With the cold snap interfering in the normal running of life for most people in recent weeks, one of Castlebar’s most colourful characters, Ernie Sweeney, shares some words of wisdom with Mayo Advertiser readers this week.
The personification of good cheer and goodwill, Ernie is well known over the years for his involvement in the Four Days Walk and love of history which he shares with anyone who cares to listen during his daily trips around town.
A late-learner in certain fields, Ernie is the embodiment of the new lifelong learning culture, having turned around an early life of illiteracy up to the age of 30, and more recently having learned to drive at age 56; now aged 61, Ernie is reading the Koran - the Muslim holy book - currently at page 200 out of page 900 - and very much enjoying the material. “I certainly don’t get cabin fever while I’m studying it,” he quipped.
However matters more pertinent to Irish daily life are of concern to Ernie at the moment, such as safety on the roads during the recent snow spell. The Boradruma man has been particularly less than impressed with the icy state of the footpaths around the county town in the run up to Christmas.
“If there was to be a funeral today there’d be more dead people brought out of the cemetery than into it because the whole place after the ice is like a pure bottle.”
Saving his praise for the ‘men and women out gritting our roads’ - the new heroes, as Ernie hails them, he suggests that the powers that be devise gritting trucks in the manner of “the old steam engines’, to steam off the snow first, as “with the gritter out the back of multi-tonne loads the our heroes lives are being put at risk”, he said.
Despite other concerns about the town being too dark in parts in the winter evenings right now, Ernie nonetheless remains upbeat as ever.
“Every day I would usually walk about five miles in and around Castlebar and out Glenisland and up to the Hill of the High Fort, which is 800 feet high offering panoramic views of ancient Ireland. What I have learned in these strange times is that crisis and negativity brings on positivity, so we are seeing great community spirit, with people out bringing the turf and helping others. It is the yin and yang of life that will always prevail.”
