Search Results for 'carpenter'

A lifetime spent in football has taught Joey Malone many lessons. More than three decades after guiding Galway United to a cherished FAI Cup success in 1991, Malone is well aware of the importance of that achievement.

The final chapter in the history of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Paris bookshop, began with the publication of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, in May 1939. The shop closed in December 1941 when a Nazi officer saw a copy of Joyce’s book in its window and asked to buy it. Sylvia Beach refused saying it was her only copy, and was not for sale. The officer threatened to return and confiscate her entire stock, and left. He returned the next day and demanded she sold him the book. Again Sylvia refused, and the officer, ‘trembling with rage’ warned that he would be back that afternoon and seize all her books.

For a decade Gary Fitzgerald resisted the temptation that always existed to get back involved in football.

“Boats from the Long Walk as well as the Boraholla boats were plying, and the shouting of the boatmen 'Who’s for Menlo, twopence a head, children free' rent the air …. It is a slow voyage but no-one minds. Joe Banks, piper to the King plays ‘The Rakes of Mallow'. Joe Kelly is piping in another boat, which is occupied by the Mayor of Galway …… Sweet vendors were working night and day preparing sugar-sticks and kiss-pipes which were sold in colours of red and white at a half-penny each ….. the cries of different vendors of eatables and drinks rent the air: ‘Cider a penny a glass …. The real juice of the American apple; Guinness threepence per pint and minerals twopence per bottle’ is the shout …… Puritans and temperance fanatics were unknown …. The ladies in the enclosure, which was at this side of the castle, with their sunshades and costumes of mid-Victorian days, looked beautiful. The villagers and colleens with their shoulder-shawls and neat pinafores were a picture of neatness and comeliness. They were all dressed — not undressed as they are today. Lady Blake hands the prizes and cups to the successful crews. The Miss Blakes are chatting in good old Irish to Maureen, Shawneen and Paudeen.”

The lot of a country girl growing up in rural Ireland in the 1930s and 40s was a lottery. If her family had a decent farm, and were relatively well off, she could go to university or train as a nurse, and could marry a prosperous farmer.

Galway United’s thirst for national football honours was finally satisfied in Lansdowne Road in 1991 with a 1-0 win over Shamrock Rovers in the FAI Cup. It was a success that gave reality to dreams cherished for so long by so many who had fostered local football for decades. Linley MacKenzie spent the weekend with the United squad, watching their dreams become reality.

Week VI

Are you in for a real fright?

The modern world is full of fraught trials for children and young people, ranging across issues like exam pressure, bullying, poverty, homelessness, radicalisation, suicidal impulses, and the impact of social media.

I do not know the statistics, but I feel sure that the greatest number of our continental visitors come from France. During the summer you hear and see a lot of French people clutching maps of our small city, wandering about in groups; or lines of young students talking and gesturing happily among themselves, not paying the least attention to their guide. The French are not operatic like the Italians. They share beautiful sounding words; but the face is serious. I feel there is something of Old Europe in the French language.