Better Bedding sale to help post-Christmas pocket worries

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

As many of us know, Christmas cheer and delightful gifts can be a large expense, and leave us with nothing but flint and fluff in our pockets and wallets. With this in mind, it is a relief to know that the Better Bedding sale will commence today (Thursday), with a vast and beautiful range of household products reduced up to 50 per cent. The sale guarantees 20 per cent off all Respa Irish made beds, 20 per cent off all Truscan Irish made furniture, 25 per cent off all thermal lined curtains, and up to a whopping 50 per cent off selected quilt covers and a selection of readymade curtains.

Solid fuel heating made simple with Stoveman Galway

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

Stoveman Galway has announced that its new solid fuel stove shop is now open in Liosbán Estate, Tuam Road, Galway.

Lose weight with food, exercise, and metabolism correction

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

There are three keys to a genuine weight loss (real fat loss) plan — diet, exercise, and metabolism correction. All three keys interconnect — one will not work without the other.

Transform your body with a revolutionary new treatment

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

Are you fed up of those lumps and bumps? Perhaps you do all the right things and exercise regularly but still cannot banish fat from some areas. Whether abdominal fat, back fat, or other areas, a new treatment available at Therapie Clinic will freeze, break down, and eliminate stubborn fat cells, reducing fat by up to 40 per cent after one treatment.

How to stop worrying

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

Most of us worry. We worry about major issues such as our health, children, ageing parents, or making ends meet or about minor matters, such as waking up early for work in the morning, getting to the shops before closing time or beating rush hour traffic.

When buses came to Galway

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

The first public transport system in Galway was the horse drawn tramway. It ran until World War I when the British army commandeered most of the horses. By this time motorised transport was also providing competition, and this speeded up the demise of the tram system.

The man who rescued Lancelot from the River Clare

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

One of the most dramatic and legendary events in the history of Irish foxhunting took place with the Galway Blazers on December 19 1953 between Cregg Castle, Corrandulla, and beyond the Clare river, near Anbally. This is great fox hunting terrain. It’s level going, open and free. When on a good scent the hounds will skim the walls, and allow no time for man or beast to make mistakes if they want to stay close to them. December 19 1953 was a clear, frosty day. The hounds were in full pursuit ‘skimming the long low walls the way the swallows do’. After a four mile chase they hit the river Clare about a mile short of the nearest bridge at Corofin village.

When buses came to Galway

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

The first public transport system in Galway was the horse drawn tramway. It ran until World War I when the British army commandeered most of the horses. By this time motorised transport was also providing competition, and this speeded up the demise of the tram system.

The man who rescued Lancelot from the River Clare

Thu, Jan 03, 2013

One of the most dramatic and legendary events in the history of Irish foxhunting took place with the Galway Blazers on December 19 1953 between Cregg Castle, Corrandulla, and beyond the Clare river, near Anbally. This is great fox hunting terrain. It’s level going, open and free. When on a good scent the hounds will skim the walls, and allow no time for man or beast to make mistakes if they want to stay close to them. December 19 1953 was a clear, frosty day. The hounds were in full pursuit ‘skimming the long low walls the way the swallows do’. After a four mile chase they hit the river Clare about a mile short of the nearest bridge at Corofin village.

'It was Christmas day in the workhouse..'

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

Many people will be familiar with the first line of this famous Victorian dramatic monologue, written by the English journalist George R Sims in 1879.

St Mary’s College, 1912 – 2012

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

Our photograph today which shows the beginnings of the construction of St Mary’s College was taken in 1911.

'It was Christmas day in the workhouse..'

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,
And the cold, bare walls are bright

And the cold, bare walls are bright

A wife politely tells her husband to calm down

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

Winston Churchill was 66 years of age when he became prime minister of Great Britain on May 10 1940. It was a moment of extreme crisis in Europe. Belgium, Holland and France were collapsing under the fierce onslaught of the German invasion. A large British army was retreating in the direction of Dunkirk. There was opposition within the government to Churchill.

‘Hopeless but not serious’

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

Eamon De Valera and Winston Churchill were never friends. Famously de Valera had brilliantly defended Ireland's neutrality during World War II following a verbal broadside from Churchill. One can imagine that matters between the two leaders were cool to freezing.

According to Dennis Kelly, a former literary assistant to Churchill, the British prime minister liked to tell the following amusing story: 'British bomber over Berlin, caught in searchlight, flak coming up, one engine on fire, rear-gunner wounded, Irish pilot mutters: Thank God Dev kept us out of the bloody war.'

'Kiss your wife, and you kiss your husband'

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

One of the film highlights of the year for me was Anna Karenina, a British adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's great novel of the same name.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm meets Charles Dickens

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

This year marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. He was born February 7 1812, and died at only 58 years of age in 1870. His output was so prolific – vast novels with hundreds of characters – and his life was so frenzied, that it seems miraculous that he lived as long as he did.

Apart from his writing, theatricals, travels, and editing magazines, he gave popular public readings from his books which were sell out performances. Audiences came in their thousands, and were disappointed to be turned away.

The amazing 'Brocken Spectre'

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

Early last February local photographer Sean Tomkins found himself walking along a very foggy Atlantic coast in County Clare.

'Galwegians are particularly vindictive'

Thu, Dec 27, 2012

An unflattering picture of Galway in the mid 19th century is recorded here by a German teacher Adolf Helfferich. Earlier this year Eoin Bourke, emeritus professor of German at NUIG, published a very interesting collection of German traveller's views of Ireland from before the 1798 Rising to after the Great Famine (Poor Green Eirin published by Peter Lang and Co).

Remembering Myles Joyce

Thu, Dec 13, 2012

In April 1980, I interviewed Mrs Sarah Lynskey from Bridge Street, on her 100th birthday, for this column. In the course of our conversation, she told me her earliest memory was of “kneeling on the Salmon Weir Bridge with my mother and a lot of Claddagh women praying. I know they were Claddagh women because I can still see the triangles of shawl as they knelt on the bridge. We were praying for a fellow, they were going to hang him the next day. Joyce was his name”. She was talking about Myles Joyce, an innocent man who was to be hanged along with two others for the Maamtrasna murders.

Ten things an Irish woman could not do in 1970

Thu, Dec 13, 2012

What dominated our news and much of our conversations during the 1970s (at least in the early years), was the deteriorating crisis in Northern Ireland. When I think of that decade I remember the initial hope that something would be settled quickly rather than letting it drag on fuelled by appallingly bad political decisions, thuggery, and deeply imbedded hatred. Seamus Heaney remarked that in the early 1970s ‘there was a promise in the air as well as fury and danger’. But in Northern Ireland any nervous sense of hopeful expectation quickly soured; as Heaney recalled: ‘Soon enough it all went rancid.’ In John Montague’s poem The Rough Field, he observes: ‘In the dark streets, firing starts.’

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