Category Archives: Misc

frilly

Almost half a century of “eating like a teenager and drinking like five of them” ends here

Frilly Keane writes:

Yep tis the season.

I’m back.

Tis the season alright; externally anyway. Hay saved, leaves browning and curling, colourful skies to hang over us as we come home from work, bodies multiplying like gremlins at bus stops (not today tho’) boilers being serviced, Strictly and X Factor, then its Countdown to Christmas and I’m a Celebrity.

This year, and I kinda knew since early summer that if I was coming back to ye after the Shut Down that I would be writing about what ye are about to claw into; Frilly’s Fiftieth Fit out; FFFo.
I have entered my 50th year.

I suppose the hardest thing about it is that it is now over 30 years since I did my leaving cert, and in 1985 I never looked beyond the next weekend, naw’ mind to when I might be 30 years old; yet here I am, looking back 30 years. It’s gasping how shocking it is really.

I had no idea it even passed since I never really felt it happening or watched it enough to actually see it. To be fair I worked and grafted through it and even breastfed for a bit of it. But it wasn’t hard work like laying tarmacadam, and it was far from a disciplined strict life work balance.

However I know all about it now. And that reality bite really hurts.

I’m tired. I have aches and pains from me shoulders to me toes and I’m over weight, and not just a bit’ve a girth, I have a mezzanine level that is now quite vulgar it’s that gaudy and unsightly.

But it’s all homemade, since I eat like teenager and drink like five of them. My lifestyle is so sh1t I actually get awarded Drive-Thru miles. Mayo and salt on everything and I’ve yet to see a salad that doesn’t look better with coleslaw and a glass of wine.

I have congenital spinal conditions that have in the last 5 years developed a by-product in a degenerative condition; all of which I can kinda actually manage without meds and surgical intervention; if I was arsed.

So that’s all where I am now. Those thirty years I mentioned? Well it’s all their fault, and it was all me, I wholly own the wreck of me.

But this one, my fiftieth year, is going to be different; I have drawn up the FFFo plan, and its sum’ting like this:

Alcohol is now rationed to 1 unit a day – or 7 in a week. (I’m saving up already) Dos’ are going to be cut off at 5 units, then its water, or bed.

I will, by Christmas, have stopped all sugar into the coffee tay etc; with coffee being limited to one pint a day. Lattes are already gone, and pretty soon so will a good 50% of my dairy consumption. In fact also gone are takeaways and eating on the road. My car is already showing the signs of it.

I will develop a thirst for still water that will need at least 3 litres a day, ideally 4. Up to now I didn’t drink water in any reportable quantity, other than what’s contained in other liquids.

I will do one type of physical exercise that is not walking the dog a week and when Easter comes, I will sea swim again, if not daily at least 3 times a week. Work permitting.

This is the part of my evolution that I am most ashamed of. In 1985 I was a just-about-to-retire International Competitor. FFS. Now I only go into a Gym facility to get a facial.

That bike in the garage is going to see daylight too … I might get meself a GoPro while I’m at it.

Anyway back to the FFFo.

I intend eliminating spuds completely, including crisps by Ash Wednesday. All that other white starchy carb stuff like pasta, rice, bread, all that lovely stuff, even when it’s not soaked in butter or creamy sauces will go thru a ‘how good was I today’ indexation calculation and assessment.
And any cake, and I love me cake, will only be consumed if it’s homemade.

So ok, so I know this is all a wtf is she shyting on about now; but hould’yer whists, I do have a reason.

You see, these next twelve months is the centre of a seesaw, to me anyway. My first 30 years of adulthood are gone, binged and scarred all over me and my organs. But next year, when I am actually 50, one way or another I will fully expect to live another 30 years, statistically anyway.

So will I spend them like the last 30? Or the next 12 months?

That’s what FFFo is all about. At the end of this 50th year I might be so full of the joys of a clean fit life that I might grow up into one of those marathon running grannies, be able to drink my own wee wee like Rosanna, and feel like a 20 sum’ting Yoga teacher.

I might not be. Who knows? If I am, I might decide it wasn’t worth the effort and continue to grow old disgracefully.

Maybe this year will be so miserable and boring that even if I look like Miriam O’Callaghan at next year’s All Ireland it still wouldn’t have been worth it; and it might even end the way it started – unfit (ish), fat and creaking like an Arthritis clinic.

FFFo is like taking my own test drive in myself, and I intend to make a daycent effort at it. I’ve even gone and sorted out my hair so it’s all grown up now.

So it won’t all be nettle tea and dried pineapple chunks, there’ll a blow out here and there, absolutely, and I do love my Christmas. But I just want to know if it’s worth the attention, control and abstinence.

I’ll keep ye updated, but one way or another, I’m losing 3 stones and getting back inta a 14.

Frilly keane’s column appears here every Friday morning. Follow Frilly on Twitter: @frillykeane

Rollingnews

teachers

 

Geoffraffe writes:

A huge number of teachers were not paid today. When the payroll sector was contacted they said it was due to a backlog in processing appointments over the summer. Some teachers may not be paid for 6 weeks!!! It’s not as if they didn’t know that teachers would be appointed. This happens every year. This is the public sector that we work in.

Anyone?

1911-dominion-of-canada-1-dollar-bill-front1luke

From top: 1911 Canadian dollar; Luke Flanagan

Did you know about ‘Dublin’s Newsboy Millionaire’?

Read all about it.

Esteemed historical blogger Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Young Luke Flanagan (no relation), summoned before the Dublin Children’s Court on February 8, 1911 looked just like any other Dublin tenement boy – undersized – looking 4 years younger than his actual 15 years.

Without a shirt and with a threadbare coat pinned across his chest, his crime was also typical of many tenement boys – that of selling newspapers without a licence.

But Luke differed from the average such boy in one important respect.

According to Police Constable 86C (one of Dublin’s famous Tall Constables), who had summoned him to court, he was generally known as the ‘Dublin Millionaire Newsboy’, having inherited a large sum of money from a relative in Canada, which he would come into when he reached the age of 21 years.

Giving evidence in court, Luke’s mother, Mrs Rooney, said that she had married Frank Flanagan, the son of a Dublin solicitor who had subsequently emigrated to Canada. Frank was now dead, and she had remarried.

Luke, their only surviving child, lived with his mother, her new husband, and a ‘foster brother’, also a newsboy, in a tenement flat off O’Connell Street.

Some years before, her deceased brother-in-law, John, who had gone to Canada with his father, returned bringing news of Luke’s grandfather’s death, and a legacy of £1500 (a substantial sum in 1911) left to Frank and passing to Luke as his surviving heir.

The question was, where was the money?

Mrs Rooney – described by all sources as a woman of excellent character – thought perhaps it might have been paid into the Court of Chancery in Ireland.

This caused consternation among Dublin citizens, who were outraged at the thought of a young man of such expectant fortune – described by one paper as a thin, weakly youngster with a wistful face – being neglected by the Court and left to fend for himself on the streets of Dublin.

British newspapers took up the cry of outrage, and soon the story spread as far as Canada itself, and San Diego, Texas. In fact, Luke’s was perhaps the first Irish news story to go viral.

Matters quietened down however, when the Irish Court of Chancery released a statement saying that no money had ever been lodged with it on behalf of either Luke Flanagan or his grandfather’s estate.

Luke Flanagan was convicted of trading without a licence and obliged to pay 2s 6d to the poor box. It is not clear whether he ever got his legacy.

Was the Court of Chancery being entirely honest? Did wicked Uncle John make off with the money? What happened to Luke’s newspaper business in the Rising of 1916?

Anyone?

Tales of Old Dublin

Luke Flanagan pic: Evening Herald

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Earlier today.

Kildare FM reported that a gay couple, Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan, have stepped down from the church choir at the Catholic parish church, St Michael’s, in Athy, Co. Kildare (top).

The station reported:

Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan, who married in July, have stepped down from the church choir and other church music activities, due to what they say is the level of pressure placed upon them and the church by a local church activist Anthony Murphy [of newspaper Catholic Voice].

Mr Murphy is strongly opposed to gay people being active in the Catholic church in what he calls leadership roles.

Mr Murphy has also conveyed his views to parish priest Canon Frank McEvoy, whom the couple says has been supportive of them.

Kildare FM also reported that, a few days after Ms O’Donnell and Ms Flanagan got married, Mr Murphy sent Ms O’Donnell the following text:

Jacinta, I hope you will now have the decency to resign from the church choir and as a eucharistic minister, following the events of last Wednesday [their wedding day].

Further to this, in an interview with Shane Beatty, on Kildare FM, Jacinta O’Donnell told Mr Beatty:

“Well, we’ve been mulling over [the decision to leave] it all summer. When we were made aware of Anthony Murphy’s feelings and when we saw some of the very negative and, I suppose, hateful stuff really that was on his Facebook page, etc, and then when I got the personal text message from him.”

“Geraldine and I, you know, we, the only thing we’ve ever tried to do is provide a music ministry and the whole idea behind that was to enhance the eucharist and we felt that, bringing this trouble to the church door would be really futile and negate anything that we were trying to do.”

“So we thought about it long and hard and it was, and still is, a very difficult decision that we came to. We’re both very upset by it.”

“…we understood that there were going to be protests or some form of demonstrations, you know, to basically encourage us to leave, shall I say. And we felt that the ordinary people, that were just going along to their weekly mass, you know, didn’t need to be subjected to this.”

“And it was going to defeat the entire purpose of our whole reason to be there in the first place and I think we felt we had more respect for the house of God then to have that brought to its door or because of us and we felt that the easier thing to do would be just to walk away.”

Meanwhile, Mr Murphy told Mr Beatty:

“This is not about personalities. Well clearly, you know, the way the choir operates in Athy, Jacinta and Geraldine are positioned on the altar, in the sanctuary, you know, on a stage almost, sharing the stage with the parish priest.”

“You can not have a contradiction where the church teaches one thing and people who are right next to the tabernacle, the blessed sacrament, contradict all of that teaching.”

AUDIO: Controversy In Athy As Gay Couple Step Down From Church Music Activities (Kildare FM)

Pic: Flickr

UPDATE: EXCLUSIVE: Athy Couple At Centre Of Choir Controversy Make Their Return Tomorrow Saturday (KFM)