Together Wear (tagline: ‘share warmth with your sweetheart’) from Chukcha, the clothing brand of pro skier Artem Glebov.
Aww.
*retch*
Fadaland
at
On asking a friend from a Gaeltacht why there was a reluctance to engage in Irish with non-native customers in shops, I was taken aback with the reply: “Why should we give free lessons in Irish to anyone”.
It’s time to realign our approach to the survival of the native tongue. We focus on the Gaeltachts, but in essence have turned them into cash-cows for their inhabitants.
There is more Irish spoken in greater Dublin than the combined Gaeltachts so perhaps it’s time Raidió na Gaeltachta changed its name to Raidió Na Gael. Time to open full-time studios in Athlone, Blanchardstown, Belfast and Waterford.
Let’s break up this cosy cabal and spread our language – it’s not just the preserve of the western seaboard.
John Cuffe,
Dunboyne,
Meath.
Anyone?
Gaeltacht Irish (Irish Times letters)
Pic: Highland Radio
From top: Lady Knayth; report of De Valera’s legal victory; Russel Square, Brighton in the 1930s.
He was bequeathed a fortune by a complete stranger of apparently unsound mind.
And fought off a legal challenge by her penniless brother.
So what happened to Eamon De Valera’s Brighton windfall?
Sibling of Daedalus writes:
In 1932 the dead body of Miss Polly Mary Fitzpatrick, former lady’s maid, was discovered in her house in Russell Square, Brighton. She had lain there for three weeks.
Miss Fitzpatrick was a Dubliner by birth, a Catholic, and a patriotic Irishwoman. She was also of a ‘very thrifty and remarkable disposition.’
Her late employer, Lady de Knayth, had left her a legacy of £200 a year, which, by astute investment, she had turned into the sum of £3000 – a very large estate indeed at that time.
She had also developed a habit of making wills. The year before her death, she had bequeathed the entirety of her property to Cardinal Bourne.
This was not her last will and testament, however.
After her death there was found, in an old skirt under her bed, tied in a silken girdle, a later will in favour of Eamon de Valera, President of the Irish Free State Executive Council.
Neither will contained any bequest to her brother, John Fitzpatrick, a former railwayman living in a flat in Rialto Buildings, Dublin on a pension of 6 shillings per week, and for whom the money, he told the Irish Times, would have been a godsend.
Mr Fitzpatrick challenged the will, and Mr de Valera resisted.
Legal proceedings ensued, and were heard in the Probate Court in London. Mr Justice Bateson, the judge assigned to the case, asked Mr de Valera’s counsel, TP O’Connor, if it ‘was a real fight or a sham fight’.
A real one, Mr O’Connor replied.
Mr Fitzpatrick argued that his sister was “of weak intellect, childish and eccentric, that in late years she had become a recluse, and that she had formed a dislike of persons from whom she was said to have derived pecuniary benefit.”
This apparently referred to the family of Lady de Knayth, with whom the deceased had fallen out, possibly because they resented her late employer’s legacy.
Mr de Valera’s counsel, on the other hand, described Miss Fitzpatrick as ‘an old fashioned lady’ who, though ‘self-contained’ and not inclined to mix freely with people, was financially astute, had many interests, including old furniture and objets d’art, and ‘took her meals daily in a good class restaurant in the neighbourhood.‘
Her bequest to his client had been made in recognition of his services to Ireland, and he had no intention of profiting from the estate, intending instead that the money would be used as a trust for public purposes of the kind which Miss Fitzpatrick was known to approve and desired to see advanced.
The burden of proving unsoundness of mind, in the case of a person making a will, is a heavy burden and rests on the person challenging the will. Mr Fitzpatrick did not succeed in satisifying it.
Mr De Valera won the case, and the money.
However I cannot find any further record of the Fitzpatrick Trust, which it was stated he intended to set up.
Anyone?
Sources: (text) The Irish Times; the Times; the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette; the Gloucestershire Echo; the Northern Whig; the Edinburgh Evening News, MyBrightonandHove
Top: Lady Knayth by John Singer Sargent
Loafable
at
MORE: Inbread Pets (eatliver)
‘sup?
Mark Cantan writes:
A new sketch you might like. How our possessions communicate when we’re not listening….
Includes: rude mirror
Previously: Mark Cantan on Broadsheet
Get Her
at
This morning.
The swanky cake-strewn offices of estrogen-fueled website Her.ie [sister to scamp-like Joe.ie] where a sale of tay and treats is being held to raise money for The Alzheimer Society of Ireland Tea Day.
Why can’t we have a fupping cake sale?
Fair play in fairness.
Staying in tonight?
First Dates – RTÉ 2, 9.30pm.
Melanie O’Connor writes:
In tonight’s episode Lucy meets Séan, a boy her Nan would be impressed with, now all she needs to do is remember his name…
Berlin D2 independent coffee shop, café and club on Clarendon Street, Dublin 2 is to close
Via Dublin Inquirer:
“We’re quite devastated really,” says staff member Poppy Copeland. “We spent a whole year trying to develop a nice community coffee shop where a lot of people have met and developed relationships,” she says. “It’s a real nice hub for everyone to meet and just to feel like that space is going to close soon is just sad for everyone involved.”
Café manager Stephen McCusker says he agrees. It’s been a year or so since he and Copeland started to work together, and, it looks to them as if they’ve created something in that time.
As a space, Berlin D2 evolves throughout the day: mornings and afternoons, those who work in the area nip in for coffee and lunch. As evening approaches, one or more DJs occupy the decks for an ambient, boozier, feel.
Berlin D2 rents its space from the Powerscourt Centre, and after some disagreements with the landlord, McCusker and his team decided to call it a day.
“We could get into, for want of a better term, a shit-fight over the place,” he says. “But I think it’s better to come out with your head held high and you go, ‘We did a great thing but due to unforeseen circumstances it has to finish.’”
It’s unclear what might take their place. Copeland and McCusker reckon it’ll be one of the big chains. They note the empty retail spaces on Coppinger Row which adjoin the café.
A spokesperson for the Powerscourt Centre did not respond to phone calls asking to talk to somebody about the space, and what might replace Berlin D2.
Copeland notes the recently opened Starbucks on Drury Street and feels the area is no longer the stronghold of the smaller, independent coffee shop.
On Clarendon Street, Berlin D2 Says It’s Calling It a Day (Conal Thomas, Dublin Inquirer)
From top: Wales Green Party assembley election literature; Dan Boyle
Wales goes to the polls today and a ‘richly rewarding’ position as Wales Green Party campaign manager comes to an end for the author.
Dan Boyle writes:
This is what it all come down to. After eight months a project is coming to an end; a phase of life has been lived through.
Today is polling day for elections to the National Assembly for Wales. The whim I followed then now makes sense to me. I needed to get away so I better understood what home was to me.
While the experience has not been been without frustration, there are many warm and happy memories I can take from having been here.
Not least of those will be of people who choose to promote their values, knowing of the difficulty of being able to persuade others – the apathetic, the cynical and the unthinking.
For such people to have one person who shares their values, elected, would be a victory. Those of us who have been through that so many times realise what often follows that becomes the start of a whole new set of problems.
Progress is being made though. I hope that a breakthrough can be achieved. Not to recognise any contribution I have made, because that really isn’t important. It should happen because The Greens in Wales deserve it to happen.
I would argue the political culture of Wales would be better should Greens be elected to the National Assembly.
Welsh politics, like Irish politics, has too many elected representatives who are politically bland, politically blind, politically mute.
The people I’ve been working with; people of passion, ability and commitment, are immeasurably better than many of the time servers the voters of Wales have been led to believe represent what is supposed to be their best option.
There are differences, some nuances; interpretations where communications were sometimes less than clear. My hands off managerial style has as often frustrated as it has amused.
Despite these it has been a positive experience. For me a richly rewarding one.
An ideal world for me would be one where when I write a sentence, like this last sentence, it would be understood in the context in which it was meant. When I write ‘richly rewarding’ it rarely has anything to do with money. This has been a position, a job, for which I’ve received payment.
It hasn’t been a position in which I’ve made money. I took up the position not intending to make money. I continued to rent in Cork, always having intended to come back.
The reward has been doing something interesting, getting to know people I otherwise wouldn’t have known; enjoying the scenery and the history of a beautiful country. That is reward.
The past is another country, one I’m greatly looking forward to be returning to. Like it has before it will frustrate me and it will make me angry, but more often than not that frustration and anger will be about myself.
I’m coming home Cork.
Díolch Cymru.
Dan Boyle is campaign manager for the Wales Green Party and a former Green Party TD and Senator. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle