Buying a cooked chicken

I left her wandering in women’s fashions and took a cursory look at the men’s fashions. I say cursory as I only buy clothes when I need them, which is not apparently how women shop.

The January Sales were in full flow and she said: “I’ll meet you in the food department in 5 minutes”. It was that and more and still no sign of her.

Actually, that is a lie.

Walking back from the fruit and vegetable section I peered over a rack of shirts and saw her quite clearly. Her distinctive mass of blonde hair was visible focused over an almost endless line of women’s blouses. The dresses and coats were yet to be inspected.

I wandered back to and around the food department, an empty wire basket in hand and probably a bored look on my face. I drifted down the meat section, up the dairy trying to look as if I was considering the buying of a piece of cheese or a carton of milk, full fat or low fat? I surveyed the reduced item's shelf and noted the offerings today. Prawn cocktails, a favourite of mine were there, by the tub, at 33% off. I noted them only as we would make a decision when together we bought the supplies. I’m an impulse shopper who sent out for a loaf of bread returns with three bags of food.

I doubled back to the fruit and vegetables, our meeting spot before pressing on deeper into the veritable jungle of food. I covered the frozen food in a matter of seconds and arrived at the hot food deli counter hungry. There were no customers, just the three unsmiling female white-coated staff who looked back at me. I smiled weakly and stared into the glass display cabinets where the sausages, chicken nuggets and chips looked steaming hot and inviting. My stomach rumbled and I remembered it had been 5 hours since breakfast. I’ll propose we get something to eat now.

I retraced my steps to the fruit and vegetable and found my “shopped out” partner and as we walked back together I pointed out the possible purchases. Nothing interested her until we reached the deli counter.

So there we stood, both ravenous. “I’ll take the cooked chicken”. Now at this point in the chicken buying process, I usually gesture out a particular chicken saying “Can I have that one – I don’t want to get an ugly one!” It’s just something I do and say so that I can get what appears to be the best one on display. If I say nothing the Deli staff tend to just grab the nearest one. But today I didn’t feel the warmth of love flowing between me and the deli staff and held back on my quip. She reached in with the pincers and grabbed the nearest chicken and in it went into an insulated bag with a price sticker slapped on for good measure. Walking away I had a nagging feeling that it was an undersized, slight bird and that I would regret not choosing my favourite. It was in the back of my mind as I drove home.

It was only when we got home and I opened the bag that my worst fears had indeed appeared to come through. I split open the bag to reveal a chicken that had avoided food and apparently spent its time on a treadmill. It was as lean as lean could be. I went to cut some tender chicken breast off and came across the rib cage within seconds. I searched for meat with the knife but wherever I looked I came up against bone. I knew it looked small in the shop but surely there must be more to it than this?

It was at this point that I called my wife across and pointed out the scarcity of meat on this bird. I now know why I married this woman. Saying not a word she took the chicken and flipped it over on the plate. I’d been staring at it upside down.

“Plenty of meat on this side,” she said before walking away, “Can you cut me a breast?”

Misdiagnosis beware self diagnosis

We all needed a servicing. The house heating system, a big red Stanley cooker and boiler had its annual service ahead of the chillingly cold Irish winter. The car clocked up its first 30,000 kilometres and required a service and the hand brake required tightening. My wife visited the doc and had her blood pressure tablets changed and dosage increased. Her cholesterol came in very high at 7 and she exited with another prescription.

It was all rounded off with a visit to her much older sister who at 71 was recovering from the removal of an entire kidney. They’d intended just taking a biopsy but on the day whipped the whole thing out. We visited the Saturday afternoon, a month after the operation and thank God found her and her husband in a relatively good state of health and mind.

“How did they spot her cancer of the kidneys?” I asked as we drove homewards.

“Oh – it was in her urine – her pee. It was red which meant there was blood in it. Your kidneys manufacture your urine.”

“Hmmm” I answered thoughtfully. Apparently, a lot can be learnt from the colour of your urine.

We carried on home and the next day I looked out the kitchen window to see the damage caused by the first storm of the winter. 140 Kilometre per hour winds had lashed the house and garden the previous night. The grass was covered in broken branches and leafs torn from the trees. My ride-on shed’s felt roof had a large chunk torn off and chucked onto the concrete below. The new ponds dug out in the summer had experienced their first heavy downpours of rainwater and the water had got under the liner so the bottom came floating to the top. It was chaos and with a gap in the bad weather I took out the ladder and mounted the shed roof to tack back the loosened piece. I then coated it in tar paint and added a roll of tar “sellotape” to triple proof it against happening again. I addressed the other issues as the sun appeared and we had a bright sunny day.

Next on our list was to harvest the vegetables we’d grown in the polytunnel and soon a basket was filled with tomatoes, radishes, parsley, sage and beetroot. My good wife didn’t hang about with the beetroot and before the day was out the pressure cooker was spitting steam and they were cooked. They cooled and were sliced up for tea that night. I must confess I love beetroot and during the day while working in the garden I popped in a few times and nibbled at it as it cooled in the kitchen.

The salad we enjoyed that evening was amazing. I don’t know if it was the work in the garden but I was very hungry and ate a hearty meal. Knowing the vegetables are all organic probably adds to the pleasure of eating. A few wickedly fattening cashew nuts added to the flavour and ensured I left not a nanoparticle on the plate.

The good weather stayed about for the next day or two and my roofing work seemed to have done the trick. Reluctantly we left our country home and drove to Dublin on Wednesday. In Dublin, upon our arrival, I used the toilet. Once done I turned around to flush the contents away but found that the bowl was filled with blood red water. I said nothing to my wife but I was worried about it. I had a rather sleepless night. I felt physically fine but maybe that’s true for everyone with cancer of the kidneys? At 6.30am I was up and in the toilet again. Again the contents of my toilet bowl were red. Now I was seriously worried. I had to share it with her.

“Have you a minute?” I asked as she exited the bedroom. Normally I know better than to approach the Grinch before a first coffee and cigarette but it indicates to you my degree of worry. I was prepared to take the chance.

“What for?” she replied with a slight irritation in her voice.

“To look at my toilet bowl” I answered.

“Mark – I’ve seen one. You know when you’ve seen one – you’ve seen them all.”

“No – I mean – can you take a look at my ….. pooh”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?

I can’t wait. I suppose you say this to all the girls

Lead on”

She took one glance at my red offering and roared laughing. I looked at her quizzically.

“Mark – mines the same!!”

“Does that mean we both have cancer of the kidney?”

“No you fool – It’s the beetroot”

“We both ate the beetroot”

So let this be a lesson to all you amateur doctors out there. Never self diagnose. I’ve learnt my lesson. However, the lesson may also be to ease up on the beetroot. Your choice.

Child Minding ain’t what it used to be

I was flattered that we were asked to minds baby Bob. It would be his 6th month on this earth and his mothers 30th birthday. It would also be Mum and Dad’s first joint night out sans Bob so there was an edge to the evening, “Going where this family had not gone before……..”

I was also fairly relaxed about the occasion as my wife had reared four of her own, we’d already minded overnight two other grandchildren and basically, it was at the end of a tough week at work and I hadn’t given the day too much thought. You know the way it happens? You wake up to find it's the weekend and you flick open the daily diary to find you haven’t updated the last three days and then your eye is drawn to today’s entry with an event entered in a strong black ink and highlighted in yellow?

Still, it doesn’t start till 4.30pm so you’ve got 8 hours to make it and it’s cool. That’s until wife turns a 15-minute visit to the shopping centre to pick up a voucher gift card into a two-hour excursion as Debenhams were having a sale with two for the price of one and 70% off! A miniature fashion show ensues on her return and much as I enjoy a private showing the clock on the wall keeps ticking.

OK, we are running tight for time now but I reckon we are max 20 minutes away from party base camp so we are still cool.

“What text?” “You got a text? Saying what exactly?”

“Balloons …..Any particular type of balloons?”

“We have to pick up helium inflated pre-ordered balloons”

“Where?”

“That’s in the opposite direction!”

The heat is on and we make the balloon pick up and gently force the enlarged and very pink yet delicate globes into the car without disaster. It’s on to the party and on arrival can see that baby Bob has been entrusted to a friend of Mums while the lady herself is away for the afternoon for a “pampering” session which includes, nail, face and makeup. Hubby is erecting Pagodas, tables, chairs and a bouncy castle. Chimena’s are set up for the cool later evening and solar lights decorate the garden, again designed to kick into action as dusk arrives. We make ourselves useful and plant up some border plants purchased but not planted by a man being stretched beyond his normal capabilities. Other pals have arrived and the house and garden are transformed in an hour into a weatherproofed, BBQ and party venue. The party beat is coming from inside when the girl herself arrives looking every inch a beautiful movie star.

You may have questioned, quite reasonably, the bouncy castle at a 30 something party. We have now reached that stage in life for the party host and guests that parties for tonight and for the next 20 years will include kids. Tonight the kids are mostly under 5 years but that will change. This same crowd 5 years ago would have been enjoying a wild and loud time with the party only starting at 10.30pm and boogying on into the small hours. With few exceptions, they have moved en masse into the world of parenthood and the life change has happened seamlessly.

By 10pm the children and related parents have departed, the cake has been presented, the BBQ has fed the 5,000 and it’s getting nippy in the garden. The fire brigade ( a decommissioned red one with a pole and male pole dancer) has pulled up outside to transport the birthday girl and 9 girlfriends to town for a boogie whilst the male partners are settling for a taxi. We wave all off and silence descends on the empty house. Upstairs Bob is sound asleep. My wife is shattered and takes to bed with a glass of wine and before long it’s just me. I watch TV flicking the channels until I find the sport and sit there with the remote in my right hand and the baby monitor in my left. The monitor shows a steady 18 degrees and I hear his little voice as he occasionally mumbles to himself.

I pass at least 2 hours in peace and venture upstairs once to eyeball him, just to be sure. Then about midnight, I hear some little cries and I go to his side. The blanket is wrapped around his torso but not the arms and legs. I hold his fingers and they are cold. I wrap my hands around them until they warm up. He settles again and I return to the football. It was over an hour before the monitor speaker alerts me further to his cries. I glance at the watch – 1.30am.

It’s about a bottle time. I’d taken only the scantest of interest in the baby handling instructions as they were being addressed to wife. However, I realise only at this late hour that I ‘m on my own now and I probably should have taken more interest. Still, I can do this. Heat a bottle in the micro, test the temperature on the nape of the wrist and stick the bottle in the gob. Simple. I carried out the plan to the letter and all was going swimmingly well until the stick in gob bit. I reached in to remove the mildly whinging kid when I found he wasn’t coming out too easily. In fact, the more I pulled him the heavier he felt and then I noticed the mattress was coming with him! He began to get agitated and I knew if he opened his eyes he’d be surprised to see who was holding him, to put it mildly. I whipped the blanket off him and was amazed to find he was actually “velcroed” to the mattress. The strips ran around his waist and up from between his legs to his tummy button where it met the cross band. They kept him on the flat of his back and prevented him from rolling over. I’d never seen anything like it and was gobsmacked! I had to remove him to feed him so I undid the velcro and out he popped.

I held him in my left arm and placed the bottle teeth to his lips and we started. That was until the baby monitor started to emit a piercing tone. I tried to ignore it, as did he but it just grew and grew. Apparently, the child’s 18 degrees of body heat had plunged to zero and this monitor was not letting this event go unnoticed. Within a minute it was issuing urgent loud repetitive tones and I had to put the baby back in the cot while I focused on the monitor. Without my glasses, I couldn’t read the screen and resorted to pressing every button in turn, which achieved nothing. I was told later by Dad that it was only at the base station that the monitor could be switched off so I resorted to a technophobes solution and ran downstairs sticking the bloody thing under two cushions in the sitting room and closing the door.

Back up I went to a wide-awake Bob who surveyed a mildly familiar face and made the decision not the shout the house down. We spent a very happy few hours together in the kitchen amusing each other and eventually he drifted off and back to the cot he went. However, I didn’t Velcro him in and with the monitor disabled I mounted guard on him until the boogied out parents reappeared in a shared taxi at 5.00am.

Life and babysitting have got a lot more exhausting!

Changing Jobs is a life changing experience

Three weeks ago I changed jobs. In itself, it’s an unremarkable event. People do it every day but when you think about it it’s quite strange that we take the huge changes that this encompasses in our stride.

On a Friday I sat at the desk I’d sat at for 4 years, 5 days a week, 9 am to 5.30pm (and often later) for 48 weeks of the year. Around me were a bunch of people whom, by now I knew intimately as I spent more waking hours with them than I did my wife. I knew most of their partner’s names, their children’s names and their main interests. I knew their sense of humour if they were happy today or not.  I knew what they ate for lunch and what made them laugh. They also knew me.

We’d been through a lot together. We were a team. I couldn’t do my bit until several others had completed theirs and once a month we worked hell for leather for 5 days to hit tight deadlines. Above and beyond me in the process sat another guy and above him another again who could only get their job done when I’d pressed the button on my work.

In the past 4 years, we’d lost hundreds of staff to redundancy, had 3 managing directors, flirted with examinership, moved offices and built almost 20 rescue plans to save the business. I’m amazed no one died from the stress of it all. OK, my hair has begun to go grey a bit but I was coping quite well compared to others. One was twice admitted to A&E and ultimately had to quit. Others went on sick leave for months.

It was at times a depressing experience and we developed an “in the trenches” dark sense of humour. The future was uncertain and each new rescue plan, launched by a new suited leader at a gather round sounded sadly similar to the previous ones launched by the last guy. Sales fell and staff were cut, sales fell further, more staff were cut and on it went. For the survivors, the phrase “swopping seats on the Titanic” came to mind.

One guy, parachuted in to turn the business around, announced his plans saying “I’m on a bus that will take us to a profitable place. I only want people on this bus who are committed to making this journey with me.  If you don’t want to come you’d better leave now” The audience reaction was two minutes of complete silence and no one moved a muscle. His two-year bus ride to corporate salvation lasted 8 months as new group management decided he shouldn’t be on the bus and slipped in a new driver in his place!

I could contrast those years above with the life I had in several companies that were making money while I worked there. The atmosphere was completely different. People by and large went to work happy and the management of those concerns occasionally made small gestures to staff that made them even happier. For example ice creams given to all on hot sunny days. “Mark, your masseur is ready for you now”. An evening out, a day at the races, a two-day company gathering at an island hotel for team building and effort recognition. I could go on but you get the drift.

People in profitable businesses were also nicer to each other. They worked without fear of job loss and shared information readily for the “greater good”. They lived happy lives with “up” people and a mood of success permeated the office air. People in the loss-making businesses lived more stressful lives and worked in silence for long parts of the day. At times it felt like we worked in a public library or an examination hall.  They ring-fenced their turf, adopted defensive tactics and generally took much longer to accept newcomers as one of the team. However once accepted as a team member their friendship and help was unlimited.

Working in a place that is losing money is a pressurized and unpleasant experience and it’s difficult to leave the worries at the office door however if you don’t they can come home with you and sour your personal life too.

On Monday 3 weeks ago I didn’t go to normal workplace. I didn’t see the old crew of familiar faces. I didn’t log into the PC get down to work. I didn’t use my security tag to flash it three times to get to the toilet or to access the canteen to make myself a cup of coffee. I went somewhere else where I only knew one person.

I suited up and knocked on a door in a town 160 kilometres away. I met a whole bunch of new people, a brand new laptop, a new phone and a new set of duties. Almost overnight I threw away my old life and replaced it with a new one.

Do you not find it strange that we expect ourselves to immediately adapt to such changes and to just carry on?

I do. It just struck me today that what we do regularly in life is in changing jobs, which throws all our daily routines up in the air is that it forces us to accept new challenges in new places with new people. In some ways, it’s like being reborn.

You are the man from afar. No-one knows anything about you. You can start life afresh with the slate wiped clean and an opportunity to shine. You can, however, view it negatively and see the challenges it brings but I’m upbeat about the future so bring it on!

Keeping in Touch

Being a man (and I have no scientific basis to lay this at men’s doors), I believe we men are very poor at keeping in contact with our past life and I fully expect to lose contact with the old team and to never see or hear from them again. To Mark, Paul and Aidan I am truly sorry but I’m sure the loss of contact is both mutual an inevitable. No matter how fond you guys were of the daft bloke who turned up in various moods and guises over the previous 4 years you will let him go to float away in the ether of time.

However, in contrast, I believe a woman given the same work experience would be still in contact with most of the old team and may still be planning to meet up at the next leavers going away drinks. Five years on I would suggest she would still be in contact with at least two of her former colleagues and be planning a meal out some night.

We men seem to lack that contact gene and I can’t tell you of the number of people I really liked in companies I worked for, that  I have lost forever over my working life.

Do you agree?

Are men poor at keeping in touch?

Parallel Lifes

I sat in a friend’s house and we three enjoyed a meal of chicken, rice and vegetables washed down with a bottle of wine and a generous helping of religious prejudice and sectarian bigotry. The incidents being recounted were from my lifetime but not my life. They were occurring in my country but not to me. They left lasting marks of their victims and they are still occurring today.

I live in a European first world country where we like to think we are thoroughly modern and international in our attitudes. In the past 20 years, we have had an influx of foreign European and foreign global immigrants that have given our country a multinational friendly touchy feely appearance. Yet beneath that veneer of modernity, we still struggle to cope with our own religious bigotry that has damaged the country for more than a hundred years.

How can we look at what’s happening in the Middle East between Sunni’s and Shi’ites from any position of superiority when the same sectarian actions still rumble on within our own society?

A friend sips on her wine and recalled how difficult her childhood had been in the 1960s and 1970s in a Dublin where the Catholic Church was closely entwined with the Government and the majority of the population.

As she filled the glasses my other friend chipped in her story of trying to evade the unwritten rules within society that were applied, this time in the Dublin of 1980. She’d always wanted to be a nurse and applied to one of the State hospitals in the city to complete 6 months of training. The hospital was run for the State by a Catholic order of nuns who numbered just a few of the hundreds who actually worked there. The patients were of all religious and cultural persuasions. Your chosen faith, should on the face of it, play no part in whether you were accepted as a trainee nurse in the hospital or not.

On completing the application form my friend omitted her school name and her religion. She felt sure this would be picked up in the initial screening but it wasn’t and she duly joined the course. If you worked on Sundays at the hospital you were given an extra 20 minutes break at 10.00 am so that you could attend mass in the hospital chapel. She took that time off so as not to raise suspicion but it was noticed, over time, that she hadn’t actually attended the religious service. She was summoned to meet with the matron who asked why she hadn’t. “I’m just not very religious Sister” my friend replied. “Come now,” said the Matron, gently, “Is there more to it than that?”

When my friend admitted that she was, in fact, Presbyterian the matron left the room and returned with my friend's course application form and was clearly exasperated to find the blank spaces where key information should have been. “This matter will have to be discussed at the next Board meeting of the Governors” she announced and dismissed the nurse whose only sin had been her religion. Having got on the course through omission rather a lie she was subsequently allowed to stay and complete it. The Matron would be more careful reading the next set of applications that landed on her desk.

Even if no one committed a bigoted act growing up a Protestant in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland in those days was an uncomfortable experience for many. Outside schooling which was split between fee-paying private and free state provided, the children generally played happily across religious lines but many an Ash Wednesday led to my friend and her fellow schoolmates travelling, heads down, on public transport with their hair pulled across their foreheads. The absence of a sooty black ash thumbprint from the priest would mark them out as different and attract abuse. On Sundays, the Presbyterian children attended church and Sunday school but were not allowed out at night. There were instances of verbal abuse being shouted and stones thrown at their homes by passing teenagers heading out for the night.

Corpus Christi
The celebration in days gone past of the Roman Catholic feast of Corpus Christi involved a parade of children, adults and accompanying bands in many local residential areas culminating with a religious service held on the green parks located in those estates. The procession generally started at the church and ended on the green. It probably didn’t occur to most participants that anyone would find its occurrence intimidating or objectionable. It probably didn’t occur to many of us that the estates might contain non-Roman Catholics but in hindsight of course, they did. In my case both of my next door neighbours were Protestant and we lived on a green semi-surrounded by a dozen houses. Nearly half were lived in by Protestants and then there was my best friends Alan, a Jew at number 41.

Did I know that in some houses that day children were held inside by their parents during the hour-long parade and service? No, I didn’t. Their plight simply passed me bye.

Holy Communions
Holy communions and the excitement of that day, the white dresses, handbags, rosary beads and the family celebrations were an occasion that Roman Catholic children looked forward to and the whole family enjoyed. However many Protestant children attending state schools, where religious education was compulsory, found that the only religion discussed was the Roman Catholic version. This was largely due to the handing over of the delivery of education in the new state (by the Free State Government) to the Roman Catholic church in the early 1920s.

One of the results of this decision was that generations of children, of all faiths, sat in religious education classes fixated on the First Holy Communion, a major event in the Roman Catholic calendar for weeks before the actual day arrived, usually around April.

First Confession
But before your First Holy Communion came along your First Confession. It seems strange now to recount it, but I struggled to pull together a list of sins to confess to. I was only 7 so I hadn’t reached the fornication or career criminal stage of life. For my first confession I came up with a few tame sins that I felt sure would incur minimal punishment and yet register with the listening priest as indeed sins. I opened the door and sat on the edge of the seat in the darkened chamber. The priest slid back the curtain and from the darkness of his chamber on the other side of the grill He asked not my name but awaited my confession.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned” I went. “I coveted my brother's silver cowboy cap gun and holster and I answered back to my mother.”

“Is that it?” boomed the voice.

“Yes,” I said. I had no plan B if he sought further sins.

“Three Hail Marie’s and two Our Fathers” came the bored voice on the other side and the curtains were drawn across again.

I stepped out of the booth to see three old women sunk on their knees in prayer waiting their turn. One rose with difficulty and made her way to the confessional. As I knelt to do my penance and recited the words I knew so well my mind wandered to the sins these old ladies may well be confessing to and pondered for the next few minutes on their crimes. I drew a blank. 

Today, 52 years later I wondered again at what, in the name of God, this good elderly church-going, service attending women could have been confessing to?

Mass murder? A white collar crime of several millions? Sexual deviancy? Or maybe something more mundane…..

Theft of cough tablets from the local pharmacy?
Lusting after the local doctor? Talking ill of their young loud neighbours?

The people who actually committed the crimes that would have brightened up Father Murphy’s confessional would never have crossed his path. They don’t go to church or frequent confessionals. His daily diet of mind-numbingly petty crimes must have driven him to distraction.

However, I digress. Back then, as I said earlier, all children attending state-run schools were, en masse, educated in the Roman Catholic way. Many of the Protestant girls & boys felt they were missing out on Holy Communion and some of their parents actually bought them white dresses and held parties to appease their youngsters. The desire to fit in and be part of the community seemed a strong then as now.

My nursing friend said her brother emigrated in the 1980s to London, England and said he believed he was suffocated in Ireland by the unhealthy closeness of church and state and the bigotry that continued to exist in everyday life in the Republic.

Ireland in recent years is indulging in a fit of revisiting the evil practices of past generations and it becomes clear that the unhealthy closeness of state and one religion has led to acts of horrible inhumanity on some of our fellow Irish people by, what we can at best call, misguided Irish people. The 1900–1980s contained a catalogue of institutional child and women abuse. I list a few examples below which have shamed our nation and damaged so many lives. Institutions set up with the aim to help the poor and unfortunate ended up destroying the very people they hoped to help.

The Magdalen Laundries were workhouses in which many Irish women and girls were effectively imprisoned because they were perceived to be a threat to the moral fibre of society. Mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996. The remains of 155 inmates, buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed, cremated, and buried elsewhere in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal in Ireland and since then the Magdalen laundries have become an important issue in Irish culture, especially with the 2002 release of the film “The Magdalene Sisters.” http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01180

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home,[1] or simply The Home, was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children that operated between 1925 and 1961 in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. It was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic religious order of nuns. Thousands of unwed pregnant women were sent there to give birth. Some of the poorer women were afterwards forced to work without pay, in reimbursement for some of the services rendered. Their children were separated from them and cared for by the nuns until they could be adopted. Over 2,000 children were removed and shipped to America by the religious orders where they were adopted.

In 2012, local historian Catherine Corless published an article documenting the deaths of 796 babies and toddlers at the Home during its years of operation. Her research led her to conclude that almost all had been buried in an unmarked and unregistered mass grave at the Home, some of them in a septic tank.[3] In 1975, two local boys had found a chamber filled with children’s skeletons on the site.[3][4][5] Some local people speculated it was a grave for Famine victims or un-baptised babies.[6]

Numerous news reports alleging the existence of a mass grave containing 800 babies in the septic tank were published – first by one Irish print media outlet and later by international media outlets in late May–early June 2014. The Associated Press has since criticised the reporting of the case, saying it “offers a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media”.[7] The story sparked outrage in Ireland and internationally, and the Irish government came under pressure to launch an investigation.[8][9][10] The government called the allegations “deeply disturbing”;[5][11] shortly thereafter, the government and police began a preliminary investigation with the aim of launching an inquiry. Some sources eventually began questioning the story. Corless told the Irish Times “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank.”[3] Dr. Maurice Gueret said his own research into the Home indicated that the death rate at the Bon Secours home was not unusual for that era: “It was no secret that many children died young, especially in the 1920s and 1930s.”[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home

SYMPHYSIOTOMY is a cruel and dangerous childbirth operation that unhinges the pelvis, severing the symphysis joint or, in the case of pubiotomy, sundering the pubic bones.
Ireland was the only country in the developed world to practice this discarded surgery in the mid to late 20th century.

The caesarean section had been the standard treatment for difficult births in Ireland since the end of the 1930s. However, doctors’ preference for symphysiotomy saw 1,500 of these 18th-century operations being performed from 1944 onwards, mostly in Catholic private hospitals. Around 150 women survive today, many of them permanently disabled, incontinent and in pain. One baby in ten died during the process and a number were brain damaged.

Women were occasionally informed their pelvis would be broken, but most were not.

Beyond those specific examples above Ireland was until fairly recently a difficult place for women and non-conformists to live. We’d like to think things are better now but maybe in 50 years time we will be revisited by future generations and found to have fallen short on basic standards of respect of human rights and freedom of religious and lifestyle choices. Only time will tell and we, who are living through now often walk blindly about, not seeing the wrongs around us.

Where had all the old men gone?

I wondered where all the old people had gone when I drove into town recently. The street benches remained bare where previously old men, wearing cloth peaked caps and heavy worn suits, used to spend their days sitting and watching the world go by. They’d chat intently amongst themselves and one would periodically reach into his pocket to pull out some shreds of tobacco leaf and a sliver of wafer-thin paper and artfully roll a cigarette using one hand. Other men would greet and heartily shake the hands of locals while staring with amusement at the city folk that shopped in their town over the summer months.

The back wall of churches was another gathering place for these hardy countrymen. They sometimes stood in groups outside the church door, even if there was space within, sharing the odd whispered joke while fulfilling the duty of attending church on a Sunday. Their tractors lined up against the church walls and their battered mud splattered cars, often with trailers, filled the road outside.

Since last Sunday I now know where they have gone.

The local general hospital is a sprawling linked set of building with an enormous car park. I spent almost a full day in the casualty department before dropping a level and moving to a short stay ward called St Josephs. The ward had a central corridor and off it lay several nurse’s stations, toilets and roughly ten rooms of patients containing anything from six to ten patients in each.

It was in four of these rooms that I found the missing old men of the town. I poked my head around the door of one such room and saw them, lined up in bed after bed, dressed in white nighties and appearing barely alive. Some lay on their backs and slept with their mouths open. Others lay on their sides and chatted to their neighbour. Some appeared so still I thought they were already dead. They appeared far from short-stay patients and had the relaxed familiarity of long-stay patients. I recalled the news stories of the elderly clogging up the hospital beds because they had nowhere to go home to after they recovered from illness and I safely surmised that these were them.

One man caught my eye as he seemed to be perfectly well physically but something in his gait and eyes told me he was different from the rest. For one, he wore a pair of blue overalls over which he had slipped on a heavy tweed jacket with padding on the elbows. He wandered without purpose along the corridor, pausing to look at notice boards or stare into rooms but registering little of what he saw on his lined features. He had a bored resigned manner of someone who had long grown tired of his surroundings but was powerless to leave them. The nursing staff knew him well and treated him with a gentle familiarity. “C’mon Noel, back to your bed now” they chided. Over my stay I heard the alarm bells go off twice, setting nurses off in hot pursuit as Noel’s wandering had taken him beyond the wards perimeters. Two nurses would reappear breathless with a bemused Noel in tow. I spent my days sat in a ladies room of 6 patients and saw I wife inadvertently giggle as Noel passed by once again but this time in a self-propelled wheelchair! It didn’t seem right to place Noel in such surrounding neither for him or the staff but all parties made the best of it dealing with each other with good humour and patience.

Transformation

It is astonishing how normal people are transformed into patients by merely donning white pyjamas. It struck home to me when one of the women in my wife’s room was told she could go home. I’d noticed her on our arrival and she looked quite gaunt sitting in the bed opposite. When she left the bed she walked slowly around in a light dressing gown and slippers and looked the very part of a patient. Nursing staff wheeled her in a wheelchair to and from tests and the catering staff delivered meals to her on a table & tray that slid up the bed to her elbows to minimise her movement. Upon getting the news of her release she pulled a curtain around her bed and emerged ten minutes later as a normal human being. She wore a colourful dress, makeup, leather boots and carried a small overnight bag. The transformation was nothing short of miraculous. Previously had she’d died overnight I would have said “oh well, she looked poorly” but now she looked healthy and well I’d have been stunned if she died.

Mobility

My wife was similarly wheeled around in a wheelchair and I came to the conclusion that it suits the hospital or its staff to limit patient’s movements by keeping them in beds or shifting about the hospital in wheelchairs.

If they, the patients were encouraged to walk around rather than be confined to bed there would be chaos. Finding them, the patients for a start! How many tests would be delayed or consultants ward visits made redundant as the patient was absent from the bed? With so many patients to manage the hospital appears regimented and can only function if patients stay in or close to their beds.

The whole experience of staying in a hospital was a shock to me as I live my days in a world of working young or middle-aged healthy people. I shop in outlets filled with fresh food, bright lights and peopled buzzing mobile shoppers and shop assistants. I work in a large open plan office filled with able-bodied and assured people. I play football with dynamic, fast-moving twenty-something’s through to fifty something’s, physically fit and cunningly dexterous. I drive down motorways filled with fast-moving working people’s cars and vans. I socialise with family and friends who are also in that demographic group and to discover this whole other world of sick and aged people that live in a separate yet parallel existence to mine is a shock that I’m still coming to terms with.

Winter flu bugs man when colds strike again

For those of you unfamiliar with Man Flu and who believe it’s just a man sympathy thing I urge you to look at the linked video clip that clearly establishes how real this male flu infection is and who the carriers are.

Comments please……………..

Modern prams can cause carnage

We’d only arrived at their house when we were led into the sitting room to see a multifunctional, interchangeable must-have for modern parents.

The pram of today is a crafted mixture of modern design meets the Flinstone’s. The shiny silver handlebars are offset by the enormous black inflated wheels of the pram. The sheer size of the unit is surprising and I found myself wondering what would happen if two of these monsters ever met head-on, on the main street. I mean “Which one will step out into the road to get around the other?”

Worse still perambulating through shops must be hellish as the width of the prams leaves little space for other shoppers.  I’d be forever apologizing to people. “I’m so sorry….. I’m dreadfully sorry…… was that your foot? There’s really no weight in it…. Alice is only 8 lbs ….Opps there I go again….Yes, hold on. I’ll slip her into reverse now and it won’t take a minute… Excuse me can you move that old lady’s stick? Just a millimetre to the left, Great, Thanks.”

“Oh drat now she’s fallen over……she’s 87 really?…well I must say she’s looking good for it. Can I what? Take the pram off her leg? Sure.

“Gosh it’s hot in here isn’t it?”

I flippantly said to son in-law-to-be “what happens when the wheels get a puncture?”He said “Hey, it actually happens!” so he had placed his bicycle pump and repair kit in the nappy changer bag. Good Lord!

I can hear that emergency call emanating on a busy Saturday morning from a city centre street.

“Hello, is that the AA?”

“Yes, Sir – how can I help?”

“I’d like a patrol sent to Grafton Street Dublin 2”

“Yes, Sir – what’s the vehicle registration number and the problem?”

“It’s a Bugaboo, serial number 1567894/H – it’s got a flat tyre on the front left. Hit a pothole as I cornered Wicklow street a few minutes ago. It’s totally flat now”

“I’m afraid it will be 20 minutes before a team will get to you. Have you unstrapped the spare that hangs on the underside of the cot?”

“No – hold on” “My word – you’re right there it is”. Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll just jack her up and slip on the spare”

“Pleased to be of service – have a nice day!”

Yes, I can see that happening with one of these monsters.

However, there are definitely tangible benefits that come with the prams. They will cover the first 3 years of a baby’s life and are ultra safe to use.

The other big plus is their interchangeability. Like transformers, they can be unclipped, clipped, rotated and screwed into any number of uses. One minute it’s a pram, next it’s a car seat, next a buggy and finally a carrycot. The car seat requires you to buy the car jack which enables the car seat to screw into the body of the car.

Being caring grandparents we sought to contribute to our grandchild so my wife volunteered to buy the baby car seat. We thought €250 was a reasonable sum. It was thankfully accepted by the couple but they were spending over €1,000 on the Bugaboo set of parts needed to operate the system. The car jack was €250 on its own.

I just could n’t see my wife proudly pointing to a crowbar piece of metal and saying that we bought that for the grandchild!

Cash for clothes

So I have been walking past this shop for more than a year when I finally plucked up the courage to push the door open and walk in. The window and door were plastered with adverts saying “€1 for every pound of clothes”. It struck a chord with me as besides needing the money I have over the past 20 years been stockpiling clothes. Now, I visualised a weighing scale sat on the shop counter and the black bags of clothes being weighed and the cash handed over. With the number of clothes I had to sell, I’d be looking at €50 at least

I walked in behind a young man, casually dressed, who put his bags on the counter. I was shocked to see the two shop assistants tearing open the bags and pulling out the clothes. One at a time they held them up, scrutinised them, checking for faults and after reviewing the twenty odd items, €15 was torn from the cash register and passed across the counter.

I was appalled. His stuff looked as new as the day it was bought. All neatly folded with creases where there should be creases. I reckon he must have stayed up the previous night, having previously popped them in the washer dryer, to give them a last loving iron before carefully folding them and placing them in the plastic bag. My mind’s eye visualised the pile of unsorted, ancient, torn and damaged clothing I had planned to visit them with and I shuddered. You see to make it into my castoff clothing pile the smart jeans, for example, would have to have had a broken zip or a large tear in the ass, paint splattered on the legs, worn through knee damage or an unfortunate stain around the groin. Simply being old or out of fashion would not be enough.

 My cast off clothing travelled through a multi-phase process to final discardment. First, their replacement items were test worn until I feel comfortable with them, as I grow quite attached to any clothes I buy. When, after several months, I decide to downgrade, let’s say the jeans, they move out of the wardrobe and into the gardening wear pile. From here they can be used to wear while I mix concrete, paint sheds, shift soil or cut wood. They can last several years in this pile until finally retirement to the castoff clothing pile. Even then they may be retrieved for a particularly dirty job such as the cleaning out of the septic tank.

 I came out of my daydream to see the shop assistants looking directly at me. I smiled weakly and without a word made a swift exit and ran up the road to catch up with my wife.

 “Well?” she said.

 “No good – they only take women’s clothes. Shame though…”

The Art of Pegulation

I have this friend for whom I am her Apprentice Pegulator this last 15 years. Pegulation is the art of hanging clothes out on washing lines or drying rails.

You didn’t know of the art form? Shame on you!

Pegulation dates back hundreds if not millions of years. I’m sure stone age women were avid followers of the practice. The first experts practiced the craft after washing their rugs and pelts in streams of fast running water and then carefully hanging out their washing to dry in the branches of nearby trees. They found there was an art to laying out clothes to dry, handed down by woman to woman over the centuries.

I discovered it quite by chance one day when I followed my wife out into the garden. I carried a washing basket filled with damp clean clothing and sheets. She started with the socks and I grabbed a pillowcase and jumper and proceeded to place them, if I’m honest in a willy nilly fashion on the line. I carried on with a few more garments before being asked to check my emails, make a cup of coffee or for Pete’s sake stop what I’m doing. Its then my mentor introduced me to the true way to stress free pegulation. I have to say my method was pretty stress free as it went but that was only me. She was fit to burst and I was just adding to her work not reducing it.

OK – I will now tell you all I know about pegulation but have regard that I’m still only an apprentice and have much to learn.

Socks

Right. From what I gather you start with the socks when hanging out the washing. Socks hang next to other socks and not close to underwear and certainly not next to jumpers or sheets. Socks should hang in pairs. The implications of unmatched socks is that they may get permanently separated and be matched up with other unrelated socks. The two partners may never see each other again but more to the point they embark on a life of separate washes and so may never have the same shade of grey, black, red or blue that their partner has. Sock marriages are for life not just for Christmas. Split them up and that could be that. You might as well buy another pair.

Socks line the bottom rows on the washing line and next to each other.

Underwear

Underwear is generally a two peggy job and must be pegged from side to side and not in the middle where they sag terribly and may not dry properly round the pouch and could lead to “willy rot” if worn damp. It’s also an opportunity for the female pegulator to cast a critical eye over the shape her partner's underwear is in. It’s not unknown for males to carry on using underwear long after the bottom has dropped out of the market, so to speak. Frayed pants can be easily spotted if hung out to dry on two pegs and can move neatly along to become window polishing rags in their declining years.

Ideally, men’s underwear should hang together as she’d prefer if I didn’t find her panties in amongst my cotton keyhole trunks when restored to the bedroom drawers later that day. My arse is considerably larger than hers and my eyesight not so good at 6.00am on a dark Monday morning. Let’s just say we had a few disasters last Winter and leave it at that.

Of course, segregation is not an issue when it comes to many of the panties worn by women today. I don’t speak of the Bridget Jones style sloggy knickers but the pairs that consist of two shoelaces and a tissue sized cloth covering the essentials. I confess the challenge here is to gather enough material to get a decent peg bite on them.

Now beyond the small stuff comes the shirts and T-shirts, tops and jumpers. Not much segregation here but all are at least a two peg job, often 4 if they have long sleeves. The pegs locations are obvious. Trousers likewise should hold no fear for the beginner. Just don’t hang them from the waist but from the ends of the legs.

The sheets are an occasion when the apprentice pegulator is needed. I hold one end, she halves the sheet in width and walks towards me folding as she goes. She then hangs bit by bit, unfolding the sheet till it flutters loosely in the wind. Now I say I am needed but these pegulators are used to working alone and she has advanced pegulation tricks she uses when I’m not about.

Finally, there it is. A rotating 4 tier washing line, fully loaded and twirling in the class 7 gale that passes as a Spring day in Wexford, Ireland.

My next class for you is in how to de-pegulate but we’ll save that for another day.