Lifestyle
Holiday disasters make for compelling viewing
TV Watch with Bernie Ni Fhlatharta
The great thing about watching programmes like Holiday Homes from Hell is the comfort of not being directly affected by the problem.
However, it was no joke for the victims of a £3 million scam in Cyprus covered in a TV3 programme on Tuesday.
My first thoughts watching it was relief that I hadn’t succumbed to buying a little holiday home in the boom years now that I hear about all the problems associated with homes abroad.
There were a lot of couples scammed by British businessman Ian Beaumont, who took money off people to build homes in Cyprus.
Incredibly, the man called a meeting of all these couples and promised them all he was going to sort it out, give them back their money and not do a runner as he was not a crook.
Well, the thing was, he lied as he had been convicted a decade earlier for a similar scam in Kuwait. Why didn’t any of these people Google his name before doing business with him, I asked myself.
Then there was the English couple with young children who built their dream villa on a mountainside in Greece. They filmed it on their first day. It looked beautiful. The children played on the balcony overlooking a valley and a little infinity pool. Lovely.
But two days into their first holiday, forest fires erupted destroying many homes and killing a local family of four who perished in their house. The English family had to take refuge in a taverna further up the mountain. But luckily for them the fire stopped short of their new home, which was by now standing in a scene that looked post Apocolyptic.
The same happened to another couple in Tenerife only their holiday home was destroyed.
Of course, when these disasters happen in a foreign land, the red tape for insurance etc is the real nightmare.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.
Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara
Patricia McGettigan grew up in a house in Inverin where flowers and herb would be used as remedies for common complaints. Once married, she moved first to Donegal and then to the UK and anywhere she set up home she would grow herbs and use those to create teas and tinctures.
These she would dole out to family and friends for complaints ranging from sore joints, constipation, stomach issues, sleep.
A trained beauty therapist, holistic masseur with training in aromatherapy and dealing with gut problems, it was during the pandemic that she decided to immerse herself in training in herbalism and get qualified with the Herbal Study Academy.
Accredited by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners, it is an online school founded by Tuam-based herbalist Patrick Murphy which allows people to pick and choose what aspects of herbal medicine they wish to learn about with a view to living healthier or to practice in the field.
“While I’ve always done it myself, I decided to get really deep into it because I love it, it’s an utter passion for me,” explains Patricia.
“The things is, everybody knows a bit about it, they just forget what they’ve learned when they were small when their granny or grandad would reach for the old-fashioned cure.”
Patricia practices from her home in Inverin where she does consultations with people before deciding which herbs and teas would suit them best. A consultation costs €50.
“They come in and have a chat as long as they want so we can try to get the cause of the problem. They might have a headache but it could be a stress headache, the problem could actually be coming from the gut as a result of die but it manifests itself as a headache.
“You have to start slow and give time to let herbs work. It’s better for the body to get to the root cause. It’s easy to treat a symptom, it’s harder to find out why the body is reacting the way it does.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Country Living with Francis Farragher
As one ‘shoves on’ in life, there tends to be an increasing attendance at anniversary masses of friends and family — at the back of the mind, there’s always the nagging feeling at such occasions, that you’ve moved up in the queue.
Regardless of the intensity of one’s religious fever though — or the lack of it — there is always something special about remembering the passing of a loved one: gone but not forgotten, is probably the best way to sum it.
The great and warming tradition of the chat with neighbours after the preacher has finishing his words still persists, and especially so across rural Ireland, and inevitably the conversation seems to switch to the weather.
Last Sunday morning as I walked out from Brooklodge Church in Ballyglunin — a lovely little prayer place nestled in one corner of the old Blake estate — I was reminded that I shouldn’t have praised February too much over recent weeks, as March was always waiting in the wings to deal with such buds of early spring optimism.
The theme of the advice was to never count your chickens before they hatch, because if we enjoyed a good spell of weather in the late-winter, early-spring period, nature’s scales would soon balance things out. There were also murmurs too about the price of bales of silage.
For those of you not of a rural hue, these are essentially big bales of grass wrapped up in plastic to preserve them, a commodity you couldn’t ‘give away’ in February as we all looked forward to an ‘early spring’.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
1923
Capital of Connacht
Retail shopkeepers in County Galway towns complain very justly that they have to go to Dublin and cross-Channel for their goods, whereas in the all too few instances in which they can purchase in the county town at wholesale rates, they find they can do much better as to price and quite as good as to quality.
Has Galway ever considered what it would mean to the town if the wholesale trade were developed to any extent within its walls?
It would mean that instead of crowded streets on Saturdays and occasionally on Wednesdays, we should have eager, active businessmen thronging our thoroughfares every day of the six; that we should have streams of vehicles coming to and going from the city; that business would be stimulated, employment increased and prices reduced.
It would mean that shipping in our harbour would grow and expand, slowly and, perhaps even painfully, at first, that coastwise traffic would be developed, and that Galway would in course of time become in fact, as well as in the name, the capital of Connacht.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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