Country Living

Resign yourselves to enjoy those pockets of lazy cheer

Published

5 years ago

October 18, 2018

Country Living with Francis Farragher

There are few of us country boys who could field any insult bar that of laziness. Yet, the more I browse through studies about taking things a bit easier, the more I realise that if we could all work a measure of lazy time into our lives, it would probably help us all to relax a bit more.

We all love to have the regular moan about hard we work . . . how we cannot keep it all done . . . and what’s all this rushing and racing about. The lazy lobby do have a point, mind you, in that if you cannot box off an hour or two each day, or a couple of days in each week, for your own time, then the balance on the scales of life is not quite correct.

Being from a generation where the word holidays only related to being off from school and being available for all types of farm and bog work, it was something of a shock to the systems over three decades ago when the first sun holiday was embarked upon.

A fortnight of sun and sand in far away Cyprus in the heart of the Mediterranean, seemed at face value, to offer an unbridled two weeks of bliss with nothing to do only stretching out in the sun like a lazy Labrador on a July day.

Alas the reality after about the second or third day of this holiday was that being in an unfamiliar place with absolutely nothing to do, did not add up to anything barely resembling happiness. In a strange environment of heat, dust and a parched landscape, the reality of perpetual idlenesss was not a state-of-mind that brought me any modicum of contentment.

Anyway, that first holiday was probably saved from a severe dose of vacation depression by a three-day trip to Israel where at least there was mind activity and a trip back into history. After that though, so called sun holidays were to be treated with a bit of caution with some activity diary always having to be prepared in advance of the vacation.

A synonym for laziness is sloth and of course that latter word pops in the list of The Seven Deadly Sins from early Christian teachings, taking its dishonourable place beside pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony and wrath. Is it then really any wonder given our Catholic upbringings that we can start to feel pangs of remorse on a Winter’s evening if one pans out on the recliner and slips into the world of dreams for an hour or so.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Country Living

All a long way removed from cautions over noxious weeds

Published

1 day ago

June 8, 2023

Francis Farragher

More innocent times: A scene at a fair day in the late-1950s-early-1960s as a young Garda does his rounds.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Maybe, I’m a bit old-fashioned, but back the years we were always given the standard family advice of the time – ‘Not to be cheeky, to show respect for older people, and to do whatever a Guard would tell you’.

Those little life mantras didn’t seem to do us any harm as we grew up in a rural setting which was almost completely crime free.

Our local guard was based in the nearby village of Barnaderg – a man by the name of Martin Lyster RIP – who was the quintessential rural Garda: he knew everything that was going on and if at all possible he would advise rather than prosecute.

There was a sense of alarm one summer’s day when he called to my father about what we all thought must have a very serious issue.

The purpose of his advisory visit was to gently remind my father that one of his fields near the road had a few thistles too many per square yard while a couple of other intruders had ‘moved in’ also, such as ragworts and docks.

It was a very serious but friendly conversation and as I kept an ‘ear out’ for what was going on, I could hear the guard mentioning the Noxious Weeds Act, and the need for us to comply with the law.

Sure enough, that evening the scythes were lined up – one or two of them borrowed from the neighbours – so father and sons spent the best part of the following few days mowing down the noxious weeds.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Country Living

A time to stay dry as EU seeks to rewet farmlands

Published

1 week ago

June 1, 2023

Francis Farragher

Rewetting: Trouble coming down the drains.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

For most of us who grew up on family farms back through the decades, it could seem to be a very mixed bag. There were always ‘jobs’ to be done like looking at the cattle located a few miles away on a fine summer’s evening when a game of football would seem a lot more attractive.

There were the tougher jobs like thinnowing beet or turnips; footing turf for a day; or that task I hated with a vengeance – picking stones from the meadow fields. I could never quite figure out as a young lad why stones had to be picked almost every year – it was as if they grew out of the soil!

For all that, the quality of life was quite good for most of us out the country, even during the more straitened times of the 1960s, when in fairness, there was always healthy food on the table but very little by way of the clang of silver in your pocket.

In general, it was a time when farms were less intensive but in the ‘pre-dole days’, it still remains something of a mystery to me how families managed to rear and educate quite large ‘clutches’ of children.

There was of a course a whole culture of self-sufficiency on most farms with the hens supplying the eggs that provided food for the table and the ‘gugs’ also went a long way to paying for the groceries when the ‘travelling shop’ called once a week. We used to call him the ‘eggler’ – in my childhood days, a man called Christy Mannion from Barnaderg whose Wednesday visit to our house was almost akin to a Santa Claus arrival every week.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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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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Country Living

Getting a small bit spooked as the machines get smarter

Published

4 weeks ago

May 11, 2023

Francis Farragher

Country Living with Francis Farragher

WE all get attached . . . nay, even dependent . . . on our technology devices, most notably the mobile phone, but here and there the technology does spook me a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, as I sat into my car one evening as I prepared to head for the hills, I began to sing a verse or two of the Beatles classic ‘Yesterday’.

The Apple CarPlay system was on in my car and I had scarcely completed the first verse of the song when lo and behold what started to play on the speakers but of one Paul McCartney with the ‘real thing’.

Now, some of my technology nerd acquaintances will come up with a simple explanation as to why this happened but it surely wasn’t a coincidence.

There are times too when I think I’m paranoid, or maybe not, when after certain conversations have taken place about anything from cars to canisters, an ad flashes across my iPhone about the topic we’d just been discussing.

And now, the latest buzz words in the whole chain of technology advancement are Artificial Intelligence or AI, which I have to admit is just a little bit above my basic level of competency or understanding of high-tech jargon.

Being of country stock, the AI initials always meant only one thing back the years – artificial insemination – when the man with the straws of bull semen would arrive on the farm to impregnate cows in what had to be a very non-pleasurable experience for all concerned.

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.