Myths, Memories and Musings

Reflections

John McGerr — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:31:31 +0000

It’s been a whole year since my last post here. Before the election, when the economic meltdown was just getting started properly. Has a year changed anything? Not a whole lot. We have a new government and popular opinion considers them to be just a puppet government pissing their pants every time France, Germany or [...]

Dying to Vote

John McGerr — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:49:53 +0000

In case I haven’t mentioned it before there is an election coming up on Ireland, a general election, to choose a new government. The skeptical part of my brain tells me we are just swapping one set of jackasses for another but another part of me, a larger part will insist on asking ‘Could I [...]

Ireland in Decline 2

John McGerr — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:58:22 +0000

A lot of mud-slinging has gone on in the past few months pointing the finger at this one or tha one for the screw-ups in our economy. I think all the slinging has missed out on one big one. The Electorate. That’s right! The voters of Ireland. And I count myself one of them. ‘Ah [...]

Ireland in decline

John McGerr — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:34:39 +0000

I know sod all about high finance. I read stuff in papers, on the internet, hear it on the news but most of it goes over my head. When I left school in the 1980′s to join the exclusive club known as jobseekers Ireland was in a recession emigration was not only a choice but, [...]

Eighty years a’growing

John McGerr — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 19:08:12 +0000

My father celebrated eighty years on this planet on the 1st of October last. It’s been a long active life for him. Born in 1930 he is old enough to remember events of the Second World War as it affected his life on the family farm he inherited from his father and has turned over [...]

The Pen

John McGerr — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:06:57 +0000

The Pen. Emma Stone and I had grown up together, neighbour-children, thrown together as such children often are in a single street of a city. We had shared many likes and dislikes but one thing was uniquely her own, her love for writing. I loathed writing essays for school she loved them and often wrote [...]

Changes

John McGerr — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:30:41 +0000

This is my twenty fifth year with my current employer, more than half my life built round the routines of shiftwork and overtime. One of my shifts started at 5am, another at one pm, for a number of years I had a third shift starting at 9pm – none of them were pleasant, timewise, even [...]

A Sense of Place8

John McGerr — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:23:10 +0000

Education has been a feature of Edgeworthstown for many years. One account list eight schools as being in the Parish prior to the Famine. In more recent times the Parish had it’s own secondary school(only to Junior Cert level but it was there) right up until the late sixties or early seventies. Oliver Goldsmith was [...]

A sense of me

John McGerr — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:02:57 +0000

Some of the fondest memories I have are of a two storey house not far from the banks of the Moy river, a place called Castleconnor. This house was home of my aunt and uncle, Rita and Thomas Boland and it became a summer tradition for a small army of kids to pile into one, [...]

Another craze?

John McGerr — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:11:02 +0000

Blu Ray and high-definition screens have only started to take off and yet the techno-crowd are moving on to the next big thing. 3-D Television. I don’t see the point frankly. No matter how good the technology is it can still only display a set of images on a screen. A nine minute wonder it [...]