10th May, 2001
Another long weekend has come and gone, and the
good news for all of you employee’s is that there’s
another one next month. I was going to drive down to
Fountainstown on Monday, but the traffic was backed up to
Donnybrook!! (only joking!). A few weeks ago I mentioned how
lucky we are to live in Cork - 15 minutes from the ocean. I
suppose what makes Fountainstown so attractive is its complete
lack of commercialism. Just a shop at the bottom of the hill, and
that’s the way it has been since I was a kid going to the
movies in the tennis club there in the early 60’s.
Later on when I married, my wife and I lived in Fountainstown for
8 months. A family friend offered us her bungalow for the winter
months. It was a wooden bungalow with a fantastic sea view. Like
the Bryan Adams song, “It was the summer of ‘69”.
I have happy memories of those eight months, but nothing stays
the same, and we moved on. I never forgot the name of the
bungalow, “Loretto”. The owner, a single lady, died a
few years later, and the bungalow went into decay, eventually
being burnt to the ground by vandals. A few months ago I drove
down to Fountainstown and the site was over grown in Brambles.
Now I’m told that site is for sale, and the highest offer is
£200,000. A long way from my £5 a week rent in 1969.
I Watching Sky News last night and one of the ads was an Irish
one, a message from Fergal Quinn of Superquinn. Fergal told us
that thanks to modern technology, all beef can be traced back to
it’s source with the help of DNA. Think about it, we can
phone Fergal, ask him about a burger and he can trace it back to
Montana, or Fergal, what about this Granny Smith? This can be
traced back to the garden of Eden!!
I think the shareholders are being very hard on Michael Smurfit.
Just because Mick’s annual wage was £5.2 million, that’s
only £100,000 a week! Do they expect him to live in a cardboard
box?
A sports headline caught my eye last night. The Irish women’s
rugby team lost to the French. The line read, “The Irish
were unlucky to lose to the French”. The result? 45-9. Yes,
that was very close, wasn’t it!
Some peoples problems are huge. Last week I sat and listened to a
man and a women talking, well actually, he did all the talking,
she just smiled and sympathised. His problem was the huge
increase in the cost of berthing his yacht in the Marina in Dun
Laoighaire. After fifteen minutes, the woman yawned, looked for
an escape, saw a friend and she was gone. The wind was gone out
of his sails. Ain’t life a bitch!
This Friday night make sure you watch one of Donald Sutherlands
best films. I think it’s on RTE 1 after the Late Late Show.
Check your TV guide, its called, “The Eye of the Needle”.
Don’t miss it!
Speaking of TV, I watched Tina Turner live in Holland last week,
shown on TV3. It showed Tina at her best, that women has more
talent in her small toenail than all the boy bands (put together)
in the world. In the words of her best know song title, “Simply
the Best”.
I spoke to a young man last week. He was really in a quandry. He
wasn’t happy in his job, he had been offered another job,
but it would have been his third job in a year and he was worried
about how it would look on his CV. I could tell it was causing
him a lot of stress. He wasn’t happy in his present job, if
he moved to another job, would he be happy there?
On a related matter, I heard a story about another young person
who’s causing concern to his parents. A few years ago he
wanted to do the course of his choice, but his parents over-ruled
his decision and insisted on him following their choice of what
he should do with his life. Now he’s drinking and falling in
the door almost every night of the week.
To finish, read the words of an Eric Bogle song, ‘Marking
Time’, think it just about sums up what one should do in
life when decision time comes around ...
“The road behind me disappears, in a haze of vague
regret,
the road ahead is still unclear, there’s a mist that hides
it yet.
So here I stand on shifting sand, waiting for a sign,
I’m standing at the crossroads, marking time.
Listen to your heart, its the only road to follow,
when all your dream have flown, let your heart lead you home.
The wheel of time spins unconcerned, the short years come and go,
and as it spins the more I learn, the less I seem to know.
On the run downhill with no answers still, to this foolish
pantomime,
I’m standing at the crossing, marking time.
Listen to your heart, its the only road to follow,
when all your dream have flown, let your heart lead you home.
Yet sometime when I lift my eyes, the road ahead is clear,
the mist was just a thin disguise, to hide my deepest fear.
I know this choice is mine, to live the night or to fear the
night,
when I’m standing at the crossroads, marking time.
Listen to your heart, its the only road to follow,
when all your dream have flown, let your heart lead you home.”
Bye for now,
Michael O’Hanlon.
PS. My sympathy to the Drinan family. John, a lovely friendly
man, will be missed by all who knew and loved him. R.I.P.
