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GI4RSI > BARNEY 08.01.04 16:43l 62 Lines 4191 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 35312-GB7FCR
Read: GUEST
Subj: The enjoyment of greetings...................
Path: ON0AR<ON0AR<GB7FCR
Sent: 040108/1541Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:35312 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:35312-GB
From: GI4RSI@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : BARNEY@WW
The enjoyment of greetings from friends near and far away...
Hello there. How are ye all doin'? As this is the first screed I'll write this year, I do wish sincerely that you'll all have a real Happy New Year, and a healthy one too.
By the time you read this I suppose you'll be taking down your Christmas cards and I hope taking time to read all the greetings on them and the name of the senders.
I find this is the time when you really get to know who your friends are and where they are - probably scattered all over the world'.
I used to get far more from far afield than I do now, probably because most of the friends have died out or thought that I have died out, but, thank God, I'm still here, but I'm running out of ideas, and would welcome all the help you can give me.
I still get a card from Ray Bearns, of Florida, who came from the Aughnacloy district, and still comes home nearly every second year to see his old friends, and where would he see them but at the Clogher Valley Show. I missed him there last year, but I believe he was in the district.
My good friend of many years, Gordon Keyes, of Toronto, formerly from Fintona, died during the year, but I got a letter from his daughter Marion Primrose, saying that he looked forward to getting the `Con' in batches, even though he couldn't remember all the people in it.
During the year I got a postcard from Alaska from a lady who used to live outside Omagh at Burnside Cottage, Mullaghmore. She is now living over in Shropshire, but was one of the Fowler
family and has great memories of Omagh and district, particularly of the Killyclogher Burn, although she never caught minnows in it, as the late Frank McCrory's song says.
I wonder are there any readers who remember her mother's wee shop, just over the bridge there. It was one of the old-fashioned shops where you could have got almost everything from a needle to an anchor, including candles, in case your lamp went out and a bottle of paraffin oil to make sure it didn't go out again.
Aye, and if you wanted a dozen eggs or even a chicken, you could have got them before you set out to walk back to the town, fortified by afternoon tea and cakes, if you wanted.
Of course, that was in the good old days of the thirties when people walked and had time for a chat.
God be with the good oul days when 1 was twenty wan,
When motors were unheard of and a cart's horse power was one,
People moved much slower then and no one seemed to care,
If you went for a journey, you just went by shank's mare.
When a pair were getting married in them good oul days of yore,
Big Joe arrived upon the scene complete with jaunting car,
And when the clergy gave his blessing and pronounced them man and wife,
Joe took them for a good long jaunt to start their married life.
And when the happy couple got back home,
What a treat there'd be in store,
There'd be bowls of broth and dumplings
and soda farls galore,
There'd be singing, there'd be dancing,
all day and all night through,
And if oul men's beards got trampled on,
It would be like an Irish stew.
But things is done much different now,
Of that you all know well,
Most weddings in the country
now book some posh hotel,
The pony traps are out of date,
The guests now come in cars,
And the feast's composed of `prawn cocktails,
frogs legs and stuff in jars".
Then the happy couple used to go to the seaside in a train,
Now they fly across the sky to Italy or Spain,
Ach things is changing tarra and each day brings some new craze,
But folks, as far as I'm concerned, give me the good oul days.
Seriously, take all that with a big pinch of salt. Maybe the good old days weren't so good after all. It was nice sitting round a turf fire of an evening yamings til "the wag is striking ten" as W.F. Marshall wrote, But with your "shins breezin and your back freezin" who would not have swapped all that for central heating"?
Well whether you like the old days or the new days, I hope you'll all have good luck in all the days to come.
- by Barney McCool .
73 - Kenny, GI4RSI @ GI4RSI
Message timed: 15:38 on 2004-Jan-08
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