3rd February, 2000
Well, Mike Tyson came, saw and
conquered. Six minutes work and £5,000,000 richer. Millions of
viewers £15.99 poorer. I decided to watch the controversial
banned movie ‘Natural Born Killers’ on TV3. All set
with a big fire, a couple of cold bottles of beer in the fridge,
and at 10.45pm TV3 told us that they were not going to show the
movie. It seems the state decided it might corrupt our morals,
and threatened the station with court action. After watching last
weeks news I’m afraid my faith in the political system has
reached a new low. It’s now so low it has a minus symbol in
front of the word low. The spin doctors must be working overtime
... “Tell them you didn’t know, tell them its before
the courts, tell them to wait for the tribunals report. tell them
its ‘sub-justice’, tell them anything but the bloody
truth!”
The politicians cannot understand why there is such a low turnout
at election time. For years I told my children to vote, the
system was something that good men and women fought and died for
84 years ago. They must be spinning in their graves.
The good news for anybody who likes dancing is that Sunday
afternoon adult dancing is taking place this Sunday at the
Rochestown Park Hotel. Now that Sunday has become as commercial
as Saturday, with as many cars and people in Douglas on a Sunday
as any other day, it makes a difference to know that there is a
place where people can meet, make friends, have a drink and dance
the afternoon away. I think its a lovely social way to spend a
Sunday afternoon. I’ll be there on Sunday to take some
photo’s, hope to see you there!
A few weeks ago, we in the ‘Douglas Weekly, came up with an
idea which we thought would be good because it would involve our
young people in St. Columba’s girls and boys school. We rang
school principal Michelle Cashman and asked her if her students
would write a composition on “Why I like living in
Douglas”. Michelle liked the idea and today Luke Philpott
dropped up to the office with 38 entries. We will publish three
or four entries each week, starting next week, and at the end of
the competition we will get a judge to pick three winners, who
will receive a prize from Douglas Books. I hope you enjoy reading
them as much as I did.
Before leaving the office Luke told me a joke ... Three screen
tough guys were offered film parts in the lives of famous
composers. Sylvester Stallone said, “I’ll be
Mozart”. Jean Claude Van Damme said, “I’ll be
Chopin”, and Arnold Swartzenagger said, “I’ll
beBach!” (get it?)
Congratulations to Mark O’Sullivan of CL Meats, Kinsale
Road. Mark told me that they are celebrating ten years in
business with their factory priced meat retail outlet on the
Kinsale Road. Mark also told me that they are a family owned
business, as well as supplying the general public they also
supply the hotel and catering trade. All their hams are home
cooked. Finally, watch out for some anniversary specials from CL
Meats (opposite Woodies).
Welcome home and back to the council chambers to our local county
councillor Peter Kelly. Peter is one of our most active local
councillors and has always kept in contact with the
‘Weekly’, then for the past eight weeks, nothing! We
began to wonder. Was he a secret lotto winner? Had he moved to a
villa in Barbados? No folk, nothing like that, Peter has been
quite ill in hospital, but now thankfully he’s back with us.
When you see him wish him well because he’s doing a great
job, like Deirdre Forde, representing us at local level. Welcome
back Peter.
Things are really hotting up in the Douglas area, with massive
development plans before the planning authorities, resident
groups are being formed every week. I have a feeling that its
going to be a long hot summer, in more ways than one.
In last weeks ‘Douglas Weekly’ we published a
photograph of local graveyard caretaker Pat McSweeney pointing to
a stone inscribed in Latin. Past asked us for some help in
finding out its history. Local latin scholar Michael Keohane rang
us and the translation into English is in this weeks edition
(below). Its the family gave of the Heard family who died in the
1790’s. Their son John arranged the tombstone. John is
listed in the Cork directory (1820-1822), it states, “John
Henry Heard, Attorney register of the Diocese of Cork and Ross,
Ballybrack House”. What we would like to know is what
happened to John Heard? There are no Heard’s listed in the
phonebook. We rang local historian Con Foley who told us that the
Heard family were originally from Kinsale and moved to Douglas.
Any information on John Henry Heard, gentleman, landowner and
attorney would be appreciated. Watch this space!
Bye for now,
Michael O’Hanlon.
