HOLIDAYS in IRELAND

Well here i am at last...totally exhausted... after spending the last few hours entertaining the old folks in a nursing home. They love music and it is nice to be able to play for them.
First of all let me wish all my friends, old and new, a happy St Patrick's day. The weather here today is like a Summer's day and is most unusual for mid March. What a wonderful day for the parades. My memories of the parades are more of the wild, wet, or freezing days when i was in short pants and a white shirt standing in the queue waiting for the parade to start. We had to parade with our school and i have no fond memories of a day like today. There was always a delay in starting the parade and it seemed like forever as we stood there shivering not daring to complain. The parading soldiers were what always got my attention. The army pipe band, and maybe a few army trucks or armoured cars were also exciting for kids like us. Of course we had been to mass earlier and the churches would always be packed to the doors. There would even have been people standing outside the doors, and it was a great occasions.
We are all worried about this recession today,but in those days we had a lot less than they have now and we never noticed. Life was good. There were not the same luxuries then as people have now but when we did get something nice it was a real treat. Maybe a few sweets on a Sunday, and how good they tasted. Bring a kid into a shop today and show him a display of sweets and he will find it hard to pick something that he likes. Give him forty birthday or Christmas presents and he is still looking for the missing one....and he does not know what that is either. Give him pizza and he wants a burger...give him a burger and he wants something else....no wonder we have problems. In my day you ate what you got and you were glad of it. If you did not eat it, you stayed at the table until you did while the others who were finished went out to play. You were not long after them. And when you played it was outside in the fresh air...not stuck in front of a telly or a computer or on your phone texting. Maybe you had a ball and a hurley or maybe you just played some game that you invented yourself. Our imaginations were alive and well, and we used them. We were healthy and we were tough and most of the time we did what we were told. If we did anything wrong it was a very minor offence and if we were caught we paid the price......we were grounded. In my home there was no physical punishment and it was not needed.We respected our parents and we respected our neighbours and they were always Mr or Mrs whatever. I never in my wildest imaginings thought that i would live to see the day when the elderly would be attacked or abused by anybody. I never heard a young person verbally abuse an older person let alone attack them. Maybe the world needs this shake-up....maybe our young people need to learn how to provide for themselves like they did in my time and maybe we need to help them to see that. Parents pay their college fees....we went to England in the Summer and worked on the buses or the building sites and paid for it ourselves because our parents did not have the money and the question of them paying for that never arose. As for getting the deposit for a house off your parents.....that would have been ridiculous to even imagine. Of course it is wonderful to be able to help but is it good for them if they can at least help in some way themselves? And how many kids will pay back what they have been given by parents who have left themselves without for years? Get real....they will not be able to afford it because they will be too busy buying all the things that we never could afford...and maybe still cannot afford. Maybe we need this shake-up. The meal you earn with your own hands tastes so much better.
Why this sudden bout of nostalgia? Well this morning i was looking at a photo of myself and my older brother which was taken when i was about nine or ten years of age. He would have been fourteen maybe. He had his arm around my shoulders as we stood together on top of the cliffs on the Aran Islands at Dun Aengus fort. I was wearing my little corduroy suit...short pants and zipped up jacket...he had long pants ...which would one day be mine...and i could not wait to get them. What was amazing about that photo? We were happy...really happy. We were on holidays and staying with the local curate on the island....for free. He was my Mom's cousin and what a lovely man he was. He was a priest...and like so many other priests...a good priest. I always assumed that he would go straight to heaven...and now i believe that that is where he is today. His BSA Bantam motor bike was the only petrol engine on the island and he used to carry four of us on the bike....all together. When we were not on the bike we were on a donkey...they were all over the place and you just jumped on the first one that came your way. What a wonderful time we had. Would you trade that for phones and computers and gameboys and ipods and whatever else that they have now? Not me pal. And when we were finished playing, we went in for our dinner and we were starving. We ate plain, but we ate well....plenty of potatoes and veg....meat and fish and eggs. Porridge in the morning...and home made bread. I can still smell that.....the butter melting on it when you cut it fresh from the oven. My mother telling us that we would get a pain in our bellies eating it hot....but who cared...it was divine. We lived the simple life...maybe a little like St Patrick had to live, but i am sure a lot better. But he left us a message of hope. He left us rules to live by....to love our neighbour and to put our trust in God when things were not too good. We had a healthy fear of doing wrong. There were things that were called sins and people were not afraid to mention them. There was a price to be paid. There was a life hereafter.....and death was not the end of it all....and still is not.
Today St Patrick is with us again and i wonder what he sees. I am sure that he understands better than we do what is going on and i am sure that he knows that all will be well. I am sure that he knows that when we tire of messing things up that we will get back on the right road.
As i tour Ireland i cannot escape the reminders of the great men and women who carried the message brought to us by this great man. The ruins of old abbeys and monasteries....the high crosses....the offshore island retreats....the great mountain of St Patrick...Croagh Patrick. These reminders help me to focus on what really matters in this life and what it is all about. Forget your so called recessions and think of the poor in the third world who have never eaten even one decent dinner. They would take a small plate-full before they would take your luxury car or your boat or your holiday home. Have we ever really known hardship like that?
Ireland today is still a wonderful place to be and our Irish people still have that warmth about them. Most of our young people will be fine despite what they have to cope with in this modern world. We are fortunate to have peace in our country and our crime rate is not nearly as bad as many other countries. People come to Ireland looking for a car and driver...a chauffeur driven tour....a stree free holiday....and they come to mebecause that is the service i provide and i become a part of their excitement and enjoyment as we tour this beautiful country. I share my experience and we talk about anything and everything. I love what i do and i try to do it well and i have made so many friends doing just that.
To all those friends today i say...thank you sincerely for allowing me to be a part of your lives...and may the blessings of St Patrick be on all of you today.
If you wish to share anything with me please fell free to comment. have a great St Patrick'e day.