An Apple a day...

To say that I am unfortunately clumsy would be considered an understatement by most. I fall, trip, bang into things and drop items more than should be deemed acceptable in social surroundings.

Recently I lost my Itouch to my clumsy fate and decided to torture myself by pricing a new personal music player (that is what the fancy kids call it...).

The man behind the counter, whose name was Ger- so said his plastic name tag, seemed uncaring by the fact that Apple products cost a BEZILLION euro.

So I will now remortgage the house, I will sell one kidney and I believe my youngest brother could make a pretty penny.

So Ger- I will be back....

Nasty Neighbours.... added notes

Reader,

Please be advised that the aforementioned neighbours found previously in this weblog were in fact extremely attractive.

Think sexiest people you know going at it on a table which holds you favourite meal, with your favourite music playing in the background and a winning lottery ticket on the table beside the condoms...

Transfor...meh

Because I am a good friend I recently endured the CGI "delight" that was Transformers- the Revenge of the Fallen. I just wish that in the first five minutes the vengeful had thought about falling on Shia LeBeouf's face.

Megan Fox is ok.... but if anyone else calls her a "talented actress" I may have a problem.

Very Nasty Neighbours

Once Upon a Time...

I accidentally saw my neighbours "at it". Since then I have been very aware of what can be seen from my window and, more importantly, what I have to endure if I look out at the wrong time of day.

This morning while changing my bed clothes I was foolish enough to open my window, straighten the curtain and wipe the dust off window sill... then BAM...

and they are at it again.

I'm moving.

What's your wpm?

I have become slightly obsessed with typing speed tests online. It all began last night at some ungodly hour when I had decided that reading wasn't going to help me sleep. I started with the rather respectable speed of 48wpm and have now with, considerable endurance and a seeming less talent achieved 62 wpm. I will not stop until I have obtained the ultimate goal- 80wpm. Some woman on television gloated about that being her average wpm and I decided that if she can do it, why not me...

Oh Now...

Having watched the polite delight that was The Commons this morning I find myself looking at the Oireachtas Report... what a leap back down.

"Semi detached" was a description used during a... rant about our relationship with the rest of Europe. Why is no one saying pleasant things? Why are they not calling each other friends and gentlemen etc...

It's pretty much like 50 business study teachers all sitting in a room, kinda mad at each other cause the longer they spend talking about silly things, like our economy, they will miss last call in the pub.

When the going gets tough: avoid daytime TV

Having just turned on the television to find out what is going on in the world I have started to follow the live feed of "the commons" on Sky News.

What I love about this is how very conservative and proper the entire affair is! They call each other "honourable gentlemen" and "honourable friends" all the while they snipe and threaten each other... and then there are the constant heckles from the other sleepy people sitting on the green leather seats. It's English repression without the nice scones...

Also it seems there was some sort of massive sale on navy pinstriped three piece suits lately...

My other aims of today are to conduct a survey of sorts. I need to make up some sort of lovely and delightful hen party invitation for my sisters impending matrimonial leap. I must also send off her mass booklet information to the printers and I have to wait patiently by the phone in the hopes that it will ring and a nice lady/gentleman at the end of the line will offer me a hugely exciting job.

All these things will get done, bar the job offer... if I was to hold my breath on that front I would make a very attractive smurf by the end of the day...

Because I have listened to it 400 times...

If you're not up before 5am I don't want to hear about it...

When one wakes from a slumber heavily induced by painkillers it is not best to deal with anything human for at least 24 hours... that is the motto I have now decided to run along beside. I won't actually do that, I;ll just watch that unfold while I hurt myself lefting heavy things.

I do plan on posting a blog up here... any minute now... however, I have just completed more before 12pm than you wil achieve all day. You wanna challenge me?... I've read a book, cleaned out a kitchen, defrosted a freezer and "fixed" the clothes line (I fashioned some sort of "staying upright" device...)...

Oh yeah.. the recession+arts degree= probably best not to leave any firearms in the house...

Chipped nail varnish and alot of cold water later...

Waking up in a bad mood is counter productive. Just makes me more cranky. So what does one do in the fit of unhelping hormones? Wash windows. My mother and any living Stepford Wife would be proud. Bar Nicole Kidman, but that's only because she's hungry all the time and Australia was shit.

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark."

I lie in bed clutching the bed sheet which is tucked under my chin. I curse everyone that has abandoned me, as far as I am concerned in my time of need. I curse my parents for allowing me to act this way as a child, I curse my best friends for being at hand during a serious bout of self resolve but most of all I curse all the fictional misgivings that could be going on in my room at this very moment. The bogie man in the wardrobe, the troll under the bed, the witch behind the curtain. All of these demons were more real to me even after I passed the age of believing in Santa Clause and considering the tooth fairy as my main source of income.

My imagination has always been the key to my life, since as far back as I could remember I have been more than dutifully entertained by my own company than can be considered adequate.

I slept in a tiny box room with my older sister; we spent much of our time discussing certain aspects of our busy days. Who got picked in sports, who read the most interesting thing in class, which boy we married during break... it was all very valuable stuff swirling around the room, in the atmosphere of night that was safely shrouded with the nightlight my father had installed when he realised his youngest daughter would not overcome irrational fears in a hurry.

At five it was endearing, a quirky characteristic of a child that would be something her parents would fondly look back on once she had grown out of. The teddy bears were lined up in the bed ready to attack any enemy that penetrated the perimeter of the bed. Their watchful eyes helped me recover from any hiccup that occured once it was time for lights out. A gush of wind, a stray animal growl outside, a creak from the attic; all these things could make any five year old uneasy, this one particularly was not fond of the unexplained. An overactive imagination had a lot to answer for.

By ten it was a slight concern, a nuisance at a slumber party and the plight of my relationship with the aforementioned sister. It was time to embrace the night time. To become comfortable with my own thoughts when they were in the dark. No matter how logical the noises around me were made, the fact that I could not see the source was causing the problems; therefore a nightlight was the only way through. There was no reasonable explanation for such a fear of the dark.

I was not beaten as a child. I was not brought up in a rough shod house where I feared the superior, cried at the entrance of the alpha male. Where I shuddered at the discourse of going against the trend of anything. I was comfortable in my own skin as a toddler and as I grew I found comfort in my own fantasies. My mother encouraged, my father knowingly smiled and my siblings on occasion took the time to jeer in a somewhat comradely way, but more often than not they left their sister to her own devices. As God knows what would happen if she joined in any activity they were lobbying for. An adventure in my mind as a child was wherever my imagination felt like taking me that day. Where would I soldier- fight the dragon? What princess would I watch enviously being saved by the masterful and magnificent Prince? Where in the world was there a damsel in distress trapped in a tower and how could I read about her being saved in some wonderfully romantic fashion that would end happily ever after.

I had no problems in fiction or in reality, yet the idea of being left alone in a darkened room causes an uprooted emotion of fear. Even now, at the age of 22, it is a difficult to task to sleep in a room that has no flickering of reassurance.

They never came home.

Each article written about the Stardust disaster has been taken from the angle of a nation that had to suffer the emotional scars from the aftermath. Parents crushed as they buried their children, one baby left orphaned as a result and a community so strained under the pressure of seeking justice that it leads to the ruination of many families. Having read so many reports it has become blatantly clear that the nightclub should never have been opened in the first place. The Stardust Nightclub was dangerous places that ultimately lead to the death of 48 innocent young people.


In the early 70’s budding entrepreneur Patrick Butterly began his long battle in the North Dublin area with the city’s planning authority to have a once productive jam factory be converted into a thriving entertainment complex comprising of a pub, function rooms and cabaret venue. Throughout the 70’s Butterly would apply many time to the local authorities and he would be declined due to blatant lack of safety regulations on the premises. This however, all changed in 1975 when the local planning authorities granted him permission to create a somewhat social district, Butterly claimed that this would play a pivotal role in creating morale among the community and bringing about a social chnge in time for the city to raise above the economical lull it can been victim to throughout the early 70’s. Political change was already a foot with local Politician Charles Haughey taking over as Taoiseach from Jack Lynch in 1979.


It would seem that Patrick Butterly’s dream of creating some kind of social buzz would be welcomed by all. The ”Stardust” night club opened in However, prior and during the opening of the Butterly premises it would seem that things were not up to the standard hoped by the corporation inspectors, who paid the night clubs up to 24 visits in 1980 alone. With each inspection worrying results to be found; loose tables obstructing the exits, fire exit doors that did not open the appropriate amount and defective light bulbs in the emergency lighting system. However, bizarrely enough none of these problems led to the Stardust being shut down. Patrick Butterly claims he was not aware that all the exits must be unlocked at all times, but he also claimed that as soon as every regulatory lack was brought to his attention they were rectified immediately.


Mr. Butterly’s business savvy and community loyalty was not the reason that the Stardust remained open to the public, it was perhaps convenient at the time of each safety investigation that he was canvassing for local politicians during the pre-election events. It has to be said that his involvement in the political rallies in the area were probably highly beneficial to each of the inspections being ignored by the local authorities.


The buzz outside the Stardust on the eve of Valentines Day was contagious for each of the young people waiting to get inside. As they waited to pay they did not pay heed to the chain fire exit doors or the steel plates covering every single toilet window in the building. They were looking forward to the romantic encounters that would be found inside and the ensuing excitement of maybe meeting someone special before midnight. However, it seems none of these people would forget their night, all for the wrong reasons.

Where in the world?

In 2004 The Missing Person Association (MPA) recorded that 5,060 people were reported missing in Ireland and 83 of which were never found. With a population just shy of 4 million this is a statistic that is growing alarmingly. Due to this ongoing crisis the MPA have established three categories to help them assist as many people as possible. A Category ‘A’ missing person requires immediate action this person is at high risk, usually someone who has been abducted or a possible suicide threat. A Category ‘B’ missing person may be an individual who has left voluntarily and has notified a family member. A Category ‘C’ missing person is someone who is of absolutely no threat, a person who more than likely just wishes to begin a new life. Sadly not all missing persons in this country disappear willingly; many vanish without a trace and leave behind a heartbroken family desperate to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Philip Cairns had just started at Colaiste Eanna secondary school. On the 23rd of October in 1986 he was walking from his home on Ballyroan Road in Rathfarnham back to school after his lunch break, however he never arrived. To this day no trace of the young teenager has been found, despite countless heartfelt pleas made by the local Gardai and the Cairns Family. It seems that the school boy simply disappeared on this busy and seemingly harmless stretch of road. Even more mysterious was that seven days after his disappearance two teenage girls found his school-bag in a dark, curvy laneway close to his home the had been searched extensively just hours after Mr. and Mrs. Cairns had called the authorities to report their sons disappearance. This can only mean that some one planted the bag in that laneway shortly before the girls came upon it. This person could probably be of great assistance to the Rathfarnham Gardai who investigated Philips case. To this day no answers have been given to Alice Cairns who has lost her eldest son.

Mary Boyle was a pretty and curious six year old girl in 1977 who liked nothing more than to play with her brother and sister. Tragically she is Ireland’s youngest missing person, having vanished in March 18th 1977 near Ballyshannon in Southern Donegal. On that day Mary had been playing with her twin sister and older brother Patrick in the back garden while her parents were in the house preparing dinner. When Mary complained of being bored the other two children were not ready to finish their game and so continued without paying much attention to their sibling. Her parents Charlie and Ann did not see the little girl wander out of the garden. Mary’s uncle and godfather Gerry Gallagher is the last known person to have seen her. At about 3.30 that afternoon he was carrying a ladder back to house of his neighbour. Mary followed him from a distance chatting idly to her uncle. Just before reaching the house Gerry made his way through six inches of mud. Mary hesitated and decided to turn back home. She would never be seen again.
No evidence was ever found to suggest that Mary was abducted. Two theories remain dominant in the case of Mary Boyle. One is that she encountered some marshy bog land that had been an undetected sink-hole, and being less than four foot tall she would not have been able to pull herself back up if she had lost her footing. If Mary had been wearing boots then it is very likely that the little girl would have been walking awkwardly through the marshy land and so if she had fallen over the likely scenario is that she would have become stuck in the mud, if she were to struggle it would have resulted in her becoming further embedded in the reeds and shallow waters. Being such a slight build the little girl could very easily have sunk into the bogland completely unnoticed and sadly her body would never be recovered, although it would remain perfectly preserved. The other, far more sinister theory is that Mary was abducted after she left her uncles company and before she had reached the safety of home. Unfortunately both theories have been entertained for almost thirty years and have shed no light in this tragic mystery.

Without the information and help of the public it has become painstakingly clear to the authorities that many of the missing people of Ireland will remain under that label. The sad truth of the matter is that people like Fiona Sinnot, Jo Jo Dullard and Ciara Breen all remain unsolved mysterious filed away until someone can help unravel, perhaps the last moments of their lives.

The lost child

Every time the name Kennedy is uttered amongst a group of people the conversation will usually lead onto a discussion about the political inauguration of Jack, the assassination of Bobby, the drunken disasters of Ted and the shame Jackie brought on the family name when she wanted out of the Camelot dynasty. The entire world knows who the Kennedy’s are and what they have become in American political history. Well, at least the Kennedy history that people were allowed to hear and speculate about.
Born on the 13th September 1918 she was the first daughter for Joe and Rose Kennedy and their third child. Rosemary wasn’t like her other seven siblings; she was shy and passive and spent as much time on her own while growing up. Her reaction to public outings that the family took was often to cower in the corner and hide behind her big brother Jack (JFK).

Anthony Summers, a non-fiction writer based in Ireland has researched the Kennedy family intensively for his two non fiction works “The Kennedy Conspiracy” and “Not in Your Life Time”, has spoken to the Express about the faux pas that was Rosemary Kennedy’s “mental instability” within the realms of the American royal family.
“Rosemary’s IQ”, Summers says, “was somewhere in the range of 80-85, which is by no means fantastic, but it doesn’t suggest anything remotely mind altering. However, with the rest of siblings reaching IQ’s of somewhere between 120 and 130, she had no way to compete with them. Therefore Joe had no problem bringing it down to a certain mark, where it reached mild retardation.”
In “The Kennedy Conspiracy” Summers suggests that once Jack was no longer around to deal with Rosemary‘s nervous mood swings would have to take things into his own hands.

“It was clear that Rosemary had a nervous disposition, was depressed and had concerns about the way in which she was perceived by others. Would I call that a mental health issue which warranted such a drastic solution? Most certainly not” was the response Summers gave when asked about how he felt about Rosemary’s treatment.

Joe Kennedy started speaking to doctors about his daughter when she was in her early twenties and spent the majority of her time hidden away from the world. Neuro-surgeon Walter Freeman was called upon to assess the girl and make a decision that would lead to the ruination of a young life. He along with his assistant James Watts came to the conclusion if 1941 that a pre frontal lobotomy would be the best thing for the young daughter of the progressive Kennedy.
The following excerpt is a brief account from James Watts’ medical notes on what procedure they undertook with Rosemary:
We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.

It was the 61st surgery for both men and was considered a success by them both. However Summers says the overall result of the young mind that was left in disarray is considered the fist of the Kennedy tragedies.

Left in a darkened room during her post op care Rosemary Kennedy was not the girl she had been prior to the invasive operation. She now had no attention span, rarely converse with others, even her beloved Bobby and Jack found it difficult to keep her distracted long enough for nurses to check on her stitches in the days that followed the surgery.
In ’47 Rose was moved to St. Colleta School for Exceptional Children where she would live out the rest of life and would pass away quietly on the 7th of January 2005. She stared vacantly while being told the sudden deaths of her siblings, the timely passing of her parents and the tragedy that ended her nephew’s life. She, like them was no longer on this earth.


“Mental health was the taboo of 1940’s America and that would not help anyone make their way to Camelot. Joe Kennedy was advised wrongly during the consultations about his daughter’s health, unfortunately she is a statistic of someone “lost” while neuro- surgery was still massively experimental.

Eunice Kennedy, Rosemary’s younger sister suffered greatly from losing her older sister and spent much of her adult life dedicated to the sufferers of mental health, so much so that she founded the Special Olympics which was all “for Rosie” she told Summers during an interview in the early 90s.

The Express did attempt to make contact with Eunice Kennedy but the response was a generic tone explaining that Ms Kennedy had multiple commitments at this moment in time but would ask that any information written about her sister’s medical history be treated with the privacy and dignity she deserved. She never appreciated the lime light before or after her illness in 1940.

The irony of that response is that although she didn’t enjoy the lime light like the rest of her family she ended up in the darkness, alone.

My mother had a sewing box with patterns on the side

With pins on the top that sparkled
when kept beside the fire.

It healed the wounded-
badged the brave
and put excitement back into the dull.

My little hands were prohibited from touching such treasure,
but I watched from a distnace as it transformed a critical daily
garment k into an ensemble worthy of Milan.

It fixed the torn, it helped the ripped and held together the most
stubborn of fabrics.

I believed in magic then.

When I grow up I want to be...

When I was a child after school my two younger brothers and I would spend hours outside on adventures; we were pirates, pilots, thieves, statesmen and villains. We left the bored ed realms of reality and donned our imaginations for an afternoon. It was during this time that I first realised that the world of make believe was the best place for someone who dreamed as Peter and Wendy did of Never land.

Playing dress up and being on stage was the easiest way to fun that I could think of, we wrote stories as kids and we then spent hours going through the gruelling tasks of casting, production and eventually executing our written plots.

My parents always humoured and applauded such tasks, occasionally making eye contact no doubt dreaming of a child that would be content on a football field or in front of a computer screen, they had four other off springs to fulfill that duty. I was to be their one ping pong ball amongst the rest.

My brothers and sister occasionally took part in my games and stories, but after a number of failed efforts they realised that they had outgrown the pixie dust. It was strange for me. We were five kids very similar in eyes and noses- yet we were so different in our minds it would be difficult to find the family gene amongst the thoughts.

As we grew older it was an "each to their own" mind frame. My parents encouraged each child on our paths and met us half way when times tough, easy and joyful. They smiled in triumph, wept when fruits spoiled and most importantly of all they were there to see it all.

In case of emergency.... run hysterically from the burning building running over whoever is in your path.

There shouldn't be a limit to the length of a blog title- I should have the same artistic freedom of Fall Out Boy when it comes to these things. If I want my blog to have a title of essay proportion then no one should stand in my way. Yeah you heard me blogger.com. I'm talking to you.

The sad thing is I had a blog all lined up in my head, but this has ruined the train of thought.

You've no one to blame but yourself.