April 08, 2005
Pushing it
There's at least one man in Connemara not afraid of hard work. ..Wheelbarrow on Cashel Hill by the graveyard, Cashel, West Galway.*
For all the building work that's going on around the country, a once common sight has become rare. On any building site, you'll see every class of mechanical digger, pickup truck, jack-hammers and the like, but you'll rarely see a wheelbarrow anymore. It must be hard to find guys to push them anymore.
Well, Irish men anyway. Luckily, there are plenty of foreigners who'll do the job for us. And for every bit of misfortune, duplicity and hardship that was visited on Irishmen that dug and shovelled their lives away on distant shores, we are inflicting twofold on the workers that come to do the same work in Ireland. Aren't we great?
* Cashel village, or rather the inhabitants of Cashel House, has played host to some important visitors over the years. Harold McMillan and Charles De Gaulle holidayed in the village decades ago, though not at the same time. If they had, who knows? Maybe the UK (and therefore the Irish too) might have made it into the European Union a whole lot sooner. On the other hand, we might have been deprived of the following story.
At the end of a long and probably very boring meal (at a formal dinner), (British Prime Minister) Macmillan turned to Madame de Gaulle and asked politely what she was looking forward to in her retirement. Quick as a flash the elderly lady replied: "A penis." Macmillan had been trained all his life never to appear shocked, but even he was a bit taken aback. After drawling out a series of polite platitudes, - "Well, I can see your point of view, don't have much time for that sort of thing nowadays" - it gradually dawned on him to his intense relief that what the old girl had actually said was "happiness." - Paul Foot, in the essay A New Definition: The Quality of Life, British Medical Journal, VOLUME 321, DECEMBER 2000
Posted by Monasette at April 8, 2005 12:01 AM