On 22nd February 2015 my wife and I flew out of Dublin Airport bound for Beauvais 50 miles north of Paris, an airport in much need of investment and used by lots of budget carriers from North Africa and especially by our very own Ryan Air. A hundred years ago […]
Tag: The Connaught Rangers Association
Wandering through South Africa – Part 9
I have to raise my hand to the people of Aliwal North for the welcome they gave us and the graciousness with which they accepted our presence, we whose forbears had helped to destroy some of their heritage. I was talking to a local politician Hennie du Preez, a councillor […]
Wandering Through South Africa – Part 2
After our late night in the Champagne Castle Hotel high in the Drakensberg Mountains are bodies were unwilling for the early start that was programmed. Mad Mullingar had secreted his private stock and so was longer packing than us unburdened lot, however we dragged our sore heads to breakfast with […]
Wandering Through South Africa – Part 1
It was Day 1 of our trip, 13th October 1914, five intrepids gathered in the concourse of Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport, our destination KwaZulu Natal. There was the Colonel from Limerick, Mad Mullingar from you guessed it but with a birthright of Tipperary, Flash Harry from Liverpool with 50% […]
Synchronicity
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word synchronicity as the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernable causal connection. Well I think a whole load of synchronicity has entered the life of the Connaught Rangers Association with the centenary year of the start of the […]
Report on the Remembrance Weekend at Markree Castle in 2013
THE WEEKEND AT MARKREE AND REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY AT KING HOUSE, 8th – 10th November 2013 Well it is over and what a remarkable weekend it was in the splendid comfort of Markree Castle in Collooney in Co Sligo. The idea was born over a year ago now, when Charles Cooper, […]
Private Egerton Arthur Emerson of the Connaught Rangers – Teb
One day in May this year I met a woman in King House here in Boyle who asked me the question as to how a man from Drogheda came to be fighting with the Connaught Rangers, we talked some more and this is the story that came out of that […]
Volunteering For Pleasure.
The two main thing you have in spades in retirement is dwindling money resources and plenty of time. Dwindling money resources, what with bankers, government and markets all joining up to rob you of all your hard earned that you had put by for a rainy day and plenty of […]
Ireland Then and Now
As regular readers of my blog will know, I had the absolute privilege of helping to put on a couple of live performances of a play From the Shannon to the Somme written by Neil Richardson which in a quiet way showed the changing face of Ireland in the years […]
Our Play For The Gathering
Two years ago in the Little Theatre in Athlone I had the privilege of watching a debut performance of a play written by Neil Richardson and directed by Caroline Barry called From The Shannon To The Somme. A true story about an Athlone man, Sgt Michael Curley, a soldier before […]