EVENTS THIS WEEK
- MEETING ON CHURCH RENOVATIONS: We held our meeting on Monday night last in connection with the above. Unfortunately, it was poorly attended. We had expected a better turn-out. However, what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality! Fin Garvey, the Project Manager, walked us around the plans, literally. It was an interesting session. We did have in our midst however a number of 'gate-crashers', professional protesters who carried a very clear agenda. Their interests lay in theology (of the pre-Trent variety) rather than in Church architecture, I fear. My only regret was that they may have cowed into silence some of our own people who may well have had genuine reservations about the proposed alterations. However, that's how the ball hops. Incidentally, two sets of the plans are on display; one at the top of the Church, on the Sacred Heart side, and the other just inside the hall door of the Priory.
- THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY: On Saturday night week, a choir from Christchurch gave a concert in the Augustinian here. They used the front parlour as a dressing room and, in the heat of the moment, they opened a window that really was not intended for opening. It duly crashed out onto the street. I attended Mary Geraghty's wedding on Friday. In the course of her speech, the bride referred to the amazing escape she and her bridesmaid had as she passed by the Augustinian on the night of her 'hen party'. Talk about headless chickens!
AS I WAS SAYING...
If you are here for the Galway races, you are very, very welcome! Like the Arts Festival, the Galway Races didn't just drop from the skies as a ready-made gift to the people of Galway. (It brought €58 million to Galway last year). A lot of work, vision and money went into advancing the festival to its present level.
The festival has a long history. It began at Ballybrit on Tuesday, 17th August, 1869, when contemporary records show that 40,000 attended. The park at Eyre Square had to be used as a camping site for the huge crowds that arrived in the town well in advance of the two-day race meeting. Captain Wilson Lynch of Renmore gave the land at Ballybrit free of charge, and the racecourse, measuring one and a half miles was laid out by a civil engineer, a Mr. T. Waters. The Galway Vindicator described it as "covered with herbage or moss and excelling any course in Ireland for good going."
There were eight events, four on each day, but the main attraction was the Galway Plate " .. of 100 sovs., an open handicap steeplechase of 2½ miles…" Eight jumps had to be negotiated, two of them stone walls. Tenant Farmers could race in the Glenard Plate (£50); and there was a Visitors Plate for gentlemen riders. There was wide advance publicity. The Midland and Great Western Railway agreed to carry all horses to and from the course free of charge provided they had run in a race. Special trains came to Galway from all over the country and the Lough Corrib Steam Navigation Company (the helicopter of the 19th century?) ran a special service from Cong for the two days racing. A mounted official watched the racing on both days and jockeys were warned that "if found guilty of sly practices in riding that they would be disqualified".
Local newspapers describe the first day as "a magnificent success." J. R. Bell's Absentee won the Galway Plate in a field of thirteen runners and Mr. John Ussher's Ishmael won the Ballybrit Plate and the Renmore Stakes. In terms of social success the meeting was a winner. The local paper, The Vindicator was prophetic in its comment "The Galway Races promise to advance in the future equal, if not superior, to any other provincial races in the country".
Broadcasting of races commenced in 1929. Television arrived in 1963. Sponsorship came in 1959 and the Summer Festival Meeting was extended to five days in 1974. By 1999 it had become a seven-day festival.
However, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The Connaught Tribune of 1978 explains why:Although the Met Office predicts little improvement in the weather over the next few days, there are no fears of the repetition of three years ago. Drainage improvements to the Ballybrit track have been carried out it is now well capable of absorbing heavy rain. Freak torrential rain caused the cancellation of three and a half days of the five day meeting in 1975.
We are already familiar with 'freak torrential rain' this year. However, one thing is certain: the races will not be cancelled, even if the jockeys do have to wear lifejackets! Enjoy it!
-Dick Lyng.PLOUGH HORSES
Their glossy flanks and manes outshone
The flying splinters of the sun.
The tranquil rhythm of that team
Was as slow flowing meadow stream.
And I saw Phidias's chisel there -
An ocean stallion, mountain mare -
Seeing with eyes the Spirit unsealed
Plough horses in a quiet field.
-Patrick Kavanagh.
RELIGIOUS DECLINE
A major factor in the changes that have been taking place in relation to the family in Irish society has been the decline in religious belief and practice. Thus there is evidence that in Ireland marriage breakdown is more common amongst people with no religious affiliation.
In many other industrialised countries this process began several centuries ago and was well-advanced by the time social changes affecting the family began to emerge. In Ireland, however, these two processes have effectively coincided - squeezing into the same quarter of a century developments that in countries like Britain and France were spread sequentially over two centuries. This specifically Irish aspect of the matter has not, I think, been widely enough recognised.
-Garret Fitzgerald.THE SAMARITANS
(An Anglican Priest, Rev. Chad Varah, founded the Samaritans,
almost by accident, in November, 1953. Below is his own account of
the foundation of this 'befriending' society.)"I wasn't suicidal. I was very busy. I was an Anglican Vicar. Life was full. There was no time to discover whether I was happy or not.
It had been 18 years since I buried a 14 year old girl who'd killed herself inexplicably. I had been running a successful youth club in Clapham Junction. I did some cartoon drawings which brought me into contact with the editor of a popular London newspaper, The Picture Post. He asked me to take on the post of 'Agony Uncle', a magazine feature then in its infancy but growing in popularity.
On my first day at my new desk, exactly 100 young people wrote to me 'telling all'. Of that hundred, I judged 14 to be suicidal and only one of whom needed a psychiatrist. The rest (including the 14) simply need someone to listen to them.
What sort of a someone might they want? Well, some had chosen me through the Picture Post. If it was so easy to save lives, why didn't I do it all the time? And how would they get in touch at the moment of crisis?
There ought to be an emergency number for suicidal people, I thought. Then I said to God, be reasonable! Don't look at me.... I'm possibly the busiest person in the Church of England.. it'd need to be a priest with one of those city churches with no parishioners. Out of the blue, I got an invitation to apply for St Stephen Walbrook, in the heart of the City of London. I applied and I told the interviewers of my crazy scheme. I got the job on November 2nd, 1953. The emergency number provided was MAN 9000.
With my secretary Vivian I tried to cope with callers-up and callers-in. But we were overwhelmed. Volunteers offered to help. With great reluctance we accepted their offers. It soon became evident that they were doing the clients more good than I was. Everybody needed befriending. Only a minority needed my counselling, or referral to a psychiatrist. By 2nd February 1954, I called these amateur volunteers together and said, 'Over to you Samaritans. Never again shall I pick up the emergency phone. I shall select you and supervise you and discipline you and sack you if necessary, and see the clients who need something more than your befriending, and I shall make the decisions you are not competent to make. But you are the life-savers, and one day everyone will recognise what suicidal people need'. The Samaritans were born! My job now is to organise it all over the world, until suicide becomes unimportant as a cause of death."
By 1963, there were 41 Branches of Samaritans in the UK and Ireland. By 1974 the number had risen to 160 Branches, with 18,022 volunteers. There has been a steady growth since that date, with volunteer numbers peaking 10 years ago in 1993 at 23,500. Calls to Samaritans have continued to go up every year, and the number of Branches is now at 203.
The still sprightly 92 year old Rev.Varah keeps in daily contact with the work of his 'disciples' from his London home.