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data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/your-money" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Money</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_your-money" aria-label="Show Your Money sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_your-money"><li class="subsection-item" 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data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Property</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_property" aria-label="Show Property sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_property"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/residential" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Residential</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/commercial-property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Commercial Property</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/interiors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Interiors</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/food" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Food</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_food" aria-label="Show Food sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_food"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/drink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Drink</a></li><li class="subsection-item" 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viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_health"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-family" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Family</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Fitness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-wellness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Wellness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness/get-running" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Get Running</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Life & Style</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_life-style" aria-label="Show Life & Style sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_life-style"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fashion" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fashion</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/beauty/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Beauty</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fine-art-antiques" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fine Art & Antiques</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/gardening" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gardening</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">People</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/travel" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Travel</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/culture" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Culture</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_culture" aria-label="Show Culture sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_culture"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/art" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Art</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Books</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/film" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Film</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/music" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Music</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/stage" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Stage</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/tv-radio" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">TV & Radio</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/environment" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Environment</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_environment" aria-label="Show Environment sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_environment"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/environment/climate-crisis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Climate Crisis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/technology" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Technology</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_technology" aria-label="Show Technology sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_technology"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/big-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Big Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/consumer-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Consumer Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/data-security" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Data & Security</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/gaming" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaming</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/science" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Science</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_science" aria-label="Show Science sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_science"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/science/space" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Space</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/media" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Media</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Abroad</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/obituaries" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Obituaries</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/transport" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Transport</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/motors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Motors</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_motors" aria-label="Show Motors sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_motors"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/motors/car-reviews/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Car Reviews</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/listen/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Listen</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack 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Everything is different " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7FX5ZBU7MNF4FNXW5H4GFVZMKQ.jpg?focal=673%2C332&auth=13a2edbeda661331cfa49f5d8ab7452b5b85e10e9912080df989d221f76d8f98&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7FX5ZBU7MNF4FNXW5H4GFVZMKQ.jpg?focal=673%2C332&auth=13a2edbeda661331cfa49f5d8ab7452b5b85e10e9912080df989d221f76d8f98&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7FX5ZBU7MNF4FNXW5H4GFVZMKQ.jpg?focal=673%2C332&auth=13a2edbeda661331cfa49f5d8ab7452b5b85e10e9912080df989d221f76d8f98&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/">Irishwoman in El Salvador: I’m 60 and moved halfway around the world. Everything is different </a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Maureen Stevens</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/17/my-mothers-blanket-has-travelled-the-world-with-me-along-with-her-thoughts-and-dreams/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="My mother’s blanket has travelled the world with me, along with her thoughts and dreams" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA.jpg?smart=true&auth=1fa2122b31ef9ae272af5f50702449fda67dc5a5a9f132d54f397a5996e47703&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA.jpg?smart=true&auth=1fa2122b31ef9ae272af5f50702449fda67dc5a5a9f132d54f397a5996e47703&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA.jpg?smart=true&auth=1fa2122b31ef9ae272af5f50702449fda67dc5a5a9f132d54f397a5996e47703&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/17/my-mothers-blanket-has-travelled-the-world-with-me-along-with-her-thoughts-and-dreams/">My mother’s blanket has travelled the world with me, along with her thoughts and dreams</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Christopher Burke</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Crafting jewellery in a country where it is considered rude to show your wealth" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU.JPG?smart=true&auth=c4ebbd68413e2a20dc8d75ee34b0785a8c407a6078f63fb75b36a236c90afaab&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU.JPG?smart=true&auth=c4ebbd68413e2a20dc8d75ee34b0785a8c407a6078f63fb75b36a236c90afaab&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU.JPG?smart=true&auth=c4ebbd68413e2a20dc8d75ee34b0785a8c407a6078f63fb75b36a236c90afaab&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/">Crafting jewellery in a country where it is considered rude to show your wealth</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By <a class="c-link" href="/author/deirdre-mcquillan/">Deirdre McQuillan</a></div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Ballrooms of romance: ‘I wasn’t the greatest dancer but when we danced together it was like it was meant to be’" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM.jpg?focal=449%2C258&auth=62963b72ba99fc3e3201868236b8834e05119976a51cdb9969576ac3068bdb22&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM.jpg?focal=449%2C258&auth=62963b72ba99fc3e3201868236b8834e05119976a51cdb9969576ac3068bdb22&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM.jpg?focal=449%2C258&auth=62963b72ba99fc3e3201868236b8834e05119976a51cdb9969576ac3068bdb22&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/">Ballrooms of romance: ‘I wasn’t the greatest dancer but when we danced together it was like it was meant to be’</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Niamh Linehan</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74.jpg?focal=1211%2C1976&auth=3290cef646d36215a9aece6fdc85a0508dfefbaa9ebe98b15428b86ab58d7d0f&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74.jpg?focal=1211%2C1976&auth=3290cef646d36215a9aece6fdc85a0508dfefbaa9ebe98b15428b86ab58d7d0f&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74.jpg?focal=1211%2C1976&auth=3290cef646d36215a9aece6fdc85a0508dfefbaa9ebe98b15428b86ab58d7d0f&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/">The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By <a class="c-link" href="/author/laura-kennedy/">Laura Kennedy</a></div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="I’ve worked in 60 countries – here is what people have said to me about Ireland" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA.jpg?smart=true&auth=53e29d8e0a97d3ae26d6891bcac1128d79d9c80b90a84538872338e4436ac363&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA.jpg?smart=true&auth=53e29d8e0a97d3ae26d6891bcac1128d79d9c80b90a84538872338e4436ac363&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA.jpg?smart=true&auth=53e29d8e0a97d3ae26d6891bcac1128d79d9c80b90a84538872338e4436ac363&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/">I’ve worked in 60 countries – here is what people have said to me about Ireland</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Enda Hardiman</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ.png?smart=true&auth=72d6d861968433618f1d79f6e8bac5a265206242f0b9727a13246d0b61f1bb59&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ.png?smart=true&auth=72d6d861968433618f1d79f6e8bac5a265206242f0b9727a13246d0b61f1bb59&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ.png?smart=true&auth=72d6d861968433618f1d79f6e8bac5a265206242f0b9727a13246d0b61f1bb59&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/">An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By <a class="c-link" href="/author/olive-keogh/">Olive Keogh</a></div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ.jpg?smart=true&auth=5af1b53ff253cdad600b5b032d983583207bde458d48d165be0e2c9bd7bbf4de&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ.jpg?smart=true&auth=5af1b53ff253cdad600b5b032d983583207bde458d48d165be0e2c9bd7bbf4de&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ.jpg?smart=true&auth=5af1b53ff253cdad600b5b032d983583207bde458d48d165be0e2c9bd7bbf4de&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/">A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Peter Flanagan</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/">Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’</a></h2></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4.jpg?smart=true&auth=b431abd4c354f759a93a9f3ec5f767dc2f046ab927a899721a0681a9c1abe299&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4.jpg?smart=true&auth=b431abd4c354f759a93a9f3ec5f767dc2f046ab927a899721a0681a9c1abe299&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4.jpg?smart=true&auth=b431abd4c354f759a93a9f3ec5f767dc2f046ab927a899721a0681a9c1abe299&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/">The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it </a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By <a class="c-link" href="/author/laura-kennedy/">Laura Kennedy</a></div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg?focal=370%2C236&auth=ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/">An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Hugo Harvey</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad/2025/01/23/experience-and-the-wisdom-that-comes-with-it-are-highly-valued-in-asian-culture/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Irishman in Singapore: I wondered if I was foolish to emigrate in my 50s. 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But I feel more alive than ever</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Richard Hennessy</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/01/19/rome-is-a-fantastic-city-to-live-in-but-its-very-complicated-its-a-mess-of-a-place-madrid-is-clean-everything-works/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/G7BF2ST5AJAUXJ7BX2EPFMZ7IY.jpg?smart=true&auth=047234f4b3969cdd1d87dc518553ae2b505d4efbf0729274922216f7a3600949&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/G7BF2ST5AJAUXJ7BX2EPFMZ7IY.jpg?smart=true&auth=047234f4b3969cdd1d87dc518553ae2b505d4efbf0729274922216f7a3600949&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/G7BF2ST5AJAUXJ7BX2EPFMZ7IY.jpg?smart=true&auth=047234f4b3969cdd1d87dc518553ae2b505d4efbf0729274922216f7a3600949&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/business/work/2025/01/19/rome-is-a-fantastic-city-to-live-in-but-its-very-complicated-its-a-mess-of-a-place-madrid-is-clean-everything-works/">‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’</a></h2><div class="c-attribution">By Fiona Alston</div></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="c-stack b-results-list__seeMore" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><button aria-label="See more stories about this topic" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--primary" type="button"><span>See more</span></button></div></div><div id="lazy_37535" class="lazy_container"></div></div><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item-2" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"></div></div><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-right-rail b-it-right-rail-advanced__empty" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack 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data-style-wrap="nowrap" style="--c-stack-gap:0"><h2 as="h5" class="c-heading font-normal margin_none"><span class=" font-normal">MOST READ<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="14" height="24" viewBox="0 0 14 24" fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" class="c-icon"><path d="M1.13096 0.799122C1.80974 0.102652 2.7203 -0.288062 3.25008 0.255525L13.3161 10.5835C14.2279 11.4523 14.228 12.9331 13.3161 13.802L3.78 23.0857C2.92237 23.9029 2.18997 24.7165 0.637788 22.9345C-0.650965 21.455 0.273466 20.6414 1.1311 19.8243L8.71733 12.5593C8.91647 12.3686 8.92364 12.0527 8.73336 11.8531L0.748709 3.47961C-0.108924 2.6625 0.0713963 1.88627 1.13096 0.799122Z"></path></svg></span></h2></div></div></a></div></div></div><div><div class="c-stack b-numbered-list" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack b-numbered-list__items" data-style-direction="vertical" 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And that we are, indeed, a nation of immigrants, and all the better for it,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TW4DEVBPAFBWTCXJNTB3XT54XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520151},"content":"The Charitable Irish Society was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1737 to alleviate suffering among Irish immigrants to the city “or other worthy recipients as by the vicissitudes of fortune might be deserving of its charity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6INK4HCRVNH2DO5XYVSEF6JOQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520152},"content":"This year, the Carnegie Corporation has spent $27m providing legal support, language and job training and other supports to immigrants, “doing what the Charitable Irish Society has been doing since the early 18th century and it has never been more important”, she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GR4YZEKA6FD4XLG4L2J45LNUZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520153},"content":"Nicholas R Burns, a former US ambassador to China, said the success of the modern Irish state offered lessons to the US in “this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYWSVIKAINFQJPVFFUOBGZ2V5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520154},"content":"Mr Burns, who has served in seven countries, said: “One of the most impressive global stories of our time, in all the world, is the rebirth and the transformation of Ireland, phoenix-like, from a relatively poor country on Europe’s western margins to today.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CRV53VJ4QJC2PNO57TEKCVHRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520155},"content":"Praising the role played by Irish soldiers as peacekeepers, he said: “Ireland sends its sons and daughters to the most difficult conflict areas. It doesn’t ask them to fight. It asks them to try to keep the peace in very difficult parts of the world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7YPJT2EHFCONHLIOG7LSRIEB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520156},"content":"The Irish Government, he said, “has a tradition as well” of standing up for human rights. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBW6TJJRS5DLHO2GWVSKXW6UXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“And maybe that’s right, given Ireland’s own bitter past and bitter problems with colonialism,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASHGGQ5WVNDNRG4HBTGKYLK7WU","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520157},"content":"“There’s so much to admire about modern Ireland, especially its healthy, stable democracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCO6OJKS35GSBJ366BR5OX2HXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520158},"content":"“And that begs a question for us in St Patrick’s Day this year, for those of us who are Americans, who are so passionate in this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"655GOLGE75BXLGLOTR5U3ZJWYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520159},"content":"“What can and what should we learn from modern Ireland, as Americans, about maintaining a centred, fair, democratic system here in the United States?","type":"text"},{"_id":"56ZWYJ55GVE2JGLAOXBGBH4754","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520160},"content":"“In this sense, ironically, Ireland, once so poor, so benighted, so fractured, itself, in the past, is now in some ways a guiding light for us, shining across the dark sea.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Mark Hennessy"}},"name":"Mark Hennessy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Ireland can be guiding light for US during ‘turbulent, divided and disputatious time’"},"display_date":"2025-03-18T13:52:08.161Z","headlines":{"basic":"Immigration ‘makes the United States what it is’, Boston-Irish audience told","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DARZ7JXRE5G2FJVVBECNWIXBNY","auth":{"1":"76c6b4875ab8bc6bc1a1ef4167b658b10e6ab6f69fa84e2711e5dbca88e9eef1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DARZ7JXRE5G2FJVVBECNWIXBNY.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"US"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Social Affairs"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/us/2025/03/18/immigration-makes-the-united-states-what-it-is-boston-irish-audience-told/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/us","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"US"}}}},{"_id":"2DWLFDSTOJHNBKCEXLBK4GW2TY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":372,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/20483554-ef4d-4a16-882a-49010c70af18/versions/1741775916/media/19edf3d66e440506cb88f9049ae3daac_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/03/16/a-carlow-man-of-steel-who-helped-build-dubai-there-was-always-money-available-to-make-construction-projects-look-good/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ILMLUPOPFREPPINXXEFE7TWRA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Carlow native John O’Kelly and 30 volunteers undertook a 2,000km drive from the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam to Kampala in January to deliver a fleet of 15 emergency vehicles (donated by the Japanese government) to the Ugandan capital. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVNXWBG5E5FVHKHJ5KZFWBGYYE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Tackling inhospitable terrain is nothing new for O’Kelly. He’s a former endurance motorbike racer who organised a similar trip to Uganda in 2020. In recent years he has embarked on three motorbike adventures, which took him from Dubai to Dublin via Iran, from Dubai to Cape Town, and from Argentina to Alaska. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"URI64I77DZB2DGIBNCNLYWDX7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly lives in Dubai where he is chief executive of Kelly Steel Engineering. He has been in the Middle East for more than 40 years and his company specialises in providing the type of elaborate architectural steel that distinguishes many of the landmark buildings in the Gulf region. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOXHDFZ4GNHKZAIPELS72KZJT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among others, the company is responsible for the spectacular Butterfly Pavilion on Al Noor Island and for the striking Adnec skyscraper events centre in Abu Dhabi. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E2MO2RTQS5HQ3HRTRBFCXQPN5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"When O’Kelly left Ireland in 1982, his plan was to follow friends to Sydney. He stopped off in the Middle East for three months and that was that. He never made it to Australia. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIP677AXMVB5TGOYO43KI6JL64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Although the economy was quite bad in Ireland in the early 1980s – and this was certainly an incentive – the main reason I left was to explore the world and seek adventure,” says O’Kelly, who studied agriculture at Warrenstown when he left school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZO6ND7ZGFB2PAB3BR5ZJ7GGME","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"EH54Q2T33BCUDBQEPZ4OGQFDTA","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly got a job with Masstock (the dairy business started by the McGuckian brothers in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s) and started off driving a bulldozer. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCE5J34TQBFABI7HD53VU2AAIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“To this day I have a good relationship with the McGuckians. If you were willing to work hard, they were willing to give you the opportunity to progress within the business. As the business grew, I grew with it and moved into sales and marketing. I became area sales manager, country manager and eventually marketing manager for five Gulf countries based in Dubai,” says O’Kelly, who spent 15 years with the business before following his dream to start his own company in 1997. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"F546NP7YGJAWRCUVTHPFRVRBLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There was a vast amount of development going on in Dubai at the time and I could see an opportunity in steelwork construction,” he says. “Steelwork had always interested me. Even as a youngster on the farm I loved working with steel. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUNWKAXI7RB4HA6E4JMAWWIGQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I set up Kelly Steel Engineering to focus on architectural steel that combines aesthetics with functionality. This was doable in the Middle East as there was always money available to go the extra mile to make construction projects look good. We are now the number one company providing aesthetic architectural steel in the region.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5PXEWYMPFDYTPROKAZE22SQVU","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PSVAG2U7SFHLNFHFK4LUJF36GY","additional_properties":{},"content":"For almost 20 years, the company’s business was concentrated in the Middle East. But as the market matured, O’Kelly began looking farther afield and over the past decade the company has moved into Australia, Africa, Europe, North America and the Far East. Kelly Steel Engineering is building the Prada handbag store in Singapore and the parliament building in Uganda, which requires 3,000 tonnes of steelwork. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ODKK4Z6XT5CD7B33IWUOFMSU4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly started his business with 11 staff, mainly from India. Within 18 months this had risen to 35. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGOJFP4QDVDPHMLOODKKX2XMM4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Today, 182 people are employed at the company’s 15,000sq m design and manufacturing facility in Dubai. “What really enabled us to expand was becoming heavily involved with the metro for Dubai city. That was our big break,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VML2SPRUZVFU7GDSIWTMZKBJAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Setting up the business was not without its challenges at the time as O’Kelly had a young family, no capital and no track record in running a business. The Dubai metro contract gave him the leverage and credibility required to borrow to expand. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3XBDKVLRZFDBCPY4JQEJZOZ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Banks in Dubai are encouraged to lend on the basis of how you’ve conducted your business. It’s your ability to perform rather than anything else they look at,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYJHCYVOWJBHHIARVGSDRNYMBI","additional_properties":{},"content":" O’Kelly met his wife, Liamhán, in the Middle East and the couple have five sons, all of whom completed their secondary education at Clongowes and are now working and studying across the globe. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZGY2KOXCZGNJCT7NN3YNNC5ZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dubai is a great place to live. It has fantastic infrastructure, extremely low crime rates, a family friendly atmosphere and good education. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FB3SBQWERZERRGVSHEKFBP5I4Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It also offers fabulous outdoor activity opportunities. I particularly like the desert and exploring that vast expanse. Dubai has been the fastest-growing city in the world for more than 30 years and this has provided good business opportunities for entrepreneurs who are prepared to work hard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AESEBNI4DRBHHLM564YWSUBRQY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dubai has a skilled, diverse workforce which fosters innovation and opportunity,” he says. “The UAE has more than 190 different nationalities in permanent residency so it’s a real melting pot. It’s critically important to learn about other cultures and understand their way of doing business. Then different approaches can be meshed together to form a strong working relationship.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37PZ7MCT7RHLXPH5WUTUZBYVYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I saw how the McGuckians approached doing business in a foreign country. Basically, they adapted to local culture instead of trying to impose what they knew from home. I followed what I’d learned from them. Working with the McGuckians was a whole education in itself.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVRWEG5GP5GOHOZQDZRNGLJZOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly points out that while it’s not possible to get citizenship in Dubai, there is no barrier to working there indefinitely if someone is employed or is a business owner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5GDY44GFRAW5OBMP3ODKYMOJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"After four decades in the sun, O’Kelly is well acclimatised to desert living. However, he admits that, “sometimes I miss the soft Irish rainfall after many months of continuous sunshine.” ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: John O’Kelly owns an architectural steel company in Dubai, which is currently building the Ugandan parliament building"},"display_date":"2025-03-16T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Irishman who helped build Dubai: ‘The metro was our big break’ ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"D5CSTQ4TLBG63L7CJIAECMU6UE","auth":{"1":"e11310b4741cd640d4101f3281e70cd1470befab6c37a5f32dabc92d89ebdd0c"},"focal_point":{"x":1284,"y":587},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/D5CSTQ4TLBG63L7CJIAECMU6UE.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/03/16/a-carlow-man-of-steel-who-helped-build-dubai-there-was-always-money-available-to-make-construction-projects-look-good/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"QBOTN3X65NDXHIYEJ7QYQFLPSY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/life-style/2025/03/13/st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-50-questions-to-test-your-knowledge-of-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IDBRAC5IQNELFLZCUNHLDQT45I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909293},"content":"It’s finally here: your big chance to prove you know more about Irish things and Irish people than almost any other reader of The Irish Times by competing in this year’s big <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/st-patrick/\" target=\"_blank\">St Patrick’s</a> Day Quiz.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CKTHM75HIFEUXH5RFEPTRFX3QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909294},"content":"Do you know which low-key Irish attraction <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kim-kardashian/\" target=\"_blank\">Kim Kardashian</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kanye-west/\" target=\"_blank\">Kanye West</a> visited during their 2014 Irish honeymoon? Or which film director is making a biopic of our pirate queen, Grace O’Malley? If so, why not try your luck with these and the rest of our 50 questions. You could win this great prize:","type":"text"},{"_id":"JSZJ7XLZYVFLJGYWOK5JWEDBMY","additional_properties":{"_id":"NMRFQOJA3RF7HGVXAW5QMFAW4I"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X7RUXWMS4VHGPMXQXHAYJ7MKUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VV57QCFTGNF4TMCC6GDXRZ5T6Q"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"LBELDGHWU5BN7FEUBFR7APQOOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909297},"content":"Ireland’s Blue Book is giving away an overnight stay, dinner, and breakfast the following morning<i> </i>for two people sharing at<i> </i>Tankardstown House, Co Meath, to the winner of the Irish Times St Patrick’s Day Quiz. Tankardstown House is nestled on 80 acres of parkland, woodland, and gardens in the Boyne Valley. Located 45 minutes from Dublin city, Tankardstown House offers a luxurious stay with a range of accommodations, from heritage bedrooms to dog-friendly rooms, as well as an award-winning restaurant and afternoon tea. Tankardstown House is a proud member of Ireland’s Blue Book, a collection of more than 60 Irish country house hotels, manors, castles, and restaurants. For more information see <a href=\"http://irelandsbluebook.com/\" target=\"_blank\">irelandsbluebook.com</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"XS3IW6Y42FDUFJNRKU4XHDM2IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909298},"content":"The closing date of the competition is Wednesday, March 19th at 10pm. The winner’s name and quiz answers will be published in The Irish Times Magazine on April 5th. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/2025/03/13/the-irish-times-st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-terms-conditions/\" target=\"_blank\">Terms and conditions apply</a>. Best of luck!","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3USOLVWV5ELVKJZ4QQONCJ2SQ","content":"<div class=\"riddle2-wrapper\" data-rid-id=\"JWPycOz1\" data-auto-scroll=\"true\" data-is-fixed-height-enabled=\"false\" data-bg=\"#fff\" data-fg=\"#00205b\" style=\"margin:0 auto; max-width:100%; width:640px;\" ><script src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/build-embedjs/embedV2.js\"><\/script><iframe title=\"St Patrick's Day Quiz\" src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/a/JWPycOz1?lazyImages=false&staticHeight=false\" allow=\"autoplay\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin\"><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>What is the Irish pub at Walt Disney World in Orlando called?</h3><ul><li>Tipsy McStagger’s </li><li>Gargle Kingdom </li><li>Raglan Road </li><li>Come Out You Black and Tans </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these Irish cultural icons was actually born in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>St Patrick </li><li>Saoirse Ronan</li><li>Shane MacGowan</li><li>Oscar Wilde </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Since 2023, the first Monday each February in the Republic of Ireland has been a bank holiday commemorating...?</h3><ul><li>The Easter Rising </li><li>St Brigid’s Day</li><li>Garth Brooks’s sold-out Croke Park concerts</li><li>The sinking of the Titanic </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Until 1979, the value of the Irish punt was pegged to the value of...?</h3><ul><li>A pound of butter </li><li>A pint of beer </li><li>The US dollar</li><li>The UK pound</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2025, Daniel O’Donnell told The Irish Times: “I admire Paul Mescal greatly. But I don’t know if I’d…”</h3><ul><li>Wear GAA shorts as short as he does </li><li>Sing Sia’s Chandelier as well as he does </li><li>Accept the lead in an action movie like Gladiator given all the media attention and Hollywood hype that would come with it </li><li>Shoot a TV ad inadvertently pitching Ballyhaunis as a tourist destination </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The cities of Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick were founded by which band of roving marauders?</h3><ul><li>The Vikings </li><li>The Visigoths</li><li>The Crips</li><li>The Black and Tans</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who, after meeting then taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2013, “hit the dance floor and mingled with local beauties” in a venue where they “stayed largely unnoticed until after 2am”?</h3><ul><li>Nelson Mandela in Lillie’s Bordello </li><li>Hilary Clinton in the Róisín Dubh </li><li>Kim Jong-un in the Gleneagle Hotel </li><li>Elon Musk in Copper Face Jacks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Why was Capt Ruben Ocana, a Mexican pilot, forced to remain in Ireland for six weeks in 1983 after crash-landing his Gulfstream II jet at Mallow racecourse in 1983?</h3><ul><li>He was detained for entering the country without a passport </li><li>He was forced to wash dishes until he had paid off the bill for the damage caused</li><li>He was forced to quarantine after contracting Joe Dolan fever</li><li>A runway had to be built to allow his aircraft to take off</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In advance of whose Dublin visit were walls and barriers erected to block views of the city’s slums?</h3><ul><li>Beyoncé </li><li>Queen Victoria </li><li>John F Kennedy </li><li>Mariah Carey</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s 2014 Irish honeymoon included an afternoon visiting which not terribly glamorous attraction?</h3><ul><li>Leisureland, Galway </li><li>Odeon Cinema, Portlaoise</li><li>Clay-pipe centre, Knockcroghery</li><li>Barack Obama Plaza, Moneygall </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In what year was the Flight of the Earls?</h3><ul><li>1506 </li><li>1607 </li><li>1708 </li><li>1809 </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The phrase “Who’s taking the horse to France?” appeared in a 1990s Irish TV ad for...?</h3><ul><li>Guinness </li><li>Brittany Ferries</li><li>DHL</li><li>Kerrygold</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who was the guest of honour when, in 1976, Tim Severin set out from Dingle Harbour by currach to re-create St Brendan’s sixth-century voyage across the Atlantic?</h3><ul><li>Dolly Parton </li><li>Éamon de Valera</li><li>Bishop Eamonn Casey </li><li>Larry Hagman (aka JR Ewing)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to a recent bestselling book, which Irish immigrant currently wields so much power behind the scenes that they effectively run Britain?</h3><ul><li>Graham Norton </li><li>Morgan McSweeney</li><li>Simone Rocha </li><li>Dervla Kirwan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the Irish song Carraig Donn, the singer laments that her lover has gone to...?</h3><ul><li>Germany to wear lederhosen </li><li>France to wear the fleur-de-lis</li><li>Greece to walk in the footsteps of Homer</li><li>India to learn the way of the Kama Sutra</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which director is currently working on a biopic of Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s pirate queen?</h3><ul><li>Kirsten Sheridan </li><li>Lenny Abrahamson</li><li>Kathryn Bigelow</li><li>Quentin Tarantino </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the Taken movies, what explanation is offered for why Liam Neeson’s character, a LA-based former CIA agent, speaks with an Irish accent?</h3><ul><li>He is a fugitive on the run from the Troubles</li><li>He took a Fás course on which he acquired a very particular set of skills</li><li>He suffered a head injury and woke up with foreign-accent syndrome</li><li>No explanation is ever given</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In which film does Gene Wilder play a Dublin manure collector who falls in love with an American exchange student played by Margot Kidder?</h3><ul><li>Ryan’s Daughter </li><li>Barry Lyndon</li><li>The Quiet Man </li><li>Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish actor has been nominated for both an Oscar and a Mercury Music Prize?</h3><ul><li>Jessie Buckley </li><li>Kerry Condon </li><li>Caitríona Balfe </li><li>Eve Hewson </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Hollywood leading man of the 1930s, who often starred opposite Bette Davis, was a courier for Michael Collins during the War of Independence?</h3><ul><li>George Brent </li><li>James Cagney</li><li>Spencer Tracy</li><li>Cary Grant </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Where did The Beatles play their only Irish concert, in 1963?</h3><ul><li>Slane Castle </li><li>Páirc Uí Chaoimh</li><li>Dalymount Park </li><li>Dublin’s Adelphi Cinema</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Belfast rappers Kneecap arrived at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival using what form of transportation?</h3><ul><li>Horse </li><li>Tank </li><li>PSNI Land Rover</li><li>High Nelly</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 1996,which British artist recorded a song featuring Seán Ó Riada’s setting of Mnánah Éireann in the Irish language?</h3><ul><li>Spice Girls</li><li>PJ Harvey </li><li>Dido</li><li>Kate Bush</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2023, which Irish song was performed at Harry Belafonte’s funeral, where it was introduced to mourners as “his favourite”?</h3><ul><li>I Don’t Know by Lisa Hannigan </li><li>The Island by Paul Brady</li><li>I Useta Lover by The Saw Doctors</li><li>Jumbo Breakfast Roll by Pat Shortt </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who wrote the lyrics to I’m Shipping Up to Boston, which became a hit for Irish-American band Dropkick Murphys after it featured in Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed?</h3><ul><li>Joan Baez </li><li>Peggy Seeger</li><li>Woody Guthrie</li><li>Ewan MacColl</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2024, which viral hit by Kabin Crew &amp; Lisdoonvarna Crew was described by the Guardian as “one of the songs of the summer that made the internet vibrate with joy”?</h3><ul><li>The Joke </li><li>The Weight </li><li>The Spark </li><li>The End</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2018,who was left “non too plussed” when their fitted Hugo Boss suit couldn’t accommodate all the change from a Dart ticket machine?</h3><ul><li>Twink </li><li>Marty Morrissey</li><li>Tony McGregor</li><li>Linda Martin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which dance-themed cover song did country act Crystal Swing release as the follow-up to He Drinks Tequila, their viral hit from 2010?</h3><ul><li>The Hucklebuck </li><li>The Loco-Motion</li><li>The Twist</li><li>The Mashed Potato</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Ninety-seven years ago people lost their lives in that park over there. Constant Markievicz gave up his life…” Speaking to RTÉ News in 2013, what mistake did Tom Darcy of Direct Democracy Ireland make when eulogising a 1916 hero?</h3><ul><li>Markievicz’s first name was Constance, not Constant </li><li>She was a woman </li><li>She survived the Rising and died of natural causes years later</li><li>All of the above</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2017, Co Kerry’s the Fleming family were invited to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live after a video of the father, Derry, trying to remove what from their kitchen went viral?</h3><ul><li>Squirrel </li><li>Lobster </li><li>Bat</li><li>Family of ducks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>What name given to Ireland by the second-century Roman geographer Ptolemy was also the name of a TV comedy?</h3><ul><li>Friends </li><li>Two and a Half Men</li><li>Schitt’s Creek </li><li>Little Britain</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which 18th-century Irish nun secretly set up schools to circumvent a ban on Catholics being educated?</h3><ul><li>Nano Nagle </li><li>Catherine McAuley </li><li>Clare Crockett</li><li>Mary Zita Welsh</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 1919, Michael Collins and Harry Boland helped break Éamon de Valera out of which prison?</h3><ul><li>Brixton </li><li>Lincoln</li><li>Alcatraz</li><li>The Maze</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Chicago’s river was first dyed green for St Patrick’s Day, in 1962, by a local plumbers’ union using...?</h3><ul><li>Spinach juice </li><li>Radioactive waste</li><li>Shamrock shakes</li><li>Green dye meant to identify leaky pipes</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish political activist was called “Fidel Castro in a miniskirt” when she visited New York in 1969?</h3><ul><li>Mary Robinson </li><li>Nell McCafferty </li><li>Bernadette Devlin</li><li>Mary Kenny</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, what did Jonathan Swift suggest as a solution to poverty in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Introducing headage payments for Irish children </li><li>Selling Irish children as slave labour</li><li>Selling Irish children as food</li><li>Evacuating the west of Ireland and turning it into a luxury beach resort</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Before becoming a novelist, Sally Rooney was a champion in which competitive activity?</h3><ul><li>Chess </li><li>Debating </li><li> Hula-hooping</li><li>Sean-nós singing</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In what conflict did the protagonist of WB Yeats’s An Irish Airman Foresees His Death envisage meeting his fate?</h3><ul><li>American Civil War </li><li>Franco-Prussian War</li><li>First World War </li><li> Irish Civil War </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The lyrics to the song On Raglan Road were written by Irish poet...?</h3><ul><li>Paul Durcan </li><li>Patrick Kavanagh</li><li>Eavan Boland</li><li>Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these is a real Ross O’Carroll-Kelly book by Paul Howard?</h3><ul><li>Malahide and Prejudice </li><li>Eat, Pray, Dropgoal </li><li>Of Mice and Men … and Jägerbombs</li><li>Once Upon a Time in … Donnybrook</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish soccer player was the first person to be sent off in an FA Cup final?</h3><ul><li>Roy Keane </li><li>Kevin Moran </li><li>Richard Dunne</li><li>Jon Walters</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which member of the Irish women’s 4x400m relay team that qualified through the heats at the Paris Olympics lost her place to Rhasidat Adeleke in the final?</h3><ul><li>Sophie Becker </li><li>Phil Healy </li><li>Kelly McGrory</li><li>Sharlene Mawdsley</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish sports star, best known for her achievements in another code, also won 11 caps for the Republic of Ireland women’s soccer team between 2006 and 2009?</h3><ul><li>Cora Staunton </li><li>Katie Taylor</li><li>Leona Maguire </li><li>Sonia O’Sullivan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>How did Irish long-jumper Peter O’Connor, who won gold and silver medals at the 1906 Olympics in Athens, protest being classified as a British athlete?</h3><ul><li>He chose to represent the United States </li><li>He wore a green sash over his British singlet </li><li>At the presentation ceremony he refused to stand for God Save the King</li><li>At the presentation ceremony he scaled the flagpole and hoisted an Irish flag in place of the Union Jack</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>When did the RTÉ commentator George Hamilton utter the famous words, “The nation holds its breath as...”?</h3><ul><li>Kellie Harrington awaited the result of her gold-medal bout at Tokyo 2020 </li><li>Johnny Sexton attempted a potentially Grand Slam-winning drop goal against France in 2018</li><li>David O’Leary stepped forward to take Ireland’s final penalty against Romania at Italia 90</li><li>Jimmy Magee paused to recall the names of the 1947 Cavan full-back line on an episode of Know Your Sport</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In Irish mythology, with whom did Oisín fall in love and travel on a magical white stallion to Tír nanÓg?</h3><ul><li>Niamh Cinn Óir </li><li>Sharon Ní Bheoláin </li><li>Medb of Connacht</li><li>Gráinne </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Only one of these public figures would be eligible to stand for the presidency of Ireland in 2025 if they so wished. Which one?</h3><ul><li>Michael D Higgins </li><li>Mary McAleese </li><li>Mary Robinson</li><li>Saoirse Ronan </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2024, American comedian Conan O’Brien made a cameo appearance in Ros na Rún, the TG4 soap opera, playing a person with the unlikely job of...?</h3><ul><li>Balloon deliverer </li><li>Waterslide tester</li><li>Dog-food taster</li><li>Professional sleeper</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these Irish cultural icons was actually born in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Bundee Aki </li><li>Liam MacCarthy </li><li>Sybil Connolly</li><li>Bono</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to Dr Liwei Zhu, a lecturer in Chinese language and culture at TU Dublin, the Chinese word for “Ireland” can translate into English as…?</h3><ul><li>Love you, orchid </li><li>See you around, buttercup</li><li>Later, alligator </li><li>Kind regards, losers</li></ul></section></iframe></div>","type":"raw_html"},{"_id":"JQBSKPE67FBOLF2GTOTXGUMQZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741968750949},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/2025/03/13/the-irish-times-st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-terms-conditions/\" target=\"_blank\">Full terms and conditions here</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Eoin Butler"}},"name":"Eoin Butler"}]},"description":{"basic":"If you think you’re an expert on all things Irish, you could be in with a chance to win a great prize"},"display_date":"2025-03-14T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"St Patrick’s Day Quiz 2025: 50 questions to test your Irishology","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"USV3S2VRGZGF3AVCNCA264VAG4","auth":{"1":"55006ddf4a3671b453a32061c1df4ddeefbb69f44b423cf6c2d403cdceba3638"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/USV3S2VRGZGF3AVCNCA264VAG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"opinion","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Life & Style"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/2025/03/13/st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-50-questions-to-test-your-knowledge-of-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Life & Style"}}}},{"_id":"DYLQCXWRCJAQDL3A7QQGPIU7PI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":303,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/959e4e63-941a-435c-83be-d42585b86b42/versions/1741794093/media/5365bda088c08af25b746b93a2327a34_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/13/an-irishman-abroad-ive-meditated-in-bosnian-mosques-thai-temples-and-ukrainian-orthodox-churches/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WGNERUH2CBDT7DP5FXUCYZPIGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909221},"content":"Buddhism was not a thing where I grew up. I barely knew any Protestants. There were three in my year at school. I didn’t dislike them, but I suppose I was keeping count.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EXMEJTFU2ZEXLOA25PQRLOF5EE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909222},"content":"Who knows why eastern mysticism never took off in Ireland?","type":"text"},{"_id":"N7VSK45QQVCAJGDRM3BXHGAGXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909223},"content":"Perhaps we’re too begrudging as a people. Not letting go of things is a cornerstone of our culture. If we believed in reincarnation, we’d probably look at newborn babies and think, “I know that b*****d. Oh, we’ve been waiting for you ... <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/oliver-cromwell/\" target=\"_blank\">Oliver Cromwell</a>.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GJVPF2AUIND7XDS5CCKWIW6DU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909224},"content":"I prayed well into my late teens, which is longer than is socially acceptable. My family weren’t devout Catholics. But I suffered from anxiety, so my mother suggested that prayer might help. It was the early 2000s in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kildare/\" target=\"_blank\">Kildare</a> and neither of us had any better ideas when it came to mental health.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2L6LJGROYZD6TGIIWSEY3FGDOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909225},"content":"By the time I started university I’d abandoned the practice entirely. Paranormal superstition had been replaced by delirious binge drinking. I was not a wine drinker, but if I could have turned water into a six pack of Bavaria lager then I would have.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNXTFQJWGVCMBCWFBUKUBIHM4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909226},"content":"I was 22 when I stumbled upon meditation. In my fourth year of college I was feeling pretty low again and the campus counselling service pointed me towards a mindfulness class. The ability to separate my body from the troubled thoughts that plagued me was a revelation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPZ2VGJBKVHYTCMZWUYJ2AMD7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909227},"content":"The effect was more soothing than I’d experienced with prayer. Meditation is about accepting things as they are without judgment, while prayer is the exact opposite. When we commune with God we usually have a laundry list of grievances we’d like him to sort out for us. A missing wedding ring, an exam result, a miracle cure. Praying to the Christian God is the spiritual equivalent of asking to speak to the manager. No wonder white people took to it so well.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOAY2Y63LJDZ5K3DN7IPFLOBTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909228},"content":"Through a simple mindfulness exercise it’s possible to bring awareness to the present moment and liberate ourselves from toxic relationships with the past and future. It’s less about trying to change your situation than it is about stepping outside of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQ3KY6L7QFEO7IAS2QIV5XYUJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909229},"content":"My enthusiasm has ebbed and flowed over the years, but I try to keep up a regular routine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXX7U3K4I5BWVERQCHALKOPOFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909230},"content":"Part of the fun is finding a quiet place to practice when I’m starting a new job or travelling abroad. I’ve meditated in Bosnian mosques, Thai temples and Ukrainian Orthodox churches. I’ve also had a go in my fair share of toilet cubicles. Overhearing the digestive movements of the bloke in the stall next to you makes enlightenment difficult, but not impossible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X3OWIIAAUZDIVKWAG67ZTOXQQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909231},"content":"Different religious sects, health departments or mindfulness apps might insist you sit a certain way, recite a mantra, or even visualise a landscape or person. I’d be wary of anyone who claims to have found the “right” way to meditate. All you need to do, really, is slow down a little and notice what’s going on inside yourself. I find counting my inhales and exhales really helpful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2DGJFYN4ORDTPEYXJZ3ABUUV24","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909232},"content":"Body scans are great when I have the time. You can mix and match techniques to suit yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C73F6CAUSNFXHAYFMYTNOJEORE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909233},"content":"While the explosion in popularity of these practices is a good thing, I could do without my human resources department getting in on the act.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWX4R6EUVBDMDNUP4L4DIZ5V6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909234},"content":"The movement has been co-opted and shoved down the throats of overworked employees in offices around the world. If corporations are genuinely interested in staff wellbeing, they should offer better pay, more holidays and meaningful work. Reminding us to breathe at our desks should not be a workplace perk.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOG6FFEXBVFTDHU6EL2OBNMHZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909235},"content":"I dated a Buddhist for a few months. We met online, but happened to attend the same temple in East London. It was a curious experience to have a spiritual component to a romantic relationship.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGIVZL7EWZHFZKUAVFUK2A7UTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909236},"content":"This was the norm in Ireland and Britain until fairly recently with many couples meeting at church or attending services together every week. Today, if someone you met on the internet suggested Mass as a first date, most people would run a mile (unless you were using dating app Christian Mingle).","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOZI4K3QQJBIZC4PRFPPO26Q2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909237},"content":"Our relationship didn’t work out; it ended quite badly, actually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOKOAM3F3ZAUBC5C5RLP3WFPSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909238},"content":"Here’s the thing about mindfulness: it won’t solve all your problems – it’s not supposed to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TY3AHOZTWRDJTPTOZYBBGSRD7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909239},"content":"If your practice is consistent, you’ll hopefully enjoy some respite from the unnecessary suffering created by our overthinking minds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3T2VX5ZOVNFK5JESSVPQ3IIJSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909240},"content":"I can’t promise it will make your love life any easier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C237SQTVIVGAFJIXUKUMJLA3KA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909241},"content":"I guess we’re all on our own there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRICGXEMTZGQHOAFXHDMYE2CQ4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Peter Flanagan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Peter Flanagan: 'Reminding us to breathe at our desks should not be a workplace perk'"},"display_date":"2025-03-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman abroad: ‘I’ve meditated in Bosnian mosques, Thai temples and Ukrainian Orthodox churches’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7XJLGQTHS5CKDPHGA2SXKQN75Y","auth":{"1":"b7f6cd1893599e0cf6d4309eb714d7ac5695e1134c0ca1c5c8694a4e727e3c43"},"focal_point":{"x":1354,"y":914},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7XJLGQTHS5CKDPHGA2SXKQN75Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/13/an-irishman-abroad-ive-meditated-in-bosnian-mosques-thai-temples-and-ukrainian-orthodox-churches/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"5G7IS32PYVDX5GUPBG6OGDI6YA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":358,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/721776ff-2b69-47ca-8685-53bcce718811/versions/1741191906/media/2f5ed7899618570a1e6472fccc3d1ace_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/12/laura-kennedy-autumn-in-canberra-serves-as-a-useful-reminder-of-how-we-take-our-natural-beauty-for-granted-in-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"DX5MCIILKBHRTHXUFZPQYFMWUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390258},"content":"From the home office in my apartment here in Canberra, it’s clear that the trees are turning. Their burnished and russet tips jostle in the warm breeze, though the branches remain thickly furred with leaves. The landscape – famous for a verdancy that somehow feels so dissimilar to the crisper, sappier jewel greens of Irish trees, still looks fulsome, but the warning is there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GUVOW3JCDBDR5JCNVE3DSU4B3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390259},"content":"Autumn is coming, the mornings will soon feel unreasonably cold, and everyone (myself included) will be dressed in impossibly unflattering thermal gilets they bought from Uniqlo or Patagonia. The type that break a biting wind and turn you into the sort of exhausting drip who unironically says tedious things like: ‘Do you know where I left my zhee-lay?’","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZYZBBBPSZBBTGV5IUQPGNETS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390260},"content":"Meanwhile, my brother sends me photos from his garden in Limerick, where his daffodils have been resurrected against the rumour of an impending spring. They drag themselves from the grave by their elbows like zombies in truncated hats, trumpeting forth a season of optimism. Grand stretch, and so on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHWDRXGSMVDEBN5LIEBDRBN7VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390261},"content":"While we were laid out in the heat of a blistering Canberran summer here in the Australian capital, spreading at the borders like a Mr Freeze melting on a scalding pavement, my family at home was plunged into the perpetual liquid semi-dark of a Limerick winter. I like to look at the weather app just to get a sense of things at home. “Two degrees,” it would report back, “but it feels like zero.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6CXR7ZZ6ABHXRJFVYBG4RFDTJE","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"AVFKK3GMT5E4RNHLST4OWZJ6QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390263},"content":"I would think of every Limerick winter then, walking through air that is somehow also water, so that the shorter bits of hair around your face curl and thrash like you’ve set an open flame on them. The memory of walking to school in the semi-dark mornings with cold shins and cold ears and a resentful expression as the damp breeze buffets and slaps you about like you’re being unscrupulously interrogated. That, I think, is the climate my body was built for. Irish people have a sort of terrestrial aquatic resilience. Water runs off us like we’re waxed. It’s just what we’re used to. Dryness is a luxury. It makes us soft. The dry, radical alienness of Canberra somehow remains a shock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3EAPOWVGLRGPRIJOUIK3WEKC5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390264},"content":"This will be my second time seeing in an Australian autumn at what still feels like precisely the wrong time of year. I’m forever disappointing people at home with the news that Australia’s capital does have seasons. It’s known for a comparatively spectacular autumn in an Australian context (though it’s also known for its almost terminal year-round hay fever, so everywhere has its challenges). If you drive a couple of hours from here to Sydney, you won’t see much evidence of leaves changing colour unless you visit the botanical gardens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3NWAZ4BBNFLXBZ4QI6L2QMR6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390265},"content":"There are regions of this vast land mass with arid and tropical climates, where trees don’t do anything so dainty as dropping their leaves like a Victorian lady wilting on to a chaise longue. There are weird lizards that look like grinning Tudor courtiers wearing a ruff in those parts of Australia and monsoon rains. There are insects that tick and snicker and whose ghastly little feet you can hear tippy tapping when they scuttle. I’ve never lived in a country that can domestically grow bananas before. Imagine not having to import bananas – it is unfathomable. Even in a much milder Canberran climate, within the familiarity of a red-gold autumn palette as cat-sized cockatoos conduct verbal disputes in the branches above your head, you can feel far from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRRW3BPIGNFEDBCYDEQQOUH3WU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390266},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australians respond differently to nature compared to Irish people","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GVBP57MZHBETZCLP7FLF6ERDKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390267},"content":"Canberra’s autumn is very pretty, and it serves as a lovely consolation when the weather begins to cool down. Most Irish people don’t think of chilly walks and hot chocolate and dumb gilets when they consider the Australian alternative life we all seem to nurture some dream of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"47IKOLFWYNDTBEL4DQDGF4KASY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390268},"content":"It serves as a useful reminder, though, of how generally we take our natural beauty for granted in Ireland. The seasonality of it. The rich almost blue-green and slate-grey and navy-black the landscape takes on when, about 200 days a year, everything has just been generously and infuriatingly rained on. Autumn at home for me was always signalled by the Virginia Creeper on my mother’s shed turning a lavish red. Spectacularly beautiful, it nevertheless filled me with dread, symbolising as it did the end of summer and freedom and shoes being optional in the garden. The return to school and the cold, wet walks to sit on a hard chair in cold, wet socks while a nun taught you long division you won’t remember how to do when you’re 30. Slowly, the shed would transform each year from a fluffy green mass until it looked as though some sybarite had draped it languidly in heavy crimson velvet. The sort that crunches when you touch it, and in which your fingertips leave a dent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYGYJ2GVYZGSHECLBCE3QSNKNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390269},"content":"An unnecessary extravagance of nature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EZ72QJOC6FFMTLUBMYXMYMGG3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390270},"content":"The shed is gone now, and so is my mother, but the creeper remains the ultimate symbol of an Irish autumn for me. In the uncanny familiarity of an autumn thousands of kilometres from home – one that, taking place in March, feels as mistimed as someone standing up to object to a wedding only to realise they’ve barged in on a funeral service – things feel very different. We are coming out of summer, but my Limerick clock is still timed to spring.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWQP4AJTFRADHMYWVHUU5ROQFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390271},"content":"I wait, like the daffodils, to be resurrected by lengthening days and gentler breezes, only to remember that I’ve moved to a place where that will happen next September. In September, as leaves begin to wilt and drop at home, buds will be screeching into life down here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7GMX4RTUBHZHJRLSI7D3BAKYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390272},"content":"It’s all backwards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANQNY2SG7RBSVPFKH3WPDAZBBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390273},"content":"I wonder if you ever get used to it.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I’m forever disappointing people at home with the news that Australia’s capital does have seasons"},"display_date":"2025-03-12T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Autumn in Australia: I wonder if you ever get used to it?","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DQ3F6SBR6ZBRRFTY7MAXIINNHQ","auth":{"1":"ae371ae1aa9e9bcc4bfe463f5e28f066ec2933a3036d75255d65905837223165"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DQ3F6SBR6ZBRRFTY7MAXIINNHQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/12/laura-kennedy-autumn-in-canberra-serves-as-a-useful-reminder-of-how-we-take-our-natural-beauty-for-granted-in-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"K73GUS3Y3VCF3GFY753MFZ7LIM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":231,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c40ed31d-fab8-4aca-9807-ffea7d64e036/versions/1741795318/media/398f93f585894d53f3a558040750f2f0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/world/australia/2025/03/09/storm-alfred-australia-experiences/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CXFDNPCQBNHJRAL3YY4YH6APCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"As darkness fell over <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\">Brisbane</a> on Sunday night rain continued to batter the city, hampering efforts to remove trees felled by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/weather-events/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/weather-events/\">Storm Alfred</a>, with flash floods and ongoing power outages reported across the region.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX5FMKCZ5ZAZ3CABWWTN4FDUWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Doireann O Bradaigh from Byron Shire Council in New South Wales (NSW) was one of those without power, having seen the lights first go out on Friday night.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADHWPGFA4BGTNOV6S3SPHS5IAQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It had been a tense few days before that, with her community watching the cyclone swell come in since.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HA5HG6Z6K5GXDKS2QMMPVVMTUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said the eye of the storm had been predicted to make landfall near Brisbane but the real impact was felt further south across the border in northern NSW, with severe flooding reported. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJAPN5U34BE4HIN5SXFMOIPBTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"She expressed concern that the continuing rain would bring more flooding and more evacuations in the area. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GPMKOBFF6JC5BJXIGTVZFF76PY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Stephen Hanley moved to Brisbane as the curtain came down on 2020 and he told The Irish Times that the level of disruption in Queensland this week reminded him of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/covid-19/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/covid-19/\">Covid</a> lockdowns in Dublin before he left. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7SDHITGBNG2ZBV5VJ56BUTWV4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"2KO2QXY2ZNCKXNGRG5C3FTWELQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He, his wife and three children live on the crest of a hill at the edge of an extensive bushland reserve that had borne the brunt of a cyclone in 1974 when three nearby houses were destroyed. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RH4NWYHLNFA2DHDISEAVEA3V4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Their vacant blocks sit as an evergreen reminder,” he said. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASMRL7YR3NAMVAMZFNFQMGOIRY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A “rain bomb” in 2022 damaged many of his neighbours’ homes, with some only just finishing the repairs now. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YIKPAUXXVZGHNGMVSMQXSL64QA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ex-Cyclone Alfred: One dead and mass blackouts after tropical low hits Australia","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F5EPSLKXIZBEHGVKT6YQQKPLBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“At least this time round we got warning, and earlier this week we were told to prepare our properties – in particular clearing anything that might become a missile,” he said. “The din of hammers and drills filled the air for much of the week [and] cars queued at the local State Emergency Service depot for sandbags.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4YSOSMETVGJ5D47QBSF6ERPYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He said Cyclone Alfred’s arrival was “delayed several times as he danced around the coral sea, and by Friday evening videos were emerging of bored surfers on the swells of the Gold Coast, much to the annoyance of authorities”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQM7KNUOBJEBJKRQJ6LEH3KHYU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He recalled how high winds rattled his windows on Friday night, and expressed relief that his family escaped the worst of the storm – with flooding the primary concern now. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSP523D2KFFHBHQ5FPEBNU5HRM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Baz McAlister has been living in Brisbane for 20 years and expected chaos, based on all the early warnings. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FWF5XETAFGC7C4GGWR47TRQFY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“What we got was a very strange weather system that was nowhere near as bad as I was envisioning. We were well prepared for it, and our leaders, weather agencies and emergency services approached the situation with an overabundance of caution. In the end, though, it seemed a lot of fuss over a bit of wind and rain that would be considered fairly unremarkable for the Causeway Coast on any given dirty winter night! A lucky escape for most.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHMJJEIOMSY4NVCRXM2MRLMRDM","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"OER3KR2TDZEVZOVXCOUYBMLSPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He said flooding in the region was “getting pretty bad even where I am and the system is sitting over us and will be for the rest of the night, but in terms of the wind, I think we have been spared the worst of it”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJYS4YQFP5H7XIZIN2OT6RI63M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nicola Holly of the Irish Australian Support Association of Queensland said the cyclone has had “a significant impact on many communities”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4HHKHB5L25EWJMQWEMEMOYEDIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said things have been “a bit manic” since late last week, with “a lot of flooding around the place. The rain has been non-stop and there are a lot of trees down. And half the city is without power”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EWAU5Y2RRBI7B5VPCAKCGYZF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her association has been forced to close its offices, with staff working remotely, and they “had to make the difficult decision to cancel our annual charity ball which was scheduled for March 8th. Everyone was worried about the impending weather event”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOBQSX5725FBVEJQ7TIZQZWV7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said it had been an “eerie few days, with the anticipation of the cyclone affecting basically every facet of people’s lives, but we are grateful that it taught us how to be more prepared”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Conor Pope"}},"name":"Conor Pope"}]},"description":{"basic":"It was an ‘eerie few days’ in Brisbane as a strange weather system named Alfred came calling"},"display_date":"2025-03-09T14:29:12.406Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Half the city is without power’: Readers in Australia share their storm experiences","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WXV5STKNPZON6YEHPMOHNNKQLY","auth":{"1":"d0355721eaa762b5c73fe5549f458b4493275c6605d0e7f67edbcf3b11e783f1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WXV5STKNPZON6YEHPMOHNNKQLY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Australia"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/australia/2025/03/09/storm-alfred-australia-experiences/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/australia","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Australia"}}}},{"_id":"AE4EHLUEB5GTRI2JBWBBGQ6W3A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":327,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/cb21d111-55e1-48d4-a2cc-015d8d0518ed/versions/1740661490/media/2b05508578a374b5048784d036cbe6df_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/03/09/the-portuguese-are-very-like-the-irish-in-many-ways-the-tipperary-man-in-charge-of-denis-obriens-luxury-algarve-resort/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2DMOE6P3PJG35A76QG7VEMI3DA","additional_properties":{},"content":"As the youngest of nine children growing up in Two-Mile-Borris, Co Tipperary, Sean Moriarty learned self-reliance early. As a 13-year-old, he didn’t want to ask his parents for money so he got on his bike and cycled to a nearby farm and cheese factory and secured a part-time job, working weekends and summer holidays.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VCWHTIHQ5GNHK2ILW6OAQNZW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"That strong work ethic has been a feature of his career, which has seen him working in management roles in Tesco, Dairygold, 4HomeSuperstore and forecourt operator Topaz, before moving to his latest challenge in Portugal. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CGADP4GEBBEPNDR3NIJOP73BE","additional_properties":{},"content":"His time at Topaz saw him rise to retail director. After the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denis-o-brien/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denis-o-brien/\">Denis O’Brien</a>-owned firm was sold to a Canadian retailer Couche Tard in late 2015 and rebranded as Circle K, Moriarty considered various options within the multinational group that would have seen him move abroad, but hankered for a more entrepreneurial role. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKCXKFC3DVGRLBVEF53BNCOX64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’m very much driven on the operational side of things,” he says. “I like to see how things work from A-Z, how you start projects, how you see them through and how you market them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQT3DKE4JZGQNPAHX2RPF522TY","additional_properties":{},"content":"When an opportunity to move to Portugal to run and expand Denis O’Brien’s Quinta do Lago resort arose the following year, he jumped at the chance. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTUBWPQFGFD2HEJ6R2YRIRFJG4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The resort, which was established in the early 1970s, has long been popular with golfers and had hosted the Portuguese Open several times over the years, but its owner had a vision to expand its appeal as a wider luxury lifestyle resort, with a wide range of new facilities, catering for everyone from elite sports stars to families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMAA5STQWJEV3FJHHDJC2N3XVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FG6KOJBCERHKBK6EEFCIN4YKXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quinta do Lago is about 15 minutes from Faro airport. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAGNK6QH6NECVDS5RFON44I3CM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We are located beside one of one of Europe’s largest nature reserves, part of an area that has been referred to as the golden triangle. It’s a beautiful place to be. Once you sit on your flight in Dublin and everything goes on time, you can be in our resort in about three hours.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVW4CRLSFVC67IW7HZIS3RNT5Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the standout features of the resort is called The Campus. This features start-of-the-art sports training facilities with close attention paid to the fine details. Top professional clubs that want to use the facility can replicate the condition of a playing pitch down to grass height, pitch grip and bounce level, with three days’ notice, for example, while chefs can customise meals for team members who need to build muscle or gain or lose weight. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NM2NQ6OQHZEMHPLNINA6VT53IA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Campus is a fly-to destination in itself. We built it to be good enough for elite athletes to train in but it is open to everyone. Our tagline is ‘Be elite, whatever your level’.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWQZ5O26XJAH7EHFH6LI5MSLZ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It also opens the gates to other people living in the area as somewhere great to go and socialise in a sporting environment to have coffee or a meal and drinks. It has created a great community.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQX6K5QKTNBHHP7HBCRYEZGW4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"While golf remains a big draw for the resort, those who want a relaxing break can also take advantage of 14 distinct restaurants, bars and a beautiful beach in an area known for its pleasant-all-year-round climate. The resort recently completed the acquisition of the adjoining Conrad Hotel to expand its accommodation options. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKTNKAEY4NGSVKXXN2ATN5Q3S4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quinta do Lago is also increasingly focusing on a residential building programme, for those who wish to own their own properties at the resort.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOP2HHTK7ZAJPKEQDJUHALKQKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Moriarty moved to Portugal with a young family. Any concerns he and his wife may have had about how their family would acclimatise have long been allayed, with excellent schools and an emphasis on sport and the outdoor lifestyle. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHBNQV4AVNA4LN6TQGQGUNFBV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"An initial plan to stay for just two years has turned into an eight-year experience and the family have no plans to leave now. The climate is among the attractions. “We don’t have to wake up in the morning and open the curtains to know if the weather will be nice.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYVDI4AYQFD57OJHOI2SHRZB5Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"GFIR2YXXBZE7DIEYA7C2NJCBFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"As chief executive of Quinta do Lago, Moriarty works long hours. “People sometimes like to just say that, but I bring it upon myself as I enjoy it. I like going out in the evening and talking about the resort, be it with residents or others. The challenge we have here is continuous improvement and bringing people on that journey with you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UE5WZHOUL5A3HFFP5G4M22KDBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When he is not working, Moriarty takes advantage of the opportunity to play golf and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/01/29/roisin-ingle-ive-discovered-padel-and-it-has-been-a-revelation/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/01/29/roisin-ingle-ive-discovered-padel-and-it-has-been-a-revelation/\">padel</a>, the fast-growing and popular sport racket at the resort.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSO2DX4CMVEVLIQDPKPMPELFCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He finds the Portuguese culture and temperament easy to relate to. “The Portuguese are very nice people to be around, to work with and to socialise with. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"A2AY6FHE6NBQ5ADHX4WUGX7V4E","additional_properties":{},"content":"“They are very like the Irish in many ways. Family is very important. They like to gather for big meals. They might not sit at the bar drinking their pints like we would, but they do enjoy socialising in groups.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANQ2S5YXHZCKFAJ7CEDQOJW46M","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is a strong expat community in the area. “The beauty is that you can be as involved in the community – or as uninvolved in the community – as you wish, and nobody will bother you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6JTSSPVZMRASPEIANPMBHOKF7E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Regular trips home to Ireland allow him to catch up with family and friends and to take in an occasional hurling match but while he does miss some aspects of Ireland, for the foreseeable future the Algarve is very much home. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Frank Dillon"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Sean Moriarty runs Quinta do Lago resort"},"display_date":"2025-03-09T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘The Portuguese are very like the Irish in many ways’: the Tipperary man in charge of Denis O’Brien’s luxury Algarve resort","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SJVQNNRY5NE7NK35EIFGST3MAQ","auth":{"1":"9a845ef083b8936f41cebca401acf095b992e7e8f307a7337894f7b999a95477"},"focal_point":{"x":1340,"y":749},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJVQNNRY5NE7NK35EIFGST3MAQ.jpeg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/03/09/the-portuguese-are-very-like-the-irish-in-many-ways-the-tipperary-man-in-charge-of-denis-obriens-luxury-algarve-resort/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"F2ZVQTWOVFHTZF6AAPEKDZRNJA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/08/cyclone-alfred-share-your-story/","content_elements":[{"_id":"MQ6IJIXNE5AVNOJWRYCPBANUAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred has battered the eastern regions of Australia, bringing heavy rain, huge waves and strong winds that cut power and shut airports.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CV5RD74PLFHJJEGOZUF7HJCGNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although it has been downgraded to a ‘tropical low’, reports are rolling in detailing the extent of the destruction and The Irish Times would like to hear from Irish expats living in or near Brisbane, or any Australian region impacted by the cyclone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CRCJD5P5BNDCZNNYGIGDCY3YIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Were you directly impacted by the weather conditions? Did you have to flee an area for your own safety, or cancel travel plans? Has Cyclone Alfred left property damaged, or negatively affected you in some other way? We would like to hear your story. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IMJHZ25ABJDATKB7OAJNIPPC6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"You can let us know what you think using the form below, and share any photographs or video clips you think might help tell your story. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VAEM623XK5C7BBUT6DXEZFNVSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Please limit your submissions to 400 words or less. Please include a phone number for verification purposes only. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, please indicate this in your submission – we will keep your name and contact details confidential. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"R4KL3SYQI5DJPBFRZTLAYX4EPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"We will curate a selection of submissions for an article but please note we may not publish every submission we receive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6XYNWCRMNHORKA4QPNI5JJVIE","content":"<span class=\"contribly-contribute-v2\" data-client=\"9fc0f2a4-9bf9-4464-8b77-ec351ad0db03\" data-assignment=\"862886db-94a6-4b04-ac68-e272c1dedd4d\" data-display=\"inline\"></span><script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/contribly-widgets/contribute/contribute-v2.js\"><\/script>","type":"raw_html"},{"_id":"5BGWNWVUIZA75DASD363ZKIDNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"free"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Were you negatively impacted by weather conditions that struck Australia’s eastern regions this weekend?"},"display_date":"2025-03-08T09:22:12.361Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ex-Cyclone Alfred: Are you Irish and living near Brisbane? Tell us your story ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UT2Z74DNMRDKXC5AMXEFMOQE3Q","auth":{"1":"f58aeee86758b5b62919876bfa87775cf0de115883ab5c0bbb204b5c19da41f5"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UT2Z74DNMRDKXC5AMXEFMOQE3Q.png"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Environment"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"Australia"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/08/cyclone-alfred-share-your-story/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"VBWFRRVVANHENLYMZ2TSOAO2BA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":102,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/bb962f5f-ba91-4ed8-a80c-0639fe90017f/versions/1741374011/media/11634823e18fa94b219adac9988b8864_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/07/irish-tourist-escapes-with-minor-injuries-after-paragliding-crash-in-peru/","content_elements":[{"_id":"MTXYGB7IV5AMRNTY5Q7POLRSRA","additional_properties":{},"content":"An Irish tourist escaped with minor injuries after the paraglider she was travelling in was forced to make an emergency landing on a busy road in the Peruvian capital of Lima. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTH46GUSNFAANLRFP2UAHORWEY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the incident, which was captured on video, the woman and her instructor got into difficulty in crosswinds and crash-landed on a Costa Verde highway roundabout.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNRVIOLTJBBEHPZBJZOWE4Y2AM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Video footage shows the tourist lying on the road for some time while being examined by paramedics who arrived on the scene shortly afterwards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TACISZFRA5GWFOPSRUUHDEYP7Q","subtype":"instagram","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"ZGEAIK7FBVEOTLRHG4O3EUEWTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The instructor and tourist were treated for injuries at a local clinic where their condition was described as “stable” with “minor injuries” and in “good general physical condition” by the local association for aero sports tourism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PX7QOGWMK5HT5E4L74QYEW2LDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said it was ready to provide consular assistance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIHAVVD77VFALBEEIM35SDWX7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The incident occurred in the Miraflores area of the city, where paragliding and hang-gliding tours of the coastline are popular with tourists.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K23MB6HYABFL7MQDY77EPFWYAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Peruvian association of aero sports tourism said the incident occurred at about 5pm on Thursday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XE4N5DQ2KZCPTJIXREKFM6KXQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"It said wind conditions prevented a planned landing in the Miraflores area and the crash occurred while attempting to find an alternative location to land.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVXPXFPSDBDRHLPHUV5QAHUUF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The association said the pilot had more than 10 years of experience and attempted to manoeuvre the paraglider to safety. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y55NXFYHOVD47FMGOJLLJ42ZPY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The association announced the suspension of paragliding at the Miraflores area for three days to review safety procedures and evaluate risks. It said authorities were evaluating safety protocols for paragliding in the area and an investigation was continuing.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Video footage shows glider falling to earth on busy Lima road"},"display_date":"2025-03-07T18:54:48.044Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish tourist escapes with minor injuries after paragliding crash in Peru","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XAOCQ6FFVZFSTEAUQEJQVUE2YY","auth":{"1":"d4fafed9fa795332ebff8680d3681d85d43d8d84a0297921ddfddcf0e91f0ce9"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XAOCQ6FFVZFSTEAUQEJQVUE2YY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"Ireland"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/07/irish-tourist-escapes-with-minor-injuries-after-paragliding-crash-in-peru/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"Y7VXJQR6UNFF7CEK6TFCUGXNHQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":245,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/437d2eb4-1da2-4dfb-980d-98ed09292000/versions/1740668829/media/fed67a061372cf8fa599b2548cc4b85e_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/05/an-irishman-in-spain-salaries-are-much-lower-here-but-my-mental-health-is-far-better/","content_elements":[{"_id":"W54XZQVZBZAU3OTSRRXLI7KNIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308602},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland will always be home</a>, but I wake up here to clear blue skies. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/09/02/weekly-earnings-rise-42-but-men-still-earn-more/\" target=\"_blank\">Salaries </a>are much lower in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/09/02/weekly-earnings-rise-42-but-men-still-earn-more/\" target=\"_blank\">Spain</a>, but the cost of living is so much cheaper. I can’t see myself <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">going home</a> anytime soon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZV4JO33XFBLFI6XZ7TPVRHHME","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308603},"content":"I am from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/naas/\" target=\"_blank\">Naas in Co Kildare </a>and, growing up, I never really saw myself leaving Ireland, until my parents left and I began to realise that there could be something better out there for me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6NOFLPWXJFHDA4G6FJL3BDECU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308604},"content":"The high cost of living and the lack of proper healthcare made them follow their dreams and they now live in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/property/residential/2024/10/11/what-will-260000-buy-in-spain-france-sweden-mexico-and-kilkenny/\" target=\"_blank\">Torrevieja</a> on the Costa Blanca.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLCYK7ZSIZD2LDFXY5ZRQUZS7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308605},"content":"I had been working for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/intel/\" target=\"_blank\">Intel</a> on the laboratory construction site. I loved it most of the time, as it was an amazing position to have for team-work development and I got paid very well indeed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5DVZUAZBZFABPVE6GOU5VSNDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308606},"content":"But, as time wore on, I began to question my commitment to leaving home at 5.30am and getting back home again after 7pm most days. I was working, but I wasn’t living. I couldn’t even enjoy weekends or the odd day off because I would always be trying to catch up on myself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HIH62Y345D5DAT2WJCI4JCJYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308607},"content":"Mum and dad had moved to Spain and I had started popping out to see them. I loved it there, particularly the weather and the people and I realised I wanted more of that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UAILO6GQDVBW5CTYQXQKU2PPJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308608},"content":"So I took the plunge and picked up work here and there before working for a healthcare company in the Costa Blanca area.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VYLTW47ECFBPRDGU353ZCFIGZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308609},"content":"I realised I loved the job of looking after patients who had travelled there for operations from Ireland using the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2023/06/26/number-of-irish-patients-travelling-for-cross-border-healthcare-collapses-due-to-brexit/\" target=\"_blank\">European Union’s Cross Border Directive</a>. While I loved the work, I didn’t particularly like how some things were run so I left with no particular plan in mind other than looking for another job in Spain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XWPE2NKECZD3PLZM2ATRI3HGNE","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6R4R56CSZFQXHLU2CJAVN6ZJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308610},"content":"By chance, a friend mentioned that Surgery Now, an Irish company which also brought Irish patients to Spain for surgeries, were looking for a carer/driver. I sent in my CV, did the interview, and was offered the position. I felt welcomed straight away, there were proper management meetings and structure and I loved all of that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7FHCHPNQOBEFLMT54T5IFOJE34","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308611},"content":"So I’m the person who meets patients when they land at Alicante airport and I take them to their appointments, or physio sessions – and, when there’s time, I will take patients and family members into Alicante to go shopping. And I ensure all the paperwork needed for patients using the EU directive (so they get health costs reimbursed by the Health Service Executive) is supplied.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXMZVUGMZBGIJHRSTJRLLFLIDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308612},"content":"As the lead driver and patient/family liaison, I see up close how an illness has left someone in excruciating pain, but I also see them go home post-op.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDAIHSHRE5GB5GHSCPLA44SOIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308613},"content":"There is enormous job satisfaction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UDQMHT2ZRFGQRHQ34FUEPKP2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308614},"content":"Here in Spain, I find the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living </a>is so much cheaper than at home. Things like car insurance and tax are so much cheaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUNFGBH2PFHRLBEQQWETDN2OAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308615},"content":"There isn’t too much hassle getting somewhere to rent for a quarter of what you’d pay at home. I don’t drink that often, but, when I do, I can still get a pint here for €2. I don’t need €100 for a meal and a night out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLE2ESJOINCQFJEHE5RS7YXI7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"IKIJGFSXUNFJHAYDCHSWVBNYN4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"DPHZGRGGJJH5JLUK2P6VH4LCPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308616},"content":"With housing costs and cost-of-living issues in Ireland, I just can’t see myself going home any time soon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VHKZR4QVFAXTF7CZF7HCBZ5AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308617},"content":"When I get up in the morning here and feel the sun on my face, I feel alive. My mental health is so much better here – doing my job with huge satisfaction every day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KOGRVZ2MSVFBRD24OHO3S3KLDA","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Scott McCormack"}]},"description":{"basic":"Co Kildare man is enjoying life in Torrevieja, where feeling the sun on his face every morning makes him feel alive"},"display_date":"2025-03-05T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman in Spain: ‘Salaries are much lower here, but my mental health is far better’ ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5M6DNKSD3ZHNHHRN4YXX45KN64","auth":{"1":"1781f0a72aef8ec9b83faab7b6fc766df956759ff354eb95090e89843665ba0f"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5M6DNKSD3ZHNHHRN4YXX45KN64.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/05/an-irishman-in-spain-salaries-are-much-lower-here-but-my-mental-health-is-far-better/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"ISAR6P5L4RA5RHGARHU4GDOAEA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/28/irish-in-el-salvador-a-jaw-dropping-adjustment/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2KHOCLZHBJGQ3DKM2Y3O2YEOFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1649694895589},"content":"Maureen Stevens left Ireland a long time ago and has lived abroad for two decades. But her recent move to the “world’s first bitcoin city” in El Salvador <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/\">has still been a culture shock</a>. She left Spain where she lived for years and made another move aged 60. “The contrast between where I had been and where I now found myself was jaw-dropping,” she writes. “I live on a dirt road with clucking chickens and skulking street dogs. My senses have taken a while to adapt, but adapting they are. Everything is different from what I’m used to. It’s a sensorial readjustment.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3UEPCSRA4JEDHIHEUREPN75KCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Peter Flanagan lives in England and writes that he finds “the Irish attitude towards Britain <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/\">isn’t one of static resentment</a>. It hardens and softens again over time according to the developments of the day,” be it Brexit or the recent bellyaching about Kneecap.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZBCNS3TEJNA3DCS4NZ2U2NOAIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the colonial links between Britain and Ireland is being broken in by a shake-up in the House of Lords. A total of 92 hereditary peers will have their seats abolished under incoming legislation, among them <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/02/23/last-of-the-irish-lords-theres-a-love-hate-relationship-between-irish-people-and-anglo-titles/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/02/23/last-of-the-irish-lords-theres-a-love-hate-relationship-between-irish-people-and-anglo-titles/\">the handful with titles from the Republic</a>. London Correspondent Mark Paul spoke to a number of them, including Patrick Stopford, 9th Earl of Courtown. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBDI2CM6TBHZVFXSU4Z2ODVXCU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He became the 9th Earl at 21 when his father died. He recalls drinking in a pub in Inch, Co Wexford, soon afterwards. A local man asked him: “Are you the new lord now?” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GU2DJT2B5VC27O6JSVJP2HVMK4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I told him: ‘Yes, but I think those days are long gone, aren’t they?’ He laughed and said he wasn’t so sure.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDINFPXUEBFPNB2P4MIXZ4NSAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paul also spoke to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/\">a Carlow-born baronet</a> to help guide him through the Byzantine notions of Britain’s nobility and class structures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBAFRT4NIFHUVOPA4V7UZIUABQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/\">Jockey Johnny Allen</a> lives in Australia. He moved there in 2012, having grown up in Araglin in north Cork. He has amassed more than 1,000 victories during his career, including 19 group one winners, and he says racing is a much bigger industry in Australia. He says: “I suppose when I came out here first, I assumed I’d go home at some point. However, the longer you stay, the harder it becomes.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5OMHXBICVBP7LU3M47CCZANQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, columnist Laura Kennedy <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/\">lives in Canberra</a>. Some Australian friends look “as though I’ve told them that my dog just died” when she tells them where she lives as it’s a more clinical and less cool place than Syndey or Australia. But Kennedy’s grateful, as while things aren’t necessarily better in Australia than in Ireland, “they are easier”. Meanwhile, Orlaith Delargy has found things a bit harder in Spain where the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/\">bureaucracy involved in getting an EU citizen card</a> has her reflecting on studying Kafka in college. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LBPLO76GPVHAXGP6TTH4LOMDFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael O’Dwyer from Dún Laoghaire works <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/\">as a jewellery designer in Stockholm</a>. He commutes from Sörmland, about an hour’s drive away, “the equivalent of driving from Aughrim to Dublin”, he tells Deirdre McQuillan. He says it “can be difficult to persuade [Swedes] to see the value of expensive high-end jewellery. They will drive a nice car and have a nice house and go on fantastic holidays, but there is an old philosophy called Jante’s Law, unwritten but powerful, that holds that it is rude to show your wealth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZHU3RS7WVD53GFLB6V6NZK5LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221846},"content":"“You could be on a train and sitting beside a multimillionaire and you would never know,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW2AR4FUVJARDFA24DSWLZBKSY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thanks for reading.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"We hear from some of the last Irish lords and a jockey making waves in Australia"},"display_date":"2025-02-28T14:24:16.226Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish in El Salvador: A ‘jaw-dropping’ adjustment","native":"Abroad newsletter: Irish in El Salvador - A ‘jaw-dropping’ adjustment"},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4","auth":{"1":"516a482d65591273058932bc55f07a8b4890cdbc0d1709f9b5b06cb773810c0c"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/28/irish-in-el-salvador-a-jaw-dropping-adjustment/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"J7JDB4HSNFCPLNELYND2BDT2RU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":283,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/65c2c50e-a79b-4d52-b311-b2cada21a6b9/versions/1740606352/media/6287225955eeca9f67eeb9f48651cece_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/27/my-mum-dangles-the-question-like-a-golden-carrot-youll-never-guess-whos-died/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6A7JCHZKRZBS3MIFXYQ5HHFS6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092700},"content":"“You’ll never guess who’s died.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4IIMF4AXONGTZPP77LMZZM5TDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092701},"content":"This is the teaser that fills every lull in my calls home to my Irish mother.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3JLI5HEMTJD5ZJV6LVWBLME3LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092702},"content":"Since moving to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a>, I’ve phoned her at least once a week, sometimes more. It’s important for me to hear what’s happening on my island from a local, and to protect my <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/dublin-4/\" target=\"_blank\">D4</a> accent from becoming full-blown Anglican. It’s a ritual I cherish and, even if there’s no “news” to report, I know I’ll hang up feeling better.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WJFCNOWAZHUXGQZQLJWLM7HFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092703},"content":"But, recently, I’ve noticed a recurring theme in our calls: death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHKXKW2GQFHFBA5U7ESK465ZJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092704},"content":"We could be discussing anything – the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/us-election/\" target=\"_blank\">US election</a>, black ice, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/patrick-kielty/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Kielty</a> – and somehow, we always end up playing a morbid round of Guess Who.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35Y4XC56GBEGTASMRKRZ7QAMAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092705},"content":"My mum dangles the question like a golden carrot, and I almost always answer incorrectly. When she finally tells me, I often don’t even know the person. Sometimes, it transpires that my mother doesn’t either. But she knows <i>of</i> them, and in Ireland, where everyone is distantly related anyway, that’s more than enough.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIUUUWHFC5DV7AOFBZSUQSMFPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092706},"content":"If the person hasn’t died yet, but is terminally unwell, the verb still takes centre stage: “Seán<i> </i>is<i> </i>dying<i>. </i>Mary<i> </i>could die<i>. </i>Breda<i> </i>will<i> </i>die<i>.</i>”<i> </i>What follows is a detailed obituary (a drafted one if they’re still alive), highlighting everything from their birthplace to their last public sighting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLAU7IGDA5F5HOS7S5JWJCLKDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092707},"content":"After a few months of this pattern, I started to worry Ireland had a far higher mortality rate than its European counterparts. A frantic search of Google reassured me that, no, it doesn’t. In fact, ironically, people in Ireland have the longest life expectancy in the EU.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XJQ32RJUWVFUXB3N4J6TULSKZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092708},"content":"What the country does have, however, is a high bereavement rate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKKN7Z2GFFCKVLNX7G7PJKNNKM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092709},"content":"Our societal infrastructure is built to support, and even encourage, the grieving process. We treat funerals like jubilees, giving an extraordinary send-off to even the most ordinary of people. We publicly honour the dead on <a href=\"https://rip.ie/\">rip.ie</a>, making internet stars out of folks who’d never even used social media. We host month’s mind masses with gorgeous stationery, ensuring the person’s legacy lasts long after they’ve been buried or cremated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZV75O5LSHJBF7DWT453LLUZR54","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092710},"content":"Initially, these conversations with my Irish mammy felt insensitive. I couldn’t help but think my British friends would see them as tactless (a crime akin to treason in the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/\" target=\"_blank\">UK</a>), or that I was obsessed with people dying. If I ever answered the call in public, I found myself lowering the volume, for fear of others overhearing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"562HC3NNAFFN7HGJV5XOIWFQNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092711},"content":"But I’ve come to realise that these phone conversations are just another patch in the tapestry of Ireland’s rich grief culture. Like all the other traditions, they simply serve to commemorate the person. We have our wakes and we have our WhatsApp calls. After centuries of our burial rituals being oppressed, we know that the subject of death shouldn’t be confined to a stuffy funeral parlour. It can be aired between talking about EastEnders and political scandals, and, contrary to what our British counterparts might think, it isn’t disrespectful to do so.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q7XAAJBNXZDTZBSU7DAZSMZURA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092712},"content":"So next time I cringe at my mother’s Guess Who games, I’ll take a second to stop myself. A natter about your fourth cousin’s death at the Tube station on a Tuesday is nothing to be ashamed of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGYQV2VFANH57LRF35R5KF5JXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092713},"content":"Turn the volume up, I say, and let the tradition live long and loud.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GUYLFNKBREERMCA5BKP4M37CI","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Emma Dooney"}]},"description":{"basic":"Calling her Irish mammy from London feels like playing a morbid round of Guess Who for this Dubliner"},"display_date":"2025-02-27T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"My mum dangles the question like a golden carrot: ‘You’ll never guess who’s died’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TJQ3GMGRSNDQFGGPQU6DPVTU3A","auth":{"1":"dcd46e791b4a1f71c0b1c239fa1b8aaa9322cd4c2aef647b40626feac7202576"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TJQ3GMGRSNDQFGGPQU6DPVTU3A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/27/my-mum-dangles-the-question-like-a-golden-carrot-youll-never-guess-whos-died/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"L4TY6CAR5RD7JHB2JIDCIRPAUU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":304,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/8f06c2d9-9d28-4228-8505-3d209929af24/versions/1740499220/media/6f2708059fd141df4b568571e04f97ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/","content_elements":[{"_id":"EQ5CD7WFEVCNBAGJ4MA73SS53M","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Byzantine notions of Britain’s nobility and class structures can easily confuse a citizen of a republic, even the neighbouring one, so I sought out a cicerone to explain how it all worked. Sir David O’Grady Roche (77), a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/carlow/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/carlow/\">Carlow</a>-born baronet living in Britain since the 1960s, promised to guide me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAGCGG6V2NC43BXEDB5XE6RSBM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Roche (he dropped the O’Grady leg of his name in Britain years ago) suggested we meet at his mews home in west <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\">London</a>, down a charming cobbled street near Lancaster Gate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ULLTU3Z2OJHZXAI3GTQJMWGFGY","additional_properties":{},"content":"We had met a couple of times previously – once for lunch and, long before that, when he had effectively gatecrashed <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2023/09/23/nigel-farage-on-leo-varadkar-we-had-some-fun-once-or-twice-and-he-even-asked-me-for-a-selfie/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2023/09/23/nigel-farage-on-leo-varadkar-we-had-some-fun-once-or-twice-and-he-even-asked-me-for-a-selfie/\">an Irish Times interview with politician Nigel Farage</a> at a raffish restaurant in Mayfair. They shared a mutual friend, who had also pitched up to join the conversation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEKHBIMAUZFHRJT2JGFDF4ZSYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"At that first meeting, Roche had landed at our table on the restaurant’s roof, puffing on his pipe and bearing a roguish grin. Now, more than a year later, he answers the door of his mews home in precisely the same demeanour – his eyes glinting behind the curls of blue smoke rising from his pipe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAY6ACDLTNAXFACAZBLVDEDDBE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He leads me to a downstairs front room filled with artefacts and family heirlooms including old furniture from Aghade, his family’s long since-sold Carlow estate, as well as pictures of his ancestors. Roche pauses beneath a photograph on the wall of a military vessel. “That was my father’s ship.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLY2ECOLXZA25D4UXWSSLQKIK4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His father, Sir Standish O’Grady Roche, became the 4th Baronet of Carass in Limerick at the age of three. He later joined the Royal Navy and, aged in his early 30s, commanded the destroyer HMS Beaufort during the second World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFHSS4QSTRC3TDL6R5Y3R7IRWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Standish saw action near the coast of Malta during the second Battle of Sirte in 1942. A British convoy survived a heavy attack by enemy Italian battleships. But the violence of war left a dark legacy for Standish. He ended up suffering from what would now be called <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-a-condition-we-are-likely-to-see-more-of-1.4876895\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-a-condition-we-are-likely-to-see-more-of-1.4876895\">post-traumatic stress disorder</a>. After the war, he struggled to keep Aghade afloat and eventually sold it in the late 1960s. The mariner’s eldest son, Roche, moved to London virtually penniless.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEHJB2AMNVDYVAXM37EKU5YJKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I sought the counsel of a man more experienced in these things, and asked him what I should do. He told me to become a chartered accountant,” says Roche, who inherited his father’s title upon his death in 1977. He trained with KPMG and embarked on a successful career in business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EN2LRR45DJGEJLVYESHZELWO34","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Just because you’ve got a title, people expect you to be born rich. But I came here [to London] without a shilling. Whatever I did, I did myself. Eventually I did make a lot of money. But, well, I spent it all on yachts and things,” he says, clearly facetiously, as his eyes glint ever brighter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQCSLP5B4RHQPKH3YM7M5LRDFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"We move upstairs to the kitchen, where Roche has laid on an eclectic buffet of egg mayonnaise and prawn sandwiches, Mars bars and Bordeaux wine. As we tuck in, he explains at length and with great entertainment the differences between the strata of nobility – barons and baronets (the latter are the lowest ranked, but are still above knights), viscounts, earls, marquesses and the highest ranked, dukes. Titles are inherited along the male line.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZP3TWKXYFD5PJEQREV37ZS7FM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The notion of titles is more or less dying out,” he says. “Nobody really uses them any more.” Roche argues that this trend, while desired by many in society, presents a problem for the British monarchy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFOKWJUGYFFPTGSITSRKH5JPKQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The king sits at the top of a pyramid of honours. That pyramid always gave the monarchy strength and stability. But now, instead of that pyramid, there is more of a narrow pillar of honour that runs directly between the monarchy and its popularity with the people. Pillars are much easier to knock over than pyramids. This has introduced an element of vulnerability to the monarchy,” says Roche.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JLIRU4HV5BQ3F35ZUB6WP3RRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"For example, he says, the last hereditary baronetcy to be created by the monarchy was for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sir-denis-thatcher-dies-in-london-aged-88-1.484657\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sir-denis-thatcher-dies-in-london-aged-88-1.484657\">Denis Thatcher</a>, husband of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, back in 1990. Denis Thatcher was a friend of Roche’s, whose ancestors were granted their Irish baronetcy in 1838 during the coronation honours of Queen Victoria. All the family’s subsequent baronets – there have been five, including the incumbent – were christened either David or Standish, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDOKOPWFPNE4TMTWAMC6F4K2JE","additional_properties":{},"content":"As the afternoon draws to a close, Roche says he has a son, David, who will one day inherit his baronetcy and the right in Britain to the title “Sir”. He had another son, his first born, who sadly died at the age of two. I ask what happened. Roche reveals the boy drowned.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BHBTXXVPQ5AIVEQOJZD6CS3BTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“And what was his name?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOGMQBZCJFF33I6PDLA2XBIXUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Standish,” he replies, softly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3SDMKBCJZFDPABMWFMWZD5NSA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It surely must be true that titles bring privilege and social advantage that others never experience. Some things, however, are universal and don’t discriminate, no matter what.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Mark Paul"}},"name":"Mark Paul"}]},"description":{"basic":"London Letter: An afternoon spent discussing nobility"},"display_date":"2025-02-26T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A baronet from Carlow: ‘Just because you’ve a title, people expect you’re born rich’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VUP23RFLA5BRPF2OAHWWVG7LE4","auth":{"1":"1e0791a7beee32d6b5d5b48a4caa509ceb5756e3a80c134e0e4c5796ae7f9301"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VUP23RFLA5BRPF2OAHWWVG7LE4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"UK"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/uk","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"UK"}}}},{"_id":"DMBA2VSQZ5B6XO3JBCNPWJRLX4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":375,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/82b58029-eab0-42e7-bbe6-4a66a19e2c42/versions/1739962483/media/d02d7a5f2437995d1a831ffdf61a5d5d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/","content_elements":[{"_id":"PFPRGLNZWRGXHCXQGTEIYTQSCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844763},"content":"In <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Canberra</a>, I live in an apartment building in the middle of the city, near a park. That in itself feels strange on the page – having lived in other capital cities, such as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/\" target=\"_blank\">Dublin</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a>, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/renting/\" target=\"_blank\">rent</a> for something similar right in the heart of the city would have been impossibly high. As I look out the window of my home office several floors up, I’m once again struck by the impression that Australian teenage girls seem uniquely bad at planning for rain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F5VWVLS3HVACVK7KI2EP3GC23A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844764},"content":"A thunderous downpour has come, suddenly and violently, to ruin their hair and make them regret their choice of flip flops. They run from the park screaming, hands held aloft over their heads as though it will save the hair they carefully styled before leaving the house. I’ve been there, though a Limerick upbringing will make you a hair realist relatively quickly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WDCCJIGCVA4RNTAS3D7OETADA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844765},"content":"In Limerick, the air is a liquid about nine months a year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QBZIYXSDA5AW7LKUFHPXONVVHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844766},"content":"You get used to it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E3EFPDBNZJEEVKZTNW5LIV222M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844767},"content":"Behind the panicking girls, a complacency (is that the collective noun?) of adolescent boys shuffle out too slowly as the girls shout back at them to hurry up. The boys move as though determined to signal that the downpour leeching into their baggy jeans and creeping kneeward doesn’t bother them at all. Watching them, I know that I’m no longer young because there are no conditions under which I would choose seeming cool over being warm and dry. None at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3EIZWNANVDFNLDAK4IZIVFIZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844768},"content":"Contrary to popular assumption, it does rain here in the Australian capital, even in summer. You might experience seven days in a month when it rains, though some of those might just be showers. It rains more now that we are mincing into autumn and everyone is constantly saying “it’s getting chilly, isn’t it?” to one another just as spring creaks into being back at home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"435QZ3HRVZDPHCWF7BZWAAIFXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844769},"content":"Seven days of rain in a month is a wild luxury in comparison to my life in Ireland. So much about living in Canberra feels like a luxury because – if you have lived in Ireland or the UK, it simply is luxurious by comparison. When people at home ask about the life here, I want to tell them that it’s not necessarily the dream they imagine. The streets are paved with neither gold nor Tim Tams. I don’t want to tell anyone that things are better here than they are at home, but they are easier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Y4GGPBYYNDS3DADNB6NYC5ZBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844770},"content":"The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"WKRAI2AKLNCYJMS23BKIMEKTOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844771},"content":"Smoother. They are less strained and stressful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JD6I5MCDJND2ZJKUR2GNZFHE2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844772},"content":"At a recent work event I met a lot of new Australian people, many of whom had travelled in from Sydney and would be heading back the following day. Everyone I met that evening who asked if I live here in Canberra looked slightly horrified when I told them I did. It’s a political city. Most people you meet work either in the military or a government job. Despite real efforts on behalf of local government, the cultural life of the city does not compare to Sydney or Melbourne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QP7LY6A2ZJDNNFZJ3WCZ5T7POA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844773},"content":"And why would it? They are older, larger, more organically evolved places. They draw in more creative people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYGVZOJZARHS7CRQZ5IEF3ZL4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844774},"content":"Canberra was designed as a home for the Australian government, and it certainly can feel like it at times. A bit of an “organised fun” atmosphere. People move in and out for short periods and there can be a feeling of transience. It can be hard to make friends, to feel rooted, or to find your niche in a place that owes its existence to bureaucracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JR5NWJYELBBKHO3YYKTPQQU264","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844775},"content":"This is why Australian people always seem to look at me as though I’ve told them that my dog just died when I tell them that I live in Canberra. And yet, it may be a sign of how good life is – on average – in Australia that so many people here are horrified by the idea of living in a city which, if less cool than others (and it is less cool), nonetheless offers the most stress-free life I’ve ever experienced.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2FEL3Y5T7JFJJHJTTFJ4I7YWQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844776},"content":"For my birthday last week, my husband took me to my favourite steak restaurant here in the city. While we waited for our food, he asked me what I considered the most and least favourable aspects of living in the Australian capital. In the con aisle was the slightly clinical feeling that the place can have, depending on where you find yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"33N3BJCUCZFJ7HAR5QSBNMSRB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844777},"content":"The most favourable thing is that ease. How easy everything is compared with life in Dublin or London. I rate that very highly. That lack of friction inside your own life. The lack of weariness involved in living in a place brimming with culture and activity and life, but which you are generally too tired or too cash strapped to fully take part in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ANJUWJMDFFURO4U45S6GX7ZPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844778},"content":"The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ECRU45AAZVDFRJ53LUVGC6OIN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844779},"content":"No two-hour commutes to work. No spending a vast proportion of your monthly income on getting to and from the office you work in. I haven’t had a single cold since I got here. Everything is easy to access. The climate entices you outdoors and makes you more active without you even noticing (though do check the weather app before you put on flip flops). The natural world is awe-inducing. The food is spectacularly good – nutritious and varied and infinitely more affordable than at home. The people are warm. After years of experiencing the NHS and the HSE, I feel genuinely shocked to be able to see a doctor at all, let alone the same one every visit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6MNJ3RFGBEUDB376VAKE7XEDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844780},"content":"While Canberra is considered an especially expensive place to live by Australians, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living</a> is so much lower than it is in Dublin that I regularly think about it and feel mild despair. Everywhere has its flaws, but living here has proved that it is possible to have sufficient housing to meet demand. It is possible to have a healthcare system that doesn’t routinely leave people waiting years for treatment so that a problem becomes a chronic problem. It is possible to have an excellent steak dinner for two with drinks and notions asparagus with pancetta on your birthday and not pay more than €50 per person.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHA7I3R6MZHKFF2BPO5VBMSDQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844781},"content":"It just isn’t possible in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I32LYH6SNZD43CXZMQE3SIXYP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844782},"content":"It’s even less possible in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QASCCV4ACBBNRK3TIJYOWAUAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844783},"content":"I’m grateful to live in Canberra.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I don’t want to tell anyone that things are better here than they are at home, but they are easier"},"display_date":"2025-02-25T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Things aren’t better in Australia than in Ireland, but they are easier","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"YVDJW2VP5FBWRLI2GJHIW2EGIA","auth":{"1":"dd9c418357edaaf846071132e042f9553f0709bd712832f84f29c668de4125d1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVDJW2VP5FBWRLI2GJHIW2EGIA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"ZZWEV4VQKBCK5CD32EPE2ZIIRM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":301,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e4b34cc0-7743-405c-8e6e-6b4bdb4ce696/versions/1740332051/media/573be1f5a64163e375b387de880749a1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AHQJBW6AMRGIVPFBYGRHTIM2GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067307},"content":"Let’s imagine, for example, you are in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/spain/\" target=\"_blank\">Spain</a>, trying to get your <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/european-union/\" target=\"_blank\">European Union</a> citizen card. You could spend hours on your bike criss-crossing Madrid in the sun and the rain, taking in police stations, print shops and translation offices, discovering far-flung neighbourhoods that you would never otherwise have had the pleasure of knowing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"26SLAFY5QVHGLDV56SSIGJ7F3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067308},"content":"You might find that, by the fourth appointment for the same card, you know the route to the police station off by heart – what a win!","type":"text"},{"_id":"OM6ULZMHGNAGDB75UWYCMTGIMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067309},"content":"Along that selfsame route, you could find yourself thinking that it’s quite apt that the journey is all uphill, and wondering what the Spanish for Sisyphus is (Sísifo, by the way).","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECX7JT47FNFPFANNRUN2JZ2NEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067310},"content":"I use the example of being in Spain trying to get an EU citizen card because I am, in fact, in Spain, trying to get my EU citizen card.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDRKATOY2REWHEDGTY675PAKYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067311},"content":"I’ve learned that it’s not enough to <i>be</i> a citizen of the EU, existing in Spain. I need to <i>prove</i> that with documents – and lots of them. (There is a joke to be made here about Elon Musk’s new department of government efficiency, but I don’t like him so I won’t make it.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"F6UMFZXCOVCRNB2I3LYPKJDCVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067312},"content":"You’d think a degree in European studies would have prepared me for this.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OM33J2J6WZGATBBEG3TI22JCIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067313},"content":"We studied the works of Dante, Weber and Kafka, which provide the theoretical foundations for hellish bureaucracy. Somehow the theory feels hollow when you’re crying outside the police station with no <i>tarjeta</i> in your hand, but then, feeling hollow is probably what Dante, Weber and Kafka were getting at.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DCUHFELLR5A6HINXUU6NRD74GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067314},"content":"My chosen career path should have helped too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PESXTLG4DRC35KWUR4ZHXCF35M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067315},"content":"I work in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\">climate change</a>, so preparing irrefutable evidence of the facts, expecting swift action and being constantly disappointed is my bread and butter. I can’t help myself feeling a glimmer of hope each time the <i>policía</i> rifles through the documents, but, like any good UN climate conference, the outcome is suboptimal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ON2QLUFWDFEHFKCAR4TDIKAIAU","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"BFDDSRESIZCODI2GCXOSEZ3AYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067316},"content":"The experience has got me thinking about a lot of things.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3O423IDNNED7MP2CTEVBISCTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067317},"content":"Seeing the post-Brexit hoops that friends from the UK have to jump through to get their visa makes me very grateful to be part of the EU, to have a fast(er) track to residency.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASJ4XI6FCJEHPI3CYJGFKEWBPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067318},"content":"I also recognise the immense privilege it is to simply pitch up and start working in Spain, especially compared with friends arriving from places such as Syria and Venezuela.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IOTFZF3ZRH77BNNZZWUE3L5OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067319},"content":"It also raises questions about different kinds of work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKCTGL2GKVHDTCGYORIRJXYK7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067320},"content":"I am setting up as a freelance (I would love to avoid, but can’t really deny, the term “digital nomad” which has become a dirty term here, linked to gentrification and rising rents). Effectively, this means I will tap away at my laptop for eight hours a day, sending emails and shuffling information from Word documents to Excel spreadsheets.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3OZNLMUXNCMJII2BBVJ3O73WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067321},"content":"Meanwhile, when I’ve arrived for my multiple appointments, I’ve been given a little square of paper with a number on it. It’s your ticket and your number is called when it’s your turn. But the ticket doesn’t come from a machine. It has been hand-cut with a scissors, meaning that each morning, it is someone else’s job to cut up these little squares of paper and ready them for the day ahead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6WPP532R5BVVMNZSP76P3GEUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067322},"content":"I think about David Graeber’s book <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/job-dissatisfaction-is-your-work-completely-pointless-1.3907418\" target=\"_blank\">Bullshit Jobs</a> and feel a profound sense of connection with the ticket-cutter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFO4IGVYWNGTHI63CB3MTB76BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067323},"content":"My friend tells me that the Spanish bureaucratic system is designed to catch you out. In my small experience, it is certainly a colossal waste of time for applicants and police officers, who presumably didn’t dream of this during their years of training.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KISYRLBNGRBZHFU35LDSDR6YPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067324},"content":"But perhaps the time wasted is a challenge to our modern obsession with efficiency. After all, what difference does a few lost hours here and there really make?","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RLNH77HT5B7ZBMN37LEQG2UKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067325},"content":"And, in a world where we are constantly in our heads, receiving and processing a barrage of information every day, we must take every chance to reconnect with our bodies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFCEOLGTIZG4RBYNP3GNMOLHBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067326},"content":"You know, really <i>feel</i> the rage coursing through your veins, the tears flowing from your eyes, the breath quickening.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VEACSLK67ZCPLFX4IOTGWC5H6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067327},"content":"The fifth appointment looms – wish me luck!","type":"text"},{"_id":"STWYPWWT4FCGLEJMKVXFJJI2TA","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Orlaith Delargy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I work in climate change, so preparing irrefutable evidence of the facts, expecting swift action and being constantly disappointed is my bread and butter"},"display_date":"2025-02-24T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘A great way of seeing a new city is to become embroiled in its bureaucracy’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TPTGH4SAKJB7NDJSRD54ATAYRA","auth":{"1":"3798bad36e6062e45f608ee29cb50177d1ad5053dae6fc58db060b59cce80c06"},"focal_point":{"x":3050,"y":1676},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TPTGH4SAKJB7NDJSRD54ATAYRA.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"57RS72HRMFDQLDA74A3DPLNLSI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":295,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/ec167c08-6dce-4d23-9240-5d0e97b46679/versions/1739975295/media/17226618ea195fcd8a1b379d63055ff6_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/23/last-time-i-tried-to-park-a-car-in-dublin-i-couldnt-get-over-it/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6WH555GGTNBMRB7FMS6PZGJKGM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Glasnevin-born Alan Flanagan has enjoyed an impressive career in the competitive world of global asset management since joining <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bny-mellon/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bny-mellon/\">BNY</a> (formerly known as BNY Mellon) 17 years ago. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRVHZVOUSJGUBKMKPP3IZLTYEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Initially based in Dublin, he moved to the firm’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\">New York</a> office in 2016, with a series of moves there leading to his current position as head of global client coverage, asset servicing, for the bank. His global role involves dealing with 250 direct reports and extensive travel around the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MNKPPQDOOBCRZHE6OTAYX6NU4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan credits his early accountancy training and experience with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kpmg/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kpmg/\">KPMG</a> in Dublin in the late 1990s and early noughties as providing a really solid base for his career. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"N5NIJLOOUFDMFG3SXL5FA4OKMQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I trained as a chartered accountant, and although I decided that audit wasn’t for me, I am forever grateful for the professional standards training I received there – which has stood to me to this day.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CO6Z573GFEB7EDFICHRV3L7P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan also met his wife in KPMG, and the newly qualified pair enjoyed time travelling before settling in the Cayman Islands, where there were opportunities for accountants in the offshore funds area. 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","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCOLCRNUCBG2ZGSWKTPLKHKPDI","embed":{"config":{},"id":"acast_podcast-60219","url":"/"},"subtype":"acast_podcast","type":"custom_embed"},{"_id":"Q7HTE4G22VBTXEIYCIMHNOKAII","additional_properties":{},"content":"The decision was also heavily influenced by the autism diagnosis their youngest child received and the belief that he would receive better supports there, which has proven to be the case, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXRCYBJGDVCXXMPYOPKA62HZ5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family settled in Princeton. It is famous for its Ivy League university, but outside its walls there is a beautiful town, he says. “It’s got a really nice international flavour to it. It’s a melting pot, with great restaurants and facilities and really good schools, which has been a great benefit to our family.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"U5UBIX7BXNFLZC7TFZSGMRASNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among the things he likes in the US is the sense of wide open space, in contrast to Dublin. “Space is in abundance here. You notice it around housing and car park spaces. Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it. There’s more space here, even in the shopping aisles.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XPSDG7L6NBAIJPVZ6W2LVMIXBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan makes an 80-minute commute to BNY’s offices in Manhattan. The bank was founded in 1784, making it the oldest bank in the United States. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6NOPKL457RAHXFCCPKLRE7PSQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Philadelphia has always played second fiddle to New York and we kind of like it that way’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3RLGSCU5PZA2HCK36QBBT2TUOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We oversee, manage and keep safe in excess of $50 trillion (€47.9 trillion) in assets. Part of my role is to run a team of relationship managers to deal with all aspects of those relationships,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z26GHGR37RDFHF3RAVYIEB7QB4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Despite the impact of technology in our business, it is still very much a people business. We’ve leveraging AI but it’s still very much a people business and a trust-based business, so the people in my team have to build relationships and build trust to continue to service clients and to grow new business,” he explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFLU744I5FA6HFHCIAVBRCPRE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another role Flanagan has involves championing neurodiversity as the executive sponsor of BNY’s Heart initiative, which aims to elevate awareness of disabilities and to promote a safe, respectful and welcoming environment where all employees feel included.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGYOHDQWA5BRRLIWVDGMYZPUIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Working at the firm involves early starts and Flanagan regularly has breakfast meetings at 7.30am. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RYFVR3445AZ5JNZ6XV7PFF57E","additional_properties":{},"content":"“People do work very hard here. Winning is important, and there’s a great confidence in people in the workforce. I see it in the graduates who come and work for the company. I put a lot of that down to the educational system. There’s a lot of emphasis on continuous assessment and presentations, which helps prepare people for work.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7CYWCBMMBARLK2ECLPLOPYDME","additional_properties":{},"content":"As well as holiday visits, Flanagan gets to return to Ireland on business several times a year, which affords him opportunity to catch up with much-missed family and friends. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EVUYKSZ6WNFOLJXK5A7PQEMGN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I get to stay in the place in Ireland which is my mother’s house in Glasnevin. The food and the laundry service are just outstanding.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDM3NA77RRG7NFIO24TOBFBCQ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"A further tie to Ireland is that his daughter Sally recently returned to study at Trinity College Dublin. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAEIZPGWHNB3NA2JDU3QLGHRAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"BNY recently celebrated 30 years in Ireland and Flanagan says many Irish professionals have done well at the firm. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EYW7X54CNFGZLK5XMYG4LE6CF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We have a very strong culture of cultivating talent in Ireland. 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I could only hope that the latter might be the case for the relatively new president, Nayib Bukele, and his great reforms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTJSEF7OYRDLZOUY4CITO3AUD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600444},"content":"El Salvador plans first ‘Bitcoin City’ powered by a volcano","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YBBT4ITJZJH3RLB5PMKAMC642U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600452},"content":"My ever-tremulous heart looked over the edges of canyons as we wound our way up the volcanoes, playing chicken with young lads on motorbikes (and chickens). I invoked my long-neglected guardian angel that day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXBO2IMRFBFYZHY2N2CNBUR5K4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600453},"content":"We finally arrived in Berlín, which has now been my home for a short while.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGSBBNKO6FC2FNQ2CNSXVKIJWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600455},"content":"I live on a dirt road with clucking chickens and skulking street dogs. My senses have taken a while to adapt, but adapting they are. Everything is different from what I’m used to. It’s a sensorial readjustment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KL42CU5CYRAOFGGSGOUAZKKYUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600457},"content":"And, yes, perhaps it <i>has</i> been too long since I was rambling down in the street. Perhaps I’m not the toughie I thought I was. Perhaps I’m clutching my shabby first-world coat a little bit too tightly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M5ALKASD6ZHTFLG47PP37ZEWAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600458},"content":"The world’s first Bitcoin city is full of first-world eccentrics, not least my second-born, Charlie, anxious to watch the new currency work in real time, with real products.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIPAXABLZVGQHN3FDIVD3M3FUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600459},"content":"All over the town, the familiar Bitcoin sign adorns shopfronts. Everywhere, someone is trying to sell you something, and many of the transactions can happen, directly from vendor to purchaser, in seconds flat, through a facility created by Bitcoin developers called the Lightning Network.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3Z6BHWYVVAU7ORHBOKADQXZH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600454},"type":"image"},{"_id":"M2NTK6HV3BD2PKLIJJ4LFOKVZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600460},"content":"I won’t get into it. I should leave that to the experts, but it is fascinating to watch this once-deemed “Ponzi scheme” rise from the ashes of disrepute. You can buy accommodation, fruit, vegetables, milk, bread, meat, endless corn products, clothes, shoes, pots, butter, land, houses, cows and furniture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UZ6FNKI6KVCMFNONS4JOXTFZU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600461},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBAGVWHE7RGKNNHBABHTSONGHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600462},"content":"The Irish are represented well here, with two of Charlie’s friends, Rob Comer from Mayo and Joe Hayes from Kerry flying the flag (literally) down by the coast. And more power to all these pioneering young men.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5MR7FT4DCND4HIGZTXEAENNVZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600463},"content":"As for me, who knows?","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKRCFNTMNJEUHAINWFDKA5MLZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600465},"content":"I have climbed a volcano. I have used Bitcoin. I live each day with the roar of motorbikes and ire-filled preachers on their microphones. I marvel daily at the plant-life and magnificent butterflies that bejewel the environment. I have basked in the gloriously welcoming smiles of the local people and have received warm hugs from the local women I have met.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4","additional_properties":{"_id":"2AB7ZF5NBVH3RPQTQJQGCKV2YA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"2NP5FWDH2ZAMHLR24D5E6JKIAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600467},"content":"Despite the poverty, I see a people who laugh a lot, people who interact readily. What I don’t see are people engrossed with their phones or behind locked doors shutting out a cold world. It’s a noisy, smelly, vibrant landscape in a growing economy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MGKFBANPTBA4NHNXIGCDHVVNSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600468},"content":"It is quite a wonder, El Salvador.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IW5EBQLAJZGYVKAZJF5MNZ3T5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600470},"content":"Perhaps I will get a teaching job in the capital. For now, I am making bone broth, peanut butter and lemon curd to sell in a farmers’ market.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4LDFL2JDXVA67NLDPA3CVQGND4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600471},"content":"I have become one of the ubiquitous vendors, hoping to make a buck. Or a satoshi.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4ZWQLVNOJGCLG2FTY4K4JMLZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600464},"content":"The ‘cult’ of Bukele: El Salvador’s millennial strongman heads for second term","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TJYNWUDFOZFH5DC74KBYMJV6ZY","type":"list"},{"_id":"J6MURTBMZNHIDND44WR6GBM4KE","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Maureen Stevens"}]},"description":{"basic":"Life in El Salvador: ‘I’ve climbed a volcano and used Bitcoin. 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There I could create worlds of my own imagining.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AE4JZUHPR5FQPBNLUBIRKWZTLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618641},"content":"The salt water was probably too cold to have contemplated a swim or even an ankle paddle in. This was out the Connemara road from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/galway\" target=\"_blank\">Galway</a>, “backside Spiddal”, as my father used to call it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TS2GNVWNMBHOVJDMK62ANC6IWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618642},"content":"There were small boreens between stone walls that led down off that road to the left to stretches of sand surrounded by large brown Connemara outcroppings. The introduction of my hand-knitted drawers to the salt water was my mistake, I admit that. I slipped and fell into a pool of trapped seawater between some smooth and slippery Atlantic rocks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFH5SG5DS5B3PBO7FF5OGUW5IA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618643},"content":"I sat there surprised as the water seeped into my woollen shorts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRC3P7KIPJBJFGB6UOHNVGC2XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618644},"content":"Did the assembled family laugh? You can be sure they did.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MVSXRRWPGBA27HKSIAO2JF3E3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618645},"content":"Did I laugh? Not at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKIWPYDPARGMHBXNFEMJEY52WY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618646},"content":"The seawater-soaked woollen shorts were already beginning to irritate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37ROUS35DVDWTGO2SM5AW7GTUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618647},"content":"My mother grabbed me out of the water, wrapped a towel around me, pulled down the soggy wool lot, and dried me off.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NDRSOZ7BHRCMBFYSYEOZE3WDNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618648},"content":"I think it was my aunt Una who went to one of the two cars that we had driven down the boreen that Sunday. She came back with a pair of clean, dry, yellow and very adult women’s knickers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7SZY3CCJNDZFKMO633QJKRIX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618649},"content":"Why did they happen to have an extra pair of fresh women’s knickers in the Commer? That I don’t know. Where were my own day clothes? Again a mystery. Had we left home with all the children dressed in our home-knitted woollen beach outfits with no plan B? It seems that we had.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PKWLAXYPJBCFZNGSDVNFFMKKJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618650},"content":"As my Aunt Una handed the mystery yellow knickers to my mother, I realised that they were intended for me. I knew, even then, at age four or five, that something was seriously awry. I struggled and resisted, but my fighting strength was limited; I was small then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WXN62VLEWJHV7ECOVBS3PKP4GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618651},"content":"Once dressed in the unauthorised and illegitimate knickers, I became aware of further laughter from the assembled and now more-interested-than-ever extended family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XS5RR6YXZCF5L7ZUDPAVGJBEE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618652},"content":"They laughed and laughed, as I ran and ran with all the speed that I could, at the age that I had, to hide in the car until they could take me home. Which they eventually did. When the car stopped in front of our house, I took off like a bat out of hell till I got to my room, where I removed the offending yellow knickers with a speed that might have won me Olympic gold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2F2JWWLQFHW5O55L3IE4VZYW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618653},"content":"This is all by way of saying that my mother was a very good knitter, and that wool was once not only a way to inflict emotional pain on the young of Ireland, but a necessity wrought by the exigencies of the times. What you didn’t have you created in the 1950s, and wool was the undisputed interactive software of the day, pun intended. I think that my mother knitted all of the scratchy outfits for the kids assembled on that particular Sunday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JIVAETPLVRCZ5L3UP57XMT2YN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618654},"content":"Knitting, mending and darning were skills much in demand. The three activities were essential women’s skills, and the men of the time depended on women for such basics in life. I’m sure there were men who enjoyed knitting, mending or darning in the privacy of their own homes in Ireland then, but they never did publicly. There were tailors, of course, but that was different.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADIQO5SPLZBO3NCJJQQC5CU26U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618655},"content":"Other than our swimming outfits, my mother knitted our socks, gloves, scarves, jumpers and cardigans. In their wedding picture, my father is wearing a hand-knitted V-neck sleeveless woollen jumper, as did is his brother Mattie, his best man. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother knitted both.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUQYYNJVJJDRFCHM3XKA2ISEWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618656},"content":"My mother Brigid knitted wherever she happened to be, at the hearth, at the kitchen table, in an armchair; and, when the weather was warm, sitting outside. I have a memory of seeing my mother sitting around in a circle with my aunts knitting, while a black kitten leapt and jumped after the unwinding balls of wool.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWTPKIQF2FE65LNSSOMKKKLDF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618657},"content":"Wool was flecked or plain in the 1950s. Colours were dull, more often than not; dull reds, dull blues, dull greens and browns. Even light colours were dull; dull light green, dull light blue, flecked dull light red and flecked dull light grey. Phosphorescent hues were still a long ways off in the shock of the future, as was the universal availability of cotton thread.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMBNIYJZBVDJ3JDO274TUQ6QMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230833},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"HFJ72POGEZHXBCRQV3QAQUKJ6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618658},"content":"All of my mother’s knitting left a large amount of leftover wool; half skeins and half balls of yarn and jumbles of colours bound together of what remained after a successful jumper or pair of gloves was complete.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ID6BA2MPIVBDZCKF3GUWOMEFF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618659},"content":"What to do?","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENRVAUVCH5CFZKRUMXO6KSHMV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618660},"content":"Well, my mother decided to knit a blanket in widths of about a foot, and lengths of about a yard. She knitted her blanket with double threads; at least I think that’s how she ended up with such a rich and heavy warmth of interwoven colours. As she knitted, she wove her thoughts and daily dreams into her work. She thought of her sister who had recently died, and of her sister’s children who were now motherless. She thought of her sister Nellie who had swapped her name out so that she could migrate to Massachusetts. She thought of the whitewashed home where they had all grown up, now left to the winds of time in Clonboo. She saw her youngest son fall into a pool of saltwater in “backside Spiddal” and sit there not knowing what to do, and she laughed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGSR3QP2WJEFLJBKJILXSGJLIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618661},"content":"My mother saw a thousand things and felt a thousand things as she knitted, and she knitted one and purled each and every one of those images and feelings into her lengths of blanket. She knitted a dozen or so panels of leftover wool. Then, she sewed them all together to make a blanket that is as representative of Ireland of its time and as magical and mysterious as Lebor na hUidre – the Book of the Dun Cow – is of another.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWUSPBKTN5EHHHV2NZNCBFJYBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618662},"content":"My mother recorded what she knew for us going forward and she did it effortlessly. Did she think that one day we might remember her because of her blanket? It never crossed her mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFPRCXBMH5GK7BURKBRPNOA6ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618663},"content":"Did she think of the future of her three young boys? Of course she did. Did she see their futures? Not at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KNBFRXOQPJA2TD67CADYGKV4B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618664},"content":"Of their offspring, she saw nothing either, and nothing of her great-nephews and grandnieces. Did she wish them all well? Innately; it’s all there in the knitting. She ordered the world into knit and purl and left it safe for future generations. My mother gave us everything of the truth as she knew it in her knitting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DB7HOIGM7NC3HLM7I7H2PKS7LM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618665},"content":"I don’t know when I first became aware of this blanket, but from when it first entered my consciousness, I loved it intuitively. For decades, it sat on the back of the sofa in my parents' living room. However, with the coal fire blazing in the fireplace in winter, there was never any reason to use it. The blanket sat there completely satisfied with itself, but unnoticed and unused.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XB6ACXTAYBEQ3JM2IHREGQJSFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618666},"content":"Then, on one of my visits to Ireland, my mother said: “You should take this to New York.” She knew how much I loved her blanket. She was getting older and wanted the blanket to be appreciated after she was gone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7AOMJ4B5VG2VL3FMUELSN2G6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618667},"content":"So I packed my mother’s multi-coloured blanket into a suitcase. It came with me to Shannon and then on to New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG67MZ35LJHAREYEOWEEZACMAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618668},"content":"In Brooklyn, the blanket enjoyed a new life, and yet old, on the back of my sofa for many years. The weather was too hot in summer to contemplate wool – yes, rough wool is anathema to cooling off now, just as it was in the 1950s. In winter, the stifling heat of a centrally steam-heated New York apartment meant that the duvet was too hot; never mind adding a wool blanket to the bed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJWNLEHM6NF2NEG372TQ4NQH7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230846},"type":"image"},{"_id":"JRPOPHU2CRFJHGBVUJQ6IG253I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618669},"content":"Then, my mother’s blanket moved with me to the country in upstate New York, and there it found its place, its home, for a time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNRMJ646EJCNBEYUALBBUELWLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618670},"content":"Winters, and even springs and autumns, were cold enough there to appreciate the fine wool-woven knots of my mother’s ambition. Her blanket covered one bed or another there, with various other blanket companions, on many a night.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMLTNB34BBGSLKCZ3I5XV3W7W4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618671},"content":"Even my mother herself came and enjoyed the deep solace that one of her previous lives offered her; her hand-knitted masterpiece containing her thoughts from the 1950s lay comfortably over her legs as she slept in Upstate New York in the 1980s and early 1990s. We never mentioned it, never talked about it, as if it was the most common thing in the world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OL2N2FCBWNE7BP6DMOPSX42CCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618672},"content":"Of course it wasn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SLK6OOZBWFBQPH3F35GTXE5S5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618673},"content":"My mother left us.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YR66TL3OGVD7RKBWJVSLBEN2IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618674},"content":"And I left New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2UTA4OYCZEIDLAS5BA2HMK7KU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618675},"content":"I moved to Florida, hardly the ideal home for a heavy wool blanket. So my mother’s blanket retreated to an Irish pine blanket chest even older than itself, until I decided to move to Colombia at the end of the first decade of the new millennium.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5PD5JACIFEYJF2C2SZ7B7I7IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618676},"content":"Bogotá, Colombia, as it turns out, is much more amenable to wool than many other places on our planet. High in the Andes, nights are cool, and air conditioning and central heating are unknown. There is often the need for a heavy woollen blanket.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TT6MEAZ5ZJD25P4HCAHN2ZZM5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618677},"content":"The Irish blanket settled into my new home in Colombia as if it had been knitted with Bogotá’s climate in mind. My ageing cat, Figueras, took a special liking to the warmth that the blanket provided, and spent many days and nights of her last years ensconced in the blanket from Galway.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFFCE4TOFFARNNW67RE7BKSDPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618678},"content":"And all the while, the blanket’s secrets that my mother had imparted decades earlier lived on unnoticed as time swept us on unawares.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLAQH5ZJGVC3JB7ISYKKUMIFJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230858},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"FYVOKIYJKRDTRJYRJINGQW5X6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618679},"content":"AI has been much in the news, and on our minds, in the last couple of years. The capacity of AI seems unlimited, and even if just a small percentage of what has been predicted for AI comes true, our lives will be much altered. For now, the promise of AI has allowed me to imagine the “what-ifs” of my mother’s blanket, however farfetched.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWWQ2EH7KVGWZCCUVD3WHPZXII","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618680},"content":"What if AI, one day in the not-too-distant future, can learn to see the past through the remnants and artefacts that remain with us?","type":"text"},{"_id":"27FUX7PNQJFUDGOTB4UARN23FA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618681},"content":"What if, one day, AI can learn to read my mother’s thoughts from the blanket that she knitted?","type":"text"},{"_id":"KCS4DPSKQBE3LBQVKI7ECFUVWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618682},"content":"What if one day, AI can see the video of me falling into the seawater between some slippery rocks “<i>backside Spiddal!!”</i>, just because it was there in my mother’s mind when she knitted her blanket?","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLFCDMQGGBHQTDKWGJBT5AHS3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618683},"content":"Oh, you scoff.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PKP6O5HSNHLZCLZGMAO7276PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618684},"content":"As I opened my eyes, I saw the scratchy wool blanket on top of a hill of blankets, some Peruvian, some Guatemalan, in the blue-painted antique wardrobe that my mother’s blanket now called home. Like my mother, I too am soon to be gone. Once I am gone, what is to become of my mother’s blanket in Colombia, I wondered. The blanket is too full of the mysteries of time, too full of my mother’s history, just to become a wayward piece of knitting in the flea markets of Bogotá, Buenos Aires or Mexico City.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ISGDD732FHBLEJR4XN6OVD5PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618685},"content":"My mother’s blanket needed to be home in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NQWYMGL35FFLC4QGANMACKTAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618686},"content":"On that April morning, I made a decision. How perfect! The 1950s blanket would travel home to Ireland in my brother’s empty suitcase.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANT3UJKZ7FCYTDEM2QWKRG67HI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618687},"content":"And so it did.","type":"text"},{"_id":"53GCC2RYPZE2BAFG3TU7O64H64","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618688},"content":"“I have a surprise for you,” I said to my brother. “Do you remember this.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGGYML4GTJBPTFC3DSLGF6AA5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618689},"content":"“Of course, I do,” he said. “Our mother knitted that blanket!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHBEO6DH7VEEZCLKCMNVJ56W3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618690},"content":"Odd things happen in your mind when pieces of the past come back to you. Sometimes, old pieces of the puzzle fall into place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TXSU5PCXZZGNVPGKNFVQNFIQ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618691},"content":"Sometimes, life surprises you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWIGJLFXT5BI5FGRKJOLPIZC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618692},"content":"My brother’s daughter’s daughter, Amélie, a new knitting enthusiast at an early age, came into the room and saw the blanket. She took it into her hands and looked it carefully up and down. I don’t think she had ever seen anything quite like it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NAOLJ273VNHELFNVZROP6WWOQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618693},"content":"She threw it on the floor as if it were a rug to a carpet, and then she lay down on it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEH6JHYC3NAEHMSTLPEH75BWY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618694},"content":"I was overjoyed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KB63H56IJVAMHD67QQK4YRYDTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618695},"content":"I knew that my mother’s blanket had found a new soul who would treasure it and take care of it going forward.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZBNELUWXZBKBIKI3PQYTKE6NI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618696},"content":"Amélie will have it now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCGHTPEIOJCBFCAYMPFR5534FY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618697},"content":"She will love it and, more likely than not, put it on the back of a sofa somewhere in a future that none of us can imagine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LKUCEI7GNRGALJPR54R7WWJR4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618698},"content":"Oh, and I’m absolutely sure that my mother’s blanket will one day end up in a museum, hopefully in Galway, where AI will unlock its secrets to throw light over life as it was lived in Galway and in the west of Ireland in the 1950s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PTQIWMW6UNDORJ4AM55YYT6M5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618699},"content":"You scoff again! But you shouldn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LENMUFSYEJG6RE5LWCL4MLNOZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618700},"content":"Who will be here to celebrate that day?","type":"text"},{"_id":"IONCSXAY6VCH3FBGQ43LUAOL2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618701},"content":"Perhaps Amélie will.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ERYYGDFJVD7BEIM73FBFMKNDI","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Christopher Burke"}]},"description":{"basic":"She was a very good knitter, and wool was once not only a way to inflict emotional pain on the young of Ireland, but a necessity wrought by the exigencies of the times"},"display_date":"2025-02-17T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"My mother’s blanket has travelled the world with me, along with her thoughts and dreams","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA","auth":{"1":"1fa2122b31ef9ae272af5f50702449fda67dc5a5a9f132d54f397a5996e47703"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/17/my-mothers-blanket-has-travelled-the-world-with-me-along-with-her-thoughts-and-dreams/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"6TOQRZPPZFAGPIPKKUB2QUZAV4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":294,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d9b4d85a-f553-4c71-a56c-8a6356033259/versions/1739373082/media/841d31d0d6d5860d8704497fa2373f8a_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RE5Q4R4O25GIXJRLYWDD6TRMIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221829},"content":"From Dún Laoghaire and a former UCD art history student, Michael O’Dwyer found his calling as a jewellery designer when he was selected for Jane Huston’s acclaimed goldsmithing course in Kilkenny, one of only 12 students selected every two years for specialist training.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QFSGM5BGYFBGDFTXDEQ255LW5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221830},"content":"He furthered his career in Antwerp with a master stone setter and, having met and married a Swede, came to Stockholm to live in 2009 “because the social welfare is so good – the best in the world” and found immediate work because of his microscope stone-setting skills, then unique in Sweden.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VYD7Y6UPVZDQ5P44DYLIWOCD6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221831},"content":"He set up his own company specialising in goldsmithing, stone setting and enamel work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TRZAGQTRY5COBPYP7BQ76BOJQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221832},"content":"Five years ago, O’Dwyer had a studio in a leafy part of the city; later he moved to a bigger premises in Stockholm just at the point when the world economy was overheating, Covid hit and the Russians invaded Ukraine. The subsequent effect on him financially forced him to rethink his business model and relocate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2SGZMNICIVAGHGCY3SHHLMUGKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221833},"content":"Today his workshop is housed in an old industrial building in the city which was the original Electrolux factory. He commutes from Sörmland, about an hour’s drive away (“the equivalent of driving from Aughrim to Dublin”), where he lives with his wife and their five children aged between one and 14. There is little traffic and the road network is very good, “and I could also take a train”, so it’s easily accessible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R377W42S3BFZJDAQAEWUVRPDOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221834},"content":"His work can be found in Dublin in Stonechat in the Westbury Mall, where owner Anne Chapman has remained a friend since their student days in Kilkenny.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMUPL6U6FJDXVIWDIR5A6RUB5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221835},"content":"As well as being an established professional goldsmith, O’Dwyer has developed another career writing guidebooks for cyclists and other lovers of the outdoors.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AY5S6XZR2JH3XKX7EQ5K7G5CHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221836},"content":"“When I was young, I did a lot of hiking, rock climbing and cycling in the mountains and when a friend, David Flanagan [a writer and climber who runs Three Rock Books], invited me on a bikepacking trip to Mongolia eight years ago, it took me back in to the outdoors and gravel biking, sea kayaking and paddling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXVKNCBS7JHENIK577D7HBCSKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221837},"content":"“I formed a network of interested friends both Swedish and international. I like to gather people, to collect people. So some know me for my jewellery and others for my guide books, so I am known equally well in two different fields,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QLMJOXHHNBE5DEJGLDUQAFB6ZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221838},"content":"The guides on his site <a href=\"http://www.grvl.se/\" target=\"_self\">grvl.se</a> provide bikepacking routes all over Sweden and beyond, with more than 300 original and curated routes in a global network spanning 50 countries. “I tell Swedes where to go,” says O’Dwyer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NPJ7WS32VCTVMRGRMUDUGRWUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221839},"content":"An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"U3RAX6C76NHHZCDHXCMDK4R7RE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221840},"content":"Given the demands of his highly skilled craft and its precision, it is easy to see how the outdoors provides some escapism and a counterbalance to the intensity of the work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCRKZQHSWBHVRCO2HDA72ABQKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221841},"content":"“I live outside the village in a location known for the most intensive wildlife in Sweden – in fact, I nearly crashed into a deer this morning; I saw about 20 of them. We have wolves coming into the village – they were extinct, but they have walked in from Finland and Russia and we now have one of the highest concentrations of wolves, though you would rarely see them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNUDWA26JFERPGZISA2BDVEHXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221842},"content":"Swedes are conservative without being formal, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZV2SVDFFFHP3L2YPNWGPVSJDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221843},"content":"“The friends they make at preschool tend to remain best friends for the rest of their lives. On the surface, they are very nice and polite and love to speak English, but then it is very difficult to break into that inner circle of friendship. There is a very big gap between the two, but once you are in, that’s it for life and they would do anything for you. Irish people have more fleeting friendships,” he observes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQTI5RJ4CBBYVJDTQG3CPKEH4Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"AZUQ3OV75ZFVBIM65LJBVWRSMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221845},"content":"As for jewellery, “it’s not a big part of their culture – though that is changing – so it can be difficult to persuade them to see the value of expensive high-end jewellery. They will drive a nice car and have a nice house and go on fantastic holidays, but there is an old philosophy called Jante’s Law, unwritten but powerful, that holds that it is rude to show your wealth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLK7Z74QTBF5XPLZN2LMGQR6NU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221846},"content":"“You could be on a train and sitting beside a multimillionaire and you would never know,” he says. Call it Nordic modesty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4ET4O47UVBQ7K5CULRG267DK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221847},"content":"In the countryside, O’Dwyer and his children enjoy outdoor sports – cycling or ice-skating. “All the children are bilingual, though holidays home to Ireland with them are expensive.” His wife, currently on maternity leave, is an education teacher specialising in preschool.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WRFTBUBE55GPFCDFLS3JY5BYSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221848},"content":"“The way people interact here is different to the Irish, where people are more outgoing, so the craic is different, but you get used to the lifestyle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BG4HMBWNUZFXBHJXYER2EL277M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221849},"content":"“Ireland will always be home, but it’s like a different band playing your favourite song – you know the words, you know the music and the melody, but it is just different. I am that long gone.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Deirdre McQuillan"}},"name":"Deirdre McQuillan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Michael O'Dwyer, Stockholm"},"display_date":"2025-02-16T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Crafting jewellery in a country where it is considered rude to show your wealth","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU","auth":{"1":"c4ebbd68413e2a20dc8d75ee34b0785a8c407a6078f63fb75b36a236c90afaab"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"5FOEHIHTFNFZ5NAJ2HO5ML72XQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":821,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/f39d1a3c-7d58-4ddd-934c-a607f9bcf770/versions/1738683641/media/28bcede1ff9b05a2948c579f4ccfb9a2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NELE6F2SSRALNPE4I5C2EQPRQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144716},"content":"In the age of algorithms, apps and social media it is ironic to think that the very technology designed to bring us closer can often leave us feeling more disconnected. Today’s dating apps serve up an endless stream of potential matches, yet meaningful connections can feel elusive. And while many of us are willing to divulge our most personal information online, when faced with real-life encounters we can be hesitant, as if the idea of someone approaching us organically has become almost unnatural.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B3TJMIUQFJEKVKS5T4EMEARZJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144717},"content":"It’s a stark contrast to the past, when love and friendship were forged not through screens, but in dance halls throughout <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a> and across the Irish Sea in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\" target=\"_blank\">England</a>. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when showbands ruled the dance floors, a night out at a Ballroom of Romance wasn’t just about the music – though it played a vital role; it was a catalyst for connection, where you might meet a future partner, land a job or forge lifelong friendships. Long before we started taking pictures of our drinks, we were boldly asking strangers if we could buy them one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKHI2SD3I5AU3LSCHF72QZ2LKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144718},"content":"Perhaps that’s why nostalgia-driven Facebook groups such as <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/844859936299428\">Irish in London Past and Present</a>, <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/539919766404866\">Irish Showbands 1950s/60s/70s/80s</a> and Irish Dance Halls in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a> in Years Gone By have become so popular. These groups are hubs for those who mourn the loss of dance halls and want to take the opportunity to recall the golden age of the showband era, when acts including <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dixies\" target=\"_blank\">The Dixies</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/big-tom-sang-with-a-happy-kind-of-sadness-1.3464948\" target=\"_blank\">Big Tom and the Mainliners</a> packed out venues at home and abroad.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PH3LV5ZIVJE6VFB325G23Y55QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144719},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"BOZSYJTHXBHSVKLRLOBHOUBBLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144720},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PGNYRQZMDNC3VEJ6SOD3JWOY2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144721},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"M4J6IYHQZBHP3PEDC6RIMQ6NWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144722},"content":"For the Irish diaspora in London during the 1970s and 1980s the dance halls offered a much-needed connection to home, a chance to meet new people at the end of a long week and the potential thrill of catching someone’s eye. There was the excitement of receiving an invitation to dance, the potential spark of connection and, perhaps, the hope of finding love.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAJQRI6UGRHTTB2GMF7AXE2STU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144723},"content":"While places like The Quex in Kilburn, The Hibernia in Fulham and The Emerald in Hammersmith had their loyal crowds, it was the Galtymore that truly became the stuff of legend. Although it closed its doors for good in the 2000s, its legacy endures through the stories and romances that outlasted its final dance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUQA7UMY4VCRZAA2KHUBVNW3EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144724},"content":"From the archive: End of an era for Irish in London as iconic Galtymore dance hall to close its doors","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"H7TXJ7OYTFF4DFWGTTUKF3TMKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144725},"content":"For Bernie Rodgers, the Galtymore will always hold a special place in her heart. Having grown up in Paddington in London, Rodgers now lives in Stockport, Manchester, and has been happily married for 43 years, with four children. She met her husband John in 1978 at age 18, on a Saturday night out at the Galtymore. “Oh, it was great,” she recalls. “I went out for a dance, and I came home with a boyfriend.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K57B4G2BYZE7RIOG7LN44A5C5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144726},"content":"The daughter of Irish immigrants, who separated when she was a teenager, Rodgers laughs when she remembers how she and her mother used to head to the Galtymore on the weekend. The venue was divided into two sections, the younger crowd venturing to one side, parents to the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKBE4UGOBFHQPIAVMBBFXLNS34","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144727},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XTK6JUS2SJBWJHOSUXJ4ZDS43I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144728},"type":"image"},{"_id":"E3ZVQQQEVRD3LJ5YD74M6RQJD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144729},"content":"“My mum would go to what we would call ‘the old side’ – though, thinking of it now, she must’ve only been about 42.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R55BI7YVOFB2DC2XZUGKWZMWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144730},"content":"The dances were the highlight of the week for Rodgers and her friends. They would eagerly anticipate the weekends, buying new outfits – often rotating them between each other so there was something “new” to wear. In fact, it was Rodgers’s outfit that first caught her future husband’s attention. As he approached, he walked straight into a large circle of her friends to speak to her.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UW4JPYI2VBDFNMYY46XAWCSN5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144731},"content":"“I thought he was very brave,” she laughs, recalling the moment. That bravery would come in handy later on when, in quick succession, he met her mother and extended family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4X5THQLX75E55FOO6EAQC45XYA","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"G7AENVB2ZRHLHMX2FGKVNAWN7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144733},"content":"For Rodgers, the atmosphere of the dance hall was simultaneously innocent and intimate. It was a place where fun flourished but respect was paramount. Bad behaviour was not tolerated – the bouncers made sure of that. Anyone acting inappropriately was quickly shown the door. More often than not, it was those who had over-imbibed, perhaps looking for some courage to fuel their evening, who found themselves escorted out. But for those who played by the rules, a set of six dances – three fast, three slow – was all the time you needed to decide to meet, and potentially match with, a person who could become the love of your life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SDPF52M3QNCYFH2AKDJAD26H2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144734},"type":"image"},{"_id":"6WDBK4ZJ2NFBVHNM3YX6WJXDBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144736},"content":"Pat Greene, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, remembers those dance hall days vividly. A barman at The Crown in Cricklewood and a bouncer at the Galtymore in the 1980s, Greene witnessed hundreds of hopeful singles flooding through the doors every weekend. A natural people-watcher, he would often retreat to the balcony, where he could observe the dance floor below. He’s also a self-declared great dancer, who enjoyed watching those who were skilled on the floor and mentally noting who was up to par. He remembers that many of the men preferred the slow dances – though not for the reasons you might think.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2GSGGS575VDQPGI2P6LUJKBJHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144737},"content":"“It wasn’t just about getting close to a woman,” he explains. “It was because the steps were easier and you could see the lads who weren’t great dancers relax when the steps were simpler. They were less self-conscious.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LC6JUZFIQNBC3B27JSS7OTVQ5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144738},"content":"For Rodgers and her friends, conversations with a new dance partner could range from lighthearted banter to serious fact-finding missions. Finding out about a man’s “seed and breed”, she says, was fair game, but so too were practicalities – like whether he owned a car. A “yes” would prompt a subtle thumbs-up to the girls at the bar, a silent signal that a lift home had been secured, freeing up their bus fare for another round of drinks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43736DJWDFDPZBYHLAAJO65SMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144739},"type":"image"},{"_id":"OIRZLBQIWBFLRETFA6WNNH4RCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144740},"content":"She fondly remembers the night her husband approached her. A Donegal native, off the boat only a matter of weeks, he made a beeline for Rodgers and complimented the rose on her dress – a simple remark that opened the door to a drink, a dance and, by the end of the night, a drive home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJPOM2DTZ5HF5NXWDQOJTCDMBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144741},"content":"“He even came in for tea and to meet my mum,” she says. “Our second date? Another dance, but this time he met all my aunts and uncles – my cousins too. That was just the done thing – and he didn’t run a mile, so I knew he was a keeper.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7OGZ7OGWJBRNPYSV3XWAY6N3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144742},"content":"Their courtship, like so many others, played out to the rhythm of the dance hall. Living on opposite sides of London meant meticulous planning. Every Tuesday night they’d walk to the phone booths at the end of their respective roads, timing their calls down to the minute. Miss it, and that was that – no texts, no second chances, just a long wait until Saturday, where an explanation would be expected, if they showed up at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QXM2Y2V5F5E2JHMD3TKGPRVGOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144743},"content":"Between scheduled calls, meeting cousins and courting under the watchful eyes of parents (often in full view on the dance floor), there was little room for ambiguity. If you liked someone, you made it known. Any hesitation, and by the following week you might be watching them waltz into the arms of someone else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RJUVDXLF6FB3LCV3HBUYJU5JNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144744},"content":"Relationships back then were built on shared moments, anticipation and the quiet hope that the next dance might lead to something extraordinary. These dance halls weren’t just places to move to the music; they were the heart of courtship, community and young love.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5W5EYJDJ2BEKDOK4LBJTNXDO74","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144745},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CRI6K2CBL5ACXADXUF32VCRULU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144746},"content":"Bernard Conlon, from Dublin, remembers them as vital social hubs for his generation, and he laments that young people today don’t have the same opportunities to meet face-to-face.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DSG3RJ6IQRGALD34QKGPTS7C7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144747},"content":"With a chuckle, he recalls his own time spent in a showband in the 1960s. Many a Friday morning, he and a group of pals would load up their van, travel the country, and play to packed venues over the weekend – feeling every bit the rock’n’roll stars. Closer to home, he timed his visits to cousins in Sligo to coincide with the marquee weekends – legendary dance nights held in large tents that popped up in rural parishes throughout spring, summer and autumn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E3RZ6SDH6FAJBA2JN5YBIYSEBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144748},"content":"This was the showband circuit in full swing, with home-grown acts filling the dance floors with energy and giving young people a rare and electrifying escape. In the country towns, where the clergy’s influence still loomed large, these weekends were a much needed release.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ELVWID4WCZGYTOSVQU537FVZYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144749},"content":"Making The Ballroom of Romance in Co Mayo: ‘Even passing it today, I still think I can hear the music in it’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T6CQSKJJRNDNZJJ6VHCZTMORHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144750},"content":"It was at a Garda dance on Dublin’s South Circular Road in 1968 that Conlon first spotted the tall, beautiful woman who would go on to become his wife. He asked her to dance and a small misunderstanding on the dance floor turned into an inside joke that lasted throughout their 50-year marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2I657Z6QGBEYNAZKUGLOJ7ZRO4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"YFIAZJYEZFF4BFKYMZARNIJMAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144752},"content":"“She asked me if I could drive,” he chuckles, “and I sheepishly admitted I only had my provisional licence.” A confused look and a few clarifications later revealed she’d actually asked if he could jive. And as it turned out, he could. “I wasn’t the greatest dancer,” he says, “but when we danced together, it was like we were cut from the same cloth – like it was meant to be.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJ24IX5O3NENFDHZDF4EN3STH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144753},"content":"Three weeks – and many jives – later, he proposed. They married in 1970, building a life filled with love, laughter and music until Anne passed away four years ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7TW6FZDM4NEW7I37XAJYVHSJKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144754},"content":"Conlon looks back now with nostalgia at the way things used to be for young couples dating. The simplicity of the era meant that couples might meet on a Saturday night, share a dance and make plans to see each other again. Months or even mere weeks later, they might be engaged.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RQLVEJ4W3ZFKPFVOBEFF32ZKC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144755},"content":"These were different times, Rodgers agrees. “There wasn’t the endless second-guessing we see today,” she says. “You got to know someone quickly, often in the space of a few dances.” There weren’t infinite options at your fingertips, there were no notifications pulling your attention in different directions – it was all about just about the person in front of you, with both of you giving it the chance to see where it might lead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5HUUIH3ZBDINGZ32QHOR3WGEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144756},"content":"Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing. To fall in love during a dance, you first had to actually ask someone to dance – and for some people, that was a step too far. Pat Greene remembers many men who were simply too shy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHMZYIDUCJHGRMOMBJ4VX6D6QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144757},"content":"“I’d be talking to auld lads at the bar and even 50, 60 years later they were still in love with a girl they never had the courage to ask out. They’d come into the dance halls for a bit of company – they’d be on their own, but they weren’t alone in there, if you get me. And sure, the drink became their companion too, I suppose.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UJ3JOMLERFBGVG3WCMRYMDOWBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144758},"content":"Perhaps this is where modern technology has its merits. For those who once lacked the courage to strike up a conversation, apps can provide a safe starting point. But over-reliance on them risks stripping away the serendipity that makes romance special. Today, we have infinite choices, yet connection feels more elusive. Back then, you didn’t need hundreds of matches – you just needed one good dance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYV7Y6WAF5ANJBNYDB3K65YFUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144759},"content":"And sometimes you have to trust your instincts. Rodgers recalls how John told her he loved her after just a few weeks of courting. Young and fond of him but overwhelmed, she let him leave her house that evening without making plans for their next call. As the minutes ticked by, a gnawing feeling grew – had she just let him slip away? With no phones and no easy way to contact him, the odds of seeing him again felt slim. Worse still, would he avoid the Galtymore altogether after being rebuffed?","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEVEUQC3RNEEHIFZPLMMFUM2EU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144760},"content":"As fate would have it, Rodgers’s aunt’s boyfriend was home that evening, car keys in hand. Acting on impulse, she begged him to drive her to the nearest Tube station, hoping to catch John before he disappeared into the London night. Luck was on her side – she found him. Breathless, she apologised and asked if he’d be at the Galtymore that weekend. “You’ll have to wait and see,” he replied as the train doors slid shut behind him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ITKUFY4P5EHDOG2FPF6JJTIX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144761},"content":"Saturday arrived, and Rodgers turned up at the Galtymore, feeling nervous and hopeful in equal measure. And there he was. From that moment on, they were inseparable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CK4S7JQECRAURCFTFULH46TC6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144762},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"XGUUM47D2BCNVC7APSHF7AD4JU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144763},"content":"Forty-three years later, it’s clear she still feels the same way about her husband. “He has been the best father and the best husband I could have ever wished for,” she says. In the absence of dance halls, her daughter now goes to Irish bars in Manchester, hoping to meet someone like her dad. Rodgers isn’t convinced – or maybe she is just a bit biased. “I don’t know if she will – I don’t know if they make men like him any more,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UTCVHT5LPZEMJIOUHF7HPJAE2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144764},"content":"On a weekend when many couples are celebrating Valentine’s by going for a dinner or a night out, Rodgers’s experience serves as a reminder of the importance of taking a chance. How we pursue romance may have changed but the search for love remains the same. And while the dance floors may be gone, a relationship can still begin with a bold approach and the courage to ask, “Can I buy you a drink?”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Niamh Linehan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Before dating apps, in Ireland and for the Irish diaspora in Britain, many’s the courtship that played out to the rhythm of a dance hall"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ballrooms of romance: ‘I wasn’t the greatest dancer but when we danced together it was like it was meant to be’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM","auth":{"1":"62963b72ba99fc3e3201868236b8834e05119976a51cdb9969576ac3068bdb22"},"focal_point":{"x":449,"y":258},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"People"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style/people","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"People"}}}},{"_id":"ZGLSL65EBBD7ZIFSBJE6AN44G4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":427,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/79d6dfab-ef66-4986-9124-408d6aa81c18/versions/1738764673/media/4e96d49a4d62dc77dfeda26f7a2aa6d8_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QAXMZMQ3GNDBJAPGLVYPZTIEUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643792},"content":"“Now”. Such a small phrase and yet so expansive. Though it has many uses and contexts, I associate it most with the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_self\">Irish mammy</a>. Spoken aloud as she collects herself at the close of one task before beginning to consider the next.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RHRNGD7MRCJPHOCZZLU4PL6FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643793},"content":"Uttered on a long exhalation countless times in a day filled with such tasks. Or to mark her satisfaction as she knocks something off her to-do list.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUJBNMASI5GU3JWMFN6P2A5C6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643794},"content":"I would often hear my mother mutter “now” to herself as she put something she’d baked on the table. A way of verbally icing her achievement. Once, as she stood in the kitchen quietly examining a chocolate cake she’d made (my mother was famous for her chocolate cake), not realising I was standing behind her, she followed the “now” with an “I’m s**t hot”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3HBQSTB35FGBHN7K2X7DXFJPZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643795},"content":"My prim, always correct mother rendered a softly spoken egotist by an excellent cake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWPR5GBOPFDDHK2CYOBUWSVNOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643796},"content":"“Now” can be presented as a sort of offering when sharing a piece of shocking but thrilling news. Your neighbour has been arrested, for example. The one who always wears shorts (even in February) so that just looking at him makes your legs start to ache. Apparently, there was a cannabis farm in a secret bunker under his house. Gardaí raided the place while you were on a weekend in Kilkee. Sure no wonder about the shorts – the house must have been sweltering with the grow lamps. Everyone discusses this dramatic news at luxuriant length. Several neighbours along the road express the obligatory, “I knew there was something off about that lad all along”, completing the ritual of collectively processing bad and exciting news, and then there is a lull. A pause.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BPEHWV2D5EUTBUQ7EAUMAFTAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643797},"content":"The person who originally offered the information looks meaningfully at everyone. “Now”, they say. “Now for you.” Everyone nods sagely.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXROITHIPNCTHH5PI5AIIICEAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643798},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T54IRGOK2ZGI7LY56XO2542KNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643799},"content":"Or it’s a chastisement. Irish people don’t lean into a “now now!” when castigating a sandwich-stealing dog or attempting to upbraid a churlish adolescent quietly seething at how pointless and stupid everyone else in the family is over dinner. The double utterance feels a bit camp, a bit affected, and consequently insufficiently excoriating. Just the one will usually do it. The eyes glint over with incredulity. The chin retracts into the neck like a tortoise going home to himself. The head tilts. The “now!” which results from this rearrangement of one’s head is an expression of weary distaste directed at someone who is presumed to know better. Get in line. Pipe down. Cop on for yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"742ZZTYXP5D5JDH4IG2YWZM2UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643800},"content":"Someone, canine, human or otherwise, is pushing their luck. If the situation is dire, and a whole wedding cake rather than a sandwich has been pilfered, or the adolescent has shifted from looking contemptuous to audibly scoffing at the Christmas table as auntie Bridie shares her tragic life story, an “Ah now!” may ensue. Here is the thinnest of ice. Both an expostulation and a warning. It says, “you fool” and “you chancer” and “were you dragged up?”. It says, “stop making a show of yourself and, consequently, the rest of us” as you prize a delicate white triangle of egg mayonnaise from the jaws of a goofy looking doodle with colon problems by the name of Christopher. “Ah now. Christopher you can’t keep pulling this sort of gobshitery. €400 at the vet last time. Would you just accept that dairy is your Jaysus kryptonite? You’ll be down for the day… now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7J6ZY3BHREZJCYTNZZPSD7RHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643801},"content":"Or my favourite now is the now that means decidedly not precisely now. The one that bends time to its own grammatical will, and understandably baffles anyone who, coming in from outside the Irish colloquial lexicon, has the sense to try and take you literally. “I’ll do that now in a minute.” “Where was that beach we went to now last summer? The one in Kerry.” “Why would you be going on a second date with that eejit now and he sending DMs to half your Pilates class in September?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7IYBCFUTOVCGRBQOILQZGWXQZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643802},"content":"“Now” is a sentence. A statement. A cryptic verse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BWH655DMRNBHHED352L6447P6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643803},"content":"It is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. Like most Irish people, I keep this weapon holstered most of the time. I use it when deadly force is needed, or when I’ve just finished folding all my towels and am getting ready to send a few emails. Or when, for example, I’m writing this very column but decide (approximately here) to stop and make a nice cup of tea. Now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"46XRJLX42VEIRJE6HSSP5YB7EI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643804},"content":"“Now” does not wield the same sacred power in Australia. I use it with my English husband, who lived in Ireland long enough to absorb its value. Though he uses the very British “right!” on finishing a task and before beginning another, which reminds me that while we may love one another, we are ancient enemies really. In Australia, “now” is the time that is the present time. It’s not a threat or a sense of internal satisfaction or verbal evidence of transitioning between the last task and the next. As far as I can tell a year-plus into Australian life, now is just “now” here, though there are plenty of rich local uses of language that we don’t share at home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHQK3P5ZG5BNNODFQD2JRLFBCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643805},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australians respond differently to nature compared to Irish people","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QT7K7GPJGJDBPFFBXEO5XRMZSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643806},"content":"For a short while, I was baffled by “too easy”, which I’ve learned is the Australian equivalent of our “no bother” or “grand”. I’d ask the guy behind the pharmacy counter for some eye drops and he’d hand them to me, merrily saying “too easy!” and I’d think “what a strange thing to be so arrogant about”. But really, Australians are quite like us in this way. When they say something that means, “I didn’t inconvenience myself to help you”, they really mean “you did not inconvenience me. I am happy to help you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7IGMOE6RVDJ5OSXPVT4CR53GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643807},"content":"Like us, sometimes they talk in a way that is a few feet to the left or right of what they are literally saying. It’s not quite “now”, but I’ll tell you this much – it can be a comfort now when you’re far from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Like us, Australians sometimes talk in a way that is a few feet to the left or right of what they are literally saying"},"display_date":"2025-02-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74","auth":{"1":"3290cef646d36215a9aece6fdc85a0508dfefbaa9ebe98b15428b86ab58d7d0f"},"focal_point":{"x":1211,"y":1976},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"R2TBSPVUW5GX7FFYK4PNQ7B5AQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":496,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6a4b9e32-460e-4bee-a1c9-ad671ce1b182/versions/1738928081/media/0d7bbb6fbc74693af1105c4543d65e1d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"XZFQXV26CNANHFD6DHHOXXQPD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107056},"content":"Having had a standard <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christian-brothers/\" target=\"_blank\">Christian Brothers’</a> school <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/\" target=\"_blank\">education</a>, I was brought up to believe that the British Empire was the embodiment of all evil. That changed somewhat when I proceeded to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/trinity-college-dublin-tcd/\" target=\"_blank\">Trinity College</a>, but particularly when I read <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2022/10/08/jan-morris-a-life-of-great-escapes/#:~:text=Born%20in%20Clevedon%20on%20the,the%20Booker%20Prize%20in%201985.\" target=\"_blank\">Jan Morris’</a>s Pax Britannica trilogy, at the age of 19. Morris wrote an affectionate portrait of empire. It was uneven, but nevertheless a very good read. It opened my eyes to the variegated nature of the imperial era.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7B56PUTSRJG5FH3HU7YRZORNMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107057},"content":"When I travelled in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/africa/\" target=\"_blank\">Africa</a> I was much taken aback to discover that British rule was viewed by many through a lens of nostalgia – selective, no doubt, but emphasising stability and the rule of law.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBLSSJT2UJFHFHWAU2UOYGEZJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107058},"content":"I was equally surprised that Ireland had little or no profile as the intrepid small nation that led the way in imperial disintegration. Conversely, notably in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kenya/\" target=\"_blank\">Kenya</a>, it was well known that the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/south-africa/\" target=\"_blank\">South African</a> Boers, at the zenith of empire, fought imperial forces to a standstill. The salient point was that imperial might was not unassailable. Kenyan accession to independence, unusually in British Africa, was violent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LSRPQPQANENRL7VVQXGRZXJSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107059},"content":"Ignorance of Ireland was not universal. I was surprised when an <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/algeria/\" target=\"_blank\">Algerian</a> colleague described the tactics of the Algerian armed independence movement, the FLN: “But you will, of course, be familiar with how we hit at French administration. We studied your <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/michael-collins/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Collins</a> closely.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGGY7SNVBVEDLHI4WWKEBRXYL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107060},"content":"Less surprising was discovering that Yitzhak Shamir, when leader of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – the Stern Gang in imperial parlance – adopted “Michael”, again following Collins, as his nom-de-guerre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWH6ZB2D7VD6TOYEN2YLLBK36A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107061},"content":"This view on Irish relationships with imperialism, however, cut both ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EK6QL4CV5VCKBLF3J7RTZ4656Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107062},"content":"I once mentioned the “British Raj” to a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/pakistan/\" target=\"_blank\">Pakistani</a> colleague. His family had left <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/india/\" target=\"_blank\">India</a> following the independence and partition of the country. He hauled me up in rather sharp manner<i>. </i>“You are referring to the Irish Raj, I take it? Do you know how many Irish there were in the Indian civil service?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EV6ZY7MHKFBAVDRBVQHSKNNRZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107063},"content":"I was relieved that he made no reference to the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. Brigadier Dyer, who gave the order to fire, was educated at Midleton College in Cork. Michael O’Dwyer, lieutenant governor of the Punjab, who supported Dyer, hailed from Co Tipperary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OI74I43DTFD3ZNDAFLSMW5ZQVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107064},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"KBGNV5VYXZHBZLOFF36YIP6K4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107065},"content":"Erstwhile British possessions seem to be rather relaxed about street and other location naming. The main drag in Delhi is still Connaught Circus. There is an area of Singapore called Killiney. I am not sure, however, that overt association is made with Ireland. Other echoes are extant. The main drag in Kowloon, Hong Kong, is Nathan Road, after Matthew Nathan, under-secretary for Ireland in 1916.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKRRR7WIAZC2ZJCAUYFRS53O6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107066},"content":"Irish profile elsewhere in Asia is low. I gave up, rather early on, correcting confusion with Scotland. I have also had innumerable interactions with taxi drivers along the following lines:","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6XE7PLNIVBLJNCMQSSDZRVGQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107067},"content":"Where are you from?","type":"text"},{"_id":"65F5TTQCVFAX3OWOJDUC64YS5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107068},"content":"Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSFTAQH2OVDS5G34MM4RVUI7PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107069},"content":"Ah, lovely tulips.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWZM56HSMNE3VN7LJ6SEVV4IL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107070},"content":"No, Ireland, not the Netherlands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NU2CWHBFUZE27DUIYW7PRXE7SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107071},"content":"Ah, <i>very</i> cold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZYWKCCOJVFYJMT3A3PXOHT52A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107072},"content":"The profile of Iceland, I deduced, was greater than that of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYGJIRYYYJH6LMYZWXN5ZKJVWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107073},"content":"For a brief period, I was surprised at the number of market traders who claimed relatives in Ireland. Then I started answering the question of my provenance with “Ruritani”<i> </i>(the fictional country in central Europe used as a setting for novels by Anthony Hope). An equal, if not a greater number, had relatives there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2UKDGJGWNHNJESA6PXXG7XTI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107074},"content":"European perceptions are another matter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKSB2UTSRBBPHN6TLCWIIOLFVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107075},"content":"When I worked in Belgium, colleagues seemed to think of me as a child of nature from a primitive windswept rock out in the Atlantic somewhere. They kindly explained the basics of how modern societies work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UR33BSA6YJB6XBAGKKPEDKM6VA","additional_properties":{"_id":"3E34ELSMJJE7HCKEEM72UC4DRA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"R7G55IJ5CBACXJJND4NJLK7RBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107077},"content":"Ireland’s EU membership notwithstanding, few had any awareness of the Republic as an independent state. Rather, they had a vague idea that the relationship with Britain was similar to that of Flanders or Wallonia with the Belgian state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWQ23TYJFNF4JDXBPNHIROTVJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107078},"content":"French radicals, veterans of the French student protests of 1968, solemnly assured me of solidarity in the anti-imperialist struggle. Britain, no doubt coloured by Gallic disdain for les Anglo-Saxons and by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/margaret-thatcher/\" target=\"_blank\">Margaret Thatcher</a>’s bellicose comportment on matters European,<i> </i>was the devil incarnate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YFFY632YTVEHFNQJKI4UK66PEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107079},"content":"Algeria and Vietnam went unmentioned, as did extant realities of l’Afrique francophone. Abstractions of Ireland were odd. Some were aware of the prevailing Catholic ethos of the country at the time, and assumed that the mores and ethos of the anti-Semitic, clerical French Third Republic applied undiluted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3PXJCVOQJGIRBSWC5HZCHFGME","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107080},"content":"Germans, while again being very hazy about constitutional status – Bavaria’s relationship with the Bundesrepublik figured – often had very clear ideas of Ireland and the Irish. In contrast to themselves, we break rules (delighted horror) and sing until dawn in pubs, in the manner of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-dubliners/\" target=\"_blank\">The Dubliners</a>. Perhaps we could read, and perhaps not. Strange and inexplicable behaviour was to be expected, especially with drink.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIEULSJT5NDDNOVE4SS4NOENV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107081},"content":"When Queen Elizabeth died in 2022, I received many condolence messages. One stands out. It was from a French Canadian whom I knew to be a cultural, if not political nationalist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G36MEYYFVZDODGMMKFORMYUXQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107082},"content":"I responded in French. I thanked him for his message, noting that I had passed it on to my British colleagues. With tongue firmly in cheek, I then extended my own condolences to him, since Canada was a dominion of Britain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VROJHVXAIRBQTIQQYXUZZSP6PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107083},"content":"I spent one <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/st-patrick/\" target=\"_blank\">St Patrick’s Day</a> in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\" target=\"_blank\">New York</a>, and one in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/los-angeles/\" target=\"_blank\">Los Angeles</a>. As the real thing – a real live Irishman – I was feted, which on one level was gratifying. However, in LA I got so fed up with the incessant yells of “Ah, St Patty’s Day” that I went back to my hotel at lunchtime and changed my green tie.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BURLZAGASNBFRBHCHN6R756J5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107084},"content":"I learned to keep my mouth shut when it was assumed that I would hold socially and religiously conservative views. Equally, I adhered to a rule of never engaging Americans on Irish politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNZN6ALHG5FLJJKA2K57JNT6MA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107085},"content":"Perceptions were copper-fastened, especially among Irish Americans who had never been to Ireland. Political views seemed mired in 1919. Economic views seemed mired in 1860. They were unbudgeable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Enda Hardiman"}]},"description":{"basic":"Belgian colleagues kindly explained the basics of how modern societies work; I adhered to a rule of never engaging Americans on Irish politics"},"display_date":"2025-02-10T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"I’ve worked in 60 countries – here is what people have said to me about Ireland","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA","auth":{"1":"53e29d8e0a97d3ae26d6891bcac1128d79d9c80b90a84538872338e4436ac363"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"NDTI6GOZRZDU3PCHH3FC7YQLAU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":326,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/4bba41c5-986b-48ab-a8d0-17e683270f8e/versions/1738750387/media/f204d34a8d865e915c49ab0622f364ec_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZM6NCTNEEZGVPMQZ33PVNAKULI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2021, Cork-born Australian-based jockey Johnny Allen recorded the biggest victory of his career when he won the Cox Plate in Melbourne. It is a prestigious race for thoroughbreds that attracts a world-class field. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3Y3E23JYVAPXJ7PJETK4L5FJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"What made the victory all the sweeter was that Allen triumphed on the Irish-bred, Irish-trained horse State of Rest from the Joseph O’Brien stable. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OFBCPXADLJG6HNC6IGSCVSJ2A4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For Allen, who had moved to Australia in 2012 when he felt his career at home was stalling, the win was pivotal, and he has had no shortage of rides since. He now lives in Miners Rest in Ballarat in the state of Victoria and races between three and six days a week on the flat having started his career as a jump jockey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XM7WIDP2PNDVZK2GRJMTC4HOVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen hails from the north Cork village of Araglin, about half way between Fermoy and Mitchelstown. He could ride almost as soon as he could walk (his mother taught riding locally), and although his family had no direct involvement in racing, they always kept horses and ponies. In his early teens, Allen began working summers and weekends in a local stud. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WS6ROSLSFFGOFLW3PJSBMTII4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There’s a photo of me with a black eye – not that I remember it – after a fall off a pony aged two or three,” says Allen. “I did a bit of pony racing, hunting and point to point as a boy, but our ponies weren’t the sort of expensive animals you’d see in pony clubs. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"TUXQSRSV25CN7BXQN3O473YD4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I had some success with the pony racing and, when I finished the Leaving Cert, I decided to turn my attention towards building a career as a professional jockey. I hadn’t enjoyed school much and wasn’t interested in continuing in education.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOUP7WBLCBAFBPMX4AFKWJ5OUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F4K27MKWGRA6TLW7BPFV7DSHFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen got his first ride with Joe Crowley (trainer Aidan O’Brien’s father-in-law) and rode his first winner for Crowley’s daughter, Frances, who was the first woman to saddle an Irish Classic winner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XAEK3PBZBVBIRK6D6ZRTH4AHZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I had my first taste of Australia at the age of 18 when I was part of a group of jump jockeys sent out to represent Ireland on a sponsored tour,” says Allen who has amassed more than 1,000 victories during his career, including 19 group one winners. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"T5F6THWXFRHPBBXT6LWFTQYJPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2011 he spent six enjoyable months in Australia, and this experience along with a combination of itchy feet and the prospect of more work made him decide to relocate there full time a year later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH3264J2EJC6VIPAMIWERWB444","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I subsequently transferred to flat racing to get more opportunities, as jump racing is quite small here,” says Allen, who has competed in several marathons and an Ironman challenge to keep himself in good shape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HV4Y4FDLKZHNPL7ZXP42IDF4OY","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"5A3G3T3NCZA2NNFLRMIT4VTVCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"At 5ft 8in (173cm), Allen is quite tall for a flat jockey, so he has to be constantly vigilant about his weight. He typically competes at about nine stones (or less) which rules out overdoing the treats, he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IWXZGTLY6ZESFG2ZYWCKZMI2ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The racing industry is big in Ireland relative to the size of the country but it’s extremely competitive in terms of trainers, horses and jockeys and there’s room for maybe 10-20 at the top level. There are no gaps you can jump into and become successful quickly. By coming here, I have been able compete in some of the biggest races in the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCPYEICFUJH45A4RR66PSTFHGE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“In Australia, there is racing every day apart from Christmas Day, so the industry here is much, much bigger,” he adds. “Nevertheless you don’t become successful overnight. It takes time to build up a reputation and to hook up with successful trainers. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YUCCASB74ZALHJKLRSWQ2GTL3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Now I predominantly ride for Ciaron Maher Racing, one of the biggest stables in Australia, and mainly compete interstate, which cuts down on the travel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DKZFDWV6EJGNJKWNSCTSJ253CY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’ve been lucky that my injuries have been mainly fractures and dislocations and not anything more serious. As long as you don’t sustain a bad injury and you stay healthy, you can sustain your career into your 50s,” says Allen, who has recently turned 40.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7QIJUVKBZAHJI7LSS4EGOCHKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“After that, there’s not necessarily a clear window as to where you go next, although I’d have some interest in maybe going down the training route. But, no more than being a jockey, it’s a tough, tough game. To be honest I haven’t put much thought into it yet. It’s still a bridge to be crossed.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WIFK4I5QENG3VNBNSM5MOARORU","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Copenhagen is like Disneyland compared to Munich: moving here immediately resonated with me’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3TUSPMFGBRHS7FU4A2DJDQKNZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen got married in 2023 and recently became a first-time dad. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W7TFLCQ4ANAWFLEUF46L2PXGO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Australia has a lot going for it as a place to live and this includes the climate and a good quality of life,” he says. “Of course I miss my family and friends, and I suppose when I came out here first, I assumed I’d go home at some point. However, the longer you stay, the harder it becomes. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3UKSDYKPZCAZDAVNRKD6M5W7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The ideal would be to spend a few months a year in Ireland and the rest of the time here. I’ve lived in a country area since moving to Australia, and the people are friendly and relaxed and more laid back than in the big cities.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LD27RXER2RB7VOPB2HRKOKJS3M","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is a big Irish community involved in racing in Australia so Allen is not short of Irish friends to socialise with and he has a brother in Perth and a sister in Melbourne. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NCN7AZ6R6JA3DJT35V73QDB5EA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“My Mum is also a regular visitor as she loves it out here. We got my Dad over for our wedding last year, which was great. It was his first time on a plane in 40 years.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q25RYLDS3FDK3LJO357Y6ZYY7A","additional_properties":{},"content":" ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Johnny Allen, Australia"},"display_date":"2025-02-09T10:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ","auth":{"1":"72d6d861968433618f1d79f6e8bac5a265206242f0b9727a13246d0b61f1bb59"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ.png"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"K4TQMPFRBFDRXL3WNKBSUHGIPQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":300,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b0cfc33a-f64e-416d-9a58-9c229ee16c1c/versions/1738858417/media/1e931fa4d2adb4732b4d8b7fd1c3e5ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UTYSELKQEBDC5LSVM345EVDQRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855194},"content":"My Dad was 18 when he tried to join the Royal Air Force. He’d wanted to fly planes since he was a little boy. Going to England and signing up to the RAF seemed to be the most straightforward way to do that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W7HD74MMZAFHHAOET4XSTAMBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855195},"content":"He took a ferry to Wales, jumped on a train to London and revelled in the debauchery of 1970s Soho. Home had been that relentlessly flat, green strip of soil called the Curragh.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IZDJWAMDCNDWDMIQXXV6DM3CJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855196},"content":"Bathed in the lurid glow of strip bars and porno kiosks, it must have felt like another planet. He’d swapped Dominican friars gripping rosary beads for pimps with golden crosses nestled in greasy chest hair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLJ2JRARG5CZHGC6ED3S4YUMIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855197},"content":"The RAF didn’t want him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TKXGS5PVI5FI5EVZZ2TTEUPFOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855198},"content":"They told him to try again once he had finished his legal studies at UCD. He was disappointed, but decided to have another go once he got his degree.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3NMFGKJ3FCANEFNOKZXCR6XAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855199},"content":"Then Bloody Sunday happened.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X4XKQQ62DJEMLL6YMNDBABGQKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855200},"content":"Rather than daydreaming about darting through the sky in an Electric Lightning, my old man was in the crowd cheering <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/the-day-of-rage-after-bloody-sunday-that-saw-the-british-embassy-burn-down-1.4791709\" target=\"_self\">when the British</a> embassy burned in Dublin. The Anglo-Irish relationship hadn’t just soured – it turned rancid. Serving the crown suddenly was suddenly out of the question.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBJGOR5WL5D3DPJCHW4XGXIJDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855201},"content":"He never went back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVVGK5KQYZGRRFQYFYACKH6DO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855202},"content":"Contrary to the stereotype, the Irish attitude towards Britain isn’t one of static resentment. It hardens and softens again over time according to the developments of the day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NH5R3PMVBJDGDKUCKAH2ZJ5CXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855203},"content":"I moved to London shortly after the Brexit referendum. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/boris-johnson/\" target=\"_self\">Boris Johnson</a> and his clown-car of hardliners were in the ascendancy. Their contempt for the Irish peace process was galling. Relations never reached the lows of the Troubles, but it was an uncomfortable reminder of how little some English people think of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHRRQTE6AFB3PGSRB2QFNZEJAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855204},"content":"The notion of the treacherous, slovenly Paddy has been around for almost a thousand years. It was first codified in 1185 when Gerald of Wales wrote Topographia Hibernica, describing us as “dedicated to leisure and laziness ... a truly barbarous people”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A77BRFWJGVH2NPNQIGG7BSLEMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855205},"content":"The framing of the Irish as a morally inferior ethnic group allowed the British to rationalise the atrocities that followed. They used Ireland to experiment with colonisation for the first time, a process of trial and error that they would eventually perfect in Africa and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YWCD225QEVHDVIBHUD3LYQH3CQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855206},"content":"Today, most people I meet here have a positive disposition towards us. Though some old habits die hard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BW2IHKU5E5FALCLNYSZNKGN3KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855207},"content":"The <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/12/10/daily-mail-vs-kneecap-belfast-rap-trios-anti-british-film-has-the-newspaper-up-in-arms-again/\">Daily Mail’s coverage</a> of<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kneecap/\" target=\"_self\"> Kneecap</a>’s win at the British Independent Film Awards was another reminder of the UK’s discomfort with uppity colonials. If an Irish artist living in the UK makes any critique of the establishment that governs them, they can be easily and thoughtlessly dismissed as “anti-Brits”. The singularity of their cultural identity is not embraced, but they are not considered “properly” British either. The black sheep of the empire, the same but different, mad cousins living on a rock in the Atlantic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIOG7D7K5BA27LYR7UFRJYP7PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855208},"content":"Most ordinary people in the UK have no strong feelings on Ireland or its place in the world. They think of it as the land of black beer and singsong accents, if they think about us at all. The complexities of our shared history is poorly understood. They look at British colonisation the way they look at their parents' sex life – they know it happened, but they’d prefer not to know the details.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXMJGN635BB3FNUWEE24FLYGKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855209},"content":"There is an alternative reality, perhaps, where events played out differently. One where Dad flew planes at the pleasure of her majesty, one where Irish people feel less protective of our national heritage. But here in the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJQQCXP7VJDY5EZ77EDCJHYCDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855210},"content":"Here it feels lighter and more fragile, like it might slip away from me if I loosen my grip. Rather than soften my accent or the Hiberno-English peculiarities of my speech, I lean into them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVNLP5P6SRDZDFD5Y533X2ZTOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855211},"content":"“What’s the story? Any craic?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLX6NPKUL5EGHDAE3RYEGMAWVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855212},"content":"I am not British, I am Irish, now tell me a story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LXH7TPWC4JBKPD2ZQYFDVZ77T4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855213},"content":"The confused look I get is vaguely satisfying.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LREVOW5CZEXVJSO3DZZIK4EVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855214},"content":"A tiny mutiny has taken place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZVZ72KUNBGE5ESNR6V7646EXE","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Peter Flanagan"}]},"description":{"basic":"In the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise"},"display_date":"2025-02-07T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ","auth":{"1":"5af1b53ff253cdad600b5b032d983583207bde458d48d165be0e2c9bd7bbf4de"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"TT4UPRHO6NEXFDKUGMKFBYJSJY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TKRFXPSXTJEIFBGPETAM7IBCMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the most-read abroad stories of the month came from Hugo Harvey. He writes about how studying English literature at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/university-of-oxford/\" rel=\"\">University of Oxford</a> as an Irish undergraduate was <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/\">an education in being an outsider</a>. “I felt alienated from the very start.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTBLBAZAGRE7PMOKWPHLBV42QE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He writes that on his second evening, the college organised a formal dinner for undergraduates to meet the tutors. “Many of my peers were from British private schools, so were already comfortable in this world. One of them even corrected my American professor’s table manners, scoffing at her for not using her cutlery in the right order.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWTPINZEBZGDLA22UV4IU5AW4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the 40th anniversary year of Live Aid, New York-based Bray man Mark O’Toole explains what motivated him to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/\">do the Great Ethiopian Run</a>. “The real purpose of my trip lay in witnessing Goal’s fieldwork first hand. As Bono once said, nothing prepares you for the ‘car park of humanity’. The stark reality of refugees and displaced families, forced from their homes by conflict, famine or other crises, was overwhelming.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OOVX3GUJJZHCROZB2AFRS35O5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Richard Hennessy <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/23/experience-and-the-wisdom-that-comes-with-it-are-highly-valued-in-asian-culture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/23/experience-and-the-wisdom-that-comes-with-it-are-highly-valued-in-asian-culture/\">moved to Singapore in his 50s</a> with his partner in 2018 and found that his experience and the soft skills we learn in Ireland were valued there. “Singapore’s low income tax was a revelation. When I received my first tax bill, I contacted the inland revenue authority, worried they had made a mistake and I would end up owing thousands in back tax. But there was no mistake.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOJX2UJSMVEHVCCINFVVUTGKKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Northern correspondent Seanín Graham spoke to Joanne Davey, a Carrickfergus-born <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/\">former PSNI officer who relocated to Adelaide</a> and joined the South Australian Police. She says lower crime levels, beautiful weather and her outdoors life in the family camper van are among the big differences to life in Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JN6UTW3SUNAG3HXLV6UKVNFOXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Caroline Ryan from north Cork lives in Copenhagen where she works as a photographer and brand consultant. She immediately <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/\">fell in love with the city</a> in 2020. “It’s like Disneyland compared to Munich,” she says, “and Danes are like kittens compared to Munich where people will not shy away from telling you what to do.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTOMYUY2KZFGPJZ75AAU3GXLMQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"John Connolly charted <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/09/i-stepped-through-a-door-and-emerged-as-a-us-citizen-but-now-comes-the-journey-of-belonging/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/09/i-stepped-through-a-door-and-emerged-as-a-us-citizen-but-now-comes-the-journey-of-belonging/\">his path to US citizenship</a> almost 25 years after arriving in Boston in March 2000. He worked in the mayor’s office for years before taking a circuitous route to becoming the director of marketing at the Harvard Art Museums. “The people at the museum taught me the power of being both fiercely and fearlessly positive... It was in that environment that I realised that US careers are built upon confidence, and hard work is the bank that confidence draws from.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CK4PWDG5FNFGZH4V7QR74ASPDY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flight attendant Paula Gahan offers her <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/\">five top tips</a> on how to avoid stress on your next trip from booking early to buying your own liquid bag for airport security.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JHJ2BLXLJEIJH5FXSQM4BCJO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fashion designer Molly Walters <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/11/10/designing-sustainable-fashion-that-grandmother-would-have-approved-of/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/11/10/designing-sustainable-fashion-that-grandmother-would-have-approved-of/\">tells us about life in Lisbon</a> where she is working to “combat fast fashion and unconscious consumerism”. She says: “I find it a youthful city; people want to be out and about all the time and there is always something happening.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OF3AG3CERFHFFGYPUOBRKFL2DY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Finally, at the end of last year Megan Nolan wrote about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/\">the experience of dating in her 30s</a> and how a conversation with a man in the US made clear the realities of this new era in her life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTGD7HEQ55HFXKYUCX4U6YVXBU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thanks for reading.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"We hear from an Irish man who moved to Singapore in his 50s and a Cork photographer in Copenhagen"},"display_date":"2025-01-30T14:34:27.234Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’","native":"Irish Times Abroad newsletter: Irish in Oxford - ‘I felt alienated from the very start’"},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA","auth":{"1":"ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d"},"focal_point":{"x":370,"y":236},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"7Z2R3IAMLJEPBGAEMRKZU7KG2I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":386,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/995f72c2-6b64-4c8b-ad57-f303f2dcd8c9/versions/1737459588/media/9e0189f6a8cd948fbd6c8b0d48f84f67_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B2XIMYD4TFEDHAQPYGJOW27RFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It makes sense that General Tso’s chicken is an American invention and not a natural culinary product of home-grown Chinese cuisine. Why? Well, because it’s a ball of deep-fried chicken in a viscous, sugar-based sauce. That’s why, but also because it is the product of one of those countries’ values at the time of its invention, and not so much the other. Italians invented the Italian cut of men’s suits, slender and elegant and a touch charmingly self-celebratory, but unsurprisingly they did not invent lederhosen, pineapple pizza or those T-shirts reading “Body by bacon” that you see on male tourists at historical landmarks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XQZIBMEVMZHOHMIJ34NQMRTPDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish invented keening and colour photography (apparently, thanks to physicist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-irish-man-who-brought-radiotherapy-forward-1.1828507\" target=\"_self\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-irish-man-who-brought-radiotherapy-forward-1.1828507\">John Joly</a>).","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBBSGXQ6N5HEJDXWJILFVQRNYA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I’ll tell you what Irish culture could never produce, invent or conceive. The voice note. It is anathema to the values that generated and uphold Irishness as we know it. While ironically (but perhaps unsurprisingly) the Italians love a voice note, this seemingly benign technological artefact is the Irish person’s pineapple pizza. An offence. Something that threatens and undermines the Irish way of life, if your neighbour with the very weathered Child of Prague lying face-down on her front lawn has anything to say about it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RH7CIDYUABCHBKBZIXCM6HLWI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The voice note might just be a form of Irish cultural erosion. If it wasn’t so inherently American, we’d accuse it of being British just for its gall. The voice note presumes, nay demands, too much. That we are able to hear the sound of our own voice without screaming ourselves hoarse with horror, for one thing. Because once you’ve recorded a voice note, it’s mandatory to listen back to yourself sounding shrill and rambling and incoherent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBAW3C64VFHVHAEM4X7O46JKPM","additional_properties":{"_id":"N7HHDOVL5ZCAFEIWYURAVTAIUI"},"content":"A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beaches","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"55JXY2EW7JGLPGFSCKCPJRL7Y4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Realising that you sent a friend a recording in which you accidentally called them “Mam” for some reason or badmouthed the ex they are now decidedly back with can make you want to crawl into a hole and die. You probably shouldn’t have called him “a waste of polyester” or “the shame of Leitrim”. Worse still, you could send the voice note to the wrong person. This feels (and I know from experience) exactly how it felt that time I accidentally sent my editor at The Irish Times a text message saying merely “I love you” with no further context whatsoever. She was good about it and attempted to let me down gently, but it had been intended for my then boyfriend and really could have been a whole HR snafu.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXXGMMQX6ZCO7DKZ5QVOZKBFZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Secondly, the incoming voice note sidles in presuming that you must want to hear the unfiltered, unedited thoughts of your friends and loved ones, or worse still, your colleagues or boss. It is a technology widely abused by those who consider their verbal incontinence to be a gift to the receiver, or by your mother who voice-notes you incoherently from what sounds like the strongroom of an underground bunker with demands that you remotely fix her various tech problems. “Is this email from Joe Biden asking for a pint of my blood fake?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IVNFPXPMFFVXB4RQTHAUTMEWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Irish culture sees an incoming voice note from anyone and thinks, he/she has some neck to be presuming that they have anything to say worth listening to, or that anyone would want to hear their Dundalk accent talking about “give me a call back when you can. Jimmy’s in the hospital”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y24GTQGJRJH63MY73F4RHT5ZIY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Needy stuff, you know? Have some dignity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V7QH26KSORHSTB7SFEK7444ENI","additional_properties":{},"content":"And yet. Though we could never have invented a mechanism whereby you presume somebody might like to listen to your impromptu monologuing, the voice note is a crucial component of the Irish emigrant toolkit in keeping a live connection with people at home. If you live far from home, even more so. At this time of year, my sofa in Australia is 11 hours ahead of my brother’s kitchen table in Limerick. When it’s waking-up time at home, it’s winding-down time here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXW7O4JZNFDN5IQX72IXCRZYFM","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"6K3BACCFVJE75FNH6LXFGOCVAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It doesn’t sound all that bad, except when you think about what it’s truly like to have a serious, or even a trivial conversation first thing in the morning or just before bed. No matter when you schedule it, somebody probably isn’t in the right head space. At the end of a long day with my small niece and nephew, my brother’s eyes are crossing with tiredness on a video call. First thing in the morning, those two pyjama-clad scamps need to eat their Weetabix and get help putting their socks on and ask exhausting philosophical questions that four-year-olds ask, like, “When do you become a grown-up?” or, “Why do kangaroos only have tiny arms?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XYU3EPVAMZCPPPRZLL7TUU4B5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Here in Australia, in the morning I’m cantankerous and a similar state of affairs rolls around before bed. I’m as prone as my niece to wondering when someone becomes a grown-up when I answer work emails that have come in from the other side of the planet overnight. They lie in wait for me before 7am when I pick up my phone, bleary eyed. It’s such a joy, then, to wake to a voice note from my friend telling me about the date she went on with a man who turned out to be a fugitive wanted by Interpol, or sharing the news of a hard-won promotion at work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UPRCLGV3XJA5BO4CHMMZWTPIN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s so cheering to hear my niece tell me, scandalised, that her baby brother farted in the bath. And it’s easy for me to voice-note her dad about the fact that in Canberra today, for some reason, the air is filled with vast numbers of winged beetles mating frenziedly, and that “beetle orgy day” had apparently not been advertised anywhere in advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZKLLSQ35JH75ON3IENJFENXOI","additional_properties":{},"content":"This nonsense is the stuff of everyday connection.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUEK3UMM4ZAQVJTRKLR4XJNACM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Long live the voice note.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIHOE2JFAVG7XN6O5WF4DV5QNQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLT4KIGANZCTBO3DV3EVFDLXUI","additional_properties":{},"content":"<i>This article was amended on January 31st, 2025</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Yet it is a crucial component of the Irish emigrant toolkit. It’s so cheering to hear my niece tell me, scandalised, that her baby brother farted in the bath"},"display_date":"2025-01-29T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4","auth":{"1":"b431abd4c354f759a93a9f3ec5f767dc2f046ab927a899721a0681a9c1abe299"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"6DVDVDI5QJBRBAPL6I3YYUT4XQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":378,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/90f8154a-f4fe-47f7-8c13-ae5db362d5ef/versions/1737648423/media/7747426ddde88026cf7a8ff3562577d1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NOXRLPRCMVBGLFBINCOYX3OFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462440},"content":"Studying English literature at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/university-of-oxford/\" target=\"_blank\">University of Oxford</a> as an Irish undergraduate was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NU2RZYIYBNENNG7VJI7U4QBNPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462441},"content":"On my second evening, the college organised a “formal dinner” for us, the new undergraduates, to meet our tutors. We all had to wear “white-tie” and “sub fusc” while we were wined and dined at a three-course meal in the dining hall alongside our tutors.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJAZF6M3GNEKJBRH74RM65XJV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462442},"content":"Many of my peers were from British private schools, so were already comfortable in this world. One of them even corrected my American professor’s table manners, scoffing at her for not using her cutlery in the right order. I identified with the professor, who had also just arrived to the university, feeling reassured that at least others were also unfamiliar with these codes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75OHC32BCRFW3CI7DLQPO2D4DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462443},"content":"I was less reassured, however, when a professor sat down next to me. Since coming to Oxford as an undergraduate, he had never left, and was now in his 70s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJNKGO6G25AL3LC5UHMN3UO6TM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462444},"content":"He asked me the dreaded question: “What did you enjoy reading this summer?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVZVAZYS25GAJIFUJ5P5V5PLE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737647860589},"content":"I tentatively threw out an answer: Moby-Dick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6LIOLPYHRDBLON3ENXPDPY5HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462445},"content":"He seemed pleased: “Ah yes, the second best novel in the English language ...”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMO7DDDAYZDUFKSQVQLLAEKCEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462446},"content":"I threw the question back at him as though it was too hot to hold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RLTZFVJBENG5VDFQGLIQLNQBOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462447},"content":"He replied that every summer break, he would lock himself at home and read 100 books. By his complexion, I knew he was telling the truth. He continued that, this summer, he had, on a whim, decided to read <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sally-rooney/\" target=\"_blank\">Sally Rooney</a>’s novels to see what all the hype was about. Not only did he think her novels were overrated, he told me they should not have been published.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SOLGTTKF2BEWDF3OH4XNOXU6TI","additional_properties":{"_id":"PZVVWIHPEFA7PI3NI5V4OYBNBY"},"content":"A Derry Girl in Oxford: ‘The Troubles followed us over the Irish Sea’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VS7GI6E3T5E6RPFCGD2CQC7CLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737647860593},"content":"It was then I realised: I was no longer in the land of normal people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4VMZXFPWBAKPDT6K366SY4ZEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462448},"content":"One surreal evening in my second year, I was forced by circumstance to attend an event in a dingy, darkened room at the back of a local Conservative club. A crowd of Oxford students in fancy dress took turns getting up on stage and drunkenly shouting out speeches.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEOSQHLEXZCIJMYXOKABUIYVIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462450},"content":"I had the misfortune of attending on Guy Fawkes night. A <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/northern-ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Northern Irish</a> unionist took the stage to pontificate on the differences between a papist and a Catholic, and which one deserved to be burned, to raucous applause. I was deeply uncomfortable, scanning the room to see if anyone else felt like me, but everyone simply laughed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ALTSYHVXCVFLXJOKUHY7DJD4V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462452},"content":"It was not only the people I met that left me feeling alienated, but also the rhetoric of the books I read. Since Oxford unsurprisingly taught literature in an extremely traditional way, we almost never read anything written after 1830. By reading so historically, all I had to do was brush off the dust from some of the books, and a load of anti-Irish rhetoric would come flying off with it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDHJPONGTBAO7EFLS2DNFWDPTI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462453},"content":"We were taught, for instance, about Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590), a canonical epic poem that is more than 36,000 lines long and that Spenser described as “cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices”. I did not know what to make of it, but initially enjoyed how quirky it was. So, I decided to dig further. It did not take long before I realised many of his allegories were distinctively anti-Irish. In fact, I found that Spenser had written an entire tract called A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596), dedicated to advocating for the genocide of the Irish.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASROEHFMIZCYREUE2E5Q4HCS3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"3UJ55SRCHRHAHMF4Z6GPHSRMYM"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"PLRNVQG7K5CJFEKKHKA6M5FBJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462454},"content":"I did not enjoy how quirky he was after that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5WUWVNYYYBEDPJM7HMOXZSFWFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462455},"content":"Unfortunately, Spenser was more the rule than the exception. Class after class, I would sit through texts that either bashed the Irish or Catholics, with classmates awkwardly staring at me as the words were read aloud. The other foreigners in my classes – Russians, Indians, Chinese – were never targeted in the same way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWFDAZQOHREVLBIDRMKLKFUEJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462456},"content":"But that’s the bad and the ugly. Let me tell you about the good.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEDZWQ2EWRBSBLX64WXLYKLPPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462457},"content":"Though English literature once belittled the Irish, Irish writers stood tall within it – and that was a source of connection that other foreigners did not have.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNJNJFQALFENHGG4B77JGHGX2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462458},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/seamus-heaney/\" target=\"_blank\">Seamus Heaney</a>, for instance, was everywhere – from his poetry to his translation of Beowulf in my Old English studies to his criticism of John Clare in my Romantics module. His presence was all the more comforting since he was a writer my mother, a secondary-school English teacher, had taught me about, even dragging me to one of his last public recitals when I was a child.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MAPRVODJABD53PXU7DY7T6TJ6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462460},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/oscar-wilde/\" target=\"_blank\">Oscar Wilde</a> had, of course, attended Oxford himself, and lived on in the curriculum, building names and university legend. He was another writer that I had a personal connection to, as my grandmother, who never finished secondary school, had loved quoting Wilde’s witticisms to me growing up. I took great pride in being able to send my grandmother a postcard of him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FXHXCYQ7QJHUXDSZQNFZSCP7ZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462461},"content":"These were just two of many Irish writers whose contributions to the English-language literary canon could not be denied and with whom I enjoyed a kind of quiet solidarity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADLGO77K4JBYHB2NPPHE6WFO2U","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Hugo Harvey"}]},"description":{"basic":"The good, the bad and the ugly parts of studying English through Irish eyes at Oxford"},"display_date":"2025-01-27T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. 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Out of the blue, my partner was offered a position as professor at the National University of Singapore and he asked how I would feel about upping sticks and moving from Dublin to South East Asia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T527AOV3L5CQ3C4EAOLIRZQUUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454411},"content":"Both in our early 50s, we had been fortunate in never being forced to emigrate, as many of our contemporaries were in the 1980s. Were we foolish to consider it at this stage in our lives?","type":"text"},{"_id":"TAHJKBUGERGJTJRAUU3J2L2RP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454412},"content":"Singapore does not recognise same-sex civil partnerships, so I would have to look for my own employment pass. But first, I needed to find employment. I emailed my hastily-prepared CV to five psychology practices found though Google, was interviewed by four (on Skype, remember that?). I was offered three jobs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKAKGDTVPVGZNLGZOGDYAOXX6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454414},"content":"What I had not realised was that experience, and the wisdom that comes with it, are highly valued in Asian culture. It was the boost I needed and literally lifted me out of a very dark place (I think my late father was looking after me from above.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKCDXNCOSRFU3EEAPITJKFVO4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"WSDIFF42FBHVXC2MH7IDX3FTJU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"GTNX23YBKZBEPKK3OJTJ2ZTDPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454415},"content":"Cut to 2018, two men, and a sedated dog, board a flight to a gleaming metropolis, called the “Little Red Dot”, roughly the size of Co Louth with a population of 5.5 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NDHE35FGORCGPKIIYIQ4I7YVR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454416},"content":"We settled in quickly, and any concerns I had about practising as a psychologist in this multiracial, multi-ethnic city state dissolved quickly. Children, schools and families are essentially the same the world over and one learns to practise in a culturally sensitive way very quickly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEZZHZD6BJGZRCMIJNX7GTA44E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454417},"content":"Singapore is like New York – you master your brief quickly or you do not survive. Thankfully, I built up a good professional reputation rapidly and formed good relationships with international schools, of which there are many in Singapore.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UMKMHJFIJBCJFDLNPP4W45MFMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737555582961},"content":"Referrals came quite quickly and I was established without much delay, notwithstanding the pandemic in 2020. Irish professionals are highly regarded here, especially occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and physiotherapists.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IJ3ACQ4JAFCGHDG4REYEIPHDH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737555582962},"content":"I think I now realise why – as a race – we Irish undervalue the so-called “soft skills” that develop from operating in a small country, where we treat each other as neighbours, even in the professional setting. As well as being well-trained, we generally present with a kind, informal sensibility that is appreciated here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3WTUOTFTYBD57ALQJ6YCB7BP3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454419},"content":"I deliberately chose to work in a Singaporean-owned practice in order to avoid operating purely in an expat ghetto, which can happen. As a result, I have quite a few Singaporean clients, as well as Australians, Americans, Europeans, South Asians and others.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KDGF4IIAS5EMREOFBCF6KAJFKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454420},"content":"I have learned that, as an experienced, middle-aged Irish psychologist with an increasingly grey head, parents and children seem to trust my judgment and heed my advice. When I came here, I honestly did not feel I had anything of value to offer any more. I am happier and more fulfilled professionally now than ever.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3MVUPD7DBNGPDBVJP725AEZTX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454421},"content":"Singapore’s low income tax was a revelation. When I received my first tax bill, I contacted the inland revenue authority, worried they had made a mistake and I would end up owing thousands in back tax. But there was no mistake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WGI6FGMTFBBHFQ7ETBTVPTY2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454422},"content":"Having paid almost half my salary in tax and insurance for most of my life, it was astonishing to me to see little difference between gross and net salary amounts. It makes it easy to save for retirement, although I now envisage working longer that I would have if I had stayed in Ireland; and not because I have to, but because I still enjoy my job and derive great fulfilment from it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJNKTDAXP5CDRAFWBPSWSPL44E","additional_properties":{"_id":"DUTQU3BIMNB2ZL4RMOKKYN2ISY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5ZXZH44GTBDOHEF45SM5RYZD4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454423},"content":"Apart from work, Singapore has a lot to offer – every type of cuisine is available and it is a melting pot of cultures where you will find a mosque, Hindu temple, Taoist shrine and church, all on the same street.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5GQNPKOQFA35GIR7YP53OZQLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454424},"content":"There is a small but vibrant Irish community here and, with a friend who worked in the Irish embassy, we have organised some Pop-Up Gaeltacht events over the years that have grown in popularity. Along with well-established Irish games and dance, it is now possible to hear our language spoken in the tropical heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIV2CBOXHJHAPIWGILCVGG75R4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454425},"content":"I recall the late, lamented Nuala O’Faolain writing something about ageing backwards when she landed in Manhattan and, in a sense, I now understand what she meant. When I land in Changi Airport, having had a lovely holiday in Ireland, I find myself feeling younger and more vibrant than before.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZRXIU4WSNHHPIKUICA4I3YA44","additional_properties":{"_id":1737553917589},"content":"This is certainly true when I compare myself to the person I was six years ago, before I believed any of this was possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454426},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Richard Hennessy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Irish professionals are highly regarded in Singapore. And I had not realised that experience, and the wisdom that comes with it, is highly valued in Asian culture"},"display_date":"2025-01-23T19:57:48.145Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irishman in Singapore: I wondered if I was foolish to emigrate in my 50s. 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Telcos and the development of the internet of things have provided him with work on several continents, but he always gravitates back to Madrid, “the most relaxed city in the world”, where he now lives with his family, working remotely for the Ukrainian firm Intellias as global vice-president of IOT.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIH7GEN23JBDHC7WLQCK4MHBGI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his early career, Haughian worked in Athlone for Ericsson. “There were big opportunities at the time. Ireland was not booming, but it was starting to boom. And the IT industry was starting to move to dot-com.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M35SYDLU2RDNREYMWSQZCDBPEE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The industry brought him to Italy, where he worked in Rome for a couple of years as a consultant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAQOIYR2H5F4JCAD46N5Y33KBY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Irish community, they’re so good. You walk into the Irish pub and the guys take you under their wing because I didn’t know anybody else speaking English. And then you’re looked after, and then you become part of the community,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CSY5FMQWCVFXTCNBE3OGEVQLGE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I came over to Madrid to visit a friend who was working there in Ericsson. Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated unless you’re used to it – nothing works; it’s a mess of a place.” Madrid proved to be something else entirely.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NQXB5JLJKNGHJM34XYA2DSFLAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The city’s clean. It’s got an infrastructure. Everything works ... So I phoned and got a job there and stayed for two years.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3WCTJVCEQJCEFCATUIBKUUMXQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In Madrid he worked as a consultant, troubleshooting with telcos, including Ericsson, which then brought him to Central America, specifically Mexico. ‘I’d been there before and I loved the place. It was not like it is now; it was a safe back then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZX5G34A5VJDH7CDWWITFY2JDC4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"WJQEVFU43RDHDGZLPVT7PCX4JM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I was in Saltillo, which is in the north near Monterrey, near the border. I was picking where I wanted to live because we were lucky at the time we could do that.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCWPS3XCBNFMFI4JMFINQ2324E","additional_properties":{},"content":"He has also worked in Panama, the Dominican Republic and the Cayman Islands. “I probably fixed a fault for every single operator in the world, I’d say, at some stage,” he says. It hasn’t always been straightforward, given the way things work in certain parts of the world. “You always have to be careful who’s asking you and get it verified, because the authorities can choose from one day to the next,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5332BSR34BECPONWNBDPCZE2WI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His work with Ericsson saw him involved in large projects in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. At one stage, an internet-of-things project with the company looked like it might involve a move to the company’s home country, Sweden, which he was not keen on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLXAQG6M6FATFBOQS4HD7AUAYU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It’s easier to move south than north,” he says. That may have been influenced by his time in Aberdeen studying for his master’s. “Aberdeen is the coldest place I’ve ever lived in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t a fan of Aberdeen city, I thought it was very rough.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IYXUUXIERBXTOS6CJYCW2FMTA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NVXW3LUTAVB2RBHYC7SZBRC74M"},"content":"‘Copenhagen is like Disneyland compared to Munich: moving here immediately resonated with me’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"Q4NGFUEVRNGILDHDYYQUA7NT5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cold is not something he has to worry about any more. He’s happily settled in Madrid and has an affection for Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/ukraine-war/\" target=\"_blank\">invasion</a>, Haughian housed refugees in Ireland, where he owns a castle in Co Galway. It was sitting empty at the time, after a failed attempt to move back with his family. The lack of light in a castle and the driving Galway rain proved no match for the Spanish sunshine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"USUEGOTOHBA5FDKM3EBKBXKIRY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’m pretty impulsive. If I say I’m going to do something I just do it, to hell with the consequences,” he says. It all worked out and he now has Ukrainian “friends for life”. Despite his newfound friends, Haughian hadn’t been there until this year, when his employer brought him to Lviv to speak at the IT Arena tech conference.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIR5QU5RXZBGBMEFBJT3V2NRAQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I was panicking about coming, I really was,” he says, but it all worked out well. Despite being a remote worker, he says the company is continuously in touch to make sure he’s safe and well, something that has become standard practice for Ukrainian companies in recent years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KFQBNWL3EFAGXAF2REEOA7CDFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was speaking at the conference about the internet of things, where the buzz about AI and defence tech is palpable. “If you are building any AI system, you need data. How do you get the data? You get it from IOT. It’s that simple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5H6V6T4S4BENJAMSUTBABG2QSU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Someone said to me recently that IOT is taking a back seat to AI now, but it’s not a competition between technology; nobody cares. Almost every IOT system will have AI now, whether they need it or not, because it’s a boom for the next few years. And it’ll die down again, like it did before,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHXIZEQIERCIDHFC4X672JCKVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Away from work, horse riding helps clears his head, having come to equestrian sports later in life after a “city slickers” trip at a ranch in the United States.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Fiona Alston"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Barry Haughian works for Ukrainian telco Intellias in the Spanish capital"},"display_date":"2025-01-19T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"G7BF2ST5AJAUXJ7BX2EPFMZ7IY","auth":{"1":"047234f4b3969cdd1d87dc518553ae2b505d4efbf0729274922216f7a3600949"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/G7BF2ST5AJAUXJ7BX2EPFMZ7IY.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/01/19/rome-is-a-fantastic-city-to-live-in-but-its-very-complicated-its-a-mess-of-a-place-madrid-is-clean-everything-works/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"NOVGHDKP7RFYNIMH4XNEINEXUM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":349,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/4cab3897-778a-4316-9b58-6b511987d1cd/versions/1737047257/media/62efc7eda75cd0c8b60f4d6b317a4e8c_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HXWYOJC325AW3AWZ7WYAHIO52I","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591520},"content":"On a Tuesday evening in January, Joanne Davey is overlooking the ocean as people stroll along an esplanade and children play on the beach.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGDURUUO2BDONMRH7K4T3XV7UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591521},"content":"It is 8.10pm in Adelaide and the former Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer is talking to The Irish Times from a surf club after finishing her sergeant’s shift with the South Australian Police.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4XZB5QMSYFBVZBKTNDSCUMIPKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591522},"content":"Following almost a decade working in Belfast – her final posting was in the PSNI’s public order unit, policing riots and potentially dangerous situations – Davey (49) applied to an international recruitment campaign 15 years ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3J7NHYN6BC4FPTA7SHJSNBGGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591523},"content":"She had day-tripped to Adelaide in 2000 “for just two days”, visiting the Barossa Valley wine region and Glenelg Beach during a backpacking trip around the country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJH4JJD2JZDJTLGHNA33ZQNG7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591524},"content":"“I loved my job, but the opportunity came up to transfer out to South Australia – and because I always had this dream to return and live this lifestyle I applied and was successful,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNWYDTOTLVFDXD3HCGZYFST6UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591525},"content":"Ten boxes of her personal items were shipped out and she and her husband (who is also from Northern Ireland) rented for the first year before buying a four-bedroom home in Semaphore, a seaside town, with a swimming pool in their backyard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JELQBPQH5NA75K6Z5EFIB2VRQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737046633957},"content":"The Carrickfergus-born woman has never looked back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ALQ3ZIBZABFCXDBC3KJQM2ZRWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591527},"content":"“Though we had to cut back in those early stages, we still had a brilliant life – whether it was at the beach, visiting all the wineries, the markets and the festivals that Adelaide offers,” she says. “There’s lots of things to do that are very cheap and have a good lifestyle.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NPRTBPEZ5APJLN4RHO25CND5M","additional_properties":{"_id":"4ADLLUJOGBBADPULO2DETQ7GDI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"ALQ3ZIBZABFCXDBC3KJQM2ZRWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591527},"content":"Today, Davey is backing a fresh overseas recruitment drive for 200 experienced officers that has attracted interest from serving PSNI and Garda officers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FUG7QNRH6REW3DAXUY3FNYPQZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591530},"content":"Of the total applications over the past year – police are being sought from the UK, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand – around 5 per cent have been from the PSNI, with 7 per cent from serving gardaí, says Chief Inspector Scott Collins of the South Australian Police.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UX4GJED4ANFFTKYZRQOXLRSIAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591531},"content":"There has been a “massive amount of interest”, adds Collins, who transferred to the South Australia force from Thames Valley Police in southeast England 20 years ago. He still experiences “pinch me” moments when “I’m just doing my daily business”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XGQ2F7TZXZFYRCXUPZSSA4C45Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"GWW75TPW5VBA3OFR5A3JEZMSUY"},"content":"One Australian police force receives ‘over 100’ applications from gardaí, though few make move","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ITFOCEHVKZAV7MD7KLSMAB3XRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591533},"content":"Enticements for the recruits include “competitive” salaries – a constable earns the equivalent of €63,000 to €74,000 – and gets six weeks’ annual leave and “various health and well being packages”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NIRBCMKJUZGEVGDKZYIHFA3JLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591534},"content":"The South Australian government has recently announced pay rises of up to a 17.9 per cent over the next 12 months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNMCSHCMENE3TCEBVWRRDKUGUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591535},"content":"“Combine this with the lifestyle over here in South Australia, which is very different from the Eastern states. It’s busy enough, but not too busy. It’s nice for families, it’s clean and it’s safe,” Collins says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSQNHNYFZNBGJIZZG3DU33GKXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591536},"content":"Davey agrees.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHUFYFG4IVCRTJ62D62UV6ZLCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591537},"content":"Lower crime levels, beautiful weather and her outdoors life in the family camper van are among the big differences to life in Northern Ireland. Kangaroo Island – an island beach voted the second best in the world last year – is a half-hour drive away.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDFAVUL7ESWSR3Q6YV6KNEEUII","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVEX7WNPPJACPNH26Y6FT5PIJ4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5CTXEGGKC5HRVEDHPPYXKJI7CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591539},"content":"“I have a very active 12-year-old and as soon as I finish work I’m off taking him to swim training or footie training. He also does surf life saving. They start at age six,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5OVYRQCU2VB2LIFVTR3SOYMHKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591540},"content":"“We love to travel and there’s lots of camping opportunities along the beach or by the river or inland. Adelaide has the whole beachline with so many open spaces and parks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"22HNV3XKWBG4TIPYNV27XZ2X4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591542},"content":"“There’s no vandalism in the parks and all have free barbecues for you to use. There’s quite a lot of new adventure playgrounds and they don’t get vandalised the way stuff does back home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMSSVNJ3KNF37FDIRMVFJGEQ64","additional_properties":{"_id":"XHGFRO47LJHRBC7RO6Q7CSOBOI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"SHBQHVGCJVFGDOI6NLWWGACHRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591543},"content":"As PSNI numbers fall to their lowest in the service’s 24-year history – there are around 6,300 officers, with a ‘recovery plan’ under way – and attacks on officers increase, Davey contrasts her former job with her current role.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPAA44DL5NEXHJOBHAPSAVQ2IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591544},"content":"“I didn’t move because I disliked the PSNI. I moved because I was able to come here and do the job I love and help people and serve the community – but still have that lifestyle, to be outdoors, to go to the beach, to go camping and have the proper summers. The facilities here are just amazing,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C4TUHQ3VHVBK7OKYO5PHAOLVBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591545},"content":"“The types of day-to-day crime we deal with are exactly the same, but the crime level here is much lower than home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5VPIVA57BDMHA5QCBO6JNVKPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591546},"content":"“I currently work full-time and I’m a sergeant. My shifts are eight hours a day. There is a big focus on work/life balance with lots of opportunities for flexible work.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYRECRDLKVHWLBIBT4642KSNRM","additional_properties":{"_id":"7RSKV6ZH4NENFOZOWK255NT534"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"A7N2BVIJBNEVZDAAA3A2XDVVWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737046633979},"content":"What she misses most are her family and friends. “We are far away, but we’re also very close to home as well with technology these days. You only have to lift the phone to ring home and I probably speak to my family more often than I would do if I lived in the same town,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"76TYZFKOKZEX3LQCWR4M54CWWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591549},"content":"The only other yearnings are for Marks & Spencer’s foodhalls and Tayto cheese-and-onion crisps.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVYD4VY5TBBY5AL2AVTD6GKN4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591550},"content":"“If they could just bring it over here, that would be awesome,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFECE76RFFCYNGMEVPRM5LUUQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591551},"content":"Visits back home are frequent to “keep that connection with my son’s grandparents and cousins”, she also says. “But Australia is my home now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V34BDHLQS5EGHJGCHGK7Q6ZHC4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Seanín Graham"}},"name":"Seanín Graham"}]},"description":{"basic":"Officers from An Garda Síochána are also being tempted by lifestyle and pay and conditions"},"display_date":"2025-01-17T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Low crime rate and ‘proper summers’ drawing police officers to Australia","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S5YFHLX4WBFAZLHRJCA7L4MLLE","auth":{"1":"89462454f9571ce7146d2c766f4568f1ec1f35c905e79992b1c251b3debf8e10"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S5YFHLX4WBFAZLHRJCA7L4MLLE.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Crime & Law"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"NJVW2LUF6FFPJOST3JT2KL7FHM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":345,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/fad70a0e-c2cc-422a-8a2b-95736c2c0a85/versions/1737021703/media/56e4c6ce0b3b2cddb793cac357974bed_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/somebody-broke-in-and-stole-our-christmas-gifts-but-i-felt-a-sense-of-gratitude/","content_elements":[{"_id":"3QBOFFEHJREVJLONY6JLSL53LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211486},"content":"So look, somebody stole my <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> presents. That’s as good a prompt for reflection as any at the close of one year and the opening of another. I didn’t tell anyone at the time. It would really be far too much of a festive conversation killer on the video call home to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7APYD2Z6RFYFH7HTTTNWQKZ3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211487},"content":"Plus, I could think of no way to say it that wouldn’t make me sound like a whiny baby, but I’m telling you now because I’m not above knocking a column out of it. I figure that here in the Sisyphean depths of January, as we all crawl resentfully on stiff joints toward pay-day, it might elicit a chuckle of Schadenfreude from the darker recesses in us all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVOGZO4Z6JEWDHU7SAMAOEVLC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211488},"content":"There are doubtless a few people reading this who might consider it for the best that a columnist for The Irish Times have their Christmas presents stolen. A matter of public policy even. Isn’t it good enough for them, and such. Such people wouldn’t be entirely wrong – we’re arguably prone to a lack of perfect humility at times. The universe may simply be restoring balance by arranging to have someone pilfer my Notions Christmas-tree-scented candle and my cartoon print of a fat guy sitting on a bench with the caption “I hate human beings”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4GO27PJZJAH5DWVRRF6C4QAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211489},"content":"I had to try not to chuckle myself, to be honest, having woken up on Christmas morning to find my husband in the kitchen, visibly upset that someone had stolen the <a href=\"https://www.lego.com/en-ie/product/mona-lisa-31213?gclid=Cj0KCQiA-aK8BhCDARIsAL_-H9l7KEhNmYHUAoRSNJ9-qGkrZa20VfgUXkUvypVcwetGq4e5ukqivNIaAqvWEALw_wcB&ef_id=Cj0KCQiA-aK8BhCDARIsAL_-H9l7KEhNmYHUAoRSNJ9-qGkrZa20VfgUXkUvypVcwetGq4e5ukqivNIaAqvWEALw_wcB%3AG%3As&s_kwcid=AL%21933%213%21699668344070%21e%21%21g%21%21lego+mona+lisa%2120592840449%21162031468749&cmp=KAC-INI-GOOGEU-GO-IE_GL-EN-RE-PS-BUY-ESCAPE-ART-SHOP-BP-MM-ALL-CIDNA00000-NOVELTIES-ART&gad_source=1\" target=\"_blank\">Lego Mona Lisa</a> he bought for me to assemble during my week off. “I stored the gifts I got you downstairs so you wouldn’t find them,” he said. “Somebody broke in and took them.” In fairness, I would have felt absolutely dreadful in his position, but was also conscious that if somebody stealing your fancy bits and pieces at Christmas is the worst of your problems, you’re doing fine overall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZADMA54Z3RGVDM3JZLSV7WTCXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211490},"content":"Here in Canberra, one of the things you’ll struggle to comprehend as an Irish person upon first renting a property (apart from the fact that a dishwasher is considered standard rather than an indulgent luxury for out-of-touch idiots) is that apartments come with storage. Lots of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX662UPBZ5D3JILUSOQOJXME7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211491},"content":"Newish buildings have underground parking and each apartment has its own storage cage next to its parking space beneath the building. You padlock your cage, which is like a tiny shed with a wire mesh roof, and store larger items in there (like the huge, empty suitcases you used when you emigrated, or your artificial Christmas tree) which aren’t very tempting to steal, but would be cumbersome to keep in your apartment – your apartment which also, incidentally, has a lot of storage. Because cupboards and wardrobes are also not seen as the sole remit of oligarchs and leaders of industry, despite their being considered along the lines of a Fabergé egg by Dublin landlords.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EDI25PDKQRHOBFTODV6TUEVBOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211492},"content":"Much about Australian life remains alien to me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SZSOY6OQOVFB5MDB7NSMIM2TNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211493},"content":"No doubt any Australian reading this will think that only a chump would store Christmas gifts in a storage cage overnight, and they’d have a point. Still, it’s easy to relax and feel more trusting here. Canberra is not a big shrieking city like London. It has none of the gritty bustle of Dublin. For someone who has lived in those cities, Canberra feels both very quiet and pretty safe, despite a growing and visibly intensifying homelessness problem that is mirrored in every western city. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KV44VQT7AZGOBKIJOKU36BM6UA","additional_properties":{},"content":"For the most part, you don’t walk about with the sense that someone might imminently chloroform you and harvest your kidneys. Although you will frequently come across people with addiction issues, many of whom are clearly not mentally well, and who are sort of ignored by the city as though rendering them invisible constitutes a form of compassion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SR6CHHFTJZEDBOOQDEOM4CWG2I","additional_properties":{"_id":"CNGPAHJ3NNBT5KNP5GTDR5J2WY"},"content":"After years living in Ireland, everything in Australia feels suspiciously easy","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RZF4GGMGV5ELVAMXCNVOM52YSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211494},"content":"Someone had come in with bolt cutters on Christmas Eve, like the Grinch himself, and torn through the locker (along with six other lockers), throwing said empty suitcases and other sundries out on to the ground as they searched, presumably, for whatever they could resell on Facebook marketplace. We found the voucher himself had bought me for the local indoor plant shop here in Canberra strewn on the ground nearby, a short distance from the koala-festooned Christmas card it had been carefully placed in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZTVWRTWJ3NAMTJI72Z356WRXLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211495},"content":"The plant shop, incidentally, is called The Green Vine and is very much worth a visit if you find yourself in the city. It’s a peaceful haven for – mostly, let’s be honest – girls and women who like to grow things and have a crush on the squashy-faced French bulldog, Rocky, who belongs to the owner and accepts callers – ie lets strangers rapturously pet him while giving him compliments.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WZS6FKYQU5EZLMPBKHGZKDY7PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211496},"content":"I was delighted to find the discarded voucher, if a bit sad at the thief’s evident contempt for a nice aspidistra.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GS4YV6TEHBAJBLGXAZBQH46DMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211497},"content":"It might have been one of those experiences, as an immigrant, that makes you feel less welcome in a new country, but it didn’t. Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up off the car park floor, I still marvelled at the fact that you get storage. At how good things are, really, that this was the worst problem I had after waking on a belting hot summer Christmas morning. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSP6CVHHCBHMNMEKQD3MH2CRJI","additional_properties":{"_id":"65O6CRVJBVAMTAZBEW2CANKYJI"},"content":"Moving to Australia: ‘I would have had a very fixed life in Ireland. I feel very light here’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CUZXM7MU2VGQDJFYZB2D77JN54","additional_properties":{},"content":"I hoped that the thief needed my fancy bits and pieces more than I did, because stealing people’s gifts on Christmas Eve is, let’s be frank, an unequivocally sh**e thing to do. I hoped that it was sheer desperation that led them to it rather than callous disregard, though of course enough of one can generate the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2JKFGPQDNDALNQ25VGNUDILNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211498},"content":"We begin a new year here in Australia without the scent of Notions Christmas trees in the apartment, but with a sense of gratitude, nonetheless. Not quite to the thief, because I’m really not that magnanimous, but for the reminder of how lucky we are (and, crucially, how much storage comes as standard).","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up, I marvelled at the fact that in Canberra, unlike in Dublin, you get storage as standard. Lots of it"},"display_date":"2025-01-16T09:56:34.489Z","headlines":{"basic":"Somebody broke in and stole our Christmas gifts – but I felt a sense of gratitude","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"QFM56SWB7BEZBMBJIB77JYPVWY","auth":{"1":"0a29f27d95f108c7c46ad585f19ab71c09e81ea16fd0374aced2b773d9106088"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/QFM56SWB7BEZBMBJIB77JYPVWY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/somebody-broke-in-and-stole-our-christmas-gifts-but-i-felt-a-sense-of-gratitude/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"AF6SY2JHLNAKNIUWWHSHXEB66A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":282,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/71bdb2cf-f13a-42d1-8aea-34af0f09b437/versions/1736860324/media/6bca275adca78cf6a3de7dc11230f5ff_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/","content_elements":[{"_id":"KVKX3HANRVBQNE4JUNUVAHPGQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646138},"content":"Can it really be that time of year again when we start planning our next getaway? Now that <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas </a>is over, many of us <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/travel/\" target=\"_blank\">are looking to escape</a> the January blues and kick off the new year with a bit of winter sun.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZY2QN4WHFZBVHBW34OD2MVA5OI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646139},"content":"You might think that, as a seasoned flight attendant with nearly a decade of experience, I would be the most organised traveller around. But, alas, you’d be mistaken. It’s a classic case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N74N3QZXSFDS7FRTDDUYMJJTWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646140},"content":"Despite my knowledge of travel tricks, I often find myself racing through the airport, desperately trying to grab last-minute essentials before my flight boards. Yes, I confess I frequently leave my travel preparations to the last minute, and, while sprinting to the gate, I curse myself for not having packed a bottle of water after clearing security.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLO3DXG6JRF5ZPN46PTRZUVPJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646141},"content":"To help you avoid the travel stress I often inflict upon myself, I’ve compiled my top five tips for a smoother journey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52YX5SZRIBGZDIX7BKZSD3F2M4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646142},"content":"Buy your own liquid bag","type":"header"},{"_id":"AINVDFXOGFFIJHS4MZAPH2FYZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646143},"content":"The rules around liquids can be confusing and often change from country to country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PU4OLNOCHVFHLPGMWKHWLJ6LDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646144},"content":"If you’re travelling within Europe, you’ll need to pack all your liquids into one of those tiny plastic bags they give you at the airport that rarely fit everything you need. To save yourself from the last-minute scramble, invest in a clear plastic case that meets aviation guidelines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4N3OXWIMJH4DA4QJXTPPMYQCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646145},"content":"For just a few quid, you can neatly pack your liquids at home instead of frantically stuffing them into a bag while under pressure from security agents. Trust me, it’s the best fiver you’ll ever spend.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NHNO2RGQTZGAVDATXIX642YSDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646146},"content":"Book your flights early","type":"header"},{"_id":"KANRLPCRBJBJ7DDPSAVWUWOVLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646147},"content":"January is often a time when airlines offer great deals for travel, making it an ideal month to plan your next trip. However, I’ll admit it: I’m the worst offender when it comes to booking flights in advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVCCRKVWLZAQLMVNDOAHA22H4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646148},"content":"As a cabin crew member, I have the unique advantage of flying cheaply on standby tickets, but this doesn’t mean I should procrastinate. Booking your flights early not only secures better prices, but also gives you peace of mind, allowing you to plan your getaway without the last-minute stress of searching for a flight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VT2J6HXC5NHN5KQX22RM3F55AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646149},"content":"Arrive early at the airport","type":"header"},{"_id":"QKLBSTUH6BBXFCP2P3EBPEEMTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646150},"content":"There’s nothing quite like the panic of running through the airport, like Kevin McCallister’s dad in Home Alone, desperately trying to catch a flight. I’ve done this more times than I care to admit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7NGZO74KRGTXHYXWB3SQPLWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646151},"content":"Instead, take my advice and arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare – what I like to call “dad time”. While we often poke fun at those dads who show up five hours early, it’s worth noting that they are far less stressed than those of us racing against the clock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O5FJOZGRUJGE7MEZOIBBCL62IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646152},"content":"Pack smart","type":"header"},{"_id":"FTMRYOTWMRA2TOF5D3PIAQUGDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646153},"content":"Smart packing is essential for hassle-free travel, especially when embarking on a new-year adventure. Utilise vacuum bags to save space and try to carry on your luggage whenever possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YOY5JBPQZJC7HHVNKSXLKEMDVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646154},"content":"Always keep a spare set of clothes in your carry-on. Take it from my sister, who once packed everything in the hold and then had to wear her sweatpants on a night out in London’s West End when the airline lost her bag.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NATAPF2H2FCP5CV3J4JWLMBAG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646155},"content":"Packing smart not only saves you from wardrobe malfunctions, but also ensures you have everything you need right at your fingertips.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MVPB5KPHGNG23CYRSWVWCF7R4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646156},"content":"Embrace technology","type":"header"},{"_id":"XWYJ6JBA2NHT5MQRKQV56PEMRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646157},"content":"Consider using <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/ie/airtag/\" target=\"_blank\">AirTags</a> to keep track of your luggage. These little devices provide peace of mind by helping you locate your bags if they go astray.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z6HWDSHPANEL7BJN4W6BO5YJDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646158},"content":"Additionally, download your favourite shows on your iPadm tablet, or phone before you leave so you have entertainment ready for the flight. Don’t forget to bring a reusable water bottle to stay hydrated during your travels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KB3UYLTEURBDHCO4L2AHXQHKOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVMANVUVOFAT7JBPONRQPTJ5YQ"},"content":"An Irish flight attendant on the top five most annoying things passengers do","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5XUDJKLNEBCJ7KNIRSEDTOUOOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646159},"content":"Lastly, never underestimate the power of snacks. Packing your favourite treats can make your journey more enjoyable and help ward off any hunger pangs that may strike mid-flight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDITUHEADRBB3B6QH2723ZA2JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646161},"content":"By following these simple yet effective tips, you can transform your travel experience from chaotic to calm. Safe travels, and may your new year be filled with exciting adventures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646162},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Paula Gahan"}]},"description":{"basic":"New year, new adventures, same old lack of preparation? 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Occasionally, we break the monotony with dinners out or concerts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S43GCAQ57NCRLGCQMEXYTOA2XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830984},"content":"But often, it feels like running on a hamster wheel. Rinse. Repeat. It’s hard not to wonder: is this all there is?","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7L62NFZLZCODESC4SYYYMVWIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842129},"content":"That question found an answer at a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/goal/2/\" target=\"_blank\">Goal</a> USA launch event. Join us for the Great <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/ethiopia/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethiopian</a> Run and Raise Money for Charity<i>,</i> the headline declared. My heart said yes – go to Africa. But my mind quickly erected barriers. Excuses poured in, each more convincing than the last. The coup de grâce? “My wife would kill me.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EC2K5G5BJNBWXIFE3KNNRR2D6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830987},"content":"Adding to my hesitation, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-states/\" target=\"_blank\">US</a> State Department’s ominous DO NOT TRAVEL advisory, which cited conflict, unrest, and crime. Quite the list.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4GZLDRL3RCMDOUEWPTRTY7YRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736526461229},"content":"And yet, I couldn’t let it go.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TBP4OXYOINFIPHSQMVGTFDZU6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842131},"content":"Decades earlier, as a student, I cofounded The Great Race to raise funds for Ethiopian and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/somalia/\" target=\"_blank\">Somalian</a> famines. That experience showed me the power of collective action, planting a seed that stayed with me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"APCUYZ7RUFCIHGLUZCIZGAAH54","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830990},"content":"Now, I had the chance not to organise a race but to run in one (you can <a href=\"https://goalus.enthuse.com/cf/great-ethiopian-run\" target=\"_blank\">contribute here</a>) – a challenge blending my love of running with a commitment to those in need. I’d come full circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WANUOVK3VCH5GD6NAL2CAHEXA","additional_properties":{"_id":"FZJJGTI6OVBN5B4NUCIYFJLJEI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XQGG2C32JJGMDDXJZZODRT2OS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830991},"content":"Addis Ababa","type":"header"},{"_id":"PEGTBQRAVFEGLCLGM46S452KRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842133},"content":"Escaping the aftermath of the US election, I landed in Addis Ababa with limited internet – a gift that let me disconnect from the relentless post-election news cycle. Alongside me were like-minded ambassadors for the Irish charity, all united by a shared drive to make a difference.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHUVFSYYYFC2XPZ4YDY2IEBH5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842134},"content":"The Great Ethiopian Run, founded 25 years ago by legendary Olympian Haile Gebrselassie, is Africa’s largest road race, attracting nearly 50,000 runners each year. Though only a 10km, the altitude made it feel like a marathon. We’d been warned – add at least two minutes to your average pace; the lack of oxygen will humble you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7PLPWDRKZVEHTICE7PD26I362U","additional_properties":{"_id":"3LN3MD4PLJFLZHY5YZFX3MQGU4"},"content":"Global South must be saved from fossil fuels and other climate-harming practices","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"7D4RBXWTPREBTOB5BANNYML2GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842135},"content":"Our group included Irish running legend <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/athletics/2023/08/14/eamonn-coghlan-ive-been-very-blessed-by-what-i-achieved-in-athletics/\" target=\"_blank\">Eamonn Coghlan</a>, who not only cheered us on, but ran alongside us, offering tips and encouragement. Adding prestige to the event, Kenya’s newly crowned marathon world record holder, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/athletics/2024/10/13/ruth-chepngetich-smashes-womens-world-marathon-record-in-chicago/\" target=\"_blank\">Ruth Chepngetich</a>, was also present. I was in awe, surrounded by greatness on and off the track.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7DQSM2LFRBVLM5TPF5GFHDYXM","additional_properties":{"_id":"PCX77JC345CHPENPUSJDRZUH7A"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"J4VHNQK4ERHSPK3LQT3PRDM3WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842136},"content":"<b>Stories from the field</b>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FXD5QWE4QJBGZNFHTSVOVDKDJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842137},"content":"With the race as a backdrop, the real purpose of my trip lay in witnessing Goal’s fieldwork first hand. As Bono once said, nothing prepares you for the “car park of humanity”. The stark reality of refugees and displaced families, forced from their homes by conflict, famine or other crises, was overwhelming. Their poverty contrasted sharply with our Western privileges, faced, as they were, with the choice of eating or dying; every minor complaint of mine seemed trivial.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WPOOXBS7URF5TCDXLPY5ZQUZPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842138},"content":"In West Harerghe, near the Somali border, we visited a nutrition facility where malnourished children and mothers receive care. A group of mothers shared their stories through an interpreter. Tentatively, I asked one if she had any questions for me. Her response caught me off guard: “I have no questions, but you have saved me and my children, and I thank you.” I had done nothing but witness her suffering, yet she was thanking me. Overwhelmed, I broke down in tears, words failing me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U63ED3PJKRDP3FEVYA3GLUJEEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842139},"content":"Later, a mother proudly displayed three chickens she had purchased for $3 through Goal’s support. She now had a sustainable source of income, selling eggs at the market. Still stinging from my earlier encounter, I ventured to ask if she had any questions for us. With a wry smile, she replied: “Yes, you’re an hour late.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ALIJF43MLZCAFAIJCTNTJXXNWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830999},"content":"And indeed, we were.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RMKBK2ZH6RBG5LL4L2JBIAFTRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842140},"content":"In Nagesh, Tigray, a bombed-out ambulance sat outside a Micro Gardening facility (a joint project by USAID and Goal) – a chilling reminder of the Tigray civil war, which claimed nearly 600,000 lives. The ambulance’s driver, a nurse and a patient were inside when it was bombed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQIVJMCJ6RHGVGQS525L57636A","additional_properties":{"_id":"JUSCJ6H6FNBG5CRWMV2ZIT4LJQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"USHHWE3ANRA4VIHQYUU25UAHVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842141},"content":"Nearby, two mothers sat on the cracked earth, their faces etched with hunger and fragile hope. One had a cross sign tattooed on to her forehead, a tradition with roots in Ethiopia’s long history as one of the oldest Christian nations: “My mother did it when I was young.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3PEG7ODZ5CW7EVSLSI5KKB2AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831002},"content":"Their babies clung silently to them, too weak to cry, ribs visible beneath tattered clothing. Their husbands had been conscripted into the army, earning barely $35 a month, leaving the mothers with no means to feed their families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQYYCUUDOJGG5M3TVRCFB6KMRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842142},"content":"Elsewhere in the camp, my eye caught a group of children listlessly sitting on a dilapidated playground spinning wheel, its faded colours a faint echo of what should have been a source of joy. I approached and gently picked up one of the boys, who looked no older than three. As I reached to lift him, his frail body startled me; he weighed no more than a loaf of bread, his thin frame almost featherlike in my grasp.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BMBGRACSAFFOHLAFE7T4MT5X7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736323878590},"content":"I nearly overcompensated and flung him over my shoulder, his malnourished form a stark reminder of his fragile state. His limbs felt unnervingly delicate, as though his bones lacked the strength to support him, a haunting testament to the cruel grip of hunger and deprivation. He was in the right place now. Help was at hand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESOI4KOWABBRNG5EYFMHBDU6ZU","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZWBSZLLCJ5E3JAZMIXDHV4T3FY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WIJX7CC3NZBVNDCHJHA6DLWTAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842143},"content":"Gambela","type":"header"},{"_id":"YJSYFLVIMJEKLDAZLYS34FYCLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842144},"content":"Meanwhile, in Gambela, on the other side of the country, refugee camps overflowed with people fleeing conflict in South Sudan. A sea of expectant mothers and children gathered to greet our group, eager to share their stories. Planting the seeds of a brighter future often begins with bold requests.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUOCVLFARBGIHLYOLFS4MNCOEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831006},"content":"“Can we have a generator?” one mother asked earnestly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LI47SE62FVAFFPQNZSONU6YGYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831007},"content":"“Can you send me a tractor?” pleaded another.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AW5L25ZGDVCNJCKO7CHKQDQIIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842145},"content":"In a lighter moment, one of our group members introduced himself, prompting the crowd to erupt in laughter. We were convinced his name translated to something hilariously unfortunate in their language, bringing a rare moment of joy to an otherwise grim setting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WVK3MVB3IVEKXBBYU5KYVCBWZA","additional_properties":{"_id":"RVHNMGCLYFCJXOCG6FHLCUOCPM"},"content":"Sudan war pushing country towards partition, US envoy says","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZEO4IS4GCZAWZPJ3LIINLKB5TQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842146},"content":"Ethiopia’s burden is compounded by one million refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. For a nation that has often been described as the “cradle of humanity”, with one of the world’s oldest humanoids, Lucy, discovered here, it’s a shame the country is where it is economically, socially and by circumstance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SAWIDRDAVAYLMJZZHL3H7G4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842147},"content":"Over six years, supported by USAID, Goal has treated 4.27 million children under five and pregnant women for acute malnutrition across 118 districts. Beyond immediate aid, they’ve strengthened local health systems, ensuring communities can sustain themselves in the long term. In Ethiopia alone, they’ve reached 3.6 million people through direct action and partnerships. Remarkably, 99 per cent of Goal’s staff are Ethiopian nationals – unsung heroes delivering hope in the toughest conditions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AONHE5FVBJH2TGYV27GHL4O77A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842148},"content":"It’s easy to give passively to causes, especially when the conflicts and crises feel distant – out of sight, out of mind. Witnessing this work first hand underscored the critical importance of donations. Without this funding, people die – It’s that simple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65ZVLKV7OBHVXHEEGLIRB6M6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831012},"content":"Goal USA is already planning another trip, offering a unique opportunity to witness the resilience of those in need and the transformative power of collective action. Experience it for yourself, remind yourself of your own humanity, and discover how fortunate we truly are.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWKW5JC7A5FIXAQS5KZWPQLV4U","additional_properties":{"_id":"3FN5W5RSH5EU3DUPYRJI5YGKNA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842150},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Mark O’Toole"}]},"description":{"basic":"In the 40th anniversary year of Live Aid, New York-based Bray man Mark O’Toole explains what motivated him to do the Great Ethiopian Run"},"display_date":"2025-01-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘I landed in Addis Ababa for a challenge that blended my love of running with a commitment to those in need’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2OIQZMEAKNE55H7NDS3ET245DM","auth":{"1":"cd015973bfee53b2b01ebad656b890b93b936ee4dabffff4117834afa30837a7"},"focal_point":{"x":1028,"y":489},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2OIQZMEAKNE55H7NDS3ET245DM.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"DDIZKLFKEZDFJJVREINLYUQXUQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":291,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c8d93c2d-1aa3-4b5b-92c8-93202c3129e5/versions/1736244248/media/7113f95159e96f945c2466cabc15b0e2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/","content_elements":[{"_id":"N7TXESMYHFGBPAJXHDDTHM5VJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399364},"content":"Caroline Ryan grew up in a thatched cottage in the village of Boherbue in north Cork, one of a family of four whose father had returned from New Zealand to live in Ireland as a teenager. 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With an annual turnover of €110 million, it has a daily production capacity of more than 100,000 pieces and exports 100 per cent of what it produces, with its main customer being Inditex, the owner of Zara and associated brands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KP5V76HUE5CJTMMW2MZXD54QOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884247},"content":"Walters gained valuable experience there and after graduation went on to win the €3,500 River Island bursary and a three-month paid internship in London for her capsule collection called Waste Not, Want Not inspired by her late grandmother’s philosophy of taking care of her possessions and garments.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2Z3VY5HNVH3TOE27KGSBEWJQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385551},"content":"In the meantime, Guimaraes, who is passionate about sustainability and, like all her family, interested in fabrics, wanted to start her own brand and was adamant that the collection be made from durable natural or cellulose, fossil-free biodegradable fibres.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JAFGHTSV7BG5RDZMB36HLJ5SCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385552},"content":"She called it Taippe (pronounced type) and asked Walters to become its fashion designer. “I agreed and it was an active choice having had experience of fast fashion”, Walters says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YL7SQS3BTBDRBHHO5KAMP23WXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385553},"content":"As a subsidiary of Polopique, Taippe is a capsule unisex wardrobe transcending seasons and trends, embracing a fully vertical production process. “All the Guimaraes stay in the business inspired by their predecessors, but the new generation want to do their own thing” Walters explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZBIDDYIZJCPDL4RSZG3KDM7DU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884248},"content":"She has now settled in Lisbon in a ground floor flat in the centre of the city and commutes to the factory in Vizela every second week for two days where the collection is developed and manufactured.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOGFVWKGHBFHHAIABAVHDRCAPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385555},"content":"“We focus on crafting timeless, versatile garments, high-quality pieces that can be worn and reworn for years. 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I like new environments, and I am learning Portuguese.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BP4HDX5OKJD6JMWBE6JE53XAOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884250},"content":"Although still relatively new to the city, she finds the locals “incredibly friendly, everybody is willing to chat so it’s similar to the Irish. People want to help you and look after you”, she says. “I find it a youthful city; people want to be out and about all the time and there is always something happening.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6I5ILQHMKBDCTIDY2ARAZ5N3KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385559},"content":"“In Stockholm where I lived for eight months and worked remotely, people really hibernate and everyone wants to have a nice place at home that they don’t want to leave. So, it’s different here where people value being out and it is so easy to meet and make connections”, she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOSRWU4EDZDCFO3MDVZA452I3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385560},"content":"“There are so many exhibitions and every single restaurant, pub and bar is flooded with people. The shops have pop-ups where people can have a beer, so it’s a very social place”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2W7RYOU2BFEDCHRGBZWXP7JAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884251},"content":"From Dublin, though her parents have now moved to Wexford, Walters was surrounded by an artistic family and has inherited the attitude of her grandmother Hilda and her mother Jenny to clothing, and of looking after rather than discarding garments. 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They organised a pop-up event in Lisbon and next January will show at Paris Fashion Week at an incubation project called Impossible Objects.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6U675ISXFATLN3JO2Y7JZMA7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385563},"content":"Taippe is also in the forefront when it comes to complying with robust new EU rules regarding garment traceability rolling out in coming years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLWQ6546FVEAVIWR7ZFLHNU74U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385564},"content":"“Every item we produce will have a digital passport and the QR code on the garment will give details of fibre composition, country of origin of materials, where the item was made and ownership,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EDWZPTJOTBG2XODLCDUTNWSQAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884252},"content":"The factory environment in Vizela impresses too. “It is ethical, very social and workers are paid well. In the booming Portuguese textile industry everyone knows everyone else, so there are always connections.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5O7L3RY7VGSHCUKK543JBZDSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385566},"content":"“The only downside is that it can be difficult to communicate because of my lack of fluency in the language, but Matilde has been my translator. We work with an engineer called Armando and we bring him fabrics that we like so he can reproduce them in a more sustainable way. Matilde is really into pattern and graphics while my focus is on detail and design so we complement each other.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Deirdre McQuillan"}},"name":"Deirdre McQuillan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Molly Walters, Lisbon"},"display_date":"2025-01-07T09:28:58.652Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irish designer making waves in sustainable fashion in Portugal","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"I7LC44ULEZG3DPFOJP7SE6DSRA","auth":{"1":"3d20b8bbc793726cf1d5873b44d122c473eda1d9b76bb884abe8534f5eb55078"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/I7LC44ULEZG3DPFOJP7SE6DSRA.jpeg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2024/11/10/designing-sustainable-fashion-that-grandmother-would-have-approved-of/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"TRGNIZHDRJE4HORSGAMFIQY7M4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":375,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7fca1abd-cdcc-416a-9c8e-55f8cb596e8a/versions/1734435890/media/81ded6bb593dd6cf5671b7a11fdc5098_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/01/new-years-in-australia-when-you-leave-home-to-live-abroad-you-take-any-traditions-you-can-feasibly-translate/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NFOAMNQ3EFHVZM27HDAETBWWUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687982},"content":"January 1st marks a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">new year</a> in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/australia\" target=\"_blank\">Australia.</a> That’s hardly a unique state of affairs. As Australians awake to the unblemished first day of 2025, lids dragging across dry eyeballs in the screaming heat of summer, nasal passages desiccated from air the conditioning that is required to reach a temperature at which you could physically manage sleep the night before, people in Ireland will still be asleep, and it will, if briefly, still be 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PUJ2SZ2SERE7LIOA2LV7M7H6RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687983},"content":"It will be evening here in Canberra before family and friends at back in Ireland awake to the first few hours of 2025, the one foot that has escaped from beneath a high tog duvet numb from the cold, nasal passages full of the seasonal ague that runs through everyone in the house each winter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKCIOA7W4JFETFPQBUQQQ5VDNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687984},"content":"The recent election left people here in Canberra somewhat disgruntled. That too is a state of affairs to which anyone in Ireland can relate. One of the more charming attempts to pacify the masses on behalf of the local government here is a return of the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display at midnight. After all, if people’s heads are craned upward, they have less time to notice reality on the ground. The city is filled with tall apartment buildings, one of which I am lucky enough to live in, so New Year’s Eve will have been spent in a time-honoured tradition – watching Die Hard, followed by catching the fireworks display from the livingroom window.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZNVMPKZ4JFMDDLVJLEMVH4YUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687985},"content":"The latter tradition is new to me, and I’m excited about it. The former was developed on the first New Year’s Eve after my mother died nine years ago. Until then, I would close out each December with her in the house in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/limerick/\" target=\"_blank\">Limerick </a>where I grew up, curled on to the battered old sofa we’d had since before I was born, talking about what the next 12 months might hold for us and looking forward to tomorrow, when we would sit down to her obscenely good New Year’s Day dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2B3VUBTIKVDTRL2AW433NP6MNM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687986},"content":"The first December 31st without her fell just a month after her death and it felt like an unbearable proof of her absence. Like a temporal barrier that her living memory would remain forever trapped behind, carrying her further away into the past as I trudged forward, 20-something and baffled without her. She had only been gone for a few weeks, but the moment January crested the hill, it would be true to say that she died “last year”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FPBTK2AEZRAA3GBGROJWWKMTY4","additional_properties":{"_id":"47HD4R35PVETFJMW3QHQGFJQFQ"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"INIIYSEPNJFC5E5FQOGPVKP4X4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687987},"content":"When my then-boyfriend asked what I felt like doing on the last day of that terrible year, I supposed there was only one thing to do. Watch the silliest and least upsetting film I could think of and eat mince pies on the pleather couch of our rented Dublin flat as a way of waiting it out. It became a tradition on a night that is often ultimately about waiting it out for many people. This loaded, liminal night that feels like a death, a funeral and the cusp of something all at once. So we watch the stupid Die Hard films year by year in numerical order (they get progressively worse and therefore more enjoyable), first in Ireland, then the UK, and now in Australia. When we run out, we start again at the beginning. The mince pies don’t vary. They have a sort of blanketing sedative effect on gloomy spirits.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LLJZLJ56Y5GWXFMVM6UJSGVUYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687988},"content":"When you leave home to live in another country, you take with you whichever traditions can feasibly be translated to the new place. Once you have lived a while in the new country, you realise that there are potential selves you might become in other environments. That the person you recognised as yourself in one place can be quite different in another, engaging in different habits, hobbies, and ideas. You naturally respond to the culture, the environment and the incentive structure of the place in which you now live. Maybe it changes you or perhaps it just reveals your potential to live in a different way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWBBZF3OCVHW5OFFZIE6WMEQNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687989},"content":"In Ireland and in London, I never seemed to wake up without my alarm in the morning. Darker, chillier mornings do not beckon a cosy body into wakefulness. Here in Australia, the sun is doing its utmost to melt the window frames before 6am in summer and still beats merrily in by 7am on Canberra’s below-zero winter mornings. In London, I was a significantly more efficient person. The place simply demanded it of me. Everything requires organisation, planning, scheduling, booking ahead and unreasonable levels of waiting. In Australia and in Ireland, I walk at a slower pace and have less panic bashing against my rib cage as I move through the day’s basic tasks. I’m not the impatient person I am in London, nor anywhere near as cool as I pretended to be in London. Australia’s wider streets and bigger scale in general mean that people have more of a concept of personal space than they do in the narrower, older streets and smaller public spaces of home. In Ireland, I am put off exercise by the weather and a more self-conscious culture. In Australia, I do it without much resistance sense of conspicuousness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YEW7ISJXXNCDNHJSMDWF65BKFY","additional_properties":{"_id":"S3KINDF54FGDTMO3RSXDDTMWCA"},"content":"Australia is so very far from Europe and US, and yet is as deeply rooted in Anglosphere norms, customs and culture","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QMUGF6BWANBDNPIZWSCZCSTEVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687990},"content":"A new year is a new beginning. I don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has all the vast unfamiliarity to me that the country itself still does.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKBY67GUZFGBRCC6BSSGQQQSEE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687991},"content":"That’s a bit frightening. It’s exciting, too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4U3WMDP6TJHTHGJQ4JFCLKFGXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687992},"content":"It might be cheating to express the hope that 2025 will hold a visit home for me. It’s wonderful to experience new selves in new places, but I prefer not to go too long without reconnecting with the original. The person who sat down to New Year’s Day dinner in my mother’s house, and didn’t yet realise how much we can change when we need to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has a vast unfamiliarity to me that country itself still does"},"display_date":"2025-01-01T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"New Year’s in Australia: When you leave home to live abroad, you take any traditions you can feasibly translate","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7N4JX6QUQVD55KK7VCIJEU3QJY","auth":{"1":"b1595bc12ca61028f6af2670d9cbed5409dc3e08860c002d927caaa5f8bdceb3"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7N4JX6QUQVD55KK7VCIJEU3QJY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/01/new-years-in-australia-when-you-leave-home-to-live-abroad-you-take-any-traditions-you-can-feasibly-translate/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"SYGKF7ASHBBMJHYH66AN5YYNXM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":716,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/de21a545-ee54-47b0-b538-7e013c5df815/versions/1733743569/media/499826eaa09f0317e0468c091fcd9d1b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CDOLATM7IJA4XLWAVLH3MZA7SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106649},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRRXWMY6PJA6HAQ2R5CMLNJ5GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735121},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W4Q5LDLUVATBNUTTJD7MG2ZQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106651},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCZOFF5XFDHFE7XL4RVZK23OE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106654},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ARXFT3O2BGVLCAMCXVGU5BAHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733660725185},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFN7HZSL75G27JG7K7AULC6RSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735124},"content":"Recently, a meme was sent around various friends’ groups that said: “If your job can’t be illustrated by an animal wearing a hat in a children’s book, it’s not a real job,” along with a whimsical drawing of a pig farmer, a sheep baker, a construction worker dog and so on. We were showing this to each other to acknowledge that, by and large, we have jobs that are not easily communicable, whose dubious use cannot be simply conveyed. They are jobs that sound frivolous to our parents and, in our deepest hearts, to ourselves; or which have needlessly convoluted titles, making it impossible for most people to parse their meaning, or which involve much co-ordinating of communications and very little material action (these we dismissively call “email jobs” and as the media continues to disintegrate and devalue its workers, many of those of us who write are desperate to return to the comparative peace of the email jobs we happily shed in our early 20s in search of creative fulfilment).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3E2MTQIBG5DAHN2ZYIGOOQSZTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106650},"content":"The subject must have been on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/megan-nolan\" target=\"_blank\">my mind</a> already, only weeks before having had a dream in which I was watching a horror film where a villain trapped hordes of people in a mansion and began to pick them off according to how useless and fanciful their jobs were; the plumber lives, the senior director of search engine optimisation dies. Work – the value of my own, the meaning of work in one’s life generally – is something I have been contemplating more and more as I enter my mid-30s and lines are becoming more concretely drawn about what sort of lives my friends and I are leading. The babies are coming, most notably.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W4Q5LDLUVATBNUTTJD7MG2ZQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106651},"content":"A friend who is trying to get pregnant and I spoke about the process, and she commented that even though she was now actively trying to do so, pregnancy still seemed preposterous: “It’s okay when other people do it, but for me it is against nature, fantasy novel stuff.” I am single and have never particularly wanted children, so the defining element of my middle age is not going to be based around babies, barring an unforeseen radical shift in my desires or a tragic yet uplifting tale where a close friend is killed in a plane crash and has curiously decided to leave the care of their child to me, the irresponsible city girl, teaching me – and the kid! – a few choice life lessons along the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWAO3WTR4FBWVLKBYIXQ3UCIBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"4246CUHC35F63FOAA57RVFTPJQ"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"NDF577J7UVB7PK424UPGXPYA4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106652},"content":"None of this has really impacted my life just yet as is typical of my generation and the cities I live in. I moved from London to New York this year with some awareness that it is even more difficult to buy property and raise children in New York, so I could perhaps outrun the inevitable shift a little longer here. For the moment, most people I know here are, like me, still figuring out what to prioritise and what is possible. But it’s happening, nonetheless, the lines are being drawn: do you give precedence to family and marriage, work, friends, or adventure? Only the truly wealthy can attempt to have a bit of everything.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKQNFQ6PQJFAHNRKQUS7HI4CCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106653},"content":"Recently, the realities of this new era in my life became clear, chasteningly so, when I began to date a man in his late 30s. Admittedly, Americans often date in an aggressive, turbocharged fashion, which is alien and crass to me as a person from Ireland and having lived a long time in England, where emotion and relationship vagaries are not discussed with the same brutal, bureaucratic efficiency. This man and I only saw each other for six weeks or so, but we had become close quickly and things felt like they could become serious if given the chance. I brought him to my apartment with a bunch of my friends for tacos and the presidential debates, that innocent time only weeks ago when such things could be consumed as mere spectacle. We spent weekend mornings walking his dog around the Brooklyn neighbourhood he lived in, which was almost nauseatingly aesthetically pleasing in the autumn, reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Halloween before all the stabbing begins. I woke up one Sunday and walked into his livingroom where he was sitting in the sunlit armchair doing a crossword while my favourite album played and thought: yes, I could see this working, I would like to make this work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCZOFF5XFDHFE7XL4RVZK23OE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106654},"content":"Instead, things fell apart spectacularly after a conversation in which he worried that I was not open to children and marriage. I tried to make my case – I had simply never seriously dated anyone who wanted those things before, it hadn’t come up. I am not closed off to them but I would only want them with somebody who I am in love with. I do not want them abstractly. The falling in love would have to happen before I could want them, and six weeks was not long enough for me to feel confidence about love, marriage, or children. He would also want to leave New York, a place I love more than anywhere and have only just managed to arrive after years of planning, to raise said children. Trying to be reasonable and open-minded, I asked where he might like to live if not New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBPSBMFRXNFHRL6NIBB23YOQVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106655},"content":"“I don’t know ... New Jersey?” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIPPMXNGRFDZ5MSKV2TMD6434A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735131},"content":"“<i>New</i> <i>Jersey?</i>” I couldn’t help but gasp back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IPE4ZKXWZBHJPDZOE2TVEVK364","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735132},"content":"And that, more or less, was that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LAJ6XGC3RFFDDF5ADILIALOWPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106656},"content":"He was right to do what was best for him, to ensure he was in with the best chance of the kids and wife and house and yard he wanted. I didn’t hold it against him, but it felt lonely and frightening to think that it is no longer possible to only be open to what may arise in life but that it may now be the case that you must enter each interaction with defined aims in mind, and if you didn’t, then tough luck.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYBF6XLVGBD6XMIR6MJT4SARAM","additional_properties":{"_id":"S5JVOULWRFDNLLTEDDYDT6NM7Y"},"content":"Megan Nolan: I gave Dublin a shot for seven years and nothing good had come of it. Why not cut my losses?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UCM3O2Q5JZC37GMXICGXXWF6AM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106657},"content":"Nowadays, for women who don’t have or want children, it is often expected culturally that you take that effort and pride, and direct it to your work. This is, obviously, a vast improvement on the situation historically when such a woman was consigned to embarrassed ignorance at best and open attack, derision and violence at worst. There are, as indicated by the deeply disturbing gender wars, which have become explicit post-Trump re-election, a sizeable contingent of men still who will publicly say that a woman’s only function is procreation, and that any other personhood or value she holds is meaningless by comparison. Even those who are not so medieval in their thinking, though, even the relatively right-on, even women ourselves, tend to look at a childless woman and think, “So what are you doing instead?”, as though we owe a dazzling and remarkably successful career in lieu of the human beings we failed to produce.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GJFME5EWYD4YJ67XMJVWQMXAQA","additional_properties":{"_id":"D43B6VL5A5EEJHCWVG524K7GHA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"TXTDCCAM35GNBE45GDUXM7PRXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106658},"content":"I thought this myself for a long stretch. Emerging from the first half of my 20s, which were defined entirely by the need to be domesticated and accepted and taken care of by a man, I figured, logically enough, that the only acceptable recourse was to turn the other way and refuse those desires entirely. I focused on work instead, to create what I hoped would be the stable identity I had negated through my need for love. I didn’t do this in the coherent, concentrated way that would have been more satisfying – no studying, no degree, no official stamp to tell me I had come good, in fact no employment whatsoever – but in fits and starts I cobbled together a writing career and went on to publish novels, a thing that seemed like an impossibly grandiose dream for my whole life. And there was a narrative satisfaction in the turn of events, that I had taken all the debasement and spiritual aridness of those love-addict years and digested them into something that would come to give me the means, both practically and emotionally, to see myself as a fully autonomous and independent person.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3MY6U25QAVBQRJOJPJKX45SE5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106659},"content":"I am proud of my work, or at least I am more glad that I produced it than ashamed of its failings, and it is also true that there is little as inconsistent as writing, or any art-making, to provide you with self worth. There is also little that has demonstrated to me the arbitrary nature of evaluation as clearly as selling books. You hear of one incontrovertible genius, beloved by readers and critics, selling her short story collection for what amounts to a month or two of minimum wage, and then another person getting hundreds of thousands for a concept, which must have appeared promising, but was not underwritten by talent or experience and goes on to sell nothing. The whole experience made money itself seem fake to me, and then I realised that it is in a sense fake, an illusion we all have to commonly agree upon to keep the wheels turning. The arbitrary nature of how art work is received is similarly destabilising: when I had an office job, the amount and quality of work I did was quantifiable whether by the number of reports I finished or hours I spent on the phone or emails returned. Now, though, while some people may find value in what I do, many others don’t, so who am I to decide what is work, and how hard I have done it?","type":"text"},{"_id":"JTZEBAJSPZC6TPNHTBRTVNOF3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106660},"content":"I think, too, about the way that work has changed through the generations, and how this abstraction colours the relationship to it. My grandfather John Nolan began as a labourer in Telecom Éireann. His final rank survey officer, and his son, my father, became the playwright and director Jim Nolan. After getting my not entirely technically minded father hired at Telecom Éireann(which became known as Eircom and then later Eir), my grandfather must have been alarmed to see him eventually depart to make a living out of thought and words instead of quantifiable action. And yet he had built him a shed in their garden to write in. I was moved to learn this, the thought of the physical labour of my grandfather being put to this use, facilitating a practice and a life for my father that could hardly have been more alien to his own.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3WHEDA2WNFH7IGHFU7SN4SUDY","additional_properties":{"_id":"4GKAJUWQAJDKTF34YUJ6TMGOXA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"6KLQWTXL6ZDCXIQ34TJRA5KQHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106661},"content":"Lately I stood there in the doorway of that garden so that my dad could point out the absence of a tree that had been cut down, allowing for an overly stark sightline between the house behind and my grandmother’s house – “I thought he was going to come down out of the window,” she said, of the neighbouring man she could newly see peering out across from her. Dad pointed out where the shed had been, and said his father had installed a gas heater to keep him warm, or possibly try to kill him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y57PPI6XQVCQFFP5IPGZIVNT7U","additional_properties":{"_id":"OQHABCWAPFHKHG5TBJEZ32USBA"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"5FJPCDPTYRBS5K4FJQV7JDKIMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735139},"content":"I was thinking that day about a quote I like from one of my favourite books. I like it despite, or maybe because of, the fact it disquiets me, presenting a position that is, if true, in direct opposition to how I have so far lived my life. The quote is from the novel Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham, and says: “He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5KA7C3LV5BD3NCHBNU4VUDYTM","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZGMRPU6VMZH45FGOLVNFFACJSM"},"content":"I bought CDs, rented videos and lost my virginity to a boy I met on MySpace","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"COL4RPNICVFR5F5T5BMVGMK344","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106662},"content":"Looking at the space my father’s shed had once been, a monument to my grandad’s faith in the possibilities of his life, I thought about how work did not have to have its own inbuilt or inherent meaning – that perhaps in my grandfather’s case, his hard work was made meaningful by allowing him such things as to build that offering to my dad, to support the people closest to him in ways both logistically and otherwise. Though what my dad and I both do is difficult to justify as hard work compared with most jobs, I think in its best moments it shares something with this notion of facilitating closeness; it is an attempt in one guise or another to recognise those around you and see them for who they are and hold them near you, be they a child, a parent, a friend, or a stranger who chances upon the words. All my life I have wanted nothing more than the company of other people, to care for and cook for them and make them laugh and live alongside them, and if the work can help me afford that time, then it has done enough for me, and I for it.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Megan Nolan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Family, career, friends or adventure? 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This paradise rises only a few feet above sea level and, with just seven residents and two dogs, it’s no tourist hotspot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CO7NJ7VGYZED7EDOPKQKALLEBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686734},"content":"Helming our <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">sailboat</a>, we make a careful approach with the help of our chart plotter and satellite imagery. Compared to our own technology-heavy circumnavigation, I’m in awe of the early Polynesian settlers. More than two thousand years ago, in wooden outrigger canoes, they navigated this vast ocean using the stars as their guide.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HYKXMFAYSBERXEY7MVTJWEPEJE","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVSNHODLBJFQLGIJHT7M7MSEQI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"22W4U44MKNCCTEYI3BC3YEVZM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686735},"content":"Access to the atoll’s interior is via a narrow passage where the ocean floods in and ebbs out on the tide and capricious currents swirl menacingly. Furling away our sails, we engage our engines. As we accelerate, steep underwater coral walls either side of us are illuminated by scattered beams of sunlight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WWMBBOEA6JCNZHO7TB5GYFEZQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686736},"content":"Our bows slice through Maupiha’a’s inner lagoon, hemmed by palm-covered islets. Nesting terns stalk from above, while six grey reef sharks, attracted to our anchor chain lowering, begin to circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDUCAYFJ4BEP5KLMRHIEYKPUAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686737},"content":"A sturdy woman and tattooed man with rock-solid biceps paddle towards us. “La Ora Na!” (Tahitian hello). “Tu-veux du poisson?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KRCXX37FE5G4RFVHMMT45BN6AY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686738},"content":"Placing six parrot fish neatly on our back step, Harry and Norma introduce themselves, inviting us to their place “tout moment” before vanishing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3KCAMM3INFKVPZSIZPWRD7S4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686739},"content":"Since arriving in this country 14 months ago, the interchange between languages is a constant reminder that French Polynesia is an overseas collectivity of France. Recently, the pro-independence party came into power and it’s not difficult to understand some of the reasons why. That 193 atomic bombs were detonated by the French, contaminating atolls like this one until 1996, is the most horrifying one to me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6TPC7OSHRA33M6C7KRZVHWYXE","additional_properties":{"_id":"MD3ANFKUVBEGLHSPN2NUONIKLA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"34QZXPU4DZBJDLWOQIUEOLVAMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686740},"content":"Sending ripples across the glassy lagoon, we startle a green turtle and two burrowing stingrays. Through knee-deep water, over coral-pink sand, we wade, dragging our paddle-boards up the beach.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOEXXPBIE5BJNMMMCNHWEGIG3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686741},"content":"Crafted from woven palm fronds, a little house sits pleasantly under shady overhanging trees. Rows of vegetables, planted in sandy soil, span an impressive variety and nearby, a tiny generator, rainwater catchment system and solar panels complete the technological array.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2NWEYLF4ZGJ3BGCPUWU7W4MJU","additional_properties":{"_id":"2IDKQFQU2ZBT5DSZWKQKWDIMOE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"L6TVGCEVQFBULLJONSRS45IDKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686742},"content":"I open my bag placing a contribution on the table – flour, mayonnaise, cooking oil, fishing hooks and two spare knives. A black terrier barks playfully until Norma appears, shushing the mutt who’s tied to a tree. Punishment, apparently, for gobbling the remaining chickens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JIROWUTKQFH5BJS4JUJTG65K7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686743},"content":"Barefoot, we explore the airless palm forest that runs parallel to the ocean. Machetes and other tools for de-husking coconuts litter the path. A lapis lazuli-coloured coconut crab emerges from a pile of fallen fronds snapping its claws at me. Further along coconut flesh dries in the sun being transformed into what’s known as Copra.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W6R3XX2KVCSXMHNDNCZW4SW3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686744},"content":"On our return, four green coconuts have been set on a table, a drinking hole punched out of each.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIFMAQBKPFASVBZTPWAQTZ3QO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686745},"content":"“C’est pour tu!” Norma says daubing her forehead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVZB52YUWBBRPFTB7Z6DR5T3FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686746},"content":"Flies are swatted, and bowls uncovered reveal an unexpected banquet: speared tuna steaks and sashimi, curried coconut crab, taro, rice and coconut cake. I notice a Ukulele in the corner too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZ57CG6AMFB3VPCXPB4YQ7VQAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686747},"content":"We begin to chat. Their home atoll, Maupiti, is just 95 nautical miles away. They’re here to harvest Copra. With a weighty quota to meet before the Copra ship will come for them, and only seven people to process it, two years has passed since they’ve been home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S44PR2P6SJHVXC77VBCE7AGYEI","additional_properties":{"_id":"I2YBW2G5D5FKJCAO7IG7MD2GGY"},"content":"I have sailed halfway around the world with my partner, living off rental income and remote freelance work’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"E2NWHZZVBNFMNCEALDSE3AP2IU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686748},"content":"But they do seem content. They say, this place gives them everything they need.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63ZZNDXY2RDSBLHKF5GFJROMGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686749},"content":"“Socialising with sailors is important though.” Norma explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVTZQDHEQVHQ7ES23KUT7KKBJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686750},"content":"Through our patchy French and with the aid of paper and pencils, we exchange stories of our adventures. Us transients, I realise, are their link to the outside world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWHOAXK2QBCPZGM3B2QSYQFR5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686751},"content":"One evening, under a waxing gibbous moon, Harry leads us through the coconut palms. He’s been fattening up coconut crabs in traps. Keeping all fingers intact, masterfully he handles them into netted bags.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7DFDJW7JVAGDANLTSZP4LXEEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686752},"content":"Harry points skyward “During cyclones, we chop away branches to reduce swaying. Climb up, tie ourselves there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KNZPCUCA4VE5JAIFUUM6N4BYKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686753},"content":"This is how, in 1991, the residents survived cyclone Wasa-Arthur’s eight-metre waves that submerged all but the tallest treetops.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QFGCMD2BRBH3ZJHLJ63VIEEZ7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"SIGJLS74G5CX3FF2YMBE6KXUVI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"BP3D46FQIBFE5NN5TZZKM777EA","additional_properties":{"_id":"HIDV7VK5BFFL5D4CKNX5KYIPCE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"4ZYH567BSVC4LGWFZG6NIZFB2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686754},"content":"Life here is precarious: climate change brings more frequent cyclones, while storms from thousands of miles away create surges capable of engulfing an atoll like this one. Without access to weather forecasting, like their Polynesians ancestors, they look to nature’s signals; the behaviour of wildlife, the angle and movement of trees, cloud formations and the sea state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AE72LSSWKBGFHLGWR7Z37YPBQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686755},"content":"On the 12th night, an east wind blows – the time for our onward journey to Samoa has arrived. Coconuts and papayas are packed into our dinghy, a gift from Maupiha’a we’re told. A guestbook containing sailors’ messages of gratitude dating back years is passed to us to sign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OSYH3ERTXZF53JZ3IWV4CXSYLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686756},"content":"The roar of the Pacific beckons us to walk the outer reef one last time. I watch the night sky mirrored in rock pools and beyond the whitewash of a thousand breaking waves. At first light we’ll weigh anchor, all the richer for the time spent with these resilient and generous hosts in this wild place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZSUID24IQVE5DKQOF7YSOUKH2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686757},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Kate Ashe-Leonard"}]},"description":{"basic":"Dubliner Kate Ashe-Leonard left Ireland in 2017 to live with her partner in London. 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From current events to pop culture, to sports and political earthquakes, answer 100 questions in our annual quiz and you could win this great prize:","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJKDEPJFVZCUHDAFWW4DYNLEAM","additional_properties":{"_id":"LTTQC6542NHMJCW4GB74DB3GRQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X7U2ECRALJBCZJHFU6K46W5GBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734720910742},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irelands-blue-book.ie/\">Ireland’s Blue Book</a> is delighted to offer the winner of the Big Irish Times Quiz of the Year an overnight stay for two in Ballymaloe House, Co Cork, including dinner and breakfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXR65F2ZMZBRTCH2MQQRUI2M7E","additional_properties":{"_id":"6N63MTABLBH45KPYSLUXKHSYRM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CNO6S6BCTRCVJLPAGG533U2NEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734725932319},"content":"Ballymaloe House Hotel is a family-owned country house hotel and restaurant, nestled in the lush countryside of east Cork. A tranquil retreat with luxurious accommodation, a celebrated farm-to-fork dining experience, 300-acres of land and the very best of Irish hospitality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEUS2VK645H6XA2DPHVGHRGGMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734720910744},"content":"Closing date is Monday, January 6th, 2025, at 5pm GMT. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/\">Terms and conditions apply</a>. The winner and quiz answers will be published in The Irish Times Magazine on Saturday, January 18th. Best of luck.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EABYJJHLLRC7DEJMWYSE3YFQ4M","additional_properties":{"_id":"3NUOIPTBKZFD3HRZGOTB3X7I6U"},"content":"<div class=\"riddle2-wrapper\" data-rid-id=\"cJLK0FVl\" data-auto-scroll=\"true\" data-auto-scroll-offset=\"100\" data-is-fixed-height-enabled=\"false\" data-bg=\"#fff\" data-fg=\"#00205b\" style=\"margin:0 auto; max-width:100%; width:100%;\" data-embed-url=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/a/cJLK0FVl?lazyImages=true&staticHeight=false\"><script src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/build-embedjs/embedV2.js\"><\/script><iframe title=\"The Big Christmas Quiz 2024\" allow=\"autoplay\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin\"><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I feel nothing. He isn’t in my thoughts.” In January, whose former partner, Jules Thomas, reacted to news of his death?</h3><ul><li>Ian Bailey </li><li>John Bruton</li><li>Liam Payne </li><li>OJ Simpson</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“kamala IS brat.” In July, which pop star tweeted her support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic US presidential candidate?</h3><ul><li>Taylor Swift</li><li>Charli XCX</li><li>Dua Lipa</li><li>Chappell Roan </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“The tank is next to me. It’s moving.” “Is it very close?” “Very, very. Will you come and get me? I’m so scared.” In January, these were the last words spoken by Hind Rajab(5) to the Red Crescent after coming under Israeli tank fire where?</h3><ul><li>Gaza City </li><li>West Bank</li><li>Golan Heights</li><li>Lebanon</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“There are no more mountains. That’s it. I’m done now.” In August, Kellie Harrington announced her retirement from boxing after securing her second Olympic gold medal by defeating...?</h3><ul><li>Alessia Mesiano (Italy) </li><li>Angie Valdes (Colombia)</li><li>Beatriz Ferreira (Brazil)</li><li>Wenlu Yang (China)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I don’t think there’s an inmate left down there.” In March, police commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille confirmed the escape of almost 4,000 prisoners from the national penitentiary of which country?</h3><ul><li>El Salvador </li><li> Democratic Republic of the Congo</li><li>Haiti</li><li>Nigeria </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Well, it makes sense. You put New York and Dublin together and what do you get?” In May, late-night US TV comedian Stephen Colbert compared antisocial behaviour at the New York-Dublin Portal to what?</h3><ul><li>Bedlam </li><li>Boredom</li><li>Bacchanalia</li><li>Boston</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I don’t feel that I’m the best person for that job anymore.” In March, who unexpectedly announced they were stepping down from their job but would remain in office until a replacement was chosen?</h3><ul><li>Joe Biden </li><li>Jürgen Klopp</li><li>Leo Varadkar </li><li>Bill Belichick</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, a German court upheld the country’s ban on what phrase?</h3><ul><li>“It is what it is” </li><li>“My honour is loyalty”</li><li>“From the river to the sea”</li><li>“That was not on my 2024 bingo card”</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.” In April, Paste Magazine explained why which article appeared without a byline?</h3><ul><li>A report on corporate malfeasance </li><li>An exposé of Israeli war crimes in Gaza</li><li>An article calling on US Republicans to dump Donald Trump as their presidential nominee</li><li>A negative review of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.” In March, who was forced to admit altering a Mother’s Day photograph?</h3><ul><li>Karlie Kloss</li><li> Kim Kardashian</li><li>Kate Middleton</li><li>Annie Leibovitz</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar, why were asylum seekers sleeping in tents in Dublin moved out of the city centre during March’s St Patrick’s Day festivities?</h3><ul><li>Optics</li><li>Health and safety</li><li>Decentralisation</li><li>Bureaucratic error</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, what did then British prime minister Rishi Sunak vow that his country would refuse to accept back from Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Tony Cascarino</li><li>The Treaty Ports </li><li>Asylum seekers</li><li>The Wellington Monument </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, there was outrage when it was revealed the OPW paid more than €335,000 for what?</h3><ul><li>A bike shed </li><li>Eco-toilets</li><li>The relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux</li><li>Oasis tickets </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which Irish actor raised more than €900,000 for charity by running the Dublin Marathon?</h3><ul><li>Brendan Gleeson </li><li>Saoirse Ronan</li><li>Cillian Murphy</li><li>Colin Farrell</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, who became Limerick’s first directly elected mayor?</h3><ul><li>Daniel Butler </li><li>John Moran</li><li>Helen O’Donnell</li><li>Dee Ryan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, Taoiseach Simon Harris was briefed about the existence of “Cobalt”, an Oireachtas member allegedly recruited as an intelligence agent for which country?</h3><ul><li>China </li><li>Russia </li><li>United Kingdom</li><li>United States</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, Merchants Arch in Temple Bar became the first pub in Ireland to offer what?</h3><ul><li>A cashless bar</li><li>A silent disco</li><li>AI bartenders</li><li>€10 pints</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, following arrests in Cork and Kerry, the Garda announced that which organisation was now operating in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Peaky Blinders </li><li>New Jersey mob</li><li>Sinaloa cartel</li><li>Paw Patrol</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, a court heard that, despite being incarcerated in Mountjoy for many months, the controversial teacher Enoch Burke was still receiving what?</h3><ul><li>Jobseeker’s allowance </li><li>Malaria tablets </li><li>Daily prisoner orientation briefings</li><li>His full salary</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>During the general election campaign in November, Taoiseach Simon Harris apologised to Charlotte Fallon, a voter in Co Cork, for walking away when she tried to ask him about low pay in her job sector. What is her profession?</h3><ul><li>Nurse</li><li>Teacher</li><li>Disability care worker</li><li>HSE consultant </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, the Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan handed control of four villages to which country in a bid to avert war?</h3><ul><li>Azerbaijan</li><li>Iran </li><li>Russia</li><li>Turkey</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, organisers of the Paris Olympics insisted that a controversial drag performance during the opening ceremony was inspired, not by the Last Supper, but by what?</h3><ul><li>The Simpsons</li><li>Greek mythology</li><li>Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe</li><li>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, angry Valencia residents booed and threw eggs at Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia when they visited in the aftermath of what type of disaster?</h3><ul><li>Earthquake </li><li>Tsunami</li><li>Wildfire</li><li>Flood</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, Iran’s president and foreign minister were killed in a helicopter crash while returning from where?</h3><ul><li>A factory tour in Kazakhstan</li><li>A dam opening in Azerbaijan</li><li>A bridge dedication in Turkmenistan</li><li>A luau in Tajikistan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia the previous summer on what?</h3><ul><li>Food poisoning </li><li>War plans leaked to Russia</li><li>Waterlogged battlefields</li><li>Injuries to and suspensions of his field commanders</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, what did Ireland, Spain and Norway announce?</h3><ul><li>A joint bid to host the 2034 World Cup</li><li>A major fishing-rights agreement </li><li>Recognition of the state of Palestine</li><li>Their intention to form a new Eurovision voting bloc</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, which unexpected devices, belonging to members of Hizbullah, detonated in simultaneous explosions across Lebanon?</h3><ul><li>Pagers and walkie-talkies </li><li>Landlines and fax machines</li><li>BlackBerrys and floppy disks</li><li>Walkmans and disposable cameras</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Norwegian authorities denied that a Russian “spy whale” found dead had been shot. How did they claim it died?</h3><ul><li>By falling out of a fourth-floor window</li><li>By hanging itself in its jail cell</li><li>By accidentally overdosing </li><li>By getting a stick lodged in its mouth</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act provides fast-track citizenship to immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan provided they are not what?</h3><ul><li>Podcasters </li><li>Influencers</li><li>Muslims</li><li>Illegal drug users</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March’s Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin won a reported 88 per cent of the vote to extend his rule until when?</h3><ul><li>2028 </li><li>2030</li><li>2036</li><li>2040</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August at the Paris Olympics, the French pole-vaulter Anthony Ammirati went viral when which part of his anatomy appeared to knock the crossbar?</h3><ul><li>His foot </li><li>His elbow</li><li>His head</li><li>His crotch</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, who overtook Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke in the home straight to snatch bronze in the women’s 400m Olympic final?</h3><ul><li>Marileidy Paulino (Dominican Republic) </li><li>Sharlene Mawdsley (Ireland)</li><li>Natalia Kaczmarek (Poland)</li><li>Amber Anning (GB)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Connacht and Ireland rugby star Bundee Aki was one of 3,600 people who took part in what kind of event at Convention Centre Dublin?</h3><ul><li>Citizenship ceremony </li><li>Comic-Con</li><li>Moonie wedding</li><li>Multilevel-marketing seminar</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, which became the first continental European club to win a GAA provincial match when it beat Conahy Shamrocks in Kilkenny?</h3><ul><li>St Petersburg Emmets </li><li>Helsinki Shamrocks</li><li>Barcelona Gaels</li><li> Istanbul St Mary’s</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, which player – arguably the most hyped name in women’s basketball – was controversially left out of the US 2024 Olympic squad?</h3><ul><li> Brittney Griner </li><li>Caitlin Clark</li><li>Breanna Stewart</li><li>A’ja Wilson</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, why did Luke Littler’s progress to the final of the PDC World Darts Championship generate unprecedented attention for the sport?</h3><ul><li>He’s ambidextrous </li><li>He’s a teetotaller</li><li>He was educated at Eton </li><li>He was 16 years old</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, what unusual exercise did Shelbourne boss Damien Duff tell his players to engage in as they closed in on the League of Ireland title?</h3><ul><li>Knitting </li><li>Bubble-wrap popping</li><li>Primal-scream therapy</li><li>Watching Only Fools and Horses</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>With a gold and a bronze medal, who was Ireland’s single most successful athlete at the Paris Olympics?</h3><ul><li>Kellie Harrington </li><li>Rhys McClenaghan</li><li>Mona McSharry</li><li>Daniel Wiffen</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At the Euros in July, how did the Spanish FA reportedly risk prosecution by selecting Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal to play against Georgia in the round of 16?</h3><ul><li>He’d picked up two yellow cards in the group stage </li><li>He’d failed to submit to a random drug test after Spain’s game against Albania </li><li>Officials had raised questions about his eligibility to represent his country</li><li>It was an evening kick-off, and German law forbids minors from working past 8pm</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, after they fought in Texas, what dirty trick did Katie Taylor’s defeated opponent, Amanda Serrano, accuse the Irish boxer of employing?</h3><ul><li> Greasing</li><li>Headbutting</li><li>Bribing the judges</li><li>Loading her gloves</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At which Irish venue did Taylor Swift’s Eras tour stop for three sold-out performances in June?</h3><ul><li>Aviva Stadium </li><li>Croke Park</li><li>Páirc Uí Chaoimh</li><li>RDS</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, who made a surprise appearance onstage with The Wolfe Tones at Electric Picnic?</h3><ul><li>Liam Gallagher </li><li>Kellie Harrington</li><li>Kneecap</li><li>Michelle O’Neill</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, a diss track called Not Like Us was widely reckoned to have settled “the defining hip-hop beef of the 21st century” in whose favour?</h3><ul><li>Drake’s </li><li>Kendrick Lamar’s</li><li>50 Cent’s</li><li>Diddy’s</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, Ireland’s Eurovision entry, BambieThug, was asked to remove pro-Palestinian messages written on their body in what script?</h3><ul><li>Kanji </li><li>Arabic</li><li>Sanskrit </li><li>Ogham</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, veteran rockers Deep Purple admitted to carrying out which showbiz deception?</h3><ul><li>Lip-syncing</li><li>Crotch-stuffing </li><li>Telling crowds in multiple cities that they were, by far, the best audience in the world</li><li>Staging a farewell tour when they had no intention of retiring</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, Hozier’s Too Sweet became the first Irish song to top the Billboard Hot 100 since which single?</h3><ul><li>U2’s Beautiful Day </li><li>The Cranberries's Dreams</li><li>Sinéad O’Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U</li><li>Chris de Burgh's Lady in Red</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which comeback album did The Irish Times praise as “majestically desolate, gorgeously grim”?</h3><ul><li>The Cure's Songs of a Lost World </li><li>Eminem's The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)</li><li>Jennifer Lopez’ This Is Me…Now</li><li>Vampire Weekend's Only God Was Above Us</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, which of his lesser-known skills did Usher showcase during the Super Bowl half-time show in Las Vegas?</h3><ul><li>Juggling </li><li>Roller-skating</li><li>Bouncing a penny into a glass</li><li>Breaking an apple in half with his bare hands</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, which Irish act did Elton John call “the best band” in the world right now?</h3><ul><li>Fontaines DC </li><li>Pillow Queens</li><li>Kneecap</li><li>Boyzlife</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, the video for Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please single featured a cameo by which Irish actor?</h3><ul><li>Michael Fassbender </li><li>Andrew Scott</li><li>Sharon Horgan</li><li>Barry Keoghan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Coolock says No.” In August, after an anti-immigration rally in Belfast, far-right activists from north Dublin reportedly spent the evening socialising with members of which organisation?</h3><ul><li>UDA </li><li>IRA</li><li>International Committee of the Red Cross</li><li>Oireachtas Golf Society</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“One of the advantages of being blind and in journalism is that you can focus on the words.” In July, the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue interviewed a key witness to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, unaware of what?</h3><ul><li>His own forehead was bleeding after he ducked to avoid fire </li><li>Secret Service agents were approaching with guns drawn</li><li>The witness was wearing a Trump visor topped with fake hair and holding a beer can</li><li>The would-be assassin’s dead body was slumped a few feet away</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“How do you address him? Do you kiss the ring? I got more instruction on how to meet Barbra Streisand.” In June, US late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon was one of 105 comedians from around the world invited to meet whom?</h3><ul><li>Pope Francis </li><li>King Charles III</li><li>US president Joe Biden</li><li>Dalai Lama</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“The first time I came to the Dáil ... I saw this young lad walking around the place,and I said to myself, ‘Ah sure, he must be on a school tour or on work experience’.” Who did Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys pay tribute to in April?</h3><ul><li>Jack Chambers </li><li>Simon Harris</li><li>Michael Ring</li><li>Bernard Durkan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I think there’s a little [_____] in all of us.” In November, Clare man Jack Wall O’Reilly (aka “Earbuds Paul”) was victorious in what novelty contest in Dublin’s Smithfield Square?</h3><ul><li>Lip Sync Battle </li><li>Speed Dating champion</li><li>Mr Gay Ireland</li><li>Paul Mescal lookalike contest</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Only a short while ago we thought we’d eradicated measles and [_____]. Both have now been brought back, largely by the same people.” Who or what was journalist Marina Hyde writing about after the UK general election in July?</h3><ul><li>Racism </li><li>George Galloway</li><li>Nigel Farage</li><li>Vinyl records</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I am a woman. I was born a woman, I’ve lived as a woman and I’ve competed as a woman. There’s no doubt that there are enemies of success.” The Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, who was at the centre of a gender controversy in Paris, represents which country?</h3><ul><li>Algeria </li><li>Paraguay</li><li>Italy</li><li>United States</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“It was like something out of an action movie. It was something you never thought you’d see.” In March, Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott was reacting to?</h3><ul><li>The Orioles’ first World Series victory </li><li>The rescue of hostages from a burning building </li><li>The collapse of the city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge</li><li>The destruction of the city’s historic Fort McHenry</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“She has little teeny-tiny baby chompers, she's perpetually wet, and her name means bouncy pork. It’s the ultimate recipe for internet cuteness.” Which pygmy hippo became a global sensation in September after videos of her frolicking at a Thai zoo went viral?</h3><ul><li>Moo Deng</li><li>Moo Toon</li><li>Moo Waan</li><li>Kha Moo</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“A usually reliable source tells me that the North Korean soldiers who have deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before. As a result, they are gorging on [_____].” What’s the missing word from this November tweet by the Financial Times’s chief foreign-affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman?</h3><ul><li>Facebook </li><li>Pornography</li><li>Minecraft</li><li>Netflix</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, the New York Times revealed that which US presidential contender had said that doctors discovered a dead worm in their brain?</h3><ul><li>Ron DeSantis </li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li><li> Marianne Williamson </li><li>Vivek Ramaswamy</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“They never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.” In April, whose claim that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during the second World War met widespread bemusement?</h3><ul><li>Donald Trump </li><li>Joe Biden</li><li>JD Vance</li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, Robert F Kennedy admitted to once dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park in New York and staging the scene to look like what?</h3><ul><li>A suicide </li><li>A mob hit</li><li>A bicycle accident</li><li>A drug deal gone wrong</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, who torpedoed their chances of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate by revealing they once shot their year-old dog and threw its body in a gravel pit?</h3><ul><li>Robert F Kennedy </li><li>Kristi Noem</li><li>Marco Rubio</li><li>Glenn Youngkin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, newly released documents revealed why Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, had abruptly left the White House. What had the German shepherd done?</h3><ul><li>Been involved in at least 24 biting incidents </li><li>Been involved in at least 24 groping incidents </li><li>Chosen to go live with a lovely family on a farm upstate</li><li>Been hired as a political analyst by MSNBC</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Donald Trump’s claim that Haitian migrants were eating cats and dogs in which American city was denied by its mayor?</h3><ul><li>Springfield, Ohio </li><li>Honolulu, Hawaii </li><li>Miami, Florida </li><li>San Francisco, California</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, Vanity Fair published a photograph of which presidential hopeful appearing to eat a barbecued dog in 2010? (The candidate later insisted the animal was a goat.)</h3><ul><li>Joe Biden </li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li><li>Donald Trump</li><li>Jill Stein</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At a rally in October, what did Donald Trump spend a notable amount of time talking about?</h3><ul><li>Tiger Woods’s swing </li><li>Greg Norman’s short game</li><li>Rory McIlroy’s putting skills </li><li>Arnold Palmer’s penis</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, who said they were being investigated after allegedly once cutting off a whale’s head with a chainsaw and driving home with it strapped to the roof of a minivan?</h3><ul><li>Robert F Kennedy </li><li>Kristi Noem</li><li>Marco Rubio</li><li>Glenn Youngkin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At Madison Square Garden in October, Donald Trump promised that, if re-elected, he would let whom “go wild” in which policy area?</h3><ul><li>Ted Nugent on guns </li><li>Robert F Kennedy on health</li><li>Donald Trump jnr on narcotics</li><li>Kristi Noem on animal control</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, to whom did Cillian Murphy dedicate his best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer?</h3><ul><li>Dreamers </li><li>Peacemakers</li><li>Cheesemakers </li><li>Manufacturers of all dairy products</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, American comedian Conan O’Brien made a cameo on TG4’s Ros na Rún, playing a person with what unlikely job?</h3><ul><li>Balloon delivery person</li><li>Waterslide tester</li><li>Dog-food taster</li><li>Professional sleeper</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, a fictional TV series depicting which real-life former world leader as a small-town detective debuted internationally?</h3><ul><li>Hillary Clinton </li><li>Sanna Marin</li><li>Theresa May </li><li>Angela Merkel </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, Belfast rappers Kneecap arrived for the premiere of their film at Utah’s Sundance Film Festival in what form of transportation?</h3><ul><li>Tank </li><li>PSNI Land Rover</li><li>Handcar</li><li>City bus</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her role in a fatal shooting incident on the set of which Alec Baldwin film?</h3><ul><li>Boss Baby </li><li>The Departed</li><li>Mission: Impossible – Fallout</li><li>Rust</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which musician made his acting debut playing Saoirse Ronan’s father in Steve McQueen’s film Blitz?</h3><ul><li>Paul Weller </li><li>Morrissey </li><li>Liam Ó Maonlaí </li><li>Simon Le Bon </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, which RTÉ prank-based comedy show was described by one reviewer as so bad “it makes Mrs Brown’s Boys look like Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation”?</h3><ul><li>The Tommy Tiernan Show </li><li>The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show </li><li>The Dry</li><li>RTÉ News: Nine O’Clock</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, which real couple featured in the cast of Alex Garland’s dystopian thriller Civil War?</h3><ul><li>Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds </li><li>Emily Blunt and John Krasinski </li><li>Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons</li><li>Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, the final season of which long-running HBO show was promoted with the tagline “Don’t be mad he’s leaving. Be mad he stayed so long”?</h3><ul><li>Blue Bloods </li><li>Curb Your Enthusiasm</li><li>The Penguin</li><li>Yellowstone</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, a report brought to Cabinet by Simon Harris proposed relocating part of RTÉ to which tourist attraction?</h3><ul><li> Glendalough </li><li>Rock of Cashel</li><li>GPO </li><li>Guinness Storehouse</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Released in May, which viral hit by Kabin Crew, from Cork, and Lisdoonvarna Crew, from Co Clare, was praised by the Guardian as “one of the songs of summer that made the internet vibrate with joy”?</h3><ul><li> The Joke </li><li>The Weight</li><li>The Spark</li><li>The End</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of the following rivals to X (formerly Twitter) proved most successful in 2024 in terms of user adoption and reach?</h3><ul><li>Bluesky </li><li>Threads </li><li>Mastodon</li><li>Truth Social</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, which YouTube personality defeated Mike Tyson, the 58-year-old former professional boxer, in a fight streamed live on Netflix?</h3><ul><li>MrBeast </li><li>PewDiePie</li><li>Logan Paul </li><li>Jake Paul</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The loss of more than 130,000 jobs at Google, Cisco, Intel and other tech companies in 2024 were linked to the rapid adoption of what?</h3><ul><li>Tariffs</li><li>Artificial intelligence </li><li>Driverless cars</li><li> Early retirements</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, tech website Gizmodo revealed that [blank] “hasn’t been necessary for nearly 20 years, but the myth persists”?</h3><ul><li>Tipping </li><li>Flu shots </li><li>Hazard lights</li><li>Airplane mode</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, which cybersecurity firm apologised for a global IT outage, sparked by a flawed update, that crippled 8.5 million computers running Microsoft software?</h3><ul><li>CrowdStrike </li><li>CyberArk</li><li>Fortinet </li><li>Palo Alto Networks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Family (child) friendly, relaxed chilled-out atmosphere. I unreservedly rate this area five-star but not cheap.” In March, it was revealed that which of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, with a $5 million bounty on their head, is also a prolific restaurant reviewer on Google Maps?</h3><ul><li>Joseph Kony </li><li>DB Cooper</li><li>Ruja Ignatova</li><li>Christy Kinahan snr</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, how did Saudi Arabia’s first male AI robot blot its copybook when it was publicly presented in Riyadh?</h3><ul><li>It stuttered</li><li>It groped a female TV reporter</li><li>It failed some basic maths questions</li><li>It made a series of controversial remarks about gender identity</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, Fingal County Council warned the public to be vigilant after bogus QR codes were discovered stuck on to what?</h3><ul><li>Traffic lights </li><li>Parking meters</li><li>Postboxes</li><li>Election posters</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, what were spotted carrying out security patrols at the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, the US president-elect?</h3><ul><li>Robotic dogs </li><li>Holographic secret-service agents</li><li>Remote-control alligators</li><li>Facial-recognition drones</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In an unscripted moment on NBC’s Today show in February, which TV legend “throttled” Elmo because (they said) they found his voice annoying?</h3><ul><li>Oprah Winfrey </li><li>David Attenborough</li><li>William Shatner </li><li>Larry David </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the first half of 2024, what occurred in Lanesborough, Co Longford; Leixlip, Co Kildare; Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow; Clonmel, Co Tipperary; and Convoy, Co Donegal, as well as at multiple locations around Dublin?</h3><ul><li>Reports of moving statues </li><li>Outbreaks of mpox</li><li>Fires at buildings reported (or rumoured) to be earmarked for migrants</li><li>Elections to choose local mayors</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, rock band Oasis claimed that they “at no time had any awareness” that which controversial pricing strategy was being used to sell tickets for their 2025 reunion shows?</h3><ul><li>Kinetic tariffs </li><li>Dynamic pricing</li><li>Quantum costing</li><li>Volatile valuation</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of the following is not a real headline from 2024?</h3><ul><li>Israel “in secret talks to send Gazans to Congo as part of resettlement plan” </li><li>Israeli special forces disguised as doctors kill three militants at West Bank hospital </li><li>Israeli spokesperson says that while they disagree, they “respect” Ireland’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood</li><li> “Human shielding in action”: Israeli forces strap Palestinian man to jeep”</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, which country was accused of sending “excrement balloons” into its neighbours’ airspace?</h3><ul><li>Russia </li><li>Israel </li><li>North Korea </li><li>Pakistan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in October, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called what a “floating island of garbage”?</h3><ul><li>Manhattan </li><li>The Maga movement </li><li>Donald Trump’s planned cabinet appointments </li><li>Puerto Rico</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, which report in Chinese state media did then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar issue a statement to deny?</h3><ul><li>That he had come out in favour of the reunification of China and Taiwan </li><li>That he had come out in favour of the disbandment of Nato </li><li>That he had given China permission to open a police station on Dublin’s Capel Street</li><li>That he was leaving politics to become a Shaolin monk</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, what did Basketball Ireland chief executive John Feehan claim “would be ruinous” for the Ireland women’s team?</h3><ul><li>Building a monorail from their hotel to their training ground </li><li>Accepting a sponsorship deal from Boko Haram</li><li>Boycotting the side’s match against Israel </li><li>Splurging €2.2 million on a musical about the history of basketball in Ireland</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, mourners arrested while laying flowers at memorials to Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in St Petersburg received what unusual punishment?</h3><ul><li>They were imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals </li><li>They were sent to labour camps </li><li>They were required to apologise on social media</li><li>They were conscripted into the Russian army</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, a Co Clare woman had a €760,000 injury claim dismissed after she admitted winning what less than a year after her accident?</h3><ul><li>An Easter egg hunt </li><li>A beach volleyball tournament</li><li>A pumpkin-carving contest </li><li>A Christmas tree-throwing competition</li></ul></section></iframe></div>","type":"raw_html"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Eoin Butler"}},"name":"Eoin Butler"}]},"description":{"basic":"From Ireland’s headline-makers to global events, music milestones, sports triumphs, and unforgettable quotes, answer Eoin Butler’s 100 questions correctly and you could win a luxury overnight stay for two"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Big Irish Times Quiz of 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SQ3ABCVPZNEBXPHXX6K7MVM6PQ","auth":{"1":"7f4aa88c3fdec9953ec60d43bb5dd5626ede60fbecb9e6b6f35fd770bc707ba8"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SQ3ABCVPZNEBXPHXX6K7MVM6PQ.png"}},"subtype":"opinion","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Life & Style"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/2024/12/23/the-big-irish-times-quiz-of-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Life & Style"}}}},{"_id":"54IZPNY2DFD63BSSGL567JFIQQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":399,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/bd366794-a082-482e-8a59-4ff0d4cc3823/versions/1733842130/media/183fa1708939a023fe1f6ad10d314c12_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/2024/12/23/emigration-to-australia-is-at-its-highest-level-for-a-decade-we-need-to-ask-why/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HWLKNG75RNBAJPA2QDLLJSLS7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196077},"content":"<a href=\"http://irishtimes.com/tags/christmas\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> comes around quickly. It has its own form of repetition; the rituals, gatherings, meet-ups, traditions. One is the annual flurry of video clips of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/emigration/\" target=\"_blank\">emigrants</a> returning home. I’m a sucker for these tender arrivals-hall scenes. Behind them is the story of a legacy of emigration embedded in our national psyche. But its previous triggers – economic and social – have less purchase now. Yet no matter how much Ireland progresses as a society, emigration remains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DP4MESD7YFDFBJHKYSIXFCKZBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196078},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2024/keyfindings/#:~:text=Over%2069%2C000%20people%20departed%20the,54%2C200%20births%20and%2034%2C800%20deaths.\" target=\"_blank\">According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO)</a>, between April 2023 and April 2024, about 69,900 people emigrated from Ireland, up 5,000 from the same period between 2022 and 2023. This is the highest level of emigration since 2015. It is high, in part, due to Ukrainian people leaving Ireland (21,500), along with 10,600 EU citizens and 3,000 UK citizens. The number of Irish citizens leaving stood at 34,700. Of those, 10,600 left for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>. This is an increase of 126 per cent on the previous period’s figure, which was 4,700. This marks the highest level of emigration to Australia since 2013.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J2JUXQG22RG35OUHKIVWF4SMSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733828225498},"content":"Not all emigration is the result of hardship, and it would be silly to frame it all as such. Young Irish people are under no obligation to stay in Ireland. Countless places around the world offer a much better quality of life: better nightlife, more amenities, more diverse cultural choices, higher wages, and crucially, housing. And Australia has its own <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/housing-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">housing</a> issues, especially in Sydney, where the median weekly rent is more than €450.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5JC2LSBQG5CD3HU6MV6BJVCOJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734255815768},"content":"But there is much greater value in the private rental market in Australia, as well as higher wages. A two-bedroom apartment in Coogee can be rented for the same price as a “studio” flat on Dorset Street. A functioning rental market is not just about the cost, it’s also about the opportunity to rent at all, and it’s about value.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZGECBMN5BGWHBYKYQ3AHDD6IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196080},"content":"A useful research project would be to survey emigrants in detail on their reasons for leaving Ireland. Then, we would be able to understand how prominent housing – especially the cost of rent – is as a factor. Certainly, among my own friends, departures in recent years have been catalysed by the rental crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOZOI4Y63RGCVPOBP2UBQ7WQPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196081},"content":"The reality remains that there is no choice in the Irish “market” when it comes to renting. What’s available is overpriced. Supply in and of itself is not the answer. Affordable supply is. It’s pretty obvious that build-to-rent apartments now make up a large part of the private rental market, and do not have enough people on high wages to fill them. Last month, Killian Woods of the Business Post <a href=\"https://www.businesspost.ie/news/landlords-linked-to-us-funds-pitching-e2000-plus-black-friday-deals-for-dublin-apartments/\">reported that landlords linked to US funds were offering deals on rent</a> coinciding with “Black Friday”. One US residential investor reportedly threw in two weeks of free rent for apartments in Dublin’s docklands as an incentive – hardly a sign they’re in huge demand. How could they be fully occupied? Two-bed apartments are listed for €3,745 a month, which is unaffordable for most people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"62BPR4TJRJC4XBFKTKPLFXIJGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196082},"content":"During the recent general election campaign, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/simon-harris/\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Harris</a> had a soundbite about how he didn’t want his children to live through austerity. But those being pummelled by the cost of rent are already living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated by rent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N3PCT4GUDNFZDG7JXE5MDMTKTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196083},"content":"For students, the situation is especially bleak. There is no real affordability in the private student accommodation market. Despite the fact that student homelessness, couch-surfing and extremely draining commutes to college are well-documented, nothing is being done to radically reduce the rent for students. Instead, unaffordability has been designed in to the market through purpose-built student accommodation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRXBPVWLLNHJTJSSGBK4YOPWB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196084},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.residencestoneybatter.com/flexfloorplan/679/10382/I\">A small single-bed en suite</a> in a “four bedroom cluster”, which includes a “rejuvenating shower” in a new student block in Stoneybatter in Dublin 7, close to TUD’s Grangegorman campus, costs €343 a week, or about €1,372 a month. And that’s fairly standard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZ5PNQSQANDO7IAFC2BKLS4TXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733771701574},"content":"Last July, the president of the Union of Students of Ireland, Chris Clifford, spoke about student accommodation costs being driven up by private developers. “They just want to squeeze as much money as possible from students and know how desperate many students are because of the housing crisis. Yet again, we call on Government to publish the long-awaited Student Accommodation Strategy urgently.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"REH626TANFHPXPIGFOA26PBWJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196085},"content":"By August 2023, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/08/15/more-than-two-thirds-of-young-adults-in-ireland-still-living-with-parents-figures-show/\">68 per cent of young adults aged between 25 and 29 still lived at home</a>, almost 26 per cent higher than the EU average. The situation is particularly bad for young men, with 73.9 per cent of men in that age range still living at home, compared with 61.1 per cent of young women. Across the EU, the average for women in that age range living at home is 36 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJLH6PKGDJHSZNAL7IEFAQYNBU","additional_properties":{"_id":"KYKFEN3H5RAQRPNOWBQBZI3EEY"},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TUX5X4MGYJC7TDCHK3VFFYK3IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733828225506},"content":"There’s something deeply wrong, and actually quite upsetting, with the reality that younger generations are growing in confidence, contributing hugely to contemporary Irish culture in so many ways, yet then find that confidence and self-esteem battered by the lived experience of the rental crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LF7TODYHKRAINKXGVOTSJRCBJY","additional_properties":{"_id":"WFMF6WGFDRAR3ID4SQ5CW3Z7X4"},"content":"Moving to Australia: ‘I would have had a very fixed life in Ireland. I feel very light here’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2ER56SOITFDG7LVJZFPMCIJ25A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196086},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"KPSXZ4ORNRD3ZIZ2YBUB3GO6NE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733771701577},"content":"Another Christmas tradition is the collision of family members’ political views over the festive dinner table. Perhaps this year, returning emigrants can ask older generations why the parties responsible for the housing policies that curtail the futures of the young were returned to power in 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HH3JX46LHBBNFBF7RFZ5IWYT4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196087},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Una Mullally"}},"name":"Una Mullally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Those being pummelled by the cost of rent are living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Emigration to Australia is at its highest level for a decade. We need to ask why","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"A2FX57KG3ZES5H5OPRLMR5OMUI","auth":{"1":"2a6f38884b451a4b1226c27b9fc5c8f891e1506ccfd427dd88c1d6fa24ad1999"},"focal_point":{"x":1163,"y":1206},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/A2FX57KG3ZES5H5OPRLMR5OMUI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Opinion"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/2024/12/23/emigration-to-australia-is-at-its-highest-level-for-a-decade-we-need-to-ask-why/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Opinion"}}}},{"_id":"ASRDRWD6YZFXTOO3QZO3DGP5QY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":424,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a61536f6-7cab-4dbc-a00c-c147067f0bf5/versions/1734022189/media/2c4b51d51421e00324a91700c06c39a1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/23/the-christmas-swim-is-going-to-be-a-lot-nicer-young-irish-expats-embrace-their-first-australian-christmas/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YZMFTJOTZVF47FXF6L5ARYD3YE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448031},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> – and summer – has well and truly arrived in Melbourne, although feeling festive in 30-plus degree heat while listening to songs about a winter wonderland is certainly something to get used to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHAVPDV2NZEG5BFTLABSCAIXKM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448033},"content":"For many younger Irish people who have <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">moved</a> to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>, it will be a case of getting used to their first Christmas away from home comforts and traditions this year. So how are they feeling?","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HFWKGIXJJHJVDJ7TKLZNUFDAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448034},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNWYN7C2V5DGDFS7NUKEXWXSSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448035},"content":"“I’m definitely embracing the change of scenery and feel very lucky to experience the festive period in Australia,” says Elaine Freeman (34) from Co Clare. “There is such a festive buzz around Melbourne as well as summer excitement, it’s such an exciting time to experience Melbourne and Australia,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H5NKF3R5PRDPXOHNFAHINZZAWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448036},"content":"Instead of celebrating in Melbourne, though, Freeman will travel up the east coast to Byron Bay and Noosa for the holidays, located in the states of New South Wales and Queensland respectively. “I’m excited for the quintessential Australian beach Christmas,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWUFTXY4VVGHZN3ZWYHT5GXMWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448037},"content":"“I’ll be with my sister, her fiance and a group of friends. Between work, travelling, living in different countries and Covid, this will be the first time since 2016 that my sister and I will be in the same room for Christmas. This makes my first Christmas in Australia even more special,” says Freeman.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEWQVSJH2FFAHLS5QWKSWT5F3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448038},"content":"Also embracing new surroundings is Dale Galway (30) from Co Wexford. “Enjoying the weather, a barbecue and a sea dip is something I am really looking forward to. There is an amazing, vibrant Irish culture here, so hearing accents or seeing familiar faces is really great,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKLTFRCDM5AVJDA3BUUZYAHQWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448039},"content":"“I will be spending [the day] with my housemates, friends and friends of friends. Being here and being open to new people is pretty important and thus far I have met some really amazing people.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNNR2FVKQBAKDL4ZKDRRFEBQGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448040},"content":"As much as he is excited for a sun-filled, outdoor Christmas, Galway says he will “miss the craic” at home with friends and family. “Seeing people from years back in the local pub, catching up and reminiscing about times gone past was always a highlight at home,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WZ7SIF6LIVC35HMBUQKT7SDDGY","additional_properties":{"_id":"5IXHST52LJHMVIIK2DYHK7NVWM"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UA6CYPAU65CYZOF6HRYTJ4L6QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448041},"content":"Galway has noticed a “laid-back” approach to Christmas in Melbourne and feels the festivities begin a lot earlier in Ireland. He says: “I haven’t been asked: ‘Are you all set for Christmas?’ yet.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R66SNPAMFJAMJA56XBH5LFTSSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448042},"content":"“There are amazing lights and decorations all over the city centre, but nothing compares to the old street lights hanging up across the small towns of Ireland with Christmas songs playing on the streets.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMDAMR3ZNNEOPJKU63L3X6GIXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448043},"content":"He says: “The sun feels weird at this time of year, but if your only complaint is the weather, you really have nothing to complain about.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"AXAGDCVDHNC6LPEN223IIAZCYE","additional_properties":{"_id":"Q4RZSUGUPJFXXEEFJ3WXJKDPHM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6LIJJICZJC4VN2JJPGAI3TJMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448044},"content":"Maria O’Dowd (28), from Co Galway, who now lives in Perth, says spending her first Christmas on the other side of the world will be “challenging”. With her friends in Perth heading home for the holiday season, O’Dowd will spend Christmas in Melbourne with her Irish friends who live here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZPIPVU755BQTPBUCSPLMQPXEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448045},"content":"She says: “Being away from home for Christmas this year will be really challenging, but I am excited about it because it is something I have never done before. Friends who have lived in Australia for a few years have always told me that it’s crucial to enjoy Christmas as best I can here and avoid making it feel like Christmas at home as it would be hard to meet the expectations.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3UOUQNWSLZDHDHUVNMT4GBJ3RM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448046},"content":"On Christmas Day, O’Dowd plans to hit the beach with friends followed by dinner, drinks and games in the evening (her contribution to dinner will be Brussels sprouts and dessert ). “There will be a lot of people on Christmas Day, some people I know from home and some people from Ireland I have never met before … It will be easier to be away from home knowing there are other Irish people celebrating Christmas with me as they are also separated from friends, family and loved ones during this time,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZX53QA2TNEDBF6Y3ASI534BWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448047},"content":"In keeping with Irish traditions, O’Dowd says her GAA team in Perth organised the 12 pubs of Christmas. “That was very enjoyable, especially in the sun,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGQOPTL3MZBIRPOP6Q4NXAS2H4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448048},"content":"Even though spending Christmas away from family will be a difficult time for O’Dowd, she says: “I’m going to embrace it this year and do it in Aussie-style. I’ll be thinking positively and telling myself that not everyone has the opportunity to experience what it’s like to live in a different country, with new traditions and among new people, and for that I am very grateful.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DE6F6KULZZEY5APEYCSMLHPOS4","additional_properties":{"_id":"X5ZWMS5WVZAJJBE2EEEFQ3DKAE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HBMPLXTJ6JH75IDERNY7XBZS5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448049},"content":"Seamus O’Dwyer (24) from Co Kilkenny agrees that Christmas this year will be “strange” but is welcoming the new experience. He will be celebrating his first Aussie Christmas in Melbourne with his partner and friends, “ideally at the beach”, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W2ZWI7CNCVAGJCNRELC4NKEMTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448050},"content":"“Christmas will certainly be different this year – the heat being the main factor, I’m still not used to it … The Christmas swim is definitely going to be a lot nicer, though.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGUKQYXMSBCOTBQHT3SWLP4NLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448051},"content":"Having only arrived in Australia earlier this year, O’Dwyer says he’s not feeling homesick but being away from home for Christmas is “definitely sinking in”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LXHNWP2SQNHJVPBXJ32KC6ROXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448052},"content":"He says: “I will be calling home and friends that we would normally visit before Christmas, other than that I would say everything is going to be completely different – new country, amazing weather, new friends. It’s a lot to take in suddenly, it feels like time is flying past.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TKXKPQ5SNFAPHA2GR652KDQJQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448053},"content":"Although having a slight craving for a typical home-made Christmas dinner, O’Dwyer is looking forward to Aussie barbecues on the beach, but “I can’t leave out the 12 pubs, something from home to embrace”, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R7CWMJALBVFPHJ5GJBWKTIF45M","additional_properties":{"_id":"S6TK5ALHLJFXLPPVNTTJR67YTM"},"content":"‘Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world I have been’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5B6EEX3TCREDXK7DHHW3XQWWNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448054},"content":"“As much as I’d love to get my jacket on and head out on a cold evening back home, I’m happy sticking with the sunshine here for now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U2M4HLPU4RBZFFJMEWKO3MDHPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448055},"content":"Yasmin Green (31) from Co Leitrim is a nurse in Melbourne and says she will be working a lot over the festive season but is “fortunate to be rostered off Christmas Day, so I am having a very Australian barbecue, [doing] Secret Santa with my housemates and going to the beach”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7OXVBX7DJDHHAHLPITTMGEZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":"URTHHZW4HJCLDG55ASKILX5ZYM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"N3KWPQB3MBD5PIHUAK2NK7RVUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448056},"content":"Green says celebrating Christmas in Australia has always been on her bucket list. She says: “I feel excited and privileged for a once in a lifetime Christmas experience. However, I have lived overseas previously … so I am used to spending it away from home and family.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SDA2UJAPRAPHFZ2FP3CCKXIAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448057},"content":"Reflecting on Christmas at home in Leitrim, Green says: “I will miss the tradition of meeting up and attending midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with my extended family and meeting up to celebrate with my friends on Stephen’s Day. Most of my Christmas will be completely different to any other year this year.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V34BDHLQS5EGHJGCHGK7Q6ZHC4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Olivia Powell in Melbourne"}]},"description":{"basic":"How do the Irish in Melbourne feel about spending their first festive season Down Under?"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘The Christmas swim is going to be a lot nicer’: Young Irish expats embrace their first Australian Christmas","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SPHWGLLATBBEFC7SUAQF2C3ZDM","auth":{"1":"8150509b6af737e70e262434a9236898d5d320ab98c31aa1f63150e3ee108076"},"focal_point":{"x":750,"y":555},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SPHWGLLATBBEFC7SUAQF2C3ZDM.jpeg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/23/the-christmas-swim-is-going-to-be-a-lot-nicer-young-irish-expats-embrace-their-first-australian-christmas/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"73TWREVXKNC25IXGTMDRZYFWF4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/20/abroad-newsletter-most-read-stories-of-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ESD47VYLUVBGFBFSVEUBVMROEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133098},"content":"Welcome to the December issue of The Irish Times Abroad newsletter. As it’s that time of year, we’re having a look back at the stories that caught your attention over the last 12 months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFY3HIUDDNBK7N7JQMDE7H3BDE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The most read piece in Abroad this year was this piece by Jade Wilson about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/01/04/moving-from-singapore-to-ireland-im-shocked-by-the-inefficiency-and-complete-lack-of-common-sense/\" target=\"_blank\">an Irish woman’s move home from Singapore</a>. Louise O’Leary worked and lived there for five years before meeting her Singaporean husband. “My partner wasn’t ready to leave after a year or two together because he was still building up his work and experience. So I stayed about two or three years longer than planned.” However when they moved home, the bureaucratic challenges she encountered on her return to her home country were “really unexpected”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F37I4RSKMZBVBK3RSGB2SGC4TA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734710833102},"content":"In February, Cathal Mongey wrote <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/02/15/my-partner-and-i-are-renting-an-apartment-for-the-same-price-we-were-paying-to-share-with-five-others-in-dublin-and-were-10-minutes-from-the-beach/\" target=\"_blank\">about life in Perth, Australia</a>, something he recommends that any young Irish person should try. He says while housing is an issue there as well it “definitely is a little easier finding somewhere to live... To put it into perspective, my partner and I are renting our own apartment for the same price we were paying to share a house with five others in Dublin – and we’re 10 minutes from the beach.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6C3Y5CZVHZBSXIRDCA6ZXT2SJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Evan Cannon wrote about his time in college <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/08/09/as-you-watch-the-olympics-remember-that-the-us-collegiate-athletics-system-plays-a-major-role/\" target=\"_blank\">at Purdue University and Notre Dame in Indiana</a> and the immense pride students in the US have in the universities, “a concept that’s almost non-existent in Ireland. The main reason for this pride? College sports.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"56OFO4QCVFGRPGHGMHXUTGKSI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flight attendant Paula Gahan wrote about the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/07/18/an-irish-flight-attendant-on-the-top-five-most-annoying-things-passengers-do/\" target=\"_blank\">top five most annoying things passengers do</a>. “I was just on a flight back from San Francisco and I bought a bag of Haribo for a sugar hit to get me through the 10-hour flight. I leave the bag on the counter and turn around to see some cheeky woman helping herself. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RO3YBVH5OVFVZIFRZF4OV6OBW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Look, we do have to eat as well, you know? Cabin crew don’t subsist on aircraft dust and toilet water.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"THTDFQJNK5HUHJ63VP654SHCSQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In March, Anna Waters wrote about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/03/18/irishwoman-in-sicily-i-wanted-a-kind-of-financial-freedom-that-wasnt-on-offer-to-me-in-ireland\" target=\"_blank\">leaving Dublin to live in Palermo</a> for a “kind of life available here that has been squeezed out of my hometown”. “Though Ireland and Sicily are distant from one another relative to our compact continent, I am more often than not struck by the similarities in the mindsets of the people – psyches shaped by conquest, isolation and the sea”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IJ5PIMW4OZC4PFSNTEWD6EAELA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, this month, we heard from Corkonian <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/12/01/trades-are-very-well-paid-here-compared-to-anywhere-else-in-the-world-i-have-been/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Kidney</a>, who moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2012 with his partner Niharika. A carpenter by trade, the couple applied under the skilled migrant visa scheme. “Carpentry is a good trade to facilitate international travel, and my partner is an occupational therapist, which is a recognised skill too, so we were well placed,” he said. People who work in the trade can expect to make between $120,000-$150,000 Australian dollars a year if employed full-time, he says. That is the equivalent of €74,000-€92,500 annually. Chris started working for himself as a bespoke carpenter but despite the high level of work, he says Australia is not a cheap place to live. He still says he is a “proud Cork man”, however, he doesn’t see himself returning to the city anytime soon. “Ireland is a very special place, but for now, Australia is home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWXIKWNNCVDCPM4NGDQNXVA4OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133100},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQAB2OE5D5FNVNK3KO4BICKFXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133101},"content":"Regular abroad writer <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/12/04/laura-kennedy-australia-offers-me-a-more-dignified-life-than-the-one-i-had-in-ireland-its-not-unpatriotic-to-say-so/\" target=\"_blank\">Laura Kennedy</a> talks about the impact felt by the Irish election in Canberra. She says like many other Irish emigrants she is more invested in Ireland’s future rather than the country that she now calls home. “I would love for Ireland to be somewhere that had space, employment, homes, educational opportunity and healthcare for the people who live there,” she writes. Calling out her wishlist for Ireland saying she would like a direct connection from Dublin Airport to the city as well as fairer public representation for all members of society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDBIXMN6VVBZDC7K7UTPSCSAIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133102},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKHZYZHCTBF6THGZGXPK4LAZ4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133103},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"VITVTPRI4VEF5GIUTJYPVT27FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133104},"content":"Dubliner <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/12/15/in-ireland-we-have-lost-some-the-human-connection-in-business-dealings-in-uganda-it-is-deeply-valued/\" target=\"_blank\">Declan Peppard</a> spent years working for British Airways and in 1991 he was posted to Zimbabwe. However, in 1997, Peppard changed scenery. “I left Uganda for the role of commercial director for Brazil, with a remit to dramatically improve our sales performance: over the course of two years, we grew sales from $34 million to $64 million,” he said. It was not the last that Peppard would see of Uganda though, as by 2000 he was back in the country running a travel agency before setting up his own company, Travelcare Uganda, five years later. Despite challenges through Covid-19, Peppard said that working abroad has given him opportunities that he might not have had in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESD47VYLUVBGFBFSVEUBVMROEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133098},"content":"This is the final abroad newsletter this year and as 2024 draws to a close, we would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Fiona Keeley"}},"name":"Fiona Keeley"}]},"description":{"basic":"The challenges of returning to Ireland from Singapore, the intensity of college sport in the US and how to get in flight attendants’ bad books"},"display_date":"2024-12-20T17:21:53.305Z","headlines":{"basic":"The top five most read Abroad stories of the year","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"IFWJHC54NVF5PN2ULVSFBNSMIA","auth":{"1":"11d6377b8a7d2bc4fc51776cb76349942d4ee2f6ff9a0b8daed48c21dbe680a6"},"focal_point":{"x":360,"y":426},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/IFWJHC54NVF5PN2ULVSFBNSMIA.jpeg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/20/abroad-newsletter-most-read-stories-of-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"7LVUEE2FINBIRJP36KI3Z6OF2I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":398,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2488a622-1f1d-4235-bd05-ad79a47ce6c5/versions/1733745489/media/8bbbe0dd1687a6b6977e34475fea8c83_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/18/laura-kennedy-a-critic-of-this-column-thinks-theres-too-much-negativity-about-ireland-not-enough-about-australias-beaches/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AWJEYRTZFVEVPOFEPFOG6LLVRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966265},"content":"A lady emailed me a few weeks back to complain that the content of this column is, to her mind, overly critical of Ireland and extravagantly lacking in accounts of the beaches of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>. “People want to read about the beaches,” she wrote to me. They want to fantasise about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> in the summertime.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3IOVLHM4YNCSLEFC4W3ROLOI2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288023},"content":"The suggestion was that I should write less about the conflicted emigrant relationship to home and more about turquoise water and the traditional Australian Christmas dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TCYMC2PFQZBVRB2LPFSRWNPCA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966266},"content":"Having never enjoyed a traditional Australian Christmas dinner myself, I asked around. While answers vary, it seems that festive fare over here generally contains a lot of salad components. That may sound odd to us, but we do have experience of this particular hot weather impulse. Consider those sweltering (if rare) Irish summer days when your mammy would down tools and definitively declare that “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s too hot for cooking”. Then everyone would have a wedge of iceberg lettuce, a slice of anaemic tomato, boiled egg and some cold ham for dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4TWRAYQBWBC53CTOIRWXDQ6GUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288025},"content":"This culinary solution predated Uber Eats, and was objectively terrible, but is nevertheless one of the fires in which Irish psychology was forged. When I recently asked the four-year-old daughter of a friend what her favourite food is, and the child looked contemplatively into the distance before answering “chorizo”, I was confirmed in my suspicion that the hot-weather-cold-ham dinner might now legally qualify as child abuse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOO7OSLXPNHOJAWR5NOBYOX6ZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966267},"content":"According to my research on the ground (ie asking an accountant I met) pavlova is apparently the ideal Australian Christmas dessert, and I can understand that. Even the memory of British colonialism can’t eradicate the undeniable truth that a strawberry pavlova is, to use Hiberno-English-adjacent parlance, an absolutely unbelievable dessert. It has everything you could want. Tanginess, sweetness, four tonnes of sugar and a veritable riot of textures. Crisp, soft, light, creamy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDCWRF74GNHC3BSO6GB4M7UEVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734613934101},"content":"And yet. if I’m not drenching a dense, fatty pudding in brandy and setting it alight, it really doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. Even if it is more than 30 degrees out and the idea of roasting meat in the oven all day long sort of makes you want to die.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYYALBWFTZE33IK7MAUAE75N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966268},"content":"Thus far, I haven’t been able to oblige the woman who complained by writing of her voracious appetite for descriptions of beaches. Outside Australia, most people seem to think of this country in geographical terms as a large land mass with coastal cities and towns peppering its perimeter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIAXJS52LNEA7I5AINUGXS4P6E","additional_properties":{"_id":"SBWADBFZSRDAHDLYEHEIIMY2GY"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FYYALBWFTZE33IK7MAUAE75N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966268},"content":"An Irish person recently messaged me on Instagram when I shared a post indicating the various times The Late Late Toy Show would be broadcast live in Australia, which has three primary time zones but six in all if you include regional variations and territories. Her message indicated some shock that Australia was big enough to have so many time zones. There was a hint of incredulity to it, as if Australia had lost the run of itself a bit, but if you airlifted this country and plonked it on top of Europe, it would apparently stretch from Iceland in the northwest to Turkey in the southeast, with some parts of Russia sticking out untidily, as they are wont to do regardless.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WLBBHGEOS5DBFHBU4JF66BSIHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966269},"content":"It is difficult for us as Europeans to grasp just how large Australia is. You feel it when you’re here – everything takes up more space, because space is something Australia is abundant in. The horizon is vaster. The sky feels bigger. The mountains are gargantuan. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/11/06/laura-kennedy-swooping-season-in-australia-brings-home-the-taking-names-and-kicking-arse-approach-of-nature-here/\" target=\"_blank\">The birds</a> are intimidatingly large and blowsy, and they have the personality of mean drunks. Anything not abutting the sea is considered outside Australia as a sort of molten hellscape, uninhabitable by any creature containing organs made of meat. Most Irish people don’t seem to realise that you can live in Australia and not be next to, or permanently overlooking, the ocean at all. Until I moved to Canberra, the country’s inland capital, I thought the same.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUYS3GSZMRG2RPLQS74UF4MYQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"NN2RK4WRMBAFXKO7YTZEB5AHAE"},"content":"From an Irish workhouse to Australia – the story of the Famine orphan girls","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZIRV3SNKEBDIVPFPALWMXXCVMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966270},"content":"I understand the mentality of some Irish people, which suggests that only a total gom would move to Australia and not live near the ocean when so very much of the country is indeed adjacent to it. To those people I say this – yes, I live inland, about 3½ hours from the sea, but it is 27 degrees out as I write this and everything in my rented apartment is relatively new and in working order. These conditions are not attainable in Dublin, so ocean or no, I’m content.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2V74ZJQQVDAFK4KFDBVF47QNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288030},"content":"The lady who emailed to complain won’t like me writing that, but there you have it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVODVVRRB5FYLCN5PBMOUUKT2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966271},"content":"But listen, I have a sense of my professional obligation. I’m not a wild animal. If the nation of Ireland has come to a standstill until some random woman in Australia writes about what a day at the beach is like – and my concerned emailer seemed to convey that this indeed is the case – then I clearly have to write about the beach. I can’t have my homeland tanking economically and then sinking into the Irish Sea on my conscience. I’m a patriot that way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PD2OAJGO3ZAHBE3YLKXQYLNKKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966272},"content":"So I’ve arranged a beach trip. Everyone at home can forestall another snap election. Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach awaits. My husband loves the beach. Not being Irish, he is without any body shame whatever. The sun is not fatal to him and the God of his ancestors won’t smite him for lying about on white sand like a cat on a warm rock for an afternoon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"332GZERSZFBVLIMPG6H4C525CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288033},"content":"I, on the other hand, am Irish. I’ve had to buy a special medical grade sun hat and check with my GP whether SPF goes higher than 100. I already feel guilty about taking the time off, and I’m strongly considering just wearing jeans.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTAKJIUKE5ECVIX6OMBXM6IXHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288034},"content":"My emailer will get her beach column, even if it kills me (and it might).","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"That reader should know that, even though I live 3½ hours from the coast, I am taking her concerns on board"},"display_date":"2024-12-18T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beaches","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CJAFVJEK5VGDJEYS4XJNBZKVAY","auth":{"1":"8773672482e52929ca355abf1a128cc8b9ee3c5f14991d32b04d76a156bd085c"},"focal_point":{"x":1690,"y":1418},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CJAFVJEK5VGDJEYS4XJNBZKVAY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/18/laura-kennedy-a-critic-of-this-column-thinks-theres-too-much-negativity-about-ireland-not-enough-about-australias-beaches/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"5VPLLXIMQNBPZE7EMIYTR2EMBM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":343,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/98e086d9-46c8-46b9-938b-767106100808/versions/1733930542/media/447f776a55e67a7f49bb7aa6179370b7_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2024/12/15/in-ireland-we-have-lost-some-the-human-connection-in-business-dealings-in-uganda-it-is-deeply-valued/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FGLG3VP52ZCZBHWGN6HC24NIIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022382},"content":"Dubliner Declan Peppard joined British Airways from school as a reservation sales agent back in 1983 on the princely salary of IR£6,400 a year. It was a modest start to what blossomed into a fruitful 20-year career with the airline that saw Peppard appointed to senior management positions in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Brazil.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XKVA6Y7WUZB7JHDRNA4PJSUXIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022383},"content":"Since 2000, Peppard has lived in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and for the past 20 years he has been at the helm of Travelcare Uganda, a corporate travel agency he cofounded in 2005. More than 90 per cent of the company’s turnover is related to outbound business travel, with the remainder accounted for by private holidaymakers, typically from Europe, who come to Uganda mainly for gorilla trekking.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WKEH3WH5FDBBLABX3UU2QWW3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022384},"content":"Travelcare employs 14 people and, although Uganda is a relatively small market, he says the company has “become a big fish in a small pond and the quality of the service provided by our travel advisers rivals and often surpasses what you’d find anywhere else”, who used to run with Raheny Shamrocks and now keeps fit by going to the gym six times a week and playing what he describes as “lousy” golf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OOGOHWHO5ZBYTOKXKDMRQ2IYDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022385},"content":"Peppard attributes his peripatetic career to the fact that, in his early 20s, he became part of BA’s overseas pool, which was a small group of employees who provided cover at BA operations around the world. “This was 1989 when BA still had many expat country managers and airport managers on the payroll and we covered when they were on leave or there was a crisis,” says Peppard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDEIF7A2L5GC5EM456OX7CCGYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022386},"content":"“In 1991 I was posted to Zimbabwe as customer service manager with the airline and spent two years there. In 1993 I moved to Uganda as country manager and my key responsibility was to make the London-Entebbe route profitable. With the help of a great team, we succeeded. In 1997 I left Uganda for the role of commercial director for Brazil, with a remit to dramatically improve our sales performance: over the course of two years, we grew sales from $34 million to $64 million.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HY6X5KIK6BESRFVJRMAA6HWN54","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022387},"content":"In 2000, Peppard was headhunted to run a travel agency in Uganda. Five years later he and two others struck out on their own to set up Travelcare Uganda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZBZSX5EGBC27KQDFMAF63D6NQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022388},"content":"Peppard says the sudden shutdown of international travel when Covid hit was a very worrying time for the company but it weathered the storm by getting involved in arranging repatriation flights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ML4BL4F5T5CS5OMKERF2XIE43Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022389},"content":"“Thankfully this generated enough income to tide us over with no lay-offs but when it happened, I thought, jeepers we’re really in trouble now,” says Peppard, who has a family of four girls including twins at college in the UK and daughters working in Dublin and Harare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEMPQCZ47JBR5MQANY3IW7ZOQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022390},"content":"“Opening and operating a business in Uganda is relatively straightforward. And as long as you adhere to the regulatory requirements, you can grow your business with minimal obstacles,” says Peppard. “It’s crucial to remember that, even though I now hold both Irish and Ugandan passports, I am still a guest in Uganda and must always respect the local laws, culture, and traditions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5VWQ3D5AORHK5NV4FDYUJVKRL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022391},"content":"“One key aspect of doing business here is the importance of maintaining a respectful and human approach to both colleagues and customers. In Uganda, this personal touch is deeply valued and integral to business success. I sometimes feel that, in Ireland, with the rapid advance of technology, we might have lost a bit of that human connection in our business dealings.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EIQSAMBINRAITIQJTTRSFIWSSE","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZYUV6C6TIJHVRN5OIZIS3CGI3Q"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"KXLVJGES7REWRLY2QGXI4Z5SZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022392},"content":"Peppard says there is a vibrant Irish community in Uganda with events such as St Patrick’s Day, All Irelands and the Six Nations tournament well celebrated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLAXHLOACJEVJP77BQUO4JTTQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022393},"content":"“Our current ambassador, Kevin Colgan, regularly hosts the Irish community and every one of the ambassadors who have been here in my time have been truly remarkable individuals who have enhanced Ireland’s reputation in the region,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTJUSYKIZRHQVL2BYDEYRWXOXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022394},"content":"Despite being a big fan of the “perfect Ugandan climate, which never gets too hot and is never cold”, Peppard misses the changing seasons and the crisp autumn air that marks the passage of time back home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMREU4BH4JAR7M7BK3DKDNSVBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022395},"content":"“The year here is divided by wet and dry seasons and when it rains, it really rains and there’s a lot of flooding and the road system struggles to cope. You try not to drive anywhere at this point as a normal 15-minute journey could take an hour or even two. At the best of times, Kampala is a bit chaotic with horrendous traffic and overcrowding with private taxis and boda-bodas (bicycle and motorcycle taxis).","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDBYNZRZPFGB3EEBUXQOSGH7ZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022396},"content":"“But the people here are genuinely good-natured and extremely friendly. We are free of violent crime and I have never felt threatened or at risk, even during elections.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLEYA3HFUBGSLJ37MRJW6QSSNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022397},"content":"“Sometimes living in a landlocked country makes me long for the sea as there’s nothing quite like the calming presence of the ocean. And I truly miss St Anne’s Park in Dublin. It’s always been my sanctuary, a place where I could escape, reflect and recharge,” Peppard adds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RN5HEDLZSFBJNLWCLGH3SX3X2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022398},"content":"“On the plus side, working abroad has given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had at home, particularly in terms of the exceptional training I received during my time with British Airways. The overseas pool programme provided invaluable experience that greatly influenced my career. Now as I approach 41 years in the airline and travel industries, I can confidently say that such international exposure has been pivotal to my success in business.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Living and working in Uganda, Declan Peppard ‘truly misses’ St Anne’s Park in Dublin"},"display_date":"2024-12-15T00:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘In Ireland we have lost some the human connection in business dealings. In Uganda it is deeply valued’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UKATGYE7QVH37LPALRTSLEQQP4","auth":{"1":"a1e32dba00ed4b8ab469dd20720e09078f90ee2a74d5ce3cc9b68fb739390e21"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UKATGYE7QVH37LPALRTSLEQQP4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2024/12/15/in-ireland-we-have-lost-some-the-human-connection-in-business-dealings-in-uganda-it-is-deeply-valued/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"TXZOKFMWTREYRJRYP63T26YDJY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":154,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/289d6343-1ef8-43a9-9e6e-9886346ec47b/versions/1733937520/media/7d3c6cd6130d28506e9a23d9f356e5ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/12/an-irishman-in-basque-country-my-first-encounter-with-a-tortilla-came-out-of-necessity-now-i-order-one-out-of-desire/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UZMMDCEP45GPHAL4QWG3YH2VQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536019},"content":"My first encounter with a tortilla came out of necessity. In 2005, I’d been diagnosed a coeliac and on a holiday to Donosti in the Basque area of Spain the following year I entered a bar one morning asking for something that didn’t have flour.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRQXT7ZLZBC6ZBHMFVXUTTBLHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916739953},"content":"I was directed towards what looked like a potato cake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSUXL723JNCPHLKN4TPVFXCAJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536021},"content":"From my experience of them in Ireland, I expected a bland flavour, but after buying a slice I was surprised to discover a savoury one seasoned with salt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KF66VKWBSJFS7HE55M3VPXEWEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536022},"content":"I snacked on this during the trip and on successive holidays. However, it was only when I moved to the Basque Country in 2019 that I found out how they were made.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNQZ2P3TZNFIPBBWQRKHDVG7VQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536023},"content":"I assumed that you boil the potatoes – how they are made at home – but my flatmate Aroa explained, while cutting them up into small pieces, that you fry them instead. She then whipped a few eggs in a large bowl, while the potato pieces sizzled in a saucepan of oil; and afterwards added a few pinches of salt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXPB5QSGOJECPIO6TXAP6TLV6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536024},"content":"When the spuds were fried, she scooped them out of the oil and into the bowl of whipped eggs where she blended them together. She then transferred this mixture to a heated frying pan for about half a minute, flipped it over using a plate, and after another 30 seconds, Voilà!","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJUHMPA2JJAFVFOPBMIZJOIW4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536025},"content":"Since that time, I’ve sampled many different types of tortilla, from tortilla de bacalao (cod) and tortilla de atún (tuna) to tortilla de cebolla (onion) and tortilla de espinacas (spinach), all with their own distinctive savoury flavours; and now today when I order one in a bar it is not out of necessity, but desire.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZLYFUACOLZFPXHNMG2T4LUZI3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536026},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Poraic Cahill"}]},"description":{"basic":"From my experience of them in Ireland I expected a bland flavour. How wrong I was"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman in Basque Country: ‘My first encounter with a tortilla came out of necessity. 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The aim was to provide domestic servants for European settlers, potential wives for convicts, to help populate the new colony and to lessen numbers in Irish workhouses.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVLEPIQN2FFLFBU3DOBPDTHX6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204493},"content":"Today, approximately two million Australians are descended from an Irish Famine orphan girl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GTILPHVGNEP5IWWTQZE5AJPIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204494},"content":"Most gathered at Famine Rock are descendants of more than 1,200 orphan girls sent to Melbourne. Others are not. But all pay tribute to the resilience of those brave teenagers journeying from hunger to hope so long ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD626OZYTFGEXNQ7YJSBFQRRDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"R6MZ63UBNRHGRMCJODMRHDTCMQ"},"content":"Great Famine and Irish independence struggle linked by geography and history","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T5JRHYHDPJFCDBSUC5NQFBXVYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204495},"content":"Who were the Irish Famine Orphan Girls? Surprisingly, many people – in Australia and Ireland – do not know. And that is the challenge.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQ64IE4K4RDMBKBN3TT266A7PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204496},"content":"Recently, Irish singer-songwriter Ryan Kelly (best known for being a part of Celtic Thunder) <a href=\"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irish-famine-orphan-girls\" target=\"_blank\">did an interview,</a> hosted by the Irish Famine Orphan Girls Commemoration Melbourne, to speak of sharing our stories in song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O32TNUPENNA6VJJMT6PGMLYSKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204498},"content":"For their Famine-emigration song, Land of a Thousand Dreams, bandmates Kelly and Neil Byrne filmed at the Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FD673LGZEBF6RLIKQ4YWR7T6QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"WVEWCDQ73FCLPNPENGIOJHVGXI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IERPKML2NVFMHI5Z6G3UF6YOTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508757},"content":"“Learning about the Famine and this tragic, tragic time in Ireland, when we lost millions to starvation and emigration – people just had to leave because there was no food, there was no life here and they had to go – I thought about the people watching from the clifftops as their family members boarded these ships. And they were gone,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VARK3YKFR5HORK3HVCXGFIRSYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204501},"content":"“But, as the song goes on, it’s more echoing the pride that we have in these people and in our forefathers who made these journeys.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5N74WSLFBZAWJLVP67TCZ7S5CE","additional_properties":{"_id":"YNI5XXCA3BATVPBX5YOZ7RUHRI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"TYLLT2S5XZGCHCOJSWIDM6FMBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204502},"content":"The determination of the Irish to integrate and contribute in their new lives, while keeping alive pride in their native ground – that is the story of the diaspora.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q6A6KIPCGJBKLMYAD5HXFTPOHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204503},"content":"The 2016 song still inspires people to learn more about the Famine. “That’s the beauty of music, as a connection it can make with people across the world,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTCHOMWTFJGEVFQZB37Z6KLOUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204505},"content":"Some 94 girls were sent from Co Tyrone, including one Eliza Greenwood from her home village of Moy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMDJFCLJV5DPJK7C5NB6QSZ4IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508763},"content":"“The whole story of the Great Famine and that emigration story is not told enough,” said Kelly. “It’s not taught in our schools. And it’s something that we should know more about growing up, because it’s a massive, massive part of our history.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PDNFFVOEHBHPDOFVUKTYITFLH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204510},"content":"Even in Australia, awareness of this remarkable story is still only slowly building. Many descendants didn’t know the story, until an orphan girl ancestor stepped from the shadows of family history research. Sue Jacques, of Queensland, is a great-great-granddaughter of Lucy Ellis, one of 35 orphan girls sent from the Newry Workhouse, Co Down. Sixteen year-old Lucy arrived in Melbourne on board the Derwent in 1850.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCDNCXAYBFFTVPKABHEEU2XVLA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NLSS6775RZBVNJGX5JBNUGKVNE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WBVO6MXKTJCDBM5RUMG5YKNH2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204514},"content":"Sue first learned Lucy’s story from family research. And she wasted no time in visiting Newry to retrace Lucy’s steps.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TI4RTHO5S5GE3ENJL6C7MBK7NA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508767},"content":"“Through this journey, I met a lot of wonderful people and I really found out what the conditions were like in the workhouses then,” she said. “You can read all you like but it’s when you visit there and see for yourself, you truly appreciate what it was like.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJK2ARFFXVBLBFGKBE2LS4AG64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204517},"content":"“The cold, stone buildings, long dormitories with one very tiny fire at the end of two long rooms, high windows that you couldn’t see out of, families separated, overcrowded – and the list goes on. It’s a miracle to me that Lucy and the other Earl Grey girls remained healthy enough to be chosen to come to Australia in the first place.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJUEG4EB2RG2RIHG32UKKR6J3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733394590452},"content":"For a long time the orphan girls’ story has been largely unknown. “When we’ve got these platforms I think it’s important for us to use them and undo this,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OTLUZSKJZCDRL4J6QBXEA7ZE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204521},"content":"It remains for us to tell their story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KUFZEPQYYZCXFOXTGFG4A6KTUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204522},"content":"<i>The 2024 Irish Famine Orphan Girls Commemoration event was held on Sunday, November 24th at Famine Rock in Burgoyne Reserve, Williamstown, Melbourne.</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKW3CUX3ZBEIDK75IZM2EQ5FPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204523},"content":"<i>Siobhán O’Neill is a consulting media, communications and event manager who lives in Melbourne. She emigrated to Australia with her Irish parents when she was a baby.</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Siobhán O’Neill"}]},"description":{"basic":"Every year descendants of the thousands of orphaned Irish teenage girls sent to Australia during the Great Famine gather in Melbourne to remember them"},"display_date":"2024-12-05T16:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"From an Irish workhouse to Australia – the story of the Famine orphan girls","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"35D5LGEK7RD7NOKK2BKOL7ZYSY","auth":{"1":"2fa8de6474e2f8d701cfa7648140f493498e741422d1bc6d128e2b95a9dbcb69"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/35D5LGEK7RD7NOKK2BKOL7ZYSY.png"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/05/from-an-irish-workhouse-to-australia-the-story-of-the-famine-orphan-girls/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"VZENT4KZIBHNVHJIPKLRJSVVJY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":389,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/681c7935-a63c-42e4-bd37-0dbd29539bd5/versions/1732791173/media/27f7d67c3fd2d583827c90f0b3fd684c_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/04/laura-kennedy-australia-offers-me-a-more-dignified-life-than-the-one-i-had-in-ireland-its-not-unpatriotic-to-say-so/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B52KP6IO2FHWTNI4UPWOMIUY3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259630},"content":"Even all the way from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>, the tedium and generally hopeless mood around <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/election2024/\" target=\"_blank\">the election</a> was palpable. As though <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland </a>as a country was engaged in some form of collective performance art when we all knew the outcome would be more of the same no matter who got in. After indulging in yet another vent at a friend here in Canberra about Ireland, they pointed out that I appear to be more personally invested in a country I don’t currently live in than the one where I do live.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PF4K5KAMDZDIXNAYCA72GIUH24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259631},"content":"The reality is that, like many emigrants, I <i>am</i> more invested in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ER6JMWUGYZCJJGXCY2IP5C74GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919067},"content":"Like a family member I’m at my wits’ end with, I am profoundly interested in its welfare. I am weary of its bullshit. I am angry with it and attached to it in a way that is irrevocable, joyous and sometimes kind of hurts. I would love Ireland to be somewhere that stops feeling so often like a bit of a mess. Like a country filled with excellent people who continually elect governments that can facilitate the building of data centres, but not hospitals. People who consider government both the cause of and solution to pretty much every problem, but don’t consider the deep problems inherent to that very attitude.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HMYJWPEJFE47AEP24RAWOVI4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259632},"content":"Like many Irish people both at home and abroad, I would like to have a rail connection from Dublin Airport into the city. I would like my two-year-old nephew, who I <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/11/10/laura-kennedy-like-many-two-year-olds-my-nephew-hates-socks-and-love-blueberries-but-hes-also-unlike-other-little-boys/\" target=\"_blank\">wrote about</a> recently, and who has a disability, to be a person who is valued and fairly represented in the country of his birth. I would like to come from a culture that is willing to consider the calcified clientelism within it, which goes so much deeper than politics and in which we are all participants.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EIJS2VBJDVCKROUIBHZIOHI67I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259633},"content":"It makes sense that emigrants often care so deeply about their country – as much as those who are privileged (or unlucky, depending on who’s making the judgment) enough to be able to live at home. It’s true that you become more Irish when you leave, in part because Irishness ceases to be a neutral quality shared with most people around you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TXUL4NRUXRA4VJJHXCMJP5QUYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919070},"content":"It becomes a central, unavoidable element of your identity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQBS6BQ7AJF5HICO6BAJZ4YMQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259634},"content":"Like any national identity, Irishness is multifaceted. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/author/laura-kennedy\" target=\"_blank\">I’ve been writing</a> about being an Irish emigrant in Australia for a year now. The similarities and differences. About what it is like to be part of a wave of Irish people, like so many at previous points in history, to move here, so far from home to a country so many Irish people celebrate and admire. There is a view of Irishness, common at home, that suggests that the moment you leave, your relationship to Ireland must change. Namely, your right to despair over Ireland, or to criticise your culture and homeland disappear. It’s all suddenly supposed to become irrelevant or alien to you, from deep irritation at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/11/23/disability-worker-says-she-was-shaken-and-in-tears-after-exchange-with-fine-gael-leader-simon-harris-in-kanturk/\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Harris</a> acting like a fussy baby when confronted with the hopeless, furious desperation of a disability worker, to your favourite chipper closing in your hometown.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3GEZBA7LHFEMDLIRBALBROHPBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919072},"content":"In the eyes of some, you lose this element of your claim to home along with your vote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OAVL723U6FC2VD4JBKHZMBJA4M","additional_properties":{"_id":"L3R6XM4HRREOJKHTOUOUD2CFTM"},"content":"Many Irish have voted with their feet but can’t vote in the election. The reason is plain","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GBXRXRIBVNCUHHAHDHUQO4E4OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259635},"content":"“Stop being critical of home and just write about the beaches and the weather in Australia,” one deeply irritated reader wrote to me after reading a column that compared the housing situation in the Australian capital with Ireland’s own. Canberra is inland and has a freezing winter, so we’ll forgive the snafu there, but the attitude is common – “you’re not here, so you’re not really one of us”. Criticism from within is how Irish people bond. Criticism from without is bad PR. A liberty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFNZZROZQVE7DBRWZT27KBPFJI","additional_properties":{"_id":"PD4VXJ2VF5AKDDNRTBYOENOK4A"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"V3JK52FW6BGRRBPUR3T25UI7GU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259636},"content":"People don’t necessarily leave Ireland in large numbers without the push factor of the conditions they live under. If our country was less broken, we might be able to make that argument. But there is widespread agreement that our <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/housing-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">housing crisis</a> is one of – if not the – worst in Europe, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living</a> is pushing out our young people, access to medical care is astonishingly poor, there is an unacceptable shortage of school places, numbers of children living unhoused or in poverty continue to grow and the country is hobbled by lack of imagination and unwillingness on the part of consecutive ineffectual governments to address the big problems that only bloat further with each election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E5DMKAOVMNFERDFQVXU462TDIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259637},"content":"We accept that Irish emigrants have much to offer the countries they move to but we don’t like to carefully interrogate why it is that they leave. Unless we can blame the British for it. Nor do we focus on what is lost to us when our young people in particular leave home to invest their education, their energy and their labour elsewhere. Their experience of other cultures, other possibilities, other ways of doing things, remain elsewhere unless we can entice them home. At present, there is little to entice Irish emigrants back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E2IDFK2EOJC2BIB7V2KMFTNY7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259638},"content":"I would love for Ireland to be somewhere that had space, employment, homes, educational opportunity and healthcare for the people who live there. I imagine many Irish emigrants and their families feel the same. Australia is not my home. It is not my country. But it is a country that offers a more dignified life than the one I come from. It is far from unpatriotic to say that this should not be the case.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FOGT24SMYJF6FCSDDPYNHPP2SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259639},"content":"It’s difficult to live abroad and know that you have no say in the direction your country takes. More so to think that if you lived at home, you would probably still feel that way, as friends and family do. In Ireland, we address the symptoms of problems and not the problems themselves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DPSN6WFYKRA3NMNS6KUVA43OIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919078},"content":"We bash our heads against the same old wall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYD4HKYZ4ZECTLNRJEMDAQVONU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919079},"content":"It would be nice if, rather than trusting in the promises of the chump in the suit who swears (again) to build us a gate on time and on budget, we could trust one another enough to kick the wall down altogether.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Like many emigrants, the reality is that I am more invested in Ireland than the country I have moved to"},"display_date":"2024-12-04T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. 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A qualified carpenter he met along the way took him under his wing and encouraged him as he undertook a qualification with Fás (the State training agency now known as Solas) as a carpenter and joiner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DJQZZU26RFAIPI2NWJKXRCKQCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334068},"content":"Kidney also had a hankering for travel, and his two passions combined well as he got to experience life in both Canada and Sydney in his 20s, before making a permanent move to Melbourne with his partner, Niharika, in 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZOOC55OPLFE2LN5JWCYTHVK3CA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334069},"content":"“We applied under the Skilled Migrant Visa Scheme and got accepted within three months. Carpentry is a good trade to facilitate international travel, and my partner is an occupational therapist, which is a recognised skill too, so we were well placed,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SDP3KRDR5JHQHAICOPWJLTYUL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334070},"content":"Kidney found work relatively easily and built up his experience and contacts with a hotel refurbishment company.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWAV2NTOJNG7NAHRQNBLLULHIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334071},"content":"“Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world that I have been. A good carpenter could expect to make Aus $120,000-$150,000 (€74,000-€92,500) a year in a waged position, depending on the job and the overtime they can get.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O27QEEVWJFEILB2FFKXO6SOYWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334072},"content":"“I spent my first 18 months here making contacts and it exposed me to an audience of customers that you just couldn’t reach as an individual. By late 2013, I decided I wanted to do my own thing, so I got my own van and tools and then opened up my own workshop.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZUP4IGOEG5CLZIBOCK5ZF46TK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"ESUFZFLUSVHDFJEGEXFK57VPUY"},"content":"An Irish businessman in Singapore: ‘You’ll get a year in jail if you are in a drunken brawl, so people don’t step out of line’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RAIZATUSFFAYNIO3NIVMTZ53BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334073},"content":"Kidney now works as a bespoke carpenter, generally on high-end projects for homeowners and developers. Typically, that might involve a customised staircase, a set of sash windows or cabinetry and furniture for a luxury home, but Kidney says he will turn his hand to almost any bespoke carpentry project and enjoys the interaction with customers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K5AEOUWM3JDTFP5REN3CURKC3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334074},"content":"“It’s a more personal service. I enjoy meeting the customers and getting a feel for who they are and what they are looking for. Then I put my own spin on it and give them some options to choose from. You get to be a bit more creative and it’s a challenge. No two houses and no two jobs are the same.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WCQT4ZJBQRFFLNGTXPEFLRPQHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334075},"content":"Working from his home base in Woodend, just north of Melbourne, Kidney employs a trusted group of freelance tradespeople he has got to know in his time here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YOWT4F4PYJA5PFVBAUMKN6YHSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334076},"content":"Business has grown steadily over the years as Australia’s housing market has boomed, but with a cooling off lately, he senses that consumers have become more cautious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VALTIIJ2YFCFHIUQLV6KKGLHSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334077},"content":"While he enjoys a good standard of living and the couple have been able to buy their own home, good salaries don’t go as far there as people might think, he cautions. “Taxes are creeping up here. It’s not a cheap place to live. The wages are high, but the cost of living is also high. Second-hand cars also would also be a lot more expensive than they are in Ireland.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7VJINHKL4BBEVMDIV3XDNRXB3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334078},"content":"Kidney credits his partner as a rock of support as he has developed his business. “A good partner is a massive help when you are growing your own business. You are going to get bumps and knocks along the way. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without her.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4VRL4FQPBHLVFVXAJDWUF3BLA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NNCNMACQUJA3PI7Z4ZZ5Z5CDTE"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"QPWH5ALEGJELVJK5E62D4RALAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334079},"content":"He has also developed a good circle of friends in the 12 years he has been in Melbourne, many of them also from Ireland. “Naturally you gravitate to your own people. I have a lot of good Irish friends. The rep for the company that I get materials from and the guy that services my machines are Irish. You meet people and you get introduced. There’s a massive Irish community here.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WIQ7QWPZVAGJKJ37I44X7U27I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334080},"content":"Having lived and worked in two big Australian cities, Kidney has become familiar with local culture and the personality of natives in his adopted home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSUIPTHLQZH35CYHUSHRR74USA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334081},"content":"“Australians are a bit tougher and straight-talking and you could see that as them being abrupt, and you can take that up wrongly until you get to know them better. They are certainly direct, and you know where you stand with them. They enjoy a bit of craic too, and I have some great Aussie friends.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UVGWQ6ZM5E2DO2W3M7VTG5M64","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334082},"content":"Given the climate, Kidney enjoys an outdoor lifestyle involving forest and mountain trails as well as local beaches and barbecues, along with a vibrant cafe and nightlife culture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFDG6HAEG5APRBQZBPTCEUCE4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334083},"content":"There is also a vibrant sports and music culture around the city. “You’ve got rugby, soccer and Australian Rules football among other things. There’s also a strong music scene between local artists and international visiting ones. We get Irish acts coming over. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/damien-dempsey/\" target=\"_blank\">Damien Dempsey</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/glen-hansard/\" target=\"_blank\">Glen Hansard</a>, for example, have played here.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UK53EEESPBBOXDJIXX7F26G2YU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334084},"content":"Kidney maintains his love of Ireland, proclaiming he is a “proud Cork man” and he enjoys his visits back to his native city, but he can’t see himself returning anything soon. “Ireland is a very special place, but for now, Australia is home.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Chris Kidney is a carpenter in Melbourne, Australia"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world I have been’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"QHGBK4VE7BAGNPCX6IRE4OGEG4","auth":{"1":"40f2c0a63cb1462bb11b059ba806a0fc0c32e55a970d7f2ca6930c08273c8c18"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/QHGBK4VE7BAGNPCX6IRE4OGEG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2024/12/01/trades-are-very-well-paid-here-compared-to-anywhere-else-in-the-world-i-have-been/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"5H65A7NE3BHXDD33QCUDJQKD7M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":316,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0b575c3c-6c89-4e82-aed4-1aa8ce5a44b6/versions/1732889332/media/b2de64cdcc437a5c3db8059ea280a727_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/11/29/i-know-nothing-about-running-a-kitchen-it-looks-like-absolute-hell-tiring-time-consuming-and-extremely-risky/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4ULU7HLCPRGY7NXSSYQDCT4TGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221116},"content":"Recently we signed the lease on the ground floor of Bratislava’s newest underground music club: Padá Omietka. The name means “Falling Plaster” in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/slovakia/\" target=\"_blank\">Slovak</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3M5YF4D3VFBJ3LDT2KPBRZRRCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221117},"content":"A few years ago many of the ornate buildings in the city were in a state of disrepair and were covered in signs warning of falling plaster; these somewhat limited the insurance liability of the building owners should pedestrians be hit by a piece of early 20th century facade. There aren’t as many as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2022/08/08/this-kerryman-didnt-just-walk-into-a-bar-in-bratislava-he-opened-one/\" target=\"_blank\">when I first moved here</a>, but you still see the odd one affixed to an ornate mansion. Such signs serve as free advertising for us, and give us instant brand recognition with any Slovak person who hears the name.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5EZRCP3PNB5BOMOYBQUEUYLKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221118},"content":"We’ve been operating a late bar and sometimes a nightclub in the basement for some months now. We’ve been experimenting with various events in that time. To be honest, it has sometimes been a drag on the operations of The International, our flagship brand, but now we’re making moves to turn this new bar into the economic engine that’s going to propel us forward.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XXHYUMHE5CONJ4JHODXY2VH2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"22SCQN7CZFCADLLV22OEUYHS6Y"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"3YISGM677ZBR3OAHHLRP3XBQSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221119},"content":"There were several factors working against us until now, chief among them being that to access this club you had to walk through a functioning Slovak <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/food/restaurants/\" target=\"_blank\">restaurant</a>. And the lack of a sign on the street. We were too hidden. But the restaurant has now vacated the upstairs, which leaves us with much more space to work with, a new bar and, most terrifyingly, a kitchen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBLUWE5URNHZROMFUQYTXQSP3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221120},"content":"I know nothing about running a kitchen. I know enough from friends in the business and from watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares that it looks like absolute hell – tiring, time consuming and extremely risky.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IAY3EIUY4RGB5O5FP4EUXIKBXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221121},"content":"We’re not looking for that kind of stress in our lives. Our expertise lies in having a room with stuff happening in it that people come and buy drinks in. So we’re opting for a different tack with the kitchen – we’re going to sublet it. Someone operates the kitchen, pays a flat rate for it, another bit for energy and then keeps the take from food – they can even sell food via delivery apps.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTBSZYUJKVD7LO7ZCG5OSZN4VY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221122},"content":"So we offset our monthly rent, some enterprising chef tries out their dream, and customers can have a munch. Everyone wins. That said, we are now entering an interesting situation after putting the word about the kitchen out: we’ve been approached by a few potential suitors for it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUL4DBYWG5AIDOBK7LLSSCYYYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221123},"content":"First was an English gentleman, who is the associate of a Slovak sausage maker. People from Ireland and Britain struggle with accessing our style of sausages and rashers here. The spices just aren’t right; if you order a full Irish or full English breakfast in Slovakia, you’re most likely getting hot dogs with your eggs and beans. So on top of turning the kitchen into a sausage-making facility, they would also offer customers British/Irish-style breakfasts. We would probably be the only place in Slovakia where you’d get a really authentic one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EJQN5YLHGRBDNH5B5G7I34YM6I","additional_properties":{"_id":"DHC3WKTOXNHFLB4JJN6ZRBWGPQ"},"content":"How Slovakia’s poisonous politics left prime minister fighting for his life","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GXIEAT6ZIZBJDAL63T43M6TMVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221124},"content":"A problem with a strictly meat-based place is the clientele we intend to serve in this bar. We have teamed up with people behind Koncerty Na Garazach (Concerts at the Garages). During the warm half of the year, these guys run concerts of many genres, but especially those of an underground variety. Hard-core punk, thrash metal, grindcore, hip-hop. Bands from Europe, Asia, South America. And, as you might guess, a lot of the crowd that follows them are vegan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UOACYY3OW5EVNHYQGNGVX3ZE4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221125},"content":"So we have decided to walk down the grassy path of veganism. But veganism is a broad church. Without getting too much into the weeds of Slovak vegan politics, it seems like it’s going to boil down to whether we want whoever has the kitchen to have dreadlocks and piercings or not.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TPWFAT47MFAEJIQCUCSVXRKYTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221126},"content":"The Slovak vegan offering would most likely take the form of veganised Slovak dishes prepared en masse for the daily lunch rush. Restaurants here typically serve a set daily menu for between €7 and €10, offering a soup, a small drink and a choice of two mains. Sheep cheese and bacon gnocchi, duck leg with grease pancakes, chicken or pork schnitzel, and breaded deep-fried cheese are all typical offerings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPXXOIGH6NG3HG73XCGJONGT7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732886312511},"content":"I am not sure how you make a duck leg vegan, but I’m sure they’ll make it work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221128},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oscar Brophy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Irishman Oscar Brophy is subletting the kitchen of his new Bratislava bar-cum-nightclub, whose name translates as Falling Plaster"},"display_date":"2024-11-29T14:08:48.319Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘I know nothing about running a kitchen . . . it looks like absolute hell – tiring, time consuming and extremely 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contribution of immigrants to the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united–states\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united–states\">United States</a> has “been called into question”, but they “make the country what it is”, the Irish-born head of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Prof <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/louise-richardson/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/louise-richardson/\">Louise Richardson</a>, has said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3JPQ45HYT5ER3AFYDXLEYCQDHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520145},"content":"In a speech in Boston where she was honoured by the Charitable Irish Society, Prof Richardson said 14 per cent of the US population was now foreign-born, of whom half were now naturalised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMQ2TBEXP5A67KNUXNFEKY3HKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520146},"content":"About 230 of the top Fortune 500 companies in the US are led by immigrants, of the children of immigrants, generating more than the gross domestic product of Germany or the United Kingdom.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FW77MXBTTVHK7PIIEXBTCNRTMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520147},"content":"Immigrants support the US economy in so many ways, she said: 23 per cent of entrepreneurs are immigrants, so are 23 per cent of science and technology workers and 16 per cent of nurses, offering a total spending power of $1.6 trillion (€1.47 trillion) nationally.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RIC7DEGX6JFPPEI3Q3O2AUNRMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520148},"content":"“The contributions that immigrants, and this has been called into question in recent days, in recent weeks, especially, but the contributions that they make are what make this country what it is,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6XMWZ2LYRZEIHBMRFHNT2L673M","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520149},"content":"Noting the rise in anti-immigrant feeling in the US, Prof Richardson, a former vice-chancellor of Oxford University and of St Andrews, she said that for the first time in 20 years Americans want fewer immigrants.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7YKTEVZXOZA47ORCZTOOOV77GU","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520150},"content":"“It’s never been more important that we make the case for immigrants, for the contributions they make, both financial and cultural, and every other way to this country. And that we are, indeed, a nation of immigrants, and all the better for it,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TW4DEVBPAFBWTCXJNTB3XT54XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520151},"content":"The Charitable Irish Society was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1737 to alleviate suffering among Irish immigrants to the city “or other worthy recipients as by the vicissitudes of fortune might be deserving of its charity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6INK4HCRVNH2DO5XYVSEF6JOQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520152},"content":"This year, the Carnegie Corporation has spent $27m providing legal support, language and job training and other supports to immigrants, “doing what the Charitable Irish Society has been doing since the early 18th century and it has never been more important”, she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GR4YZEKA6FD4XLG4L2J45LNUZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520153},"content":"Nicholas R Burns, a former US ambassador to China, said the success of the modern Irish state offered lessons to the US in “this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYWSVIKAINFQJPVFFUOBGZ2V5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520154},"content":"Mr Burns, who has served in seven countries, said: “One of the most impressive global stories of our time, in all the world, is the rebirth and the transformation of Ireland, phoenix-like, from a relatively poor country on Europe’s western margins to today.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CRV53VJ4QJC2PNO57TEKCVHRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520155},"content":"Praising the role played by Irish soldiers as peacekeepers, he said: “Ireland sends its sons and daughters to the most difficult conflict areas. It doesn’t ask them to fight. It asks them to try to keep the peace in very difficult parts of the world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7YPJT2EHFCONHLIOG7LSRIEB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520156},"content":"The Irish Government, he said, “has a tradition as well” of standing up for human rights. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBW6TJJRS5DLHO2GWVSKXW6UXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“And maybe that’s right, given Ireland’s own bitter past and bitter problems with colonialism,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASHGGQ5WVNDNRG4HBTGKYLK7WU","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520157},"content":"“There’s so much to admire about modern Ireland, especially its healthy, stable democracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCO6OJKS35GSBJ366BR5OX2HXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520158},"content":"“And that begs a question for us in St Patrick’s Day this year, for those of us who are Americans, who are so passionate in this turbulent, divided and disputatious time in our own country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"655GOLGE75BXLGLOTR5U3ZJWYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520159},"content":"“What can and what should we learn from modern Ireland, as Americans, about maintaining a centred, fair, democratic system here in the United States?","type":"text"},{"_id":"56ZWYJ55GVE2JGLAOXBGBH4754","additional_properties":{"_id":1742300520160},"content":"“In this sense, ironically, Ireland, once so poor, so benighted, so fractured, itself, in the past, is now in some ways a guiding light for us, shining across the dark sea.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Mark Hennessy"}},"name":"Mark Hennessy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Ireland can be guiding light for US during ‘turbulent, divided and disputatious time’"},"display_date":"2025-03-18T13:52:08.161Z","headlines":{"basic":"Immigration ‘makes the United States what it is’, Boston-Irish audience told","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DARZ7JXRE5G2FJVVBECNWIXBNY","auth":{"1":"76c6b4875ab8bc6bc1a1ef4167b658b10e6ab6f69fa84e2711e5dbca88e9eef1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DARZ7JXRE5G2FJVVBECNWIXBNY.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"US"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Social Affairs"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/us/2025/03/18/immigration-makes-the-united-states-what-it-is-boston-irish-audience-told/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/us","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"US"}}}},{"_id":"2DWLFDSTOJHNBKCEXLBK4GW2TY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":372,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/20483554-ef4d-4a16-882a-49010c70af18/versions/1741775916/media/19edf3d66e440506cb88f9049ae3daac_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/03/16/a-carlow-man-of-steel-who-helped-build-dubai-there-was-always-money-available-to-make-construction-projects-look-good/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ILMLUPOPFREPPINXXEFE7TWRA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Carlow native John O’Kelly and 30 volunteers undertook a 2,000km drive from the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam to Kampala in January to deliver a fleet of 15 emergency vehicles (donated by the Japanese government) to the Ugandan capital. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVNXWBG5E5FVHKHJ5KZFWBGYYE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Tackling inhospitable terrain is nothing new for O’Kelly. He’s a former endurance motorbike racer who organised a similar trip to Uganda in 2020. In recent years he has embarked on three motorbike adventures, which took him from Dubai to Dublin via Iran, from Dubai to Cape Town, and from Argentina to Alaska. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"URI64I77DZB2DGIBNCNLYWDX7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly lives in Dubai where he is chief executive of Kelly Steel Engineering. He has been in the Middle East for more than 40 years and his company specialises in providing the type of elaborate architectural steel that distinguishes many of the landmark buildings in the Gulf region. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOXHDFZ4GNHKZAIPELS72KZJT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among others, the company is responsible for the spectacular Butterfly Pavilion on Al Noor Island and for the striking Adnec skyscraper events centre in Abu Dhabi. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E2MO2RTQS5HQ3HRTRBFCXQPN5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"When O’Kelly left Ireland in 1982, his plan was to follow friends to Sydney. He stopped off in the Middle East for three months and that was that. He never made it to Australia. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIP677AXMVB5TGOYO43KI6JL64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Although the economy was quite bad in Ireland in the early 1980s – and this was certainly an incentive – the main reason I left was to explore the world and seek adventure,” says O’Kelly, who studied agriculture at Warrenstown when he left school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZO6ND7ZGFB2PAB3BR5ZJ7GGME","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"EH54Q2T33BCUDBQEPZ4OGQFDTA","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly got a job with Masstock (the dairy business started by the McGuckian brothers in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s) and started off driving a bulldozer. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCE5J34TQBFABI7HD53VU2AAIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“To this day I have a good relationship with the McGuckians. If you were willing to work hard, they were willing to give you the opportunity to progress within the business. As the business grew, I grew with it and moved into sales and marketing. I became area sales manager, country manager and eventually marketing manager for five Gulf countries based in Dubai,” says O’Kelly, who spent 15 years with the business before following his dream to start his own company in 1997. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"F546NP7YGJAWRCUVTHPFRVRBLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There was a vast amount of development going on in Dubai at the time and I could see an opportunity in steelwork construction,” he says. “Steelwork had always interested me. Even as a youngster on the farm I loved working with steel. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUNWKAXI7RB4HA6E4JMAWWIGQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I set up Kelly Steel Engineering to focus on architectural steel that combines aesthetics with functionality. This was doable in the Middle East as there was always money available to go the extra mile to make construction projects look good. We are now the number one company providing aesthetic architectural steel in the region.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5PXEWYMPFDYTPROKAZE22SQVU","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PSVAG2U7SFHLNFHFK4LUJF36GY","additional_properties":{},"content":"For almost 20 years, the company’s business was concentrated in the Middle East. But as the market matured, O’Kelly began looking farther afield and over the past decade the company has moved into Australia, Africa, Europe, North America and the Far East. Kelly Steel Engineering is building the Prada handbag store in Singapore and the parliament building in Uganda, which requires 3,000 tonnes of steelwork. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ODKK4Z6XT5CD7B33IWUOFMSU4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly started his business with 11 staff, mainly from India. Within 18 months this had risen to 35. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGOJFP4QDVDPHMLOODKKX2XMM4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Today, 182 people are employed at the company’s 15,000sq m design and manufacturing facility in Dubai. “What really enabled us to expand was becoming heavily involved with the metro for Dubai city. That was our big break,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VML2SPRUZVFU7GDSIWTMZKBJAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Setting up the business was not without its challenges at the time as O’Kelly had a young family, no capital and no track record in running a business. The Dubai metro contract gave him the leverage and credibility required to borrow to expand. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3XBDKVLRZFDBCPY4JQEJZOZ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Banks in Dubai are encouraged to lend on the basis of how you’ve conducted your business. It’s your ability to perform rather than anything else they look at,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYJHCYVOWJBHHIARVGSDRNYMBI","additional_properties":{},"content":" O’Kelly met his wife, Liamhán, in the Middle East and the couple have five sons, all of whom completed their secondary education at Clongowes and are now working and studying across the globe. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZGY2KOXCZGNJCT7NN3YNNC5ZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dubai is a great place to live. It has fantastic infrastructure, extremely low crime rates, a family friendly atmosphere and good education. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FB3SBQWERZERRGVSHEKFBP5I4Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It also offers fabulous outdoor activity opportunities. I particularly like the desert and exploring that vast expanse. Dubai has been the fastest-growing city in the world for more than 30 years and this has provided good business opportunities for entrepreneurs who are prepared to work hard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AESEBNI4DRBHHLM564YWSUBRQY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dubai has a skilled, diverse workforce which fosters innovation and opportunity,” he says. “The UAE has more than 190 different nationalities in permanent residency so it’s a real melting pot. It’s critically important to learn about other cultures and understand their way of doing business. Then different approaches can be meshed together to form a strong working relationship.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37PZ7MCT7RHLXPH5WUTUZBYVYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I saw how the McGuckians approached doing business in a foreign country. Basically, they adapted to local culture instead of trying to impose what they knew from home. I followed what I’d learned from them. Working with the McGuckians was a whole education in itself.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVRWEG5GP5GOHOZQDZRNGLJZOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"O’Kelly points out that while it’s not possible to get citizenship in Dubai, there is no barrier to working there indefinitely if someone is employed or is a business owner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5GDY44GFRAW5OBMP3ODKYMOJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"After four decades in the sun, O’Kelly is well acclimatised to desert living. However, he admits that, “sometimes I miss the soft Irish rainfall after many months of continuous sunshine.” ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: John O’Kelly owns an architectural steel company in Dubai, which is currently building the Ugandan parliament building"},"display_date":"2025-03-16T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Irishman who helped build Dubai: ‘The metro was our big break’ ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"D5CSTQ4TLBG63L7CJIAECMU6UE","auth":{"1":"e11310b4741cd640d4101f3281e70cd1470befab6c37a5f32dabc92d89ebdd0c"},"focal_point":{"x":1284,"y":587},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/D5CSTQ4TLBG63L7CJIAECMU6UE.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/03/16/a-carlow-man-of-steel-who-helped-build-dubai-there-was-always-money-available-to-make-construction-projects-look-good/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"QBOTN3X65NDXHIYEJ7QYQFLPSY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/life-style/2025/03/13/st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-50-questions-to-test-your-knowledge-of-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IDBRAC5IQNELFLZCUNHLDQT45I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909293},"content":"It’s finally here: your big chance to prove you know more about Irish things and Irish people than almost any other reader of The Irish Times by competing in this year’s big <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/st-patrick/\" target=\"_blank\">St Patrick’s</a> Day Quiz.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CKTHM75HIFEUXH5RFEPTRFX3QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909294},"content":"Do you know which low-key Irish attraction <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kim-kardashian/\" target=\"_blank\">Kim Kardashian</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kanye-west/\" target=\"_blank\">Kanye West</a> visited during their 2014 Irish honeymoon? Or which film director is making a biopic of our pirate queen, Grace O’Malley? If so, why not try your luck with these and the rest of our 50 questions. You could win this great prize:","type":"text"},{"_id":"JSZJ7XLZYVFLJGYWOK5JWEDBMY","additional_properties":{"_id":"NMRFQOJA3RF7HGVXAW5QMFAW4I"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X7RUXWMS4VHGPMXQXHAYJ7MKUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VV57QCFTGNF4TMCC6GDXRZ5T6Q"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"LBELDGHWU5BN7FEUBFR7APQOOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909297},"content":"Ireland’s Blue Book is giving away an overnight stay, dinner, and breakfast the following morning<i> </i>for two people sharing at<i> </i>Tankardstown House, Co Meath, to the winner of the Irish Times St Patrick’s Day Quiz. Tankardstown House is nestled on 80 acres of parkland, woodland, and gardens in the Boyne Valley. Located 45 minutes from Dublin city, Tankardstown House offers a luxurious stay with a range of accommodations, from heritage bedrooms to dog-friendly rooms, as well as an award-winning restaurant and afternoon tea. Tankardstown House is a proud member of Ireland’s Blue Book, a collection of more than 60 Irish country house hotels, manors, castles, and restaurants. For more information see <a href=\"http://irelandsbluebook.com/\" target=\"_blank\">irelandsbluebook.com</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"XS3IW6Y42FDUFJNRKU4XHDM2IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741619909298},"content":"The closing date of the competition is Wednesday, March 19th at 10pm. The winner’s name and quiz answers will be published in The Irish Times Magazine on April 5th. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/2025/03/13/the-irish-times-st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-terms-conditions/\" target=\"_blank\">Terms and conditions apply</a>. Best of luck!","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3USOLVWV5ELVKJZ4QQONCJ2SQ","content":"<div class=\"riddle2-wrapper\" data-rid-id=\"JWPycOz1\" data-auto-scroll=\"true\" data-is-fixed-height-enabled=\"false\" data-bg=\"#fff\" data-fg=\"#00205b\" style=\"margin:0 auto; max-width:100%; width:640px;\" ><script src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/build-embedjs/embedV2.js\"><\/script><iframe title=\"St Patrick's Day Quiz\" src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/a/JWPycOz1?lazyImages=false&staticHeight=false\" allow=\"autoplay\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin\"><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>What is the Irish pub at Walt Disney World in Orlando called?</h3><ul><li>Tipsy McStagger’s </li><li>Gargle Kingdom </li><li>Raglan Road </li><li>Come Out You Black and Tans </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these Irish cultural icons was actually born in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>St Patrick </li><li>Saoirse Ronan</li><li>Shane MacGowan</li><li>Oscar Wilde </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Since 2023, the first Monday each February in the Republic of Ireland has been a bank holiday commemorating...?</h3><ul><li>The Easter Rising </li><li>St Brigid’s Day</li><li>Garth Brooks’s sold-out Croke Park concerts</li><li>The sinking of the Titanic </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Until 1979, the value of the Irish punt was pegged to the value of...?</h3><ul><li>A pound of butter </li><li>A pint of beer </li><li>The US dollar</li><li>The UK pound</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2025, Daniel O’Donnell told The Irish Times: “I admire Paul Mescal greatly. But I don’t know if I’d…”</h3><ul><li>Wear GAA shorts as short as he does </li><li>Sing Sia’s Chandelier as well as he does </li><li>Accept the lead in an action movie like Gladiator given all the media attention and Hollywood hype that would come with it </li><li>Shoot a TV ad inadvertently pitching Ballyhaunis as a tourist destination </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The cities of Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick were founded by which band of roving marauders?</h3><ul><li>The Vikings </li><li>The Visigoths</li><li>The Crips</li><li>The Black and Tans</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who, after meeting then taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2013, “hit the dance floor and mingled with local beauties” in a venue where they “stayed largely unnoticed until after 2am”?</h3><ul><li>Nelson Mandela in Lillie’s Bordello </li><li>Hilary Clinton in the Róisín Dubh </li><li>Kim Jong-un in the Gleneagle Hotel </li><li>Elon Musk in Copper Face Jacks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Why was Capt Ruben Ocana, a Mexican pilot, forced to remain in Ireland for six weeks in 1983 after crash-landing his Gulfstream II jet at Mallow racecourse in 1983?</h3><ul><li>He was detained for entering the country without a passport </li><li>He was forced to wash dishes until he had paid off the bill for the damage caused</li><li>He was forced to quarantine after contracting Joe Dolan fever</li><li>A runway had to be built to allow his aircraft to take off</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In advance of whose Dublin visit were walls and barriers erected to block views of the city’s slums?</h3><ul><li>Beyoncé </li><li>Queen Victoria </li><li>John F Kennedy </li><li>Mariah Carey</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s 2014 Irish honeymoon included an afternoon visiting which not terribly glamorous attraction?</h3><ul><li>Leisureland, Galway </li><li>Odeon Cinema, Portlaoise</li><li>Clay-pipe centre, Knockcroghery</li><li>Barack Obama Plaza, Moneygall </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In what year was the Flight of the Earls?</h3><ul><li>1506 </li><li>1607 </li><li>1708 </li><li>1809 </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The phrase “Who’s taking the horse to France?” appeared in a 1990s Irish TV ad for...?</h3><ul><li>Guinness </li><li>Brittany Ferries</li><li>DHL</li><li>Kerrygold</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who was the guest of honour when, in 1976, Tim Severin set out from Dingle Harbour by currach to re-create St Brendan’s sixth-century voyage across the Atlantic?</h3><ul><li>Dolly Parton </li><li>Éamon de Valera</li><li>Bishop Eamonn Casey </li><li>Larry Hagman (aka JR Ewing)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to a recent bestselling book, which Irish immigrant currently wields so much power behind the scenes that they effectively run Britain?</h3><ul><li>Graham Norton </li><li>Morgan McSweeney</li><li>Simone Rocha </li><li>Dervla Kirwan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the Irish song Carraig Donn, the singer laments that her lover has gone to...?</h3><ul><li>Germany to wear lederhosen </li><li>France to wear the fleur-de-lis</li><li>Greece to walk in the footsteps of Homer</li><li>India to learn the way of the Kama Sutra</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which director is currently working on a biopic of Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s pirate queen?</h3><ul><li>Kirsten Sheridan </li><li>Lenny Abrahamson</li><li>Kathryn Bigelow</li><li>Quentin Tarantino </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the Taken movies, what explanation is offered for why Liam Neeson’s character, a LA-based former CIA agent, speaks with an Irish accent?</h3><ul><li>He is a fugitive on the run from the Troubles</li><li>He took a Fás course on which he acquired a very particular set of skills</li><li>He suffered a head injury and woke up with foreign-accent syndrome</li><li>No explanation is ever given</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In which film does Gene Wilder play a Dublin manure collector who falls in love with an American exchange student played by Margot Kidder?</h3><ul><li>Ryan’s Daughter </li><li>Barry Lyndon</li><li>The Quiet Man </li><li>Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish actor has been nominated for both an Oscar and a Mercury Music Prize?</h3><ul><li>Jessie Buckley </li><li>Kerry Condon </li><li>Caitríona Balfe </li><li>Eve Hewson </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Hollywood leading man of the 1930s, who often starred opposite Bette Davis, was a courier for Michael Collins during the War of Independence?</h3><ul><li>George Brent </li><li>James Cagney</li><li>Spencer Tracy</li><li>Cary Grant </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Where did The Beatles play their only Irish concert, in 1963?</h3><ul><li>Slane Castle </li><li>Páirc Uí Chaoimh</li><li>Dalymount Park </li><li>Dublin’s Adelphi Cinema</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Belfast rappers Kneecap arrived at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival using what form of transportation?</h3><ul><li>Horse </li><li>Tank </li><li>PSNI Land Rover</li><li>High Nelly</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 1996,which British artist recorded a song featuring Seán Ó Riada’s setting of Mnánah Éireann in the Irish language?</h3><ul><li>Spice Girls</li><li>PJ Harvey </li><li>Dido</li><li>Kate Bush</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2023, which Irish song was performed at Harry Belafonte’s funeral, where it was introduced to mourners as “his favourite”?</h3><ul><li>I Don’t Know by Lisa Hannigan </li><li>The Island by Paul Brady</li><li>I Useta Lover by The Saw Doctors</li><li>Jumbo Breakfast Roll by Pat Shortt </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Who wrote the lyrics to I’m Shipping Up to Boston, which became a hit for Irish-American band Dropkick Murphys after it featured in Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed?</h3><ul><li>Joan Baez </li><li>Peggy Seeger</li><li>Woody Guthrie</li><li>Ewan MacColl</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2024, which viral hit by Kabin Crew &amp; Lisdoonvarna Crew was described by the Guardian as “one of the songs of the summer that made the internet vibrate with joy”?</h3><ul><li>The Joke </li><li>The Weight </li><li>The Spark </li><li>The End</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2018,who was left “non too plussed” when their fitted Hugo Boss suit couldn’t accommodate all the change from a Dart ticket machine?</h3><ul><li>Twink </li><li>Marty Morrissey</li><li>Tony McGregor</li><li>Linda Martin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which dance-themed cover song did country act Crystal Swing release as the follow-up to He Drinks Tequila, their viral hit from 2010?</h3><ul><li>The Hucklebuck </li><li>The Loco-Motion</li><li>The Twist</li><li>The Mashed Potato</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Ninety-seven years ago people lost their lives in that park over there. Constant Markievicz gave up his life…” Speaking to RTÉ News in 2013, what mistake did Tom Darcy of Direct Democracy Ireland make when eulogising a 1916 hero?</h3><ul><li>Markievicz’s first name was Constance, not Constant </li><li>She was a woman </li><li>She survived the Rising and died of natural causes years later</li><li>All of the above</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2017, Co Kerry’s the Fleming family were invited to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live after a video of the father, Derry, trying to remove what from their kitchen went viral?</h3><ul><li>Squirrel </li><li>Lobster </li><li>Bat</li><li>Family of ducks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>What name given to Ireland by the second-century Roman geographer Ptolemy was also the name of a TV comedy?</h3><ul><li>Friends </li><li>Two and a Half Men</li><li>Schitt’s Creek </li><li>Little Britain</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which 18th-century Irish nun secretly set up schools to circumvent a ban on Catholics being educated?</h3><ul><li>Nano Nagle </li><li>Catherine McAuley </li><li>Clare Crockett</li><li>Mary Zita Welsh</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 1919, Michael Collins and Harry Boland helped break Éamon de Valera out of which prison?</h3><ul><li>Brixton </li><li>Lincoln</li><li>Alcatraz</li><li>The Maze</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Chicago’s river was first dyed green for St Patrick’s Day, in 1962, by a local plumbers’ union using...?</h3><ul><li>Spinach juice </li><li>Radioactive waste</li><li>Shamrock shakes</li><li>Green dye meant to identify leaky pipes</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish political activist was called “Fidel Castro in a miniskirt” when she visited New York in 1969?</h3><ul><li>Mary Robinson </li><li>Nell McCafferty </li><li>Bernadette Devlin</li><li>Mary Kenny</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, what did Jonathan Swift suggest as a solution to poverty in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Introducing headage payments for Irish children </li><li>Selling Irish children as slave labour</li><li>Selling Irish children as food</li><li>Evacuating the west of Ireland and turning it into a luxury beach resort</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Before becoming a novelist, Sally Rooney was a champion in which competitive activity?</h3><ul><li>Chess </li><li>Debating </li><li> Hula-hooping</li><li>Sean-nós singing</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In what conflict did the protagonist of WB Yeats’s An Irish Airman Foresees His Death envisage meeting his fate?</h3><ul><li>American Civil War </li><li>Franco-Prussian War</li><li>First World War </li><li> Irish Civil War </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The lyrics to the song On Raglan Road were written by Irish poet...?</h3><ul><li>Paul Durcan </li><li>Patrick Kavanagh</li><li>Eavan Boland</li><li>Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these is a real Ross O’Carroll-Kelly book by Paul Howard?</h3><ul><li>Malahide and Prejudice </li><li>Eat, Pray, Dropgoal </li><li>Of Mice and Men … and Jägerbombs</li><li>Once Upon a Time in … Donnybrook</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish soccer player was the first person to be sent off in an FA Cup final?</h3><ul><li>Roy Keane </li><li>Kevin Moran </li><li>Richard Dunne</li><li>Jon Walters</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which member of the Irish women’s 4x400m relay team that qualified through the heats at the Paris Olympics lost her place to Rhasidat Adeleke in the final?</h3><ul><li>Sophie Becker </li><li>Phil Healy </li><li>Kelly McGrory</li><li>Sharlene Mawdsley</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which Irish sports star, best known for her achievements in another code, also won 11 caps for the Republic of Ireland women’s soccer team between 2006 and 2009?</h3><ul><li>Cora Staunton </li><li>Katie Taylor</li><li>Leona Maguire </li><li>Sonia O’Sullivan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>How did Irish long-jumper Peter O’Connor, who won gold and silver medals at the 1906 Olympics in Athens, protest being classified as a British athlete?</h3><ul><li>He chose to represent the United States </li><li>He wore a green sash over his British singlet </li><li>At the presentation ceremony he refused to stand for God Save the King</li><li>At the presentation ceremony he scaled the flagpole and hoisted an Irish flag in place of the Union Jack</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>When did the RTÉ commentator George Hamilton utter the famous words, “The nation holds its breath as...”?</h3><ul><li>Kellie Harrington awaited the result of her gold-medal bout at Tokyo 2020 </li><li>Johnny Sexton attempted a potentially Grand Slam-winning drop goal against France in 2018</li><li>David O’Leary stepped forward to take Ireland’s final penalty against Romania at Italia 90</li><li>Jimmy Magee paused to recall the names of the 1947 Cavan full-back line on an episode of Know Your Sport</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In Irish mythology, with whom did Oisín fall in love and travel on a magical white stallion to Tír nanÓg?</h3><ul><li>Niamh Cinn Óir </li><li>Sharon Ní Bheoláin </li><li>Medb of Connacht</li><li>Gráinne </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Only one of these public figures would be eligible to stand for the presidency of Ireland in 2025 if they so wished. Which one?</h3><ul><li>Michael D Higgins </li><li>Mary McAleese </li><li>Mary Robinson</li><li>Saoirse Ronan </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In 2024, American comedian Conan O’Brien made a cameo appearance in Ros na Rún, the TG4 soap opera, playing a person with the unlikely job of...?</h3><ul><li>Balloon deliverer </li><li>Waterslide tester</li><li>Dog-food taster</li><li>Professional sleeper</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of these Irish cultural icons was actually born in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Bundee Aki </li><li>Liam MacCarthy </li><li>Sybil Connolly</li><li>Bono</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to Dr Liwei Zhu, a lecturer in Chinese language and culture at TU Dublin, the Chinese word for “Ireland” can translate into English as…?</h3><ul><li>Love you, orchid </li><li>See you around, buttercup</li><li>Later, alligator </li><li>Kind regards, losers</li></ul></section></iframe></div>","type":"raw_html"},{"_id":"JQBSKPE67FBOLF2GTOTXGUMQZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741968750949},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/2025/03/13/the-irish-times-st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-terms-conditions/\" target=\"_blank\">Full terms and conditions here</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Eoin Butler"}},"name":"Eoin Butler"}]},"description":{"basic":"If you think you’re an expert on all things Irish, you could be in with a chance to win a great prize"},"display_date":"2025-03-14T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"St Patrick’s Day Quiz 2025: 50 questions to test your Irishology","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"USV3S2VRGZGF3AVCNCA264VAG4","auth":{"1":"55006ddf4a3671b453a32061c1df4ddeefbb69f44b423cf6c2d403cdceba3638"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/USV3S2VRGZGF3AVCNCA264VAG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"opinion","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Life & Style"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/2025/03/13/st-patricks-day-quiz-2025-50-questions-to-test-your-knowledge-of-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Life & Style"}}}},{"_id":"DYLQCXWRCJAQDL3A7QQGPIU7PI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":303,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/959e4e63-941a-435c-83be-d42585b86b42/versions/1741794093/media/5365bda088c08af25b746b93a2327a34_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/13/an-irishman-abroad-ive-meditated-in-bosnian-mosques-thai-temples-and-ukrainian-orthodox-churches/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WGNERUH2CBDT7DP5FXUCYZPIGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909221},"content":"Buddhism was not a thing where I grew up. I barely knew any Protestants. There were three in my year at school. I didn’t dislike them, but I suppose I was keeping count.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EXMEJTFU2ZEXLOA25PQRLOF5EE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909222},"content":"Who knows why eastern mysticism never took off in Ireland?","type":"text"},{"_id":"N7VSK45QQVCAJGDRM3BXHGAGXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909223},"content":"Perhaps we’re too begrudging as a people. Not letting go of things is a cornerstone of our culture. If we believed in reincarnation, we’d probably look at newborn babies and think, “I know that b*****d. Oh, we’ve been waiting for you ... <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/oliver-cromwell/\" target=\"_blank\">Oliver Cromwell</a>.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GJVPF2AUIND7XDS5CCKWIW6DU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909224},"content":"I prayed well into my late teens, which is longer than is socially acceptable. My family weren’t devout Catholics. But I suffered from anxiety, so my mother suggested that prayer might help. It was the early 2000s in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kildare/\" target=\"_blank\">Kildare</a> and neither of us had any better ideas when it came to mental health.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2L6LJGROYZD6TGIIWSEY3FGDOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909225},"content":"By the time I started university I’d abandoned the practice entirely. Paranormal superstition had been replaced by delirious binge drinking. I was not a wine drinker, but if I could have turned water into a six pack of Bavaria lager then I would have.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNXTFQJWGVCMBCWFBUKUBIHM4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909226},"content":"I was 22 when I stumbled upon meditation. In my fourth year of college I was feeling pretty low again and the campus counselling service pointed me towards a mindfulness class. The ability to separate my body from the troubled thoughts that plagued me was a revelation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPZ2VGJBKVHYTCMZWUYJ2AMD7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909227},"content":"The effect was more soothing than I’d experienced with prayer. Meditation is about accepting things as they are without judgment, while prayer is the exact opposite. When we commune with God we usually have a laundry list of grievances we’d like him to sort out for us. A missing wedding ring, an exam result, a miracle cure. Praying to the Christian God is the spiritual equivalent of asking to speak to the manager. No wonder white people took to it so well.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOAY2Y63LJDZ5K3DN7IPFLOBTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909228},"content":"Through a simple mindfulness exercise it’s possible to bring awareness to the present moment and liberate ourselves from toxic relationships with the past and future. It’s less about trying to change your situation than it is about stepping outside of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQ3KY6L7QFEO7IAS2QIV5XYUJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909229},"content":"My enthusiasm has ebbed and flowed over the years, but I try to keep up a regular routine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXX7U3K4I5BWVERQCHALKOPOFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909230},"content":"Part of the fun is finding a quiet place to practice when I’m starting a new job or travelling abroad. I’ve meditated in Bosnian mosques, Thai temples and Ukrainian Orthodox churches. I’ve also had a go in my fair share of toilet cubicles. Overhearing the digestive movements of the bloke in the stall next to you makes enlightenment difficult, but not impossible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X3OWIIAAUZDIVKWAG67ZTOXQQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909231},"content":"Different religious sects, health departments or mindfulness apps might insist you sit a certain way, recite a mantra, or even visualise a landscape or person. I’d be wary of anyone who claims to have found the “right” way to meditate. All you need to do, really, is slow down a little and notice what’s going on inside yourself. I find counting my inhales and exhales really helpful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2DGJFYN4ORDTPEYXJZ3ABUUV24","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909232},"content":"Body scans are great when I have the time. You can mix and match techniques to suit yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C73F6CAUSNFXHAYFMYTNOJEORE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909233},"content":"While the explosion in popularity of these practices is a good thing, I could do without my human resources department getting in on the act.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWX4R6EUVBDMDNUP4L4DIZ5V6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909234},"content":"The movement has been co-opted and shoved down the throats of overworked employees in offices around the world. If corporations are genuinely interested in staff wellbeing, they should offer better pay, more holidays and meaningful work. Reminding us to breathe at our desks should not be a workplace perk.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOG6FFEXBVFTDHU6EL2OBNMHZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909235},"content":"I dated a Buddhist for a few months. We met online, but happened to attend the same temple in East London. It was a curious experience to have a spiritual component to a romantic relationship.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGIVZL7EWZHFZKUAVFUK2A7UTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909236},"content":"This was the norm in Ireland and Britain until fairly recently with many couples meeting at church or attending services together every week. Today, if someone you met on the internet suggested Mass as a first date, most people would run a mile (unless you were using dating app Christian Mingle).","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOZI4K3QQJBIZC4PRFPPO26Q2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909237},"content":"Our relationship didn’t work out; it ended quite badly, actually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOKOAM3F3ZAUBC5C5RLP3WFPSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909238},"content":"Here’s the thing about mindfulness: it won’t solve all your problems – it’s not supposed to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TY3AHOZTWRDJTPTOZYBBGSRD7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909239},"content":"If your practice is consistent, you’ll hopefully enjoy some respite from the unnecessary suffering created by our overthinking minds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3T2VX5ZOVNFK5JESSVPQ3IIJSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909240},"content":"I can’t promise it will make your love life any easier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C237SQTVIVGAFJIXUKUMJLA3KA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741814909241},"content":"I guess we’re all on our own there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRICGXEMTZGQHOAFXHDMYE2CQ4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Peter Flanagan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Peter Flanagan: 'Reminding us to breathe at our desks should not be a workplace perk'"},"display_date":"2025-03-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman abroad: ‘I’ve meditated in Bosnian mosques, Thai temples and Ukrainian Orthodox churches’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7XJLGQTHS5CKDPHGA2SXKQN75Y","auth":{"1":"b7f6cd1893599e0cf6d4309eb714d7ac5695e1134c0ca1c5c8694a4e727e3c43"},"focal_point":{"x":1354,"y":914},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7XJLGQTHS5CKDPHGA2SXKQN75Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/13/an-irishman-abroad-ive-meditated-in-bosnian-mosques-thai-temples-and-ukrainian-orthodox-churches/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"5G7IS32PYVDX5GUPBG6OGDI6YA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":358,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/721776ff-2b69-47ca-8685-53bcce718811/versions/1741191906/media/2f5ed7899618570a1e6472fccc3d1ace_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/12/laura-kennedy-autumn-in-canberra-serves-as-a-useful-reminder-of-how-we-take-our-natural-beauty-for-granted-in-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"DX5MCIILKBHRTHXUFZPQYFMWUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390258},"content":"From the home office in my apartment here in Canberra, it’s clear that the trees are turning. Their burnished and russet tips jostle in the warm breeze, though the branches remain thickly furred with leaves. The landscape – famous for a verdancy that somehow feels so dissimilar to the crisper, sappier jewel greens of Irish trees, still looks fulsome, but the warning is there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GUVOW3JCDBDR5JCNVE3DSU4B3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390259},"content":"Autumn is coming, the mornings will soon feel unreasonably cold, and everyone (myself included) will be dressed in impossibly unflattering thermal gilets they bought from Uniqlo or Patagonia. The type that break a biting wind and turn you into the sort of exhausting drip who unironically says tedious things like: ‘Do you know where I left my zhee-lay?’","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZYZBBBPSZBBTGV5IUQPGNETS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390260},"content":"Meanwhile, my brother sends me photos from his garden in Limerick, where his daffodils have been resurrected against the rumour of an impending spring. They drag themselves from the grave by their elbows like zombies in truncated hats, trumpeting forth a season of optimism. Grand stretch, and so on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHWDRXGSMVDEBN5LIEBDRBN7VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390261},"content":"While we were laid out in the heat of a blistering Canberran summer here in the Australian capital, spreading at the borders like a Mr Freeze melting on a scalding pavement, my family at home was plunged into the perpetual liquid semi-dark of a Limerick winter. I like to look at the weather app just to get a sense of things at home. “Two degrees,” it would report back, “but it feels like zero.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6CXR7ZZ6ABHXRJFVYBG4RFDTJE","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"AVFKK3GMT5E4RNHLST4OWZJ6QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390263},"content":"I would think of every Limerick winter then, walking through air that is somehow also water, so that the shorter bits of hair around your face curl and thrash like you’ve set an open flame on them. The memory of walking to school in the semi-dark mornings with cold shins and cold ears and a resentful expression as the damp breeze buffets and slaps you about like you’re being unscrupulously interrogated. That, I think, is the climate my body was built for. Irish people have a sort of terrestrial aquatic resilience. Water runs off us like we’re waxed. It’s just what we’re used to. Dryness is a luxury. It makes us soft. The dry, radical alienness of Canberra somehow remains a shock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3EAPOWVGLRGPRIJOUIK3WEKC5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390264},"content":"This will be my second time seeing in an Australian autumn at what still feels like precisely the wrong time of year. I’m forever disappointing people at home with the news that Australia’s capital does have seasons. It’s known for a comparatively spectacular autumn in an Australian context (though it’s also known for its almost terminal year-round hay fever, so everywhere has its challenges). If you drive a couple of hours from here to Sydney, you won’t see much evidence of leaves changing colour unless you visit the botanical gardens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3NWAZ4BBNFLXBZ4QI6L2QMR6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390265},"content":"There are regions of this vast land mass with arid and tropical climates, where trees don’t do anything so dainty as dropping their leaves like a Victorian lady wilting on to a chaise longue. There are weird lizards that look like grinning Tudor courtiers wearing a ruff in those parts of Australia and monsoon rains. There are insects that tick and snicker and whose ghastly little feet you can hear tippy tapping when they scuttle. I’ve never lived in a country that can domestically grow bananas before. Imagine not having to import bananas – it is unfathomable. Even in a much milder Canberran climate, within the familiarity of a red-gold autumn palette as cat-sized cockatoos conduct verbal disputes in the branches above your head, you can feel far from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRRW3BPIGNFEDBCYDEQQOUH3WU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390266},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australians respond differently to nature compared to Irish people","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GVBP57MZHBETZCLP7FLF6ERDKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390267},"content":"Canberra’s autumn is very pretty, and it serves as a lovely consolation when the weather begins to cool down. Most Irish people don’t think of chilly walks and hot chocolate and dumb gilets when they consider the Australian alternative life we all seem to nurture some dream of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"47IKOLFWYNDTBEL4DQDGF4KASY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390268},"content":"It serves as a useful reminder, though, of how generally we take our natural beauty for granted in Ireland. The seasonality of it. The rich almost blue-green and slate-grey and navy-black the landscape takes on when, about 200 days a year, everything has just been generously and infuriatingly rained on. Autumn at home for me was always signalled by the Virginia Creeper on my mother’s shed turning a lavish red. Spectacularly beautiful, it nevertheless filled me with dread, symbolising as it did the end of summer and freedom and shoes being optional in the garden. The return to school and the cold, wet walks to sit on a hard chair in cold, wet socks while a nun taught you long division you won’t remember how to do when you’re 30. Slowly, the shed would transform each year from a fluffy green mass until it looked as though some sybarite had draped it languidly in heavy crimson velvet. The sort that crunches when you touch it, and in which your fingertips leave a dent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYGYJ2GVYZGSHECLBCE3QSNKNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390269},"content":"An unnecessary extravagance of nature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EZ72QJOC6FFMTLUBMYXMYMGG3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390270},"content":"The shed is gone now, and so is my mother, but the creeper remains the ultimate symbol of an Irish autumn for me. In the uncanny familiarity of an autumn thousands of kilometres from home – one that, taking place in March, feels as mistimed as someone standing up to object to a wedding only to realise they’ve barged in on a funeral service – things feel very different. We are coming out of summer, but my Limerick clock is still timed to spring.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWQP4AJTFRADHMYWVHUU5ROQFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390271},"content":"I wait, like the daffodils, to be resurrected by lengthening days and gentler breezes, only to remember that I’ve moved to a place where that will happen next September. In September, as leaves begin to wilt and drop at home, buds will be screeching into life down here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7GMX4RTUBHZHJRLSI7D3BAKYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390272},"content":"It’s all backwards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANQNY2SG7RBSVPFKH3WPDAZBBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1741699390273},"content":"I wonder if you ever get used to it.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I’m forever disappointing people at home with the news that Australia’s capital does have seasons"},"display_date":"2025-03-12T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Autumn in Australia: I wonder if you ever get used to it?","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DQ3F6SBR6ZBRRFTY7MAXIINNHQ","auth":{"1":"ae371ae1aa9e9bcc4bfe463f5e28f066ec2933a3036d75255d65905837223165"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DQ3F6SBR6ZBRRFTY7MAXIINNHQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/12/laura-kennedy-autumn-in-canberra-serves-as-a-useful-reminder-of-how-we-take-our-natural-beauty-for-granted-in-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"K73GUS3Y3VCF3GFY753MFZ7LIM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":231,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c40ed31d-fab8-4aca-9807-ffea7d64e036/versions/1741795318/media/398f93f585894d53f3a558040750f2f0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/world/australia/2025/03/09/storm-alfred-australia-experiences/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CXFDNPCQBNHJRAL3YY4YH6APCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"As darkness fell over <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\">Brisbane</a> on Sunday night rain continued to batter the city, hampering efforts to remove trees felled by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/weather-events/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/weather-events/\">Storm Alfred</a>, with flash floods and ongoing power outages reported across the region.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX5FMKCZ5ZAZ3CABWWTN4FDUWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Doireann O Bradaigh from Byron Shire Council in New South Wales (NSW) was one of those without power, having seen the lights first go out on Friday night.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADHWPGFA4BGTNOV6S3SPHS5IAQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It had been a tense few days before that, with her community watching the cyclone swell come in since.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HA5HG6Z6K5GXDKS2QMMPVVMTUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said the eye of the storm had been predicted to make landfall near Brisbane but the real impact was felt further south across the border in northern NSW, with severe flooding reported. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJAPN5U34BE4HIN5SXFMOIPBTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"She expressed concern that the continuing rain would bring more flooding and more evacuations in the area. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GPMKOBFF6JC5BJXIGTVZFF76PY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Stephen Hanley moved to Brisbane as the curtain came down on 2020 and he told The Irish Times that the level of disruption in Queensland this week reminded him of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/covid-19/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/covid-19/\">Covid</a> lockdowns in Dublin before he left. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7SDHITGBNG2ZBV5VJ56BUTWV4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"2KO2QXY2ZNCKXNGRG5C3FTWELQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He, his wife and three children live on the crest of a hill at the edge of an extensive bushland reserve that had borne the brunt of a cyclone in 1974 when three nearby houses were destroyed. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RH4NWYHLNFA2DHDISEAVEA3V4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Their vacant blocks sit as an evergreen reminder,” he said. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASMRL7YR3NAMVAMZFNFQMGOIRY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A “rain bomb” in 2022 damaged many of his neighbours’ homes, with some only just finishing the repairs now. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YIKPAUXXVZGHNGMVSMQXSL64QA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ex-Cyclone Alfred: One dead and mass blackouts after tropical low hits Australia","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F5EPSLKXIZBEHGVKT6YQQKPLBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“At least this time round we got warning, and earlier this week we were told to prepare our properties – in particular clearing anything that might become a missile,” he said. “The din of hammers and drills filled the air for much of the week [and] cars queued at the local State Emergency Service depot for sandbags.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4YSOSMETVGJ5D47QBSF6ERPYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He said Cyclone Alfred’s arrival was “delayed several times as he danced around the coral sea, and by Friday evening videos were emerging of bored surfers on the swells of the Gold Coast, much to the annoyance of authorities”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQM7KNUOBJEBJKRQJ6LEH3KHYU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He recalled how high winds rattled his windows on Friday night, and expressed relief that his family escaped the worst of the storm – with flooding the primary concern now. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSP523D2KFFHBHQ5FPEBNU5HRM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Baz McAlister has been living in Brisbane for 20 years and expected chaos, based on all the early warnings. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FWF5XETAFGC7C4GGWR47TRQFY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“What we got was a very strange weather system that was nowhere near as bad as I was envisioning. We were well prepared for it, and our leaders, weather agencies and emergency services approached the situation with an overabundance of caution. In the end, though, it seemed a lot of fuss over a bit of wind and rain that would be considered fairly unremarkable for the Causeway Coast on any given dirty winter night! A lucky escape for most.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHMJJEIOMSY4NVCRXM2MRLMRDM","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"OER3KR2TDZEVZOVXCOUYBMLSPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He said flooding in the region was “getting pretty bad even where I am and the system is sitting over us and will be for the rest of the night, but in terms of the wind, I think we have been spared the worst of it”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJYS4YQFP5H7XIZIN2OT6RI63M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nicola Holly of the Irish Australian Support Association of Queensland said the cyclone has had “a significant impact on many communities”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4HHKHB5L25EWJMQWEMEMOYEDIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said things have been “a bit manic” since late last week, with “a lot of flooding around the place. The rain has been non-stop and there are a lot of trees down. And half the city is without power”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EWAU5Y2RRBI7B5VPCAKCGYZF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her association has been forced to close its offices, with staff working remotely, and they “had to make the difficult decision to cancel our annual charity ball which was scheduled for March 8th. Everyone was worried about the impending weather event”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOBQSX5725FBVEJQ7TIZQZWV7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"She said it had been an “eerie few days, with the anticipation of the cyclone affecting basically every facet of people’s lives, but we are grateful that it taught us how to be more prepared”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Conor Pope"}},"name":"Conor Pope"}]},"description":{"basic":"It was an ‘eerie few days’ in Brisbane as a strange weather system named Alfred came calling"},"display_date":"2025-03-09T14:29:12.406Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Half the city is without power’: Readers in Australia share their storm experiences","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WXV5STKNPZON6YEHPMOHNNKQLY","auth":{"1":"d0355721eaa762b5c73fe5549f458b4493275c6605d0e7f67edbcf3b11e783f1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WXV5STKNPZON6YEHPMOHNNKQLY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Australia"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/australia/2025/03/09/storm-alfred-australia-experiences/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/australia","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Australia"}}}},{"_id":"AE4EHLUEB5GTRI2JBWBBGQ6W3A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":327,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/cb21d111-55e1-48d4-a2cc-015d8d0518ed/versions/1740661490/media/2b05508578a374b5048784d036cbe6df_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/03/09/the-portuguese-are-very-like-the-irish-in-many-ways-the-tipperary-man-in-charge-of-denis-obriens-luxury-algarve-resort/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2DMOE6P3PJG35A76QG7VEMI3DA","additional_properties":{},"content":"As the youngest of nine children growing up in Two-Mile-Borris, Co Tipperary, Sean Moriarty learned self-reliance early. As a 13-year-old, he didn’t want to ask his parents for money so he got on his bike and cycled to a nearby farm and cheese factory and secured a part-time job, working weekends and summer holidays.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VCWHTIHQ5GNHK2ILW6OAQNZW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"That strong work ethic has been a feature of his career, which has seen him working in management roles in Tesco, Dairygold, 4HomeSuperstore and forecourt operator Topaz, before moving to his latest challenge in Portugal. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CGADP4GEBBEPNDR3NIJOP73BE","additional_properties":{},"content":"His time at Topaz saw him rise to retail director. After the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denis-o-brien/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denis-o-brien/\">Denis O’Brien</a>-owned firm was sold to a Canadian retailer Couche Tard in late 2015 and rebranded as Circle K, Moriarty considered various options within the multinational group that would have seen him move abroad, but hankered for a more entrepreneurial role. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKCXKFC3DVGRLBVEF53BNCOX64","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’m very much driven on the operational side of things,” he says. “I like to see how things work from A-Z, how you start projects, how you see them through and how you market them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQT3DKE4JZGQNPAHX2RPF522TY","additional_properties":{},"content":"When an opportunity to move to Portugal to run and expand Denis O’Brien’s Quinta do Lago resort arose the following year, he jumped at the chance. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTUBWPQFGFD2HEJ6R2YRIRFJG4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The resort, which was established in the early 1970s, has long been popular with golfers and had hosted the Portuguese Open several times over the years, but its owner had a vision to expand its appeal as a wider luxury lifestyle resort, with a wide range of new facilities, catering for everyone from elite sports stars to families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMAA5STQWJEV3FJHHDJC2N3XVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FG6KOJBCERHKBK6EEFCIN4YKXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quinta do Lago is about 15 minutes from Faro airport. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAGNK6QH6NECVDS5RFON44I3CM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We are located beside one of one of Europe’s largest nature reserves, part of an area that has been referred to as the golden triangle. It’s a beautiful place to be. Once you sit on your flight in Dublin and everything goes on time, you can be in our resort in about three hours.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVW4CRLSFVC67IW7HZIS3RNT5Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the standout features of the resort is called The Campus. This features start-of-the-art sports training facilities with close attention paid to the fine details. Top professional clubs that want to use the facility can replicate the condition of a playing pitch down to grass height, pitch grip and bounce level, with three days’ notice, for example, while chefs can customise meals for team members who need to build muscle or gain or lose weight. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NM2NQ6OQHZEMHPLNINA6VT53IA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Campus is a fly-to destination in itself. We built it to be good enough for elite athletes to train in but it is open to everyone. Our tagline is ‘Be elite, whatever your level’.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWQZ5O26XJAH7EHFH6LI5MSLZ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It also opens the gates to other people living in the area as somewhere great to go and socialise in a sporting environment to have coffee or a meal and drinks. It has created a great community.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQX6K5QKTNBHHP7HBCRYEZGW4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"While golf remains a big draw for the resort, those who want a relaxing break can also take advantage of 14 distinct restaurants, bars and a beautiful beach in an area known for its pleasant-all-year-round climate. The resort recently completed the acquisition of the adjoining Conrad Hotel to expand its accommodation options. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKTNKAEY4NGSVKXXN2ATN5Q3S4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quinta do Lago is also increasingly focusing on a residential building programme, for those who wish to own their own properties at the resort.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOP2HHTK7ZAJPKEQDJUHALKQKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Moriarty moved to Portugal with a young family. Any concerns he and his wife may have had about how their family would acclimatise have long been allayed, with excellent schools and an emphasis on sport and the outdoor lifestyle. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHBNQV4AVNA4LN6TQGQGUNFBV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"An initial plan to stay for just two years has turned into an eight-year experience and the family have no plans to leave now. The climate is among the attractions. “We don’t have to wake up in the morning and open the curtains to know if the weather will be nice.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYVDI4AYQFD57OJHOI2SHRZB5Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"GFIR2YXXBZE7DIEYA7C2NJCBFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"As chief executive of Quinta do Lago, Moriarty works long hours. “People sometimes like to just say that, but I bring it upon myself as I enjoy it. I like going out in the evening and talking about the resort, be it with residents or others. The challenge we have here is continuous improvement and bringing people on that journey with you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UE5WZHOUL5A3HFFP5G4M22KDBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When he is not working, Moriarty takes advantage of the opportunity to play golf and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/01/29/roisin-ingle-ive-discovered-padel-and-it-has-been-a-revelation/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/01/29/roisin-ingle-ive-discovered-padel-and-it-has-been-a-revelation/\">padel</a>, the fast-growing and popular sport racket at the resort.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSO2DX4CMVEVLIQDPKPMPELFCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He finds the Portuguese culture and temperament easy to relate to. “The Portuguese are very nice people to be around, to work with and to socialise with. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"A2AY6FHE6NBQ5ADHX4WUGX7V4E","additional_properties":{},"content":"“They are very like the Irish in many ways. Family is very important. They like to gather for big meals. They might not sit at the bar drinking their pints like we would, but they do enjoy socialising in groups.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANQ2S5YXHZCKFAJ7CEDQOJW46M","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is a strong expat community in the area. “The beauty is that you can be as involved in the community – or as uninvolved in the community – as you wish, and nobody will bother you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6JTSSPVZMRASPEIANPMBHOKF7E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Regular trips home to Ireland allow him to catch up with family and friends and to take in an occasional hurling match but while he does miss some aspects of Ireland, for the foreseeable future the Algarve is very much home. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Frank Dillon"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Sean Moriarty runs Quinta do Lago resort"},"display_date":"2025-03-09T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘The Portuguese are very like the Irish in many ways’: the Tipperary man in charge of Denis O’Brien’s luxury Algarve resort","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SJVQNNRY5NE7NK35EIFGST3MAQ","auth":{"1":"9a845ef083b8936f41cebca401acf095b992e7e8f307a7337894f7b999a95477"},"focal_point":{"x":1340,"y":749},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJVQNNRY5NE7NK35EIFGST3MAQ.jpeg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/03/09/the-portuguese-are-very-like-the-irish-in-many-ways-the-tipperary-man-in-charge-of-denis-obriens-luxury-algarve-resort/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"F2ZVQTWOVFHTZF6AAPEKDZRNJA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/08/cyclone-alfred-share-your-story/","content_elements":[{"_id":"MQ6IJIXNE5AVNOJWRYCPBANUAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred has battered the eastern regions of Australia, bringing heavy rain, huge waves and strong winds that cut power and shut airports.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CV5RD74PLFHJJEGOZUF7HJCGNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although it has been downgraded to a ‘tropical low’, reports are rolling in detailing the extent of the destruction and The Irish Times would like to hear from Irish expats living in or near Brisbane, or any Australian region impacted by the cyclone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CRCJD5P5BNDCZNNYGIGDCY3YIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Were you directly impacted by the weather conditions? Did you have to flee an area for your own safety, or cancel travel plans? Has Cyclone Alfred left property damaged, or negatively affected you in some other way? We would like to hear your story. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IMJHZ25ABJDATKB7OAJNIPPC6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"You can let us know what you think using the form below, and share any photographs or video clips you think might help tell your story. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VAEM623XK5C7BBUT6DXEZFNVSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Please limit your submissions to 400 words or less. Please include a phone number for verification purposes only. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, please indicate this in your submission – we will keep your name and contact details confidential. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"R4KL3SYQI5DJPBFRZTLAYX4EPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"We will curate a selection of submissions for an article but please note we may not publish every submission we receive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6XYNWCRMNHORKA4QPNI5JJVIE","content":"<span class=\"contribly-contribute-v2\" data-client=\"9fc0f2a4-9bf9-4464-8b77-ec351ad0db03\" data-assignment=\"862886db-94a6-4b04-ac68-e272c1dedd4d\" data-display=\"inline\"></span><script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/contribly-widgets/contribute/contribute-v2.js\"><\/script>","type":"raw_html"},{"_id":"5BGWNWVUIZA75DASD363ZKIDNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"free"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Were you negatively impacted by weather conditions that struck Australia’s eastern regions this weekend?"},"display_date":"2025-03-08T09:22:12.361Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ex-Cyclone Alfred: Are you Irish and living near Brisbane? 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","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTH46GUSNFAANLRFP2UAHORWEY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the incident, which was captured on video, the woman and her instructor got into difficulty in crosswinds and crash-landed on a Costa Verde highway roundabout.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNRVIOLTJBBEHPZBJZOWE4Y2AM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Video footage shows the tourist lying on the road for some time while being examined by paramedics who arrived on the scene shortly afterwards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TACISZFRA5GWFOPSRUUHDEYP7Q","subtype":"instagram","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"ZGEAIK7FBVEOTLRHG4O3EUEWTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The instructor and tourist were treated for injuries at a local clinic where their condition was described as “stable” with “minor injuries” and in “good general physical condition” by the local association for aero sports tourism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PX7QOGWMK5HT5E4L74QYEW2LDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said it was ready to provide consular assistance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIHAVVD77VFALBEEIM35SDWX7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The incident occurred in the Miraflores area of the city, where paragliding and hang-gliding tours of the coastline are popular with tourists.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K23MB6HYABFL7MQDY77EPFWYAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Peruvian association of aero sports tourism said the incident occurred at about 5pm on Thursday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XE4N5DQ2KZCPTJIXREKFM6KXQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"It said wind conditions prevented a planned landing in the Miraflores area and the crash occurred while attempting to find an alternative location to land.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVXPXFPSDBDRHLPHUV5QAHUUF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The association said the pilot had more than 10 years of experience and attempted to manoeuvre the paraglider to safety. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y55NXFYHOVD47FMGOJLLJ42ZPY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The association announced the suspension of paragliding at the Miraflores area for three days to review safety procedures and evaluate risks. It said authorities were evaluating safety protocols for paragliding in the area and an investigation was continuing.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Video footage shows glider falling to earth on busy Lima road"},"display_date":"2025-03-07T18:54:48.044Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish tourist escapes with minor injuries after paragliding crash in Peru","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XAOCQ6FFVZFSTEAUQEJQVUE2YY","auth":{"1":"d4fafed9fa795332ebff8680d3681d85d43d8d84a0297921ddfddcf0e91f0ce9"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XAOCQ6FFVZFSTEAUQEJQVUE2YY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"Ireland"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/07/irish-tourist-escapes-with-minor-injuries-after-paragliding-crash-in-peru/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"Y7VXJQR6UNFF7CEK6TFCUGXNHQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":245,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/437d2eb4-1da2-4dfb-980d-98ed09292000/versions/1740668829/media/fed67a061372cf8fa599b2548cc4b85e_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/03/05/an-irishman-in-spain-salaries-are-much-lower-here-but-my-mental-health-is-far-better/","content_elements":[{"_id":"W54XZQVZBZAU3OTSRRXLI7KNIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308602},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland will always be home</a>, but I wake up here to clear blue skies. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/09/02/weekly-earnings-rise-42-but-men-still-earn-more/\" target=\"_blank\">Salaries </a>are much lower in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/09/02/weekly-earnings-rise-42-but-men-still-earn-more/\" target=\"_blank\">Spain</a>, but the cost of living is so much cheaper. I can’t see myself <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">going home</a> anytime soon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZV4JO33XFBLFI6XZ7TPVRHHME","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308603},"content":"I am from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/naas/\" target=\"_blank\">Naas in Co Kildare </a>and, growing up, I never really saw myself leaving Ireland, until my parents left and I began to realise that there could be something better out there for me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6NOFLPWXJFHDA4G6FJL3BDECU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308604},"content":"The high cost of living and the lack of proper healthcare made them follow their dreams and they now live in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/property/residential/2024/10/11/what-will-260000-buy-in-spain-france-sweden-mexico-and-kilkenny/\" target=\"_blank\">Torrevieja</a> on the Costa Blanca.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLCYK7ZSIZD2LDFXY5ZRQUZS7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308605},"content":"I had been working for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/intel/\" target=\"_blank\">Intel</a> on the laboratory construction site. I loved it most of the time, as it was an amazing position to have for team-work development and I got paid very well indeed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5DVZUAZBZFABPVE6GOU5VSNDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308606},"content":"But, as time wore on, I began to question my commitment to leaving home at 5.30am and getting back home again after 7pm most days. I was working, but I wasn’t living. I couldn’t even enjoy weekends or the odd day off because I would always be trying to catch up on myself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HIH62Y345D5DAT2WJCI4JCJYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308607},"content":"Mum and dad had moved to Spain and I had started popping out to see them. I loved it there, particularly the weather and the people and I realised I wanted more of that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UAILO6GQDVBW5CTYQXQKU2PPJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308608},"content":"So I took the plunge and picked up work here and there before working for a healthcare company in the Costa Blanca area.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VYLTW47ECFBPRDGU353ZCFIGZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308609},"content":"I realised I loved the job of looking after patients who had travelled there for operations from Ireland using the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2023/06/26/number-of-irish-patients-travelling-for-cross-border-healthcare-collapses-due-to-brexit/\" target=\"_blank\">European Union’s Cross Border Directive</a>. While I loved the work, I didn’t particularly like how some things were run so I left with no particular plan in mind other than looking for another job in Spain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XWPE2NKECZD3PLZM2ATRI3HGNE","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6R4R56CSZFQXHLU2CJAVN6ZJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308610},"content":"By chance, a friend mentioned that Surgery Now, an Irish company which also brought Irish patients to Spain for surgeries, were looking for a carer/driver. I sent in my CV, did the interview, and was offered the position. I felt welcomed straight away, there were proper management meetings and structure and I loved all of that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7FHCHPNQOBEFLMT54T5IFOJE34","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308611},"content":"So I’m the person who meets patients when they land at Alicante airport and I take them to their appointments, or physio sessions – and, when there’s time, I will take patients and family members into Alicante to go shopping. And I ensure all the paperwork needed for patients using the EU directive (so they get health costs reimbursed by the Health Service Executive) is supplied.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXMZVUGMZBGIJHRSTJRLLFLIDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308612},"content":"As the lead driver and patient/family liaison, I see up close how an illness has left someone in excruciating pain, but I also see them go home post-op.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDAIHSHRE5GB5GHSCPLA44SOIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308613},"content":"There is enormous job satisfaction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UDQMHT2ZRFGQRHQ34FUEPKP2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308614},"content":"Here in Spain, I find the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living </a>is so much cheaper than at home. Things like car insurance and tax are so much cheaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUNFGBH2PFHRLBEQQWETDN2OAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308615},"content":"There isn’t too much hassle getting somewhere to rent for a quarter of what you’d pay at home. I don’t drink that often, but, when I do, I can still get a pint here for €2. I don’t need €100 for a meal and a night out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLE2ESJOINCQFJEHE5RS7YXI7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"IKIJGFSXUNFJHAYDCHSWVBNYN4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"DPHZGRGGJJH5JLUK2P6VH4LCPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308616},"content":"With housing costs and cost-of-living issues in Ireland, I just can’t see myself going home any time soon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VHKZR4QVFAXTF7CZF7HCBZ5AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740754308617},"content":"When I get up in the morning here and feel the sun on my face, I feel alive. My mental health is so much better here – doing my job with huge satisfaction every day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KOGRVZ2MSVFBRD24OHO3S3KLDA","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Scott McCormack"}]},"description":{"basic":"Co Kildare man is enjoying life in Torrevieja, where feeling the sun on his face every morning makes him feel alive"},"display_date":"2025-03-05T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman in Spain: ‘Salaries are much lower here, but my mental health is far better’ ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5M6DNKSD3ZHNHHRN4YXX45KN64","auth":{"1":"1781f0a72aef8ec9b83faab7b6fc766df956759ff354eb95090e89843665ba0f"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5M6DNKSD3ZHNHHRN4YXX45KN64.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/03/05/an-irishman-in-spain-salaries-are-much-lower-here-but-my-mental-health-is-far-better/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"ISAR6P5L4RA5RHGARHU4GDOAEA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/28/irish-in-el-salvador-a-jaw-dropping-adjustment/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2KHOCLZHBJGQ3DKM2Y3O2YEOFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1649694895589},"content":"Maureen Stevens left Ireland a long time ago and has lived abroad for two decades. But her recent move to the “world’s first bitcoin city” in El Salvador <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/\">has still been a culture shock</a>. She left Spain where she lived for years and made another move aged 60. “The contrast between where I had been and where I now found myself was jaw-dropping,” she writes. “I live on a dirt road with clucking chickens and skulking street dogs. My senses have taken a while to adapt, but adapting they are. Everything is different from what I’m used to. It’s a sensorial readjustment.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3UEPCSRA4JEDHIHEUREPN75KCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Peter Flanagan lives in England and writes that he finds “the Irish attitude towards Britain <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/\">isn’t one of static resentment</a>. It hardens and softens again over time according to the developments of the day,” be it Brexit or the recent bellyaching about Kneecap.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZBCNS3TEJNA3DCS4NZ2U2NOAIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the colonial links between Britain and Ireland is being broken in by a shake-up in the House of Lords. A total of 92 hereditary peers will have their seats abolished under incoming legislation, among them <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/02/23/last-of-the-irish-lords-theres-a-love-hate-relationship-between-irish-people-and-anglo-titles/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/02/23/last-of-the-irish-lords-theres-a-love-hate-relationship-between-irish-people-and-anglo-titles/\">the handful with titles from the Republic</a>. London Correspondent Mark Paul spoke to a number of them, including Patrick Stopford, 9th Earl of Courtown. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBDI2CM6TBHZVFXSU4Z2ODVXCU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He became the 9th Earl at 21 when his father died. He recalls drinking in a pub in Inch, Co Wexford, soon afterwards. A local man asked him: “Are you the new lord now?” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GU2DJT2B5VC27O6JSVJP2HVMK4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I told him: ‘Yes, but I think those days are long gone, aren’t they?’ He laughed and said he wasn’t so sure.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDINFPXUEBFPNB2P4MIXZ4NSAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paul also spoke to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/\">a Carlow-born baronet</a> to help guide him through the Byzantine notions of Britain’s nobility and class structures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBAFRT4NIFHUVOPA4V7UZIUABQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/\">Jockey Johnny Allen</a> lives in Australia. He moved there in 2012, having grown up in Araglin in north Cork. He has amassed more than 1,000 victories during his career, including 19 group one winners, and he says racing is a much bigger industry in Australia. He says: “I suppose when I came out here first, I assumed I’d go home at some point. However, the longer you stay, the harder it becomes.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5OMHXBICVBP7LU3M47CCZANQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, columnist Laura Kennedy <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/\">lives in Canberra</a>. Some Australian friends look “as though I’ve told them that my dog just died” when she tells them where she lives as it’s a more clinical and less cool place than Syndey or Australia. But Kennedy’s grateful, as while things aren’t necessarily better in Australia than in Ireland, “they are easier”. Meanwhile, Orlaith Delargy has found things a bit harder in Spain where the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/\">bureaucracy involved in getting an EU citizen card</a> has her reflecting on studying Kafka in college. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LBPLO76GPVHAXGP6TTH4LOMDFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael O’Dwyer from Dún Laoghaire works <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/\">as a jewellery designer in Stockholm</a>. He commutes from Sörmland, about an hour’s drive away, “the equivalent of driving from Aughrim to Dublin”, he tells Deirdre McQuillan. He says it “can be difficult to persuade [Swedes] to see the value of expensive high-end jewellery. They will drive a nice car and have a nice house and go on fantastic holidays, but there is an old philosophy called Jante’s Law, unwritten but powerful, that holds that it is rude to show your wealth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZHU3RS7WVD53GFLB6V6NZK5LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221846},"content":"“You could be on a train and sitting beside a multimillionaire and you would never know,” he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW2AR4FUVJARDFA24DSWLZBKSY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thanks for reading.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"We hear from some of the last Irish lords and a jockey making waves in Australia"},"display_date":"2025-02-28T14:24:16.226Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish in El Salvador: A ‘jaw-dropping’ adjustment","native":"Abroad newsletter: Irish in El Salvador - A ‘jaw-dropping’ adjustment"},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4","auth":{"1":"516a482d65591273058932bc55f07a8b4890cdbc0d1709f9b5b06cb773810c0c"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/28/irish-in-el-salvador-a-jaw-dropping-adjustment/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"J7JDB4HSNFCPLNELYND2BDT2RU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":283,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/65c2c50e-a79b-4d52-b311-b2cada21a6b9/versions/1740606352/media/6287225955eeca9f67eeb9f48651cece_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/27/my-mum-dangles-the-question-like-a-golden-carrot-youll-never-guess-whos-died/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6A7JCHZKRZBS3MIFXYQ5HHFS6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092700},"content":"“You’ll never guess who’s died.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4IIMF4AXONGTZPP77LMZZM5TDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092701},"content":"This is the teaser that fills every lull in my calls home to my Irish mother.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3JLI5HEMTJD5ZJV6LVWBLME3LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092702},"content":"Since moving to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a>, I’ve phoned her at least once a week, sometimes more. It’s important for me to hear what’s happening on my island from a local, and to protect my <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/dublin-4/\" target=\"_blank\">D4</a> accent from becoming full-blown Anglican. It’s a ritual I cherish and, even if there’s no “news” to report, I know I’ll hang up feeling better.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WJFCNOWAZHUXGQZQLJWLM7HFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092703},"content":"But, recently, I’ve noticed a recurring theme in our calls: death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHKXKW2GQFHFBA5U7ESK465ZJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092704},"content":"We could be discussing anything – the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/us-election/\" target=\"_blank\">US election</a>, black ice, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/patrick-kielty/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Kielty</a> – and somehow, we always end up playing a morbid round of Guess Who.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35Y4XC56GBEGTASMRKRZ7QAMAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092705},"content":"My mum dangles the question like a golden carrot, and I almost always answer incorrectly. When she finally tells me, I often don’t even know the person. Sometimes, it transpires that my mother doesn’t either. But she knows <i>of</i> them, and in Ireland, where everyone is distantly related anyway, that’s more than enough.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIUUUWHFC5DV7AOFBZSUQSMFPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092706},"content":"If the person hasn’t died yet, but is terminally unwell, the verb still takes centre stage: “Seán<i> </i>is<i> </i>dying<i>. </i>Mary<i> </i>could die<i>. </i>Breda<i> </i>will<i> </i>die<i>.</i>”<i> </i>What follows is a detailed obituary (a drafted one if they’re still alive), highlighting everything from their birthplace to their last public sighting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLAU7IGDA5F5HOS7S5JWJCLKDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092707},"content":"After a few months of this pattern, I started to worry Ireland had a far higher mortality rate than its European counterparts. A frantic search of Google reassured me that, no, it doesn’t. In fact, ironically, people in Ireland have the longest life expectancy in the EU.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XJQ32RJUWVFUXB3N4J6TULSKZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092708},"content":"What the country does have, however, is a high bereavement rate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKKN7Z2GFFCKVLNX7G7PJKNNKM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092709},"content":"Our societal infrastructure is built to support, and even encourage, the grieving process. We treat funerals like jubilees, giving an extraordinary send-off to even the most ordinary of people. We publicly honour the dead on <a href=\"https://rip.ie/\">rip.ie</a>, making internet stars out of folks who’d never even used social media. We host month’s mind masses with gorgeous stationery, ensuring the person’s legacy lasts long after they’ve been buried or cremated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZV75O5LSHJBF7DWT453LLUZR54","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092710},"content":"Initially, these conversations with my Irish mammy felt insensitive. I couldn’t help but think my British friends would see them as tactless (a crime akin to treason in the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/\" target=\"_blank\">UK</a>), or that I was obsessed with people dying. If I ever answered the call in public, I found myself lowering the volume, for fear of others overhearing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"562HC3NNAFFN7HGJV5XOIWFQNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092711},"content":"But I’ve come to realise that these phone conversations are just another patch in the tapestry of Ireland’s rich grief culture. Like all the other traditions, they simply serve to commemorate the person. We have our wakes and we have our WhatsApp calls. After centuries of our burial rituals being oppressed, we know that the subject of death shouldn’t be confined to a stuffy funeral parlour. It can be aired between talking about EastEnders and political scandals, and, contrary to what our British counterparts might think, it isn’t disrespectful to do so.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q7XAAJBNXZDTZBSU7DAZSMZURA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092712},"content":"So next time I cringe at my mother’s Guess Who games, I’ll take a second to stop myself. A natter about your fourth cousin’s death at the Tube station on a Tuesday is nothing to be ashamed of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGYQV2VFANH57LRF35R5KF5JXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740604092713},"content":"Turn the volume up, I say, and let the tradition live long and loud.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GUYLFNKBREERMCA5BKP4M37CI","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Emma Dooney"}]},"description":{"basic":"Calling her Irish mammy from London feels like playing a morbid round of Guess Who for this Dubliner"},"display_date":"2025-02-27T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"My mum dangles the question like a golden carrot: ‘You’ll never guess who’s died’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TJQ3GMGRSNDQFGGPQU6DPVTU3A","auth":{"1":"dcd46e791b4a1f71c0b1c239fa1b8aaa9322cd4c2aef647b40626feac7202576"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TJQ3GMGRSNDQFGGPQU6DPVTU3A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/27/my-mum-dangles-the-question-like-a-golden-carrot-youll-never-guess-whos-died/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"L4TY6CAR5RD7JHB2JIDCIRPAUU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":304,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/8f06c2d9-9d28-4228-8505-3d209929af24/versions/1740499220/media/6f2708059fd141df4b568571e04f97ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/","content_elements":[{"_id":"EQ5CD7WFEVCNBAGJ4MA73SS53M","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Byzantine notions of Britain’s nobility and class structures can easily confuse a citizen of a republic, even the neighbouring one, so I sought out a cicerone to explain how it all worked. Sir David O’Grady Roche (77), a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/carlow/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/carlow/\">Carlow</a>-born baronet living in Britain since the 1960s, promised to guide me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAGCGG6V2NC43BXEDB5XE6RSBM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Roche (he dropped the O’Grady leg of his name in Britain years ago) suggested we meet at his mews home in west <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\">London</a>, down a charming cobbled street near Lancaster Gate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ULLTU3Z2OJHZXAI3GTQJMWGFGY","additional_properties":{},"content":"We had met a couple of times previously – once for lunch and, long before that, when he had effectively gatecrashed <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2023/09/23/nigel-farage-on-leo-varadkar-we-had-some-fun-once-or-twice-and-he-even-asked-me-for-a-selfie/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2023/09/23/nigel-farage-on-leo-varadkar-we-had-some-fun-once-or-twice-and-he-even-asked-me-for-a-selfie/\">an Irish Times interview with politician Nigel Farage</a> at a raffish restaurant in Mayfair. They shared a mutual friend, who had also pitched up to join the conversation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEKHBIMAUZFHRJT2JGFDF4ZSYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"At that first meeting, Roche had landed at our table on the restaurant’s roof, puffing on his pipe and bearing a roguish grin. Now, more than a year later, he answers the door of his mews home in precisely the same demeanour – his eyes glinting behind the curls of blue smoke rising from his pipe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAY6ACDLTNAXFACAZBLVDEDDBE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He leads me to a downstairs front room filled with artefacts and family heirlooms including old furniture from Aghade, his family’s long since-sold Carlow estate, as well as pictures of his ancestors. Roche pauses beneath a photograph on the wall of a military vessel. “That was my father’s ship.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLY2ECOLXZA25D4UXWSSLQKIK4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His father, Sir Standish O’Grady Roche, became the 4th Baronet of Carass in Limerick at the age of three. He later joined the Royal Navy and, aged in his early 30s, commanded the destroyer HMS Beaufort during the second World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFHSS4QSTRC3TDL6R5Y3R7IRWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Standish saw action near the coast of Malta during the second Battle of Sirte in 1942. A British convoy survived a heavy attack by enemy Italian battleships. But the violence of war left a dark legacy for Standish. He ended up suffering from what would now be called <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-a-condition-we-are-likely-to-see-more-of-1.4876895\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-a-condition-we-are-likely-to-see-more-of-1.4876895\">post-traumatic stress disorder</a>. After the war, he struggled to keep Aghade afloat and eventually sold it in the late 1960s. The mariner’s eldest son, Roche, moved to London virtually penniless.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEHJB2AMNVDYVAXM37EKU5YJKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I sought the counsel of a man more experienced in these things, and asked him what I should do. He told me to become a chartered accountant,” says Roche, who inherited his father’s title upon his death in 1977. He trained with KPMG and embarked on a successful career in business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EN2LRR45DJGEJLVYESHZELWO34","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Just because you’ve got a title, people expect you to be born rich. But I came here [to London] without a shilling. Whatever I did, I did myself. Eventually I did make a lot of money. But, well, I spent it all on yachts and things,” he says, clearly facetiously, as his eyes glint ever brighter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQCSLP5B4RHQPKH3YM7M5LRDFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"We move upstairs to the kitchen, where Roche has laid on an eclectic buffet of egg mayonnaise and prawn sandwiches, Mars bars and Bordeaux wine. As we tuck in, he explains at length and with great entertainment the differences between the strata of nobility – barons and baronets (the latter are the lowest ranked, but are still above knights), viscounts, earls, marquesses and the highest ranked, dukes. Titles are inherited along the male line.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZP3TWKXYFD5PJEQREV37ZS7FM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The notion of titles is more or less dying out,” he says. “Nobody really uses them any more.” Roche argues that this trend, while desired by many in society, presents a problem for the British monarchy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFOKWJUGYFFPTGSITSRKH5JPKQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The king sits at the top of a pyramid of honours. That pyramid always gave the monarchy strength and stability. But now, instead of that pyramid, there is more of a narrow pillar of honour that runs directly between the monarchy and its popularity with the people. Pillars are much easier to knock over than pyramids. This has introduced an element of vulnerability to the monarchy,” says Roche.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JLIRU4HV5BQ3F35ZUB6WP3RRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"For example, he says, the last hereditary baronetcy to be created by the monarchy was for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sir-denis-thatcher-dies-in-london-aged-88-1.484657\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sir-denis-thatcher-dies-in-london-aged-88-1.484657\">Denis Thatcher</a>, husband of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, back in 1990. Denis Thatcher was a friend of Roche’s, whose ancestors were granted their Irish baronetcy in 1838 during the coronation honours of Queen Victoria. All the family’s subsequent baronets – there have been five, including the incumbent – were christened either David or Standish, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDOKOPWFPNE4TMTWAMC6F4K2JE","additional_properties":{},"content":"As the afternoon draws to a close, Roche says he has a son, David, who will one day inherit his baronetcy and the right in Britain to the title “Sir”. He had another son, his first born, who sadly died at the age of two. I ask what happened. Roche reveals the boy drowned.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BHBTXXVPQ5AIVEQOJZD6CS3BTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“And what was his name?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOGMQBZCJFF33I6PDLA2XBIXUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Standish,” he replies, softly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3SDMKBCJZFDPABMWFMWZD5NSA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It surely must be true that titles bring privilege and social advantage that others never experience. Some things, however, are universal and don’t discriminate, no matter what.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Mark Paul"}},"name":"Mark Paul"}]},"description":{"basic":"London Letter: An afternoon spent discussing nobility"},"display_date":"2025-02-26T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A baronet from Carlow: ‘Just because you’ve a title, people expect you’re born rich’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VUP23RFLA5BRPF2OAHWWVG7LE4","auth":{"1":"1e0791a7beee32d6b5d5b48a4caa509ceb5756e3a80c134e0e4c5796ae7f9301"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VUP23RFLA5BRPF2OAHWWVG7LE4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"UK"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"World"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/world/uk/2025/02/26/a-baronet-from-carlow-just-because-youve-a-title-people-expect-youre-born-rich/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/world/uk","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"UK"}}}},{"_id":"DMBA2VSQZ5B6XO3JBCNPWJRLX4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":375,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/82b58029-eab0-42e7-bbe6-4a66a19e2c42/versions/1739962483/media/d02d7a5f2437995d1a831ffdf61a5d5d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/","content_elements":[{"_id":"PFPRGLNZWRGXHCXQGTEIYTQSCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844763},"content":"In <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Canberra</a>, I live in an apartment building in the middle of the city, near a park. That in itself feels strange on the page – having lived in other capital cities, such as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/\" target=\"_blank\">Dublin</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/3/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a>, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/renting/\" target=\"_blank\">rent</a> for something similar right in the heart of the city would have been impossibly high. As I look out the window of my home office several floors up, I’m once again struck by the impression that Australian teenage girls seem uniquely bad at planning for rain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F5VWVLS3HVACVK7KI2EP3GC23A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844764},"content":"A thunderous downpour has come, suddenly and violently, to ruin their hair and make them regret their choice of flip flops. They run from the park screaming, hands held aloft over their heads as though it will save the hair they carefully styled before leaving the house. I’ve been there, though a Limerick upbringing will make you a hair realist relatively quickly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WDCCJIGCVA4RNTAS3D7OETADA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844765},"content":"In Limerick, the air is a liquid about nine months a year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QBZIYXSDA5AW7LKUFHPXONVVHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844766},"content":"You get used to it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E3EFPDBNZJEEVKZTNW5LIV222M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844767},"content":"Behind the panicking girls, a complacency (is that the collective noun?) of adolescent boys shuffle out too slowly as the girls shout back at them to hurry up. The boys move as though determined to signal that the downpour leeching into their baggy jeans and creeping kneeward doesn’t bother them at all. Watching them, I know that I’m no longer young because there are no conditions under which I would choose seeming cool over being warm and dry. None at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3EIZWNANVDFNLDAK4IZIVFIZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844768},"content":"Contrary to popular assumption, it does rain here in the Australian capital, even in summer. You might experience seven days in a month when it rains, though some of those might just be showers. It rains more now that we are mincing into autumn and everyone is constantly saying “it’s getting chilly, isn’t it?” to one another just as spring creaks into being back at home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"435QZ3HRVZDPHCWF7BZWAAIFXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844769},"content":"Seven days of rain in a month is a wild luxury in comparison to my life in Ireland. So much about living in Canberra feels like a luxury because – if you have lived in Ireland or the UK, it simply is luxurious by comparison. When people at home ask about the life here, I want to tell them that it’s not necessarily the dream they imagine. The streets are paved with neither gold nor Tim Tams. I don’t want to tell anyone that things are better here than they are at home, but they are easier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Y4GGPBYYNDS3DADNB6NYC5ZBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844770},"content":"The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"WKRAI2AKLNCYJMS23BKIMEKTOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844771},"content":"Smoother. They are less strained and stressful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JD6I5MCDJND2ZJKUR2GNZFHE2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844772},"content":"At a recent work event I met a lot of new Australian people, many of whom had travelled in from Sydney and would be heading back the following day. Everyone I met that evening who asked if I live here in Canberra looked slightly horrified when I told them I did. It’s a political city. Most people you meet work either in the military or a government job. Despite real efforts on behalf of local government, the cultural life of the city does not compare to Sydney or Melbourne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QP7LY6A2ZJDNNFZJ3WCZ5T7POA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844773},"content":"And why would it? They are older, larger, more organically evolved places. They draw in more creative people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYGVZOJZARHS7CRQZ5IEF3ZL4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844774},"content":"Canberra was designed as a home for the Australian government, and it certainly can feel like it at times. A bit of an “organised fun” atmosphere. People move in and out for short periods and there can be a feeling of transience. It can be hard to make friends, to feel rooted, or to find your niche in a place that owes its existence to bureaucracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JR5NWJYELBBKHO3YYKTPQQU264","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844775},"content":"This is why Australian people always seem to look at me as though I’ve told them that my dog just died when I tell them that I live in Canberra. And yet, it may be a sign of how good life is – on average – in Australia that so many people here are horrified by the idea of living in a city which, if less cool than others (and it is less cool), nonetheless offers the most stress-free life I’ve ever experienced.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2FEL3Y5T7JFJJHJTTFJ4I7YWQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844776},"content":"For my birthday last week, my husband took me to my favourite steak restaurant here in the city. While we waited for our food, he asked me what I considered the most and least favourable aspects of living in the Australian capital. In the con aisle was the slightly clinical feeling that the place can have, depending on where you find yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"33N3BJCUCZFJ7HAR5QSBNMSRB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844777},"content":"The most favourable thing is that ease. How easy everything is compared with life in Dublin or London. I rate that very highly. That lack of friction inside your own life. The lack of weariness involved in living in a place brimming with culture and activity and life, but which you are generally too tired or too cash strapped to fully take part in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ANJUWJMDFFURO4U45S6GX7ZPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844778},"content":"The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ECRU45AAZVDFRJ53LUVGC6OIN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844779},"content":"No two-hour commutes to work. No spending a vast proportion of your monthly income on getting to and from the office you work in. I haven’t had a single cold since I got here. Everything is easy to access. The climate entices you outdoors and makes you more active without you even noticing (though do check the weather app before you put on flip flops). The natural world is awe-inducing. The food is spectacularly good – nutritious and varied and infinitely more affordable than at home. The people are warm. After years of experiencing the NHS and the HSE, I feel genuinely shocked to be able to see a doctor at all, let alone the same one every visit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6MNJ3RFGBEUDB376VAKE7XEDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844780},"content":"While Canberra is considered an especially expensive place to live by Australians, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living</a> is so much lower than it is in Dublin that I regularly think about it and feel mild despair. Everywhere has its flaws, but living here has proved that it is possible to have sufficient housing to meet demand. It is possible to have a healthcare system that doesn’t routinely leave people waiting years for treatment so that a problem becomes a chronic problem. It is possible to have an excellent steak dinner for two with drinks and notions asparagus with pancetta on your birthday and not pay more than €50 per person.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHA7I3R6MZHKFF2BPO5VBMSDQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844781},"content":"It just isn’t possible in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I32LYH6SNZD43CXZMQE3SIXYP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844782},"content":"It’s even less possible in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QASCCV4ACBBNRK3TIJYOWAUAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740414844783},"content":"I’m grateful to live in Canberra.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I don’t want to tell anyone that things are better here than they are at home, but they are easier"},"display_date":"2025-02-25T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Things aren’t better in Australia than in Ireland, but they are easier","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"YVDJW2VP5FBWRLI2GJHIW2EGIA","auth":{"1":"dd9c418357edaaf846071132e042f9553f0709bd712832f84f29c668de4125d1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVDJW2VP5FBWRLI2GJHIW2EGIA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/25/things-arent-better-in-australia-than-in-ireland-but-they-are-easier/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"ZZWEV4VQKBCK5CD32EPE2ZIIRM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":301,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e4b34cc0-7743-405c-8e6e-6b4bdb4ce696/versions/1740332051/media/573be1f5a64163e375b387de880749a1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AHQJBW6AMRGIVPFBYGRHTIM2GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067307},"content":"Let’s imagine, for example, you are in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/spain/\" target=\"_blank\">Spain</a>, trying to get your <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/european-union/\" target=\"_blank\">European Union</a> citizen card. You could spend hours on your bike criss-crossing Madrid in the sun and the rain, taking in police stations, print shops and translation offices, discovering far-flung neighbourhoods that you would never otherwise have had the pleasure of knowing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"26SLAFY5QVHGLDV56SSIGJ7F3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067308},"content":"You might find that, by the fourth appointment for the same card, you know the route to the police station off by heart – what a win!","type":"text"},{"_id":"OM6ULZMHGNAGDB75UWYCMTGIMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067309},"content":"Along that selfsame route, you could find yourself thinking that it’s quite apt that the journey is all uphill, and wondering what the Spanish for Sisyphus is (Sísifo, by the way).","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECX7JT47FNFPFANNRUN2JZ2NEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067310},"content":"I use the example of being in Spain trying to get an EU citizen card because I am, in fact, in Spain, trying to get my EU citizen card.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDRKATOY2REWHEDGTY675PAKYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067311},"content":"I’ve learned that it’s not enough to <i>be</i> a citizen of the EU, existing in Spain. I need to <i>prove</i> that with documents – and lots of them. (There is a joke to be made here about Elon Musk’s new department of government efficiency, but I don’t like him so I won’t make it.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"F6UMFZXCOVCRNB2I3LYPKJDCVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067312},"content":"You’d think a degree in European studies would have prepared me for this.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OM33J2J6WZGATBBEG3TI22JCIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067313},"content":"We studied the works of Dante, Weber and Kafka, which provide the theoretical foundations for hellish bureaucracy. Somehow the theory feels hollow when you’re crying outside the police station with no <i>tarjeta</i> in your hand, but then, feeling hollow is probably what Dante, Weber and Kafka were getting at.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DCUHFELLR5A6HINXUU6NRD74GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067314},"content":"My chosen career path should have helped too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PESXTLG4DRC35KWUR4ZHXCF35M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067315},"content":"I work in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\">climate change</a>, so preparing irrefutable evidence of the facts, expecting swift action and being constantly disappointed is my bread and butter. I can’t help myself feeling a glimmer of hope each time the <i>policía</i> rifles through the documents, but, like any good UN climate conference, the outcome is suboptimal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ON2QLUFWDFEHFKCAR4TDIKAIAU","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"BFDDSRESIZCODI2GCXOSEZ3AYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067316},"content":"The experience has got me thinking about a lot of things.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3O423IDNNED7MP2CTEVBISCTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067317},"content":"Seeing the post-Brexit hoops that friends from the UK have to jump through to get their visa makes me very grateful to be part of the EU, to have a fast(er) track to residency.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASJ4XI6FCJEHPI3CYJGFKEWBPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067318},"content":"I also recognise the immense privilege it is to simply pitch up and start working in Spain, especially compared with friends arriving from places such as Syria and Venezuela.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IOTFZF3ZRH77BNNZZWUE3L5OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067319},"content":"It also raises questions about different kinds of work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKCTGL2GKVHDTCGYORIRJXYK7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067320},"content":"I am setting up as a freelance (I would love to avoid, but can’t really deny, the term “digital nomad” which has become a dirty term here, linked to gentrification and rising rents). Effectively, this means I will tap away at my laptop for eight hours a day, sending emails and shuffling information from Word documents to Excel spreadsheets.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3OZNLMUXNCMJII2BBVJ3O73WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067321},"content":"Meanwhile, when I’ve arrived for my multiple appointments, I’ve been given a little square of paper with a number on it. It’s your ticket and your number is called when it’s your turn. But the ticket doesn’t come from a machine. It has been hand-cut with a scissors, meaning that each morning, it is someone else’s job to cut up these little squares of paper and ready them for the day ahead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6WPP532R5BVVMNZSP76P3GEUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067322},"content":"I think about David Graeber’s book <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/job-dissatisfaction-is-your-work-completely-pointless-1.3907418\" target=\"_blank\">Bullshit Jobs</a> and feel a profound sense of connection with the ticket-cutter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFO4IGVYWNGTHI63CB3MTB76BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067323},"content":"My friend tells me that the Spanish bureaucratic system is designed to catch you out. In my small experience, it is certainly a colossal waste of time for applicants and police officers, who presumably didn’t dream of this during their years of training.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KISYRLBNGRBZHFU35LDSDR6YPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067324},"content":"But perhaps the time wasted is a challenge to our modern obsession with efficiency. After all, what difference does a few lost hours here and there really make?","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RLNH77HT5B7ZBMN37LEQG2UKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067325},"content":"And, in a world where we are constantly in our heads, receiving and processing a barrage of information every day, we must take every chance to reconnect with our bodies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFCEOLGTIZG4RBYNP3GNMOLHBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067326},"content":"You know, really <i>feel</i> the rage coursing through your veins, the tears flowing from your eyes, the breath quickening.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VEACSLK67ZCPLFX4IOTGWC5H6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1740330067327},"content":"The fifth appointment looms – wish me luck!","type":"text"},{"_id":"STWYPWWT4FCGLEJMKVXFJJI2TA","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Orlaith Delargy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I work in climate change, so preparing irrefutable evidence of the facts, expecting swift action and being constantly disappointed is my bread and butter"},"display_date":"2025-02-24T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘A great way of seeing a new city is to become embroiled in its bureaucracy’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TPTGH4SAKJB7NDJSRD54ATAYRA","auth":{"1":"3798bad36e6062e45f608ee29cb50177d1ad5053dae6fc58db060b59cce80c06"},"focal_point":{"x":3050,"y":1676},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TPTGH4SAKJB7NDJSRD54ATAYRA.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/24/a-great-way-of-seeing-a-new-city-is-to-become-embroiled-in-its-bureaucracy/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"57RS72HRMFDQLDA74A3DPLNLSI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":295,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/ec167c08-6dce-4d23-9240-5d0e97b46679/versions/1739975295/media/17226618ea195fcd8a1b379d63055ff6_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/23/last-time-i-tried-to-park-a-car-in-dublin-i-couldnt-get-over-it/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6WH555GGTNBMRB7FMS6PZGJKGM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Glasnevin-born Alan Flanagan has enjoyed an impressive career in the competitive world of global asset management since joining <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bny-mellon/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bny-mellon/\">BNY</a> (formerly known as BNY Mellon) 17 years ago. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRVHZVOUSJGUBKMKPP3IZLTYEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Initially based in Dublin, he moved to the firm’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\">New York</a> office in 2016, with a series of moves there leading to his current position as head of global client coverage, asset servicing, for the bank. His global role involves dealing with 250 direct reports and extensive travel around the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MNKPPQDOOBCRZHE6OTAYX6NU4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan credits his early accountancy training and experience with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kpmg/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kpmg/\">KPMG</a> in Dublin in the late 1990s and early noughties as providing a really solid base for his career. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"N5NIJLOOUFDMFG3SXL5FA4OKMQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I trained as a chartered accountant, and although I decided that audit wasn’t for me, I am forever grateful for the professional standards training I received there – which has stood to me to this day.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CO6Z573GFEB7EDFICHRV3L7P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan also met his wife in KPMG, and the newly qualified pair enjoyed time travelling before settling in the Cayman Islands, where there were opportunities for accountants in the offshore funds area. A planned two-year stay turned into six years, and two of the couple’s four children were born there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P6XFT4KQQRFVDPZS5AXROB56RM","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"CNSF2TESQRH2VGMTV3HRKY7A4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Raising a young family was one of the motivators for a move back to Dublin in 2007, when Flanagan had the opportunity to join BNY to set up and run its private equity fund services business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQAIHL6VG5G65J5A7WFOIUKZOA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Progression with the firm and frequent travelling to the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-states/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-states/\">United States</a> led to a decision to move to New Jersey in 2016. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCOLCRNUCBG2ZGSWKTPLKHKPDI","embed":{"config":{},"id":"acast_podcast-60219","url":"/"},"subtype":"acast_podcast","type":"custom_embed"},{"_id":"Q7HTE4G22VBTXEIYCIMHNOKAII","additional_properties":{},"content":"The decision was also heavily influenced by the autism diagnosis their youngest child received and the belief that he would receive better supports there, which has proven to be the case, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXRCYBJGDVCXXMPYOPKA62HZ5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family settled in Princeton. It is famous for its Ivy League university, but outside its walls there is a beautiful town, he says. “It’s got a really nice international flavour to it. It’s a melting pot, with great restaurants and facilities and really good schools, which has been a great benefit to our family.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"U5UBIX7BXNFLZC7TFZSGMRASNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among the things he likes in the US is the sense of wide open space, in contrast to Dublin. “Space is in abundance here. You notice it around housing and car park spaces. Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it. There’s more space here, even in the shopping aisles.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XPSDG7L6NBAIJPVZ6W2LVMIXBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flanagan makes an 80-minute commute to BNY’s offices in Manhattan. The bank was founded in 1784, making it the oldest bank in the United States. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6NOPKL457RAHXFCCPKLRE7PSQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Philadelphia has always played second fiddle to New York and we kind of like it that way’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3RLGSCU5PZA2HCK36QBBT2TUOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We oversee, manage and keep safe in excess of $50 trillion (€47.9 trillion) in assets. Part of my role is to run a team of relationship managers to deal with all aspects of those relationships,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z26GHGR37RDFHF3RAVYIEB7QB4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Despite the impact of technology in our business, it is still very much a people business. We’ve leveraging AI but it’s still very much a people business and a trust-based business, so the people in my team have to build relationships and build trust to continue to service clients and to grow new business,” he explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFLU744I5FA6HFHCIAVBRCPRE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another role Flanagan has involves championing neurodiversity as the executive sponsor of BNY’s Heart initiative, which aims to elevate awareness of disabilities and to promote a safe, respectful and welcoming environment where all employees feel included.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGYOHDQWA5BRRLIWVDGMYZPUIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Working at the firm involves early starts and Flanagan regularly has breakfast meetings at 7.30am. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RYFVR3445AZ5JNZ6XV7PFF57E","additional_properties":{},"content":"“People do work very hard here. Winning is important, and there’s a great confidence in people in the workforce. I see it in the graduates who come and work for the company. I put a lot of that down to the educational system. There’s a lot of emphasis on continuous assessment and presentations, which helps prepare people for work.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7CYWCBMMBARLK2ECLPLOPYDME","additional_properties":{},"content":"As well as holiday visits, Flanagan gets to return to Ireland on business several times a year, which affords him opportunity to catch up with much-missed family and friends. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EVUYKSZ6WNFOLJXK5A7PQEMGN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I get to stay in the place in Ireland which is my mother’s house in Glasnevin. The food and the laundry service are just outstanding.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDM3NA77RRG7NFIO24TOBFBCQ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"A further tie to Ireland is that his daughter Sally recently returned to study at Trinity College Dublin. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAEIZPGWHNB3NA2JDU3QLGHRAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"BNY recently celebrated 30 years in Ireland and Flanagan says many Irish professionals have done well at the firm. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EYW7X54CNFGZLK5XMYG4LE6CF4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We have a very strong culture of cultivating talent in Ireland. To have so many Irish people in a firm of this scale sitting in leadership positions says a lot about Ireland and the culture, and what we bring to the table.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Frank Dillon"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Progression with BNY and frequent travelling to the US led Alan Flanagan and his family to move to New Jersey in 2016"},"display_date":"2025-02-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NGSAM43YU5FDZE2F274OOPPRNI","auth":{"1":"031b5cc7a27b30f57d3e605d0b6b0081bce620885df58b525729204facee0640"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NGSAM43YU5FDZE2F274OOPPRNI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/02/23/last-time-i-tried-to-park-a-car-in-dublin-i-couldnt-get-over-it/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"U4VCGI6U3VC57IRND34U3SKIGU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":432,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5e06178c-9fa7-4aa6-adad-fe373b84dfaa/versions/1739528873/media/65ea086bf21c344cbcfd4a2428a33fc1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/18/irishwoman-in-el-salvador-im-60-and-moved-halfway-around-the-world-everything-is-different/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SCCLALHQORF5ZJ6UPWT5LR6Z44","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600439},"content":"More than 23 years ago – September 2001 to be exact – I moved with my two children to the southeast of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/spain/\" target=\"_self\">Spain</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PYAFTEOKHBBDJN7A5PURVEWBKM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600440},"content":"Good times and bad times were had. One great thing was that it left us all with good Spanish skills. More than a couple of decades later, I decided to up sticks again and make another move at the age of 60.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KQZNATD6IVDMPHHNQLFKEXIKYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600441},"content":"This time, the jump was bigger and, as I said to my son hosting me here in El Salvador, “Charlie, I’m very good at jumping, just not so good at landing.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIJWO7YAVZBLTKG5UE2O6UW724","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600442},"content":"Perhaps I am the old dog to whom you can’t teach new tricks. All I know is, the stark contrast between where I had been and where I now found myself was jaw-dropping.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WLJVVCMRNAGRFIGI2A5AHVVXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600443},"content":"Security was heavy both inside and outside the airport. We stayed in the city of San Salvador for two days. What struck me initially was the humidity, the presence of guns, the plastic, the plant-growth and the abundance of US brands. It appeared returning migrants brought US culture back with them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YJJ3I2FVEVEL5DM4KSGHZ5JOZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600445},"content":"We soon embarked on the three-hour drive to the small city of Berlín, a town set among volcanoes. I was relieved to leave the chaos of the city and to be heading to the tranquil countryside. Or so I thought.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VY7N6FXCKZDR5FNDPIKD2CEAUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600446},"content":"This is where the jaw-dropping began, as the chaos continued. No hard or soft shoulders, razor-sharp bends, maniacal motorcyclists, blind overtaking, and stray dogs all over the place. It turned my own shoulders hard. Being a bad passenger at the best of times, I was reeling, but my astonishment at the mind-boggling poverty was a distraction. Thank God for small mercies. And yes, my jaw was at half-mast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4SLYH563ZBAZTBJDZBXVP3BPPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600447},"type":"image"},{"_id":"NZZ6DPY7FZCJ3GSSVXYV3AYDQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600449},"content":"There were vendors of everything everywhere. All generations lined the highway, trying to flag down the hurtling traffic in the hope of a sale. Bananas, coconuts, papayas, avocados, water, cola, balloons(!), sheets of aluminium, coffee beans, clothes, motorbike parts, flowers, cars, pupusas (thick, spongy corn tortillas) and more pupusas adorned the roughshod sides of the highway, along with the forlorn homes these vendors live in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFY3BQ6TKFFH5PL7ZNXAWDMRBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600450},"content":"And all this with a backdrop of glorious and abundant flora. I seemed to have arrived in the land of chaos and non-stop growth. I could only hope that the latter might be the case for the relatively new president, Nayib Bukele, and his great reforms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTJSEF7OYRDLZOUY4CITO3AUD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600444},"content":"El Salvador plans first ‘Bitcoin City’ powered by a volcano","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YBBT4ITJZJH3RLB5PMKAMC642U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600452},"content":"My ever-tremulous heart looked over the edges of canyons as we wound our way up the volcanoes, playing chicken with young lads on motorbikes (and chickens). I invoked my long-neglected guardian angel that day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXBO2IMRFBFYZHY2N2CNBUR5K4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600453},"content":"We finally arrived in Berlín, which has now been my home for a short while.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGSBBNKO6FC2FNQ2CNSXVKIJWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600455},"content":"I live on a dirt road with clucking chickens and skulking street dogs. My senses have taken a while to adapt, but adapting they are. Everything is different from what I’m used to. It’s a sensorial readjustment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KL42CU5CYRAOFGGSGOUAZKKYUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600457},"content":"And, yes, perhaps it <i>has</i> been too long since I was rambling down in the street. Perhaps I’m not the toughie I thought I was. Perhaps I’m clutching my shabby first-world coat a little bit too tightly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M5ALKASD6ZHTFLG47PP37ZEWAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600458},"content":"The world’s first Bitcoin city is full of first-world eccentrics, not least my second-born, Charlie, anxious to watch the new currency work in real time, with real products.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIPAXABLZVGQHN3FDIVD3M3FUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600459},"content":"All over the town, the familiar Bitcoin sign adorns shopfronts. Everywhere, someone is trying to sell you something, and many of the transactions can happen, directly from vendor to purchaser, in seconds flat, through a facility created by Bitcoin developers called the Lightning Network.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3Z6BHWYVVAU7ORHBOKADQXZH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600454},"type":"image"},{"_id":"M2NTK6HV3BD2PKLIJJ4LFOKVZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600460},"content":"I won’t get into it. I should leave that to the experts, but it is fascinating to watch this once-deemed “Ponzi scheme” rise from the ashes of disrepute. You can buy accommodation, fruit, vegetables, milk, bread, meat, endless corn products, clothes, shoes, pots, butter, land, houses, cows and furniture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UZ6FNKI6KVCMFNONS4JOXTFZU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600461},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBAGVWHE7RGKNNHBABHTSONGHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600462},"content":"The Irish are represented well here, with two of Charlie’s friends, Rob Comer from Mayo and Joe Hayes from Kerry flying the flag (literally) down by the coast. And more power to all these pioneering young men.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5MR7FT4DCND4HIGZTXEAENNVZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600463},"content":"As for me, who knows?","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKRCFNTMNJEUHAINWFDKA5MLZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600465},"content":"I have climbed a volcano. I have used Bitcoin. I live each day with the roar of motorbikes and ire-filled preachers on their microphones. I marvel daily at the plant-life and magnificent butterflies that bejewel the environment. I have basked in the gloriously welcoming smiles of the local people and have received warm hugs from the local women I have met.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W42BR7BKNBCWPLX3ELUJWKIVA4","additional_properties":{"_id":"2AB7ZF5NBVH3RPQTQJQGCKV2YA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"2NP5FWDH2ZAMHLR24D5E6JKIAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600467},"content":"Despite the poverty, I see a people who laugh a lot, people who interact readily. What I don’t see are people engrossed with their phones or behind locked doors shutting out a cold world. It’s a noisy, smelly, vibrant landscape in a growing economy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MGKFBANPTBA4NHNXIGCDHVVNSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600468},"content":"It is quite a wonder, El Salvador.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IW5EBQLAJZGYVKAZJF5MNZ3T5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600470},"content":"Perhaps I will get a teaching job in the capital. For now, I am making bone broth, peanut butter and lemon curd to sell in a farmers’ market.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4LDFL2JDXVA67NLDPA3CVQGND4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600471},"content":"I have become one of the ubiquitous vendors, hoping to make a buck. Or a satoshi.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4ZWQLVNOJGCLG2FTY4K4JMLZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739806600464},"content":"The ‘cult’ of Bukele: El Salvador’s millennial strongman heads for second term","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TJYNWUDFOZFH5DC74KBYMJV6ZY","type":"list"},{"_id":"J6MURTBMZNHIDND44WR6GBM4KE","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Maureen Stevens"}]},"description":{"basic":"Life in El Salvador: ‘I’ve climbed a volcano and used Bitcoin. 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There I could create worlds of my own imagining.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AE4JZUHPR5FQPBNLUBIRKWZTLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618641},"content":"The salt water was probably too cold to have contemplated a swim or even an ankle paddle in. This was out the Connemara road from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/galway\" target=\"_blank\">Galway</a>, “backside Spiddal”, as my father used to call it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TS2GNVWNMBHOVJDMK62ANC6IWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618642},"content":"There were small boreens between stone walls that led down off that road to the left to stretches of sand surrounded by large brown Connemara outcroppings. The introduction of my hand-knitted drawers to the salt water was my mistake, I admit that. I slipped and fell into a pool of trapped seawater between some smooth and slippery Atlantic rocks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFH5SG5DS5B3PBO7FF5OGUW5IA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618643},"content":"I sat there surprised as the water seeped into my woollen shorts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRC3P7KIPJBJFGB6UOHNVGC2XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618644},"content":"Did the assembled family laugh? You can be sure they did.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MVSXRRWPGBA27HKSIAO2JF3E3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618645},"content":"Did I laugh? Not at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKIWPYDPARGMHBXNFEMJEY52WY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618646},"content":"The seawater-soaked woollen shorts were already beginning to irritate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37ROUS35DVDWTGO2SM5AW7GTUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618647},"content":"My mother grabbed me out of the water, wrapped a towel around me, pulled down the soggy wool lot, and dried me off.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NDRSOZ7BHRCMBFYSYEOZE3WDNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618648},"content":"I think it was my aunt Una who went to one of the two cars that we had driven down the boreen that Sunday. She came back with a pair of clean, dry, yellow and very adult women’s knickers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7SZY3CCJNDZFKMO633QJKRIX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618649},"content":"Why did they happen to have an extra pair of fresh women’s knickers in the Commer? That I don’t know. Where were my own day clothes? Again a mystery. Had we left home with all the children dressed in our home-knitted woollen beach outfits with no plan B? It seems that we had.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PKWLAXYPJBCFZNGSDVNFFMKKJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618650},"content":"As my Aunt Una handed the mystery yellow knickers to my mother, I realised that they were intended for me. I knew, even then, at age four or five, that something was seriously awry. I struggled and resisted, but my fighting strength was limited; I was small then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WXN62VLEWJHV7ECOVBS3PKP4GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618651},"content":"Once dressed in the unauthorised and illegitimate knickers, I became aware of further laughter from the assembled and now more-interested-than-ever extended family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XS5RR6YXZCF5L7ZUDPAVGJBEE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618652},"content":"They laughed and laughed, as I ran and ran with all the speed that I could, at the age that I had, to hide in the car until they could take me home. Which they eventually did. When the car stopped in front of our house, I took off like a bat out of hell till I got to my room, where I removed the offending yellow knickers with a speed that might have won me Olympic gold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2F2JWWLQFHW5O55L3IE4VZYW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618653},"content":"This is all by way of saying that my mother was a very good knitter, and that wool was once not only a way to inflict emotional pain on the young of Ireland, but a necessity wrought by the exigencies of the times. What you didn’t have you created in the 1950s, and wool was the undisputed interactive software of the day, pun intended. I think that my mother knitted all of the scratchy outfits for the kids assembled on that particular Sunday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JIVAETPLVRCZ5L3UP57XMT2YN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618654},"content":"Knitting, mending and darning were skills much in demand. The three activities were essential women’s skills, and the men of the time depended on women for such basics in life. I’m sure there were men who enjoyed knitting, mending or darning in the privacy of their own homes in Ireland then, but they never did publicly. There were tailors, of course, but that was different.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADIQO5SPLZBO3NCJJQQC5CU26U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618655},"content":"Other than our swimming outfits, my mother knitted our socks, gloves, scarves, jumpers and cardigans. In their wedding picture, my father is wearing a hand-knitted V-neck sleeveless woollen jumper, as did is his brother Mattie, his best man. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother knitted both.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUQYYNJVJJDRFCHM3XKA2ISEWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618656},"content":"My mother Brigid knitted wherever she happened to be, at the hearth, at the kitchen table, in an armchair; and, when the weather was warm, sitting outside. I have a memory of seeing my mother sitting around in a circle with my aunts knitting, while a black kitten leapt and jumped after the unwinding balls of wool.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWTPKIQF2FE65LNSSOMKKKLDF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618657},"content":"Wool was flecked or plain in the 1950s. Colours were dull, more often than not; dull reds, dull blues, dull greens and browns. Even light colours were dull; dull light green, dull light blue, flecked dull light red and flecked dull light grey. Phosphorescent hues were still a long ways off in the shock of the future, as was the universal availability of cotton thread.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMBNIYJZBVDJ3JDO274TUQ6QMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230833},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"HFJ72POGEZHXBCRQV3QAQUKJ6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618658},"content":"All of my mother’s knitting left a large amount of leftover wool; half skeins and half balls of yarn and jumbles of colours bound together of what remained after a successful jumper or pair of gloves was complete.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ID6BA2MPIVBDZCKF3GUWOMEFF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618659},"content":"What to do?","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENRVAUVCH5CFZKRUMXO6KSHMV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618660},"content":"Well, my mother decided to knit a blanket in widths of about a foot, and lengths of about a yard. She knitted her blanket with double threads; at least I think that’s how she ended up with such a rich and heavy warmth of interwoven colours. As she knitted, she wove her thoughts and daily dreams into her work. She thought of her sister who had recently died, and of her sister’s children who were now motherless. She thought of her sister Nellie who had swapped her name out so that she could migrate to Massachusetts. She thought of the whitewashed home where they had all grown up, now left to the winds of time in Clonboo. She saw her youngest son fall into a pool of saltwater in “backside Spiddal” and sit there not knowing what to do, and she laughed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGSR3QP2WJEFLJBKJILXSGJLIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618661},"content":"My mother saw a thousand things and felt a thousand things as she knitted, and she knitted one and purled each and every one of those images and feelings into her lengths of blanket. She knitted a dozen or so panels of leftover wool. Then, she sewed them all together to make a blanket that is as representative of Ireland of its time and as magical and mysterious as Lebor na hUidre – the Book of the Dun Cow – is of another.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWUSPBKTN5EHHHV2NZNCBFJYBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618662},"content":"My mother recorded what she knew for us going forward and she did it effortlessly. Did she think that one day we might remember her because of her blanket? It never crossed her mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFPRCXBMH5GK7BURKBRPNOA6ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618663},"content":"Did she think of the future of her three young boys? Of course she did. Did she see their futures? Not at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KNBFRXOQPJA2TD67CADYGKV4B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618664},"content":"Of their offspring, she saw nothing either, and nothing of her great-nephews and grandnieces. Did she wish them all well? Innately; it’s all there in the knitting. She ordered the world into knit and purl and left it safe for future generations. My mother gave us everything of the truth as she knew it in her knitting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DB7HOIGM7NC3HLM7I7H2PKS7LM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618665},"content":"I don’t know when I first became aware of this blanket, but from when it first entered my consciousness, I loved it intuitively. For decades, it sat on the back of the sofa in my parents' living room. However, with the coal fire blazing in the fireplace in winter, there was never any reason to use it. The blanket sat there completely satisfied with itself, but unnoticed and unused.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XB6ACXTAYBEQ3JM2IHREGQJSFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618666},"content":"Then, on one of my visits to Ireland, my mother said: “You should take this to New York.” She knew how much I loved her blanket. She was getting older and wanted the blanket to be appreciated after she was gone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7AOMJ4B5VG2VL3FMUELSN2G6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618667},"content":"So I packed my mother’s multi-coloured blanket into a suitcase. It came with me to Shannon and then on to New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG67MZ35LJHAREYEOWEEZACMAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618668},"content":"In Brooklyn, the blanket enjoyed a new life, and yet old, on the back of my sofa for many years. The weather was too hot in summer to contemplate wool – yes, rough wool is anathema to cooling off now, just as it was in the 1950s. In winter, the stifling heat of a centrally steam-heated New York apartment meant that the duvet was too hot; never mind adding a wool blanket to the bed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJWNLEHM6NF2NEG372TQ4NQH7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230846},"type":"image"},{"_id":"JRPOPHU2CRFJHGBVUJQ6IG253I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618669},"content":"Then, my mother’s blanket moved with me to the country in upstate New York, and there it found its place, its home, for a time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNRMJ646EJCNBEYUALBBUELWLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618670},"content":"Winters, and even springs and autumns, were cold enough there to appreciate the fine wool-woven knots of my mother’s ambition. Her blanket covered one bed or another there, with various other blanket companions, on many a night.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMLTNB34BBGSLKCZ3I5XV3W7W4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618671},"content":"Even my mother herself came and enjoyed the deep solace that one of her previous lives offered her; her hand-knitted masterpiece containing her thoughts from the 1950s lay comfortably over her legs as she slept in Upstate New York in the 1980s and early 1990s. We never mentioned it, never talked about it, as if it was the most common thing in the world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OL2N2FCBWNE7BP6DMOPSX42CCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618672},"content":"Of course it wasn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SLK6OOZBWFBQPH3F35GTXE5S5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618673},"content":"My mother left us.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YR66TL3OGVD7RKBWJVSLBEN2IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618674},"content":"And I left New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2UTA4OYCZEIDLAS5BA2HMK7KU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618675},"content":"I moved to Florida, hardly the ideal home for a heavy wool blanket. So my mother’s blanket retreated to an Irish pine blanket chest even older than itself, until I decided to move to Colombia at the end of the first decade of the new millennium.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5PD5JACIFEYJF2C2SZ7B7I7IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618676},"content":"Bogotá, Colombia, as it turns out, is much more amenable to wool than many other places on our planet. High in the Andes, nights are cool, and air conditioning and central heating are unknown. There is often the need for a heavy woollen blanket.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TT6MEAZ5ZJD25P4HCAHN2ZZM5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618677},"content":"The Irish blanket settled into my new home in Colombia as if it had been knitted with Bogotá’s climate in mind. My ageing cat, Figueras, took a special liking to the warmth that the blanket provided, and spent many days and nights of her last years ensconced in the blanket from Galway.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFFCE4TOFFARNNW67RE7BKSDPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618678},"content":"And all the while, the blanket’s secrets that my mother had imparted decades earlier lived on unnoticed as time swept us on unawares.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLAQH5ZJGVC3JB7ISYKKUMIFJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739550230858},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"FYVOKIYJKRDTRJYRJINGQW5X6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618679},"content":"AI has been much in the news, and on our minds, in the last couple of years. The capacity of AI seems unlimited, and even if just a small percentage of what has been predicted for AI comes true, our lives will be much altered. For now, the promise of AI has allowed me to imagine the “what-ifs” of my mother’s blanket, however farfetched.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWWQ2EH7KVGWZCCUVD3WHPZXII","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618680},"content":"What if AI, one day in the not-too-distant future, can learn to see the past through the remnants and artefacts that remain with us?","type":"text"},{"_id":"27FUX7PNQJFUDGOTB4UARN23FA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618681},"content":"What if, one day, AI can learn to read my mother’s thoughts from the blanket that she knitted?","type":"text"},{"_id":"KCS4DPSKQBE3LBQVKI7ECFUVWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618682},"content":"What if one day, AI can see the video of me falling into the seawater between some slippery rocks “<i>backside Spiddal!!”</i>, just because it was there in my mother’s mind when she knitted her blanket?","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLFCDMQGGBHQTDKWGJBT5AHS3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618683},"content":"Oh, you scoff.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PKP6O5HSNHLZCLZGMAO7276PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618684},"content":"As I opened my eyes, I saw the scratchy wool blanket on top of a hill of blankets, some Peruvian, some Guatemalan, in the blue-painted antique wardrobe that my mother’s blanket now called home. Like my mother, I too am soon to be gone. Once I am gone, what is to become of my mother’s blanket in Colombia, I wondered. The blanket is too full of the mysteries of time, too full of my mother’s history, just to become a wayward piece of knitting in the flea markets of Bogotá, Buenos Aires or Mexico City.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ISGDD732FHBLEJR4XN6OVD5PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618685},"content":"My mother’s blanket needed to be home in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NQWYMGL35FFLC4QGANMACKTAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618686},"content":"On that April morning, I made a decision. How perfect! The 1950s blanket would travel home to Ireland in my brother’s empty suitcase.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ANT3UJKZ7FCYTDEM2QWKRG67HI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618687},"content":"And so it did.","type":"text"},{"_id":"53GCC2RYPZE2BAFG3TU7O64H64","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618688},"content":"“I have a surprise for you,” I said to my brother. “Do you remember this.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGGYML4GTJBPTFC3DSLGF6AA5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618689},"content":"“Of course, I do,” he said. “Our mother knitted that blanket!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHBEO6DH7VEEZCLKCMNVJ56W3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618690},"content":"Odd things happen in your mind when pieces of the past come back to you. Sometimes, old pieces of the puzzle fall into place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TXSU5PCXZZGNVPGKNFVQNFIQ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618691},"content":"Sometimes, life surprises you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWIGJLFXT5BI5FGRKJOLPIZC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618692},"content":"My brother’s daughter’s daughter, Amélie, a new knitting enthusiast at an early age, came into the room and saw the blanket. She took it into her hands and looked it carefully up and down. I don’t think she had ever seen anything quite like it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NAOLJ273VNHELFNVZROP6WWOQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618693},"content":"She threw it on the floor as if it were a rug to a carpet, and then she lay down on it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEH6JHYC3NAEHMSTLPEH75BWY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618694},"content":"I was overjoyed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KB63H56IJVAMHD67QQK4YRYDTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618695},"content":"I knew that my mother’s blanket had found a new soul who would treasure it and take care of it going forward.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZBNELUWXZBKBIKI3PQYTKE6NI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618696},"content":"Amélie will have it now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCGHTPEIOJCBFCAYMPFR5534FY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618697},"content":"She will love it and, more likely than not, put it on the back of a sofa somewhere in a future that none of us can imagine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LKUCEI7GNRGALJPR54R7WWJR4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618698},"content":"Oh, and I’m absolutely sure that my mother’s blanket will one day end up in a museum, hopefully in Galway, where AI will unlock its secrets to throw light over life as it was lived in Galway and in the west of Ireland in the 1950s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PTQIWMW6UNDORJ4AM55YYT6M5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618699},"content":"You scoff again! But you shouldn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LENMUFSYEJG6RE5LWCL4MLNOZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618700},"content":"Who will be here to celebrate that day?","type":"text"},{"_id":"IONCSXAY6VCH3FBGQ43LUAOL2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739446618701},"content":"Perhaps Amélie will.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ERYYGDFJVD7BEIM73FBFMKNDI","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Christopher Burke"}]},"description":{"basic":"She was a very good knitter, and wool was once not only a way to inflict emotional pain on the young of Ireland, but a necessity wrought by the exigencies of the times"},"display_date":"2025-02-17T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"My mother’s blanket has travelled the world with me, along with her thoughts and dreams","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA","auth":{"1":"1fa2122b31ef9ae272af5f50702449fda67dc5a5a9f132d54f397a5996e47703"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5HB2QI4THFAPNPHVHVQE2YEKSA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/17/my-mothers-blanket-has-travelled-the-world-with-me-along-with-her-thoughts-and-dreams/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"6TOQRZPPZFAGPIPKKUB2QUZAV4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":294,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d9b4d85a-f553-4c71-a56c-8a6356033259/versions/1739373082/media/841d31d0d6d5860d8704497fa2373f8a_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RE5Q4R4O25GIXJRLYWDD6TRMIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221829},"content":"From Dún Laoghaire and a former UCD art history student, Michael O’Dwyer found his calling as a jewellery designer when he was selected for Jane Huston’s acclaimed goldsmithing course in Kilkenny, one of only 12 students selected every two years for specialist training.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QFSGM5BGYFBGDFTXDEQ255LW5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221830},"content":"He furthered his career in Antwerp with a master stone setter and, having met and married a Swede, came to Stockholm to live in 2009 “because the social welfare is so good – the best in the world” and found immediate work because of his microscope stone-setting skills, then unique in Sweden.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VYD7Y6UPVZDQ5P44DYLIWOCD6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221831},"content":"He set up his own company specialising in goldsmithing, stone setting and enamel work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TRZAGQTRY5COBPYP7BQ76BOJQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221832},"content":"Five years ago, O’Dwyer had a studio in a leafy part of the city; later he moved to a bigger premises in Stockholm just at the point when the world economy was overheating, Covid hit and the Russians invaded Ukraine. The subsequent effect on him financially forced him to rethink his business model and relocate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2SGZMNICIVAGHGCY3SHHLMUGKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221833},"content":"Today his workshop is housed in an old industrial building in the city which was the original Electrolux factory. He commutes from Sörmland, about an hour’s drive away (“the equivalent of driving from Aughrim to Dublin”), where he lives with his wife and their five children aged between one and 14. There is little traffic and the road network is very good, “and I could also take a train”, so it’s easily accessible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R377W42S3BFZJDAQAEWUVRPDOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221834},"content":"His work can be found in Dublin in Stonechat in the Westbury Mall, where owner Anne Chapman has remained a friend since their student days in Kilkenny.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMUPL6U6FJDXVIWDIR5A6RUB5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221835},"content":"As well as being an established professional goldsmith, O’Dwyer has developed another career writing guidebooks for cyclists and other lovers of the outdoors.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AY5S6XZR2JH3XKX7EQ5K7G5CHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221836},"content":"“When I was young, I did a lot of hiking, rock climbing and cycling in the mountains and when a friend, David Flanagan [a writer and climber who runs Three Rock Books], invited me on a bikepacking trip to Mongolia eight years ago, it took me back in to the outdoors and gravel biking, sea kayaking and paddling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXVKNCBS7JHENIK577D7HBCSKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221837},"content":"“I formed a network of interested friends both Swedish and international. I like to gather people, to collect people. So some know me for my jewellery and others for my guide books, so I am known equally well in two different fields,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QLMJOXHHNBE5DEJGLDUQAFB6ZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221838},"content":"The guides on his site <a href=\"http://www.grvl.se/\" target=\"_self\">grvl.se</a> provide bikepacking routes all over Sweden and beyond, with more than 300 original and curated routes in a global network spanning 50 countries. “I tell Swedes where to go,” says O’Dwyer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NPJ7WS32VCTVMRGRMUDUGRWUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221839},"content":"An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"U3RAX6C76NHHZCDHXCMDK4R7RE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221840},"content":"Given the demands of his highly skilled craft and its precision, it is easy to see how the outdoors provides some escapism and a counterbalance to the intensity of the work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCRKZQHSWBHVRCO2HDA72ABQKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221841},"content":"“I live outside the village in a location known for the most intensive wildlife in Sweden – in fact, I nearly crashed into a deer this morning; I saw about 20 of them. We have wolves coming into the village – they were extinct, but they have walked in from Finland and Russia and we now have one of the highest concentrations of wolves, though you would rarely see them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNUDWA26JFERPGZISA2BDVEHXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221842},"content":"Swedes are conservative without being formal, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZV2SVDFFFHP3L2YPNWGPVSJDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221843},"content":"“The friends they make at preschool tend to remain best friends for the rest of their lives. On the surface, they are very nice and polite and love to speak English, but then it is very difficult to break into that inner circle of friendship. There is a very big gap between the two, but once you are in, that’s it for life and they would do anything for you. Irish people have more fleeting friendships,” he observes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQTI5RJ4CBBYVJDTQG3CPKEH4Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"AZUQ3OV75ZFVBIM65LJBVWRSMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221845},"content":"As for jewellery, “it’s not a big part of their culture – though that is changing – so it can be difficult to persuade them to see the value of expensive high-end jewellery. They will drive a nice car and have a nice house and go on fantastic holidays, but there is an old philosophy called Jante’s Law, unwritten but powerful, that holds that it is rude to show your wealth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLK7Z74QTBF5XPLZN2LMGQR6NU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221846},"content":"“You could be on a train and sitting beside a multimillionaire and you would never know,” he says. Call it Nordic modesty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4ET4O47UVBQ7K5CULRG267DK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221847},"content":"In the countryside, O’Dwyer and his children enjoy outdoor sports – cycling or ice-skating. “All the children are bilingual, though holidays home to Ireland with them are expensive.” His wife, currently on maternity leave, is an education teacher specialising in preschool.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WRFTBUBE55GPFCDFLS3JY5BYSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221848},"content":"“The way people interact here is different to the Irish, where people are more outgoing, so the craic is different, but you get used to the lifestyle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BG4HMBWNUZFXBHJXYER2EL277M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739711221849},"content":"“Ireland will always be home, but it’s like a different band playing your favourite song – you know the words, you know the music and the melody, but it is just different. I am that long gone.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Deirdre McQuillan"}},"name":"Deirdre McQuillan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Michael O'Dwyer, Stockholm"},"display_date":"2025-02-16T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Crafting jewellery in a country where it is considered rude to show your wealth","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU","auth":{"1":"c4ebbd68413e2a20dc8d75ee34b0785a8c407a6078f63fb75b36a236c90afaab"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/V7H5AXPJBFFW5FI4SKTIDNMHIU.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/02/16/crafting-jewellery-in-a-country-where-it-is-considered-rude-to-show-your-wealth/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"5FOEHIHTFNFZ5NAJ2HO5ML72XQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":821,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/f39d1a3c-7d58-4ddd-934c-a607f9bcf770/versions/1738683641/media/28bcede1ff9b05a2948c579f4ccfb9a2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NELE6F2SSRALNPE4I5C2EQPRQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144716},"content":"In the age of algorithms, apps and social media it is ironic to think that the very technology designed to bring us closer can often leave us feeling more disconnected. Today’s dating apps serve up an endless stream of potential matches, yet meaningful connections can feel elusive. And while many of us are willing to divulge our most personal information online, when faced with real-life encounters we can be hesitant, as if the idea of someone approaching us organically has become almost unnatural.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B3TJMIUQFJEKVKS5T4EMEARZJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144717},"content":"It’s a stark contrast to the past, when love and friendship were forged not through screens, but in dance halls throughout <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a> and across the Irish Sea in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\" target=\"_blank\">England</a>. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when showbands ruled the dance floors, a night out at a Ballroom of Romance wasn’t just about the music – though it played a vital role; it was a catalyst for connection, where you might meet a future partner, land a job or forge lifelong friendships. Long before we started taking pictures of our drinks, we were boldly asking strangers if we could buy them one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKHI2SD3I5AU3LSCHF72QZ2LKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144718},"content":"Perhaps that’s why nostalgia-driven Facebook groups such as <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/844859936299428\">Irish in London Past and Present</a>, <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/539919766404866\">Irish Showbands 1950s/60s/70s/80s</a> and Irish Dance Halls in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a> in Years Gone By have become so popular. These groups are hubs for those who mourn the loss of dance halls and want to take the opportunity to recall the golden age of the showband era, when acts including <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dixies\" target=\"_blank\">The Dixies</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/big-tom-sang-with-a-happy-kind-of-sadness-1.3464948\" target=\"_blank\">Big Tom and the Mainliners</a> packed out venues at home and abroad.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PH3LV5ZIVJE6VFB325G23Y55QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144719},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"BOZSYJTHXBHSVKLRLOBHOUBBLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144720},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PGNYRQZMDNC3VEJ6SOD3JWOY2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144721},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"M4J6IYHQZBHP3PEDC6RIMQ6NWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144722},"content":"For the Irish diaspora in London during the 1970s and 1980s the dance halls offered a much-needed connection to home, a chance to meet new people at the end of a long week and the potential thrill of catching someone’s eye. There was the excitement of receiving an invitation to dance, the potential spark of connection and, perhaps, the hope of finding love.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAJQRI6UGRHTTB2GMF7AXE2STU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144723},"content":"While places like The Quex in Kilburn, The Hibernia in Fulham and The Emerald in Hammersmith had their loyal crowds, it was the Galtymore that truly became the stuff of legend. Although it closed its doors for good in the 2000s, its legacy endures through the stories and romances that outlasted its final dance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUQA7UMY4VCRZAA2KHUBVNW3EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144724},"content":"From the archive: End of an era for Irish in London as iconic Galtymore dance hall to close its doors","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"H7TXJ7OYTFF4DFWGTTUKF3TMKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144725},"content":"For Bernie Rodgers, the Galtymore will always hold a special place in her heart. Having grown up in Paddington in London, Rodgers now lives in Stockport, Manchester, and has been happily married for 43 years, with four children. She met her husband John in 1978 at age 18, on a Saturday night out at the Galtymore. “Oh, it was great,” she recalls. “I went out for a dance, and I came home with a boyfriend.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K57B4G2BYZE7RIOG7LN44A5C5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144726},"content":"The daughter of Irish immigrants, who separated when she was a teenager, Rodgers laughs when she remembers how she and her mother used to head to the Galtymore on the weekend. The venue was divided into two sections, the younger crowd venturing to one side, parents to the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKBE4UGOBFHQPIAVMBBFXLNS34","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144727},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XTK6JUS2SJBWJHOSUXJ4ZDS43I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144728},"type":"image"},{"_id":"E3ZVQQQEVRD3LJ5YD74M6RQJD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144729},"content":"“My mum would go to what we would call ‘the old side’ – though, thinking of it now, she must’ve only been about 42.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R55BI7YVOFB2DC2XZUGKWZMWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144730},"content":"The dances were the highlight of the week for Rodgers and her friends. They would eagerly anticipate the weekends, buying new outfits – often rotating them between each other so there was something “new” to wear. In fact, it was Rodgers’s outfit that first caught her future husband’s attention. As he approached, he walked straight into a large circle of her friends to speak to her.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UW4JPYI2VBDFNMYY46XAWCSN5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144731},"content":"“I thought he was very brave,” she laughs, recalling the moment. That bravery would come in handy later on when, in quick succession, he met her mother and extended family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4X5THQLX75E55FOO6EAQC45XYA","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"G7AENVB2ZRHLHMX2FGKVNAWN7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144733},"content":"For Rodgers, the atmosphere of the dance hall was simultaneously innocent and intimate. It was a place where fun flourished but respect was paramount. Bad behaviour was not tolerated – the bouncers made sure of that. Anyone acting inappropriately was quickly shown the door. More often than not, it was those who had over-imbibed, perhaps looking for some courage to fuel their evening, who found themselves escorted out. But for those who played by the rules, a set of six dances – three fast, three slow – was all the time you needed to decide to meet, and potentially match with, a person who could become the love of your life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SDPF52M3QNCYFH2AKDJAD26H2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144734},"type":"image"},{"_id":"6WDBK4ZJ2NFBVHNM3YX6WJXDBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144736},"content":"Pat Greene, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, remembers those dance hall days vividly. A barman at The Crown in Cricklewood and a bouncer at the Galtymore in the 1980s, Greene witnessed hundreds of hopeful singles flooding through the doors every weekend. A natural people-watcher, he would often retreat to the balcony, where he could observe the dance floor below. He’s also a self-declared great dancer, who enjoyed watching those who were skilled on the floor and mentally noting who was up to par. He remembers that many of the men preferred the slow dances – though not for the reasons you might think.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2GSGGS575VDQPGI2P6LUJKBJHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144737},"content":"“It wasn’t just about getting close to a woman,” he explains. “It was because the steps were easier and you could see the lads who weren’t great dancers relax when the steps were simpler. They were less self-conscious.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LC6JUZFIQNBC3B27JSS7OTVQ5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144738},"content":"For Rodgers and her friends, conversations with a new dance partner could range from lighthearted banter to serious fact-finding missions. Finding out about a man’s “seed and breed”, she says, was fair game, but so too were practicalities – like whether he owned a car. A “yes” would prompt a subtle thumbs-up to the girls at the bar, a silent signal that a lift home had been secured, freeing up their bus fare for another round of drinks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43736DJWDFDPZBYHLAAJO65SMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144739},"type":"image"},{"_id":"OIRZLBQIWBFLRETFA6WNNH4RCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144740},"content":"She fondly remembers the night her husband approached her. A Donegal native, off the boat only a matter of weeks, he made a beeline for Rodgers and complimented the rose on her dress – a simple remark that opened the door to a drink, a dance and, by the end of the night, a drive home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJPOM2DTZ5HF5NXWDQOJTCDMBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144741},"content":"“He even came in for tea and to meet my mum,” she says. “Our second date? Another dance, but this time he met all my aunts and uncles – my cousins too. That was just the done thing – and he didn’t run a mile, so I knew he was a keeper.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7OGZ7OGWJBRNPYSV3XWAY6N3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144742},"content":"Their courtship, like so many others, played out to the rhythm of the dance hall. Living on opposite sides of London meant meticulous planning. Every Tuesday night they’d walk to the phone booths at the end of their respective roads, timing their calls down to the minute. Miss it, and that was that – no texts, no second chances, just a long wait until Saturday, where an explanation would be expected, if they showed up at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QXM2Y2V5F5E2JHMD3TKGPRVGOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144743},"content":"Between scheduled calls, meeting cousins and courting under the watchful eyes of parents (often in full view on the dance floor), there was little room for ambiguity. If you liked someone, you made it known. Any hesitation, and by the following week you might be watching them waltz into the arms of someone else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RJUVDXLF6FB3LCV3HBUYJU5JNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144744},"content":"Relationships back then were built on shared moments, anticipation and the quiet hope that the next dance might lead to something extraordinary. These dance halls weren’t just places to move to the music; they were the heart of courtship, community and young love.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5W5EYJDJ2BEKDOK4LBJTNXDO74","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144745},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CRI6K2CBL5ACXADXUF32VCRULU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144746},"content":"Bernard Conlon, from Dublin, remembers them as vital social hubs for his generation, and he laments that young people today don’t have the same opportunities to meet face-to-face.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DSG3RJ6IQRGALD34QKGPTS7C7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144747},"content":"With a chuckle, he recalls his own time spent in a showband in the 1960s. Many a Friday morning, he and a group of pals would load up their van, travel the country, and play to packed venues over the weekend – feeling every bit the rock’n’roll stars. Closer to home, he timed his visits to cousins in Sligo to coincide with the marquee weekends – legendary dance nights held in large tents that popped up in rural parishes throughout spring, summer and autumn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E3RZ6SDH6FAJBA2JN5YBIYSEBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144748},"content":"This was the showband circuit in full swing, with home-grown acts filling the dance floors with energy and giving young people a rare and electrifying escape. In the country towns, where the clergy’s influence still loomed large, these weekends were a much needed release.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ELVWID4WCZGYTOSVQU537FVZYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144749},"content":"Making The Ballroom of Romance in Co Mayo: ‘Even passing it today, I still think I can hear the music in it’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T6CQSKJJRNDNZJJ6VHCZTMORHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144750},"content":"It was at a Garda dance on Dublin’s South Circular Road in 1968 that Conlon first spotted the tall, beautiful woman who would go on to become his wife. He asked her to dance and a small misunderstanding on the dance floor turned into an inside joke that lasted throughout their 50-year marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2I657Z6QGBEYNAZKUGLOJ7ZRO4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"YFIAZJYEZFF4BFKYMZARNIJMAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144752},"content":"“She asked me if I could drive,” he chuckles, “and I sheepishly admitted I only had my provisional licence.” A confused look and a few clarifications later revealed she’d actually asked if he could jive. And as it turned out, he could. “I wasn’t the greatest dancer,” he says, “but when we danced together, it was like we were cut from the same cloth – like it was meant to be.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJ24IX5O3NENFDHZDF4EN3STH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144753},"content":"Three weeks – and many jives – later, he proposed. They married in 1970, building a life filled with love, laughter and music until Anne passed away four years ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7TW6FZDM4NEW7I37XAJYVHSJKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144754},"content":"Conlon looks back now with nostalgia at the way things used to be for young couples dating. The simplicity of the era meant that couples might meet on a Saturday night, share a dance and make plans to see each other again. Months or even mere weeks later, they might be engaged.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RQLVEJ4W3ZFKPFVOBEFF32ZKC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144755},"content":"These were different times, Rodgers agrees. “There wasn’t the endless second-guessing we see today,” she says. “You got to know someone quickly, often in the space of a few dances.” There weren’t infinite options at your fingertips, there were no notifications pulling your attention in different directions – it was all about just about the person in front of you, with both of you giving it the chance to see where it might lead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5HUUIH3ZBDINGZ32QHOR3WGEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144756},"content":"Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing. To fall in love during a dance, you first had to actually ask someone to dance – and for some people, that was a step too far. Pat Greene remembers many men who were simply too shy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHMZYIDUCJHGRMOMBJ4VX6D6QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144757},"content":"“I’d be talking to auld lads at the bar and even 50, 60 years later they were still in love with a girl they never had the courage to ask out. They’d come into the dance halls for a bit of company – they’d be on their own, but they weren’t alone in there, if you get me. And sure, the drink became their companion too, I suppose.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UJ3JOMLERFBGVG3WCMRYMDOWBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144758},"content":"Perhaps this is where modern technology has its merits. For those who once lacked the courage to strike up a conversation, apps can provide a safe starting point. But over-reliance on them risks stripping away the serendipity that makes romance special. Today, we have infinite choices, yet connection feels more elusive. Back then, you didn’t need hundreds of matches – you just needed one good dance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYV7Y6WAF5ANJBNYDB3K65YFUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144759},"content":"And sometimes you have to trust your instincts. Rodgers recalls how John told her he loved her after just a few weeks of courting. Young and fond of him but overwhelmed, she let him leave her house that evening without making plans for their next call. As the minutes ticked by, a gnawing feeling grew – had she just let him slip away? With no phones and no easy way to contact him, the odds of seeing him again felt slim. Worse still, would he avoid the Galtymore altogether after being rebuffed?","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEVEUQC3RNEEHIFZPLMMFUM2EU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144760},"content":"As fate would have it, Rodgers’s aunt’s boyfriend was home that evening, car keys in hand. Acting on impulse, she begged him to drive her to the nearest Tube station, hoping to catch John before he disappeared into the London night. Luck was on her side – she found him. Breathless, she apologised and asked if he’d be at the Galtymore that weekend. “You’ll have to wait and see,” he replied as the train doors slid shut behind him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ITKUFY4P5EHDOG2FPF6JJTIX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144761},"content":"Saturday arrived, and Rodgers turned up at the Galtymore, feeling nervous and hopeful in equal measure. And there he was. From that moment on, they were inseparable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CK4S7JQECRAURCFTFULH46TC6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144762},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"XGUUM47D2BCNVC7APSHF7AD4JU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144763},"content":"Forty-three years later, it’s clear she still feels the same way about her husband. “He has been the best father and the best husband I could have ever wished for,” she says. In the absence of dance halls, her daughter now goes to Irish bars in Manchester, hoping to meet someone like her dad. Rodgers isn’t convinced – or maybe she is just a bit biased. “I don’t know if she will – I don’t know if they make men like him any more,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UTCVHT5LPZEMJIOUHF7HPJAE2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739521144764},"content":"On a weekend when many couples are celebrating Valentine’s by going for a dinner or a night out, Rodgers’s experience serves as a reminder of the importance of taking a chance. How we pursue romance may have changed but the search for love remains the same. And while the dance floors may be gone, a relationship can still begin with a bold approach and the courage to ask, “Can I buy you a drink?”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Niamh Linehan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Before dating apps, in Ireland and for the Irish diaspora in Britain, many’s the courtship that played out to the rhythm of a dance hall"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ballrooms of romance: ‘I wasn’t the greatest dancer but when we danced together it was like it was meant to be’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM","auth":{"1":"62963b72ba99fc3e3201868236b8834e05119976a51cdb9969576ac3068bdb22"},"focal_point":{"x":449,"y":258},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7HMYA2SNLGABXOBTJLZJ5JOWEM.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"People"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/people/2025/02/15/ballrooms-of-romance-i-wasnt-the-greatest-dancer-but-when-we-danced-together-it-was-like-it-was-meant-to-be/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style/people","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"People"}}}},{"_id":"ZGLSL65EBBD7ZIFSBJE6AN44G4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":427,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/79d6dfab-ef66-4986-9124-408d6aa81c18/versions/1738764673/media/4e96d49a4d62dc77dfeda26f7a2aa6d8_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QAXMZMQ3GNDBJAPGLVYPZTIEUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643792},"content":"“Now”. Such a small phrase and yet so expansive. Though it has many uses and contexts, I associate it most with the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_self\">Irish mammy</a>. Spoken aloud as she collects herself at the close of one task before beginning to consider the next.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RHRNGD7MRCJPHOCZZLU4PL6FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643793},"content":"Uttered on a long exhalation countless times in a day filled with such tasks. Or to mark her satisfaction as she knocks something off her to-do list.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUJBNMASI5GU3JWMFN6P2A5C6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643794},"content":"I would often hear my mother mutter “now” to herself as she put something she’d baked on the table. A way of verbally icing her achievement. Once, as she stood in the kitchen quietly examining a chocolate cake she’d made (my mother was famous for her chocolate cake), not realising I was standing behind her, she followed the “now” with an “I’m s**t hot”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3HBQSTB35FGBHN7K2X7DXFJPZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643795},"content":"My prim, always correct mother rendered a softly spoken egotist by an excellent cake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWPR5GBOPFDDHK2CYOBUWSVNOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643796},"content":"“Now” can be presented as a sort of offering when sharing a piece of shocking but thrilling news. Your neighbour has been arrested, for example. The one who always wears shorts (even in February) so that just looking at him makes your legs start to ache. Apparently, there was a cannabis farm in a secret bunker under his house. Gardaí raided the place while you were on a weekend in Kilkee. Sure no wonder about the shorts – the house must have been sweltering with the grow lamps. Everyone discusses this dramatic news at luxuriant length. Several neighbours along the road express the obligatory, “I knew there was something off about that lad all along”, completing the ritual of collectively processing bad and exciting news, and then there is a lull. A pause.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BPEHWV2D5EUTBUQ7EAUMAFTAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643797},"content":"The person who originally offered the information looks meaningfully at everyone. “Now”, they say. “Now for you.” Everyone nods sagely.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXROITHIPNCTHH5PI5AIIICEAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643798},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T54IRGOK2ZGI7LY56XO2542KNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643799},"content":"Or it’s a chastisement. Irish people don’t lean into a “now now!” when castigating a sandwich-stealing dog or attempting to upbraid a churlish adolescent quietly seething at how pointless and stupid everyone else in the family is over dinner. The double utterance feels a bit camp, a bit affected, and consequently insufficiently excoriating. Just the one will usually do it. The eyes glint over with incredulity. The chin retracts into the neck like a tortoise going home to himself. The head tilts. The “now!” which results from this rearrangement of one’s head is an expression of weary distaste directed at someone who is presumed to know better. Get in line. Pipe down. Cop on for yourself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"742ZZTYXP5D5JDH4IG2YWZM2UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643800},"content":"Someone, canine, human or otherwise, is pushing their luck. If the situation is dire, and a whole wedding cake rather than a sandwich has been pilfered, or the adolescent has shifted from looking contemptuous to audibly scoffing at the Christmas table as auntie Bridie shares her tragic life story, an “Ah now!” may ensue. Here is the thinnest of ice. Both an expostulation and a warning. It says, “you fool” and “you chancer” and “were you dragged up?”. It says, “stop making a show of yourself and, consequently, the rest of us” as you prize a delicate white triangle of egg mayonnaise from the jaws of a goofy looking doodle with colon problems by the name of Christopher. “Ah now. Christopher you can’t keep pulling this sort of gobshitery. €400 at the vet last time. Would you just accept that dairy is your Jaysus kryptonite? You’ll be down for the day… now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7J6ZY3BHREZJCYTNZZPSD7RHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643801},"content":"Or my favourite now is the now that means decidedly not precisely now. The one that bends time to its own grammatical will, and understandably baffles anyone who, coming in from outside the Irish colloquial lexicon, has the sense to try and take you literally. “I’ll do that now in a minute.” “Where was that beach we went to now last summer? The one in Kerry.” “Why would you be going on a second date with that eejit now and he sending DMs to half your Pilates class in September?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7IYBCFUTOVCGRBQOILQZGWXQZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643802},"content":"“Now” is a sentence. A statement. A cryptic verse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BWH655DMRNBHHED352L6447P6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643803},"content":"It is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. Like most Irish people, I keep this weapon holstered most of the time. I use it when deadly force is needed, or when I’ve just finished folding all my towels and am getting ready to send a few emails. Or when, for example, I’m writing this very column but decide (approximately here) to stop and make a nice cup of tea. Now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"46XRJLX42VEIRJE6HSSP5YB7EI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643804},"content":"“Now” does not wield the same sacred power in Australia. I use it with my English husband, who lived in Ireland long enough to absorb its value. Though he uses the very British “right!” on finishing a task and before beginning another, which reminds me that while we may love one another, we are ancient enemies really. In Australia, “now” is the time that is the present time. It’s not a threat or a sense of internal satisfaction or verbal evidence of transitioning between the last task and the next. As far as I can tell a year-plus into Australian life, now is just “now” here, though there are plenty of rich local uses of language that we don’t share at home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHQK3P5ZG5BNNODFQD2JRLFBCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643805},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australians respond differently to nature compared to Irish people","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QT7K7GPJGJDBPFFBXEO5XRMZSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643806},"content":"For a short while, I was baffled by “too easy”, which I’ve learned is the Australian equivalent of our “no bother” or “grand”. I’d ask the guy behind the pharmacy counter for some eye drops and he’d hand them to me, merrily saying “too easy!” and I’d think “what a strange thing to be so arrogant about”. But really, Australians are quite like us in this way. When they say something that means, “I didn’t inconvenience myself to help you”, they really mean “you did not inconvenience me. I am happy to help you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7IGMOE6RVDJ5OSXPVT4CR53GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739268643807},"content":"Like us, sometimes they talk in a way that is a few feet to the left or right of what they are literally saying. It’s not quite “now”, but I’ll tell you this much – it can be a comfort now when you’re far from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Like us, Australians sometimes talk in a way that is a few feet to the left or right of what they are literally saying"},"display_date":"2025-02-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74","auth":{"1":"3290cef646d36215a9aece6fdc85a0508dfefbaa9ebe98b15428b86ab58d7d0f"},"focal_point":{"x":1211,"y":1976},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/USZQESGTTRGTVEGSOAHPIGDI74.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/13/the-word-now-is-a-weapon-that-irish-people-wield-as-needed-but-australians-use-it-differently/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"R2TBSPVUW5GX7FFYK4PNQ7B5AQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":496,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6a4b9e32-460e-4bee-a1c9-ad671ce1b182/versions/1738928081/media/0d7bbb6fbc74693af1105c4543d65e1d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/","content_elements":[{"_id":"XZFQXV26CNANHFD6DHHOXXQPD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107056},"content":"Having had a standard <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christian-brothers/\" target=\"_blank\">Christian Brothers’</a> school <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/\" target=\"_blank\">education</a>, I was brought up to believe that the British Empire was the embodiment of all evil. That changed somewhat when I proceeded to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/trinity-college-dublin-tcd/\" target=\"_blank\">Trinity College</a>, but particularly when I read <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2022/10/08/jan-morris-a-life-of-great-escapes/#:~:text=Born%20in%20Clevedon%20on%20the,the%20Booker%20Prize%20in%201985.\" target=\"_blank\">Jan Morris’</a>s Pax Britannica trilogy, at the age of 19. Morris wrote an affectionate portrait of empire. It was uneven, but nevertheless a very good read. It opened my eyes to the variegated nature of the imperial era.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7B56PUTSRJG5FH3HU7YRZORNMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107057},"content":"When I travelled in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/africa/\" target=\"_blank\">Africa</a> I was much taken aback to discover that British rule was viewed by many through a lens of nostalgia – selective, no doubt, but emphasising stability and the rule of law.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBLSSJT2UJFHFHWAU2UOYGEZJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107058},"content":"I was equally surprised that Ireland had little or no profile as the intrepid small nation that led the way in imperial disintegration. Conversely, notably in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kenya/\" target=\"_blank\">Kenya</a>, it was well known that the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/south-africa/\" target=\"_blank\">South African</a> Boers, at the zenith of empire, fought imperial forces to a standstill. The salient point was that imperial might was not unassailable. Kenyan accession to independence, unusually in British Africa, was violent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LSRPQPQANENRL7VVQXGRZXJSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107059},"content":"Ignorance of Ireland was not universal. I was surprised when an <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/algeria/\" target=\"_blank\">Algerian</a> colleague described the tactics of the Algerian armed independence movement, the FLN: “But you will, of course, be familiar with how we hit at French administration. We studied your <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/michael-collins/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Collins</a> closely.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGGY7SNVBVEDLHI4WWKEBRXYL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107060},"content":"Less surprising was discovering that Yitzhak Shamir, when leader of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – the Stern Gang in imperial parlance – adopted “Michael”, again following Collins, as his nom-de-guerre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWH6ZB2D7VD6TOYEN2YLLBK36A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107061},"content":"This view on Irish relationships with imperialism, however, cut both ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EK6QL4CV5VCKBLF3J7RTZ4656Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107062},"content":"I once mentioned the “British Raj” to a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/pakistan/\" target=\"_blank\">Pakistani</a> colleague. His family had left <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/india/\" target=\"_blank\">India</a> following the independence and partition of the country. He hauled me up in rather sharp manner<i>. </i>“You are referring to the Irish Raj, I take it? Do you know how many Irish there were in the Indian civil service?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EV6ZY7MHKFBAVDRBVQHSKNNRZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107063},"content":"I was relieved that he made no reference to the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. Brigadier Dyer, who gave the order to fire, was educated at Midleton College in Cork. Michael O’Dwyer, lieutenant governor of the Punjab, who supported Dyer, hailed from Co Tipperary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OI74I43DTFD3ZNDAFLSMW5ZQVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107064},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"KBGNV5VYXZHBZLOFF36YIP6K4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107065},"content":"Erstwhile British possessions seem to be rather relaxed about street and other location naming. The main drag in Delhi is still Connaught Circus. There is an area of Singapore called Killiney. I am not sure, however, that overt association is made with Ireland. Other echoes are extant. The main drag in Kowloon, Hong Kong, is Nathan Road, after Matthew Nathan, under-secretary for Ireland in 1916.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKRRR7WIAZC2ZJCAUYFRS53O6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107066},"content":"Irish profile elsewhere in Asia is low. I gave up, rather early on, correcting confusion with Scotland. I have also had innumerable interactions with taxi drivers along the following lines:","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6XE7PLNIVBLJNCMQSSDZRVGQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107067},"content":"Where are you from?","type":"text"},{"_id":"65F5TTQCVFAX3OWOJDUC64YS5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107068},"content":"Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSFTAQH2OVDS5G34MM4RVUI7PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107069},"content":"Ah, lovely tulips.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AWZM56HSMNE3VN7LJ6SEVV4IL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107070},"content":"No, Ireland, not the Netherlands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NU2CWHBFUZE27DUIYW7PRXE7SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107071},"content":"Ah, <i>very</i> cold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZYWKCCOJVFYJMT3A3PXOHT52A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107072},"content":"The profile of Iceland, I deduced, was greater than that of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYGJIRYYYJH6LMYZWXN5ZKJVWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107073},"content":"For a brief period, I was surprised at the number of market traders who claimed relatives in Ireland. Then I started answering the question of my provenance with “Ruritani”<i> </i>(the fictional country in central Europe used as a setting for novels by Anthony Hope). An equal, if not a greater number, had relatives there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2UKDGJGWNHNJESA6PXXG7XTI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107074},"content":"European perceptions are another matter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKSB2UTSRBBPHN6TLCWIIOLFVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107075},"content":"When I worked in Belgium, colleagues seemed to think of me as a child of nature from a primitive windswept rock out in the Atlantic somewhere. They kindly explained the basics of how modern societies work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UR33BSA6YJB6XBAGKKPEDKM6VA","additional_properties":{"_id":"3E34ELSMJJE7HCKEEM72UC4DRA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"R7G55IJ5CBACXJJND4NJLK7RBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107077},"content":"Ireland’s EU membership notwithstanding, few had any awareness of the Republic as an independent state. Rather, they had a vague idea that the relationship with Britain was similar to that of Flanders or Wallonia with the Belgian state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWQ23TYJFNF4JDXBPNHIROTVJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107078},"content":"French radicals, veterans of the French student protests of 1968, solemnly assured me of solidarity in the anti-imperialist struggle. Britain, no doubt coloured by Gallic disdain for les Anglo-Saxons and by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/margaret-thatcher/\" target=\"_blank\">Margaret Thatcher</a>’s bellicose comportment on matters European,<i> </i>was the devil incarnate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YFFY632YTVEHFNQJKI4UK66PEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107079},"content":"Algeria and Vietnam went unmentioned, as did extant realities of l’Afrique francophone. Abstractions of Ireland were odd. Some were aware of the prevailing Catholic ethos of the country at the time, and assumed that the mores and ethos of the anti-Semitic, clerical French Third Republic applied undiluted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3PXJCVOQJGIRBSWC5HZCHFGME","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107080},"content":"Germans, while again being very hazy about constitutional status – Bavaria’s relationship with the Bundesrepublik figured – often had very clear ideas of Ireland and the Irish. In contrast to themselves, we break rules (delighted horror) and sing until dawn in pubs, in the manner of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-dubliners/\" target=\"_blank\">The Dubliners</a>. Perhaps we could read, and perhaps not. Strange and inexplicable behaviour was to be expected, especially with drink.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIEULSJT5NDDNOVE4SS4NOENV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107081},"content":"When Queen Elizabeth died in 2022, I received many condolence messages. One stands out. It was from a French Canadian whom I knew to be a cultural, if not political nationalist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G36MEYYFVZDODGMMKFORMYUXQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107082},"content":"I responded in French. I thanked him for his message, noting that I had passed it on to my British colleagues. With tongue firmly in cheek, I then extended my own condolences to him, since Canada was a dominion of Britain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VROJHVXAIRBQTIQQYXUZZSP6PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107083},"content":"I spent one <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/st-patrick/\" target=\"_blank\">St Patrick’s Day</a> in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/new-york-city/\" target=\"_blank\">New York</a>, and one in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/los-angeles/\" target=\"_blank\">Los Angeles</a>. As the real thing – a real live Irishman – I was feted, which on one level was gratifying. However, in LA I got so fed up with the incessant yells of “Ah, St Patty’s Day” that I went back to my hotel at lunchtime and changed my green tie.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BURLZAGASNBFRBHCHN6R756J5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107084},"content":"I learned to keep my mouth shut when it was assumed that I would hold socially and religiously conservative views. Equally, I adhered to a rule of never engaging Americans on Irish politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNZN6ALHG5FLJJKA2K57JNT6MA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739189107085},"content":"Perceptions were copper-fastened, especially among Irish Americans who had never been to Ireland. Political views seemed mired in 1919. Economic views seemed mired in 1860. They were unbudgeable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Enda Hardiman"}]},"description":{"basic":"Belgian colleagues kindly explained the basics of how modern societies work; I adhered to a rule of never engaging Americans on Irish politics"},"display_date":"2025-02-10T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"I’ve worked in 60 countries – here is what people have said to me about Ireland","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA","auth":{"1":"53e29d8e0a97d3ae26d6891bcac1128d79d9c80b90a84538872338e4436ac363"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/JAOIGZVJJBGRZGL3VVHFQVMTPA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/04/after-working-in-60-countries-here-is-what-people-have-said-to-me-about-ireland/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"NDTI6GOZRZDU3PCHH3FC7YQLAU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":326,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/4bba41c5-986b-48ab-a8d0-17e683270f8e/versions/1738750387/media/f204d34a8d865e915c49ab0622f364ec_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZM6NCTNEEZGVPMQZ33PVNAKULI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2021, Cork-born Australian-based jockey Johnny Allen recorded the biggest victory of his career when he won the Cox Plate in Melbourne. It is a prestigious race for thoroughbreds that attracts a world-class field. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3Y3E23JYVAPXJ7PJETK4L5FJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"What made the victory all the sweeter was that Allen triumphed on the Irish-bred, Irish-trained horse State of Rest from the Joseph O’Brien stable. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OFBCPXADLJG6HNC6IGSCVSJ2A4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For Allen, who had moved to Australia in 2012 when he felt his career at home was stalling, the win was pivotal, and he has had no shortage of rides since. He now lives in Miners Rest in Ballarat in the state of Victoria and races between three and six days a week on the flat having started his career as a jump jockey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XM7WIDP2PNDVZK2GRJMTC4HOVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen hails from the north Cork village of Araglin, about half way between Fermoy and Mitchelstown. He could ride almost as soon as he could walk (his mother taught riding locally), and although his family had no direct involvement in racing, they always kept horses and ponies. In his early teens, Allen began working summers and weekends in a local stud. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WS6ROSLSFFGOFLW3PJSBMTII4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There’s a photo of me with a black eye – not that I remember it – after a fall off a pony aged two or three,” says Allen. “I did a bit of pony racing, hunting and point to point as a boy, but our ponies weren’t the sort of expensive animals you’d see in pony clubs. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"TUXQSRSV25CN7BXQN3O473YD4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I had some success with the pony racing and, when I finished the Leaving Cert, I decided to turn my attention towards building a career as a professional jockey. I hadn’t enjoyed school much and wasn’t interested in continuing in education.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOUP7WBLCBAFBPMX4AFKWJ5OUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F4K27MKWGRA6TLW7BPFV7DSHFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen got his first ride with Joe Crowley (trainer Aidan O’Brien’s father-in-law) and rode his first winner for Crowley’s daughter, Frances, who was the first woman to saddle an Irish Classic winner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XAEK3PBZBVBIRK6D6ZRTH4AHZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I had my first taste of Australia at the age of 18 when I was part of a group of jump jockeys sent out to represent Ireland on a sponsored tour,” says Allen who has amassed more than 1,000 victories during his career, including 19 group one winners. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"T5F6THWXFRHPBBXT6LWFTQYJPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2011 he spent six enjoyable months in Australia, and this experience along with a combination of itchy feet and the prospect of more work made him decide to relocate there full time a year later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH3264J2EJC6VIPAMIWERWB444","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I subsequently transferred to flat racing to get more opportunities, as jump racing is quite small here,” says Allen, who has competed in several marathons and an Ironman challenge to keep himself in good shape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HV4Y4FDLKZHNPL7ZXP42IDF4OY","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"5A3G3T3NCZA2NNFLRMIT4VTVCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"At 5ft 8in (173cm), Allen is quite tall for a flat jockey, so he has to be constantly vigilant about his weight. He typically competes at about nine stones (or less) which rules out overdoing the treats, he says. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IWXZGTLY6ZESFG2ZYWCKZMI2ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The racing industry is big in Ireland relative to the size of the country but it’s extremely competitive in terms of trainers, horses and jockeys and there’s room for maybe 10-20 at the top level. There are no gaps you can jump into and become successful quickly. By coming here, I have been able compete in some of the biggest races in the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCPYEICFUJH45A4RR66PSTFHGE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“In Australia, there is racing every day apart from Christmas Day, so the industry here is much, much bigger,” he adds. “Nevertheless you don’t become successful overnight. It takes time to build up a reputation and to hook up with successful trainers. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YUCCASB74ZALHJKLRSWQ2GTL3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Now I predominantly ride for Ciaron Maher Racing, one of the biggest stables in Australia, and mainly compete interstate, which cuts down on the travel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DKZFDWV6EJGNJKWNSCTSJ253CY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’ve been lucky that my injuries have been mainly fractures and dislocations and not anything more serious. As long as you don’t sustain a bad injury and you stay healthy, you can sustain your career into your 50s,” says Allen, who has recently turned 40.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7QIJUVKBZAHJI7LSS4EGOCHKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“After that, there’s not necessarily a clear window as to where you go next, although I’d have some interest in maybe going down the training route. But, no more than being a jockey, it’s a tough, tough game. To be honest I haven’t put much thought into it yet. It’s still a bridge to be crossed.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WIFK4I5QENG3VNBNSM5MOARORU","additional_properties":{},"content":"‘Copenhagen is like Disneyland compared to Munich: moving here immediately resonated with me’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3TUSPMFGBRHS7FU4A2DJDQKNZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Allen got married in 2023 and recently became a first-time dad. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W7TFLCQ4ANAWFLEUF46L2PXGO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Australia has a lot going for it as a place to live and this includes the climate and a good quality of life,” he says. “Of course I miss my family and friends, and I suppose when I came out here first, I assumed I’d go home at some point. However, the longer you stay, the harder it becomes. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M3UKSDYKPZCAZDAVNRKD6M5W7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The ideal would be to spend a few months a year in Ireland and the rest of the time here. I’ve lived in a country area since moving to Australia, and the people are friendly and relaxed and more laid back than in the big cities.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LD27RXER2RB7VOPB2HRKOKJS3M","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is a big Irish community involved in racing in Australia so Allen is not short of Irish friends to socialise with and he has a brother in Perth and a sister in Melbourne. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NCN7AZ6R6JA3DJT35V73QDB5EA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“My Mum is also a regular visitor as she loves it out here. We got my Dad over for our wedding last year, which was great. It was his first time on a plane in 40 years.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q25RYLDS3FDK3LJO357Y6ZYY7A","additional_properties":{},"content":" ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Johnny Allen, Australia"},"display_date":"2025-02-09T10:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ","auth":{"1":"72d6d861968433618f1d79f6e8bac5a265206242f0b9727a13246d0b61f1bb59"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/JPVGAVU4NFE2BNULDQUSHQDSAQ.png"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2025/02/09/an-irish-jockey-in-australia-the-longer-you-stay-the-harder-it-becomes-to-go-home/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"K4TQMPFRBFDRXL3WNKBSUHGIPQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":300,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b0cfc33a-f64e-416d-9a58-9c229ee16c1c/versions/1738858417/media/1e931fa4d2adb4732b4d8b7fd1c3e5ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UTYSELKQEBDC5LSVM345EVDQRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855194},"content":"My Dad was 18 when he tried to join the Royal Air Force. He’d wanted to fly planes since he was a little boy. Going to England and signing up to the RAF seemed to be the most straightforward way to do that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W7HD74MMZAFHHAOET4XSTAMBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855195},"content":"He took a ferry to Wales, jumped on a train to London and revelled in the debauchery of 1970s Soho. Home had been that relentlessly flat, green strip of soil called the Curragh.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IZDJWAMDCNDWDMIQXXV6DM3CJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855196},"content":"Bathed in the lurid glow of strip bars and porno kiosks, it must have felt like another planet. He’d swapped Dominican friars gripping rosary beads for pimps with golden crosses nestled in greasy chest hair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLJ2JRARG5CZHGC6ED3S4YUMIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855197},"content":"The RAF didn’t want him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TKXGS5PVI5FI5EVZZ2TTEUPFOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855198},"content":"They told him to try again once he had finished his legal studies at UCD. He was disappointed, but decided to have another go once he got his degree.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3NMFGKJ3FCANEFNOKZXCR6XAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855199},"content":"Then Bloody Sunday happened.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X4XKQQ62DJEMLL6YMNDBABGQKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855200},"content":"Rather than daydreaming about darting through the sky in an Electric Lightning, my old man was in the crowd cheering <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/the-day-of-rage-after-bloody-sunday-that-saw-the-british-embassy-burn-down-1.4791709\" target=\"_self\">when the British</a> embassy burned in Dublin. The Anglo-Irish relationship hadn’t just soured – it turned rancid. Serving the crown suddenly was suddenly out of the question.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GBJGOR5WL5D3DPJCHW4XGXIJDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855201},"content":"He never went back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVVGK5KQYZGRRFQYFYACKH6DO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855202},"content":"Contrary to the stereotype, the Irish attitude towards Britain isn’t one of static resentment. It hardens and softens again over time according to the developments of the day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NH5R3PMVBJDGDKUCKAH2ZJ5CXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855203},"content":"I moved to London shortly after the Brexit referendum. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/boris-johnson/\" target=\"_self\">Boris Johnson</a> and his clown-car of hardliners were in the ascendancy. Their contempt for the Irish peace process was galling. Relations never reached the lows of the Troubles, but it was an uncomfortable reminder of how little some English people think of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHRRQTE6AFB3PGSRB2QFNZEJAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855204},"content":"The notion of the treacherous, slovenly Paddy has been around for almost a thousand years. It was first codified in 1185 when Gerald of Wales wrote Topographia Hibernica, describing us as “dedicated to leisure and laziness ... a truly barbarous people”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A77BRFWJGVH2NPNQIGG7BSLEMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855205},"content":"The framing of the Irish as a morally inferior ethnic group allowed the British to rationalise the atrocities that followed. They used Ireland to experiment with colonisation for the first time, a process of trial and error that they would eventually perfect in Africa and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YWCD225QEVHDVIBHUD3LYQH3CQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855206},"content":"Today, most people I meet here have a positive disposition towards us. Though some old habits die hard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BW2IHKU5E5FALCLNYSZNKGN3KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855207},"content":"The <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/12/10/daily-mail-vs-kneecap-belfast-rap-trios-anti-british-film-has-the-newspaper-up-in-arms-again/\">Daily Mail’s coverage</a> of<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kneecap/\" target=\"_self\"> Kneecap</a>’s win at the British Independent Film Awards was another reminder of the UK’s discomfort with uppity colonials. If an Irish artist living in the UK makes any critique of the establishment that governs them, they can be easily and thoughtlessly dismissed as “anti-Brits”. The singularity of their cultural identity is not embraced, but they are not considered “properly” British either. The black sheep of the empire, the same but different, mad cousins living on a rock in the Atlantic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIOG7D7K5BA27LYR7UFRJYP7PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855208},"content":"Most ordinary people in the UK have no strong feelings on Ireland or its place in the world. They think of it as the land of black beer and singsong accents, if they think about us at all. The complexities of our shared history is poorly understood. They look at British colonisation the way they look at their parents' sex life – they know it happened, but they’d prefer not to know the details.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXMJGN635BB3FNUWEE24FLYGKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855209},"content":"There is an alternative reality, perhaps, where events played out differently. One where Dad flew planes at the pleasure of her majesty, one where Irish people feel less protective of our national heritage. But here in the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJQQCXP7VJDY5EZ77EDCJHYCDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855210},"content":"Here it feels lighter and more fragile, like it might slip away from me if I loosen my grip. Rather than soften my accent or the Hiberno-English peculiarities of my speech, I lean into them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVNLP5P6SRDZDFD5Y533X2ZTOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855211},"content":"“What’s the story? Any craic?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLX6NPKUL5EGHDAE3RYEGMAWVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855212},"content":"I am not British, I am Irish, now tell me a story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LXH7TPWC4JBKPD2ZQYFDVZ77T4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855213},"content":"The confused look I get is vaguely satisfying.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LREVOW5CZEXVJSO3DZZIK4EVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739194855214},"content":"A tiny mutiny has taken place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZVZ72KUNBGE5ESNR6V7646EXE","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Peter Flanagan"}]},"description":{"basic":"In the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise"},"display_date":"2025-02-07T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ","auth":{"1":"5af1b53ff253cdad600b5b032d983583207bde458d48d165be0e2c9bd7bbf4de"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EAPCRMCEJRGVHF277AY6CD6PPQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/02/07/a-kildare-man-in-london-the-british-view-colonisation-the-way-they-look-at-their-parents-sex-life-they-know-it-happened-but-prefer-not-to-know-details/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"TT4UPRHO6NEXFDKUGMKFBYJSJY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TKRFXPSXTJEIFBGPETAM7IBCMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the most-read abroad stories of the month came from Hugo Harvey. He writes about how studying English literature at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/university-of-oxford/\" rel=\"\">University of Oxford</a> as an Irish undergraduate was <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/\">an education in being an outsider</a>. “I felt alienated from the very start.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTBLBAZAGRE7PMOKWPHLBV42QE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He writes that on his second evening, the college organised a formal dinner for undergraduates to meet the tutors. “Many of my peers were from British private schools, so were already comfortable in this world. One of them even corrected my American professor’s table manners, scoffing at her for not using her cutlery in the right order.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWTPINZEBZGDLA22UV4IU5AW4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the 40th anniversary year of Live Aid, New York-based Bray man Mark O’Toole explains what motivated him to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/\">do the Great Ethiopian Run</a>. “The real purpose of my trip lay in witnessing Goal’s fieldwork first hand. As Bono once said, nothing prepares you for the ‘car park of humanity’. The stark reality of refugees and displaced families, forced from their homes by conflict, famine or other crises, was overwhelming.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OOVX3GUJJZHCROZB2AFRS35O5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Richard Hennessy <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/23/experience-and-the-wisdom-that-comes-with-it-are-highly-valued-in-asian-culture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/23/experience-and-the-wisdom-that-comes-with-it-are-highly-valued-in-asian-culture/\">moved to Singapore in his 50s</a> with his partner in 2018 and found that his experience and the soft skills we learn in Ireland were valued there. “Singapore’s low income tax was a revelation. When I received my first tax bill, I contacted the inland revenue authority, worried they had made a mistake and I would end up owing thousands in back tax. But there was no mistake.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOJX2UJSMVEHVCCINFVVUTGKKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Northern correspondent Seanín Graham spoke to Joanne Davey, a Carrickfergus-born <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/\">former PSNI officer who relocated to Adelaide</a> and joined the South Australian Police. She says lower crime levels, beautiful weather and her outdoors life in the family camper van are among the big differences to life in Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JN6UTW3SUNAG3HXLV6UKVNFOXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Caroline Ryan from north Cork lives in Copenhagen where she works as a photographer and brand consultant. She immediately <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/\">fell in love with the city</a> in 2020. “It’s like Disneyland compared to Munich,” she says, “and Danes are like kittens compared to Munich where people will not shy away from telling you what to do.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTOMYUY2KZFGPJZ75AAU3GXLMQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"John Connolly charted <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/09/i-stepped-through-a-door-and-emerged-as-a-us-citizen-but-now-comes-the-journey-of-belonging/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/09/i-stepped-through-a-door-and-emerged-as-a-us-citizen-but-now-comes-the-journey-of-belonging/\">his path to US citizenship</a> almost 25 years after arriving in Boston in March 2000. He worked in the mayor’s office for years before taking a circuitous route to becoming the director of marketing at the Harvard Art Museums. “The people at the museum taught me the power of being both fiercely and fearlessly positive... It was in that environment that I realised that US careers are built upon confidence, and hard work is the bank that confidence draws from.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CK4PWDG5FNFGZH4V7QR74ASPDY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flight attendant Paula Gahan offers her <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/\">five top tips</a> on how to avoid stress on your next trip from booking early to buying your own liquid bag for airport security.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JHJ2BLXLJEIJH5FXSQM4BCJO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fashion designer Molly Walters <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/11/10/designing-sustainable-fashion-that-grandmother-would-have-approved-of/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/11/10/designing-sustainable-fashion-that-grandmother-would-have-approved-of/\">tells us about life in Lisbon</a> where she is working to “combat fast fashion and unconscious consumerism”. She says: “I find it a youthful city; people want to be out and about all the time and there is always something happening.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OF3AG3CERFHFFGYPUOBRKFL2DY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Finally, at the end of last year Megan Nolan wrote about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/\">the experience of dating in her 30s</a> and how a conversation with a man in the US made clear the realities of this new era in her life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTGD7HEQ55HFXKYUCX4U6YVXBU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thanks for reading.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"We hear from an Irish man who moved to Singapore in his 50s and a Cork photographer in Copenhagen"},"display_date":"2025-01-30T14:34:27.234Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’","native":"Irish Times Abroad newsletter: Irish in Oxford - ‘I felt alienated from the very start’"},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA","auth":{"1":"ea51d2fe5c58394ae712adf70f3c17e6907ca2d117d39f422cb59b53ca632c6d"},"focal_point":{"x":370,"y":236},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/I3LMVCAE2BCYNDN4WGG7ZNBUNA.jpg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/30/irish-times-abroad-oxford-singapore-denmark-great-ethiopian-run-lisbon/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"7Z2R3IAMLJEPBGAEMRKZU7KG2I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":386,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/995f72c2-6b64-4c8b-ad57-f303f2dcd8c9/versions/1737459588/media/9e0189f6a8cd948fbd6c8b0d48f84f67_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B2XIMYD4TFEDHAQPYGJOW27RFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It makes sense that General Tso’s chicken is an American invention and not a natural culinary product of home-grown Chinese cuisine. Why? Well, because it’s a ball of deep-fried chicken in a viscous, sugar-based sauce. That’s why, but also because it is the product of one of those countries’ values at the time of its invention, and not so much the other. Italians invented the Italian cut of men’s suits, slender and elegant and a touch charmingly self-celebratory, but unsurprisingly they did not invent lederhosen, pineapple pizza or those T-shirts reading “Body by bacon” that you see on male tourists at historical landmarks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XQZIBMEVMZHOHMIJ34NQMRTPDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish invented keening and colour photography (apparently, thanks to physicist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-irish-man-who-brought-radiotherapy-forward-1.1828507\" target=\"_self\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-irish-man-who-brought-radiotherapy-forward-1.1828507\">John Joly</a>).","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBBSGXQ6N5HEJDXWJILFVQRNYA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I’ll tell you what Irish culture could never produce, invent or conceive. The voice note. It is anathema to the values that generated and uphold Irishness as we know it. While ironically (but perhaps unsurprisingly) the Italians love a voice note, this seemingly benign technological artefact is the Irish person’s pineapple pizza. An offence. Something that threatens and undermines the Irish way of life, if your neighbour with the very weathered Child of Prague lying face-down on her front lawn has anything to say about it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RH7CIDYUABCHBKBZIXCM6HLWI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The voice note might just be a form of Irish cultural erosion. If it wasn’t so inherently American, we’d accuse it of being British just for its gall. The voice note presumes, nay demands, too much. That we are able to hear the sound of our own voice without screaming ourselves hoarse with horror, for one thing. Because once you’ve recorded a voice note, it’s mandatory to listen back to yourself sounding shrill and rambling and incoherent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBAW3C64VFHVHAEM4X7O46JKPM","additional_properties":{"_id":"N7HHDOVL5ZCAFEIWYURAVTAIUI"},"content":"A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beaches","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"55JXY2EW7JGLPGFSCKCPJRL7Y4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Realising that you sent a friend a recording in which you accidentally called them “Mam” for some reason or badmouthed the ex they are now decidedly back with can make you want to crawl into a hole and die. You probably shouldn’t have called him “a waste of polyester” or “the shame of Leitrim”. Worse still, you could send the voice note to the wrong person. This feels (and I know from experience) exactly how it felt that time I accidentally sent my editor at The Irish Times a text message saying merely “I love you” with no further context whatsoever. She was good about it and attempted to let me down gently, but it had been intended for my then boyfriend and really could have been a whole HR snafu.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXXGMMQX6ZCO7DKZ5QVOZKBFZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Secondly, the incoming voice note sidles in presuming that you must want to hear the unfiltered, unedited thoughts of your friends and loved ones, or worse still, your colleagues or boss. It is a technology widely abused by those who consider their verbal incontinence to be a gift to the receiver, or by your mother who voice-notes you incoherently from what sounds like the strongroom of an underground bunker with demands that you remotely fix her various tech problems. “Is this email from Joe Biden asking for a pint of my blood fake?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IVNFPXPMFFVXB4RQTHAUTMEWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Irish culture sees an incoming voice note from anyone and thinks, he/she has some neck to be presuming that they have anything to say worth listening to, or that anyone would want to hear their Dundalk accent talking about “give me a call back when you can. Jimmy’s in the hospital”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y24GTQGJRJH63MY73F4RHT5ZIY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Needy stuff, you know? Have some dignity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V7QH26KSORHSTB7SFEK7444ENI","additional_properties":{},"content":"And yet. Though we could never have invented a mechanism whereby you presume somebody might like to listen to your impromptu monologuing, the voice note is a crucial component of the Irish emigrant toolkit in keeping a live connection with people at home. If you live far from home, even more so. At this time of year, my sofa in Australia is 11 hours ahead of my brother’s kitchen table in Limerick. When it’s waking-up time at home, it’s winding-down time here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXW7O4JZNFDN5IQX72IXCRZYFM","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"6K3BACCFVJE75FNH6LXFGOCVAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It doesn’t sound all that bad, except when you think about what it’s truly like to have a serious, or even a trivial conversation first thing in the morning or just before bed. No matter when you schedule it, somebody probably isn’t in the right head space. At the end of a long day with my small niece and nephew, my brother’s eyes are crossing with tiredness on a video call. First thing in the morning, those two pyjama-clad scamps need to eat their Weetabix and get help putting their socks on and ask exhausting philosophical questions that four-year-olds ask, like, “When do you become a grown-up?” or, “Why do kangaroos only have tiny arms?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XYU3EPVAMZCPPPRZLL7TUU4B5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Here in Australia, in the morning I’m cantankerous and a similar state of affairs rolls around before bed. I’m as prone as my niece to wondering when someone becomes a grown-up when I answer work emails that have come in from the other side of the planet overnight. They lie in wait for me before 7am when I pick up my phone, bleary eyed. It’s such a joy, then, to wake to a voice note from my friend telling me about the date she went on with a man who turned out to be a fugitive wanted by Interpol, or sharing the news of a hard-won promotion at work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UPRCLGV3XJA5BO4CHMMZWTPIN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s so cheering to hear my niece tell me, scandalised, that her baby brother farted in the bath. And it’s easy for me to voice-note her dad about the fact that in Canberra today, for some reason, the air is filled with vast numbers of winged beetles mating frenziedly, and that “beetle orgy day” had apparently not been advertised anywhere in advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZKLLSQ35JH75ON3IENJFENXOI","additional_properties":{},"content":"This nonsense is the stuff of everyday connection.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUEK3UMM4ZAQVJTRKLR4XJNACM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Long live the voice note.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIHOE2JFAVG7XN6O5WF4DV5QNQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLT4KIGANZCTBO3DV3EVFDLXUI","additional_properties":{},"content":"<i>This article was amended on January 31st, 2025</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Yet it is a crucial component of the Irish emigrant toolkit. It’s so cheering to hear my niece tell me, scandalised, that her baby brother farted in the bath"},"display_date":"2025-01-29T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4","auth":{"1":"b431abd4c354f759a93a9f3ec5f767dc2f046ab927a899721a0681a9c1abe299"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/235ISA6STZECZBMZBYWUKYA5Q4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/29/laura-kennedy-the-voice-note-is-anathema-to-the-values-that-uphold-irishness-as-we-know-it/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"6DVDVDI5QJBRBAPL6I3YYUT4XQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":378,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/90f8154a-f4fe-47f7-8c13-ae5db362d5ef/versions/1737648423/media/7747426ddde88026cf7a8ff3562577d1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NOXRLPRCMVBGLFBINCOYX3OFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462440},"content":"Studying English literature at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/university-of-oxford/\" target=\"_blank\">University of Oxford</a> as an Irish undergraduate was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NU2RZYIYBNENNG7VJI7U4QBNPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462441},"content":"On my second evening, the college organised a “formal dinner” for us, the new undergraduates, to meet our tutors. We all had to wear “white-tie” and “sub fusc” while we were wined and dined at a three-course meal in the dining hall alongside our tutors.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJAZF6M3GNEKJBRH74RM65XJV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462442},"content":"Many of my peers were from British private schools, so were already comfortable in this world. One of them even corrected my American professor’s table manners, scoffing at her for not using her cutlery in the right order. I identified with the professor, who had also just arrived to the university, feeling reassured that at least others were also unfamiliar with these codes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75OHC32BCRFW3CI7DLQPO2D4DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462443},"content":"I was less reassured, however, when a professor sat down next to me. Since coming to Oxford as an undergraduate, he had never left, and was now in his 70s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJNKGO6G25AL3LC5UHMN3UO6TM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462444},"content":"He asked me the dreaded question: “What did you enjoy reading this summer?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVZVAZYS25GAJIFUJ5P5V5PLE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737647860589},"content":"I tentatively threw out an answer: Moby-Dick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6LIOLPYHRDBLON3ENXPDPY5HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462445},"content":"He seemed pleased: “Ah yes, the second best novel in the English language ...”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMO7DDDAYZDUFKSQVQLLAEKCEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462446},"content":"I threw the question back at him as though it was too hot to hold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RLTZFVJBENG5VDFQGLIQLNQBOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462447},"content":"He replied that every summer break, he would lock himself at home and read 100 books. By his complexion, I knew he was telling the truth. He continued that, this summer, he had, on a whim, decided to read <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sally-rooney/\" target=\"_blank\">Sally Rooney</a>’s novels to see what all the hype was about. Not only did he think her novels were overrated, he told me they should not have been published.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SOLGTTKF2BEWDF3OH4XNOXU6TI","additional_properties":{"_id":"PZVVWIHPEFA7PI3NI5V4OYBNBY"},"content":"A Derry Girl in Oxford: ‘The Troubles followed us over the Irish Sea’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VS7GI6E3T5E6RPFCGD2CQC7CLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737647860593},"content":"It was then I realised: I was no longer in the land of normal people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4VMZXFPWBAKPDT6K366SY4ZEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462448},"content":"One surreal evening in my second year, I was forced by circumstance to attend an event in a dingy, darkened room at the back of a local Conservative club. A crowd of Oxford students in fancy dress took turns getting up on stage and drunkenly shouting out speeches.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEOSQHLEXZCIJMYXOKABUIYVIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462450},"content":"I had the misfortune of attending on Guy Fawkes night. A <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/northern-ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Northern Irish</a> unionist took the stage to pontificate on the differences between a papist and a Catholic, and which one deserved to be burned, to raucous applause. I was deeply uncomfortable, scanning the room to see if anyone else felt like me, but everyone simply laughed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ALTSYHVXCVFLXJOKUHY7DJD4V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462452},"content":"It was not only the people I met that left me feeling alienated, but also the rhetoric of the books I read. Since Oxford unsurprisingly taught literature in an extremely traditional way, we almost never read anything written after 1830. By reading so historically, all I had to do was brush off the dust from some of the books, and a load of anti-Irish rhetoric would come flying off with it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDHJPONGTBAO7EFLS2DNFWDPTI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462453},"content":"We were taught, for instance, about Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590), a canonical epic poem that is more than 36,000 lines long and that Spenser described as “cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices”. I did not know what to make of it, but initially enjoyed how quirky it was. So, I decided to dig further. It did not take long before I realised many of his allegories were distinctively anti-Irish. In fact, I found that Spenser had written an entire tract called A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596), dedicated to advocating for the genocide of the Irish.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASROEHFMIZCYREUE2E5Q4HCS3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"3UJ55SRCHRHAHMF4Z6GPHSRMYM"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"PLRNVQG7K5CJFEKKHKA6M5FBJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462454},"content":"I did not enjoy how quirky he was after that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5WUWVNYYYBEDPJM7HMOXZSFWFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462455},"content":"Unfortunately, Spenser was more the rule than the exception. Class after class, I would sit through texts that either bashed the Irish or Catholics, with classmates awkwardly staring at me as the words were read aloud. The other foreigners in my classes – Russians, Indians, Chinese – were never targeted in the same way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWFDAZQOHREVLBIDRMKLKFUEJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462456},"content":"But that’s the bad and the ugly. Let me tell you about the good.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEDZWQ2EWRBSBLX64WXLYKLPPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462457},"content":"Though English literature once belittled the Irish, Irish writers stood tall within it – and that was a source of connection that other foreigners did not have.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNJNJFQALFENHGG4B77JGHGX2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462458},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/seamus-heaney/\" target=\"_blank\">Seamus Heaney</a>, for instance, was everywhere – from his poetry to his translation of Beowulf in my Old English studies to his criticism of John Clare in my Romantics module. His presence was all the more comforting since he was a writer my mother, a secondary-school English teacher, had taught me about, even dragging me to one of his last public recitals when I was a child.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MAPRVODJABD53PXU7DY7T6TJ6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462460},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/oscar-wilde/\" target=\"_blank\">Oscar Wilde</a> had, of course, attended Oxford himself, and lived on in the curriculum, building names and university legend. He was another writer that I had a personal connection to, as my grandmother, who never finished secondary school, had loved quoting Wilde’s witticisms to me growing up. I took great pride in being able to send my grandmother a postcard of him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FXHXCYQ7QJHUXDSZQNFZSCP7ZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737642462461},"content":"These were just two of many Irish writers whose contributions to the English-language literary canon could not be denied and with whom I enjoyed a kind of quiet solidarity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ADLGO77K4JBYHB2NPPHE6WFO2U","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Hugo Harvey"}]},"description":{"basic":"The good, the bad and the ugly parts of studying English through Irish eyes at Oxford"},"display_date":"2025-01-27T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. 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It was the boost I needed and literally lifted me out of a very dark place (I think my late father was looking after me from above.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKCDXNCOSRFU3EEAPITJKFVO4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"WSDIFF42FBHVXC2MH7IDX3FTJU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"GTNX23YBKZBEPKK3OJTJ2ZTDPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454415},"content":"Cut to 2018, two men, and a sedated dog, board a flight to a gleaming metropolis, called the “Little Red Dot”, roughly the size of Co Louth with a population of 5.5 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NDHE35FGORCGPKIIYIQ4I7YVR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454416},"content":"We settled in quickly, and any concerns I had about practising as a psychologist in this multiracial, multi-ethnic city state dissolved quickly. Children, schools and families are essentially the same the world over and one learns to practise in a culturally sensitive way very quickly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEZZHZD6BJGZRCMIJNX7GTA44E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454417},"content":"Singapore is like New York – you master your brief quickly or you do not survive. Thankfully, I built up a good professional reputation rapidly and formed good relationships with international schools, of which there are many in Singapore.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UMKMHJFIJBCJFDLNPP4W45MFMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737555582961},"content":"Referrals came quite quickly and I was established without much delay, notwithstanding the pandemic in 2020. 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But there was no mistake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WGI6FGMTFBBHFQ7ETBTVPTY2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454422},"content":"Having paid almost half my salary in tax and insurance for most of my life, it was astonishing to me to see little difference between gross and net salary amounts. It makes it easy to save for retirement, although I now envisage working longer that I would have if I had stayed in Ireland; and not because I have to, but because I still enjoy my job and derive great fulfilment from it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJNKTDAXP5CDRAFWBPSWSPL44E","additional_properties":{"_id":"DUTQU3BIMNB2ZL4RMOKKYN2ISY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5ZXZH44GTBDOHEF45SM5RYZD4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454423},"content":"Apart from work, Singapore has a lot to offer – every type of cuisine is available and it is a melting pot of cultures where you will find a mosque, Hindu temple, Taoist shrine and church, all on the same street.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5GQNPKOQFA35GIR7YP53OZQLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454424},"content":"There is a small but vibrant Irish community here and, with a friend who worked in the Irish embassy, we have organised some Pop-Up Gaeltacht events over the years that have grown in popularity. Along with well-established Irish games and dance, it is now possible to hear our language spoken in the tropical heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIV2CBOXHJHAPIWGILCVGG75R4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454425},"content":"I recall the late, lamented Nuala O’Faolain writing something about ageing backwards when she landed in Manhattan and, in a sense, I now understand what she meant. When I land in Changi Airport, having had a lovely holiday in Ireland, I find myself feeling younger and more vibrant than before.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JZRXIU4WSNHHPIKUICA4I3YA44","additional_properties":{"_id":1737553917589},"content":"This is certainly true when I compare myself to the person I was six years ago, before I believed any of this was possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1737550454426},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Richard Hennessy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Irish professionals are highly regarded in Singapore. And I had not realised that experience, and the wisdom that comes with it, is highly valued in Asian culture"},"display_date":"2025-01-23T19:57:48.145Z","headlines":{"basic":"Irishman in Singapore: I wondered if I was foolish to emigrate in my 50s. 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Telcos and the development of the internet of things have provided him with work on several continents, but he always gravitates back to Madrid, “the most relaxed city in the world”, where he now lives with his family, working remotely for the Ukrainian firm Intellias as global vice-president of IOT.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIH7GEN23JBDHC7WLQCK4MHBGI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his early career, Haughian worked in Athlone for Ericsson. “There were big opportunities at the time. Ireland was not booming, but it was starting to boom. And the IT industry was starting to move to dot-com.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M35SYDLU2RDNREYMWSQZCDBPEE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The industry brought him to Italy, where he worked in Rome for a couple of years as a consultant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAQOIYR2H5F4JCAD46N5Y33KBY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Irish community, they’re so good. You walk into the Irish pub and the guys take you under their wing because I didn’t know anybody else speaking English. And then you’re looked after, and then you become part of the community,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CSY5FMQWCVFXTCNBE3OGEVQLGE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I came over to Madrid to visit a friend who was working there in Ericsson. Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated unless you’re used to it – nothing works; it’s a mess of a place.” Madrid proved to be something else entirely.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NQXB5JLJKNGHJM34XYA2DSFLAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The city’s clean. It’s got an infrastructure. Everything works ... So I phoned and got a job there and stayed for two years.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3WCTJVCEQJCEFCATUIBKUUMXQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In Madrid he worked as a consultant, troubleshooting with telcos, including Ericsson, which then brought him to Central America, specifically Mexico. ‘I’d been there before and I loved the place. It was not like it is now; it was a safe back then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZX5G34A5VJDH7CDWWITFY2JDC4","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"WJQEVFU43RDHDGZLPVT7PCX4JM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I was in Saltillo, which is in the north near Monterrey, near the border. I was picking where I wanted to live because we were lucky at the time we could do that.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCWPS3XCBNFMFI4JMFINQ2324E","additional_properties":{},"content":"He has also worked in Panama, the Dominican Republic and the Cayman Islands. “I probably fixed a fault for every single operator in the world, I’d say, at some stage,” he says. It hasn’t always been straightforward, given the way things work in certain parts of the world. “You always have to be careful who’s asking you and get it verified, because the authorities can choose from one day to the next,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5332BSR34BECPONWNBDPCZE2WI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His work with Ericsson saw him involved in large projects in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. At one stage, an internet-of-things project with the company looked like it might involve a move to the company’s home country, Sweden, which he was not keen on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLXAQG6M6FATFBOQS4HD7AUAYU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It’s easier to move south than north,” he says. That may have been influenced by his time in Aberdeen studying for his master’s. “Aberdeen is the coldest place I’ve ever lived in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t a fan of Aberdeen city, I thought it was very rough.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IYXUUXIERBXTOS6CJYCW2FMTA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NVXW3LUTAVB2RBHYC7SZBRC74M"},"content":"‘Copenhagen is like Disneyland compared to Munich: moving here immediately resonated with me’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"Q4NGFUEVRNGILDHDYYQUA7NT5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cold is not something he has to worry about any more. He’s happily settled in Madrid and has an affection for Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/ukraine-war/\" target=\"_blank\">invasion</a>, Haughian housed refugees in Ireland, where he owns a castle in Co Galway. It was sitting empty at the time, after a failed attempt to move back with his family. The lack of light in a castle and the driving Galway rain proved no match for the Spanish sunshine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"USUEGOTOHBA5FDKM3EBKBXKIRY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I’m pretty impulsive. If I say I’m going to do something I just do it, to hell with the consequences,” he says. It all worked out and he now has Ukrainian “friends for life”. Despite his newfound friends, Haughian hadn’t been there until this year, when his employer brought him to Lviv to speak at the IT Arena tech conference.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIR5QU5RXZBGBMEFBJT3V2NRAQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I was panicking about coming, I really was,” he says, but it all worked out well. Despite being a remote worker, he says the company is continuously in touch to make sure he’s safe and well, something that has become standard practice for Ukrainian companies in recent years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KFQBNWL3EFAGXAF2REEOA7CDFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was speaking at the conference about the internet of things, where the buzz about AI and defence tech is palpable. “If you are building any AI system, you need data. How do you get the data? You get it from IOT. It’s that simple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5H6V6T4S4BENJAMSUTBABG2QSU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Someone said to me recently that IOT is taking a back seat to AI now, but it’s not a competition between technology; nobody cares. Almost every IOT system will have AI now, whether they need it or not, because it’s a boom for the next few years. And it’ll die down again, like it did before,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHXIZEQIERCIDHFC4X672JCKVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Away from work, horse riding helps clears his head, having come to equestrian sports later in life after a “city slickers” trip at a ranch in the United States.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Fiona Alston"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Barry Haughian works for Ukrainian telco Intellias in the Spanish capital"},"display_date":"2025-01-19T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. 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He still experiences “pinch me” moments when “I’m just doing my daily business”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XGQ2F7TZXZFYRCXUPZSSA4C45Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"GWW75TPW5VBA3OFR5A3JEZMSUY"},"content":"One Australian police force receives ‘over 100’ applications from gardaí, though few make move","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ITFOCEHVKZAV7MD7KLSMAB3XRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591533},"content":"Enticements for the recruits include “competitive” salaries – a constable earns the equivalent of €63,000 to €74,000 – and gets six weeks’ annual leave and “various health and well being packages”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NIRBCMKJUZGEVGDKZYIHFA3JLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591534},"content":"The South Australian government has recently announced pay rises of up to a 17.9 per cent over the next 12 months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNMCSHCMENE3TCEBVWRRDKUGUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591535},"content":"“Combine this with the lifestyle over here in South Australia, which is very different from the Eastern states. It’s busy enough, but not too busy. It’s nice for families, it’s clean and it’s safe,” Collins says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSQNHNYFZNBGJIZZG3DU33GKXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591536},"content":"Davey agrees.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHUFYFG4IVCRTJ62D62UV6ZLCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591537},"content":"Lower crime levels, beautiful weather and her outdoors life in the family camper van are among the big differences to life in Northern Ireland. Kangaroo Island – an island beach voted the second best in the world last year – is a half-hour drive away.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDFAVUL7ESWSR3Q6YV6KNEEUII","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVEX7WNPPJACPNH26Y6FT5PIJ4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5CTXEGGKC5HRVEDHPPYXKJI7CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591539},"content":"“I have a very active 12-year-old and as soon as I finish work I’m off taking him to swim training or footie training. He also does surf life saving. They start at age six,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5OVYRQCU2VB2LIFVTR3SOYMHKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591540},"content":"“We love to travel and there’s lots of camping opportunities along the beach or by the river or inland. Adelaide has the whole beachline with so many open spaces and parks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"22HNV3XKWBG4TIPYNV27XZ2X4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591542},"content":"“There’s no vandalism in the parks and all have free barbecues for you to use. There’s quite a lot of new adventure playgrounds and they don’t get vandalised the way stuff does back home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMSSVNJ3KNF37FDIRMVFJGEQ64","additional_properties":{"_id":"XHGFRO47LJHRBC7RO6Q7CSOBOI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"SHBQHVGCJVFGDOI6NLWWGACHRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591543},"content":"As PSNI numbers fall to their lowest in the service’s 24-year history – there are around 6,300 officers, with a ‘recovery plan’ under way – and attacks on officers increase, Davey contrasts her former job with her current role.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPAA44DL5NEXHJOBHAPSAVQ2IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591544},"content":"“I didn’t move because I disliked the PSNI. I moved because I was able to come here and do the job I love and help people and serve the community – but still have that lifestyle, to be outdoors, to go to the beach, to go camping and have the proper summers. The facilities here are just amazing,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C4TUHQ3VHVBK7OKYO5PHAOLVBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591545},"content":"“The types of day-to-day crime we deal with are exactly the same, but the crime level here is much lower than home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5VPIVA57BDMHA5QCBO6JNVKPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591546},"content":"“I currently work full-time and I’m a sergeant. My shifts are eight hours a day. There is a big focus on work/life balance with lots of opportunities for flexible work.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYRECRDLKVHWLBIBT4642KSNRM","additional_properties":{"_id":"7RSKV6ZH4NENFOZOWK255NT534"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"A7N2BVIJBNEVZDAAA3A2XDVVWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737046633979},"content":"What she misses most are her family and friends. “We are far away, but we’re also very close to home as well with technology these days. You only have to lift the phone to ring home and I probably speak to my family more often than I would do if I lived in the same town,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"76TYZFKOKZEX3LQCWR4M54CWWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591549},"content":"The only other yearnings are for Marks & Spencer’s foodhalls and Tayto cheese-and-onion crisps.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVYD4VY5TBBY5AL2AVTD6GKN4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591550},"content":"“If they could just bring it over here, that would be awesome,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFECE76RFFCYNGMEVPRM5LUUQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737039591551},"content":"Visits back home are frequent to “keep that connection with my son’s grandparents and cousins”, she also says. “But Australia is my home now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V34BDHLQS5EGHJGCHGK7Q6ZHC4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Seanín Graham"}},"name":"Seanín Graham"}]},"description":{"basic":"Officers from An Garda Síochána are also being tempted by lifestyle and pay and conditions"},"display_date":"2025-01-17T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Low crime rate and ‘proper summers’ drawing police officers to Australia","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S5YFHLX4WBFAZLHRJCA7L4MLLE","auth":{"1":"89462454f9571ce7146d2c766f4568f1ec1f35c905e79992b1c251b3debf8e10"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S5YFHLX4WBFAZLHRJCA7L4MLLE.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Crime & Law"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/17/i-didnt-move-because-i-disliked-the-psni-low-crime-rate-and-proper-summers-among-draws-for-police-to-australia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"NJVW2LUF6FFPJOST3JT2KL7FHM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":345,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/fad70a0e-c2cc-422a-8a2b-95736c2c0a85/versions/1737021703/media/56e4c6ce0b3b2cddb793cac357974bed_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/somebody-broke-in-and-stole-our-christmas-gifts-but-i-felt-a-sense-of-gratitude/","content_elements":[{"_id":"3QBOFFEHJREVJLONY6JLSL53LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211486},"content":"So look, somebody stole my <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> presents. That’s as good a prompt for reflection as any at the close of one year and the opening of another. I didn’t tell anyone at the time. It would really be far too much of a festive conversation killer on the video call home to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7APYD2Z6RFYFH7HTTTNWQKZ3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211487},"content":"Plus, I could think of no way to say it that wouldn’t make me sound like a whiny baby, but I’m telling you now because I’m not above knocking a column out of it. I figure that here in the Sisyphean depths of January, as we all crawl resentfully on stiff joints toward pay-day, it might elicit a chuckle of Schadenfreude from the darker recesses in us all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVOGZO4Z6JEWDHU7SAMAOEVLC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211488},"content":"There are doubtless a few people reading this who might consider it for the best that a columnist for The Irish Times have their Christmas presents stolen. A matter of public policy even. Isn’t it good enough for them, and such. Such people wouldn’t be entirely wrong – we’re arguably prone to a lack of perfect humility at times. The universe may simply be restoring balance by arranging to have someone pilfer my Notions Christmas-tree-scented candle and my cartoon print of a fat guy sitting on a bench with the caption “I hate human beings”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4GO27PJZJAH5DWVRRF6C4QAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211489},"content":"I had to try not to chuckle myself, to be honest, having woken up on Christmas morning to find my husband in the kitchen, visibly upset that someone had stolen the <a href=\"https://www.lego.com/en-ie/product/mona-lisa-31213?gclid=Cj0KCQiA-aK8BhCDARIsAL_-H9l7KEhNmYHUAoRSNJ9-qGkrZa20VfgUXkUvypVcwetGq4e5ukqivNIaAqvWEALw_wcB&ef_id=Cj0KCQiA-aK8BhCDARIsAL_-H9l7KEhNmYHUAoRSNJ9-qGkrZa20VfgUXkUvypVcwetGq4e5ukqivNIaAqvWEALw_wcB%3AG%3As&s_kwcid=AL%21933%213%21699668344070%21e%21%21g%21%21lego+mona+lisa%2120592840449%21162031468749&cmp=KAC-INI-GOOGEU-GO-IE_GL-EN-RE-PS-BUY-ESCAPE-ART-SHOP-BP-MM-ALL-CIDNA00000-NOVELTIES-ART&gad_source=1\" target=\"_blank\">Lego Mona Lisa</a> he bought for me to assemble during my week off. “I stored the gifts I got you downstairs so you wouldn’t find them,” he said. “Somebody broke in and took them.” In fairness, I would have felt absolutely dreadful in his position, but was also conscious that if somebody stealing your fancy bits and pieces at Christmas is the worst of your problems, you’re doing fine overall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZADMA54Z3RGVDM3JZLSV7WTCXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211490},"content":"Here in Canberra, one of the things you’ll struggle to comprehend as an Irish person upon first renting a property (apart from the fact that a dishwasher is considered standard rather than an indulgent luxury for out-of-touch idiots) is that apartments come with storage. Lots of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX662UPBZ5D3JILUSOQOJXME7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211491},"content":"Newish buildings have underground parking and each apartment has its own storage cage next to its parking space beneath the building. You padlock your cage, which is like a tiny shed with a wire mesh roof, and store larger items in there (like the huge, empty suitcases you used when you emigrated, or your artificial Christmas tree) which aren’t very tempting to steal, but would be cumbersome to keep in your apartment – your apartment which also, incidentally, has a lot of storage. Because cupboards and wardrobes are also not seen as the sole remit of oligarchs and leaders of industry, despite their being considered along the lines of a Fabergé egg by Dublin landlords.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EDI25PDKQRHOBFTODV6TUEVBOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211492},"content":"Much about Australian life remains alien to me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SZSOY6OQOVFB5MDB7NSMIM2TNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211493},"content":"No doubt any Australian reading this will think that only a chump would store Christmas gifts in a storage cage overnight, and they’d have a point. Still, it’s easy to relax and feel more trusting here. Canberra is not a big shrieking city like London. It has none of the gritty bustle of Dublin. For someone who has lived in those cities, Canberra feels both very quiet and pretty safe, despite a growing and visibly intensifying homelessness problem that is mirrored in every western city. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KV44VQT7AZGOBKIJOKU36BM6UA","additional_properties":{},"content":"For the most part, you don’t walk about with the sense that someone might imminently chloroform you and harvest your kidneys. Although you will frequently come across people with addiction issues, many of whom are clearly not mentally well, and who are sort of ignored by the city as though rendering them invisible constitutes a form of compassion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SR6CHHFTJZEDBOOQDEOM4CWG2I","additional_properties":{"_id":"CNGPAHJ3NNBT5KNP5GTDR5J2WY"},"content":"After years living in Ireland, everything in Australia feels suspiciously easy","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RZF4GGMGV5ELVAMXCNVOM52YSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211494},"content":"Someone had come in with bolt cutters on Christmas Eve, like the Grinch himself, and torn through the locker (along with six other lockers), throwing said empty suitcases and other sundries out on to the ground as they searched, presumably, for whatever they could resell on Facebook marketplace. We found the voucher himself had bought me for the local indoor plant shop here in Canberra strewn on the ground nearby, a short distance from the koala-festooned Christmas card it had been carefully placed in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZTVWRTWJ3NAMTJI72Z356WRXLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211495},"content":"The plant shop, incidentally, is called The Green Vine and is very much worth a visit if you find yourself in the city. It’s a peaceful haven for – mostly, let’s be honest – girls and women who like to grow things and have a crush on the squashy-faced French bulldog, Rocky, who belongs to the owner and accepts callers – ie lets strangers rapturously pet him while giving him compliments.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WZS6FKYQU5EZLMPBKHGZKDY7PE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211496},"content":"I was delighted to find the discarded voucher, if a bit sad at the thief’s evident contempt for a nice aspidistra.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GS4YV6TEHBAJBLGXAZBQH46DMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211497},"content":"It might have been one of those experiences, as an immigrant, that makes you feel less welcome in a new country, but it didn’t. Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up off the car park floor, I still marvelled at the fact that you get storage. At how good things are, really, that this was the worst problem I had after waking on a belting hot summer Christmas morning. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSP6CVHHCBHMNMEKQD3MH2CRJI","additional_properties":{"_id":"65O6CRVJBVAMTAZBEW2CANKYJI"},"content":"Moving to Australia: ‘I would have had a very fixed life in Ireland. I feel very light here’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CUZXM7MU2VGQDJFYZB2D77JN54","additional_properties":{},"content":"I hoped that the thief needed my fancy bits and pieces more than I did, because stealing people’s gifts on Christmas Eve is, let’s be frank, an unequivocally sh**e thing to do. I hoped that it was sheer desperation that led them to it rather than callous disregard, though of course enough of one can generate the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2JKFGPQDNDALNQ25VGNUDILNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736896211498},"content":"We begin a new year here in Australia without the scent of Notions Christmas trees in the apartment, but with a sense of gratitude, nonetheless. Not quite to the thief, because I’m really not that magnanimous, but for the reminder of how lucky we are (and, crucially, how much storage comes as standard).","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up, I marvelled at the fact that in Canberra, unlike in Dublin, you get storage as standard. Lots of it"},"display_date":"2025-01-16T09:56:34.489Z","headlines":{"basic":"Somebody broke in and stole our Christmas gifts – but I felt a sense of gratitude","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"QFM56SWB7BEZBMBJIB77JYPVWY","auth":{"1":"0a29f27d95f108c7c46ad585f19ab71c09e81ea16fd0374aced2b773d9106088"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/QFM56SWB7BEZBMBJIB77JYPVWY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/somebody-broke-in-and-stole-our-christmas-gifts-but-i-felt-a-sense-of-gratitude/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"AF6SY2JHLNAKNIUWWHSHXEB66A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":282,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/71bdb2cf-f13a-42d1-8aea-34af0f09b437/versions/1736860324/media/6bca275adca78cf6a3de7dc11230f5ff_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2025/01/16/an-irish-flight-attendants-top-travel-tips-on-how-to-avoid-stress-on-your-next-trip-dublin-airport-going-on-holiday/","content_elements":[{"_id":"KVKX3HANRVBQNE4JUNUVAHPGQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646138},"content":"Can it really be that time of year again when we start planning our next getaway? Now that <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas </a>is over, many of us <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/travel/\" target=\"_blank\">are looking to escape</a> the January blues and kick off the new year with a bit of winter sun.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZY2QN4WHFZBVHBW34OD2MVA5OI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646139},"content":"You might think that, as a seasoned flight attendant with nearly a decade of experience, I would be the most organised traveller around. But, alas, you’d be mistaken. It’s a classic case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N74N3QZXSFDS7FRTDDUYMJJTWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646140},"content":"Despite my knowledge of travel tricks, I often find myself racing through the airport, desperately trying to grab last-minute essentials before my flight boards. Yes, I confess I frequently leave my travel preparations to the last minute, and, while sprinting to the gate, I curse myself for not having packed a bottle of water after clearing security.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLO3DXG6JRF5ZPN46PTRZUVPJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646141},"content":"To help you avoid the travel stress I often inflict upon myself, I’ve compiled my top five tips for a smoother journey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52YX5SZRIBGZDIX7BKZSD3F2M4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646142},"content":"Buy your own liquid bag","type":"header"},{"_id":"AINVDFXOGFFIJHS4MZAPH2FYZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646143},"content":"The rules around liquids can be confusing and often change from country to country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PU4OLNOCHVFHLPGMWKHWLJ6LDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646144},"content":"If you’re travelling within Europe, you’ll need to pack all your liquids into one of those tiny plastic bags they give you at the airport that rarely fit everything you need. To save yourself from the last-minute scramble, invest in a clear plastic case that meets aviation guidelines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4N3OXWIMJH4DA4QJXTPPMYQCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646145},"content":"For just a few quid, you can neatly pack your liquids at home instead of frantically stuffing them into a bag while under pressure from security agents. Trust me, it’s the best fiver you’ll ever spend.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NHNO2RGQTZGAVDATXIX642YSDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646146},"content":"Book your flights early","type":"header"},{"_id":"KANRLPCRBJBJ7DDPSAVWUWOVLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646147},"content":"January is often a time when airlines offer great deals for travel, making it an ideal month to plan your next trip. However, I’ll admit it: I’m the worst offender when it comes to booking flights in advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVCCRKVWLZAQLMVNDOAHA22H4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646148},"content":"As a cabin crew member, I have the unique advantage of flying cheaply on standby tickets, but this doesn’t mean I should procrastinate. Booking your flights early not only secures better prices, but also gives you peace of mind, allowing you to plan your getaway without the last-minute stress of searching for a flight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VT2J6HXC5NHN5KQX22RM3F55AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646149},"content":"Arrive early at the airport","type":"header"},{"_id":"QKLBSTUH6BBXFCP2P3EBPEEMTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646150},"content":"There’s nothing quite like the panic of running through the airport, like Kevin McCallister’s dad in Home Alone, desperately trying to catch a flight. I’ve done this more times than I care to admit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7NGZO74KRGTXHYXWB3SQPLWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646151},"content":"Instead, take my advice and arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare – what I like to call “dad time”. While we often poke fun at those dads who show up five hours early, it’s worth noting that they are far less stressed than those of us racing against the clock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O5FJOZGRUJGE7MEZOIBBCL62IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646152},"content":"Pack smart","type":"header"},{"_id":"FTMRYOTWMRA2TOF5D3PIAQUGDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646153},"content":"Smart packing is essential for hassle-free travel, especially when embarking on a new-year adventure. Utilise vacuum bags to save space and try to carry on your luggage whenever possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YOY5JBPQZJC7HHVNKSXLKEMDVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646154},"content":"Always keep a spare set of clothes in your carry-on. Take it from my sister, who once packed everything in the hold and then had to wear her sweatpants on a night out in London’s West End when the airline lost her bag.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NATAPF2H2FCP5CV3J4JWLMBAG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646155},"content":"Packing smart not only saves you from wardrobe malfunctions, but also ensures you have everything you need right at your fingertips.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MVPB5KPHGNG23CYRSWVWCF7R4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646156},"content":"Embrace technology","type":"header"},{"_id":"XWYJ6JBA2NHT5MQRKQV56PEMRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646157},"content":"Consider using <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/ie/airtag/\" target=\"_blank\">AirTags</a> to keep track of your luggage. These little devices provide peace of mind by helping you locate your bags if they go astray.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z6HWDSHPANEL7BJN4W6BO5YJDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646158},"content":"Additionally, download your favourite shows on your iPadm tablet, or phone before you leave so you have entertainment ready for the flight. Don’t forget to bring a reusable water bottle to stay hydrated during your travels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KB3UYLTEURBDHCO4L2AHXQHKOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVMANVUVOFAT7JBPONRQPTJ5YQ"},"content":"An Irish flight attendant on the top five most annoying things passengers do","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5XUDJKLNEBCJ7KNIRSEDTOUOOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646159},"content":"Lastly, never underestimate the power of snacks. Packing your favourite treats can make your journey more enjoyable and help ward off any hunger pangs that may strike mid-flight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDITUHEADRBB3B6QH2723ZA2JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646161},"content":"By following these simple yet effective tips, you can transform your travel experience from chaotic to calm. Safe travels, and may your new year be filled with exciting adventures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736856646162},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Paula Gahan"}]},"description":{"basic":"New year, new adventures, same old lack of preparation? 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Occasionally, we break the monotony with dinners out or concerts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S43GCAQ57NCRLGCQMEXYTOA2XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830984},"content":"But often, it feels like running on a hamster wheel. Rinse. Repeat. It’s hard not to wonder: is this all there is?","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7L62NFZLZCODESC4SYYYMVWIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842129},"content":"That question found an answer at a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/goal/2/\" target=\"_blank\">Goal</a> USA launch event. Join us for the Great <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/ethiopia/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethiopian</a> Run and Raise Money for Charity<i>,</i> the headline declared. My heart said yes – go to Africa. But my mind quickly erected barriers. Excuses poured in, each more convincing than the last. The coup de grâce? “My wife would kill me.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EC2K5G5BJNBWXIFE3KNNRR2D6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830987},"content":"Adding to my hesitation, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-states/\" target=\"_blank\">US</a> State Department’s ominous DO NOT TRAVEL advisory, which cited conflict, unrest, and crime. Quite the list.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4GZLDRL3RCMDOUEWPTRTY7YRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736526461229},"content":"And yet, I couldn’t let it go.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TBP4OXYOINFIPHSQMVGTFDZU6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842131},"content":"Decades earlier, as a student, I cofounded The Great Race to raise funds for Ethiopian and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/somalia/\" target=\"_blank\">Somalian</a> famines. That experience showed me the power of collective action, planting a seed that stayed with me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"APCUYZ7RUFCIHGLUZCIZGAAH54","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830990},"content":"Now, I had the chance not to organise a race but to run in one (you can <a href=\"https://goalus.enthuse.com/cf/great-ethiopian-run\" target=\"_blank\">contribute here</a>) – a challenge blending my love of running with a commitment to those in need. I’d come full circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WANUOVK3VCH5GD6NAL2CAHEXA","additional_properties":{"_id":"FZJJGTI6OVBN5B4NUCIYFJLJEI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XQGG2C32JJGMDDXJZZODRT2OS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830991},"content":"Addis Ababa","type":"header"},{"_id":"PEGTBQRAVFEGLCLGM46S452KRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842133},"content":"Escaping the aftermath of the US election, I landed in Addis Ababa with limited internet – a gift that let me disconnect from the relentless post-election news cycle. Alongside me were like-minded ambassadors for the Irish charity, all united by a shared drive to make a difference.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHUVFSYYYFC2XPZ4YDY2IEBH5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842134},"content":"The Great Ethiopian Run, founded 25 years ago by legendary Olympian Haile Gebrselassie, is Africa’s largest road race, attracting nearly 50,000 runners each year. Though only a 10km, the altitude made it feel like a marathon. We’d been warned – add at least two minutes to your average pace; the lack of oxygen will humble you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7PLPWDRKZVEHTICE7PD26I362U","additional_properties":{"_id":"3LN3MD4PLJFLZHY5YZFX3MQGU4"},"content":"Global South must be saved from fossil fuels and other climate-harming practices","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"7D4RBXWTPREBTOB5BANNYML2GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842135},"content":"Our group included Irish running legend <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/athletics/2023/08/14/eamonn-coghlan-ive-been-very-blessed-by-what-i-achieved-in-athletics/\" target=\"_blank\">Eamonn Coghlan</a>, who not only cheered us on, but ran alongside us, offering tips and encouragement. Adding prestige to the event, Kenya’s newly crowned marathon world record holder, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/athletics/2024/10/13/ruth-chepngetich-smashes-womens-world-marathon-record-in-chicago/\" target=\"_blank\">Ruth Chepngetich</a>, was also present. I was in awe, surrounded by greatness on and off the track.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7DQSM2LFRBVLM5TPF5GFHDYXM","additional_properties":{"_id":"PCX77JC345CHPENPUSJDRZUH7A"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"J4VHNQK4ERHSPK3LQT3PRDM3WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842136},"content":"<b>Stories from the field</b>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FXD5QWE4QJBGZNFHTSVOVDKDJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842137},"content":"With the race as a backdrop, the real purpose of my trip lay in witnessing Goal’s fieldwork first hand. As Bono once said, nothing prepares you for the “car park of humanity”. The stark reality of refugees and displaced families, forced from their homes by conflict, famine or other crises, was overwhelming. Their poverty contrasted sharply with our Western privileges, faced, as they were, with the choice of eating or dying; every minor complaint of mine seemed trivial.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WPOOXBS7URF5TCDXLPY5ZQUZPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842138},"content":"In West Harerghe, near the Somali border, we visited a nutrition facility where malnourished children and mothers receive care. A group of mothers shared their stories through an interpreter. Tentatively, I asked one if she had any questions for me. Her response caught me off guard: “I have no questions, but you have saved me and my children, and I thank you.” I had done nothing but witness her suffering, yet she was thanking me. Overwhelmed, I broke down in tears, words failing me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U63ED3PJKRDP3FEVYA3GLUJEEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842139},"content":"Later, a mother proudly displayed three chickens she had purchased for $3 through Goal’s support. She now had a sustainable source of income, selling eggs at the market. Still stinging from my earlier encounter, I ventured to ask if she had any questions for us. With a wry smile, she replied: “Yes, you’re an hour late.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ALIJF43MLZCAFAIJCTNTJXXNWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321830999},"content":"And indeed, we were.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RMKBK2ZH6RBG5LL4L2JBIAFTRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842140},"content":"In Nagesh, Tigray, a bombed-out ambulance sat outside a Micro Gardening facility (a joint project by USAID and Goal) – a chilling reminder of the Tigray civil war, which claimed nearly 600,000 lives. The ambulance’s driver, a nurse and a patient were inside when it was bombed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQIVJMCJ6RHGVGQS525L57636A","additional_properties":{"_id":"JUSCJ6H6FNBG5CRWMV2ZIT4LJQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"USHHWE3ANRA4VIHQYUU25UAHVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842141},"content":"Nearby, two mothers sat on the cracked earth, their faces etched with hunger and fragile hope. One had a cross sign tattooed on to her forehead, a tradition with roots in Ethiopia’s long history as one of the oldest Christian nations: “My mother did it when I was young.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3PEG7ODZ5CW7EVSLSI5KKB2AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831002},"content":"Their babies clung silently to them, too weak to cry, ribs visible beneath tattered clothing. Their husbands had been conscripted into the army, earning barely $35 a month, leaving the mothers with no means to feed their families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQYYCUUDOJGG5M3TVRCFB6KMRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842142},"content":"Elsewhere in the camp, my eye caught a group of children listlessly sitting on a dilapidated playground spinning wheel, its faded colours a faint echo of what should have been a source of joy. I approached and gently picked up one of the boys, who looked no older than three. As I reached to lift him, his frail body startled me; he weighed no more than a loaf of bread, his thin frame almost featherlike in my grasp.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BMBGRACSAFFOHLAFE7T4MT5X7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736323878590},"content":"I nearly overcompensated and flung him over my shoulder, his malnourished form a stark reminder of his fragile state. His limbs felt unnervingly delicate, as though his bones lacked the strength to support him, a haunting testament to the cruel grip of hunger and deprivation. He was in the right place now. Help was at hand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESOI4KOWABBRNG5EYFMHBDU6ZU","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZWBSZLLCJ5E3JAZMIXDHV4T3FY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WIJX7CC3NZBVNDCHJHA6DLWTAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842143},"content":"Gambela","type":"header"},{"_id":"YJSYFLVIMJEKLDAZLYS34FYCLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842144},"content":"Meanwhile, in Gambela, on the other side of the country, refugee camps overflowed with people fleeing conflict in South Sudan. A sea of expectant mothers and children gathered to greet our group, eager to share their stories. Planting the seeds of a brighter future often begins with bold requests.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUOCVLFARBGIHLYOLFS4MNCOEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831006},"content":"“Can we have a generator?” one mother asked earnestly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LI47SE62FVAFFPQNZSONU6YGYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831007},"content":"“Can you send me a tractor?” pleaded another.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AW5L25ZGDVCNJCKO7CHKQDQIIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842145},"content":"In a lighter moment, one of our group members introduced himself, prompting the crowd to erupt in laughter. We were convinced his name translated to something hilariously unfortunate in their language, bringing a rare moment of joy to an otherwise grim setting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WVK3MVB3IVEKXBBYU5KYVCBWZA","additional_properties":{"_id":"RVHNMGCLYFCJXOCG6FHLCUOCPM"},"content":"Sudan war pushing country towards partition, US envoy says","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZEO4IS4GCZAWZPJ3LIINLKB5TQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842146},"content":"Ethiopia’s burden is compounded by one million refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. For a nation that has often been described as the “cradle of humanity”, with one of the world’s oldest humanoids, Lucy, discovered here, it’s a shame the country is where it is economically, socially and by circumstance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SAWIDRDAVAYLMJZZHL3H7G4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842147},"content":"Over six years, supported by USAID, Goal has treated 4.27 million children under five and pregnant women for acute malnutrition across 118 districts. Beyond immediate aid, they’ve strengthened local health systems, ensuring communities can sustain themselves in the long term. In Ethiopia alone, they’ve reached 3.6 million people through direct action and partnerships. Remarkably, 99 per cent of Goal’s staff are Ethiopian nationals – unsung heroes delivering hope in the toughest conditions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AONHE5FVBJH2TGYV27GHL4O77A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842148},"content":"It’s easy to give passively to causes, especially when the conflicts and crises feel distant – out of sight, out of mind. Witnessing this work first hand underscored the critical importance of donations. Without this funding, people die – It’s that simple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65ZVLKV7OBHVXHEEGLIRB6M6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736321831012},"content":"Goal USA is already planning another trip, offering a unique opportunity to witness the resilience of those in need and the transformative power of collective action. Experience it for yourself, remind yourself of your own humanity, and discover how fortunate we truly are.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWKW5JC7A5FIXAQS5KZWPQLV4U","additional_properties":{"_id":"3FN5W5RSH5EU3DUPYRJI5YGKNA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736263842150},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Mark O’Toole"}]},"description":{"basic":"In the 40th anniversary year of Live Aid, New York-based Bray man Mark O’Toole explains what motivated him to do the Great Ethiopian Run"},"display_date":"2025-01-13T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘I landed in Addis Ababa for a challenge that blended my love of running with a commitment to those in need’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2OIQZMEAKNE55H7NDS3ET245DM","auth":{"1":"cd015973bfee53b2b01ebad656b890b93b936ee4dabffff4117834afa30837a7"},"focal_point":{"x":1028,"y":489},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2OIQZMEAKNE55H7NDS3ET245DM.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/13/i-landed-in-addis-ababa-for-a-challenge-that-blended-my-love-of-running-with-a-commitment-to-those-in-need/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"DDIZKLFKEZDFJJVREINLYUQXUQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":291,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c8d93c2d-1aa3-4b5b-92c8-93202c3129e5/versions/1736244248/media/7113f95159e96f945c2466cabc15b0e2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2025/01/12/its-like-disneyland-compared-to-munich-moving-here-immediately-resonated-with-me/","content_elements":[{"_id":"N7TXESMYHFGBPAJXHDDTHM5VJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399364},"content":"Caroline Ryan grew up in a thatched cottage in the village of Boherbue in north Cork, one of a family of four whose father had returned from New Zealand to live in Ireland as a teenager. A photographer and brand consultant, Ryan now lives and works in Copenhagen, her base an early 18th-century converted cargo warehouse in Christianshavn, one of the city’s liveliest neighbourhoods with a hip cafe culture and canals. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denmark/\" target=\"_blank\">Danish</a> supermodel Helena Christensen lives in an apartment nearby.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UU2KTQM53BEMTEMEFX3P7GNIAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399365},"content":"Always interested in working in the fashion industry, Ryan studied international fashion promotion in Manchester and interned with Wolford in Austria during her placement year in 2018. Hired as their social media editor, she worked with them remotely from Manchester during her degree and for six months after graduation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUKRPOO5IVGD7D5GYFHQJOTETI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165079},"content":"Later that year, she got a job in social media with Mytheresa, a leading German online luxury fashion marketplace, in Munich where she worked and lived for nearly two years. “Fashion promotion,” she explains, ‘involves content creation, styling, photography, art direction – everything other than making clothes.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4B6EBZTKXJCNFHNVXTJ4LVMDCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399366},"content":"In 2020, she joined Malene Birger, the eponymous Danish label founded by the artist and designer in 2003, as social media manager and moved into the role of creative content manager during the rebranding of By Malene Birger.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TCLJYAAYHRBTHDWSBUTHVZXCEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165081},"content":"“I wasn’t that passionate initially about social media as you need to have a visual and analytical mind and you need to be able to write. You need all these things in one but at Malene Birger I grew to like it”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SBYOSE3RA5C7XPA2XOYW5KM5FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399367},"content":"She moved to the Danish capital in February 2020 and immediately fell in love with the city. “It’s like Disneyland compared to Munich,” she says, “and Danes are like kittens compared to Munich where people will not shy away from telling you what to do. Moving here immediately resonated with me.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QRJKZGPUYBGJPJP4SBW7UT2UXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399368},"content":"Having done photographic work for the Swedish brand Rodebjer, she joined the company in 2023 working remotely from Copenhagen and remains with them, travelling to the Swedish capital once a month.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRTLYEDFXVADLNIIZLZKAVBHF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165084},"content":"“I shoot everything on an iPhone and, as we are selling clothes, we are mixing ‘lookbook’ campaign imagery with more realistic social media. The campaign images get hundreds of likes but the iPhone images always do better with thousands of likes and that helps to grow the brand quite a lot and seems to engage people more.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GOOANYNJBNCRHILYBSP2ML444U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399369},"content":"She combines her job with working part-time as a freelance photographer as well as brand consulting. Some of her clients include Malene Birger, Remain Birger Christensen and Birrot, a Korean-Danish brand due to show on the official schedule at Copenhagen Fashion Week next season.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XF7YDUZB4ZC5PAR4MF3Q32CX3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399370},"content":"Her apartment, which she shares with her partner Simon Brody, a music therapist, is on the second floor of the building and she explains that “in Copenhagen when you pay your [rental] deposit, you know that at the end of your lease they will subtract the cost of repainting and re-sanding the floorboards, so it comes out of your deposit”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIM4T4VZ4ZFE5FK7UT3YGOSF4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165087},"content":"Though she loves living in the city, she finds the language difficult and admits that “I am not super proud of not being able to speak Danish. It took a while to distinguish between Swedish and Danish”, though that has not stopped her making many friends.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZO5UBINE4JABXJH7YDWMOU5NSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165088},"content":"“Danish people have a reputation for being colder and a little bit difficult and can be slow to open up but I have had amazing conversations with people locally here, so it is what you make of it. Their humour can be similar to ours and is quite dry, but the fashion industry is very international.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2Q4H743AAVBI5FW3U7LJNVZHUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736242399371},"content":"“In Denmark, there is a lot of respect for free time and work-life balance is very important. You can have a full day after the office.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W427V3XQVFMPHMYRSLMUF77K4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165090},"content":"“Danes have a universal level of appreciation of design and no one is trying to do better than anyone else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSIS4COL5FB35KEDNDWQHHTRLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165091},"content":"“In summer you can go for a swim and have a glass of wine afterwards and there is a real village feeling here in Christianshavn. Danes tend to eat at home, as dining out can often be dangerously expensive. When friends visiting from home see in euros what they have paid in krone, they often get a shock”, she says, adding though that “the food scene here is amazing”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q6JGYNISUNC47NONLAUJH6BBZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736244165092},"content":"Her sister, Deborah, who is a TU culinary arts graduate, is also working in the city as a food photographer, host and founder of the Copenhagen Cookbook Club. 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With an annual turnover of €110 million, it has a daily production capacity of more than 100,000 pieces and exports 100 per cent of what it produces, with its main customer being Inditex, the owner of Zara and associated brands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KP5V76HUE5CJTMMW2MZXD54QOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884247},"content":"Walters gained valuable experience there and after graduation went on to win the €3,500 River Island bursary and a three-month paid internship in London for her capsule collection called Waste Not, Want Not inspired by her late grandmother’s philosophy of taking care of her possessions and garments.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2Z3VY5HNVH3TOE27KGSBEWJQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385551},"content":"In the meantime, Guimaraes, who is passionate about sustainability and, like all her family, interested in fabrics, wanted to start her own brand and was adamant that the collection be made from durable natural or cellulose, fossil-free biodegradable fibres.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JAFGHTSV7BG5RDZMB36HLJ5SCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385552},"content":"She called it Taippe (pronounced type) and asked Walters to become its fashion designer. “I agreed and it was an active choice having had experience of fast fashion”, Walters says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YL7SQS3BTBDRBHHO5KAMP23WXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385553},"content":"As a subsidiary of Polopique, Taippe is a capsule unisex wardrobe transcending seasons and trends, embracing a fully vertical production process. “All the Guimaraes stay in the business inspired by their predecessors, but the new generation want to do their own thing” Walters explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZBIDDYIZJCPDL4RSZG3KDM7DU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884248},"content":"She has now settled in Lisbon in a ground floor flat in the centre of the city and commutes to the factory in Vizela every second week for two days where the collection is developed and manufactured.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOGFVWKGHBFHHAIABAVHDRCAPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385555},"content":"“We focus on crafting timeless, versatile garments, high-quality pieces that can be worn and reworn for years. The first collection was trial and error, but you make your mistakes in the first one. We sell directly to consumers from the website,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7PB6AVZNCJDZLB3WOAFY7BQZII","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884249},"content":"She loves Lisbon having lived abroad for over a year. “I work mainly from home because I am a victim of the Covid generation who had to learn to work from home and it works for me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D54QEJ5UT5GZ7EVNFTJF4NCCFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385557},"content":"“I lived in Porto [during the internship] which is only an hour from Vizela and got to know the city well, but wanted to explore the capital,” she says of her move to Lisbon. “I like change. I like new environments, and I am learning Portuguese.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BP4HDX5OKJD6JMWBE6JE53XAOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884250},"content":"Although still relatively new to the city, she finds the locals “incredibly friendly, everybody is willing to chat so it’s similar to the Irish. People want to help you and look after you”, she says. “I find it a youthful city; people want to be out and about all the time and there is always something happening.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6I5ILQHMKBDCTIDY2ARAZ5N3KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385559},"content":"“In Stockholm where I lived for eight months and worked remotely, people really hibernate and everyone wants to have a nice place at home that they don’t want to leave. 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She has found the perfect expression of these ideals working for Taippe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKFXQ4N7UZCBXDLEWMA7TABS6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385562},"content":"“Our aim is to combat fast fashion and unconscious consumerism and grow organically with a commitment to inclusivity across all genders and ages” is the mission statement. They organised a pop-up event in Lisbon and next January will show at Paris Fashion Week at an incubation project called Impossible Objects.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6U675ISXFATLN3JO2Y7JZMA7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385563},"content":"Taippe is also in the forefront when it comes to complying with robust new EU rules regarding garment traceability rolling out in coming years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLWQ6546FVEAVIWR7ZFLHNU74U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385564},"content":"“Every item we produce will have a digital passport and the QR code on the garment will give details of fibre composition, country of origin of materials, where the item was made and ownership,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EDWZPTJOTBG2XODLCDUTNWSQAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730818884252},"content":"The factory environment in Vizela impresses too. “It is ethical, very social and workers are paid well. In the booming Portuguese textile industry everyone knows everyone else, so there are always connections.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5O7L3RY7VGSHCUKK543JBZDSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730820385566},"content":"“The only downside is that it can be difficult to communicate because of my lack of fluency in the language, but Matilde has been my translator. We work with an engineer called Armando and we bring him fabrics that we like so he can reproduce them in a more sustainable way. 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As Australians awake to the unblemished first day of 2025, lids dragging across dry eyeballs in the screaming heat of summer, nasal passages desiccated from air the conditioning that is required to reach a temperature at which you could physically manage sleep the night before, people in Ireland will still be asleep, and it will, if briefly, still be 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PUJ2SZ2SERE7LIOA2LV7M7H6RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687983},"content":"It will be evening here in Canberra before family and friends at back in Ireland awake to the first few hours of 2025, the one foot that has escaped from beneath a high tog duvet numb from the cold, nasal passages full of the seasonal ague that runs through everyone in the house each winter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKCIOA7W4JFETFPQBUQQQ5VDNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687984},"content":"The recent election left people here in Canberra somewhat disgruntled. That too is a state of affairs to which anyone in Ireland can relate. One of the more charming attempts to pacify the masses on behalf of the local government here is a return of the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display at midnight. After all, if people’s heads are craned upward, they have less time to notice reality on the ground. The city is filled with tall apartment buildings, one of which I am lucky enough to live in, so New Year’s Eve will have been spent in a time-honoured tradition – watching Die Hard, followed by catching the fireworks display from the livingroom window.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7ZNVMPKZ4JFMDDLVJLEMVH4YUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687985},"content":"The latter tradition is new to me, and I’m excited about it. The former was developed on the first New Year’s Eve after my mother died nine years ago. Until then, I would close out each December with her in the house in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/limerick/\" target=\"_blank\">Limerick </a>where I grew up, curled on to the battered old sofa we’d had since before I was born, talking about what the next 12 months might hold for us and looking forward to tomorrow, when we would sit down to her obscenely good New Year’s Day dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2B3VUBTIKVDTRL2AW433NP6MNM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687986},"content":"The first December 31st without her fell just a month after her death and it felt like an unbearable proof of her absence. Like a temporal barrier that her living memory would remain forever trapped behind, carrying her further away into the past as I trudged forward, 20-something and baffled without her. She had only been gone for a few weeks, but the moment January crested the hill, it would be true to say that she died “last year”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FPBTK2AEZRAA3GBGROJWWKMTY4","additional_properties":{"_id":"47HD4R35PVETFJMW3QHQGFJQFQ"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"INIIYSEPNJFC5E5FQOGPVKP4X4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687987},"content":"When my then-boyfriend asked what I felt like doing on the last day of that terrible year, I supposed there was only one thing to do. Watch the silliest and least upsetting film I could think of and eat mince pies on the pleather couch of our rented Dublin flat as a way of waiting it out. It became a tradition on a night that is often ultimately about waiting it out for many people. This loaded, liminal night that feels like a death, a funeral and the cusp of something all at once. So we watch the stupid Die Hard films year by year in numerical order (they get progressively worse and therefore more enjoyable), first in Ireland, then the UK, and now in Australia. When we run out, we start again at the beginning. The mince pies don’t vary. They have a sort of blanketing sedative effect on gloomy spirits.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LLJZLJ56Y5GWXFMVM6UJSGVUYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687988},"content":"When you leave home to live in another country, you take with you whichever traditions can feasibly be translated to the new place. Once you have lived a while in the new country, you realise that there are potential selves you might become in other environments. That the person you recognised as yourself in one place can be quite different in another, engaging in different habits, hobbies, and ideas. You naturally respond to the culture, the environment and the incentive structure of the place in which you now live. Maybe it changes you or perhaps it just reveals your potential to live in a different way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWBBZF3OCVHW5OFFZIE6WMEQNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687989},"content":"In Ireland and in London, I never seemed to wake up without my alarm in the morning. Darker, chillier mornings do not beckon a cosy body into wakefulness. Here in Australia, the sun is doing its utmost to melt the window frames before 6am in summer and still beats merrily in by 7am on Canberra’s below-zero winter mornings. In London, I was a significantly more efficient person. The place simply demanded it of me. Everything requires organisation, planning, scheduling, booking ahead and unreasonable levels of waiting. In Australia and in Ireland, I walk at a slower pace and have less panic bashing against my rib cage as I move through the day’s basic tasks. I’m not the impatient person I am in London, nor anywhere near as cool as I pretended to be in London. Australia’s wider streets and bigger scale in general mean that people have more of a concept of personal space than they do in the narrower, older streets and smaller public spaces of home. In Ireland, I am put off exercise by the weather and a more self-conscious culture. In Australia, I do it without much resistance sense of conspicuousness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YEW7ISJXXNCDNHJSMDWF65BKFY","additional_properties":{"_id":"S3KINDF54FGDTMO3RSXDDTMWCA"},"content":"Australia is so very far from Europe and US, and yet is as deeply rooted in Anglosphere norms, customs and culture","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QMUGF6BWANBDNPIZWSCZCSTEVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687990},"content":"A new year is a new beginning. I don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has all the vast unfamiliarity to me that the country itself still does.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKBY67GUZFGBRCC6BSSGQQQSEE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687991},"content":"That’s a bit frightening. It’s exciting, too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4U3WMDP6TJHTHGJQ4JFCLKFGXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734380687992},"content":"It might be cheating to express the hope that 2025 will hold a visit home for me. It’s wonderful to experience new selves in new places, but I prefer not to go too long without reconnecting with the original. The person who sat down to New Year’s Day dinner in my mother’s house, and didn’t yet realise how much we can change when we need to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"I don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has a vast unfamiliarity to me that country itself still does"},"display_date":"2025-01-01T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"New Year’s in Australia: When you leave home to live abroad, you take any traditions you can feasibly translate","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7N4JX6QUQVD55KK7VCIJEU3QJY","auth":{"1":"b1595bc12ca61028f6af2670d9cbed5409dc3e08860c002d927caaa5f8bdceb3"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7N4JX6QUQVD55KK7VCIJEU3QJY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2025/01/01/new-years-in-australia-when-you-leave-home-to-live-abroad-you-take-any-traditions-you-can-feasibly-translate/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"SYGKF7ASHBBMJHYH66AN5YYNXM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":716,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/de21a545-ee54-47b0-b538-7e013c5df815/versions/1733743569/media/499826eaa09f0317e0468c091fcd9d1b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CDOLATM7IJA4XLWAVLH3MZA7SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106649},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRRXWMY6PJA6HAQ2R5CMLNJ5GM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735121},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W4Q5LDLUVATBNUTTJD7MG2ZQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106651},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCZOFF5XFDHFE7XL4RVZK23OE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106654},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ARXFT3O2BGVLCAMCXVGU5BAHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733660725185},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFN7HZSL75G27JG7K7AULC6RSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735124},"content":"Recently, a meme was sent around various friends’ groups that said: “If your job can’t be illustrated by an animal wearing a hat in a children’s book, it’s not a real job,” along with a whimsical drawing of a pig farmer, a sheep baker, a construction worker dog and so on. We were showing this to each other to acknowledge that, by and large, we have jobs that are not easily communicable, whose dubious use cannot be simply conveyed. They are jobs that sound frivolous to our parents and, in our deepest hearts, to ourselves; or which have needlessly convoluted titles, making it impossible for most people to parse their meaning, or which involve much co-ordinating of communications and very little material action (these we dismissively call “email jobs” and as the media continues to disintegrate and devalue its workers, many of those of us who write are desperate to return to the comparative peace of the email jobs we happily shed in our early 20s in search of creative fulfilment).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3E2MTQIBG5DAHN2ZYIGOOQSZTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106650},"content":"The subject must have been on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/megan-nolan\" target=\"_blank\">my mind</a> already, only weeks before having had a dream in which I was watching a horror film where a villain trapped hordes of people in a mansion and began to pick them off according to how useless and fanciful their jobs were; the plumber lives, the senior director of search engine optimisation dies. Work – the value of my own, the meaning of work in one’s life generally – is something I have been contemplating more and more as I enter my mid-30s and lines are becoming more concretely drawn about what sort of lives my friends and I are leading. The babies are coming, most notably.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W4Q5LDLUVATBNUTTJD7MG2ZQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106651},"content":"A friend who is trying to get pregnant and I spoke about the process, and she commented that even though she was now actively trying to do so, pregnancy still seemed preposterous: “It’s okay when other people do it, but for me it is against nature, fantasy novel stuff.” I am single and have never particularly wanted children, so the defining element of my middle age is not going to be based around babies, barring an unforeseen radical shift in my desires or a tragic yet uplifting tale where a close friend is killed in a plane crash and has curiously decided to leave the care of their child to me, the irresponsible city girl, teaching me – and the kid! – a few choice life lessons along the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWAO3WTR4FBWVLKBYIXQ3UCIBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"4246CUHC35F63FOAA57RVFTPJQ"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"NDF577J7UVB7PK424UPGXPYA4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106652},"content":"None of this has really impacted my life just yet as is typical of my generation and the cities I live in. I moved from London to New York this year with some awareness that it is even more difficult to buy property and raise children in New York, so I could perhaps outrun the inevitable shift a little longer here. For the moment, most people I know here are, like me, still figuring out what to prioritise and what is possible. But it’s happening, nonetheless, the lines are being drawn: do you give precedence to family and marriage, work, friends, or adventure? Only the truly wealthy can attempt to have a bit of everything.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKQNFQ6PQJFAHNRKQUS7HI4CCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106653},"content":"Recently, the realities of this new era in my life became clear, chasteningly so, when I began to date a man in his late 30s. Admittedly, Americans often date in an aggressive, turbocharged fashion, which is alien and crass to me as a person from Ireland and having lived a long time in England, where emotion and relationship vagaries are not discussed with the same brutal, bureaucratic efficiency. This man and I only saw each other for six weeks or so, but we had become close quickly and things felt like they could become serious if given the chance. I brought him to my apartment with a bunch of my friends for tacos and the presidential debates, that innocent time only weeks ago when such things could be consumed as mere spectacle. We spent weekend mornings walking his dog around the Brooklyn neighbourhood he lived in, which was almost nauseatingly aesthetically pleasing in the autumn, reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Halloween before all the stabbing begins. I woke up one Sunday and walked into his livingroom where he was sitting in the sunlit armchair doing a crossword while my favourite album played and thought: yes, I could see this working, I would like to make this work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCZOFF5XFDHFE7XL4RVZK23OE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106654},"content":"Instead, things fell apart spectacularly after a conversation in which he worried that I was not open to children and marriage. I tried to make my case – I had simply never seriously dated anyone who wanted those things before, it hadn’t come up. I am not closed off to them but I would only want them with somebody who I am in love with. I do not want them abstractly. The falling in love would have to happen before I could want them, and six weeks was not long enough for me to feel confidence about love, marriage, or children. He would also want to leave New York, a place I love more than anywhere and have only just managed to arrive after years of planning, to raise said children. Trying to be reasonable and open-minded, I asked where he might like to live if not New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBPSBMFRXNFHRL6NIBB23YOQVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106655},"content":"“I don’t know ... New Jersey?” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIPPMXNGRFDZ5MSKV2TMD6434A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735131},"content":"“<i>New</i> <i>Jersey?</i>” I couldn’t help but gasp back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IPE4ZKXWZBHJPDZOE2TVEVK364","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735132},"content":"And that, more or less, was that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LAJ6XGC3RFFDDF5ADILIALOWPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106656},"content":"He was right to do what was best for him, to ensure he was in with the best chance of the kids and wife and house and yard he wanted. I didn’t hold it against him, but it felt lonely and frightening to think that it is no longer possible to only be open to what may arise in life but that it may now be the case that you must enter each interaction with defined aims in mind, and if you didn’t, then tough luck.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYBF6XLVGBD6XMIR6MJT4SARAM","additional_properties":{"_id":"S5JVOULWRFDNLLTEDDYDT6NM7Y"},"content":"Megan Nolan: I gave Dublin a shot for seven years and nothing good had come of it. Why not cut my losses?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UCM3O2Q5JZC37GMXICGXXWF6AM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106657},"content":"Nowadays, for women who don’t have or want children, it is often expected culturally that you take that effort and pride, and direct it to your work. This is, obviously, a vast improvement on the situation historically when such a woman was consigned to embarrassed ignorance at best and open attack, derision and violence at worst. There are, as indicated by the deeply disturbing gender wars, which have become explicit post-Trump re-election, a sizeable contingent of men still who will publicly say that a woman’s only function is procreation, and that any other personhood or value she holds is meaningless by comparison. Even those who are not so medieval in their thinking, though, even the relatively right-on, even women ourselves, tend to look at a childless woman and think, “So what are you doing instead?”, as though we owe a dazzling and remarkably successful career in lieu of the human beings we failed to produce.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GJFME5EWYD4YJ67XMJVWQMXAQA","additional_properties":{"_id":"D43B6VL5A5EEJHCWVG524K7GHA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"TXTDCCAM35GNBE45GDUXM7PRXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106658},"content":"I thought this myself for a long stretch. Emerging from the first half of my 20s, which were defined entirely by the need to be domesticated and accepted and taken care of by a man, I figured, logically enough, that the only acceptable recourse was to turn the other way and refuse those desires entirely. I focused on work instead, to create what I hoped would be the stable identity I had negated through my need for love. I didn’t do this in the coherent, concentrated way that would have been more satisfying – no studying, no degree, no official stamp to tell me I had come good, in fact no employment whatsoever – but in fits and starts I cobbled together a writing career and went on to publish novels, a thing that seemed like an impossibly grandiose dream for my whole life. And there was a narrative satisfaction in the turn of events, that I had taken all the debasement and spiritual aridness of those love-addict years and digested them into something that would come to give me the means, both practically and emotionally, to see myself as a fully autonomous and independent person.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3MY6U25QAVBQRJOJPJKX45SE5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106659},"content":"I am proud of my work, or at least I am more glad that I produced it than ashamed of its failings, and it is also true that there is little as inconsistent as writing, or any art-making, to provide you with self worth. There is also little that has demonstrated to me the arbitrary nature of evaluation as clearly as selling books. You hear of one incontrovertible genius, beloved by readers and critics, selling her short story collection for what amounts to a month or two of minimum wage, and then another person getting hundreds of thousands for a concept, which must have appeared promising, but was not underwritten by talent or experience and goes on to sell nothing. The whole experience made money itself seem fake to me, and then I realised that it is in a sense fake, an illusion we all have to commonly agree upon to keep the wheels turning. The arbitrary nature of how art work is received is similarly destabilising: when I had an office job, the amount and quality of work I did was quantifiable whether by the number of reports I finished or hours I spent on the phone or emails returned. Now, though, while some people may find value in what I do, many others don’t, so who am I to decide what is work, and how hard I have done it?","type":"text"},{"_id":"JTZEBAJSPZC6TPNHTBRTVNOF3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106660},"content":"I think, too, about the way that work has changed through the generations, and how this abstraction colours the relationship to it. My grandfather John Nolan began as a labourer in Telecom Éireann. His final rank survey officer, and his son, my father, became the playwright and director Jim Nolan. After getting my not entirely technically minded father hired at Telecom Éireann(which became known as Eircom and then later Eir), my grandfather must have been alarmed to see him eventually depart to make a living out of thought and words instead of quantifiable action. And yet he had built him a shed in their garden to write in. I was moved to learn this, the thought of the physical labour of my grandfather being put to this use, facilitating a practice and a life for my father that could hardly have been more alien to his own.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3WHEDA2WNFH7IGHFU7SN4SUDY","additional_properties":{"_id":"4GKAJUWQAJDKTF34YUJ6TMGOXA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"6KLQWTXL6ZDCXIQ34TJRA5KQHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106661},"content":"Lately I stood there in the doorway of that garden so that my dad could point out the absence of a tree that had been cut down, allowing for an overly stark sightline between the house behind and my grandmother’s house – “I thought he was going to come down out of the window,” she said, of the neighbouring man she could newly see peering out across from her. Dad pointed out where the shed had been, and said his father had installed a gas heater to keep him warm, or possibly try to kill him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y57PPI6XQVCQFFP5IPGZIVNT7U","additional_properties":{"_id":"OQHABCWAPFHKHG5TBJEZ32USBA"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"5FJPCDPTYRBS5K4FJQV7JDKIMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733506735139},"content":"I was thinking that day about a quote I like from one of my favourite books. I like it despite, or maybe because of, the fact it disquiets me, presenting a position that is, if true, in direct opposition to how I have so far lived my life. The quote is from the novel Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham, and says: “He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5KA7C3LV5BD3NCHBNU4VUDYTM","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZGMRPU6VMZH45FGOLVNFFACJSM"},"content":"I bought CDs, rented videos and lost my virginity to a boy I met on MySpace","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"COL4RPNICVFR5F5T5BMVGMK344","additional_properties":{"_id":1733499106662},"content":"Looking at the space my father’s shed had once been, a monument to my grandad’s faith in the possibilities of his life, I thought about how work did not have to have its own inbuilt or inherent meaning – that perhaps in my grandfather’s case, his hard work was made meaningful by allowing him such things as to build that offering to my dad, to support the people closest to him in ways both logistically and otherwise. Though what my dad and I both do is difficult to justify as hard work compared with most jobs, I think in its best moments it shares something with this notion of facilitating closeness; it is an attempt in one guise or another to recognise those around you and see them for who they are and hold them near you, be they a child, a parent, a friend, or a stranger who chances upon the words. All my life I have wanted nothing more than the company of other people, to care for and cook for them and make them laugh and live alongside them, and if the work can help me afford that time, then it has done enough for me, and I for it.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Megan Nolan"}]},"description":{"basic":"Family, career, friends or adventure? Only the truly wealthy can attempt to have a bit of everything"},"display_date":"2024-12-26T05:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Megan Nolan: A conversation with a man in his late 30s made clear the realities of this new era in my dating life","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"IRRC5APJ6NAB3JKE6WMJ42RXUE","auth":{"1":"904fa0b3783e829af805534760dfdc57116cf518fe674825be31ca55228faec3"},"focal_point":{"x":714,"y":1250},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/IRRC5APJ6NAB3JKE6WMJ42RXUE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"People"},{"name":"Abroad"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/people/2024/12/26/megan-nolan-family-career-friends-or-adventure-only-the-truly-wealthy-can-attempt-to-have-a-bit-of-everything/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style/people","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"People"}}}},{"_id":"7RIZJVJBHNDBFJKP2IUPI4TEVE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":427,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/da208224-5043-4d8f-9d2f-8e8948a1fcd4/versions/1734707046/media/d4f84ec2aaf9709ab882d29e620f4e28_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/25/sailing-around-the-world-through-patchy-french-and-with-the-aid-of-paper-and-pencils-we-exchange-stories-of-our-adventures/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ABTUUR4BDJAGRDPA5TQOUGNL2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686733},"content":"The tiny coral atoll of Maupiha’a lies 120 nautical miles west of Bora Bora’s five-star over-water bungalows. This paradise rises only a few feet above sea level and, with just seven residents and two dogs, it’s no tourist hotspot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CO7NJ7VGYZED7EDOPKQKALLEBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686734},"content":"Helming our <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">sailboat</a>, we make a careful approach with the help of our chart plotter and satellite imagery. Compared to our own technology-heavy circumnavigation, I’m in awe of the early Polynesian settlers. More than two thousand years ago, in wooden outrigger canoes, they navigated this vast ocean using the stars as their guide.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HYKXMFAYSBERXEY7MVTJWEPEJE","additional_properties":{"_id":"MVSNHODLBJFQLGIJHT7M7MSEQI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"22W4U44MKNCCTEYI3BC3YEVZM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686735},"content":"Access to the atoll’s interior is via a narrow passage where the ocean floods in and ebbs out on the tide and capricious currents swirl menacingly. Furling away our sails, we engage our engines. As we accelerate, steep underwater coral walls either side of us are illuminated by scattered beams of sunlight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WWMBBOEA6JCNZHO7TB5GYFEZQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686736},"content":"Our bows slice through Maupiha’a’s inner lagoon, hemmed by palm-covered islets. Nesting terns stalk from above, while six grey reef sharks, attracted to our anchor chain lowering, begin to circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDUCAYFJ4BEP5KLMRHIEYKPUAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686737},"content":"A sturdy woman and tattooed man with rock-solid biceps paddle towards us. “La Ora Na!” (Tahitian hello). “Tu-veux du poisson?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KRCXX37FE5G4RFVHMMT45BN6AY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686738},"content":"Placing six parrot fish neatly on our back step, Harry and Norma introduce themselves, inviting us to their place “tout moment” before vanishing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K3KCAMM3INFKVPZSIZPWRD7S4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686739},"content":"Since arriving in this country 14 months ago, the interchange between languages is a constant reminder that French Polynesia is an overseas collectivity of France. Recently, the pro-independence party came into power and it’s not difficult to understand some of the reasons why. That 193 atomic bombs were detonated by the French, contaminating atolls like this one until 1996, is the most horrifying one to me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6TPC7OSHRA33M6C7KRZVHWYXE","additional_properties":{"_id":"MD3ANFKUVBEGLHSPN2NUONIKLA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"34QZXPU4DZBJDLWOQIUEOLVAMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686740},"content":"Sending ripples across the glassy lagoon, we startle a green turtle and two burrowing stingrays. Through knee-deep water, over coral-pink sand, we wade, dragging our paddle-boards up the beach.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOEXXPBIE5BJNMMMCNHWEGIG3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686741},"content":"Crafted from woven palm fronds, a little house sits pleasantly under shady overhanging trees. Rows of vegetables, planted in sandy soil, span an impressive variety and nearby, a tiny generator, rainwater catchment system and solar panels complete the technological array.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2NWEYLF4ZGJ3BGCPUWU7W4MJU","additional_properties":{"_id":"2IDKQFQU2ZBT5DSZWKQKWDIMOE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"L6TVGCEVQFBULLJONSRS45IDKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686742},"content":"I open my bag placing a contribution on the table – flour, mayonnaise, cooking oil, fishing hooks and two spare knives. A black terrier barks playfully until Norma appears, shushing the mutt who’s tied to a tree. Punishment, apparently, for gobbling the remaining chickens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JIROWUTKQFH5BJS4JUJTG65K7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686743},"content":"Barefoot, we explore the airless palm forest that runs parallel to the ocean. Machetes and other tools for de-husking coconuts litter the path. A lapis lazuli-coloured coconut crab emerges from a pile of fallen fronds snapping its claws at me. Further along coconut flesh dries in the sun being transformed into what’s known as Copra.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W6R3XX2KVCSXMHNDNCZW4SW3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686744},"content":"On our return, four green coconuts have been set on a table, a drinking hole punched out of each.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIFMAQBKPFASVBZTPWAQTZ3QO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686745},"content":"“C’est pour tu!” Norma says daubing her forehead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVZB52YUWBBRPFTB7Z6DR5T3FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686746},"content":"Flies are swatted, and bowls uncovered reveal an unexpected banquet: speared tuna steaks and sashimi, curried coconut crab, taro, rice and coconut cake. I notice a Ukulele in the corner too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZ57CG6AMFB3VPCXPB4YQ7VQAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686747},"content":"We begin to chat. Their home atoll, Maupiti, is just 95 nautical miles away. They’re here to harvest Copra. With a weighty quota to meet before the Copra ship will come for them, and only seven people to process it, two years has passed since they’ve been home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S44PR2P6SJHVXC77VBCE7AGYEI","additional_properties":{"_id":"I2YBW2G5D5FKJCAO7IG7MD2GGY"},"content":"I have sailed halfway around the world with my partner, living off rental income and remote freelance work’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"E2NWHZZVBNFMNCEALDSE3AP2IU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686748},"content":"But they do seem content. They say, this place gives them everything they need.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63ZZNDXY2RDSBLHKF5GFJROMGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686749},"content":"“Socialising with sailors is important though.” Norma explains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVTZQDHEQVHQ7ES23KUT7KKBJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686750},"content":"Through our patchy French and with the aid of paper and pencils, we exchange stories of our adventures. Us transients, I realise, are their link to the outside world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWHOAXK2QBCPZGM3B2QSYQFR5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686751},"content":"One evening, under a waxing gibbous moon, Harry leads us through the coconut palms. He’s been fattening up coconut crabs in traps. Keeping all fingers intact, masterfully he handles them into netted bags.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7DFDJW7JVAGDANLTSZP4LXEEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686752},"content":"Harry points skyward “During cyclones, we chop away branches to reduce swaying. Climb up, tie ourselves there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KNZPCUCA4VE5JAIFUUM6N4BYKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686753},"content":"This is how, in 1991, the residents survived cyclone Wasa-Arthur’s eight-metre waves that submerged all but the tallest treetops.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QFGCMD2BRBH3ZJHLJ63VIEEZ7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"SIGJLS74G5CX3FF2YMBE6KXUVI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"BP3D46FQIBFE5NN5TZZKM777EA","additional_properties":{"_id":"HIDV7VK5BFFL5D4CKNX5KYIPCE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"4ZYH567BSVC4LGWFZG6NIZFB2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686754},"content":"Life here is precarious: climate change brings more frequent cyclones, while storms from thousands of miles away create surges capable of engulfing an atoll like this one. Without access to weather forecasting, like their Polynesians ancestors, they look to nature’s signals; the behaviour of wildlife, the angle and movement of trees, cloud formations and the sea state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AE72LSSWKBGFHLGWR7Z37YPBQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686755},"content":"On the 12th night, an east wind blows – the time for our onward journey to Samoa has arrived. Coconuts and papayas are packed into our dinghy, a gift from Maupiha’a we’re told. A guestbook containing sailors’ messages of gratitude dating back years is passed to us to sign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OSYH3ERTXZF53JZ3IWV4CXSYLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686756},"content":"The roar of the Pacific beckons us to walk the outer reef one last time. I watch the night sky mirrored in rock pools and beyond the whitewash of a thousand breaking waves. At first light we’ll weigh anchor, all the richer for the time spent with these resilient and generous hosts in this wild place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZSUID24IQVE5DKQOF7YSOUKH2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734432686757},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Kate Ashe-Leonard"}]},"description":{"basic":"Dubliner Kate Ashe-Leonard left Ireland in 2017 to live with her partner in London. In 2018, they began their adventure to sail around the world"},"display_date":"2024-12-25T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"An Irishwoman sailing around the world: ‘This paradise has just seven residents and two dogs’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"PI6NRC3VRJCNPNK2OSDGT3UKYM","auth":{"1":"e0a1228ddec93c1d0b4866c08dc86d0f77c166c3b2ba7ddec1e8292a7902c5e5"},"focal_point":{"x":452,"y":201},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/PI6NRC3VRJCNPNK2OSDGT3UKYM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/25/sailing-around-the-world-through-patchy-french-and-with-the-aid-of-paper-and-pencils-we-exchange-stories-of-our-adventures/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"DJ2CR5SX2JC7JN5EZPSROJM4NU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":66,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/63fc897e-356c-48f3-9b48-9716f9edacc0/versions/1734727677/media/893b8e71e5237c1f73ff69efffdd27e1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/2024/12/23/the-big-irish-times-quiz-of-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"DKDSTFQWSBDA3JPMS46OQ7LAXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734719468775},"content":"Are you ready to test your memory and see just how much you know about the world in 2024? From current events to pop culture, to sports and political earthquakes, answer 100 questions in our annual quiz and you could win this great prize:","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJKDEPJFVZCUHDAFWW4DYNLEAM","additional_properties":{"_id":"LTTQC6542NHMJCW4GB74DB3GRQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X7U2ECRALJBCZJHFU6K46W5GBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734720910742},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irelands-blue-book.ie/\">Ireland’s Blue Book</a> is delighted to offer the winner of the Big Irish Times Quiz of the Year an overnight stay for two in Ballymaloe House, Co Cork, including dinner and breakfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SXR65F2ZMZBRTCH2MQQRUI2M7E","additional_properties":{"_id":"6N63MTABLBH45KPYSLUXKHSYRM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CNO6S6BCTRCVJLPAGG533U2NEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734725932319},"content":"Ballymaloe House Hotel is a family-owned country house hotel and restaurant, nestled in the lush countryside of east Cork. A tranquil retreat with luxurious accommodation, a celebrated farm-to-fork dining experience, 300-acres of land and the very best of Irish hospitality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEUS2VK645H6XA2DPHVGHRGGMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734720910744},"content":"Closing date is Monday, January 6th, 2025, at 5pm GMT. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/competitions/\">Terms and conditions apply</a>. The winner and quiz answers will be published in The Irish Times Magazine on Saturday, January 18th. Best of luck.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EABYJJHLLRC7DEJMWYSE3YFQ4M","additional_properties":{"_id":"3NUOIPTBKZFD3HRZGOTB3X7I6U"},"content":"<div class=\"riddle2-wrapper\" data-rid-id=\"cJLK0FVl\" data-auto-scroll=\"true\" data-auto-scroll-offset=\"100\" data-is-fixed-height-enabled=\"false\" data-bg=\"#fff\" data-fg=\"#00205b\" style=\"margin:0 auto; max-width:100%; width:100%;\" data-embed-url=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/a/cJLK0FVl?lazyImages=true&staticHeight=false\"><script src=\"https://www.riddle.com/embed/build-embedjs/embedV2.js\"><\/script><iframe title=\"The Big Christmas Quiz 2024\" allow=\"autoplay\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin\"><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I feel nothing. He isn’t in my thoughts.” In January, whose former partner, Jules Thomas, reacted to news of his death?</h3><ul><li>Ian Bailey </li><li>John Bruton</li><li>Liam Payne </li><li>OJ Simpson</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“kamala IS brat.” In July, which pop star tweeted her support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic US presidential candidate?</h3><ul><li>Taylor Swift</li><li>Charli XCX</li><li>Dua Lipa</li><li>Chappell Roan </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“The tank is next to me. It’s moving.” “Is it very close?” “Very, very. Will you come and get me? I’m so scared.” In January, these were the last words spoken by Hind Rajab(5) to the Red Crescent after coming under Israeli tank fire where?</h3><ul><li>Gaza City </li><li>West Bank</li><li>Golan Heights</li><li>Lebanon</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“There are no more mountains. That’s it. I’m done now.” In August, Kellie Harrington announced her retirement from boxing after securing her second Olympic gold medal by defeating...?</h3><ul><li>Alessia Mesiano (Italy) </li><li>Angie Valdes (Colombia)</li><li>Beatriz Ferreira (Brazil)</li><li>Wenlu Yang (China)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I don’t think there’s an inmate left down there.” In March, police commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille confirmed the escape of almost 4,000 prisoners from the national penitentiary of which country?</h3><ul><li>El Salvador </li><li> Democratic Republic of the Congo</li><li>Haiti</li><li>Nigeria </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Well, it makes sense. You put New York and Dublin together and what do you get?” In May, late-night US TV comedian Stephen Colbert compared antisocial behaviour at the New York-Dublin Portal to what?</h3><ul><li>Bedlam </li><li>Boredom</li><li>Bacchanalia</li><li>Boston</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I don’t feel that I’m the best person for that job anymore.” In March, who unexpectedly announced they were stepping down from their job but would remain in office until a replacement was chosen?</h3><ul><li>Joe Biden </li><li>Jürgen Klopp</li><li>Leo Varadkar </li><li>Bill Belichick</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, a German court upheld the country’s ban on what phrase?</h3><ul><li>“It is what it is” </li><li>“My honour is loyalty”</li><li>“From the river to the sea”</li><li>“That was not on my 2024 bingo card”</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.” In April, Paste Magazine explained why which article appeared without a byline?</h3><ul><li>A report on corporate malfeasance </li><li>An exposé of Israeli war crimes in Gaza</li><li>An article calling on US Republicans to dump Donald Trump as their presidential nominee</li><li>A negative review of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.” In March, who was forced to admit altering a Mother’s Day photograph?</h3><ul><li>Karlie Kloss</li><li> Kim Kardashian</li><li>Kate Middleton</li><li>Annie Leibovitz</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>According to then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar, why were asylum seekers sleeping in tents in Dublin moved out of the city centre during March’s St Patrick’s Day festivities?</h3><ul><li>Optics</li><li>Health and safety</li><li>Decentralisation</li><li>Bureaucratic error</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, what did then British prime minister Rishi Sunak vow that his country would refuse to accept back from Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Tony Cascarino</li><li>The Treaty Ports </li><li>Asylum seekers</li><li>The Wellington Monument </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, there was outrage when it was revealed the OPW paid more than €335,000 for what?</h3><ul><li>A bike shed </li><li>Eco-toilets</li><li>The relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux</li><li>Oasis tickets </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which Irish actor raised more than €900,000 for charity by running the Dublin Marathon?</h3><ul><li>Brendan Gleeson </li><li>Saoirse Ronan</li><li>Cillian Murphy</li><li>Colin Farrell</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, who became Limerick’s first directly elected mayor?</h3><ul><li>Daniel Butler </li><li>John Moran</li><li>Helen O’Donnell</li><li>Dee Ryan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, Taoiseach Simon Harris was briefed about the existence of “Cobalt”, an Oireachtas member allegedly recruited as an intelligence agent for which country?</h3><ul><li>China </li><li>Russia </li><li>United Kingdom</li><li>United States</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, Merchants Arch in Temple Bar became the first pub in Ireland to offer what?</h3><ul><li>A cashless bar</li><li>A silent disco</li><li>AI bartenders</li><li>€10 pints</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, following arrests in Cork and Kerry, the Garda announced that which organisation was now operating in Ireland?</h3><ul><li>Peaky Blinders </li><li>New Jersey mob</li><li>Sinaloa cartel</li><li>Paw Patrol</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, a court heard that, despite being incarcerated in Mountjoy for many months, the controversial teacher Enoch Burke was still receiving what?</h3><ul><li>Jobseeker’s allowance </li><li>Malaria tablets </li><li>Daily prisoner orientation briefings</li><li>His full salary</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>During the general election campaign in November, Taoiseach Simon Harris apologised to Charlotte Fallon, a voter in Co Cork, for walking away when she tried to ask him about low pay in her job sector. What is her profession?</h3><ul><li>Nurse</li><li>Teacher</li><li>Disability care worker</li><li>HSE consultant </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, the Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan handed control of four villages to which country in a bid to avert war?</h3><ul><li>Azerbaijan</li><li>Iran </li><li>Russia</li><li>Turkey</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, organisers of the Paris Olympics insisted that a controversial drag performance during the opening ceremony was inspired, not by the Last Supper, but by what?</h3><ul><li>The Simpsons</li><li>Greek mythology</li><li>Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe</li><li>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, angry Valencia residents booed and threw eggs at Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia when they visited in the aftermath of what type of disaster?</h3><ul><li>Earthquake </li><li>Tsunami</li><li>Wildfire</li><li>Flood</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, Iran’s president and foreign minister were killed in a helicopter crash while returning from where?</h3><ul><li>A factory tour in Kazakhstan</li><li>A dam opening in Azerbaijan</li><li>A bridge dedication in Turkmenistan</li><li>A luau in Tajikistan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia the previous summer on what?</h3><ul><li>Food poisoning </li><li>War plans leaked to Russia</li><li>Waterlogged battlefields</li><li>Injuries to and suspensions of his field commanders</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, what did Ireland, Spain and Norway announce?</h3><ul><li>A joint bid to host the 2034 World Cup</li><li>A major fishing-rights agreement </li><li>Recognition of the state of Palestine</li><li>Their intention to form a new Eurovision voting bloc</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, which unexpected devices, belonging to members of Hizbullah, detonated in simultaneous explosions across Lebanon?</h3><ul><li>Pagers and walkie-talkies </li><li>Landlines and fax machines</li><li>BlackBerrys and floppy disks</li><li>Walkmans and disposable cameras</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Norwegian authorities denied that a Russian “spy whale” found dead had been shot. How did they claim it died?</h3><ul><li>By falling out of a fourth-floor window</li><li>By hanging itself in its jail cell</li><li>By accidentally overdosing </li><li>By getting a stick lodged in its mouth</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act provides fast-track citizenship to immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan provided they are not what?</h3><ul><li>Podcasters </li><li>Influencers</li><li>Muslims</li><li>Illegal drug users</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March’s Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin won a reported 88 per cent of the vote to extend his rule until when?</h3><ul><li>2028 </li><li>2030</li><li>2036</li><li>2040</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August at the Paris Olympics, the French pole-vaulter Anthony Ammirati went viral when which part of his anatomy appeared to knock the crossbar?</h3><ul><li>His foot </li><li>His elbow</li><li>His head</li><li>His crotch</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, who overtook Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke in the home straight to snatch bronze in the women’s 400m Olympic final?</h3><ul><li>Marileidy Paulino (Dominican Republic) </li><li>Sharlene Mawdsley (Ireland)</li><li>Natalia Kaczmarek (Poland)</li><li>Amber Anning (GB)</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Connacht and Ireland rugby star Bundee Aki was one of 3,600 people who took part in what kind of event at Convention Centre Dublin?</h3><ul><li>Citizenship ceremony </li><li>Comic-Con</li><li>Moonie wedding</li><li>Multilevel-marketing seminar</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, which became the first continental European club to win a GAA provincial match when it beat Conahy Shamrocks in Kilkenny?</h3><ul><li>St Petersburg Emmets </li><li>Helsinki Shamrocks</li><li>Barcelona Gaels</li><li> Istanbul St Mary’s</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, which player – arguably the most hyped name in women’s basketball – was controversially left out of the US 2024 Olympic squad?</h3><ul><li> Brittney Griner </li><li>Caitlin Clark</li><li>Breanna Stewart</li><li>A’ja Wilson</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, why did Luke Littler’s progress to the final of the PDC World Darts Championship generate unprecedented attention for the sport?</h3><ul><li>He’s ambidextrous </li><li>He’s a teetotaller</li><li>He was educated at Eton </li><li>He was 16 years old</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, what unusual exercise did Shelbourne boss Damien Duff tell his players to engage in as they closed in on the League of Ireland title?</h3><ul><li>Knitting </li><li>Bubble-wrap popping</li><li>Primal-scream therapy</li><li>Watching Only Fools and Horses</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>With a gold and a bronze medal, who was Ireland’s single most successful athlete at the Paris Olympics?</h3><ul><li>Kellie Harrington </li><li>Rhys McClenaghan</li><li>Mona McSharry</li><li>Daniel Wiffen</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At the Euros in July, how did the Spanish FA reportedly risk prosecution by selecting Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal to play against Georgia in the round of 16?</h3><ul><li>He’d picked up two yellow cards in the group stage </li><li>He’d failed to submit to a random drug test after Spain’s game against Albania </li><li>Officials had raised questions about his eligibility to represent his country</li><li>It was an evening kick-off, and German law forbids minors from working past 8pm</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, after they fought in Texas, what dirty trick did Katie Taylor’s defeated opponent, Amanda Serrano, accuse the Irish boxer of employing?</h3><ul><li> Greasing</li><li>Headbutting</li><li>Bribing the judges</li><li>Loading her gloves</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At which Irish venue did Taylor Swift’s Eras tour stop for three sold-out performances in June?</h3><ul><li>Aviva Stadium </li><li>Croke Park</li><li>Páirc Uí Chaoimh</li><li>RDS</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, who made a surprise appearance onstage with The Wolfe Tones at Electric Picnic?</h3><ul><li>Liam Gallagher </li><li>Kellie Harrington</li><li>Kneecap</li><li>Michelle O’Neill</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, a diss track called Not Like Us was widely reckoned to have settled “the defining hip-hop beef of the 21st century” in whose favour?</h3><ul><li>Drake’s </li><li>Kendrick Lamar’s</li><li>50 Cent’s</li><li>Diddy’s</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, Ireland’s Eurovision entry, BambieThug, was asked to remove pro-Palestinian messages written on their body in what script?</h3><ul><li>Kanji </li><li>Arabic</li><li>Sanskrit </li><li>Ogham</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, veteran rockers Deep Purple admitted to carrying out which showbiz deception?</h3><ul><li>Lip-syncing</li><li>Crotch-stuffing </li><li>Telling crowds in multiple cities that they were, by far, the best audience in the world</li><li>Staging a farewell tour when they had no intention of retiring</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, Hozier’s Too Sweet became the first Irish song to top the Billboard Hot 100 since which single?</h3><ul><li>U2’s Beautiful Day </li><li>The Cranberries's Dreams</li><li>Sinéad O’Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U</li><li>Chris de Burgh's Lady in Red</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which comeback album did The Irish Times praise as “majestically desolate, gorgeously grim”?</h3><ul><li>The Cure's Songs of a Lost World </li><li>Eminem's The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)</li><li>Jennifer Lopez’ This Is Me…Now</li><li>Vampire Weekend's Only God Was Above Us</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, which of his lesser-known skills did Usher showcase during the Super Bowl half-time show in Las Vegas?</h3><ul><li>Juggling </li><li>Roller-skating</li><li>Bouncing a penny into a glass</li><li>Breaking an apple in half with his bare hands</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, which Irish act did Elton John call “the best band” in the world right now?</h3><ul><li>Fontaines DC </li><li>Pillow Queens</li><li>Kneecap</li><li>Boyzlife</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In June, the video for Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please single featured a cameo by which Irish actor?</h3><ul><li>Michael Fassbender </li><li>Andrew Scott</li><li>Sharon Horgan</li><li>Barry Keoghan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Coolock says No.” In August, after an anti-immigration rally in Belfast, far-right activists from north Dublin reportedly spent the evening socialising with members of which organisation?</h3><ul><li>UDA </li><li>IRA</li><li>International Committee of the Red Cross</li><li>Oireachtas Golf Society</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“One of the advantages of being blind and in journalism is that you can focus on the words.” In July, the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue interviewed a key witness to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, unaware of what?</h3><ul><li>His own forehead was bleeding after he ducked to avoid fire </li><li>Secret Service agents were approaching with guns drawn</li><li>The witness was wearing a Trump visor topped with fake hair and holding a beer can</li><li>The would-be assassin’s dead body was slumped a few feet away</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“How do you address him? Do you kiss the ring? I got more instruction on how to meet Barbra Streisand.” In June, US late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon was one of 105 comedians from around the world invited to meet whom?</h3><ul><li>Pope Francis </li><li>King Charles III</li><li>US president Joe Biden</li><li>Dalai Lama</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“The first time I came to the Dáil ... I saw this young lad walking around the place,and I said to myself, ‘Ah sure, he must be on a school tour or on work experience’.” Who did Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys pay tribute to in April?</h3><ul><li>Jack Chambers </li><li>Simon Harris</li><li>Michael Ring</li><li>Bernard Durkan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I think there’s a little [_____] in all of us.” In November, Clare man Jack Wall O’Reilly (aka “Earbuds Paul”) was victorious in what novelty contest in Dublin’s Smithfield Square?</h3><ul><li>Lip Sync Battle </li><li>Speed Dating champion</li><li>Mr Gay Ireland</li><li>Paul Mescal lookalike contest</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Only a short while ago we thought we’d eradicated measles and [_____]. Both have now been brought back, largely by the same people.” Who or what was journalist Marina Hyde writing about after the UK general election in July?</h3><ul><li>Racism </li><li>George Galloway</li><li>Nigel Farage</li><li>Vinyl records</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“I am a woman. I was born a woman, I’ve lived as a woman and I’ve competed as a woman. There’s no doubt that there are enemies of success.” The Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, who was at the centre of a gender controversy in Paris, represents which country?</h3><ul><li>Algeria </li><li>Paraguay</li><li>Italy</li><li>United States</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“It was like something out of an action movie. It was something you never thought you’d see.” In March, Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott was reacting to?</h3><ul><li>The Orioles’ first World Series victory </li><li>The rescue of hostages from a burning building </li><li>The collapse of the city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge</li><li>The destruction of the city’s historic Fort McHenry</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“She has little teeny-tiny baby chompers, she's perpetually wet, and her name means bouncy pork. It’s the ultimate recipe for internet cuteness.” Which pygmy hippo became a global sensation in September after videos of her frolicking at a Thai zoo went viral?</h3><ul><li>Moo Deng</li><li>Moo Toon</li><li>Moo Waan</li><li>Kha Moo</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“A usually reliable source tells me that the North Korean soldiers who have deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before. As a result, they are gorging on [_____].” What’s the missing word from this November tweet by the Financial Times’s chief foreign-affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman?</h3><ul><li>Facebook </li><li>Pornography</li><li>Minecraft</li><li>Netflix</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, the New York Times revealed that which US presidential contender had said that doctors discovered a dead worm in their brain?</h3><ul><li>Ron DeSantis </li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li><li> Marianne Williamson </li><li>Vivek Ramaswamy</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“They never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.” In April, whose claim that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during the second World War met widespread bemusement?</h3><ul><li>Donald Trump </li><li>Joe Biden</li><li>JD Vance</li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In August, Robert F Kennedy admitted to once dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park in New York and staging the scene to look like what?</h3><ul><li>A suicide </li><li>A mob hit</li><li>A bicycle accident</li><li>A drug deal gone wrong</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, who torpedoed their chances of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate by revealing they once shot their year-old dog and threw its body in a gravel pit?</h3><ul><li>Robert F Kennedy </li><li>Kristi Noem</li><li>Marco Rubio</li><li>Glenn Youngkin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, newly released documents revealed why Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, had abruptly left the White House. What had the German shepherd done?</h3><ul><li>Been involved in at least 24 biting incidents </li><li>Been involved in at least 24 groping incidents </li><li>Chosen to go live with a lovely family on a farm upstate</li><li>Been hired as a political analyst by MSNBC</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, Donald Trump’s claim that Haitian migrants were eating cats and dogs in which American city was denied by its mayor?</h3><ul><li>Springfield, Ohio </li><li>Honolulu, Hawaii </li><li>Miami, Florida </li><li>San Francisco, California</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, Vanity Fair published a photograph of which presidential hopeful appearing to eat a barbecued dog in 2010? (The candidate later insisted the animal was a goat.)</h3><ul><li>Joe Biden </li><li>Robert F Kennedy</li><li>Donald Trump</li><li>Jill Stein</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At a rally in October, what did Donald Trump spend a notable amount of time talking about?</h3><ul><li>Tiger Woods’s swing </li><li>Greg Norman’s short game</li><li>Rory McIlroy’s putting skills </li><li>Arnold Palmer’s penis</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, who said they were being investigated after allegedly once cutting off a whale’s head with a chainsaw and driving home with it strapped to the roof of a minivan?</h3><ul><li>Robert F Kennedy </li><li>Kristi Noem</li><li>Marco Rubio</li><li>Glenn Youngkin</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At Madison Square Garden in October, Donald Trump promised that, if re-elected, he would let whom “go wild” in which policy area?</h3><ul><li>Ted Nugent on guns </li><li>Robert F Kennedy on health</li><li>Donald Trump jnr on narcotics</li><li>Kristi Noem on animal control</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, to whom did Cillian Murphy dedicate his best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer?</h3><ul><li>Dreamers </li><li>Peacemakers</li><li>Cheesemakers </li><li>Manufacturers of all dairy products</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, American comedian Conan O’Brien made a cameo on TG4’s Ros na Rún, playing a person with what unlikely job?</h3><ul><li>Balloon delivery person</li><li>Waterslide tester</li><li>Dog-food taster</li><li>Professional sleeper</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, a fictional TV series depicting which real-life former world leader as a small-town detective debuted internationally?</h3><ul><li>Hillary Clinton </li><li>Sanna Marin</li><li>Theresa May </li><li>Angela Merkel </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, Belfast rappers Kneecap arrived for the premiere of their film at Utah’s Sundance Film Festival in what form of transportation?</h3><ul><li>Tank </li><li>PSNI Land Rover</li><li>Handcar</li><li>City bus</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her role in a fatal shooting incident on the set of which Alec Baldwin film?</h3><ul><li>Boss Baby </li><li>The Departed</li><li>Mission: Impossible – Fallout</li><li>Rust</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, which musician made his acting debut playing Saoirse Ronan’s father in Steve McQueen’s film Blitz?</h3><ul><li>Paul Weller </li><li>Morrissey </li><li>Liam Ó Maonlaí </li><li>Simon Le Bon </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, which RTÉ prank-based comedy show was described by one reviewer as so bad “it makes Mrs Brown’s Boys look like Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation”?</h3><ul><li>The Tommy Tiernan Show </li><li>The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show </li><li>The Dry</li><li>RTÉ News: Nine O’Clock</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In April, which real couple featured in the cast of Alex Garland’s dystopian thriller Civil War?</h3><ul><li>Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds </li><li>Emily Blunt and John Krasinski </li><li>Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons</li><li>Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, the final season of which long-running HBO show was promoted with the tagline “Don’t be mad he’s leaving. Be mad he stayed so long”?</h3><ul><li>Blue Bloods </li><li>Curb Your Enthusiasm</li><li>The Penguin</li><li>Yellowstone</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, a report brought to Cabinet by Simon Harris proposed relocating part of RTÉ to which tourist attraction?</h3><ul><li> Glendalough </li><li>Rock of Cashel</li><li>GPO </li><li>Guinness Storehouse</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Released in May, which viral hit by Kabin Crew, from Cork, and Lisdoonvarna Crew, from Co Clare, was praised by the Guardian as “one of the songs of summer that made the internet vibrate with joy”?</h3><ul><li> The Joke </li><li>The Weight</li><li>The Spark</li><li>The End</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of the following rivals to X (formerly Twitter) proved most successful in 2024 in terms of user adoption and reach?</h3><ul><li>Bluesky </li><li>Threads </li><li>Mastodon</li><li>Truth Social</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, which YouTube personality defeated Mike Tyson, the 58-year-old former professional boxer, in a fight streamed live on Netflix?</h3><ul><li>MrBeast </li><li>PewDiePie</li><li>Logan Paul </li><li>Jake Paul</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>The loss of more than 130,000 jobs at Google, Cisco, Intel and other tech companies in 2024 were linked to the rapid adoption of what?</h3><ul><li>Tariffs</li><li>Artificial intelligence </li><li>Driverless cars</li><li> Early retirements</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, tech website Gizmodo revealed that [blank] “hasn’t been necessary for nearly 20 years, but the myth persists”?</h3><ul><li>Tipping </li><li>Flu shots </li><li>Hazard lights</li><li>Airplane mode</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In July, which cybersecurity firm apologised for a global IT outage, sparked by a flawed update, that crippled 8.5 million computers running Microsoft software?</h3><ul><li>CrowdStrike </li><li>CyberArk</li><li>Fortinet </li><li>Palo Alto Networks</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>“Family (child) friendly, relaxed chilled-out atmosphere. I unreservedly rate this area five-star but not cheap.” In March, it was revealed that which of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, with a $5 million bounty on their head, is also a prolific restaurant reviewer on Google Maps?</h3><ul><li>Joseph Kony </li><li>DB Cooper</li><li>Ruja Ignatova</li><li>Christy Kinahan snr</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In March, how did Saudi Arabia’s first male AI robot blot its copybook when it was publicly presented in Riyadh?</h3><ul><li>It stuttered</li><li>It groped a female TV reporter</li><li>It failed some basic maths questions</li><li>It made a series of controversial remarks about gender identity</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In October, Fingal County Council warned the public to be vigilant after bogus QR codes were discovered stuck on to what?</h3><ul><li>Traffic lights </li><li>Parking meters</li><li>Postboxes</li><li>Election posters</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In November, what were spotted carrying out security patrols at the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, the US president-elect?</h3><ul><li>Robotic dogs </li><li>Holographic secret-service agents</li><li>Remote-control alligators</li><li>Facial-recognition drones</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In an unscripted moment on NBC’s Today show in February, which TV legend “throttled” Elmo because (they said) they found his voice annoying?</h3><ul><li>Oprah Winfrey </li><li>David Attenborough</li><li>William Shatner </li><li>Larry David </li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In the first half of 2024, what occurred in Lanesborough, Co Longford; Leixlip, Co Kildare; Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow; Clonmel, Co Tipperary; and Convoy, Co Donegal, as well as at multiple locations around Dublin?</h3><ul><li>Reports of moving statues </li><li>Outbreaks of mpox</li><li>Fires at buildings reported (or rumoured) to be earmarked for migrants</li><li>Elections to choose local mayors</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In September, rock band Oasis claimed that they “at no time had any awareness” that which controversial pricing strategy was being used to sell tickets for their 2025 reunion shows?</h3><ul><li>Kinetic tariffs </li><li>Dynamic pricing</li><li>Quantum costing</li><li>Volatile valuation</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>Which of the following is not a real headline from 2024?</h3><ul><li>Israel “in secret talks to send Gazans to Congo as part of resettlement plan” </li><li>Israeli special forces disguised as doctors kill three militants at West Bank hospital </li><li>Israeli spokesperson says that while they disagree, they “respect” Ireland’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood</li><li> “Human shielding in action”: Israeli forces strap Palestinian man to jeep”</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In May, which country was accused of sending “excrement balloons” into its neighbours’ airspace?</h3><ul><li>Russia </li><li>Israel </li><li>North Korea </li><li>Pakistan</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>At a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in October, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called what a “floating island of garbage”?</h3><ul><li>Manhattan </li><li>The Maga movement </li><li>Donald Trump’s planned cabinet appointments </li><li>Puerto Rico</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, which report in Chinese state media did then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar issue a statement to deny?</h3><ul><li>That he had come out in favour of the reunification of China and Taiwan </li><li>That he had come out in favour of the disbandment of Nato </li><li>That he had given China permission to open a police station on Dublin’s Capel Street</li><li>That he was leaving politics to become a Shaolin monk</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, what did Basketball Ireland chief executive John Feehan claim “would be ruinous” for the Ireland women’s team?</h3><ul><li>Building a monorail from their hotel to their training ground </li><li>Accepting a sponsorship deal from Boko Haram</li><li>Boycotting the side’s match against Israel </li><li>Splurging €2.2 million on a musical about the history of basketball in Ireland</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In February, mourners arrested while laying flowers at memorials to Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in St Petersburg received what unusual punishment?</h3><ul><li>They were imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals </li><li>They were sent to labour camps </li><li>They were required to apologise on social media</li><li>They were conscripted into the Russian army</li></ul></section><section data-block=\"SingleChoice\"><h3>In January, a Co Clare woman had a €760,000 injury claim dismissed after she admitted winning what less than a year after her accident?</h3><ul><li>An Easter egg hunt </li><li>A beach volleyball tournament</li><li>A pumpkin-carving contest </li><li>A Christmas tree-throwing competition</li></ul></section></iframe></div>","type":"raw_html"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Eoin Butler"}},"name":"Eoin Butler"}]},"description":{"basic":"From Ireland’s headline-makers to global events, music milestones, sports triumphs, and unforgettable quotes, answer Eoin Butler’s 100 questions correctly and you could win a luxury overnight stay for two"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Big Irish Times Quiz of 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SQ3ABCVPZNEBXPHXX6K7MVM6PQ","auth":{"1":"7f4aa88c3fdec9953ec60d43bb5dd5626ede60fbecb9e6b6f35fd770bc707ba8"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SQ3ABCVPZNEBXPHXX6K7MVM6PQ.png"}},"subtype":"opinion","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Life & Style"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/2024/12/23/the-big-irish-times-quiz-of-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Life & Style"}}}},{"_id":"54IZPNY2DFD63BSSGL567JFIQQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":399,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/bd366794-a082-482e-8a59-4ff0d4cc3823/versions/1733842130/media/183fa1708939a023fe1f6ad10d314c12_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/2024/12/23/emigration-to-australia-is-at-its-highest-level-for-a-decade-we-need-to-ask-why/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HWLKNG75RNBAJPA2QDLLJSLS7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196077},"content":"<a href=\"http://irishtimes.com/tags/christmas\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> comes around quickly. It has its own form of repetition; the rituals, gatherings, meet-ups, traditions. One is the annual flurry of video clips of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/emigration/\" target=\"_blank\">emigrants</a> returning home. I’m a sucker for these tender arrivals-hall scenes. Behind them is the story of a legacy of emigration embedded in our national psyche. But its previous triggers – economic and social – have less purchase now. Yet no matter how much Ireland progresses as a society, emigration remains.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DP4MESD7YFDFBJHKYSIXFCKZBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196078},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2024/keyfindings/#:~:text=Over%2069%2C000%20people%20departed%20the,54%2C200%20births%20and%2034%2C800%20deaths.\" target=\"_blank\">According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO)</a>, between April 2023 and April 2024, about 69,900 people emigrated from Ireland, up 5,000 from the same period between 2022 and 2023. This is the highest level of emigration since 2015. It is high, in part, due to Ukrainian people leaving Ireland (21,500), along with 10,600 EU citizens and 3,000 UK citizens. The number of Irish citizens leaving stood at 34,700. Of those, 10,600 left for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>. This is an increase of 126 per cent on the previous period’s figure, which was 4,700. This marks the highest level of emigration to Australia since 2013.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J2JUXQG22RG35OUHKIVWF4SMSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733828225498},"content":"Not all emigration is the result of hardship, and it would be silly to frame it all as such. Young Irish people are under no obligation to stay in Ireland. Countless places around the world offer a much better quality of life: better nightlife, more amenities, more diverse cultural choices, higher wages, and crucially, housing. And Australia has its own <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/housing-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">housing</a> issues, especially in Sydney, where the median weekly rent is more than €450.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5JC2LSBQG5CD3HU6MV6BJVCOJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734255815768},"content":"But there is much greater value in the private rental market in Australia, as well as higher wages. A two-bedroom apartment in Coogee can be rented for the same price as a “studio” flat on Dorset Street. A functioning rental market is not just about the cost, it’s also about the opportunity to rent at all, and it’s about value.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZGECBMN5BGWHBYKYQ3AHDD6IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196080},"content":"A useful research project would be to survey emigrants in detail on their reasons for leaving Ireland. Then, we would be able to understand how prominent housing – especially the cost of rent – is as a factor. Certainly, among my own friends, departures in recent years have been catalysed by the rental crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOZOI4Y63RGCVPOBP2UBQ7WQPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196081},"content":"The reality remains that there is no choice in the Irish “market” when it comes to renting. What’s available is overpriced. Supply in and of itself is not the answer. Affordable supply is. It’s pretty obvious that build-to-rent apartments now make up a large part of the private rental market, and do not have enough people on high wages to fill them. Last month, Killian Woods of the Business Post <a href=\"https://www.businesspost.ie/news/landlords-linked-to-us-funds-pitching-e2000-plus-black-friday-deals-for-dublin-apartments/\">reported that landlords linked to US funds were offering deals on rent</a> coinciding with “Black Friday”. One US residential investor reportedly threw in two weeks of free rent for apartments in Dublin’s docklands as an incentive – hardly a sign they’re in huge demand. How could they be fully occupied? Two-bed apartments are listed for €3,745 a month, which is unaffordable for most people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"62BPR4TJRJC4XBFKTKPLFXIJGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196082},"content":"During the recent general election campaign, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/simon-harris/\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Harris</a> had a soundbite about how he didn’t want his children to live through austerity. But those being pummelled by the cost of rent are already living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated by rent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N3PCT4GUDNFZDG7JXE5MDMTKTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196083},"content":"For students, the situation is especially bleak. There is no real affordability in the private student accommodation market. Despite the fact that student homelessness, couch-surfing and extremely draining commutes to college are well-documented, nothing is being done to radically reduce the rent for students. Instead, unaffordability has been designed in to the market through purpose-built student accommodation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRXBPVWLLNHJTJSSGBK4YOPWB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196084},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.residencestoneybatter.com/flexfloorplan/679/10382/I\">A small single-bed en suite</a> in a “four bedroom cluster”, which includes a “rejuvenating shower” in a new student block in Stoneybatter in Dublin 7, close to TUD’s Grangegorman campus, costs €343 a week, or about €1,372 a month. And that’s fairly standard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZ5PNQSQANDO7IAFC2BKLS4TXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733771701574},"content":"Last July, the president of the Union of Students of Ireland, Chris Clifford, spoke about student accommodation costs being driven up by private developers. “They just want to squeeze as much money as possible from students and know how desperate many students are because of the housing crisis. Yet again, we call on Government to publish the long-awaited Student Accommodation Strategy urgently.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"REH626TANFHPXPIGFOA26PBWJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196085},"content":"By August 2023, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/08/15/more-than-two-thirds-of-young-adults-in-ireland-still-living-with-parents-figures-show/\">68 per cent of young adults aged between 25 and 29 still lived at home</a>, almost 26 per cent higher than the EU average. The situation is particularly bad for young men, with 73.9 per cent of men in that age range still living at home, compared with 61.1 per cent of young women. Across the EU, the average for women in that age range living at home is 36 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJLH6PKGDJHSZNAL7IEFAQYNBU","additional_properties":{"_id":"KYKFEN3H5RAQRPNOWBQBZI3EEY"},"content":"Laura Kennedy: Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TUX5X4MGYJC7TDCHK3VFFYK3IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733828225506},"content":"There’s something deeply wrong, and actually quite upsetting, with the reality that younger generations are growing in confidence, contributing hugely to contemporary Irish culture in so many ways, yet then find that confidence and self-esteem battered by the lived experience of the rental crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LF7TODYHKRAINKXGVOTSJRCBJY","additional_properties":{"_id":"WFMF6WGFDRAR3ID4SQ5CW3Z7X4"},"content":"Moving to Australia: ‘I would have had a very fixed life in Ireland. I feel very light here’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2ER56SOITFDG7LVJZFPMCIJ25A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196086},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"KPSXZ4ORNRD3ZIZ2YBUB3GO6NE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733771701577},"content":"Another Christmas tradition is the collision of family members’ political views over the festive dinner table. Perhaps this year, returning emigrants can ask older generations why the parties responsible for the housing policies that curtail the futures of the young were returned to power in 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HH3JX46LHBBNFBF7RFZ5IWYT4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733769196087},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Una Mullally"}},"name":"Una Mullally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Those being pummelled by the cost of rent are living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Emigration to Australia is at its highest level for a decade. We need to ask why","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"A2FX57KG3ZES5H5OPRLMR5OMUI","auth":{"1":"2a6f38884b451a4b1226c27b9fc5c8f891e1506ccfd427dd88c1d6fa24ad1999"},"focal_point":{"x":1163,"y":1206},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/A2FX57KG3ZES5H5OPRLMR5OMUI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Opinion"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/2024/12/23/emigration-to-australia-is-at-its-highest-level-for-a-decade-we-need-to-ask-why/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Opinion"}}}},{"_id":"ASRDRWD6YZFXTOO3QZO3DGP5QY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":424,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a61536f6-7cab-4dbc-a00c-c147067f0bf5/versions/1734022189/media/2c4b51d51421e00324a91700c06c39a1_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/23/the-christmas-swim-is-going-to-be-a-lot-nicer-young-irish-expats-embrace-their-first-australian-christmas/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YZMFTJOTZVF47FXF6L5ARYD3YE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448031},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> – and summer – has well and truly arrived in Melbourne, although feeling festive in 30-plus degree heat while listening to songs about a winter wonderland is certainly something to get used to.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHAVPDV2NZEG5BFTLABSCAIXKM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448033},"content":"For many younger Irish people who have <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-abroad\" target=\"_blank\">moved</a> to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>, it will be a case of getting used to their first Christmas away from home comforts and traditions this year. So how are they feeling?","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HFWKGIXJJHJVDJ7TKLZNUFDAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448034},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNWYN7C2V5DGDFS7NUKEXWXSSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448035},"content":"“I’m definitely embracing the change of scenery and feel very lucky to experience the festive period in Australia,” says Elaine Freeman (34) from Co Clare. “There is such a festive buzz around Melbourne as well as summer excitement, it’s such an exciting time to experience Melbourne and Australia,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H5NKF3R5PRDPXOHNFAHINZZAWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448036},"content":"Instead of celebrating in Melbourne, though, Freeman will travel up the east coast to Byron Bay and Noosa for the holidays, located in the states of New South Wales and Queensland respectively. “I’m excited for the quintessential Australian beach Christmas,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWUFTXY4VVGHZN3ZWYHT5GXMWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448037},"content":"“I’ll be with my sister, her fiance and a group of friends. Between work, travelling, living in different countries and Covid, this will be the first time since 2016 that my sister and I will be in the same room for Christmas. This makes my first Christmas in Australia even more special,” says Freeman.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KEWQVSJH2FFAHLS5QWKSWT5F3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448038},"content":"Also embracing new surroundings is Dale Galway (30) from Co Wexford. “Enjoying the weather, a barbecue and a sea dip is something I am really looking forward to. There is an amazing, vibrant Irish culture here, so hearing accents or seeing familiar faces is really great,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKLTFRCDM5AVJDA3BUUZYAHQWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448039},"content":"“I will be spending [the day] with my housemates, friends and friends of friends. Being here and being open to new people is pretty important and thus far I have met some really amazing people.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNNR2FVKQBAKDL4ZKDRRFEBQGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448040},"content":"As much as he is excited for a sun-filled, outdoor Christmas, Galway says he will “miss the craic” at home with friends and family. “Seeing people from years back in the local pub, catching up and reminiscing about times gone past was always a highlight at home,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WZ7SIF6LIVC35HMBUQKT7SDDGY","additional_properties":{"_id":"5IXHST52LJHMVIIK2DYHK7NVWM"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UA6CYPAU65CYZOF6HRYTJ4L6QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448041},"content":"Galway has noticed a “laid-back” approach to Christmas in Melbourne and feels the festivities begin a lot earlier in Ireland. He says: “I haven’t been asked: ‘Are you all set for Christmas?’ yet.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R66SNPAMFJAMJA56XBH5LFTSSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448042},"content":"“There are amazing lights and decorations all over the city centre, but nothing compares to the old street lights hanging up across the small towns of Ireland with Christmas songs playing on the streets.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMDAMR3ZNNEOPJKU63L3X6GIXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448043},"content":"He says: “The sun feels weird at this time of year, but if your only complaint is the weather, you really have nothing to complain about.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"AXAGDCVDHNC6LPEN223IIAZCYE","additional_properties":{"_id":"Q4RZSUGUPJFXXEEFJ3WXJKDPHM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6LIJJICZJC4VN2JJPGAI3TJMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448044},"content":"Maria O’Dowd (28), from Co Galway, who now lives in Perth, says spending her first Christmas on the other side of the world will be “challenging”. With her friends in Perth heading home for the holiday season, O’Dowd will spend Christmas in Melbourne with her Irish friends who live here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZPIPVU755BQTPBUCSPLMQPXEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448045},"content":"She says: “Being away from home for Christmas this year will be really challenging, but I am excited about it because it is something I have never done before. Friends who have lived in Australia for a few years have always told me that it’s crucial to enjoy Christmas as best I can here and avoid making it feel like Christmas at home as it would be hard to meet the expectations.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3UOUQNWSLZDHDHUVNMT4GBJ3RM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448046},"content":"On Christmas Day, O’Dowd plans to hit the beach with friends followed by dinner, drinks and games in the evening (her contribution to dinner will be Brussels sprouts and dessert ). “There will be a lot of people on Christmas Day, some people I know from home and some people from Ireland I have never met before … It will be easier to be away from home knowing there are other Irish people celebrating Christmas with me as they are also separated from friends, family and loved ones during this time,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZX53QA2TNEDBF6Y3ASI534BWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448047},"content":"In keeping with Irish traditions, O’Dowd says her GAA team in Perth organised the 12 pubs of Christmas. “That was very enjoyable, especially in the sun,” she says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGQOPTL3MZBIRPOP6Q4NXAS2H4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448048},"content":"Even though spending Christmas away from family will be a difficult time for O’Dowd, she says: “I’m going to embrace it this year and do it in Aussie-style. I’ll be thinking positively and telling myself that not everyone has the opportunity to experience what it’s like to live in a different country, with new traditions and among new people, and for that I am very grateful.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DE6F6KULZZEY5APEYCSMLHPOS4","additional_properties":{"_id":"X5ZWMS5WVZAJJBE2EEEFQ3DKAE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HBMPLXTJ6JH75IDERNY7XBZS5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448049},"content":"Seamus O’Dwyer (24) from Co Kilkenny agrees that Christmas this year will be “strange” but is welcoming the new experience. He will be celebrating his first Aussie Christmas in Melbourne with his partner and friends, “ideally at the beach”, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W2ZWI7CNCVAGJCNRELC4NKEMTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448050},"content":"“Christmas will certainly be different this year – the heat being the main factor, I’m still not used to it … The Christmas swim is definitely going to be a lot nicer, though.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGUKQYXMSBCOTBQHT3SWLP4NLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448051},"content":"Having only arrived in Australia earlier this year, O’Dwyer says he’s not feeling homesick but being away from home for Christmas is “definitely sinking in”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LXHNWP2SQNHJVPBXJ32KC6ROXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448052},"content":"He says: “I will be calling home and friends that we would normally visit before Christmas, other than that I would say everything is going to be completely different – new country, amazing weather, new friends. It’s a lot to take in suddenly, it feels like time is flying past.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TKXKPQ5SNFAPHA2GR652KDQJQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448053},"content":"Although having a slight craving for a typical home-made Christmas dinner, O’Dwyer is looking forward to Aussie barbecues on the beach, but “I can’t leave out the 12 pubs, something from home to embrace”, he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R7CWMJALBVFPHJ5GJBWKTIF45M","additional_properties":{"_id":"S6TK5ALHLJFXLPPVNTTJR67YTM"},"content":"‘Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world I have been’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5B6EEX3TCREDXK7DHHW3XQWWNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448054},"content":"“As much as I’d love to get my jacket on and head out on a cold evening back home, I’m happy sticking with the sunshine here for now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U2M4HLPU4RBZFFJMEWKO3MDHPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448055},"content":"Yasmin Green (31) from Co Leitrim is a nurse in Melbourne and says she will be working a lot over the festive season but is “fortunate to be rostered off Christmas Day, so I am having a very Australian barbecue, [doing] Secret Santa with my housemates and going to the beach”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7OXVBX7DJDHHAHLPITTMGEZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":"URTHHZW4HJCLDG55ASKILX5ZYM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"N3KWPQB3MBD5PIHUAK2NK7RVUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448056},"content":"Green says celebrating Christmas in Australia has always been on her bucket list. She says: “I feel excited and privileged for a once in a lifetime Christmas experience. However, I have lived overseas previously … so I am used to spending it away from home and family.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SDA2UJAPRAPHFZ2FP3CCKXIAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734006448057},"content":"Reflecting on Christmas at home in Leitrim, Green says: “I will miss the tradition of meeting up and attending midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with my extended family and meeting up to celebrate with my friends on Stephen’s Day. Most of my Christmas will be completely different to any other year this year.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V34BDHLQS5EGHJGCHGK7Q6ZHC4","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Olivia Powell in Melbourne"}]},"description":{"basic":"How do the Irish in Melbourne feel about spending their first festive season Down Under?"},"display_date":"2024-12-23T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘The Christmas swim is going to be a lot nicer’: Young Irish expats embrace their first Australian Christmas","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SPHWGLLATBBEFC7SUAQF2C3ZDM","auth":{"1":"8150509b6af737e70e262434a9236898d5d320ab98c31aa1f63150e3ee108076"},"focal_point":{"x":750,"y":555},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SPHWGLLATBBEFC7SUAQF2C3ZDM.jpeg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/23/the-christmas-swim-is-going-to-be-a-lot-nicer-young-irish-expats-embrace-their-first-australian-christmas/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"73TWREVXKNC25IXGTMDRZYFWF4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/20/abroad-newsletter-most-read-stories-of-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ESD47VYLUVBGFBFSVEUBVMROEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133098},"content":"Welcome to the December issue of The Irish Times Abroad newsletter. As it’s that time of year, we’re having a look back at the stories that caught your attention over the last 12 months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFY3HIUDDNBK7N7JQMDE7H3BDE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The most read piece in Abroad this year was this piece by Jade Wilson about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/01/04/moving-from-singapore-to-ireland-im-shocked-by-the-inefficiency-and-complete-lack-of-common-sense/\" target=\"_blank\">an Irish woman’s move home from Singapore</a>. Louise O’Leary worked and lived there for five years before meeting her Singaporean husband. “My partner wasn’t ready to leave after a year or two together because he was still building up his work and experience. So I stayed about two or three years longer than planned.” However when they moved home, the bureaucratic challenges she encountered on her return to her home country were “really unexpected”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F37I4RSKMZBVBK3RSGB2SGC4TA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734710833102},"content":"In February, Cathal Mongey wrote <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/02/15/my-partner-and-i-are-renting-an-apartment-for-the-same-price-we-were-paying-to-share-with-five-others-in-dublin-and-were-10-minutes-from-the-beach/\" target=\"_blank\">about life in Perth, Australia</a>, something he recommends that any young Irish person should try. He says while housing is an issue there as well it “definitely is a little easier finding somewhere to live... To put it into perspective, my partner and I are renting our own apartment for the same price we were paying to share a house with five others in Dublin – and we’re 10 minutes from the beach.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6C3Y5CZVHZBSXIRDCA6ZXT2SJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Evan Cannon wrote about his time in college <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/08/09/as-you-watch-the-olympics-remember-that-the-us-collegiate-athletics-system-plays-a-major-role/\" target=\"_blank\">at Purdue University and Notre Dame in Indiana</a> and the immense pride students in the US have in the universities, “a concept that’s almost non-existent in Ireland. The main reason for this pride? College sports.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"56OFO4QCVFGRPGHGMHXUTGKSI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Flight attendant Paula Gahan wrote about the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/07/18/an-irish-flight-attendant-on-the-top-five-most-annoying-things-passengers-do/\" target=\"_blank\">top five most annoying things passengers do</a>. “I was just on a flight back from San Francisco and I bought a bag of Haribo for a sugar hit to get me through the 10-hour flight. I leave the bag on the counter and turn around to see some cheeky woman helping herself. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RO3YBVH5OVFVZIFRZF4OV6OBW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Look, we do have to eat as well, you know? Cabin crew don’t subsist on aircraft dust and toilet water.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"THTDFQJNK5HUHJ63VP654SHCSQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In March, Anna Waters wrote about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/03/18/irishwoman-in-sicily-i-wanted-a-kind-of-financial-freedom-that-wasnt-on-offer-to-me-in-ireland\" target=\"_blank\">leaving Dublin to live in Palermo</a> for a “kind of life available here that has been squeezed out of my hometown”. “Though Ireland and Sicily are distant from one another relative to our compact continent, I am more often than not struck by the similarities in the mindsets of the people – psyches shaped by conquest, isolation and the sea”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IJ5PIMW4OZC4PFSNTEWD6EAELA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, this month, we heard from Corkonian <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/12/01/trades-are-very-well-paid-here-compared-to-anywhere-else-in-the-world-i-have-been/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Kidney</a>, who moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2012 with his partner Niharika. A carpenter by trade, the couple applied under the skilled migrant visa scheme. “Carpentry is a good trade to facilitate international travel, and my partner is an occupational therapist, which is a recognised skill too, so we were well placed,” he said. People who work in the trade can expect to make between $120,000-$150,000 Australian dollars a year if employed full-time, he says. That is the equivalent of €74,000-€92,500 annually. Chris started working for himself as a bespoke carpenter but despite the high level of work, he says Australia is not a cheap place to live. He still says he is a “proud Cork man”, however, he doesn’t see himself returning to the city anytime soon. “Ireland is a very special place, but for now, Australia is home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWXIKWNNCVDCPM4NGDQNXVA4OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133100},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQAB2OE5D5FNVNK3KO4BICKFXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133101},"content":"Regular abroad writer <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/12/04/laura-kennedy-australia-offers-me-a-more-dignified-life-than-the-one-i-had-in-ireland-its-not-unpatriotic-to-say-so/\" target=\"_blank\">Laura Kennedy</a> talks about the impact felt by the Irish election in Canberra. She says like many other Irish emigrants she is more invested in Ireland’s future rather than the country that she now calls home. “I would love for Ireland to be somewhere that had space, employment, homes, educational opportunity and healthcare for the people who live there,” she writes. Calling out her wishlist for Ireland saying she would like a direct connection from Dublin Airport to the city as well as fairer public representation for all members of society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDBIXMN6VVBZDC7K7UTPSCSAIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133102},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKHZYZHCTBF6THGZGXPK4LAZ4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133103},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"VITVTPRI4VEF5GIUTJYPVT27FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133104},"content":"Dubliner <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/12/15/in-ireland-we-have-lost-some-the-human-connection-in-business-dealings-in-uganda-it-is-deeply-valued/\" target=\"_blank\">Declan Peppard</a> spent years working for British Airways and in 1991 he was posted to Zimbabwe. However, in 1997, Peppard changed scenery. “I left Uganda for the role of commercial director for Brazil, with a remit to dramatically improve our sales performance: over the course of two years, we grew sales from $34 million to $64 million,” he said. It was not the last that Peppard would see of Uganda though, as by 2000 he was back in the country running a travel agency before setting up his own company, Travelcare Uganda, five years later. Despite challenges through Covid-19, Peppard said that working abroad has given him opportunities that he might not have had in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESD47VYLUVBGFBFSVEUBVMROEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734694133098},"content":"This is the final abroad newsletter this year and as 2024 draws to a close, we would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Fiona Keeley"}},"name":"Fiona Keeley"}]},"description":{"basic":"The challenges of returning to Ireland from Singapore, the intensity of college sport in the US and how to get in flight attendants’ bad books"},"display_date":"2024-12-20T17:21:53.305Z","headlines":{"basic":"The top five most read Abroad stories of the year","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"IFWJHC54NVF5PN2ULVSFBNSMIA","auth":{"1":"11d6377b8a7d2bc4fc51776cb76349942d4ee2f6ff9a0b8daed48c21dbe680a6"},"focal_point":{"x":360,"y":426},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/IFWJHC54NVF5PN2ULVSFBNSMIA.jpeg"}},"subtype":"editors-note","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/20/abroad-newsletter-most-read-stories-of-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"7LVUEE2FINBIRJP36KI3Z6OF2I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":398,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2488a622-1f1d-4235-bd05-ad79a47ce6c5/versions/1733745489/media/8bbbe0dd1687a6b6977e34475fea8c83_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/18/laura-kennedy-a-critic-of-this-column-thinks-theres-too-much-negativity-about-ireland-not-enough-about-australias-beaches/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AWJEYRTZFVEVPOFEPFOG6LLVRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966265},"content":"A lady emailed me a few weeks back to complain that the content of this column is, to her mind, overly critical of Ireland and extravagantly lacking in accounts of the beaches of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>. “People want to read about the beaches,” she wrote to me. They want to fantasise about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christmas/\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas</a> in the summertime.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3IOVLHM4YNCSLEFC4W3ROLOI2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288023},"content":"The suggestion was that I should write less about the conflicted emigrant relationship to home and more about turquoise water and the traditional Australian Christmas dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TCYMC2PFQZBVRB2LPFSRWNPCA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966266},"content":"Having never enjoyed a traditional Australian Christmas dinner myself, I asked around. While answers vary, it seems that festive fare over here generally contains a lot of salad components. That may sound odd to us, but we do have experience of this particular hot weather impulse. Consider those sweltering (if rare) Irish summer days when your mammy would down tools and definitively declare that “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s too hot for cooking”. Then everyone would have a wedge of iceberg lettuce, a slice of anaemic tomato, boiled egg and some cold ham for dinner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4TWRAYQBWBC53CTOIRWXDQ6GUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288025},"content":"This culinary solution predated Uber Eats, and was objectively terrible, but is nevertheless one of the fires in which Irish psychology was forged. When I recently asked the four-year-old daughter of a friend what her favourite food is, and the child looked contemplatively into the distance before answering “chorizo”, I was confirmed in my suspicion that the hot-weather-cold-ham dinner might now legally qualify as child abuse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOO7OSLXPNHOJAWR5NOBYOX6ZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966267},"content":"According to my research on the ground (ie asking an accountant I met) pavlova is apparently the ideal Australian Christmas dessert, and I can understand that. Even the memory of British colonialism can’t eradicate the undeniable truth that a strawberry pavlova is, to use Hiberno-English-adjacent parlance, an absolutely unbelievable dessert. It has everything you could want. Tanginess, sweetness, four tonnes of sugar and a veritable riot of textures. Crisp, soft, light, creamy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDCWRF74GNHC3BSO6GB4M7UEVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734613934101},"content":"And yet. if I’m not drenching a dense, fatty pudding in brandy and setting it alight, it really doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. Even if it is more than 30 degrees out and the idea of roasting meat in the oven all day long sort of makes you want to die.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYYALBWFTZE33IK7MAUAE75N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966268},"content":"Thus far, I haven’t been able to oblige the woman who complained by writing of her voracious appetite for descriptions of beaches. Outside Australia, most people seem to think of this country in geographical terms as a large land mass with coastal cities and towns peppering its perimeter.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIAXJS52LNEA7I5AINUGXS4P6E","additional_properties":{"_id":"SBWADBFZSRDAHDLYEHEIIMY2GY"},"content":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FYYALBWFTZE33IK7MAUAE75N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966268},"content":"An Irish person recently messaged me on Instagram when I shared a post indicating the various times The Late Late Toy Show would be broadcast live in Australia, which has three primary time zones but six in all if you include regional variations and territories. Her message indicated some shock that Australia was big enough to have so many time zones. There was a hint of incredulity to it, as if Australia had lost the run of itself a bit, but if you airlifted this country and plonked it on top of Europe, it would apparently stretch from Iceland in the northwest to Turkey in the southeast, with some parts of Russia sticking out untidily, as they are wont to do regardless.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WLBBHGEOS5DBFHBU4JF66BSIHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966269},"content":"It is difficult for us as Europeans to grasp just how large Australia is. You feel it when you’re here – everything takes up more space, because space is something Australia is abundant in. The horizon is vaster. The sky feels bigger. The mountains are gargantuan. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/11/06/laura-kennedy-swooping-season-in-australia-brings-home-the-taking-names-and-kicking-arse-approach-of-nature-here/\" target=\"_blank\">The birds</a> are intimidatingly large and blowsy, and they have the personality of mean drunks. Anything not abutting the sea is considered outside Australia as a sort of molten hellscape, uninhabitable by any creature containing organs made of meat. Most Irish people don’t seem to realise that you can live in Australia and not be next to, or permanently overlooking, the ocean at all. Until I moved to Canberra, the country’s inland capital, I thought the same.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUYS3GSZMRG2RPLQS74UF4MYQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"NN2RK4WRMBAFXKO7YTZEB5AHAE"},"content":"From an Irish workhouse to Australia – the story of the Famine orphan girls","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZIRV3SNKEBDIVPFPALWMXXCVMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966270},"content":"I understand the mentality of some Irish people, which suggests that only a total gom would move to Australia and not live near the ocean when so very much of the country is indeed adjacent to it. To those people I say this – yes, I live inland, about 3½ hours from the sea, but it is 27 degrees out as I write this and everything in my rented apartment is relatively new and in working order. These conditions are not attainable in Dublin, so ocean or no, I’m content.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2V74ZJQQVDAFK4KFDBVF47QNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288030},"content":"The lady who emailed to complain won’t like me writing that, but there you have it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVODVVRRB5FYLCN5PBMOUUKT2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966271},"content":"But listen, I have a sense of my professional obligation. I’m not a wild animal. If the nation of Ireland has come to a standstill until some random woman in Australia writes about what a day at the beach is like – and my concerned emailer seemed to convey that this indeed is the case – then I clearly have to write about the beach. I can’t have my homeland tanking economically and then sinking into the Irish Sea on my conscience. I’m a patriot that way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PD2OAJGO3ZAHBE3YLKXQYLNKKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733735966272},"content":"So I’ve arranged a beach trip. Everyone at home can forestall another snap election. Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach awaits. My husband loves the beach. Not being Irish, he is without any body shame whatever. The sun is not fatal to him and the God of his ancestors won’t smite him for lying about on white sand like a cat on a warm rock for an afternoon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"332GZERSZFBVLIMPG6H4C525CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288033},"content":"I, on the other hand, am Irish. I’ve had to buy a special medical grade sun hat and check with my GP whether SPF goes higher than 100. I already feel guilty about taking the time off, and I’m strongly considering just wearing jeans.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTAKJIUKE5ECVIX6OMBXM6IXHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733743288034},"content":"My emailer will get her beach column, even if it kills me (and it might).","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"That reader should know that, even though I live 3½ hours from the coast, I am taking her concerns on board"},"display_date":"2024-12-18T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beaches","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CJAFVJEK5VGDJEYS4XJNBZKVAY","auth":{"1":"8773672482e52929ca355abf1a128cc8b9ee3c5f14991d32b04d76a156bd085c"},"focal_point":{"x":1690,"y":1418},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CJAFVJEK5VGDJEYS4XJNBZKVAY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/18/laura-kennedy-a-critic-of-this-column-thinks-theres-too-much-negativity-about-ireland-not-enough-about-australias-beaches/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"5VPLLXIMQNBPZE7EMIYTR2EMBM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":343,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/98e086d9-46c8-46b9-938b-767106100808/versions/1733930542/media/447f776a55e67a7f49bb7aa6179370b7_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2024/12/15/in-ireland-we-have-lost-some-the-human-connection-in-business-dealings-in-uganda-it-is-deeply-valued/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FGLG3VP52ZCZBHWGN6HC24NIIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022382},"content":"Dubliner Declan Peppard joined British Airways from school as a reservation sales agent back in 1983 on the princely salary of IR£6,400 a year. It was a modest start to what blossomed into a fruitful 20-year career with the airline that saw Peppard appointed to senior management positions in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Brazil.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XKVA6Y7WUZB7JHDRNA4PJSUXIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022383},"content":"Since 2000, Peppard has lived in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and for the past 20 years he has been at the helm of Travelcare Uganda, a corporate travel agency he cofounded in 2005. More than 90 per cent of the company’s turnover is related to outbound business travel, with the remainder accounted for by private holidaymakers, typically from Europe, who come to Uganda mainly for gorilla trekking.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WKEH3WH5FDBBLABX3UU2QWW3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022384},"content":"Travelcare employs 14 people and, although Uganda is a relatively small market, he says the company has “become a big fish in a small pond and the quality of the service provided by our travel advisers rivals and often surpasses what you’d find anywhere else”, who used to run with Raheny Shamrocks and now keeps fit by going to the gym six times a week and playing what he describes as “lousy” golf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OOGOHWHO5ZBYTOKXKDMRQ2IYDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022385},"content":"Peppard attributes his peripatetic career to the fact that, in his early 20s, he became part of BA’s overseas pool, which was a small group of employees who provided cover at BA operations around the world. “This was 1989 when BA still had many expat country managers and airport managers on the payroll and we covered when they were on leave or there was a crisis,” says Peppard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDEIF7A2L5GC5EM456OX7CCGYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022386},"content":"“In 1991 I was posted to Zimbabwe as customer service manager with the airline and spent two years there. In 1993 I moved to Uganda as country manager and my key responsibility was to make the London-Entebbe route profitable. With the help of a great team, we succeeded. In 1997 I left Uganda for the role of commercial director for Brazil, with a remit to dramatically improve our sales performance: over the course of two years, we grew sales from $34 million to $64 million.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HY6X5KIK6BESRFVJRMAA6HWN54","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022387},"content":"In 2000, Peppard was headhunted to run a travel agency in Uganda. Five years later he and two others struck out on their own to set up Travelcare Uganda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZBZSX5EGBC27KQDFMAF63D6NQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022388},"content":"Peppard says the sudden shutdown of international travel when Covid hit was a very worrying time for the company but it weathered the storm by getting involved in arranging repatriation flights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ML4BL4F5T5CS5OMKERF2XIE43Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022389},"content":"“Thankfully this generated enough income to tide us over with no lay-offs but when it happened, I thought, jeepers we’re really in trouble now,” says Peppard, who has a family of four girls including twins at college in the UK and daughters working in Dublin and Harare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEMPQCZ47JBR5MQANY3IW7ZOQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022390},"content":"“Opening and operating a business in Uganda is relatively straightforward. And as long as you adhere to the regulatory requirements, you can grow your business with minimal obstacles,” says Peppard. “It’s crucial to remember that, even though I now hold both Irish and Ugandan passports, I am still a guest in Uganda and must always respect the local laws, culture, and traditions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5VWQ3D5AORHK5NV4FDYUJVKRL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022391},"content":"“One key aspect of doing business here is the importance of maintaining a respectful and human approach to both colleagues and customers. In Uganda, this personal touch is deeply valued and integral to business success. I sometimes feel that, in Ireland, with the rapid advance of technology, we might have lost a bit of that human connection in our business dealings.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EIQSAMBINRAITIQJTTRSFIWSSE","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZYUV6C6TIJHVRN5OIZIS3CGI3Q"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"KXLVJGES7REWRLY2QGXI4Z5SZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022392},"content":"Peppard says there is a vibrant Irish community in Uganda with events such as St Patrick’s Day, All Irelands and the Six Nations tournament well celebrated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLAXHLOACJEVJP77BQUO4JTTQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022393},"content":"“Our current ambassador, Kevin Colgan, regularly hosts the Irish community and every one of the ambassadors who have been here in my time have been truly remarkable individuals who have enhanced Ireland’s reputation in the region,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTJUSYKIZRHQVL2BYDEYRWXOXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022394},"content":"Despite being a big fan of the “perfect Ugandan climate, which never gets too hot and is never cold”, Peppard misses the changing seasons and the crisp autumn air that marks the passage of time back home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMREU4BH4JAR7M7BK3DKDNSVBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022395},"content":"“The year here is divided by wet and dry seasons and when it rains, it really rains and there’s a lot of flooding and the road system struggles to cope. You try not to drive anywhere at this point as a normal 15-minute journey could take an hour or even two. At the best of times, Kampala is a bit chaotic with horrendous traffic and overcrowding with private taxis and boda-bodas (bicycle and motorcycle taxis).","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDBYNZRZPFGB3EEBUXQOSGH7ZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022396},"content":"“But the people here are genuinely good-natured and extremely friendly. We are free of violent crime and I have never felt threatened or at risk, even during elections.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLEYA3HFUBGSLJ37MRJW6QSSNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022397},"content":"“Sometimes living in a landlocked country makes me long for the sea as there’s nothing quite like the calming presence of the ocean. And I truly miss St Anne’s Park in Dublin. It’s always been my sanctuary, a place where I could escape, reflect and recharge,” Peppard adds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RN5HEDLZSFBJNLWCLGH3SX3X2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733915022398},"content":"“On the plus side, working abroad has given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had at home, particularly in terms of the exceptional training I received during my time with British Airways. The overseas pool programme provided invaluable experience that greatly influenced my career. Now as I approach 41 years in the airline and travel industries, I can confidently say that such international exposure has been pivotal to my success in business.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Olive Keogh"}},"name":"Olive Keogh"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Living and working in Uganda, Declan Peppard ‘truly misses’ St Anne’s Park in Dublin"},"display_date":"2024-12-15T00:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘In Ireland we have lost some the human connection in business dealings. 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In 2005, I’d been diagnosed a coeliac and on a holiday to Donosti in the Basque area of Spain the following year I entered a bar one morning asking for something that didn’t have flour.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRQXT7ZLZBC6ZBHMFVXUTTBLHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916739953},"content":"I was directed towards what looked like a potato cake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSUXL723JNCPHLKN4TPVFXCAJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536021},"content":"From my experience of them in Ireland, I expected a bland flavour, but after buying a slice I was surprised to discover a savoury one seasoned with salt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KF66VKWBSJFS7HE55M3VPXEWEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536022},"content":"I snacked on this during the trip and on successive holidays. However, it was only when I moved to the Basque Country in 2019 that I found out how they were made.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNQZ2P3TZNFIPBBWQRKHDVG7VQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536023},"content":"I assumed that you boil the potatoes – how they are made at home – but my flatmate Aroa explained, while cutting them up into small pieces, that you fry them instead. She then whipped a few eggs in a large bowl, while the potato pieces sizzled in a saucepan of oil; and afterwards added a few pinches of salt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXPB5QSGOJECPIO6TXAP6TLV6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536024},"content":"When the spuds were fried, she scooped them out of the oil and into the bowl of whipped eggs where she blended them together. She then transferred this mixture to a heated frying pan for about half a minute, flipped it over using a plate, and after another 30 seconds, Voilà!","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJUHMPA2JJAFVFOPBMIZJOIW4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536025},"content":"Since that time, I’ve sampled many different types of tortilla, from tortilla de bacalao (cod) and tortilla de atún (tuna) to tortilla de cebolla (onion) and tortilla de espinacas (spinach), all with their own distinctive savoury flavours; and now today when I order one in a bar it is not out of necessity, but desire.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZLYFUACOLZFPXHNMG2T4LUZI3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733839536026},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Poraic Cahill"}]},"description":{"basic":"From my experience of them in Ireland I expected a bland flavour. 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The aim was to provide domestic servants for European settlers, potential wives for convicts, to help populate the new colony and to lessen numbers in Irish workhouses.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVLEPIQN2FFLFBU3DOBPDTHX6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204493},"content":"Today, approximately two million Australians are descended from an Irish Famine orphan girl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GTILPHVGNEP5IWWTQZE5AJPIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204494},"content":"Most gathered at Famine Rock are descendants of more than 1,200 orphan girls sent to Melbourne. Others are not. But all pay tribute to the resilience of those brave teenagers journeying from hunger to hope so long ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD626OZYTFGEXNQ7YJSBFQRRDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"R6MZ63UBNRHGRMCJODMRHDTCMQ"},"content":"Great Famine and Irish independence struggle linked by geography and history","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"T5JRHYHDPJFCDBSUC5NQFBXVYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204495},"content":"Who were the Irish Famine Orphan Girls? Surprisingly, many people – in Australia and Ireland – do not know. And that is the challenge.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQ64IE4K4RDMBKBN3TT266A7PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204496},"content":"Recently, Irish singer-songwriter Ryan Kelly (best known for being a part of Celtic Thunder) <a href=\"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irish-famine-orphan-girls\" target=\"_blank\">did an interview,</a> hosted by the Irish Famine Orphan Girls Commemoration Melbourne, to speak of sharing our stories in song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O32TNUPENNA6VJJMT6PGMLYSKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204498},"content":"For their Famine-emigration song, Land of a Thousand Dreams, bandmates Kelly and Neil Byrne filmed at the Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FD673LGZEBF6RLIKQ4YWR7T6QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"WVEWCDQ73FCLPNPENGIOJHVGXI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IERPKML2NVFMHI5Z6G3UF6YOTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508757},"content":"“Learning about the Famine and this tragic, tragic time in Ireland, when we lost millions to starvation and emigration – people just had to leave because there was no food, there was no life here and they had to go – I thought about the people watching from the clifftops as their family members boarded these ships. And they were gone,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VARK3YKFR5HORK3HVCXGFIRSYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204501},"content":"“But, as the song goes on, it’s more echoing the pride that we have in these people and in our forefathers who made these journeys.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5N74WSLFBZAWJLVP67TCZ7S5CE","additional_properties":{"_id":"YNI5XXCA3BATVPBX5YOZ7RUHRI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"TYLLT2S5XZGCHCOJSWIDM6FMBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204502},"content":"The determination of the Irish to integrate and contribute in their new lives, while keeping alive pride in their native ground – that is the story of the diaspora.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q6A6KIPCGJBKLMYAD5HXFTPOHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204503},"content":"The 2016 song still inspires people to learn more about the Famine. “That’s the beauty of music, as a connection it can make with people across the world,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTCHOMWTFJGEVFQZB37Z6KLOUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204505},"content":"Some 94 girls were sent from Co Tyrone, including one Eliza Greenwood from her home village of Moy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMDJFCLJV5DPJK7C5NB6QSZ4IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508763},"content":"“The whole story of the Great Famine and that emigration story is not told enough,” said Kelly. “It’s not taught in our schools. And it’s something that we should know more about growing up, because it’s a massive, massive part of our history.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PDNFFVOEHBHPDOFVUKTYITFLH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204510},"content":"Even in Australia, awareness of this remarkable story is still only slowly building. Many descendants didn’t know the story, until an orphan girl ancestor stepped from the shadows of family history research. Sue Jacques, of Queensland, is a great-great-granddaughter of Lucy Ellis, one of 35 orphan girls sent from the Newry Workhouse, Co Down. Sixteen year-old Lucy arrived in Melbourne on board the Derwent in 1850.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCDNCXAYBFFTVPKABHEEU2XVLA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NLSS6775RZBVNJGX5JBNUGKVNE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WBVO6MXKTJCDBM5RUMG5YKNH2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204514},"content":"Sue first learned Lucy’s story from family research. And she wasted no time in visiting Newry to retrace Lucy’s steps.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TI4RTHO5S5GE3ENJL6C7MBK7NA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733398508767},"content":"“Through this journey, I met a lot of wonderful people and I really found out what the conditions were like in the workhouses then,” she said. “You can read all you like but it’s when you visit there and see for yourself, you truly appreciate what it was like.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJK2ARFFXVBLBFGKBE2LS4AG64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204517},"content":"“The cold, stone buildings, long dormitories with one very tiny fire at the end of two long rooms, high windows that you couldn’t see out of, families separated, overcrowded – and the list goes on. It’s a miracle to me that Lucy and the other Earl Grey girls remained healthy enough to be chosen to come to Australia in the first place.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJUEG4EB2RG2RIHG32UKKR6J3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733394590452},"content":"For a long time the orphan girls’ story has been largely unknown. “When we’ve got these platforms I think it’s important for us to use them and undo this,” said Kelly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OTLUZSKJZCDRL4J6QBXEA7ZE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204521},"content":"It remains for us to tell their story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KUFZEPQYYZCXFOXTGFG4A6KTUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204522},"content":"<i>The 2024 Irish Famine Orphan Girls Commemoration event was held on Sunday, November 24th at Famine Rock in Burgoyne Reserve, Williamstown, Melbourne.</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKW3CUX3ZBEIDK75IZM2EQ5FPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311204523},"content":"<i>Siobhán O’Neill is a consulting media, communications and event manager who lives in Melbourne. She emigrated to Australia with her Irish parents when she was a baby.</i>","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Siobhán O’Neill"}]},"description":{"basic":"Every year descendants of the thousands of orphaned Irish teenage girls sent to Australia during the Great Famine gather in Melbourne to remember them"},"display_date":"2024-12-05T16:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"From an Irish workhouse to Australia – the story of the Famine orphan girls","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"35D5LGEK7RD7NOKK2BKOL7ZYSY","auth":{"1":"2fa8de6474e2f8d701cfa7648140f493498e741422d1bc6d128e2b95a9dbcb69"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/35D5LGEK7RD7NOKK2BKOL7ZYSY.png"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/05/from-an-irish-workhouse-to-australia-the-story-of-the-famine-orphan-girls/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"VZENT4KZIBHNVHJIPKLRJSVVJY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":389,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/681c7935-a63c-42e4-bd37-0dbd29539bd5/versions/1732791173/media/27f7d67c3fd2d583827c90f0b3fd684c_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/12/04/laura-kennedy-australia-offers-me-a-more-dignified-life-than-the-one-i-had-in-ireland-its-not-unpatriotic-to-say-so/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B52KP6IO2FHWTNI4UPWOMIUY3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259630},"content":"Even all the way from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/australia/\" target=\"_blank\">Australia</a>, the tedium and generally hopeless mood around <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/election2024/\" target=\"_blank\">the election</a> was palpable. As though <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland </a>as a country was engaged in some form of collective performance art when we all knew the outcome would be more of the same no matter who got in. After indulging in yet another vent at a friend here in Canberra about Ireland, they pointed out that I appear to be more personally invested in a country I don’t currently live in than the one where I do live.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PF4K5KAMDZDIXNAYCA72GIUH24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259631},"content":"The reality is that, like many emigrants, I <i>am</i> more invested in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ER6JMWUGYZCJJGXCY2IP5C74GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919067},"content":"Like a family member I’m at my wits’ end with, I am profoundly interested in its welfare. I am weary of its bullshit. I am angry with it and attached to it in a way that is irrevocable, joyous and sometimes kind of hurts. I would love Ireland to be somewhere that stops feeling so often like a bit of a mess. Like a country filled with excellent people who continually elect governments that can facilitate the building of data centres, but not hospitals. People who consider government both the cause of and solution to pretty much every problem, but don’t consider the deep problems inherent to that very attitude.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HMYJWPEJFE47AEP24RAWOVI4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259632},"content":"Like many Irish people both at home and abroad, I would like to have a rail connection from Dublin Airport into the city. I would like my two-year-old nephew, who I <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/11/10/laura-kennedy-like-many-two-year-olds-my-nephew-hates-socks-and-love-blueberries-but-hes-also-unlike-other-little-boys/\" target=\"_blank\">wrote about</a> recently, and who has a disability, to be a person who is valued and fairly represented in the country of his birth. I would like to come from a culture that is willing to consider the calcified clientelism within it, which goes so much deeper than politics and in which we are all participants.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EIJS2VBJDVCKROUIBHZIOHI67I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259633},"content":"It makes sense that emigrants often care so deeply about their country – as much as those who are privileged (or unlucky, depending on who’s making the judgment) enough to be able to live at home. It’s true that you become more Irish when you leave, in part because Irishness ceases to be a neutral quality shared with most people around you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TXUL4NRUXRA4VJJHXCMJP5QUYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919070},"content":"It becomes a central, unavoidable element of your identity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQBS6BQ7AJF5HICO6BAJZ4YMQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259634},"content":"Like any national identity, Irishness is multifaceted. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/author/laura-kennedy\" target=\"_blank\">I’ve been writing</a> about being an Irish emigrant in Australia for a year now. The similarities and differences. About what it is like to be part of a wave of Irish people, like so many at previous points in history, to move here, so far from home to a country so many Irish people celebrate and admire. There is a view of Irishness, common at home, that suggests that the moment you leave, your relationship to Ireland must change. Namely, your right to despair over Ireland, or to criticise your culture and homeland disappear. It’s all suddenly supposed to become irrelevant or alien to you, from deep irritation at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/11/23/disability-worker-says-she-was-shaken-and-in-tears-after-exchange-with-fine-gael-leader-simon-harris-in-kanturk/\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Harris</a> acting like a fussy baby when confronted with the hopeless, furious desperation of a disability worker, to your favourite chipper closing in your hometown.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3GEZBA7LHFEMDLIRBALBROHPBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919072},"content":"In the eyes of some, you lose this element of your claim to home along with your vote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OAVL723U6FC2VD4JBKHZMBJA4M","additional_properties":{"_id":"L3R6XM4HRREOJKHTOUOUD2CFTM"},"content":"Many Irish have voted with their feet but can’t vote in the election. The reason is plain","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GBXRXRIBVNCUHHAHDHUQO4E4OM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259635},"content":"“Stop being critical of home and just write about the beaches and the weather in Australia,” one deeply irritated reader wrote to me after reading a column that compared the housing situation in the Australian capital with Ireland’s own. Canberra is inland and has a freezing winter, so we’ll forgive the snafu there, but the attitude is common – “you’re not here, so you’re not really one of us”. Criticism from within is how Irish people bond. Criticism from without is bad PR. A liberty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFNZZROZQVE7DBRWZT27KBPFJI","additional_properties":{"_id":"PD4VXJ2VF5AKDDNRTBYOENOK4A"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"V3JK52FW6BGRRBPUR3T25UI7GU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259636},"content":"People don’t necessarily leave Ireland in large numbers without the push factor of the conditions they live under. If our country was less broken, we might be able to make that argument. But there is widespread agreement that our <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/housing-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">housing crisis</a> is one of – if not the – worst in Europe, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cost-of-living/\" target=\"_blank\">cost of living</a> is pushing out our young people, access to medical care is astonishingly poor, there is an unacceptable shortage of school places, numbers of children living unhoused or in poverty continue to grow and the country is hobbled by lack of imagination and unwillingness on the part of consecutive ineffectual governments to address the big problems that only bloat further with each election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E5DMKAOVMNFERDFQVXU462TDIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259637},"content":"We accept that Irish emigrants have much to offer the countries they move to but we don’t like to carefully interrogate why it is that they leave. Unless we can blame the British for it. Nor do we focus on what is lost to us when our young people in particular leave home to invest their education, their energy and their labour elsewhere. Their experience of other cultures, other possibilities, other ways of doing things, remain elsewhere unless we can entice them home. At present, there is little to entice Irish emigrants back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E2IDFK2EOJC2BIB7V2KMFTNY7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259638},"content":"I would love for Ireland to be somewhere that had space, employment, homes, educational opportunity and healthcare for the people who live there. I imagine many Irish emigrants and their families feel the same. Australia is not my home. It is not my country. But it is a country that offers a more dignified life than the one I come from. It is far from unpatriotic to say that this should not be the case.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FOGT24SMYJF6FCSDDPYNHPP2SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732709259639},"content":"It’s difficult to live abroad and know that you have no say in the direction your country takes. More so to think that if you lived at home, you would probably still feel that way, as friends and family do. In Ireland, we address the symptoms of problems and not the problems themselves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DPSN6WFYKRA3NMNS6KUVA43OIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919078},"content":"We bash our heads against the same old wall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYD4HKYZ4ZECTLNRJEMDAQVONU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732788919079},"content":"It would be nice if, rather than trusting in the promises of the chump in the suit who swears (again) to build us a gate on time and on budget, we could trust one another enough to kick the wall down altogether.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7JNWDK3Q5FDRCOIZH5LPVWN3Q","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Laura Kennedy"}},"name":"Laura Kennedy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Like many emigrants, the reality is that I am more invested in Ireland than the country I have moved to"},"display_date":"2024-12-04T06:01:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"D6ODVWV3HFDLLFEONCC4R7IRWY","auth":{"1":"d90fb1175f8373575e87b59999587328aeb1f9ef9c6fd302c94b434a6eb09b21"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/D6ODVWV3HFDLLFEONCC4R7IRWY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/abroad/2024/12/04/laura-kennedy-australia-offers-me-a-more-dignified-life-than-the-one-i-had-in-ireland-its-not-unpatriotic-to-say-so/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/abroad","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Abroad"}}}},{"_id":"FOBMY5HREVFD7IJT2ADJHVAWSQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":313,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/dd62b9f0-4bd8-44e7-8066-3b78f6802b2c/versions/1732707928/media/44e025b5406467a41bbdcf71a778698a_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/business/work/2024/12/01/trades-are-very-well-paid-here-compared-to-anywhere-else-in-the-world-i-have-been/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AY2JZQA3VRFLBFIGABNSE5BSGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334067},"content":"Growing up in Cork as a teenager in the 1990s, where he sometimes helped his uncle on construction jobs, Chris Kidney developed a lifelong love of carpentry. A qualified carpenter he met along the way took him under his wing and encouraged him as he undertook a qualification with Fás (the State training agency now known as Solas) as a carpenter and joiner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DJQZZU26RFAIPI2NWJKXRCKQCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334068},"content":"Kidney also had a hankering for travel, and his two passions combined well as he got to experience life in both Canada and Sydney in his 20s, before making a permanent move to Melbourne with his partner, Niharika, in 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZOOC55OPLFE2LN5JWCYTHVK3CA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334069},"content":"“We applied under the Skilled Migrant Visa Scheme and got accepted within three months. Carpentry is a good trade to facilitate international travel, and my partner is an occupational therapist, which is a recognised skill too, so we were well placed,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SDP3KRDR5JHQHAICOPWJLTYUL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334070},"content":"Kidney found work relatively easily and built up his experience and contacts with a hotel refurbishment company.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWAV2NTOJNG7NAHRQNBLLULHIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334071},"content":"“Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world that I have been. A good carpenter could expect to make Aus $120,000-$150,000 (€74,000-€92,500) a year in a waged position, depending on the job and the overtime they can get.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O27QEEVWJFEILB2FFKXO6SOYWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334072},"content":"“I spent my first 18 months here making contacts and it exposed me to an audience of customers that you just couldn’t reach as an individual. By late 2013, I decided I wanted to do my own thing, so I got my own van and tools and then opened up my own workshop.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZUP4IGOEG5CLZIBOCK5ZF46TK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"ESUFZFLUSVHDFJEGEXFK57VPUY"},"content":"An Irish businessman in Singapore: ‘You’ll get a year in jail if you are in a drunken brawl, so people don’t step out of line’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RAIZATUSFFAYNIO3NIVMTZ53BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334073},"content":"Kidney now works as a bespoke carpenter, generally on high-end projects for homeowners and developers. Typically, that might involve a customised staircase, a set of sash windows or cabinetry and furniture for a luxury home, but Kidney says he will turn his hand to almost any bespoke carpentry project and enjoys the interaction with customers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K5AEOUWM3JDTFP5REN3CURKC3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334074},"content":"“It’s a more personal service. I enjoy meeting the customers and getting a feel for who they are and what they are looking for. Then I put my own spin on it and give them some options to choose from. You get to be a bit more creative and it’s a challenge. No two houses and no two jobs are the same.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WCQT4ZJBQRFFLNGTXPEFLRPQHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334075},"content":"Working from his home base in Woodend, just north of Melbourne, Kidney employs a trusted group of freelance tradespeople he has got to know in his time here.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YOWT4F4PYJA5PFVBAUMKN6YHSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334076},"content":"Business has grown steadily over the years as Australia’s housing market has boomed, but with a cooling off lately, he senses that consumers have become more cautious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VALTIIJ2YFCFHIUQLV6KKGLHSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334077},"content":"While he enjoys a good standard of living and the couple have been able to buy their own home, good salaries don’t go as far there as people might think, he cautions. “Taxes are creeping up here. It’s not a cheap place to live. The wages are high, but the cost of living is also high. Second-hand cars also would also be a lot more expensive than they are in Ireland.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7VJINHKL4BBEVMDIV3XDNRXB3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334078},"content":"Kidney credits his partner as a rock of support as he has developed his business. “A good partner is a massive help when you are growing your own business. You are going to get bumps and knocks along the way. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without her.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4VRL4FQPBHLVFVXAJDWUF3BLA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NNCNMACQUJA3PI7Z4ZZ5Z5CDTE"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"QPWH5ALEGJELVJK5E62D4RALAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334079},"content":"He has also developed a good circle of friends in the 12 years he has been in Melbourne, many of them also from Ireland. “Naturally you gravitate to your own people. I have a lot of good Irish friends. The rep for the company that I get materials from and the guy that services my machines are Irish. You meet people and you get introduced. There’s a massive Irish community here.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WIQ7QWPZVAGJKJ37I44X7U27I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334080},"content":"Having lived and worked in two big Australian cities, Kidney has become familiar with local culture and the personality of natives in his adopted home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GSUIPTHLQZH35CYHUSHRR74USA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334081},"content":"“Australians are a bit tougher and straight-talking and you could see that as them being abrupt, and you can take that up wrongly until you get to know them better. They are certainly direct, and you know where you stand with them. They enjoy a bit of craic too, and I have some great Aussie friends.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UVGWQ6ZM5E2DO2W3M7VTG5M64","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334082},"content":"Given the climate, Kidney enjoys an outdoor lifestyle involving forest and mountain trails as well as local beaches and barbecues, along with a vibrant cafe and nightlife culture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFDG6HAEG5APRBQZBPTCEUCE4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334083},"content":"There is also a vibrant sports and music culture around the city. “You’ve got rugby, soccer and Australian Rules football among other things. There’s also a strong music scene between local artists and international visiting ones. We get Irish acts coming over. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/damien-dempsey/\" target=\"_blank\">Damien Dempsey</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/glen-hansard/\" target=\"_blank\">Glen Hansard</a>, for example, have played here.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UK53EEESPBBOXDJIXX7F26G2YU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732704334084},"content":"Kidney maintains his love of Ireland, proclaiming he is a “proud Cork man” and he enjoys his visits back to his native city, but he can’t see himself returning anything soon. “Ireland is a very special place, but for now, Australia is home.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Wild Geese: Chris Kidney is a carpenter in Melbourne, Australia"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world I have been’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"QHGBK4VE7BAGNPCX6IRE4OGEG4","auth":{"1":"40f2c0a63cb1462bb11b059ba806a0fc0c32e55a970d7f2ca6930c08273c8c18"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/QHGBK4VE7BAGNPCX6IRE4OGEG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Work"},{"name":"Business"},{"name":"Abroad"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/business/work/2024/12/01/trades-are-very-well-paid-here-compared-to-anywhere-else-in-the-world-i-have-been/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/business/work","additional_properties":{"original":{"Podcast":{"podcast_logo":null}}},"name":"Work"}}}},{"_id":"5H65A7NE3BHXDD33QCUDJQKD7M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":316,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0b575c3c-6c89-4e82-aed4-1aa8ce5a44b6/versions/1732889332/media/b2de64cdcc437a5c3db8059ea280a727_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/abroad/2024/11/29/i-know-nothing-about-running-a-kitchen-it-looks-like-absolute-hell-tiring-time-consuming-and-extremely-risky/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4ULU7HLCPRGY7NXSSYQDCT4TGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221116},"content":"Recently we signed the lease on the ground floor of Bratislava’s newest underground music club: Padá Omietka. The name means “Falling Plaster” in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/slovakia/\" target=\"_blank\">Slovak</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3M5YF4D3VFBJ3LDT2KPBRZRRCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221117},"content":"A few years ago many of the ornate buildings in the city were in a state of disrepair and were covered in signs warning of falling plaster; these somewhat limited the insurance liability of the building owners should pedestrians be hit by a piece of early 20th century facade. There aren’t as many as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2022/08/08/this-kerryman-didnt-just-walk-into-a-bar-in-bratislava-he-opened-one/\" target=\"_blank\">when I first moved here</a>, but you still see the odd one affixed to an ornate mansion. Such signs serve as free advertising for us, and give us instant brand recognition with any Slovak person who hears the name.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5EZRCP3PNB5BOMOYBQUEUYLKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221118},"content":"We’ve been operating a late bar and sometimes a nightclub in the basement for some months now. We’ve been experimenting with various events in that time. To be honest, it has sometimes been a drag on the operations of The International, our flagship brand, but now we’re making moves to turn this new bar into the economic engine that’s going to propel us forward.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XXHYUMHE5CONJ4JHODXY2VH2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"22SCQN7CZFCADLLV22OEUYHS6Y"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"3YISGM677ZBR3OAHHLRP3XBQSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732875221119},"content":"There were several factors working against us until now, chief among them being that to access this club you had to walk through a functioning Slovak <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/food/restaurants/\" target=\"_blank\">restaurant</a>. And the lack of a sign on the street. We were too hidden. 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