07.31.07
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:07 pm by Sarah
I’ve always been a sucker for medical dramas and yes Grey’s Anatomy has finally drawn me in even though I find the heroine deeply irritating and I am watching two separate series on different channels.
Anyway, to digress briefly, sometimes I say to myself, Sarah, are you self-obsessed? And then I think, well simply asking yourself that question probably means the answer is affirmative.
But then I watch Grey’s Anatomy and I think well, SHE’s self-obsessed so you can’t be THAT bad. But then I think, hmmm, you don’t like her Sarah, and anyway, she’s a ridiculous character in a medical drama and hardly a viable role model.
So THEN I think, well, you wouldn’t be AS self-obsessed if you had a job in an office and had to think about other things like colleagues and work and when is lunchtime and have watercooler moments. Your lack of socialisation probably encourages excessive reflection. and THEN I think, well you know, maybe you are achieving self awareness and this is a good thing. But where’s the line between reflection and obsession? hmmmmmmmmmmm. THEN I wonder what everyone else is thinking? Are you all out there worrying and wondering about yourselves??? I wonder what the mental barometer is? How much is too much? And is it bad?
and now you’ve got me wondering if Eamon O’Cuiv is a good lover. You guys, you guys…
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07.30.07
Posted in Feminism at 8:28 pm by Sarah
About five years ago, Iarnrod Eireann was required to erect fortifications along the railways. Litigants had successfully claimed that the company hadn’t tried hard enough to keep them out of the path of trains whilst frolicking on the railway. Since our diesel powered engines are large and noisy and railways are generally so quiet, I’d argue a significant degree of contributory negligence is necessary for someone to be accidentally hit by a train. Nevertheless Irish Rail has to show in court that they have made every effort to keep the railway wandering public off their property.
This has proved to be a terrible nuisance for our family since our land runs along one of the major lines. Until the recent fencing initiative we could walk up the fields, cross the railway at a gate or easily tackled fence and get onto the banks of the Royal Canal. From there we could walk for miles on what is a stunning linear wildlife park. Even as children we didn’t find it particularly arduous to check the signal box, watch and listen before crossing the line.
Between deep ditches and double lines of barbed wire, now I have to get into a car, drive to the village and find parking before trekking off down the canal bank. It wrecks my walking buzz and I’m resentful that my children will never experience the freedom I did as a child to enjoy the canal. However, such is the litigious nature of our society I can understand why Irish Rail had to act as they did.
For the same reason I can understand why the Office of Public Works has had to fence off and close gates at Castletown House, the beautiful estate at Celbridge. If they left access to the estate open all day and night, it would only be a matter of time before they’d find themselves in court because some fool tripped over a mushroom and felt obliged to seek compensation.
This is the way the State and its agencies have been forced to protect themselves from the stupidity and greed of the general public. What I don’t understand then is why private landowners who take the same steps are the subject of outrage. If someone walks across private land and finds a hole in which to fall or provoke a beast into a personal attack then that farmer will find themselves in a great deal of trouble.
He would have to demonstrate in court that he had taken substantial steps to protect the casual visitor to his land, even if he had no idea that person was present. Private property is constitutionally protected but the general understanding of that concept is that it refers to people’s gardens and not what is known as the “open countryside” or to rural dwellers, our land. The “right to roam”, so indignantly proclaimed by the walking fraternity does not mean my right to a recreational skip through the gardens of Ballsbridge on a Sunday afternoon. The roaming in question will only be done in the “country” and the consensus appears to be that the general population has a right to possession of the countryside on the basis that they rather like the look of it.
Curiously my toddlers have a similar outlook on life. If they see something an automatic presumption of ownership applies and any rival claims will be met with high pitched shrieking and wails of injustice.
The walkers will argue that they’ve indirectly paid for access since they pay taxes and farmers receive grants. Thanks to the efficiency of the Revenue Commissioners, farmers pay taxes too, yet no one would argue this entitles them to free water supplies or the occasional ride on Dublin Bus.
The Minister for Rural and Community Affairs Eamon O’Cuiv looks set to introduce legislation to resolve the issue along the lines of a report submitted to him by an expert working group he established. It is proposed that a right to roam will be established on mountainous and uncultivated areas but that as in Scotland “a person has access rights only if they are exercised responsibly” and that those exercising the right of access must comply with an “Access Code”. This fairly shifts a degree of responsibility onto the walkers themselves and should go someway towards protecting landowners from presumptuous and litigious tourists.
Of course, the IFA has rather stupidly announced that this amounts to “nationalisation” of private land and proposes a standard annual payment of €1000 plus €5 per metre of walk. This greedy demand will be simply ignored and its mere existence will only serve to reinforce the image of the farming community as free-loading grant grabbers. Padraig Walshe, its current President, would be much better off ensuring that sensible provisions are made to ensure good relations between farmers and walkers by establishing clear rights and responsibilities on either side.
Nevertheless, the whole issue illustrates the culture clash between the established urban consensus which dominates the media and the every day lives of the rural population. The accepted narrative of our urban-rural divide is that people who live in the country are a costly, polluting indulgence and an offence to proper planning.
Minister O’Cuiv was interviewed last Friday week on The Last Word about the €6.8bn to be spent on developing rural communities over the next seven years. Presenter Matt Cooper confidently questioned the value of such an investment since it is accepted wisdom that people who live in the country drive too much, cost too much to service and their houses ruin the view when city folk drive to their coastal holiday homes on bank holiday weekends.
O’Cuiv’s response was so refreshing it reminded me how seldom the rural perspective features in the media. He observed that planners see Ireland as a hierarchy of cities, towns and gateways but that in reality, our society strongly recognises another hierarchy of place – that of townland, parish, county and province. This is the organisation which provides the backbone of Irish society and one which thrives while urban areas suffer all kinds of problems from congestion to deprivation. There are massive social and economic benefits to rural living and no evidence whatsoever that a country dweller leaves a carbon footprint any greater than an urban one. Certainly, most people that I know in Dublin have two cars which they drive everywhere. Yet apparently a view exists that only those cars driving in from the country present an environmental hazard.
I didn’t want my children to grow up in a city because I knew they’d live in a bubble with people of like mind and means. The social and economic mix which exists in the country will give them a more balanced perspective on the nature of our society and one from which the mall-dwelling teenagers of our cities might benefit.
O’Cuiv has said “Amidst the important debate about preserving the heritage of our countryside and the value of its traditions, music and culture, the point is often missed that without our people, these cease to exist.” I agree. So from walkers to planners to commentators, how about a little more respect for those of us who live beyond the Pale?
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07.25.07
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 12:47 pm by Sarah
I’ve been meaning to say that the rain has not been all bad.
We have loads of rabbits in our garden and field. Normally they dart around the place, taking fright when they catch sight of a human and they are so alert and watchful it creates a state of tension in the garden. However the incessant rain appears to have affected their mood. Now they sit around lazily under the white thorn hedge. It’s much more peaceful. And even when they see you they don’t bother moving.
Also, the cloud formations are truly stunning even to my untrained and usually unobservant eye. With the sun behind them we’ve had amazing skies. So despite the sinister, oppressive shade of green, our chilled-out rabbits and captivating skies are lending a – slower, more contemplative air to the countryside. I’ve been taking deep breaths and rather enjoying it. We’ve got that “soft” as in “soft day thank god” atmosphere. Well, except when there are thunder storms. Which are kinda spooky.
btw, did you know it rains less in the Aran Islands? And the grass grows the whole year because the limestone lets the heat out in the winter?
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07.24.07
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 9:30 pm by Sarah
That programme is on again.
God I look like shit in it.
Those children, personalities formed at birth or not, have wiped me out.
Still, I think I am getting over it.
Just back from two lovely days in Galway where it didn’t rain at all and the sun shone.
We went to Inis Mor and to Dun Aonghas which was amazing. Thoroughly recommend it.
Can’t beat the Atlantic breeze to liven up one’s complexion.
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Posted in Feminism at 9:26 pm by Sarah
Fintan O’Toole answers PROPERLY (unlike my effort) why this case got so much attention.
sub reqd so here’s the column
Everyone remembers, of course, the young mother who met a violent death in her own home in the Dublin commuter belt in 2004, and whose husband was subsequently charged with her murder. Who could forget the awful fate of Colleen Mulder, strangled to death in Dunshaughlin? Or that of Mamie Walsh, the Waterford mother of two, whose body was found in the boot of her car in August that year, covered in a bloodstained sheet and with a rope tied loosely around her neck?
At the trial of Samuel Jennings, who was found guilty of her murder, the members of her family who had been present when the car boot was opened said, in words of searing clarity: “How poor Mamie looked on the outside then is how we all feel on the inside now.” Or Dolores McCrea, a mother of four, whose burnt body was found at the back of her house in Co Donegal that same year? The murder trial of her husband heard that he had told his children he would rip his wife’s guts out and stab her.
Or, if you’re like me, you’ve forgotten all of these cases already. The initial reports on the violent deaths of these women were shocking. The trials were upsetting. But these events passed through the media mill in a more or less routine fashion. They gave us our little fix of horror and heartbreak, our regular reminder of the barbarism that can lie just under the surface of normality, and then we moved on.
In May, when the Court of Criminal Appeal ordered a retrial of the man who had been found guilty of Colleen Mulder’s murder, the news hardly made it into the “other court stories in brief” columns.
None of these women were less human than Rachel O’Reilly. None of their families, friends and neighbours were less devastated, horrified or appalled by their deaths than Rachel’s were. If motherhood is the special ingredient that turns a violent death into an epic media event, Colleen Mulder, Mamie Walsh and Dolores McCrea had it too.
If sheer awfulness is what makes us pay attention, these deaths had it in spades. So why did the murder of Rachel O’Reilly and the trial and conviction of her husband, Joe, become one of the biggest media events of recent years, while the other death and trials were treated as routine events? The only answer I can think of is a painful one for anyone who takes pride in the profession of journalism. The story became so big because the coverage was shaped by the killer.
If that seems like an over-dramatic claim, consider the account of the journalist who set the agenda, Mick McCaffrey, then a crime reporter with the Evening Herald .
In the Sunday Tribune , where he now works, McCaffrey described how, just weeks after Rachel’s murder, Joe O’Reilly “suggested showing the newspaper around the bungalow which he said was still covered in Rachel’s bloodstains”. McCaffrey already suspected that O’Reilly may have killed his wife. He subsequently understood O’Reilly’s behaviour as that of a psychopath getting a thrill from having everybody see him at the scene of his triumph. He “thought this was psychotic behaviour but as a journalist it was a fantastic story”.
His editors clearly thought so too. The Herald’s front page ran the strapline “Exclusive: Inside murdered Rachel’s dream home” and the banner headline “Blood marks spot where mum’s vicious killer struck”. Beneath a photograph of bloodstains on a wall, there is one of Joe O’Reilly sitting proudly in the middle of the room where he killed his wife.
It is like one of those now-repulsive pictures of a big-game hunter in a pith helmet with his rifle in his hands and his foot resting on the dead body of a tiger. In return for a “fantastic story”, journalism was feeding the monstrous ego of a psychopath.
It was also providing Joe O’Reilly with what may be the best grounds he has for an appeal. In a case that depended entirely on circumstantial evidence, and therefore on the willingness of the jury to read a pattern of guilt into disjointed fragments of suggestion and implication, it can be argued that the swathes of tendentious coverage fatally polluted the process of objective judgment.
Even if this proves not to be the case, it is impossible to argue that the media coverage as a whole has been in the public interest. Allowing a suspected killer to display his victim’s bloodstains is a “fantastic story” only because it panders to our craving for grotesque sensation. But this story went far beyond sensationalism. The Herald , and to some extent the Late, Late Show , allowed a killer to influence the reporting of his crime. Joe O’Reilly upped the ante and all the media, to one degree or another, played along.
He decided that he did not wish to be treated as a routine little thug, and we obliged by turning his squalid, banal evil into a national epic.
Even if he has lost the game, he will take a sickening satisfaction from his ability to decide how it was played.
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07.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:57 pm by Sarah
Guilty.
The longer they stayed out the more I thought they might do a not guilty. I have to say, they seemed to be a good jury. They could’ve been lazy and done it in half an hour but they went through the evidence soberly.
I think the judge’s instruction was a good one: the important piece of evidence was the mobile phone and the they had to ask themselves was there any innocent explanation as to why that evidence did not match the alibi. If there was no innocent explanation then they had to find him guilty.
Having said I would have forgiven them a not guilty verdict. The evidence was really circumstantial.
Still I’ll never forget that Late Late Sho interview he did. I rang my sister straight afterwards and we agreed it was him. Fair dues to the cops for being so determined.
Amazing that he forgot the mobile phone would place him there and what a shit to let her own mother find the body.
Those poor children. How do they adjust to this?
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07.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:25 pm by Sarah
Hmmmmmm
Amazing build up tension. I think he wins. Threats everywhere, but he wins.
And then. AND THEN, no bloody music? I thought the telly was broken. It wrecked my buzz.
Apparently that was the point. But the first time ever they got too clever clever.
Gosh, much to absorb.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:04 am by Sarah
The “country market” (think Dun Laoighre People’s Park Market and divide by 1000) is 11 years old tomorrow. GG will attend. The man just can’t stop giving.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:02 am by Sarah
Last episode tonight.
I took part in a discussion about it on Ryan Tubridy this morning (Anton Savage standing-in).
You can hear it here . Today its on “latest show” and will get archived from tomorrow. I don’t come into the discussion until about 15 minutes in.
update: eeek am switching off comments! Paul Newton left one in which he confessed he knew the ending. NO comments till tomorrow. I’ve deliberately avoided ANYTHING about Tony in case someone accidentally tells me.
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07.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:14 pm by Sarah
So it’s been getting more and more painful listening to the radio. It’s stand-in hell and really there is only so much LIVE forced gaiety awful chit chat a person can stand. The alternative is of course the wonderful Radio 4 which I can listen to online or on my radio upstairs which picks up LW. The kitchen, sitting room and car are tense places. Then I remembered I used to get Radio 4 FM on the telly because I could tune it in from the Astra 2d satellite, but it disappeared -which I blamed on the children. So I got out the remote, found the Astra page again and programmed in the co-ordinates. EXCEPT Radio 4, LW or FM doesn’t appear on the list of available channels even though it is Free to air.
Last year I could get this no problem.
What’s going on? Have RTE or Sky or Astra or someone screwed around so that we can’t get it? Anyone know?
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