I hope every body had a good Christmas, despite the freeze up. Our Christmas celebrations i.e. mid night mass and Christmas day with Fr Jarleth was very appropriately celebrated enhanced by the fact that the church was wonderfully lit up the like of which I have never seen before with Fairy lights on a magnificent Christmas tree, in fact the extra lighting in the church was also in preparation for Paula de Courcey’s wedding which came about to day. The family have donated all the lights and the Tree with its decorations to the parish for future Christmas’s, and we certainly thank them for this gesture.

Paula DeCourcy and Tim Penter

As I have just mentioned Paula’s marriage to Tim Penter we would just like to congratulate them both and long life together.

Freeze up

With some relief, the snow silent but deadly has nearly gone and the ice has melted to have some water back in our homes after this long spell, which dose make on think that this could possibly happen again I feel sure its part of the global warming with a great change to the gulf stream, which influence’s the west coast, what I am trying to get at even with all the warnings from the very accurate Met Eirann bulletins , small villages around the coast still found it difficult particularly the roads and water I think for all of us it has been a learning curve, thanks to our own local community a lot of people were helped in one way or another, more co operation has to be given to us from the Galway County Council, yes I know they were flat out, but for example sand stocks and Salt allocated in prime spots placed much earlier with the Met Eirann warnings. where possibly our own lads with tractors could be of service with the advise from GCC. The surrounding roads and Innishnee were not even gritted, Toombeola, also Roundstone to Ballyconneelly we were neglected again, this is a time our own lads could help, there were thank god only minor accidents, but one car if it were not for a telegraph pole and a small stone would have gone into the river with a potential loss of life. We must seriously as a community to talk this out and be ready if there is a next time. Talking to Johnny Conneelly, the turning off of the water in Roundstone will still continue for the time being from 8.30pm to 8.30 am some times a little delay for the turn on, the source is very low, this is due to taps that had been left on during the freeze, but the now present thaw makes pipes burst, so please people farmers alike check you pipes, my alone had two bursts since the thaw.

My thanks

A certain young man came to my aid on the morning of St Stephan’s Day, with out going to the whole story, my Aunt who lives in Oughterard and is ninety one, came to have the Christmas Lunch to Recess where my Aunt had to abandon her car by Rosie Joyce’s we had to walk quite a bit for our Christmas dinner, to cut a long story short she left her car over night, I could not ask her to walk to my car in the dark, friends of mine who were also guests took her back to My house for the night, the next morning we took off to collect her car, I new my car would not get up a small hill we decided to walk up to her car, just as we started we noticed a car coming down that hill, we stopped him to find out if it was safe to drive up, he said he would take my aunt to her car, he turned around brought her to the car made sure she got to the main road. I think his name is Raymond I just want to thank him for being so generous for his help

Short as it is, that’s all from me just to wish everybody a very happy and hopefully prosperous new year. So put away your skies and ice skates and get ready with the sun tan lotion. have a great week and keep smiling