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So how do I spend my time in retirement, you ask?  Very pleasantly, on the whole.  Some days indeed, I am so occupied I cannot get in all the jobs I have engaged myself to do.

I play the organ in church.  Somewhat like myself, it is ancient and unpredictable.  Between Masses, benediction services, novenas, Holy Hours, missions, First Fridays, and so on, I am fairly often seated at the organ, which I play very ‘charitably’, for, verily, ‘my right hand knoweth not what my left hand doeth!’
Any time I meet a pretty young girl – and this town is full of them – I’ll say, ‘I’ll play the bridal march at your wedding.’ They always say, “Ach, Mr Crawford, you’ll have to get me a boy first!”  I notice that they always sigh when they tell me this.  In order to keep their young hearts up, I answer them thus:

“Look here, daughter, I never promised a girl that I’d play at her wedding, that I didn’t fulfil my promise.”  And it is so.  The first wedding I played at was in 1912.  Even considering that Lent is a close season, and Advent another,  have played for a brave few brides in that half-century.

I hope that, dressed in their bridal raiment, they will be waiting for me at the golden gates of heaven, as the blessed welcome the merry ‘Fiddler of Dooney’.

… more later …

How time flies!  Already we have seen one third of all the plays in the 2012 Newry Drama Festival!
Bart’s opening on Friday night was competent, distracting and pleasant:  I expect no kudos to come their way though.

Ballyduff (Saturday) and Nenagh (Sunday) were both outstanding in their own different ways:  Waterford displayed an exceptionally talent youth section and the production was excellent.  Tipperary gave a masterly technical performance, especially in set, lighting, costume and sound.  I expect them to win an award in the latter category.  Both performances however left room for improvement.  The Judge was weak in The Crucible:  the over-ornate and technical set restricted the cast of Jekyll and Hyde.

The best is yet to come.  I look forward especially to Silken Thomas’ Jerusalem (Friday) and Newpoint’s Beauty Queen of Lenane (Thursday).

Tonight it is Clarence with Weekend Breaks.

Attend and enjoy!

Some philanthropists, solicitous about the possibility of my becoming bored with so much leisure at my disposal, naively advised me to open ‘a wee shop’.  However recalling all the money I had paid out of my own pocket for pens, pencils, jotters, catechisms, readers, copies and rubbers for some of my old pupils (who did me up to the two eyes!) I decided to steer clear and wide of any commercial reef. When I was young I had often heard people talk in awed tones of so-and-so who was in Stubbs Gazette.  I therefore had no great urge to appear in that dreaded chronicle of financial disasters.  Wisely I decided to play it cool.

Every morning, waiting till the streets are well-aired, I lie in bed, not having to clock in any more.  I read the civil register page of the Irish News and, on discovering that I have not yet died, I rise and start the day. Sometimes on my ambles I catch a glimpse of the academy wherein I wrought for so many  (forty) years.  It still looks right well from the outside, but not having entered it for the past ten years, I cannot vouch any more for the inside! Truth be told, for all I know or feel or care, I might never have been inside it!

Speaking truthfully, it evokes no nostalgia whatever!

…. more later …

“This is Tass Murphy again!

I was born up in Derrybeg. Before the Derrybeg Estate houses were built.

There was a wee lane, up where Parkhead Crescent is now. There was a pile of us: the McCoys, Begleys, Hartes, McClellands – Michael John Benett, McKevitts, Raymy hamilton, Fegans, Gunner Devlin, Feehans – all gone! We were big into boogies. Ball-bearing carts.

We’d fly down the Camlough Road. Concrete surface then. Gave you a rollicking ride! Boy, we could go! Passed “Matchboxes”, sports cars … We were caught – more than once – by the infamous Sergeant Junk! Done us for ‘no lights on the boogies!’

Imagine! To be caught by the police at 7-year-old. He’d have a word with our fathers. Told them it was dangerous. Suppose, now you think about it, it was! But not as bad as it sounds. There wouldn’t be ten cars on the road -all day – in those times. The ’50’s. We got the wood from the oul’ tramline station. It closed in the late ’40’s. We were expert scavangers! We built a fleet of boogies. I’m sure – if you got talking to any of the men named above – it would be the same story! “