I remember I remember Is cuimhin liom

I remember, I remember

I remember the good old days when my father bought the Irish Independent first thing in the morning to read through the sports columns and the deaths. Every family placed the death notices in the national papers. Nowadays people just flick on to RIP.ie on their phones and they get all the funeral details, immediately forward them on to friends, express their condolences and even watch the service online.

  Likewise, we get all the sports news and current affairs on our phones before we get up in the morning instead of going out buying newspapers. We live in the instant news communications era

Another great topic in my formative years was the weather forecast on Radio Eireann at 7.55 am. It just could not be missed. I think the Irish were obsessed with the weather. If you met someone on the street, they were likely to greet you with, I wonder will it rain, or its windy or cold or hot.

Today as my wife was going for a walk, we checked the weather on my phone, and it told us that rain was stopping in 27 minutes and would start again in 20 minutes. We all use these forecasts. It is a phenomenal change that I can get instant access to the met office and have 24-hour accurate weather information on my phone.

In my young days in Blennerville in Tralee we had the local post office with the village phone and whenever someone died abroad the Telegram boy came to the house taking the telegram out of his pouch and gave it to the family. This message often took days to arrive. In today’s internet world we can send messages across the world in seconds and people reply instantly. It makes the world a very small place indeed.  

When I left teacher training college in 1967, we were all advised that we should purchase a set of encyclopaedias to help us with preparing class lessons and to have some extra background knowledge.  A friend of mine was selling Colliers Encyclopaedias, and I duly purchased a set. It was a huge volume of books taking up a lot of shelf space. I was always bringing them to school, and the children were very impressed by the information in them as they were researching class projects. This has all drastically changed with the internet .I can do google searches and ask AI and get all the information I need on any subject in seconds.

At home we attended Tralee races every year, run in conjunction with The Rose of Tralee festival.  This was a great carnival event which all the locals attended and enjoyed. In today’s world we still have the rose festival, but the racing is no more.

We now have online betting, and we can wager on horse racing, football matches and on myriads of events occurring worldwide. We can do lotto online and bet on just about anything, anytime. The social aspect has been diminished, and gambling has taken a grip of society causing many problems for people who get addicted.

Another great annual event in our lives was the Grand National at Aintree. We bought the paper early that day and opened the page with the list of horses. We then got a needle, closed our eyes and aimed the needle at the list. We picked our horses on that basis. We then collected the money and placed our bets in Tunny Galvin’s bookies shop at end of Rock Street, Tralee. I remember when the horse named ESB won, and I collected my winnings. There was no online betting then. My gambling career was short lived.

When we started off teaching, we were paid by cheque once a month and cashed it in the bank and balanced it out to keep us alive for four weeks.. Today people are paid online directly into their bank accounts and pay their bills using their phones. Yes, the times have changed rapidly.

Not too long ago everyone had to go to a travel agent to book a holiday but now people can organise and pay for their holidays in the comfort of their own homes. Travel books that we used to learn about cities and places we travelled to are no longer used by this generation of travellers. People book everything online including their train and bus tickets, tours, museum admissions, concert and theatre tickets and meals.

In our own homes we have robotic hoovers and our great friend Alexa plays whatever music we request her to. She is always ready to give us news updates 24 hours a day with a simple oral request like Alexa play RTE 1 or Alexa play Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever song or piece of music I want to hear.

Our old-fashioned TV programmes have now been overtaken by live streaming from Netflix, You Tube Spotify, Apple TV and more. We have far more choice on demand.

Last weekend at home we binged on the entire Hostage series on TV. We can all remember the time when we saw an episode of a series and had to wait a whole week for the next one.Yes, all these choices make life more interesting and easier we are told.

It also makes us very dependent on the internet, and we are lost if it goes down, even for a short period.

Maybe it’s time for a rethink in our lives, take a breather from the phone and laptop or I pad and chose instead to read a physical book or join an outdoor social group or simply go for a woodland or beach walk.

Things have sure changed since Mr Harmon sold his loose sweets to us in little tóisíns on our way to and from school long ago.

www.aramblersblog.com

PS: Re Photograph:

I took this photo while walking in Courtown Woods last Saturday. Someone had used the hole in this decaying tree to place a fairy door and other pieces as arboreal decorations.

A woman, who told me that she was in her eighties. was passing by and she told me that it reminded her of a fairy fort near her home in her youth. We had a nice nostalgic few moments and I told her that I would use the photo in a blog ,which I have done today.