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Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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irish independent

Message To Margaret Campaign

February 14, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I posted late last year about a recent case in England where the Ecclesiastical Court of the Church of England in Coventry refused permission for the family of Margaret Keane to include an inscription in Irish on her gravestone without translation.

A natural mimic of an Irish symbol. I found this on from cobbles by The Grand Union Canal near Denham in 2012. It mimics the cross of St Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland.
A natural mimic of an Irish symbol by The Grand Union Canal, Denham.
[Read more…] about Message To Margaret Campaign

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: anglican church, epitaph, gaeilge, irish independent, margaret keane, martina devlin, Message To Margaret Campaign, photos, spike milligan

I Told You

November 27, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

‘Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite’ is Spike Milligan’s epitaph. ‘I told you I was ill’ are the enduring words that recall his death in 2002, except they are as Gaeilge.

Some ornamental things that caught my eye this day 2016.

‘A Úachtaráin agus a chairde’ said Queen Elizabeth II in Dublin, at a State Dinner in her honour in Dublin Castle in 2011. It was hosted by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and that’s why the visiting monarch opened saying ‘President and friends’.

Martina Devlin has a story in today’s Independent that is quite surreal. It’s about an Irish language epitaph on a headstone that has been blocked in the UK. ‘In ár gcroíthe go deo’ which means ‘In our hearts forever’, would seem to be at risk of persisting ‘in our courts forever’.

The head of the Anglican Church spoke in Irish without translation and yet, her ecclesiastical courts have consistently ruled that Margaret Keane’s epitaph in Irish must be translated to avoid misinterpretation.

If I was a UK citizen in Northern Ireland, I would see this as an insult. I would treat this as an affront, a direct insult to me, to liberalism and to freedom of expression. I’m not a UK citizen and I’m pretty worked up about it because there is a history of mistrust. Like a natural resource of enmity and bile, this Anglican Church appears to mine a seam of bitterness and bring confrontations to the surface. One could say it suggests that the society the Anglican prelates represent are sliding back towards medieval if not authoritarian thinking.

It’s a disgrace that the Church of England should deny Irish speakers of British citizenship the right to express themselves in their own language. It’s antediluvian and harks back to the worst of Victorian memories when the poorest of British subjects in Ireland were allowed starve to death else forced to emigrate. It’s hard to prove causation or understand the 1840s imperial thinking but some argue that it was helpful to reduce the numbers of subsistence farmers, that it was a necessary step towards clearing the lands so that agricultural practices could be modernised. Some have said that Stalin learned from this program in creating the Holodomor of the 1930s.

A chairde, words matter and their language matters too.

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: anglican church, epitaph, gaeilge, irish independent, josep stalin, margaret keane, martina devlin, photos, queen elizabeth, spike milligan, the atlantic

Prostate Cancer Kills

November 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I heard today that English goalkeeping legend Ray Clemence has died. Now, I’m not a big football fan despite growing up with compulsive enthusiasms for the top English leagues. While I’ve always preferred rugby, years in America taught me that any sport can catch your imagination and act as a gateway to a new culture. I learned that baseball is more pointless than cricket, that American Football is seriously bad for your health and that to watch basketball, is to see how evolution works, but more slowly.

Six months old and it was time to play.
Seeking a hopeful note in a journal on cancer (from this date 2014).
[Read more…] about Prostate Cancer Kills

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: cancer, football, human rights, irish independent, movember, photos, prostate, ray clemence

Other People’s Words

September 2, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

Other people’s thoughts often provide the focus for my own musings. And I’ll admit that there are many days when I think that other people’s words convey my thoughts better than I can express them for myself. Today has been one of those days.

This seal isn’t alone surfacing for oxygen today.
[Read more…] about Other People’s Words

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: belarus, birds, irish independent, irish PEN, lia mills, photos, thejournal.ie, tim harford

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