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Manchester to Rome 2022

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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

AVE Acronym

July 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Caveat emptor: the things that flow through my consciousness are not always pleasant, complete let alone right.

Ave!

Psychopathy and sociopathy seem to feature large in everything this week. Failures in duties of care dominate the news.

I needed an acronym to make it easier to write about. I’ve chosen AVE as my acronym for Abuser, Victim and Exploitation. AVE as a shout of farewell. AVE as greeting. Two meanings. Going and coming. Double standards. Mental reservations. Ave Maria. The Hail to Mary who despite never having had sex, fell pregnant. It’s long been considered quite an honour to bear a son for a god. Her consent isn’t recorded. This scepticism is no more blasphemy than faith is scientific. Should we not continually question moralities and ethics from our evolving viewpoints? Shouldn’t we ask whether something said or done ever occurred.

L-R: Johnny Joyce, descendant of the family involved. President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly. Professor Margaret Kelleher, author of The Maamtrasna Murders. Dr Niamh Howlin, who provided an expert report on the Maamtrasna case, leading to the pardon of Myles Joyce.
© Simon Robinson 2018
[Read more…] about AVE Acronym

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: abuse, adrian horton, ahmet altan, bbc, blasphemy, brian greene, colum mccann, exploitation, irish times, james patterson, john connolly, julie k brown, margaret kelleher, martina devlin, michael reiter, netflix, podcasts, tim malloy

A Novel or is it?

June 29, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The past is done. I can’t change the fact the first president of Israel was born in Ireland. No more than I change that he was born on the island of Ireland as distinct from being born in a unified nation of Ireland that does not exist. He appears to have taken troubles with him, created by a mitosis that produced two daughter troubles.

The future may not be done but it seems that while the die is cast, those who will die are never finalised. I cannot change the fact that Israel will annex more Palestinian lands from the West Bank this week. Teflon Netanyahu has vowed it. Entrepreneur Trump supports it. Some agencies have warned that this is a war crime. Is a war crime wilful if such opinions are ignored? Is a crime during time of war different to an act of war?

[Read more…] about A Novel or is it?

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, city of books, colum mccann, conflict, israel, martina devlin, palestine, podcasts, unesco, verified

Desaturated Circles

April 18, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

First coffee in hand, looking out at the 7 am mist, I noticed the trillium was bejewelled by droplets. Bescented and bejewelled, suffused and saturated.

Saturated, a word that rang a bell. A theme with seven photos posted this week two years ago, amidst a personal iPhoneography challenge to hone my skills and learn to minimise compositional distractions. In this case, a series of desaturated pictures offered up in daily posts on Instagram.

[Read more…] about Desaturated Circles

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: christine dwyer hickey, city of books, desaturate, dublin one city one book, instagram, iphoneography, martina devlin, photography, photos, trillium, what3words

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