Now that the schools are opened again, I would like to say a word supporting all teachers.
Teachers were promised they would be prioritised. And then, almost a year after the pandemic hit, it was discovered that age was a major factor in how the virus might affect someone who might catch it. This discovery came a year after the onset of the pandemic. What other discovery lies ahead?
But this discovery means teachers no longer are a prioritised cohort. And when they protested they were, totally unjustifiably, vilified and criticised by many. Of course, it was emphasized, that this was not a criticism or reflection of the teaching profession: it was the science which was the deciding factor to deprioritise teachers. God forbid some new scientific revelation, such as mixing children and teenagers in crowded spaces, is a major cause of spreading the virus.
Then, of course, there is the advice not to mix, even if one is fully vaccinated, due to age and especially not to mix in gardens. Indeed, if I’m following matters properly, one is forbidden from mixing in gardens even if fully vaccinated. So it’s OK to be in a classroom with 20 or 30 children; in second level it could be 20 or 30 almost adults, but don’t mix in your own garden.
Thank God I’m well retired and half vaccinated, but I do feel for the teachers along with gardaí, shop workers, transport, and other frontline workers.
Maybe consider putting all these workers in the same cohort as the aged.
In my view, they are all heroes and I tell them so whenever I meet such workers.
I do believe everyone is doing the best they can, from the Government to the HSE to teachers, gardaí, shop workers, delivery people et al.
Three cheers for all, but give the teachers a fourth cheer.
Michael O’Driscoll
Old Youghal Road
Cork
Parents, your kids will be grand
Hearing from friends about the drudgery of home-schooling got me thinking about my own humble upbringing and the fact that my generation had (seemingly) tyrannical parents.
If, for example, we made quare faces behind parents’ backs, we’d be told the wind could change and you’d be left like that, which made me a lifelong wind-watcher.
For corporal punishment, my townie friends were threatened with a wooden spoon — posh like! Out the country it was more sadistic; you’d be sent to the fields to fetch a sally rod for self-flagellation, to report back with a solid instrument of torture. There you’d be, mooching around half-heartedly for a stick in the orchard —spare the rod and spoil the child, the parental mantra of 70s and 80s Ireland (I’m grand really, thanks for asking).
You’d be looking down at weeds and up at clouds, kicking stones, wanting the time to pass so they might forget, (they often did), wincing at the anticipation of the quick whip across the fatty calf of your little leg for a small enough misdemeanour.
Bad habits were nipped in the bud (ouch), giving cheek was strictly forbidden; while you’re under this roof there will be no back answers and a constant threat of there being wigs on the green.
Holy people were regularly invoked (dear Jesus and his blessed mother watch over you if I get near you) for a minor offence and could be ratcheted up a notch for a more egregious one (I brought you into this world, Jesus Mary and Joseph give me the strength not to take you out of it).
Saving the turf, where bog holes gobbled up small children and bog drains were swallow holes, where if you did your allotted share and then helped someone else, you could cycle to the shop that evening, three miles away, for an ice lolly. One. Ice. Lolly.
So, hey parents, chill out, give yourselves a break, remember your own parents and how you were as a kid. Parenting is meant to be challenging, frustrating, fun and mysterious, and every generation has a new, better, worse, way of doing it.
For your children, the pandemic will be their great growing up, coming-of-age story; you’ll never believe what happened to me when I was a child, it was in 2020, I was eight years old and… and reader, your children will be grand, seriously, they will be grand.
Anne Marie Kennedy
Craughwell
Co Galway
Scaraveen is cost of cuckoo’s misdeeds
Hearing my first cuckoo’s call during the week reminded me of a gifted teacher, who had a wonderful way of seamlessly blending his extensive general knowledge into his teaching. When it came to folklore, nature, history and sport, he was without equal. So, while I have heard and read many definitions of ‘scaraveen’, I have remained loyal to my teacher’s theory.
According to him, ‘scaraveen’ is an anglicising of the Irish phrase ‘garbh shion na gcuach’, which means ‘the rough weather of the cuckoo.’ The phrase was gradually abbreviated to ‘garbh shion’ and, finally, ‘scaraveen’.
The cuckoo, a solitary bird, more often heard than seen, winters in sub-Saharan Africa and returns north in early spring. The familiar ‘cuck-oo, cuck-oo’ call heralds the beginning of spring when the cuckoo returns to our shores. As an infamous clutch parasite, the cuckoo lays her eggs in the nests of small song birds with precision timing. Once hatched, the cuckoo chicks eject the legitimate occupants and are then fed by the unsuspecting foster parents. The cuckoo chick is already a true master of deception!
Folklore has it that ‘scaraveen’ is nature’s way of exacting retribution on the cuckoo for the havoc she causes in the bird world. During the last fortnight in April and the first fortnight in May, mild spring weather sometimes reverts to cold, wet miserable weather, which is more typical of winter. Unfortunately, we all pay the price for the cuckoo’s misdeeds.
I’m sure Met Éireann can provide a more scientific explanation for ‘scaraveen’ and, indeed, the much-maligned cuckoo may be an entirely innocent party. But until they do, I’ll stick with my former teacher’s definition and keep wearing my winter woollies!
Billy Ryle
Spa
Tralee
Co. Kerry
Taoiseach’s ‘insult’ to cancer patients
I was deeply offended at the offhand way the Taoiseach spoke to Aontú leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín in the Dáil recently. The Taoiseach was annoyed by being questioned over the real-life consequences of his Government’s closure of cancer services. The Taoiseach told Deputy Tóibín to “get real” and “be bloody realistic” over increased morbidity, increased advanced cancer diagnoses and increased cancer deaths.
Having been diagnosed myself with SIN3 ( severe abnormalities) as well as CIS (cancer in situ) at my first ever smear test, I was shocked at the seeming disregard from the Taoiseach towards public health. My twin sister was also diagnosed with the same a couple of months before I was, after not having a smear in over a decade.
We are both of the opinion that our lives were saved by having these tests when we did. Therefore, I have no doubt that lives are being endangered by these delays.
I am also aware of at least one surgeon who is not seeing any new patients on the waiting list for surgery because of Covid restrictions and there is no opening date for that to resume. There are so many families in the darkest places, who are struggling to get life-or-death treatment and can’t.
Yet the raising of their plight is met with contempt from the Taoiseach. This is an absolutely disgraceful comment and an insult to those fearful over the disruption of cancer services by the Government’s policies.
Anna Daly
Aontú rep
Cork South Central
State quarantine is window dressing
So now the Government has decided to add the US and four European countries to the list of countries for mandatory quarantine. It is window dressing. The time to restrict travel from the US was last year, not now when it is the middle of a major vaccination programme which leaves Ireland standing.
The purpose of it is not medical. It is to look good and, in passing, give much needed business to certain hotels. This is clear when even those who have been vaccinated are forced to endure it. A short-term prison sentence at your own expense, one I may have to endure myself when I eventually move back to Ireland — though the disaster that has been Ireland on Covid-19 would make me think twice.
I am statistically better off in the third-world country I live in, despite the inept nature of many of the policies here.
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh
Bogota
Colombia
