Editor's Blog Jun 26th 2012
Carnage on the streets
Not since wee Thomas Costigan and his best friend Cornilius Scanlon asked for a baked potato at the village fete in 1847, has Tipperary high street not seen the carnage I witnessed yesterday afternoon.
First we must go to the past to go back to the future, to find out why I found myself in the town that apparently it's a long way to.
My father was born in Tipperary in the 1940s and I thought it might be a good idea for my daughter and I to visit our ancestral roots.
Walking down the main drag (two way street), after downing a pint of Guinness at the Maid Of Erin, we saw in the distance what looked like a car turned on it's side smack in the middle of the road, the car was surrounded by the fine men of the Tipperary fire and rescue department.
There was a large crowd gathering and the firemen were using the Jaws of Life to cut the roof off the vehicle in order to get to the lady trapped inside. I was trying to figure out how the lady driver had managed to flip her car onto its side in an area that is restricted to a 10kph speed limit. I failed to do so as women are mysterious creatures at best.
More people started to arrive to watch the street theatre that was unfolding in front of our eyes. Once the firemen had peeled back the roof I could see movement from the driver, a spindly old lady. With no blood, guts or brains littering the inside of the car the onlookers seemed short changed for their time waiting to see if there was a grisly tale to tell, without one they started to disperse.
Apart from the rope bridge, this has been one more exciting thing to have happened, although I must admit that even though we were not able to find any of my relatives, I was a little excited at the prospect of doing so. Alas it was not to be this time.
Sleepy villages and verdant vistas aside, travelling in Eire is simple if not a tad expensive. For example, two bottles of water 330ml for the princely sum of five euros fifty, a pint of Guinness in Dublin will set you back at least six euros, meals of any sort (unless junk food) will cost no less than eighteen euros.
All the euro zone craziness has had a negative impact on the local population, as more and more Irish people head for other countries to find work due to a lot of the major industries failing and having to fold.
Only time will tell what the future holds for places like this.
Ed.
