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Do you have Exgeterce?

10/11/2025

When I spotted this sign on St Patrick’s St., I was puzzled as to ‘Exgeterce’.

Online dictionaries and Google translate have not provided any clues – neither did a search of the OneKick website.

I thought it intriguing that having ‘exgeterce’ was more important that being ‘fluent in English’.

I wonder at how many candidates with exgeterce have applied.

“Words are in dictionaries because they exist – they do not exist because they are in dictionaries” Máire Nic Mhaoláin

Maybe the dictionaries, and me, have not yet caught up on the use of the word. Maybe if one doesn't know the meaning, one definitely does not have it.

A Memento Mori For Bridges

9/11/2025

Are Cork City Council Insane?

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
(attributed to) Albert Einstein

New Bridge 1

Mardyke Bridge

New Bridge 2

Two new pedestrian bridges have been installed in Cork – both on the South Channel leading into the former Beamish & Crawford brewery site. Both are of similar design – the elevated arch, so common in recent years.

As I passed over the Mardyke Bridge this morning, I could not remember a time when the bridge was ever cleaned. For many years, Health & Safety legislation for construction obliged the designers to consider the users of any building or structure in their creation and that includes the cleaners.

I am unsure what happens in other cities with similar bridges - James Joyce Bridge and Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin; the Gateshead Millenium Bridge; or the very many by Santiago Calatrava – I do hope they are better cared for than the Mardyke Bridge.

The two new bridges remain unopened and unnamed. They are so clean and shiny but it was a Memento Mori than came to mind this morning on the North Channel

As you are now so once was I,
As I am now so you shall be

Two Rights Can Make A Wrong

8/11/2025

2014

2025

Both of the above photographs show the junction of Camden Place and Pine Street in Cork. On the left is from Google Streetview from 2014 when the Camden Palace occupied the former McKenzies building. The photograph on right was taken today – two hotels now occupy the corner site.

It was correct that the footpath was sloped/dished down to the road surface. It was definitely correct that the dishing was finished with tactile paving. Both are these are reasonably standard details these days.

What is definitely not correct is to overlay a telecoms access cover with tactile paving and grout such that the access cover is sealed and does not have a lifting eye.

Why? Why?

Answers on a postcard ……..

Keep On Rockin’ – At 79

7/11/2025

Reference to songs and poems on headstone do bring a smile to this face when strolling through graveyards.

At St Catwg’s Graveyard in Cadoxton, the smile was even great than normal.

As they say in these parts, Fair Bowls to Wyndham John Rees – to have Kept on Rockin’ at age 79.

Fifty Eight Not Out

6/11/2025

It is possibly a consequence of cricket not being a very popular game in these parts, but upto a few weeks ago I had never seen a cricketing reference on a headstone.

That was changed at St Catwg’s Graveyard in Cadoxton near Neath.

St Catwg's Graveyard, Cadoxton, Wales

A trip to Thurles is on my TO VISIT list to see a headstone erected by the Great Southern & Western Railway Cricket Club.

REUNITED or RE-UNITED????

5/11/2025

For me, upto very recently there was absolutely no question. ‘Reunited’ would have been what I would have written – and I would not have even slightly considered an alternative.

Visits to a few cemeteries in South Wales have caused me to consider an alternative.

Merriam-Webster prefers REUNITE as does Chambers Dictionary and Collins Dictionary.

As to why RE-UNITED exists on headstones is one for my TO FIND OUT MIORE list

Another Flying Apostrophe

4/11/2025

Washington Street, Cork

Bite’s & Clouds

Bite’s & Cloud’s

Bites & Clouds

take your pick….

My father told me, more than once, when I was young, that if I was going to be wrong, be consistently wrong.

My understanding of the theory is that if I was doing something consistently incorrectly, it was only the logic or reasoning of that one decision that needed correction. However, if I only intermittently made an error, I was uncertain of the principle and so it was a tougher correction.

Recently on Washington Street, I smiled at the flying apostrophe and wondered why only one. I sensed my father raising his eyes…….

Numbers 1 to 49 – but Why?

26/10/2025

Simon Community Plot, St. Finbvarr's Cemetery. Cork

I was taken aback by this grave a few weeks ago when visiting St Finbarr’s cemetery – no names, just the numbers one to forty-nine.

The Cork Simon Community is a charity assisting the homeless. Maybe names are not listed so as to avoid connecting those buried with the charity’s assistance and the possible social stigma of having been reliant on a homeless charity – if so, this appears a modern trend as the former residents of St Vincent’s Hostel and of St. Vincent’s on Peacock Lane are named. If this is the case, I would have thought it better to name the deceased and remove the name of the charity.

Maybe the numbers are temporary – to be replaced by names as ashes are added. I would like to think so but am a bit doubtful.

I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as a teenager. It is probably the book that has remained with me the strongest. Reducing someone to just a number without a name is far from progress.

The BBC Open Country programme on the Bath Workhouse Burial Ground where the names of the dead are read aloud resonates much more as a world that I would prefer. So too did the Twitter account, Tuam Babies Names, where the names and ages of the infants and children who died there were published. Both reflect my preferred type of society.

Samuel Hudson, Circus Acrobat

25/10/2025

There was nothing that particularly struck my attention when I photographed this headstone at the old Kilcully Cemetery, just outside Cork.

It was only when I uploaded the photograph to FindAGrave that I learnt that Samuel Hudson was a circus acrobat – the circus of the nineteenth century most likely as born in 1850’s. The entry on FindAGrave noted his profession as a circus acrobat, possibly from burial records. His death cert records as a showman.

It was not my own experience of visits to the circus as they were not many - Health & Safety and animal welfare regulations have increased substantially from when I was brought but even then was very tame to my expectations. I think that the bell ringing in the memory bank is that of old American movies and TV shows with the Circus coming to town in a long convoy.

I cannot remember any particular movie but the scene is well established in the grey matter – I now cannot pass the cemetery wondering about the life of an acrobat in the late 19th century.

A Boy Named Justly

24/10/2025

It was on a lovely morning at the start of October that I first encountered the name Justly.

Thomas Justly Green Chatterton died over 130 years ago – he died on 25th May, 1884. He rests in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in a prominent corner plot with a broken column.

A few days later I read on Bluesky of Virtue Names , including Patience, Felicity and Mercy – a tradition started by the Puritans. One website has ten pages of Virtue names. Justly does not appear on this list but Just does.

Times were different. Hindsight provides a wider angle but to me, Justly would not be near top of the list of possible names.

He had four daughters and so the broken column may signify the end of his line of Chatterton

Just
Description:
Just is a masculine name with Latin roots, derived from the word "justus" meaning "fair" or "righteous." As a given name, it carries strong connotations of morality, integrity, and fairness. Popular primarily in Dutch-speaking regions and parts of continental Europe, Just maintains a simple, strong quality with its single syllable and clear meaning. Though uncommon in English-speaking countries, where it might be confused with the adverb "just," the name has maintained steady usage in the Netherlands and surrounding areas. The name's brevity gives it a direct, unpretentious quality, while its meaning provides a powerful aspirational quality for its bearer.
Nameberry.com

Bee Happy, Bee Kind

4/10/2025

I have seen online a selection of knitted additions to postboxes.

But the hat on the Carron pillar box on the Mumbles Road was the first that I have encountered.

It did bring a smile.

A Part of Wales in Cork for 150 Years

4/10/2025

Today is Day 4 of #31DaysOfGraves and the prompt is language.

This headstone in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery has I think the only Welsh that I have seen written anywhere in Ireland.

John Roberts, son of Ellis & Ann, a seafaring man from Porthmadog, drowned when at sea 150 years ago this month

EP SERCHUS
GO FAM
JOHN
Anwyl fab
ELLIS ac ANN ROBERTS
yr hwn a foddodd (ac
a Gladdwyd) yn Cork.
Hydref 23 1875
Yn 30 Mlw ydd oeol.

Legitimate & Catholic Descendants

3/10/2025

This blogpost has only been over eight years in the making.

In the Summer of 2017, I visited the four cemeteries in an around Ballymacelligott in Co. Kerry. The most difficult one for me to find was Ó Bhreanáin / O’Brennan Burial Ground. It was there that I spotted this tomb structure.

The Status of Children Act of 1987 abolished child illegitimacy. The Legitimacy Act, 1931 had provided that one might become a legitimated person if one’s parents had been entitled to marry at time of the birth and subsequently did so – a retrospective erasure of a societal stain.

I was surprised when I read the restrictions imposed for future residents of this cemetery plot – I have not seen anything similar in the many graveyard strolls in the intervening years.

Today, third of October, is Day 3 of #31DaysOfGraves and the prompt is ‘Tomb’ – an encouragement to get this blog post eventually written.

A Little Step

2/10/2025

Earlier this week, I had occasion to visit my local pharmacist. It was time to re-order my stash of medications. It was time to make a very small stand.

A few weeks back, I came across a webpage requesting a boycott of TEVA – the producer of many generic drugs. Such drugs that are dispensed monthly to many in Ireland. I had a recollection of receiving some TEVA products in the past year or so.

It was simple to ask my pharmacist not to include any TEVA products in my script. The request was welcomed. There appeared to be a sense of delight in both of us.

It is only a very tiny step – but it was in the right direction.

A Flower for Maurice Henderson

1/10/2025

There are a few paintings by Maurice Henderson hanging on our walls.

I recently purchased one at auction – primarily because it was very similar to one that hung on our walls. Last Friday, ‘Inlet’ replaced ‘Blue Harbour’ on the wall in our hall. To date, only me and those reading this blog post realise that there has been a switch.

Blue Harbour

Inlet

Today, the first of October is Day 1 of 31 Days of Graves. The prompt is ‘FLOWER’’ and my offering is the headstone to Maurice Henderson Fry in St Patrick’s Cemetery in Coronea, Skibbereen.

On the paintings on our walls, the signature is Maurice and the date. On a number of visits since 2023, I have yet to find a name on initial of the stone carver on the headstone.