Lifestyle

THE Shannon Region Tidy Towns Awards presentation took place in Bunratty on Monday night.A range of awards were presented to committees by Deputy Tony Killeen, Willie Lyons of sponsors SuperValu and Dr Vincent Cunnane, CEO of Shannon Development.Ennis won the overall Shannon Region Tidy Towns Award, along with two national titles, Ireland’s Tidiest Large Urban Centre (with a prize of €5,000) and the national Gum Litter Taskforce Award (prize €1,000). In addition, Ennis won the Regional Notice Nature biodiversity award, Sixmilebridge National School won the Shannon Region Schools Award (€750 prize) and the SuperValu Endeavour Award went to Lissycasey (prize €500).In the county awards section, Ennis was the Clare winner (prize €900) with Ballynacally highly commended (prize €700) and Kilrush commended (€400). Ennis and Kilrush won gold medal awards in their population categories, with a silver going to Ballynacally and Kilkee and Mountshannon picking up bronze medals.Mr Killeen said that the competition has major benefits for communities. “We call it …

GOING back over 70 years, the game of bridge has a rich history in the county and with two relatively new clubs in Clare, the game still has more than its share of adherents across the Banner.

THE role of young people in the spiritual journey from a lakeside in East Clare to the mission fields of Africa and back to a lake in County Wicklow was recounted at the recent Céifin conference in Ennis.Young people also featured prominently in the conference contributions of other speakers at the West County Hotel.“A garden of Eden, where I experienced life as a blessing,” was how Fr Michael Rodgers described his childhood in Killanena. “My mother was religious but my father was a spiritual man,” he recalled. His earliest spiritual experiences were with his father when they were cutting turf in the bog. “At lunchtime he would lie back in the heather with his hat over his face and I would be watching the skylarks, tracking them from the sky overhead to their nests, where I would find their eggs and nestlings,” he said.Yet he found he took to institutional life when he was sent to St Flannan’s College and …

Winning the Sweep

THE 57th anniversary of the bond between Shannon and San Francisco, which was connected by an ocean of whiskey and coffee topped by foamy cream, took place on Tuesday.It was 1952 and three characters of very different professions and backgrounds had little to occupy them in an otherwise lifeless bar on the San Francisco waterfront. There was only one other person on the premises and he witnessed a series of botched attempts at making Irish Coffee, which travel writer, Stan Delaplane had discovered two years earlier when he made the first of what would be countless calls at Shannon Airport.With a readership counted in millions for his twice a week travel columns, which appeared in 45 newspapers across the USA, Stan was one of an elite press group that was flown to Rome to mark the Holy Year of 1950. But the Vatican-bound flight hit mechanical trouble over the Atlantic and made an unscheduled stop at Shannon.In those years when …

FROM looking her best to Amuzing Grace and from just imagining to The Guinness Book of World Records, former Clare Champion reporter Tara King is finding November a very busy month. The 23-year-old launched her first book on Wednesday and will follow this with the launches of two further books over the following two weeks. Having gone straight from school into a career in journalism, Tara worked as a journalist with The Clare Champion for four years, leaving in July to pursue her dream of becoming an author.Look Your Best is the first of three books completed by the Galway woman since then. Covering fashion, beauty, hair care and numerous tips and tricks, the book is endorsed by TV3’s Xposé and was launched by show presenter and Irish model Glenda Gilson this week.“The Look Your Best – beauty, fashion and tips book actually came about by accident. Earlier this year, I was chatting with my publisher John O’Connor of Blackwater …

A FORMER director of public health for the Mid-Western Western Health Board was recently awarded one of the University of Limerick’s highest and most prestigious honours, the UL President’s Medal.

Ballynacally blossomed as communities across the county were honoured at the 2009 Community Environmental Awards ceremony this week.