Lifestyle

A NEW venue specifically targeted at promoting traditional Irish music is set to open in Ennis next week creating around 15 jobs and potentially helping to boost local tourism. It’s certainly been quite a journey for Michael Coffey from vice president of a multi-national company to investor in The Merchant, a new pub which will open on Thursday next.

Leaky tents, wet socks and portable toilets are integral elements of festivals. But there is a selection of products available to help repel the odours, the germs and the shabby chic. With the right stuff in your wash bag, you can disguise your decreasing levels of hygiene until you are back at home and again have access to a bath and a hairdryer, though these are not for simultaneous use.

ONE hundred and sixty years ago this December, 36 young men were drowned off the West Clare coast in Clarefield, which is located on the Kilkee-Carrigaholt parish boundary. At least two, and possibly more, of the young men who died are buried in Kilnagalliagh graveyard, which is situated in a near-overgrown cemetery several miles from the main Kilkee-Carrigaholt road. Various stories abound as to where the dead men were from and what led to their deaths on December 12, 1849. About four years ago, photographer Katrina Morrison moved from New York to Kilkee and later onto Cross. She has developed a keen interest in sourcing and visiting derelict graveyards since settling in the west of the county.  Having read a number of British and Canadian newspaper reports from 1849, Katrina was led to believe that most of the men who died were from Kerry. “That’s what I was told. I was told that they were coming here to find work …

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WHILE the country is preparing for a second vote on the Lisbon Treaty, there may be another referendum looming. Carys Thomas of the Children’s Rights Alliance certainly hopes there will be and she feels that a constitutional amendment on the rights of the child would be a fitting gesture towards the thousands who suffered institutional abuse.

WHEN Bobby Moorhead of Ennis joins 54,000 fellow runners at the start of the Great North Run on September 20, he will be passing two milestones. It will be his 20th run in the biggest half marathon in the world and it will also be his last. Bobby has been joining in the Great North Run since 1986, the year in which he completed his first New York marathon, a feat he was to repeat two years later.

SHE’S been selling clothes for more than 50 years but Anne Pigott will be retiring from the retail business this Saturday evening. Many businesses are closing their doors nowadays due to the recession but happily, that’s not the reason that Anne’s shop, The Fuller Figure on Parnell Street is shutting.

AN Irish institution turned 50 this week. It is the most unlikely of things nowadays. On paper it should not have survived the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 70s, or the recession of the ’80s, but it did and more surprising still, is that it has made its way into the 21st century. The Rose of Tralee Festival has been parodied on television and in film but there is something intrinsically charming about it that draws viewers, crowds and indeed entrants from all over the world annually.