Takin a mark!

Totally enjoyed the 2 games so far against the Aussies, feels great to be out there playing, the only downside is the bloody shape some of these guys are in, usually i feel ok about the shape i'm in, could be a bit better, but then compared to my mates it's not bad, then I have to line out against some guys who are in feckin brilliant shape and i feel, there's only one word for this....FAT.

So between now and Christmas there is going to be a serious effort to shed the ned.... it's not the biggest ned in the world, but i'd feel a whole lot better if it dissapeared completely.

As for the games so far, Sat was great fun, really hard and tough, Monday night in Cavan was so wet and miserable, that it was hard to savour the experience sometime, still i got to play under superb lights, and i did score a neat goal to finish off the Aussie challenge, did the same Saturday, i may have a knack for getting my scores at the right time.

Busy at work today, have one of them days tomorrow where the day session is followed by an evening programme somewhere else, looking forward to it actually, being on my feet from 9.30 in the morning until 10 at night was once only a pipe dream, now it's a reality, i'm going to enjoy it.

Ok.... better get preparing....

Here we go!!!

Masters (over 40's) compromise rules 1st test

Ireland V Australia

Am looking forward to taking on the Aussies this weekend, and playing for Ireland, the last time i was picked on an Irish team was 1986 and it was in basketball, twenty years on and my life has changed a fair bit but i am really keen on this compromise game, it's very physical and hard to get use to, but i love the contact and the hard hits.

let the games begin.

How did i ever live without one!

Good lord....how did i ever live without a scanner, and how did the world ever cope with not having this photo... such a lovely boy.... the two auld fellas look very dodgy though!

Grappling!

There are some interesting views on the Monaghan crash and the future of road safety in Ireland over at http://www.sarahcarey.ie/ and also at http://www.twentymajor.blogspot.com/

The daft thing is that politicians seem to feel that the behaviour of young people is something that they can control, and then claim credit for, am i the only person in the country who is morbidly amused that the headline on friday "gardai crackdown on road users yeilding results" are invariably followed by saturdays headlines "4 dead in head on collision.

The politicians can at best provide regulation and enforcement to attempt to influence peoples behaviour and fair play to the people who came up with the irish road safety campaigns, it's brilliant and i would imagine has saved lives.

This reminds me of the zero tolerance regime which apparently reduced crime in NYC sucessfully in the late 80's, which the police and mayor claimed all the credit and political kudos for. Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" makes a fairly convincing arguement that the major contributor to the fall in crime was the Roe V Wade (1972) judgement which made abortion legal and ensured that those who would have been the major perpetrators of such crime in the late 80's and early 90's were never born in the first place.

We should be looking to the ling term in our road safety strategy rather than trying to apply sensationalist bandaids everytime there is a particularly horrific tragedy. We need a cultural change, driver education would be a start, proper enforcement, like at the times when the accidents are actually happening as opposed to 7.30 in the morning would help, and proper infrastructure.

you can't control young people, the best you can hope for is to positively influence them, fear does not seem to be working as a deterrent, maybe we should try something else.

The Sunday Indo....

Yesterday the Sunday Independent snuck into my house, Maggie was on the flight into Sligo and they give them away free on the plane, it's been a while since I've seen this quality broadsheet, so I thought I'd have a look to see what quality stories and political insight would be available.

Well page one had a remarkable article of massive consequence by Brendan O'Connor on the life and times of Fr. Brian Darcy..... and a political campaign to end stamp duty...ok i thought...there must be little happening this weekend..so i turned to page three, which after all it is the key page on any broadsheet... wow.. lola cashman still has Bono's trousers... .. quick glance to page two... well would you look...four young men killed in monaghan...where will we hide that Aengus?....oh put it on page two...we have important stories about the lack of Brian D'Arcy's sex life and Bono's trousers for the main news pages... i really don't know what was in the rest of the paper, I have better things to do with me time (like wallpaper the garden fence)

I heard recently that Brendan O'Connor is being groomed as the new editor of the Indo... God help us!

I used to think it was a tabloid dressed up as a broadsheet, it's not, it's just mass market trash..... there's only one real use to which the Sunday Indo should be put, but i find the paper a bit hard and non absorbent!

Shit happens

I really think the world is going daft, there is a major scandal on now because the national childrens hospital did not have the right screening procedures for Hep C in the early 90's, now i can understand a scandal if they had actually caused infections, but the only thing wrong (15 years ago) was a screening procedure.

The child protection bill which is going through the house of commons at the moment requires screening and a licencing system for all those who come in contact with children, either professionally or in a voluntary capacity, in otherwords the Brits have now decided that all grown up's are potential peadophiles and that all children should be scared of them....

all this reminds me of the movie the village, where the elders whip up poisonous fear and hysteria in order to maintain political control and keep everyone in line, if things keep going like this people will be afraid to go out thier front doors, creativity and adventure will be stifled and we'll all be walking round like crash test dummies and behaving like happy little consumers, i'm fecking sick of it anyway.

It used to be almost funny, this stuff about bogey men and pookas, but if this bullshit continues there will be no children out to play anymore, nobody to give blood, nobody to coach the underage sports team, nobody to take a stand on anything....i'm bloody sick of this consistant bad news and scaremongering,,,feckin sick of it.. you'd never notice would ya.

I even have a great idea for reducing road deaths, ban cars.... why do we have to live in a bloody world where people can't realise that "shit happens"? that people will be killed on the roads, that children will die, that mistakes will occassionally be made, i'm all for standards me, but if the level of regulation is strangling the life out of the people, where do we stop, there would be no drunken fights at night if we just imposed a curfew! no accidents without cars.. and no sporting peados if we banned all juvenile sports... sounds like afganistan or disneyland

Stepping forward!

Is it possible to step forward without doubt? I'm heading into a new phase of the business and although i'm confident that i'm doing the right thing i'm also really nervous of myself, a big fear in my life is letting people down, or more accurately causing people to think or speak poorly of me, so with anything new comes the risk that occassionally i won't be able to keep my promises and people will think less of me.

The truth is that how this works out will be directly linked to the effort and work that goes into it, if we acknowledge that doubt, and tear in nonetheless, then i have a feeling that it will be better than fine, the challenge is not to let the doubts rule, to allow them to paralyse and frustrate our efforts.

It's a fairly simple business really, decide on the plan, generate and package the ideas, sell them regularly and establish good relationships, deliver the goods, keep at it..... it's no different really from selling soap, candles, saucepans or shovels.

A friend made me really smile last week when she told me her son has started first year in UCD and he's doing astrophysics, that is rocket science apparently, this should'nt be.

ya lose one, ya gain one

This is my new niece Grace, she's very nice in the way that babys are very nice, if you lined up 7 babies in an identity parade and asked me to pick the same one twice...i would have a one in seven chance of getting it right. they all kinda look the same to me, but it is strange and wierd to look at the very beginning of a life, so quickly after being there for the very end of another.

Life is precious, in our society we certainly think it is, i witnessed enough resources being used to try and keep my father alive and wondered about it, here was a man who lived a smashing life, was now 81 and in serious trouble, and yet the time, drugs and medical expertise invested in his last few days would probably have kept a bombay clinic serviing hundreds open for a week. we certainly cherish the old in western society, i'm not saying that we should'nt by the way, i'm only asking the question,

but back to grace, the changes she will witness, my dad saw the introduction of the motor car and electricity, i saw the introduction of the computer and satalite communications, my daughter was about for the internet and the mobile communication explosing, god only knows what grace will be about for, the cure to cancer?, a muslim v christian world war? we have no idea (except that Fine Gael won't be in Govt much).. but it's exciting and i hope she enjoys it greatly, i'm sure she will, she has great parents (despite the Elvis fixation..lol)

am in a pondery mood

Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the world.

I’m back at work, what someone called the return to normality, things will return to normal, but the normal I knew with my father will never return.

I have not had the opportunity to be on my own and reflect until today, and writing this is an attempt to deal with the numbness and lost feeling I have in the wake of his death, I’ve seen it hundreds of times in books and films, the bond between fathers and sons, the desire to make him proud, the closeness and distance that exists, the acceptance both have of each others achievements and weaknesses.

His passing was a unique experience for me, the sense of peace, the knowledge that he had lived a full and passionate life, the understanding that I had little left to share with him as he moved on, the simplicity of holding his hand and knowing that he was leaving us, not through his choice, but because of the natural movement of life and the passing of time which cannot ever be recovered no matter how we wish it.

If I had one more day with him I could not share anything else, we shared our lives with each other to a huge extent, he saw me at my strongest and proudest, he also experienced me weak and almost beaten, but we never gave in to it, we never let life with all it’s pain and hardships overcome us, we always drove on, usually with his encouragement and I’m still here, emboldened with the courage he vested in me to carry on, to move forward, to live a life that, I can look back on from deaths perspective and feel that I have given it my all, that I have given it my best.

“Straighten yourself up”, that’s what he always said to us, carry yourself well, and face the ball, face the world, take it on and be strong, be strong for those around you, and yet with that strength be gentle, the gentle that carries those who are not so strong safely, my father had a intense dislike of bullies, he lacked respect for those who used their advantages in life to hurt others, he always advised us to take them on, the bully is a coward he said, stand up to him and he will never best you, be strong. He was a giant of a man, all 6”8” of him and yet he was at his best with babies and toddlers, they adored him, his disarming way of showing them true gentleness and fun.

His stories are legendary, I have no intention of going back over them here, the happiest times of my childhood were when we were alone together, either at the bog, down the fields, at a match or driving to Donegal in the old peugeot, with the gear lever on the steering wheel, discussing that nights Eurovision and singing “what’s another year”. They are the times I look back fondly upon, I almost broke his heart with some of my behaviour, but he would always support me, always be there for me. He was my port of last resort, and he would bail me out, we got through those times and grew closer because of them, and when he died I knew I owed him nothing except to keep his values intact, to live a life that gave of my best, that left it out there on the field, a life that would allow me to live at peace with myself.

Everyone leaves a legacy, some people leave millions of pounds, some leave heartache and sorrow, my father left neither of those, he left something far more valuable, he left me the things he valued greatly, the virtue of strength, the importance of gentleness, the necessity for dignity, the power of passion. He used to instill in me that nothing was beyond me if I had the guts and sought the education to go for it, when I was little and out with him digging holes or drains occassionally we would come up against an unmovable rock, an impossible obstacle, and he would examine it, and dig around it and then ask for a crow bar, a few well placed stones, his incredible strenght and a few minutes later the massive rock would begin to shift, as he took it out of the ground he would always say. “give me a lever long enough and I’ll move the world” You did move it big man, you did.

JP Newton 1925 – 2006 RIP Ni bheidh a leitheid aris ann.