My liver and plants are delighted that the Ballinamore Festival is over.
A very good time was had by a multitude of people … at a pile of events.
Pity about the rain … but what’s out of our control … gives us something to moan about.
Dessie has posted a great slide show of the Premier Event of the festival … the Fancy Dress Parade and mad party at the marque behind Priors.
ballinamore fancy dress parade on you tube.
Now saying marque makes it all sound far too posh – it’s a tent in a field and when you dance off the dance floor … you sink up to your knees in mud.
Maggie knows all about that … don’t you Mags?
And what truth to the rumour that one of the 2 portaloos fell over … I didn’t hear about any major gusts of wind that evening … so how did it fall over? … but I did hear about 2 people emerging from the fallen portaloo.
Hmmmmm.
Truth? In Ballinamore some people go where no one has gone before …
Thanks heaps to both Maggie and Adrian for your care and concern over my poor plants.
They got thrown around on Saturday morning and again this morning.
I can just hear the plants saying to each other …
‘ Do we look like bleedin’ birds’ …as they are thrown in the air for the second night running.
Adrian brought the plant barrow back and Maggie and the street cleaners (thanks lads) helped pick up the poor traumatised plants.
I’ve replanted them again.
Big happy hugs to Adrian’s dog Boysie who scared the living daylights out of a drunken man who was lurking in our lane near Mrs Hamill’s.
Message to drunken men who nip behind our houses to vomit and do their business … Maggie and I do let the dogs out late at night so they can do their business …you never know when …
And I think the score will always be Dogs .. 100 … Drunken Men … nil.
How fast can you run?
Me and Coco are taking to our beds for the next 2 days … I feel a great need for some peace and quiet.
We will be able to sleep a night through without the drunken noise of revellers at 2am … 3 am … 4am … 6am…
Ah well … it’s the festival and the majority of people are great and had a great time catching up.
Oh yeh … to the man who decided to share his thoughts through a loudspeaker at 5.30am on Sunday morning outside my window … I’m doing a special wishing on the next dark moon regarding your sexual prowess and attractiveness.
Be afraid …
I’ve just been in correspondence with a reader in LA who is tracing her grandmothers birth cert so she can come and live in Ireland.
I’m going to help her track it down and go get it for her.
What fun … Liz Lennon … heritage detective … hmmm … family tree sleuth …
The Centre here in Ballinamore and other places have been very helpful.
I love the way all sorts of people read this blog from around the world.
If you ever want me to take a picture of anything specific in Ballinamore … a place or person … leave a comment and I’ll do what I can.
I may stop lolling long enough tomorrow to post the last of the festival photos.
Slan
Liz
Hi Liz, I like reading your stuff. I have been to the festival for the past three years, and i have made some good friends. I tend to keep a low profile and stay around Liam MacGirls bar when i am over.
My family come from Greagreavamore Glebe on the (Ram) Rourke side and from Butlers Bridge(O’Connor-McPhillips)and Ballinamore from my mothers side. Granny was Maggie Mulvey. Jimmy Conway and his sisters are my mums first cousins. We used to visit them in town before we took a taxi up to Aughnasheelin to my grandads small farm overlooking the plains of Breffny. I visit Jim and Cissy when i come over. I like to give cissy a box of chocholates that she in turn gives to her grandchildren.
You will have gathered that my fortieth was some two decades ago.,but i still dream of home, event though i live in a most beautiful part of the Scottish Highlands. Lochaber sits on the lower part of the Great Glen. Ben Nevis is our most recognisable land mark but the whole glen is a place of the utmost beauty.
An interesting part of my family geographical jigsaw was the discovery when i mover there, that when my Grandad (John O’Connor) took his family to Scotland he did so by working on a hydro-electric scheme providing power to the Alluminum factory in Fort William, which is the name of the town that i live in. I moved my family from the Glasgow area, to the highlands in 1978.
My family connections with home are becoming tenious, due to the inevitable march of time. Jimmy remembers us well but his children have no idea who we are, and I dont ,like to approach people saying that I am your long lost cousin. My sister Lana has no problem with that and she has met with the whole Mulvey related tribe and been made most welcome.
I will not be coming to this years celebration’s but I send my best wishes to all those family and friends who are never far from my thoughts.
If at all possible, would you give my love to Jimmy and Cissy and their family.
Love and best wishes to all at this years shenanigans.
T