Category: Ireland

Internet-Phobia

buggy

By far one of the best investments we have made in child equipment has been the Phil & Ted’s 3-wheel pram. It’s a popular model among the toddler-owning fraternity and I see more and more of them when I’m out and about. Always there’s a shared smile and a nod of the head that says “Hello fellow trendy parent, aren’t we glad we’re not bugaboo owners.” It also gets a fair amount of attention from people wanting to know where I got it and do I like it, so I wasn’t surprised when I was approached in Dundrum Shopping Centre on Sunday afternoon.

She was wearing a full-length fur coat and looked far too manicured to be a parent but nevertheless she swooped over to me:

“Oooh, we’ve been looking for a pram like that! Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s great, we love it.”

“Wherever did you find it? We’ve looked everywhere.”

“I got it off the inter….”

I hadn’t even got the word out when the smile died on her lips, she rolled her eyes, clicked her tongue and turned her back on me. Ever eager to have complete strangers approve of me I called after her,

“I’ve seen them in Roches Stores in Blackrock as well.”

She was no longer interested though and gave me an unconvincing smile over her shoulder before sweeping away. Had she given me the chance I would have asked her why she reacted that way to my mention of the internet. She didn’t strike me as the type to not have a credit card…perhaps she doesn’t have access since so many people in Ireland still don’t even have dial-up.

I couldn’t help wondering if it was something more like fear; to the average Irish person who doesn’t spend as much time online as we bloggers and blog-readers, I can imagine the internet would seem a scary place. The media likes to publish stories about the dark side of online life, the sensational accounts of pornography, child groomers and identity fraud. I suppose those are the ones that sell newspapers and boost ratings.

If she would have stayed around I could have told her I had been able to read reviews and compare prices at my leisure, all from the comfort of my home. In the end the pram cost me over â‚¬100 less online than any shop I checked with here in Ireland. Even when I rang those Irish shops hoping to give them my business and told them I would definitely buy from them if they would match the price they refused with no negotiation. Not even an offer of a discount. So, instead I bought from Kiddicare in the UK who delivered to my door within two days, no fuss. I believe we have in the internet a wonderful weapon against so-called “Rip-Off Ireland” and it’s not being used to its full potential, either by retailers or by customers.

Why are we as a nation so slow to embrace it?

Ireland

Wanderlust

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, the day to celebrate being Irish and yet today I’m daydreaming about living in warmer climes. I had plans to go to the parade today, I was going to bring my camera and shoot wonderful shots of young children with painted faces and of giant papier machÃ© heads. Then came the rain and the hailstones and the arctic cold wind and I said “sod it” I’d rather work. Now I’m sitting in my office, my hands frozen into claws, trying to animate and failing miserably. The view out of the window is grey, Eve is cranky and I can hear her wandering around downstairs whining because she’s sick of being stuck inside. I put my headphones on, fire up iTunes and Madonna is singing “I Love New York.” I guess I just can’t help it, I’m wondering what it would be like to live in Southern California, or Italy, or France. I even went so far as to look up house prices in San Francisco after seeing this photo on Flickr (pretty bloody expensive just in case you’re wondering).

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood is of when I was about seven years old (I think) and my parents decided we were all going to emigrate to Australia. It was the seventies and my parents were sick of the struggle of living in Ireland. There were petrol strikes and electricity strikes, unemployment was through the roof and things were bleak. My Dad had a job but money was always tight and, although I don’t have any memory of this because my childhood was nicely shielded, I see now that the Ireland of the seventies and eighties was a distant cry from Starbucks coffee shops and spa weekends.

I spent a lot of time trying to get my head around just how far away Australia was and I was sure it meant we were never going to come back and we were never going to see anyone we knew ever again. I remember when we went into the Australian embassy for a family interview at some point in the process. I don’t have a good memory of what we were asked, I just have a picture of us all sitting in a circle in a beige room on uncomfortable chairs. That was when it struck me that I was going to get an Australian accent and that would mean I wasn’t Irish anymore. In the end we were rejected. The Maguire family was deemed unsuitable for Australia for some reason. Although I was relieved I was also disappointed. There was something so exciting about the thought of living in a completely different country. That was the start of my hankering for other places.

I recognise this feeling, I get it every few years. It’s the wanderlust and I’ve acted on it enough to know the grass isn’t greener it’s just yellow in different places. Still, I wonder what the weather is like in New England, Vancouver or New Zealand.

Blogging Ireland

Soft Blogging

First I read something last Thursday on United Irelander. He seemed to be saying that the view held by non-bloggers that blogs were mere personal diaries was bringing down the image of blogging:

I personally feel blogs are let down with their reputation as being simply “personal diaries”. While there are alot of bloggers who talk about how Cindy was being a real bitch at school and pondering over whether Corey will take them to the prom, there’s a hell of alot of blogs which steer clear of the personal diary-esque style altogether and they need to be the ones who encompass the bulk of the blogosphere.

Oh really?

Then there was the piece by John Ihle in the Times just before the blog awards where the emphasis was all on blogs as an extension of the traditional news media and the whole “citizen journalist” slant and again wanting to distance blogs from the perception of them being just personal diaries.

Then Fiona deLondras asked once again why more women don’t blog (although I think there are loads of us and I think it’s one area in which we’re well-represented) and if they do is there a perception that they only blog on the “soft” issues. She did ask whether or not that would be a bad thing if it were true but I think that a lot of the time it is perceived as a bad thing as highlighted by United Irelander’s statement.

It is my opinion that this so-called soft blogging ought to be encouraged in Irish blogs. Why must we all go techhy or political with our blogging? Why should it be the majority as if the rest is a sort of embarrassment? We have plenty of hard topic blogs but the personal blogs…the ones that really talk in an honest and open and funny way about life…are thin on the ground in Ireland. Why are we Irish so scared about the personal stuff? The blogging I’m talking about is hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking and brave. It’s not just confined to women, there are men blogging in this way too. Unfortunately not a lot of them are Irish.

I think the question (that I’m asking myself too by the way) is not why more women aren’t blogging, or how to get everyone blogging about politics. I think it’s more why we Irish bloggers are so scared and intimidated about blogging about the personal stuff? Why is that seen as embarrassing or soft?

I’d also like to see more Irish shoe blogs…anyone care to try that one?

Blogging Ireland

And The Winners Were…

blog awards
Photo by Ryan of Rymus.net: Colm Bracken (In Fact, Ah); Me; Matt; Ryan.

I’m just now emerging from a dozy haze…no I didn’t overindulge at the Blog Awards on Saturday night, rather I was over at my parent’s house last night and complained that I seemed to be suffering some kind of allergic reaction. My nose was itching like crazy and I was being driven mad. My father offered me one of his anti-histamine tablets and I was so distracted by the itching that I gladly accepted. He assured me as I popped the little white pill that they didn’t make him drowzy, but I might find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. “No change there” I thought and happily swallowed the thing. What I didn’t take into account was, because of the breastfeeding which I’ve only just stopped and the pregnancy before that, I’ve not taken anything stronger than Panadol in about two and a half years. So I got home yesterday evening planning to write an account of the Awards but instead fell fast asleep at about 8:30. I slept the sleep of the deeply drugged until 6am when Eve woke with her usual ear-piercing screech. I positioned her in front of “Ice Age” and fell back into my stupor waking only long enough to press replay on the DVD when it finished. The credits were rolling for the second time when Matt rescued me and I crawled back into bed where I lay unconscious until 2pm. I don’t know what my Dad is made of but it’s of far sterner stuff than I am! Either that or he’s planning a little boost to the pension when the time comes and that first pill was free.

Soooo, since I’m way behind on posting about this I will direct you to the main site for the list of winners. Gingerpixel was not one of the glittering plaque-holders on the night but the Best Photoblog prize went to a very deserving Donncha. I had thought Ryan was going to be a shoo-in for it and he was the firm favourite but there was tough competition in our category. I got to meet so many of my favourite Irish Bloggers and I think I said hi to everyone I had wanted to say hi to. The only two I missed were Damien himself (but he was a very busy man on the night and I would have had to have stuck my ankle out and tripped him up to get to talk to him which I thought might have been rude) and JL Pagano who was standing behind me at one stage and I meant to turn and introduce myself but got distracted and missed him. Ah well, hopefully some other time JL. I’m also hoping that Paige will be coming along to some blog get-togethers in the future only telling us she wasn’t coming at the last minute. I was sorry not to have met you Paige.

It was a great night and Damien deserves all the cyber-love he’s been getting over the past few days and Rick O’Shea was the perfect MC. I will be adding quite a few blogs to me daily reading list now that I know the people behind them. Or in the case of TCAL, the large crowd behind them. Congratulations to That Girl and SinÃ©ad, hard luck to In Fact, Ah and Redmum (at least as a “non-winner” I’m in good company). So many blogs have great round-ups of the evening Irish Blogs is a good place to go to find them all. However, I will direct you to Letter To America, the blog of the hilarious Jett. He has a podcast up and I’m off to listen to that myself. His blog, funny as it is, only does marginal justice to how funny he is in real life so I’m betting his podcast is well worth a listen.

Blogging Ireland

Irish Blog Awards

Good luck to all the Irish Blog Award nominees tonight. The big event starts at 7pm in The Alexander Hotel in Dublin City Centre. I’ll be there with my glad rags on and am looking forward to meeting everyone.

I’m still debating on whether to bring my camera; with all the talk of anonymity around the various Irish blogs I’ll just end up with a load of photos of people with big blurry circles in front of their faces! Although it would be a good way of avoiding the scary end of the lens myself.