Tourists are being encouraged to pay $36,000 per week to indulge in "the Ballymena Experience," said the Ballymena Guardian. For that money, it must be some experience.
The literature promises "luxury, undersea extravaganzas and a side of Bahamian culture you won't find in most travel books", according to the newspaper, which eventually revealed that Ballymena is actually the name of a 124-foot yacht, available for charter in the Bahamas.
Interesting that this was the front-page headline in a week of historic significance in the North. "Bloody Sunday . . . The Beginning of The End", declared the Derry Journal with an almost audible sigh of relief. "A generation of waiting ended yesterday for the people of Derry when the much reviled Widgery report was all but officially discredited with the British government's historic announcement of a new judicial inquiry into Bloody Sunday," it said.
The same event was described as "a sad, sad day for unionists" by DUP Alderman Gregory Campbell in "a scathing attack on the Labour government", reported on page three of the newspaper. "If State involvement is the benchmark upon which inquiries are to be ordered, perhaps Tony Blair should now press Bertie Ahern to investigate a previous Irish government's financing of the IRA's terror machine," he said. In an editorial, the Derry Journal said "it is a pity that the unionist people in general seemed unable to grasp why Bloody Sunday was unique, but at the same time many unionists have expressed privately their misgivings and their sympathy for the victims.
"The campaign for a new inquiry was never a party political ploy. It was a movement based solely on a burning desire to right a state-imposed wrong, an issue of human rights devoid from petty politics."
A different issue of human rights, not historic but not petty either for the man involved, also arose in the Derry Journal. Pte Vincent Crawford (38), an Army private from Lifford, was granted a temporary High Court order last week preventing the army from discharging him on the grounds that he is overweight. Pte Crawford admits to being overweight, but claims he is capable of doing the type of work assigned to him - a "company runner" at the Lifford military base where he works.
Old lobsters never die - they go to Dingle. The Kerryman said that a 60year-old, 11 lb lobster - "one of the oldest and heaviest lobsters ever to be caught in Dingle" - is to spend his retirement "staring out at people from inside a tank in the aquarium". The Corkman introduced readers to Mac, a "sheep that thinks it's a dog". Mac was rescued last spring by Shirley Ladd of Castletownroche and now goes walking daily with Shirley's father, Tom Ladd, and his five dogs.
"Even when he meets his fellow sheep in the fields, Mac totally ignores them and prefers to stick with his canine buddies. Whenever we pass the sheep, Mac walks on either side of them with the other dogs as if he is not one of them," said Tom.
The Corkman/Kerryman's editorial had words of advice for Bill Clinton, quoting Albert Reynolds: "It's the little things that get you down." Kerry's Eye demanded the US President break up the news media "cartels" which created the Monica scandal. You might wonder why a small, local newspaper should be so passionate in its defence of the leader of the western world. At no costs should Slick Willy be prevented from keeping his golf date with Dick Spring at Ballybunion this summer, the newspaper believes.
If he wants to become a member of Tralee Golf Club, he'll have to pay £3,000 - that is if the club approves a plan for 190 new international memberships, when it holds its a.g.m. tonight, said the Kerryman. A case of "outright discrimination" has "furious" farming women crying foul, said the Connacht Tribune. The Department of Agriculture's "one farm rule for couples" means when a farmer marries a woman who also has her own separate holding of land, they must operate the farms as one unit. In recent weeks a number of Co Galway farm women - who operated their own holdings separate from their husbands - had their herd numbers withdrawn. Gardai are warning shopkeepers in Co Leitrim to be alert for two "ladies" who discreetly robbed Drumshanbo Post Office last week. The pair - one a bleached blonde - shifted a bag of money from behind the counter "when the shop assistant was otherwise engaged", said the Leitrim Observer.
A "Spice Invasion" drew a mob of adoring fans to Rathdrum last week, said the Wicklow People. "Children gasped in amazement" as Ginger Spice appeared on horseback during the filming of a video in Rathdrum's market square. A garda remarked "the kids won't do any harm to the girls, but there's always the slim chance that a John Lennon-type assassin might just turn up".
