A round-up of today’s other stories in brief
Chairman miaow
Controversy has surrounded the National Roads Authority decision to remove business signs from one of Ireland’s most photographed signposts at the T junction in Ballyvaughan in the Burren, Co Clare. But, although the signpost has been denuded, one of the village’s other main attractions is still firmly in business.
Mrs Puss, as she prepares to read the day’s sensations, is a tortoiseshell cat who looks as though she has just been through a heavyweight boxing bout. She creates an endless stream of curiosity outside the Village Stores. As an entry point for those beginning their Burren journey, she has developed a talismanic quality.
Alighting at the bus stop beside the shop, visitors receive their befurred blessing. Tourists frequently drop grateful crumbs to her strategic position at one side of the picnic table (although she does not much care for Guinness cake).
Relaxed and unconcerned by the attention, Mrs Puss has built up a fanbase and the ultimate accolade of more than 40 friends on a Facebook page: search for the Ballyvaughan Tongue Cat Club. Fussed over but unfazed by fame, Ballyvaughan’s glamour puss is the Burren’s most photographed tabby and a fitting replacement for the T junction signpost.
Mrs Puss features in Burren Country: Travels Through an Irish Limestone Landscape published by the Collins Press, collinspress.ie.
Paul Clements
WORD ON THE STREET: Bacn
What it means:So you've activated your spam filters, installed your anti-virus software and cleared out your junk. Why is your inbox still so cluttered? Simple – you've got bacn. Bacn is content you don't want to delete but don't have time to read – not spam, but not quite priority either.
Facebook notifications, Twitter alerts, LinkedIn requests, Google updates, newsletters from your favourite websites, special offers from your favourite stores – all of these come under the category of bacn. As our social and business networks have expanded, so too has the amount of bacn in our inboxes. A little of it is okay, but too much and our email gets totally clogged up, until we start to wonder if we were better off with good, old-fashioned spam.
Where it comes from:Bacn was first coined in 2007, and a website was set up to this new threat to our inboxes. The term was slow to catch on, but as inboxes became more cluttered, the term has come back on the table. An estimated 27 billion bacn emails were sent every day last year. A website, unsubscribe.com, offers to help combat bacn, and Google has recently introduced a Gmail add-on that gathers your bacn in one pile and stashes it for future perusal. What's the bet you'll never get around to reading it?
How to say it: This is ridiculous – I'm getting 50 notifications a day telling me how much bacn is in my inbox!
Kevin Courtney
Whitney Port's charity tote
US reality TV star Whitney Port of The Hillsand The Cityfame, in Ireland to launch Summertime Festival of Fashion at Kildare Village, is no stranger to dishing out advice – and even gives her tuppenceworth on getting through our current economic woes.
The star, who found fame with MTV's The Hills, and is now a fashion designer-cum-agony aunt, says: "In life, the relationships and who you hold dear is what is important – not your possessions."
Why didn’t we think of that before?
Port's fashion label is Whitney Eve and she has created a canvas tote, inspired by her A/W collection, available exclusively at Kildare Village for the duration of their Summertime festival. It retails at €15 and all proceeds go to Barretstown. She has also written a book, True Whit: Designing a Life of Style, Beauty, and Fun, a how-to guide covering everything from dating to decorating your apartment on a budget.
Her fashion label, now in its fourth season, is stocked in Ireland by Drury Street boutique Alila in Dublin.
We ask Port if she has any fashion advice to impart? When it comes to figuring out how you look before going out she has this to say: “Sometimes it helps to take a picture of yourself. That way you can see you the way others see you.”
Summertime is a month-long entertainment, shopping and gourmet food extravaganza that takes place at Kildare Village all through July. Today there’s free street theatre with Circus Bijou’s Helter Skelter team and Barren Carousel Family Sideshow, big hits with kids of all ages. Next Saturday there’s an open-air seisiún, presented in association with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann.
Alanna Gallagher
Poetry in craft - an exhibition
Design and craft will be celebrated for the first time at the Galway Arts Festival with a rare opportunity to see Material Poetry, an exhibition of contemporary objects highlighting the new wave of design/craft in Ireland. Curated by Brian Kennedy and originally shown at the American Irish Historical Society in New York last November, it focuses on 16 Irish makers whose work “is infused with a poetic simplicity and material honesty”. It will be the first in a series of exhibitions of contemporary craft and design that will take place over the next three years in Ireland and the US under the direction of a newly created agency called Studio Practice. Included in the Galway show, which takes place at the Absolut Festival Gallery on the Headford Road, will be work by ceramicists Sara Flynn, Nuala O’Donovan and Frances Lambe along with furniture maker Joseph Walsh and basket maker Joe Hogan (work pictured). studiopractice.ie
Deirdre McQuillan
A new meaning to the term 'pocketbook'
We've been amazed by new technology but if someone were now to invent the paperback for the first time it would surely impress: you can read it in the bath without electrocuting yourself or watching it die if you drop it in the water; it doesn't need recharging; you can flick open any page in half a second and see all the text straight away; and it fits in pockets. Now there's a new micro-paperback known as a Flipback, which is perfect for helping in the fight to keep luggage allowances beneath the surcharge zone. Flipbacks are tiny (12cmx8cm), and light, with pages that float like those gossamer leafs in bibles and hymn books. While this keeps the pounds off, the thin paper has the side-effect of showing back-facing print through the pages so they are best read with a tissue placed beneath the page. Print runs lengthways up the page to keep the lines of text habitually long. Flipbacks were launched in the Netherlands 18 months ago and have landed on our shores. Hodder is publishing 12 titles this week – including Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier, Cloud Atlasby David Mitchell, The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Languageby Melvyn Bragg and John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; more will follow in the autumn. Flipbacks cost £9.99 (approximately €11).
Emma Cullinan
Get on your bike in Belfast
A new initiative offers guided bike tours around Belfast’s historic sites and beauty spots. What’s more, organisers promise there’ll be no sore bottoms at the end.
“It comes down to choosing bikes with big, comfy saddles, so it’s always like a sofa on wheels,” says Jerome O’Loughlin, who set up Belfast City Bike Tours along with his business partner Rory Martin. O’Loughlin says the most physically demanding part of the 10km tour will be a gentle incline through the Botanic Gardens. “We go at the pace of the slowest person, stopping off at Custom House Square, the Albert Clock, the Cathedral Quarter and Queen’s University,” he says.
The price is £15 per person (roughly €17) and the tours leave at 10am and 2pm on Saturdays and Sundays, from the Linen House Hostel in Kent Street. See belfastcitybiketours.com.
Jane Coyle
Fancy doing something charitable for the day? Head along to the Big Top Rail Sale in Airfield Home Farm in Dundrum, where the marquee will be filled with fashionable folk selling their wares. Proceeds from rail and table rental go to Diabetes Ireland and the Bubble Gum Club, a children’s charity dedicated to provide extraordinary outings for extraordinary children. Doors open at midday
An artisan perfume from Galway
Galway-based Cloon Keen may be best known for its range of delicate, scented candles – but we predict a cult product in the making in the form of its latest creation, Cloon Keen’s first artisan perfume, Bataille de Fleurs. In an understated glass bottle, all clean lines and blunt angles, the scent, inspired by its namesake French carnival, along the Promenade des Anglais, is a sensory experience that will overwhelam and delight. Imagine the smell of fresh-cut lemons, lingering behind the aroma of the mimosa tree, juxtaposed with hints of fig. In short, it smells like the kind of summer holiday you see in films - films where Julia Roberts finds herself in a private villa in Antibes; or where Brigitte Bardot spends her days lazing on the balcony of her tiled summer house; or where Diane Kruger, dressed in white linen, throws herself into a field of poppies. But, please, don’t take our word for it – head to 3 Kirwans Lane in Galway or the Cloon Keen boutique at Arnotts in Dublin and sniff for yourself. 50ml eau de parfum, €70. cloonkeen.com
Rosemary McCabe
Index
WHAT’S HOT
Beyoncé Fresh from a triumphant appearance at last week’s Glastonbury festival, the one and only Sasha Fierce takes to the stage at Kildare’s Oxegen festival next weekend. Sequined shorts a must
BuntingBecause no summer party is complete without it. We love this Rob Ryan bunting, emblazoned with happy-making slogans such as "everything is going to be okay". Available from onebrowncow.co.uk
' Game of Thrones'Can HBO do no wrong? From the makers of The Wire comes this gritty fantasy show – a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Tudors (in a good way), this is not for the faint-hearted
Dynamic Light appWant to make your photos of you and your friends look like they've been taken by David Bailey? Blimey there's an app for that and it's only €0.79
Sligo Heading west?Don't follow the crowd to Galway – instead head to Sligo for great surfing, better food (Source is the eatery on everyone's minds) and stunning scenery
CiderWhether it's dodgy stuff in plastic bottles or the posh stuff that comes in champagne bottles, it's the perfect summer drink
Yellow eyeshadowNot as drag queen as it sounds, and a huge trend for summer. If you're not feeling brave, avoid a block canary matte colour and go for a light lemon shimmer instead
Smilesforcrumlin.ieUpload a photo of your baby or toddler's smile and Cow Gate will make a €1 donation to the hospital
WHAT’S NOT
White blazers at festivalsCome on, Gwyneth Paltrow, it's Glastonbury, not Kate Moss's wedding – and we don't care that it's Stella McCartney
'Live' televisionWhy bother spending your evenings watching your favourite programmes when you can just catch up on a lazy Sunday? Set your box to record and free your mind
Regular weddingsWith the news that Kate Moss is having a three-day festival for hers, the stark reality hits – your one-day traditional day simply won't do
Bean sproutsObviously
Estate agents not turning up for appointmentsThe rollicking rental market is leading to almost as much rudeness as the property boom did
Short back'n'sides and a sacred heart
They say that, into each life, some rain must fall. Well here at the Glasnevin Barber Shop, on a warm summer’s day, Arthur McGuinness is gleefully talking up a monsoon. The McGuinnesses have been cutting hair at this location, opposite the National Botanic Gardens, since 1910. And mine are about to join some pretty illustrious floor sweepings.
Matt Talbot and Brendan Behan were both customers. Éamon de Valera, too. “He was bald on top,” recalls Arthur. “So he’d have had it very short.” The former taoiseach’s family were also patrons. “The son was a lovely fella. He was a gynaecologist, big long fingers on him.”
It’s a charming, old-fashioned premises, whose proprietor is a character straight out of city folklore. So how is business faring these days? “It’s dying a death,” McGuinness sighs, cheerfully. “There should be a collection for me to keep the place running.”
This isn’t the answer I had expected. The shop has just launched a new website. It was his publicist who suggested I visit. “If I was depending on this place,” says McGuinness, “I’d be dead long ago.”
Through a door and down some steps, we enter the Crockery Shop: a sort of oddball bric-a-brac curiosity shop. Music lovers will immediately be drawn to the stack of vinyl seven-inch singles on the table. The Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin, Joe Dolan’s Make Me an Island and the Fianna Fáil party song Your Kind of Country among them. Not bad value at €1 each.
Elsewhere, there are incredible 19th-century cash registers, antique barbers’ chairs, mirrors, pots, kettles, paintings and crockery. Having assembled this collection at auctions and house clearances, is there a particular favourite? “No.”
Well, perhaps he could describe the thrill of collecting that makes its more thankless aspects worthwhile? He contemplates the question. “When the money comes in,” he says. “That’s when I get all excited. If you walked out of here after giving me a few bob I’d say, ‘Jesus, he was a great fella’.”
Has he ever considered renting merchandise as film props? “Waste of time,” he splutters. “Theyre all the same. ‘Oh, we’re an independent company. We don’t have any budget.’ You remember the barber shop scene in The General? That was all my stuff. But they give you pennies. They’re worse than journalists!”
Wheeling around, my eye lands at random on an enormous religious statue on the dresser. I bet there’s an interesting or amusing anecdote about how this came into his possession. “Poor man lived in a house on his own. He had a right miserable life. When he died, I went in and there was a roomful of statues. I bought that one.” Pause. “And here it is.”
Any offers? “No.” Down the back there are more cash registers, adding machines and assorted 1950s kitsch. He asks if I like the place. I tell him I do. It reminds me a little of my granny’s.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what a lot of fellas would say. ‘Me poor auld mother, me sainted mother, God be good to her . . .’ There’s a fella in the pub, when he gets a few drinks in him, starts crying about his mother.” He starts singing. “Good boy Johnny dear, when you’re far away, don’t forget your dear old mother . . .”
It’s like he’s known me all my life.
At €10 a pop, Arthur is practically giving the haircuts away, he tells me. “You couldn’t give €10 to a child going to the shops. They’d give it back to you.” We bid each other good day and I depart. “Sure, you couldn’t make money in this place,” he calls after me. “Not a bob!”
Glasnevin Barber Shop/The Crockery Shop, 189 Botanic Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, thecrockeryshop.com
Eoin Butler
