Blowing In the Wind

Maybe it’s just a straw in the wind and in the end of the day it doesn’t matter much but then again it all depends where you’re coming from but, not surprisingly, I have a fondness for weather-vanes! Of course, I have to declare a self-interest in actually being one – the eponymous Brasscock himself. He that claims to know what way the wind do be blowing, this way and that, on most issues hoisted high as I am on my lofty perch keeping a weather eye on this, that and the other! Before the era when we have hourly reports on what the elements of the weather are up to country folk liked to know what way the wind was blowing and experience had taught them to deduce their own forecasting from that. Thus weather vanes became a popular feature atop of public buildings, churches or other tall structures. Nowadays they have become a rarity on modern buildings. I was well pleased when the Leisure Centre next door to my perch at the Brasscock was topped off with a fellow observer of all-things hereabouts, and further a field, indeed. He was a woodland creature, a dapper wee squirrel, known as Cno to his cairde. We got on great for a good while but with me being busy looking into this and that, I hadn’t noticed for a while that he had ‘upped and left’ imithe gan tasc na tuairisc a couple of years back, leaving me to bewail: Ca bhfuil mo Chno?

Maybe this’ gra’ for weather vanes goes back to my Cork childhood as the ‘Goldie Fish’ of Shandon was not only a dominant feature of our street- scape but I had a clear full-frontal and every -way view from my bedroom. No need for clocks or watches either as its four massive clocks told the time to all onlookers – but then again like any great institution, it had its detractors and so dubiously dubbed ‘The Four-Faced Liar’!

Well back to this neck of the woods and still in search of fellow-blowers-in-the-wind. Well there’s a weather vane in the form of a wee goldie fish on the Clock Tower, there’s a Fox atop Nolan, Farrell and Geoff, solicitors, at Newtown and further along the DMR there used to be a Huntsman taking aim at Lime Hill House- what happened him? Maybe there are others, readers could inform me as to their whereabouts or do I search in Vain?!

BBQ Rules: We are, or at least should be in the BBQ season. New standard operating procedures have been recently announced. Therefore it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity. When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine:(1) The woman buys the food. (2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert. (3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill – beer in hand. (4) The woman remains outside the compulsory three meter exclusion zone where the exuberance of testosterone and other manly bonding activities can take place without the interference of the woman. Here comes the important part:

(5) The man places the meat on the grill.