Con Dillon's, Money, St Michael's Burial Ground and the word gob

 Mallow Camera Club Image of the Year 2021 Competition

Grade 3 : Image Title : " Quality of Lockdown" 
1st Place : Philip Kerins. LIPF.

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Portmarnock on Sunday Feb 14 2021

Photo: Éamon ÓMurchú

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Everyone's A Winner

The good news is that Danny is going to give a prize to every youngster who entered his Valentine's Art Competition.

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A Lovely Listowel Premisis

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Farthings and Florins to Bitcoin

" You can now purchase your Tesla using Bitcoin" ran the headline. A few years ago that would have been Double Dutch to most people. It set me thinking. 

Is bitcoin the new cash?

 Not yet but maybe soon.

Since Covid 19 we are seeing the demise of money as we know it. Shops now prefer contactless payment. Online shopping prefers Paypal and every young person wants to get their pocket money via Revolut. You can pay your parish dues at the press of a Donate button

Don't get me started on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

I'm not the only one who feels a bit left behind. Marie Shaw writes about her early difficulties in the U.S.

"Remembering arriving in the US in 1958 and having a problem with the $ bill, always mentally transferring it to the £ to truly understand how much money was in my wallet. Adjusted quickly and accepted the new currency. Then went back, after just three years away and had a problem with the £. Then, a few years later I had to deal with the €, another challenge. Still have a bit of a problem with the € but then my mind doesn’t operate at the level it used to."

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Graveyard, Cemetery or Burial Ground

When  did a graveyard become a burial ground?

What is the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?

I'll answer the second question first. A  graveyard is a place where people are buried near a church, often in the same grounds as the church. So, St. Michael's is definitely a graveyard.

A cemetery is a burial ground not attached to a church.

A burial ground is a phrase that no one uses to define a cemetery or a graveyard.

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Another Word Ireland may have given to the world.

Gob is the Irish word for a bird's beak. Now we hear it as a word for mouth in English as in

 "I didn't open my gob to the referee."

It also occurs in words like gobshite, someone suffering from verbal diarrhoea, or gobdaw, someone who doesn't know when to keep his beak shut.

People my age will remember a gobstopper, a sweet so large and round you couldn't possibly talk while eating it.

There is also gobsmacked, as in struck dumb with amazement.