Saturday, September 26, 2009

It's a small world

How often have I heard the phrase," It's a small world "


I can recall my father say to my mother on occasion especially when ever he'd be a bit late home from work. " God Mollie it's a small world, you'll never guess who I met, you remember Johnny from Kells I bumped into him on the Square and he asked me if I'd like a pint and sure it wouldn't be right to say no ". Then there was the times when we visited our grandparents Cathy and Pat Donohue in Delvin, Co. West Meath and I heard the people say to my father, God, Mick Sheils from Navan well isn't it a small world?.


If my grandparents came back they would be amazed at how small the world is now. People are jetting off on foreign holidays two and three times a year. In my grandparents day it was so different if someone left the country it was up to Dublin they went for a days shopping or to get the cattle boat to England in search of work or worse still to fight other peoples wars.

There was no such thing as: television, computers or mobile phones. I did a computer course about three years ago and the inevitable happened I bought a computer.

A friend, Frank Murphy, a member of the Meath Writer's Circle and author of two books "The Marginal Line and Excursions ", told me that I should start my own blog site. Of course I was a bit weary of this and thought it would cost money. Frank said, " no it will cost you nothing, the best way I can explain it is like this, years ago when people first went to America there was so much land that the government were giving it away. They organised races people would gather at certain points and the race would begin first to reach a certain point would stake claim to that land ".
" Yeah land which was stolen from the natives ", I replied.
" I know it was wrong but I'm just using it as a analogy. There's so much space on the Internet that it's going for free and you don't have to dispossess anyone for it". Frank convinced me and after aweek of trial and error I was in business.


Old habits die hard, one saturday evening I said to my wife Josephine, I'll switch on the pc and see if I've any fanmail. Low and behold it said you have a new comment. I clicked on comment and it read, Michael thanks for the nice post, have a nice weekend, David Santos from Portugal and I thought! God, it's a small world.

In August 2002 I travelled to Australia with my son Austin. I wrote a small piece about an encounter which I had in a town called Gungadai and I posted it on my blog 13 May 2008, then on 23rd August I got a comment all the way from Australia and I thought! it's a small world. Then there was the day I rang Seamy my sister's partner on my mobile, the phone rang out and went to his message box, it was my sister Rosaleen's voice, she said, sorry Seamus is not available at the moment please leave your number and he'll get back to you as soon as possible. God I thought it realy is a small world, Rosaleen had passed away two weeks earlier. And that's a journey I'm going to have to take myself some day.
.

Michael " The Sheriff " Sheils

2 comments:

Frank said...

Michael, you have a talent for telling stories,but you'll get me into trouble with the Sioux or something!
FM.

MichaelSheils said...

No worries Frank!
They know Sheriff speaks with straight tongue.