A difficult year – Castlebar native Kevin reflects from UK
THIS year has been a sad one for Castlebar folk.
As well as Covid, we don’t have our Christmas parish magazine this year. It may be trivia compared to Covid but most immigrants look forward to receiving it, writes Kevin McAleese, a native of Ballynew, Castlebar, and a former employee of The Connaught Telegraph.
Over the years, it was great to get something in print as a lot of young people today may not know how to write a letter, etcetera. It appears to be out-of-date to do so when using social media, Instagram and Twitter.
Johnny Mee, Joe Redmond, with their backroom staff, kept the magazine going over the years and I hope they get help in future years to keep it in print.
My mother Bridie and, later, my sister Margo always ensured I got the magazine. When I took it to The Irish Centre in Newcastle, many people asked me where I’d got it and asked if it was possible to get them one. My mother willingly posted a few extra copies to me.
There were many lovely articles written by Castlebar people, such as Peter Killeen, Ernie Sweeney, Bernie Murphy, Sean Lyons, John Healy, Brian Hoban, and, the person who created Ireland’s best peace park, Michael Feeney.
One article in particular was by the great Johnny Mee who wrote about emigrants leaving McHale Road and making their way to the railway station, with lots of crying going on, as their relatives thought they’d never see them again.
Many years ago I could relate to the story when my dad, Donagh MacAleese, died. He was a well-known man in Castlebar. My neighbour from Ballynew, the late Dick Geraghty, dropped me off at Castlebar station to get a train to Dublin for my return to the UK.
A family boarded the train at Claremorris with two young children and there were lots of tears at the station, I could see.
They sat next to me. The man told me he’d got a job as a teacher in London and his wife a nursing post. They were looking forward to starting a new life. Neither of them had been to London before and we all shared a bus from Heuston Station to Dublin Airport.
The children couldn’t understand why I wasn’t going with them on the plane as they thought there was only one flight to the UK. I was getting a flight home to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Hopefully their lives were happy and successful.
Fingers crossed this will be the last year without our magazine. It’s been a difficult year but it's now coming to an end.
Perhaps Christmas will ‘lift our spirits’ for the future. Our values and expectations have to be reassessed in the light of the ongoing coronavirus and if we take the true meaning of Christmas to heart - 'Peace on Earth to all of Goodwill’ - the inner peace that comes from sharing with the caring of one another, then we can help lighten the burden for those who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own and those in ill-health who have lost loved ones.
Let’s hope 2021 will bring contentment into our lives and the new year will be the start of better times.
A happy Christmas and all the best to the parish magazine readers, and get the vaccination as soon as it’s available so we can hug each other again.