Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
Retired teacher and blogger Hilda Smith (Over The Hilda) remembers her first Christmas at her in-laws and how it helped teach her what she wanted from festive celebrations to come.
MYSELF AND GRAHAM are thirty-six years married and we met through hockey. I had just joined a hockey club and he was already the captain. It’s a small club called Lorraine HC in the Phoenix Park. I saw a photograph of him before I met him and I said, ‘Ooh, he’s nice.’
I fancied him from the beginning but he was going out with somebody. He said he fancied me in the beginning but he was also going out with somebody! Both of our relationships broke up in December and we started going out in Galway on the 14th February. That was our first kiss, if you like. He asked me out then and that was it. We were engaged a year later and married four months after that.
I’m the eldest of six girls. Christmas in our house would always have been chaotic, but fun. My mother fed half the neighbourhood – people across the road, aunts, uncles. It was always a bit frantic, but lots of fun.
On our first Christmas as a married couple, Graham’s mother said, ‘You’re coming to me. We can’t be on our own.’ Their other son was in Canada at the time. So I said, ‘I suppose we better!’
That first Christmas was lovely. It was a very nice day. But it wasn’t the type of Christmas I was used to. It was quiet. There was only four of us.
My mother-in-law had no interest in food. It was always about how the table was set. We had to listen to The Queen’s Speech. That was part of the day. It was about sitting down with the knives and forks. It was very formal in many ways.
Every year for the first three years, we ate there. Then we had children and I said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’ Graham said, ‘Do you mind cooking? They’ll have to come to us.’ She was actually quite happy to because she didn’t like cooking anyway.
The first thing she did when she came in was come in and look at the table. She was always very nice like, ‘Oh the table is beautiful, I have to take a photograph of the table.’ She’d like things done a certain way – she’d have been mortified or really cross if I didn’t have napkins on the table!
My first Christmas was not the type of Christmas that I necessarily wanted or that I continued. It wasn’t the same. Everything was all to do with the table looking lovely and it didn’t really matter what kind of food was on it.
I wanted a Christmas that was more fun. We came from a house where you’d pull crackers and play games and that’s the type of Christmas we have reinstated, Graham and I. We have always played games on Christmas evening with the girls and anyone else who comes for dinner.
When my parents-in-law came to our house, the funny thing is that they did loosen up a bit. We did play charades – okay, my father-in-law might have fallen asleep during it – but they did loosen up.
The message is there’s compromising and there’s doing what is right for your family. That’s important, too. You must put your family first. Happy children, happy husband, happy house – that’s it, isn’t it?
This Christmas, the family are coming here – our two daughters, their men, and our grandson. It will be brilliant.
Want to win a festive food and wine hamper worth €100? Enter this week’s Aldi Christmas Magazine competition right here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Just build it ffs
@bmul: Did you know that there still isn’t a public bus route that uses the busiest stretch of road in the city, the N6 Quincentenary bridge? Either your consent has been manufactured by the city gombeens or you work for them.
@bmul: if you read the article you will learn that it is also not going to solve the traffic problem.
@Sean Byrne: If you knew the city and actually used public transport you’d also know that the value of a route using the quincentennial is fairly low due to the demographic layout of city and destinations being already reasonably serviced by existing bus routes. A “Cross Town” express on the north of the city bus service would be pretty useless for all but a very small group of people working in ballybane and ballybrit, especially in the absence of proper park and ride facilities
@Brendan Gordon: it would suit a lot of people going from Knocknacarra/Westside to Ballybrit/Parkmore instead of meandering through town for an hour.
@Brendan Gordon: I do know the city and public transport routes. Might I point out to you that NUIG and the University College Hospital are very close to the west end of the Quincentenary Bridge and those are major destinations from the east side of the city as well as the west. There’s also GMIT to the east which together make up cities largest city employment. There are about 4000 workers in Medtronic, parkmore alone but figures for the total workforce of the industrial estates that you mentioned are not insignificant. And there are the small matters that only 3% of traffic is through traffic and the Quincentenary Bridge is the cities busiest road. To hell with park and ride. You want people to invest in a car, pay repairs, tax, insurance, parking fees then use public transport? A proven failure in city.
@Sean Byrne: only 3% is through traffic but what % is rammed into town to cross the city .
@bmul: I’m not sure I understand the question. Through traffic is traffic that starts from outside and finishes outside the city. It’s not necessary that any traffic goes through town to cross the city. About 19,000 vehicles cross the N6 bridge each way daily. 97% of journeys start or terminate within city limits. Half of those at work in the city commute from outside. I hope that answers your question.
@bmul: The waffle about a GLUAS us an insult to peoples intelligence. Fact it takes approx hours travel dublin to end of M6 / N6 (220km). Then it can take up 1.5 hours to travel East to west of city (10km). Having commuted Galway – Dublin for years in 90′s + 00′s the journey could be 4 – 5 hours, endless queues. BUILD THE BYPASS NOW. GIVE GALWAY A CHANCE.
@Pseud O’Nym: your argument is flawed. A large % of people working in large factories commute from east of the county, mayo, clare etc. The absence of bypass leaves these people stranded trying to exit industrial estates (and yes some of those estates are poorly serviced)
@Pseud O’Nym: So as I said, it would suit a small number of people at very specific times of the day, a demographic of people from a dozen housing estates who work for one of 6 large employers in 2 business parks already serviced by other routes. As I said before, only worthwhile if proper park and ride facilities are available to service the entire county west of the city
@Sean Byrne: You obviously don’t, because you don’t know where the majority of those employees are travelling from, only a small fraction happen to live in the west side of the city, with most commuting locally or by car from other towns. NUIG is already well serviced with bus routes and is a 5 minute walk from the city centre. The people who benefit from park and ride are already tied to car ownership, they don’t live in the city. All you’ve pointed out to my is your own absolute ignorance on the topic
@Brendan Gordon: There is a lot more than a dozen estates between Knocknacarra, Barna, Rahoon, Newcastle, Westside, Salthill and Shantala who are commuting to Nuig, Nuihg, Terry land, liosban, ballybane, the Tuam Road, ballybrit/Parkmore.
If its only at certain times of the day so what? Better that it direct than to have to go to the city centre and wait on another bus.
The data used is from 2012 and is out of date, traffic levels are higher now (pre covid) than 9 years ago.
The road needs to be built, but realistic public transport needs to be built in tandem with it. Just as the report says.
@Robert Conneely: And they are already well serviced for all those locations by the 402,404, 405 and city direct services. The 404 and 405 don’t require switching buses, the only issue is city centre congestion.
A bus service utilising the quincentennial is a less effective use of resources of benefit to fewer people. The shift changes only occur at certain times of day but the staff on those shifts are in no way fixed, and the quincentennial itself is prone to heavy congestion, thus the requirements for a by-pass in the first place. All of which you’d know if you actually lived in westside/knocknacarra and depended on public transport as I have for the past 15 years, both as a student and for work to get to destinations on both sides of the city
@Brendan Gordon: Yes I live in Knocknacarra, but because the bus takes you through every estate instead of down the Western Distributor Road and over the bridge its a waste of my time to take it. So I cycle or drive.
I fail to see your argument against another bus route. How is more public transport a bad thing?
As you said the bridge is prone to congestion, in fact it is backed up to Moycullen and beyond in one direction, the Western distributer and out past Barna towards Spiddal from 0730 every morning. More than 20, 000 people are being funneled onto the bridge every day and the road doesn’t have the capacity.
.
@Robert Conneely: I’m not arguing against another bus route, I’m explaining to you that there isn’t one that goes across the quincantennial because it would be a waste of resources. If there’s funding for another route, it should be used for the maximum benefit to the most people, not to make your life easier by functioning as a convenient shuttle from where you personally live to where you personally want to be. The bus goes PAST housing estates because that’s where the people who use it live. All of them take fairly straightforward routes running parallel and then crossing western distributor, or using it, so is your problem that they stop to pick other people up?
The problem is, you fail to understand any of this, right down to what’s been said in this very thread.
@Brendan Gordon: I understand it well, but you don’t seem to.
Every report says the issue is crossing of the corrib. Now one would assume that you’ve been a student in Galway. If you’ve been 15 years in Galway then it seems a long time to keep your graduation pictures. You seem well able to call out other people on there situation, so what’s yours? Do you cross over to the east side of the city for work.
What is your solution to the traffic that backs out past moycullen and Spiddal?
@Brendan Gordon: What is your solution to the traffic that backs out past moycullen and Spiddal?
There should be a direct bus from East to west avoiding the city centre with a park and ride near Dangan and Barna. There are 20000 people trying to cross every day just from the west of the city, never mind the commuter towns. Increasing capacity could take hundreds of not thousands of cars off the road at that time.
I’ve no problem with the bus that stops outside my estate, but I’d rather walk 5 or 10 minutes instead of spreading 20 on a tour of Knocknacarra.
@Robert Conneely: Way to demonstrate that you didn’t even read my comments properly! I clearly stated that there’d be a need for a park and ride and in order to make a cross-town express viable, because a simple express solely from knocknacarra to ballybrit has niche use.
Well if the imaginary route that you think the bus takes is so loopy and indirect, why don’t you just walk the 10 minutes to the 405 that goes straight down WDR and into town? You just came here looking for an argument and totally embarrassed yourself
@Brendan Gordon: The 405 is a 3k walk, bit more than a 10min walk or run for that matter and starts at the end of the WDR.
You couldn’t answer the questions I asked you, saying they are addicted to their car doesn’t really cut it. So I guess youve only ever lived around westside/rahoon and worked in town or the westside of the city, and as a student probably in a bar working hours outside of the main commuting hours.
How you can think a money making service will a waste of resources is strange. You’ve made no compelling argument for/against the road and really, you’re just out to troll.
It needs to be built, freeing up the City for more public friendly transport, this is going on to long, build it! Limerick has a bypass, bundoran have a bypass, ffs just build it !
@Galwaygogo: youghal has a bypass
@James Fox: you needs to stop worrying about what we got
@Galwaygogo: bundoran has a bypass because pretty much ever vehicle wanted to go to Donegal or Sligo. Small bottlenecks needs to be bypassed even with smaller volumes. Not comparable to Galway.
They’ll probably have the road finished by the time I get to the end of this article.
Should have been built in 1990
The only solution here is to build a monorail.
@Munsterman: it put Ogdenville and North Haverbrook on the map.
@Eoghan P O’Leary: yeah but is there a chance the track could bend?
@Alex Marquis: Not on your life, my Galwegian friend.
This road is 20 years overdue, it is badly needed & will support alternative cycling and bus routes on the inner city roads. If it’s not built – Galway’s future as a place to welcome high end jobs, be a popular tourist destination and all other development which sustain it as a place to live and work will be ruined. This will be a landmark decision either way.
While my heart goes out to anybody whose home may be subject to a CPO, please just BUILD THE BLOODY THING. Galway is choking.
This ring road is well overdue , we are way behind Limerick , Cork , Dublin and even Kilkenny and Waterford who all have ring roads and function properly as city’s. It is easier to travel to work in Shannon or Limerick than to try and get to other side of Galway City if you are living anywhere south of the city . Sickening at this stage to be listening to every Tom, Dick and Harry , just build it and move on
@Finnster: Cork uses a suburban road through housing estates as a ‘north ring road’ – yes there is a good south ring road – the N40.
Galway city centre is congested so yes build the road !! but build a Motorway between Cork and Limerick first !!
@Finnster: some of my neighbours – near Athenry – go shopping in Limerick. Less time, fuel wasted and less blood pressure
54 houses would need to be demolished, with a lack of houses already in Galway where are these 54 people/families going to live?
@Sophie:
Too true! It is not good enough that 54 homes, lives of so many Seniors get upended for sake of a bypass.
Sod the cost! High time to take nuclear long-term option by building The Bobby Molloy Tunnel stretching from, to…**locations to be decided.Ones from E – W causing least amount of disruption to human lives, whatever about surrounding flora and fauna** Toll it over 100 yrs to recover the c. €3 bn cost. Motorists would be glad to pay c. €2 e/w charge for convenience.
And infrastructural funding- for key government-led projects like this long-running sore of an issue, stunting regional economic growth, particularly out Connemara can be secured at practically zero cost.
And open that bus route along Quincentennial Bridge without delay like man above recommended.
Rant over!
Can I not just read a headline and comment inappropriately
Build more roads and there will just be more cars on the roads. Create an environment where it’s acceptable to cycle around the city and be able to rely on public transport and the congestion will be eased.
@Derry Townsend: As they found out in places as diverse as Los Angeles and Birmingham: build for cars and you get cars (so you can never provide enough capacity). Build/plan for every mode of transport and you’ll get every mode, and suddenly the “car problem” isn’t a problem any more. If Galway could plan with some actual vision (but it’s not looking good), in the future they might be able to look back and realise that the decades’ delay was a blessing in disguise because the bypass was never built, and never attracted even more traffic.
@Derry Townsend: build more roads and there will be more cars? Really? Are they giving away free cars when they build roads? Not a Mensa moment. More roads means more space for the cars. That’s all. Space… the ultimate luxury in this instance.
@Derry Townsend:
The point is Galway lives in a big hinterland where there is no public transport… Cars are needed… But cars aren’t needed in the city center if possible…
There are 4 times the cars on the roads compared to when the last bridge was built.. Even simple math makes it cheaper for the people from Tuam and Athenry to drive to college each day rather than pay rent in Galway.
So if we get the cars out of the city we can then fill it with Pedestrians, Cyclists and Public Transport… There is already well developed plans to build an extra pedestrian bridge and give another bridge to public transport.
That is not happening without a by pass…
Public Transport is unreliable because of traffic, cycling is dangerous and walking is full of fumes and noise.
As for environmentalists…. By the time we get this bridge built a large chunk of cars will by hybrid and vast majority of the life of the bypass will be populated with electric cars..
As someone who grew up in Galway a ring road is needed, but the route that they have chosen is absolutely crazy. It’s supposed to be an outer bypass and yet somehow they’ve chosen to route it through some of the most expensive real estate in the city. The original route was the correct one but of course that’s history because the tree huggers wanted to protect some bog cotton.
It will never be built on this route. The residents of Bushypark have deep pockets and will pretty much ensure that when the courts become involved (which they 100% will at some stage) Galway City Council will be publicly embarrassed as the fools they are.
@Paddy Kennedy: I agree the ring road is needed but further out .
@Paddy Kennedy:
I think the Bog Cotton was thrown out because someone mentioned it only grows on freshly cut bog…
I think it was moved because they found limestone paving (1/2 acre) some where up around troonnabrooky(can’t spell)…
The City Council are could have done far better… They should have known this and mangaged it better…
O’Cuiv stated in a meeting if we could have asked to make human habitate on an equal foot to animal habitate then we could have used the original route (which you are right is by far the best route)
Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids. Find someone else.
Hello Galway this is Dublin talking.
Amazing they can send a mission to Mars but can this lot on the planet ? can’t sought out a Road.
Cars and bypasses are not the answer
Galway politics.
Whatever you do, do nothing.
Galway doesn’t need more roads, it needs less cars trying to get INTO its tiny city centre.
Do a six month trial: get a decent public transport (radial and orbital) and park and ride in the outskirts. Ban cars, except licensed one (disability, essential commercial, etc). make cycling an easy option for people of all ages and abilities. Things will change fast.
@Stephen McManus: They arent trying to get to the city centre, but they are forced too hence the need for the bypass.
Build the road and apply what you have said.
@Stephen McManus: To put it in Dublin terms. Imagine everything West of Cabra and Crumlin is under water as far as Athboy.
Most of the work is on the North side and more than half your population is on the south side. You also need to plan for trucks to pass through from North to South and the M50 doesn’t exist.
There are a number of issues that need to be addressed along with the ring road. Firstly, the Bus Éireann city bus routes are more or less the same for the last fifty years. In that time, the population has tripled. They cross the city instead of having an interchange in Eyre Square. To get from Knocknacarra to Mervue can take over an hour, including sitting waiting on the bus in Eyre Square for ten minutes. Add to this, as a result of the traffic congestion, the buses are often late, and the times end up being merged together so one bus instead of three comes in a time span of forty-five minutes. It just makes public transport a completely unviable option. Also, the reluctance to expand the city boundaries makes realistic planning an impossibility. Oranmore, Bearna, Moycullen and Claregalway are suburbs but are not included as such. They bring the population of the city up to 100,000.
We have had this debate in Galway for a long time and while I was all for this bypass being built at the start, the fact we have so many homes that will have to be demolished and given the shortage on actual affordable houses in the area means it’s just maybe a too high price for easing the congestion problem. I don’t think you could ever end congestion in Galway, places like parkmore where a lot of major FDI’s and multinationals are based was a living traffic nightmare Monday to Friday in the morning and evening pre covid, and they thought once the gort/ tuam bypass after that was built was gonna ease congestion there, but it only put a small dent in it really….
I live to the west of the city. They should take a fraction of the proposed cost and build park and rides located in places such as spiddal and run shuttle buses in to the city. Public transport at present is scarce and way too expensive. Instead the clowns in the council are allowing luxury estates to be built along the coast in the unprotected Gaeltacht, thereby increasing the number of cars travelling in to the city.
Sometimes it’s worth remembering that an imperfect solution today is better than no solution for 10 years
@Anthony Horan: Pity we hadn’t an imperfect solution about 1990
Thousands of cars go through the tunnel in Cork everyday
75% are only going 10 miles
@trebloc01: Those cars would need to go through the City Centre if the tunnel was not there whether 25% are going over 10 ‘miles’ or not.
Cars should be only needed if you are travelling 50+ miles outside the city
@trebloc01:
How do you come up with that…
Galway has many rural areas which wouldn’t be viable for a commercial bus route… Explain how someone from rural town get to work…
The traffic is so bad the buses can’t get through the city… All traffic has to go through the city… The city needs a bypass so it can implement a proper bus service, have more cycling and safer walking…
Galway already has the highest cycling participation of any city outside Dublin… The route from Knocknacarra to Ballybrit (which is main living area to main working area) has a cycle lane for 100% of the way… The weather is inconsistent, it is hilly….
The bypass is for being pro cycling, Public Transport and freeing up the city..
Everything’s a crisis now in the media
The key issues here are resilience on the network and increased connectivity. The building of the road will also save lives by taking inappropriate trips off the city road network.
In terms of the houses, CPO is a messy process that nobody enjoys especially the affected families but we can’t build roads by threading the eye of the needle to miss all on the houses. These people will be paid around 150% of the market value of their homes and will just have to restart their life in a new house. Building 54 houses is not a big task @ €300,000 per house which would build pretty nice houses this would cost €16.2m. When you compare this to the road cost it is about 3% of the cost.
Best of luck to the project and seeing a mature well developed Galway thrive into the future.
For such a great city, this ongoing debacle over a ring road for decades is nothing short of embarrassing. Mark my words it still won’t be built in 10 years times, and Galway will still be the gridlocked hellhole that it’s always been. You look down the road at Limerick, and the brilliant road infrastructure that they have,while Galway is still stuck in the 1970s.Galway City Counciy should hang their heads in shame, or better still the government should take over and just build the bypass.
I’m not from Galway but this is all eerily familiar. Contrary to one posters comment below -Limerick does not have a bypass. Limerick local authority (in cahoots with Clare) has a remarkably similar plan for what they’re calling a Northern Distributor around the north of the city. A dual carriageway in all but name it similarly promises sun, moon and stars in terms of solving congestion issues and has gone through some similar revisions and re-inventions to Galways project including a substantial green-washing to give the appearance it’s being undertaken for the greater good of the environment and to encourage modal shift. More than half the cycle lanes Limerick Corpo have committed to build in the next decade are on the LNDR (you read that right -they’re on a road that does not exist AND they’ve counted them twice because they go in both directions!) and a good chunk more that connect won’t be built outside the context of a LNDR.
There isn’t a report produced by a anyone without a vested interest in building things this side of 1985 that suggests projects like Galways and Limericks are anything but 180 degrees the wrong way to go. You just end up broadening the low density footprint of the city and making a bad situation worse.
It’s being sold as a positive that the LNDR will open up land banks for ‘development’ by people who see green fields as ‘undeveloped land’. The simple rules of finance dictate if that were to happen Limerick, which has shocking rates of dereliction and grey and brownfield sites, can forget about those being touched for generations. I imagine Galway, for all that it fairs better in some regards, has plenty such sites as well.
What is remarkable is the determination that whatever happens, whatever the cost and regardless of the damage -the road MUST be built. The moral, environmental and financial delinquency of it is staggering.
The team building the case made a glaringly big mistake with ten fold increase of traffic on Letteragh Road and six fold increase on Cappagh Road yet no corresponding increases in the EIAR Air Quality and Climate analysis of emissions such as NO2, various sizes of particulate matter and Benzene at the same locations.
ABP won’t be long spotting it so which is right and which is wrong? Presumably traffic projections document correct and emissions one is incorrect.
In any event it will likely be shot down by the EU when they see the huge projected increase in greenhouse gases so it mightn’t even get to court.
have your say