It Says in The Bridge - Summer 2024

School's out and it's time to enjoy those rainy, cloudy, crazy days of summer (re-jigging the lyrics of that Nat King Cole favourite to more accurately reflect our weather so far!), writes Brian Byrne. This summer issue of The Bridge has a fair bit about leaving school, highlighting on the cover the retirements of two local teachers and the graduation of the 2023-2024 year at Auntie Anne's Country Creche. The stories get more extensive coverage inside, and the magazine also gives a shout out in general to teachers who have made schools today such enjoyable places to be.

This issue too marks the usual summer break for the magazine itself — the next one is September — so the various regular contributors will be putting their keyboards to one side for a while. Which is maybe an appropriate time to thank them for their constancy over the last year and wish them a happy summer.

Among them is Mary Orford, who this month takes a look back at what agriculture was like in the region a hundred years ago. In a rather perilous state, it seems from her deep dives into the newspapers of the day. Floods devastating the land. A farmworkers strike in Ballyshannon. Warnings of foot and mouth disease. Which only shows: all change, little change?

Want to get away from Kilcullen for a few hours? Noel Clare's Out and Away this month takes a trek around St Anne's Park in Raheny in Dublin, finding impressive stands of trees, a beautiful rose garden, and former stables converted into cafe and exhibition facilities. Meantime, if you're just sipping a coffee back in Kilcullen, it could well be provided by PJ Coffee Roasters in the Link Park, who are the subject of Gillian Rea's A Bit of Business this month.

John Duffey is also in recollection mode, reminding those of us of a certain age of the heydays of cinema in Kilcullen, with live cabaret shows which included The Harmonichords, later to become major singing stars as The Bachelors. The first year of the revitalised Kilcullen Bridge Cinema is also featured in a piece by Teresa Nurse of the Kilcullen Lions committee responsible for relighting the flickering silver screen in the town. And from September, that experience will be even better, with new sound and projection equipment installed — Noel Clare has a page devoted to how a Shropshire couple with Kilcullen connections played a big part in that.

From our other regulars, Julie Felsbergs has been on a cruise and it triggered consideration of how we form personal views of the world today from small glimpses that perhaps don't allow consideration of the 'big picture'. Fr Gary muses on the 'hours of prayer' that developed within the Christian church and which offer an opportunity through every day to reflect on 'the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish' of life.

As usual, Billy Redmond has his personal take on life, this month Off the Cuff on recent politics, persistent and targeted demands from charities, and an opportunity he got to lunch in Trinity College Dublin. The 20 Questions are answered by Tanya Flanagan, who'd like to take a time machine trip back to the craic of Italia 90. Sean Landers continues to mine the story of the Cramer Roberts family and Sallymount, this time delving into their more troubled times.

There's poetry from Patrick Maloney, and in the Creative Writers page one from Saoirse Ní Bheacháin along with a fictional piece from Julie O'Donoghue that is a different view on difference.

As always, there's more in the Bridge. Make it last until the autumn and the schools reopen. Usual outlets.

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