Eavan Boland at the National Gallery of Ireland, Wednesday 2nd June 2008.

Image via WikipediaSo some of you may be wondering why I posted the Pomengranate earlier this week....Well it is one of my favourite poems by Eavan Boland....However my main reasons was I wished to share it with you but also because I am going to listen to a poetry reading she is giving tomorrow in the National Gallery on Merrion Square at 1pm.This is part of the Gallery's summer lunchtime events and there are some pretty interesting talks and discussions on every week day over the course of July. For further information go to the Gallery's website here.

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Limerick's Rental Confusion

Image via WikipediaSo this is Headline One from Todays Limerick Post

Limerick rents rise by 2 per cent:

Limerick City rents have bucked the national downturn by increasing by 2 per cent, in the face of falls as high as 6 per cent in South Dublin. The surprise finding, espicially factored against a doubling of the available rental pool of housing, was in Daft.ie's latest Rent Report.
Source: Limerick Post

And This Is Headline Two from Todays Limerick Independent:

City rents fall by 3%

There is good news for renters of properties in Limerick, according to the latest figures from property website Daft.ie, which shows that rents in Limerick have fallen by 3%
Source: Limerick Independent

Two City Newspapers. The Same Story. Two Completely Different Outcomes. Now I am no expert in Stats, but the old cliché goes that you can make Statistics say whatever you want 95% percent of the time. However both Headlines cannot be right?! So what does Daft Say then? Well Daft's own report says :

Rents falling for first time since 2004:
....The nationwide fall of 2% masks some regional variation - in Limerick city and Dublin city centre rents have fallen by almost 3%, whereas in West Dublin and West Leinster rents rose slightly....
Source: Daft.ie

So the Limerick Post has it wrong then. Time to go back and learn the basics about Checking your facts before you publish a story me thinks. Or at the very least, make sure you read the correct headline before you publish.

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Who Will Buy?

Some of you will be aware of the BBC 1 Production "I'd Do Anything" which takes a relative nobody and selects her to become a leading "Nancy"/leading "Oliver" in the West End production of "Oliver" later this year, produced by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It is a spin off from the 'Maria' and 'Joseph' series last year and the year before and has proven to be hugely popular.

So the semi-final is on this weekend and to get me in the mood before I do my Eurovision post, I figured I would give y'all this to feast on from the original Movie version of Oliver because it is a fantastic day outside!Coupled with not seeing the movie in full in years-I think I still have it on VHS at home!, its a nice one to have. :-)

Also for those of you who don't know who the original Oliver was and in case you get asked in a Trivia quiz, see here for Wikipedia Article on Mark Lester.

For more information on the BBC's "I'd Do Anything" go to the BBC website:

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Happy May Day

Image via Wikipedia

Happy May Day one and All. What better way to celebrate this bastion day of the triumph of Labour than with a poem. Also there's a March later this evening from Parnell Square to Liberty Hall this evening. Meet at the Garden of Remembrance at 7.30pm. The theme of this year's march is 'Defend and Extend Trade Union Rights'. (Some of you may be interested in a post from a couple of weeks ago on declining Union Membership to give this some context.)

"Into the Streets May First"
by Alfred Hayes
(May, 1934)

Into the streets May First!
Into the roaring Square!
Shake the midtown towers!
Shatter the downtown air!
Come with a storm of banners,
Come with an earthquake tread,
Bells, hurl out of your belfries,
Red flag, unfurl your red!

Out of the shops and factories,
Up with the sickle and hammer,
Comrades, these are our tools,
A song and a banner!
Roll song, from the sea of hearts,
Banner, leap and be free;
Song and banner together,
Down with the bourgeoisie!

Pour forth like a second flood!
Thunder the Alps of the air!
Subways are roaring our milllons --
"Comrades, into the square !!!"

To X or not to X...

Image by Avery Edison via Flickr

It is quiet the conundrum in modern day life. You are writing an email/text message and you say what you need to say in it. Then you come to the dreaded end greeting and you are unsure how you should end it. Now within a business setting obviously you use the term "Regards, theangryhedgehog.com". However what about with friends. When exactly is it appropriate for to use the phrase "kisses" or the "x" in a message. Well I guess some of you will tell me that it depends on the intimacy you have with that person. I figure you are right to an extent, it does but what if you are unsure as to the status of intimacy or if you are friends or whatever, do you 'x' then? Can the use of the 'x' be a waste of a keystroke or simply a sign of affection. Personally I think having an 'x' at the end of a text/email is quiet a statement to make to that person. It is a sign of affection, of shared experiences and a recognition of all that. Platonic or otherwise.

Beyond the Pale: National Photographic Archive

Image via Wikipedia

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned I was going to go to the Beyond the Pale exhibition in the National Photographic in Templebar. So Jeff and I had some time last week, so we popped in before Lunchtime to see what the was all about. For those of you who don't know where the Archive exhibition space is, it is located opposite the Information Centre in Templebar, behind the IFI.

So the exhibition. Well as the title itself suggests Beyond the Pale is to do with displaying images from the Lawerence Collection in the National Library of Ireland. The Lawerence Collection has been with the National Library since the mid 1940s and is one of the foremost photographic collections of Irish Social life at the turn of the 20th Century. This exbo however deliberates uses images from around the country from the late 19th and early 20th Century and hence the name "Beyond the Pale".

The cities featured in the exbo are Limerick, Derry, Belfast Cork, Galway and Waterford. It also features the town of Kilkenny (Yes I know I know but Kilkenny is not really a city and I'm writing this and I don't really care what the 2006 census says, it is not a City!). Overall Exbo is pretty well laid out and really easy to follow. Highly reccommended Viewing. Even if it is only placing streets in a modern context and trying to work out where everything goes now. Also alot of the images are crystal clear and save for the obvious dress differences with the subjects in the pictures, they could be quiet easily be confused for a picture which was only taken two weeks ago.

• Linky: NPA's 'Beyond the Pale'

Bosco Meets Bertie

Image via WikipediaBertie meets Bosco & Grainné