Mary’s Musings In her latest observations Mary looks forward to a family Christmas and reading some good books, applauds our science and maths students and takes a philosophical view of the confidence and supply agreement
On Christmas Day I am invited to my son Aengus and his wife Lisa in Athlone with my four lovely grandchildren, ranging in age from 9-17.
Hello again to all the readers of this lovely magazine. I hope you have come through the autumn/ early winter days well. We have had such a variety of weather, ranging from bitterly cold to very mild and in between lots of rain and gales. However, Christmas is approaching, and all our thoughts are bound up in that. I hope the weather will be suitable for those who will be travelling to be at home with their own people, or travelling to events over the Christmas season. I, like everyone else, am busy preparing for Christmas. I am so lucky in that I have a small but very loving family. On Christmas Day, I am invited to my son Aengus and his wife Lisa, who live in Athlone with my four lovely grand-
children, ranging in age from 9-17. We will have great fun and much laughter all together. Lisa’s Mum, who is a widow too, will be down to stay with her, and also her sister and husband and two children, so it will be a packed household. In Dublin, my son Feargal and his wife Maeve and their two children will have Christmas Day at home, and then on December 27, they come down to here to be in Athlone and stay until New Year’s Eve when they will go off to Cork to Maeve’s parents who live there. So all in all, it will be a busy time of family and children, of talking, catching up with the news, hearing about how school is going, but, above all, of so much love between us all. I am so happy to be part of a loving family, and my
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wish would be that everyone who reads these pages will have love in their lives also over the Christmas period, in some form or another. After all, the whole story of Christmas is that of an infant born in a stable in Bethlehem. I constantly tell that to my grandchildren, and how right it is that they do not lose track of what all the festivity and joy and love is about. So, what has been going on in the last number of weeks? Well, I was invited down to Maura and Daithi’s Today Show in Cork. I’m sure many of the readers look at it; it is a very good production by RTÉ for over two hours on each weekday. They have a variety of visitors, commentators, sports news, political news, cooking, fashion, anything you would want – it will so easily while away a couple of hours on an afternoon.
