Moonlight [and the street lights of Renmore] reflected in the still waters of Lough Atalia last night. The red lights in the centre of the picture are on the mast in Mellows Army Barracks and the bright rectangle of light nearby is the front of the Department of Defense building. You can see another picture taken on the same night here.

The cross at St Augustine’s Well at the edge of Lough Atalia in Galway City – picture taken on Saturday morning.

Among other things, Fr Anthony Fahy had a reputation as a matchmaker, a role he probably didn’t anticipate when he arrived in Buenos Aires to take up his role as Chaplain of the Irish congregation in Argentina on January 11th, 1844. He spent the next 27 years traveling around Argentina ministering to his congregation – a congregation that he helped populate through encouraging people back home to emigrate to Argentina [at a time when the Famine and its aftermath was causing huge hardship in Ireland]. In 1855, he wrote :-

Would to God that Irish emigrants would come to this country, instead of going to the United States. Here they would feel at home, they would have plenty employment and experience a sympathy from the natives very different from what now drives too many of them from the States back to Ireland. There is not a finer country in the world for a poor man to come to, especially with a family. Vast plains lying idle for want of hands to cultivate them and where the government offers every protection and encouragement to the foreigner’

When there were not enough women of marriageable age for the young Irish  farmers that had arrived in Argentina, Fr Fahy arranged for young women from his home town of Loughrea, in east Galway, to emigrate too. Fr Fahy is buried in the same cemetery in Buenos Aires (the famous and frankly bizarre Recoleta cemetery) as his good friend  Admiral William Brown, a Mayoman and founder of the Argentine navy.

However, there were some relationships that Fr. Fahy did not approve of, at all. When a young Argentine society lady of Irish descent, Camila O’Gorman, ran off with a priest from Buenos Aires named Ladislao Gutiérrez, it scandalized society there. Argentina was ruled as separate provinces at the time, and Fr Fahy was an ally of the Buenos Aires governor, Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Fr. Fahy, amongst others,

demanded an exemplary punishment of the wayward daughter that was also giving the industrious and well-regarded [Irish] community a bad name.

He got his wish. When the  location of the lovers was betrayed by another Irish priest, Fr Michael Gannon, they were brought back to Buenos Aires. Camila was 8 months pregnant and just twenty years old. On the orders of the governor, both she and Ladislao were executed by firing squad 162 years ago on this day.

We’ve had a very cold spell in Ireland this week, with temperatures falling to -6 or -7 Celcius  in the midlands or north of the country. In the Claddagh canal basin, the water froze as it did in the Harbour (I think the lock-gates may have been closed for a night or two). I didn’t get any pictures of the harbour but Kevin Crowley did [you can see his Flickr pictures here and here]. Back in March 2006, there was the coldest night for a decade and some ice formed in the harbour, but it didn’t last as long that time.

I ws surprised to see Lough Atalia frozen over. It is a salt-water lake (an inlet really) and there is quite a tidal current. But the water at the head of the inlet is quite still and that is where most of the ice formed. As you can see, the ice formed at high tide, and when the tide went out, the rocks peeked through the ice sheet.

More pictures of ice on Lough Atalia here.

The train pulled out of Ceannt Station dead on time one morning last week, crossed the Lough Atalia bridge and then cut out. We had made it about 300 yards. Apparently, the driver had driven through a red signal and the train automatically cut out. Since safety procedures require another driver to accompany the first one after breaking through a signal, we all to wait until they got one out of bed. While it’s good that Irish Rail’s emergency procedures were working, it seemed a bit strange that they very first signal was set to red at the time that the train was supposed to leave the station.[thats the story i heard from two sources - the only announcement at the time referred to, you guessed it, signalling problems]

On the stations along the Galway to Athlone line, the hoardings proclaiming the new Irish Rail trains to be among the greenest in Europe have disappeared. It’s easy get good fuel consumption out of trains when they are parked in a siding – we still haven’t seen any of them on my route.

Meanwhile, an Irish broadband company offered to provide wi-fi access on all the trains. Let’s hope that the equipment isn’t temperature-sensitive. On my route, the trains’ temperature controls have been out since Christmas – for the first few months, alternate carriages were either freezing or roasting – now, they are all sweltering. they might be a bit cooler if all the doors would open when the train stops in the stations – but that’s not a sure thing either.

Irish Rail are actually running the new trains on a midday route down to Galway – leading to fun at Woodlawn (where no more than a handful of people get on/disembark – on a busy day). You see, the trains are longer than the platform, and unlike the old trains, all of the doors open irrespective of whether the next step is merely a big one or a near fatal one.

It just gets better and better.

[update July 02 2008] It’s 7.00 pm and my train is sitting on the tracks near Woodlawn station. A forty minute delay has just been announced. More signalling problems – apparently,’engineers’ are ‘on-route’ from Galway to fix the problem. The horror, the horror…

[update July 03 2008] another 15minute delay sojourn near Woodlawn this evening – they didn’t bother offer an excuse.

[update July 04 2008]Homeward bound train (which should arrive in Galway for 5pm) sits for 50 minutes in Tullamore – station staff in Athlone cunningly announce it as two separate shorter delays in an effort to take the sting out of it. Doesn’t work…

[update July 09 2008] The train is delayed for 30 minutes outside Woodlawn. At least I think that’s where we are – it’s hard to see with the torrential rain hammering against the window…

Photography Note:

The image above demonstrates the difference between lens shake and slow shutter blur. I used a lens with Image Stabilization which allowed me to take this picture at 1/8th of a second. Normally, using such a slow shutter speed would cause the whole image to be blurred – but the IS counteracted the shake of my hand. However, a fast moving object will still be blurred [since it is moving while the shutter is open] as can be seen in the image above – which is the effect I wanted. I heard the train coming but didn’t have time to get my tripod.

Camera = Canon EOS 5D, lens = 24-105mm@24mm, speed =1/8 sec, aperture=7.1, ISO=640.