As part of the Carrick400 celebrations (apparently Carrick-on-Shannon in Co. Leitrim is 400 years old this year), there was an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the number of people ‘rocking’ to “Rock the Boat“, a cheesy Seventies song by the Hues Corporation. According to the Guinness Book of Records website, the previous record was also set in Ireland, when 1428 people assembled in Armagh. However, there is an article in TheJournal.ie that attributes the record to an event in Rhode, Co. Offaly (which is only a few miles down the road from where I was brought up, and hasn’t had anywhere close to 1500 people living there since before the Famine).
In any case, the word in Carrick was that 1429 was the number to beat, and in the end , 1700 rockers assembled to set a new record. Each participant was given a number – my nephew got number 1430 so he was the first to break the record.
I missed the Wife-Carrying competition last week, but there will be pig-racing on the main street on Wednesday evening. You should go – you know you want to.
So, if you feel like our love is like a ship on the ocean, and that we’ve been sailing with a cargo of love and devotion, you should click this link and see 1700 Leitrim people getting down.