February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Let’s just say these thieves know their ABCs.
It started off as a kind of E craze. Not the illegal, dance-enhancing pills, but the actual letter.
The Longford Leader reports that the fifth letter of the alphabet — now synonymous with e-mails and E-tabs — recently began disappearing off shopfront signs in Longford town.
Customers would walk past BS building society, or Harny’s Jwllrs — E’s were disappearing all over the place. Then it became Fs. And what may have started as a joke now has local business fuming with letters disappearing overnight.
The paper reports that the worst affected building has been the Medical Center on New Street, which has had all its gold-plated lettering broken in bits and left scattered on the footpath.
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"It had been happening slowly over the past few months, but the worst incident was during the Longford festival, when all the lettering was broken off," Dr. Eugene Hardiman said.
"It means you can’t have raised lettering, which looked quite well — you could say Heineken Hysteria cost me £1,500," the doctor said.
Return journey
One of the survivor’s from the Titanic recently returned to the ill-fated liner’s last port of call to help open a theme bar dedicated to the ship’s memory.
The Examiner newspaper reports that Milvina Deane was just an infant when the White Star liner sank after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic 88 years ago. But she gamely traveled to Cobh, Co. Cork, for the grand opening of the Titanic Bar, modeled in the design of the ship’s first- and second-class smoking rooms.
The bar was the dream of Vincent Keaney, a lotto winner, who began planning for the Titanic Bar almost five years ago.
The Examiner reports the £1 million bar and restaurant is built on the pier terminal where more than 120 passengers boarded the Titanic before she set off on her first and last voyage.
Love of pins
For Kent Geib, it was the perfect honeymoon in Limerick when his new bride, Rachel Burns, stuck a needle into his neck.
But Rachel was just making sure everyone would know her man by tattooing her name on his neck.
The Limerick Leader reports that the newlyweds just had to come to Limerick for Ireland’s first tattoo convention. Californian Rachel, a world renowned tattoo artist, couldn’t miss it.
The couple were supposed to honeymoon in the South of France, but Rachel, who sports 13 tattoos as well as body piercing, insisted on coming to Ireland for the convention.
The love-struck couple have matching tattoos on the inside of their wrists. He also now has Rachel’s name etched forever across his neck.
"People now, and especially women, are really taking advantage of tattoos for a fashion statement. Before they just got the traditional anchor or ‘Mam’ and ‘Dad.’ Now with technology and pigments there is so much more on offer," Burns said.
Doubletime
A family is celebrating two births on the same day — on different sides of the Atlantic.
Two Termonfeckin sisters who got married in a double wedding ceremony last August have given birth on the same day, one in Drogheda and the other in North Carolina.
The Drogheda Independent reports that Tanya and Kareiz McAuley were married to their husbands in Termonfeckin church on Aug. 27 last year. Kareiz, who now lives in North Carolina. gave birth to a son, Liam John, within hours of her sister, who gave birth in Ireland. The births were within hours of each other.
"We have seen pictures of Kareiz’s baby in America. She sent them over on the Internet," said the proud father of the two women.