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John Arnold

John Arnold

Evening Echo

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Church’s burial custom recalls era when wolves prowled land

WRITING lately of my more than half a century as a GAA member, I quoted the first two lines of a famous song, I’ve been to a great many places /And...

previous day 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

My night with GAA exiles who are kings of Kilburn High Road

DID ye ever see the play The Kings Of Kilburn High Road by Jimmy Murphy? Set in London in the 1990s, the play is all about six young Irishmen who...

11.04.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Still standing 70 years on: warm memories of our ‘Turf House’

“AND tell me, is the Turf House still standing?” Well, I was taken aback by the question. It was back in the summer of 2016 when Paddy Murphy was...

04.04.2024 9

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Meeting pals from St Colman’s Class of 1974, half a century on

“YUDDY, yuddy, yuddy, yup, yup, yup, who’s goin to win the Harty Cup?”  That’s what the ‘cheer leader’ sang and we’d all answer back...

21.03.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

I always wanted to act... and I share one trait with our Cillian

AH, lads, what a week we’ve had with ‘moving’ pictures, amateur drama and the Oscars! You know, if fate hadn’t decreed that I pursued farming...

14.03.2024 5

Evening Echo

John Arnold

125 years dead, we must never forget the likes of James Maye

PAGE 3 of the Boston Irish/American newspaper The Pilot carried the following item under ‘News From Cork’ on Saturday, October 31, 1899. ‘Cork;...

07.03.2024 6

Evening Echo

John Arnold

John Arnold: My GAA pilgrimage to Newry, and memories of Cork legend Ring

I’M sorry to say I never actually met Christy Ring. After the Cork hurling team homecoming in the South Mall in September, 1978, I remember Christy...

29.02.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Two fine plays about death you must see, set 2,500 years apart

EVERYONE is familiar with that oft-used reading from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, ‘For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose...

22.02.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Farewell to a friend, forged via phone call that changed my life

THERE’S a lovely phrase in the Irish language, a kind of seanfhocail you could call it, I suppose - ‘Is ait an mac an saol’, which is generally...

15.02.2024 7

Evening Echo

John Arnold

School register is a real treasure trove shining light on area’s past

How time flies - this time 20 years ago we were busy, busy here getting ready for a school reunion. The year 2004 was 100 years on from the opening of...

08.02.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

40 years to the day since Luke Kelly died, his Raglan Road lives on

I’VE no idea if Patrick Kavanagh and Luke Kelly were good friends or not. They certainly met in The Bailey public house in Dublin. The Monaghan poet...

01.02.2024 6

Evening Echo

John Arnold

How about 1,000 of us donate €1k each to keep Páirc  Uí Chaoimh name?

FIRSTLY, let me put my hand up and say, yes, I have ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to the naming rights of the main GAA Stadium in Cork. It...

25.01.2024 9

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Leprechauns, banshees, ghosts - well, I’m a believer, are you?

I THINK Dianne McLauren was the only anthropologist I’ve ever met, and that meeting must be 25 or 30 years ago. She came from America and I don’t...

18.01.2024 8

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Love thy neighbour! Why I’ll be cheering on ‘rivals’ this weekend

IT must be over a decade ago that I saw the ‘trailer’ on RTÉ television of a new series called Love/Hate. I never watched a single episode of it...

11.01.2024 5

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Drenched at a charity tractor event, but it feels good to give

THE last day of 2023 started quietly enough. A cold and misty morning it was as I did a few jobs around the yard before mass. We had put in plenty...

04.01.2024 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Sure, I complain, and I am an eccentric, but here’s to 2024!

“I’LL be making no New Year’s Resolutions this year! I’m determined that, as the coming year of 2024 moves along, I won’t be throwing...

28.12.2023 20

Evening Echo

John Arnold

I got my teeth into a panto role aged six... as the Big Bad Wolf

I ALWAYS associate Christmas time with the beginning of my acting career - well, maybe using the word ‘career’ might sound a little bit...

21.12.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

A trip down memory lane with a cousin visiting from the U.S

“And while we were talking of days that have gone, The woes of the world for a time they were gone” Pardon me as I paraphrase the words of Percy...

14.12.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Smiles and tears amid the rain on my pilgrimage to Lourdes

IT was way back in 1952 that Gene Kelly made the song Singing In The Rain famous. I felt a bit like that this past week as I spent some wet, wet days...

07.12.2023 7

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Dead 100 years: The Corkman who helped to found the GAA

ON Monday, November 3, 1884, the back page of the Cork Examiner carried a lengthy report headed ‘Gaelic Association For National Pastimes’....

30.11.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

I remember when JFK died, 60 years on his legacy remains

ALL I can recall about Friday, November 22, 1963, is that I was six and a half and that we were visiting cousins in Kilworth that night. I’m not...

23.11.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

John Arnold: A smile, a wave, a wink - my own gave me a boost when I needed

NOVEMBER is no doubt the darkest month of the year. It’s not just that the winter is truly here with such short days, no, but October often still...

16.11.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

An out of date passport and a very problematic photo shoot

WELL, what do ye think of me now? Rugged, aged, decrepit, vaguely handsome, the relics of auld decency or just plain older me? The thing is, I wanted...

09.11.2023 5

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Amazing coincidence linking an Australian wedding to Cork

I THINK ’twas around 1816 that one of my eight great, great grandmothers was born. Yeah, we have just one mother and two grandmothers. A further...

02.11.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Celebrating an inspirational Cork nun, born 100 years ago

I’D say it must be about 60 years ago since I first visited the Poor Clare Monastery at College Road, Cork. Mam used often visit the Poor Clares if...

18.10.2023 6

Evening Echo

John Arnold

John Arnold: A journey of just over a mile, but scarcely a yard of it without a story

I DROVE a bit over a mile down the road from the chapel the other night. The sun was sinking low over Coolequane and Watergrasshill. It was just that...

12.10.2023 20

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Saving the planet? Let’s start by protecting worms and bats

TO be honest, I can’t say when I first heard the word biodiversity, definitely ’twas only in the last five or six years. Even then, the main way...

05.10.2023 9

Evening Echo

John Arnold

John Arnold: Yarn about yearning husband, pining for his sea goddess wife

There’s a glen in old Tirconnell There’s a wee house in that glen...’ THUS begins the song made famous by DJ Curtin, Art Supple and Brendan...

28.09.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

A priest, his hitch-hiker in Oz, and amazing Cork connection

I WAS thinking a lot about travelling lately, though I’ve nothing farther than West Cork planned at the moment. They say travel broadens the mind...

21.09.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Fresh off a liner in Cobh... my long-lost ‘cousin’ from Texas!

WAIT ’til I tell ye about the taxi driver from Limerick, the cruise liner in Cobh, and (possibly) my rich Texan cousin! Last week, I was head over...

14.09.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

Saluting the heroic deeds of a rural athletics club in County Cork

MOSS Egan was what you’d call an ‘all-round sportsman’. Reared on the family farm at Desert, Bartlemy, he lived with his parents, brother John...

07.09.2023 10

Evening Echo

John Arnold

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