Duckett’s Grove was the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th century home of the Duckett family. It was the centre of a 12,000 acre estate that dominated the Carlow landscape for over 300 years.

The mansion was transformed into a castellated Gothic fantasy by Thomas A. Cobden for J. D. Duckett in 1830.

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While in Carlow we visted Brownshill Portal Tomb which has a capstone weighing about 150 tonnes probably making it the heaviest capstone in Europe.

You can learn more about Portal Tombs/Dolmens here!

Tom Crean (1877-1938) was born on a farm near the village Annascaul in Co. Kerry.

At the age of 15 he joined the British Navy and ended up being on three of the four major British Antarctic expeditions:

1. The “Discovery” (1901 – 1904)
2. The “Terra Nova” (1910 – 1913)
3. The “Endurance” (1914 – 1916)

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I see we have attained the distinction of having the dirtiest city in Ireland!

(I guess we can’t sing ‘Beautiful City …. my home by the Lee’ anymore? We could try ‘Pollutiful City, green and so smelly, pollutiful City my home by the green Lee’. We’d have a devil of a time getting the words to rhyme but what the hey it’s worth a piece of paper!)

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I see Fianna Fáil are ‘revisiting’ the whole Medical Card issue …. pity they didn’t think it through before they caused angst amongst the senior citizens of our country.

By all means …. means test it … but raise the threshold so that the middle income pensioners can have a reasonable standard of living.

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What can I say?

Class sizes are going to increase (doesn’t bother me …. I’m bucking the trend!  )

Overall, to be honest (and I ain’t a Fianna Fáil fan) … it could have been worse considering the shit we’re in.

I will be down a few hundred euro in the year but hey so will everyone else. I just don’t spend it if I ain’t got it.

I guess the new Dell netbook is on hold for the time being!

Be careful where you stand on Irish Blogs dot ie!

I see the site is a minefield of ads.

You can even get your blog featured on it …. for a fee.

I used to like Irish Blogs dot ie ‘cos it was a great place to see what we Irish were commenting (ranting) about.

Now that it’s bowing to the google and ‘place your ad here’ pressure I’m beginning to wonder if Irish Blogs dot ie will start to favour on opinion over another, one blog over another …. all for the taste of the mighty euro?

They should change their tag line from ‘what is Ireland saying right now‘ to ‘what we are earning from what Ireland is saying right now’

Recession must be hitting hard when Irish Blogs dot ie has started to monetise itself!

(Now where did I put my metal detector?)