Astrology and Astrophysics

Coming up to the year two thousand, a neighbour said the world would end in that year. "Was she disappointed when it didn't?" asked my sister-in-law. The same neighbour said, in all seriousness, that an old man told her when they put up the first satellite, it would ruin the weather.

There are several sayings about old people, there's no fool like an old fool, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, a wise old man. Use these phrases as and when appropriate.

Some people say that the fairies left Ireland when electrification came in. I said that to a man my brother and I gave a lift to. He said the fairies took him once. He said it lasted for about an hour, it was a frosty night, he was in a field.......I stopped listening.

(This was recently).

In the eighties (of the last century) there was the moving statues phenomenon, when crowds gathered to look at religious statues, some said they saw the statue move, others said if you stare at anything long enough, your eyes play tricks on you. Bus loads of people came to look.

There was a joke going around at the time. A statue was walking across the road when it was hit by a car. It was totally paralysed.

Rural electrification took place in Ireland in the nineteen thirties. When an old woman, who had never boiled water except on an open fire, saw an electric kettle brought to the boil, she said "It's the work of the divil himself".

In the year of Our Lord, two thousand and nine, N-O-W now, people still believe in this stuff and are gathering to look at mysterious tree stumps and alleged apparitions.

When my brother and I worked in a car park, two Australians came back for their car after walking around Dublin. "Did you see any leprechauns?" asked my brother, jokingly. My nephew, out of earshot, said "Only tourists believe in leprechauns".

I saw an hour-long television program, via satellite, in which tarot cards and other such were presented as fact by a man with an American accent, bringing medieval superstition into the digital age.

How about Old Moore's Almanac, a yearly publication, making predictions for the year ahead, which is on sale and is bought in this country?

Mother Ireland, you're rearing them yet.

David **** (Our fate, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves - Shakespeare).