By Kathleen Mullane

‘Out & About’ 

Sincere congrats and good wishes go this week to Andrea Greaney (daughter of Tommy and Ita, Templeathea) who had a double celebration! She celebrated her 30th birthday last week and also got engaged to Jeremiah Healy (son of Mary & Teady of Abbeyfeale). Indeed cause for a double celebration.

Many thanks to all those who gave so willingly to our church gate collection last weekend in aid of ‘Epilepsy Ireland’. I will be lodging the great sum of €560 this week to the cause – well done to all.

Well done to Breda Hayes of Lower Athea who won the award of Practice Administrator/Manager GP Buddy Award 2016 at The Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin recently. Breda does untold work at Dr. Kieran Murphy’s practice here in Athea. A really well deserving winner.

Don’t forget the Ladies ‘Monthly’ Night Out starting on this Friday, October 7th at 9pm at Brown Joe’s. Everyone is welcome to go along and enjoy the craic, sing along etc, seeing as the ladies don’t get out as much as the men. Teresa feels they need a night out at least once a month! Any enquiries to 087-1513565.

Well the ‘main topic’ of conversation over the weekend, following the All Ireland replay between Dublin and Mayo was that everyone in the parish was rooting for Mayo. It was indeed ‘heartbreaking’ and losing by just 1pt was worse still. As Joe Brolly, sports commentator, said in his interview and to quote “wouldn’t Mayo just win and let us all get on with our lives” – such was everyone’s eagerness for them to win after over 60 years. Well all we can say at this stage is  “here’s to net year and the near heart attacks again”.

Our health system is often criticized by many, but if you watch the programme ‘Keeping Ireland Alive – the health service in a day’ you will see how so very hard the surgeons, theatre staff, nurses and doctors work, often doing innumerable operations in a day and treating every kind of an emergency and ailment, so it’s not entirely their fault, so maybe a bit of ‘Praise’ wouldn’t go astray from all of us now and again.

Wasn’t it brilliant that Athea went up by a massive ‘19’ points this year due to the hard work of all the Tidy Towns committee. Everyone should be so proud – if you see a bottle, can or papers thrown around, pick them up or pull a weed or two – it all helps.