By Kathleen Mullane

“Many Celebrations”

Firstly we wish 70th birthday wishes to Donal Carroll of Dirreen, Athea, who recently celebrated his ‘special birthday’ along with his family at The Listowel Arms Hotel. A great night was enjoyed by all.

Another ‘70th’ birthday celebration took place at Leen’s Hotel in Abbeyfeale recently when Denis Barrett of Templeathea reached his special day also. Family and friends joined him to celebrate his birthday. A very enjoyable evening was had by everyone.

Sincere congrats to Mary Ita and Ger Collins of Knocknagorna who were blessed with their new baby recently, a little boy they are naming Ned, who is a little brother for Grace and Bill, who are delighted. We also congratulate the proud grandparents Peggy and Bill Casey of Colbert Street and Kathleen and Paddy Collins of Knocknagorna. Great excitement all around.

Well last Sunday being the beautiful day that it was, I went with my daughter and grandchildren to Glin and did the fabulous ‘Knights Walk’ up at the area across from the church. The beautiful ‘Fairy Garden’ is something else – so colourful with painted stones, painted old wheelbarrows and broken painted flower-pots, indeed a real ‘treasure chest’ for little people.

 It’s great to hear incidentally that our own ‘make & do’ group who get together in the hall every Wednesday morning and evening sharing each others ‘crafts’ etc are presently painting stones etc for the Athea Fairy Garden. I’m sure we all have something colourful at home that seems useless and that would “jazz up” our Athea Fairy Path, everything helps and the Tidy Towns need all the help they can get. So hopefully everyone will buy a ticket for the Fashion Show on Wednesday, April 17th which is always a great night and also help with the ‘Big Limerick Clean Up’ on Good Friday and be proud of Athea.

The Athea Lourdes fund-raising group thank sincerely everyone who supported their great fundraising concert last week and also thanks to everyone who has put their €2 in the ‘split the bucket’ with their name and phone number. We will collect the buckets after 2 weeks, put all the envelopes together – then draw a winner with half the total proceeds going to the ‘1’ lucky winner and the other half to help send our 3 Youth Volunteers to Lourdes and also hopefully some invalids – if you know anyone who would be in a position and like to go please inform us.