LÁ NUA - a new day

Ochón, Ochón, (Alas, Alas) dhein me dearahmd ar (I forgot) an cúpla focail (the few words) a geall me (that I promised) i gcóir (for) an Bhlian Nua(the New Year).

Á É Í Ó Ú á é í ó ú

Tá na Litireachta seo (These letters are) anseo (here) mar (because) níl bfios agam (I don't know) conas (how) a usaid (to use) an 'ASCII code' (níl an focail Gaelige agam (I don't have the Irish word) i gcóir (for) ASCII code. 

 

 Really, there is only one item today, even though there are two images, and a number of scraps of paper.

These all date from the period November 1981 to January 1982. At this time my husband was working for World Book - Childcraft, and this is some of the literature he received.
It's topical to look at the yellow notice talking about the effects of severe weather. The 1982 snowfall was legendary.

 The family story about encyclopaedias is a bit interesting.

When we first came to live in Tallaght in 1970, among the various people who knocked on our door were numerous sellers of encyclopaediae. I had one stock answer for them all as I refused to buy:

"Encyclopaedae go out of date every few years. It is much better if I go to the library when I need to use an encyclopaeda."

So they never even got inside the door.

But one day when I wasn't in the house, a very persuasive young woman met my husband, and when she heard I had a nursery school, she asked him to ask me would I give an opinion on the value of what she was selling (Grolier World of Knowledge, if I remember correctly)

I agreed to talk to her, and suddenly, in the middle of my usual spiel about going to the library, I relaized that in fact, I had never actually done this - in all the years of saying to the children: 'We must look that up when we go to the library', I had actually never looked up a single thing!

Without any persuasion from her whatsoever, I said I would buy the product - I calculated that the Children's Allowance would about cover the repayments. (it was probably the easiest sale she ever made)

To cut a long story short, the books got great use, and we actually wore out the dictionary in three volumes. Later, we graduated to the World Book, then to Britannica, and now they are all obsolete as the whole family uses Google to find out whatever they want to know.


But it did all start with a cheap children's encyclopaedia 

However, the cartoon to the left gives the game away, when some people, who shall be nameless turn out to be home-educated after all.