THIS WOMAN’S LIFE
I’m all confused and I do exactly what she tells me. I feel I am missing out on a Mystic Meg experience here. I try to register so that I can see into oblivion.
Like life isn’t weird enough. Now with the help of eFlow I can see my journeys online. The journeys I take, and the journeys I leave behind — the road less travelled.
Then I run out to see what my reg number is and I run in and add that to the form, and then I add another long number which is my account number and then I get an ‘Oops’!
I hate it when I get an ‘Oops’! It means I have to start all over again and run out to check my reg number.
But then it seems a person with my email is already registered. Yeah, that would be me. The man with no name who took my credit card details set me up that time, I’m thinking, and anyway I mostly get the bus and rarely use eFlow.
So what am I worrying about? How often am I going to get an invite to the Aras? When we have a different president I’ll never see the inside of the Aras again.
Well, that eFlow diversion got my mind off the very unnerving thoughts that a skyscraper is planned for Eyre Square East Quarter. Complete with hotel, shops, offices and apartments.
That’s not all either. This is only a tiny part of a massive area of the city that has been labelled a Designated Regeneration Area in the Developmental Plan. The areas in question are: the inner docks; Ceannt Station; and the Headford Road developments.
To me it all looks like a big business centre. Having an almost non-existent residential mix in these proposals is absolutely sacrilegious, given the city’s housing crisis. However, there are plans for luxury student accommodation.
Oddly for this city, a socalled oasis of culture, a tiny amount of the developments is allotted as cultural space. The irony of that.
Some people from the arts world objected. Former Cuirt and Macnas director Padraic Breathnach said: “In my view the cultural space allocation contravenes the spirit of the city plan.”
Other objections to the plans for an urban quarter at Galway Docks came from Trish Forde, the former artistic director with the Arts Festival, and from Tom Conroy, who served on the Galway Arts Festival board.
Corporate bodies, on the other hand, are delighted with the development plans.
But some people, myself included, feel it will destroy Galway’s medieval aspect. Only recently, after a concrete facade was removed from Garavan’s Bar on William Street, were several intricate medieval carvings revealed, giving us a glimpse of what a beautiful place Galway was in days gone by. Soon it will be little more than a facade if these planned developments get oxygen.
Galway in the future will likely resemble a mini-New York, but with little of the Big Apple’s infrastructure. The buildings suggested in the development plan