Fantastic February for Fermoy Men’s Club!
If there was ever a good reason to be a member of Fermoy Men’s Club (FMC), then it was to benefit from the line-up of events provided for the membership in February.
Not alone did we have renowned Cork singer and entertainer, Seán O’Se, as our guest at our monthly meeting, but we also enjoyed a great bus outing at the end of the month to Bartlemy, under the guidance of John Arnold.
ON PUC AR BUILE
Seán O’Se, a native of Ballylickey, gave a highly polished performance to a full house of close to 60 members on Feb 13th, with a mixture of song and story that lasted for over one hour. Belying his age of 87, Seán sang as if in his prime with tunes such as ‘The Mountain Dew’, ‘Go Lassie Go’, ‘Carrickfergus’ and ‘Galway Bay’, not to mention old Cork favourites - ‘The Banks …..’ and the song mostly linked to him - ‘On Puc ar Buile’. He provided some great humour too with his yarns, and had high praise for his accompanying guitarist, Robert Carlile (son of club member, Orison), for enhancing his performance – with both Seán and Robert having met for the first time that morning in rehearsal.
Many members said afterwards that the cost of the annual sub was worth the admission alone to witness this event! It goes down as one of the best meetings ever and so our sincere thanks to Seán for attending.
BARTLEMY
Renowned historian, writer and raconteur, John Arnold, provided a fabulous day’s entertainment when he led a group of 34 men (bus full to capacity!) on a tour of his beloved homeland of Bartlemy. Starting at the crossroads in the centre of the village, John outlined the local history as we made our way down to St Peters Church and Bishop O’Brien’s house, before bringing us in to see the state-of-the-art TVM Studios run by Helen and Batt Arnold (John’s brother). A highly sophisticated and technically advanced operation, we were given a run down of how outside broadcasting works, be that at racecourses or stadia in Ireland and abroad. As we left TVM, all the travelling party were hugely impressed with this successful venture.
After a tasty lunch in the Rathcormac Inn, John continued the tour showing us sights such as – the Tithe War Monument, Gortroe Cemetery, Sheelaboonaskeen’s Castle, Cooneenasprioda, the Dead Man’s Letter box and St Bartholomew’s Holy Well. Needless to say, at every juncture, John mixed in some funny folktales which brought great humour to proceedings! Many thanks to John, a great supporter of our club.
UPCOMING EVENT
Our next meeting is this Mon (March 13th) at 3pm in the Youth Centre where our guest speaker will be Conor Counihan, former Cork footballer and coach. New members are most welcome with the annual membership fee being €40.