Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 7
My wife Hero and I have recently come back from the Republic of Ireland after spending a busy ten days with my son Greg, his wife Louise and his three children, Erin, 17, Kai, 13 and Ryan ,10. They live in Dublin and we’ve been there a few times but we’ve never been to the west coast.
It just so happens that Greg was selected to play Tag Rugby over 50’s for Ireland in a World Cup. The event took place in Limerick on the west of the country so we decided that after the Cup we should spend a few days somewhere on the west coast. Louise, who was born and bred in Ireland made the arrangements and booked a house on the island of Achill. This is beautiful area of estuaries and lagoons opening out into the wild and often stormy Atlantic.
But first of all, the World Cup. As a former rugby player with the original15-man game, I was amazed that Tag Rugby had grown into an international sport. Before Tag, there was and still is Touch Rugby. Both these games were devised for two purposes. Firstly, to keep serious rugby players fit and agile during the off season and, secondly, to offer a sport that has many elements of the oval ball game but is not a contact sport. Both Tag and Touch rules are closer to Rugby League, which has been a professional sport long before Rugby Union that remained amateur until 1995. Tag rugby was invented by the British Royal Navy based in Gibraltar in 1983. The sailors needed a game they could play on hard surfaces, even on the decks of their ships. By taking the actual tackling out of rugby, it was possible to play on the few hard surfaces available to the navy in Gibraltar. Somehow the game spread to Australia and is now played by many thousands of men and women in different age groups. The other country, where there are already over 30,000 players, is Ireland.
Both League and Union are branded by many as violent sports. Tackling the other player and bringing him to the ground is a key part of these two games, whereas Tag and Touch do not tackle. Instead with Tag there is a little Velcro strip attached to the waist of the player, which when removed by an opposing player constitutes a “tackle.” With Touch, as you would have guessed, you simply have to touch your opponent for him to be “tackled.” Instead of a scrum as in Union, the player then employs the League technique of passing the ball backwards through the legs to another of their players until it is time, after the fourth tag, for the other side to take the ball.
Greg was a fabulous rugby player before he dislocated his shoulder twice and was told not to play the game again. He was small but very fast and had a real rugby “brain,” reading the play correctly time and time again. I believe he could have played provincial rugby in South Africa and just possibly win an international cap with the Springboks. However, injuries prevented this and he took up coaching at his old club, Pirates, in Johannesburg until relocating to Ireland. Once there, he discovered Tag rugby. Apparently, he’s also going to represent Ireland at the Touch Rugby World Cup at the end of the year.
That was the hyperactive part of our holiday. I have always roamed up and down the touchline when Greg or one of my other children was playing a variety of sports. At my present age it was pretty tiring so the second half of our holiday was very welcome. Before we left Limerick, our host Mike (who had kindly offered accommodation for Hero, my daughter Xanthe and myself) took us on a tour of the area. This included a trip to Adare Manor, the former home of Countess of Dunraven and Mount-Earl. It is probably the most beautiful estate I have ever seen. The Countess sold it to the billionaire businessman J.P.McManus who has turned the manor house into a five-star hotel and the impeccably groomed estate into a major golf course. In fact, a forthcoming Ryder Cup, the ultimate contest between European and US golfers, will be played there in 2027.
The following day we headed north up the coast to the island of Achill, a somewhat isolated but very popular area for local holiday makers. The thing that struck us while traveling by road around Ireland is that the entire country is immaculately clean. The hedges and grass verges are beautifully maintained, Houses both small and large are spotless with no rubbish lying around. They are mostly painted white, with a few light yellow and even a couple of grey stone unpainted houses here and there. We turned off the motorway onto a series of country roads which were narrow, twisty and turny – but added to the charm of the place.
What amazed me about the entire trip was the fact that we were travelling across a country that historically was regarded as one of the poorest in Europe. The Great Famine of 1845 until 1852, with the failure of their staple diet of potatoes, caused massive hardships, starvation and the death of so many of the poorest inhabitants. The tragic effects of these years continued until well into the 20th Century; yet today Ireland has one of the fastest growing economies in the world!
There is a causeway onto the island itself. We crossed over and despite the mostly overcast sky we were enthralled by the rustic beauty of the place. The sea has meandered inland in large estuaries a short distance from the road on which we were heading for the house my son Greg had rented for all of us.
After the rather exhausting trip from Luton Airport (near our home in Milton Keynes) to Dublin, a night at Greg and Louise’s home, then a nearly three-hour drive to Limerick and the World Cup, dreams of a quiet and restful holiday had faded fast until we reached the island of Achill, where we spent some time on the beach – when the sun deigned to shine upon us – and then visited local pubs for meals and a drink. The food was excellent, especially the clam chowder with freshly caught fish. Guinness was the popular drink of the day although I generally stuck with red wine.
It had also been four years since we had seen Greg, Louise and the three kids. We were delighted to find that all three children had matured enormously. They are all clever academically, Can’t think where that comes from, certainly not from the Dressers, although both Hero and Louise did well with the three R’s – reading, ’riting and ’rithmatic. Both boys are excelling at rugby with Kai also becoming a little star with Gaelic Football. They have all learned to speak Gaelic and Erin has shown some signs of becoming a talented writer.
The other thing we love about Ireland is the people. They are delightful, full of humor and mostly very cheerful. They are also quite eccentric in many ways, which lends an additional layer of interest rather than the dullness of those nations who try to stick to the rules and lack boldness.
Athena, Hero’s mother, was a great anglophile. The Brits could do no wrong despite the fact that she was born in South Africa of Greek Cypriot parentage. We are now officially eire-ophiles – or should it be galeophiles? So many people take their work and their lives very seriously and are often not successful. The Irish see the humor in most things but are more successful than most. Having married Hero, getting on for fifty-nine years, the quality that appealed most to me was her sense of humor. We found we could laugh aut almost anything. It is that lack of seriousness that has propelled us through all of these years without any major upsets. Plenty of minor ones though but these are quickly forgotten with a laugh.
Anyway, we enjoyed our first holiday in many years and are grateful for the proximity of an Emerald Isle on our doorstep!
I have to say that one of the many pleasing facets of working with ExoBrain is that there is plenty of laughter between team members. This is probably inspired from the top. Peter Warren, our Founder and Creator of ExoTech, has a great sense of humor. It is sometimes a bit dated and corny but it makes us all laugh and creates a warm, friendly environment in which we are busy changing the way the world will communicate and carry out instructions in the near future.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.