Latest news with #BarbaraRyan
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Hospital stay leads to a jarring experience
'My late father used to have to go to hospital every few months for a procedure on his 'waterworks',' writes Barbara Ryan of Caringbah South. 'This usually required an overnight stay. Since he liked a glass of sherry before dinner he used to take some in a jar. On one visit the nurse moved his belongings to another room while he was in the operating theatre. When he came out, she said that he didn't need to bring a urine sample (C8) and had thrown out his sherry. Just as well they didn't send it to the lab.' Regarding all the beer nostalgia (C8), Andrew McCarthy of Toormina points out that occasionally, 'Carlton United Breweries (CUB) has produced 'one-off' runs of DA and KB for the discerning drinker.' 'Whatever happened to the once-ubiquitous Globite school case?' ponders Col Begg of Orange. 'So good for mothers to discover last week's lunch crusts and banana skins among the sweaty gym gear and for creating an almost impenetrable obstacle path in the bus aisle.' Leonie Barrett's (C8) public phone avouchment has the backing of Peter Mayes of Petersham: 'Recently, my daughter fell asleep on the last train out of Sydney after a long day and evening at work. She woke up at Flemington. Her mobile was dead so no money, taxi or Uber. Thank God she was able to call me at 1am to go and fetch her. Telstra, we love you!' 'I tried to support Leonie yesterday by using my closest public telephone to call a friend,' says Brian Harris of Port Macquarie. 'The only problem was, all my contacts were in my mobile phone.' 'Not a dunce cap (C8),' says Geoff Gilligan of Coogee. 'But, in the late '50s my fourth class teacher had a foot-high wooden model of a man dressed in a suit, complete with bowler hat. The head was mounted on a spindle and could do 360s. His name was Mr Swivelhead, and if you were turning around and talking to students behind you, you had to take him home and bring him back with a note from your parents acknowledging your inattention. Yes, I got him a few times. Nowadays, I'd probably just be classified as ADHD.' 'We've had the Victorian era, the Edwardian, Georgian and Elizabethan eras, but what era are we in now?' asks Alison Brooks of Hope Island (Qld). 'Surely, not the Charleston era?'
The Age
4 days ago
- The Age
Hospital stay leads to a jarring experience
'My late father used to have to go to hospital every few months for a procedure on his 'waterworks',' writes Barbara Ryan of Caringbah South. 'This usually required an overnight stay. Since he liked a glass of sherry before dinner he used to take some in a jar. On one visit the nurse moved his belongings to another room while he was in the operating theatre. When he came out, she said that he didn't need to bring a urine sample (C8) and had thrown out his sherry. Just as well they didn't send it to the lab.' Regarding all the beer nostalgia (C8), Andrew McCarthy of Toormina points out that occasionally, 'Carlton United Breweries (CUB) has produced 'one-off' runs of DA and KB for the discerning drinker.' 'Whatever happened to the once-ubiquitous Globite school case?' ponders Col Begg of Orange. 'So good for mothers to discover last week's lunch crusts and banana skins among the sweaty gym gear and for creating an almost impenetrable obstacle path in the bus aisle.' Leonie Barrett's (C8) public phone avouchment has the backing of Peter Mayes of Petersham: 'Recently, my daughter fell asleep on the last train out of Sydney after a long day and evening at work. She woke up at Flemington. Her mobile was dead so no money, taxi or Uber. Thank God she was able to call me at 1am to go and fetch her. Telstra, we love you!' 'I tried to support Leonie yesterday by using my closest public telephone to call a friend,' says Brian Harris of Port Macquarie. 'The only problem was, all my contacts were in my mobile phone.' 'Not a dunce cap (C8),' says Geoff Gilligan of Coogee. 'But, in the late '50s my fourth class teacher had a foot-high wooden model of a man dressed in a suit, complete with bowler hat. The head was mounted on a spindle and could do 360s. His name was Mr Swivelhead, and if you were turning around and talking to students behind you, you had to take him home and bring him back with a note from your parents acknowledging your inattention. Yes, I got him a few times. Nowadays, I'd probably just be classified as ADHD.' 'We've had the Victorian era, the Edwardian, Georgian and Elizabethan eras, but what era are we in now?' asks Alison Brooks of Hope Island (Qld). 'Surely, not the Charleston era?'
Irish Independent
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Number of marriages dropped 4pc last year as religious and civil ceremonies nearing parity
A Central Statistics Office (CSO) release, which was published today, revealed that Catholic and civil ceremonies were nearly on parity in 2024. They were the two most popular forms of ceremony for opposite-sex marriages across the country, with 32.6pc happy couples having a Catholic ceremony and 32.5pc holding a civil ceremony. The ratio of Catholic and civil ceremonies has reduced since the year before, in 2023, when 35.4pc of ceremonies were Catholic, while 31.6pc were civil. Only 33 more Catholic than civil ceremonies took place last year, compared with 6,905 more a decade ago, in 2014, marking a significant change within a decade. David Quinn, a spokesperson for the Iona Institute, said the figures 'don't surprise him at all' and that 'it's all part of a long-term trend'. "There's a big fall-off in church attendance, but the whole trend towards having non-church weddings accelerated when hotels could do the receptions and the ceremony. 'When that happened, there was a big takeoff in these non-church wedding ceremonies. The hotel will send them along to one of these organisations that I'm broadly calling 'New Age', and they will conduct the ceremony.' He expects this trend to continue and that 'something similar [might] eventually happen for funerals as well'. 'We're secularising, obviously, but it's not just that. Because if it was purely secularising, then people wouldn't be having quasi-religious ceremonies in the hotels and all these various organisations that now conduct these wedding ceremonies do include religious or spiritual elements,' he added. A wedding celebrant and solemniser from Co Wicklow, Barbara Ryan, also said that more couples choose a civil ceremony because they 'want everything to be in one venue'. ADVERTISEMENT "They don't necessarily want their guests to have to travel around from a church to the venue. "A lot of venues now, that I work in, recently enough, have purpose-built ceremony spaces, which are quite beautiful and very instagrammable. "The couples I work with want personal ceremonies that are focused on them and their families. They want a relaxed, meaningful ceremony that is not too long. And if they have children, they really want them involved and to have the ceremony focused on them," she said. A statistician in the life events and demography division, Seán O'Connor, added: 'Looking back 10 years, the proportion of Roman Catholic ceremonies for opposite-sex weddings has fallen from 59.3pc to 32.6pc.' However, the CSO report also revealed the overall number of marriages in Ireland continued to fall in 2024, down by almost 4pc from 2023, and by 7.7pc from 2014. There were 20,348 marriages registered in Ireland last year, which included 668 same-sex marriages, down from 21,159 in 2023 and 23,173 in 2022. Meanwhile, the average age for grooms and brides continues to rise, as the average age for a bride stood at 35.9 years last year, increasing from 35.8 years the year before and 35.4 years in 2022. However, the average age of grooms remained unchanged at 37.7 years since 2023. For grooms, the average age rose from 26.9 years in 1974 to 27.3 years in 1984, before increasing to 37.7 years in 2024. A similar trend can be observed for the average age of brides, rising from 24.6 years in 1974 to 25.2 years in 1984, before growing to 35.9 years in 2024. For same-sex weddings in 2024, the average age for males was 40.7 years, while the average for females was 39.7 years. For females, it rose from 38 years in 2023, while it decreased for males from 40.8 years in the same year.
