The students from St Matthew’s School are paragons of tidiness. Here they are cleaning up Sandymount Green. See letter below.

Hello there News 4
In early May this year, I was out for a walk along the Irishtown Nature Walk in Sean Moore Park, when I saw some students from St Matthew’s Primary School.

Accompanied by a teacher, the students were doing a complete clean-up of the area. It made me so proud to see them there. They had been supplied with gloves and Dublin City Council bags.

I want to congratulate them one and all for their efforts, they are a credit to St Matthew’s. Perhaps more of the local schools could get involved in this project. It could be part of their Civics training– keeping your own area clean and tidy is a lesson everyone should learn, I think.

I myself have cleaned up rubbish in this area on numerous occasions in the past and I get in touch with the Council from time to time if the place is getting too dirty.

Kind Regards
Margaret Dunne

PS: I enjoy your paper

The Scribe Meets a Diva in Portugal
Whilst taking a weekend break, on 19th June, to visit a niece living in Lisbon, I noticed the Portuguese Capital city has a lot of cultural development happening at present.

On Sunday 21st June, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum I was lucky to have been able to attend a concert performance by Ana Pinto, in the auditorium of the modern art wing.

This lady is an operatic singer of some note, a diva. She performed five pieces of music by the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), four pieces by Emmanual Chabrier (1841-1894), and eight pieces by the composer Gabriel Faure (1845-1924). She was accompanied by pianist Cristovao Luiz.

Ana’s repertoire covers operatic pieces in French, German, Spanish and English, she performed in many countries of Europe.

I spoke with her after she acknowledged a standing ovation following her recital performance at the venue in Lisbon. She has a happy temperament and likes to meet her admirers.

She told me she would be performing in London soon, and she was looking forward to that venue. Ana hails from Porto, in the North of Portugal, and is well known to Portuguese audiences. Asked if she might be singing in Dublin in the near future, she smiled a big ‘perhaps’.

I can recommend her beautiful singing voice; it is like that of an Angel.

By Geoffrey P. B. Lyon

Dear Editor
Peggy (Margaret) Irlams’s letter in the June/ July issue of NewsFour about her childhood memories mentioned the sound of sheep she used to hear coming from Landsdowne Road. Those were my father’s sheep, his name was Jack McDonnell and he lived at The Dairy, Seafort Avenue, Sandymount. A Mr Mervyn Fox from Donnybrook also kept sheep there. My father also made hay on the back pitches before the sheep were put there. He lived in Sandymount all his life as did I until I got married to Joan Dunwoody 46 years ago.

We enjoy reading NewsFour and all the memories it brings back for us. Keep up the good work.

Enjoy your retirement Ann.

Regards
Joe McDonnell