GILLIES MacBAIN,
Madam, - The new memorial rising in O'Connell Street will bear no inscription. It carries a torch for no one - only a small light to avoid potentially embarrassing collisions. It has so far defied all attempts to christen it, and its authors have failed to define its purpose or significance. It may be destined to follow Lord Nelson - and the lady running the bath filled with fish and chip papers and worse things - into storage or rubble or landfill.
We live in times when memories are short and relationships ever more fleeting. Our memorials are tribunals, dedicated to reluctant heroes of the recent past, businessmen and politicians, who had everything - mostly at others' expense - but now recall nothing.
So are we erecting a monument to oblivion? We live in an age of having it all and remembering nothing in the morning. This is indeed the monument of our dazzled, zapper-happy, zipper-happy times.
It is, Madam, no more than a one-light stand. - Yours, etc.,
GILLIES MacBAIN,
Templemore,
Co Tipperary.