Around since ... yesterday
It is a tradition with many businesses to proclaim their date of establishment.
In the old days this carried the message that they were a long established firm with decades, if not centuries, of experience and reliability behind them.
Nowadays, with the pace of change in corporate ownership, this doesn't mean a lot. However in a place like Galway, which is geared up to the tourist, and makes a thing of its history, there is a proliferation of shop fronts proclaiming their lineage, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
OK, I know, you have to start sometime and if you last long enough you are history, so to speak.
Here are a few that struck me.
This proclamation at the Claddagh Ring Emporium is certainly respectable, claiming continuity of over a quarter of a millennium. It must surely impress Americans, being as old as the United States of America itself.
However, the premises is now occupied by Galway Cameras, which, by definition, cannot have dated from earlier than the beginning of the last century and is clearly of more recent origin.
This one can claim to have spanned three centuries, though it is just over a hundred years old. It also seems to have had a continuity of use as a pub, whatever about a family business.
This claim, at Geraghty's clothes emporium, is still at the respectable end of the time scale, predating the Second World War, and my own advent into this world.
It's funny. You can consider anything dating from before you were born as old, but when it comes to things that happened in your own lifetime they don't seem to belong in the realms of history.
For me, 1953 is pushing it. It is more a declaration of youth than of old age. But then I think of today's youth. To them it is a generation older than they are.
This is the Bierhaus. Oh, well, you have to start sometime.
And then there is this one. The premises is in use as a shop in the main pedestrian thoroughfare.
Into its fifth century and well on the way to its half Millennium.