A break from the madding crowd...

Thu, Aug 08, 2013

When you were young and the Yanks and those ‘ovah’ from the UK would come home for weeks on end, sporting the sort of clothes and the richness of tan that we only ever saw through the pages of National Geographic magazine, there was always a welcome hiatus when they left. Endless days and nights of chatter interspersed with endless cups of tea served in blue willow delft which for the rest of the year resided in my grandmother’s dresser, monotonous trip to the shop to get pounds of ham and tomatoes to create exotic summer salads all munched down between hundreds and hundreds of mentions of life ‘ovah.’

Paddy wasn’t built for the sunshine...

Thu, Jul 25, 2013

Paddy wasn’t built for sunshine. You see, he never had much practice at it, despite he convincing himself that every summer of his childhood was spent on his back in the fields looking up at a sky with ne’er a cloud to be seen. With the sun-tanned shape of his Casio digital watch festooned like a white tattoo on his freckled arms, he told himself that this would be the best country in the world if the sun shone all the time. He says that he never noticed the wimmen of the country ‘til the sun shone and that he never appreciated the natural beauty of the countryside either. And when the rain and the winds came and they did come with earnest for the best part of a decade, he wished that the day would come when it would be warm in the morning and warm at night and that then all his ills would be cured.

A LAR is born...

Thu, Jul 11, 2013

I'd never heard of a LAR before this week, that is apart from Lar Corbett. I didn't know what it was, whether it was a he, a she or an it, or whether you could manage to eat a full one. And now this week, with the birds falling out of the trees with the sunburn and us driven to distraction by a boat full of millionaires holidaying alongside Mutton Island, Fianna Fail has decided to unleash the LARS on a generally unsuspecting public.

When will the blather machine ever run dry?

Thu, Jun 27, 2013

I don’t do sincerity very well. Don’t get me wrong, it‘s not a flaw or anything which gets me down, it’s just a conditioning, a layer that has applied itself to me since a long time back. There are days when I wish I was a very principled person, one who could be strongly committed to one cause of another. I encounter lots of people who strongly believe in a cause or a campaign and I lay the resources of my pages at their disposal and I admire them. But I’m not one of them. And because I’m afflicted with a latent lack of sincerity, I tend to get that little twitch in my nose when I detect similar insincerity, when I resist the temptation to have an almighty yawn and say to someone ‘save the bullshit for someone else.”

When will the blather machine ever run dry?

Thu, Jun 27, 2013

I don’t do sincerity very well. Don’t get me wrong, it‘s not a flaw or anything which gets me down, it’s just a conditioning, a layer that has applied itself to me since a long time back. There are days when I wish I was a very principled person, one who could be strongly committed to one cause of another. I encounter lots of people who strongly believe in a cause or a campaign and I lay the resources of my pages at their disposal and I admire them. But I’m not one of them. And because I’m afflicted with a latent lack of sincerity, I tend to get that little twitch in my nose when I detect similar insincerity, when I resist the temptation to have an almighty yawn and say to someone ‘save the bullshit for someone else.”

50 years since JFK, but it may as well be a hundred

Thu, Jun 20, 2013

Over the course of the next week, you will be regaled with anecdotes about the day the most famous man in the world came to Galway and how for one day, everything came to a standstill. And how the snapshots in our mind, whether they be colour or black and white were forever crystallised on those heady days and in the sad months that followed, as reality became legend and legend became myth.

Abuse is the new discourse

Thu, Jun 13, 2013

When Enda Kenny stood up in the Dail yesterday and outlined the amount of bile and hate that is coming his way courtesy of his stance on the abortion legislation, he was reflecting a reality that ensures abuse is now a new form of discourse, being seen instead as a quicker way of getting your point across than searching and struggling manfully for a burst of eloquence that may never arrive.

A nation stands shocked

Thu, May 30, 2013

When the children of Ireland were being abused and beaten in the industrial schools of this country for decades, it all happened in black and white. And because things happened in black and white, they seemed less real. Almost as if they have to be proven to have happened at all. The cameras were not there for those terrible deeds that happened to the vulnerable of this country up to not so long ago and so they did not have the same imprint on the mind if they would if they were captured on video for us to watch over and over again.

Don't take away our discretion

Thu, May 23, 2013

In the crazy world that exists after Shattergate and Minggate, we are in danger of losing something very precious. You can take away the house, the job, the fancy cars, our dignity, but please don't take away the one thing we Irish love in great big shovels full — our discretion. What would life be like if we all had to live by the rules? If we had to pay the exact penalty for every misdemeanour we do, if we had to do things exactly as they should be done. If that was to happen, we’d turn into Germans aware that anything we do wrong would be punished exactly as the rule says it should. Or we’d spend our lives making sure others did things the way they should. A regimental regime like that would not be Ireland.

At last - an art gallery for Galway?

Thu, May 16, 2013

Google, that now indispensible servant for the curious seeker of information, reveals – among a myriad of other facts – that Galway is the fourth most populous city in the Republic, and the sixth most populous on the island of Ireland. From Wikipedia we learn that Galway “is known as Ireland's Cultural Heart and is renowned for its vibrant lifestyle and numerous festivals, celebrations and events”, including, of course, the internationally renowned Galway Arts Festival.

Fergie adieu another milestone in year of filleting sacred cows

Thu, May 09, 2013

If you told us at the beginning of the year that we’d have two popes living together in the one house in Rome, one in the posh end and the other in the modest end; or that we would never ever be able to listen to Two Little Boys again and feel the same way about it; that we’d find out we’ve been eating horses; that we could never again watch Coronation Street and feel sorry for Ken Barlow in the way we used to when he was having his eye wiped by Mike Baldwin, or indeed watch the joyous end of a marathon without feeling any emotion other than joy, you would scarcely believe it.

Time to start preparing for election — your council needs you

Thu, May 02, 2013

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard this afternoon’s flight to the Pig’s Back. Our journey time will be approximately 52 weeks and although there will not be any in-flight service along the way, you can rest assured that as soon as you reach the Pig’s Back, you will be very well catered for.

Are ya going far?

Thu, Apr 25, 2013

XFor more years than I can care to remember, I found myself on Friday afternoons walking out past Tirellan, finding my slot, dropping my bag down on the path, pushing out my chest, flicking the hair out of my eyes (sighs), and sticking out my thumb. In those days, it was the nearest we got to the Kerouac idea — taking your chances with the generosity of strangers and engrossing yourself in a conversation that, like the free ride, could take you anywhere.

Children are victims of mankind’s cruelty

Thu, Apr 18, 2013

It is not right that children fail to outlive their childhood. Their young legs should in an ideal world, enable them to run free, to find wonderment in the environment that is their playground, to leap with their imaginations into the recesses of their young minds, as yet untainted by the cynicism of adult life. And this imagination and carefreeness should come with the love and care of those who are charged with shaping the environment in which they grow.

Children are victims of mankind’s cruelty

Thu, Apr 18, 2013

It is not right that children fail to outlive their childhood. Their young legs should in an ideal world, enable them to run free, to find wonderment in the environment that is their playground, to leap with their imaginations into the recesses of their young minds, as yet untainted by the cynicism of adult life. And this imagination and carefreeness should come with the love and care of those who are charged with shaping the environment in which they grow.

Appreciating the value of life

Thu, Apr 11, 2013

In a week in which the news seems to focus locally on the reasons for lives lost and internationally on the mocking of some of someone who has passed on, the value of life seems permanently at the core of our minds.

Dignity of lives lost should not be forgotten in circus

Thu, Apr 04, 2013

Next Monday, a circus will descend on Galway. Media of all hue and definition will head west for a hearing that will be seen to set the agenda for a debate that has long divided this country. For more than a week, the focus of the country will be on the deliberations of a coroner and his witnesses in a case which has brought Galway to the attention of the world.

Cyprus and the two Popes have made us believe that anything can happen

Thu, Mar 28, 2013

We are truly living in unbelievable times. In a world with two popes where foreign governments can plunder your life savings and where the Government can tell you to give up your job if they determine that it is not worth your bother, it is easy to get up and believe the first thing we are told each morning.

Food festival copperfastens Galway’s unique culinary culture

Thu, Mar 21, 2013

Next Thursday the second Galway Food Festival gets under way in the city. A mere twelve months ago, the first installment of the festival was greeted with bemusement by those who would not have immediately associated Galway as being one of the most foodie places in the country. This was Galway of the arts, of the culture, a place more associated with the craic than the cuisine. But how wrong all of that was.

Will the greenway be our green shoot?

Thu, Mar 14, 2013

One of the upsides of the ‘we are where we are” scenario that has engulfed this country for the last few years is that it is forcing more and more people to look for opportunities in the sea of adversity in which we are all floundering. One of these opportunities has come to Galway in the past 48 hours with the news that a greenway trail for cyclists and pedestrians from Oughterard to Clifden has been approved by An Bord Pleanála.

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