April, 2009

On Monday nights since September we’ve been running a reading club at our house. There are eight of us but sometimes the number in attendance slips a few. There are just two men in the group – myself and John McAleer. He’s a former colleague of mine at UUJ and a very bright man. Anyway, […]

I remember an occasion over thirty years ago, in Newcastle upon Tyne, saying to the man I was drinking with that I figured all the things we do, including great art, are to help us forget that inside fifty, a hundred years we’ll be no more than a handful of dust. He seemed to find […]

I’m getting ready to run a half-marathon (no, please, please – you’ll frighten the horses with your applause) in Bantry at the beginning of next month. There are a lot of interesting aspects to doing this, including the recurring thought “Am I mad/stupid/consumed by a death-wish?”, but the one that struck me today was the […]

I’m getting ready to run a half-marathon (no, please, please – you’ll frighten the horses with your applause) in Bantry at the beginning of next month. There are a lot of interesting aspects to doing this, including the recurring thought “Am I mad/stupid/consumed by a death-wish?”, but the one that struck me today was the […]

The aptly-named Dick Roche was on television yesterday. Dick is a well-padded man, an Irish cabinet minister and he was talking about a young Irishman who’d been shot dead in Bolivia. The authorities there say the young man was part of a group intent on assassinating the country’s president, Evo Morales. Dick in contrast said […]

The aptly-named Dick Roche was on television yesterday. Dick is a well-padded man, an Irish cabinet minister and he was talking about a young Irishman who’d been shot dead in Bolivia. The authorities there say the young man was part of a group intent on assassinating the country’s president, Evo Morales. Dick in contrast said […]

I spent yesterday talking to four people, three of whom I had last seen when they and I were seventeen years old. I’m doing a series of interviews with people (I almost said ‘boys’) who left St Columb’s College, Derry (yes, that’s right – the only school in the world to have produced two Nobel […]

I spent yesterday talking to four people, three of whom I had last seen when they and I were seventeen years old. I’m doing a series of interviews with people (I almost said ‘boys’) who left St Columb’s College, Derry (yes, that’s right – the only school in the world to have produced two Nobel […]