I’ve just read an article by an Irish-American about the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Hillsborough, where she met the Irish rugby team. ‘English Queen should not set foot in Republic of Ireland’ the headline said. How refreshing – a commentator who isn’t saying it’s time in the name of reconciliation for HMQE2 to come […]
Not Fair
I’ve just read an article by an Irish-American about the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Hillsborough, where she met the Irish rugby team. ‘English Queen should not set foot in Republic of Ireland’ the headline said. How refreshing – a commentator who isn’t saying it’s time in the name of reconciliation for HMQE2 to come […]
Mind and Body
It’s hard to know which takes the severest pummelling in life, the body or the brain. I was in Bantry in Co Cork at the weekend, competing…No, wrong word. Participating in the half-marathon. It was a hilly course, which made me very apprehensive, as I tend to start gasping after a hill, and once that […]
Mind and Body
It’s hard to know which takes the severest pummelling in life, the body or the brain. I was in Bantry in Co Cork at the weekend, competing…No, wrong word. Participating in the half-marathon. It was a hilly course, which made me very apprehensive, as I tend to start gasping after a hill, and once that […]
Poem
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, […]
Core Things
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 […]
Stand and deliver. Then fly/drive
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 […]
Stand and deliver. Then fly/drive
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 […]
Viva Dick!
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 […]
Viva Dick!
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 […]