February, 2016

  Whatever happened to Galoshes? No, it’s not another typo. They were not French cigarettes, but rubber overshoes and extremely useful and convenient. I may be a senior citizen but not antediluvian. Galoshes were depicted by perhaps the greatest Modernist writer as the most up-to-date invention since newly baked bread. It’s in  THE DEAD, regarded […]

    I read recently that the second busiest international air route is Dublin-London and that the busiest is Hong Kong – Taipia. London is served by Heathrow,Gatwick, City and Luton airports, whereas Dublin has but one, Collinstown, a British forces’ aerodrome in less happy days. In my youth the Aer Lingus Dakotas approaching the airport flew […]

Potato blight in these islands in the 1840s was first noticed in the Isle of Wight. It also occurred in Continental Europe. It didn’t wipe out significant proportions of the populations of either, for Northwestern Europe is pretty well favoured by nature. Ireland is no desert. Indeed it is nauseatingly  called the Emerald Isle by […]

As I may have mentioned, last week I attended a panel discussion in  my home town of Omagh.  It was organized by Sinn Féin and the motion was “That a United Ireland is inevitable”.  It was notable for a number of reasons, not least the fact that the panel of six contained three unionists –  Linda […]

(This article first appeared in the Irish Democrat) Those who have enjoyed Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’ stories – (and who, having read them, did not?) may recall Hubert Lane. For those unfamiliar with the stories, William was a Huckleberry Finn translated to commuter belt Kent, an eleven-year-old scapegrace and leader of a gang rejoicing in the name […]

  A picture is worth a thousand words, especially if it puts the spotlight on the distant past rather than today (or yesterday). As you can see, the Irish Times’s English cartoonist, Martyn Turner, lost no time about putting the boot into Sinn Féin on the first day of the election campaign. The thing was, […]

You’d assume that somewhere in the background , papers are already being shuffled in the corridors of power….Yes.. Let’s try that on for size ….”A few bad apples!”.. That has a certain ring to it .It’s a catch-all kind of phrase and covers any number of possibilities and is vague and homely enough to allow […]

The resuscitation of the Lucan story this week, when the High Court in London granted a death certificate to the family, may perhaps give some pause for thought to the vocal minority around Dublin who question any celebration of the Easter Rising in its centenary year. Honouring men and women of violence is unthinkable to […]

I should imagine many of my contemporaries brought up in the 26 counties will have listened to ITMA, Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh, Music While You Work, Just William, and Dick Barton- Special Agent,in the 1940s, and continued to listen to the BBC in subsequent decades. I can remember Radio Newsreel’s report of the March 1957 Irish General Election, […]

I wonder how Enda Kenny would react if reporters repeatedly questioned him about the fact that Michael Lowry once belonged to the party which he leads. I suspect he would say that Mr Lowry is not running as a Fine Gael candidate and that they should address their concerns to Mr Lowry. And I wonder how […]