THE revelation this week that even celebrities are fallible came from a pretty unlikely source, when the woman who seems to have it all announced she had undergone a preventative double mastectomy. Angelina Jolie has had a colourful life by anyone’s standards and she’s still only 37. Her daring red carpet fashion choices have led [...]
THE SONG might have it that it is a good year for the roses, but this year so far it is a good year for a less noble but possibly more useful plant, writes Noel Carney. I have noticed in recent years that certain wild flowers, weeds and plants seem to have the stage to [...]
PATRIOTISM was never an easy option. It was always easier to see which way the wind blew and try to plump for the winning side. In France the membership of the Résistance grew remarkably once the Allies had landed in Normandy. In Ireland the roll of honour of those in the GPO in 1916 lengthened [...]
WHITE dresses, angelic faces and the odd toothless smile have been lighting up the local landscape as this year’s First Holy Communicants receive the sacrament. Thankfully the largesse of the Celtic Tiger is behind us so the tendency to spray tan eight-year-olds and apply false nails to the same child is not as prevalent as [...]
DO YOU REMEMBER when idleness was almost sinful? The big bad slogan was “The devil makes work for idle hands”. The idea that you might sit or stand, lost in thought, was anathema to our parents. Especially parents who were farmers. Apparently, there were always jobs to be done around the farm. Surprise, surprise. To [...]
‘THE middle class can kiss my ass: I’ve got the banker’s bonus at last.” This play on the old song came to mind when I was reading Broke, subtitled “Who Killed the Middle Classes?” by English writer David Boyle. Although the focus of the book is the British middle class (and well over 70 per [...]
WHEN the Roman mob lost the need to work, thanks to the riches flowing in from the Empire, the emperors needed to find some way to keep the million or so idle citizens distracted. The answer was bread and circuses — free food, and entertainment in the vast amphitheatres, where animals, criminals, Christian and occasionally gladiators [...]
A deadly serious bargain hunter in the good old days Dear Editor, It was with great pleasure and a lot of pride that I read the article by KM in your edition of May 2. My name is Martin McDonnell and I am the son of Jimmy McDonnell who was so glowingly referred to in [...]
THE HEADLINE news on Bank Holiday Monday was that 20,000 homeowners had rushed to pay their household charge in order to avoid a threatened clampdown by the Revenue Commissioners, who are taking over the Local Property Tax (LPT) collection process from July 1. The implication was that many of the people who did not pay the [...]
Seek an alternative route for the greenway A Chara, As a Galway man I have been following the reports in your paper about making a greenway out of the railway line at Tuam and was interested to read that Galway County Council has voted by 22 to 1 against the idea. It is understandable that [...]
