Leisureland difficulties a sign of these strange times

Thu, Sep 17, 2020

Fifty years ago last April, on the very first edition of the new Galway Advertiser, was an impressive and rare in those days, colour photograph of the proposed Leisureland development planned for Salthill. Under a headline of Galway in the 1970s, it promised a facility that would be at the heart of Galway and west of Ireland life for years to come. And so it has been.

Through The Glass Darkly

Thu, Sep 17, 2020

That happiness - what it is, where is it found, and how to hold onto and maximise it - is big business these days is obvious to anyone browsing the ever-expanding New Age section of book shops, large and small. Titles like The Seven Steps to Happiness or How to be Happy 365 Days a Year and dozens of others all promise to show how happiness can be achieved easily, painlessly, and permanently.

BE A GALWAY VOICE

Thu, Sep 17, 2020

Investment and not just policing is needed in communities

Fantasy Football round two preview

Wed, Sep 16, 2020

Round one of the Premier League is done and dusted and we got good value from our eight games with 23 goals scored. There were no shocks on the opening weekend as Fulham and West Brom fell to 3-0 defeats to Arsenal and Leicester City respectively with Chelsea securing three points away to Brighton.

A quiet space to mind ourselves, and others

Thu, Sep 10, 2020

In the year that is in it, when we have all been twisted and turned this way and that by the vagaries of this awful disease, there are moments which sum us up as a nation which make us smile and realise what a great little place we can be when we stick together.

Through The Glass Darkly

Thu, Sep 10, 2020

Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca addressed many of the same difficulties and flukes of fate with which we are now ourselves grappling.

IT IS BACK!!! Fantasy Football round one preview

Tue, Sep 08, 2020

The Champions League and Europa League campaigns may have given us our football kick right up until the end of August but there is nothing that replaces Premier League football and more importantly Fantasy Football.

Clifden flooding another reminder of the power of nature

Thu, Sep 03, 2020

You would like to think that 2020 is some sort of training year, an obstacle course designed to test our resilience, to throw all sorts of misfortune our way to see how we deal with it. Maybe Fate Inc decided that we were too fragile, had become too used to a world without global fear. That we needed to know the sort of life that our parents did, and their parents — all generations who had lived through wars and recessions and famine.

4 Of The Best Irish TV Shows To Binge-Watch Right Now

Fri, Aug 28, 2020

This year has been a big year for streaming tv shows as many people have been spending a lot of time at home due to Covid-19 lockdowns. As many usual holidaymakers are still looking for the right time to travel this summer, others are deciding to stay put at home or opting for a ‘staycation’ instead. Luckily, there are plenty of entertaining tv shows to keep us all entertained for hours. Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise of binge-worthy tv shows with audiences making them trend on social media. Some of the most watched shows on Netflix in December 2019 were Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, You, and Sex Education.

Golf dinner fallout is a wake-up call to complacency and arrogance

Thu, Aug 27, 2020

A few weeks ago, as a friend of mine was traversing cross country on his way to the south east, he stopped for a coffee at a big service station on one of the motorways. But as they got there, they could see that inside it was overly packed, that while the numbers might not have been in breach of anything, it was still not conducive to good public health were they to go in. His daughter noticed this too and said as much. “Daddy, there are too many people in there, let’s move along and go somewhere else.”

She was 11.

The Growth in Ireland's Casino Industry

Wed, Aug 26, 2020

The gambling market in Ireland is unique given the country's proximity to Great Britain. A lot of people assume that the gambling laws in Ireland are the same as the laws that are in place throughout other countries in the region. That's just not the case.

Now we need each other more than ever

Thu, Aug 20, 2020

When they come to finally audit the medical, economic, social and emotional devastation that has been caused by Covid-19, I wonder will they look at the secondary impact.

It really is time to mask up

Thu, Aug 13, 2020

In the last five months since lockdown was first imposed, we have continually heard a new set of buzz words in association with Covid-19 - PPE, self isolation, social distancing, flattening the curve, pandemic. We have been told we must accept these changes in our lives as the 'new normal'.

John Hume – the man who laid the foundations for a new Ireland

Thu, Aug 06, 2020

One of the many admirable qualities of the late and unquestionably great John Hume was his ability to listen. As someone once said, courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. And John Hume possessed both.

The long weekends in the year that didn’t need them

Thu, Jul 30, 2020

And so we head into another long weekend...
As if the weekends needed any elongation, as if the weeks needed weekends, never mind long ones.

As if the weekends needed any elongation, as if the weeks needed weekends, never mind long ones.

All hail the champions

Wed, Jul 29, 2020

And so after 38 rounds, 380 games, and 354 days, the Premier League for the 2019/20 season has finally been concluded.

Race week, but not as we know it

Thu, Jul 23, 2020

Am here for the races…In Galway... there’s no kapin’ me away from Galway at this time of the year…Social distancing me…whole summer I’d been planning me stay…near panicked when thought it mightn’t be on…savin’ since I got back from Cheltingham so I was…never said I was ovah cos everyone was looking me quare like as if I had some sort of disease… but am here now, like that Boris Johnson lad, head on me like an explosion in a bloody mattress factory…normally mad for road I am……this year mad for cycling lane more like...The clobber on me right out of Peaky Blinders, the kinda clothes me fadder’s fodder would have worn like 150 year ago…looking like an extra on the Irish RM…town is strange…something strange about every wan in the streets like, as if they’re kinda sober or something. Haven’t seen anyone throw a slap at all at all...Families and foreign tourists from overseas like; what are they doing here in Race Week…do they not know ‘tis a week for the likes o’ me having a serious blow-out like...total carnage...a week like for showing after the watershed...sort of Normal People without the Leaving Cert and Trinity...sort of like the lads who were yer man’s friends back home in Normal People...not the soppy stuff like. So anyways here I am...sun rises in the capital of culture…ate a clock in the mornin’…I wake up with a head on me…flat out like Eamonn Ryan during a vote…in a crumpled hape...Went to bed looking like Donal Og Cusack, woke up looking like Dunphy...open shirt buttons and spray deodorant under arms one squirt for each oxter and one for the road with a shot for the lads below…ya can never take any chances like at the Galway Races…could be hit by a bus or a quare wan…make me way around the square…no buses heading out to Ballybrit…Invite only...Did ya ever hear the likes...Town all zoned off into different zones - Serious Drinkers; Maggoty Drunk Drinkers; Absolute Beginners; and Pioneers...One of the lads said he was goin’ to rock up to Ballybrit with a horse and trailer and see if he’d get in...crazy idea to kape us out...’twould never have happened if Fianna Fail were in by themselves...so have to find a base for meself in town like…to watch it on a screen...the new normal…the new nonsense more like...I’m RacingMan…RacingMan…seriously discommoded like by these restrictions but am making the best of it...thinking of me country...pulling on me green jersey and all that...fellas in welder’s helmets pullin’ your pint like…where’s your mask mate, he says to me and I never meetin’ him before in me life…no masks with me, so next day I use a pair of the spare jocks, get a scissors and a stapler and I’ve me mask with a big Y on the front…why would ya be wasting money on a blue nappy for your face when ya could be spending it on skullin’ pints and lashing into beef rolls...Starving…looking at the menu boards outside like… rakes and rakes o’ hummus everywhere cos those woolly feckers in the arts festival and the film thingy were not here this year… hipster fella with a beard asks me do I want brunch like. Says he can do me advocate toast or something strange sounding like that...throw back the lugs and dive in...twas muck...like eating a squashed apple through a sock...try to walk sober like, wan foot then the udder, repeat...I’m Racingman, I’m wide out…I’m part of Galway. I’m Racingman, the boyoh, unleashed for the week…the Welder, I’ll call him Dermot... served me another pint…I asks him are there any quare wans in town this year…jockeying for position for the best apartments…the dominatrix like…Lads have quare wans’ mobile numbers from the Google… A wan called Ivana Legova tells them she want 200 notes for an hour of the socially distanced bould thing...lads laugh when I ask for group discount and take out me social services card….an hour I laugh, an hour of drinking time wasted...she says for 400 she’ll bate me with a whip ’til I cry and give me a happy ending…told her I can get a batin’ for nawthing outside the chipper…and if I want a happy ending, I can watch a video of the 2017 hurling final…and the lads laugh…Am great for the auld repartee, me, cos I’m Racingman. I walk down the street like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever ‘cept without the can o’ paint…baby shakin that ass... they’re looking at me, the wimmen, can’t get enough of me...nawthing like a pair of skinny jeans (no ballroom dancing for me) and a mismatched jacket and tweed jacket and braces and cap to get them going...down the square check out paddys ladbrokes boyles get the odds... and ends..too early to go out to Ballybrit yet...then I remember I can’t, so I sit on bench and look at the pretend fountain that’s never on…sit on steps, legs sprawled...what’s Galway city centre in race week unless ya can get out of it...Galway without getting to the races is like getting to Pisa and finding a pile of rubble; or going to EuroDisney and not matin’ Mickey Mouse. I’ll do it this year...for me country...but next year I want to be out there in person, the sound of the horses, the smell of the people...Hear a shout...Mon is it you...Am hailed by my taxi lad friend from Lagos, sitting bored at the rank, says he’ll me take out to Ballybrit anyway for a look at the gate and then back again, for auld time’s sake...says he knows a farm shed and a ladder at Castlegar where we can go up on the roof and watch the racing and bet online with the wifi from the passing buses...so here we are...not in the Moet or the Killanin but the Corrugated Stand holding me phone to the sky and roaring me head off. See ye next year...because what do they do say, like ya feel after a bad curry, remember, this too will pass. G’luck.

Fantasy Football round 38 preview

Thu, Jul 23, 2020

This Sunday will see the Premier League season of 2019/20 brought to conclusion, 353 days after it kicked off on August 9 2019. It is unlikely that many would have foretold what the campaign would entail when Michael Oliver blew his whistle to open proceedings at Anfield last year but we are nearly there and what a day we have in store.

Fantasy Football round 37 preview

Fri, Jul 17, 2020

There are only two rounds of the Premier League left and while the race for Champions League remains no clearer and the fight to stave off relegation continues, what we do know is that Liverpool will not reach the magical 100 point mark because of a 2-1 defeat away to Arsenal on Wednesday night.

Not the same craic or interaction as technology takes control

Thu, Jul 16, 2020

This week Galway Races chief executive Michael Moloney looked out his window, which overlooks the parade ring at Ballybrit. He struggled to believe one of the greatest race meetings in the world, The Galway Races Summer Festival, had fallen victim to Covid-19.

The ground should have been buzzing with activity - food and beverage suppliers on the go, marquees and tents being erected, thousands of workers on site preparing for the 151st edition of this iconic event. Instead Moloney found it difficult as he viewed a very different scenario. A vacant Ballybrit - something so surreal, hard to accept.

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