Lockdown abroad - Martina Geraghty

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

"Greetings from Cornwall. I am working on the frontline in NHS and it feels like the calm before the storm. Massive hugs to my family and friends in Headford and cousins in Galway city and county. I cycle every evening on my indoor trainer to exercise and pass the time. Stay strong and stay safe."

Lockdown abroad - Eduard Antoniu

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

"I am extremely busy at home as usual lately, no time or place for boredom and not enough time to do what I want, just stressed out by idiotic noisy neighbours. I'm not leaving the house even if it is postatomic (except for just running away back to Galway again) - I wish I never left it and now I cannot even run away back there.

Lockdown abroad - David Browne

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

"I am in lockdown in Lanzarote. There is no walking the prom here. The weather is lovely and I am in a bungalow beside Playa Chica. It is boring but safe. God bless everyone and take care."

Lockdown abroad - Daragh O'Fiannaidhe

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

"I am in Manchester and just moved into a new house yesterday afternoon. Luckily we moved everything in one day. My boredom will be filled with finding a place for everything in the new house."

Lockdown abroad - Adrienne Leader

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

"I am living in San Francisco. My work has shut down and I am home with the children. To pass the time we are going for drives by the water, gardening, and avoiding watching Trump on TV."

Keeping hope alive in challenging times

Thu, Mar 26, 2020

We can learn a lot from previous generations. Think about our ancestors who survived the Famine, wars, high child mortality rates, poor medical care and working conditions, the scourge of TB, and shortage of money.

Seeing light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel

Thu, Mar 19, 2020

Mary Tierney has a hand sanitiser and a notice appealing to visitors to wash their hands attached to her front door at her home in Castlegar.

Free initial HR and recruitment consultation from GHR Consulting

Thu, Mar 19, 2020

GHR Consulting is a Human Resources and Recruitment consultancy based in Galway City and was set up by Ruairi Guckian in October, 2019.

A challenge that is alien to many of us

Thu, Mar 12, 2020

"Rodders, my son, this end of the world could be the making of us..." — Del Boy, Only Fools and Horses.

It's a sense of entrapment to which we are not accustomed. The releases to which we would normally look at this time of the year are not an option for us. An island nation, there was always the option to get to where the sun shines, where the headspace is clearer, to a place sufficiently different from our own that it would class as a break from the normal worries and stresses of human life.

Fantasy Football round 30 preview

Wed, Mar 11, 2020

So what has round 29 done to the top three of the Advertiser Tribal League in association with Monroe's Tavern?

WilliamsKate Street — for a day

Thu, Mar 05, 2020

There’s nothing like a good aul’ visit to focus the mind. Whether it’s the Royals or the Yanks, it sort of makes you stand up, puff out the cushions, throw a lick of paint on the doorpost and reach up to the dresser for the best Willow design cups.

There must be a whole generation of Americans who think that the entire population of Ireland pre-1970, instead of being perceived as the mucksavages we were, supped our tea every evening from dainty little cups with blue designs, and ate salads consisting of a slice of ham, a leaf of lettuce and a solitary tomato the size of a sliotar.

Fantasy Football round 29 preview

Wed, Mar 04, 2020

Liverpool have been beaten. Yes, the runaway league leaders finally suffered their first Premier League defeat as they were humbled 3-0 by relegation threatened Watford at Vicarage Road on Saturday evening.

Living on a volcano — putting a price on what matters

Thu, Feb 27, 2020

“Being a football manager is like living on a volcano: any day may be your last” - Arsene Wenger

At night his heartbeat gets faster when he hears it, the drip drip; the wind getting up; the words from the forecast ringing in his ears; his mind a mixture of warnings yellow and orange of wind and rain. He twists but sleep doesn’t come because there is always a worry that it will happen again; like before. The forecast said rain...heavy rain...torrential rain...rain that will swell the river below.

Fantasy Football round 28 preview

Wed, Feb 26, 2020

Another weekend and another round of Premier League games completed. Frank Lampard's Chelsea secured a valuable win over Spurs in the race for fourth spot. The match was marred by VAR controversy as Giovani Lo Celso was inexplicably allowed to stay on the field after raking his studs down Cesar Azpilicueta's leg.

Augustine Hill — a new neighbourhood in a new Galway

Thu, Feb 20, 2020

Over the past few months I have opined and received many responses on the need for a big discussion on how Galway will be shaped in the next 10 years, because the next 10, and the opportunities it allows, will shape what will be achieved in the next one hundred.

Football’s back — and this time we’re genuine contenders

Thu, Feb 20, 2020

About an hour or so after I write this every Wednesday evening, you’ll find me on a muddy pitch, shouting orders with my fellow coaches, at two dozen U-12 footballers as they lash into one another. We are just one group of thousands who do this a few times a week, up and down the country. Instilling a love of football into those in our charge, in the hope that they get as much enjoyment out of it as we did when we chased a ball up and down a pitch.

Part of what inspires us is the grá that we all had for it, and knowing their disappointment that ensues if it has to be postponed, as has happened so many times in recent weeks because of the weather.

Fantasy Football round 27 preview

Thu, Feb 20, 2020

Game week 27 came to an end in the Etihad on Wednesday night as Man City strolled to a 2-0 victory over hapless West Ham. Elsewhere Man United breathed new life into their fight for the Champions League by defeating Chelsea 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. Sheffield United and Spurs won again to close the gap on a top four spot or should I say top five? And Liverpool continued their stroll to the title with a 1-0 success over Norwich City.

We’ve spoken and it’s all very clear now, isn’t it?

Thu, Feb 13, 2020

So to quote Dick Tuck, we have spoken, we bastards, and if we are to look at who we have elected right across the country, we see that what has come out of our mouths is that we want a bit of change. That we don’t mind any auld baggage that might be attached to our chosen parties; that we are open to a sliceen of triumphalism, or jingoism, that we don’t mind the odd bit of gombeenism; that we are partial to a touch of the barely concealed racism, and sure, anyway, isn’t it what everyone is saying anyway? Isn’t it, and sure, that’s all in the past now and it’s time to be moving on without harking back to that stuff at all...at least until the next time we have to wheel it out and pick on some other unfortunate divil.

To look at our voting, it seems that we’re saying we want a bit of respect and dignty and maybe sure isn’t respect and dignity a bit overrated anyway, when we should be free to have the auld bit of banter, innocent harmless fun without annoying those snowflakes and their wokeness, which is nawthing to do with what time you get up in the morning. We’re saying that we want to protect the planet and those who live in it, and speaking on behalf of other planets, that maybe those who want to care about this planet should go to hell, at least until tomorrow when we realise that it’s ourselves we’re talking about and that the planet is kinda needed ‘cos it’s right there under our feet and our cars and our tractors and our notions.

Will the legacy of this weekend’s events span seven centuries?

Thu, Feb 06, 2020

To be fair, I can’t blame the folks at St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church for the ridiculously busy news weekend that lies ahead of us here in Galway. There is no doubt that when they finished that wonderful church on that February Sunday in 1320 that they had no idea that exactly seven centuries later, they would be blowing out the 700 candles on a massive cake, at the same time as the drums of Galway being named a European capital were beating out just a few fields away.

Nor would they have known that they would be competing with the sound of thumbs flicking through the counting of 200,000 votes as the city and county played its part in electing our new leaders. If there had been buses through Galway on that day in 1320, indeed at least two of them would have come by at the same time, although then again, the street surfaces were probably better at that time than they are now).

Fantasy Football round 26 preview

Wed, Feb 05, 2020

Another weekend, another round of Premier League football, and another victory for Liverpool. Jürgen Klopp's men are on course to break a number of records including securing the earliest title in the history of the league. Elsewhere champions Man City fell to defeat against Spurs, Leciester and Chelsea battled out to a 2-2 draw, and West Ham blew a two goal lead to draw with Brighton.

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