That stretch in the evening has never been so welcome

Thu, Mar 23, 2017

C’mon, gimme your light. It’s been a long winter and autumn and spring.

I will gladly lean all my strength against the hand of that clock this weekend to push it forward so that we get sooner into summertime.

Farewell to a rock’n’roll bishop

Thu, Mar 16, 2017

I can well remember the last time I met Bishop Eamon Casey. I was late for a reporting gig at some event in the Crescent and we both ran on the footpath around the corner and crashed into each other, each of us as apologetic as the other. In hindsight, I should have been able to avoid him because as he walked, he sang and so his arrival was flagged well before he appeared.

Let's not be the society that created Tuam

Thu, Mar 09, 2017

They were of Galway.
These little people. Barely formed.

Societies by their nature are inequitable

Thu, Mar 02, 2017

Take a stroll out on the street and see for yourself the various manifestations of humanity that are there before your eyes. You see the strong, the weak, the confident, the loud, the shy, the timid. All human nature. Every country has people who exist under the radar, whose voices are never heard because they have not been granted a voice, or because the people who have been designated the role of being their voice are not doing their job properly.

When we tend to think of those without a voice, we tend to look back and imagine this from a different age, the child in the back room who is never brought out, an era when everyone lived in black and white, when people were not glic, when they were uneducated, didn’t know their rights. And because of that, they became the unwitting victims of a whole generation of perverse horror.

People just want to get home — time to sort our traffic

Thu, Feb 23, 2017

It’s nice to be a table-topper. To be perched there among a group of your peers and looking down at all those ranked below you, committing the sin of pride. Top of the table. Ahead of the rest.

Gossip played a role in the week’s revelations

Thu, Feb 16, 2017

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys. It is the lifeblood of every conversation. There is nothing juicier than the prospect of being told gossip that you can then trade for some more at a later stage. Gossip is the unedited bit of conversation.

An icon who didn’t need a second chance to make a first impression

Thu, Feb 09, 2017

When you look back at the recent history of Galway, and when I say recent, I mean the last forty or fifty years, you see that the progression of the city is built around a group of individuals in all spheres, political, cultural, musical and otherwise, who somehow contributed to this conviction of Galway as being a place apart.

They were people who made a difference because they were different, who brought a certain divilment or joie de vivre to the whole idea of Galway. They had a bit of a neck about them to make themselves stand out and be heard, and in some way contribute to the air of confidence that this city needed to make the transformation from fishing town to cosmopolitan city. And they were all flamboyant, and they probably needed to be. They had a self assurance that carried them where they went.

The power of the human spirit

Thu, Feb 02, 2017

You'd envy Gavan Hennigan this morning, so you would.

We need healthy small towns

Thu, Jan 26, 2017

I love small towns. I am the product of one. The first two decades of my life were shaped within the confines of one. Back then, towns were in their heyday. While there were cities beyond the hills, everything we seemed to need was available in the small town. Sure, we had a chipper to feed everyone and a town hall to hold everything in, and to provide custom for the chipper. And we had two telephone kiosks, some schools and two churches, and three banks and a town library (in my house) and a lake and a few roads out of it. What more could a body ask for? What else in life did we need, even if there was something mildly attractive about the few roads out?

Living in interesting times

Thu, Jan 19, 2017

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down

When will we undo the undoing?

Thu, Jan 12, 2017

There was the smell of rain, through sodden duffle coats, pressing on hand-me-down jumpers over skimpy vests that guarded stringy scapulars against our puny chests.

Two men in a boat

Thu, Jan 05, 2017

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,

Some year for one year, but what’s ahead?

Thu, Dec 29, 2016

It’s been some year for one year — but what about 2017? This week I take a look into my crystal ball and see what’s lying in wait for us.

Use Christmas to find calm after turbulent year

Thu, Dec 22, 2016

It’s been some year — a whirlwind of emotion, of joy and despair, of utter horror and desperation, of uncertainty and fear, but also a time of pride and happiness.

Let’s make a contribution to our communities

Thu, Dec 15, 2016

In comedy, there is often truth and wisdom. In the ability to laugh at ourselves, we find nuggets about life.

Let’s not kill our islands by making life more difficult

Thu, Dec 01, 2016

An island by its nature is a finite feature of geography. The smaller the island, the more you can see its edges from standing in the highest point. From here you can look down and feel part of this wonder of nature. This piece of rock and soil, this large stepping stone in the pond of the ocean, upon which we feel privileged to trod, upon which we feel safe and liberated. You look down towards its edges and here you find the most comfort. Monarch of all you survey.

It’s now more important than ever to mind each other

Thu, Nov 24, 2016

To the children who sat through school this morning with empty rumbling tummies, the talk of the return of property boom means nothing. To the people who walk through town this week, staring at the windows, eyeing things they know they cannot afford, talk of a recovery means little. They stumble on, upright but overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness.

Galway has to get on the Rugby World Cup shortlist

Thu, Nov 17, 2016

This month next year a decision will be made on who will host the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The bookies were saying yesterday that Ireland is the 2/5 favourite to be awarded the honour, but there is many a slip twixt world cup and the lip and there cannot be any element of complacency regarding a potential bid.

Fear born in Paris was used to reshape world affairs

Thu, Nov 10, 2016

And so here we are, at a place in international affairs where it seems everything has been turned on its head. This week last year, as people gathered in Paris for a football match, to go to a concert, to enjoy life, we did not know the fear that would be used for much of the following 12 months.

Lá breithe sona do TG4 —a cultural mirror leaves its teen years behind

Thu, Oct 27, 2016

Back in the days when learning Irish consisted of the fear of getting a shlap with a big shtick if you failed to know any of the less miserable aspects of Peig Sayer’s difficult existence, the prospect of a TV station that would be broadcast almost entirely in Irish was not one which warmed the cockles of the heart.

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