Let the summer raise our spirits

Thu, Jun 07, 2012

After a few years during which we have collectively skulked around Europe, with our heads facing the ground for fear of looking up and seeing that people are staring and laughing at us, the country gets a chance from this weekend to start to believe that we are back in our place in the international community again.

We'll have snow, ha? — the noise will soon be over

Thu, May 31, 2012

It is perhaps quite apt that Druid is performing a selection of Tom Murphy plays these weeks in Galway. Murphy fans will remember the character of Pete Mullins in A Crucial Week In the Life Of A Grocer's Assistant, who opened all of his utterances and his conversations with "we'll have snow, ha?" Mullins, based on a real character in Murphy's hometown of Tuam said this, not because he genuinely believed that the white stuff was imminent, but because he wanted to contribute to the discourse of the day, to get a spake in, no matter how ridiculous what he was saying. It was his 'in" into a conversation. It was his way of contributing to the noise. In one way, if Peteen Mullins were alive today, he'd be stuck into the discourse of the referendum. He’d want to contribute to the noise, not to add anything to the conversation, but just to make the sound, to be heard.

From small beginnings

Thu, May 24, 2012

In little more than a month, the much-anticipated Volvo Ocean Race returns to Galway.

Kennedy, Diana, 9/11 and O’Cuiv’s monumental decision

Thu, May 10, 2012

There are among you people who can remember exactly where you were when Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, when Diana died in that tunnel in Paris, where you heard about the horrors of 9/11, when Michael Jackson was rushed by ambulance to the hospital in Los Angeles. They were all events that marked out our lives, momentous you could call them, just as we will no doubt all remember where we were when this week we heard that Eamon O Cuiv was to make the most difficult decision of his life...and stay in Fianna Fail.

To inspire schoolchildren, councillors will have to stop acting like them

Thu, Apr 26, 2012

It is perhaps quite appropriate that Mayor Hildegarde Naughton, herself a schoolteacher by profession, brought some of the city’s young people into the Council chambers this week to launch her novel initiative Know Your Council, which is aimed at getting young people interested in and giving them a knowledge of the workings of local government. At such an age, the happenings at City Hall on alternative Monday evenings are perhaps the furthest things from the minds of these youngsters, but it is a novel way of introducing the city’s youngsters into the processes that, for better or worse, determine how public services are overseen in the city.

Keep Galway in the shop window

Thu, Apr 19, 2012

As I’m typing this on this Wednesday evening, with the sun squinting in through the blinds and the sky blue as far west across the city as I can see it, it is not difficult to be optimistic about the fate of Galway in this time of unprecedented doom and gloom.

Marx and sparks — gonna be a fiery weekend for the left

Thu, Apr 12, 2012

Early last year when Labour decided to hold this year’s centenary conference in Galway, they could not have foreseen just how different the picture would be. They had just been elected into power along with Fine Gael on a tidal wave of dissent against the incumbent incompetents. They had elected many new TDs, bright young things whom it seemed had lots to offer the party in this new coalition. Here in Galway, we provided two of them — Derek Nolan and Colm Keaveney — and they represented a refreshing change, and in the Seanad, Lorraine Higgins has also been groomed for greater things. Happy days for Labour in Government and in Galway.

Galway loses more giants

Thu, Apr 05, 2012

How many more giants can Galway bear to lose this year? The year is but a child yet the city has seen enormous figures in the areas of sport, culture, media and the arts robbed from us way before their time. Galway is a unique mix, a place that does not adore heroes easily nor suffer fools gladly. To earn kudos in a chosen field, one has to be adored by some, maybe scorned by others and despised by some more. The mantle of greatness does not come easily in this neck of the woods.

Bonhomie and not bulldozers will settle Occupy issue

Thu, Mar 15, 2012

There has been much written and said about the presence of the Occupy Galway camp in Eyre Square — and this week as they celebrated their 150th day on site, the debate has been ever more vociferous. With the dismantling of the Dublin camp and the voluntary evacuation of the Cork site, there is much pressure on the Galway site to do likewise, to say ‘we’ve done our bit, we’ve made a stance, but now we feel it is time to go’.

When is it time to say enough is enough?

Thu, Mar 08, 2012

The deadline is looming for every house owner in Ireland to pay the new property tax, and understandably people are asking: when does it stop?

Ó Cuív move to make FF Eurosceptic?

Thu, Mar 01, 2012

In every classic mob movie, whenever a Don is being buried, far back in the recesses of the cemetery you will see the raincoated FBI guys, with cameras trained on the congregation, just to see who has been flushed out for the occasion, to see who's in with who. By observing the faces in the crowd, assumptions and links can be made, and motivations mapped.

FC Heaven has made one hell of a signing

Thu, Feb 16, 2012

God never had any respect for the football transfer window. He feels it limits his options and you know how God is when it comes to having his will imposed on us mere mortals. But in assembling a football squad worthy of representing Heaven, he made one hell of a signing this week when he selected one of Galway’s most loved and most talented sportsmen. And like any football signing, his loss has left his family, friends, and supporters bereft.

A master storyteller moves on

Thu, Feb 09, 2012

Every town needs its storytellers, its raconteurs who can fill a silence with a story plucked from the ether, who can use the power of words to shape situations, to create pictures in minds, to instil the emotions of laughter and to lift the tastebuds of imaginations. Every town and community needs to have an image of itself shaped through its wordsmiths who polish the mirror and hold it up to ourselves. On Tuesday night, Galway lost one of its best exponents of this art when John Cunningham passed away.

There’s nothing like the filthy lucre

Thu, Feb 02, 2012

When we were growing up, we never thought that people like the county council employee or the teacher or the guard ever cared about the filthy lucre. They were people who did the job cos it was part of what they were. In our minds, they were the salt of the earth, who came to their jobs because they had a calling, a sort of vocation brought to them on the road to Damascus, when they were struck by a strong light and told by a booming voice “Son, your future is in forward planning and Section Fours. Now go forth.” Young gardai then were not reared on diets of CSI and Midsomer Murders. No, they were hewn from Connemara rock, with necks like a jockey’s b.. ahem, like a jockey, and with a chest that ensured the silver insignia on their shoulders sat two yards apart. Teachers were normally the lucky ones in a family who would have the good luck to have had a grandmother or an aunt wealthy enough to send just one of them to third level while the rest stayed at home, fought over the farms and descended into a lifetime of alcoholism and inappropriate thoughts.

Thu, Jan 26, 2012

For many of us, Terryland Park was the nearest we got to the San Siro back in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the most senior level of soccer we could get to see without getting on a plane to do so, and that was unheard of in those days.

The numbers that sum up modern smalltown Ireland

Thu, Jan 19, 2012

In a town I know quite well, these are the numbers that are resonating this week. Not because some local octogenarian who spends €10 a week on her lucky dip has won some obscene amount of money. No, the number resonates the opposite of joy. These are the numbers that represent the new reality in small towns like the one I am referring to.

Exit strategy — the passing of a truly great roundabout

Thu, Jan 12, 2012

They just couldn’t leave it alone, could they? It was there tempting them for many years. They stopped and stared at it, wondering what a mess it was, how it could be solved. And this week, they went for the jugular.

Exit strategy — the passing of a truly great roundabout

Thu, Jan 12, 2012

They just couldn’t leave it alone, could they? It was there tempting them for many years. They stopped and stared at it, wondering what a mess it was, how it could be solved. And this week, they went for the jugular.

2012 — a spaced-out odyssey?

Thu, Dec 29, 2011

There is no doubt that 2012 will be hard pressed to be half as interesting as 2011, but taking a look into my crystal ball, I can see some fascinating developemnts in the months ahead.

The Christmas of the empty chairs...

Thu, Dec 22, 2011

We had a young man working here with us for a while this year who had his Christmas dinner back in October. He went home to his family one weekend to discover that they had decked out the kitchen in festive fare, donned the silly hats, bought the crackers and crackling away in the oven was a turkey the size of an eagle.

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