Time for us all to spread the soundness

Thu, Aug 05, 2021

When we look back at the history of this time in a decade or more, we will see in a graph the ebbs and flows of curves of the national mood. The initial shock, the coping time when loaves of banana bread fed the five thousand, the novelty of the new situation, the loneliness of our towns and villages with all places of community shut off; the realisation that jobs were lost and may never come back. The emptiness of those Sundays when we were thrown back to the time when nothing happened at weekends without sport or worship, when people spent time together and ate meals at home, cooked in their own kitchens.

And now we are at another phase — when hope seems close, but like a dinghy just off shore, it comes close and then is carried out again on a new wave. So we watch at this shore as the situation keeps everchanging. Arguably, it is at this time that we need each other more than ever. Last winter when the normal loneliness of the long nights was elongated by the restrictions, we all answered the cause and looked out for each other. Now, at the height of holidaytime, with the sun shining into the night and day arriving sooner than it should, there is no reason why we should let up.

Appreciating greatness in our midst

Thu, Jul 29, 2021

A sense of belonging is essential in life because it places us in a grouping or place that we hope will allow us to share moments of joy and collegiality. It enables us to appreciate support when there is sadness and loss. It makes us do unusual things in the name of being part of a tribe or a gang. We stand on muddy sidelines and roar on the teams in our colours; we stay up late to watch a rowing race across the other side of the world because we do so with hope, knowing that there will either be elation or disappointment at the end of it. We consume culture that means something to us and which gives us a little gift of wisdom at the end of each performance.

There’s nothing that floors us like a bit of heat

Thu, Jul 22, 2021

There are only a few things in life that can floor the Irish. A small fall of snow. A few flakes and we’re closing roads and skiving off work and school. The second thing is a draught. There’s seemingly nothing as fatal to the Irish person as the draught that you sat in a week or so ago and which now has ya at death’s door. And the third thing is the heat. The heat. The heattttttttttt.

The height of summer, but not as we know it

Thu, Jul 15, 2021

Around this week every year for the past three decades or more, the soul of Galway would be alive by now; the streets would have been festooned with colourful streamers; the street characters who normally provided the entertainment would have sidled off to let others take their place, and the arrival of summer would be marked with a joie de vivre that marked Galway out as a place that was different.

It was a time of the year in the news cycle when things quietened down; the politicians would be slowing down for the summer, the new mayor would have been elected in time to open the Arts Festival, and Galway would relax itself into a cycle of cultural appreciation continued by a completely new cast who would take the stage for the week-long racing festival.

Madigan speech should kickstart debate on behaviour and treatment

Thu, Jul 08, 2021

One of the victims of the pandemic over the past while has been the absence of strong discourse on anything other than the virus itself. Like a tsunami, it has come in and engulfed everything, has suppressed debate on matters of great import and placed shadows into corners where light should be shone. And to be fair, that was to be expected.

Are we heading for a meaningful autumn?

Thu, Jul 01, 2021

Here we are again. As the strapline said for Jaws, “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water,” it looks like we’re all going to need a bigger boat. Next week was assumed for some time now to be the date when another ton of normality would be heaped back into the mix, but alas, this is not the case.

The conundrum of our drink laws

Thu, Jun 24, 2021

Covid - not just about crushing the curve - continues to throw us a few curved balls.

New dining spaces welcomed, but let’s not lose any character

Thu, Jun 17, 2021

The news confirmed last evening that Dominick Street Upper is to be closed to traffic at evening time to facilitate outdoor dining is to be welcomed.

Outdoor dining is restoring the heart of our community

Thu, Jun 10, 2021

I have always been fascinated by the audio offerings that come with whatever car I have had. From the first cassette players to the smoothness of the CD drives, sucking in the discs; to the Pioneer speakers which I had drilled into the doors. As times has gone by, what passed as extraordinary in those cars are now de rigeur, the norm. This year when I changed my car in Galway, I discovered that my new car and its complicated audio system had an even newer feature that ordinarily would be like a lighthouse in the Bog of Allen, brilliant but useless.

But in this year, in this time, perhaps this feature had its use. Under the button marked media, comes up on the screen sights and sounds of walking in snow; the crackling of a winter fire, the images of a forest under birdsong...and perhaps the most unusual one, the full sound and clatter of a cafe with the hum of conversation, the banging of cups and saucers, the tinkling of cutlery.

Farewell to a planter of ideals

Thu, Jun 03, 2021

There is a Greek saying that a society becomes great when people plant trees, the shade of which they will never sit under. There have been many such people in Galway, and my hope is that there will be many more. Indeed, our society needs a constant flow of people whose unselfish actions make better the place they live and work.

Salthill Sundays — an ugly manifestation of machismo and bravado

Thu, May 27, 2021

Was there ever anything as innocent as the Sunday spin? Back in the days when cars were scarce and the options of anything meaningful to do on Sunday afternoons were even scarcer, the Sunday spin was the highlight of the week. Whole families poured into one of the dozen types of car available at that time, and they travelled up and down bumpy country roads in search of something...anything. Normally a toilet or some place for the carsick kids to spew up.

Bad cess to the hackers for piling misery upon misery

Thu, May 20, 2021

As if things could not be bad enough for the health services struggling to cope with the impact of the pandemic, the abominable hackers had to come along and carry out this act of malware criminality at the worst time possible. For those who have been suffering serious illness not related to the pandemic, their treatment plans were set in disarray, and now there are fears that the must unscrupulous of people have access to patient data and will sell it to the highest bidder, or release it on the general web.

Nothing like a bit of retail therapy to spark off normality

Thu, May 13, 2021

In times to come when they will write up various theses on this pandemic and how we reacted to it — and they will do thesis upon thesis on it as we revise every aspect of it, there will be a map drawn up which will show how we have reacted to the different stimuli and restrictions along the road.

And when it comes to this week, there will be a positive turn, one that see the road go downhill to the place we want to go. Like one of those hills you freewheel down on a bike.

Harbour vision can make us look to the sea and the wind

Thu, May 06, 2021

It is perhaps surprising that a city such as Galway which was built on the water and is mostly surrounded by it, should have taken this long to realise that perhaps for centuries, we have been looking the wrong way. There are not many cities that have the proximity of its port so close to the city centre and yet have it so underutilised. Perhaps now, comes the vision that will change that.

An address to mark the beginning of the end

Thu, Apr 29, 2021

We haven’t been a gather ‘round the wireless, shut all the doors, hush all the children sort of generation. Most of us haven’t been spoken to from lecterns since we left education, but for the past year we have stopped all the clocks and given a juicy bone to the dog on many occasions, right from that time when Mr Varadkar Went To Washington and addressed us in a dawn darkness while most of us were due to be on our elevenses. From that moment on, the country has been twisted this way and that for more announcements, briefings, warnings, tellings-off, back-pats and aren’t-ye-greats all delivered and signed to us in front of official green backdrops that will forever in our minds become the shade of Covid.

Football powergrab shows the importance of identity for us all

Thu, Apr 22, 2021

This is not an editorial about football, but it is brought on by the biggest story in football this week, a story that knocked Covid to one side in the minds of many. The issues raised by the attempt by 12 European football clubs to breakaway and form a competition with rules set by themselves, have shown us that they are not just pertinent on the streets of Turin, Manchester, London, Barcelona or Munich, but in all our communities, wherever we live.

Time for us to invest in the outdoors for a healthier future

Thu, Apr 15, 2021

While it is easy to make decisions easier when the sun shines, the arrival of that bright thing in the sky this week has been a timely boost to morale at a time when every step forward seems to be followed by two backwards. The feeling of warmth on the face has also served to remind us of the brighter days, as in the actual brighter days ahead, and not just the metaphorical ones we keep hearing about.

Publication of vaccination dates should douse the flames of tension

Thu, Apr 08, 2021

They say that patience is the virtue that you show when there are too many witnesses around to see how you may have behaved otherwise. Be that as it may, it has been a virtue that we have been implored to employ over the past year or more. And like in all instances when we require patience, it is as we enter the final straight that the adherence to it becomes the most difficult.

Focus on new ways of living shows us the end line

Thu, Apr 01, 2021

For those of us in the weekly newspaper game, there is a six or seven year wait for your publication day to come around to falling on April 1. That day when you’d be plotting prank stories about Arabs buying Galway United, when there’d be plans for a multi-storey carpark to be located under Eyre Square, or when the IDA would be announcing a new factory opening out in Parkmore for the production of skirting board ladders and glass hammers.

A year like no other

Thu, Mar 25, 2021

A year since Ireland went into a Covid-induced lockdown, we can look back and see how we have suffered and stagnated, progressed and then regressed in attempts to return to our pre-Covid normality.

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