Ballyhaunis

Night on the Great River

Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close. Read the rest of this entry »

Misty (1959)

Published: Evening Herald, April 2010

The Bull & Castle

It’s the last outing for this column. Aidan and I are celebrating at the Bull & Castle in Christchurch. We’re joined by our friend, Johnny, briefly home from the States. “Butler pays for everything, by the way,” says Aidan, as we take our seats. “Why?” I ask. Aidan snorts. “I’ve given you enough fucking material,” he says. “You’re lucky I don’t sue ya for commission.”

He has a point. Read the rest of this entry »

Perusing the Sunday papers, something suddenly strikes me…

I hate the Sunday papers. The first six days of the week, newspaper articles tend to begin with sentences like ‘The government has announced…’, ‘Sources in Timbuktu report…’ or ‘Grave robbers in Ballyjamesduff have stolen…’ But come Sunday, all that goes out the window. Suddenly, it’s all ‘Is Bebo turning our children into vampires?’ or ‘Can worrying about my bum give me the plague?’ Read the rest of this article here.

So I hear you’re a racist… Is this the new thing?

“Ah Christ… Who told you?”

“I met Tina in Tescos the other night.”

“For fuck’s sake… He was a Malaysian fella in a Malaysian restaurant wearing a black shirt… Anyone could have made the same mistake.” Read the full article here.

I’m in Love With a Girl (1974)

R.I.P. Alex Chilton.

Your Ma: A Critical Perspective

There has been a tendency in recent times to recalibrate the matriarch by endowing her with glamour, sophistication or sex appeal. Unapologetically bucking this trend, however, is your Ma: a gormless, rotund but ultimately lovable woman, who makes a persuasive case that the best path forward for the Irish Mammy lies not in elegance or refinement, but in understatement and verisimilitude. Read the rest of this entry »

Brendan Thompson getting his mickey caught in his zip in Junior Infants: a critical analysis

Picture it: a vibrant tableau of rural Irish childhood in the 1980s. Two lines of infants, marshalled by a prissy, short-sighted nun, queue in a freezing corridor, waiting for their turn to use the toilet. There is some perfunctory jostling and pulling of hair. But for the most part, it is an unremarkable scene. On the wall behind, a portrait of Pope John Paul II beams down serenely. Read the rest of this entry »

The Moonshiner (1963)

Surely the most nihilistic folk song ever written and also – not entirely coincidentally – my party piece. Weddings, bar mitzvahs etc. etc.

They say the guy has a metal plate in his head…

Now I don’t know if that’s true or not. But once, when we got caught out in a thunderstorm, I noticed him sprinting for the clubhouse in a manic, zigzag pattern – like a soldier dodging sniper fire… Read the rest of this article here.