irish times

Before I begin, I’d like to address a few words to the Garda Road Traffic Corps…

Officers, lads… I know we’ve had our differences. We’ve both said things that, in the light of day, we probably regret. But look what you’ve reduced me to. I’m using public transport. Dear God, hasn’t this madness gone far enough? Read the rest of this article here.

Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #28

Okay, I got this from Mark Little’s Twitter feed. It came to his attention via multiple sources…

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 »

A Six-Pack to Go (1960)

Los Ballyhaunis Galácticos [Updated]

Flying out to Madrid this afternoon. There’s intense speculation I’m being offered a multimillion euro contract to link up with Ronalda and Kaka at the Bernabéu. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumours. There may also be rumours that I’m actually going on a pretty tame weekend break with my mother. Again, I can neither confirm nor deny those rumours. (Sufficed to say, if its anything like our Roman jolly in October, well, I’m in for a rollercoaster ride. Of Mass.) Read the rest of this entry »

Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #27

From today’s Guardian. As I’m sure Darragh would want me to put it: EPIC FAIL. Read the rest of this entry »

Published: Irish Times, October 19 2009

90mph… Down a Dead End Street

ON A COLD, CRISP morning in the winter of 2000, 19-year-old Richard Gilligan stood on the banks of the Kenmare River, his feet muddy and camera poised. A hundred metres away, his friend Bruce Kelliher was nervously clutching his skateboard and swaying slightly in the breeze. It was just after daybreak, and Our Lady’s Bridge, outside Kenmare in Co Kerry, was deserted. Read the rest of this entry »

“The most likely explanation, I correctly surmised, was that the bank had simply made a mistake…”

I’d like to say that I agonised about what to do next. But that would be an utter lie. When a friend, over breakfast, suggested contacting my branch, I laughed so violently that a Rice Krispie and a trickle of milk exited my left nostril rather abruptly. Read the rest of this article here.

You can’t hurry love?

THE LIGHTING IS soft. That’s the first thing you notice when you arrive downstairs at the Turk’s Head pub in Dublin city centre. If it were any softer, you might pull up a chair by one of those old flower pots and ask what she looks for in a relationship. The organisers of tonight’s speed dating event asked participants to assemble at 7.45pm sharp. I arrive at 7.49pm, so flustered I almost sign up for salsa dancing lessons by accident. But nothing actually happens until almost 9pm.

The ladies, by and large, have shown up in pairs. They sit awkwardly at the bar, fixing their hair and stealing furtive glances at the latest arrivals. The guys have almost all come alone. But as with any group of men, thrown together in any circumstances, anywhere in the world, we pick up the conversation almost without missing a beat. Robbie Keane to Celtic, huh? How’ll that pan out? Risky move on Spurs’ part. He scores goals, the boy scores goals… Read the rest of this article here.

Creative Whiting

`
Tabloid newspapers have a dubious habit of using speculative commentary by unnamed “sources” to pad out their stories. No matter where the celebrity transgression takes place, it seems, there will always be some Joe Public type on hand to weigh in on the controversy in suspiciously proficient tabloid-ese. Today’s News of the World story on John Terry (‘It looks fishy, but Toni’s fallen for JT whopper’) is a really hilarious case in point. Read the rest of this entry »