Opinion
Mothers come in varying guises, including Old Bats
THE FACT OF THE MATTER PAUL HOPKINS My maternal grandmother died when my Mother was just five so she never had a lifetime to know her. When I came into this world, the first of three, and work took my Father away a lot, my paternal grandmother came to call for an afternoon of china-cupped …
It’s time to rethink icing sore and injured muscles
By Eoin Everard Even while you may believe that you are promoting your own healing, you are actually hindering it. You probably pull an ice pack out of the freezer to relieve pain when your knees hurt after a day of intense squats, your elbow hurts after a weekend tennis match, or your daughter knocks …
Cheltenham preview 2023
Kilkenny Sport Focus By Michael O’Leary One of the great Racing and indeed Sporting Highlights of 2023 commences next Tuesday Afternoon March 14th as the Cheltenham Festival gets underway. As is traditional, The Supreme Novices Hurdle gets The Festival underway and it was 28 years ago to the very day – Tuesday March 14th 1995 …
Girl Auction
BY NED EGAN Part 8 At the bedroom door now, and looking down the gloomy stairs, Molly felt a small terror grip her, about the strange and dangerous situation she was in. All the nights in her young life had finished up with her waking in the morning in this little room, drowsy, and fairly …
Fair days in Callan
By John Fitzgerald PART ONE Callan in the early years of the twentieth century was a thriving market town-thanks mainly to its monthly fair and weekly fowl markets. The fair was on the third Wednesday of each month, and saw the town transformed into a hive of wheeling and dealing. Buyers and sellers of livestock …
Presenting the Oscars and a 12 minute standing ovation!
FURTHERMORE By Gerry Moran It’s not every day of the week that a man gets to present an Oscar, two Oscars even! But that’s exactly what yours truly did this time (ie. Oscar-time) last year. And I did it in Cleere’s pub. I presented the Oscars to two of the co-founders of the Monday night …
Q&A: the auto-enrolment pension scheme
BY JOHN ELLIS, FINANCIAL ADVISOR There is a growing interest in the new auto-enrolment pension scheme with employers and employees requesting more information. Here are some of the common questions I have received recently. Who is it for? Everyone from 23 to 60, and earning more than €20,000 a year, will automatically be auto enrolled …
The stress effect on your gut
BY CLAIR WHITTY Stress is part of everyday life and it’s important to keep you alert and aware of your surroundings so that you can avoid danger. But unfortunately, excess stress is not good for your digestive system. It can have a negative effect on your gut because stress affects the production of digestive enzymes …
Making allowance for that time of the month
AS I SEE IT MARIANNE HERON Just as I was musing that social attitudes have reversed between North and South and that the North is now more conservative than we are, comes the news that the Six Counties may be taking a liberal leap. There are calls to do the decent thing there and follow …
Banshees and boyos… and male friendship
THE FACT OF THE MATTER PAUL HOPKINS In the multi-award nominated film The Banshees of Inisherin – the Oscars are this Sunday night – the central thesis of Martin McDonagh’s wonderful piece of cinema comes in the early exchange between the two main characters when Colm (Brendan Gleeson) abruptly ends his lifelong friendship with Pádraic …
