My childhood memories are filled with holy statues, the smell of incense, the sound of pews squeaking on a tiled floor in an echoey church. Visits to the crib and offkey hymns were Christmas. The somewhat gory sight of the Virgin Mary’s foot crushing a snake fascinated me during primary school assemblies, and the comforting Sunday [...]
Ever since I moved to the Cork neighbourhood of St Luke's, I've been intrigued by Henchy's bar. You'd be wrong to describe it as an "old man pub" because they're not the kind of old men you'd normally expect in a city pub. Henchy's is full of arty looking old men wearing hats. They each have [...]
My colleague told me this afternoon that on Friday she stopped her car on the Glen junction of the North Ring Road after seeing an old lady falling on the (very narrow, precarious) footpath there and hitting her head.Watching out the window as she approached, she knew there was something up with the lady. She was [...]
HK Central Building HMV Group shop (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Both begin with H; both sometimes feature a small dog looking up at them quizzically; and both were in the news this week as evidence of a failure of consumerism to work for consumers. The nostalgia evident among people of a certain age, we'll say [...]
*Burgers*Chips*Curry*Salad*Cans*Chicken* ... Ponies... ... Toys... ... Carpets... ... Liquid Viagra (Free! Today only!)... ... Chickens... ... Work boots... Welcome to the Mart. A Bank Holiday Monday Mart. Only on Bank Holidays does the Mart - what Orla Kiely fans would call a farmers' market, until they experience it in all its tacky, mucky, jumble sale glory - [...]
This is my editorial from last week's paper. I've noticed similar pieces a couple of places,in yesterday's Agenda magazine and elsewhere, but this was written last Tuesday. There are a lot of euphemisms about these days, masking unpleasant news. We’re all familiar with downsizing, resizing and – the most recent word from the world of human [...]
The news today about McElhinney's of Athboy is really heartwarming. Unusual for business news to be "heartwarming", but this is a through-and-through good news story. I'm not too acquainted with the finer points of the deal, but from what I gather, after going into voluntary liquidation, the company did a deal with another Irish company - [...]
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