“Do you believe in fairies, sir”
“Fairies?”
“The little people, sir. You know what I mean.”
“If they are so little, why do people fear them so much? Why do you see trees left standing in the middle of cornfields because a farmers who may have hundreds of acres of land and the latest and most expensive machinery are afraid to cut down what they have been told is a fairy thorn?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Nor do I.”
It was encouraging that even in this corner of Dublin, the …
The centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses has prompted far more words of commentary than appear in the nine hundred pages of the original novel.
Having read Ulysses three times in the past decade, I have never got over lingering doubts.
Reflecting upon an abstract painting on one occasion, a friend pointed out the development of the work of the artist; the way in which the painter could have presented a straightforward representation of the subject, but that such realism in painting had become unnecessary after the advent …
Deputy Sean Fleming tells us that we should stop moaning about high prices and shop around more to save money.
Deputy Fleming, on a ministerial salary and substantial expenses is, of course, considerably wealthier than most of us. He is a man who can afford to shop around.
Anyone who doesn’t understand how the rich live more cheaply than the poor should read Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms. It includes the “Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
…“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was
I put the box of teabags into the cupboard of the staff tea room. “I’m sorry,” I said to a colleague, “it’s Bewley’s Original Blend. Supervalu didn’t have any Gold blend.”
“Did you always drink tea?”
“I did.”
I should have said, “nearly always did,” for I remembered a conversation with Lionel, an old friend from days in the country.
“I would never refuse anyone’s hospitality,” he once said to me.
He must have caught sight of me screwing up my nose at the thought of tea in a particular …
It was a bitterly cold afternoon in Glasnevin Cemetery. The crowd gathered to remember the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Big Jim Larkin stood in silence as a mark of respect and remembrance for thirteen other Irish people who had died on this day fifty years ago.
Perhaps the connection between the people is greater than the coincidence of the dates of their deaths. Perhaps if Jim Larkin’s vision of the future had prevailed, then the sectarian history of Ireland would not have continued as it did and no-one …
Connolly Books in Temple Bar is a delightful bookshop. It is a place where independent and alternative thought can be encountered. It is a place where books that go against the grain are sold. It is a place where I bought two excellent books just before Christmas.
One was On Dangerous Ground: A Memoir of the Irish Revolution. The writer Maire Comerford was from a wealthy family in Co Wexford. Growing up in the fox hunting fraternity, she moved easily among the landed families. A friend of the Barton …
