My phone beeped on January 3rd. A simple text from an American friend:“Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him. ”It was clearly referring to the audacious seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

I return again – unapologetically, I have to say – to what has become something of a personal obsession.

2026 starts with a lot of clouds overhead. The international system is volatile and unpredictable. Our problems on the domestic front seem intractable, even unsolvable.

Every new year, like every Christmas, measures life out in manageable portions that help us to mark time. Do you remember? as the song goes, Will I ever forget? It’s what we do.

I have previously complained about proving irresistible to mosquitoes, midges and their associated winged cousins - whether bitten on my back by a cavalcade of Ukrainian insects while sleeping in a hotel in Odessa, being attacked through my clothes ...

A brilliant initiative from the Tourism Department of Mayo County Council should get us all out with our cameras this year.

I have a friend, let’s call her Mary, for the sake of anonymity.

The Irish have a keen nose for gratuitous oppression, honed by eight centuries under someone else’s rule. We recognise it, even if camouflaged as self-defence or necessity.

Early on in his novel, That They May See The Rising Sun, John McGahern has the main character, Ruttledge, admit to the playful Jamesie that he’s feeling a bit down. ‘Why don’t you go to Mass, then, if you are that down?’ Jamesie offered.

For a television series that began in the 1960s, Star Trek has had an uncanny habit of staying ahead of its time. Not just technologically, but morally.