Some years ago I remember as a teacher being part of a school discussion about memories with a group of teenagers. Part of it was about what we remembered and why we remembered it.

Your humble scribe was among the multitudes that turned out for the launch of Billy Heffron’s book, Fighting the Good Fight, on August 21 in the Ox Suite of the Great National Hotel in Ballina.

I've written about the robin before, at Christmas, and I made a hames of it. Not in the small ways, though there were those as well. Wrong in the way that counts.

It’s almost 50 years since September 1979, when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland – for the first papal visit to Ireland in history.

The curse nonsense Given that the so-called ‘curse’ only entered circulation in the early 2000s, some 50 years after it apparently happened, it always deserved scorn.

There's a hotel on the road into every western town that hasn't hosted a wedding in four years. The car park's full. The lights are on in the evening.

This was a rough week. I had to get a fill of kerosene. Eight hundred and seventy one litres at €1. 21 per litre. Do the math and the bill comes to just short of €1,200. Included in that, of course, is VAT at 13. 5% which comes to €142.

Who (or what’s) a Catholic? Once we had no problem answering that question – and I’m old enough to remember it well.

Rose Conway-Walsh leaned across the floor of the Dáil a few weeks back and told Simon Harris that Michael Collins would be pleased with him. Read it again.

It is now over three weeks since the final whistle and the joy of winning the All-Ireland has not abated one bit. We thought the sheer ecstasy of winning might just last for a few hours, a day or two at the most. But it sustained for well over a week.