There is a certain something about a pot of homemade jam; the craft of preserving summer fruits, the colour, the aroma, the joy in its making and the pleasure in its eating.

Claremorris native Debbie Cullinane has built a successful career as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, a career you can clearly see brings her joy when she talks about it.

There's a perverse pleasure in being terrified. We huddle in darkened cinemas, stuffing our gaping gobs with popcorn as our primal fears are prodded and our nerves frayed.

Canvassing. In urban areas, it is described as ‘knocking on doors’, in more rural areas it is ‘calling’.

It goes something like this. You wake up. It’s the middle of the night. You are in your own home, but you don’t know where you are. You decide to get dressed but you can’t find your clothes. You decide to go downstairs but you can’t find the stairs.

‘You could fry an egg on the sidewalk here… if it wasn’t already boiled in your pocket!” As I self-congratulated myself on my wit, an actor colleague from South Korea looked at me with a mixture of incomprehension and pity.

So the old Rooskies (the lads from Russia, not the Roscommon lads who are absolved from any involvement at this time) have infiltrated the Dáil and have installed a spy in the highest (lowest?) echelons of Irish society. This is disgraceful.

News that Mark Duffy and Martina Jennings have been selected to stand for Fine Gael in the upcoming general election in Mayo has transformed the race for the five seats in this constituency.

I have a fancy for poultry, hens in particular. They are easily kept, quickly trained and repay good husbandry with a supply of eggs.

Gemma Jordan (nee Lucey), a proud Cork native, has business in her blood. Raised in Mallow, her family institution of Lucey’s Butchers, now Lucey’s 1880, spans multiple generations.