It was refreshing to see the lack of investment in infrastructure in the west of Ireland highlighted on RTÉ News last week. The more of a light that can be shone on this issue, the better.

First up was a trip to Castlebar to take in the Wolf Tones, before I travelled to Dublin to watch Coldplay and concluded my concert haul by attending a Christy Moore show in Sligo.

I remember a time when the wool from our Ox Mountain sheep was worth a few pound. It would be factored into the small income that came from a sheep flock.

From the window of our modest home on the outskirts of Castlebar, I can see Nephin shimmer in and out of mists, a visual metaphor for my son's now inconstant presence, expanding and decreasing in unpredictable measure.

From the very top of her game in banking, to coaching women to get into senior management roles in the corporate world, Tréasa Fitzgibbon gives whatever she is doing 100%.

So, the Office of Public Works (OPW) has been pilloried for spending €366,000 on an eighteen unit bicycle stand in Leinster House. Now a lot of people would not care if someone set a match to Leinster House and reduced it to rubble.

What possessed me to wear a canary-yellow shirt to the Fianna Fáil meeting in Ballina? I was glowing in a sea of monochrome jackets, jumpers and tops, only matched by my throbbing red face.

I remember the makeshift roadside camps of the Travelling People seasonally situated at crossroads and bridges at various points along the Moy or in the Ox Mountains.

In the unfathomable mystery of gender, few habits perplex the average male, such as a woman's fervent devotion to a handbag.

Denise McDonagh has achieved more in her life so far than many of us can only imagine and you get the impression that she is not finished yet.