We live in strange times. While a permanent feature of life in every century and in every decade is to be convinced that ‘the world is in a terrible state’, there are times - and this surely is one of them - when that cliché makes absolute sense.

Standing slumped under an American flag hung from a lamp-post, the clown looked as if he had died inside. The scattered passersby ignored him and his forlorn bucket of balloons.

I very rarely intrude on the world of association football. It is not something that I know much about. I watch Irish teams. Football, rugby, men women, and will them to win.

I always think it’s not quite fair to refer to butterflies as insects. I see insects as creepy crawlies, dull in colour and having more legs than they need.

When you see and hear the news that Charlie Kirk, a Trump supporter and advocate of free speech (mostly his free speech!) has been shot and killed by a lone shooter at a University campus in Utah you begin to think that America is a dangerously sick ...

What happens when September turns warm in Mayo and every flying insect in Connacht decides to visit? Here I sit, dear readers, at my keyboard in the townland of Castlebar, as another winged fury passes by my well-attuned ear before slapping the ...

If you want to beat rises in the cost of living, you must stop trying to do so by throwing money at it. The more money you throw at price rises, the greater the rise in prices will be.

For most appointees of significant posts in public office, the usual measure of their style and effectiveness is their ‘first 100 days’.

The killing last week of Charlie Kirk, a US right-wing activist and close ally of Donald Trump, revealed so much of the worst of where discourse is at these days.

On Wednesday last, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, led his fellow members in a moment of silence following the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk earlier that afternoon.