Mari Corduff is the Cake Queen! But like many other businesswomen, it’s not something she set out to be. Mari owns The Cake Queen coffee shop in Belmullet and produces novelty cakes for all occasions as well.

This week the Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying is set to publish its report, in which by majority vote it will recommend that both assisted suicide and euthanasia be made legal in Ireland.

So, the Government is to blame for the fact that the people of the country voted No-No in the referendum.

As I write, a sea of daffodils outside the window reminds me that, though yet early enough in the year, Winter has begun to pay its reluctant homage to another Spring.

Emphatically, unequivocally, and with a tremendous resounding belly laugh, the Irish people have given the governing politicians a swift kick to the nether regions.

It is at this time of year, when the grass begins to stir beneath last year’s fallen leaves, that Junior ‘A’ parish teams begin to look towards the year ahead.

Melissa Gilligan is a creative person – there is no getting away from that. A beautician by trade, she always found joy in seeing a vision and bringing it to life. And that’s exactly what she has done with the Old Kirk and Manse in Hollymount.

I enjoy my morning ritual, the hum of the kettle, the smell of freshly ground coffee and caramelised toast. I open the glass patio door and scatter a generous handful of breadcrumbs across the still-cold earth.

Would you have thought that the DUP would be playing hurling and speaking Irish? ‘No, Never’, you might reply, but they have just done both – and that’s not fake news.

I have been sort of housebound this past while with the result that I have been re-introduced to the wonders of the radio. There are, as I have mentioned previously, programmes where Alexa is called into action to switch off the nonsense.