HERE’S a packet of Tayto vegetable roll flavour potato crisps. Note the presence of the word ‘flavour’ in there. They’re required to put that in there because there’s no actual vegetable roll in the crisps – just potatoes; they don’t smear the raw potatoes with minced pork and flecks of green stuff and deep-fry […]
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Getting hung up on nationality
It’s funny the things that set our blood simmering. I was online the other day, trying to enter for the Dublin Half-Marathon next month. I got to a Required slot that demanded “Nationality”. Nothing wrong with that, except that it wouldn’t let me write “Irish”. I had to choose from a long list on […]
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Ignoring the women of ’81
I WENT to see 66 Days – a couple of weeks later than everybody else. Well, not everybody actually. We went on Tuesday night to the Kennedy Centre to see it and it was sold out half an hour before it was due to screen. So we hightailed it to Yorkgate to watch it […]
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Kilkenny will be top Cats once again
THE All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final takes centre stage this Sunday at Croke Park as defending champions Kilkenny face Tipperary and we have signed up our GAA tipster Paddy Tierney to review the weekend game. The sides have built up a fierce rivalry in recent times with Tipp famously stopping Kilkenny’s ‘drive for five’ in […]
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A dragonfly for every county
This a creature that inevitably creates a smile on everyone’s face. And it’s probably that we are all thinking: just how can nature produce something so beautiful? This dragonfly landed on the hand of a West Belfast hillwalker who goes by the name of Rob Smith and he was able to take this incredible […]
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‘Solid Man’ who ensured crowds flocked to view Alhambra acts
On the morning of Tuesday, March 11, 1873, crowds of people made their way to Lower North Street. They went there to see the damage done by fire to the Alhambra. The Royal Alhambra Music Hall, probably Belfast’s first, was opened in 1871. In two short years it was playing to full houses every […]
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