Angeldubba

September 2020 There's a little pub on the quay front in Wexford town, called the John Barry. The building looks like it is a least a couple of hundred years old, and the type of place where the customers often might be of the same vintage. "Old man pubs", some call them, quite respectfully, of the senior citizens who frequent them, usually male, because they grew up in a period when a woman's place was in the home, or at most in the Lounge bar. Being Australian, I can relate to that. However from the historic accounts on the web, it's a friendly, lively little pub with great stout and live music. Music and drink, the twin reasons for being of the Irish pub. Well, the John Barry hasn't been open for six months now, and it bears the dreaded "No dine-in. Beer." tag.  So do hundreds of pubs across the country, an estimated 7,000 of them (for a country of fewer than five million). The government allowed pubs which serve food to reopen on June 29, having ...

True, the Irish presidential campaign has become very interesting in the past 10 days. Martin McGuinness's entry into the field was an attention-grabber: will the electorate forgive the past of this reputed IRA hardman, now a peacemaker and good buddy of the Reverend Ian Paisley? And the almost-Lazarus-like return of Senator David Norris to the contest was also in the category of truth frequently outstripping fiction  . But before that, the media hysteria over a pretty dull race between pretty dull candidates was already hogging broadcast hours, webpages and column inches. The reason, I think, is that many senior people in the media are in fact frustrated politicians themselves. They didn't have the ego, the guts or the money to get up there themselves and ask the masses to vote for them; but they are fascinated by the process, and love tracking (especially the downfalls) of the politicians who are actually doing the business.