Bust

So I come back to Cork after some days away and leave a black bag of my clothes in the hallway, including my best clothes intended to be worn for the smashing launch of Ireland Unhinged at the lovely Boqueria a couple of nights ago. BUT: Bag disappears, flat out vanishes. A couple of...Read more »

The bad economic news keep raining down as hard as the weather of the last week – new taxes on pensions, on water, and on property to feed the increasingly bottomless repayments to the IMF and European Central Bank. Meanwhile, consumer energy prices are slated to rise by 20 percent. Writing in today’s Irish...Read more »

What a country. We have had the most golden and renewing of spring weather of late, topped off by a visit to Tobin’s ancient pub in Ballyduff on Sunday after Medusa-fighting infernal brambles, where I was treated to A Local Man of Knowledge discoursing on the dangers of planting spuds with their eyes pointing...Read more »

In a sad, sad return to the days of yore, predictions are that 50,000 Irish people will have to flee this bedraggled country this year in search of work and a future elsewhere — with college graduates and professionals in the vanguard this time. Our daughter has already left for Vancouver. What will happen...Read more »

After pouring the nation’s newfound wealth down the sink into the never-never, as Michael Lewis has just so wonderfully described in Vanity Fair, Irish banks are getting more creative in their attempts to tidy up the mess with fresh approaches and regulations. These involve becoming houses of torture. Never mind chasing the guys who...Read more »

Perhaps fitting for a place with its name, Blarney — that icon of Ireland to foreign eyes — is often not what it seems, and is as clouded with ill winds in this troubled tourist season as any place in this rapidly changing land. Forget for a moment Blarney’s gab stone and schlock. With...Read more »