Off Topic

This is the first year that my little boy ‘gets’ Christmas, if you know what I mean. It’s the first year he’s old enough to get excited (as in hopping up and down like he’s consumed a bag of sugar) every time he catches a glimpse of any picture of Santa Claus. For the first year ever, he was able to tell us precisely...

 Do you remember when you were young and had no sense? Can you pinpoint when that changed – when you began to take life ‘seriously’? Or are you still a kid at heart? I think I fall into the latter category, judging by how hilarious I found the debacle in the city centre on Monday evening. For those of you who missed...

I’ve written previously about how much my two year old son enjoys mimicking me doing household chores. And I’ve ranted at length about my perturbment when, on trying to buy him a toy iron of his own, I discovered that the only options available to me were in various shades of bright pink, covered in flowers and – in...

I’ve often heard men say (and women agree) that they couldn’t be trusted to do the shopping – they’d end up coming back with all the wrong products. And whilst I may have previously thought that this was yet another example a man feigning incompetence into order to get out of ‘women’s work’, I’m starting to have a...

Well, I bit the bullet last week (and I sincerely hope I’m only speaking metaphorically here) and got the swine flu jab. It was, undoubtedly, one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make and one that took some serious thought…and then a simple leap of faith. Seeing as I’m in the third trimester of...

Well, I took a stroll down Memory Lane last Saturday night, when I brought my little boy out ‘trick or treating’ (or, as they used to say in my day, ‘we went around for Halloween’). And what an eye-opener it was. Okay, so I’d had a bit of an inkling that things had changed somewhat when I saw costumes for dogs making...

Have you ever heard yourself say: “I just need one drink, to calm my nerves”? Maybe before you go on a first date? To stand up to make a speech at a wedding? Or to get you over a dose of stage fright? A pint of liquid courage, as it were. It’s a long-accepted belief in Irish society that the consumption of one drink...

Now that my toddler is listening and picking up on every word he hears – particularly the bad ones – I’ve recently had to install a situation-sensitive filter between my brain and my mouth (ok, so not literally, but you get my drift). Aside from repeating every word he hears, he’s become completely open to the...

Well I was certainly relieved to hear that the Road Safety Authority has seen sense and scrapped their plans to impose a night-time curfew for learner drivers from 10pm to 6am. Announced earlier this year, the measure was one of a series of proposals aimed at young drivers (the others, which included limiting the...

I’d say you’re sick of reading that the 1980s are back in Ireland. With emigration and unemployment levels soaring, the Government’s annual budget deficit standing at over 10% and all those slashes to social spending and hikes in VAT and income tax, the comparisons are fairly obvious. And then there are the fashion...

Being a native of the ‘Top of Town’ area, I’d consider myself fairly in tune with its uniquely satirical psyche and attitude. People in that locality know one another, they know your stock and they watch out for you. And they stick together, which is why – as a community – they’re so...

The Central Statistics Office last week announced that ‘Jack’ remains the most popular name for baby boys in Waterford, while Ava is amongst the favourites for little girls. So, in four years time, teachers in the locality will also be meeting a lot of little Jamies and Seans, Aoifes and Emmas. My significant...