An Irish Diary

Coming down was a problem, with the dreaded possibility that my fear of heights resulting from my aunt dangling me by the legs over the Cliffs of Moher as a boy would return

The jig that welcomed General Humbert to Co Mayo can still be heard in Kilcummin and Amsterdam

Fanlight statuettes were a nod to politics, insurance policies and personal tragedies

New generation is transfixed by The Meeting on the Turret Stairs

An amphibious invasion boded ill after a foray to liberate some 1798 spirit

Being cool means embracing the tactility of earplugs, remote conversations and stony-faced unfriendliness

Kind gesture in Paris led to unexpected glimpse of Empress Josephine’s roses

She took an exotic name and wed the unlucky-in-love Hollywood heart-throb Rudolph

Short poem in The Irish Times was too obscure for some, but Beckett’s time in Saint-Lô warranted a verse with deep meaning

Magheracloone holds the only Irish deposits of gypsum, while the French capital was extensively mined to make plaster of Paris

This ferociously busy route was clearly not built with pedestrians in mind and hitchhiking didn’t seem safe to attempt

People smile and nod when you say you have tickets to the games in Birmingham or even the Olympics

Little did I know that in the editor’s eyes the page I was overseeing was the most important in the newspaper

‘It’s definitely getting brighter, for sure – it feels like we’re going back in time’

Mayan folk beliefs mingled with Leonora Carrington’s inherited Celtic ones in a heady concoction

Location in the Liberties ‘approved as part of a wider community regeneration project intended to provide a permanent market and community space’

Closure was provided 41 years later when a driver from the Westmeath town got me to a screen showing the All-Ireland final

Irate passengers and an unexpected demand that he converse in Irish prevented D O’Donoghue from answering the phone that day

The football final between the two descended into violent chaos when the teams met in 1926

This dramatic change in the landscape around Dublin had somehow passed me by

Plus a suspicious detail about a banshee’s ominous cries

The Taliban have banned women’s sport, while Cricket Ireland received €70,000 to promote gender equality

The competition’s storied past takes in the nascent Irish State, Shergar and changing times

Extraordinary sound – ‘neither voice nor instrument’ – heralded baron’s death in 1801

The Odyssey predates the earliest evidence for Ireland’s Táin Bó Cúailnge by around 1,400 years

A felicitous aspect of a reporter’s work is the amount of time spent in the rooms and corridors of Ireland’s architectural treasures

Preparing to climb the old-fashioned way, I am reminded that the modern Reek Sunday is nothing like it was 25 or 30 years ago

Mayo’s 1952 All-Ireland win was followed by quiet years, rain and the county’s closest neighbours rubbing salt in the wound

After hitchhiking back from Craogh Patrick, the celebrations in Westport led to an unexpected ending for the weekend

Known by many colourful names, a decent slice of it and you were good for the afternoon

My 55th time at a final, but I had never witnessed anything like the outpouring of raw emotion

Immaculate conception, fine half, electrocution lessons, a fifty and more in professor’s compendium

The late Paddy McNally spent some of his childhood in Ireland, romanced Sarah Ferguson and had brothers who did unspeakable things to cats

The issue is the dried-in grime, accumulated from two months of leaks and spillages, and from the primordial ooze that gathers around the base of bins

Addition of a step to help people onto the stone has hastened the demise of its 6,000-year-old carvings

I’ll give Christopher Nolan’s film this much: the wooden horse was good

There’s an audience for everything, no matter how niche its topic

An Post has not always avoided controversy with its choice of prominent figures

Plus: Diplomacy requires envoys of bad luck to avoid Spain’s and Argentina’s embassies on Sunday

In Riga, Paddy Whelan’s pub went to great lengths to ensure it looked authentic