Stories

My first day at school began with a suspiciously thorough wash. We had left rural Donegal and landed in inner-city Coventry, a decision in which I had…

I was never very tall. At my peak, I reached five feet eight and a half inches. The half was important. When you are under five feet…

As a teenager growing up in the 1960s, I had mixed feelings about the border between County Donegal and Northern Ireland. To my parents’ generation, the border…

When baby boomers were young, most houses seemed to have a room called the Good Room. It had the best sofa, the best rug, the best chairs…

It all started, I think, with Bring Your Child to Work Day. Like many modern ideas, it seems to have started in America and eventually crossed the…

Long before Amazon, Shein and Temu discovered the revolutionary idea of selling people things they had never seen, every household in Britain and Ireland had at least…

I sometimes wonder what exactly evolution was up to when it produced men and women. Obviously we’re the same species. Science is very clear on that. But…

Before Google, and back in my increasingly ancient past, there was no quick way of finding out the answer to something and then pretending you had known…

I read recently that the average person has somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 emails sitting in their mailbox. That seems a lot, but then most of us…

I can’t remember exactly what age I was, but at some point in my school career it was decided that I was mature enough to be trusted…

Though I say it myself, I think I was a good-looking child. Dark brown eyes, long eyelashes and dark hair. The sort of child middle-aged women would…

Before Google, buying anything expensive involved a mixture of guesswork, pub wisdom and asking somebody who “knew about these things.” You wanted a washing machine? Someone at…

In my part of Ireland, the old religious divide has more or less disappeared. Nobody pays much attention to it now. But when I was younger, it…

In our house there’s a bowl full of things that nobody can identify. I’m told nearly every house has something similar. Some people have a drawer, which…

Christmas in July We have just survived July, including those few days when the temperature climbed above 20 degrees, and the Irish population began behaving as though…

Is it just me, or do these international days seem to crop up every few days now? Apparently I’m right. The United Nations has around 230 official…

Irish people are fiercely loyal to their county. We can spend hours telling you everything that is wrong with the place, but if you agree with us,…

Who are they? Where did they come from? And more importantly, who decided we needed their advice? Years ago, if you wanted to know something, you asked…

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats supposedly wrote that, and it is hard…

Breakfast when I was a child was a simple affair. There was toast. There was nearly always toast. Toast, of course, was less a food than a…

Before Nike, Adidas, and all the other multinational companies convinced us we were one pair of runners away from Olympic glory, we had these. The humble plimsoll.…

On my first day at work, I was still waiting for my school exam results. This was awkward because I had been promised a job as a…

I recently discovered that only somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the population irons their bedsheets. This came as a considerable shock to me, because I…

There seems to be a natural order to family life. Little girls often adore their fathers, and little boys think their mothers can solve almost anything. Hence,…

In the 1960s, television in Ireland was fairly straightforward. There was one Irish channel, and if your aerial was good enough, high enough and pointed in the…

There were few luxuries available to Irish immigrant families in England in the 1950s, but one of them was the fizzy drink. Every few weeks, the Corona…

Now, before you get too excited, this isn’t a tale of debauchery. It’s about food. Like many of us, I’ve drifted into the modern world of sourdough…

There are few things in the house as nasty as the bathroom scales. They sit there on the floor saying nothing, pretending to be useful, when really…

On a recent clear-out, I came across an old road atlas. Younger people may not know what this ancient artefact was. Imagine Google Maps, but printed on…

I was probably about eight or nine when I made one of the great discoveries of my childhood. Not gold. Not buried treasure. Not the secret of…

When I was growing up, second-hand clothes made up most of your wardrobe. Mind you, “wardrobe” is probably too grand a word. It was usually a drawer…

There are few sights more alarming than an Irishman dressing for summer. For most of the year, he is perfectly comfortable. Jeans, shirt, jumper, fleece, jacket, possibly…

Plastic bags in supermarkets have more or less disappeared, and rightly so, I suppose. But there is still a strange moment of shame if you ever have…

Warm weather has arrived, which is what we have been giving out about since sometime last October. For months, we looked out at rain, wind, grey skies…

We live in an age of takeaways, ready meals and things in plastic trays that claim to be “homemade,” despite having been assembled in a factory outside…

Of all the many irritations in modern life, few are as maddening as the supermarket checkout. It should be simple. You put your stuff on the belt,…

This used to be a simple question. Then, experts got involved. In the old days, there was a straightforward rule: you waited until the sun was over…

Steven Spielberg reckons aliens may already be living among us. And I have to say, the more I look around, the more I think the man may…

When I was young, and that is now a frighteningly long time ago, a holiday did not involve passports, airport parking, online check-in, or trying to work…

Do you remember when garages were actually for cars? That was the whole point of them. You drove the car in, shut the door, and it sat…

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Boomer generation was taking control. They were earning money their ancestors could only dream of, and they had the…

As part of our late-life attempt at becoming sophisticated, we have discovered gourmet dining. This is not to be confused with going out for a meal. Going…

Once upon a time, going into an Irish bank felt like being summoned before a small local tribunal. You didn’t just stroll in and withdraw your own…

When I was about eight or nine, my brothers and I used to spend our summers in Granny’s thatched cottage in Donegal. We absolutely loved it. To…

Back in the day, taking a photograph was a serious financial decision. You didn’t just whip out a phone and take 47 pictures of a starter meal.…

There must have been a meeting. I’m convinced of it. Somewhere, years ago, a group of people sat around a table and came up with what, on…

In Boomer’s early years, booking a hotel used to involve a phone call or even a letter to the hotel. You didn’t go online comparing “exclusive member…