| Inns & Tonics with Cormac MacConnell |
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Cormac MacConnell
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HOURS before the opening of the big Maytime festival of oysters and lobsters and music and song, I arrive in Carrigaholt. She is putting on her powder and lipstick like a young girl a-going to a party. Everywhere the façade of the seaside village is ...
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BIG Liam Canny sits at the bar of the family pub in Kilanena, up there in the highlands of east Clare, and he’s watching...
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SOMETIMES even a hardened old hack like myself can be shocked to the core. It does not happen often but when it does it ...
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SPRING is here. The funfair at the rear of the antiques shop was alive with music and flying roundabouts as I parked and...
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IT IS not lucky to pass Fanny O’Deas so I don’t. Every time I cross the ancient threshold I think of the poor divil that...
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THE first time I was in The Ballyline Bar, years ago now, I was travelling with an amazingly flamboyant character called...
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THE pint was only thruppence on that stormy winter evening when the sailing ship Leon began to founder in heavy seas off Quilty away back in 1907. And the Quilty fishermen went out...
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THIS was such a great night that I’ve had a lot of trouble in putting it down on paper. That does not happen me all that often. I started the sceal two or three times during the ea...
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HUGE big powerful carthorses would still have been a regular sight on Kilkishen’s single street back in the time when Jack’s Place was simply called Maloney’s pub and when the worl...
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THERE is a solid wall of smiles in every available foot of Jimmy Daffy’s fabled pub in Corofin two Sunday evenings ago, just before the start of the Corofin Traditional Festival. T...
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COME with me last Saturday afternoon to the sundrenched mazylands around New Quay under Black Head and stand for a little while before the grand slated holiday home of the gently ...
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SO many elements of rural life and living, both simple and profound, amalgamated on an emotional evening in O’Callaghan’s Mills last week. It was an occasion which underlined the p...
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DAMMIT who do I not meet in the Preacher’s Bar at the Temple Gate but Pudsy Ryan’s brother! That was one of the defining moments of my month so far.
If you are of the generatio...
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HERE’S a shocking statistic to begin with.
No less than 40 of Mick Gleeson’s regulars were killed stone dead last year whilst crossing the road either to or from the riverside...
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YOU could call the regulars The Knights Of The Round Tables because there are a lot of solid round tables in The Knights in the Shannon Town Centre. It is in many ways the heart of...
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I’M GRINNING as I enter The Anchor Inn in Liscannor on a recent Friday. I’m grinning because, from nowhere, I recall that Dinny Vaughan did not like Fridays back in the era when Mo...
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THE first yarns I heard in Griffins in Ennistymon come from over 30 years ago and the last one — as good as any — a few days ago from Matthew as we enjoyed a January afternoon tipp...
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THE huge brute of a greengray pike at the bottom of the lough saw a passing coppery glint that looked like the belly of a passing perch one morning and he hurled all his 56 pounds ...
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THIS comes with a health warning attached – not from the Government or even from the much-maligned Health Services Executive, but from the self-appoin... |
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 Marty Morrissey I said it publicly on Sunday night in Logue’s Pub and Restaurant in Ballyvaughan so I may as well put it on the record here as well. My favourite driv... |
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 Zeitghost IT’S been one year, almost to the day, since my jumper went missing. I’ve hunted high and low for the precious garment but there’s no sign. I’ve launc... |
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