AND ANOTHER THING:

Imagine if you had €150 with you to go shopping. You could, at will, decide what you spent your money on which is only fair. Remember the old saying “he who pays the fiddler may call the tune”. Not all this is being stood on its head by this government and R.T.E. We are going to be forced to pay €152 and have no say in anything that happens in that woeful place. It’s beyond words to describe why many people in R.T.E. are being paid kings ransoms for their ‘services’. To me, anyway, most of them are arrogant, self opinionated little shites that are paid far beyond their worth. Incredibly, I hear that R.T.E. has shed five hundred jobs this past while. Did you notice any difference? It makes you wonder what the hell they were doing there in the first place. Be sure none of them left without a nice wee handshake and probably a pension for life. What the hell, sure won’t Joe Soap pick up the tab - he always does. In fact he is forced to pick up the tab. You will also remember that I forecast that after the election the screws were being oiled and that things were not as rosy in the garden as we were being told before the election. Remember Sile De Valera who wouldn’t give in to RTE. Look where she is now and in her place is a person who is going to grant them a huge increase in the licence fee. A huge increase, that is, of our money. Roll on the next lame duck. Isn’t that what we’re here for. Sure isn’t that what we voted for.

AND ANOTHER THING:

I’m baffled beyond words to understand why all the fuss is being made over this ‘Big Brother’ thing and that boy they call Bono. They are in the papers every day being photographed for something or other. I, for one, can’t abide either, no fault to them, but it’s hard to fathom why so much importance is being attached to them every day. I suspect that had Bono been from Donegal there would be less word about him in the daily papers. There is something else I’m baffled about and it’s this - tourists are almost non-existant and the farmer is having the worst year in living memory and yet the whole public worry is that the F.A.I. has sold out to the highest bidder for a few games of soccer. Now that’s what I would call getting your priorities right.

AND ANOTHER THING:

This year, for a bit of past-time I cultivated a wee corner of a vegetable garden near my summer retreat and with the exception of a few early yorks and onions I must confess that nature has almost beaten me. Everything that could fly, crawl, hop or grow in the form of weeds attacked my wee plot. One day I arrived unannounced to find a young rabbit busily thinning out my brussels sprouts. My presence didn’t bother him one bit even when I roared at him to leave, he sat on nibbling away for all he was worth. It took a cudgel of a stone, thrown with as much malice as I could muster to eventually force him away. It was to no avail anyway for as I returned the following day I found he and his accomplices had completed the job and had paired the remainder of my sprouts down to the last bud. To tell the truth I prayed prayers that I didn’t think I knew and for sure not one of them could be printed on these pages. For some strange reason they didn’t seem to bother with the lettuce - it would appear that they left that to the boys from down under who would crawl unnoticed up the stalk and leave the leaf of the lettuce and cabbage like a bit of lace. And then there were the birds. Plenty of them too and big ones at that who never left this small corner. I would love to know just how did all these pests find out about my couple of ridges of vegetables. Perhaps I will never know.

AND ANOTHER THING:

Along with a high ranking member of Donegal County Council I undertook (on your behalf) a little fact finding tour of Donegal Town and its surrounding areas. Anyway, I see where work has commenced at the Clar Road roundabout which when completed should yield up to two hundred new jobs. This is indeed a major boost for this town and it was as sad as it was surprising to learn that this project has been held back for seven years due to objections locally. Will the people in this town never learn? It would seem they will when it’s too late. Also another project in full swing is the long awaited new sewer system. It should be completed in two years or thereabouts and should ensure that this column and other bits and pieces should reach the green islands in mighty shape. That’s progress for you.

AND ANOTHER THING:

My contact in high places tells me that a phone call has been received ‘upstairs’ stating the obvious that poor old JR cannot spell. This is like preaching to the converted. Sure I always knew that I was not too hot on the spelling. I had formed the habit early on of going with the sound of the word. This apparently didn’t please a certain Glasgow reader who it would seem has found his voice again. I surely hope this affliction doesn’t spread to his hand whereby he might start writing again. This could prove too much. But then again we might come to known the difference in ‘hoor’ as opposed to ‘whore’. That’s experience for you. We should have all emigrated years ago if only to learn to spell, if nothing else.

AND ANOTHER THING:

With the onset of advancing years we are all supposed to be winding down and taking things a bit easier and yet I find myself scribbling furiously at almost three o’clock in the morning to meet the deadline. This is too much and something is going to have to be done. Maybe it’s time to rest the quill entirely and put away my jotter. I will, most probably see this year out if I’m spared and take a good hard look at the situation nearing Christmas and make a decision then. I would favour a sort of diary now and then when I took the notion rather than be tied down to a twice monthly column. We will see what happens!