REMEMBER the end of When Harry Met Sally?

ON Sunday morning, many of us will be woken by electronic bleeps and whirrs as new computer-powered gadgets and toys are plugged in, charged up and used for the first time.

THEY say necessity is the mother of invention.

SITTING in the press box in the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night behind a laptop and under a sky filled with paper planes, it was clear that travel — if not beautiful football — is what we do best.

I HEARD the great American sports writer Jerry Izenberg blow the dust of some great tales this week on Newstalk’s Off the Ball programme.

AS THEY say in political backrooms: you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.

BE careful, there’s no panic,” Sean Baldwin says as he places the rifle in my arms and I look through the sights at a target the size of a saucer, 10m down the hall at Morton Stadium last Tuesday morning.

HOW do you get to know a nation? Taste their food? Walk their streets? Read their history? Try clicking through the nearest turnstile, follow the route on the back of your ticket to the seat. And learn.

THEY say everyone has a book in them. Paddy Coyne dragged it out kicking and screaming.

You don’t want to know the mucky process in which many engaged to get a ticket. Each one will have a tale of how they got there come Sunday.