JOHN GILES scrambled down his staircase in his Yorkshire home one morning to bafflingly find a pair of match caps had dropped in the letterbox from Dublin.

IT feels, this week and in this country, like someone should gently place a Sinatra record under a record player stylus as we bob downstream together towards oblivion.

TIM HORGAN told us to crack open the Catcher in the Rye.

Tuesday night: I’m locked in a bathroom, behind a door with a faulty lock. Forty-five minutes into the ordeal I’m eating toothpaste and have promoted a rubber ducky to head of communications.

BELIEVE it or not, I was once the feckless type of young man who’d only wear a suit when I reached the cup final in Championship Manager 97-98 on the Amiga 1200.

IS there a silver lining in the economic storms at our doorstep? Now that we’re poorer, will we produce better teams?

WHILE you sit there on the train or in the canteen or outside the school gate, ponder this one: what’s the connection between hurling in north Kerry and Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt?

LET’s think back a moment, before we look forward. You’ve just had your dinner. A warm mug of milky tea is perched on the arm of the sofa as you sit back in short trousers on another yawning summer evening.

WHAT’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.

MONTY is cleaning his spikes in anticipation of next month’s action at Celtic Manor while the Americans are checking their passports are valid and changing their money to Euros.