Not so long ago, cancer sufferers pretended they didn’t have the disease. Neither they nor their families acknowledged the Big C. Now, it is an occasion for exploration in books, newspaper columns, blogs or – in the case of Farrah Fawcett – a TV documentary

Just as drinkers are threatened by non-drinkers because they convince themselves the teetotallers are soberly watching them getting pie-eyed, making notes for subsequent use, so the happy-clappy brigade are threatened by anyone who wants to opt out.

On the face of it, the processions and programmes on radio and television and speeches in Leinster House were the outward and visible sign of a nation offering long-overdue vindication to thousands of abuse survivors.

FIANNA Fáil got beaten senseless and the Green Party got beaten nearly to death.

WE lost custody of the garden a couple of years back.

NOT feeling great this Monday morning, are you? Bit of a sore throat and a runny nose?

YOU’VE seen the posters.

What he was at was intelligence-testing on the hoof. If a newcomer, faced with the yokel performance, decided this minister was a gobshite, then the minister had the measure of the newcomer.

IT wouldn’t be possible, these days, and it shouldn’t have been possible even back then.

During the world wars, some of the British towers were turned into observation and gun posts.