THE mobile phone came into its own the day the Taoiseach announced his intention to resign. Anybody involved — even at the outermost edges — in journalism or politics, heard their mobile come alive with ring tones alternating with text squawks.

This column, on this day, is a safe house, offering refuge to readers who may lose the will to live if they have to read one more word about Bertie Ahern’s legacy or Brian Cowen’s cabinet.

BRENT HOBERMAN may not be a name everybody instantly puts a face alongside, but it once was. Brent is one half of the couple who invented lastminute.com. They started their business with virtually no capital in a premises so small that cat-swinging was never an option for them.

THE gardaí may have built up a mountain of overtime hours ensuring that we all stay safe on the roads this weekend, but who’s protecting us in the airports, I ask you?

WE MAY be celebrating him. We may be sending ministers overseas to help other nations celebrate him. But the reality is that today’s Ireland wouldn’t tolerate St Patrick.

Dr McCarthy queried the appointment of Gay Byrne to the RSA because Byrne is in his 70s.

The paradox of Buckley’s work is that, despite constant presence, unceasing media access, money, education and a mind as well-stocked as the internet, albeit more selective in its content, it would be difficult to point to anyone ever persuaded by him to share his right-wing views

A MEETING is going to over-run, somewhere today. A meal is going to take longer than it should. A driver is going to lose track of time.

MONTH by month, she took the photographs. In the early months, as she took the pictures, she would cry. Cry because of the infinitely lonely plaint of a wood pigeon in the trees.

Men seem to assume a dishwasher is an extension of a woman.