Having crossed the finish line, the runners go into shock, shivering in a way that rocks a small car on its wheels and begin personal comparison: did they do better than they did last year, or last month in this city or on another continent?

The dead guy in the raincoat punched me in the kidneys. They called my flight before the relationship ended, which meant the chair continued to wallop the air as if the dead guy was sporadically animated by a cattle prod.

Florence Nightingale’s undeviating determination to put her own stamp on nursing, nonetheless, succeeded, not just because of her capacity to use vitriol, charm and manipulation in equal measure, but because she understood the importance of communication.

WE’RE the most observed, studied and measured society ever. Ireland can’t get through a week without a new study or survey, measuring something about us.

THIS Monday morning, trying to explain Ireland to a visiting Martian would be quite a challenge. Any alien from another planet would ask you to start with sport, since he wouldn’t have been able to get away from it this weekend.

All sorts of verbal blunders swim through our sentences like bubbles in champagne.

THE most obvious difference was the hats. Or lack of them. In pictures of the 1929 collapse in the United States, every investor queuing at the closed doors of financial institutions wore a neat fedora, whereas the men queuing outside the 78 branches of Northern Rock on Friday were hatless and — mostly — grey-haired.

IN THIS newspaper last Thursday, Diarmaid Ferriter’s column excoriated the late Fr Michael Cleary. On Saturday, in the same slot, Ryle Dwyer also discussed Fr Cleary, rejecting what he described as the week-long pillorying of the dead priest.

If Hillary doesn’t make it back to the White House, the argument that America wasn’t ready for a woman president will at least be a consolation prize.

‘The current myth that fame, in the past, was dependent on talent, hard work and positive achievement, is just that: a myth.