Election cycle is the one that matters now
I can usually keep myself abreast of the daily news.
It is relevant at this point to inform you all that when my newspaper folded up during the last recession, I was left with no salary, four hungry children and a mortgage.
I responded by trading as a freelance for anyone that would pay me.
You name it, I wrote it.
I wrote a GAA novel called Final Moments, for example, which cleared a lot of my debts.
I produced a Christmas song called ‘Christmas In The Trenches’, which will begin to again earn me a few bob as Yuletide approaches.
And, crucially in today’s context, there were a couple of years when I was the author responsible for the weekly exploits of the unique lady detective, Miss Bridget Flanagan, in Ireland’s Own.
Many of you will be aware of the exploits of this legendary lady, as she solves all crimes in the village of Benford, where her brother is the PP, and her good friend is Sergeant Reilly.
I researched her history fully before writing about her.
She cycled every day through Benford, as she solved the village’s problems. Because of that research, I am better informed than most men about the connection between Irishwomen and their cycles, and that is why, quite frankly, I am totally baffled and bamboozled by a boldly headlined page one story in this paper last Saturday.
And I cannot at all understand how the story went viral via the BBC, Reuters, and such reputable organs as The New York Post. And that is the pure truth.
I never felt the need to pay any attention to Miss Flanagan’s daily cycle through Benford.
For the life of me, I cannot at all understand how and why
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One tweet reproduced by this paper, for example, read “Hiya @EndaKennyTD about halfway thru my cycle now gearing up for the main event in two weeks.”
Has this lady no commonsense or compassion for our Taoiseach?
He is up to his eyeballs in major political problems, on the front doorstep of a general election.
How can he be expected to comment on the fact that this lady, clearly, is in training for some relatively insignificant charity cycle, at the end of the month?
I would sometimes be as critical of Enda as the next man but, dammit, fair is fair, and this is going too far.
I studied the story on page one again, looking for explanations and, just maybe, I found a clue.
It looks as if the original cyclist who began the campaign is a young lady called Gráinne Maguire. I grew up in the county of the Maguires, and they are generally a merry clan.
It is accordingly probably significant that Miss Maguire is a comedian by trade.
She is surely laughing all the way along her daily cycles at the fact that her gimmick has gleaned such international publicity.
You could not buy that kind of coverage.
Despite my criticism about her troubling our Taoiseach at this time of great pressure for him, I sincerely wish her well in her charity cycle at the end of the month, and genuinely hope she wins. The pure truth, yet again.
I’ve been told that Enda Kenny sometimes cycled to the Mayo school in which he briefly taught, before succeeding his late father in the Dáil.
However, he did not deal with his own bicycle at all, in response to the avalanche of tweets from the female cyclists.
A spokesman responded by saying that Enda receives tweets all the time on all sorts of issues, and it was part and parcel of him being active on the platform.
Meanwhile, he is cycling fast down the election road. And I am still baffled about it all.
