Timoleague, an ancient village overlooking the beautiful Argideen estuary, seems a challenged place on a still dark, early spring evening. 

THERE are moments, just passing ones, but moments of real promise, at this time of the year when the hard, cobalt blue of the cold winter sky is softened by strands of viridian light, an energising, germinating light that promises that spring is coming on the next train; that the circle is indeed unbroken.

TIME was that when a broth of an Irishman — and the long, curious journey towards self-realisation has suggested I may be one — decided to visit a vegetarian restaurant it was like going to the zoo. 

The Pepperstack Bistro at Rosie’s Bar in Lower Aghada, Co Cork is a bistro like Paul O’Connell is a rugby player, like Graham Norton is an entertainer. 

I’M NOT sure how many points opening — or in this case rejuvenating — a restaurant registers in the National Optimism Rebuilding Programme.

IN A WORLD where everyone of Roy Keane’s self-serving, confrontational utterances is treated as if it were a recently-discovered Heaney poem on the nature of egomania.

Pier 26 Seafood Restaurant, Ballycotton, Co Cork, 

THERE are days when you just want middle-of-the-road, keep-the-show-on-the road food — days when you don’t need, or even want, poppy-seed brown bread knitted by celibate artisan bakers; days you just can’t summon up the joie de vivre needed to make the prospect of crabmeat or pan-roasted cod named after the port in which its captor buys his marine diesel, seem even vaguely uplifting. 

Wolfe Tone Square,

White Horses,

Panorama Restaurant,

El Vino, The Elysian,

Chapel Steps, Patrick’s Place,

Strasbourg Goose,

O’Donovan’s Restaurant,

Ristorante Rossini, 33/34 Princes Street, Cork, 021-4275818, rossini.ie

Global Village Restaurant, Main Street, Dingle, Co Kerry; tel: 066-9152325; globalvillagedingle.com

Willie Pa’s Bar & Restaurant, Colomane Cross, Bantry, Co Cork; tel: 027-50392

Raymond’s Restaurant, Distillery Walk, Midleton, Co Cork; tel: 021-4635235, raymonds.ie

The Church Restaurant, Bridge Street, Skibbereen, Co Cork, 028-23625, thechurchrestaurant.ie

Fishy Fishy, Crowley’s Quay, Kinsale, Co Cork; tel: 021-4700415; www.fishyfishy.ie

Toddies at the Bulman, Summercove, Kinsale, Co Cork; 021-4772131, thebulman.ie

Church Lane Restaurant, Macroom, Co Cork, 026-23402 and facebook

Man Friday, Scilly, Kinsale, Co Cork; tel: 021-4772260, manfridaykinsale.ie

Seaview House Hotel, Ballylickey, Bantry, Co Cork; tel: 027-50073/50462; www.seaviewhousehotel.com

The Bell Tower Restaurant, Castlemartyr Resort,

La Bigoudenne, 28 MacCurtain Street, Fermoy, Co Cork; Tel: 025-32832.

The Cliff House Hotel, Ardmore, Co Waterford; tel: 024-87 800; web: thecliffhousehotel.com

Wigan chairman Dave Whelan claims they have offered to double Victor Moses' wages but the winger already believes he is available to the highest bidder.

SO MUCH energy is spent fretting about what we can’t have but probably don’t need. Separating need from desire is the permanent frontline in consumer societies.

A survival plan for Eircom is expected to be approved at creditors’ meetings today.

THIS is the time of the year when your Kerry friends, many of them beloved cousins, sidle up to your weak shoulder, head bowed but eyes cross-haired on everything that moves, feet flicking at some imagined football.

IT MAY not be the kind of icy economic indicator that would beguile Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s, but the fact that a Saturday night table at Farmgate is not so easily secured must mean something positive.

EACH of us is a walking, talking set of definitions, opinions, biases, proclivities and habits, some good, others maybe regrettable.

EVERY old river city, from Bergen to Bristol, from Hamburg to Cork, wears its past like a beautiful necklace.

THE ramifications of Ireland’s qualification for Euro 2012 were felt all the way over in Wigan, with James McCarthy poised to become the Latics’ sole representative at the finals.

EVEN the prettiest town square can look dull after business has ended for the day.

SOME things are just right — they fill their space in the world so perfectly that they make it unnecessary to wish for more.

WHEN Seamus O’Connell washed up on these shores many years ago he seemed an exotic bird of paradise. And, thankfully, so he remains.

IT may not have been Dylan Thomas’ “mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore” but the view from the windows at Deasy’s Seafood Bar in Ring, outside Clonakilty, Co Cork, is as captivating as I imagine the shoreline that shaped the Welshman’s sublime Poem in October must have been.

THIS intimate, pleasantly claustraphobic restaurant, tucked away almost in a neat fold in the city-centre street’s edifice, is on the Michelin recommended list so the bar is set reasonably high the very moment a booking is made.

IF EVER the Sheela Na Gigs at Timoleague abbey decide that passivity is getting them nowhere, that being a wallflower for the bones of a millennium is enough, they won’t have far to go to celebrate their liberation with a lovely meal in a lovely place.

EVERY city and most towns have their almost hidden places, tucked-away half secrets that, because they are not on a busy corner, are found only through effort.