Time to draw laughter lines in the battle against our culture of complaint

LADS - and that includes you, Minister Hanafin - ye looked lovely in your garlands. Or leis. Or feather boas.

Or whatever they call those oversized necklace things they slung around your necks out in India. Orange for ministers and multi-coloured for the Taoiseach, indicating VIP and Serious VIP, respectively. Hope you brought yours home for the kids, Micheál.

No disrespect to any of you, but what was most interesting, in the photographs at that Christian Brothers' school, was the laughter and delight on the faces of the kids surrounding you. No self-conscious, eyes-sliding right and left to check how the pupil on either side is behaving. Those kids were just having fun. Now, the Christian Brothers have their points, but they never had a great reputation as witty, positive, laughter-inducers. They're better known for bruising grim determination (through the medium of Irish). It may be the country of origin, therefore, rather than the CBs, that should get the credit for the laughing children.