Same old, same old from stale party as good days drift further into past

After a tumultuous few months of hand wringing, convention dates, reminders, and exposures, which reminded me of a lump of driftwood left behind by the tide, and now being fought over by a swarm of beetles, the secret meetings, the handshakes, the infighting, and whisperings of splits in the camp, followed by weeks of speculation over who was going to get the nod at the Fianna Fáil convention, all we ended up with was a 68-year-old pensioner from Dungloe, born on the March 10, 1948, in Burtonport, which used to be a busy thriving fishing port but is now a ghostly shadow of its former self.

I remembered being at the Burtonport Festival one year and Pat the Cope, who got the thumbs up at the convention, was on the stage pointing with his outstretched arm towards a house and saying proudly, “that’s the room up there where I was born”.

I hate to say it but there’s nothing there to be proud of today, because just the same as the boats that will never split the waves again as they head for open sea, the decay has well and truly set in.