Hugo Brady Brown

That's the fear.

At least they haven't introduced the Two Minutes Hate.

This reminds me of the statement by the fat member of the German government in the 30s.

A reader's letter in the Irish Times today, 6 March

There's a certain peace in recognising the jingle as The Teddy Bears' Picnic. Near me, in the private houses, an ice-cream van has arrived every night for 19 years now at around 19.30, playing the same jingle that I cannot identify. In recent years it has gone noticeably flat too.

Yours etc.

Venezuela: oil
Nigeria: oil
Iran: oil

I'm glad Ireland is barren.

No I'm not. I wrote 'laughing', but Autocorrect intervened to improve things.

I am laughter (really, truly).

They were no fun!

We need some children's books set in Irish schools. They're no more unacceptable or foreign a milieu to most readers than an English prep school. The local colour might help their fortunes.

Why do professional photographers taking group shots:

1) Have people crowded into a needlessly small space in the centre?

2) Have people at the edges sideways-on (in such a stilted way)?

3) Have people at the ends standing like the leaning tower in Pisa?

(I did not come out well either.)

It happens to me about once a week, so take heart.

A 19th century dry educationalist might have fastened on that for a discussion of division and philosophical paradoxes and even infinitesimals.

And did you get into frightful scrapes and send the masters on wild goose chases and have all the interesting aspects of a self-sufficient school society?

('Gross ignorance' was 144 times worse than common or garden ignorance; I liked that.)

They're like two related but distinct species that have come into contact. Jennings' relentless ludicrous application of his logic is excellent. At the age, I thought he was, on the whole, perfectly reasonable, given his partial grasp of the world and of facts at hand.
Mr Wilkins seemed sympathetic.

The remarkable thing is that, for those with brains wired a certain way, they still hold up when read in old age. It's not often that old light comic writing for children stays alive like that.

With collar-and-tie now fading away as business attire, will men my age too start wearing ample scarves to conceal our raddled necks from the gaze of delicate souls? How much will have been gained and how much lost?

24,400 Irish citizens registered in Gulf - McEntee Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee has told the Dáil that 24,400 Irish citizens have registered their presence in the Gulf and that the number is increasing, after the first flight from the Mi...

A contribution of €800 is being asked of our ex-pats in the Persian Gulf region for their repatriation flights to Ireland.

We must hope that all latitude will be extended in cases of hardship or embarrassment. There should be a supplementary estimate, if necessary, for the Foreign Affairs vote.

Two sides of the South Pacific LP might be needed as a chaser.

... "bett into it" is how my dialect would have expressed that "stuffed" so much better.

And such a lovely show too.

Never given to taking selfies and avoidant of anyone wielding a camera, it has come as a shock now to receive a snap taken today with my reluctant permission in which the subject looks like a Bullmastiff stuffed into a tight jumper. The looking glass does it better.

"We like to put on the cast album of an opera at home of an evening to relax in the lounge. Something like Elektra by Richard Strauss."

A stellar career must have been expected of him.

My incredulity about extraordinary names that strangely weren't career-ending came to a close when I heard about the American divine Oral Roberts.

An early effort by Samuel Langhorne Clemens?

Gulf countries concerned about risk of Iran civil war, says EU's foreign chief Countries in the Middle East ​have told European officials they are concerned about the risk of ‌civil war in Iran as a result of the conflict between Tehran and the United States and Israel, EU forei...

I understand from a newspaper-scanning member of the academy tonight that if Iran can be tipped into civil war, the international community may need to intervene to secure the oil fields. Partition.(at least temporarily) could be on the cards, as previously discussed.

Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum says discovers new Rembrandt painting Modern analytical tools allowed experts to confirm the authenticity of the work, which depicts the announcement of the arrival of John the Baptist to high priest Zacharias. The work will be displayed ...

Do we love the recently identified Rembrandt painting because it is great or because it is by Rembrandt?

Would we have bustled past it last week to drink in something further along the wall that had a group of appreciators gathered in front of it? We don't know.

The US President is urging the Kurds in Iran to rise up.

Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
to serve the King of kings.

R. S. Thomas hanging out over a half door. We cannot decide if he is pleased in the snap.

'... Earth endures
After the passing, necessary shame
Of winter, and the old lie
Of green places beckons me still
From the new world, ugly and evil,
That men pry for in truth’s name.'

Can spring ever be far behind for R. S. Thomas?

In any search now on Amazon for a book, the number of relevant hits is less than 50% and it's getting worse. And in cases where I know a certain book exists, searching with author and title will not now reliably pull up the record, though an ISBN will usually reveal it.

We need the BBiP again.

A wine has hints of mango, I understand. I wonder if it's red or white.