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Anyone who has had prostate cancer will tell you that blood tests are a regular part of life, and it doesn’t matter how familiar you are with the procedure, there’s always a bit of anxiety while waiting for the results. You don’t want anything to be found that might interfere with your progress, but that possibility is ever present. Slight but present, nonetheless.

I’m still happy to get them done though. I’ve been having them for years and they have already saved my life once and I would advise any man over forty years of age who hasn’t had a conversation about prostate cancer with his GP, to do so immediately. Like today.

Public awareness campaigns continue to highlight the need for men to be aware of symptoms such as frequent urination, decreased force of urination, difficulty starting or stopping urine stream, blood in the semen, pain or discomfort in the pelvic area. If you experience any of these, you should consult your doctor, but my advice is not to wait for symptoms because they might never appear.

That needs to be shouted from the rooftops. I know I’m repeating myself but the majority of guys I know who have had prostate cancer had no symptoms, so we need to get that message out there. Creating awareness is important and as September is national prostate cancer awareness month, it seems appropriate to talk about it now.

Bill Turnbull, the former BBC broadcaster died as a result of this disease recently at the age of sixty-six. He went public with his diagnosis in 2018 and his campaigning saved lives and encouraged “thousands and thousands” of men to come forward for prostate cancer testing, experts say. Thanks to the publicity he generated, referrals to the NHS increased by about 20%, according to the charity Prostate Cancer UK.

Calls to its helpline also saw a large increase and they reckon news of his death could have a similar impact. Inspiring men to be tested for the illness was the “one useful thing” he had done in his life, Turnbull said, admitting he was “cross with myself” for the pride he had felt at not visiting a GP in four years.

Unfortunately, Turnbull’s story isn’t unusual because men are generally poor at looking after their health. We’re not great at asking for directions, reading instruction manuals, or multi-tasking either, but these failings are seldom fatal. Neglecting our health on the other hand can be, but avoiding the medical check-up is still a common complaint.

The thought of surgery, potential side effects and the inconvenience of it all can be off-putting. None of us likes to be poked and prodded but the consequences of ignoring a prostate issue are not good. The prospect of sitting in front of a medic and being told you have cancer might be scary and that’s understandable, but if you’re going to get that news, it’s better to get it early. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

I’m not an expert when it comes to cancer, but I do know what it’s like to get rid of a dodgy prostate. I’m not going to tell you it was a pleasant experience because it wasn’t. The digital examinations, the biopsy, the surgery, the recovery and the side effects were all a pain in the butt, quite literally, but having said that, it wasn’t bad enough to put me off either. If I had to go through it all again, I would because the alternative is a lot more unpleasant.

It is a dangerous disease that needs to be taken seriously. Reassurance from well-wishers that it’s the best kind of cancer to get doesn’t really cut the mustard. While they don’t mean any harm, they don’t help either. The diagnosis will shake you up a bit initially but it’s not the end of the world once it’s caught in time and not every case requires surgery either.

Thankfully, improvements are constantly being made in the diagnosis and treatment. An article in The Times UK claimed that screening for prostate cancer could be possible within five years. Prostate screening has been notoriously difficult, but advances in genetics and medical imaging are hopefully going to change that.

Prostate cancer is still the most common cancer among men, but survival rates have improved dramatically. In the 1970s, only 25 per cent of those with a diagnosis lived more than ten years but now when detected early, over 92% of men survive. With early detection, this disease can be treated successfully.

There is plenty of support available too. MAC (Men Against Cancer) is an Irish volunteer patient support group for men with prostate or testicular cancer and for men who have other prostatic conditions.

Members provide non-medical support, counselling and information for those diagnosed with prostate cancer and their relatives, so they don’t have to face it alone. According to their website, MAC members provide peer support for patients and relatives which is free and anonymous, and the volunteers are all men who have been affected by the disease themselves.

For men who develop advanced prostate cancer, there are new treatments available too and that’s very positive news for them but the best way to deal with this disease is to catch it before it gets to that stage. Early detection is vital and that can be achieved with a simple blood test.

I had my surgery in September 2018, and I’ve just had my annual visit to my consultant in the Mater Hospital. Thankfully my blood results are fine so I’m good to go for another while. That might not have been the case If my GP had not suggested having these blood tests as soon as I hit 50 and I will be forever grateful that he did.

It won’t come as a great surprise to many that the Green Party Leader, Eamon Ryan is not my favourite politician. I do have some sympathy for him though because everyone who deals with him seems to agree that he is a nice, courteous man. A decent skin with good intentions apparently and I don’t doubt that, but God help us, he sure knows how to put his foot in it.

He made a complete hash of the turf saga. What started out as a plan to ban the use of turf to improve the quality of our air, ended up becoming an issue that threatened the stability of the Government. Add that to the car-pooling idea, the ‘grow your own salads in window boxes’ plan, and his recent reference to Russia as the USSR, which was disbanded 30 years ago, and you can see that it’s not all plain sailing in Eamon’s world.

Politicians get a lot of stick and I have often wondered why they bother. What it is that drives people to get involved in politics in the first place? Is it a genuine desire to improve society, a crusade for social justice or is it something more basic like a hunger for power or money? Or is it a craving for attention and the love of being in the spotlight?  

Whatever the reason, as far as I can see, it’s a time-consuming, thankless, stressful occupation with no job security, very little downtime and no privacy. But there are many who disagree and find political life totally absorbing and rewarding and they’re happy to make a career for themselves in that business.

That’s great because we need people like them. We might constantly complain about our TD’s, but we should give them some credit for putting themselves forward because if the country was full of people like me, Dail Eireann would be empty, and the country would be rudderless. OK, you might well ask how that would be any different to what’s happening now, but you know what I mean.

I never had much interest in politics when I was growing up. We weren’t a political family, so it came as no surprise to me when I was introduced to Gerry Collins in Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick by a friend of mine in the seventies, that I had no idea who he was. I was a teenager, so his name meant nothing to me.

It became much more significant a few years later when I joined An Garda Siochana in 1979 and that same man became my new boss as Minister for Justice. That was the moment I regretted not being more switched on in Abbeyfeale. Thankfully, I had learned my lesson by the mid-eighties, so I was able to recognise the then Taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, when I met him.

I was stationed in Blarney at the time, and he had come to Cork and was staying overnight in Christy’s Hotel. On Sunday morning I was instructed to go to the hotel at 6am to relieve the guy who had been on duty there all night. The purpose of the duty was to provide low level security in the area while Haughey was in the building.

It was before 8am in the morning, when Mr. Haughey came downstairs accompanied by his driver. At that time the accommodation section of the hotel was in a separate part of the building to the bar and restaurant, so we had to exit the hotel and walk along the front of the building and go through the main door to gain access to the dining area.

When we got there, the driver opened the door to the dining room and as Mr. Haughey was about to enter, he turned to me and asked me if I had had any breakfast. I thanked him and told him I was fine, but he insisted I join them.

In the dining room, the hotel staff had a large table reserved for him with all the Sunday papers placed beside him. He got stuck into the papers and at 8am, the RTE news came on the radio. It was all about Charlie Haughey this and Charlie Haughey that, but he never lifted his head out of the paper. He must have heard his name being mentioned but he didn’t seem to have the slightest interest. Maybe he had heard it all before.

I was impressed that a man like that, who was obviously leading such a busy life, took the time to ask a young garda if he was hungry. History doesn’t remember Haughey too fondly for many reasons, but I remember him for the consideration he showed me.

I worked with other politicians too during my time in community policing and I witnessed the endless demands on their time. Most of them made a genuine effort but they also knew there were no guarantees. They could be out of a job on the whim of the electorate so it’s not the place to be if you like the idea of job security. Politics is an unpredictable business, as William Henry Harrison found out.

He was the 9^th US President and at his inauguration in 1841, he made a very long, speech. He delivered it outdoors on a freezing afternoon without a coat. Harrison was used to bad weather, having worked as a farmer and a soldier but it turned out he wasn’t immune to the cold.

The sixty-eight-year-old developed pneumonia. Doctors tried the usual remedies of the day including bleeding the president with leeches and trying to draw out the disease with heated cups, but Harrison died. He was just one month in office, making him the shortest-serving president in U.S. history and the first one to die in office.

Energy bills are going through the roof and all the signs seem to indicate we are in for a costly winter. The increases keep coming and we are being advised to be careful with our use of electricity and gas but that won’t be easy once the weather turns. The winter woollies could be worn out by the time Spring comes.

That’s not the end of it either. We might be colder outside too if the Government carry out their threat to take the second car off us.

Eamon Ryan, Minister for the Environment, is warning that we will face consequences if we don’t reach the target for reducing our carbon emissions by 2030. That worries me because we don’t have a good record for forward planning and reaching targets in this country, so the chances are, we are in for a fall.

Remember the late seventies, Cork city needed a solution to traffic congestion. That’s when the proposal for a tunnel crossing, now known as the Jack Lynch tunnel, was first mooted.

In 1985 a report on the proposed development was commissioned and submitted to the Minister of the Environment, Padraig Flynn in 1987. It sat on his desk for a bit and in 1989, the government recommended another feasibility study – which only confirmed the findings of the first one – and the plan was approved in 1992. The project was eventually completed in 1999, some twenty years later.

It was estimated at the time that 25,000 vehicles would use the tunnel daily with that figure rising to 40,000 within a few years. It did rise to 40,000 vehicles per day by 2005 and that had increased to 63,000 vehicles a day ten years later and is tipping 70,000 today. So, it took twenty years to come up with a plan that was redundant twenty-five years later.

In the late eighties, the Government sanctioned the building of three new Cork garda stations in Mayfield, Gurranabraher and Togher. They were supposedly designed to deal with modern needs yet within a few short years, all three were lacking in space. Rooms originally designed as storage areas were being turned into offices and parking was becoming an issue. Expensive refurbishment was required.

Anglesea Street Garda Station was designed as the new divisional headquarters, but it became unsuitable soon after it opened. The cells never housed a single prisoner but were used instead for storage. Office space was at a premium from the get-go and the parking facilities were totally unsuitable and couldn’t cater for the large number of official vehicles and private cars.

Government foresight was lacking elsewhere too.

When I retired in 2015, I bought a new Mazda CX5. I had never owned a diesel car before then, but I was advised by the Government that they were better for the environment. They even reduced the road tax to encourage us to get on board. I was delighted, so much so that I replaced it in 2018 with another one.

But as soon as I parked it in the driveway, Eamon Ryan was telling me to get rid of it. Suddenly, it was bad for the environment, and I was responsible polluting the atmosphere, melting ice caps and killing penguins. Then road tax went up again and now they say I’ll have to get rid of it in a few years. How did they not see that coming?

They are now warning that families could be forced to abandon their second car. Senior Government sources have said limiting the overall number of vehicles on roads and looking at the second family car would all be in the mix if the targets of carbon emissions are not reached. Call me an old cynic but based on previous experience, I’m not expecting good news.

I have little faith in Government long-term planning, so I don’t expect them to hit their carbon emission targets by 2030. I don’t expect people to give up their second car without a fight either though unless they provide an efficient public transport system in rural Ireland which is something Minister Ryan should be really targeting. He would get a lot of kudos and could make a significant impact on his beloved environment too but we’re a long way off that yet.

Almost three-quarters of all journeys in 2019 were made by car and according to Social Justice Ireland, the lack of reliable public transport in rural areas means that households are more reliant on their car to access basic services and to commute to and from work and school. This is contributing to the country’s carbon footprint, especially in rural areas, where we don’t have a viable alternative.

I would happily survive without a car, if it were possible. I would save a fortune for a start. I remember writing previously about the cost of owning a car and AA Ireland’s 2019 survey of motoring finances concluded that running a family car for a year costs €10,593.26.

That was three years ago so we can assume it has become even more expensive since then with the rising price of fuel, so who wouldn’t want to ditch the car? Through no fault of their own, most couples in rural Ireland need two cars, but now the Government is threatening to make their lives even more difficult by taking us back to the 1960’s.

When I was a child, we got luminous armbands to keep us safe as we walked home from school in the dark because there was no street lighting. We walked everywhere in all weathers. We had no central heating either, so we had lots of blankets on the bed at night to keep us warm, but I’m thankful for that experience. It was a good grounding for what lies ahead.

Civil wedding ceremonies are very common in Ireland now with venues varying from houses and hotels to gardens, forests, beaches, boats and whatever you’re having yourself. Solemnisers, or celebrants, are flat out and I’m all for it. I’ve been to a few of these, including my own daughter’s wedding recently and I must say like it. I like the more informal and casual format.

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, a solemniser is a fancy name for a person licensed by the State to conduct weddings in Ireland. Only a registered solemniser can perform a legally binding civil wedding ceremony and the main difference between these weddings and the traditional Church weddings is that there is no religious aspect to the civil version.

I say traditional Church weddings, but civil wedding ceremonies have been around long before the Church got involved so they are not new. According to oldmooresalmanac.com, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, many couples chose to get married at home until the Catholic Church sought to make marriages more formal.

The Tametsi decree of the Council of Trent was introduced as the church fought for change. This decree stipulated that any marriage that took place outside the presence of a parish priest or his representative and two witnesses would be null and void. So, if you didn’t get married in a house of God by a priest, the marriage wasn’t legal.

Needless to say, the Irish largely ignored this for several more centuries, and carried on doing their own thing. Even up until the 1900s, a wedding at home was more common than a church wedding but eventually the Church won out and their wedding ceremonies became the norm. Now though, it seems we have gone full circle.

But, while we may have gone back to our roots, there’s nothing medieval about the cost of today’s nuptials. Wedding planners, make-up artists, videographers, lavish receptions and all the other accessories that go hand in hand with the special day don’t come cheap.

When you include bridal showers, overseas stag nights, hen nights, the day-after party and exotic honeymoons, it’s easy to see how the costs can add up and not only for the happy couple. The guests will also find a sizeable hole in their pocket when the dust has settled, and the confetti has been swept up.

It’s not only the money though. The time, effort, energy and stress that goes into planning a modern wedding is considerable. Every couple wants their wedding to be just right, and expectations are high. They’re under enormous pressure to produce the goods and create a magical event and I think we have lost the run of ourselves.

I spoke to a man recently who was married in 1957. His wife-to-be lived in a small house out in the country, and he told me that after the church ceremony, they headed back to her house for the reception.

Families from both sides were invited so there wasn’t a lot of room, but they managed. They were lucky the day was fine so they could go into the small garden. The food was prepared by relatives, and they were served in stages. The first ten guests were seated around the kitchen table to be fed and when they were finished, the next ten sat down and so on until everyone was sorted.

After that, the newlyweds were taken to Cork by taxi where they caught the ferry to Swansea and the train to London for a short honeymoon. That man is in his nineties now but still remembers that day fondly so it can’t have been all that bad.

The parents of a friend of mine got married in 1961 and after the ceremony, they adjourned to a hotel across the road from the church for the reception. It was called the wedding breakfast then and I think that had something to do with the fact that it was the brides first meal as a newly married woman.

Anyway, they were part of the farming community and had busy lives as did many of the guests. After the breakfast they chatted for a while and by lunchtime, they were back working on their farms again. They were more practical back then and they had some good ideas too.

The bride’s wedding dress was much more sensible for a start, just a fancier version of an everyday dress. In fact, women wore outfits that they could wear again as their Sunday best. Some made dresses that could easily be altered so they could be used for other life events.

The guests on the other hand just turned up in their normal everyday clothes. Even as late as the 1930s, a couple getting married were photographed in their wedding clothes, but guests looked like they were off to the market.

The wedding cake was usually, a currant loaf, with the bride getting the first slice. Tipsy cake, a sponge cake soaked in sherry or whatever alcohol was available, was also common and young unmarried maidens would put a sliver of the wedding cake under their pillows to induce intense dreams about their future husband.

In the nineteenth century, a few days before the wedding, the bride’s family would invite the groom over for dinner. There, they would cook a goose in his honour and while waiting for the dinner they would sign contracts and land rights that would bind the two together. Once the goose was cooked, it signified the solidification of the groom’s decision to marry the bride.

There was no turning back after that which is probably where we get the saying ‘his goose is cooked.’ I can’t see us returning to those days, but maybe we could find a reasonable compromise.

I read a story recently about Jesse James, a criminal in the Wild West era of the 1800’s. A couple of weeks later, I read a story about the less well-known Frank Serpico, who was a police detective with the NYPD in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Two completely different characters who lived their lives on opposite sides of the law, but they had something in common.

They lived in different times, with contrasting lifestyles, but they were both betrayed by their own people. Jesse James was shot in the back by a member of his own gang while Frank Serpico was set up by his fellow officers and left to die after being shot in the face. Serpico didn’t die though, he lived to tell the tale, a tale of a police force that was up to its eyes in corruption.

But let’s start with Jesse James. According to Biography.com, James was born in 1847 in Missouri and was only 16 years old when he and his brother Frank took the law into their own hands and began robbing trains, stagecoaches and banks. They became a feared band of outlaws, responsible for the murders of countless individuals who stood in their way and stealing an estimated $200,000 in the process.

Things took a turn for the worse in 1869, when the gang robbed a bank in Missouri and Jesse shot a teller in the heart. Local newspapers labelled the actions vicious and bloodthirsty and called for the gang’s capture. From then on, members of the James Gang had a price on their heads and were wanted dead or alive.

They were always on the move after that and had planned another robbery with the Ford brothers, Charlie and Bob, but they didn’t know that the Governor of Missouri had put a bounty on their heads so large that the Fords couldn’t resist it.

In 1882, when Jesse was at home, he went to straighten a picture on a wall and while his back was turned, Ford shot him in the back of the head. Jesse died instantly at age 34. Three months later, Frank James surrendered but the jury wouldn’t convict him on meagre evidence, so he was freed.

It was ironic that having lived such a violent lifestyle, Jesse James ended his days while doing something as mundane as straightening a picture on the wall. Ford was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang but was quickly pardoned and moved to Colorado where he opened a saloon. In 1892 Ed O’Kelley entered the saloon carrying a shotgun and shot him dead and became the “man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.”

The second guy in this story is Frank Serpico, an NYPD officer whose stand against police corruption was celebrated in the film starring Al Pacino. Now well into his eighties, he still recalls how he was appalled by the bribes he witnessed in the 1960s.

On his very first day on duty, he was introduced to the way his fellow police officers went to local cafes for their free lunch. Serpico refused to be part of it and paid for his meals. He could tell that the café owners resented the practice and he felt that police on the take lost the respect of the public. There was worse to come.

Serpico witnessed a driver giving a policeman a $35 bribe to avoid a ticket for going through a red traffic light. He refused to take half, which was meant to be his share of the money. He soon realised these were both the accepted and the expected ways for police to behave when on patrol duty.

When he became a detective, he realised that plainclothes officers had a reputation for graft and corruption which Serpico ignored until an envelope with $300 inside was thrust into his hand. He reported the matter to his captain who suggested Serpico had two options. The first was to persist with the complaint and end up face down in the East River and the second was just to forget the whole thing.

Three months after receiving the envelope, Serpico was transferred to another plainclothes group, and he soon found out it was the worst place for blatant graft and corruption he had come across.

By October 1967 Serpico’s position was becoming untenable. He was doing his job and arresting individuals for illegal gambling while they were paying his colleagues for protection. With nobody prepared to do anything, he took his story to The New York Times. They knew immediately this would become one of the biggest stories of the year.

On the night of February 3, 1971, Serpico was brought along on the arrest of a drug dealer in a Latino neighbourhood of Brooklyn because he spoke Spanish. Accompanied by a couple of backup officers, Serpico was instructed to just get the apartment door open and leave the rest to his colleagues.

But when the door was opened and Serpico rushed it, it was slammed on his shoulder and head, wedging him halfway inside. Frank Serpico called to his two backup officers for assistance, but no help came, and he was shot in the face.

Both of the backup officers fled, and it was an elderly Hispanic man who called 911 on his behalf. A single patrol car responded to the incident and the officer who responded allegedly muttered, “If I knew it was Serpico, I would have left him bleed to death.”

He barely survived and today he still doesn’t know the full story behind his shooting because an investigation was never conducted. Serpico continues as an activist, speaking out against police corruption and brutality, lecturing to students at universities and serving as a mentor to officers in situations similar to what he endured.

I didn’t hear Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald speaking on Cork 96FM’s Opinion Line recently, but the programme subsequently quoted him on Twitter as suggesting he thought it was time to review the garda programme. ‘The new programme for gardai isn’t working and while there was always a good relationship with Superintendents who were active in the community, that doesn’t exist now.’

Tony Tweeted after the show that he didn’t see the point in community gardai working until 2.00 am. when schools and community centres were closed and suggested the preventative model of policing needed change. He said he was full of praise for gardai, and always was, but the roster wasn’t working.

Cllr Fitzgeralds point was that Models of best practice were developed in the ninety’s involving community, gardai & the department of justice which gave community gardai the flexibility to work their rosters accordingly to the needs of the community and family friendly policies. Huge gains were made.

He was challenged about this on Twitter by one person who suggested that gardaí were entitled to a work/family life balance, and the current roster facilitated that.  They said “Community policing involves more than just visiting schools and community centres. Much like every other aspect of policing, community policing is a 24/7 job. The need for community gardaí to be out and about doesn’t lessen once the sun goes down!”

I would argue that the need for gardai to be out and about doesn’t diminish once the sun goes down, but the need for community gardai to be out at that hour does. There is a difference. In my time, community policing was about dedicated sections of gardai engaging with the community, developing relationships with the various voluntary and statutory agencies, educating youngsters through the school’s programme and promoting community safety initiatives.

That business occurs during daylight hours when the other stakeholders are available, but that comment demonstrates how the distinction between community policing and policing the community, has become clouded. And it’s clouded because it suits the Government narrative. They would like us to believe that everything is fine, and nothing has changed, but it has.

I was responsible for community policing in Cork in the noughties, and in my time, policing the community was about patrolling the streets, investigating crimes and attending to calls that required garda attention. Community policing had a specific focus, but that role has been diluted largely because of the new roster. The lack of resources hasn’t helped either.

It was on the cards and in 2016, I made a few predictions. I can’t take any credit for them because it didn’t require any great wisdom on my part. It was obvious to all of us involved in community policing that the consequences of the “Modernisation and Renewal Programme” and the ‘New Roster’ aligned with the lack of resources were going to signal the demise of community engagement.

The introduction of the National Model of Community Policing in 2009 which was launched by M.F.Murphy, Commissioner could have saved the day. It was a blueprint for community policing that would have given it a stand-alone status if it had been implemented but the timing was bad.

The economic crash, an embargo on recruitment, manpower shortages and the introduction of the new roster system, meant the plan was doomed from the outset. Community policing officers were regularly taken from their duties to fill gaps elsewhere and as a consequence, they were less available to the community.

The ‘Modernisation and Renewal Programme 2016-2021’ as announced by the then Garda Commissioner, Noirin O’Sullivan, promised “to enhance our model of community policing to make communities safer, and address the policing challenges of each community. We will demonstrate our new policing ethos by engaging with the community through Community Policing Fora to determine their policing requirements.”

I predicted it wouldn’t work. It sounded great, but unfortunately the resources weren’t there to support it. To have any hope of succeeding, community gardai needed to operate outside the restraints of the new roster. I wasn’t the only person to hold that view.

The Garda Inspectorate agreed and pointed out that the introduction of the roster and constraints on resources led to a reduction in the number of dedicated Community Policing Units, particularly in rural areas. The Inspectorate recommended that the roster for community gardai should be tailored specifically for them. That didn’t happen.

In October 2017, I again argued that the closure of rural garda stations, new garda roster and the lack of garda manpower were having a negative impact on country living. Both the then Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald disagreed and persuaded the nation that rural Ireland was getting a better and more efficient policing service by closing country stations and redeploying those gardai to larger centres.

In reality, those relocated gardai were consumed by the workload demands in the already understaffed centres they had been transferred to and as a consequence, they were rarely seen in the locality again. If you need evidence of that, just ask residents to identify their local community garda or to indicate when they last saw a garda walking the beat.

A later report of the Garda Inspectorate confirmed that community policing was practically non-existent in Ireland as of December 2015, and they had concerns about the resourcing levels devoted to community policing duties. They also found significant reductions in the number of members assigned to community policing and found some divisions had no dedicated community policing units at all.

It confirmed what we already knew; the new roster was, and still is, unsuitable to community engagement. Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald is actively involved at ground level in his community and he’s saying the same thing all these years later, but still, nobody seems to be listening.

I was out walking the other night in Cobh around 9pm. It was a balmy evening, and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and stepping it out as much as I could. I’m six foot tall and sixteen stone so it takes a bit of effort to build up a head of steam. I usually do about four miles and once I get going I do alright for a sixty-four-year-old.

As I was returning home, I saw a guy ahead of me on the footpath making a bit of a nuisance of himself, shouting at people passing by. He was very drunk, and I know this to be a fact because as I passed him, he took a step back, balanced himself carefully and looked me up and down and in a loud voice, he asked, “Are you an athlete?”

I was laughing to myself, and I suspect anyone within hearing distance was also having a chuckle. I am not now, nor was I ever, an athlete and one look at me would confirm that. I have managed to survive this life so far without having an athletic bone in my body but there was a time when my lack of athleticism got me into a spot of bother.

I was a young trainee garda in Templemore in 1980. It was known as the Garda Training Centre in those days and while classroom work took up most of our day, physical training was also part of the daily regime. Apart from the swimming, I didn’t enjoy those sessions, because running was a particular problem. I couldn’t do it. 

We used to run five-mile distances as far as I remember, and I always struggled. Walking for a bit, then running for a bit meant I was always at the rear coming back to base and even then, I was so out of breath I could hardly say my name. It’s a mystery to me how joggers can carry on a normal conversation without missing a beat.

One day I was holding up the rear as usual with a couple of similarly afflicted souls and when we arrived back at the centre, we were met by an angry training sergeant. He had a face like thunder, and he accused us of hiding somewhere outside the centre and then popping out to join the rest of the lads as they made their way back.

He had absolutely no evidence to support his claim but that didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t even make sense because if we were going to do that, it would have been more prudent for us to join the group somewhere in the middle and avoid the embarrassment of coming in last. In any event, the punishment for our non-offence was to keep running for several laps of the parade ground. A firing squad would have been more humane.

I suspect the angry sergeant may have been caught up in the story of Rosie Ruiz who was the surprise winner of the Boston Marathon around that same time in 1980. Her win was a surprise because, despite her near-world record time of 2 hours, 31 minutes, 56 seconds, no one had ever heard of her. Not only that, but no one recalled seeing her during the race.

According to History.com, Ruiz was unknown in the running world and her victory raised suspicions because it was a 25-minute improvement over her New York City Marathon time. Additionally, her winning time was then the third-fastest marathon time in history for a woman. After studying race photographs, Ruiz didn’t appear in any of them until the very end.

The second-placed woman, Jacqueline Gareau, was surprised when she was told that someone had finished two and a half minutes ahead of her and officials became suspicious when, during post-race TV interviews, Ruiz didn’t seem to know much at all about running. Ruiz, however, stoutly defended her achievement.

When two bystanders came forward and said they saw Ruiz coming out of the crowd onto the course a mile before the finish, officials began to question stewards. None of them had remembered seeing her pass any of the other checkpoints. When questioned, she suggested that officials had mistaken her for a man because of her short hair and that she‘d felt particularly energized after a hearty breakfast, which accounted for her vastly improved time.

Stewards reviewed official photographs and failed to find her anywhere along the course before the 25^th mile which made sense when they discovered she had taken the subway during that part of the race. Boston Marathon officials stripped Ruiz of her title and named Jacqueline Gareau of Canada the women’s champion and Ruiz’s time was invalidated.

In another marathon, Steve Cairns was in third place and out on his own. As he passed the 14-mile mark, he could see the two leading runners, a few minutes ahead. He knew he had little chance of catching the front-runners and with a six-minute gap to close, the rest of the field had little chance of catching him.

Cairns held on to his position and finished the race comfortably. As he crossed the finish line, he heard his fourth-place finish called over the PA. Confused, he asked a marshal to point out who was third. Cairns recognised the man immediately as Rob Sloan. Cairns had exchanged nods with him on the start line but hadn’t seen him since.

No other runners could recall him passing them on the trail either. Photographs suggested he was missing from the race and only appeared when there were just a few miles to go. Some witnesses clearly recalled seeing Sloan earlier but just not on the course. They said he had taken a bus.

I woke in the middle of the night some time ago. Nothing unusual in that because I’m a light sleeper and it doesn’t take much to wake me. This time, it was the noise of the howling gale outside that disturbed me. I was surprised because I hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t in the forecast and when I looked out the window, I saw the recycling bin had been upended outside the gate and was lying on its side.

Thankfully, the contents remained inside, but I could see other debris scattered around the road. A few of the tall trees were straining to defy Mother Nature but my neighbour had done a good job removing a lot of the dead wood after Storm Eunice came calling so I wasn’t too worried.

The fence at the back of the house had been flattened after that storm and had only recently been repaired so I was afraid to look in that direction in case it had met the same fate as the bin. I decided to forget about it and go back to bed. Nothing I could do about it now anyway. As it happened, it survived intact, thanks to the expertise of the builder.

There wasn’t much point lying awake listening to the house being battered but getting back to sleep wasn’t easy either. My wife has no such difficulty because she can sleep through anything, which reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago.

It’s a tale of a young man who applied for a job as a farmhand. When the farmer asked him why he should hire him, he said, “I can sleep through a storm.” This puzzled the farmer, but he liked the young man, so he took him on.

A few weeks later, the farmer and his wife were awakened in the night by a violent storm ripping through the valley. He jumped out of bed and called out for his new hired man but found him sleeping soundly in the midst of the storm and couldn’t wake him.

Annoyed, he went outside himself and quickly began to check things to see if all was secure. He found that the shutters of the farmhouse had been securely fastened and a good supply of logs had been set next to the fireplace. The farmer and his wife inspected the rest of the property and they found that all the farm tools had been placed in the storage shed, safe from the elements and the wheat bales had been bound and wrapped in tarps.

The tractor had been moved into its garage and the barn was properly locked tight. The animals were calm, had plenty of feed and all was well. The farmer then understood the meaning of the young man’s words, “I can sleep through a storm.”

Because the farmhand did his work loyally and faithfully when the skies were clear, he was prepared for any storm. So, when a storm did actually break, he was not concerned or afraid. He was satisfied when he was going to bed that everything was fine so he could sleep in peace.

Maybe if I had been more like that guy, I would have had the good sense to put the wheelie bin in a safer place when I left it outside.

American author Mitch Albom had his own interpretation of that story and he said if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere; our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of “I could have, or I should have. We can sleep through a storm and when it’s our time to go, our good-byes will be complete.

My father wasn’t a religious man, but he was a decent character and his advice to me was something similar. He said, “If you don’t go out of your way to cause harm to anyone, and you give a helping hand to anyone you meet along the way who needs it, you won’t go too far wrong.” I have never forgotten that.

So, it would seem that a clear conscience is the key to a good night’s sleep but what do you do if you haven’t got one? Or how can you prepare for a storm if you’re not as organised as that farmhand?  Well, you better come up with a plan because the future is looking bleak.

Gerald Fleming was a weather forecaster with RTE a few years ago and a familiar face. We took comfort from his reassuring wink but now he has some grim news. After studying long term weather trends, he reckons that change is on the way.

Climate predictions suggest that by 2050, our weather conditions will be warmer overall, especially through the winter months when there will be a noticeable decrease in frost at night. Our winters will also be wetter, our summers drier and we will have fewer winter storms. The bad news is those storms might be fewer in number, but they could be a lot stronger.

Rainfall may also become far more intense and is likely to be delivered in shorter, more vigorous bursts. Warmer summers could bring heatwaves, adding a significant mortality threat to the elderly and to many others already suffering from poor health. Heavier winter rain and swollen rivers, and the increased risks from winter flooding are probably the greatest threat that extreme weather poses to this country he says.

That’s not good news for my wheelie bin, my fence or my sleep pattern.

A private school in Bristol in the UK, named after the slave trader Edward Colston, is to change its name to ‘Collegiate’ in September. The governors decided on this alternative, after receiving hundreds of suggestions from students, parents and staff.

A statue of his was pulled down there during The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest last year, following the murder of George Floyd in the United States. School leaders said that after the toppling of the statue, the name would “forever be associated with the enslavement and deaths of African men, women and children”.

After it was toppled by the protesters, it was daubed with paint, spat on, struck with implements, rolled through the city centre and thrown into the harbour, but in the aftermath, four Black Lives Matter activists were acquitted of causing criminal damage to it.

They admitted their part in pulling it down, but not to causing criminal damage which seemed kind of strange to me. They didn’t accept intending to damage the statue or being reckless as to whether it was damaged or not. Their acquittal prompted a debate in the UK about its criminal justice system and the case is going to its Court of Appeal.

Everyone has the right to protest peacefully but I don’t accept we can wreck the place in the process.  I’ve seen people convicted of causing criminal damage for less.

One of the four was asked what he would say to people who accused him of trying to rewrite history, he said: “We didn’t change history, they were whitewashing history by calling him a virtuous man. We didn’t change history, we rectified it.”

I don’t understand the thinking behind this to be honest. How can you rectify history? Colston was a product of his time and lived in an era when slavery was accepted by many. He didn’t invent it and trying to wipe him from history doesn’t alter that reality.

Judging past actions by today’s standards and interpreting past events in terms of modern values and concepts is just interfering with history

I recently learned the famous author, Enid Blyton, was rejected by the Royal Mint in 2016 for commemoration on a 50p coin because, the advisory committee decided she was ‘a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer.’

That was a surprise to me because I grew up reading Enid Blyton books and I never saw anything wrong with them. I was a child then so I wouldn’t have I suppose, but I have been a big reader all my life and it was her books that got me started. I followed the exploits of the Famous Five and loved their adventures. Cheesy characters by today’s standards but they were products of their time too.

To suggest that Blyton is ‘not a very well-regarded writer’ is off the mark. She wrote somewhere in the region of seven hundred books in her time and sold over six hundred million copies. She was obviously well-regarded by many and that should be acknowledged too. It’s very easy to be critical with the benefit of hindsight but many of us are reading today, and educating ourselves about these issues, because of her.

During my working life in An Garda Siochana, I was responsible for a community policing team in Cork. Part of our brief was to engage with members of the new communities in the city, and to work with State agencies, volunteer organisations and minority groups promoting integration and inclusion. We were well intentioned but if our efforts were judged by todays’ standards, many holes could be found in our strategy. We made plenty of mistakes.

It was new ground to all of us back in the noughties. Record numbers of immigrants were arriving in the city from all over the world, and we were suddenly presented with different religions, cultures, languages and customs but there was no rule book to show us how to get everyone living and working together.

We did our best and in 2011, I accepted an award on behalf of the Community Policing section from The Integration Centre in Dublin. ‘The Diverse Ireland Awards’ were organised annually, and we were recognised for the effort we were making. We didn’t get it right all the time, but at least we were trying.

I remember being mildly chastised for shaking hands with a Muslim woman. I didn’t realise it was against her religion for her to shake hands with a man but there was no offence intended and none was taken, and I learned from my mistake.

On another occasion I referred to someone as a non-national which was a term being bandied about at the time. I thought nothing of it until one man suggested the term made him uncomfortable because it suggested he had no nationality and didn’t belong anywhere. While he had left his own country for various reasons, he was nevertheless, proud of his heritage, roots and nationality. He was a ‘national’, just not an Irish one.

Fair enough. That made sense to me once it was pointed out and again there was no offence intended or taken. Most reasonable people understood we were trying our best even though, looking back on it now, we were often stumbling around in the dark, but we improved with time as did Edward Colston.

He built a school to prepare boys from ‘poor families’ for apprenticeships. He also gave money to other schools, alms-houses, hospitals and churches during his lifetime and on his death, he left the equivalent of £16 million to charity but that seems to have been conveniently forgotten.

As William Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”  Edward Colston did a lot of good work in the community, but that part of his story will remain with him in the coffin.

Back in the 19^th century, rag-and-bone men went from house to house with their hand carts, gathering unwanted bits and pieces. You could say they were the original recyclers because they collected anything with a resale value and put it back in circulation. Scrap metal was melted down and reformed, rags were sold to paper mills for use in the making of certain types of paper and old bones were used in fertilisers and soaps.

Just in case you didn’t know, soap was once made from ash and lime mixed with oil and beer or mutton fat which was heated to a high temperature before being mixed with flour and made into the required shape. None of your fancy cleansers back then.

Anyway, I’m too young to remember rag-and-bone men, but I do remember the traditional dustmen. They hoisted the bins onto their shoulders and tipped the contents into the back of the dust lorry. You knew when they were coming too because they dropped the metal lids on the footpath as they went along and made quite a racket.

Lonnie Donegan had a song about them that hit the top of the charts in 1960.

Oi! My old man’s a dustman
He wears a dustman’s hat
He wears cor-blimey trousers
And he lives in a council flat

Everybody had coal fires or stoves in those days and anything that could burn went in there so lots of dust and ash ended up in the bins, which is possibly where the name ‘dustman’ came from.

There wasn’t much household waste though because very little was thrown away. Clothes, for example, were handed down from one child to the next and when they were torn, they were patched. When they could be patched no longer, they were cut up for rags and any decent pieces left over after that were put aside to be used in future patching jobs or given to the rag n’ bone man.

Before refrigeration, food was bought as it was needed so there was little waste. Fruit and vegetable skins went onto garden compost heaps or were given to the guy who collected food for his pigs.

I can remember as a child, putting the metal bin out on collection day and I think it was more awkward than heavy, but they were eventually replaced with a plastic version and the hot ashes put holes in many of them until people tuned in. I don’t know if they made life any easier for the bin men, but things certainly got quieter on collection day.

The term ‘dustman’ is still used even though waste disposal has changed completely. Gone are the days when everything ended up in the local tip or quarry. They weren’t the most hygienic places. They stank and attracted lots of rats and other vermin and regularly went on fire, sending putrid smoke over our towns.

These days we have green bins, brown bins, waste bins and glass bins and trying to figure out what goes where can be taxing at times. Choosing the right day for the right bin can be tricky too but it’s worth the effort because the end result is a cleaner environment.

Cyprus, my favourite holiday spot, has a different system. They use large industrial type bins, and everything goes into those. They’re placed by the footpaths in residential areas, but the downside is the area around the bins can get messy. While they do have lids, nobody bothers closing them, so cats and birds get in and scatter stuff everywhere particularly when the bins are full. Startled cats frequently jump out and frighten the life out of you when you throw in a bag. Especially at night when it’s dark.

Cyprus experiences the heat of the Mediterranean sun, so the bins can get smelly, but they’re emptied regularly, and the system works well most of the time. There is also an unofficial system in operation and I’m pretty sure it involves a secret society of rag-and-bone men.

I had a few things I needed to get rid of and as recycling isn’t popular in Cyprus yet, I wasn’t expecting to find a recycling centre, so I asked a local resident where the nearest tip was. He advised me to leave the items on the ground by the bins. I thought this was unusual and felt a bit uneasy but did as I was told.

I had two old suitcases I didn’t need anymore, so I brought them out by the bins and left them there. I felt like a criminal as I walked away and when I left the complex shortly after that, I half expected to be abused by someone for littering the street but then I noticed the cases were gone. Both of them. I tried again the next day and put out an old TV set and hey presto, that disappeared too.

I followed that up with an old deck chair, the metal kind with canvas material for a seat. The screws were rusted, and it wasn’t in the best shape, but I opened it up and put it in the same spot. When I checked half an hour later, it was gone as well but there was nobody around. I haven’t seen anybody taking anything either, so there is only one explanation; they are invisible.

Here at home, our refuse collectors are very visible. They’re hardworking too, and we’d be lost without them. They’re out and about in all weathers, exposed to fumes, gasses, dust and God knows what as they go about their business and we’re grateful for the work they do. I’m grateful to my rag and bone people in Cyprus too but I can’t tell them. Maybe I should just leave a note by the bin.