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If a bridge suddenly appeared between Ireland and mainland Europe overnight, I would happily use it. I like driving and it would be nice to have my car with me on the other side too when I arrive. It would be interesting to see how that would work out financially when compared to flights and car ferries but for now, I limited to flying.

That’s not always straight forward though. I often use low-budget airlines but dealing with them can be stressful. It can be expensive at times too and it’s important to understand beforehand that if anything goes wrong with your travel plans, your chances of finding a sympathetic voice in the customer service department of these organisations are slim. That’s provided you can even get through.

You can probably expect a bit of a walk too. The boarding gates used by low budget airlines are often located at the far end of the terminal. Space might also be tight, and the seats won’t be as comfortable as your recliner at home so your bum might be a little numb by the time you reach your destination.

But if you’re getting the flight at the right price and you know what you’re letting yourself in for beforehand then you can’t complain. You pay for the basics and that’s what you get so if it’s luxury you’re after, you better look elsewhere. They’ll get you to where you want to go and that’s the most important thing.

We all want value for money though, but with no frills airlines, what you see is not necessarily always what you get. Especially when it comes to final cost, so you need to be tuned in; they aren’t always cheap. Prices have risen sharply in the last couple of years thanks to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the go-to excuses for all price hikes these days, so watch out for hidden charges.

After you have been lured into the website by the prospect of getting a flight at a bargain price you might discover the cost has risen dramatically once you’ve added your luggage, selected your seats and opted for priority boarding.

Travelling without luggage is obviously cheaper. It’s easier to move around too when you don’t have to haul suitcases behind you, and it saves time at your destination when you don’t have to wait at the carousel for the bags to be unloaded from the plane.

Paying for luggage can often cost as much as the price of the actual ticket but families going on holidays have little alternative. Similarly, families travelling together have little choice but to reserve seats if they want to sit together. Opting for random seating is easier and cheaper when travelling alone.

I only pre-book a seat if I need to catch a connecting flight and time is short. Selecting a seat up the front of the plane allows for a quick exit but that only works when you don’t have to wait for a bus to take you to the terminal building and you don’t have to collect luggage.

Priority boarding is something that always leaves me scratching my head. Passengers who pay more for that facility pass through the boarding gate ahead of non-priority passengers, but they generally end up standing together on the other side of the gate anyway until the plane is ready to accept them.

Having said all that, there are deals to be had too, especially if you can be flexible with your dates and times. For now, driving to Cyprus is a non-runner for me. My only choice is to fly, and it seems there are some who would like to deprive me of that.

The idea of rationing flights has been around for a few years. The suggestion is that passengers would only be allowed to fly a certain number of miles each year to help cut down on emissions that are causing a huge amount of damage to the environment.

Short haul flights emit more CO2 per passenger than long haul flights because most of the fuel is used during take-off and landing. Long haul flights are more fuel efficient, but they use more fuel overall so there have been calls for the airline industry to make changes.

If flight rationing does come into force, we will be at the mercy of an air mile allowance which will make it more difficult to get off our very expensive little island.

Ireland had the single highest consumer prices in the EU last year, because of government hikes in alcohol and tobacco as well as the cost of energy and communications. Ireland’s price level for consumer goods and services was 46% above the EU average in 2022, according to data released by Eurostat.

I experienced a bit of that recently when my wife and I called into a hotel for a bit of lunch. My wife had a glass of house wine, and the measure could be described as modest. There was no danger of it overflowing.

When we got the bill afterwards, we were shocked to see she was charged €9.20 for her tipple. I reckon the hotel could get at least five glasses out of that bottle which would give them close to €50 for each bottle.

I know very little about wine apart from the fact that it comes from grapes, but I do know I can get lots of it in Cyprus for less than a fiver a bottle and wine drinkers are very happy with it. I can also have a dinner and a few beers on that island for less than €15 which is more than I can do here.

If flight rationing does come to pass, I might just have to stay away for longer.

I’m not sure where this started but there is a no-wash movement emerging whose aim is to encourage people to wash their clothes as little as possible or not at all. They say it’s to protect the environment, save water and extend the life of our clothes.

Our Green friends want us to live like Baldrick, Edmund Blackadder’s sidekick but I won’t be joining in. They say there are some great reasons for washing our clothes less frequently. They’ll last longer, it’s good for the environment and using a washing machine can be expensive, so doing less laundry will save you time and money.

That may be, but one of the things I like about living in the twenty first century, is the comfort it provides me. I like feeling fresh, I love my shower and I prefer clean clothes. I know what the alternative feels like from my travels to various parts of the world in the days when trying to maintain good personal hygiene was often difficult. Been there and worn the dirty t-shirt.

I wince when I think about what our ancestors had to put up with, but they didn’t know any better and didn’t have the facilities either. I wrote recently about toileting in medieval times and I’m still not over that. We are wiser now and I have no intention of slumming it no matter what the no-washers tell me.

According to The Guardian, Richard Blackburn, professor of sustainable materials at Leeds University asked at what stage do you decide to wash your clothes? “Do you smell it? Do you look at it? Or do you just wash it habitually?” He then points out that the fabric that has most contact with your body is your bedding, and you wouldn’t dream of washing it after every use.

He didn’t say how often he washes his bed linen but I’m getting itchy just thinking about it. In our house, certain clothes are washed more frequently than others. Tennis gear, work clothes and anything likely to come in contact with my sweaty body goes straight into the wash basket the miniute it comes off. Casual wear around the house might last a couple of days at most.

He doesn’t like washing the body too often either. “We wash ourselves so much anyway.” According to Professor Blackburn, “Most people shower or bathe once a day. Most of us do occupations where, frankly, we don’t really perspire. We don’t get dirty, and it’s not good to be uber clean.”

The professor says he’ll happily wear socks more than once and has been known to wear pants twice if on the first day, he didn’t get the full 18-hours’ use out of them. I presume he means underpants and I’m sorry but I’m not having that. Another suggestion is to be flexible and if your clothes don’t smell, don’t bother washing them.

I have no intention of wearing a shirt until it starts to stink. I shower every morning and usually again at some other point during the day depending on what I’m doing. I sweat a lot so presumably anything that comes in contact with me is also going to get sweaty and even if it doesn’t pong, it’s going in the machine.

Even back in the Middle Ages they washed themselves and their clothes. They did the best they could with what they had.

According to worldhistory.com people in the Middle Ages acquired something of a bad reputation when it came to cleanliness, especially the peasantry. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities, there were common expectations of personal hygiene such as regularly washing from a basin.

Washing the hands before and after eating was regarded as good etiquette in a period when cutlery was still a rarity for most people. Although monks had their own special areas for washing, including at Cluny Abbey in France which had a large basin where hands were washed before meals.

There, the towels were changed twice a week while the water was changed only once a week which kind of defeated the purpose.

Running water was scarce, and it took such a physical effort to get one bucketful from a well or nearby water source, it’s not surprising that taking a full bath every day was not a feasible option for most people. Indeed, with baths seen as a luxury given the cost of fuel to heat the water, monks, for example, were typically prohibited from taking more than two or three baths in a year.

For those who had a bath, it most often took the form of a wooden half-barrel or tub. Even then it would not have been filled and most of the ‘bathing’ was done using a jug of heated water poured over the body.

The vast majority of people, though, would have made do with a quick swill using a basin of cold water. As 80% of the population did physically demanding jobs working the land it is likely that washing of some kind was done on a daily basis.

Teeth were cleaned using twigs (especially hazel) and small pieces of wool cloth. Shaving was either not done at all or just once a week.

Soaking laundry in lye, an alkaline solution often used for washing, was an important way of tackling white and off-white cloth to whiten as well as cleanse. Ashes and urine were the most important substances for mixing a good “lye”. As well as helping to remove stains and encourage a white colour, they were good de-greasing agents.

I’m not gone on the idea of washing my clothes in ashes and pee or limiting myself to a couple of showers a year either, so I won’t be joining the no-wash brigade.

I was delighted to read John Dolan’s column in The Echo some time ago in which he described how he had been assaulted by a horse fly while out for his daily walk. He was bitten each time he passed the same location, so much so, he wondered if the same insect was ambushing him.

I didn’t take any pleasure from John’s misery, but it gave me some comfort to learn that I am not alone when it comes to being assaulted by biting things. It’s nice to know there are fellow sufferers out there.

Insects generally give me a hard time, and that includes horse flies. There was a time when they were the bane of my life and when I lived in the countryside, I hated the thought of having to cut the grass. No matter what the weather was like I had to dress like a beekeeper. Long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a hat and gloves. Anything left exposed after that, got the tiger balm treatment.

Horse flies didn’t like that stuff but neither did I. It was sticky, smelly and difficult to apply but needs must. On a hot summer’s day, it was uncomfortable being wrapped up like someone preparing for a game of ice hockey but even with those precautions, the horse flies didn’t give up. They were always on the prowl.

Anyone familiar with these creatures knows they are persistent little buggers. Swatting them away only encourages them so the only option is extermination, but they don’t make that easy either. Best thing is to let them land and then whack them.

And that’s a pity because I would happily share my blood with them, if they weren’t so aggressive. I have plenty so I’m sure we could have a harmonious relationship if they could drink their fill without leaving itchy lumps on my body.

They’re very selective in choosing their victims too. My neighbour back then, loved gardening. He would often be out there from early morning until late at night with his shirt off. Plenty of skin exposed but he never got a bite. There was a small hedge between us, but the horse flies seemed to prefer my side so, I came to the conclusion it was personal.

It’s a similar story when I go abroad. As soon as I step off the plane, the mosquito community get an alert that I have arrived. They rub their little pincers together at the prospect of a hearty meal. I have tried every lotion and potion known to mankind without success, so I have come to accept mozzie bites as a price to be paid for life in the sun.

Recently though, the stakes were raised when some biting things invaded my home. This was a new and unwelcome departure. I woke up one morning and found lumps on my ankles and arms and every day brought fresh bites. Then my wife started showing lumps and she rarely gets bitten. At one stage I counted fifteen on the back of her neck.

Our first thought was that maybe it was an infestation of bed bugs. I had been spending a lot of time lying in bed following back surgery and we figured that maybe due to prolonged heat on the bed some creatures had invaded our bedding. Apparently, bed bugs leave evidence of their presence but there were no tell-tale signs that we could see.

In any case, we stripped the bed, hoovered the mattress, sprayed it, scoured the bedroom carpet and curtains and washed everything. We opened all the windows and even moved into a spare room for a few days to allow plenty ventilation, but new bites kept appearing. My wife was getting bitten more than I was which was really strange.

The enemy was invisible. You can see horseflies and you can hear mosquitoes and you can often see a tiny speck of blood on a pillow or a sheet following a visit from a mozzie but we could see nothing. It was very frustrating.

We have a small room downstairs that doubles as a cloak room and an office and because the weather had been so bad for a few weeks previously, we couldn’t get the washing out on the line, so we put two clothes horses in there.

The radiator was on, and the window was closed so between the dampness, the heat and the lack of ventilation, I thought that maybe we had created our own version of a rain forest. A nice tropical setting for insects to thrive in. At times I expected David Attenborough to pop out from behind the towels.

As part of my recovery, I was taking short regular walks in an area that was surrounded with trees and foliage and I reckoned I must have picked up something on my clothing and introduced the creature or creatures to their new environment.

This theory made sense especially as my son was never in there and he was bite free, so it all added up. That room was next to get the full treatment. We removed everything, opened the window, scrubbed and sprayed the place and the problem was solved; except it wasn’t.

My wife continued to be targeted so we narrowed it down to the sitting room. I was restricted to sitting on a hard chair, so I spent less time in there than she did. She would relax there watching the TV in the evening and, in the morning, fresh bites would appear, so we turned our attention to that room.

We briefly considered throwing out the couch, but sterilised every inch of the room instead, and the biting finally stopped. We never did find the culprits but on the positive side, the house is spotless now.

I came across a story somewhere recently about a guy in England in the fourteenth century who was killed when he fell down the toilet.

Turns out the toilet was in a castle, three or four stories above ground, and was little more than a hole in the floor attached to a large drain that went all the way to the ground. The waste went down the chute and was collected at the bottom and taken away.

A plank of timber straddled the opening of the hole inside the castle and while the unfortunate guy was attending to business, the plank broke and he fell to his death. Now, when I first read that, I thought it was a bit far-fetched but then I remembered something.  

Many years ago, I spent some time travelling around eastern Europe with my Chernobyl buddies delivering humanitarian aid to various places in Belarus and Western Russia. One time we came across a picnic area at the edge of a forest and decided it was the perfect place for a rest and a cook up.

In amongst the trees, we spotted a wooden hut which had all the appearances of a toilet which made us very happy. Finding a functioning toilet in that part of the world in those days was tricky. A regular toilet bowl wasn’t always available either so you would often find just a hole in the floor. That’s why we celebrated whenever we were lucky enough to find a decent one.

In this case, our celebrations were a tad premature. I walked over to this shed and as I got closer, I could tell from the stench that I was not heading for a pleasant experience. It was dimly lit inside but I could see a square cut out of the timber floor and a deep pit beneath it. I didn’t need a manual to show me how to use this contraption.

One piece of advice we got very early on in our travels to those parts was to never go anywhere without a supply of toilet paper in your back pocket. I was grateful for that little nugget on more than one occasion.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the ground moving beneath me and I assumed there was a little stream running below. When I looked closer, I could see it wasn’t water that was moving but the floor of the pit was covered with rats. Trying to concentrate of the task in hand suddenly became very difficult. Falling into that mess could have ended as badly as it did for our friend in the 14^th century.

According to allthatsinteresting.com, toileting in medieval times wasn’t such a pleasant experience either unless you were lucky enough to live in a castle and even then, toilets were just openings that led into a latrine or the castle moat.

The waste shafts of some medieval toilets ran down the exterior wall of a fort into moats or rivers, while others were designed with internal channels that funnelled waste into a courtyard or cesspit.

Others protruded out from the castle walls with openings that hung in the open-air, allowing gravity to do the rest. Usually, a wooden bench separated the stone-carved hole from a user’s rear and while sitting there they also had to be alert for the enemy who could try to sneak through the hole in the privy chamber.

That was almost impossible when castle toilets were built to hang out over a steep cliff. That also made disposal of the waste much easier when it fell directly into the ocean where no one had to deal with it.

For the common people, things were more complicated. It was forbidden to go in public spaces and dangerous too. In 1339, a beggar was killed by a cart in London while squatting to relieve himself in the street.

Houses with privies were rare so it was common for families to use chamber pots or buckets to relieve themselves at home and empty them into pits afterwards. With such a lack of facilities for dealing with sewage, the smell was everywhere.

Public latrines were scarce and served more than one customer at a time. They were often built over bridges and on quays to facilitate the evacuation of human waste directly into water. In medieval public lavatories, people sat next to each other to do their business and one London latrine had no less than two rows of 64 seats each.

Royal toileting was better. A man was specifically employed to wipe the king’s behind, and he was known as the “Groom of the King’s Close Stool”. His job was to carry around the portable toilet and clean the royal rear.

We’ve cleaned up our act a lot since then, or have we? Medieval toilet paper consisted of a fistful of hay. This was rarely an issue when it came to clogging or cleanliness even though it did go on fire occasionally, but it seems it was less hazardous than our modern toilet paper.

Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ have recently been found in toilet paper around the world. Research found this paper flushed down toilets and sent to sewage plants is probably a significant source of water pollution. Might be time to bring back the hay.

Closer to home, Cork City councillors have called for City Hall to better advertise the locations of their public toilets, after it emerged that a clean, supervised loo had opened its doors next to the city library and they didn’t know about it. Several city councillors said they didn’t even realise it was there.

Maybe they should count themselves lucky. There was a time when the smell would have left them in no doubt where the nearest toilet was.

Back in the early seventies as a teenager, I was a member of Mount Crozier Tennis Club in Cobh. It was a small club with three courts, but a large group of us spent most of our time there during the summer holidays. When we weren’t playing tennis, we were hanging out together and having fun.

It was a place where teenage love blossomed, and hearts were broken but at the end of the day it was the friendships that mattered. There was never an ounce of trouble in that place.

It was long before mobile phones, but we had no need to be calling anyone. When we wanted to meet up with friends, we just headed to Mt. Crozier, and you could be guaranteed someone would be there. There were no bags of cans or drugs to be found. The only vice belonged to the few who smoked cigarettes. Looking back on it, it was innocent fun.

One summer, a group of us decided to do a fund raiser for the club. It was going to be an open day. I can’t remember what we were going to offer in the line of entertainment, but I do remember some genius suggested that we should engage a fortune teller for the craic. I’m not sure how it happened exactly but I became the mystic for the day.

I have no idea why I went along with it, but I ended up wearing some ridiculous clothes, including a head scarf which was wrapped around me like a veil and some makeup. A cross between Hilda Ogden and Dame Edna Everage.

The readings took place in a small changing room in the clubhouse that was in darkness to protect the anonymity of the mystic. I can still hear some of the gang sniggering as they huddled outside the little window trying to hear my prophesies.

It was meant to be a bit of fun for the kids, and all went well until an elderly lady wandered in and wanted her future told. This was a real person not a child. Panic set in.

I waffled on for a bit, and I thought I was doing OK until I mentioned something about her husband. When she told me her husband was dead, I knew I was in bother. I don’t remember much after that apart from being consumed with guilt and resigning my position as the resident mystic with immediate effect.

I’m sure that woman wasn’t as old as she appeared to my teenage mind, and maybe she was having a joke at my expense too. She probably got a bigger laugh from the experience than we did. At any rate, I’m glad that finished my experiment with mysticism because it could have landed me in hot water with The Vatican if I was still practising.

According to The Times UK, The Vatican has launched a task force to tackle the rising number of mystics who claim to communicate with the Virgin Mary, including a woman with hundreds of followers near Rome who says her statue of the saint can multiply plates of pizza.

Claiming that it wanted to help believers who “can easily be fooled”, the Vatican said thousands of people had claimed to have “a private relationship with the Madonna” in Italy in recent decades, while only a handful were recognised as genuine by the church.

They claimed the rising army of Madonna mystics needed to be challenged because they “cause confusion, promote apocalyptic scenarios and even make accusations against the Pope and the church”.

They began their initiative on the day that Gisella Cardia, 53, went into her monthly trance on a hilltop at Trevignano near Rome, in front of a statue of the Madonna that she claims sheds tears of blood.

Watched by about 250 devotees, she jotted down advice and predictions the Madonna supposedly passed to her during her trance, before reading them out. Cardia, who neglected to mention that she has a conviction for fraudulent bankruptcy in her native Sicily, boasted she witnessed the inexplicable multiplication of pizza and gnocchi portions prepared for her followers.

Cardia has been ordered by the mayor to remove benches, a marquee and the statue of the Madonna, which were set up without permission. It has become a pilgrimage hub since six children said they saw visions of Mary in 1981. The Vatican is determined to avoid Catholicism being hijacked by possible fraudsters.

So, maybe all isn’t what it appears to be in the mystic world. Many people have faith in fortune tellers and astrology and some like to read their horoscopes, but others would say it’s just a load of hocus pocus.

It’s big business in America though. Four in 10 U.S. adults believe in psychics, according to polling by the Pew Research Center and there are nearly 94,000 psychic businesses nationwide with an estimated revenue of $2 billion a year. 

To each his own I say but Steve Finan who previously wrote horoscopes for a newspaper, has poured cold water on the predictions. Writing in The Courier he said, “Don’t believe your horoscope – I’ve written enough of them to know it’s all nonsense.”

He says those horoscopes we see every day are fun, but fake, and his advice is to have a giggle but don’t make any life-changing decisions on the back of them. Predictions for the next 12 months based on the alignment of the stars are a load of rubbish according to Mr. Finan.

It is a pseudoscience he says. Newspapers print horoscopes every day, and there is little wrong with that. It’s a bit of fun, something to have a laugh with during your coffee break and shouldn’t be taken seriously. As someone with experience of the mystic world, I second that.

I don’t snore, at least I don’t think I do. Having said that, 60 per cent of people who do snore, refuse to accept they have a problem, so maybe I’m one of those. I have received an occasional poke in the ribs from my wife after a night in my local tavern, but those visits are rare now.

So, I will rephrase that and say I don’t snore much. I have woken myself from a light doze a few times with a snort and maybe that counts. If I was a regular snorer though, I imagine my wife would be complaining more about it, but she isn’t. She is a deep sleeper herself however so maybe she just isn’t aware of it.

There are different levels of snoring. There is a gentle whimper you’d hardly even recognise as a snore and a noisier version that is fairly harmless but could disturb you if you were in close proximity. Then there is the executive model. A noise of such magnitude it could be used to warn ships of impending danger and I experienced one of those.

Many years ago, I was part of a humanitarian aid convoy delivering medical supplies to orphanages, hospitals, day care centres etc in Belarus in the aftermath of the nuclear accident at the power plant in Chernobyl. The days were long and tiring and there was lots of driving involved. Unloading the trucks by hand was hard going too so by nightfall, we were ready for sleep.

We usually spent the night in our vehicles, but we were sometimes offered a bit of floor space indoors when it was available and occasionally, we got the comfort of a bed. It was on one of these occasions that I encountered the king of all snorers.

There were about twenty of us sleeping in small single beds in a large dormitory-type room. At some point, I woke up to a terrible racket. To say this guy was snoring doesn’t do justice to the sound coming out of his body. It was hard to believe a human could even produce such a din and live through it.

The room was dimly lit but there was some light filtering through the windows, and I could see others in the room also sitting up trying to identify the source of the noise. It wasn’t hard to find him. Various missiles were sent flying in his direction, but it didn’t quieten him. Eventually it became too much for a group of truck drivers who surrounded his bed, grabbed hold of his mattress and carried him outside. They placed him on the grass under one of the trucks and left him there.

Peace was restored once more but this guy was so loud, we could still hear him snoring in the distance. It was funny at the time, and it took us a while to get back to sleep we were laughing so much but there is a serious side to snoring. It can cause problems in relationships and can also be a threat to health of the snorer. So, what causes it.

It happens when the walls of the throat relax and narrow as we sleep, partially blocking the upper airway. The snoring sound is caused by vibrations of the tongue, nose and throat. This helps to explain why men snore more often and more loudly than women: men tend to have larger airways, into which their tongues fall back when they sleep, plus a higher proportion of fat in the upper part of the tongue.

According to the Times UK, new research has found that those who snore may be at risk of harming their bodies and brains. The good news is that lifestyle changes and medical advances can help to alleviate the problem. Light snoring or occasional nocturnal snorts are harmless, but at the other end of the spectrum, when snoring is sufficiently ground shaking to be called obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), it could be a threat to your physical and cognitive health.

If that’s not bad enough, The Irish Examiner had more worrying news and reported that people who experience sleep problems are more likely to have a stroke. Getting too much or too little sleep, taking long naps, snoring, snorting, and sleep apnoea are associated with an increased risk of stroke, a global study co-led by the University of Galway has found.

People who sleep for too many or too few hours are more likely to have a stroke than people who sleep an average number of hours. They also found snorers are almost twice as likely as non-snorers to have a stroke and that’s not all.

Many couples sleep in separate rooms because of snoring and in some cases, head for the divorce court. Understandable I suppose. We all get cranky when we don’t get enough sleep and when that’s happening on a regular basis it wouldn’t be long wearing you down. It’s easy to see how tensions might rise and create difficulties in the best of relationships. It’s not all bad news though.

A Cardiff woman woke in the early hours from her husband’s ‘snoring’. Her annoyance turned to panic when she could not rouse 39-year-old who was a fit and active cycling enthusiast. It turned out he was in cardiac arrest, and she thought her husband had died.

She called the Welsh Ambulance Service who instructed her how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which she did for eight minutes until the ambulance arrived. The ambulance crew shocked the patient with a defibrillator fifteen times to restart his heart. He survived but spent a month in hospital before being discharged.

So, the next time to get the urge to knee your snoring partner in the back, check his pulse first.

Protest marches and demonstrations have always been with us. There are times, when people feel sufficiently aggrieved, they need to take to the streets to let off some steam. That’s fair enough and everyone has the right to take part in a lawful protest.

I was involved in policing a few of these during my service in An Garda Siochana and most of them went off without a hitch because there was usually engagement with the organisers beforehand. It suited both sides to ensure demonstrations were well marshalled, trouble free and caused as little disruption to the general public as possible.

The one notable exception was the march to the British Embassy in Dublin in 1981 in support of the H-Block hunger strikers which turned into a riot. The violence that erupted that day resulted in over 200 people being injured, hundreds of thousands of Euros worth of damage caused and dozens of arrests but that was an exceptional event.

The French might be a bit extreme when it comes to demonstrating but, in the UK, where they are normally more sedate, public expressions of anger have taken another twist in recent years.

Protestors are using more disruptive actions like gluing themselves to motorways to cause maximum inconvenience to commuters. Or sticking their hands to fixed objects, chaining themselves to goal posts and tennis nets and defacing works of art to gain attention.

Just Stop Oil protesters threw orange paint over a garden display at the Chelsea Flower Show in London recently and in Sheffield during the World Snooker Championships protestors from the same group threw orange paint over a snooker table, disrupting the days play.

This kind of destructive nonsense isn’t confined to the UK and if the authorities here don’t take action, we could see a lot more of it in this jurisdiction, particularly when it comes to immigration issues.

I saw a video on social media of a truck attempting to deliver furniture to an asylum centre in Santry in Dublin. There was a barrier at the entrance to the facility and a few men were sitting on chairs next to it, blocking the entrance.

They refused to allow the lorry to travel beyond the barrier, so the delivery guys had to offload the goods outside on the roadway and carry them into the property while two gardai looked on.

I don’t blame the two gardai for not getting involved. They were acting on instructions from their superiors who were presumably taking orders from Garda Headquarters, but the optics weren’t great. Gardaí have so far relied on a soft approach when dealing antimigrant protests, but it’s time to up the ante.

No vigilante group should be allowed to assume the authority to block a public road and deny access to members of the public. In this case, workers were prevented from carrying out a delivery on behalf of their employer and as a consequence, their job was made more difficult.

There was a similar incident in Clare when demonstrators again blocked access to a public roadway. In some cases, they wore balaclavas and checked identification and questioned drivers as to where they were going and what their business was.

This kind of activity seems to be growing in popularity and the activists justify their behaviour by claiming the right to protest peacefully. There is a big difference though between having a peaceful protest and engaging in behaviour involving violence and intimidation.

In Dublin, asylum seekers were intimidated out of a makeshift street camp before it was set on fire. The following day a mob descended on a nearby asylum-seeker camp and damaged and kicked at tents and hurled abuse at the people living in them.

We have all seen videos of gardai being shouted at, cursed, provoked and abused by protesters and there is a certain cohort, particularly the far-right activists, who push this to the limit. They wrap the Irish tricolour around their shoulders like a Superman cape, arm themselves with a camera phone and proudly claim to be the defenders of the Nation.

They believe they have a large following, but I seriously doubt that. They certainly don’t represent me or, I suspect, the vast majority of fair-minded people, so, why are they getting away with it?

Garda management seem to think that by enforcing the Public Order Act they will play into the hands of the far-right. But surely by giving them a free hand to cause a public nuisance, this is exactly what they’re doing, and offenders are becoming more emboldened by the lack of a lawful response.

The Policing Authority has “totally condemned” the escalation of protests from lawful demonstrations to “violence and intimidation” of vulnerable people, communities and gardaí and has sought to discuss the worsening situation with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and his senior team.

The general secretary of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, Antoinette Cunningham, has called for “proper training” and resourcing to deal with the protests. They also want to meet with the Garda Commissioner as a matter of urgency.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said protests outside of premises earmarked to accommodate refugees is “wrong” and go against “our culture and understanding of being Irish people.”

Justice Minister Simon Harris told the Dáil he has been in contact with Garda Commissioner Harris who said gardaí are mindful of its response to the threat posed by the far right and said, “we should not overstate it but we cannot and should not tolerate it.”

Everyone appears to be in agreement that this type of behaviour is unacceptable so what are we waiting for? The Public Order Act is there for a reason. Take these offenders off the streets and into the court rooms and let justice take its course. Enough is enough.

I was popular last week. I got a text message from an unknown number warrning me ‘You haven’t paid your charges, visit eflow-toll-deadline.com or an additional fine will be sent to your home’. That was strange, since I hadn’t been driving the car outside Cobh for the previous three months. Nobody else had driven my car to Dublin either, so I just deleted the message.

Then I got another text. This time it was purporting to be from Amazon, and they wanted me to contact them in relation to a payment I needed to make to continue with my order. Another mystery because I had no order, so I deleted that message too. Both of these texts looked official so the scammers who do this for a living have upped their game.

Then I got a phone call from another guy. I can’t remember who he said he was representing but he basically told me there was a problem and I needed switch on my laptop to fix it. He would talk me through the steps I needed to take, and everything would be fine.

I played along with him for a while and eventually I asked him if his family was proud of how he was earning a crust? I asked him if he was bothered by the fact that he was stealing money from innocent victims, but he wasn’t backing down. He didn’t appear to be embarrassed either. He was very confident and gave as good as he got before he finally hung up.

He was hoping I would follow his instructions which would give him access to my computer so he could monitor my online transactions. Once he was in, he would have my passwords, credit card numbers, pin numbers etc. That would give him some free shopping until the fraud was detected.

This kind of activity is very common and has added two important words to our vocabulary – phishing and smishing.

Phishing is a cybercrime where people are contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords. The information is then used to access important accounts and can result in identity theft and financial loss.

Smishing is a combination of the words “SMS” and “phishing” and is a scam where fraudsters use mobile phone text messages to trick you into opening a malicious attachment or link. Typically, the text messages claim to come from a reputable organisation such as your bank, card issuer, a service provider like your mobile phone company, or even a government department.

They’re very convincing so we need to be wary of these people. They’re targeting WhatsApp users too with the ‘friend in need’ confidence trick. There are a couple of variations but usually a parent gets a message from a supposed family member with “Hello Mam” or “Hello Dad”.

The pretend child will say that they are texting from a new mobile number as their phone was lost or damaged and will ask for money to either purchase a new phone, or to pay a bill. Another version is a message from a ‘friend’ abroad who needs funds urgently and asks for help. The criminal supplies bank details for payment and collects the money.

The general advice is not to send money anywhere until you’re sure of where it’s going and until the identity of the person receiving it can be verified. Don’t click on any suspicious links in emails or text messages and never respond to suspicious messages that direct you to send money or change your bank details. Don’t give any personal details, bank account details or card information and contact your local Garda station if you believe you are a victim of a cyber-crime.

We have something else to worry about now. Criminals are targeting smart phone users in a caper known as “shoulder surfing”. The criminals look over people’s shoulders as they enter their phone passcode and then steal their phones. According to the Wall Street Journal, ‘shoulder-surfing’ gangs were targeting people in bars in US cities and London. They unlock passwords stored on the device allowing them access to financial apps.

Even those looking for companionship on the Internet aren’t safe. While checking the garda website for advice on dealing with fraudsters, I came across a piece advising people to beware of Romance Scams.

People searching for a partner on the Internet often believe they have met their perfect match, but the other person could be a scammer using a fake profile to build the relationship. They slowly gain the victim’s trust before eventually asking for money.

One Irish woman was showered with expensive gifts before she was asked to invest in her suitor’s business. Over a thirteen-month period, the woman gave the romance fraudster €48,000. The woman initially delayed reporting the fraud to Gardaí as she was married.

These characters prey on emotionally vulnerable victims and have only one thing in mind and it’s not romance. Desiree Boltos, the “Sweetheart Swindler”, was a serial romance scammer. She was sent to prison in America for scamming elderly people by pretending to be in love with them. Over a five-year period, she conned five men and one woman out of $1.6 million.

Romance seekers might be safer with face-to-face meetings at the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival. The festival is over 165 years old and completely different from online dating services. Those looking for love can meet Ireland’s only traditional matchmaker in the Matchmaker Bar where legend says if you touch his ‘lucky book’ with both hands, you’ll be married in six months!

They’ve no time for that auld Internet stuff there.

I heard in the news recently, reference being made to a world happiness index and Ireland’s position on it. The newsreader told us that Ireland’s place on this index had fallen slightly since the previous year, down one place from 13^th to 14^th. I had no idea what they were on about.

Apparently, there are 146 countries listed on this index and the closer you are to the number one spot, the happier that nation is. So, on the face of it, being ranked 14^th seems pretty impressive but on the other hand we were 13^th last year so we’re not as happy now as we were twelve months ago so that’s not good.

But what exactly are we supposed to do with this information? Should we lodge a complaint and demand we be returned to our rightful position and if so, who do we complain to? Somebody is deciding whether I’m happy or not and ranking me on a list based on how happy or how miserable I am at a given time and I want to know who they are?

Apparently, it started twelve years ago when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 19 July 2011, inviting national governments to “give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.

That’s a fine mouthful but it basically means that governments were going to get guidelines on how to make its citizens happy. The citizens were then going to be polled to establish how happy they were, and the results of the polls would be reflected in a list and ranked in order of happiness which became the World Happiness Index.

The results are announced every year in the World Happiness Report, which is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. The report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

Something else I wasn’t aware of is that 20th March is observed annually as the International Day of Happiness and according to the people involved in this report, the natural way to measure a nation’s happiness is to ask a nationally representative sample of people how satisfied they are with their lives at the time.

Life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll provide the basis for the annual happiness rankings. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question and respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale.

I was a little confused by this because as far as I can remember, I have never taken part in any poll concerning my state of mind. I wasn’t aware that anyone was worried about my level of satisfaction with life but if anyone had bothered to ask me, they would have received different responses depending on when they inquired.

For instance, if someone approached me with a clip board to ask me about my level of happiness with the world as I was having my prostate extracted from my body, they would have discovered my misery was at a level they had yet to experience.

If they asked me how happy I was in the aftermath of having a couple of metal rods planted in my back, the pollster would probably have needed some medical intervention to remove said clipboard.

On the other hand, if I was asked the same question as I was stepping off a plane having landed in Cyprus for a holiday in the sun, my happiness level would be through the roof. If Leeds United remain in the Premiership at the end of the football season my joy will be unbridled, and I would easily score a 10 on that happiness ladder. So, what’s the point of it?

Well, for a start we should be paying a bit more attention to Finland. They’re not known for being very chatty. In fact, they have a reputation for being unsociable and a bit glum. There’s a long-standing joke about two Finns going to a bar for a drink. One says, “Cheers.” The other asks grumpily, “Have we come here to talk or to drink?”

Still, they have held the number one spot for the last six years so they must be doing something right. Denmark and Iceland are in second and third place respectively and I would have considered those places to be cold at the best of times, so I don’t know what they’re so happy about.

On the other hand, Cyprus is down in 38^th place despite having a wonderful Mediterranean climate so obviously happiness isn’t all down to the weather. Afghanistan occupies the last position at 146 ranking them as the unhappiest nation in the world which probably won’t come as much of a surprise given the unrest in that country.

According to the report though, the happiness scores take other factors into consideration too, like how individuals feel about the state of their country, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption. The effectiveness of the government has a major influence on human happiness of the people which worries me when I consider I might have to rely on Eamon Ryan and his colleagues to put a smile on my face.

Given the state of housing, health care, and homelessness here, I’m surprised we didn’t beat Afghanistan in a race to the bottom of this happiness index.

It seems a member of An Garda Siochana is to face a criminal prosecution over his driving in relation to an incident in which three men were killed in a collision while fleeing gardai.

The DPP has directed a garda involved in the pursuit of the three males who were members of a Tallaght-based criminal gang that specialised in burglaries, is to be charged with a driving offence. The three victims were killed instantly when their BMW vehicle burst into flames following a head-on crash with a truck on the N7 in 2021, while they were driving on the wrong side of the carriageway.

It remains to be seen what charges the garda is going to face but garda management needs to stand up and be counted here. Gardai in the course of their duty have a right to expect leadership and support. 

Many years ago, I was involved in an accident while driving a patrol car. It was on a Sunday evening while in pursuit of a stolen car. There was a lot of damage done to several cars. The following morning, I showed up for work at 6am and at 9am the superintendent arrived in the public office.

The first thing he asked me was how I was feeling. Then he told me not to worry one bit about the damage to the cars. That can all be fixed he said. Then he insisted I visit my GP in case I was suffering from shock that I mightn’t be aware of. I was fine but what he displayed that morning was leadership and support. I’m not sure if there is much of that around today.

Policing in Ireland is in a difficult place at the moment. An Garda Siochana is on a downward spiral with lack of morale, a rising number of resignations and poor recruitment. Young members are stifled with oversight, tied to their PULSE machines and consumed with fear of making a mistake and the likely sanctions that could follow.

I can’t imagine that the young men and women entering the Garda Training College these days are much different to those of us who joined in earlier times. We were anxious to get the training over with and get out on the beat where we hoped we could make a difference.

We were proud to wear the uniform and follow in the footsteps of so many of our well-respected predecessors. We wanted to be seen.

During my thirty-five year service, I was privileged to have worked with some fine men and women. I witnessed many examples of bravery and courage by dedicated members who often went above and beyond what was required or expected of them.

There were difficult times too. It’s impossible to spend a lifetime as a police officer without seeing the evil side of society. Dealing with the deaths and injuries sustained through accident or design are part of the job. Violence is always a possibility, and danger is a regular visitor, but we expected that. We were trained for it.

We were happy to do deal with whatever came our way because back then we knew our colleagues were there in support. When we found ourselves in sticky situations, back up was never far away and it was important to know that.

Confronting burglars in the middle of the night, dealing with rows, assaults, armed robberies etc are fraught with danger but gardai deal with these situations on a regular basis without giving them a second thought. Preservation of life and protection of property is what policing is all about. The automatic response is to get stuck in.

That could change if garda management doesn’t support its members and not just in the rough and tumble stuff either.

Community engagement is important too. Being out and about, meeting people, getting to know them and being there for them when they need help matters. It’s what we’ve done since the foundation of the State, and we were good at it.

There is a new method of policing in this country currently that I don’t recognise. I have written previously about the lack of community engagement. Garda visibility is becoming increasingly scarce which is creating a void, a void that will be filled with an alternative we may not be too happy with.

If you want an example of where we are now, take a look at Ailin Quinlans piece in The Echo about her recent experience in the west Cork town of Clonakilty. It is typical of the stories I hear from all over the island, but few have raised my hackles as much as this.

She had a run-in with a guy on an e-scooter who had frightened an elderly lady. He completely ignored Ailin’s plea to be careful and went on his way. The elderly lady wondered why she never saw a garda on foot around the place anymore. A fair question.

Soon after that incident, Ailin witnessed vandalism taking place in the town’s Emmet Square, which she describes as a beautifully landscaped little park full of seats and well-established shrubbery. She rang the local gardaí and reported both incidents and asked if they could get somebody into the town?

The guard took her name and number, then informed her that her call would have to be patched through to a central control room before anything could be done by the local gardai. She was told that all questions, which included whether she wanted to be interviewed personally by a member of the Garda Siochana, had to be gone through before the gardaí could be authorised to attend the incident.

As she walked away, she heard one of the teenagers say: “Lads, your ‘wan is after calling the guards”. They all laughed heartily. And why wouldn’t they.