WE heard during the week that Rishi Sunak has pledged to raise defence spending in the UK to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, effectively putting Britain on a ‘war footing’. This rise will result in an additional £75bn in funding over the next six years. So it seems Simon Harris picked a bad week to start a war with them.
Not since the Declan Rice saga have transfers between Ireland and the UK been so controversial, and this week relations between both gov- ernments went down another few degrees on the geopolitical thermometer with Helen McAtee facing cancelled meetings and Sunak stating he is ‘not interested’ in a scheme whereby asylum seekers crossing the border in Northern Ireland are returned. And we thought the deposit returns scheme was a mess!
It all seems fraught at the moment, doesn’t it? With the Minister for Justice evacuated following a hoax bomb threat to her family home and politicians here in West Cork using dangerous, divisive language about castrating rapists and wounding intruders, you’d wonder where our collective sense of decency has gone in these strange, unsettling times?
And who is going to lead us to a place where we are listen- ing to the better angels of our nature, rather than our very worst, most base instincts?
Well, dog gone it!
ACCORDING to author Tommy Tomlinson writing in The Washington Post this week, the dog is humankind’s greatest invention. He says that the wheel and the lightbulb come close but ‘nothing in human creation has been as essential and adaptable as the countless descendants of the ancient grey wolf.’
Listen, I’ve never been a dog person. I hated them when I was a child, was petrified in fact, and now they just do my head in by constantly fouling the streets in our estate. But perhaps I need to reconsider it.
The strange companionship between man and his so-called best friend started between somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago, scientists believe, with wolves being eventually tamed after many centuries of hanging around the human encampments.
At some point, one of these wolves came up for a belly rub and ever since we’ve been experimenting with different ways to breed and tame them, whether for work, or company or protection.
The most interesting theory about the relationship is that humans domesticated the dog somewhere around the same time the Neanderthals died out.
‘Maybe the dog was the key advantage in the triumph of humankind,’ says Tomlinson.
An interesting theory, and if we can evolve a species that can bring its own pooper scooper around and clean up after itself, then I’m all up for getting on board.
Two homes to go to?
REGULAR readers of this column may have noticed that I have a weakness for stupid property shows. There, I said it. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? In recent weeks, in an effort to switching off my consciousness after a day in the office and an evening of childrearing, I’ve been watching a lot of Cheap European Homes on RTÉ Player which features various wild-eyed Irish people, plastered in sun cream, drooling over knock-off bargains in sleepy European villages, led by the inordinately cheerful Maggie Molloy.
Recently my nine-year-old son tuned in with us, to observe what weird nonsense his parents indulged in at the end of a work day. After a few minutes getting to understand the format and the aim of the game – this one needs too much work, this one is perfect but five thousand miles away from civilisation, this one is just right – he turned to me and said ‘why on earth would anyone want a second house?’
Out of the mouths of babes, eh?
How to ‘wine’ a marathon
I WAS at a wedding last weekend for the first time in a few years and it was the first time I really felt like one of the aunties and uncles generation. It was tough going, watching the youngsters limbo dancing on the dancefloor to Toto’s Africa while my knees were starting to give way underneath me.
What was even worse was the four-day hangover that followed, something that I was only aware of before in
Dylan Moran stand-up comedy routines and now seems to have reached my door. By Thursday, I was still in a paranoid heap after what was, by standards of old, an extremely light session. It’s a swift sherry and off to bed early for me next time, I think.
Some fellas seem to have a better idea of how to deal with hangovers, namely cutting them off before they have a chance to even begin. A case in point is wine merchant Tom Gilbey who completed the London Marathon last weekend after tasting a different wine at every mile along the route. The 52-year old had to guess the country of origin, grape variety and vintage as he staggered around the course, and he got seven perfectly right and 14 partially correct.
I suppose if we can have wild swimming and mindful walking then why not ‘wet exercise’?
*****
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