I’ll be honest with ye, I’ve spent the past decade or so treating January resolutions more like those broad recommendations the government might get from a citizen’s assembly. ‘Eat less cheese’ becomes ‘eat slightly different types of cheese.’ ‘Exercise more’ becomes ‘walk briskly to the fridge.’ Like the government, there are some I just ignored outright. But this year, something clicked.

The diet is going well. I’m back on the bike. I’m off the booze. For the first time in living memory, I’m actually sticking to the plan. My jeans are fitting better. I have energy. I’m sleeping like a baby. I’m finally the man I always wanted to be.

And isn’t it just typical: the precise moment I find some personal mojo, the very week I get my act together, the world, according to the Sunday panel on the Brendan O’Connor Show, is about to end.

I cut out the chocolate hobnobs and Trump announced he’s invading Greenland ‘whether they like it or not.’ I gave up buttered toast and NATO is on the verge of collapse. I’ve lost four pounds and gained the very real possibility of being vaporised by a Russian supersonic Oreshnik missile before I get to enjoy any of it. I didn’t even mention Iran or Venezuela.

I’m scrolling through the news while eating my sensible Odlums porridge (no honey, even less joy) and there’s the White House press secretary confirming that ‘utilising the US military is always an option’ against Denmark. Denmark! The lads that gave us Carlsberg and those nice butter cookies in the blue tin, not to mention all the Scandi Noir.

Forty-seven years on this earth, waiting for the moment I’d finally get my act together, and it coincides exactly with the unravelling of the post-war international order. The way this is going, I’ll be in peak physical condition just in time for the apocalypse.

It’s the hope that kills you. Well, that or the hypersonic missiles.

Good luck to the Kingdom

It’s been quite the weekend for small clubs with big notions. An Ghaeltacht, a club of 181 adult members out on the last toenail of West Kerry, won the All-Ireland intermediate football on Sunday. And Dingle, their sworn enemies five miles down the road, are in the senior final next week.

Two clubs from the same windswept peninsula, both in All-Ireland finals a week apart. Darragh Ó Sé wrote a lovely piece about it in the Irish Times, describing the ‘wildness’ of West Kerry and their four strands of identity: the scenery, the language, the traditional music, and the football. Very poetic. Very Kerry. No sign of humility.

In fairness to An Ghaeltacht, they waited 21 years for this after losing their senior final to Caltra back in 2004. And they have a Cork man, Aidan Walsh, in their ranks, which gives it a veneer of respectability. Walsh moved out west after falling for a Gaeltacht girl. They say he doesn’t understand a word of the team talks conducted entirely as Gaeilge, but sure, as long as he’s kicking the ball over the bar, who needs communication?

We in West Cork will be watching Dingle’s final next Sunday with interest. And we’ll be wishing them well because our appetites have been sated this year by the heroics of the Kilbrittain hurlers who, if you have been living under a rock, won the All-Ireland junior hurling last Saturday. As an Ardfield man, they would have been our mortal enemies growing up but when it comes to success on a national level even I can overcome my begrudgery. Are the celebrations still ongoing down there? I hope so.

The People’s Republic

Speaking of Cork people doing remarkable things the rest of us never heard about, there was a lovely detail revealed during the Taoiseach’s China trip last week. Micheál Martin and Xi Jinping were chatting in Beijing when it emerged they’d both read the same book as teenagers: The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich.

Voynich was born Ethel Boole in Cork. Her novel about Italian revolutionaries was a bestseller when it came out in 1895, then quietly disappeared from Western shelves while becoming absolutely massive in the Soviet Union and China. Tens of millions read it. She was the first female Irish author to sell over a million copies. And yet here at home, practically nobody has heard of her.

Xi read it during the Cultural Revolution after his family was banished to the countryside. Martin encountered it as a student in UCC, presumably during the sideburns and long hair revolution of the late 70’s when the notion of the People’s Republic Of Cork was first mooted. There’s something about that image, a Taoiseach and a Chinese president discovering common literary ground over a revolutionary tale from a Cork woman, that feels appropriately strange for 2026. And if Bertie could find his inner socialist, maybe Micheál can too?