IN THE Sunday Tribune (November II) Workers' Party press officer Tony Heffernan tried to explain away Tomas Mac Giolla's demented ravings in North Korea by suggesting that the North Korean English-language newsspaper, the Pyongyang Times, from which the Trib was quoting, might have mis-translated Mac Giolia's reemarks.
The local Photographer was lining them up: the local party activists, the councillors, the two TDs and the Taoiseach. It was Friday November 9 and Garret FitzGerald was beginning his tour of the country to explain the National Plan to the people of Ireland.
A source so reliable that I'm not sure it wouldn't be a mortal sin to doubt it tells me that Bishop Jeremiah Newman of Limerick has gone the ecclesiastical equivalent of ape-shit over the case of Cornelius Sheehan, the man who is seeking to have a charge of bigamy brought against the woman who he used to believe was his wife.
THE PHOTO ON THE RIGHT shows two photographers and a spectator standing outside Bailieboro courthouse. The photographers are watching the gate at the side of the courthouse. They have been watching it for hours. It is about 1O.15pm on Friday October 19.
A FEW years back I was being cross-examined during a criminal trial in Dublin when I noticed an unkempt man at the front of the court. The man clearly felt deeply emotionally involved in the exchanges between myself and the fleshy lawyer who, I had been warned by impressionable people, was a hot-shot brief capable of demolishing even as formidable and transparently honest a witness as myself.
I SEE THAT Conor Cruise 0 'Brien has been sacked by the/Observetr. Of course it hasn't been described as a "sacking". "Mutual agreement", "parrting of the ways", all that guff. Reeminds me of the rock singer who left a band in Dublin and told Hot Press it had been on account of "musical differences". When I met him drunk (both of us) in the Baggot and asked him to elaborate he explained: "I was musical, they were different."
Rosc Around The Clock
FIRST THERE WAS THE President of Ireland, Patrick J. Hillery. He was being led around Rosc by its chairman Patrick J. Murphy. They came to a large number of sods of turf which some arrtist had put there as a work of art. Both Patrick J's looked down at it, neither spoke and then Patrick J., Murphy looked at Patrick J. Hillery and said "Turf." Just one word. "Turf." Patrick J. Hillery continued to look at the turf but he didn't say anything.
THERE is nothing in the report of the British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on the de Lorean scam which was not forseen back in 1979 when the Detroit dope dealer was pushing his project in the North.
Mark Brennock with the Irish troops in Lebanon
EIGHT AM IN TIBNIN AND THE SOUND OF THE PIPE BAND playing "Twenty Men from Dublin Town'. echoed through the prefabricated billets of Camp Shamrock, making sleep impossible for those who had not yet emerged from under the mosquito nets.
IN JANUARY THIS YEAR a meeting was held between the senior garda officers innvolved in the Nicky Kelly case and the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP wanted to know why John Fitzpatrick had not been arrested and charged with the Sallins train robbery which had taken place eight years earlier. The meeting discussed whether it was now possible to charge Fitzpatrick with the robbery.