I keep thinking about masks. Not the medical kind - though God knows we've had enough of those - but the sort that suggests you've something to hide. The ICE agents currently stalking America's streets wear them constantly.

You know that feeling when you're on a night out and one of the guests whom you've always relied upon, who's perhaps picked up the bill before, who's told great stories, suddenly stands up, begins ranting about buying the neighbour's garden shed, ...

There's a particular quality to silence you only learn when your offspring leaves home. It’s not the absence of noise but the unfamiliar silence that invades when the parenting purpose has been removed.

There's something strangely reassuring about scams. Not the losing-your-life-savings part, but the timeless persistence of deceit.

Imagine a scene in a beige-carpeted office in Belfast, a civil servant clutches her chest and crumples to the floor. Her colleague rushes over.  "What happened?" he gasps.

January usually arrives in the west of Ireland like an uninvited spinster aunt, cold, judgmental, and determined to make you feel terrible about yourself.

I have a friend, let’s call her Mary, for the sake of anonymity.

The Irish have a keen nose for gratuitous oppression, honed by eight centuries under someone else’s rule. We recognise it, even if camouflaged as self-defence or necessity.

Just when we thought the American political saga had reached its maximum absurdity, the Trump administration has managed, with barely concealed sleight of hand and a wry smile, to turn the First Amendment into both a delayed Fourth of July ...

The whole point of Christmas is to step back from life's daily grind and to remember that we are not machines, but people who need each other, CONOR McGUIRE

I was browsing online recently and came across the new National Security Strategy document just published by the Trump administration.

I came across an RTÉ archive recently, Gay Byrne no less, interviewing a 93-year-old man sitting in a television studio in Dublin, his hands still, his voice steady as a metronome. Jack Campbell. Dubliner. Last of the Old Contemptibles.

There's a particular grimness to discovering that Ireland has developed its own strain of far-right extremism.

There's a particular species of politician who discovers a problem only when it threatens to jeopardise their career. They wake up one morning, check the polls, and suddenly the blindfold falls away.

If you are of a certain vintage, you may have had a realisation, probably somewhere between your first pair of reading glasses and the unsettling knowledge that the last crop of Gardaí look like schoolboys, when you stop giving a damn what anyone ...

Should you so choose, with a single search online, you can view a photograph of Abraham Lincoln looking like death chewing a wasp.

With a little searching, you'll find a photo on the internet from Sharm el-Sheikh that tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump's much-trumpeted Middle East peace deal.

We are witnessing a particular species of Irish government farce unfolding in the grey corridors of Leinster House where millions of taxpayers' money evaporates.

You know that moment at a dinner when someone's had too much wine and starts saying increasingly unhinged things, and everyone else develops a sudden fascination with their napkins? The decent thing would be to intervene, to gently suggest perhaps ...

So here's a thing. Apparently, I'm menopausal. Yes, me. Despite having never possessed the requisite plumbing for such an endeavour, I am now, according to medical fashion, experiencing my very own version of The Change.