The Anti Room

“I DON’T KNOW which of us is worse off,” said my aunt. She felt growing up that she had no choice but to marry and have children. “But I look at you and my girls and you have so many choices that it must be difficult to make one and not feel you are missing [...]

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When I moved to Dublin in 2007, it didn’t take me long to find Ryan Tubridy on my radio dial. What I hadn’t banked on was just how difficult it would be to avoid him everywhere else. To English friends, I used to describe Mr T , in terms of reach at least, as ‘like [...]

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A very brave girl recently posted her experiences of being bullied on the SpunOut.ie website under the heading “True life: Even if this only helps one person, it will still be worth it.” She describes a lifetime filled with sadness and horror. Tormented by bullies from the age of four, she felt unable to turn [...]

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All the talk of Obama’s visit to Ireland today, brings me back to the evening of his inauguration, January 20th 2009, when Himself came home to find me on the kitchen floor. On my knees. Surrounded by the usual mish-mash of baby changing paraphernalia – sudocreme, wipes, tiny nappies and – ahem – masking tape. SKY [...]

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I can now confirm from personal experience that Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl, but she didn’t have a lot to say. Well, that’s not entirely fair. She didn’t say a lot to me individually, but the fact that she took time to stop to talk at all was remarkable.  I was lucky enough [...]

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Every Republican under the sun, it seems, wants the Queen to apologise for the whole enchilada from Strongbow’s invasion of Ireland and the manky spud famine to Bloody Sunday (Part I & Part II). But won’t Elizabeth Windsor suffer enough faced with a barrage of Irish c’lebs from Amanda Brunker to Lorraine Keane − whose contribution to Irish culture has been to tell motorists to avoid the Kimmage crossroads [...]

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Quick: where were you when the Pope came to Ireland? Me, I’ve got no idea. Before I’m excommunicated, I should point out that’s because I’m not Irish, and wasn’t living in Ireland at the time of the papal visit. Ask me, though, where I was for the Queen’s Silver Jublilee (two years before all Irish [...]

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Orla Shanaghy asks why, when it comes to gender issues, Irish telly is still in black and white…. It was with great reluctance that I turned on my TV last night to watch the latest episode of RTE’s The Frontline. Not because I wasn’t interested in the topics (I was), or because Pat Kenny and [...]

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According to the UN Global Report on Women in Tourism the tourism sector, one of the most significant generators of wealth and employment globally, is also credited with providing valuable income-generation and career opportunities for women. In contrast with other sectors women are almost twice as likely hold positions as employers in tourism and the leadership possibilities span [...]

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THE four-letter word I most dislike begins with a ‘C’. We’ve already had that debate on this blog. But the most abused and misused four-letter word I can think of is ‘rape’. There was a time, not too long ago, where it wasn’t considered polite to mention rape in conversation. Too raw, too politically-charged, too [...]

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