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Billy Keane Opinion Years as a barman taught me not to engage with someone who has a story too long to go into

The walled garden was in full bloom. It was the sort of a place where you would expect to find ‘Adam loves Eve’ carved into a tree. The man and his mother sat sipping apple juice in the gardens of Tintern Abbey in Co Wexford.

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Billy Keane Opinion Anxiety of an expectant grandad is hard to take. I’d the morning sickness without any drink

These are the weeks in June when the summer suddenly bursts out all over. The hedgerows on the roads barely travelled are a resurrection of wildflowers, in these the best days of their short but glorious lives.

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Billy Keane Opinion How Google Maps sent the art of conversation in new direction on our information highways

Hardly anyone stops to ask for directions anymore. It’s all sat-nav now or Google Maps. Connections are impersonal. The days of the extrovert are numbered. Long live the talkers.

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Billy Keane Opinion If Trump gets back in, there’s no chance he’ll nuke us – not when he owns a five-star hotel here

The Man Who Knows Everything (TMWKE) was certain he was right. “Ye’re after causing terrible trouble in the world,” he said, “what with pandemics, wars and the boiling of the bacon separate to the cabbage.”

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Billy Keane Opinion Man-eating tigers, cheetahs and polar bears have nothing on the gouger gander from Ballyfinboy

The Serengeti is home to voracious lions and cheetahs. What’s left of the Arctic is populated by ferocious polar bears. Indian tigers are man-eaters and the Amazon is full of nasty piranha. We too have our predators in rural Ireland.

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Gallery

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Billy Keane on the legacy of John B Keane: ‘Even though Dad didn’t last the test of time, his work did’

Dad — or John B Keane, as he is known to you all — moved on 20 years ago, on May 30, 2002 to be exact.

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Billy Keane Opinion One day you’re brandishing a pike on Vinegar Hill, the next you’re cheering on the English

The singing of God Save the Queen got me going. I was in the GPO in 1916 when Dublin was rubble, and up on Vinegar Hill in 1798 with a pike in my hand.

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Billy Keane Opinion The Alsatian crept under the fence. I raced for the car for fear of a terrible mutilation

This story of the near mutilation of me begins and ends at the Listowel Horse Fair. I took a wander through the horses. The big man holding the small horse said there were far too many people wearing yellow coats these days, and you wouldn’t know a garda from a man.

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Billy Keane Opinion Vicky Phelan may be tired at times, but she is never, ever weak

Vicky Phelan came home yesterday – she’s Vicky Kelly here in Mooncoin.

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Billy Keane Opinion You’re no one around here if you haven’t caught the Covid – there’s even a virus snobbery

The wan fridge bulb has finally shone through the gap left by the removal of the boxes of prawn skewers, duck rolls and various party platters. It was a Newgrange moment to welcome in 2022.

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Billy Keane Opinion Rejected by his family, abandoned by the State but adopted by an entire community

Jerry Ryan kept our town clean for a good many years. He ran to the shop for the older ladies, gave a hand in the bog, whitewashed, babysat and, if he did take a drink too many, most of us knew why.

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Billy Keane Opinion Vicky McCarthy Keane is my woman of the year – Vicky Phelan, my woman of every year

We all have our own private worries. The writer’s fear of exposure to ridicule and failure is one of the worst of the lot.

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Billy Keane Opinion I was charmed by the telly bigger than a rugby player, but herself might have had other thoughts

The televisions were wonder walls. Some of the big ones cost a couple of grand and a nice bit with it. Televisions are one of the few remnants from the old imperial system of measuring based on feet and inches.

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Billy Keane Opinion Memories of Mam, Dad and their customers strengthen my resolve to keep this old house standing

The alarm from Horan’s excellent health food store has been playing away on a loop. I get to thinking it must be the Omega 3 Thieves or the Cod Liver Oil Gang. A false alarm, it was. No harm done.

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Billy Keane Opinion I can be slow sometimes. I spray aftershave on my hand. There’s no smell. I have a dose of Covid

There was a suggestion the bin was knocked by a huff and puff urban fox, but it was a human that did it – it’s a well-known fact foxes don’t drink gut-tearing cheap cans of lager. You know the type of amber fire, 12 cans for a fiver.

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Billy Keane Opinion What I wouldn’t give for just one more song from my old pal Eric – ‘one dog, one bone’

It was the end for my boyhood friend. He was Harry Potter, Batman, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, all in the one man.

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Billy Keane Opinion My centurion godson, Jonathan: fearless, kind and honest, but tough too and very smart

The godson was a pool shark when he was eight. Even then he had the eye. The godson was a plotter and a planner.

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Billy Keane Opinion When even bumpkins are eating pumpkins, you know it’s time for an IPA – or perhaps a pale ale

When someone starts a sentence with “I’m sorry, but”, you know the person isn’t one bit sorry and a desperate giving out is on the way.

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Billy Keane Opinion Brendan was getting us ready for grief, and now we’re grieving the loss of a man who made us smile

Brendan Kennelly didn’t beat Alzheimer’s, but he recited poetry almost to the end. Small victories are the great glories of wars lost before they begin.

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Billy Keane Opinion The carer is a secret saint who has sacrificed a lot to keep people alive, so please get the jab for her sake

The Delphi oracle in me spoke out not long after the chance and tricky encounter with the man in the queue. This is the Delphi in Greece we’re talking about, although many is the wise word that has been spoken by the Mayo Delphi. Here’s the wisdom.

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Billy Keane Opinion The big winner of Budget Bingo is an 80-year-old publican with a baby and another child under eight

I usually pick the brains of some lad sitting on a high stool to help me write the annual column on the Budget, but seeing as we are not allowed to seat customers at the counter, I have to write the story of Budget 2022 all by myself.

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Billy Keane Opinion There isn’t much sex here this week, but it still might be best to move on immediately if you’re not able for it

The Woman Who Hasn’t Had Sex For 39 Years is now The Woman Who Hasn’t Had Sex for 41 Years.

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Billy Keane Opinion For those of us used to kicking old payphones, video chats with the grandkids are a modern marvel

The way we ask people to leave our company seems very polite.

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Billy Keane Opinion The stories I’m told in the pub prove that words are horrid important – and that’s no BS

Today is the last day of the Listowel Races of 2021. Is this the last Covid races?

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Billy Keane Opinion Even through the darkness of illness, a spark can be found in us all if we look hard enough for it

The person I was meeting came in with two packets of biscuits. I often confide in myself: “That’s it.” I sighed, thinking: “I’ll be here all day.”

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Billy Keane Opinion Croke Park on All-Ireland final day is really not the place for drat, golly, jeepers – or crochet

The All-Ireland football final between Tyrone and Mayo takes place today in Croke Park. Saturday games break with the tradition of playing our All-­Ireland finals on Sundays.

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Billy Keane Opinion It was the sight of a spiky conker that brought on the Pre-Races Tension – nearly time for Listowel

I spotted a conker, all prickly and ripe. Not that anyone would go eating a mahogany conker. You wouldn’t have a tooth left in your head after eating hard conkers, or horse chestnuts, not to be confused with the chestnuts roasting on an open fire in the Christmas song or the water chestnuts much used in Chinese takeaways.

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Billy Keane Opinion Three vital questions you have to ask when you’re looking for an extra pair of hands around the farm

The farmer was looking for a helper. Farm labourers are scarce. The old system of big families working on family farms is long gone.

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Billy Keane Opinion Incident of the woman who stayed in bed for 40 years brings pirates and Fine Thick Men to mind

This is some of the story of the woman from Taunton, in England, who stayed in bed for 40 years. The reason she stayed in bed for 40 years was because her doctor told her not to get up until he called back. She had the flu and the doctor never came back, so she stayed put. The woman was 34 at the time.

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Billy Keane Opinion Zappone’s party caused more of a fuss than when Leo took his shirt off in public – and that’s legal

Leo is at home with the feet up after a 15-hour day when  the courier knocks at the door.