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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.

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Billy Keane Opinion All it took was a three-day break in west Kerry to solve the mystery of the origins of life on Earth

I’m in Dingle doing research on your behalf. So far, I’ve researched pubs. Strange, isn’t it, that a barman makes for the pub on his holiday. I wonder if busmen travel by car when they go on vacation.

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Billy Keane Opinion What’s in a name? Well, supposedly €69 if it’s a certain Liverpool star on a young fan’s jersey

The Whyte family came to see us from the Valley of the Nire, and not a pyramid nor an obelisk to be seen there.

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Billy Keane Opinion Special times sharing ice cream with the grandson, and fishing for mullet with a sliced pan as bait

The happiest and messiest ice-cream eaters are small boys and small girls. The kids make the most of every lick. Us big kids horse back the ice cream, but the children turn the eating and drinking of an ice-cream into an event. The kids wait for the melting before they rightly get stuck in. Maybe the faster melting of ice cream is a sign of global warming.

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Billy Keane Opinion Rain in Spain and red noses on display as far as the eye can see – it’s summer, just as we like it

I hope today is as hot here as it is in Spain. The forecast wasn’t just for ordinary hot, it was for frying-eggs-on-stones hot. I suppose the eggs will be done sunny side up. I wish I could stick in a funny face emoji to celebrate that excellent hot weather joke. Ha-ha will have to do.

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Billy Keane Opinion It’s wrong that a man going into a bank with a mask comes out with less money than he went in with

My friend Kevin’s knees were at him. Kevin needed two new knees, but he wouldn’t be able to walk if the two knees were done at the same time. He does his best on one knee, and part of his rehab must be cracking jokes.

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Billy Keane Opinion Publicans must take on the role as ambassadors for the checking of vaccination documentation

We knew the news was not going to be good, but when the bad news came, we were shocked.

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Billy Keane Opinion Part of me died when the music and acting stopped due to Covid, but I believe in the resurrection

The 54-and-a-half-year-old lady was in the queue for her second shot. That’s the vaccine. She hasn’t done Sambuca since UCC.

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Billy Keane Opinion The vaccine not only reveals a woman’s age, it may help hopeless romantics in the love department

The Man Who Knows Everything got the second shot of the AstraZeneca and he’s back in the pub. “I would have made up a batch myself,” he says, “only I didn’t have the time.”

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Billy Keane Opinion Publicans were aching to reopen, and now they can’t bend down to tie their shoelaces

There isn’t a part of me that isn’t sore. It’s not that I’m complaining. Whenever someone says “It’s not that I’m complaining”, don’t we all know what’s coming next?

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Billy Keane Opinion It’s OK to be nervous – this virus doesn’t play fair – but I can’t wait for that first pint with my friends

He had emigrated to London and his first job was labouring for a hugely successful Irish builder who went to England with a hammer and a tenner.

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Billy Keane Opinion The greatest inventions soften peas and slake thirst, but I will do my duty and trust the experts

I am only putting the vaccine in third place. The invention of Lucozade Zero beats all comers.

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Billy Keane Opinion As the pubs get ready to open after the longest dry spell ever, let’s talk about sex... maybe

There are nearly as many media agony aunts and sex therapists now as there are celebrity chefs.

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Billy Keane Opinion Púca statue is far from sinister and, if nothing else, it will send more tourists to its host town

That pup of a Púca is at it again. Causing trouble he is. There’s a statue of the Púca himself supposed to be going up in Ennistymon. Or is the Púca an “itself”? Whatever he is or isn’t, watch out – the Púca is about.