Can the choc ice be saved?

Comedy is a very personal thing; oftentimes what makes you laugh might get no reaction at all from me.

The same applies to comedians –while some people love the likes of Des Bishop or Deirdre O’Kane, I have to admit that I don’t find them funny at all. The 2 Johnnies are another example. Normally I can take or leave them, but this week, for once, I am totally on their side.

Last week, news broke that HB were getting rid of the beloved choc ice after more than sixty years because “it is no longer as popular as it was”. The 2 Johnnies were so horri-

Gaelic football musings

fied that they launched a petition to save the iconic ice cream.

Michael Healy-Rae, the very popular Kerry TD, also expressed disappointment at the decision and wondered is there anything sacred anymore. He also wondered if the Greens were involved in any way, but it seems they had no hand or part in it as they have already done enough damage to rural Ireland. Anyway, hats off to the 2 Johnnies; if they manage to save the choc ice, I’ll be the first to buy them one each. The choc ice was always a favourite of mine, so here’s hoping HB will have a rethink and give it a reprieve.

For the second week in a row those of us who hail from the Galway side of our boundary with Roscommon are again licking our sporting wounds.

This time, it was our footballers who committed the cardinal sin of coughing up possession in the last few seconds of their game with Armagh, conceding a freekick from which the Northerners scored the winning point. The ‘reward’ for Galway is a derby battle with Mayo this Sunday up in Pearse Stadium, and if ever there was a fixture fraught with danger, this is it.

On the other side of our local border, the Rossies too are licking their wounds after being pipped by Kildare last Sunday. But a trip to Cork this weekend for them doesn’t seem too much of a daunting prospect. This weekend promises to be a pivotal one in this year’s football championship and I can’t wait to see who gets through to the quarter-finals proper.

Before I leave the Galway/Armagh game, I must say the request to move the match to Croke Park looks pretty foolish now – the less than 7,000 attendance in Carrick would hardly fill the bars in GAA HQ!

all very well if they had a car! When I asked this lady who would foot the bill if we had one locally, she said she would be more than willing to sell her house and pay for their place in a retirement home (emphasising that she was not looking for something for nothing).

Even when I put on my politician’s hat and said the powers-thatbe would be more likely to try to house young couples with children, she told me that she had said to her local council that she would be willing do a deal and let them use her house to take a family off the waiting list.

I have to admit that when we spoke first, I thought the idea of a retirement home was mad. However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense – especially for people like this reader. When I suggested that she should speak to local councillors about a possible solution, she said she is blue in the face from ringing them, and she never gets a reply. Now of course we already have a major housing crisis in Ireland, so maybe the will to build retirement homes for the elderly isn’t there, but for people who are amongst the most vulnerable in our society, surely it could be worth a study.

I looked up such places in England