@radiobrendan We are, as it’s said, shaped by our history; and certain past experiences define us more than others. This year, Ireland is gearing up to commemorate the centenaries of a couple of such ‘game-changing’ events. In general, they are viewed as...
@radiobrendan The on-line edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘sport’ as ‘an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment’. The amount of ‘physical...
@radiobrendan 2015. Best summed up as a year I’d largely like to scrap from the memory bank. Any time you lose a loved one is never easy; this is made even more difficult when it’s someone who left this earth way before her time, someone who had so much more to give....
@radiobrendan If you’re to take your lead from most Western —as well as Colombian— media, going to Venezuela these days without solid reasons is a very risky undertaking. Throw in a hotly contested and potentially era-ending national election, as we just had, and the...
@radiobrendan It was Benjamin Franklin who said that nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes. Some people, however, manage to find ways around the latter. As of yet, though, no one has managed to get the better of the former. For something so inevitable, that many of us give very little, if […]
@radiobrendan So another Rugby World Cup is put to bed and with it the team that has always been described as the globe’s greatest has officially cemented its number one status — for now at least. The New Zealand All Blacks’ triumph takes their World Cup winners...
@radiobrendan The Wrong Way approach to spirituality and such like has very much been in the contemporary science sphere. The closest thing to the belief that we have an immortal, incorporeal soul is the idea that the energy running through our living bodies continues in some...
@radiobrendan The bars/tiendas are stocking up. Replica jerseys of the competing nations are being sold on the street. There’s giddy excitement in the air. Yep, Rugby World Cup 2015 is almost upon us and Colombia is gearing up for it with gusto. OK, I might be in dreamland...
@radiobrendan In many ways there is a sense of inevitability to all of this. Although those who call the shots in both Colombia and Venezuela are pretty much from the same stock, the ideologies they (claim) to follow are far from similar. Considering socialist Venezuela’s...
@radiobrendan There is a poem by the late Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, entitled ‘Scaffolding’. In it, he explains how builders rely heavily on scaffolding to aid them in the early stages of construction. (OK, they may be able to build something without it, but...
