I went to a school where a visiting youth group used Sellotape to show us how sex before marriage decreased our value, where we sat through interminably long Masses and where prayers were said as a priority before we got to any other business in the morning. It’s a typical education for many on this island but one which, looking back, I can see was inherently problematic.
I’m becoming profoundly upset by the news. That’s an embarrassing admission for me to make as a journalist, but there it is. At least several times a week and probably more than that news stories and content are bringing me to tears.
I’m as excited as anyone to see Cillian Murphy play another man of few words in the screen adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival.
Free childcare it’s something of which Northern Ireland parents could only dream. And with the return of Stormont and the positive vibes that seem to be emerging from that long-beleaguered building, such a fantasy seemed like it was finally almost close enough to touch.