News Opinion

PAUL HOPKINS: Men, when it comes to the long summer and the shorts of it …

By Kilkenny Now 20th July 2020 0

Amid all the madness, and sadness, that is Covid-19, there has been one redeeming factor —  it has not been a bad summer so far, and, though the outlook, is, typically, rather mixed, let us count our blessings. The Irish summer is a vagary onto itself, our reaction to it even more vagarious: when it’s […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Why I’m in no hurry to go back to the pub

By Kilkenny Now 29th June 2020 0

My late father said to me once that there were no “real pubs” left in Ireland. Not so, I chided, and began a litany of some of our more renowned watering holes. My mother nodded her head as I reeled off pub after pub and, when I was up at around a score or so, […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Madeleine and me, and a feeling as old as life …

By Kilkenny Now 22nd June 2020 Post a comment

The imposition that is Covid-19 throws up many moments for reflection and self-censuring, not always necessarily a good thing for the soul. I find myself at my most reflective. It wasn’t today or yesterday I saw 60, so I’m now officially old. My beautiful granddaughter Madeleine, aged just 20 months, is testament to that. Life […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Not just on Father’s Day do modern dads show their true emotions

By Kilkenny Now 15th June 2020 0

It’s been long a given that there’s a whole generation of the New Man out there. They use moisturiser, they stroke the cat, they have women friends, they make brown bread, and they clip their toenails on a regular basis. But they also workout regularly and are conscious of diet and anti-oxidants (which had not […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Racist Ireland indictment exposes ignorance wrapped in a threadbare shroud

By Kilkenny Now 9th June 2020 0

While we are, as a society, noted for our welcoming nature, every so often, and more often of late, we find ourselves badly wanting when it comes to being the land of Cead Mile Failte. Racism is a reality here. We may not see an out-and-out rightwing swing and inbred hatred, as in the US, […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Life in the time of coronavirus: Let’s not consign all old people to Ga Ga land …

By Kilkenny Now 2nd June 2020 0

We might like to think that those in the autumn of their years have never had it so good. Thanks to advancements in nutrition and medicine, not to mention those (no thanks!) elective cosmetic treatments, our picture of ageing has changed radically in the past decades. In my lifetime, life expectancy has risen from 69 […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Life in the time of coronavirus: Africa Rising needs your help

By Kilkenny Now 25th May 2020 Post a comment

Few corners of the world have escaped the devastation of Covid-19. One of the biggest mistruths about the rogue microbe is that it treats all its victims equally, discriminating nowhere. While people of all backgrounds and dispositions are hit by Covid-19, it is those souls in the lower socio-economic brackets who, with the elderly, are […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Life in the time of coronavirus … I’m fine, honest, but I’d love a bit of human flesh

By Kilkenny Now 11th May 2020 0

Despite seven or so weeks of isolation, we are surrounded by bodies —  lone bodies, bodies from afar, bodies on your daily constitutional walk to be avoided, bodies of youths hanging out in groups, bodies in lines outside shops, bodies flattened on screens and, above all, bodies of dead loved ones, and of health workers […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Life in the time of coronavirus: More to home-schooling than the three Rs

By Kilkenny Now 5th May 2020 0

So, the lockdown continues … with scientists now cautioning against the re-opening of schools after findings suggest children could be as infectious as adults. Studies, by the team of leading German virologist Christian Drosten — and teams at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US and the Shenzhen Centre for Disease Control […]

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PAUL HOPKINS: Life in the time of coronavirus: Finding our other selves while living in lockdown

By Kilkenny Now 27th April 2020 0

Let’s park aside the fact that this time of living with the coronavirus ain’t going to end any time soon; that when the world emerges from lockdown it will be a different world for some time to come, in that in the coming months we might have restaurants but no music festivals, offices but no […]