There’s an ad for RTE out at the moment. Four young, clean-limbed, reasonable, middle-class, college-educated lads are sitting together watching a TV screen. You can’t see what’s on but the lads are having the craic. They’re extremely pleased with the fare. One of them even uses the phrase “gone through the roof” in his effort to convince us that RTE is great. Then they all laugh again, heartily, some more heartily than others. I wonder if the likely lads are thinking of “Winning Streak” as they ruminate on the fabulousness of it all. “Winning Streak” always features old people. I’ve nothing against old people, you understand. They’re always old. They buy lots of lotto tickets. This is a perfect show for old people because all they have to do for money is choose a number from 1 to 5. That’s not quite true. Now and again they are asked to press a button that sits atop a kind of pedestal well within arm’s reach. They like being asked to do simple things for money. It’s only fair. Their arthritis won’t allow anything more challenging. But wait…it’s not so easy. They need to consult their families in the audience. They can’t decide which of the numbers 1 to 5 they want. Ooh, it’s so agonising; what if they pick 3 and it turns out to be 2 or 4 behind that yoke that turns? That would be maddening. So close! But it’s okay. Ask the family… because with three or more people on the case, you’ve a much better chance of guessing that elusive number. Phew, glad we brought the family now. You stick it out ( it moves at a blistering pace) and you might get to spin the wheel. You have to spin...

From Las Vegas, Nevada, Andre Agassi grew up hating tennis. His father obsessed about it. He watched American soldiers play it in Iran as a child and served as a ball boy. He later boxed and never backed down from a fight, once knocking a fellow motorist out cold in a violent act of road rage. He also pointed a handgun at a driver, reaching across the young Andre with it and laughing afterwards, warning his son not to tell his mother. Andre’s father Mike forced Andre to eat, drink, and sleep tennis, even improvising a machine called the Dragon to spit tennis balls at him from on high forcing him to hit harder and earlier. Anyone who plays tennis knows about that horrible bounce that attacks your neck and makes you curse your feet. Mike’s plan was for Andre to hit 2,500 balls in a day which equates to nearly a million in a year. It was all about the tennis. Andre once tried to play soccer; his father appeared on the sideline in a rage and threw Andre’s gear at the coach. He was never allowed play soccer again. It was tennis, tennis, tennis! Andre Agassi hates tennis. People think he means he hates tennis today. But Agassi repeatedly insists: I hate tennis. The obvious question is, Why play it then? The reason is he can do nothing else because he was never allowed do anything else, like soccer. He knows nothing else. But it wasn’t his choice. His opinion never mattered. His father would have become enraged had Andre ever refused to play. Then came the rebellion. He wore a mohawk at tennis school and ran away at least once. Nick Bollettieri, his tennis mentor and nemesis for a time, tries...

We walked to the far end of the beach. Here, old ladies lay flat and untied their bras and big-bellied men walked about as if in search of some artefacts in the sand. Across the little bay was the forest and just below it the cemetery of dead trees standing grey and erect and silent. A dog barked nonsensical at the little waves, his mistress sitting there but allowing the din. The sand was the colour of weathered bone and some of the rocks provided a relief of beige and brown and even white but nothing else was white. Even the clouds appeared blemished by use or stained with blown dust. And there was heat-of-sun enough to allow for a momentary illusion of holiday. I felt it on my left and whenever I turned that way all I could see was its light glittering on the water and the low, stretched watercolour peninsula that appeared to bleed into the sea at points where all was monochrome. Half-way along its length, plumes of barrelly smoke rose first straight up and then to the right, becoming cloud-like and feeding a line of darkish cotton pushing it further along to the west. There were two others still visible on the strand where I sat. First, the woman lay on her back now, reading a book that hung suspended from her right hand. Though she had bony knees and slender calves her belly was swollen and could have been that of a man of her age partial to beer. It was disproportionate and dimpled over her ribs. She wore rolled-up blue jeans above the knee and a striped, multi-coloured bikini bra offensively bright and just about sufficient to house her large, flaccid breasts. Her hair, like her stomach,...

Deserted beach front clapboard housepaint peels Grey stones, white froth, seabirds Along the shore; Flotsam dreams of plastic bottle broken- Backed over fish head eyes astill; To see an emboldened sky cry Silver droplets clean the bottle once and for all.   A man with beard and cigarette looks on – Aghast. R.H....

Time the Healer goes forth With all aplomb; Exudes the shape of lion and tiger brawn. And jungle palm frond Whipped in windy blast; The pond fills up with muddy-watered brim. A shack to house the hunters ‘Neath a cliff And green-leafed brazen boys and men attend Who Ambite to dredge their souls. For all delude Their mothers yarn on days all gladly come....

Clearly our options are somewhat narrow; The living of our time and its shrouded jargon – A landscape’s load, burden of salt Preserves the poisoned Sweat of a nation. A glimmer of sanded gloaming; Wretched blurred figures approach With black hearts poised A finger hovers o’er the town beyond....

It was a decidedly wet Sunday afternoon, and Alan boldly resolved to add “weather forecasts” to his extensive list of untrustworthy things, which already included such deceitful knaves as “Urban Dictionary” and “Nick Clegg”. He sat dripping on an uncomfortable park bench, watching the world go by. Confucius sat beside him, pawing at said bench despondently. The bench was painted an ugly shade of green, except for where they appeared to have run out of paint and used an uglier shade of teal instead. Confucius was not impressed. ‘Well, this is just wonderful, isn’t it?’ Alan commented. ‘Woof,’ Confucius replied. ‘I wish I had found my umbrella,’ Alan said to nobody in particular. ‘Woof,’ Confucius agreed. ‘I mean, it must be in the apartment somewhere, mustn’t it?’ Alan mused. ‘It can’t be down the back of the sofa, can it, because if it was I would have found it when I found my shoes. I don’t know why I didn’t just put it in the umbrella stand.’ ‘Woof,’ Confucius reminded him. ‘Well, yes, that’s true,’ Alan admitted. ‘In that case, I should get an umbrella stand as soon as possible.’ They fell silent once more. The rain started to lighten. ‘At last,’ Alan murmured. The rain worsened again immediately. ‘Damn,’ Alan muttered. He glanced up at the tree beneath which they sat. He wasn’t even sure if it constituted a tree. It had about five spindly branches and leaves were scarcer than penguins in the Australian Outback. Hailstones beat through it like bullets through a handkerchief. Alan sighed. Confucius sneezed. Suddenly there was an elderly man sitting there beside them. Alan blinked. In his experience, elderly men usually walked at the approximate speed of a dying slug – except when they were crossing roads,...