Seán Moncrieff: There’s a crushing pressure to be happy at ChristmasTry to remember many people aren’t Christmassy. So if they are a bit withdrawn or quiet, leave them beSat Dec 23 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: What is it with young people wearing shorts in the cold and rain?They obviously don’t watch the nine o’clock news. They’re all TikTok and Instagram and think the stuff the old people look at is irrelevantSun Dec 17 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: My cousin was cremated on the day of the riots. He’d have found a joke in there somewhereMy three cousins, all brothers, didn’t curse their genetic ill-fortune when cancer struck. They opted to remain themselves, to be funny and charming and tell storiesSun Dec 10 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: In Somalia, the creepy crawlies are the least of their worriesWith climate change having a catastrophic effect on the region, it is no wonder Somalis aren’t bothered by insects. It’s people they should be scared ofSun Dec 03 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: You’ve seen pictures of starving kids. But nothing prepares you for the up-close realityDid I have the mental fortitude to witness human depravity visited upon children in Somalia?Sun Nov 26 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: The only time I met Gerry Adams he told me he likes to trampoline nakedSinn Féin's former president is happy to project an image of cheerful dottiness these days. How much this island has changedSun Nov 19 2023 - 10:30
Seán Moncrieff: I don’t want to have hobbies. Even the word makes me shudderIt’s too jolly hockey sticks; it smells of organised fun, it’s prescriptive: a way of filling up the time between work and sleep, to keep your mind off the screaming pointlessness of existenceSun Nov 12 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Myself and Herself look like quitting Netflix. Daughter Number Four may be the only reason it staysNetflix may survive our streaming cull. But a reckoning is comingSun Nov 05 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I wasn’t one of the victimised boys in my school. I was luckyIn the all-boys schools I attended, all the teachers – overwhelmingly male and often priests – would be rated for their teaching ability and inclination for viciousnessSun Oct 29 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: We are like any other country now. Our difficulties are not specific to being IrishThat lack of self-confidence has dogged Ireland, not just in sport but in many aspects of our public lifeSun Oct 22 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Some people may never get over what happened to them during the pandemicAs a collective self-defence mechanism, we’ve tried to forget what it was like, but there are people among us who are forever scarredSun Oct 15 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I never cry. My generation of men had the tears bred out of usIf Ireland win the Rugby World Cup, you’ll see men in absolute floods. I look forward to itSat Oct 07 2023 - 21:00
Seán Moncrieff: I get lots of feedback from readers, but this letter was the most interesting (and embarrassing)It’s quite touching when people go to the trouble of using old-fashioned snail mailSun Oct 01 2023 - 05:00
Why do we feel the urge to tell other people what to do?I wonder how the people who voted against same-sex marriage feel nowSun Sept 24 2023 - 07:30
Seán Moncrieff: Eco-guilt is real. A lot of marketing claims product X will make you feel slightly less terribleSo many products or services make a claim for how environmentally responsible they are. Occasionally, those claims may even be trueSun Sept 10 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: What really happens to the clothes we return online? Figures from the UK and the US suggest that about 20 per cent of clothes ordered online are returnedSun Sept 03 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: The planet is officially boiling. Is this as good as it’s ever going to get for humankind?A hellishly hot family journey to Disneyland was a wake-up callSun Aug 27 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: My kids are quite open with me about their lives. Too open, sometimes The generation gap is far less now than it was between me and my parents at that ageSun Aug 20 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: My daughter is gay and I don’t care. I’m not uncaring. I’m thrilled for herI believed it would be more difficult road to take, it would be another thing to fret about after I had once fed a poisonous tropeSun Aug 13 2023 - 08:00
Dublin’s O’Connell Street represents a spectacular failure of what our Republic should beSean Moncrieff: The main street of our capital city is still the figurative and geographical heart of our country and it should be treasuredSun Aug 06 2023 - 06:30
Seán Moncrieff: A holiday with four men I’ve known since childhood means story after story after storyThere is something fundamental about the connection we have, something we don’t quite understand, nor do we particularly need toSun Jul 30 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Any meal that doesn’t involve pasta with red stuff sparks a battle with my daughterDaughter Number Three survived largely on ketchup for some years, and we’re in the middle of the Meal Wars with Daughter Number FourSun Jul 23 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Summer garden parties at the Áras are the very essence of lovelinessThis really is Ireland: where, even in the President’s house, no one is told to get outSun Jul 16 2023 - 05:00
What I learned from working in RTÉ and elsewhere: It’s not conspiracy, it’s incompetenceSean Moncrieff: People would often waste inordinate amounts of time speculating on what various department heads were ‘up to’. The main canteen was often rife with gossipSun Jul 09 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: My daughter has finally moved out, and the house is eerily quietIt’s not like we’ll never see my granddaughter again, but it will be a shame to miss the small daily changes as she grows upSun Jul 02 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Our overcrowded house is creaking at the seams It’s many months since Daughter Number One, the Boyfriend and Granddaughter Number One moved in, and there’s still no sign of them finding a place to rentSun Jun 25 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Snooty department stores make me want to yellIt’s the atmosphere. There’s a church-like reverence, mixed with a not inconsiderable dash of smugnessSun Jun 18 2023 - 06:30
Seán Moncrieff: You’ll never hear a straight man say: wow, those jeans fit you wellYou’ll never hear a straight man say: wow, those jeans fit you wellSun Jun 11 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: It’s fun to speculate but we haven’t a clue what our kids will becomeDaughter Number Three is still herself, the person she always was. Just a slightly different versionSun Jun 04 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I wish I was a carpenter or plumber. I’d be coining it nowPlumbers seem to exist, yet are impossible to find, simultaneously phasing in and out of existence: Schrödinger’s plumbersSun May 28 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I want an ice cream van at my funeral and a headstone with this one baffling wordI’m not sure why this word appeals to me. It might as well say here lies a pretentious smart-ass who embarrassed his family with his dying wishSun May 21 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: In the modern workplace, how do you know if your boss is mad with you?When I started in journalism, I received two types of feedback: shouting or no shoutingSun May 14 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Can ChatGPT write this column for me? The drivel it vomited up. Banal and cliche-ridden. No mention of Herself or the number-children. No woke virtue signallingSun May 07 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: How about, Herself suggested, we don’t get solar panels for the house and have an adventure insteadMy friend told me he and his wife resigned from their jobs, were going travelling for a bit, and would then figure out a plan. That sounded like a planSat Apr 29 2023 - 05:00
Those of us with houses and jobs like to think we deserve the lives we have. But isn’t it just blind luck?Seán Moncrieff: A young man approached me asking for a favour. Afterwards, he walked off, back to his worldSat Apr 22 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: Funeral sandwiches are part of the Irish grieving processWhen a loved one dies, there is a comfort in ordinariness. It’s not a time when you want any surprises or innovationsSun Apr 16 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: My sense of smell is abysmal. Herself? She is a super-smeller‘Not all her senses are boosted. After a lifetime of wearing glasses and contacts – and after some years of talking about it – she finally opted to get the eyes lasered’Sat Apr 08 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff on birthday party factories: Daughter Number Four is attending the same one as a fortnight ago If you time it right, you can arrive just in time for the tuneless Happy Birthday rendition, smile indulgently for two minutes and then leaveSat Apr 01 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: House-hunting in Dublin is like The Hunger Games. Many have simply given upWhat we have is analogous to an internal refugee problem, and it will take many years and imagination to fixSat Mar 25 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: The tendency to turn fiction into hard fact takes a darker turn onlineThere seems to be a growing willingness to prefer a more fantastical version of events over what’s evident, logical or likelySat Mar 18 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: ‘My daughter said I might be mildly traumatised. Her generation likes to throw around the T-word’My mind felt stuffed with everything I was told and everything I’d seen, to the extent that I found it difficult to answer the simple question: what was Ukraine like?Sat Mar 11 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: There’s nothing wrong with Irish trains. As long as you’re not going to Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan or west CorkGet on a train in Europe and you might meet the modern version of Bogart. Get on the train to Portarlington and you might see Ed SheerinSat Mar 04 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I tried to look as relaxed as a beardy old geezer surrounded by 400 20-something women can beI learned a lot from watching Daughter Number One perfrom a hilarious and absolutely filthy showSat Feb 25 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I saw a group of men at a service station who were not Irish and were all of ‘fighting age’How many other passers-by saw them and assumed they could pose a problem?Sat Feb 18 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: I’m a man. If I had periods I’d never shut up about itIf men had periods, the way we organise work and sport and life in general would be completely differentSat Feb 11 2023 - 06:11
Seán Moncrieff: Within living memory, children in Ireland were regarded as a burdenTheir feelings were irrelevant, and any expression of them was viewed as dysfunction or defianceSat Feb 04 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: All families have their difficulties. Bad marriages. Tragedy. Siblings that don’t get onWhy are the Irish so obsessed with the royal saga? Because we can identify with the family dramaSat Jan 28 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: It’s no wonder so many people choose to believe in a God, despite the lack of evidenceOur loves, our experiences and our actions, while significant to us, make little or no difference. That’s a terrifying thoughtSat Jan 21 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: No visiting. No visitors. Covid robbed us of a Christmas with the people we loveSanta-like, I spent Christmas Eve driving around Dublin and leaving presents outside front doorsSat Jan 14 2023 - 05:00
Seán Moncrieff: After a lifetime of it, I am addicted to busyness There’s an undeniable dopamine hit from having a list of things to do, and getting them doneSat Jan 07 2023 - 05:00
