So. You think you have problems. Try being a Roscommon supporter from Ballaghaderreen, writes Patsy McGarry
There I was last Monday, returned to the office after a break and poring through 386 e-mails (who would believe Viagra could be so cheap?), when a colleague shouted: "Yo . . . [George Bush has SO much to answer for] . . . Patsy. What is a Ballaghaderreen man doing playing for Mayo?"
He was referring to the previous day's drawn Mayo/Laois match in Croke Park, which will be replayed this Sunday.
I sighed as some do when confronted with the great questions - the existence of God; the meaning of life; why Ballaghaderreen men play football for Mayo though the town is in Roscommon.
I told my colleague. He remains in recovery.
The Ballaghaderreen man who played for Mayo against Laois last Sunday, and will again this Sunday if there is any justice, was Andy Moran. He scored a vital point, without which Mayo would now be whistling Dixie with its arse to the wind, God help us.
Andy is a Roscommon supporter. His people - seed, breed and generation - are Roscommon people. (Okay, so his mother's father was from Cork, but no one's perfect.)
But Andy can play football only with Mayo. Similarly with Barry Reagan, his colleague on the Mayo panel also from the Ballaghaderreen club, and Pearse Hanley, captain of the Mayo minor team who is from the club too.
This intriguing tale of two counties can be traced back to another millennium when, in the distant 19th century, John Dillon, one-time leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster and MP for East Mayo, decided his home town Ballaghaderreen should be moved from Mayo into Roscommon.
It was 1898 and local authority boundaries were being redrawn.
At a meeting he and other traders in the town (Dillon owned the large Monica Duff & Co Ltd business) decided they wanted the map redrawn so Ballaghaderreen could be included in Roscommon, where rates were lower than in Mayo.
He moved a private members' motion to that effect at Westminster and it was done.
But Ballaghaderreen's GAA club refused to budge. Map or no map it was staying in Mayo, of which it had been part since the GAA was founded 14 years before, in 1884.
So, despite John Dillon, Roscommon men from Ballaghaderreen can play county football only for Mayo. Dillon, of course, had his cake and ate it. Though, by his own decision he resided in Roscommon, he continued to give his address as "Ballaghaderreen, Co Mayo" - a practice his son James, and one-time Fine Gael leader, also continued until he died in 1986.
It means that we Roscommon people in Ballaghaderreen can feel like exiles in our own county.
It also means there are times when our Hizbullah wing can be difficult to contain, particularly when they see Roscommon men from the town help Mayo to great heights, while Roscommon languishes in the shallows where it has spent most of the 62 years since it last won an All-Ireland. (Shhh!)
And, as with all border areas, identities in the town are strong. My mother, for instance, has her house painted primrose and blue - the Roscommon colours.
But even the most loyal families in the town can come apart on this two-counties' issue, with The Wind that Shakes the Barley divides in many households.
Recently, we experienced this directly in my own family. Last month I visited Niamh, my niece in Nice, along with her father and mother.
When my brother and his wife returned home it was to find that their son, my nephew Declan (who has a Mayo under-16 county medal), had erected a Mayo flag at the back of their house in Ballaghaderreen.
It remains there, such is the natural tolerance of most Roscommon people in Ballaghaderreen.
But wait till his granny gets her hands on it. Or him!