It truly is no place for the old. Grandparents tut tut at over indulged children; hungover parents stumble a bed having assembled a surfeit of toys and are awakened a couple of hours later by agog kids wide awake and wanting to know has Santa been yet.

Was it ever thus. Christmas isn’t wasted on the children or the young reveller. Once as a student I managed to get myself out 17 nights in a row. Later I remember spending a New Years eve in the American Bar at the docks in Belfast and looking forward to the next day and peace and wishing it was all bloody over.

Of course all of that had nothing to do with Christmas. We used to gather in MJ’s bar in Omagh. My best mate Brogy would display the results of his shopping for all to laugh at. Once he produced a melon baller he’d bought for his brother and his wife. His dad Liam was getting a kitchen roll holder. No doubt Liam did enjoy the thought -certainly we all did.

The alcohol infused evening would lead into night. Once after a festive bout in the Hogshead in Omagh we ended up at midnight Mass, blue bags a-clinking, us a-giggling and others a-disapproving.

Sometimes Christmas would go pear shaped, not tits up mind you. It’s not a season I associate with the females of the world – most Christmas liaisons conducted through a fugue of forgetfulfutility maybe a bit of mistletoe. That was then…. Besides, ’twas usually too cold and both parties had too many clothes for any real Christmas crackers!

Once on a class reunion in McElroys front bar Decky Coyle and myself demolished significant amounts of Bushmills and finished the job with half uns of Lagavulin Single Malt. Coyle puked. I didn’t. We spent the night at David McCormack’s house – wasn’t good. The next day I had one of the first of monster hangovers. It wasn’t really a hangover at all- that followed days later. At this stage you understand I was still full as a gypsy’s tit. The day after was horrendous. My life force felt replaced with ennui, nausea and cement. Aches and pains, gut in contortion and the agony of something simple but essential like light. I dunno how Shane McGowan does it.

We would go out on Boxing Night for more beer. Some may have ventured on Christmas night, I once caught on a girl who was allegedly going out with me out with another fella on Christmas Night. Boxing day though anything went. Hit the dancefloor and you would take some doll’s fancy or vice versa. Next morning the memories in your part may be hedgy enough but she would know she’d koorted a Christmas drunk.

During the run up to Christmas as a student was different in many ways, the old classic get your coat worked a treat up round Queen’s. Desperados one and all.

But the real craic at Christmas was in Omagh where we would persuade one another out 17 nights if we could. The craic was ninety, Decky Coyle would appear from Strabane, men would agree just one more night and the craic would follow.

It was wonderful. That was then, this is now, that was then….. but it was the best pure 100% craic we ever had. Don’t think I could stick it anymore but you never know.

‘I can see a better time/when all our dreams will all come true’

Doughnut do this.

And in the beginning there was the word. And the word was ‘and’. And you shouldn’t start a sentence with ‘And’. Who ever said that?

Read this very carefully, okay? Just because you are writing for business doesn’t mean that you have to use jargon. It is pretentious, self indulgent and overbearing. Just don’t it.

Spellcheck. Simple. Got it?

If you’re asked for 500 words. Provide 500. If you’re asked for 50, provide 50.

Capital letters. Proper nouns take capital letters. That’s people, places and not general things. Once you remove overuse of capital letters from a document it instantly becomes more readable.

If you are asked to amend or review someone else’s work, avoid the need t o correct things that don’t need to be corrected. There’s a difference between writing style and grammatical correctness.

This is a piece I found recently looking through some old work files. It was in hard copy. I wrote it when requested to write a piece for the Annversary Edition of the Omagh CBS School Magazine Saine of which I was the first Editor. The piece wasn’t used at the time due to a tragic accidental death among the School Community. I was asked to submit another piece, which I did. This piece is about a real incident that happened when I was eight or nine years old. It is reproduced exactly as written originally.

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As a child I used to go to the bog past Mountfield to cut turf along with the rest of my family. I remember vividly the hot summer days spent working on the bog, eating picnic lunches and drinking tins of Coke. The first year we went to the bog my father had rented it for our family alone but for the following two years Bobby Rogers rented the bog as well. I remember Brian and Brendan Rogers clodding handfuls of soggy turf at my sister and myself and feeling indignant when Bobby blamed us. Little did I know I was to have the last laugh.

On one such balmy summer’s day, after we had finished in the bog we went to Micky Keenan’s farm at Greencastle, whether it was to leave turf spades back I cannot remember. My father was not along with us this particular day, but I was there along with my cousin Aidan, Brendan and Brian Rogers and my sister Dolores.

We were in the farmyard, standing around chatting to Patsy Keenan and waiting for Micky to appear when he came walking round the corner carrying a double barrelled shotgun. He sauntered over casually and stood talking with the gun in the crook of his arm. Bobby Rogers asked Mickey could he look at the gun and I remember feeling slightly alarmed when he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it in my direction and then proceeded to draw a bead on various other random targets. Suddenly the quiet of the summer’s evening was destroyed by an almighty BANG followed immediately by the sound of pressurised air escaping from a car tyre. Birds flew up into the air, hens scattered and a dog ran for cover.

Bobby Rogers had shot his car with the shotgun. . . .

The front left side of the car slumped to the ground. The paint on the wheel arch was blasted off in places, but the tyre was totally destroyed and the hubcap, well you would have thought an elephant had stood on it. I cannot remember whether I laughed or stood dumbstruck. God knows I have laughed often enough since when I’ve thought about it, but I do remember the expression on Bobby Roger’s face. I don’t think I have ever seen greater shock mingled with disbelief on the face of anyone since. After all, the man had just blown the hell out of his own car.

I cannot remember what my father said about the incident but I can well imagine he was none-too-pleased about his colleague loosing off a shotgun when his two youngest children were about. I remember not being particularly perturbed at the time, although I remember thinking that he could easily have shot me. Perhaps it was due to my innocence as a child that I saw nothing unusual about a grown man shooting his own car.

By the time I made it to the Brothers’, his name was Master Rogers and he was the Deputy headmaster, indeed in my A-Level Year he was Acting Principal. I often wondered did he remember the time he’d shot his car and I often felt like reminding him, but it was like a secret that only he and I knew and we didn’t like to talk about it. Bobby has since retired and I wish him well. Someday if I meet him at the golf club or wherever I’ll buy him a drink and we’ll laugh about his armed assault on his own car. You never know, we might even cut turf again one day.

One Sunday a while back a familiar figure clambered out of the boot of the car, wagged her tail and limped into the house. Soda was back.

In 1998 our black labrador Sam had six pups. The first born was a lovely golden bitch called Peig. She was born in the bed, her terrified mother obviously decided that the safest place to nest was between Angela and myself.

Waking up in dog’s afterbirth is a curious experience. Sam proceeded to have the remaining five pups in various locations downstairs. I’m not sure the bed could have taken the strain. Even curiouser it was the start of a pattern of peripatetic birthing in the family home which continued for a number of years. More about that another day.

In total Sam had four yellow and two black pups and for a while our house was the place to visit after the pub. Revellers would return late at night to play with some puppies as it were. Once one got lost causing panic in the living room, before a drunken student realised she was sitting on it.

We decided to keep Péig the first born. She was a wonderful dog, a bit idiosyncratic but affectionate and was great with the children when they appeared. She could also retrieve a hurling ball no matter how hard I could hit it into the sea. She was also like the conscience of the house and would slink off ears down and tail curled when any voices were raised.

It was a close run thing between Péig and another one of the golden pups as to which we would keep at the time. The other candidate was a yellow one nicknamed Clever by our lodger Jeremy. She was the first to clamber out of the stockade and the first to try anything. Reluctantly we gave her away but she didn’t go too far. Up to Derry to Angela’s brother Kevin.

Of the others, one went to Bushmills were he significantly upped the IQ level in that wonderful town; another to Omagh where he was later shot whilst worrying sheep; another black dog called Buster stayed in Portstewart; so did his yellow brother Oscar, who was killed on the railway line a couple of years back. Peig lived here with us for ten happy years. And then there was Soda. . .

At the time Kevin lived in a small terrace house which wasn’t conducive to Labrador life. So the dog relocated to Stella Maris for Angela’s mother Patsy to look after her during the day. The dog formerly called Clever became known as Soda, the name coming from one of Patsy’s granddaughters Katie. Katie christened her Soda because she said she was well bred. It stuck.

In time, in fact in a very short space of time, Soda became Patsy’s dog. They became inseparable companions when Patsy was out and about. She walked her in Amelia Earhart Park in Derry; she would take her swimming to Donegal. And, when she visited relatives Soda came too. In fact, sometimes Patsy would forget that Soda came too when, after settling down to a cup of tea or a glass of wine she would suddenly startle and say “God, Soda’s in the boot’ and laugh in that throaty smoky Patsy way of hers.

And, someone having been despatched to retrieve her from the boot, Soda would pad into the house, looking at Patsy a little bewildered as she would say apologetically “Ah my Soda”. In time I think the dog got used to it and probably in the end up half expected it. A day away with Patsy wasn’t the same without a while waiting in the boot.

A visit to Patsy’s and the dog would lie at her feet in front of the fire. Religiously she would walk her giving both of them a bit of exercise although neither needed it really. Patsy would regularly head out visiting, whilst Soda held the fort at Stella Maris.

Then she would head off herself and be spotted in various locations around Derry. Look, Patsy Casey’s dog. There’s Soda.

Once when she was young she went missing, everyone was frantic. Eventually, after contacting the Dog Shelter Angela and Patsy went to collect her. It was only after they got the dog home, when it exhibited some untypical behaviour and the real Soda turned up, did it become apparent that they had lifted the wrong dog from the Pound.

The real Soda was fiercely loyal. When Patsy would appear home in the car Soda would be in waiting and would round ferociously and protectively on the nearest passerby scaring the shite out of them.

One famous night Patsy was contacted by the local police – they had found the dog and having read the nametag were keen to return her to her owner. Patsy would have had no intention of getting up to go out to retrieve the dog when she was in bed, so she calmly instructed the listening policeman to tell Soda to go home. This appeared to have worked as when Patsy got up the next morning, Soda was there. It was a tale Patsy enjoyed telling.

When I told my daughter that her grandmother had passed away last month, her first question to me amidst the tears was ‘What about Soda’. It was a question on many people’s minds.

Happily, she came back here with us, to where she started out thirteen and a half years ago. She seems happy and content. She comes in here to the office during the day and keeps me company which is more than our resident bloody dog Hub does. Anytime she returned here with Patsy I got the impression she was on familiar ground and knew her way about.

When people call and see her they give her a big affectionate hello, as much because of who she belonged to as because of who she is. On the beach today she ran as quickly as her arthritic joints would let her, chasing birds and trying to catch the surf blowing off the sea. She used to chase the birds down on the beach in Shroove and maybe she remembers doing it in happier days.

You never know, we may even lock her in the boot from time to time. For old times sake you understand. She would expect no less.