It seems a bit cheap for the DUP-Sinn Féin to call the Opposition the “Craggy Island Opposition”. The Government would rather have SDLP and UUP as small parties without influence within their own DUP-SF dominated Executive.
It shows a disrespect for the people who actually voted SDLP and UUP.
Who are the formerly fearless and intrepid journos who (poacher turned gamekeepers) who are now press officers, churning out this rubbish. I hope they are proud of themselves.
My favourite charachters on “Craggy Island” were the squabbling shopkeepers John and Mary. The married couple who hated each other in private and put on a show of affection when Fr Ted and Fr Dougal came shopping. A bit like…..Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
I always thought John and Mary were like my own harmonious union. They love each other really. Somewhere underneath.
There is a comfort in being an old married couple. I am now married to Mrs FJH for 34 years and while it is obviously too soon to judge, I feel that it is going reasonably well.
There is a lot of stuff shared over 34 years….births of children, deaths of parents, births of grandchildren (the most recent being less than 48 hours ago), the death of a granchild 12 years ago…..I thoroughly recommend marriage.
A whole calendar of dates that meant nothing to me as a single man….1st December, 23rd January, 23rd August…all the way to 8th December.
The older a married couple gets the fear grows that there is a date out there with our name on it….or a date with one of our names on it…..a date that means nothing now.
A date where one heart stops beating and the other heart starts breaking.
Zig, I have spent too much time at funerals this year. Its not the headstones with ages around my own that bother me…..its the second names on a headstone that bothers me. Men dying 15, 20 years after a wife….or a woman dying 20, 30 years after a husband…..thats the statistic that scares me. And probably you as well.
I always think there was a sinister side to “John and Mary”. We have all been in the position of having a family disagreement and seeing a visitors car pull up at the house and putting on a show of unity for the visitors….and thats amusing.
But there is the darker side in John and Mary …the violence. Yes its cartoonish but that aspect where men and women (and mostly women) suffered in loveless and violent marraiages was something that a lot of us were unaware of.