Monday 15th
Another Davitt book is brought. The hagiographers of this Lancastrian monster are inexhaustible.

Was a time when I knew all the words to How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life? And with a half decent guitar in my mitts and a strong wind at my back I can still do a fair enough job on John Hartford's I've Heard That Tear-Stained Monologue You Do There By The Door Before You Go. And before age withered my memory the drop of a hat would launch me into the late Johnny Mercer's first published song:

Gene Kerrigan reviews Maeve Binchy's latest book, DUBLIN4.

Dublin 4, by Maeve Binchy, is pubblished by Ward River Press at £2.50.

Maeve Binchy's new book of short stories, Dublin 4, used to cost £2,87 1/2p - until Ray McSharry turned nice guy and took V A T off books - and now it costs £2.50. With four stories, this works out at 62 1/2p a shot - not a bad deal. Perrsonally, I'd go up a quid each for two of the stories, the other two would then work out at 25p a piece, which is about right.

Pushing on the Open Door. By Gene Kerriagn

By the time it was over the office at 20 Summerhill Parade was smothering in paper. It's a community centre office around which revolve the various strivings of activists who have for years been trying to organise a fight back against the waves of economic and social problems flooding the neighbourhood. The avalanche of paper was started when Tony Gregory handed Charlie Haughey a two-page document on the Tuesday after the election.

The glasses will have to go. Let them see the sexy eyelashes. Then, maybe, a pipe. Not one of those curving professorial types. A straight pipe. Assertive. Smouldering. Or, maybe, black Russian cigarettes would be better. Yeah, and a gold lighter.

School's out early today. It's five to three on a Wednesday afternoon in the National Concert Hall. The RTESO has just finished rehearsing Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." As the wind and percussion players gather together their instruments and prepare to leave, the string players sit patiently waiting to finish the day's work. The last programme piece to be rehearsed, "Divertmento For Strings" by Irish composer Seoirse Bodley, is, as the title would suggest, for string only. By Paddy Agnew

Yank comes into O'Donoghue's at lunchtime. "A Paddy and a Carlssberg Special." Stands about two feet back from the bar. "Eh, make that a cold Carlsberg Special, huh?" Ike jacket, check shirt, levis, moustache, thinning blonde hair. A big man, hard, mid-thirties, face like a map of Saigon.  By Gene Kerrigan

Monday 1st.
I watch the swans dying outside the Cfdistillery of which Mr. John Lynch is a director. I suppose he assumed that they -serene, tragic, and balletic - had to be children of serene tragic balletic C. J. Haughey, awaiting the call of their spirits from this stormy world.

It has to be that the press conference is for Fianna Fail. Down the corriidor in the Burlington they're getting ready for the Fine Gael show in an hour's time - but all they have on the tables down there is coffee. Here the amber shimmers through the glasses like a warm· sun rising on a win ter's morning. Like Charlie says, things ain't so bad that we can't afford a little splash. by Gene Kerrigan

"And sometimes the computer talks to this machine Hhere, the VT 90." Barry Cowan is recording a quick tour around the RTE Election Centre, a short piece to be used at the start of the election programme. By Fintan O'Toole