My post-cancer treatment hair reminds me of boxing promoter Don King. It makes me laugh

I Feel Bad About My Neck is a collection of essays by Nora Ephron that I read or listen to every now and again. It's a great title, extremely relatable for many women of a certain age when hairs start to sprout in unexpected places and brown spots appear on our hands. It's all down to this phenomenon called ageing. A beautiful thing. But it's also a transition and like any transition, it can take time to adjust.
I don't feel bad about my neck. I've always had a couple of extra chins, more visible from certain angles than others. They would surprise me sometimes in the photos other people took of me - who is that person with generous neck undercarriage? I take a lot of selfies, because I know the angles that work best for my chin area.
I don't feel bad about my neck (chintastic) or my belly (generous) or my hands (they look older than I feel) but lately I feel funny about my hair. It's been on quite a trip. I was lucky enough to avail of life-saving chemotherapy treatment in the
Mater hospital
last year after
I was diagnosed with cancer
. Before starting the treatment, I knew my long, thick, highlighted hair, the kind of hair people rave about when you've had it professionally blow dried, was not long for this world.
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Róisín Ingle: I did a good bit of 'maevesdropping' in the shop. It's what Binchy would have wanted
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In preparation, I got my enviable mane cut into a bob in a hairdressers in
Terenure
. I found the place after I went to a Maria Doyle Kennedy concert in my local Protestant church in North Strand. I was on crutches at the time, having broken my ankle in a fall because cancer wasn't enough to be dealing with. From my pew, I spied a woman a few rows behind with such a beautiful short haircut that I made my
soon to be husband
, an introverted person who doesn't routinely have the chats with strangers, get up and ask her where she'd got her hair done. She was delighted and told my soon to be husband about Jacqui in L'OmBré in Terenure. The short-haired woman told him Jacqui was so good that she followed her around from salon to salon for years. The next day I made an appointment.
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I brought my mother along, for moral support. It was a strange, emotionally turbulent time now I look back. Anyway, Jacqui turned out to be the perfect person to give me a new 'do'. She had helped a lot of women with pre- and post-
cancer
hair conundrums and had a close friend with a similar diagnosis to mine, breast cancer that had spread to the bones, who she told me was doing well years after she first got her own shocking news. My mother got her hair done too, promising our new friend a copy of her memoir (
Openhearted
, she'd obviously kill me if I didn't plug it) and a jar of her homemade marmalade.
So, thanks to Jacqui I went into my chemotherapy adventure with a bob and then a few weeks later on Valentine's Day, when my bob started to fall out from the expected side-effects, I got my brother-in-law Killian to come into hospital (I was in there again for an operation on my other leg, cancer still not being enough drama for me) and he shaved it all off with his clippers. I felt only relief.
Sometimes, I went around the place with my shaved head, even though it meant I'd get strange, sympathetic looks from people who took one look at me and thought: cancer.
Sinéad O'Connor
modelled this hairstyle so well, but all these years later people still don't believe a woman would shave her hair off unless there's a tragic reason - see
Britney Spears
. Sometimes, the sympathy was useful. One night, rushing for a train that was leaving the platform in
Galway
, I'm convinced the Irish Rail worker stopped the train and let me on because he felt sorry for the woman with the cancer head. Other times, I'd wear a wig. With the wig on I'd feel inconspicuous and normal and a bit like my old self even though my old self was dead.
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Róisín Ingle: We will have two 16-year-olds in this house soon which is blowing my mind a bit
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]
I wore a wig when I got married last July. Stephanie came to my hotel room to style it. We both cried when she was finished. After the wedding, I hardly ever wore the wig again and when I got my byline photo done, to illustrate an article in which I came out about my cancer, I felt cool about my hair in an
Olivia Colman
or
Judi Dench
kind of way.
We transition. We adjust. And now I feel funny about my hair. It's been growing. Vertically. It's a grey skyscraper rising from my scalp, defying gravity. It had been bugging me, who my hair was reminding me of, and then the other day I put an image of boxing promoter Don King alongside a picture of me in the family WhatsApp with the caption 'separated at birth'. My children could not get over the hair likeness.
I don't feel bad about my neck, I feel funny about my hair, by which I mean that when I look in the mirror these days my hair makes me laugh. And, oh, it feels good.
Down with that 'skort' of thing / Celebrating Tina Turner
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We're drinking less and generally more health conscious. So why is cocaine use increasing?

A major generational shift has occurred in Irish society without much fanfare. Alcohol consumption in Ireland has collapsed. A report commissioned by the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland published this month showed the average alcohol consumption per adult in Ireland fell 4.5 per cent in 2024 compared with 2023. The story over the course of two decades is much more profound. Since 2001, alcohol consumption per adult in Ireland fell by 34.3 per cent. Today, people in Ireland are drinking at average European levels (a good argument for reducing excise taxes). The Health Research Board 's 2024 report on alcohol showed Ireland is no longer a high alcohol consumption country by European Union or OECD standards. This is a remarkable shift, great news for public health, and will have a positive knock-on effect for decades to come. The reasons suggested for this can come off as anecdotal or vague, but like any behavioural shift, there tends to be multiple factors at once. 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Irish Times

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Sinéad Gibney tells of how cousin Des Bishop ‘helped me to reflect on my own drinking'

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Irish Times

a day ago

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The Irish Times view on caring for older people: deserving of dignity, gratitude and respect

Much is rightly made of the statements of intent and idealism that characterised the foundation documents of this Republic. These included the Democratic Programme unveiled at the meeting of the first Dáil in January 1919, in which 'The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefor a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation's aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration'. At the centre of that poor law system established under British rule was the workhouse, which was feared and detested in equal measure. While independent Irish governments subsequently sought to develop a more humane and empathetic social contract, the care of our elderly population has for far too long been compromised, sometimes egregiously. There is excessive reliance on nursing homes, a dependency more alarming given the shortcomings in Ireland's history of institutional care. There has also been a dramatic shift towards the privatisation of these homes. In the 1980s, public nursing homes accounted for roughly 60 per cent of total beds nationally, but a report from the ESRI last year highlighted that in 2022, '83 per cent of all Long-Term Residential Care (LTRC) home beds were provided by voluntary/private sector LTRC homes, with private for-profit operators alone contributing 74 per cent'. Considering the recent revelations by RTÉ Investigates, the Minister of State for Older People and Housing, Kieran O'Donnell, has said he has 'concerns' about the scale of privatisation and has ordered officials to study this issue . The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has highlighted the need to give it more power in relation to private nursing homes and their corporate owners. READ MORE The current controversies are all the more disturbing given it is 20 years since distressing images of the use of Buxton chairs to restrain elderly nursing home residents at the Leas Cross home in Dublin. A subsequent report by consultant geriatrician Desmond O'Neill described the care shortcomings at the home as 'institutional abuse'. As was often and remains the case, various concerns had been raised but it took journalistic exposé to bring matters to a head. In 2022, our population aged 65 years and over was 781,400 and is set to reach over one million by 2030. The number aged over 85 is projected to rise to 301,000 by 2051. What has been uncovered must generate an urgent dynamic to address the care of our elderly, who now, no more than when their needs were voiced by the architects of Irish independence, need to be treated with the dignity, gratitude and respect they deserve.