“Claremorris, Co Mayo. last week.”

Brendan Gleeson’s The Guard opens in the UK this weekend.

Today’s reviews in the English papers made for arresting reading.

Steve Ross, The Guardian.

Christopher Tookey, The Daily Mail 

Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard

Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

Must be a two hen-gin fire.

Taken literally minutes ago.

They’ve rolled out the pink carpet.

That’s Kildare TV.

More as we get it.

The Emerald Community Singers of Montserrat performing at Dublin’s City Hall today. The group are celebrating their 40th anniversary.

Montserrat was a haven for Irish Catholics driven off other Caribbean islands (having been sent into exile, effectively as slaves, by Cromwell). Irish was spoken on the island up to 100 years ago and many families still have Irish names. St Patrick’s Day is celebrated as a national holiday but it also commemorates a slave uprising which took place on the island on March 17, 1768.

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrmdGwJlm-M

Worst Babysitter Ever Takes Infant For Ride On Back of Pick-Up Truck (Gawker)

Mullingar-born Niall Horan, of One Direction literally minutes ago outside the studios of 98Fm and Spin 103.8 in Dublin.

Meanwhile…

The guards don’t like their ah-ih-tude.

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

(Irish Independent)

From Turkish daily Hürriyet:

A 17-year-old waiter in Turkey’s Aegean province of İzmir has been detained for allegedly stabbing to death two women from Northern Ireland.

The bodies of the two women, identified only as E.G. and C.D., have been recovered from a wooded area outside central İzmir.

The suspect, identified only as R.Ç., was said to be the boyfriend of E.G.’s 15-year-old daughter S.G.

R.Ç. first denied any connection to the women but upon detailed investigation by the local police, confessed to murdering them, saying he murdered E.G. because she would not approve of his wish to marry her daughter.

R.Ç. said he met S.G. in Kuşadası, a tourist destination close to İzmir, when she and her family came to the restaurant he was working at as a waiter and they started dating.

On the day of the murder, S.G. was on a boat tour in Kuşadası and R.Ç. offered to take E.G. and C.D. to İzmir for a tour of the city’s sights.

They went to the city by taxi, and once in İzmir R.Ç. picked up his father’s car and took the two women to the woods, where he stabbed them to death. R.Ç. left the bodies in the woods and returned to Kuşadası.

S.G., suspicious of the disappearance of her mother, contacted local authorities, which led to the opening of an investigation and R.Ç.’s apprehension.

R.Ç.’s father E.Ç. and taxi driver M.K. have also been detained as suspects in the investigation.

Reports did not mention whether the two women were residents or tourists, though reports have said that E.G.’s family does own property in the Kuşadası area.

Two irish Women Murdered In Western Turkey (Hürriyet)

Northern Ireland Women Stabbed To Death In Turkey (Guardian)