Drapier: By teatime tomorrow we will know whether the Polish icebox did the business for Brian O'Driscoll's hamstring. Apparently a bout of intense cold is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to dealing with the muscles of elite athletes.
Maybe so. Maybe Brian's hammer will emerge much the better for having been subjected to the deep-freeze treatment. Sadly, Drapier must report that his own nether regions are much the worse as a result of similar treatment by Mother Nature earlier this week.
It may be only an hour from Dublin, but Navan was more like the Tundra than the Pale on Wednesday last. It was dark, dreary, windy and cold. Very cold. Very, very cold.
Drapier doesn't much like by-elections at the best of times. We are, each of us, in Leinster House used to being the main man in our respective constituencies. At election time we are the focus of attention. The people know us and we know them.
By-elections are different. They turn us all into footsoldiers, transported out to places we don't know to talk to people we don't know about issues which we know nothing about. This is all well and good if the punters are happy and the sun is shining. But if the punters are cranky, the wind is howling and there's a Champions' League match on television, it's just not fun.
Not that our leaders seem to mind. Bertie was in positively jovial mood as he told those of us who minded to complain about the weather to "blame Enda Kenny".
In some ways it's easy for Bertie to be happy. Bar a complete disaster he can hardly lose. A win would be a major bonus. But a defeat can easily be explained away on the basis that governments always lose by-elections. For the Opposition there is much more at stake. Enda Kenny needs to do well in both elections and would dearly like to win at least one, most likely Meath. Pat Rabbitte has to do well in Kildare. Both men will be looking eagerly for evidence that the electorate really is prepared to support an alternative.
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Of course, the one crowd we will all be watching is the Shinners!
The polls suggest that their core support is holding firm. No surprise that. It was never likely that a relatively few incidents would impact on the party's core vote. Equally it is no surprise that some of the soft support for Gerry Adams as leader has melted away, at least for the moment.
On one issue the polls are pretty amazing.
The Indo made much of the fact that over 60 per cent of the people believe that the Shinners and the IRA are "inextricably linked". What Drapier finds truly staggering is that nearly two people in every five do not subscribe to this view, and every one in four actively disagreed with the proposition.
Drapier has not the slightest doubt but that the Shinners and the Provos are inextricably linked, not the slightest scintilla of doubt. Drapier knows of nobody in Leinster House who doubts the connection. .
How then can fully 38 per cent of the Irish people possibly fail to acknowledge what everybody in politics believes to be blindingly obvious?
It's easy to understand why Sinn Féin voters would seek to repeat the mantra of their leaders. But it is time to get really worried when the supporters of other parties engage in the same kind of denial.
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Gerry Adams rang into Morning Ireland during the week and, boy, was he ratty.
He berated presenter Áine Lawlor for having allowed Dermot Ahern to besmirch Sinn Féin in an interview broadcast a little earlier. Dermot, it seems, had thrown Sinn Féin, the IRA and crime into the one pot and mixed them around in a way that Gerry didn't like.
The exchange was remarkable. First, Gerry was rattled, rattled in a way which flies in the face of his well-cultivated public image of a man who is always in control. Second, it was interesting that he should launch a public broadside at Dermot Ahern, a Fianna Fáil Minister intimately involved with the peace process.
Until recently the boys and girls in Iveagh House seemed to act as messengers for the Shinners, relaying their every concern to the Brits. For Gerry to turn on Dermot in such a public way suggests that relations really are pretty terrible.
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What's happening in the Greens these days?
Trevor Sargent was notable by his absence when Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte launched their vote-transfer pact for the umpteenth time this week. Enda and Pat first did their duet back in late summer in Mullingar. Trevor didn't make it on that occasion because the Greens don't have anyone in Westmeath. And the other pair forgot to tell him that they were about to strut their stuff for the cameras.
This week's outing took place on Leinster Lawn. Once again lots of cameras, Enda and Pat smiling broadly at each other and once again not a Green in sight. Could it be that the Greens are going off the idea of a new rainbow? Or did the others just forget to tell them yet again?
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Drapier is envious of Ivor Callely. There are few TDs who have such brass neck and self-confidence as him. Ivor was majorly rebuked by his senior Minister, Martin Cullen, who said, in effect, that Ivor's plans for transport were a figment of his overactive imagination.
Far from lying low in face of the rebuke, Ivor has been milking the resulting publicity.
Then earlier this week there was another setback, this time from Micheál Martin, who made it clear that he wasn't present at a crucial meeting where the issue of the illegal health charges was discussed but that Ivor, then minister for the elderly, was present.
Drapier has a notion that we haven't heard the end of this story just yet, and events may yet wipe the smile from Ivor's face.