I loved Dublin. It’s the city of my birth, where my wife and I fell in love, and where we became parents. I spent four great years there from 1999-2003 and it broke my heart to leave. But I had to face the fact that I am a culchie. Like the salmon swimming back upstream […]
Recent Posts
The Man Who Wanted To Know
It’s a curious thing to be adopted. You are a stranger in your own skin, in your own family, like a cuckoo that suddenly appears and everyone tries to pretend that you’re not different. But the difference is there every time you look at a family photo, or in the mirror – where did I […]
No, Yes, lightning, Wiseblood
Indo col 57: If you had asked me a week ago how my parents would have voted, I would have said they were a definite No. They were oldschool Catholics – for them abortion in any situation was murder. I can still remember my mother’s fury when in 1992 I tried to make the point […]
Tinder, incels, killings, Peterson
Indo col 56: There are many things in the modern world that scare and confuse me – GDPR, bitcoin, and whatever is going on in that Childish Gambino video to name but three. If any of these things come up in conversation, I usually just nod and say ‘indeed’ or possibly ‘but is it a […]
Kidder, Clark, gammon, CBLive
Indo col 55: I can’t remember when I first saw Superman: The Movie. Given that I was three when it first hit cinemas, it seems unlikely it was on the big screen, but it is just one of those films, along with The Neverending Story or A New Hope, that always seemed to be there; […]
Dunville’s, distilleries, Speyside, patience
Indo col 54: St Malachy’s Church in Belfast is a survivor. Built in 1841 in what Sir John Betjeman once described as ‘a cheerful gothic’ style, it had its windows blown in by a German bomb during the Second World War, whilst also having the remaining windows sucked out when another bomb hit the nearby […]
Driving test, L for Love, owls, back it up
Indo col 53: The key to successfully failing your driving test is not, as one would imagine, in the preparation or lack thereof, but rather that you tell as many people as possible that you have it coming up. This allows you to develop a network of friends and family who will support you with […]
RAS, Avicii, Kramer, youth
Indo col 52: The American songwriter Nick ‘RAS’ Furlong was in a Galway pub when he dreamed up his biggest hit. Surrounded by the sounds of a sing-song, laughter and clinking glasses, he was inspired to write what he would later describe as a classic Irish drinking song – or, as he also called it, […]
The Veldt, Fortnite, gambling, obsolescence
Indo col 51: Although published in 1950, Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt summed up a lot of very modern anxieties about children and technology. It told the story of a family who live in The Happylife Home, an automated house that does everything for them. The children have a virtual reality space called […]
Caledonia calling
Three years ago I flew home from the Spirit Of Speyside with a heavy heart. After spending a week there, I was going back to the real world in the knowledge that I would never have the time or, more importantly, the money, to come back. I went back home, wrote a piece for the […]
