Category archives: Personal
Send…More…Paramedics…
Had a blast and a half, with the Outbreak Festival crew, in the old Daghda space (St. John’s Sq, Limerick) last night. A healthy (or suitably unhealthy) crowd shuffled horrifically down to enjoy local film-maker Dermott Petty’s Gothic Country ‘n’… continue reading »
Brainstorm: Dawn of the Damp
Achill Island. 1999. A different decade. A different millennium. Driving, interminable rain sweeps in over Keel strand and down from lofty Slievemore. Dark thunderous clouds roll and boil in the grim skies overhead. And there, huddled and damp, in a… continue reading »
Family Album: The Terrible Agony of the White Phone When it Doesn’t Ring (Or Maybe When it Does)
There really wasn’t that much to do. Back in damp-priest-riddled, early-80s Ireland. Especially if you were a wife and mother. Choices were stark and choices and simple. And really limited. You could sit munching a communion wafer (or sucking an… continue reading »
Songs for the Bewildered: The Place Where We All Intend To Die
Back in the fun-stuffed, joy-filled, gloriously utopian days of the early 1980s, three things seemed sure and certain. 1) Nuclear Armageddon was imminent and inevitable. It was 2 minutes to midnight and jttery fingers hovered over red buttons. We were… continue reading »
Will Coyotes Still Get in?
About 6 months ago, on a night (dear readers) very much like this,1 I found myself sitting, sweatily, at a giant mahogany table in my parents’ “Good Room”.2 Phone in hand. Preparing to talk to an 85-year-old Richard Matheson. Look,… continue reading »
To see a world in an old maid’s glasses, and heaven in a motorist’s slacks…
So there we were, Betty Octopus and I, in a newsagent queue. All ready to buy the reasonably-priced jellies and chocolate and water that we planned to sneak into an afternoon showing of Black Swan (like the mad, thrifty bastards… continue reading »
I Must Obey You, Girl in the Mirror…
Back when I was a wee lad, I never lost my temper. I never accidentally stabbed my sister with a metal badge in the shape of a thumb.1 I never did anything wrong. Ever. There was, however, a small boy… continue reading »
You’d Never Know they were Anatomically Correct…
For those of you who weren’t present in Exchange Dublin last Thursday night to hear it (i.e. all of you) here’s the piece of sit-down comedy reading I performed (as part of Gareth Stack’s Marshmallow Ladyboy Jesus). ————————————————————————————————————————————– The fragmented… continue reading »
