Introducing: Get Around To It, the podcast

When you reach your 30s something annoying can start to happen: in the rush to get your life together (read: career, family, relationships, paying rent, etc) you can find that you don’t have enough time for the hobbies you once did. That’s not the case for everyone, and is something that can wax and wane….

The unexpected tenderness of Salt Fat Acid Heat

There’s a moment in the first episode of the Netflix series Salt Fat Acid Heat when an Italian baker in the Liguria region gently smooths olive oil over a rectangular lump of dough, his palms slowly sweeping up and down the future loaf of focaccia. Then, he takes three fingers and lightly presses them into…

Paris in black & white

Paris is grey. Aged stone of different shades of grey. It’s buildings that have seen history happen around them and which wear their ages well. It’s skinny rues and wide avenues, and puddles on uneven streets. Cafés with wicker chairs gathered around small tables with ashtrays on them, sweating under plastic canopies. The cafés always seem…

Short story: Beara

I went on a trip to the Beara Peninsula with two of my best friends – the bad bitches Kim and Vicky – two years ago. We stayed in a gorgeous old house that opened at the back onto the sea (they filmed Ondine next door, a few years earlier) and ate breakfast watching the boats pull…

This is why Mystery Show is so damn great

‘You are full of information’, a stranger tells Starlee Kine in the most recent episode of her podcast Mystery Show. Listening to this line (from case number six, ‘Kotter’, about a guy who wants to discover the meaning behind the animation on the cover of a lunchbox) while sitting on the train to Dublin, watching the sheep-scattered dull green…