December 2011
1 post
Continental drift
Three months, it turns out, is how long it takes.
Three months to completely pack up your life, wrap the most important parts in bubble wrap, arrange them carefully around the load-bearing parts. To find a company you can trust to carry your life across the ocean, find an airline you can trust to carry you across the ocean. To file 17 forms - in triplicate - with immigration and customs on the...
September 2011
1 post
The words I never said
There’s a storm over London tonight. The trees outside my window push back against the wind. Listening to their hushed and tired sounds, I think they’re trying to comfort each other.
A close friend of mine lost her cousin in a car crash last week. It’s difficult, being far from the people you love when you know they’re grieving. It doesn’t matter how many words you...
August 2011
1 post
Happy endings
There is no such thing as an amicable break-up.
I’ve heard the same glossy phrases uttered dozens of times by optimistic friends. Bathed in the glow of relief, safe in the knowledge that a battle was avoided. ‘It was mutual… It was pleasant… We’re happier as friends’. But in the months that follow, those sweet words turn bitter. There’s a sticky...
July 2011
2 posts
Town and country
I grew up in a small, rain-polished town buried in the rich green depths of Ireland - which may sound slightly more romantic and mysterious than it felt at the time. I visited cities, as a child, but I’d no real understanding of them. The people I met on the street, the time I spent there, didn’t so much blur together as… average out. The average colour was concrete. The average...
Wake up
At some point during the epic tug-of-war relationship I’ve always had with sleep, I realised something important. If I was going to have to spend a certain number of hours each night asleep, I could at least try to make some use of them. So without ever knowing what it was called or that anyone before me had tried it, I started playing around with lucid dreaming.
The summer of my twelfth...
June 2011
3 posts
Home
The queue shifts. I imagine I can smell the feast, and the bus rumbles its agreement. I think of meat and gravy, and what’s waiting for me when I reach home. I realise the source is behind me. A pensioner has retreated into his overcoat and is clutching at a burger to stave off the cold. Its tendrils are reaching me despite the gale pulsing through the courtyard. The smell burrows into my clothes;...
An overheard conversation
He was maybe fifteen years old, swaggering and swaying as he made his way down the aisle and towards the back of the bus. He had shock of black curls, barely restrained by a handful of gel, plastered behind his ears by the heat of the day and the daily rush of pubescent hormones. A black t-shirt with ‘Metallica’ emblazoned across the chest glared sullenly from underneath a much-abused...
Out with the old
I find, as time goes by, that going out isn’t quite what it used to be. When I go to someone’s house for a night, I expect great music and genuine belly laughs - but it’s been a while since I had to wriggle past three people making out in the hallway, and add my bottle of whiskey to the stack of half-opened bottles on the kitchen table.
I’ve also noticed a subtle shift in...
May 2011
3 posts
Candlelight
In their lifetime, the average person will spend over twenty years of their time on earth asleep. Passed out peacefully, lying in any number of sweet or cathartic poses, as they trip and tumble through slumberland.
…and by slumberland, I mean what our brains invent to muffle the sound of a thousand neurons randomly firing through the night. Not the bedding specialists. I can’t even...
A good lie
Traditionally, the Irish have earned something of a reputation abroad as story-tellers. The dewy myths, the little people, a horse and its cart, plodding carefully between one thatched cottage and the next. It seemed that a carelessly woven tale related in a gentle brogue was always expected of me, when I first arrived in the California. That and knowing every Irish other person that had ever...
The Great Cake* Experiment
When I started college, I was one of a class of 1,300. The reading lists were long, the books were dense, and often all I had to propel me forward was a stubborn refusal to not do well. Arts students had a reputation for staying out til dawn and coasting through exams - and while I have some truly ridiculous stories from nights spent perpetuating the stereotype, the morning after always found me...
March 2011
1 post
Not a call to arms
I’ll be honest, I don’t seek out new music they way I used to. Being in a studio makes you lazy that way, keeps your head out of tune with the world around you. Which is why it’s such a rare joy when I stumble across a new song I like. On soundtracks, since I watch a lot of films when I’m recording; at gigs, when I turn up early for a quiet drink with friends and get caught...
February 2011
2 posts
Talking to girls
When I travelled around the US last year, I had grand intentions of keeping a tour diary. Thanks to a combination of jetlag and sheer overwhelming enthusiasm for everything else I was doing, what I ended up with was more a tour scrapbook: ticket stubs, phone numbers, and hastily scrawled notes to myself, all stuffed in a CD wallet to be sorted through at a later date. It may make for an iconic...
Lost letters and taxes
If I had to pick my favourite month – in some fictitious slumber-party setting, or bizarre life-threatening scenario - January might just top my list. The endless possibilities of the new year, tinged with the satisfaction of putting the old one to rest. The comfort of knowing you’ve just put the largest of the Hallmark holidays behind you, and have at least ten months before the next onslaught...
January 2011
1 post
Away from London
It’s 11pm on a Wednesday night, and my train is chasing the rain home. Even in the darkness, I have a strong memory of lush green fields and sun-drenched flowers to fill in the black, rolling landscape. It’s good that it’s raining. I find I’m less antagonistic about the weather since I left the city.
Having grown up in a small town on the west coast of Ireland, I presumed...
October 2010
1 post
September 2010
1 post
Life at GMT -5
Tropes and cliches, as literary devices, have long since been relegated to the sixth circle of hell. They’re the poster-children for poor writing and media hackery - and perhaps undeservedly so. Sure, they’re ideas or expressions that have been overused dozens of times by screenwriters, advertising executives and love-laden teenagers, but at one time or another, they were fundamentally...
August 2010
3 posts
The unexpected question
I’ve held down many jobs in my lifetime. I’m not indecisive and the recession isn’t to blame for everything - it’s just that freelance work is notoriously unstable. Of all the places I’ve accepted a pay-cheque from though, I think the company I’m with now is my favourite. Work as a Production Manager is a step up from where I was four months ago, but it’s...
Life is good
I love books. I have boxes of them in my room in my parents’ house, packed up for safe-keeping because my shelves are overflowing. And while they cover a world of topics (Greek architecture, a history of cryptography, how four hobbits helped save Middle Earth…) these books have one thing in common. They’re all well-loved.
The spines of my books are all long-since broken....
July 2010
4 posts
Finding luck in the right places
I’m not a superstitious person, but I like to take a lot of the things that happen to me for luck. I guess it’s flirting with the hope that the universe might - in the right circumstances - bend itself to work in my favour, without actually subscribing to that idea. I just like to think the universe has good intentions.
The examples of this usually work on a pretty small scale....
Smart guys finish last
When it comes to being prepared, I am the proverbial eagle scout of planning. Is there a proverb about eagle scouts? Probably not. What I’m trying to say is that, although I didn’t ever work towards the badges or earn any sort of official qualification, I like to be prepared.
Similarly, I’ve dated competitive, urgent and equally prepared guys all my life. Two of them were in...
Missing in action
I’d a few hours to myself this afternoon, and while I was tempted to wander in the sunshine that’s been thawing Londoners to life lately, I used up most of my sunscreen filming outdoors last week. So I cut my time in the park to a still-glorious minimum and then tried to do something useful around the house.
We’re moving in a month, and while the adventure looks promising,...
What's in a name?
A friend of mine is venturing into the world of blogging, and has been trying for almost a year now to come up with a title she liked. She asked me recently how I came up with the title for my blog - and I’m aware that the answer I gave her was somewhat enigmatic, if not bordering on unhelpful. So I thought it would be worth taking the time to try and explain it here in better detail. This...
June 2010
5 posts
Your own worst enemy
I was learning to drive a few years ago, and doing quite well at motoring around the quieter parts of East London, until one incident put me off completely. I was crossing a roundabout when a motorcyclist approaching from the other direction decided, in a combination of enthusiasm and stupidity, that they would get to where they were going faster if they ignored the roundabout completely and drove...
All work and no play
It’s good to be back in London. Two weeks on tour equated to about 2,000 miles added to my little VW golf’s mileage - so I took a few days at home to see family, put my feet up, and generally being in one place for more than 12 hours at a time.
Being at home gives me plenty time to think. My family keeps to daylight hours, and nowhere in town stays open past midnight. My life between...
Little ones
I’m visiting family at the moment, and since I haven’t been home since Christmas, I’ve spent the majority of the trip catching up with various aunts and cousins. The following story comes from a primary school teacher, who looks after junior infants.
She’d enjoyed a well-earned lunch and was making her way back to class when she noticed one of her little ones, with the...
May 2010
11 posts
The road so far
Since I’m unlikely to post at all while I’m on tour, I thought it might be an idea to let google maps do most of the writing for me. There’s a link to our tour map below, I’ll be updating it from the road - so the more curious reader will be able to see what kind of ground we’re covering, day to day.
Our promo week is pretty much up now, and it’s almost...
Dealing with tendinitis (now with photos)
I don’t know if it’s just the kind of people I spend time with, or if this is a widespread problem, but increasing numbers of my friends are being struck down with RSI, tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and all sorts of similar injuries. And I generally hear about it when problems start to arise, because I’ve had tendon problems in my left arm for about three years now. (Though...
Of things extinct (or 'Tyrannosaurus Ex')
I got a text message from an ex boyfriend today. ‘Hey, I’m going to be in London this weekend. Want to meet up?’ And you know what? I honestly do.
It’s not something that all my friends get about me, but I like being friends with my exes. Or at least to give friendship a fair go. I think that, in the midst of all the pain and stomach ache that comes with a break-up,...
No lights on my street
It’s 4am, and we’re out of milk. This immediately rules out at least half of the things I thought I’d snack on to stop me waking up hungry, so I pull on the tracksuit bottoms that are large enough to disguise my pyjamas and pull my protesting coat out of the cupboard. I must remember to hammer the stray nail there back into place. As I shiver and stomp my way to the petrol...
The blog I brush my teeth to (or Dental hygiene,...
The first words I ever posted online were an explanation as to why blogging seemed like a good idea - but looking back, I never wrote about the moment I realised writing might be something I’d like to do long term. The reason it seems relevant now is I was brushing my teeth at the time.
I think this early on in a blog, stream of consciousness might be mistaken for mild obsession so...
It was the best of times, at least for dental...
It’s 5am, and I’m brushing my teeth before bed. I’m nowhere near sleepy but it’s a trick I like to try sometimes, in the hope that my brain will some day realise that brushing your teeth is something people do before they go to bed at night, and know it must be time to sleep. It’s never worked. I sometimes think that it will backfire and as I’m brushing my ...
Cake & writing
I think a good blog can be one of two things: useful or honest. Some are both, certainly. Penelope Trunk is probably my most-cited example of this blend done well. There’s just something to be said for learning new skills from someone’s personal experiences. But I think that when it comes to blogs, it’s worth differentiating between useful and instructional.
I like to read...