I’m very excited about this week’s launch of Catherine O’Flynn’s second novel, The News Where You Are, published by Penguin. To say I’m a rubbish reader feels like an understatement - I feel proud of myself if I can get through more than one novel a year. The long-haul journey to/from Oz last month would’ve been the [...]

I moved house this weekend. A rough trawl through the years puts this latest (rented) abode as my 24th place of residence; a fact I find faintly worrysome. This particular move was physically and emotionally knackering. No sooner had I dumped all my stuff, unsorted, into the house I now share with Johnny HamFisted, I [...]

Belfast Queen’s Uni On top of the stacks In the old, abandoned Library. The information has been carted off, But ghosts are still present.

02.01.2010 As the bliss-bubbles of the Christmastide ebb away, I face up to the prospect of a new year that has been trumpeted in by Captain Skint on his Frugal-horn. At the chime of midnight I was too busy having fun to hear his clarion call beneath a cacophony of TV fireworks: anticipating a reprisal [...]