Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution. (Mae West)

I got two wedding invitations this week.
When you turn 18 you are invited to numerous 18th birthday parties, the same applies at 21. Then come the graduation parties and job celebrations. Once you hit 25 weddings become the major celebration until you hit 30. As I reach that milestone my postman is delivering quite a few delicately [...]

Nothing To Do With You : a night with The Pigeon Detectives

This week I went to The Academy, courtesy of entertainment.ie, to see a band I knew nothing about.
The Pigeon Detectives had to cancel their last appearance in Dublin because singer Matt Bowman hurt his leg after jumping from the stage at a gig in the UK, but they did make this year’s Oxegen line-up.
My housemate played [...]

Breathe

Festival season is in full swing and all the newspapers are going Oxegen crazy.
I’ll be at home this weekend keeping warm and dry and I’ll be playing with my rain stick in a bid to encourage rain fall, laughing at the misfortune of those caked in mud at Oxegen.
Am I jealous of those attending the [...]

Remembering 7/7

I received a phone call at 9am on Saturday morning to do a quick interview about the London bombings for a radio station in Wales. Thankfully I wasn’t in bed and although I wasn’t quite awake I was able to string a sentence together.  
I was living and working in London on the 7/7/2005 and had [...]

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no [...]

Knife crime in the UK – too little too late.

 
Following a spate of stabbings British headlines have been filled with stories about knife crime:
 
Knife crime: Blunting the edge (The Guardian)
The wrong handle on knife crime (The Times)
Boy, 10, ‘pulled blade on girl, 9’ (the Sun)
Blunt truth about Britain’s knife crime (The Mirror)
 
I lived in London between 2003 and 2006, close to where French students [...]