Published: Irish Times, September 13 2008

“Salted porridge. Dried meat. Leeks. Goats milk…”

“Anything that doesn’t require refrigeration, basically. Chuck it all in a pot and then boil it up…” It’s hard to say quite which element of historical military re-enactment least appeals to me. It could be the drafty costumes. It could be the public scorn. Then there’s the very real possibility of having my eye taken out by some hyperactive fund manager with a lance. But a new contender has just crept up along the outside rail: the horrific-sounding lunchtimes.

“Oh no, that’s not just your lunch,” laughs John Looney, the founder of re-enactment website LivingHistory.ie. “That has to last you two days – that’s your breakfast dinner and tea!” Read the rest of this entry »

Your unsolicited late night Elvis Costello double bill

There’s A Story In Your Voice
Both of these tracks are relatively obscure Costello collaborations; the first with Burt Bachrach from the Painted From Memory album (1998), the second with Lucinda Williams from The Delivery Man (2004.) They’re very different songs and, yet, they’re both (to borrow another Costello line) “either side of the same town.”

Published: A Century of Flann, Irish Times, October 1 2011

Humour down to a science

IN 1927, an Irishman named JW Dunne published an eccentric philosophical tome entitled An Experiment With Time. The author was an engineer, best remembered today (if at all) as a pioneer of British military aviation. But in his book he expounded theories that went far beyond matters aeronautical.

Dunne described “precognitive dreams” he had experienced, in which he claimed to have foreseen major world events. This led him (with somewhat reckless abandon) to conclude that time is not linear, and that human beings are capable of existing simultaneously in the past, present and future.

“The kindest that could be said about Dunne’s ideas is that they were a little off the wall,” says Dr Mark O’Connell, a postdoctoral fellow in the school of English at Trinity College. “A harsher verdict might be that they were completely insane.” Read the rest of this entry »