Something would need to look decrepit to the point of hopelessness for me to pass up the opportunity to have a go at reusing or recycling it, if it’s there for the taking. So there I was, earlier this summer, messing about in the green waste pile of a well known nursery, as you do,… Read more »

Are you familiar with The High Line? The High Line (also known as High Line Park) is a one and a half mile long linear park built in Manhattan on an elevated section of a disused New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line. Inspired by a similar project in Paris, the three-… Read more »

I have been ticking off the projects around the house like a trooper over the past couple of weeks. I’m like Taz from the cartoon back in the day. This happens every autumn. This crazed burst of energy, this urgency to get loose ends tied up. And every time it happens it gives me occasion… Read more »

All politics is local. So say those who know about or are interested in such things. What springs to mind when the word environment is mentioned? Kyoto protocols, carbon footprints, emission standards, global warming, climate change, polar ice caps, Hurricane Katrina, O-zone layers, the earth as seen from the moon. All global, epic notions. When… Read more »

The projects are coming thick and fast. The last one was all about the contemporary and the global. The next one is more about the historic and the local. St. Mary’s Cemetery is located on the Ballintubbert Road in Athy. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage describes it thus: “Workhouse burial ground with grave markers… Read more »

So we eventually got there. Last Saturday evening saw the first group of refugees to use the Syrian courtyard garden at the reception centre in Monasterevin. An idea which was born towards the end of 2015 finally and officially came into being on Saturday evening. The route has been circuitous, the process arduous in places.… Read more »

Space, the final frontier. It’s all about the space now; outer space, inner space. Space, there seems to be plenty of it knocking around but we invariably can’t get our hands on enough of it to meet our needs. We notice that the principal protagonists on our beloved home renovation shows no longer refer to… Read more »

Syria hasn’t gone away. It’s still there, being decimated piece by piece, its citizens (those who haven’t managed to flee) living in utterly desperate conditions. No infrastructure, no water, no food, minimal shelter, being pounded on an hourly basis by Russian bombers. The city of Aleppo has been reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble.… Read more »

I’ve been doing quite well on the social front recently. In the last three weeks I’ve been to three gigs, which believe me is a frequency which will skew the annual average out of all recognition. First up we had hardcore Northumberland folkies The Unthanks in the Set Theatre in Kilkenny, followed closely by Californian… Read more »

The Midlands gets a bad rap. Conventional wisdom has it that it is nothing but the annoying chunk of nothingness that you have to get through on the way from one coast to the other. But we know better. We know the beauty of the Midlands landscape, a landscape punctuated by unique villages and towns.… Read more »