The Anti Room

Lots of people’s lives were changed by Steve Jobs – but Lisa Domican, the mother of two autistic children, has a special reason to thank him. I was terribly sad to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs last Thursday. And before you ask – yes, I read about it on the Twitter App on [...]

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I participated in the recent protest in Dublin about cutbacks to Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) in schools, bringing with me half a dozen eggs with the intention of lobbing them at the front door of the Central Bank on Dame Street.  In the event it didn’t seem right to do that in front of the [...]

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Sinéad Keogh on what her grandad taught her about life and loss. Driving with my Granddad is my predominant memory of being a kid. Driving across The Wicklow Gap in the passenger seat of the car, being terribly impressed by the drop down on one side. Work driving – travelling around in the cab of [...]

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Is there anything that doesn’t have its own occasion these days? Daffodil Day, Arthur’s Day,  Heritage Week, Book Week, Culture Night even Fish ‘n’ Chip day. Some of these are awareness raising, some are nothing more than marketing ploys. They seem to work in that the public masses go out of their way to focus [...]

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My introduction to motherhood was drastically different to what I expected, imagined and dreamed of whilst pregnant. I was always fairly easy going about my pregnancy, with a hope for a more natural birth but a realistic understanding that I might want to be pumped full of pain-killers if I needed to. The one thing [...]

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Kate Bopp asks whether the election is turning into a farce… I often wonder if it is uniquely Irish or do all nations have chronic hypocrisy threaded through their tapestry of inhabitants? I only experience this secret language of say-one-thing-while-meaning-something-completely-different when I am at home in my native Ireland. Sometimes it is hilariously funny, other [...]

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It’s 3.30am and I’m standing with my face pressed against the kitchen window. I don’t know why I’m drawn to stare out into the dark, maybe because it seems to answer back. Next door, someone’s watching TV, their window blind flickers in shades of grey: ash, then slate, and back. The big spruce blocks the [...]

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Among my many favorite things, (which include bacon fries, anything Mark Gatiss has ever done, the word ‘phantasmagoria’ and theme parks, to name but a few) one that ranks rather highly is stories about eccentric, unconventional and often brazen women who happily disregarded what was socially acceptable for their gender in the times they lived [...]

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I waded diddies-deep into one of those conversations about sex at a party on Saturday night. You know the kind, the two-drinks-too-many kind that leaves lasting friendships in its wake. Because they know too much. By the time I rocked up they’d already gotten through the bravado part of the conversation (concerning the more exotic [...]

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I played a show in Dublin once where the front row was jumping up and down so much and so fast that they all got dizzy at the same time, started knocking each other over. Usually, I stare into space when I play, but this sea-like movement was so visually intriguing that I turned my [...]

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