The mantelpiece makes a poor barre. It’s Thursday morning, and I’m wearing my ballet shoes — a rare occasion these days, even if today they’re paired with faded black leggings, laddered in one thigh, and an oversized My Chemical Romance t-shirt I bought myself as a gift for hitting a writing milestone. I’d love to …
In Praise of Cold Takes
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly tend to be at the cutting edge of media consumption. And I’m not only referring to the fact that I spend most of my time being overwhelmingly emotional about medieval literature, although no doubt that contributes to the phenomenon. I just… don’t have the hang …
Rereading Katniss
Over the last few days, I’ve been rereading the Hunger Games trilogy for the first time in years. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but with the libraries closed and my copies in London, there were a number of significant barriers in the way. However, when I found myself back in the …
Precedented
I’ve been finding myself nostalgic recently. This isn’t exactly unusual — I’m a nostalgic person, prone to accidentally losing hours scrolling through old pictures and reminiscing. Sometimes I wonder whether I’d be less nostalgic if I had a better memory. Mine’s terrible, so often, looking through photos like that is the only record I have …
Hosting and Posting
Recently, I found myself in the position of needing to shift to a new blog host. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with my old host — SiteGround has been keeping the site running smoothly since 2017 — but circumstances have changed. Back then, I was getting nearly 30k hits per year, and I felt …
An Early Modern Melancholy
I’ve been working this week on Oidheadh Con Culainn, the Early Modern version of The Death of Cú Chulainn. It’s a fascinating story that pretty much nobody seems to care about, as is often the way with these early modern prose tales — too late for the medievalists, too early for the modernists, or at …
Learning To Live
For the last few years, I’ve tried to resist the temptation of making New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve pointed out that they’re a lot of pressure to put on an arbitrary date; that change can come at any time; that I’m the kind of overly-ambitious perfectionist who makes unrealistic goals and only sets myself up to …
This Year In Writing
For many people, 2020 hasn’t been a particularly productive year, which is entirely understandable. It’s hard to focus on anything when the world’s falling apart around you, and for those with kids suddenly at home 24/7… well, I’m not surprised to see a lot of writers tweeting about how many deadlines they’ve missed this year, …
One Semester, Mastered
This week marked the end of my first semester at UCC studying the MA in Early and Medieval Irish. On the one hand, it feels bizarre that I’ve already been living here in Cork for more than three months. On the other hand, the semester occasionally felt endless, and by the end of it I …
Memory, Peace, and New Paths
This Remembrance Sunday marks two years since I attended my first Quaker meeting at Friends’ House, in London. It wasn’t an entirely typical meeting. There were a number of people there specifically to mark Remembrance, among them several members of Veterans for Peace. While my own attendance was triggered by an interest in Quakerism that …