I took a holiday this week. At home. In Dublin. It was almost entirely unplanned, in that I only decided to have a holiday last Friday, and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do any of the stuff you’re supposed to do on holidays in order to call it a holiday. Here is a list of the stuff people…
Category: Actual Writing
Tark And Mara Monetise That Weather We’re Having
“I’ve decided we need a new season.” Tark waved a manicured hand at his chest barber in dismissal, and wiped his newly-shaven belly with a monogrammed towel before dismounting from an uncomfortably tall massage table. He swore they had it raised on purpose before his appointments. It was their only way of feeling superior to a client so great…
Love, And The Way It Might Steal You Away
Today, this cynical old blogger wants to talk about love. * Because just 2 short weeks ago, I fell in it. I found myself swimming in sticky, glorious, all-consuming love. I tumbled into it while reading a book. I’m going to be mean, and not tell you which it was, because it was an old book, already famous, and I don’t want this…
Tark And Mara Go On Retreat And Find Themselves
Mara swept Billy goat’s-curd serum from her upper lip and sat up. She would know that noise anywhere. The man she loved was in pain. She had to go to him. She wound a bamboo hand-towel around her fleshless frame and donned sunglasses before exiting the treatment room. She was only three minutes into a two-hour Deeply Detoxifying Core Cleansing…
Tark And Mara Tackle Global Inequality
All was quiet in Tark and Mara’s penthouse (in the most ruinously expensive borough of Dublin city) save a seductive hum of contentment. Mara was reclining on her brand-new 16th century fainting couch following her weekly meal, languorously turning the pages of a glossy magazine. Tark had been miming at the baby grand piano for twenty minutes. Nobody could…
Tark and Mara Do New Year’s Resolutions
Tark and Mara were holding their AGM. Their 12,000 square foot penthouse resembled the control room of an overly optimistic mission to Mars. Every window blind was a projection screen festooned with graphs and media strategies. Every surface, including the grand piano, was a sea of printouts, computer equipment, and swatches of ruinously expensive fabric.…
Tark And Mara Do Blog Awards
( I know, I know. This REEKS of dragging it out. But it’s a month today, and I did promise Tark and Mara’s take on the Blog Awards ages ago. Then we’re done, I swear.) Somewhere in a parallel universe, a large function room in Co. Kill Dare was brimming with hope, excitement, and alcohol, wherein the Blogerati had gathered,…
Look Away Now… It’s Irish Writing Kryptonite
Tell me. Have you breathed any air, lately? Got up in the morning? Smiled, any time in the last 6 weeks? Yes? Well, pull up a pew, then, because you need to listen to this. I don’t want to be the girl who cried wolf, here, because that could possibly ruin my cheap and nasty…
I WON AT THE BLOG AWARDS! And, um, this outfit happened
So I wasn’t expecting that! (Obviously, or I never would have promised you a photograph.) But I won the award for Best Newcomer at the Blog Awards last night. And I’m so delighted I don’t even mind jeopardising everything I hold dear now, by showing you just how seriously I took the 1980s fancy dress theme. It was marginally funny…
Tark And Mara Do Fashion… And Scottish Independence
Mara was spitting fire. “Please stop spraying lighter fluid on that naked flame, my little pyronymphomaniac,” said Tark, lounging against the Baby Grand in the open-plan concert kitchen of their Dublin penthouse, a post-flight gin and tonic in his hand. He had been expecting his wife to explode ever since their private jet had touched down. “If a second Damien Hirst…
