One Sunday afternoon last month, I impulsively purchased a new €900 iPhone and put it on my credit card. That very day I also ordered a device to lock myself out of the very same phone. Ah, the duality of woman. I, like so many of us, have a problematic relationship with my phone. It … Read more
A friend used to live across the road from a family with a preposterous television. It was a gargantuan object and, in the evenings, when it lit up the entire cul de sac it really felt like maybe it might be seen from space. I had images of the family squeezing around the edges of … Read more
Watching the coverage of the Oscars red carpet last Sunday night, I was struck over and over by the same thought. “Celebrities! Stop hugging and getting your heads so close together! Don’t you know that’s how the nits spread?” I don’t even have children, but a number of my friends who are parents have been … Read more
When I think back on the 20 years I’ve called Dublin city my home, I’m smothered in delicious, nostalgic and frenetic memories. Dragging camping chairs on to the roof of the apartment building in Stoneybatter to watch the sunset. Walking, or rather sliding, to work on North Wall Quay at 6am during a Big Snow. … Read more
I smoked my last ever cigarette on March 16th, 2017. I’m coming up on nine years as a reformed Silk Cut devotee. Whenever anyone congratulates me on my nine smoke-free years I feel compelled to admit that my father died of metastatic lung cancer – a direct result of smoking – in 2008 and I … Read more
I’m so glad I never had children. I’d be a terrible mother. I’m old enough now to know that. I’m also old enough that Instagram ads have almost completely stopped screaming ‘You’re almost out of eggs, are you SURE you don’t want to have a baby?’ at me, and people no longer badger me about … Read more
A dear friend texted me just minutes after I heard the news. “Oh, Emer, I’m so sorry about Catherine O’Hara.” She was offering it as a condolence, a recognition that I would be devastated upon learning of the death of this woman who meant so much to me. Many people of a certain age, myself … Read more
My best friend watches the sun like a hawk. Every spring she tracks it as it creeps around her side garden wall. She reports on its progress as it inches towards the far end of her clothesline and when it hits a certain spot she announces, like a 40-something Dublin 7 groundhog, that summer is … Read more
There are certain trips abroad that you need to steel yourself for. Journeys to cities such as Oslo, Reykjavik, Hong Kong or Paris. Not because of danger, or travel stress, or extremes of temperature or culture shock, but because people will drive you to distraction telling you how expensive everything will be. “Oh, it’s very … Read more
Archyde The Rise of the “Middle-Aged Rave”: Can Daytime Clubbing Save Nightlife? Table of Contents 1. The Rise of the “Middle-Aged Rave”: Can Daytime Clubbing Save Nightlife? 2. The Reluctant Retirement 3. Enter the “Middle-Aged Rave”: A New Kind of Night Out 4. Daytime Parties: A Growing Trend 5. implications for the U.S. Market: A … Read more