Look guys, if the gays can boycott the Eurovision, the very very very least you can do is boycott FIFA

Today is 2025-12-05, the sun sets at 16:07:38 and the grand auld stretch tonight was 1 min and 55 secs. #GrandStretch #GrandDrawingIn

We have NEW Christmas Cards for the loveliest people in your life. Get em while they're warm www.anniewest.com/books-cards/...

Archiseek will be 30 next May, and I'm starting to look for some corporate sponsorship for it. Thoughts, suggestions are welcome via socials or to [email protected]

A #painting to look at. "Fitzwilliam Square" came from a time when I was just about able to do the odd commission. Still took me years (There was a lot of bricks). Dublin, sometimes it's Georgian. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm

Loving this festive image from my French publisher Éditions Prisma Once A Year looking beautiful as Le plus beau jour de lannée #OnceAYear #booksky #French #translation #festive #fiction #books #writingcommunity #spéirgorm

I've written a novel, Experts in a Dying Field. It's out on Penguin Sandycove in June. It's about about a band and a tragedy & art for art's sake & aging & loss & community & Dublin. There's a fox in it. & sheet music. The beautiful cover's by Jack Smyth. You can preorder: linktr.ee/expertsinady...

Myers Briggs test for Irish men:

A roaring fire is just the thing for a chilly Tuesday in November. Doodle found inside the 1672 'New Rules' for the regulation of cities and towns in Ireland.

The "liver, fava beans and a nice chianti" line in Silence Of The Lambs is a little joke for psychiatrists in the audience - those foods cannot be consumed with the meds (monoamine oxidase inhibitors) that Lecter is supposed to be taking.

*sighs* How about just the odd time supporting your actual real human Illustrators for goodness sake We generally know how many hands/eyes someone is supposed to have

People who dismiss e-books or audiobooks as being somehow less worthy or less meaningful than physical books are missing the point of books. Books are not ink and paper, just as human beings are not defined by their physicality. Books are connections; emotions; ideas; just like their creators.

I was just thinking the other day that it is mad that if this continues then the book I'm writing, about London 1560-1630, will contain basically no British Library manuscript material. Would have been unthinkable to me but there hasn't been a manuscript catalogue for two years now!

Absolutely going to need smarties.

Speaking of the Pro-Cathedral, my favourite funny story about my Dublin granny. Before he died leaving her a widow with five young children in England during the war, Granpa had given her a fur coat which was her prized possession. Nobody in the family had ever had a fur coat before... After the

Long live the ‘soundabout’.

"And James Bond, who did NOT die"

When you suddenly realise you've been saying hello to all the villagers without changing back into human form.

Deireadh ag teacht le leaganacha aipe ‘Foclóir.ie’ agus ‘Teanglann.ie’

Right lads, here's one for you: we've a gentleman looking for a Dublin phone directory, anyone got one looking for a good home? Not sure what year the last one issued was but would prefer as recent as possible.

Today’s Halloween poem is called ‘Come, take this hand in yours’.

I've a 2 mile uphill walk to a rural voting booth. I'll be happy to do it again, in rain, to vote against FF's 'Enable Flatley and McGregor to make a Holy Show of us' Referendum.

What better way to get voting day off to a lively start than to share these alternative lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson, which can be found in the #PresidentialElection material of Robinson’s archive @uniofgalwayasc.bsky.social @uniofgalwaylib.bsky.social #Áras25

My polling station has a bus stop outside and at 8am it was packed with teenagers in Halloween costumes, apparently warding off evil spirits from the ballot boxes. With a bit of effort we could probably convince foreign journalists this is an actual Irish thing.

It's been a bittersweet week at Orkney Library & Archive because we've been saying goodbye and HAPPY RETIREMENT to Simon who is leaving us after many years of service in the library and, of course, being the driver of #BookyMcBookface (and several previous Mobile Libraries!)

Delighted to be present for the opening of ‘The Prisoners’ Lens: Secret photography in Kilmainham Gaol, 1921’, a gem of an exhibition (curated by Brian Crowley) exploring fascinating photographs taken in Kilmainham Gaol during the Irish War of Independence! www.kilmainhamgaolmuseum.ie/exhibitions/

If Jim Gavin gets 12.5% or more, Fianna Fáil gets €250,000 in expenses refunded. Bear that in mind if you're voting for Jim Gavin as a joke.

Good morning! Check out Lauren O’Hara’s Happy Prince painting in @booksupstairs.bsky.social’s window! 😍 Launching this evening at 6.30pm, all welcome!

I really enjoy this. Also you should give blood if you can!

Thank goodness for the AI search recommendations: "it looks like you're searching for a particular author who appears in our catalogue. Would you like to search for some gibberish instead?"

BRAND NEW Far Side from Gary Larson just dropped

If any of my Dublin peeps are near NCI (kids welcome!) around 2pm today, we’re doing a little Diwali Delight, with chai and mithai, Halloween sweeties and water, and a bit of music, just at the front of the Mayor Square building at the Iris sculpture.

If anyone has some time to help out in transcribing old, handwritten weather records. www.met.ie/met-eireann-...

Dublin small press fair on 28 & 29 November at Pearse St library. Free and open to the public. dublinsmallpressfair.com

Delighted to host Dr Leeann Lane's fantastic exhibition on the afterlives of Cork republican women in Cregan Library until the 30th of this month! It'll be travelling to the O'Reilly Library for display from the 1st of November. @dublincityuni.bsky.social

New Blog Post. Library of Congress & Flickr Commons: Analysis of user interactions on 40,000 images thisismattmiller.com/post/lc-flic... - Organizing 95K photo comments. - Viewer to explore user georectified images - Folksonomy tagging vs LCSH Vocabulary - Placing into the Wiki* knowledge graph

Book post is the best post! My very first published books, released all the way back in 2003, now finally available in Irish! #SpeirGorm #BookSky #KidsBooks

Weird flex but ok dude 👀

Just heard that tickets for this workshop are selling well already. Do come and join us in Dingle in November. It's a brilliant festival in a stunning place. dinglelit.ie/news/event/h... #Spéirgorm #writingcommunity #Ireland #Dingle #Books @dinglelit.bsky.social @gaiabanks.bsky.social

A reminder that today is Michaelmas, on which day in parts of Ireland rent could be paid in geese. If you’re due to pay rent this month, please consider setting a very irritated goose on your landlord in lieu of payment, in the name of upholding important Irish traditions.

Irish Examiner... #Aras25 #FeckOffIona

Our TV series starts this Thursday on UTV at 10.45 (or find it on the ITV player). A beautiful collection of UTV archive reflecting the stories and lives of Northern Ireland 1959-1964. A time of hope and growing awareness of the world around us, unknowingly on the eve of terrible change.

A poet's "mugshot" from @cabhc.bsky.social and two men keeping watch over a fairy bridge in County Donegal from the @nlireland.bsky.social were among our favorites of the 1,457 new photos this week on Flickr Commons.

“Where would they have been in 1916?” Geldof

A guy I knew tried to use the line "Your father's a thief, he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes!".He was super drunk though and said to the girl "Your father's a thief..." and forgot the rest. She punched him.

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow swampland The lovers, the dreamers, and me

There’s a public survey open for the general public to give input as to whether the Basic Income for the Arts scheme should continue. I implore you to take the 2 mins to fill out this survey and call for the BIA scheme to be continued and further developed. ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/run...