Really enjoyed Not Making Hay by The Irish Times’ @frankie49.bsky.social part memoir, part rumination on writing four columns a week for the last couple of decades. Lovely stuff.

If that’s a seven-foot Christmas tree, I should be a line-out jumper for Ireland.

Willie Redmond’s grave, Flanders.

All quiet on the western front.

Ring of untruth – Frank McNally on how the Irish language gave ‘phoney’ to English

Rock of Ages – Frank McNally on the shock of punk turning 50

November embers, Dublin

Favorite line so far: "The mother herself was half Irish, on her father’s side, so the teenager was in high-risk group for developing symptoms." (Second-most-favorite: "I might also add in passing that 'Polly Amory' would be an excellent name for an agony aunt.") THANK YOU FRANK McNALLY. 😀

“We are well used to visitors outdoing us in the performative aspects of Irishness. The Normans started it, becoming famously ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’ and so launching the Eight Hundred Years of Impressionism.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

This is a godforsaken place’: A despairing letter from a garda stationed in Tipperary in 1940 www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

How Nancy Spain became the unlikely heroine of an Irish folk classic

Frank McNally: My life as a civil servant in 1980s Dublin

“Driving up north recently, I passed a mural of Bobby Sands with his famous quotation: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” And reflecting on what kids find funny now, I wondered what he would have made of Kneecap.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Laughing for Ireland? Frank McNally on Bobby Sands and Kneecap

Faithful departure: Frank McNally on a belated first visit to Knock Airport, 40 years on

A rock in a hard place: Frank McNally hunts an elusive ancient monument in Mayo

Great work here from @frankie49.bsky.social Especially pleased to see MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever) on the hyperbolic list of Irish history. I'd cast a vote for GUBU (Grotesque Unbelievable Bizarre and Unprecedented) as entry #101 😱

Frank McNally: A History of Ireland in a Hundred Hyperboles

Old Men of the Canal – Frank McNally on the herons of Percy Place

“Despite being born in the same town myself, the astounding fact of Alex Haley’s Irish roots had somehow escaped me until as recently as Wednesday.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

A column from @frankie49.bsky.social that manages to link Festy Ebosele, James Joyce and Wittgenstein, via Connemara www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

I seem to have written a buke

Our Man in Havana – Frank McNally on a forgotten Irishman honoured in Cuba

Charlie Tango – Frank McNally on revisiting the Charlie Hebdo massacre 10 years on

Sunrise on the Beckett Bridge, Dublin.

Howya Heid? - Frank McNally on a visit to one of Glasgow’s toughest pubs

“I don’t expect to be a conscious participant at my own wake when the time comes, but I had a sneak preview of that event while attending a book launch last week.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

I seem to have written a buke

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky. (Me on a slipway in Oban, Scotland, as pictured by my son Daniel.)

Skipping pages – Frank McNally on trawling through the discarded library of a lifetime

On the corner of Hope and Waterloo.

In deepest Glasgae

For the Birds – Frank McNally on an encounter with Dublin’s Pigeon Man

Blades and Fades – Frank McNally on New York’s ‘Lads of Kilkenny’ and a Joycean Fenian in Paris

✨Mark your calendars✨ If you are in Dublin 24 September be sure attend the launch of long-time Flaneur and Irish Times columnist Frank McNally's 'Not Making Hay: The Life and Deadlines of a 'Diary' Farmer'. Top shelf pun, @frankie49.bsky.social!

Gorgeous

If you go down to the woods: Frank McNally on a long dark night of no soul in Stradbally

Tour de farce: Frank McNally on the dubious ‘facts’ Dublin tourists get told

Mellow guitar and a polite cyclist (“Sorry bro”), Dublin.

Dedicated to the one I hate: Frank McNally on how a book inscription came back to haunt Patrick Kavanagh

Street furniture, Dublin.

Happy Independence Day of Ukraine. We owe it to the thousands defending the country today. Fad saoil daoibh go léir 💙💛

A "thank you" bouquet for @frankie49.bsky.social 😄

Field Study – Frank McNally on the night a ‘sputnik’ crash-landed in rural Wexford

Frank McNally is in great form, mastered the diary without going mad - perhaps a first. ‘A breakthrough in the case of my stolen Dublin Bike and the subsequent €150 fine’ www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

A daisy with a doctorate? Frank McNally on the enrolment of ragwort in the rewilded lawns of Trinity College

Ballet Go Backwards – Frank McNally on Patrick Kavanagh’s short-lived career as a dance librettist

Long Day’s Journey Into Night – @frankie49.bsky.social on Monaghan's only All-Ireland final appearance. The programme for the 'last battle of the civil war' between Monaghan and Kerry in the All Ireland football final of 1930 features in 'The GAA Covered'. irishtimes.com/opinion/an-iri…

The Irish caminos: Climbing the ‘passage of the birds’ - a Connemara rival to Croagh Patrick Frank McNally on an ancient Connemara pilgrimage, once suppressed by the church but now happily revived