Last night in Gloucestershire a black cat found me 🐈‍⬛ I then ended up sleeping with two black cats. 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ Lads I am living in a cathouse.

Apparently I’m on this DUB-LHR BA flight enough they asked if I’d like a go in the first officer’s chair! 🤣 (The captain was an ex-Red Arrow- I took some pictures for an aeroplane mad six year-old…)

Wake up and message friends in Kyiv after a brutal night of Russian onslaught.  ‘Yeah it was a little loud here but all good :) Slept in the bomb shelter most of the night. Busy there. Quite a few people and pets.’ We talk about Blitz spirit. This, my friends, is the literal Blitz spirit in 2025.

Fall out my Dublin doorstep, en route to school run and airport, and trip over the postman. ‘Oh I’ve left a letter for you, Pádraig. It didn’t look like a bill. It looks more like an invitation.’ Told him I’d been a good boy and deserved it. We don’t half deserve An Post.

Taking off from Dublin airport. The entire airport as much as possible, taxiing and takeoffs, pauses at 1100 for the one minute’s silence. 🌺

In London. I have a five year-old British Ukrainian girl teaching me all the important words: Kokashka poop Peesha wee wee Toalet toilet Pook pook fart

I’m a weekly or so commuter between Dublin and London. Each week, I carry empty suitcases to London, to bring my clothes back to Dublin. The only way this is possible is if I unknowingly fly naked Dublin to London each week, and everyone is too polite to mention it.

At least I’ve convinced the kids on my doorstop to start shouting ‘sé seacht’ at passersby, instead of ‘six seven’. We take the small wins.

I’m binge watching Black Mirror when I finish writing each night. So I can cheer myself up by the thought that instead of being a journalist with a doctorate to finish, maybe I just live in a horror tech dystopia instead.

It rained on the last day of our @athleticsireland.bsky.social Halloween camp. So this being Ireland, these ghouls, ninjas, and princesses set up hurdles inside and blasted Zombie 🧟🎃☘️💚

So Carlotta covered me with fake blood to coach on #Halloween but I just look like I shaved 🤷‍♂️

I'm running a little athletics camp this week for @athleticsireland.bsky.social in inner-city Crumlin. The idea is, keep kids off screens and active during half term. Here's us today managing admirably with Irish weather ☔️☘️

Good to see she has those barrister skills down. I will get my coat

A pyjama-clad 9 year-old VERY adorably just asked, at 9 pm, if I'd give her a latte-making masterclass, as she wanted to be a barista. I talked her through the steps and assured her the finished product was the best ever – because it was. Unrelatedly I am now not going to sleep tonight.

🐥🇮🇪🛁

✈️👕

This is the fourth night I’ve made a fire to write by, and now the whole cottage smells beautifully of alder, ash, and beech.

Two women under a rainbow on Ireland’s only fjord. Which makes them Fjord explorers.

It’s half term, so I’ve bundled my two into the estate with books, gin, and chessboard, and driven us to a Connemara cottage with a fire.  Turns out they wanted a cheeseboard.

A quick update on my friend Timur in Kazakhstan. After a trial where he wasn’t allowed to call any witnesses, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. But there’s still hope, and we may have help from human rights barristers in London. In the meantime, all my support. #justicefortimur

Please admire my new hata

On the Piccadilly Line. Two German girls swap from their chat to say, in bang on Estuary English, ‘See it Say It Sorted’ in unison with the announcer.  And they say Britain has nothing left to offer the world.

Did a news shift this morning in Dublin. Popped into a school in Tallaght to do quick sprints coaching with incredibly cute kids. Now off to London to work tonight. You know deep down, what all these three very different activities all have in common? Rain. A feck ton of rain.

The anniversary of the death of my mother, Carlotta, sees my daughter Carlotta a long-limbed, fashionable young woman whose Italian grows more confident each summer.   Liam and I are locked in combat at the chessboard while sharing torta della nonna, grandmother’s cake. Ti amerò per sempre, mamma.

Lifetimes ago as a student at Yale, I made lucky friends with Zhanna, a breathtakingly intelligent girl from Kazakhstan – a country to which I could barely point on the map. We stayed in close touch - so much that I befriended her lovely family when I found myself, later, reporting in Astana. 1/

I was so grateful, from 6,000 km away, to make a message of support outside a Kazakhstan courtroom. An illegally detained friend from my time reporting there, Timur Sadvakassov, still fights for his freedom after a court said should go free. I look forward to us celebrating the day he is released.

As well as leaves of fire, October calls to mind Octoberfest, sauerkraut, German Unity Day, and all the friends from Germany who’ve blest my life - like my son’s beautiful godmother Paula. And here is one tiny encomium, for October, to all those lovely Germans who have so gorgeously touched my life.

It’s hard being a big yellow bird in the US at the moment you just get ostrich sized

October’s start marks the dozen days before the anniversary of mum dying; other years I’ve cycled the length of Britain, or run that of Ireland. What stays with me was how strangers put me up each night. The memory of that kindness is what lingers. And somehow all insisted on me having a hot shower

Skipped runs and weights last night to get my BBC story filed over breakfast. Now I’m off to two inner city schools to talk to kids about sport because I am basically a hypocrite.

I'm so very glad the first debate for the highest office in our republic, perfectly timed for the schoolchildren who will be our future voters and representatives, is at the prime time hour of *checks notes* 10 pm. #Áras2025

Just been coaching all the six year olds of Dublin in fencing because I am fully in support of arming small children with knives

It seems like a former president heading for prison should be attracting more attention, but the general reaction I'm seeing here in France is just a shrug and that accompanying gallic puff of air.

Funny seeing Sarkozy sentenced to prison this week. One of my first pieces ever to see print was a @thetls.bsky.social scene setter for his rise to power, which I felt far too clever for spotting in the offing. I’m still glad, all these years later, I insisted on the question mark.

My mistake was agreeing to go for lunch (Friday, presumably boozy?) with someone called ‘Jim’

I'm writing The Times's obit this week for Conor Gearty – an Irish barrister who was a founding member of Matrix Chambers, and as a professor at the LSE, one of the world's leading scholars of human rights. If by chance you knew him, and you've a moment, I'd be very grateful for a quick chat.

I take a look this morning for the BBC at one quiet group of people who, between Ukraine and the Middle East, have never been busier: the war insurance underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, which provides 70 per cent of the world’s war insurance. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I am out out running up a mountain in Ireland to rain and 80s dance mixes.

Stolen: my fencing kit bag, water bottle, and expression. Please return if seen.

Disasters are great for talking to strangers in London. Once I had the best dishwasher explosion - neighbours downstairs and next door both affected. Met both. Ended up having both round for Christmas. Still in touch.

Wednesday, after a charity dinner in London, I led survivors onto a Soho dance floor, to Chinatown, and a casino until 8 am. Thursday, I took eGates and aircoach, and walked home through Dún Laoghaire. Weds I had 0 chats with strangers. Thurs I had 5. This whole Ireland lark is on to something.

Am writing in the front row of my DUB-LHR flight. In a turbulent moment over the Isle of Man, salads take flight, mingle in a heap of broken china in the aisle. Without batting an eye, in-flight lead quips ‘lunch is served’. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I fly @british-airways.bsky.social

Finally got to admire the @businesspost’s dishy new newsroom (as opposed to old-oldsroom?) in my first reporting shift today in the new digs. (Move in happened last week: I was by a pool in Italy.) Friday’s when I learn if you can finish a news shift there at 7 pm and be on a flight to London at 8.

My best friends have abandoned me so off to the newsroom I sulk

New French kid in my daughter’s class. Lands in Ireland last week. Sees a seal. Jumps up and down, pointing, loudly shouting ‘phoque! phoque! phoque!’ Basically she’s fitting in grand in Dublin already.

Madly, trulli? Have the album cover, just need the album.

Each day in journalism’s a brave adventure. Today - I’m wondering round a campsite in Italy, armed with a biro and a receipt-turned-stenographer notepad, shouting through my mobile at Seb Coe, ‘Seb, I found a clearing in the trees, can you hear me now?’ overcoming hurdles, keeping the receipts

Ronnie Scott's late sets, tho. Brought the valiant survivors from a book launch last night. It's so intimate and friendly - chatting about jazz with artists after their sets - and my god it's only a tenner. Honestly this is the most fun you can have in London at midnight with your clothes on.

Fantastic being able to chair a launch dinner last night for Bob Seely’s new book on Russia’s New Total War. We also raised a few pennies for ambulances for Ukraine - justgiving.com/page/mllu. I’m going to try to get out before year’s end to lend a hand too. Ukraine deserves and needs our help. 💙💛

Loads of Americans from Kansas and Iowa coming through Dublin airport now, on their way to the weekend's footie at the Aviva. Chatted with a Garda at passports, who was munching on a chocolate biscuit. "From America!" she grinned.