I got a cracker view of Sydney Harbour when we were leaving for Christchurch yesterday. Glad I scooted over to that side of the mostly-empty plane as soon as the seat belt sign went off!

I for one would not be looking so delighted if gulls were circling directly above the open top of my vehicle 🐦‍⬛💩

It's my last night in Ireland for who knows how long, but years most likely. Tomorrow (Monday) morning I head to Dublin and thence to New Zealand where I should get home by Wednesday afternoon. Even allowing for the time difference that's a long auld slog!

Meowie Antoinette

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Cat, plus a quite magnificent carpet that was fitted in the family home around 1980 and is still going strong in the sitting room.

The farm sheds haven't been used in a long time and some of the oldest ones are only fit for demolition now, but they're full of memories for me, especially what was the calving shed. As soon as I slid open the doorhandle and walked through the door I could almost smell straw and cows.

Bzzzzz

Bluesky isn't a bubble or an echo chamber, it's a garden. You plant some seeds and pull some weeds, you tend to it with care, and you make it into a space that pleases you when you come to sit in it a while. Other people can plant and tend to their own gardens, if they like. This garden is yours.

I never thought I'd say this, but it was Far Too Hot in Ireland this past few days and I am glad the heatwave has broken. I had to wear SPF30 and felt sticky all over with the humidity. In Kerry!!! The sheep were very hot and uncomfortable, panting away in their big fleeces with no real shade.

The Kerry Cliffs are nowhere near as famous as the Cliffs of Moher but boy did they deliver today.

Bronze Age stone circle in a boggy paddock in Co.Cork. It's pretty cool to just walk up and pat stones that were put there about 3000 years ago.

Remember last year when the Free Speech Union signed up hundreds of their followers to try to take over InternetNZ? They're going to try again this year, but will be more organised. If you joined last year to vote but let your membership lapse, please renew and come to the AGM. internetnz.nz

Excited to be visiting Cork and Kerry for a couple of days this week. I will be in @irishrainforest.bsky.social country! Although sadly I probably won't see or experience much real rainforest or rewilded bits. Will report back in either case!

Definition of a Woman, NZ First - Someone who Shane Jones can enjoy watching on a hotel TV screen at taxpayer expense. ACT - Someone who is probably safe from Tim Jago. National - Someone who does not deserve pay equity.

I've been doing a little project recording details about the residents of the family graveyard in Ireland. Thanks to my granny's scrapbooks of newspaper clippings I've now identified at least 25 people who are buried there with no grave marker, and

I have really spent a lot more of this Irish trip with graveyard dirt under my fingernails than I expected 😂 I've been on a mini crusade to roll back decades of moss and grass on the oldest gravestones of my paternal ancestors.

A little outing before the rain hit. #Ireland

Two housemartins in flight, attending to important nest business under the eaves.

One of the benefits of visiting home: I requested a hug from my mum and she instantly gave me a hug instead of waving at me down a webcam. Nice.

Hello Ireland! I'm down there somewhere.

KitKats are not for kit kats.

Cat has just been fed some freshly cooked rashers of bacon and a saucer of Jersey milk. He eats better than I do!

Two signs within metres of each other on the riverbank in Arklow. Make your mind up!!

My mother's approach to cat management: 1. Allows the unnamed yard cat to come indoors 2. Complains that Cat is begging for food 3. Feeds Cat some random treat (most recently, kefir 😆! Or chocolate, until I made her stop) so it quits bothering her 4. Denies that Cat is now a pet 5. Repeat from (1)

Well you would, wouldn't you.

A wholesome story for nerds: On Saturday, I was signing books at a local bookstore for Independent Bookstore Day. The store had a signing-palooza with new authors every hour; toward the end of my hour, a woman came up and asked what my book was about. "Dictionaries," I said, and she lit up. 1/n

one time at work i noticed this guy and i were wearing shirts from the same band and i wanted to point it out but my brain short circuited and so i just said ‘hey!’ and gestured directly at my tits

Rook strut.

I suppose if I *must* have a day out, Inis Oírr isn't the worst place for it.

I'm dating myself a bit here but were moving statues not already a massive fad in Ireland?

I am thoroughly enjoying the cultural experience of a part of my homeland my upbringing didn't include: traditional Irish music in a small pub in a small town.

Genuinely devastating. This is one of my favourite cafes in NZ and I always call in if I'm passing through the area. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

The Cliffs of Moher were looking moody and misty this evening.

Today was a bluebell-heavy day in the west of Ireland.

Yo. Hey there. Hello.

Aargh 😂

Going to the garden centre in Ireland right now is just a big tease for me. Even if I was willing to run the gauntlet of NZ biosecurity (which I am very much not), I'll be coming back to winter not spring! *cries in northern hemisphere*

Irish springtime greetings to you all.

WTF is wrong with this country. We apparently have $$$$ to burn on MOAR ROADS (North Island only) but an underresourced ambulance service that relies on donations to scrape by. Not to mention people living with pain and infection and social stigma because dentistry costs more than they can afford.

Hoping there's another sign at the end labelled </FOOT PATH>

Super thrilled and delighted that I briefly took my Kindle out of airplane mode and it immediately wiped all the public domain books I had loaded onto it, leaving only the ones purchased from Amazon years ago. I can't even jailbreak this particular model and now can't trust it.

Today's "insects of Ireland". Apologies for lack of proper alt text but I am not confident in declaring what any of them are on a site that doesn't allow anything to be edited!

About NZ $2000/mo for a "licence" to stay in a bed in a shared room! I guess tenement housing is the way forward for those who aren't in the landlord class. +

An hour ago I was standing in a field of rape as tall as I am, enjoying the sweet scent and watching the critters buzz and crawl around, and now the plants have been mown flat by the farmer and the critters are either chopped up too or have fled. I feel terrible for them!

The human circulatory system, before and after proper cable management.

WANT

This is the sort of road we were on at the time - not the ideal place to have car trouble! But we pulled in at a gap that turned out to be Eamonn's front gate, and he was working in his front garden at the time so he immediately saw the problem. He really went out of his way to help us.

The kindness of strangers! GRMA to Eamonn Haughney, ably assisted by cycle race marshall Noel Cummins who was brought in to assist, who came to the rescue when Mum and I got a flat tyre halfway up Mt Leinster. They struggled getting the wheel off so we wouldn't have had a hope by ourselves. Cheers!