Nicky Harley is excellent in The Human Voice at the Lyric. Those wonderful moments in theatre when you are brought into someone’s world and share their emotions - even here when it is pain and desolation we feel.

Some of the Gliders are getting bone rattlingly uncomfortable at times. Brief and passing but moments of real discomfort as they shake.

Thanks to all @niscifest.bsky.social for a great festival. The best tribute I can give to it is maybe that though I went to 15+ events there are an equal amount of other things I could have went to and had just as great a time. The best of our local festivals and an annual boon for life here.

The subject of an event at the Black Box tonight - what is the greatest SF movie ever? There is the greatest and your favourite (not always the same) but for me the obvious answer is (and nearly on both criteria) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Last day of the science festival (for me) - the beautiful wonders of life in our coastal waters, Can Geology save the world? (Spoiler- yes), history of the Ordinance Survey in Ireland and an interactive debate on the greatest SF movie ever. 😁😁

Map Men at the NI Science Festival tonight - as fun, entertaining and interesting in person as in their videos. Lively, sold out audience. #NISF26

Hive Choir’s experimentation, sense of play, creation of musical soundscapes make them always entertaining and intriguing. Tonight’s event at SARC mixed medical research and experimental music. Nice to finally get to a Hivesplaining event. #NISF26

My favourite type of talks (and there have been a few #NISF26) are probably those that open a new area of the world or a new way of seeing the world to you. I’m blessed by being omnivorously curious and with a love of learning but these are a particular kick.

Absorbing and well presented talk on the fallibility and flexibility of memory tonight #NISF26 from @ciaragreene.bsky.social and @gillian-murphy.bsky.social. Book looks great too.

Today at the science festival 2 of the great science communicators of our time - Marcus Du Sautoy and Jim Al-Kahlili. But Super Sundays are as much about Belfast gathering en masse to engage together with the beauties and wonders of our world. #NISF26

More events #NISF26 - discussion on Belfast scientist and QUB founding father Thomas Andrews and interesting talk on right and left handiness. Tonight a very well organised and delivered presentation on autopsies- congratulations to the 2 histopathologists involved - superbly done.

Event 5 at the NI Science Festival and talks on dopamine and smart phone addiction and the dangers for our children’s developing brains. Also got to see, for the first time in far too long, the great Emer Maguire performing- singing even better than ever. #NISF26

Event 4 at NISF and the always excellent @flygirlnhm.bsky.social and her talk, Metamorphosis on flies - communicates both her erudition about and enthusiasm for the subject in a very engaging way.

Arts Cure with Daisy Fancourt @niscifest.bsky.social was great tonight - about research into the health benefits of engaging with and in the arts. Personally need to try doing more art and creative things but in the past I have been weak about developing this habit.

First event tonight at @niscifest.bsky.social Dr Bot on medicine and AI with @crblease.bsky.social - fascinating and insightful, must read the book now.

The annual feast of curiosity, wonder, beauty and intellectual stimulation/ vigour that is @niscifest.bsky.social has started 😁. Tonight a talk on Egyptology and how a multi-disciplinary scientific approach has unveiled so much of the past there.

Age Verification. “Too orangey for crows, just for me and my dog”

The Importance of Being Earnest at the Lyric is a joyful delight - a wonderfully theatrical entertainment with everything turned up and fabulous (but not OTT).

First night at a conventional book club tonight (as opposed to the Silent Book Club). Enjoyable and engaging discussion on Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth at Bullhouse East - thanks to organisers Seaside Books.

Long time since I last watched a western so seeing Winchester ‘73 tonight at the new @lonesomedove73.bsky.social cinema club was even more fun than I expected. Beanbag Cinema is nicer than I was last in it too (but that might even be 15 years ago).

Another day, another showcase - Glimpse @circusful.bsky.social. I don’t get to enough circus arts performances. Always enjoy them and frequently amazed, filled with wonder and moved.

Manifest Showcase @themacbelfast.bsky.social from Amadan and others - six pieces in development, some very promising, some a bit too short to be sure but an exciting evening of new theatre 👏👏👏

Good concert tonight from @ulsterorchestra.bsky.social of 5 pieces recorded for R3 New Music. Highlight for me a wonderful piece from Nahia Vicente evoking whales and the sea

Really enjoyed this by @stubailie.bsky.social - beautifully designed,with some great photos and seems to catch the essence of the man

Winter Warmer from Eastside Choir tonight at Templemore Baths - always a fun evening and this time with stories and poems of Belfast Christmases from Jazzmin 😁👏👏

Congratulations to all @accidental.bsky.social who now own their building and hopefully will be a boon to life in Belfast for many more years.

This excellent novel, by @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social, is so vivid and moving in how it captures multiple stories and voices in a compelling narrative. Funny, shocking, insightful and so richly alive.

At the third of 3 great exhibitions from the Belfast Archive Project @ulstermuseum.org - Bill Kirk and Frankie Quinn before - and today the Bell Archive. Beautiful, rich, evocative documents of times and people past. An excellent series.

Live theatre - caught up in a story, enraptured in a moment caught on stage by the production team, the actors and the writer- literally on the edge of my seat and sharing it with others in a darkened room - feels so alive and exciting, a transcendent togetherness.

I engage with theatre (and art in general) to hear stories from all people and culture. But it is also a pleasure in the last month to have seen 2 plays by writers from my own area and relevant to my own story.

Thrilling theatre at Bright Umbrella tonight with David Ireland’s Ulster American - shocking, visceral and hilarious. Go see - gripping drama.

Nice to be back at the Strand Arts Centre for 2 good events today - talk on the building’s past and future and a showing of Singin’ in the Rain, preceded by a performance from the Soda Popz.

Belfast TradFest looks great this year so I probably should have made to more than this event but tonight’s - Brighde Chaimbeul and Chris Stout & Catriona McKay - was excellent.

At the opening night of Sam Robinson’s Spacebucket Rides Again - 2nd of his plays about growing up in Ballybeen. Great night’s theatre but difficult to be objective as this is basically my story

Ulster Consort gigs always have good music (tonight’s at St Patrick’s with pieces associated with the Sistine Chapel) but you also get to experience (and very definitely to hear) great church architecture. Allegri’s Miserere in particular was spine-tinglingly good.

What algorithm ( “or who?) decides the price of second hand books on Amazon? Bought Ladybird in a Loony Bin by Ian Cochrane last week for £4.99 plus P&P. Now available only for £42 (around what I had seen it for before). Other 2 Cochranes that I have read but don’t own are £60 and £87.

For someone who goes to a lot of theatre and lives in Ballybeen/Dundonald it has taken me a ridiculously long to catch up with the DLA but saw it tonight at @themacbelfast.bsky.social and there were some great laughs and both performers were good.

Excellent short film telling a story of forgotten local history. Very promising start to a project and account worth following.

This is great - so wide ranging, so entertaining, such a love of music and pop culture combined with insight and erudition.

A.I. n’t Written - improv with a twist (scripts by ChatGPT) at The Mac tonight - performed with great verve and funny,if not entirely successful. Promise for more shows.

Pruning bookshelves is difficult. Very rarely reread but difficult to give away a good book even if all it will do is gather dust. Then there are the ones that I will get round to reading someday 😁.

Interesting exhibition at Titanic Belfast of etchings by Lucian Freud with several accompanying short films. Usual problem though with the large print catalogue of merely reproducing the blurbs and not indicating how they relate to the paintings on the walls i.e. start on your left and go clockwise

11 events at the book festival and thoroughly enjoyed them. Such a diversity of ideas, emotions and people that I have engaged with in the last 8 days. A strong, very well run festival that is a tribute to the vibrancy of our cultural sector here. Thanks to all. #belfastbookfestival

Events at the book festival with the Seamus Heaney fellows are always a highlight - tonight’s with Declan Lawn & Adam Patterson, Fiona Benson and @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social - provided a good ending to a great festival. #belfastbookfestival

Thought this would be the highlight of the book festival - @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social new book- and after the launch tonight I eagerly look forward to reading it. #belfastbookfestival

The friendship between @lucycaldwell.bsky.social and @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social, the fun they have in chatting and their obvious intelligence and insight makes events between them a real pleasure. Tonight’s, on the latter’s new novel did not disappoint. #belfastbookfestival

Day six #belfastbookfestival and an event with Paul McVeigh - a writer I only know from his play Big Man but will have to read more of.

Thank to the very kind and helpful volunteer at the book festival tonight who asked if I needed a seat at the front because of my poor eyesight and then found me one. Exceptional stuff. #belfastbookfestival

2 more events at the book festival. Living on the Fringes with the always interesting Darren Anderson and Eoin McNamee (relatively little known to me). Then an eloquent, funny and insightful chat with Roddy Doyle conducted by Glenn Patterson. #belfastbookfestival

Should one read books fast or go slow and savour? Certainly sometimes I can read fast and more skim than read properly. Started this by Lucy Caldwell this morning on the bus and between gaps at the book festival finished on the bus home. Loved it.