Porto in lock down

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Today I watched a tv news item on the closure of the border with Spain and, collaterally, of the pilgrimage route to Santiago, and it struck me that here was a tiny filament in the incomprehensibly complex web of fractures in the life of the world: like the shattered screen of a mobile phone, but not so easy to replace.

January 2019

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A film noir drizzle is spangling the windows tonight, puddles fragmenting the street below, the wet sweep of traffic like windscreen wipers: reveal and erase, erase and reveal.

From: “THE FRENCH THING” (Carreg Gwalch, 2002)

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“…that low-grade xenophobia that is never far below the surface in the English psyche; a dull and petulant hatred of the whole world, but especially of Europe. People talk about Ireland’s deadly affair with history, the gloomy steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone, but really it is England that has the dismal and corrupting preoccupation with the past. Sometimes you feel …

RED HAMMER (from FLIRTING AT THE FUNERAL)

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    © Chris Keil 2012 “RED HAMMER” A play by Dave Leaper ACT ONE SCENE ONE As the lights come up on a stretch of isolated country road, we hear the sounds of a bus pulling away from a stop – hiss and clap of the door, EEH-AW screech of a klaxon, the roar of the motor shifting up …

May 26th

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I’ve been watching a couple in their early forties in the square across the street, talking very intently under a tree, amongst the parked cars. There’s a kid with them, a boy of twelve or thirteen, that skinny, floppy-haired look they have, sometimes taking part in the conversation, sometimes stamping off, bouncing a ball on the pavement. He looks bored …

Porto, May

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A film noir drizzle is spangling the windows tonight, puddles fragmenting the street below, the wet sweep of traffic like windscreen wipers: reveal and erase, erase and reveal.

Cillian Editing Services

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My publisher, Mark Brady of Cillian Press, has just launched  Cillian Editing Services – brilliant, innovative, setting a  new standard of excellence. Check it out at: cillianeditingservices.co.uk