Galway Bay Cycling CLub (GBCC) Criterium racing, Highfield Park, Galway City, Saturday evening, June 9th, 2018. Dry warm June. Tight clockwise circuit buried in one of Galway’s west side housing estates. Five right handers, two left handers, 2 speed bumps, one drag up, one drag down. Assorted bales of hay. All images Donal Kelly 2018.…
The Dark Half. If you were to cut a year down the middle, right through the belly, it would make sense (in the northern hemisphere at least), to choose the time of Halloween. This is when Daylight Savings Time is cut from the clocks and autumn cedes to winter. It’s a transition from light to…
Is it here yet? We are plugged into radio, tv, boards.ie, facebook, twitter. RED warning. refresh, refresh, refresh. Cork’s getting a hammering. 169 km/h way down at Fastnet Rock. Waterford. Tipperary. The eye is tracking up the west coast. Is this it? Now? Lough Corrib is churning. It’s raining full pelt. Up in the high…
I’ve just left Temple Cafe in the Corn Store, and their grilled chicken sandwich on sourdough bread. Two old ladies, walking slowly in conversation along St Augustine Street. A man on the opposite side of the street, going the other way. The building next to the library is in the process of being torn down.…
Here it comes, there it goes. The Christmas break, with its long buildup and heavily marketed stature, has already left the building before it seemed to even arrive. The rains barely paused for breath, though the good winds provided enough breath for all. Under the twinklings of dangling lights blowing in the breezing rain, ’tis…
It’s a little bit of dark, a little bit of chaos, a lot of imagination, and a stick to shake at the arriving winter. Dwell in the dark, take refuge in the symbols, there is energy and density in the bulbous, the twisted, the animal, and the shadow. The first set of black and white…
W.B. Yeats visited a public school in Waterford in 1926, and there, as an ageing man among the young children, his mind wanders, first to Maud Gonne, to youth, and in an unexpected way, to something universal and beautiful: Among School Children How can we know the dancer from the dance? The poem is an…
Symphony for the Restless: Let the Night in, let the night out It moves slowly, eerily, growing from a small blob to the right of the cathedral, into a more distinct giant head as it crosses the Salmon Weir bridge. With hollering and boom, behind the brassy siren of a high-perched saxophone, under a darkening…
Act Dance Sing is a dance academy in Galway. This year the group got together for their annual summer show ‘Stars on the Rise’ in Leisureland, Salthill
The Mistake (a very short story) Wasn’t like the daydreams at all. They chased me up Taylor’s street and left down St. Kilda’s Avenue and over the grassy wall into Finny Park where the trees were just beginning to leaf and for a change nobody was walking a dog. I had my heavy work shoes…
It’s a windy, dark, mid December morning, and I’m watching the rain pelt down along shop street. From the barely-there shelter of the cafe I annoy passers-by with my camera. But I like the atmosphere of the Sunday morning downpour, and there are few enough people to actually see them as they pass by. The…
Burgundy. Cabernet Sauvignon. Merlot. White, red, rosa, bubbly. Brian bought 500 grams of dry fusilli pasta in Dunness Stores before going to the Dole Office to sign on. He should have gone earlier; it was overflowing when he got to the doors. Now he was back outside looking at a display of wines through a…