Secrets of an Innocent Irishman.

The guest house was cool and quiet. From under its thatched roof and high ceilings I stepped into the already stale morning. It was like w...

I took the number 46 bus from Gare du Nord and got off at Porte Dor é e. It looked the same, smelled the same as it did when I used to l...

The moon looks so conspicuous sitting in a sky that seems to be otherwise empty. No stars visible, no clouds. Just a velvety, royal blue ba...

Sun-drenched beaches are drawing car loads of people out of the city today like a hot bread poultice draws poisonous pus from an infecte...

Yesterday came to an end; the sun slithered quietly into the ocean and day turned into night while I took one sip of remarkable wine that wa...

Old world charm is what you get in my favourite hotel in Donegal, and it hasn’t been falsely created - it’s always been that way. We’ve st...

I sat and looked intently at my feet tonight, not a part of my body to which I pay a lot of attention, and I thought to myself, “Wow, I wond...

I do enjoy being entertained in a pleasant garden, and that’s what happened to me late this afternoon. When the worst of today’s heat had ...

Do you like the word ‘purloin’? Perhaps the activity to which it refers gives the word a bad reputation, but it’s not the word’s fault. If...

I know of no sadder place to be than this café at six o’clock on a Sunday night in January. My wife is out so I’ve come to read a dreadf...

I grow my own garlic - that you already know. I derive great satisfaction from my industry, from the fruit of my labour, but there is a lot ...

Come up on deck. Lie back on this roll of we tarpaulin with me and watch the stars. Count them and name them. Feel the swell of the sea un...

Could do better Needs to try harder Not reaching his full potential Easily distracted Needs to focus Pleasant boy These were the u...

It’s two in the morning  The twelfth of November I’m warming my feet By the fast-fading embers The window is frosted The garden is dusted W...

It’s not an easy life being a carpet. I spend all day every day lying on my back and soaking in household smells like cooked food and feet. ...

Billy dug graves and they were dug to perfection: smooth, straight sides that never collapsed, always just wide enough but never much more...

In the warmth of an empty café I take a cure, a double espresso, served up by a depressed looking barista. I observe the January world f...

Leonard Cohen reminded me tonight (funny how people can do that from beyond the grave) that my great aunt (but only by marriage, and my gran...

It was through eyes heavy with fever that I first saw Rome. It was winter, a particularly hard winter, and the overnight train down from G...

Isabella stared into her glass. Her husband’s phone had rung and he had gone out onto the street to take the call saying, as he always did...