To do, tonight: Black Letters and Ballads folk club

This is the real thing. A folk club like you hear tell of from the sixties, where rapt listeners sit silent as musician poets sing tales of sea-faring and loss and wandering strangers. Musicians and singers sing real old folk songs, not the schmaltzy sentimental faux-folk or Dylan tributes that too often define the genre in this country. In the sparse living-room like surroundings of The Joinery you could be in Greenwich Village in 1962, channelling your inner Kerouac. The last time I went to Black Letters and Ballads everyone who performed got up for a song together at the end. Autoharps, dulcimers, double bass, mandolins and a cacophony of harmonising voices made a riotous and joyful end to a very lovely night of song. After some months wandering in a far off land, the club makes a welcome return. The loosely interpreted theme for this session is rather aptly, rambling and roving. It starts at 7.30 in The Joinery, Stoneybatter.

https://www.facebook.com/events/246387748785444/

We are one year old...

Oh my god are we REALLY that old?

...And we can't quite believe it. We've managed to keep posting and kept all of you interested for a whole year. So here's to another year of celebrating the weird and wonderful and cool and not so cool and THANK YOU! from us, and keep reading!

YES!

Riding out at Ballydoyle

I was right! The Queen IS going to visit Coolmore Stud, it was confirmed in the Irish Times yesterday. Maybe she'll go and watch the early morning exercise at Coolmore's racing arm - Ballydoyle. (...this is just an excuse to use this photo...)

Has Ireland finally grown up?

We had our much longed for general election here in Ireland on Friday.

A nation historically very attached to our parliamentary system, we exercised our electoral power and demolished the ruling Fianna Fáil party, reducing their representation in parliament from 78 seats to a mere 20. The Greens, coalition partners with Fianna Fáil, are now on the brink of extinction, winning no seats. They compromised their ideological integrity and appeared apparently unconcerned (up until last November) that they were helping to shore up a failing and despised government.

In power for the past 13 years, Fianna Fáil presided over the now fabled 'Celtic Tiger' boomtime, and as we now know, disasterously mismanaged it. Sadly, it has taken an economic collapse that has the country on the edge of bankruptcy to force a major shift in the political landscape.

We are attached to our parliamentary system because it was hard won, and we are, or were, attached to political parties because of lingering divisions from those days of civil war, of family allegiances four generations old. This election has shown that those parochial, 'civil war politics' can no longer work - the party entrusted with ruling this country for the good of it's people have destroyed it, and with it the shining future the young of the country were led to believe awaited.

The Republic of Ireland is a young country. Perhaps now, after civil war, terrorism, recession, boom, and more recession, the nation's imagined community has reached the end of adolescence and can begin to recover on the domestic and international stage and behave as a responsible member of the international community.

The likely coalition of Fine Gael and Labour have a very difficult job ahead of them. It will be largely thankless (just look at how Obama's doing) and having done all the hard work to get the country off it's knees, they will probably be booted out of government after two or three terms by an electorate disillusioned with further belt-tightening policies. At least, this election has shown we can hope that if Fianna Fáil do return to power one day it will be because they have policies that appeal and ideas that will work, and not because one's great-great-grandfather fought on their side over a century ago.