Friday 26th June “For every old sock, there’s an old shoe.” I stop by a French bakery on the outskirts of Galway City, wait in a socially-distant queue and buy all the pastries I can reasonably buy without looking like I haven’t eaten for a month. I am celebrating: twenty-one years ago, in a tiny…
DetailsSunday 21st June There’s a place I have sketched many times. It is called Killeenaran Quay. It has colourful boats and a wall with a bridge, and sea and seaweed, and loads of sky that is usually a celestial canvas of something dramatic and beautiful. When I arrived last Sunday I dropped down over the…
DetailsThursday 18th June Paddy (18) wants to visit Galway City. He hasn’t been in town for three months, whereas we used to go once every couple of weeks. “I just want to go in and get a quiche from the Gourmet Tart Company,” he says in such a wistful voice that I cannot refuse, and…
DetailsMonday 15th June It is hot today. We have been spoiled with amazing weather lately, but then some wretched wind came in from the Arctic and we got cold again. Now the good weather has returned. I suggest to Liv (15) that we head off for a snorkel. She’s game, so just after lunch we…
DetailsIt’s elderflower season in Galway. years ago I used to make elderflower cordial, but I have passed the baton on to my younger daughter Olivia (15), who is as domestically-goddess as I ever was, with the great benefit that she is extremely tidy and organised too, something I never managed. But she loves all the…
DetailsMy brother Malachy paid us a visit. He bought clams and mussels from the guys down the road. They harvest them down at the shore where I sat on wet sand and sketched the other day, and bring them back to a little shed, where they are filtered (clams) and de-bearded (mussels) and flown all…
DetailsI am sewing a lot of pencil cases at the moment. They are gifts for the generous artists who contributed their work to my new book, Urban Sketcher’s Handbook – Drawing Expressive People, because I wanted to say thank you to them. For all I know they all already have loads of pencil cases, and…
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It couldn’t last forever. The beautiful harmony we had enjoyed as a family for three whole months of being cooped up together cracked, and after a dinner that had taken me hours to cook one of my kids was rude to me. I am used to it with another of the kids, but not this…
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Locked down, still? Yes. We can go no further than 5km from our homes, unless it’s for shopping or essential work. That hasn’t stopped much of Ireland from piling into their cars and travelling across the country for the long weekend. The roads are clogged with D-reg cars, meaning holidaymakers and hundreds of kilometres travelled.…
DetailsThursday 28th May Summer seems to have arrived in Galway. Everything is green and lush and it’s much too hot for anyone in their right mind to go for a walk from about 11.00am (only because we’re not used to it, it’s probably chilly by some people’s standards). My girl Liv (15) lies on the…
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