fishing trawler

Published: Irish Times, August 20 2011

The Trawlerman

IT’S 3.45AM AND not a soul is stirring in Kinsale. As our jeep crunches to a halt on the roadside, the headlights reveal a lone heron wading in the tide below. Shane Murphy bounds down the gangway and boards Aurora Borealis, a 35ft inshore trawler he has skippered for six years.

He flicks a light switch in the wheelhouse and fires up the diesel engine. Mike McCarthy, his crewman, busies himself with the moorings. Our passage out of Kinsale this morning will be with the help of a baffling array of technologies: Decca plotter, echo sounder, radar, Sodena plotter, autopilot, GPS and compass.

“I might also look out of the window occasionally,” adds the skipper, deadpan. Read the rest of this article here.

Published: Irish Times, 20 August 2011

The Trawlerman

IT’S 3.45AM AND not a soul is stirring in Kinsale. As our jeep crunches to a halt on the roadside, the headlights reveal a lone heron wading in the tide below. Shane Murphy bounds down the gangway and boards Aurora Borealis, a 35ft inshore trawler he has skippered for six years.

He flicks a light switch in the wheelhouse and fires up the diesel engine. Mike McCarthy, his crewman, busies himself with the moorings. Our passage out of Kinsale this morning will be with the help of a baffling array of technologies: Decca plotter, echo sounder, radar, Sodena plotter, autopilot, GPS and compass.

“I might also look out of the window occasionally,” adds the skipper, deadpan. Read the rest of this entry »

Meltdown on the Property Market

It’s official. The Irish property market is on the brink of collapse. All that you have ever worked for is about be lost in the abyss of a new economic Dark Age, made more sinister and protracted by the twisted lights of perverted lending practices. The time to panic has come and gone. Your dream home is worthless now. Forget about it, it’s gone. If you can find someone to swap you a Lost Series One DVD box set for it, then grab that lifeline and grab it fast.

There may, however, be a silver lining in all of this. Look at it this way. You’ve tried the path of prudence. You’ve scrimped and saved and prostituted your talent to a faceless corporation. You’ve poured your heart and soul into an inanimate lump of concrete because that’s what society told you to do. And where did it get you? Sat on the kerb with a Lost DVD box set and nowhere to watch it.

What sensible person could therefore object if, for your next move, you let yourself be guided, not by the strait jacket of conventional wisdom, but by some whimsical impulse of your deranged imagination? I bet you’ve never given any serious consideration to any of these five exciting living scenarios. If not, why not? Read the rest of this entry »

Published: Mongrel, December 2006

MELTDOWN ON THE PROPERTY MARKET

It’s official. The Irish property market is on the brink of collapse. All that you have ever worked for is about be lost in the abyss of a new economic Dark Age, made more sinister and protracted by the twisted lights of perverted lending practices. The time to panic has come and gone. Your dream home is worthless now. Forget about it, it’s gone. If you can find someone to swap you a Lost Series One DVD box set for it, then grab that lifeline and grab it fast.

There may, however, be a silver lining in all of this. Look at it this way. You’ve tried the path of prudence. You’ve scrimped and saved and prostituted your talent to a faceless corporation. You’ve poured your heart and soul into an inanimate lump of concrete because that’s what society told you to do. And where did it get you? Sat on the kerb with a Lost DVD box set and nowhere to watch it.

What sensible person could therefore object if, for your next move, you let yourself be guided, not by the strait jacket of conventional wisdom, but by some whimsical impulse of your deranged imagination? I bet you’ve never given any serious consideration to any of these five exciting living scenarios. If not, why not? Read the rest of this entry »