BlackwaterDistillery

Dirtgrain Irish #Whisky Manifesto Release now available to purchase via ballot until midnight Mon with live launch Wed 30 Nov 8pm with @storiesandsips. Ballot winners will be notified on Wed and will have 24 hours to purchase. #dirtgrain #drinkresponsibly blackwaterdistillery.ie/ballot-dirtgra…

Theres a little chemist at 1 Lincoln Place in Dublin that has been affectionately described as the worst pharmacy in the city. But its also its most famous. Sweny's opened in 1853, though the building itself dates to 1847, when it served as a GP's consulting room until Frederick William Sweny took over. Its across the road from the birthplace of Oscar Wilde, and fifty yards from the spot where James Joyce was stood up by Nora Barnacle on the 14th of June 1904. The interior has barely changed since the 1850s. Mahogany counters and original glass cabinets and shelves of medicine bottles, brown paper-wrapped prescriptions waiting to be collected. It is, as the legends who run it freely admit, preserved through a combination of dedication and neglect. In 1904, the young Joyce walked in and consulted with Sweny in enough detail that the prescription Bloom orders in the novel can, in theory, be recreated today. In the Lotus Eaters episode of Ulysses, Bloom comes in to collect a lotion for his wife Molly, lingers among the potions and compounds, and on impulse picks up a bar of lemon-scented soap. He carries it with him for the rest of the day. It becomes a kind of smelly talisman. The pharmacy traded for over a century and a half before closing its doors as a business in 2009. Miraculously a group of Joycean enthusiasts moved in. And fair play to them around twenty odd volunteers took on shifts. They wear white chemist's coats and hold daily public readings of Joyce's work, in English and other languages. Visitors can pick up the book and read a page aloud. There are stools and the occasional cup of tea and you can still buy the lemon soap. Preserving the (inter)national treasure of Sweny's isnt easy. Rising rents threatened closure in recent years, and the operation runs on donations and soap sales. Writers' Tears whiskey stepped in with financial support ahead of Bloomsday 2019. Emmanuel Macron visited in August 2021 with then Taoiseach in tow. The regular volunteer was away in France at the time, which is the kind of detail Joyce would have appreciated. Sweny's occupies a peculiar position in Dublin's literary landscape. Its not really a museum even though its full of artefacts like a hundred-year-old prescription sitting uncollected on a shelf (I was embarressed, then the rash cleared up) Its not a bookshop but it sells books. Its a room where people come to read aloud to strangers, buy soap, and feel briefly connected to a city that no longer exists except on the page. But as the specky sexy git said himself in Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis "The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring."  Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…

A Grey Heron flypast! 😀 Taken recently at the Huntspill seawall in Somerset. 😊🐦

Heron.

Grey Heron through the reeds. 😍 Taken last week at RSPB Ham Wall in Somerset. 🐦

A Great Blue Heron offers stick to his lady for the nest.

Heron.

It’s AGM for the Herons on the grand canal!

Grey Heron in the rhyne. 😍 Taken recently in my Somerset village. 🐦

Grey Heron in the treetops! 😀 Taken last weekend at Swell Wood in Somerset. 😊🐦

I hate it when I can’t take my washing in for fear of disturbing the apex predator that visits most days.

Heron .

Heron.

Heron.

Heron.

Heron.

Probably the proudest day ever today to see what the team @wearehappydoggo have been working on and rolling out in stages. Apologies for the voice but I had to get out of my sick bed to come and see this… 🐕 The start of our government partnerships sterilizing dogs at scale. All around Samui for the next 3 weeks and the moving to rural Thailand. ✂️ I can explain the amount of planning that goes into this for training staff, licenses, permits and general logistics and safety planning etc. 🇹🇭 What I especially love is that apart from me it was 100% Thai staff and Thai community there today. This is how we will fix the problem. Locals bringing their dogs in. 🎯 The dog catching and darting team are my heroes. Getting those dogs in is exceptionally hard. 💵 There is absolutely no cost for the community. Many of these people are low income community who just can’t afford the care. Having their dogs sterilized is a game changer. For those who support us this is what we can do. 100s of puppies stopped today. People who follow us @wearehappydoggo love the rescues and the retirement village and the food and the makeovers where dogs have comebacks. But this today is why we really do it. These mobile units will go on to save 1000s of lives this year working on a daily basis in rural Thailand. I’ll make sure even if we start on a local basis like this soon you’ll see this all over Thailand and the world. The dogs need this ❤️

@HedgehogCabin @white_arrow_uk Is there any commercially produced bird food that isn’t poisonous for hedgehogs eg Niger seed?

@white_arrow_uk They really are, and we make their little lives so hard and dangerous.

In loving memory of Milo. 🪦 I post this every year at this time as an example, in the hopes it may save some gentle trusting little animal's life. It's a little earlier than usual because the hedgehogs hibernated early last year, so there is more danger of them rising earlier this year. Please read Milo's story in the thread below. Then please spread this information as far and as wide as you can. The more people who see it, the more lives are saved. I hope I live long enough to, one year, never have to post this again. 1. In February 2019 a little hedgehog called Milo woke early from hibernation. Healthy, but weak and desperate for food he lived on whatever he could find, which was spillage from under a bird feeder. On 11th March he was found out in the frost, crippled, both front legs broken.

Heron.

Heron touchdown.