Colin Leonard.

@DonaldClarke63 It adds to the thrill of the hunt, especially with the twin packs.

Is there a simple answer why the cost of Lavazza coffee varies HUGELY (and randomly) from shop to shop? By my calculation, one habitually overpriced “food market” chain is selling it at around 75% of the price charged in my local supermarket.

Norwich City have reached an agreement for Vinnie Leonard to join us from League of Ireland Premier Division side Dundalk in July 2026. The move is subject to medical, international clearance and approval from The FA and EFL.

✅ Dundalk FC can confirm an agreement has been reached with English Championship club Norwich City for the transfer of Vinnie Leonard. 📅 Vinnie will remain with Dundalk FC until the opening of the UK summer window 📝 👉 dundalkfc.com/dundalk-fc-and…

@NiecyOKeeffe @Ryan_Genealogy Making local enemies sounds like a noble pursuit for a journalist.

@Ryan_Genealogy I’d just end up making very local enemies.

Passed the vape shop in town and a huuuuuuge queue of young ones, all in school uniform, queuing up to buy. I mean, queued up in a long line outside the door. Obscene doesn’t begin to cover that shit. It’s fucked up.

@sophiegrenham Hope it was The Forest by David Byrne. That truly takes you to a different place.

The Temple Theatre was more than a nightclub. For a particular generation of Dubliners, it was a rite of passage.Its lifespan was barely seven years. But its legacy as a sacred place for music, dancing, drugs and getting your hole makes it one of the most important spawning grounds of Dublin youth. Long before all that good stuff, St. George’s Church was of the Georgian Northside Dublins great early 19th century Protestant houses of worship. Designed by the architect of the GPO Francis Johnston, the church began construction in 1802 and opened in 1814, he gave it a dramatic triple-tiered spire. But St. George’s was nearly fecked from the start. The dodgy roof was made with badly designed timber trusses and began to fail under its own weight. Luckily Robert Mallet, one of Ireland’s most innovative engineers, designed a series of cast-iron trusses to stabilise it. By the late twentieth century, the church was once again encased in scaffolding. The posh spire needed reinforcement during the 1980s. Protestant attendance on the northside had dwindled by then anyway and St. George’s was deconsecrated. Its bells, made famous by their tolling in Joyces Ulysses, were removed to Taney Parish Church in Dundrum. The aul pulpit took a stranger journey, ending up in Thomas Read’s pub on Parliament Street. In 1991, the building was sold to actor and entrepreneur Sean Simon. On the 9th of September 1996 St. George’s reopened as the Temple Theatre! The neo-classical interior remained with the nave accomodating a congregation with a different vibe. The vaulted basement crypt was refitted with recycled church pews and converted into two bars. The Temple Theatre quickly became Dublin’s premier dance venue, attracting an international roster like Sasha and Digweed, Judge Jules, Mauro Picotto, Scott Bond, Joy Kitikonti, and Lisa Lashes. And then, as with so many great Dublin institutions, it bleedin ended abruptly. The final weekend, over the August bank holiday in 2002, was called "End of an Era". By September 2003, the Temple Theatre had closed its doors. So what about the urban legends of there being bodies buried under the dancefloor? Well when this Church of Ireland site was deconsecrated records indicate that some remains were removed to the consecrated ground of Mount Jerome Cemetery. But Dublin legends say deeper vaults were quickly sealed behind new partitions to accommodate the bars and sound systems. There was a more thourough rennovation in 2004, after the club when the building was purchased by Eugene O’Connor and converted into high-end offices. The building is currently used as private office space for Temple Street Children's Hospital. The "Crypt" where people once danced to trance music is now used for storage, plant machinery, and office infrastructure.

Coming this spring... Book 3 features stories by ten awesome authors. Jay McKenzie, Andrew Humphrey, Thomas Nicholson, Damir Salkovic, E.F. Ritter, Rex Burrows, Mike A. Rhodes, Alistair Rey, Isabelle Nygren, and SJ Townend. (order subject to change).

@RobLooseCannon No problem. She's a fine writer. That one's quite recent.

@collyleonard Cheers for the recommendation man, I must give it a look.

A mystery man who gave the fake identity “Peter Bergmann” came to Ireland to die, after spending his final days meticulously erasing evidence of himself like a Cold War spy. On Friday the 12th of June 2009, a middle-aged bloke with a thick German accent stepped off the bus from Derry in Sligo. He took a taxi to the Sligo City Hotel and checked in under the name Peter Bergmann, giving an address in Vienna, Austria. Later investigation showed the address was a vacant lot and no EU databases recognised his identity. Over the next three days, CCTV cameras across Sligo documented a quiet ritual destroying evidence. Bergmann left the hotel thirteen times carrying a distinctive purple plastic bag, bulging as though full. Each time he returned with the bag empty. Although Sligo town centre has dense CCTV cover Bergmann had an uncanny, or espionage trained, awareness of the surveillance network. He consistently deposited his gear in public bins positioned just outside camera coverage. Not a single object discarded was ever recovered. On the 15th of June he checked out of the hotel. He visited the post office and bought eight 82-cent stamps and airmail stickers. Assumably he used them but no post from him has ever surfaced. Later that day, he got a bus to Rosses Point. At 11:50pm, a woman noticed him walking along the shoreline, carrying a plastic bag. The following morning, 16th of June a father and son discovered his body washed up on the beach. He was wearing swimming togs over his underwear. His clothes were folded neatly on nearby rocks. Every identifying label had been removed, from his jacket down to his socks. The stitching had been cut with care. He'd left no wallet or phone or ID. Initially, Gardaí assumedd he had drowned. But the autopsy told a different story. There was no saltwater in his lungs. Instead, he had suffered a fatal heart attack. The post-mortem examination revealed the poor lad had advanced prostate cancer with bone metastases and had only one kidney. He had also survived multiple previous heart attacks. Toxicology reports showed no medication whatsoever in his system. Not even aspirin. The unfortunate bloke had been dying for some time seemingly choosing to do so without pain relief. His fingerprints returned no matches. His DNA did not appear in any missing persons database. This isn't really surprising I suppose as there's no reason to think the gentleman had a criminal record. But no family or friends or colleagues came forward. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Sligo Cemetery, attended only by four Gardaí. So who was he? Some theories are he was a former intelligence operative, maybe old East German, Austrian or Czech. Trained to evade surveillance and dispose of evidence. Or maybe he was simply a private man executing a carefully planned suicide. Faced with terminal illness, he may have chosen Ireland in general and Sligo in particular out of a personal bucket list or for its coastline or just its distance from his personal life. A more heartbreaking theory is he thought he was sparing his family the burden of watching him die, or of dealing with the financial or bureaucratic aftermath. If so relatives have found him yet and maybe that's as it should be.

I've been thinking about this a bit. We have this "vulnerability" culture in which people go online every five minutes and complain about what's bothering them in life. And a post about the frustrations of parenthood, especially when kids are young — blowout diapers, public tantrums, etc. — is going to get more attention than a simple post with a photo of a child, or a video of a person reading to their child. (Read to your kids, btw.) So what we get is this weird recency bias, kind of like negative polarization in politics, around parenting. And it's unfortunate. The other element I think of CONSTANTLY is that we've convinced ourselves, because of one-click Amazon orders and Door Dash and so on and so forth, that life is supposed to be easy. But nothing worth doing is easy. Being an athlete is hard. Writing is hard. Learning to play an instrument is hard. Parenting is hard too. And what Roan doesn't say — and I guarantee in every case except maybe one or two psychopaths — is that every parent who complains about parenting would tell you they don't regret having kids. Parenting is hard. But then some nights (as happened this week) you get to turn on a favorite movie and your teenage kid lays on your shoulder and laughs at the same joke you laugh at and talks about the film's cinematography because it's one of your obsessions you've passed along and no drug on the earth could levitate you more.

@LeneMacLeod Happy New Year, Lene. It was a pleasure to be involved with Frost Zone Stories. Wishing you all the best for 2026!

2025 had its good points: the authors in FZS 1&2 were delightful. As was working with FZS's 2 readers (right @collyleonard ? 😆) And I gave a home to a new dog - the craziest but best canine creature. 🐶

@vickyweberbooks 200 words a day gets you there eventually.

There’s this misconception that to be an author, you have to write 1,000 words every single day. The reality is that the average person with a job and a family just can’t do that. And honestly? I don't expect that of you. I certainly can't do it!

I've edited hundreds of novels, and there's one thing that ruins an otherwise incredible story: Bad dialogue 🗣️ Here are the 7 biggest dialogue mistakes I see and how to revise them so your characters sound real.

@stephenRB4 Gonna finish writing this one. An Irish family saga, dipped in regret.

Are you going to write a book in 2026? 📚

There's Christmas movies galore, but not that many for New Years. Apart from... 🧵

@sophiegrenham Conversely, you could say that because you didn't have the distraction and worry that comes with independent living in your twenties, you were able to give your writing a strong foundation at that time.

DAY 6 OF 6 OF ANNOUNCING! Table of Contents for: +HORROR LIBRARY+ Volume 9 (from @DarkMoonBooks ) More here: ericjguignard.substack.com/p/day-6-of-6-o… #HorrorLibrary, #anthology, #DarkMoonBooks, #NewRelease

If you venture into the world's scariest library, you'll find me there.

DAY 5 OF 6 OF ANNOUNCING! Table of Contents for: +HORROR LIBRARY+ Volume 9 (from @DarkMoonBooks ) More here: ericjguignard.substack.com/p/day-5-of-6-o… #HorrorLibrary, #anthology, #DarkMoonBooks, #NewRelease

We feel your pain!