'How To Disappear' - 'Sunset Connoisseur'

"Sunset Connoisseur" is an instrumental track on Limerick musician Paddy Mulcahy's latest vinyl album How To Disappear, which is "printed on recycled material - every copy will be a different colour," he says.

The track also has a superb new video by Dave Fox. It's shot around modern warts-and-all Dublin, on an old Super 8mm camera that he recently inherited. Enjoy.

More on the docks, and Leo Varadkar

Ireland's latest taoiseach (prime minister) happens to be gay, young (38) and have a dad from India. Cue plenty of international headlines making out like our country has suddenly become ultra progressive. As if.

The Jobstown House, Jobstown

The Jobstown House gets a quick mention in book #4 of the Moss Reid series, The Rebel Type. I first found out about the Dublin pub via its brilliant viral videos, starting with its entry in the "Mannequin Challenge" last year (above).

Smithfield's mural to Stormzy

This mural tribute to rapper Stormzy has appeared overnight on the wall of the old Block T building on the Haymarket side of Smithfield in Dublin.

The Hungry Tree in the King's Inns

"Inosculation," Wikipedia tells me, "is a natural phenomenon in which trunks, branches or roots of two trees grow together."

The Infant of Prague, the Lady on the Rock

An earlier post deals with 83 Manor Street in Stoneybatter, with its magnolia tree and Austin Clarke connections and the work of master craftsman James Beatley. While James's instruments are beautifully handmade, the following two slices of popular culture are mass produced.

Next door at 84 Manor Street is a bed and breakfast. Pride of place in the fanlight above its front door is a statue, sometimes illuminated by an electric light. It's an Infant of Prague, also known as a Child of Prague.

Take Her Up to Monto

- Child at play, Railway Street, Dublin, 1913

So far I've not woven any of the history of Monto into a Moss Reid story, but it's only a matter of time. Here are some of my notes about the area...

Dublin Canvas

It's turning out to be the biggest public art project in the city, a simple idea to brighten up the streetscapes by giving artists those boring old grey traffic-light control boxes as a blank canvas.

The "Dublin Canvas" project is managed by Dave Murtagh for Dublin City Council. While backpacking around Australia a decade ago he was inspired by a similar scheme by street artists in Brisbane.

The manhole wars of the new millennium

Time for a very long ramble about the ground behind my feet.

Picture the scene. It's mid-May 2011, the week before the Queen of England comes to town.

The Irish weather has been kinder than usual this spring, and there have been marches and demonstrations, anti-visit posters, bomb threats, hoaxes, suspect packages, a pipe bomb on a bus from Maynooth, surveillance operations and pre-emptive arrests north and south of the Border.

'First we take the Manhattan'

Always looks closed from the outside, doesn't it?

Yeah, but it's an open secret. Just look at the queue on the street tonight.

Everyone knows you just need the right knock. The right tap-tappety-tap on the door to gain entry. 

Like it's a shebeen, an illegal drinking den rather than a late-night diner.

Busáras, Store Street

A view from the top floor of Busáras

"Dubliners have a love–hate relationship with Busáras."

That's how one character puts it in my third novel Ghost Flight.

Perhaps it's a mild understatement.

Busáras is the city's central bus station for Bus Éireann's inter-city and regional bus services. And the building is a classic case of Marmite architecture.

And Busáras has a sort of walk-on part in chapter 39 of the novel.

Kate's Cottage and the early houses

A question for your next pub quiz: "What was the name of the very last old 'cottage' by Busáras in the centre of Dublin?"

Despite its tacky "crazy paving" exterior walls and daft "cottage" title, Kate's Cottage on the corner of Store Street and Amiens Street was a city-centre pub with a surprisingly spacious interior, excellent pints of stout and a mean hang-an'-cheese sandwich.

Sightings of Bono before the ban

Sightings of Bono began life as a short story by Irish writer Gerard Beirne in the Sunday Tribune in 1995. It went on to be anthologised, and read by Pauline McGlynn in BBC Radio 4's Late Story slot in 1998 and 1999.

It also became a short film. One that's already beginning to show its age, in the nicest possible sense...

Video: In Flags or Flitters

This video of archive material is a fascinating glimpse into Dublin city's people and architecture back in the second half of the 20th century, from its painters and poets to pubs and planning.

A list of Dublin places in 'Ghost Flight'

Here's a short list of places in and around Dublin that are featured in the crime thriller Ghost Flight.