'Educating Rita', from Zoom to Mooz

Believe it or not, an upmarket new Italian grocer in Stoneybatter called Mooz was once a location for a very famous film from 1983.

The Floozie in the Jacuzzi (not)

Dublin humour can be playful, cynical, surreal and full of wicked wordplay. It's a bit like the kid at the back of the class who's asked to use the word "bewitches" in a sentence.

"Ah you go on ahead," he replies, "I'll be wid yez in a minute."

Dublin wit is also embodied in the nicknames of its statutes and monuments, particularly the more "modren" additions to our postcolonial streetscape. And one nickname stands head and shoulders above the rest: "The Floozie in the Jacuzzi".

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.

Juno's Café, Parkgate Street

Here's a quote from Black Marigolds, the second book in the 'Moss Reid' series. It's a set piece where Moss Reid slips through a back alley (most people miss it) from Nancy Hands's smoking garden and sneaks into Juno's Bistro to see who's tailing him...