Dublin Real Stories

I first went to the shelter in Rathfarnham on a wet Tuesday, the kind of Dublin day that makes even the trees look tired. I had no plan to adopt. I told…

I used to think a field was only a field if it was working for you. Grass for cattle, hay for winter, a ditch to keep the wind off, a gate to…

Three months before our wedding, myself and Ciarán were standing in Arnotts arguing quietly over a toaster. Not a dramatic argument, just that tired kind couples have when they are pretending to…

I was seventeen the winter I learned that a library could feel warmer than a bedroom. I had no bedroom then, only a rucksack, a school jumper I washed in sinks, and…

When my mother came home from the Mater after her stroke, the first thing we learned was that a house can love you for forty years and still become a stranger overnight.…

When we moved into our little red-brick terrace near Stoneybatter, I thought I knew what loneliness looked like. I had seen it on buses, in the wet windows of cafés, in old…

I started leaving notes around Dublin the winter after my mother died. It sounds sweeter than it was. At the time, it was mostly because I couldn’t bear the quiet of my…

My son turned nine on a wet Saturday in March, the kind of Dublin rain that seems too tired to fall properly and just hangs in the air. We had planned a…