Writer and Author

Category: Journalism (Page 4 of 4)

A Whole New Way of Doing Things?

I was talking to a friend on Skype earlier today and the conversation turned to social networking…as it does.  I was trying to explain the concept of Twitter to her and persuade her to give it a try and the conversation turned to the whole social networking phenomenon and how much the business of writing and researching has changed since we both studied journalism in college.

Now granted, since I learnt the ropes things have moved on from quarter in reel to reel recorder (one of these…, through minidiscs on to hardrive recorders.  Elsewhere the revolution of being able to file copy from anywhere without having to use a copy taker or an ISDN line as long as you have access to an internet connection has made minute by minute breaking news achievable.

But apart from the tools we carry about with us to perform our daily business it’s the actual job that has changed almost beyond recognition over the year.  I graduated from college in 2000.  Back then learning how to use search engines was a fairly new part of the curriculum.  These days, if the Internet went bang in the morning I wonder how many of us would remember how to do things the old fashioned way.  There are so many routine inquiries that would have required several hours of judicial phone calls or knocks on doors that can now be answered by a few minutes Googling.

It’s something that we all take for granted yet still on occassion becomes something to marvel at.  I’ve lost count of the number of times the press room in the Four Courts has been agog over a piece of video or audio that would have previously meant a search of the archives back at base that you might only have seen when it went to air.  During the Joe O’Reilly trial, for example the footage of his appearance on the Late, Late Show in the company of his obviously uncomfortable mother-in-law three weeks after he had murdered his wife got an almost daily showing.

Similarly the video that Siobhan Kearney shot to publicise the guest house she and her husband Brian Kearney had run in Spain was played again and again in the media room during his trial for her murder.

These are the kinds of archive material that have always been obtainable but never quite as readily as they are now.  These days colour writers wanting to describe an earlier event in vivid technicolour can call up their subject in a Google search rather than rely on rusty memories.

Even basic newsgathering is changing according to the advances in technology.  Journalists can now look at someone’s Myspace or Facebook page.  Incereasingly this is the first place to look in the case of murder victims.  A Bebo memorial page set up in their honour is a source of photographs not just of them but of the friends and family who attend the court each day, a way of putting names to faces without intruding.  In the recent trial of Finn Colclough, which I’ve written about at some length, journalists quickly found the Bebo page set up for victim Sean Nolan with the outpouring of grief from his devoted friends which still continues to this day.

We live in a technological world and it is at their peril that a journalist doesn’t move with the times.  YouTube is the source for the kind of eye witness footage captured by increasingly high resolution mobile phones that news editors could have only dreamed of in the past.  Twitter has become the new buzz word for a second by second stream of information from any major news event.  You only have to look at the number of articles and courses springing up on electronic news gathering to see the impact it’s having.

As I discovered researching the book it’s now possible to gather information from the other side of the road simply sitting at your desk.  I’m a great fan of the idea of VOIP (quite apart from the fact it allows me to chat with people who have decided to move back to Sweden and are no longer eligable to be my Call a Friend for Free!)  I get very excited about the fact that I can Google someone or somewhere, go to their website then simply click on a phone number somewhere in that page of text and within seconds talk to them through Skype (using the Firefox Skype plugin).

As a writer too the advent of Web 2.0 has totally changed the reality of life.  The fact that you have become some grungy creature who hasn’t change dout of your pajamas and who lives in a small pool of light over  you cluttered desk and overheating laptop is no longer a barrier to you networking with editors or agents in any of the major cities.

Living in Ireland and not having access to a lot of writing festivals or author appearances where publishers and agents would be in attendance it’s fantastic.  I can be as cheeky as I like in approaching people through Twitter or blogs (although it remains to be seen how successful my networking is – to date I’ve probably got most of my most concrete contacts the old fashioned way but I’m optimistic for the future).

I’m constantly in awe of all these changes.  I love technology but I’m not young enough to be born to it.  I remember what life was like in the dark Luddite days and I like the way things have changed.  Personnally I think the reality is that this is simply a new way of doing something we’ve always done.  I’m fascinated with the opportunities to self publicise that the Internet provides (obviously I’m aware of the blogging one) and the idea of virtual book tours and being able to reach a global audience is too exciting to pass up.

The Internet has allowed us to go back to the kind of old fashioned communities and intensive networking that were bog standard a century or more ago.  These days we may hang out on Twitter, in the 18th Century coffee shops were all the rage.  Thanks to Google I’m now in touch with a community gardening initiative that happens not five minutes from my front door.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if everything went bang (it’s a thought that feels natural with the ongoing economic doom and gloom) but I can’t help thinking we’d probably carry on much as we are now.  We’d just have to get out more.  As long as Armageddon isn’t coming any time soon, I’m happy enough with the way things are.  We’ve come a long way, even if the communities we’re building hark back to earlier times and I for one am more than happy to embrace tweeting and blogging and exploring the big wide world from the comfort of my desk!

 

 

The January Blues…

The last of the Christmas decorations have been boxed up and put away and the rapidly moulting tree was dragged off down to the recycling centre this morning.  The house now looks twice the size and impossibly, depressingly bare.

I was ready to scream if the tinsel and the baubles had stayed up one more night but predicably now they’re gone for another year I’m in the dumps.  It’s probably got a lot to do with the rather uncertain forcast for 2009 and the fact that I’m actually going to have to settle on one project to start on and just pray it earns some money.

Its a weird thing to be moaning about I know.  I might be temporarily lacking in steady employment but I’m not exactly short of avenues to explore.  The January cold and gloom though makes it feel like those times in the dim and distant past when the heating kept going off because you’d forgotten to pay the bill and you didn’t answer knocks at the door in case it was someone looking for money (yes I’m old enough to remember the days before Ireland became the land of milk and honey).

Rationally I know times have changed beyond recognition and I’m no longer an eighteen year old calling herself a writer when she got into conversations with other people in the queue for the Dole.  Now I actually am a writer and the book’s available in all good bookshops.  But sitting in the newly denuded living room with nothing much to do in the middle of the afternoon and no one to talk to but the cat, it really doesn’t feel any different.

I know there’s stuff I should be doing, emails I should be sending, phonecalls I should be making, but today January just got on top of me and optimism just seemed a stretch too far.  Tomorrow I’ll go round the bookshops, maybe sign some more copies (honestly it was my publisher’s idea, I’m not just a desperate meglomaniac) and rev myself myself up to the relentlessly cheerful state of mind that I usually manage to keep up until the leaves come back on the trees and I don’t have to fake it any more.

But some days were just meant to be bad and the cold, grey empty ones lend themselves to it easier than others.  The decorations are away and it’s time to start the new year for real…tomorrow.

Getting ready to write…theoretically…

It happens every year, during those dead days when the presents and the turkey and the Christmas pud start to feel overly familiar.  The last few days when the New Year has been rung in but the tree’s still up and tedium reigns supreme.

We stick to the old twelve days of Christmas in our house.  The new year doesn’t start in earnest until January 6th when the tree is brought down for recycling and the decorations get zipped back up into their Ben & Jerry’s cooler bag and stowed in a cupboard while the days gradually get longer.

I’ve always waited until the 6th to take down the decorations.  January 6th was my dad’s birthday (he died when I was a baby) and it always seemed in some way appropriate to celebrate Twelth Night for him.  The husband holds a similar superstition and so up stay the decorations and all resolutions are put off until they’ve gone away.

To be honest, there’s not really much choice.  We live in a little terraced house and once the tree’s gone up, there’s limited room in the main living area.  With other drawers and cupboards hidden by laiden branches, my desk (in a corner of this main room – would probably be an idea to move but I like where it sits, in a little cubby hole under the stairs) become the repository for all the festive detritus that doesn’t have a home.

As I write I’m looking at three presents that haven’t yet been given, a bowl of Christmas chocolates and another one of nuts, various festive cds and dvds, a cat pencil sharpener that squeals whenever you sharpen a pencil by sticking it up it’s bum (ok that sort of lives there and was a Christmas present), various lengths of ribbon left over from present wrapping and six rolls of Sellotape and two tubes of Araldite glue.  I might not be the most consientious house frau but even by my standards that’s pretty ridiculous!

I know the obvious answer is to have a more minimalist Christmas but that’s something I just can’t bring myself to do.  For me Christmas is a puddle of light in an otherwise grim season and it’s a festival I always embrace wholeheartedly.  The other eleven months the house work can go hang if I’m on a deadline or the inspiration is actually doing what it’s supposed to.  But for the few weeks from the second week of December until the end of the first week in January I morph into a Stepford Wife and the writing tends to take a back seat.

Consequently once the end of the season is only a few days away the tension starts building.  Quite apart from all the work I know I have to do starting Monday (invoices to write, emails to send, a book trailer to shoot and some heavy editing to get stuck into) I’m itching to get the hoover out and vacuum up all the pine needles (my inner Stepford hasn’t quite evaporated yet).

I feel quite irritable all the time, waiting for the year to get started and to clear the festivities away for another year.  Because at the end of all, while I love Christmas and I wouldn’t change the way we do it for love or money, after a few weeks off I’m brimming with ideas and I can’t wait to get back into that zone again and start work.

In the mean time I’m doing what I can.  This is one resolution I can keep up in the brief interludes of peace I can find and the rest will follow next week.  Roll on the 6th!

Resolutions, resolutions, resolutions…

Every year since I was a child I’ve started each new diary on January 1st with a list of the resolutions I intend to fulfill throughout the year.  It’s not a particularly imaginative way to start the year but the habit’s stuck and so it continues.

In recent years, since I discovered the wonderful writer’s diary produced by the literary magazine MsLexia my resolutions have become more focused.  I still promise myself this is the year I’m going to get in shape, start fencing again, become a fully fledged domestic goddess and make more time for housework but it seems to make a lot more sense to resolve to do things I have a chance of following through rather than setting myself up for disappointment before I start.

So every year the first page of the diary is the home of my professional aspirations, a point by point plan of where I want to be by the end of the year.  Some resolutions have been in the same place for years but others have seen some definate movement.  It’s always interesting to look back over old diaries and see where you thought you were going.

This year was a tricky one.  I’ve never been in this situation at the turn of the year you see.  On the one hand I’ve achieved something I’ve been wanting to do for as long as I can remember and I’m closer to where I want to be than I ever have.  On the other hand I’m technically jobless and let’s be honest, it’s not exactly the best time to be looking for alternative employment.

Rather than simply throwing a load of ideas at the wall when it comes to resolution time, in the hope that at least one of them will stick, I now have to work out what I need to do to finally achieve my dreams.

On the one hand I’d like to concentrate on my novel, on the other building on the genre I’ve been writing in so far seems like the most sensible path, and the one that’s more likely to put bread on the table in the short term.

These musings probably sound rather self indulgent – after all I could simply hang on and push away exactly as I have been for the past couple of years.  After all, that’s got me where I am today.

It’s not that simple though.  I describe myself as a writer and a journalist on this blog.  It might seem like an unnecessary repetition but I think it’s an important distinction.  Journalism is what I trained at.  It’s how I pay the bills and hopefully how I will continue to pay them for the moment.  But writing is what I’ve always done.  Ever since I can remember I’ve told stories and woven plots.  I’m happiest when I’m making things up.

When I’m writing a piece of journalism or working on non-fiction I can tell the story and try to craft the existing plot into it’s sleekest form but I can’t deviate from the facts.  There are plenty of stories that need and deserve to be told in the world we live in and that’s why I love journalism but the satisfaction I get from telling a true story is nothing compared to following the thread of an idea inside your head and pulling in narrative rules until you have something that stands alongside reality, mirroring it but with your fingerprints all over it.

This isn’t exactly what I intended to be writing here.  When I started this blog it was to go hand in hand with the publication of the Devil in the Red Dress so this kind of artistic rush of whimsy was to be strictly banished in favour of clear, well-described facts and figures.

But this year, as I write down the latest batch of resolutions in the brand new writer’s diary I’m faced with the realisation that I’m going to have to start talking about this kind of stuff because like it or not it’s the writing I want to pursue more than anything else.

I’ll still be down at the Four Courts following trials from time to time but this year I want to pursue other things so you’re going to see a rather different side to me here.  I’m rather nervous about introducing a rather more personal aspect to this “personal blog” but I might as well start the year as I mean to go on…that’s what resolutions are all about!

So what can you expect to read here from now on?  Well if I’m down in the courts there’ll be more of my impressions of proceedings as I’ve done so far with trials like those of Finn Colclough and Dane Pearse.  But this year I want to write more about other things I write and the reality of being a (in all probability struggling) freelance writer/ journo.  I’ve been at this point several times over the years and I’ve always decided to do the sensible thing in terms of following the most regular source of income.  Well now it seems like a concerted push is needed if I’m ever going to have anything other than a double-barrelled profession.

God knows what I’ll be writing on the first page of next years diary.  This year it all feels a little bit make or break.  Wish me luck!

Back From the West…

I got back from Ennis yesterday.  It was a pretty quick turn around just long enough for another round of signings and an interview with John Cooke on Clare FM.  I’ll post the interview when I get the chance.

I stayed the night with the sister of an old friend, who’s now a new friend and her lovely daughter Rachel.  It was a great night, just good food, nice wine and interesting conversation.  8-year-old Rachel paid me a massive compliment, using the presence of a real life author in the house (by which she meant me) as an excuse to stay up late.

It really made me think, talking to her about writing.  She writes stories herself and I was telling her how I had done the same when I was her age, in fact I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer.  I may have been a journalist for a decade but it’s only now I can really call myself a writer as well.

I’ve spent so long, over the years of being an aspiring writer, reading interviews with published authors talking about how they were always writing stories as children and knowing I had done the same gave me hope.  Seeing the same hope on Rachel’s face was a weird feeling, knowing that somehow over the last couple of months I’ve gone from aspiring to actual writer.

Now granted, Devil in the Red Dress is not a novel.  It might tell a fantastic story but it is one hundred per cent true.  But a story like that is easy to tell and I’ve tried to make the book the lively read it should be.  It’ll be a while yet before I turn to fiction although it’s something I have been interested in for a while.

My apologies if this post is completely all over the place.  I’ve had a raging cold for the last few days and my brain is still in a bit of a heap.  Hopefully normal service will be resumed in the next couple of days.  I’m getting a bit fed up with coughing and sniffling my way around and anyway, there’s work to be done!

The Deadline Approaches…

No, nothing to do with Sharon Collins or Essam Eid – the only deadlines I’m worried about this weekend is the one for filing Income Tax.

I’m not a violent person but after sitting for the past few hours staring at the dreaded Form 11 I want to visit all kinds of biblical plagues on the Revenue, and the Department of Finance too while I’m at it.  There are so many pages…and so many numbers…and so many notes!

I’m a writer – I deal with words – numbers make my head hurt.  I would happily give the Revenue a third of my wages (well maybe not a third) if only they would write their forms in plain English!  Until I had actually looked at the damn thing I was pretty confident that filing my first tax return would be no problem at all, but now three hours later I’m feeling like the school dunce and it’s still not filled in.

I know I should get an accountant.  Getting an accountant would be the sensible, sane thing to do, given my numerically challenged status.  But that would be way too sensible.  I decided over the summer that I would file at least one lot of returns myself.  So I could understand in future how it’s done.  Well I take it back!  I don’t want to file anymore.  And after Tuesday’s Budget they’ve only gone and made it even more complicated.  Income levies indeed! (Not even getting into the whole 2009 Budget thing here).

At this stage my brain is well and truly boggled and my frustration levels are sky high.  It doesn’t help that all my self employed colleagues have been telling me how simple the whole process is.  Or that I’m struggling with a form that doesn’t even have my name on it.

Because this is the other thing that irritates me about the Tax Man.  Ever since I went self employed I have become someone with whom he will not talk.  I have become a chattel of my (PAYE) husband’s and no longer merit a letter or any form of correspondence.

There is actually a reason for this.  It’s not just random meanness, unfortunately.  Myself and the husband, you see, are jointly assessed.  And the husband is the principal earner.  When part of the joint income is self assessed, it’s supposed to be the principal earner who fills out the forms.  It’s that assumption that irritates me.  I was the one who filled out the forms to become self assessed.  They took my PPS number to do it.  Then they wrote back to the husband and told him I was now self assessed.

This was never the case when I also had a PAYE job.  I was deemed important enough to be sent my own tax forms in their own envelopes.  Even though we were still self assessed.  Now that I have more paper work to do and horrible confusing forms to fill out, I don’t even warrant a letter.  They even tried to tell me I needed the husband’s permission to use the Revenue online service…though that’s been cleared up now.

I’ll eventually get my head around the form, and I will be sad so hand over the money but hand it over I will.  I just don’t understand why just because I’m self-assessed one of us has to cease to exist.  I get the principal earner idea but I’m talking stationary here.  All I want is the letters addressed to me.  Rather than having to locate them in the husband’s rather chaotic filing system.

It’s all very frustrating and annoying and is enough to make you want to be a tax exile!  I bet then they’d use my name!

When the Story Gets Lost in the Legal Argument…

I can’t help but see any trial that I cover as a story and it’s frustrating sometimes when the law gets in the way of telling it.  I’m not being an air-headed artistic type here, each murder is the story of the end of a life.

The person who we refer to, with professional distance, as “the deceased” once went about their life with all the hopes and dreams and fears and foibles that are the basic building blocks to any story.

It’s easy to see yet another dead stranger as simply the “corpse of the week”, as if it’s some TV series unfolding before our eyes.  Perhaps in a way it’s self preservation to dismiss them like that.  When you hear post mortems and forensic results it’s better not to think of the body as a living human being.

But in the end, as a journalist, my job is to tell the story.  It doesn’t matter how convoluted the prosecution case may be, I sit down at my laptop and find the strongest hook to hang the day’s instalment on.

But sometimes that’s more difficult than others.  There are certain prosecution barristers who stick to the letter of the law until the story is all but lost.  The one’s that insist on dotting every legal “i” and crossing every legal “t”.

Instead of proving that the evidence was gathered and the investigation conducted in full accordance with the law we will hear every aspect of the case proved from numerous different angles.  Rather than taking broad strokes and proving the main strands of evidence, we get the story through feathery little strokes that stretch the narrative, and the sense, of the investigation to breaking point.

It’s not just boring it actually makes the job more difficult when you just get the same piece of evidence told in half a dozen different ways rather than new information.  Of course it has to be seen that the law was above reproach during the investigation but if there are, for example, numerous CCTV pictures in evidence, do we really need to hear from every single person in the chain from the source to the garda in charge of evidence?

This chain can be several people long.  There’s usually the shop keeper (or whoever) from whose premise the CCTV camera was on.  Then there’s the garda who went to collect the DVD of the footage, the garda who downloaded it onto a computer, the garda who watched it, and finally the garda who’s in charge of all the evidence and so has to receive the DVD in the end.

Now this might not seem so bad but consider the trial where there are multiple CCTV cameras and we go through the same chain for each one.  It’s not necessary to prove every little thing.  Especially when the defence team’s acceptance of the evidence is a clear indication that everything was done correctly.  But there are some prosecution barristers who work their way through the book of evidence from page one right through to the end.

Just to clarify, every criminal trial has a book of evidence, the collection of every document that was gathered to prove the prosecution’s case.  Not everything in the book of evidence will be told to the jury.  Not every witness whose statement appears within it’s pages will be called.  This is normal.  This is because a garda investigation goes down certain set lines and takes a lot of man power.  But not all these people are essential parts of the story.

For me, it’s simply an inconvenience and an irritation.  It’s also very, very boring.  But I’m only there to do a job.  Justice happens whether I’m there or not.  It’s the jury who are going to decide whether the accused is guilty or not.  That’s the problem.  An over-reliance on protocol blurs the story they have to judge.  When a barrister has no sense of the story he is telling, it makes their job more difficult and that’s not good for justice.

I’m not saying every barrister should be an actor but I can’t help thinking it may be a bit of a disservice to both the deceased and the accused when their story gets lost in the middle of legal protocol.  Surely the accused should be judged, based on whether the jury believes the prosecution’s story of the events leading up to a person’s death, rather than whether the members of the gardai did their jobs right?

I’m probably just tired and cranky tonight.  There’s been too many budgets and taxes today.  Maybe I’m being a bit pretentious.  But I do think the story is important and allowing it to be told gives both the deceased and the accused their due.  Not every trial will titillate the tabloids like Sharon Collins, or Joe O’Reilly or Brian Kearney but every murder means someone died and someone else is facing a hell of a lot of jail time.  They all decide to have their story told.

The Date is Set

The finishing line is finally in sight.  Sharon Collins and Essam Eid will be sentenced on Monday November 3rd, four weeks away.  So know we know when the end begins and the story finds it’s conclusion (until the appeal comes around of course).

Court 1 was full this morning, the confusion over whether today was to be the actual sentence or not ensured the press pack gathered and the tension built just in case the information was wrong and they were going to sneak in a sentence under everyone’s unprepared noses. We heard how both the Courts Services and the Department of Justice had seen to it that Sharon was psycholigically assessed.  When her defence team stand to speak in her favour they will have plenty of material to pick from all due to this confusion they were keen to point out.

But to some relief it turned out the law is more civilised than that.  Eid’s legal team had not quite gathered all the medical reports they were looking for so it was only a couple of minutes business while a date in four weeks’ time was found.

Both of them were sitting in their old seats.  Eid smiling at the prison guards up near the judge, while Sharon waited for her boys in the alcove under the stairs in the reception area.  While she waited she chatted earnestly to a prison guard, her hands fluttering underlining her points as her eyes flicked towards any figure passing towards the Round Hall.

After three months in prison her hair is longer now and she no longer has the groomed look she wore throughout the trial.  A prison diet has added pounds to the skinny frame she once used heavy duty obesity medication to maintain.  Weeks of worry and misery inside had deepened the lines on her face and darkened the shadows under her eyes.

Eventually one of her son’s turned up.  David, the younger of her two boys, 22 years of nervous energy sitting beside his mother sharing a moment of rare semi privacy.  As always during the trial he took his seat before his mother, insulating her from her co-accused.

Today they were relegated to the back row of the benches that serve as a home to the accused when they are on trial.  The press had spilled into her usual perch, staking their claim now she was a convicted felon who didn’t need to be stepped around.

So it’ll be November before everyone gathers again.  The first Monday is when it all kicks off.  In a way it’s nice to get the break but it would be nice to draw a line under this book and give it an ending.  Still four weeks isn’t that long.

Back to Work

The Courts are back at work today and tomorrow is the first list in the Central Criminal Court so it’s back to the day job.  It’s always a little like going back to school once the Michaelmas term starts – well actually it’s exactly like going back to school apart from the lack of lessons and the fact that I don’t spend my summers playing on the streets these days.

So tomorrow it’s back to the grindstone and a different murder, after three months immersed in the intricacies of Ms Collins and Mr Eid.  Of course, their story isn’t over yet.  We’ve still got the sentence to come with all the excitement that will bring (from a journalistic point of view that is).  They were due to be sentenced on Wednesday but it looks like things won’t happen quite that quickly.  The appearance on Wednesday will just be a nod and a wink and the real fun will be deferred until a later date.  As far as the book is concerned that means it ain’t over until it’s over.   in lieu of a fat lady we’ll just have to await a tune from Mr Justice Roderick Murphy.

So until the date is decided for us to gather in Court 2 again and find out how long it’ll be before Sharon Collins can send her own book off to publishers it’s back to normality.

I cover murders all the time, it’s one of the main areas the news agency I work for covers.  Every  now and then there is a trial that is elevated to circus proportions by the press and public.  The kind of trial that ticks all the boxes to sell newspapers.  In the last few years there’s been a run of high profile cases – Joe O’Reilly, Brian Kearney, Anton Mulder, John O’Brien.  These trials tend to be the ones that centre on sex or money so Sharon Collins fitted the bill even without the added curiosity of her being a woman.

Despite the number of trials like this in recent times they aren’t the standard case to come towards the Central Criminal Court.  The trials that usually come up are sad, sordid affairs, a moment of violence that may never be repeated or an unhappy chain of events that were waiting in some way to happen.  Most trials go almost unnoticed, certain ones almost guaranteed to sink into obscurity.

We’ve got so used to murder these days that trials will be graded on their story worthiness.  A domestic tragedy scores well, if the wife was a tragic mother, preferably blond and passably good looking, or the husband rich enough and preferably having an affair.  On the other hand, a row between drunken young men is brushed off almost completely.

I know why this happens but it does seem as if some human lives are being ranked as better than others simply because of who killed them and how they died.  Each murder trial or attempted murder or even conspiracy to murder is a personal tragedy for someone. Lives are wrecked no matter what the circumstances.  It always seemed sad that some stories will never be told.

Ah well, there’s work to be done before tomorrow’s list; notebooks and pens to dig out after their two month’s break.  There’s little time for philosophising once the work’s begun so I’m just making the most of the calm before the frenzy of the new term.

Deep breath, back straight and off I go…back to work at last.

Back Home and Back to Work

After a much needed break (even with all the hassle with this blog) I’m back at my desk and back at work.  I have just over a week before Sharon Collins and Essam Eid are back in front of the courts for sentencing and the courts aren’t back until next week either so there are a few days to get back into the swing of things.

It’s time for one final push but for today with the suitcases still only partially unpacked I can’t take things too seriously.  I still have French music on Media Player and I’m not quite ready to get back to the hustle and bustle of normal life and normal posting just yet.  Once I settle down I’ll blog more seriously but since I’m still essentially talking to myself (Google indexing being the arcane beast that it is) I thought I’d share a little music.

I always get cds when we go to France and my latest find is a Parisian singer called Camille.  I’d heard about her before we went through my friend Rowan’s blog (always a good source of inspiration music wise!) and already got her latest mainly English album, Music Hole which includes tracks like Cats and Dogs – you’ve got to love a song which has the whole band making random animal noises at the end…

While over there I found a copy of her first album, Les Sac des Filles.  Sung mainly in French it includes songs like Paris.

The lyrics (for those of you that don’t speak French) are talking about leaving Paris because it’s dirty and miserable and smelly but in the end coming back because it’s home.  Which seemed rather appropriate coming back to grey and miserable Dublin.  It really is just peachy coming home to the news that the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse…

Yes I’ve just decided, the holiday can last one more day, I’m going to listen to more Camille!

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