A Typical London Argument

The altercation, as transcribed exactly by your correspondent, with neither editing, censor nor commentary, occurred between three persons at the Docklands Light Rail station in Shadwell, a district in the Borough of Tower Hamlets, East London. It is the belief of the writer that what follows is the direct realisation and representational analogue to those most…

Impressions of poverty – A Dublin Story

If you’ve ever listened to the song Running to Stand Still from U2’s Joshua Tree album you will have heard about the Dublin neighbourhood of Ballymun in the lyric, “I see seven towers but I only see one way out.” Located on the northern periphery of Dublin city, Ballymun was at one time Ireland’s largest and…

A Rural Idyll in Steady Decline

The people of that plainly built farming town led simple lives and were proud of the hardship and forfeiture rural existence assumed of them. They knew their place in that world and – as is customary in such isolated surroundings – they conducted themselves with the same sheltered constancy as so many of their forebears had done for generations before.