For a long time, I had a problem I couldn't solve. My relationship with Brigid was growing. My Catholic upbringing wasn't going anywhere - not because I was still practising in any conventional sense, but because it's in me, in the way that anything you're raised inside is in you. And I couldn't work out how to hold both things at once. I've written about this conflict recently - the specific discomfort of being a pagan Catholic, of loving figures who belong to a tradition you've also had...

I want to be honest with you about something, because I think it might be useful. The last few months have been hard. I've been struggling with anxiety - properly struggling, not just the background hum that most of us carry, but the kind that makes the ordinary things feel effortful and the future feel unreliable. I'm getting professional help, and that matters. But alongside that, I've been going to the sea more than usual. On the rougher days - the ones where everything felt loud and sharp...

Last week, Ireland decided to have actual summer. Thirty degrees. Proper heat, the kind we're categorically not built for. We don't have air conditioning in the house. We do have a €30 mini air conditioner from Amazon that makes a heroic amount of noise for very little cooling effect. What we also have is a car with functioning air con - so I did what any sensible person would do. I invented a reason to drive to Waterford. I had exam scripts to collect. This was true. It was also, I'll be...