Jo Ní Ghiolla Shúiligh

The best thing about life is breakfast.

Landscape format. Ink and watercolour painting of facade of Trinity College as seen through a load of locked bicycles and a myriad of poles, traffic lights, and street signs, plus two tall leafless trees with twisting green-brown trunks and branches higher than the sight-line of the violet slate roof of Trinity. The college is greys of blue and purple, darker at ground level behind black railings. It has pale columns and a front portico with a blue clock in the triangular gable above, and below is a large arched brown door mostly hidden by a plinth with a dark statue with a raised arm just past the bicycles. Ukrainian flags of blue over yellow are hanging vertically from two near lamp-posts and two far ones. A white taxi with yellow markings is to the left of the bikes on the blue grey surface of the street. It is all framed by the dark purple, blue and green trunk of a tree on either side, conveniently both of which are leaning out of the picture to help the view between them past some paving stones. Signed bottom left in ink, Liam Daly

A little Dublin #painting from a few years ago. "Trinity College & College Green" was done one cold morning when I cycled into town and sat down on a traffic island where I sketched the city centre cluster-fest in front of me. Surprisingly nobody came up to me when painting. #art #urbansketching

Btw if you’re struggling with trusting that either you or the other* will stay with it when the going gets tough, that sounds like a really rich area for work.

*or others. Marriages come in many forms. Not all are legally contracted nor are they all dyads.

Always striking to me how reactionaries treat "culture" as immutable, something totally static. They think it's like an inheritance, something with set bounds passed down from parent to child and never changing - Instead of the ongoing collective experience of people in a place and time

I mean, we know this, but I’m gonna say it anyway. A marriage that both people actively and continually choose to be in is worth a hell of a lot more than a marriage that they merely can’t leave.

Consent is top tier, friends.

You want tiers? Grand, the compulsory one goes at the bottom.

Taking blame culture to new levels - trust us to do it with the weather!

You made your bed.

That’s a very good answer 👏

And anyway, what if *we* don’t want them altering the nature of marriage, huh? HUH??

Ah thank you!

I’m genuinely lost😬

I am utterly sick and tired of self-declared experts who've never knowingly listened to a trans person in their life being elevated and presented by the media as definitive voices on our lives. A trans person is always too "biased" to comment on our own life and healthcare, but not these charlatans

May I suggest you get creative with it, friends? Think about what it means to define relationships on your own terms rather than on legal terms?

The irony is also not lost on me that those who fought so hard to prevent queer folks access to marriage are so dependent on the law to define their own.

What I don’t understand here is why you would need that if you’re confident that both you and your partner are on the same page.

If you both don’t believe in divorce then simply don’t get one.

Culturally, we've never been able to wrap our heads around the fact that "pedophiles" (quotes bc social media overuses the term) are grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers, neighbors. People we know and trust.

We couldn't accept it when Freud &Ferenczi spoke about it; we still haven't accepted it.

And what's worse is, they tend not to believe us when we do try to talk about how complicated these relationships are:

"Why didn't you fight back?"
"Why didn't you report?"
"Why didn't you leave him?" etc

...all belies a belief they would be better victims than actual victims.

It was such a pleasure to be out cycling this morning after battling through the rain and storms for so long!

A single snowdrop bloom.

Signs of the season turning…

Oh I’m only one episode in. It’s looking good alright.

They’re not known for their good humour alright. I hope it doesn’t put a dampener on your birthday!

I see the 'gay' jokes are still happening in schools, my son was told if he didn't get "out of the library, he's gay", to which, given we are particularly tolerant he responded that it'd be perfectly normal if he was anyway. I never heard that crap until at least secondary school in the 90s.

Just started it, it seems like fun:)

Just started it!

Why not?

I know that in the context of global instability, a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis, it is hard to consider the threat and impact of climate change. But we need a government that does.

We need a government that puts the people and the planet first.

That has the courage and the vision to meet our country’s greatest challenges across climate, cost of living, housing and healthcare.

@hollycairns.bsky.social

Ok, a quick search confirms I should be.

No idea. No info, no promise of a refund nor that they’ll reschedule. I imagine they’ll be in touch but it was all very odd.

Should I be watching How to get to Heaven from Belfast?