Colm Ryan 🇮🇪🇪🇺🇺🇦

Westerkerk in Amsterdam. Tall slim tower overlooking a busy canal

In Amsterdam today. Fierce smell of vegetables here.

Square format in acrylics on canvas. View from a height at, in the foreground, the ruined remains of an abbey and dominating the picture a stone 12th century Round Tower rendered mostly in warm tones with the right side being dark in shadow and the left side in sunlight having pale grey blue stones and some pink and red dotted among the earthen tones as it moves around to the dark brown and blue at the right side. Its pointed top reaches almost the top of the painting. Around its base are scattered headstones of a cemetery in various greys with some round green bushes. Just in front along the bottom edge is pale yellow-green grass, because the view is from across the road in a field which is higher than the graveyard. Behind the tower we see down onto the crescent-shaped strand stretching away to halfway up the painting where it bends right receiving the blues of the sea coming in from the right. Near the back of the beach is a broken line of pink, perhaps of seaweed at a tide line. Behind the beach at the left edge is a caravan park with dozens of mostly pale caravans in rows. Along the horizon, a third of the way down from the top edge and up past the beach are gentle hills of green patchwork fields, dotted with pale houses at the bottom closest to Ardmore and with a tree line along much of the distant top extending to the right over a headland which has violet and grey cliffs at the right edge. The sky is a very pale aqua blue. Signed top left, Liam Daly

A #painting from Ireland's south coast. "Ardmore" is an exalted place for me, not because of the Round Tower, but because when I was small I stayed in a caravan and every day you'd jump over the dunes to the beach after first eating a bowl of Puffa Puffa Rice. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #TidesOutTuesday

Garmin Varia™ RTL515 | Rearview Radar with Bike Light The Varia™ RTL515 rear bike light with radar provides alerts of vehicles approaching from behind, as well provide daylight visibility up to 1 mile.

I love my Garmin bike radar. It alerts you to cars behind you, tells you how many cars there are and how fast they are approaching www.garmin.com/en-IE/p/6980...

My inner Francophile has awoken. I do love this country. 🇫🇷

Seriously. Why isn’t Britain over this shit. Instead loads of people seem to be asking for seconds, with extra piss and dead flies on top.

Reminds me of that scene in Life of Brian - Brexit? Yes. Good…

Haha!

Next. Crucifixion?

Yes.

Good. Out of the door. Line on the left. One cross each. Next. Crucifixion?

Another monument close by is a memorial to 4 French lads who paid the ultimate price for coming to the aid of British airmen.

Everyone discovering the downsides of over-sharing.

Monument in Lille, France for the “Colombophiles” - executed by the Germans in World War I for having homing pigeons in their possession.

Monument in Lille, France for the “Colombophiles” - executed by the Germans for having homing pigeons in their possession.

Monument in Lille, France for the “Colombophiles” - executed by the Germans for having homing pigeons in their possession.

Executed for having pigeons.

The graph of younger cohort is very interesting.

It’s not good, and totally unnecessary. I honestly felt sorry for the people in that line.

I walked past a Brexit queue in Schipol yesterday - UK nationals waiting to get through passport control.

It was long. Really long.

There’s a horse loose in the hospital.

And the horse has dementia.

And the horse is very angry.

And the horse wants to see the world burn.

Yay Moldova! 🇲🇩

YouTube video by Farm to Taber Raw Milk and Farm Literacy

Terrific video on raw milk, and how it really makes no sense to touch the stuff.

Hint: cow poo. Lots and lots of unavoidable cow poo.

youtu.be/piB_DdO2D6I?...

No - though I think I listened to the episodes about Cromwell in Ireland

My latest read. Oh wow. Historians kept this one very quiet when we were kids.

I sense a Kittie Fix is overdue here.

The Kirk aftermath has echoes of Reinhardt Heydrich about it. Creating an atmosphere of constant threat.

America is a seriously scary place.

YouTube video by vlogbrothers This Might Actually be Happening

In better news, they may have discovered convincing evidence for past life on Mars.

youtu.be/iWuFBZw9Olk?...

We get 70 years, then we repeat the mistakes all over again.

For sure. In reality it’s not the foreigners that are ruining Dublin. It’s our home-grown so-called patriots.

When do they eventually realise that immigrants are just normal people?

We have our own problems here, but the rot has not set in as much yet.

No mention of the role of privatisation, under-taxation of the billionaire class, deep income disparities, private equity companies saddling debt upon debt or a media hell bent on creating division. No, it’s just brown skinned immigrants.

I had a brief conversation with an Englishwoman who was over here in Ireland for a few days. Nice person, but when I mentioned UK politics, she started talking about the country being destroyed by immigrants. That’s all she seemed to know.

Britain, you have a problem.

Threatening legitimacy elected Irish politicians now. I see the violent rapist wants to be a terrorist too. #FuckConorMcGregor

Could it be that the reason babies are not being born these days is the direct result of modern fiscal policy? Young people don’t have the income, have too much debt, and house prices are stratospheric. No house by a certain age means fewer children overall.

March is the world waking up, scratching itself, trying to find the alarm clock, and failing. You both might be on to something here.

I vote September. Not quite summer anymore, but not quite autumn either - at least in this part of the world. All the leaves still solidly green on the trees, yet the heat is disappearing and none of the raging gales typical of autumn.

September really needs to get its act together.