Anchor Baby – the audio

One of the most difficult aspects of moving to the US has been trying to get my head around the concept of a “credit rating” – a system whereby individuals are scored based on their history of debt; how much they have incurred; how well they’ve paid it off; just how much they can be depended on to fulfil their financial obligations and, crucially, to sign up for more directly afterwards. Being deb...

I will admit that I have, for of my adult years, been a terror for cancellations. It’s easy to blame mental health issues – the social anxiety that grew acute during the noughties, but toned down slightly as I got to grips with my depression and started regular therapy – but a lot of the time I think there’s just a kind of dissonance between who I am and who I want to be. Who I am? A slightly intr...

There is an option on Substack – as there is on Patreon – to give feedback when you choose to unsubscribe from a publication. On Patreon, there are boxes you can tick – “my financial situation changed”, is one option; “Joe Blogs wasn’t as active as I expected” is another – but there’s a text field, too, where you can elaborate on your reasons. On Substack, there are no boxes to tick. Rather, there...

I have begun my great return tour of Dublin and its environs – my parents do, after all, live in Kildare, and much as I feel myself a Dubliner, I cannot deny the geography – and I have been both disappointed and thrilled, albeit at different moments. One of the things I’ve missed most about Ireland is the food. Here, I feel I should caveat by writing about the friends and family I love and miss on...

“It’s all about willpower,” says my dad, sipping his coffee (black) and wiping a crumb off his beard, leftover from the (one) slice of batch bread he ate for his lunch. “Or, should I say, won’t power.” My Dad has spent the last decade slowly losing weight. “I’m on a quiet diet,” he would say, although, to paraphrase The Princess Bride , I do not think that word (quiet) means what he thinks it mean...

Until last week, I had never heard the N-word uttered out loud. Sure, there it is in music; in racist graffiti; in stories of racial abuse hurled at footballers from the stands. But I’d never had someone just… say it , like it was just another word, like it meant nothing more than any other word, like saying “toothbrush” or “profit margin” or “dog-whistle”. Life is full of surprises. I had laser e...

In an attempt to be more neighbourly – and due to my love of a petty neighbourhood drama – I joined our housing estate’s Facebook group a few months back. I was delighted when I found it, but my delight soon turned to rage when I realised that my husband was already a member, and had never once mentioned it to me. “Oh, the Facebook group?” he replied to my incandescent accusations of treachery. “N...

That’s Aubrey Gordon , speaking on an episode of Maintenance Phase , the podcast she co-hosts with journalist Michael Hobbes (formerly of You’re Wrong About fame). I’ve been listening to a lot of Maintenance Phase lately. It’s an excellent podcast dedicated to diving in to and debunking a lot of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo on diets, “the obesity epidemic” and the “worrying” statistics relating t...

There’s one thing nobody tells you about breastfeeding, and it is this: it gives you a lot of time to think. No matter how proficient you become at writing texts, one-handed, or playing jigsaw puzzles on your phone, you will inevitably end up staring, blankly, into space, ruminating upon the strange familiarity of the whole thing. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how precious these moments a...

We submitted an application for the baby’s passport on Saturday. I made the appointment a few weeks back; both parents have to be present, so the earliest weekend date I could get was four weeks out. Though he’s been here for almost six months, once I had the forms filled out it felt as though this had become an urgent project, a to-do list item that must be ticked off sooner rather than later. I...

When I was freelancing, I found myself doing a lot of odd jobs within the media sphere. I regularly appeared on Midday, a panel show on then-TV3 (now Virgin Media One) where we would discuss the issues of the day and, ideally, disagree about them. I would opine authoritatively – a friend’s Dad once told me, not entirely complimentarily, I thought, that I was “a great bullshitter” – on topics from...

Last week, I wrote a poem that I don’t remember writing. I found it in the Notes app on my iPhone when I was looking up the very long list of podcast topics Beatrice and I frequently add to during our daily phone conversations. “That’s a great podcast topic!” we’ll say about something that’s making us laugh – usually something that is not, in fact, a great podcast topic. Anyway, apparently I wrote...