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Scotsman
3 days ago
- General
- Scotsman
I've got loads of money, but nobody in Scotland will take my cash
Dmitry Lobanov - I can't find many places who'll take my haul Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I've had a windfall Nope, no lottery win, as yet, though I'll keep Thunderballing. It's because the process of moving house and the accompanying clearing out has been accompanied by a handbag, trouser, jacket and coat audit. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Before those items go off to the charity shop, or textile bin, their pockets are frisked. I've found tissues, mainly, hair clips, bus tickets and ticket stubs for the cinema. A furry chocolate lime or two. My membership for Diane's Pool Hall, which closed eight years ago, and a signed photo from the late Supermarket Sweep presenter, Dale Winton. However, the yield of actual treasure has been incredible - a few pence here, a couple of quid there, or a whole five pound note in the inside pocket of a puffer jacket. I must have found about £100 in sterling. More than that, probably. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There have also been Danish Kroner, a Mini Cooper themed £5 coin, and a weird-looking almond-shaped penny that I thought must be a rare Roman denarius, but turned out to be one with a dinosaur on it that was re-moulded in the National Museum of Scotland's machine. I haven't found one of those rare King Charles 50ps, with a leaping salmon on the other side, which are supposed to be worth about £50, though I feel I'm one pocket away from that. Anyway, it's the first time in years that I've had a purse full of coins, and I love the heft of actual wonga. It must be a Proustian thing, but I've never felt so wealthy. At last, I have actual pocket money. I feel as if I've been working away for the last few years, and just earning numbers, rather than real life shekels. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I've missed cash, since Covid and lockdown accelerated the use of contactless payments. I think I had a vague notion that we'd start using it again, but that hasn't happened. Now, money seems like more of a concept, rather than a physical thing. It was so much part of our lives, and then it was gone. I mean, it dates me to say that I don't even know what a bitcoin is, but I do remember when 1/2ps were discontinued, back in 1984. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad My other half doesn't have the same attachment. He was desperate to get rid of his smash, which is ironic, as he'd been collecting it in a giant old catering-size Nescafe tin, with a tiny postbox slit sawed into in the top, for decades. He's like my frugal granny, who kept all her pennies in a big jar. We'd use it to play shops when we came over, but I don't think she ever actually spent that haul. I kind of wish she had bought herself something lovely. Last week, it ended up being me, who had to take my husband's loose change to the bank. I had to Google where to find one, as they've all closed down and been transformed into restaurants, and it's pretty hard to find an actual branch these days. This one was surprisingly busy. I had to stand in the queue for 30 minutes, lop-sided, as I hadn't considered how heavy a £20-odd quid of coppers would be. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad At least he'd already portioned it into £1 bags, so I didn't get the cashier's death stare, like the woman in front of me, who came in with a huge bag of mixed coins and emptied them onto the counter. The person in front of me in the line grumbled heavily about her, and didn't seem happy when I 'fessed up that I was also depositing coins. The guy who served me was very pleased about the bags. He thanked me profusely and weighed each, though one was 1p up, another 1p down. Quick switcheroo, and we're done. Anyway, now that they're transferred into my husband's account, he can go back to virtual cash. I'm keeping all mine. The only problem is, my windfall is burning a hole in my pocket, as it's too difficult to spend. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I thought it'd be useful when it came to paying for coffees. However, cafes seem to be the very last places that still accept cash. I tried to pay for my matcha latte at a cooler-than-cool place the other day. My little leather purse came out, and I prepared to count out £5.20, or whatever other ridiculous amount they were charging. 'Do you take cash?' I asked, as he got the milk and green powder for my drink out. The look he gave me was multifaceted. It was withering, patronising, yet also world-weary. Of course, it's their prerogative, but it was like I'd asked if I could pay with cowrie shells. It's amazing that, with one glance, someone can say, 'Of course not, we are in the 21st century, you utter moron.' Since then, I've carried my loot around and not really used it. The only place that I know will take my money is the local shop. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The woman who works behind the counter there seems to like the challenge. She's obviously bored of the tappety cards. Still, I must be something of a rarity, as she still seems a bit blindsided, when I pull out my little leather purse. Despite that, she takes the coins with relish, and always says 'old school!' when I present my smash. Thanks to her, my vast pile of riches is slowly depleting.
Times
05-07-2025
- Times
The best places to visit in Canada (and how to see them)
Moving to London from my native Toronto made me into a country girl. I hadn't realised how deeply canoe trekking, woodland walks and wild camping weekends under the big sky had sunk into my skin. I love the cities, too, many inhabitants descended from people from across the globe including Scotland, Germany, China and Africa. I return to Canada's restaurants with Proustian relish — even our beloved doughnut shops. I always breathe easier touching down for a visit, from the sense of space and the feeling everyone's got my back (Canadians really are as friendly as they say). Consider a week to start: however long you stay, it's a life-changer. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue One week Vancouver Island and the Rockies Two weeks Vancouver Island, the Rockies, Prince Edward County, Montreal Three weeks Vancouver Island, the Rockies, Cottage Country, Montreal, Newfoundland and Fogo Island Is it fjords paddled by grizzlies you're after, or black bears on the beach and humpback whales at sea? Maybe it's a forest of giant red cedars wider than most houses. Either way, you'll see it all of a morning on Vancouver Island. A hulking natural preserve supporting rainforest and snow-capped mountains, nine-metre waves and sacred indigenous sites, the island is like California in miniature, three hours by ferry from Vancouver airport. Drive off the east coast and wind your way to the west through Pacific Rim National Park. Based in the loose, surf-friendly community of Ucluelet, you can join a whale-watching tour or simply luxuriate on 10-mile Long Beach. You'll feel the spray of the wild Pacific from the terrace of your suite at the Black Rock Oceanfront Resort in Ucluelet. The property is bookended by a secluded beach and the Ancient Cedars Trail, so you can park your car for the duration. Frontier Canada's seven-night Vancouver Island fly-drive loops from Vancouver to Tofino and back, via the charming small-town capital city Victoria. In 1896, about 100,000 chancers stampeded up the Yukon River to the Klondike region hoping to pan for gold. They developed the mountainous frontier around Dawson City, then abandoned the colourful saloons and guesthouses (leaving a few nuggets left for dogged panners) for new generations more interested in whitewater rafting, char-fishing, moose-watching and air tours over the Tombstone mountains. The northern lights are frequent visitors, especially during the new moon. If they're a no-show, drown your sorrows at the legendary Sourdough Saloon. The Midnight Sun Hotel takes you back to the prospecting era with a tin-ceilinged parlour and big, comfy beds. Do the 17-night Yukon Klondike Kluane Loop, driving a motorhome around the territory and over the Alaskan border with Canadian Affair. • Discover our full guide to Canada Sumptuous Rocky Mountain views are remarkably easy to access in Canada. An hour outside Calgary, Kananaskis gets a fraction of the tourists of Alberta's grande dame destination Banff — and yet the extremes of life on the Continental Divide are all here. Will it be sulphur-rich thermal springs at 1,585m followed by maple-infused cocktails by the fire, or bracing mountain climbs followed by Olympic-calibre skiing? Never mind: you can do it all in a day. An hour up the Trans-Canada Highway, the gem-green waters of Lake Louise are the lure to Yoho National Park, an off-radar idyll for glacier treks among sawtooth peaks. Emerald Lake Lodge overlooks Yoho's lesser-known glacial lake and not much more from 24 private cabins. Secluded and low tech (the only wi-fi is at the main lodge), the property makes the most of its incredible position, with a hot tub facing Hamilton Falls and lunch round the fire pit. On Exodus's nine-night Discover the Canadian Rockies tour, you'll hike, bike and canoe between ice fields, canyons and waterfalls, exploring National Park country outside Calgary. Saskatchewan's prehistoric plateaus and mesmerising First Nation rituals belie its reputation for stunning, wheat-whistling flatness. At Wanuskewin Heritage Park, just outside the provincial metropolis of Saskatoon, you can watch a herd of plains bison migrate across the prairie, dine on bison burgers with heirloom Lakota produce, then meet with dancing, drumming, fiddling members of the Great Plains nations, who have congregated on this land going back more than six millennia. Their long history is laid out across miles of trails, where archaeologists comb for arrowheads, tipi rings and pottery shards. Views over the lake-dotted grasslands go on for days. Wanuskewin visitors can stay over in an authentic 5.5m tipi, styled after traditional Plains Cree tents. The one-night B&B visits include a night of immersive cultural programming (but no shower). You can visit Wanuskewin as part of a 14-night loop of Saskatchewan's grasslands, plateaus and (lake) beaches, beginning and ending in Calgary. The package, from Canadian Affair, includes flights from the UK plus overnights in Wanuskewin and a century-old working ranch. Think of it as Canada's Hudson Valley — a waterfront pastoral (on Lake Ontario, smallest of the Great Lakes) where tasteful types escape the city. In 20 years the rural backwater has metamorphosed with small-batch vineyards, revitalised motor inns and speakeasies that host live music. In summer it explodes, but you should get long, sunny days from May through Halloween. Pack a picnic at Fawn Over Market, near Twelve O'Clock Point, and find a quiet patch of beach at Presqu'ile Provincial Park. Stay at the Drake Devonshire and Motor Inn, sister hotels with lively painted rooms that form the social centre of beachy Wellington. A Victorian warehouse in small-town Picton, Ontario, has been given a wood-panelled, fashionably lit, urbane overhaul and puts you within 20 minutes of long sandy beaches, gourmet markets and brew-pubs. Weekends on the lakes north of Toronto are a rite of passage for millions of Canadians, and you'll understand why on the shores of Precambrian rock around Georgian Bay. Rippling out from the Great Lake Huron, its denim-blue waters are vast as an ocean yet still as a pond, surrounded by thick forests of white pine and quaint cabins for fishing and partying round the campfire with a two-four (case of 24 beers). Take the highway north from the city and bend around the north shore for canoeing quietly between umpteen islands and hiking to waterfalls along rivers of sturgeon. Killarney Mountain Lodge maintains a low-fi mid-century vibe, though the log cabins and bay-view rooms have been tailored and wired like a five-star hotel. Learn to canoe or book into a microbrew tasting. In the world's polar bear capital, most residents live to support, protect and watch the apex predators as they migrate between the prairie and frozen Hudson Bay (named after Henry Hudson, who commercialised the ancient trading port). Local laws allow visitors to get within 100m of the bears — closer than in other regions — whether trekking on foot or in a kayak or Rib boat during the thaw. Visiting in summer turns a stay into a veritable safari, with thousands of beluga whales adding to the thrill as they drift in to calve. Via Rail's sleeper from Winnipeg gets you here in two nights. The log-cabin stay Lazy Bear Lodge doubles as an outfitter, leading wildlife expeditions by day, aurora excursions by night. This playground on the St Lawrence River is what you get when you cross-pollinate pleasant Canadian deportment with Parisian chic and New Orleans' lust for life. The late 20th-century decline of this once grand French-speaking metropolis was everyone's gain. Designers colonised the stone townhouses of the Plateau; chefs from France, Haiti and Vietnam launched quirky brasseries by the old rail tracks in Little Burgundy; and creative students from the cluster of universities stayed on to party. Now weekends are spent day-drinking through brunch in Mile End or queueing for still-steaming bagels with smoked meat before hiking up Mount Royal for views to the Laurentian range. Stay at Hotel Le Germain for access to the old city and plateau — it's surrounded by museums, with Mount Royal steps away. Spend four days exploring Montreal's old city, lively markets and art galleries on Canadian Affair's Montreal City Escape break. Newfoundland remains one of Canada's least explored provinces. However, a Westjet route from Gatwick to its capital, St John's, makes it easier to reach the iceberg-dotted coast (in six hours, no less). But serious voyagers leave quickly for the west country. The desolate Trans Canada Highway takes you to the Tablelands desert and the Unesco national park Gros Morne, an extension of the Appalachians with a glacier-carved landlocked fjord. You'll follow the coast east to west on Intrepid's seven-night Newfoundland Adventure, following local guides on wildlife walks and outback trails. The Gros Morne Inn is a light-wood Nordic-style retreat on an arm of the Gulf of St Lawrence, between the Tablelands and Gros Morne. The fairytale wilds of this north-shore Newfoundland island got their happily-ever-after when Zita Cobb, a cod-fisherman's daughter with a Silicon Valley fortune, returned to help the community cope with the dwindling industry. She lured artists, chefs and entrepreneurs to work sustainably with local resources and commissioned a striking creative colony by the sea, which mimics traditional fisherman's cottages with spectacular modernity. Visitors enjoy the fruits of their labour: dramatic views, North Atlantic seafood, fireside jam sessions, and whale-watching with seasoned sea captains. The Fogo Island Inn is the heart of the development, where wide-windowed guest rooms cantilever over the shore with saunas and hot tubs perched overhead. Combine a stay at the Inn with wildlife adventures and boat trips around the icebergs. Wexas tailors a seven-night itinerary. The Rockies is Alberta at its most memorable and things are at their most interesting on the Icefields Parkway — but only outside the bumper-to-bumper summer season. The road unspools north of Banff and Lake Louise, delivering a succession of flint-crested peaks, razor gullies, sacred lakes and deep woods, where peekaboo wildlife sightings become a badge of honour. En route, diamond-blue Peyto Lake will be instantly recognisable from your social feeds, then there's the Athabasca Glacier where you can play at being Shackleton and Hillary — Canada doesn't get more classic. Fairmont Banff Springs is a Scottish-style baronial heap, fitted with towers, tartan carpets and romantic turret rooms — in short, it's the ultimate heritage hotel. G Adventures has an 11-day Vancouver Island & Northern Rockies trip, including a full north-to-south trip on the Icefields Parkway and stopping at the Columbia Icefield en of green and red shoot through the dark, growing in real time. Thin clouds are blowing overhead and spangled ribbons streak to the horizons. You imagine this is what the aurora borealis may look like — ephemeral, elemental, auspicious. Yellowknife is the place to find out with your own eyes and the Northwestern Territories bills itself as the world northern lights capital, recording more calendar sightings per year than anywhere else. The most memorable part of your journey though may not be the spectacle of the lights, but the indigenous First Nations stories you learn along the way. The Explorer Hotel, located just outside Downtown, is ground zero for an abundance of aurora tours. Get Your Guide offers multiple aurora viewing tours and packages, from sledding tours to backcountry snowmobile rides to nights spent in cosy world's highest tides is the pitch of this broad inlet sandwiched between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but the destination offers much more than moshing waves and maple sand beaches. You can sea kayak among its signature flowerpot-shaped rock stacks. Or say hello to a dozen species of cetacean on a lifetime's-best whale watching safari. Perhaps, a stand-up paddleboard tour of Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park is a must. What you don't need to decide on is how awe-inspiring the sight of 100 billion tonnes of tidal brine flowing in and out of the bay really is. The Algonquin Resort St Andrews by-the-Sea delivers Atlantic Canada charm by the bucketload. Riviera Travel has an 11-day Maritime Canada: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island trip that takes in the best bits of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Additional reporting by Mike MacEacheran
Irish Examiner
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Book review: Memoir rich in literary allusion, social mobility, and so much more
It has become commonplace to laud English writer Geoff Dyer for his versatility, but that makes the praise no less valid. A multi-awarding author of numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, criticism, and other surprisingly genre-defying books, he has now turned his highly accomplished hand to memoir. Homework is an account of Dyer's upbringing in Cheltenham in the 1960s and '70s, a world he evokes in gloriously minute, Proustian detail. Dyer's 1960s working-class childhood is depicted as unapologetically ordinary, filled with the boyish toys and past times that arouse gentle nostalgia for the mid-20th-century world. He writes charmingly about his ever-growing collections of army figurines, Airfix models, Action Man dolls, and bubblegum cards, of playing conkers in the autumn, of the colours and tastes of long-gone sweets, and the rapture of receiving annuals at Christmas. Later, Dyer writes with understated wit and self-deprecation about his adolescent schooldays, detailing his clumsy efforts with girls, his love of football (undiminished by his own mediocrity at the sport), his bookishness, his embarrassing puberty, and his developing sense of physical inferiority. Surrounded by an array of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, being an only child was never a cause for loneliness. A young Geoff Dyer in his bedroom in his family's home in Cheltenham, England. But, naturally, the two central people in his life — and in the book — are his parents. His portrayal of his reticent, Methodist-background mother Phyllis, whose birthmark tragically afflicted her entire sense of self, is tender and moving. Dyer's more complicated portrait of his father Arthur, a Labour-supporting, Thatcher-despising, staunchly anti-Royalist engineer, is of an unusually tight-fisted and tight-lipped man, who was also self-sacrificing and without any real meanness. He stresses that although they were not poor, his father's internalisation of the wartime rationing spirit simply meant he would never spend any money. Dyer presents distinct dead or diminishing worlds. There is his own vanishing world, the source of the memoir itself. There is the dying world of his parents' generation, and before them, his grandparents', whose farming lives were to the young writer an alien mixture of myth and the Victorian fiction of Thomas Hardy. Dyer's family history also acts as an account of social mobility in England over a century or so. His mother's father, a veteran of the Battle of the Somme, was an illiterate man from rural Shropshire, while much of Arthur Dyer's young life was shaped by the parsimony and violence of wartime experiences. Arthur is depicted increasingly at odds with the post-war consumer boom, constantly complaining about the cost of things, at one point even putting so little petrol in his beloved Vauxhall Victor that he has to coast down inclining roads. Even so, his father could not stop the forces of progress. In 1970, the family moved to a bigger home and, later, Dyer went to study in Oxford. Although Homework is not a book about Dyer's formation as a writer, it is a book rich in literary allusion. Yet, this literariness is never heavy-handed but lightly worn and always illuminating. Dyer is an immensely skilled writer, one who can seamlessly switch from joyfully endorsing his childhood love of sugar to considering, by way of Roland Barthes, the semiotics of an old family photograph. Like all the best memoirs, Homework also reflects on the process of recollection as well as offering a defence of it: 'Can't memory', he asks, 'be a species or form of fact?' The facts of his youth, as he recalls them here, are poignant, joyous, funny, sad and evocative, and offer a portrait of a life of reasonable contentment in post-war England that feels at once both fading and familiar.
The Hindu
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Jeet Thayil in conversation with Jerry Pinto on his new book The Elsewhereans
Jeet Thayil's new work, The Elsewhereans (published by Fourth Estate), defies genre, forcing readers to reconsider everything they think they know about literary strategies. The subtitle calls it a documentary novel but it is biography, autobiography, family history, ghost story, travelogue, ityaadi. We meet Ammu and George in a village in Kerala and travel with and without them to Mumbai, Hanoi, Saigon, Hong Kong and Paris. On this periplus, ghosts surface and evanesce, skeletons tumble out of closets, one of which smiles at us from the cover. At the heart of this magnificent and compelling mélange, the narrator, Jeet lui-meme, forces us to decide: is this an unreliable narrator? In my opinion, there is no such thing as an unreliable narrator because there are no reliable narrators; there are only compelling narrators and boring ones. Jeet is a compelling storyteller, descended from an ancient line of mariners — water plays an important role in this story. His first commitment will be to the story and so should ours be. I believe that a family story that leaves the family happy will be boring; the real stories are the ones we hold close to our chests, the family's asps. (The more the writer bleeds, the better it reads.) To bring these stories out into the world, to talk about the failures and the addictions, the desires and the disappointments is to remind all of us that every family is a work in progress. Perhaps the first and most natural question to ask the author who turns his hand with elegance and strength to the forms of poetry, the novel and the anthology is about the risk a genre-agnostic book takes in a world obsessed with categories. Excerpts from an email interview: Q: This genre-shifting is an enormous risk in a world of categories. Did it happen organically or was it planned? A: It was very much an organic process. I started with a book that was twice the size, about 400 pages or more. Which might have been some form of Proustian anxiety, the obsessive compulsive need to record every passing digression. Then, in a moment of clarity, I jettisoned everything that didn't fit the single and singular story being told — and ended up with a leaner, tighter, better manuscript. The form revealed itself three or four years into the writing. It might have been the most crucial stage of the whole process, and the most difficult. Q: But at the heart of this magnificent mélange is Jeet Thayil telling us a story so close to him that we sense the vulnerability of the storyteller. Could you talk a little about the psychic cost of such writing? A: Since my parents are a part of the story, I had to ask their permission. It was only right. My mother gave her permission reluctantly, but there was never any question that she would refuse. She'd probably agree wholeheartedly with the epigraph that begins the book: 'When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.' I guess the psychic cost is one every writer must confront: by telling your story, which is also the story of the people you have known, are you usurping or co-opting their voices? If there's a sense of guilt, a residual guilt, it is offset by a sense of duty. That it is your job to tell the story however the chips may fall. Q: As readers, we encounter a series of enigmatic and intriguing women: Ammu, Nguyen Phuc Chau, Da Nang, Lijia, Chachiamma, a dead wife, M. We half recognise these women from our own histories and yet they are completely new. Perhaps this question is about the choice of characters populating the book. A: It started with Ammu, and the novel ends with her. She died in January, at which point I knew it was time to bring this novel to a close. It was always going to be her story. Though I didn't realise until I saw your question that she is only one among half-a-dozen compelling women characters, and that the women own the book. This wasn't planned, but it seems absolute and inevitable. I come from a long line of strong women. There's no way to tell this story without acknowledging and honouring them. Q: The poet and the novelist work together here. For me, this is about the lapidary care with which conversations are constructed or events outlined. Would you like to say something about the interaction between these selves? A: It isn't always possible to separate those selves. If you practise, or embody, both disciplines, it's difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. In my case, and in yours, the poet and the novelist bleed into each other. Which is the way it should be. Genres or labels are for book shops. If you are both those things, how do you separate? And more to the point, why should you separate? If the point of a novel is to tell a story only you can tell, why would you discriminate between your separate yet adjacent selves? Q: You take for granted — and expect perhaps your reader to also take for granted — the osmosis between the world of the dead and the living. Our generation, I believe, was trained to be rational. Was this something you struggled with? A: We have been trained to be rational. We are told to believe half of what we see and none of what we hear. And at this point, in the age of AI, we can't believe much of what we see, either. I can't say I've ever struggled with the question of what is rational and what isn't. The rational world would have us endorse the viewpoint that when the dead die, they cease to exist. And yet, and yet. I've never had much doubt about where the dead go. I know they are among us, unable to fully be here or to fully leave. In that sense, the difference between the world of the dead and the world of the living is nothing more than a veil. All we have to do is look past the veil. It's a way of seeing, of believing in the world that lies beyond the waking world. Or to quote from The Elsewhereans: 'This is where the dead go. To torment us in our dreams. They have nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.' Q: Is 'Elsewhereanism' an inheritance? Or is it a choice? A: I'd say it's a state of being, and in that sense, it's an inheritance. But in every other way, it's an ongoing choice. Is it possible to live in the modern world and be of one place? Who can answer with one word the question, 'Where are you from?' Even if you've never left your place of birth, you may feel like a stranger at home. You may choose to believe that your hometown is wherever you happen to be. You are not of single origin, like a coffee varietal. You are from multiple places. You contain multitudes. Home is where you lay your hat. The interviewer is a poet and novelist.
Irish Examiner
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Theatre For One review: Intimate setting makes for wonderful experience at Cork Midsummer
Theatre for One, Emmet Place, Cork Midsummer Festival, ★★★★★ All of the city is a stage is a central tenet of Cork Midsummer Festival, one that is underscored as the queue begins to grow outside the Theatre for One venue near Cork Opera House and the starting time is delayed as we wait for a noisy street-cleaning machine to pass by. It all adds to the camaraderie and anticipation for the offerings from Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals, as does the welcome offer of sunscreen from the staff as the midday sun makes its presence felt. Theatre for One presents five-minute pieces performed by a single actor to an audience of one in a confessional-style booth. This year, the theme is Made in Cork, featuring plays by six Cork writers, directed by Julie Kelleher and Eoghan McCarrick. As the door shuts, the sudden darkness of the plush red velvet surrounds strikes a particularly Proustian chord with this former convent school girl. The religious theme continues to echo in The Green Line, written by Michael John McCarthy and performed with affecting conviction by Marion O'Dwyer. The set-up is quickly and skilfully achieved, as an older woman at a New York bus stop unburdens herself to a fellow waiting passenger — I startle when she asks my name. As she reminisces about her childhood in Ireland, the New Yawk accent is replaced by the musical lilt of her West Cork upbringing. Wearing a cross, she has been at the church to pray for her late husband and imagines an idealised version of her own funeral at home before dismissing the idea. She indicates that my bus is coming and it's time to say goodbye. Next up is Hex, showcasing the considerable talents of Gina Moxley, who both writes and performs. She recounts a trip with her college friends to the US and an encounter with Elijah, the palm-reading hotel worker with 'a bang of Southern Gothic' whose casual aside has tormented her for years. Fragile, yet determined, she, like my friend at the bus stop, is confronting her mortality. It sounds deep but it's also very funny, employing Moxley's gift for a neat turn of phrase. The intimate, and confronting, nature of the format comes to the fore as she asks to hold my hand, commenting on how soft it is before giving me a notebook and asking me to write something for her, the text of a tattoo she plans to get across her chest. As she spells out the three words, I catch my breath at the implication and hesitate to complete her request. It's one of the most powerful and profound moments I have ever experienced in a theatrical setting. As the screen comes down, my eyes prickle with tears. I need a moment to compose myself but the door opens, the darkness recedes and the sunlight floods in — time to go back to the real world.
