Macha 
As children, we could take or leave the Twelfth, but we couldn’t wait for the Thirteenth each year. I grew up just a few miles from Scarva. My Dad drove through the village every day on his way home from work, stopping at the little shop that used to be there to pick up his newspaper. We played in the park, and our local chippy was there, long since closed. For most of the year it was a quiet, sleepy …
Standing in the sunshine outside the MAC in Belfast last Thursday morning, I had a few butterflies in my stomach. I had an SDLP lanyard around my neck, and I was attending my first political conference. It felt slightly surreal because last November, I had asked and answered this question: So why don’t I just get on with it and join the SDLP? Because…it’s still about crossing a cultural line and stepping into a space that can make you feel …
Last December, I wrote about fox hunting and political evasion and why I do not believe tradition alone justifies the organised pursuit and killing of a wild animal for pleasure. I wrote then about my rural farming upbringing and my father’s deep dislike of fox hunts and terrier men. I highlighted the cynical attempt to recast opposition to fox hunting as hostility toward rural communities, rather than acknowledging how many people from farming and rural backgrounds object to it. In that …
My trust in policing was pretty much a given growing up, though I appreciate that won’t be true for everyone reading this. For much of my life, I believed that if something truly awful happened to me, a police investigation would pursue the truth with rigour and urgency. After reading Dr Jan Melia’s review, something foundational in that trust has been broken. Few stories have unsettled me as much as this one. In August 2020, Katie was found critically injured …
A day spent exploring Rathlin on foot made me want to share the simple joys of a place that takes me back to a time when we were kinder to nature. I’m a great believer in a well-executed day trip. Good company (or none at all), a few indulgent food treats, and a real sense of getting off the beaten path. So our packed lunch included slabs of buttered Guinness wheaten bread, a vintage crumbly cheddar, lemon drizzle cake, seaweed …
I don’t follow U.S. politics particularly closely, but as I have watched what has unfolded in Minneapolis, an awful bleakness has settled over me, alongside a rising sense of anger and injustice. This month, two U.S. citizens were shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Their names were Renée Good and Alex Pretti. In any democratic society, a death at the hands of the state should trigger an independent inquiry. Until the facts are fully known, those involved should …
Periodically, almost cyclically, I reach a point of political fatigue. I still believe incremental progress is possible and worth the sustained effort it requires, and I know my energy will return. Still, sometimes the arguments feel so entrenched that I find myself tuning out. Driving to work just before sunrise a few days ago, the roads were icy and the sky clear, tinged pink. The moon sat over the water, and I suddenly wondered how many others were looking at …
Boxing Day is a significant date in the fox-hunting calendar. Foxes are unaware of this, moving through hedgerows and fields largely unseen, doing what wild animals do in winter, trying to survive. Meanwhile, groups of people are preparing for what they describe as a “cultural activity” centred on the pursuit and killing of a wild animal. I am a country woman, born and bred. My father was a farmer to the bone and worked the land long after his body …
After more than five years commenting on Slugger, I can still count the regular female voices roughly on one hand. When almost half the population isn’t represented here, we should be asking why. This isn’t really about why women may be less likely to arrive here in the first place. That question is interesting, but it’s not something people already here can meaningfully influence. It also fails to capture what it actually feels like for women who do visit, comment, …
Reunification will come, but not necessarily soon, and not by wishful thinking. The combined nationalist vote still sits at roughly forty per cent, with no credible plan to move it beyond fifty, in a way that would persuade the Secretary of State to act. However, among many nationalists, there’s a strong sense that reunification is almost within reach. Sinn Féin’s dominance feeds that belief, but momentum within one party and one community has clear limits. Where is the strategy to …
Well, I do swear. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about I Swear, a film released this month based on the true story of John Davidson, who was diagnosed with Tourette’s at age fifteen in the 1980s. Tourette’s causes involuntary movements and sounds that a person cannot control. Swearing, known as coprolalia, is actually rare, though it’s the symptom most people associate with the condition. I went to see it last Friday in a “social” cinema with a …
Three unionists write in their own words, interwoven with my reflections. I have come to see that I still feel a kinship with unionism, even though I’ve moved away from supporting the Union. My hackles start to rise as I hear unionist communities reduced to stereotypes, patronised, and unfairly branded with historic guilt. It’s shown me that my identity and loyalty run much deeper than the constitutional question, even though I haven’t felt unionist or British for a very long …
Outrage has become the dominant style of debate online, in politics, and even in everyday conversations, while complexity and nuance are often overlooked. The tone is full of absolutism and hyperbole, and it often feels more about venting than persuading. Over time, my frustration with this has grown to the point where what once felt like irritation now feels like disenchantment. My core values haven’t changed. I still believe in fairness, equality, and a society that protects the vulnerable. What …
It was on Slugger O’Toole that I first twigged there was “a thing” about Protestants and traybakes. I honestly had no idea until I came across the jokes here. Since then, it has been thrown at me now and then in good humour, and the banter led me to realise that some people have no idea what a Top Hat is?! Turns out they just knew them as “wee marshmallow things”. I laughed at that! I have so many memories …
Scrolling through social media before bedtime, I saw it on my feed. “None in, all out” stamped boldly across a photo of asylum seekers in a small boat. Another post from the same page smeared “illegal” immigrants with allegations of paedophilia. This was not from a stranger, but from someone I know and am connected to through family. I replied with a few facts about asylum claims. By morning I had been unfriended. Racism is not new here, but it …
I’ve written before about moving away from the conservative Christianity and unionism of my upbringing, a gradual, personal shift that took shape during the decade I spent living and working in Dublin. That experience left me open to the idea of reunification and increasingly disconnected from unionism. I now find myself uneasy with some of the cultural signals coming from nationalism. The tone of certain music, the symbolism, the responses to criticism, all sometimes feel more like assertions of identity …
I write this piece as a gentle challenge. A few years ago, I wrote on Slugger, “As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that as a general rule, the people I like & gravitate towards are left-leaning. They generally like nature, are artistic & care about helping those who are more vulnerable in our society.” On a personal level, this is still broadly true, and yet I find myself increasingly troubled by elements of left activism, particularly online. The first pricks …
How persuadable people think seems to form a bit of a blind spot for those to whom it should matter most – people who are apparently invested in trying to keep NI in the UK and those who are set on achieving reunification. Both sides seem to prefer repetitive rhetoric laden arguments (with those who will never be convinced) and comfortable conversations with those of a similar persuasion. Many of us accept our unionism or nationalism as a kind of …
Each July my father made a choice not to erect a Union Jack outside our home, which was in a predominantly unionist area. This was out of respect to our neighbours, who were Catholic. However, this piece is not really about the flying of emblems from private property. Along many streets in various parts of Northern Ireland, flags of various sorts fly high and proud on public lampposts and there they can remain until the wind reduces them to tatters. …
I was grumbling to a friend a while ago about the commercialisation of Halloween and was picking on the ubiquitous pumpkin, a rather lurid American import in my opinion. She reminded me that the origins of Halloween are Irish and then a few days ago she sent me a photo of the turnip she’d carved “in honour of” her “Irish roots”. The pagan celebration from which Halloween originates is Samhain (pronounced Saw-when or Sow-whin), a Celtic festival marking the …