12 March 2026

As the Middle-East burns at the behest of Trump (and his boss Netanyahu) - and thousands of innocents die, our Taoiseach arrives at the White House to kiss his ass. Doesn’t he do us proud.

Picture of the Week

Eddie Mooney died last October at the age of 85 and it’s fair to say that not many in the art world noticed. After a period of activism in the Sixties (he was one of the founders of Independent Artists) he withdrew from the scene and apart from annual appearances at the RHA (he was an honorary member) was rarely seen. He never had a solo show - although in 2013 he did have a two-person exhibition with Joseph O’Connor at the Peppercanister Gallery. His style was unique in Irish terms owing more to social realists like John Bratby in England and Bernard Buffet in France. Mooney himself expressed admiration for German expressionists like Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. Some of his later work has echoes of Dix’s Weimar paintings. Mooney drew heavily on his childhood memories of poverty throughout his career - fish bones and predatory birds feature regularly. This painting, Trolly Dolly, recreates an adventure with his older sister.

The Moronic Inferno

Mary Geddry’s well-written analyses of the American shit show on Substack are always worth reading. Here’s an extract from a recent piece - delivering a succinct summary of the implications as the USA carpet bomb Iran:

“Now comes the delicious little punchline: so much for regime change. After all the posturing, all the blood-soaked fantasy talk, all the usual delusions about cleansing fire and democratic rebirth, Iran appears to have responded by replacing one Khamenei with another. The regime did not collapse, it reproduced spectacularly, a dynastic continuity under bombardment. It’s the clerical version of a franchise renewal. The grand result of this latest march of the war hawks is Khamenei 2.0, a wider regional conflict, and oil above $100 a barrel. Great job, MAGA, world-class stuff. If the goal was to harden the regime, rally the security state, and hand the global economy another inflationary brick to the face, then yes, mission accomplished.”

Musical Interlude

I Can’t Win by Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder is one of my musical heroes for his pioneering eclecticism and virtuoso guitar playing. I saw him first in the Stadium back in the Seventies with a full band and years later in his more stripped down guitar-focused gigs at the Olympia. This song is from his 1979 album Bop till You Drop and features the distinctive voice of Bobby King who was regular part of his touring and recording band.

Bedtime Reading

I’ve been getting into Olivia Laing’s corpus over the last year and she’s yet to disappoint me. The latest one I’ve got to is The Lonely City - an unusual blend of memoir, biography and psychological speculation. It starts with a relationship split which leaves her stranded alone in New York without family or friends. Her bleak and friendless situation (in that most challenging of cities) provides the stimulus to explore the nature of loneliness using the work of Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz (artist and Aids-activist) and Henry Darger (a truly weird artist/writer). You get plenty of biographical anecdotes to spice up the psychological insights - and, as usual with Laing, she doesn’t spare herself. The section on Hopper is fascinating (not a nice man), and his painting Nighthawks is one of the key elements in Laing’s analysis. Intense stuff but worth the effort. Her piece on Warhol features an unusually sympathetic portrayal of Valerie Solinas the woman who shot him.

This Sporting Life

Last year I had my best Cheltenham ever, with 17 winning bets, as Paddy Power reminded me before this year’s festival (nice data mining Paddy).

Well the wheel has turned (“from woe to weal and after out of joy” as my buddy Chaucer would say). After Day 2 , I’ve yet to have a winner, just a couple of long-priced placed horses. While I enjoy watching the racing generally, and can appreciate a race where I have no bet, it’s still no fun when you end the day a loser. I should have known my luck was out when my fancy, Mydaddypaddy, got bumped badly (and perhaps deliberately by Nick de Prick) when coming to challenge in the very first race - the Supreme Novices. There are two days to go so perhaps Henry de Bromhead will rescue me today, with three runners I fancy. He has a great record at Cheltenham and over the years has made me a lot of money. I remember very warmly Minella Indo at 66-1 in the Albert Bartlett in 2019 and two later in the Gold Cup at 9-1. However, no amount of having starred…

Last weekend’s 6Nations matches were the most exhilarating I can remember. Especially the first 60 minutes of Scotland versus France where the Scots fury and skill dismantled a seemingly invincible French team. An indelible image from that match was Dupont’s desperate forward pass in the in-goal area. Oh how the mighty had fallen. Italy beating England was unprecedented and put a smile on all who admire the cavalier spirit as Borthwick’s roundheads were confounded. As for Ireland, they almost succumbed to Wales’s greater intensity, not helped by Crowley’s unreliable place kicking. Crowley’s a way better attacking and defensive out-half than Prendergast but he needs to work on his place kicking, and his punting isn’t great either. I am reminded of Tommy Kiernan who had a long and illustrious career for Ireland but was a disaster as a place kicker - losing us matches we should have won in those low-scoring days.

Poetry Corner

This poem may no longer be an aid to seduction in these sexually liberal days but back in my ‘courting’ days, the ability to trot out a few lines from it was a worthy tactic - especially with the bluestockings. “The graves a fine and private place / But none I think do there embrace” was one of my favourite lines.

To His Coy Mistress

By Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.