A friend of mine, Aine Rynne, is a founder member of Bluepatch Productions, and they’re doing Portia Coughlan by the mighty Marina Carr next month. They’re having a table quiz in the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn on the 26th January at 7.30pm to raise funds:

“Come along and support our fundraiser for Bluepatch’s production of Portia Coughlin, which will run from the 3rd-7th of February at The New Theatre on East Essex Street, Temple Bar.

The night will be fun filled with loads of fabulous spot prizes. There will be teams of 4/5 each competing to be crowned The Bluepatch Stars !! Live Music is by very popular and talented group; The Sick and Indigent Song Club!! James Fanning will entertain with his stand up style of cheeky wit and humorous storytelling. Altogether a nite not to be missed!!

Please tell all your friends and help us raise money for Bluepatch’s debut production in The New Theatre! We value your support and look forward to a night of fun and games.

Charge is Ten Euro a head!”

Should be a good night, so if you’re a table quiz fiend, grab your fiendish mates and head over to the Ha’penny. Theatre is a good cause.

I happened to be in Dublin as I’d a couple of gigs. It was eventful. I was drawing caricatures at Legal Island’s review of employment law and Wyeth’s HR Department’s Christmas party. Great craic and met lots of nice people. Going to Soundcheck was another plus.
The cons were, in order:
My car engine died. I’m waiting on a new engine. I’m in Galway. My car is in Terenure.
My shades broke.
The pants of my suit ripped up the side.
I always balance these little trials by counting my fingers and toes. All present and accounted for.

While I’m a huge fan of Antony Gormley and in particular Angel of the North I’m not convinced that the scale of his proposed work for Dublin’s docklands is entirely appropriate. A human form of that scale in such a tight urban setting actually dimishes the innate human scale intrinsic in that setting, for example the implied human form and scale in the size and shape of a park bench, a doorway, the width of a pedestrian crossing (and a central concern in Gormley’s earlier work). The Angel of the North works so well in that it is unbounded by urbanity and talks down the post-human scales of modern British motorways, while nodding to the human as engineer and the implied Icarus-like failure that may lurk in our grand projects such as those motorways.

The docklands proposal is intimidatingly big. A graphic in today’s Irish Times places it at a head with Liberty Hall and twice the height of the Angel. Perhaps Gormley is seeking a different dynamic to the one I’ve identified, but I think this is a great sculpture in the wrong setting.

On Sunday night I’ll be in the Portmarnock Golf Club for a private function. Maybe I should bring my clubs as well as my pens. Why I haven’t played golf since…

… the Ryder Cup!

UPDATE: Images from the Trinity Medical Ball can be seen here!

SPAN (Strategic Planning Action Network – Réseau de Programmation Stratégique Active) is a “North-West Europe” Interreg III B inter-regional cooperation project. Eight partners from four regions in four European Union Member States are involved in SPAN.

The project has an overall budget of EUR 4 million, 60% of which is funded by ERDF, through the Interreg III B Community Initiative.

SPAN aims to develop innovative approaches to strategic planning for the benefit of all the partner regions and test them under actual conditions. The stress is placed on the participation of civil society in the planning of territorial interventions at regional, infra-regional and local levels. The project also aims to shed new light on relations between urban and rural areas, relations which could be put to better use in the future.