To Mega Therion (and beyond!)

Where to begin? If I go right back to my very early teens I remember developing a great interest and fascination with Irish and Egyptian mythology. While the latter was more in the context of archaeological interest, the former held a deeper attraction for me. I was reading The Táin about the same time a

Quick Update

I most definitely neglect repeated opportunities to add news and thoughts on here, so this coming week I’m going to write all about my pagan / heathen / occult life before, during, and after my career in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I bring facets of my musical tastes

Blue Lights: PSNI Police Procedural TV Drama. How realistic is it?

Using this opportunity to have a break, of sorts, from specific topics which I’d encountered throughout my RUC / PSNI career. Instead, I’m looking at the recent BBC TV drama Blue Lights, a drama based on frontline policing in the PSNI.

NEW STRAY BULLETS PODCAST EPISODE 12

From Banality to Atrocity?

During the Troubles the squeeze of a trigger or flick of a switch could quickly turn the events of the day from mundane to inhumane. For the majority of the time the victims of shootings or bombings would have been vastly unaware of their fate. But sometimes not. How do you process the possibility of confronting someone who wants to murder you?

NEW STRAY BULLETS PODCAST EPISODE

In Part II of ‘In Bloody Protest For A Glorious Thing’ I continue my thoughts on militant Republicanism in the context of ‘Heroic-Sacrifice’ and a mythic past to which the Patriot Dead added their names for ‘Ireland’s freedom’.

Ghost Days

So, yesterday was a bit of a ‘ghost day’ for me. Haunted. A past incident I was involved in unfolded around me. Encircling. Containing. Actuality dissolving into the early 1990s. The battleship grey of a Tangi landrover dully defying the sharp blue of the morning sky. Dark blast marks radiating out like teeth from where

The Shrapnel Podcast

‘Shrapnel is the podcast that looks at pieces of the past in Northern Ireland. Hosted by Sam McIlwaine and Gareth Mulvenna, we aim to bring you the voices and conversations that aren’t given a platform by the mainstream media.’

ALL LIFE IS NOISE

mind going backwards to the IED – the one by the path not the car not the firing-point not the one that took a soldier’s face so many – a mind made of sepia voices wrapped in newsprint washed away yesterdays red streams through barren field-dressings drown my mind. Politics is just noise in my

The Apotheosis of Assassins

There’s no greater act of liberation than dying a death so grand to free one’s native land.

RISK: A MISTRESS OF DEATH

PTSD and its urge for self-destruction through risk-taking