Pádraig and Elizabeth 1691 Cambridge Street, an unexpected setting for a love story. A frowning Irish boy and grinning Kenyan girl decide they’ve found a good thing. Amidst raised eyebrows and clucking tongues, he lays a hardwood floor, she spreads a patch of sunshine over it. They slip on wedding rings and sit down to a cup of tea. School Children in Kwa Zulu Natal One hundred and twenty bare feet pound a welcome song into the dust. Sub-Saharan sun bears down on tattered uniforms. “We welcome you, we welcome you, You are welcome here today!” I wake to the memory of their happy voices. Wanting to be worthy of their song, I rise and dress for another day. Jeannie Marie at Johnny’s Foodmarket It’s the same question every time “Honey, that your daughter?” “Yes, it is Jeannie Marie.” I pretend it’s the first time she’s ever asked. “Isn’t she just a peach.” Then leaning her white head of hair in, she whispers: “Eat a plum everyday love, it helps with digestion.” She winks, buys her cigarettes and lottery ticket And walks out the...

I just saw this crowd called Attraction on Britain’s Got Talent. There were about eight of them, mostly women, dressed in tight lycra. They all got behind a screen; there was a light source too, to create silhouetted figures who danced and combined to form shapes, impossibly clever stuff like camels, tombstones, even a fighter jet. The judges were awed. I was sitting there and, like them, I was feeling it: it was extraordinary, but more importantly, poignant. And then, out walks Alice: Alice Good God Almighty.  ...

            “You’ve got to be kidding me.”           “No, mother, I am not.”           “But why? James-Rainbow Drop, honey-why are you-?” The emaciated woman looked at her son in concern. He looked a lot like she did, she thought with pride: he had the same colour eyes, the same shade of brown in his messy hair, the same slimness in his body and a pointed face but his hair was a lot shorter than hers and his skin was far less sallow-looking. Sunlight shone into the kitchen from the open window. It was reflected in the woman’s drinking goblet, which lay waiting on the countertop. Catherina had been hoping for a quiet and peaceful afternoon but her wish had not come true. James bitterly cut across her, his light voice more akin to his father’s than Cathy’s deep, cut-throat rasping.           “Why?! I’ll tell you why,’ he snapped, standing firmly. A frown emerged on his tanned and handsome face; he could sense the fist of his right hand clenching. “I can no longer live here. I will no longer live here, not with you and your repulsive smell and your … issues.’           “Excuse me?!”           “Yeah, that’s right,” James verified his comment with a snort: “issues. Do you think I like living here in this house, watching it fall apart, watching the family fall apart?”           His voice got weaker as he spoke and his bottom lip shuddered. Cathy listened to the words, which seemed to be forcing themselves out of his throat like water trying to break past a particularly large boulder. Her green eyes fearfully searched his pair as if she were looking afresh at a challenging...

So, drivers: Irish drivers, to be more precise. Whatever we use the road for, we always hope no one will come crashing into us (it happens, and more regularly than you’d think.) Firstly, the cyclists: these are the most vulnerable due to their lack of protection on the roads and their alleged carelessness. They want drivers to acknowledge them but still illegally cycle on footpaths. When they have cycle lanes you would hope they would use them –  not always, though. Either they are too much of a tank to cycle on these specially designated ways and so use the road, or they continue with the footpath. Motorcyclists are nearly in the same boat, except they can’t use cycle paths: not as vulnerable either, but still as recklessness, if not more so. Cars are the most common means of transport, and the safest (except maybe for tractors – come to that later.) They carry large numbers in the one go, and have the four wheels: very important. However, crashes are still common and people are killed regularly. We can’t turn on the news without hearing of someone being killed, either for being recklessness, being the victim of reckless behaviour or due to freak conditions and, what’s more, the numbers are creeping up, or so the Road Safety Authority leads us to believe, at least so far in 2013: must be them damn number plates. Lorry drivers are, according to a teacher, the most polite road users, leaving everyone else out in front of them. How kind! They also happen to run down a lot of cyclists. Finally, the safest road vehicle, I believe, is the beloved tractor, used by generations of Irish people who can tell a cow from a lamp post. It’s slow,...

Deal Dialy, So, things went flom bad to wolse today. The genelars advised me to lerease this plopaganda video of a lagtag band of sordiels attacking some caldboald cut-outs of those Ovel the Rine. Light, so they bling an Arsatian with them too. But you know what would happen, dialy? Yep, you guessed. The dog maured one of them. All of this on vlideo! The dog l-was shot, but the damlage was done. The sordiel wooked like a rump of clap. And you know what one of them had the blight idea of doing? Yep, it’s is up on that IntiPipe. Werr, wercome to youl avelage day hele on the grolious side of the Rine. Tark soon! Naghag...

Evil is a force among us, It feasts on the weak and the strong, It stimulates us and we hallucinate, It’s the mastermind of every wrong. Hate takes refuge inside us, It is the driving force of us all, We kneel at its feet, accepting defeat, And it takes control as we fall. Greed is a hunger within us, A sinister craving we share, Turning brother against brother, son against mother And causing havoc everywhere. But I am ready to fight Against the masters of our minds: To destroy these united evils, To give sight to the blind. I am willing to rebel, If others are willing to follow. But this is just a dream – A naïve dream, A silent scream… Because no matter how bright the light There is always the...

Alliance of Valiant Arms is an online-free-to-play-first-person-shooter that combines almost every free-to-play game out there, including game modes similar to Team Fortress 2 and Crossfire, a levelling-up system that is a hybrid of Blacklight Retribution and Crossfire, and a game play system similar to Soldierfront. Game play: The game’s graphics are outstanding with the unreal engine that makes things look sharp and shiny, leaving no piece of the puzzle looking dull or ordinary. The sound system is mind-blowing and immersive. There are three classes available in-game: point man; rifleman; and sniper – in other words, short, medium and long range. There are the normal game modes you see in almost every game since Counterstrike: Team Deathmatch; Search and Destroy; Domination and other modes. Then there are other modes like Escape, similar to Crossfire’s Escape mode: Escort mode is very similar to Team Fortress 2’s Payload mode, Infection mode like War Rock’s, and the unique AI mode, where 4 or 6 players are pitted together in a scenario co-op mission like defending against prisoners and sometimes escaping the prison itself, or fighting a battle against a team of AI with infinite lives while you have only one. This game is one of the most diverse games I have seen. There is a great load of fun to be had in this game but it does have some downsides, the most common of which is the bad community. If you came to this game hoping to make friends and take a break from other terrible communities, then this is the wrong place. Other players start by saying things like “Go please, go man, go go go go go go go!!” then ending with things you wouldn’t like to hear about your mother. Another major problem is that there is no learning curve; it’s like taking a walk with an AK-47 then turning a corner and...

From the start, I have to say Starcraft II is as good as you will ever get in strategy games. This game will always catch the eyes of strategy fans. It is amazing in every concept attempted so far. Quality-wise it has done excellently, from texture and terrain to huge explosions of Minotaur class Battlecruisers. It is mind-blowing and immersing with surprising differences in terrain from map to map, including jungle, rock, lava, urban and space platforms. You can notice every detail on units and terrain, and see the drop ship disintegrate as it is destroyed,a few pieces falling to the lava below. So quality gets a 10/10 Game play is very fun and addictive and surprisingly varying between the three races. The first race is named the Terrans, the humans split apart by civil war, and without giving too much away, are mainly split into the Confederates (dead), United Earth Directorate  – UED for short (dead), the Dominion, and Raynor’s raiders rebel group: they specialise in using walkers and other tech weapons, like grenade launchers that cause concussive blasts that slow enemies down. They are the moderate race that combine a bit of each of the races. The Protoss are a very technologically advanced race of aliens that use warp technology to transport their army and requisition buildings that were previously built on a carrier, to be teleported (called ‘warping’) directly onto the battlefield around pylons, which also provide supply (called...

Margarete Adness sipped her tea and let her soft blue eyes wander up and down the street. Little Charlie Green was over at the book store, shouting at his mother to get him the latest “Bruce Bogtrotter” novel while Roxanne Pontalo was admiring a rather expensive looking dress in the window of Elitists…and there was that nameless newspaper guy picking his nose while at the same time, using his other hand, attempting to thrust the latest “Fibbler” into an old woman’s rather shaky hands. Margarete sighed, put her porcelain cup down on the table outside Posh’s Inn, and said: ‘Where is he?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Linda Eyer said empathetically and ran her long slender fingers through her lustrous blonde hair. The brown-haired Frederick Atso grinned at her, squeezed her hand gently and looked at the dark-haired, bog-standard undergraduate currently looking for her boyfriend. ‘He’ll turn up,’ Frederick said dropping some chip onto his bulging red jumper. ‘He always does.’ But he usually doesn’t break promises, Margarete thought before saying with a perfectly practiced smile: ‘You’re right, of course.’ ‘I know I am,’ Frederick said casually and looked towards his girlfriend for a smile; Linda however was too busy looking down Yelshi Street to keep him satisfied so Frederick awkwardly continued. ‘Did any of you watch the match?’ ‘Yes,’ Margarete said with a chill. ‘It was a load of shi…’ ‘Shih-tzu puppies,’ Frederick nodded. ‘I agree. Linda?’ He looked at Linda who, after a while, tuned back in, looked at the father of her unborn child and said: ‘No, I don’t like battleball. How many times do I have to tell you?’ She licked her lips, he licked his and they met each other’s gaze. Then… ‘What the-?!’ Linda cried and looked behind her to find...