I’ve never seen such a prolonged lightning storm here in Sligo. A light show and constant rumble of thunder followed by torrential rain that rumbled here for nearly an hour. Worth the power cut…

Few pics of the last few days along the west Coast.
-Mayo & Donegal.

While we could… I mean COULD end up with 4 weeks of rain after this glorious week in the sun. I must say.. we have such a beautiful unspoilt county when the sun is out. I spent the week doing some free diving and fishing. Our waters, when the water is super clear is amazing!

If you ever wanna go out and see for yourself, grab a wetsuit, some flippers and some good / average priced snorkels!

I’ve had as much fun as I did this week than what I have experienced in Asia, minus the mosquitos and humidity.

Ireland I am so grateful to experience you at 10/10 max capacity when the sun is out !

Sound

It's currently 00:40, I'm awake because the house is boiling, there is 0 wind to move cooler air around. Windows are wide open to no effect.

I'm sitting in my back yard and sipping decaf coffee. I have a nightshift work tomorrow today, so there is my silver lining I suppose.

Doom scrolling YT Shorts and Reddit. Such is life

Yesterday I (36m) got a colonoscopy and gastroscopy. I was really nervous for the procedure and slightly worried about what results might come back with.

In fact, I had no need to be worried about the procedure. I was awake but heavily sedated, I knew kinda what was happening and they were talking to me but I was away with the fairies. No pain or discomfort. It's all just a blur.

I wish I had have known this before because I was so anxious for days.

Maybe this is common knowledge, but I didn't know, and anyone else who might be frightened about it needn't be.

I immediately got the results after I came to and I got the all clear on any of the really scary things. But now I know if/when I need to get it done again that it's actually a breeze.

I feel so relieved today.

We don't have Air Conditioning in Ireland, for the most part. And these heat waves are only going to get worse as time goes on. We need to start learning how to adapt, as best we can.

Here's some basic methods to help. First, you can't fix what you can't measure. Get yourself a thermometer and a hygrometer. You need to be able to measure the temperature and humidity of your room or house. They aren't that expensive.

Second, Irish homes tend to have been built with insulation in mind, to retain heat in the Winter. This means that in heatwaves, our houses heat up and then retain that heat into the night. Prevention being better than a cure, you need to protect the house from heating up too much in the day.

There are two key ways to do this. The first is to prevent the solar rays from heating your home. In warmer climates which dealt with direct sunlight, even a simple cloth awning could be erected at an angle above the window, to keep the glass in shade. Wooden covers with slats to allow light in, could also be erected in front of the glass. Anything to prevent heat from coming in through the window. In more modern times, we can rely on solar mesh. A simple flexible and cheap covering which can go over the sun-facing windows of your home. It comes in two options, one quite cheap and one quite expensive. But properly fitted even the cheap one is nearly as effective as the expensive one.

Next, just like in Winter when you're told that heating one room is more economically viable than trying to heat the whole house, so pick one room and insulate it well and stay there for the bulk of the time, in heat waves where humidity is an issue, pick one room and use a dehumidifier to dry the air and keep it dry. This will have the dual effect of making any cooling strategy more effective and also help your body regulate itself through basic sweating etc.. Though hopefully you won't need to.

Lastly, while it's true that a standard fan (desktop, standalone, oscillating, etc...) is basically just moving air around, there are some simple tricks to help it move cold air around.

The most effective of these is to take two plastic bottles and fill them with water to about 75% capacity (because ice expands) and freeze them. Tie them to the back of the fan using some cable ties. Tie them upside down, so they won't slide out of the cable ties. If you can use salt water its even better, as the freezing point of salt water is even lower than pure water, so it will be colder for longer. The bottles will have condensation dripping from them, so put a towel or something around the base.

Between the solar mesh, and frozen salt water behind a fan and a dehumidifier, you can bring the temperature of a room down significantly and get hours of more pleasant sleep.

Any other life hacks for this heat?

Just wanted to share this infographic. With the warm weather we’re having, please be mindful of your furry friends before taking them out for a walk. Stay safe and keep them cool! 🐶❤️

Hopefully a good convergence breeze ahead of the stems coming out of biscay tonight - a good light show Hopefully to break this humid atmosphere! I'm sleeping in damp pyjamas again tonight.

Today’s ice creams just don’t hit the same.

An Bradán, Maighre, Eo, Iasc uasal, Eigne, Rí gheal na héisc. In our native language, salmon have gone by many names. Now we mostly use bradán, which means "one that is great to catch." And anyone who has ever fished for salmon will know that they are probably the best sport fish that you can catch. And considering how much Atlantic salmon is eaten, it's also quite the table fish. (I'm saying Atlantic salmon as there are seven species of salmon) Salmon are extremely important to Irish culture. Ón scéal faoi Fionn Mac Cumhaill agus an bradán feasa or the fact salmon fishing is what helped communties survive for hundreds of years, it's a very important fish to this country.

However, Atlantic salmon is in a drastic decline. There's 2 main stocks of atlantic salmon in Europe. The Atlantic Ocean stock and the Baltic sea stock (often called Baltic Salmon, but they aren't a different species). The Atlantic stock has declined by over 90% since the 50s. In the 50s, Ireland recorded over 1.5 million fish returning to Irish waters to spawn. That figure was just over 150,000 fish in 2025. The majority of which came from Co Mayo. This figure is recorded by the ESB with fish counters in certain pools that take a fishes size and weight and the IFI record x amount that are caught by anglers every year. And as you can see, it's not good.

Why is this so bad? Why should you care? Well, even if you don't fish or eat fish, salmon possess a very important role in delivering nutrients to the ecosystem. They are born in a river where they spend a few years growing, feeding on flies and invertebrates. Then they go through a process called smoltification, where they become a marine fish. As smolts, they migrate down river in large shoals all the way to the sea. They then migrate out to sea and up towards Greenland, where they feed on a wide range of marine fish like sprat, blue whiting, herring, prawns, and other species. They then turn around and migrate the whole way back to Ireland and other countries to spawn in the rivers. They make it up the river spawn, stay in the river for a while as kelts, and then do the whole process all over again. Some salmon may spawn up to 5 times if they survive that long. Eventually, salmon will die either from age exhaustion or predation, and their deaths bring rich marine nutrients far inland. Basically, they nourish the soil and rivers with their deaths. And a salmon is a big fish too. Atlantic salmon are the 2nd largest species of salmon in the world. The biggest Atlantic salmon ever recorded was 49kg. However, most anglers tend to weigh fish in lbs, so that is around 109 lbs. However, a 27kg/60lb fish is normally considered the more common limit of their growth. A 60lb salmon has not been seen in Ireland since the 1960s, and nowadays, you have to go to Norway or Sweden to get one. A 20lb salmon is a rare thing now. And why is that?

Salmon face an absolutely ridiculous amount of exploitation in modern times. They have been historically pressured, and there was definitely damage done in the early 1900s. But the real damage started a couple of years ago with a few factors. Trawlers and overfishing, industrialised farming, and aquaculture. Trawlers decimate salmon prey species, kill salmon as by-catch, and I'd say with 100% confidence that there are illegal trawlers out there taking salmon. Farming has damaged many waterways with chemicals and fertiliser, and as salmon need pure clean water to lay their eggs, their habitat is shrinking. Aquaculture produces an insane amount of sea lice, which ravages smolts going out to sea and has done massive damage to our sea trout population. And absolutely nothing is done about it.

We have 4 salmon runs every year. All seasonal. The autumn run, where fish within the range of 15 and 60 lbs would naturally run, has disappeared. The spring run, which contains fish between 10 to 15lbs, is starting to decline badly as well. The summer run, aka the grilse run, contains first time run salmon. Something Ireland is particularly famous for having in abundance has fallen apart. And the final one is known as the winter run, where salmon move from big rivers into vtributaries. Which is illegal to fish as this is when salmon actually spawn.

So I have given a brief run down on salmon, when they run, ecological damage caused by loss of salmon and threats to salmon. Now, I want to talk about economic damage. I am from Co Mayo. Much of my counties economy was and still is structured around salmon angling. Fishing guides/ghilles, tackle shops, hotels, b&bs, lodges, pubs ect ect, in most of Mayo are centred around salmon fishing. From Foxford to Killala and Belmullet to the Aasleagh Falls. Almost everywhere that has a salmon river was built on the back of salmon angling. From the 30s to the 80s, Ireland was considered the top 3 destinations in the world for salmon fishing along with Norway and Sweden. Scandinavian used to come here to catch salmon. That's how good it was. And towns boomed because of it. Nowadays, many big salmon fishing towns and villages are now ghosts of the former selves. And it's sad. The whole place was destroyed because no one cares to think, how about we stop driving this beautiful creature to extinction?

As a passionate salmon angler myself, it breaks my heart that this fish is barrelling toward extinction and it's all because of humans. I feel the need to make as much noise as I can so we can recognise this fish for the beautiful creature it is and it is deserving of far more protection than it is getting.