Any Other Dublin

Meet Fatuma Abdullai, a bright brash energetic new Irish citizen. Join her as she seeks love in the big bad city, in the final episode of Any Other Dublin.

Fatuma is a recent immigrant from the African nation of Liberia. Fatuma runs her own mobile phone and religious accessory store on Moore St. Fatuma is a Charismatic Christian with an interest in angels and spiritualism. Fatuma is a naturally friendly person, who feels cut off by Irish reserve and socially excluded. She is seeking a husband, having decided to start a family. Circumstances are forcing her to engage with the wider society in a new way, and she must deal with the evitable conflicts, culture shock and misunderstandings.

Download: Episode 6 – Deluxe web version (25.3megs)

Meet Martha Heinsklimer, feminist icon and one woman Irish business brand.

Martha is a Tech entrepreneur and divorcee, who owns and runs her own Web 2.0 business – WebbildyBooboo.ie. Martha considers herself an inspiration to women everywhere, especially her many loyal minions employees. Marta is raising money for charity, hoping to raise enough to get a free cycling holiday in France.

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Meet Sean Og Ní Sugru, a deeply socially conscious ‘new man’.

Sean Og is a political activist, amateur clown, psychonaut and raw food vegan. He’s currently training as a sex positive psychotherapist. Sean Og was involved in Occupy Henry St, and has campaigned at Rosslare against the Tesco pipeline. Sean Og’s worldview is in crisis as he attempts to balance the demands of becoming ‘respectable’ with his countercultural ideals. His socially unacceptable conspiracy theories, use of psychedelics and interest in the occult come into conflict with his attempts to become a ‘professional’. John is in a long term relationship with an asexual woman’Bríd’, who’s currently finishing her PHD, and he’s having difficulties accepting her sexuality.

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The second set of episodes from Any Other Dublin kicks off Monday, for now check out these outtakes from Episode 2.

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Jolita Grīnberga a young Irish writer. Jolita struggles with a lack of creative recognition and the caprices of an unappreciative universe.

Jolita is young creative woman, originally of Latvian origin, who writes and performs on top of her day job. She’s currently attempting to become the next Kindle publishing sensation. Jolita is active member of the Dublin live action role play and burlesque communities. Despite her many creative outlets, Jolita struggles with low self-esteem and weight issues. Jolita works by day in a call centre, doing surveys for the Dept of Agriculture, and lives with her best friend Sebastian, and her cats Lord British and Noroku. She has a second job in a craft market – selling her own hand-made corsets. Jolita’s parents are members of a new religious group. Although warm and supportive, they’re eager for Jolita to marry and settle down. Jolita’s dream is to emigrate to London, to live in Camden and write for Coilhouse magazine and publish her first novel.

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Oisin Kylemore is a pick up artist, a pro-gamer, and a troubled young man. Join him as he shows you another side of Dublin.

Oisin works for one of the ‘big three’ financial services firms in the IFSC. With no time for relationships, ‘love is just another transaction’. Oisin frequently visits his mother (his only surviving parent) at her nursing home – but seems unable unable to forge a meaningful emotional connection to her. When not working 50 – 60 hours a week at his high pressure job. Oisin indulges his hobbies: Martial Art ‘Jeet Kune Do’, and the video game Team Fighter 2. Oisin is in some ways a ‘new man’, putting great emphasis on his appearance, health and fitness; and is a follower of the currently trendy Paleolithic ‘cave man’ diet. Oisin is also part of the men’s rights movement, and considers himself an able ‘pick up artist’. Oisin has a court date approaching, resulting from a violent incident which arose out of his issues with alcohol, and it appears as though his carefully managed life might not be all that it seems.

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Meet Bernard Noonan, in many ways a typical Dubliner. In the first episode of our six part series, we follow Bernie as he struggles with life and romance after the boom.

Bernie is a former property developer, who served a brief sentence at Portmarnock prison for an unspecified offense, after his company went bust during the construction industry crisis. He’s now attempting to get his local community gardening scheme off the ground as a business – but is facing opposition from the volunteers who founded and run the scheme. Bernie believes social entrepreneurship is key to ‘getting us out of this mess’, and faces an uphill struggle to convince others of his vision. After the collapse of his company, Bernie’s marriage ended, and he now lives with his former personal assistant, Wiola. The pair struggle with adjusting to the changed power dynamics of their new relationship circumstances.

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Extract, accompanied by music from String Quartet No1. in A Major by Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin. https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/centauria-music-compressed.mp3

Extract, no musical accompaniment.

Download: A Tale from Centauria

The Chronicles of Centauria

Book One – A Girl Transformed

By Jolita Grīnberga

Chapter One – A Horse is a horse, of course of course… Or is he?

Silmalarian, High Hoof of the great heard of the Silver Plains, forth Manemaster of his name, flight of fetlock and glib of gab, proud of shank and staunch of withers, fierce hearted prince of the ancient race known throughout Centauria as Equus Magnificus, sat in Mrs Feltzwitches biochemistry class and stared out the window; his face a mixture of boredom and of handsomeness.

Alone at her isolated desk at the back of the classroom, where she had been exiled by the cruel jibes of the trendys and the plastics, who ruled her school like an empire of cool, a kingdom of funk – if funk was still cool (but it’s not, though they knew it and she didn’t), MaryLou-Ann, the least popular girl not only in her school but possibly the universe, literally dropped her jaw onto the floor. ‘What the hell’, she thought, ‘Why is there a centaur sitting in my class? The new guy is half horse’.

Silmalarian whineyed softly. When would he find the human mate he had been sent to earth to seek? Pulled from his loving home in the foothills of Magnesia by the ancient Drafhoon pulled through an interdimensional rift to this strange world of boy bands and iphones, like the eldest son of each generation of his family every generation for twelve thousand years before him. These earth girls could not hold the interest of the 300 year old prince of a proud race of centaur men. Besides, he thought, ignoring the simple human biochemistry on the blackboard – most of which he had learned as a toddler of 50; he just wanted to stay here in ‘Bushwick High’, and party.

‘Mr Clydsdale’, said Mrs Felzwitch, cutting through his thoughts like a spur pierces the flank of a once free stallion – ‘I hope you’re paying attention to my biochemistry class.’ But he wasn’t, for Silmalarian had caught the eye of MaryLou-Ann, a girl who had almost no idea she would soon travel to Centauria to become lady queen of the Centaurians.

‘What the actual fuck’, she thought to herself. ‘He is absolutely equilicious’. But love was briefly a one way stable. For Silmalarian could see nothing of interest in this most mundane of the mundane, this callow girl with her homemade gingham dress and her two lazy eyes, each competing to be the most lackadaisical, as though her face were a job in a factory and they were in a union. Her hair resembled straw, not good fresh tasty straw but old yellow straw like you might find after deflating a bouncy castle you’ve set up for the summer, weirdly stained, with things crawling on it, so that you have to call around to the neighbours and apologize and hire a Mexican to plant new grass. That kind of straw. She was a big girl too. To call her plump, would have been to miss a perfect opportunity to use the word fat.

MaryLou-Ann had always been different. She had somehow always felt closer to friends of four legs than of two; and though her mother could never have afforded a pony, and their trailer wouldn’t have fit one anyway, she had found herself, many times, sneaking a peak at the frolicking unfettered nags in the fields near her trailer park. But something was always missing, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something magical and thrilling which would make her horsey friends complete – a human upper half.

‘She knows’, realized Silmalarian with a shock like the cruel bolt in a slaughterhouse that sends an old stallion’s head to the glue factory and the rest of him to a French restaurant, ‘nay… she can’t!’ But she did.