Eating Ranelagh, where I live, has a good selection of restaurants. I also love to cook for friends, using fresh Irish ingredients, which I buy at our local farmers’ market (Sundays outside the Interdenominational School in Ranelagh), or from the ladies’ stalls on Camden Street. Favourite shops include Naturally Nice and Morton’s, both in Dunville Avenue, and The Hopsack.
Shopping I get most of my clothes via mail order from England and India, or from second-hand shops like A Store is Born. I buy household goods from Arnotts (especially their sales!), Kitchen Complements, Sweeney O’Rourke and Urban Outfitters (where I got my favourite goldfish shower curtain).
Outdoors My favourite walk is from Ringsend out onto the nature reserve leading to the Pigeon House. It’s wild, unmanicured, a refuge for birds, wild flowers, insects, shrubs – and it’s by the sea.
Dublin Ups Bicycling; the Luas; the Grand Canal; being able to see the Dublin mountains; Laser for film rentals in Ranelagh; people caring more about planting gardens and trees; Irish cheeses; the potentially stimulating new cultural mix of the city; organ music in St Bartholomew’s, St Patrick’s and Christ Church cathedrals, and Judy Martin’s musical direction in the latter.
Dublin Downs The obsession with new cars, particularly the antisocial, petrol-guzzling, black-windowed SUV bruisers driven by distracted people on mobile telephones; disappearing green spaces; the lack of friendly communication between people on the streets; sodium street lighting; litter; the disappearance of small local shops and craftsmen; alienation caused by thoughtless suburban sprawl.
Media I read the Financial Times and the Irish Times on Saturdays; Apollo and Crafts magazines and the Irish Arts Review. On television I like TG4, Newsnight and John Kelly’s The View. I listen to Bernard Clarke, Tim Thurston and Gerry Godley (Reels to Ragas) on Lyric FM. I love the live opera broadcasts from the Met in New York.
Sport I don’t play or watch, except for rugby when my nephew (Tommy Bowe) is playing on the Irish team. Then I’m (proudly, if uninformedly) glued.
Heroes John Gormley for upholding the Green Party; Feasta (the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability); Kieran Owens for his Event Guide; Jane Powers for her impassioned ecological/gardening features in the Irish Times; Kevin Nowlan, Eddie McParland, Desmond Guinness, the Knight of Glin and Ian Lumley, crusading conservationists; Denis Healy, founder of the indispensable Organic Delights; Sean McArdle for starting up farmers’ markets.
Villains Greedy property ‘developers’ devouring the city without any interest in sound architectural or environmental principles; ministers who permit the tragic overfishing of our waters; whoever destroyed the trees that ran down the centre of O’Connell Street; indiscriminate planning officers.
Nicola Gordon Bowe is director of the MA Course in the History of Design and the Applied Arts at NCAD. She is currently completing a book on Wilhelmina Geddes (1887-1955). Her next project is an illustrated study of the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland.
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