Watching – I finally got into Hacks this week. I watched a bunch of episodes on a plane about a year ago but never went back to it. However, I am now finished season 1 and fully committed to these funny women, who are such terrible people. The first series also made me think of GLOW, which I still miss. Only because the final season was also set in Las Vegas which seems like such a weird transitional place to live. It’s on Sky/Now TV if you’re keen to see what the fuss is about.

Reading – Don’t Make Me Laugh by Julia Raeside might be the reason I started watching Hacks again this week. It’s also about stand-up, as well as misogyny and terrible men in the entertainment industry. It’s mostly set in London but things all come to a head at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. I enjoyed it. It’s well-written, the writing is almost at a remove from the main character which I found interesting. I’ve been reading a lot of first-person fiction at the moment so that felt very noticeable to me.

Listening – After this week’s win at the Ivor Novello awards, CMAT’s Euro-Country is back in rotation. (I also loved the frock she wore to the award ceremony, so much colour and so much fluff.) I’ve listened this album over the 11 months and it still sounds fantastic. I love the energy on the album and the off-the-wall lyrics. My current favourite songs are Jamie Oliver Petrol Station and Janis Joplining.

Also – After writing so many words about how much I love the library, I got locked out of my account this week. This is what happens when you have a book overdue for more than 2 months. This was not the first time it’s happened to me.

Irish libraries don’t issue fines anymore, but they will stop you taking out more books or using Borrow Box (the library app that lets you borrow e-books, audiobooks and a whole lot of magazines) if you don’t bring your books back in a timely fashion.

The long overdue book was Helen Garner’s How to End a Story. In my defense, it is her collected diaries; it’s 800 pages long and it’s in demand so I wasn’t able to renew it. It’s alos very good. It feels like a rich read, full of interesting ideas. I’d been reading in small chunks which is why it was taking me so long to finish it. After two months I’ve only got to the end of the first book.

I reluctantly returned last week it to get my account unlocked. I was missing my audio books and New Scientist subscription on Borrow Box. I have added How to End a Story to my reserved list again. I am now at the back of the queue (61 of 61) and will have to wait for my turn to come round again before I can start book 2. I also added her first novel Monkey Grip to my list, also with her most recent book The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial, which is a conversation with two other Australian writers – Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein – about the trial of Erin Patterson.

And finally – I saw these swans and their five tiny, grey, fluffy cygnets on Blessington Basin on Sunday 17th May and I haven’t seen them since. I’ve only been up to the Basin a couple of times since so maybe I just keep missing them. However that doesn’t stop me from worrying that something terrible has happened to the babies. I will try to hope for the best, but I fear for the worst. Fingers crossed they reappear soon.