Galway is cold and dry, due to stubborn Arctic aircurrent. Gorse blooms and burns; on social networking sites, people share dark photos of flame-seamed horizons.

My days do not vary, not even on the weekends. In the mornings I have porridge and coffee as I work with my back to the sunlight. In the afternoons I eat stinky cheese on sesame-flecked rye crackers in a dim room and stare into a luminescent screen, working. In the evenings after exercise and a quick dinner, I drink wine or beer and work until two or three am, when I go to bed with a glass of whiskey and write in my diary about the same old things (work, work, work). What's the use or meaning of this labor? The production of so much noise, to feed a machine in which I am but an expendable part.

I miss rain, the sky's changeability.

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