After I walked Sam around the town this morning, I was quite tired. I walked him because the mother-in-law had asked me last night if I had walked the dog that morning, and frowned when I said I didn't. So much of what I do is often so I won't disappoint the people around me.

Anyways, I can't tell if my fatigue is covid-related or not. I've been feeling exhausted for most of this spring. Blame the news. Blame the sense of impending apocalypse, the future derailed by an addiction to fossil fuels and war machines. Sometimes I think an apocalypse doesn't come with a big bang, in swift cataclysmic events that occur all at once, but in a series of slow minor catastrophes, burning through the understory of our living until it has crept over and devoured what we thought stable and enduring.

Obviously my thoughts have turned dire, catalysed perhaps by news this morning of two horrific murders in Sligo, a town with 20,000 inhabitants, "just up the road" from my town. Within the space of less than 48 hours, two gay men were murdered and mutilated in their homes, and a man in his 20s was arrested for the murders. Absolutely devastating for this small town, and for the LGBT community in Ireland.

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