I’ve just flicked open the new issue of the Stinging Fly (and am dizzy on the delicious smell of fresh print) to find essays on first drafts by Colette Bryce, Dermot Healy, Philip Ó Ceallaigh and Peter Sirr among others, as well as new fiction by the likes of James Kelman, new poems by Paula Meehan and Sinéad Morrissey and a piece entitled First Passions by Joseph O’Connor. Sixteen extra pages brings it to 128 pages of words that I can’t wait to pore over, and all for less than the price of a paperback.

Speaking of Kelman, a man greatly loved by the head of the English department of Trinity College during my time there, Thomas Docherty, he (Kelman, not Docherty) is giving a public reading at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology today at 7 p.m. I remember Docherty extolling Kelman’s mastery of voice and the vernacular, illustrated in what appeared to be Docherty’s favourite quotation from the Booker Prize winning author, and one he urged us to visualise – you’ve really got to picture this, apparently – as he bellowed gleefully through the hallowed halls of Trinity College:  “You couldn’t score in a barrel of fannies!”