Compiled by Nicoline Greer
SPLASH OUT: Tomorrow and on Monday, divers at the Exploris aquarium in Strangford Lough, Co Down, will swim with the fishes - of the rather large variety. They hand-feed sharks and conger eels, more dangerous species, apparently, as they would gladly nip your hand off if you offered it to them. Discovery Pool demonstrations take place every hour-and-a-half, when you can get as close as you like to sharks, rays, starfish and urchins. Nothing like an interactive shark display to liven up a Bank Holiday weekend. Divers in Open Sea Tank takes place tomorrow and on Monday. Exploris Aquarium, The Rope Walk, Castle Street, Portaferry, Co Down (048-42728062), www.exploris.org.uk.
WHAT A CARD: "Cocktail Cuties" is the name of a series of playful greeting cards by Andrea Kett, a gifted Irish illustrator living in Manchester. This drawing, Queen of Tarts, adorns one of her best sellers, along with another called "We Three Queens", all part of a series of more than 30 designs which come glamorously decorated with tassels, glitter and diamanté. Like all of her Cocktail Cuties, it has a recipe for a cocktail on the back and a femme fatale on the front. Other illustrations take delight in puns, with titles such as Delectable Dollies, Fairy Cakes and Booby Traps - "a product of too much P.D. Wodehouse", she says. Fans include Ron Wood and Lulu Guinness, for whom she did all the point-of-sale material for her shoe range. A Dubliner who studied in Dún Laoghaire College of Art and then left to do an animation course in Bristol, she started selling her cards (and Christmas decorations) herself "with my trusty assistant, my mother" three years ago. Now her work can be found in Barneys in New York and online at www.powderedwater.co.uk. In Ireland, her handfinished cards, as heady as a real cocktail at around €7.60 each, can be found in SWALK in the Hibernian Mall and at Indigo in Howth. Deirdre McQuillan
TOUR DE TAPAS: Oh, how we love Spain's tradition of enjoying nibbly things. Follow the tapas trail at the Instituto Cervantes evenings of Spanish regional food each month from now until the end of the year. Spanish gastronomic expert, Mila Santurino, will explain the culinary traditions, and demonstrate how to prepare well-known Spanish dishes. The first one, on May 28th, features chorizo and cheese from New Castile. Expect lashings of tomato bread at the Catalonia evening next month. And in July, the action will move on to Celtic Galicia - inevitably a seafood affair. The dates are: May 28th, New Castile; June 25th, Catalonia; July 23rd, Galicia; September 24th, Extremadura; October 29th, Andalucía; November 26th, Aragon/ Navarra; December 10th, Spanish Christmas traditions. All 7 p.m. €15 per session; closing date is four days before each session. Instituto Cervantes, 58 Northumberland Rd, Dublin 4 (01-6682024), e-mail: secdub@cervantes.es, http://dublin.cervantes.es
CHEAP DEAL: DIGITAL PHOTO PRINTING: Bonusprint.ie offers one of the best quality and cheapest digital photo printing services around. The price of digital cameras is coming down, but printing from your home computer can be expensive and time-consuming - and it is difficult to get the quality as good as you might like it. Prices start at for a 10x15 centimetre picture, and you even get a money-back guarantee.
FIERY VALUES: Black Rock is a place like no other. Its 25,000 people raise the surreal city out of the cracked Nevada Desert once a year. "Burning Man" is a unique gathering where anything goes, and it is being celebrated in Dublin this weekend by the screening of two films capturing the spirit of artistic endeavour and communal belonging. Tonight, Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock premières in Ireland. Tomorrow, Dust Devils, made by Irish film-makers, Aprile Blake and Dearbhla Glynn, will be screened in Meeting House Square at 8.30 p.m. If you're not close by, it's also showing on TG4. Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock is at the Sugar Club, tonight, 7.30 p.m. Tickets, €15 from Sustainable Ireland. Larry Harvey, one of the founders of Burning Man, is coming to Ireland for the first time and will give a talk before the screenings. www.beyondblackrock.com, www.sustainable.ie. This year, the Burning Man Festival is from August 30th to September 6th, see www.burningman.com.
ONLY NATURAL: Composting household waste, saving water, growing organic vegetables - virtuous, yes, but they all seem so difficult. And expensive. Trust the Irish Peatland Conservation Council to take away the last of your excuses with a range of books and videos on eco-friendly gardening. From Composting For All (€4 for book, €16.99 for video) to Gardening without Water (€17.50), these guides will help you make your garden a better place, from worm-farming to wildlife-nurturing. There's something for the kids, too, in Muck and Magic (€10), which shows them how to start their own natural garden, as well as how to grow a potato crop, and identify garden birds and animals. Shop online at www.ipcc.ie, at the EnviroShop on 119 Capel Street, or through the Save the Bogs catalogue, available from boggifts@ipcc.ie or from Oscar Duggan, on 01-8722397. Belinda McKeon