The ocean on your plate:You could walk past the self-effacing frontage of Kish Fish for years, as I did, thinking it was only a wholesaler. Enter just once, however, and you know you have found a very special shop.
In a space no bigger than your dining table, a cornucopia awaits: sardines, mackerel, monkfish, sea bream, red gurnard, sea bass, red snapper, scallops, tuna, prawns and a couple of dozen other species are laid out in an artful display. It shifts with the seasons - indeed with every day's catch. It would stand out even in Barcelona's legendary fish market. Every fish's eye fairly sparkles with freshness, and, if you still have any doubts at all (you shouldn't), www.kishfish.ie instructs you on several other ways to test how long the produce is out of the water. Enter the shop a second time, as you surely will, and Fedelmia O'Meara and Jimmy Smith (right) will greet you like the regular you have just become. They will tell you where a fish comes from, suggest how to cook it and debate overfishing, all with a brisk good humour that recalls a gentler Dublin. But their technology is as fresh as their fish: you can call up their recipes on the computer beside the counter, to print them out. Dublin's new diversity is catered for, too. Business development manager Tadgh O'Meara says they bring in carp at Christmas for eastern Europeans and a much greater variety of shellfish for Asians. "The Irish are developing more exotic tastes as well," he says. "They'll see a red snapper on the counter and remember eating it on their holidays." Don't forget to pick up some free fresh parsley on the way out. Kish Fish is on Bow Street, between Smithfield and Church Street in Dublin 7. See www.kishfish.ie or call 01-8728211. Paddy Woodworth
Mellow cello
Cellos are traditionally more at home in orchestra pits than on rock stages, but that will change with the start of Vyvienne Long's national tour, at the eclectic Farmleigh Affair festival in Phoenix Park, Dublin 8, tomorrow. Best known as Damien Rice's cellist, she will take to the stage with her pianist, double bassist, drummer and two other cellists.
"It should be called the Vyvienne Long Orchestra, really," says Long during a brief break between touring with Rice and starting her own series of performances. "I've got some amazing musicians playing with me. I did a small tour last September, so the whole idea of touring my own material still feels fresh - it still feels like I'm starting out. It's quite a big contrast between playing my own shows and playing with Damien. It's very different fronting a band rather than playing along, where the focus isn't on you. There's a huge difference in concentration. It's much more intense, because singing and playing at the same time is in itself much more demanding."
Long first made a noise as a solo performer when her sparse cello-and-handclaps version of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army became a cult hit a few years ago. She followed this last year with a charming EP, Birdtalk, which featured two covers alongside her own compositions. Will there be more startling reinterpretations during her series of shows?
"My own 'original repertoire' has expanded a lot in the last year, so my shows will be mostly original material, maybe only one cover," she says. "Lots of the songs are developments of music I wrote a long time ago, and I had to make a conscious effort to finish them off and write lyrics. After finishing a US tour with Damien in October, I'm going into the studio to finally record them."
And as for all those cellos on stage? "I'm kind of the first public face of the cello in Ireland, but I'm happily surprised by how interested people are in the instrument, and how accepting they are - rather than considering it just a classical instrument, they're quite happy to see three cellos on stage."
After the Farmleigh Affair, tomorrow, Long is at Dolans, Limerick, on August 10th; St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny, at lunchtime on August 11th; Cyprus Avenue, Cork, on the evening of August 11th; Róisín Dubh, Galway, on August 14th; and the Village, Dublin, on August 15th. www.vyviennelong.com. Tickets for the Farmleigh Affair are available from www.farmleigh.ieand from the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, on East Essex Street, Dublin 2. Davin O'Dwyer
Kitchen bling
Chunky gold bling has given a reputation as supplier to the chav trade, as well as to anyone looking for cheap furniture and bedding and George Foreman grills. But its new catalogue is moving upmarket, selling kitchen items that one might normally have to visit, dare we say, Brown Thomas to buy. "Aspirational" totems such as toasters, Gaggia coffee makers and food processors feature, along with damask cotton duvet covers. Worth a look. Kate Holmquist
Green gauge
The first Irish Green Gathering takes place from August 17th to 19th in the grounds of Woodbrook House, in Killanne, Co Wexford. It is the home of Giles and Alexandra FitzHerbert, who want to promote sustainable living. "Woodbrook is a lovely place for a festival, but I'm also doing this because climate change is now, to my, mind, one of the most important issues facing the world in which my children and grandchildren live," says Giles. There'll be three stages of live music, stalls where you can see how practical solar water heating or pellet boilers can be, a holistic-healing area - have shiatsu and Ayurvedic treatments or a t'ai chi lesson - green workshops and screenings of An Inconvenient Truth and other films. Food stalls, including one featuring Lu Thornely's delicious fare, will feed the masses at this family-friendly event. A day ticket costs €20 and a weekend ticket €50 (children are free). You can pitch your tent in a field beside the house. www.irishgreengathering.com, 053-9255671. Eoin Lyons
Ray of light
Stained glass can be inspiring, but it doesn't have to be churchy. Ireland's internationally admired tradition of stained-glass art has its origins in the arts-and-crafts and neo-Celtic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A new exhibition in Kilkenny shows how contemporary stained, etched and painted glass can enhance an interior setting. The Light Fantastic: Irish Stained Glass Art is curated by Mary Boydell, president of the Glass Society of Ireland, and Audrey Whitty, curator of applied arts at the National Museum of Ireland's Decorative Arts & History branch. It's at the National Craft Gallery, Castle Yard, Kilkenny Castle, August 11th-September 30th, Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm, Sunday 11 am-6pm. Kate Holmquist
School sports
When Kinsale Gaelscoil opens in September, it will be with the help of Giles Norman's images of the Munster rugby team. The well-known photographer, who is based in the town, is providing 25 black-and-white prints of each of five shots, with the money going to the school and the Munster injured-players fund. The framed prints come in two sizes: 90cm by 60cm (36in by 24in), for €450, and 120cm by 90cm (48in by 36in), for €750. Call 087-2079114 or 087-6183008, or e-mail gaelscoilcionntsaile@gmail.com.
On a roll
Multiples and chain stores have turned some of our shopping streets into mirror images of the British high street, and restaurants are rapidly following suit, with the opening next week of Ireland's first branch of Yo! Sushi at Dundrum Town Centre, Dublin 14, and the apparent acquisition of a high-profile site on Dawson Street, Dublin 2, for , the Italian cafe and deli chain founded by the chef Antonio Carluccio. The revolving conveyor belt at the 72-seat Yo! Sushi is scheduled to be switched on next Thursday, and Carluccio's, the first of between three and five of the brand planned for the capital, is expected to open before the end of the year. Marie-Claire Digby
Power to the people
A couple of years ago the Irish-born journalist Samantha Power visited a refugee camp in northern Chad. One of the women she met, a 26-year-old named Amina Abaker Mohammed, told her about the gruesome death of the eldest of her six children, 10-year-old Mohammed Haroun. The mother and son had been drawing water from a well one morning when military aircraft sent by the Sudanese government bombed them. "In the wake of the planes came Sudanese soldiers, packed into trucks and Land Cruisers; they were followed by hundreds of menacing Janjaweed on camelback and horseback," Power wrote in her Pulitzer-winning report for the New Yorker magazine. Amina fled, not realising that Mohammed had stayed at the well, to protect their animals. When she returned, as soon after nightfall as was safe, she found the well stuffed with corpses. "Suddenly, she spotted his face - but only his face. Mohammed had been beheaded." He was just one victim of his government's ferocious policy of ethnic cleansing. Power will be talking about the appalling humanitarian situation in Darfur in the inaugural Hubert Butler lecture, at Kilkenny Arts Festival on August 15th. Tickets cost €12 from www.kilkennyarts.ie or 056-7752175. Liam Stebbing
House on the hill
House Projects is an ambitious series of seven exhibitions
taking place in Dublin, Galway, London and New York. The project
brings together 60 artists, curators and writers from Ireland and
abroad. The point, say its organisers, the artists Gavin Murphy and
Sonia Shiel and the curator Mary Cremin, is to bring the public to
the artist rather than the art to the public.On Saturday, August
18th, they will turn Killiney Hill, in south Co Dublin, into an
artists' commune, with the aim of examining alternative communities
and traditional ideas of the house. Instead of the traditional
two-hour private-view opening, with everyone casting anxious
glances to see if the cheap red wine has run out, a picnic will
take place at 2pm, followed by music by Nina Canell and Robin
Watkins. Houseproject.net.
Larry Ryan