Thomil's Random Ramblings

Apologies to Paradox Interactve for the horrible opening pun! So, for the first time in what seems like a long time, there have been some public realm improvements here in Ballincollig, the suburb of Cork where I live. It is, admittedly, a minor upgrade, but it's a nice step in the right direction. What the hell is that guy talking about now? Has he been smoking weird stuff again? Nope, no need, I’m stoned by nature. Seriously though, recently, a so-called Parklet was installed on Main Street. Parklets are essentially small public seating & planting structures designed to be slotted into a space not much larger than one or two car parking spaces. There's been one of these on Douglas Street in Cork City for quite some time. Finally, back in Fall of 2020, Cork City Council announced both the funding and later the location for ten additional parklets throughout the city, including the one on Main Street that was so recently installed. These parklets are being set up in coopera...

There’s something rotten in the state of Cork! For years, the supposed “City Rising” has been trapped in a downward spiral. Yes, new and impressive buildings have sprung up along Albert Quay and around Kent Station, I work in one of them, however behind that glossy veneer, the city has been slowly falling apart. The streets are pockmarked with potholes that more often than not border on craters, pavement stones are loose and waiting to trip up unsuspecting pedestrians. What should be sweeping urban plazas are desolate wastes, dotted with black asphalt scars where trees used to be. Entire streets have been reduced to looking like a war zone, with crumbling shells of buildings held up by rusting steel beams, ready to crush passers-by. That’s if you can walk down those streets in the first placed without being run over by cars, lorries and delivery vans criss-crossing every which way, ignoring red lights and using narrow laneways as rat runs. Even they can count themselves lucky if they’r...