Blanchardstown in west Dublin is where I grew up and finally moved away from in the last year. The pace of property development there was so fast that from the age of nine, I was pointing at the sprawling car parks and saying, gruffly, “I remember when all this was fields.”

Because I did. I remember the rock-breaking machine that cut the shale out of the Tolka Valley when they built the M50. There’s a picture of me on my bike on that road, the wet, black tarmac and bright, freshly-turned clay.

Even now, you can slip throgh gaps in the reality of the outer suburbs to find bits of nature and history which have survived the colonisation.

And the really weird stuff that passes for normality in a place where plenty of people have houses, but nobody really lives.

I mean, who uses a giant inflatable Optimus Prime to sell kitchens?

They are the chronicles of #blanchlife, and they are a thing to behold.