Aidy has the weekend to write and submit a short story, a chance to finally fulfil his lifelong dream and perhaps escape the fragmented life he has built for himself, with three children by three different women and the lasting burden of never having known his mother. But the weekend does not unfold as planned, and instead of writing, he finds himself spending time with his children, gradually realising that they are the most important thing he has. Written without any punctuation other than slashes, the unusual format is initially surprising, but quickly becomes invisible as the story draws you in. What begins as an experimental structure turns into a tender and moving portrait of a man trying to find his place in life, with a simple twist that gives the story a surprisingly beautiful emotional impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Osh is already connected to the car’s Bluetooth \/ already well-acquainted with how to get the music playing \/ to Aidy’s surprise his first choice is a pretty catchy track \/ an Irish harp to start \/ a twinkly sound that lingers there in the background \/ it’s still very young-sounding \/ pop-y with this kind of urban twist \/ a song that both Osh & Eimear seem to know \/ & like \/ judging by the light in their eyes \/ the subtle jutting of their jaw to the beat \/ he gives it a little while \/ enjoying the different textures of the song \/ including the young singer’s vocals \/ before he asks \/ Who’s this, then? \/ Aidy knows there’s no way of asking about modern music without sounding like a complete dinosaur \/ as much as he tries to keep up \/ most songs these days blur into one \/ he tries to stay in the know \/ always got the radio on \/ blaring from his open garage for when he’s pottering in the garden \/ or on the treadmill \/ or tinkering with this \/ that \/ or the other \/ but Aidy knows he’s long in the tooth now \/ too old to keep up \/ Gemma Dunleavy, Up De Flats \/ Osh replies \/”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aidy has the weekend to write and submit a short story, a chance to finally fulfil his lifelong dream and perhaps escape the fragmented life he has built for himself, with three children by three different women and the lasting burden of never having known his mother. But the weekend does not unfold as planned, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,296],"tags":[31,45,27],"class_list":["post-22420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-year-of-reading-2026","tag-family","tag-mothers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/yannick-pulver-hopX_jpVtRM-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22434,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420\/revisions\/22434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}