It rained on the last day of our @athleticsireland.bsky.social Halloween camp. So this being Ireland, these ghouls, ninjas, and princesses set up hurdles inside and blasted Zombie 🧟🎃☘️💚

I'm running a little athletics camp this week for @athleticsireland.bsky.social in inner-city Crumlin. The idea is, keep kids off screens and active during half term.
Here's us today managing admirably with Irish weather ☔️☘️

🐥🇮🇪🛁

✈️👕

This is the fourth night I’ve made a fire to write by, and now the whole cottage smells beautifully of alder, ash, and beech.

A quick update on my friend Timur in Kazakhstan. After a trial where he wasn’t allowed to call any witnesses, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. But there’s still hope, and we may have help from human rights barristers in London. In the meantime, all my support. #justicefortimur

It is a dark story, involving whether a government can arbitrarily jail its own people. But at least he is very ably represented by my dear friend Kamila, who is an astute and skilled public defender. And she is also, as it happens, his wife.

(part two of my video message of support)

I was so grateful, from 6,000 km away, to make a message of support outside a Kazakhstan courtroom. An illegally detained friend from my time reporting there, Timur Sadvakassov, still fights for his freedom after a court said should go free.

I look forward to us celebrating the day he is released.

As well as leaves of fire, October calls to mind Octoberfest, sauerkraut, German Unity Day, and all the friends from Germany who’ve blest my life - like my son’s beautiful godmother Paula. And here is one tiny encomium, for October, to all those lovely Germans who have so gorgeously touched my life.