In The Irish Times this weekend: RTÉ in crisis, find 40 places to stay in the great outdoors, meet the team representing Ireland at this year's football World Cup, and be in with a chance to win €1,000. Subscribe now throught the link in bio to read The Irish Times exactly as it appears in print on ePaper.

While writing her latest novel, ‘In a Thousand Different Ways’, author Cecelia Ahern was also busy navigating “the three Ps”: the perimenopause, the pandemic and the postnatal period following the birth of her third child. “There were so many things that came crashing together,” she says. “I was feeling so much, I wrote a book about feeling”. Speaking on the latest episode of The Irish Times Women’s Podcast, Ahern reveals the bouts of brain fog and rage she experienced through perimenopause, before taking up Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to ease her symptoms. “This hot angry woman was coming out… I said to my GP, I feel like I’m living in a different Before going down the HRT route, Ahern says she “tried everything not to do it”, by giving up alcohol, exercising more and trying different therapies. “I did everything I possibly could, until it got to the extent where the GP said, you have done everything, there is nothing else I can tell you to try,” she says. Describing the effects of the treatment she explains, “I wouldn’t say it’s immediate, and it’s not even magical, but when you look back you can see there is a progression… I do feel less in a swirl”. Listen back to The Women’s Podcast in the link in bio or wherever you get your podcasts. #ceceliahern #perimenopause #menopausesupport

The stitched-up wounds down the face of Ukrainian Oleksandr Hrekov were shocking evidence of the ordeal he suffered. The 23-year-old actor came to Ireland to tread the boards of the Abbey Theatre, an experience that should have offered respite from the war. Instead, Hrekov returned home to Kyiv with a lifelong reminder of his trip to Dublin. He was set upon, apparently by a five-strong group – two men and three women – on Eden Quay in Dublin city centre, just around the corner from the Abbey, last Saturday night. He was glassed in the face and bitten. Gardaí believe the attack was unleashed as the group tried to steal the young actor’s cigarettes. Click the link in the bio for the full story

Edge & Sons Hardware store in Fairview, Dublin is to close after 106 years in business. Owner Victor Edge (77) is retiring and has the store up for sale. Click the link in the bio for the full video Video: @bryanjobrien

Don Canizales, The Red Stables Food Market, St Annes Park, Clontarf @doncanizales The food market at the Red Stables at St Anne’s Park in Raheny, Dublin, is one of the loveliest places you could head to on a Saturday. There is an enviable selection of food trucks and you can also pick up some of Denis Healy’s organic vegetables at the fresh produce section. It’s a good spot for mutts too, with stands for dogs’ photographs, bandanas and scoops of doggy ice-cream. Among the trucks is Don Canizales, where Venezuelan Carlos Canizales, his wife, Glenda Castillo, and Maier Echarri serve up five different types of paella cooked over an open wood-burning fire. There are two on the go at a time. They also serve smaller dishes, like croquetas, patatas bravas and Spanish omelette. Click the link in the bio for the full review

This June’s live music calendar is more congested than the M50 during back to school rush hour. The subsequent advent of earlier stage times has resulted in three distinct and unwelcome phenomena. First, audiences cannot enjoy a band with the visual power of Kraftwerk to its full potential, as headline acts are effectively going onstage in broad daylight, which was also evident at recent shows by Pulp and Blur. Second, an early start stacks the odds against the time-honoured ritual of going for a pre-gig pint, which is now in grave danger of becoming totally extinct on school nights. Third, there is an elevated risk of bees stinging the audience. For the very first time in my concert attendance history, I was stung by a bee as Kraftwerk were performing their 1981 hit, Computer Love. This incident ultimately transpired to be a sign of tremendous good fortune, as the evening became the most enthralling show I’ve witnessed the robotic wizards of electronica deliver since the Olympia in 2004, when all four members of U2 looked on owllike from a stage side box in the hallowed Grand Old Lady of Dame Street. Click the link in the bio for the full story Photographs: @tomhonanphotography

It’s a drama played out in real time on the nation’s most popular radio station, with large swathes of airtime devoted to the topic. Yet as the week progresses and RTÉ Radio 1 hosts continue to dissect the ructions surrounding the undeclared payments to their most highly remunerated colleague, more questions arise than answers: What, another story about Ryan Tubridy? Just wondering, is anything else happening in the world? Good lord, will this ever stop? This isn’t an entirely facetious reaction. There’s no denying the seismic impact of the Tubridy affair on RTÉ, from the damage to public trust and the seething anger of its staff, to the serious implications for the network’s funding. As Mary Wilson tersely notes on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays): “The consequences are felt every hour in this building.” Nor is it to diminish the forensic quality of coverage across the Radio 1 schedule, which has been unflinching in its examination of matter. But at a certain point, the accumulated volume of material threatens to suffocate the general listener, who may think the governance of the national broadcaster doesn’t merit such saturation. Meanwhile Tubridy, suspended from his show since the scandal broke, is conspicuously missing from the conversation, even as his presence – or rather absence – haunts Radio 1 like Banquo’s ghost. Click the link in the bio for the full story

Ireland has just experienced its hottest ever June, breaking an 83-year-old record, with warnings of more frequent and extreme weather events to come, Met Éireann has said. It is the first time June has seen average temperatures of over 16 degrees and is set to be more than half a degree higher than the previous record dating back to 1940. Tuesday, June 13th, had the highest temperature of the year to date, with 28.8 degrees reported at Oak Park in Co Carlow. It is also the third consecutive year a temperature at or above this value has been observed in Ireland. Click the link in the bio for the full story

Ryan Tubridy has a lovely home. It is a mirror of its owner – congenial with no excess bulk. This I know because I interviewed the broadcaster there at his invitation in 2021 and he proudly showed me around it. Before our meeting, the RTÉ press office ordered that his house was not to be identified and required a written undertaking in advance that there would be no questions about the Montrose star’s “private life”. The day after the interview, another diktat arrived. This one said there was to be no mention of “who appears in photographs, paintings or specific book titles in his house”. I checked the calendar to see if it was April Fools’ Day. At that time The Late Late Show presenter’s published salary from RTÉ was €495,000. Last week, the rest of us great unwashed found out that the public service station was paying him an extra €75,000-a-year, camouflaged as “consultancy” fees and paid through a British company. When I had broached the subject of his lavish remuneration, RTE’s highest-paid presenter had replied that his lifestyle was not expensive, as epitomised by the 14-year-old car he drove. “I think if I was to end up working in a bookshop tomorrow I would downsize comfortably because my needs are not outrageous,” he said. I believe he meant it sincerely. So why did he feel the need to extract more than half-a-million-euro annually from his impoverished employer? Click the link in our bio to subscribe

Vaping was supposed to help smokers wean themselves off cigarettes, or at least take nicotine in a safer way. No doubt that is still why some people vape. But the snazzy packaging, the use of flavours such as bubblegum and birthday cake, and the ads by influencers on TikTok all indicate that vaping is now being aimed at a whole new market. The pipes, tanks and clouds of smoke once associated with vaping are mostly gone. In their place are deft little disposables, costing about €8 each, which are convenient and easy to use. Presented as a lifestyle product, they are especially popular with retailers, who can get a margin of 30 to 40 per cent. Vaping involves heating a liquid which is turned into vapour and inhaled through a mouthpiece. The vapour has no tar but does contain nicotine, and so is habit-forming. “It’s the biggest spread of addiction this country has ever seen,” says a whistleblower within the vaping industry, who declines to be named. “Hundreds of thousands of children have been hooked.” To read more click on link in bio. #vaping

Front page photograph: Family reach €14m court settlement. Melissa McCarthy with her son Calum (16), who has physical and cognitive impairments, outside the High Court following settlement of a case taken against the HSE concerning the management of Callum's birth. To read more click on link in bio.

Mykyta Karagodin and his friends had just gotten their mango-passion fruit drinks and placed their dinner order on the terrace of the Ria Lounge on Tuesday night – a lazy summer evening at a popular restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. Then they heard a whistle. “First, we thought it was a plane, nothing too serious. But then someone screamed ‘Down on the floor!’” said Karagodin (23). “Then there was an explosion.” A Russian missile landed a direct hit on the restaurant during the dinnertime rush, when the place was bustling. The blast wave threw diners and workers against walls, furniture and each other, battering and slicing them with shards of glass and other debris. At least 12 people, including 14-year-old twin sisters and another teenage girl, were killed. Ukrainian authorities said 56 other people were wounded. At least one person was believed to be still under the rubble. Click the link in our bio for the full article