Monthly Archives: June 2016

Brief encounter

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Hi *****

Of course I remember you.  You’re the one who replied to a few Tom Waits lines some years back but never got to meet in the end.

I hope your life is unravelling nicely and you met some incredible woman (or women, or men, or pets) since. I fled **** and conformed.  I have a Tesco Club Card now, and a child, and the child’s father for company. I occasionally think about colour schemes for the living room, and harbour other dangerous thoughts. But I did manage to see Tom Waits in concert since, and live a life loosely based on the principles of unavoidable heebie jeebies according to The National and John Grant. And weren’t those opening notes from Paul Buchanan’s re-launch on Later… worth the wait?

I’m in two minds about ****** now. Thanks for the warning.

All the best

****

We singularly failed to meet up about a decade back. I believe we were both hopeless and disorganised, although not a whole lot has changed for me on that score!

I seem to have executed another un-innocent, (not so) elegant fall into the unmagnificent life of adults over the last ten years. I now have a daughter, a son and their mum for company, plus a Tesco Club Card (on my keyring, no less) and a Nectar points card. My partner and I don’t see eye to eye on Club Card vs Nectar: I like the money-off points, she likes the vouchers. What can you do?

Where did you see Tom Waits? Was he good? I caught him at ******, which was pretty amazing. Spent most of the last ten years writing and writing. I did an awful lot of music writing, interviews and the like. Still doing a few bits and bobs though not features. Managed to meet the National – the guitarist lent me his hoodie as I shivered outside a rustic French venue in the small hours, then we sat by the lake for a few hours doing an interview thingy the next day, which was all good drunken fun and, er, very much the stuff of nostalgic pangs now that life is a circus act of nappy juggling, precarious school dashes and vertiginous views of the slip into middle age.

 

Congratulations on becoming a mother! And glad to hear you’re thinking colour schemes. I may frame some pictures in the office this week if the urge to do something dangerous strikes. I didn’t see Paul B on Later… but I’ll rummage around on YouTube for it later….

 

Yeah, so  ******** – not that good, I gave it three stars but I think that was a bit over-generous. I seemed to remember you being a cinephile! Do you find that parenthood eats into crucial film time? I’m still reviewing so I have an excuse but the allotted movie-time never feels like enough…

 

Anyway, nice to hear back from you!

 

*****

Ah. A Nectar card. That’s a relief. I feared you might’ve gone the way of the damned into the wide aisles of Waitrose, or become a Mumford and Son fan. Such are the vagaries of middle-age and parenthood.

So, true love found us both in the end then, as Daniel Johnston sort of predicted, although I was more reassured by Beck’s assertion. Thanks for your kind wishes. I’ll see them and raise them – your family life sounds perfectly frenetic. Warm congratulations.

Yes, I’m condemned to Netflix and rentals these days. The cinema occupies a rare form of respite from Waybaloo and intense discussions on the contents of any given nappy despite getting off to a good start a week into motherhood. I sashayed up to the ticket office (Steve McQueen’s Shame – 4 stars?) while ****** watered ***** in the foyer, and paced the corridor for several miles although he failed to mention that bit. That probably tells you more about him than me, and why I knock about with him. I would’ve alluded to his winning ways in my wedding speech but didn’t get to make one. We eloped two years today coincidentally. Who needs dysfunctional family or a first dance song? (I’m thinking Talking Heads’ This Must Be The Place’). I’m sure I’ll get to praise him publicly some other time. If he’s up in court or something.

Great you’re continuing to make a living from your passions. I must remember to seek approval from your reviews before taking any chances, although there’s no preventative measures for impulse as evidenced by the twee induced hangover I’m suffering from About Time. Nick Cave must be twirling in his stately pile.

I moved back to Ireland the year Tom Waits played Dublin in the appropriately named Rats Cellar within glitter kicking distance of the President’s residence in Phoenix Park. He summoned up our fixed gazes along with the dust on the first stomp of his foot and that was my general state till he took his leave. Magic. From there to the North (the things we do for love) where I’ve been since.

It’s been good to hear life is grand. We should check in with each other again in another twenty years to compare pension plans.

Best wishes to you and your (no doubt) lovely clan.

******

Jenny

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A few years back, I received an email from a bloke I hadn’t thought about in while. One I was supposed to meet ten years ago but didn’t. “Remember me?” ran the subject title. It took me a second. A nanosecond.

I had been a fugitive from heartbreak for a few years and getting tired of being on the run. I’d got lucky and fell in with a lively crowd attached to the job I took up. Jenny sat cross-legged at the neighbouring desk. A good sign. It was inevitable we would soon meet on Saturday afternoons for hangover parties to slump over coffee, despair at the state of our singlehood, and expertly decode one another’s star sign from the paper.

Then, one day, the dreaded inevitable happened. She broke with self-pity convention to suggest we do something about this terrible state of affairs (Munch Scream). A woman of her whim, she flung herself into the world of web-dating and set my comfort zone on fire with her inexhaustible optimism and candour at the state of my “aura”. Not forgetting the fact my dress sense was beginning to resemble that of an “orthodox Muslim”.

Under pressure, but unable to come up with a profile, I settled for hiding behind a few lines quoted from a favourite song. A cunning plan that would guarantee a non-response, or separate the Pink Panthers from the Anthill Mob.

I got one reply. He was funny, self-assured, with a great taste in music (obviously), a passion he converted into a living by writing about it. It was the height of Summer and our early attempts to meet were thwarted by family visits and pre-arranged trips elsewhere. Gradually our lives became a backdrop to our emails so that by the time Autumn came round the shine had gone off my nerve.

He’s happily hitched now with two kids of his own. It would be another year before I could brave it over the threshold of my charred comfort zone into the trust of another.

Jenny is still sitting cross-legged somewhere. Switching between umpteen languages on the phone nestled under her chin as she frantically rummages around looking for the phone she’s holding. I imagine it’s one of the many reasons her fella fell for her. And some other pair of eejits will be slumped at our old table tomorrow.

Our fogey trip

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It’s that time of year when the factor of one’s sun-cream ideally should match the average age of the season’s headline acts. When the country’s prodigal musicians return kicking the arse of twice your time on Earth but with double the energy, and an unparalleled bladder prowess that has you speculating on the possible use of catheters.

stage2

 Anticipation through a crap camera

Where the anticipation of the dizzying call and response routine from huddles of deft guitarists rises with the same speed of your involuntary fist by the time they take the stage. Where 20 minute jammin’ sessions are implored with licks and flicks through semi-century-spanning oeuvres of which the gathered never tire.

When heads are bowed in solemn shakes of sheer joy and feet stomped to the beat of the rhythm of a youthhood its owners are fearful of forgetting. When three hours on a trans-aorta flight makes the soul pop and the wooziness from the jet lag of daily living kicks in from the ankles up.

After which neon lights shiver across the city in joint jubilation and the moratorium on smiling to oneself is momentarily lifted. Then your heart burps. And it’s all over till next time.

Ladies and Webtlemen, Mr….

neilyoungbelfast

Freddy Krueger

AKA Neil Young

Belfast, 7th June 2016

Pro-lific Campaign calls to maintain the 148

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By Cora Sure-Look

Pro-voice campaigners know that theirs is a minority position and that the vast majority of Irish people think that reason on demand is abhorrent. So in order to get what they want, they must chip away at silence, building a campaign around calls for reason and nuance on platforms such as Twitter, where the counter argument has a logic-limiting condition.

Once a little bit of reason is permitted, it is easier to justify a little more, and so on. The public becomes blind to the horror of logic, and deaf to calls to protect the rights of those  who wouldn’t be able demonstrate their lack of reason today were it not for the 148 characters to prove it.

Pro-voice campaigners, allied to the political pragmatic, and heavily funded by compassion, have used the same strategy across the world. Every incident of their reason on demand regime began as “restrictive” but once the door to reason was unlocked, the rest was just a matter of exploiting those restrictions until more ground was conceded. 148 characters has increasingly been followed by another 148, and another, and so on and so forth.

It’s undeniable that in high-profile cases used to push for reason, generalisations are airbrushed out of the picture. Reason is just a procedure. An exchange of views on a keyboard. The fact that it is the deliberate destruction of generalisations is tactically suppressed. We are supposed to pretend that somehow it doesn’t matter.

It’s easy to accuse Pro-lific people of burying their heads in the sand for not accepting reason while wilfully refusing to discuss what reason actually involves.

In Pro-lific circles, there are numerous stories of individuals who contemplated reason only to change their minds at the last minute. Many of them say it’s thanks to the 148 word limit that they were spared the pain of carrying their point through to its logical conclusion.

Some might like to believe that dilution of the 148 word limit would bring “an end to  crude debate” – that we would have dealt with the lack of reason question “once and for all”. This is totally naïve.

But maybe we would be saved from reason if the 148 character limit was dismantled? This is a nonsense claim. The extension of characters has nothing to do with saving face. Ireland, with its cherished lack of reason, is one of the safest countries in the world in which to be willfully dogmatic. Official reports into various tragedies involving the demise of common sense confirm these had to do with systems failure and not the illegality of reason.

That’s why it’s vital that certain UN(reasonable) committees and groups like Am Nasty International join in the fight against logic.

The current character limit, which claims brevity as a treatment for stupidity, is more than adequate. The very foundation of theocracy is built on silencing its critics. The 148 character limit must be protected.

Cora Sure-Look is Deputy Chairperson of the Pro-lific Campaign

Hardy perennials

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Summer time. And being dragged around various ‘nice’ respectable events like Bloom and Taste of Dublin won’t be easy. The organisers were obviously up all night thinking of those awe-inspiring titles. How can a garden show consider itself a festival? Unless someone relieves themselves up against an exhibit. At least the Ploughing Championships don’t bother with such pretensions and are undoubtedly twice the laugh.

These excursions come courtesy of my folks who were given tickets as ‘prizes’ when they crossed the final frontier of respectability the other week into the audience of The Late Late Show. Admittedly, I enjoyed telling my in-laws that one. But their patio is still bigger. Ah, well.

Apparently Ryan Tubridy really is so thin he only needs the one eye. And the audience have to exit through a gift shop where a branded mug is theirs for the price of a small internal organ on the black market.

We gathered round the box with The Fear my Da would be caught picking his nose on camera. Or my Ma would be caught nudging him right after said offence with him clearly mystified as to why he’s been attacked on live TV. Following a few tense minutes of crowd-scanning, I heard her unmistakable laugh at Jason Byrne’s irreverent bouncy castle Jesus joke. She had made it on to the front row following a generous helping of wine. We all settled down after that. But are paying dearly for it now in concept gardens and ingredients we can’t pronounce.  And I’ll be forced to issue a report to the in-laws, who’ll force themselves to pretend they care.

I’ll leave out the bit where my mother missed The Undertones in the flesh by watching them on the studio monitor, and verified her own laugh at the Jesus joke when it was repeated two days later. They’d never have done something so sacrilegious. Like ignore The Undertones.

gaarden

What’s the Latin for “where’s the bar?”