Author Archives: Department of Speculation

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?”

Old dog, old tricks, old post

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about some things I used to do before Becoming a Parent™. I was first instructed to apply myself to this task by members of The Chorus of Doom during my pregnancy. Grave warnings were issued about how life would never be the same, and sacrifices would inevitably be made. True. I can’t say I enjoy the same relentless self-obsessing without interruption these days, but nor do I miss having to explain what I’m doing with my life. Others assume an explanation since our one arrived. The relief. I have parenting to fall back on while I figure it out; usually in a state of high anxiety over whether I should be world dictator on a full or part-time basis. Lean in *glances furtively around* can I excuse myself from this one? I’d rather chew my own elbows off than endure another meeting where everyone talks in their weird telephone voice, and gesticulates in ways that interferes with their own peripheral vision.

Nowadays, the aforementioned parentatti can be heard cheerfully reminding rookies what’s “all ahead” of them in that self-satisfied tone that suggests it never occurred to the naïve couple that their midget drunk will grow up and demand more things to meet their ever expanding basic needs. Seriously? Did you hear that, Dad? (yes, I’ve been known to call my fella that – it’s all ahead of you). Well, if I’d known. One day they might even use the expression ‘Jesus Christ!’ in a situation appropriate way. Like when they can’t get their own pants down while clamouring on to the potty. And this is something to worry about apparently. Pass me the manual. It says here it won’t last forever. Did you hear that, Dad? How do you fancy pulling an all-nighter first Friday in 2028?

‘Before’ is a broad term however. And for me, it increasingly has less to do with getting up off a chair unaided, or watching just one more episode of a box-set at three in the morning (hey, I’ve lived) than jumping off piers. That’s right. I’ve regressed for the umpteenth time in my parenthood. It was a relief to know I can still revert to ten-year old behaviour round the family Christmas Dinner table, and remain suspicious of adults talking to me like I’m one of them. But this is unprecedented. I haven’t leaped off a pier since my teens.

pier

Quick! the parentatti are coming

Not only do I want to sprint down one and fling myself knees-up overboard, I want to travel there by bike and abandon that bike on a mountain of others. I want to lay flat a digital watch on the ledge before leaping. And forget to bring a towel. Then I want us all to commandeer the road back home in a bird flight formation.

Really, I just want to live retro in a day directed by Steven Spielberg. Where walkie talkies are the height of sophisticated telecommunications, the encyclopaedia is our Google of the day, and there’s a soundtrack for when things get really exciting or tense. I’d like some ominous sounding synths as I approach my Boss’s office. And I wouldn’t half mind getting drunk by proxy through a two-foot creature waddling around our kitchen helping itself to beers from the fridge. I’ve heard that’s all ahead of us anyway. Jane said it happened with all hers but not to worry, it was just a phase.

Ireland blog awards – celebrating the best of Irish writing?

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Awards. I can take them or leave them. Except when it comes to Ryan Gosling being over-looked for a gong for Blue Valentine, which I will always contend was a gross miscarriage of justice.

So, blogging awards shouldn’t really give me jip, especially when I harbour fairly low expectations of my own, which have predictably been borne out by a dwindling readership. I’m reasonably comfortable with being an acquired taste. I can take me or leave me much of the time, too.

But when it comes to organisers of blog awards casually taking or leaving large swathes of bloggers while hogging lofty straplines, it tends to get on my tits.

A quick peer through the history of the Irish Blog Awards shows an evolution of a peer-led rough ‘n’ ready collective cheer-lead into the slick PR company extravaganza it is today. It should be within the fabric of any modern movement to periodically re-invent itself. The corresponding lament for resulting casualties is inevitable, as are the rapid chalk-ups of same to behavior of the strictly churlish and curmudgeonly. The net is buoyed up on simple binary formulae.

Which makes it difficult to call out the insidious dominance of the ‘lifestyle’ ‘category’ as the enemy of good writing. For the second year running, the ‘personal’ category has been jettisoned in favour of this apparently convenient catch-all. Only the catch-all relies heavily on catching as many products as possible: dining, fashion, make-up, cooking. Preferably with photos. The quality of writing appears to be an afterthought, if considered at all. Less in sync with the values of writing than those of glossy publishing and ‘industry experts’. Commonly caught up in their dedication to Selling to The Consumer.

If this reads as an attack on lifestyle blogging, I apologise. It’s not meant as one. Or a suggestion that lifestyle blogging is incompatible with good writing. But rather an unapologetic two-fingers up to the casual and unquestioned flicking aside of bloggers that fail to fit the category however broad the catch-all appears. And the unsubtle expansion of personal blogging into personal PR, an extension of the catalogue industry. Where the anonymous are the creeping social media pariah, the writing scope of females stereotyped to a laughable degree, and blokes don’t stand a chance.

Squeezed from consideration are those who shy away from documenting their forays into personal tastes and tidbits; who care less for current trends and aesthetics than treading thoughts on all manner of topics too thinly spread to qualify them comfortably in other categories. Of the half dozen blogs that spring to mind, none would be eligible for the category criteria. Yet they contain some of the best of Irish writing I have the good fortune to click on. Substance over style. In my opinionated opinion. Perhaps it’s a problem of taste. Or more likely – the taste-makers.

Ireland Blog Awards – ignoring some of the best of Irish Writing.

In neutral

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Saturday morning. An authoritative knock at the door. I don’t bother opening my eyes but considerately, if reluctantly, take a moment to assess its forcefulness. On the scale of urgency it’s somewhere between a car-blocking incident, and an exasperated delivery-person giving up grappling with a stubborn envelope. Whoever it is, they’re too impatient to await my plan of inaction so swiftly move next door to keep the rhythm going. Violet’s chirpy greeting is soon punctured by a monotone male. Or Violence, as I prefer to call her, on account of her overbearing inoffensiveness.

My curiosity yawning now, I make for the window just as her door shuts. A PSNI officer flees the driveway. Shit.

On the scale of catastrophe, reason gauges this approximately somewhere between finding my fella collapsed on the park-run circuit (I feared it all along), and an offer of a witness protection programme after my decision to throw a vote at one of the local Unionists was rumbled (I feared it all along). In a way, I’m relieved my dirty secret is finally out.

Earlier that morning…

“A Chara, he was the only candidate who supports same-sex marriage and is pro-choice. See? Only a pretend Unionist. With a font size 2 U. Oh no, please, not the kneecaps. They’re my best feature” *bolts upright in cold sweat from nightmare*

So I knock on the window fully intending to comply. He looks up, shakes his head disappointingly before consulting his watch.

“What sorta time do you call this to be in bed?”

It’s 9:45am. This is nothing, pal. But I’m wearing pyjamas with a family of sparkly rabbits on the front so it’s no time to willingly participate in sadistic interrogation without my lawyer present, who for I all know was found collapsed on the park run circuit moments earlier.

“Small child. You know yerself”. Thankfully the 53-month old is at her relos. I don’t know where I got the giggle from. Possibly Barbara Windsor circa her Carry On days.

The relief on learning the woman three doors down had her car robbed overnight is immense. Yay. My fella’s still alive.

“Some time after one this morning”

“Oh that’s dreadful”, I reply in slightly Violence-esque tones.

“They broke into the house and got the keys”

“Oh no”

It’s impossible to feel anything but pity for the plight of our neighbour. But discussing it with a police officer through an upstairs bedroom window with upside-down hair while in novelty pyjamas isn’t usually my thing.

So I do that thing that one shouldn’t ever do when one is feeling comprised. I relax.

“That happened my brother last year”

I can tell he’s wondering what this has to do with anything. Time to crank it up a gear.

“Down South”

He backs away slowly.

“And guess what? When he replaced the car, they came back and did it again. How mad was that?”

He returns to his watch.

“Well, thanks for your time. If you hear or see anything suspicious you can call the station”

He momentarily looks at my car, declining the opportunity to issue a reminder to keep it locked. We both suspect if anyone bothered to rob it, they’d probably leave it back shortly afterwards.

How Prince Charles helped normalise Anglo Irish relations

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Prince Charles’s visit to Donegal earlier is being hailed as a significant moment in the long process of normalisation in Anglo-Irish relations. Up until today, the only royalty of world renown who managed to visit the north west was Sara Jessica Parker, Mick Hucknall, and Meryl Streep.

After a century of UK embargoes on travel, work, and sanctions on sexual relations between the two nations, the Prince opened a new era in the history of these islands. And he proclaimed it not with a speech or a grand political gesture. He did it by graciously donning the local traditional costume – a Manchester United jersey.

prince charlesman u

Charles yesterday                            Charles lines up for 5-a-side         

His choice of a red and white ensemble (his staff called it ‘crimson and ivory ’) was as demonstrative a gesture as the late Pope kissing the tarmac.

It was underlined by another colossal gesture soon afterwards as the future King (by now in taupe) took to the podium and greeted the crowds in their own language. “Hello”, he announced smiling, drawing audible gasps of admiration at his flawless pronunciation. Mickey Joe Boyle, President of Donegal Tidy Towns Association, who was standing beside the Prince, turned to the crowd open-mouthed, exclaiming “wow”.

While distant jeers could be heard from a small group of protesters in Arsenal jerseys, by far the most significant sound was that of a twin-cam engine giving her dixie in the distance.

Everyone appeared to be full of praise for the address, which was delivered in front of dignitaries from both sides of the Donegal border, including the King of Tory, Patsy Dan, Members of the Donegal Association of Bridge Players, religious leaders including Dana and Bibi Baskin, the Nobel laureate Daniel O’Donnell, and various members of the extended Blaney family. They gave Prince Charles and Camilla rapturous applause and a standing ovation.

patsy dan

The King of Tory lines up for 5-a-side

Some Sinn Féin politicians claimed “Tá brón orainn” – and found themselves roundly attacked for failing to speak in a language local people could understand.

The Royal visit continues tomorrow with the party expected to sample the local delicacies of Lough Derg.

charles and camilla

Charles and Camilla have difficulty understanding the local Sinn Fein Councillor