Category Archives: Uncategorized

FauxHealth

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There’s a woman who’s been trying to get up since dawn, to get the wreckage into gear, and dash, and spend, and pray she has enough petrol.

A woman who works all day and returns home to put in another shift by the fridge. And that takes the time to read the latest dubious story linking ISIS membership with wayward teenagers whose mothers work outside the home; or half half (OK, quarter) listen to yours.

There is a woman who will sit up all night with a Netflix series, and will not rest until the finale is over; who hides at the school gates rain, hail or shine; who feeds her pet hates;  makes the bed just before getting into it, puts the candid feelings into cake, and makes your wishes up for you. You’re a bank manger! You have the power to let me borrow all your birthday money!

glohealth

Yes! Found the Green & Black’s

There’s a woman who spends all her time, all her money, all her love, on the things and the people that matter. Like coffee, and toilet paper, and overdue Xtravision fees.

And through every hour, she will always be fed the feeling that she should feel she is not giving enough, not doing enough, not consuming enough.

Mothers, you do enough to put up with this insufferable bullshit. Now let us do something for you. Like stopping the exploitation of your bankrupt consumerist vulnerabilities, and the relentless rampant rifling of human emotion to sell you something else.

Mothers, you’re amazing…ly gullible if you fall for it.

FauxHealth: My cover. My arse.

 

Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?

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Who’s gonna drown in your blue sea?

Smart arse.

How d’ya mean?

Answering a question with a question.

We’re in this boat together, baaaaaaaaaby….

That reminds me..

What Happens When the Heart Just Stops?

Hmm. You become a Mumford & Sons fan. Vote Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, or Labour. Casually wear navy with black. And use parenting as a verb. In random order, obviously.

What about voting Sinn Féin?

That’s not a lagitamit…

Fucker

Do nat interrupt me. I did nat interrupt yew now, did a?

How Soon Is Now?

Somewhere between after a while and a wee while ago. I love this game.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Erm. Nothing, I guess, when you put it like that…

Where Did Our Love Go?

I dunno. You were the one who questioned it in the first place. I’m happy to move on.

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

*pitiful look*

Where Is My Mind?

Exactly

What’s The Matter Here?

Let’s just get back to the questionnaire

Isn’t She Lovely?

Lovelier than two lovely things stuck together with Huberman endorsed angel wing encrusted adhesive. Dusted with glitter.

Why Does It Always Rain On Me?

What difference does it make?

*arched brow*

Who’s That Girl?

*incredulous* Jean Byrne

What’s Goin’ On?

Scattered showers, red mist. Thunderbolts and lightning.

Don’t…

Gallileo..GALLILEO…gallileo

…You Want Me, Baby?

I Want You. You’ve had your fun you don’t get well no more.

What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

Elvis Costello

Who Wrote The Book Of Love?

That’d be Stephin Merritt

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

To hear it again? OK, hang on til I get it..

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

*shrugs* Self praise is no recommendation

 

 

Let all the children boogie

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No-man’s land between New Year and pay-day is the least hospitable place of the year. Forced to count in coppers as coins small and smaller regain their status as legitimate currency. Even the ducks can’t be arsed making the modest swim across the mirrored pond to accept our offer of stale bread. The new bike is wearily abandoned mid-cycle in solidarity with them so we walk it back to the car then bundle ourselves into the house with a collective relief none of us own up to.

For every set of speakers blasting Bowie across suburbia this week there must be the same in neighbours wishing someone would turn it the fuck down. Consideration for ours is fleeting with the volume creeping upwards incrementally with each passing video. Our girl’s not sure if he’s a boy or a girl but gives up caring eventually. She claims every song as her favourite. I think she’s lying; it’s Starman. We debate the merits of Bowie versus Michael Jackson. She looks at me pitifully when I suggest there’s no contest. Don’t be silly, Mum. She hasn’t learned to eye-roll yet so laughs instead. Her musical loyalties are taking shape, another marker of her move further into the forest of independence. And wilful disobedience.

No-man’s land between New Year and pay-day was probably the only time of year Bowie could depart. Nature has the grace to be grieving already. The light respectfully hangs at half mast giving sufficient visibility for small hands to grab older ones to swing one another around the hearth to wake the dead and ourselves momentarily up out of the January fug.

Grave robbers and revisionists

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It’s January 2016, so it must be time for…

Anti-Sinn Féin sentiment to hit apoplectic proportions across the mainstream media and middle-classes. The only thing more nauseating than the self-serving antics of the All-Ireland version of the politburo is the hysterical outcry The Party provokes among those respectable folk forced to suffer the riff-raff.

Specifically, the cynical self-serving outcry that has them holding their noses as they take their seats next to them in the pews of Leinster House; all the while conveniently ignoring their own role in sanctioning the same bunch of “grave-robbers and revisionists” to dominate the high-table of decision-making in the North through endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement.

It’s the sort of hypocrisy that enjoys persistent re-profiling into a gesture of such messianic proportions in the re-telling it’s a wonder the entire Republic weren’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Sure, those wee northerners would’ve obliterated each other had the political elite not stepped in to break up the skirmish. Sure, aren’t they all grand up there now? And aren’t we the fine nation that made all those generous concessions that didn’t affect us anyway to ensure peace was brokered between neighbours before we went back to ignoring them or sneering at them. And haven’t we a right to raise a brow at any allegation of hypocrisy, automatically charging anyone daring to do so with membership of Republican Sympathisers. Usually with all the consideration and finesse of a tweet.  But..but…but…They’re not blowing the fuck out of each other! We made that happen! It’s different down here! What’s that you say about rampant sectarianism, political intransigence, and crippling poverty? Sorry, you’re breaking up….

It’s the sort of hypocrisy that enables the political and media elite to formulate a sickening hierarchy of respectable republicans. And get away with it. Where Mairia Cahill’s harrowing abuse can be exploited and adopted as a political weapon to fire from the benches of the Seanad while it’s fair game to relegate Pauline Tully, former wife of republican criminal Pearse McAuley, to a level of scrutiny consistent with the worst kind of victim-blaming those same critics abhor when applied elsewhere. Despite the over-lapping political ideologies of both women.

It’s the kind of hypocrisy that showers concern on the impact of the lack of law and disregard for justice on one woman, while spectacularly ignoring the commonalities of conflicts that unleash violence of every conceivable guise on too many women. But selective opportunistic support will do in lieu of giving a fuck, and possessing any sincerity or commitment to addressing the legacy of the Conflict. As long as they stay out of our way, and we can reduce peace to a tear-jerking sound-bite and the Conflict to a petty internal parochial battle between neighbours fuelled by irrational nationalism (our favourite fairytale), and write our late-coming elite into the history books of heroes, right? Right? Right.

Who will write the history of the Conflict? It’s not the job of the Shinners, but certainly not that of the myopic mainstream media and political middle-class of the Republic.

I ain’t no apologist or fan of Sinn Féin, but victim-robbing and revisionism cuts a number of sinister ways.

More rioja, anyone?

 

Changes

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One of the consequences of the death of a totem figure is all the eloquent writing it unleashes in those left behind. Column inches capturing the alchemy of every Bowie there ever was continue to line up uniformly on the screen; like mourners taking off their caps to respectfully watch the hearse go by.

I am not one of those writers, but I’m glad I jokingly (if in all seriousness) suggested a moment’s silence at his passing at the end of a work meeting this morning. Sixty-somethings turned to thirty-somethings to compare shock and surprise. Forty-somethings joked with fifty-somethings that they’d never heard of him until a seventy-something interrupted the joke to point out the expanse of his legacy.

For a few minutes at least, they weren’t PSNI officers, or civil servants, or opposing sectoral soldiers, or silent minute-takers, but fans and admirers. Another reminder of the power of music in knocking down barriers and levelling the ground between us all.

David Bowie R.I.P.

What happened next? Blogging 2015 re-visited

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Was someone foolish enough to offer me a new job? Just how was that gig I rhapsodised over? Did my mother-in-law hear about my court appearance? What was with the weird name change?

Prepare yourself for an eyelid-droop-inducing revisit to those riveting cliff-hanger blog moments of 2015 to find out what happened next. Insert dramatic violin music here.

Coincidentally, it also covers top five things I wasn’t proud of this year, and the top jerk of the year (in a recurring role).

January

Post: The revolving door

Our girl turned three.

three

What happened next?

She turned three and a half a week later, and remained that age until she turned four.

Post:  Personal specification

Job interview season returned as my contract neared an end. Willpower competed with ambition in the race for last place. Some finer interview moments revisited.

itsover

Except it wasn’t

What happened next?

Last minute stay of execution. Within days of the excruciating whip-around and proverbial last supper. Not as close as the time it was granted after those very events took place. Mind you, that was one of the better leaving bashes. And would’ve been perfect had I not returned to my desk the following Monday. Awkward. Am back in the same position this year. Thrilling seat-of-the-pants stuff. I’ll warn them to hold back on the fake gushing this time lest their insincerity be tested.

February

Post: Gaol Bird

A short secular prayer service for Patti Smith in anticipation of her impending June gig. pattismith

Brilliant gig, probably.

(image: entertainment.ie)

What happened next?

I forgot to get the tickets. People have the power… to be almighty arses.

March

Post: Scenes from a court summons

Random snapshots from my self-inflicted brush with the law.

courtroom

No laughing matter, obviously.

(image: southuniversity.edu)

What happened next?

Amnesty took on the case. Consequently, the local newspaper received dozens of shrill letters from a protesting public.

OK, OK. I learned my lesson and received a new driving licence with two points knocked off for bad behaviour.  On the plus side, my hair looks alright in the photo. No discernible difference in the reactions from my mother-in-law. But our wedding photo still hasn’t made it to the sitting room gallery. My paranoia levels remained consistent with pre-court appearance.

March 

Post:  Places I’ve lived

A postcard from the hedge written as part of an exercise to loosen up the sharing muscles in a new writing group I joined.

pub

Virgin Mary not featured

What happened next?

The writing group met for a further four sessions with the aim of facilitating participants to share their abortion story. Which it did. Folk responded kindly to the results here, and I was very grateful for that.

On a side-note, I eventually gave up trying to out-stare the Virgin Mary and fled to the city after three of the wildest years of my puff to date.

April

Post: Tagging along

Where I celebrated a year of blogging and vowed to bid farewell to it for a bit.

blogging

It’s this or…running? I think not!

What happened next?

Following orders from my impressively weak will-power, I returned the next week. Shrugs.

May

Post: The Professionals

In which The Professionals got themselves careers.

professional

“Don’t worry about your annual performance review. He just rabbits on about targets and work/life balance like he actually gives a toss”

(Image: mark-1.com)

What happened next?

Another nauseating board-room meeting. Just for the sake it.

June

Post:  Yardsticks

A visit to a primary school eerily similar to my own, and the introduction of our girl to another.

school furniture

Does my arse look big in one of these?

What happened next?

I cried looking for my mammy. Sigourney kicked me up the arse.

July

Post: Squalor Victoria

We visited an abandoned gaol and spotted some famous characters in the Orange March.

What happened next?

We eventually made it home to a frazzled man worn out from trying to convince our three-year old her Ma hadn’t really been incarcerated.

prison

Oh no, is the Wi-Fi down again?

(Image: designyourage.com)

August

Post:  This writing life

A whistle-stop tour through my life with some of the prominent pens and keyboards that have featured in it along the way. In response to a nomination for the Irish Blog Awards lifestyle category.

lifestyle

Jesus wept. That would’ve been the Irish in him.

What happened next?

A lengthy, and incomplete, meltdown over the creeping invasion of the limiting notion of ‘lifestyle’ blogging. To be continued. Probably.

September

Post: Did you read Róisín yet?

A reflection on the connection my mother and I have had with Róisín Ingle’s weekly column over the years. It ended with a phone-call in which I told her I also had an abortion following Róisín’s public disclosure of her own.

irishwoman

Oh Holy Mother of God she only went and had an abortion

(Image: Irish Times)

What happened next?

I told her I was only joking.

Only joking.

Some reasonable questions followed along with assurances that she would’ve supported me without judgement had I gone to her. I knew all that all along. And had long dismissed the stereotypical image of the rosary-bead wielding older woman apparently found everywhere beyond The Pale.

Post: Births, deaths, and marriages

Where I visited the top fromage in the Norn Iron Humanist Association with a view to giving serious consideration to training as a celebrant. With a straight face.

funeral

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word life. It means forever. Oops. Sorry. Force of habit. “

What happened next?

Periodic chin-stroking. Like this, look *me chin-stroking*. My fella has a beard so I picked up the habit unconsciously. Handy for chin-hair watch.

Also, did the sums and couldn’t justify the spend on a massive gamble with no guarantee I wouldn’t fall at the first hurdle. Realised that while aspects of humanism are consistent with my outlook,  I’m not ready to surrender the life-time war against being labelled in any walk of life. More questions than answers linger. To be continued. Sorry.

October

Post: The green of Ireland

Brief exchange with a taxi driver who collected us from the cinema after seeing the brilliant Queen of Ireland. Not very funny retort included.

What happened next?

“And SHE must’ve thought it was some film, wah?”, chuckled the taxi-driver to me in reference my 80 year-old mother sitting in the back seat.

My mother and I whipped off our seat-belts and Hong Kong Phooey’ed the fuck out of him.

panti

Panti is left discombobulated after hearing about the incident

(Image: irishcentral.com)

Actually, my mother railed against the display of casual ageism by quietly pointing it out to me when we got out of the car. Oh, right. That’s another thing that’s all ahead of me.

November

Post: Running to stand still

Our house went up for sale.

estate agent

Heeey, how can I annoy the hell out of you today?

(Image: dezrezblog.com)

What happened next?

The house was tidied for the first time in five years. In a manoeuvre comparable to immersion-left-on anxiety, I pulled a dramatic five-point turn a mile out the road and ran back into the house to hide the furry Celtic F.C. Santas before the prospective buyers arrived. Estate agents replaced Bono as the new receptacles for my affection.

December

Post: What to give the special blogger in your life this Christmas

Where I was unequivocal in my hints for potential presents this year.

What happened next?

Ignored again. But I did get this lovely coaster.

elvis costello

Very handy for cups and glasses of all sizes. A blogger’s must-have.

OK, you can turn back to Come Dine With Me now.

Nollaig na fan

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Our girl turns four today, and I don’t know what to say.

I thought of writing a send-up of the nativity in which her three wise aunties appear with goodies (true story, riveting) but I wandered off down a corridor of memories and couldn’t find my way back.

I thought of writing how the celebration of her birth starts at the end of November when the lights go up around the park, and the air would give you a cheap shot of botox if you stayed out in it long enough. The type of air forever swollen since with anticipation.

I thought of writing about all the significant fours in her life thus far. Her defiant, if out-of-tune, sing-along with The Beatles that features in every long distance drive. But I couldn’t pick just four friends. Or four furry animals. Or four dominant characteristics. Or top four things I love about her.

I thought of addressing this to her directly but my heart was so full and heavy it would’ve spilled all over the page had I attempted to pour just one drop.

I thought of writing about how her Dad is perplexed by the notion of me writing to her here at all. And how he rolled his eyes in response to a moving post written by a father to his son I read aloud. “Why doesn’t he just tell him directly?”

I thought of writing of the opportunities the internet gives parents and guardians for expressing love for their children. A file for documents of it. And those many souls ravaged by emotional stoicism that deserved to be just as sentimentalised but were condemned to similar suffocation in their capacity as fathers and mothers.

Sometimes, I think of writing about my own parents; to speculate on what they might’ve written had they had this instrument at their disposal. But of course they did not have the time, or the means, or the grammar of out-loud parenting as we know it; and often fear (Is it just me?).

I thought of writing about the underrated value of the mystery of children and childbirth, and parental love, and the savage lows and transcendental highs of parenting. That for every heart-beat halting observation caught on keyboard, there are vastly more consigned to memory where the best of all of lived experience resides more vividly. Pictures beating words with photo albums.

Had I managed a ‘best of’ round-up from the year, I would’ve included Boyhood, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? and Catastrophe when writing about my cultural highs. They succeeded in capturing something  relatable to my experience of motherhood better than any instructive published piece ever could.

Occasionally, I’ve thought of writing about wondering what it would be like to be a teenager…young adult…grown-up…woman-child… reading back over the externalised thoughts of my parents.  Would I want to read them? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. It’s a dilemma I’m told I overthink. With good reason, I think. The telling-off and the over-thinking. And yet I am now in a race against time to retrieve data from their archives to file in the annals of family history; the oral storybook, the pages of which I intend turning for our own one. How I have been lucky to have run the long distance alongside them while others are less fortunate.

Inevitably, I think of writing of the shame I feel when thinking of the torment I once casually unleashed on my own mother for not utilising her fine mind better. The worst at the peak of my youthful arrogance. How I burn when I think of the sacrifices made without bitterness or mention. For she knew these are the jobs of parenting, the mysteries of which can only attempt to be solved by the off-spring with time and wisdom. Shelter has a broad meaning. Parents are obliged to keep the word small between them and their children…teenagers…young adults…grown-ups. My respect renewed with reminders of how they avoided invading those phases with worries from their parenthood. The unsaid reveals itself eventually, when and where it matters. I understand now how brilliantly her mind was used and what it reaped for the rest of us.

So often I think of writing about the challenges of reconciling writing on parenting and children with these seemingly old-fashioned notions of mystery and discretion I can’t seem to ever let go of. Some day.

For one brief nanosecond, I even thought about posting a picture of her. Kitted out in her new school uniform eagerly licking the bowl used to toss rice krispies and chocolate around. For a party. For our Nollaig na mBan. She’s lovely. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

 

No more heroes anymore

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It’s a low point for indulgence when you’ve only a handful of crème-egged sweets and mild temperatures left to work with. You should never mix your confectionary seasons anyway. It creates an unsettling cognitive dissonance. I don’t ever recall tucking into a chocolate Santa on Easter Sunday morning. But I wouldn’t be averse to the idea if it can be arranged.

It’s day two from my sick bed *back of hand to forehead for fever-check* so if there is a chocolate Santa within a 200m radius, I’ll have to eat it on the sly in case I trigger a downpour of doubts over my deteriorating condition. Namely, my internal dialogue. I’m nearing Ferris Bueller levels of voice recovery but I was left alone with my own thoughts for longer than what is normally tolerable and things have gotten slightly out of hand. I can only assume a similar outbreak of solitude led to the composition of the list below and other hallucinatory behaviour this time last year.

Do too

Turns out lying down is a popular yoga position in some cultures. Damn.

I fancy a black pen this year.

In the round

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And on the 9th day of Christmas, they peered down at the crib and rejoiced in exaltation “It’s a miracle!”. For she had finally succumbed to the evil infection that had been trying to make off with her voice. It succeeded overnight. They had come from afar (the living room, the kitchen) to behold the blessed silence. “How can we repay you, O Lord?”, they chanted. “Is there anything I can get for you?”, he meekly enquired with lips struggling to maintain a straight line. She shook her head in feigned helplessness, vowing to recover the power of bullshit with which she would torment him as soon as possible. Even if it necessitated channelling it through the vocal pipes of Marge Simpson. She would be that soldier.

Right, that’s enough of that talk in the third person carry-on. It’s been dull as Farrah from Fair City round here lately. What with re-posts and seasonal lethargy. How folk had the wherewithal to round up reviews and get to work on delusions of their new, improved, selves during the festival of sloth is impressive but appalling. Until yesterday, my conversational frame of reference had shrunk to the critical issues of mini fudge reserves, the scientific dilemma of over-lapping programmes and under-chilled drinks , and whose turn it is to parent. In that order.

It took a lethal concoction of interventions to revive the ailing energy levels; namely sickness and competition. The former is usually the sole source of competition in our family and enough to energise us all.

“I think I’ve a cold coming on.”

“I’ll see your cold and raise you a septic head.”

“I’ll see both your colds and your septic head and raise you a potential personality disorder.”

Hmmm. Impressive.

“OK, I’ll see all those and raise you a dysfunctional childhood with father/daughter issues.”

“Ah fuck off, you know we can’t compete with the only girl in the family.”

*slightly victorious before dark realisation descends*

“Hang on, did you just eat that last fudge?” etc. etc.

But yesterday, after years of dutifully showing up at the in-laws for alternative family dysfunction (hugging, civility, conversation), we were catapulted back into the bowels of mine for New Year’s.

And what does New Year’s at the brother’s mean? A general knowledge quiz apparently. Cue furtive glances towards my fella. Our ability to resume eating following a catastrophic outburst of paranoia round the table, he can handle. Ditto the mild elder abuse towards our Da. Mild, since he can no longer hear very well. Abusive, as we’ve a tendency to mix up the chronology of events. Our instant reversion to our 1970s selves? No bother. But a quiz… I wasn’t so sure. Especially with my oldest brother, Pol Pot, as quiz master. We approached it with all the enthusiasm of the office party. Rictus grins and laughs neither of us recognised from the other.

Twenty minutes later we were on our feet contesting the withdrawal of a point for failing to give the new Star Wars film its full title. We were only double-figures in the lead but that’s not the point. It was the principle of the matter, and other clichéd defences. And outbursts of incredulity, and charges of double-standards, and references to similar miscarriages of justice in the Great Nail-Biting Final Round of 2015 we regretfully missed. And bitter groans in response to woeful puns from the quiz master as he announced Joan Burton’s Canoe as the team that sailed ahead (groan) to claim victory. (Christeama Aguilera came second – bigger groan).

With last year’s winners ungraciously deposed, there was consensus in favour of my fella circulating round the teams next time to even out the scores. “God, I’m wrecked after that”, he sighed. Excessive praise will do that to a person alright. “I’ll see your tiredness and raise you a persecution complex”. “What was that? You sound awful”. Yay. I won.

marg simpson

In America, what does the term ZIP stand for?

Mmmm I was sure it was fire-lighter

 Image: youtube