Category Archives: Uncategorized

Immense anticipation

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We all have them. Those friends who never knew you before your neuroses took root. Or when your skin was pillow plump. The ones who won’t ever understand your hometown or teenhood references or give a flying fuck anyway. Remember trying to be cool by accepting a smoke from Mickey Harte at the indie disco only to sledgehammer the Bogart and Bacall quality of the moment by leaving the filter end dangling for him to light? They don’t remember either. And they don’t care. You didn’t meet until well after the chief rites of passage were complete. Usually in your 30s when you’re on your way to somewhere you fear might share the same spelling with the place you intended to be by then.

Occasionally, you’ll have a relapse and beseech them to believe you when you say you weren’t always this fat/neurotic/cynical/fader/news junkie/judgemental etc. But for the most part there’s freedom to be had in not having to not be those anymore anyway. Besides, you were always a bit judgemental, you just mistook your own opinion as fact. I still do, but it has blended with all the other socially acceptable forms of behaviour along with sneering at parents who don’t wallop their children for having a mickey fit in Tesco, and sneering at parents who do wallop their children for having a mickey fit in Tesco.

Once in a while a woman comes along, and you can tell by her excessive use of “Ah lads” that your chances of hatching a friendship have been reduced by a worrying 72 per cent. Studies conducted by The Institute of Emigration from The Mother Land point to the inherent risks associated with two distinct groups of Irish people colliding abroad. Namely:

  1. Those who proceed with their lives as an immigrant pretty much as they did before
  2. Those who start off with a touch of the mild Flatleys with an odd begorrah here and there, before being one “Ah lads” away from tickling an imaginary pig under their arm and spontaneously jiving at every crossroads

I needn’t have worried. A case of mistaken identity. We went from circling each other with suspicion in a work meeting to an epic self-disclosure off quicker than you could say “top o’ the morning to ya”.  I saw her mid-30s-and-single crisis (Munch’s scream) and raised her the feeling of being adrift. She matched my broken heart and went one higher with the prospect of remaining childless.  She introduced me to good beer; I insisted she stayed for another.  And so it was and ever shall be despite our later jiving at life’s crossroads swinging us in different directions. A friendship to give any of my Mickey Harte era mates a run for their money. But I swear – I did used to be thinner, and slightly less cynical. Maybe.

Last time I saw her she was once again boarding the emigrant train; this time by brute force than by choice. Half a lifetime spent overseas, then a courageous move home to a cold shoulder from the state forcing her to turn back again.

It’ll have been four years since we’ve seen each other when we meet this weekend.  In that time she saw my growing semblance of impermanent contentment and raised me a philosophical acceptance with just the right faint hint of bitterness. She saw my ropey pregnancy and raised me a health scare.  She saw our hope as word of the breast cancer diagnosis reached us and raised us an indefatigable optimism.  I’m only saying indefatigable because it’s like something she would say. Along with ‘immense’. And converting an everyday action into an ‘intervention’.  Like lunch, or a pint. And of course they would all be truly ‘epic’.

She writes that her hair is beginning to grow back. She has gone back to her hometown, to the sanctuary of her family for her period of treatment and recovery. She wanders the streets of her teenhood now in her (immense) collection of colourful headscarves. I don’t recognise them, and will never know them intimately. But I’ve known her long enough to only think of her as the flame-haired artist converting the mundane into something magical, the woman who can hold her own in any company, crossing her Ts with a dirty laugh and dotting her i’s with engaging questions of others. I expect we’ll circle each other momentarily before going from opening hug to the here and now in the space of a Flatley tap.

Press Statement

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Tendernessontheblock is both shocked and honoured to have received a nomination for an Inspiring Blogger Award. Shocked that she would inspire anyone to do anything, honoured if that anything is nothing other than reaching the end of her blog posts without losing the will to stay awake.

The impressive attention span responsible for this unsolicited act of kindness belongs to her fellow be-feathered blogger, richly endowed with a talent for reconciling the commendable efforts of everyday living with a turn of phrase and feeling that is all her own – Little Steps to Somewhere. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to exploit a situation for a top five, tendernessontheblock would like to thank her, using the top five expression of thanks in her native language:

  1. Thanks a million
  2. Ah you shouldn’t have, but thanks
  3. This old thing? A fiver in Penny’s
  4. You’ll take half of it anyway
  5. You’re insulting me now

 

inspirational blog award

The rules of the aforementioned award are as follows:

  1. Thank the blogger who nominated you, and link back to their blog
  2. List the rules and display the award on your blog
  3. Share seven facts about yourself
  4. Nominate 5 other blogs which inspire you and let the blogger know

To that end, tendernessontheblock wishes to highlight the following seven facts about herself:

  1. Referring to herself in the third person simultaneously makes her feel like a wanker and gives her a brief high, sort of like eating cake, so it’s inevitable she’ll continue to do it for the remainder of the day.
  2. Like many bloggers, she is a parent but is frequently freaked out by parenting blogs. This potentially alienates her from 80 per cent of the blogging community.
  3. She is a keen parallel-parker and is a strong advocate for its inclusion in the Olympics as a bona fide sport. This thought occurred to her one night she managed to get a toy truck neatly between two phone directories with at least 5 pints of beer in her using only a battery remote control.
  4. The name of her blog is the title of a song by Warren Zevon but she prefers the version by Freddie White. It sprays the scent of her childhood reminding her of all the competing feelings that have stayed alarmingly fresh into middle-age.
  5. It is her firmly-held belief that beetroot was sent to test us, along with Stephen Fry and self-service checkouts.
  6. Her fantasy dinner party guest list would include Jon Ronson, Stewart Lee, Ross Noble, and David Bowie.
  7. Her early role models included Penelope Pittstop and Marmalade Atkins.

And now to the nominations:

  1. The Airing Cupboard: Family life and childhood development made funny and refreshing by a writer willing to show her vulnerability
  2. Trucker Turning Write &
  3. J.D. Gallagher   – Both these men are committed word masons, with their own voice, their own humorous outlooks; their own men.
  4. In and around Dublin – Life in pictures alongside wry commentary
  5. As I Please – The one that doesn’t pop up enough in the Reader but any follower of it knows for certain it’ll be something to savour when it does

There will be no further comments on the matter. All other questions should be directed to her agent.

Thank you

Old soul’s night

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Review: John Fullbright, Whelans 6/09/14

“I don’t know what is the joke, and what is sentimental”, quips John Fullbright as he launches into Blameless, a song that began life as a parody of country music before getting the better of its maker forcing him to surrender to its sentimentalism. Word of resounding thumbs up to Fullbright’s live shows had travelled well ahead of him across the Atlantic ensuring standing room only tonight in Whelans for the first of two Irish dates.

A recurring name on the critics’ Best of 2014 so far lists, the Grammy award-winning Oklahoma native is in town to promote Songs, his second album, difficult if only for a breakup providing the source material. The venue is celebrating its 25th anniversary but the ‘Whelans 25’ stage backdrop doubles up as a reminder the number is consistent with the performer’s tender time on Earth. Fullbright’s lyrics confidently that of a man with no shortage of mileage on the clock of self-discoveries; bedded down by his own guitar and piano, both deftly handled and topped off with occasional harmonica.

Clues to his birthplace and Americana influences abound, his introductions overlaid with bare-boned philosophy delivered in his breezy drawl reminiscent of that shared by those demon-dodging, God-fearing characters immortalised by all the master song smiths from Guthrie to Waits to Cave.

Strays into his debut album From the Ground Up reveal the more character laden side of his oeuvre.  Someone unafraid to follow through on murderous intent as he finally kills off the eponymous ‘Fat Man’ who haunts his sleep (“I slept better after I wrote that”); and not beyond inhabiting the songwriter role from God’s perspective in Gawd Above (“Because I’m a total narcissist”). But it’s exposure of own undressed heart in Songs when plaintive voice meets plain speak with stunning effect. The She in She Knows knows a thing or two about him. Like how he’s scared of the dark and will “bleed on command…She knows a thing or two about rain”.

Returning for a brief encore with a requested rendition of Jericho, Fullbright quietly takes his leave casting little doubt among those gathered that he knows a thing or two about pain.

Love actuary

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It’s always the same. The bride glides down the aisle, and no sooner has the groundhog titter at the priest’s threadbare welcoming joke petered out than we’re into the first reading. From gold-gilded pages of ornate cursive print, chosen friends read aloud solemn definitions of love. Love is patient, love is kind. Love is never having to shave your legs with the same regularity etc.. And though this is a celebration of our two hosts, all I can think about are the guests.

I estimate the row directly in front has a combined 150 years of marriage between them. Stalwarts of an institution that has no notion of going away. How do these words ring in their ear-pieces now? Do they chime with how it played out, or has time earned them a detached wry smile?

How about you two over there – what, five years since you strut back down from the same altar thoroughly delighted with yourselves? What are your thought bubbles saying to each other now two children on? They steal a joke between them, their vibrating shoulders suggesting all is well. I eventually avert my thought bubble away from the couple nearby them who have hit a kink on the road, hopeful that their pooled silence will form a landing plain for a reminder on love that could matter for the better.

No couple on the brink of commitment is going to feel the true weight of these spoken-worded warnings on marriage. How it requires minding if it is to go the distance of our silver-haired role models up front, and the dangers of leaving it to fend for itself. It is the private thoughts of onlookers that suspend belief in the fairy-tale for those few minutes, however wide the grins of the newly-weds to be. The test of a marriage is to sit through another couple’s wedding ceremony. An opportunity to invigilate your own re-sit on the vows you pledged.

I hone in on the man next to me, whom I took for better or worse three years ago this month. Just the two of us, and a pair of witnesses picked up along the way. And still, I managed to mess up the brief responses required of me, mixing “I do” with “I will”. Looking sideways at him now, having failed to escape the guilt trowelled on by St. Paul (himself a bit of a misogynist shit by all accounts), I want to tell him I definitely will. I will try a bit better, be less of a wanker. He looks back, inscrutable at first, then looks at me in that way when he’s fearful I’m about to go off on one about the Catholic Church. Or he suddenly realises he is married to a drag queen after she let herself go.

So, I take the fancy order of service and tickle him under the chin with the feather attached. He does his Ken Dodd laugh, and I crack up. We later join the procession of couples yawning out of the church into the rain, scurrying in different directions.

Women and the web

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One of the by-products of blogging I hadn’t anticipated, is the level of interaction and commentary between bloggers. Which seems daft now given the congestion when making my way towards a few favourites.

Before taking the leap into the virtual wilderness with WordPress, I got off on trading banter on a couple of message-boards of varying purpose and personality. I still do. The chat deviates from what it says on the tin (music, matrimony, cheese appreciation etc.). Topics are flung up at random, and the discussion belongs to all in common without the original poster’s work coming under heightened scrutiny. At some stage, everyone will unite against perceived injustices carried out by an invisible board administrator. Lyrical will be capital-lettered on the benefits of free speech and fears over grave threats to the ‘community’. However off-beam and barmy that speech can deteriorate into. Conversation is less about responding to the person who makes the point that kicks it off, than all grabbing the topic to play tug o’ war with it until they knock themselves out after 50 pages. We’ve all been there. The dynamic differs. Sensitivities wither more rapidly.

In the fifteen years (yikes) since dipping my toe in on-line chat, social media continues to thrive as a much lauded instrument of democracy; a civic forum transcending officialdom providing unfettered access to channels for the creation of public ‘opinion’ from the comfort of our kitchens. A challenge to consensus. Mostly by people who comment on-line. Its status as an apparatus of the people comes into sharper focus with the centrality of citizen reporting in contemporary front-line news packages. An integral component of modern life in which everyone has an e-print of their own. Even Daily Mail readers.

But is it inclusive of everyone? The opportunity to swap chat with folk scattered across time-zones suggests a compendium of the world has never been more reachable than through a keypad. It’s hard to argue with that when you’re busy arguing with someone else 10,000 miles away over the merits of U2’s output since Achtung Baby. The lack of a consensus on that topic is on-going and set to intensify with each successive album release.

As a relatively busy person with the concentration span of a bubble (so busy I get to sit down and tell you), and an allergy to discussions on U2 exceeding five minutes, I can’t devote myself to making the case for their overdue break-up. Hopefully some youths will fly the skull ‘n’ bones flag for me. They have a toolbox of acronyms to speed things up, IYKWIM.

Most of us are contending with busy lives, so it is not possible to fly the flag for every conceivable injustice or inequality all of the time. We can’t diversity-proof our life’s experiences and posts. Nor should we have the desire to do so. Our powers of inclusion and empathy are not limitless. Most of the time I come on here to blog top five cheeses, which I must get round to doing soon.

Even so, I get instinctively jittery when walking into what feels like on-line cosy consensus at times. On parenting matters, for example, particularly the challenges to women, and all the attendant anxieties of inhabiting that role. A singular narrative creeps in and a new consensus threatens to dominate. From the risk of glass-ceiling concussion, to best ways to hide butternut squash in a veg-resistant child’s meal. Certainly, these topics are as worthy of a chin-stroke as the umpteen other common denominators that divide and console our daily difficulties.

Still, I wonder how much of the prevalent views on social media are representative of women’s experiences as a whole. Women for whom the term glass ceiling means something entirely different. For whom the challenges of balancing childcare and career fling insurmountable barriers in the way of their hopes rarely discussed, let alone realised. A diversity of women, whose lives don’t fit with a prevailing commentary often alien to them. The women that trickle-down feminism doesn’t ever seem to reach.

Which is where I think message-boards have a slight edge over blogging. The neutrality of a public space dissolves consensus and social niceties more readily; whereas crossing the threshold of someone’s virtual living room helps keep them intact.  Being surrounded by another’s carefully chosen décor and family portraits will naturally influence conduct and contributions.  It does mine, at times. The ugly side of anonymity on message-boards needs no defending, but the benefits of anonymity cannot be dismissed either.  Assumptions and generalisations are exposed to a more rigorous kicking from size 10 steel-toe caps than a less threatening pair of pumps.

That’s not to suggest blogging is free from fisticuffs, or that message-boards provide a utopian level of interaction for all. Participation in social media hinges on a number of factors. Exclusion is part and parcel of the privilege, but that doesn’t mean those with access are required to apologise for making full use of it.

It’s just that in 2014, women in Ireland have never been more diverse in terms of ethnicity, class divide, income, and the configuration of their families. I’m not convinced they’re represented on-line, or that a lot of potential consensus on parenting and family life represents their experiences entirely. Because, it can’t though, can it?

And there goes the question mark it has taken me 832 words to reach. Far from a desire to issue sanctimonious full-stops, it’s just something I occasionally wonder about in the context of the web’s reputation as the great leveller. Something to bear in mind.

But not nearly as important as top five cheeses, which are as follows:

1. Cashel Blue

2. Stilton

3. Camembert

4. Richard Curtis films

5. Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits

 

Feel free to add your own.

Top five things that have freaked me out this week already

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1. Debbie Harry is coming 70

Just keep wearing the shades, girls (and other habits your gene pool may sabotage anyway)

2. Being awakened by my own snoring

Who knew? Nature’s latest piss-take. The one they don’t tell you about along with the bullet-proof nipple hair and the lingering broodiness in your 40s.

3. Two people with ginger hair romantically involved

A first. You won’t think it’s weird until you see it. Wait until it happens to you and you’ll be aghast. I never get to say aghast often enough so I’m just throwing it in here. Nothing personal, good folk with ginger hair. I used to kinda be one. Let’s say I’m 37 per cent ginger. Well, was, until nature gunned me down with grey spray pellets as I legged it through the jungle of vanity. 

4. People stampeding to check out the leaked naked pics of Jennifer Lawrence

Surprise!

5. My daughter correcting me referring to the local church as the castle from Frozen. It’s “God’s house ” . Allegedly.

Another adulthood shattered.

Smorgasbord

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Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the day the IRA interrupted me cleaning a Danish hotel room. My best mate and I stopped whatever we were doing and stood jaw-dropped in front of the television. We looked at each other in disbelief. Oh. My. God. At last. Someone speaking English.

I don’t remember a job interview, but I recall precisely how we landed on the idea of Copenhagen. We stuck a pin in a map the previous May. That’s how fast and loose we played with earning our college keep back then. Oh yeah. Get us. Backpacking our way to one of the most expensive cities on the planet.  We didn’t bank on pints costing over a fiver a pull (a tenner in today’s dosh), and me accidently flushing my favourite trousers down the toilet on our first night in the youth hostel. Or hostel, as I called it until my eligibility to stay in these bunk-bedded communes expired. Funny how the word ‘youth’ only appears in the lexicon of folk middle-aged and beyond. I digress. How I mourned those trousers. Bought from the erstwhile second-hand shop, Flip, in Temple Bar, which did a respectable line in second-hand silk pyjama bottoms originally designed (and possibly worn by) the more refined older gentleman. I hope. The draught never bothered me anyway.

By the time the IRA was bragging about graciously laying down their arms, we had managed to shave an hour off our working day since our arrival in June.  We were contracted to be paid for twenty-two minutes per double room, eighteen for a single. For the first month, we could be seen shuffling out of the building hours after the others had left, occasionally carrying bags of empties under each arm signalling a good day for leftover bottles from departing guests. The returns on enough of those babies would guarantee us half a beer, or an ice-cream, or one-third of our relentless daily diet of pasta, veg, and sausages. A pair of Irish gombeens among a gang of Filipino women chambermaiding their way towards their respective versions of a more exciting life. Two women unaccustomed to cleaning at any speed other than at their leisure. We needed to get a move on. (Warning: don’t ever drink from a glass in a hotel room).

At some point during the stolen coffee breaks, we learned our colleagues were being exploited by our employer. Underpaid and held to ransom by expired working visas they refused to extend. Memory of the revolutionary meeting with the union is sketchy, and distance and nostalgia has inflated our cameo appearance into a starring role in the re-telling. But looking back, it was a summer of political awakenings for us both in many small but significant ways.

Shortly after Trousergate, we secured a room in the halls of a university campus on the outskirts of town. Here we collided with Somali refugees newly arrived in their host country impressively leading the charge in European immigration and integration. I never required healthcare during my visit, but that my tax bill included a specified amount towards it added up. Recycling, an informal approach to queuing, the lack of vocabulary or need for ‘excuse me’ … all (eventually) made sense.  Everything except The Little Mermaid. Squint or you’ll miss her.

mermaid

“Any chance one of you could get me a BigMac?”

Then there was Greta, a German trainee doctor working as an intern in a city hospital. What we lost in translation and the endurance test otherwise known as her boyfriend (she appeared to find him equally insufferable), we gained from her vivid accounts of life as an East Berliner where she lived her parents, both prominent figures in The Communist Party. Four years on, she still lamented the fall of The Wall, but strangely found solace in The Hoff’s sensitive performance (not really). They had looked after each other there, she sighed, unable to conceive of a lasting fair society under reunification and liberalisation. “Don’t worry”, I whispered solemnly, “Angela Merkel will see yiz right”. (not re..what do you think?)

What they thought of us was anyone’s business but ours. Everyone displayed an interest in knowing more about Northern Ireland. Except us. We found the easiest way to scratch heads and move the chat along was to explain we hailed from the South, but from the most northerly county on the island. In the middle but really on the edge. Neither with them nor against them. Sounding like them but speaking a different language. Sharing a geographical hinterland but not a currency or culture. Shopping in the same places but only we were obliged to hide ours under the car-seat going through customs. A sort of smorgasbord of bits and bobs from one and the other.  A take it or leave it.

The remainder of that day twenty years ago was given over to raising a beer (maybe two) to the most significant event of the day – my best mate’s birthday.

Happy Birthday M xx

Together in electric dreams

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Three days without a shower, queuing for a piss in a dark dank Portaloo, getting my hair washed twice daily ‘neath another downpour. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather to be doing this weekend but alas the Electric Picnic wellies must stay mud-clad in the corner for the second year in a row.

Just to torture myself even further, I’ve compiled a list of top five acts for my ultimate fantasy line-up applying the following criteria:

– they must be alive (this often helps when playing live)

– have not played EP before (so that rules out the top 5 best performances to date: New Order, Patti Smith, Bjork, PiL, Passion Pit)

1. Kate Bush

Woman of the moment, but soundtrack to the pivotal moments of some of our lives.

Stage: Body & Soul

Extras: Dancers trapeze off the trees, Liam O’Maonlai dances like an irritating loon at the front of the stage.

Next day reviews: Local radio station in Portlaoise receive calls from concerned residents reporting strange banshee sounds during the night. Crowd unhappy with O’Maonlai antics.

Standout track: This Woman’s Work

2. Talking Heads

“Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play”. If you recognise that line then you deserve to be in the front row. David Byrne popping in with St. Vincent last year doesn’t count so don’t be awkward by bringing it up.

Stage: Electric Arena. Taking no chances with the wind swaying Tina Weymouth’s bass to the other side of the audience. No fucking way.

Extras: Standing lamp for old time’s sake.

Standout track: Born Under Punches

Next day reviews: Clichéd references to David Byrne’s shock of white hair, and mention of the two other female bass guitarists in the world.

3. Neil Young

He has just announced his divorce so prepare for a few 45 minute guitar solos. Head-butt anyone who fears they will be “turgid”. They haven’t a fuck’s notion what they’re on about. And they just like using the word turgid.

Stage: Main. I don’t mind five or ten minutes of the solos getting blown to the other side of the audience to enable us discuss what to eat next: Pieminister or burritos?

Extras: I suppose a ‘hello’ would be out of the question, Neil?

Standout track: Like a Hurricane. Preferably as the heavens crack open.

Next day reviews: Why didn’t he play Old Man? Boo hoo etc.. Accusations of turgid guitar solos.

4. Cathal Coughlan

Who?

Stage: Cosby. Probably at an inappropriately peppy 3pm knowing the talent the organisers have for fucking up the schedule

Extras: Consensus-smashing wry observations on the state of the nation during an appearance later on the sofa in Minefield.

Standout Track: Officer Material/cover of Big Star’s Thank You

Next day reviews: Oh ja. I love all his work. Notable tensions between himself and McWilliams.

5. ABBA

It’s OK. No-one needs to know you just had a hard/wide-on at the thought of it.

Have fun, if you’re going. (fucker)

“Just the one”

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There’s no such thing really, is there?

What starts off as a benign statement full of good intention usually collapses before the one pint is polished off. It’s only manners the other person gets their round in. Another one for my good friend here.

What starts off as a meaningless comment in response to conversational calculations of children among parents, usually converts into an arrow slung at the heart of a strain of sensitivity you wish to fuck you could shed.

You’ve just the one.

I have? Oh thanks. I’ll put that with my other information.

No, I just made that up. I actually have eight others I hide in the attic at home.

That’s right, I have one.

The one in a million.