Monday, 17 March 2014
Saturday, 30 November 2013
Cousin of The Month
Been away, back now.
Those of you who pay the remotest attention to my interests/books/writings etc will know that I spend (too?) much time on genealogy and tracking down dead ancestors and living cousins and the likes.
Sometimes results are good.
I have now discovered a new cousin, and here she is...
...in the green dress. No I haven't a clue who all the apparachiks in suits are, but, as well as being gorgeous, she is my First Cousin Twice Removed and an actress in London and here she is as Maid Marian.
Her name is Jessica Hern.
@HernJessica
I don't do twitter but if anyone does, tell her I said Hi.
Those of you who pay the remotest attention to my interests/books/writings etc will know that I spend (too?) much time on genealogy and tracking down dead ancestors and living cousins and the likes.
Sometimes results are good.
I have now discovered a new cousin, and here she is...
...in the green dress. No I haven't a clue who all the apparachiks in suits are, but, as well as being gorgeous, she is my First Cousin Twice Removed and an actress in London and here she is as Maid Marian.
Her name is Jessica Hern.
@HernJessica
I don't do twitter but if anyone does, tell her I said Hi.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Killala Ghosts
We are celebrating the events of 1798, when a French force invaded these parts to assist in the rising of the United Irishmen.
The French were led by General Humbert, a revolutionary soldier who had spent his earlier career slaughtering unrevolutionary peasants in his native country. But hey, who's counting. He came here to help us and he's our guy.
He and his army arrived in Kilcummin, a remote enough spot some miles from the town. And yesterday our ceremonies kicked off out there, the flagship of the Irish Naval Service (paid for by the EU) moored out in the bay and a giant Sikorski helicopter of the Irish Coast Guard (run by a Canadian company) clattering overhead.
Independence was well worth the struggle.
It was a great morning. A "military re-enactor" gotten up as General Humbert landed in a small boat, his soldiers presented arms, and speeches were made.Quite a few in fact, one by a local TD, John O'Mahony. No-one here actually knows that much about the same John, he being a sort of gofer and sidekick and local point man for our real TD, Enda Kenny, who is the Taoiseach. John last came into prominence when he wrestled with his conscience over the abortion legislation. He won, and he still has his job. Not that anyone knows what his job is. Apart from welcoming Frenchmen dressed as 18th century generals to the shores of Kilcummin. And he did it very well indeed.
Onward then to the streets of the ancient town of Killala, streets which were occupied by British forces. Sort of. The streets were actually occupied by British military re-enactors. My camera found the beautiful one, and here she is. The rest were mostly jovial sorts of blokes who looked like they also had a serious interest in real ale, lots of real ale. In this they were pretty well matched with the French re-enactors marching on them from Kilcummin, those Frenchmen too a jovial sort, no strangers to the well stocked table and the convivial bar.
The forces clashed in the town.
Muskets crackled and cannons roared.
The French troops were assisted by a motley crowd of Irish irregulars, Pike Men as we call them. Several of these I knew well as staunch supporters of the declining pub industry in these parts, and so irregular was precisely the right word. It was all very authentic.
We won.
I did hear a call from the defeated British ranks, "we'll be back", and, though I think it was a joke, he wasn't kidding.
The British did come back in 1798. After initial successes the French and Irish forces were defeated, and British troops and their supporting militias swept back over the countryside. Think Syria. Things were especially bad right here in the town of Killala. Hundreds were killed by the militias, dozens hanged by the army.
I know this well, being somewhat of an historian. But I also know it in a different way. Our house on the edge of the town was formerly a couple of ancient cottages. And the roadway here was one time known as The Path of The Slaughter. For the simple reason that the militias coming into the town after the collapse of 1798 came into all the cottages along and killed the inhabitants.
My children brought up here, they know this too. Not as historians, no, but as little ones complaining of ghosts. And now as adults being none too keen to visit, lest their childhood ghosts come back to haunt.
Ah sure, ghosts don't bother me.
It's the living sometimes worry.
And hey, I've just got an email from Ryanair, reminding me I'm off to Italy next week.
Oh well, needs must.
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
The Booker...and psychopaths
A countryman of mine has written a book called The Spinning Heart. It's longlisted for the Booker Prize, so that's good for the author Donal Ryan. Not that I quite approve of Donal Ryan writing books, him being a Civil Servant and thus what Dublin taxidrivers call a double jobber.
Translation/exposition: double jobbing taxi drivers are taking the bread out of the mouths of Dublin taxi drivers...and double jobbing writers are taking the bread out of the mouths of full time professional writers like myself. Taxi drivers and me are ad idem on this, as we are on many other important topics. Like where could it all end?
How and ever. Let's hope he wins. He'll earn big bucks. He'll jack in the day job. This will create a vacancy in the Civil Service. They won't fill it. The more unfilled vacancies in the Civil Service the better the running of the country. It's night follows day stuff. Simple economics. Taxi drivers and myself understand these things.
How and ever, again. I'd never really heard of Donal Ryan, not paying much attention to literary things or the Booker goings on. ( Like...they don't pay much attention to me...)
I first heard of him while reading the culture section of the Daily Telegraph. (I need that info for talking to Dublin taxi drivers.) More specifically, I was reading a review of his book by one Catherine Taylor. I know nothing about her. And she's probably not related to Ruth Taylor...
Yes, that's her, the cover girl and the protagonist in my novel The Colour of Her Eyes.
Ruth is a single Mum with a murky sexual past living in Bognor Regis. She's hardly related to Catherine Taylor, Daily Telegraph Book Reviewer. . But...there again...Taylor is not that common a name...
How and ever, for the third time. Catherine, whoever she is and whomsoever she is related to, does not strike me as being a native Irish woman. This, of course, in the Daily Telegraph's editorial eyes makes her the perfect person to discuss Ireland and review Irish novels. And she does it nicely. Fair and generous enough, she does mention however that there are some false notes in our double jobbing Civil Servant's opus. One of these is, she suggests, and I quote, "it seems unlikely that such a small locale can produce not one but three potential psychopaths."
WHAT ARE YOU ON WOMAN?
The book is set in LIMERICK !!!!
Limerick has whole areas almost entirely occupied by psychopaths. That's a big city...but...every small village in Ireland has at least one. A three psychopath village is nothing to us native Irish. We laugh at those places. Dismiss them as irrelevant and as somehow failing to live up to the Irish thing, all that.
Enough said.
FREE FREE FREE...
Translation/exposition: double jobbing taxi drivers are taking the bread out of the mouths of Dublin taxi drivers...and double jobbing writers are taking the bread out of the mouths of full time professional writers like myself. Taxi drivers and me are ad idem on this, as we are on many other important topics. Like where could it all end?
How and ever. Let's hope he wins. He'll earn big bucks. He'll jack in the day job. This will create a vacancy in the Civil Service. They won't fill it. The more unfilled vacancies in the Civil Service the better the running of the country. It's night follows day stuff. Simple economics. Taxi drivers and myself understand these things.
How and ever, again. I'd never really heard of Donal Ryan, not paying much attention to literary things or the Booker goings on. ( Like...they don't pay much attention to me...)
I first heard of him while reading the culture section of the Daily Telegraph. (I need that info for talking to Dublin taxi drivers.) More specifically, I was reading a review of his book by one Catherine Taylor. I know nothing about her. And she's probably not related to Ruth Taylor...
Ruth is a single Mum with a murky sexual past living in Bognor Regis. She's hardly related to Catherine Taylor, Daily Telegraph Book Reviewer. . But...there again...Taylor is not that common a name...
How and ever, for the third time. Catherine, whoever she is and whomsoever she is related to, does not strike me as being a native Irish woman. This, of course, in the Daily Telegraph's editorial eyes makes her the perfect person to discuss Ireland and review Irish novels. And she does it nicely. Fair and generous enough, she does mention however that there are some false notes in our double jobbing Civil Servant's opus. One of these is, she suggests, and I quote, "it seems unlikely that such a small locale can produce not one but three potential psychopaths."
WHAT ARE YOU ON WOMAN?
The book is set in LIMERICK !!!!
Limerick has whole areas almost entirely occupied by psychopaths. That's a big city...but...every small village in Ireland has at least one. A three psychopath village is nothing to us native Irish. We laugh at those places. Dismiss them as irrelevant and as somehow failing to live up to the Irish thing, all that.
Enough said.
FREE FREE FREE...
There's no such thing as a free lunch, all that. But there are some free books just a couple of clicks away. One is by myself and one is...not. Though I did edit it. Whether any of that is good or bad or indifferent is up to the reader.
Go to my website to get hold of A Walk on The Southside. That'll only be up there free for awhile, so act now, who hesitates is lost, etc.
The Mysterious Mary H is available from my Academia site, which for some reason always seems to need refreshing...but worth the wait.
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Yuccas
I've been thinking about yuccas recently.
Well, for the last forty eight hours or so. Before that I hadn't been thinking about yuccas at all. Not really, though I do recall seeing some on display outside a store in Toronto. And yes, I do recall...yes yes it's all coming back to me as I write, I do recall thinking then that I hadn't seen a yucca in a long while.
The thought passed.
I came back to Ireland and there I was, forty eight hours ago, sitting in The Bayside Inn in Sutton in County Dublin. It was very quiet. I hadn't been there for a few months but the same people seemed to be sitting there in the same seats, being very quiet. It was strange for me to think, to realise that all the while I was away in North America these same people had been sitting here. Not missing me in the slightest. The relationship was mutual.
The deceased husband of a girlfriend of mine once told me that it took a good ten years to build up a relationship with a pub. He actually told me a lot of other stuff, me being the lover of his wife, like, but what sticks in my mind is that particular notion, that it takes a good ten years to build up a relationship with a pub.
Now I don't know about this at all. It may well do, but it is not necessarily so, not necessary that any relationship will be built up at all. I have been going to the Bayside Inn in Sutton for ten years or so. Every few months. Say maybe six or seven times a year. And, hand on heart, I can say that I have absolutely no relationship with the Bayside Inn in Sutton, nor with its denizens. And I could be going there for the next ten years, and I can confidently assert that I would have built up no relationship.
So there. But...doubts creep in...maybe that is the nature of the relationship? Maybe a relationship that doesn't exist is in fact a relationship?
Is this all getting a bit Wittgenstein?
Perhaps. So, these yuccas. There I was sitting in my non-relationship with the establishment, a sort of dark matter relationship...there I was and I became conscious of being watched. I put up with this for awhile and then looked around. And there they were, a row of yucca plants along a shelf, watching me. Four or five or maybe even six yucca plants. I didnt count. There was enough. There was actually too many. Because that's the thing about yucca plants, they are a singular, should be anyway. One is quite enough. After that they get sinister. They kind of gang up on you. And one becomes aware...of the yuccas of North County Dublin and the yuccas of Toronto...their totality...
That's all I have to say on the matter.
Well, for the last forty eight hours or so. Before that I hadn't been thinking about yuccas at all. Not really, though I do recall seeing some on display outside a store in Toronto. And yes, I do recall...yes yes it's all coming back to me as I write, I do recall thinking then that I hadn't seen a yucca in a long while.
The thought passed.
I came back to Ireland and there I was, forty eight hours ago, sitting in The Bayside Inn in Sutton in County Dublin. It was very quiet. I hadn't been there for a few months but the same people seemed to be sitting there in the same seats, being very quiet. It was strange for me to think, to realise that all the while I was away in North America these same people had been sitting here. Not missing me in the slightest. The relationship was mutual.
The deceased husband of a girlfriend of mine once told me that it took a good ten years to build up a relationship with a pub. He actually told me a lot of other stuff, me being the lover of his wife, like, but what sticks in my mind is that particular notion, that it takes a good ten years to build up a relationship with a pub.
Now I don't know about this at all. It may well do, but it is not necessarily so, not necessary that any relationship will be built up at all. I have been going to the Bayside Inn in Sutton for ten years or so. Every few months. Say maybe six or seven times a year. And, hand on heart, I can say that I have absolutely no relationship with the Bayside Inn in Sutton, nor with its denizens. And I could be going there for the next ten years, and I can confidently assert that I would have built up no relationship.
So there. But...doubts creep in...maybe that is the nature of the relationship? Maybe a relationship that doesn't exist is in fact a relationship?
Is this all getting a bit Wittgenstein?
Perhaps. So, these yuccas. There I was sitting in my non-relationship with the establishment, a sort of dark matter relationship...there I was and I became conscious of being watched. I put up with this for awhile and then looked around. And there they were, a row of yucca plants along a shelf, watching me. Four or five or maybe even six yucca plants. I didnt count. There was enough. There was actually too many. Because that's the thing about yucca plants, they are a singular, should be anyway. One is quite enough. After that they get sinister. They kind of gang up on you. And one becomes aware...of the yuccas of North County Dublin and the yuccas of Toronto...their totality...
That's all I have to say on the matter.
*
I see I have a new follower on my Academia site. She's looks very nice. Here she is below. She's interested in Early Photography. And so am I. And she's also interested in The Life and Works of Mary Hayden. And so am I .
But I wonder if she's interested in yucca plants?
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Madonna in Monkstown.
Well that was a good six month break from the slavery of the screen.
Have been in Canada for this last month...don't knock it, it's a great country...Toronto is a great city...Soby's at Yonge and St Claire is a great supermarket...Jingles is a great pub...(with the exception of their "chef's salad" which is a few olives buried in a pile of lettuce leaves...)
And so, now that I'm a leading food writer, I have to mention that I'm barely back in Ireland when I see Madonna walking along by Monkstown Church in County Dublin...well I don't actually see her, not in the flesh (don't tempt me) but rather I see a photo of Madonna walking along by Monkstown Church in County Dublin...she is, the caption tells me, accompanied by her bodyguard and some female friends.
This bodyguard concept is a good idea, Monkstown is a notoriously dangerous area. I found it dangerous when I lived there. Though it must be admitted that most of the danger in my case was created by my female friends. Wrote a book about all that.
I tell my wife H, about whom I wrote that book, that Madonna has been in Monkstown County Dublin.
"What was she doing", says H, "adopting children?"
It's one of her sardonic mornings.
Life does that to a woman. Particularly life with me.
"No", I tell her, "it's all about food".
So what has Madonna got to do with food?
Ah hah...this is the thing...Madonna is going (in the picture on my screen) to the funeral of David Collins.
Oh God, David Collins is not dead is he?
Oh yes he is, and I don't even know who he is. Quick google. Oh God again. He's a celebrity architect from Glenageary in County Dublin. And he's designed every restaurant worth going to in London. And he wears velvet jackets. And Graham Norton was also at the funeral. And and and...the details pile up...but those relevant to myself are hidden, obscured...I search...it's much like poking through the lettuce leaves in Jingles pub at Yonge and St Claire, looking for the damn olives...
Ah hah.
Olive one...Collins went to St Conleths School in Dublin...SO DID I ...
Olive two...Collins designed the Wolsley Restaurant in London...I HAD BREAKFAST THERE ONCE !
Olive three...Collins's father was an architect Jack Collins of Glenageary County Dublin....ah hah...ah bloody hah...I knew that old boy, vaguely, by repute...and long years ago when I was setting up my horticultural business (another blog, another day, another blog, be patient) I bought some equipment from a secondhand salesrooms which, I learned, had originally been in Collins's offices...
How about that then? It's eerie. The connections between myself and David Collins are obviously multifaceted and extensive. The cosmos does have an architect.
Dammit. I should've been at that funeral. I feel guilty now. I just should've been there. And what was I doing instead?
Well...back in Toronto I didn't spend all my time in Soby's Supermarket or Jingles Pub, I was actually working as well. And part of my work was to visit and meet and talk to a very elderly lady from Ireland. A jewish lady, she is the surviving sister of Ettie Steinberg, the only Irish victim of Auschwitz, about whom I have written in the past.
I did all that and came back to Ireland with my notes and my photographs and I went to my house and I cut my grass and then I sat down to write about the elderly Jewish lady and her life and all that, and how her murdered sister did not have a life nor a chance to be an elderly lady in Toronto surrounded by a huge loving family.
Yep, that sort of peripheral stuff.
When I could indeed should have been at the funeral of a posh restaurant designer.
Me and Madonna.
ConanK
Have been in Canada for this last month...don't knock it, it's a great country...Toronto is a great city...Soby's at Yonge and St Claire is a great supermarket...Jingles is a great pub...(with the exception of their "chef's salad" which is a few olives buried in a pile of lettuce leaves...)
And so, now that I'm a leading food writer, I have to mention that I'm barely back in Ireland when I see Madonna walking along by Monkstown Church in County Dublin...well I don't actually see her, not in the flesh (don't tempt me) but rather I see a photo of Madonna walking along by Monkstown Church in County Dublin...she is, the caption tells me, accompanied by her bodyguard and some female friends.
This bodyguard concept is a good idea, Monkstown is a notoriously dangerous area. I found it dangerous when I lived there. Though it must be admitted that most of the danger in my case was created by my female friends. Wrote a book about all that.
I tell my wife H, about whom I wrote that book, that Madonna has been in Monkstown County Dublin.
"What was she doing", says H, "adopting children?"
It's one of her sardonic mornings.
Life does that to a woman. Particularly life with me.
"No", I tell her, "it's all about food".
So what has Madonna got to do with food?
Ah hah...this is the thing...Madonna is going (in the picture on my screen) to the funeral of David Collins.
Oh God, David Collins is not dead is he?
Oh yes he is, and I don't even know who he is. Quick google. Oh God again. He's a celebrity architect from Glenageary in County Dublin. And he's designed every restaurant worth going to in London. And he wears velvet jackets. And Graham Norton was also at the funeral. And and and...the details pile up...but those relevant to myself are hidden, obscured...I search...it's much like poking through the lettuce leaves in Jingles pub at Yonge and St Claire, looking for the damn olives...
Ah hah.
Olive one...Collins went to St Conleths School in Dublin...SO DID I ...
Olive two...Collins designed the Wolsley Restaurant in London...I HAD BREAKFAST THERE ONCE !
Olive three...Collins's father was an architect Jack Collins of Glenageary County Dublin....ah hah...ah bloody hah...I knew that old boy, vaguely, by repute...and long years ago when I was setting up my horticultural business (another blog, another day, another blog, be patient) I bought some equipment from a secondhand salesrooms which, I learned, had originally been in Collins's offices...
How about that then? It's eerie. The connections between myself and David Collins are obviously multifaceted and extensive. The cosmos does have an architect.
Dammit. I should've been at that funeral. I feel guilty now. I just should've been there. And what was I doing instead?
Well...back in Toronto I didn't spend all my time in Soby's Supermarket or Jingles Pub, I was actually working as well. And part of my work was to visit and meet and talk to a very elderly lady from Ireland. A jewish lady, she is the surviving sister of Ettie Steinberg, the only Irish victim of Auschwitz, about whom I have written in the past.
I did all that and came back to Ireland with my notes and my photographs and I went to my house and I cut my grass and then I sat down to write about the elderly Jewish lady and her life and all that, and how her murdered sister did not have a life nor a chance to be an elderly lady in Toronto surrounded by a huge loving family.
Yep, that sort of peripheral stuff.
When I could indeed should have been at the funeral of a posh restaurant designer.
Me and Madonna.
ConanK
Saturday, 19 January 2013
NOW !
As mentioned previous posting, the NOTEBOOK is closed...('tho you can still read the entries by scrolling around here)...from now on such postings (as they are) will be on the main page under the LATEST heading...thing is, if the thousands of people who have read NOTEBOOK over the past couple of years had bought books then I'd have the time to write more NOTEBOOK...but they haven't, and I haven't.
Other could-be-interesting material still here in seperate locations focuses on
Genealogy , and Old Photographs,
There's an archive of published articles and suchlike on topics various right here.
(Be patient with that link, might need to refresh, reason obscure.)
Same place has access to download a free book !
Sunday, 23 December 2012
All good things...
...come to an end....and with the fast moving online interface place (or something) it soon becomes time to move on to something new...which time has now arrived for this writer anyway...so...click for my musical message...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hZrXdJ-ibo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hZrXdJ-ibo
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Days of Miracles and Wonder
The week didn't start that well, austerity wise. For reasons too obscure to even mention it so happened that my beloved H and I found ourselves in guardianship of a small eleven year old boy for a few days.
A pupil in St Andrews College in Dublin, this single fact put the kibosh on the austerity bit. They don't do austerity down there. Or, if they do, the yummy mummys apply a pretty good face to things.
It was a revelation.
To avoid the congestion on Booterstown Avenue we had been instructed by the parents of the small eleven year old boy to approach the school from the rere. (Yes there is a joke there somewhere but I'm not going scraping that barrel.) There is a lane, we were told, running through wooded territory to the east of the Radisson Hotel. And that would lead to St Andrew's without getting snarled up among lowly commuters. We found it. And got snarled up among large vehicles with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey forgotten in the glove compartments. These large vehicles were being driven (badly) by blondish Mums who, if it had been sunny, would've been wearing sunglasses in their hair.
But it wasn't. It was raining.
I parked the car, suddenly conscious that the vehicle was a couple of years older than the small boy in my charge. It vaguely occurred that there was some rule of thumb or social convention whereas one's car should be younger than one's children...certainly to be socially acceptable in St Andrews laneway. But the thought evaporated. This happens more and more, these days.
It's not actually officially St Andrew's Laneway, more likely an extension of the entrance to that Radisson Hotel, and obviously originally a laneway that ran round the boundary of the onetime St Helen's Estate. I spotted apartment blocks here and there in the woods. Mere glimpses through trees. But then other lives are like that. And I also spotted a playing fields which I first thought belonged to St Andrews but then was enlightened by the beloved H. (Not that she's that beloved when she's in enlightening mode, but whatever.) Apparantly the playing fields belonged to neighbouring Colaiste Iosagain, a different school entirely. Oh yes I know it well. Our daughter went there. And now walking down the lane I noticed clones of my daughter...well clones as she was fifteen years ago, that familiar uniform... coming up the lane towards me. Girls in greenish plaid skirts. Whilst going in the same direction as myself the St Andrew's kids were in their grey and darkish blue rigouts.
I noticed the different factions of young people ignored each other as they passed. The difference between fees of six and a half thousand a year and no fees at all does that I reckon.
"Like what do the St Andrew's kids get" I asked H, "like for their six and half grand? Like what do they get that the free school kids don't?"
"Better facilities?" she surmised.
"But Iosagain is one of the best schools in Ireland, and our daughter got a masters from University College London." (I didn't actually say 'our daughter', I used her name. But I realise she desires anonymity from her father's writing. Wonder about that sometime.)
"Yeah well," said my beloved H, and the matter remained unresolved.
How and ever, that same evening some small chink of resolution did glimmer.
It happened down in Sandymount. I was in the upstairs bar of the clubhouse of the Pembroke Wanderers' Hockey Club. Pictures of old hockey teams on the walls. And among them photographic portraits of deceased individuals important to the history of the club. Women who looked unmarried and men who looked like accountants.
I absorbed all that.
I gazed out over the floodlit expanse of the all weather hockey pitch. Hordes of small boys were rushing around with hockey sticks and I was trying to work out which exactly was my eleven year old charge. They all looked pretty much of a muchness from that distance.
A DART train went by. I imagined myself sitting in the window, looking out at the hockey pitch, as no doubt people were, and as I had done myself so many times. So many times but this, I realised, this was the first time I had ever been in the clubhouse of the Pembroke Wanderers' Hockey Club. But, however, how and ever, it was not at all the first time I had been at the grounds itself. Long years ago I used play cricket here. It was grass then, and the clubhouse then was a shack over at the Churchill Terrace side.
I remembered that.
The next day Saturday I went to the austerity march through Dublin. I wasn't actually participating, merely observing. I like to be in at the start of a revolution. It gets messy later on, but the start tends to be interesting. I walked up O'Connell Street.
A group of thuggish characters had taken over the O'Connell Monument and were waving flags of the IRSP, The Irish Republican Socialist Party. I nodded, but only to myself. I walked on. remembering how thirty five years ago I had walked through Little Bray behind the coffin of Seamus Costello.
There's been a lot of funerals since.
I walked on. A man that seemed to have stepped out of a Victorian cartoon held a large placard on a pole above his head. It prophesised doom in biblical language. A group of Islamic people stood silently along the kerb. Well, two groups of Islamic people, one made up of men, the other of women. I presume they were essentially the same group. They weren't protesting, rather evangelizing, if that be the word. Definitely was the word for yet another group, this one of fundamentalist Christian preachers. And beside them a group who didn't think much of Jews or Israel. All white Irish, the young men wore Arab scarves and the young women were in gear they certainly wouldn't be able to wear when their cause was won.
I walked on.
A solitary and beautiful young woman handed me a Pro-Life leaflet. I took it politely, wondering vaguely yet again why Pro-Life women are better looking that Pro-Choice? It's been something that perplexes me. I suppose nature has an answer.
On and on I walked, my pocket gradually getting stuffeder and stuffeder with leaflets and pamphlets.
.Socialists.
Tax Campaigners.
More socialists.
On and on I walked, and on and on they came, the leaflets. I took up my position beside The Spire and remembered going up its predecessor Nelson Pillar. And remembered being in Africa when someone told me it had been blown up. Dublin and its revolutions seemed far away then, other wars on my mind.
The protest parade eventually started. It was very very large and none of the people marching looked like they had kids in St Andrews College, nor that they actively participated in the doings of the Pembroke Wanderer' Hockey Club.
The parade was led by a masked girl on a horse.
She was wearing a voluminous black cloak and I suppose she was meant to be death.
I thought these are the days of miracles and wonder.
And went home and listened to the song.
Days of Miracles and Wonder
A pupil in St Andrews College in Dublin, this single fact put the kibosh on the austerity bit. They don't do austerity down there. Or, if they do, the yummy mummys apply a pretty good face to things.
It was a revelation.
To avoid the congestion on Booterstown Avenue we had been instructed by the parents of the small eleven year old boy to approach the school from the rere. (Yes there is a joke there somewhere but I'm not going scraping that barrel.) There is a lane, we were told, running through wooded territory to the east of the Radisson Hotel. And that would lead to St Andrew's without getting snarled up among lowly commuters. We found it. And got snarled up among large vehicles with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey forgotten in the glove compartments. These large vehicles were being driven (badly) by blondish Mums who, if it had been sunny, would've been wearing sunglasses in their hair.
But it wasn't. It was raining.
I parked the car, suddenly conscious that the vehicle was a couple of years older than the small boy in my charge. It vaguely occurred that there was some rule of thumb or social convention whereas one's car should be younger than one's children...certainly to be socially acceptable in St Andrews laneway. But the thought evaporated. This happens more and more, these days.
It's not actually officially St Andrew's Laneway, more likely an extension of the entrance to that Radisson Hotel, and obviously originally a laneway that ran round the boundary of the onetime St Helen's Estate. I spotted apartment blocks here and there in the woods. Mere glimpses through trees. But then other lives are like that. And I also spotted a playing fields which I first thought belonged to St Andrews but then was enlightened by the beloved H. (Not that she's that beloved when she's in enlightening mode, but whatever.) Apparantly the playing fields belonged to neighbouring Colaiste Iosagain, a different school entirely. Oh yes I know it well. Our daughter went there. And now walking down the lane I noticed clones of my daughter...well clones as she was fifteen years ago, that familiar uniform... coming up the lane towards me. Girls in greenish plaid skirts. Whilst going in the same direction as myself the St Andrew's kids were in their grey and darkish blue rigouts.
I noticed the different factions of young people ignored each other as they passed. The difference between fees of six and a half thousand a year and no fees at all does that I reckon.
"Like what do the St Andrew's kids get" I asked H, "like for their six and half grand? Like what do they get that the free school kids don't?"
"Better facilities?" she surmised.
"But Iosagain is one of the best schools in Ireland, and our daughter got a masters from University College London." (I didn't actually say 'our daughter', I used her name. But I realise she desires anonymity from her father's writing. Wonder about that sometime.)
"Yeah well," said my beloved H, and the matter remained unresolved.
How and ever, that same evening some small chink of resolution did glimmer.
It happened down in Sandymount. I was in the upstairs bar of the clubhouse of the Pembroke Wanderers' Hockey Club. Pictures of old hockey teams on the walls. And among them photographic portraits of deceased individuals important to the history of the club. Women who looked unmarried and men who looked like accountants.
I absorbed all that.
I gazed out over the floodlit expanse of the all weather hockey pitch. Hordes of small boys were rushing around with hockey sticks and I was trying to work out which exactly was my eleven year old charge. They all looked pretty much of a muchness from that distance.
A DART train went by. I imagined myself sitting in the window, looking out at the hockey pitch, as no doubt people were, and as I had done myself so many times. So many times but this, I realised, this was the first time I had ever been in the clubhouse of the Pembroke Wanderers' Hockey Club. But, however, how and ever, it was not at all the first time I had been at the grounds itself. Long years ago I used play cricket here. It was grass then, and the clubhouse then was a shack over at the Churchill Terrace side.
I remembered that.
The next day Saturday I went to the austerity march through Dublin. I wasn't actually participating, merely observing. I like to be in at the start of a revolution. It gets messy later on, but the start tends to be interesting. I walked up O'Connell Street.
A group of thuggish characters had taken over the O'Connell Monument and were waving flags of the IRSP, The Irish Republican Socialist Party. I nodded, but only to myself. I walked on. remembering how thirty five years ago I had walked through Little Bray behind the coffin of Seamus Costello.
There's been a lot of funerals since.
I walked on. A man that seemed to have stepped out of a Victorian cartoon held a large placard on a pole above his head. It prophesised doom in biblical language. A group of Islamic people stood silently along the kerb. Well, two groups of Islamic people, one made up of men, the other of women. I presume they were essentially the same group. They weren't protesting, rather evangelizing, if that be the word. Definitely was the word for yet another group, this one of fundamentalist Christian preachers. And beside them a group who didn't think much of Jews or Israel. All white Irish, the young men wore Arab scarves and the young women were in gear they certainly wouldn't be able to wear when their cause was won.
I walked on.
A solitary and beautiful young woman handed me a Pro-Life leaflet. I took it politely, wondering vaguely yet again why Pro-Life women are better looking that Pro-Choice? It's been something that perplexes me. I suppose nature has an answer.
On and on I walked, my pocket gradually getting stuffeder and stuffeder with leaflets and pamphlets.
.Socialists.
Tax Campaigners.
More socialists.
On and on I walked, and on and on they came, the leaflets. I took up my position beside The Spire and remembered going up its predecessor Nelson Pillar. And remembered being in Africa when someone told me it had been blown up. Dublin and its revolutions seemed far away then, other wars on my mind.
The protest parade eventually started. It was very very large and none of the people marching looked like they had kids in St Andrews College, nor that they actively participated in the doings of the Pembroke Wanderer' Hockey Club.
The parade was led by a masked girl on a horse.
She was wearing a voluminous black cloak and I suppose she was meant to be death.
I thought these are the days of miracles and wonder.
And went home and listened to the song.
Conan Kennedy's new novel is
now in (Irish) bookshops.
Days of Miracles and Wonder
Friday, 2 November 2012
REHOBOTH
There's woegeous journalism and there's an article on The Irish Times website, Is Dublin 8 the New Gay Village. It has the sentence:
The area's edgy cosmopolitan vibe is attracting gay residents.
The writer who should in her own interests prefer to be nameless, she really should, builds on this start and leads the hapless reader into a carcrash of an article. It's all quite risible, embarassing, appallingly written and...oh for goddsakes...read the comments thereto attached...I actually could say it better myself but can't be bothered.
But but but...at least I now know that the majority of people in Ireland who have entered into civil partnerships live in the area of Dublin 8. (Village? Village? Dublin 8 is a huge urban area with a population greater than most Irish towns.)
Another thing I now know is that couples who allow Irish Times writers into their houses to write about them and their ideas on society and interior decor are pretty damn smug and self satisfied. And it's nothing to do with being gay, but that helps.
Jim and Philip and Nathalie and Carla are (head?)cases in point.
The photo of Mr and Mr shows them standing in what at first glance looks like an Ikea showroom under construction, before the bits and bobs arrive, and yes they do look pretty damn smug and self satisfied. Jim is in communications and Philip is a librarian. But we sort of knew that. Just as we suspect that Jim's role in communications does not involve climbing up telegraph poles to connect wires. The photo of Ms and Ms is much the same, oozing with a like amount of smugness and self satisfaction, but with added girlie bits, like cushions. Ms and Ms appear to be in design, and one Ms is an apparachik in the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network.
This is where I come in.
This is where it all comes together.
My amazing connections!
I shared a flat in London with one of the founders of the GLEN. There were two other blokes there. Every week one of us would cook a Sunday meal for the others. I was the worst cook and the least gay and got chucked out of the whole arrangement. I then shared a bedsitter with the brother of Eric Luke, the Irish Times photographer involved in this appalling piece of journalism. Many years later I came back to Dublin and met the same Eric up Dalkey Hill...he took a photo of my small daughter being picturesque in the snow. And not...only...that...the other photographer involved in the misconceived article is Cyril Byrne...and Cyril Byrne is married to a friend of mine in Shankill.
And...not...only...that...
Mr and Mr Jim and Philip live in Rehoboth Place in Dolphin's Barn. And I know an awful lot about Rehoboth Place. I learned most of it when editing The Diaries of Mary Hayden. Stuff like...
Molly Bloom's father lived in Rehoboth Place. Yes he was fictional, but real people who also lived there range from Isabella Mulvany who more or less founded Alexandra College and her sister who was the grandmother of Richard Murphy the Poet.
Whatever happened to him?
I think he's in Sri Lanka.
I suppose it all hangs together.
Sri Lanka being the sort of Dublin 8 of the Indian Ocean.
PS: My new novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura is now in Irish bookshops. Though not of course in The Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar, see below ! Their demographic wouldn't like it.
The area's edgy cosmopolitan vibe is attracting gay residents.
The writer who should in her own interests prefer to be nameless, she really should, builds on this start and leads the hapless reader into a carcrash of an article. It's all quite risible, embarassing, appallingly written and...oh for goddsakes...read the comments thereto attached...I actually could say it better myself but can't be bothered.
But but but...at least I now know that the majority of people in Ireland who have entered into civil partnerships live in the area of Dublin 8. (Village? Village? Dublin 8 is a huge urban area with a population greater than most Irish towns.)
Another thing I now know is that couples who allow Irish Times writers into their houses to write about them and their ideas on society and interior decor are pretty damn smug and self satisfied. And it's nothing to do with being gay, but that helps.
Jim and Philip and Nathalie and Carla are (head?)cases in point.
The photo of Mr and Mr shows them standing in what at first glance looks like an Ikea showroom under construction, before the bits and bobs arrive, and yes they do look pretty damn smug and self satisfied. Jim is in communications and Philip is a librarian. But we sort of knew that. Just as we suspect that Jim's role in communications does not involve climbing up telegraph poles to connect wires. The photo of Ms and Ms is much the same, oozing with a like amount of smugness and self satisfaction, but with added girlie bits, like cushions. Ms and Ms appear to be in design, and one Ms is an apparachik in the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network.
This is where I come in.
This is where it all comes together.
My amazing connections!
I shared a flat in London with one of the founders of the GLEN. There were two other blokes there. Every week one of us would cook a Sunday meal for the others. I was the worst cook and the least gay and got chucked out of the whole arrangement. I then shared a bedsitter with the brother of Eric Luke, the Irish Times photographer involved in this appalling piece of journalism. Many years later I came back to Dublin and met the same Eric up Dalkey Hill...he took a photo of my small daughter being picturesque in the snow. And not...only...that...the other photographer involved in the misconceived article is Cyril Byrne...and Cyril Byrne is married to a friend of mine in Shankill.
And...not...only...that...
Mr and Mr Jim and Philip live in Rehoboth Place in Dolphin's Barn. And I know an awful lot about Rehoboth Place. I learned most of it when editing The Diaries of Mary Hayden. Stuff like...
Molly Bloom's father lived in Rehoboth Place. Yes he was fictional, but real people who also lived there range from Isabella Mulvany who more or less founded Alexandra College and her sister who was the grandmother of Richard Murphy the Poet.
Whatever happened to him?
I think he's in Sri Lanka.
I suppose it all hangs together.
Sri Lanka being the sort of Dublin 8 of the Indian Ocean.
PS: My new novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura is now in Irish bookshops. Though not of course in The Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar, see below ! Their demographic wouldn't like it.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Jimmy Savile,Melanie Verwoerd, and The Gutter Bookshop.
So...the BBC didn't want any negative information about the late Jimmy Savile coming out...
And...Pat Kenny of RTE doesn't want any negative information about the late Gerry Ryan coming out...
"That book should not have been written", he is reported of saying about the beautiful Melanie's book which, among other things, deals with her late lover the RTE presenter Gerry Ryan.
It's ludicrous, methinks. And Gerry Ryan wasn't even a paedophile, he was just a rather sad character who took too much cocaine and didn't have any friends.
Interesting now that he's safely dead he does have friends in the Irish media mafia.
Hanging together lest they hang seperately? No doubt. And to be expected. But nonetheless it's rather alarming to note that Ireland's major radio/tv presenter/commentator (€800,000 per year...yes that's five noughts) has come out strongly in favour of book burning.
Ah sure...moving on....
Mentioning books. My own new novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura has now been published in print format. And very good it is too. (Though I don't expect Pat Kenny to be interviewing me on any of his shows.)
As part of its publication I thought I'd take a wander round Dublin's remaining bookshops to see how it was looking. And in the course of this wander someone told me there was a new bookshop...well...a newish bookshop down in Temple Bar.
This, I thought, was good news. Bookshops are becoming increasingly few on the ground. Thank God for the world of E, etcetera.
I looked it up. The new bookshop presented itself as a happening sort of place at the cutting edge, reader and writer friendly, all that. I found that it was owned by a bloke who used work for Hughes and Hughes (which went bust) and also with Waterstones (which did likewise). So I reckoned he should know a thing or two about the book business.
I wandered down to The Gutter Bookshop to check it all out.
It was pretty much the same old same old, like a provincial Easons, but with fewer titles. The usual suspects really. Disappointing but, whatever. A bookshop is a bookshop.
Anyway, they'd never heard of my book. But I suppose they are at the far arse end of Temple Bar in a sort of cultural bubble and stuff doesn't really penetrate.
I arranged for a copy of the book to be sent to them.
Week or so later I wandered down again.
No, they hadn't ordered my book. And she, yes she, whoever she was, had no intention of so doing. And conveyed this info in terms which could not be described as warm and friendly.
Ah hah, I thought, this shop is aptly positioned, in Cow Lane.
"Why not?" I asked, my thoughts staying schtum.
"It's not in our demographic."
"Oh. What does that mean?" I asked, but reply there came none...'she' just left and walked away to sell a jumper to a customer.
Yes they sell jumpers.
And why not? I myself used sell horticultural products in Dublin's wholesale vegetable markets. And there's no difference. Some people you meet in the sales game are polite, and some are sheer damn ignorant and rude and offensive.
The product is meaningless.
And...Pat Kenny of RTE doesn't want any negative information about the late Gerry Ryan coming out...
"That book should not have been written", he is reported of saying about the beautiful Melanie's book which, among other things, deals with her late lover the RTE presenter Gerry Ryan.
It's ludicrous, methinks. And Gerry Ryan wasn't even a paedophile, he was just a rather sad character who took too much cocaine and didn't have any friends.
Interesting now that he's safely dead he does have friends in the Irish media mafia.
Hanging together lest they hang seperately? No doubt. And to be expected. But nonetheless it's rather alarming to note that Ireland's major radio/tv presenter/commentator (€800,000 per year...yes that's five noughts) has come out strongly in favour of book burning.
Ah sure...moving on....
Mentioning books. My own new novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura has now been published in print format. And very good it is too. (Though I don't expect Pat Kenny to be interviewing me on any of his shows.)
As part of its publication I thought I'd take a wander round Dublin's remaining bookshops to see how it was looking. And in the course of this wander someone told me there was a new bookshop...well...a newish bookshop down in Temple Bar.
This, I thought, was good news. Bookshops are becoming increasingly few on the ground. Thank God for the world of E, etcetera.
I looked it up. The new bookshop presented itself as a happening sort of place at the cutting edge, reader and writer friendly, all that. I found that it was owned by a bloke who used work for Hughes and Hughes (which went bust) and also with Waterstones (which did likewise). So I reckoned he should know a thing or two about the book business.
I wandered down to The Gutter Bookshop to check it all out.
It was pretty much the same old same old, like a provincial Easons, but with fewer titles. The usual suspects really. Disappointing but, whatever. A bookshop is a bookshop.
Anyway, they'd never heard of my book. But I suppose they are at the far arse end of Temple Bar in a sort of cultural bubble and stuff doesn't really penetrate.
I arranged for a copy of the book to be sent to them.
Week or so later I wandered down again.
No, they hadn't ordered my book. And she, yes she, whoever she was, had no intention of so doing. And conveyed this info in terms which could not be described as warm and friendly.
Ah hah, I thought, this shop is aptly positioned, in Cow Lane.
"Why not?" I asked, my thoughts staying schtum.
"It's not in our demographic."
"Oh. What does that mean?" I asked, but reply there came none...'she' just left and walked away to sell a jumper to a customer.
Yes they sell jumpers.
And why not? I myself used sell horticultural products in Dublin's wholesale vegetable markets. And there's no difference. Some people you meet in the sales game are polite, and some are sheer damn ignorant and rude and offensive.
The product is meaningless.
Sunday, 30 September 2012
DESSIE SWORDS
This much I know.
I don't English speak very well.
What...am I talking about?
The Guardian newspaper, that's what. It runs a column, or columns a run, if you prefer, entitled this much I know. The content is the same old same old, a few hundred words by no you've never heard of them either. But the title of the pieces, that annoys me. It's pretentious and portentous and lots of other things ending in ous. But hell, it's in the Guardian. A newspaper I only read to avoid The Irish Times. And hell again, I'll you tell, so know you this much, I that never read.
Enough already.
Myself and herself are currently sleeping on a mattress in a room which once was the living room. We now use another room entirely as a living room, a room in the newer part of the house. But the former living room is in the very old part of the house, as is the bedroom we have migrated from. That's all by the by, just setting the scene.
The mattress lies up against a range of bookshelves which act as a sort of headboard. And it is my habit betimes to reach out a hand blindly and take an arbitrary book down. I do this over my head and cannot see which book it is until it is in my hand. It makes for a surprise. It's a journey and exciting. We have been married a while and one must spice up one's bedtime as best one can.
Thing is, becuse this is the abandoned living room, the books in the shelves are likewise, yesterday's items, abandoned, many forgotten and some by Edna O'Brien. The book that came into my hand on a particular day this week was an Anthology of Dalkey, my home town, a pretty little town on the edge of Dublin. Bono lives there now, I don't.
I flipped through the pages of the anthology, a type of memoir, local history. And there I saw a photograph of a man by the name of Dessie Swords.
Ah hah, I said to myself. I knew that Dessie Swords, when I was a child he was Desmond, the verger of the church. Cassock clad he lit the candles before Mass. And rang the daily angelus that pealed acoss the town, at twelve and at six and my Granny crossing herself and muttering incantations.
I had not seen nor heard of him for fifty years.
Thing is, Desmond was part of my early childhood. And, like my Granny and my childhood, he's long gone. And which stars in the sky are the candles he lights in the darkness...that sort of gone.
I put the book back in the shelf and, as The Guardian might say, I no more thought about it. That very day I had to go to Dublin. For work and a spot of socialising. The work was work and the socialising in the evening was to have a meal with a woman whom I had not met for thirty five years. Living in America now, she was visiting Ireland and had got in touch. So myself and my wife and herself and her husband and my mate Michael-the-Mystic all met up to eat. In Michael's house in Dalkey, my old home town. (He, being a mystic, can afford to live there).
Angela and Daniel were a very nice and interesting couple. Everything went swimmingly. Apart from the salmon which my wife had brought along...that didn't ...the guests were vegetarians.
Angela did not come from natural vegetarian territory. On the contrary, she came from an area of nearby DunLaoghaire where, my father used say, "they eat their young". But then, my father said things like that. Those that read my just published book Fragments from Frescati will understand his reasons. Whatever, Angela .comes from what us southsiders know as The Noggin, which is a large working class area of public housing. As mentioned, I come from Dalkey, which is not. (Bono lives there.) But Angela and I had known each other and had met and mingled back in the old hippie days when class and the like were meaningless.
Yeah right.
Anyway, we discussed the writing life and days gone by, and certain people remembered, many best forgotten. Sometime between the vegetarian spaghetti bolognese (don't even ask) and the vegetarian roulade Angela mentioned that as a child she used come right here to Dalkey to visit her Uncle Dessie. In Begnet's Villas.
"Uncle Dessie?"
"Yes, he was the verger in Dalkey Church."
"Dessie Swords? He was your uncle?"
"Yes."
Ah, I thought, remembering that very morning in my idle bed. And my fingers playing the unseen spines of unknown books... like a blind piano player looking for a tune.
And finding it.
I don't English speak very well.
What...am I talking about?
The Guardian newspaper, that's what. It runs a column, or columns a run, if you prefer, entitled this much I know. The content is the same old same old, a few hundred words by no you've never heard of them either. But the title of the pieces, that annoys me. It's pretentious and portentous and lots of other things ending in ous. But hell, it's in the Guardian. A newspaper I only read to avoid The Irish Times. And hell again, I'll you tell, so know you this much, I that never read.
Enough already.
*
Myself and herself are currently sleeping on a mattress in a room which once was the living room. We now use another room entirely as a living room, a room in the newer part of the house. But the former living room is in the very old part of the house, as is the bedroom we have migrated from. That's all by the by, just setting the scene.
The mattress lies up against a range of bookshelves which act as a sort of headboard. And it is my habit betimes to reach out a hand blindly and take an arbitrary book down. I do this over my head and cannot see which book it is until it is in my hand. It makes for a surprise. It's a journey and exciting. We have been married a while and one must spice up one's bedtime as best one can.
Thing is, becuse this is the abandoned living room, the books in the shelves are likewise, yesterday's items, abandoned, many forgotten and some by Edna O'Brien. The book that came into my hand on a particular day this week was an Anthology of Dalkey, my home town, a pretty little town on the edge of Dublin. Bono lives there now, I don't.
I flipped through the pages of the anthology, a type of memoir, local history. And there I saw a photograph of a man by the name of Dessie Swords.
Ah hah, I said to myself. I knew that Dessie Swords, when I was a child he was Desmond, the verger of the church. Cassock clad he lit the candles before Mass. And rang the daily angelus that pealed acoss the town, at twelve and at six and my Granny crossing herself and muttering incantations.
I had not seen nor heard of him for fifty years.
Thing is, Desmond was part of my early childhood. And, like my Granny and my childhood, he's long gone. And which stars in the sky are the candles he lights in the darkness...that sort of gone.
I put the book back in the shelf and, as The Guardian might say, I no more thought about it. That very day I had to go to Dublin. For work and a spot of socialising. The work was work and the socialising in the evening was to have a meal with a woman whom I had not met for thirty five years. Living in America now, she was visiting Ireland and had got in touch. So myself and my wife and herself and her husband and my mate Michael-the-Mystic all met up to eat. In Michael's house in Dalkey, my old home town. (He, being a mystic, can afford to live there).
Angela and Daniel were a very nice and interesting couple. Everything went swimmingly. Apart from the salmon which my wife had brought along...that didn't ...the guests were vegetarians.
Angela did not come from natural vegetarian territory. On the contrary, she came from an area of nearby DunLaoghaire where, my father used say, "they eat their young". But then, my father said things like that. Those that read my just published book Fragments from Frescati will understand his reasons. Whatever, Angela .comes from what us southsiders know as The Noggin, which is a large working class area of public housing. As mentioned, I come from Dalkey, which is not. (Bono lives there.) But Angela and I had known each other and had met and mingled back in the old hippie days when class and the like were meaningless.
Yeah right.
Anyway, we discussed the writing life and days gone by, and certain people remembered, many best forgotten. Sometime between the vegetarian spaghetti bolognese (don't even ask) and the vegetarian roulade Angela mentioned that as a child she used come right here to Dalkey to visit her Uncle Dessie. In Begnet's Villas.
"Uncle Dessie?"
"Yes, he was the verger in Dalkey Church."
"Dessie Swords? He was your uncle?"
"Yes."
Ah, I thought, remembering that very morning in my idle bed. And my fingers playing the unseen spines of unknown books... like a blind piano player looking for a tune.
And finding it.
Friday, 14 September 2012
Bad week, good week.
Bad week. Car broke down. € 1000 or thereabouts. So that means 500 of you folks have to download an EBook of mine, or 200 of you have to buy a printed book. So let's hope everone rallies round. Steps up to the plate, all that. Words are cheap. Major engine works on a VW Passat are not. Bloody Germans, first Angela Merkel, now this.
Good week. Well, good in the sense that one of the beautiful daughters appears on Page 27 of Gaelsceal, the Irish newspaper. Irish language newspaper. And here she is. On right of photo.
For the benefit of the few of you who don't understand Irish I will translate. Roughly. This beautiful daughter is a radio producer/presenter, and the article is about a series of her radio shows dealing with minority beliefs in Ireland. Here in the photo she is with a few of her pagans. Irish-speaking bodhran-banging pagans. I like to think that my book Ancient Ireland-Users Guide is responsible for the growing interest in such ancient practices.
But it probably goes deeper than that.
Good week too in that the mother of one of my beautiful daughters appears on Page Three of The Western People.
There she is, unveiling a plaque, rather than herself, which most women on page threes of Irish newspapers are doing. I dealt with all that memorial plaque business in my September Ninth posting. But of course it seems much more real when one sees it reported in the media. Which is the world we live in.
And which reminds me. I myself haven't been mentioned in a newspaper for months.
Bad news? Or good news?
Sunday, 9 September 2012
OK I'm back.
No I haven't been here for going on two months. And a quick check of this blog's stats show that, if anything, readership has gone up in my absence.
The less I write the more readers I get?
Some message there, best not go too deeply.
One of the things I've been busy with is a military ceremony to honour the memory of my wife's late father, an Irish Army officer. And here she is, walking ahead of some troops on the way to unveiling a plaque in Admiral Brown Park in County Mayo's Foxford. And yes she is the same woman who appears on the cover and in the pages of my best selling A Walk On The South Side.
And here are some more pictures. For which I am grateful to Lam Lee who came all the way from Toronto to the ceremony. And that's her (guess which?) with Jane Edwards who came from the UK. Both for family connection reasons. We're a widely scattered bunch. And yes those are glasses on the table of Brennan's Lane Restaurant, pride of Ballina nightlife.
And here is Colonel Aherne, making his speech at the ceremony, the band in the background.
Yes it all went well.
Also in my absence from this blog location, three new books of mine were published. Not one, not two, but three. This may sound magnificent but one of them (Fragments from Frescati) had been hanging round for quite some time, awaiting its moment. That moment has now come. Fragments from Frescati is now in the bookshop, as is Boy on A Bicycle. Details of these on my website. (Non fiction, they probably won't be E for awhile.) The third is the print version of the novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura. That has available as an EBook for a few months, though with a different cover. Same words.
There I was at home to find that the local population are celebrating the nineteenth century composer William Vincent Wallace. They're not exactly dancing in the streets but a committee is up to things, concerts and talks and the likes. This I found interesting because my book Fragments from Frescati has two pages on the same William Vincent. Also interesting because William Vincent was son of an army bandmaster and I had just come from being entertained by an Irish army band.
It all hangs together.
William Vincent Wallace is described in the publicity material for the shindig here as "colourful".
That he was. As teacher of music in a convent he ran away with one of the schoolgirls to Australia, fathered two children on her, abandoned her to a life of poverty and went about his business. Which was pretty damn murky.
OK. Those who have already read A Walk On The South Side. will know that I also married a schoolgirl and thus should cease casting aspersions.
Yeah but I didn't abandon her to a life of poverty. I share it with her.
And, more importantly, being kind of classy, we went to America, not Australia.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Writer's Block
If I were in my secondary home of Italy, which I'm not, I might have called this piece Writer's Sun Block. But I'm not. Another opportunity for hilarity lost.
Anyway.
I'm in my Irish home working on The Novel. Suffice to say this is based around the Yeats International Summer School which takes place in Sligo. I'm writing the thing about 50 miles down the coast.
Tuesday got into a bit of a bugger-this-writing-game, can't think what to say next. Went for walk to harbour.
There I see large and beautiful yacht stuck on sandbank. Maybird of Falmouth. Local fishermen trying to pull her off. Took these photos.
Interesting, I thought, boat sails around world through storm and fury, Fastnet Race and so on and so forth, ends up on sandbank in quiet calm harbour.
Then, more interesting. Another coincidence/correspondence/holistic occurance. The Maybird was on passage to Sligo where the owner/skipper intends to go to the Yeats International Summer School.
Sailors Block?
Anyway.
I'm in my Irish home working on The Novel. Suffice to say this is based around the Yeats International Summer School which takes place in Sligo. I'm writing the thing about 50 miles down the coast.
Tuesday got into a bit of a bugger-this-writing-game, can't think what to say next. Went for walk to harbour.
There I see large and beautiful yacht stuck on sandbank. Maybird of Falmouth. Local fishermen trying to pull her off. Took these photos.
Went home. Looked up the Maybird of Falmouth.
Interesting, I thought, boat sails around world through storm and fury, Fastnet Race and so on and so forth, ends up on sandbank in quiet calm harbour.
Then, more interesting. Another coincidence/correspondence/holistic occurance. The Maybird was on passage to Sligo where the owner/skipper intends to go to the Yeats International Summer School.
Sailors Block?
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Sustainability and all that.
I went to Galway ten days or so ago, sat in on a speech by the Taoiseach.
I didn't actually go there to hear the Taoiseach. But I heard him anyway. He gave his speech in a large conference tent in Galway.
The Volvo Ocean Race was in town.
I didn't actually go to Galway to see the Volvo Ocean Race yachts but there they were anyway. And very impressive they were too. Not actually having a boat...(haven't had a boat for twenty years, and that a mere Enterprise dinghy in DunLaoghaire)...not actually having a boat I couldn't see the Volvo yachts in full sail...but that's them on the horizon as seen from the Galway docks.
Long years ago I was involved with him in setting up an Irish branch of The Future in our Hands.
It was not successful. We were before our time. Or, rather, before everyone else's time. I reflected on that, listening to the Taoiseach wittering on about the issues which Richard had addressed so passionately. He's in fashion now, I thought, but dead. God be good to him.
Interesting, these conferences.
A nudge in ribs from the wife/stand-in mistress then alerted me to a woman a few seats up who had beside her a copy of Anna Karenina. She was obviously expecting to have a fair amount of down time.
I found this interesting. The Anna Karenina bit. Because not twenty four hours before I had been writing my new novel in general and in particular writing a few thousand words in which my character Emily Tomkins ( sixteen with long dark hair, you'll love her) is given a present of Anna Karenina by her mother's lover. He's interested in her personal development. (But I haven't got to that bit yet.)
This rather eerie confluence of events struck me as being, well, rather eerie. My mate Mystic Michael says such things happen because of the holistic nature of the universe. He could be right.
After the speeches we were approached by a functionary who invited us to lunch with the Taoiseach. He didn't really want us at the lunch for the Taoiseach, just wanted to butter up the star turn, namely the son/investmnent banker who had flown in from afar with hundreds of millions of other people's money to splash around. Little did the apparachik know that the same son wouldn't want his disreputable parents at the lunch anyway.Lest we disgrace him.
Couldn't and didn't go anyway. Had an appointment to meet my mate John the Polymath. Met him and had hot dogs and drove, not home, but to Dublin. We had a full social diary that weekend and were headed for a barbecue in a rather elegant house on the southside. Many of the guests were people from a past that was interesting but must remain unrecorded. Being my age they were all too old for me so I talked to one of their daughters, as a sort of exercise in time travel. In that she reminded me of her mother as of twenty years ago.
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I didn't actually go there to hear the Taoiseach. But I heard him anyway. He gave his speech in a large conference tent in Galway.
The Volvo Ocean Race was in town.
I didn't actually go to Galway to see the Volvo Ocean Race yachts but there they were anyway. And very impressive they were too. Not actually having a boat...(haven't had a boat for twenty years, and that a mere Enterprise dinghy in DunLaoghaire)...not actually having a boat I couldn't see the Volvo yachts in full sail...but that's them on the horizon as seen from the Galway docks.
And that's the wife/stand-in mistress. (She's had her hair cut). We weren't in Galway to hear the Taoiseach or to see the yachts, we were there to meet a son.
The particular son, being the son of this writer and his wife/stand-in mistress, both perhaps 'alternative' and somewhat eccentric, is, naturally enough, a major player in international investment banking. This is what happens, parenting-wise. You try to bring them up right and proper and they end up managing sovereign wealth funds. He had flown in from afar and we, proud parents, had driven to Galway in the (eleven year old) car. (In the unlikely event that same son reads this blog, please note contents of the previous parentheses). Anyway we went there to listen to him at the sustainability conference. (It all comes together, eventually). He spoke with flair and humour and was quite impressive.
Though he was lucky. Comparison wise. Because he spoke after the Taoiseach...who didn't speak with flair and humour and wasn't that impressive. Wellmeaning enough, he was borderline woegeous. And, I admit, in all honesty, listening to him didn't occupy the fullness of my mind and I used some spare available capacity in remembering Richard Douthwaite. Long years ago I was involved with him in setting up an Irish branch of The Future in our Hands.
It was not successful. We were before our time. Or, rather, before everyone else's time. I reflected on that, listening to the Taoiseach wittering on about the issues which Richard had addressed so passionately. He's in fashion now, I thought, but dead. God be good to him.
Interesting, these conferences.
I noted that the guy sitting in front of us was surreptitiously reading a newspaper DURING PAT RABBITTE'S SPEECH ! But it was the Financial Times so I suppose that's OK.
A nudge in ribs from the wife/stand-in mistress then alerted me to a woman a few seats up who had beside her a copy of Anna Karenina. She was obviously expecting to have a fair amount of down time.
I found this interesting. The Anna Karenina bit. Because not twenty four hours before I had been writing my new novel in general and in particular writing a few thousand words in which my character Emily Tomkins ( sixteen with long dark hair, you'll love her) is given a present of Anna Karenina by her mother's lover. He's interested in her personal development. (But I haven't got to that bit yet.)
This rather eerie confluence of events struck me as being, well, rather eerie. My mate Mystic Michael says such things happen because of the holistic nature of the universe. He could be right.
After the speeches we were approached by a functionary who invited us to lunch with the Taoiseach. He didn't really want us at the lunch for the Taoiseach, just wanted to butter up the star turn, namely the son/investmnent banker who had flown in from afar with hundreds of millions of other people's money to splash around. Little did the apparachik know that the same son wouldn't want his disreputable parents at the lunch anyway.Lest we disgrace him.
Couldn't and didn't go anyway. Had an appointment to meet my mate John the Polymath. Met him and had hot dogs and drove, not home, but to Dublin. We had a full social diary that weekend and were headed for a barbecue in a rather elegant house on the southside. Many of the guests were people from a past that was interesting but must remain unrecorded. Being my age they were all too old for me so I talked to one of their daughters, as a sort of exercise in time travel. In that she reminded me of her mother as of twenty years ago.
The daughter was a a Canadian (we get around, us DunLaoghaire folks), worked for an NGO and had recently returned from Zambia. We discussed that, myself having lived in Zambia. As mentioned, we get around, us DunLaoghaire folks. Lovely country, laid back people. (Zambia, not DunLaoghaire). But what really interested me was that as I discussed matters such as Africa/Development/Gender Issues I was really thinking of an invitation in my pocket for a forthcoming function. It was from my mate the Ambassador of Belgium to Ireland. An evening of Stella Artois and Leonidas chocolates in Ailesbury Road. (They go as well together as do the Flemings and Walloons). I wasn't actually going to go, life being increasingly short, but it was interesting to have the invite in my pocket as I talked to the young woman from Zambia.
And why?
Because when I lived in Zambia up there on the Congo border, right across the river in the Congo lived the presentday Belgian ambassador to Ireland. I didn't know him there or then but he told me this when I first met him in a Dublin pub. People who have lived on either side of the Congo border have a certain affinity, not to mention a certain ability in self preservation. That's why he invites me to the Belgian National Day. That or he wants to dilute the Belgian thing a bit. But of course none of that's the point, as is fairly usual in my blogs. The point is...weird connections...
And so all that fascinates me.
Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina.
Zambia and Zambia.
I have a Zambian friend in Boston. If I find out she has been reading Anna Karenina this week then...well...I dunno really.
Thursday, 28 June 2012
I Met This Man and...
What a difference a week makes!
There I was last week spending time with a beautiful woman in Dublin. See last week's blog. And here I am this week spending time with a different (beautiful) woman in the West of Ireland.
Who says life is not good?
Snap out of the misery, people!
I have nothing but good news.
Firstly, I have bought a new barbecue.
Secondly, my in-box emails are positive. My much loved in Australia is there, not with great news, but any news from her is good. A woman I knew as a schoolgirl is also there, she's a Dublin journalist. I think she must be my oldest friend. Not in years but in length of time hanging on in there. When we meet as we sometimes do we relive our teenage days. And look into each other's eyes and wonder why we didn't...whatever it was we didn't do... and it's too late now. Proust probably had an insight into that stuff.
And there among my emails someone new to me, another journalist, Aoife Drew. An Irish journalist living in Paris. She wants to read a book of mine. Yes I want her to do that too. Because hopefully she will write about it and then other people will want to read the same book. Though, of course, it does depend on what she writes.
All in lap of Gods. It'll be lively anyway.
Why are all the bounciest Irish journalists and media folks living outside Ireland? Yes Aoife tells me she is married to a Frenchman, so in her case that's an explanation. But that can't possibly be the explanation for the mass migration of the brightest and the best. We can't all marry Frenchmen. Could the reason be that the Irish media and literary world is infested with dullards and mediocrities and back scratchers who won't give way to anyone else? Could very well be.
Could very well be.
So, enough of that.
I met this man and...
He approached me on the pier of the small unevolved west of Ireland town where I am well known as that ^%&*%" who writes. We conversed generally. I have found that it's always best to converse generally with men who approach one on piers. Having grown up in DunLaoghaire, which has a very long pier, I reckon I learned this at an early age.
He moved on from the general to ask me about my work, (being from out of town he didn't know me as that ^%&*%" who writes)...like what did I do for a crust, he asked?
"I'm in the book business," I told him, reluctantly. Very good reason for this reluctance. I often think I should change my stated career to rat catcher. Few people would say "good, my house is full of rats, can you help?" But at any mention of book publishing they say...Yes you know what they say. Read on.
"You mean you publish books?" he asked.
"Well I am involved with...a book publishing business..." I added, vaguely, even more reluctantly.
"I've written a book of poetry," he told me.
Yes that's what people say. Though sometimes they've written a novel. I have an all purpose answer.
"Aahh," I say, "not our area, at all at all. At all."
"Why not?"
Well. No-one reads poetry. And I like to eat. And spend my time with beautiful women in Dublin and the West of Ireland. Neither of these activities would be possible if I published poetry. Because I wouldn't have any money. And any spare time I had would be used up in dealing with poetry mafia apparachiks like Joe Woods and Peter Sirr. And Joe Woods threw me off the Poetry Ireland Forum for mentioning Cathal O Searchaigh in an unfavourable light. And Peter Sirr is descended from the secret policman who arrested Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1798. (Yes I have a long memory). But worse, worse than that. They both do poetry readings. And even worse. They do poetry readings of THEIR OWN POETRY. And this depresses me. I don't need to be depressed by others. I can do that all by myself.
Oh. I've done it already.
Better end right here.
There I was last week spending time with a beautiful woman in Dublin. See last week's blog. And here I am this week spending time with a different (beautiful) woman in the West of Ireland.
Who says life is not good?
Snap out of the misery, people!
I have nothing but good news.
Firstly, I have bought a new barbecue.
Secondly, my in-box emails are positive. My much loved in Australia is there, not with great news, but any news from her is good. A woman I knew as a schoolgirl is also there, she's a Dublin journalist. I think she must be my oldest friend. Not in years but in length of time hanging on in there. When we meet as we sometimes do we relive our teenage days. And look into each other's eyes and wonder why we didn't...whatever it was we didn't do... and it's too late now. Proust probably had an insight into that stuff.
And there among my emails someone new to me, another journalist, Aoife Drew. An Irish journalist living in Paris. She wants to read a book of mine. Yes I want her to do that too. Because hopefully she will write about it and then other people will want to read the same book. Though, of course, it does depend on what she writes.
All in lap of Gods. It'll be lively anyway.
Why are all the bounciest Irish journalists and media folks living outside Ireland? Yes Aoife tells me she is married to a Frenchman, so in her case that's an explanation. But that can't possibly be the explanation for the mass migration of the brightest and the best. We can't all marry Frenchmen. Could the reason be that the Irish media and literary world is infested with dullards and mediocrities and back scratchers who won't give way to anyone else? Could very well be.
Could very well be.
So, enough of that.
I met this man and...
He approached me on the pier of the small unevolved west of Ireland town where I am well known as that ^%&*%" who writes. We conversed generally. I have found that it's always best to converse generally with men who approach one on piers. Having grown up in DunLaoghaire, which has a very long pier, I reckon I learned this at an early age.
He moved on from the general to ask me about my work, (being from out of town he didn't know me as that ^%&*%" who writes)...like what did I do for a crust, he asked?
"I'm in the book business," I told him, reluctantly. Very good reason for this reluctance. I often think I should change my stated career to rat catcher. Few people would say "good, my house is full of rats, can you help?" But at any mention of book publishing they say...Yes you know what they say. Read on.
"You mean you publish books?" he asked.
"Well I am involved with...a book publishing business..." I added, vaguely, even more reluctantly.
"I've written a book of poetry," he told me.
Yes that's what people say. Though sometimes they've written a novel. I have an all purpose answer.
"Aahh," I say, "not our area, at all at all. At all."
"Why not?"
Well. No-one reads poetry. And I like to eat. And spend my time with beautiful women in Dublin and the West of Ireland. Neither of these activities would be possible if I published poetry. Because I wouldn't have any money. And any spare time I had would be used up in dealing with poetry mafia apparachiks like Joe Woods and Peter Sirr. And Joe Woods threw me off the Poetry Ireland Forum for mentioning Cathal O Searchaigh in an unfavourable light. And Peter Sirr is descended from the secret policman who arrested Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1798. (Yes I have a long memory). But worse, worse than that. They both do poetry readings. And even worse. They do poetry readings of THEIR OWN POETRY. And this depresses me. I don't need to be depressed by others. I can do that all by myself.
Oh. I've done it already.
Better end right here.
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
I Met This Woman and...
Yes, many interesting things in this writer's life start with that line...I met this woman and...
However there are lots of run of the mill things that do not start with that line. And there are several extremely irritating things that do not start with that line. And one of that latter variety starts with this:
I went to Dalkey.
I went to Dalkey to see Michael the Mystic, my friend and sometime editor.
The Dalkey Book Festival was on. It seemed to be headquartered in the now closed down and lamented Exchange Bookshop. This struck me as akin to celebrating one's wedding night in the funeral home in which one lies lifeless in the box. But whatever. I avoided the festival. Last year I commented wryly upon it and the chief barker David McWilliams emailed me to tell me I was a sad bastard, or words to that effect. I avoided the festival and decided to move on.
Unfortunetly I moved on past this signboard.
Ah, I thought, good to see at least those two Irish media commentators confessing. But not so good to see the sign was pointing in the wrong direction. That blue door is in fact the Masonic Hall,( people like me born in Dalkey know these things). Holy Mother ! Can John Waters and David McWilliams not get the simplest things right?
Answer: No.
Moving on again... I made my way along Castle Street past Bloomsday sort of activities.
I knocked on the door of the residence of Michael the Mystic.
"Ah," he said, as he opened, "I've bad news."
"What's that?" I said, expecting something about the fabric of the cosmos shattering and a time warp dropping us into an alternative universe of absolute horror. Something Dante-ish with added California. And maybe a bit of Mayan cosmology.
"I've lost that manuscript of yours."
"Expand?"
"I left it on the DART. Come in."
I went in. Yes he'd been reading the manuscript on the DART and left it behind on the seat like it was a METRO throwaway newspaper.
I said "you mean some gobshite in Bray is reading my private draft material."
He said "don't worry they can't read in Bray."
People in Dalkey say things like that.
He gave me a beer. His beautiful daughter arrived. She calmed me down. Beautiful young women have that effect on me. Strangely they used do the opposite. I must be getting old.
So that's the waffle over.
Now for I met this woman and...I met this woman and...and I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery on a matter of genealogical interest.
Yeah right.
I cannot tell a lie. I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery because I met her on the internet and our communications there revealed her to be a very interesting and attractive woman indeed. And I wanted to meet her in the flesh...and so I met her, there among the bones.
She arrived and didn't look remotely like the photo she had sent. And yes this can be a good or bad thing. In her case it was good. (Though I suppose it is a canny bit of feminine wile to send a photo of yourself at not your best...but enough of lookism.)
We didn't find her ancestral grave. But I did find my lost manuscript, in a manner of speaking.
Because that is a book in which the man guy meets the woman guy in a graveyard. And in the early chapter he stands there leaning against a grave stone, watching her in the distance, watching her as she moves from grave to grave, bending over to read the names. And in Glasnevin Cemetery I now found myself doing precisely that, watching the woman doing precisely that. And suddenly remembered...hey this is in my book !
How did I write that before I experienced it?
No, I didn't get any answers.
And we didn't find her ancestral grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.
So we went down the road to the Botanic Gardens. And strolled a few hours away among the lanes beneath the trees. And no we didn't find the ancestral grave there either.
So we went to The Bleeding Horse in Camden Street.
No, the ancestral grave was nowhere to be seen.
But at that stage we'd kind of moved on from genealogy.
As mentioned...I met this woman and...
However there are lots of run of the mill things that do not start with that line. And there are several extremely irritating things that do not start with that line. And one of that latter variety starts with this:
I went to Dalkey.
I went to Dalkey to see Michael the Mystic, my friend and sometime editor.
The Dalkey Book Festival was on. It seemed to be headquartered in the now closed down and lamented Exchange Bookshop. This struck me as akin to celebrating one's wedding night in the funeral home in which one lies lifeless in the box. But whatever. I avoided the festival. Last year I commented wryly upon it and the chief barker David McWilliams emailed me to tell me I was a sad bastard, or words to that effect. I avoided the festival and decided to move on.
Unfortunetly I moved on past this signboard.
Ah, I thought, good to see at least those two Irish media commentators confessing. But not so good to see the sign was pointing in the wrong direction. That blue door is in fact the Masonic Hall,( people like me born in Dalkey know these things). Holy Mother ! Can John Waters and David McWilliams not get the simplest things right?
Answer: No.
Moving on again... I made my way along Castle Street past Bloomsday sort of activities.
I knocked on the door of the residence of Michael the Mystic.
"Ah," he said, as he opened, "I've bad news."
"What's that?" I said, expecting something about the fabric of the cosmos shattering and a time warp dropping us into an alternative universe of absolute horror. Something Dante-ish with added California. And maybe a bit of Mayan cosmology.
"I've lost that manuscript of yours."
"Expand?"
"I left it on the DART. Come in."
I went in. Yes he'd been reading the manuscript on the DART and left it behind on the seat like it was a METRO throwaway newspaper.
I said "you mean some gobshite in Bray is reading my private draft material."
He said "don't worry they can't read in Bray."
People in Dalkey say things like that.
He gave me a beer. His beautiful daughter arrived. She calmed me down. Beautiful young women have that effect on me. Strangely they used do the opposite. I must be getting old.
So that's the waffle over.
Now for I met this woman and...I met this woman and...and I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery on a matter of genealogical interest.
Yeah right.
I cannot tell a lie. I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery because I met her on the internet and our communications there revealed her to be a very interesting and attractive woman indeed. And I wanted to meet her in the flesh...and so I met her, there among the bones.
She arrived and didn't look remotely like the photo she had sent. And yes this can be a good or bad thing. In her case it was good. (Though I suppose it is a canny bit of feminine wile to send a photo of yourself at not your best...but enough of lookism.)
We didn't find her ancestral grave. But I did find my lost manuscript, in a manner of speaking.
Because that is a book in which the man guy meets the woman guy in a graveyard. And in the early chapter he stands there leaning against a grave stone, watching her in the distance, watching her as she moves from grave to grave, bending over to read the names. And in Glasnevin Cemetery I now found myself doing precisely that, watching the woman doing precisely that. And suddenly remembered...hey this is in my book !
How did I write that before I experienced it?
No, I didn't get any answers.
And we didn't find her ancestral grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.
So we went down the road to the Botanic Gardens. And strolled a few hours away among the lanes beneath the trees. And no we didn't find the ancestral grave there either.
So we went to The Bleeding Horse in Camden Street.
No, the ancestral grave was nowhere to be seen.
But at that stage we'd kind of moved on from genealogy.
As mentioned...I met this woman and...
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