Tá Mac-na-hÓige Slán ?

It all hangs together.
The priest conducting  the ceremony is Father Cormac McIlraith.
Ah hah, did I not long years ago live in a house in Sandycove beside an engineer by the name of Declan McIlraith? I did, and he (my bean cheile H whispers beside me) is brother to the priest.
Not only that.
The First Holy Communicants are drawn from several schools in the Booterstown area of County Dublin. St Andrew's. All Saints National School, and Booterstown National School.
Ah hah again. Did not the father of one particular communicant attend the precursor of that Booterstown National School, then situated beside Monkstown Church?
He did, and he has flown in from the Middle East for the ceremomy. Just as I, his father, have trained in from the Far West for the ceremony.
It all hangs together.
The child communicant is my grandson.
A moment of reflection appropriate to the occasion.
First conclusion. I am now old enough to have a grandchild of first communication  age.
Develop that reflection...do I remember my own First Communion?
Well in so far as I remember a crocodile of kids being marched along Sandycove in the rain and into Glasthule Church, I do. The rest is silence.
Carry on...do I remember the First Communions of my own four children?
Three of them yes, because they would have been as gaeilge, those particular kids having been brought up in the Irish language. But as for the older, he from the Middle East, tanned in suit, designer sunglasses perched in hair, gazillion dollar watch on wrist, I can't remember his First Communion at all. He did go to a Protestant school, but it must've happened. I may be lax and maybe lapsed, but in First Communions I take a hard Roman Catholic stance. This is my apostolic line in the sand. Once crossed, the whole thing will fall apart.
Today we're all doing our best to see that doesn't happen. 
The ceremony is well thought out, and elegantly organised. Both prayerful and exuberant, it is a happy morning in an unhappy world.  
At the bunfight afterwards I meet an interesting and intelligent Frenchman, a schoolteacher in Dublin. We have a wideranging conversation, among the topics raised being Moliere and Racine.
Ok. I know moliere all about Racine. And it is a racine certainty that I know even less about Moliere. But why let that get between oneself and a good intellectual discussion?
No reason.

Another question. Why entitle this posting Tá Mac-na-hÓige Slán, and what does it mean? Well I can certainly translate the phrase, but I cannot tell the meaning. It translates as "The Virgin's Son is Safe". And its origins are in the old Irish story about the wife of one of the people involved in Christ's crucifixion, how she said that Jesus had as much chance as rising from the dead as that cock cooking there in the pot. At which the cock jumped out of the pot saying... "The Virgin's Son is Safe!" That is the translation and the explanation.

The meaning is another question entirely.

To answer...

People asked...what happened the other postings on other topics...since website reorganised...

Well...they're available from here...

http://www.conankennedy.com/What.html

Girl on Train

Oh well, there went March.
 Apologies to the Dear Followers. Have been away writing a book. Well, not precisely away, in the sense of being off the island, just away from this particular virtual place.
 Book in question is fiction, and has turned out to be very interesting. Yes, I can hear the mutters out there, that makes a change. So I'll elaborate, it has turned out to be very interesting to me, as a writer. Writing for a living can be very boring but...this time...different.
So, to break a lifetime’s veto, something about the job of writing follows.
 It appears to be a generally held feeling, and no doubt reasonably so, that a writer's life experiences, his/her understandings and observations and lunacies, well that they  go into a sort of cement mixer situation in the brain, get churned about a bit, and at a later date emerge as fiction, as events, personalities, characterisations and so on and so forth on the printed page. The belief is that in effect there is a progression from this 'real' world to the artificial/fictional world of the book. And furthermore, that this progression is linear and goes from the past, through the present, to the future.
Not so with this book I'm working on.
Elaborate…
OK. For reasons quite unclear to me now, my main woman character comes from County Offaly. My main man is a Dubliner ...and the bits of relevance to this particular elaboration are…
 In the book my man character is travelling from Athlone to Dublin on train. Train stops at Clara County Offaly. Main woman character gets on. Sits beside him. The rest is 100,000 words of love and sex and travels to exotic places like Toronto and Perth. Or something along those lines.
Unfortunately the phrase "love and sex and travels to exotic places like Toronto and Perth" does not actually add up to a book, there's slightly more work involved. So a few days ago I thought I'd better do a bit of this work.
  I was in Dublin and told myself I'll hop down to Clara on the train, check out the journey and Clara and all that, and come back and hit the keyboard.
The first half went well. Although it was raining in Clara, a woegeous little place of shops to let and all pervading gloom,  I did get the picture. I could see why my main woman character was heading to exotic places.
Thing about my main woman. She's a musician. And that day (in the book) she is carrying a guitar on the station platform, awaiting the train and her destiny, the bloke from Dublin.
He's already on the train. She waits on the platform.
The rest is, as mentioned,  100,000 words of love and sex and travels to exotic places like Toronto and Perth. Or something along those lines.
All this was already written in the book as I traipsed back up in the rain from the town to get the train back to Dublin, my wet notebook brimming with interesting info.
It was two o'clock or thereabouts..
The platform was empty.
Then about four or five minutes before the train arrived I saw her, a young woman coming on to the platform...a young woman carrying a guitar.
Freaked, I was, yes I think that's the word. It’s all very well for one's characters to come alive, but to actually physically join one on Clara Station platform is another thing altogether.
I watched her warily.
She didn't actually look like my character. Ok she was the right age, early twenties, for the incident in the book, but she wasn't the woman. She was just a young woman, with a guitar. Whereas my woman in the book stands out, she is very good looking. (Writing is a lonely job. Might as well write about a goodlooking woman as a plain.)
The train was crowded and the guitar carrying woman vanished, and I just sat down any old place. The any old place turned out to be right opposite a young woman who did look like the character in the book. Right age, colour hair, right looks. Maybe even slightly too goodlooking for the character. And also, whilst my character is a civil servant, this one turned out to be a student at TCD.  Or so I learned when I bullied her away from her laptop to engage in conversation.
We got on quite well. Apart from her yawning now and then. Maybe she was tired. We discussed life's hopes and dreams, well, her ones. Being a writer I don't really have many hopes and dreams available for discussion. She turned out to have several interlocking zany philosophies and proposed lifestyles. Many of these were incompatible.  And life will wear her down.  But she was very clever, laughed a lot, and underneath had some kind of steely understated feminism. As the editor of the Diaries of Mary Hayden, I'm very fond of steely understated feminism. Bottom line she was very likeable. Even admirable I suppose. And she told me she wrote poetry and liked Kurt Vonnegut. Just like me !
All in all, if I were younger and less married and less the father of a daughter of the same age...well...this would add up to a different story....etcetera.
I told her about the writing business, mentioned a book I'd written about my wife. In response to this she took off her top. (Yes you did!). No doubt in some kind of weird unconscious primitive female body language thing. Or alternatively it could have been the temperature in the train. I prefer to believe the former. Because she also fiddled with her hair and played with her bare upper arms. (I’m a writer, I notice stuff!) Good sign all that. (If one were younger and less married and less the father of a daughter of the same age etcetera etcetera).
But the point…underneath the sweater she wore a teeshirt. It had writing on it, saying what I do not know or clearly see.I tend not to stare at the writing on young women's teeshirts, it can be misconstrued. But the point here is that my woman character also wore a teeshirt with writing on  it.
The more I talked to my new friend the more I realised I was actually talking to my female character. I had actually written phrases she used. And given my character her little gestures. I found this pretty damn strange. If I had met this girl before I wrote the character it would've been OK, I would merely have been taking a shortcut into getting someone down on the page. But I hadn't, and I didn't.
Approaching Heuston Station we exchanged emails. For what purpose I have not the remotest idea, doubtless time will tell. We then established a pact, an arrangement. When we got to the station we would both go our seperate ways, not go down into the city together. I took her hand and shook it, telling her that while we could very well meet in cyberspace, I would like to have had some physical contact beforehand. To confirm that she was real, so to speak. Then she went her way and I went mine.
I watched her and remembered how I had described my man character parting from the woman in the book. I quote…

She nodded, and then she turned away. Yes, he noted, she did do that with some kind of flourish. He watched her walking away, some statement in her sway. He watched her walking all the way down Dawson Street, watched her as she weaved herself into the crowd, into the fabric of the crowd like a stitch of some particular colour. Now you see me, now you don’t. Lost her outside Waterstones, a closed up bankrupt bookshop. He thought of the empty shelves in there, and all the vanished books, and all the ghosts of stories.
 
Put that rather well I think. And apart from the Dawson Street and the Waterstones bit, that was the exit of the TCD student.
Later on the Luas platform I did spot my character…oops, sorry, the TCD student…buying her ticket from a machine. But I reckoned that particular chapter of the mysterious story we share was done, and kept my distance.
 That evening I dined with my mystical editor Michael. I told him of this strange event. more or less meeting my character on the train. He said you really don't understand, you're a gobshite. (I think that's an editorial term.) He said it's all about synchronicity. When you're writing you're in a different zone, psychically and timewise. There is no past present future. You have in fact already met that girl, and seen that other girl with the guitar. And used those things in the book...you just think it's linear, it's not...the future is inspiring you…and all that…
But but but...
No buts about it, according to my mystical editor.

ConanK

Selling books...

Thing is, no matter how long you spend at this writing game, you never know what will sell, what won't. Yes I knew my Walk on The Southside would do well...(and my editorial mate Michael The Mystic agreed, though he said only because people are vicarious!)...well it has done well, and continues to sell...and I continue to get personal communications from happy (vicarious?) readers...like from

Eoghan Harris (of the Sunday Independent)  

judging by the  photos of  H, then and now,  she  was and is a stunner,  my ideal kind of woman and generally a fine thing.  Had I  met her in my prime, when my hair was black and my eyes a blazing blue, I would have made every effort to extricate her from your coils and shown  her a good time. Even now you would be well advised not to drop your guard.

(Hey what's with that 'even now' ???)

Also hear from Gerry Cott (co-founder of The Boomtown Rats), he  describes the book as 

           like a piece of music from which I extrapolate context, culture and influences. like a     
           good tune, your book will stick with me for some time to come.

Well let's hope the follow up...prequel actually, does as well. Here's the cover. Details on the website.

Funerals...and Fame

Sunday, time to think of the immortal soul. Of death, and funerals, and that.

Funerals. We don't  really do them well,  the funerals of famous folk.

This week I caught a TV glimpse of the funeral of David Kelly, the actor. And then later caught a glimpse of the singer Whitney Houston...both celebrities  being sent to their eternal rest. 

Neither glimpse was...well...entirely satisfactory really.

Firstly...David Kelly the actor...no-one really turned up at his funeral...and I wondered why?

For godssakes he was in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp!

Myself and the tv camera looked down the aisle of a sparsely populated church. It was the sort of shot that would've come in handy for any RTE program on the decline of the church. (They'll probably hold it on file just for that purpose). Granted it was a large church. But large the attendance was certainly not.

It was a bit embarassing really, even at the distance from TV land. It was a relief when the producer quickly agreed with this analysis and honed his camera in on Michael Colgan eulogising. Not that much relief, in all honesty, because Michael Colgan is...well...Michael Colgan. But he does have talent, we must grant him that. It takes some theatrical ability to look smug and very pleased with oneself whilst giving such an oration...but Colgan was well up to the task.

So this was pretty embarassing too and the camera fled, and wandered around to seek out well known faces in the crowd. There were some. But not well known in the sense of being...well...current. Just old folks who used be famous. Their expressions realising that no-one was going to turn up for their funerals either.

It's a disconnect, methinks. Between the hype and the reality. Obviously to the arts community and the media generally the likes of David Kelly are incredibly important. Yes of course he was an agreeable sort of cove, a gentleman and a competent actor, and he deserves respect in life and death. But he deserves no more respect in life and death than any of us. And this is the problem. The arts community and the media generally feel that people like Kelly are actually more important than the run of folks.

Because?  Because he is one of them and they think that they are more important than the run of folks. And so they hype up the news of the passing of one of their own, tripping over each other to grab microphones and column inches. Unfortunately the run of folks dont share that particular view. And hence the empty churches at the funerals of the famous.

So that's that. But secondly. About Whitney Houston. Well there was no bother with crowds there. They turned up. In their droves. A beautiful woman and a beautiful singer, she struck one as being a nice and a good person. But a person who had led a troubled life and died tragically.  But whoever she was she deserved a good send off and she got one.

Little niggle though. Whether she deserved to be compared to Mother Theresa, as she was in a eulogy, well that seems kind of a different question really.
I sort of lost the thread round there.

And doth my lesson endeth here?

Not really.

There was a third funeral this week, that of a young girl shot dead in Dublin. A traveller, she was given a typical and elaborate traveller funeral in London. This was very well covered by the media. Too well covered. Because the coverage did have an air of My Big Fat Gypsy Funeral about it, ie exploitative. One felt the elbows of smartassed tv producers nudging our ribs. And subliminal messages emanating.
Look at these people, they're different than us.
Thing is, they're not.
They live, and celebrate.
And die, and mourn.

Martin Sheen & Me

Not everyone can say this...but Martin Sheen (I read) is playing a priest in a new movie, Stella Days, to be launched in Ireland in March...and the priest he plays is....da dum...yes, the priest he plays is the priest who married me...the priest in question being Fr Paddy Cahill of Borrisokane, Co Tipperary...and the woman in question (whom he married me to) is on the cover of this very book.

And folks can read all about her, me, and Martin Sheen...oops, I mean Fr Paddy Cahill...by going to my website, finding the book, and clicking that PayPal button...

Just thought I'd get that out there.

It all hangs together in some strange sort of way.

Yes I'm having a quiet day.

Tubbercurry & Toronto

Just when you lose faith in Ireland and all its doings...which is more or less most mornings...and evenings...just about then something good happens...meet someone...hear something...see something...that sort of good. Which brings me to Tubbercurry. Largish town in mountains between...well, between lots of places. Ballina and Sligo and Boyle and Charlestown, places like that. Handy to Knock Airport.
Nice town. Was once on the railway and might be again some distant day if West On Track ever gets there. But sure as hell I won't be on that train. My Toronto Son might, he's 22, so he just might. Reckon he'll be pretty damn old, but make it? He might. Maybe his children? Whatever.
He did make  it to Tubbercurry this week with me. But by motorcar. En route to Toronto. Not to Knock Airport, no, Knock doesn't do Toronto, but en route to Dublin from our fastness in the west.
I'm not often in Tubbercurry. It's not on a direct route between Fastness in The West and Apartment in The City...but now and then when I need to breathe that mountain air and see Lough Talt, I drive that way. But this visit was nothing to do with mountain air or Lough Talt. It was all to do with H, the wife. She had a client to track down in the Tubbercurry area.
The plan: She would leave her husband and son in the town and drive into the hills to find that client. Then, that done, she would return to the town, pick us up, and we'd all drive on to Dublin. Very efficient woman. Not that that prevented her being defamed/libelled and traduced by a Sunday Independent journalist a week or so back. (You know who you are Ciara Dwyer).
Yes, efficient wife, a writer needs one. Very good looking woman too, same wife. I've lived with her so long I've forgotten that. But was reminded during the week by Eoghan Harris.  She's a  'stunner', according to that sage/scribe, telling me this and other stuff too embarassing to repeat. What happens in my email stays in my email ! (Much like events on a stag weekend.)  Enough to say he detailed her attractions. All this arising from a hames the Sunday Indo made of reviewing a book of mine, A Walk on The Southside.
I sometimes have my doubts about that newspaper.
The wife's Passat vanished into the mist (it was misty) and the son and I stood on Main Drag Tubbercurry. It was quiet. Too quiet? Probably.
I looked across the road and there it was, a place I knew, remembered. A hostelry. We'll go in there, we decided, have a cup of tea.
It was Killorans, coffee shop and bar.
Coffee shop and bar goes no way towards describing Killorans.Nothing really could describe Killorans. Maybe because it's not actually a place, more like a journey. Down sideways of memory and charm.
I told the son of the place I'd been there fifteen years ago for breakfast. He said "fifteen years...mmmnn...mustn't have been a great breakfast". His mother and I discussed Brendan Shine at some length, Killoran's being a centre of music and entertainment. (As well as coffee shop and bar). She told me about her Downs Syndrome daughter and her dealings (fraught) with the HSE to raise funds for the handicapped of the town. And the same daughter brushed the floor around our table. Smiling. And meaningfully mentioning the forthcoming Valentine's Day to  my Toronto Son.
It was a good place and human. And there's less and less of that to find.
And so the hour passed well.
I thought to myself this is what tourists in Ireland are looking for. But there's less and less to find. And then H the wife came back to collect us. I took a photograph. The rest is history.

We drove on to Dublin.
Toronto Son went out to see his mates. I reckon this involved pizzas and slabs of cheap beer in places that students live in Terenure. He went out with strict injunctions to reappear next morning for important visit. He did reappear next morning. By his demeanour it was obvious that his night before  had involved pizzas and slabs of cheap beer in places that students live in Terenure.
The important visit?
To my sisters, his aunts.
To say my sisters are eccentric is....well...quite right. But then I too am eccentric. Eccentric is good. Cherish the difference. Yes the  instructions to the Toronto Son was that he must visit my sisters/his aunts on his visit from Toronto. It was only right and proper. Childless aunts like visits from nephews. Granted, the converse  doesn't always obtain, but it's only right and proper for the younger generation to..etc etc...
Just to make sure he got there I drove him.
We set off to Greystones. We drove into the relevant housing estate.
It then became surreal.
We saw ahead of us a Garda Presence, by way of car and personnel. A knot of rubberneckers. A tow truck. And a vehicle up a tree in a garden. A particular vehicle with flowers painted on the sides. Yes, one of my sisters is an artist, and drives a particular vehicle with flowers painted on the side. How well she drives it is...hmmnnn...the owner of the garden and that tree may very well be able to fill you in on that.
We lept out of our car, son and I, actually quite shocked. The guard told us that the sister/aunt had been taken away in an ambulance, she too quite shocked, but apart from that...etc. She'd been taken to Loughlinstown Hospital.
Ah, I thought. Being old enough to have known people who referred to it as The Workhouse. Back in the '90's. The 1990's. And workhouse it was. And more or less still is. There's a mass grave in the back garden.
We drove to Loughlinstown Hospital.
Any empty parking spots were labelled doctors, with names of various consultants. The thought did cross my mind as to why those parking bays were all empty? It is mid morning, weekday, busy busy busy...why are all the senior doctors' parking bays empty?
Why am I asking myself stupid rhetorical questions?
Toronto Son and I thus spent most of the day in Loughlinstown A&E Department. There are better ways to spend a day and better places too. But needs must. The country is in freefall. But everyone knows that, so no point in adding words to words.
We drove the sister/aunt home. The garden she'd run into didn't look that great. Particularly with that tree cut down. A feature tree. A mature silver birch. Kind of made the house, really. Pity.
We left Greystones and drove back across the city. Toronto Son said goodbye to his sisters and elderly relatives. And next morning we drove him to the airport. And he said goodbye to his mother (stunner) and to his father (writer). It was five thirty, thereabouts. And his mother (stunner) wiped a tear. And his father (writer) touched her shoulder. And driving silently back towards Sutton I saw a glimmer of dawn beyond Howth in the east.
But it promised no light for the darkness.