tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37096710524773896172024-03-18T21:50:34.410+00:00Charlie Adley - Double VisionDouble Vision ran in the Connacht Tribune and City Tribune from 1992 - 2020.
Along with my latest work, here you'll find Double Vision's archive from 2007-2020. Columns from 1992-2006 are available. Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.comBlogger709125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-11847491792244266602024-03-03T11:52:00.001+00:002024-03-07T10:33:05.747+00:00 What about individual citizens?<p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mpnevYpwaV_datJegMGXRpXE8DG3VFa1Fkxv2gMMBoawqUX7Ic9kGh1yFFRJmT_MpYmRySUFlf_R1B2zSXNMBWE1gjJUvNSXLFSNfxFNQnYXHzfU3TsReHV7ApbVhQtyL3E7tb6AdoPClx4i4JrT686kMDAbZFp_HWITyuYlaA0cSktRQftP8CjFms_o/s3024/IMG_9885.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2745" data-original-width="3024" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mpnevYpwaV_datJegMGXRpXE8DG3VFa1Fkxv2gMMBoawqUX7Ic9kGh1yFFRJmT_MpYmRySUFlf_R1B2zSXNMBWE1gjJUvNSXLFSNfxFNQnYXHzfU3TsReHV7ApbVhQtyL3E7tb6AdoPClx4i4JrT686kMDAbZFp_HWITyuYlaA0cSktRQftP8CjFms_o/s320/IMG_9885.jpg" width="320" /></a></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Referendums in this country used to scare the pants off me.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Can a pregnant woman leave the country? <br />Should a phone number remain illegal? <br />Is the life of a woman as important as the baby she’s carrying in her womb?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Within two decades of those referendum questions, you’d voted through the world’s first plebiscite on Marriage Equality.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s been an exciting privilege to live here over the last 32 years, experiencing this country’s emergence from an oppressed and oppressive past into a modern liberal democracy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">However sometimes it takes an outsider to see what’s going on, and now that Ireland has caught up with the First World on economic and demographic matters, it’s so important that the Irish grasp this chance to change these two Amendments.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">They represent anachronistic evidence of how the Church of Rome played midwife to the birth of Ireland’s republic. They have no place in any country’s constitution.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why on God’s good earth are we asking if a woman’s place is in the home?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why is the Family with a capital F defined as Ireland’s “… natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society … a moral institution … superior to all positive law...”?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because that’s the template the Catholic Church traced over Ireland’s nascent constitution.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is where some of you will write me off as being anti-Catholic Church, and you couldn’t be more wrong.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m delighted that you have your faith, and hope it brings you comfort, but the Church belongs in a church, and not in a nation’s constitution.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tragically, women, carers and lone parents of all genders will continue to serve their families and society with unpaid work, regardless of any so-called protections written into the constitution.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">They must be paid for their work and protected by law, with rights imposed by legislation, constantly updated to be economically relevant and viable, by this and every subsequent government.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What of those like me who do not fit into these parameters of protection? I’m divorced, single, childless, with my non-Irish family living in England.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">If the family remains natural, primary and fundamental, then that’ll leave me and a whole lot of Irish citizens feeling unnatural, secondary and inconsequential.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is it too much to ask that our constitution sees us all as equal individuals? In the 21st century every citizen must matter. Each of us is individually primary, a fundamental and unique part of this nation.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">During the Tiger years I was a Youth Worker in Ballybane, one of the more socioeconomically challenged areas of Galway City.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our project was based in what was then called the Family Resource Centre, a title that left<br />me feeling uneasy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ballybane was the early recipient of immigrants from Africa, many of whom were single.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How would they feel when they saw the wording on the exterior of the building?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why might they feel we were there for them too?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I suggested to the centre director that we change the name, and it became the Community Resource Centre.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I then went door to door, canvassing the local single population, making sure they were made aware that many of the organisations housed under our one roof were there to support them too.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m proud to say I’m now an Irish citizen, so I can vote in this referendum, but where a simple YES and YES should be the order of the day, I wonder if I might just abstain.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">All of us single souls with no family are invisible in this debate, and it’s quite difficult to feel involved. Many immigrants must feel the same.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s such a shame that, just as we have in past referendums, so many rationalise reasons to not vote for positive and necessary change.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our relationships and family have nothing to do with anyone except us.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having grown up in England as a mere subject, in a constitutional monarchy with no written constitution, I rather hoped that a modern republic would care primarily for the rights of each citizen.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s time to cast off the last of these ancient shackles, and allow Ireland to be as unique as its people have always been.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hence yes, I will vote YES and YES, because both changes offer less offence than the previous arcane options.</span><br /><br /><br /> </p><p style="text-align: left;">©Charlie Adley<br />03.03.2024</p><br />Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-91993407843426261782024-02-18T13:32:00.004+00:002024-02-18T17:07:32.329+00:00 Less Top Gun - more Top Bum!<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwEHniU32cyAXEGEyqeeMO_OgSsSlyPQT0RzG3wpCBXzdc3KGh99qiyM8CJ3_9eVBOyCv7NO0Jl3LiTJehsKxSA9Hr-xsl4AaKUaySr_xG6BVxq6-XC6-Q9NUNNP3wag0tlWn7drtX7YHGpmj44ZOaZBdPXu7QQJ-8KuZmYr2GoLUOR3EPcb9Bs6WOIvW3/s640/16757988474_95447ac3f6_z.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="640" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwEHniU32cyAXEGEyqeeMO_OgSsSlyPQT0RzG3wpCBXzdc3KGh99qiyM8CJ3_9eVBOyCv7NO0Jl3LiTJehsKxSA9Hr-xsl4AaKUaySr_xG6BVxq6-XC6-Q9NUNNP3wag0tlWn7drtX7YHGpmj44ZOaZBdPXu7QQJ-8KuZmYr2GoLUOR3EPcb9Bs6WOIvW3/w400-h290/16757988474_95447ac3f6_z.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">One white smear on the ground outside my front door. A few small grey splashes on Joey SX’s windscreen.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Small time poopers but sure signs: Shitting Season has begun.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On census night in 2022 I decided to do my own survey of the local population. Walking around this patch of land I counted seventy two rook nests; magnificent creations, huge and sturdy, swaying high in the soaring old ash trees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Years ago, when I lived on the shores of Lough Corrib, there was a house a mile away, surrounded by crows nest. As I drove past each day I felt a macabre shiver run through me, and gave thanks that I didn’t live so close to that constant cacophonous crawking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">‘Couldn’t live there.’ I thought to myself. ‘It’d just be way too depressing.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Life is constantly surprising, and clichés such as ‘Needs must, when the devil drives’ exist for a reason.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the Spring of 2021, recovering from a life-threatening illness, major surgery and my second house eviction in three years, I had no savings, was too unwell to work, and even if I’d had money, there were no places to rent post-Covid anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was one of my darkest hours, yet the universe provided: I was rescued by a friend who offered me this place as a refuge.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As I moved my boxes into my new home I stopped to look up at the rook-ridden trees. An excellent friend who was helping me move gave wise counsel:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“You’ll have to either phase ‘em out or get into ‘em, because they’re going nowhere.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Between March and June, when Shitting Season is at full splat, you cannot help but feel besieged. By then the birds have built their stupendous nests and hatched their babies, and any feeble-minded notion of sharing the patch with feathery friends disappears.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Any hippyish souls who insist the cwooty wooty birdies are not attacking on purpose, I challenge to stand out there for five minutes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s made extremely clear that humans who live here are nothing but invaders in their territory. We are not welcome, so near to their chicks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Both our cars become covered in guano, to the point where windscreen washers and wipers do not suffice. Truly Disgusting with a capital D. My front door and windows are splattered and squelched with shit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In order to hit the exterior of my gaff, deliberate and highly skilful feats of dive-bombing are performed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Last year the Tom Cruise of the local rook community managed to score a direct lumpy gooey hit on the little square window in my front door. To achieve this, they’d have had to fly low and then shoot up vertically at the very last minute.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not so much Top Gun as Top Bum.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">During Shitting Season we are considered Legitimate Targets if we dare walk anywhere in the vicinity, which proves problematic as I pay my rent by gardening.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On rare and wondrous blue sky Spring days, I am to be found with the hood up on an old anorak, watering or weeding as quickly and efficiently as possible.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Hurrying inside feeling relieved that I escaped their pooh, I discover - in a thoroughly unhygienic and squelchy way - the vile goo on the back lower leg of my jeans.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">How the hell did they manage that? <br />Yuk yuk bloody yuk. <br />And Grrrr.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Phase ‘em out or get in to ‘em, eh? I dare you to achieve either during Peak Shit, but when their babies have fully fledged, sometime around the end of July, they shut the fuck up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Shit free silence.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A few weeks of dozing off in my chair outside, delirious in the afternoon sunshine, bewitched only by the buzz of bees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">From Autumnal to Vernal equinox, Chas’ Caff is open for business. A restaurant that pops-up wherever I live, it supplies seed each morning to the local bird community.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I tried the bird-feeder tree hangers, but within minutes the seed was all spilled out by clever crows, so I gauge how much seed my local gang can chow daily, and throw less on the ground, leaving nothing for the rats.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A constant throughout my life,I glean such joy from this simple activity. I’ve about fifteen hedge sparrows, some blue tits, yellow tits (no great or crested though) and two redbreast robins, who both fly in to my call:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“Mister Robiiiiiiiin….”</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> </i></b>There are finches of many colours, and Mr and Mrs. Blackbird, who delight in taking a bath in the water bowls I put out. On occasion my group is joined by a plump pheasant, stunning in his rainbow finery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Last Spring a pair of collared doves visited daily, and in Autumn there appeared five more, the image of the adult collareds, save for a lack of collars.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My wise friend explained that these were juveniles; maybe even one or two broods fed by the pair of adults who’d dined at my caff. Indeed, as this Winter progressed into Spring, I saw the gradual arrival of greeny-black collars growing on the young ones, so that they were becoming hard to tell apart from their parents.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiar0UubyYE_cJx6SjQ1EAEn7w9ExLzJDGmUHX0qWqIG-CWP-yTQlIY6LVWf739hC63cZSe8KXOSRp0gUEFWEw6mbusY-rv6mDIStRoEsjkbG-yCSdZXgx9jTCaLsWYjC4wZWljB_5R3ZwL75we0B_1Dn_IJb5b9p0yIkj3qxcddLloGB-eHpWphoWdmT1C/s4032/IMG_9866.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiar0UubyYE_cJx6SjQ1EAEn7w9ExLzJDGmUHX0qWqIG-CWP-yTQlIY6LVWf739hC63cZSe8KXOSRp0gUEFWEw6mbusY-rv6mDIStRoEsjkbG-yCSdZXgx9jTCaLsWYjC4wZWljB_5R3ZwL75we0B_1Dn_IJb5b9p0yIkj3qxcddLloGB-eHpWphoWdmT1C/w480-h640/IMG_9866.jpg" width="480" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Late arrivals at Chas' Caff: adult collared dove, young 'un with only a tiny bit of collar, a few sparrows and a rook...</i><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They show their auld folks no respect. There is mayhem aplenty as all seven fight over the food. The sparrows seems more placid and peace-loving, while the tits and robins are vicious, often spending more time attacking each other than eating the seed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The whole bunch have developed some kind of pavlovian response to the sound of my kitchen tap. They know I will go outside a few times as I clean out the fire and empty the ash, so they wait until I start the dishes to plunge down and feast.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Recently I’ve noticed that they’re all waiting in the shrubs as I emerge in the morning. Now that it’s light by eight, it appears to them that breakfast is late, their circadian rhythms frustrated by my adherence to human time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Much as I love my birdy crew, I’m not sure that I’d choose to live surrounded by seventy two rook nests.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, doing that has been a revelation. I’ve happily adapted to a situation that, in the past, I’d sworn I couldn’t cope with.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Life is constantly surprising. At the tender range of 63, I’m delighted to discover I’m capable of far greater acceptance than I ever imagined.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Where other creatures’ lives interact with my own, I now know that all is possible, as long as you don’t try to rule the roost. <br /><br /></span><br /><br />©Charlie Adley<br />18.02.2024</p><br /><br /></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-64531674656420250102024-01-11T14:50:00.001+00:002024-01-11T14:50:53.392+00:00Thank you Winter. Don’t listen to the others. I love you. <p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwN-JKKQVbRHlTss-5LfaZZpMGt-kekDr7tx9a6kGTFtYC7fMHhuCnT3seNjbrJT9yuycDmB1hcCe6W8LkxBt2i87WwaviqBgvw0qiuwStDwARkPqLXm_HeO68TcmUySHZqTlakWCVBebs/s1600/IMG_1390.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwN-JKKQVbRHlTss-5LfaZZpMGt-kekDr7tx9a6kGTFtYC7fMHhuCnT3seNjbrJT9yuycDmB1hcCe6W8LkxBt2i87WwaviqBgvw0qiuwStDwARkPqLXm_HeO68TcmUySHZqTlakWCVBebs/s320/IMG_1390.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>
<span style="font-size: large;">Waking to the sound of no rain hammering my bedroom windows, I turn on the lamp.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">6:43</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Above me silence reigns, where last week the wind played a violin concerto, as waves of rain smashed violently onto the roof. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The mighty old ash trees that surround me here reveal by the pitch of their howl the energy of the storm. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I see stars through the velux window.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Splendid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Clear means icy, frosty, the end of the nasturtiums at last. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are countless downsides to being a writer, but having to get out of bed while it’s still dark isn’t one of them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Propping
up a pillow behind my head I reach for the doorstop of a hardback that
has sustained and entertained me for two weeks now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What luxury!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For
years I commuted into London, physically hurling my body at packed tube
trains, just as the doors started to close, so that my impact would
allow me to squeeze into the space between glass and wedged workers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No more.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVQ9QfeXEWoYmtyd2W1Y-znHrM-338MEoyRAZsDgNtSZCenLXt7-ZYNN001JXtI_oCiPupTGOwEl8tF2fn3w0u_sUtcZ3p8LJ4h-oL2sbeQSSz9L8wwzFuWnVNAvPI9hoCPTv1TFK7HYZ/s1600/IMG_4478.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVQ9QfeXEWoYmtyd2W1Y-znHrM-338MEoyRAZsDgNtSZCenLXt7-ZYNN001JXtI_oCiPupTGOwEl8tF2fn3w0u_sUtcZ3p8LJ4h-oL2sbeQSSz9L8wwzFuWnVNAvPI9hoCPTv1TFK7HYZ/s320/IMG_4478.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No
need, reason or desire to leave the house. Just get up, do my
stretches, make a fire, have breakfast and go to my office. There I can
sit and write as long as I want to, because outside it’s
freezing/lashing/blowing a gale/winter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Apart from housework, there is nothing else I can do today.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Good writing weather: that’s what I call it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Lovely.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3mFGfjuIOsQ-DB0c83iTjk6xU-RuSGMOwVfBJJSS7_qr5oa4XaTgTzHceGsbClHv_h9QmVZx5R0QhcYraMSH3yZkprlt_NYgH4DBfNwlCQvLLZJNpPGMO_h_1xPwf6Tot1DKmx_4_JRNi/s1600/IMG_4428.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3mFGfjuIOsQ-DB0c83iTjk6xU-RuSGMOwVfBJJSS7_qr5oa4XaTgTzHceGsbClHv_h9QmVZx5R0QhcYraMSH3yZkprlt_NYgH4DBfNwlCQvLLZJNpPGMO_h_1xPwf6Tot1DKmx_4_JRNi/s320/IMG_4428.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">God
knows what other poor souls who live rural lives do on days like this.
Sometimes being a scribbler feels like a blessing, because I’m condemned
to neither loneliness nor Loose Women.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Without the writing Winter would send me even more doolally than I already am.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ireland
has produced so many writers, because instead of going on merry social
jaunts, we’re forced by the rain to stay inside; to apply our madness to
writing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Others
warn me of the dangers of isolation, but I experience way more
craziness out there in the human world, than here in my solitude.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Exchanging
pleasantries with shop workers or howyas on the street inevitably
entails listening to them giving out something rotten about the wind and
rain.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They
can take the cold, and love the sunshine. Oh they’ll take anything,
except that rain, the wind and the rain. They just can’t bear it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I nod and smile, eager but socially unable to moan back at them:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well
why the bloody hell do you live here then, in this country famed for
wind and rain? Move to Morocco. But no, ‘cos once it gets above 20
degrees you’re giving out like babies that it’s fearful hot. And as for
humid, well believe me, what you call humid in Ireland truly isn’t.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Would you want to sit there and tell me you hate a quarter of your life?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Well then, don’t give out about the only Irish season that does what it says on the calendar.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9wkYs89X_pj_-K9PTuiRmp8Y7U_Kmvz0hLLwSyJaug3WOUrDuz9yCxC7Zcu4nQHcjxOm2N6HZWb8FKa3HVd4d9frXRyWGht1NvYrm8UbV9DGM9i_NMsHrjkrE8ER6QEZDwyHpypR8XaX/s1600/IMG_1374.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9wkYs89X_pj_-K9PTuiRmp8Y7U_Kmvz0hLLwSyJaug3WOUrDuz9yCxC7Zcu4nQHcjxOm2N6HZWb8FKa3HVd4d9frXRyWGht1NvYrm8UbV9DGM9i_NMsHrjkrE8ER6QEZDwyHpypR8XaX/s320/IMG_1374.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In
Winter we can enjoy each day’s sunrise and sunset. With the sun so low
on the horizon, the heavens offer severe contrasts and jaw-dropping
colours.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Shafts
of fire and crimson shoot from both dawn and dying sun, up into black
clouds bulging with rain. The light and dark bleed together, mutating
into a menacing purple glow, intense with latent power.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As the sun creeps along its low Winter horizon it lights up the empty branches of trees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The best of Winter comes not with what is, but what is not.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">During
the darkest months, while we uncivilised beasts rush around in festive
frenzy, arrogantly believing ourselves immune to mammalian hibernation,
the natural world becomes calm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stand
still for only a few minutes each day and you’ll discover how in Winter
our environment exists in a variety of silences, offering the bliss of
several levels of peace.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At Winter dusk there are no power tools; not even birdsong here.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not a sound; not a movement; not a car in the distance nor a ram at a ewe.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A majestic calm hangs over the land. Away from war and Christmas shopping, here right now, at our feet, the world is placid.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With shorter days I sleep more and try to expect less of myself. A very fine and fancy shmancy idea, but the outside world <i>(a.k.a. life) </i>always steps in and dictates the rules.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Still,
despite the trials and challenges life presents, which as we all know
it does, relentlessly, I make sure to give thanks for Winter.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbH-PhBr3IsXtm6bdGOzO4ooeIEZLKU3lWWqqTAAJMf-zPNLXN8ujO4pbBWAh5Fa3mU2YCJbLuFxPANCqf6Eyl0RW_IVtVck-mk6rJBrhqvER144BHkFtsTPux11AQ5hlqDfGSkwci9dvM/s1600/IMG_1382.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbH-PhBr3IsXtm6bdGOzO4ooeIEZLKU3lWWqqTAAJMf-zPNLXN8ujO4pbBWAh5Fa3mU2YCJbLuFxPANCqf6Eyl0RW_IVtVck-mk6rJBrhqvER144BHkFtsTPux11AQ5hlqDfGSkwci9dvM/s320/IMG_1382.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">When
the trees are still, silent and naked, I enjoy nothing more than
standing by the back door, watching the birds eat the seeds I’ve strewn.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Oh wow!</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A young fox appears, not 20 feet from me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Robust with health in his lush rusty coat, he licks up a few mouthfuls of birdseed and jumps over the stone wall.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The weather forecast unfolds over my house. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">I take time to appreciate the glorious tranquillity.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I
like to stand on the bog road at 8:30 on a January morning, watching
the huge sun creep above the hill, slashing the sky so that it bursts a
blood red snakeskin pattern above
pitch black mountains. </span><br />
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuRtlcw5G9KihUQT-fIdiLMpbyjZ-QpYnyuu3XB5fNJJfM2tPCncaESXZCNyFHuZ0JNUnJRhDE4CxJY3cH6mBiMp-osQUQxOyIKwHGN48LMPikGjCs4vD_FT9eoxevdQYTdz6EgpeGOnSW/s1600/IMG_1367.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuRtlcw5G9KihUQT-fIdiLMpbyjZ-QpYnyuu3XB5fNJJfM2tPCncaESXZCNyFHuZ0JNUnJRhDE4CxJY3cH6mBiMp-osQUQxOyIKwHGN48LMPikGjCs4vD_FT9eoxevdQYTdz6EgpeGOnSW/s320/IMG_1367.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: large;">I love the abruptness of Winter silence.</span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">Trees demand attention: starkly silhouetted inverted lungs, plugged into the planet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Away over
there another fox appears in daylight, because it has to, and I admire the
size of this beast, surprisingly brown, with a yard long brush ending in a
white bobble.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">By god, it’s thriving.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When
all the undergrowth is stripped back, Winter allows you to encounter
Ireland’s wildlife up close. The pair of herons that in midsummer would
have no need to be close to humans now launch themselves out of the
drainage ditch up the bog road.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I stop in my tracks as they rip-roar out of the reeds, casually
flapping their great dinosaur wings, rising straight up only to settle
back down 20 yards away on the bog.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">At midday, dazzled by the low sun, I stand under a deep blue sky, vivid rust bogland to the horizon.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Drinking in the stillness; the only sound a breeze in my ear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thank you Winter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Don’t listen to the others.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I love you. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YFTmpT9WGm1GK1ycNWutYKYV_xSmgpEalulKKt6AiYtL9JpRV_FOhj_BvoSZYFyo4LE3K-RJVvU3Diu1nu1HJQO7h2kvdgV9a5C-q6VeOpGp4-p08kglnDMGoffBsK7rYJVhHcOaeIsL/s1600/IMG_1387.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YFTmpT9WGm1GK1ycNWutYKYV_xSmgpEalulKKt6AiYtL9JpRV_FOhj_BvoSZYFyo4LE3K-RJVvU3Diu1nu1HJQO7h2kvdgV9a5C-q6VeOpGp4-p08kglnDMGoffBsK7rYJVhHcOaeIsL/s320/IMG_1387.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">08.01.2024 </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br /><p> </p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-51930888712985238722023-12-08T15:35:00.002+00:002023-12-08T16:29:19.429+00:00Fancy a touch of zorbing or wadi bashing? <div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYdkOudgT7Op3jh0QWK9b8XBbCRm7leR4YNj412x2HFJcYNqlGNuHCccws1leR8e_YaYnpnvgehGJuYexWXB7vxZPxWWVdtzMoGAUmTymrpr4txqa4coGSNRK9B6ifh2AlBUhWk8B-Wj_ZcZgTNQeYVwsQJkHEj4-uW4nZrRN0BAs2-2dDyBpqKN2OIm7W/s1000/2b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="1000" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYdkOudgT7Op3jh0QWK9b8XBbCRm7leR4YNj412x2HFJcYNqlGNuHCccws1leR8e_YaYnpnvgehGJuYexWXB7vxZPxWWVdtzMoGAUmTymrpr4txqa4coGSNRK9B6ifh2AlBUhWk8B-Wj_ZcZgTNQeYVwsQJkHEj4-uW4nZrRN0BAs2-2dDyBpqKN2OIm7W/s320/2b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">Time to renew my travel insurance, so online I go to check out a few quotes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the past this was pretty simple - around 70 smackers for a worldwide year of insured travel, but well into my 60s, I have several of what insurance types call ‘pre-existing conditions.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I could of course pretend I don’t, but insurance companies just love not paying out, and I’m buggered if I’m going to give them a chance to nullify a claim.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Say I lost my suitcase and everything therein, but they somehow found out about my dodgy knee.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You could spend several hundred years trying to ascertain what links these two issues, apart from my good self, but link them they will, and then take great pleasure in telling me my policy is invalid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“But but but my belongings are not lost because I have a torn meniscus!” I cry in outrage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Makes no difference, puny human. Be gone before we sue your sorry arse for lying to an insurance company, and oh yes, remember, your call is very important to us."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The initial quote looked very reasonable, but once I’ve told them I had half a lung cut out, and yes, this does affect my breathing, and yes, there’s a couple of other chronic conditions attached to my lungs as well, their premium calculator spins into hyperdrive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All of a sudden I’m looking at having to fork out several hundred spondoolicks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As the amount due inflates, so the health issues covered start to shrink. Now they’re saying that they won’t cover me for anything to do with breathing, which includes blood issues, heart issues and, well, y’know, life in general.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Breathing’s pretty high up the old Being Alive Pyramid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While I wonder why the price is going up at the same time as they’re refusing to pay out for just about everything that might go wrong with a human body, I advance to a page on their website that - s’cuse me - takes my breath away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We’ve established I’m somewhat limited breathwise, so why on earth are they now asking me if intend to enjoy an insane list of sporting activities on my travels?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Of course it’s reasonable to ask about scuba diving and skiing. Even, at a stretch, not beyond the bounds of possibility I might at some juncture get up on a horse, a camel or even a nellyphant.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But they want to know if I’m planning to attempt any of the following:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Assault course.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Breathing observation bubble diving, maximum depth 30 metres, under 14 days. <i>
(What even is that??)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paragliding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Parachuting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Parapenting.<br /><i>(Parapenting? Answers on a postcard please!)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ostrich riding.<br /><i>(Really? I mean really? Have they seen me? Well, no, obviously not, but I have never met anyone who has wanted to ride an ostrich, or even talked of or mentioned in passing a penchant for ostrich riding.)</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Manual labour at ground level, no machinery or power tools. <i>
(On holiday? Why why why?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Canyon Swinging.<br /><i>(Errrm, wot? Does that mean Tarzanning across the canyon, or having sex with the neighbours near a canyon?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dragon boating.<br /><i>(See above re: Errrm wot?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Gorge swinging.<br /><i>(More outdoor nookie?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Hydro speeding.<br /><i>(Perchance taking amphetamines while underwater?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Mud buggying.<br /><i>(Yet again, no idea)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tree top walking<br /><i>(Or any other supernatural or Jesus-like activities…?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Wadi bashing.<br /><i>(Beating up a dried-up river bed? Why? Is that really a thing? That river bed has done nothing to me. I mean no harm to dried-up river beds. I’m a lover not a basher.)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And finally…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Zorbing.<br /><i>(Is that the opposite of absorbing?)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I could look up each sport or activity or whatever the hell Cat Skiing is, just to make sure I won’t be doing it by accident on my travels, but hey, you know, life’s too short, especially with all my pre-existing conditions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Clearly there are people out there who like nothing better on holiday than a few hours manual labour after a good morning’s ostrich riding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you ever meet one whilst enjoying a bit of Zorbing, please let me know.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley<br />08.12.2023<br /><br /><br /></span><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-31772099792855900912023-12-06T14:49:00.002+00:002023-12-06T14:59:06.775+00:00 Two questions every writer should ask!<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiREBVkOQZd8oDb8uAl7V54J9WI3gg7bIesFQVijQvRDWq2-wbnnjcRHLsAABDrUUvs_qf3ASU8JiOcHOuX1BnVquotDdIP9WJ15QiwWtwW-j2v1RrYVaRlPgDg4Njj62a0fBvvdErc3Q1RjKlQ_xhnHo-hMiKedOwd7i77s4OoXMg2wNXBHZSUI0_ct0bP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="210" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiREBVkOQZd8oDb8uAl7V54J9WI3gg7bIesFQVijQvRDWq2-wbnnjcRHLsAABDrUUvs_qf3ASU8JiOcHOuX1BnVquotDdIP9WJ15QiwWtwW-j2v1RrYVaRlPgDg4Njj62a0fBvvdErc3Q1RjKlQ_xhnHo-hMiKedOwd7i77s4OoXMg2wNXBHZSUI0_ct0bP" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jIBfqH_Hdvd1OCLcchBLOM5eXhlmphfvdZXzxHDBqXQ86QsNT8KeIv2aCrVhzkQoly_B9VQ09HIUrt0_LXObqe_DAjHlKEXR8s83LUWrHxCaGtAAJQD3WruXoxbjuTcesw0aWepyCOotccjs22654hl3GitrmyuG8YOkocdEljhvx76FBkA4i1AHM2dm/s279/prphet%20song.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="181" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jIBfqH_Hdvd1OCLcchBLOM5eXhlmphfvdZXzxHDBqXQ86QsNT8KeIv2aCrVhzkQoly_B9VQ09HIUrt0_LXObqe_DAjHlKEXR8s83LUWrHxCaGtAAJQD3WruXoxbjuTcesw0aWepyCOotccjs22654hl3GitrmyuG8YOkocdEljhvx76FBkA4i1AHM2dm/s1600/prphet%20song.jpg" width="181" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having respectively won and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, I’m certain that Pauls Lynch and Murray will not lose sleep over my criticism.</span></div></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’m aware that neither author will pay the slightest heed to my opinion, but that’s never going to stop me saying how I feel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As a vocational writer who’s made a living for three decades from his scribbling, I have the right to say what I think.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Truth is we all do. That’s what’s so great about the Arts. All opinions are important.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I finished reading <i>Prophet Song</i> a week before it won the Booker Prize. Although it offers more than a pure thriller, its greatest quality is that it is thrilling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Lynch builds a terrifyingly credible justifiably paranoid 21st century Dublin, and although the political undertones are fascinating, the story sticks to the war narrative like hot tyres on molten asphalt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Personally I would’ve liked more backstory of how this rightwing autocracy gained power, but that would be a different book.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I did however reach that wonderful point in a reader’s relationship with their book, when I looked forward to going to bed so that I could rejoin the story.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As the book that Lynch wanted to write, it was almost perfect, except for the writer’s refusal to hit return on the keyboard, so that we might know who is talking to whom at all times.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ever since Cormac McCarthy’s <i>The Road,</i> the absence of quotation marks and character identifiers (he whispered, she said) has become <i>de rigueur</i> <i>dwaaahhlinng</i> for the Literati.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So eager are some authors to write in a fashionable style, they forget to ask themselves the two questions every writer must ask, when considering a narrative device of any kind:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Does it work?<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">and</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is it necessary?<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Students on my <i>Craft of Writing Course</i> </span><span style="font-size: large;">inevitably </span><span style="font-size: large;">ask</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Charlie, can I do ‘this’?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">or<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Is ‘that’ allowed?”<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">to which I always reply</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">“You can do anything you want, as long as it works.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The decision about whether the device is necessary comes
only after it has been proven to work. When I read McCarthy’s <i>The Road</i>
I never had any doubts who was saying what to whom.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not
only did his decision to omit punctuation work, it actually enhanced
the reading of what was, essentially a double-header between father and
son.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">We knew who they were and had no need for identifiers or quotation marks.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It worked, and it was necessary.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Paul Lynch decided to do away with paragraphs, quotation marks and identifiers, he did his book no favours.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">As
a reader, I want to be utterly engaged at all times. I want to feel
sucked whole into this world on the pages in front of me, enveloped by
the author's thoughts, dreams, rhythms and feelings.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I
don’t want to be aware I’m on the bus or in bed, reading. I want to be
there, in the book, seduced by beautiful simple stunning prose.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What
I do not want is to have to read a sentence twice to understand its
context, or to revisit a paragraph, so that I can work out who’s
talking, when their speech ends and at which point it’s replaced by a
narrative voice.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Does it work? </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, it works. It’s stumbling and inelegant, but it works.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is it necessary? Does it enhance the reading of the book?</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Absolutely not, in any way. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Welcome
to the perilous territory of ‘Art with a Capital F’ wherein the writer
considers how the book is written to be more important than how it is
read.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whilst busy criticising other
scribblers, I’ll now take the risk of disappearing up my own hole, by quoting from the introduction to my <i>Craft of Writing Course</i>:</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">'Never write to impress.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Never try to appear clever.'</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Prophet
Song</i> is an outstanding book. I was gripped, and felt sad when I
finished it. Very possibly Mr. Lynch employed his block narrative style
to create a sense of claustrophobia in his reader.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He
underestimates us, and the power of his own language. The device was
not necessary. It just felt he was trying to be clever, to write
Literature, and in the process forced me to feel disengaged, thrust out
of the book, time and time again.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Had he
not tried to be clever, it would have read so much better. Just my
opinion, for which I make no excuses. I can’t read it as you.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What a joy it was then, to pick up<i> The Bee Sting</i> and encounter simple, hilarious and knowing prose.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What a relief.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">So accessible was Murray’s narrative that I felt my criticism of <i>Prophet Song</i> (oh but how I loathe this word) validated</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">From Son to Daughter we stray, and then to the voice of Imelda, the Mother and oh, Lordy Miss Maudy, Murray’s at it too.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe he's using the device to portray how frantic and non-stop Imelda
is, so her passages have no quotation marks, although, strangely, they do
have identifiers.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Equally odd, while there
are no paragraphs, there is a capital letter at the start of each
sentence, even though there’s no full stop/period before it, to announce
the end of the</span><span style="font-size: large;"> previous sentence.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a kind of mish-mash half-arsed version of the style employed in <i>Prophet Song</i> and several other contemporary novels.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tragically,
yet again, it adds nothing to the book, and serially breaks my
engagement with the narrative, as I reread a few lines for clarity.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet again a talented writer tries something he believes to be clever, underestimating both his readers and his own skills.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless
I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, and hoping that when we reach the
Father character, we’ll be back to using paragraphs, punctuation and all
that standard stuff…</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">... unless Murray tries something else that works,
which proves necessary and keeps me more engaged as a reader than ever
before</span></p><div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgFVmhram16cQctYW4zqoM98IAr6ZKW8RwdkzEgK4uvgYFOPp-wSZcBNGcEn9KrQyGIwG1hPkwvh9fLhO3sxpooXpQbqcxjfHjctNpnw_UbxEK_n4yijHCvtDJr7dSTys5O4pLP_AXfDeLKKzmlQlFzCu-RNw7ouL2cy3ccipjJ0fXKU4Q9_znzPcyVdx/s4255/%20logo%20copy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1575" data-original-width="4255" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgFVmhram16cQctYW4zqoM98IAr6ZKW8RwdkzEgK4uvgYFOPp-wSZcBNGcEn9KrQyGIwG1hPkwvh9fLhO3sxpooXpQbqcxjfHjctNpnw_UbxEK_n4yijHCvtDJr7dSTys5O4pLP_AXfDeLKKzmlQlFzCu-RNw7ouL2cy3ccipjJ0fXKU4Q9_znzPcyVdx/w320-h118/%20logo%20copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley</span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">06.12.2023 </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-71937159658669114482023-11-27T16:45:00.005+00:002023-11-28T20:16:57.691+00:00 Even Space Cadets get the job done!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIUn6C3RJGu6sCFkxojRu9eBz5e_cv57_k4Rvv0vp-QVZjPZIcVTTvT3Favfk2o2xcjWEPn8qFaYnqxpZDcoB1CISHvq6N_jk8vm0TZvGHfh6yKPtGZo2_Vc6t_H1zMPjyfk7DW5DtOk2DlttxrDU4VqfT0y2StDS8JNVF68-DWHPH49u27KcGjdCCj9R/s320/dv168-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="254" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIUn6C3RJGu6sCFkxojRu9eBz5e_cv57_k4Rvv0vp-QVZjPZIcVTTvT3Favfk2o2xcjWEPn8qFaYnqxpZDcoB1CISHvq6N_jk8vm0TZvGHfh6yKPtGZo2_Vc6t_H1zMPjyfk7DW5DtOk2DlttxrDU4VqfT0y2StDS8JNVF68-DWHPH49u27KcGjdCCj9R/s1600/dv168-1.jpg" width="254" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.caricatures.ie/">Artwork by the excellent Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.ie</a></i><br /></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Five years single now, more in fact, and apart from that nearly dying stuff during 2020, I'm happily adapted to doing things my way.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">When I want; how I want.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Course I’d much prefer it if I didn’t live with 7/8 pain in my right knee, and wouldn’t mind sending back my two lung conditions in return for that half lung which went AWOL, but this is me now - who I is today - and yes, they slow me down, and the ensuing obesity doesn't help either, but the jobs still get done.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This colyoom has talked before about a certain type of selfish that’s a pure good thing. It neither harms nor affects anyone else: it’s just you being you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Well, there’s been plenty of that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s incredibly comforting when you discover you are the person you thought you are; that you do mean what you say.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just takes a while to adjust to doing things more slowly, to learn my new limitations, which require many grunts of</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“Oooawaaaargghhh!” </i></b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">and plenty of exclamations of </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“Phoooofffssshhh!”</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">...with many pauses... <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: large;">...to catch my breath…<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">…to restore the air intake... <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: large;">....to a happy rhythm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Those are the moments when I grasp the opportunity to take a look around; to peer through the trees, looking for the silvery sheen of high tide glowing; to watch the rooks reinforce their giant nests, way up high in the ancient ash trees; to listen to the salty sea wind in my ears.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve always been happiest when lost staring into nature for indefinite periods of wonder.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Time was the one commodity I missed beyond all others when I lived in California in the 1990s. Now I have the luxury of it, and I bathe in its glory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Like I said, it’s a relief to turn out to be the person you thought you were; to find out that the object of your dreams truly does make you happy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Better still to have faith in what you say. This space cadet will always stop and stare, but also, I get the job done.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I pay my rent by working on my friend’s magnificent garden, but due to my unique athleticism, I’m not exactly Monty Don.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I tell her that even though I’m a month behind, the trees in the orchard will be mulched before first frost. She believes me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Last week, on the two dry days advertised by Met Eireann, that was done, and I came dangerously close to feeling smug, finishing the day before the night temperatures plummeted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I tell her that the little patio just up from my wee gaff will be sorted, and she says nothing. I say it might take a while, but it will be done, ‘cos it all gets done in the end.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Casting her eyes over the neglected terrace, now transformed into a layer cake of grasses, creeping buttercup, moss and mud, topped off with an amber frosting from the million zillion leaves, fallen from overhanging copper beech, she says nowt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tacitly she trusts me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As I sit here today, it’s half done, liberated from that messy mire of a carpet, the fig tree and rose cut right back, and tomorrow, on the second of two days of sunny high pressure, I will perform slow motion trickery with the loppers, a step ladder and hedge trimmers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everything takes a little longer now, but it all gets done.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And there is much pleasure in the doing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So much, because I do it when and as and how I like.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Slowly. <br />Quickly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Steadily.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I am who I think.<br />I mean what I say. <br />It will be done. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">27.11.223<br /></span><br /></p></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-92053457024713218222023-11-01T14:31:00.004+00:002023-11-01T16:57:00.562+00:00One thing left of three that mattered to me!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7F5N2uzYtgdF1nVfqXz6jIFEn-2tZrWIm5ybhyiJ6x-RtBXDvDpZuqS_TUddC3LkG_DFk5QSb7IVxQWZQU1NcsDQSzscLWQHlQfWJS-yP53R4zrcwhndVFxyR09bTOagn6h70xuPwkcnLnDTHrNN33vopndGkQGxoVMscIjSaAGWn6XTi11EmbJDIhBGn/s400/travel-cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7F5N2uzYtgdF1nVfqXz6jIFEn-2tZrWIm5ybhyiJ6x-RtBXDvDpZuqS_TUddC3LkG_DFk5QSb7IVxQWZQU1NcsDQSzscLWQHlQfWJS-yP53R4zrcwhndVFxyR09bTOagn6h70xuPwkcnLnDTHrNN33vopndGkQGxoVMscIjSaAGWn6XTi11EmbJDIhBGn/s320/travel-cartoon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">“What’s this tosh?” I hear you cry. “Yon scribbler has more than three things.”</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Indeed I do, but you don’t, ‘cos nobody talks like that.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I have many hundreds of things; so many, in fact, that I’m about to hire a mini-skip and dump a large tranche of my possessions.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">How many do I care about?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Aside from a couple of hundred books (I’ll know precisely how many after I’ve sifted through them and decided which ones will be recycled via charity shops.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Some are beloved reads, while others hold great sentimental value, like the hardback copy of Treasure Island, awarded to my late father in 1936 ‘<b><i>For all your hard work at the village fête.’</i></b> while others, like that one about the egg creature, are doomed for being pure shite.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, for the purposes of this colyoom, the books that I love are excluded, as this is about ‘things’ that matter to me.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Good books transcend being ‘things’. They are dreams made manifest.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Colyoomistas of old already know that stuff, in general, holds little meaning for me. Spending money rarely gives me a thrill, but spending time in my own little world of wonder brings me much joy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Spending time to sit on a rock on an empty beach and watch the tide turn; to write here right now, watching the edges of Storm Ciarán whip my corner of the world into a furious mess of fallen leaves and sideways rain; to walk myself into a sweat along the Summertime bohreens of Connacht, between the meadowsweet, purple loosestrife and fuchsia laden with orchestras of buzzing bees; to stand on a bog on a Winter’s morning, and feel the profound calm and quiet, as I watch a sparrow hawk plunge for prey: all of the above make my life worth living.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Throughout that life I owned three things that offered some measure of meaning.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Back in 1973, my father’s best friend gave me a gold Parker biro, engraved with my initials, as a bar mitzvah present. This mattered to me, not because of the donor, an unpleasant sadistic criminal, whose claim to be dad’s best friend was based upon the longevity of their friendship, alongside the power he held over my father.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">No, the pen was meaningful for two reasons: because pens are considered the quintessentially classic bar mitzvah presents, which are supposed to last a lifetime (as this one nearly did), and because the writer in me loved that pen, seeing it as representative of the skill that made my life worthwhile.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">My diaries from ages 15-21 were written with that pen, as were the signatures on every legal document and each heart-rending love letter in my earlier life.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Then last year, I reached for its familiar old red case, opened it and found it empty. <br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgchg5PJyo2CN6mPpXPLEmutFPxaEhw21EGeVbTyV6Fb9F475KeO5u80Wva0xC8CMNdqSPJCXBagGwPnR3OTplFxDE8hedz5kNzUFE8n73idyVBW1ZBbB77gYB1WJVSAONB9J3rz5W6Fluc0UU-LHAPymqAoMC1cGDZkqzYXkfurbA6mq8yEovLIMlUalM/s4032/IMG_9595.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgchg5PJyo2CN6mPpXPLEmutFPxaEhw21EGeVbTyV6Fb9F475KeO5u80Wva0xC8CMNdqSPJCXBagGwPnR3OTplFxDE8hedz5kNzUFE8n73idyVBW1ZBbB77gYB1WJVSAONB9J3rz5W6Fluc0UU-LHAPymqAoMC1cGDZkqzYXkfurbA6mq8yEovLIMlUalM/s320/IMG_9595.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Unless the several million wood lice with whom I share a home have transported it away to a place where they can worship the shiny cylinder, it remains very possible that when I move out of this place, I might find the pen down the back of somewhere unthinkable beneath my desk.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">But how did it leave its case, where it had rested since 1973?</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Why and what and who knows…?</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I let it go, just as I did my Ricoh watch.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eleven years after I received that pen, I awarded myself my Ricoh watch, when I worked for said Japanese photocopier company.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">From October 1983 to November 1984 I shot up their corporate structure like some kind of marketing Icarus, constantly and incredibly swiftly being promoted, given more and more responsibility and money, until I was earning more than any 24 year-old should ever be allowed to earn.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">They promised me I would be Marketing Director by the age of 30, but after seeing the Sales Manager drop dead from stress on the office floor, and my good friend and boss endure an excruciatingly slow and horrendous breakdown in front of my eyes, I confronted a profound truth.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Money does not make me happy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">In fact, despite everyone in my personal and professional life telling me what a massive success I was, I felt utterly empty.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">My soul was a void of despair.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even though exceptionally able to empathise with purchasers from conglomerates and corporate giants, I did not care how many photocopiers were sold to anyone anywhere.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I hated my job, and felt deeply depressed, convinced I was wasting my life.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The company paid for my car, my petrol, my household bills, gave me an unlimited expense account and an American Express card, thereby making it incredibly easy for me to save money.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Also, among several other job titles, they made me Head of Giveaways, so natch I gave myself a wonderful Ricoh watch.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’d worked my voluptuous butt off. I deserved it.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having accumulated a small fortune in savings, I quit the job and on November 22nd, 1984 boarded a spanky new Virgin Atlantic flight to Newark, New Jersey, and proceeded to travel for a year, very slowly, around the world, whilst writing a craftless yet passionate first draft of a novel.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even though that book was never published, I went on to enjoy the privilege and good fortune of living off my writing, loving both my work and the meaning it brought to my life. </span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzTB3PvmHRVUAuYUuiXnWO_aaJCGpMirDVTrbmouKPgu1BZi3aQ2UfagvsoZuMM4iqHeXyzXmuOBolm3gg6sSHhc5ADIszTNLoHHQGkTNzL9j21AJsGFAwFbuCmn2IGY_qxWDlOkpQOPUKY4aXxQBhriHjBnRe0MiE3q8jiFCv_GQgrC8hgxz49TmAsS4W/s1284/s-l1600.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1284" data-original-width="1284" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzTB3PvmHRVUAuYUuiXnWO_aaJCGpMirDVTrbmouKPgu1BZi3aQ2UfagvsoZuMM4iqHeXyzXmuOBolm3gg6sSHhc5ADIszTNLoHHQGkTNzL9j21AJsGFAwFbuCmn2IGY_qxWDlOkpQOPUKY4aXxQBhriHjBnRe0MiE3q8jiFCv_GQgrC8hgxz49TmAsS4W/s320/s-l1600.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">For nearly 40 years I sported on my left wrist the Ricoh watch that reminded me every day of that decision I made at the age of 23; of who I am, and what matters to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then, six months ago, I stayed in an hotel in Sligo, left my watch behind in the room, and never saw it again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I mourned neither the pen nor the watch. Of course I was a little sad that two significant lifetime possessions had left me, but I shed no tears.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I still had Blue Bag.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Relax, loyal colyoomista: there is no ‘had’. I have Blue Bag, and yes, as my friend Andy suggested many yonks ago:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“You’ll be buried with that effin’ bag.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Were it not for my wish to be cremated, I would most certainly and happily rot into the soil with Blue Bag decomposing upon me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Instead I say burn me with Blue Bag. Scatter our combined ashes off the cliffs of Kilcummin Back Strand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Purchased for a tenner, from a tourist shop on Oxford Street the day I left Ricoh in 1984, Blue Bag and I have been around the world twice together.We have hitch-hiked over 200,000 miles together.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the Cadillacs of California, the buses of Bali and the 24-wheel rigs that monopolise European motorways, Blue Bag stood on its end between my legs, taking up no more space than I do myself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That allowed it to stay with me on buses in the developing world, while traditional backpacks were hoisted onto the roof, far from their owners.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In strange bars Blue Bag’s handles are hooked round my bar stool so that no stray hand might whisk it away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Before the ridiculous limits of carrying of liquids in airports, Blue Bag used to be my hand luggage, allowing me to be off the plane and out into a new country while all the other passengers were left behind, waiting at the baggage carousel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Through all manner of insanity and tribulation, Blue Bag has been by my side.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When it’s hoisted onto my right shoulder, I feel safe; complete; ready to take on the world and win.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and (slightly embarrassed cof cof) I simply want Blue Bag with me; always. Metaphorically and practically, it’s been my fast track to freedom.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now that my craziest travels are behind me, I still use Blue Bag for two or three day trips, but when heading to London or further afield, I pack Blue Bag into my suitcase, because … well … you never know when you might need a mad dash.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">One man and his bag. <br />That’s the only possession I need.</span><br /><br /><br />©Charlie Adley<br />01.11.2023<br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-68963000019579907552023-10-27T16:06:00.004+01:002023-10-27T20:17:26.406+01:00Time to break all my rules. Sometimes I have to.<p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SiK2H-K6OISoGqGrSO0sZTMdaDttCXG5R_fjMDglx9FTvC5vqrfMNOqmqqiU1WhSW5m5kS5pa_AUCY9Lf-a_6edHekisi9Zffpx9Ltc_zubdO28VfUedqECl2YyJpwWtgrR4NXXZs5yPyTAADPqdQIDjEdgeSxtJVtjkS7xFw0cD7svCC9dhFZddFHaJ/s4032/IMG_9550.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SiK2H-K6OISoGqGrSO0sZTMdaDttCXG5R_fjMDglx9FTvC5vqrfMNOqmqqiU1WhSW5m5kS5pa_AUCY9Lf-a_6edHekisi9Zffpx9Ltc_zubdO28VfUedqECl2YyJpwWtgrR4NXXZs5yPyTAADPqdQIDjEdgeSxtJVtjkS7xFw0cD7svCC9dhFZddFHaJ/s320/IMG_9550.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">The knee’s pure agony. The war’s cutting deep slices into my soul. My lungs are well gippy and ah, look, my tomatoes are finally ripe.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Time to break all your rules. Sometimes you have to.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRPtubjohsR5axBJc4zLmH9Jcg10whtvPYcomHXl4aYiAW6YB2f5tai-K1OhWHJtJ95ZiC9pzWDXi3f_k3dlj7fgzRNR8e2x8m-ypGOvLvHj3z6bMbvt3z2CqYFxJyLZgH5Jr3hXWAXf-m3WgRFGoGL2UWw2jBM8w3dvHuM4ULQpe1I1jNn1JB1z5BHRH/s4032/IMG_9543.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRPtubjohsR5axBJc4zLmH9Jcg10whtvPYcomHXl4aYiAW6YB2f5tai-K1OhWHJtJ95ZiC9pzWDXi3f_k3dlj7fgzRNR8e2x8m-ypGOvLvHj3z6bMbvt3z2CqYFxJyLZgH5Jr3hXWAXf-m3WgRFGoGL2UWw2jBM8w3dvHuM4ULQpe1I1jNn1JB1z5BHRH/s320/IMG_9543.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Crusty white bread. I never buy white bread, but today has to be crusty white bread.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4aG8aa-MhGG70MUIMvIK9qkRcGqeMdXbAIDphjOBl4RjUqaidWBg1NJHlre82fT3lMUpqEMaRbgoucgn741Bk3JIjRaSkjX5a6Lxpce_SwMRq2zRx5mXqzCm27O7nTuh9jY8YtowQYazv0o8fdRfLi02OBS4h3STHNX5FBk1pwmDnPyw6paf4ixdBvPn/s4032/IMG_9546.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4aG8aa-MhGG70MUIMvIK9qkRcGqeMdXbAIDphjOBl4RjUqaidWBg1NJHlre82fT3lMUpqEMaRbgoucgn741Bk3JIjRaSkjX5a6Lxpce_SwMRq2zRx5mXqzCm27O7nTuh9jY8YtowQYazv0o8fdRfLi02OBS4h3STHNX5FBk1pwmDnPyw6paf4ixdBvPn/s320/IMG_9546.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dry Cured rashers, 97% if you don’t mind. Haven’t bought bacon for two years, but that’s what we're talking here. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpvTopfT22O8fZK1IzmltEwMJ4-VUSuRcBEkZCfzeVkGDxVSIhVIOs4X3kXokWDDLZ3X-o1SViby-ohyphenhyphenEgx7c6DDfbcw4oIikRbOhQ6pyRK4Z2oFSqEXjb_fbVyTC14EK4pgNB-nHhwYw4m78REcVBocp-HSfshJGLHj0ZkgDy9tQDod72JIKdWiQPe5T/s4032/IMG_9547.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpvTopfT22O8fZK1IzmltEwMJ4-VUSuRcBEkZCfzeVkGDxVSIhVIOs4X3kXokWDDLZ3X-o1SViby-ohyphenhyphenEgx7c6DDfbcw4oIikRbOhQ6pyRK4Z2oFSqEXjb_fbVyTC14EK4pgNB-nHhwYw4m78REcVBocp-HSfshJGLHj0ZkgDy9tQDod72JIKdWiQPe5T/s320/IMG_9547.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Unsalted butter. Makes no sense, you’d think, with the all that salt in the rashers, but I swear the toasted white bread tomato tangy rasher topped slices will taste better unsalted. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sugar in my tea. No, two sugars in my tea. Never put sugar in my tea, unless in shock or gravely hungover.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Noticed over the decades that me and many of my testicular brethren find
Autumn tough on our mental health.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe the mists damp down our spirits.<br />I call Autumn <i><b>Male Depression Season</b></i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Time to break your rules: two sugars in the tea; crusty white bread; dry cured rashers; unsalted butter and my own tomatoes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And yes, hipsters, a little drizzle of himself the extra Virgin.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No ketchup; no HP. Not this time. <br />Just a celebration of me ‘matoes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">By god, it helped, and I need all the help I can give myself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SiK2H-K6OISoGqGrSO0sZTMdaDttCXG5R_fjMDglx9FTvC5vqrfMNOqmqqiU1WhSW5m5kS5pa_AUCY9Lf-a_6edHekisi9Zffpx9Ltc_zubdO28VfUedqECl2YyJpwWtgrR4NXXZs5yPyTAADPqdQIDjEdgeSxtJVtjkS7xFw0cD7svCC9dhFZddFHaJ/s4032/IMG_9550.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SiK2H-K6OISoGqGrSO0sZTMdaDttCXG5R_fjMDglx9FTvC5vqrfMNOqmqqiU1WhSW5m5kS5pa_AUCY9Lf-a_6edHekisi9Zffpx9Ltc_zubdO28VfUedqECl2YyJpwWtgrR4NXXZs5yPyTAADPqdQIDjEdgeSxtJVtjkS7xFw0cD7svCC9dhFZddFHaJ/s320/IMG_9550.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">©Charlie Adley</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">27.10.2023 <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-81001480395333647532023-09-02T12:30:00.001+01:002023-09-02T12:46:41.162+01:00 High Street shopping beats High Speed Broadband!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-CdXW4hs9xZSS3hTSMD5f7yI9gN4eFWh2zKGnDUThSGtzYYnvCBC2JOy7zdI5FQfTr9wyi8mGvhakFBDCEA7nAXjYQNe42t7Pzn3flITS3YHGHfmxDM_omd3OmKW7xwtbhXTv6tK7dKn6rIK1RxGEadXysD1tdPtmWYj60ctButCxjUAv3v5vMZ__MJF/s400/ntl-upc-customer-service-cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-CdXW4hs9xZSS3hTSMD5f7yI9gN4eFWh2zKGnDUThSGtzYYnvCBC2JOy7zdI5FQfTr9wyi8mGvhakFBDCEA7nAXjYQNe42t7Pzn3flITS3YHGHfmxDM_omd3OmKW7xwtbhXTv6tK7dKn6rIK1RxGEadXysD1tdPtmWYj60ctButCxjUAv3v5vMZ__MJF/s320/ntl-upc-customer-service-cartoon.jpg" width="320" /></a><i> </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.caricatures-ireland.com">Artwork by Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com</a></i></div><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thanks for shopping with us! Your order will be delivered in multiple packages.<br /><br />(Oh gord, that means you’re going to send me two copies of all your bloody emails.)<br /><br />Our courier has received your order!<br />Our courier has received your order!<br /><br />(I really couldn’t care. Just get my stuff to me.)<br /><br />You’ve left something behind. Please see below the socks left in your basket. <br />You’ve left something behind. Please see below the socks left in your basket. <br /><br />(I didn’t leave them in my basket. I chose not to buy them. Stop it, stop it, right now.)<br /><br />Your order is on the way!<br />Your order is on the way!<br /><br />(I bloody hope so. You’ve taken the money from my credit card, so if my stuff wasn’t on its way, you’d be robbing me. No running commentary necessary. Just bring me my stuff.)<br /><br />Your order has been delayed. We are very sorry but due to volcanic eruptions in the South Pacific and the star B652a34 going Supernova, your socks and shirt won’t arrive on Wednesday the nth, but probably Thursday the nth. <br />Your order has been delayed. We are very sorry but due to volcanic eruptions in the South Pacific and the star B652a34 going Supernova, your socks and shirt won’t arrive on Wednesday the nth, but probably Thursday the nth. <br /><br />(I really couldn’t care. When you declared that initial delivery date I took it as advisory rather than compulsory, because I have been through this shite before.)<br /><br />Your order has left the warehouse!<br />Your order has left the warehouse!<br /><br />(Oh good god. Give it a rest. I don’t feel the need to tell you I’ve eaten my breakfast once, let alone twice. You’re doing what you exist to do, so shut up and just do it.)<br /><br />Your order has been shipped to the courier!<br />Your order has been shipped to the courier!<br /><br />(My bowels moved this morning. My bowels moved this morning. Tell me how much you needed to know that. No more nor less than I needed to know that a courier has my socks. And a courier has my shirt. And a courier has my socks. And a courier has my shirt.)<br /><br />Your order has left the courier!<br />Your order has left the courier!<br /><br />(Why? Shouldn’t it have stayed with the courier? Now I’m confused, as I drown in all this shitey spammish bollocks you keep sending.)<br /><br />Your order is out for delivery!<br />Your order is out for delivery!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">(I know. I got it yesterday. Very nice, thanks, and hopefully that means an end to all these emails. But what am I talking about? I really should know better.)<br /><br />We really want to know how you feel, so please fill in the short review section below to share how you enjoyed your shopping experience with us.<br />We really want to know how you feel, so please fill in the short review section below to share how you enjoyed your shopping experience with us.<br /><br />(Believe me, you really really don’t want to know how I feel about my shopping experience with you. Just go away and leave me alone.)<br /><br />Hi there! You seem to have forgotten to review your shopping experience!<br />Hi there! You seem to have forgotten to review your shopping experience!<br /><br />(Fuck off out of my life right now. I’ll never shop with you again, you hassling harassing sycophantic synthetic sons of Hades.)<br /><br />Would you like to apply for our credit card?<br />Would you like to apply for our credit card?<br /><br />(Would you like a kick up where the sun don’t shine?)<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>***<br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile in the real world, I walk into a shop on a high street. <br /><br />“Hello! I’d like these socks and this shirt, please.”<br /><br />“Great choice. That’ll be €43.99, please, when you’re ready.”<br /><br />“Thanks.”<br /><br />“Thank you. Now here’s your receipt. We’ll look forward to seeing you again.”<br /><br />“Oh I’ll be back. Lovely shop, stock and staff. Thanks so much.”<br /><br />“Well I'm very happy to hear that. Bye then.”<br /><br />“Bye!”</span></p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><p><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">02.09.2023<br /></span><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-88152274072126048042023-08-03T14:18:00.005+01:002023-08-06T14:10:21.250+01:00When I was your age, I could flyyyy…<p><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Race Week 1992: I step off the boat from France, onto Irish soil for the first time. Double Vision starts in print six weeks later, and after thirty one years I’m still inflicting DVs upon you.<br />Below find one of my most cherished encounters, described in a DV from April 2005, during the Cheltenham Festival.</span></i></b><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">**8</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hl79TwQtAsDWX_EWXVttgy_Aycn4KFndR98zuR93Jakz0-g5GW_-EBxXOCuYWj42yJoZiJ92nmjGCkJ4tpkEGSdNMZZXWH7TW9wXqVJOAPIvN0rEUCBjjeDAEojT1O_CCMpvV2dlMT03swumKHXE-1NsVZKtJFvyAC_vtNqkKDVvFu628g0aunWM0ViZ/s1060/older-man-rainbow-jacket-is-flying-with-parachute-sky_888396-1944.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1060" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hl79TwQtAsDWX_EWXVttgy_Aycn4KFndR98zuR93Jakz0-g5GW_-EBxXOCuYWj42yJoZiJ92nmjGCkJ4tpkEGSdNMZZXWH7TW9wXqVJOAPIvN0rEUCBjjeDAEojT1O_CCMpvV2dlMT03swumKHXE-1NsVZKtJFvyAC_vtNqkKDVvFu628g0aunWM0ViZ/w640-h426/older-man-rainbow-jacket-is-flying-with-parachute-sky_888396-1944.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stepping out of the Westside bookies I stop in my tracks. Beside my car Betsy the Blue Bubble, another is now parked, and a young woman is helping an older woman out of the back door.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She’s taking her time to emerge, so I hang back.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">For once, I’m in no particular rush, and realise that if I walked up to my car now, the lady might feel under pressure, possibly even intimidated or embarrassed.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">So I wait at a distance, as gradually she emerges from the silver Nissan in an elegant slow-motion swirl.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Feeling it’s now okay to move closer, I walk towards my car, only to see said woman clutching a healthy wad of €50 euro notes.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She stands for a moment like a statue, as if frozen in mid-run, poised like a predator with scent on the air, her body pointed toward the shops.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">As a gun dog at a kill, her head slowly moves along the row of buildings, her eyes scanning for prey.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It’s over there, Ma, the blue building on the far right!"</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">A second after assimilating her daughter’s directions, yer wan raises her hand with wad of notes high above her head, and marches at high speed directly towards the bookies,</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Any more confident stride I am yet to see. <br />Poopers! I wish I knew which horse she had!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">With a Galway smile etched onto my face, I turn back to the cars, wondering at how great it is to be living in Ireland, where an older lady can feel safe waving her dosh around like that.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just as I’m about to open my car door, the front door of the same Nissan opens to reveal an older gentleman, who for the life of him looks like he stepped out of an Irish Tourist Board advertisement.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He couldn’t have looked more Auld Ireland.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Impeccable, with tweed jacket, flat hat and blackthorn cane, he turns his freckled lined face to me, and I smile back.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">As he talks, his long chin moves up and down.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">His eyes betray the weariness of age, although they shine too, with humour and a sparkle of gentle wit.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Ye’ll have to be patient young man!”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, absolutely!” says I, not feeling particularly young, and eager to put him at his ease.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“There’s no rush,” I offer, “It’s a lovely day, and the races don’t start for another hour!”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">By now he has swung his legs out of the car, and I hesitate to offer a helping hand, because he radiates an atmosphere of individuality and independence.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He stretches out his arms in well-practiced manner, and assuredly lifts himself out and up<br />onto his feet.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span>“Ah, yes, everything takes a little longer than it used to…” <br />he explains, as he turns back into the car to reach for his cane, <br />“…and on occasion, that can be a very good thing!”</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span>As
this septuagenarian’s double entendre sinks into my mind, a coin
through jelly, happily surprising me on its merry way, he walks right up
to me, engaging me close, eye to eye, his breath on my chin.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span>“Mind you…” he whispers, somewhere between wistful and a challenge,</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span>“…mind you, when I was your age, I could</span><b><i> </i></b></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i> flyyy</i></b></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i>yyy</i></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>yyyyyyyy</i></b></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i>y</i></b><b><i>yyyyy</i></b></span><span style="font-size: large;">..............”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">As he exhales the last word, he lifts both his voice and hand high to the sky, and for a second or two, I believe he could.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">We stare into the other man’s’ eyes, laugh, and wish each other good luck on the gee gees.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I drive off, thrilled that a gentle encounter with a perfect stranger has left me enthralled; charmed; inspired.</span><br /><br /> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">©Charlie Adley<br />03.08.2023</p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-86312505765782993422023-07-29T11:26:00.004+01:002023-08-01T14:55:15.889+01:00 Immoral, magnificent, the Galway Races offer the essence of Ireland!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqiuwoXr925exlejG1twfot-p-vBBM-_74bkI44XzQ3QpeOChWkXYgXSPgaMad0H-3htLU9jIy246SfrNbBZgRk4TEG4Tnz0aj_-NsyUQ2ON7VxciMtqAgQMBUZaIMrdA5XXM9vezUktdTidNO6mqj27XgzkuOQKy-qpC2pvcDkNwyFrE1bxfIgvmTgvM8/s1000/DV19-31-1000px.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqiuwoXr925exlejG1twfot-p-vBBM-_74bkI44XzQ3QpeOChWkXYgXSPgaMad0H-3htLU9jIy246SfrNbBZgRk4TEG4Tnz0aj_-NsyUQ2ON7VxciMtqAgQMBUZaIMrdA5XXM9vezUktdTidNO6mqj27XgzkuOQKy-qpC2pvcDkNwyFrE1bxfIgvmTgvM8/s320/DV19-31-1000px.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.caricatures-ireland.com">Thanks to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com</a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Around the world there are great cites that define the essence of their country.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not national capitals</span><span style="font-size: large;">, these are yer second favourites: much-loved places of culture, art and inspiration, like San Francisco, Liverpool, Melbourne and Galway.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Galway City is only Dublin's poor relation in economic and demographic terms. To this Englishman, Galway City is pure Ireland, and Race Week is the triple-distilled spirit of Galway City.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ergo: Ireland is Race Week; wonderful and horrendous; immoral and magnificent.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh yeh, and it sends you mad. Stark staring cuckoo. Whoever you are, and whatever you're doing, if you are around Galway City during Race Week, it will infect you, as sure as a gee-gee has a leg at each corner.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Kitchen porters are clanging and rushing; chefs pouring sweat while barstaff fill buckets; hoteliers hop; gamblers and cards sharks a-pumping; prossies a-jumping; priests go insomniac with the overtime; the streets overflow with eaters and drinkers and dresses and hats, plastic pint glasses and a billion fag butts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Up above choppers fly everywhere, buzzing-bizzing like is this a flashback or a film?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Spot the difference: Galway during Race Week and the set of Apocalypse Now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Horror. <br />The Horror.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Mystery. <br />The marvellous madness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What’s a fella to do, as the song says. Thunder clouds roll in and it’s sweaty. The flies are out and it’s Race Week.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On Thursday morning Siobhan from Claregalway spends hours in front of her long cupboard mirror, checking her accessories.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">She’s broke but hell, she’s going anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tommy from Salthill, well, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for days, but that’s the way it is in Race Week.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’ll get himself into a card game and you won’t see him ‘til he’s done. Used to be a problem back in the day when the kids were young, but now, well, to be honest, it frees up his long-suffering missis for a few days. So everyone’s happy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Himself from Ballybrit is delighted to be back working the door at the Owners and Trainers Bar, watching the good money coming in and the bad money going out.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’s grinning to himself at the pittance he’s being paid compared to these Fianna Fail gombeens.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’s watching it all and lapping up the scenery. There’s yer trainers and owners, coming and going, and then there’s all these other yokes who are looking for nothing but a little bit of information, d’y’see? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just a nod or a wink from the bloke who owns a fetlock and Colm from Roscommon is on to his phone to do the betting faster than the Heineken floods cold nectar into his glass.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then there’s the players. The really class ones are the types most people miss, but Himself on the door, he sees ‘em, because he’s learned to spot people hiding in plain sight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Relaxed, happy, calm, but sucking up the hottest angles, placing the biggest bundles on the nose. They’re not yer each way betters.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He smiles as he thinks of it. No, these aren’t yer each-wayers. These are the players.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The work is good, he’s happy for it, but the watching, listening and learning, that’s better than a banker’s bonus.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Well, no, not better than a banker’s bonus, but great craic. Rather be doing it than not, safe to say.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Siobhan’s met up with her friends in Eyre Square, and they're heading up to the course on the bus. They were going to get a taxi, do it in style, but there was a bus right there, so wha’the.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Her mates all look amazing and it’s just a kickin’ day out.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">She’ll get the first round in. That’s it, she’ll get the first bottle of bubbles, that way everybody’ll remember and nobody’ll notice that she doesn’t do much betting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">She’d budgeted for her share of a taxi, but the bus was a money-saving godsend. Thank you God, she says to herself, as she listens to Anne-Marie’s story about </span><span style="font-size: large;">and a lad called Brian and bottles of </span><span style="font-size: large;">Bulmers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As long as the bubbles aren’t too crazy expensive, she might even have a bit left to bet with, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now that’d be a laugh alright. She’s working part-time in the Londis round the corner, and hitching to lectures at NUIG. Loans and rent and life’s not all fun, but you have to sometimes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes you just have to, and today is Ladies Day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After his stint working the door, Himself is back in town, sitting outside Coili’s, watching a fire juggler across the way.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turning to the grey-haired boho next to him he says:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“He’s alright, s’pose, but not good enough for Johnny Massacre Corner!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The man replies: “I am sorry. Who is John ze Masterpiece, pliz?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Himself smiles. “S’alright mate, no bother.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What was he thinking? Like yeh, really, the guy’s gonna be a Galwegian, tonight, in Race Week!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Cork’s got jazz and Kilkenny makes comedy and hurlers. There’s the All Ireland Finals at Croker, but that’s a couple of hours sport with a day and night’s drinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The nation comes to Galway for a week, but this is not merely some pathetic endurance test.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Back when Plate Day Wednesday was the big day, when the meeting ran only a few days, the Galway Races were no less significant.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There’s a depravity, corruption and decadence to the affair that cannot be ignored, but putting aside the traffic and the pavement pizzas for a moment, the best part of Race Week is the spirit of the city.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Galway soaks up the farmers, politicians, insurance brokers and hairdressers. They are all welcome to have their own parties, to gamble and screw each other, or gently sip tea and suck Galway oysters from the half shell.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Siobhan’s eye liner is a disaster by the time she’s back on Quay Street. The cobbled streets are a total mare to </span><span style="font-size: large;">those </span><span style="font-size: large;">heels now, ouch, bleedin’ exhausted, pure bubbled out, but nobody noticed about the money.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now they want to go for a drink. She’s enough for one and the bus home.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Coili’s for the music?” asks Roisin.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So they head up High Street, and in the distance, Himself spots Siobhan, and she kinda catches his eye.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What’s a fella to do?<br /><br /></span><br /><br />©Charlie Adley<br />29.07.2023</p></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-36501436264406362412023-07-21T14:25:00.002+01:002023-07-22T16:04:11.118+01:00 Without this weather would we lose the place we love?<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiscyjl_6CBjhE3Fk3CKLCCPN16tO2ax6tmwrnw8VT_Xc1M9hrrjDer1PJFDCPM2rJl722-5oufiDdUF7ugFS_9f2CJn9f0g7Knn2xrGN2ZOPPD7n7GUNlJU1oobNGWiszFcHA9_n4ayJIFCzSsSmV5ZP8NLWd86Kxc29OFnF8RzynHhGGwKckbCu653vu9/s320/Busker-696x482.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="222" data-original-width="320" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiscyjl_6CBjhE3Fk3CKLCCPN16tO2ax6tmwrnw8VT_Xc1M9hrrjDer1PJFDCPM2rJl722-5oufiDdUF7ugFS_9f2CJn9f0g7Knn2xrGN2ZOPPD7n7GUNlJU1oobNGWiszFcHA9_n4ayJIFCzSsSmV5ZP8NLWd86Kxc29OFnF8RzynHhGGwKckbCu653vu9/s1600/Busker-696x482.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">True to form, everyone has forgotten the wonderful late Spring and early Summer we enjoyed this May and June.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We walked under sunny dry cloudless skies for six weeks, but a fortnight of sodden July has erased from our brains all we then enjoyed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The rains came exactly when they always do: just as festival season hit Galway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Humid damp air cooks under morning hot sunshine, conjuring towering thunderclouds by midday.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We console ourselves with "We don't live here for the weather!" but that’s becoming less true with each warming year. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve lived in San Francisco and Melbourne, yet take the weather of the West of Ireland weather every time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Wise words were spoken to me during a deluge decades ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">October late evening, the rain roaring sideways up Dominick Street, I sought shelter in a shop porch opposite the Left Bank Café.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Crammed in beside me, an old bloke (think: Del Boy’s’s Uncle Albert) was lifting his head and smiling like he’d just picked the winner.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Together we watched as blankets of water ripped off the Atlantic Ocean, powered up Dominick Street, torrents of insistent swirls, dancing silver under the street lights.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Tell me, without this weather would we lose the place we love?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Impressed by his sensing I love it here, I stared into his eyes with a look that said</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Do what? Go on then, I’ve bitten.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We turned our heads together, back out into the rampant bleakness;<br />both knowing well that this was not a passing shower; <br />that we would have to brave it and deal with the consequences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turning to me one again, Shorty White Hair threw back his old head and laughed maniacally.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“God’s gift to Ireland!” he screamed above the clamour of the storm. “God’s gift, the RRRAAaaaiiin!” he cheered.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not really in the mood for theological debate, I resisted the urge to reply</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well ta very much, God!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">instead settling for the more respectful:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“How’s that then?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Delighted, he launched into his spiel, which was, I must admit, entrancing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Without the rain there’d be a hotel on every clifftop. Without the rain there’d be caravans and mobile homes as far as you can see. Without the rain there’d be millions of tourists here every month of the year and the farmers would go broke and sell up to build more hotels and the land would be gone and the space would be filled. Without the rain everything you love about Ireland would be gone.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Silence fell between us.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Somehow this stranger could not have summed up better what I love about the West of Ireland. Almost beyond the compassion, warmth and wit of the people, I adore the pace and space of the West.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Step out of your shower in Florida in July and you instantly need another shower. The towel won’t take the water off you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Humidity sucks, but not water from skin. Sleepless nights, above the sheets, scared to move an inch to break sweat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Horrible. <br />No thanks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In Rome they're telling people to stay indoors. <br />In Greece; Canada; everywhere, it burns wild and terrifying.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve seen a forest of blue gums with their bases intact and untouched, their canopy still alive with green leaves, with all between scorched charcoal black.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The fire moved so fast it didn't have time to take the tops and bottoms of the trees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">70 mph fireballs racing from each exploding eucalyptus to the next.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No thanks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When I lived in the Redwood Empire, it stopped raining in May, and you most likely wouldn’t catch a drop ’til mid-November.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">By that time, frazzled beyond reason, I was that eedjit dancing with joy in the downpour in the library car park.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Irish weather is terrible, and as Autumn already threatens, consider this: wherever you live in Connacht, you’re never more than 20 minutes from somewhere stunningly beautiful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you step out of your bus or car and stand in the middle of nowhere for 15 minutes, you’ll be giving thanks, feeling privileged to live in this extraordinary part of the planet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We have so much empty space. Wildflower meadows pop up in vacant lots between launderettes and pubs on Irish streets.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Here in North Mayo, I can walk for hours without the sound of distant traffic. I lie in my bed in the morning and listen to plaintiff donkey brays crashing through the air, pheasants <b><i>gawaaaaghrrrk-</i></b>ing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Our mountain sides are empty. <br />Our clifftops are grassy, lined with wild orchids.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At night, in our rare and splendid area of darkness, we can see the Milky Way in all its glory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">During the day we can walk among wildlife, dreaming for a moment we are the sole representatives of the human race.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, we have gorse and bog fires, but they don't outrun a speeding car. <br />Our land stays still; no significant tectonics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The odd mudslide, once a year or so. <br />Flooding, yes, increasingly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If I ever buy a house, it’ll be on a hill.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Flying low over Ireland, you fully appreciate how this nation is a shcattering of green bumps and lumps, sticking out of vast and many puddles.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We have windstorms in winter but little snow, and over 300 days a year between 10C and 20C. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ll take that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ll take it all, with clifftops clear of hotels. <br /></span><br />©Charlie Adley<br />21.07.2023.<br /><br />909 words</p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-24553091928402483162023-06-21T13:38:00.003+01:002023-06-21T17:52:31.431+01:00 Do You Believe In SHC?<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="https://cdn.britannica.com/07/195407-050-BC1BF191/Illustration-Spontaneous-human-combustion.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="480" src="https://cdn.britannica.com/07/195407-050-BC1BF191/Illustration-Spontaneous-human-combustion.jpg" width="640" /></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><cite class="credit d-block mt-5"><span style="font-size: small;">Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Patrick O'Neill Riley</span></cite></p><p><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The leaves of Dublin’s trees shrivelled and cried in the cold north wind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig arranged the turves around the burning coal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“It makes a nice fire. A jolly nice fire.” said Paul.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">‘And what would you know about fire?’ thought Padraig.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He didn’t like the young man, with all that button-down collar malarkey.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">‘And him sitting in my own armchair. I do not like him, and I do not have to like him. Ice in his Jameson’s. It’s as well I didn’t offer the Redbreast.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul stuck his finger into his whiskey, twirling the ice around in the glass.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig stood in front of the fire. The heat was good, and soon the backs of his legs were roasting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He stayed put, lest Paul might feel too warm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So, where would you stand on the issue of spontaneous human combustion then now?” asked Padraig, with mischievous flourish.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul sat up in his chair. What a startling non-sequitur! Still, it was interesting enough. Maybe there was more to Padraig than a nicotined beard and a shoulder chip the size of the British Empire.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well actually, I must confess to a latent fascination for S.H.C., now that you mention it.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“What was that? What was that? What’s all this S.H.C.? Oh, I see, yes, and tell me this. Would that be what they call a ‘buzzword’ these days, young man, is it now?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig made it clear that his question was rhetorical, sniffing deep and long. Then, groaning with invented pain, he settled himself into the other armchair, all the while casting covetous glances at his own.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul showed no telepathic tendencies. So then, ousted Padraig was, and ousted he would be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Slowly, deliberately, Padraig packed his pipe, allowing time for Paul’s mind to wander.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With smoke rising from the freshly-lit bowl, the flames from the fire reflecting in his eyes, Padraig turned to the young man.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Now, let me tell you about your S.H.C. Yes, let me tell you about he-he–hexploding people. Listen now while I tell you the story of Bernie Collins.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In some matters Paul knew his place. <br />He leant back in his chair.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well, Bernie was a Traffic Warden, off in County Kildare. You wouldn’t know the place so I’ll not waste my time telling it to you. Anyway, this would be a good few years from now, oh yes. This would be maybe in the next century, d’you see?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Ahhm, I think so.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well, either you do see or you do not see.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, well, yes, I see. A good few years from now.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So what was your problem?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“I didn’t think I had a problem. Please, please go on with your story.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well, that would be a lot easier without all of these hin-hin-hin-hin-h-interruptions.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sort of ‘Stop talking while I’m interrupting’ kind of thing? Sorry, it’s a joke. Never mind. Do go on.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Yes, and I should think so too. Ah, but you’ll have that. Now, Bernie Collins was a Traffic Warden, and his uniform was brown. Bernie loved his job and he loved his uniform. He lived on his own, after his Mother died of course. All alone in his own wee house.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"The outside of his house he painted brown, and the insides he painted brown, and all of the things he bought to put inside his house were brown too. All of his everything matched his uniform, and that made Bernie very happy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“He had one suit - brown it was - and he’d wear it every Sunday to Mass. Funerals and weddings he wore his uniform. And sure, every other second of his waking life, Bernie wore his uniform.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Did he sleep in his uniform?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For a few seconds Padraig stared at Paul, lips drawn tight white with contempt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sorry, I just wondered. You said he wore it every second of the day, didn’t you? Or was it every second day?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig exhaled slowly, shaking his head, and continued regardless.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Yes, well now, Bernie wasn’t one for doing much. He was the shape of a barrel, a short barrel on legs, hoho yes. But he did love his job. If he could have he would have worked from dawn to dusk and through the hours of darkness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"He knew every single, double or dotted yellow line in his town. He knew just exactly who owned every vehicle, and he tried his blessed best to know who was driving which car and where and when they were doing it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Y’see, he knew that the Undertaker’s pretty young assistant was out driving with the Mayor every Tuesday afternoon. Then there was the manager of a big insurance company down on the High Street, who was parked outside of his own wife’s si-si-sister’s house every Friday, between the midday Angelus and a half past the hour of One. He saw it all, and the more he saw of them the less he liked them. Their secrets.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“He just plain couldn’t face the horror of the world. Bernie, d’y’see, he’d loved his Mammy, and never had he felt the slightest h-inclination to step out with a young lady. Ohno. Not the slightest bit. Some are like that, so they are.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So there he would sit, in his brown uniform, his head swimming with all their secrets. Their lies. Their deceptions. Their lies and their sinning. It was too much for him, d’y’see? He just plain didn’t want to know.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So he’d settle into his tatty brown leather chair after eating his brown pie and brown gravy, and he’d watch his old black and white television. It was so old that the picture was all faded, like. You could almost imagine it being brown.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“But my, did he watch it? Oh my, did Bernie Collins enjoy his televison? Oho! He watched every soap opera, every chat show, game show, and he loved to watch a fil-m. He’d watch just anything that wasn’t a news programme or a doc-humentary.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“As he watched all those soaps and that, he’d think to himself he was watching the lives of all the liars in his town. D’y’see, he had not the slightest knowledge of anything that was happening in the world. All he knew was the inside of his troubled head, and the stories that the television told him. If it didn’t occur within his own sight and hearing he remained ignorant of it, and - oh yes - that was another thing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Bernie Collins was as near to deaf as a man can be before you call him deaf. His television was turned up so loud you could hear it from a half-mile away, and there he was himself, sitting there, just right up in front of it all the time. Mind you, that’s not to say there was anything wrong with his sight, hoh no. Sharp as a kestrel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Bernie, he enjoyed his deafness. Oh yes. He thought himself lucky that he didn’t have to be putting up with hearing all the blaspheming that folk shouted at him when he gave them a parking ticket. Not at all. Not a bit of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“There were some who thought Bernie loved giving tickets, but that wasn’t the truth of it. Sure, he loved his job, but he would have been even happier if he never saw an illegally parked car all day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Bernie was not a man with an evil streak inside of him. Truth be told, he just felt sad when folk tried to get away with illegal parking. It made him sadder still when they shouted at him, as if it wasn’t them who had done wrong.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Worst of all was when he’d be finding the same car parked on the same illegal spot, time and time again, day after day. That would make him feel redundant, d’y’see? What was the point in him being there, of him telling them not to park there, if they simply ignored him?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“It was the only thing that made him angry, and maybe, just maybe deep inside the heart of Bernie Collins, he knew that his tickets were nothing more than minor irritations to these people, and he - well, that meant to them he was nothing more than the bearer of minor irritations.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Was Bernie the only Traffic Warden in the town?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“He was. The very sole purveyor of the parking tickets.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“And what, pray, does this have to do with S.H.C.?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Well now, if you were a more patient man you’d find out. Now, so there was Bernie sitting in his chair, watching one of his soap operas, with the sound turned up terrible loud, so loud that he couldn’t hear the singing outside.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“He just plain couldn’t hear it, but every other soul living on the planet that night could hear the singing. It was the singing of Angels. Yes, Angels, singing from the skies, calling folk to come outside. Some say it sounded different to every soul who heard it, but certainly, to each and every one of them, it was the sweetest sound. A sound that had to be heard. Listened to.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Outside, outside they went, onto the streets, looking up to the skies, looking for the source of that heavenly music. Children woke in their beds and followed their parents onto the streets. Nurses wheeled the old folk out to hear the cherubim, and soon enough there were great multitudes thronging the streets.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“When the sounds started to move away, the crowds followed, as rats to the piper. Off into the darkness they went, without so much as the slightest he-he-hesitation. Off, away, never to be seen again.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul was engrossed. What a splendid yarn.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“All of them. Every man, woman, child and babe-in-arms. All except for Bernie Collins, who sat watching his soap opera until the picture went dead. All the lights in his little brown house went off, and Bernie grumbled to himself about power cuts and took himself to bed for an early night.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Come the morn, and still he had no 'lectricity. No power. Bernie shrugged, shivered by the embers of his fire, and groaned when he found no milk bottles delivered to his door.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Outside on the street you could have heard the flap of a lark’s wing. Of course Bernie noticed that there were no folks up and about, but why would that worry him? Wasn’t it good to walk the streets and do his work without all those eyes staring at him? All those nasty eyes, always just a pen stroke from shouting at him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So Bernie was not upset to have the world to himself. It took more than that to upset Bernie Collins. So now, tell me what would it take to upset Bernie?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul had been off, walking the empty streets of County Kildare. He wasn’t ready for tests of mental alacrity.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sorry? What would upset Bernie? Well, I, err, illegally parked cars?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig nodded slowly and deliberately, as if Paul’s answer should have revealed a deep hidden truth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul stuck his neck out, motioning Padraig to carry on, but Padraig merely continued his sage nodding, his lips turning down into a sad pout as if to infer that Paul had let him down in some small but significant way.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Now, so, of course, all the cars were parked in just the same places they were the day before. So off went Bernie, giving out his tickets, slapping them onto the windscreens, over the ones he had given out the day before.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Not one soul had seen fit to move their car. Not one soul had spared a moment to ponder how their illegal parking might have caused inconvenience to others.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Not one soul had taken Bernie’s tickets seriously. Back home that night Bernie sat in the dark, unable to see his wee brown world. Indeed, of course, without d’lectric, he couldn’t watch his television, nor cook any food, so he sat there entertaining thoughts as dark as the air in his living room.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“That night he was barely able to sleep. Around and around poor Bernie’s head, illegally parked cars, imagined conversations he would have with all those folk on the morrow. Oh, he would tell them. Yes, how he would tell them what he thought of their selfish parking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Bernie set off at first trace of dawn, only to find every single car unmoved.‘Surely,’ he thinks to himself, ‘surely there must be one, just one person who cares.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“No more the leisurely amble for Bernie now. Oh no. He was a man a-fired, walking full pace around the whole town. And then around again, and again, until his feet were sore, his soles burning hot on the pavement.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Each and every time he passed a car he wrote another ticket and slapped it on top of the old one. And each and every time he did that, he felt a little more angry about it all.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“By lunchtime the sweat was pouring from his brow, his fingers were sore from the grip of his pen, and his shoes, well, he was sure that they had shrunk, hugging the skin on his swollen feet like that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“ ‘Two more rounds, just two more rounds’ he told himself, ‘and then I can call it a day.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“The quiet private voice of his soul started singing a song, a song of hope that he might find just one car that had moved, just so that he could feel like as how he really did h-exist, d’y’see?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“But, of course, he found all the cars just as he left them. Covered in tickets from top to bottom as they now were.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“That night, exhausted, dejected and desolate, Bernie lay in the dark on his brown bed. All his feelings melded together to form anger, and a particularly fearsome anger it was. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Hadn’t he only been trying to do his job? So why was it that they were all out to stop him? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“That was it. They had all met together and decided to defy him. They had decided that life would be better without him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Had they stopped to consider what would become of their traffic flow once he was gone? What singular chaos might ensue once folk were parking wherever they felt like it, at whim? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"Had any of them just once asked themselves why he was needed? Had they thought about that? Had they?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"And what did he ask from them? Was it so much? Was it really so very much? No, it was nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing. And what did he get in return? Disrespect. Yes, disrespect, and parking on double yellows, that’s what he got, ho yes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“What stupid senseless people he served. And why should he serve them? Why should he be their Public Servant, these folk who didn’t deserve to be served? And now they had taken his lights away. Taken the power for his television and his cooker away, and all the while not one had the decency to show their face.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Pah! He would show them. He wasn’t one to be defeated so easily, not Bernie Collins, not a bit of it, oh no. He would be back out there tomorrow, just as he was today, just as he always would be. If needs be he would cover every single car in tickets, if that was what it would take. He knew his duty, even if other folk knew nothing of theirs. Stupid selfish evil folk ...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Now, if there had been even just a trace of light in Bernie’s bedroom, he would have seen the smoke arising from his tummy button, his navel, d’y’see? But it was dark as coal in Bernie Collins’ brown house, and so he lay there, stoking the fire of his own demise.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“As he glowed with rage he braised his liver, grilled his guts and stewed the bile that had risen in his stomach. As the juices boiled inside of him, his thoughts became more terrifying, more tormented, more tortured. Down in his bowel, his gases had expanded until they could expand no more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“And so it was that in a flash of flame and fart, Bernie Collins h-exploded. The fire leaped from his torn torso onto to his sheets, his room, his house, until there was not a trace of Bernie Collins left on the earth. His parking tickets were the only things that remained, as a testament.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Padraig leant back in his chair, satisfied and slightly wearied by the effort of the telling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paul felt the onus on himself to offer a comment of some kind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The silence was pregnant with Padraig’s expectation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“You tell a good tale, Padraig. I wonder, would you mind if I built the fire up? It’s getting just the slightest bit chilly in here.” </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“And why wouldn’t you? Go ahead young man. But do me this. Build a good fire, or build a bad fire, but save, oh save me and spare me from a jolly fire. The idea of it. Indeed.”<br /></span><br /> </p><p>© Charlie Adley <br />22.06.2023<br /><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-53227650095008421062023-05-21T14:49:00.002+01:002023-05-21T15:23:00.808+01:00Why I love the West of Ireland: #43,729<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQ7RIAGI2_FK3vVDhL4tGBv45vsJNMyRsaBWaULhgm4_pyxUsoFmpLECT9qN57INxhMBK7crzUQI5-hDTUa1NegNiBBIhoAvRKjcU5bc-ohs8oSa_uRw5e810otyOh4IlqcANU38H5kt6a-gma5vu97kfqyyEyY3TIImcKydIFKA2b5umgt0yzNe5nA/s4032/IMG_8823.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQ7RIAGI2_FK3vVDhL4tGBv45vsJNMyRsaBWaULhgm4_pyxUsoFmpLECT9qN57INxhMBK7crzUQI5-hDTUa1NegNiBBIhoAvRKjcU5bc-ohs8oSa_uRw5e810otyOh4IlqcANU38H5kt6a-gma5vu97kfqyyEyY3TIImcKydIFKA2b5umgt0yzNe5nA/s320/IMG_8823.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">Above Knock Airport the sky hangs pure deep blue; not a tiny wispy cloud anywhere on the horizon.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The sun soaks my skin as I walk out into the car park.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Home!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My long weekend in my native London was great. Everything went really well. I drenched myself in the love of friends of forty nine years, and on Monday swapped those numbers around for 94, the age of my incredible wonderful mum.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Uber to Mum, Uber back, Uber to the pub: when in London do what you cannot in Killala.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I talked at length with three Uber drivers: a brace of Afghan and one Bulgarian. All with stories to tell. All - with no little pride - describing themselves as Londoners.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That was London, but here is the West of Ireland and recharged, I’m home on my 63rd birthday, happy and excited at the prospect of a few sunny evening whiskies at Sweeney’s later with the posse.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe my mind is there, drinking beneath the Round Tower, because wherever I am, it’s neither here nor at all ‘in the moment’, as they say these days.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Indicating left, I swing Joey round towards the Northbound N17, turn to look far right to see if all’s clear, but forget to look straight in front of me, which some might consider important, generally and specifically, when driving.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">CrummmPPPK</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">KKraackackKUMK</span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Glassy tinklesplinter...... Glassy tinklesplinter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh fuck fuck fuck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fuketty fukking fuck fuck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not now. <br />Not Now.<br />Not Bloody Now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yer man’s getting out his car in front, and I’m suddenly tense, not ready to encounter any kind of aggression, as I was off in such a happy place mere seconds ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Can’t sit here any longer. Have to get out of the car.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Engage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Ah look, I'm so sorry. Fuck. So sorry. C’mere, do you want to do the insurance thing?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Ah no no no. I’d say you have it a lot worse than me. Look, you’ve only smashed my rear light. Yours is hit much harder. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I turn and look at broken Joey. Yes I am that sad git who names his bloody cars. My vehicles, 2 and 4 wheeled, have all felt like steeds in some way, so I gave them names.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite having seen not one second of structured reality TV show <i>The Only Way Is Essex,</i><b><i> </i></b>when I bought my Suzuki SX, I immediately thought of its star, Joey SX.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That’s it. Now his wing is gashed, his headlight smashed and bonnet crumpled a tad.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“At least let me give you something for your broken light!” I say.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As I open Joey’s back door to get €50 cash for the man, the contents of my travel bag spill onto the road.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Wallet, USB key. Coins.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fuck Fuck Fuck</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“I have your water bottle!” he shouts from somewhere. “It rolled out from under the car!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I gather up all my spilled items from the hot tarmac.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fuck fuck fuck</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Standing, I look around but he’s nowhere. <br />Oh there he is.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The man whose car I just smashed into at the airport, (and let’s face it, if you’re at an airport there’s something happening in your life. No good time to have an accident, yeh, but airports are the worst) he’s on his knees struggling with both hands to bend the metal away from Joey’s tyre. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“See now this was a bit jammed in there but now I’d say that wheel will roll. I’d want to be sure the tyre’s not binding though, so if you like I’ll just follow you down the road a while, and see how you get on.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In my brain’s background there appears a volley of sugary primary colour explosions of unexpected humanity and compassion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I say</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“No, I’ll be fine, that’s so incredibly kind of you but thanks so much.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He bends the torn metal around upwards, a few more inches away from Joey’s tyre <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HqaAnvbF6PXODpvZowX-oJFoz5aAtxl0Wqns66ysbBD5a54tRxC1dkuHRiJHDYrIMZNINq9jJFnZGrX_j2t_8CDQGmTQk6hHYtQ90h3NCFjQEu2wjKRl1VeLH7TnGV9dTzNVvxfYD-3xeatxS3U56sqFvOy2ukfUyVdckCjgYj39sxMohoge3Yjyaw/s4032/IMG_8825.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HqaAnvbF6PXODpvZowX-oJFoz5aAtxl0Wqns66ysbBD5a54tRxC1dkuHRiJHDYrIMZNINq9jJFnZGrX_j2t_8CDQGmTQk6hHYtQ90h3NCFjQEu2wjKRl1VeLH7TnGV9dTzNVvxfYD-3xeatxS3U56sqFvOy2ukfUyVdckCjgYj39sxMohoge3Yjyaw/s320/IMG_8825.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">“There now, I’d say you’ll be alright. Keep an eye on your temperature gauge, I would, in case anything’s binding.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Really, and thanks so much for your help, and I’m really sorry about well, y’know. It’s pretty much downhill to Swinford and I’ll pull into that garage there to take a look."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sound. And sound!” he declares, waving the 50 back at me, and he drives off.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Joey’s partially blocking the airport road, so I roll him down onto the hard shoulder of the main road, stop and</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sit</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Think<br />Breathe<br />Think</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">God he was so nice<br />Offering to follow me to see if I was okay</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So kind</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yeh get shopping in the garage, ‘cos I’ll not have a car.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But if I don’t have a car how do I get to Castlebar for my knee injection on Saturday morning?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No way I’m missing that. Waited months for that. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And no way I’m asking anyone in the posse to get out of bed early on a Saturday.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And pretty sure there’ll be no public transport to get from the village to Castlebar by 10.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stare into space <br />(definitely better when not moving)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dial the mobile of the bloke who owns the garage in my village.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Rural West of Ireland means first name terms.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Kev, it’s Charlie. How you doing mate? Listen, fucking smashed my car a bit outside of Knock Airport. Happy fucking birthday, eh? Yeh, it is, yeh, 63. Not an age event that rocks my world, to be honest, Kev. No biggie. But still, yeh, exactly. Not on your birthday and not at the bloody airport. Thanks Kev, yeh, so, I’m on my way to you now, but I’ve a few medical appointments I need to get to, so any chance of a car?"</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Not right now, Charlie, but by tonight or tomorrow morning latest there’ll be a car here for you, which you can keep for the duration of the repair.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Kev you're a bloody mensch, mate. Thanks so much. See you in an hour, I hope.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The bloke I crashed into gets my car going, and the garage gives me a car. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not saying you wouldn’t get that in London, but. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The West of Ireland is a great place to live. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and by the way Kev, no rush: I’m loving the <i>Qashqai</i>!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">©Charlie Adley</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">21.05.2023 </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-65314911981668312562023-03-31T11:15:00.004+01:002023-03-31T15:46:54.989+01:00How to cure the housing crisis overnight!<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9LqqyKi0wq4lC6VIVv_M6395KU3MHaoKOISnHefum7o8Ts6Wda6gsDED8uzoaHFhUhgn3Lt_Xu1sRUE31SS0HfYhyha0c06OWqYvMNusvGsN-HHQ7YnIeBdkxCqy_V2NBxgyl1H4VWaJBuacbKJFGAiQVcB6IYxmFy1lQY4AATyaUbpf7yYNQ2QIpA/s1024/1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="1024" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9LqqyKi0wq4lC6VIVv_M6395KU3MHaoKOISnHefum7o8Ts6Wda6gsDED8uzoaHFhUhgn3Lt_Xu1sRUE31SS0HfYhyha0c06OWqYvMNusvGsN-HHQ7YnIeBdkxCqy_V2NBxgyl1H4VWaJBuacbKJFGAiQVcB6IYxmFy1lQY4AATyaUbpf7yYNQ2QIpA/w400-h223/1.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Kudos to the excellent notfairbnb campaign </i><br /></div></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Throughout this immoral and appalling Irish housing scandal, nothing has enraged me more than words uttered by our rotated Taoiseach.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">With his government facing a vote of No Confidence due to their lifting of the Eviction Ban, Maggie Varadkar thought the time was right to dabble in legal pedantics.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Ignorant of the obscenity of an Irish leader pontificating the definition of eviction, Varadkar spoke at an EU summit in Brussels.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">“I think people often mix up termination with evictions.” he said.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">As I absorbed those words a searing pain, burning and visceral, roared from my core to all parts abdomen.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Think what you like, Blueshirt Boy, but know this, you loathsome toe-rag: if you’re a tenant who’s paid their rent every month, done the landlord the service of caring for the property and tending to the garden, when you’re served notice you feel like you’re being evicted.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because you are.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even given the fact that Maggie V is a landlord, I was astonished at his absolute inability to empathise; his vile arrogance and shameful ignorance of real life.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was saying we’re so stupid we don’t even understand which particular way we’re getting fucked out of our homes.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I know very bloody well how desperate and terrifying it feels to be told to leave your home, especially when you’re unable to find another. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95Bf0kYe1_-fkEiQpbUV-DUHcJcAxnE3bh_eBoMDK8UEY3zF3a-8-G-HUNx6CsyHTrFe0oNu8mSUMqamXjcR5pDBn-F_agNXjdZj3Vg6Ja2qZ_VbfBoaLYC50JiiyKwaP-h2fZe8f4WezVprwuCfFcEphnn9qlMcddONKoeexQd-x9j20e_xsCfI3wg/s896/ejectment.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="896" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95Bf0kYe1_-fkEiQpbUV-DUHcJcAxnE3bh_eBoMDK8UEY3zF3a-8-G-HUNx6CsyHTrFe0oNu8mSUMqamXjcR5pDBn-F_agNXjdZj3Vg6Ja2qZ_VbfBoaLYC50JiiyKwaP-h2fZe8f4WezVprwuCfFcEphnn9qlMcddONKoeexQd-x9j20e_xsCfI3wg/s320/ejectment.jpg" width="320" /></a> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">A tenant since 1981, I’ve never missed a month’s rent. Yet in the last 5 years I’ve been served notice to terminate my fully-registered tenancies twice, and neither time was I in any way at fault.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Five years ago, three months after the collapse of my marriage, my landlady took advantage of the change in circumstances to serve notice on a six year tenancy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two years later, in a different county, my next landlord saw fit to serve me notice on the afternoon I found out I was to have half my left lung surgically removed.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">After the break-up, the house move and 18 months of severe illness, I had no savings and was about to face a major operation.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Due to Ireland’s woeful lack of housing supply, there was nowhere to move to, and even if I did get lucky and found somewhere, how the hell was I going to pay rent?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Every single night for four months I searched the three major property websites for rentals around Killala, North Mayo, and found nothing. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two places were advertised but it proved impossible to get a viewing.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then I looked at the Airbnb website and saw they had 871 properties available in the general Killala area.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Listen to me, Leo, you vacuous waste of space. Your smug semantics will never succeed in diminishing the dignity of good folk facing eviction.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The truth is as simple as it is tragic: losing your home is losing your home.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The fury I feel towards Varadkar becomes insignificant in comparison to the frustration I feel, as yet again I stare at the overnight solution to our nation’s housing crisis.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">January 2023 figures from the Department of Housing show the number of homeless people in Ireland now stands at 11,754 - the highest number of homeless individuals since current records began.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">That number translates into 3,431 children belonging to 1,609 homeless families.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet just a click of the mouse away, there are 25,515 AirBnB listings in Ireland, 60 per cent of which are entire homes or apartments.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s over 15,000 empty homes and apartments in excellent states of repair, ready to be lived in right now.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How can it be right to sacrifice the needs of those who live here to those of tourists?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course Ireland needs to profit from tourism, but infinitely more important, its people need somewhere to live.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The simple overnight solution to the Housing Crisis: forget about being slaves to the free market for a second, impose a five year moratorium on all online vacation housing websites, and give homes to the homeless.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you want a self-catering pad in Ireland, get on the phone. Call up about your cottages, pods, yurts, tepees and penthouses. They’re only a phone call away.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Zero homeless. Completely achievable, if only a couple of rotating capitalists had the cojones to adapt the market in a tiny yet massively significant way.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Airbnb will still enjoy healthy profits without Ireland, and as soon as we’ve cured homelessness, they’ll come running back without a whimper.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alongside the official homeless there are 290,000 people in Ireland like me, the hidden homeless, living at the grace and generosity of friends or family.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">We are lucky in that we have roofs over our heads, but we have no security of tenure, no rights, no future in Ireland’s gleaming.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Until there is a viable supply of homes to rent, we have to stop sacrificing Irish freedoms to corporate forces, stop scaring people out of their homes, and offer hope through the simplest of solutions.<br /></span><br /><br />©CharlieAdley<br />31.03.2023<br /><br /><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-76417410580422753042023-03-04T11:45:00.001+00:002023-03-04T11:47:46.161+00:00Kill Me Now!<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJPhxt4lkmlrOvVLrtwlbv5jyGvld3ybMN02z5t0y2yReX0JtubfiZIoY3nQ0lOZyFpZrw-HM-pDkpIuz1lSa4AfUI_xfWuPTtYFM0SlCmRTRfnD2ei2ONLm3-93BKOeo6IZu_ZocILGQ5RV4VOlUrrf2lvtR1uJ8A4pgI7fE4Au72AXqG4Z-ptMbNw/s2347/img20220801_12274143.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2347" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJPhxt4lkmlrOvVLrtwlbv5jyGvld3ybMN02z5t0y2yReX0JtubfiZIoY3nQ0lOZyFpZrw-HM-pDkpIuz1lSa4AfUI_xfWuPTtYFM0SlCmRTRfnD2ei2ONLm3-93BKOeo6IZu_ZocILGQ5RV4VOlUrrf2lvtR1uJ8A4pgI7fE4Au72AXqG4Z-ptMbNw/s320/img20220801_12274143.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i> </i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Kitty and Molly looking for some loving </i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">If the locals from the village could see you now, that English fella, yes him alone there in that big old house, they’d be sure you were off your tiny head.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But nobody can see you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There’s not a human awake for miles around.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s three in the morning.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You cheer as you manage to get the head of the hoover attachment flat against the ceiling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Now I’ll have you, ye little bastards!” you cry triumphantly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even though your bedroom is two doorways away, you won’t be able to sleep knowing that your hall ceiling is carpeted by a million midges.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The thought makes your shoulders hunch, your stomach churn. You scritch and scratch your forearms at the idea of it, and let rip a tremulous</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Phwwhhoooooorrr.”</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now you slide the hoover in straight lines, high above your head. The vacuumed strip reveals white paint under black, while each side of the clean swathe midges fly and tumble, all along your hallway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After twenty minutes you’ve almost got all of them. The rest will fly off tomorrow morning, when the hall will be dark. You’ll open the front door and the midges will head out into daylight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ten hours earlier you’d been watching the TV news: horrific heaps of burning cows, as the government try to halt the spread of Foot and Mouth disease.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You turn off the TV and go to sit on your front step.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ahhh. <br />That’s better. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Lovely.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Above the trees that line the river, the early evening midsummer sun rides high, golden, huge.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The crows resume their daily conflict over the right to perch on the creamery roof.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The river splutters.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A tractor growls its way up a distant hill.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Calm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Bliss.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You love living here. When you decided to look for a place in County Mayo, you wrote a list of wants, partly because it created a checklist to ease your head, but also because someone you admire once told you that if you put simple clear wishes out into the universe, they are more likely to come true.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do you really believe that? <br />You did it anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You wanted a place off the road, away from traffic. It had to have a bath and a spare room that could double as an office. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It had to have a garden of some sort, and not be more than three miles from a village or town, with a pub and a shop. Ideally there would be nearby beaches to walk.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYUyokvS-FoFPXU4Iea6CHdJZd4eJ9Swi-H_plRS5tslsTbKNirqIClVu5f5On71R2C2Kuf8AFH6ui2nwogmITG8mzXglSraSipYXU7sE4briTjrQKPbaeAA3Im6tt9rM3vFefXT-POpbDGGucazDSWot-LH6Kf99hd_1VTuTtHJxaZRZcjs31XEvEYA/s4032/IMG_7916.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYUyokvS-FoFPXU4Iea6CHdJZd4eJ9Swi-H_plRS5tslsTbKNirqIClVu5f5On71R2C2Kuf8AFH6ui2nwogmITG8mzXglSraSipYXU7sE4briTjrQKPbaeAA3Im6tt9rM3vFefXT-POpbDGGucazDSWot-LH6Kf99hd_1VTuTtHJxaZRZcjs31XEvEYA/s320/IMG_7916.jpg" width="320" /></a></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This place has all that and more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Built by your landlord’s father, its thick stone walls are painted white with red trim.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the past you’ve written in your bedrooms and you’ve written in your spare rooms, but now, for the first time in your life, you have a spare bedroom as well as a room that serves solely as a place to write.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The village - that’s what you call it, but the local farmers call it ‘town’ and it’s best not to offend them - has two shops, a garage and several pubs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There’s a small but growing population of blow-ins like yourself, urban types with a yen for the country who, along with welcome friendship, bring city wit and irony to your rural life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are many beaches: empty expanses of pristine white sand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You walk for hours, losing your mind to the beauty of it all; the pure glory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Beyond your list and dreams, fifty yards from your front door, past the ruined mill, the Cloonaghmore river rushes out to sea.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You empathise with the wild salmon and sea trout who swim inland. You’ve also gone upriver.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even though you know you’re the worst fisherman in the world, you have to have a go.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A few days ago you endure an excruciating experience, both physically and socially.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your girlfriend wanders down to the river, to see if you’ve landed dinner, only to find you half naked, wrestling with a barbed sliver of metal the wrong side of your left breast button.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You managed to catch your own nipple.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When, finally, you ease the hook out, she gently mocks you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now you can chuckle about that. <br />Not then. You discovered a new echelon of soreness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your girlfriend works in Galway and comes up every other weekend, leaving you to go down to the shmoke for the craic every fortnight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When you first move here the Irish Examiner send a photographer to do a shoot, for a cover shot and the double-page spread that launches your new column.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The photographer wants you to go up the pub, to take photos of you with the locals.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You take a look at his yard-long pop star paparazzi lens and decide that is the worst idea you ever heard. You’ll be socially dead in the village before you meet anyone.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone will think you’re there just to write about them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You do have to write about something, so instead you write about clouds, birds, empty beaches and your neighbours, who are both animals.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Kitty the donkey lives in the field outside your kitchen window, while Jack-The-Cat-Who-Thinks-He’s-A-Dog is a lithe tortoiseshell and white who lives in the barn.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Cats are meant to have pride. They’re not supposed to appear eager, but Jack thinks he’s a dog.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When you go out he waits by the turnoff to the main road, and when you return he races the car to the front gate. On cold mornings he sits on top of your kitchen radiator, warming his body right through.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You worry he’s grilling his kidneys, but he’s a smart lad.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Kitty and Jack and you become a pretty tight crew. When Kitty gives birth to her foal a flick of her head, and then she brings leggy Molly from the shed to meet you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Clearly Kitty’s telling Molly that you’re family, you’re okay. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve an adult donkey mare behind you, while her tiny foal leans on your front.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You can feel their body heat. <br />Your nostrils fill with their heady sweaty scent.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re completely moved by this experience, until you look up to find the lad from the fish farm, staring at this scene with a wildly mocking eye.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sure that’s your name, Charlie. That’s your feckin’ Indian name from now on! ‘Shtands With Donkeys.’ That’s your name!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You take photos of Molly, write a feature about her and send it off to the<i> Irish Examiner</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They publish it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit on the back step and watch the clouds change direction, and then go and write about it, send it off and they publish it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each morning you wake as Kitty greets the farmer with a raucous bray.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After stretches, crunches and press-ups you walk the beach, then go to the village to buy your paper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Ah Charlie, you’ve been walking Ross again!” cries the shopkeeper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“I have. It was glorious up there this morning, Patsy! But how do you know?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“How do I know? There’s sand all over my clean floor. That’s how I know!”
</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Her smile betrays the way she’s happy for you.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlu56IKpHqVZvkaZ5u33ihfZpb-NTWGeEeicvydI86kRGchFIANtDbrP_MTHHPOtpN5OTwVigJ1SmNegbiIIc0rLKXXH1QVjjqg0Q_SzDMumBSsXbDlIoC-MEJ9QLAaSV5Y7Ae8okpHiaUE2U0oH8RKVRWQTKElS1-cmif7A7vEnTm227Gn5M9cbfbA/s3840/E011E14C-085C-4948-8441-E3E1DCDABCFF.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlu56IKpHqVZvkaZ5u33ihfZpb-NTWGeEeicvydI86kRGchFIANtDbrP_MTHHPOtpN5OTwVigJ1SmNegbiIIc0rLKXXH1QVjjqg0Q_SzDMumBSsXbDlIoC-MEJ9QLAaSV5Y7Ae8okpHiaUE2U0oH8RKVRWQTKElS1-cmif7A7vEnTm227Gn5M9cbfbA/s320/E011E14C-085C-4948-8441-E3E1DCDABCFF.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You eat breakfast, then go and write in your room that’s just for writing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After a few hours you walk past the old mill to the lush avenue of trees beside the river.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit on a rock alone, surrounded by tall yellow flag iris, beside fast flowing water.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The perfect lunch hour.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When the farmer goes Christmas shopping in Dublin, the only day each year he’s away from his livestock, he asks you to give the cows some hay and feed the sheep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You're a suburban Jewish boy from northwest London. Now you stand ankle deep in muck, lobbing hay over to cows with a pitchfork.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You breathe in the pong of cow dung. You’ve always loved that smell. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It reminds you of the farm in Somerset where you holidayed as a child. That’s where your country soul first revealed itself to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You feel proud. <br />The farmer trusts you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He says you keep ‘a tidy patch.’<br />Praise indeed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom has somehow found you, here in your stone farmhouse.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve your regular column in the regional paper, and your new column in the national broadsheet. All the features you send out are published.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The features editor of the national broadsheet calls you often to offer more work: a situation unprecedented and never repeated.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You only write exactly what you want to. You are fulfilling your own dream and make sure to appreciate the wonder of the moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been sitting here on your front step for hours now, taking in the scenery and sunshine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your arse is numb.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You stand up, stretch your arms high to the sky and decide to hitch to the pub.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A few weeks ago one of the brothers who own the local garage waved his arms around in frustration at your wimpy ways.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“You need to drive that car like a man, Charlie. Give it some ooomph and clean out its engine."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You decide this probably isn’t the best time to explain to him that it’s not ‘that car.’</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your Mazda’s name is Betsy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Somewhat foolishly you trust his expert opinion, and drive for six hours at full speed, to visit friends far away in The Kingdom.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turns out Betsy the Blue Bubble is, as you suspected, an old woman, who likes to be treated with respect.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ten miles outside Dingle her oil warning light comes on, and for the last few months your car has been hundreds of miles away, languishing in a mechanic’s field in County Kerry.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Being carless through these Summer months has proved wonderful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve hitched, cycled and walked everywhere, and now you stretch your legs up to the main road, stick your thumb out by the old stone bridge, and within minutes you’re in the pub.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Unburdened by the need to remain sober enough to drive, you can now drink as much as you want, so you do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Later, after hitching home, you lie on the sofa.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve opened the window so that you can hear the sun set. You can't see that horizon, but the thousands of birds nested in the riverside trees can.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Be it 5 o’clock on a December afternoon, or 11 on a midsummer’s night like tonight, the very second the sun goes past the edge of the Earth, they simultaneously explode into song.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s more of a cacophonous screech, but regular as clockwork.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you were a God, this would be your alarm clock.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You don’t hear the avian explosion that night, because you’re fast asleep, under the influence of Guinness and whiskey.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At three in the morning your bladder knocks on your brainbox. You wake to a mouth of emery board.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been snoring and - oh my good god.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh fuck <span style="font-size: x-large;">fuck</span> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>fuck</b></span>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Due to a cocktail of late daylight and too much booze, you didn’t realise you’d turned the hall light on, when you came home from the pub.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With the living room window wide open, the midges had swarmed inside, and your hall’s white ceiling is now black.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No exaggeration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Forty five gazillion midges carpet your hall ceiling, and you have a simple choice to make.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Either you go to bed or you hoover them up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The relief of emptying your bladder gives you a rush of happiness, so off you go to get the hoover, singing in crazed jubilation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“Hi ho! Hi ho! <br />It’s hoov’ring ceilings I go.<br />At three ayyy em. <br />’Tis mad I am!. <br />Hi ho! Hi ho hi ho hi hoooooooo!”</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The next morning, drinking tea at the kitchen table, you think about your life: this house, the beaches, the girlfriend, the pubs; the river and new found friends, both human and beast, the calm, the peace, the way editors are eager for your work.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU4TvHCHZMz3DQnKEiqoPk2vCmRpXWzntaMcxEnTChaWb6jhr7bjctoU-DGv1y4B1f_UekodEzs3xM4h-2fe10eveXUDv24faYNxSyDBWsqAKgeNJGNhBPhcMIcj-qylfkGK8YfGXQEg84tNm4WIueQCPQHKycKi1xoWDzaioEVY7dy_qoeKK1Q2rjg/s1176/img20230302_14314475%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1176" data-original-width="765" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU4TvHCHZMz3DQnKEiqoPk2vCmRpXWzntaMcxEnTChaWb6jhr7bjctoU-DGv1y4B1f_UekodEzs3xM4h-2fe10eveXUDv24faYNxSyDBWsqAKgeNJGNhBPhcMIcj-qylfkGK8YfGXQEg84tNm4WIueQCPQHKycKi1xoWDzaioEVY7dy_qoeKK1Q2rjg/s320/img20230302_14314475%202.jpg" width="208" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Bad times in life beat you around the head, but good times can pass by without being appreciated. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Has your life ever been better?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You write in your journal:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">‘Kill me now.’</span><br /><br /><br /><br />© 04.03.2023<br /><br /><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">From my new collection: Hoovering Ceilings<br /><a href="mailto:charlieadley1@mail.com">charlieadley1@gmail.com</a></span></i></b><br /><br /><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-35502653035465538442023-02-24T13:35:00.000+00:002023-02-24T13:35:29.953+00:00Interesting Feeling.<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Staring death in the eye with a blade pricking my jugular - another true story from my new collection: <b><i>Hoovering Ceilings.</i></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> </i></b> <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-8ZaAaucRjKhQWh8zn8KCItZZRkHFRoJ5vfzWd6vqtA7pms63sVGqCZ12DuD6oHEBtAfj4VoAHDyPIIlOAQO-1jMJubGJ1L1w2X6ITkxhW3IGorAiZ4A2CzMUaLhYBoQVWO_Tfs7yXYHb4lxYk4cPJrCkvmiD1N4-44xm3Gko95-JBwgw-MZlIVpefA/s620/brixton-tube-station-closure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="620" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-8ZaAaucRjKhQWh8zn8KCItZZRkHFRoJ5vfzWd6vqtA7pms63sVGqCZ12DuD6oHEBtAfj4VoAHDyPIIlOAQO-1jMJubGJ1L1w2X6ITkxhW3IGorAiZ4A2CzMUaLhYBoQVWO_Tfs7yXYHb4lxYk4cPJrCkvmiD1N4-44xm3Gko95-JBwgw-MZlIVpefA/s320/brixton-tube-station-closure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Interesting Feeling.</b><br /><br />The city streets are black and wet. Your friend’s living room glows amber from the light of lamps.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You feel safe; warm; relaxed. <br />You’re 23 and life is good.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Later this evening life will feel fantastic. <br />You will appreciate every single breath.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">None of you want to go out. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Saturday night is for amateurs: time to stay away from pubs, clubs and restaurants. Trouble is, everyone wants something to smoke, and nobody else knows how to get some.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You head off with your mate to Brixton, to score a little gear for the crew.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fifty pairs of eyes turn to look as you walk into the pub. The centre of the bar is empty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone is hanging out by the walls, or the bar. Everyone is watching everyone else in a surreptitious way, that gives the impression they are in fact minding their own business.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Grabbing a pair of barstools, your mate orders pints, while you look around for your guy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been shopping here a dozen times. You know your guy and he knows you. With deals like these it helps to know your guy. You know neither his name nor his marital status.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know nothing about him, save for the fact that he has done you right in the past.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’s your man.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After all your previous visits everyone else knows he’s your man too, so they leave you alone.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That saves a load of stress and hassle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There he is, sitting over by the jukebox as usual. You catch his eye, exchange glances and head for the Gents.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s glaring bright white in there, heady with a cocktail of bleach and urine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Nobody else about. <br />Excellent.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’s a big guy, over six foot and chunky sideways too, wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt under his brown leather jacket.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You speak first.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Arright mate?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeh, harsit goin’?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Good y’know.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Watcha wan’? Black ‘ash?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Nah. I want some draw, if you got some.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeh I got some. How much?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Five?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Nah man, gonna cost you ten for draw. S’good bush, y’kna, s’Sensi, y’kna. Me personals.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh come on, you wouldn’t be selling ya personals to me.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“S’good, y’kna, right?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Suddenly three more guys come in. They’ve seen you walk in and they’re after your business.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re not interested in them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">One of them pushes forward.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Hey man, watcha wan’? Ya don’ wan’ ‘is gear man, iss no good. Look, I got good ‘ash, see. Red Seal, see.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t want no Red Seal.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That was your mistake. You should have completely ignored the other hustlers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your man thinks he’s about to lose his deal, and while it probably isn’t worth that much to him, there’s ethics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, even in pub toilets on cold Brixton nights there’s ethics, and these other guys are out of order.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Hey, wass yaaar problem? See, I deal with the man, see! He come to me befah, ya kna?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“So what you say now, fool? You say I can’ no sell ‘ash in me own backyar’?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A third guy takes hold of your hand, opens out your fingers, swiftly squashes something into your palm and then closes your fingers around it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s an old trick. You got it, so now pay for it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No way you’d ever buy like that, not without seeing and smelling the gear first.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Otherwise you’re going to end up with liquorice or oregano.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Things are getting a little messy, but you’re not sweating it. You’ve failed to learn that bad madness can happen any time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your man sees you holding the other guy’s gear and reckons you’ve done the dirty on him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the past he’s always been gentle of foot and vocal chord, but now he completely loses control, shouting and screaming.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“What ya doooin’, boy? You don’t do a deal with me? You can’t swap over, like, whenever you want, ya fool, bumbaclot.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You step back in shock.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stepping towards you</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">in one swift movement<br />he grabs you with one hand <br />by your neck,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">the other by the rear waistband of your jeans.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He lifts you off your feet <br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">into the air and<br />fast and strong <br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">slams your back up <br />against the wall <br />above the urinal trench.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The others lads are laughing, but when he pulls the blade they start to jump up and down, yelling and screaming at him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Fuck’s sake man, get that blade off’ve ‘im! ‘Ees gonna kill that stupid fucka!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Bladclaart man, you wanna get the blade you get the blade. ‘Fee wanna kill the man ees gonna kill the man and nuttin’ we can do ‘bout it.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He’s holding you a foot off the ground, choking your neck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The power of his grasp presses your back against the wall.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know the guy. He’d always seemed cool.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tonight though he’s gone full whackadoodle on you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You smell his breath. Curry goat patty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now he presses his shoulder hard into your chest, releasing the hand around your neck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For a second you breathe in free rasps as he adjusts his grip, the hand now holding you up scrunched on the lapel of your leather jacket.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His other hand arrives at your freshly exposed neck, pressing his blade into your jugular.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There’s a fair bit of flesh on your bones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It takes the strength of a mad man to hold you above the ground with one hand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As long as he stays this mad you’ll be okay.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If he gets sane all of a sudden, and loses the strength to hold you up, you’ll slide down the wall,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">onto the blade, <br />which will slide into your neck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If he gets any crazier he’s going to stick it in anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You can feel the cold metal tip pricking your skin.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The others aren’t pleased with all this. They’ve got businesses to run from the premises, and Babylon swarming all over asking questions they can do without.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They’re leaping up and down, shouting at him to let you go, but they can’t pull him away ‘cos then you drop.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If they try to get the blade off him he’ll do it anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know it’s nothing to him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He can kill you, or he can let you live.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A dead white male on the toilet floor of a Brixton pub on a Saturday night: The Boys are not going to be overwhelmed by witnesses.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re aware that his mates are trying to get him off you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re also aware that your wallet is being passed around out there somewhere, but that doesn’t worry you in the least.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The real game is between you and him,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">up close</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">face to face.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He's using all of his strength to hold you up there.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You breathe hard on each other<br />his spittle hits your cheeks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His eyes glare at yours<br />yours stare close up into his.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His sweat and heat on your sweat and heat. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know it’s nothing to him.<br />He can kill you</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">or he can let you live.<br /><br /><br />You’re adrenalin calm. <br /><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Interesting feeling.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p>©Charlie Adley</p><p>24.02.2023<br /><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-61998277620129839652023-02-19T11:01:00.002+00:002023-02-19T11:05:22.057+00:00Music Monitor<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOwsy9anr26dmNBvfERffpqKzHEWk6SWjb-cjYqZgEs8o0MNIkh5uDPvKOPAoGadSsuHhr_U7ABbGl1WIsNPUnPva-sNUWAtSLrW1AZyLL85M5EWfeDKW0bD5OSshOIqdaZZ6SHN3Vq7N51VyLowL4sIkkgMutHAzf3TT_BBhTjBdrhf6w4DW_L3GazQ/s340/Machine-Head.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOwsy9anr26dmNBvfERffpqKzHEWk6SWjb-cjYqZgEs8o0MNIkh5uDPvKOPAoGadSsuHhr_U7ABbGl1WIsNPUnPva-sNUWAtSLrW1AZyLL85M5EWfeDKW0bD5OSshOIqdaZZ6SHN3Vq7N51VyLowL4sIkkgMutHAzf3TT_BBhTjBdrhf6w4DW_L3GazQ/s320/Machine-Head.jpg" width="320" /></a> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A tale of Deep Purple, bruised buttocks and my first act of rebellion. From my new collection of autobiographical short stories: <i><b>Hoovering Ceilings</b></i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Enquiries: <a href="mailto:charlieadley1@gmail.com">charlieadley1@gmail.com</a><br /> </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Music Monitor </i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit terrified behind the curtain at the edge of the school stage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The only other person up here is the Headmaster.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A lanky skinny man, he is compassionate, yet unpredictable in everything except his wardrobe and his rollups.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He sports green leather patches on the elbows of his omnipresent tweed jacket, nicotine yellow fingertips and moustache.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He also wears the rich scent of Old Holborn tobacco.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are worse smells.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You peek out, around the edge of the curtain.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His fingertips rest regally on the arms of his wooden throne.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Below, the entire school fidgets excitedly on polished wooden benches. Each boy’s head twists to look up at you: excited if they don’t like you; nervous if you’re their friend.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You start to sweat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your heartbeat crashes around your eardrums.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For the first time you taste your own bile, along with a pre-pubescent whiff of damp armpit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You wonder why the hell you’ve decided to do this.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At the age of 12, your life is as good as it will ever get. You’re Patrol Leader, a School Prefect and a Dormitory Prefect. You scored straight ‘A’s on all your exams and you’ve loads of friends.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A few weeks ago the Headmaster approached you to ask if you’d like to be Morning Music Monitor. Every function at English Preparatory School has to have a title.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now you have the honour of choosing a piece of music each morning, which you then play while Assembly dissembles.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The corresponding record sleeve has to be displayed in front of the Headmaster’s lectern on stage, enabling everyone in front of it to know what music they can look forward to.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Behind the lectern, the Headmaster has no idea which composer you’ve picked, but he’s very familiar with the entire school collection.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At least, he thinks he is.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All he’s done today is come into Morning Assembly, as he always does.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He hasn’t seen what the rest of the school has seen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Next year you’ll start Public School and because they think you’re smart enough to be an Oxbridge candidate, you’ll be thrown into a class a year ahead, and pushed to take three ‘O’ levels in a single year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ll go from top of the form and popular to being the class dumbo and a social pariah.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A boiling bag of hormones, paranoia and primal urges, you’ll react by putting on 45 pounds of weight, and decide that you’ve no desire whatsoever to go to university.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Right now though you’re bricking it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So far you’ve been the model of a modern music monitor, done exactly what you’re meant to do, choosing safe crowd-pleasing favourites such as Grieg’s <b><i>In The Hall of the Mountain King</i></b> or Sibelius’ <b><i>Karelia Suite.</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each morning you lift the needle and set it down so very carefully onto the LP, in an effort to avoid deafening everyone with the ear-splitting crunch of a stylus sliding through loudspeakers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Today the boys hold their breath, their eyes transfixed by the cover of the LP on display.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your first act of rebellion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Punishment awaits.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After the hymns and prayers, the Headmaster stands to make his daily announcements, sits down, turns to you and nods his head.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your signal to play the music.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Nobody will stand up from their seats until the music starts, and then they will file out, age by age, class by class, except for the Prefects who wait until all others are gone, and then file out in order of their own seniority, followed by the Deputy Head Boy, then the Head Boy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This obsession with hierarchy drives you crazy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This is why you feel the need to break rank, and it’s too late now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone apart from the Headmaster has seen the album cover.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you don’t do it you’ll be chicken.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you do it, you’ll be a hero and in serious trouble.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Slowly, gently, the needle is lowered.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit back and wait for the opening chords of Deep Purple’s <b><i>Smoke On The Water</i></b>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A gasp is audible from below, but still, row by row, the boys stand up and file out, each staring with a smile as they walk by.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Some whisper</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Nice one, Adley!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Others drag their fingers across their necks, in simulation of the slaughter to come.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After the boys have all left the hall, the teachers file out in their correct order, by seniority of age and department, followed by the Deputy Headmaster, and finally the Headmaster.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This morning he’s not gone anywhere though.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He sits in his chair and looks over. Just the two of you in the empty hall. He looks down at his knees.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He places the palms of his hands over his cheeks, hiding his weary kind eyes. Now he inspects the frayed hems of his ancient gabardine trousers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit and say nothing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That’s a simple fact of life in private schools in England: speak only when spoken to, and even then, only when expected to reply.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This long silence drowns you in dread.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You imagine the Headmaster is contemplating which particular line of punishment to choose.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Finally he turns to you, and speaks softly across the stage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Hmm. Well, Adley that was that was hmm. What was that?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“That was <b><i>Smoke On The Water</i></b> by Deep Purple, Sir.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Hmm. Heard worse things. They appear able to play their instruments and create a melody. Hmm. I suggest that from now on, you stick to the wonderful world of Classical music from Monday to Thursday. Hmmm. On Fridays, I will trust you to be sanguine about your choices, but if it has a tune, some kind of musical merit and is ermmm popular with the boys, I see no reason to avoid the contemporary canon completely. Are you capable of choosing such pieces?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Er, yes. Yes Sir!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“And that doesn’t include Chuck Berry and his ding a ling, nor Benny Hill and the likes of Ernie.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“No sir. Hate that anyway, Sir.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Very well, Adley.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He stands up and leaves.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit there in shock, wondering what the hell ‘sanguine’ means, aware that you’ve got away with a whopper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You stand up, and discover something that will affect each subsequent performance throughout your life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While you have the nerve to speak in public, to make a marketing presentation, to open an exhibition or launch a book, afterwards your legs become feeble wobbly sticks, completely failing you, and you will fall over.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Alone in the school hall, you slowly topple backwards.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your arse slams hard</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">against the wooden boards</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">with an echoing eye-jarring <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i>thump</i></b></span>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You have escaped the cane.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You have neither been reprimanded nor beaten, but contrived somehow to smack your own behind and end up in pain.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was worth it though. <br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p>©Charlie Adley<br /></p><p>19.02.2023<br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-3837597622374826572023-02-11T15:36:00.007+00:002023-02-11T19:19:58.988+00:00International Dateline<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"></span></b></i></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ8hCVvnDk6Cu0WZgXEw_w_Qj1XgSOn-mbgsS_GPdwcvrz88WwlgQiIkavch8AQoH9s_PNq3hAkYRt31fS-s7o4wAeiV4eN3qZaCHwNhVvPqi-CSY0PSL_P54CBsSpZTjJk8s5Jmw7R6qV6CVrMxx2SusamDG5RSDxL2Ncia3Oo2byNPEap2u-OJFheQ/s810/world-map-international-date-line.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="810" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ8hCVvnDk6Cu0WZgXEw_w_Qj1XgSOn-mbgsS_GPdwcvrz88WwlgQiIkavch8AQoH9s_PNq3hAkYRt31fS-s7o4wAeiV4eN3qZaCHwNhVvPqi-CSY0PSL_P54CBsSpZTjJk8s5Jmw7R6qV6CVrMxx2SusamDG5RSDxL2Ncia3Oo2byNPEap2u-OJFheQ/s320/world-map-international-date-line.webp" width="320" /></a></span></b></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span> </span> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Map: Caitlin Dempsey</span><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">This weekend - from my new collection <b>Hoovering Ceilings</b> - obsessive love and madness unleashed in:</span></span></i></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u><i><b><span>International Dateline</span></b></i></u></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></i><u><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></i></u></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">For months you clamp yourself to her life, until eventually she relents and lets you be her boyfriend.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">For years you tell her how important it is to travel.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She goes travelling.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now she’s on a beach in Los Angeles, and you're in a piss-stinking public phone box in Bradford, West Yorkshire.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You ask the woman on the end of the phone three times: is she sure there were no letters waiting for your girlfriend when she arrived.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Three times she answers with increasing impatience.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“There were no letters for her, and right now she’s down at the beach.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">None of the many long letters you wrote arrived. She doesn’t know what you wrote.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You can’t even remember what you wrote, because ever since she left, you’ve been out of your tiny fragile mind.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Without her there to obsess over, your madness has no outlet.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You tuck your chin into your coat, push open the door of the phone box, and step into the freezing cold rain exploding over the Pennines.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You walk against the wind, and stumble back to your little terraced house, where you sit on the sofa in your soaking wet coat.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You drink scotch. Famous Grouse. <br />You smoke some hash. <br />Then drink more scotch.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eight hours later Malcolm comes home from work at the Student Union bars and finds you still in your damp coat.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Full length tweed, with a large collar that you keep flipped up around your neck, exposing only your face to the outside world.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Since she left you wear this coat everywhere, even during university lectures.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s being talked about, but you know it’s better this way. You are safely cocooned, and they are protected from you.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mind you it stinks a bit, when it’s soaked through and body-warmed from the inside.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Malcolm is not an effusive man. Long silences and few words are his way, yet tonight he sits next to you and puts his arm around you.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“This can’t go on, Charlie.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“My letters didn’t arrive."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Long silence.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“If it can’t go on, what do I do?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Go and pack Blue Bag.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You head upstairs, somewhat surprised to find Malcolm following you. Evidently he’s reached a level of concern that requires you to be supervised.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“What am I packing for? How long?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“As long as it takes.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“And am I going somewhere hot or cold?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Pack as if you’re never coming back."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is a man you trust. Your inability to act rationally makes taking instruction easy; pleasurable.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Somebody else has taken control.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thank fuck for that.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Packing Blue Bag is simple when you’re going forever.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One set of clothes for hot. <br />One set for cold. <br />One set to stay dry when it’s wet. <br />Washbag. <br />Boots on the foot and trainers in the bag.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Everything stuffed into a plastic orange survival bag, which keeps it all dry, and if you’re ever stuck, you sleep in that bag. Orange bag rolled into a sausage, slid into Blue Bag and zip.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Done.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Well done Charlie. Now, am I right in thinking you’ve still got an American Express card? I seem to remember you saying you’d kept it from your marketing days.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yep. Paid the bloody membership fee each year for some reason, but never use it. It’s a charge card, not a credit card. You have to pay the full bill each month. Who does that?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Perfect. Put it in your wallet.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You follow Malcolm out of the house and walk through the silent darkness of sleeping Bradford.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Malcolm unlocks the door of the bar he closed only an hour earlier.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You sit together in the pale light of beer pump heads.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Absorbing Malcolm’s calm and the stillness of a closed bar, you drink whisky through the night.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Malcolm looks at his watch.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“First train leaves for London in 20 minutes. Time to get to the Interchange.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Am I going to London?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No Charlie. You’re going after her.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Am I? Oooerr. Not sure she’ll like me muscling in on her trip.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“You don’t have to muscle in on anything. Just see her, say what you need to and take it from there.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Malcolm walks you through Bradford’s ashen dawn, down to the station, and sees you onto the train.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re heading south at sunrise.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Blue Bag is by your side. <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SUfeQ6sb5HyxnInjDQkw_t_nsg3T9UzEs0TaHnqGJw-DK21RqdINuLCL2rHo9iUwCNEw5Opp_edBILYJqVbaceLaPhXHLCIw6esM2OZF0_NGmHGvcpHdiWgUZv3_MsmQ71FbCyQPAEjrcsfnjkov-RXvLOSEVHr1akyi11EGhwxJwtMSk6X5MbOrtg/s400/travel-cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SUfeQ6sb5HyxnInjDQkw_t_nsg3T9UzEs0TaHnqGJw-DK21RqdINuLCL2rHo9iUwCNEw5Opp_edBILYJqVbaceLaPhXHLCIw6esM2OZF0_NGmHGvcpHdiWgUZv3_MsmQ71FbCyQPAEjrcsfnjkov-RXvLOSEVHr1akyi11EGhwxJwtMSk6X5MbOrtg/s320/travel-cartoon.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="https://www.caricatures-ireland.com">Blue Bag by caricatures-ireland.com</a></i></span></span><br /></div></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Relief and a sense of purpose flood your frayed worn out systems.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">From London’s Kings Cross you jump onto the Northern Line, and head straight to Kentish Town, to wake up Chris.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You tell him that you need him by your side for the day.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay Chas, but I’m going nowhere without a coffee and a rolly. What’s going on this time?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Right mate, here’s the story. Got to be on a plane to LA by sundown, or else I might start to think."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Chris takes you to the USIT travel agency in the West End, where you show a young brunette your student card.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You explain to her that you have to be on a flight to LA by nightfall.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Her fingers whirl over her keyboard.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay, there’s a flight with BA to JFK, leaving Heathrow at 5pm today, and then a connecting flight to LA six hours later, but … if you wait until morning, there’s a much cheaper fare on a direct flight, without that long layover.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No. I need to go now.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay. How long would you like to spend in LA?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“24 hours. And the following day I need a flight on to New Zealand.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She looks up at you for a second and returns to her keyboard.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Hmm, yes, I can do that. Air New Zealand have two daily fights. Any preference for times?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Chris bounces nervously from one foot to the other.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“And onward from New Zealand?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Shit. You haven’t got that far yet.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ll sort that when I’m there.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“So it’s a one way from here to Aukland with a stopover in LA."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“You could say that.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She looks at you and smiles.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Do this a lot, do you? Get me to the other side of the world right now type of thing?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You smile and ask if they accept American Express.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“That’ll do nicely!” she says.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You both turn your heads as Chris chuckles at the absurdity of it all, and then all three of you laugh together.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh and I need a hotel room in LA. What time do I get in?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Erm, 1:20 am local time.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Shit. Okay, I definitely need a room. Nice place, please.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ve a room at the Wilshere for $250.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“That’ll do. Book that too.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You hug Chris and climb onto the bus to Heathrow.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re on the plane to JFK. <br />You wind your watch back 5 hours.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sleep is out of the question. You’re buzzed to fuck on adrenaline and off your tits on sleep deprivation.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Six hours layover in JFK, immobile with a thousand yard stare,</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now you’re on the plane to LA.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You wind your watch back three hours.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is the longest fucking day the universe has ever seen.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It started three days ago.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You asked Chris to call her, to tell her Charlie is on his way.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Chris didn’t thank you for that. What a bastard call to make for your mate.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She’ll be there.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will she be safe at the airport?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Get a grip. She volunteered to help the victims of the Loma Prieta earthquake.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She’ll be able to handle a fucking airport.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will she be furious?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You encourage her to travel and then, soon as she does, you implode, go bananas and chase after her.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Pathetic.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You hate yourself but you love her.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Staring into the night outside the airplane window you see her dark blonde hair, those rounded cheekbones, her clear English Rose blue eyes and that perfect petite nose.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through the veil of your madness this middle class woman from the Midlands appears to have a soul that’s pure, a heart that’s open, an admirably powerful sense of social justice and a mind-blowing body.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re not muscling in on her trip. <br />You’ll be gone the day after you arrive.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You just need to hold her.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She needs to know how much you love her, and then you can let her go.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hang on! She’s heading to New Zealand in December.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before she left, while you were still sane, she suggested you might fly out and meet her there for Christmas.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She actually said that, months ago, and you laughed and said</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No, this is your time my love. The last thing you need is me. This is about you.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, maybe, this one night in LA might be followed by Christmas together in New Zealand.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How long is it since Bradford?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How long is it since sleep, since food or anything but winding back your watch?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Off the plane in LAX, you race to Arrivals, and</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">there<br />there she is<br />waiting for you.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She tries to look angry.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your eyes pump excitement as you stride towards her, yet she refuses to smile.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You go for a hug but she stands back.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“What the hell are you doing here?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Came to see you, didn’t I?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She can’t resist the power of your crazed enthusiasm, and now you hug her and she lingers just long enough to let you know.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She smells so good.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You grab a cab to the hotel and you both sit on the floor in your room, swigging a bottle of vodka from the neck.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She feeds off your madness, the excitement of it, and then you make love, frantic wonderful sex on rough hotel carpet, and then you pass out on the bed.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two hours later the Californian sun drills into your head through your eyes.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">When you try to check out of the hotel, the guy on reception says if you don’t mind, please wait a moment. He has to call American Express.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Apparently there’s been a recent flurry of activity on this card, and he simply needs to reassure them you presented full ID, and the card has not been stolen.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Outside the hotel you stretch out your arm, flick on your lighter and set fire to your American Express card.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The melting plastic drips onto the sidewalk.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“What the bloody hell are you doing?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It was getting too hot, so I made it hotter. I’d never be able to use it again anyway.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You hug her and armed with her scent in your nostrils, you finally summon up the courage to ask</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“New Zealand for Christmas? I can rent us a beach hut near Abel Tasman?”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She looks you in the eye, shakes her head and sighs.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ll be there.”</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You turn and walk into downtown LA, find a local bus that creeps slowly towards LAX, via some extremely dodgy neighbourhoods, board your flight to New Zealand and wind your watch back …</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">… how long?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hang on, you’ll cross the International Dateline, so isn’t it tomorrow there already?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have no idea what time</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> or even what day it is.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve completely lost your own dateline</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> your brain bouncing around a timeless lifeline.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">24 hours later you walk up Queen Street in Auckland.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have no money.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have no place to stay.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have no ticket out.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You might never go back.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You might live here forever. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You might not. <br /> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">She’s coming for Christmas. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">©Charlie Adley</p><p style="text-align: left;">11.02.2023<br /><br /></p></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-16036843569905565872023-02-05T12:03:00.003+00:002023-02-06T11:42:18.405+00:00 Dangers Of Joy<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkVvvOmRW_pRMzVCyWXbfVGKi1oHqSHsMDJ3XniEWKCvBAfBiPuMGmgSwdEfJbglPsHOfPGI8NBqBbYew4Y4es773bW0laLcKfSd2dCEo2KHXtNwC5S0XP8jTAJXcLwwKViLqcPD_vEA87dbIJ6wc3VkY_RAwJkxOCPvWDKfinEms_nZdX0zMi-_1qA/s4032/IMG_8450.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkVvvOmRW_pRMzVCyWXbfVGKi1oHqSHsMDJ3XniEWKCvBAfBiPuMGmgSwdEfJbglPsHOfPGI8NBqBbYew4Y4es773bW0laLcKfSd2dCEo2KHXtNwC5S0XP8jTAJXcLwwKViLqcPD_vEA87dbIJ6wc3VkY_RAwJkxOCPvWDKfinEms_nZdX0zMi-_1qA/s320/IMG_8450.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After yesterday’s tale of pain, today I greet joy in 1990s Connemara. From my new collection of autobiographical short stories: <br /></span></div></div><div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.</b></i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="mailto:charlieadley1@gmail.com">charlieadley1@gmail.com</a> </i></span></p><p><u><b><br /></b></u><span style="font-size: large;"><u><b>Dangers Of Joy.</b></u><br /><br />Today is the day you discover joy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everything you perceived as happiness in the past was merely a confused cocktail of alcohol, hormones and drugs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This is joy, and it’s not fleeting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re about to feel joyful for weeks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After two years in Galway City, a slave to the Salthill craic, you spend six months plotting your escape.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Today, under a sunny sky, it’s finally happening. You load all your worldlies into your transit van, and head west out of the city.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At 32, you arrived in Ireland ready to ease up on the partying. After four hectic years in Bradford, West Yorkshire, it was time to grow up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Galway had other ideas, and your life is now immeasurably happier, thanks to friendships formed in city pubs and Salthill clubs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ll always love Galway City, and you’ll need that craic for decades to come, but cohabiting has never been your strong point.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Driving through the majesty of Connemara, your heart calms; your spirit soars.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Cloud shadows scurry over the smooth slopes of the Twelve Pins. <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCEVdafNEQQRuUYLebVX2cMVZ2dbpDIdfsYflUVxgzESfZvA6K81mYsAz32MzqsrMTNjXAxbiGosDh-JHLNZkAO0QkPZP2x-vwdNilygNJnXigKcvorOC-SvVYWbJtvKqjyovtWkcbhknm2NqYqvg7J2a59qanAZMOe4qfmbL5vqqf6_6zKh_XOe3Rfw/s3264/IMG_3972.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCEVdafNEQQRuUYLebVX2cMVZ2dbpDIdfsYflUVxgzESfZvA6K81mYsAz32MzqsrMTNjXAxbiGosDh-JHLNZkAO0QkPZP2x-vwdNilygNJnXigKcvorOC-SvVYWbJtvKqjyovtWkcbhknm2NqYqvg7J2a59qanAZMOe4qfmbL5vqqf6_6zKh_XOe3Rfw/s320/IMG_3972.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">This road started when you first left London in 1981, to live in Cambridge. Even then you knew that you wanted this. A part of you has wanted this ever since you stayed on a Somerset farm during childhood summers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Of course you didn’t know at the age of seven, but that feeling of utter belonging was your country soul firing up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re moving into a tiny house on the edge of Europe, beside a lake, a few hundred yards off the road, behind the landlord’s family farm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Atlantic ocean awaits, with white sand beaches on three sides of your peninsula.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your house.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2zbQfAqfjFiXR1mx44gDX52DddyOmY03beu9oFg4hEyDRILqm2qgVxobGCtCKEmSvk3LQUFnnWrjlZYPQsoPBoefamzCOVLQBZ0TQNe_wKyLGExjv82rgPO8upoiQ9XOtB80z6-wA-mkYg_ynZRW_pjLLzQ6JGYa3GSkduVflSLFn9hNbJfKrkpUhw/s4032/IMG_8448.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2zbQfAqfjFiXR1mx44gDX52DddyOmY03beu9oFg4hEyDRILqm2qgVxobGCtCKEmSvk3LQUFnnWrjlZYPQsoPBoefamzCOVLQBZ0TQNe_wKyLGExjv82rgPO8upoiQ9XOtB80z6-wA-mkYg_ynZRW_pjLLzQ6JGYa3GSkduVflSLFn9hNbJfKrkpUhw/s320/IMG_8448.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Photos of photos, so as not to destroy my old photgraph album...</span></span></i><br /></div><div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your first house, alone, where you will be able to write; walk; calm the fuck down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After decades of countless housemates, that sounds wonderful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Finally you have your own lone sanctuary, with a front and back door.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Compared to all your other moves, in and out of city flats, lugging heaving straining boxes up narrow windy staircases, moving into this house is incredibly easy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your life is unloaded in 20 minutes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With everything inside, you step outside to be greeted by a deep blue cloudless sky and Freddie, the farmer’s cattle dog. He’s not used to being petted, and delighted to have his ruff scratched. You’ll share a strong bond.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKk9Fz93HSZ6wrkvvG67ZWGIwKkCLioIgsJPw62aJRUKUq4DS_bd0GWNfVJHZEWWVqeHo0tlZVFgbeTHefcr8qlnBrtuBS8QLfLC-ORSFtc2sU3GOkh3cKwrhR2KOrw1jWgnI0eCrOkqoGaVSZN7cCZdmeePvfMxl_8bvvffVQYPMMJpH1nQqp4LzNdA/s4032/IMG_8455.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKk9Fz93HSZ6wrkvvG67ZWGIwKkCLioIgsJPw62aJRUKUq4DS_bd0GWNfVJHZEWWVqeHo0tlZVFgbeTHefcr8qlnBrtuBS8QLfLC-ORSFtc2sU3GOkh3cKwrhR2KOrw1jWgnI0eCrOkqoGaVSZN7cCZdmeePvfMxl_8bvvffVQYPMMJpH1nQqp4LzNdA/s320/IMG_8455.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Behind the steel gate is Sarah, the neurotic Connemara show pony. She’s too twitchy to be a friend, but the farmer always says “Howya!” as he walks by, and stops to chat about grass temperature and the pregnant cow.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">To keep you warm you order a trailer load of turf, which is dropped in a heap on your driveway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Beside every other house you see the upturned hull shapes of turf reeks, expertly stacked by locals, so you try to build your own.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turns out to be harder work than you thought. There’s thousands of the little sods. Failing miserably, you come over all Beckett, decide to fail better and walk to the pub.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In an act of perfect kindness, the farmer’s sons sort your turf while you drink. Arriving back at twilight, you see your year’s fuel perfectly stacked up by the wall.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0ZwrliwpYPfyd3jQG8SAaZHd-msTJMHzuIsY3sfH0-rmNacU4PZ0nssvRcryrqheUzRuhE-iWQAbG_hzUpPlmc3nJRk1EHbz7Y6FOvyCmFCweS1kFnYBlcDqURf9nu9tdZAY3Lw_Mr8L02O8kGcim-sQm9Rw7Sk9IPCOf1uezPYqYJpu9sqT4sg3ww/s4032/IMG_8451%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0ZwrliwpYPfyd3jQG8SAaZHd-msTJMHzuIsY3sfH0-rmNacU4PZ0nssvRcryrqheUzRuhE-iWQAbG_hzUpPlmc3nJRk1EHbz7Y6FOvyCmFCweS1kFnYBlcDqURf9nu9tdZAY3Lw_Mr8L02O8kGcim-sQm9Rw7Sk9IPCOf1uezPYqYJpu9sqT4sg3ww/s320/IMG_8451%202.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Encouraged by pints of Guinness with Jameson chasers, you feel altogether emotional and very welcome.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are people all around the world whom you love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They have helped you through hard times.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You feel strongly they need to know you now live in this stunningly beautiful place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Joy seems to make you feel strongly about many things.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your soul has risen high into your chest.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Energy and power flow through your body, into the Connemara sunshine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your feet barely touch the grass; bog; cow pooh; white sand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Unpacking the final box, you find your old Ricoh camera.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You step outside, breathing deep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even though the air smells rich in sea salt and cow dung, it’s so clean it actually tastes of honey.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Time to attempt a 360 degree photo of your new location. <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkVvvOmRW_pRMzVCyWXbfVGKi1oHqSHsMDJ3XniEWKCvBAfBiPuMGmgSwdEfJbglPsHOfPGI8NBqBbYew4Y4es773bW0laLcKfSd2dCEo2KHXtNwC5S0XP8jTAJXcLwwKViLqcPD_vEA87dbIJ6wc3VkY_RAwJkxOCPvWDKfinEms_nZdX0zMi-_1qA/s4032/IMG_8450.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkVvvOmRW_pRMzVCyWXbfVGKi1oHqSHsMDJ3XniEWKCvBAfBiPuMGmgSwdEfJbglPsHOfPGI8NBqBbYew4Y4es773bW0laLcKfSd2dCEo2KHXtNwC5S0XP8jTAJXcLwwKViLqcPD_vEA87dbIJ6wc3VkY_RAwJkxOCPvWDKfinEms_nZdX0zMi-_1qA/s320/IMG_8450.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">First shot is of your house, the second of the gravel drive that winds to the farmer’s house and the road,<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(you take a shot, and then turn a few inches clockwise)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">which leads to the ruined castle on top of Dun Hill, where a 15 year-old Granuaille, Ireland’s Pirate Queen, moved in with Donaille of the Fierce O’Flahertys in 1546.<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(and take another, making the pictures overlap)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A small turn to the right and there’s the moonscape.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sparse grasses tousle glacial marble slabs, smooth as fallen headstones, in treeless famine fields, enclosed by dry stone walls.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The fields rise and sink at random, as if tossed by a gentle green tide.<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(so that no detail is missed out)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A few degrees further finds the gashed grey silhouette of Erris Beg, the mountain that shields Roundstone and south Connemara from view.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(and as you take it all in)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Further round to the west lies Lough Anaserd, a small azure lake, squeezed between the coral white and pink sands of Doonloughan and Mannin strands.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(you gradually realise)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the distance behind your house rise the sensual slopes and towering peaks of the Twelve Pins: God’s own fruit bowl.<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(that this place is really your home)</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Before them lies Errislannan, the mystical misty headland where Alcock and Brown landed, after their pioneering Atlantic flight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(and for the first time in your life you are experiencing joy.)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Days later you pick up those photos from the chemist in Clifden, and arrange them into a wide circle on white card.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the centre of that circle you stick a map of Ireland, on which you’ve circled Connemara with a marker pen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Beside that circle you place a small portion of a local map, with your house marked precisely by yet another circle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then you draw manic arrows from the outer photos to the national map, and more from that to the local map, and your house.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then you drive back to Clifden and take A3 colour photocopies of your white card montage, and mail those copies to family and friends around the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You can relax now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They all know you’ve reached the end of this road, from metropolis to city, from town to these small clusters of homes, with neither shops nor church, known in Ireland as townlands.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As your local populations shrank from vast to minuscule, your world expanded wildly, allowing space for your spirit.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">On your first night in your new house you step outside and gasp to see the Milky Way: a gash of silver light sweeping across the pure darkness above.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You look inside, through your living room window, and smile at the fire blazing by the comfy chair.</span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">Must be a lucky person, whoever lives there.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The next day you plan a Sunday roast. You’ve picked up two cheap front shanks of lamb. If you cook them long and slow, they’ll taste sublime.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">To minimise hassle you roast them together with onion and spuds, adding parsnip and carrots later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everything’s in one dish. <br />Dead easy for the washing up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After two hours your house is filled with the scents of rosemary and garlic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your stomach rumbles. <br />The skies are still blue outside.<br />You lift the roasting dish out of the oven.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dammit, you’re singing with pure happiness while you prepare the feast on your plate.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just a few long slices with the carving knife, to ease the meat from its tendon and bone, and then one final slice to split the skin between your thumb and finger.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Blood gushes forth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know two things: there’s no way you’ll ask the farmer for help, like a useless blow-in English fool.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not on your first full day in this house.<br />That is not going to happen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You also know that, fuck it, you will sit and eat this dinner.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A bit of a wound won’t stop you now.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Belly driven, that’s you.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_syKg_n85svUF-kdbls9kwVXjlWK7Xwy5jb9qnKOTowZGLPHLuyLpcPNxK0MBqcv2RRcKOjRwHTz3_KGKJF8jBjHwy6UPhuPxraihk-UGTgTm_r8jS_Ii-4iEGkoK8XfD-UCtgS4GYWp7zO0NV6dACDC2yff8w2KJfPFEOcMaeN0c9SfKDNDAZJmEA/s400/cut-hand-cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_syKg_n85svUF-kdbls9kwVXjlWK7Xwy5jb9qnKOTowZGLPHLuyLpcPNxK0MBqcv2RRcKOjRwHTz3_KGKJF8jBjHwy6UPhuPxraihk-UGTgTm_r8jS_Ii-4iEGkoK8XfD-UCtgS4GYWp7zO0NV6dACDC2yff8w2KJfPFEOcMaeN0c9SfKDNDAZJmEA/s320/cut-hand-cartoon.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.caricatures-ireland.com/">Thanks to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com</a></span></i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You wrap several sheets of kitchen towel around your severed flesh, and sit at the table with your bloodstained hand raised above your head, to stall the bleeding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your other hand grabs roasties, carrots and lamb from the plate and shovels them into your mouth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, mmm, god, mmm, that’s so good!” you mumble, chewing the lamb bone like a primal predator.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Howya Charlie! Just thought I’d put my head round the door, like, see if you’re settlin’ in okay, like!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re not yet accustomed to the locals’ habit of ignoring closed doors.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you’re there, they let themselves in, as your landlord has just now, finding you waving a blood-soaked hand high above your head, and a gravied gristly lamb bone in the other.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your face is smeared with grease and unbeknownst to you, your left ear is covered with dried blood from your injury.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your landlord stops in his tracks.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You try to decide which hand is best to wave.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Grand thanks, Pat!” you cry excitedly, spittles of lamb exploding from your mouth, flying visibly through the sun-drenched air.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“All good here! Not a bother on me!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Sound, well, I’ll be off then.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Shocked, unsure and hesitant, the young man smiles, turns and retreats.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You laugh as you wonder whether he thought you were eating your own self-amputated hand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’ll be a while before he pops in unannounced again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your reputation has been created. The locals in the pub hear this story, and they christen you Oddball.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In response you explain to this rural Brethren of the Bar, some of whom appear to have worn the same clothes for forty years, that coming from them, Oddball feels like a compliment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone laughs at that, mostly because they don’t understand your accent, and are unaware they’ve been slagged off.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The bleeding eases after your Sunday feast.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit by the fire.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your energy crashes like an avalanche.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Joy is powerful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Treat it with respect.</span><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>© Charlie Adley</p><p>05.02.2023<br /></p><p><br /></p></div></div>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-73234240600065247112023-02-04T12:20:00.005+00:002023-02-04T12:22:08.220+00:00But This Now?<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJf4zfnVRCduS56S85rn23VidylZmHdNSzHhGWmo9p90hkosSoZ3t31MxFVmnCQLT86Rnu5x5-rZ3PPaI-PQ7s44CoNQ7geDGkBhukHD8ITck1-aKL3WuRNghJaSsqaoRNHqUxhDwgEDkf958-rPm4c_6Bv--6Uz71RpohqLDTmE5PMVLXxk6xDaKCw/s400/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJf4zfnVRCduS56S85rn23VidylZmHdNSzHhGWmo9p90hkosSoZ3t31MxFVmnCQLT86Rnu5x5-rZ3PPaI-PQ7s44CoNQ7geDGkBhukHD8ITck1-aKL3WuRNghJaSsqaoRNHqUxhDwgEDkf958-rPm4c_6Bv--6Uz71RpohqLDTmE5PMVLXxk6xDaKCw/s320/unnamed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="www.caricatures-ireland.com ">Thanks to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com for the great artwork.</a></i></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>This weekend I’m posting two tales from my new collection of autobiographical short stories: <b> </b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.</b></span><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>In one life could not be better; in the other, everything, including my life, is under threat. <b>charlieadley1@gmail.com</b><br /> </i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i> </i></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b><span style="font-size: large;">But This Now?</span></b></u></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You sit in the waiting room of Galway Hospital’s chest clinic.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Due to Covid it has moved out of the central building. Beyond tall glass windows the July sun burns high, in an ocean blue midsummer sky.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today you expect to meet the lung consultant, with whom you’ve dealt for the last seven months, and meet the surgeon, to discuss plans.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">These appointments are usually punctual affairs, but the surgeon is late because he’s performing an emergency operation.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your phone vibrates in your pocket. It’s a text from your landlord. He asks you to call him at your earliest opportunity.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">That doesn’t sound good. <br />In fact that sounds desperately worrying.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">At other times in your life you might not react with instant despair to that text, but after the past four years your reflex now lurches towards the negative.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re sick, weak beyond exhausted, nerves in tatters.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Please, not your home. <br />Not now.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You text him back:</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Hi. In UHG Chest Clinic, waiting to find out if they’re going to cut off a chunk of my lung. Will call you when I’m back home. Hope all good with you. Cheers.’</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your physical health has finally collapsed under emotional and mental stress: the loss of your marriage; your house; your dog; both of your income strands; three of your best friends.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been in hospital three times in the last seven months. First there came pneumonia and pleurisy, creating pain that made smashing your femur at 17 feel like a splinter in your finger.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then after a Winter at home coughing up vile mucus for twenty hours a day, they admitted you with a massive empyema, and over ten days drained a litre and a half of pus from your chest cavity.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Since Spring, whenever faced with even the minutest of emotional pressures, you cough up blood.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">There comes a gurgle, like a tap that’s been turned on inside your chest, and you rush for the kitchen sink, and splatter it scarlet.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">A friend of thirty years is upset with you for reasons unknown. He wants to meet and talk about it, but you can’t cope with that.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">After that phone call you drench a patch of lawn red.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">An email from your wife about the divorce puts you on the toilet, painting the bathroom basin bloody for seven long demoralising hours.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve seen so many movies when blood appears on a handkerchief, the soundtrack shifts from major to minor, and the character is dead minutes later.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, because your present life is an unrecognisable horror, you look at the blood and think</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Okay, so I do that now too.</span></i></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What does scare you is the way the experts don’t know what’s wrong with you. <br />That means they don’t know how to treat you.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have countless X-rays and CT scans. You have bronchoscopies and inconclusive biopsies. They send you to the posh private clinic for a PET Scan, which seeks out cancer.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The level of care you receive shows the medical types perceive your condition as extremely serious.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally you’re shown into the consulting room.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re nervous. You’ve never met this surgeon before.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite saying he’d be here, your lung consultant, who’s a great guy with a calming manner, is not around.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Months later, after the surgeon has performed his magic on you, you see him in fine form.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Unfortunately, today he is exhausted.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You remember your lung consultant said something about the possibility of foreign bodies in your lung.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Do you think it might be caused by a foreign body?” you ask.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Foreign body? No foreign body!” shouts the surgeon, “You don’t breathe in foreign bodies. You not a child.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Well neither are you, but you’re behaving like one!</i> you think to yourself.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Three possible causes.” he explains. “One: infection.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Hmm, antibiotics don’t seem to clear it up so - ”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Two: inflammation.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“But my CRP markers are down to fourteen from over eighty, so what’s the third?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Cancer. We have talked and want to cut off half your left lung. You okay with that?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Half?<br />Half of it?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Up to that moment you imagined surgery will involve the removal of the atelectasis, a golf ball-sized inverted collapse, down the very bottom of the lung, which the lung consultant showed you on a CT scan.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Half a lung?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Do you agree to the surgery?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Half your lung?<br />Your spirit drains from your toes.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Er, of course. You’re the expert. Whatever it takes. After surgery you do a biopsy?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yes. Then we do biopsy.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You sign a consent form, stumble out of the room and head for your car, where you have a little cry.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You call your sister, because you know your mum's round there. Saves saying it all twice.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“They want to cut half my lung off. They still think I might have lung cancer.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">When you hear yourself saying it, everything becomes real.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Drive.<br />Get outa Dodge.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You need to be the other side of your hour’s journey, so you can take a valium.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back home, before you even call your brother, you speak to the landlord. You explain that you’ve just found out you’re losing half a lung, and you might have lung cancer.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He says he’s sorry to hear that. He won’t be renewing the lease. You've until December to move out.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Afterwards you sit in your chair and try to make sense of it.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve very possibly got lung cancer, although you’re still a fat bastard, and there’s not many fat bastard cancer patients.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve got a divorce coming up; a messy affair: shouldn't be, but it is.<br /></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been unable to earn anything for seven months, due to your illness and Covid. Your savings are almost gone. You have only enough left for a couple of months’ rent.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">A brutal illness, no money and a divorce.<br />That would be enough.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">But this now?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now a house move, that shoves the global pandemic down into fourth place.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How will you find another new home, if you have no way of paying rent.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your landlord wants you out, but you aren’t physically able to execute a house move.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">After surgery you will be debilitated for several months.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">For months your lung consultant has told you he feels strongly it’s some kind of infection.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now cancer is very much back on the menu.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you have cancer you cannot stay in this house. <br />You're too isolated; too far from the hospital.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">In fact, if you’ve got lung cancer, you might even want to go back to London, to be surrounded by friends and family.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back to London? <br />Have you gone insane?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You love the West of Ireland and never want to live anywhere else.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yeh but that’s it.<br />You want to live in the west of Ireland. <br />Maybe you’d rather die in London.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, not really.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You'd rather not die, but in the meantime, you have to make decisions.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Too much stuff.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cruel.<br />Fuck.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Too much big stuff.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do you have lung cancer? <br />Where will you be living come December? <br />How bad will you be after surgery? </span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Breeathe <i>in</i></span></b></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Breeeeeeeathe <i>out</i></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i> </i><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Breeeeeeathe <i>in</i></span></b></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeathe <i>out</i></b></span> </span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What feels right to you?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you don’t know the answer, you’re asking the wrong question.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Distract yourself to avoid a panic attack.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Build a fire.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It may be July but you can still build a fire. Do something that makes sense. Sweep out the ashes and put them in the metal bucket.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wait.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You can’t decide where to live until you know if you’ve got lung cancer.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">That will define everything.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Firelighters. Break one into two and lay them on the grate.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Use the axe to chop a turf briquette into kindling. <br />Careful.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Keep your mind in the moment. <br />Eyes on the job.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Good.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wait for the biopsy. Find out if you’ve got cancer, and then decide where you live.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Strike a match and hold it to the firelighters.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, of course.<br />Sit back in the chair and breathe.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the meantime do something that makes you feel better.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do some work. Be a writer. Finish these stories. That makes all the shite easier to deal with.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Life should not be a senseless charge from confusion toward pain.<br />It’s for living, walking, fireside talking. Writing makes you whole. </span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Throughout all this shit, you don’t indulge misery. You battle on, praying to your atheist god for a change of luck.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Never do you waste time wondering what you’ve done to deserve it.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You joke that if reincarnation is real, you must’ve been some kind of special arsehole in a previous existence.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">But this now?<br />The house.<br />Your home.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Breathe.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Take it all on board, and decide only what feels right.<br />More nuanced and subtle decisions can follow in time.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You do the exercises they give you, to prepare your body for major surgery.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The operation goes well.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The biopsy shows that while you don’t have lung cancer, you do have Actinomycosis: a very rare, potentially lethal, often indomitable bacterial infection.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">This bug has been causing all your illnesses, and created the abscess that made you cough up blood.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now you will be fitted with a plastic line that runs into your arm and across the inside of your chest.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through it you will administer intravenous antibiotics to yourself at home for 6 weeks, followed by a year of oral antibiotics, with no guarantee that’ll wipe the bug out.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Antibiotics for a year?</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">If the treatment fails, this infection creates abscesses and fistulas, gradually dissolving your insides into lumpy pus.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Take your pills.<br />Get on with life.<br /><br /></span><i><br />©Charlie Adley<br />04.02.2023<br /><br /></i></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-81686948447805170792023-01-29T10:57:00.001+00:002023-01-29T10:58:05.416+00:00Sometimes They Die<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj24dfikO9H0USueHmkDiuYq86DY4f2FYLMzoNozNc5cqBbPeyuuSDoXKgyL0MlhmxCKQYSYd-Q0BfrUE0nas_O4pYcfFuIjEaOXYLVMTuXdFBoZl2jbMCgF7ln27-raYd0OzdWgY03h4tHt6dghuCCH_Nvxwutoo5_j9TBqW7Rs4LsGRQqkfqt39cb3g/s965/atexjfydgvkmmfxah05e.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="965" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj24dfikO9H0USueHmkDiuYq86DY4f2FYLMzoNozNc5cqBbPeyuuSDoXKgyL0MlhmxCKQYSYd-Q0BfrUE0nas_O4pYcfFuIjEaOXYLVMTuXdFBoZl2jbMCgF7ln27-raYd0OzdWgY03h4tHt6dghuCCH_Nvxwutoo5_j9TBqW7Rs4LsGRQqkfqt39cb3g/s320/atexjfydgvkmmfxah05e.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1987 a close friend of mine died in police custody. This is his story. I’ve changed his name to protect the privacy of his family. </span><span style="font-size: large;">It's part of my new collection of 20 autobiographical short stories:
<b><i> </i></b></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.</i></b><br /></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Enquiries to: <i><a href="mailto:charlieadley1@gmail.com">charlieadley1@gmail.com</a></i></span><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;">***<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Sometimes They Die.</span></b></i></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></b></i><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re on the third bus of your journey across London, looking forward to seeing Jimmy feeling happy.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">At last, after years of trying, he’s finally got his council flat swap sorted.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The small middle-aged woman in the seat next to you suddenly pipes up:</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“On your way to work?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No, visiting a friend.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Who’s that then?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, I shouldn’t think you’d know him. Bloke called Jimmy Williams.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“ ‘Course I know him. Jimmy Williams, as in Tom’s brother? Him who just got his council swap?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeh, that’s him.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, he’s dead, that one is. Jimmy Williams, Tom’s brother who just got his council swap. He’s dead.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No, he’s not dead. He’s my mate.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh sorry but he is you know. Don’t know much, but I do know he’s dead. Seems he got pissed and wrecked a pub. Whizz-head, weren’t he? Snaps your bloody brain that stuff does. Yeh, wrecked this pub, then next day he never knew he’d done it, so off he goes, back down the same pub. Walks in, bold as bloody brass, asks what the hell happened here. Plain didn’t remember. They reckoned he’s taking the piss. You would, wouldn’t ya. Anyways, The Boys arrive down and before you can say shit, he’s banged up. Everyone knew he shouldn’t have gone for that council swap. The Boys was wetting themselves about him. Never made it to the hearing, he didn’t. Still, like I say, don’t know much.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">No. <br />Not possible.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy is a common name.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He’s a tall blond lad, with kind eyes that suppress a wildness, which often appears in his behaviour.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">With plants and animals, though, Jimmy is exceptionally gentle.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">At first you go round to his gaff, buy some of his newspaper-wrapped homegrown and bugger off.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">After a few visits, you find yourself playing cards with him.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The way Jimmy talks about life is admirably crazy, and his stories of the road are strong and hard.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy knows all there is to know about growing marijuana in north-west London. You sit for hours, peering into the cupboard where he’s rigged up lights for his plants, while he talks of trace elements and humidity.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He nurtures those plants with the utmost care, looking to far-off November, when they will offer fully mature sticky flowers, devoid of seeds.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The next time you go to see him the plants are gone. The distinctive minty aroma of immature homegrown fills the flat.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Where are the plants, Jimmy?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Smoked ‘em, Charlie.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">His oval furrowed face spreads into a charismatic childish grin.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“They weren’t that strong, Charlie. Would’ve been better to leave ‘em, s’pose, but got bored, didn’t I, so I pulled ‘em, dried ‘em and smoked ‘em. Got a buzz, y’know, but nothing special.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy takes you to a pub where you can buy anything you want. You get some whizz, but Jimmy doesn’t seem happy.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Dunno, Charlie, ‘s funny stuff, the old fast one. Don’t do nothing for me no more, not unless I put it into me arm, y’know.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">This comes as a shock to you. Half a gram of the powder dropped into a vodka on a Friday evening sends you righteously doolally for the rest of the weekend. </span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Used to do it a lot, see,” explains Jimmy, “but it don’t seem to agree with me. I try to stay off it, mostly.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through the Winter months you sit on his ragged grey carpet, near his tiny electric heater, playing Gin Rummy.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Dunno Charlie, someone like you shouldn’t be hanging around with someone like me.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Why not, Jimmy?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“ 'Cos you’re cleverer than me, Charlie.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Ah, but you know more than I do, Jimmy.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Maybe I do, but that don't mean you’re not cleverer than me. Deal the cards Charlie, I can feel a Gin coming on.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One day you find a belt tied in a loop on Jimmy’s bathroom floor.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“ ‘Ello ‘ello, what’s all this then?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeh, been a bit stupid, ain’t I? Got this here, didn’t I, see?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He reaches under his mattress and produces a crumpled letter. It’s an injunction, forbidding Jimmy from seeing his children.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You know he has two kids, but you never ask, ‘cos he never offers to talk about them.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh Jimmy, why? Why now?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It’s her, innit! She’s got herself a new man and she don’t want wild-boy Jimmy getting in the way. I used to go down and hide in the bushes, see, and watch ‘em leaving school, yeh, but they knew I was there. Bloody bush wasn’t big enough, was it! Never spoke to ‘em or nothing, just wanted to look, y’know? Got herself a new bloody man now, hasn’t she. Don’t want me to be their father no more.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your middle-class liberality is offended.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“But you are their father, Jimmy! You’ve got rights like she has. You can fight this! Surely this isn’t the end of the road.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Nah, Charlie, got form, ain’t I, see. Nothing spectacular but it’s enough. A bit of a punch-up when I was 19, and then I got done for the lead off’ve the church roof too. Trying to be Jack-the-bloody-Lad weren’t I. Done me time, but oh they got my file, and, here, look, here’s a picture of 'em. It’s from about three years ago now, but see, that one’s me daughter and that one’s me little boy. Well, he was, like, ‘til that bloody letter come."</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No Jimmy. They’ll always be your kids.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeh, well tell me this, Charlie, eh. What bloody use is it having bloody kids you can’t bloody see? Eh? So Steve come round and we mainlined some whizz. Ain’t proud of it Charlie, but that’s the way it is, y’know. That’s the way it bloody is.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy can’t get a job or see his kids because of his form. Trapped in a council flat in a wealthy London suburb, he dreams of a house transfer back to Hayes, where his family lives.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sadly nobody wants to swap their affordable life in Hayes to live in Jimmy’s pricey neighbourhood.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy has a big addictive hole, which he tries to fill by exploiting his garden to its full potential.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Onions.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy says he’s going to grow onions, and the next time you see him the whole garden has been turned over to onions. Hundreds of them.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Lovely, Charlie. Build up the liver, onions do. Build the liver and clean the blood.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like everything that Jimmy grows, the onions flourish, and then he eats them all, every single one, by the plateful.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">My god his breath stinks, but his skin glows.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Potatoes.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy says he’s going to grow potatoes, and the next time you see him the whole garden is turned over potatoes. Hundreds of them.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Lovely, Charlie. Vitamin C in the skins, roughage and carbs. And they’ll taste a bloody sight better than them onions!”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The potatoes grow, large and prolific, and Jimmy eats every single one.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Next you find him digging a deep round hole.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Ducks, Charlie. Know someone who’s got ducks. This is going to be their pond, see?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Off you go together to visit one of Jimmy’s many mates, Comic scenes ensue as you both career around, trying to catch a pair of ducks. Eventually you manage and Jimmy puts them in a VCR’s cardboard box.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy is over the moon, striding along the street with the ducks thrashing about in their box.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He has recently read several books about ducks.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“As it ‘appens I know quite a lot about ducks, Charlie.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Tell you what though, Jimmy boy. Be bloody funny if The Boys pulled up now and asked us what we had in the box. <i>‘Oh no, Officer, it’s not a VCR, it’s actually a couple of ducks, on my mother’s life!’</i> ”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy roars with laughter.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through plane tree Autumn leaves the late afternoon sun shines dappled gold.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a gentle moment of joy shared with Jimmy that you treasure.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">By November Jimmy’s ducks have flown and he is out in his garden, a blur of hammer and nails, building a wire fence.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Lop-eared rabbits, Charlie. Brilliant they are. A mate of mine’s got seven. Bloody great they are, lop-eared rabbits, Charlie. You’ll love ‘em.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The rabbits arrive and thrive. Jimmy knows them all by name, even when their numbers grow, but soon there arises a conflict of interests.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jimmy’s built their wire run around the edges of the garden, and in the middle built a greenhouse.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He sits feeding his beloved rabbits by hand.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Now look here, you lot, this is the deal, see. You listening? Right, now see that greenhouse over there? That’s out of bounds, right? You can go anywhere you like, but you stay out of there, right? Deal is, stay out here and I feed you. Get in there and you feed me. Right? Fair enough?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Rabbits are notoriously disobedient. They burrow into the greenhouse, and devour all the marijuana plants.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Always a man of his word, Jimmy offers you a plate of rabbit stew.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Sorry mate. Never eat anything that had a name.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Fair enough, Charlie, I respect that, but it’s your loss. With all that gear in ‘em, you get a fair buzz off’ve eating the little perishers. Stupid bloody things.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Years pass and Jimmy tires of trying to find benign ways to feed his addictive cravings.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is always the whizz and, more and more, there is always the whizz.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then one day, when all seems hopeless, he ushers you in with a fabulous smile on his face.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Bloody got it, didn’t I Charlie! Got my transfer through, didn’t I? Geezer come round yesterday, says he wants to swap! Lives just round the corner from me old Mum, don’t he! Just round the corner, Charlie. Bloody fantastic, eh? I’ll be right there, with all me family and all me mates. You’ll still come round and see me though, won’t you Charlie?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Course I will mate. Brilliant. Can’t believe it!”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Off the bus, you wander the labyrinthine lines and circles of identical houses.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually you find his new flat.<br />Swallow from a dry mouth.<br />Knock on the door.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He’s out, probably visiting his mum.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You start talking out loud to yourself, alone on the streets of this sprawling housing estate.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Right Chas. What you’ve got to do is go down the Nick and find out.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The copshop air reeks of cheap pine disinfectant.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Duty Sergeant looks up Jimmy in his book.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh yes, Jimmy Williams. Died on his way to hospital.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Why was he on his way to hospital?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I wasn’t on duty that night … sir.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Please go and find someone who was.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He looks at you with profound contempt and goes out the back.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another one comes out.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“What exactly seems to be the problem, sir?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“My mate, Jimmy Williams. Trying to find out if he’s dead, and if so, what happened. Jimmy Williams. Tell me. Tell me what happened.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, Jimmy Williams? Yes, found dead in his cell. Terrible shame.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“But the other one said he died on his way to hospital.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Ah, did he? There you are, then. Now, is there anything else, sir?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You beat the counter-top, weeping, yelling for someone to tell you what happened.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">An older one comes out and the others leave.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Now then, sir, what’s seems to be the problem? Calm down sir. Can I get you a cup of tea?”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t want tea. I want to know what happened to my mate.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Not a lot to know really. Shame, young bloke like that. We got him into an ambulance, quickly as possible, but he died at Uxbridge General Hospital. Such a waste.”</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back outside on the grey damp drizzly streets, you whimper and sob.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have to call Dave, up in Yorkshire.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oh god.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Over the road.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Red phone kiosk.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">He needs to know and you need to stop feeling so bloody alone.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Dave mate. Charlie. Got some bad news.”</span><br /><br /><br /><br />©Charlie Adley<br />29.01.2023<br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-58236017610275160242023-01-28T14:56:00.000+00:002023-01-28T14:56:32.539+00:00With The Lifts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9TyOhBjpx7HZr7a1m__3mhvp47o55oFE8RfvtLn9C2W7ix0635elxxlpbu0Ek5d9rcbrsH5UvllT3PlRZ7T9dlNiGdfvGyD0qLlmJRKCsQcpX6zxLrU9pFkaTVDnCienJzF3j3CxMEa8PDFfvyUQR0W9DJWHAkBOzCYvu1xUD1UYvGzhgV53zPHvczQ/s800/galactic-hitchhiker-featured.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="800" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9TyOhBjpx7HZr7a1m__3mhvp47o55oFE8RfvtLn9C2W7ix0635elxxlpbu0Ek5d9rcbrsH5UvllT3PlRZ7T9dlNiGdfvGyD0qLlmJRKCsQcpX6zxLrU9pFkaTVDnCienJzF3j3CxMEa8PDFfvyUQR0W9DJWHAkBOzCYvu1xUD1UYvGzhgV53zPHvczQ/w400-h173/galactic-hitchhiker-featured.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another of my new collection of 20 autobiographical short stories entitled
<i><b> </b></i></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>'Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.' </b></i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you’d like to read another, leave a comment. <br />Enquiries to: charlieadley1@gmail.com</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://allancavanagh.com/">Thanks to Allan Cavanagh (at allancavanagh.com) for his fantastic artwork.</a> <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><b> ***</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><b>With The Lifts.</b></i></span> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The art of Going With The Lifts relies on the first exchange of words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When a car stops, it’s vital to keep your message simple.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The driver asks where you’re going.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now you must respond in a calm and assured way, that sends out no dodgy signals.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Wherever you’re going, if that’s okay.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They will, quite naturally, be suspicious; maybe shocked and confused.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s your job to convince them you are neither a psychotic killer nor an obsessive stalker.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re simply enjoying an overdose of freedom.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Trying to reassure by enthusiastically exclaiming</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Don’t worry! I’m not a dangerous weirdo!” tends to prove counterproductive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Some, driven by fear, make swift their escape, yet astonishingly many trust you and take you with them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Right now you’re on a deserted road on New Zealand’s North Island.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Route 2 from Tauranga in the north to Gisborne in the south dissects the East Cape, cutting out the need to travel all the way around.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Anyone on the cape is here for a reason. <br />Your reason is to be here.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiATrnSMh-NV7w8ndtzr-UmFtDVdbbJuzDmpbOddlh6wp2DOPwLp1UmmzGx9rfG0YL4SP48bSf--iHNi_9g3X9_C7bUtFX1XUdtB95Gm2TdkZnEgE7p0eagNgbqF9tC_O4eMMxuQ3T2mlj9ggp6X2lN1TPu0uoF7Wyorha2o-o4n3m5zB89fzpA8-1RcA/s400/travel-cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="400" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiATrnSMh-NV7w8ndtzr-UmFtDVdbbJuzDmpbOddlh6wp2DOPwLp1UmmzGx9rfG0YL4SP48bSf--iHNi_9g3X9_C7bUtFX1XUdtB95Gm2TdkZnEgE7p0eagNgbqF9tC_O4eMMxuQ3T2mlj9ggp6X2lN1TPu0uoF7Wyorha2o-o4n3m5zB89fzpA8-1RcA/s320/travel-cartoon.jpg" width="320" /></a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Blue bag - your loyal lifelong companion </span></i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You stand alone in a magnificent wilderness. From Tikitiki to Te Araroa steep gorges and lush valleys are lit up by the exploding yellows of flowering gorse.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then you’re by the gentle sweep of azure coast to Hicks Bay, where once again you plunge inland, into the crumbling grandeur of this cascading landscape.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now you’re somewhere between Potaka and Cape Runaway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There’s not been a single car for half an hour.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You walk a few paces up the road, stop to look at the view from a new perspective, and wonder whether anyone ever saw that view from there.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You wait for your ears, heart and mind to calm to the sound of silence.<br />Then you take another look, and see much more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For you hitching is about way more than moving from A to B.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Some drivers are happy with silence.<br />Others need to pour their hearts out to a stranger who they know they’ll never see again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Some want to convert you to their belief system, be it religion or racism. You learn to spot their mildly crazed evangelical eyes, and wait for them to start their spiel. They used to mainline heroin and then the Baby Jesus came into their hearts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes, when the car you climb out of disappears down a tiny side road, you find you’ve been dropped off in the middle of nowhere.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That you love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">From the age of fifteen you feel a strong desire to stick out your thumb at the side of the road. You quickly discover that you are good at getting lifts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Over the next decade you hitch to school, pubs, jobs, and all over Europe. In the Summer of ’79 you hitch to Israel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the ‘70s hitchhikers are still a common sight; groups of longhairs clumped around motorway service stations, lounging on top of guitar cases, relaxedly unperturbed by inertia.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While they sit, passively waiting hours for someone to stop, you walk a little further up the slip road.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A minute later you climb into a Jag, accompanied by distant hippy wails.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Like much in life, empathy is the name of the hitching game: if you want a lift think like a driver.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stand still, where drivers can see you from far away. Give drivers somewhere safe and easy to pull in.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You'll never understand why some people hitch while walking along the edge of the road. If they can walk to where they’re going, why are they hitching?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What good will walking do them? Drivers won’t stop because the walkers’ faces are hidden from them. The car that passes them on that tight bend, that’s the one which stops for you, because you’re standing in a good spot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Always make an early start and then walk out of town. Walk and walk until buildings are far behind you, yet the traffic’s not speeding up too fast. Find a good place and stand there until you get a lift.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Carry no signs, because you’ll miss out on the shorter lifts that might bring you somewhere better.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Often people ask if you’ve ever been stuck. If you were stuck, you’d still be there.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Faith is an essential ingredient of hitching. Every time you put out your thumb you enjoy a thrill of excitement, born out of the assured knowledge that you will reach your destination. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A friend of yours used to try hitching up the M1 to Yorkshire from Brent Cross.When he left your Golders Green flat he told you he’d give it three hours, and then go to the station and get the 3:30 bus. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">With that doubt in his heart he was doomed to failure.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After a lifetime of hitching you can spot the rides as they approach. <br />You know this huge Holden saloon will stop.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Crawling along with ancient rusty sills scraping the road, it’s crammed with an extended Maori family.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The old Holden creaks to a halt just past you. Children of all ages, parents, babies and grandparents empty out from the back seat, carrying crates of tomatoes, bags of fish and boxes of beer.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The sides of the saloon car visibly lift several inches. You climb in and find yourself wedged between smiling chilled-out Maori generations.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The salt and pepper haired male driver reaches across, flips open the glove compartment, and hands you a bag of green.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“S’only cabbage, yih, but hilp yoursilf mate, eh. Where ya hiddin?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Dunno. Wherever you’re going.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay, ya wanna come home with us, eh?”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“That’d be great. Wow, thanks! Yeh, great."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You spend a week with the local crew, drinking jugs of beer each night beside fires on the beach. They play guitars and sing and fool around with pretend drunken brawls that end up in giggling fits.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On your last night they cook a Hāngi, to honour your visit; by god you feel special.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Over the next several weeks, all over New Zealand, you achieve a rare and blissful state of hitching nirvana.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Going with the lifts allows a profound state of calm.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You let go of everything.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stress becomes a stranger.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You develop a deep trust in humanity, alongside a faith in the process that influences you still.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">North of Opotiki you’re picked up by a woman in a white cotton dress, that contrasts with her mahogany tan. She has silky long brown hair, so dark it’s almost black. Her skin exudes scents of jasmine and sandalwood.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turning off the main road she drives to a long white sandy beach, where she dances, alone, with a white silk scarf flying from her hand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">She whirls her body, and twirls her arms around with pure joy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know she doesn’t dance for you. She dances for herself, paying homage to life and joy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a moment that stays with you all your life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Months before, when you arrived in Tahiti you were shocked to find the French still operating an empire all over the South Pacific. They are furious when David Lange, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, offers a berth in Aukland harbour to the Greenpeace vessel <i>Rainbow Warrior</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The ship is on its way to protest France’s nuclear weapons testing. When it blows up, two French secret service agents are caught, convicted of the manslaughter of a Greenpeace activist, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For the first - and last - time in your life, you watch local demonstrators marching outside their parliament in favour of their government. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Go David! Yeah!” they cry with pride.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For months you sleep rough, two nights out of three. On the third night you enjoy the comfort of a Kiwi motel room, with a waterbed, power shower, TV and little kitchenette.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That way you avoid hostels and other travellers. You don’t travel to listen to other travellers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You travel to listen to silence, or locals in their cars and trucks. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Over the decades, on three continents, you share innumerable one-to-one talks with drivers from every walk of life. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After the Bahamas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, LA and Polynesia, you fly into Auckland, accompanied by the lovely Cory, a Californian Amazonian Space Cadet, who you met in a dank thatch Tahitian shack, infested with mosquitos the size of tennis balls.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">She has legs the length of Chile and skin of hazel brown, but her beauty is tempered by her need to share inane observations. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the lobby of an Auckland Youth Hostel, Cory attracts a retired local school teacher, who invites you both out on <i>Celeste</i>, his self-built 38 foot yacht. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3g7AgW6t7i8drK7cv4vDcaBpoUnF9z2EDQ2UxVIzK_i3KSAEecQijdideZBIFuYbdWiiZbOqkNORG7yiWx9dXeyPZyfnVp2qy0bkp21LKBkTo-jdZ0pSeJVj1AxQbl8AErWM0HqEn52lov5SpQ0khsAcCRp9hLeUB6j1zIIA-CRKsxS1h29Q6uHlpg/s320/Celeste%20decks.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="133" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3g7AgW6t7i8drK7cv4vDcaBpoUnF9z2EDQ2UxVIzK_i3KSAEecQijdideZBIFuYbdWiiZbOqkNORG7yiWx9dXeyPZyfnVp2qy0bkp21LKBkTo-jdZ0pSeJVj1AxQbl8AErWM0HqEn52lov5SpQ0khsAcCRp9hLeUB6j1zIIA-CRKsxS1h29Q6uHlpg/s1600/Celeste%20decks.jpeg" width="133" /></a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Cory and Maurice onboard 'Celeste'</span></i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You enjoy a blissful fortnight of yachting wonder, for which rich people would fork out fortunes. Sailing around the Hauraki Gulf, your host shows you how to forage and fish for your food, sharing his vast knowledge of local flora and fauna.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghHprSkmMWrnfMxvOR3Ja0oexbirqD4n6K5TXpn0AmZOwdq5NqrdVYlP1E5HCgmyRnzaAjdUPpumFx60JCcAABSVU1y8Jo3rAFPXYMlkKXkI4tKLIo7Yis6b5CqQuq2ErpIsEyHV_xqKnBbyg_7WUsNI0oZXMxcl4FEshXVxtejoce449RaPfuNtjWfA/s1600/Ocean-fresh%20fish014.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1045" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghHprSkmMWrnfMxvOR3Ja0oexbirqD4n6K5TXpn0AmZOwdq5NqrdVYlP1E5HCgmyRnzaAjdUPpumFx60JCcAABSVU1y8Jo3rAFPXYMlkKXkI4tKLIo7Yis6b5CqQuq2ErpIsEyHV_xqKnBbyg_7WUsNI0oZXMxcl4FEshXVxtejoce449RaPfuNtjWfA/s320/Ocean-fresh%20fish014.jpg" width="209" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Catch fish, cook 'em, </i></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Maurice</i></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> foraging veg before we'd ever heard the word 'forage'.</i></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Back in the city, it’s time to part. You want to hitch, see where the winds send you. Cory analyses aloud your desire, using much psychobabbly crap.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You are, apparently, egocentric, selfish and self-destructive, ‘cos, like, she wants to take the bus.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone at the hostel insists you must go to Rotorua and Queenstown. Now you know two places to avoid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Instead you spend three months going with the lifts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After New Zealand you fly to Noumea where you’re placed under house arrest. There’s a crazy three-way civil war raging.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After five days they let you fly to Sydney, where you enjoy time with your good friend Catherine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Everywhere you go in the world, people tell you it’s unsafe to hitch, so you ignore Catherine’s emphatic advice to take the bus, and insist on hitching to Melbourne.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turns out Australia is not New Zealand. <br />Who knew?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Every Australian creature that crawls or flies bites or stings. While waiting for your first lift out of Sydney, Blue Bag is assaulted by bull ants, and as you try to slap them off it, your arms are bitten to buggery and back.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Pathetically unprepared for sleeping out in Australia, you hitch night and day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This road that has brought you half way round the planet ends here, in this plush leafy Melbourne suburb.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You're a few yards from Tony’s doorstep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At last you see your old friend’s family home. It looks huge and altogether luxurious, which is fine by you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You hope he's not away somewhere.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The year you both left school, he returned to Melbourne with his family. You told him that one day you’d turn up on his doorstep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now, seven years later, you’re about to turn up on his doorstep. <br />He has no idea you’re on the way. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Over the next few months you learn how incredibly unlikely it is that Tony is home that day. His job in TV has him working shifts long and many.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yet that day your journey ends perfectly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You ring the bell. <br />Tony opens the door.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The last time you saw each other, you looked like an anaemic beached whale.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now, after nine months on the road, your skin is the colour of a fine cigar. </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRj-XXvUDkz0sK0ADE3i9dXRLC4kQK82DBaJByGvvncYnwt1dVahi4tr0WlhDKCDzakEm-h4wLBDeCuEGnXOczL4ef7y8PDab4sves_9fky3Q015PzSUP_ves-GPjBBLKUhWw10lG0uu0gRIVehDmwq0LwUHLfr51Bs9Ar45A2yYjftjRB64D965Z7CQ/s4223/Kiwi%20lamb029.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4223" data-original-width="2827" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRj-XXvUDkz0sK0ADE3i9dXRLC4kQK82DBaJByGvvncYnwt1dVahi4tr0WlhDKCDzakEm-h4wLBDeCuEGnXOczL4ef7y8PDab4sves_9fky3Q015PzSUP_ves-GPjBBLKUhWw10lG0uu0gRIVehDmwq0LwUHLfr51Bs9Ar45A2yYjftjRB64D965Z7CQ/s320/Kiwi%20lamb029.jpg" width="214" /></a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">After three months living rough and healthy in New Zealand</span></i><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You are as slim as you’ve ever been, and ever will be, so he takes a few seconds to realise you are indeed his mate Charlie.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He looks almost exactly the same as he used to: lanky, with long straw blond hair and a dry grin, stretched by pronounced cheekbones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Fuck me. Wouldja look who it is.”<br /></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8k-TC6v-ioBp2tIkSlzKdmiPCm4_pHTUG02aN-dWJXxmrYR-yWgBbCGKdaO4rU-uxlocYkb2O0ZwyqqZANQRMiRaCpYJKZlG1JNJx2yNFeuVfJDrI1YdxBFeLGEV4wAdyYWX1UbYaR3_6RssNqljsniB_zxqM-UCjkhscBfS-iuRK6ki2wU42q-0cg/s3296/IMG_1719.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3296" data-original-width="2472" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8k-TC6v-ioBp2tIkSlzKdmiPCm4_pHTUG02aN-dWJXxmrYR-yWgBbCGKdaO4rU-uxlocYkb2O0ZwyqqZANQRMiRaCpYJKZlG1JNJx2yNFeuVfJDrI1YdxBFeLGEV4wAdyYWX1UbYaR3_6RssNqljsniB_zxqM-UCjkhscBfS-iuRK6ki2wU42q-0cg/s320/IMG_1719.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Tony and myself when he visited Galway 12 years ago</i></span><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>©Charlie Adley</p><p>28.01.2023<br /></p><p><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-45669726864047385012023-01-27T11:38:00.007+00:002023-01-27T11:47:31.545+00:00He Knew<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of my new collection of 20 autobiographical short stories entitled<b><br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>'Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.'</i> </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you’d like to read another, leave a comment. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Enquiries to: charlieadley1@gmail.com</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtoat7ZW_PbwCdQWRwSw_n1j2TBnJ3D3UR8Udqk4-V6FuMDXgJTCLVFt2oHgwkIDQZbSq-XLr0HpyTS3uSKEZiZb8UstQ2YNb8a4f83zZ3MKdDjyQ-NZedzN4EUJqpGPzKjpWUnEqjo8yhqdh3My_tvhejX0h9PRMojHa_Usv4KQ3_cr29Qw_ZU4rXHg/s1445/Dad14.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1139" data-original-width="1445" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtoat7ZW_PbwCdQWRwSw_n1j2TBnJ3D3UR8Udqk4-V6FuMDXgJTCLVFt2oHgwkIDQZbSq-XLr0HpyTS3uSKEZiZb8UstQ2YNb8a4f83zZ3MKdDjyQ-NZedzN4EUJqpGPzKjpWUnEqjo8yhqdh3My_tvhejX0h9PRMojHa_Usv4KQ3_cr29Qw_ZU4rXHg/s320/Dad14.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br /></b><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><u><b><span style="font-size: large;">He Knew</span></b></u><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In glorious rural Berkshire, jugs of Pimm’s are topped with mint and cucumber.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There is laughter and lunch at the French Horn in Sonning.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your entire family and many friends gather to celebrate your father’s 70th birthday.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The sun shines on the beautiful old coaching inn, nestled between ancient weeping willows on the banks of the Thames.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your father stands to make his speech.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The masses hush.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After pursing his lips, there comes from this most lucid of men a long terrifying silence.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A crushing compassion falls upon you, as you watch him struggle to move his mouth. Your father remains stoic in expression, while hearts break all around the room.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After a while he regains control, and void of the cheeky aplomb you love so much, he delivers his words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Since that most unwelcome arrival, you now know all about TIAs, these mini strokes that your father recovers from, over and over again. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each one robs him temporarily of the ability to control something: the movement of his jaw, which for a while viciously and spontaneously chews his own cheek; his right arm, which suddenly shoots up in the air and waves around, as if he were a schoolboy desperate to attract teacher’s attention.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each time a new behaviour appears, you long for the day when that symptom eases, not only for him, but also because of the pain you suffer by seeing him out of control.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Living in Ireland, you have developed a phobia of the phone. As soon as you hear your sister’s voice, you know that for who knows how long, your life must be put on hold.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re going to England on a flex-ticket, packing your bag with practiced precision and speed, desperate to arrive before Dad dies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite the fact you’ve felt this so many times, each hits you like the first.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve slept on family sofas, in your mum’s spare room, in cheap hotels, and spent long terrible days with your mother and siblings, sitting vigil in his private hospital rooms.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Over these 12 years of your father’s decline, there have been moments of humour, like when he regains consciousness after surgery, and oblivious to the presence of his loved ones, appears excited, only because the Chelsea manager is on the TV.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Moo - Moo- Mourinho!” he splutters.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You laugh in relief, possibly privately hurt in a small yet personal way, because he notices Jose before you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Other times you laugh out of embarrassment, because your father’s pain threshold is the lowest of any human who ever walked the Earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You want your father to be a hero, but it proves impossible not to squirm when he responds to a kindly nurse, gently cleaning his face with a warm flannel:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Torture! She’s torturing me!” <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFf2uKQSOFRHdDn7j_d2K8tzaFnJBFkytRnCJbgD9u1zxGrPzSK6HjhZtjfQ3dgxYr_8OX-ZR8AB2ubs_NKwF0X4ot8WRM_t-Hj5FcWx2OxpE4xDovNGKoYrQqvPUGQpQkrsDVRvZ8h4qblVJ2RVf97i4HzDY64oH630kVKpUsc2f24wRjlz4mGqZbug/s1024/Dad9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="917" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFf2uKQSOFRHdDn7j_d2K8tzaFnJBFkytRnCJbgD9u1zxGrPzSK6HjhZtjfQ3dgxYr_8OX-ZR8AB2ubs_NKwF0X4ot8WRM_t-Hj5FcWx2OxpE4xDovNGKoYrQqvPUGQpQkrsDVRvZ8h4qblVJ2RVf97i4HzDY64oH630kVKpUsc2f24wRjlz4mGqZbug/s320/Dad9.jpg" width="287" /></a></b></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All he ever wants is to go home, yet each time he does the challenges become greater, more testing for your mum, so back he goes to hospital, where you watch him close his eyes tightly, as if in complaint to the universe, and drop his chin onto his chest.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Arriving at the door of his hospital room on any given morning, in who knows which of so many hospitals, you and your mother are confronted by the saddest of sights.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This bombastic, jocular and opinionated man sits in the chair beside his bed. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Instead of looking out of the window or reading a book, he chooses to bow his upper body so far forward, that the crown of his head presses down on the trolley-table in front of him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His eyes are locked shut, his face wearing three hundred and forty seven varieties of angst.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You put your arm around your Mum and give her a reassuring hug, because if you find this sight sad, you cannot imagine how it must be hurting her.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A kidney specialist tells you two years ago that you should arrange for Dad to move to a hospice.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“It’s only going to be a matter of days.” says the consultant, but still he survives.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Looking at this man who made your life possible, you wonder why he hangs on.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For you, the moment your father lost his <i>joie de vie</i>, he was gone. Without that sparkly glint in his eye, which reassures you he loves you, (your parents only award the ‘L’ word to pets) this tragically wrung-out figure appears to have no desire to live.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You assume he must be driven to survive purely by terror of the alternative.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You decide you absolutely never want children: not if your dotage will force them to endure this horror.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You hope that when your time is up, you will not hang on through mere fear, and then you mock yourself, because you have been taunted by your own mortality ever since your first pubic hair.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The most painful part of Dad dying slowly is that you have to keep on leaving.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You've given up your job back in Ireland, so that you can come whenever you need to, and stay as long as possible.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yet eventually you always have to go home, and it is these times that test your heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Will you ever see him again?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Will he be dead before you return?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On a Friday night 18 months ago you decide to deal with this trial.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Before you drive your rental car through the snowy night darkness to Luton Airport, you decide to say a last goodbye.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You know of course that you might well see him again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You also understand that you cannot continue to torment your heart and twist your soul, by repeatedly arriving home in dread of missing his death.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You go up to your father in his bed, and throw your arms over his chest, forcing your right hand around and under his neck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He awakes and you whisper</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“I’m going now, Dad. Good bye. Shabbat Shalom.” </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">and he replies</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for coming. Drive carefully.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">and you hug him tightly and then climb off the bed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You hold your breath along the hospital corridor, in the lift, and as you briskly walk through reception. Outside, the cold air freezes your lungs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You find your rental car, close the door, sit in front of the steering wheel and let out a wail; a crescendo howling cry of pain.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For ten minutes, twenty minutes, who knows or cares, you sit in your car and cry, heaving with loss and misery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve just said goodbye to your father, and although you see him many times after that, there is wisdom in that move.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It eases your pain, but now the time has come for the final farewell.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQCy9VcIvA8qZZuGJAxQIIDDgYucI9IWzQ6gS69in4Bu8UrD33NN2z2lpSNjxclUfbZjMehaZXc0m5yRkxUNvaftWwINubtXRekO6oeeNae0ibXQOYVPwhJoKWwOAEM2qYGUD-qRdhGzeN4_SKwxMJHUt80r4dzcqeltxGTotVRo7dEhXyzCqu6qWbg/s1096/Dad8.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1096" data-original-width="717" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQCy9VcIvA8qZZuGJAxQIIDDgYucI9IWzQ6gS69in4Bu8UrD33NN2z2lpSNjxclUfbZjMehaZXc0m5yRkxUNvaftWwINubtXRekO6oeeNae0ibXQOYVPwhJoKWwOAEM2qYGUD-qRdhGzeN4_SKwxMJHUt80r4dzcqeltxGTotVRo7dEhXyzCqu6qWbg/s320/Dad8.jpg" width="209" /></a></b></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The nursing home gardens are truly splendid. Gravel paths surround trimmed lawns, gently sloping towards crescent flower beds, flush with roses, crimson and pink.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re unable to see beauty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the grey Victorian mansion above, your father is drifting lethewards, floating in and out of a morphine coma.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You struggle to move your aching legs through the stifling London heat. The humid still air is a rich soup of lavender.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You breathe deep its comforting scent.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’re taking a break, doing a few laps of the garden, because you can’t sit there beside him forever.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Turning at the edge of the lawn, you head up the gravel path, back towards this halfway house.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You go to the Gents and wash your face with cold water. Staring at yourself in the mirror you contemplate what you’re about to do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tomorrow you must leave once more for Ireland. <br />In two weeks you’re getting married.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You feel sure this will be the last time you see Dad alive. <br />You steel yourself and enter his small quiet room.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Beyond the tall sash windows the garden glows golden.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You move a chair to sit parallel with your father. Your back is against the wall beside his head.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You reach down with your left hand and lift his limp warm right hand, intertwining your fingers with his, hoping he might wake, respond in some way, acknowledge your presence and thereby give you the chance to say goodbye one final time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But he doesn’t.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He sleeps on, lost to consciousness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His lips part like a baby’s kiss as he exhales gently</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">...<i><b> pwaaaahh</b></i>...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You sit, hold his hand and find comfort in the peace and privilege of being there at his side.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the midst of the turbulence of weddings, illness, life and death, you appreciate these calm minutes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You wish your father knew you were there, but he doesn’t. The nurse told you that he was on such a heavy dose he could barely keep breathing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You accept that being beside him is enough.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Finally the hour comes when you must meet others, leave your father forever and return to the brash world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“Dad, it’s Charlie. I’ve got to go now. I’m heading back to Galway tomorrow, to organise our wedding party. I love you, Dad.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As you rise out of your seat, your father suddenly grips your intermingled fingers, holding them tight to his.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You look straight away into his eyes, but they are still clamped shut.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Nothing stirs, yet he has heard you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He has heard your words and knows you are there. He continues to grip your hand with such force it slightly unsettles you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Reaching across his body you plant a long, lingering and most loving kiss on his forehead.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He feels your lips on his skin. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He exhales. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His hand relaxes and lowers to his side. <br /><br /></span><br />©Charlie Adley<br />27.01.2023</p><p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: large;">From <i><b>Hoovering Ceilings - Life Upside Down.</b></i> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Enquiries to <b>charlieadley1@gmail.com</b></span></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709671052477389617.post-57390811242006636742023-01-25T11:26:00.003+00:002023-01-25T17:07:15.331+00:00 The West will fight to the last Ukrainian!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IF0zMVRtjJQLGOD9QroGs8xXJWKeTI4hbCnQXUgo28AtNNpGhIx7UDh_uxOxe8vWylEubw19uAhzLA-ZuyH7hSSrEFCbL65mbc_fYtq02mzAPkWBzEQ09EuQIIR-CjTqbCUX-_M5HhWZirWbUvHyq6JDNuZeUeud724nPX2bNYkxjVvzmiQmB7F94w/s786/f61d56d348cb64_61d56d348cba6.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="786" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IF0zMVRtjJQLGOD9QroGs8xXJWKeTI4hbCnQXUgo28AtNNpGhIx7UDh_uxOxe8vWylEubw19uAhzLA-ZuyH7hSSrEFCbL65mbc_fYtq02mzAPkWBzEQ09EuQIIR-CjTqbCUX-_M5HhWZirWbUvHyq6JDNuZeUeud724nPX2bNYkxjVvzmiQmB7F94w/s320/f61d56d348cb64_61d56d348cba6.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do I think Putin is a dangerous megalomaniac?<br />I do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do I see his invasion of Ukraine as wholly wrong?<br />I do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So why do I have unsettling feelings about the way this war is taking shape?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Why do I feel deeply cynical about the tactics employed by the EU, UK, USA and NATO?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do you see any day ever when Putin will raise his arms high in the sky and declare he surrenders?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do you really believe that, however much fire power the West injects into Ukraine, brave and inspiring Volodymyr Zelenskyy will ever win a famous victory?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Do you see an endgame? <br />Can you imagine any kind of way out of this conflict?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’m asking many questions but offering very few answers. What I do believe is that there were possible endgames to be negotiated, through the regions now under Russian occupation: Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">These regions have significant Russian populations, and if the West truly wanted to make peace, they would have acted swiftly, years ago, with the annexation of Crimea.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A negotiation of possibly a Demilitarised Zone, or a shared access to ports: who knows. I am not an international negotiator.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just a scribbler with a fearful heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s no secret that Putin wants complete access to the Black Sea ports. <br />Yet earlier on in the war, as a bizarre softener, he agreed to the <i>Black Sea Grain Initiative</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Since then, over 500 ships full of grain and other foodstuffs have left three Ukrainian ports: Chornomorsk, Odesa and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was almost as if he was asking for negotiations.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The raw hard truth is that this war suits the USA, EU and UK down to the ground.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In this utterly ridiculous paradigm, just because Ukraine doesn’t wear the right badges, foreign soldiers will not commit to the battlefield.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If it were a member of the EU or NATO, things would be different, but it’s not.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Hence the Western powers have what some might consider the perfect war: no bodybags flying home; no coffins draped with our flags; an evil enemy to blame for every single domestic political failure; a shop window for the West’s latest military hardware.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">None of ‘our’ troops or civilians die; inflation and energy prices can be blamed on Putin, while each night on the news, the tragedy of Ukraine’s continued and inevitable destruction plays out in front of our increasingly disinterested eyes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Again I state I am no fan of Putin, but consider the Russian perspective. In 2014, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that France and Germany had delayed a peace agreement with Russia so that Ukrainian forces could be trained to NATO standards.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ukraine then provoked Putin by unleashing a wave of sectarian violence against Russians in the Donbas region.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite the presence of a significant Russian population in the areas now annexed, Zelenskyy’s regime has outlawed the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It is not difficult to understand why the loyalty of Ukraine’s Russian population leans towards Russia.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If you ever wonder why none of the liberal media have spoken out about these concerns, I suggest you look to <i>Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media</i>, a book by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They theorise that when all sides of a nation’s political executive are in agreement, the media will not challenge that position. Apart from a couple of Irish Putin apologist MEPs, nobody has spoken out against this war, and nobody dares to challenge this status quo.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On a macro scale, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the EU and NATO have expanded closer and closer towards Russia. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While this phenomenon was legitimate and democratically engineered, the security barrier afforded by the old Eastern European nations of the Soviet Bloc are now gone. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The West is knocking on Russia’s door, and if you were a lot more sympathetic to Putin than I am, you might contrive to say his invasion of Ukraine was predictable.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I remember years ago listening to Putin making a speech about how Kyiv is the birth place of Mother Russia.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even back then I said <br />“Uhoh!” <br />to myself, so don’t tell me nobody else saw this coming.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Personally I abhor everything about his invasion of a sovereign nation, but I profoundly fear that there is no Ukrainian victory out there; that this terrible war will escalate, with more high-powered weaponry and technology supplied by the West, until there comes a catastrophe that involves us all. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Let us all pray that I am wrong.</span><br /><br /> </p><p>©Charlie Adley<br />25.01.2023<br /><br /></p>Charlie Adleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17063071455000195762noreply@blogger.com0