Charlie Adley's Double Vision

If debt is a tumour then bailouts are chemotherapy!

2012-01-25T15:31:00.000Z

http://www.naturalnews.com

Sadly, too many of us will be familiar with the maxim: if the cancer doesn’t kill you the chemo will. Recently over in England, I had to explain to my friends and family that however bad the UK economy might appear to them, with its trillion pound debt, the atmosphere in London was so preferable to the melancholic treacle we have to wade through every waking moment in Ireland.

When they asked me what’s it like living in a bailout country, I found myself describing awful things: our stunned outrage over the €1 billion paid to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which is nothing more than the new fascia of the dead bank previously known as Anglo-Irish; our utter disbelief at the €1.25 billion being paid to unsecured bond holders, because we know that if we mere proles failed to pay back an unsecured loan, the bank would sell our debt to bastards who’d come to our homes and take away our furniture and TVs; our seething frustration at the closure of hospitals all over the country; our boiling rage at the loss of schools and teaching jobs; our pathetic impotence in the face of VAT tax rises, because purchase tax damages the poor so much more than it hurts the rich; the demise of our self-respect as we either lose our jobs or face penury paying the new Universal Social Charge alongside the new Bank Levy, PRSI, the new Property Tax and Income Tax (blimey - nearly forgot Income Tax there, so blinded was I by all the new taxes!); the raging anger about …

… the raging anger about all of it, all of it all of it, because all the good that was in our lives and this nation is being slowly destroyed, poisoned, killed off to save invisible greedy rich people who gambled and lost.

And then it struck me. They’re trying to kill us in order to save us. The debt that neither Paddy nor Patricia Public was guilty of creating arrived like a tumour in the body of this nation, and now, with this disgustingly misnomered ‘bailout’, we are being pumped with chemotherapy, which in its efforts to kill the debt is destroying all that was good and healthy about us and the country in which we live (although it won’t succeed, because we and Ireland are just so bloody great, we will refuse to succumb).

A very dear friend of mine died of cancer a few years ago. She refused to have chemotherapy, preferring instead to enjoy a long happy Summer. My memories of her are not filled with the terrible sights of her treatment taking its toll, but rather of her beautiful face laughing over the kitchen table, as she prepared her healthy dinner and felt happy with her choices.

We all have to die sometime, but what’s the rush?
Why are we being forced to suffer this chemo poisoning now, when we all know this tumour is nothing more than an abstract number on a Troika computer screen?

Two barbers, a dead footballer and a bit of colonial symbolism!

2012-01-25T11:47:00.003Z

A man’s relationship with his barber can be a wondrous and personal thing. In so many movies, when the old fella wants to talk about the mysteries of life, or mull over a very personal problem, he talks to his barber. I’ve been very lucky over the last 20 years in Galway, because I’ve had two excellent barbers who not only made sense of the swirling cow’s lick sheep’s ass hedge that is my hair, but also have been good for a bit of banter, craic and fiendish slagging.

The other day I was pounding along Salthill Prom (yes, the knee operation was a success, I’m thrilled to say) when my path crossed with Old Barber. I’m calling him that not because he’s longer in the tooth than New Barber, but simply that five years ago he put down his scissors to go to college.

Such is the heinous grapevine that is Galway, after our initial “Howyas!” I was able to tell him that he’d been spotted last week, back cutting hair in a shop in the high street. Was he done with college?

“No, Charlie, just doing one day a week for the bobs, y’understand. Nearly finished, now though, at college. Five years done and I’m about to be a barrister!”

“Bloody hell mate, well done! That’s incredible. I’ll have you on speed dial on my mobile.”  

“Sure that’s what they all say! We’ll see, but it’ll be a great day when I put my scissors up on eBay!”

“Mate, you’re an inspiration! Well done, and thanks for giving me ammo to use against New Barber. I’ll be able to taunt him now that the Master is back on the job!”

“Thanks Charlie, but there’s one thing I’m really pissed off about. They’ve only just gone and changed the law, stopping barristers wearing wigs in court …”
and as he lifted the hood on his anorak to reveal his balding pate
“… and wasn’t that the only reason I bloody wanted to be one in the first place!”

We roared with laughter.

“Ah sure mate, those wigs were only sad leftovers of colonial symbolism. You’ll be better off without them.”

As we walked on our separate ways I smiled broadly, happy to live in a place where you bump into the bloke who used to cut your hair and share a laugh talking bollocks and colonial symbolism.

So when I popped into New Barber I told him he’d better do a bloody good job, ‘cos Old Barber was back on the beat. Trouble was, such is the nature of the two men, we only ended up talking about what a great bloke Old Barber was, and I knew that having sat in New Barber’s chair for many a year now, I was not about to take my barnet elsewhere.

But all this mutual male respect and lurrve didn’t stop us enjoying a good slagging. Most of our banter over the years has been based around the fact that, as my colyoomistas know, I am a life-long Chelsea fan, while New Barber is a Gooner, one of the lowest forms of animal life, otherwise known as an Arsenal fan.

I had a peach ready.
“Did ya hear the news? Chelsea’s bringing back Peter Osgood!”
“Peter Osgood? But isn’t he dead?”
“Sadly yes, but your lot have bought back Thierry Henry and Man United have dragged back Scholes, so while Drogba and the lads are away at the African Cup of Nations, we’re going to let Ossie have a few games.”

Thankfully he stood back and lowered his scissors before he fell about laughing and coughing.

“Peter Osgood! Love it! That’s the best one this week!”

Peter Osgood - The King Of Stamford Bridge.

(Here's a little ditty we used to sing back in the 60s and 70s, to the tune of 'The First Noel')

Out from the shed came a young rising star,
Scoring against Jennings from near and from far,
When Chelsea won the game like we all knew they would,
The star of that great team was Peter Osgood.

Osgood, Osgood, Osgood, Osgood,
Born is the king of Stamford Bridge,
Osgood, Osgood, Osgood, Osgood,
Born is the king of Stamford Bridge …..

Where did the colyooms go?

2012-01-18T11:42:00.003Z

Panic not my colyoomistas, just been the busy madman from Blurville for the last few weeks. Off to England to visit family and attend a friend's wedding this weekend, but already this desk has a little pile of shreds of paper with notes scrawled upon them, all reasy to be colyoomised next week.

The day that Christmas stopped the killing.

2011-12-25T11:11:00.002Z

And finally, a moving reminder of heroic times, so that we can give thanks for being so safe, warm and well fed this Christmas Day! It’s the 7th Christmas colyoom this week, so it must be Christmas Day! Happy Christmas to all of you, friends, strangers and most of all my colyoomistas! I hope you enjoyed this week's marathon dip into the archive!

http://www.caricatures-ireland.com/

Thanks to Allan Cavangh for the perfect illistration.

British Expeditionary Force,
Friday December 25th, 1914.

My Dear Mater,
This will be the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent or likely to spend: since about tea time yesterday I don’t think there’s been a shot fired on either side up to now. Last night turned a very clear frost moonlight night, so soon after dusk we had some decent fires going and had a few carols and songs. The Germans commenced by placing lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us - wishing us a happy Christmas etc ... Some of our chaps went over to their lines. I think they’ve all come back, bar one from ‘E’ Company. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir.
There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as today we are all on top of our trenches running about. ... Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans ... I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I’ve also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat. They say they won’t fire tomorrow if we don’t so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps ... We can hardly believe that we’ve been firing at them ... it all seems so strange. With much love from Boy."

Strange indeed, how wonderful is the human spirit. We humans have hearts the size of harvest moons. Given the choice of killing indiscriminately or having a meal with friends, the vast majority of us lay down our guns and pick up our knives and forks.

I always find the Christmas Day truce of 1914 exceptionally moving, as for once, a religious festival was used to encourage exactly what it stood for.

As an atheist of Jewish stock, I have always loved the Nativity story. Evidently God was showing in the strongest possible way that social status meant absolutely nothing; that true power lay in the heart, mind and spirit.

All that matters is to be a loving human being; to shake hands with your enemy, love your neighbour and turn the other cheek. Christian ethics are an admirable and glorious collection, never better illustrated than by those good men who lifted themselves clean out of their hellish muddy disease-ridden trenches and played a little footie with the lads from the other side.

Christmas as a child was a big affair in my Jewish home. My parents felt it was important for us all to feel a part of the country that had taken us in, and so, in our own way, we assimilated the English culture of Christmas and left out the religion.

We had a tree, which is a Pagan tradition anyway, and we had presents and decorations. Indeed, on Christmas morning my Dad would crack open a bottle of champagne and declare ‘Happy Christmas!’, and none of us felt any less Jewish. Didn’t we still light the Menorah candles and celebrate Hannukah? Didn’t we eat hot salt beef sandwiches with sweet and sour cucumbers on Christmas Eve night, feeling completely Jewish and comfortable within ourselves?

All wisdom and worthy religious creed is based around acceptance (rather then tolerance, even though many still fail to see the vital difference), but even at this time of year, when true Christians are supposed to be celebrating the arrival of peace on Earth in the shape of their Saviour’s birth, there is begrudgery and prejudice aplenty.

Even though I cannot stand the censorial excesses and puritan overtones of Political Correctness, I’m going to risk being accused of just that when I say that, unlike lots of ye Irish folk, I actually like the “Happy Holidays!” thing.

Many of you believe that maniacal liberals demand the saying of “Happy Holidays!” so as to avoid offending non-Christian members of society, but they are wrong. No Irish Muslim, Sikh or Jew will be offended by one Christian saying “Happy Christmas!” to another, but there are other festivals that occur at this time of year in each religion. No minority immigrant is going to sit around and wait for an Irish Catholic to wish them a Happy Hannukah or Diwali, so why not cover all the religious bases, spread the love a little and keep everybody happy?

It seems absurd to me that people should get protective over their own religious festivals to the detriment of others. It feels a little like grown-ups who never learned to share their toys as children.
So no, “Happy Holidays!” does not preclude you celebrating your festival: it merely includes all of us who might be celebrating ours. I have never felt in any way offended by the sight of somebody gaining wisdom or comfort from their personal religious faith, but I do feel offended when I read in Irish newspaper pages “...well tough luck, why should we worry about offending anybody in this our country...?”

Why? I’ll tell you why! Forgive this atheist Jew for preaching Christianity, but you should worry simply and purely because it is un-Christian to think that way. I have lived in ‘your’ country for 16 years. I love Ireland, the Irish and I even pay my taxes. At what point does this country become my country too? Clearly, never, as far as many of you are concerned, and once again I recall the words that my Dad used to say, when I was but a little boy.

“We are just visitors in this country.” he told me, “One day we may have to move on, like your grandparents did before you were born.”

How dare any of us become angry over such trifling matters, when we think of the bravery, love, compassion and ultimate sacrifice made by the lad who wrote that letter back in the trenches? A victim of a pointless and disgusting war, he and his equals on both sides found the true spirit of Christmas and made peace.

So please, as you celebrate this most important of feasts, give thanks to your God for all that you have, and try to love the fact that we are all so beautifully different.

'Bertie Potter and the Lost Memories of Erin' - a fairytale of Christmas Eve.

2011-12-24T15:47:00.000Z

Thanks to conormchale.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html

(This 6th of the 7 colyooms I’m posting this week was first published in December 2002.)

It was the night before Christmas, and snow lay all over the fields of Erin. Out in the garden shed, Bertie Potter was shivering in the cold, wondering why oh why he couldn’t sleep inside the na Fianna family house.
There was a terrible curse upon the na Fianna family. Old cousin Charlie had strangled himself on the sleeve of his silk shirt, and Bertie’s father Albert had choked to death on a beef bone. Bertie Potter was sent to live with his nasty Auntie Mary Harniggan, and his horrible Uncle Charlie McCrevil.
Auntie Mary was a huge woman with a short temper, who loved her own children much more than she loved Bertie Potter. She gave Bertie old clothes to wear, and just enough food scraps to keep him alive.
Uncle Charlie was a dirty smelly old man, with bad teeth and too much drink inside him. He went on and on about never having enough money, but Bertie Potter didn’t understand why he couldn’t have any Christmas presents, because he remembered the time when Auntie Mary wanted to buy a bottle of wine in a faraway county. Uncle Charlie suddenly found the money to pay for a private plane for her, which must have cost a pretty penny.
Bertie Potter knew that as soon as he was able, he was going to leave home and live on his own. Somewhere deep inside, he knew he was not the same as them. He felt special, somehow different, but he didn’t yet know why.
Wrapping himself up in his tatty old blanket, Bertie Potter finally drifted off to sleep, but an hour later he woke up with a shock. The door of the shed suddenly crashed open, and two men burst in, falling over each other.
Bertie couldn’t believe his eyes! It was the ghosts of Grandad Eamonn and his Great Uncle Michael, who’d both been dead many a long year. Bertie Potter could smell the drink on them, so he understood how they were able to fight and laugh and hug each other, all at the same time.
“On yer boike, ye pat’et’ic two-faced weasel!” shouted Great Uncle Michael at Grandad Eamonn.
“Never moind my bike, ye great hulkin’ Cork fool, you watch yer back - oh sorry, too late, har har har!” cried Grandad Eamonn, at which the two men fell over, giggling like a couple of teenagers on Buckfast.
Eventually they calmed down, and turned to Bertie Potter, who was sitting with his blanket wrapped around his knees, his eyes bulging with surprise.
“Howya, Bertie Potter!” said Grandad Eamonn. “Sorry to wake ye up, but the time has come for ye to know the truth! Bertie, you are a wizard, and you have a very important job to do!”
Nothing could prepare Bertie Potter for what happened next. Before you could say ‘Ryanair extra charges’, Great Uncle Michael scooped Bertie into his arms, and the two men flew out of the shed, and up high, into the Christmas Eve sky. It felt good, being held by that strong giant of a man, and as they flew over Erin, Great Uncle Michael explained everything to Bertie Potter.
“Look below and see the Erin that your Grandad and I built, after we kicked the English out of the place - ”
“Well, most of the place!” interrupted Grandad Eamonn.
“Oh for god’s sake, wouldja ever get over that!” shouted Great Uncle Michael. “Anyway, Free Erin was the envy of the world. Sure, we weren’t rich, but your Uncle Buck and Auntie Dollares came to visit from far away, and loved us so much, they opened lots of shops and factories here.
"Then Uncle Mark from Germany and Auntie Franc from France sent Erin lots of money, so that we could build new roads and houses, and everything was looking good. Everyone could buy new cars, take holidays, and last Summer, your Uncle Charlie gave everyone free money for their piggy banks.
“But then something terrible happened. Your Auntie and Uncle sent out hundreds of magic brown envelopes, and anyone who opened them fell immediately under a spell. All over Erin, people lost their memories ... and their money.
“Everyone in the Tribunals forgot everything ever!
“The Gardai even forgot what each other looked like!
“Aer Rianta forgot to forget about £5,000 of cigars and brandy that Seamus Brennan never had.
“Mad Cows forgot they had BSE.
“Mothers forgot they had Hepatitis C.
“British soldiers in Derry forgot they shot people on Bloody Sunday.
“Both sides in the North forgot they had promised to make peace.
“The FAI invited everyone in Europe to come and play football here, but forgot that they had no pitches to play on!
“Some people in Erin even forgot that millions of us were once refugees, fleeing persecution and famine, and suddenly started being racist against asylum seekers here.
“Politicians forgot how important medical cards and hospitals and FAS Courses are to the poor. And tonight, there are many very poor children all over Erin who will not wake up to a pile of Christmas presents at the end of their beds.”
After their long flight, Great Uncle Michael and Grandad Eamonn landed on the top of Athlone Cathedral.
“So who am I?” asked Bertie Potter, “And what can I do to help?”
“You are 'The Boy Who Remembered’. It is your destiny to save Erin, Bertie Potter!” exclaimed Great Uncle Michael.
“When you get home, you must cast a powerful magic spell on your Auntie and Uncle, making them prisoners inside the na Fianna house. You must make sure that your evil Auntie Mary and your wicked Uncle Charlie never ever leave that house again. They must never be seen, never have one of their words heard, and never ever send a brown envelope in the post. If you do that, Bertie Potter, you will save your Erin!”
‘I can do it!’ thought brave Bertie Potter to himself, ‘And without those nasty na Fiannas, everyone will have their memories back, and remember the numbers of their Cayman
Island accounts. We’ll all have enough money for a very Merry Christmas!’

No room at the Irish inn?

2011-12-23T16:32:00.000Z

This 5th of 7 Christmas colyooms I’m posting this week was written in December 2004, just after the Irish, (a nation of people who more than any other have seen - and still see! - economic migration as their birthright) voted in a referendum to deny children born in Ireland the right of automatic citizenship.

Christmas is a cosy time of year, isn’t it? Roaring fires, full bellies and a movie before tea. Comfortable, happy and safe. Yes, feeling safe, that’s what it’s all about.

You close your eyes and drift off into a little snooze, but your mind brings you nightmares.

You’re walking into your home, but it feels empty. Silent. Where is your wife and where are your children?

You walk into the kids’ bedroom and see a few clothes thrown around. You see that their small suitcase is missing, and then you run, crazed, into your own bedroom, where you see your wife’s bag gone too.

You don’t know what to do.

You call your friends and find nobody knows anything.

All you can do is sit and wait and hope they return.

Two days later, you receive a call from the police. Your wife went to a government office to pick up some forms, was suddenly arrested, handcuffed, and driven immediately across town to pick up some clothes for the children. Then she and your children were rushed to the airport and thrown out of the country, flown off to the very place you spent your life trying to escape.

What a terrible country that must be to live in. To lose your wife and kids, without so much as a kiss goodbye. To think of the shame your wife felt being walked handcuffed through an airport. To feel the fear and confusion of your children who might wonder what terrible thing they had done to deserve this.

To wonder if you will ever see your family again.

Kingsley Igbojionu may well have seen his wife Rachel, and their two Irish-born children again, as months after his wife was humiliated and deported, he too was sent back to Nigeria.

As you recline safely in your Christmas armchairs, ponder for a second about Ireland, and how it behaves towards refugees.

Over 80% of you voted ‘Yes’ in the referendum this year. Over 400 people have been sent out of this country since then, and more than 11,000 parents of Irish-born children could be deported.

The kids can stay, but what parents would abandon their children to the care of a State that has enforced such a separation?

No room at the Inn. Happy Christmas to you.

Christmas is supposedly a celebration of birth, love and delivery from fear. This year, if you will excuse my chutzpah, this Atheist Jew implores you all to behave like true Christians.

Love thy neighbour.

Celebrate the fact that others want to live here. They want to share their cultures, to love their children, and to worship their own gods.

Pray in your churches this Christmas that all the people living in this land might feel as safe as you do.

Oh, and have a most excellent and jubilant Christmas holiday!

...and then there was the Christmas we burned the banker’s lawn!

2011-12-22T15:35:00.002Z

The 4th of the 7 Christmas colyooms I'm posting this week oozes us into that alcohol-stained area known as‘Christmas Past’, back when nobody had ever heard of burning bondholders, but somehow (I blame Dumbo!)we managed to burn the banker's lawn...

Although old enough to know better,we were a bunch of friends clinging collectively to a mischievous hedonism, adesire to have just two too many, because we could, and then someone found abottle of Tequila, and we did that too, d’ya know the kind o’way?

The Croaker’s dad wassome kind of bigwig at Lloyd’s Bank, and his friend had a timesharecottage down in Somerset. So we decided we'd all go off to do Christmas in a Merchant Banker’s holiday home in the picturesque village ofPorlock.

Oh, and we were very, very lucky,or so everyone told us.

Far from being the biscuit tinpicture Tudor oak-beamed thatch of our dreams, the ‘cottage’ turned out to be acrushingly unremarkable house, at the end of a suburban-style cul-de-sac.

Well, dwaaarling, to be dreadfullyhonest, it was simply awful. Bland. Pure 100% unadulterated boring dull andtaste-free, decorated throughout in white this, grey wall-to-wall that, nothingof note, character, history or colour.

But boy, had we been warned!Daddy’s little gal drummed into us that his place was to be respected. Nothingwas going to happen to this place, okay? Rilly, because one just doesn’t goaround damaging other people’s homes, okay yah? And the garden too, okay, yah?Daddy loves his lawn, okay? Super!

She handed us the keys. Young,loaded with disposable income, drink and doubtless, in those days, a wide rangeof potent and nefarious ‘recreationals’, we headed off to the West Country.

Christmas morning arrives, anddomestic bliss descends on the ‘cottage’.

Everyone, except for Lucy, isdraped over chairs, sofas and each other. Every eye is trained on the TVscreen, where Dumbo’s mother is locked up in a cage. They think she’s a maddangerous animal. We know, of course, that she is nothing but a pure sweetheartof a beast, and our emotions are gently twitching, peaking and troughing,sailing blissfully on the waters of mass mind-altering consumption.

Little Dumbo is losing his mum. Heputs his trunk through the bars of the cage, which if I recall correctly was ona train, and Mummy Dumbo and little Dumbo link trunks.

Lucy’s smiling face appears aroundthe door.

"Er guys - the kitchen’s onfire."

I asked her later why she said itso calmly. She explained that in her shock, she incorrectly assumed we wouldreact like responsible adult human beings, so she decided it best not to createunnecessary panic.

As it was, we were so far gone inthe cerebrals we completely ignored her, as one.

"Oh cool!"

"Nice, nice!"

"Poor lickel nellyphant gonnaloose his mumma. That’s so sad!"

"Yeh - but it’ll be alright inthe-"

"No...er...guys, the KITCHENis on FIRE!"

"No, really? Be with you in atick, love! Luce, chill, we just wanna watch this!"

Confronted with such overwhelminglyabject apathy, Lucy finally lost it.

"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!Fire in the kitchen! Turn off the bloody video you morons, there’s a FIREIN THE KITCHEN!"

I heard a distant Rasta voiceemerge from under a cushion, bravely offering in a whispering song

“...there’s a fire in my kitchen, what am I gonna do!”

By the time we actually got off ourarses and made it into the kitchen, Lucy had rushed upstairs and was, rathersuperbly, dunking bath towels in water. Flames were licking out of the oven,smoke billowing all over the place. It was dramatic and confusing, our feebleheads no longer lolling on oceans of calm, instead now tossed about on stormyseas of impending disaster.

We felt collectively unsure aboutopening the oven door.

Didn’t opening doors make fires getworse?

Maybe if we all stood at oddangles, and chewed our cuticles frantically for a few more minutes, maybe itmight go away.

Anyway, the fire didn’t lookstructurally threatening. Not yet.

Still, it was pretty exciting, andwe generally ooo-ed, errr-ed, yelled ‘Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring’, andgiggled like infants eating cake-mix behind Mummy’s back.

Lucy appeared with soaking towels,opened the oven door, and threw a towel over the flames in the roasting tin.

Gone. Wow, fire gone bye-byes! Weall stood and stared, while Lucy tried to come to terms with saving the day.

Suddenly, for absolutely noapparent reason whatsoever, Neil was spurred into action.

"Got to get that pan out ofthere!” he said, and before any of us could stop him, he picked up the othertowel, and lifted the smouldering disaster of a dinner out of the oven, yelling

“Open the front door!"

Like a man possessed, he stormedout into the garden, and carefully lowered the smoking dish down onto thevelvet turf.

We all looked at it, and we 'knew’, as it says in the Bible. We knew that it was not good.

Never mind the smoke-stainedkitchen. Black can be made white again. We could clean the fire damage, noproblem.

But right now, somebody had to goand move that dish. As soon as possible. Pronto. Like, er, yesterday, dude...

It was, as it had to be, Neil whowent back to the scene of his crime. Once more, as neighbour’s net curtainstwitched all around, in true British Bourgeois fashion, we stood and giggled asNeil bent over the now-cooled tray.

As he lifted it, so he also lifteda clump of verdant bliss the size of - well, the exact size and shape of alarge roasting tin.

"Daddy loves his lawn!"offered some bright spark.

"Drink!" Lucy wasinspired. “Drink! We need drink, lads! It’s Christmas Day! We need adrink!"

This time we all heard her, and Ihave to admit, from that moment on I can’t remember anything - not awall-cleaning, oven-scrubbing moment, but a fine time was had by all, and that,my patient readers, is what I wish for you.

May this season of Christmas, Diwhali and Hanukkah bring you, andyour families, Shalom peace.

There really is no such thing as free beer!

2011-12-21T16:47:00.001Z

The 3rd of the 7 Christmas colyooms I'm posting each day this week is a tale of broken bones, beer, pantomime and Archimedes' Principle of Displacement!

Visit Caricatures Ireland

More than any other time ofthe year, when we sit around our dinner tables on Christmas Day, we are awareof who is there and who is not.

At the age of 17, havingperformed impressive acrobatics with my Yamaha 250, a saloon car, a ditch and abarbed wire fence, I spent six weeks in hospital over Christmas and New Year.My femur was snapped in two, which is no mean feat with thighs like mine, andmy tibia had a crack or two as well. Bed-bound, with my leg in traction, Ideveloped a bronchial chest infection after an emergency operation.

Every two seconds for six weeksI coughed in hacking spasms, thus shaking my smashed leg, which was hung in asling, supported by a metal pole they had driven through me, just below theknee.

Suffice to say I came toterms with pain.

In our part of the ward,there were four beds and three bikers with broken bones.

There was Kev, who had fallenoff his sleek and mean Suzuki GT750 (a two stroke 3-into-1, since you ask), andopposite us two was brick shithouse Yorkshireman Gary, ex-SAS, and mightyembarrassed, having survived several covert tours of duty in Northern Ireland,to have to admit to falling off a Honda 125.

Compared to the otherpatients in the hospital the three of us were well off.

We were not sick. We'd hadour operations, and apart from antibiotics for wounds, and pain killers forbroken bones, we needed very little medical attention.

We were young, male, bored,and allowed to drink beer. Naturally, we tried to attract the attention of thestudent nurses as much as possible, and equally, they were happy to have a bitof a laugh with lads who were not ill, physically, at least!

By the time Christmas camearound, the three of us were well aquainted with all the student nurses, andthen we were told we would be allowed to drink spirits during the Christmasperiod.

So we did.

We got plastered, if you’llpardon the pun, and so did the student nurses. We persuaded them that by havinga tipple or three with us they were really doing their jobs, because they werehelping us through a difficult time.

On Christmas morning, theConsultant Surgeons came around the wards, carving the turkeys at our besides,and general merriment was had by all.

Karen, my favourite studentnurse, had had a lickle ickle bit too much to drink. She pulled the curtainsaround my bed, produced a half bottle of vodka from under her skirt, and takingsome lemonade and a clean specimen bottle from my bedside cabinet, mixed us upa festive cocktail, after which she gave me a lovely snog, and left me feelinga million dollars.

Looking back now, I can onlythink how wonderful she was, because not only was I away from my familyChristmas table, but so was she.

After the Christmas pud, wewere all wheeled out of the ward in our beds, and taken to a large and crowdedarea, where the staff were putting on a Panto for the patients.

Gary’s wife, (a woman of suchsubstantial proportions and brooding menace that she clearly put the fear ofgod into our man of iron) had turned up with several cases of brown ale, and sowe sat up in our beds, enjoying the show, drinking frothing foaming pints ofbeer from plastic glasses.

Half way through theperformance, I realised I needed to pee. I’d done precious little but drink allday, and now I really really needed to go, all of a sudden, with the fiercelydemanding urgency of someone who knows that he cannot go.

There was no way I could askanybody to wheel me to the loo. To get me and my bed out of that area wouldhave meant interrupting the show, and causing a kerfuffle that would spoileverything for everybody.

So I did all I could do.

I drained my pint glass ofbeer, and, errr, then I refilled it!

In my drunken state, Idecided it made perfect Archimidean mathematical sense.

Reaching out of my bed, Iplaced the foaming frothing pint onto a shelf, and watched the rest of theshow, making a mental note to remember to pick it up afterwards and dispose ofit myself.

Trouble was, when the lightswent up, it was no longer there, and to this day I do not know whether someunfortunate alcoholic scrumper thought his luck was in.

Free beer! Whoopee!

Best not think about that toolong.

But on Christmas Day, please,let’s all for a minute think of those who have given up their day to work: toserve us with safety in our homes, at sea and overseas; those who comfort and care, and those whovolunteer to help others without a home to go to.

If you spare them a thoughtand give thanks, you won’t be far off pleasing whichever God you might worship!

Happy Christmas, Diwali,Hannukah and Solstice, and may your god go with you.

What’s so terrible about Christmas on your own?

2011-12-20T15:20:00.001Z

(Day 2 of the 7 Christmas colyooms I'm posting this week! This one was written in 2002, when I lived in a farmhouse near Killala, Co. Mayo, and felt very happy to be spending Christmas on my own...)

lifehack.org

It’s the look in their eyes that gets me. They’ve asked you what you’re going to do for Christmas, and you’ve said you don’t know. You might go to friends, but you might just stay in and do it on your own.

Then there’s the look. The staring-down-the-nose dewey-eyed you-don’t really-know-what you’re-saying-do-you-you-poor-sad-lonely-little-loser look.

Drives me crazy every time.

Of course it is tragic that some people will be lonely and alone on Christmas Day.

But the time has come for me to stand up and be counted, on behalf of the multitude out here who will be alone and doing just fine, thanks very much.

Well, I wanted to be counted but there’s just me, so I’ll do it myself: one.

One person who will wake up when he wants to on Christmas morning. It’s a special day, so I’ll make sure to leave a few cards and pressies to open, at my leisure, whilst lying in bed.

Then I’ll take a wonderfully peaceful walk along a deserted beach and return home to build a massive fire. Once the coal is crackling and hissing in the hearth, I’ll phone my family back in London, and chat to my nieces, sister, brother and parents as the phone is passed around their living room. Once again, I’ll reassure my folks that I am fine and happy.

Time to have a little snifter. Crack open the Jameson 12, feel the dark chewy whiskey flowing all over my far-flung bodily extremities, warming my heart while cheering my soul.

Now it really feels like Christmas: time to play some music. I’m partial to the Vienna Boys Choir on Christmas morning (and they speak very highly of me too!), but I might just be tempted by my very dodgy ‘The Chieftains - The Bells of Dublin’ Christmas album.

Shocking behaviour.

I’ll play my music as loud as I want to, very probably do a silly little dance and nobody will complain or mock my natural sense of rhythm.

Time to warm up the oven, but what does a man cook to eat on his own for Christmas dinner? Well, exactly whatever he feels like,to be eaten whenever he wants.

All I know for sure at this moment is that the meal will consist solely of the most magnificently self-indulgent ingredients. Possibly a roast fillet of lamb, larded with garlic, wrapped in rosemary and honey; crispy roast shpuds; steamed carrots and leeks; a braised onion and a sweet roasted parsnip.

Sound good? Oh, you don’t care for lamb?

I don’t care. I’m cooking for one.

Such a feast requires a splendid bottle of French red, perchance a Grand Cru of velvet depth and sublime body - much like myself!

As the smells of the roasting meat inveigle their way around the house, I’ll make a few more phone calls, spreading love and good wishes to my friends, scattered around the globe.

Then it’s out the door, and up to visit the landlord farmer and his wife, drop off a bottle of whiskey and a message of thanks to them for housing me in such a happy home.

Oh, and donkeys celebrate Christmas too, so the usual carrots are out, and today it’s nothing but choccy biccies and Golden Delicious apples for my closest ‘neigh-bours’, Kitty and her foal Molly.

Even an atheist Jew such as myself can be a hoary old Christmas traditionalist, so I put the Christmas pud on the steamer and glaze my home-made mince pies, to be snarfed later with brandy butter and burps.

Most important of all, I take the cheese out of the fridge, and let it breathe. I am a self-avowed pathetic slave to cheese, and this year I have had to cut it from my diet at home, in an effort to cut down on the cholesterol.

But hey, it’s Christmas, so it’s got to be stinky creamy Stilton on digestive biscuits, and a pungent nutty cheddar on oatcakes, washed down with a healthy dose of vintage port, of which I will purchase a half bottle for my own consumption.

After the meal, a stroll down by the river, enjoying the utter tranquility of the day that’s in it, and back home to watch a movie. As a child in England, there was comfort to be found in the Christmas morning Beatles film on the box, and in the afternoon the Beeb always used to run ‘Bridge Over The River Kwai’. Some traditions are best left unwrapped, so to be on the safe side I’ll make sure to rent a couple of vids - one new release and one old fave ,something epic like Goodfellas or ‘Dr. Zhivago’.

By the time darkness has fallen on my solitary Christmas Day, I will have exercised twice, been well fed and over-watered, ready to snooze a while in front of the fire. I will not be woken up by any upsetting family rows, or Uncle George needing urgent medical attention after overdoing the brandy.

After my snooze, there’ll be an energetic walk to the bathroom, followed by a disgustingly long soak, and then a bit of a wash and brush up to see if I feel like visiting friends, or prefer simply to stare at the goggle box and drift off into my own private Yuletide nirvana.

How bad does that sound?

To be completely honest, I’m not even sure that I really will spend Christmas Day alone this year. I have two friends in Galway City who are also planning to spend the day alone, so I made a suggestion that if they felt the urge, so to speak, they might come up and share a country Christmas with me.

If they come I will be delighted to see them, certain in the knowledge that we will still have exactly the day we all want, under no pressure to do, be or say anything that crosses the border from our Happy World of Indulgence into the dark dreary land of Duty.

Either way, alone or with my fellow Lost Boys, I will be spending money I don’t have; eating and drinking as if I were immortal; enjoying my own company, and equally eager to step into the pub at noon on Stephen’s Day and quaff pints of black, whilst listening to the horrific tales of woe emanating from all those poor sad souls who had to endure the Christmas that everyone else wanted.

Whether on your own or in the company of others, enjoy a peaceful happy Christmas, and whatever your faith, may your god go with you.

“Well, he was Jewish, wasn’t he?”

2011-12-19T10:38:00.000Z

One of the challenges of being a columnist is coming up with a new Christmas piece each and every year. One of the bonuses of being a columnist is that I've now a sizeable archive (oooerr Matron!) - so I'm going to try and post a different Christmas colyoom on the blog each day this week.

First up, A Tale of Two Santas and Hundreds of Hassidic Jews, who rescued me from the prospect of an impoverished Christmas!

The snow was falling onto the sodium-lit street. Chris and I sat in theliving room of my Rats Alley flat. We stared at each other in silence, hunchedup, wrestling with the fierce London cold.

Broke. Two days to go until Christmas.

‘Hey Charlie, have you got any old whiskey bottles?”

“Yeh, there’s two empties over there. Why?”

“Aha! Bring them to me, and bring out that fan heater you hide in yourbedroom. We’ll have a drink yet!”

Ten minutes later, we lay on our bellies watching whiskey seeminglyappear from nowhere. The heat from the fan was condensing the holy juice out ofthe glass, and from nothing we suddenly had an inch or two of Christmas Cheer.And we did.

The ‘phone rang. Did I want to earn some cash? And did I know anyoneelse who needed some too?

Did I?

One of the shop owners down the street was looking for a couple of guysto stand outside his store dressed as Santa Claus. They would be collectingmoney for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

Sure, yes, we can do that. But how can you pay us if we’re collectingfor a charity? We wouldn’t stoop so low as to take money from the sick kiddies.

He explained that our presence was going to attract punters to his shop,one way or another.

Well, fair enough then. More than fair, but just one more thing. Thiswas Golders Green, the most Jewish suburb in North London. How kindly were thelocals going to take to Father Christmas?

“Well, yer man was Jewish, wasn’t he?” came the inscrutable, irrefutablereply.

Chris and I could not contain our laughter as we were fitted out for ourcostumes. We were unsure if Santa was meant to be naked underneath his regalia,but the freezing air settled our minds on that issue.

Somehow, fitting the tights over our jeans felt more than a littleSuperman-ish, but the beard was another matter entirely.

It got up my nose, tickled my lips, and after a minute or two ofbreathing, returned to my senses the less-than delightful scent of the previousnight’s Rogan Josh curry.

And so, out onto the streets, followed by a gaggle of giggling shopassistants.

“Cor, look at those two sex bombs!”

“Yeh, don’t fancy yours much though!”

We asked the boss if it wasn’t a little excessive having two Santas outthere together, but once again, his answer was beyond reason.

“In most places you only got one, so in Golders Green, you got two.”

Chris and I started to shake our buckets, trying to catch a generouseye. People were ready and eager to give. It was a cause that crossed thebarriers of race and religion, although I was a little saddened to have totreat a hospital like a charity.

We had been provided with bags of lollipops, which we were meant to giveto sweet little kiddies who came up to us. Unfortunately, (or maybe mostfortunately) little kiddies are these days trained to stay away from strangemen bearing candy. The combination of my costume, and the ultra-deep voice Iadopted for my ‘rôle’ seemed to scare the hell out of the wee darlings.

All it took was “Hellow lickle girlie! Do you want a lollipop?” and Iwas instant pervert, children scurrying away to hide behind their parents, safefrom the nasty red man.

Off in the distance, we heard a strange commotion. Two police carsrolled slowly down the street, followed by a massive demonstration by HassidicJews, they who sport the long hair curls, blue raincoats and big floppy velvethats. Hundreds of them were marching down the Golders Green Road, carryingplacards written in Hebrew.

Chris and I stepped back to watch this strangest of sights unfold, andthen all of a sudden, it dawned on me that each and every one of them was apotential punter.

I leaped into the fray, shaking my collection bucket, while each side ofme, every which way, hats, raincoats and beards glided past, temporarilyblinded by this scarlet flash in their Aegean Sea of blue. I felt like I wasinside a roll of news film, and was tempted to just savour the moment, butthere was work to be done.

“Cough up for the kiddies! Great Ormond Street Hospital needs your help!Dig deep!’”

Dig they did. Coppers started flying into the bucket, followed by silvercoins and then notes, fivers, tenners, the lot. It was enough to bring a tearto my eye. There was no question of Old or New Testament loyalty here, just ariver of raincoats on a mission from God.

A full bucket, a happy shopkeeper, and two very merry Santas in the pubthat Christmas Eve.

May your God be with you.

Will the last simple sandwich to leave Ireland please put the ciabatta under the grill?

2011-12-11T13:18:00.001Z

youthink.com

The tattered remains of the Celtic Tiger are scattered all over Ireland.
It’s easy to spot the empty rotting ghost estates that stand as headstones for the grave of another failed construction boom.
It’s fun to count the traffic jams of ‘00’ and ’99’ reg cars that cram Ireland’s roads.
It’s sad to see the frail, old, young and poor yet again take the hit for the failures of the rich.

Far from these deep and depressing issues, there’s another much more trivial yet still irritating legacy of those boom days occupying Galway City.

From High Street to Spanish Arch it’s nigh on impossible to sit in a pub and order a simple sandwich. Off the beaten tracks there are thankfully pubs that knock out that classic Irish standard, Shoopandsandgidgeforafiver, but from Sea Road to Eyre Square you’re more likely to be offered a menu crawling with gourmet offerings of organic Mongolian yak’s cheese, with sun-dried beetroot husks on a bed of 85 day-aged wolf navels on a wood oven reheated ciabatta, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil sourced exclusively from a 60,000 year-old tree on a long-lost Ionian island.

Yours for only €7.95, served with 6 blue seaweed leaved foraged from the local beach and 2.5 game chips

Very lovely; doubtless scrumptious; but all you really want is a sandwich.
A cup of tea washing down a couple of slices of wholemeal pan filled with ample ham and mustard, cheese and pickle or excuse me, fellow travellers, but egg mayonnaise.
Yes, I am that simple, and if you can’t stand the smell, don’t fly Adley Airways.

Don’t get me wrong. I'm delighted that Irish cuisine has come up in the world. There has been a foodie revolution in Ireland over the last 10 years, and we’re all the better for it. But just as I am so happy still to be able to start my Galway nights out with PJ McDonagh’s excellent cod and mushy peas, so too I fear Irish pubs are flushing out the basic bready baby with the Tiger’s bath water.

Why does a pub have to hand over its entire menu to sumptuous über-bites? Why can’t they also offer us plebs a simple cheap lunch on square bread? While we’re on the subject, is it just me that has always had trouble with the term ‘gastropub’?

I’ve never been able to get past the fact that the first two syllables allude less to having a good old chow down, and more to do with the prefix of a series of vile stomach illnesses.

I don’t watch films at a cancercinema or shop in a poxmall, so why would I want to eat in a Gastropub?

‘Gourmetpub’?
Love that. I’m there.

Where have all my comments gone?

2011-12-08T14:10:00.001Z

There used to be a healthy discourse on my blog. People left comments to which I’d reply, then others might join in, helping to brew up a cauldron of exchanged ideas.

Then I started to use facebook as a portal to the blog and overnight the comments disappeared. Being a scribbler and a wordy old hoor, I still enjoy using just as many words as I deem necessary. Not too many and never too few: just enough; the right amount.

Yet today the world of words is shrinking. Not sufficient that text messaging and tweets allow only 140 characters with which to express yourself, facebook has now reduced the comments on my blog to a single mouse click.

Of course I’m delighted that people on facebook click to say they ‘like’ a link to the blog, but I miss those expressions of anger, joy and general bloody-mindedly opinionated thought that used to grace the bottom of my blog posts.

Ah well, maybe I should be grateful that in a world where ‘more’ rules the roost and ‘excess’ is a dream to be sought after, this need for fewer words is a good thing.

No, can’t buy that. I want to know what you’re thinking, and ‘like’ clicks representing approval or an absence of clicks to show dissent just doesn’t cut the mustard.

What’s worse than a bus driver talking on his mobile phone? I found out on Saturday!

2011-12-04T12:34:00.001Z

http://zazzle.com

As I stepped onto the bus I handed the driver the correct fare.
He waved his hand at me, urging me to take my ticket.
He couldn’t actually speak to me because he was on his mobile phone.

‘Charming!’I thought.

I took my seat and fumed to see him continue to talk into his phone as we pulled out into the main road. Admittedly Salthill on a wet cold Saturday morning is not a hotbed of high speed driving, but we had all paid to be driven by him, and not only was he breaking the law, but doing so in a way that could risk both his job and our lives.

By the time I reached my destination I had worked out what I wanted to say to him. There was no point in being aggressive, as that would only get his back up. For all I knew he might have been on the phone to a sick wife, or an ailing parent in an Emergency Room, so I was loathe to judge him too harshly.

Before I walked off the bus I turned to him and calmly said:

“Hi. You know, when we step onto this bus we’re putting our lives in your hands, so it’s a bit scary for us too see you driving while you’re talking on your mobile.”

As I spoke to him my eyes looked over to see that in his lap he was balancing his football pools sheet, while in his other hand he had a pen with which he was doing the pools, leaving, errrr, no hand at all with which to drive the bus.

He then contemptuously snorted wind from his nose, and in my direction exclaimed slowly, impatiently, emphatically:

“Oh. Sweet. God.”

Evidently he felt he had the absolute right to endanger not only us, but other drivers and pedestrians, by driving a bus whilst talking on the phone whilst doing his football pools.

Part of me wanted to report him, but I didn’t, as he’d lose his job, bringing untold suffering upon his family who were, unlike him, innocent.

Instead I gently said:

“When you hit a child in the road, saving your job will be the least of your worries.”

The Winter of Burning Cars.

2011-11-27T18:47:00.001Z

http://10horses.blogspot.com

With all this talk ofcollapsing currencies and impending apocalyptic chaos, I thought it was time torevisit 'The Winter of Burning Cars', a nice little post-apocalyptic piece Iwrote for this colyoom back in September 2002, when the supposed threat camefrom Saddam rather than the Euro.

As thatAutumn of 2002 came around, we had no idea what lay ahead.

No ideathat the war would be over without a shot fired. No idea that we would lose.

Septembercame and went in a blaze of sunshine. The October gales plucked leaves from thetrees, scattering them over the earth.

Talk of warseemed almost safe, remote. Everything was going to be alright, I told myself.We’d heard it all before. Same old macho politicians posturing and prattingaround the planet, desperate to try out some strategic nuclear weapons in thefield of battle. Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice droned on and on, justlike Daddy Bush back in ‘92.

“Blah blahU.N. resolutions, blah blah weapons inspectors, blah blah Saddam must go.”

Same-oldsame-old.

With thecoming of a cold November, the first coal fire of the season was built More talk on the news about theprotection of freedoms, limited strikes, and somehow, there’d been so manyfar-off wars I’d grown immune. Of course it was a terrible thing and all that,but rain was still going to fall on Ireland’s fields.

Still does.

Now I knowhow complacent I was.

This is theWinter of Burning Cars.

It happenedso quickly. That was what shocked everyone. We all felt so deep-down secure inour western civilisation. Whatever atrocities were visited upon distantvillagers in crumbling stone desert huts, it wouldn’t really stop us living ourday-to-day lives.

How couldit?

Oneinterview, that was what did it in the end.

The US andUK forces were building up on the Iraqi borders, trying their best to provokeSaddam into attacking first. They desperately wanted war, but all they got wasentrenched defiance, and then Condoleeza Rice gave ‘that’ interview to CNN.

“So Condie,can I call you Condie? So, Condie, how is this war on Iraq going to help theUSA’s war on terrorism?”

“Well, Isee this chapter as part of a greater book. George Bush is a great man, a goodman, and his policies will make the world a safer place. After the Taliban andSaddam’s regime have been replaced by democracies, the US can turn itsattention to Iran, and then Saudi Arabia.”

“But theSaudis are our allies. Does this mean a shift in policy toward the Saudis?”

“Well, ithas to be said that it’s not a very attractive society.”

“So is itnow US policy to gradually replace all Middle-Eastern societies with theAmerican-Israeli democratic model?”

“If you putit like that, yes, that’s a dream I hold dear. What’s so bad about a worldwhere elections give everyone the leaders they want?”

“But whatif they elect leaders who are anti-American?”

I missedCondie’s answer. My spuds had to come to the boil.

As I ate mydinner, reports were coming in about the beginning of the end. Condoleeza’sinterview had provoked an immediate and massive response from a belt ofcountries from Libya to Pakistan. There was, for the first time, a consensus ofoutrage and direction.

No moreoil. That’s what they decided. Rather than sit and watch their owncivilisations fall foul of the infidel predator, the western war machine wasgoing to be starved of oil.

Middle-Easternpopulations were already living with the threat of a costly deadly war with theUS, which would leave their countries destroyed, the survivors condemned toslow deaths from depleted uranium.

Theprospect of abject poverty was not too hard a sacrifice.

The US hadstockpiled their Texan oil, and started to intercept (pirate) any tankers thatsailed the Atlantic from the Venezuelan oil-fields. The Russians managed tosecure supplies from Azerbaijan, but for Western Europe, the brakes came onunbelievably quickly.

By the timeEuropean governments realised what was going on, it was too late.

TheAmericans had shut up shop, becoming instantly uncooperative. They were plaindoolally terrified that their combustion-engined world was going to dry up, andwhen your back’s up against the wall, you don’t look out for your mates.

Well, theydidn’t, anyway.

Petrolstations and civil liberties were, naturally, the first to go. All Ireland’smanufacturing industries were shut down in the first two weeks, but it didn’tmatter. People couldn’t get to work even if their jobs still existed, becausetheir cars couldn’t run.

They turnedour electricity off at 22:00 each night, while the military convoys escortedroad tankers from the docks to oil depots.

Riotsswarmed over Europe’s old capitals as mould on a loaf.

After amonth, income as we knew it was a thing of the past. We cycled, walked, begged,borrowed and stole to get through that fierce cold winter.

Andfinally, as an expression of our pain, we people pushed our cars out into thecity streets. We built huge towers of our wrecked, impotent, pointless cars.All those angry, now orphaned Celtic Tiger Cubs who loved all their thousandsof brand new ‘99’ and ‘00’ reg cars, shiny proud memberships to the club ofnew-found affluence and a high-flying economy, now nothing more than patheticlumps of metal, as cheap as the world on which they were built.

We piledthem high, and they burned beautifully, massive bonfires all over the land.

Driftinginto the freedom of anarchy, the people of Europe finally grasp our chance tostand as one. We stand together as we watch the flames of our burning cars.

Losing your home doesn’t hurt any less just because you don’t own it!

2011-11-23T13:10:00.001Z

dragonworldz.net

What about us renters? We’re being punished for not being massively in debt to the banks, but when we lose our home it hurts just as much!

We’re always hearing about the mortgage holders.
How can we help the mortgage holders?
Should we offer mortgage holders some kind of debt protection, so that they don’t lose their homes?

I’ve never owned a home and I’ve never missed a rent payment, but I know the pain I felt years ago, when my landlord told me he was going to sell the house I was living in. I was going to lose my home, and there was nothing I could do about it. Didn’t matter that I’d kept it immaculately, paid all the bills. Counted not a jot that I had personally painted the whole place and paid all my rent on time.

You’re out. Good luck.

I haven’t suddenly become a heartless bastard who thinks my situation is more important than anyone else’s. If you’ve paid your mortgage and then lose your job, you shouldn’t have to live in fear of being homeless. Ideally nobody should ever live with that fear.

Yet all the media talk is of the mortgage holders. How can we protect the mortgage holders?
But renters matter too. Renters on the poverty line in Ireland are about to have their rent allowance benefits cut asunder in the upcoming budget, and nobody seems too upset about it.

I do. In fact I need to say it again: poverty-line renters are losing their benefits and as a consequence being kicked out of their homes, while debt relief for mortgage holders is still a possibility.

Personally, I’d be delighted to protect those who took out mortgages from slavering bankers who aggressively sold economically insane mortgages. It’s too easy to call the punters greedy. We all want to live in lovely homes, and if we’re told by lenders that we can afford it, we want to believe them. ‘Sub Prime’ could not exist as a concept were that not true.

But what about the renters? There’s no protection for us because we haven’t played the game. We’re not hundreds of thousands of euro in debt to the banks. We are people who are trying to pay our way, simply and honestly. Many renters have debts of course, because they’ve bought into the credit card culture and they have children to feed. But because they are not ridiculously in debt, for some reason their homes are not deemed worthy of financial protection.

When a renter is served notice, nobody notices. It doesn’t make the 6 o’clock news. But losing your home doesn’t hurt any less just because you don’t own it, especially when you’ve paid your way, looked after the house, and loved the home it became.

Why did the Irish make such a mess of democracy?

2011-10-31T12:50:00.001Z

http://nialloloughlin.blogspot.com/

Fair play to you Irish. What a great election! The thrilling campaign careered from the gay Joycean scholar candidate being accused of defending a Palestinian child abuser to the Eurovision Song-winning Christian Fundamentalist candidate screeching about car crashes, slashed tyres and attempted murder. The nation watched as the ex-IRA leader shot down and killed the corrupt and greedy Dragon’s Den ogre, and that was just the Live TV debate!

At the start of the campaign all the presidential candidates lined up on the lawn outside Áras an Uachtaráin, and I wondered where else on earth I’d ever seen such a disparate collection of fading celebrities and ageing politicians gathering to do battle.

And then I was confused. Was this the Irish Presidential Election or the new series of Strictly Come Dancing?

Thanks goodness for Martin McGuinness for metaphorically knocking some sense into the Irish people, who were unbelievably yet again drawn to the guy with the big car and fat cigar. When will you ever learn?

Well, maybe you have, because you voted in the right man. On a national level, Michael D. is a proven humanitarian, peace advocate and a champion of the arts. On a personal level, it feels great that the Head of State of my adopted country is somebody who I have chatted with on the street several times. However sad and egocentric it may be, I’m delighted that the new President knows me by name. We have collaborated together on a few occasions when I was working with teenage Travellers, and way back in 1993 I interviewed him for this colyoom, (excerpts from that interview can be posted here soon, if any colyoomistas would like to see them!).

The diversity of the candidates reflects well on the growing enlightenment of this republic, but the process that they had to undergo to become candidates appears farcical to this Englishman.

After all those years of oppression you had a blank canvas.
After all those years of colonial masters dictating the limitations of your freedom, you had the freedom to deny yourselves any limitations.

Depending on which Irish person happens to be chewing my English ear off, you Irish suffered either 400, 700, or 800 years of brutal colonialism. After all those centuries of having alien overlords imposing their laws upon your country, Irish people could finally choose their own constitution.

You did not have to pander in the slightest to the political model that had been harshly visited upon your country for aeons. You were free to build a fair and just electoral system. You had the chance to devise simple political models that might draw joyful breaths from hearts of every free Irish citizen. Instead, you made an absolutely shabby and disgraceful mess of your democratic processes.

Significant problems arise in both England and Ireland with the elections of the Upper House and Head of State. The English rather ingeniously avoid any controversial democratic practices concerning these two bodies by avoiding elections altogether. Unfair and anachronistic it may be, but at least they don’t pretend that in these areas democracy is at work.

Much as I dislike the House of Lords and feel at best ambivalent about the monarchy, both arcane institutions are starting to compare pretty favourably with the way you Irish have chosen to elect your Upper House and Head of State.

Do you, an educated Irish person, have a clear understanding of who represents you and why? I doubt it. I made some effort to understand how the Seanad is elected, but instead decided you couldn't make it up.

Of the Seanad's 60 members, 11 are elected by the Taoiseach, 6 by university graduates, while 43 are selected from 5 panels, which have a number of members allocated as 5; 11; 11; 9; 7 respectively, with a minimum to be selected from each sub-panel allocated as 2; 4; 4; 3; 3.

You had a blank canvas, but instead chose that good old 11:6:43 ratio that you find naturally occurring absolutely nowhere in nature, mathematics or common sense.

Skipping over the entire debacle of which particular privileged sectors of Irish society are allowed to elect Senators, we arrive at the happy fact that if you want to become President of Ireland, all you have to do is be an Irish citizen, over 35, and nominated by at least 20 members of the Oireachtas or at least 4 local authorities.

Why pluck these seemingly random and pointless numbers from the ether, and apply them to your constitution? Why does your Head of State need the approval of at least 4 local authorities? What possible advantage might people who plan roundabouts and organise wheelie bin runs have over your own decision-making abilities?

You had a blank canvas. Why make it all so complicated and elusive? Why not choose a number, any number, say 1,000 signatures, and a person can run for President?

After 20 years of living here, I suspect that the needless involvement of local authorities has a great deal to do with gombeen politics and nothing more. If Sean Gallagher had not been able to take the ‘Roundabout’ route he’d have had to parade his true Fianna Fail colours, at a time when that is political suicide.

Such circuitous Irish behaviour as the Presidential candidature process is often excused as a post-colonial reaction to years of trying to secure freedom by keeping secrets from the Powers-That-Be. Now your very own Irish Powers-That-Be are able to deny freedom to the Irish people by obfuscation within their own constitution.

After all those years you had a blank canvas. Your electoral systems could have been gloriously simple. Yet the very same Celtic twirl of thought that created the Back Door system in the GAA Championship, whereby a team can beat another in a knockout competition and later lose to the same team in the final, has created an electoral Jackson Pollock.

One for you, Jon!

2011-10-24T10:15:00.001Z

clashmusic.com

Decided to ease my Chelsea blues by going to see Billy Bragg play a stonking set to a packed house at the Roisin Dubh. Good to see all Galway’s old lefties come out of the woodwork, as well as those who appreciate a good song well sung.

As the set built I felt pounded by waves of nostalgia for my teenage London years back in the 1970s, and when he played 'Levi Stubbs Tears' I felt a rush of emotion and strongly and suddenly missed my dear departed friend Jon Lewin, who was by my side at so many gigs back then. He would've been should've been and maybe was in spirit by my side tonight.

Miss you Jon, did tonight, do often. This one goes out to you mate. X

All Hail The Magnificent 7!

2011-10-22T06:24:00.002Z

zazzle.com

For those of you who complained that the link to my Irish Times article (17.10.2011) didn't work, here is my spermy tale of woe once more...

8.05: Good, she's awake. In 40 minutes she needs to be at the clinic, where the egg collection procedure must go ahead at precisely 09.00. Timing is vital today. She needs tea and toast before the procedure, so I'll make that and go upstairs.

8.20: Lying on the bed. All I need to do is something I've done countless times. How difficult can it be, compared to what she's been through over the last few months? She has sniffed hormones up her nose, swallowed hormones in tablets and injected her own belly with yet more hormones, stoically suffering a panorama of nasty side effects. Day after week after month her mobile has chimed reminders to take another nasty drug, so that she might produce fertile eggs and prepare her womb for carrying.

All I have to do is produce a sample. That's all. Over the last two years almost everything about this process has quite rightly been about her body. My sperm count is a low but tolerable 2 million, however my lads are no longer lively young things. They have little chance of fulfilling their natural destiny, so rather than IVF we're doing ICSI, where the sperm are injected directly into the eggs.

8.25: As I look down on my mature meat and two veg, they visibly shrink. I'm watching a time-lapse film of my own puberty in reverse. Over the last two minutes my penis has shrunk to the size it was when I was seven, while my testicles are on a mission to rise up through my body and hide in my rib cage.

8.30: Time is ticking. My mind is all over the place. Can't concentrate. Can't relax. No, this isn't going to work. We have to get going. I'll just have to provide my sample at the clinic. Not a very appealing prospect.

I'm silently hoping I'll be able to have my sample done and out of the way before the egg collection process starts. That would be great. The last thing I want to do is make a fuss. It's only a bloke knocking one off, so what's the bother? Try being a woman, Sir, and have someone put a foot-long stiletto needle up your netherly noodles.

8.45: I hold her hand as they sedate her and do unspeakable things to her in a gentle and professional way. And lo, her body has produced miracles! There are now eggs in a container, waiting to be inspected for quality; maturity; whatever it takes for life to begin.

By now I just want to scream out loud: “I'm feeling under massive pressure! I must get my sample done as soon as possible!” but not one part of me feels comfortable saying a word.

11.00: She's safe in bed. I ask a nurse if I can finally give my sample.
“Sorry, no!” she says, “There's another man using The Room at the moment.”
The Room? Oh yuk. How absolutely not sexy.
I sit by her bed, hold her hand and try not mention how much I dread letting her down; about how devastated I'll feel if I can't do one simple thing, after all she's been through.

11.15: The nurse tells me The Room is free.

11:17: I'm in a dimly lit sperm collection room designed by women. There's a chair, a pile of fairly unpleasant soft porn mags and a specimen jar that's way too fiddly for the job in hand. My bare buttocks are stuck on the same plastic seat that was occupied by another man's buttocks a mere few minutes before. I could not feel less able to produce a sample, but I simply have to, otherwise, quite apart from all the major life factors, we've wasted a massive amount of money. Nothing small at all. Just life-changing issues and huge amounts of money.

11.45: Simply by being a male of the species, hotwired to be able to prioritise sex, I have somehow produced a sample. Thank God! Oh good grief! Relief floods over me. I'm so happy not to have let the side down. Phew!

12.45: A nurse pops up by her bedside.
“Well, there's really great news! You've produced 10 mature eggs! Fantastic! You can go home now, but take it very easy for the rest of the day. Now, Charlie, not such great news. There was nothing in your sample, I'm afraid!”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing at all. There's no reason to it. Last week a fella gave one sample that had zero and another he delivered two hours later had 90 million. It just goes like that. We don't have a clue why. Thing is, time is now a factor.
We need another sample in the next two hours? Can you drive her home and bring another sample back to us?”

Another one? Please no. I am utterly wired. Another sample, with added real time pressure? Great!

13.15: Back home, I'm trying to avoid a panic attack, whilst trying yet again to supply a sample. Knowing there are now 10 eggs out there and that her body has worked magnificently is not diminishing the pressure I'm feeling.

14.15: Back at the clinic with another sample. The nurse suggests I wait while she tests it. I sit in the waiting room, surrounded by women thumbing magazines, feeling tremendously lonely. Any minute now somebody will walk into the room and tell me whether I've written off any hope of parenthood for good, or that everything is back on track. Of course she will use delicate rational language, but I'm not feeling the slightest bit rational.

15:15: Back at the house, relieved and exhausted. I tell her how the nurse managed to find 7 healthy lads. Not 90 million. Not 2 million. 7. Already my infantile male mind has named them The Magnificent 7. She reminds me that throughout the process, we were told that 'Quality not Quantity' was the maxim whenever eggs and sperm were mentioned.

I love her for reminding me of that. Now we are in the hands of fate. Despite the way that as a man I felt marginalised throughout this process, the boy in me feels rather proud of The Magnificent 7.

Does Largely Cloudy beat Mainly Cloudy?

2011-10-20T09:23:00.000Z

paddyjokes.com

We all drop our chins in wonder at the popular myth that the Inuit have 40 words for snow, but right here at home in Ireland there’s a subtlety to the vocabulary of our weather forecast that has me flummoxed.

Despite what you see as evidence here in this colyoom, I tickle fancies of being a man of words, but all my scribbly instincts and blathering verbals proved useless when I looked at the weather forecast in the paper on Tuesday (it’s broken down into Ireland’s four provinces, roughly west, east south and north respectively).

Connacht: Generally cloudy today with spells of rain.
Leinster: Largely cloudy today with occasional rain.
Munster: Mainly cloudy today with outbreaks of rain.
Ulster: Largely cloudy today with periods of rain.

You don’t have to be a meteorologist to know that for at least 300 days a year we enjoy a mixture of sunshine and showers, and this colyoom has in past years romped with agitation about forecasts predicting ‘Rain at times, sunshine in places’, because with the only details we actually need to know having been rather ingeniously omitted, we have no idea at what times it might rain and in which places.

But this is a different matter; a question of language. I need to understand words and their uses in my adopted home’s vernacular, and also I need to be outside for those brief periods when the sun might shine down on my sorry soul.

So, does Largely Cloudy beat Mainly Cloudy?
Or is Generally Cloudy the biggest baddest adjective in the Irish cloudy lexicon?

As for rain, are Spells of Rain shorter than Periods of Rain?
Do Outbreaks of Rain come less often than Occasional Rain?
I haven’t a clue. What the bloomin’ ‘ell are they on about?

Perchance the poor bored artisan who had to fashion something readable out of a messy map of uncertainty made their lot less heavy by entertaining themselves with a dash of creative flair, in an effort to help the forecast appear less dreadfully repetitive and oppressively rank.

Or maybe I just don’t understand the power order of the words.
Help me out. I need to know.
Or maybe I just need help...

I was strangely proud of my 'Magnificent Seven'!

2011-10-18T09:22:00.000Z

thanks to clker.com

All summer my colyoomistas have been brushed aside with excuses. You've had apologies about long gaps between colyooms and enigmatic allusions to a period of stress and pressure.

Well, now you can read about what was happening by going out and buying a copy of today's Irish Times, or clicking on the link below.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2011/1018/1224305986419.html

Sadly the fates didn't bless us with a child, so we're going to buy a puppy instead!

Can an Adult Burger legally change its name to Cherry Pie? Does an Adult Burger have the right to Same Sex Partnerships?

2011-10-14T10:05:00.002Z

image from bdtimes.com

There are Burger King leaflets all over town, offering
‘Free Fries And Drink When You Buy An Adult Burger.’

Does the beef in an Adult Burger have to be 18 years old?
Can Adult Burgers marry the fries of their choice?
Can an Adult Burger legally change its name to Cherry Pie?
Does an Adult Burger have the right to Same Sex Partnerships?
When oh when will the day come that all Adult Burgers have the right to vote?

Now, my loyal colyoomistas, we can hide no longer.
We must turn and face our fear.
There can be no more procrastination.
This is the time we have to confront that most profound and perplexing question, the very conundrum that all the above flippancy works so hard to avoid.

Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. There is still one tiny and slight tangent we must travel. Before we’re ready to delve into the massive philosophical quandary of
‘Why is an Adult Burger?’
we must know the answer to
‘What is an Adult Burger?’

At this juncture all I can tell you is that we know precisely what it is not, because on the voucher is printed ‘excluding Hamburger, Cheeseburger, King Deal Meals and Breakfast menu.’ So we can safely conclude that an Adult Burger is anything that’s not a hamburger or a cheeseburger or breakfast.
Limitless options open.
Marvellous.
That’ll do for me, Tommy.

Now ponder well and let me know, is an Adult Burger a burger for adults, or is it a grown-up burger?
Do Burger King want adults to buy Adult Burgers, thereby making them loyal and frequent customers with or without their kids? If so, methinks in a valiant effort to pinch punters from the Golden Arches, the Home of the Whopper is rather missing the point. Adults eat in McDonald's and Burger King because apart from it being cheap and fast, by doing so we relinquished all adult responsibilities. For a short time, we don’t have to think about cooking, washing up, or worry our tiny minds with such minor trifles as nutrition and health. No, we get to feel a lickly bit childish as we tuck into our American Franchise sandwiches.

Eating burgers is nothing to do with being grown up.
It’s about knowing that as far as your food goes, you don’t have to be an adult at all. In this mind frame of reckless abandonment, you don’t even have to feel the slightest bit embarrassed hearing yourself say out loud in public

“Double bacon cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla shake, please!”

Maybe the folks at the Home of the Whopper have some understanding of psychology. Maybe Adult Burgers were invented so that kids could pester adults by pleading...

“Pleease paaaleeeease can I have an Adult Burger? Papapaaleeeease mum paaaleeeese?!?!”

... so that they can feel really grown up and choke on jalapeno peppers.

Sure, there’ll be some Joe the Plumber types out there who’ll want to order the most Aberdeen Angus USDA-Approved Hairy-Chested Adult Burger smothered in hot pepper and so-not-a-Kiddie Meal that simply ordering such mature fare just proves he must have a huge penis, but mostly, for the rest of us meek and sensible creatures, we’ll order a Whopper and have a little giggle that it’s just a bit rude.

When does a Blow-in become a Local?

2011-10-13T11:35:00.000Z

Not wanting to overdo the legwork after my knee operation, I dive off Shop Street and take a few minutes to sit down and relax outside Buon Appetito Café on Upper Abbeygate Street.

When I arrived in Ireland there was no talk of Immigrants. I was just another Blow-in, and as such felt envious of those locals who could righteously claim they had a history with the place.

I look to my left, towards Lynch’s Castle and Powell’s Four Corners. I look up at the ancient buildings opposite and to my right, towards Newtownsmith and

and all of a sudden my mind is filled with a gushing flood of memories. Down there on the left, that’s where I converted, opened and ran a charity shop. That was a mad period of time, just back from America, working my bollocks off and living in the Claddagh. Tired after a full day in the shop, I had to build two fires after work in that house, and the bathroom was an icy cupboard, but in the summer, ahhh, the garden at the back was a rambly paradise.

Right here, opposite this café in the narrow cobblestone street, up in that window there, above the Barber’s Shop and the Organismical Seaweed Mermaid Massage Baths, there used to be an office occupied by a Galway free sheet newspaper. As well as scribbling this very same colyoom for the Tribune papers, I was back then also writing for the inestimable Seamus R.(vot a schnozz! Oy!). Can’t for the life of me recall the name of the paper (The Bugle? The Word? The Execrable Screech?). But I remember exactly how good life felt then.

I was living in a tiny wee house in Connemara, a few country miles between Slyne Head and Ballyconneely, driving a transit van and delivering to Seamus four different columns under four different names each week.

There was Pink O’Bum - the Petulant Politico; there was Swami ben Carpenter - the Muse with the Views; there was Poor Little Greenie, a Bowie-Inspired Ingenue; and of course, ever popular whenever I’ve dragged his wretched bones back from the dead, there was Freebase Kevin, the drug-crazed cider-fuelled foul-mouthed biker, who went down a storm with Galway’s lads, just as he had in Cambridge and Bradford, 20 and 10 years previously respectively.

I was living my dream - my dream of that moment. I believe that life is not a one way street, but rather a series of journeys, and in each we must pursue a dream. If we focus strongly, we’ll arrive somewhere very close to that dream: possibly better, maybe simply different to what we’d imagined, but I knew at that time that life was perfect, and realising joy is what matters.

You have to be aware of the happy times, because hard times, by their nature, let you know they are there, whereas happiness can pass by undetected, like a cooling zephyr on a summer's evening. You neither notice it nor give thanks for it.

Oh, and the memories keep flowing over me. In a tiny room high up in the medieval building opposite this café, there’s that jeweller, one of Galway’s old-fashioned expert craftsmen. I only found him because the owner of a High Street jewellery shop told me to go to him, and with his skill he repaired my father’s watch, the one that Mum game me after Dad died.

Around the corner there’s the Tribune offices and an Tobar and countless other chapters from my Galway storybook, but it feels good, right now, sipping my coffee, resting a while. Not swamped by my past, very much in the present, just pausing for a moment in life, drifting off in reverie outside the café, my mind awash with the happy history I have with this place.

I don’t believe in God, I’m ashamed of successive Israeli governments, so why am I proud to be Jewish?

2011-10-07T15:02:00.000Z

pic thanks to www.atheistnexus.org

The answer’s in the question: I’m ashamed of how Israeli governments have behaved. I wasn’t ashamed of the abomination of South Africa’s apartheid régime: I just loathed it.

Not one part of my being seeks to be allied with the brutality that’s going on in Israel and the Occupied Territories, but still, for a reason that neither this colyoom nor any other piece of writing can fully explain, despite being an atheist, I feel it personally.

When I call myself Jewish in Ireland people assume I am some kind of Zionist fascist racist anti-Palestinian bastard. In London, I am seen by some members of my family and the wider Jewish community as an embarrassing Arab-loving Palestinian hugging Hezbollah kissing terrorist.

Why does everyone seek black and white solutions to problems? Why search for absolutes, where none exist?

A old friend of mine insists that I have no right to call myself Jewish. He tells me that he could convert to Judaism, just as easily as I could become a Catholic, and that would make him Jewish. He says that as I don’t believe in God, it makes no sense to claim membership of a religion.

I try time and time again to explain to him that my Jewishness is not a preference. I don’t call myself Jewish in the same way that I call myself a Chelsea fan. It’s not a lifestyle choice.

Why on earth would I seek membership of a club that has been attacked for thousands of years? Why would I align myself with a group of people that every conspiracy theorist blames for all the banking ills of the world? Why would I choose to belong to a people that has survived despite its history, rather than because of it?

If Judaism was about believing in God then I’d be stuck. But it’s not, and I’m one of the thousands of living proofs. I feel my Jewishness in my bones; in my heart; in my head and on this evening of Kol Nidrei, the holiest night of the Jewish calendar, my thoughts will be with my family in London and my late Father, for whom a candle will be lit in my living room.

Being Jewish means a lot to me. Judaism is so wrapped up in the fabric of family life that I cannot see my mother, brother or sister, or myself in the mirror, without knowing, feeling, living my Jewishness.

Judaism starts, ends and lives in the home. Every Friday night throughout my life, the family gathers at the dinner table to break bread and drink wine and welcome in the Sabbath Prayers are read and blessings made, but the occasion is infinitely more about the family being together than giving thanks to an ill-tempered God.

Every Jewish festival starts in the home, usually around the dinner table, and such is the importance of food within Jewish culture that each festival brings different food traditions in different families.

For New Year we used to eat roast lamb, and at Pesach or Passover we eat matzos and small yeast-free cakes like cinnamon balls, almond cake and coconut pyramids. At hannukah we eat doughnuts and latkes. Tonight my family will take the Yom Kippur fast together and then 26.75 hours later, they’ll break that fast with a selection of deli items, like rollmop herring, chopped liver, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, and cold fried fish (delicious, despite how vile it sounds!).

Possibly as a result of Jews being excluded from society for so many centuries, my Jewishness gives me a sense of inclusion. I’m part of something ancient and vast, even though it operates best at a tiny domestic level. For me, it’s neither a religion nor a way of life. There’s nothing I do every day that makes me know I’m Jewish.

Hmmm, well, I call my mother every day. Good Jewish boy. And when I see Jewish comics on the TV I feel I can relate to their humour better than a non-Jewish person might. I feel a part of Larry David and Woody Allen running through me. Their angst is mine.

I feel proud of Einstein’s genius, proud of Menuhin and Chomsky and Roth and all the great Jewish thinkers, scientists and artists, musicians and inventors (although the atom bomb was less than a good idea); proud that Jews have survived long enough to allow someone like me, an atheist living in a Catholic country, surrounded by millions of non-Jewish people, to be part of the Tribe, but cannot tell you why or how it feels.

As I say to my friend after I’ve become exasperated: “If I’m not Jewish what am I? You can philosophise all you like about whether being Jewish is a religious or racial matter, but I can tell you from the inside, that’s what I am: God or no God!”

So as we enter this Yom Kippur, this Day of Atonement, when Jews remember their dead and ask for forgiveness from sin, I’ll think of my family, of their Fast and how long the day feels when it has no meals to mark its progress.

I’ll remember long Yom Kippurim spent in our family living room, with the TV off and all of us forced to make conversation, no choice but to to discuss matters of life and meaning. Weighty and philosophical discussions were not commonplace in our lounge, so it always made a welcome change to hear how crazy we all were; how different were our outlooks on life, and yet there we all were, bonded together by ... by what?

A culture? A race? A people? A religion? A nation?
Being Jewish can be all and none of the above. It’s an identity that you know you have, from which there is no hiding. And why would you want to hide?

Well, history has shown us why, and now with the crimes of Israeli governments lighting the fires of hatred all over the internet, a subtext of anti-Semitism is showing through the cracks. The word ‘Zionist’ has been hijacked by those who would do us damage. It fuels all the conspiracy theories and will eventually fire up hatred against people like me once again.

So am I Jewish because I’ll be persecuted as a Jew, atheist or believer?
No. That’s far too negative an assumption. In the words of the Jewish God (or was it Popeye?):

“I am who I am!”

To be Jewish, you need to have Jewish humour. So as a way of saying ‘Yes I’m Jewish, no I don’t know why, but strangely, I’m proud of it!’, and as an antidote to the hatred, here’s a wee Jewish joke.

So two Israelis, Avi and Motti, are wandering around the Amazon Jungle, trying to hunt down Nazis. They stumble upon a clearing in the trees, where there sits a beautiful marble mansion, with towering pillars and vast formal gardens.

Nodding silently they slip inside unseen, and climb the huge white staircase, higher and higher, passing an unparalleled collection of rare and stolen art.

Finally they reach a gallery, and looking down they see below a long table, around which sits twenty young men and twenty old men. The young men look strangely like the old men, as if they might be their sons, and all the old men look suspiciously like notorious Nazi leaders.

The young man at the end of the table stands up to speak. Avi points out to Motti that this bloke looks a lot like a young Hitler, and then they listen to his fierce speech.

“Ziss time ve vill make no MISTAKES! Ziss time ve vill not be so SOFT! Ziss time ve vill kill ALL za JEWS and ALL za HEDGEHOGS!”

The men sitting around the table sit back in shock, and then start shouting back:
“Hedgehogs?”
“Why kill the hedgehogs?”
“What’s that about hedgehogs?”
“Hedgehogs? Why hedgehogs?”

Looking down from above, Motti turns to Avi and whispers:
“You see. I told you. Nobody gives a shit about the Jews!”

I wish you all Well over the Fast, and please, don't not only pray for peace: believe it might happen.

The Welfare State makes me proud to be human - so why are ‘Benefits’ being used as a weapon against the poor?

2011-10-05T10:38:00.000Z

There’s not much that makes me proud to be human, but the Welfare State was Britain’s finest creation, as compassionate and civilised a route as any society might hope to choose.

Clement Attlee's 1945 Labour government went to war on what the Beveridge Report called ‘The Five Giant Evils’ of squalor; ignorance; want; idleness and disease. They introduced laws to provide for the people "from the cradle to the grave”.

Nobody ever need be homeless, hungry, or uneducated. Why you fell ill, you were cared for. Wonderful.

(Sorry, colyoomistas - just have to pause here and say ‘Health, housing and education. Health, housing and education. Health, housing and education.’ for the umpteenth time in my life. Write it off as a nervous tic, a Socialist Obsessive Compulsive flicking his moral light switch three times, to make himself feel better.)

There was no need for Communism. Give everyone a safe, informed and healthy start, then let the human race rip. We’ll all go off in different directions, but we’ll live without fear. Well, we would, but the rich like to hold on to their riches, and the Tories turned our right of support into a privilege.

Now Cameron's Conservatives are throwing lumps of bloody red meat to the wolves baying for rioters’ blood. If you riot, your family loses its benefits. If you play truant from school, your family lose their council house. That’ll bloody show the scum, eh chaps! Can’t sit back and let the anarchists control the streets, what!

Quite apart from the simple fact that hundreds of middle class rioters and truants have families with neither benefits nor council houses to lose, there’s an elephant in the room: the real cause of the riots, which was simply rampant materialism.

These kids have grown up in a society where stuff counts and to be a face, a hit on the street, you need the bestest most superlative hyperbolic all-new must-have stuff at all times. Come the recession, come the heinous Conservative cuts, and the kids ain’t getting their stuff.

This week at their party conference, the Tories blamed the riots on poor parenting and ‘Benefit Culture’, but ironically it was the very same acquisitional Capitalist society that the Conservatives have always encouraged which drove those angry young people to steal trainers and TVs, and all the other stuff they can’t afford.

And what of this ‘Benefit Culture’? The only people who say how easy it is to live on the dole in England are those who never have. Over here in Ireland the dole is set at €188 a week, but in the UK you get £65, and still politicians talk of benefit culture. It drives me crazy. Yes, of course, there are out there some few professionals who screw the system for every penny they can get, but mostly it’s just poor decent people trying desperately to keep their heads above water.

Those who talk of ‘Benefit Culture’ tell their researchers to look up how much you can get with a family of four on full housing benefit, full family credit and all the other benefits they can find, and then come out with absurd stories about how the poor are living it large on the backs of the middle classes.

What they might not know, and certainly have no desire to find out, is that you might well claim for all that stuff, but you’re a rare person if you actually get it.

Murdoch’s Irish Sunday Times last week ran a front page piece under the headline ‘Welfare Wage €28,000. According to the piece, there’s no point in getting a job for less that €28,000, because you’re better off on the dole. If you have 4 children and are in receipt of every possible available benefit to its highest threshold, that may be the case, but what the journalist doesn’t bother to explain is that the partner of that recipient will only receive a pittance in proportion to the main claimant, who most likely isn’t getting half of it anyway.

Most likely that recipient is sitting on a plastic chair, in a soul-sapping queue, watching the numbers go round, deciding whether it’s the wife or the son who’ll receive no birthday present this year, waiting to be called, and the rich call that ‘Living It Large’? They dare to threaten the poor with the withdrawal of these cash dribbles while they award themselves gold mountains ...oh ah eeee I’m starting to feel angry.

Calm down calm down. I experienced the UK’s Welfare State system during the Thatcher years, and I’m ready to admit that once, at Shepherd’s Bush Dole office, they made me cry. The Irish attitude is thankfully more respectful of the poor, but when you hear on the news those stats about the numbers claiming benefits, never ever assume the people are actually receiving the money.

This practice of using welfare as a weapon comes, of course, from the USA, and just as when Washington sneezes, London catches a cold, we here in the West of Ireland run the risk of droplet infection.

Let’s hang on to our precious values and never use the most wonderful creation of the almost civilised world as a weapon to beat the least guilty.

I was quite relaxed about my operation until....

2011-09-27T08:07:00.000Z

Lying on the trolley-bed in Pre-0p, waiting to be wheeled in for my operation, I hear two women and a man talking behind me.

“It’s such a shame, isn’t it? Didn’t they read her notes?”

“Apparently they did. Well, they said they did, but they had to say that, didn’t they? Still, I don’t see how they could have. Terribly sad, awful.”

“No, they couldn’t have read her notes, otherwise she wouldn’t have died!”

Whoever you were, thanks for your comforting chitty-chat. So good to overhear your reassuring words, just before they wheeled me into the operating theatre!

If all goes well I'll be back on the Prom ... fingers crossed!

2011-09-23T21:51:00.000Z

No fresh and furry post this week, as I'm off to hospital to have a little keyhole surgery on my knee. If all goes well I'll be able to walk without pain, a prospect that fills me with joy. So fingers crossed and I'll keep my colyoomistas posted...

Here’s one dumb sucker who swallowed the maggot of 6 months free interest!

2011-09-16T11:50:00.001Z

1 credit card = 1 leaflet, 2 letters and 3 booklets = 63 pages of illegible blurb and incomprehensible small print, lovingly lacquered into slick smooth selling copy for a product I neither sought out, nor want, nor need.

63 pages?

So did it work? Well, here’s one dumb sucker who swallowed the maggot of 6 months free interest. Did I read the blurb? Do I have any idea what I’ve let myself in for?

63 pages? You’re ‘avin’ a laugh.

My old Ulster Bank MasterCard sat in my wallet for years, neither exciting nor annoying me. Not a second of my life was wasted wondering whether it was either wonderful or deficient. There’s more to life than a credit card.

But Ulster Bank decided that my card just wasn’t up to scratch. Evidently they’ve come up with a way to make more money out of my spending patterns, so back in June they wrote to tell me that I was being upgraded to a bigger better more generally heavenly credit card. If I didn’t want it to happen I could tell them, otherwise I’d receive the upgrade automatically.

Upgrade, huh? There’s a word to make you feel fantastically self-important and all just a bit in love with yourself. Nice marketing, Ulster Bank.

Go on big boy, hit me with the Barry White soundtrack:
Hmmmm mhhhmmmmhh.... can’t get enough of your UPgrade baaaaaby....

Having felt thoroughly intimidated by the acres of small print, I scanned my eyes quickly over some of the big-print blurb. Well looky-here! Purchases on the new card will be interest-free for 6 months.

‘Yowza!’ thought I, in my financially adult and sophisticated way, ‘Let’s have ourselves a li’l bit o’that interest-free action, baby!’

For a few minutes I read more blurb, trying to find justification for the use of the word upgrade. Nu-huh. This upgrade exists only in the minds of the Ulster Bank and MasterCard, happy in the knowledge that they’ve caught another one, hooked on their line for a few more years.

The leaflet was entitled Your Upgrade To A Credit Card That Offers You More, which ran to 8 pages, telling me about their super new YourPoints points system. The words tumbled excitedly from the page. When I’ve spent a mere €47,600 on my new credit card, I’ll have enough points to take one adult and one car on the ferry from Rosslare to Fishguard.
Oh my god. I can’t wait. Talk dirty to me whydoncha.

After that letter and leaflet, Ulster Bank sent another letter and three separate booklets that must overlap, please say they do, please say they overlap, because I don’t want to believe that it’s possible to say that much about a credit card. 63 pages? Please tell me they’re telling me the same things over and over again. I’ll never know, because I know that if I read them, I’ll drop dead and inside my skull they’ll find Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup.

My favourite booklet arrived next: a hard-to-resist little number called Ulster Bank MasterCard Insurance and YourPoints Terms and Conditions, which runs to a full 28 pages of small print, designed to melt your brain like a naked bar of chocolate atop a hot radiator.

The second to arrive in the mail was a charming little ditty entitled Ulster Bank MasterCard Important Information, with a total of 19 fascinating pages crammed with all sorts of Must-Know goodies. At least, I presume it is, but while I was trying to read it my soul resigned, escaped the confines of my body and dragged its belly over mud and gravel, crawling inexorably towards the Caverns of Hopelessness.

The final blurb arrived in the form of the third booklet, ingeniously called Conditions of Use, a masterpiece of mind-numbingly minuscule print, gate-folding into another full 8 pages .

63 pages?

Let’s step back, pause for a second and take the unusually empathetic step of trying to sympathise with the legal departments of credit card companies. We might only wonder at the titanic levels of idiotic human behaviour that have forced credit card companies to legally reinforce themselves: simply start with ‘Dyuuurk, I hur hur spent all the money hur but I didn’t know I had to hur pay it all back hur hur’ and go anywhere you like from there.

I know that as each crazy person brings another crass lawsuit as a result of their inability to balance the use of their own brain and plastic, these companies are forced to protect themselves, but 63 pages?

63 pages?
What can they be saying?
Really?

Yet I’m happy in my ignorance. The day has yet to come when I feel the need to sit down and read 63 pages of blurb and small print.

They have beaten me.
They can and will have my money, but they’ll never take my spirit.

Now, what about those interest-free purchases? HooooMumma!

... in which I fish for human trout and catch a bollox instead!

2011-09-12T10:20:00.000Z

“So when can I come to look at the house?” I ask.

He has called me about an ad I placed in the local paper, looking for a house to rent. His late middle-aged voice hesitates, his breathing strangled into a whine.

“Whell now, I’m not sure, now, really.”
“How would Sunday be?” I offer, trying to move things along a little.
“Sunday? No, sorry, y’see Sunday would be a bad day for me. Saturday would be better.”
“Great, so Saturday, I’ll come look at the house. What’s a good time for you on Saturday?”
“Wheeeell there’s the tenants moving out now, on Saturday d’ye see, so things could be a bit messy, and -”
“Okay, yes, I see, sure, that’s probably not the best time to look at a house.”
“So right now, grand so, come on Saturday at 1 o’clock.”
“Oh, okay, I er yeh, great. I’ll call you Saturday morning. Oh, and just so we don’t go wasting each others’ time, did you have any idea about what you might be asking for rent?”

As I ask my voice trails off, because I know he’s pure old school rural Irish. He doesn’t want to talk money at this stage.

“Ah well now d’ya see I oh I haven’t really oh -”
“Sound. Perfect. Why don’t we chat about that when we meet each other, eh? That’d be better, wouldn’t it.”
He sounds ridiculously relieved at my suggestion.
“Yes, that’s the way. Grand. Lovely. So call me during the week and we’ll sort out a day for you to come look at the house.”
“But I thought I was coming Saturday at 1?”
“Ah, so we did. So call me Saturday morning and we’ll sort it. Bye now.”

This fella’s called me because he wants me to rent his house, but he will tell me neither when I can look at his house nor how much the rent will be. This kind of behaviour mystified and infuriated me when I first came to Ireland in 1992, but now I understand. The little bit of Londoner that still lurks in me feels strongly that seeing the house and knowing the rent are two pretty basic criteria. Yet the part of me that has loved and lived two decades in the West of Ireland now plays the Irish game as a second nature.

I’d go as far as to say there’s a quiet fondness in me for the idiosyncratic gentle wooliness of rural Irish behaviour, and only a smidgen of frustration.
Well, I am human. Oh so human.

Compared to yer man’s circuitous and eccentric behaviour, the majority of responses to my Accommodation Wanted ad have been breathtaking. The Irish are famous for their literate and scholarly ways, but for some reason when the people who have called me incessantly over the last three days read my ad, their eyes read the word Detached and saw Semi-Detached. They read 3 bedrooms and saw 2 bedrooms, while assisted solely by the power of their own vision, they magically turned the word West into East.

Being a soft git who believes in that whole karmic what-goes-around-comes-around whoodjermalarkey, I’ve spent many hours over the last few days texting and calling people who left messages in response to the ad. I’ve thanked them each profusely for their call and told them that I’m so sorry, but strangely I kind of meant all that stuff I said in my ad about how we’re looking for a 3 bedroom detached, 20 minutes west of the city, so sorry and thanks, but neither a 2 bedroom terrace in the city centre, nor a 7 bedroom 20 miles east of the city will do.

I didn’t text in shouty upper case capitals CAN'T YOU EFFIN' READ? or call the bloke who left a message about a house in Loughrea and say "How can anything apart from a time space wormhole be 5 minutes from Loughrea and 5 minutes from Galway? Did you stumble upon the God Particle while you were wandering around out on the bog, you raving madman?"

So yes, handling those calls has been annoying, while dealing with the fella who simply wouldn’t tell me anything or let me see his house, well, that was more fun. It felt a bit like landing an Irish trout.

I love the way that here in the West of Ireland I can mix up my Jewish oral tradition with the locals’ own, everyone milking tragic histories for pathos and self-deprecating humour. But it wasn’t until last week I realised that in both cultures, for different reasons, communication can mean calling up and saying you have nothing to say.

While I was trying to hook the Lesser-Spotted Irish Landlord, my brother called me to say he was too tired to talk. I knew just what he meant. We’d been texting and playing telephone tennis for days, and he felt he should call for a chat after being out the last time I called, but when it came down to it, he was just knackered. I was half way though my dinner anyway, and could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

He said “Hi, I’m too tired to talk!” and I said “Fine, speak to ya soon! Bye!” and understood completely. Equally, I wholly understand yer man’s hesitancy to talk about the rent on the phone. He wants to have a good look at me and gauge how much he can charge me. Although the Trout’s motives were very different, both oral traditions found a need for a man to call to say he has nothing to say.

So I call Fishy on the Saturday morning, to confirm that I’m about to drive out to the house.
“Well, I’m up in Mayo today,” he tells me, “So tomorrow would be best.”
“But you told me last time we talked that Sunday was bad for you. I thought we’d set up a meet for today.”
“No no, not today, d’ye see. I’m in Mayo. Come tomorrow morning, early.”
“No, not early. Ireland are playing in the Rugby World Cup.”
“Are they? Well now, why don’t you call me next week? Tuesday I’ll be here and -”

Enough. I’ve had enough now.
“You know what my friend, I’ll leave it, thanks all the same.”
“Sure. Sound.”

Yes, I was and am still fond of those quirky old Irish ways, but also sometimes you have to step back and tell yourself you’re dealing with a time waster. Yer man was more unreliable than stinky milk, and a bollox is just a bollox in any language.

'Hymn To Beer' on its own at last! The iconic single released only 30 years after it was recorded!

2011-08-01T15:15:00.002Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfxaVXQkOTo

Now this is all out of my system, I'll return to scribbling, I promise!

30 years ago. 3 young men. 1 west London flat. 5 songs - Welcome to Non-Stop Jeep!

2011-07-30T08:16:00.001Z

Non-Stop Jeep are/were:
David Rainger - Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Production, General Genius.
David Ramseyer - Saxaphone, Vocals, Backing Vocals.
Charlie Adley - Chinese drum, Percussion, Backing Vocals.

Songs: The Driving Instructor; Regardez Cette Montagne La-Bas; Hymn To Beer; Rocking Instrumental; Welcome To The Island. With thanks to Bob Newhart and Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds

Everybody Hates A Told-You-So #2: This iconic colyoom was onto the iconic abuse of the word iconic before it became an iconic way of iconic life!

2011-07-27T12:09:00.000Z

On a lighter note, but no less iconic than the collapse of the single currency, You Read It In This Colyoom FIRST Productions reveals my iconic finger oh-so early on the iconic pulse
Wish I’d been wrong, but way back on 17th March, 2009, this colyoom declared:

It’s official. The word ‘iconic’ has just become iconic. It’s an iconic word. Pure iconic.

Our 21st century culture craves ultimates as if there indeed is no tomorrow. The God of Greed no longer sits up high on Mount Olympus, so you need to find a new inspiration, seeking hyperbole and exaggeration where adjectives and a varied vocabulary used to do a fair job.

It’s no longer sufficient for anything to be unique, special, vital or extraordinary.
If it’s not iconic it’s not worth a busted light bulb.

In the past few days I have heard Salt and Vinegar being described as an iconic crisp flavour; Granny Smiths declared an iconic apple variety, and Charlie Haughey referred to as an iconic leader.

Tell me pray, where does cheeky Charlie’s iconic photo fit on the iconic Irish dresser? Somewhere between the Pope and Jacks Kennedy and Charlton?

Everybody Hates A Told-You-So #1: Your ‘umble scribbler predicts our dire predicament a year before the Euro!

2011-07-27T11:45:00.000Z

You Read It In This Colyoom FIRST Productions reveals now that your ‘umble scribbler predicted our dire predicament in print a year before the Euro became Europe’s single currency. From the annals (yikes!) of my dusty files, here’s a piece I penned for the Irish Post in February 2001. For those of you with short attention spans, the last paragraph says it all...

(Thanks to the Irish Post.)
Is the Celtic Tiger and Endangered Species

Mary from da country is on an RTE radio phone-in, giving out to Georgio, an Italian official from the European Union.

“Oh yes, Georgio, we hed some verra verra haird toimes in this conchee, so we did, back in da Aytiz, but do you know what we did, Georgio, do ya, do ya?”

Poor Georgio doesn’t quite grasp the rhetoric inherent in Mary’s question.

“Way-all, Mary, I donna hexackerlee-”

“Well, Georgio, oil tellya what we did. We pulled in our belts, and we pulled up our shocksh, and we ate bread and water, and we worked like divills, and we went without holidays to Shpain and da like, and gradjally...gradjally we made it to where we are today, the most succeshful conchee in da world, which we are, I think you’ll find. And now, soon as we have got ourshelves out of the gotta, and made some money so’s we can go on holidays to Shpain and da like, you lot in Europe come along and tell us that we are doing it wrong. Do ya know what I says to dat? Do ya? Do Ya?”

By now, poor Georgio is just the slightest bit wary of Mary and her rantings.

“Er, yes, I mean no, so, we are hall very ‘appy for hireland’s success and-”

“Do you know what I says to dat, Georgio? I says you have no right, dat’s what I say. Joss because your Euro is so patettic and all that, and you haven’t done as well as we have at making a go of it, you can’t shtand seeing the little cunchee doing well, can you? Dat’s da trobble widjall your brossels broorocrats.”

At this juncture, the radio show host jumps in, but sadly fails to bring any sense to proceedings.

“So, Georgio, you can see the feeling in the country is running pretty high. Answer me this, Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland score for unemployment?”

Naturally, poor Georgio evades a direct response to such a crass line of questioning, but our host continues unabashed.

“Okay, so Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland rate for old age pensions? How do we rate for education spending?”

Poor Georgio states the obvious, that it is pointless to score points in this manner, but our host, (and Mary, whose continued presence on the line is heralded by her 40-a day wheezy breathing) are in the mood for a scrap, and any European foreigner will do.

“So Georgio, tell me, would you like to take back the tax cuts? Would you like to stop the old people getting a rise? Tell me, Georgio, which bit of our success would you like to put a stop to?”

I can’t take any more and turn the radio off.

What on earth is it that possess the Irish when they talk about their economic progress? Everyone, from Mary out on the bog, to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, chooses to behave like four year-old children, if that’s not being completely unfair to toddlers.

Personally no, Mary, I don’t understand what you’re saying, to be honest, because, to use the vernacular, you’re talking absolute bollocks. As a child I was taught that when one friend tells me I’m wrong, I’m right, but when five friends tell me I’m wrong, I am wrong.

Charlie McCreevy recently came out of a meeting where all 14 European Finance Ministers admonished him for his inflationary budget, and just like Mary, Charlie stuck his tongue out and shouted

“I’m the King of the castle, you’re the dirty old rascals!”.
Then he ate some mud and was sick on the carpet.

Well, no, he didn’t, but he might as well have. Instead he adopted the same infantile argument as the radio host.

“Is anyone suggesting we take £500 million from health? Is anyone suggesting that we don’t go ahead with the very necessary roads infrastructure?”

No, Charlie, I’m not. I’m just taking a look at all those new roads, and Ireland’s improving infrastructure, and appreciating the billions of pounds that Europe have invested here over the last few years. Everywhere you go in this country, huge signs proudly fly the European flag, informing us that European funds have helped build this hospital, that road, this causeway and that airport extension.

What planet is Charlie McCreevy on? Given the billions of pounds of Structural Adjustment Funds that pour into Ireland from Europe every year, how can he have the gall to say
“Over the last five years we have not received any particular favours from the EU. Anything we got, we got on its merits.”

Right, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte. Why do Charlie and Mary both fail to realise that far from wanting to spoil the party, the European Commission is trying save the Irish from rampant inflation, a misery that affects the poor worst of all?

You can’t expect kazillions of pounds in investment without some notional rules of control. You can’t sign up to a single currency, and expect everyone else to follow your lead.

Do the Irish really imagine that the Celtic Tiger economy has been built on Irish sweat and Irish money? People seem to understand that American multinationals bring jobs and money, and then leave Ireland to invest somewhere else where the tax breaks are better. So why do they imagine that they can take the European money, run away, and pretend it never happened?

It’s great that the inflation levels are slowing down, but it’s like a balloon. Slowing the rate of inflation doesn’t actually stop the prices going up. Next year the Euro arrives, and every single price in the European single market will be converted, and then rounded up to the nearest figure. Two years from now, the balloon will burst, and everyone who is now whinging about European interference will be running around with empty wallets, asking why it was allowed to happen. Why didn’t the EU do something?

The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast, more of a chameleon really, fed by American investment, protected by the camouflage of European subsidy. Until the Irish see that their success is very far from homegrown, they will have to mature quickly and answer to those who make their good lives possible.

©Charlie Adley
17.02.01.

The Lost Nolan Note!

2011-07-26T11:28:00.000Z

Just back from England, slightly discombobulated, and there awaiting me on my office desk is a card upon which I've scrawled the word

'Nolan'

Evidently I wrote it as a note about something, but have no memory of when or what it was about. In fact, you out there have as much chance of knowing what it means as I do. So does anyone have any ideas?

Did you hear the one about the helpful friendly banker?

2011-07-18T22:55:00.000Z

I know this colyoom has been erratic and occasional of late, but as some of you know recent months have presented trying times on a personal level. That period is now over and life is moving on, unlike the Irish economy.

So if you've tired of old pieces represented here, breathe deep and enjoy patience, my loyal colyoomistas.

A return to regular new material is on the way, but until then here's a piece from Auguat 2008 that I'm dedicating to all the lads and lasses employed to wear and carry sandwich boards and signposts for local businesses.

Galway City Council has decided that times aren't hard enough on the high street and has taken action to ban them. Tidy up the streets by making people redundant and limiting advertising for local traders. We're on the right track in Ireland, oh by Jiminy so we are.

August 2008
I’ve been trying really hard not to write about the financial crisis blah recession blah economic downturn blah blah, because if you’re anything like me, you’re fed up to the back teeth with it. If you lost your job or can’t find a new one, the only thing you need less than the sight of failed bankers and corrupt politicians talking at you from your tele is yet more printed matter running past your eyes going oooh errr isn’t it awful.

Yeh, you’re probably as bored of all the excreta that has already been dribbled about this banking crisis as I am, and yet there’s one gripe inside me, like a mental tapeworm, niggling my thoughts, growing off my annoyance, biting into my anger, becoming gigantic gorging on my outrage.

The only way I can stop this parasite popping its head out of my mouth and sinking its chomping great fangs into my head is to dump it on you, so here goes.

Did you hear the one about Paddy O’Reilly? A few years ago, at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom, Paddy wanted to start a business, so off he went to his bank and filled out all the forms, after which he was given a whacking great loan.

Trouble was, Paddy’s inflatable pineapple business went down the pan. Exhausted and depressed, Paddy applied for another loan, got it, but instead of using it wisely, he proceeded to blow the money on fast cars and slow women. Unable to make the repayments, Paddy went to see his bank manager, asking for money to pay off the loan.

His bank manager said that the bank would be delighted to give Paddy all the money he needed. The bank would pay off the loan, no strings, and in fact, the bank would add a bit extra, like, do ya know the way, like, to make sure that Paddy could get back on his feet after all his troubles, maybe buy the missis a nice day at the spa.

Paddy was over the moon. He walked away debt free, with a wad of cash in his pocket and a present for the wife.

What was that you said? You didn’t hear that one?

No?

Well no, neither did I, because it never happened.

Coming soon to an Inferiority Complex near you, Robin Hood Through the Looking Glass, a classic tale of robbing the poor to pay the rich. From the makers of Recession, directed by people who told you that you lost your job in the name of efficiency, comes the sensational idea that to boost the economy, governments need to rob the public and give their money to banks.

You can try to blind me with financial science; twist my brain with explanations of short selling; contort my consciousness with talk of derivatives and send me hoolallly noony trying to justify hedge funds ‘til you’re blue in the face, it’ll make no difference.

We get it. We understand. We know that we, in good faith, gave banks our money, which they gambled greedily and lost. We know that our money doesn’t really sit in a vault at the back of the branch. We know that banks don’t even own the money they loan as mortgages, which begs the question: how are they able to repossess our houses?

What’s more, we now know that there is no real money at all, but instead electronic signals that rise, fall, or sink without trace at the drop of a noodle in Tokyo, or a flash of sunspot activity.

We know that if we lived our lives budgeting in the same way as governments and banks, we’d all be broke, jobless and licking the pavement for something to eat.

So given all that, here’s the niggling thought that has eaten me up for months:

Why do we have to give up our heard-earned wages to save failed banks? When did banks become more important than people? Why do we need to be the medicine? The idea of them doing the same for us, of banks being there for us normal human beings when times get tough, is as ridiculous as Paddy O'Reilly's tale.

We know how it works with banks.
When you’re in the money they love you, and send you stuff in the post all the time, encouraging you to become beholden to them by debt as quickly as possible.
When you haven’t got money, or when times are hard, banks don’t want to know.
‘You should have been more prudent when you had that cash!’ they tell you.
‘Come back and see us when you have some collateral or capita!’ they say.
‘Why not start a savings account, and try to build up your financial base?’ they ask.
Basically, get lost poor boy, we don’t want to know.

And now, having behaved worse than a bunch of drunken gambling addicts on speed and Daddy’s yacht, they expect us to give them our money.

Many people seem to think that the welfare of banks is more important than that of we, the people. If you know what I’m missing here, please let me know.

In the meantime, I’m wondering if it’s not time for our worm to turn. Why should you be jobless just because some tosspot in a button-down collar decided to short sell your company’s shares? Why are our wages going to pay for the bankers’ bookies bills? What chance would you have turning up at your local bank branch with a failed betting slip from the 3.45 at Punchestown Races, and insisting they give you the money that you would have won if your horse had possessed a leg at each corner. Yes, you admit, you backed a horse that had three legs, but the odds were astronomical, just too good to resist, so give me the money.

Of course it’s absurd, yet no less absurd than banks expecting the same favours from us.

At what point do the downtrodden masses decide that we are as mad as hell and not willing to take it any more? The French, as usual, were first to scent revolution, marching disgruntled (as only the French can) through the streets of Paris, protesting about the way the people were being made to suffer for the sins of the bankers.

Maybe this is the big one. Maybe it’s time to stand in the streets together, and be counted.

What's the deal with all the 'P's?

2011-07-11T13:20:00.001Z

Looked down at my To-Do list this morning and was blinded by ‘P’s.

Pick up Prescription.
Deliver Paul’s Post.
Buy:
Pillows.
Plant Pots.
Peat free Potting compost.
Print Cartridges.

What’s the story with all the ‘P’s? Is there anything significant in the letter, other than its many appearances being a natural coincidence?
Any ideas, please let me know!

While I was daydreaming about the significance of ‘P’, I remembered a City Tribune colyoom I wrote way back in August 2007, inspired by the Sun newspaper, which had finally solved Pi!

With Murdoch closing down the News of The World, a Sunday edition of his Sun (perchance called ‘SunDay’? Call me a genius if you must!) is inevitable, so this feels like a good time to celebrate the wonder that is Britain’s Brashest Red Top newspaper.

While you’re at it, check out the piece's second section , where I don’t mind saying, your colyoomist was incredibly economically prescient.

August 2007
What a relief - The Sun has solved Pi!
Thank goodness for the Super Soaraway Sun ! Why on earth do I buy a copy of Britain’s best-selling newspaper only once or twice a year?

If only the world’s greatest scientists and mathematicians had bought the same issue that I did, they could all be sleeping soundly in their beds tonight.

For aeons mathematicians, engineers, mystics and artists alike have wrestled with that old conundrum: the relationship between a circle's diameter and its circumference.
Could you put that more simply, my son?

Well, The Sun does ‘simple’ better than anyone. On page 6, they ran a fifty question quiz, rather ingeniously called ‘Feeling Brainy?’

Possibly looking for their more cerebral readers, the quiz was placed opposite the paper’s Editorial Comment, which, by the way, read exactly thus:

“Load of Bull?
The search for Ireland’s most beautiful cow was unveiled yesterday. They might look the same to some, but for some a sprightly bovine can be moo-tiful. But a sexy cow? Pull the UDDER one!”

Tempted to see if I qualified as brainy for a Sun reader, I stormed in, until I reached question 8, where I have to admit, I became a bit stumped.

‘How many times does the diameter of a circle fit into its circumference?’

All power to the question setter. He or she could so easily have just asked “Imagine you’ve drawn a line from one side of a circle right across to the other side. Now, how many of those wee lines do you think will fit around the outside of the circle?

But they didn’t, because they want to believe that their readers are not idiots. I didn't want to be an idiot. I didn’t want to come up with the wrong answer, and a part of me just hoped it would suffice to say Pi, or even the symbol (π).

Just how clever did The Sun want me to be? After all, from the little I understand, (or to be honest, just learned from the internet), as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean genome, Pi is a mathematical constant and a transcendental and irrational number.
Also known as Archimedes' constant and Ludolph’s number, its exact size has never been ascertained.

On the 20th November, 2005, a gentleman called Chao Lu became the world record holder for reciting decimal places of Pi, having memorised it to a truly unbelievable 67,890 digits.
In September 2002, Dr. Kanada’s team at the University of Tokyo calculated Pi to 206,158,430,000 decimal places, and still didn’t get an answer.

Foolish ignorant men. If only they’d had half a brain cell to rub together, they’d have gone down the shop, bought The Sun, some tea bags, milk and a packet of chocolate digestives, and whilst dunking their biccies in their mugs, they could have found out that they had been wasting their time.

‘Cos there it was, in the answers, upside down on the same page.

3.

That’s how may times the diameter of a circle fits into its circumference. There is no need for decimal places. The Sun has released us from centuries of mathematical purgatory; delivered us from scientific torment and philosophical agony.

It’s official. Pi = 3.
The Sun. We love It.

***

Actually, I’m being a little unfair to The Sun.
Now, that’s a challenging concept!

Whilst that item about the cow was true, it did not run alone. Above it, the red top ran an editorial about the economic disparity enjoyed and suffered in unequal measure in our so-called Tiger Republic.

Running with figures recently released by the Central Statistics Office, the paper complains quite rightly that our society cannot be called ‘fair’ when the top ten percent of this country’s earners bring home €2,233 each week after tax, while the lowest ten percent earn only €157.

What kind of boom is this, where the rich get richer and the poor become inexorably poorer?
Allow me to introduce you to the Thatcherite boom, just like the one Britain endured in the 1980’s.

Then, as now, small groups of people living within a tiny geographical area became immensely rich, while the rest of us were bombarded with propaganda about the economic miracle in which we were living.

Then, as Bertie and his PD charioteers do now, Thatcher encouraged the marriage of an unbridled belief in the beauty of the free market to a young and hungry population, greedy beyond all precedent.

Then, as now, all you end up with is the disgrace of a society we have today.

If you tell enough people how well off they are enough times, they will start to believe it themselves. They will go out and buy 46” HDTVs on their credit cards, and take on 100% mortgages, because they feel financially secure.

Sure, aren’t we richer than we have ever been?

Watch and wait as the global corporate greed that encourages sub-prime mortgages begins to collapse, bringing us all down with it. Before you can say ‘Negative Equity’, the two most dreaded words in a free market economy, the house you bought is worth less than you paid for it.

Already I dread the start of house repossessions that I saw in mid-’80’s England.
But more than that, I fear for those families (and don’t forget, we’re talking about 10% of the earning population here!) who earn only €158, and yet have to spend €217 each week to survive.

Before we become obsessed with interest rates, bricks and mortar, let’s not forget our neighbours, who lie awake at night full of fear. They might well be worried about their mortgages, but as their spending on simple groceries and utility bills sends them €3,000 into debt each year, they are, more than anything, worried about putting food into their childrens’ mouths.

And there was me, thinking Ireland had left those dark days behind.

You might well laugh when I call myself a Socialist, but the trouble with Capitalism is that the philanthropic dream of a so-called Drip Drip Drip effect of wealth distribution never existed in the real world.

The rich became rich in the first place by hanging on to their money. The poor become poorer, and will stay poorer as long as we turn our heads, vote for the status quo, and sleep happily whilst not giving a damn.

© Charlie Adley
August 4th, 2007

Come on people - let's hit Murdoch while he's down!

2011-07-06T22:41:00.000Z

The world will be a better place without his filthy influence, so click and send a message:

Send a message opposing Murdoch's media takeover

www.avaaz.org

We have 3 days left to stop Rupert Murdoch's media takeover - send your message to Jeremy Hunt's consultation calling for a full review and an inquiry into hacking scandals -- it can make a massive difference!

This is my Jerusalem!

2011-06-27T12:18:00.005Z

www.irelandinpicture.net

‘Happy Ever After’ is a pointless ambition. Happiness comes like a swallow in Summer, like a snowflake landing on warm grass. Happiness lasts for a second or two years, and the only important thing is to realise it, feel it while it lasts.

I felt happiness for a few precious minutes last week, and I drank deeply of it.

A brief hiatus appeared in the midst of the maelstrom that has been life in recent times, so I packed Blue Bag and headed off to Newport. Co. Mayo.

Walking into the first Bed and Breakfast I came upon in the small town, I lingered in an empty reception area as an older man and an invisible woman had a heated discussion in the kitchen. I walked up and down, knowing that they knew I was there, slightly irked that they were ignoring a potential customer, but patient; grateful to be there at all while the Snapper was back in Galway at work.

Eventually the older man decided to acknowledge me, walking towards me asking what I wanted. I was standing by a reception desk with a bag on my shoulder, so I was just a tad surprised when he raised his eyebrow at my request for a room.

He called for Herself, and out she came. Lined fifty year-old skin on the face of a forty year-old smoker, she refused to return the smile I was pumping at her, instead telling me she had to check her book to see if she had a room. While she did that I cast an eye into the Visitors Book, wherein the last entry had been made two days previously.

She had a room. She was just looking for the least good room she could award to this single traveller. On the ground floor, two single beds and a tiny en suite, but fine, I’ll take it, I said. How much? Oooh, er emm, bit steep, but okay. I was tired and even though she pitched her price at the top end of the B&B marketplace, I wasn’t going to argue.

So I unpacked, put on my trackies and a fleece and lay back on the bed. The wall opposite was one huge window that opened out onto the rear car park, so anybody and everybody could see me. I boiled the kettle and found in the fridge in the hallway some nasty rank milk. The little pre-wrapped 3-pack of Custard Creams on my room’s tea tray were beyond their Best Before date.

Refusing to let anything get me down, I lay back on the bed.
Peace and quiet, hoo yeh baby. I never ever nap or take a siesta, but here, now, I had a chance.

No I didn’t. Outside my door, noisy as if in my face, fresh B&B guests had arrived. Herself was laughing and chatting and being generally lovely with them and I wondered why I’d lost out on her charm. She showed them into the room next door and was oh ho ho having a good old laugh with them, so she was, ho ho.

They went to their loo and took a shower and I swear I felt like I was immersed inside the runway of a major airport. Explosive noises shot over under and around me as symphonic plumbing went mental in my lug holes.

I felt miserable. All I’d wanted was to find a quiet clean place The place was clean alright but it was neither cheap, friendly, quiet nor private.

Facing Herself again would be a pain, but screw it.
So I dressed and packed and headed back to reception, where I had to knock on doors and wait for ages. I could’ve just left but wanted to be polite, offer her a couple of quid for her trouble and the cup of tea with off milk and stale biscuits (oh come on, of course I ate them - it was only a Best Before date!).

Her face was a picture as I mumbled some ill-thought out excuse as to why I had to go.
She shook her grim chin at my couple of Euro and headed off at high speed to the room I’d been in, doubtless to see if I’d stolen from her.

As I climbed back into the car I laughed. What was I going to nick? Her bedspreads? I think not.

At the top of the hill I headed into the hotel, where Roisin quoted me a price ten euro more than the B&B (ignore any rate cards you ever see in Irish hotels, absolutely). She listened to my needs and gave me a quiet room tucked away far from the bar. As I opened the door I let out a whoop! It was huge and modern and clean and way well worth the extra tenner. The skin-piercing shower alone was worth the extra dosh. All of a sudden I wanted to sing out loud.

Feeling for the first time that I might be on holiday, I started at the furthest point from the hotel, hitting each of the five pubs in town, ordering a Jameson in each and being given exactly that. No urban enquiries of whether I’d like ice or water or essence of Christian Dior in my whiskey, just a simple glass with a neat Jamie.

Many evenings of my life have been spent in rural pubs and small town bars in the West of Ireland, but that night I didn’t really feel like chasing the craic. I hadn’t the energy, so after I ran out of bars, and while the sun was still above the distant dark hills, I walked up the road to the church.

Having reached the top of the hill, I leaned on the stone wall and realised it was June 23rd, St. John’s Eve: bonfire night in Catholic countries. Below green fields fell away toward the windy wee road, twisting its way to somewhere. Beyond the road the valley rose with stone walls and lush fields, blending into the black distant Nephin Beg range of hills.

Bonfires, everywhere, how many? 12, 13, 17, every house that might have been invisible in the fading evening light became a point on the map. Smoke spires dotted the landscape, as if a thousand new popes had been announced.

Small clouds clipped the fading sun’s dazzle, as it started to slip below the hills, and I found peace.

This is my green and pleasant land. This is my Jerusalem. This was my moment to be happy. I know how to spot it now. So many people miss their own happiness. It’s gone before their next bad time hits them over the head. They might then wonder why life is worth it, and that is a tragedy.

The only thing I didn’t know was how long this happiness would last, but I didn’t care. The sun was gone, the sky purple and pink as I turned away from the stone wall and took a wander around the church. Recently restored with shiny pointing and a mini round tower, it was lovely.

A woman in a house behind me suddenly said hello. She was having a ciggie out of her window and I said hello back.

Hello, lovely evening isn’t it.
Lovely.

Strangers who say hello, just because you’re there.

Around the far side of the church I came across a door with a sign that said

'Sacristy and Toilets’

and behind it, I heard a young man singing. He had no idea that I was there, but I could tell he was writing a song. Maybe he was a young priest, composing something for his Sunday sermon. He sang as a priest might, with a strong steady falsetto voice, ecclesiastical, lyrical and ethereal.

"La la laaaaaaaa..."

He was writing a song. I wondered what it was about?

"Laaa laal la la laaaa..."

He coughed and then sang the words of his song for the first time.

“Property Tax, Property Tax,
They’re going to give us a Property Tax,
I’m looking forward to the Property Tax.

“Water Tax, Water Tax,
How will we pay the Water Tax?
I’m looking forward to the Water Tax...
We’ll all go to jail for the Property Tax....
lal la laaa...”

and then he was wordless again, doubtless penning the lyrics to a second verse.
But it was perfect.
A priest in touch with the plight of his flock.
A scribbler at one with the splendour of rural Ireland.
Happiness, for which I am grateful.

Avoid the propaganda on Page 1 - Seek out the silent heroes of page 32!

2011-06-22T14:44:00.001Z

Why did my heart sink when I saw The Observer’s front page headline ‘Revealed: war crimes files that could convict Gaddafi’?

Do I not think Gaddafi is a potential monster, capable of systematically killing his own people?
I do.

Do I not think that it’s good to have a War Crimes Tribunal that can punish perpetrators of massacre and genocide?
I do, even though, with few exceptions, all war is a crime.

So why so sad?
Because it was such blatant propaganda. Perchance it’s all true and maybe none of it is, but what matters is that The Observer ran the headline. Of course it did. Even though it’s the favourite paper of this sad news junky’s week, it still follows the line.

This colyoom has often in the past mused that one human life is neither more nor less precious than any other, but here in the Developed World we need to have a regular supply of enemies. As Orwell showed us when he wrote 1984 in 1948, a good hate figure helps to divert the population’s negative energies elsewhere. As long as we’re Us and they are Them, we behave ourselves.

So yes, Gaddafi is a dangerous megalomaniacal nutter, capable of genocide, who is killing his own population.
But so is Assad in Syria.
So are leaders of the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and North Korea.
So why don’t we see them on the front page?

We’re told from an early age to pick our fights. You can’t take on the world and win. As adults we’re force-fed our fights by the media, and if foreign journalists are not allowed into the country, we don’t hear about it.

We know all about Netanyahu. We know all about the Taliban, just as we knew all about Saddam Hussein. Liberals and conspiracists are right to be appalled by what’s going on in Gaza and the West Bank, but Israel is a democracy, so the voices of the moderate Israelis and peacemaking Palestinians are heard the world over.

In North Korea, Kim Jong Il does as he pleases, and we’re none the wiser. The international media can’t report the truth of what happens there, and the size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is such that Americans cannot threaten the country without fear of lethal reprisal, so we don’t hear.
So we don’t care.

It’s what I call ‘anti-propaganda’: the omission or under-reporting of a story.
The situation in the Congo region is so complex, involving so many disparate groups in extremely hostile conditions that the western media just don’t bother to try and report it.
So we don’t know about it.
So we don’t care.

As long as NATO warplanes are bombing Tripoli we’re going to hear about Gaddafi. We’re going to be reminded again and again how bad he is. Assad can continue to kill and torture and maim swathes of his Syrian people, but because foreign media are not allowed inside the country, we’ll hear little about it compared to atrocities performed in neighbouring Israel/Palestine.

As ever it’s the news stories on pages 14 and 27 that I read. The tiny paragraphs that slip through the net unnoticed. If it’s under-reported it piques my interest.
I don’t like being told what to think.
I just want to know what’s going on, so I’ll stick to my own news, thanks very much.

Right there, on page 32 of the Sunday Mirror (well, you have to buy a red top once in a while) runs my favourite story of the week, The antidote to my anger at anti-propaganda is a story reported by Richard Jones and Susie Boniface, revealing how 300 Old Age pensioners in Japan have volunteered to

“...give their lives in the battle to bring the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant under control.”

Michiaki Okimoto, one of the volunteers, was 8 years old when he saw the atomic bomb explode over Hiroshima:
‘I know about the fear of radiation. I saw the flash and heard the explosion. To me this is like any other project. My physical strength may be weaker, but I have the same spirit as a young man.’

72 year-old Yastel Yamada explains:
‘We feel responsible. The nuclear plants were created by my generation and we should fix the mess. The cancers take 10, 20, 30 years to appear. Most of us will be dead by then.’

Avoid the anti-propaganda of omission on Page 1. Seek out the hidden secrets of page 32.

And raise a glass to those selfless heroes in Japan.

We've been here before...

2011-06-18T07:19:00.001Z

so colyoomistas know that normal service will resume at any time: two seconds hence or halfty three o'clock.

Been one of the strangest and most demanding weeks I can remember, but all is good.

A little tired though.

It's Pip the Greek’s 90th birthday, so here's his Top Ten Tragic Utterances!

2011-06-10T15:40:00.000Z

Despite the Irish slagging me for growing up as a ‘Subject of the British Crown’ I really couldn’t give a damn whether I live in a Monarchy or a Republic. I felt no more or less of a citizen in England than I do in Ireland, or did whilst living in the USA or Australia. Heads of State, be they King, Queen, or President, are all the same: wholly and utterly irrelevant to me. As long as I’m free to feel apathetic about them and have the right to write about how I don’t give a monkey’s fart, I’m a happy and grateful man.

I'm also a compassionate man. I feel Elizabeth II’s pain. Her hubbie the Duke of Edinburgh has been a blight on her reign, a pain in her royal pachoochy for decades. He’s a vacuum of tact; an overt racist; a vile creature of the lowest order.

So (with due thanks to the Daily Mirror’s Steve Myall) this colyoom celebrates Pip the Greek’s 90th birthday today with a Top Ten of the Tragic Utterances from the anachronistic inbred blue blood ignoramus.

10. Conciliatory as ever, as said to Atul Patel at a 2009 reception for influential Indians:
“There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”

9. Exhibiting great honesty whilst visiting the Paraguayan dictator General Stroessner:
“It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”

8. Never one to bear a grudge, he explained to an Ambassador in 1967:
“I’d like to go to Russia very much - although the bastards murdered half of my family!”

7. Sensitive as ever in 2002, he chatted to blind Susan Edwards and her guide dog:
“They have eating dogs for anorexics now.”
(don’t laugh, it’s not funny, oh go on then!)

6. While on the only slightly offensive remarks, there’s the classic encounter in 1995 with a Scottish driving instructor:
“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

5. Showing his lack of awarenss of domestic politics, to the black Conservative politician, John David Beckett, Lord Taylor of Warwick:
“And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”

4. Not even his family are safe. Of his daughter Anne in 1970:
“If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”

3. Even though he’s Greek, he seems to feel very English about France. When asked if the Queen was enjoying her trip to Paris in 2006, he retorted simply:
“Damn fool question.”

2. Almost worthy of the top spot of this disgusting chart, in 1998 Prince Philip scraped his tongue along the dregs of the barrel of poor taste when talking about smoke alarms to a mother who had just lost two sons in a house fire:
“They’re a damn nuisance. I’ve got one in my bathroom and every time I run a bath the steam sets it off.”

1. Top of this Party Pooper Pops has to be Philip's universally notorious comment to an English student in China in 1986:
“If you stay here much longer you'll go home with slitty eyes.”
Happy 90th Birthday Philip . Thank goodness we English are so different to you.

Rain, beer and then more rain - it's Summertime in Galway!

2011-06-08T09:49:00.000Z

Can’t think, can’t write, trying to make it successfully through a difficult period, but refuse to let down my colyoomistas.

So by way of a total cop-out, here are a couple of auld Summer colyooms, one dedicated to the rain, rain rain rain ha ha ha rain Summer rain, the other a quick snapshot of your colyoomist, back in those drunken days when I faced up to a night out in Galway City in the same way that a prize-fighter takes on his opponent...

July 1999.
The Riddle of Galway?

Ahh, the relief of finally lying down ... as that cruelly early Galway Summer dawn appears from behind the curtain ...ooohhhhh ... god, bed feels good.

Now, time to check the spin-ometer. Just close the eyes for a few seconds, see if the insides of my head are of a mood to start challenging the laws of centrifuge, physics, Copernicus and Pat Kenny.

Nope. Brain and senses feel calm and stationary.

Good.

Next see if the ooo ... aaahhh ... eee ...contents of my distended stomach are going behave themselves, or prove Newton’s laws of motion, acton and reaction kind of thing.

Well, there’s no lack of activity in my voluminous belly, where happy groups of assorted and varied ingredients are lovingly forming themselves into a peristaltic bullet train, bound for express travel to Morning town.

Lovely. Smashed but safe and intact.

As I strain to lift my head to see if the Scores on the Time Doors say 4:30am or 5:00am, the Snapper soothes my partied brow.

“Ssshhhssshhh ... you’ve been feeding the Beast, babe, that’s all. You know how Galway City loves to be fed excess...”

So true, so very true, and the day being the Guru’s birthday, I had drained it of every drop of celebration there was to be had in it.

A riddle for Galway occurs to me, worthy of the Sphinx herself.

In which city can you step out in the morning on two legs, walk all day alongside many legs, and return to lie down, legless?

June 2008.
Is the pint as long as the shower, or the other way around?

The Summer Galway afternoon sky holds a million possibilities. Light grey clouds float above dark grey clouds, hanging below the canopy of the billowing thunderstorm anvil.

Scattered cracked saucers of blue show through, and the rain has abated.
Well, at least, for the moment.

Time to leave my friend’s house and walk home, but before I reach the bottom of his cul-de-sac, the rain begins to fall. Sure, it’s only a shower, and if I’m walking I’m walking.

Down the hill, and the rain is holding off. Good thing too, really, because these drops are not soft. These drops are not mist. These drops are Galway Summer Style‘n’Fashion Mother of All Wet-Making Drops, soaking, permeating, getting down to business drops that have one purpose in life: to seek flesh through cotton.

Being a bloke means that you’re not allowed to stop walking to do your coat up. You have to keep walking as you do it, or risk being misinterpreted as a man of less than wholesome substance. So whilst moving at full speed, my hands are flailing below my line of vision. To a stranger it must look as if I’m trying to read my waxed cotton jacket in braille. Without looking down like a sensible human being to see what I’m doing, lest I lose a moment of momentum, I struggle to wrap the collar flap around my oak tree neck. Ah, now, here comes the rain.

Now, wouldn’t you think I learned something useful in my 16 years in Ireland, beyond my affected Irish use of ‘now’ and ‘wouldn’t’?

Didn’t I learn how to deal with the rain?
Didn’t I learn to take shelter, because for 360 days of the year, the weather in the West of Ireland comes as sunshine and showers?
Didn’t I learn that these showers were the reason everybody clears the streets to take shelter in shops? A shower of Galway rain lasts just exactly the same time it takes to pour and drink a pint of the black, so the shower was the very reason that, back in days of yore, a barrel of beer arrived in the back of every wee shop.

So when you arrive in a tiny West of Ireland town that has two shops and 47 pubs, you can blame the nature of the shower.

Sheltering under a bush at the side of the road, I’m feeling smug in a ‘I’m not a local, but hey, I’m no tourist either’ kind of way. The rain stops, and I emerge into the steamy sunshine, walk on, waaaalk on, with my head held high, chin shiny and dry.

And then the rain really comes. The universe sensed my hubris, and now I will truly be punished. There is no ambiguity about this sky. It is black, heavy and low. As I round the crest of the hill the rain kicks up two gears, turning into flash-flood sub-tropical downpour.

I know it can’t last at this level long, because we’re temperate in these parts, but shelter is now out of the question. I am going to get drenched to the skin, and, well, that’s okay. The Irish have a word for it. You have to get drownded once in a while.

The Irish get drownded.
The English get drenched.
They both hit my mark.

My hair is sodden, dripping floods into my eyes, and now I cannot see through my glasses, which are steamed and under torrential attack. Crossing by the lights at the top of Taylor’s Hill, I head down Threadneedle Road towards the Prom, deranged, repeating over and over to myself

“Do not miss the footpath out to the left. Do not miss the footpath out to the left.”
Onwards, onwards, until I lift up my glasses and peer out to see I have, of course, missed the bloody footpath.

Turning around and heading back up the hill, I stumble into what I think is the footpath, which turns out instead to be a block of flats, and then the rain goes into overdrive again. Now I’m in the zone. Carefreeeee however wet I’ll beeeee. Lollopping back down towards the Prom, I am slapping flappy-dapping around in my sodden wet jeans with insane abandon, laughing out loud crazy, not giving a damn.

“Okay!” I yell to the skies,”You’ve shown me who is boss, and I accept. I am worthless. Thank you!”

Yet even the joy of that fleeting moment of acceptance is taken from me, for as I turn into my own street, all the clouds disappear, the sun comes out, and I am steaming in my saturated clothes under a hot clear blue sky before I turn the key in my front door.

The voice of hope from Israel's finest!

2011-05-30T13:06:00.000Z

Despite what it has become fashionable to think, not all Israelis harbour imperialist expansionist ideals. The voice of sanity is finally emanating from the Middle East, spoken by a group of 21 prominent Israeli writers, scientists, diplomats and politicians.

In an open letter the group, which includes my good friend and teacher, the writer Iris Leal, vow to support the establishment of a Palestinian state:

Here is their open letter:

Palestinian leaders have made clear their intention to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognise the independence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
This declaration is both a challenge and an opportunity for all sides. It is a decisive moment.
The failure of the international community and primarily of the United States to renew peace negotiations reflects an undeniable and disconcerting reality – peace has been taken captive by the "Peace Process". The ongoing construction of settlements in the West Bank East-Jerusalem, and Israel’s refusal to freeze construction in the interest of negotiations indicate that the current leadership of Israel uses the peace process as a distraction manoeuvre rather than a means to conflict resolution.
In the face of endless procrastination and mutual distrust, a declaration of Palestinian independence is not only legitimate, but also a positive and constructive step for the benefit of the two nations.
As Israelis, we avow that if and when the Palestinian people declares independence in a sovereign state to exist side by side with Israel in peace and security we shall support such declaration. We will recognise a Palestinian state based on 1967 line, with necessary land swaps by a 1:1 ratio and with Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The Gaza strip should also be recognised as part of the Palestinian state as long as its leadership acknowledges Israel’s right to existence.
We call upon countries of the world to openly support the Palestinian declaration, based on the aforementioned principles.
Such a support may provide a framework for proper negotiations between the two sovereign states.

1    Lea Aini, author
2    Prof. Arie Arnon,
3    Prof. Bernard Avishai
4    Nir Baram, author
5    Ilan Baruch, former ambassador to South Africa
6    Michael Ben Yair, former Attorney General of Israel
7    Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset and former Chairman of the    Jewish Agency
8    Prof. Sidra Dekoven-Ezrahi
9    Prof. Yitzhak Galnoor, former Civil Service Commissioner of Israel
10    Prof. Moshe Halbertal, co-author of the IDF ethical code
11    Prof. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize laureate
12    Dr. Menachem Klein
13    Iris Leal, author
14    Dr. Alon Liel, former Director General of the Foreign Ministry
15    Prof. Avishai Margalit, Israel Prize laureate
16    Ronit Matalon, author
17    Prof. Yair Oron
18    Prof. David Shulman
19    Prof. Shulamit Volkov
20    Prof. Menachem Yaari, Israel Prize laureate, former President of the Israel Arts and Science Academy
21    Prof. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Israel Prize laureate

With Fatah and Hamas talking to each other once again, Barack Obama drawing the 1967 lines back into the sand and this enterprising collective now declaring their intent, momentum appears to be gaining apace.

Anyone who cares at least a little about the Middle East immediately feels a sinking sensation in the stomach at the merest mention of peace talks and two state solutions. Yet until there exists peace between two states living side by side, we cannot afford to give up hope.

Amen.

President Obama is coming to see me today!

2011-05-23T16:26:00.000Z

It’s brilliant! Pure fantastic! The President of the United States of America is coming to my house today, to visit me. Yes, you read that right! That’s himself, the actual President of the actual United actual States, coming to visit your very own colyoomist in my very own house.

Any moment, he’ll be here. Should’ve been here a few hours ago, like, but he’s a busy man,
so I’ll let him off. Sure, ye’ll have that in small towns and built-up areas.

Can’t wait to meet him. Barack Obama, coming to see me. Sounds amazing, unbelievable almost, but it says so right here in the newspaper. ‘The President will be visiting his eighth cousin, in the village where his Great Great Great Grandfather used to live, until he left to live in America.'

Uncanny! Yes we can!

That’s me, isn’t it! Just to be on the safe side, I unleashed the full might of this colyoom’s entire research department onto the case, because it’d be terribly embarrassing to be wrong about something as huge as this, and not one of my dedicated team of professionals has failed me.

They have proved beyond doubt that I have an eighth cousin directly descended from the Kenyan half of President Obama’s family, and incredibly, as if that wasn’t enough, I also am an eighth cousin completely related to President Obama’s Hawaiian half of the family as well. Add in the Irish half, my English half and my Jewish half, and you’re gradually seeing where I’m coming from.

So many halves must make more than a whole, so it’s beyond question. We’re related, Barack and me, in so many ways. I can’t wait to meet him. It’ll be like we’ve known each other all of our lives. Bound to be, if you think about it, because so many of our ancestors shared the same lives, altogether.

I’m the eighth cousin living in Ireland that me long lost cousin Barack is coming to visit, and as if to prove it, my research team didn’t stop there. They have also failed to uncover anything to disprove the fact that one of my Great Great Great Grandfathers left Ireland to go to America.

Way beyond pure coincidence, you have to agree. Chance is a notion we left behind long ago in this process. What we are using here is genealogy and heredity and good old-fashioned state-of-the-art pure cold science - that’s what’s at work here. So it’s definitely me he’s coming to see. Stands to reason.

If that’s not proof enough for you, ye miserable damp begrudging puddle of doubters, it says right here in the paper that President Obama is going to visit his ancestral home. They’re even calling it ‘The Homecoming’. The newspaper states very clearly that Obama’s ancestral home is a little house where his ancestral family don’t actually live any more. It’s not his family that live there now, d’y’see, and the house itself is not exactly the same house as the one which both his and my Great Great Great Grandfather left from, to move to America, because it’s had a bit of work done to it, d’ya’know

All that historical and up-to-the-minute detail right there in the paper, and all it’s saying to me is:

‘This is your house, Charlie Adley!’

Can’t wait. What an honour. He’ll be here any moment.
Must be me.
Nobody else has eighth cousins, do they?

After 3 Obits, a birthday, because life is for the living!

2011-05-19T12:34:00.000Z

The last three posts in this colyoom have been about loss, and much as it’s important to celebrate the lives of those who have gone, we’d be missing the point entirely if we forgot to enjoy life as we live it. A few days ago I made it to my 51st, and was very appreciative of how the wonderful people in my life insisted we celebrate.

The fiesta started a few days earlier in Madrid, when my great friend bought me a massage as a present. With distant New Age mood sounds of elephants trumpeting and jungly creatures hooting, a petite masseuse found each of the golf balls that had been illegally occupying my shoulders, kneading those knotted lumps of angry tension into healthy loose fibrous musc-yools filled with smooth flowing bloodules (technical terminology, you understand.)

Doubtless I should have immediately gone to rest and drunk bucketloads of water, but there was whisky to be downed and a city to explore. “Happy Birthday!” said my mate, and when I pointed out that it wasn’t actually for a few days yet, he sensitively and thoughtfully retorted “Bollocks! It’s already started!”

On the day itself, back in Galway, I picked up redoubtable Dalooney and headed off to visit the Guru in his new rural eyrie, high up on the hills of Tonabrocky. We lads, friends for many a year, sat and drank tea, talking shite about dreadful things we’d done ages ago and last week, whilst eating fresh strawberries, enjoying as fine a morning as anybody into the second half of their century might desire.

The Guru said he wanted to take me out to lunch, but I had already stuffed my face with a full Irish breakfast at Lohans pub first thing that morning (I’d decided that I was worth it!), so it was off back down we went, to sea level, to sup a pint of Bay Ale in the Oslo in Salthill.

By the time I got home, the Snapper had been mighty busy, running an Olympic record tour of local supermarkets and delis. On the kitchen table were a pile of big balloons, pressies and cards, which I tore open like a six year-old. Books and chocolate and messages from overseas, by snail mail, e-card, donkey train and turtle dove.

Lovely! Off to shower my ageing boddaay before Dalooney and the Body joined the Guru at our gaff, whereupon we started to drink much English beer (no, not warm beer, just not chilled beer. What is it with the way the world mocks our bitter? Does anyone complain that most red wine is served unchilled? Does anyone say ‘Ooh yuk, warm wine?’) and Irish whiskey, a bottle of which was produced by the Body himself (as a gift, I hasten to add, not through his bladder!)

We four blokes than sat around the table and were presented with a roast chicken feast, followed by berries, lemon tart and finally, a home-baked birthday cake, all the work of my lovely wife. Raising our glasses to toast her, the mad shouting and exuberant drunken revelry that exploded from our mouths somehow formed into a rousing, very customised version of the Marseillaise.

Well, it was similar to the French national anthem in every way except none of us actually formed words, throwing grunty laughing noises into a mix of pure exuberance, to thank herself for her sterling and loving efforts.

And then a few minutes later, spont-an-naneously like, just for the craic like, we raised our glasses and toasted her again, producing another nonsensical chorus of “Aaaaalonzzz lay zer doo baarr doo berrr be dooo dan na na shoooobeeer doo be daaerrrr!”, accompanied by hearty table thumping and a healthy dollop of pure silliness.

We watched no TV, played no games, just talked and ate and drank and I looked around the room and couldn’t have been happier. Admittedly there were rather more testicles than wombs around the room, but sure, ye’ll have that. There were family phone calls, balloons on the walls and a room filled with the beating of excellent human hearts, good souls with one combined intent - to celebrate life and get on with the living of it!

Ethel never sat on the fence!

2011-05-17T14:48:00.000Z

(A quick aside to say how much I love working with my computer. In the old days, finding the piece below would have meant hours sifting through hundreds of columns and features. Instead, just by typing the letters ‘kingf’ of the word ‘kingfisher’ into the drop-down spotlight gizmo on the top of my Mac’s screen, I’m immediately given access to Diary of a Blow-in #8, a column I wrote for the Irish Examiner during the years I lived in stunning north Co. Mayo, near the splendid village of Killala.)

In the midst of life we are in death, and I’m loath to apologise for all the obituaries appearing in this colyoom recently, because believe me, I’d rather not be writing them. However, on the same day that Merlin died, an old friend of mine passed away in Castlebar hospital.

Ethel was loved by many, and universally revered, respected and admired. Her fierce wit and long-lodged opinions presented a very firm fence, which you were either her side of or the other. For reasons I’ll never fully understand, yet always appreciate, she took to me when I lived in Killala, and we formed a cross-generational friendship that I suspect gave us both much pleasure.

Ethel’s sister in Cork sent her copies of my Diary of a Blow-In columns, which Ethel read and then tested me on.

“How have you seen the Brent Geese yet? I didn’t think that they’d be around yet, but you said in the paper that you’d seen them. When did you see them? I see the beach from the field every day when I visit my cows, and I have not yet seen them.”

Throughout the entire area her prowess as a cook was unquestioned. Ethel’s cakes and jams were legendary, as was her love for the man she ironically referred to as ‘His Lordship’.

I remember my inevitably unexpected visits to her house so clearly: met with fussing and great hospitality, the living room toasty warm, huge pots boiling on the range, her late husband Jack sat in his chair by the stove, with Ethel up on the blanketed and cushioned shelf she called her ‘nest’; all was well with the world.

Then Ethel would put a glass filled with whiskey and a mountain of thickly-sliced fruit cake in front of me. I knew that neither drink-driving laws nor my desire to fit into my clothes would prove useful as excuses for not eating and drinking the lot. Ethel did not have to behave like Father Ted’s Mrs. Doyle, with all that “You will you will you will!” blather.

Ethel was not one to blather. Not a chance. Ethel just put the drink and food in front of you and told you to eat and drink it, and you did. She was one who must be obeyed.

Possibly it was my confidence in her presence that attracted her, or maybe merely that I wrote about the rural world that she loved, but I was happy to have her as a friend. My thoughts and love now go to her close family and all the people of Ross.

I didn’t know Ethel well, but I liked well what I knew, and also knew that I was honoured to be on the right side of her fence.

Here’s the kingfisher piece, wherein I first meet Ethel, which appeared in the Irish Examiner, May, 2001.

Diary of a Blow-In #8

I have now enjoyed half of the journey through a year's seasons up here in north Mayo, and it really feels like my place now. As if to prove it, I have a garden that's grown out of control.
The September sunshine was kind to my nasturtiums, which have spread over every spare spot of earth, climbing up the back hedge, and tumbling over the raised stone bed, cutting long straight orange blades across the green grass.

The end of my first summer brings a small but pleasing harvest. The wee herb garden I built has proved a major success, and now I cut and dry the copious growth of rosemary, oregano, mint, chives and thyme, before they whither in the early frosts. Flowers from my home-grown lavender are snipped and stored in a jar that smells somewhere between dizzy and divine.

It took me only an hour to spot the arrival of the ram in the field opposite my house, but I'll bet it didn't take the ewes that long! He has a white face, and a brown fleece - well, it's beige really, but that sounds so terribly urban, dwarling! - and the only other white-faced sheep in there is the aptly-named Bianca.

Romeo Ram systematically walks the white-fenced edge of the field, like a rampant lad in a nightclub easing his way along the red carpet, hugging the brass rail. Sheep are more direct than humans, so Romeo simply tries to stick his schnozz up each ewe's rear end. The gals cop on to this ruse pretty quickly, moving away before Romeo even gets close to a genital whiff.

But all of a sudden he strikes lucky. A big old ewe raises herself to her feet, slowly and deliberately walking backwards onto Romeo's nose. There she lingers for a while, before wiggling her Sunday Dinners off to a bucket of feed.

I recognise this behaviour as the ovine equivalent of Isabella Rosellini singing Blue Velvet. This is sheep-talk for Lauren Bacall telling Steve he knows how to whistle. Just more honest. And more effective.

My plan was always to arrive in the area with a mild plop, rather than a loud bang, and it is paying off. I have seen what happens when others elsewhere have tried to make a quick and big impression on new neighbours. It was always my wish that the locals would come to me, rather than the other way around, and gradually it is happening.

Landlords in pubs are starting to call me by name, and the other day, I was visited by a charming mother and daughter-in-law team. Much to my delight, they came bearing jars of home-made gooseberry and blackcurrant jam, and rather less welcome, they also brought a dead kingfisher, which the elder of the two emptied from a plastic bag onto my outstretched hand.

She told me that she had read of my birdie adventures in this column, and was eager to show me a beautiful bird that we had living in our local environment. I agreed that indeed, when alive, the tiny kingfisher is a glorious sight, but pointed out that it does lose a certain charm after it's been wrapped in a plastic bag, a good few days after a cat killed it. I had to ask:

“Please tell me you’re leaving the jam and taking the bird away?”

I enjoyed their short but pleasant visit, which culminated in my accepting their kind invitation to a party. Unbeknownst to me, the celebration turns out to be a Silver Wedding Anniversary, and the warm friendly house is packed to the gunwales with crowds of friends and relations. There is an enormous effort made to make me feel welcome, which I do as soon as I enter, but I become nervous when I am introduced to a silenced kitchen of revellers thus:

“This is Charlie - he's a writer, and he'll be putting all this down in the paper!”

From that moment on, I feel conscious of my every movement, and end up drinking far too much beer, and boring the bejazus out of a family visiting from Yorkshire.

As the party develops, a great banquet reveals itself. There is a large table laden with massive congratulatory cakes, cooked chickens, salads and burgers, while out in the yard, there are two barbecues grilling fresh mackerel and salmon. Everywhere I am greeted by smiling, kindly faces, and although still very much an outsider, I taste for the first time the 'joie de vivre' enjoyed by my local community.

It was an honour to be invited to such a special occasion, and an absolute pleasure to feel included.

The October sky brings rainbows back to the west of Ireland, along with an incandescent tangerine glow to the early evening sky that brings a glow to my heart. The air carries the sodden smell of decay, softened by the sweet scent of turf smoke, while the low sun shines brighter, the wind blowing ever colder.

As the nights close in on these burned-out ends of smoky days, there is no better place to be than warm and cosy in the Irish countryside.

In memory of Merlin, a very special dog.

2011-05-17T11:51:00.000Z

Merlin the dog died yesterday, so here’s an excerpt from a colyoom I wrote back in 2003. Thanks Merlin - happy wanderings!

Did I dream the dog in the darkness?

The storm blows at its full force around four in the morning, when a thumping gust wobbles the walls of the house. I open my eyes, and feel my arms and legs pinned inside a sleeping bag. Seconds drag by, like sweat-on-the-brow-inducing hours, as I lie in the darkness, struggling to remember where the hell I am.

Thoughts race around my brain like shelled peas in a bucket. Where did this particular slice of mayhem begin? ‘Twas a manly handshake after a meeting in Salthill a few days ago that let loose a couple of empty days. Grabbing my chance to take a break, I flee south out of town before the morning rush hour. The rising sun sears blood red lines through the black clouds that hang over the half-built rooftops of Oranmore.

By the time I reach the ferry at Kilimer, the same sun shines supreme in a sky bursting blue.
Breathing in the breeze on deck, my chest puffs up with excitement. Off to the Dingle Peninsular, to visit Yoda Casanova. with whom I enjoy a great friendship, a mutual admiration, 43,844,782 cups of tea and the odd wee pint.

Aha! So that’s where I am.

I’m on top of Yoda’s mattress-less bed, wrapped up in a sleeping bag inside another sleeping bag in an effort to keep warm. Too many sessions and not enough kip, and now too awake to go back to sleep.
I switch on the light, swinging my mummified torso off the bed.

Cold air hits my bare knees as the 2 sleeping bags slide down, and I head for the darkness of the hallway. My body is demanding water in exchange for all those whiskies I gave it earlier. The kitchen is downstairs, but for some sadistic reason, my brain decides to deny my body coordination, conspiring with gravity to send me tumbling down the steep stairs. Screaming pained Homer Simpson-isms into the darkness, my body bounces ¡Doh! off the walls, crashes ¡Fuurrrrkeeegooooo! onto the stairs, slams into banisters ¡Oowwmoofffhh! and falls head-first downwards into the void

¡Weeaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhh!

On arrival at the bottom, I lift my bruised and bewildered living corpse off the floor. Through the window in the front door I see the world outside flung into chaos by a raging Atlantic storm.
Usually I love a good gale, but suddenly I’m now gripped from head to toe by a cold sharp spear of fear.

Inside this room, I can hear thumping.
Weird rhythmic thumping, coming out of the pitch darkness, from the other side of the room.
Thump thump thump.

Thump thump thump.
Yoda is asleep in his truck outside.

Thump thump thump.
I’m alone in the house, so what the bloody hell is that noise?

Thump thump thump.
Always fond of the simple and lazy route, I ask the universe to make the bad thumping go away, and rather amazingly it does. Trouble is, (from the makers of ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’) there comes, from the same place, the sound of low-down dribbly slavering breathing.

My mouth goes dry with terror, my hand scrabbling around, sliding blindly over the walls, looking in vain for a light switch. Taking in a deep breath, I race in the direction of the kitchen. Managing to limit the number of collisions with unseen low-lying furniture to only three actual skin-gashing bleeders, I flip on the kitchen light.

At once, all is peace and joy.

The phantom thumper and breather is none other than Merlin, Jenny and Andy’s dog, from down the way. A beautiful big black dog with a heart of gold and a mean way with a muzzly nuzzle of the knees, Merlin is as smart as his namesake. Not only had escaped the storm by opening the front door, he somehow managed to close the door behind him, against the full force of the wind.

Evidently Merlin is well used to seeing eedjit humans falling downstairs in the middle of the night. He walks over, licks my hand and wags his tail (thump thump thump), and I climb back up the stairs into my cotton cocoon, to sleep better for the knowledge that I’m not alone in the house after all.

The next day Andy explained, “He’s not stupid! He knew it was in his best interests to keep the cold wind out, so he closed the door behind him, even though the wind was against him! God knows how, mind!”

Great lies of the Modern World #243: 'PEEL HERE'

2011-05-15T16:13:00.000Z

It’s a plastic carton of bacon.
It’s a waxy paper packet of cheese.
It’s a supermarket sandwich.
It’s a tray of sliced ham.

Your first instinct as a man is to pick it up and pull it apart. To huff and puff and tear the pack asunder, grunting with hairy-chested satisfaction that you have killed it and now, ug, throwing your head back and laughing wildly, you may feast well upon it.

But then you remember that you are not a mere grunty ape any more; that you have progressed, evolved from the primal life of the jungle floor. You now know how to use tools, so you grab a small sharp knife from the drawer, and you’re just about to stick it into the plastic when you see two words:

‘Peel Here.’

However sophisticated and well-groomed your all-new must-wash metrosexual male image might look, at that moment you are so still resisting the powerful urge to shred the pack into smithereens.

But you don’t, ‘cos it’s not what’s expected of you. You’re meant to be in control of your urges, aware of socially-acceptable behaviour and hopefully able to read.

So you look at those two words:

‘Peel here.’

All of a sudden the binary door of your super-efficient logical male brain crashes open, and a shaft of dazzling light fills your cerebral cortex. Heavenly falsetto angels sing an ethereal chorus of joyful choral anthems.

Look! They’ve gone to the trouble of specifically adapting their packaging design and decided it’s worthwhile to make major modifications to their factory machinery, just to make a little bendy toggly bit on the corner of the pack.

Just so you can open it easily.

Would they really go to all that trouble if it wasn’t going to work?
No, silly, of course they wouldn’t.

But then you’re suddenly shocked by an unexpected broadside barrage of negative thinking, a salvo of cautionary thoughts, fired from the experiential caverns of your brainbox.

No, it won’t work.
It never works.
Never did. never will.
Tear it.
Use the knife.
It never works. You know it never works. Cut it. Cut it.

But you want to believe. You so want to believe that if they can grow babies in glass tubes and sell 31 flavours of ice cream in one single shop, that they really might have finally come up with a simple, easy and efficient way of opening their product.
A way that, by design, might even leave the package resealable.
A way that might not later require the use of cling film, aluminium foil, super-glue and bandages to restore the packet to a safe level of hygienic storage, ready for the fridge.

So you put the knife down. You pick up the packet and taking a deep breath, try to meter your manly muscly power so as not to break off the triangular tabby ‘Peel Here’ thing.

Holding your breath you gently pull, but nothing happens.
You pull harder. You bend the tabby triangle back and forth a few times, just in case there’s an in-built line of weakness that you haven’t activated yet. You pull it again, harder, now breathing wildly, teeth gritted, pulling harder and stronger and tighter and

Nothing gives. It doesn’t want to peel. It shows no sign of peeling.
It’s a lie. Another dirty down dastardly lie. They’ve had you again, the little bleeders.

Your next choice of action depends wholly on the level of intellectual engagement available within your present hissing and grunting testicular frenzy. You either grab one side of the packet with each of your hands and pull the living fucking daylights out of it, until, inevitably, the ham, cheese or bacon falls onto the kitchen floor. Or, if you’re hanging off a branch slightly higher up the behavioural tree, you grab the knife you put down earlier and stab it into the packet, sliding a simple easy cut into the thin covering, wondering why on earth you didn’t just do that in the first place.

At this stage it is important to remember that your objective is to eat. You really must resist all temptations to stab the packet again and again and again, out of pure bloody-minded fury. If you find yourself unable to stop hacking the packet to shreds with the blade of your knife, it’s time to take yourself off to bed for a wee nap, and then seek psychiatric help in the morning.

If you live on the happy side of psychotic, then just make a nice cuppa tea and enjoy your sandwich.

You know you’ll never believe their filthy ‘Peel Here’ lie again.
Or will you?

Who knows, by the time you’ve bought the next packet, they might have perfected it....

Win lose or draw, Dad's spirit will be with me today!

2011-05-08T07:07:00.002Z

Three years ago today my Dad died, and these anniversaries or jahrzeit serve their purpose. After a decade-long decline, he slipped away a mere two weeks before my marraige to the Snapper, in a traumatic period of time emotionally exacerbated by a trip back to California.

Yes, there's a point to these days, but that doesn't make them easy to get through. Thankfully, the fates have conspired to set up a title decider between Chelsea and Manchester United this afternoon, something that he and I would have loved to watch together. So I won't be miserably dragging myself through a difficult day - no, Dad would have hated that. Instead I’ll be raising a glass of whiskey to the most excellent John Adley at 4 o'clock today, and missing him like crazy. Come on you Blues - but win lose or draw today, I couldn't have wished for a better father!

This obituary which I wrote at the time says it well enough.

My Dad died.
I have seen many people lose parents, siblings, friends and even children, and the most tragic losses are the ones in which there lingers something unfinished. As the minutes ooze from the time of death, that lingering becomes malingering, and pain follows close behind.

Dad made it easy for me, because he had been so unwell for so long, I had time to tell him everything I wanted to say.

And oy, he put up a fight! Year after year, Dad grumped and exploded his way through procedures, operations, scrapings and inflations. Towards the end he lost his joie de vivre, but never his sense of humour, although my mother, his rock, his redeemer, and a great force of nature, mentioned how she sometimes missed the sound of laughter.

Watching somebody you love head slowly lethewards erases from your mind the image of the person they once were. When I think now of my father, all my mind offers is a weak old man in much discomfort, fed up with life, yet absolutely unwilling to die.

Naturally, I do not have to scrape much dust from my memories to see Dad as a younger man, and as I do, my heart races a little faster and a smile comes to my tear-sodden eyes.

So I am very happy to have told him what I thought of him, before he went.

A few months ago, he was sitting in his armchair next to my mum on the sofa. I had to be tactful, because despite the Jewish spirit, my parents' home and behaviour is quintessentially Olde Englishe, like the marmalade. Hence to avoid melodrama, I had to tread carefully when trying to explain to my father that he had always been my inspiration.

To that Octogenarian these words came as a surprise; one which I had anticipated, and thought might fire his spirit and confidence a tad.

I told him, in front of Mum, that he had been my inspiration throughout my life, in two different ways.
At a most vital level, I appreciated how hard he had worked, how many decades he had climbed into his car at 7.40 am, and driven off through the dirthy sludge of London's constipated commute, all the way to Soho, where he worked all his life for Pearl and Dean.

At weekends he ran a small chain of three record shops, until one of his managers did the dirty, and sent the business down the pan.

From my privileged and relatively cushy life, I am in awe of how hard Dad worked, so that we might enjoy the upbringing we had. His was the last generation that would ever enjoy the 'job for life' culture, but even so, I embarrass myself when I think of how few hours I have to spend earning money each week.

Somehow, back in the early 1960's he earned enough money to take all five of us on holidays to Europe every other year, with trips to Devon and Somerset in the intervening summers.

"Thanks Dad!" I told him. "I didn't appreciate it when I was a kid, but I do appreciate it now."

My mum spluttered out that she thought that was very nice, and my Dad did something with his mouth that showed he was grateful.

But then I looked over, into his eyes, and I sent them a twinkle.

"There's another way you inspired me, Dad. Your mountains, mate! Remember all your books from the 1930's and 1950's about the conquests of Kachenjunga, K2 and Everest? They all had the same kind of tan cloth covers, and were packed with photos and maps and tales of these great mountaineers, walking around the Annapurna Circuit and reaching for the skies.

Well, it took a while for me to realise it, but all my travelling; the way I've lived my life; it's down to you. Didn't cop on when I was a teenager, because all that hitching just felt so good, and looked to me a million miles from the life you lived, and the one you wanted for me. But when I went off for my first roundy-worldy jaunt in 1984, you whispered

'Say hello to the mountains for me!'
and it all made sense.

Yes, in that instant I understood why I was who I was. I knew that your spirit of adventure was kindled in me; that the boy who read those books gave birth to another who could go and see them.
And the greatest thing about a sprit of adventure is that it helps you live your life less dominated by fear.

So thanks Dad! You worked your arse off so that I might have a good childhood, and you also lifted my eyes, my horizons and my understanding of ambition, so that when I felt happy in my life, I might know that I was a success."

What I didn't say to him then, but do now, was that unfortunately, I don't think you ever enjoyed the same self-confidence that you helped build in me.

You were a possessor of great charm and unquestioning generosity. You taught me how to appreciate fine wines, how to carry myself in any situation, and always assured me that while fine things were alright, you could never beat the pleasure and honesty of a pie and a pint.

Wherever I have been in the world, we always had time for the Chelsea. Remember that time when you were almost unconscious in hospital, and the Special One came on the TV in your hospital room?

"Mou mou mou rinho!" you spluttered, as you entered consciousness.

But my favourite of all time, was a year ago last Spring, when we were all standing round your bed in Intensive Care. We'd nearly lost you in the ambulance, and had been discussing how to cancel your big 80th birthday party.

Unaware of where you were, or how close you had come to death, your first words as you opened your eyes:

'Who's ordering the wine for the party?"

You couldn't understand why we all fell about laughing. Your spirit was so strong it will live forever amongst us.
I love you Dad. I love you very much.
God knows, I'll miss you.

'She'll be fine now' - that's why I live here!

2011-04-27T13:54:00.000Z

Several weeks ago, just after the big Grand Slam rugby match in Dublin, I was at Luton Airport for the late night flight to Galway. The security guard at looked at my boarding pass.

“Hope you're happy now, beating us at cricket and rugby!”

There was an edge of good old-fashioned English aggression in his tone, so I walked on through into the Departure Area without bothering to tell him I was English too. His tongue-lash reminded me why I prefer the lack of violence inherent in the people of the West of Ireland to the latent violence all over English attitudes.

Trouble was, after that rugby match, I'd read acres of Irish newspapers and listened to scores of Irish voices telling me how, sure, wasn't it feckin' mighty to wipe those smile off the faces of the auld enemy? The nationalist fever (yes, 'nationalist' is the word, unless you prefer 'jingoistic') that surrounded the victory made me wonder: why have I been in love with the West, ever since I arrived here 19 years ago?

The memory of a friend's voice slid through my brain. Back in London, outside a pub, he'd asked

“So what is it you love so much about living out there, Charlie? The whole country's broke and anyway, don't they hate you for being English ?”
“Dunno.” I offered eloquently in reply.
“Do you ever think of coming back to England?”
“Not a chance.”

If relationships are all about the bad times, then my love of the West of Ireland must run strong and true. As we in the West know, when economists and journalists say 'Ireland' they mean 'Dublin and the Pale'. If life in that 'Ireland' is described as tough, you can bet the price of your last pint that times are even harder in the West, yet still I'd live nowhere else.

Whereas in England people are culturally and bureaucratically punished for being poor, here in the West of Ireland a simple humanity thrives still. Despite the inescapable melancholy that pervades our daily lives; the stark hard fact that jobs this side of the Shannon are rarer than raw meat and that paying each month's rent or mortgage now presents a financial mountain to climb, we stick together and have a laugh.

It's safe to say that 'Hard Times' is the West of Ireland's default setting. Here we know how to smile when life is hard, and we're famous for the way we party. Thankfully, the people of the West of Ireland determine for themselves when times are good, and it's rarely based on our financial status. A good time might be the next 9 minutes, the next 8 hours, or it might not come for weeks and months. But from the moment she kicks off her shoes, be ready to dance!

The flight landed safely back at Galway Airport around midnight. I showed my UK passport to the Irish Immigration Officer.

“Enjoy your stay.”

For the second time that night I couldn’t be bothered to explain that while yes, I'm English, I first arrived in Galway almost two decades ago. It's my home, has been for ages. I love it, hate it, know it backwards, inside out, up the wall and around the bend, as only an outsider can. Yet 'tis the curse of the blow-in, to answer every single day of your life “Are you on holidays?” or “Whereabouts in London are you from? I was over there in the 50s, d'y'know!”

Galway Airport has two Car Park Payment machines, each side of the Terminal entrance. That night the machine on the right had an 'Out Of Order' notice stuck on it, and there was already a long queue for the one remaining machine. The slightly harassed and hirsute American at the front of the queue put his ticket into the machine, but it didn't register.

Nothing happened.

Feeling twelve pairs of impatient eyes burning his neck from behind, he started pressing buttons like Ensign Sulu on Red Alert. As we looked on over his shoulder, the screen went German, Norwegian, all over the place.

There were grumblings in the queue. It was late. We were tired. We wanted to pay for our parking but if their equipment wasn't working then couldn't they just raise the barrier and let us go? Please?

Frustrated, the American tourist went off to speak to the folk at the Information Desk, and sure enough, a few minutes later a bloke with a bright orange plastic toolkit arrived.
At last someone was on the case. He was going to take on the machine.

Except he didn't.

Side-stepping us all, he strolled over to the other machine and peeled off the 'Out Of Order’ sign that was taped to it.

“You can use this one now!” he said, as we all gasped astonished. Facing us with not a trace of a smile, he explained

“Sure, it was just booting up. Takes about an hour. She'll be fine now!”

While others around me made infuriated grumpy sounds and wha'th'hell perplexed explosives, I smiled as I slipped in my ticket, giggled a little as I paid my money, chuckled as I left the airport and guffawed as I drove home.

She'll be fine now. That's what the man said, and that's why I love living here. The sign might say 'Out Of Order', but that's not the truth of it. Life's absurdities are relied upon and respected in the West of Ireland, and after travelling around the planet a couple of times, I found out that I belong here.

Galway is the filling in Life’s sandwich!

2011-04-24T10:53:00.000Z

Born 15 minutes apart and raised a few front doors from each other, the two fiftysomething friends each wrap an arm around my shoulders and we move as one body, away from the midnight cab, towards my front door, in a man-huggy drunken lope.

The relationship enjoyed by these two men might be called brotherly, but that would be unfair. I can recognise their bond, because I’m lucky enough to share similar ones in my life.

They are as close as brothers, but as friends they are unencumbered by the limitations of sibling rivalry and family obligation. Safely in the front door and ensconsed, sipping whiskey in my living room, I sit back and laugh as they cruelly slag each other off with the skill of decades practice.

It’s been a long night, so I head off to bed, leaving the life-long friends to their own company. In front of me they were behaving like men: neither sensible nor sober men, but grown-ups nonetheless. Now that I am above, lying in bed, their slagging has stopped. They have no audience any more, so they don’t need to display their wit; their repartee. From the room below rises the wonderful sound of two grown men giggling and chuckling like the eight year-old boys they once were, together.

I’m drifting off into sleep, awash with their distant laughter. My last waking thoughts of the night make my heart sing for Galway City. Earlier, as we had clambered leggy and locked out of that cab, my good friend who was down from the old village in Co. Mayo stretched his arms out wide, announcing

“I love being in Galway! It’s great to be in the city!”
His friend from Dublin stretched his arms wide, declaring in response
“I love being in Galway! It’s great to be out of the city!”
Naturally I had to seal the deal, stretching my arms and saying
“I love Galway! It’s a little bit of what you want, whatever that is!”

We three laughed smugly, they each taking one of my outstretched arms, sandwiching me as if I was Galway, in the middle of their rural urban sandwich.

I'll have the Early Bird menu without the sexist assumptions, please!

2011-04-18T12:14:00.000Z

The Snapper’s splendid parents are back in Galway City, so last night we had a lovely meal at one of the many Quay Street restaurants offering recession-busting Early Bird menus

The food was cooked simply and to great effect, while the service was friendly and prompt.
On three separate occasions whilst in the restaurant I felt so very male, which, surprising as it might seem to many of you, was not a terrible phenomenon.

The first time my testicles affected my brainbox was when my mother-in-law told the waitress that she didn’t want a starter and proceeded to order her main course from the Early Bird menu. The waitress (who was friendly and German) suddenly interrupted her, telling her that she couldn’t order from the Early Bird menu any more, because it was a three course menu. If she wanted that dish without a starter she’d have to go to the á la carte menu.

Had she said ‘Madam might find ordering á la carte more reasonable if she requires only two
courses’ I might have understood, but she didn’t.

My testosterone took the Spinal Chord Expressway to my binary male brain, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself intervening. My in-laws were in my home town, so I felt protective, but in a trice the Snapper applied her charm and a lifetime of restaurant management experience to the situation, explaining to the waitress that her mother would have this dish on the á la carte menu, without that but with this, so that when it turned up, exactly as it appeared on the Early Bird menu, it was exactly what her mother wanted.

As I sit here and write this, I still cannot for the life of male logic understand why wanting to eat less disqualified my mother-in-law from the €25 euro Early Bird menu. Had she been a difficult customer, asking to insert something that wasn’t on the set menu into it, I would have understood, but she didn’t. She simply wanted two courses of a three course menu, but was told that she couldn’t have it, which also meant that she had to order dessert separately from the group, and generally might have felt unnecessarily marginalised, had she not been such a good sport.

By the time her rhubarb crumble arrived we three had already finished our Early Bird desserts (no manners, some people!) so her husband took a spoon to help himself to a taste. When the waitress returned she noticed the two spoons on her plate and joked about how my mother-in-law must have been using one spoon to eat with and the other, to fend off us dessert vultures. Then she went and spoiled it all by spouting well-worn nonsense about how she could manage that, because as a woman, she could multi-task.

Sitting there I felt for the umpteenth time aware that even though I have dangly bits where girls have not, I am very able to multi-task. Not for the first time this colyoom stands up for men, because we have to be subjected to sexist ridicule as a matter of course, each and every day.

Yes, I know it’s a patriarchal society, and that if women ruled the world we’d have no nuclear weapons, but that is not my personal fault. I’m a socially-aware sensitive New Man who is oh-so very tired of hearing my gender freely and openly slagged off on TV, radio, in print and in real life.

Quite possibly women are better multi-taskers that men, but that doesn’t mean that all men are unable to multitask, any more than it means all women are unable to comprehend the workings of the internal combustion engine, or that all gay men are great dancers, or lesbians wear pork pie hats.

It’s a nonsensical sexist assumption, but for some reason women are allowed to publicly proffer those, while we verbally-battered men are way too scared to say anything of the sort.

The third time I felt fantastically male last night was wholly down to me being a clumsy oaf. Our table in the restaurant was tucked into the eave of the attic space, and as I slid around to settle into my seat, I brushed a candle lantern that was hanging in the window, spilling candle wax down my jacket, over my jeans and onto the floor.

In retrospect I could have been a complete pain and complained that a restaurant having something loaded with hot wax swinging at head height from the ceiling might not be a very good idea, blah blah blah, Health and Safety, blah blah blah, but I didn’t. Nevertheless I was admonished by my wife and felt pretty badly myself about the mess on the floor.

Later, as I returned from the restaurant loo, I thought it would be polite to apologise to our waitress about the mess, so I went over to her and said sorry, at which she unleashed a good-natured yet lengthy and preachy lecture about how I must stay behind and clean up the mess; how my wife would have a nightmare ironing the wax out of my clothes; my poor wife this and my poor wife that.

Of course it was my fault I knocked into the lantern, but beyond that, it was not my fault that it was hung so low, right by the table, and it was certainly not my fault that in this waitresses’ eyes I had caused all sorts of problems for my wife.

I decided to let her spill her venom, resisting the strong temptation to point out that actually, it was my jacket and my jeans that had been damaged, and that I (and therefore she and her restaurant as a whole) was pretty lucky I hadn’t been burned by hot wax hitting my neck or other bare-fleshy parts.

God forbid I had said something along the lines of ‘ow the little woman was goin’ to ‘ave an ‘eck of a job gettin’ that crap off've me clothes.

But I didn’t. She was the one making sexist assumptions, not me.

Mea Culpa- the emails arrived!

2011-04-10T11:33:00.002Z

A qualified apology to Eudora - the emails that Eudora decided might cause me offense (see post below) appeared in my Inbox this morning. Sitting beside them were a few warning red chilli peppers, but after several days spent wanderin' the protocol prairies of internet and corporate ethics (oxymoron?), they made it through and free speech lives another day.

I will never appreciate being preached at by my own software, either with chilli peppers, highlighted texts or erroneous warning messages. The exercise is flawed anyway, as I don't suppose the world will benefit from baccy-chewin' bigots and rocking chair racists being told by their own computers that using the word 'fag' might cause offense. They want to use it because it will cause offense.

Anyway, I jumped to conclusions and was only partially right, which is a cowardly way of saying I was wrong. Time for software manufacturers to update their international abusive term databases and more to the point, time for this colyoom to move on!

I’m being censored by my own email!

2011-04-08T14:43:00.000Z

I’ve always used Eudora Light for my email. It’s a freebie no-frills application that does exactly what I want, in a lean no pop-ups or ads type of way. Every now and then a dialogue box appears after its launch, asking if I want to upgrade and register for the full Eudora shebang. I click Not Yet and life goes on.

Well, it did, until a week ago, when I was multi-tasking as only a man can, and accidentally clicked on the Ohh Yes Please Let Me Enjoy All Those Features button.

Poopers. What happens now? Will I have to pay? Will there be all sorts of clunky features I neither want nor need?

But no, it’s fine. There are no ads, but then again I haven’t registered with them yet. I write an email to my man JB about how my life is pootling along, about struggles giving up fags, and when I go to send it I’m presented with a dialogue box on screen:

“Your message may cause offense. Your message to ‘person’ regarding ‘subject’ has language highly likely to be found offensive.”

The little blue button on my screen asks me if I want to Send Anyway?, so I click on it, but the message doesn’t go. Instead it sits in my Outbox, with a hefty censorial criss-cross in its margin, and three red chilli pepper icons stuck beside it.

Taking a glance up my Outbox, I spotted a few other emails with one and two red chilli pepper icons attached, all sent since I’d left the freedom of Eudora Light. Opening these peppered emails, I find other mentions of ‘fags’, as there would very likely be, in England and Ireland, if you’re talking about cigarettes.

Outrage starts to build within me. I’m a writer and I need the freedom to send emails containing whatever text necessary. More to the point, I am a human being who does not want, need or expect to be judged by his email application. Had I been spreading vile racist abuse or sexist vitriol I might have felt different, but probably not, because there’s this thing called Freedom of Speech.

From that outrage fresh anger grows, at the sad inaccuracy of this misplaced censorship. If you're going to offer a truly international product, make sure your software is sufficiently sophisticated.

Then I wonder: if Eudora won’t let me use ‘fag’ because of the way the word is used in America, will it let me use words that will actually cause offense in Europe? I send an email to myself with the single word ‘poof’ in it, and it goes without any warning. I send myself emails with the words ‘queer’, bender’ and ‘gay’, and they all go too. Then I try one with ‘fuck’ and it won’t go. Apparently, sending myself that email is highly likely to be found offensive - by me.

My blood runs cold. Get me out of big Eudora and do it now. There are times when I really need to send pieces that have swear words and curses in them, because I’m a freelance writer living in Ireland, where the Fs and C’s flow as freely as the craic. It’s just Ireland’s way of adopting English, with all the scrungy cocktails of its Anglo-Saxon and Latin glories intact.

Nobody here will be offended by the use of the word ‘fag’ for ‘cigarette’. Yet I am offended. I am deeply offended and affronted. By simply clicking on the wrong button, my freedom of speech has been curtailed.

I’m sending a copy of this to the folks at Eudora, who will hopefully reply with an explanation of how I can simply change my settings and stop this happening. If however they say this is the way it has to be, I’m out of Eudora faster than peppered fag.

Everything a writer does - except writing!

2011-04-04T09:43:00.001Z

Back from a night in the countryside last week, I sat at this computer fully intending to do some work, but first made the mistake of checking my email.

The first message came from my Israeli friend and writing teacher, who wants me to do some research for her novel. I try to explain that I don't know any better than she does who her character might be hanging out with in London in 2004, because at that time I was living in a field by a river in Co. Mayo, writing about birds and donkeys for the Irish Examiner. I could not have had my finger further from the urban pulse, but I agree to help, because she is my teacher, my friend and in some bizarre way it's an honour to help out; a mitzvah, noch.

Another email awaits in my inbox, from a lifetime friend in London who has just started a blog which is feeling lost and unvisited. 'What should he do to encourage traffic?' he asks, so I try to concentrate on reading his material, while casting my eye to my mobile phone, which has just peeped after receiving a text.

Another friend, this one in Galway, has written some splendid poems over the years, and now he's texting me to ask if I would like to proof-read them when I have the time. I told him weeks ago that I'd love to, it'd be a privilege, but now I’m not sure when I can get round to it. Ah well, any time, really.

Another email awaits, this time from Ryan who works for Lonely Planet guide books. Two years ago he contacted me after finding this colyoom online, to say he was coming to Galway to work on the new Ireland edition. We had a great day out, divilment and debauchery aplenty while I showed him around Galway, and then I basked in the glow of all the newspaper reports that said Galway had received such good reviews in the new Lonely Planet Ireland book.

'All my own work!' I thought quietly to myself.

Sometimes I do just think quietly to myself. Hard to believe, but I’m not all blog and bluster.

Anyway, Ryan's email is letting me know he’s coming back to town and wants to hook up and see what's changed in Galway. I tell him I'll get back to him after sorting out my teacher's novel, my mate's blog, my friend's poems and - hang on, wasn't I meant to be doing some writing of my own?

I adore being a scribbler, and love helping others, but sometimes it becomes difficult to know when to draw the line. Ah Pooey McShooey, to be honest, there are no lines. There’s just humanity, and the old ‘what goes around comes around’ maxim. I am lucky that people come to me for advice, and know that when I need help, there will be somebody there for me.

Now, I think I’ll do some work. Ah sure well, first I need to pop into town to get some A4 white envelopes, and then...maybe tea and buns at me old mate Dalooney's...

..in which your colyoomist seeks to self-improve, but ends up lost between doing a Masters in Writing and nothing at all!

2011-03-27T22:09:00.001Z

For decades I’ve earned my living through a mix of freelance writing and Youth Work, but these days in beautiful bonkers bankrupt Ireland, it’s tough finding a job. Even as a Youth Worker with years of experience working with young Travellers, I can no longer get a job interview without a relevant FETAC 5 qualification.

It’s frustrating knowing that I’d be at least known and often trusted in most Traveller kitchens in east Galway City, yet the job’s going to someone who’s probably never spoken with a Traveller. But self-pity doesn’t pay the rent. I’ve still a couple of intact brain cells, so if it’s qualifications I need, then qualifications I’ll get.

A friend gave me the name and number of the Course Administrator on a distant learning degree in Community Development, who just happened to follow my newspaper column. After nearly 20 years in the West of Ireland I know how it’s done, so I met yer man, who was thoroughly delightful. He told me that someone with my writing experience could drop several modules. That should have been good news, but I’d left school just turned 17 in 1977, had no further academic education, and hadn’t a clue what a module was.

His course had already begun, so the sooner I started the better. I’d be expected to attend a Saturday workshop once a month in a neighbouring town, while most of the work would be done online.

So with gusto I enter once more the arcane world of essay writing, and I’m half-way through my second module when I suddenly realise that I don’t know exactly what qualification I’m working towards, nor what the course will cost.

The Administrator tells me I’m doing a HETAC 6, which overlaps with FETAC 6. Two years of this part-time course will be like the first year at university, and all being well, fifteen months after that I could have a degree. How will I pay for the course? He suggests I approach FAS about funding.

At Galway’s Island House, FAS officer Tom gives me a form to fill out, promising to see whether I qualify for funding. He’s a busy man and truth be told, I don’t expect to hear from him, so I’m rather impressed when a few days later he telephones me.

He’s very sorry, but it’s not good news. There’s a slight problem with the fact that I’ve already started the course, but the real problem is that FAS only provides funding for FETAC not HETAC courses. I point out that a HETAC 6 is only a FETAC 6 in disguise. He apologises again, suggesting I speak to Pat down there above the Dole Office. Pat will be able to point me in the right direction.

Oh and by the way, I should check out qualifax.ie for help and advice.

Thanking Tom, I head off to Pat down there above the Dole Office, but Pat isn’t available, so I have an interview with Donal, who says he’s sorry, but there’s not much he can do either. If I want to investigate funding for Third Level courses, he says I’d be better off visiting the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), or the Vocational Education Committee (VEC). Donal suggests that as I’ve never had a grant before, I must be due something, and I meet all the criteria for the Back To Education Allowance (the BACTA, as it’s known).

Oh and by the way, I should check out studentfinance.ie for help.

In the meantime the course I’m doing turns out to be quite different from what I expected. The online element is minimal. Everyone lives in the town. I’m the only student who comes all the way from Galway. All the people involved are absolutely splendid, but nothing feels distant about it. On my third month I’m required to attend 4 times in 5 weeks, which costs a lot in petrol, not to mention time. Given Galway City’s rush hour traffic problems, making it to a 6pm lecture on a Wednesday evening means leaving home several years earlier.

Anyway, without funding I’m not able to pay for the course it, so I quit, which hurts. Ouch. I am not a quitter. My essays are in and now I’ll never know. All that work gone to pooey. That hurts. But I’m still determined to get to a qualification. Sitting back and accepting that I can’t get a job interview just isn’t my style.

Donal of the Dole had previously given me the names of the women who run the Community Development Programme at the university. He told me that I was just the sort of person they were looking for on this programme, because I already had experience in the field. This was a course specially geared to people like me.

Oh and by the way, I should check out nuig.ie for help and advice.

How good it sounded at last to be told that I actually met criteria. Thanking Donal profusely I left with a spring in my old boots. There was hope yet. Who knew, maybe I’d end up with a proper degree, attending a real university, just like a normal person.

Eagerly the next morning I call NUIG, to be greeted by a machine.

“Please state the name or extension number of the person or department you wish to speak to.”

Oh lord no. Please can’t I have a human being?

“Community Development Programme.” I enunciate slowly, clearly and calmly.

“Sorry. Please state the name or extension number of the person or department you wish to speak to.”

Taking a deep breath, I try again.

“Community Development Programme.” I say slowly, but not quite so calmly.

“Sorry. Please state the name or extension number of the person or department you wish to speak to.”

“Community Development fucking Programme.” I scream down the phone like a deranged rabid beast.

“Thank you. Putting you through to Kevin Lynch.”

I hang up. Whoever Kevin Lynch may be, he doesn’t need me in his life right now.

Heroically, I give it one more shot.

“Please state the name or extension number of the person or department you wish to speak to.”

“Community Development Programme.” I enunciate slowly, clearly and as calmly as a nutter is able.

“Thank you. Putting you through to the Spanish Department.”

INTERMISSION

...this is a long sorry painful tale, so feel free to take some time to take a break, have a drink, live your life a little...

Scrabbling through notes scrawled during Dole interviews, I find a name and number at NUIG that by-passes the demonic central voicemail.

Instead I’m now in somebody called Fiona’s voicemail. Leaving my details, I explain that I want to find out about the Community Development programme. Fiona replies by email, suggesting I contact Trish, the Mature Students Officer.

So I send Trish an email and she replies to tell me yes, while I would have been eligible to attend the Community Development programme, and most likely receive both a grant and funding, I’d missed the deadline for courses starting in September 2011 by one week.

7 measly days? I ask if there is any chance of a little flexibility, seeing as how I’d wasted time being shown down wrong tracks, been given poor advice, so please don’t exclude me now, just because I’m a week late.

Trish is really sympathetic and wants to help, but there’s no hope of a course in 2011. However, she makes a surprising suggestion.

‘Perhaps you should speak with the Postgraduate section of the University to see if you could do a Masters in Writing. Sometimes, if an individual has a portfolio and much experience in the area they wish to study, they would consider them for a Masters and not require an Undergraduate degree. Perhaps set up an appointment with the director of the course to see if this is possible.’

All I want is a simple FETAC qualification to help me get job interviews for Youth Work, but after a trail of minor travesties, I’m now looking at the possibility of doing a Masters in Writing, my other professional field. How bad would it be to have a Masters after one year, without having to do a degree? Unsure whether I was influenced by vanity or my need for qualifications, I wrote an email to the Professor of the Masters in Writing.

He wrote back to say that I was not too late and that I sounded ‘like an excellent candidate’ for the exceptional admission onto the Masters without a BA. He explained that I had to register for Postgraduate Applications at pac.ie, make a personal statement and give a writing sample of not more than 10 pages, and then, if I was admitted on a ‘provisional basis’, I’d need to register for an MA Qualifier, which entailed providing a paper of 5,000 words before August 1st.

After registering online, I dared to entertain thoughts that my miserable quest to gain qualifications might be about succeed. Back I went to Donal of the Dole, to find out if I’d qualify for funding. Hadn’t he told me that I was eligible for the BACTA? Indeed he had, but as he now explained patiently, watching my face redden and my eyes swell with exhausted tears, there was no provision for BACTA on a Masters course.

At this stage, unashamedly, I pleaded with him. I had never had a grant or funding or done any kind of Third Level Education. I was applying for the 1 year course as an ‘exceptional’ student, as a writer with a lifetime portfolio, and if there was ever a time for an ‘exception’ surely it was now, in my favour.

He sighed and shook his head, entering into a lengthy explanation as to how I might be able to retain some benefits if I signed off and became wholly dependent on my wife, even though I wouldn’t be making pension contributions or even exist financially in the eyes of the system for the period of the course, depending on whether her circumstances changed...

My spirits sank below the earth’s crust, but Donal suggested that my journey might not yet be over. He told me I needed find out if the fees for the course were covered under VEC or Local Authority Grant, and if so, by how much? If neither of those enquiries proved fruitful, there was a chance that some philanthropic old student might have left a bursary for the course, to support students who didn’t fit into the holes.

Square peg? I’d sand myself down. Inspired by Donal of the Dole’s stoic persistence, I refused to give up.

So I sent an email to the course administrator at NUIG who told me that unfortunately there was no bursary availiable for the course, advising me to send an email to the Fees Office. They emailed explaining that fees could be funded up to €6270, which was excellent news as I’d discovered online that the total fees for the course came to €6,015. Once again I dared to feel that the force might at last be with me. Ignoring the fact that without BACTA I’d have no income whilst doing the course, I followed the trail of funding like a dog follows a bitch on heat: because it felt good and offered hope.

Off I went, to visit the offices of the VEC at Island House, where many moons ago this journey began with a visit to FAS. An extremely helpful VEC woman shared much time and knowledge, telling me that actually I needed to go to Galway County Council to apply for funding, while warning me that should I receive funding for a Masters, in the future I’d never qualify for funding for a degree or any other lesser qualification. Handy to know, given that all I really wanted was a FETAC 5 that gave me access to job interviews.

Apparently the forms for funding application didn’t come out until May, but I needed to be very on the case, as they already had a backlog. I asked how on earth they could have a backlog before the application forms came out, but she sideswiped that one, insisting I needed to apply on the day that the forms were released.

She gave me a checklist of things that I’d need to process my application. Along with the birth cert, passport and proof of residence, I’d need an Official College offer; a course acceptance schedule FA2 or PLC/FA1; a Revenue PAYE P21 and P60 or P45 for each employment on the P21; a statement from the Social Welfare, and proof of independent residence, just in case I was still living with Mammy at the age of 50.

Although my eyes followed her fingers running down the checklist, my brain had stalled at the 'Official College Offer’. The course Professor had said that I would only be on a provisional offer until August, or had I got that wrong? The VEC woman insisted that I had to have a firm offer before I filled out the forms in May.

My head started to swim. I couldn’t get BACTA but might be able to find a penny or two if I become entirely dependent on my wife’s financial circumstances. I might get funding but only if I had an offer of a firm place but I couldn’t get an offer of a firm place because I was an exceptional candidate. I couldn’t get financial support because I was doing a Masters even though I’d never done a BA, but all I really wanted in the first place was a FETAC 5.

The VEC woman said that if all I wanted was a FETAC 5, I should go along to the Open Day at the GTI college on Father Griffin Road. So I did, and the moment I entered the building, the woman at reception told me that for the course I wanted, I should really go to the offices of Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme (VTOS) on Merchants Road.

I’d been to FAS, the HSE, the GCP, the GTI and the VEC. I’d called NUIG, the CAC, the GCC and registered at pac.ie. I’d gone through more capital letters than the most ambitious of academics could ever hope to sport after their name. My best efforts to self-improve, to gain a simple qualification, were proving useless, and it made me wonder.

How on earth might somebody who didn’t have the energy, drive and motivation that has powered me through 20 years of a freelance writing career fare on this journey?

Many of you reading this are doubtless tutting and shaking your heads, wondering how I made such hard work of an essentially simple process. You lucky winners have an instinctive and symbiotic empathy with the system, while many of us who are not the least bit stupid are unable to deal with the vagaries of welfare, academia and bureaucracy. We just bounce off the system like oil from water. It’s a labyrinthine nightmare. We need a course on how to apply for a course.

Hang on, that’s an idea.....

Malcolm X’s maxim used to overthrow African national leader!

2011-03-23T10:50:00.001Z

Just like Donald Rumsfeld, there are some things I know I know and some things I don’t know that I know. I know that war is complex, and that when a dictator talks about showing his own people ‘no mercy’ there may well be a bloodbath.

So intervention in Libya might have been justified to save the lives of the rebels in Benghazi, but all last week I was wondering about what I didn’t know: why were Cameron and Sarkozy so very eager to impose a ‘No Fly Zone’?

I’d listened to the military experts and read column yards of military advice, and everyone in helmets said the same thing: that a ‘No Fly Zone’ was fairly pointless, because Gaddafi was moving his troops around on the ground, and even if and when he used helicopters for troop movements, a ‘No Fly Zone’ doesn’t actually allow you to shoot them down.

But as soon as I heard the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ being used in the new UN resolution, all became clear. They had never wanted a ‘No Fly Zone’. All they wanted was the idea of one, so that they could get a U.N. resolution passed, which allowed them to do whatever they wanted ‘legally’.

So now they’ve waded in with all the powerful speed, shocking ferocity and bloodlust that we have see so many times before. They have no idea what their endgame is because they never bother to think that far ahead. They didn’t finish in Afghanistan before they started in Iraq, and they didn’t finish there before they started in Libya. This colyoom suggests Yemen might well be next ...

My favourite bit of the war so far? That fabulous Pubic Relations exercise where the Royal Air Force said that they’d aborted a Tornado bombing mission over Libya when they’d received intelligence that there might be heavy civilian casualites. Oh my, how caring and compassionate the allied forces are. Why, I love them so much I could cuddle a cruise missile.