DON’T BELIEVE THE FAKE DV AWARDS 2017!

Thanks as always to the inestimable Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

Dwaaarlings, luvvies, leddeeez an’ gennellmen! Good evening good morning good afternoon! Welcome, bienvenue and fáilte to the Fake DV Awards 2017!
 
As the world trembles under an orange shadow, up has become down and truth a distant memory, so let’s get the show under way with the Bill Clinton I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Woman DV for being guilty as hell and not giving a damn, which this year goes to the despicable self-interested scum known as Republican politicians in Washington DC.
 
These people could, in effect, save the world, but rather than resist the Orange, they hung back in their own dark shadows, waiting until they could pass a tax law that secures their place in the dollar drenched edge of the desert that is the American economy. In the process they added trillions to the US national debt and opened up the Arctic for drilling.
 
Shame on them, and talking of shame, The Is That Steve Bannon In Your Pocket Or Is It Just Megadata? DV for selling your soul for power goes to Theresa May, who followed a disastrous UK general elections with a vile power-grab deal with the DUP. Involving over a billion quid, its success relies wholly on the ignorance of the English public to all matters Irish.
 
Moving to the Middle East and the Charlie Haughey Jeeze Lads Is That What Guns Look Like? DV goes to the security guards at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport.
 
Everyone who flies out of Israel is interviewed person to person in the terminal by a security expert. If you pass that they don’t care what you take on the plane.
 
As I started to remove my jacket before going through the X-Ray machines, the security guy yelled over:


“Hey! You can leave all your clothes on, and your shoes! You can bring your water as well. We are looking for guns, bullets and bombs, not belts, boots and bottles!”
 
Moving to Europe now, and the Don’t Go Upsetting Those Nice Folk At Apple About Tax Avoidance DV for allowing power to take over without worrying your tiny head about boring stuff like justice goes to the EU, who sat back and watched the government of a member state forcibly close down a free election called by a devolved government. 

We sat and watched the scenes in Catalunya agape, as ballot boxes were destroyed and politicians arrested for participating in a democratic process.
 
Made you proud to call yourself European, didn’t it?
No? 

Well maybe Ireland should call Article 50 too, and seek their own Canadian Model, which seamlessly leads us into the Ronnie Reagan Loves Maggie Thatcher DV for politicians getting all luvvy duvvy in public, which this year is awarded to the yukky social media bromance between Leo Varadkar and Justin Trudeau.
 
As the world burned, these two young leaders pontificated about the colour of their socks on Twitter.
 
Pass me that fiddle, Nero.
 
Before we head to Ireland for local and national awards, we have the honour of offering a DV Lifetime Fellowship to the Orange himself.
 
In one short year he has managed to unify Christians and Muslims in disgust. Europe has never been more united against anything. In my native country, both Corbyn and May have expressed in public their revulsion at his methods. 

Outside of the US Rust Belt and Brexiteers’ backsides, we all stand together, as one species, rejecting his malevolence.
 
Talking of standing together, police ranks have had a great year. A lone Garda nearly bought down the government.
 
Not sure Sgt. Maurice McCabe would see it like that, but his bravery has exposed the depth of corruption and degradation at the rotten core of the Irish Establishment.
 
Now for some metaphysical musings on numbers: their appearance and disappearance. The 2017 Where Exactly Are These Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Tony? DV for stretching the truth beyond bounds of reason goes to the Garda Siochana. 

After enquiries into breath test numbers, a Garda spokesperson revealed that in some cases the Gardai were “Making up the test numbers,” and in other cases merely “exaggerating the numbers.”
 
And the difference between those would be…?
 
Would that be two offences or just the one, yer honour?
 
Finally we come to the streets and fields of Galway city and county, where 2017 has seen famous victories. This year’s Jack Charlton DV for Pure Plastic Paddy behaviour is awarded to your colyoomist.
 
Even though I cannot lay claim to the pride that true Galwegians feel, I must confess that tears tumbled, as I watched the families, the little girls and mums waving flags and literally jumping for joy, as they celebrated Galway's victory in the All-Ireland.
 
Then there came the massive win for Liam Mellows. Apologies to colyoomistas in Gort, but for weeks there was a buzz around Galway city that made life joyful.
 
Last but not least comes the Oh Are There Really Five Exits On That Roundabout? DV for total local incompetence,  goes to Galway council’s plan to charge for Sunday parking. 

They sent workers out to change hundreds of signs and recalibrate payment machines around the city ... and then they changed their minds and sent workers out to put tape over the bottom of the new signs ... and then they decided that not all of them should change … and right now I have no idea what the situation is, and I’m pretty damn sure the council don’t either.
 
Now that your minds are lost to bewilderment, I leave you perfectly prepared for life in 2018. Happy New Year!

©Charlie Adley
17.12.2017.

YOU DON'T GIVE A DOG - YOU BUY A DOG A HOME!

Sticks! More sticks!

“There’s a parcel for you in the newsroom. Will I send it to you?”

“No, thanks, I’m in town on Monday. I’ll pick it up.”
 
Hmmm, wonder what that is. Over the decades I’ve been sent many things by readers: some delightful, others disgusting.
 
Possibly a fair reflection of these colyooms.
 
It’s a tiny little present, perfectly wrapped with scarlet paper and a bow, which reveals a yellow box, inside which lies a tea bag.
 
Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to send me a tea bag.
 
Perhaps they find my blather boring, and have contrived to liven up Double Vision with a dose of magic mushrooms.
 
Ah, there, a yellow tag at the end of the attached string, with #PawsForThought printed in black.
 
Now I know what we’re dealing with. This is the Dog’s Trust campaign.
 
What is it with dog’s charities and creative marketing? This time last year I received another cute parcel, inside which was a slip of paper printed #stopkeepingmum, a campaign to counteract the evils of puppy farms.
 
This colyoom weekly receives umpteen requests to write about this, that and the other. Press release emails arrive advertising Cubist face painting festivals in Waterford and Organic Beetle Weaving Workshops in Carrick on Shannon.
 
Far away and less than thrilling, they are mostly left ignored, but just as I was this time last year, I’m quietly impressed with the dog charity’s minimalist tactics.
 
Instead of shouting their cause in bold print, they created a puzzle that I can choose to look into further.
 

 

 I love life!

Thing is, they’re preaching to the converted.
 
Four years ago the Snapper and I adopted a Labrador/Collie cross (most people call them ‘Labrollies’ but I’m quite a fan of Colliador’) called Lady, from the most excellent folk at madra.ie
 
We didn’t buy her, because you cannot buy a dog.  
You cannot give a dog to somebody else.  
What you can do is buy a dog a home, for the entirety of its life.
 
If you insist on buying a puppy from a private breeder, ask to see its mother first, to make sure she’s not being abused as a breeding machine.
 
Better still, go to Madra or the Dog’s Trust and adopt a rescue dog. You can have a puppy if you want one, but check out the wide selection of more mature dogs that might better suit your home and lifestyle.
 
Take your time.
Meet the dog, take it for a walk, and then try a home visit.
 
Of course little could equal the moment of explosive joy when your kiddy is given a puppy under the crimble tree, but a dog’s batteries don’t run out in two weeks.
 

 

First day in her new home...

If all this sounds a bit serious, I make no apologies. Guaranteed to outlast that brief gift-giving bliss on Christmas morning, the depth of love and trust that will develop between you and your dog as the years go by is unique and profound.
 
Every dog has its own quirks. As Marina at Madra said to us:
“There’s a reason why they're here!”
 
We’ll never know what happened during Lady’s first two and half years. Evidently she was trained to be an angel at home, but as soon as she steps outside - especially after dark - she becomes a very different beast.
 
We’ve livestock living around us here, so every single time she needs a peeper or a pooper, be it wind, rain or hail, we have to take her round the garden on the lead. 

We walk her every single day, whatever the weather, and in turn she rewards us inside by being, as the Snapper is wont to say, the best dog in the world.
 
She does not chew anything. She does not go for bins, no matter if they stink of meaty bones. I left a plate of chocolate biscuits on the coffee table, went to the loo and suddenly realised Lady was lying beside that table.
 
Yikes! That much chocolate could do her serious damage!
 
Not a nibble.
Barely a poochie head raised.

 "You are under my spell..."

The only vaguely naughty thing Lady’s ever done inside the house happened, aptly, on Christmas Day.
 
’Tis my custom to open presents at midday, drinking fizz and eating hot sausage rolls, to the sound of the Kings College Choir singing carols. 

During Lady’s first Christmas with us she became rather carried away by the shouty wrapping paper melée, and took a notion to pick a sausage roll off the plate with her mouth, walking over to her bed with the cheekiest of expressions on her face.
 
She knew.
 
The Snapper took it out of her mouth without a struggle, and that’s it, the worst she’s ever been inside. There have been rare dodgy tums and clear-ups off the kitchen floor in the morning, but never will there be a better inside dog.
 
Outside she is learning, improving and so are we. Imagine adopting a teenager from a care home: that was our challenge.
 
Having a dog is a huge commitment but worth every second of effort. The best present you can give this Christmas is a dog a home for life.
 
Hate to buck the trend, but I’m actually looking forward to Christmas. As blow-ins living away from our families back in England, the Snapper and I pass quiet Christmases in Ireland.
 
For two days the gate will remain closed. The world will seek nothing from me, save a feast, which I will gladly deliver.
 
All the ‘to do’ lists are filed away; jobs in progress put on hold.

The fire’s lit and the fridge is heaving.
 
A gentle peaceful Christmas, the very same that I wish for all of you, my loyal colyoomistas.
 
(When you adopt from a charity your dog comes neutered, vaccinated and microchipped.  To find out how to adopt a dog, go to dogstrust.ie and madra.ie)



13.12.2017.
©Charlie Adley

Why do I love the people of the West of Ireland?

Thanks to wherethefisjess.com/

Welcome aboard Adley Airways flight 202 from Londoner to Chilled Out Scribbler. We’ll be departing from Terminal Stress and today’s flight time to our arrival at Not Very International Airport will be just over an hour.
 

Every time I return to the West of Ireland I appreciate the feeling of being home. I spent decades wandering around, looking for somewhere I belonged in and to, so the gratitude I feel for having found my home echoes each time I come back.
 

I do a lot of coming and going, because my family and many life-long friends live in England. Mind you, for the past few years I’ve barely seen my mates, as I go over to hang out with my Octogenarian mum, whose energy puts me to shame.
 

My joy at returning to the West in no way reflects poorly on my love for those in London. I’m not pleased to get away from them, but I am delighted to revert to the man I become when in Connacht.
 

On a late Summer’s evening a lifetime ago, I climbed into my car at Knock Airport to drive to my home, which was then in Killala. Winding down my window I punched the air outside, compressing a powerful cocktail of joy and relief into the sound: 

"Yessssssssssssss!"
 

I’ll never experience the power of having lived your entire life in one place, as so many do in rural Ireland. To have that blood connection with the same land for centuries must create a profound feeling, but I too have a wonderful perspective: I found my home.
 

Like you, I feel a strong connection to my birthplace, but I live here, not there, and see this place and its people through the eyes of a stranger, a blow-in, and I always will.
 

I am with ye, but I am not of ye.
 

Amen. cof cof. Pass the mustard.
 

25 years on I still can’t wait to board this Aer Lingus flight to Shannon, but it’s delayed due to bad weather.
 

Outside the sky is cloudless. 

The sun has been shining all day over the British Isles (it’s a geographical term, so don’t be getting yourselves all bolshy) and it’s only a 20 minute delay, but give us ‘Technical Difficulty’ or ‘Operational Disfunction’ on a day like this. 

Any old blatant lie will do, but not the weather. 

Not today.
 

Anyway, the plane’s outside, so all is good. Passing time is my number one talent. I can sit calmly and space out in silence for hours.
 

What I can’t do though is wait here beside this woman who’s come to sit next to me. She’s texting what appears to be three or four people at once. This I know only because her phone’s alert signal is that birdy tweet
 

DO-WEEE DO-WEEE DO-WEEE DO-WEEE

which she has set on cranium cracking volume levels. Two or three 

DO-WEEE DO-WEEE DO-WEEE DO-WEEEs 

arrive every ten seconds, as each person replies to whatever is so bloody important.
 

Why does she think it’s okay?
 

Rising to my feet and above such a minor irritant in the order of things, I see that boarding is starting. Yer man at the gate refuses to reply to my “Hello’, and when I thank him he says nothing back.
 

No eye contact.
Zilch.
 

Entering the plane I’m welcomed by two female Aer Lingus stewards with warm, calm, friendly smiles.
 

“Yer man back there could do with a bit of charm school !” I suggest, telling them about his performance.
 

“Is he wearing one of our uniforms?” she asks with pride, as she raises her fists to show what she’d do to him, if he turned out to be one of theirs.
She makes me smile.
 

The trip’s been great. I hung out with mum, saw my sister and one of my nieces, and had a meal with a great friend. Couldn’t ask for more, but three days in London gives me a granite neck and guts twisted this way and that. 

Ouch, and oh, it’s lovely to settle into my  my plane seat at last.
 

Looking at the Irish passengers as they file in, with their goofy teeth and gentle smiles, I wonder what it is about them that I find so comforting.
 

Is it something to do with they way they’ve suffered for so long?
Is it the poverty and bad weather, or is it in their genes?
 

Today it’s easy to feel kinship with the people of the West of Ireland, because I’ve just been in a country where the culture is driven by a desire to recreate what is believed to be a great past. 
 

After months of listening to the delusion, pomposity, ignorance and arrogance that English leaders offer Europe and Ireland, it’s naturally comforting to be among humble people, who know who they are; people who prefer to leave their past behind, rather than dream of it; people who do not punish others for being poor - well, unless they're asylum seekers or refugees.
 

Well nobody’s perfect.
 

The answer to my quandary comes quickly after arrival at Shannon Airport.
Off to the Gents, where I think I might need to sit down, but oh no, and yuk, and oh no again, every toilet is filthy.
 

Just a peeper then. 


No soap in any of the dispensers.
 

Oh come on, you're ‘avin’ a larf.  

This is an airport isn’t it?
 

Back in arrogant Heathrow, remote-controlled sensors supplied hot water and soap, while under-mirror blow-heaters dried your hands.
 

Filthy toilets and no soap.  

Is this why all these folk are happy?
 

In England they expect everything and are permanently disappointed. Here in the West of Ireland we have zero expectations most of the time, because that brings no disappointments
 

The woman at the baggage carousel spots my UK passport.
 

“Over for a visit, are you? You’ll be back home for Christmas, I suppose?”
 

“Home for Christmas? Yes!” I smile back at her. “I’m already here.”

Charlie Adley
07.12.2017.

WOULD LIFE BE LESS STRESSFUL IF WE FOUGHT LIONS?

In case you were wondering, I only squeezed another 24 hours out of my manic upswing, beyond the writing of last week’s colyoom.

As predicted, a comedown arrived, accompanied by a collapse of mood and energy, but  nothing too extreme; nothing a couple of solitary hours on a beach wouldn’t solve.
 
Off I head, back to my old stomping grounds. The cliffs are dark and defiant; the sand white, strewn with felled forests of diverse seaweeds.

I walk up to the distant headland, with the cold wet wind behind me, and sit on a rock. Then I choose another rock out there, at the water’s edge, and watch and marvel at how quickly the tide is pulling in.
 
This is my meditation, my mindfulness if you must: I just call it sitting on a rock.
 

Waves gradually encircle my staring rock, offering the illusion that it’s drifting out into the ocean. Once the water has risen enough to completely cover it I stand, stretch and realise I’m bloomin’ freezing.
 
Time to head to a nearby town for a cuppa and a toastie.
Into a pub I’ve visited for over 25 years, a place where sentimental memories abound, but today the lass behind the bar tells me she can't do a toasted sandwich ’til 12:30.
 
There’s a couple eating soup and brown bread to my left, and over there a fella is tucking into his Full Irish, so I ask her if she is serving food.
 
Sticking her chin up and out towards me, she charmlessly states
 
“Breakfast.”
 
At which point I put on my coat and leave, frosted with sadness.
 
Off down the road to another pub where far more locals are found: always a good sign. Loads of young smiley staff are whizzing around and when I thank her for bringing my tea she says
 
“You’re very welcome!”
 
Music to my English ears, which still struggle a little with the ubiquitous Irish server’s: “No problem.”


Unlike the Gents in the other place, where a feeble machine wafted warm sparrow farts onto my wet hands, here there’s a hand dryer that really drys hands.
 
Lovely staff, great food, and I’m feeling just a bit pleased to have broken with routine and found somewhere new, and then it hits me.
 
I’m a bit too pleased. 

How pathetic. 
How miserably sad and cowardly we have become. 

Yes, I know I’m writing about myself, but you too have rituals and habits that you’ve created to protect you from unknown threats.
 
Trouble is, there are very few significant unknown threats in our everyday lives. Today’s First World society offers us a pampered plush existence. The vast majority of you reading this will not go to bed hungry tonight.
 
You will not have ice on the inside of your windows in the morning. Your toilet will flush and your shower water will be hot. You will not go to bed fearful that someone you love will be taken in the night. If you become unwell you will be cared for. If you are poor, there is help available.
 
Yet everywhere you look, people are suffering from anxiety. Stressed out, exhausted, depressed, they are prescribed pills to calm them down, because even if the reasons for their fears are not justified, their fears are as real and frightening as finding a lion in your bedroom.
 
Does changing the pub in which I eat my toastie represent the extent of adventure in my life? If so, I need a lot more. We all need more, because our technology has outpaced our evolution.
 

When you suffer stress or panic attacks your system has been flooded with adrenaline, produced by your body’s ‘fight or flight’ mechanism.
 
Back in the days before Netflix and tea bags, when your ancestor was facing up to a wild animal that she was hoping would be her dinner, or another that wanted her to be its dinner, I don’t think she wrote a To Do list.
 
She didn’t ask Siri or Alexa what percentage chance she had of success. She didn’t google “How to kill a sabre toothed tiger.”
 
She acted. She either fought or fled, and her chances of success were massively heightened by the presence of adrenaline coursing through her veins.
 
Years ago I experienced a massive panic attack and let me tell you, whoof, those babies are as scary as life gets, and that’s kind of my point.
 
Is all this anxiety that’s destroying so many lives today the result of us leading cumfy wumfy existences, that rarely require life or death decisions?
 
Our bodies are still designed to deal with such extremes, yet instead of chasing a gazelle that you fancy roasting on a spit, or outwitting the snake that was sitting on your chest as you awoke, the most stressful part of your day comes while you’re watching tele, when that dialogue box appears on screen to tell you that you’re recording too many programmes and have to cancel one of them.
 
I’m not a medical professional, so if you are one, please refute my lay theory that if we had real encounters with dangerous things, we’d feel less stressed.
 
With eyes on the front of our faces, we are designed to be predators. We used to kill or be killed, and now we worry about where to eat toasties.
 
Well that’s a trifle unfair. We worry about money and rent, mortgages and bills. We worry about our childrens’ use of social media and whether we can afford to run two cars any more.
 
All these fears are substantial and real, but the amount of stress they create goes far beyond the worth of the problems they represent.
 
I’m pretty sure that if I was going face to face with a hungry lion, the last thing I’d do is have a panic attack.

©Charlie Adley
20.11.2017.

I HAVE TO LET RIP DURING MY MANIC UPSWING!

Listmania in action...

Good luck with reading this because I’m enjoying what I reckon is a minor manic upswing, after months of that low-level depression I’ve been scribbling about.
 
This manic upswing business is pretty amazing. A pumping living energy, it lifts my chest up to the sky, injects my body with energy and fills my brain with possibilities.
 
Truth is, I’m starting to think that maybe this one’s not so minor. It’s difficult to judge accurately when you’re trying to diagnose your own brain.
 
Usually sleep is my achilles heel. If I lose a few hours I’m nasty and useless, but recently I’ve been waking up at five in the morning, which for a 57 year-old man is not remarkable. 

All us middle aged blokes need our nocturnal micturations, but rather than going straight off to sleep again, I’m hitting the mattress with my mental surfboard riding the back of a 40 foot breaking wave. 

Thoughts cascade and crash around and I’m lying there, working on my breathing ...

... in like soooooooooooo … 
... out like ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh … 

and then the thoughts come back and I fail to swamp their insistence by reading, so then it’s off to the living room to do back stretches in the dark.
 
Point is, I’m sitting here after three nights of this nonsense and I feel great.
 
Most strange, or as we Londoners say: well odd. Experience has taught me to be a little suspicious, because as we learn from life, when it seems too good to be true, it usually is.
 
Maybe there’s a mood collapse out there, a crash awaiting me, but what a waste of an exceptional opportunity it would be to tinkle-tonkle around my mania on tiptoes.
 
There’s no point in living with the dark times unless you let rip in the upswing.
 
So this week’s colyoom comes to you from the Ministry of Multitasking’s Department of Stress Management. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, volume one of Multitasking for Men is called Me Hole - We Do It All The Time!
 
Whether manic, down or floating somewhere on the edge of acceptable normalcy, I multitask. Admittedly right now I've a lot more energy than I usually do, but I am actually writing this while sending emails, checking facts for other stories, watering the houseplants and dealing with clients and students.
 
All this fine madness coursing around my system needs to be controlled, harnessed for good, otherwise I might turn into a Bond villain.
 
Far more prosaically, instead I try to ease those unwelcome storms of tumbling To Dos at five in the morning by writing lists. 

A good list is great, but a bad list is a killer. If you create a list that will never be completed, it will only get you down. Best to start with a very small list of three things that you absolutely know you can do today.
 
Well, that’s what the therapists say anyway, but my reality is that I will find comfort only when I know I haven’t forgotten something, because right now, as it happens, there’s a heck of a lot going on, and none of it is trivial.
 
Given that I know this period, as everything else, will soon pass, I’m allowing myself a melange of lists, because the more I get to cross off, the better I feel.
 
It’d be bloody silly of me not to also acknowledge the potential for stress in all these lists, but I’ve got the mania right now, so I can achieve three, four, five times what I’m usually able to do.
 
I’ve got Macro lists and Mini lists, Today lists and Get In Touch With lists, shopping lists, and timeline lists, more usually referred to as calendars.
 
There’s two cars to service and mend, one to pass a test and one to sell. There’s courses to book and sell, colyooms to write and clients to keep happy. There’s the dog’s worming tablets and the citizenship applications.
 
Aye, that’s quite a major one. 
Watch this space.
 
And oh yes, the book. I’m writing a book. Not good to forget that, but in a way all the other minutiae of life are furniture on deck, and right now they’re all over the place, demanding attention, so I’ll give my responsibilities the time they deserve and then focus on the book.
 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not waiting for the perfect time. That does not exist. I’m working on the book all the time, either silently in my head or physically on paper, but life has to be lived alongside the writing process.
 
I have to play the adult, pay the bills, carry out my duties in a way that satisfies society’s need to tick boxes, so that for moments, long and short, I can live and work as if the book is all that matters.
 
If that sounds all melodramatic and rather head up the backside, I apologise: it’s not me, it’s my mania!
 
Attitudes in the West of Ireland don’t help minds like mine. My local friends unwittingly conspire to keep me beholden to lists. This Englishman suggests someting crazy like hey, let’s meet up next week, thereby scaring the bejazus out of my Galwegian friends, who tell me that I have to text them back on the day before whatever it is, to remind them.
 
Great. Now I’ve got something else I need to remember.
 
Another thing on another bloody list. Hmm, I’d better watch this pattern. In my eagerness to know for certain about something, I’m setting myself up to be a sucker.
 
Thankfully, my friends have to be people who can take a slagging. When I tell them to get their acts together, they laugh long and hard at me, as well they might.
 
They don’t need a reminder app: they’ve got a manic Charlie.

©Charlie Adley
14.11.2017

If home is where the heart is, mine is split in three!

Hoo yeah, that's a mighty fine pint.
 
I’m in the only pub for miles around. Outside the wind, rain and cloud are merged as one, while I sit staring at a head over an inch deep, floating on top of a settling pint.
 
By the time the black is separated from the creamy bubble-free head, this baby’s going to look, taste and feel like a true country pint.
 
What is it about Guinness and rural pubs? The country pint is alive, well and sitting on the bar in front of me, but for some reason it cannot be replicated in the city. All you need for good Guinness is a line that pours often throughout the day, and a cellar that’s not too cold.
 
Maybe that’s it: the cellars of urban bars are chilled to levels that might make penguins think twice, to satisfy the tastes of the young lager drinker. Or is it more about the average age of the rural drinker, the majority of whom still favour the stout over the continental cousins of the Harpic family?
 
Whatever the answer, I don’t care, as there's one right in front of me now.
 
I breathe out and give thanks.
 
It wonderful to be back in Mayo once more. As I watch the gold and brown liquids tumble and unfurl in the glass before my eyes, my thoughts wax lyrical in an unashamedly self-indulgent way.
 
Well really, if a man cannot indulge himself in his own head, as he sits after a long day’s work, staring at his pint, when can he?
 
Stretching this metaphor way beyond any reasonable bounds of poetry, I privately wonder whether, geographically speaking, my heart is not just like that pint.
 
If home is where the heart is, mine is split in three, you see.
 
I’m a Londoner, born and bred, and that honour will never leave me, but a couple of years ago I suffered a major crisis of identity as far as my roots go. 

Crossing London by tube from south east to north west, I became a little confused about where some of the new lines started and finished. Stopping on a platform, I stared at the Underground map, and then I crumpled inside.
 
Ohhh.
Oh please no, don’t let it be so.
 
The pain that accompanied the sudden realisation that I’m a stranger in the city of my birth was followed by a tidal wave of loss and confusion.
 
Only a tourist looks at the tube map. Londoners never look. Not only do they have that map imprinted on their DNA, they also have etched on their cerebella detailed knowledge of where to stand on the platform at each station, to both maximise their chances of a seat while minimising their walk to the exit at the other end.
 
Even with this new-found ignorance, a part of me will always be a Londoner. I love that wonderful and unique city, but these days it represents only the misty condensed frosting on the outside of my glass.
 
Galway on the other hand is the whole black body of my pint. City and County, my love for both is immense and inseparable, but the black is nothing without the white, and County Mayo is my head; my haven; my lucky county.
 

 

 No light compares to Co. Mayo light...

Driving over the bridge past Leenane I’m awestruck as I pass the Party mountains, towering vast, cracked and caramel, beyond Maumtrasna.
 
I’ll drive through Westport, but it’s nothing personal. A pretty town that many claim is today what Galway once was. I’ll beg to differ: Galway today is the only Galway I want, whatever it might have been. If I want hordes of tourists and stags and hens on the rampage, I’ll watch them from the safe familiarity of Quay Street, thanks all the same.
 
Newport however is a different proposition, with its jaw-dropping bridge and aura of calm married to craic. Many a good night I’ve enjoyed in this town, and more to come, doubtless, but today I have far to go, so I drive on.
 
Through Mulranny where I turn right, heading away from Achill and into the glorious wilderness of Ballycroy, where I drive underneath skies of a size that’d put Montana to shame.
 
The winter boglands glow Trump orange, their endless miles picked out by the mirrored tops of turloughs, rising from the depths to greet the dark season. On three sides the mountains rise, black, majestic and reassuringly permanent, while over the ocean the hills of Achill glow a magnificent gunmetal grey in the midday sunshine.
 
On another day I’d take the left turn at Bangor and head past Belmullet, to the astonishing views afforded around Pollatomish and Benwee Head, and then drive on a wild backroad all the way to Belderrig. For 20 minutes I’d see not one sign of human life, save for a few bags of turf. It’s an excursion of astonishing beauty.
 
Indeed, whenever I’ve done that particular drive in the past I’ve allowed myself a whole day, as I need to step out of the car and walk in the raw splendour of true wilderness.
 
Such a rare and precious experience to enjoy these days in western Europe, it’s essential to have the time to fully appreciate it.
 
Today I’m not aiming for barren lands, but the hearth of some fantastic friends who I met when I lived up in Killala.
 

 

With mile upon mile of footprint-free white sand beaches; ocean stacks and stone circles; ogham stones, a round tower and ruined abbeys aplenty; with people as pleased to see you as you are to greet them, Killala remains Ireland’s best kept secret: the jewel in the crown of my lucky county.
 
Whoops, lost myself in thought there.
That pint’s more than ready for the supping.
 
Ah, that’s bloomin’ lovely, as they don't say in Mayo.

©Charlie Adley
13.11.2017.

Congratulations to Nuala O'Halloran and Frank Fahy, two of the many talented students on my recent Craft of Writing Course, who read live on the Keith Finnegan Show today.
 
Wonderful writing, beautifully read: I'm exceptionally proud of them both, as I am of the entire class.
 
Have a listen at http://galwaybayfm.ie/podcast-keith-finnegan-show-wednesday-november-22nd-2017/

 (We start at 1hr:44, so slide the bar along to just before the end of the show.)

I'm not drunk - it was the compost!

The inestimable Harriet Leander...

As I head into the city I wonder if tonight’s the right night for my Organic Galway Ramble No. 3,256. I call them Organic not because my nights out are righteous or wholesome in any New Age way, but solely because I have no plans; made no arrangements.

I’m going to let Galway lead me.
That’s the way this city likes it.
 
PJ McDonagh’s represents so much more than my traditional starting point: it’s an essential component of any Galway ramble. 

However weak or pathetic you feel as you enter, you’ll be raring to go after the light crispy batter, piping hot flaky fresh white fish and incredible chips.
 
Dammit, even the vinegar tastes special as I eat staring at Biddy Ward’s pocket and poem once again.
 
Now that's better. 
All of a sudden your scribbler has a thirst.
 
Over two Jamies enjoyed outside the Quays, conversation with a pair of local characters leaps seamlessly from the Atlas Mountains to the moons of Jupiter. 

From there it’s a happy road of reminiscence to Apollo 8, to Borman, Lovell and Anders, the first men to see the dark side of the moon, whose mission filled my 8 year-old mind with inspiration and wonder.
 
Don't tend to like tigh Neactain at night, but I open the door to take a look and am presented by a sea of backs, a wave of noise and body heat. 

No thanks. 
Not got the energy for that. 
Tonight I want a gentle ramble, not a social scrum down
 
Now I wander down to the docks, to stare at the millpond that is the Atlantic on this rare calm November evening. Each step I take sends a shooting pain down my left leg. 

Sciatica on the way methinks, as I am an idiot who has yet again proved correct Einstein's definition of stupidity: do the same thing and expect a different result. 

This time last year I put my back out sorting the garden compost, and today I did it again.
 
As I said: idiot.
 
Standing right at the end of the docks, I’m caught between the artificial and natural worlds. To my right, under blinding electric spotlights, a pair of tyrannosauric JCBs are loading vast heaps of gravel onto a ship.

 

On my left, down in the darkness afforded by the sea wall, a heron stands in the middle of the stream. I watch him watching the water, waiting for his dinner to rise out of the inky shallows. Giant dumper trucks shovelling stone and muck and wild animals trying to hunt.
 
Just another night in Galway City.
 
Looking over to Nimmos pier I recall standing right at the end of it, dressed in my finery like a latterday French Lieutenant’s Woman, experiencing the Millennium New Year’s Eve celebrations. 

Fresh back from failure in America, I needed to be apart from it all and a part of it too. I heard the cheers from Eyre Square, and saw fireworks showering the skies above County Clare across the bay.
 

 

Dock One Seafood Bar has been several pubs, but for years has been drifting towards becoming a restaurant. It was Padraig's for dodgy dawns after mad bad craziness in Taylor's bar and losing the will to live in Le Graal. Then it was Sheridan’s, with fine dining upstairs, and as I take a look at the current menu outside, I mumble 

“B’god, that's fancy!”
 

Whilst in this neck of the waterside it’s impossible not to give thanks to Harriet Leander. Her tenure at Nimmos helped drag Galway’s gastronomy out of the Dark Ages of tinned sweetcorn and white pan, into the modern world of classic cuisine: fresh food, locally sourced, served with simple brilliance.  

The ingredients of Harriet’s Nimmos were a bar, two restaurants, 78 great characters, 43 eccentrics and a sprinkling of weirdos. Pure Galway in its transience, the place shone brightly for a few years, became a way of life to me, and then it was gone.
 
Thankfully that was after I'd been served a glass of red by a brunette, who then joined me on the other side of the bar. I cooked her dinner and later, Reader, I married her.
 
Walking into Dock One I’m greeted by the barman’s warm handshake and powerful smile. Aha! So this is where himself of the Quays disappeared to. A second ago I was wondering why, in a city crammed with great pubs, I'm going to a restaurant for a drink. 

Now I'm glad to be here, but the cool November air has hit my manparts, so I head to the Gents.
 
Unfortunately my gammy leg is forcing me to walk with that studied concentration usually associated with very pissed people trying to look sober. 

Unable to move in a straight line, I zig-zaggy stumble past a table of three ladies eating dinner, appearing to go out of my way to bang my hip against a stray barstool.
 
They laugh and mutter about it being early to be “that bad!”
 
I resist the temptation to explain I’m not that drunk, it’s the compost you see, deciding that would sound so obscure it might just confirm their suspicions.
 
Secretly I wish I was that drunk, as that'd make me a really cheap date.
 
Time to head off west now, where I feel less of a visitor. Even after a quarter century I'm still thrilled by the sight and feel of the River Corrib rushing under Wolfe Tone bridge, vibrating the walkway as it hastens Connemara's rain into the Atlantic.
 
Thank you universe, for providing such a calm and benign evening for me to hop and limp around my dry windless city.
 
Monroe's and the Crane bar beckon…
©Charlie Adley
04.11.2017.

I’M MORE GRANDPA SIMPSON THAN FINGER ON THE PULSE!

As I grow older my finger drifts further and further from the cultural pulse. As a teenager in London I needed to know what was hot and happening, and thanks to my much-missed mate Jon Lewin, I usually did.
 
Jon had a way of anticipating each big musical trend. In May 1976 he took me and my mate Martin to the Hope and Anchor, to see a band called The Jam. 

This was six months before the Sex Pistols released Anarchy in the UK, and we were hesitant as we’d heard mention of swastikas and goose steps connected to the nascent punk phenomenon.
 
Inside the pub there were only a few people milling around and we watched the three piece outfit deliver a tight set, but left unconvinced, wary of the Union Jack displayed behind the drum kit: it smacked of nationalism at a time and an age when we didn’t want to belong to anything, except each other.
 
A seminal moment in a young life, to be there, at punk’s beginning, and over the next few years I used to cut out the adverts in the NME for the Marquee Club on Wardour Street, because with them, from Monday to Thursday, you could get in for free. I saw The Clash; The Damned; The everybody starting with The.
 
Inbetween acts, two young lads called John Cooper Clarke and Lynton Kwesi Johnson walked on stage, armed with their biting poetry, recited to a backing track playing on a little Philips tape recorder.
 
We knew we had our fingers on the pulse, because those gigs were part of the pulse, and this we did, after school, as often as we could.
 
Tremendous gigs involving The Specials, Madness and The Selecter cemented my burgeoning love affair with reggae, so Jon Lewin took me to Dub Vendor Record Shack on Ladbroke Grove. 

On the way there he explained to me the new concept of dub, and how it was going to change music forever.
 
I had my doubts but should have known better.
 
During my late 20s I danced my ageing arse off to Madchester music, still went to Ramones gigs (unequivocally the best live act ever) but by the time I arrived in Galway in the early 1990s I was happily out of touch, which was just as well.
 
No disrespect to the local clubs and DJs. They played great tunes and we all danced like pure eedjits and had a right larf, but having been raised on the cutting edge of modern culture, the Atlantic edge of the Continental plate offered something … different.
 
Here at last I accepted that my finger had drifted far from the source, and ever since I have listened to what can only be described as ‘old’ music.
 
By way of replacement, I lived by the use of and attuned my ears to the language, taking a rather sad and pathetic joy in sharing with my colyoomistas what I anticipated would be the next trendy word in the local vernacular.
 
Way back in 2009 this colyoom sent out a warning flare, alerting you to the overuse of  ‘iconic.’ Sure enough, what was once a word that carried weight and power has been endlessly devoured and regurgitated by the 21st Century’s endless hunger for hyperbole. 

Now a spent force, ‘iconic’ is used to describe crisp flavours.
 
Three years ago Double Vision raised an alarm about certain experts’ overuse of the word ‘so’ at the opening of a sentence. 

Everybody does it now, as if it was as natural as taking a breath.
 
It is a rare sentence that needs to start with ‘so', so (!) I stand back, pretending to be all cool and down with the kids, accepting that like wow man, language is like an evolving life-force, like water flowing downstream man, ever-changing, all the while privately and silently, nerdily and slightly guiltily, removing the word ‘so’ from the sentence just spoken, telling myself that it works very well without it.
 
Then I smile and continue my day, aware with each passing week that I am less and less in touch with everything.
 
Even though I’d consider myself fairly well politically informed, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Neocon and a Neoliberal. 

What’s more, middle aged and treading water midstream, I feel no inclination to find out.
 
I will recoil from anything that is not a stone which describes itself as ‘Bijou’. Same goes for ‘Boutique' as in
 
“Oh it’s an amazing hotel with an organic herb garden and a rooftop infinity pool. It’s boooteeeek!”
 
To me that means it’ll be a minuscule lavishly furnished massively overpriced room above a very noisy street in a city centre.
 
No thanks, and while you’re at it, you can keep your Artisan and your Gourmet, your Craft and your Legend.
 
Ah, legend. What a tragic shame. If it’s now acceptable to describe Olly Murs as a legend, what space have we left for real heroes to emerge?
 
These days the only finger on my pulse is checking for a heartbeat. 

Less cutting edge, more Grandpa Simpson, I sit in my armchair and cry out:
 
“What did he say?”
 
or
 
“Oh! Is she the one from you know, you know, that thing with the cake?”
 
and
 
“Sorry, I just drifted off. Can we rewind it a few minutes!”
 
Beside me the Snapper answers patiently, doubtless wondering what her future holds.
 
Thankfully she has never told me to chillax, because she understands that chill and relax are words that individually do their job admirably, while their combination adds zilch to their impact.
 
Utterly removed from the latest teenage trends in music and modern idiom, which these days evolve on Snapchat, Spotify and Instagram, I’ve no idea what’s going on.
 
Have to say, I really don’t mind.

©Charlie Adley
02.11.2017

A SMILE ON YOUR VOICE BOOSTS YOUR CHANCES!

Thanks as always to Allan Canvanagh at caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

I’m pumped up with goodness and positive energy and yes, now is the time to make those phone calls.
 
You know the ones. They start with recorded messages before you even get to the press-button menus and holding tunes.
 
Don’t go there, Adley. 
Don’t spoil it now. 

I’ve checked that my happiness tank is full and my fortitude levels are way up my mental dipstick. It'd be stupid to wreck the mission by blowing a gasket now, leaking anger into my brainbox at the thought of what lies ahead.
 
Whatever it is you’re calling a company or institution about, it’s never the fault of the person on the other end of the line. They didn’t make the rules. They’re not responsible for your predicament.
 
You’re way more likely to get a result if you've a full tank of patience and a purring engine supplying a smile to your voice. Act a bit human. Call them by name. Get into all that empathy hoojamaflip.
 
Anyway the first call isn’t to a bank or internet service provider, so it won’t be too bad.
 
She says hello, University College Hospital, and I ask to be put through to Mental Health Services.
 
It rings. It rings and rings and I do not mind. I am ready, prepared, and I’d rather listen to a ring than an ear-shattering rendition of Total Eclipse Of The Heart played on a blade of grass.
 
This is fine.
 
It rings and rings, so I sit back, breathe out and relax, thinking of all the people rushing around that hospital, trying to make the best of scandalously ill-funded jobs.
 
Oh, I’m back to reception.
 
“Sorry about that, I’ll try another number for you now.”
I’m surprised and gratified that she even knew I was still hanging on.
 
“Thanks!”
 
It rings and rings. Rings and rings and rings and then I’m back to herself again, who apologises again and puts me into another number which, yes, rings.
 
Holding the phone a little away from my ear, I think of how busy Mental Health Services must be right now, with everyone upset about the Tracker Mortgage scandal.
 
More homes lost and lives ruined by banks, but really, what do you expect?
 
Until the guilty bankers and politicians of this republic are sent to serve proper time in real jails, they will continue to operate with impunity from inside the cartel they constructed decades ago.
 
If you don’t arrest and imprison people when they steal money, they will do it again.
 
My own mental health is more challenged by the way the Irish focus their ire upon the banks - companies that openly exist to serve their own purposes - rather than the €13 billion of tax revenue refused from Apple. At present the Irish government are pursuing an expensive legal case against the EU: fighting not to take it.
 
Every time I think about the immorality of this stance, bile rises from my gut, tasting dark and visceral on my tongue
 
It utterly enrages me, yet nobody protests.
 
We should be taking patients on trolleys out of A&E and wheeling them into Dáil Éireann, demanding our billions. We should be taking homeless people to the doorsteps of rich cabinet ministers’ homes, demanding they give up their bedrooms until we are given our billions.
 
How can you not be outraged by this? You were upset for a short while, but now you shout at the banks, and -
 
“Hello? Can I help you?”
 
Through at last, but now I’ve been diverted to the outskirts of the system, and although she’s thoroughly helpful, she’s unable to find out what I need to know.
 
Ah well. We’ll leave that then.  
Time to move on to the ESB.
 
Here comes the first pre-recorded preamble of the morning and by god it goes on. Yes many are still tragically without power after Ophelia, but having told me straightaway the number to ring about outages and fallen cables, the recorded voice then goes on and on, listing websites to visit to find updates, while I’m wondering how the hell you find websites if your power is down and -
 
Ah! Here comes the pushbutton number menu, 
beep yeh, 
beep yeh, come on, 
beep and hooray! 

I’m through almost instantly to a woman who explains she’s sorry, but she can’t help me. Then I crank up my sob story a level or two and she reacts with intelligence and compassion, suddenly having an idea, trying it out and yes, there you go Mr. Adley, that is now done!

“Thank you so much! You have been great! Goodbye, and thanks again!”
 
Well this is going positively all lardeedaaar lovely. The universe is working my way today, so maybe now’s the time to make the Eir call.
 
Cue ‘Dum Dum Dum’ noises, thunder rolls and voiceover from a man with glass shards in his throat:
 
“It’s time … to make … the Eir call!”
 
Except it isn’t. Three times I go through the whole cycle of pre-recorded preamble and press-button bollocks, and three times I sit listening to the same tune, because each time I speak to an Eir person, they say they’ll put me through to Loyalty.
 
At first this news makes my heart leap with hope, but each of the three times they put me through I sit, increasingly angry, listening to the same pop song over and over again, until someone picks up their phone and puts it down again.
 
That was Eir’s Loyalty department.
Three times they hung up on me.
 
Given that Eir had gone to the trouble of actually naming a department after the concept, I so wanted to believe that Loyalty meant something to them.
 
Tank now empty.
I know my limits. 
Make a mug of Builder’s tea.
Eir are just too strong for me. 

WE NEED TO HANG ONTO OUR QUIRKS MORE THAN EVER!

Thanks to the wonderful Allan Cavanagh - good luck with the Cartoon Festival! Go to: caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

Soon after I first dated the Snapper, I was cringing in my car as she carefully, systematically and very crinkly-crunkly-noisily folded up her crisp packet, tucking in the final corner so that the empty plastic bag held its own triangulated shape.
 
Aware that I’d found it irritating, she turned to me and asserted calmly:
 
“It’s my thing. It’s what I do so get used to it.”
 
Since then I’ve grown immune to her triangulating compulsion, amazed only at the way size presents no object. Be it the tiniest sweet wrapper or a huge plastic Dunnes carrier bag, everything gets triangulated.
 
It’s what she does.
It’s who she is.
 
We all have our very own ‘things’. They are the foibles that define us, the quirks that can sometimes drive the uninitiated around the bend. They are the twitches and habits that you either fall in love with or move way from.
 
Essential to individuality, our eccentricities matter beyond apparently deeper differences. They are the driving force of our uniqueness.
 
Doubtless shocking to any who knows me, I confess to having one or two minor ones myself.
 
You don’t look at three quarters of a painting, nor just the top of a sculpture, so when watching a film I want to see the whole piece, intact, from beginning to end. No talking, no interruptions of any kind. 

Admittedly, if it’s Vampire Zombies v Predator III, such rules might not apply, but out of respect to the masses who’ve worked on the movie, I’ll give it my full attention.
 
Last week I was watching ‘The Place Beyond The Pines.’  I was completely absorbed by fine storytelling, yet seemingly without conscious thought, my left hand picked up my smartphone.
 
Really?
Is this who I am now?
If so, who the hell is that?
 
Alone in my living room on a wet Saturday afternoon, the fire is blazing and Chelsea are live on the TV. I’m as happy as I might ever be. 

If I made a 30 mile round trip to the city I could watch the game with friends, but although the camaraderie is fun, there’s also the chance that someone might sit next to me and blah blah blah in my ear all through the game, which drives me bananas.
 
So I convince myself the price of Sky Sports is cheaper than petrol and beer, so that I can sit in peace, able to focus on every aspect of the match.
 
Except - oh bloody hell! - I missed a Chelsea goal because I was reading about someone’s night out on Facebook.
 
After working days here in front of my computer, I eschew YouTube links people tell me to to watch, plumping instead for the mental stimulation of TV’s BBC 4, except Lucy Worsley has barely begun her explanation of the Reformation before I’ve picked up my smartphone to check Twitter and Facebook.
 
I don’t know who I am any more, while after years of resisting a smartphone, the Snapper now sits beside me, chucking gently to memes of doggy ears and messages from faraway friends.
 
Although we make sure to watch certain series together, and on occasion even talk to each other, we are now part of a vast tribe lost to their phones.
 
I used to sit outside Tigh Neachtain and look to the rooftops, enjoying the contrast between the grey slate, blue sky and green moss.
 
Now I’m head down double-chinned, trying to filter sunlight from my screen.
 
In the past I was contemptuous of those unable to appreciate being here and now, driven to record their time in Connemara through the filter of their phones.
 
Now I grab my phone on a walk, to photograph a spider’s web glistening in the early morning light.
 
Seeing it used to be enough.
 
Now I need to show it to the world.
 
Web designers and engineers Justin Rosenstein and Tristan Harris explained to Paul Lewis of The Guardian that they left their jobs at Google and Facebook to co-found an advocacy group called ‘Time Well Spent’, which implores tech companies to design less addictive software.
 
One of the team that created the all-powerful ‘Like’ button, Rosenstein noticed a few years ago that his ability to concentrate on the very things he wanted to focus on was being inhibited by technology.
 
“It was that kind of individual, existential realisation: what’s going on? Isn’t technology supposed to be doing the complete opposite of this? Everyone is distracted all of the time.”
 
Loren Brichter helped to design the swipe down/refresh software that pulls in punters on many social media. However she is not proud of her success.
 
“I have two kids and I regret every minute that I’m not paying attention because my smartphone has sucked me in.”
 
Our brains are being adapted by technology. 

Each time you’re attracted to that red dot on Facebook’s icon, or just want to get rid of it, you’re responding to a reward-based behaviour that activates the brain’s dopamine pathways, the neurological routes designed to offer comfort, heat and all life’s good stuff, which also create gambling and drug addictions.
 
Now that 87% percent of people wake up and go to sleep with their smartphones, and people tap or swipe their smartphones on average 2,617 times a day (ouch!) it’s more important than ever to hang on to your differences.
 
Concentrate on being your fantastically wonderful self: alphabetical spice racks; picking your teeth with your toenails; hiding a hazelnut under a pillow; triangulated crisp packets and all.
 
Otherwise, in exchange for slavery to software, you’ll lose everything that makes you an individual.

©Charlie Adley
20.10.2017

FEELS SO GOOD TO BE WRITING UNLEASHED!

Thanks twice this week to the most excellent Allan Cavangh caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

By god it feels good to be working on something. Not just anything but something that requires creativity; something that I can describe as ‘my work.’
 
Nothing gives a writer more sense of identity, more self-confidence and self-doubt, more elation and dread than writing freely.
 
You have to make a living in this world and while I truly appreciate being able to earn money doing what I love, I also yearn to write unleashed.
 
Over the last few years I’ve started many stories. Enlarging scribbled almost indecipherable notes into sketches, I then tried filling out those sketches into substantial pieces of work, but each time I failed.
 
They didn’t grab me at all.
 
A writer never wants to throw anything away. Even when that note or half-written story feels empty of purpose, void of strength or simply offers no reason to exist, you keep it.
 
On my desktop there’s a folder called In Progress and inside that there’s another folder called Where Does This All Go?
 
Inside there I dump the detritus of years of failed attempts at whatever it was I was trying to do. Not once did I get down on myself. 

Instead I walked away from each piece knowing that I’d given it my best at that time, and might use some part of it in the future, or maybe not: either way, there had been no harm in its creation.
 
At least I tried.
At least I had a go.
 
I’d kicked my imagination up its backside and made sure it was still alive.
 
Then in March I was over in Tel Aviv for my lovely niece’s wedding, so I was able to spend some time with my friend and teacher, the Israeli writer Iris Leal. Although she’ll always be my teacher, these days we meet on level ground.
 
Nobody has had such an influence on my writing. Back in 1986 I was living in a manky old flat, two floors above the shops on London’s Golders Green Road. Two years previously I’d quit a lucrative marketing job to travel around the world, all the way scribbling frantically the first draft of a first novel into a red hardback copybook.
 
Returning to London homeless, I sofa surfed for 6 months, until lifetime friendships were sorely tested. Eventually I found that flat in NW11, and there I sat, wrapped up entirely in the image of being a writer.
 
When Iris wandered unannounced and uninvited into my living room, she found me sitting at a desk, banging away at a typewriter, with the requisite number of screwed-up pieces of paper strategically strewn around the floor, an ashtray overflowing with still-smoking fags and a bottle of whisky (no ‘e’ as it was Scotch in those days) within a hand’s reach.
 
Artless, craftless and wonderfully ignorant, I was chucking the story out of me, so when Iris looked at my work she could feel my raw passion, and thankfully believed I had sufficient talent to adopt me, to take me on as her unofficial pupil and try to drum some craft into me.
 

 

Over two excruciatingly painful years she taught me ten years of craft...

Over the course of two excruciatingly painful years she taught me ten years of craft. Back then, more than ever since, we occupied polar opposites of literary ambition. 

Iris would take all day to write three sentences, with, as she rather melodramatically put it: “The ghosts of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann at my shoulder as I write!” while I was knocking out 2,000 words a day, concerned only that anyone able to read might appreciate my work.
 
Happily now we both understand that we are different writers, on completely disparate missions. She wants the recognition of her literary peers, grand prizes and eternal glory, while I am wary, fearful of fame and the ensuing loss of privacy, happy to improve, hopefully one day coming up with worthy work that is uniquely my own.
 
Chatting over coffee in Tel Aviv, Iris asked me to describe in precise detail every minute of my working day.
 

“You are being lazy, Charlie. Do not be blasé about your life, Charlie!” she admonished me. “I want a short story in six weeks.” 

 

“You are being lazy, Charlie. Do not be blasé about your life!"

Sometimes that’s all you need: someone you respect who takes your writing seriously. Two weeks later a story fell out of me in a second person voice and it felt right.
 
Second person is not a voice I’d ever recommend to any writer, and certainly not a voice that you force out - you never want to force any of your writing - but for that story the voice felt absolutely perfect.
 
Buzzed up and inspired, I tried the same voice on those old sketches and unfinished stories languishing in the Where Does This All Go? folder. Thankfully once again it fell out of me.
 
It had to, if it was going to work.
 
As before, the second person proved perfect, somehow distancing my narrative and unleashing the stories’ potential.
 
Iris told me aeons ago that a writer is like a pressure cooker; that each time you talk about your work it loses some steam, some pent-up power.
 
So why am I writing about this work in progress in this very public newspaper?
 

 

Well, starting a book is a terrifying process. After so many fallen flares of optimism, I wait until a body of work starts to build, gradually trusting that the process is this time truly up and running; that a book is being written.
 
Here I am, breaking Iris’ rule, forcing this book to be real by sharing its existence with you.
 
Feels so good to be writing unchained once more. If it proves good enough, you might see it one day.
 
Wish me luck.

©Charlie Adley
08.10.2017.