Oh Ireland, my friend, with this singing turkey, you really spoil me!

Ireland has been really good to me, and I have grown to love it back. Trouble is, love comes with more baggage than the backed-up halls of Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5.
When one of my close friends is making a complete arse of themselves, or exposing an embarrassing weakness, love pours forth from me in the guises of compassion and empathy.
I hurt for my friend.
I wish they could see that what they were doing was wrong.
I wish they realised how silly they had been, and I wished that they might see their own strengths.
Even as a wee child back in London in the 1960s, we knew that Eurovision was nothing more than a bit of a laugh. Of course there was great glory for the winning singer and kudos for the song, and we sat as a family, whooping and cheering and booing and never ever took it seriously.
But over here you thought Eurovision mattered, producing the execrable mediocrity of Johnny Logan and desperate melancholy of Brendan Graham's Rock'n'Roll Kids.
When that one made Ireland third time winners in a row, I collapsed back in my armchair, fearful that my beloved adopted country would never grow up.
And then came Dustin and 'Irelande Douze Pointe', and once more I could breathe. There was hope for my friend yet.
At last Ireland has woken up to its own genius.
As they say in Yorkshire: There's none so blind as them won't see. Maybe some kind of national post-colonial (steady steady, I know there's still that bit up north) head injury has led the Irish to seek one new master after another.
Maybe colonialism acts a little like being stuck in a mental hospital, or a prison? After you're let out, you kind of miss the comfort zone of not having to think for yourselves. You used to be able to sit around and complain, validly bemoaning your victim status, whilst all the while knowing exactly where you were and what was going on.
But then the newly-formed Republic chose to dance the necessary evil of the economic pas-de-deux with the old colonial master. To this day I can recall the looks of pure joy and vengeful bliss on the faces of Galwegians when, in the early 1990s, the Irish Punt became briefly worth more than the Pound Sterling. At that moment I understood how profoundly the Irish had willingly enslaved themselves once more.
Then came the European Union, and 7.6 billion euros of Structural Adjustment Funds, and well, just would ye ever look at that, now, sure, isn't your economy booming?
Throughout my 16 years in this country, successive governments have chosen to offer massive tax subsidies and financial incentives to foreign, mostly American companies, who come in, employ as few permanent staff as possible, make their money and naff off back to their homeland as soon as the Dollar flops or the Euro rises.
They don't give a damn about Ireland, and yet the Irish hand over to them all the financial breaks, without ever uttering a word against them when they destroy local lives and communities by leaving.
Collectively the Irish are some of the smartest folk I know, yet for the longest most painful time, they have been unable to see that what the rest of the world has known all along: that you are intelligent, hard-working (when you want to be), ingenious, imaginative, tenacious and adventurous.
But for some reason when the hands that built America work on a road in their own country, they think that filling a pothole with loose gravel and pouring on some pitch is good enough.
Seeing how the rest of the world take you seriously, isn't it about time you got your priorities right, and exploited your strengths on the home front?
Doing Irish the Irish way; the way the Irish know best, finally having the confidence to trust your own talent.
Like Dustin.
'Twould be marvellous if the national enlightenment vis-á-vis the gravitas of the Eurovision Song Contest was merely the spark that lit the pilot light of Irish self-confidence. Turn your national backs on the financial incentives for the likes of Digital and other fly-by-nights, and demand that such monies are redirected into a new wave of electrifying and ingenious Irish start-up companies run by people who care about the country, and the well-being of the people who live in it.
So good luck to Dustin in the Serbian capital Belgrade on 20 May and hopefully the final, four days later.
Or maybe not. After all, there are more important things.
Nobody could ever say it clearer than your very own singing turkey:
"Oh I come, from a nation
What knows how to write a song
Oh Europe, where or where did it all go wrong?
COME ON!!!!!!"

****

Blissfully unaware that they are creating layer upon layer of absurd parody, satirising the nightmare that is the European Parliament itself, a bunch called 'The Governing Body of the European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group' (EBUESCRG), (love it already) which, is described in the words of their own website as: "... a. group representative of EBU member countries participating in the Eurovision Song contest which liaises directly with the EBU to guide and approve the major elements of the concept, development and preparation of the Eurovision Song Contest" have been gently kicking up a storm about some of the Irish entry's lyrics.
Indeed, unofficially, the EBUESCRG has asked the Irish delegation to change a few of the words in Dustin's song.
At a point in the song when the Irish turkey sings a list of the names of several countries, he refers to 'Macedonia'.
Trouble is, apparently some people prefer it being called the 'Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia', while others like it trimmed down to 'FYR Macedonia'.
Blissfully unaware of how droningly dull it is to dissect wit, the EBU has planted its official backside on the fence, refusing to state clearly if a request has come from somewhere to change these lyrics, and if so who so, and if the Greeks why now, and whatever happened to humour?
Yet it matters not a jot, and that is my point. The entire event is worthy of nothing more than a whimsical glance, and now I can love the Irish all the more because I know that you believe it too!
Shooo boopy doo.
Catchy that.

In a mad world only the crazy people know what’s going on!

Back from four exhausting and emotionally trying days in England, but with Dadley Adley still in hospital there’s a temporary feel to each day, hour, minute.
If all goes well and he comes home soon, I can relax, but if not, I’ll be back there again in a few days.
I’m all over the place. Splattered, scattered and shattered, that’s where I’m at this week, lost midway between my lovely life in Galway and my loving family in England.
Midway eh? So my soul is treading water just off the coast of Liverpool, is it?
Fair enough.
You’ll not get much sanity out of me this week, as if you ever did, but anyway, I’ve always felt that sanity is vastly overrated.
Find me a human being who has never declared aloud or silently wondered to themselves just what a crazy world is ours. Thus it makes sense, does it not, if we all agree our world is crazy, that crazy people are the only ones who know what is going on.
I’ve never really been attracted to sane people. All my friends and loved-ones are nutty as fruitcakes, in wonderful, interesting and sometimes challenging ways. As I’ve got older I’ve developed a talent for seeing the inner hidden nutter that lurks just under the surface of some people who still, to this day, regard themselves as sane.
In fact, they are now doubtless outraged that I have slurred them as less than sane; but were they not, I could not count them among my friends.
If only our forbears had had the foresight to listen to their loonies, instead of locking them up and making them walk around and around in circles in grey stone prison-hospitals.
Maybe the mad people of 1799 were muttering
“It ha would be ha wonderful if when ha they invent the aerosol ha ha ha, they didn’t use chlorofluorocarbons!”
“Tel them! Tell them!! You must tell them there will be no WMDs in Iraq!”
“Iraq irackky missy mack Iraq aq aq aq wackker dacker dack. Oh, you have to be careful to use the drop-down menu to select ‘No Insurance required’ on that Ryanair interwebby malarkey arkey dooby doo.”
So this week ‘sane’ is very totally oh-so absolutely last Millennia, and ‘crazy’ is the new ‘black’. Crazy turned out to be pretty handy, when last I had to keep a straight face, having just met a man who lived in Lickey End.
A gentle and wonderful nurse in my Dad’s hospital, the 20something lad had a bit of a local yokel combine harvestery oooo aaaaarrrr me lover accent about him, and so I asked him where he came from.
“Me? Oh, I come from Lickey End.”
Holding my childish breath to stifle my guffaw, I let my eyes bulge out a little too long.
Bless him, he had no idea that he had so amused me. Looking over at my contorted features, he reckoned that must be what I look like when I’m thinking, trying to work out where Lickey End might be.
“It’s in the West Midlands.” he offered.
By then I had settled down. My ‘Infantile Response To Humour Team’ had been arrested by the tiny but efficient ‘Adley Adult Assault Force’, and I was able to offer a little conversation.
“West Midlands, eh? Sorry, I thought I detected a South-West accent. No offence mate.”
“None taken!” said he, “And you’re right! I’ve got a strong Devon accent, because my mum comes from Pennycomequick, see?”
Staring into his eyes I detected not the slightest trace of irony. He was genuinely telling me the truth.
I can believe that this bloke might have gone through life never seeing anything the slightest bit funny in the fact that his mother came from a place called Pennycomequick, and he now lived in Lickey End. However, what I couldn’t quite buy was the chance of his going through life without anybody else having a laugh at his locational expense.
Back in the sad bad days of my youth, I used to drive over 1,000 miles a week around England, in my smart reppy suit in my zippetty-dippetty reppy car. During those dreadful years, I did take some solace from noting England’s wealth of eccentric and bizarre village names.
So I knew this guy was being straight.
But was he being just a bit too straight?
Just as the Drink Driving adverts on the tele advise us to always expect the unexpected, when faced with somebody who appears just too unbelievably sane and normal, I suspect the contrary.
Hah! Yes! Was that not a twinkle in his eye?
“C’mere!” say I, all of sudden sounding just a ton or two too Oirish for a good ol’ London boy, “Don’t suppose you’ve got a brother living in Great Cock-Up, have you?”
His eyebrows instantly lift, stretching his face upward into a smile.
“How did you know?”
“Oh, i don’t know! Just a feeling!“
“Yes, and I’ve got three sisters.”
“Have you indeed? Do they live together?”
”No, they live in Fry Up, Splat and Pity Me.”
Finally we relaxed and laughed together. He confessed to changing his home town as often as the sun pops out of a LOndon cloud.
“It helps me get through the day, and sometimes I get a laugh or two out of a patient. But I never let on, and if I don’t like the people, I can act quite offended if they have a laugh at what they think is my expense.”
Extraordinary behaviour. This guy was a professional. He had had me fooled completely at the beginning. Deep inside me, just when I most needed it, my love for the madness of our species burgeons anew.
I love our compassion, our imagination and our utter lack of regard for whatever normality might be.
Instead we seek whatever it takes to get us through, which is, in my experience, rarely sanity and sanity alone.
For five magical minutes, the nurse and I played at high speed a shouting exchange of all England’s strangest place names”
“Nob End! Great Snoring! Piddle!”
“What about Slack Bottom! Horneyman! Hackballscross!”
Right, but beat Pox! Or Twatt, for that matter!”
My own favourite? Ever enigmatic and mysterious, I wonder how life (or just simply the filling-in of forms) might be for the folk of Co. Durham, who live a town called No Place.