Thank you Winter. Don’t listen to the others. I love you.

 

Waking to the sound of no rain hammering my bedroom windows, I turn on the lamp.

6:43

Above me silence reigns, where last week the wind played a violin concerto, as waves of rain smashed violently onto the roof. 

The mighty old ash trees that surround me here reveal by the pitch of their howl the energy of the storm. 

I see stars through the velux window.

Splendid.

Clear means icy, frosty, the end of the nasturtiums at last. 

There are countless downsides to being a writer, but having to get out of bed while it’s still dark isn’t one of them.

Propping up a pillow behind my head I reach for the doorstop of a hardback that has sustained and entertained me for two weeks now.

What luxury!

For years I commuted into London, physically hurling my body at packed tube trains, just as the doors started to close, so that my impact would allow me to squeeze into the space between glass and wedged workers.

No more.
                        

No need, reason or desire to leave the house. Just get up, do my stretches, make a fire, have breakfast and go to my office. There I can sit and write as long as I want to, because outside it’s freezing/lashing/blowing a gale/winter.

Apart from housework, there is nothing else I can do today. 

Good writing weather: that’s what I call it.

Lovely.
                             
God knows what other poor souls who live rural lives do on days like this. Sometimes being a scribbler feels like a blessing, because I’m condemned to neither loneliness nor Loose Women.

Without the writing Winter would send me even more doolally than I already am.

Ireland has produced so many writers, because instead of going on merry social jaunts, we’re forced by the rain to stay inside; to apply our madness to writing.

Others warn me of the dangers of isolation, but I experience way more craziness out there in the human world, than here in my solitude.

Exchanging pleasantries with shop workers or howyas on the street inevitably entails listening to them giving out something rotten about the wind and rain.

They can take the cold, and love the sunshine. Oh they’ll take anything, except that rain, the wind and the rain. They just can’t bear it.

I nod and smile, eager but socially unable to moan back at them:

“Well why the bloody hell do you live here then, in this country famed for wind and rain? Move to Morocco. But no, ‘cos once it gets above 20 degrees you’re giving out like babies that it’s fearful hot. And as for humid, well believe me, what you call humid in Ireland truly isn’t.”

Would you want to sit there and tell me you hate a quarter of your life?

Well then, don’t give out about the only Irish season that does what it says on the calendar.
                        
In Winter we can enjoy each day’s sunrise and sunset. With the sun so low on the horizon, the heavens offer severe contrasts and jaw-dropping colours.

Shafts of fire and crimson shoot from both dawn and dying sun, up into black clouds bulging with rain. The light and dark bleed together, mutating into a menacing purple glow, intense with latent power. 

As the sun creeps along its low Winter horizon it lights up the empty branches of trees.

The best of Winter comes not with what is, but what is not.

During the darkest months, while we uncivilised beasts rush around in festive frenzy, arrogantly believing ourselves immune to mammalian hibernation, the natural world becomes calm.

Stand still for only a few minutes each day and you’ll discover how in Winter our environment exists in a variety of silences, offering the bliss of several levels of peace. 

At Winter dusk there are no power tools; not even birdsong here.

Not a sound; not a movement; not a car in the distance nor a ram at a ewe. 

A majestic calm hangs over the land. Away from war and Christmas shopping, here right now, at our feet, the world is placid. 

With shorter days I sleep more and try to expect less of myself. A very fine and fancy shmancy idea, but the outside world (a.k.a. life) always steps in and dictates the rules.

Still, despite the trials and challenges life presents, which as we all know it does, relentlessly, I make sure to give thanks for Winter.

 

When the trees are still, silent and naked, I enjoy nothing more than standing by the back door, watching the birds eat the seeds I’ve strewn.

Oh wow!

A young fox appears, not 20 feet from me.

Robust with health in his lush rusty coat, he licks up a few mouthfuls of birdseed and jumps over the stone wall. 

The weather forecast unfolds over my house.
I take time to appreciate the glorious tranquillity.  

I like to stand on the bog road at 8:30 on a January morning, watching the huge sun creep above the hill, slashing the sky so that it bursts a blood red snakeskin pattern above pitch black mountains.

 I love the abruptness of Winter silence.

Trees demand attention: starkly silhouetted inverted lungs, plugged into the planet.

Away over there another fox appears in daylight, because it has to, and I admire the size of this beast, surprisingly brown, with a yard long brush ending in a white bobble.

By god, it’s thriving.

When all the undergrowth is stripped back, Winter allows you to encounter Ireland’s wildlife up close. The pair of herons that in midsummer would have no need to be close to humans now launch themselves out of the drainage ditch up the bog road.

I stop in my tracks as they rip-roar out of the reeds, casually flapping their great dinosaur wings, rising straight up only to settle back down 20 yards away on the bog. 

At midday, dazzled by the low sun, I stand under a deep blue sky, vivid rust bogland to the horizon.

Drinking in the stillness; the only sound a breeze in my ear.

Thank you Winter.

Don’t listen to the others.

I love you.

 

 

 

 

©Charlie Adley

08.01.2024

 

 

Fancy a touch of zorbing or wadi bashing?

Time to renew my travel insurance, so online I go to check out a few quotes.

In the past this was pretty simple - around 70 smackers for a worldwide year of insured travel, but well into my 60s, I have several of what insurance types call ‘pre-existing conditions.’

I could of course pretend I don’t, but insurance companies just love not paying out, and I’m buggered if I’m going to give them a chance to nullify a claim.

Say I lost my suitcase and everything therein, but they somehow found out about my dodgy knee.

You could spend several hundred years trying to ascertain what links these two issues, apart from my good self, but link them they will, and then take great pleasure in telling me my policy is invalid.

“But but but my belongings are not lost because I have a torn meniscus!” I cry in outrage.

“Makes no difference, puny human. Be gone before we sue your sorry arse for lying to an insurance company, and oh yes, remember, your call is very important to us."

The initial quote looked very reasonable, but once I’ve told them I had half a lung cut out, and yes, this does affect my breathing, and yes, there’s a couple of other chronic conditions attached to my lungs as well, their premium calculator spins into hyperdrive.

All of a sudden I’m looking at having to fork out several hundred spondoolicks.

As the amount due inflates, so the health issues covered start to shrink. Now they’re saying that they won’t cover me for anything to do with breathing, which includes blood issues, heart issues and, well, y’know, life in general.

Breathing’s pretty high up the old Being Alive Pyramid.

While I wonder why the price is going up at the same time as they’re refusing to pay out for just about everything that might go wrong with a human body, I advance to a page on their website that - s’cuse me - takes my breath away.

We’ve established I’m somewhat limited breathwise, so why on earth are they now asking me if intend to enjoy an insane list of sporting activities on my travels?

Of course it’s reasonable to ask about scuba diving and skiing. Even, at a stretch, not beyond the bounds of possibility I might at some juncture get up on a horse, a camel or even a nellyphant.

But they want to know if I’m planning to attempt any of the following:

Assault course.

Breathing observation bubble diving, maximum depth 30 metres, under 14 days.                                                                                  
(What even is that??)

Paragliding.

Parachuting.

Parapenting.
(Parapenting? Answers on a postcard please!)

Ostrich riding.
(Really? I mean really? Have they seen me? Well, no, obviously not, but I have never met anyone who has wanted to ride an ostrich, or even talked of or mentioned in passing a penchant for ostrich riding.) 

Manual labour at ground level, no machinery or power tools.           
(On holiday? Why why why?)

Canyon Swinging.
(Errrm, wot? Does that mean Tarzanning across the canyon, or having sex with the neighbours near a canyon?)

Dragon boating.
(See above re: Errrm wot?)

Gorge swinging.
(More outdoor nookie?)

Hydro speeding.
(Perchance taking amphetamines while underwater?)

Mud buggying.
(Yet again, no idea)

Tree top walking
(Or any other supernatural or Jesus-like activities…?)

Wadi bashing.
(Beating up a dried-up river bed? Why? Is that really a thing? That river bed has done nothing to me. I mean no harm to dried-up river beds. I’m a lover not a basher.)

And finally…

Zorbing.
(Is that the opposite of absorbing?)

I could look up each sport or activity or whatever the hell Cat Skiing is, just to make sure I won’t be doing it by accident on my travels, but hey, you know, life’s too short, especially with all my pre-existing conditions.

Clearly there are people out there who like nothing better on holiday than a few hours manual labour after a good morning’s ostrich riding.

If you ever meet one whilst enjoying a bit of Zorbing, please let me know.


©Charlie Adley
08.12.2023

Two questions every writer should ask!

 

 

Having respectively won and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, I’m certain that Pauls Lynch and Murray will not lose sleep over my criticism.

I’m aware that neither author will pay the slightest heed to my opinion, but that’s never going to stop me saying how I feel.

As a vocational writer who’s made a living for three decades from his scribbling, I have the right to say what I think.

Truth is we all do. That’s what’s so great about the Arts. All opinions are important.

I finished reading Prophet Song a week before it won the Booker Prize. Although it offers more than a pure thriller, its greatest quality is that it is thrilling.

Lynch builds a terrifyingly credible justifiably paranoid 21st century Dublin, and although the political undertones are fascinating, the story sticks to the war narrative like hot tyres on molten asphalt.

Personally I would’ve liked more backstory of how this rightwing autocracy gained power, but that would be a different book.

I did however reach that wonderful point in a reader’s relationship with their book, when I looked forward to going to bed so that I could rejoin the story.

As the book that Lynch wanted to write, it was almost perfect, except for the writer’s refusal to hit return on the keyboard, so that we might know who is talking to whom at all times.

Ever since Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the absence of quotation marks and character identifiers (he whispered, she said) has become de rigueur dwaaahhlinng for the Literati.

So eager are some authors to write in a fashionable style, they forget to ask themselves the two questions every writer must ask, when considering a narrative device of any kind:

Does it work?

and

Is it necessary?

Students on my Craft of Writing Course inevitably ask

“Charlie, can I do ‘this’?”

or

“Is ‘that’ allowed?”

to which I always reply

“You can do anything you want, as long as it works.”

The decision about whether the device is necessary comes only after it has been proven to work. When I read McCarthy’s The Road I never had any doubts who was saying what to whom.

Not only did his decision to omit punctuation work, it actually enhanced the reading of what was, essentially a double-header between father and son.

We knew who they were and had no need for identifiers or quotation marks.

It worked, and it was necessary.

When Paul Lynch decided to do away with paragraphs, quotation marks and identifiers, he did his book no favours.

As a reader, I want to be utterly engaged at all times. I want to feel sucked whole into this world on the pages in front of me, enveloped by the author's thoughts, dreams, rhythms and feelings.

I don’t want to be aware I’m on the bus or in bed, reading. I want to be there, in the book, seduced by beautiful simple stunning prose.

What I do not want is to have to read a sentence twice to understand its context, or to revisit a paragraph, so that I can work out who’s talking, when their speech ends and at which point it’s replaced by a narrative voice. 

Does it work?
Yes, it works. It’s stumbling and inelegant, but it works. 

Is it necessary? Does it enhance the reading of the book?
Absolutely not, in any way.

Welcome to the perilous territory of ‘Art with a Capital F’ wherein the writer considers how the book is written to be more important than how it is read.

Whilst busy criticising other scribblers, I’ll now take the risk of disappearing up my own hole, by quoting from the introduction to my Craft of Writing Course:

'Never write to impress.
Never try to appear clever.'

Prophet Song is an outstanding book. I was gripped, and felt sad when I finished it. Very possibly Mr. Lynch employed his block narrative style to create a sense of claustrophobia in his reader.

He underestimates us, and the power of his own language. The device was not necessary. It just felt he was trying to be clever, to write Literature, and in the process forced me to feel disengaged, thrust out of the book, time and time again.

Had he not tried to be clever, it would have read so much better. Just my opinion, for which I make no excuses. I can’t read it as you.

What a joy it was then, to pick up The Bee Sting and encounter simple, hilarious and knowing prose.

What a relief. 

So accessible was Murray’s narrative that I felt my criticism of Prophet Song (oh but how I loathe this word) validated

From Son to Daughter we stray, and then to the voice of Imelda, the Mother and oh, Lordy Miss Maudy, Murray’s at it too.

Maybe he's using the device to portray how frantic and non-stop Imelda is, so her passages have no quotation marks, although, strangely, they do have identifiers. 

Equally odd, while there are no paragraphs, there is a capital letter at the start of each sentence, even though there’s no full stop/period before it, to announce the end of the previous sentence.

It’s a kind of mish-mash half-arsed version of the style employed in Prophet Song and several other contemporary novels. 

Tragically, yet again, it adds nothing to the book, and serially breaks my engagement with the narrative, as I reread a few lines for clarity.

Yet again a talented writer tries something he believes to be clever, underestimating both his readers and his own skills.

Nevertheless I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, and hoping that when we reach the Father character, we’ll be back to using paragraphs, punctuation and all that standard stuff…

... unless Murray tries something else that works, which proves necessary and keeps me more engaged as a reader than ever before

 

 

 

 

©Charlie Adley

06.12.2023

Even Space Cadets get the job done!

Artwork by the excellent Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.ie

 

Five years single now, more in fact, and apart from that nearly dying stuff during 2020, I'm happily adapted to doing things my way.

When I want; how I want.

Course I’d much prefer it if I didn’t live with 7/8 pain in my right knee, and wouldn’t mind sending back my two lung conditions in return for that half lung which went AWOL, but this is me now - who I is today - and yes, they slow me down, and the ensuing obesity doesn't help either, but the jobs still get done.

This colyoom has talked before about a certain type of selfish that’s a pure good thing. It neither harms nor affects anyone else: it’s just you being you.

Well, there’s been plenty of that.

It’s incredibly comforting when you discover you are the person you thought you are; that you do mean what you say.

Just takes a while to adjust to doing things more slowly, to learn my new limitations, which require many grunts of

“Oooawaaaargghhh!”

and plenty of exclamations of 

“Phoooofffssshhh!”

...with many pauses...

...to catch my breath…

…to restore the air intake...

....to a happy rhythm.

Those are the moments when I grasp the opportunity to take a look around; to peer through the trees, looking for the silvery sheen of high tide glowing; to watch the rooks reinforce their giant nests, way up high in the ancient ash trees; to listen to the salty sea wind in my ears.

I’ve always been happiest when lost staring into nature for indefinite periods of wonder.

Time was the one commodity I missed beyond all others when I lived in California in the 1990s. Now I have the luxury of it, and I bathe in its glory.

Like I said, it’s a relief to turn out to be the person you thought you were; to find out that the object of your dreams truly does make you happy.

Better still to have faith in what you say. This space cadet will always stop and stare, but also, I get the job done.

I pay my rent by working on my friend’s magnificent garden, but due to my unique athleticism, I’m not exactly Monty Don.

I tell her that even though I’m a month behind, the trees in the orchard will be mulched before first frost. She believes me.

Last week, on the two dry days advertised by Met Eireann, that was done, and I came dangerously close to feeling smug, finishing the day before the night temperatures plummeted.

I tell her that the little patio just up from my wee gaff will be sorted, and she says nothing. I say it might take a while, but it will be done, ‘cos it all gets done in the end.

Casting her eyes over the neglected terrace, now transformed into a layer cake of grasses, creeping buttercup, moss and mud, topped off with an amber frosting from the million zillion leaves, fallen from overhanging copper beech, she says nowt.

Tacitly she trusts me.

As I sit here today, it’s half done, liberated from that messy mire of a carpet, the fig tree and rose cut right back, and tomorrow, on the second of two days of sunny high pressure, I will perform slow motion trickery with the loppers, a step ladder and hedge trimmers.

Everything takes a little longer now, but it all gets done.

And there is much pleasure in the doing.

So much, because I do it when and as and how I like.

Slowly.
Quickly.

Steadily.

I am who I think.
I mean what I say.
It will be done. 

 

 

©Charlie Adley

27.11.223

One thing left of three that mattered to me!

“What’s this tosh?” I hear you cry. “Yon scribbler has more than three things.”

 

Indeed I do, but you don’t, ‘cos nobody talks like that.

 

I have many hundreds of things; so many, in fact, that I’m about to hire a mini-skip and dump a large tranche of my possessions.

 

How many do I care about?

 

Aside from a couple of hundred books (I’ll know precisely how many after I’ve sifted through them and decided which ones will be recycled via charity shops.

 

Some are beloved reads, while others hold great sentimental value, like the hardback copy of Treasure Island, awarded to my late father in 1936 ‘For all your hard work at the village fête.’ while others, like that one about the egg creature, are doomed for being pure shite.

 

Anyway, for the purposes of this colyoom, the books that I love are excluded, as this is about ‘things’ that matter to me.

 

Good books transcend being ‘things’. They are dreams made manifest.

 

Colyoomistas of old already know that stuff, in general, holds little meaning for me. Spending money rarely gives me a thrill, but spending time in my own little world of wonder brings me much joy.

 

Spending time to sit on a rock on an empty beach and watch the tide turn; to write here right now, watching the edges of Storm Ciarán whip my corner of the world into a furious mess of fallen leaves and sideways rain; to walk myself into a sweat along the Summertime bohreens of Connacht, between the meadowsweet, purple loosestrife and fuchsia laden with orchestras of buzzing bees; to stand on a bog on a Winter’s morning, and feel the profound calm and quiet, as I watch a sparrow hawk plunge for prey: all of the above make my life worth living.

 

Throughout that life I owned three things that offered some measure of meaning.

 

Back in 1973, my father’s best friend gave me a gold Parker biro, engraved with my initials, as a bar mitzvah present. This mattered to me, not because of the donor, an unpleasant sadistic criminal, whose claim to be dad’s best friend was based upon the longevity of their friendship, alongside the power he held over my father.

 

No, the pen was meaningful for two reasons: because pens are considered the quintessentially classic bar mitzvah presents, which are supposed to last a lifetime (as this one nearly did), and because the writer in me loved that pen, seeing it as representative of the skill that made my life worthwhile.

 

My diaries from ages 15-21 were written with that pen, as were the signatures on every legal document and each heart-rending love letter in my earlier life.

 

Then last year, I reached for its familiar old red case, opened it and found it empty.

Unless the several million wood lice with whom I share a home have transported it away to a place where they can worship the shiny cylinder, it remains very possible that when I move out of this place, I might find the pen down the back of somewhere unthinkable beneath my desk. 

But how did it leave its case, where it had rested since 1973?
Why and what and who knows…? 

I let it go, just as I did my Ricoh watch. 

Eleven years after I received that pen, I awarded myself my Ricoh watch, when I worked for said Japanese photocopier company.

 From October 1983 to November 1984 I shot up their corporate structure like some kind of marketing Icarus, constantly and incredibly swiftly being promoted, given more and more responsibility and money, until I was earning more than any 24 year-old should ever be allowed to earn. 

They promised me I would be Marketing Director by the age of 30, but after seeing the Sales Manager drop dead from stress on the office floor, and my good friend and boss endure an excruciatingly slow and horrendous breakdown in front of my eyes, I confronted a profound truth. 

Money does not make me happy.

In fact, despite everyone in my personal and professional life telling me what a massive success I was, I felt utterly empty.

My soul was a void of despair.

Even though exceptionally able to empathise with purchasers from conglomerates and corporate giants, I did not care how many photocopiers were sold to anyone anywhere. 

I hated my job, and felt deeply depressed, convinced I was wasting my life.

The company paid for my car, my petrol, my household bills, gave me an unlimited expense account and an American Express card, thereby making it incredibly easy for me to save money. 

Also, among several other job titles, they made me Head of Giveaways, so natch I gave myself a wonderful Ricoh watch.

I’d worked my voluptuous butt off. I deserved it.

Having accumulated a small fortune in savings, I quit the job and on November 22nd, 1984 boarded a spanky new Virgin Atlantic flight to Newark, New Jersey, and proceeded to travel for a year, very slowly, around the world, whilst writing a craftless yet passionate first draft of a novel.

Even though that book was never published, I went on to enjoy the privilege and good fortune of living off my writing, loving both my work and the meaning it brought to my life.

For nearly 40 years I sported on my left wrist the Ricoh watch that reminded me every day of that decision I made at the age of 23; of who I am, and what matters to me.

Then, six months ago, I stayed in an hotel in Sligo, left my watch behind in the room, and never saw it again.

I mourned neither the pen nor the watch. Of course I was a little sad that two significant lifetime possessions had left me, but I shed no tears.

I still had Blue Bag.

Relax, loyal colyoomista: there is no ‘had’. I have Blue Bag, and yes, as my friend Andy suggested many yonks ago:

“You’ll be buried with that effin’ bag.”

Were it not for my wish to be cremated, I would most certainly and happily rot into the soil with Blue Bag decomposing upon me.

Instead I say burn me with Blue Bag. Scatter our combined ashes off the cliffs of Kilcummin Back Strand.

Purchased for a tenner, from a tourist shop on Oxford Street the day I left Ricoh in 1984, Blue Bag and I have been around the world twice together.We have hitch-hiked over 200,000 miles together.

In the Cadillacs of California, the buses of Bali and the 24-wheel rigs that monopolise European motorways, Blue Bag stood on its end between my legs, taking up no more space than I do myself.

That allowed it to stay with me on buses in the developing world, while traditional backpacks were hoisted onto the roof, far from their owners.

In strange bars Blue Bag’s handles are hooked round my bar stool so that no stray hand might whisk it away.

Before the ridiculous limits of carrying of liquids in airports, Blue Bag used to be my hand luggage, allowing me to be off the plane and out into a new country while all the other passengers were left behind, waiting at the baggage carousel.

Through all manner of insanity and tribulation, Blue Bag has been by my side.

When it’s hoisted onto my right shoulder, I feel safe; complete; ready to take on the world and win.

Oh, and (slightly embarrassed cof cof) I simply want Blue Bag with me; always. Metaphorically and practically, it’s been my fast track to freedom.

Now that my craziest travels are behind me, I still use Blue Bag for two or three day trips, but when heading to London or further afield, I pack Blue Bag into my suitcase, because … well … you never know when you might need a mad dash.

One man and his bag.
That’s the only possession I need.


©Charlie Adley
01.11.2023