From Pillar to Post

Last Saturday I went, for the fourth time, to the Inkslingers Creative Writing Workshop in the Irish Writers Centre, and I finally worked up the courage to read out what I’d written. They laughed, though not as often as I’d hoped, and were all very complimentary about it.

The theme was to imagine a person from about 100 years ago arriving today on OConnell Street, Dublin’s main street, and writing about the changes he would find. We were to start with “Standing outside the GPO I couldn’t believe what I saw…”

Unfortunately most of the places mentioned on the street will mean very little to any of you, as indeed will J.M. Synge, the person I chose simply so that I could make the joke about the shifts, but since the first thing I’ve ever written and then read to a live audience posting it here anyway…..     

Then ...

Standing outside the GPO I couldn’t believe what I saw. The number of taxis, to start with. They used to be a rare sighting, the motorised equivalent of Bigfoot, now they lined up all along the street, hunting in packs.

The Savoy Cinema across the road had eight film listed. Plainly films are much shorter these days if they can fit so many onto one screen in one day.

There were cafes, all luridly coloured and selling something called “fast food”. Everything came with fries. I couldn’t believe that if you ordered, say, chicken nuggets (a part of the chicken that they didn’t sell when I was last here) they would give you a side-order of a fry as well.

I saw a shop called “Anne Summers”. One of my plays once had riots at it because I referred to “ladies in their shifts”. Shifts have apparently got shorter since then.

... and now

McDowell’s the Happy Ring House was still there. So was Clery’s clock. Nelson’s Pillar was taller and narrower than I remembered it, but at least it was still there too.

A group of people were sitting at little tables outside a bar, smoking. At least we Dubliners still drink as much as we used to, I thought, there must be no room inside.

And it was these people that astonished me most. A couple were speaking in what I thought were the thickest Kerry accents I’d ever heard, until I realised that they were speaking Polish.

There were blacks and Asians among the Irish, a sight you’d never have seen in my time. And they all seemed to fit in, to be accepted, and to be friends.

I realised that I liked this Dublin better.

And that’s that. Tomorrow’s post will make in-jokes about my kitchen, which none of you have ever seen either.

Troubled Water

There is currently a debate taking place in Ireland about the introduction of water charges (“debate” is an old Irish word meaning yelling insults at the other side without recourse to facts, statistics or evidence). There are those who believe that charging for water will encourage conservation, while others ask why, in one of the dreariest, wettest countries in Europe, we should pay for something that you can find literally lying on the street.

The government have not helped by telling us (all in the space of a week) (a) that we will have to pay for the meter, though not for its installation; (b) that we will have to pay for both the meter and the installation; (c) that the charge for the meter will be €40 per year for 20 years, which is about eight times the cost of an actual meter; (d) that they have no idea how much the charges for the actual water will be, and are refusing even to make an estimate; and (e) that we’re to shut up asking questions, we’re starting to get on their nerves.

It is believed that each household will have a certain free allowance based upon the size of the dwelling (not sure how that’s relevant, unless we plan to flood all of our rooms once a year) and the number of occupants therein.

By this stage this is starting to look a bit like a serious, grown-up blog, so I would like raise a few serious, grown-up points.

There are presently five people living in the Tinhouse, so presumably at the beginning of the year we will get an allowance for these five people. What happens when Tinson1, as he is determined to do as soon as he graduates, leaves the country? Do we have to report this fact to the Water Police (motto: “To Serve You Shower”) or do we get to gleefully use the rest of the yearly allowance by standing under a garden hose and pretending that we’re Gene Kelly standing under the broken gutter?

Or perhaps we could sell our excess to other, less fortunate people, say a young couple who have a baby on January 2nd, just too late to qualify for the additional ration.

Mention of babies raises another point which doesn’t seem to have been considered – the age of each occupant. A new-born baby, for instance, needs a huge amount of water.

First of all, as I recall there always has to be a supply of cooled-boiled-water, though I have to admit that I can’t remember why.

A new-born has to be bathed every day. At least five babygros per day will go into the washing machine, along with the astonishing number of articles of his parents’ clothing that he has managed to cover in baby-sick.

Yet by the time the same child is three he will need almost no water at all, as he will drink only Sunny Delight and will be washed by spittle applied via his mother’s handkerchief. A bowlful of water each week for his pet goldfish (and the occasional toilet-flush as each one is literally buried at sea) will be all that is required.

I offer these insights to the government, but to be quite honest I don’t think they’ll listen, so I’m just going to wash my hands of them.

If I can afford it.

Weekly Drawing Challenge – Through

In yesterday’s post I used this phrase:

“Let me present Batman – the Dark Knight, Thor – the Thunder God, and Robin – the Guy Who Looks Good On Christmas Cards.”

In the first draft (yes, I do edit this stuff, even if it doesn’t look like it) between Thor and Robin I had “Bertie – the Disgraced Liar”. I took it out in the end because most of you that read this aren’t from Ireland and so wouldn’t understand it, and because it was a pretty feeble attempt at political satire in any case.

On Thursday a Tribunal of Inquiry into corruption in our planning system found that our ex Prime Minister Bertie Ahern had lied to it about large sums of money which he received, firstly when he was Minister for Finance and then when he held the most powerful position in our land.

Most of us knew this, of course. The evidence that he gave to the Tribunal was funnier and more imaginative than anything I ever written. He explained two lodgements of £22,500 and £16,500 as loans (or “dig-outs”, as he called them) from his friends because they felt he was hard up after his marriage break-up, although he had over£70,000 in cash at the time. He said that he was at a dinner in Manchester after being at a football match, was asked to say a few words and the listeners were so impressed that they had a whip-around and presented him with £8,000 sterling (had this been a fee for speaking he would, of course, have had to pay tax on it). He denied that he ever received any other sterling, ever, and when it was pointed out to him that lodgements of £15,500 to accounts belonging to himself and his daughters were definitely sterling he suddenly remembered that he had won it betting on races in UK.

$45,000 was lodged into one of his accounts. He simply denied that he had ever received dollars from anyone.

This odious little toad, by the way, was our leader when the property bubble which has led to the destruction of our economy began. He was on first-name terms with the chairman of the bank that collapsed most spectacularly, and for which we (population 4 million) have to pay out a promissory note debt worth €3.06 billion (€3,060,000,000) before next Friday.

Several people I know have lost their jobs. Our company had to impose pay cuts on all of us and let 25 people go.

Some of my children will probably have to emigrate. I may one day have grand-children that I see only once a year or so.

Ahern chickened out of facing the voters in the last General Election, where his party was massacred. That party began moves this week to expel him (something never before done to a former leader) at a meeting to be held next Friday. He chickened out of that too, by resigning from the party last night.

He is through.

My attempt at drawing him captures little of his smirk, of lips that were so quick to tighten into a thin line of repressed rage whenever he was asked a difficult question. About the only thing that I’ve captured is his almost cylindrical head, so like the buckets of cash with which he ran his life.

So no jokes today, just a venting of my contempt for one of the most self-serving, money-grabbing, deceitful creatures to ever infect politics in our country.

A recent challenge, which I never got around to doing, was “Distorted”, so I’m using today’s post to cover that too.

But it’s not my drawing I’m talking about.

Green Party

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, St Patrick was actually Welsh and was kidnapped and sold into slavery here……  

***********************************************************

Patrick was awakened by the time-honoured method of a bucket of water in the face. He sat up groggily, his head still hurting from the blow which had rendered him unconscious.

“Where am I?” he asked, the time-honoured question of anyone coming to in such circumstances.

“You’re in Ireland,” said a voice.

Patrick looked out of the window of the low, dark building in which he found himself. The countryside spread bleakly before him in about forty shades of dreary green. The sky was leaden-grey. Rain was not exactly falling, but not exactly not.

“This is Ireland?” he snorted. “It’s a dank, damp, dump.”

“Says the guy from Wales,” said the voice in a Celtic brogue, which belonged to a man in an apron, Celtic brogues and his early forties.

“Good point,” said Patrick. “But what am I doing here?”

“You’ve been kidnapped, me lad. You’ve been sold to me as a slave. My name’s Sean.”

“As a slave? Doing what?”

“You’re going to run this pub for me while I’m away.”

“Away where?”

“I’ve heard tell of a magical land called Majorca, where it’s said the sun shines all day, so I’m going to try and find it. After all, as you say, this country is a dank, damp, dump.”

Patrick looked around the pub that he was apparently to run. It was a gloomy place in which gloomy men sat in gloomy silence, each with a mug of foamy, foul-smelling ale in front of them.

“What’s the pub called?” he asked.

“It’s called The Deep Depression,” said Sean, “on account of the fact that it’s in a valley.”

One of the gloomy men suddenly put one hand over one ear and emitted a “Nyyeeeeaah” sound, like bagpipes being passed through a wood-chipping machine. This turned out to be the first note of a fifty-verse song in which the man’s potato crop failed, his wife died in childbirth, his daughter went into the escort agency business and his ass went lame. The song made it clear that all of this was somehow the fault of the English.

“This place is like Hell,” said Patrick. “I can’t think of anything that would make it worse.”

He moved his foot and trod on a stick, which bit him.

“Oh,” said Sean. “It’s also full of snakes.”

***********************************************************************

It was two months later when Sean came back. He had learned several things on his travels, such as that there was indeed a magical place called Majorca, that all-day sunshine and Irish complexions do not make a happy partnership and that Ryanlongboats charged extra if your luggage was over a certain weight (twelve ounces).

As he started down into the valley he started. The pub was now called “The Pot O’ Gold ”. As he neared it he could hear what is commonly known as a “hubbub” coming from inside.

He opened the door and stood staring at what he saw. The walls were painted bright green and were covered in harps, shillelaghs and shamrocks. Road-signs pointed to a variety of Irish towns and there were T-Shirts on sale with slogans like “Kiss Me, I’m Irish”. There was a woman, a flame-haired, green-eyed beauty, serving behind the bar and tiny people in green outfits with giant green hats patrolled the room with trays.

Most amazingly, though, the pub was packed, both by males and females, both by young and old. There was chatter, banter and merry laughter.

Patrick spotted Sean and walked over and clapped him merrily on the back, never a joyous event for a man with sunburn.

“Welcome back,” said Patrick. “What do you think?”

“I’m speechless,” said Sean. “What have you done?”

“Modernised,” said Patrick. “I’ve made it a theme pub.” He motioned, and one of the little people walked over to the table. “Darby, bring my friend and me a drink,“ said Patrick. “This is Darby O’Gill,” he said to Sean. “He’s a leprechaun.”

“Don’t patronise me,” said Sean. “He’s a small boy from the village, and his name’s Kevin.”

“Yeah?” said Patrick. “Well, the tourists believe it.”

“Tourists?”

“Yes,” they come from everywhere. They want to savour the true Irish experience.”

“Sadness, drunkenness and famine?”

“No, friendliness, riverdance and the chance to kiss a stone.”

Darby/Kevin returned with two drinks. Both were jet-black, with white heads. Sean took a cautious sip. “What’s this?” he asked.

“No-one could drink that awful ale,” said Patrick, “so I invented this. I call it Guinness, from a Welsh word meaning ‘don’t be anywhere near me when I fart’.”

As they sat and drank singing started, but this was not the whiny solo effort of two months earlier. The same man began it, but others joined in, basses, tenors and baritones, rich voices somehow redolent of welcoming hillsides and deep mines. Their song was of eyes that were smiling, of their wonderful mammy and of something called touralouraloura, yet there was also a hint of sadness over a colleen who would not requite their love, and the song made it clear that this was somehow the fault of the English.

“They’re the Hill of Tara Male Voice Choir,” said Patrick when they’d finished, with a tear in his eye.

The barmaid came over and kissed Patrick (well, he was now Irish) on the cheek.

“He’s saved the pub, he’s made Ireland famous and he’s got rid of the snakes,” she said, gazing lovingly at him. “He should be made a saint.”

Patrick wrapped an arm around her waist, then turned and winked at Sean.

“Perhaps,” he said, “but as my friend Augustine says, ‘not yet’.”

“You got rid of the snakes?” gasped Sean.

“Yeah, I chased them out into the sea,” said Patrick. “I think I’ve invented eels.”

“How did you manage it?”

“I mowed the grass,” said Patrick. “I don’t know why no-one thought of that before.”

Through the Kitchen Window

They say that people in Ireland and the UK are obsessed with the weather. For you lucky gits readers in Australia, South Africa and California, among other places, these three photographs, taken through the same east-facing window, might help explain why.

This was yesterday morning:

This was last night:

And this was this morning:

The word weather forecasters use for this is “changeable”.

The word we use cannot be repeated.

Multiple Choice

Today is the day of our Presidential election.

I’ve mentioned it before, in the post where I declared my intention to stand as a candidate. That never happened, mainly because two men in dark suits with dark glasses (I didn’t know we had a CIA, I was quite impressed) arrived at my door and told me not to go for it. They said this blog showed that I would be a “loose cannon” President, since I have a penchant (they said that too, though they rhymed it with “pendant”) for inventing stories such as, for example, this one.

Vincent...

...and Miriam

Anyway, they did find seven people obviously less loose-cannonical than I am, though you wouldn’t know it to look at some of their histories. The sheer number of the candidates has made each televised Presidential debate, with each of them standing behind a little lectern, look like an episode of The Weakest Link, though the presenter has not worn black leather like Anne Robinson and winked at us all at the end (which is a pity in some cases, Miriam O’Callaghan would have looked great, though Vincent Browne not so much).

The office is largely ceremonial. The President does have some powers, some of them quite important, but essentially he or she is there to be a unifying figure for the people and an ambassador for Ireland both here and abroad. The last two have grown into the job and been terrific, so we can only hope for the best from this current lot, who at the moment range from the dreadfully mediocre to the simply dreadful.

This guy is the favourite to win

after the previous favourite imploded spectacularly during the last debate on Monday. His name is Michael D. Higgins, he’s been around politics since the time of Pitt the Younger, he’s a poet, a raconteur and frankly a bit of a windbag (look who’s talking, I hear you say), but basically a decent enough guy.

I can claim no credit for the picture below, but I thought I would share it with you all anyway:

My own opinion is that once that picture appeared on the internet Michael D should have replaced his own staid poster with it.

I reckon he’d have sailed in.

Getting Shorter

This week’s Six Word Saturday is

Getting Up In The Dark Again

I get up at 6.15 each morning and all last week, for the first time in months, it has been dark when I’ve been getting up.

Not Stygian blackness, (though that can’t actually have been totally dark, how would the ferryman have found his way across the Styx, he might just have rowed around in circles. And how would he know you’d given him the right money, you could have given him an “I Am 4 Today”button for all he’d know) but just dark enough that I’ve had to turn on the light in the kitchen while I was making breakfast.

Autumn is upon us.

Over the years people have tried to make Autumn sound like a Good Thing. The Autumn section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has the nicest music of all of the four sections. Keats burbles on about mists and mellow fruitfulness (though remember that he died young from consumption, probably from hanging about in the mists). Sky Sports keep reminding us that the new football season starts in Autumn (they’ve actually been rabbiting on about that since May since they’ve no decent sport to show during the summer). Americans refer to it as Fall, making it sound less forbidding and also easier to spell.

If its all that great then why do birds gather together in their hundreds, fly around in circles for a while like looners, then sod off south until spring.

No, the fact is that Autumn is the warm-up guy for the main act of Winter, though warm-up is the wrong expression. This week has been chilly, and coming from an Irishman that’s bad, we regard anything above 18 degrees as stifling.

Soon it will be dark not just when I get up for work, but still dark when I get there. It will be dark when I leave to come home.

Any day now a Christmas ad will appear on the TV, and I will throw something at the screen.

The only good thing that can be said for Autumn is that without it the apple would not have dropped onto Isaac Newton’s head. In that case he would never have invented gravity, and my laptop would now be floating just above my head, slightly out of reach.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

http://www.showmyface.com/

All The President’s Tin

I have decided to put myself forward as President of Ireland.

There is to be an election later this year, since after two terms in office the incumbent President Mary McAleese is not permitted to stand again, and there has been a bit of a struggle to find anyone who would be acceptable to the electorate, ie, someone who is not an ex-politician looking for a nice, well-paid retirement post.

The people’s original favourite, raconteur and Joycean scholar David Norris withdrew from the race under something of a cloud. The next favourite (at least according to him) was an ex-TV presenter called Gay Byrne (in this country “ex-TV presenter” means someone who has retired from the show they have done for many years, but who is still wheeled out to present other programmes several times a year). He also withdrew, not under a cloud, but because he would have to come down from his.

People are now mentioning Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh, a really sweet man whose gentle voice graced Gaelic Football and Hurling commentaries for many years, but who is now 81, retired and has never shown any interest in the job. The main reason to elect him would be to laugh the BBC and CNN’s attempts to pronounce his name.

But enough about them. All of them labour under the belief that being elected to the Presidency would be an elevation to high office, and each of them have publicly doubted whether they would be up to the job. Since a couple of months ago on this very blog I gave reasons why I would make an excellent Prime Minister, and since back at the start of the year I reported that I had applied successfully to the Vatican for the job of God, I would have no such doubts. In fact, I might well be able to keep my present job at the same time.

Because the job is not like that of President of the US, where I would have to deal with stuff like mid-term elections, the Tea Party and trying to figure out what a trillion is, although I believe that tea-parties may well be involved.

The post is more that of a national figurehead. I’d be like the Queen, though without a crown, my face on our money or the ability to refer to oneself in the third person singular. I won’t have to do a State of the Union address, like Obama, I won’t have to do a Christmas Day address like the Queen.

I will have an address, though. It’s called Áras an Uachtaráin (let me tell you, Spellcheck is not enjoying this post) and I would be expected to move in there for my seven-year term. When I tell you that this house is in the middle of one of the largest parks in any European capital city, and therefore miles from any pub, you will understand the sacrifices I am prepared to make in the service of my country.

Any overseas readers struck by the majestic sound of the name, by the way, will be disappointed to learn that it is simply Irish for “The House of the President”.

They might as well call Buckingham Palace “The Queen’s Gaff”.

I would be addressed as “Your Excellency”, which I find it hard to argue with. Since we have had female presidents for the last twenty years no-one can remember how to address the wife of a male one, so I plan to start referring to Mrs Tin as Lady Tin and hope that it catches on.

My duties, as far as I can tell, will be to visit foreign countries and tell them how great Ireland is, allow new ambassadors to present their credentials (I’m hoping that’s not a euphemism) and then tell them how great Ireland is, and attend a lot of state banquets, where I will be expected to toast how great Ireland is.

It is also apparently traditional that I attend the Dublin Horse Show each year. Never mind, I can always bring a book.

It’s not all beer and skittles, though (in fact I believe there is very little of either), I do have some responsibility. If the Government of the day collapses and comes to me asking to dissolve itself and call an election I apparently have the power to tell them that they can‘t. This power is generally regarded as a good thing for democracy, though I‘ve never understood why. It seems to me that I’d be telling a group of people too incompetent to run the government that they are to continue to incompetently run the government, and why one would ever do this is beyond me.

Oh, there is one more thing. Apparently the President is expected to be above politics.

I have seen what has passed for politics in this country over the last thirty years, and believe me I am well above that.

Singing, Each to Each

I’ve often wondered why we Irish have our own unique look and complexion.

After all we’ve been invaded by just about every country and race in Europe, yet we do not have the Nordic blondness of the Vikings, the suave sophistication of the Romans, the lilting voice of the Welsh Celts, the black make-up of the Goths, the nerdiness of the Normans (sorry, but Norman is a nerdy name) or the rugged good looks of the English, as represented by John Terry or Boris Johnston.

As I said, it’s a mystery, or at least it was until I read this in the paper this week:

It explains everything – our almost vampire-like aversion to sunshine, the fact that we think Colin Farrell is good-looking and the fact that we can all drink like a fish.

It turns out that we are descended from the aquaphibians from Stingray.

*

Playing the Record

Even by my modest standards the photograph below is not great:

But in a pub at ten to eight in the morning, taken on a mobile phone with no flash that I can find, it’s not too bad an effort.

“Hang on a sec,” I hear you think. “In a pub at ten to eight in the morning, Tinman? You’re basically one stage away from drinking out of a can in a paper-bag up an alley somewhere.”

Let me explain.

As part of Dublin Street World Championships Week a guitarist called Dave Browne announced that he was going to break the Guinness World Record by playing the guitar for one hundred hours. He played in the Temple Bar pub in the city centre and as you passed, at whatever hour of the day or night, there were bar staff standing outside with a coffee machine offering you free coffee if you would just go in and watch him for a couple of songs, and applaud him at the end of each one to keep him going.

That’s him on the right of the picture (yes, the one standing up, I think that helped him stay awake). This picture was taken yesterday morning, and unfortunately the light on the wall above the middle guy was just too bright in the darkness of the pub.

Because it’s a running clock, and in the picture it says 87 hours, 57 minutes and 2 seconds.

This means he should have reached his target at about eight last night, and as I got off the bus this morning I was thinking about him, wondering how he had got on.

But as I got around the corner near the Temple Bar I could hear music again, and there were still people outside handing out coffee.

I peeked inside. He was still playing, and the clock now read 112.02.02.

Apparently it had been discovered that the world record is actually 113 hours, so he just kept going. He eventually stopped at 10.20, having played for 1,372 pieces of music over 114 hours and 20 minutes. He’s doing it to raise money for Focus Ireland, a charity that helps the homeless.

I’m glad I was there, even for just a few minutes. I hope he raises a lot of money, I hope he gets a lot of praise, I hope he has a terrific life.

I hope he gets to sleep until Tuesday.

This is what he really looks like (image thanks to Goldenplec)