Wheat, Maize and Grain

When I was at school Geography was the educational equivalent of the Big Mac gherkin, unloved and discarded by virtually everyone.

This was because it was unrelentingly dull. We were a given a light snowfall of information about a number of countries, none of it deep enough to actually stick. Generally speaking we were taught the name of the capital city and the chief exports. As far as I can remember the exports always included wheat, maize and grain, and these three words featured in the first sentence of every exam answer I ever gave (“the chief exports of Ireland are wheat, maize and grain”…. “the chief exports of Antartica are wheat, maize and grain”… “the chief exports of the Sahara…” etc, etc).

Doing “projects” meant being a handed a map of Ireland stripped of all characteristics other than an outline of the counties, and being asked to fill in the names. This was as exciting as Geography got.

And because it was so dull, we all ended up forgetting about half of what we learned. I presume that’s why, although I can tell you where the North and South Poles are, I haven’t a clue about the whereabouts of the East and West ones.

When people slag Americans for how little they know about Europe, they assume it’s because they never learned about it. In fact, they were taught about it, but just couldn’t be arsed remembering. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, the same goes for us in reverse. One night in my local we managed to name 48 of the 50 US States. I was told to find out which two we were missing and returned the following night to report that we were actually missing five, since one of the ones we had listed was actually in Canada and two others weren’t States at all.

But somewhere along the way Geography upped its game. I think it began when the six-nation Common Market evolved via a series of leaps and bounds into the 27-nation EU (well, to be strictly accurate, 26 and Britain, who were given Free Trial Membership back in 1973 and still haven’t fully decided whether they like it or not). Suddenly Geography was no longer a dead, fixed subject, like Latin, it was changing all the time.

The collapse of communism halved the number of Germanies, while the number of Balkan countries exploded, often explosively. The roll-call of world nations changes with a rapidity that keeps atlas publishers in Ferraris and World Cup organisers in therapy. And climate change and global warming means that the very shape of countries and continents is changing.

The Burren

Tingirl is doing Geography and has three projects to hand in by Christmas. These are on the Burren, earthquakes and tornadoes. The Burren is a wild and lovely part of County Clare, earthquakes are strictly speaking Geology and tornadoes are just weather, but all three are more exciting than drawing the path of a river or a relief map of a fjord, which is the kind of crap homework we used to get. As a result kids these days love Geography.

Everyone has a Trivial Pursuit achilles heel. I’m sure you’ve guessed mine. I’d slide my wedge-filled pie-dish into the very centre, my fellow players would say “geography” in unison, I’d be asked some baffling question containing the word “scree” or “delta” and I’d retreat in humble embarrassment.

Hopefully the kids of today will be spared that humiliation.

Shanghai Express

Being Shanghaied was something that used to happen to sailors when unscrupulous captains were looking to fill a crew for a voyage.

A man would go into a bar, people there would get him very drunk, and he’d awaken the following morning aboard a ship bound for the far east to pick up spices (and scurvy).

The modern, Tinman equivalent is to go out for a quiet drink and come home having committed yourself to go to a football match in England next Saturday.

I was out with a friend last night when his phone rang. His side of the conversation went “hello…what, why can’t he?…well, maybe we can get someone else…actually, hang on a second.” He then turned to me and said “how would you like to come to Manchester United v Sunderland on Saturday,” and yet again the derealised me heard a voice very like mine saying “sure, I’d love to.”

Now, I do like football, and have been to matches in the UK before. Indeed, this will be my eleventh game. But the first four were when I used to be sent to the UK for work, and was there anyway, and the later ones were reached through the medium of flight. I used to bring Tinson1 to a match each year as a Christmas present, then the last time we brought Tinson2 as well, and the tradition only ended the year I was blacking out, & we decided it probably wasn’t a good idea.

Each year we made an event of it, flying over and staying in a hotel both the night before and after the game. In other words, we did it in style, and, if we weren’t quite part of the “Prawn Sandwich Brigade” so denigrated by Roy Keane, we certainly weren’t the re-incarnation of old fans in flat caps with rattles. If anyone ever chanted “who ate all the pies” at us, we’d have to reply “well, not us, because we wouldn’t eat that crap.”

My friend and his three mates (well, two this week, which has opened the door for me) don’t do it that way. The match is on Saturday. They are leaving Ireland on Saturday, and leaving the UK on the way home on Saturday. And doing it all by car and boat.

As far as I can make out, the itinerary is: get up at six, get picked up at seven, drive to Dun Laoghaire, catch the boat to Holyhead, drive through Wales to Manchester, have a few drinks, watch the match, have a few drinks, drive back from Manchester through Wales to Holyhead, have a few drinks waiting for the boat, catch the boat back to Ireland (having a last few drinks on the boat) and then be driven home, arriving at 7am on Sunday (I should point out here that the driver is a non-drinker – we’re not totally mad). All that just for 90 minutes of football (well, 96 minutes, probably – it is United, after all).

As GoldenEyes here at work says, it sounds like the kind of weekend that four 25-year-olds would have. But, although I am the age of two 25-year-olds, I don’t have twice the drinking capacity, and I’m quite worried.

My mate is hoping that it’s a good game. I’m just hoping I don’t throw up in the car.

Boy With the Black Stuff

In Flann O’Brien’s book The Third Policeman he suggests the theory that, after a lifetime spent in the saddle of a bike, the molecules of policeman and bike would start to mingle, and eventually the policeman would become part bike, leaning against walls while idle, etc.

If his theory is correct, it is possible that I am now 70% Guinness, and therefore should make brief reference to this special day. Today is Arthur’s Day, celebrating the fact that the Guinness brewery was founded 250 years ago in 1759, and at 17:59 today a concert is taking place in the Guinness Storehouse which will be broadcast, in pubs only, all around the world.

It may surprise those of my readers not from here that not everybody in Ireland drinks Guinness. It is possible to retain’s one’s Irishness while not liking it, in the same way that it is not obligatory for us to like Riverdance, boiled bacon & cabbage, or those songs that begin with a long nasal “Neeeeahhhh”, which can only be sung with one’s eyes closed and one hand cupped over one ear.

It is true, though, that Guinness has come to be seen as a symbol of the Irish, and rightly so. It is popular, inclined to be bitter, and too much can give you a real headache.

I’ve only recently reverted to Guinness, having actually stopped drinking it for a few years. Like a 50-year-old flirting with a selection of blonde ladies, I underwent my own mid-life crisis by flirting with a succession of bland lagers. As an excuse for this infidelity I can only offer the standard male excuse, which is that Guinness drove me to it. As a wife will change for the worse after a marriage (I only get away with stuff like this coz Mrs Tin doesn’t read this blog) Guinness altered for the worse after it had originally ensnared me.

Back in the 1970s Guinness introduced a new stout called Guinness Light (with the unfortunately prescient tag-line “they said it couldn’t be done”). It was less heavy and bitter, and aimed at younger drinkers, so I drank it one night. I should point out that I was not a mad teenager on a weekend spree, I was a guy in his 20s out with his brother and sister-in-law for a couple of quiet Tueday night drinks. So the fact that I spent the following days vomiting solidly (if such a thing is possible),till I was eventually throwing up green stuff that I reckoned was the lining of my stomach, was entirely down to the product, and not at all due to my youthful excesses.

And apparently I wasn’t alone, as Guinness Light died a quick and unmourned death. Instead of leaving well enough alone, however, Guinness were still determined to attract the younger drinker, so about a decade ago they messed with the formula of the Guinness pint itself.

Prior to this Guinness was a heavy drink with the consistency of soup. When they messed with it they produced instead a load of watery shite that gives you, well, watery shite, and although they quickly realised their error, they have never been able to get the original standard back  (If you think this is just nostalgia talking, notice how many of their ads relate to quality control, and to how many people they have on the road checking the standard of the pint. They know themselves that they have a problem).

No article about Guinness would be complete without a brief mention of its effects on your insides. For an accurate and hilarious description of a visit to the toilet after a night drinking Guinness I recommend Twenty Major’s first novel, and all I say in addition is that you will notice that Dr Gillian McKeith has never had a Guinness drinker on her programme, because if she had it would cure of her of her curious obsession with poo forever.

Anyway, today is Guinness’s birthday, and for all that I have given out about it here, I am doing so in the same way that one gives out about a favoured uncle – full of deprecation, but with an underlying affection.

Here’s to the next 250 years.

On Yer Bike

This arrived in the post yesterday. It’s my Dublinbikes membership card.

Dublinbikes is the new bike-rental scheme in Dublin. 450 bikes have been placed at 20 different stations around the inner city, and the idea is that you hire one, make your journey, and leave it off at another station somewhere.

The system is based on the Velib system operated in Paris. This has been very popular, though unfortunately the bikes themselves have been subjected to extreme vandalism. Some have been found up in trees, some have been thrown into the Seine. If that’s the sort of behaviour that goes on in Paris, then many people fear for the bikes in Dublin, but Dublin City Council have optimistically said they are confident that the same thing will not happen here. (If they are speaking very literally then they are of course correct – it’s almost impossible to throw a bike into the Seine from here).

Anyway, for some reason I’ve decided to give it a try. I’m planning to use it to cycle to and from the station each day. The main flaw in my plan is that I’ve cycled just once in the last 35 years. That was last summer in France, when I cycled around a lake with Tinson1, and, as a description of how my nether regions felt afterwards, well, I just can’t top this . So, before I embark on my intended route, which will involve cycling along the traffic-packed quays, I’ve decided to practice for a few lunchtimes on some quiet roads around here.

Today was my first effort. I wobbled, wavered, went too slowly sometimes,  and discovered that the bike wheel is exactly the right width to get caught in the tram tracks of the Luas. The bikes are painted blue and are quite distinctive, so I attracted quite a bit of attention and comment, and was the butt of quite a lot of dry Dublin humour (sorry, but the word butt is at the forefront of my mind at the moment, as already I’m starting to feel a saddle-shaped pain in mine). Occasionally I’d work up a bit of speed and start to enjoy it, but then I’d hear traffic coming along behind me again, and I’d cravenly slow down & sometimes just pull in and get off.

Is it safe for a derealised man to cycle around a large city? Possibly not, which is why I’m just practising at the moment, & if I don’t feel happy then I won’t take it any further. Then again, thousands of people cycle in here, every day, so if I’m careful I should have nothing to worry about.

Besides, I have this.

I didn’t have a blog when I reached my 50th birthday, so never got to report how funny all my workmates found it, since none of them had even had a 40th, and indeed many hadn’t had a 30th. There was great excitement – and a cake – that morning, then about 15 of them brought me for lunch and insisted I had wine, and my timesheet for that afternoon still stands as a far finer work of fiction than anything I’ve ever written here.

My blackouts, at that time still unexplained, were at their most frequent around then, and I was still hitting my head off large parts of Dublin city, so among many other presents GoldenEyes and the Overlord bought me that cycling helmet.

And I kept it, though I was never quite sure why. And today, for the first time, I got to wear it.

My bum will probably be really sore after today’s workout (it’s sentences like that one that get you loads of hits, Mwa), but hopefully I’ve found a new and useful form of exercise.

A Sort of Homecoming

Guess where I was yesterday….

U2 are back in Dublin, and the show was brilliant, but the main reason for this post is the photograph above. I am immensely proud of it, not just because I haven’t nicked it off Google Images like I usually do.

It’s because I took it with my phone.

As I have often said before, I am not exactly a child of the technological age. It is widely believed that the word “Luddite”, coined back in the 19th Century, means “anyone opposed to technological change”, but the exact meaning at the time was “a word nearly good enough to describe someone who’s crap at everything technical, which will have to do till Tinman comes along next century and really raises (or lowers) the bar of ineptitude, & we can start calling these people tinmen instead”.

I do have a digital camera, given to me by my adoring family last birthday. I asked for it because I thought it would be of use in my blog, but in fact every picture by me that’s ever appeared here has been taken on my phone. My digital camera is about to make it’s debut here, and perhaps you’ll see why:

That’s the only one of the 60 pictures taken on the camera yesterday that was taken by me. Once Mrs Tin saw that, it was taken away from me, and I was left to play with my mobile instead.

And so, when the blimp suddenly appeared behind the giant stage, I took that picture. On the screen of my mobile it looked grey and tiny, and I was astonished when I opened it on my computer this morning.

It’s better than anything Mrs Tin took on my camera. Well, apart from this one:

…or maybe this one…..

…or maybe, well, OK, any of them really.

Still, neither of us got what would have been the best picture of the night. As you can see, the area behind the stage was unoccupied, as Hill 16 at Croke Park has terraces instead of seats. This meant that all signs on the walls of the Hill were visible and at one point, as Bono was on the giant screen, the sign “Toilet” appeared above his head.

Even Bono himself would have laughed.

A Boy at Heart

We grow up, and become more mature. We get ourselves up in the morning, and drag ourselves off to work as hard as we can at jobs that we have found for ourselves. We buy houses, find spouses, have children. These children think that we are the most most mature and sensible people they will ever meet. In short, we become adults.

And yet inside each of us adults there is still a schoolchild, a kid who finds the words “poo” and “bum” funny, and to whom the ultimate in humour is a person falling over.

Yesterday I watched the golf on telly, and ,while it was an amazing and unforgettable day, as 59-year old Tom Watson came so close to winning, what I will remember most was a remark by one of the commentators. Speaking about fellow commentator and former player Ken Brown, Mark James said:

“Well, it can get cold. That’s why Ken Brown used to soak his balls in hot water for an hour before going out.”

(Did you smirk when you read that? See?)

And last night in my local, when the highlights of the Tour de France came on (I don’t know why we put it on every evening, none of us have a clue what’s going on), I found myself thinking “I wonder do cyclists soak their balls in cold water for an hour after coming in” and realised my inner schoolchild is still going strong.

He’ll be around as long as I am.

The Excitement is in Tents

Tinson1 if off to Oxygen this morning.

This is his “end of school” celebratory event. A load of the class are heading off to Majorca, and he was going to do that, but he came home one day and said “nah, it’s getting too messy” (and when a 17-year old bloke says that, you wonder WTF they were planning), so he opted for this instead.

This is his checklist, which I found on the kitchen table (sorry that’s it’s a bit hard to read, it’s not easy taking photos & uploading them at 5.30 am):

The list is apparently based on tips from the Oxygen website. The compilers, bless them, sound as innocent and naive as he does.

The second item, for example, says “something luminous to notice our tent”. Ignoring for a moment the construction of the sentence, which would lead you to believe that English is not Tinson1’s first language, a short reflection will quickly reveal the flaw in this plan. Attaching something luminous to your tent so that you can find it in the dark is a great idea, but only if you’re the only people doing it. I have a mental image of a load of half-asleep people wandering blearily around at 4 a.m. in a field eerily lit by a thousand luminous tents, the whole scene looking like a Sellafield housing estate being visited by zombies.

Item 6 – “Lock for tent” – is also touching in its innocence. It’s rumoured  that both the first and second of the three little pigs also invested in locks.

His proposed diet for the weekend is interesting. “16+ nutrigrain bars” and “canned fruit (must have opener tabs)” mean that at least he’ll be getting his five helpings a day, if in the least possible edible form. The second last item, though,  says “Jam sandwiches – keep for a few days!” (his exclamation mark). I fear he will discover that, while this may be true of the jam (there’s a reason why you find it in Tesco in an aisle marked “preserves”) it is unlikely to be true of the bread, and the only thing worse than eating mouldy bread is eating mouldy bread with strawberry jam on it.

I’m mentally blocking out the last line. It’s not just the word “vaseline” that worries me, it’s the “dot, dot, dot, question mark” that follows it.

(By the way, while I’m grateful that the list doesn’t include entries like “condoms” or “spliffs”, I have been a parent long enough to know that he might well have a second list).

I hope he has a great time, though, and I envy him. The line-up for the weekend is incredible (I’ve heard of more than half of the bands, which is saying something) and the whole thing will be a great experience, and hopefully great fun.

The weather forecast, for Saturday in particular, is absolutely shite.  It wouldn’t be a music festival if it wasn’t.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On

Sunshine!

Warm, brilliant, heart-lifting sunshine!

The picture above is not from Majorca, the Algarve or Sardinia, but was taken in my back garden this morning. Centrestage is my beloved sun lounger, a Father’s Day gift from the (almost as beloved) Tinkids about five years ago, and still the best present I’ve ever received.

For the first time this year (and remember it’s more than one-third over) God has decided to give us a sunny day that isn’t a Tuesday, so everything I’d planned to do today has gone out the window.

Instead I’ve sat, and sometimes lain, in the lounger. I’ve read a bit, slept a bit, and had a great time.

You can see a newspaper in the photo, but to be honest I’ve only read a couple of pages. There will be plenty of damp, dreary days (starting, apparently, with tomorrow) to read about the cruelty a generation of our children received from church-run institutions, the short-sighted greed of our bankers and builders, and the sheer incompetence of our politicians, but today is not one of those day.

Instead I’m going to be postitive. Especially since it’s now three hours and forty-two minutes since anyone started up a motor mower.

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I’ve just discovered that this is my 300th post, and I’m glad it’s such a happy one.

Dunmovin

Beside my house there’s a walkway into the next housing estate. Since the shops, train station, pub, etc are all in the other direction, however, I almost never walk through it.

I had to deliver a letter to a house in the estate this evening, though, so I walked through and noticed that the second house in, just twnty yards or so from mine, has a lovely wooden name plate.

The house is called Meanmemot.

Genius.

We’ve Boldly Gone

Last night the whole Tinfamily went to see Star Trek.

The Tinsons like the later series, such as Voyager and Enterprise, but would regard the old show, with Kirk and Spock, as outdated. Mrs Tin and Tingirl have no time for them at all. 

I’ve always been a fan of all the different series, but to be honest (and this proves I’m not a true Trekkie) I’ve never liked any of the films much. I’ve always thought they were overblown and far too pompous.

As such, none of us really knew what to expect.

We had a great time. The film is exhilarating. It’s funny, noisy, action-packed and a joy from beginning to end. It has lots of little in-jokes for people like me, but overall you may never have seen a single episode, like Tingirl, and you’ll still have a great time.  

As the Tinkids get older such all-family events are becoming increasingly rare, and that probably made it all the more enjoyable.

Here I should finish with some remark like “I hope the makers live long, and prosper”, but I don’t want to look like a complete nerd. 

And, of couse, I could have shown a picture of Kirk, or Spock (the brilliant Sylar from Heroes), or the Enterprise itself, but I’ve chosen Lt Urura instead. When I was a kid I used to fancy the old Uhura (she’s 75 now, born the same year as my dad), but this one is just gorgeous.