Two Notes on Impending Christmas ‘24

My Christmas holiday has now begun and I’m really very happy about that. 

I particularly love these years when Christmas falls in a way that allows me to get a few days off before the big day arrives. It gives a little time to walk around and smell the cloves, so to speak, and drink in the feeling of ‘something nice coming’, rather than the bulk of the holiday being spent having a slight tang of ‘something’s over now’.

And I’m walking around, and I get thoughts about things. Christmassy things. As usual, none of these thoughts are of a particular depth or relevance. The main attribute they have is that they are my own. So, I thought I’d see if I can now remember two of these thoughts while I’m typing and, if so, set them down. Then, when I (hopefully) look back on these scribblings in years to come, as I sometimes do, I might get some taste of where my head was at, in December 2024. Don’t expect much from here on. These are, after all, only my thoughts.

Christmas Radio Times: I had a thought about the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. It has been sitting under the tree for the past week. I’ve peeped inside but I haven’t sat with it. Until yesterday, which was Saturday. That was the day the programmes in the Radio Times began. I opened it up, read for a while about what was on offer for Saturday, and set a few bits to record. 

I’ve been getting the Christmas Radio Times since I was a small boy, even though we’re here in Ireland and the RTE Guide is the weapon of choice for 99% of the populace. I loved radio from a very young age and used to get nearly as much from the radio listings as I did from the television ones. So, every year I still get it, even though it’s got really quite expensive now. This year’s outlay was 9 Euro! Anyway, I opened it up yesterday morning and immediately realised that, for me at least, the item in my hand had devalued by a full 50% by the very act of starting to use it. 

I realised that much of the joy in the magazine now lies in a) its arrival on the shop shelves, offering a portent of a holiday to come as clear as a morning star in the east and b) the untapped potential of what might be on offer between those covers. The deterioration of a) is pretty clear. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, and like most everything of the season, the potency wanes with each passing hour until it is, once again, gone. My Radio Times is like Schrodinger’s Cat, except the box is now open and I can see that, dead or alive, the contents is merely a cat.

Water My Tree: Every year we get a real Christmas tree. I’ve written before here about the extraordinary interaction I have with the Christmas Tree Man since the year I gave my tree away, so we won’t go into that here again. Here’s the thing with my tree, and I hope you won’t brand me as being cruel, I think I have just been a little unthinking, which is perhaps worse. Until this year, I didn’t really understand the real Christmas tree in my living room needs water. Sorry, I just didn’t. I tended to leave a bowl of water adjacent to the base of the tree and thought that was okay. The trees generally clung on to acceptability until the start of the New Year and so everything was fairly okay. 

This year, though, has been slightly different. The tree I got is a little smaller than previous tress. Not substantially so and not for any reason of economics. It was just the prettiest durned tree on the lot, as my American friends might or might not say. Perhaps because the tree is that little bit smaller, it seems to have started to deteriorate more quickly that the trees of yore. It just looks a bit ‘saggy’ and there’s an aura of ‘advanced tree’ about it that I never noticed before. 

When I went and looked it up on the Internet, I was shouted at from all sides, “YOUR TREE NEEDS WATER’ or ’YOUR TREE WILL DIE WITHOUT WATER.’ I was immediately in a high state of guilt and remorse and I resolved to amend my oversight forthwith. But there was a problem, The metal base of my tree (re-used every year) extends out quite a bit, such that I would need a tray with a diameter of just over 800mm to accommodate it. I searched all over town but couldn’t find anything that worked. Removing the base in favour of some other, more water-friendly, base would be a nightmare (before Christmas) what with all the lights and baubles and things in it. 

So what to do? I’m rather proud of myself that I devised a little ‘water delivery’ system at the base of the tree after puzzling over it for a while. A slender plastic lunch box lid, slipped under the slightly elevated part of the stand at the base of the tree, filled with water, and then a cut sponge squeezed between the base of the tree and the water in the Pyrex lid. The sponge, even as I speak, is soaking the water up and delivering it into the base of the tree by a mixture of Capillary Action and Blind Faith. Will it make a blind bit of difference to my dehydrated tree. The newborn Christ only knows. But it’s made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. At least I’ve done something. 

I’ve just been and had a look and the tree seems to be drinking up the water although maybe it’s all in the sponge. Please don’t give me good advice about this. I will do better next year (artificial tree, probably) and my ingenious little arrangement has brought me some temporary peace of mind.

And, at the end of the day, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

I wish you all a Happy Christmas and, hopefully, some Temporary Peace of Mind.

x

It’s Coming on Christmas…

The title this week is quoting an old Joni Mitchell song, and the opening lyrics seem particularly appropriate here in Castlebar this week.

It's coming on Christmas.

They're cutting down trees.

It’s coming on Christmas for sure and, yes, here in town, they are indeed cutting down trees.

But the trees they are cutting down are not those of the Yuletide persuasion. Our beloved town green, known locally as The Mall, has been having a number of very old trees removed this week. As I understand, they have had to cut down four Ash trees in total, at least one of them over three hundred years old.

I didn’t know this was going to happen. What would I have done if I had known? Would I have given the trees a farewell hug? Unlikely. Would I have taken a photo? Unsatisfactory. Would I have stood and looked at them quietly one last time and murmured thanks in my brain for all the green leaves and portents of changing seasons. I think I probably would have done that. But I didn’t. The first thing I knew was that the red and white plastic security tape was up, and the machinery was in, and the saws were roaring.

Huge slices of tree sat on The Mall as I walked back after lunch. Their insides so pale and bare. A temptation, perhaps, to count the rings but there were no rings to be seen from across the plastic tape. Perhaps they were too dense to apprehend. Perhaps they were too white to show.

The trees on The Mall are, for me at least, an intrinsic part of this town I live in. The first thing that drew me to the town was this large green area right at the centre, so similar in ways to Twickenham Green where I had just left. The trees that surround The Mall have never sat still. They have always been changing and turning. One of them claimed my son’s boomerang twenty years ago and probably still has it. The trees have seen people sit under them and rest and read and look at their phones. The trees have borne pale white Christmas lights to remind us of the season and to effectively ease the darkness. The trees have seen people hung from them, in earlier times.

The removal of the trees is a little like having four teeth out all at once. It hurts a little and one’s senses naturally migrate to the empty spaces where they used to be. But we will get used to their absence, as we get used to almost all other absences. We will plough on.

The trees had to come down. They were diseased and split and had become a hazard to the good people of the town. The work was done cleanly and safely and well, and I feel sure that the wood will be considerately used.

So, thanks, trees, thanks for everything. As the old song goes, we can run on for a long time, but sooner or later, someone or something is going to cut us down.

 

 

Blue Skies and Possible Second Chances

I’ve had a social media account on Bluesky for quite a while. I hadn’t been using it much, to be honest. One update a week, generally, a link to the blog post. Maybe a reply or two here and there, the odd ‘like’. Nothing major. In case you’re wondering, it’s like Twitter/X but nicer.

Then, a few weeks ago, it kind of just took off. After you-know-who won you-know-what, more and more people jumped ship and turned up on Bluesky, which was the equivalent of the ‘RMS Carpathia’, if you know what I mean. Old familiar faces appeared, Tentative exchanges and sapling conversations sprang up. It was nice. 

Could it be something? A possible second chance at a working social media interface, without the barriers and the blocks and the forced information and adverts? We’ll see, I guess.

Today will be the first day that I won’t do a tweet on ‘X’ for this weekly blog post. That’s been pretty much the only tweet I’ve done for some time now. It’s been a pointless exercise because ‘X’ won’t share a tweet with a link like that in it. Two or three friends will see it, that’s all (as far as I can tell). I’d got used to that. But what I hadn’t got used to was the fact that I was giving some kind of support or acknowledgement to the current owner of ‘X’ and that is something I don’t want to be doing. Hypocritically, maybe, I’ll hold on to the account for another while but won’t use it unless I see a friend who needs a word of support. I should terminate it but there’s 15 years of friends and stuff put into it and maybe someday someone else will come along and it will be a good thing again. I know, I know, but that’s how I think. A tad naive, at best.

Meanwhile, there’s Bluesky.

Something small but nice happened to me on Bluesky yesterday. It started, as nice things sometimes do, with the excellent Moose Allain. I had the pleasure of meeting Moose once, but it was on a very sad day, and I don’t feel I was as outgoing or genial as I wish I had been. Moose is very clever, very creative and very, very inventive and you should go and look him up and support his Art. He and I share an’ involvement’ in Architecture but I reckon he’s way better at it than I am. (Ed: That’s enough about Moose now, what did he do yesterday?)

Okay, yesterday Moose posted a message on Bluesky. I really don’t know what people call that. A Bluesky-Tweet. A Bleat, maybe? I have no clue. Here’s what he bleated. No, doesn’t work, anyway…

Just thinking about dad jokes I’ve made which have annoyed/embarrassed my children. For example in a restaurant I ordered a coke. The waitress asked if I wanted a pint or a half. I said, “Better make it a half, I’m driving.” No one laughed, apart from me.

I read it, enjoyed it and was about to move on when I suddenly remembered that I’d had my own spontaneous Dad-Joke moment in just the last couple of days. So I typed that up in a message and sent it as a reply to Moose. No reason, really. I didn’t even think it was all that worth sending. But I did anyway. Here’s what I sent back.

Just the other day, I was buying two of the same book, in the bookshop, as pressies. The lady asked me if I was sure I needed two and I said yes, I'm going to read it twice. She just looked at me.

On of the good things I always found about Twitter/X/Bluesky is how it teaches you to edit yourself. I could have made a whole blog post out of that (true) story. I suppose, in a way, I have. Anyway, Moose replied (kindly) that this was ‘Marvellous Stuff’ and passed it on to the people who read his stuff. This was kind and much appreciated. One would expect a little traction from a Moose seal of approval like this. I kind of figured I would see about three ‘likes’ and maybe one repost of my thing if I was lucky.

As I l glance now at my little message, I see that there are… 370 likes and… twenty-nine reposts. A brace of new people has come and followed my mutterings. Yesterday was a pleasant experience, the few times I checked in to Bluesky saw more and more reaction and replies to my couple of lines and new people dropping by. It was an experience reminiscent of old school Twitter from ten or fifteen years ago. It was not really about being ultra-clever or super-funny. It was something considerably more subtle than that.

It’s a twofold thing, really. The first part is a renewed spirit of generosity that Twitter had beaten out of most of us. ‘That’s kind of good, I’ll give it a like’ is no longer the Twitter/X way, not in my experience anyway. The second part is simply about seeing and being seen. Twitter/X shut me down to such an extent that no more than a literal handful of people were seeing anything I chose to say, which unsurprisingly became less and less and less. But, like a frog in slowly heating water, I never really took notice until I was virtual escargot.

This post isn’t here to say, look at me, I did a funny and got loads of likes. 370 doesn't even qualify as 'loads of likes' by old-school standards. But it is something. It is a positive sign. One of positivity and engagement. Stretching the point, it may be a possible sign of regeneration and of social media rebirth.

Do I go too far? Of course I do! Haven’t you met me?

Perhaps the likelihood is that Bluesky will mark time in a grossly accelerated fashion, rather like that water planet in Interstellar. It will warm up and cool down and congeal at ten times the rate of the other places we have landed, and we will hoof through its bubbling scraps again for a while before hopping on to some other doomed planet for another while. 

But maybe not. Maybe this is the place.

The place for us.

 

Doubting Thomas Versus Armageddon

Two things happened this week that colour what I’m going to try to say.

As I type, the votes in our General Election are being counted. It’s a fun few days if you enjoy that kind of thing. Our Proportional Representation system means that second, third, fourth or even fifth-choice votes can often elect somebody. So it comes down to late night showdowns in large halls which end up with one person being hoisted awkwardly onto the shoulders of his new minions, while another person slinks miserably off towards the rear exit.

But, when all the interpersonal battling and general flim-flam is set aside, the story of this election seems to have been already written in the exit polls and in the faces of the people. The emerging headline is clear. ‘Nothing Will Change.’

So, that’s the first thing that happened.

The second thing that happened this week is that Sally Rooney wrote an article in the Irish Times on the subject of Climate Change. For some reason, the paywall let me through and I got to read it. You should too if you can. It got me thinking about Climate Change… and about General Elections… and about how nothing will change.

Two things... and here I am, typing.

In her article, Sally considers Climate Change and Elections together. She says, “ Voters concerned about the future of human life on Earth can still choose to support the few radical left-wing parties that are trying to understand the scale of the challenge, like People Before Profit here in Ireland. Equally, consumers who are worried about the climate can reduce their own impact on carbon emissions by cutting out flights, eating less or no meat, buying fewer unnecessary items, and so on. These are in no way meaningless gestures, but neither are they sufficient to bring the fossil-fuel establishment to its knees.”

It’s that end bit. We can stop eating meat, we can travel nowhere, we can be more mindful generally… and we should… we definitely should. But those things won’t save the planet. That’s the problem. I can do my bit, but my bit and your bit and all our bits together won’t come anywhere close to even starting to sort it out. It’s going to need something earth-shattering and massive to turn this around. And, in case you haven’t noticed, it just ain’t happening. I’m still typing, and the election results are rolling in as my fingers work. Nothing is changing. Nothing at all.

Allow me to make two diverse cultural references, draw one conclusion, and then shut up for this week.

First cultural reference: Doubting Thomas. You all know him, right? Or am I wrongly assuming you do because I exist in a somewhat Catholic world. In case you don’t know, when Jesus returned from being dead, he visited the apostles in a locked room, just to show them that he was back. Ten of them seemed quite chuffed about this, one of them was dead and the remainder, Thomas, was off somewhere else ‘doing a message’ as we say in Ireland. When he got back and heard the scoop, his response was something like the 33 AD equivalent of “Fuck no, I’m not buying any of that.” He announced that unless he could, among other things, see the piercings of the nails and place his hand inside the wound that Jesus got on the cross, he would not believe. That was Doubting Thomas. Jesus duly came back on another day. “Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless.” Thomas came round pretty sharpish after all that prodding and poking.

I’m a writer. I listen, I eavesdrop, I overhear. And the word I hear on the street about Climate Change is the word of Doubting Thomas. What I hear goes something like this; Storms and hurricanes, we’ve had them forever; It’s all a load of bullshit; Global warming? We haven’t seen the sun all summer; It’s all talk, exactly like the Millenium Bug, keep us afraid, keep us in line. Of course that’s not all I hear. I hear the people who know the truth too, like Sally. But this is quite a lot of what I hear. Make no mistake. People are not getting the message that we are in trouble.

And, like they said in The X Files (that’s not the second cultural reference, it’s just a bonus one) “The Truth is Out There.’ You don’t have to look very hard to find the scientific evidence, to learn of the icecaps falling into the sea, to see the devastating weather on the news every other night. It’s not like we are not being told. So what’s the problem? The problem is twofold, as far as we the plain people are concerned. Firstly, we are simply not listening and secondly, and most crucially, like old Doubting Tom himself, we do not really believe.

This shouldn’t be surprising. We are finite creatures in many ways. And this is too damn big. Too big to believe. It is, almost literally, beyond our comprehension. Contemplating the actual end of the world as we know it is a little like contemplating eternity. We can go a certain distance with it, we can even get concerned about it. But if we push too far with our contemplation of it, our little minds will start to reel and stagger and we will have to go and sit in a quiet corner and think about something smaller instead.

Here’s my second cultural reference and I should warn you that if you’ve read this far and are hoping for some happy conclusion to all this then you should temper your expectations. I know what’s coming in this piece and it ain’t all that positive.

The second reference is the movie ‘Armageddon’ with Bruce Willis and God knows who else. It could be ‘Deep Impact’ just as easily. Both came out at the same time and both are on the same rough narrative. A big fuck-off asteroid is heading straight for us. What are we going to do? Bruce is sent off in a space shuttle to sort it all out (Yippee Kay Aye, Asteroid) or Robert Duvall is sent off, if you’re in the other movie. National differences are set aside for the planetary good. The whole world unites behind them. All that stuff.

But here’s the thing. In these movies, the world wasn’t simply looking skyward in terror because they were informed that there was a problem. They weren’t all focused on the incoming disaster because a bunch of scientists had written articles about it or because some old presidential candidate had made a documentary about it.

They were focused… and terrified… and united… because extremely bad shit had happened to them personally.

It wasn’t just about a big asteroid that’s still a million miles off. Nobody would have believed that. Nobody would have given a shit. To get everyone on board with the disaster, there had to be a bunch of awful precursors. Mini asteroids started taking out capital cities here and there. God knows why there were mini asperiods so far ahead of the big one or where they all came from. The movie just needed them. For the world to believably unite, there needed be no doubt whatsoever, in everybody’s heads, that really bad stuff was coming.

Any that’s the problem, as I see it anyway.

The plain people of the world are currently in considerable doubt that the end is nigh. Quite considerable doubt. And my fear is that the only thing that will focus the plain people of the world, on the strife that they genuinely in, is some super-colossal disaster.

Here’s one tiny, quite terrible, example to try to illustrate this large point.

In the early Eighties, Fire Regulations in Ireland needed updating. They got updated. But not before a nightclub burned down and killed forty-eight people. Need I say more?

If you have a heart, and I know you do, you will possibly say to yourself that the world is already inundated with the kind of super-colossal natural disasters that I think the sea-change will require. Look to Spain, for God’s sake, look to Haiti, Columbia, Costa Rica. Look anywhere. The portents are all there. And you’re right, of course, except you’re also wrong. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but it’s going to take something worse than that, something exponentially worse, before we as a planet sit up in terror and start to do, as one, the things we are going to need to do.

I told you there was no happy conclusion.

Except to say that this bleak outlook does not let us off the hook. We have to continue to do whatever we can to change our own personal ways, to change our own habits. At the very least, it will be good practice for the things we will be forced to do in the coming decades. But, most crucially of all, we need to find some way to turn up the volume on the Ecological narrative. 

And, if possible, we need to find a way to do it that doesn't involve another few million people getting killed.

The Puddy Diaries - Nov 24

Several people have mentioned that I am my most endearing here when I write about the cat. The converse is probably something I should think more about more often, that I am clearly not normally very endearing. But, no, I think I can live with that… mostly.

But this week… well… maybe it’s high time I was endearing again. It’s been quite a while, after all. Time to update the Puddy Log.

Puddy is the semi-feral cat that came into both of our lives just as the boys were largely going out. I named her Puddy because that’s how I referred to her. That as well as Pussy, Pusscat Pussy-Pussy and Puddledy-Puddledy, much to the late night consternation of my next door neighbours, I’m sure.

So, yes, a Puddy update is perhaps in order, if only to redeem my public persona. The only trouble is… well, there isn’t all that much to update. No earth-shattering developments, no startling revelations. Life with Puddy simply goes on.

Puddy spent her Summer and early Autumn out of doors. She would come into the sitting room every evening and ignore the television for three or four hours but as bedtime approached, she would need to be off and would not be encouraged into her normal overnight accommodation in the front hall. For those months, it was like the comfy fur basket in the hall did not exist or, at best, had committed some deep and personal affront to the cat. 

But now, as the Winter draws ever inward, Puddy is once more happy to overnight in the hall. She has everything she needs there. Munchies, water, and litter tray. But she cannot get out until I come and let her out in the morning. For the first few revisits of this season, I was up at five to see if she needed to go out and, indeed, when I opened the door, out she popped. But as the days get darker, colder, and wetter, she has had no continuing enthusiasm for an early departure. Seven forty-five will do nicely, thank you. She will only visit the litter-tray when caught short and that is a rare event. So I would imagine the rapid 7.45 departure is straight to the nearest bush convenience. She does a high speed ‘slink’ through the door as soon as the opening is more than a crack and then she is gone. Until she is back again ten minutes later demanding breakfast.

It’s Sunday morning, around eight, and I’ve just been out in the back garden with a foil sachet of food, waving it in the breeze. The crinkly sound of the packet usually brings Puddy along from whatever she is doing. Last night, she refrained from overnighting in the hall. She had been in there for most of the day, in fairness, assessing the electoral candidate’s representatives as they came and went. This morning, my sachet-waving has also failed to get her to materialise. I’m not worried though. She’ll turn up when she’s good and ready.

Puddy doesn’t make a lot of noise. She has a Meow in reserve for when she’s hangry but it’s a very quiet one. We’ve got used to it now but for a while we were very surprised at how quiet a cat she is. She purrs when Patricia strokes her and when she’s chasing Dreamies around the room. Patricia won her over with patience and kindness and gets to have a daily 'fuss' on Puddy’s strict terms. In this regard, Puddy and I remain in a permanent stand-off. She follows me around with interest whenever I’m doing stuff in the garden and weaves in and out between my shins when she’s of a mind but we both seem clear that any further PDA activity is firmly off the cards.

Puddy largely ignores the television when she resides in the biggest armchair in the room in the evenings. All manners of shouts, screams, and loud noises are equally ignored. Trying to get her hooked, I went to YouTube to see if there are any videos designed to intrigue cats. Surprise surprise, there are many and, now that I’d selected one or two, the algorithm has made this my first choice of things to see. They all follow a similar theme. A log in the forest or a feeder in a garden, some food laid out on it, and hours and hours of birds coming and going. No music, no narration, no murder to solve. Just an endless stream of our winged friends, eating and leaving, like 66% Pandas. One riff on these cat videos features a combination of birds and tiny frenetic rodents who shoot in and out of various crevasses. Without having any visible aversion to either of these genera, this video has populated my nightmares on several occasions now.

As for Puddy, when one of these videos comes on, she studiously ignores it for a while but, gradually, the fascination grows. She doesn’t move in her armchair but her demeanour becomes infinitely more engaged and alert. Whenever a bird flies off screen, her head moves to follow its flight around the room. Failing to find it, she returns attention to the screen and waits to track the next departure. It’s fun to watch Puddy watching the birds and the rat-things on YouTube but the fun can never continue for too long. Sooner or later, Puddy will graduate from casual viewer status to wild hunter mode. You can almost see her mind go, “Feck it, I am gonna eat one of those Mudders.” Then she’s up and on her way to the telly, all purpose and death. It’s a sudden switch back to Match of the Day then or the telly will be shredded. Puddy always needs to go out the window and into the garden, then, just to check and see if all the birds and things are congregating out there in the bushes.

Puddy has brought a new dimension to our lives. Not quite a pet, not quite a visitor, we don’t really know what she is. We just know we care about her and will look out for her in whatever way she needs.

What does the future hold? Who on earth knows?

And am I just referring to Puddy? What do you think?

Some Previous Puddy Posts - In Order: (The Cat Act III might be the best)

Speaking French to the Cats

Desenchante par le Chat

The Cat - Act III

The Cat - Full Circle

Puddy in the Hall

Cat Dancing

Falling for All the Cats

Gladiator II – A Sort of a Review

There is a sort of a tradition, here on the blog, that if I see a movie on the first night it comes out, I might try to write a sort of a review of it. 

In the last decade, the only way I’ve seen movies on the day they come out is when the local Rotary Club host a premiere evening in the local cinema for local charities. It’s a local thing. Such was the case last night and many thanks to Castlebar Rotary for an excellent evening of old friends spotted, super canapes, nice wine, and a worrying number of warnings that we all better head to the toilet before the movie starts. I guess we are knocking on a bit.

Gladiator is knocking on a bit too. I went to see the first one with my young godson in this self-same cinema and he’s a grown-assed married man now. Trish and I went to Gladiator II last night and, yes, it was a fun night out and, no, the film didn’t quite do it for me. Sorry.

So, mostly for my own benefit, as most of these blog posts are, I thought I’d sit down on this Saturday morning and try to set down some thoughts on why it didn’t do it for me. So, if you want to slope away early this week, that’s okay, ‘cos that’s all you’re going to get.

So…

The opening titles of Gladiator II are great. A surreal animation of key scenes from the original movie where the characters appear stretched, distorted and almost agonised. Very striking and very promising. Less promising is when the title of the original movie appears on screen, and the word Gladiator gets two capital ‘I’s dropped into the centre to make the II of the title. GladIIiator, or something like that. Even at that moment, before everything unfolded, it seemed like a mission statement. Let’s take the original and drop a load of stuff in on top of it. That will be our movie.

And that is indeed our movie. It is the first movie, dialled up. The rhythm of the film is uncannily close to that of the original. Every beat the nostalgic movie pilgrim might wish for is amply catered-for here. 

That might be entirely forgivable, in a commercial/entertainment venture such as this, but the effect is spoiled by the magnification of every trope we meet. Here's just one, as an example. In the original, Maximus liked to take a little earth from the ground on which he is about to do battle, be it the forests of Germania or the blood soaked sands of the arena. It was rather an engaging mannerism, in my opinion. It showed the character to be grounded in the earth and respectful of where he stood and of where he may fall. Enter Lucius in the new movie and, from minute one, he is grabbing stuff, sniffing it, and rolling it around in his palm. It seems he can’t pass an allotment without doing an impromptu soil analysis. That’s the pattern in the movie, trope covered, trope elevated, trope devalued.

Paul Mescal acquits himself very well. Okay, I would say that. I’m Irish and we’re all proud of him because he seems humble and real and he represents us with aplomb and he is out there beating the world. And, yes, I probably would say it except, in this case, I mean it too. He is convincing as a beefed up captive returning immigrant. He looks the part. He is written a little strange. We constantly hear that it is his rage that drives him onward through the narrative but he loves a little downtime from his rage to have a bit of ‘craic’ with his fellow captives. He is also constantly speaking in absolutes, he will never do this and will never do that, in this life or the next, but five minutes later, there he is, doing it. Plus the things he is given to say are just not as catchy as the ones that Russell had. Perhaps the battle was lost because the soldiers were pre-occupied by wondering what he had been on about.

Paul Mescal reminds me of Daniel Craig but only in that they both have taken on a cinematic icon and willed themselves to seriously act the part rather than just be iconic. Paul is working very hard to make Lucius believable and relatable and one can see the nuanced work he is bringing to the role. But he is in at the centre of an absolute machine, where everyone is too busy looking over their shoulders at what went before to really get their teeth into what needs to happen now. He is largely alone in his craft.

And let’s not pretend that the original was the absolute bee’s knees either. I loved it but could also recognise that its strength was in the two enormous central characters. Back then, rage really did drive them both on and we lapped it all up along with all the spilled blood. When the central characters were not engaging, the sappy politics and general grape-eating was all a bit tedious, to be frank. But, boy, when it was mano-a-mano in the Colosseum, we were there for it.

And therein lies the biggest loss in the Gladiator II. Only at one moment, does that mano-a-mano confrontation evolve and that is a good moment. Two men, facing off in front of the baying hoard. That’s what I think I needed. Alas, instead, every time the doors of the arena opened and the gladiators steeled themselves for battle, it was not a person who came out. And, be assured, we didn’t need a man. An overstimulated hoard of Amazonian Harpies would have been just as welcome. But what we actually got was a parade of ludicrous CGI creations that had about as much actual physical threat or stakes as my tired old ass. Every time the gate opened, we wondered, “what in the good Christ is going to come out this time?” And we were never disappointed in our disappointment. We didn’t want a crossbred monkey or a fucking Hippo or whatever it was. Like the baying hoard, we craved flesh and blood. And, incidentally, the Hippo (yes, I know it was a Rhino... I'm being facetious) was immediately no threat whatsoever because we’d seen his brother’s head decorating the banquet table a few scenes earlier.

I think lots of people will like this movie, mostly because they’re not as tired as I am. Denzel is smilingly strong in this. Derek Jacobi is woefully underused but I pray he got a big cheque. The evil emperor twins were a horrible non-event. Rather than giving omnipotent despot energy they instead could only muster a sort of a tired post-show Ed Sheeran vibe.

Only one revived trope succeeds entirely. I’m no massive fan of Hans Zimmer but, with Gladiator, he created a score for the ages and when it swells once again as this new action unfolds, for a moment, everything seems all right.

I generally like Ridley Scott movies. He commandeers vast resources into engaging work. I put The Last Duel a country mile ahead of this one. Perhaps it was just that it wasn’t looking over its shoulder and applying ECG paddles to ideas that had died dramatically some decades before.

I hope you enjoy it. The more I think about it, the more I think the problem was mostly with me. I’m getting old and the things I once admired in cinema are no longer the things I crave. I just don’t think I needed another Gladiator movie in my little life and, looking back, there is perhaps not a single thing that could have been done to make me love it. Perhaps Maximus' big line holds the key.

What they did in life, echoed in the sequel.

Driving with Una

I was driving to Dublin, early one weekday morning, and I had Marty Whelan on, as I often do if I’m on the road at that time. I like Marty. He keeps it positive, no matter what, and he runs seat-of-the-pants interviews that can’t help but make you twitch. Also, he plays good tunes and that is the point, really.

Marty was playing one of his good tunes. It was by Elena Kats-Chernin and was called Eliza Aria. You’ll probably know it better as the music from the Lloyds TSB animated telly ads that started way back in 2008. Click here for a link to the tune in case it helps you relate to this post.  

The ads showed a series of distinctively animated characters on their everyday life journeys and suggested how Lloyds TSB might help. You’d know it if you saw it or heard it again.

It’s a funny thing but, back in the day, these ads always made my think of my wife’s sister Una, who I was extremely fond of. Although Una was the older sister, and a few years ahead of Patricia and me, we often seemed to be a little further down the road in some ways. Patricia and I had met before Una met her lovely Frank and we also had our kids before Una went on to have her three lovely daughters. We also settled in London a few years before Una arrived to do the same. Una was ahead of us in many, many ways but in these matters of life and young families, we seemed to take the lead.

And, because one of the characters in the animated advert reminded me a little of Una, the adverts came to mean a little more to me than just commericials. They were like a pictorial representation of Una’s life, as she settled down in London, met the love of her life, bought her own house, pursued her career as a GP and had her wonderful children. In a funny, light-hearted way, the adverts made me think of Una whenever I caught sight of one of them. Nothing remarkable, just another of my diverse passing thoughts.

The other day, when that distinctive tune from the adverts came on my car radio at about 7.30 in the morning, with the sun just crawling up, it evoked Una for me in a rather surprising way.

I remembered the last time I drove with Una in my car. How she sat in the passenger seat next to me. The seat that was now empty. She was coming over on her own for a day or two, staying in Ballinrobe. I picked her up from her London flight at Knock Airport. I was a bit late and Una was standing outside the terminal doors waiting when I pulled up. I regretted that greatly because Una was not well at the time and I hated the idea of her waiting in the cold for me. She didn’t mind though; she was smiling and glad to see me and we set off on the road to Ballinrobe in fine spirits, Una riding shotgun with her bags on the back seat.

Una and me always got on really well. We could always chat effortlessly about lots of things, but we particularly enjoyed taking about movies. We had seen quite a few together over the years. When I was working in Dublin for a few months and Trish had to stay in London, we went to the Savoy a few times and, even in London, we went a few times ourselves when Trish was busy studying. And, of course, we went as a party of three many, many times. On our drive from the airport we talked about ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ and how I had liked it and how I thought Una and her kids might like it too. The journey was not long, and maybe I’m projecting here, but I think we both knew that this would be the last time we would ever drive in a car together.

So this tune came on the radio the other morning and it evoked Una for me. And, as it did so, A wealth of memories came flooding back, all in a rush, as the music played. Everyday moments. Remarkable one-off moments. Una at our front door, smiling. Una skiing in Colorado. Una on her Wedding Day. Una locked out of her house. Una being sad in the curry house. Una giving the famous runner a lift home from the tube station. Una at the last night of the proms when we sneaked in at the last minute. Unforgettable things that we sometimes tend to forget. And, yes, I may have shed a tear or two, which I don’t very often do, and I don’t mind saying it.

And perhaps it was a form of self-hypnosis, with the music and the empty pre-dawn road, but these memories were more vivid and ‘coloured-in’ than they had ever seemed to be before. They were 4K Ultra HD memories that you could almost reach out and touch. For a moment, it was almost like Una was riding shotgun once more.

We are the keepers of the memories of the friends and the family who are no longer with us. Evoking these memories can sometimes make them spring up once more, vibrant, and three-dimensional inside of our minds. 

Even when our loved ones are still alive and right there in front of us, they really only ever exist for us inside our own minds. We can’t ever 'inhabit' them or ‘become’ them, we can only really know of them what we think of them. Granted, we can touch them and hug them and talk to them and these things are obviously vital. But the 'mind' part is very important too and it is the only part that doesn’t go away after the person dies. The person who has gone is still there, inside of our minds.

Sometimes it takes an unexpected tune to bring them back.

Young Playwrights - Showing and Learning

This day next week, the final beat of the busiest two months of my year will be struck and I will return to my burrow in the deep dark forest and sleep until Spring arrives. (Some hope).

For the past number of years, at this time of year, I’ve been part of a wonderful mentoring programme for young playwrights at my beloved Linenhall Arts Centre, run under the auspices of Fighting Words by the inestimable Paul Soye and aided and abetted by the wonderful Ernestine Duffy and, um, me.

Yesterday, we had our final three-hour session, poring over the scripts, reading them, assessing them, offering sincere reactions and advice, encouraging each other. If it sounds boring to you then you may not be a writer. It has been a complete buzz from start to finish. We have our plays now. Final polishes are being applied today and they will be dispatched to poor Paul tomorrow, who will collate them and get them off to the directorial and actorial (that’s not a word, is it?) talent.

In these sessions, I tell the young writers what I think, and I don’t really pull very many punches. I’m the Craig at the end of the Strictly judging panel. Slightly pernickety, picky, wanting everything to be ‘just so’ but always on your side, really.  But for all my mouthing-off and nit-picking, one thing is always true of these valued interactions and it’s this: I always learn far more than I teach. Always.

Young people know stuff. They always have and they always will. They know what counts with them and they know to exclude what doesn’t count for them. They have incredibly busy lives, and they are accosted from all sides by input, input, input. Yet they parse it all, get it all into its correct compartment and move on. I think that’s the main reason why I do okay at these playwriting sessions, I have such respect for young people. How much they carry; how much they know.

The joy of the last few months in these writing and learning sessions is how nobody has ever seemed to act like they didn’t want to be there. Hard work has been put in and the writers have all shown the necessary willingness to not settle for the first words on the page but to work them and work them and work them again, until they are right.

And what do I learn from all this? What do I get? It’s hard to pin down. It’s a myriad of things. Perhaps it can be summarised that all of us people who aspire to write are on a journey to a place where we will never arrive. You can be sixteen or sixty-two, the journey is the same. The truths we know are the same and the vast number of things we have all yet to learn are the same. It sounds hopeless but it is the opposite of that because, along the way, there are glorious oases (yes, that is a word) to stop at. These oases (yes, it is) are formed when we complete a piece of writing. We linger there before we strike out again, across the desert, to try to form our next resting place.

Next Sunday, 10^th November, will be the first oasis for many of these young writers. They will have written a brand new play, which never existed before and which will always be theirs. They conjured it from nothing more than imagination and passion and a question to be answered. I’m proud of them. I’m proud of myself for helping a little but also proud for the things I’ve learned while watching them do it.

The Young Playwrights are Jack Joyce, N.J. McDonnell, Ruby Moran, Yvonne Heneghan, Lily-Marie Buddy McBride, Hannah Thornton, Diana Tipane, and Billy Hutchinson.

The Directors are Bob Kelly and Joy Nesbitt and the Actors are Ian O'Reilly, Aoife Fitzpatrick, Seán Landau and Meadhbh Maxwell.

And me? I’m Ken. My part is done now. It’s over to the writers and the pros to do theirs.

I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

I Need a Small Favour…

Writing related moments, for me, are often a bit like buses. There may not be one for quite a while and then a bunch of them will come along all at once.

As the dust settles on what was, for me, an extraordinary 6 weeks of theatre creativity and fun, something new arises.

But, before that, one final word of gratitude and joy to all the cast and production team on ‘Dance Night’, ‘Conception, Pregnancy and Bert’, and ‘Two for a Tenor’. An endeavour that culminated in packed houses, standing ovations, champagne corks off-stage, shots in Coady’s, and Jim Finan singing ‘One More for the Road’ down the back bar. I mean, what more could anyone possibly want?

Thank you all.

x

And now, I need a little something from you, Dear Reader, if I can possibly get it. There’s no money involved, so breathe easy on that front.

My friend, and creative conspirator, Richard Keaney, has made a short film from one of my short stories and, this weekend, for the first time, in the middle of its festival run, it is available for free public viewing at the TMFF Film Festival website. 

It’s only twelve minutes long but it doesn’t waste much of its run time and I would love you to see it. The link to it is just below but before you race to it, there’s one important thing. Even if you don’t have time right now to watch the whole film, if you had a moment to click over there and give the film 5 stars at the top of the webpage, that would be great. 

Extra Note - One or two kind people have accidentally given us 1 star by thinking you just click on any star to get into the voting. But the star you click on first is the vote you give. I think it's necessary to click straight onto the fifth star, if voting. It all registers alarmingly quickly. Thanks. 

This may seem underhand and, yes, by golly, it’s kind of is. But all it will do is allow Richard’s film to progress to the next stage of viewership in the festival and, at this point in the life of this little film, getting eyes on it is one of the great challenges. I would very much appreciate your help with this. Thanks.

Here’s the link to the film. Click Here. The image at the top will get you there too. It’s all high-tech stuff, this.

Then, having done that, and if you have time to view it (pump it up to full screen and turn the sound up) I would genuinely like to hear what you think of it. It’s rather a tricky little narrative structure. Does it engage? Does it get its story across clearly and in a diverting way? These are script questions and I’m a script guy. I thrive on feedback, and I definitely don’t need 5 stars for this part of the exercise. Hit me with it. Right between the eyes. I can take it.

I am really very proud of the film. Richard is a talented director, with an array of successful shorts and documentaries under his belt and an encyclopedic knowledge of the medium inside of his beardy head. For this project, he shanghaied the wonderfully visionary cinematographer Rafael de Almeida, who I think has done a splendid job. Actors Liam Gaffney, Patrick Austin and Claire Blennerhassett are all brilliant, the location work is spot-on, and my little story is served very well by the entire team. Go and have a look (and give it five stars, no matter what you think.)

As a story, Joey had a rather interesting genesis. I was on a bus to Dublin, in 2014, with an orchestra of teens who were heading to play National Concert Hall in front of the President of Ireland. I was hauling Sam’s drums, a very very important role. We stopped at the Applegreen Motorway Services Station, a place I had never stopped at before. I stepped off the bus (much as Joey does in the film) and stopped in amazement. Two simultaneous thoughts arrived. The first, I’ve just said it, was ‘This is amazing’ and, hot on its heels, that old familiar tingly feeling in the back of your head that signals there’s a story around here somewhere. I worked out that story in my head on the last hour into Dublin and wrote it the next day and posted it on this blog. It’s back there somewhere still. But watch the film instead. It tells it better.

I’m thanking people again but I have to express my gratitude to my good friend, Richard Keaney, for always reading my stupid scripts and, on two occasions now, actually assembling a team and pushing an amazing project right through to fruition. He deserves to sail past me into superstardom and I can’t wait for that day to come.

What’s next, Richard?

See, I had this idea…

This is It

People of a certain vintage, like me, will not have forgotten the Bugs Bunny Show which was a feature of our undersized televisions back in the day.

It always started with an opening theme song. Bugs and Daffy marched onstage with their canes and straw boater hats (Bugs’ hat had holes in it for his ears to stick through). Immediately they would launch into their well-known vaudeville-like song-and-dance routine.

The lyrics were pretty memorable:

Overture, curtains, lights
This is it, the night of nights
No more rehearsing and nursing a part
We know every part by heart

Overture, curtains, lights
This is it, you'll hit the heights
And oh what heights we’ll hit
On with the show this is it

In more recent years, the song tends to remind me of Ethel Merman belting out ‘You’ll be Swell, You’ll be Great’ as she performs ‘Everything’s Coming up Roses’ from ‘Gypsy’. On a less informed note, I have never-once been able to look at Michael Flatley dancing without thinking of Bugs Bunny.

I saw somebody on Twitter this week referring to Bugs’ and Daffy’s routine. He said that there is hardly a better description available of the feeling one gets when you are involved in a show and the rehearsals are largely all done, and it is finally time for the show to go on.

That’s where we’re at this week. On Thursday and Friday, at The Linenhall Arts Centre, our three plays will go on.

Our time in the lovely Scouts Den is all done. Our invaluable borrowed moments in the theatre are just about over too, though we still have Tech and Dress to complete.

All that will be left, by Thursday at teatime, will be to light it up, get into the glad rags, and get it done.

It’s a bit nerve-racking, for sure, but the upcoming evenings of Thursday and Friday of this week is why we do it. It’s why we turn up in twilight rooms, when we could be at home watching Eastenders or out having a nice stroll. It's why we scour the town for props and learn silly lines untl they are coming out of our ears.

We get to put on a show.

All through this weekend, people have been coming up to me and saying, “We’ll see you Thursday”, or “We’ll see you Friday night.” They may not see me. I’ll be in a darkened control room sweating over music and lighting cues. But that’s not what they mean. They may not entirely know it, but they mean they will see the show, and, in that way, they will see me. I appreciate that people will come out and pay good money to see what we might do. I appreciate very much the people who have come out over the past weeks and months to do it with me. You guys rock my world.

I keep saying it but, dammit, it’s true.

I’m a lucky duck…

…or perhaps a lucky bunny.

Take your pick.

 

There are still some tickets available at www.the linenhall.com or on 094 90 23733 but please don’t leave it too late to grab 'em.

Feeling Writery

Have I ever had a moment where I felt this writery before? I’m not sure that I have.

Sure, there’s been moments where I’ve managed to feel like an actual writer, as opposed to a person who works full time and who writes when they can. I’ve always had too much respect for the professional writer to call myself one. Although you can do that if you want, I won’t mind. I’m a writer, I know I am, but while I spend the majority of my week doing other things, I’ll never be able to shout it out with much confidence.

But this Sunday morning, I feel quite writery.

It’s a nice feeling.

Why so, Ken? Why do you feel writery now as opposed to some other random time? 

Well, thank you for your question, Ken, you can sit down again now. It ain’t rocket science. It’s just simply that there are quite a lot of writery things going on right now and that tends to make me feel writery. You follow?

Take the upcoming two week period. We’re in rehearsal with three of my plays. We covered that last week. Yesterday, I spent a lovely three hours with my good friend Paul Soye, both of us with our metaphorical Fighting Words caps on, working with a bunch of talented teens on their upcoming plays. From there, straight into a rehearsal for Two for a Tenor with Donna, Vivienne, Eamon, and Brendan, where I had the rare experience of laughing until I cried. Today, at one, we have a rehearsal of ‘Conception, Pregnancy, and Bert, with the three busiest actors in that play, Katie, Matthew, and Charlie. On Friday I was on the radio talking about the plays. Me… on the radio. Who’d have thunk it? This week there will be three separate rehearsal sessions, four if we can make Saturday work. It’s not easy, there’s a cast of fourteen across all three plays and everybody has their own lives and responsibilities to constantly corral.

Incidentially, if you'd like to come see the plays, pre-booking is highly recommended and you can do it here. 

Then, as if all that weren’t enough, the wonderful Wild Atlantic Words week is about to kick off here in Castlebar. On Wednesday, I get to present the Poem and a Pint evening, which is one of my favourite moments of any given year and then, to round off the working week, there’s this. I get to introduce my good friend Sally Rooney for her in-person reading from ‘Intermezzo’ in the Festival Dome. I’ve never previously been involved in an event which was booked out in forty seconds. It's quite something. I’m understandably very excited about this, and there have been many happy moments spent over the last few months where I mulled over what on Earth I might say. I think I’ve got it largely figured out now so that’s a bit of a relief.

So, hey, I think, overall, it’s forgivable if I feel a bit writerly.

I hope, when it’s all over, in a few weeks’ time, the memory of all this fun and excitement will stay with me and drive me on to complete my next writing thing. So that I can perhaps get to experience some more of this very good stuff in the coming years.

Thanks to everyone who continues to put their faith in me to deliver on these enviable responsibilities.

I’m not sure how I’ll do. I never really am. I can only promise that I will try my very best.

And that I will love the trying.

Re-hearsal

I am often at my happiest when I’m rehearsing. Not before a rehearsal starts or, indeed after it finishes. But during, yes. I get lost in the challenge and the process and, when I look back on a session, I can see that I threw off some of my natural and evolved inhibitions and pranced around a lot, trying to sort things out. The process takes me out of myself and my daily concerns such that nothing else matters except that the scene plays, that the actors are fulfilled, and that hardly a stray word or action remains in place.

We’re deep in the rehearsal process right now and the honeymoon time is very nearly over. For me, the ‘honeymoon time’ is the brief period where the shows seem quite a long way off and there still seems to be time to get everything done. This, of course, is an illusion. There is never enough time to get everything done and the shows are always right around the corner. As time progresses, far too quickly, the illusion withers and fades. We have a bit more than two weeks left until we hit the stage with three of my plays. We have to get our lines off, know where we’re moving to and from, find some props, source some music, sell some tickets (God, help us) and make ourselves at least partially happy that we won’t make a holy show of ourselves on the night.

I am often at my happiest at rehearsals, but I am often at my most stressed too.

I remember writing about the previous rehearsal period, which was a few years ago now, and my friend Jim reminding me that I’m a very lucky son-of-a-gun to get to do all this. To see my scribbles learned and sweated-over and acted-out for the benefit of an audience with a pulse. I need reminding of this periodically, as my blood-pressure rises. I am indeed lucky. Blessed, one might say. The dedication and patience of the cast members never fails to amaze me. I am a bit of a pain in the ass when directing (as I am this time, with one of the three plays) but the guys tolerate my constant interruptions and general goofing about in a way that is quite beyond understanding. As a person directing my own writing, I am constantly cutting out words and even entire speeches. I always feel the writing should be able to sway a little in order to suit the individual actors who are performing it. It’s not a one-way street. They bend to meet the words, of course, but I don’t think it’s any great harm if the words bend back to meet them too. Does that even make sense? It does to me but it’s Sunday morning and I haven’t had my coffee yet.

On Thursday 17^th and Friday 18^th October we will be onstage at the beloved Linenhall Arts Centre here in Castlebar. We will put on three plays by yours truly. Dance Night, Conception Pregnancy and Bert, and Two for a Tenor. It won’t be as long-winded as it might sound. One of the plays is short (but it’s one of my favorites), one of the plays belts along like a goddamn steam train and the last one has previously shown itself to be a bit funny and sweet, if maybe a tad rude in places.

I am so overwhelmingly grateful to the inestimable Castlebar Musical and Drama Society for coming along and seizing these plays, even as they begin to wind themselves up for their next big musical extravaganza. As an unfailing attendee of all their shows, I am totally buzzed at this opportunity to work with such talented members of the cohort. I am equally indebted and, in no small measure, moved to have a number of key players from the original productions come back to reprise their roles. Donna, Vivienne, and Eamon, where would I be without you? An additional joy is the return of three of our treasured 'teen cast' people from the teen play years. Katie, Aoife and Charlie, what a joy to get to do theatre with you again as adults.

Are you in Castlebar on those nights? If so, maybe you’d come down and see what we plan to do. We may not challenge your higher intellect, nor solve the mysteries of the world, but I think I can promise you a pocketful of laughs and, if we all play our cards right, maybe a little tear too. And isn’t that what those mask guys who represent theatre always do? Laugh a little, cry a little. That’s theatre, innit? And we’ll be giving it a solid 'good go' in a few weeks’ time. So come and see us if you can.

Tickets from: https://www.thelinenhall.com/whats-on/events/a-comedy-tonight

I have to go and finish my prop list now. I have to find some music tracks and a believable doorbell effect. I have to ask Ronan if I can borrow his nice free-standing coat hanger again and figure out how to get Kevin’s couch transported into the theatre. I have help with this, and I am very grateful for it, but my head still dances with all of the requirements and the possibilities and the fear and the fun.

This, for me, is living. This, for me, is life.

Thank you for letting me continue to play.

Wedding Bliss

We’ve been at a wedding for the weekend, Friday included. We only got home last night. It was a lovely wedding. Here are a few words about it.

I don’t believe in Weather Gods (even though I cover my bases by giving them Capital Letters). The notion of some sky-based personage, chucking around lightning bolts and thunder heads doesn’t really do it for me. But, on Friday, it was hard not to think that there was some higher Norse power at work. Someone who had had a particularly good sandwich or seen a really nice boxset and decided that, yes, the weather has been completely awful for the past entire month, but Niamh and Vincent have been so cool though it all, what the hey, let’s chuck ‘em a break.

In short, the weather was glorious.

The venue was glorious too. It was a lovely house by a lake, with a wedding pavilion, and a boathouse wedding venue where the end wall was entirely made of glass and looked out onto the lake. This is where those Weather Gods really started to bring their stuff. The panels on this glazed end wall were slid entirely open and the wonder of the lake itself became an integral part of the space. We all eased in, in our black-tie regalia and our gowns and our shades and our fascinators and, blow me down, we were one good-lookin’ collective.

A string quartet of elegant ladies struck up the Monty Norman theme from you-know-where, as the groom, Vincent, entered with customary style and grace. The Bride, on John’s arm, was simply beautiful. The ceremony was conducted by a Humanist celebrant. I lost that word for a moment just now and wrote the word ‘Naturist’ as a place filler, but I rubbed it out again so don’t worry, clothes stayed on. The reading were sourced from lovely places like Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett and the string quartet soared through timeless movements such as ‘Wrecking Ball’. One extract from the readings mentioned dragonflies and this was illustrated by real live dragonflies working the lake’s glassy surface out behind the wedding party.

For me, I think the highpoint of the ceremony was the exchanged vows, each of which had been written for the other to read out and which had not been seen beforehand. This brought the fun and warmth that one would always expect from this lovely couple, but it also brought a memorable example of the levels of empathy and mutual understanding they enjoy from each other. We, who had gathered to witness a joining together, certainly witnessed it at that moment.

One of Niamh’s closest friends Anita (her name is not really Anita) spoke movingly about love and friendship and the string quartet played Deborah’s Theme. I can’t speak for anyone else, but it was right up my street.

On a lakeside lawn, after the ceremony, we drank Prosecco and Tom Collins (who I thought was a local auctioneer, but we live and learn) and mingled and failed to mingle in roughly equal measure. Peacocks wandered through and offered their opinion. The Weather Gods continued to spray their benevolence in the most pleasing of fashions.

The dinner was brilliantly illustrated by Lisa, Niamh’s sister and one of my favourite people in the entire world. The courses were punctuated by speeches, which were all unerringly lovely. But Niamh’s Dad, John, was the first to totally win the room with his natural and heartfelt memories of his wedded daughter and their wonderful life to date. Vincent’s Dad had committed his entire contribution to rhyming verses and, one felt, if he hadn’t done it, there would have been a level of disappointment as he is well known for it. He did it right, never sacrificing a warm moment or a good gag at the altar of the rhyme.

Meanwhile, the tables echoed with that wedding mix of extraordinary conversation. I sat with John from Texas, and we dissected the vagaries of the Irish roundabout road junction system. We reached some valuable conclusions, but it will require a measure of government action on our recommendations to see everything finally put right. A shout out, too, to lovely Helena, who reads this blog every week but would be equally lovely even if she didn't. 

The band were nifty and cool. The lead singer had an enviable falsetto that we all secretly tried to copy and all secretly failed to varying degrees. They were inventive in their setlists, typically mixing perennial Irish favourites with Cuban party vibes. The necessary riff from ‘Wicked Game’ was provided by Falsetto Man on a tin whistle. The dance floor strutted their appreciation.

The next day, we decamped to Niamh’s family home where Nimah's Mum and Dad, John and Marian, were the effortless hosts they always are, just, this time, on a considerably larger scale. John’s garden, a decade-spanning labour of love, had been waiting for this day all of its life, as mini-group after mini-group ambled its ways and marveled at its multi-sensory overload. That photo on top; that's his garden. 

A wondrous weekend, a couple well-and truly married. I wish them what I have been blessed enough to have for myself, peace and love, health and companionship. I wish them everything they wish themselves.

Regrets from the day, the weekend, the wedding? There are always regrets. So many wonderful people, so many loved ones. The day goes so quickly. There isn’t the time to sit with everyone and tell them how darned good it is to see them. There isn’t time to say we hope we see them again soon and to hope that all is okay with them, out there in their real world.

We don’t get to say it, but we get to think it all right. Hell, some of us even go and write it down.

But then, as we know, some of us are just plain weird.

Not Feeling It

'Blogging.' 

Is that what we still call this thing I do? 

Or has the world turned sufficiently that now it’s just called 'typing something every week and sticking it up on the Internet.' Internet… is that even what we still call it? It’s all becoming a bit of a mystery.

All I know is I’ve been doing this ‘blogging’ thing for longer than seems sensible or viable or even useful.

I look back over the website I post this stuff on. Posts date back to 2008 with no meaningful break in between then and now. A quick bit of (unreliable) addition reveals that there are now 852 posts. Average about 800 words per post and that’s, well, quite a few words.

This isn’t surprising. It’s in my nature to not give up on things. If I start something I like to see it through. That becomes something of a problem when something doesn’t present its own finish line, its own logical end. So, the likelihood is that I’ll keep on doing this until the place I post to shuts down or until I die. I’ve long ago reconciled myself to the fact that this rather futile exercise is for my own benefit, much more than anybody else’s. That’s fine by me. Sometimes I know that some kindly reader will find some use or entertainment in something I put up here. That’s wonderful. An added bonus. Always welcome. But mostly, it’s about me, how I’m happier in myself when I’ve set some words down and shared them around.

A point, Ken, is there a point to this week’s typing?

Not much of a one. Just simply that I’m not really feeling it this past couple of weeks. The only way I can get myself to sit and write this week’s ‘thing’ is to set that very thought down. There is no other thought I feel ready or equipped to deal with today.

Fear not, Ken. (I’m going to talk to myself for a minute now. ‘First sign’ etc.) You’re not going to stop writing these things, not in the immediate future anyway, unless one of the aforementioned scenarios play themselves out. Stopping is not really in your nature. So, if writing a thing this week, about how you have nothing to write, gets you through to next week and a little more inspiration, then so be it. Carry on to the end. Just come back fighting next week and stop pissing around with this navel-gazing malarky.

Why am I not feeling it, I hear you cry. Or rather I hear myself pretending to hear you cry. It’s been one hell of a few weeks, in fairness. Things I don’t want to talk about, at least not yet. Some of them potentially wonderful, some more of them undoubtedly awful. None of them ready for discussion.

Perhaps it’s as simple as that. A series of subjects are monopolising my mind and none of them are ripe or suitable for this ‘thing,’ whatever it is.

I’ve written posts like this before when I’ve gotten stuck. They help me got over the roadblock. The muscle-memory of fingers on a keyboard moves my mind to places and things I can write about. It will probably hatch something-or-other by next week.

Meantime, thanks for dropping by. Sorry that there’s not a good laugh or a silly idea of even a vague memory for you to take away with you.

Maybe next time, eh?