Pocket Monster

This is becoming a real problem for me.

It’s been an issue for quite some time but the events of yesterday afternoon – after work – have shown me that a critical point is approaching and may well have now been passed…

… I have too much stuff in my pockets.


“Gosh, ‘being trivial yet again Ken?” You may well cry but wait. Have you considered how awful a thing it can be to have too much stuff in your pockets? It’s not the additional weight that makes it so bad, nor is it the bulky ruined lines of your clothes. None of the above. No, it’s the fact that you can never find the single bloody thing that you are looking for – that’s the killer.

Let’s just look at what I have in my pockets: Wallet, phone, keys (house), keys (car) USB thingie, loose coins, iPod with long headphone wire, data storage tape, nifty key-ring which my lovely wife gave me with no keys on it (but with a neat coin shaped piece which you can remove and use to free up your Tesco trolley) lottery tickets (unchecked), old sticking plaster (just threw that out) (yuk) and a street map of Dublin where I patently do not live anymore.

You get the idea.

All this stuff is distributed between my trousers and coat pockets and there is little-or-no pattern to where any given item might be found at any given time. Things are made worse because I have a hole in my coat pocket and keys and things can sometimes slip into the depths of the lining too.

On three separate occasions yesterday, the matinee performance which is my life was delayed while I tried to find something in my pockets. All three were bad but the last time took the biscuit. Here’s what happened:

I was leaving work. I had just returned from a meeting and was making a flying visit to the office. The car park adjoining the office allows you to go in and back out of the barriers if you are prompt – the little tickets have about ten minutes grace on them. So I ran in and ran out again… sort of. You see, I glanced at Twitter while I was in and you know how that can be. By the time I got back to the barrier I was dicing with that ten minute deadline and I knew it.

I found my ticket in my pocket (took a while) drove up to the barrier and stuck my ticket in. “Time Limit Exceeded, Please Return to Paystation.” Drat, I muttered, or words to that effect. I turned to reverse back from the barrier.

But, lo, a woman had appeared behind me in an oversized cow-killer of a vehicle and she was hemming me in. I waved at her to back up a bit so I could reverse away. She eventually went back about five and a half inches and gave me one of those sour ‘There, happy now?” looks. I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t reverse out in five and a half inches and if somebody else arrived behind her we were rightly stuck. So I waved some more at her and she backed up some more whilst sporting a face like thunder.

As I reversed back past her I buzzed down my farside window and said, “Sorry about that, my ticket wouldn’t work.” She responded by remaining silent and scowling at me as if I were a piece of dog crud on her shoe, which rather annoyed me.

“Well,” I said, “I hope you are received more kindly when it happens to you some day.” She scowled some more and I reversed back to a parking spot so that I could go and get my ticket authorised.

I realise this is going on a bit, sorry, it’s therapeutic.

I got out of my car, closed the door, and then noticed that the scowling lady was still at the barrier with another car now behind her. She didn’t seem to be able to get out. I smiled to myself and reached for my barrier ticket.

No barrier ticket.

I started the pocket search which had lately become so familiar. No ticket. I piled all the contents of my pockets on the roof of the car one by one – there was so much stuff – no ticket.

The lady was still at the barrier…

Had I left it in the car? I opened the car door to see, panicking now. I am driving a borrowed car for reasons I’d best not go in to here. The door of this car is higher than my own. As I hauled open the door, the sharpish top corner of it caught my chin and cut me there, I could feel blood welling and trickling down my neck. This snapped my temper.

The lady was still at the barrier…

I took a minute out to stomp around clutching chin and swearing the most potent and fervent swear words in my vocabulary and, when I finally calmed down a bit, I saw there was no ticket in the car either. There could now be no doubt – I had left the ticket in the barrier ticket slot when I reversed away and the reason the lady hadn’t gone through the barrier yet was because she was messing with my ticket.

I walked towards her purposefully to see if she had my ticket. She saw me in her wing mirror striding up and the look of unbridled terror on her face stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t just go up to her having admonished her a few moments ago, I would scare her and I really didn’t want to do that. As I hesitated, the barrier lifted and she sped away, tyres squealing, into the night. Did she have my ticket with her? I will never know.

Back at the car, most of my rooftop pocket stuff had fallen into a puddle on the ground. I now had no ticket to validate and no way of getting one. In despair, I drove up to the barrier again and pressed the alarm button hoping to convince the person on the other end to please just let me go. I never actually had to say a word, perhaps they could see me on CCTV, wet, distraught and bleeding copiously from my chin. The barrier just went up and let me out.

So, today, I’m clearing out my pockets. I need to be able to find things more quickly or at least to know for sure if I’ve lost them.

I need to lighten up.

The First Night of Alien

The word got around. The Savoy was about to re-open. For months the dilapidated foyer had echoed to the clatter of hammers and the buzz of power drills. Now the word was out. The year was 1979, we were sixteen years old, and the movies were the crux of our social lives.

The re-opening of the Savoy Cinema was a big deal to us. When we heard that the first film to be shown would be 'Alien', that deal became a good deal bigger. Ridley Scott's 'Alien' was coming to Sligo with some major advance publicity. It was, we read, the scariest film ever made. The poor cinema-goers of London were dropping dead of shock in their seats. We simply could not wait for it to arrive.

The Savoy re-opened on a fine Summer's Friday evening. We queued from Seven o'clock, a full hour early, to be super-sure of getting in. When the mesh curtained French-doors finally swung open we may have shuffled nonchalantly up the newly-carpeted steps but our hearts were beating fast. 

The décor might have changed but thankfully Marie, the horn-rimmed lady in the ticket booth had not. Marie ran her very own little censorship office from behind her Plexiglas screen. While the powers-that-be had judged that 'Alien' was worthy of an 'X' certificate and therefore suitable only for persons over eighteen years of age, Marie figured otherwise. Although 'Alien' contained mayhem, death and dismemberment aplenty, there was absolutely no sex whatsoever. Marie therefore reckoned it was all right for us to go in and see it. She was a fine woman.

We opted for balcony seats. Only Feeney, proud possessor of a new blonde girlfriend, headed for the stalls, having heard a rumour of the re-instatement of 'courting seats' in that area. For the uninitiated, 'Courting seats' were unpartitioned couches designed to accommodate two like-minded souls. An evening in a courting seat was considered a success if the pair managed to swap their positions without ever standing up. Feeney was all on for giving this a go.

The rumours were right, the courting seats were back - built for pleasure and speed - but this was not to be Feeney's night. While he installed himself hopefully in the first courting seat, his girlfriend was busy settling into the second. She stretched out, put her feet up and grinned across the vast expanse to where Feeney lurked.

"These big seats are great, aren't they?" she said.

It was about then that Feeney knew he would have been as well off upstairs on the balcony with the rest of us.

'Alien' was great, at least I thought so. Full of dark corridors, dripping acidic fluids and shiny designer-creatures, it remains one of my most vivid movie-going experiences. But not all of my friends agreed. Half way through the film, at a particularly tense moment, an unimpressed ne'er-do-well called Gilmore got frustrated with the pacing, picked up his duffle-coat and threw it out over the balcony.

I have many memories of Sligo's Savoy Cinema, now dark once more. One of my fondest is of the screams which rose from Feeney's nervous girlfriend when, alone in her oversized seat, a mysterious fuzzy alien, with floppy arms and a hood, descended on her from the darkened skies above.

Hard to Tell

Back in 1991, I worked with a team of Building Contractors in London. We spent several months doing up a floor of offices just off High Street Kensington. I was normally on the other side of the drawing board on these building projects, so this was a visceral, exhausting but highly-entertaining time for me.

One of the guys, Richard, seemed to provide the bulk of this entertainment. He was a mid-twenties Cockney guy who seemed to constantly challenge his environment on every possible level. Everything was a Federal Case to him.

One Saturday morning, coming up to tea-break. Richard announced he was going out to the shop for some apples. Apples were a significant departure from the stodge we normally shoved down our necks but, Richard being Richard, nobody questioned his decision.

"The front door is locked," said Denis, the foreman, "so buzz the intercom when you want to come back in."

"Right."

"Oh and Richard," said Denis, "don’t piss around, get right back here or we may fall out."

You didn’t want to fall out with Denis. His type of fall out was more of the nuclear kind than the emotional.

Richard left and we all sat down for tea on the floor of the big office with the windows open onto the street six stories below.

Our conversation covered all kinds of topics over the next fifteen minutes, including The Arsenal’s chances of a draw in the afternoon and the likelihood of Rambo having a positive impact on the worsening situation if he were to be parachuted into Deepest Iraq.

After a while, all topics were exhausted and we sat quietly with our thoughts and our tea. Denis suddenly looked around angrily.

"Where the hell is Richard?"

He didn’t actually use the word ‘Hell’.

That fall out was coming…

Richard was, in fact, down on the street, six storeys below, looking up at our open windows so far above.

The electricians had disconnected the door entry intercom for reasons known only to themselves. Richard could buzz that button all day if he wanted, nobody on the sixth floor was ever going to hear.

He wasn’t getting back in.

Richard soon realised that the intercom was a futile exercise. He paced up and down the street, glaring up at the windows, wondering how on earth he could get back in. The phones were all disconnected up there and the only mobile phones in those day were the same size as a concrete block and were not generally owned by angry foremen.

He tried shouting.

"Hey!", he roared, "Hey!"

Back up on the sixth floor a colossal wave of post-prandial torpor had set in. We all lounged around dreading the call back to work.

A discordant tone drifted in the window.

"Did you hear something outside?" Someone asked.

"No," someone else replied, "it was the radio, now shut up."

Back at ground level, Richard threw his hands up in exasperation. Then he remembered the paper bag in his hand.

The apples.

A wild idea formed in his fevered mind. If he could take an apple, a single apple, and throw it though that sixth floor window then his cohort within would be alerted to his situation and would get up off their arses and let him bloody in.

But the window was six storeys high. It was a long way up. A legendary effort would be required on his part.

An impossible throw.

Denis stretched and raised himself off the floor. It was our signal, the call to action. He hardly needed to speak but he did anyway.

"Come on men," he said, "one more time before the weekend."

Just as we were getting up, something strange happened.

A bright red apple sailed in the window and landed on the floor.

Richard stared up in disbelief, arm still extended. He had done it, he had accomplished the seemingly impossible feat. Songs would be written about this, stories would be told. He did a little impromptu dance on the street, then looked up and waited.

The apple bounced impressively, rolled across the floor and stopped at the toe of Denis’ boot.

"Where the hell did that come from?" somebody asked.

Denis thought about this for a long moment.

"Who the hell cares?" he said, "Let’s get back to work."

* * * *

I did a follow-up to this post which you can have a look at here if you like.

With a Song in My Head

I like to try write lyrics occasionally – never poems.

Sometimes you can say things much neater in that way than you can in any other.

As I always say when I flash a lyric, if anyone can come up with a good tune for one of these puppies, let me know, perhaps we could do a Lennon/McCartney type thing on it.

I gotta like the tune though. I gotta love it!

When we Finally Say Goodbye

We've been together always
but the way's been hard and dry
so we shouldn't make a deal of it
when we finally say goodbye.

We stuck it out as best we could
and the years just walked on by
but we'll know it's only for the best
when we finally say goodbye.

It's been a long time coming
but it's been coming all the time
and we lost however many times we tried.
It's been such a long time coming
but we're running out of time
now it's coming to our time to say goodbye.

We dragged and pushed and clung so hard
we're allowed just one more cry
but the tears will stop forever
when we finally say goodbye.

Heart and Skin

I took up my blade
the night we met.
The edge was sharp and true.
I gave you my heart,
gave you my skin.
I cut them nice for you.

I pledged allegiance
to your flag.
Carved off my tattoo.
Gave you my heart,
gave you my skin
Forever me and you.

My body lying
raw and still.
You’re onto something new.
I gave you my heart,
gave you my skin.
Flayed and lifeless too.

© Ken Armstrong and Niamh O’Reilly 2007

I'm Gone

You can tell me that you love me.
Swear the grass is always green
You can say my disposition's just
the sweetest ever seen.
You can say that we're forever.
That we never can go wrong
You can say in heaven's choir
we're both singing the same song.

Just remember that I'm idling
and I've got my handbrake on.
You can lay your heart down in my road
but when the light goes green, I'm gone.

You can say that I'm an angel.
You can think that I'm the Man.
You can say that in the scheme of things
we're nature's given plan.
You can sing my highest praises.
You can curse me into hell
You can swear allegiance to my throne
and kiss my ass as well.

Just remember that I'm stalling.
I'm intent on moving on.
You can put your hair down on the ground
but when that light goes green, I'm gone.

People think that we're forever
gotta tell you that they're wrong
'cos you're stuck in my no-parking zone
and when that light goes green I'm gone.
To me you're just a pit stop.
A place to wash my screen,
check my tyre pressure,
wipe my dipstick clean.

You can wish for love eternal.
You can wish for what you need.
Just don’t put me in your wishes,
I'll be gone from you at speed.

Like I told you I'm just idling
and I've got my handbrake on.
You can lay your heart down on the road
but when the light goes green, I'm gone

(That's me: gone.)

Things I Do...

Recently, I've been writing a song lyric or two, as I do sometimes.

There's never any music, unless I borrow a tune from somebody else. I do that sometimes too - I call it a 'Tribute'.

Anyway, this is an older lyric of mine. I posted it once before, back when I had a total of one reader. So sorry for the repetition Catherine!

Someone I know thinks this is actually a poem. I don't, it was written by me after all.

Oh, and if anyone thinks they might have a tune for this thing, do please let me know.




Things I Do Since I Took Up With You

Look left and right when crossing the street
Cut all the fat off of my meat
Eat unripe bananas for a treat
Read small books on the loo

These are things I’ve started to do
Since I took up with you

Brush my teeth three times a day
Eat my dinner off a tray
Stop kicking mutts out of my way
Wear red things when I’m blue

These are things I’ve started to do
Since I took up with you

Speak to guys about my fears
Come out of movies in floods of tears
Shave all the hairs off of my ears
And off my earlobes too

These are things I’ve started to do
Since I took up with you

Use both my hands now when I steer
Leave a little of my beer
Go to church three times a year
Instead of only two

These are things I’ve started to do
Since I took up with you

Close the windows as I drive
Apply the handbrake when I arrive
Thank my stars that I’m alive
And smile the whole day through

These are things I’ve started to do
Since I took up with you



(c) Ken Armstrong

Winning Streak

For we the compulsive people-watchers of Ireland, there is really only one television programme worth tuning in for.

I refer, of course, to ‘Winning Streak’.

Millions may watch it avidly each week but they are largely doing it for all the wrong reasons. They hope to see ‘winners’, they hope to see ‘losers’, they hope to see distant relatives who they can tap afterwards for funds. That’s all very well but they are missing the true joy of the thing.

The simple truth, which many fail to recognise, is that this is the only programme on any station anywhere where the producers have no control whatsoever over who appears each week.


‘Your name comes out in the draw? You’re on mate!


‘Winning Streak’ is the ultimate celebration of that most elusive of creatures - ‘Your Average Punter’. Every week, five versions of ‘Your Average Punter’ are hauled from their oceans of mundane saline to lie flapping and gaping on the imitation-leather chairs of RTE’s Studio One. This, of course, is any sane TV producer’s nightmare and that is exactly what makes it is so very compelling to watch.

Most shows can withstand a brief moment or two of exposure to ‘Your Average Punter’. You see them on ‘Questions and Answers’ periodically, they ask the same question as the guy before asked and they press the panel for an answer. They phone up ‘The Late Late Show’ now and again in order to flash their bleary insights at passing celebrities. Pat always cuts them off before the celebrity responds. Pat is quite right to do so.

We may glimpse them in the wilds of the RTE schedule from time to time but ‘Winning Streak’ is their wildlife park. Here they can lollop around, resplendent in their average-punter-ness.

They can show how intelligent they almost are.

We can watch them squirm.

Mike Murphy is the resident zoo-keeper and this article has no quarrel whatsoever with him. Mike is a consummate media professional, silky and un-aging, the only man in Ireland who can still carry off wearing a beige suit with grey shoes.

He fearlessly extends the hand of over-familiarity to the row of expectant televisual virgins. He jokes with him. He shows them how to push their buttons. He gives them money to take home.

At about the same time he is doing this on TV, Mike can be heard doing something else on the radio. He is the presenter of the countries principal Arts Review Programme. This is Mike’s natural environment, he discourses knowledgeably on Diverse subjects from ‘Proust’ to ‘Wagner’. He lets us know what he is currently reading. He mixes with the best of them.

One listen to this programme will punch home to the unwary viewer just how far off his home turf Mike is with his Saturday-night row of hopeful scratch-card draftees. They think ‘Proust’ is a form of washing powder. They believe that ‘Wagner’ was married to Natalie Wood. They really don't care, they just want to get their money and then be allowed home.

Mike bridges the extraordinary gulf between his experiences and theirs by employing the sort of cheerfully-encouraging manner one might expect from a Gonhorrea doctor.

“Have you anybody with you?” he asks.

“They’re a rough-looking bunch,” he says, “you’d want to stay away from them.”

On his Arts show, Mike plunges in head-first. He delves into his guest’s deepest sexual yearnings and unconscious fantasies. On ‘Winning Streak’, he treads much more tentatively. Lines of questioning like, “So, Dolly, do I hear that you’re a bit of lesbian?” simply will not go over well with the guest’s assembled well-wishers.

The very best weeks are when five lads all line out together. Always fresh from propping up the Donnybrook bar in search of gallons of false courage, they slouch aimlessly behind their buttons and grin as their idiot sons wave inappropriately-sloganed socks from the back row of the audience. One gets the firm impression that the studio air would be thick with the smell of farts on these nights.

The various competitions are all subtle variations on a complex little game called ‘Spin The Friggin' Wheel Missus’. Each season, the management succeeds in coming up with increasingly perverse angles on this limited theme. The punters look increasingly baffled as the winnings pile up.

And when the money is all dispensed, the relatives all paid off, and the studio floor mopped dry of another weeks puddles of nervous urine, we sit and wonder ‘what was it all about?’

But we shouldn’t.

It was about people. Real, honest, God-fearing, good people. People just like ourselves. People who should never be let anywhere near the front of a television camera because we are so Real we will only look completely silly and get laughed at.

The people who look good on television are not ‘Real’. They are not ‘Your Average Punters’. They are neither like us or from us. They know nothing about us.

And yet still we always seem to vote for them.

The Best I Ever Did

I was on my way home to Castlebar one Saturday evening when I stopped into a shop in Sligo to do the Lottery. An almost-elderly man was getting directions from the young guy behind the counter.

“You go to the bottom of the road then turn left then… are you driving?” He was not driving. “You’re walking? It’s a terrible long way to walk.”

I asked them both where he was going. The man told me.

“I’ve walked down from the hospice," He said, "My old neighbour is up there, dying, and I got a lift in from Manorhamilton to visit him and all he is wishing for is one drink of Lucozade and I can’t find a drop in this blessed town.”

I glanced at my wrist. I was late for home. My children would be in bed before I got there, if I didn’t get a move on.

“Come on,” I said, “We’ll take a quick spin and find your friend some Lucozade.”

He looked at me a moment. I was unshaven and roughly-dressed. I could have been some kind of kidnapper. He decided to trust me. We drove around all the service stations. For some reason, there wasn’t much Lucozade to be had that night. Eventually we found a place down on the Bundoran Road. I waited in the car and was delighted to see him emerge with his Lucozade – a large bottle under each arm.

He wanted to walk back up to the hospice. He thought he had imposed enough on my time.

We chatted about the usual things on the way back. When we stopped at the gates, he slipped something onto my lap.

“I got you a scratch card,” he said, “for your kindness” Then he went off to deliver his Lucozade

After I had dropped him, I drove for a while then pulled in and scratched off the lottery card he had given me. There was a two Euro prize on it.

It was the best I ever did.

Song of the Decade

I was walking home from work the other evening, as usual – keeping the old carbon footprint down – when a song came on the ipod that I hadn’t heard in a while.

I listened to it, enjoyed it greatly, and then a thought occurred.

‘That pop song’, I thought, ‘is as good a song as any to represent the 1970’s for me.’

Okayyyy…


So then I got to thinking, what one pop song might represent the other decades that I've lived in? I thought about it a little bit and then I threw a song at each decade.

I gave myself a couple of rules, nothing too strenuous. I made it exclusively pop songs, because they seem to be the most ‘of-their-time’ and thus more apt in summing up a decade.

And then I… nope, that’s it with the rules actually.

I didn’t think about it too hard either. You could tied up in knots trying to be all apt and clever and stuff.

Anyway, the song I was listening to, which started the whole bus of thought (it was too small to be an actual train) was this:

1970’s - Run to Me by The Bee Gees



What a great song that is_ wait, another rule, no editorialising either. Just pick a damn song.

- Jees… ‘touchy or what?

- It’s been a rough day, okay?

- Okay?

- Yeah, okay?

- Okay, jees…

1980’s - True Faith by New Order

1990’s - Losing My Religion by REM

2000’s – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Part 1) by The Flaming Lips.



Hey, I left out the sixties. I was around for much of the sixties but I was quite young so it’s difficult… aw hell:

1960’s Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles. (I may explain why in a comment, if forced.)

A word about that 2000’s choice. My pal Reggie at Fragileheart is doing a period of ‘Pink Blogging’ to promote breast cancer Awareness (to hell with grammar, I ain’t capitalising that shit).

I though this song might be of interest to her because, although it is ostensibly about a young Japanese girl fighting robots, there is a perceived subtext that the girl in the song is actually battling cancer. It’s a great song and it’s got elements in it that couldn’t belong to any other decade methinks.

So, anyone care to play? What pop song sums up a generation for you?

Go on… I dare ya!

Not Competent Technically

In Ireland, we have The ‘NCT Test’. Yes that phrase is an example of Tautology (the things I do for clarity). This is a compulsory roadworthiness test for cars over 3 years old. It's a bit like the British MOT test or the American... I don't know, the American 'what' test?

Anyway... yet another embarrassing true story follows:

I have heard that certain families of crows have evolved so that they can use primitive tools such as stones to help break open their food. On that particular wing of the evolutionary scale they are a beak and several feathers above me. Any job which requires the use of tools or the interconnecting of parts will be guaranteed to cause me the greatest of difficulty.

It was therefore with a dull sense of trepidation that I approached the green letter which perched on my mat one bleak Tuesday morning. It was time for my car to be NCT tested to assess, and hopefully confirm, its continued roadworthiness. Doubtless the car would have to be tweaked and fiddled-with to help ease its passage. But ‘trepidation’ is too big a word to last very long. I resolved to take my standard approach to any problem requiring ingrained ‘handiness’ – I would simply pay somebody, who was up there with the crows, to do it for me.

So it was that I found myself, on the night before the test, sitting at home looking out at the rain pelt down upon my gleaming fully-serviced car, when it occurred to me to check the NCT appointment letter to make sure all my documentation was to hand – I’m passable at documentation.

The problem arose halfway down the letter where a note had mysteriously appeared to tell me that the hubcaps had to be removed from the wheels before arriving at the test centre. It was evident that nothing had thus far been removed from the wheels of my car and my appointment was for nine-fifteen the next day.

There was little choice. I would have to Do It Myself.

Some people – sportsmen and athletes perhaps – may enjoy sweating in the rain. But it was a relatively new experience for me and not one which I was enjoying at all.

Drenched to the sinew, at the centre of a virtual fairy fort of tools, devices and implements of destruction, I faced four of the most immovable spherical objects in the history of motorised transport. NCT failure hung over me like a steamy cloud. I needed help.

I phoned Dad, certifiably the handiest man in the world and living proof that physical dexterity can easily skip a generation.

“Get a chisel or a screwdriver” he bellowed from the midst of whatever handy task he was currently engaged in, “get the edge in under the rim then bang it hard until it comes off.”

Five minutes later things were largely as they were before except that I was now bleeding profusely from the fleshy part of my palm. I did what all non-handy people should always do… I gave up.

Next morning at work I told my work mate Anthony how I had skipped my test on account of the immovability of my hubcaps.

His reply was as gentle as it was disbelieving.

“You don’t have hubcaps,” he said, “you have alloy wheels.”

When I turned up for my rearranged appointment and told the NCT Man how my car had ‘Alloys’ which didn’t have to be prised off, I felt that for a fleeting moment I had peered in through the door of a club to which I would never, ever, belong.

This didn’t bother me too much.

What really bothered me was that, out there in the streaming rain, just before the blood started to flow in earnest, I had nearly gotten one of those beauties off.

A Key To My Mindset

I find that the small bunch of keys I carry around in my pocket can sometimes give me an insight into where my sub-conscious thoughts are.

It isn’t rocket science either.

Sometimes, when I get home from work, I will try to unlock the front door with the office key. As soon as I do it, I realise that I haven’t really come home at all and my brain is still mulling over work-related matters.

In the same way, I can often try to open the office door with my home key. At those times, I know I really don’t want to be there at all – I’d rather be at home.

Like I said, not rocket science.

When I come back from lunch, I have a little game I play where I try to plunge the key straight into the lock from two foot away using a single fearless thrust. If I can do it (and I usually can) it gives me confidence that I am on top of my game and that nothing the afternoon can produce will phase me. Those times that I don’t succeed means that there are some serious dents in the lock plate and in the end of the key too.

Finally, in my youth, my keys occasionally used to bring on some serious feelings of homesickness.

When I started living in Dublin, at seventeen, to go to college, I used to travel home for most weekends. Whenever I got back to my accommodation, late on Sunday evening, and put the key from my home up to the door… I knew where I wanted to be.

Do your keys ever tell you anything?

Stirred and Shaken

At the ripe old age of sixteen, I was promoted from behind the public bar to the relative elegance of the restaurant bar next door. My black tie was borrowed and my white shirt still boasted those sharp vertical creases from the packaging. I felt fairly refined.

Pat, the manager, showed me the ropes to the accompaniment of James Last on the stereo.

"In here, you just have to put on the bit of a show," he explained. He was gone before I could ask him what he meant.

An elderly tartan-clad American gent sat up on one of my stools and ordered himself a 'Bloody Mary'. We served those out in the public bar now and again so I knew what to do.

I got a small whiskey glass and fired a measure of Vodka into it. Then I added two economy-sized ice cubes and presented it to him alongside a little bottle of tomato juice which I had skilfully opened. Remembering about putting on the show, I wiped the bottle with a tea towel as I laid it in front of him.

"What in the hell is this?" the American thundered as Pat the manager reappeared magically at my shoulder.

Without a word he swept my version of a Bloody Mary from view and smoothly produced a gleaming cocktail shaker. He opened it, added vodka, juice, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper and just a hint of Tabasco. He sealed it all up and gave it a vigorous and theatrical shaking. Then the cocktail was ready, beautifully presented in a tall slender glass and finished off with a stick of crisp celery.

The manager's smile became a little more fixed when he turned back to me.  "Remember," he hissed, "put on the show."

It was a fairly quiet evening so I spent much of my time shining up glasses and watching all the beautiful people eat. I had a fine array of sparkling glassware in front of me by the time my next complicated order arrived. It came from a little bald man with a tweed jacket.

"I'd like a 'Fifty-five' please."

These days, most people know that a 'Fifty-five' is just lemonade and orange juice. You can even buy it in its own little bottle. But this was 1980 and I was at a complete loss.

"What's in it?" I whispered. When he told me, I smiled. I knew what I had to do. I took the gleaming cocktail shaker and added an impressive scoop of ice. Then I opened an orange juice and a white lemonade and poured them equally in on top of the ice.

The bald man in the tweed jacket looked a bit tense but I tipped him a reassuring wink as I sealed the top of my shaker down. I picked it up and shook it vigorously.

It is a truism of bar work that lemonade is not well disposed towards being shaken.

The top of my shaker exploded and took off across the restaurant, nearly decapitating the American with the Bloody Mary. A fizzy sticky mess of orange juice erupted all over my array of polished glasses and onward over the man's tweed jacket and bald head.  The entire restaurant stared at me in disbelief, even James Last on the stereo seemed momentarily knocked off his stride.

And all the patrons of the public bar were surprised to see me back so soon.

"We thought you were trying out the posh bar tonight," they said.

"I was," said I, "What can I get you, a pint?"

Letting Off Steam

Okay. I'm gonna share this with y'all 'cos you've stuck by me through the bad times and you deserve a little insight to help guide you along life's occasionally rocky highway.

Ready?

To make the perfect boiled egg every time, do NOT time the process.  Instead, lift the egg periodically from the boiling water with a spoon (yes, the spoon *is* a good idea).

When it's out, watch how fast the water evaporates off the egg shell.  If it takes longer than 2 seconds, put the egg back in the water.  When it takes a little less than 2 seconds, it is perfectly done - not too hard, not too soft.

After you do this for a few years, you will become a master of the Art, like me.

There you go - I suppose you can think of me as a sort of Nigella Lawson without the Decolletage....

No, perhaps not.

Night of the Frogs

I was driving from Limerick to Sligo with a police sergeant one foul winter’s night and I was as guilty as sin.

I wasn’t a bank robber or even a drinker in those days. I was twenty-one and amazingly well-behaved for my age.

This guilt I felt was all of my own imagining. Still it hung over me like a pall.

It was my brother’s fault that I came to be driving with this policeman. He was engaged to the policeman’s daughter and we had been down to admire the home they were busy making.

I wanted to get back for the weekend and Joe had to get back to police-work so it was obvious that we should go together.

Obvious but awkward.

Although Joe was, and still is, one of the most congenial, accessible men on earth, I knew it was going to be hellish. You see, I had never been in a car with a real live policeman before.

We bade farewell to Limerick and started out all brightness and lively chat but soon enough dusk and silence fell. The radio went on the blink.

And then it started to rain. It started to pour. I had never seen precipitation like it in my life. We both leaned really close into the windscreen wipers and willed ourselves down the road. The rain even opened a brief conversational ploy.

“It’s very heavy”, I said.

“It surely is,” said Joe.

And that was it.

The downpour became hypnotic and I was just starting to doze when I suddenly thought I saw a large green frog jump up in the headlights of the car. I jumped too.

“Are you all right?,” asked Joe.

"Fine!"

I wasn’t going to tell him I saw a big frog, no way.

Suddenly there was another one and another and another. They leapt up into the full-beams, did a little flip and were gone. I rubbed my eyes but still there seemed to be amphibians in the headlights. Were they real? I wasn't at all sure. The heavy rain was throwing up huge splashes which looked a bit like frogs too. It could all be just an optical illusion.

The silence in the car got very heavy indeed.

If I were to tell Joe I was seeing frogs, and it turned out that he wasn’t, I could find myself in some trouble. Conclusions involving substance abuse could well be drawn. I decided to hold my peace.

For an age we drove through the downpour as a constant roll-call of little green Kermits did their party piece in front of my eyes. Finally a particularly large one jumped up and winked at me. Then it was my turn to flip.

“Joe...," I said quickly, "are you seeing frogs?”

The police sergeant looked over at me, indicated left, and eased the car to a stop. He glared at me.

“Thank God,” he said, “I thought I was going mad.”

Over time I'm sure I would have learned the truth - that policemen are often regular guys just like the rest of us. The frogs just taught me it that little bit quicker.

And I’ve since found that it is a well-documented occurrence. Heavy rain fills the ditches with water and hoards of frogs get evicted up onto the road to hop around in car headlights.

It may be hard to believe but I saw it.

And, in case you don't believe me, the policeman saw it too.



(c) Ken Armstrong

Dissecting My Own Alien

As I was saying last time, I’ve been thinking a bit about truth and memories and how they relate to my writing.

When I put up Dad’s story, two posts ago, I recorded it reasonably faithfully. Okay, I threw in a few engine ‘ticks’ and other shreds of Blarney to help it along. But it was basically written as I had heard it.

I figured there had to be elements of invention in that story but I didn’t know what, or how many, they were.


Then I thought, why not take a little memory story of my own and look at it hard then set down what was true and what was invention in it?

So if you liked my last little story, you might want to look away now.

I’m about to cut it open…

Here’s the facts of ‘The First Night of Alien’ as I recall them now.

I went to see ‘Alien’ with a friend of mine. It was the second night because there was a special screening the night before to open the refurbished cinema. We sat in the stalls. There were courting seats but we weren’t in them. The movie was great.

That’s about it. But that’s no good.

I wanted to capture the excitement, the anticipation, the *fun* and the facts just didn’t do it for me.

So I started weaving a bit…

My wife had once told me a story of a friend of hers who sat in a courting seat on her own while her new boyfriend was forced to sit in the next one – she thought they were just big seats.

Once, in the old Savoy, a guy called Gilmore had thrown his coat over the balcony and it had landed on a guy called Feeney who was understandably annoyed. As I recall, this happened at a double bill of Elvis Presley movies (Blue Hawaii and GI Blues) which played one Sunday night shortly after Elvis’ death.

I stole Marie, the horn-rimmed lady behind the Plexiglas screen, from a story of mine called ‘Rasp’. She was actually pure ‘Gary Larson’ and never really existed.

So I gave Feeney a girlfriend which he never had and gave them that ‘courting seat business’ to play out.

Then I put myself and my now-legion of mates up on the balcony just so Gilmore could throw his coat over the edge again for me. It was only after he threw it over, on my page, that I realised that it could land on Feeney’s girl thus providing her with an apt punishment for venturing into a big seat all on her own at such a very scary movie.

That was a fun realisation!

And that’s it. That’s the truth of the story. Or… is it?

After all, this all happened (or didn’t happen) back in 1979 when I was sixteen. God knows how my memory might have failed me since then.

One final point. When I called the piece, ‘The First night of Alien’, I was entertaining myself with a little pun that I don’t believe anyone has ever got. You see, I saw a play on telly once about George Bernard Shaw and the premiere of one his best known plays. The play was called ‘The First Night of Pygmalion’ (by Richard Huggett). I like the fact that this little connection is there for me and perhaps for nobody else or, even better, perhaps for one other person somewhere in the world who might chance upon my story some day and get a kick out of it.

So that’s my alien dissection.

I can’t apologise for any of this lying or trickery. I’m see myself as a story-teller, not as a historian or a reporter or a biographer.

The true story which I wanted to tell did not have enough of the necessary elements in it to succeed as a story. So I worked on it a little. I lied and I cheated.

And here’s the great thing…

The resultant story, for all it’s invention and untruths, has (for me at least) more truth and honesty in it than any pure ‘setting-down-of-the-facts’ could ever have managed.

For me, it captures a little of the excitement and anticipation of going out with your friends when you’re young. It also reminds me of the social aspects of going to the movies as a teen, the fun that we had in the stalls which had very little to do with the movie on the screen (or with sex, I hasten to add). I’ve lost sight of this latter point in my advancing years – see my post of just a few weeks ago if you’re in any doubt about this.

So I wrote a pack of lies and, by doing so, somehow got closer to the truth.

Isn’t that odd?

The Cold Hand

I was posting recently about my Dad and the stories I sometimes steal off him. Here’s another one of those stories. This one concerns one of the most terrifying events of his younger life.

So be warned!

Many years ago, he was a keen fisherman - trout and salmon mainly. He and his friends used to travel quite a bit to compete in lake-fishing competitions around this time of year. That meant they would often be driving home along the strange dark Irish roads very late at night.

One such night, he and his friend happened upon a very recent car crash. The car had ploughed through the roadside hedges and fallen down quite a drop into the field beyond. In fact, the car was so far down they wouldn’t have even known it was there, if not for the skid marks and the freshly broken section of the hedge.

It was pitch dark down in the field where the car lay ticking away quietly. The headlights from up on the road could not reach down there, it was pitch dark. All that he and his friend could do was feel their way along the car to get their bearings.

The driver side door could not be opened but the passenger side obliged. No internal light came on, which was not surprising given the horrific state of the car. Gradually, their eyes were adjusting to the dark and they could now make out that there was indeed a body in the driver seat, crumpled and still. It was clear that there was nobody else inside.

The body made no movement when the men shouted in. It seemed likely this person had not survived the crash. Neither of the men knew any First Aid but he came up with the best suggestion he could.  "You go and find a phone and I’ll wait here," he said.

His friend ran off to get help, leaving him alone with the motionless body in the car.

"Can you hear me? Hello?"

There was still no response, no movement.  He threw the passenger door open as far as it would go and climbed into the passenger seat. Once inside, the car door slammed heavily shut. Some mechanism jammed as it did and he found that the door would not open again. Luckily all the windows had been shattered so the feeling of being locked in was somewhat lessened.

In among all the broken glass and sticky upholstery, he turned to the person in the driver seat and spoke to him.

"Don’t worry," he said, "the ambulance is coming… we’ll get you out… you’ll be all right…"

There was nothing else he could do.

He sat there, hand resting on the person’s shoulder, repeating his reassurances over and over again as the engine ticked slowly down, then stopped. And the darkness seemed only to get deeper and deeper and deeper.

Time passed. It was difficult to tell how much, there was nothing to gauge it by. There was only the darkness and the still motionless body by his side.

Nothing happened.

But, after a time, something did.

Without sound or warning a cold hand fell unerringly onto his hand and gripped it tightly. The hand did not belong to the body in the car – it had come from the other side.  He was too terrified to move, too frozen to speak.

A low drone began. Perhaps due to the shock induced by this hand-from-nowhere, this drone was indecipherable at first, a hoarse throaty mumbling, tubercular and flat.  Then it became recognisable, familiar.

"… kingdom come, ‘will be done ‘earth as t’is in heaven. ‘Give us this day…"

"Eh, Father," my Dad said, shakily, "It’s not me that needs you, it’s him over there."

Hard to Tell 2

The story I wrote in my previous post is a largely-true tale about something that happened way back in 1991.

At the time, when all the facts of the matter became clear, it was one of the funniest thing I have ever witnessed. That Saturday afternoon we laughed and laughed at the memory of what had happened.

I love to write down these stories as best I can and I have read quite a few of them out on a radio programme called Sunday Miscellany .


But the writing of this one daunted me. Many times I have said to myself, "Must get that one down Ken."

(And I have answered myself back, "Please don’t use my first name, we hardly know each other")

I guess I was daunted by the complexity of the story. Of course, it’s a very simple tale about one man’s quest to be readmitted to his place of work. But how to get the story across, pass on at least some element of the humour and not tie the whole thing up in knots?

Look at some of the difficulties:

The action takes place simultaneously in two separate locations.

At the end of the story, nobody in the story knows that anything has happened.

Nothing funny happens at either of the two locations in the story – it is only in the over-view of the two coinciding narratives that the humour emerges.

The best bit is in the middle of the story. What happens at the end is not funny at all and must be cut out.

So, with so much narrative complication for such a simple tale, I never sat down and wrote it.

Until last Saturday.

"Come on Ken!", I shouted at myself, "just write it."
("I’ve warned you about names already," I replied, "and don’t you dare exclaim at me.")

So I just sat down and… wrote it. To hell with the consequences. Bugger the complications. JUST WRITE THE DAMN THING.

And I did. Wrote it, left it to cool, tidied it and fired it up on the Blog here. I don’t usually move from writing to posting so fast but speed was of the essence here, before the narrative-angst-bogeymen caught up with me again.

I had also written a whole spiel at the front of the story detailing my nervousness about the narrative complications therein but I decided to cut all that out and just let the story stand up on its own two legs. The only hint I put in that first post was in the title.

I’m actually quite happy with the way this little story turned out and I’m most grateful for your positive feedback, dear visitors. I brought it along to my friends in Castlebar Writer’s Group last night and raised quite a few laughs with it (which is my pretty much my food-and-drink).

Interesting, the best laughs were at the point when Richard remembered his bag of apples. I think that moment when an audience finally realises where a story might be going – that’s a good moment.

I hate morals. So the moral of this ‘story-about-a-story’ is a motivational chant which I guess I should listen to more often.

"Don’t get it right, Get it written."