Um…

I got nothing for ya this week.

I nearly always write my blog post in the week before I post it.  I reckon it helps to keep the thing reflective of where my mind is in any given week.  Usually it’s finished well-before Sunday comes around, sometimes it’s not.  That’s not a problem.

I’m not normally stuck for something to write about either.  Well, when it’s waffle like this, how could I be?  It’s just, this morning, I got nothing.  As they say on the stage when they forget their lines, “I’m up.”

I have a wee notebook, that's always secreted on my person, where I scribble things in.  I had a look through and there’s some damn fine blog ideas tucked away in there.  Damn fine… You’re going to really enjoy them… I’m just not in the mood to write those particular ones this morning and if I’m not in the mood, they won’t flow and a blog’s gotta flow outta ya, I reckon.

So what do I do?  Faced with the proverbial Blank Page?

Do I leave it for this week and go off and watch Mayo pound Roscommon into the ground (C’mon Mayo!!).  Do I read my book (Sarah Pinborough’s up next… very excited about that) or do I just Goof Off (which I think is a great expression ‘cos we don’t use it this side of the Atlantic and thus it sounds faintly rude).

None of the above.  No.

I have to face this Blank Page down and put some words on it, cos that’s what writers do.  If we wait for it all to mature in our heads, all the nuances to work themselves out and the creative planets to align themselves in our writerly favour, then we don’t get very much done.  More importantly, the good ‘half-ideas’ that we have don’t ever amount to much more than a misquoted hill of mushy peas.

Facing down the Blank Page is an excellent thing to do.  It may start slowly (“All Work anD NO play makes KEN a dull bOy…”) but, before long, you will follow some despairing thought down a rabbit hole and you’ll be off-and-running on some completely random and bullshit escapade which might, one day, actually shape up into something good.  Then again, you might not.  At worst, you are putting yourself in the Zone where Writing can Happen.  Facing down the blank page... if you do it often enough, something will come out of it, that’s for damn sure.

(Check word count)  No, that’s not a Blog Post, you fecker, that’s an extended tweet for Chrissakes… develop the thought…

Come on… come on…

Okay…

Another good thing about the Blank Page is that it isn’t distracting.  It can actually be quite demanding.  It’s just you and me, babe, and either we can sit here and do nothing or we can ‘Get It On’.  So whaddya say, blank page, you wanna waltz with me a while?”

(That bit’s shit… ‘best rub it out)

No. No. No!

You don’t rub shit out on the Blank Page.  You keep going and going regardless.  You can ‘Save As’ later into a file called ‘Marginally Less Shite Than Before’ and feck with it all you want in there but not here.  The Blank Page must be filled up with stuff at all costs.

You can do anything you want on the Blank Page.  What you don’t ever do is print ‘publish’ on the damn thing just after you’ve written it.  That’s just stupid.  Even after you’ve “Saved As’ and tidied it all up, like a muff on a prom night.  You still have to let it breathe for some period of time, even if it’s only thirty minutes (ideally thirty days but it’s a blog, dude, not ‘War and Peace’).  In that brief hiatus (phew) you will see quite a bit of the crap you missed before.  Not all of it but enough to get by on.

It’s okay to fear the Blank Page.  It’s natural.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t step up and kick its lily-white ass from time-to-time.

“Lily-white Ass… Blank Page…” Hey! That’s not bad…

I’m glad I did this now.

A Little Book Learning

This week I have reminded myself that I can learn things from books.

Yes, I know, “The Most Obvious Statement Ever Made,” etc.  I do know.  But I was actually reminding myself of something a little bit more specific than the obvious.  It was the face that, as a writer, you can learn much about writing from actually reading.

Still pretty obvious but it amazes me how many people pursue writing hobbies and careers in the belief that they don’t need to read anything in order to do it.  Just reading that sentence makes it seem so silly to me yet I see it quite a bit.

Anyway, I’m not here to pontificate – not today anyway.  I just want to refer to two novels which I recently finished reading, both of which taught me something useful about my own writing endeavours and, particularly, what I should expect to find within my writing.

The two books are ‘The Elegance of The Hedgehog’ by Muriel Barbery and ‘Inheritance’ by Nicholas Shakespeare and, before I say more about them, I need to thank my friends at Castlebar Book Club who put me on to both of these books.  I would not have found them by myself and that, for me, is the indispensable value of the book club.

Onwards…

Each of these books taught me a lesson which I can take away to my own writing.  I’d like to tell you what those two lessons are without getting too deep into either of the two books.

Let’s start with ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ which has the simpler of the two lessons.  The book is the story of a Concierge in a Parisian apartment building who hides her intellect and her Aesthete nature from the people she deals with.  It is also the story of a young girl who lives in the apartment block – a girl who fully intends to blow herself up.

It’s a nice set-up.  It is quite heavy on the intellectualising… wait, let me tell you what I learned and that’ll probably say enough about the book.

The story sets itself up very quickly, it does this very well.  We are only a few pages in when we know the Renee and what is driving her.  We know Paloma too, it’s all good.

“Ah,” I hear you say, “I know where he’s going with this.  After the start of the book, nothing happens. That’s it, right?”

Well no.  I thought that was it, I really did.  You see, halfway through I was hating this book, I was pleading on Twitter for somebody to give me an excuse to stop reading the damn thing.  And I thought it was because nothing was happening.  But, looking back, I could see that loads of things had happened, loads of good stuff…

… that’s when I saw why the book had lost me as it did.

Nothing changed.

There was loads of events and opinions-expressed and comings-and-goings but, despite all this, by page 125, the Concierge was still hiding her true nature and the girl was still going to blow herself up.  No change.  Then, on page 129, a tiny little event happened but this event was different to all the others.  It caused change.  And then, dear friends, the book took off.

So that’s my lesson from this book – happenings and action are not enough to engage the audience/reader, you have to evoke change in your characters.

Onwards again…

The next book, was ‘Inheritance’  It’s got a great notion behind it, this book.  What movie makers would call ‘high concept’ which means you hear the premise described in a few short sentences and you are engaged.

The premise here is this;  a guy goes to his teacher’s funeral but goes into the wrong crematorium chapel by mistake.  As a result of attending the wrong funeral, he inherits seventeen million pounds from the deceased man.

See?  It’s good innit?  Here’s what it taught me. 

I’m a story-man, me.  Story first.  This idea of developing characters and then inventing something for them to do… that doesn’t work for my writing.  For me, the characters usually grow to suit the story.

Well, until now anyway. 

You see, the first half of this book is all-story.  The character, the guy who gets the money, seems to stumble through the story without really showing himself in any interesting way.  As with the previous book, the first half of it lost me but, again, the second half won me back.

In the second half, the deceased character comes to the fore as his story is told and, boy, he is a real character for sure.  With the arrival of this real character, the book comes alive.  Taking things a step too far, I now think the author deliberately drew the main character a little bland to then elevate him in the presence of his better-written second character.

What I learned then is that 'Story' on its own will not be enough.  No matter how good the story is.  I have to pay attention to my characters more.

Yes, Ken, but the books… are they any good?

For me, neither were world-beaters but both have rewarded me for reading them.

Give them a go, I’d say.

When You Go Your Own Way

This week I’m mostly trying to get a particular thought straight in my head.  It often helps if I type through these things.  Maybe it might help you too, who knows?

It relates to writing. And negativity. Well, a bit anyway.

I was having one of those ‘Dark Tea Times of the Soul’ (respect to Douglas Adams) about my writing a few weeks ago.  My thoughts went something like this;

“Everybody in the world is writing.  Everybody has computers and word processors and printers.  Everybody is swigging coffee and pushing themselves and creating scenarios and characters and working hard and… just… writing.  So why are you any different?  In truth, you’re just another slob with a PC and a dream.  There’s a million of you out there and quite a significant percentage are most-likely a whole lot better then you are.  So why bother?  How can you ever hope to succeed?”

Like I said, it was perhaps not the very best of days.

But then I had this other thought.  This thought that I’m trying to get straight in my head.  Oddly enough, it was about the Live Aid Concert in Wembley back in 1985.  Bear with me on this, I think it’s pertinent to the point about negativity, I just have to work through it a little.

You see, I was lucky enough to be at the Live Aid Concert back in 1985.  It wasn’t quite ‘The Perfect Day’ that it may have seemed on the telly but, looking back, it wasn’t terribly far off it either.

But this thought-of-mine doesn’t relate to the concert itself, it relates to what happened when it finished up.

What happened was that we all went home.  All of us.  Pretty much at the same time. And there was a bloody enormous crowd of us.  As we all crushed out of Wembley Stadium and onto the pavilion, I remember thinking something like this;

“I am part of an enormous crowd of people.  We are all going the same way, wanting to get to the same place.  How can this ever work itself out?”

But I kept walking in the crowd, shuffling along.  What else was there for me to do?  Eventually I turned down a street, and then another, and then another…

…and, suddenly, I was alone.

Quite alone.

…

This was very surprising to me.  One minute I was in a crowd that seemed unbreakable, eternal.  Yet it only took a couple of minor turns for me to lose the crowd, who had all made their own turns, and be out on my own again.

So at the end of all my gloomy ponderings (see above) I took some heart from this memory.  I don’t want to kill the point by driving it home, I think the analogy is pretty clear but, just in case.

Perhaps you write (or whatever it is that you do) and you fear you are one of a huge crowd and will never stand out, in your own right.  I reckon that if you just continue to go your own way, make the turns you need to make and be true to your route then, not too far down that line, you will be out on your own, doing your own individual thing.

Will it be good enough? Well that’s another question, isn’t it? That takes learning and perseverance and maybe a little luck and talent, who knows?

But as for The Crowd?  There is no real need to fear The Crowd.

Just turn once down there at the bottom, then again at the end, then once more - you decide which direction to go.

Then, for sure, you will be out on your own.

Writing About… Um…

I’m not very good at it, am I?

I do it all right, I do quite a bit of it, but I’m not really any good at writing about it.

Writing, that is.  Writing about writing.

I wonder why not?  I love to write - it’s my passion, really.  You’d think I’d be bursting at the seams to tell you how many words I did today or what part I edited and how much fun it all was.  But, no, I don’t ever feel the urge to do that.  

I don’t feel the urge to do it now either but I was thinking about it and that’s where these blog posts generally come from – whatever I happen to be thinking about.

So why don’t I write about writing?

I’ve found over time that I need to write within a bubble in order to get it done.  If I reveal what I’m writing at any given time, the intimate relationship I have with the material is instantly shattered.  I’ve told somebody about it and I’ve let them into the world too and now the world no longer belongs simply to me and the story I’m writing.  This has quite been enough to kill projects stone-dead for me, in the past.

So I can’t write about what I’m doing right now… I need to stay in the ‘Bubble’.  But, still, I could be writing about whatever I was writing before, couldn’t I?  I could be promoting it and announcing it and trying a little bloody harder to flog it to somebody.

I think I don’t tend to do that because it bores me so much.  When it’s done – written, rewritten, rewritten, rewritten, rewritten – it’s done.  I don’t want to discuss it anymore  At that point, the next writing thing becomes the focus, the excitement.  And, like I said, I can’t talk about that.

I also find I need some validation before I’m truly comfortable talking about something I’ve written.  When somebody’s taken a piece of my writing on, whether it’s a play that got a production or a story that’s gotten into print somewhere, then I can talk about it until the cows come home.  I guess I don’t feel that my simply having written something makes it worthy of discussion.  I need that third party to come and want to use it.  Validation; I need a bit, I reckon.

Also, the Internet is already so very replete with people writing about their writing.  For many people, it seems almost as if every paragraph which is completed must be marked with a blog post or a Twitter/Facebook announcement celebrating the fact. 

I’m not complaining.  Writing is such a personal thing, whatever works for you works… so long as it works.  I even tried a little bit of that with the book I recently finished writing (‘too boring, let’s not).  For once, I hinted to some people what I was doing, I even outright-told a few people – unheard-of for me.  No detail, that would have been Death, but just a few mentions that I was finally intent on finishing that book I’d been struggling with.  I did this to try to push myself.  To see if, by putting my intention out in the public domain, it would add some impetus to my doing it.  I’d be churlish if I didn’t admit that it worked, to a certain extent.  People would ask me, ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘Aren’t you finished yet?” and I kept at it.  I won’t be doing that again in a hurry but I did see how it might work for other writers.  To be constantly announcing your progress and hinting at your methodology, if it drives you, it drives you.  Like I said, whatever works…

But there’s no doubt that there are people out there who are much more enamoured with talking about their writing as opposed to actually doing any writing.  That’s the danger.  You can get so wrapped up in telling everyone about it, keeping them posted, that you forget to do any of it.  You gotta watch out for that one.

So, what am I doing now?

Well, it’s a thing… about a thing… it should take me about... hmm hmm hmmm to write and…

… um... it’ll be Great.

Doodling With the Dice

In October, which is coming up fast,  I’ve been asked to do some children’s workshops in creative writing as part of the Linenhall’s annual Roolaboola Children's Festival.

I’m planning to use a really cool toy called ‘Rory’s Story Cubes’ to show how stories can be made up and hopefully then crafted a little.  The cubes are lovely things – made up of nine dice with pictures on each side.  You roll the dice and make up a story on what you see.  The kids in the workshops will make up stories and then we will work together to make up a story which I will read aloud to an audience the next day.

If I’m going to do this, I figured I’d better get some practice in so, here, for the first time ever, is me rolling the cubes for a story.  I’m only allowing myself one throw.

(Roll, throw)

Okay… I got the following:  A question mark,  a bee, a magnifying glass, a sad face, a lock, a mobile phone, a crescent moon, a tower and a bridge.

Jaysus… is there still time to cancel?

Okay....

Dial Bee for Blunder

Bee mobile phones are incredibly small and that’s why you hardly ever see them and even scoff at the thought that they might even actually exist.  But they do and you shouldn’t scoff., if the wind changes when you’re doing it, your mouth will be left stuck in a permanent scoffing expression and you will never again get offered cake.

On the day that Roger the Bee lost his mobile phone, he tried to cover it up out of embarrassment.

When he returned from his pollen scouting session, he tried to convey the location of the bounty he had found by the old fashioned method of bee-dancing.  His colleagues looked at him in unbridled dismay.  They even phoned up their friends to come and see Stupid Roger trying to do the Ancient Honey Dance.  One of those that flew over scoffed and the wind changed and, well, you know the rest.

Honey watched the sad dance from a distance.  She was a gentle, kind, lady bee who hated the incredible obviousness of her name.  She had sweet and sticky feelings for Roger and, now, after she saw him trying to dance out his directions like their grandfathers used to do (in the days before mobile phones) she took him aside and buzzed softly in his ear.

“Where was the last time you saw it?” she buzzed and Roger didn’t even bother pretending that he didn’t know what she meant.

“I had it down by the Old Stone Bridge this morning,” he said.

Honey knew that because he had used it to call her and ask her whether she might like to go to the hivetop and spoon under the crescent moon that evening.  Bee-spooning, like hedgehog mating, is a careful and tentative affair but it is very rewarding, particularly in the early spring moonlight.

The call had ended in a rather dreamy, achy, manner and Honey could quite understand how Roger might have neglected to take his phone along with him when he flew back.

“Let’s go back there now and see if we can find it.”  Suggested Honey.

So they buzzed off back to the bridge blissfully unaware of the trail of alliteration they left behind them.

There was plenty of signs at the Old Stone Bridge but, alas, there was no sign of a phone.

Roger felt as if he could break down and cry and so that's exactly what he did.  It was neither a resilient nor a macho thing to do but Honey did not love Roger for such qualities.  She loved him because he was in touch with his Inner Apodia and because he spooned really really nice.

She came to a decision about what to do and, before she could think herself back out of it, she did it.

She put her feelers to her temple and used that magical fourteenth sense that lady bees have but that men bees have long since given up in favour of bigger stings.  She pushed her senses out into the world of nature around the Old Stone Bridge seeking the gentle carrier of a lost mobile phone – or ‘Handy’ as German bees tend to call theirs.  Then, against all odds, she felt it, a tingling in her senses like a tingly bee sense thing.

“It’s over there,” she said excitedly, pointing to the Old Stone Tower which stood beside the Old Stone Bridge, “it’s in there, lying on the top floor.”

“But how do you-“ started Roger but then he understood that Honey had used her fourteenth sense to help him.  He also knew that girl bees can only use their fourteenth sense once in their entire lives and that they invariably save that moment for when they are bopped by a rolled-up newspaper at a human picnic and need to bring themselves back to life.

“I can’t believe that you did that for me,” Roger said as they flew into the old locked tower in search of the phone, “what will you do now when the humans strike you?”

Honey smiled.

“I’ll just have to rely on you coming to rescue me,” she said.

And later that evening, as the pale crescent moon rose slowly above them, as they spooned so gently and so very dangerously, Roger swore quietly on his newly-rescued phone that, when the time came, he would do exactly that.

It’s When They Talk Back…

I took a little break from posting for a few weeks there.

The truth is, I am reaching the end of a bulky writing project and I felt happier putting everything else aside to try to get it over the brow of the hill.

I may be wrong but I think I’m over it now.  There may be another hill halfway down this final descent, we’ll see.


It struck me, while doing this work, that writing can be hard.  This may seem obvious but I don’t think it always is. 

I reckon there are people who have tried their hand at writing and given up because it didn’t come easily to them.  I also reckon there are people who it comes really easily to, and they believe they’re great, but really they’re just not working hard enough at it.

It is my experience that great writers often grind and sweat and push really hard to get their writing out.  Granted, sometimes it just rolls along like a Summer breeze but they don’t get to stop just because it stops being easy.  They just have to crank it out.

So my point, I guess, is this.  If you’re writing and it’s not coming easily, don’t take that as a sign that you can’t do it.  And, if you’re churning it out without a care in the world well… ask yourself, is it any good?

I’ve always found there is a point in writing something where I know I've largely cracked it and that, regardless of whether it will be good or bad, I will get it to the finish line.  For me, that moment occurs when the characters in the narrative start doing and saying things for themselves rather than what I tell them to do.

I realise this may sound like a load of pretentious rubbish nonetheless I’ve always found it to be quite true. 

You set up a story and characters and motives and emotions and such and then you write.  And, for such a long time, the characters lay there and do what you tell them to do – go here, do that – no problem.  Then, when you’ve done enough work, and if you’ve done it well enough, a character will just get up and walk in the opposite direction to where you think they should be going.

“I wouldn’t do that,” they will say, over their shoulder as they go, “I would do this.  Don’t you know me at all?”

It’s quite a glorious moment and a bit scary too because the story may now go somewhere you never quite envisaged it would go.

I reckon you’ve got to run with it, when it starts.  What’s the worst that can happen? 

At worst you might write yourself up a dead end and have to go back.  Who cares?  The writer who puts it upon themselves to chart a linear course through their writing is seriously damaging their chances of creating anything good, in my opinion.  It’s only ink and paper, you have to be prepared to write some stuff you will not use.  You also have to be prepared to learn almost subliminally from that stuff you leave behind and bring it along with you into that stuff you keep.

Ack.  I’ve been away too long, I’m rambling now.

Still if it gets me back in the blogging habit again, that’ll be okay.

I missed it, this last few weeks.

Eavesdropping on the Movies

When I started off writing stuff for radio, I seemed to fall into the groove of it fairly easily. I think the reason for that is on account of the love I had for radio from a ridiculously early age.

The place where I lived, in north west Ireland, was well placed to pick up the BBC Radio stations and it was these that I listened to the most. Every week, in our house, we got the 'Radio Times' and the 'TV Times' and, while the rest of the family were thumbing to see what Ken Godwin was up to, I was sneaking off to the back pages of the Radio Times to read about what the coming week’s radio had to offer me.

Nobody else was interested in foreign BBC radio channels, the domestic services were all they needed so this remained all my territory, my secret place.

I listened on a cool transistor radio which had three bands, MW, LW and FM (VHF). It had an aerial which extended very long and this picked up those somewhat distant voices with impressive ease.

I used to listen to the dramas on Radio 4. One Sunday afternoon, as a child, I listened to the entire production of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ mostly because the wonderful lilustration in the Radio Times showed two old wolves dressed up in old people’s clothes. I expected the wolves to appear in the play somewhere and, although they never did, I was still very taken with what I heard.

It’s funny that I remember practically nothing about the most memorable play I heard. It was one Saturday night, underneath the bedclothes. It was set in Wales, I know that, and it was about two young boys – I think one was called Dai (I realise this is not a stretch) - but, critically, he died and his friends would go and visit him in the cemetery. The images all this evoked in my room were alive and tangible to me. Although I don’t remember the play very well, the effect it had will never ever leave. It was, and sorry for the cliché, the power of radio in action.

As I turned teen, I moved up the channel a bit to Radio Luxembourg and such. The music and the naughty condom ads were too much to resist. Then my usage tapered off, as other matters arose.

In early secondary school, all the peer pressure seemed to revolve around how much adult TV viewing you could get away with over your weekends. You earned your spurs in this regard by being able to speak knowledgeably about whatever film or series was on. If you had been allowed to see it, you were a winner. Needless to say, my thoughtful and kind parents were very careful about what I was allowed to watch so I fared very poorly in these televisual tests of manhood.

This all came to a head one Friday night when RTE Television was showing the TV premiere of ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ starring Clint Eastwood. Mark Askey, who got to see absolutely everything on telly, warned us that this was the true proof of a man – whether he could get to see ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ or not. I was surely lost… until I had the most wonderful idea.

On that radio I used to listen to so much, my domain had been largely the MW and LW bands but there was a wonderful idiosyncrasy about the FM/VHF band. Before Irish television caught up with the world and moved to UHF (ultra high frequency) it used to broadcast on VHF (very high frequency) and this was the very self-same VHF that was on my old radio.

In the simplest terms, I remembered that I could hear the TV on my radio.

I tried to stay up for Coogan’s Bluff. I made myself as small as possible in the corner and I uttered not a peep but the programme announcer alerted my parent to the sex and violence aspects of the feature and I was summarily dispatched.

I tuned the movie in as I climbed into bed, pulled up the blanket over my head, and listened to the whole thing. It was very entertaining and, on Monday morning, even Mark Askey was astonished that I could describe the film in such graphic detail. My standing went up, I moved slowly towards manhood within the group.

Thus began quite a long run of listening to unsuitable movies on the radio. The disembodied voice still holds a strong sway over my thoughts and deeds.

I feel a huge bond with radio. I only wish I could describe it to you better.

Driving Imagination

God but aren’t there are a lot of bloody awful drivers in the world?

You go out in your car, it’s like being in the middle of an ‘80’s video game. That guy is gonna pull out in front of you, this old dear is gonna park her car in the middle of the road, this girl is gonna drive three inches behind you while doing her lippy in the rear view mirror.

It often annoys me to see how downright badly people drive and I regularly find it hard to hold my peace about it.

Sometimes I berate them after they have driven away (amusing but largely pointless), sometimes I fume silently and promise to blog about it - and sometimes I go at them while they are still there (which is often quite dangerous).

Me? I think I’m quite a good driver. Not in a rapid gear change, heavy revving, wear pointless black gloves sort of a way. I think I’m focused and steady and fairly safe.

As a matter of fact, I’ve developed a bit of a theory on the reason why this might be…

(What? Oh, you’re off? Well see you next time maybe, eh? I know it’s boring but I just want to get it down on paper… you know how these things are.)

My theory is simple. I think there is one key element which sets all good drivers apart from the hoards of useless ones out there. No, it’s not gender, I have no time for that discussion at all. Well, maybe I have a little time… but not right now.

This thing that sets us good drivers apart… it’s Imagination.

I do a bit of writing, I don’t know if you know this. I like to imagine stories and scenarios and discussions and arguments and gun battles and such-like. It occupies a surprising amount of my time. For this reason, I am gifted with a very graphic imagination. I’m not bragging here – it can be something of a curse.

If I get involved in visualising a scenario, that scenario can take over my mind to quite a startling extent. The regular world can simply ‘go away’ for a time and whatever thing is ‘playing out’ in my head will be there, wide and vividly coloured, in front of my eyes. This visualising can halt me in the middle of a conversation or even stop me in my tracks when I am walking. It’s like how they sometimes show flashbacks in movies, without the wobbly-screen bit at the start.

Okay, so we've established that I have some level of imagination. My point is that this helps me enormously towards being a safer driver. The reason is simple. I can ‘see’ what might happen or, more to the point, I can see what might have very nearly just happened and the visceral – often gory – truth of what I see scares me and troubles me into being a little bit more careful as I drive down the road.

These driving scenarios are always playing quietly in the back of the mind. Is there a child behind that car? Will I be able to stop if she runs out. Will I hit her and watch with horror as her little ragdoll heap tumbles up and bloodily shatters my windscreen. How hot will her blood be as it spatters my face? What will the smells be like in my car then, burnt rubber from the all- too-late-brakes, some fruity shampoo from her hair in my face and perhaps… other things too - things I can visualise but do not wish to mention.

The possibility of what I could do with my car is kept in the front of my brain by my imagination and this keeps me slower and safer than some others you may see.

‘Not a saint – never a saint – just a slightly scared motorist who understands what my car might do on my behalf.

The proof of my theory lies mostly in its corollary.

The next time you see someone driving badly, look at them closely. You will see. Whoever they are, they are not creatures of imagination. They do not dream of what they and their car might one day inadvertently do to somebody else.

I really hope they never have to find out.

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.

Writing Influences

Who influenced me and made me write in the way that I do?

It’s a question I’ve thought about quite a bit although I hadn’t really ever intended posting about it. Then my pal Rachel Fox did a Fine Post on the writers who have influenced her and she asked me the question directly. (I see that Poetikat has posted on this too). So that all gave me an excuse to answer, hopefully without sounding too full of myself.

I started to read a lot and to write a little when I was really young and I believe that the seeds of the way I scribble were planted very early and have not changed an awful lot since. That’s why the five influences I’m about to suggest will not seem overly highbrow or intellectual.

I could bluff you with more challenging fare if I felt like it, trust me, but that's not the point.

These five names represent an honest attempt to think back at who coloured my style of writing and why.

In approximate chronological order, here goes:

James Thurber: As with most things, I am not an authority on James Thurber. He turned up in a English Class textbook - “The Night The Ghost Got In”, I think – and shortly after that, I saw two collections of his work in the local book shop and I bought them. Most of the short pieces were from his New Yorker writings. I was amazed to find that a writer could be so accessible, smart and yet still funny. I wanted to learn to do that.

James Herriot: Yes, the ‘Vet’ from 'All Creatures Great and Small'. Years before any mention of a TV series, I was attracted to James Herriot’s books on account of the nice cartoons on the covers (remember I was very young). Inside the covers lay a wealth of well-told stories from the man’s professional life as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the Thirties. I always remember a review on the back of one of the books said something like, “he can tell a good story against himself.” This sentence became embedded in the part of my heart reserved for writing.

Kevin Marron: Sadly, a great many of you won’t know who Kevin Marron was. Kevin was the editor of The Sunday World newspaper in Ireland in the Seventies and early Eighties. He kept a page in that paper called ‘A Sort of TV Column’ in which he reviewed the week’s television and had fun with everything else that came to his mind. His page was always adorned by a nubile young lady in a bikini and I think my parents thought my interest in the page was another sign of my advancing adolescence (along with the acne and the moods). The girls were certainly nice but Kevin was the main event - he was a brilliant writer. He was readable, smart, finger-on-the-pulse and funny – very funny. In 1984, when still a young man, Kevin Marron flew to France on the annual Beaujolais Nouveau run and tragically died in the ensuing plane crash. You made me want to write as good as you did Kevin. Maybe someday…

Stephen King: It seems to be cool to knock Stephen King but I will always defend him with some passion. I have read pretty much every word he has ever published and I think he is a sharp, crystal clean writer with colossal story–telling ability. I can criticise him too. Here is my one-sentence-King-crit: His 'small' books are much better than his 'big' ones. People think King is some kind of pulp writer because a) he writes in the horror genre and b) he is prolific but Stephen will still be around in a century’s time and will be taught in all the best schools. He writes about his own pain with great insight, be it alcoholism in 'The Shining' or traumatic life shattering injury in 'Duma Key'. He is graphic, visual and searing and he is, to my knowledge, the first writer to describe the taste of blood as ‘copper’. I remember as a teen grabbing his books off the shelves on the day they were published – books like ‘Christine’ and ‘Cujo’ spoke directly to me as a young guy. I wanted to be able to tell a story and grab the reader by the scruff of the neck like he could. Still tryin’…

David Mamet: It took me quite a while to discover that I’m better at writing drama than I am at writing anything else. Nobody beats Mamet for Drama. He pares everything down to the absolute quick. There is no flab, no fat. Read 'American Buffalo', see ‘Oleanna’, catch the movies ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ or even ‘The Untouchables’. Mamet rules. He taught me that brevity is the soul of wit (Polonius who?) and he is still teaching it to me. Nobody is better at writing about the state of being a man. I don’t always get what he writes but it always, always, gets me.

I could list 25 writers, sure I could. But with these five, I believe that I can see their footprints in the words I write. I don’t think I’m as good as them or even as good as anybody else, I just think they - all five - have shaped me a little. And that’s the point of this post.

Back in 1978, my English teacher wrote on the bottom of my essay that I had a 'nice, chatty style' and that I should try to hold onto that. She wasn't a writer but, with that passing comment, she influenced me too.

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!

Some Notes on JJ

I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the writing of my short story ‘JJ’s Note’ and then criticise myself a little – just for fun, you understand.

I’ve always liked mystery stories - Agatha Christie, all that. So I suppose it was natural that, sooner or later, I would try to write a couple of them myself.

In fact, a book I’m busy writing (when I’m not hanging around here) is itself a fairly ambitious mystery story, so I guess I haven’t quit yet.


I’ve never actually read a book about how to write a mystery story but I reckon there’s really no big mystery to it.

For me there’s only one place to start. You need to find a ‘skewed fact’.

(I think I just made that up – ‘Skewed Fact’ – is it any good? I’m quite taken with it myself, although it’s probably in all those ‘How to Write a Mystery’ books that I’ve never read.)

In my (admittedly twisted) mind this ‘Skewed Fact’ is something that, ideally, only you will possess. It is your way of looking at something which differs ever-so-slightly from the way the rest of the world looks at it. When you find one of these, treasure it, it can be the kernel of a mystery story.

Let’s look at the ‘Skewed Fact’ in ‘JJ’s Note’.

Cosmopolitan Magazine announced a shot story competition, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago. I entered it using a fictitious female name, thinking I might have a better chance that way (eat yer heart out JK). I think I called myself ‘Felicity Martine’, which is a ‘feminisation’ of my actual middle names. (100EC for the first comment guessing my middle names, if you’re bothered).

I didn’t enter because I had a yen to write for a Woman’s Magazine – although I’ve done that in my time – I did it because of the subject you had to write about.

The subject of the competition was ‘Reading Between The Lines’.

See?

As soon as I saw that title – I thought of the town of ‘Reading’ instead of the word ‘reading’ and I knew I had a ‘Skewed Fact’ on my hands. I knew that I could build something around my twisted understanding of the writing theme and, at the very least, entertain myself for a little while.

After much plotting and concoction, ‘JJ’s Note’ emerged and I’m pleased to say I got absolutely nowhere in the competition. Never mind, JJ has stayed with me ever since.

It’s fun to watch out for these little acorns upon which vast pulp edifices may be erected. One of my favourites comes from Ed McBain – who I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who likes their detective fiction tough and sexy and garnished with loads of killer dialogue. Ed wrote a book called ‘Like Love’ which (spoiler alert) based its entire premise on the fact that men frequently misunderstand the order in which women put on underwear and suspenders. It was a very neat ‘Skewed Fact’ and it made for an elegant solution to his book.

So the whole point of this bit is – do you want to write a mystery story? First find your ‘Skewed Fact’ and then build your story from there.


* * * *

Criticism.

It’s good for writers to criticise themselves.

Some of us believe our vision is fatally biased and that we all think everything we write is brilliant. I don’t subscribe to that point of view (lyric alert). I think, late at night, even those fools on ‘X-Factor’ - who pretend they think they can sing - look into their mirror and admit to themselves how crap they really are.

I think if we hold a good hard looking glass up to our own work, we can give and receive some criticism which is more valuable than most.

I mean, come on! You know when something’s good or bad – don’t you?

And the trouble is, people who read your writing are usually desperate to be nice to you, to encourage you with your little hobby ("it keeps him off the streets, doesn’t it?"). One of my plays was performed once before a full house and everyone came out afterward and told me how brilliant it was, how great I was… but it wasn’t, it just bloody wasn’t and I knew it and I hope to God they knew it too but they wouldn’t say it. One person, ,months – years – later smiled at the memory of that night and said to me, “God, that was shite, wasn’t it?”

That person can read my work anytime!

So what do I think of ‘JJ’s Note’?

In one respect I like it, I think it has a reasonably elegant solution and I think the structure I built around that solution is quite solid and convincing. I like the fact that I posited a possible alternate solution in the middle which I then promptly rejected. That ‘glorious twelfth’ piece was another ‘Skewed Thingie’ which could have had its own narrative edifice erected around it, if I saw fit, but I sacrificed it instead to the altar of JJ.

In another respect, I dislike ‘JJ’s Note’ and I’ve alluded to my main reason for this several times in this post already. The story is little more than a technical exercise in deception. It is a heartless edifice built around a flimsy fact and all the heartbreak and pain concocted along the way was created for only one reason – to make the trick work.

It is a bit like the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’ in that respect. If you look at it too hard, it will fall down under the weight of its own subterfuge.

‘JJ’s Note’ was written before I learned the lesson that I try to inject into everything I write these day. That lesson states, ‘There had to be a little truth in it’. Just that. There has to be a little truth to elevate it above the technical and the gratuitous. Just a little truth…

But, interestingly, some people seemed to be moved by my little technical story. Were they like the audience in the theatre that night – just trying to say something nice – or is there a chance, a little chance that, when I wasn’t looking, a little truth accidentally slipped into my story?

There’s always something else to learn, isn’t there?

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?

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.