Author: freeirishpoems

freeirishpoems

Day 43

Are Cows Waterproof?

country kitchen

Any culchies reading this? Even pretend, blow-in culchies like Walter? Because I have a question about my cows. I do not actually own these cows, and neither does the man who owns the shit-flavoured field they are currently munching their way through. But the field is overlooked by part of the back garden of the estate which is overlooked by the bay window in the country-kitchen-style country kitchen which I am currently looking through while sitting at the country-kitchen-style country table you see in the picture above. Admittedly, in the picture, the table is in its Winter configuration so that the seatees at the table can benefit from the heat from the everything-burning stove which is just out of view to the left. But I could still look out the window from it were I seated in my rightful place at head of the table. Said table is currently in its Summer (I know, I am an eternal optimist) position in the bay window, and a change is as good as a rest to a blind man.

What I (slightly) want to know about cows is this: are those leather coats they are wearing not waterproof like the ones we used to buy in shops when we used to be allowed to go to shops are? Because, as it has remembered how to rain this morning, these wimpy cows – which are not mine, remember – are all gathered up under the shelter of the branches of some of my trees in the first wood, which happen to overhang part of the field which is beyond my back garden which is outside my bay window which is where I am currently sat. Exact enough locational detail for you, google? And for the FBI, CIA and conspiracy theory Trump Minions who read the interwobble for any mention of their despot? (Remind me to show you the successful result of the similar experiment about Russia I carried out some days ago.) So why would the cows, and the periods of seven days’ holiday from work, be in need of shelter of any kind giving that they are sporting leather coats, which should be waterproof, or else sent back to the manufactures with a strongly-worded complaint letter? The coats, not the cows; peel the cows first. And how much should I charge the guy who rents the field from the guy who owns it for this unwarranted, unrequested and, in all likelihood, unlegal use of the shelter provided by some of my trees? These and other conundrums will probably keep me safely away from any work work today.

There is a phrase in Irish which is currently at number seven in my top ten list of favourite phrases in Irish. Could I be bothered to look it up for youse and provide a link? OK, then, youse stay here and talk among yourselves in the Comments Section for a while while I go and get it (great use of two words together there to confuse Microsoft’s crap grammar checker; take my advice and pay for professional editing services) [Thank you! – Ed.] (I did not mean you, I meant me – me) [Oh! – Ed.] … shut up, now; I’m back! There you go, here is the link. Do you get the idea? So frucked-up to the eye-teeth are culchies about the whole subject of land that, in the dim and misty past when we all spoke garlic, they even made up a particular phrase for the dodgy son-in-law who they suspect of really marrying the farm and not the daughter. To explain the reference [new light out of old windows here – Ed.], Walter would be such a cliamhain isteach were he actually married to the woman whose cows he services in County Clare. (Not ‘services’ like that, though I would not put it past the same Walter.)

Although most of the rest of youse do not know Walter, youse actually do. Not my Walter, but a Walter. A Walter is that friend of yours whom your wife actually likes but who she wishes you would not go out on the piss with as she thinks he always gets you into trouble. What part-time wife does not realise or appreciate is, that for Walter’s part-time-common-law-wife, I am Walter. [Don’t you call my non-wife common! – Wltr] (Get the fruck out of those brackets right now! – me)

In Belfast slang all Walters are rockets: you never know when they are going to go off (on one) nor where they will end up. Re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere is also problematic for them, on occasion. But we need our rockets, I say. Boris is a rocket, and thank God he will be back today doing his stand-up routine at the daily farce that is the government’s update on how it is mismanaging the pandemic. He was on the piss yesterday wetting the head of what he claims is his fifth child, but there are those who suspect he uses imaginary numbers when computing the fruits of his loins. As for the fruits of his lions, that is anyone’s guess. (I object strongly to the name of that website I have just linked you to: maths is not fun; maths is maths, and fun is fun. People should have paid more attention in Logic:101, or do they not teach that in primary school anymore? Please look away now while I wrestle this mugger bracket to the ground.)

So, answers on a postcard, usual prizes, terms & conditions apply. Are cows waterproof?

 

freeirishpoems

Day 42

Any Other Business

Has the novelty of virtual meetings worn off yet for you? If not, don’t worry, it will soon. And hands up anyone who has already used the excuse of a dodgy wifi connection for dropping out of some interminable meeting or other? If you haven’t, please feel free now to so do.

Meetings, virtual or otherwise, are among the top ten useless things invented by man (with a capital M). They sit alongside washing-up basins, radiator covers and mindfulness as testament to man’s inhumanity to man and his unerring ability to make incorrect decisions. Speaking of decisions, can any of you recall a meeting that actually came to one that was subsequently implemented? Thought not. Meetings exist to provide middle-management with the illusion that they are actually working, and to keep the rest of us away from actually doing work. As this site’s subjunctive consultant succinctly puts it, they achieve nothing that a well-constructed email could not achieve in a fraction of the time.

And so to today’s topic [this will be a laugh – Ed.], and this is actually a commission: Query Boy paid me off in home-made pancakes for promising to address what is a burning issue for him. He obviously has the heat up too high before he pours the batter in. (What I have done there, Shirleen, is called misdirection in the trade: I led you to believe that the adjective ‘burning’ referred to how important the matter in hand [batter in hand? – Ed.] ((I’ll do the jokes – me)) is for Query Boy, then switched it at the last moment to refer back to the results of his experiments in cooking.) Normally I would treat any requests to address a particular subject in this space with the disdain they deserve, and with a taut, “Go and write your own blog, you w***er!”, but pancakes is pancakes.

People, as opposed to cattle, generally have trouble knowing how to sign off emails. The rules they mis-learned at school for ending letters (for historical reference as no one writes letters any more, it is ‘Your sincerely’ if you know the addressee’s name, and ‘Yours faithfully’ if you don’t) are way too formal for electronic use, and so people flail about with various formulae such as ‘Best wishes’, ‘Thanks’ and ‘Keep her lit, boy’. Query Boy himself has landed on the phrase Le meas (look it up; this is not Irish:101 you’re in here) as his way of finishing an email, but as his emails (to me, anyway) are generally full of sarcasm, this has the opposite of the literal meaning and has me wondering whether he is in fact employing what is known (in the trade, but also elsewhere) as double sarcasm.

Double sarcasm was invented by me, Charly and Walter on a slow Wednesday during a Gaeltacht course in Donegal. Under its strict and ever-evolving grammar, while continuing to use what is recognisably a sarcastic phrase, one’s intended meaning is actually the opposite of the sarcastic meaning, which is itself the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. An example will probably retrieve you from the slurry pit that last sentence threw you into. Thus, under ordinary sarcasm rules, were Walter to say, “I’m nearly looking forward to the céilí tonight, like,” Charly and I would get the meaning that he was not relishing the prospect of a night of fiddly-dee and jigs and forced dancing – Hitler Youth would not be in it when I think back on the totalitarian torture we were subjected to on those language courses in Donegal. Under double sarcasm, however, we would understand that he could not wait to get his dancing brogues on and was hoping to touch for that girl with the curly, black hair at that evening’s musical soirée. We briefly toyed with the concept of triple sarcasm – which would reverse the phrase back to its original sarcastic intent, obviously – but we confused ourselves with that one, and ended up with no one knowing what anyone else really meant. Like.

As an aside [from what, exactly? – Ed.], me and the daughter have come up with a related linguistic phenomenon (I can never spell that word) which, as yet, has no title. It involves saving ourselves some time in typing (we never actually talk to each other, but do exchange the odd text, sometimes very odd) by negating the meaning of words beginning with vowels by the simple measure of prefixing an ‘n’ to them. Thus, if the suggestion under discussion is not acceptable, instead of going to all the bother of typing “not OK”, we will just type “nOK”. Similarly “nalways”, “nindubitably”  and “nunnecessary” have the opposite meaning to those words minus the prefixed ‘n’. Nobviously.

As those of you who think you know me know, I have hit upon the perfect solution to ending emails: I finish what I am saying, then write simply ‘Philip’ on a line by itself, with the automatic signature a spaced line below that. If it is a particularly personal or intimate email, the ‘p’ in Philip will be in lower case. [You fool! Now they’ll all want one in lower case – Ed.] The first ‘p’, for clarity’s sake; the second ‘p’ knows its place and rarely ventures into capitals. Especially not after that bad experience it had in Barcelona.  I suggest you all do the same, and ditch all those other formulae that can never be appropriate in all cases. [nappropriate? – Ed.] In years to come, social historians will be wondering who this guy Philip/philip was, and why he wrote so many emails from so many different addresses.

While Query Boy will nobviously stick to his own sign-off in nadmirable obstinancy, what his commission actually wanted me to address was why under God women – and it is only women who do it before you reach for the sexist manual – include kisses with all their sign-offs to emails and texts. Kisses as in ‘x’, sometimes ‘xx’ and nalways ‘xo’ with the ‘o’ representing a hug, napparently. Even when they are texting their bank manager or drug dealer, I presume, especially if the same individual holds those two positions. In response to Query Boy, and in payment for all the pancakes, I can reveal my considered and thoroughly-researched response here today: I don’t know. Maybe ask a woman? Which I am not.

It is weird, though. But, then again, so are cattle. (You see what I did there, don’t you Shirleen? You are fairly behind the curtain now, but you will not understand that reference.) I am away out now to count mine and have my healthy smoke outside. Even more healthy now, it seems, on foot of the latest research proving smokers are less susceptible to catching covidnovid. Put that in your pipes and smoke it, sanctimonious fuckwits of the world! Nimmediatley.

freeirishpoems

Day 41

(Ignoring) Social Distancing

What with all the no traffic to not negotiate, we fairly skated down the infamous Hill Section of the M2 yesterday on our non-essential trip to pick up essential equipment from our work places in order to keep doing non-essential work from home. [Now that is the type of call-back I like; keeps the sale of back issues ticking over – Ed.] As we approached the provincial backwater that thinks it is a city (no, not Lisburn or Newry – Belfast itself), part-time wife came up with a mildly interesting theory regarding the success of various countries in dealing with the Kerfuffle. According to her, the countries run by women are doing better. In her defence of this theory before the hastily-assembled PhD differentiation panel in the car (ie me and the daughter, who kept her headphones on throughout), she produced (our of her hat) Germany and New Zealand, both of which are currently luxuriating in the anomaly that is a female head of government. And, fair enough, those two countries are keeping the deaths down fairly well. In retaliation – sorry response – I brought into evidence Marlene and the toss-a-coin approach evident in the response to covid-19 in Norn Iron. I proceeded to immediately contradict my own point [not like you at all – Ed.] by pointing out to the panel and to the applicant/supplicant/candidate that Norn Iron does not actually have a government: it has a legislative assembly, which is not the same thing at all. I am probably navy in the face by this stage pointing out this matter on various argument websites on the interwobble, but maybe the message will get through some day: Norn Iron is not a country, never was and never shall be, through the grace of God, rest in peace, amen.

Sorry about this, Lick&Spittle have just phoned up with an editorial query. [Where did they get your number? I don’t have it – Ed.] It’s from yesterday (there is a bit of a delay on the phoneline from Ballygobackwards to here) rather than from further down in today’s post in the part not yet written, and they require elucidation on the actual meaning of the phrase used then, viz “to all occupying makeshift, canvas sleeping equipment and dolphins”. Ach, c’mon off it lads! That is Editing:101 stuff, and youse should have been able to work it out using the communal brain cell. As in hurling, however, according to Woody, “The first one is free,” and so – just this once – I will talk the two minion editors through the construction and subsequent deployment of the phrase. In any form of writing, except when necessary, it is advisable to avoid cliché (like the plague). The phrase “to all intents and purposes” is an example of such an overused arrangement of words, and so I avoided it successfully while still using it. Are youse with me now? Youse are going to have to up your game, lads, if you do not want to be put out to grass, or furlough as the UK Government (which is more of a misgovernment at the moment) terms it now. What’s that? Marlene? That is shorthand for the amalgamation of Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Forster, the two blades currently not really running the administrative region known as Norn Iron. Now, get back to work!

Back to the part-time wife’s defence of her PhD thesis. In summation, she revealed that she came up with the fanciful idea when observing the behaviour of local men in the local shops, and in the supermarket I released her into (with my money) on the way home from our non-essential trip to Zombie Apocalypse City, Arizona. Men, according to part-time wife, “Just haven’t a clue.” This is not a general observation – although it could be – but a particular insight into men’s attitude to the idea of social distancing when in shops, and to hygiene and germs in general. They just barge right past you in the aisles, according to yer women, and seem to think this covid-19 stuff is a Belfast thing and sure nobody round here has got it. Not yet, they haven’t. So she extrapolates from this individual, particular experience of local men’s laissez faire attitude to dirt and germs to construct a surprisingly semi-accurate analysis of world government. And fair fucks to her, I say. I mean, no one has proved her wrong yet on Twatter, and that is the source of all wisdom and knowledge, apparently.

So should we all move to New Zealand? (Nobody in their right mind would voluntarily go to Germany.) [Germany for you, then? – Ed.] Too late, unfortunately. Having, like Rathlin, Tory and Árainn Mhór (hi, Proinsias) before them, realised that it is an island, New Zealand is not letting anyone in, and hasn’t been since 19 March. Got that, Marlene? I know only half of you knows that Ireland is an island that does not stop at Fermanagh, but still – bang the rocks together, girls!

Spittle wonders in passing if New Zealand is not actually two islands, but he can stay wondering. Or open a reference book.

I survived the interrogation by the fuzz, by the way. They tried to catch me out over the intercom by asking how many people were in the car before they would remotely raise the barrier into my frontline workplace. I knew rightly they were watching me on CCTV, so I told them the truth, not my usual approach, admittedly, when helping the police with their inquiries. Here is a life hint, by the way: live your life as if you are constantly being watched on CCTV. Because you are. Except in your shed. isolation blues

They followed up with a supplementary though, trying to catch me off guard. “Are they all from the same household?” they probed. “According to my wife, they are,” I countered, “but I have never actually got around to getting the DNA test done.” That shut them up. As regular readers know, the sulk in the back is only related to me by marriage. So is the part-time wife, as it happens. In like Flynn I was to the workplace, picked up the non-essential item I do not really not need to continue my non-essential work, had a wee spin in the Chief Executive’s chair because there was nobody else in the building and then got the flock out of there and back home to the safety of the ranch.

That covid-19 nonsense is really only a Belfast thing, I reckon.

freeirishpoems

Day 40

daffs and whellbarrow

Illegal Distancing

Just time for a quickie this morning, but at least you have the daffs up there to look at. And I swear to Allah (it is illegal for Christians to swear to God, or to anything – read the Bible: which kind of makes the whole court charade thing of swearing on the Bible before you tell your lies in public illegitimate) the wheelbarrow just happened to be there; I did not place it there for rustic, pictorial reasons. As with cars in the countryside, it was just abandoned there, not parked in any of the known meanings of that word.

And the mention of a quickie is not a reference to the matutinal sex question previously mentioned: I will explain that sometime if I get clearance from Legal. No, we are heading off early this morning on a mostly unlawful trip to the Schmall Schmoke. For the difference in meaning between ‘unlawful’ and ‘illegal’, you are on your own there, although I do, of course, know the answer. We = part-time wife, teenager #1 (the daughter and non-heir) and me, and the purpose of our journey to Belfast will be made up on the spot if the peelers stop us, but will no doubt touch on diabetic drugs and drought of same in my green and peasant land. I might throw in something to do with the public examinations that will not be taking place as well, and the essential preparations for them not to take place. We’ll be alright, so long as none of you touts touts on us on the psni toutline. I’ll tell youse about the journey tomorrow – if I am not in jail jail.

One door closes … and another one slams in your face. That is the pessimist’s view of life, and it is a fair enough outlook to have in 53.1% of the possible circumstances. In the Irish language, of course, we have a different view on doors. For a start, the basic word “doras” that youse have all forgotten from your schooling, is not even equivalent to the English word “door”. In Erse, it means the opening in the wall in which the piece of wood known as a door sits. Also, in Erse, is deise cabhair Dé ná an doras – God’s help is closer than the door. Which, when you think about it, is pretty damn close. Especially if you are sitting in the doras (bilingual, locational reference there: note use of preposition ‘in’) smoking your fourth cigarette of the maidin enjoying the antics of the local wildlife. Not the local humanoids, the four-legged ones. In many ways then, given both my position and the traditional location of God’s help, I was – to all occupying makeshift, canvas sleeping equipment and dolphins – in God’s help, or was God’s help. [You are certainly in need of it anyway – Ed.]

So even though my Icelandic swans are “gone, gone and never called me mother”, the new wildlife out in the fields beyond the back garden of the hacienda are currently providing me with seconds of enjoyment each morning as I try to extract the residue of last night’s fun from my lungs in a complicated and intricate act of coughing.

But the weemen are nagging me to get on the road. So I suppose I had better get dressed – although driving to Belfast naked would be corroborating evidence that the trip is essential, surely? I’ll let you know how I get on with that one. [Someone please phone the toutline now! –  Ed.]

freeirishpoems

Day 39

Seriously Worrying

2020-04-26

And on the seventh day, God created Sundays because, basically, she had run out of good ideas. As my mate Kris sings, ‘There’s just something bout a Sunday.’ And that thing is a vague sense of ennui, for the French speakers among(st) us, and a general Wednesdayness for the linguistically-challenged.

For me, in PC times, Sundays used to start off well. The sex question sorted for the day, I would get downstairs early, wind up the battery on the computer and read a chapter of the Bible in Irish (the original language of God). Reading the Bible in Irish with a parallel English copy open for reference (not for cheating) is a real eye-opener. Quite apart from some of the unforgivable (ironic, given the reading material) grammar errors committed by the wee Taig priests who provided the Irish version, there are times when it is hard to see any connection between certain phrases in the Irish and English versions. Where the English had ‘eunuchs’, for example, the Irish equivalent meant ‘holy fornicators’, or something to that effect. I cannot be bothered looking it up now. But if you want to try it out for yourself, this is a great app. I must have a go when I am bored to find out what a French eunuch is. [Jean-Paul Gautier, surely? – Ed.]

KGB, Moscow, Putin, conspiracy. Sorry about that, just my wee experiment. Anytime I type in words such as those, the site gets a hit from Russia from the spy employed there to read the interwobble every day and chase up any reference to his employers. And speaking of the site [were you? – Ed.], have a look at the pic up there. I mean, are youse serious? We were motoring along nicely in our (apparent) attempt to flatten the curve and keep readers of this blog in manageable proportions and thus avoid over-burdening the medical services in various countries, and then what happens? (Rhetorical; no prizes for answering that.) See that spike in readership on 23 April? I will save youse the bother of checking your archives – youse would probably be as good at so doing as Darzán and the Headscratchers are at coming up with the original references I ask them for. What happened on that fateful day was that I stuck up a picture of a cat, and put the word ‘cats’ into the tags for the post. I mean, is that what it takes, really? Pictures of cats? Fruck that for a game of marleys. Cats are now banned from mention in this blog, although they are welcome to continue reading it.

[Any chance of a few call-backs? – Ed.] (What do you mean? – me) [Have a read of what you have written already and you will see what I mean – Ed.] (You mean you expect me to read this stuff as well as just typing it out off the top of my head? – me) [Well, it’s up to you, but … -Ed.]

OK. The proof that Irish is the original language of God comes from the Rastafarian word for God which, as even Question Girl knows, is ‘Jah’. Now this is so close in pronunciation to the Irish word for God ‘Dia’ that it is obvious (to me) that both derive from the antediluvian, spiritual language actually spoken but God, which is therefore obviously an early form of Late-Modern Irish. Ipso facto, QED.

So Sundays PC would start off well but go rapidly downhill before, during and after the weekly, compulsory attendance at an act of communal worship. (Mass, Shirleeen.) Part-time wife would get her knickers in a twist that we were going to be late, or that there would be no seats because there was a funeral on or it was one of the big, religious feasts. We were never late in our lives for Mass as I have the journey from the hacienda to the église timed to within an inch of its life: it takes 9.47 mins on a good day, and 8.97 mins on a Sunday, which is not a good day. But because part-time wife was brought up in house with a driver (her ex-father) who, being a confirmed pessimist, always factored in changing a flat tyre into every journey and who firmly stuck to the premise throughout his life that ‘on time’ actually meant half an hour early, she gets jittery and bitchy at my Japanese just-in-time delivery methods. Which, I might add, is not an ideal state of mind for her to be in in preparation for a celebration of Christian values. As for there being no seats, as it is a venial sin in the countryside for the congregation to use the first ten aisles in case they draw to attention to themselves, there are ALWAYS seats available, so long as you do not mind providing staring material for the rest of the crowd for the duration of the service. And then the actual Mass itself would bore the hind legs off a donkey. It is as if they (the clergy) have gone out of their way to make what is actually a riveting subject as arse-numbingly dull as possible. And the music! Why don’t they try something like this holy song from Counting Crows the odd time instead of those dreadful dirges about niceness and loving and comfort? That might at least wake the captive audience up.

Then, post-Mass, I would have to endure a 47.3 minute sulk from teenager #2 as I drove him to Lisburn for his judo class. That’s right, readers, I am going out of my way to give the ungrateful cur a lift to a venue where he will enjoy his hobby while I have to hang around for 1.57 hours doing nothing much except drinking coffee while waiting to give him a lift back home, and the wee bastard sits sulking in the passenger seat for the whole of the trip there as if I am forcing him to go to the class or something. I do not remember signing up for this level of treatment. He would be/used be more talkative (he could hardly be less) on the way home as he would have managed to beat someone up during the class and thus rid himself of some of his pent-up aggression.

All downhill after that for Sunday because of the pile of chores assigned to me. What with having to walk 0.53 of a mile to put the bins out for collection, an afternoon nap on the sofa while pretending to watch the live GAA match on the telly, 2.35 hours for my weekly bath (whether I need it or not) and then the realisation, near midnight, that I have not even started on reading the Culture Section in The Irish Times that I bought the day before it’s a wonder I even had time to draw breath – or a detailed landscape or portrait – on a Sunday. So, a drop of reading and into bed never any earlier than 01:58 with a whole 9-5, five day work week ahead of me.

But most of that – including Boresville, Arizona, Mass. (complicated geographical joke there for the Yanks) – is out the window now. Even more bountiful blessings from covid-19. Let’s all clap the virus itself the next time The Man tries to force us all out of our houses (which is illegal, according to the same Man) for a demonstration of totalitarian power. And Sundays are as a result quite pleasant now.

Oh. And Happy Birthday, Mo!

freeirishpoems

Day 38

Saturday Distancing

In this part of this World, yesterday was, according to the part-time wife, “A complete supermodel of a day.” She is handy for the odd felicitous phrase like that, the part-time wife, which I then try to pass off as my own. Today, on the other hand, is Saturday, with all the saturnine problems that Saturdays bring with them the world over. Weatherwise, for those of you not up yet, it has potential, but started off misty and wet in this part of this World.

But yeah, Saturday has its own, private set of problems as far as days go. In times PC, under the excuse of shopping, and having settled for the day the sex question with part-time wife, I would disappear from the hacienda early in the morning, usually not returning until after lunchtime. My lunchtime, that is, as after a leisurely morning’s strolling around buying the odd thing (sugar, meat, bread, milk, a wireless mouse), I generally felt that I deserved a rest and would take myself (by the hand, usually) to an eating emporium there to survey, and then taste, the latest variation on The Ulster Fry. (The information on that link is not totally correct, by the way. But how could it be? I mean, I did not write it.) John Kelly is of the opinion that Gloria Hunniford invented The Ulster Fry, and that before that it was just called ‘breakfast’, and he might have a point. (80 my arse, by the way!) Not that John Kelly, you eejit, this one. The various local emporia, or ‘eating shops’ as the non-Latin-speaking locals call them, keep adding things to the plate, unnecessary things in most instances such as beans and mushrooms, and it is really hard to keep up with what one is actually eating and what country the café owners think they are in. For instance, while hash browns is actually a welcome addition to the plate, what now is the actual point of visiting the US of A and spending most of the trip in their delightful diners making up new ways to require your eggs (‘not too difficult eggs, cloudy side down’ is my preferred order) if hash browns are readily available in other parts of this World?

But back to the Fry … oh, I forgot, he’s not here today; you will have to supply your own interruption. Rather than spoil your fun by giving the correct answer, please leave your list of essential (and existential, if you must) elements of an Ulster Fry in the comments section below. (If you do not know how to access the comments section, read this urbane, witty and not at all sarcastic guide on how to use a computer.) And I want essential elements only, no fripperies and definitely no aberrations like toasting some elements in order to make the repast more ‘healthy’. For fruck’s sake, like, if you have already decided to fry your breakfast, trying to then make it healthy is an exercise in self-contradictory nonsense. Like caffeine-free coffee. I mean, just have a drink of hot water, you spa! (What I have done there is to use a water-based term of abuse for the purposes of humour, Shirleen, but it is between and not on the lines you are going to find the Cool Kids, so stop looking in the wrong places. How’s your hangover, by the way?) And no vegetarians or vegans; I find them hard to digest along with the egg. Off you go; I’ll wait here for you …

… done? Good man stroke woman. That is not pidgin creole relationship advice; I just did not want to use a / in the middle of a sentence. But you have just done so! cry the assembled hordes. Yeah, but that was in a different sentence, so put that in your clay pipes and bring it to water. (For your benefit, and your benefit only, dear humourly-challenged cousin, the full joke is: you can bring a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead, copyright Laurel and Hardy. But the Cool Kids already know this joke as a reference point, and so understand intuitively, and chuckle to themselves in a self-satisfied manner, when I break up elements of it and combine it with other clichés for devastating comic effect. Get with the programme, child!)

Yeah, so, on a usual Saturday PC, after a usual 07:04-19:33 working week, working as late as possible in the forlorn hope that I would not have to do any of the teenagers’ homework when I arrived back on the estate, I generally spent about 4.27 hours out of the house in a – successful – attempt to avoid my family. When I rocked back home, they had usually been fed and watered, and hosed down the odd time, by their full-time mother, and would gather excitedly by the front door as I opened it. (More proof that I am only a blow-in and will never be a real culchie: I actually use the front door of my house for something other than being carried out of it in a coffin.) Not excitement at Daddy being home, let me add: their excitement was completely Pavlovian. They knew from sweet experience (again, Cool Kids may chuckle at that if they feel like it) that I would be ‘carrying’, that is, some sort of sugar would be in my possession. Usually they would claw in desperation at the bag before I was even over the threshold of the hacienda, leaving it in tatters on the alpaca wool doormat, then store the purloined sugar under their armpits and retreat to their caves for consumption of same. At this point, part-time wife and myself would have some free, uninterrupted time for casual, affectionate chat and general catching up with other. But we never took advantage of it. Instead, I would retreat to the study in the East Wing and she would do whatever it is she does to fill her days before her 15 hour sleep.

But, times have indeed changed. With all these social restrictions because of boreohnovirus, I have to come up with more and more imaginative and intricate ways to avoid my family on a Saturday. I sort of feel that someone should really count how many trees there are in the Second Wood sometime, don’t you? I mean, an undocumented number of trees growing away there on one’s land is an offence to proprietary, n’est-ce pas? (That’s French, Shirleen, or did you take the Mexican Government to court to get an exemption from that school subject as well?)

Clothes? Dressing gown, and full Andytown today.

freeirishpoems

Day 37

Nature Notes (city dwellers look away now)

What’s going on with wood pigeons? Why do they make suck a racket? I’m talking about the sudden, explosive noise from their wings, by the way, not the gentle cooing for which they get so much good press. Just after you startle them by doing something really scary like walking down the lane parallel to the first wood (one wood is never enough, don’t you find?), they startle you with the clatter from their wings as they fly away from your highly dangerous walking technique, or whatever it was about your presence that spooked them. I mean, are they blind or something? I do not be carrying a gun when out for my constitutionals in the countryside, so I pose no threat to my wingéd cohabitors of the demense (that fada back there is for pronunciation purposes: I am looking for two syllables, not one). In fact, the last time I carried a gun in the dark … [I’ll stop you there: Legal have been on the phone and they advise against any such admissions in print – Ed.]

I have never really trusted wood pigeons anyway, and find it difficult to eat more than twelve. The way they bolt away from their hiding place safe in a tree always makes me suspicious of them. And they fly off in an embarrassed manner, sort of half-looking over their shoulders at you as if whatever it was they were up to in the tree is something they are ashamed of and want to get as far away as possible from in case you find any incriminating evidence. Of course I realise that there may be an inherited reflex at play here with the wood pigeons, fear of humans being imprinted now in their DNA as a result of bitter experience of culchies out for walks suddenly whipping out shotguns and shooting their ancestors for dinner. But that is just stupid: before the Kerfuffle, there was no such a thing as culchies ‘out for walks’; any culchie on foot was a hunter, and their ancestors should have frucked away off up into the sky as soon as they saw a culchie come out his back door (they never use their front doors) not wrapped in a tractor. And I am not a culchie, as is obvious from my good dental health and my ability to write. So, pay more attention, wood pigeons, is my message, or else just stop doing whatever it is you do be doing [are you going to persist with this non-standard use of the continuous present? – Ed] in the trees that makes you feel so ashamed.

In the field next to the field next to part of my back garden, I witnessed an amazing sight last night. Two bullocks (look up the definition of bullock yourselves; I’m too busy writing this to provide a link), both at least 13 months old by the look of them, and by the names of them or else they would have been calves, gambolled – and I use the verb advisedly – from near the stonewall side of their enclosure over towards the white strip that will give them an electric shock if they try to go past it. Electric shocks, I know! The Nazis wouldn’t be in it with some of the tortures these farmers devise for their livestock. Now I realise the bullocks were excited having recently been released from their overlong captivity in the shed over the Winter (more on that later), but have they been given the wrong manual re animal behaviour for reading material during their incarceration? Gambolling is, or should be, an exclusively sheep-based activity. (Unlike gambling, which is for humans who are sheep.) But there was no other word to describe the way they were kicking up their heels and frolicking about – practically skipping hand in hand – from one side of the field to the other. Traditionally, bullocks should spend their time head-butting each other and acting the hard men, when they are not trying to pretend to try to ride each other, just as lads, like. What next? Waddling rabbits? Hopping foxes? Lord preserve us from lumbering foxes (and if you got a bestiality joke there it is your own fault; I am referring to a side-to-side walking gait, not Belfast slang for kissing).

But if you have noticed that your steaks taste a bit shit recently, I am about to let you into the reason for that. Nowadays, farmers keep their beef cattle locked up in sheds for stupendously overlong periods of time. This is due to the overriding characteristic that unites all farmers, namely, greed. In the good old days when I was interrupting work on half-relatives’ farms in Greater Tyrone, silage was a new-fangled idea and most farmers still stuck with making hay out of grass. Making hay is a complicated business in Ireland as it requires a degree of certainty about a prolonged period of dry weather, and good luck with that in this country where the weather changes about as often as a woman’s mind, and with about the same degree of logic. As a result, it was the fortunate farmer indeed who got even a chance at the mythical ‘second cut’ to produce more hay bales to feed the cattle with during the Winter. But now, with silage being the sine qua non of even non-Latin-speaking farmers, even a third cut is not beyond the greed of most of them, with the result that they end up with far too much silage for the Winter. So the poor cattle are kept locked up in their sheds for anything up to six months, or until they have eaten the stupid amount of silage the farmer produced the previous Summer. The cows will still be in the sheds eating silage (stale grass) while the stuff they should be eating (fresh grass) is growing again in the fields. While in the sheds, they produce copious amounts of shit, which the farmer, being greedy, sees as free manure. So, instead of paying for the cattle shed to be connected to the municipal sewerage works, he collects the cows’ shit in a big cess pool, calls it slurry and, if he does not manage to kill himself rescuing a pet dog that gets stuck in the slurry pit, spends a few weeks spreading this stale cowshit on his fields to make the grass grow. Wee hint here, farmers; the grass is growing anyway and needs no help from your foul-smelling mixture born of greed.

Have you got the cycle in your head yet? The farmer spreads cowshit on his fields in which the grass grows, then he eventually releases his cattle to eat this shit-flavoured grass for the brief period of what passes for Summer here, also cuts this shit-flavoured grass when the cows are in a different field and turns it into wet, shit-flavoured grass called silage which he then feeds to the cows when he bangs them up again in the shed for six months. Meanwhile the cows shit for six months and the farmer collects this and spreads it on the fields again in preparation for the cows’ release. So, when he eventually gets around to killing the cow for meat, it is probably approximately 83.7% shit at that stage. Is it any wonder then that you, in your fancy restaurant, are less than enamoured with the aroma and bouquet [same thing – Ed.] of the over-priced filet mignon you have just ordered, and have a vague idea that steaks used to taste better when cows used to eat grass and hay?

I’m here all week; try the chicken.

freeirishpoems

Day 36

D2D06620-6016-42E0-ABCE-1B43D1D8E3D4

Shirleen’s Birthday

In an attempt to determine which sex they are, we sheared two of the human teenagers last evening. We could have got away with just shearing one of them had that one turned out to be the girl, because then, ipso facto, the sum of the square on the other two sides would have been equal to the square on the hypotenuse. Ended up being the two males under the lock of quarantine hair (did you see what I did there, Mal?), and, as they now have the requisite haircut, we will be posting them off next week to the US Marine Recruitment Centre. Once we get the required packaging materials from the Post Office. Does the Post Office do deliveries? (That is not a joke – well. it is, but it is also a query: go and find out for me, Question Girl, please, now that you know what google is.)

Because fruck this home schooling lark for a game of marleys! They will learn more in their six months in Marine Boot Camp than they would in a month of Sundays on Showbie or Google Classroom. And they might actually learn something practical – like how to speak English to adults again, albeit American English, which should probably be re-classified under modern foreign languages, like. (What I have done there is, without being specific about it, I have satirised an aspect of the paucity of American English usage by using one of its indispensable communication crutches as the final word in my own sentence. And, yes, I have been watching too much Stewart Lee recently, but, sure, why wouldn’t you? There is, as usual, nothing ‘worthy of my serious attention’ on the TV, as Mal’s Da used to say when perusing the television listings in the daily paper, when such listings used to consist of only six channels, and when he used to be alive. Now, how am I going to get out of these brackets?)

And with one bound, he was free! The male teenagers already know how to disobey direct orders from their full-time mother, but they might find that skill of little practical use to them where they are going. I hope, at least, when they come back that they have not been afflicted by the terrible mid-Atlantic, hailstone accent that affects Graeme Mc Dowell (why can he not even spell his own first name properly?) and several other Irishmen who have to spend part of their time in the US of A to earn a few bob. Our wee Liam from Ballymena is not completely immune to it either. I wonder will yer Hollywood star who is currently stranded in Dalkey because of the Kerfuffle be inversely afflicted when he gets back Stateside and start pronouncing ‘many’ as if it is the word ‘man’ with a ‘ee’ sound on the end of it. Here’s a linguistic tip for the Mexicans on this island: the vowel ‘a’ has two pronunciations, and they are not both the same; any questions? Or, as some of them would pronounce it, ‘Annie questions?’

Sorry, I got side-tracked there [from what? – Ed.] (Oh here, by the way Ed., since you’re here, I should inform you that two sub-eds have joined the gang, so watch yourself! And welcome, Lick&Spittle; sort out among yourselves which of you is to be Lick and which Spittle, and let me know, but I will generally refer to youse in the collective noun indicative of the work youse do to keep this blog up to its traditionally (too) high linguistic standards. If I had a Finance Director, he would be on to me about the added expense of all these brackets today.) So, yeah, I can’t say I will really miss the male teenagers when they go off to be marines. They do not really contribute much to the ambience of the hacienda at the moment, unless constant conflict is the parent-offspring ambience we are aiming at. And it’s not, as that is taken care of by the parent-parent relationship. Part-time wife was (slightly) concerned that one of them might get killed when they are over there playing their war games. She did not specify which one (she is not, despite her working conditions, in a Nazi war film) and was (slightly) mollified when I pointed out that we did, in fact, have a spare one, having over-produced on the male offspring project when sex was still a thing in the household. I think she was trying for a wee gay one, but got the cooking wrong. I further pointed out from, as you may guess, the beneficence of my accumulated wisdom that the USian army does not fight real wars these days anyway, so the chance of collateral damage to one of the sons was minimal. Their last two major wars have seen them pitted against an abstract noun (terrorism) and a microbiological virus (covid-19): not much danger of either of those two combatants surprising either son in his trench and stiffing him with a bayonet to the belly. They do still use bayonets in armies, don’t they?

Yeah, the pics? Fine looking cat, if you ask me, and you can see how seriously she takes her guard-cat duties: that garden furniture outside the bay window is going nowhere without her say so. But twas the Marketing Manager made me put them up. She sent me a memo pointing out that if I did not want to continue to flatten the curve of readership of this blog, I should post more cat pictures. I do not know why she sent me a memo as she was sitting right in front of me in our early-morning skype meeting at the time. Marketing types, eh? Who knows what they actually do? (That is neither a joke nor a query, although marketing departments generally are a joke.) But surely rather than cats, it is you, gentle reader, who should be assisting in un-flattening the curve of readership of the blog by using that secret weapon that you keep concealed behind your teeth? That’s right, smart boy at the back of the class, word of mouth. So off you go and tell all your mate(s) about the blog. I will wait on youse here …

… done? OK, two thoughts about the bottom pic: a) which of us is more relaxed? and b) did I copy the cat or did the copy-cat cat copy me?

As for the subtitle of today’s lecture, again twas the Marketing Manager who informed me that Question Girl aka Shirleen is 84 today. All together now, “Happy Birthday to it, Happy Birthday to it, we can’t sing ‘to her’ or ‘to him’ anymore, in case we get in the shit.” Is that how the new version goes?

freeirishpoems

Day 35

lila dirty look

Species Distancing

Fairly remiss of me not to have noticed until now, but I have come to the belated realisation that I am harbouring four fugitive teenagers, and not the previously assumed total of three. It would appear that the cat, too, is a teenager. It is not the fact that she uses my 40.2% paid-for house only for the purposes of food, shelter and lounging without ever sticking her hand into her own pocket that made me realise she was a teenager. Nor even the fact that she has forced me to learn a new method of communication that consists mostly of body language and wordless noises. Neither was it the fact that the words ‘thank you’ have never passed unbidden through her lips. That’s her in the pic up there, in case you were wondering, giving me a dirty look any teenager would be proud of as I spy on her activities – nothing much – through the bay window of the country-kitchen-style country kitchen.

No, her teenager status dawned on me the other night [some temporal mix-up there, surely? – Ed.] when I was ambling past The Vatican. Before you phone up the peelers on me for having fired up the private jet to fly to Rome for my daily, compulsory exercise, I should explain that, down my way, The Vatican is a small, mostly uninhabited cottage further on up the lane that used to be inhabited by a man who used to look vaguely similar to a man who used to be The Pope. Hence the name, which has stuck around even though the man and The Pope have gone the way of all flesh some time ago. So I passed The Vatican, giving it my secular blessing as I did, and spied the cat ahead of me on the lane at the edge of where the canopy of trees opens up doing her admirable impression of a stone. This appears to be her hunting technique: pretend to be a stone and wait until something small and alive comes within grabbing distance; saves all that running around, you see. Now I was not aware – she tells me nothing, another teenager trait I should have noticed before now – that the cat went this far on her rambles. I knew she patrolled the first and second woods in a proprietorial manner, and I have caught her on the odd time halfway down the lane in the other direction near the farmhouse where the other cats live, but these were uncharted waters for her, I thought. And there are foxes hanging out up this end of the lane, so potentially dangerous, uncharted waters too. But there was not a bother on her, it seemed.

I called her by a name. She does have a name, but I have no idea what it is, as I was not around when her mother christened her. The previous owner did tell us her slave name when she donated the cat to us: the cat was trying to kill her so she had to get rid of it. But sure that is only a name that humans made up and forced on her. Like Kunta Kinte in Roots, she no doubt has her own private, cat name that she keeps in one of her secret places and takes out and plays with when we are not looking. And anyway, when I am not calling her ‘cat’, I mostly call her by the name of the previous cat as I cannot keep two made-up slave cat names in my head at the one time. So I called her, and, after a pause, she stopped acting the stone and came towards me and, with only a desultory brush against my leg, kept going! That is when I had my epiphany about her teenager status. It is a punishment worse than death for a teenager to be seen in public with either of its two parents. Heaven forfend, both at one time! And so it was with the cat. Even though it was dark, even though there was a canopy of leaves shielding us from prying eyes, the cat could not risk being seen with me in public in case it damaged her cool level among her fellow creatures of the night. So she left me there, stunned and heart-broken, and sauntered back down the lane to a different spot to resume her stone-shaping activities.

I do not really know how I finished my walk so devastated was I, or even what route I took to get me back to the gate lodge and into the estate. I mean, I am well-used to such shunning from the human teenagers, but I really thought me and the cat had a connection going. She said not a word about it several hours later when she forced me to come to the window to let her back into the house – sleep was out of the question for me after such a blow, of course, and I was sitting with my head in my hands at the country-kitchen-style country kitchen table when she made her appearance at the window demanding entry. No thought of retribution entered my head, and I let her in immediately. I mean, hope springs eternal and all that.

But still, if she thinks I am going to start driving her to Ballygobackwards to collect her at three in the morning off the bus from some Kat Nite Klub she simply has to go to because all the kool kats will be there, she will have to dispose of the female, human teenager first as she has first dibs on that taxi service, which, thankfully, has been put on hold since the Kerfuffle business began. See, that’s me all over: always trying to find the silver lining. But my heart is clouded and dark. And will never be the same again.