Author: freeirishpoems

freeirishpoems

Day 25

Social Distancing

It would appear that I have 12 followers. Given the day that’s in it, a few questions spring (unbidden) to mind. Is twelve the optimum number of followers for a cult figure, or should I aim for the baker’s dozen? Have you twelve nothing better to be doing? And which one of you is going to betray me?

Given the other day that’s in it (not really, though, the Easter Rising – the other one – actually happened on 24 April, 1916, and that was Easter Monday that year), if one of you is going to betray me, I advise you make full use of the touts’ website that the local Brits have made available for such purposes. Trust the local Brits to come up with something like that. Have they learnt nothing? Don’t answer that, given the usual warnings about the restrictions in size of the interwobble [three times! Is that a record? – Ed.]. All I will say [I’ll believe that when I see it! – Ed.] is this: why are the police bastards? because they RUC. Doesn’t really work as well – or at all – with PSNI, but you can bring a leopard to water, though a pencil must be lead.

Gives a new slant on the nudge department’s slogan, though, doesn’t it? We’re all in this together. Yeah, all spying out the windows together on each other from our captivity and shopping in our neighbours if we think they have gone to the shop too often, or walked too close to our hedge or gone out for an essentials trip in the car with one too many packed suitcases in the boot. Divide and conquer was always the Brits’ favourite tactic – that, and queuing – but there are well-researched guerrilla tactics to combat it. In this case, basically spam their page with so many fictitious complaints that they will be so busy investigating that we can all jump in our cars and get out of Dodge for an Easter break with no worry about police road blocks. Or start a riot in Derry to deflect attention away from social distancing misdemeanours in Belfast. [C’mon Derry, get the finger out, you owe us one; we did something similar for youse during the Battle of the Bogside.]

Fair play to Leo, too. When asked if he was minded to set up a similar website for touts down Mexico way, not only did he make a literary reference to The Valley of the Squinting Windows, he also said no. Which I took to be an implicit admission from the government that a blind eye would be turned to the annual Paschal Pilgrimage to Donegal of most of West Belfast. I mean, what other way could you take it? He was very clear in his message, and this is such an unheard of approach from a politician that it is as obvious as a duck that he meant us to take the opposite meaning from what he was actually saying. Maybe he was also trying to indirectly address some of the criminal neglect of the county by successive regimes in Dublin.

(David Attenborough voiceover required here; use you imaginations, I can’t afford to hire him.) ‘Yes … although we can never be certain in advance of the actual date as its designation is shrouded in the mysteries of Time and that smells and bells institution known as the Catholic Church, around this time of the year one of the most remarkable mass movements of the species homo sapiens occurs. With little or no preparation, save a quick trip to what most participants in the annual migration call “the offy”, nearly 93.2% of the population of West Belfast moves en masse to one or two small villages in West Donegal. There appears to be no apparent motive for this exodus: while some mating activity does obviously occur during the one or two days away from their natural habitat – very obviously, in some regrettable instances – this does not seem to be the purpose of the event, as it is for salmon, for instance. Neither has the staple food supply run out in their home region, as it has for the wandering wildebeest, as the chippies are still open even as their six-days-a-week customers drive westwards away from them. We will just have to put it down as one of those wonders of nature, like all those baby turtles appearing on the same night on that beach somewhere that slips my mind at the moment and trying to make it into the sea before they are eaten. In fact, if a full Moon occurs contemporaneously with the Westies’ migration, something similar to the turtle run can be witnessed on Machaire Chlochair strand as groups of male Westies strip off and run bare-assed in the moonlight past the remains of Eddie’s shipwrecked boat and out as far as the breaking waves. Unlike the baby turtles, though, they turn quickly back to land, blaming the temperature of the Spring sea on the paucity of their mating display to the obvious amusement of the chip-eating hordes of female Westies gathered on the dunes overlooking the strand watching their potential mates’ behaviour. Many’s a successful West Belfast divorce started in such a romantic setting. The attitude of the resident, local population to this annual invasion of their territory has never been recorded, except in their tills. Fascinating!’

See you up there. Last one into the sea is a wuss!

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 24

I called round to see Seamus Heaney this morning. He’s doing all right, since you ask, still in the same place I left him (have you got that pic, Mal?) but somewhat embarrassed now about his whole ‘there is no afterlife’ stance. But no doubt he’ll be forgiven for that, after an appropriately lengthy period in Purgatory (a place where there is no time by the way, as far as I understand eternity, which is pretty far, actually; to the Moon and back, maybe).

It being Easter and all (but not Easter Saturday, cf yesterday’s diatribe), for reasons best known to myself, I was also going to call in on two of our successful hunger strikers (ie they died) who are buried in the new annex to Bellaghy Cemetery. It needed an annex because it is a very popular cemetery: people are dying to get into it! (That ‘joke’ is copyright this guy, who has gone viral with his rendition of a song in Irish to celebrate his own birthday; I would accuse him of vanity, but look at his hair, for Christ’s sake! When I say he has gone viral, I do not mean he has boreohnovirus, by the way, but, again, look at his hair – maybe he does?) But there was a badly-written typed notice on both entrances to the cemetery informing me that, due to the Covid-19 regulations, it was closed to ‘visitors except for burials and funerals’. Are you with me? First, can you have a burial without a funeral attached? And, more egregiously, why would there be any visitors at either? Are people that stuck for something to do during lockdown? Badly-written, as I said, but beautifully typed all the same. Credit where it’s due.

So I cannot let you know how either Thomas McElwee or Francis Hughes are getting on in the afterlife as I am very strict about obeying rules that happen to suit my personal purposes (I was already late and could not really afford three trips to the afterlife when I had only gone out for milk). And so, as there was neither a burial nor a funeral going on at the time to which I could inveigle an invitation, I will have to arrange some other opportunity to fulfill my Easter republican Duties – the Easter religious Duties have already been thrown out the window by the very organisation which instituted them. Changed times, indeed. Before I get back to the Heaney topic … do you know, I was pausing there waiting for SquarebracketHead to stick in his usual sarky comment, but I forgot it is Saturday and so his day off. Personally, I get no days off, and neither do you, gentle readers. Please remember there will be a class test after the ‘holidays’, at a time of my own choosing and on a topic off the top of my head, which will carry 31.27% of the final credit for this on-line course. Approximately. But, yes, one more interesting fact concerning Bellaghy Cemetery (both wings); there is a dead person in there sporting the spectacular first name ‘Adolf’. The surname is not Hitler, by the way. Now obviously this is not a traditional moniker in the locale as he is the only one in the place. For extra credit, the swots in the class should upload a pic of his headstone in the comments section (worked it out now, Shirleen? there is not a limit of one comment per lifetime, by the way), and add a brief note pertaining to the date of his death and, by extension backwards, his baptism.

Yeah, famous Seamus. I called round to see him to get a few hints. Not about poetry, obviously: that was never the strongest card in his hand. I noted, in passing to be sure, that there was a freshly-ploughed field next door to him, and chuckled to myself on the way up to his grave that he would have dug that. (What I have done there is too complicated to explain, but those who appreciate the fusion of misdirection, literary reference and jazz jargon should go to the top of the class … and jump off – we don’t want your sort in here.) No, I was in fact looking for hints for how to deal with the Kerfuffle, because our Seamie is suddenly, and probably quite unexpectedly for him, one of the leading world experts on the matter. Leo, the Gayshock, quoted him twice(ly) in his latest address to the half-nation (‘Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors/it’s a flag we Republicans claim/it will never belong to Free Staters/for you brought on it nothing but shame.’), and there is barely a commentator worth his salt in this neck of the woods who has not dipped into the Heaney well. So, along with the phrases ‘loved ones’ and ‘existential crisis’, I am today proclaiming a total ban on quoting Heaney in relation to Covid-19. And the great man himself is in total agreement with this ban. He told me so himself this morning during our chat, and no one can prove that he didn’t. One other point, could whoever is doing it please stop leaving coins at the foot of the headstone? He is not some sort of a secular saint, the grave is very cheap to upkeep and needs no voluntary contributions from fans and, personally, I would find notes weighted down with a stone much easier to collect and carry off with me: coins make such an unsightly bulge in an Armani suit, don’t you find?

One last hint for the speech writers tripping over themselves for pertinent and insightful quotations to stuff into the mouths of illiterate public figures: there are other writers in the world. Just by way of example and not in any way as an exercise in practising a wind instrument that I own, I will leave you today with one of the freshly-minted triads I published some years ago, as it happens in a book in Irish with a title in Latin in order to put off all but the most esoteric of readers. By the way, the school of Irish triad writing I thus founded is closed for the foreseeable future due to restrictions on funerals (it never really opened, but I live in hope), as are my network of illegal hedge schools around the country. Here is the triad; good luck with google translate!

Trí rud a imeoidh:

an ghealach is an ghrian;

a dtáinig ariamh;

an chiotaí seo eadrainn.

Slán go Phil!

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 23

Good Friday? It’s too early to say. But after a mediocre Thursday coming hot on the heels of what can only be described as a Wick Wednesday, I shall reserve judgement on the goodness or otherwise of the day until it is over. But at least Lent is. Over, I mean, and I have that from the horse’s mouth. Lent actually ended last night at sunset, as an itinerant priest standing on the quay on Rathlin Island waiting on his boat back to the mainland (not that one!) explained to me one year. The Church of the Roman Rite (and other ones, for all I care) splits the year up into various seasons, beginning with Advent, followed by Christmastide, bombing through a period of Ordinary Time (not to be confused with injury time, extra-time or penalty shoot-outs) into the Septuagesima and then Lent, which ended last night because we are now into the Easter Triduum of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, and with admirable illogicality, and following its basically Jewish tradition, the Church decrees that all these seasons actually start at sunset the night before. But don’t take my second-hand word for it, wiki knows. So, from now on, and with full authority from both me and the Pope, let your children open their Christmas presents as soon as it gets dark on Christmas Eve (i.e. BEFORE Santa comes), and feel free from sin when munching your way right now through that coop of chocolate Easter eggs you have amassed during your essential trips to the shops for non-essentials. In fact, have a plenary indulgence for so doing as well, or some sort of indulgence anyway.

What’s that? Why was I standing on the quay of one of my off-shore islands on the eve of the day before Holy Saturday one year? (And please note, ignoramuses, tomorrow is not called Easter Saturday; that is next week.) Mind your own business … but basically I was making sure the priest got the Hell off the island so that the bacchanalian festivities traditional in that corner of the Western World could commence and continue without any of the awkwardness that the presence of a priest at any community event entails. (In passing, obviously, could I perhaps point out that the major part of what is termed the Western World is actually in the Eastern Hemisphere? Just saying, like, but with terminology like that, is it any wonder that US of Aers are so bad at geography? Paris, France, anyone? The rest of us know where Paris is, dufus, we do not need a parenthetical aide-memoire!) He probably would not have wanted to be a judge at the traditional post-Holy-Thursday-washing-of-the-feet-and-other-bodily-parts wet T-Shirt competition anyway, and some of the finer points of the competitors may have been wasted on him.

There are, it goes without saying, many disadvantages to speaking Irish, and the interwobble is maybe too small a space for a comprehensive discussion of all of them [second time you’ve done that joke – Ed.]. Occasionally, however, it throws up a gem of distilled wisdom, and not only in my own writings. One such seanfhocal contains precise advice on how we, the great unwashed, should interact with ‘our people set apart’, the clergy, that is. It goes something like this, give or take a séimhiú depending on which part of the Isle of Spin and Scheisters you are from: ná bí róbheag ná rómhór leis an chléir. If you are expecting me to translate that for you, dream on, sister! Life is already too long for me to be wasting my talents on that sort of menial exercise. I will provide a link to google translate, though, while pointing out that approximately 20.1% of their translation is neither satisfactory nor accurate. To confuse linguistically-challenged outsiders, in this context, ‘big’ and ‘small’ actually mean something more akin to ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’, respectively, of course. Now nobody could convince me that both the island’s people and its largest Church would not be in a better position today had that advice been followed to the letter. Keep them set apart, particularly from underage boys and girls, and don’t pay too much attention to what they say, particularly about theological matters, not one of their strong points, historically. But, by all means, do greet them if you happen to pass them (quickly) on the street.

Dress-down Friday at work today, a tradition started by the main protagonist in the original Good Friday (wasn’t such a good day for Him either, was it?). I won’t go as far as being stripped by a passing squad of Roman legionnaires (they are never off the Upper Lane these days getting in their compulsory, daily exercise), but I may struggle to make it out of my rapidly disintegrating dressing gown. Mostly because it is getting a bit sticky in parts. Did Arthur Dent end up with the same problem while hitch-hiking through the universe?

 

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 22

A bit late with the post today, sorry, but sure youse got a double dose yesterday, even if one of them was in a language only approximately 5.67% of the blog’s readers can understand. Blame the Kerfuffle. Not on the abnormally high percentage of Irish speakers hanging out in here, but on the lateness of the post. I was out foraging again. For a non-essential phone this time.

Like truffles, it is hard enough to find a smart phone in the wild. Doubly so now that the Kerfuffle has closed almost 77.46% of my previous happy hunting grounds in this field. Car parks outside nite-clubs and pubs were, traditionally, the most successful places to pick up a free, second-hand smart phone, though you needed to be out early in the morning before the lossees realised they were phoneless and used the tracking device to find out where it was. Then a quick trip to the dodgy guy to unlock your ‘new’ phone for you because you had forgotten your password, and Robert was your male relative. (I never really ever found any phones in a field, and I do not know why I said that up there.)

On that point [faut-il? – Ed], the phrase ‘loved ones’ is getting nearly as much mileage these days as that other source of irritation (to me), namely ‘existential crisis’ (for which see previous post). It’s ‘loved ones’ in danger here, ‘loved ones’ on the front line there every time you switch on the news – which I don’t anymore, except at night; by that stage all the people who have been contradicting themselves and each other during the day have come to some sort of a compromise position, and lobbed in a few facts for good measure. Now when I was picking up daisies (being closer to the ground than I now am), the phrase battered into our heads by our teachers for this scenario was ‘friends and relatives’, and I sincerely wish it still was. As a phrase, it is not that much longer than the new abomination, but, and more importantly, it is also more accurate than the new-comer and carries none of its presumption and assumptions. While it is a bit of an ipso facto that some measure of affection must attach itself to one’s friends (otherwise why would they be friends rather than acquaintances or enemies or people you work near?), who does yer woman on the news think she is upping the ante like that and declaring it to be full-blown love? Cheek of her! And while you can at least choose your friends, there are a fair few of my relatives for which that interloper of a phrase could only be described as less than apt. Bring back into use ‘friends and relatives’ is today’s message for the masses, and I also note [in passing? – Ed.] the strict distinction between the two categories inherent in the conjunction placed judiciously equidistant between them. It is not ‘friends and friends who are relatives’ as that would be an incomplete set. Those currently reading this know who they are.

Can we ban also the use of all this war terminology when talking about the Kerfuffle? We are not at war. Had you been in a war, you would notice the difference. Yon virus is not some sort of evil genius with plans to invade the Sudetenland and then move on to the rest of Europe as an encore. In a real war, you need an actual enemy to fight against, an enemy with aims and plans and stratagems designed to frustrate your defences and make a hames of your best-laid plans, and, coincidentally, those of the resident mice. And an unconscious virus does not cut the mustard in this scenario any more than an abstract noun did. (War on Terrorism, anyone? Who won that one?)

Look, I’ll have to go here. Because of the late start, it is now lunch followed by Ibero-Hiberno siesta. I’ll tell you the outcome of the phone forage tomorrow. Maybe. The position of Finance Director of the blog is still open for applicants, by the way, as are the two temporary future posts as pall bearer. And the future is probably temporary. CVs not accepted.

freeirishpoems

(r)Acht na Gaeilge

Lá 21

Fáilte isteach chuig an cholún seo, agus fáilte amach arís más foghlaimeoir thú. Ní hé nach ansa liom foghlaimeoirí – agus ní féidir a shéanadh go mbíonn sé iontach greannmhar ag éisteacht leo ag streachailt le deacrachtaí an tuisil ghinidigh (ar thug sibh faoi deara an rud a rinne mé ansin?) gan trácht ar rialacha rúnda an tséimhithe – ach mothaím go dtugtar barraíocht airde orthu, mar ghrúpa, agus go ndéantar faillí dá bharr i ngrúpa eile, mar atá Gaeilgeoirí líofa atá ar thóir ábhar éadrom léitheoireachta ar bhlag Béarla.

Bhí an fhaillí chomh mór sin go raibh orm an spás seo a cheannach ón eagarthóir le hábhar léitheoireachta den chineál sin a chur ar fáil dom féin. (Cinnte, léim an blag seo, ach tuigim duit, a léitheoir léannta: is iomaí sin blagadóir nach n-athléann rud ar bith a scríobhann sé féin, mar is léir ón raiméis a chuirtear i gcló ar a shuíomh.)

Blag dóibh siúd a thuigeann é an blag seo, mar sin, agus tá dhá chiall ar a laghad i gceist agam leis an tuiscint sin. I dtús báire, is blag é dóibh siúd a thuigfidh gan stró na focail agus na habairtí fada, ina mbeidh fochlásal ag iomrascáil le fochlásal, coibhneas díreach in adharca le coibhneas indíreach, a úsáidfidh mé le mo smaointe caolchúiseacha a chur in iúl. Agus sa dara dul síos (cé nach raibh an chéad dul síos agam agus gur locht é sin dar le gramadáin áirithe), is blag é dóibh siúd a thuigfidh nach mbeidh plé ar bith ann ar an Ghaeilge mar chúis de chineál ar bith, ar dhóigheanna leis an Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn ná ar imeachtaí áitiúla Gaeilge (nach mbíonn achan imeacht ‘áitiúil’ ina cheantar féin?), ach amháin ar chúinsí grinn.

Nuair a bhí mé féin ag foghlaim na Gaeilge, ag am nach raibh sé tairbheach ná tráthúil, níor cuireadh in iúl dom go mbeadh claonadh ag daoine eile ina dhiaidh sin tuairimí áirithe a chur síos dom de thairbhe Gaeilge a bheith agam. A leithéid seo: bá a bheith agam leis an cheol thraidisiúnta; díograis a bheith ionam fá chur chun cinn na Gaelscolaíochta; foighne dhochreidte a bheith agam le foghlaimeoirí; dearcadh a bheith agam ar chúrsaí polaitíochta, go háirithe ar an cheist náisiúnta (mar eolas, is í seo an cheist náisiúnta: cad is fiú Ryan Tubridy?); fuath a bheith agam don Bhéarla. D’fhoghlaim mé an Fhraincis gob ar ghob leis an Ghaeilge agus, seachas an ceann deireanach sin, níor ghlac Frainciseoir ar bith leis go mbeadh tuairimí faoi leith agam toisc Fraincis a bheith agam. Níor cuireadh in iúl dom, mar shampla, go mbeadh orm suim faoi leith a chothú i gcáis, gráin a bheith agam ar na Gearmánaigh ná tuiscint faoi leith a aimsiú ar staid amaideach an duine i gcruinne gan chiall. Sin na Francaigh duit, áfach; tá siad chomh féinmhuiníneach sin go ligeann siad duit a dteanga a labhairt gan réamhchoinníollacha. Amhail is gur leor fáthanna cumarsáide le teanga a labhairt.

Ó thuigeann an bheirt agaibh atá fágtha anois an cur chuige NACH mbeidh agam sa spás seo, cad é go díreach a dtig leis an triúr againn a bheith ag súil leis sa bhlag féin? Dá ndéarfainn libh nach bhfuil mé iomlán cinnte mar nach bhfuil mé cinnte go mbeidh an t-airgead agam achan mhí leis an leathanach a cheannach ón eagarthóir, an mbeadh sibh sásta leis sin? Ach is iomaí sin racht a thagann orm ó lá go lá (cuir ceist ar mo Heinz Bean mura gcreideann sibh mé), agus is iomaí sin imeacht dáiríre atá greannmhar i ndáiríre a thiteann amach sa taobh seo tíre, agus mhol mo dhochtúir dom áit éigin chiúin a aimsiú leis an fhrustrachas agus leis an fhearg agus leis an ghliondar a chuireann a leithéid orm a scaoileadh amach. Agus nach áit bhreá chiúin é an leathanach seo? Is beag duine a thabharfaidh faoi deara muid anseo ar chor ar bith agus, mar gheall air sin, thig linn ár rogha rud a dhéanamh.

Is dócha, fiú, go mbeadh cead agam, agus go mbeadh sé sábháilte dom, tagairt a dhéanamh do theideal an ailt seo. Ní hamhlaidh go bhfuil mé i gcoinne Acht na Gaeilge. Is é rud go bhfuil mé go hiomlán i gcoinne Acht na Gaeilge. Ar imeall na sochaí agus ar imeall na tíre, sin an áit is dual don Ghaeilgeoir a bheith. Agus san áit sin, is mó taithí atá aige ar an dlí a sheachaint seachas ar an dlí a leanúint. Cad é a dhéanfadh an duine bocht dá bhfógrófaí go tobann go mbeadh an Ghaeilge dleathach as seo amach? Bheadh sé go hiomlán i gcoinne a dhúchais agus a thógála rud dleathach a dhéanamh, agus bheadh air, mar sin, an Béarla a tharraingt chuige agus an dlí a bhriseadh ar an dóigh sin. Tá Gaeilgeoirí ar m’aithne agus ní iarrfainn pionós ní b’fhóirsteanaí dóibh, ach, do mhórchuid na ndaoine bochta a bhfuil sé d’ualach agus de bhuairt aigne orthu Gaeilge a bheith acu, bheadh an pionós rud beag thar fóir. Trí lá na seachtaine, b’fhéidir, ach ní go deo na ndeor.

Agus féach cé chomh maith agus a d’éirigh leis na Meicsicigh ó dheas uainn maidir leis an Ghaeilge éigeantach sa chóras oideachais agus leis an stádas oifigiúil ina mbréag-Phoblacht. Mura bhfuil duine sásta foghlaim ó cheachtanna na staire, níor cheart dó a bheith ag dúil le trua nuair a tharlóidh an rud céanna arís. Ní searbh ná garbh atá an fhírinne, ach fíor. Fág dlíthe ag an dream ar suim leo iad agus fanaimis, Gaeilgeoirí réabhlóideacha Uladh, san áit is dual dúinn a bheith: ar an taobh mhícheart den dlí.

Ultach Mac Albanaigh

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 21

Despite my valiant efforts to keep it country, this site is on the up and up, it appears. Having cracked both the US of A and what is left of the USS of R in recent weeks, another milestone was reached yesterday when our first complaint flooded in. Not so much flooded in though as raked up the country lane at an illegal and, frankly, dangerous speed, pulled a noisy handbraker on the horizontal part of the manicured tarmac outside the tricky front door of the home place (remind me to tell you that one about the taxi driver and the opening night of the Heaney HomePlace some time) and burned its way, metaphorically, through the broken letterbox to land, smoking, on the hand-made wicker mat resting unevenly on the stone tiles of the front vestibule. For clarity’s sake, there is no back vestibule in the estate; one accesses the private wood and the semi-private lough directly through the door of the mutility room off the galley kitchen section of the country-kitchen style country kitchen. But I like to be precise in the location of my vestibules, so I prefer to give it its full title any time it is mentioned.

Yes, so while amassing a total of 12 followers to date (hi guys, and thanks, now please tell all your mate(s) about the blog too) and attracting a total of comments rapidly approaching double figures are, without doubt, achievements worth celebrating, it is only when you pass the complaint threshold that you really start to hit pay-dirt. So lashings of ginger pop and biscuits all round to the team behind the blog, and take the rest of the day off (after you have completed all your duties). And this was no ordinary complaint either. It whizzed its way through the information highway – albeit second-hand – from a member of the Irish language community. In other words, from a professional source. Heady days, indeed.

Of all the minority-hobby groups that I have come across on my evening walks, the Irish language community is head and shoulders above all others, including fresh-water salmon fishermen, in terms of whingeing and complaining. I should point out here that, although I speak Irish as well as the next man (and the next man happens to be Máirtín Ó Cadhain), I am not myself a member of the Irish language community; although I have been known to complain the odd time about various matters, it has been on a strictly amateur basis. I speak French as well as the next man too, but no one has ever presumed because of that fact that I am a member of any class of French language community. In fact, a Frenchman in a café (redundant – Ed.] one time expressed the opinion that I spoke better French than him and his mates. I explained to him – in simple French – that he was incorrect in that assertion: I spoke French that was more grammatically correct than his, but that was not the same thing as speaking better French than him. He accepted my back-handed compliment with a shrug, but he still did not sign me up to be part of any French language community, if there even is one.

That’s not the way it works with Irish, though, and people will tick all sorts of boxes for you if they hear you utter the cúpla míle focal. Before you know it, they will have you down as a lover of all sorts of diddly-dee music and endless, dirge-like songs designed, obviously, to pass the whole of the winter in deepest Donegal in one performance, as an aficionado (or preferably an actual, certifiable fanatic) of all known Gaelic sports, including rounders (could someone please ask the GAA where they came up with that one from in their rule book), as a fervent hater of all things English (but especially their very useful, and beautiful, language) and as a part-time IRA man, or at least a bar-stool Republican, faute de mieux. Ballacks to all that, is what I say. And, like Groucho Marx, I pointblank refuse to be a member of any organisation that would allow the likes of me into it.

As for the substance of the complaint, who knows? I did not have the time, the inclination or the interest to read it: the very fact of its existence is what counts, and may it prove to be one of many. Let the Games Begin!

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 20

I was trying to sneak out the door early this morning on my essentials trip – fegs – but the part-time wife caught me on and added a few of what can only be described as optionals rather than essentials. I mean, washing powder, anyone? Is anyone else even still washing clothes this weather? Sure you can turn whatever clothes you were wearing last week inside out and get another week out of them now that nobody is looking at you apart from your family. And they don’t count. It would take something much bigger than the Kerfuffle, though, for the part-time wife to give up what I presume (from how often she does it) to be one of her favourite hobbies.

She caught me on sneaking out the door because she has occasionally taken to performing some of her 16 hours per day sleep on the couch in the front salon in the West Wing, which happens to be adjacent to the vestibule with the tricky turn for coffins in it (do try to keep up, or else scroll down and find out) which contains, in a charming protruding porch, the front door, beside which I was bent over double nosily extracting some mucus from my lungs. She claims that this variation of sleeping location is because if she happens to wake up during the night, she enjoys watching the stars do their thing from her recumbent position below them. I have pointed out, in vain, that said stars are also available for viewing from a recumbent position in the Master Bedroom, but, intuitively, I know that this new interest in astrology is just another excuse for her to get out of carrying out her full wifely duties in what I would describe as a complete and thorough manner. Hence her part-time status.

It is a truth barely ever acknowledged that one of the most effective contraceptives known to man is marriage. Barely ever acknowledged by men, that is; women are all too aware of this fact, as they created it. It comes as a surprise to many a married man, however, not a few of whom were tricked into the institution in the mistaken belief that they would have en-suite sex available for the rest of their lives, saving them the bother of going out hunting for it in discos and pubs and ‘walking clubs’. (By ‘en-suite sex’ I do not mean sex in the shower, although chance would be a fine thing.) But what with children (which, ironically, are a daily reminder that the sex thing did use to happen, or happened three times, at least), constant clothes-washing and intermittent bouts of astrology, like the mucus in my morning cough, the flow of on-tap sex eventually dries up, and, by that stage, the poor man finds he is too old, or too bald, or too damned tired chasing his wife around the house in pursuit of a snog, even, to go back out into the disco jungle in pursuit of his main hobby. He is too tired even for the pretence of joining a walking club in search of an extra-marital affair; it’s the incidental walking that puts him off. In a brief and related theological aside [it had better be – Ed.], if your wife gives up sex for Lent but has not consulted you about the matter beforehand, does that constitute rape?

So anyway, the news on the car radio on the way to the local shop was so depressing that I switched over to the Leonard Cohen CD. (Remind me to do a post some day about the criminally-neglected humour in the oeuvre of Beckett and Cohen, which sounds like a law firm now that I see it typed. For information, I hear this stuff first before I see it in print: I have no idea who is dictating it into my head. Now, how am I going to get out of these brackets gracefully?) I also happened to see myself in the rear-view mirror of the car. I took a good, hard look at myself (the car was parked, dear reader, but thank you for your concern for the safety of other road users – there weren’t any, by the way) and realised that this is actually getting serious. I would go so far as to say that we are approaching crisis point. And the really annoying thing is that there was a chance, before it all began, to take preventative measures and to thus now be in a much better state of preparation for the dangers ahead. These truths struck me as I gazed – fondly – into my own unfathomably deep pupils, and became fully aware, for maybe the first time since the Kerfuffle began, that my hair is on the point of explosion. And I could have had it cut three weeks ago when I dragged the middle teenager into Belfast one Saturday to be shorn – never, ever go to a culchie barbers, readers; the reason being visible all around you on the craniums of the locals. Do any of you know any city-based barbers who do deliveries?

I note (in passing, obviously) that Blustering Boris is so embarrassed at the gentle ribbing I subject him to in this blog that he has gone into hiding in an Intensive Care Unit. C’mon, Boris, show some balls! Come back out and face the music. And dance. Like the circus bear that you really are.

freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 19

Monday, or so it seems. As Square-Brackets-Head pointed out yesterday (or was it Friday?) I am getting a bit mixed up with my days, but not with the number thereof. I wonder, in a disinterested sort of way, whether the ex-Finance Director of this site has made it to the big city yet. I drove to Belfast yesterday (and passed him hitch-hiking illegally on the empty motorway) with the Irish-language teenager on a completely non-essential mission, but there was no room at the inn when we got there: the particular business enterprise we were trying to relieve of one of its commercial products had, apparently, calculated the number of customers already in the shop and decreed that no more could enter as it would take them the 30 minutes up to closing time to deal with those already in situ. There’s customer service for you. I pointed out to security guy that I had pre-paid and thus did not actually need to queue, just pick up the essentially non-essential item, but he was having none of it. I gently suggested to him that if said enterprise spent more time serving its customers and less time calculating how quickly it could get rid of them so that its staff could go home right on the stroke of six o’clock, it would be in less danger of going out of business come the revolution. He did not seem that interested in insurgency and its effects on micro-economic theory, though; too busy checking his watch three times even while he was meant to be engaged in talking to me.

I’d better explain that six o’clock closing time for the foreign students – and you’re very welcome whoever it is from the sub-continent of India who has started reading this blog; now go and make the tea! (The brand new, improved and updated marketing manager is probably due a bonus for that but – from bitter experience – I will see how she gets on the rest of the week before making a definitive decision.) Yes, Sunday opening hours are a thing here in Norn Iron. In normal circumstances, if the adjective ‘normal’ is ever appropriate when applied to what my mother used to term The Annex, while shops open at noon on Sundays here, the Lord has decreed in a part of the Bible I have not yet got to – don’t tell me what happens in the end; you’ll spoil the surprise – that commercial transactions cannot occur until one o’clock in the afternoon. So, on a normal Sunday here (again such a concept probably does not actually exist), you can observe the surreal sight of eejits rushing around Tesco filling up their trolleys as fast as they can after they are let in the door at 12.00pm, presumably just so that they can enjoy the full 30 minutes of their half-hour wait in the queue for the tills to open at one o’clock. Said shops also obey strictly-imposed Sabbath laws by shutting early on Sundays at the ungodly early hour of 18:00. I think our divided Brethren are missing a trick here, though, and that they should go the whole hog and decree that all commercial activity on the Lord’s Day should cease at the surreal time of 16:90. (That was a complicated set-up, but worth it in the end, I feel.)

But my tendency to mix-up the days is not really due to the onset of the Kerfuffle. I have a vague enough definition of the term ‘working week’ and sometimes end up doing more work at the weekends than during the Mon-Fri charade; fewer emails to move from folder to folder, no phone-calls and definitely no work-related video calls on Sat and Sun, you see, which leaves a bit of time to get some work done. An IT colleague in the building formerly known as my work place had a great line that he was fond of using when getting up from the table after a subsidised lunch, the price of which the begrudgers and penny-pinchers still complained about. ‘Right,’ he would say, ‘I like to do a bit of work in the afternoon: it helps to put the day in.’

The other point is that the work I was doing at the weekend was not work work but real work, for which feel free to explore the other pages on this site. But make sure to wear a hard hat and a high-vis jacket if you do, as most of it is still a building site. Oh, and wash your hands before you come back here.

For homework, compare and contrast: Boris goes into hospital; Leo goes back to work as a doctor. Which of the two Taoisigh on these islands do you think is having the better crisis? Upload your answers in the comments section and you will receive feedback if, and only if, your answer is of sufficient quality.

Right then, decisions, decisions. Andytown shower or full Monty? Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or opposition? Mustard shirt or granddad collarless one with a natty cravat? It’s never easy in the mornings, but, as Douglas Adams rightly pointed out, no one ever said it was going to be.

This is not what I meant to write about at all today. Hopefully, there will be a tomorrow, and it will not be a Sunday.