Michael Praetorius ✒  Long overdue is a bit of recognition for the discreetly stalwart service rendered by we Catholics who, for whatever reason, have ended up living with a Protestant (not the same one, mind you). As I've said before, Jean’s a Protestant.

She is, for example, and to give just one instance of what we have to put up with, very disrespectful towards the Blessed Virgin. When I listed many of Her names - Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven, Cause of Our Joy, Mother of Mercy - Jean cackled and said, What a load of simpering, mammy's-boy rubbish . . .  And you supposed to be an atheist . . .  ! 

Setting aside all the religious stuff, I replied, the fact is that the Blessed Virgin had to cope with a son tramping around the countryside, roaring his head off about Kingdom Come, like in Pasolini's film The Gospel According to St. Matthew; a space cadet in her neighbours' eyes no doubt. And with zero help whatsoever from St Joseph, for we have no evidence that he ever lifted a hand outside of his carpenter's workshop. Plus, she had Jesus's brothers and sisters to provide for. 

Brother and sisters?!? said Jean, real virgin . . . 

This lack of fellow feeling towards a poor, struggling Catholic woman with a big family (featuring plumb loco son), is, in fact, precisely indicative of the mind-set that prevailed here, and led to 60 years of discrimination and gerrymandering, and padlocked swings on Sunday.

I looked at Jean; she was sitting comfortably on the sofa with her feet up, shopping. But really, I thought, nothing has changed with this privileged, Proddy crowd. It's rarely I succumb to agreeing that the only definitive solution would be to put them all on a boat back to Scotland . . . 

Dr No

So, said Jean, let me ask you, just so I can understand what you've been saying:

Is there such a thing as meaning or value?

No I replied.

Is there any inherent meaning in the universe?

No, I replied.

Has the pursuit of meaning any meaning in itself?

No, I replied.

Is an individual's construction of any type of objective meaning possible?

No, I replied.

So is there any authentic resolution to the individual's desire to seek meaning?

No, I replied.

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Consider the ex-English teacher busking. He begins Neil Young's waltz-time version of Don Gibson's wonderful Oh, Lonesome Me. All is as well as can be expected, until this verse:

Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues,
forget about the past and find somebody new.
I've thought of everything from A to Z ...


Aaarrggghhh . . . ! He has to pronounce Z(ed) as Z(eee) so as to get the rhyme with final line, Oh, lonesome me ...

He winces every time at this naff American pronunciation.

I love that song, says a woman passing by, unaware of the suffering that underlies all great art . . . 

An Apology

Like many other people who are a bit nervous and anxious, or sometimes depressed, or rather impulsive, or not always great at mixing, or somewhat volatile, or bored and moody once in a while, or subject to feelings of low self esteem now and again, or rather overwhelmed by events occasionally, or a little lonely, or a bollix at relationships, and so on, I have always been under the impression that these characteristics were all part of the necessarily diverse, normal and rich pageant of human psychological make-up.

I now understand that nothing could be further from the truth, for the reality is that I, and almost everybody else, have, in fact, been suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Furthermore, contrary to what I may have believed before diagnosis, I now appreciate that any rudeness, selfishness, stupidity, arrogance, laziness, incompetence, bloody mindedness, sheer awfulness, or lack of sympathy exhibited by me in the past are symptoms of this devastating condition over which I have no control, and therefore entirely nothing is my fault or responsibility.

In addition, it goes without saying that BPD is not only the root cause of all my personal failings, but also explains any absence of success in my career, finances, sport, and so on.

I apologise unreservedly for any misunderstanding caused.

Ralph Mclean Is Simply Dreadful ...

Radio Ulster's Street-Star Profile feature on me goes out next Saturday, 7pm. In case you're not familiar with the format - friends, colleagues, etc. are interviewed to help illustrate your stairway to excellence in whatever it is you do. Thanks to these, and the others, who took part:

Classmate at St Colman's College: Musically, Michael told me the sky was his limit . . .  but, like, he spent months trying to do that wolf-whistle thing on Jennifer Eccles, without ever getting near it . . .  Definitely came natural to him to be sort of at two with the guitar . . . 


Fellow busker: He has that single-mindedness . . .  I mean, the number of times I've suggested an electronic tuner . . .  but he thinks it's in tune already  . . .

Ex-work colleague: Everybody else was in NIPSA . . .he set up a branch of UNISON with just himself in it . . .

Man who sat listening for half an hour one day: I mean, he just plinked and plunked out the same old thing over and over. There was no Eagles or Gary Moore or anything. Then he took the huff when I told him he was absolute shite . . .

Woman met on a dating site: He said he was a jet pilot . . .

Losing Your Religion

But why did you lose your faith? a Jehovah's Witness asked me last week.

Gaelic football, I replied.

Really? she said.

Yes, I told her, we were caned at school for playing real football - soccer - with a tennis ball in the handball alleys.

Handball alleys? she echoed.

Nobody played handball any more, I said.

There must be other reasons, she said.

Missions, I said. We had to get up really early and trudge off to Chapel for a half hour session, go straight to school, then go to the Chapel again the same night for two hours. For a whole week. Once a year.

But those are harmful symptoms of a corruption of the Word and its true delivery, not of the message itself, she assured me.

Well, maybe, I said, but at least my mother always got me a little scapular from the Mission stall - we thought they were dead-on back then.

A little what? she asked.

They know nothing, these people . . . 

It's All Good

New year, and thanks largely to Jean's presence and influence, I at last have a much more positive, optimistic outlook on existence.

You’ve changed my life, I told her.

For the better, I hope, she said.

Oh yes, I replied. Entering old age, for example, no longer depresses me. With you at my side I now see it in an upbeat fashion. I am merely entering a scrubby twilit landscape where the previously wide road of life stutters into a path, and that path into a slender track, going nowhere, squeezing toward the end of ambition.

Furthermore, it's wonderful to be at that point on the living road where there are no more signposts, no way-markers, no ambition, and not many other people. All happy surprises are in the past. No more miracles, nothing to be expected, no good news, no hope even, only those rocky heights and the barren hills, and oblivion behind them in unreadable shadow; but pushing on, destiny long behind me, with every turnoff looking treacherous, the whole way forward tending toward darkness.

Life growing thinner and emptying out, travelling in that harsh hinterland of aging, on that narrowing path where no one willingly accompanies you.


Glad I was able to help, said Jean.

Another Apology

Over the years I may have given the impression that, like many high achievers, I've suffered bouts of personal listlessness and fatigue, including many varieties of nervous exhaustion. I may have attributed this draining of the spirit to the speed, variety, complexity, pressures, and so on of my striving relentlessly at the coal face in our modern technological, global workforce.

I may even have looked for, and apparently found, cures in a whole range of physical lifestyle changes, encompassing everything from yoga to diets (including an evangelism for the eating of muesli).

It may also be the case that I have at various times diagnosed my condition as neurasthenia, or existential tiredness, or angst, or anomie, and so on.

I now realise how wrong I have been in any such diagnosis. What I am actually enduring is burnout. This term makes clear that the sufferer, in this case myself, has selflessly just given too much of himself, with the further implication that I have done so for the greater good. Thus am I absolved from the suggestion of self indulgence that accompanies those said to suffer from 'fatigue' or 'ennui'.

I apologise unreservedly for any misunderstanding caused.

I Went To School In Newry

No, answered the man handing out the saved-type leaflets in Newry, when I asked him if Miss Lotte Lenya can come to Heaven with me. His was a strictly subdue-and-have-dominion-over approach, to a wholly unrelated category of creature he called 'the animals', as if, somehow, and just as one example, his bones aren't nearly identical in form and function to those of the other mammals.

Ah, but, I said, consider me out walking with Miss Lotte Lenya: there is complexity to my and her make-up, compared to the relatively simple structure of the inanimate universe we inhabit, in as much as we can know it at all. Thinking about this as we walk, I'm striving for some shallow, uninformed significance or insight. But Lotte isn't. She holds no grudges, asserts no doctrine or creeds, flies no flag, imposes no meaning, demands no faith or formulas. In other words, a more innocent and deserving candidate for a place in paradise would be hard to find. And certainly when I get to Heaven the first thing I'll do is call her name and take her for a walk.

A dog has no soul, God's frontman pronounced witheringly, from the lofty heights of sterile enlightenment and banal revelation.

Look at her, I told him.

She was wagging her tail.

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast ... when he can get a pitch.

Black Prods ✑ My Part In Their Conservation

Michael Praetorius ✒  Long overdue is a bit of recognition for the discreetly stalwart service rendered by we Catholics who, for whatever reason, have ended up living with a Protestant (not the same one, mind you). As I've said before, Jean’s a Protestant.

She is, for example, and to give just one instance of what we have to put up with, very disrespectful towards the Blessed Virgin. When I listed many of Her names - Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven, Cause of Our Joy, Mother of Mercy - Jean cackled and said, What a load of simpering, mammy's-boy rubbish . . .  And you supposed to be an atheist . . .  ! 

Setting aside all the religious stuff, I replied, the fact is that the Blessed Virgin had to cope with a son tramping around the countryside, roaring his head off about Kingdom Come, like in Pasolini's film The Gospel According to St. Matthew; a space cadet in her neighbours' eyes no doubt. And with zero help whatsoever from St Joseph, for we have no evidence that he ever lifted a hand outside of his carpenter's workshop. Plus, she had Jesus's brothers and sisters to provide for. 

Brother and sisters?!? said Jean, real virgin . . . 

This lack of fellow feeling towards a poor, struggling Catholic woman with a big family (featuring plumb loco son), is, in fact, precisely indicative of the mind-set that prevailed here, and led to 60 years of discrimination and gerrymandering, and padlocked swings on Sunday.

I looked at Jean; she was sitting comfortably on the sofa with her feet up, shopping. But really, I thought, nothing has changed with this privileged, Proddy crowd. It's rarely I succumb to agreeing that the only definitive solution would be to put them all on a boat back to Scotland . . . 

Dr No

So, said Jean, let me ask you, just so I can understand what you've been saying:

Is there such a thing as meaning or value?

No I replied.

Is there any inherent meaning in the universe?

No, I replied.

Has the pursuit of meaning any meaning in itself?

No, I replied.

Is an individual's construction of any type of objective meaning possible?

No, I replied.

So is there any authentic resolution to the individual's desire to seek meaning?

No, I replied.

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Consider the ex-English teacher busking. He begins Neil Young's waltz-time version of Don Gibson's wonderful Oh, Lonesome Me. All is as well as can be expected, until this verse:

Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues,
forget about the past and find somebody new.
I've thought of everything from A to Z ...


Aaarrggghhh . . . ! He has to pronounce Z(ed) as Z(eee) so as to get the rhyme with final line, Oh, lonesome me ...

He winces every time at this naff American pronunciation.

I love that song, says a woman passing by, unaware of the suffering that underlies all great art . . . 

An Apology

Like many other people who are a bit nervous and anxious, or sometimes depressed, or rather impulsive, or not always great at mixing, or somewhat volatile, or bored and moody once in a while, or subject to feelings of low self esteem now and again, or rather overwhelmed by events occasionally, or a little lonely, or a bollix at relationships, and so on, I have always been under the impression that these characteristics were all part of the necessarily diverse, normal and rich pageant of human psychological make-up.

I now understand that nothing could be further from the truth, for the reality is that I, and almost everybody else, have, in fact, been suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Furthermore, contrary to what I may have believed before diagnosis, I now appreciate that any rudeness, selfishness, stupidity, arrogance, laziness, incompetence, bloody mindedness, sheer awfulness, or lack of sympathy exhibited by me in the past are symptoms of this devastating condition over which I have no control, and therefore entirely nothing is my fault or responsibility.

In addition, it goes without saying that BPD is not only the root cause of all my personal failings, but also explains any absence of success in my career, finances, sport, and so on.

I apologise unreservedly for any misunderstanding caused.

Ralph Mclean Is Simply Dreadful ...

Radio Ulster's Street-Star Profile feature on me goes out next Saturday, 7pm. In case you're not familiar with the format - friends, colleagues, etc. are interviewed to help illustrate your stairway to excellence in whatever it is you do. Thanks to these, and the others, who took part:

Classmate at St Colman's College: Musically, Michael told me the sky was his limit . . .  but, like, he spent months trying to do that wolf-whistle thing on Jennifer Eccles, without ever getting near it . . .  Definitely came natural to him to be sort of at two with the guitar . . . 


Fellow busker: He has that single-mindedness . . .  I mean, the number of times I've suggested an electronic tuner . . .  but he thinks it's in tune already  . . .

Ex-work colleague: Everybody else was in NIPSA . . .he set up a branch of UNISON with just himself in it . . .

Man who sat listening for half an hour one day: I mean, he just plinked and plunked out the same old thing over and over. There was no Eagles or Gary Moore or anything. Then he took the huff when I told him he was absolute shite . . .

Woman met on a dating site: He said he was a jet pilot . . .

Losing Your Religion

But why did you lose your faith? a Jehovah's Witness asked me last week.

Gaelic football, I replied.

Really? she said.

Yes, I told her, we were caned at school for playing real football - soccer - with a tennis ball in the handball alleys.

Handball alleys? she echoed.

Nobody played handball any more, I said.

There must be other reasons, she said.

Missions, I said. We had to get up really early and trudge off to Chapel for a half hour session, go straight to school, then go to the Chapel again the same night for two hours. For a whole week. Once a year.

But those are harmful symptoms of a corruption of the Word and its true delivery, not of the message itself, she assured me.

Well, maybe, I said, but at least my mother always got me a little scapular from the Mission stall - we thought they were dead-on back then.

A little what? she asked.

They know nothing, these people . . . 

It's All Good

New year, and thanks largely to Jean's presence and influence, I at last have a much more positive, optimistic outlook on existence.

You’ve changed my life, I told her.

For the better, I hope, she said.

Oh yes, I replied. Entering old age, for example, no longer depresses me. With you at my side I now see it in an upbeat fashion. I am merely entering a scrubby twilit landscape where the previously wide road of life stutters into a path, and that path into a slender track, going nowhere, squeezing toward the end of ambition.

Furthermore, it's wonderful to be at that point on the living road where there are no more signposts, no way-markers, no ambition, and not many other people. All happy surprises are in the past. No more miracles, nothing to be expected, no good news, no hope even, only those rocky heights and the barren hills, and oblivion behind them in unreadable shadow; but pushing on, destiny long behind me, with every turnoff looking treacherous, the whole way forward tending toward darkness.

Life growing thinner and emptying out, travelling in that harsh hinterland of aging, on that narrowing path where no one willingly accompanies you.


Glad I was able to help, said Jean.

Another Apology

Over the years I may have given the impression that, like many high achievers, I've suffered bouts of personal listlessness and fatigue, including many varieties of nervous exhaustion. I may have attributed this draining of the spirit to the speed, variety, complexity, pressures, and so on of my striving relentlessly at the coal face in our modern technological, global workforce.

I may even have looked for, and apparently found, cures in a whole range of physical lifestyle changes, encompassing everything from yoga to diets (including an evangelism for the eating of muesli).

It may also be the case that I have at various times diagnosed my condition as neurasthenia, or existential tiredness, or angst, or anomie, and so on.

I now realise how wrong I have been in any such diagnosis. What I am actually enduring is burnout. This term makes clear that the sufferer, in this case myself, has selflessly just given too much of himself, with the further implication that I have done so for the greater good. Thus am I absolved from the suggestion of self indulgence that accompanies those said to suffer from 'fatigue' or 'ennui'.

I apologise unreservedly for any misunderstanding caused.

I Went To School In Newry

No, answered the man handing out the saved-type leaflets in Newry, when I asked him if Miss Lotte Lenya can come to Heaven with me. His was a strictly subdue-and-have-dominion-over approach, to a wholly unrelated category of creature he called 'the animals', as if, somehow, and just as one example, his bones aren't nearly identical in form and function to those of the other mammals.

Ah, but, I said, consider me out walking with Miss Lotte Lenya: there is complexity to my and her make-up, compared to the relatively simple structure of the inanimate universe we inhabit, in as much as we can know it at all. Thinking about this as we walk, I'm striving for some shallow, uninformed significance or insight. But Lotte isn't. She holds no grudges, asserts no doctrine or creeds, flies no flag, imposes no meaning, demands no faith or formulas. In other words, a more innocent and deserving candidate for a place in paradise would be hard to find. And certainly when I get to Heaven the first thing I'll do is call her name and take her for a walk.

A dog has no soul, God's frontman pronounced witheringly, from the lofty heights of sterile enlightenment and banal revelation.

Look at her, I told him.

She was wagging her tail.

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast ... when he can get a pitch.

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