Oh, lucky woman
The first thing I told Jean, when we
started chatting on the dating site, was that I had just saved £100 on my
heating oil. I wanted her to know the calibre of man with whom she'd hit the
jackpot.
I think she was equally impressed on our
initial date, at some place on the Lisburn Road. Looked a bit expensive to my
mind, so while Jean ordered lunch, I settled for a Diet Pepsi. Nevertheless
though, when the waiter handed me the bill, I remarked to Jean, as I passed it
over to her, that I'd cover the Pepsi for sure. It was the generous thing to
do, after all, and I could see from the curious, admiring look on her face that
I'd gone up even further in her estimation.
Second date was at the QFT. Some European
film with subtitles but, disappointingly, no big nudey women scenes essential
to the narrative, like they usually have. Anyway, I'd bought the tickets online
and afterwards in the Jameson Bar, as we and the other pseuds chewed over the
import of all those gloomy faces and events on screen, Jean asked how much
they'd cost.
We'll go Dutch,
she said.
£10,
I said.
Ok,
she said. And offered me a fiver from her purse.
Actually, I said, as a Senior Citizen, mine was discounted to £4, so you owe me another quid . . .
With that same admiring gaze, she
playfully flung a pound coin right at me.
Treat yourself,
she said.
I had to root around on the floor, mind
you, but I'm sure she'd have given me another pound, had I not eventually found
it.
Charity begins at school
An exciting development . . . There's now a crowd called Make Ireland Catholic Again. And since Donegal has never been anything else, they only have 25 counties to go.
Years ago, at St Colman's, a priest said to me, A bit of humility,
Praetorius; remember that.
Of course, I didn't, and now secular Ireland is under siege. Will we be made to
dance at the crossroads after compulsory Mass? Strapping lads, comely maidens
contesting the Poc Fada, and us trailing after them over the bogs in the rain?
Sharon Shannon and her awful bloody squeezebox everywhere? Baseball caps
obligatory, Heineken mandatory, as we watch the appallingly culchie
Championship? GAA manly men keeping feckless women in line, and pronouncing
that Oscar Wilde went a bit too far?
Years ago, at St Colman's, the same priest said to me, You think you're
better than all this, don't you, Praetorius . . . ?
Yes, I do, I said.
With your foreign newspaper and your filthy pop music, he opined, you’re a disgrace to the country you were born in.
And,
taking a copper halfpenny from the pocket of his soutane, he tossed it on to my
desk and added, Give that to your benighted Mother to put towards a haircut
for you . . .
Definitely
abuse
I don't talk much about my childhood. It's taken years of counselling to get me this far. I've
tried every desperate route I know, bar becoming an actor, to block
out the terror of my youth.
It began when I was 11. I'd passed the 11 Plus. My father made me go to Grammar
School. All my mates were free to go to the local secondary school. No homework
for them. Meanwhile, my overbearing father rigidly forced me to do mine, in the
sense that it was left entirely up to me whether I did it at all. But hounded
thus, I predictably fared well in my A Levels.
Ruthlessly, my Da then suggested I consider going to university only if I
wanted to, sinisterly implying that I'd always have a loving home with my
parents regardless of what I chose. Faced with such harassment I, of course,
went to university. While I was there he slyly went out of his way to make sure
I never wanted for transport, or money if he had any himself. Terrorised thus, I
obtained a degree.
Next thing I knew my degree enabled me to coast through 40 years without ever
doing a real day's work. I then had no option but to retire on a comfortable
pension, and spend my time doing exactly as I pleased.
All because a cunning, manipulative man had blighted my life with his cruel,
selfish desire to give me a 'better' chance . . . !
Oh yes, he achieved his aim. But it cost me my heart and soul, my being. I have
watched many of my old mates freeze, starve, brawl, die young, go to gaol,
support Celtic, get tore on dole day, wear the naffest chav gear, beat Hell out
of the wife and each other, never learn to read, write or, indeed, speak
English.
But none of these priceless, deeply personal expressions of freedom and being
were available to me. Instead, tyranny and slavery, at the hand of a man who
knowingly contrived to ruin my chances of being a farm labourer or factory hand
or corner boy.
Fortunately, times have changed, and I was having none of that horror heaped on
my own son. So it came as a complete surprise to me when he announced, at 5 years
old, that he'd considered a range of options, mulled them over for some time,
and finally settled on a strategy for his life: pass the 11 Plus, go to
Methodist College, then up to Cambridge as an Organ Scholar. He added that the
whole shooting match was all his own
idea, nothing to do with me or his Ma. And, as it turned out, he was as good as
word.
So, Let them make up their own minds, I say.
Who wears the dildo in your house . . . ?
I was listening to The Lemonheads today. Their singer/songwriter/guitarist was called Evan Dando. I wonder if he's related to the late Jill Dando, or Jan Dildo, as she was originally called? It was her great grandmother, Roalda Dildo, who invented the famous female sex toy that we(e) men so envy.
This formidable woman, originally from Canada, was an accomplished lumberjack.
But, as a fierce believer in the integrity of the British Empire, she had
commanded a women's company of Black and Tans during the Irish War of
Independence in the 1920s.
Unfortunately she chose to marry an Ulster Presbyterian. A physically demanding
woman, she had never encountered a man so stricken by incapacitating nocturnal
headaches. So, harking back to her tree felling days, she whittled a 'joy'
stick from the branch of an apple tree in their garden.
Thus was born the Dildo. When her husband, whose heroic abstinence inspired
generations of Ulster men to say No!, died, he left a substantial sum of
money. This she used to establish a factory in Cullybackey, where mass
production of dildoes began in 1933, due to the great preponderance of Ulster
Presbyterian men living in the area.
Production continues there today, in more modest quantities, but many in
Cullybackey can still remember its heyday as the Dildo capital of Europe. Various
models are available, including the legendary Paisley Poker (Yo Surrender!) and
the rampant Robinson RamRod (for the older woman who still wants something
younger).
Nobody loves her
Off to the University of the Third Age to hear a lecture entitled All Men Are
Dreadful. It was delivered by some specky little tugboat, perpetually enraged
by her utter lack of sex appeal.
In the foyer afterwards several feminist groups had set up stalls. My favourite
was Armagh Catholic Feminist NIPSA Sisters Against Abortion, Except Where The
Foetus Is Male.
Later, I saw our resident Lothario talking to the little woman who had given
the lecture. Like all great gigilos he has nerves of steel; though quite
visibly nauseated, he managed, heroically, not to vomit all over the creature.
On leaving I was importuned by one of the 'pro life' Catholic Feminists to sign
some grubby petition; something about saving the lives of thousands of fully
formed little Celtic supporters who would otherwise be 'killed' by sadistic Dr
Mengeles in abortion clinics.
I looked at her earnest face, glowingly infused with certainty and faith and
righteousness and crusading mission.
Just like Flaubert, I told her, I have tried to live my life in an
ivory tower, but its walls are being assailed by a tide of shite.
Eh . . . ? she replied, but reached over to offer pen and petition anyway.
You will lean that way forever, I said and wandered off.
Talkin’
Barry Bucknell Blues
Jean, aghast at all the odd jobs that need doing around the place, said to me the other night, You know, if I'd known earlier in our relationship that you're a man who's always at his books but can't even put up a shelf for them, I'd have seriously reconsidered us as an item.
I tried to explain. There was a priest at St. Colman's, a Maths teacher, called
McGuinness. He was a big bull of a bogman from Roscommon, and he took a drink
to prep himself for whatever. Every week his Mammy would post him the Roscommon
Herald, and he'd bring it into class, sit back, prop his feet up on the desk,
and read it while we scribbled industriously at our sums.
Then he'd ask some question like, Well, McKenna, what do you make of the
state of the fiscal economy in Roscommon then? All at sea, Noel had no
reply, so McGuinness would lean over and swat him thickly round the ear with
the paper.
On another occasion he threw a haymaker at the same lad's head, but Noel
managed to duck. McGuinness's big fist smashed into the blackboard, his
knuckles leaving a crumpled dent in it. That dent remained there for years: a
desperate warning to everyone who saw it not to cross him.
He knocked us around all right, and we were terrified of him. But the way
things were then, this was nothing to write home about. Whether he despised us
quite as much as I'd say, with hindsight, he probably – on some level -
despised himself and his life, is a moot point.
Some years later, though, I attended the baptism of my brother's second son, in
Craigavon, and who should be officiating but the bold McGuinness . . . !
Well, you can guess how our reunion went at the little reception afterwards:
McGuinness the unreconstructed bully-boy hypocrite, and moronic GAA gael; me
the now unafraid, militant, anti-clerical, atheist 'Anglo'. My brother
eventually had to beg us, for the sake of the day that was in it, to break off
our vicious slanging match . . .
So, I mean, it's no wonder I can't put up a shelf . . .
Me and Bobby McDylan
Dave Van Ronk's first words to me were, If you're another pilfering bastard who's gonna rip me off, just fuck off now . . . !
He was referring, of course, to Bob Dylan 'borrowing' his arrangement of House
of the Rising Sun for his (Dylan's) first album. I felt a little guilty. It was
me who actually played guitar on the track, Bobbie being unable, at that time,
to get his 'thumb over the top' on the F chord to give it that 'big' sound.
I was doing all right in Greenwich Village back then, early 60s. I'd met a girl
and was living in her apartment. Her name was Ramona; she was a friend of
Dylan's and he had written a song for her but couldn't think of the right title
for it.
What about To Ramona? I said.
Wow! Cool, said Bobbie. That's it, man!
I was hanging out with Paul Simon a lot, too. I was teaching him English. He
was under the impression that Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost were top notch
poets, so there was quite a way to go with him. He had written a song about his
girlfriend, Kathy. He debuted it at Gerde's Folk City one evening and told me afterwards
he was calling it To Kathy. I told him about the title I had given Dylan.
Oh, for fuck's sake! he answered. What's that going to look like?!?
What's the problem? I asked, not really seeing a problem.
Problem . . . ? he shouted. Dylan writes To Ramona and five minutes
later Simon writes To Kathy . . . !!! Everyone in the Village sees me as a Dylan
clone . . . I'm already the first 'new Bob Dylan', and he hasn't even made it
yet! And you ask what's the problem! I'll have to drop the song ... that was
the best title ever . . . it even had Kathy's name in it . . . Jesus wept . . . !
I told him to calm down. An idea had struck me.
Call yours Kathy's Song, I said.
Paul deliberated.
Wait a minute, he said, finally, that's perfect . . . Kathy will love
it . . . !
I said, Just trying to keep the customer satisfied . . .
Charles
Wood time
It's that time of year again. The Charles Wood Festival and Summer School is off and running. Choral and sacred music fills the air. The streets of Armagh are choc-a-bloc with people like me: measured, perspicacious, refined, intricate, trailblazing, cultivated. As opposed to the usual bullish, monosyllabic, native pudding-heads and numbskulls.
Today, we had Evensong. Like many an existential nihilist atheist, Evensong is one of my favourite things. Partly because it contains (preferably sung versions of) two wizard New Testament canticles: the Magnificat (Song of Mary); and the Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon).
The plain people of N Ireland of a certain persuasion have no truck with the
Marian cult, so it is always a pleasure to see them forced, by the influx of
high church aficionados from England and elsewhere, to put up with,
begrudgingly, this song attributed to the woman we devout Catholic children
called the Blessèd Virgin.
Saint Luke reports that Simeon was a devout Jew who had been promised by what
used to be called the Holy Ghost that he would not die until he had seen the
Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem
for the ceremony of consecration of a firstborn son, Simeon was there, and he
took Jesus into his arms and uttered the words of his beautiful, valedictory
song:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face
of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy
people Israel.
As I listened this evening I realised its sentiments echo mine precisely when I
reflect that a non existent deity has mercifully permitted me to live long
enough to witness today's marvellous incarnation of the Saviour: in the form of
retard celebrities, 'reality' TV, political correctness, enforced compassion,
and compulsory maximum self-esteem and fulfilment.
How
do you like me now . . . ?!
First there was Magherafelt. And if you read my last column you'll know that gig was rudely interrupted by a manic street preacher, and culminated in an indecorous public commotion. Nevertheless, it was a portent of great things.
For
lo and behold, word gets around, and the only way is up ... I have just been
booked to play at the Glebe House Harmony Community Trust Roald Dahl Raucous
Family Fun Day in Kilclief . . . !!
On signing up, I magnanimously told the organiser that I'd donate my fee straight back to the Harmony Community Trust.
Well, you could if there was a fee, she replied, but there isn't ... No expenses, either, before you ask.
The
main thing, of course, was to keep the Harmony Community Trust away from my
Facebook page. All the employees are young, and you know what young people are
like nowadays. Unlike the rest of us, they do seem to need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows. So looking at my stuff they might well have
got the wrong, or indeed right, impression, depending on which quarter of
Woketown they hail from . . .
Have you any videos of your playing? they asked.
Without
thinking, I replied that I had a few on my Facebook page. Send me a friend
request, I added.
Are
you senile?
enquired a Protestant when I got home, they'll think you're possessed by the
demon of a second rate Auberon Waugh . . . !
They
won't know who Auberon Waugh was, I said.
Jean had a point, though. On the other hand, it would be bigly flattering to be deemed even a mediocre Auberon Waugh. It was a poser; I was torn.
But in the end I ignored the friend request, and sent a hasty email instead. Just trawled Facebook, I lied. No videos there (lie). But Jean, who worships me and my music (lie) has made a collection she can moon over (lie) when I bite the dust. A couple attached. What do you think?
Amazing, they replied later, you're in . . . !
You
can fool people into thinking you're a guitar player, but not that you're
Auberon Waugh ...
Charles
Wood (reprise)
Off to Sung Mass tonight, part of the Charles Wood Festival and Summer School. The service takes place in a choral music setting and is therefore open only to cultural aesthetes like myself, and Jean, by Papal dispensation, even though she’s a Protestant. Prods think sacred music is that creepy Willie McCrea guy. Your average Armagh Catholic chav or NIPSA member, in stained tracksuit and putrid trainers, is kept at bay by a police cordon around the church.
Jean finds it difficult to understand that I, an unreconstructed and unrepentant atheist, have more chance of going to heaven than she. But both Saints Mark and Matthew, in their gospels, recount an occasion when Jesus outlines who will be welcomed into his kingdom, and he clearly says, Even the least shall enter herein, but not the black turncoat.
It's a while since I've been to Mass, but imagine my surprise when I realised
it was being said in English . . . !! Dominus Vobiscum, I intoned to the
Dean of the Anglican Cathedral, who was sitting behind me. Et Cum Spiritu
Tuo, he responded heartily. It's a holy terror that we have to depend on
the Orange Order to keep these sacred traditions going.
Anyway,
during the boring bits of tonight's Mass (i.e. all of it except the music), I
tried to estimate the number of times I crossed myself before packing God in
long ago and far away. Must have been about 1000 times every year, at least. So
maybe about eleven or twelve thousand times in all. How much time does that add
up to? And what might I have done with that time had I not been crossing
myself?
My
favourite time at Mass was always Holy Communion, for it offers a chance to sit
back, relax and watch the procession of Holy Joes and creeping Jesuses
participating in the great mystery of why they are such nincompoops.
Never
mind that it's all mumbo-jumbo, though. That’s neither here nor there. No, the
most appropriate basis for abstention is these bloody lay 'helpers' who are all
over the sanctuary nowadays. They ooze a greasy 'holiness'; they reek of fake
humility. They shuffle around, ostensibly obsequious, but drenched in
self-importance. They stumble through the readings in a spiritless,
unpunctuated monotone, with none of the gravitas, intonation, and expression a liberal
university education would have bestowed upon them if they hadn’t been
gormless.
Then
they're allowed to open the Tabernacle with their unsanctified, grubby hands,
and get the hosts and stuff out. Most of them as old and dilapidated as me.
And, grotesquely, they now presume to dole out Communion ... ! For, suddenly, a creepy pair of these old timers lined up with the priest, chalice in grizzled, calloused hands. As a confirmed atheist I draw the line at this. Dear God, if I'm going to be misdirected and conned, it'll be by the magician, thank you, not his unlovely assistant - an oul codger or oul bag of a nosey parker who, as my mother would have said, spends the rest of the week eating the altar rail.
Even more traumatic, however, was the bit when the priest sprang a sadistic invitation
to 'give each other the sign of peace'. Instantly a whole horde of complete
strangers, many of them dressed in appallingly poor taste, was trying to shake
my hand. Jean, because she is a Protestant and knows no better, went along with
this, but I stood firm, arms resolutely folded until the wave of vulgar,
spurious, 'spiritual' feel good baloney receded.
And
in the end
It
was instructive to attend Sung Mass at St Malachy's Catholic Church a few
nights ago. I couldn't help but be touched by the simple, incurious, credulous
faith of these ordinary, unsophisticated, feckless working class folk.
It was also instructive to attend Choral Evensong the day after in the Church
of Ireland Cathedral. I couldn't help but be touched by the simple, incurious,
credulous faith of these singular, sophisticated, aspiring, middle class folk.
I, on the other hand, was lucky enough (if you like) to read Philosophy at
university, and can see, therefore, that both congregations' toytown
fantasizing amounts to nothing but wishful thinking. Religion, after all, is
merely philosophy without the questions, science without the evidence.
Or, to put it another way, as my mother (God rest her) never missed an
opportunity to remind me, I'll die roaring . . .
At least Catholic Mass sounds entertaining, there's nothing as boring as one of our Blackmouth sessions on at uncivilised o'clock on a Sunday. To add to the ignominy we'd always to wear uncomfortable clothes without the social lubrication to look forward to after.
ReplyDeleteSteve R, Protestant services are quite straightforward by comparison. When you're are sitting, you're listening and when you are standing, you're singing. As a confirmed atheist I find all religious services uncomfortable in the extreme. At times the urge to stand up and shout 'Prove it!!' is unbearable.
DeleteStill incredibly boring Terry. I was brought up a Blackmouth but my best mates Dad was a minister with the CoI, at least they had a sense of humour and made it a bit more fun! My better half was brought up RC and although there's is plenty she hates about it at least even the clergy got on the beers after!
DeleteSweet FA entertaining about them. The sermon is on occasion interesting but little else. Occasionally. I turn out for a requiem mass and find proceedings absurd. But if the bereaved get some comfort I am not going to piss on it.
Delete