Z Factor
My big break . . . ! On Saturday a man
says to me,
Sounds good . . . listen, I run the pub on the corner . . . punters would like it. There's a bench opposite, so why don't you play there?
I'll see you right for a pint and your lunch.
Fair enough, I said, you're
on . . . !
The gateway to a residency? Maybe . . . at last. A weekly or
monthly gig. Dream come true ...!
Within a couple of minutes Miss Lotte Lenya and I are there.
I don't know how it's going with the al fresco drinkers and lunchers at the
pub, I'm too nervous to take my eyes off the fretboard.
After a while the owner comes over. Listen, he says, do
you know any of the classics though?
I begin Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
No, he says,
laughing, I mean stuff like Parisienne Walkways, Ride on, or maybe Van
Morrison . . . ? That's what people want.
Well, shortly we are back at my usual bench, without pint or
lunch or residency. There's nothing more than this. How could it ever be
otherwise? Sacrifice Blind Boy Fuller for a balloon like Van Morrison . . . ?
Parisienne Walkways shite? Christy fucking Moore with his finger in his ear, Royde
on, Oy cud niver go wit chew . . . ?!?
Shove your pub.
Men at work
I cut the grass earlier. Was so hot
outside I then had a beer.
That's two manly type things in a
row I've done, I remarked to Jean.
Sometimes, she replied, methinks
there's a closet trans woman here who doth protest too much.
This is so typically misinformed of Jean. A few days ago I
was out in the little paddock behind the house. I happened to be burning all my
son's Harry Potter books.
What on earth are you doing?
she asked.
J K Rowling said it's a fact that only a woman can be a
woman, I replied, and these days we
call people like that out, I mean, the brass neck of her, it's easy to prove
anything with just facts, for God's sake . . . !
Some people will say they told me so. When I first met her
on that dating site, Jean was the typical woman: only interested in chalking up
as many random sexual encounters as possible. A world apart from me, the
typical man: I was seeking a mature, long term, monogamous match founded on
genuine affection and shared interests.
Take the A stream
It used to be simple. Newry serves
as a good example. As I may have mentioned before, I attended St Colman's
College there with the other smart boys. The less bright lads went to St
Joseph's Secondary. And the irredeemably dense to the Abbey, where they were
lathered by the Christian Brothers.
Sinn Fein are strong supporters of vetted free speech. Thus
when John O'Dowd led the Education Ministry it was politically incorrect to
point out that much of the opposition to 'selection' comes from parents whose
children have not 'done well', or who fear they won't do well. Just as much of
the alleged 'trauma' suffered is instilled in children by anxious parents and
the media, and/or experienced by parents on behalf of the children.
Not to mention opposition fostered by 'socialist' (i.e.
fascist) 'radicals' (i.e.Catholic), like Sinn Fein. And also the on trend
'teachers' from a humble, but tyranically 'egalitarian' dictatorship of the
proletariat.
All must now have prizes.
It has long been Sinn Fein, BBC NI, and Morrison's (pub
across the road from Beeb, where the 'journos' sometimes 'drink') policy that
we should have comprehensive schools, where 'progressive' teachers join with
working class 'rough diamonds' in wreaking vengeance on any pupil who is
cleverer than the others.
Supporters of this dogma can still be seen knocking on doors
in 'deprived' areas of Belfast, with a tennis racket in hand, to ask the
bemused residents if they have ever seen a tennis racket. This is supposed to
illustrate how many Andy Murrays we have lost because children who 'fail' or
don't sit the transfer test never get the chance to go to a school where tennis
is played.
[Editorial note: The Quill has been informed that Mr
Praetorius's own son did, in fact, pass the transfer test, attend Methodist
College, and then 'go up' to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. However,
Michael states that the boy's assumption into the privileged top 2% of the
student hierarchy has no connection whatsoever with the views expressed here in
his column. Apparently, the son is a brilliant tennis player too.]
A
history of Philosophy (abridged)
Something's wrong, I said to Miss Lotte Lenya, when we arrived back home.
First time busking in Belfast for a long time. My mojo gone.
Mistakes in every tune. Not dark yet, but it’s getting there. I didn't even dare
look at my hands, in case they appeared to be big fat maggots, like Antoine
Roquentin's.
You will never be happy,
I had said to a man who stopped to philosophise, as they do, if you continue
to search for a meaning to life.
As
part of the search he'd taken a 14 hour course on
the web: The Entire History of Philosophy.
14 hours . . . ?!? I can do it in three words, I said.
Go
on, then, he
said.
Why? Why not . . . ?
Making a philosophy of the
dog's dinner
Miss Lotte's Lenya’s next two meals:
chicken and ham pie; then chicken and ham without the pie. Because I read
Philosophy at Queen's I'm able to ponder the theological and humanistic
implications of this bill of fare.
Jean says, Lotte doesn't know how lucky she is.
But isn't it appropriate that a
beloved pet can bask in the love of her owner and never know hunger or pain or
neglect?
And thus never have to be aware how lucky she is?
For in this respect Miss Lotte is
better off than significant numbers of the world's children, whose only
experience of the love of their owner, God, is starvation, famine, war,
cruelty, devastation, despair – all the usual suspects.
But why is it that God doesn’t love
his children even as you love your dog? Behold a hollow, shameless crew of
creeping Jesuses to clarify your grievous mistake. When good things happen it's
God's miraculous bounty, but when bad things happen it's our wickedness.
Or it may be a spellbindingly
grotesque variation on that theme: namely that the torture of children is
necessary for the fulfilment of a greater Divine design, which we can't
understand as yet.
In that case, don't bother explaining later, Lord . . .
She’s a Saving Babies Operative
I was standing outside the City Hall
in Belfast the other day. A thin, drawn and serious girl, with a clipboard and
folder, approached me. She asked if I would look at some photographs. Why
not? I said gamely.
She showed them.
Those children have been murdered, she said, her voice quivering slightly.
You mean, they were fully formed little Man Utd, Celtic or
Rangers fans as early as that? I asked.
Well, yes, she said, I
suppose you could put it that way.
And she smiled a tiny smile, amused, I assume, by that
perpetually endearing male tendency to translate momentous issues into
footballing parlance.
I'm a QPR fan myself,
I said, so, to be honest with you, I’d say murder's too good for them... !
Her male colleague joined us
There's no need for that kind of talk, he said, from a sacred mountain peak of his humble and
unadorned, but ex-cathedra, rectitude. He had a huge steel crucifix hanging on
a chain around his neck, and was clutching Rosary Beads.
Hey, man, I said, which
decade are you on? The 1720s . . . ? Boom boom . . . !!
But he didn't get the joke.
Angels from the realms of glory
Disturbing news. I read recently
that physicists have so far discovered 16 elementary particles . . . near enough
anyway. But here's the spooky bit: to build the atoms from which everything we
know of is made, you only need 3 of them . . . ! If you have the up quark, the
down quark, and the electron then you're in with a great chance to end up being
paged in reception one of these days . . .
So what are the other particles for? We have no idea. Currently
unemployed. Maybe they have something to do with the 95% of the universe about
which we know nothing. Dark matter and dark energy, and so on.
All dreadfully unsettling, though,
for lapsed Catholics whose formative years were a paradise of certainty and
security, thanks to going to Mass, and having a guardian angel. Guardian angels
were real angels, not the kind of crap, terminally twee ones you hear crackpot
women talking about on breakfast TV.
Sometimes I wonder how mine is doing without me. He looked
like me, had my name, was like me in every respect (not the bad bits – that was
Satan’s wicked guardian angel on my other shoulder), and we went everywhere together.
You always had someone to talk to, and I did plenty of that.
It was my understanding that everyone had a guardian angel. So, with the great decline in faith, I think about what they're at nowadays. Discarded, and still bursting with pent-up enthusiasm and zeal, but no outlet for it? Might they be, in fact, the dark energy we're hunting . . . ?
World
gone wrong
Anyone of a reflective nature must
ask: was coronavirus the result of gay marriage and increased women's rights . . .? I remember many years ago, as a student, turning the corner into some or
other Belfast street to find the late Ian Paisley, atop an empty crate, red in
the face, spraying spittle, as he thundered at me to save Ulster from sodomy.
We haven't been able to do that. And look where we are. They’re
even getting married. And my own sister's one, for God’s sake . . . ! The folks
back home just don’t understand; and it's difficult for many devoutly
charitable Christians not to draw the obvious conclusion: we have reaped a well
deserved whirlwind, in the shape of the pandemic . . . because we’ve exalted
perversion . . . !
The extension of basic human rights to women, allowing them
to control their own bodies, and go to school, and leave the house, and so on,
hasn't helped either. Good living Christians know that St Paul understood only
too well how feckless, stupid, shallow, lusty, and mad women are. Consider 1
Timothy 2:11-15:
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all
subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp
authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
deceived was in the transgression.
Not a bloke you'd want to introduce your girlfriend to, by
the sound of it. But he’s only delivering the Lord's take on these Delilahs; don’t
shoot the messenger.
Therefore, I just wanted to give a
big shout-out here for that righteous group so far overlooked in the rounds of
applause, and in the history of the pandemic. Namely, those true believers who
were forced, by our devilry, to forgo any notion of charity, fellowship, even
basic humanity, so as to exult in slaughter, and offer it up to Jesus, who sent
this plague to decrease the surplus population of hardened sinners, dedicated to
evil.
And,
say what you like about Jesus, but history shows that He does seem to need this
kind of brutal cull regularly, for some reason or other. But ours not to reason
why, as the Bishop frequently reminded the Chorister.
Bourgeois blues
Jean said to me, I'm fed up with
you putting posts on Facebook that misrepresent me.
Don't worry, darling,
I replied, I always point out that you are a Prod, and therefore genetically
predisposed to have unsavoury prejudices and irrational opinions. So people who
read the posts understand you can't help yourself . . .
No, she said, it's
just a none too subtle way of getting across what is actually your own
sectarianism and bigotry . . . what psychologists term 'projection'.
Jean, and this, I’m afraid, is the typical mindset among what
is now a minority (Protestant) population in the Failed Statelet, has, rather
than face facts, resorted to what we philosophers call the argument ad
hominem. She attacks me, snidely casting doubt on my character and personal
attributes in an attempt to discredit my argument, with no real reference to,
or evidential rebuttal of, its substance.
Clearly implying, too, that I am a
feckless, workshy benefits cheat doing the double, too fond of a drop, and with
an irresponsibly large brood of thieving brats who’d only have wrecked that
house, so Austin Currie and I had no bloody business squatting there in the
first place.
A
pale shadow, and echo, of a once glorious tradition which gave us Alex Higgins,
Romper Rooms, and chicken pie hunger strikes.
⏩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. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.
I reckon yer Guardian Angel is touching their chin to their knees and comfort rockin' n' screaming Michael.
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