Joy And Fun Are Fucking Killing Me ✑ Act Ⅷ

Michael Praetorius ✒ with the eighth act in his satirical series.

10 reasons not to live in the country:

hospitals are far away;

no streetlights in the lane, so it's dark at night;

country people often have dark or tragic secrets, like in many of William Trevor's short stories. Mostly of the lost, or unexpressed, or unrequited love and longing kind, not the murdered wives thrown in the cesspit kind, so fashionable nowadays. Anyway, Jean's head is too big to fit through the opening to our septic tank;

cows stare dolefully at you from behind a hedge, as if they know their terrible fate and silently hold you responsible. You know that meat is murder, and yet there's cottage pie for tea;

farmers cut those same hedges twice a year and so you get punctures when cycling at those times;

if your dog is off the lead and does no. 2s in a big field, it can be hard to find them, but all the livestock and children will die agonisingly if you don't;

autumn leaves fall from the trees on to your lawn, and you spend ages wondering if you should get one of those blower things, then just spend more ages trying to sweep them up without one;

lambs get their heads caught in fences, and netting, and whatever, and bleat continuously for mammy, who is standing helplessly nearby. So, even though they're not yours, you have to go out and free them before they strangle themselves. And you get no thanks. Indeed, going by their frantically terrified reaction to being untangled and carried back to mammy, you might as well have been Jack the Ripper;

not many existential nihilists about so far;

one of your neighbours might be in the Orange Order, or, even worse, the GAA.

He’s a total bastard

It's not just because everything he did - records, poetry, novels, the whole lot - was a dead loss, that I mock Lenny Cohen. However, it's only now, 50 years later, I can bear to talk about the real trauma ...

I was at QUB. A Friday night student party. We were all sat around in a big circle, a few drinks, etc. Candlelight. Lots of pretty girls. A guitar was being passed around. My understanding, when I took up guitar, had been that it would be a real chick magnet. Experience had shown how extraordinarily wrong that was, in my case anyway: the most positive reaction to my playing I'd ever got from girls was indifference.

Nevertheless, in those days hope sprang eternal; so when the guitar reached me I tentatively fumbled and muttered my way into the opening chorus of Mr Tambourine Man. Then that first verse ... 'my weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet ... ' even now, when I sing it on the street, it's still a perfect expression of the existential condition, Bob ... !

But just before I could lay that admission of my lonely, broken, personal cosmos on the girls' tender sensibilities, the lad beside me, a curly haired and bearded type of the genus Gnome, grabbed the guitar away and snapped, Listen, man, Dylan's just a word rhymer, Cohen's a real poet ...

And he plunked his way into Lenny's great clunker, Suzanne. I looked at the girls. They looked at him. I went home alone.

No. 10

As an atheist, I've always been sceptical when believers tediously relate their stories of personal epiphany and/or sightings of the 'divine'. Yet an odd thing happened at Loftus Road yesterday. It was half time and there was some sort of commotion on the pitch. I saw a group of men in the centre circle, not the players, but middle aged and older, dressed in suits, ties etc.

It was then, incredibly, I glimpsed Divinity. One of these men was slim, white haired and had a distinctly visible aura, gleaming with charisma and holiness. Despite a lifetime's cynicism I just seemed to know that I was in the presence of the Lord. A revelatory wave of belief and ecstasy swept through me, and I felt cleansed, whole, justified, and saved. God had revealed himself to me.

Yes indeed, it was Mr Stanley Bowles, QPR's greatest ever number 10, hopeless gambler, carouser, and absolute hero. Stan didn’t need a right foot, his left did it all. If he’d bet big, someone in the crowd would hand him a newspaper so that he could check the racing results while Dave Thomas, or Don Masson, or Gerry Francis was trotting out to take a corner.

He was being inducted into the ex-players association. Rodney Marsh, we never missed you.

Blue remembered hills

Sometimes when I'm 'playing', people say to me, Michael, this Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup and Black Snake Moan stuff is grand, but does it ever remind you of A E Housman?

Of course it does! He and I were distinguished classicists together at UCL. When we first met he was a devout Anglican. I gave him the heads-up that all that stuff is de trop, and he soon caught on. So much so that when an immensely rare, original Coverdale Bible of 1535 was discovered in the UCL library and presented to the Library Committee, on which we both sat, Housman remarked that it would be better to sell it to 'buy some ... useful books with the proceeds'. What a wag!

He had this notion in his poetry of young, 'athletic' lads dying noble deaths and leaving broken hearted 'admirers', usually himself, behind. One fellow don remarked that A.E. seemed to be ‘descended from a long line of maiden aunts'.

Most of his poems are marked by deep pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation. Brilliant. In this respect he is your ideal man in the pub, and I urge you to abandon all hope or faith and get tore into Housman. For example:

Into my heart an air that kills
from yon far country blows:
what are those blue remembered hills,
what spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain;
the happy highways where I went
and cannot come again.

Next time: Thomas Hardy arranges God's funeral.

The deep end

Unlikely as it seems, I often forget the fact that, as well as being the great musicianor, I'm also quite the poet. I once told W H Auden that he's a bit like Bob Dylan, in that they both sometimes have a series of unconnected and obscure lines in their heads, bung them all together, and call the result a poem. Anybody can do that fluff, I told him.

I've raided my own back catalogue to get a couple of things altogether much less shallow:

Eschatological motorpsycho nightmare

I've never understood the desire
for an afterlife;
I mean, you might run into someone,
like ... er ... your ex wife ...

Happy ending

They had the whole of happiness,
a highway ... ahead of them;
but, alas, it was meant for some other pair
... instead of them.

Oh, lonesome me

To be honest, I've never had any problem getting the women. Except into bed.

At 16, and cripplingly shy, I somehow mustered just enough courage to ask out the girl of my dreams. On the school bus home from Newry. She was a Sacred Heart girl. We had been pals a long time. I (secretly) wrote poems to her, such was my passion.

But, Michael, she replied, I've always thought of you as a brother ...

Dear God ...

A few years later, at Queen's, I fell in with a bunch of lads, one of whom was a big hit with the chicks. We all shared a house, where our Don Juan had the big top floor room. He needed space; for his contribution to urban blues, if you know what I mean. One evening he was typically hard at it, this time with some girl he'd coaxed over from Scotland, so good was he.

Downstairs we cynically aspirant ladykillers were also hard at it - watching The Onedin Line, and scoffing our takeaways. I answered a knock on the front door. It was Lothario's long time, much put upon, at-her-wit's-end-with-his-philandering girlfriend. An awkward moment, for sure. I stood there, dumbstruck.

His light's on, she said, looking up at the bedroom window.

She dashed past me, and took three flights of stairs in seconds. Then there was hammering on a door, angry screeching, shouting, accusations, bad words, and kerfuffling. Next thing, girlfriend careens back down the stairs, crying hysterically, bolts out the door and down the street. So it hadn't gone well.

The following day I was in the Sudent Union snack bar, eating apple crumble and custard while I read read Keith Waterhouse's column in the Daily Mirror. The girlfriend appeared from somewhere and sat down with me.

What did you think of last night then ... ? she asked miserably, her eyes still red and brimming with tears.

That was a quare poser. For I was stuck somewhere between unashamed admiration for, and envy of, a man who could have women actually fighting over him (the stuff of fantasies ... !), and sympathy for her, heartsick and helplessly hoping. Oh dear. I was much the same then as I am now: self-absorbed, withdrawn, obtuse. Relationships ... ? Hey hey hey ... I didn't have any, so, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

To reflect this ignorance, and stall for time, I finally said I wasn't the right person to ask.

Oh, but you are, she replied, you aren't like him or his other mates; you're the only one of them who thinks about things, and I can talk to you ...

And there you have it, men. The story of my life. I'm a brother, or they cry on my shoulder. But as for the sack ... ? Forget it, Quasimodo. I mean, for fuck's sake ...

Only sex, or the lack thereof, can break your heart

So, pound-shop Casanova, said Jean, you finally admit that you've never even got a look-in with women in the bed department ... ?

Listen, I said, I'm only 70, it's early days, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry ...

Jean is a Protestant and therefore loves, of course, to mock Taigs. I deliberately excluded her from those who could see a recent facebook post in which I blew the gaff on me and the birds (and bees), but obviously some stool-pigeon grassed me up.

Let me just quote you, she jeered. You said that when you're busking, women call you 'sex with a guitar' ... Ha ha ... !!

Jean doesn't know who David Crosby is, but in an interview some years ago he admitted that the only reason he picked up a guitar in the first place was to score some chicks. And he certainly managed to do that, even before The Byrds and CSN&Y.

I can't deny it figured in my thinking too when I began to plink and plonk. But that’s all it ever did. Nothing was delivered. Or as T S Eliot puts it:

Between the idea

and the reality
Between the motion
and the act
falls the Shadow ...

Between the conception
and the creation
Between the emotion
and the response
falls the Shadow ...

Between the desire
and the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
and the descent
falls the Shadow ...

And it was definitely just me and my shadow. A whimper, but definitely no bangs ... if you see what I mean ...

They won the Sam Maguire once

Here we are at the Studio Theatre in Armagh’s totemic Marketplace 'Theatre'. Featured tonight is a 'leading' but, for some reason, unnamed NI drama group. Doing Keith Waterhouse's homage, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.

It was to run for two nights. Poor take up of tickets so one was cancelled. Still the place is almost half empty. We kick off at 8pm. But we don't. This is Armagh, the 'city' where absolutely everyone knows everyone else. It's now nearly 8 15. Sean and Michelle and Tommy (or whoever) are still gossiping in the foyer, and the girl on the door has asked the company to hold back until her friends (of course she knows them all!) finally exhaust their jolly tale-swapping of the kids' achievements and who's shagging who, and finally decide to take their seats.

Same thing at the interval. The tannoy announces the performance will begin again in three minutes. But Gerry and Denise and Paul (or whoever) are having a smoke outside and the craic is so good that they can't be arsed returning just yet. And the girl on the door asks the company to hold back until her friends (of course she knows them all!) have another cigarette. Fifteen minutes later the show resumes.

Talk to Armagh people. They will tell you how lucky they are to have so much 'culture' in the 'city', and at half the price of Belfast! Across the way in the main theatre an Eagles 'tribute' band was playing. They are called Talons. There was a stall selling Talons t-shirts and other memorabilia. Let me get this right: some people will buy souvenirs and cds of a band who are, at best, the palest of imitations of the real thing. But why not? Armagh is, after all, a kind of 'tribute' city ... the palest imitation of the real thing ...

Trying too hard

I'm one of that select band of men who have managed to run over themselves. I was badly parked in Armagh one day and asked Jean to nip across to the shop and get me some chocolate. Because she is a Protestant, and therefore congenitally unhelpful, she refused. So I ran over myself ...

No more tar brush

Hats off to Richard Grayson and East Flatbush University Press ... !

We’ve all been there. Monitored by the wokesters, we can no longer call a spade a spade, or, indeed, even a darkie. For instance, once upon a time The Nigger Of The Narcissus was one of Joseph Conrad's most frequently read books. I loved it when taking English at university. However, due to its ... er ... quirkily retro title, it has been unfairly shunned for decades.

Now, however, no need to glue yourself to the road because of it, for thanks to editor Richard Grayson and East Flatbush University Press, we have a new, non-offensive edition of Conrad's thought-provoking tale of the sea; one that is totally inoffensive to people of colour who are, no longer, coloured people, somehow. Even your wife and servants can enjoy it.

Every instance of the N-word has been scrubbed from the text and replaced with 'nice guy' - which is just what West Indian (and that nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse) sailor James Wait really is. A classic work of literature, The Nice Guy Of The Narcissus, is now available for a new, all-inclusive generation.

Fenian fatigue

The bastion of Unionism that used to be Belfast City Hall is now a Fenian cesspit, said Jean, when she heard that a portrait of past Sinn Fein Lord Mayor, Danny Baker, is going on display there.

In it he is seated in an armchair, holding an Armalite, and with his feet propped up on a ballot-box. On the wall behind him is a portrait of a chimpanzee in a suit being paraded by what appears to be an aristocratic couple, with the caption, Royal baby leaves hospital.

10 reasons to live in the country:

your field type cocker spaniel will love it all her days;

your partner will hate it;

on a clear night you go outside, stand under an impossibly wonderful starry dome, and marvel how in all that infinite vastness there is a God who has the time and inclination to be having kittens about how tiny little you conducts your sex life;

you have the best neighbours in the world i.e. cows, sheep, Ivy and her lovely foal;

wood pigeons mate for life, for convenience (not out of love); nevertheless, to watch the same pair every day in autumn, snacking on the windfall beneath your apple tree, must be a sure sign of something or other;

when practising guitar you can give it a bit of welly;

in the middle of the night, you are outside with the binoculars, trying to see Saturn. Along the lane, initially not noticing you, shuffles a badger. Finally it sees you, pauses apprehensively, then shuffles on, hoping for the best, I suppose;

there aren't many people in the country, so you don't have to waste your time talking to anybody;

all around is Mother Nature, splendid evidence of almighty God's Intelligent Design; although, no harm to Him, like, but had I been present at the Creation, I'd have made numerous rational and pertinent suggestions for a much better ordering of things than He managed;

if any of your primate neighbours are in the Orange Order or GAA, you can have a damned good laugh at them, since they must be bird-brained wing nuts.

⏩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.