Joy And Fun Are Fucking Killing Me ✑ Act Ⅸ

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

Platform Blues

Some years ago NIR introduced its new rolling stock. All very good, especially when you remember this stock was manufactured in Spain, a good Catholic country, so we can be sure a substantial share of the profits will go to the IRA.

The other night though, coming back by train from Swan Lake at the Grand Opera House, I noticed that it's already becoming seriously dilapidated. The head rests are greasy, seats dirty, carpets scruffy and threadbare. Discarded crisp packets and 'fizzy' drink bottles everywhere. Loafers lolling all over the place with their loathsome track suits, nauseating trainers, electronic 'cigarettes', covert cider, and 'smart' phones.

What's to be done? How to make public transport the exclusive preserve of the aesthetic and refined? My solution would be to bar all those earning under 20k a year from using the trains.

If that’s too much to ask for, we could reintroduce the class system. Instead of the old 1st and 2nd, we could have Cultured and Culchie classes. On purchasing a ticket the punter would be rigorously grilled by station staff to ascertain his/her knowledge and appreciation of the Fine Arts, Philosophy, Literature, and Natural Sciences. Those whose answers don't measure up go at the back of the train, in the shabbiest carriage.

In this way, I will travel home after the Opera, Ballet or whatever, in perfect serenity, with the erudite, elegant and stylish.

At the end of the journey I can wait in the station concourse for Jean to alight from the rear carriage and join me.

As I went out one morning

I'm worried about your health, said Jean.

Don't be, I replied, none of the chicks throwing themselves at me will tempt me away from you for that long ... probably ...

Exactly, she said, it's your mental health worries me particularly. You need to get out more ...

So I took Miss Lotte Lenya for a walk on the Mall in Armagh. Half way round there was a guy wearing, among other things, a tweed flat cap and tweed waistcoat. He had that little display stand with the free Bibles on it.

Hello ... ! he shouted, I'm Andrew ... !

I'm sorry, I said, but my partner has forbidden me to talk to people like yourself. She's worried about my mental health, you see ...

Eh ... ? he said.

Ok, I said, you’ve talked me into it, but I can only give you a couple of minutes. Did you ever read a book called Wise Blood ... ? By Flannery O'Connor ... ?

No, he said, but the Bible says ...

Actually, I switched off at that point. I mean, honestly, the Bible says, and Bob Dylan says, and Pol Pot says, and Stacey Dooley says, and I say ... Everybody says. Who cares ... ?

When I imagined he'd finished, I jumped in to say:

Well, Wise Blood's about this guy who was brought up a fundamentalist, like yourself, but he comes back home an atheist from World War II. So he jumps up on a car bonnet and proclaims the Church Of Jesus Christ Without Jesus Christ. It's his church of anti-religion, you see. A crisis of faith, if ever there was one. Anyway, in the end he walks around with barbed wire wrapped around his chest under his shirt, and sharp stones and pebbles in his shoes, and then a cop whacks him with a baton and he dies. Have you ever thought about taking an approach like that ... ?

I can see why your partner is worried about your mental health, said Andrew.

You shouldn't mock the afflicted, I said.

Robin Hood approximately

I needed 18 darts to hit treble 16 last night. I'm not usually just as bad as that. Still enough to make me wonder what on earth I think equips me to play darts, other than having a pot belly. Mind you, the treble bed is roughly 3.5cm by 1.4cm, and you're standing nearly 8 ft from the board, so it's an incredible display of artistry when you see a top pro hitting trebles, almost at will.

How come darts is dismissed as a bunch of fat slobs arsing about ... ? Michael van Gerwen and friends are actually the true existential gladiators, facing, utterly alone, the usually malign indifference of the universe on every checkout.

I watched him recently. 170 needed, three darts for it ... his big rubbery, lugubrious face, and chrome dome, gleaming in the stage lights ... he steps quickly up to the oche, leans in menacingly towards the board, no delay, thud-thud, that’s two treble 20s, then without the slightest pause switches for his third to the bull (diameter 1.4cm) ... what a finish ... !!

Walking down the streets of Paradise

You'll never believe this, but I have a huge pile of remaindered copies of my poetry collection Joy and fun are fucking killing me [Adze Press, 2014].

I urge you to consider it as a Christmas present for any friend you value who is suicidal or, even worse, thinking of becoming a singer/songwriter: it's best they know that the great existential tropes of everything being really awful, and getting yourself arrested for nothing, and then interrogated about nothing, like Josef K was, are yesterday’s news - thanks to yours truly, the librarian.

As I said to Jean, who is a Protestant and therefore genetically predisposed to Philistinism, It's not that I'm unhappy; quite the contrary, I'm absolutely miserable. Or as T S Eliot should have put it:

All that's lost will be recovered
on your diamond day:
the dead eyes, long tearful;
the fearless still fearful;
and the should that
could never have been may.

Let us pray. It's not that I died,
or ever clenched a fist;
but worse, miserere mei:
I didn't exist.

Look at me, Father, straining in my trance;
yet here is the dead heart of hearts.
All that's lost will be recovered
when nothing starts.

Is that poem in your book? asked Jean.

Of course, I replied.

No jokes then? she said.

What did the policeman say to T S Eliot? I replied.

I don’t know, she said, what did the policeman say to T S Eliot?

Hollow, hollow, hollow, gentlemen ... what haven’t we here then ... ?

Birth of the Blues

You know, I feel sorry for people like you, said Jean.

Why? I asked.

Because, she replied, you just can't be happy in the present, and just be here and enjoy it all while you can ...

Now, I don't have to tell you what a shallow statement that is; the kind of facile, lightweight utterance typically made by people who can stare at their hand forever and never get the impression that it has become a disconnected, alien something, like a big, repulsive maggot. That's the impression Jean-Paul Sartre got when he was just looking at his hand one time, so he started up Existentialism.

Mr Top Tips

Here's a couple of useful tips I learned from Mary Berry:

Cupboards are ideal for putting things in. They generally come with a door, or even two doors, so they can be shut when not 'in use'. For instructions on how to shut your own particular cupboard, please refer to the manufacturer's guidelines.

Bookshelves are perfect for storing books. I place mine on the shelf with the spines facing outwards. This lets me see what the book is without having to pull it out.

Can blue men sing the Whites ... ?

There's going to be an awful lot of darkies around, I said.

I hope you're not going to use that word on Facebook, replied Jean.

Of course not, darling, I said, but now that we've got rid of all the Polish plumbers and Bulgarian mafioso there's nobody to pick fruit and clean the bogs, so we'll have to get in boat loads of what the Queen Mother and Phil the Greek called 'blackamoors', from Bongo-Bongo Land. It's why Liz and Suella had a 90 minute shouting match.

Don't put that on either, she said.

Of course I won't, I said, but listen, don't you remember Enoch Powell? Rivers of blood ... ? And Eric Clapton: stop Britain from becoming a black colony, he said, get the foreigners out; get the wogs out; get the coons out; keep Britain white ...

Don't put that on either, she said, and, anyway, Clapton apologised about 40 years later ...

Well, I would have too, I replied, if I'd made a fortune out of the music made by the very people I'm slagging off, while they didn't get a bloody penny for it ... !

You are not to put all that on Facebook, she snapped.

Me and Malachi O’Doherty

I'm quitting the busking, I told Jean.

Does that mean you'll be around the house more? she asked.

I suppose so, I said.

Oh dear, she sighed.

It's all getting very old, I confessed, and these days I just don't seem to know who or what I am anymore, beset with doubt ...

That's dementia kicking in, she replied, and I'll never be able to look after you, so it'll have to be a care home ...

She was telling me the other day that in the Failed Statelet Prods are much less likely than Taigs to go to university. She sees this as discrimination whereas, for me, it's just confirmation that they are genetically predisposed to be a bit witless. And, in her case, under the impression she is, somehow, droll.

Listen to yourself, she said one time, you despise the Catholic Church and all its works, you loathe the GAA, you think the Plain People of Donegal should be forcibly relocated in Rwanda ... you might as well be a Prod, Uncle Tom ... !

Having not attended university herself I hadn't thought Jean was acquainted with the work of Mrs Beecher Stowe. Nevertheless, I know a felon when I hear one.

Calling me an Uncle Tom is hate speech ... ! I exclaimed.

Well then, give over, Aunt Sally, she replied.

Incidents of spiritual significance that ask us to momentarily dampen our self-obsession and consider the possibility of the divine

It had to happen: fate; synchronicity; call it what you will, if you’re the class of eejit who doesn’t know what a coincidence is. A priest stopped with me as I busked in Armagh ... !

Good to see a bit of life around the old place, he said.

Was he being sarcastic ... ? I mean, I’m 70, like – I have to go away now and die soon ...

Anyway, we fell into conversation, as you do with the clergy, for some reason. He is a big fan of Pope Francis, he told me; inspirational figure, agent of change and good intention, but cruelly pitted against near insuperable conservative odds, and so on. This put me under pressure to come up with a churchman I esteem. No easy undertaking, if you spent seven years being taught by the bastards at St Colman's College, Newry.

The best I could do was acclaim William of Ockham, mediaeval Franciscan friar, who first noted that, in trying to understand something, getting unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest route to the truth, or to the best explanation (Ockham’s Razor).

Admirable counsel, eh? I said.

But he had never heard of William of Ockham.

The tracks of her fears

There's a little bit of field beside our house which is a favourite haunt of Miss Lotte Lenya. I often take her into it. In the days when she could still hear well, if, on closing the front door, I said, We're going to the field, she immediately dashed out of the driveway and straight for the gate leading in.

I'm still in there regularly with her, but rather than just ramble about willy nilly, I've used our walks to mark out in the grass a very clear series of paths corresponding exactly to the layout of the railway lines at Central Junction in Belfast.

I remarked on this to Jean the other evening.

What are you talking about ... ?!? she said.

Yes, I replied, with tracks running to a terminus, in the sheugh, which represents Gt Victoria Street Station obviously, and others heading one way in the direction of what would be Portadown, and in the other to Lanyon Place, formerly Belfast Central. Just like the real thing.

She was silent for a while.

Then she said, I just hope you're joking ...

Obviously one believer

Of course, like any other lapsed-Catholic-existential-nihilist, I remain profoundly religious. Indeed, to paraphrase the man who quite rightly never even got close to a Nobel Laureateship, I am leaning out for faith, but I'll lean that way forever.

I'd join the Orange Order rather than go to Mass. Yet, each Sunday morning Miss Lotte Lenya and I are up at the scrake of dawn, walked, fed, and so on, so that we may listen to Vox Nostra on RTÉ lyric fm. It's a programme devoted to Early Music - Baroque and further back, much of it religious, and is introduced by some guy with an unspellable and unpronounceable name which, just for once, isn't some ludicrously Gaelic Revival one.

When Jean comes downstairs, looking for Radio Ulster and Leo Sayer, etc., I say, Don't turn that over, for I am at Mass ...

After it’s all over I intone, Benedictio Dei Omnipotentis + Patris, et Filiis, et Spiritus Sanctis Descendat super vos et maneat semper.

Jean, the Protestant, responds, Neque deditionem.

Ite Missa est, l say.

⏩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.