Did you hear about the Jewish kamikaze pilot ... ? He crashed his plane into his brother’s scrapyard ...
Terrifying incident yesterday. We boarded the ferry at Strangford. I happened to leave the car and head for the pedestrian deck. Looking up at the wheelhouse I saw the pilot. It was a woman.
Jesus, Mary and Josef K ... I bellowed down to Jean, We've got to get off this fucking shipwreck ... !!!
But, wouldn't you know it, the car was already boxed in on all sides by a pack of ignorant bastards, none of whom would consider reversing off again, even when I gave them a heads up about the kamikaze at the helm.
Dear God ...
Yes, said Jean, I read about it in the paper, they've appointed the first female pilot ever ...
Dirty beasts
Coming home on the train from Belfast recently, with Miss Lotte Lenya, I noticed, not for the first time, how much cleaner, more presentable, better behaved, and tidier she is than many of the other passengers. But ... I'm not one of those dysfunctional types who find dogs more deserving of our affection and sympathy than people.
Not at all. For, I'm told, there's a vast difference between the two. Even, I suppose, if the superior attributes and accomplishments credited to humans are not immediately, or, indeed, even after sustained acquaintance, apparent.
Be that as it may however, I'm a liberal, so I remain convinced that this parade of loud, loutish, littering, filthy trainers on seats, queue jumping, two seat hogging ignoramuses should incur no penalty other than be shot.
Terrifying incident yesterday. We boarded the ferry at Strangford. I happened to leave the car and head for the pedestrian deck. Looking up at the wheelhouse I saw the pilot. It was a woman.
Jesus, Mary and Josef K ... I bellowed down to Jean, We've got to get off this fucking shipwreck ... !!!
But, wouldn't you know it, the car was already boxed in on all sides by a pack of ignorant bastards, none of whom would consider reversing off again, even when I gave them a heads up about the kamikaze at the helm.
Dear God ...
Yes, said Jean, I read about it in the paper, they've appointed the first female pilot ever ...
Dirty beasts
Coming home on the train from Belfast recently, with Miss Lotte Lenya, I noticed, not for the first time, how much cleaner, more presentable, better behaved, and tidier she is than many of the other passengers. But ... I'm not one of those dysfunctional types who find dogs more deserving of our affection and sympathy than people.
Not at all. For, I'm told, there's a vast difference between the two. Even, I suppose, if the superior attributes and accomplishments credited to humans are not immediately, or, indeed, even after sustained acquaintance, apparent.
Be that as it may however, I'm a liberal, so I remain convinced that this parade of loud, loutish, littering, filthy trainers on seats, queue jumping, two seat hogging ignoramuses should incur no penalty other than be shot.
Country pie
I am, in fact, a better cook than Jean. The other night, as a surprise treat for her, I effectuated a cunning little wheeze. I had said earlier that I was taking her out for dinner at an expensive restaurant. But when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs, all dressed up and raring to go, I whisked her straight into the kitchen, sat her down and served up my signature dish - can based cinq genre des haricots sur pain grillé ... !!
I followed this with my homemade style, shop bought sourced, faux chocolate mallow, with optional raspberry fresh from the tin.
Well, honestly, the look on Jean's face ... She was speechless ... ! Not to mention the money she saved ...
The Queen of the New York streets
Elmore James. Howlin' Wolf. Muddy Waters. Hound Dog Taylor ...
Please don't start, said Jean.
All men, I continued, undeterred.
But who is Queen of the Blues. Victoria Spivey ... ? Etta Baker ... ? Memphis Minnie ... ?
All brilliant. But no. Top spot goes to the wonderful Mrs Dorothy Parker.
What a gal ... ! Poetess, short story writer, ruthless wisecracker and satirist. Sabre tongued, profoundly sarcastic, deeply pessimistic. Dog lover, feminist, anti-fascist, Black Rights activist, White Rock communist ...
She knew she was special, but not special enough, and so took it from there. Hit the booze. Several suicide attempts. Soft spot for gigolos.
A central theme emerges in her work: death. The death of loved ones, but more frequently the end of love or the death of dreams. What she wrote, usually with biting candour, and a combination of fragility and toughness, was punchy, cynical, and astonishingly distinctive compared to what was being written by other women.
Above all, it was sublimely witty. Which excuses everything, of course, and renders the rest of us simply unworthy.
What fresh hell is this ... ? she asked, on waking each morning;
when a barman asked what she was having she replied, Not much fun ...
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to, she said of the rich;
of a woman of some repute, [She] speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them;
literary luncheons, she said, were filled with people who looked as if they had been scraped out of drains;
when pursued by her editor for some proofs, Tell him I was too fucking busy — or visa versa;
of yet another one of her treacherous Lotharios, It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard;
her autobiography: Ducking for apples — change one letter and it’s the story of my life;
on hearing of the death of notably impassive President Coolidge, she asked, How could they tell... ?
after glimpsing James Joyce, and hearing of how taciturn he was, she remarked mockingly, I guess he's afraid he might drop a pearl.
So, to paraphrase Joyce himself when talking about Flann O'Brien, we can say about Dottie, There's a writer with the real comic spirit ... !
And here she is at her best in terse, concise and acerbic verse:
Two-volume novel
The sun's gone dim, and
the moon's turned black;
for I loved him, and
he didn't love back.
Relationships ... hey, hey, hey
When I lived in Belfast a few years ago I worked full time for Relate. I clocked up a total of 73 'saved' relationships. I got paid on commission, so a hastily contrived, and almost certainly temporary, papering over of the cracks in a bust up - by hook or by crook - was my modus operandi.
The main thing being just to get the terminally argumentative duo together again for a week or two, come what may, regardless of compatibility or consequences. Then submit a Successful Resolution report to the Chief Marjorie Proops, and get paid, before the inevitable resumption of Saturday night phone calls to the PSNI from concerned neighbours.
Anyway, and not only because recently reading John Updike had given me a heads-up on female chicanery, I sometimes felt that the men involved were somewhat befuddled. Like with prostate problems, the ominous portents seemed often to escape them.
So, here they are then, lads - the subtle, almost invisible, but, if you understand women, tell-tale signs your partner may be losing interest in you:
1) she sends a text, dumping you;
2) she's living with another man;
3) you don't exist.
We can woke it out
Hats off to somebody called Ryan Coogan who writes in a rather uncharmingly woke, and therefore by definition - sanctimonious and humourless, way for the Independent ... !!
He keeps an eye on J K Rowling, who is, apparently, a notorious transphobic. He has called her out for saying things like, A woman has a vagina. This kind of lie shows, according to Ryan, that 'she relies on the same spurious logic and semi-clever dog-whistling that has become a feature of anti-trans discourse in the past decade.'
It is not for me to comment on the authenticity of Ryan's take on rudimentary biology. But, as a Philosophy graduate, I must say I hope it is better than his grasp of the difference between trumpeting a right-on opinion and the actual criteria required in the real world to dismiss convincingly any contrary opinion as rooted in 'spurious logic'.
Mind you, I'd still rather become a Prod than read a word of Harry Potter or ask Keir Starmer to fix me up with a nice girl ...
On being special
People, I find, are intrigued by, but perhaps wary of, artists. This is understandable. After all, we are the embodiment of everything they aren't, but would, nevertheless, love to be: gifted; unique; sensitive; attuned; harmonic; and, in the choicest cases, spiritually connected.
So when I'm busking, though conscious I'm operating on a finer and much more discerning plane than them, I strive to offer touches that demonstrate empathy with ordinary people.
Sometimes, for instance, on finishing a piece, I look up and say hello to whoever is passing. Sometimes he or she grunts a Prole-type hello back. It’s a simple but universal exchange of greetings, maybe even understood by some of them, albeit across the unbridgeable, existential chasm of being that lies between us simply because they lack my primal, untamed flair for creation.
Or I may include I Can't Stop Loving You in my set, just to show how well I know where they're coming from, even if my complex sensibility bought me a one way ticket out of that dump a long time ago.
Later on, of course, I can be my other and real self, and it's off to the QFT to see the kind of arty film that lies beyond the stunted and atrophied aesthetic outreach of the herd in the street ... like, for example, the bland tube who asked me earlier if I knew anything by The Eagles ...
Repellent news
The eldest daughter of a neighbouring, straightforwardly Protestant and Unionist household has left home, and is now living with her boyfriend. And he is a Taig ... !
Naturally, I have made myself available to the family should they need counselling. I'm a Taig living with a Prod, after all, which is even worse than being a Prod who lives with a Taig.
I met the beleaguered Dad the other morning, and made it clear in our conversation that these theologically mulatto hook ups are a non-starter. And that he should consider beating seven different kinds of shite out of the boyfriend before it's too late, and his girl ends up eating the altar rails.
No offence to you personally, like, I said to him, but Jean has done everything in her power to get me into one of those tin shacks where the preacher shouts and spits all over you just to say you're going to blazes.
You're a very brave man, he said humbly, and I admire you ...
Abortion: the No-choice position
My literary termination is easily explained: responsibility lies with the priests of St. Colman's College, Newry, at whose hands, as I may have said before, I took some lathering. Due entirely to them, and through no innate shortfall on my own part, I have zero talent, a chronic lack of insight, negligible perception, and a predilection to explore new depths of shallowness.
And this not only because of frequent clerical largesse with the mother and father of all haymakers to the pit of my stomach. There were regular smacks in the bake for my inner child, too. On one occasion, for instance, as English homework, we were asked to compose a short poem. Mine, delicately autobiographical, with my defenceless core shyly leaning out for validation, was called The Dreamer, and went:
The Dreamer sits with twisted eye
casting a glance upon
the clear and lonely desert sky
and the sad sands rolling on.
When Fr. Boyle read this out in class he paused for a time, and then said, Praetorius, you are a misunderstood young cabbage ...
And so it went on; the needling and the damage done ...
Everybody must get stoned
Gallstone, said the doctor.
Have you noticed, he went on, any yellow discolouring of the skin ... ?
No, I answered.
Jean, who was with me, said, Well, apart from that big streak down the middle of your back ...
Video, please kill the Radio Star
I'm listening to Nolan, about these new safe centres for injecting drugs in Belfast. Initially I thought, What a great idea ... If you fancy a fix and are running low, just pop in and shoot up ... !
But then Jim Wells reminded me of the reality. If we allow this to happen, every man, woman and child in N Ireland will seize the chance to become a heroin addict, just as they all had abortions and got into gay marriages when the rules were changed in those areas.
The new centres are a definite no, then. So, how do we cope with this pushers and junkies malarkey ...? An interesting fact emerged in the discussion: during the last round of troubles there was very little drug traffic here. Are you thinking what I'm thinking ... ? Of course you are ...
Exactly ... we start up the troubles again, and hey presto, no drug problem ... ! Ok, there'll be a few fusspots dissing this kind of dig out, but surely in a choice between two blatant evils it's better the devil you know ... I mean we still hate each other, and slaughter on the streets has to be a better option than the needle and the damage done ...
La Belle Chienne sans Merci
Jean wants to
go to Lanzarote.
I have to say,
But what about Lotte ... ?!?
A French film's on at the QFT ... ?
and Jean says, That's for you and me.
Big nudey women a cert on the menu ... !
But what about Miss Lotte LenyU ... ?
So that is why Jean sojourns here,
alone and palely loitering.
Miss Lotte lies upon the sofa.
And no tickets are bought ...
Table talk chez Praetorius
Everyone needs something to look forward to, said Jean.
Yes, I agreed, even if, like me, it's only the Fair City Omnibus ...
You know, I went on, I'd watch Ros na Rún too, but on it they all speak that Tá Mé Mahogany Gaspipe guff. Reminds me of the only bit of luck I had in the whole of my childhood ...
Which was ... ? asked Jean.
My favourite aunt died very prematurely the day before I was off to the Gaeltacht for a month, I said, so I got out of going.
Gaeltacht?
It's where the young Gaels go, I explained, to practise and preserve the sweet Gaelic dialect, which is oftener in their mouths than a scrap of food, as Bonaparte O'Coonassa remarked.
Oh dear, said Jean.
Yes, I said, like it was four weeks of beating the shite out of each other with hurleys, and bawling out Sean South From Garryowen, and then getting tore in to the evening spuds. All in Irish. Preserving our culture. In the rain.
You should hear yourself sometimes, said Jean ... a republican ...
Lower case 'r' there, please ... ! I interrupted.
Yes, I know, she said, as well as, lapsed or not, a Taig, yet never a day passes that you're not mocking and sneering at all things Oirish, as you call it ...
Fair enough, I said, but that's because the priests at St Colman's in Newry ...
Oh, don't start with that ... ! she snapped.
Listen, I said, I'm as Irish as the next man ...
Aye, she interrupted, as long as he's not - and remember these are your descriptions - a mummy's boy/pervy priest, or a boney-arsed, baseball-capped, GAA bogman, or a Hunger-Strike-Now-For-Street-Names-In-Irish! pain in the arse. So, by your analysis, the next man can only be a Prod ...
That's how bad things are, I said.
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