Poetry Corner
So,
farewell then Orchard County;
you won the Sam Maguire,
a very long time ago, and the Orchardmen
are still talking about it.
And to Armagh:
city of Saints and Scholars
(even if no particular contemporary, never mind recent, example springs to mind);
of glorious ecclesiastical legacy (Archbishop Robinson's Observatory, and that's it);
of high culture (another Eagles/Abba/Stones/etc. tribute band in the Marketplace Theatre next week);
of spectacular Georgian architecture,
like, about two dilapidated terraces that is,
but a clergyman lives in one and so
there can't be a one way traffic system,
which would make it easier for everybody ...
but too noisy for him.
Jean says, Come on . . . .
there must be something good about it . . .
Yes. The road out of it.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Armagh;
it isn't fit for humans now,
there isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death ... !
Me too
I was just settling down to sleep last night when, completely uninvited, Jean planted what she called a 'goodnight kiss', smack on my lips. Entirely non-consensual, for I have no truck with such inappropriately excitable shenanigans.
Her reckless snog has sent a shockwave through Portaferry; people are outraged that she kissed me without my go-ahead, and brazenly so. Community and church leaders have united in their condemnation, and called on Jean to submit to re-education on the subject of men.
The PSNI have confirmed the opening of a criminal investigation. An officer from its Sensitivity Training Unit gave this statement:
Let it be said with the utmost simplicity and directness: there is nothing bad in sex, and the conventional attitude in this matter is morbid. No other one evil in our society is so potent a source of human misery, since not only does it directly cause a long train of evils, but it inhibits that kindliness and human affection that might lead us to remedy the other remediable evils, economical, political, and racial, by which humanity is tortured.
On the other hand, though, this woman has clearly overstepped the mark, and she's heading for the slammer.
Restless farewell
Sad enough saying goodbye to some of my neighbours, but what to say to this very bold, beautiful girl . . . ?
With me, Ivy has always been prosaic about matters. If I arrive at the gate without grub, she's not interested. And departs immediately.
I hadn't seen her for nearly a fortnight, but she noticed me in the lane yesterday and came galloping over.
I've nothing for you, bold girl, I said.
She put her big head over the gate, sniffed all around me, and established the awful truth for herself.
I moved off. To my surprise she stayed at the gate, big horsey gaze on me.
Lo and behold, but just for once in her life, she allowed me to stroke and pet that big hard head, scratch behind those ears, and generally cosset her for as long as I stood there. Free of charge ... !
Maybe she likes me, I said excitedly to Jean later on, independent of the apples and carrots and so on, I mean ...
You're desperate for a horse to 'like' you . . . ?!? she said.
Yes, I said
Don't get a horse. I've never had one, but if this is what it's like to leave behind someone else's . . .
Mass missive
It's a few years 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 instantly.
It’s a holy terror that we have to depend on the Orange Order to keep these traditions going.
Meanwhile, up at the altar, there was a creepy pair of old timers from the congregation, who were allowed to give out communion. From their demeanour, they were what my mother would have called ‘altar rail eaters’. As a confirmed atheist I draw the line at this. If you're doolally enough to believe that you are partaking of the body and blood of Our Lord, it should at least be dished out by the sky pilot, not some oul bag of a nosey parker.
And when it was all over, there were the same senior s(c)urfers tidying things away with their grizzled, grubby hands in the sacred space of the tabernacle! I mean, for fuck's sake, God knows where those digits were inserted recently, let alone when they were last washed properly.
The most traumatic bit was when the priest sprang an invitation on us 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 went along with this, but I stood firm, arms resolutely folded until the wave of vulgar, spurious, 'spiritual' feel good baloney receded.
The Pol Pot diaries (cont’d)
Are you really going to keep wearing that cap? asked Jean. With the Russian badge on it?
Yes, I replied. And it's a Soviet Union badge, actually.
Even though Stalin and the rest of them were ruthless dictators ... ?!?
Don't be so presentist, darling, I replied, it was ok to be a tyrant back then. It was expected of you in Russia. Still is, by the look of things.
But millions were starved, or shot, or imprisoned, or tortured, or disappeared, or God knows what ... ! she said.
But some of them might have been guilty of something or other, fifth columnists or whatever, I said. Like, supposing Stalin killed 100 million people, ok? And suppose only 10% of them (it was probably more) were capitalist running dogs, right? That means he got at least 10 million Quislings out of the way. So it wasn't all bad news ...
And all so that people could have shops with empty shelves and live in poky little badly constructed flats, she went on.
But sure people are spoiled nowadays, I pointed out.
Handyman
We had one in Armagh. A man so moronic that he awoke, one morning, in a field, with a hangover, and believed that God was speaking to him. This 'revelation' is his favourite topic of conversation, and he never tires of telling how an omnipotent, omniscient being took time off from running the universe to intervene in the life of one miserable little wanker. Yes, he’s humble enough to be the entire focus of Divine attention.
Anyway, here he comes to do some work for us. Fearless in his righteousness, he can be relied upon to speak God's truth. For example, if you are separated or divorced he will say clearly, and in front of your current partner, that he hopes you and your spouse can get back together. If confronted with the accusation that it is none of his business, and therefore rude (not to mention arrogant and presumptuous), he blithely confirms that, once chosen, he has a moral duty to expose wickedness wherever it is festering.
He's never read a book in his life, he can barely read or write, he knows nothing beyond the small world of his squalid little 'church' with its close knit band of backstabbing, bigoted, racist retards. But he is a fountain of expertise on any conceivable subject, with an unerring moral compass that permits him to apportion salvation and damnation with terrifying certainty.
Can you imagine his fulminating reaction when he insisted on friending me on facebook, and saw my page ... !? At Combe Florey we are laughing still at the unreconstructed idiocy of this nincompoop, ludicrously self-important, creeping Jesus . . .
Mind you, he charged us a Hell of a lot . . .
Pseud’s Corner
At the movies in that little picture house at Queen’s University last night. Some arty thing, but no big nudey women in it, disappointingly. I would have dozed off, but what is it with people ... ? They cannot simply be quiet. Unending waves of coughing and sneezing and hawking and throat clearing.
That's my last time at the Queens Phlegm Theatre . . .
Shocking revelations: culprit unmasked
But why, people ask, why on earth Portaferry . . . ?
Yes, the answer is, Miss Lotte Lenya.
Unbeknownst to me, and for the best part of two years, Lotte had been shitting all over Kilclief, when Jean had her little house there . . . ! Front gardens, back gardens, communal gardens, fields, hedges, ditches, on car bonnets, in children's buggies, supermarkets, on the ferry, in school playgrounds, baptismal fonts, and on the handlebars of frail pensioners' mobility scooters.
Moreover, her poo was responsible, at the last count, for the deaths of 39 calves. The local farmer revealed the devastation inflicted; in a statement to the PSNI he said:
A couple of years ago I'd heard that a man was walking his dog in my fields. Other people walk their dogs in them, but friends of mine who live near this character in Kilclief, told me that he's a bloody blow-in, which means his dog's shite is a killer for sure.
Anyway, I was doing a bit of fencing one day, just after he moved to Kilclief, and in he comes to the field. We'd never seen each other before, but from what my kin had told me, I'd expected your run of the mill tattooed thug with standard American Pit Bull. So you can guess how horrified I was to confront a quiet, reserved, bookish looking maniac with a very old spaniel . . . !! When they reached me, what do you know, but the bloody dog went straight for me - wagging its tail and trying to lick my face. If I hadn't had the wit to scratch her ears and tickle her belly, she'd have slabbered all over me.
His statement continues:
Every day I ask myself why I didn't tell him then and there to get orf moy laaannndd !!!! Why did I wait two years? Probably because for two years I didn't think he was doing any harm.
Meanwhile, there was a neighbour - no names, no pack drill, but think shotgun, bird exterminator, and the monitoring of our every movement on a set of security cameras, and the combat gear, and the sitting all day in the house, blinds closed, won't answer the door, does no work, nothing to do but keep us in line, and the Easy Rider glasses, and the shooty shooty bang bang computer games, and the complete absence of any fellow feeling or empathy, and the attempts to control where we parked our cars, and ban us from going near a party wall, and the instructions to us that when walking Lotte we must be seen by him to return with a poo bag, etc; well, initially we assumed he was a dangerous weirdo, unaware that, in the mindset of a place like Kilclief, we are, in fact, the real dangerous weirdos.
Anyway, he knew he had to stop playing with himself for a while and act. His friend across the street pitched in. Tramp! she would shout across to me as I left the house. Or, Gypsy! Or, Away and wash yourself!
Thank you, I would say. She was only telling the truth, after all.
I bear no grudge. They were doing what had to be done to make sure the place wasn't polluted. Let's not be hypocrites. We've all been there, and we'd all have done the same thing. This has opened my eyes, and I certainly wouldn't want to live near anyone like me or Jean, and I'd be the first to do whatever was necessary to get rid of us, particularly of me.
Humbled by the dignity, courage, and selflessness of those two community stalwarts, Jean and I had an honest heart to heart. We accepted that we were an evil presence, grievously offensive to locals.
So, our actions had to speak louder than words:
I personally thanked the neighbour, Vigilante Man, and acknowledged to him that he was only doing what any beleaguered soul would do when faced with a bolshy neighbour who tried to fight back;
we took space in the Down Recorder to make a sincere, public apology for the ruination we wreaked;
the house went on the market immediately, and I assured the injured neighbours that any prospective purchaser would be closely vetted and approved by themselves before anything was signed;
we reported Miss Lotte Lenya to the NI Veterinary Service for killing hapless calves; and to the PSNI for the attempted murder of pensioners and toddlers. She was put down.
And both Jean and were required to sign legally binding affidavits, swearing that if we ever returned to this part of Co Down, it would be across the water, far away from our victims, to the ‘Dark Side’.
Hence ... Portaferry.
That’s no way to say goodbye
Friday just past, and last busking session in Armagh. I finally took to the Big Stage. Yes, outside the optician's that is opposite the library in Market Street. Competition for this, the prime busking pitch, is fierce, but I managed to get the lad already there to vacate the spot, by suggesting that he is autistic and therefore destined for greater things.
I had some mighty big shoes to fill: Dock Of The Bay man, who can stretch out Otis Redding's version by 17 minutes; Oasis man, who has a whole book of Oasis songs (on a music stand) to get through, but makes an exception to bellow out Ride On, which is, apparently, a profound statement of something or other.
Within half an hour at least three ex-work colleagues had stopped to ask, with varying degrees of tact, if it had really come to begging in the street. I hadn't seen them in years so I told each the standard version, i.e. that I’d lost everything in a Bulgarian land deal scam, been dumped by my foreign floozie, and was now dependent on hand outs. To be fair, this went down pleasingly with them and off they went, happily enough, without violating the gaping, empty space in my guitar case.
Other buskers appeared occasionally, and lingered, staring hard, but not admiringly. This is busker body language translating as, You're shite; move on and let a star take over; people want to hear Christy Moore, strum strum . . . !!
I ran through the whole spectrum of my limited range. This is no reason to feel bad: indifferent playing was a significant, if not always entertaining, strand of busking long before Don Partridge had a hit with Rosie, and triggered today's sacred notion, perpetuated by assholes like Ralph McLean, that busking is the sole preserve of tedious, shallowly insightful singer/songwriters, and the perfect route to stardom for them.
When it was time to go and I was packing up, two women, who had been sitting over coffee for a long time outside Bagel Bean next door, came over and contributed. Thank you, said one of them, you made our afternoon . . .
The graves are not singing
This morning I belted out to Kearney. It's all folksy, white, Irish cottagey-type cottages. Owned, restored, and preserved by the National Trust, as a glimpse of how we used to live. You can rent a house here for like about £1k a month, as a home or holiday home.
I thought to myself, I'll get a few good photographs here of Old Ireland, the oul sod stuff. But there were bloody great 4×4s parked outside nearly every front door. What is the NT thinking off ... ?!?
If you live here you should be made to use a pony and trap, and dig the praties, and break your back cutting turf, with the women in shawls, and pigs or whatever in the kitchen, and everybody eating grass once in a while, for the sake of authenticity.
The whole thing has been dumbed down ...
Real Poetry Corner
Love after love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
we reported Miss Lotte Lenya to the NI Veterinary Service for killing hapless calves; and to the PSNI for the attempted murder of pensioners and toddlers. She was put down.
And both Jean and were required to sign legally binding affidavits, swearing that if we ever returned to this part of Co Down, it would be across the water, far away from our victims, to the ‘Dark Side’.
Hence ... Portaferry.
That’s no way to say goodbye
Friday just past, and last busking session in Armagh. I finally took to the Big Stage. Yes, outside the optician's that is opposite the library in Market Street. Competition for this, the prime busking pitch, is fierce, but I managed to get the lad already there to vacate the spot, by suggesting that he is autistic and therefore destined for greater things.
I had some mighty big shoes to fill: Dock Of The Bay man, who can stretch out Otis Redding's version by 17 minutes; Oasis man, who has a whole book of Oasis songs (on a music stand) to get through, but makes an exception to bellow out Ride On, which is, apparently, a profound statement of something or other.
Within half an hour at least three ex-work colleagues had stopped to ask, with varying degrees of tact, if it had really come to begging in the street. I hadn't seen them in years so I told each the standard version, i.e. that I’d lost everything in a Bulgarian land deal scam, been dumped by my foreign floozie, and was now dependent on hand outs. To be fair, this went down pleasingly with them and off they went, happily enough, without violating the gaping, empty space in my guitar case.
Other buskers appeared occasionally, and lingered, staring hard, but not admiringly. This is busker body language translating as, You're shite; move on and let a star take over; people want to hear Christy Moore, strum strum . . . !!
I ran through the whole spectrum of my limited range. This is no reason to feel bad: indifferent playing was a significant, if not always entertaining, strand of busking long before Don Partridge had a hit with Rosie, and triggered today's sacred notion, perpetuated by assholes like Ralph McLean, that busking is the sole preserve of tedious, shallowly insightful singer/songwriters, and the perfect route to stardom for them.
When it was time to go and I was packing up, two women, who had been sitting over coffee for a long time outside Bagel Bean next door, came over and contributed. Thank you, said one of them, you made our afternoon . . .
The graves are not singing
This morning I belted out to Kearney. It's all folksy, white, Irish cottagey-type cottages. Owned, restored, and preserved by the National Trust, as a glimpse of how we used to live. You can rent a house here for like about £1k a month, as a home or holiday home.
I thought to myself, I'll get a few good photographs here of Old Ireland, the oul sod stuff. But there were bloody great 4×4s parked outside nearly every front door. What is the NT thinking off ... ?!?
If you live here you should be made to use a pony and trap, and dig the praties, and break your back cutting turf, with the women in shawls, and pigs or whatever in the kitchen, and everybody eating grass once in a while, for the sake of authenticity.
The whole thing has been dumbed down ...
Real Poetry Corner
Love after love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
⏩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.
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