Portaferry Diary
Jean's only here, of course, but already has loads of friends. She's in the choir and the Book Club and the Paintbox and the U3A, and her phone is constantly pinging with messages from new chums, suggesting meet ups, and coffee stops, and expeditions all over the bloody place.
But then, she's so undiscriminating. I bet you not one of her new pals has a degree . . . and that's only for starters . . .
Consider my more measured approach. I lived in Armagh for well nigh 40 years, and I can truthfully say that on the day I left it, I still hadn't a single friend. Because they were all a bunch of baseball-cap-wearing, nose-picking, brutish, unlettered, dingleberried retardates. Not one of them aware, for instance, that Robert Graves wasn't too fond of D H Lawrence, or that ravel and unravel mean the same thing, or that a total score of 26 in darts is known as 'getting your bed and breakfast', and so on.
I will be applying the same strict standards in Portaferry . . .
Norman Barry
Watched a French film, L'avenir, last night. Jean’s idea. I always think that I could have put to better use the time taken to read subtitles on foreign films over the course of my life.
Anyway, this one is about a woman who is a philosophy teacher with a strange ungainly walk, like a man with arthritis; though one critic says this curious gait imbues scenes with additional, nuanced expression. The director is a woman, so you won't be surprised to hear that the philosopher is married to a dull, fat, white, middle aged bore.
The upshot is that this tedious tosser, or typical man, is having an affair and goes off to live with his new bint, while the strong 'women are doing it for themselves' philosopher copes alone with the selfish demands, and then death, of her mother, student strikes, a cinema groper, profit oriented publishers, her mother's cat, and so on.
Consolation is one of her old students. He is a young, very beautiful genius who has become an anarchist. Like many anarchists in France he, with a few fellow travellers, buys a beautifully picturesque chateau in the mountains. On returning home one day and finding her husband has taken some books she wanted, she says enough is enough, and goes off to visit her Adonis of the hills. Cue many hints of possible physical consummation, foaming waterfalls, passionate debate, but no sex.
When a male director makes a film and casts his personal 'ideal', much younger woman in a leading role the sisterhood condemns it as abusive, masturbatory fantasy. Uncannily enough when a female director resorts to this kind of carry on, it becomes a heroic affirmation of an older woman's 'journey', her inner control and authority. The presence of the female masturbatory object (his physical beauty being, for whatever reason, essential to the plot), but with no physical consummation, is another way of showing that men are shallow and would probably just fill their boots.
I’m a terrible man with whom to watch a film.
Queen Elizabeth, approximately
In my life - career, entertaining, charity work - I was privileged not to meet the late Queen on many occasions, and always found her to be the gracious epitome of someone I wouldn't have wanted to meet anyway, since the notion, so beloved of her proud 'subjects', that an accident of birth confers an innate superiority on someone, is strictly for ninnyhammer forelock-tuggers and brown-nosers.
Nevertheless, her path and mine crossed a few times, with seismic consequences. Most notably when I was offered a 'gong'. Not many people remember this, but as a librarian I disseminated a lot of information. In fact, twice running, I ended up at no. 1 in the UK Librarys' Bulk Disseminator of Information of the Year chart. And that's a dump truck load of data distribution by anyone's standards.
Anyway, the Boss calls me in one day.
Stop dispersing facts for a minute there, Michael, he says, and cop this. The Palace wants to give you an MBE ... ! Services to Information Dissemination ...
Well, you could have knocked me over with a copy of Walford and Winchell's Bibliography of Bibliographies ... !
But I told him it just wasn't on, and admitted that my preference would be that all Royalists, as they used to say during the French Revolution, should be invited to put their heads out of the Republican window.
And anyway, I added, MBEs are for proles. I'd have needed a Knighthood at least . . .
Like, I was joking, but wouldn't you know, a couple of days later he interrupted my diffusion of knowledge again.
They've upped it to a Peerage . . . ! he said . . . King Brian’s buzzword around the Palace this year is 'communication', and he's heard you're the big knob in that department. Plus, they'll throw in a ton of bits and bobs, like jam and so on, from the Duchy of Cornwall, lifetime supply. It's first rate stuff, apparently . . .
I'd tried the marmalade. Overpriced, but tasty.
It'd be grand publicity for us too, the Boss said, Michael Praetorius, Lord of the Low-down. Could help make libraries seem a bit less spinster-with-a-bun-type places . . . Think it over, while you're dissipating the word to the oul codgers out there fighting over The Irish News . . .
Anthony Blunt (still unmasked as a Soviet spy) was Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Curator of the Royal Libraries at that time. The Boss asked him to talk me round, librarian to librarian, like. He telephoned one evening, and, true to form, never mentioned libraries or gongs, but instead made a pretty good case for believing that we'll only be truly free when the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.
I signed up, became a poputchik (fellow traveller) overnight, and soon Ivan had the dope on the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Library of Congress Classification, and Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. At least Soviet libraries knew in what order to shelve books so as they might be found again, and soon there were as many queues outside libraries as at supermarkets, hospitals, sweet shops, schools, lavatories, and so on. Putin's doing the same right now to restructure libraries in occupied Ukraine, so it's not all bad news from that quarter.
More importantly, though, Blunt, like his chum Kim Philby - then safely holed up in a lavishly tiny, unfurnished, unheated bedsit in Moscow - was keen on marmalade. He gave me a heads-up that night about a new variation on an old theme. A Pinko pal on the shop floor at Frank Cooper's in Oxford had let slip the news that they were about to target the hard-core marmalade zombies with a new EXTRA Coarse Cut version of their Vintage brand.
So, says the Boss a few days later, what do I tell No. 10 . . . ?
Can't afford to do it, Boss, I told him. He was furious.
I tried to explain. Man of principle, me. Uncle Joe maybe a trifle vindictive. But Khrushchev a decent spud. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, first woman in space. Robert Emmet, heart in the right place, but fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And ok, Padraig Pearse, bit of a mental defective, but James Connolly, a top man, genuinely worthy of a seat in the Lords, even though he'd have quite happily blown the bloody place up.
You're a Red, he gasped, wrapped in the Green Flag . . . !
The blows fell in quick succession. Only 52, but enforced early retirement, generous lump sum, adequate pension. Cushy number.
Try that Extra Coarse Cut . . .
Shocking news
On the eve of my departure to Portaferry I received an email from the Secretary, rescinding my membership of Armagh County Gentleman's Club. I had assumed continued associateship was a mere formality. Wherever I reside, I still meet, and exceed even, the quintessential membership criterion.
Which is: I have nothing but supreme contempt for the common man of today - a moronic rabble of gum-chewing, unread, uninformed, celebrity-worshipping, idolatrous, sponging, tasteless, phone-wielding, porn-addicted, workshy, whinging, loud, bumptious, drunken, loutish, bearded, gormless self-abusers.
No explanation for my blackballing has been given. I can't help but wonder if Jean, because she is a Protestant, slipped a heads-up to the that I’m a Taig. There may be sectarians there for all I know. If so, I was willing to overlook their need for a German Royal Family, and their heathen, sinfully misguided attachment to that odorous Protestant religion. But, as they wish . . .
More child abuse
I’m reading this book on Elvis Presley. I mean, to be honest, other than a few of his very early rock ‘n’ roll records, he was appalling. Nevertheless, like almost everyone else nowadays, I had a traumatic childhood, and in which The King played a cruel part.
His manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker saw Hollywood as the big money route. Consequently Elvis made these diabolical films; they weren’t even B movie quality. Kid Galahad; Follow That Dream; Wild In The Country; Kissin’ Cousins; Double Trouble; Blue Hawaii; Girls, Girls, Girls; Speedway; Easy Come, Easy Go; and many more. They were all terrible shite, with shite scripts, and worse than shite songs (Petunia, the gardener’s daughter; Song of the shrimp; and millions more).
When an Elvis film came to the Iveagh in Banbridge or the Regal in Portadown (and he seemed to make about twenty a year) my two older sisters would want to go. My mother, anxious to make sure they didn’t get involved in any back row stuff with the lads, conceived a great plan to keep them away from what the Catholic Church called an occasion of sin. They had to take me with them . . . !!
A deluge of cornball puke . . . It scarred me, dear reader. So much so that I still get panic attacks when I see a dodgy bit of back projection in a film.
And to cap it all, when the universe finally righted itself with The Beatles’ arrival, and they made A Hard Day’s Night, I was ecstatic in my anticipation to see it. But my sisters, quick to recognise a second rate, flash in the pan act, refused to take me. I mean, I was only 12, and I had to go all the way on the bus to Banbridge by myself. And it was dark when I was coming home, too.
Digs
Jean's only here, of course, but already has loads of friends. She's in the choir and the Book Club and the Paintbox and the U3A, and her phone is constantly pinging with messages from new chums, suggesting meet ups, and coffee stops, and expeditions all over the bloody place.
But then, she's so undiscriminating. I bet you not one of her new pals has a degree . . . and that's only for starters . . .
Consider my more measured approach. I lived in Armagh for well nigh 40 years, and I can truthfully say that on the day I left it, I still hadn't a single friend. Because they were all a bunch of baseball-cap-wearing, nose-picking, brutish, unlettered, dingleberried retardates. Not one of them aware, for instance, that Robert Graves wasn't too fond of D H Lawrence, or that ravel and unravel mean the same thing, or that a total score of 26 in darts is known as 'getting your bed and breakfast', and so on.
I will be applying the same strict standards in Portaferry . . .
Norman Barry
Watched a French film, L'avenir, last night. Jean’s idea. I always think that I could have put to better use the time taken to read subtitles on foreign films over the course of my life.
Anyway, this one is about a woman who is a philosophy teacher with a strange ungainly walk, like a man with arthritis; though one critic says this curious gait imbues scenes with additional, nuanced expression. The director is a woman, so you won't be surprised to hear that the philosopher is married to a dull, fat, white, middle aged bore.
The upshot is that this tedious tosser, or typical man, is having an affair and goes off to live with his new bint, while the strong 'women are doing it for themselves' philosopher copes alone with the selfish demands, and then death, of her mother, student strikes, a cinema groper, profit oriented publishers, her mother's cat, and so on.
Consolation is one of her old students. He is a young, very beautiful genius who has become an anarchist. Like many anarchists in France he, with a few fellow travellers, buys a beautifully picturesque chateau in the mountains. On returning home one day and finding her husband has taken some books she wanted, she says enough is enough, and goes off to visit her Adonis of the hills. Cue many hints of possible physical consummation, foaming waterfalls, passionate debate, but no sex.
When a male director makes a film and casts his personal 'ideal', much younger woman in a leading role the sisterhood condemns it as abusive, masturbatory fantasy. Uncannily enough when a female director resorts to this kind of carry on, it becomes a heroic affirmation of an older woman's 'journey', her inner control and authority. The presence of the female masturbatory object (his physical beauty being, for whatever reason, essential to the plot), but with no physical consummation, is another way of showing that men are shallow and would probably just fill their boots.
I’m a terrible man with whom to watch a film.
Queen Elizabeth, approximately
In my life - career, entertaining, charity work - I was privileged not to meet the late Queen on many occasions, and always found her to be the gracious epitome of someone I wouldn't have wanted to meet anyway, since the notion, so beloved of her proud 'subjects', that an accident of birth confers an innate superiority on someone, is strictly for ninnyhammer forelock-tuggers and brown-nosers.
Nevertheless, her path and mine crossed a few times, with seismic consequences. Most notably when I was offered a 'gong'. Not many people remember this, but as a librarian I disseminated a lot of information. In fact, twice running, I ended up at no. 1 in the UK Librarys' Bulk Disseminator of Information of the Year chart. And that's a dump truck load of data distribution by anyone's standards.
Anyway, the Boss calls me in one day.
Stop dispersing facts for a minute there, Michael, he says, and cop this. The Palace wants to give you an MBE ... ! Services to Information Dissemination ...
Well, you could have knocked me over with a copy of Walford and Winchell's Bibliography of Bibliographies ... !
But I told him it just wasn't on, and admitted that my preference would be that all Royalists, as they used to say during the French Revolution, should be invited to put their heads out of the Republican window.
And anyway, I added, MBEs are for proles. I'd have needed a Knighthood at least . . .
Like, I was joking, but wouldn't you know, a couple of days later he interrupted my diffusion of knowledge again.
They've upped it to a Peerage . . . ! he said . . . King Brian’s buzzword around the Palace this year is 'communication', and he's heard you're the big knob in that department. Plus, they'll throw in a ton of bits and bobs, like jam and so on, from the Duchy of Cornwall, lifetime supply. It's first rate stuff, apparently . . .
I'd tried the marmalade. Overpriced, but tasty.
It'd be grand publicity for us too, the Boss said, Michael Praetorius, Lord of the Low-down. Could help make libraries seem a bit less spinster-with-a-bun-type places . . . Think it over, while you're dissipating the word to the oul codgers out there fighting over The Irish News . . .
Anthony Blunt (still unmasked as a Soviet spy) was Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Curator of the Royal Libraries at that time. The Boss asked him to talk me round, librarian to librarian, like. He telephoned one evening, and, true to form, never mentioned libraries or gongs, but instead made a pretty good case for believing that we'll only be truly free when the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.
I signed up, became a poputchik (fellow traveller) overnight, and soon Ivan had the dope on the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Library of Congress Classification, and Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. At least Soviet libraries knew in what order to shelve books so as they might be found again, and soon there were as many queues outside libraries as at supermarkets, hospitals, sweet shops, schools, lavatories, and so on. Putin's doing the same right now to restructure libraries in occupied Ukraine, so it's not all bad news from that quarter.
More importantly, though, Blunt, like his chum Kim Philby - then safely holed up in a lavishly tiny, unfurnished, unheated bedsit in Moscow - was keen on marmalade. He gave me a heads-up that night about a new variation on an old theme. A Pinko pal on the shop floor at Frank Cooper's in Oxford had let slip the news that they were about to target the hard-core marmalade zombies with a new EXTRA Coarse Cut version of their Vintage brand.
So, says the Boss a few days later, what do I tell No. 10 . . . ?
Can't afford to do it, Boss, I told him. He was furious.
I tried to explain. Man of principle, me. Uncle Joe maybe a trifle vindictive. But Khrushchev a decent spud. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, first woman in space. Robert Emmet, heart in the right place, but fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And ok, Padraig Pearse, bit of a mental defective, but James Connolly, a top man, genuinely worthy of a seat in the Lords, even though he'd have quite happily blown the bloody place up.
You're a Red, he gasped, wrapped in the Green Flag . . . !
The blows fell in quick succession. Only 52, but enforced early retirement, generous lump sum, adequate pension. Cushy number.
Try that Extra Coarse Cut . . .
Shocking news
On the eve of my departure to Portaferry I received an email from the Secretary, rescinding my membership of Armagh County Gentleman's Club. I had assumed continued associateship was a mere formality. Wherever I reside, I still meet, and exceed even, the quintessential membership criterion.
Which is: I have nothing but supreme contempt for the common man of today - a moronic rabble of gum-chewing, unread, uninformed, celebrity-worshipping, idolatrous, sponging, tasteless, phone-wielding, porn-addicted, workshy, whinging, loud, bumptious, drunken, loutish, bearded, gormless self-abusers.
No explanation for my blackballing has been given. I can't help but wonder if Jean, because she is a Protestant, slipped a heads-up to the that I’m a Taig. There may be sectarians there for all I know. If so, I was willing to overlook their need for a German Royal Family, and their heathen, sinfully misguided attachment to that odorous Protestant religion. But, as they wish . . .
More child abuse
I’m reading this book on Elvis Presley. I mean, to be honest, other than a few of his very early rock ‘n’ roll records, he was appalling. Nevertheless, like almost everyone else nowadays, I had a traumatic childhood, and in which The King played a cruel part.
His manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker saw Hollywood as the big money route. Consequently Elvis made these diabolical films; they weren’t even B movie quality. Kid Galahad; Follow That Dream; Wild In The Country; Kissin’ Cousins; Double Trouble; Blue Hawaii; Girls, Girls, Girls; Speedway; Easy Come, Easy Go; and many more. They were all terrible shite, with shite scripts, and worse than shite songs (Petunia, the gardener’s daughter; Song of the shrimp; and millions more).
When an Elvis film came to the Iveagh in Banbridge or the Regal in Portadown (and he seemed to make about twenty a year) my two older sisters would want to go. My mother, anxious to make sure they didn’t get involved in any back row stuff with the lads, conceived a great plan to keep them away from what the Catholic Church called an occasion of sin. They had to take me with them . . . !!
A deluge of cornball puke . . . It scarred me, dear reader. So much so that I still get panic attacks when I see a dodgy bit of back projection in a film.
And to cap it all, when the universe finally righted itself with The Beatles’ arrival, and they made A Hard Day’s Night, I was ecstatic in my anticipation to see it. But my sisters, quick to recognise a second rate, flash in the pan act, refused to take me. I mean, I was only 12, and I had to go all the way on the bus to Banbridge by myself. And it was dark when I was coming home, too.
Digs
When I was at university I nearly did Archaeology. In the end I chose Social Anthropology because I felt that an acquaintance with the cultural mores of the Trobriand Islanders and the Nuer tribe would make a better man of me than digging around tentatively with a tiny trowel and brush. My subsequent life has shown just how right was my decision back then for, in the long years since, I have been accused of everything except ethnocentricity.
Nevertheless, my ranging rod is always at hand and ready, as the archaeologist said to the Bishop.
More marmalade
I was standing at a big plate glass window the other day . . . you know . . . just reflecting . . .
An ex-Branch Secretary (Unison) speaks
For the record: Trade Union office bearing, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of their involvement in unions is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.
Of course they are mentally ill, or they would not feel this terrible urge to be important and boss other people around in the first place. They are driven by some sick compulsion to be on top, to organise, to know everyone’s business, and to seek revenge on those who will not toe their fatuous and self righteous line.
Portaferry Diary (cont’d)
How I wish we’d moved sooner to Portaferry. Not so long ago both the BBC and UTV made mini series on the Lough area. Each featured, amongst other folk, one or two different arty/crafty types who mooned around the place waxing, they thought, eloquently about drawing inspiration from misty dawns on the water, and lurching through the mud to see mudlarks for all I know, or making cutsie straw dolls out in their restored beehive hut, or whatever, etc.
Somehow under the impression they’re creative, perceptive and eccentric, this crew were, in fact, entirely and unendearingly naff. Especially the singer/songwriter who haunted the shore like a pound shop Julie Felix, crafting her atmospheric, brand-new, uniquely revelatory perspectives on love . . . amounting to it might as well rain until September and breaking up is hard to do.
Nevertheless, my ranging rod is always at hand and ready, as the archaeologist said to the Bishop.
More marmalade
I was standing at a big plate glass window the other day . . . you know . . . just reflecting . . .
An ex-Branch Secretary (Unison) speaks
For the record: Trade Union office bearing, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of their involvement in unions is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.
Of course they are mentally ill, or they would not feel this terrible urge to be important and boss other people around in the first place. They are driven by some sick compulsion to be on top, to organise, to know everyone’s business, and to seek revenge on those who will not toe their fatuous and self righteous line.
Portaferry Diary (cont’d)
How I wish we’d moved sooner to Portaferry. Not so long ago both the BBC and UTV made mini series on the Lough area. Each featured, amongst other folk, one or two different arty/crafty types who mooned around the place waxing, they thought, eloquently about drawing inspiration from misty dawns on the water, and lurching through the mud to see mudlarks for all I know, or making cutsie straw dolls out in their restored beehive hut, or whatever, etc.
Somehow under the impression they’re creative, perceptive and eccentric, this crew were, in fact, entirely and unendearingly naff. Especially the singer/songwriter who haunted the shore like a pound shop Julie Felix, crafting her atmospheric, brand-new, uniquely revelatory perspectives on love . . . amounting to it might as well rain until September and breaking up is hard to do.
Had I been around, however, we’d have had the real McCoy on our hands. Consider this for my entrance: I’m seen studying that spider web (see photograph) and musing aloud to myself, ‘The intricate, delicate weaving shown here parallels the gossamer, synaptial, crackling connections electrifying my aesthetic muse . . . ’
I turn gravely to the camera, look away, and then upwards, to strafe the skies with my artist’s piercingly intuitive gaze . . . fade . . . and cut to some guy counting birds on a rock or making a model of Scrabo tower out of lollipop sticks, and so on.
Then back to me. Sitting on the shore with Miss Lotte Lenya. My voice-over: ‘All is calm here. All is still. Fertile ground for the artisan, the wordsmith, the bringer of song and dance. Only the lads up at Kirkistown can be heard, putting pedal to the metal, and roaring round the circuit Hell-for-leather. Makes me wonder if I should go ahead and buy that Vespa Piaggio I’ve always dreamed about. Get the Modshoes on, head for Itchycoo Park . . . '
Camera pans out and fades . . . and cut to woman who has some lambs somewhere, or an oul doll knitting a sweater for somebody who owns a boat . . .
Shiny, happy person
Jean is blissed out. In transports of joy.
I shouldn't have moved to Portaferry. For the first thing I did when I got here was fall off my bicycle. And damage the tendon in my left wrist. With the result that I find it too painful to play guitar.
I've never seen Jean happier.
Wilde, Joyce, me ...
and now Graham Linehan.
His new book out next month, available for pre-order now. Trans ideologues have already outed, condemned and attempted to cancel Richard Ayoade. Look at his quote on the cover. It refers to Linehan’s writing style. But he must be called out, by association. If he has praised Linehan’s style, then he must be transphobic. [As for Jonathan Ross ... already beyond the Pale.]
Biology Is Wrongthink . . . !
Wrongthink Is Genocide . . . !!
Big Trans-Identified Male Is Watching You . . . !!!
Big Trans-Identified Male Is Watching You . . . !!!
But be like me. Biology is biology is biology, hey hey hey. The earth is round (pear-shaped). Wrongthink at least 5 things before breakfast each morning ...
And buy this book.
In a time of universal deceit (and conceit), telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
Portaferry Diary (cont’d)
Well, the daggers are out already, and me only here. In the cycling group I called out a few Jaffas from the Black Hole of Strangford for referring to my side of the water as 'The Dark Side'. Hate speech that, says I to the local constabulary.
Right, says he, them boys is askin' for it, alright.
His exact words were, Christ, I thought we'd got rid of you from round these parts, yuh stuck-up, transphobic, sectarian, Fenian bollix.
Yes, definitely time for Simon Byrne to go ...
Old times good times
Ok, I admit it: I miss Armagh.
I miss Ivy.
And I never thought I'd be saying this, but I miss most the playful cries of next door's children.
Daddy, they'd shout gaily to their baseball-capped, pound-shop-Mickey-Harte daddy, that oul bastard next door won't allow us to go into his field and get our sliothar . . . he's stunting our growth as healthy, Catholic, clean-living, culture-preserving, unutterably Irish-named young Gaels, though he knows well our likes will disappear like snow of the hedges and never be seen again if he doesn’t relent. Would you not go round and deck the oul Hun perv . . . ?
I’ve stopped treating women as sex objects for Lent
Great news . . . ! Jean is furious. This morning I spotted my first big nudey woman since our flit. A yacht was making its courtly way down the Lough and out to sea. Astern there was a woman sunbathing . . . !
Fair enough, she was in a full bathing costume, but to the skewed, feverish mind of a lapsed Catholic man like me, this is getting as near to a big nudey woman as I’m ever likely to.
The first of many ... ! I exclaimed gleefully.
What a disgusting, squalid old man . . . said Jean.
Of course, she didn’t go to St Colman’s College in Newry . . .
‘P’ stands for Paddy, I suppose
One morning I belted out on the bike to Kearney. It's all folksy, white, Irish cottagey-type cottages there. 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 of . . . ?!?
If you live here you should be made to use a pony and trap, cut turf in the lashing rain, and do all the other peasant-type stuff, with the women in shawls, and pigs or whatever in the kitchen, and everybody eating grass once in a while, for the sake of veracity.
I was similarly disappointed to see some layabouts using great big machines to harvest the spuds, instead of employing the traditional, bent-double, back-breaking method. With the ghastly result that heritage-minded folk like myself can’t marvel at the authenticity of it all, take a photograph, and wander on.
⏩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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