tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79395932024-03-12T23:06:19.592+00:00Radgery...Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.comBlogger763125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-80119275250993294272021-05-06T15:38:00.002+01:002021-05-06T15:38:22.004+01:00Blogger still exists<p>Who knew?</p><p>Bless me blogosphere, for I have been most neglectful, what with having the children (two boys) and the new jobs and the leaving those jobs and the finding new jobs and the quitting those jobs after three weeks of gut cramping nausea. </p><p>Drinking less. Eating more. Worrying more. Walking less. Panicking more. Resting less. Reading, more or less, about how it's ok to fail and how I'm still on the right side of young to be starting a new career that doesn't allow for Zoom calls, Teams pings, analytics reports or the scrutiny of experts in the field of synergy.</p><p>That's all I have for now. I'm hitting publish on this one. My drafts are a dark place. </p><p>(Gimme, are you there?)</p>Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-13771694056682732752016-01-31T12:28:00.002+00:002016-01-31T12:41:37.212+00:00Hothouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZc7Vww8xDjueB8YyphMQLA-REsU_CBiElnLhb9YLi2hFJ4_GBQmkae6bCEZrN1o2KO5_BZRvd95iwrjyyXO57ikGBeVG7ZyfYJbX0NN5F7mAOknJlG-REuVRGSf7CAd-p8eLZ/s1600/Newmarket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZc7Vww8xDjueB8YyphMQLA-REsU_CBiElnLhb9YLi2hFJ4_GBQmkae6bCEZrN1o2KO5_BZRvd95iwrjyyXO57ikGBeVG7ZyfYJbX0NN5F7mAOknJlG-REuVRGSf7CAd-p8eLZ/s400/Newmarket.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It's a slow jazz café pretending not to be, the music and the dust floors and the wooden tables and the leather couches meaning somebody had an awful lot of money to spend here.<br />
<br />
It smells like soup and aftershave, whose I don't know, and the water comes in a glass jar with a handle like it's 2016 and nobody even knows what irony is anymore.<br />
<br />
I like this place though, in a way.<br />
<br />
Its surrounds, the general desertion of Newmarket Square that could put it somewhere in Brooklyn, or Romania, or what I might imagine Canada to be in moderate weather.<br />
<br />
Not exactly Dublin.<br />
<br />
I've lived in the city for 37 years and only ran across it recently, a place without road markings and an abandoned red bricked cube in its middle. A Blenders factory that PT Anderson might one day write a script around, and 70s signage over 60s offices.<br />
<br />
Nobody walks up and down these streets, they just happen to the tables of the café of a sudden. Like they've all been hiding in the jacks.<br />
<br />
The owner of the building is gladhanding investors and pointing at something from the window.<br />
<br />
My guess is it's the derelict pub up at the corner that he'll soon swallow up, turn to profit, make it into another haberdashery and craft ale hothouse. From its window someone else will point, frown, and remember when the whole thing used to be fields.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-36166658570636887052015-08-18T19:24:00.003+01:002015-08-18T19:44:01.407+01:00I got married<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The room smells like soap, there's the sound of cocktails being mixed and the Mexican bar staff who 'welcomed us home' - me with a broken tummy - upon our arrival last night.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have my girl
beside me, my wife beside me, reading the novel she bought in the airport
yesterday. She’s rapt. I’m happy. I’m married.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I just saw a lizard being very proud of itself outside. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
=</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could worry for a living and I did my share of it in the
weeks before last Thursday. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if I trip up and rip the arse of my trousers? (didn’t
happen)<br />
What if someone gets so drunk they’d puke everywhere and shut down the
dancefloor? (didn’t happen)<br />
What if I butcher my vows? (didn’t happen)<br />
What if my phone starts buzzing as she nears the top of the aisle?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That one came to pass. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks for that, LinkedIn. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I reached into my jacket, flicked it to silent,
turned to my left and she was there, being more beautiful than
even I’d imagined and the paterfamilias proudly urging me to take care of her,
now. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandfather used to tell me that worrying never solved a
problem and, even if something bad happens, worrying about it beforehand makes
you experience it twice. I'd worried a lot that everything would not be perfect. Silly stuff, and the day was full of joy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My favourite people in one room, all of them on our side. My
parents and my sisters and their husbands and my nephew, who rose to thank the
audience for the applause as we entered the dining room, every brilliant 24
months and one day of him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And her parents, so close to me, where she gets her character
from. My girl. Never ‘the wife.’ Always my wife. Always my girl. </div>
Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-2454773593257297722015-02-28T23:41:00.003+00:002015-03-01T00:09:09.664+00:00Remembering Carl O'MalleyI wish I'd known Carl O'Malley better.<br />
<br />
We started college on the same day in September 1997, a journalism degree in Griffith College in a class of 25 people.<br />
<br />
By the time I realised that Carl may have shared my 18-year-old sense of awkwardness about the world, cliques had been formed and he rested on the other side of the class divide.<br />
<br />
We were two factions. The ten of us - slightly off kilter, drunk and inexperienced. The ten of them - well put together, confident, good people but (we thought) better at the college experience. Their crowd did the bold things that we could only snigger about.<br />
<br />
Of the other group, though, Carl was always the one we felt we'd lost to them. One of us masquerading as one of theirs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Lm8b2KnY_YfVH-L0YIMRVEfuN4mxIZt2oKNaMFo7s0XfMK3VKCAiji4L6FrvpHNBmHsoHcyQuDVU-3U4unMLxXP89UdavFViLRG-ovrwG4kdO0tmv7p-WJJwq85rTh3X_FzB/s1600/Carl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Lm8b2KnY_YfVH-L0YIMRVEfuN4mxIZt2oKNaMFo7s0XfMK3VKCAiji4L6FrvpHNBmHsoHcyQuDVU-3U4unMLxXP89UdavFViLRG-ovrwG4kdO0tmv7p-WJJwq85rTh3X_FzB/s1600/Carl.jpg" height="212" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
After college, we'd run into each other every now and again. Carl worked for the Irish Times and I was with Setanta at the time. We'd take a few moments, chat about Liverpool (our shared love), a few words about where we were in life.<br />
<br />
He asked questions, the sign of any great man, as he was far more curious to know how you were doing than talking about himself. I never had the fortune to meet his wife Moira but I remember bumping into Carl on Tara Street shortly after the birth of Charlie, his first child.<br />
<br />
He beamed the same smile that had levelled the girls in college; told me Charlie was great, love in his eyes, then politely moved the focus back to me.<br />
<br />
The last time I saw Carl was in 2012.<br />
<br />
I'd gone for a job in The Irish Times and he suggested a coffee in McCabe's on Tara Street. He wanted me there, said he'd followed the work I'd been doing and hoped that we'd soon be colleagues.<br />
<br />
It didn't work out, nor did the pints we said we'd share in Bowe's, but we kept in touch in those small ways that people do nowadays.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2ZytfjXVj1FQIPirNY6pw_JbGj0GG-8I-z1wblHfl5Y_kF7NKSWGRuhQAbtE-he-LOfnmBl_J-xKaoxzrnpZcbr2glxuDWLgKxX2RD9jbbATvW_PtGVQepQZ0x1KhOyNJWeW/s1600/PalaceTweet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2ZytfjXVj1FQIPirNY6pw_JbGj0GG-8I-z1wblHfl5Y_kF7NKSWGRuhQAbtE-he-LOfnmBl_J-xKaoxzrnpZcbr2glxuDWLgKxX2RD9jbbATvW_PtGVQepQZ0x1KhOyNJWeW/s1600/PalaceTweet.jpg" height="237" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
That was Liverpool's 3-3 draw with Crystal Palace, when the title truly slipped, a small piece of empathy between two then 35-year-olds who knew it was a long way back to 1990.<br />
<br />
And that was it. There never came that pint in Bowe's, instead a phone call on Friday morning to say that Carl was no longer with us.<br />
<br />
Fuck.<br />
<br />
I just... I wish I'd known him better, that's all. This wonderful father, husband, writer, friend. He was one of us and I won't forget him as long as I go on. Nobody who knew him will. He'll never walk alone.<br />
<br />
Carl, rest in peace.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-31089374064560891762014-10-30T09:48:00.002+00:002014-10-30T10:04:09.668+00:00Secret chordThey're on their way to Sweden as I type, my father and my uncle, to make the arrangements.<br />
<br />
Their younger brother, The Musician, died early on Tuesday morning.<br />
<br />
Back in early 2011 the three of us travelled over to see him, to catch some of his life and to celebrate his 60th birthday in the city of Stockholm where he'd spent most of his adult life.<br />
<br />
The most gentle soul that I've ever met, we often mistook his solitude over there for loneliness but we've learned very different things since he got sick earlier this year. So many people cared for him, cared about him, so many friends who looked over him as the badness took hold of his body.<br />
<br />
He slipped off quickly, in his sleep, like my grandfather.<br />
<br />
Last night we talked about him, toasted him, storied him, and I asked my dad if I could post something about him here as a tribute. I'd never presume, but he wanted it, and opened his luggage to show me four printed copies of this piece I'd written three and a half years ago.<br />
<br />
For my uncle Kieran, The Musician, we miss you...<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
<i><b>February 2011</b></i><br />
<br />
He greeted us at the central bus station in Stockholm, this man that none of us had seen in fourteen years. My father's younger brother, my uncle, The Musician. Rounder of belly than before and still with that beard and long and greying hair, he didn't look the sixty years he would become at midnight.<br />
<br />
It was a spartan hotel, with no lift to our third floor room. Two single beds and one that pulled out from a couch, my second uncle was waiting for us when we returned with a few cans. The four of us supped Swedish beer and chatted but the hour was late, I'd been ill and people were tired. We agreed to meet The Musician the following morning at 10.30 and he'd show us his Stockholm.<br />
<br />
So it passed. We walked for what seemed like miles as he pointed out the school where he'd worked, the places he'd played, the people he knew, the landmarks we'd read about. We took an early pint and some lunch before heading back to his flat in the centre of the city, not far from our hotel.<br />
<br />
Whiskey poured, he told us stories of his days in Paris and Stockholm. Meeting Sean Connery and Claudia Cardinale, George Best and his other footballing heroes. Walking empty streets on his 40th birthday, twenty years ago to the day. Fending off Arab youths who had tried to steal his guitar. Missing a trial with Arsenal. Strumming and picking and drinking and smoking.<br />
<br />
He showed a phenomenal memory for a man who'd met with such trouble, a singer who treated every bit of tumult with remarkable serenity. He could tell me in great detail about the time he sang for me and my sister in the back bedroom, when we were tiny and bold.<br />
<br />
I really took to him, all over again. This disappeared uncle who, through all the reminiscing, matched me factoid for factoid on the transfer window lunacy.<br />
<br />
The next day, I let them off on their own.<br />
<br />
They took a ferry; I read my book; they visited a museum; I went for a walk; they took a jar; I sat with a coffee watching a different city going past; they came back, and we headed back out for the last night of catching up before a 4am start and the trip back to Dublin, back to her grasp, back to the impression that I may have dreamt the whole thing up.<br />
<br />
Leaving him behind was tougher than I could have imagined, but it won't be left another fourteen years.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-2539665250672795672014-08-13T09:31:00.004+01:002014-08-13T09:32:42.962+01:0010 years of RadgeryIt's ten years today since I started this blog with a Wagamama recipe and barely a clue that it'd take beyond a couple of posts.<br />
<br />
There used to be a narrative, a way for me to remember nights out and days spent boozing, different templates, a blogspot in the title, naming, shaming and guff that only those known to me might get.<br />
<br />
She came to me this morning with a novel, a card and a collection of collated blog posts from in or around the 13th of August...<br />
<br />
<i>Today, lemon and cracked black pepper mini-fillets from Marks and Spencer and, if the urge takes me, maybe a spot of dogging. I'll report back. (August 13, 2010)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Oh my.<br />
<br />
<i>My legendary irascibility aside, would I sound too like the internet's Darragh Doyle were I to ask how you're all doing? (August 8, 2012)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Titter.<br />
<br />
...and more of that kind of thing in the stapled pages of different jobs, homes, acquaintances and other things long forgotten.<br />
<br />
Ten years. 758 posts. Forgive me a little bit of self backslappery before I ease that coffee plunger down and go again.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-58577238935596718882014-08-12T10:19:00.001+01:002014-08-12T10:22:26.665+01:00Robin Williams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
He made us do the desk thing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There must have been 25 of us, each 12 or 13 years of age,
our first English class in secondary school.<br />
<br />
Gerry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A strange thing to be let call a teacher by his first name
but that’s how he introduced himself to us, him in his black cloak staring down
from those big glasses and a belly full of good old living. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He said it was time for us to start looking at the world
from a different perspective, inviting our idiot minds to circle the top of the
class, look at the room from the top of his desk and see everything fresh. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was no John Keating, was Gerry – the Leaving Cert points
system saw to that, for a start – but you had to admire such an unjaded introduction
to that glorious teenage misery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway, just a snapshot, something I got thinking about
shortly after midnight when I’d heard Robin Williams was gone. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Died by suicide. Asphyxia.
Took his own life. Struggled with addiction. </i>Twitter discovering for the
first time that comedians are often hiding a deeper, dark truth and falling
over itself to be sadder than the previous 127, 128, 129 characters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wasn’t immune. ‘Fuck it.’ That’s all I wrote, and felt bad
for wondering whether or not I’d get a retweet. Jesus. Gerry wouldn’t have
liked that, rest him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I went downstairs, poured a bowl of cereal and switched on
The War Channel. The same stock footage of Williams japing around on the red
carpet, acting the maggot, performing to a crowd of soldiers and wearing a
beard in the best way possible played on a loop over some celebrity’s neighbour
talking about the syndrome of the sad clown. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It gave me a headache. I went back to bed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I couldn’t sleep for thinking of the most perfect piece of
screen acting I’ve ever seen, one that hasn’t dulled for me in 16 years. Just last
week I watched it and reversed it and watched it again. That scene in the park,
looking at the ducks, Williams’ soliloquy to a silent Will Hunting and those
looks that channelled both warmth and contempt at exactly the same time.
Perfectly written, perfectly played, the devastating quiet of it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Christ. Will I be able to watch it again? <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s that, then, I suppose. Twitter handles will wear a
red nose in tribute and there will be lots of talk about how to listen, how to
talk, how to thrive. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There will be talk of some good coming from such a sad
loss, such wasted talent, still young at 63, etc. There will be Mrs. Doubtfire,
Good Morning Vietnam, Jumanji before the week is out. There will, and have
already been, glib catchphrases and celebrity keening. There will be talk of
giving the family privacy, while offering anything but, and ultimately there
will be...<o:p></o:p></div>
Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-74197721007996085462014-08-08T16:09:00.000+01:002014-08-08T16:09:25.084+01:00HugsThey congregate here, the beards and those big glasses.<br />
<br />
The professionally unwashed and their chequered shirts, ample parking for pushbikes outside the door, inside a haven for laptops and quinoa salads, avocado relishes and eggs so otherworldly that they take on the name of the establishment itself.<br />
<br />
I hate eggs. Always did.<br />
<br />
The decor isn't there, the conformity coming from the fact that no two items of furniture can match the table next to it. That's 2014 for you, with a blackboard and something about sorrows being less with bread. Chalked large.<br />
<br />
It's the bonhomie that gets to me, the affection, the easy way between the staff that makes it look like a paying crowd has accidentally happened to their summer of love. Trying too hard to look like they're not trying at all, like the beards at large themselves, with a Charlie Mingus soundtrack succouring the pulled pork ciabattae.<br />
<br />
They know all the customers' names, but they'll never learn mine. My glasses come in slender, my shirts unchequered, my way unsociable, my demeanour that of a man who only walks into the premises seeking a way away from it. I'll take the coffee, sadly the best in the city, on the way out the door and it's all because of the hugs.<br />
<br />
Those fucking hugs.<br />
<br />
They're a tactile bunch and if you happen into it, you'll be lucky to come out of it unembraced. The owners, the staff, the customers, the part-time actors and musicians, the men everyone calls 'hey, man,' the beat crowd, they love to just stand there and hug. And here's another hug for extra measure. And how do you like them eggs, anyway, dude?<br />
<br />
Get the...<br />
<br />
I'll take that coffee, sadly the best in this city, on the way out the door and it's all because of the hugs.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-56574597681345504612014-04-01T10:00:00.000+01:002014-04-01T10:00:06.791+01:0024 yearsIt was a Euro '88 sticker album that did it. Sucked me in. Tore me up. Gave me the fear for the next 26 years and counting, counting, counting.<br />
<br />
I'd pretended an interest in football up to that point. Tried to bluff my way through primary school with 'Liverpool' as the answer just as long as there were absolutely no follow up questions.<br />
<br />
Eight, maybe nine years of not one single clue about who starred in certain colours, what a Glenn Hoddle was, who Maradona played for, how to spell Ardiles...<br />
<br />
...and then the sticker album.<br />
<br />
There's a collector in every child and it only gets beaten out of them by drink, women, bounding, that kind of thing by 13 or 14. <br />
<br />
I took to it straight away. I remember names like Vasily Rats, Pierre Littbarski with the spiky head, Morten Olsen and Lars, all scowl and pink striped jersey. They'd adhere to the page as I waited for Stuttgart, Gelsenkirchen, the opportunity to see what Gary Stevens looked like in real life.<br />
<br />
Ray Houghton's goal. Jack hitting his head. Mick McCarthy's perfect throw-in interrupted by a flying Ronnie Whelan. Wim Kieft. Bastard.<br />
<br />
Hooked.<br />
<br />
The 1988/1989 season, the First Division Panini album this time, all the names, the bad moustaches and the Les Brileys. The swaps. Cascarino and Sheringham. Norwich as a force. Elton Welsby on a Saturday. The pink paper.<br />
<br />
Liverpool, though. It was always going to be Liverpool, and I was straight in. It helped that they had the four Irish lads in the team at the time - Houghton, Staunton, Whelan, Aldridge - and the lads supported them too.<br />
<br />
I was the child whose entire week's focal point was the match on a Saturday on RTE, or on UTV on a Sunday. The green armchair in my granny's sitting room is the only place I remember watching football, and she'd keep an ear out for the scores if the game wasn't televised. She was good like that, knew they were my version of her Kerry, McMahon and Barnes and Beardsley in lieu of O'Shea, Liston, Spillane.<br />
<br />
Finghín, my grandfather, had no real interest. He'd read the paper from the front.<br />
<br />
On it went. They lost the league to Arsenal that year and I was broken. They won it the following year and I was... I don't remember how I was. Cocky, probably, and pleased. Cocky, though, because they were Liverpool and they were the best and they'd win it forever and ever and ever...<br />
<br />
And that was 1990. And that was the last time.<br />
<br />
It's the hope that kills you, but it was the hope that kept me going until other things took over and football became something to drink to, to talk about in the pub, a little more abstract and a little bit less of the everything.<br />
<br />
Now, though, I feel like I'm nine again. I could be 10 again. Six games to go and the sense that it's happening, but you don't want to mock it, and even though they're a bunch of overpaid millionaires kicking a ball around a field I want to visit harm upon anyone who might make it small for me. Not that anyone dares.<br />
<br />
Not that anyone dares, because it's brought me back to Fairfield Road and my granny telling me something Des Cahill told her on the radio about yer man, "what's his name? What's his name Finghín? Molby is it? He's injured for Saturday."<br />
<br />
She'd enjoy this, the sense there was a point to this 24 years, and even if it doesn't work out she'd have just said that there's always next year, they'd get there in the end.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-89371591870257352262014-01-26T22:11:00.001+00:002014-01-26T22:13:55.767+00:00Windy ArbourThere's a line in the notes on my phone that reads, 'It must be the most unchanged place in Dublin.'<br />
<br />
I wrote it in the middle of the night last Wednesday, when I got in from work long after 11pm and I was trying not to wake herself.<br />
<br />
I remember being half asleep and wishing the phone had buttons, like they all used to, because I couldn't see or risk feeling around in the dark for my glasses in case I might wake her.<br />
<br />
I'm a noted dropper.<br />
<br />
I think, mostly, I wanted to talk. One of those nights where you might switch the office for the bed far too quickly and you're left with some strange comedown. Like the immediate aftermath of a gig in front of thousands with the remembrance of a dirty soup bowl, left on the desk, in place of the teenage hysteria.<br />
<br />
"Fuck."<br />
<br />
I think, instead, I was just thinking about talking. I was set upon that room in Windy Arbour and the last time I walked in through the door, pretending to be casual, knowing I was on the clock and wondering how long it had been now?<br />
<br />
This was August. Last August. That was January, early January, the first new year after the operation so it must have been 2003. Ten and a half years.<br />
<br />
"Has it been that long?"<br />
<br />
In the middle of it all I took a break for three years and, when I went back, the room was the same but her hair was different.<br />
<br />
Steel.<br />
<br />
No, grey, not steel, but I remember thinking it was steel and it suited her. Somehow made her warmer. Her face had stayed the same though, all kindness, concern, empathy in all the right places.<br />
<br />
I could never put an age on her but I was always bad at that.<br />
<br />
The chairs. The stones in the corner. The lamps, those lamps, and the Kleenex. Even the soap she and her colleagues kept in the bathroom was still the same lavender and there was the hoover in the corner. A Henry.<br />
<br />
I never once got out of line, went full Matt Damon on her, made her upset for the money I'd awkwardly leave on the table come the end of every session. I worried that I bored her, and then thought to cop myself on, "she's probably glad of the relief." Nothing wrung out.<br />
<br />
August.<br />
<br />
Christ, it's gone too long, but the walk, and that room, will remain the most unchanged in Dublin for the simple fact that there's the Luas, there's the Costcutter, there's the room above the bookies and there's the buzzer.<br />
<br />
Nothing else is seen.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-89719588174233248192013-12-24T13:50:00.000+00:002014-01-03T20:36:32.157+00:00This feels just like a TuesdayThis feels just like a Tuesday.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A Tuesday with a bit of a lie-in, granted, but a gusty Tuesday nevertheless and nothing at all like the frenzy of Christmas Eves gone by.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I didn't take sleep last night, my head full of worry and angry thoughts, anger at those factors that keep forcing my parents to prevail, and prevail, and come up with ways to get by when they shouldn't have concerns. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The latest? A car accident that they were lucky to walk away from between Birdhill and Limerick, the broken back and front of some green motor - a write-off - evidence of some swerved carnage.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've had consolation from others who say that a car can be replaced, but lives can't, and they were so lucky. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I'm relieved. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I can't help but shake an angry fuck off fist at the two steps forward, eight steps back nature of their 2013. And their 2012. And before that again. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Theirs is the story of others, of a country where you can steal billions and live happily ever after, but borrow a few quid at the wrong time and...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Look. Enough. I'm just sad is all. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I won't see them this Christmas for the first time in my life, and while I know that it's a world made small by technology and there will be happiness at both ends of our divide, there will be moments when I'm on my own and it's just a great big ball of strange. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I will, at least, be in a house where I'm also home, with my girl and her folks, and where self consciousness has no place and there is love. And tradition. Bonds that only get stricter. And a Christmas wedding to follow that may just contain all the craic in the world. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The wreckage is still there, outside in my parents' front garden, and I hope that when I say, "next year will be their year" that they can finally get free from worry. </div>
Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-57342009716969388742013-10-06T17:23:00.001+01:002013-10-06T17:23:36.688+01:00Giving up on giving overCrikey. Do you know what? Fuck it.<br />
<br />
It wouldn't quit me after all and that's that and I'll say no more*.<br />
<br />
It seems that I won Voting's Guess The Mood Of The People poll for Friday just gone. I opted for the old 'No' and 'Yes' during a sweaty imbalance up in Mount Argus, went on my way, bought a couple of ginger biscuits and snapped, crackled, popped them while the mood of the country went from "sure they're all a shower of bastards" to some other kind of apathy.<br />
<br />
I can't blame Inda.<br />
<br />
I wouldn't have debated it either. Debating is hard work, especially when the alternative is having a good gurn at Croke Park or <a href="http://youtu.be/alpiVf3x8nM"><b>cooking with Neven</b></a>.<br />
<br />
Sure it'd be a lovely little country if you could only roof it.<br />
<br />
Good golly.<br />
<br />
But I won Voting's Ask The Audience poll anyway.<br />
<br />
Elsewise, I've just been watching the headlines appearing, then disappearing, and they've mostly been some variation on how Syria Broke Bad And Then Broke Back Again, too many people going for long, long walks and a whole host of reasons not to go drinking anymore.<br />
<br />
Who can afford it? Who wants it, really, when there's Netflix afoot? Sure everything's shite since Roy Orbison died anyway.<br />
<br />
This is exhaustion on a grand scale, with a Twitter feed that just won't take a breather and Mi**y C*r*s winning the race to outvile the rest of the world, all of its subsidiaries and every last one of its shareholders.<br />
<br />
In other words, much has changed, and everything else remains sadly the same as it ever was.<br />
<br />
The asterisk: I hope that Andrew, who wrote <a href="http://chancingmyarm.blogspot.ie/2013/05/radge-against-machine.html"><b>this</b></a>, won't look at me unfondly for giving up on giving up.<br />
<br />
<br />Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-79323326230393021612013-05-24T14:37:00.002+01:002013-05-24T14:37:50.192+01:00Final postHaving dragged the arse out of the blog for the last while, it's time to bring it to a close. I always said to myself that I'd finish up on a nice, curvy 803 posts, and that is a complete lie.<br />
<br />
But it is time.<br />
<br />
I've threatened this to myself for a couple of years now, but it's only over the last couple of days that it has decided to quit me. Life has grown too full of things that I can't commit to a public forum. Too much is searchable, everything has become shareable, all reality is being seen to death.<br />
<br />
I started the blog in August 2004 and am happy to have encountered many good writers, and some great ones, that have pushed me through and kept me going when I'd lost momentum.<br />
<br />
I hope I've written some good stuff. I know I've scribbled some detritus but that's what happens when you've never had, or wanted, a theme.<br />
<br />
Playing favourites here, I still love to see Andrew (Chancing My Arm) and Rosie (The Spanish Exposition) post and I hope they keep it up, however infrequent, through their married life. Gimme (Stranded on Gaia) is a horrible tease in the best way possible, while I've lamented the full stops of Annie Rhiannon, Terence McDanger and Therese Cox in particular.<br />
<br />
Others, too, over the years and they've been in the sidebar for a reason.<br />
<br />
I'm going to keep paying Google a tenner a year to keep it open, hopefully it'll gather some sepia and I'll be able to show it to the grandkids before they kick me in the shins and run away.<br />
<br />
Thanks for stopping by, and onwards...Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-27575921128100212812013-05-14T21:04:00.001+01:002013-05-14T21:30:52.064+01:00Start to slide out of touchOne former wedding shirt and a pair of good pants later, I swear to dear sweet baby Ranulph I had become one of them.<br />
<br />
The signs? A tin-can line of traffic down the South Circular Road, a bus hugging the pavement trees, a coffee cup of Montague Street and a slip through Foster Place.<br />
<br />
New people, new circumstances, a constant wage for the first time in four years. No more freelancing, sweating on the shift sheets, nor emails to editors telling them to keep me in mind for this or that or St Stephen's Day.<br />
<br />
It feels good, has felt good, even if I may look down at my attire on a Friday and be accidentally casual.<br />
<br />
Some words have been lost for sure, and I haven't imagined Radgering since whenever when, but I'll set aside some hope for now that those will come back in time.<br />
<br />
Also, that things will settle themselves into a far greater rhythm, that dread of the end of the month and the slog of inpermanence gone and those two things most happily forgotten.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-67652159351372206062013-03-29T14:57:00.003+00:002013-03-29T14:57:54.725+00:00Sweetheart, I'm gracelessPanic on the streets of Dublin. Panic on the streets of Harcourt. The Casual Fridays stand shoulder to shoulder to shoulder as the tills ring out, and ring out, and ring out again to the tune of several thousand kerchings.<br />
<br />
The Londis queue is a coiled rattlesnake of eager boozers, out the door and around the bend, no greater fear than that midnight hour and the shutters coming down.<br />
<br />
If you're good at the old time maths, you'll figure there's time for three or four quick jars before getting to the offie and relieving it of half its stock, carried home in a one-man mambo.<br />
<br />
And the anger. The indignance. The "how fucking dare they tell us we can't drink on Good Friday, the bastards, and I'll tell you another thing, Jenny, they can stick their property tax up their arses too!"<br />
<br />
The "I'm not letting any poxy civil servant..." and the "I wouldn't mind but if I was let drink tomorrow I probably wouldn't bother my hole..." and the "Superquinn are doing a great deal on that Rioja we had in Jimmy's last year..." and the this, and then the that, and then the pubs close and then the plaintive "oh bollix."<br />
<br />
But.<br />
<br />
"It's grand, we have that bottle of port and those cans of Carlsberg in the shed."Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-73319567442252625892013-02-08T22:40:00.003+00:002013-02-08T23:53:59.778+00:00LIVEBLOG: Lost In Translation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljafjXTmveQ65qBaN7YlMhyF4tEUPeDwgqpc55L91U84j58ZuCzYCbqT45gbGO1I71nNT5BrfuFwh7naBgDyxpVcsPzdA-DfAt5dlt_76gbLnY20v78rQZPqYmnUgrcc6TJ6d/s1600/Bill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljafjXTmveQ65qBaN7YlMhyF4tEUPeDwgqpc55L91U84j58ZuCzYCbqT45gbGO1I71nNT5BrfuFwh7naBgDyxpVcsPzdA-DfAt5dlt_76gbLnY20v78rQZPqYmnUgrcc6TJ6d/s320/Bill.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
0.19: There they are. The pink knickers.<br />
<br />
1.01: Death in Vegas play in the background and there's Billo. Or Bill. I don't think he'd take to being called Billo. Jetlagged and looking out at the Tokyo night. He pulls up to the hotel.<br />
<br />
2.31: He meets a woman whose name is 'Kawasaki.' He says it's all "very Japanese." It, presumably, is. He gets a note to tell him he's forgotten his son's birthday. Not sound.<br />
<br />
3.41: Him sitting on the hotel bed, offof the poster.<br />
<br />
3.55: The first sighting of the lounge singer, aka Carol Decker from T'Pau. Lots of Japanese men are smoking. In a bar. Somewhere, Micheál Martin's combover comes unstuck. Bill, meanwhile, tells a couple of travelling businessmen that he's visiting friends. They are drunk and they are cocks. Drunken cocks.<br />
<br />
5.31: His wife faxes something about furniture. Why won't she let the man sleep? For the love of fuck.<br />
<br />
6.04: The first appearance of Scarlett, being kept awake by Giovanni Ribisi's snoring. He's a bit cool. I don't like him. Just the character, mind, I find the acting of Mr. Ribisi to be agreeable.<br />
<br />
7.19: Bill is too tall for his shower. Japanese people are small, you see?<br />
<br />
7.59: Bill sees Scarlett in the lift. She thinks he's a dirty old pervert, probably. He's just missing home is all.<br />
<br />
8.29: The whiskey ad. The director is a complete looper, and looks very like Dustin NGuyen of 21 Jump Street fame. A very animated man who shouts 'cutto cutto cutto,' which I take to be foreign for 'cut cut cut.' Bill is told to look intense, but he exudes bemusement.<br />
<br />
10.14: Bill looks like Herman Munster. Too much eye-liner. "More... intensity!" the translator tells him. He just wants to be in Neary's.<br />
<br />
11.32: Scarlett takes the train to a monastery. She later tells her sister on the phone that she 'felt nothing.' For me, she should stop her cod-acting and just have a Twix for herself.<br />
<br />
13.39: Her sister sounds like a dickhead, all the same.<br />
<br />
13.51: She's doing her make-up and tying up her hair. And lying on the bed. And hanging up decorations. She bangs her foot. She'll feel that in the morning, no way she'll be fit to face Grimsby Town on Saturday.<br />
<br />
15.00: Giovanni Ribisi's getting ready to leave, but not before giving out to her for smoking in the room. He has a point. She should really go outside. But he loses credibility for wearing sunglasses indoors. What a geebag.<br />
<br />
16.04: Bill's channel hopping, comes across one of his old films, an aged hooker calls to the door. "May I enter?" She asks him to 'lip my stockings.' She means 'rip.' He has no idea what the fuck is going on. She seems to think that his premium fantasy involves imprisonment and degradation, but he just wants her gone.<br />
<br />
18.10: Next morning. He's eating breakfast with chopsticks. Breakfast sushi. Just crazy enough to work.<br />
<br />
19.04: He's been invited to stay until Friday. He'd rather drink paint, but says he'll check with his agent.<br />
<br />
19.34: 'Fred the agent' tells him to stay. Otherwise there wouldn't be a plot, not that there's much of a plot, but y'know... Anyway, he's making the whiskey ad and the director asks him to be Lodger Moore. James Bond. He's drinking iced tea, wants a real drink. Again with the eye-liner. (I'm never making a whiskey ad in Tokyo. Especially not a fictional one where I'm pretending to be Bill Murray pretending to Lodger Moore.)<br />
<br />
22.45: Carol Decker again, making a complete and total BAGS of Scarborough Fair. For the love of crikey. This is Bill and Scarlett's meet-cute, she sends him over a Japanese delicacy and he toasts her from afar. He enters the lift and thinks "still got it!"<br />
<br />
24.27: He's in the gym, and reminds me of John Barnes in that Lucozade Sport ad, except he's not very good at exercising and makes a bollix of the whole thing.<br />
<br />
25.38: Anna Faris, playing an actress, enters. I wouldn't let her near the house. Far too shrill. She was crap in Friends, and that's saying something.<br />
<br />
26.56: Scarlett and Giovanni have a little squabble and he fucks off for the rest of the film.<br />
<br />
27.34: More Anna Faris, talking to some assembled journalists. Scarlett watches her press conference and thinks to herself, "I'd like to kick her in the back of the face."<br />
<br />
29.00: Scarlett plays with some pretty flowers. She might get to like this Tokyo place after all.<br />
<br />
30.00: Nothing on telly at night, so she heads down to the bar. She has the right idea. Booze is definitely better than indecipherable Japanese cartoons.<br />
<br />
31.00: Bill's at the bar. This is the proper first encounter. He suggests a whiskey, she orders a vodka tonic. He reveals he's being paid €2m to endorse the whiskey. Nice work*.<br />
<br />
*Prick.<br />
<br />
32.00: He lights her cigarette, she asks if he's having a mid-life crisis. Bill dispenses some wisdom. I become distracted by the whiskey in his glass. Looks nice. Easily a triple.<br />
<br />
33.00: Bill watches some aqua-aerobics, Scarlett goes to Dr. Quirkeys. She doesn't seem to be having a good time. I realise that Japanese pop music is really rather catchy.<br />
<br />
35.17: Hang on, Giovanni Ribisi's back. I thought he'd pissed off! He should brush his hair. The cut of him.<br />
<br />
35.55: Oh fuck. Anna Faris... Hell is full of Anna Farii.<br />
<br />
37.15: Bill and Scarlett again. Safe ground. He's trying to organise a prison break. Remember Prison Break? I never saw it, but heard it was good, and then shite, and then quite good again.<br />
<br />
38.11: Giovanni's wearing sunglasses indoors again. If ever a man needed a waterboarding...<br />
<br />
39.00: Right, he's properly gone now. Time for Scarlett to look wan and lovely as she surveys the landscape from on high to some Japanese mood music...<br />
<br />
FAST FORWARD...<br />
<br />
So, what DOES he whisper in her ear at the end? I reckon he's warning her to avoid Rick's Hamburgers at all costs, but it's open to interpretation...Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-31188162539474446282013-01-22T11:25:00.001+00:002013-01-22T11:28:12.116+00:00Exclusive: Ireland's road users are granted 'drink drive permits'<br />
April 2014:<br />
<br />
DANNY HEALY-RAE WAS celebrating today after his controversial motion to allow 'drink driving in moderation' was passed by a Dáil majority of 90-76.<br />
<br />
The Kerry councillor first proposed the issuing of permits "to drink two or three pints before driving home" to members of isolated rural communities in January 2013, provoking outrage amongst those members of society vehemently opposed to carnage on Irish roads.<br />
<br />
While legislation seemed unlikely at that point, it has now been passed by a Government keen to steer the national debate away from the subject of an ailing economy.<br />
<br />
One TD, who did not wish to be named, said: "There was a time when a piece of legislation such as this would never have even come to a vote, but the collective inebriation of the Dáil chamber, coupled with the need to reduce the country's rural population and therefore the burden on the Exchequer, should see it pass easily."<br />
<br />
A jubilant Cllr Healy-Rae called it a "victory for common sense."<br />
<br />
"I've met all sorts of people from communities throughout Kerry who were initially opposed to the scheme, citing all sorts of guff about months of physiotherapy, families broken up and wounds that never heal, but I soon found that after a couple a couple of rounds they were able to see my way of thinking," he said at his pub in Kilgarvan, County Kerry.<br />
<br />
When shown evidence that stricter drink-drive rules, introduced in the Road Traffic Act 2011, had greatly reduced the number of accidental deaths and injuries on Ireland's roads, Cllr Healy-Rae was nonplussed.<br />
<br />
"Look, you can show me all manner of statistics and numbers and data and all that jazz, but the fact is that a couple of pints never hurted anyone."<br />
<br />
Back in January 2013, Cllr Healy-Rae said: "There are many people locked in at home now in rural, isolated places who are looking at the four walls and they can't get out because they can't even have one drink."<br />
<br />
When it was pointed out to the Independent Councillor that alcohol itself acts as a depressant and has been ruled ineffective in the fight against deteriorating mental health, he responded: "Where I come from there's no harm whatsoever in telling a man to cop himself on and throwing a ball o' milk his way, do you get me?<br />
<br />
"Look, nobody knows more than I the benefits of a few pints of an evening, playing cards or what have you? As a young lad I walked those same roads and even got the odd lick of a Toyota Corolla or Mike Hassett's jeep, and has it done me any harm?"Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-9939460645612683722013-01-21T18:02:00.002+00:002013-01-21T18:04:48.802+00:00Images<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is what happens when the words stay in bed, keep the windows closed. </div>
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@radgery</div>
<br />Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-25491812114174511302013-01-17T15:43:00.003+00:002013-01-17T15:44:27.495+00:00On writing......or, being more accurate, things I do to avoid my lifelong ambition...<br />
<br />
<b>Housework</b><br />
<br />
Socks are no longer my nemesis, they are no longer the fuel on which runs the washing machine, they go in and come out in pairs. Hers carefully folded, mine nonchalantly balled. I have come familiar with the principle of keeping... the whites... separate, a maxim I treated with slapdash around my Charleville Road days, and I now possess the ability to undress and dress the bed in fewer than nine minutes.<br />
<br />
<i>That first sentence, though. The terror.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Sky Sports News</b><br />
<br />
What is its allure? Allure, surely, is the wrong word to describe the shouting behemoth that is recycled news features about pitch invaders and the going at Sandown. Yet my fingers move with swift grace over the buttons 4 and 0 and 8 at least 14 times a day, my eyes roboting through the on screen data and the red (not even the yellow!) ticker at the bottom.<br />
<br />
<i>That opening paragraph, mind you. Fuck.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Dublin City Centre or, y'know, 'Town'</b><br />
<br />
Bus. Off at George's Street. Look at the menus of restaurants I'd like to try but probably never will. Down Exchequer Street. Tut as someone sneezes in close proximity to me. Scoff at the Casual Fridays. Cross the road to be wherever the nearest chugger won't 'dude' me. Sit at a window drinking passable coffee. Take out a notebook and find relief at no pen. Wonder what I'm missing on Sky Sports News. Check my phone (no texts, an endorsement on LinkedIn, a blanket mail from Trip Advisor that I never signed up for, somebody I've never met LOLing on a Facebook update and spam from a Jesus freak). Back up Exchequer Street. Into Dunnes Stores to buy some chewing gum. Ponder an apostrophe. Bus home. Relief.<br />
<br />
<i>How many chapters?</i><br />
<br />
<b>The Internet</b><br />
<br />
That greatest thief of time. Today, for instance, I found myself Googling helicopter crashes alongside the filmography of Anne Bancroft, the careers of several Swindon Town footballers and job opportunities in HMV, just for the craic of it. I frowned at the fascination of people who think their cat is, like, "just the cutest" and the only feline in the world who has licked a nicely embroidered IKEA cushion.<br />
<br />
I used to read the blogs of others as a safe stayaway from putting words in melancholic, heartbreaking order myself, but my favourite writers have been dormant, perhaps swallowed whole by the one-twist-and-you're-done knocking shop that is the Twitter.<br />
<br />
<i>Don't get me started on trying to cohere a narrative. </i>Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-91980899493203542932013-01-10T15:11:00.001+00:002013-01-10T15:11:06.595+00:00What if they'd been right? <br />
No more shares. No more privacy controls. No more aggregation. No more unsolicited links. No more laughing out loud. No more plaintive Instagram posturing. No more guilt. No more flash mobs, photo bombing, hipster bashing. No more psychoanalysis. Jesus, no more tagging. No more four square, twitpics, no more 'can we share your current location?'<br />
<br />
No more Royle Family Christmas specials, no more Jean Byrne. No more Katherine Lynch, and no more Homeland. No more preposterousness, networking, keeping up and falling behind. No more Masterchef, Man vs Food, Dobbo, no more Sky Sports News.<br />
<br />
No more January transfer window. No more countdown clocks. No more Jeff Stelling, and no Merse. No more love. No more hate. No more Love/Hate. No more watercooler wet dreams. No more trees, sand, Oscar-baiting and no more Chevrolets.<br />
<br />
No more Vodafone, no more customer service menus. No more stout. No more John Mulligan. No more mortgages, no more debt. No more hierarchy. No more death. No more ill fitted suits, union flags, or sociopathic taximen.<br />
<br />
No more waiting for things to happen. No more hoping things don't happen. No more doorbells. No more gas bills. No more hope. No more despair.<br />
<br />
No more haircuts. No more Bowie. No more Formula 1, and no more fucking Gangnam Style. No more Roddy Doyle, but no more Cecilia Ahern.<br />
<br />
No more retweets, quoted tweets, double tweets, tweetweets, hyperlinks and, finally, no more bluster at all.<br />
Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-60304462606742264112012-12-28T19:13:00.001+00:002012-12-28T19:28:06.938+00:00Riposte<b>Are you having a good Christmas?</b><br />
<br />
Do you know something? I am.<br />
<br />
<b>Have you consumed?</b><br />
<br />
Overmuchly.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you spend an inordinate amount of time giving out about things beyond your control, TV shows you are supposed to like, social media trends and the decline in quality of mince pies?</b><br />
<br />
I spend an inordinate amount of time moaning about moaning, and the world somehow consumes itself with it.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you have a pension plan?</b><br />
<br />
I do not have a plan.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you feel really satisfied with life every once in a while and then worry that you're being smug and then worry that the act of worrying about being smug is in itself really smug, or else a mask for many other concerns because you aren't all that satisfied at all, are you?</b><br />
<br />
I actually spend far too much time worrying about the state of others' minds, to give my own too much concern at all.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you participate in that ah here leave it out hilarity even though you know it's not really very funny?</b><br />
<br />
I certainly fucking don't. I bristle at it, it disturbs me, it is acid to my sensibility.<br />
<br />
<b>Have you ever eaten four pieces of shortbread in alarmingly quick succession?</b><br />
<br />
In my doughier years, quite possibly.<br />
<br />
<b>Did it hurt?</b><br />
<br />
Most definitely.<br />
<br />
<b>Do other things hurt?</b><br />
<br />
Oh most certainly.<br />
<br />
<b>Is it OK to go shopping on the 26th of December?</b><br />
<br />
Anyone who rails against it has too much time to rail.<br />
<br />
<b>Is it OK to loudly proclaim your despair with the world over people going shopping on the 26th of December?</b><br />
<br />
It isn't. People love to moan.<br />
<br />
<b>Is it?</b><br />
<br />
They can have at it, but I'm over there, ignoring them.<br />
<br />
<b>Have you read a book recently and was it good?</b><br />
<br />
I am at the moment and yes, it is good, though I struggle to see its point.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you not have time for reading?</b><br />
<br />
I have plenty of time for reading, but I don't use it often enough to read.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you watch more than four hours of reality TV a week?</b><br />
<br />
I doubt I watch four minutes of reality TV a year.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you believe that America will ever sort its shit out with guns?</b><br />
<br />
No, I despairingly don't.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you gripe about auto-correct? Do you jangle your keys? Would you buy a gun if you lived in America? Do you get vexed?</b><br />
<br />
I do, yeah I do, no I wouldn't and yes I absolutely do.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you regret a lot of the things you did in your early twenties and some of the things you did last week?</b><br />
<br />
I regret many of the stupid things I've said over the years, some of them recent.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you think that foetuses have a soul and can you explain what that might be?</b><br />
<br />
I have trouble with anyone who thinks they can define what a soul is, let alone when it is felt.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you ridicule the religious?</b><br />
<br />
No, I don't. I ridicule the stupid.<br />
<br />
<b>Are you, the evangelical church up the road wishes to know, the victim of an ancestral curse?</b><br />
<br />
They can fuck right off and mind their own business.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you ever pray? If you do sometimes pray do you mentally sign off with "almost certainly not, I know, but just in case,LOL!!"?</b><br />
<br />
I'm not comfortable.<br />
<br />
<b>Did you read the small print?</b><br />
<br />
More and more.<br />
<br />
<b>Have you claimed your tax back?</b><br />
<br />
Less and less.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you do something to break a sweat every day?</b><br />
<br />
No.<br />
<br />
<b>Can you touch your toes?</b><br />
<br />
Yes, if I sit comfortably and raise them to me.<br />
<br />
<b>Are you aware that this entire concept comes from Padgett Powell's 'The Interrogative Mood', but that this particular dude hasn't read it because writing a whole book like this and getting it published and expecting people to pay for it would be taking the piss, right?</b><br />
<br />
I did not know that, and I'm fairly certain I didn't expect to write this blog either.<br />
<br />
<b>Am I wrecking your head?</b><br />
<br />
My head is rarely unwrecked.<br />
<br />
<b>Has anyone ever accused you of being a hipster?</b><br />
<br />
They'd soon know about it if they had.<br />
<br />
<b>Can you go now?</b><br />
<br />
I can not go yet.<br />
<br />
<b>Is it getting better?</b><br />
<br />
It's getting worse, but will get better.<br />
<br />
<b>Did you get what you wanted? Do you feel at home? Did you have a good year?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-5220200645370538772012-12-13T12:06:00.000+00:002012-12-13T12:17:01.355+00:00Dubliners"I know you wouldn't think it lookin' at me, love, but I'm a junkie."<br />
<br />
Full marks for honesty to her, if not for her powers of self observation. She was a giveaway, telling the strung-out mister to her left - on the back seat of the 16 - that he was "nothin' but a mean cunt, I've hash on me and you're not gettin' any cos you're just a mean cunt y'are."<br />
<br />
He was a man of many noises, none of them English, just a stream of groans and nods and the pluralisation of "wharrayaonabou'yatickdopeyeh?"<br />
<br />
I wondered myself what she, the thick dope, was on about as getting any kind of sense out of this beard wisp yoke was an exercise in stupidity. He was badly, badly fucked up on smack cocaine or whatever the hipsters don't call it.<br />
<br />
She'd turn on him, then turn to us, then turn on him again. All sorts of names, all manner of abuse to a man whose floating head was left back in some squat on Townsend Street, to my imagining.<br />
<br />
How he could have flagged down a bus, paid a fare, made his way up the stairs was beyond me. He must have just appeared there, his heroin superpower that of multilocation.<br />
<br />
She softened towards him as the bus turned up George's Street, stopped stabbing him with fingers made entirely from bone, even rubbed his head and said repeatedly, "yer alrigh,' yer bird will sort yet out, yer' alrigh,' yer bird..."<br />
<br />
She asked him where he was getting off.<br />
<br />
"Bleedin' Horse, meet me bird..."<br />
<br />
"I'll help ya off the bus. Get ready now," she said to him, but the act of remembering a specific anything had sent him back to unconsciousness, his head hitting the top of the seat in front of him and his mouth slackening out some drool.<br />
<br />
"GERRUP YA CUNT!"<br />
<br />
Her language was appalling.<br />
<br />
"GERRUP OURRA THAT YA PRICK! People on the bus won't know what to make of ya..."<br />
<br />
"Euuuuggggggghhhhh."<br />
<br />
"Come on, press that bell missus, will yeh? Come on... You've to meet your bird..."<br />
<br />
Eventually, she shovelled him up on to his feet, bowled him to the top of the stairs.<br />
<br />
"Here..." was the last thing I heard her say to him. "What's your name?"<br />
<br />
"Daithí," he said back to her.<br />
<br />
"Nice to meet yih, Daithí, I'm Teresa."<br />
<br />
Exeunt.<br />
<br />
<br />Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-57901868291229939062012-10-26T15:30:00.002+01:002012-10-26T15:32:52.371+01:00I have a word with myselfShe's 30 today, my sister, and I wonder how the hell that happened so bloody soon after we were sending her to the shop on the promise that, "we'll time you."<br />
<br />
I wonder what her record time might have been had we not shrugged and told her that we forgot to start the timer as soon as she left the gate, then asked her for the change.<br />
<br />
It makes me feel old, a bit, but it's seeded a headblog through town.<br />
<br />
A headblog through town where I lie to the lady at the free biscuit stall, telling her I'll be back later to put money where my greedy guts are.<br />
<br />
(I do that a lot, fibbing to total strangers, at least once a day if I can help it.)<br />
<br />
I walk out to Grafton Street, looking down at my phone, waiting for the world to tell me what's happening. I don't look up to see for myself, and get tangled up in a leash with three dogs, taking my lesson before freeing myself.<br />
<br />
I dare the man in the Concern vest to call me 'dude,' but I think he knows me, knows not to, and he stalks another as I pass Tower, Nourish, the place with the cakes and the International Bar. I meet <a href="http://chancingmyarm.blogspot.ie/2012/08/leah-was-tender-eyed.html">this man</a> but I don't stop. He's talking to someone else so I don't interrupt, just pass on my best and move on.<br />
<br />
Coffee. George's Street. That place, Simon's Place. I sit outside despite the chill and spy on the hipsters, the Casual Fridays, the ladies just lunched and the visitors looking up, up, up at the tops of the gay bars opposite.<br />
<br />
I spy in plain sight, then take out my phone. I make notes that mean nothing like 'woman imaginary friend' and 'ideas for pizza...' I judge people, and judge myself for judging people, and give myself a headache before the bus arrives.<br />
<br />
I get on the 9 and see the man with three dogs, I see him seeing me so I go back to my phone and wonder why, oh why, am I hidden from my own news feed...<br />
<br />
I have a word with myself.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-48822328667670664132012-09-27T14:23:00.003+01:002012-09-27T14:23:40.141+01:00WastedSo I'm watching an episode of King Of Queens that was probably first broadcast in 1956, and the Heffernans are having some trouble with the next door neighbours. I recognise the gentleman neighbour as one Walter White, or at least I think it's him.<br />
<br />
He doesn't have a beard, he doesn't have a shaved head, and he has no discernible sense of menace about his person but I know that it's him.<br />
<br />
I take to my phone and Google myself up Bryan Cranston's IMDB page and it was him alright, before the meth and the madness took to him, but I sit through it for the end credits anyway. I don't mind King Of Queens and I need the closure of his name to the theme music.<br />
<br />
Instead, infuckingstead, Comedy Central decide to eschew the credits and vomit up a promo starring Ashton Kutcher and the formerly fat half man. No closure. Even though I know it was Bryan Cranston I feel denied the last percent of my tiny piece of trivia because channel 134 must always... be... closing. ABC. They must always be selling and I get a little bit of sick in the stomach at the fact that...<br />
<br />
a) I'm wasting a pretty good day off<br />
<br />
and...<br />
<br />
b) I've finally thought up a blog to write that has to begin like a bad '80s comedy routine, but ultimately ends up even less funny and more pointless than something that stars Ashton Kutcher and a formerly thickened half man.<br />
<br />
If I didn't lose you, what's left of you, in the first three words of this entry I am very glad and I'm grateful, and I want you to spare a thought for me this coming weekend as I become a man who walks into a bar, and out of that bar, and into the next one on a stag trail in Galway.<br />
<br />
I won't need direction as I've done it all before, to the top degree of shitawful hungoverness, so this time I'm not drinking.<br />
<br />
I'm sticking to the Smithwicks and the world won't seem so gloomy come the break of Monday morning.<br />
<br />
Fógra: Can I flog all Irish people who use the word 'douchebag'?Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939593.post-54304754304300344912012-08-21T13:07:00.000+01:002012-08-21T13:07:30.889+01:00Ten years2002: Just an impression, but I must have been still sore from the angiogram, the liquid piped the wrong way up and the doctor - a contemporary - telling me the pain was 'nothing.' It was something. Warm like whiskey in all the wrong places. I woke up in the morning with a head made of polo mints, small shavings and markers where the scalpel might go. I woke up in the morning to chirping nurses doing their day job, opening curtains and tutting, things they had been taught to do.<br />
<br />
2012: Another Basque morning, we got up and showered and dressed and had a look out on the noisiest street in Bilbao. A street where a man could be heard to whisper and a woman would shout 'JULIO!!!' at all hours of the day. Julio always kept his safe distance outside the bar, 20 metres away. We decided to go to San Sebastian and then quickly undecided it, mental as the bus station in San Mames was. We took the tram back towards the Guggenheim instead.<br />
<br />
2002: I must have been fasting, so it must have been another morning when my dad showed up with food from home. Another afternoon with his onion bhajis wrapped in tin foil, a substitute for the jelly and ice cream, the lumpy mashed potatoes. No, this morning was fasting and checking the phone, a small Siemens fella or my first Nokia, who knows, while waiting for the trolley.<br />
<br />
2012: All curves and steel, glass and concrete, every bit of it spectacular. People call it the 'Gugg' but I've never been a man for shortening, and certainly not where a hard 'G' is concerned. We walked around with our handsets. Getting lost in the angles, scoffing at David Hockney, finding each other in the hiding places and the nooks, finally pretending to be a touch more fascinated than we were while thinking of lunch and wine.<br />
<br />
2002: The trolley man saying something about how Malcolm In The Middle is just as good as The Simpsons, then the operating theatre, then sleep.<br />
<br />
2012: Back to the apartment, the noise, the heat and some happiness at a shower, a sit, a read of our books and a can of 7-Up. Perhaps we napped, maybe we didn't, we probably wondered whether it was possible to be bored and content at the same time.<br />
<br />
2002: My sister's footsteps - clip clop clip - she walked like a teacher and is a teacher. Sketch! She took one look at me, conscious, said "thank God" and immediately walked back out of the room to text the concerned. My folks stayed, my head sore, and soon came the sweet relief of a painkiller administered somewhere it shouldn't have been. But it worked. So fuck it.<br />
<br />
2012: She wanted to buy me dinner, a celebration of the anniversary, so I got us a takeaway pizza instead and we ate it on the side of the street with a can of San Miguel. Bilbao had been foretold of our classiness.<br />
<br />
2002: Beeps of the phone, recovery room, sitting up, lying down, no mirrors, head out to 'there,' Lucozade and other standard issue, a silent night and walking drips.<br />
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2012: We sat by the Cathedral at 10.30, willing the ice cream shop to be a late night opener, but we were pushing it. We sat anyway, then found the angry Chinese man in his corner shop, grabbed our dessert, some beers, went home and had a sup.Radgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120550799595771510noreply@blogger.com11