That time we sent Michael D to visit the Queen

“I think he done you proud and Her Majesty loved him. I don’t understand what you was saying earlier that he’s a bit of a figure of fun.”

“Ah, look sorry, I suppose I shouldn’t have said that. He’s not, not really. Ah, it’s just, ah, he can be a bit airy-fairy, d’you know? But I voted for him and he was brilliant with the Queen alright. I suppose it’s just… we take him for granted because he’s been around forever, you know?”

“And has he always been the premier?”

“What? No, no, we only elected him President a couple of years ago but he’s always been there, d’you know? He’s always been the Minister for the Arts, and the Minister for Irish as well, it seems like even when his lot weren’t even in power. And I suppose ’twas only to see him beside the Queen, as an equal, I was glad ’twas him we elected.”

“We-e-ell… as a loyal subject of Her Majesty, I couldn’t agree that anyone’s her equal but I take your point. That said, here, he is tiny, though, ain’t he?”

“So’s the Queen.”

“Yeah, but she’s the bloody Queen, mate!

“Another pint?”

“I will, please. Cheers.”

I overheard that on Friday night, just as President and Sabina Higgins were settling back into Áras an Uachtaráin for a well-earned rest and, as Philip Nolan teased on the wireless, the President’s accent was settling back to normal too.

I was struck during the Irish Presidential Election of 2011, (that never-ending war that those of us on Twitter still call, in hushed and traumatised tones, #Aras11,) that for all the touchy-feely talk of inspiration and personification from all seven candidates, for all the Celtic mist and the Enya backing tracks, the only ones who actually understood the job for which they were applying, were the three political lifers.

Mary Davis? She rose without a trace but my goodness wasn’t she on a lot of Quangos? She talked a good fight about volunteerism but it turned out she had been paid rather a lot of money for her own volunteering.

Dana? No. Just no. Even before that whole thing with the family and the attempted assassination by, er, a burst tyre, just no.

Martin McGuinness? He did a good bit to sanitise Sinn Fein’s image down here in Mexico but he never really was a runner and I always got the impression that he knew that. He was a minesweeper for the Shinners. He also was at least instrumental in the downfall of The Man Who Should Have Been King.

Yes. Seán Gallagher. Oh Lord God. A man who was so Fianna Fáil that he wasn’t even in Fianna Fáil and if you’re not Fianna Fáil yourself well then neither is he but if you are Fianna Fáil well shur you know yourself.

Days before the election, he was the serious favourite to be our ninth president. He was on the telly so he was and apparently he was going to be some class of an entrepreneur in the Áras as well and give us all jobs. Or something.

He would, like Old Man Willikers in Scooby Doo, have gotten away with it too, if not for, at least at first, Martin McGuinness. The only candidate with actual previous experience as the head of an army, McGuinness exposed Gallagher as a Fianna Fáil bag-man on live TV. As Ken Curtin tweeted at the time, “General Tom Barry himself would have been proud of that ambush”.

I still think, though, the real damage was done by Gallagher himself in his ill-tempered reaction to Glenna Lynch‘s questions. The mask really slipped there.

Then there was the “fake” tweet. I remain convinced it might have been a plausibly-deniable tweet but I think it came from exactly where Pat Kenny thought it did. Anyway, let’s not keep going on about it. Like Sean Gallagher is.

Which leaves, as I said, the three political lifers.

Fine Gael, against Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s wishes, ran a veteran candidate so grey and charmless that my mind slides off the subject and I’m thinking now of a really great episode of Doctor Who. Sorry. Fine Gael. Right. #Aras11. Yes. The Fine Gael candidate. For the presidency. The really great thing, though, is that the writer, Steven Moffat, twists the whole idea of narrative and leaves the viewer, like Carey Mulligan’s protagonist, trying to reassemble the brilliantly fractured plotline. Despite the terrifying monsters, there’s a real joy to this story.

Sorry, what?

I would have voted for David Norris. I think he’s a great man and a patriot. I think if not for him, there is a good chance that homosexuality might still be a crime here or at least would have remained a crime for much longer. He lost my vote though at “classic paedophilia” when, as the late Christine Buckley noted, he seemed momentarily and utterly uncharacteristically blinded (I think possibly by loyalty, possibly by love) to the suffering of victims of abuse.

No, I think that given a choice between a man who had no personality, and a man who had way too much personality, we made the right decision when we elected Michael D. Higgins by over a million votes. And I’ve just realised that I’ve indirectly described my president as Goldilocks. Which is, I’m pretty sure, treason.

A man who was always there, even though we might not have really noticed, even though we might have laughed sometimes at his excesses of pomposity and flights of oratorical fancy but a great man who always remained a tireless champion of the underdog and also a kind and generous ambassador for the very best of Ireland.

A small man who makes a whole Nation a whole lot taller. And a man who always, to quote that Englishman from earlier, done us proud.

Donal O’Keeffe

 

Cork Simon and Homelessness

Last week, I wrote a piece on homelessness ahead of the Cork Simon Ball. I was attempting to drum up some publicity for a picture I had donated for auction and I’m delighted to report that the piece was bought for €950. Many thanks to Colin Hanley of Medialab Limited, Galway, who made the generous purchase. Much gratitude too to Philip Nolan and to all who helped him raise €649 on Twitter. In total, that’s €1,599 which will do a lot to help some very vulnerable people. Well done, everyone!

In the course of putting that piece together, I had a few conversations with Sophie Johnston of Cork Simon. I had asked a number of questions about homelessness, among them “Has Cork Simon seen an increase in demand for its services since the economic downturn?”, “What are the reasons for homelessness? and “How do homeless people pass the time?“

I found Sophie’s replies most informative and, with her permission, I reproduce them below. 

…

Increase in demand for services

Cork Simon has seen a steady increase in demand in recent years. In 2013 over 1,000 different people used our services. The number of people using our services increased by 16% in 2013 and the number of people sleeping rough also continued to increase during 2013, despite the addition of extra beds at Cork Simon.

(Towards the end of 2012, in response to a significant increase in the number of people sleeping rough, we added four extra beds at our Emergency Shelter bringing the total number of beds at the Shelter to 48. This time last year we also opened a five bed extension to one of our high support houses, bringing the total number of high support beds at Cork Simon to 52).

In total we have 127 beds (between our Emergency Shelter, our five high support houses and our supported independent-living flats) and these beds are all full every night of the year. At the moment about 7 people are sleeping rough on the streets of Cork nightly.

Soup Run

In addition to the increase in the number of people using our services and the number of people sleeping rough, about half the people availing of our Soup Run are in private rented accommodation.  They are most likely using all available funds to pay their rent and don’t have money left for food – they’re quite likely on the edge of homelessness and possibly one pay cheque, one social welfare payment, or one emergency away from homelessness.

We meet approximately 30 people a night at the Soup Run. The Soup Run is often people’s first point of contact with Cork Simon. From here, staff and volunteers are able to link people in with the most appropriate services.

Reasons for Homelessness

Last year we published a report on pathways to homelessness, called How Did I Get Here?  The report found that there is rarely one reason for why someone becomes homeless. In almost all cases, many different factors contribute to someone becoming homeless. These factors usually build up over a prolonged period of time – often beginning in childhood – until finally someone finds themselves overwhelmed by the multiplicity of difficulties in their lives. A combination of early school leaving, educational disadvantage, time spent in care, long-term unemployment, substance misuse, relationship breakdown, mental distress and poor physical health are all common factors that contribute to people’s pathways to homelessness.

How do people who are homeless pass the time?

Isolation, boredom, loneliness and the erosion of confidence and self-esteem are serious issues for people who are homeless and can lead to the deterioration of mental health and a dependence on alcohol and drugs as a means of escapism. We run a number of programmes in an effort to address these issues. One of these is our activities programme. The activities team, in collaboration with residents, organise events and activities from bingo nights to music lessons to ladies afternoons to cookery classes to nature walks. The idea is to provide people with a meaningful use of their time, to encourage them to socialise and build relationships once again and to support them to gently re-build their confidence.

The activities programme is often a stepping stone towards our Employment and Training Programme which works with people on an individual basis, identifying any gaps in their education and training and encouraging and supporting them on a pathway to training and employment. The Employment and Training team run courses based on the needs of residents ranging from basic literacy, numeracy and IT classes to FETAC accredited courses in areas such as woodwork, horticulture and culinary operations.

The Employment and Training team have also been successful in building relationships with businesses and developing work-experience placements and ultimately supporting people in progressing to employment. Many people who are homeless left school before the age of 14 and have difficulties with literacy and numeracy. Many also have few qualifications and limited work experience so there is a real practical need for the Employment and Training Programme, as well as it also offering people a meaningful use of their time and a way to re-build confidence and build relationships among peers and within the wider community.

Alongside skilled staff, we are lucky at Cork Simon to have a strong volunteer community. Many volunteers will spend a few hours each week with residents running activities, or doing something as simple as having a chat and a cup of tea with a resident or going for a walk. Little things like this help to give structure and routine, and help people to feel a part of their wider community again.

Here’s a link to Brian O’Connell’s report that he did just before Christmas and which covers the activity programme’s music session at the Emergency Shelter – http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10228700%3A15036%3A06%2D12%2D2013%3A – skip to 43:20 to hear the report.

…

Many thanks to Sophie Johnston and to all at Cork Simon.

Donal O’Keeffe

Chicken Noodle Soup – A recipe for superpowers

Here. Have some public service blog-casting.

My recipe for superpowers. Possibly.

Put a big slice of butter in a warming frying pan and on top of it squirt a dollop of olive oil. Then, once that’s sizzling, throw on two large, chopped, cloves of garlic. Next, four chicken breasts, cut into smallish chunks. Once they’re nicely browning, add about 200 grams of oyster mushrooms. Then, after a little while, two large spring onions, roughly chopped.

Now add about a litre of chicken stock and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat to simmer and leave for about a half an hour, before adding about 150g or so of thread noodles to the mix. Cook for a couple of minutes and then add a few handfuls of spinach (or chard, or rocket) and leave to heat through for maybe five minutes.

Bon appetit!

Donal O’Keeffe

Douglas Adams and the power of literature

 

It’s funny the way a phrase, an image or a tune will stay with you.

I bought Douglas Adams’ “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” in London in 1988, on the day it was published. I still have that first edition hard-back, yellowed, creased and torn now. It smells. It smells of the best smell in the whole world, which is, apart from the smell of new babies, the smell of old books.

It’s an innocuous paragraph, starting at the bottom of page 188, and one which I’m sure didn’t cost Adams too much thought at all as he wrote it, but I think of it every single time I stand on grass.

Now that, literary snobs, is literature.

“The grass was damp and mushy, but still worked its magic on city feet. Kate did what she always did when entering the park, which was to bob down and put the flats of her hands down on the ground for a moment. She had never quite worked out why she did this, and often she would adjust a shoe or pick up a piece of litter as a pretext for the movement, but all she really wanted was to feel the grass and the wet earth on her palms.”

– Douglas Adams ‘The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul’

 

 

 

 

Homelessness: There but for

“When I was living in New York and didn’t have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I’d think, that’ll be good, that’ll be a good spot for me when I’m homeless.”

– Larry David.

Last Christmas, on a cold evening of misting rain, I was walking down Carey’s Lane when I saw a pale, thin young man sitting on the pavement opposite the Pavilion, beside him a paper cup with a few pence in it. I stopped and gave him €2. I felt embarrassed. I’m not well-off, but €2 is still little enough to me that I always feel guilty it’s not more. Then I feel it’s awful that anyone is reduced to begging for €2 from the likes of me, so I just want to drop the coin and move off as fast as I can without adding to their humiliation. “Happy Christmas, man,” he said, “I hope it’s a good one for you and your family.”

That small kindness stopped me dead. I stuttered a bit and then I thanked him and I asked him was he alright. “Ah sure look,” he said, laughing, “It could be worse.” I couldn’t help it. I started laughing too and that made him laugh more.

I’d say he was 24 or 25. I asked him would he eat a sandwich or something and he said he’d love a Big Mac. He declined my offer to bring him around the corner to McDonald’s. When I returned with his grub, we chatted for a bit about this and that. I didn’t want to intrude too much, and we spoke in generalities. The state of the country. I asked if he found people to be generous. Most were, he felt, but times were very tight.

“God help us,” he said, “I feel sorry for people with mortgages. Sure they haven’t a washer.” And we started laughing again and I shook his hand and I wished him a happy Christmas. As I left, he repeated his blessing of my family and he started coughing, a horrible hacking cough that followed me home. I’ve kept an eye out for him but I haven’t seen him since.

It’s nearly April now but the nights are still very cold. Most nights, seven people are sleeping rough on the streets of Cork. I wouldn’t like to be one of them. Cork’s Simon Community has a total of 127 beds and every one of them is full 365 days a year. Over 1000 people used their services in 2013, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Cork Simon’s Soup Run feeds an average of thirty people a night. Almost half of those people are in private, rented accommodation. It is no exaggeration to say that people who cannot afford to feed themselves are potentially only one rent payment away from homelessness.

Cork Penny Dinners, which was founded as a soup kitchen during the Famine, reports that two years ago they were serving around 150 meals a week. Now they are serving well over 1000 meals per week.

Cork Simon’s ‘How Did I Get Here?‘ report found there is rarely one reason why someone becomes homeless. In most cases, many different factors contribute (often beginning in childhood) until finally the person is overwhelmed by the multiplicity of difficulties in their lives. Educational disadvantage, time in care, long-term unemployment, substance misuse, relationship breakdown, mental distress and poor physical health are common factors contributing to homelessness.

Homeless people suffer from boredom, isolation and the erosion of self-esteem. Mental health suffers and dependence on alcohol or drugs can become a means of escapism. A dedicated team of highly skilled staff at Cork Simon works 24/7 to address these issues. Cork Simon provides people with a meaningful use of their time, to encourage them to socialise and build relationships once again. They gently help people to re-build their own confidence.

For a few hours each week, volunteers help out by chatting over a cup of tea or going for a walk. Little things help to give people structure and routine, and help them feel part of their wider community again.

If you’d like to help out, in however small a way, please call Caitriona at Cork Penny Dinners on 085 1201742. Cork Simon needs volunteers too, so please call 021 4278728. Maybe Larry David is right. Maybe when we walk down the street, we should all be on the lookout for doorways and alcoves. Maybe it would do no harm at all if, every so often, we imagined “that’ll be a good spot for me when I’m homeless”.

– Donal O’Keeffe

P.S. In writing this, I was greatly helped by Sophie Johnston of Cork Simon. I’ve reproduced her contributions here.

Last month, my caricature of Vincent Browne, signed by the man  himself, sold for €950 at the Cork Simon Ball. Philip Nolan also raised €649 on-line, so in total we raised €1,599. Not a bad day’s work on the Tweet Machine.

Ireland, since 1984: “But to you it’s just history”

Sometimes I feel very old. Which I personally think isn’t very fair, mainly because on the inside I usually think I’m about 28 or so. But that said, there’s no escaping the fact that on the outside I’m very much not. And, if I’m honest, I’m getting less 28 on the inside by the day too.

Anyway. What’s put me thinking this way was Vincent Browne’s Irish Times column on the Garda Whistleblowers saga a while back. There has been, Browne wrote, (and it’s worth reading), “a history of malpractice and persistent abuse of legal powers given to An Garda Síochána, abuse aided by some Garda commissioners and ministers for justice who seemed, at times, to have wilfully ignored clear evidence. It was aided further by a cynical media, eager to retain ‘inside lines’ to Garda tip-offs, and aided also, at times, by a compliant judiciary”.

Of course, what got to me was Vincent’s line “Older readers will no doubt recall the Kerry Babies case of 1984–” I tweeted the link with that remark, adding the jokey comment “writes Vincent Browne depressingly” and soon discovered that a lot of people who are not perhaps “older readers” had either not heard of the Kerry Babies story at all or only knew of it peripherally. It’s something that happens to everyone, I should imagine, when you realise suddenly that what you remember as current affairs is now filed under “History”. But 1984 was thirty years ago, even if its events are still relevant in the Ireland of 2014.

Those were extraordinary times, and I think in many ways the beginning of the last days of Holy Catholic Ireland. It didn’t seem it then, though. It had been only a year since the “pro-life” movement had forced supine politicians, yes and citizens too, to enshrine in our Constitution the disastrously simplistic 8th amendment which, as Mary Robinson had predicted at the time, accidentally resulted, three decades later, in the limited legalisation of abortion in Ireland.

Our right-wing Catholic conservatives had decided that, with the spectres of contraception, divorce and, God help us, homosexuality looming, they needed a big win and they needed it fast. Abortion was never likely to be legalised in Ireland, certainly not in the early 1980’s, but as far as our Catholic fundamentalists were concerned, abortion was an open goal. This was to be their show of strength, their bulwark against the onslaught of liberalism. The frantic men and women with their plastic rosary beads and placards of aborted foetuses were triumphant and it seemed the Ireland of John Charles McQuaid was again in the ascendant but, regardless of appearances, this was to be the last year (please God) that Ireland’s crawthumpers would truly to be in command.

Again, it didn’t seem so at the time and Ireland would remain for a long time a very strange and sinister place.

1984 dawned but Eric Blair would hardly have imagined what happened next. The Kerry Babies story was quite astonishing, even then, even for those of us who were alive at a time when Ireland was a lot more like a dark version of Craggy Island than it is now. A baby was found, stabbed to death, on White Strand, Cahirciveen, Co Kerry on the 14th of April 1984. The resultant Garda investigation and prosecution by the Director of Public Prosecutions decided that a distressed young woman whose own baby, a different baby as it turned out, had died, was the murderer.

Following lengthy interrogations by the hard men in the Murder Squad, the suspect and her family gave elaborately detailed confessions to events which, it turned out, had never actually happened.  Those confessions were proven to be so flawed that they led to a tribunal of investigation, which was itself, to be frank, quite farcical. Here’s your primer, courtesy of those good folks at Wikipedia. I would really recommend that you read Gene Kerrigan’s superb account of the story here.

The Kerry Babies incident was not the only grotesque tragedy which Ireland would see in this year, or which would highlight so clearly that the old order was about to change. A young girl called Ann Lovett died that year, after giving birth at a grotto to the Blessed Virgin. Gay Byrne and Marian Finucane all-but invented social media in Ireland then, with RTÉ Radio giving voice to kind, decent and horrified Irish (and mostly Catholic) people appalled by what was happening in their country. Coincidentally, only months later, similar statues to the one which blankly watched Ann Lovett bleed out in a field would be the focus of a national religious hysteria. Rosary rallies occurred the length and breadth of the country to venerate “moving” statues, crudely-painted concrete idols illuminated by neon bulbs and haunted by moths. God love us.

The past would not surrender its grip on Ireland too easily. In 1985, Garret FitzGerald‘s “constitutional crusade” suffered a severe set-back when the first divorce referendum was rejected by a margin of 63.5%. (Ten years after that, the 15th Amendment would eventually be passed but only by the slimmest of majorities. Just to be contrarian, I will note that you never hear Irish liberals moaning about that particular referendum do-over.)

The future might have been knocking on Ireland’s door, but it was to be a long time until the turning point of 1992, when the hugely popular Bishop Eamon Casey was revealed by the Irish Times to have fathered a child over in Amerikay. We are used now to Father Ted’s Bishop Brennan and “How’s the son?” “He means the Son of God, Your Grace” but at the time the story went off like a bomb.

Casey’s media profile was probably only rivalled by that of Fr Michael Cleary, a man who, as it turned out, himself harboured a similar secret. Casey’s exposure as a man who had fathered a child and who had misappropriated funds to finance that child’s upbringing (“That money was merely resting in my account!”) served as a body blow to the Irish Catholic Church’s iron-clad authority.

1992 was the same year that the X-Case convulsed the country. A 14 year old girl, raped and impregnated by her neighbour, was effectively imprisoned in Ireland, lest she travel to Britain for an abortion. I will take to my grave the memory of the Martyn Turner cartoon which so perfectly encapsulated a national tragedy and a particularly Irish scandal. I was on a date that day and all we spoke about was this story. I imagine that younger readers will picture a scene from “Quirke” now.. Much more would happen in 1992, and I’ll come to that in a moment, but from this distance, from here in the future, dates and times tend to blur but mood is in some ways easier to evoke and that was the year, to my recollection, that the atmosphere in Ireland began to change.

1993 saw homosexuality finally decriminalised in Ireland and when Senator David Norris goes to his grave (hopefully sometime in the 22nd century) his life’s work will be celebrated as that of an Irish patriot who, for all his human failings, changed his country permanently and for the better. The upcoming referendum on marriage equality will be incredibly divisive and its result is far from a foregone conclusion but still. Look how far we’ve come in twenty-one years.

In 1994, the Irish government’s mishandling of the extradition of the paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth brought down the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government. Smyth’s monstrosity and the sheer scale of the Church’s cover-up of his evil, when finally it came to light, was to prove the last straw for many Ioyal and decent Catholics. Even for those who decided to stay with their Church, Brendan Smyth represented a clear break and a point at which Irish Catholics began to decide that they were better qualified to judge morality than their Church was.

I sometimes hear friends who were born since these events say that they see little of relevance in events which happened before or during their childhoods. Most recently, when a friend who is a scientist at Oxford University and who really is 28 said that to me on Facebook, another friend, a journalist who is more a contemporary of mine, commented that perhaps one needs to have lived through modern Irish history to understand or appreciate its relevance to the Ireland of today.

And maybe that’s fair enough. Maybe many think of history, perhaps even recent history, as Stephen Dedalus did, “a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. Or maybe youth is wasted on the wrong people. And maybe Elvis Costello was right, too. “Well I am the genuine thing,” sang Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus in ‘Pony Street‘, “But to you it’s just history.”

– Donal O’Keeffe

One postscript. I mentioned 1992 being a turning point. In November of that year, a woman called Christine Buckley spoke to Gay Byrne on his radio show about her experience of abuse while growing up in Dublin’s Goldenbridge Industrial School. This was not the last that Ireland would hear from a woman who, by sheer force of will, would literally change the course of Irish history. She was laid to rest on Thursday the 13th of March 2014 and the funeral congregation, which included President Michael D. Higgins and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, heard that Christine Buckley’s legacy is not just that the victims of abuse are now listened to, but that they are believed.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Keeping your mouth shut about marriage equality

Funny. I had dinner with my sister only tonight and we spoke about how life would be so much easier if we could just keep our mouths shut. She told me about finally losing it with a racist and giving him both barrels. My sister is a lot nicer than I am, and way smarter. She’s also a hundred times more fierce than I am. I almost felt sorry for the racist.

When I got home, I went to the pub for a late pint and brought my paper along for company. Sometimes I like to just enjoy a pint in peace and read the paper. So I sat and I read. And I tried. I really tried really hard not to listen.

“Queers. Fucking queers. Getting fucking married. What has gone wrong with this fucking country?”

“Labour. I blame Labour. Them cunts in Labour. And fucking Shatter. The Jew. He’s in favour of this shit.”

“Hi, you can’t fucking talk, your fucking crowd is as bad. That fucking bollix Micheál Martin. He’s in favour of that shit as well. Fianna Fucking Fáil.”

“You’re right. Queers. And they’ll be adopting children and turning them queer too.”

That was it.

Yes, I got involved. I put down my paper and I spoke up. And my sister is right. Life would be a lot easier if I could just shut up. And I’d be a lot more popular too.

I tried to be calm and reasonable. I tried to argue rationally and respectfully and of course it got hot and of course I was asked if I’m “a fucking queer too”.

Me being me, of course, I went a bit Spartacus and replied “And what if I fucking am?” but in truth it wasn’t my finest hour.

Those opinion poll figures are very, very soft indeed, folks. It’s going to be a very long year to the referendum on marriage equality. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking it’s a foregone conclusion.

– Donal O’Keeffe

P.S. I was also, in the heat of the debate, somewhat predictably called “Mr Fucking Irish Times”, a charge which I felt was unfair at the time as my ostentatious display of offensive literacy was actually the Irish Examiner.

Hellboy: Pancakes

 

For the day that’s in it, Mike Mignola’s charming “Pancakes” featuring his wonderful character Hellboy, seen here as a child.

 

Hellboy and all associated characters and stories are copyright Mike Mignola and the images here are lifted from a Google search.

I would urge you to get to a bookshop as fast as your cloven hooves can carry you and buy “Hellboy: Seed of Destruction“.

– Donal O’Keeffe

Quirke calls to Fermoy

“In Fermoy they stopped again, Quirke having run out of cigarettes, and while he was in the tobacconist’s Rose sat in the car and watched dismayed a man belabouring a cart horse with a stick. He was a coarse-looking fellow with a red face and a lantern jaw and a prominent forehead – he might have been modelled on a Punch cartoon – and he wore a belt of plaited straw. The horse stood between the shafts of the cart, its head hanging, suffering the blows without flinching. Oh my Lord, Rose thought, this poor benighted country!”

– John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black “Vengeance”

“What came first, the music or the misery?” Nick Hornby on love songs

“Some of my favourite songs: ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart‘ by Neil Young; ‘Last Night I Dreamed That Someone Loved Me‘ by the Smiths; ‘Call Me‘ by Aretha Franklin; ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About it‘ by anybody. And then there’s ‘Love Hurts‘ and ‘When Love Breaks Down‘ and ‘The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness‘ and ‘She’s Gone‘ and ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself‘ and… some of those songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over.  Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”

– Nick Hornby “High Fidelity“