Monday Miscellany

Dave Kenny on ‘Manity’ and How My Purple and Green Hair Made Me Want to Dye

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:23:11 +0100

I had been involved in a Trad/rock music project with Warner Music and a band called The Inishturkbeggers. It was textbook middle-age-crisis stuff: I let my grey hair grow and started calling everybody “man”. I wore paisley shirts and skinny jeans. If my wife had given me permission, I would have bought a motorbike. Yes, I looked a twat, but then I’ve always looked like a twat. I was a twat disguised as a twat, if you will.

I loved taunting my baldy mates by draping my long (clean...

Ninja Mother

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:40:12 +0100

She will perfect that mother half sitting down, ready to rise and fold something pose that every mother from Athens to Zaire learns instinctively.

She will stare longingly at photographs of herself from her pre-child years where she was wearing a bikini and holding a drink in one hand.

She will stare most intently at the novel lying in the sand and remember that was the last book she actually finished reading.

She may attempt to open a newspaper on Sunday mornings but ...

Poetry in Pavements - Honor Molloy

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:43:06 +0100

On the other hand, my father drank with, lived with, mucked about with his characters. He wholly absorbed these eccentrics and mimicked them perfectly—performing them onstage and on RTÉ.

I spent the past thirteen years writing a novel about this vanished Dublin—drawing from my mother’s journals and radio scripts, as well as John Molloy’s recordings and his memoir Alive, Alive O. While I was compiling my thoughts for this blog post, I discovered RTÉ TV50, a year-long celebration of 50 ...

So What Do You Do? - Lorraine Griffin

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:32:25 +0100

It’s time to wake up to what we’re missing. Take my office as a prime example. I work in a very structured, regulation-driven environment (not exactly famed for crazy outpourings of creativity). In fact to the outside observer, the office is a melodic typing pool of efficiency. But as I’ve discovered, all is not what it seems. In our midst, we’ve got an artist, a birthday-card designer, a culinary goddess, a cartoonist, a Toastmaster-style orator and of co...

Roots and Ribbons - Clar Ni Chonghaile

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:18:00 +0100

I left when I was 19. First to London, then Madrid, London again and then Paris, where I married an Englishman. At the civil wedding service, a self-conscious Parisian official butchered my name. “Je l’ai dit correctement?” she said anxiously. I nodded. I was used to strange pronunciations by then. Already, I was drifting: my Irish was failing, my French pout was improving, and my centre of gravity was shifting. A year later, we moved to the Ivory Coast and I discovered heat, snakes, ...

It Never Rains But It Pours - Kirk Horton

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:18:09 +0100

I watched as my mentor placed his glass down softly on his cardboard beer mat. He had an air of exactitude and with a calculated smile he said, “We’ve ten minutes until our next meeting ….and on a day like today an umbrella would be a useful asset.” Scooping up his ipod and laptop he announced, “First lesson. Look and learn.”

I followed his oversized form through the crowd of Dubliners until we arrived at the end of the bar and with a single move of his hand the ba...

Fathers and Sons by Ferdia Mac Anna

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:15:10 +0100

Where are the stewards? A group of them stands huddled together in a far field, as though this mess is now out of their hands. Where are the police? Who’s in charge here? Someone unhooks a barrier and slips through. Others follow suit and now it’s anarchy. People skip the queues. Barriers are pushed over. Thousands dash for the buses. Some shout abuse at the few stewards who are still around. You struggle to keep your feet. You worry about your boy. Hold on tight. Keep your feet no matt...

From Whence it Came - Lorraine Griffin

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:08:36 +0100

He was a Wesht of Ireland man; a teacher, headmaster, gifted storyteller and one of life’s true gentlemen. Rare nowadays that a guy would stand up if a lady entered the room or left the dinner table. In fact I know plenty that are still struggling with the door-opening basics. Through his impeccable manners, and that of his sons and daughters, it’s difficult for me to accept anything less than a firm handshake and a genuine compliment. Really, anything less is a farc...

An Accidental Miracle - Kirk Houghton

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:24:40 +0100

“Shoes, boots, belts, laptops, cell phones, coats, watches,” a security guard rang out as if in a clothes bizarre, “all right here.” He waved a plastic tray in our direction.

“Je-s-u-s,” a tall man in a suit exclaimed from behind.

“Amen to that,” a stooped woman nodded her head, glancing our way.

Processed in security we were expelled into the narrow corridor of the departure gates. The number of travellers swelled as they swarmed around the stalls and shops that line...

Meeting MacGyver - Paul O'Dwyer

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:18:11 +0100

Watching the show at 2am, 3am and other incongruous hours (with one or both baby daughters) lead to a deeper appreciation for a very clever show. The writing, acting and VFX were excellent. So when it came to the agreed lottery of who would “do nights” I volunteered! I began to follow the show religiously, almost with the fervour of my teenage years for “MacGyver”. The show follows a team of four adventurers who travel from Earth to other worlds through a portal called a Star Gate which w...

Memories of Maureen Potter - Anne Maher

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:05:27 +0100

Each year we holidayed with relations in Bundoran, Co. Donegal. My mother sent Maureen a postcard which read "Greetings from Bundoran" and with her finest handwriting she wrote "Hello from the children at the gate." However, Maureen never acknowledged the postcard. Time passed. My mother waited with bated breath for a thank-you, but still never a word from Maureen. With that, my mother chaperoned us to the gate one evening at half past five. As usual, over the road ...

French Lunch - Jane Shorthall

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:56:03 +0100

For me, this reaction is common in Ariège Pyrénées. There are many other nationalities here, and while some ex-pats say they find the people of this department insular, I don’t. Here in the Grand Sud, after food and wine, rugby is everything. While now a Stade Toulouse supporter, having been in the hallowed Lansdowne Road is my passport to fame. Some of the party were guests from Paris, here for the excellent fishing – and obviously the reason the lunch was on a bigger scale...

A Pilot's Tale - Mike Mahon

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:16:42 +0100

It had been decided to base two of our aircraft at Kano, Northern Nigeria. This was a welcome break from Lagos. The weather in Kano was much more pleasant, it was dry and no humidity. We started the new morning schedule going clockwise Kano, Kaduna, Madugeri, Sokoto and back to Kano, four sectors. It was many months later when the new timetable was eventually printed that we realized that we were supposed to operate the other way around and no one had noticed!

As fate would have it I just happen...

My Curtains - Barbara Scully

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:07:03 +0100

As I lost myself in the pattern books my mother would be rummaging in a large bin which resided in the centre of the store and was labelled ‘remnants’. She was in heaven with her hands sunk down deep into the bargain trough, pulling out all kinds of bits and pieces of multicoloured fabric, which she could purchase for half nothing.

Sometimes I would call her over to show her something I considered really wonderful, in the hope that she might be tempted to purchase the pattern and make the ...

Going Radio GaGa with Queen - Brenda Drumm

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:27:28 +0100

I decided I could cope with all those conditions. The ticket was £14.50 including a 50p booking fee. The bus was £10 return. I did the maths and decided that at least four babysitting sessions would be needed to pay for the concert and travel and maybe one or two extra for ‘refreshments’.

As soon as the tickets went on sale I bought mine. QUEEN was splashed across the top of the ticket in big gold letters. Harp Lager was the main sponsor. I had ticket number 1911270 and it said:

Slane Cas...

Halves and Steps - Ellen Brickley

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:41:01 +0100

‘Which of your parents is dead?’
‘Neither. OK, here we go. My father was married twice. . . ’

And so it would go. I even developed a quick ‘n’ easy guide to the difference between half-siblings and step-siblings: half-siblings had one parent in common. Step-siblings had none.

Where I grew up, it wasn’t unusual for women to have more than one relationship that resulted in a child. But those children were raised together - lived together, woke up in the same house and ate the same di...

How I Met Your Father, The Airplane Story - Sheena Lambert

Wed, 25 May 2011 11:48:54 +0100

It was also Mary B’s job to show me to my seat. We had allocated seats in those days, can you believe it? It was a safety measure designed so that the staff would know if anyone was missing in an emergency. How quaint. I ignored another stewardess as she made a great show of closing the door, not-so-subtly reinforcing the fact that everyone onboard had been waiting for me. Following Mary B to my seat, I glanced about apologetically at anyone who cared to notice. As I recall, most pe...

This Uneventful Life: Joe Massingham

Fri, 06 May 2011 09:44:24 +0100

Then the young man cycling along Bunda Street noticed the knot of people and the figure on the ground. He was a fireman, visiting from Melbourne, and recognised an emergency when he saw one. Shouldering his way through he immediately started resuscitation procedures, putting into practice all his hard-learned techniques. He was still working away when the ambulance arrived and machine resuscitation was applied. He gave the ambulance crew a brief outline of what he knew and watched as the ambul...

Paul's Shoes

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:04:26 +0100

We had exactly 20 minutes in the morning to run wildly around the sloping asphalt parking lot before Sr. Mary Anne rang her bell once (which made us freeze), twice (which made us line up in order of grades), and a final time (which made us file into the school). I run three steps before Paul’s slim, unforgiving shoes squeeze my thick toes like a vice, even though my Mom had spent half her morning working in oil to soften the leather. The oil made the leather more orange than soft, though, and a...

That's Mad Ted

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:40:49 +0100

So as you can imagine, I am being kept very entertained at the moment.· I end each evening in the company of that old curmudgeon Vincent Browne.· Each evening I hope for fireworks.· Last Thursday I was richly rewarded by the spectacle of Conor Lenihan giving birth to a brand new persona for himself live on TV.· It was great craic.

I watch alone but make sure that I recount each development to himself who has been asking for seemingly weeks now, “so has the Government collapsed then.”· �...