tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40553825774510954582024-02-20T17:49:27.852-08:00Oh! Ballinteer.So Much To Answer For...Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-34116241803499627252011-08-19T23:04:00.001-07:002011-08-19T23:22:42.777-07:00A Sentimental Idiot AbroadTo paraphrase my good mate Michael Jude Keogh on Facebook, aaaaaaah the middle of August, you just can’t whack it can you? Where has the summer gone? <br />
Technically, well, officially it is indeed Autumn. Or ‘The Fall’ over here. Mark E Smith and all them lads must be on tour again.<br />
The football season has rolled back into town with the same promise of all seasons before. “It’ll be better than the last one”. But truly, we are no more than a week in and already it’s Arsene Wenger moaning about something or other, Rio Ferdinand getting injured, Liverpool collating another series of excuses about why they’re not going to win the league, Jose Mourinho throwing a strop and accusing Barcelona of being c***s and Robbie Keane signing for someone and declaring it ‘a dream come true’. <br />
Might as well be last January as far as I’m concerned.<br />
<br />
I had been Joe Duffy free for four months. Never had I been happier. Thought I’d turned the corner. Like an ex-heroin addict hanging round a back alley in Temple Bar with his junkie mates I gave into temptation. On it went one day in the office. "So,nothing has changed back in the old sod then?" Off it went again. Like a terminal playing of ‘Suffer Little Children’ by The Smiths or the entirety of ‘The Holy Bible’ by Manic Street Preachers on repeat, RTE still peddles misery to the masses. <br />
And I believe Tubridy got onto the BBC? The mind boggles. How the British nation would find aural pleasure in witterings on Twitterings and cartoons is beyond me. What next? A bird out of N-Dubz judging on the X Factor? <br />
It was nicely summed up by a Canadian colleague of mine who said what I’ve been trying to say for years in one simple succinct sentence. “What the fuck is that shit?!”. Ne’er a truer word spake. A summation that has somehow escaped me for the best part of a decade, and for that I am forever indebted John.<br />
<br />
Liam Gallagher is apparently suing his brother Noel over his “we couldn’t do the V Festival because Liam had a hangover” outburst. I’d love to see that come to court. “Mr.Gallagher. I’d like to show you Exhibit A. I present to you, footage of Oasis Unplugged from 1996”.Case dis-fookin’-missed-ah. <br />
In my hankerings for the sunshine days of my youth, I do hope Noel’s album is a good one. ‘The Death Of You And Me’ gets stuck in my head until the trumpet bit which is reminiscent of the psychedelic bit out of Father Ted’s ‘My Lovely Horse’ don’t you think?<br />
<br />
Something happened to me somewhere in summertime that I never thought possible. I got insanely homesick. The aforementioned MJ Keogh came over to visit us. It was wonderful to just sit outside and talk absolute filth and nonsense for a few hours every evening after our nightly, yes, nightly barbecue. I tried to explain to him that homesickness kicks in at the most ridiculous moments possible. <br />
For instance, I heard Rupert Holmes ‘Him Him Him’ on the radio one day and I was instantly transported back to the sitting room in Broadford Drive with my Mam dancing around with me whilst my brother Alan dribbled and soiled his nappy. He was 19 at the time, but that’s besides the point. I could sense the smells(it could have been the drains),the feel of the sunshine pouring in through the net curtains onto my back and the feeling of absolute joy that it was nearly time for my Daddy to come home from work. That mystical place that you thought ‘Daddys Work’ was. He went round the corner in his car and bang, he disappeared into’work’. He worked for the ESB which meant that, in the Eighties any road, not a lot of work actually took place but, a child can dream can’t he? <br />
“I’m on a course today!” he would shout gleefully. Yeah, Dun Laoghaire Golf Club. Oh, the ESB Social Club And Golf Society was not just a wonderful name for some sort of band but provided a wonderful day out for the lads in in the Eighties. Maybe even a 'dinner dance' was thrown in.But that was then...<br />
<br />
No, the real low came one day when I’d flicked, by accident I hastily add, onto a country music station. And there I was thinking it would be somehow upbeat. How wrong I stupidly was. A song came on,extremely reminiscent of ‘North Country Boy’ by my favoured Charlatans. Glen Campbell. “Hey Little One! I’m just like you! I’m lonely too...” <br />
Now, my daughter is nearly three and my wife is nearly five foot three so I don’t know which one of them I thought it was about. Hands up. I bloody cried. I sobbed my lil’ heart out. Guilt for taking them away from all we knew? Missing all the fuckers I know back home? I don’t know.But it passed and I composed myself as I pulled the car into the driveway.<br />
"Daddy! Were you in work?!". I was. And I know what she's thinking.<br />
<br />
Next day, I was down with the wife taking our daughter on her first waterslide, in 32 degree heat with beers and chicken wings perched on a nearby table, thinking quietly to myself “What the fuck was all that about?”. <br />
Just like the football season, life is all swings and roundabouts. <br />
It could be worse. I could be back in Benildus starting a new term in school and having Double Irish first thing with Pascal fucking Smith.....<br />
Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-19229444546880910882011-07-06T21:11:00.001-07:002011-07-06T21:11:11.887-07:00"This Has To Be A Starting Point.Not The End Of Everything..."So the sun goes down on another blisteringly hot day in Burlington, Ontario. Peace reigns within the O’Connor kingdom. Who am I kidding? There’s only one chief in town and it’s not me or my wife. It’s the little girl with the sort-of Canadian accent who currently slumbers in her ‘Princess Something or Other’ bed dreaming dreams of Amarillo. I presume that’s what she’s dreaming of as she does enough hugging of her pillow to put a certain Tony Christie to shame. It’s either that or a monster, known to you and I as the face of Iain Dowie with seven legs.<br />
<br />
Though rare, I sometimes get the “what in the name of fuck am I doing here?” moments. It generally happens in Walmart (a sort of glorified Nutgrove for the uninitiated). It happens when you’re about to buy a mobile phone for $150 and you think it’s a great deal until they ring it in at the till and suddenly it jumps to $200 due to HST. I presume this stands for Horrifically Stupid Tax. You see? It’s not just in Ireland that you get ripped off unawares.<br />
<br />
It happens when you get sick of listening to the music on your iPod and you switch on Canadian radio and it’s either Bon Jovi singing about being on a bed of roses as opposed to a bed of nails or Kid Rock telling us that in his youth they were “doing stupid things, really stupid fucking things, singing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long”. Idiot. How I pray at night that he were struck dumb. Switch off and have sweet silence all summer long more like. Homesickness really does bite you at the most innocuous of times.<br />
<br />
And then there’s the time difference. I am certain my mates back home have begun to detest me. A few beers on a Friday night on the front porch loosen the tongue at around 10. In your mildly drunken state, you obviously forget it’s 3 in the morning in Dublin. And you text. And then you text some more. “Fuck ‘em” you think to yourself, laughing all evil like. And then you forget that one of them has a two-month old son. But you justify it by reasoning that he’s probably up feeding the boy anyway and you get mildly upset when you get no response to your latest brilliant witterings. And then there’s a thunderstorm and your childlike attention span is diverted. You never pause to think that they’re going to wake up at 8 on a Saturday morning and say to their good lady “what the fuck is that c*** on?” In fairness none of them have rang at 8 in the morning Irish time. But I’d better stop because I’m only inviting it on to myself now Innit?<br />
<br />
A small part of my job here at the moment is to recruit a couple of Irish land surveyors for my new firm. For that is what my profession is, in case you didn’t know. I have received a dozen or so CV’s in the past week from Ireland. Must have made a good impression eh? Either that or us Irish lot are cheaper. Probably the latter.<br />
What strikes me, as if I didn’t know already, is that every last one of them hasn’t worked since Summer 2010. Not one. And the ones who are in employment are teetering on the brink of unemployment from what I can garner. It’s fucking depressing. <br />
<br />
I listen to Tom Dunne on Newstalk via t’internet of a morning (playback, obviously) and whilst he provides some light relief, when you hear the news bulletins on the hour it would make you want to slit your wrists. How is Ireland going to get out of the state it is in with all the talk of doom and bleeding’ gloom that is overbearing within the media? When my wife and I talk of ‘the current climate’ it is actually to do with 30 degree plus temperatures and whether we should turn the air conditioning on or not. I’m in the yes camp; she’s a definite no, for your information. Makes a nice change from rowing about whether we get a take away or pay the ESB bill, I can tell you. I always pushed for the take-away. Just haven’t grown up have I?<br />
<br />
What I say in my responses to the applicants is simple. There are no Irish in Burlington save for me, my wife and child. There are no Irish bars. The Guinness is good in the bars that I have frequented on colder nights before my family arrived over. The local beer, Sleemans is cracking. Toronto is half an hour’s drive away. People get out of an evening and actually do stuff. If you want a barbecue, you can fucking have one without worrying if it’s going to rain. There are outdoor swimming pools that resemble beaches so you can feel like you’re on ollyday in Spain of a weekend. It is piss easy to drive over here – just point the car and accelerate; the insurance is unbelievably and criminally expensive mind you. The Canadian people are welcoming and genuinely good-natured, you don’t feel like it’s fake ‘Have A Nice Day’ like south of the border. Your Dublin accent is somehow exotic. You will miss your Mam and Dad and your sisters and brothers and your extended family (even those who support Leeds) and your mates like hell. But you have Skype; if even just to see them because talking on that thing is nigh on impossible. That’s what the Lord above invented the phone for.<br />
There is no ‘old school tie’ and class structure here – so you can be whoever you want to be and become whatever you want to be once you work hard and prove yourself. And you do work hard. You get ten days paid leave per year starting out. It’s a far cry from pissing off to Turkey for three weeks I can tell you.<br />
But above all, you can talk a good fight a la David Haye but you don’t want to be knocked out. You have to fight a good fight. You have to really want to escape your lot in Ireland and get the fuck out of Dodge. You have to accept that you won’t be in town with your mates, or going to Ireland matches with your mates or ripping the piss out of your brother in your Mam’s kitchen. And that you won’t be doing it for a while either. Whoever sang “I’ll be home for Christmas, but only in my dreams” was spot on. Quit dreaming this is real life baby.<br />
<br />
But the good far outweighs the bad. For every low there is a high. I left partly because I couldn’t take any more blows and partly because I looked into the future and did not like what I saw. May I add, I was thrown a wonderful lifeline to stay by a friend of mine, God bless him. But it still wasn’t enough. I apologize for that but you have to do what you have to do. You only get the one life so you’d better make it good. Sure, cats get nine. But who in their right mind wants to spend eternity sitting on a shed roof licking their town-halls?<br />
<br />
I was reading the local paper today and I was struck by a quote by an Italian football manager. “This has to be a starting point. Not the end of everything”. Was it Carlo Ancelotti? Giovanni Trappatoni? Fabio Capello? None of the above. No, it was Carolina Morace. Manager of the Canadian Women’s football team...and to think people said she was just a big pair of t*ts....<br />
<br />
From me and my High Flying Birds, I bid you a goodnight.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-38808252817465713492011-07-01T23:22:00.001-07:002011-07-01T23:22:46.167-07:00Cahore GirlsYou know that feeling? A smell or an atmosphere or a certain light? It transports you way back when? Well, I had it today. I was suddenly back in Cahore, County Wexford. Fuck knows why. I was in Oakville, Ontario beside a massive outdoor pool but it hit me anyway. It wasn’t the fact that there wasn’t a shop for miles and I couldn’t understand their accents or they couldn’t understand mine. It wasn’t the fact that the sun shone all day. It wasn’t the fact that I had nothing to do and all day to do it. Well, maybe it was all of those things. But I was transported back to Cahore nonetheless.<br />
<br />
In Cahore I’d wake up about ten. I’d head out tousle-headed for breakfast in the mobile home my Mam and Dad owned. I’d be greeted by my snivelling little brother who would accuse me of wanking the previous night and keeping him awake (I was 13, he was 10) and to be truthful, it was definitely the other way round. He was a proper delph-rattler in his time was my brother. Every fucking morning we had to go through that particular charade. He knows the truth...<br />
<br />
Anyway, most of my cousins had mobile homes in the same park. One or two or all of them would call in around 12 and off we’d go. What did we get up to? Well I can’t speak for my brother but the rest of us(and him) would just get our bikes and piss off. Freedom? You can’t put a price on that.<br />
<br />
Cahore was and still is less than a one horse town. The Strand Bar, a pier, a beach, Eddie Sinnott’s pool hall...and that was it. Oh, and a couple of tennis courts. During Wimbledon, you couldn’t get a booking. Pretend Stefan Edbergs everywhere.<br />
<br />
When we were really small kids, my Dad and my uncles Joe and Damien would drag us down to the pier of a Sunday and make us jump in to the freezing cold waters. Waters that sometimes had ‘floaters’ in them. To this day, I see no difference between Dad, Joe and Damien and Hitler, Goebbels and Herr Flick. Proper sadists. They created a fictional club called ‘The Geronimo Club’. And if you didn’t jump in first time, they’d discuss your ‘membership’ in The Strand afterwards. The cue for them to get out was “Look, the Heineken sign is lighting up”. Actually, upon mature recollection, they were fucking genii. Get the kids down and get plastered...hats off.<br />
<br />
Tuesday night was ‘Disco Night’. Ooh, the epitome of glamour. A bus would pick up all those of teenage years at the gate at 8 and it would be bound for the Hacienda of Kilmuckridge, ‘The Hydro’.<br />
I’d lash on the hair-gel so I’d resemble Marcus Tandy and throw fuckloads of my Dad’s Old Spice on my baby-esque face in the hope of “getting me hole”. Funny that I never managed it isn’t it? Well, maybe with some Wexford girl who knew no better but the Dublin girls knew the score, God bless ‘em.<br />
The night was spent in the corner talking to nobody except the Dublin lads until the slow set. The slow set usually consisted of some Bon Jovi offering or God forbid and more than likely, fucking ‘Patience’ by fucking Guns ‘N’ Fucking Roses. Couldn’t wait to get on the bus back to Cahore so we could spit on the bus driver’s head...<br />
<br />
The next day was spent avoiding the girl you didn’t kiss and didn’t talk to. We were all as guilty as each other. We should’ve stuck together, right here, right now, in sweet harmony (to use the lyrics of a popular song of the period) but we didn’t. We were idiots as teenagers. As teenagers are now. And always will be.<br />
<br />
Wednesday nights were back to playing a football match at 7 in front of the tennis courts ,trying to impress the girl you should’ve talked to the night before but didn’t and spent the whole day avoiding. “I’ll impress her by making Geoff look like a fucking mug” you thought to yourself. And you made him look a mug, but it didn’t impress her. <br />
<br />
And for that attitude alone, I raise a glass to the girls of Cahore(Dublin ones) in 91-92-93-94. Throw your hands up at me...and Kev...and Jimmy....and Barry...and John...You ain’t no WAGS and never will be.x.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-63444448675067450702011-07-01T21:49:00.001-07:002011-07-01T21:49:53.487-07:00Oh Canada - Part 1It all seems like a lifetime ago. <br />
<br />
There I was, clinging on to my mother in the sitting room in my house in Stocking Wood knowing that I’m not going to see her for months on end, my sister Lyn in floods of tears. My father having to walk out of the room as the emotion enveloped and got the better of him. My Mam’s Peugeot 206 driving down the road with me stood on the front step crying like a baby waving at it until the red tail lights turned the corner and I felt empty and sorry for what I was about to do. That was Wednesday 6th April 2011.<br />
Thursday the 7th was spent tying up loose ends and worrying. Worrying because my Canadian work permit hadn’t dropped through the letterbox. Myself and Doc had stood across the road from the house when the postman made his delivery that morning and he’d delivered nothing but a stupid fucking letter from UPC(Cunts).Janette and I had agreed that I’d fly on Friday regardless.<br />
I paced the floor like a man demented. Shitting myself. Fear like I’ve never felt before. What if? So many what ifs.<br />
<br />
At five o’clock a neighbour dropped me home. I was met in the porch by my best mate on the verge of tears. His partner was due to have their first kid in two weeks time, and there I was talking about fear? The worst part of it was the knowing I wasn’t going to be around for it.<br />
<br />
One by one, my nearest and dearest showed up to the house. It was like a wake. My own funeral. Well wishing text messages flooded in. The older brother-like figure, the singer bloke out of Rhythm Culture, who was up in my house on the previous Tuesday gave me inspiration in thirty words or less. (In times of loneliness I look at it and it gives me the inspiration to keep on trucking.I thank him profusely for it.)<br />
Everyone stood in the kitchen that night looking at the floor. Janette and I had gotten rid of everything, and I mean everything of what was dear to us. Stephen turned up to pick up the 52 inch telly that we’d bought out of our wedding present money. That for me was a significant moment. It was the moment that the baton was passed from Ireland to Canada. <br />
I loved that telly. I’d seen United do Arsenal in the Champions League Semi Final in the company of Rob, Mark and John on that telly whilst my seven month old daughter slept in her little cot upstairs and Janette went mental at us for cheering the first goal. The second goal? It was celebrated in mute, like a bunch of little deaf fellas. <br />
Good times were had with that telly and me and others. Jools Holland’s New Years Eve Hootenanny was screened religiously and the resultant magic shows from my brother Alan and Daragh that followed were good times. That telly could tell some stories, I’m telling ya...<br />
<br />
Back to the kitchen and there was those not knowing what to say, awkward moments. I stood outside on Stocking Wood Copse with Alan D, Kaner and Helga and unborn Adam all shuffling uncomfortably and putting off the inevitable. Not four years previously myself and Alan had greeted the sunrise, sitting on a kerb with a bottle of red wine in an empty new street. Life was sweet and so was the wine. My neighbour Francis looked on, pissing himself laughing at the drunken fools he had just shacked up next door to. And manys a great nights drinking I had with him. But life had changed in oh so many ways.<br />
Eventually the goodbye hugs and kisses came. Proper hugs. Ones with true meaning. “I’ll see you soon”. But how soon? Not soon enough. <br />
All the nights spent with Alan D and him carrying me home from Club Sarah, all the nights in The Coach House with Kaner, all the nights with Helga laughing at mine and Alan D’s drunken stupidity suddenly crystallized into history. And then they were gone. “You and I we’re gonna Live Forever”. I haven’t listened to that song since. I can’t bring myself to.<br />
Steve and Maria made the long trek over from Castleknock. They’re getting married this year. I’m going to miss their wedding. I’m toying with the idea of doing a congratulatory video with a pretend butler serving me Scotch. But I wish I could be there. Yarm? It, apparently rocks. Look it up on Google Maps. Bryan Robson lives there. Get well Robbo!<br />
Ed, my Leeds supporting brother in law gave me a hug. That, for anyone who knows him, is as rare as a Liverpool title winning side since the back-pass rule was introduced. My eight year old niece Ciara sat on my lap and assured me “we’ll be able to talk on Skype, so don’t worry Paul”. I miss her and I missed her communion. <br />
My mother-in-law Valerie saw the distress behind my eyes and shared wonderful words of wisdom with me. That Les Dawson sure is full of shit man!<br />
<br />
My brother Alan and Sabine had put in Trojan efforts all day. As time crept on and I knew I had to be up at the crack of dawn for my flight, I couldn’t hang on all night. I’d shared a room with this geezer for a quarter of a century. Time to say goodbye. Hard to do, rock fucking hard. We imbibed twice a week from the age of twenty to twenty five in The Coach House (Monday to Thursday and Friday to Sunday, FYI), he’d lie on the middle of the road whilst we’d replicate the ‘Stuck In A Moment’ video before Kaner would throw his bag of chips into Doctor Hooi’s back garden before we’d come home to watch “I’m Alan Partridge” every fucking night as we lay in our single beds ‘apple-tarting’ and laughing. Our Mam would come in to tell us to shut up because we were waking the whole house and we’d laugh at the fact we’d woken her up. Never a peep from Dad or Lyn. Funny that. Magical.<br />
We just looked at each other and had a big hug. I can’t remember what was said but words are made redundant in moments like that, its just the look in their eyes you remember. It was like a bad dream as he was leaving. And then he was gone into the night.<br />
<br />
Right then, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m really doing this shit. Emigration was a word reserved for people who went to foreign and grew beards and bungee jumped. Not me. Not I. Never me. But so it was. <br />
<br />
Eva had gone to sleep and I knew I’d have an hour or two with her in the morning. Myself and Janette lay in bed talking about the future. Janette and Eva were due to follow in three weeks time. “Are we mental?”, “Are we doing the right thing?”. Fuck it. We’ve gone too far to go back now. Three weeks apart is nothing in the grand scheme of things is it? “Don’t worry, it will be alright”. “What if they turn me back?”. “Don’t worry. Get some sleep”. No more worries or doubts, the good will come out....<br />
Yeah right....‘Kite’ kept going through my head keeping me awake: <br />
“Who’s to say where the wind will take you? Who’s to say what it is will break you? I don’t know which way the wind will blow. Who’s to know when the time has come around? Don’t want to see you cry, I know that this is not goodbye...”<br />
<br />
Terminal Two. Dublin Airport. An architectural wonder. Beautiful innit? Makes you feel like you are in some wondrous city until you step outside I’d imagine. But there is a major design flaw that borders on the criminal called Departures. It’s fucking horrific. You have to walk through a mile of rope before you disappear into security. The Green Mile. All well and good heading off on holiday but, when your wife and daughter are standing there and you know you’re not going to see them for the best part of a month and you’re daughter is going “Bye Daddy! Bye! Bye Daddy! Bye!(repeat to fade)” , you want to get your hands on the architect and strangle the bastard. Thank God no one else came out to see me off.<br />
<br />
I was so bad and so noticeable that some oul’ one gave me a hug in the queue to get my luggage checked. She was flying to see her son in Leeds. ”Don’t worry about it son, you’ll see them soon enough.” The first of a lot of motherly figures. I barely kept the sobbing in. In times of acute embarrassment like that and also other moments I can’t go into on a family show such as this, I recite the Arsenal team of 1989 in my head and it keeps the wolf from the door, so to speak . Lukic, Dixon, Winterburn, Adams, Bould........<br />
<br />
I had to fly to Chicago and then get a connecting flight on to Toronto. That means US Immigration, obviously. “What’s the purpose of your trip?”.”Oh, I’m heading to Canada to make a better life for meself” says I.”Ok, well make sure you get into Ice Hockey. And you will. It’s a fucking great sport man. Good luck” said Immigration Official. Simple as. Why was I shitting myself so? This will be a piece of piss this...Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-21857720514808714562011-06-18T23:08:00.001-07:002011-06-18T23:08:35.982-07:00Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your OwnMy old man went to work in Saudi Arabia in 1992. At least that’s what he told us. He could have been in ‘The Joy’ for all we knew getting mates from the ESB working abroad to send home video tapes of far-flung places like Al-Hofuf and the souks of Dhahran. I do believe he was in the sands of Arabia though. The drink-driving laws weren’t as strict in those halcyon days as in as much as the early 90’s can be called halcyon days, so I reckon he was alright. He came back sporting a ridiculous tan and even more ridiculous gold jewellery. Like a Pakistani Del-Boy or an anaemic B.A.Baracus. Ergo, he was definitely not in ‘The Joy’. Plus we met him at the airport.<br />
<br />
He was there for nine months, with a trip home at Christmas dividing the trip equally. Laden(no pun intended) with gifts he arrived in Broadford Drive, dishing them out willy-nilly. A Saudi Arabia replica shirt for me, a toy hovercraft for Alan, a purple woollen top and leggings for Lyn which read ‘Chi Pan Pan Chi Pan’ on the waist (I don’t know either) and an Arabic head-dress and suit for our Uncle Joe – which he put to good use, going down to the off-licence in Nutgrove sporting said suit and shades declaring “I buy the whole shop” and brandishing a cheque-book. And a fuck load of imitation Rolex watches. That was a good Christmas that. I was fifteen and because of my Dad’s brief return, our house was filled with relatives which made calling the girl I’d met in Stradbrook the night before rather difficult. I’d sneak into the kitchen to call her and get mercilessly slagged for it. “You know I do but I just can’t say it at the moment...” they would cry and then cry laughing whilst my face went red as I stuttered over my “So what did you do today then?” type sentences. Complete set of bastards...<br />
<br />
I used to miss Dad terribly. My Uncle Mick worked in ESB International and would deliver a parcel containing hand-written letters from him and a video tape every couple of weeks. My old man, no doubt out of boredom, would travel the highways and byways of Saudi with his newly purchased ‘Handicam’ perched on the dashboard with the accompanying backing track of a Tina Turner opus blaring to the point of actually deafening people to show off the sites that consisted of sand and more sand. He created a character called Abdul Abhaile (a doff of the cap to his Westland Row all-as Gaeilge days, obviously) for the benefit of his youngest, Lyn, who was seven. She lapped it up whilst the rest of us cringed. “Fucking hell, I’m fifteen for fuck sake!”<br />
<br />
But as much as you’d try to shrug it off, it was tough around the house without the old man. There was a father-shaped hole in 86 Broadford Drive. We were such a close-knit family unit you see. The Brady Bunch without some of the bollocks. Someone had to step up to the plate. I was fifteen. Surely this was my moment? Surely...<br />
But no. Into his place stepped a 78 year old man by the name of Jack Connor (never used the O’). My old man’s old man.<br />
<br />
Jack lived in Beaver Row in Donnybrook with our Nana(Mary). A Donnybrook long before the days the rugby bandwagon rolled into town. He would get the 48A from Ranelagh up to Broadford and assume the mantle of the chief of 86. If ever you had a problem? Jack was the man. Sure, you thought to yourself, as a fifteen year old upstart, you could have done it your way but no, come on...bow to the head of the tribe. That’s human nature. I would mouth off and think I was the dog’s because my old man wasn’t around but as soon as Jack rolled into town(on the 48A) I was reduced to the snivelling little fucker all teenagers are. <br />
<br />
Then one day, Jack spied the dripping tap outside in the back garden. “Bren’s away. It’s my duty to get this fixed”, he thought to himself. So off up to the shed he went to fetch the requisite tools for the repairs. He did this, he did that, as Alan and myself looked on. And then there was a shudder within the walls, and then the attic. Then, nothing. Out of the taps came but air. He’d airlocked the house. I was summoned by my Mam to get Darren Kavanagh from three doors up to see what he could do, but he was baffled too.<br />
We had noticed Jack retreat into the sitting room whilst Darren performed his plumbing resuscitation but when we got in there he was gone. We went out on to the street but there was no sign of him. We panicked. Really panicked.<br />
We searched Broadford Hill and the other one at the front, I think it’s the Walk, but then again nothing ever happened there to make us remember the name of the place so fuck it,and got to the 48A bus terminus at the local community school where we were met with our grandfather Jack, crying. Actually in tears.“What will Bren think of me? Mary will kill me won’t she? Your mother won’t want me in the house, will she?”. Trying to reassure the head of the family was something we were not accustomed to. We coaxed him back but he seemed deeply troubled. Even a bag of chips from Alonzi’s didn’t cheer him up.<br />
<br />
Jack passed away not three years later. And it wasn’t even in that awful moment when he passed, but until I became a father myself that I realised that a father never stops being a father. That’s life isn’t it? <br />
All the advice that my Dad and his Dad had passed to me and I disregarded as “a load of bollocks” became real and true. For as much as you believe your father to be invincible, he is not. He’s just the same as you and me. He has made the same mistakes as you and will continue to make mistakes that you will learn from until the day you don’t have him around anymore. But he does his best. And that’s all he’s ever wanted to do.<br />
<br />
Cherish him.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-91139664614202891842011-06-11T23:51:00.001-07:002011-06-11T23:51:49.552-07:00All That You Can't Leave BehindI write having made the massive life changing decision to move to Canada and all that it entails. I’m sure you’d expect me to (how shall I put this?) blow me own trumpet, a la Marc Almond, and go on about how great the place is and how great a time we’re having but...I’ll save that for another time when the t on my keyboard is working properly and we’ve had an opportunity to properly judge which country pisses on which. I do know which does what, it’s fairly obvious, but we’ll park it alongside that particular sidewalk. Go Blue Jays. <br />
<br />
We sat tonight and watched ‘Back To The Future 2’. For the seven hundredth and fifty second time. But the question arose as it always does. If you could go back in time and observe yourself in a particular scenario, when would it be and why?<br />
<br />
I trawled through the sands of time in my head and thought about the glory days of Club Sarah and Deep. A bag of chips and she’s yours for the night type things. Fantastic days. Fanfuckingtastic. <br />
I thought of working in the Ballinteer House and staying up until six in the morning watching lounge boys and girls lose their sort-of hard earned wages in games of ‘Killer’ in the snooker hall. Of getting into Noel Murphy’s or Spud Murphy’s cars and heading to some nightclub or other and wasting MY hard earned tips on beer that tasted of and probably consisted of human or horse piss.(Another Marc Almond reference for those still reading). But the constant, the factor ‘x’, the thing that stops me from suggesting that period as the golden period is the same as anything in this life...M-O-N-E-Y.<br />
I, and my associates had none in those days. Therefore, I discount it reluctantly.<br />
1995 sure was a fabulous time to be a bloke in your teenage years. Oasis, Adidas tracksuit tops, three-stripe runners, a shit haircut. None of these I have lost as of yet, incidentally. Live Forever? That was the mantra innit.<br />
Money? Ireland to Canada. You do the ‘Math’. Go Blue Jays. ZZ Top rock.<br />
<br />
Just when all seemed lost and town had lost its lustre and the ‘Millennium Bug’ was just about to wreak havoc causing aeroplanes to fall from the sky, forcing bank machines to tell you to fuck right off and helping A & R men from record companies to take over Saturday night televisual entertainment, there was a light in the darkness. I was getting bored of the Nitelink and some Jesus Hairdo freak spouting love and peace whilst punching me about the head as I clung onto my 3(three) kebabs like they were my first born...along came the Three Rock.<br />
<br />
The Three Rock was born out of a quaint little nightclub called Marleys where the people did dance and make merry and spread good tidings and goodwill. It may be possible that it is the only nightclub in history that saw an increase in violence with the introduction of Ecstasy. For that alone there should be a monument placed outside of someone dressed in a ‘Kickers’ checked shirt, frozen in time kicking seven shades of shite out of another bloke in a ‘Kickers’ checked shirt. A beautiful, mystical place.<br />
<br />
They revamped. They disposed of 45” records stuck to the wall and held the masses enthralled by suspending three Styrofoam ‘rocks’ from the roof. And they got live bands in too. Easily pleased us Ballinteer lot. But it was good. Great in fact. <br />
<br />
8pm, meet in the Coach House. Drink tonnes of Guinness and Bulmers. Laugh at Mick Keogh’s latest scheme. Slag my brother off. Have a row with my brother. Make up. Get in a taxi, get out because the row has kicked off again, call him a ‘f***ing c***’,have Brian Kane talk us out of it, hug, get to the door, show ID (I was 24!,sweet),get to the bar, have the legendary Conor ‘Sos’ O’Gorman serve us pints, as it got later have Conor serve us triple vodkas and Red Bull, have another row with my brother because his shirt is shit and he says I look like a gay because of my shirt, Kaner(inebriated now) intervenes once again, do a bit of stupid dancing, The Mulville Fella arrives and proceeds to get very drunk indeed, another row with my brother... “what’s wrong with my shoes?”,make up, watch as Alan, Mick Keogh and Kaner dance whilst looking at themselves on the big screen. Try to chat up the best looking girl in Ballinteer and make a tit of yourself because you’re so drunk and in the end get a mooch from some other girl, another few Vodkas, LEAVE, laugh as The Mulville Fella falls into a hedge and Kaner splits his head open falling off Keoghs back, get home and fall asleep in a reheated lasagne, have a row with your brother because he wants to watch Alan Partridge and you want The Office....Thats a full working day lad!....and don’t you forget it!<br />
<br />
God I miss Ballinteer.<br />
<br />
Canada is going well though. I’ll fill you in another time.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-81391169716644089352011-04-05T20:22:00.003-07:002011-04-05T20:22:07.023-07:00Big SkyLife, eh? What is it all about?<br />
<br />
You go through school and the laughter that goes with it. For that was what your school was all about, for you and your kindred spirits anyway. Pure Laughter. It wasn’t about Maths, it wasn’t about English or God forbid, the waste of time that was Irish. Laughter ruled the day. Whether it was Stephen O’Byrne wiping his dog shit filled shoes on the saddle of the biggest fucker in school’s bike or just laughing about the fact he had the nerve to do it. You laughed at the bloke who was mad into Nirvana at fourteen and laughed even more when his hero blew his brains out thus making that stooge’s argument redundant. “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die”?. Off you pop,sun-shee-eye-nah. <br />
<br />
You and your mates just missed Oasis round Benildus way. You and your mates did wear the three stripe ‘get-up’ and were roundly derided for it, I might add. For it was 1993. It truly was a shite time to be a football loving, secret music enthusiast teenager. Two more years and you’d have been Gods! <br />
Oh how they laughed at the 1970’s around then. Hand on your heart, you cannot see a comeback for the shellsuit or ‘Grunge’. Noddy Holder and his mirrored hat had more of a chance of gracing our retinas surely? <br />
<br />
The time comes for you to collect your Leaving Certificate results and you do what it says on the tin and you leave. Nobody really prepares you for the ‘what the fuck am I going to do with my life?’ moment we all face. Your life is in the hands of a faceless nameless ‘examiner’. Fuck it, life will be alright.<br />
You get your results. You go on the piss. You get your CAO form back. Who gives a fuck really? <br />
You’re young. You’re too young to make massive life choices. Gerry Ryan says so. Gerry would never lie or do something stupid would he? Believe in the words of your elders. That’s what you’re told.<br />
<br />
Off you go to college or an apprenticeship or whatever life has dealt you. You do your best, for that is all you can do. Live up to your ability. It is all that’s asked of you. <br />
<br />
You get somewhere eventually, you start earning a few ‘bob’. You get a bit cocky down in the pub some nights, thinking you’re the bollocks. You come crashing down to Earth on a Christmas Eve when some fucker that was in your class in school says he’s a millionaire. “But he was an idiot!” you protest to yourself whilst trying to piss the blue block out of the the plughole. And then you go outside and pretend to be his mate. You’ve sold your soul. <br />
You’re the idiot now. Like Ralph from The Fast Show.<br />
<br />
Things pick up. You meet the girl you were always meant to be with. The rest were just a training session. Love hits you right between the eyes.<br />
You get married. You spent a fucking fortune on the wedding. Living up to the stereotype cast upon you. You have to do it. Felt the pressure didn’t you?<br />
You both would have happily got married in a skip in Rhyl but no, you had to impress. Still, it was the best day of your life and it was worth every penny. Worth it to see the smiles on the guests faces. And most importantly, the smile on your beautiful bride. Every little girl dreams of her wedding. You hope she achieved all her dreams. You hope she did.<br />
<br />
A year or so later you are blessed with this little blinking being that looks a bit like you, a bit like your wife and a lot like your Nan. All wrinkly and pink.“I’m your Dad!” you stutter through the tears.You hold her in your left arm and try to take a photo of her to send to your loved ones. They’re all expectant and all joyous. The feeling is indescribable. A nurse comes in and snaps you out of your fuzziness. “This is how you change a nappy, this is how you dress her”. “Say again?”. You are too blown away by the wonder to take notice. The nurse doesn’t give a fuck, it’s her job. It’s up to you. The feeling of responsibility. The feeling of not leaving this little breathing fragile creature alone takes you over.<br />
You both bring this little creation home. Friends, family visit. It’s a magical time. <br />
<br />
It gets tough. Not sleeping much are you? The feeds and the cathartic feeling of making up bottles or ‘bah-bahs’ as you are want to call them can’t make up for the lack of sleep. But still, everything is alright. You’re making the mortgage payments and the car payments and every other motherfucking payment you’ve engaged in. Living the dream. Fantastic.<br />
<br />
And then things take a turn for the worse. Not sickness. Not real suffering, Thank God. <br />
You have your health after all but you end up sailing upon the Great Redundant Sea. No hope. No nothing. <br />
You’ve done a thirteen year stint in the one company and suddenly you have nothing. You feel like shit. You could’ve had it all. You did for a while. Didn’t appreciate it did you? Wish you could have saved didn’t you? All very well after the horse has bolted. You’ve always been a idiot deep down. The ‘Lads’ always told you so. Start believing it.<br />
<br />
Down, down deeper and down you slide. You don’t want to start relating to Status Quo lyrics but inevitably you do. It’s the final straw. You might as well be a cooper and have songs written about you. But eventually you snap out of it. And one bright sunshine morning you realise that your future lies outside of the country of your birth.<br />
A country riddled with corruption, parochialism, narrow-mindedness and banality. You complain about it but nobody listens. <br />
Oh sure, it’s fine to moan to Joe Duffy about how hard done by you’ve been, but who is standing up and making themselves heard?....Nobody. That’s who.<br />
<br />
You end up thinking about ‘what ifs?’. <br />
What if the Irish of today were sat in coffee shops in 1916? “Hey Fionn! There’s a goy shooting over there!”, ”Fock it. Lets get another Latte!”.<br />
The ‘much-lauded’ Wolfe Tones repertoire would be redundant wouldn’t it? . <br />
We all remember all that ‘Ole Ole’ 80s/early 90s ‘proud to be Irish’ nonsense don’t we? Where are you now? Why aren’t you burning down Leinster House? Being comfortable and settled is no excuse anymore is it? Where has the passion gone? .... Ireland is full of bullshit and bluster.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to now. You despair of this country and although your hand has been forced , you decide to leave. Leaving behind family and friends. Leaving behind a country that can talk the hind legs off a donkey, but when it has that donkey in such a state, won’t take a gun and put it down.<br />
<br />
In spite of the anger and the despair and the fear of leaving all you know, you take a walk with your kid through the fields high above the city you grew up in and you look down at the sodium glow of the streets and the houses and all the dramas contained within and your two year old daughter lies down in the grass and says “ Daddy, look at the sky” .And you realize that it’s that simple.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-8128080951397097562011-04-01T03:19:00.000-07:002011-04-01T03:19:42.209-07:00....In GreenRecently I have conversed with people I haven’t seen or spoken with in a long, long time. Something struck me about two such meetings. The people involved had turned their backs on football or ‘soccer’ as they are now want to call the sport and had fully embraced the game of rugby or ‘egg chasing’ as I am want to call it. They’ve been to see the ‘All Blacks’ and ‘The Pumas’. I just listened and probably looked perplexed with a touch of boredom thrown in for good measure ,all the while thinking to myself that I should have seen this coming and kicking myself for not doing so. <br />
<br />
As long ago as 2007, a good friend of mine met an American in a pub. “So I guess you guys are soccer guys, yeah?”, “No, I gave up on the football” said my friend “I took up the rugby”...”Oh, so which position do you play Mike?” said American fella. “No, no” said Mike “I just watch it”. Now, that was a surprise to all concerned because a)-Mike never watched football and b) no one ever knew he watched rugby either. The rugby bandwagon had obviously been a-beeping outside his front door and he left his home and belief system behind to happily jump on board. It’s a familiar scenario in Dublin right now. Success breeds interest. <br />
Who do kids look up to these days? A Robbie Keane flailing his arms around and moaning at a referee whilst feigning involvement in general play? Or a Brian O’Driscoll taking time out from watching a scrum of men with their heads in other men’s arses for a few moments to score himself a try and win stuff? Unfortunately and reluctantly you’d have to say if you were twelve, you’d want to be Brian O’Driscoll.<br />
<br />
Where does the blame lie for the current malaise in Irish football? <br />
<br />
You could go for the easy and obvious target in the village idiot in a suit posing as Chief Executive of the Football Association of Ireland, John Delaney, should you so wish. A man who, when turning up at a FIFA event such as a qualifying group draw looking like a Neanderthal scarecrow, would instantly provide comics such as Jim Davidson with a get-out-of-jail clause for their Paddy The Irishman jokes.<br />
A man who fronts an organization responsible for ridiculously over-pricing match tickets for internationals resulting in half-full/half-empty stadiums such as at the Macedonia game just past, where you had to also buy tickets for meaningless friendlies in Lansdowne Road against Uruguay and Cloudcuckooland. Not great business sense is it?<br />
You can go on and on and on about the FAI and their hare-brained nonsensical flights of fancy but the bottom line is, if your team is not successful, bums will not fill the seats. Bohemians may yet prove that theory wrong this season but that’s as maybe. And there are only about a thousand of them.<br />
<br />
Can we trace the lack of interest back to Giovanni Trappatoni’s play-it-safe tactics? <br />
About as interesting as watching paint dry, sure, but I don’t think that’s the root of disinterest.<br />
I have heard the argument that he only has a small bunch of eligible players to work with and shutting up shop and hoping for the best is the only route we can take to try to eke out some sort of success. <br />
Again, nonsense, for our good ‘friends’ in The North have beaten Spain and England in recent times with a pool of eligible players smaller than ourselves and it being diminished, it seems, by the week by the Republic legitimately taking players who have no wish to receive death threats because they go to the wrong church of a Sunday.<br />
<br />
No, our current predicament is inherently linked back to the 19th October 1988 at Lansdowne Road when we beat a rather poor Tunisian side 4-0. John Aldridge got his long-awaited first goal in a green shirt. Ireland were still flying high from a wonderful performance in the European Championship Finals in Germany the previous summer. We were at the start of our first successful World Cup Qualifying campaign. <br />
But...a rather large spanner had been thrown into the works. And it sat there for years festering. It became a part of the furniture and ended up being hung above the mantelpiece in the stead of many a beautiful oil painting. For that spanner made its debut that day. A spanner with the footballing imagination of a derelict block of apartments. Hoof the ball, if unsuccessful, hoof again. Score by accident from a corner kick and try every time again to repeat this ‘feat’. Somehow go on to play 102 times for your country. When your captain walks out on the squad just prior to a World Cup, assume his mantle. Albeit, with none of the respect (or disrespect depending on which side of the fence you wish to jump down to). He’d have pinched himself to see if he was dreaming only he’d have ballooned that pinch into the air. And probably done it again. And again, until retirement. Ole O-fucking-le.<br />
<br />
Said spanner has no need to buy a lottery ticket again, for all his numbers came up on the 12th January 2006 when he was appointed as manager of the Republic Of Ireland. <br />
I’d blame John Delaney but this spanner should never have accepted the job in the first place. I see no difference and will never see a difference between him being appointed Ireland manager and me being put in charge of a major banking institution.<br />
<br />
Cyprus was not a surprise to me or nothing else that followed on for that matter. If the Celtic Tiger began as a result of Italia ’90 then surely it died following the frenetic stabbing that was the appointment of Steve Staunton.<br />
For that was the day that I and many like me, lost any modicum of hope.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-53136395834268658852011-03-04T04:23:00.000-08:002011-03-04T04:23:11.406-08:00That's EntertainmentEvery one of them has a story. They are, after all, a human life. Someone somewhere must love them. Someone somewhere must care for them. There is a reason how they found themselves in such poor circumstances. Everyone has come across them on our streets. They’re there hail, rain or shine with their little cups looking for them to be filled with the shrapnel from your pockets. Before you think this is turning into a plea on behalf of the Simon Community or that I’m begging you to buy a copy of The Big Issue, or that I have found God, fear not. For I am pleading with you not to give your hard earned cash to these degenerates. The degenerates I speak of are members of the street entertaining community. <br />
<br />
Questions have to be asked. At what point in their lives did they wake up and say to themselves “You know what? I’m going to paint myself silver and stand still on a box in Grafton Street all day every day. Who knows? Maybe a bird will land on me. That will be the highlight of my week that. I’m going for it. Martha! Where’s that spray paint?”<br />
Credit where credit is due, they must’ve put in some serious hours of training. But where? And most importantly, why?<br />
Did they do a course down in the local community school of a Tuesday night? Week one: Pretend to be stuck in a glass box. Week Two: Stand still for a very long time and then suddenly move because people really do think you are a statue and you’ll frighten the shit out of them, but you, the consummate artist that you are, will be the only one to get the joke ‘lovey’. Week Three: The awarding of certification where nobody actually comes up to collect their award because either a) they’re stood perfectly still pretending to be a statue or b)the course director is doing the presentation through the medium of mime and no one knows what’s going on and it descends into chaos. Silent chaos. And hopefully a fight.<br />
<br />
Their very near cousins on the food chain at least have the decency to perform their zany brand of ‘humour’ under a tarpaulin. Why people continue to buy into the deeply flawed travelling roadshow that is the circus is beyond me. There are two types of circus. And they’re both crap. <br />
You have your run-of-the-mill big top with a few animals looking well pissed off and a few clowns. And you have one usually prefixed with the words French, where a load of blokes piss about on motorbikes whilst scantily clad ladies stand around moving their arms. Oh, it’s an illusion alright. The illusion being you’ve paid money to be entertained and that the entertainment simply doesn’t happen. The greatest swindle known to man.<br />
<br />
It’s like the black economy. The public buy counterfeit DVD’s thus providing paramilitary groups with funds to buy guns. The public hire clowns for kid’s parties, thus providing these egomaniacs with a living. Over my dead body will a clown every cross my doorstep.<br />
Even Cannon And Ball knew the game was up. They realised that they weren’t funny and thankfully retired. Clowns? Nah, they’re delusional, probably coked up let’s be honest, all the while refusing to believe that their day in the sun has long since passed.<br />
The only way a clown would get a laugh out of me is if the bucket of glitter they were about to ‘hilariously’ throw over their clowning pal had been replaced with hydrochloric acid. Now that I’d pay to see.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-7105551111335838902011-02-10T15:46:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:52:35.089-08:00He's Thinking He's Sinking In The Sands Of Time...<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Getting older let’s be honest, is a bit shite. Having said that I’m quite happy to age as opposed to dying at say, twenty seven, but it is shite nonetheless. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember reading somewhere that you could tell who the older people in your workplace were by virtue of their attitude on a Monday morning. Those over 30 would be fresh faced and up for the week ahead whilst those in their 20s would be absolutely bollocksed and looking like they needed a morning in bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At thirty four, the last milestone in the sands of time that I have passed, people have started saying I’m a bit like my Dad. Have you seen my Dad lately? He looks a lot like Bob Carolgees wearing Spit The Dog as a coat. A ridiculous comparison. Or is it?....For I have started to sound like him. I speak to my daughter like he spoke to me. Loudly. All because subconsciously I reckon she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. And it is a well known fact that if you speak loudly and more slowly to someone with not much English, the message will get through. I have started shouting down the phone. I have started making that ‘Hep!’ noise when I stoop down to pick something up. I even made the mistake of wearing a cardigan on a lads night out. They reckoned I looked like someone’s Nan as opposed to my father. Pepped me up somewhat I can tell you.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thirty four is scary. You walk through Dublin and you see people who look vaguely familiar and it’s only ten minutes later that you go “That was James Smyth! Fuck he looks old! Where’s his fucking hair gone? The last time I saw him he was up against a wall with some blonde!” and then you remember that that was probably sixteen years ago. And then you remember that it was the blonde you were ‘seeing’ at the time. And then you grin and go “Fuck ‘im”.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With thirty odd years behind you, by now you should’ve realised that you should start putting a bit of responsibility into that thick head of yours. Everyone else seems to find ‘Questions And Answers’ or any other political debate show massively interesting. Not you. To you it’s all a bit of load of old bollocks and you’d rather watch ‘The Royle Family’ or even, God forbid, a re-run of ‘On The Buses’ on Dave if they’re on at the same time. You’re not about to start nodding sagely or proffering your political opinion to every Tom Dick or Harry just because life tells you that it is the way you should be.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Talk of interest rates replaces talk of which band is playing in Dublin next week. Talk of what your kids are up to replaces talk of what you got up to at the weekend. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And you wonder to yourself quietly, who wrote that line “At twenty five, your mind starts changing, regret starts paining, the sky starts raining responsibility not possibility”? And you want to get into your DeLorean and travel back to 2002 and punch him in the face. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What an idiot.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-80068009851000611042010-11-05T17:38:00.001-07:002010-11-05T17:38:52.515-07:00A Head Full Of Ideas & A Handful Of Escape Routes<div class="MsoNoSpacing">I’m a-gonna skip a couple of episodes of Viva Hate right through to the summer of 1996. I’d finished up working in the Ballinteer House as a lounge boy and in probably the best job known to a teenager, namely working in the Snooker Hall of said boozing establishment. John Weedle was the best boss I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. I’d met and worked every Sunday night in the bar with the future Mrs. O’C, unbeknownst to either of us. There was that frisson but it went fucking nowhere. Space and time would regurgitate that to the ultimate. Namely the day we exchanged vows on a beautiful sun shining day in Aughrim. But...fuck it. She wasn’t interested back then. She thought I was a right shaper. And she was very, very right. Even then she knew me better than I knew myself.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I’d taken to hanging round with a fellow lounge boy, Dave Doorly (not his real name). He had an older brother who was mad into his music. Doorly had, as I had previously under the tutelage of Messrs Bushe and Noonan, absorbed his older brother’s music. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Stone Roses </i>were the stand-out. Their much derided opus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Second Coming’</i> had occupied most of the summer of 1995 in our CD players. I did and still do prefer it to their self-titled debut album. It was an eye-opener for me. I had spent the previous year listening to the greatest debut album of all time, and for all you nit-pickers, that is a fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Definitely Maybe’ </i>by you know who. I had the haircut. I put on the swagger. I was ‘mad for it’. What ‘it’ was? I still don’t know. What a summer ‘it’ was.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">One afternoon lazing about as 18 year olds do before they piss off to Club Sarah, the boy Doorly introduced an album by a band called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Charlatans </i>called ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some Friendly’ </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the room that now included fellow lounge boys and let’s face it, raconteurs, Ian Crotty and Gerard Weedle (of John Weedle fame, for he was his son). Alan Drennan who had tagged along in his position as my best mate was not going to miss out on a massive piss-up and the prospect of female company. “You’ll love this, it’s like The Stone Roses but with more wah-wah in it” opined Doorly. He was not wrong. I loved it. And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Stone Roses </i>were forever consigned to the bread bin. Never to return. It was our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inbetweeners</i> phase and let’s face it, what teenage lad hasn’t gone through that desperation of desperately wanting to ‘get yer hole’ but leaving empty handed at the end of the night looking like a contestant off <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strike It Lucky </i>that has gotten all the answers wrong? We struck gold once in a while, but it was a strike rate akin to Andy Cole in his early United days i.e. Fucking rubbish.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I was mesmerized by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Charlatans. </i>The reasoning was that album was that fucking good they could not have been dropped by their label. A trip into Freebird records on the quays of Dublin proved me right. Me, with my meagre funds bought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">three </i>of their<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>albums on cassette. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Between 10<sup>th</sup> & 11<sup>th</sup>’ </i>with bananas on the cover, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Up To Our Hips’</i> with a couple of models peering at me from behind the Perspex box...and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘The Charlatans’ s</i>elf titled with a stern black background with five stern looking lads peeping out through the gloom. At least thirty glorious tunes to become accustomed to. And all for fifteen old Irish pounds!</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">These albums kept me occupied from the summer of 1995 right through to the leaving of the Ballinteer House in May 96. You’ve just got to move on sometimes. In my mind I was Eric Cantona. I never stooped to kung-fu kicking a customer although sometimes I’ll admit, it did cross my mind....No! Love ‘em, cause a bit of fuss and leave ‘em. That was my ideology. In other people’s minds I was just a little Liam Gallagher-wannabe with shit shoes. And shite they were, let me tell you. And I was a little shite too, as only a Mam can testify. God Bless her Scouse socks.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">One Saturday night, following the definitely tried but poorly tested “this place is full of birds, it’ll be no problem to us” route we headed to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mean Fiddler </i>on Camden Street. My old pal Barry Dunne had swelled our ranks to five. After another night of ‘hitting the bar’ in more ways than one we retired to my ‘gaff’, for the oul’ pair were away.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Through my drunken state I had remembered I had purchased <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Charlatans</i> new single. On cassette. Naturally. Stuck it in the Hi-Fi. Off we go. I had forgotten to mention that their keyboard player Rob Collins had been killed in a car accident a few weeks previously. But one of the lads brought that subject up. It added a danger to proceedings. “Fuck me! They’re bringing a single out? And one of them has just died?!”. “Shush, fucking listen. Listen”. Trippy drum loop intro courtesy of The Chemical Brothers. Piano (“that’s Rob that is”...shush!),guitarspianodrumsbass, bang. The roof lifts off my head. Fucking a-maz-ing. “One to another, sister and a brother and a change in the way that you feel. Pleased to meet you, hope I never see you, I’ll be at ease watching you sleep, watching you smile”...Fuck me, I thought to myself, Noel Gallagher doesn’t do tunes like that....”Love I adore you, always looking for you and I’ll be there whenever you need me, Be my Spiderwoman I’ll be your Spiderman!”...Okay, okay, do go on...”And I hear our day is coming, gets sweeter every year, tomorrow’s gonna be too easy <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and today is gonna be too near”...That’s us lads...”Trust is for believers and love can keep the faith, I don’t need you I can’t buy you I can’t hurt you”...That’s that ugly mug from the Mean Fiddler, fuck her, she’s a dog anyway...Rob’s piano bit. Goosebumps appearing on all our arms at this stage. Listen to the drums. Fuckin hell! “One to another, peace to my brother always giving me his thing for free, sad to knock you, it’s good to rock you and I’ll do it the best that I can...”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chorus. Our day is coming lads, I’m telling you we’ll be fucking minted one day and all this will be a memory...Oh, piano bit. Fucking hell, sounds like Led Zeppelin with Chemical Brothers in the background, guitar joining in the riff now...”Stand by my accusations, I’m come clean don’t need no vice, I know you want to keep me waiting I think it’s funny that you might”...no pause for breath...”Love is hard to leave and it’s hard to never have, can you please crawl out your window you can blame it all my love yeah yeah yeah, box up all my records and a head full of ideas and a handful of escape routes. GONNA BURN YOU!”...Right lads. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ </i>this is not. This is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> fucking anthem!</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Then we played it again. And again. And again. Until we passed out due to being fucked on my Dad’s homemade wine. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Oh what a night.</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-71999342099760384182010-11-05T05:07:00.000-07:002010-11-05T05:07:41.011-07:00License To Fill<div class="MsoNoSpacing">The familiar rattle of the letterbox got me running this morning. What bills, for I presume they are bills, have been dropped in to induce mild panic now? Some crap about joining gyms and the like as ever but what’s this? An <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Post</i> marked envelope? I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">am</i> intrigued. I open it slowly so as to increase the tension...and there it is. The greatest practical joke played by any national institution and fuck me, doesn’t it have competition. In my hands was a missal informing me that ‘Mr. Television Licence Inspector’ shall be targeting unlicensed households in my area. The Gene Hunt that does RTE’s bidding will soon sweep into my street in an Audi Quattro, shooting from the hip. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“We’ve heard all the excuses and none of them work, for you are surrounded by armed bastards”.</i> Have you really Mr. Inspector Man, have you really? While we’re at it have you actually watched or listened to RTE’s output of late? Because, if you did kind sir, you’d be taking the 74A back out of here with your tail between your legs.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Let me be your guide through what television is being offered up today Friday the 5<sup>th</sup> November on the flagship station RTE1 yet paid for by the you’s and I’s of this world. We’ll start at lunch time because the dross on offer mid-morning is just not worth commenting on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> is even worse than TV3’s and that is saying something.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1.00:RTE News: </i>Laugh-a-minute stuff from the good folk at Montrose informing us through relentless state-sponsored propaganda that the nation is indeed fucked and seeing as we’re fucked anyway, they’re going to talk us further down the drain as a result putting everyone into a state of mute hysteria . Sure don’t we have the GAA to lighten our pathetic lives? That’ll brighten things up.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1.25: Home And Away:</i> “Relationship, relationship...let’s go live in a caravan. We’ll take strangers in and hang around a coffee shop discussing feelings and relationships and maybe go to the beach, you fucking drongo”</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1.55: Neighbours: </i>Someone has a row with someone else, Toadie gets fucked over by some girl or other, Paul Robinson forgets to limp, and someone leaves in a taxi with all their neighbours out to wave them off.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2.20: Eastenders: </i>A load of cockneys shouting at each other followed by a dramatic drumbeat.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">3.00: Fair City: </i>A load of country-folk with bad Dublin accents shouting badly at each other non-dramatically cutting to a badly ripped-off version of an already badly written Eastenders theme tune.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">3.30: How Clean Is Your House?: </i>None of your fucking concern.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4.00: Four Live: </i>Imaginative yet inaccurate title. It’s not live as we know it. A TD’s wife is bound to discuss cutting-edge matters such as ‘Does your dog have piles?’ with an obviously uninterested vet who’s just in it for the fee and maybe that he might get recognized on Bray Main Street on Saturday.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4.50. The Daily Show: </i>Losing the will to live? Call Daithi O’Se and the other one who’ll do their best to pep you up somewhat by falling all over the autocue.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">5.40. Nuacht: </i>Twenty minutes of programming so some fucker in Galway who’s spent his day sitting on a stone wall and picking spuds can cling on to the past.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">6.00. RTE News: </i>Still feeling fucked? Let’s lash on a bit more misery followed by a report from the Roscommon Minor training camp. Who the fuck are Shamrock Rovers anyway?</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">7.00. Nationwide: </i>The jewel in the crown. More from Roscommon Minor’s training camp ahead of the Connacht final and an insight into drug-dealing in Blanchardstown with Mary Kennedy. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">7.30. Come West Along The Road(3/13): </i>With fiddle player Denis McMahon and friends, no less. THIRTEEN episodes of a load of blokes sitting around in a pub with their eyes closed producing sounds that remind one of a cat being fucked onto the hot coals of a sauna. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">8.00. Eastenders: </i>If you couldn’t get home on your lunch to get your fix of this Cockney misery fest, fear not. Ian Beale ponces about as if he’s Alan fucking Sugar despite only owning a chipper and a snooker hall. Dot smokes a bit. Another fucking row. A pub goes on fire. But the good folk of Walford are no doubt setting themselves up for another Christmas Day wedding with the reception in the Queen Vic which will invariably go wrong with ‘tragic’ consequences.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">8.30. The Reluctant Taoiseach: </i>Comedy.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">9.00 .RTE News: </i>Still feeling fucked? Let’s lash on a bit more misery followed by a report from the Roscommon Minor training camp. Who the fuck are Shamrock Rovers anyway?</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">9.35. The Late Late Show: </i>Ok, thank you, roll it there Colette, postal quiz, thousands of entries....oh fuck... it’s Tubridy. Switch it Off.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We’ve heard all the excuses and none of them work”.</i> See you in court so.... because I ain’t paying a single cent for that excuse for televisual programming. Put on a real-life documentary following that DJ who was caught wanking on a plane as he attempts to rebuild his life on the streets of Cork City and maybe, just maybe I’ll give your Call-Centre a bell. For that would make one fantastic television programme.</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-16232895995522592662010-10-31T18:49:00.003-07:002010-10-31T18:49:01.489-07:00Standing On A Green<div class="MsoNoSpacing">You know the feeling you get? It’s eleven o’clock on a bright summer’s day. You’re only rolling out of bed. The bedroom window has been slung open all night long. You’re just turned thirteen so the room isn’t filled with the fug from the night before, so in reality there is no need to have it open. There’s calmness to the air. But there’s a buzz too. People are out in their back gardens doing things that people do. Mowing the lawn, having a blazing row, kicking a ball against a wall over and over and over. You’ve nothing much to do and all day to do it. It’s magical this stillness. Feels like heaven. So you get up, get showered and have a bowl of tasteless cereal. The cricket is still on terrestrial television so you watch a bit of that. You poke your head out through the venetian blinds to see what’s going on in the street. Maybe the tasty new Spanish student girl will stroll on by? In the summer, in the city. You check the teletext to see if United have bought someone less injury prone than Neil Webb. You slip into your track suit, for this is Broadford. Tuck it into your pristine white socks and cover them up with runner boots. This is the Nineties, man!... This is the Nineties. All that has to be invented <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has </i>been invented. Days like this are sweet. Your Mam starts nagging you, your brother starts annoying you, your sister is watching a ‘Care Bears’ video for what seems like and probably is the ninety first time, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I wanna be</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a Care Bear!, I wanna be a Care Bear</i>!”You leave. With a flick of the V’s to a sliding porch door. Feels like heaven. This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>heaven.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ireland have just been in the World Cup. They were knocked out in the quarters by some fucker who looked like a bullet with pop out eyes. But so what? Your old man is mates with Andy Townsend. He’s been in your house. You’ve been cheeky and told him you’re not exactly proud at being Irish. Proper little Dunphy, you. You bought yourself a Leeds shirt for a fiver on a football club trip to Blackpool. Does it matter? Who the fuck<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> Leeds anyway? They’ve always been in the Second Division as far as you are concerned. Johnny Giles? Didn’t he used to play for Vancouver Whitecaps? Fuck it. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">You’ve gelled your hair beyond reason. You’ve applied some Old Spice to your baby’s bum-like face. You can’t fail can you?...Yes you probably can and most definitely will. The girls unbeknownst to yourself are just as nervous around you as you are of them. They’re more interested in fucking Bros or someone of their ilk than made- up-to-look-like-someone-out-of-Brother-Beyond-in-a-tracksuit-you. You used to be able to talk to girls before you started in all all-boys school. You used to have that ring of confidence until you started in that all-boys school. You were a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond until you went to Benildus. Now? You’re the equivalent of a rather rubbish sea urchin on a rock that doesn’t want you to stick to it. Inside, you are floundering. You are Calamari waiting to be cooked by a lecherous Greek bloke who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> end up shagging the bird you will be mad into on holiday when you’re eighteen. Plate smashing bastard that he was.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">You take a stroll down to the Green where you used to play football every day with the boys on your street. You’re on your own. The boys are all still snug in bed or failing that, watching ‘Swinging On A Star’ because the girl in it is tasty as fuck. You’ve discussed it with them at length. All are in agreement on that particular score. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Even Gero, the giant-of-a-man bloke you looked up to, couldn’t be arsed getting down onto the Green until at least seven, purely because he couldn’t be arsed. It’s a right quandary you find yourself in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A pickle if you will. There’s nothing to do and all day to do it. Seemed fine earlier on didn’t it?</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Then out of the corner of your eye you spy a dark-clothed gaggle sitting on the wall. One of them is brandishing an acoustic guitar. Upon closer inspection this wannabe Jimmy Page is one of the fuckers off your Broadford Rovers Under 13 football team...and sat beside him in Gothic dress is your first ex-girlfriend. Okay, you were only ten when you ‘went out’. Still though...At least four of them are wearing ‘The Cure’ tee-shirts. So you walk up and go “Alright?”. A muffled response. You don’t belong in their gang. You know that anyway. And you don’t pretend to ingratiate yourself with them. You’re wearing a fucking tracksuit after all. Then you pipe up with “So what’s your favourite Cure album then? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Pornography’ </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Standing On A Beach’</i>?” And you are met with blank looks all round. So you fucking do one, knowingly. And you get home and you flick the V’s and you open the sliding porch door and you wait for the nagging Mam, the annoying little brother and the ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Care Bears’</i> film on constant rotation and you thank the Lord that you are just like Catherine Zeta Jones in being reliant on the older lads to get ahead in life. There’ll be a match on the Green at 7 and the ‘Cure Heads’ will have long since dispersed. Feels Like Heaven.</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-60944729588669879122010-10-28T16:25:00.001-07:002010-10-28T16:25:49.481-07:00Someone Somewhere In Summertime-Viva Hate Part 2<div class="MsoNoSpacing">The autumn and winter of 88/89 spelt a sea-change in my life. The previous summer, the class I’d grown with since 1981 were disbanded and sent to the four corners of the Attractas sixth class corridors. Fifty kids per class whittled down to sixty-six. Made no sense then and it doesn’t now. And we had four teachers during our sixth class term. Four. We were the great unwanted. It was like being at Atletico Madrid with Miss Hosty the principal as our Jesus Gil (look it up on Wikipedia, Gil that is...not Hosty). It was unsettling to say the least. I found refuge down the back of the class sat next to my neighbour Thomas ‘Skippy’ Kavanagh. We whiled away the days pea-shooting at an ever more disgruntled Alan ‘Lynchie’ Lynch whilst a trainee teacher called Miss Collins fucked with our minds. Even the nicknames smacked of a football dressing room but I certainly don’t remember either of us nailing his shoes to the floor whilst he was doing PE.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">My mother must have realised the effect all this was having on me because The Doobie Brothers album was loaned out to my Auntie Vera, never to return. In its place came Shakatak and George Benson. From the rubbish to the utter ridiculous. I’d needed something to fill The Beatles void. To turn off my mind, relax and float downstream if perhaps you might. INXS did the job for a brief period. ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Need You Tonight’ </i>primarily. Santy brought me their album ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kick’.</i> I played it on loop. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘New Sensation’</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Mystify’ </i>were particular favourites too. I quickly bored of it, as I suspect so too did Michael Hutchence.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">One evening in spring ’89 I was sat watching Top Of The Pops as I was want to do, trawling my way through Yazz & The Plastic Population and any Stock Aitken & Waterman creation you could care to imagine when the number one song in the land, not our land, their land was announced and on came the video. Two magnificently coiffured Scotsmen standing on a hill overlooking the Harland & Wolfe shipyards in Belfast came into view. A brave move, particularly in 1989. Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill and their mates. Simple Minds. The song was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Belfast Child’.</i> Seven minutes of an Irish trad song (‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She Moved Through The Fair’)</i> set to guitars and keyboards coupled with their own lyrical take. Magnificent. It built and it built to a crescendo and then came back down again. I had to buy the album. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">By this time my old man had gotten tired of funding my musical whims. “Save up your money and buy it yourself, you’re twelve now” was the response I got for asking would he pick it up for me. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I was not disheartened for my Confirmation was on the horizon. I tried taping <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Belfast Child’</i> off the radio but Larry Gogan and Simon Young were not forthcoming with the tunage. Young and cohorts had a particular talent for sporting country and western style string ties with silver buckles, but as far as their musical tastes, well, let’s face it; it was rammed right up their arses.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I waited til that fateful June day having to stand there in a fucking stupid cardigan, cream chinos and wine slip-on shoes all so it could just be the following Friday when me and my new, yet brief, classmates tootled off down to Nutgrove to spend our winnings. I returned with the album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Street Fighting Years’</i> and the full United away kit and about twenty pence change. Skippy had picked up the yellow Celtic away shirt at the same time which he ended up wearing in the Confirmation class photo shoot. He refused to take it off. And why would he? I bet he still wears it underneath his doorman’s uniform.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d been dragged off down to Wexford and missed said photo thus erasing myself from existence. A bit like ‘Back To The Future’ but with no need to get my Mam and Dad to have a smooch.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Wexford broadened my Simple Minds song cannon. My older cousin Geoff for some reason had an album of theirs called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Sons And Fascination’</i> in a cassette holdall along with Queen, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. ‘Fuck that lot’, I thought to myself. Upon a summers morn he taped <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Sons And Fascination’ </i>for me and suddenly I was a fifteen year old at twelve. I probably had more luck with the ladies as a result of hanging around with him, my cousin Colin and his mates at twelve than I ever did at fifteen. Then again I’m probably in possession of rose tinted spectacles. Spectacles were something which I thankfully had consigned to the cloakroom in Attractas at this stage.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">My Mam couldn’t understand why I was listening to ‘that racket’. But it was sublime. It had been recorded in 1981 but even now it sounds current. Song titles like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Seeing Out The Angel, ‘In Trance As Mission’, ’70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall’</i> did not sit with what other pre-pubescent geezers were listening to. Sure, we played football every day until we dropped but I’d grown up, if only by a little bit.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">We had called down to my Dad’s mate in Kilmuckridge. He had a son called Jason who was about eight years older than me. We were kicking a ball about but the ball was as flat as a witch’s tit. Jason struck on the idea of hopping in his Renault 18 and driving up to pump the ball up. On the way he asked what music I was into. Panic on the streets of Wexford. “Oh, eh, I like Simple Minds a bit, I suppose”...”Really? Well listen to this!” He popped in a tape and turned it up. Fucking loud. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Once Upon A Time’ </i>rattled the speakers. To a kid in 1989 it was manna from fucking heaven. Little did I know that Jason Bushe was the biggest Simple Minds fan known to man? Street cred with the older lads turned up a notch.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">We called around to his Mam and Dad’s the following Christmas Day. I had started in Benildus by this stage but was already being written off as what the chess-loving, bullshit-spouting, Doc Marten wearing brigade termed a ‘Soccer Head’. (It’s called fucking football lads, just a point I think needs making). I played up to it. I kept my musical counsel. I can’t remember what Santy had brought me as I found it quite strenuous to keep the pretence up as I had a sister eight years my junior and a brother who was nine. But I do remember receiving a gift that day that ranks as high as any gift I have ever been fortunate to be presented with.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Jason, massive Simple Minds fan that he was and still is, handed me vinyl copies of every Simple Minds album recorded to date. “Now. Bring them home. Tape them. And give them back”. Sure, yeah, no problem. “Oh. And every one of them is signed by Jim and Charlie. Even, look! Brian McGee the original drummer.”. FUCK. I carried them home in the old man’s car like someone coming home pretending to be sober at three in the morning to a waiting narked wife. I listened to them for days. And I gave them back unharmed. I couldn’t sleep for the worry that my little sister might use them as a Frisbee. Happy fucking Christmas and a Happy New Decade. I returned to Benildus in the New Year as a man of musical wisdom. Thanks Jason.</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-47010070291842865892010-10-27T03:09:00.001-07:002010-10-27T03:09:50.282-07:00Viva Hate-Part 1<div class="MsoNoSpacing">Kings Of Leon have just been on the radio. It was their new single. ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radioactive</i>’. How apt. Judging by the sound of it, to think it is in any way good you had to have been in close proximity to the reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 with a walkman on and its batteries running down. Truly, a painful experience. Try telling that though to the dozen of kids hanging around outside country town chip shops up and down Ireland sporting their<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Metal-like-a’ tee-shirts and mulling over whether they should throw their chips in the bin and head off to the pool hall because it’s pissing rain and there really is fuck all else to do.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing ever changes in small town Ireland. Twenty years ago just insert Guns ‘N’ Roses into the above instead of Kings Of Leon and the same scenario unfolds. Kings Of Leon have that particular market cornered now. And good luck to them. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Riding on their coat-tails however are Arcade Fire. The modern day Bon Jovi if you will. Similarities drawn are not musical but are due to the fact that they are both a bit rubbish and both having been taken to the bosom of culchiedom. Somehow, those chancers got to headline Oxegen whilst in every other festival in every other country they sweep up and make the tea for the likes of Echo And The Bunnymen, who themselves are found well down the bill. It truly is a strange little country this. And country town chip shop chips are generally reheated Birdseye efforts which hardly endear them to anyone’s heart either, may I add.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">My first musical experience was listening to Neil Diamond’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Hot August Night’</i> through a set of earphones about three times the size of my head. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Soolaimon’</i> was my favourite, judging by an audio cassette recently discovered adorned with a toddler’s dulcet tones. My old man who was only about twenty eight at the time, had records by the likes of Jim Reeves and Tony Christie alongside The Buggles ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Video Killed The Radio Star’ </i>and Adam Ant. My Mam was more into the fucking Doobie Brothers and ABBA (as was my Dad but he always maintains it was purely because of the blonde one’s arse). I honestly cannot listen to either of the latter today without breaking into a cold sweat. I think it was a form of brainwashing. I truly had empathy with Paul Rudd in the 40 Year Old Virgin who snapped after hearing Michael McDonald (A Doobie Brother) warble and drone on for the umpteenth time. Michael McDonald sounds like a Bassett Hound who’s run off with somebody’s microphone and got his knackers caught on a barbed wire fence backed by middle-of-the-road piano based guff, in case you’ve missed him.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Attractas brought The Police. I purely liked them because Warren Gillan and I were absolutely mad into ‘ChiPS’ and I thought it was Jon Baker and Frank Poncharello’s band. Dad bought me my first single ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ which I played to death. Top Of The Pops became a staple of a Thursday evening. Music was going through a weird phase at that point where the men dressed as ladies and played synthesizers (my Nan, God bless her, would be up in arms at the spectacle. My mother would be in the kitchen listening to the fucking Doobie Brothers).Weird fashions, wonderful music though. I remember crying myself to sleep and then waking and screaming some more one Thursday night having seen The Stranglers ‘Golden Brown’ video and thinking the drummer had no eyes.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">One such Thursday evening came an epiphany. For me, anyway. Nan was probably giving out about it I’d imagine. On the screen was this girl I fancied in an eighties kind of way, sitting there leafing through a magazine in a cafe. All of a sudden the characters in the magazine came to fucking life! A bit of a row followed with her and her comic book beau taking on a few hard geezers wielding spanners. She ended up lying beside a bin in a kitchen looking a bit worse for wear. The object of her affection, a certain Morten Harket then stumbles in presumably drunk. He subsequently went on along with his A-Ha band mates to smash The Doobie Brothers stranglehold on the family stereo as a result. Oh how right The Buggles were. I think Miriam Bulman taped ‘Hunting High And Low’ for me. I listened to nothing else until A-Ha released ‘Touchy’, which was the equivalent of aural murder. Dizzying highs to frightening lows. The phase had passed. ‘Help’ by The Beatles took the place of the original revelation in the tape deck. I think it was ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ which got me hooked. Melancholy in a Scouse drawl set to acoustic guitar and a tambourine. Worlds away from A-Ha and their synthetic assault. My school pal Roy McDermott and I got incredibly obsessed with all things Beatles. We traipsed up to Herman’s in Superquinn Ballinteer to get Beatles-bowl haircuts one afternoon. My mother said upon my return home that I had ‘a face like a full moon in a fog’. Charming, especially coming from the woman who used to cut my hair with an industrial size scissors in front of the fire of a Saturday night, rendering me helpless for a month looking like someone with a crooked fringe from Deliverance with glasses. Coupled with a pair of flares bought in Tomas Funge’s in Gorey, I looked a right tit. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">This was the year before The Stone Roses made the flared trouser fashionable again. Well, at least in Manchester. Me and Roy were the 80’s equivalent of Noel and Liam. And my Dad had the talk that someone should have had with Noel Gallagher before he wrote ‘Be Here Now’. “Its Beatles this! Beatles that! You talk about nothing else! Cop on!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could see it pained him. He <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loved</i> The Beatles. And for that I felt a small pang of betrayal. And at the back of my mind there was of course the omnipresent worry that the fucking Doobie Brothers would soon be back hogging the stereo.</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055382577451095458.post-91402352244387866522010-10-21T06:17:00.000-07:002010-10-21T06:29:09.672-07:00When I was a little child....<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmxHIklXnQU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmxHIklXnQU</a>My first abiding memory is of my Dad and his mate Gerry Keogh sitting in the front room drinking beer and shouting at a box emitting flashing colours and strange accents in the corner of our front room in Broadford. One minute they were knocking over their cans of Harp(adorned with scantily clad ladies on the tin),jumping for joy and hugging each other.The next they were prostrate on the ground on the verge of tears. For a two year old it was all too much to take. I ran out into the kitchen and hid underneath the crappy fold-down formica table hanging off the wall and cried out of fright. My Mam picked me up,hugged me and told me everything was alright. How wrong she was. For I had witnessed United coming back from two goals down to draw level at Wembley in the Cup Final against Arsenal with five minutes left on the clock.Only for a bubble-permed Alan Sunderland to score six yards out from a cross from Liam Brady to win the Cup. The date was 12th May 1979(I looked it up).I was two years and one hundred and sixteen days old.Welcome to the world of football.It might take twenty minutes or twenty years but ultimately the team you support will disappoint you.<br />
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That same wooden-panelled television set taught me a lot down through the years. It taught me never ever to marry Gail Tilsley because inevitably you'll wind up dead, never put your faith in an RTE produced comedy because inevitably it will be shit and you'll kick yourself for not seeing it coming and most importantly,never enter a fancy dress shop.Once you get in that changing room they will induce you with mind-bending drugs and you'll end up in a mystical land dressed as a fucking Indian chief. Fuck Attractas and Benildus that is where education was at. And I live my life by those rules. They <i>are </i>the fucking rules. Oh yeah.<br />
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Don't get me wrong. I didn't spend my entire childhood sitting in front of the telly. Broadford Drive was a great place to grow up. Sure,there were the fistfights usually brought on by someone calling me 'specky four eyes' and my stupid little temper. But the vast majority of the time it was bliss. Long before PlayStations and the humble PC ripped kids imaginations out of their heads, we were left to create our own worlds. When the World Snooker Championship was on telly, we had the Broadford Snooker Tournament. Barry Dunne's front room <i>was </i>'The Crucible'.Wimbledon?We had the Broadford Tennis Tournament replete with copious amounts of match-rigging that saw plucky little six year old Rob Bulman somehow knock twelve year-old Paul 'Gero' Geraghty out in the quarter-finals. On Finals Day,we had a sale of work on the grass verge overlooking Skippy giving me a good hiding on Centre Court. Four squares of concrete and the truth. There was the Tour De Broadford but sadly no Ashes series. There were inter-road matches between the Drive and the Hill or the Lawn or the Park or the Avenue.We always seemed to win.And no match-fixing has ever been proven with regards to that. At least, thank the Lord we never resorted to playing GAA. That particular code,after all,requires no imagination.<br />
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Why the reminiscence I hear you ask? Two fold really. I took my little one on a walk down to the Green pictured above recently. It was unscarred by any signs of any football code whatsoever.Three trees now stand were the Phone Box End jackets-cum-goalposts used to lie. The kids just sit in getting rotund. It's sad. For every eight year-old me that used to run around on that grass believing in his head he was Bryan Robson,there is an eight year-old glued to a PlayStation actually <i>being</i> Wayne Rooney. Prostitutes,luckily,are not included.<br />
Now while Robson might have once been caught in a ladies toilet up to no good with a Sky Sports anchorwoman, he at least waited until he was at Middlesbrough and their manager at that to get involved in scandalous ways. He didn't do it on my time,oh no.When mega-rich Italian clubs waved their lira at him,he cocked a massive snook in their direction and stayed loyal to the 'romance' of a not particularly good United side which was even worse than the current rabble.<br />
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Wayne Rooney has no excuse. He's in it for the money. And he isn't man enough to admit it. It's all about the filthy lucre. Myself and thousands like me would have happily signed over their right testicle to even get five minutes on the hallowed turf at Old Trafford or Goodison or Anfield (delete where applicable) but were nowhere near good or lucky enough. The passion of football is dying. My passion for football is dying.And thus,a part of my childhood is dying.Christ alone knows I cling on to it.Just ask my wife.<br />
How can anyone relate to these grossly overpaid morons is beyond me.Modern football is rubbish. Ever get the feeling you're being cheated? I do.Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07472548809442762693noreply@blogger.com0