Dangerous Games

I think I was 11 the summer I had an out of body experience that has not been equalled since. I took part in a game we called the 'fainting game' while studying at the Irish college in Carrigaholt. The way the game worked was that you had to try to exhale as much breath from your lungs as possible and not breathe back in. You did this for maybe 20 seconds and then gave a signal and somebody would bear hug you very tightly from behind. The result was that you fainted and collapsed onto the ground.
I must have done it three times in total but I only remember one time, maybe because it only really worked that once. Every day the students at the college would go for a walk somewhere in the locality and on this day we were on the beach. I remember a big guy called TJ putting me out on that day and I really did go all the way down. I was not out for so long I was later told but I have no idea how long it actually was. What I remember is an amazing feeling coming back up. I remember looking up at the faces staring down at me but not really seeing them. At first I recognized nothing and I was not even sure that I was still on this planet. Gradually though the faces came into focus and I started to recognize them. At the same time part of me was trying to go back down but my body wouldn't let me. I remember coming round fully and standing up shakily. The children all wanted to know what I had seen. The game was not an individual game, it was a group thing though only one person at a time would go out.
That summer the craze of this fainting game spread like a virus throughout Ireland. My memory of the facts is hazy but I definitely remember hearing that somebody died or went into a permanent coma. Parents were in a panic trying to stamp it out. Like all fads this game faded away gradually and probably moved on to another country. Nobody I have spoken to about this remembers the game but I am sure that many people must have forgotten it. Perhaps the memory is so strong for me because I went quite far down that one time.
Last year I remember reading that an even more dangerous version of this game involving using a ligature like a scarf has taken a hold in France. It seems that it has been a problem there for quite a few years judging from this this Guardian article from 2000. In Canada this year tens of thousands of Ontarian schoolchildren have reportedly experienced a variant on this 'choking game'.
Games based on asphyxiation are alive and well judging from what I have read on the internet. The funny thing is that most people have never heard of them so parents are just not aware of what can and does go on. I would be horrified to think of my own children doing the same thing I did, it was a very high risk game for a very temporary thrill. I found this excellent reader on how parents should deal with the horrific possibility that their kids might join in and potentially suffer fatal consequences. The internet seems to be playing a key role in reinforcing more dangerous forms of the game with sexy names like Space Cowboy and Blackout. An Irish moniker is “The American Dream Game” which scares the hell out of me in terms of making this Russian Roulette type game seem very innocent indeed. The advice offered in the reader places these dangerous games rightly in the same category as drink and drugs.
"At the risk of being cliché, these games should be a topic among the family’s parent-child discussions. Just as you would (or should) regarding tobacco, alcohol and drugs, discuss asphyxial games. You may want to open the discussion by saying you have heard or read that there are ways that some kids try to “get high” without using drugs or alcohol, but that these activities can be just as dangerous and fatal. Then let your child educate you. A dialogue will get your message across more effectively than a lecture."
The fact that it is just as difficult to proscribe as substance abuse is chillingly summed up in the last paragraph:
"I remain haunted by the end of my conversation with Kelly L. We talked about Michael, the game and the aftermath of his death. What stunned me was her revelation that youngsters in the community still play the game and talk of it openly. Their answer to those who question the wisdom of this is, “it’s better than using drugs” and “we do it together so it’s safe.” It’s not safe. Keep telling your kids so— because you love them."

Read More......

"Dream Variations" by Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.


Find this poem and many more more wonderful poems on this blog.

Read More......

'Tattoo:Tatú' - Questions & Answers

I recently put a review of the poetry collection 'Tattoo:Tatú' by Nuala Ní Chonchúir on the blog. The poet very kindly agreed to answer some questions I had about her writing.

You describe the Irish and English forms of the poems published in both languages as versions. Is there any one of the poems which you feel that both versions are equally strong or even better in the target language?
I think some worked better in their TL versions than others. I’m fond of ‘Tatú’, the title poem, in both languages. And I like the way the last two lines of ‘Ó’, have an internal rhyme and assonance that the English version only has in the last two words. That sort of happy accident is pleasing.
I think parts of some poems sound better in Irish, purely for the beauty of the language. And parts of some please me more in English because they say precisely what I was trying to say.

As a reader I am curious as to the original language of the bilingual poems even though I know that the idea is not to treat them as entities in themselves. At a guess I think that ‘Ó’ was written originally in Irish and ‘Body Haiku’ was written in English. Did you expect you readers to want to decipher the original?
I think the idea is to treat them as entities in themselves. I’d hope that someone who doesn’t read Irish would not feel they are losing out by not understanding the Irish, and vice versa. (Though there can hardly be anyone who has Irish who does not also have English…) Several of the poems have existed for years, and were individually published, in their original language version, because I hadn’t yet written their target language version.
‘Ó’ was actually written in English first, as was ‘Body Haiku’. So you were half right!
I don’t really think about readers, so I don’t mind how they come at the work. My publisher Arlen House came up with the idea (a partially bilingual collection) and I went along with it quite happily.

You chose to publish Irish and English versions of some of the poems. Did you experiment with taking this a stage further and actually writing hybrid bilingual poems? I ask this because your foreword was written with the assumption that the reader understood both languages.
It was the publisher who chose the format of the collection and who asked me to make the foreword in Irish and English. I liked their suggestions; it seemed an interesting way to do a book. I’m not a big fan of overly straightforward writings.
The poems were written as they emerged and not with a collection in mind, so I wasn’t writing them for the book.
I haven’t written macaronic (dual language) poems in any big way, though I have experimented with it. I will unapologetically throw in the odd word in Irish or French and I will not gloss it. I cannot stand poems that have asterixes and footnotes. Readers should be able to cope with one or two words in a different language, which they can easily deduce from the context, or they can go to the dictionary. As I say, I’m not much in the business of thinking about readers as I write; I write for the love of it.
I guess a glossary at the back of a book can be useful; personally I usually only find the glossary when I have finished reading a book.

I very much enjoyed the “Body Haiku” poems. Did the poem come about because you wanted to explore the haiku form or did it come to you naturally in this way?
I practice brevity when I write: I’m a cutter not an adder, so I enjoy working in short forms: haiku, short lyrics and – in fiction – sometimes flash fiction. I think I started ‘Body Haiku’ as a lyric and noticed it was really very, very short and concise, so I tried it out as a haiku until I was happy with it. A haiku with two verses, mind you. It was written for my fiancé; much of this book sprung from being in love with him.

Many of your poems refer to people whom the reader may not know anything about. Is there a reason that you did not provide footnotes or references?
See the answer to the third question above!! I think you can give a concise epigraph when needed but, for myself, I find footnoting on poems really irritating. It is rarely needed. As readers we need to be willing to do a little of the work. I also think it’s possible to enjoy a poem without understanding or knowing everything.

Was the poem “Quarry Men, Dublin 1868” referring to a specific incident in a Dublin quarry? I searched on the Internet but I couldn’t find anything.
My sister Nessa wrote a scholarly local history of our hometown – Palmerstown, County Dublin – before she died. My parents got the book published. The poem refers to an incident in her history book that took place in a quarry behind our house, where we played as kids. I thought it was such a sad but typical act of destruction – workmen breaking open a small tomb and smashing up the bones. The poem is also a metaphor for the continued destruction of our national heritage by various louts, most notably the Irish government. The road through Tara – seat of kings – being a particularly jaw-dropping example of this.

The poetry in memory of your sister is very moving. Do you find it difficult to release such personal writing into the public domain?
The poems honour Nessa, so I’m glad they are out there. ‘Nessa as Frida’ is, I hope, a lighthearted look at her funeral that she would have approved of. She was a visual artist too, so it wasn’t just that she looked like Frida Kahlo – they were in the same profession.
It was difficult to read the poems aloud at readings soon after Nessa died, as losing her was still so raw. I still miss her daily, six years later, and depending on how strong that missing is, it can still be hard to read the poems. So, sometimes I avoid doing them at readings.

Your sexual poetry is very enjoyable because it is explicit but not pornographic; it is a celebration of sexuality. Is this the domain in which you find the most inspiration as a poet? I ask this because your collection is very broad ranging but this domain really springs out.
I think that for a woman reader it can great to find poems about sex that are not from a man’s point of view. I love Eavan Boland’s orgasm poem ‘Solitary’, and Máighréad Medhbh’s playful and seriously sexy writing. Some male poets, like Patrick Cotter, write in a way where it’s clear that they value women. Gone are the days, I hope, of woman as symbol or vessel in poetry.
I was newly in love with Finbar, to whom the book is dedicated, when I started to write those poems and I deliberately chose many of the love poems for the bilingual section of the book, because the publisher wanted that part to appear first. I also started and ended the English-only section of the book with poems about him, to give a nice feeling of unity to the collection.
I’m not sure if love and the sexual domain are where I find the most inspiration; a lot of my work is informed by visual art, and women’s place in history and in society today. But the body and love are certainly to the forefront as part of that.
The Cork poet Billy Ramsell says that all love poems are really about the poet. I think he may have a point!

Finally, I know that you have published many short stories so I wondered how being a poet interacts with being a short story writer. Do you go out of your way to write poems over a period of time or do they come naturally as part of the process of writing in other forms?
The whole writing process is fluid. It changes over time. One year I may write little but fiction, the next I might write poems exclusively for months. These changes aren’t always welcome but I have had to learn to go with them.
Short fiction is my true passion. It excites me like no other writing. It’s what I’d like to be writing all the time and I read it endlessly. I have two collections published, also with Arlen House, and I am working on more stories.
I do like the idea of sitting down specifically to write a collection of poetry but, to me, it seems like a forced way of approaching writing.
I sit at my desk every day when my children are at school and I write, blog, do reviews and edit my work. I don’t choose what to write, something – a line or an image or a voice – just pops into my head and I go with it, to see if it’s going to happen, or where it will lead me. That’s the joy of writing – not knowing where you might end up.

Read More......

Let's cut out the ringers

Chekov had a post over on Three Thousand Versts about the rather bizarre situation whereby players from NI who have represented the Irish hockey team are not allowed to represent the British team in the Olympics. At the same time FIFA is introducing rules to prevent NI born players representing the Republic of Ireland soccer team even though there are good reasons why an Irish passport holder living in the north may not want to represent Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Euro 2008 has shown some examples of blatant recruitment of foreign players with the 'Pole' Roger Guerreiro taking the prize.
I have a pretty orthodox view on this. I don't think that Irish teams should include any players who either were not born in Ireland or do not have at least one Irish parent. For many Irish people the Jack Charlton years were a high point in Irish sporting history but I cannot say that I gave his teams my full hearted support. He blatantly recruited players like Andy Townsend, John Aldridge, Tony Cascarino and Ray Houghton using the so-called "granny rule". I was delighted that Brian Kerr came in and reversed that trend.
What I would like to see are that have all-island Ireland teams in every sport including soccer. This would combine the strengths of both parts of the island which is preferable from a sporting point of view. I would like to see a neutral anthem being used (but not Ireland's Call, can't stand it). I would also like to have a neutral flag that is acceptable to all people on the island. The tricolour may well show the orange and the green but unionists do not accept the flag as their own so why push a political point.
In every sport there is this awful trend of naturalizing foreigners and claiming them as your own. To be honest I am sick of it and I would love to see Ireland playing sport as one country giving the best Irish and British/Irish players from north and south a chance. If all you want is to win then of course you can naturalize 11 Brazilians in soccer or 15 New Zealanders in rugby but why bother with international sport in that case?
When it comes to the Olympics where you must represent a sovereign state then people from the north should be able to represent the UK or the Irish Republic. Wasn't that the whole point of the Good Friday Agreement after all?


.

Read More......

Milo and Tom (Polish Shkinheads)

- Milo, why d’ ya tink all dem Polish lads all have shaved heads?
- I dunno d’ya tink dat dey get nits easily like?
- But den deir wimmin would have ‘em too and dey’ve long hair and dey’re rides.
- Aw right, d’ya tink dat dey’re into heavy metal den or someting?
- Naw, in uder places the metalers have long hair, ‘tis only round here dat dey have shkinheads.
- I hurd that Bruce Willis is a big shtar over dere, maybe dat’s it. He was married to Demi Moore and she’s a ride.
- Jaysus, and the Polish wimmin are rides too. Is that de bleedin’ link?
- And tink of all de money you’d save on gel.
- And ya’d never notice yourself going bald.
- And ya’d never need to dry yar hair.
- And still ya’d get all de rides? Jaysus hold me down boy. I’m gettin this bastard shaved off. Dem Polish boys don’t miss a trick.
- Jaysus Tom we’ll have you riding yet.

Read More......

Le Grand Meaulnes

As a rule I am not a person who believes in rereading books; life is too short and there are too many books I haven’t read. There is one book though that I have read several times. When I was 18 or so I picked up an old paperback translation of “Le Grand Meaulnes” by Alain-Fournier. It is translated as “The Wanderer” and it tells the tale of Augustin Meaulnes, a young boy who becomes infatuated with a beautiful blonde-haired girl called Yvonne de Galais. He meets the girl for the first time at a magical ball which is to prove the highlight of Meaulnes’ life. The rest of the novel describes his pursuit of Yvonne and his effort to recapture that seminal experience.
The first time I read the novel I was also infatuated with a blonde so the novel was very real to me. In time I learned that the book was the only finished novel by the author who died in World War 1 at the age of 28 fighting on the Meusel on September 22, 1914. It turns out that “Le Grand Meaulnes” was largely autobiographical and that Fournier spent much of his short life fixated with Yvonne de Quiévrecourt, a love that did not wilt even after her marriage to somebody else.


“Le Grand Meaulnes” is a novel that sends an electric shock through your system. It is a novel which has bred legions of devotees. You can find yourself at a party suddenly switching into violent enthusiasm mode when you meet another who has shared your experience.
There is a museum devoted to the writer in Epineuil-le-Fleuriel. There is also an excellent website devoted to the novel and to the memory of Alain-Fournier. There is a forum on which devotees leave their messages expressing love for this book like this one from May 19:
“Le Grand Meaulnes, pour moi, c'est tout simplement LE livre que j'ai adoré tant il m'a fait partir sur les chemins du rêve, de l'aventure et d'une belle histoire d'amitié. Je dis toujours que je n'ai jamais retrouvé autant de plaisir à lire une oeuvre littéraire de cette beauté (et pourtant, il y en a beaucoup!) mais le Grand Meaulnes est, pour moi, le plus beau livre de la littérature française.!”

Read More......

The Class Divide

There is a brilliantly written post over on the Dreaming Arm blog called "Separating the wheat from the chav" analysing the white working class in Britain and Ireland. The following statement specific to Northern Ireland can be pretty much extended to anywhere in Britain or Ireland by just replacing the football shirt of choice:
"Simply swap the Rangers shirts and the union flags which were on display for Celtic shirts and tricolours (but retain the fake tans, fake designer sportswear, cigarettes, prominent tattoos and the inexpensive jewellery known as “Argos bling”) and you have the mirror image from the other side."
When you look a bit further than your nose is long you see that the educated middle classes love their debates on Slugger or wherever but ultimately political ideology does not get in the way of enjoying a pint together in the pub. When I studied at Queen's there was certainly nobody I knew who let politics get in the way of personal relationships.
The people who scare the middle classes are not normally those with another ideology or nationality but the underclass within. Even in a nominally classless society like The Netherlands the lives led by the working middle classes and the welfare class are totally different. In the ideological discussions about Britishness and Irishness and even Dutchness we are constantly trying to emphasize what makes us different but a university educated English person will have more in common with his Irish or Dutch counterpart than with the people on the margins of his own society. It makes you wonder why we are still so obsessed with nationality when the nation seems so splintered wherever you live.

Read More......

Rubber Doll

Paris, darkness, 4am
Blood tears drip on snow
Lying, my spear against your back
Let me, let me go.

Doormat, eunuch, chaperone
We held hands like lovers do
Ersatz, placebo, compagnon
All I was to you.

Your shoulders bare
Toweled and tempting
Was that light green or really red?
Words were left unsaid.

Paris by the bottle; Irish style
In vino veritas
A fumbled kiss that missed
A mumbled secret wish.

I loved you then
For what’s its worth
But I guess you never knew
That even rubber dolls have feelings too.

Read More......

This Side of Madness

When my eldest daughter was about ten months old and my wife was already pregnant again I went through a very depressed period. I think that it must have been triggered by the fact that I was pushing myself to become some kind of intellectual superman. I was studying for an evening MBA at the time and I was also taking language classes throughout that period. To make matters worse we are having trouble selling an apartment. Here is something I wrote in a mail a couple of months later:
“I have just recovered from a majorly bad period of depression. I was sick first and then I started getting really depressed about work and not selling our other house. I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to get better but I have managed to pick myself up. I have put way too much pressure on myself with all the extra study I have been doing, as well as work and family stuff. I am going to gradually cut things down.”
I must have tested my wife severely because I know that I regularly burned her ear with my laments about making the wrong choices in life and not achieving everything that I could have. Maybe it would have been better if I had have gone to some kind of therapist at that time.

Instead I just found a way though the darkness as best I could. Something happened during that bout of depression that really stays with me and makes me realize how close to the edge I came.
One evening I was upstairs and my baby daughter was asleep in her cot. She looked so beautiful and innocent and I felt overwhelmed with love for her. I got this massive urge to lie down beside her and go to sleep. With all rational thought suspended I put one foot into the cot and already there was a cracking sound as the cot gave way. The base of the cot was pulled out its joints and it fell down with a bump that woke baby.
My wife came rushing upstairs at the noise and I snapped back into reality. The cot was not irretrievably broken so we managed to screw it back together. My wife could not believe that I could have done something so crazy; the cot is clearly not designed to take the weight of an adult. We talked about this and realized that it was a clear signal that I could not do my job well, be a good father and keep studying so much all at once. For the first time I realized that I was made of far more brittle stuff than I supposed. From that time on I have involved my wife far more in the decisions as to what extra activities I should take on.
We are still using the same cot so I get to think about that incident regularly. Sometimes you can get the feeling that you are omnipotent and you need a little shock to jolt you back into reality.

Read More......

A Riverdance Moment

Yesterday we went to watch an Irish dancing class because my eldest daughter is planning to start dancing in September. I must be turning into one of those soppy emigrants who goes all soft at the mention of their homeland. At the start of the class all of the dancers did a dance to show the parents what they can do. It was really beautiful and some of the children could really dance well; I was proud to be Irish watching them. It was a Riverdance at the 1994 Eurovision moment.

It was so nice to see so many children together with Irish backgrounds speaking with Irish accents. The thing is though that they were nearly all from mixed backgrounds so every now and again one kid would slip into Dutch and then all of the other kids automatically switched with her. From my multilingual loving perspective that was also quite wonderful to hear.
I really hope that Luna will get into this once she starts because this seems an ideal way for her to have a bit more of an Irish input in her life. Every day she speaks more and more Dutch to her sister so we really are watching an irreversible tide sweep over our incubated family life. With the Irish dancing she will have a chance to speak English to other kids and enjoy this part of her life too.

Read More......

Sex without language

Back in the mists of time a friend of mine who lived in London told me about a girl he had been seeing for a while. Evidently the girl was from Venezuela and had little or no English while his Spanish didn't go beyond what he had picked up on "Sesame Street". Allegedly the relationship began in a nightclub where the ability to communicate with your potential target is rarely of too much importance. Anyway he met her on a number of occasions but the relationship was purely sexual so he just could not keep it up. No matter how fantastic somebody looks it seems that you always need to find a way to communicate in the end.
That might seem obvious but where does that leave the concept of love at first sight? My brother claims that he was once in a disco in Norway and saw a beautiful girl dancing to The Cure. Evidently he was so smitten that he just kept looking at her and walked right up to her and started kissing her. This girl was later his girlfriend for a few years so the story took on an element of a self-propagating myth; evidence that their love was predestined from that first look.
I look at this rather more cynically. There is every chance that you can look across the room at a stranger and consider that you would not mind having babies with him or her. However, if it is no more than eyes interlocking then you move on, forget that person and repeat the process ad infinitum with innumerable other strangers. Just because one of those events might translate into the love of your life does not mean it was love at first sight.
So let's agree that love at first sight does not exist what of a sex without the dimension of communication? Does that increase or decrease the sexual experience?
I cannot say myself. I imagine that the first time would be extremely liberating, freed of any need to say or do things according to some culturally acceptable protocol. The sexual event becomes more physical and maybe even more sensual like a massage with a blindfold on. However, I just cannot see that it would be so exciting after the first time. At the end of the day we are sexual animals but we still like to enjoy a coffee together afterwards.
I went out on a few dates with a very attractive Brazilian girl at one time in my life. There was never any physical element to our relationship because I just did not know what she wanted because her English was so bad. I didn't want to make a move and get rejected and if she was giving me non-verbal signals I wasn't reading them very well.
Maybe the Venezuelan story at the start (if it was even true) was so fascinating when I was younger because of the fantasy element of a physical relationship without strings without the complications of language. I would be very interested if anybody else has some anecdotes in a similar vein.

Read More......

The Orange and the Green

In 1989 I left Ireland for the first time to study at The University of Sheffield in England. I could never have known in advance how painful this decision would be. I had thought of England as a liberal, open country. I was expecting a country that would offer me the ultimate escape from conservative Ireland; the glossy prospectuses of English universities had worked their magic a little too well on me.
My actual experience was quite different. From the start I was treated less like the foreigner I was than as a second class Brit. There were many times when I wanted to quit my university and go back to Ireland but I knew that the option was not really open. Instead I persevered and tried to adapt. I learned to speak in a way in which I would be understood. I learned to appreciate the very different humour. I learned how to lay on the accent thick enough to get the swooning 'I love your accent' compliments from girls.
I never got used to being called Irish, Paddy or Mick but the nickname Semtex leaves a particularly sick taste in my mouth even now. I never learned to appreciate the Irish jokes despite being assured time and again that they weren't personal. It's just that I did take it personally being parodied as one of a race of thick idiots.
I got on with university and I made some friends, had romances and lived the student life. At the same time I was boiling up inside. My life in England was like living in a pressure cooker and I was regularly depressed.
At a certain point I found a release in going back to where I came from. I read countless books on the history of Ireland and I became passionately interested in the conflict in Northern Ireland. What intrigued me more than the familiar nationalist narrative was the story of the Ulster Protestants. My starting point was incomprehension at why these people felt so British and why they were so attached to preserving a union with a Britain that quite clearly cared little for them. In Sheffield I remember clearly that the anti-Irish jokes were not reserved only for those who were from Irish nationalist stock.
My journeys in Irish history led me to the decision to do my Masters in the mid-1990s at the Queen's University in Belfast. When I look back on my student days the year I spent in Belfast was the happiest time I had. Right from the start I made a concerted effort to meet both the orange and the green.
Politics were not normally discussed in mixed company but I was often in the situation where I was the only person in a group of the nationalist persuasion so sometimes I did get the chance to hear the unionist point of view without any vitriole. What I learned is perhaps self-evident but not always recognized. There was no point in trying to convince unionists that they were better off in a united Ireland. There was no point in invoking the United Irishmen of 1798. Unionists believe they are British and the union is their whole raison d'être.
Nowadays my interest in the north has wained somewhat. Things have reached a stalemate and as long as there is no violence the situation is far better than it was twenty years ago.
At the same time there is a lot of interesting stuff in blogland concerning Northern Ireland beyond the very well known Slugger O'Toole. One blog I really like is Chekov's Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness which is an excellent guide to the state of unionism today. He espouses a moderate and liberal unionism. This post on Unionism and Irishness argues that unionism should also be about convincing nationalists that their Irishness can be valued and expressed in the United Kingdom. I don't agree with his point of view but I do like the fact that there are people putting reasonable arguments out there that justify the unionist stance.
My own view is that the endgame will happen in a different way to what we might expect. Even if there were a nationalist majority in Northern Ireland I am not sure that a united Ireland is possible. Whatever happens there needs to be an accommodation with the unionist people. They are not magically going to turn into Irish people.
I see the United Kingdom itself falling apart. If Scotland becomes independent then the whole situation changes. Will northern unionists remain loyal to a rump UK without Scotland and maybe also Wales in time? In such a situation will England want to keep on pumping inordinate amounts of money into keeping Northern Ireland viable?
In such a situation it might well be possible to convince northern unionists that their type of Britishness can be better represented in an Irish state. Up until now I have seen little evidence that nationalists in Ireland are thinking about models for accommodating a large British minority in an Irish state. I would love to read a blog with a version of Chekov's post coming from the other side explaining how Nationalism can deal with Britishness.

Read More......

Forgetting Languages

As I said before my daughter started going to school full time last month. I’ve been dropping her off to school while my wife generally picks her up. We both noticed two ladies who speak almost in whispers to each other in Russian. Here, as in most countries, foreigners notice each other straight away; our alien radars are ever sensitive.
Anyway my wife was one of the last of the generation of Poles who took Russian as a foreign language at school. She used to speak fluent Russian and has visited the country twice. I suggested to her that she should start chatting with one of the Russians; it’s always nice to know the other parents after all.
I met my wife while she was in Holland working as an au pair with an international family who specifically wanted her to speak English to their kids (attendees of the local British School). She was following English courses when I met her and had exactly zero interest in learning Dutch given that its usefulness outside of the nether countries is pretty marginal.
Time moved on and we got married and stayed living here and gradually she came around to the idea that learning Dutch is not just a nice-to-have if you want to live here longer term. I have to hand it to her; her Dutch has improved enormously in the last year or so. She carries out much of her daily business in Dutch and has friends with whom she only speaks Dutch.
She started to speak to one of the Russians in Russian but started to stumble after a sentence or two. The well had dried up. The words that were once almost as familiar as their Polish equivalents were gone, disparu, verschwunden. She asked if the lady spoke English but, no, her English understanding was good but she actually spoke better Dutch. So my wife switched naturally into Dutch. The maxim ‘use it or lose it’ was once again proven along with the utility value of Dutch.
You hear so many people talking about how easily children pick up languages but you rarely hear about the fact that they can forget languages just as readily. The more naturally you learn a language the more likely it is that you will forget it again if you have no exposure. On Dutch television we regularly see Dutch people who emigrated to America or Australia who have trouble speaking Dutch even though they grew with it.

Adult learners normally learn languages through grammar which gives them a skeleton onto which they hang the meat of vocabulary. Grammar based learning never delivers as good as result as immersion based learning but it does have the advantage of giving you hard wired rules that you don’t forget (e.g. abair, bí, faigh, té agus déan or bijoux, cailloux, choux, genoux, hiboux, joujoux, poux).There is no doubt that my wife could get her Russian back if she spent three or four weeks in Russia. I have the same thing with languages I rarely use like French, German and Spanish. The moral of the story is that language learning is like the rock of Sisyphus, you never reach perfect fluency, with every language you constantly have to try to push the rock back up to top of the hill.

Read More......

Tattoo:Tatú

I have been reading the poetry collection 'Tattoo:Tatú' by Nuala Ní Chonchúir for the last few weeks. With poetry I tend to read a collection in short bursts spread over a long time. I became interested in this collection when I read some poems of hers on the Poetry International Web.

The collection has several poems with versions in both Irish and English. For somebody like myself with reasonably good Irish it certainly makes the Irish versions of the poems more accessible and it is an idea that deserves imitation.
There are a number of poems like the title pair, 'Enclosed' and 'Nessa as Frida' where I enjoyed both versions equally. In other cases I thought that the English version was better, a particular highlight being 'Body Haiku':

Folded between my
thighs, an oyster, with edges
that quiver, frill, pulse

Lying between your
legs, an orchid, that blossoms,
blooms on the stalk, wilts

On the other hand there are also instances when the Irish version really stands out. The poem 'Ó' is a favourite:

clúdaím mo bholg
tugaim mo dhroim duit
craiceann nach
bhfuil craptha

The collection is very broad-ranging in style and content. I think that the poet's great strength is in her celebration of sexuality and the human body with all its imperfections. She also has a very good eye for humour as in 'Venus in a Bottle':

Legless but harmless
stretched on the Métro platform
bottle in her hand.

My main criticism of the collection is the fact that there are a number of poems with references to works of art that I know nothing about and people that I had never heard of (e.g. Harry Kernoff). There is a strong case for footnotes to explain the references. I like poetry that can stand on its own irrespective of the context in which it was written.
Having said that there are many fine poems in the collection and I would recommend it to anybody interested in reading some fresh, new poetry. Nuala Ní Chonchúir has agreed to answer some questions I have on her collection so I hope to publish this on the blog soon.

Read More......

Land of Folders and Magazines

I had a conversation with some workmates a while back that made me realize that I have become more Dutch than the Dutch. One of my colleagues revealed that she had committed the heresy of pasting a Nee - Nee sticker on her post flap. These are stickers that the inhabitants of this fine country can put on their doorways to fight off the pest of unwanted supermarket folders and local newspapers.

A long time ago in Bethlehem I too had one of these things on my door warding off those enemies of the forest but something seems to have changed along the way. When I first started living in this country I was astounded by the fact that every company seemed to issue its own magazine. From Nuon (energy) to the NS (railways) through to Ohra (my main insurer) every one of them seemed to have a glossy to back up their false promises of efficiency and customer service. Moreover, I was abhorred by the positive avalanche of folders and local newspapers spewing through my post flap. Was it something that I had said or done?
When I was a singleton I too had the Nee - Nee banner proudly on display but my girlfriend kept bringing back the folders from the Aldi or the Albert Heijn and I started shopping based on the bargains. Before long I had moved to a Ja - Nee sticker allowing the folders in (but not the local rags). I got married and a sport of ours was eagerly picking through the folders in search of bargains like wolverines with a sniff of prey.
I made the final move back to a stickerless existence when we moved to our current house. I now read the local papers and their tales of arrests of drunken cyclists, arson attacks and sales of work at local schools. I cannot kick the habit of reading the supermarket folders and nothing would sicken me more now than knowing that I bought something in the C1000 supermarket that was on special in the Albert Heijn.
I have basically become a type of Dutch person that even my Dutch colleagues take the piss out of. My Dutch colleague guffawed when I reacted with such shock that she had gone down the Nee - Nee way. It's gone too far but maybe the Ireland of the 1980s has just stayed inside me. Neither a lender nor a borrower be. Live within your means. Keep driving that Daewoo Nexia even if you can afford a BMW.

Read More......

Can't take No for an answer

I thought that Vincent Browne hit the nail on the head in the Sunday Business Post yesterday when he said that we should rejoice at the fact that the people of Ireland have exercised their democratic right to vote No to the Lisbon Treaty.
I followed the run-up to the referendum in the Irish and international media and what I found most annoying was the tendency of both Irish politicians and Eurocrats to preach to the Irish people that they had to vote Yes or risk torpedoing the whole European project out of the water. There was a real element of coercion about many of the arguments put forward.
I have not read the text of the Lisbon Treaty nor do I claim to be any expert on the matter. However, one thing that is glaringly obvious is that you are living in a fantasy world if you think that European Commissioners do not and will not act in their national self-interest. One of the reasons Ireland negotiated such good deals with the EU in the past is precisely because there were Irish politicians of the calibre of Peter Sutherland on the Commission.
I am certain that the Dutch people would reject the Lisbon Treaty if given a chance just as they rejected the EU Constitution a couple of years back. In fact I would wager that almost every EU country would reject the treaty if it went to a referendum for various reasons.
The main one is that the EU has turned into a giant, undemocratic machine lacking in transparency. I would regard myself as a prototype 'European' given my mixed background and my international family ties. That does not mean that I support the ever deepening and broadening of EU powers so that we no longer even know what was signed away at Maastricht, Nice or Lisbon.
I hope that Irish politicians will accept the No vote but I am pretty sure they won't. As Vincent Browne says:
"It is blindingly obvious that the sovereignty of the Irish people will not be respected.We will be press-ganged into another referendum, and the Irish government - including Gormley - will do nothing at all to assert that sovereignty."
The enemies without are clearly nothing compared to the enemies within.

Read More......

Chronology of a near-fatal accident

Background
Some people need to think hard to come up with an answer if you ask them what was the worst night of their life. I don't.
On Thursday, April 27, 2006 at about 21:45 I got two phone calls straight after each other. The first was from the LUMC hospital in Leiden telling me that my wife had been involved in a major accident and was in intensive care awaiting a neurological operation. The second was from the police telling me that a drunk driver had driven into my wife as she was cycling home after doing some late night shopping, tellingly the driver had stepped on the gas rather than the brake pedal. This post tells the story of that night using excerpts from the statements of the driver, his co-driver and eye witnesses.

15:00 (Statement Co-driver X)
I drove from R. to Leiden at about 15:00 in my brother's car. I had had two glasses of wine and I already felt a little drunk. I drove aimlessly around until I decided to stop outside of the snack bar K in Leiden. I decided to visit my brother who has an allotment close by. We drank a few glasses of wine but I am not too sure how many it was. After a while I decided to go back to the snack bar to get a bite to eat. I ordered some food and a small bottle of wine. While I was there I started talking to a young lad who was there with his father.

16:30 (Statement Driver)
I was in the snack bar K with my father. While I was sitting there I started chatting to X. I must have drunk about 5 beers and X must have had at least 5 glasses of white wine. X asked me if I fancied going with her to a Coffee Shop to smoke a joint.
X sat in the driver's seat and I sat in beside her. We started driving towards the centre of Leiden. I had to correct X on a number of occasions because I could see that she wasn't driving straight.We stopped at a Shell garage and I got out and bought a couple of things. When I got back into the car she asked me if I would take the wheel. I know that I don't have a driving licence but I wanted to impress her so I didn't tell her that.
I had driven a car before and everything was going fine. I was driving up the Oude Herengracht and I wanted to turn right on to Haven. I wanted to break but I hit the gas pedal. I drove with screeching tyres through the bend. I think that I was doing 30 km/h before the bend but I don't know how fast I was going when I stepped on the gas.
I don't know what happened next, it all went so fast.

20:30 (Statement Witness 1)
At around 20:30 I was driving over Haven for my work, I am a taxi driver. I had just let some clients out and my car was facing towards the Haarlemerstraat. I heard the loud screech of a car motor. Then I saw a black VW travelling at high speed up the Oude Herengracht turn right onto Haven. I say high speed because this car was travelling much faster than any of the other traffic. I also heard the squeaking of tyres.
Next I saw the car begin to slide as it turned the corner, the rear of the car spun out. Then I saw the car crash into a cyclist and knock the bicycle against the bridge railing. The car slid on another ten metres and hit another cyclist.

20:30 (Statement Witness 2)
I was cycling up the Haarlemerstraat towards Haven. I saw a black car travelling up the Oude Herengracht at high speed . I saw that the man was turning right onto Haven, coming in my direction. I immediately suspected that the driver would not make the bend at the speed he was travelling.
I saw two female cyclists on Haven as the driver took the bend. I saw the driver of the black car fly out of the bend. I thought that he had lost control of the car. I saw the car crashing into one of the cyclists and then into the second cyclist. I saw that both cyclists were hit by the front of the car. I saw that both cyclists had fallen and were lying down. The lady lying by the railing was not moving.

20:30 (Statement Witness 3)
I saw that the cyclist was hit by the driver's side of the car. I saw the woman land on the bonnet and hit against the windscreen. Then I saw her fly off the car and fly through the air landing near the railing of the bridge. I saw that she stayed lying down and that her legs were really shaking. I saw lots of blood around her head.

20:30 (Statement Driver)
You are asking me if I now remember what happened after I took the corner.
Yes, I remember hitting a cyclist after I took the corner, later I heard that it was two cyclists.
I saw a cyclist hit against the front windscreen. It was an awful sight. I saw that windscreen had cracked and I saw clearly that glass from the screen had impacted into her head.

20:36 (Statement Police Officer)
At 20:36 I got a call from the call centre asking me to go to the Haven in Leiden where a traffic accident had happened between a car and two cyclists.
I saw a person lying beside a bicycle on the bridge railing. I saw that the front windscreen of the car was cracked and that there was hair stuck on the broken glass. Evidently one of the cyclists had hit the front windscreen.

21:45
I was calm after getting the phone calls. They always tell you that it's not serious and when you are in shock, you want to believe them.
My wonderful neighbours were immediately willing to help with looking after the children. My neighbour works as a doctor at the LUMC so he actually drove me there and we cut straight through the red tape to get to the operating theatre.
The neurologist explained that my wife had an impact fracture in the skull which had to be operated on immediately or there would be a risk of infection. They did not suspect permanent brain damage because the fracture location was not disadvantageous.

23:00
I left the hospital with my neighbour as there was no point in staying for the length of the operation. I needed to arrange emergency child care and inform family about what had happened. I tried not to think about the operation. I tried to sleep. I knew that the days and weeks ahead were not going to be easy.

Afterword
My wife's operation was a success but her recovery was a long process. She went through months of dental treatment to get two implants to replace the teeth she had lost. She went through months of physio to sort out her damaged kneecap. Luckily she is now almost back to where she was. Our daughter, born last month, was given the name Nadia which means hope in Polish. Even in the worst of times you have hope. The darkest part of the day is just before the dawn.

Read More......

New Gold Dream

Does it get any better than that? There was I thinking that Euro 2008 was going to be one big borefest and the Oranje boys come out and prove me wrong - twice. Little known fact but I am now qualified to naturalize and become a Dutch citizen. If they keep playing like that I might just do it!

Read More......

The Language Mix

In the last couple of weeks there has been quite a big change in language mix used by my older two daughters. It could be the beginning of the end in some respects. Up until six months ago the girls generally spoke to each other in Polish and used English sporadically especially when I was round. To hear them speak you would have assumed that they were Polish children to all intents and purposes. Gradually they began to use occasional Dutch words as well and English remained peripheral in their mutual communication. At the same time we always expected Dutch to take over one day because the community language always wins out in a multilingual environment.
Anyway, the situation now is slightly surprising. They have indeed started to have whole conversations in Dutch. Daisy goes to playschool five days a week and Luna is at school every day so they are obviously getting much more comfortable with the language. However, amazingly enough, they have also started having whole impromtu conversations in English. I did not expect this but I think that some very powerful cartoon influences such as "Charlie and Lola" and "Max and Ruby" have made them think of English as quite a cool language to use with each other and not just with old baldie ;-) Polish still remains their main language with each other and with their mum. For how long though? I give it one more year.
We are introducing some counter-measures to protect Polish. From September both of the girls will go to the Polish School in Rotterdam every second Saturday. At that school they learn Polish songs and poems and, most importantly, they learn that there are many other children just like them living in Holland.
We are also considering starting Irish Dancing classes for Luna from September. She always wants us to play Irish traditional music and she does her version of Irish dancing. We would love her to get into this as a way to also meet other Irish and international kids who speak English. It is really important to know that other kids speak your languages too.
'Language death', as linguists so dramatically call it, normally occurs when a language becomes isolated and speakers lose faith in it and switch to a more dominant language. The parents of multilingual children are in a constant struggle to balance the language exposure so that their children do not lose the languages before they are firmly embedded. It's a nice struggle though.

Read More......

Betty Blue

I was watching a travel program the other night set in France and they started to play some music that I recognised straight away. Like suddenly remembering an ex-lover forgotten I was overwhelmed by a visceral sensation. How could I have forgotten 'Betty Blue' and all that the film meant to me?

In a time before sex the fim Betty Blue (37°2 le matin) was sex. In the darkest of days it was worth remaining on this earth because women like Béatrice Dalle existed and men like Zorg could experience true passion, hedonistic drinking and a life less ordinary. If I am honest my primary interest in the first viewings was the first 30 minutes when all was good with Betty and the madness to come was only hinted at.

The film was released in 1986 and I did not start university until 1989 but the film only seemed to gain in appeal throughout my student years. The Betty Blue poster was as omnipresent as the images of Nelson Mandela and Che Guevera that covered the walls of student flats.

My own particular homage to the film was to copy Zorg's decision to only eat chili con carne. For two years of my student life I cooked hot chili every third day and ate the remains on the interval days.

The film gradually took on a darker meaning as I experienced by own version of Betty. My first real girlfriend was four years older than me, I met her at the age of 19 when I worked for a summer at a holiday camp in Skegness. She had a framed Betty Blue poster and had quite a somber view of the world. As I was going through a very depressed period in my life it was a match made in hell.
The ins and the outs of that story are too personal to go in to but suffice to say that things went very very wrong. I wrote this poem (in Dutch) for her and if I just translate a couple of lines you will get the picture:

Would that have been so poetic?

Double suicide after a full frontal collision

Or the two of us together jumping from the Severn Bridge

Yes, it all went a bit Betty Blue and maybe that's why I don't think about the film so much any more.

But now that the film has come back to me let me salute this French masterpiece and may we all live and love as in the first 30 minutes when Betty was the girl that all the boys would have loved to have been with and Zorg was the boy they would have loved to have been.

Read More......

The Oil Men

Over the weekend I was very interested to learn that my mother's first cousin, Peadar King, whom I haven't seen in years has become a documentary film maker. He is the producer and presenter of the new series of What in the World? currently showing on RTÉ in Ireland.
He was in touch with my family recently because of some research he was doing into the oil industry. One area he was researching is the incredible story of how my mother's family came to be involved in mining the black gold.My mother was brought up on a farm in the townland of Derryard near Doonbeg in County Clare. Doonbeg now hosts one of the world's top golf links but in those days this area was firmly off the beaten track. In the 1960s something unbelievable happened to my mother's family, as my cousin Peadar King writes:
Jack King coming from a long line of farmers had married in and worked the poor peaty clammy soil until he turned it into productive grazing for what was in West Clare terms a good size dairy herd. Some hard work. No mean achievement.
Then fortune seemed to smile on him. In the early 1960s, the unthinkable happened. He struck oil or so it seemed. The Ambassador Oil Company of Fort Worth, Texas was prospecting for oil all along the West Coast of Clare. Eventually they settled on a plot of bogland in Derryard.
The deal was signed on the 15th July 1962 and construction on the site started immediately. Drilling began the following September.
Not surprisingly word spread like wildfire about Derryard’s newfound wealth and people came from miles around to see unimagined technology at work. Tractors were just beginning to make their appearance in the peninsula and cars were still few and far between. Nobody had seen a D 8 bulldozer before or indeed any bulldozer for that matter and there was great speculation as to how it would get in the gap. There were audible gasps when it simply pushed the fence aside and rolled into the field. Then this skyscraper appeared and could be seen for miles over the flat boggy landscape.
Three five-man crews worked eight-hour shifts twenty-four hours a day with one relief crew. This in itself was a sight to behold. Night-time was for sleeping in rural Ireland. Twenty men – all from the United States worked the rigging and about another twenty men, some from the local area worked on the site. Prior to coming to Derryard, the oil company had drilled in Cavan and some of the men who worked on that drill also worked in Derryard.
Off-farm work was scarce in West Clare in 1962. For most people the boat to England or to the United States was the only option. As a result Jack King was under pressure to deliver jobs. But the oil industry is notoriously self-centred and there were few jobs for the locals.
But Jack was a canny operator. Years of experience at cattle fairs in West Clare had taught him to cut a good deal and cognizant of the needs of others he made two strategic moves. Having secured payment of £500, a not inconsiderable sum at the time, for permission to drill on his land, he further arranged to have the short road into the village tarred thereby keeping his neighbours happy and he secured jobs with the Ambassador Oil Company for two of his sons, Noel and PJ.
My grandfather's negotiating skills gave my two uncles the all important start in the oil industry. From my youngest years I remember my uncles coming back from the most exotic countries you can imagine, wherever there was oil they worked. My uncle Noel ended up having a very successful management career in the oil industry, becoming an executive in a drilling company. Unfortunately he passed away in 1989 long before his time. My uncle PJ still works in a consultancy role on the oil rigs and he is currently located somewhere off the coast of India.
When I was younger I considered studying Petroleum Engineering at Heriott-Watt to follow in the footsteps of my uncles but there were already warnings at that time about the oil running out and there being no future in that industry. How wrong can you get?
In West Clare as a whole there are many people who spent their time working on oil rigs because of the connections that were made at that time. When I was younger it seemed so glamourous because you could earn a lot of money and you worked four weeks on four weeks off. I imagine that the work was very hard at the roustabout/roughneck level. The four weeks off might well have become a labour too if all your friends were working normal jobs.
There was no significant oil find but the course of events that took place in those heady years altered the entire course of my family's history.

Read More......

Don't come home too soon

And I dont care what people say,

We can laugh it all away,

But if I have a dream at all for once you wont be on that stupid plane

And the world may not be shaking yet,

But you might prove them wrong,

Even long shots make it

Just don't come home too soon,

Just don't come home too soon.

Del Amitri (For Scotland in the 1998 World Cup)

We are a family from nowhere and everywhere but for Euro 2008 my girls have firmly chosen the mother country Polska! As this is probably a very poor choice (even more so after losing 2-0 to Germany in the first game) we are adopting the Scotland theme song from the 1998 World Cup, even long shots can make it after all!
Luckily we have a few options in reserve if, and when, Poland get knocked out so here are the countries we are cheering for and why:
1) Poland - The land of my wife and the motherland of my three girls (see picture).

2) The Netherlands - Where we live and a damn fine team too (3-0 against Italy!).

3) Portugal - My sister lives there, her husband is Portuguese and my two nieces will surely be cheering Forza Portugal!

4) France - My brother's wife is French and his kids go to the French school in The Hague. Allez Les Bleus!

5) Spain - My wife's first cousin lives there and we are at her wedding where she married herAntonio. Besides that we love Spain and want to live there in the future. Viva L'España or what?

6) Germany - My wife's first cousin lives in Hannover and is married to a German with two football-mad boys. Besides that Klose and Podolski are actually Polish and even speak to each other po polsku. We have even thought of calling Germany, Poland 2 because they have the best Polish players after all.

With our family connections we are sure to have a winner amongst our picks but if God is reading please let Poland get out of the group. Polska! Polska!

Read More......

British and Irish

Colm at Corcaighist has a very interesting post on what it means for him to be Irish. I found the following very thought-provoking:
"Just look at the hundreds of thousands of people born on the island of Ireland who do not feel attached to any sense of being Irish. Or look at the people who feel comfortable describing themselves as both Irish and British whilst others feel these elements are mutually exclusive."
It is an interesting question. Can you really be Irish and British at the same time?
My father was born and raised in Britain, my mother was brought up in Ireland. My older siblings were born in Britain but the three younger ones were born in Ireland. My aunt has lived her whole life in Britain but carries an Irish passport. Her brother has lived his whole life in Britain and regards himself as British.
It is clear that we are on very fragile territory when we try to define Irishness and Britishness, even more so when we try to pigeon-hole people into boxes marked Irish and British. There has been so much traffic between the two islands over the centuries that almost every British family has some Irish blood and almost every Irish family has British relatives. Quite clearly it must be possible to be Irish and British at the same time just as it is possible for my daughters to be somewhat Irish, more so Polish and increasingly Dutch at once.
Why is the issue so sensitive? Why do some people want to make British and Irish mutually exclusive concepts? Wherein lies the threat?
Obviously the political situation in Northern Ireland makes this issue more delicate than it would otherwise be. In any conflict there is a tendency to search for stability in symbols of identity such as sport, flags and language. The middle ground of shared identity is hazardous which explains why the Alliance Party never really took off. The statement "If you're not with us, you're against us." kills all argument. You need to take a side.
With the Northern Ireland situation still unresolved even those outside of the province are unlikely to want cede ground on the issue. People like myself are unlikely to admit to a degree of Britishness even when it is clear from my family background that I cannot be 100% Irish. My daughters will never have a problem having mixed Irish, Polish and Dutch loyalties because these nationalities have no unresolved dispute.
Another issue with regards to the concepts of Irish and British is that of primacy. One often hears about the idea of being English and British or Scottish and British. For British people they have a primary nationality (British) but also a secondary nationality (Scottish, English or Welsh). The problem when talking about Northern Ireland is that the secondary nationality is not so clear. Many nationalists refuse to countenance Irish a secondary nationality of British whilst unionists struggle with being Northern Irish, Ulstermen, Ulster Scots and even Irish.
In this area I do have a strong opinion. I do not think that Irish is a secondary nationality of British. I believe that you can be Irish and British if you mean that they are equal nationalities but I do not think that the Irish nationality is beneath the British nationality. I believe that this point above all pushes people from being liberal on this issue into being dogmatic and exclusivist.

Read More......

Iris Robinson in the 21st Century?

Poor old Peter Robinson. He waits countless years for Dr. No to step down as the DUP leader and no sooner has he made it to First Minister of Northern Ireland than his wife starts spouting off about gay people needing psychiatric help. Her statements came after a 27-year-old gay man was beaten up in a homophobic attack and left for dead.
Her statements are, to put it mildly, somewhat unenlightened in the 21st century. It does not surprise me to hear that somebody with a fundamentalist Christian background thinks like this, what amazes me more is that she would show such a lack of political nous that she has landed her husband in the mire. He can hardly distance himself from his own wife though I do expect statements about misinterpretation etc.
I don't know how this will play out with the DUP supporters. Surely even the more bigoted party members will not appreciate her invective against gay people in NI just after such an attack. Maybe this episode will be a trigger to reivigorate the UUP because Ulster Unionism could do without having such bigotry pouring out of the mouths of figureheads in the unionist camp.

Read More......

International?

When I was younger I was crazy about everything ‘International’ and ‘European’. Almost anything that came from another country than Ireland was automatically more interesting be it food, drink or people. When I couldn’t understand what was being said in a language I imagined that profound issues were being discussed, that foreigners had some essential life force that Irish people were missing.
Well I have been out to the world and reality has bitten. The more you speak any language the more you realize that everybody just talks about the same things. Sure, the conversation might be about a Polish soap opera or a Dutch football team but there is no substantial difference. I have given up on romanticizing countries and peoples.
Nowadays almost any educated person in the world can speak English so, by default, there are less and less monolingual people knocking about. That creates the situation whereby the least educated people in a country are the best with whom to practice the language because they don’t keep switching to English. Maybe it was some kind of backlash against my own relatively privileged upbringing but I was long a glorifier of the working class because I thought that it was there that I would find true, unadulterated culture.
Wherever I traveled I always tried to meet the ‘real’ people. I wanted to go to bars and clubs where only local people would congregate. From ‘Tanzen in Mai’ festivals in Germany to dingy nightclubs in Prague suburbs to playing for a working class Dutch football club to countless Polish weddings to ‘Hotel’ bars in Perth, I went out of my way to meet the people whom I thought were preserving their cultures.
I had many great times but I realize now that I was essentially wrong in thinking that the ‘real’ people were more likely to care about preserving their native cultures. In fact, it may well be a purely intellectual pursuit to be even thinking about cultural preservation. One example of what I mean is when I spoke about cinema. Whenever I meet people I normally talk about what films I have seen from their country so I will list off the Polish films I have seen when I meet a Pole etc. More often than not the very people I saw as more authentic were more likely never to have seen a film from their own country and sometimes even wondered why you would need to have any films outside of the Hollywood output.
This creates a dilemma. The educated intelligentsia of every country speaks other languages and looks out to the rest of the world. At the same these are the very people who are the keepers of the flame because the working class is too busy living to even care about cryptic notions like preserving culture.
When I go back to Ireland and I mention to people that watching so much British television or reading the ‘Irish’ Sun can only be undermining the Irish culture I am met with mild bemusement. There is no identity crisis for these people; they are not measuring their Irishness. When I complain to my wife that her family keep reading translations of books written in English rather than books written originally in Polish she wonders why it matters as long as they are enjoying the book.
Maybe that is the point of my international journey. By travelling and living in other countries and learning many languages I have become hypersensitive about nationality. I have become less and less Irish but I have become more vociferous in my ideas about what Irishness is or should be. Instead of thinking so much thinking about nationality and identity I maybe just need to start being just me as I am.

Read More......

The Apprentice Final Five Interviews

Last night we managed to stop the baby crying just in time to enjoy the interview round of the The Apprentice on the BBC. It was very entertaining indeed. I remain somewhat puzzled as to why anybody would actually want to work for Sir Alan Sugar. Moreover, the salary of £100,000 per year is not exactly a goldmine compared to what you can earn in the City so it's not such a dream job really.
I really like Lee who has a great character even if he does act like he's at a football match sometimes. Last night it turned out that he had lied on his CV and they found him out. I was always pretty square about 'filling the gaps' on my own CV so I have never had occasion to lie. However, I generally do expect that people will have bended the truth on their CVs. I read CVs with a pinch of salt. Anyway, if you are talking about any kind of specialist area you can soon tell if somebody knows what they are talking about.
Alex is my favourite candidate. He is handsome, articulate and a real winner. He blows a lot of hot air but he is 24 so I wouldn't expect otherwise. If I were hiring somebody to work as a line of business manager it would be him. He is being portrayed as a bit of a snake on the show but I think that they all have their reptilian moments.
Clare, the loud one, is the likely winner. For me she is a bit too forceful and there is something untrustworthy about her from the vantage point of my couch. On the follow-up program 'You've been fired' on BBC2 they did a wonderful love story collage of clips from her interview with Sir Alan's bearded friend. It was wonderful television that.
Helene is the weakest of the candidates in my opinion. She played a lot on her difficult background in the interviews. I don't think that too much of your personal life should be broadcast in interviews. Sir Alan doesn't seem to like her so I am pretty sure that she has no chance of winning.
Finally Lucinda got fired which was fully justified. She earns a packet and is already the finished article. What would she have to learn from Sir Alan? In fact, he could learn from her in that she speaks very eloquently and presents herself impeccably. She got a hard time for having a snobby accent but that was unfair because she came across as a very liberal and open person so labelling her as snooty is off the mark.
There you go, that's my analysis. I told you I was a fan.

Read More......

Where I Dream

A long, long time ago a very unhappy boy spent five years of his life at a boarding school in the bleak midlands of Ireland. You would think that he would have put the experience firmly behind him or at least have written a book and made some money out of it à la Frank McCourt but no the past keeps coming back again and again and again.
I cannot understand the logic of my dreams (who can?). Almost any time I have a dream the setting is my old school. I could be dreaming about my wife, my kids, Manchester City, ex-girlfriends, weddings, funerals or work. Whatever or whomever the dream is about all avenues lead to the old college halls.
To make matters worse I could be talking to somebody I met in Australia in my dream or one of my work colleagues or my daughter and who should I see beside them only one of my old classmates. People whose names I can barely remember appear unchanged in their fourteen or fifteen year old forms.
When I was at that school I didn't actually hate it so much. It was only in the years afterwards that I realized what an unnatural environment I had been living in. In terms of who I am now I don't regard my schooldays as having been so formative. In fact I would probably never think about the place except for the fact that it keeps coming back in my dreams.
Please though, I'm nearly 36 of age, isn't it time for the place to let me go?

Read More......

Tower Running

I felt almost nauseous after reading in The Guardian about Tower Running, one of the latest sports crazes. There is keeping fit and there is pushing your body to the limits in pursuit of some kind of masochistic pleasure. These guys admit to loving the pain fix, whatever floats your boat I guess.
It's not that I cannot be motivated by images of people pursuing physical perfection. One of my all-time favourite films is Gattaca and the scenes in that film where the Ethan Hawke character is training to become equal to the genetically perfect humans is a powerful motivator when I am in the middle of a fitness vibe. In one scenes he is does pull-ups suspended upside-down from a bar. I don't know if Ethan Hawke did those scenes himself or if it was a stand-in but I sure would love to be able to do that.
Another big film motivator is in American Beauty when the middle-aged Kevin Spacey character starts training in his garage doing bench presses. There is quite some transformation in his physique. Given that I am 35 maybe this should be my model as I can't seem myself ever running up the stairs of a skyscraper or looking like Ethan Hawke in Gattaca. Now where has that gym membership card got to?

Read More......

Attitudes to Poetry

One thing that I find curious as an amateur poet is the very negative attitude many people have towards the idea of a man writing poetry. Some people react almost the same as if you are coming out of the closet. There is an assumption that to write poetry you have to be gay or exceptionally effeminate. Why is that?
If you write a poem and change its rhythm slightly and add some musical accompaniment you have a song. If you add a bit of slang and keep an eye on the rhymes you have a rap. Nobody seems to automatically assume that rappers or musicians are gay. As long as you cover up your poetry and turn it into something else it is acceptable but pure poetry seems to represent some kind of threat. In fact, some of the same people who are negative about poetry are 'musos' who will wax lyrical about Bob Dylan or Bono or Shane McGown without seeing the wood for the trees.
There does seem to be more of a respect for well-known, published poets. If you have the stature of a Seamus Heaney or a Ted Hughes then it is okay to be a poet. It is only the amateur wordsmith like myself who is the subject of light ridicule. If somebody paints watercolours as a hobby they might be hailed as a new Constable but God help the poor soul who thinks that stringing a few words together in search of poetic beauty is equally artistic.
For me this matters because poetry can be an excellent, low threshould vehicle for self-expression. It saddens me that this outlet could be cut off for some people just because of negative stereotyping. It's not just poetry that falls victim to the same disease. My wife told me a couple of weeks ago that her friend's son wants to do ballet but her husband is saying no. On Eastenders there is the ongoing storyline of Ben hiding his tap dancing from his macho father Phil. I have even heard negative comments about sons wanting to play hockey.
My God, do you have to move to Russia before there is an appreciation that practicing or enjoying a sport or an art form does not influence your sexuality?
The ultimate consequence is that boys get pushed into a narrower existence, forced to make choices they do not agree with. I believe that there is a poet in everybody. I don't believe that everybody should have to write poetry but I would sure appreciate less negativity being directed at those (men) who do.

Read More......