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Yesterday I realised that I am the worst kind of commuter: the kind who talks, but abhorrs being talked to. One day I was sitting outside a cafe in Dublin’s Temple Bar, and a woman sat down next to me – I was alone, seats were few, about this I was not feeling any sort of animosity. But then.
- What are you reading?
Slight silence, a sense of panic. Why on earth would you ask someone what they’re reading? Doesn’t the act of reading imply a desire to be, or at the very least a contentedness with being, alone? And what do I reply?
I show her the sleeve of the book. She can read it for herself. I am smiling, so I am not being rude (I think), but I do not want to invite conversation.
- Is it a good book?
Another pause. She can obviously see, as she is staring so directly – almost confrontationally, I would say – at me, so she can see with her eyes that I am on approximately page 7. I do not know if it is a good book. I smile again.
- I’m not sure yet. Seems good so far.
Short sentences are definitely the way forward.
- Do you like reading then?
And yesterday, on the Luas: an acrid smell, possibly of some form of excretion, or of homelessness – that sweet, sickly aroma of unwashed clothing, soiled fabric, a life lived outdoors without those luxuries that many are so accustomed to (deodorant, perfume, shampoo). An old man sitting beside me, to whom I was attributing the odour.
He was sitting close, I could feel the rough fabric of his jacket, the movements of his body, the slight rumbling of his breath, the abrasion of his coughing on his chest. I turned slightly away; you know the etiquette, facing the window, again – not inviting conversation.
Reading my book (The Female Eunuch, if you’re wondering), listening to Phil Collins (I know, I know) on my iPod when I realise he is laughing and I turn around; he is doing a trick for the person on the other side of the aisle who, presumably, did not have his back turned. He has taken a key (that looks like a chubb lock key) and is demonstrating how he can make the end of the key move, from the tip to the base. The key looks like a normal key, but he changes it with a slight flick of his hand, a careful and deliberate motion of his wrist. We are all watching now.
And he gets off. The Luas stops at the next stop and the bus driver alights to walk down the length of the tram. The couple across from me wonder where he is going. I am funny, I think; I will say something funny.
- He probably forgot his lunchbox.
Polite laugh, smile. They don’t want to invite conversation.
A friend of mine was substitute teaching in a primary school near Finglas for a while last year – during the attempted ghettoisation of the area, when the bus services stopped and the gardaí patrolled the streets at lunchtime. I got regular phonecalls from her, stranded at the bus stop chatting to some granny or other: “ah, love, you wouldn’t want to be drivin’ them buses, you’d get kilt!” Oh, the joys.
For a while, she taught primary infants; their teacher was off sick, or on a training day, or off sick again – and they were unruly, but enthusiastic. One child in her class was, as they would say in the Americas, a “rough-houser” (I know this because I used to read The Babysitter’s Club novels, and Stacey used to get a good few rough-housers). She would find him in the schoolyard, punching some poor unsuspecting four year old in the arm, or hurtling himself into a crowd of girls like a human cannonball.
Reprimanded, he would look confused, then injured, then astounded by her audacity: “Múinteoir!” he’d shout (she so obviously didn’t get it). “We’re playing at wrestling!” The other children, she told me, looked as surprised as we were. Obviously unsatisfied with the confusion on her face, he continued, conspiratorially: “It’s a very rough game.” And she understood. He had to be tough, because he was wrestling – and wrestling is rough, and tough, and people get injured. They could cry if they wanted, but he couldn’t give up; after all, it was just a game.
Leaving aside the game part, this is much how I feel about the Budget. We are, say the newspaper men, in the midst of a recession – and recessions, as any four year old would know, are a rough game. We’ve spent the last 20 years rolling, ecstatically, in the soft, furry pelt of our tiger, and now we find ourselves cold, and a little bit poor, worrying about the 1 per cent tax levy on our wages, and from where we’re going to find our next sheet of parma…
I understand the arguments are more for those to whom parma still represents the unattainable, but is it not up to the population to sort itself out? If the middle classes are so vocally concerned about how the (excuse the phrase) lower classes are going to fare, why not give some of that cash to the Simon Community?
We all understand that this Budget had to be a tough one, and there doesn’t seem to be an unwillingness to comply with its terms – but there is a level of complaining that only us Irish are truly skilled at. In this case, that level is pointless. “Heaven helps those who help themselves”, as my favourite Aesop’s Fable quote goes – and we can help those who can’t.
As for the over-70s and the medical card, get a grip. Those under a certain income are entitled to it, regardless of age, and those over that income over the age of 70 don’t need it.
Naas town has been getting a bit of a battering – if you’ll excuse the foodie pun – in the last while. Stores closing down, businesses moving elsewhere, housing estates being built at a rate of knots and convenient bypasses removing the necessity to even visit the town have combined to create a new Naas: commuter town.
But recent months have seen a Naas revival; with the removal of Gogarty’s, the Naas institution, there has been space for the creation of a revamped town suitable for the aspiring yummy Drummies of the area. Kalu Emporium is leading the way with high fashion and high interior decor, providing a calm environment in which to shop your recession-tastic woes away – and now Gourmet Kitchen Burger has opened on Naas Main Street, bridging the gap between haute food-ture and McDonald’s, and giving the kids and the grown-ups somewhere to sate their appetities without cleaning out their wallets.
The Naas venture has the feel of a mid-market restaurant about it; clean lines, minimalist art and Ikea-like light fittings give it a relaxed atmosphere and an attractive appearance. And the food: man, the food.
Gourmet Burger Kitchen works along the lines of Jo’Burger in Rathmines (where, let’s face it, the service isn’t great, the music is too loud and you could end up waiting an hour for a table) – but with cheaper prices, a larger menu and a more extensive sides list (including the most delicious cajun chicken bites this mouth has ever tasted).
The burgers really do look like the picture (above), a transformation from screen to reality that Burger King and McDonald’s should take a serious hint from, and they taste as good as they look. Meaty meat, with a selection of relishes and toppings to suit even the pickiest of burger connoisseurs.
If I had one complaint (at a push), it would be that the burgers need to be eaten with a knife and fork, which seems altogether too civilised an action for that particular type of nourishment. But I’d go again, and again, and again. After 30 goes or so, I might have tried everything. But then I’d have to go again, just to check that it was as delicious as I remembered.
Tomorrow night, Pravda in Dublin 1 (at the corner of Lower Liffey Street and the north quays) will play host to the King Kong Club – a night of revelry and music, with that scourge of the happy barfly: the clapometer.
Having been at a clapometer event before, I can only describe it as being closer to theatre than a concert; the presence of the clapometer forces an engagement with the music, with the event itself, that otherwise would be left unmade, unforged. The audience is forced to invest in, to clap for and with a certain group or individual – like gambling, but without that risk (and come on, it’s not like we all have wads of cash to be throwing around these days).
Check it out tomorrow from around 9pm. And have a look at Abigail and band, who will be performing in Pravda tomorrow night. They might not need the claps, but you just might make that connection.
When did we begin to use the word “weapon” as a descriptive noun? As in, “she’s a right weapon…”. I suspect that it’s purely an Irish thing, but to claim that statement as a fact would require a few weeks’ research across the globe (which I would gladly carry out, with sponsorship from the right parties…), investigation into the other English language countries’ usage of the word.
In its pure form it does, of course, refer to an instrument of, if not torture, the infliction of pain and / or death. Of course it can also serve as a warning, a reminder, the exercise of a desire to defend oneself, one’s land or one’s family.
When it comes to the Irish Army, weapons are utilised only in the exercising of its powers as a peacekeeping force, under UN-mandated operations, currently in Chad and, in previous years, to great effect in countries like Bosnia and Afghanistan.
Today, the word “weapons” might refer to an exhibition of art by Blaise Smith, an Irish artist (and also a cousin of yours truly, to be entirely forthright) – a study of the Irish army and, more specifically, and perhaps, unsurprisingly, given the title, its tools.
The exhibition was launched in Limerick’s Hunt Museum on Thursday, October 9th, by Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea (who, despite referring to the paintings as “photographs”, introduced Blaise and his work in a most succinct and to-the-point matter as well as, surprisingly, managing to soften even the hardest of heart’s about the army itself).
I overheard an onlooker say, afterwards, “I don’t think he quite gets the irony of the paintings”. This I find confusing; is the irony the juxtaposition of art and weaponry – of beauty and menace? Is the irony the fact that an artist, traditionally thought of as a peace-loving individual, chose to enter the barracks of the Irish Army and to illustrate and document the lives and loves and skills of its members? Or is the irony in the fact that these two-dimensional images mean so much less to most of the people who will see them than they do to a large proportion (relatively speaking) of the world’s population?
But the images are not without menace. The stark image of the Browning pistol (above) is shocking, simple, and frightening in its very appearance; you can feel the cold metal, hear the click of the trigger, feel the shock as the bullet is expelled, all in a split second, a moment of artistic appreciation.
And a bullet – which, I hear, costs over €12,000 to purchase – standing alone, powerful and regal in its isolation, but really, just a painting, just a smattering of colour and pigment on an otherwise blank canvas, presents us with the crude reality that these paintings depict tools of death, of destruction, of agony.
The exhibition runs until October 23rd – if you’re in the vicinity, take a look and draw your own conclusions; I haven’t yet come to my own.
