Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 10

ANTICIPATE

Everything was under control. Preparation is everything, he told his subordinates. Seismic readings gave adequate warning so important things were squared away and secured, unsafe buildings, evacuated. He felt quite chuffed with himself and strode down the street with a swagger. That’s when the runaway horse hit him. Didn’t anticipate that.

Picture: Imperial War Museum, Runaway Horse in an Air Raid Alarm

ELEVATE

 

Her naked body gleams in the waning sunlight, the meandering shadows cloak her in an erotic memory, the tricky genie of light casts spells that highlight her sensuous curves.

‘This is a vision to elevate the soul,’ he says.

‘I agree,’  Lurg mutters, drooling.

‘No, ‘ says Bjorn, ‘ELEVATE, not SALIVATE.’

Photo: Shutterstock

Wild Sea Waves

In Dublin I knew a woman,

with flax golden hair

Tressed like wild sea waves,

her heart, her voice

was Irish,

her name, her vibrancy

were Viking.

She was Dublin.

We lived, together,

in The Liberties

while both of us sought freedom,

she, from youth and I,

from bondage.[image error]

The Viking Wall

is behind my house

and everyday I tread

in the footsteps of Danes.

A thousand years ago,

they lived, played and traded

in the shadow of my home.

In an exhibition of Viking Dublin,

five hundreds years,

buried by the city,

demonstrated in glass cases,

a shambles, once,

the living here paraded.

The Viking Splash tour

passes behind,

tourists cheer,

in an amphibious vehicle

dressed in funny, plastic hats

with horns,

the kind no Vikings ever wore.[image error]

When history is buried,

the ghosts return as cartoons,

faceless, soulless

animations.

Steps

There are, according to Eddie Cochrane, three steps to Heaven, which is a comforting thought when you consider the Irish aren’t sure how many steps there are to Hell.

Ask any Dubliner where you’ll find the 40 Steps and there’s a chance you’ll be given just as many answers. The most likely candidates though will be the 40 steps beside Dublin Castle, the steps of Murdering Lane or, finally, the 40 steps of St Audeon’s Church on High St.

Let’s start with the steps beside Dublin Castle, a narrow, steep laneway flanked by the Castle walls on one side and the derelict remains of its former existence on its other side. Tour guides lazily (and mistakenly) call it Dean Swift Alley, its real name is Hoey’s Court and was where Swift was born.

[image error]

Hoey’s Court, Dublin and the cover of my novel

This is my favourite laneway in Dublin and for many years I’ve called it Story Lane as a walk, up or down the steps, rain, hail or shine, has always helped me shake a story loose from my imagination. There aren’t 40 steps, though, there are 39.

Murdering Lane or Cromwell’s Quarters as it was cynically renamed 140 years ago doesn’t have 40 steps, either. This is another 39 stepper.[image error]

So I was holding out for St Audeon’s Church on High St to carry the select and correct number of steps because to descend through them leads to the gates of Hell, according to local legend. These steps are also known as the haunted steps since there have been many reports of a ghostly green lady being frequently spotted, thereabouts.

The green lady in question was one Darkey Kelley who, by different accounts was a brothel owner, a whore or an innkeeper but, given the circumstances of the day and the locality, it’s likely she was a bit of all three.

Kelley, it is said, became pregnant by Simon Luttrell, then Sheriff of Dublin and a prominent member of the Hellfire Club, a loose gathering of Anglo-Irish Ascendancy with more money than good sense and a penchant for high living, hedonism and debauchery.[image error]

She was then accused of the murder of the child and witchcraft for which crimes she was burned at the stake in St Stephen’s Green in 1746. Since then her ghost has been seen at the gates to the Church, below High St. Unfortunately, I counted just 39 steps. But if that’s the gates to Hell, at least we know how many steps it takes to get there.

 

Perpetual Motion

A child’s spinning top was found,

remnant from antiquity,

the detritus of a city

buried by another city.

In Baghdad, I remember,

a Sumerian spinning top

discarded through millennia

find light and air

amid the chaos and turmoil

of war and plunder.

Ninety years ago

a spinning top was

a Christmas gift.

Time flies,

as people do,

spinning, like their toys,

in perpetual motion.

Little John’s Shot

The ‘news’ that Robin Hood’s Little John is buried in Hathersage, Derbyshire (http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/little-johns-grave) will come as a surprise to the people of Dublin, Ireland since the same John Little was hanged  for robbery and buried in Arbour Hill, an inner city area on the north side of old Dublin, close to one of the first bridges across the Liffey.

According to a number of sources, Little John came to Ireland with some of the merry men following the death of their leader Robin Hood, in 1188.

[image error]

Little John’s Shot – from the point on the bridge to St Michan’s Church

The first mention of the legendary outlaw’s appearance is in Richard Stanihurst’s 16th century Irish history, De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis . Stanihurst was an Irish alchemist and intellectual and his book, Great Deeds in Ireland published in Latin and English in 1584 was heavily reliant on Giraldus Cambrensis’s Topographia Hibernica written in 1188, the same time Little John’s visit was recorded.

This is how Stanihurst relates Little John’s visit,

In the yeere one thousand one hundred foure score and nine … little John was faine to flee the realme by sailing into Ireland, where he sojornied for a few daies in Dublin. The citizens being done to understand the wandering outcast to be an excellent archer, requestd him hartilie to trie how far he could at randon; who yeelding to their behest, stood on the bridge of Dublin, and shot at the mole hill, leving behind him a monument, rather by his posteritie to be woondered than possiblie by anie man living to be counterscored” .

This account of Little John’s visit was given further credence in Joseph Cooper’s Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, published in 1786,

“According to tradition, Little John (who followed his master to this country) shot an arrow from the old bridge to the present site of St. Michan’s Church, a distance of about 11 score and seven yards, but poor Little John’s great practical skill in archery could not save him from an ignominious fate; as it appears from the records of the Southwell family, he was publicly executed for robbery on Arbour Hill.”

[image error]

Old headstones in Arbour Hill Military Cemetery

The old bridge in question has had fifteen names in its 1,000 year history. Now known as Father Matthew Bridge, it was first recorded as Droichead Dubh Ghaill (Bridge of the Dark Foreigners), it was also known, in its early years as Dane’s Bridge, Ostman’s Bridge and The Black Dane’s Bridge and later, in Medieval days as King John’s Bridge, Dublin Bridge, The Friar’s Bridge, even The Bloody Bridge.

Little John’s visit is mentioned again in Dublin University Magazine in 1857 and in the Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh (1819).

So Heathersage, Derbyshire or Arbour Hill, Dublin? For the people of Dublin, it’s no contest particularly as Little John in Dublin shares his burial space with some of Ireland’s greatest patriot martyrs, the fourteen insurrectionists executed by the British in 1916, following the Irish Rebellion.

SYNCHRONIZE

 

His movements were never co-ordinate, he knew, yet hated the word awkward. When he moved, he crashed and in a confined space, he wreaked havoc. He loved to watch the swimmers, not their funny suits or the uniform caps, no, they could synchronize . With this illness, he could only cry.

 

VISCERAL

 

Some people can vex and annoy, make you feel antsy, the sound of their voice can be as grating as a cat’s claws sliding down a blackboard, they can get on your goat, under your skin and rub you up the wrong way but this was worse. It was visceral.

Picture credit: Lost in the Bozone: Technicolor Yawn

OOZE

 

Martin knew the procedure. Stay calm, behave normal, answer the questions and present his documents, without ceremony. The commandant seemed affable. He didn’t parade like a martinet. Instead, he was smiling, friendly. But as his officers examined his documents, Martin sweated. If they got close, they’d see the blood ooze.

Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban of killer robots

It made my blood boil, yesterday, when I came across a Facebook thread of people joking facetiously about the future implications of AI and robot technology so I’ve decided to repost this article from The Guardian by Samuel Gibbs

  An Open letter signed by Tesla chief and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman urges UN to block use of lethal autonomous weapons to prevent third age of war.

read more