Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 69
May 29, 2016
The bells, the bells…my bowels
The bell ringers of St Patrick’s Cathedral are working overtime, this morning. One solid hour of teeth rattling, clanging, from the 12th century cathedral, 150 yards from where I live, has risen me, like Lazurus. They finished with a five minute, orchestral and climactic frenzy, that has loosened my bowels and heaven knows, what else.I write this, blissfully, in silence. If you have the good fortune to live between two, early Middle Ages, cathedrals, you understand the sound of silence.
May 28, 2016
A Life in a Day
6.05am Woke up… fell back to sleep.
7.30am Woke up…check my phone. It’s very early and it’s Saturday and I don’t want to be awake at this hour. Have to get up now, must pee. I don’t ‘wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across my head,’ for a whole bunch of reasons.
The first is very painful arthritis. There comes a time in a person’s life – no specific time, just a time – when your body will, no longer, do anything at the speed you wish it done. Hence that old adage, the spirit was willing but the body wouldn’t get its ass out of fucking bed. It can be frustrating.
But, while you fight it, tooth and nail – and God bless Dylan Thomas for putting these thoughts in words and verse, as in
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
But the body, and the spirit, make concessions and compromise, because, well, it’s quicker than arguing and it’s certainly a lot less painful. So I get out of bed, slowly and carefully. And, while I wake up, I never, if I can avoid it, fall out of bed. The second thing is I was losing hair from my mid-teens – ‘you’re not losing your hair, son, you just have a high forehead’, Gog bless mothers, but I’ve always had my own spin on that one. Y’see, I’ve never lost hair, I’ve just gained face and well, I ended my relationship with combs, more than 40 years ago. So, I’m not missing anything.
Now, I’m out of bed. I turn on the tap in my shower but since I live at the top of my building, it won’t come on until I flush the toilet. It becomes a seamless, mechanical and methodical act.
Showered, I sit down at the edge of the bed and test my blood sugar, before setting injection quantities on two tiny pen needles and jab myself, with both. That completed, I dress. This involves, first, having a look out my bedroom window to check the sky and the state of the day, hmmm, blue sky, sunny and it’s what time?
8am Shorts and a loose fitting linen shirt chosen, I hobble in to my kitchen and put on the kettle. It’s another essential part of my daily routine, the morning pot of coffee. While the kettle boils, I take two pills, one is an anti-inflammatory, the other is to tackle the crystals that form and lodge in my joints and make just about every contact I make with the solid world around me, painful, sometimes wildly so. Again, with the compromise. I keep my touches to a minimum and I can predict some dictation software in my future.
Coffee made and breakfast of wholegrain bread with an avocado spread, I step out onto my roof and rooftop garden, sit down at a table, open my iPad and run through news headlines, emails, Facebook updates and finally, about the third cup of coffee, the Word Press Reader, for a quick run through, before, last cup almost finished, I start to plan my day.
There are just three things I need to do; the first, is walk to the local farmer’s market, The Green Door, to buy some essentials, like bread, eggs, fish and, maybe, meat, the second, is get a haircut and the third is, having got home and fed myself, sit down and watch the European Championship Cup Final, a big derby game between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. And, when all that’s done, I’ll do something on Word Press.
Three months ago, going to the market took a ten minute, leisurely stroll there and maybe half an hour back, because I’d take the long route around, up the main street of the local shopping area so I can take in the street market, the greengrocers, the fishmongers and maybe, the butchers.Nowadays, using a walking stick and walking, tentatively, step by painful step, that ten minute walk now takes 45 minutes, which is ok when the weather is good, like today, but a total bitch, if it’s wet, windy or cold. Some days, because it’s Ireland, I could get all four, sunshine being the fourth.
At the market, I buy fish, meat, bread and then a natural twig brush for scrubbing my vegetables – they don’t like the synthetic shit, it hurst them and it’s not very good for me, either, or, so they say. I leave then, hobble towards the main street, stopping to chat with a few people, along the way.
There’s a vinyl fair on in my local pub, today, so it opens early and that means, my barber, Mick, The Demon Barber, will be on duty.
1.30pm The Thomas House and I’m Mick’s first customer. Things are looking up. No, he’s going out for a sandwich. No problem, I’ll grab a beer, while I wait. Yes, you’ve worked it out, the barber shop is in the pub, at least, every Saturday. So, we chat, catch up, listen to music, discuss events, the state of the country and the latest gossip.
Of course, the topic de jour is not Obama’s visit to Hiroshima or Donald Trump’s bizarre reaction to it. No, there more gripping stories, particularly one. There’s a guy called Barabbas – no-one knows his real name, he’s always been known as Barabbas – who looks like a red bearded pirate captain from an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, drinks pints of Guinness and has a wit so sharp, he could cut a man down where he stood, from ten paces, or more, depending on the size of the pub. Anyway, says Mick, did ye hear the story about Barabbas?
Now, I must digress here to explain part of the strategy and tactics of good pub gossip. You must start with a question that can’t give any hint of the answer but just enough to get the fish circling the hook.
Of course, I said, no, but my curiosity was twitching, as if a person’s curiosity was some kind of tangible entity in its own right. And it was, er, twitching, since, one, I hadn’t heard a story about Barabbas for a while, maybe six months and two, because stories about Barabbas could often combine three things that can make a good Irish pub story; a joke, a song and/or a fight.
Barabbas, it must be said, is a man who lives up to his biblical name, he is a big tall man, as we Irish like to say, meaning, he’s almost as broad as he’s tall, with a broad forehead and a head of reed curls and a massive, pre-hipster beard, that was once as fiery red as his hair, but now grey, with white patches..
Mick, the Demon Barber, continued. “I was cutting Joey Magic’s hair,” he began. Joey Magic was another character, with almost the same notoriety as Barabbas but not nearly, the gravitas. We all listened, attentively (of course, by now, there were more fish in this particular pond, all circling the nuggets that Mick, the Demon barber, was sprinkling, as to the manor born.
He continued, “And Joey says to me, ‘did you hear about Barabbas?’ now, I thought Mick was stretching the boundaries now and, by the rumbles among the listeners, I figured I wasn’t the only one, but like an expert, he was teasing, then he dropped the bombshell.
“He came out.” The news fell like a two ton wrecking ball on the floor before us.
“He what?” several disbelieving voices chanted, at once and when I say, disbelieving, it was more of a disbelief in their own hearing. Whatever the reason, it bore repeating, as Mick, the Demon Barber knew well.
“He’s gay. He announced it in Grogan’s, last night.”
There was complete silence. Then someone said, “Jaysus, that’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.” And this after we’d already discussed the nauseating sight of watching the Prime Minister, a gobshite, by general consent, dancing to Bruce Springsteen at a concert in a Dublin football stadium the previous night.
Someone else said he’d known Barbabbas for 20 years and he’d never shown any sign ‘of it.’ We all nodded in understanding. Someone else mentioned a woman who had been Barabbas’s constant drinking companion for most of those 20 years. She’s probably a ‘he’, quipped another wag and with that the conversation descended into general, as in completely gender specific and politically incorrect jibes and jokes.
I had my own reservations,, since I knew Barabbas, by acquaintance, almost as long as the rest of them, if not longer and I also knew his brother, himself a very out and well known, gay man and an actor. But I said nothing.
5pm, Time to go, put some food on and watch the match. For the record, I made bruschetta with anchovies and a chorizo tortilla, well, I was about to watch two Spanish football teams play a European championship final in Milan, Italy, so, mixing my sporting metaphors, all my bases were covered.
The food was great, the match exciting (Real Madrid) won by one goal, in a penalty shoot out. Now, I’m sitting here, at my desk, finishing this account of my life in one day. End of Days is the late night movie. I’m going to crack open a cold beer and then get ready to crawl back in to bed. Not jump. I don’t jump, anymore. I might think about it, but I won’t and don’t.
00.35am End of Day.
Day 13: Play with word count
This one almost got past me, as in I didn’t get the email with the prompt so I went into WP Resources to find out if I’d missed some homework. But, in an odd moment of synchronicity or symbiosis, Richard Ankers’ Six Word Stories came to my rescue. https://richardankers.com/2016/05/25/six-word-stories-the-eternals-marquis-de-rhineland/comment-page-1/#comment-73225.
Richard’s six word story for the day was, Corpulence of the brain’s a rarity.
About which, I commented, Strangely, though, some people are fatheads
Richard replied, LOL Very true.
And then, I realised, Six words, too, Richard
And thus, I believe, I completed the task of the day with my first six word, count, story.
Thank You, Richard
May 27, 2016
5 times, in 5 minutes
When I wrote, ‘the weather can change five times, in five minutes’ in Mayo (https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/27/still-water-write-photo/), I wasn’t joking, as you’ll see from this sequence of shots, taken, one bright, sunny, no ,cloudy, no, misty, it’s going to rain, rain? those are feckin’ hailstones, day on Blacksod Bay, north County Mayo. Run.
Thoughts on the novels of James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels are never ‘typical’ crime novels.
First, there’s Robicheaux, a disgraced, former NOPD Homicide lieutenant turned sheriff’s detective in Iberia Parish. Robicheaux is a good man with a chequered past; a Vietnam veteran and recovering alcoholic who carries traces of post-traumatic stress disorder and an unspecified, but lingering, guilt from the eruption of his parents’ marriage, his father’s death and his mother’s violent murder at the hands of corrupt, NOPD detectives.
His background is working class,backwoods, Louisiana Cajun. He’s Catholic. He runs a bait shop and bayou cafe when he’s not detecting. He has problems with authority, is single-minded in his pursuit of wrongdoers, corporate polluters and the antebellum remnants of the southern ascendancy.Robicheaux, although an essentially good man, has a violent streak.
Some of Burke’s other novels, like Two for Texas, are historical explorations of the complex forces that combine to make up Robicheaux’s contemporary environment; Louisiana’s sub-tropical swamplands, struggling to survive against the elements of natural phenomena like hurricanes, corporate greed and pollution and the complicit dealings of corrupt politicians, police and the Mafia.
Into this milieu in ‘In the Electric Mist’, he introduces a story about a violent and sexually perverted, serial killer, an alcoholic, Hollywood actor with psychic leanings and a sociopathic, Mafia boss turned film producer.
The actor taps in to Robicheaux’s own psychic inclinations by introducing him to the ghost of a one legged, one armed, Confederate general who, along with his ragged bunch of soldiers, haunts the swamps around his home.
Now he’s worried it’s just a dry drunk dream or living nightmare or has he conscripted himself into a new struggle with the Confederate dead, to fight the forces of evil, whether corporate, criminal or perverse or combinations thereof, that threaten his life and the lives of those he love as well as the environment they live in?
I’ve read everything I could find of James Lee Burke’s and I’m a fan.
Still water #write photo
Thursday photo prompt – Still water… #writephoto
When you’re used to cityscapes as the background to your visual reality, a jaunt in the countryside is always welcome, for a new perspective. It restores your balance, if you like. I’m returning to County Mayo next week and really looking forward to it. The weather can change five times in five minutes and so will the view.
The True Cost
Two months ago, the majority of members elected to a new Irish Parliament, won their seats on a ticket to abolish water charges. Yesterday, the biggest opposition party, FIANNA FAIL, betrayed that trust and abstained on a motion to abolish those charges
My first poem, written four months ago in response to the growing public anger and frustration at the Irish government’s austerity measures, particularly the introduction of water charges, a double tax
The Detour
One year and two days ago, Ireland became the first country in the world to enshrine marriage equality in their Constitution, by a huge majority in a popular referendum. This story was first published on the YES!CAMPAIGN website
Oh God, pre-wedding jitters; sweaty palms, itchy scalp, soggy crotch. Better change my underwear, dab on some eau de toilette; careful, you don’t want to traipse up the aisle with a honk of tart’s handbag. I’d have a fag only I haven’t put the last one out yet. This will be right. You haven’t rushed into it. There’s been plenty of time to pause and reflect. And, if you’ve a mind for it, run.
Three years you’ve been together; three, blissfully happy, years. Was that a question? Or a statement? Trying to reassure myself.
Soul mates. They wear open toed sandals, eat brown rice and lentils and talk about ley lines and karma, don’t they? We had common interests in music and cooking even though we met in a noisy club. I remember that night so well. I didn’t want to be there that night.
Or any night. I was clubbed out, back then. Christ, it’s corny, tiny hairs rising on my neck with the memory. Jeez, our eyes met across a crowded room. Three years on and we’re laughing about that, still.
We couldn’t hear each other talking so left for a quiet coffee shop where we sat and drank cappucino and espresso, nibbled almond biscotti and then a bottle of the Sicilian nero d’avola – since, our favourite wine – and talked and talked and talked.
What a Gobshite. A grandparent, closer to 60 than fifty, walking up the aisle, like a giddy virgin? Am I mad? Is it the loneliness? We walk, we talk; we go to the pictures and the theatre shows. We dine out for a treat when we have the money. We have our garden. But where’s the passion? Would you listen to me? Passion, at my age?
We took it slowly, knowing, ironically, time was not on our side. But at our age there’s plenty of baggage.
My first marriage fell apart. We were in love. I’m pretty certain of that. I think. There’s no way to be sure, y’see. All that shite about preparing you for marriage, well, it’s all bollix, isn’t it?
The fact is, you’re first love is about nature, isn’t it? Or is it? I mean, we were taught to find someone to make a home and raise a family with. And in marriage, of course. It became a war. Surrounded by an ever rising wall of interest rates, unemployment and soiled nappies, we imploded. We fell out over curtains in the end.
Well, things have changed since then.
Honking car horn, a ringing doorbell, a clenched fist beating the door. Christ, they’re here already. Have I everything? I scanned the room, stopped at the portraits of my beautiful daughters and grandsons. I’ve put them through so much.
Am I such a selfish bastard, I’ll put them through it again? Do they know what love is? Do they know they’ll lose the love they began with and have to discover new ways to love within what they’ve built already? They saw and heard us fighting. What sort of start was that? What sort of nurture was that?
Life takes us down some strange paths. Perhaps that’s what my first marriage was, just a detour. But where does that put my children? If I’d ignored that detour, they wouldn’t be here. That’s the long and the short of it.
I slammed the door of the taxi shut, louder and harder than I intended. ‘Sorry,’ I said to the taxi driver. He waved my apology away. ‘It’s the nerves, is it?’ Oh great. A philosopher. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get you there on time.’
My phone rang and I answered, welcoming the intrusion.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m in a taxi. I’ll be there in five minutes.’
Right, I’m here. And so’s everyone else. Even the ex-wife.
‘You can run, if ye want but it’s now or never, bud.’ Jean Paul Sartre and Elvis, on another day I’d love it. I handed him 10 Euro, waving the change away. It’s only two Euro, the mouthy bollix.
‘You’re late,’ someone said.‘You’re up next,’ someone else said.
I was rushed through the front hall crowded with families and friends, the gathered support groups. I don’t know, I thought in terror. The Registrar speaks. Her lips move. I strain to hear.
‘Do you John, take James, to be your lawfully wedded partner?’
Postcard from a Pigeon
- Dermott Hayes's profile
- 4 followers
