Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 87

Same Ol' Blues Again...reflections on the death of J.J.Cale

I didn't catch the Sky News report. I heard of the death of J.J. Cale via a text message from my daughter, regretting his passing in deference to my lifelong devotion to the Oklahoman guitarist, the horizontal architect of 'laid back.' I have to say I was shocked, more so than when I heard of the death of Elvis or, indeed, John Lennon. Even Bob Marley. It was an ex-girlfriend who first tuned me in to him. She had gone looking for the writer of 'After Midnight' shortly after it became a hit for Eric Clapton in 1970. Ironically, Cale himself first learned of Clapton's hit when he heard it playing on the radio of his truck. He was a poor, jobbing musician and delighted to make some money, at last. He made 'Naturally', his first album, in 1971, inspired by the success of After Midnight. That album's opening track was 'Call Me the Breeze' which was subsequently recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and launched Cale on a path to relative material comfort,as a successful songwriter, after a life of struggle. I saw J.J.Cale once. It was in the National Stadium on the South Circular Road, in 1977. It was my 21 st birthday celebration, too. We bought 14 consecutive tickets, an entire row, four rows back from front stage. Back then, the National Boxing Stadium was the primary venue in the country where one night you might see The Chieftains or The Bothy Band and on any another, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Black Sabbath or even blues' legends like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, B.B. King or Canned Heat. I know, because I attended those shows around that time, too. It's funny how the term 'eclectic' became fashionable in the '90s as a hip catchphrase for someone's musical interests when, in those days, good music was good music, same as today and same as always. The 'Stadium, that night, was engulfed in a warm, cloud of pungent smoke from bongs, pipes and spliffs as scruffily attired and tatted roadies with pony tails and prominent ass cracks scurried about the stage, adjusting lights, reassembling cables and wiring, tapping mikes and muttering, 'One - TWO, ONE - two,' in a blur of apparently frenetic activity and beneath the glare of the 'Stadium's houselights. It was just about then a bedenimmed figure emerged from the dimly lit backstage area and picked his way through the chaos, to the lead mike. This man had grey, curly hair and wore sunglasses but in his denim jacket and jeans, didn't look out of place when he picked up a guitar and began to strum and attune the instrument. Just another roadie, you might've thought, until he launched into the opening chords of 'Call Me the Breeze' and there was an audible, collective, gasp from the audience and, you imagined, from the roadies onstage, as they began to realize the show had started. The scramble to clear the stage took seconds. Then the lights came down and focussed on the lone figure onstage, his band, only now arriving and strapping in for their own performance. But by then, in his own inimitable style, J.J. Cale was already 'blowin' down the road.' Last night, I played every album I have of J.J.Cale's and I'm listening to 'Hey Baby', the opening track of Troubadour, his fourth album, as I write this and it sounds as though he was writing his own epitaph, at least, as I'll remember him and always cherish his music. Hey Baby, you're looking real good, You make every day a song, Like I knew you would.'

PictureHouse and Rod Stewart, a day in the life and a life in a day...

There is a spine chilling feeling you get at a live concert that never happens when you're listening to an artist's album, when all the elements surrounding the event combine, to make that moment 'magic', for want of a better word. I remember watching Van Morrison as he opened his headlining set on the last night of Feile in Semple Stadium, Thurles, with 'Moondance' and a bright, shining full moon hung in the August summer night above his head. Or the unassuming JJ Cale, when he strode onstage in the National Stadium, unannounced, picked up his guitar and launched into 'They Call Me The Breeze" while harassed roadies scurried about him to complete their tasks. There have been many others that I'll always treasure such as Bob Dylan at Blackbushe, The Clash in TCD and Bob Marley singing 'Natural Mystic' in London's Rainbow Theatre in 1977. You couldn't recreate it and it can never be bottled, but when it happens, everyone knows. I got that feeling last night at the PictureHouse show in Vicar St to mark the launch of the band's new album, Evolution and the relaunch of the band for whom the '90s was so full of sparkling, pop promise but who disappeared without trace amid bad decisions, contractual wrangles and changing fashions. It happened when they sang Heavenly Day, All the Time in the World and Somebody Somewhere and suddenly, the band was playing but the audience was doing the singing. There were young fans in the audience, people who'd come along on the strength of the airplay garnered by Some Night She Will Be Mine but the majority of them were people who first discovered PictureHouse in the '90s and these songs became the soundtrack for their first serious love affairs. By the time they got to Sunburst, the entire hall was standing, hands aloft and clapping, singing in one voice. I've experienced the same feeling just occasionally, at a Rod Stewart concert. And it wasn't when the stadium chorus crooned Downtown Train, Sailing or You're In My Heart; no, the hairs on the back of my neck rose with the opening chords of Mandolin Wind or You Wear it Well, both songs written by the tartan terror, himself. OK, so the latter song sounds suspiciously like another early hit of Rod's, Maggie May but it's still a great song. Dave Browne of PictureHouse is an incurable romantic; that's his strength. Evolution is aptly named as the songs on this new collection reflect a more worldly, even cautious and experienced approach to life's traffic bumps. But rest assured, Dave's lamp still blazes brightly for lovers. Rod Stewart's new album is called 'Life' and the opening track, 'She Makes Me Happy' is like a manifesto as he declares the love he's found has saved him. On the second track, 'Can't Stop Me Now', he reflects on how it all started and if you close your eyes, you can visualise that dyed mod mop of hair, sleeves rolled, perma-tanned, tartan clad pop star taking on the world and winning. He tackles divorce, fatherhood, wealth, religion and age. There's a freewheeling rocker called Beautiful Morning that should have a future as a Top Gear soundtrack or a Goal of the Month compilation. I like both these albums even if both are presented in a style to which I would not, as a general rule, hitch my wagon but what the hell? Rules, be damned, they make me smile.

Postcard from a Pigeon and Other Stories by Dermott Hayes...

Postcard from a Pigeon and Other Stories by Dermott Hayes




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Fairy tale of New York in Glasgow

Watching The Story of A Fairytale of New York on BBC2 tonight brought me back to the band's last night of a week of shows in Barrowlands, Glasgow, when they heard the song had reached no 2 in the charts. It was December 23 and the last night of a week of sell out shows. The Pogues were at their peak with a song we all knew, was a thousand times better than The Pet Shop Boys' version of 'Always on my Mind' that pipped them for the Christmas hit. But the news of their being eclipsed didn't dampen their spirits. On the day of that final show, we attended the baptism of Pogues' manager, Frank Murray's children before heading
To see Glasgow Celtic play Aberdeen in a home game. There was, as you might imagine, a fair amount of refreshments consumed. And it continued through the show that night. The last show of a tour, the end of five hectic nights in Barrowlands, the final act in a quest to mark their place among the best in the world; second place disappointed, but didn't dampen their spirits.
We piled on the bus after five encores and headed for The Holiday Inn where the party continued. It was topped off that night when Shane took to the baby grand piano in the foyer of the hotel and, joined by Kirsty McColl, they sang the song. And we all sang it with them. And we cried and laughed and cheered.
I heard them sing that song many times and in many places and, though it remains my favourite Christmas song of all times, it will never be as good as that night.

Reggae Music making me feel good now

After a night filled with the sounds and images from the lives of two legends of 20th century music, Woody Guthrie and Roy Orbison, it's inspired an exploration of the music that soundtracks my life but particularly, the influence of reggae.
The progression from Woody Guthrie or Roy Orbison to reggae might seem quite a leap, musically at least. But then both Guthrie and Orbison came from grassroots folk traditions; country music in the case of Orbison and folk music for Guthrie. Both, in turn, fashioned their own, unique style and voice from those foundations.
Reggae music came from a dancehall culture and the ability of Jamaican musicians to fashion their own versions of the American rock and roll, country and Gospel music they picked up from US radio broadcasts in the '50s and '60s.
Two of my favourite reggae versions of classic songs are John Holt's version of Kris Kristofferson's 'Help Me Make it Through the Night' or Toots and the Maytals version of John Denver's 'Country Roads.' But if you dig around, you'll find reggae versions of anything and everything, including Beatles' songs.
My first memory of hearing and seeing reggae performed was watching Millie Small sing 'My Boy Lollipop' on Top of the Pops. That was in 1964, about a year after I'd first seen The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, my two all time favourite bands. Millie's voice was quite shrill and almost childlike, immediately appealing to an impressionable 8 year old but it was the irrepressible dance rhythm that won my heart.
It would be another four or five years before I encountered reggae and this was with the birth of the skinhead movement in England. Now the irony of why a white and racist gang movement from England should champion a musical style from the Caribbean has always confounded me but at least they put reggae back in my consciousness. Songs and artists from this period - the late '60s and early '70s - that stand out for me, are Desmond Dekker with 'The Israelites' and Max Romeo's banned 'Wet Dream.' Then came Bob Andy and Marcia Griffith's cover of an Aretha Franklin song, 'Young, Gifted and Black' that rose to 11 in the charts in 1971 and Derrick Harriot's version of Pete Wingfield's 'Eighteen with a Bullet.'
But it wasn't until 1973 when I first encountered Bob Marley and The Wailers. I was working in a pub in Paddington at the time and on a day off, I took a stroll up to Portobello Road to browse the market stalls. Back then, Notting Hill had a thriving West Indian community and the walk from Praed St to Portobello brought you right through the heart of it. I remember hearing 'No Woman, No Cry', everywhere and I became obsessed by it. My only regret since then is that I missed out on a chance that summer to witness Marley's first shows in London. I did manage to catch the groundbreaking 'The Harder they Come', the first Jamaican reggae movie starring Jimmy Cliff, in a small cinema in Notting Hill and believe me, it was an awakening for a whole raft of reasons.
The following year I landed a copy of Natty Dread, the first album released as Bob Marley and The Wailers. I remember pouring over that album with my friends, a packet of Rizla and a bag of 'erb.
That summer I was working in Denver, Colorado and decided to hitch hike to New York to hook up with my mates from the UCD Freshman football team for a brief tour of New England. On the road I couldn't escape Eric Clapton's version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' which was being played off the air on FM radio stations, coast to coast. Reggae had suddenly hit the big time.
When I got home I discovered the original version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' on Burnin' by The Wailers, released in 1973. It only fuelled my thirst for reggae and the music of Marley and his companions. Soon I had Catch a Fire, the original vinyl version which I own to this day with it's gimmicky Zippo lighter cover. Two years later the band released Rastaman Vibration. But before that I was in London again, working in The Hog in the Pound on Oxford St where I got to know a Jamaican born dancer named Sylvia who danced topless in the basement bar, two nights a week. Sylvia brought me to Jamaican speakeasies and yard parties in Notting Hill where my love and appreciation of reggae music and the culture that surrounded it, blossomed and expanded.
After that there was no stopping. I bought albums by u Roy and I Roy, Dillinger, Culture, Max Romeo, The Upsetters, The Heptones and The Abyssinians and countless others. Soon, I could discern ska from rock steady and dub from dancehall. I bought a single by a band called Dirty Work from Belfast, a reggae version of The Rose of Tralee. Then The Stones released Goat's Head Soup, recorded in Jamaica and I took that as a sign. When they followed that with Black and Blue, I knew I was on the right track. Meanwhile, The Wailers' split up after Rastaman Vibration with Bunny Livingston retreating to his Roots and Peter Tosh became more militant. I bought their solo albums and admired The Stones' patronage of my heroes but the real magic lay in Bob. When the first shows were announced for the tour to launch Exodus, I knew I'd be there.
The show was in the old Rainbow Theatre, near Finsbury Park. I met a friend from Belfast the day before the show. We'd met a few months earlier at a Desmond Dekker show in a small club in Dublin, attended by reggae fans and a large group of, by now paunchy and nostalgic, skinheads and suedeheads. Peadar was from Andersonstown and spoke with his own unique accent that was a peculiar blend of Jamaican patois and West Belfast twang. There wasn't a political bone in Peadar's body but he couldn't escape where he came from. He called it 'Babylon' and we both understood what he meant. All he cared about was the music and the two eight foot high cannabis plants he'd grown and nurtured from seed in the back garden of his parents' house in A'town. He was looking forward to going home to harvest. But first, the concert.
The previous eight months had its hardships for Bob Marley, too. The split with his old mates, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, was, by all accounts, acrimonious. Bob had also become entangled in Jamaican domestic politics and he received a near fatal wounding when his Kingston compound was shot up by a rival political gang. He moved to England to record Exodus. Jamaica's loss was the world's gain.
Denim work overalls were a fashion de rigeur in those days, if you were a slave of hippy fashion and not a punk. They were baggy and comfortable and extremely useful for carrying your stash at a concert. Back in those days you could smoke indoors, even in a theatre so before we marched off to the show, we got rolling. I managed to squeeze half a dozen spliffs into the pen and tool pockets, chest height, on my overalls. But when we got to the show, we found the London Met surrounding the theatre in an over the top security response. There was no trouble but when we got to the door, the theatre's security staff were conducting body searches. The 6'4" Jamaican bouncer who patted me down, stopped on my breast pockets to enquire what I had in size. 'Spliffs,' I said. "That's cool, mon," he said with a smile, "we're only searchin' for weapon."
Although the number of white people at the show could fit in a phone booth, there was no trouble and Peadar and I were pleased to find our seat allocation put us in the fourth row, front and centre. The atmosphere of anticipation was electric. And no-one was disappointed. Marley danced onstage in blue denim shirt and matching trousers and for the next two hours he never stood still as, fired by the ground bass sound of Aston 'Family Man' Barrett, the vocal back up of the I Threes and the artful lead guitar work of Junior Murvin, he delivered a master class in reggae music.
Exodus was anticipated to be an opportunity for Marley to rant against the oppression of the political chicanery and thuggery that made him an exile. Instead, it became an international battle cry for reggae music and a paean to peace and love, too. They sang all the classics like No Woman, No Cry, I Shot the Sheriff and a stomping version of Peter Tosh's Get Up, Stand Up but it was the new songs that entranced, thrilled and won over the adoring audience from the title track, Exodus to the pastoral glory of Three Little Birds and the loving lullaby of Waiting in Vain and then the exploratory rootsiness of Natural Mystic and the final statement of One Love, a declaration of intent and purpose.
Four years later, I caught Bob Marley again. This time it was for one of his final shows in Dalymount Park. He was dying of cancer but just as before, he never stopped moving for the show's near two hour length.
In the preceding punk years, Marley brought reggae to a world audience and the music itself blossomed and found new protagonists such as Steel Pulse, Black Uhuru, Aswad and even UB40. The nascent Two Tone movement found its roots in ska through The Specials, The Selecter and The Beat and even punk found inspiration in reggae through, most notably The Clash's recording of Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves and the very obvious influence infused in many of their songs from London Calling and the heavy dub tracks of Sandinista. Punk and Reggae teamed up for many memorable shows in the Rock against Racism movement.
Thirty years later, Jimmy Cliff has brought it all full circle with an incredible interpretation of The Clash's Guns of Brixton on his 2012 release, Rebirth.
In the intervening years reggae has become an international musical dialect, employed with alacrity and enthusiasm by artists throughout the world. And Jimmy Cliff, a man who was in there at the very beginning, is the appropriate spokesman for its long journey through the years. In the song, Reggae Music, he claims his position with the track's spoken opening lines, 'In 1962 in Kingston, Jamaica, I sang my song for Mr Leslie Kong, he said, let's go record it in the style of ska...' and then the chorus, 'Reggae Music gonna make me feel good, reggae music gonna make me feel alright now...'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boPCNaFPrso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfui3DjgfrM&feature=related

Hats

Does anyone know about men's hats in Ireland anymore? Back in the day, buying a hat was easy.

I started wearing my hat, a grey, snap brim trilby, in 1995. I remember the day and the circumstances. The editor of the Evening Herald had just rung me and confirmed my appointment as the paper's diarist, writing a daily column about the city and its denizens and what they got up to of an evening. He asked me to report for duty that day and have my photograph taken for the column's masthead.

Since I'd already spent the previous two weeks writing the column under a self styled pseudonym, 'John Newman', I was familiar with Independent House on Abbey St so when I got there, I went straight up to the photographers' studio at the top of the building. The snapper on duty told me it would only take a minute and he went about fiddling with the lighting and setting up the profile shot. Then I got a flash.

I had just finished reading and reviewing Neal Gabler's  'Walter Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity', a biography of an American journalist who, it is widely claimed, was the first gossip columnist. Sweet Smell of Success, an American noir classic starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and which was loosely based on Winchell, had long been safely ensconced in my Top Ten List of favourite movies.

'Can you wait five minutes?' I asked the snapper, 'there's something I need to do.' Before he answered I was out the door and descending the stairs, two at a time. I ran out the front door and turned left, heading for O'Connell St. I ran across the road and straight in to Clery's department store. Back then, the store had a proper hat department with old men in neat suits and measuring tapes. Quickly scanning the rows and rows of hats in different colours sizes and shapes, my eyes found the hat I wanted. I asked the attendant if I could try one on and he said,'fire ahead' and pointed me to a mirror.
The first hat I tried was too small, the second one, a perfect fit. The attendant stood beside me, attentively. But he took the hat from me and, with a deft and practiced twitch of his wrist, snapped the brim, explaining 'this is a snap brim trilby.' I looked at him in horror. 'Have you another one the same size?' I asked, explaining, 'I don't want the brim snapped.' He sighed and found another hat, unsnapped, and gave it to me, a perfect fit. I paid him and left. In the studio in Independent House, I put on the hat and smiled, 'you can take my picture now.'

The hat achieved all I wanted it to do, and more. I realised, as a diarist, I needed an edge. Winchell worked at night, on the beat of nightclubs, restaurants, theatres and hotel lobbies. I wanted to do the same, to become the eyes and ears of the paper's readers, so when they picked up their paper the next day, they would read an account of the city's social nightlife less than twelve hours after it happened.

I didn't wear my hat on the 'Dublin' side or the 'Kildare' side, as the hatters' and practice believed or advised. I wore it back on my head, unsnapped. I broke the rules but for a purpose. I thought if I wore it too slouched, it might cover my face and give me a sinister or hidden appearance. Wearing it back and unsnapped, left my face open and myself, approachable. It also gave me an identity. People 'knew' who I was when I attended an event and that made it easier for me to approach them. As a journalist, I felt a reluctance to relinquish my anonymity but in the nature of the job I was taking on, it was a necessary sacrifice. My hat got me in doors and that's where the stories were.
It had its ups and downs, of course. As the paper played up my name for finding 'scoops', they played up the association and once advertised three exclusives in the Dairy as 'a hat trick'. Eventually, they changed the name of the diary to 'The Hat.' Me and 'The Hat' were synonymous.

There's a strange thing about hats and public perception of them. Forty years ago and more, almost everyone wore a hat. It was part of your wardrobe, as much as a pair of socks. Then people stopped wearing them. My hat was an exception and for some odd reason, people felt the urge to grab it, steal it, wear it. They never asked and it led me to believe it was an enormous discourtesy, simply bad manners. Yet confronted with their social aberration, one was greeted with blind, incomprehension, as though I was speaking unintelligible gibberish.

On the other hand, as I've said, it got me noticed and it got me in doors. At the black tie  opening night of Riverdance in Radio City Music Hall, New York, a leading Irish socialite approached me and introduced me her own gathering of close friends who included the CEO of one of the world's best known insurance companies and the president of a leading international bank. It was a case of mistaken identity. My first clue was how she introduced all her companions to me, indicating I was so famous I didn't require introduction. This was confirmed at the interval when the bank president approached me with his programme in hand and asked me to autograph it for his granddaughter who, he said, was a big fan of my music. I signed it, 'Close to The Edge.'

Another time while I attended the launch of a book about then World F1 champion, Damon Hill in London's impressive Natural History Museum, I was approached by a slouched, grey haired man, wearing a hat and accompanied by three children, I gathered were his grandchildren. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'are you The Edge from U2?' 'No, I'm not,' I told him, adding, 'but right now, I wish I was, Mr Harrison.'

At the gala, star studded opening of Planet Hollywood on St Stephen's Green, the celebrities were coralled in the Conrad Hilton on Earlsfort Terrace before they were transported by waiting limos to the red carpet which began outside the College of Surgeons. Pat Kenny stood on a flat bed truck outside the floodlit entrance of the restaurant and announced the celebrities as they arrived to take the walk down the carpet, cheered by the celebrity spotting public, lining the way. In the Conrad, I was approached by Arnold Schwarzenegger who shook my hand and, leaning close, said, 'I love your hat.'

I shared a limo to the event with singer Michael Ball and his manager. When we emerged from the car, there was a very brief silence before Pat Kenny announced Michael's presence but in that second a local wag could be overheard asking, 'who's dat with The Hat?', prompting Michael to joke it would be the last time he'd give me a lift in Dublin.

The hat could be a nuisance, too and I took to not wearing it when I was on holidays or out with my young, growing family. It could be an unwelcome and frankly, ironic, intrusion.

These days, there's a revival of hats even if everyone opts for that 'porkpie' 'wideboy' look so loved by Hollywood's young and trendy arrivistes. But in Dublin, the real hatters have gone and hats are sold like party treats without any notion of their fashion culture. After buying my first hat in Clery's, someone introduced me to Mr Coyle's shop on Aungier St. It was an old school men's haberdashery where string vests and studded collars could be bought alongside a staggering collection of hats of every shape, size and style. It was a mecca of hats.

Mr Coyle supplied all the hats for the Micheal Collins film and delighted in explaining the subtle differences between a proper bowler and an 'Anthony Eden.' Head to Toe, the RTE fashion show, once approached me to talk about hats and I insisted the interview was done in Mr Coyle's shop. He was delighted. Unfortunately, he was an elderly gentleman and when he died, a great tradition in Dublin died with him.

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.<br />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. 

Yay or Nay, it's all deja vu to me

'Investment, Stability, Growth', 'Austerity, Debt, Unemployment', the rhetoric makes it hard to distinguish the 'yes' from the 'no' side of the argument in Thursday's upcoming Fiscal Treaty referendum. I haven't met anyone who can tell me, with any accuracy or understanding, what they're being asked to vote for or whether they understand that though they're voting for one specific thing, their decision will alter a bunch of other things in our lives.
When I decided to put my thoughts on this subject in my blog, I never thought putting my thoughts in words could be so difficult, either. In fact, I was three quarters the way through my first draft when a drop down window suggested I had 'logged out' and would I like to 'log in' again? I said 'yes', since it seemed the logical thing to do as I had no recollection of 'logging out' in the first place and simply wanted to get back to where I was. But, as these things go, opting for a 'yes' meant I lost everything I had already written.
No-one thought to consider the consequences of their actions when the so-called captains of finance and property development were riding the pig's back with our money and future prospects over the past 15 years but the democratically elected political leaders, in whom we entrusted our future well being, were quick to pledge that trust to bail out the profligate bankers when things got rough. There has even been a subtle change in language. Now 'we' are paying back 'our' debt.
I don't own a house or a car, never mind a holiday home in Croatia or Marbella. I don't have investment properties in a ghost estate in Mullingar or any other 'desirable' site in backwater Ireland. I pay my taxes, live frugally and within my meagre means.
Ireland was a sorry sight in the 1980s. The young and talented fled this country in their droves and settled, often illegally, in the suburbs of New York, San Francisco, Boston or Sydney. They came back in the '90s, lured by the promise of 'investment, stability and growth', slowly but with increasing frequency and, for a while there was growth and a surge of belief in a country that could lift itself out of the quagmire of poverty and destitution. Ireland became synonymous with ingenuity and innovation. Then the rot set in. My mother had a great phrase about people who got 'notions' about themselves. She'd say 'shit hit with a stick, flies high' and, as gravity teaches us, all things will fall.
The notion that if we're 'good' and vote 'yes', we'll be given a bag of sweets and can aspire, in some vague and distant future, to sit at the table again, with the 'big people', is anathema to me. I say, 'where's our pride?' and 'we've done it before, we can do it again.' A 'no' vote guarantees as much uncertainty in our future, I believe 'short term', prospects as a 'yes' vote pretends not to. I think a 'no' vote is more honest.

When is Truth, Fiction or Fiction, Truth?

I believe, as a writer of fiction, that whatever I write, regardless of how close an account it is to a real event, it remains, for all intents and purposes, fiction. Now that's a very broad and some might argue, indefensible statement. How can the reader discern the fact from the fiction, for example?
There is a contradiction inherent in all fiction writing. One one hand, the novice writer is encouraged to stick to what they know and are passionate about and then, write about that or, at least, draw their inspiration from that well. On the other hand, a writer must never get too close or emotional to their own writing since their task, and duty, to the reader, is to help them suspend their disbelief and doubt and find their own 'truth' in the fiction they're reading.
Fiction, the noun, according to most dictionaries, is 'literature in the form of prose, especially novels or short stories, that describes imaginary events and people.' Such a definition might exclude the 'fictional' works of half the world's greatest writers, I think. Few can doubt the fictional nature of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Slaughterhouse Five, surely, since it relates a story of alien abduction and an alien race called The Tralfamadorians.
At the same time, the hero of the story, Billy Pilgrim, is a young American soldier who, like Vonnegut, survives the bombing of Dresden because he was working, as a POW, in an underground meat locker. Pilgrim, however, unlike the author, begins to experience life out of sequence, frequently revisiting scenes. He also meets the Tralfamadorians along the way.
Could James Joyce have conjured Leopold Bloom from his imagination or any of the other central and incidental characters who populate Ulysses or his book of short stories, Dubliners, had he not been an inhabitant and keen observer of the denizens of his own native city? I think not and I'm sure there are characters in many novels who may cause some disquiet in the lives of real people and acquaintances of the authors.
James Lee Burke, one of my all time favourite authors, frequently draws his characters from his personal experience. Burke is a multi-award winning writer of crime mysteries, best known for his novels involving Dave Robicheaux, some time deputy sheriff of New Iberia parish in Louisiana, full time recovering alcoholic and former NOPD homicide detective. He's also done series involving first, Hackberry Holland, recovering alcoholic and former Congressional candidate, Texas Ranger and public defender turned sheriff of a small, dusty town on the rim of the Tex-Mex border and then his brother, Billy Bob Holland, a public defender and environmental champion, transplanted from Texas to Montana. He's also published a number of historical novels set in the American civil war and all written from a Confederate army perspective. His observations are panoramic and insightful, always erudite and frequently painful in their honesty. Just what you'd expect from a man with an alcoholic and academic past who has worked as a teacher, a journalist, an oil worker and among down and outs in Los Angeles' skid row and who grew up in Louisiana and now lives in Montana. Read the Introduction to 'The Convict and Other Stories.' It's called Jailhouses, English Departments and Electric Chairs. It is a revelation for any aspiring writer that nothing is guaranteed or written in stone, except the writer's own unquenchable thirst to write. 'Jolie Blon's Bounce', one of Burke's most highly acclaimed and successful novels in the Dave Robicheaux series, was turned down more than 100 times before it finally found a publisher.  
I spent more than twenty years working as a journalist when the essential imperative, both legal and moral, was to ensure, as far as we could, what we wrote was factual and truthful. An author has a different objective. It may be their intention to inform; they may desire to entertain but, in my estimation, their real task is to alter the reader's point of view. I don't mean 'opinion'; I mean, literally, point of view. If a writer can give the reader the facility to see something from the point of view of a different person, of another age, another race, even another gender; then they've suspended their disbelief and achieved their own goal.
A popular novelist once told me a very personal story about himself that, while not doing anything wrong, made him look, well, gullible and human and not the worldly wise author of crime fiction he was. He was aware of my role as a journalist but he gave me the story. There was drink taken, I must admit, but the story subsequently appeared in a newspaper. The author was appalled and, frankly, outraged. He never denied it nor did he seek legal redress, as one might expect he might.
Instead, a character appeared in one of his subsequent novels, bearing my name, complete with two 'ts'. That character was a dog, a friendly, if rather dozy golden retriever, if memory serves and its owner bore the name of the third person who witnessed my conversation with the author and his revelations.
What you write becomes fiction when you set it in print, if that is your intent and design. It is the reader who must decide if it's worth reading.A writer will find inspiration anywhere. They have to look and see, that's all. Then they have to write.

Shades of Nurembourg

Did you read the full text of Cardinal Sean Brady's defence of his position regarding his role in the investigation of Brendan Smyth's appalling record of child sex abuse? 'Only a note taker,' 'no authority over (Fr) Smyth. It all smacks of the pathetic excuses proferred by Nazi party functionaries at the Nurembourg war crime trials. 'I was only following orders,' was a popular refrain back then.
Cardinal Brady had direct knowledge of Smyth's criminal activities and abuse of children. He spoke to his victims and was given the names and addresses of many more. Smyth went on to continue his abuse, north and south of the border and even, for a while, in the United States.
Yet, despite having this knowledge, Brady hides behind lame excuses such as Canon Law, 'those were different times,' 'I was only a note taker,' and he had no power over Brendan Smyth.
Well, excuse me, Cardinal, but as I read it, you had first hand knowledge of a criminal activity and failed to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities. That makes you complicit in the same crime, as far as I can see.
And then there's the victim who did come forward and was put through the most appalling interrogation by the 'note taker' and his accomplices. How dare they put a frightened 14 year old through such an ordeal?
Those were different times, it's true. My father once told me about the first time he encountered the parish priest of a country town where he had just begun to work. The priest backed him up against a wall with his walking stick and demanded to know who he was? If a priest tried that today, he'd have the stick broken across his own back.
There was too much deference shown to the clergy in those days which allowed people like Smyth to abuse their position and the vulnerable under their care. The church's actions in the past usually involved keeping the offending cleric offside and out of the public eye. More often than not, they simply shunted them off to another parish where they'd continue their abusive practices until they were moved on, yet again.
The Nazis kept meticulous records when they filled their death trains with the Jews of Europe and then those 'note takers' had the audacity to claim they hadn't committed any crime but were simply 'following orders.'
If you were aware of a heinous crime like the abuse of children and did nothing to stop it or have the perpetrators and their criminal activities exposed to the civil authorities, the very least you should do is have the moral fibre to admit your mistake and resign your post as this nation's Catholic primate. You lead no-one. Your office is a puff of smoke.