U. Cronin's Blog, page 22
February 23, 2014
Borders
February 17, 2014
Prêt-à-Porter: Ready for Porter!
February 9, 2014
The All-you-can-drink Cider House
February 2, 2014
Child of Grace, Made of Butter
January 25, 2014
Fong
January 17, 2014
New Year’s Greed
January 10, 2014
The Old Man and the TV
December 20, 2013
Red Man: a Toddler’s Christmas
Red Man
Before you come to the far end of your understanding, where days and dates and weeks are only flimsily grasped – ideas as wispy as the net curtains you tug at to look out onto the street – you hold a clear picture in your mind: a Red Man. A big, jolly, ruddy-cheeked Red Man. The man who will leave presents under the tree you took home with your Daddy and dressed with shiny balls and angels and lights. The feeling when Mammy lifted you up and you put a giant star on top! The tree’s clean smell and the coloured flashing in the darkened sitting room is like floating and just watching the lights’ reflections dance on the star is better than anything – even TV and sweets.
The adults smilingly repeat a name – Santa, Santa, Santa – and will the words from your lips, expectantly studying your features and nodding wide-eyed questions down at you.
“And who’s going to bring you ALL those presents?”
“Red Man.”
They laugh. “But what’s his real name.”
“Red Man.”
You will not call him anything but “Red Man”. It’s because he belongs to you and your name for him is the right one. It’s because you see him everywhere.
Red Man is on every wall and doorway in the creche, beaming down at you and your friends while you chatter and play. He’s in the songs you all sing and shake your fingers to when you scream, “you’d better watch out” . He’s in the stories that they read, going “ho, ho, ho” and laughing and flying with his reindeer. And they all end so happily. Red Man is in the shops, sometimes not just in pictures, but singing and dancing; Red Man dolls, with shiny black boots and golden glasses and fluffy beards. You love how he is always laughing or smiling and always looking at you the same way Grandad does.
For a while now, every morning after Daddy gives you breakfast, he takes down a long, thin box from the counter top – a calendar he calls it. He points to a tiny door and, both greedily and carefully, you pull it open to find a special chocolate behind it; a magical chocolate with a Red Man shape that you can feel with your fingers and your tongue before it disappears in your mouth. Daddy tells you it’s getting closer and closer to the big day. Christmas. That Red Man will visit you very soon and leave you presents.
“Only ten days to go,” he says.
“Only six days.”
“Only four days.”
He tells you what you have to do: go to bed early, go off to sleep, no peeping out the window or getting up and sneaking down the stairs. And if you do all that and for being a good girl all year, the Red Man will leave you wonderful presents under the tree – all wrapped up and mysterious. And very importantly: you must leave a little snack out for Red Man and his reindeer. He’s tired and hungry from travelling all around the world and bringing presents to all the boys and girls and would love a little something before he’s on his way again. So you think hard about what to leave him.
Daddy says maybe a glass of whiskey or a little glass of stout. You just know that’s wrong. You smelt whiskey once; it was yucky. Red Man wouldn’t want that stuff. You think about what you’d want yourself after a long day in the creche – a glass of milk, a Penguin Bar and a little chocolate muffin. And for the reindeer? Carrots of course!
And when Daddy says “two days to go” you know the time is near. You can count to two on your fingers and you can picture tomorrow and one day more and that’s when Red Man visits.
December 15, 2013
A Lot of Nancys, But No Nancy Boys!
Prize-winning haute couture Nancys.
Last Sunday I was dragged along by my family to Madrid’s Museo del Traje* (Fashion Museum) to see an exhibition of dolls dressed in concoctions designed by celebrated Spanish modistas. Needless to say, when the trip was mooted, a fashion museum being far from my idea of fun, I dug the old heels in, like the stubborn old mule I am, but was out-voted three to one. We were going no matter what I thought or no matter what fab alternatives I came up with. I got my revenge, however, by making lame Nancy boy jokes all weekend. You see, the doll we were going to see was none other than Nancy — Spain’s own answer to Sindy, Barbie et al. and rather unfortunately named if you happen to have a native English-speaking father in your life who cannot hear “Nancy” without following it up with “boy”. (BTW: I’ve nothing against Nancy boys. The humour for me comes from the doll’s manufacturers settling upon a name for their creation that plays into the hands of undergraduate-level wits the likes of yours truly. Talk about hand out your enemies bullets!)
Foreground: an Agatha Ruiz de la Prada-designed outfit for Nancy.
When I first learned of the existence of a doll called Nancy whose sales in Spain rivaled those of Sindy et cetera and whose standing in Spanish popular culture was equivalent to Barbie’s in the English-speaking world (in Spain you hear cutting remarks along the lines of someone being “done up like a Nancy” in the same way certain heavily made-up blond ladies are derisively called Barbie in Ireland), a frisson of evil glee ran up my back.
“And is there a Nancy boy?” I immediately asked, chortling to myself. “Like Barbie’s Ken. Or Sindy’s Paul.”
There was — a poor unfortunate called Lucas. Lucas — Nancy’s boy. Lucas — the Nancy boy. I’m laughing as I type. The joke hasn’t worn thin, even after more than a decade of snide asides at the wee fella’s expense.
Nancy in leather.
Poor Lucas is suffering the same fate as Ken and Paul. Not only is he the only man in a decidedly girly girls’ world, but he is coiffured and attired like granny’s poodle on dog-show day. Since Lucas’ birth along with Nancy** in 1968, indignity has been heaped upon indignity for our friend. On top of lacking even Action Man’s merest suggestion of the presence of gonads and corresponding secondary sexual characteristics (muscles, facial hair, a chin), Lucas has had a wardrobe forced upon him (garish Bermudas, ironic baseball caps, pastel sweaters, tight-fitting slacks) that leaves you wondering if he’s going to be stuck in there forever (har-har). The campest things (my last double entendre, I promise!) about Nancy and Lucas’ summer caravanning set are definitely not the pair of matching pink tents, if you get me!
My girls (seven and five years old) don’t know what a Nancy boy is and nor would I want them to. What they do know is that I was disappointed that among the Museo del Traje‘s dozens of haute couture and seriously dolled-up Nancys, there wasn’t one Nancy boy — not a single Lucas in sight.
“We’re sorry there was no Nancy boy, Daddy,” they consoled. “We know how much you like the Nancy boy.”
“The Nancy boy” is Lucas’ official name in our household.
“Since you like the Nancy boy so much, I might ask Santa for one!”
“That’s quite all right,” I replied. “I’ll be OK.”
Madrid’s Museo del Traje – the Fashion Museum
*All joking aisde, the Museo del Traje is well worth a visit. The Nancy exhibition runs until mid-January 2014 and there is an exhibition of the work of designer Manuel Piña until the end of January. The permanent exhibition of regional costumes from all over Spain and historical garb is fascinating and gives an insight into the cultural/regional diversity of the peninsula. If you feel like a good, long walk, head north from Gran Vía up along Calle Princesa. Just after as you hit Moncloa, the museum is on your left (well sign-posted for a change!).
**Even though I’m giving the impression here of being in possession of a condescending or even mocking attitude towards Nancy and her companion, I wholeheartedly approve of her. Unlike, Barbie or Sindy and their ilk, she has refused to sex herself up over the years. There’s a wide-eyed innocence and goodness too her that seems more appropriate to childhood than the materialistic vampishness of the Bratz or Monster High. Who cares if her best friend makes Kenneth Williams look like Rambo?!!
December 8, 2013
Glasvegas: 2nd of December, Sala Arena, Madrid
Glasvegas – James Allan (Photo credit: Gavin Lynn)
I went to this concert with some trepidation: firstly, I was going on my own and didn’t particularly want to spend an evening in character as Johnny Nofriends; secondly, Glasvegas’ recent album, Later . . . When the TV Turns to Static, is in my opinion the weakest of their oeuvre; thirdly, I had seen the band a couple of years ago in the context of a festival and wondered if frontman James Allan‘s parading and posturing rock-god antics of that night would translate to a smaller venue (the Sala Arena holds about 1,000 people). On the latter point I needn’t have worried. James Allan surprised me by walking out on stage guitar in hand (he performed sans guitar in 2011) and proceeded to spend the rest of the concert contributing, along with his cousin lead guitarist, Rab Allan, to the bands’ wonderfully considered and subtle mix of chiming noise and decayed reverb. No fist-pumping. No throwing shapes. No delivering songs from a lying-down position or on bended knee. So that the was posing (as a friend of mine branded his Bono-esque behaviour) box unticked.
In fact, James Allan came across as a much more likeable figure this time than when I saw Glasvegas last. His in-between song banter with the audience was warm, self-depreciating and, at times, hilarious (almost as funny as the Billy Connolly sketch played before the support band came on). “I feel like a fraud,” he joked after a powerful solo version of “Flowers and Football Tops“. “I’m up here laughing at some guys coming in out of time on the chorus and the words I’m singing are about someone being six feet under.” In a way, the wisecracking between songs was necessary; Glasvegas are intense and dark. Overpowering when they’re at their best. Hell, their most famous song (“Daddy’s Gone“) is about not wanting to turn out to be a deadbeat dad. Sometimes a few lines from James are a welcome relief from the doom and gloom.
But it wasn’t that this concert, apart from James Allan’s stand-up routine, was a total and utter gloomfest. There was something celebratory and sing-along jolly about it. In the same way as when you go to see a band like the Cure and find yourself grinning like a Cheshire cat while you roar the words of a song like “100 Years” back at Robert Smith (It doesn’t matter if we all die/Ambition in the back of a black car), in the Sala Arena we sang (off time!) for the aforementioned “Flowers and Football Tops”, chorused along with “I’d Rather Be Dead” and raised the roof with “Euphoria, Take My Hand”.
Glasvegas came out with all guns blazing, beginning the concert with the strongest song on the new album — its title track. From then on it was an even mix of the old and the new. They didn’t do the dog on material from the new album (another box ticked for me!), but what they did play went down well with both me and the crowd. (Must give Later . . . another chance.)
The concert had a great dynamic, a real flow to it. Glasvegas would take us up with a sequence of their more rocking songs only to slow it all down again with a song like “Ice Cream Van“, during which you could hear the proverbial pin drop and a moment that demonstrated the band’s ability to hold a crowd in the palm of its hands. A few songs later we were moshing to “Go Square Go” and the author had forgotten his status as the Sala Arena’s only Johnny Nofriends. (Another box ticked!) In all honesty there wasn’t one rum moment in the entire concert, no toilet-break song. I observed the band in between numbers waiting for drummer Jonna’s signal with expressions of “wait till they get a load of this” on their faces. Not cockiness, but confidence. And overwhelmingly justified. Three albums into their career, Glasvegas have the material, musicianship and experience to programme the perfect journey through their heart-on-sleeve world of loneliness, heartbreak, guilt, sarcasm, nostalgia and yearning. They perform like their lives depend on it and give the feeling that they’re not just breezing through town on their way to bigger and better things. They closed proceedings with “Lots Sometimes”, which built and built until the crowd could clamour no more and we said goodbye to Glasvegas, happy that we’d seen one of the best bands on the live circuit at present and looking forward to our next chance to shine like stars.
