From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

For some reason I can’t post my comment in response to the latest comment from Curly K. She made a lovely comment on my earlier blog.

So I’ll write it as a post:

Curly K,
I’d be shocked if anyone agree with all my sentiments. And I’m glad you can see what I’m getting at when I bring 1916 into the picture. This evening’s news reports that the Minister is reconsidering what should be done about future events.

You are so right to point out that we got handed down to us a version of history (I would call it simply a story) which was written by the victors. Kevin Myers (Irish Times journalist) has been trying to write John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party’s achievements back into the story. I admire him for that, even though I think Myers is blind (or acts as if he was blind) to another part of the story.

The Greens celebrate 1916. Whatever takes place later this year will be a Green celebration, and no amount of spin will make it inclusive. There is too much unexamined yet for it to be possible to have an all-Ireland celebration. I don’t begrudge the Greens their day but I feel for the Orange tradition. I get no satisfaction from being partisan.

The best way to bring about a United Ireland is to reject the idea and reject the value of a United Ireland. Instead value what we have. Enjoy the traditions. Subject each tradition to merciless critique for its blindspots.

You are so right to assert that all own the right to Free Speech. Unfortunately the right to walk the streets wearing your beliefs in public was denied on Saturday and the government and police were not up to the challenge.

I’ve just listened to the Minister saying that “hindsight is a wonderful thing…” He is right there. But forecasting is a necessary skill if you are to guard freedom of speech. If only the Minister could have come out and said: “we got it wrong; we miscalculated; we’ll never let this happen again”.

If you lived in Belfast, and your brother had been killed during the war by the IRA, and you’d come South to mark the memory of his death, and you’d had to get back on that bus, would you return to Dublin with your children in order to walk down O’Connell Street again?

Would you run the risk that the government of the South would learn from this experience?

Grace Violetta is 6 months young today.

Born @ 1401 on 31 August 2005 in Royal United Hospital in Bath, she has moved house, country, climate and culture already. She is hovering on the edge of Cork with her mixed feelings about Douglas. She has reached a milestone.

And it is tough for me.

This week she has started in a high chair. For the first time, she eats solids while sitting in her own chair, and slugs back the formula which I offer with an outstretched arm.

We have reached a rite of passage.

No longer a warm bundle to cuddle on my knee. No more intimate eye contact between feeder and fed. No more rhythmic bonding over the bottle. It’s all so mechanical now.

Putting the mashed courgette & potato onto the spoon, judging an amount that won’t slop out and dribble over her chin into the crevace below, coming in at an angle that won’t run into her flailing fingers, making it in and keeping it in… What a change… What a come down…

I used to love the warmth of her little body, her wee mouth fibrilating, her wanting wimpers. I used to revel in my role as provider of her most urgent need.

It was the closeness of it all that resurected me from the mundane. Elevated me to an arena where the drama of feeding was a regular joy. Father and daughter, warm bottle, warm bottom, warm hands, warm heart. All through the fading leaves of fall, the fluttering foliage, the fleeting frost of fresh fields, that time that I spent feeling her was precious.

I did it in Douglas shopping centre, Bishopstown swimming pool, Mahon coffee bar, the Maryborough Hotel, that folding chair in the kitchen. The only place I never fed her was in the car while I was driving : even though there are so few random roadchecks that I could have got away with it. (In Ireland, it’s not illegal to hold your mobile phone while driving, so I guess it’s not illegal to feed a baby either.)

This morning I turned to Penelope Leach (”Your Baby & Child”). I wanted to see what was in store for me over the next 6 months.

“She will probably reach a point, at around eight months, when she tries to keep you in sight every moment of her waking day; when she cannot, she will be uneasy, tearful or even panic-stricken.
Psychologist call this reaction ‘separation anxiety‘…”

So that’s what it is that I’m suffering from today: separation anxiety. I’m no longer in touch with her while she feeds. While she is satisfying her most basic need, I am excluded. I have become simply the external supplier, the one who puts the food on the table and operates the handle that spoons it in. It’s awful. Wrenching. And I have no choice about it.

Grace has done with me. She just wants me to lay it on; she’ll do the rest.

It’s hard being a dad. It’s all right when you just go off to work in the morning and get stuck in to all those adults. You don’t even know the drama you are missing, and what you never know, you can’t ever really miss.

But as a dad, you go through the most awful stretching anxiety: will she ever need me again? Will she just get up out of that high chair and go off to university and start going to bed with some fellow I don’t even know?

Believe me Grace, when you read this in years to come, the things you have put me through don’t bear talking about. Separation anxiety, I know exactly what that is already. So when you start suffering from it, I’ll be able to say : you’ll get over it.

The “Riots” in Dublin on Saturday were about as popular as the 1916 Rising.

All the papers are full of dramatic photos and headlines that scream against those who stopped the “Protestant” or “Unionist” march. The “rioters” are vilified for stoning the Gardai (police). They are criticised for spoiling Dublin’s reputation.

It would be interesting to dig out the Irish papers for Easter 1916.

During and immediately after Easter 1916, the people of Dublin were outraged by the behaviour of Pearce, Connolly et al. There was no popular support for the “Rising”.

At least the people who went on the warpath on Saturday didn’t use guns or kill anyone.

The only good I can see coming out of this is that it might make people think about celebrating the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising.

Is the country ready to celebrate 1916? Are the 26 counties ready to remember it, in anything other than a partisan way.

We all know that the 1916 Rising was followed by the 1918 election when Sinn Fein swept into a majority. We know that this was followed by the War of Independence which was followed by the Treaty which was followed by the founding of the State etc. In other words we “know” that 1916 led to independence from the British Empire. So it would seem right to celebrate that.

But what we “know” is a myth. Every state that has been formed has its own creation myth, its own story that justifies its formation, that makes it seem as if all history was a lead-up to its birth, and subsequent development.

So too with 1916. It is a central element of the creation myth of RoI (Republic of Ireland).

If the “rioters” of Dublin February 2006 were rounded up and publicly executed, and the catholic church threw all the weight of its experienced PR machine behind the “martyrs”, and this was followed by a “United Ireland”, a new creation myth would be born. The “rioters” would become “freedom fighters”. The day they prevented the “Prods” from marching over sacred ground (past the GPO) would become a day to commemorate.

I don’t think Ireland is yet ready to celebrate the Orange and the Green. The South is readying itself, under government leadership, to celebrate the Green. There are plans for a military parade to emphasise that the army of the South is a direct descendant of 1916.

In 1916, the Citizen’s Army was led by Connolly. He had misgivings about joining in with Pearce, about joining the workers’ army under the same banner as the catholic nationalist one. Finally he joined in and rose together with De Velera, Pearce and the others. But that unity was a unity in unpopularity. The people of Dublin saw the centre of the city torn apart and they were not pleased. Just as the people of Dublin today are lining up to criticise the “thugs” of Saturday.

If only the 90th anniversary of 1916 could be allowed to pass by without a murmer, if only the time could be spent educating everyone to look back and see things from another perspective, the ten years before 2016 would be usefully spent. We might then celebrate the centenary of 1916 without risking greater division.

I think Saturday was a disaster for those who hoped to reach a United Ireland by stealth. It has proved to unionists that

(1) the South is not open to a meeting of both traditions

(2) the government and state apparatus of the South cannot guarantee the safety of people from the other tradition

This will confirm the views of not just DUP supporters, but also the views of those unionists who were hoping against hope that the South had changed, that there was a new Ireland.

This will damage the tourist industry, North and South. All those Welsh rugby supporters going back with photos and word of mouth reports. Would you bring your children to Dublin?

I bet hardly any of the visitors to Dublin knew that there was a march planned to go down O’Connell Street. But if they did, they probably assumed it would be peaceful and well policed. They’d probably forgotten the underbelly of Irish politics and mythmaking.

My instincts had certainly gone off the boil. I didn’t realise how dangerous it was to dream of celebrating 1916.

There was no milk in the fridge this morning. Not even one of those cartons of smelly gunge that flops out in lumps into your tea and turns it tapioca brown.

I come home to a warm house, off an Aer Arann plane from Edinburgh, and there isn’t a feather out of place. The bed is so beautifully laid out that I don’t have the heart to sleep in it. Instead I go sleep in the guest room. There are apples and oranges in the bowl in the kitchen. I’m afraid to move anything in case I’ve landed in the wrong house.

There’s no wiffe to be seen. The child is gone. The digital monitor sleeps with the fishes.

15 euros to the taxidriver. He’s been great because he didn’t hold back with his opinion about how the odds are stacked against the rest of the country. The Dublin mob have it all carved up. The new airport terminal in Cork will open in May, he tells me. RyanAir and EasyJet are threatening to pull out if they up the landing fees. The minister promised that Cork airport authority would be debt-free from the start; now there’s a bill of at least 100 million euros imposed on Cork and the minister after promising that wouldn’t happen. He lifted my bag from his boot (trunk) and seemed content with a tip of 92 cents. I saw him looking up at the silver foil that occupies one complete upstairs window. “It’s silver foil, the best thing for cutting out the light. The landlord wouldn’t let us hang curtains…”, those were the last words I spoke out loud last night.

It was such a relief to be back home. It might have been 2335 but it felt like a new day dawning. The only food I wanted was fruit, and the best wiffe in the world had made sure there were apples for me. I eat at least 8 pieces of fruit a day. A half pound of grapes is a piece of fruit…

I dump the bag, anywhere. Walk from room to room, admiring Helen’s work. She must have come on Thursday. The key was on the carpet and there were very few letters on the mat.

This is the end of a tough two weeks. If I was to record it, it would include flights to or from Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Cardiff, Heathrow, Leeds Bradford and Edinburgh. Driving to Killarney, Limerick, Madhouse, Newport by taxi. Buses to Leeds and bus managers in Wakefield and Perth. And that’s only half of it. I’ve jumbled up two people’s schedules because we are a team. E going in one direction, me in the other, one grandmother and a creche glueing the show together. We knew it was going to be like this, but it got worse than anticipated in the middle. But I believe Grace still has two parents. Whether her parents still have any minds remains to be seen.

What would you do if you were me? And you came back to an empty house, no one to talk to. This is what I did. I put the other bag down somewhere else, plugged the mobile phone into a charger, ate my second apple while leaving the first core on the counter. (I’m like a cat marking out my territory again.) I don’t turn on the 14″ tele. (There isn’t another.) I don’t even turn on radio.

Out with the laptop, into the ‘office’, on with the blogging. And for the next three hours I read all my old favourites. I let myself be led astray onto new pastures. And everywhere I go, I leave my calling card. Like a dog, I lift my hind leg on every lamppost.

I can’t help myself. I keep saying stop to myself and carry on: is Paige still awake? Pagano playing? Champagnenroses in the wood? Any chance Red Mother has looked my way? Why have those FT heads not published my post? Was it the fact that I wrote about John Lloyd’s column and wondered whether he’d have been a blogger when he was FT correspondent in Moscow? Is the Curly woman still curling? How many hits have I had?

How can I keep track of the litter I’ve strewn across all those blogs? How can I remember the address of that new blogger who used Lisa Simpson to launch her blog? Why does Kaz have to have such a long name?

What about those comments that made it onto my blog? And what about those hundreds that tried and couldn’t get on? What do all these stats, that I get via the discretly-placed counter, mean? Does it matter how many return visitors there are? If my blog was popular, would that mean that I was writing stuff that confirmed the prejudices of my readers?

Oh, the joy of it. It was like going into a cubicle, safe from interruption, taking out the stuff, loading up and mainlining… Wasn’t it? I just got madder and madder as I went from being exhausted to running on that extra tank. I daren’t think what I wrote to you dear reader.

I even wrote my own blog, though you wouldn’t think it. I added to my Significant Other Dump one Kevin Ward. That post threatens to overwhelm everything: as time goes on I intend to list (feature - I’m incapable of stopping at a simple list) all the significant others in my life.

I hate acronyms (there you are Lisa Simpson), so I won’t be writing about my SOs.

All the time I was able to see the dark night of Douglas, the midnight mantel of this estate, and as she crept closer to dawn, my moon flickered. I was no longer Douglas but Hyde…

It was painful leaving the table, the legs were long gone. I’ll tell you a secret (this seems to one of the blogger’s art):

I never washed my teeth. I left my shirt on. I threw the socks by the bed and it took me ages to get off to sleep. I was stupid enough not to soak in a warm bath.

And I woke after 8 this morning. For the next 10 days, I’ll be up by 7. I’ll have her nappy changed and a cup of fruit tea (lemon & ginger) made for the wiffe. I won’t be myself until she comes back today and we have time to get back into each other. Texts and mobile chats have their place, but a man needs more.

I don’t even know who Spurs are playing today. But the brother is coming for food tomorrow. What on earth am I capable of cooking: blogroast perhaps. Maybe blog & butter pudding?

Bless you for reaching the end.

When the Financial Times (FT) puts “blogging” on the front page of its weekend magazine, you know “blogging” has arrived in the corridors of power in the UK.

(Once upon a time, I’d have added: and that means it’s heading this way folks.)

You may be aware that I have a huge prejudice in favour of the FT: the best newspaper in the world. I have an even bigger opinion of the FT magazine that comes with the weekend edition. I think John Lloyd was its first editor and we used to be friends. I once married his sister-in-law, stayed in his flat next to Victoria Park in London, and was a political comrade of his. (We were both in the British & Irish Communist Organisation.) All that was a long time ago. But you know how advisible it is to declare an interest before an opinion.

So when I opened last Saturday’s edition, I got really excited at the prospect of a 6-page feature by Trevor Butterworth. Also, there was a special blog set up to discuss this story: ftmagblog.blogspot.com.

I want to :
(1) advertise the entry of blogging onto such important pages of print
(2) review Trevor Butterworth’s views
(3) do this really quickly so that I can move over to the blog and read contributions (there were 72 comments when I checked last night)
(4) get stuck into having my say on that forum

Review of Trevor’s views:

It’s a great article. It contains a huge number of threads of thought some of which hang together brilliantly.

I love his reference to Karl Marx and George Orwell. Would they have blogged? Marx and Engels wrote more than 500 articles for The New York Daily Tribune. They also wrote a huge number of letters (and I have many volumes of their Collected Works in one of my lofts).

Trevor quotes Ana Marie Cox on Orwell: “Orwell was pathologically productive. He never doubted himself… and maybe he shares that trait with many bloggers.”

There is valuable information in the article:

“At the close of 2002, there were some 15,000 blogs. By 2005, 56 new blogs were starting every minute. As I type this sentence, there are, according to technorati.com, 27.2 million blogs. By the time you read this sentence, there surely will be many more...”

He quotes :

Hugh Hewitt, a syndicated radio host and law professor

Michael S Malone, known as “the Boswell of Silicon Valley”

Richard Posner, senior lecturer in law at University of Chicago and former chief judge on US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Choire Sicha, senior editor at The New York Observer

Martin Walker, bureau chief of The Guardian in 1993

Anne Nelson, media consultant and adjunct professor at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs

Nasrin Alavi, author of We are Iran

Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, “one of the most popular blogs in the world”

Heather Cox & Jessica Morgan, writers of gufugyourself.com which attracts 100,000 plus visitors a day

and others, mainly American voices. Trevor is based in Washington DC.

So, the article is worth reading for all the views it summarises..

My critique would be around the quality of writing in the article. Also, Trevor sets up a straw figurine of “blogging” and proceeds to knock that down.

He says the people don’t make much money from blogging, as if that matters. He says that there are so many bloggers pouring out so much stuff that the average quality is low, as if that matters. He says that writers of talent need time to reflect on and refine their writing, as if that constitutes a useful critique of blogging. He implies that there will be nothing to show for all the literary culture of blogging, as if that reveals anything worth thinking about.

His phrases are good:

“No Modern Library edition of the great polemicist of the blogosphere to yellow on the shelf; nothing but a virual tomb for a billion posts - a choric song of the word-weary bloggers, forlorn mariners forever posting on the slumberless seas of news.”

I love his turn of words, though I would not cross the road for his sense.

Now I must rush on to the flay on ftmagblog.blogspot.com

Come join me there, and let’s see what the wider, and maybe wilder, world of blogging has to offer.

My new hero is Brian Kennedy.

He’s the Irish Eurovision entry: the songwriter and the singer. That’s not why he’s my newest pin-up man.

He was chosen to sing the song ages ago, and his own song was voted the best during the Late, Late Show on Friday evening. There’s been a lot of background controvery about the way RTE (Irish national Television & Radio authority) managed the competition to find the song. There was even a wonderful radio epidode of Life Line where people rang in to complain that their entry to the song contest hadn’t been listened to by the judges. The empathy with which Joe Duffy facilitated that programme had me in stitches.

But my new hero isn’t my hero because of his singing voice. I don’t think he’s my cup of tea as a singer. But now I want to listen to all his songs.

I know I’m a contrary person not given to flights of consistency, but am I just being perverse?

Never. I heard Marian Finucane interview Brian on Saturday morning radio. Before that, I knew nothing about Brian.

It was like when Freddie Mercury died: I didn’t know who he was either. (in case you are wondering, I am cringing as I write this admission.)

I didn’t even know that we had one of his CDs. The wiffe has her own tastes and I am taking my time exploring them. (The longer I know her, the more I don’t know, I’m pleased to say.)

The radio intererview was a highly professional piece of journalism. Marian’s loose conversational style covering a wide range of human interest: you’d think she was a housewife gossiping.

Kennedy described what it was like to grow up in Belfast, born in 1966. The war by night, the shots, the grandmother protecting him, the language of the streets, the beatings he took as a sensitive young one who was so weird that he hummed to himself. He sang to the melody of the sirens.

He was so good at describing the situation. He painted a vivid cacophony of tribal relations (my way of putting it). I winced as I listened to the little boy pushed through the mill. I felt for him and, when he got on to describing his ‘escape’ to a London squat, I was cheering for him.

He’d got to me. He’d reached inside me with his story. Made me listen with an intensity that shook me out of the glib kitchen routine. Here was a human with a serious, disturbing, survival story to tell. I draw inspiration and courage from people like this.

Who is Brian Kennedy? I was asking myself that question as I listened. Then I was rocked to discover we had something in common…

He had 9 years of psychoanalysis. Shocked I was. Someone who had more psychoanalysis than me. I wasn’t surprised that someone, who had as tough a childhood as that, should need psychoanalysis. What shook me was that Brian had psychoanalysis, and was talking freely about it with Marian.

He was talking about something of which I had personal experience.

Dream analysis: he used to bring two dreams to the analysis. I hardly ever brought a dream to my analysis. This didn’t bother my analyst; we had enough to examine.

The experience that brought Brian into my life was what I’d call a shared experience of mental illness. Also, we are both survivors of analysis. He spoke warmly about how much he’d gained, the insight and sheer satisfaction of focussing on himself in the company of another. I think he said that it helped him find himself.

Marian didn’t ask him any details. Like, how often he went for sessions? How he afforded it? How he ended the analysis? What his significant others thought about his going for such a major commitment?

I know there are other well-known people who have had therapy. When public figures have come out and revealed that they have suffered from mental illness, I have found that comforting and encouraging. I have felt a bit more normal.

But it is hard to face up to mental illness and deal with it.

Brian Kennedy came out to me on the radio, so I am coming out to my blog. Obviously the tip of the iceberg… (so I’ll cliche it) But I suspect I’ll plumb this one again.

ps: I’ve just discovered that Brian Kennedy was born on 12 October 1966. My birthday is 12 October (1950). Would someone please tell me what this means?

It was a phone call from Esmay Clarke that made me think of it.

Thirty something years since I’d spoken to her, and she rings on Friday evening.

Not quite out of the blue because I’m phoned her and left a message. We were students together in UCD (university college dublin) in 1968-71. We studied Social Science and lost contact the day we did out final exams.

She’s changed her name now and I haven’t asked her permission to write about her, so I’ll use her maiden name and preserve her anonymity. (See previous post on The Ethics of Blogging).

The key point is that talking to her made me think of all those people who I used to know. Where are they now? What transformations have they made? If they were a little shit at school, are they a right shyster now? If I fancied them like mad, would I be safe in their company today?

It’s on the rock of questions like this that “SchoolsFriendsReunited.com” was built.

So I’m going to open up my own Significant Other Dump.

I’m going to open up a blogpost and use it to record the names of people who have been significant to me since childhood. I’m going to write down some stuff about them and some of what I know has happened to them since.

I’m not going to ask anyone’s permission. But if someone finds themselves mentioned, they can object, sue, complain or celebrate. That’s up to them.

I don’t know who’s going to appear on this list. I haven’t a clue what I’ll do with the names and characters - other than probably assassinate them without deliberation.

Without any more ado…

People who have been significant to me, and who I’ve been in touch with recently:

Esmay O’Higgins (nee Clarke) : We met in October 1968, 1st year UCD, Earlsford Terace, when we were two of about 120 starting a degree in Social Science. She did the same research stream as I did and we must have attended many tutorials together though I can remember none of them except one about the sociology of education. And she might not have been at that one. She became a social worker for a while and then gave that up because she didn’t like it. She’s changed herself into a teacher, a remedial teacher, whatever that is. We were a small section of the Arts Faculty and over the three years spent a lot of time together. I remember that Esmay and I seldom had long conversations but we probably spoke or nodded at each other daily for two years. I can still see her, accompanied by her best friend Margaret Cremin. Those two were inseparable. I got in touch with Esmay by serendipity: a second cousin, Eamer, met me at my uncle Hugh’s funeral. She turned out to be a friend of Esmay. So it is clear that Eamer was sent to direct me towards Esmay.

Brian Herlihy: from the Mill Road Corbally. We were both at the Cresent in Limerick, ‘educated’ by Jesuits. Brian was in the other class. The habit was to stream the year into those with academic potential and those without. The other class had more fun. Brian I met in London in about 1977. I was conducting a number 31 bus between Camden Town and Kings Road. He was there and I had to give him a ticket. I think I paid for it myself because I never let anyone travel on my bus without a ticket. ( I have always had a goody, goody streak). He’d become a focus-puller. That’s what you do before you become a Lighting Camerman. Brian took some wonderful photographs in Oman, or Aden or somewhere out east. It turned out that we were living close to each other: I was on Fitzjohn’s Avenue, he was at the bottom of the hill in Swiss Cottage. It was great to run into him because I’m spent plenty of time avoiding running into Irish people, especially people from Limerick. Now he’s in Kenmare. We met up after I’d played golf at a wonderful course in Bantry Bay. There he was with his hat, gaunt against the background, a joy for company. We had so much to discuss, including the memory that we’d both played rugby with Pah Whelan, who went on to coach the Irish team. It was fabulous to go west from Cork and meet him under the mountains.

Kevin Ward: I remember Kevin addressing a packed lecture theatre in Earlsford Tce (UCD) in autumn 1969, or was it 1968? He was with Tom O’Carroll and the two of them had spent a few months in Botswana. They had also gone over the border into South Africa by night and spent time with black people, maybe in a shanty town. The two of them were fantastic. Apartheid was terribly strong. The regime seemed so powerful to me that I thought it could only be overthrown by bloody war. However, the SA regime was militarily so strong that it looked as if it was going to go on for ever. Kevin was different from Irish students: he was English, spoke like an English person and attracted some beautiful women. He was not a Maoist, not a Republican, not a communist. He was definitely left and came from the tradition of British working class radicalism. He had no axe with Catholic Nationalism, though I guess he must have been sentimentally in favour of a United Ireland. He was a breath of fresh air. I talked to him almost every day for two years. We met up again years after UCD. He was working in Leeds University, developing a radical new activity: the university reaching out into its local community, helping council tenants to organise. He became one of the leaders of university outreach, widening access to education. He got a debilitating illness, used to be called ME. This was back in the days when people used to call it the malingers’ illness. (Now it’s chronic fatigue syndrome) We’ve kept in touch with long gaps. I once went up to Gairloch on the west coast of Scotland where he was on holiday with his family.
On Monday, I got off a plane in Leeds Bradford airport and went into Leeds by bus. I got the sudden impulse to contact Kevin. I didn’t know if he was still alive, and what his phone number was. So I rang Shirin and asked her to look up K Ward for me. There were seven K Wards in Leeds. I asked for three numbers and said that if we were meant to meet, we would. He answered the first phone call and I took a half bottle of champers with me to his house. He hasn’t changed a bit. He is still a lovely man.

Bill Whelan:

People who were significant to me but who I haven’t met since:

Willis Walsh

I am posting this comment on comments made by Blank Paige. (I tried and failed to add my comments onto my own blog.)

Paige is always well worth reading. I recommend you all read her blog. She has a fabulous eye and not a bad turn of the wrist.

I tried to add this comment after her last post about the President.

“Paige, it sounds to me as if it might be a generational thing. Mary McAleese is your generation of President; Mary Robinson is mine?

It is something when you can say that the President has the qualities of “warmth, empathy, compassion“. Those are rare enough qualities for anyone to have as a cluster. I resonate with your claim that these are “female qualities“. But you go too far. Stereotyping isn’t fair.

I bet you know men who have at least some of these qualities. Your dad probably has them. You identify with Mary McAleese. I know how good it is to find someone with whom to identify.

Mary Robinson is a woman. She is not someone who “happened to be a woman“, I contest. Before become President, she was a fine lawyer and she is doing a good job of holding the USA to account today. She is a great model of a serious woman able to hold her own. This is not to cast any aspersion on the current President.

I have noticed that she has repeated her condemnation of the violence that accompanied the protests over the cartoons. Some journalists who have written headlines have given the impression that she did not take a stand against violent protest.

We should be suspicious of headlines: they are written to get people to buy the paper. But often, people only read the headlines.

I don’t think it was a minor matter that the President neglected to stand up for Denmark. She made herself an unwitting agent of opportunists who are taking advantage of Denmark’s difficulties. Should she pursue financial advanage for Irish business at the expense of an EU ally? Does the EU really exist as a partnership? Who wants to live in a world characterised by a free-for-all?

Again, I repeat that I feel unqualified to say anything critical of the President. That doesn’t stop me saying what I’ve said. If I was to wait until I felt qualified, I’d be waiting a long time.

Have you ever left half way through a show?

When was the last time? I can remember every time I’ve done it. That’s how seldom I’ve given up, and cut my losses. But last night I left in the interval of “The Man from La Mancha“. It was awful: very drab and dimly lit stage. Very unimpressive singing. The worst thing was that the performers were miked up…

It was more than I could take when the poor unfortunate lead man had to sustain a long final note, and went a tad flat on it.

To be fair, recently I listened to Don Quixote on audio book, an abridged verson but brilliant. Such rich language, so extraordinarily funny… There was no way it wasn’t going to be a hard act to follow. The thing about Don Quixote is that, as a Knight Errant, he speaks in high-flown, flowery, language. No one can fathom him out and he comes across as crazy, mad, touched, ‘duine le dia’ (literally, a person with god - the most wonderful expression for a person with mental illness. That’s the Gaelic for you.)

This production was ambitious: it began with Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, being put on trial by the Inquisition. And the ‘trial’ was conducted in a prison by the inmates. All very grabbing stuff. But a total distraction from the essence of the man from La Mancha. It was an example of a director imposing a personal passion on the creative piece. We began with a dog’s dinner, and went downhill.

I’d like to offer a sort of apology to the six people who came in late in front of me and obscured my view, and destroyed the opening dramatic tension: I am sorry I waved at you to sit down fast. You have rights too: and you needed time to sort out who was going to sit next to whom. So you shuffled back and forth until you were lined up in the right order. It’s a quaint, old-fashioned custom to let late-commers in during the performance. I’d forgotten to expect it.

But I’d have stayed for the second half if I could have put up with the performance. It was my first time out in public as an independent adult since Under Milk Wood. I needed the fresh air. Much as I love being a stay-at-home father, I need access to wider culture and I need to be challenged artistically. Also I need the perspiration of other people in the seat next to me. Babies don’t satisfy me. It took a lot to send me home early.

So why did the quotes from the reviews say that this was “compelling…” and “not to be missed…”?

Every so often an issue comes along which gathers together my values and synchronistically opens up vistas.

I listened to RTE 1 radio news this morning, as I usually do. I was in one room playing with Grace on the carpet, encouraging her to turn over unaided for the first time. (She didn’t.) The radio was in the kitchen. The K-Club got a mention I immediately got up from the prone position and hurried next door.

Greenkeepers in dispute with golf club management: a trade union official being interviewed. It seems that that the people who maintain the greens, the fairways, the rough, the bunkers, the tees, the water hazards, the drains (in other words, everything except the bar, the changing rooms, the restaurant and the pro shop) are only paid 10 euros an hour by the K-Club. Alledgedly, their pay was frozen last year (effectively a pay cut). Alledgedly, greenkeepers at some other clubs are paid closer to 20 euros an hour.

This is the big year for Irish golf. The course needs to be at its best ever. Greenkeepers deliver that ‘promise’. The Irish tourist industry will be affected by what happens at the K-Club. Word of mouth advertising is a key component of Brand Ireland.

I am naïve. I think this way: 2006 is our big year; we want world class performance from our greenkeepers; so we should give them every incentive and reward them accordingly; we should increase their pay and put them on some sort of performance related bonus.

According to the Trade Union man, greenkeepers have always been poorly paid. (I see it as a ‘vocation’) The Union had only 6 members until he held a meeting. 30 attended and now the Union has more members. But it does not have a collective bargaining relationship with the Club. The K-Club has the legal right not to negotiate with the Union and it does not intend to engage in such negotiations.

I imagine the K-Club management is keen to drive down costs, increase efficiency, show that it can run a tight ship, especially this year. The Ryder Cup will be no gravy train for staff. The Chief Executive is probably rewarded on financial performance. So I can see why management mightn’t want to allow ‘wage drift’ or trade union recognition. You can imagine how time consuming it would be to discuss staff wages and conditions.

Is this a classic case of management sticking to its knitting, doing what it knows best: resisting demands from staff?

I’m not given to charitable gestures, like giving the company’s money away unnecessarily. Omani is no soft touch. Greenkeepers are another overhead. If the company can keep that cost under control, it can repay shareholders and members more generously, and management can earn its performance- related bonus.

But hold on. Where is the vision? Where is the risk assessment? What if the greenkeepers go on a go-slow? Go on a quality-containment drive? In other words, what if the staff limit their contribution to the enterprise. What is the risk that an intangible feature of the customer experience will be lost? People might not say: “it was in amazing condition“. They might simply say it was “great“. They might not say: “the Irish know how to do it best…” There might be long term fallout, all over the shop.

Trade Unions are ancient beasts. They come from an industrial age. They sit uneasily in this information age. While living standards are going up and up, while increasing numbers of workers are upwardly and status mobile, aren’t trade unions only for people who work in trades? So many people have done quite nicely without any trade union lifting a finger for them. So many people have got ahead through individual effort, rather than collective bargaining strength.

“I’m all right Jack…” Until you find your salary frozen, your pension provision vulnerable… Then it dawns on you that your security is not so secure as you thought. If that happens to you, you might start thinking about “unity is strength“… It happened to me when I was working for a university (UWE in Bristol).

Greenkeepers are the receptionists of the K-Club. What they present to the customer sells the Brand. Screw them and you screw your own investment.

Trade unions are dinosaurs. But look at the number of children that love dinosaurs. Dinosaurs deserve respect and they contain a core of collective experience that is a valuable resource for determining common sense.

Just are there are managers without vision, who go for short term gain and miss the real challenge, there are awful trade union officials. But there are entrepreneurial, thoughtful and visionary managers who know how to lead an organisation through a world class challenge. And there are trade union officers worth talking to.

I’m going to bring my daughter up to bargain hard for all her rights and conditions. I’ll be no push-over. In fact, I think I’ll force her to join forces with other children in order to increase her chances of getting what she wants. I might even freeze her pocket-money. That’ll see what she made of, and prepare her for the real world.

I got this via “Disillusioned Lefty” and I thank that blog for it. It has broadened my worldview.

It’s an article about bus drivers in Iran.

Read it. It’ll do you good.

With a great big smile on her face, and both cheeks blushing brighter than a ripe tomato, Grace finished all her courgette (zucchini) this evening.

Well might she smile, and she after hearing her father admit to having made a complete ass (amadain - sorry I don’t know how to put in the fada) of himself. I had to own up to the wiffe. She phoned in from Celtic Manor where she was earning the crusts.

This is what happened this afternoon.

Carla and Emily called over. They live in Boulder, Colorado now. Carla has been one of my wife’s best friends for over 20 years. Emily is her 5 year old daughter. Carla is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, in every way. She brought a lovely present for Grace: “Baby’s First Valentine’s Dish Set” - a plate, fork, spoon, cup and bowl.

But this time I was prepared: we had a present for Carla’s daughter. It was wrapped and sitting on the kitchen windowsill. I waited a suitable interval before saying that we had a small something for Emily.

None of this took place in a vacuum. The context is a girls’ re-union that is to take place on Saturday evening. About five of my wife’s best friends are gathering, from Brussels, London, Boulder and Cork. One of them had her 40th birthday recently and it was hard to find a suitable gift for her. But my wife found just the thing in Douglas - a fine-looking necklace, one that would go with an evening dress.

I guess you’ve guessed what happened. Emily took off the string and burgundy wrapping paper and opened her little present. Her eyes lit up. Out she took her first necklace. Her mother was suitably effusive with gratitude. I was in a state of confusion. This didn’t look like Emily’s present but I couldn’t remember what the 40th birthday present was.

So I immediately seized back the necklace from the child and told her she couldn’t have it. I’d have to look around to find the proper present for her and she should amuse herself while I found it. After all it was important that each person got their proper present.

If you believe that bit, you must think all men are hard-hearted brutes with the sensitivity of a tractor.

So now 5 year old Emily has a necklace she loves, and 40 year old Kim has a paintbox.

Grace witnessed all this and missed none of it. No wonder she went off to sleep with a smile on her face.

I’d like to congratulate the Taoiseach’s office (the Prime Minister’s office) on their secondment to Dublin City Corportation. Following their recent performance in preventing leaks, it is no surprise that they have been headhunted to the project team in charge of the Dublin tunnel.

For those of you not familiar with the background, the tunnel is leaking. Before xmas, Dublin Corporation denied that the leaks were serious and promised that they would be plugged by the end of January.

Yesterday, newspaper reports showed that the leaks were still leaking. Once again the tunnel project team was on the backfoot.

(1) A broken promise, followed by another promise that the leak would be fixed “in two weeks”. This is a PR disaster. The Corporation could have been proactive and controlled the news by giving an update when it became clear that the leak would not be plugged by end January. Instead they stayed in their bunker and hoped the story would go away. Incredibly stupid, in this age of digital cameras, whistleblowers and bring-forward files. The tunnel team needs a new PR director.

(2) Yesterday, the leaky tunnel team sent a man onto the radio to say the the leaks weren’t serious: it was just like a leaking bath tap. Another disaster. Everyone knows that a leaking bathtap can lead to an overflow, and pretty soon to a collapsing ceiling. (How many of you have lost a ceiling to an overflown bath?) Who wants that? Also, everyone knows that we need to plug leaks and not waste water. You can’t put up with domestic leaks and condone public drips. Talk about joined-up thinking! Who was the PR genius who thought up the idea of comparing the tunnel leak with an overflowing bath? Which department should he or she be promoted to lead?

(3) The tunnel will continue to leak leaks. Birtie’s team had to be called in. Not a single journalist suspected who was going to fill Ivor Callaly’s shoes. (That was the minister who resigned before xmas, after it was revealed he let a contractor paint his house for nothing.) Actually they all thought they knew who the Taoiseach was going to promote, but no one in Birtie’s office leaked. So government’s backbenchers were fooled. The press corps was shown up to have limited access to Birtie’s intelligence. That’s the kind of team you need in charge of a leaking tunnel.

__________________________________________________

Attacking the President

I have been reluctant to say anything derogatory about the President. After all, I wasn’t here when she was elected. I have only snippets of what she’s been doing. It’s a matter of respect and credibility: I’m not a credible commentator and certainly not a credible critic.

But I have been surprised at some of her recent behaviour. It feels as if she has been trying to make a point, deliver a campaign. Perhaps even leave a legacy.

She said some things about Unionists, comparing their behaviour or attitude with fascism: I don’t know the details. But that’s pretty controversial stuff. Such a comparison would certainly be likely to put Unionist’s backs up and go right against any prospect of a United Ireland.

I mention this because there are criticisms of her bubbling away in the background from all sides of the Republican divide: those against a United Ireland and those who hope for a United Ireland by agreement.

Why did she feel a need to comment on the cartoons? She could have kept quiet or said something so anodyne that everyone would have forgotten it quickly. Instead she said that the Irish people “abhorred the publication” of the cartoons. That’s a strong view and presumes to know what the Irish people think. Had she commissioned a poll? (There is a tradition which De Velera showed by which the leader knows what the people are thinking by looking into his own heart. Perhaps this President was tapping into that font.)

The other thing is that she said nothing on behalf of Denmark, our EU partner. She was speaking at a conference in Jedda from which Denmark was excluded. Her host, Saudi Arabia, is a powerful state, with powerful allies. It’s an amazing example of transformation from desert, tribal culture, to urban, military complex in a few years. A oil-rich family holding on to power while importing most of what it needs, including workers.

The family, in league with religious leaders, has maintained a culture within which women are controlled. For example, the women at the conference were grouped behind a screen. It must have been quite a culture shock for the President. Imagine if she faced an audience in Dublin where all the East Europeans were put behind such a screen.

But Google recently agreed to censor itself in order to get into China. And if Google can do that…

So I suppose the President said to herself something like: this is for Ireland; we need the business. The long slow process of reform will result in women being allowed out to mix with men. What are Saudi women who favour equality saying? Unfortunately, they are not allowed to express their point of view in public in Saudi Arabia.

The Irish President was taking advantage of Denmark’s difficulties. What thought did she give to the possibility that Ireland might need the support of Denmark sometime in the future? Imagine if an Irish magazine had published the cartoons and the Islamic fundamentalist protests had been directed against Ireland. Would we have hoped or expected Denmark to support us or stab us in the back?

“England’s difficulty, Ireland’s opportunity”: a paraphrase of one Republican political strategy. Was the President translating that into a modern context? Was she acting on behalf of the commercial interest of Irish businesses in competition with Danish companies?

I’ll be reluctant to say anything critical of the President until I am more settled and sure of my ground. In July 2005, I met her husband in Adare at McManus Golf Classic, a wonderful pro-am golf event that raised millions for charity. It was an accidental meeting in a hotel and we joked about whether I should move back to Ireland. He was a lovely man. Imagine me meeting Prince Phillip by accident in a hotel bar? It was a good experience. The President wasn’t there. But I felt positive about her after that.

My sister-in-law had a good laugh about me running into the President’s husband. That’s one of the beauties of Ireland: it is so small and domestic in scale. There is a sense of community about the place.

Kevin Myers has the right to criticise and he has a fine facility with words. He attacked the President with gusto in the Irish Times yesterday. I could not say the same but I agree with most of his points - except that I think he is confused in his critique of the 1916 Rising. (That’s another story for another day.)

The President seems to be laying down a path. It’ll be interesting to see what other one-sided views she puts forward in the name of the Irish people.

I meant to blog today. But I didn’t do it. It was Valentine’s Day and I massacred the time. I booked a couple of flights. Got stuck in the middle of another, and I kept the house clean enough for my brother David to visit.

I went to the FAS building. Way out the back there is a small office where they deal with the importation of cars. My job was to hand over documents for the wiffe. She has imported a Saab. It’s a better one than mine.

I asked the woman behind the desk how much it costs to tax a car in Ireland. She is a government official. She didn’t know. “It should be about 400 euros.” It’s £160 in UK.

Then I went into Ulster Bank to ask about mortgages. How much does it cost for a mortgage?

3.1% is the best he could offer. Is that good?

Grace sat in her Stokke. She smiled at him once. He kept on talking to me, so she didn’t smile again.

This time I didn’t get clamped. Less than 2 euros to park on Grand Parade for an hour.

It was a rush to get to Douglas in time to buy fish pie for dinner. The best fish pie maker’s name is Mackesy: he sells awesome cottage pie and fish pie. He also sells very heavy brown bread.

He recommended Dunne’s for wine. So I went and bought a bottle of champagne, Piper something champagne, non-vintage. That was about 25 euros. I also bought a bottle of 1997 Bordeaux, Lynch something. It turned out to be very good.

We had fish pie with carrots, red wine, cardamon-flavoured ice cream with champagne, and a bit of Redbreast whiskey afterwards.

It was a Valentine’s meal. Grace slept through it all. We didn’t make much noise.

Now it is midnight.

I have Blank Paige (Tuesday, 7 February) to thank for this. She used to have a strong value set which included not sending round this sort of thing - a collection of questions to reveal what kind of a person you are.

I don’t like answering so many questions at once: it’s like stuffing yourself with too much triffle. But I also don’t like avoiding a challenge, in case it looks as if I have something to hide.

These are the questions and my responses:

Gender: masculine

Age: 46-60 (55 to be precise)

Nationality: Irish

Country of residence: Cork

Sexual Orientation: breasts, legs, toes, necks, mouths, tongues

Do you have a disability? : Yes. Several. And one eye doesn’t work properly. Also, I need a hearing test because I have lost some of it.

How would you describe your political philosophy? : radical, challenging, thoughtful, humorous

Level of education (primary; post-primary; third-level; graduate; professional): inadequate

If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (Ireland)? : I don’t know. I used to despise parliamentary democrats when I was at my most radical back in the early 1970s. I was anti-republican and anti-catholic nationalist. I still am. Recently I’ve been profoundly unimpressed with Fine Gael. The Labour leader, Pat Rabbite, wrote a great piece on why schools should be taken out of the hands of the Catholic Church, so I might be tempted to vote Labour.

If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (UK)? If I was still living in Bath, I’d vote Labour because there is a sitting Liberal Democrat MP. I’m inclined to use my vote as a lever against complacency.

If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (USA)? Democrat. But it might depend on where I was living.

Where do you stand on the EU? Fully in favour of it. I wish the European Parliament was more important. I love the way Brussels promotes initiatives that challenge national parliaments. But I don’t like the way Denmark has been abandonned by some EU member states.

Did you support the invasion of Afghanistan? Yes. I hated what the Taliban stood for, except for the burning of poppies.

Did you support the invasion of Iraq? No. Political dishonestly and trickery. All real politic.

Do you continue to support either or both of those conflicts? I’ve lost track of what’s going on in Afganistan. So I don’t know what I think of the current situation. Iraq seems a terrible rough story. If any good comes out of it, it won’t be thanks to Bush and Blair.

What do you believe is the single biggest issue facing Irish politics? I’m not sure. It might be the rooting out of corruption (like the paying of backhanders to politicians for planning permission).. It might be the laying down of the aspiration for a United Ireland. It might be replacing the power of the Catholic Church in education with a publicly accountable system of ownership. It might even be the development of a proper town and country planning act. But I feel too new to reland to give a confident answer.

What do you believe is the single biggest issue facing European politics? Building a shared culture based on valuing diversity, and the prospect of Turkish accession.

What do you believe is the single biggest issue facing international politics? Rebuilding a UN which can be a forum respected by all nation states. Maybe I should have said Global Warming.

Are you, have you ever been, and do you ever wish to be involved in politics in a party political manner? I was a member of a left-wing, communist group, the British & Irish Communist Organisation, back in the 1969-83. I enjoyed that. I don’t think I’d ever join a proper political party.

Who would you have voted for in the past US Presidential Election? Against Bush… what was his name? He was from near Killarney, wasn’t he?

I was attracted to blogging because it offered a combination of at least two different elements:

(1) a place where I could write and develop my style
(2) a process which could lead to dialogue with readers.

I’d spend a good few years writing for, and to, myself. It was summer 1995 when I wrote my first poem (called ‘Friendship’). Even though a few of my poems were published by a small poetry press (’Community of Poets‘), and I self-published one collection (’Vital Poems‘), the main way I shared my writing was through public performance to small groups in pubs.

I was one of the four Dandelion Poets (with Dawn Gorman, Andrew Stacey & Ursula Brooke) from Bradford on Avon. For about three years we performed together at Festivals in Wiltshire and Devon.

But I wrote an awful lot more than I ever revealed or edited. When Emily Dickinson died they found packets of her poems in her loft. In 1861 she write about 310 poems, 1862 320, 1863 360, 1864 280, 1865 276. In some years between 1996 and 2005 I’ve written even more.

I say this to show how important writing has become to me in recent years. The poems may be 99.9% drivel but the writing of them has positively benefitted my health and well being. The writing has helped me process the emotions of depression and the emotions of recovering from depression. And everything in between. The habit of writing has become like going to the gym: without it I feel lethargic and twitchy, on edge. I have come to see periods of not writing as a form of research, where stuff is being churned over, but not yet ready for expression.

When I say I am a writer, I now mean the same as when I say I am a two-legged man.

Last year, while waiting for Grace to be born, I wrote a daily diary (’A diary for Itsy‘). I am slowly editing that diary and publishing it in my other blog. Writing that mixture of prose and poetry coincided with hearing about blogs from Dave Gurteen’s Newsletter. I starting asking friends if they knew anything about blogging. William Pennington told me he knew a woman who blogged. Rachel R. showed me her blog. With their help I got started.

Blogging seemed ideal because

(1) I could write and keep a safe copy
(2) I could tune my writing for an audience
(3) I might get some interesting feedback from people who added their comments
(4) I might build new links with others..

I have watched the number of comments like a blackbird watches for the worm to rise.

I have been reading other blogs to pick up sylistic inspiration.

So when I got three comments (the most I’ve ever had) on ‘The Runs‘ I knew that I had hit a chord at long last. I had written about a shared experience. At last I felt part of a community.