From my forthcoming collection of short stories and poetry:
“A Poem That Has No Real Meaning, Yet Literary Critics And Academics Would No Doubt Find Some Hidden Connotations About Life And Death And Draw Some Significance In The Fact That The Title Is Longer Than The Actual Poem”
A fish opens its mouth
In a pond
Closes it
Opens it again
Over and over
Eats weed
Swims away
And gets eaten by a passing heron.
In Complete Circles: The Memoirs & Travels of an Ageing Schoolboy…
Available now from Amazon for £4.95 or $10.50 or €8.24 (in Italy), €8.12 (in France), €8.56 in Germany, €7.90 (in Spain).
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Move over Natalie Portman... Stephen Ireland auditions for the part of a ballerina in Black Swan
Ireland (the footballer not the country) famously courted controversy a few years when he told the Rep of Ireland manager Giovanni Trappatoni he was unable to play in the forthcoming international fixture as his grandmother had just died.
It soon emerged that the old lady in question was actually very much alive and young Stephen was in fact telling a massive porky pie just to get out of playing in the match.
What is it with Irish soccer players and grannies? Not so long ago, there were few players on the team with Irish accents, but they could all claim at least one Irish granny.
In this interview Ireland makes clear his views on Ireland – both the team (the southern one that is) and the country. His criticism of “foreign managers” in the interview is interesting, (“they’re no good” he says), but I’d love to see him saying that to Jack Charlton’s face.
So here we have a tattooed outspoken footballer from Cork who likes to speak his mind with brutal honesty, who once plied his trade with an expensive Premiere League club in Manchester before moving to a less successful club in the north-east of England, but refuses to play for his national team and has a pop at the manager – it sounds all too familiar…
CLICK TO ENLARGE
21:36 on a Tuesday night in mid-April. Looks like a case of blogger’s block.
On arrival in Belfast on Christmas eve, having flown in from London that morning I had a bit of time to wait to catch the bus back to Omagh. So I ventured into WH Smiths for a browse. In such situations I generally make a point of looking at the Irish current affairs magazines which aren’t available in London. Hidden discreetly behind a stack of Economists or some similar such publication was the latest edition of the Dublin-based current affairs magazine The Village with a rather eye-catching front cover of the sort one would normally see on the top shelf. Is it just me or does the woman on the cover bear an uncanny resemblance to one of The Corrs?
So to mark an issue dedicated to the themes of sexual equality and gender (or more likely in a desperate attempt to boost flagging sales), the magazine has gone for this particular type of cover. Ironically, the staff at WH Smiths had decided to hide it away which was more likely to have the opposite effect. But in a further ironic twist I did end up buying it – so it did work.
In its monthly “Village idiot” section, the magazine has nominated foul-mouthed, attention-seeking Green Party TD Paul “Fuck you Deputy Stagg” Gogarty following his recent outburst in the Dáil involving the use of “most unparliamentary language” directed at a fellow member and “by constantly – tiresomely and hypocritically disagreeing with policies he then votes for”. The incident has become so famous that it even featured in a recent airing of the BBC TV satirical panel show Have I Got News For You. But for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t seen it, you can view it here:
There’s also an article by the senator, academic and gay rights campaigner David Norris on anti-gay discrimination in the Republic – the only article in the magazine on this particular topic. So does this mean that Norris is the only gay in “The Village”?
I’ve referred to the early 1980s BBC comedy sketch show Not the 9 o’clock News on this site before (cf “Nice Video Shame About the Song” and the Two Ninnies “We like birds” song). Here’s another sketch of note. Pamela Stephenson, now trading as the psychologist Dr Pamela “married to a rather well known hirsute Scottish comedian, who this blogger has been known to do drunken impressions of at 60th birthday parties in Belgian restaurants” Stephenson does a passable parody of Kate Bush.
The sketch is a satire of the song Them Heavy People, (which is also linked here for comparative purposes), a cautionary tale warning people about the dangers of obesity. Although Kate’s one of those people along with Enya and the French actress Irène Jacob of Three Colours Red and La Double Vie de Véronique fame that I won’t have a bad word about, it’s probably fair to say that some of her songs do slightly border on the pretentious or too- clever-by-half category with their pseudo-intellectual references to deep philosophical concepts and spirituality. Who else could get away with a song containing references to whirling dervishes and lines like:
“They open doorways that I thought were shut for good.
They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu”
And no I didn’t know who Gurdjieff was either before I looked him up on Wikipedia.
Although she doesn’t succeed in looking like Kate, Pamela gets the voice uncannily accurate. And I’m sure being a good sport and of fairly broad-minded principles Kate saw the funny side. Hopefully so will you.
Despite the inauspicious date, the glamorous confines of Antrim’s Comfort Hotel played host to a meeting of bloggers. Of sorts.
So thanks to Nelly from the Garden, d@\/e of SE VEN , (and Wendy), Ed who didn’t quite catch it, Davy Mac, Sharon, who’s on a Voyage, and the unforgettable Grannymar (Good luck in Cork – here’s hoping you meet another toyboy down there) for a great evening when the virtual protocols of the blogosphere became real life.
And not one Paraskavedekatriaphobe among them.
Apparently there was even a short film made about it.
I won’t be blogging for another week or so, as I’m off to Romania on a jolly romp to see what’s going on down Transylvania way. Not that I blog that much anyway, so you probably won’t notice the difference.
Anyway, the garlic, crucifixes and wooden stakes are all packed and ready to go.
Been practising the language a bit. Not that difficult really – you can almost get by speaking Italian with a slavic accent.
O sticlă de vin roşu de casă va rog.
Noroc!
La revedere for the moment!
The Dreaming Armadillo 
