What the...?

If it wasn’t so offensive, the party political broadcast by the British National Party the other night would have been hilarious. The opening shot is of the leader of the party sat at a desk with a book case behind him – was this shot on location at the ‘home office’ area at IKEA? Nasty Nick looked his normal manic self and, whatever you think of his unfashionable politics you had to admire his sporting of an unfashionable suit – it takes a certain something to appear before the nation, asking for your vote, wearing a polyester blend.

Of particular interest was the picture of Churchill behind the buffoon frothing about immigration. Was I alone in thinking that Churchill was going to actually come out of the picture, like the girl in ‘the Ring’, and throttle the tinpot bastard addressing the camera while muttering ‘narzzzzzzzzzi’?

As for the hilarity – well, whoever provided the BNP with the clips for their ‘WWII’ montage obviously had a sense of humour. The message of the broadcast was ‘we fought against Europe and now Britain is being taken over by people who are not British’. The soldiers hitting the beach in the newsreel footage were Americans. The spitfire pictured was probably flown by a Pole.

But by far my favourite bit was the interviews with people on the streets. This is the British national party, right? So why were all the interviews with people from Essex?

I suggest it’s because outside of England, nobody in their right mind would even think about voting for fascists. The Welsh are too busy being anti-English and the Scots and Irish are far too busy with sectarian violence to even bother about nationalities.

Wednesday Quiz

Question one:

You are about to publish your novel, do you use your own name, or a pen name?

A) Your own name, of course. That way you have a guaranteed readership of at least the few people who remember you from school, who will be curious to know if you have used their name or character in the book and, if so, will buy it to aid its success and make you worth suing.

B) A pen name. You do not want your mother knowing that you are capable of writing the sentence: 'Daphne thrilled as she licked the taramoslata from the back of Jason's knee'.

C) Your own name but with a strategically placed, possibly invented, middle initial, allowing you plausible denial but also meaning that friends and relatives will feel more motivated to move your paperback to a position of prominence in the stacks of any bookshop they visit.

Question two:

Is ignorance bliss? For many office plankton, the end of the financial year means it's time for annual performance assessment reports. Is it better to feel sprightly because you have been described as 'obtuse', or Google the word and spend the rest of your 'career' in a sullen mood?

A) Ignorance is bliss. Especially when a relationship is ending. On being told you are a shameless narcissist, it's better to think somebody considers you a good gardener than look up the term (in between googling your own name) and have to face an ugly truth when you could be facing a good looking reflection.

B) Knowledge is power. Knowing stuff allows you to leave the other person in no doubt as to your feelings, especially if your knowledge is an in-depth understanding of martial arts.

C) Wing it! Nothing wierds people out more than their conversational partner misusing words normally deployed with those with a large vocabulary. Those who know you are misusing words like 'intransigent' (possibly in the context of ordering how you want your eggs done) will either be too polite to correct you or will doubt their own understanding of the meaning. (For a bonus point participate in the following social exercise - use the word 'occluded' conversationally, to infer that it is the technical description for the layer of jelly between the pork and the pastry crust in a pork pie. See how many people ask you what the hell you are talking about).

Question three:

Is camouflage a viable fashion option for anyone over thirty?

A) Hell no!
B) Hell yes! What else does one wear while paintballing, going to militia meetings or hiding in a hedge when stalking the new girl from accounts?
C) Only if all your colleagues are wearing it too and you don't wear bright colours because not only do they make you look washed out because of your complexion but it makes it easier for the fucking Taliban to snipe at you. With an RPG.

Postscript from Ireland - maps

A map has three lives. Actually, to be more accurate, there are three ages to the life of a map. At least.

The first age is before the journey – the planning stages. Now, you can talk about a journey as much as you like, either to your mates down the pub or speculatively with your significant other whom you’re trying to entice away for a week of naughtiness under canvas but, once you’ve invested in a map, that’s commitment. Is there anything more exciting than a map spread across a table? It may be the family dining table, with a map of the holiday spread out and the excited family gathered at the edges. Even more excitingly, it may be over a pub table with a group of mates who were sceptical about the prospect of a cycling tour but, through the simple application of several pints of lager and a map clearly showing just how many public houses there are along the route, are now straining at the break blocks to get underway.

Pub tables are simply more exciting because ideas generated by alcohol and sustained by alcohol are such fun. Oddly, from places of relaxation where the diet is based around beer, pork scratchings and corn based snacks, many athletic holidays are planned – cycling round Ireland, walking the Pennine Way, mountaineering in Spain. All sound possible through the simple addition of beer.

It all connects us to that time in the past when heroic men, probably buoyed up by an explosive mixture of brandy, cigars and rampant imperialism, spread a map, largely blank in the middle, across the billiards table of their club and decided to see what was at the centre of that blank space. With luck, that large blank space contained a large mineral deposit and some gullible natives who didn’t realise the true value of a copper mine. Possibly even a mountain that one could name after an aunt, thus securing that all-important inheritance or at least the best of the bone china.

The second age of the map is actual use. This is where the map is folded back and forth, forth and back. Sometimes if you are lucky you will get the concertina folds the right way round and the thing will fold away to its original size and not resemble a crumple the size of a beach ball, but don’t worry if you don’t. During the campaigning stage a map can be expected to pick up the following: raindrops, snowmelt, surf, rapid, tears, tears, animal prints, scorch marks, beer glass rings, wine glass rings (red and white), swatted insect smears, sun tan lotion greasy fingerprints, a tyre track, sand (beach), sand (storm) and probably at least one good soaking from that river you were sure was fordable.

The third age is as a reference tool. Used to get the spelling right when labelling your photographs, or to geotag your photographs, or to frame what’s left of it as a memento of your journey (‘look, you can see where the bullet passed through’), after you’ve festooned it with trail marks, red lines, comments, crosses, asterisks and many non-official markings (a pint with three stars being a favourite).

The Ireland touring map I used was everything you could want from a map, clear, robust and largely weatherproof – ideal for Ireland where unfurling a large piece of paper on the wild Atlantic coast can be something of a challenge of coordination and perception – trying to find the road to Killarney while the map thrashes in the wind like a salmon at the end of the line is something of an art. Trying to consult it in the open was not unlike unfurling a spinnaker and it’s a testament to the quality of the paper that it’s still more paper than selotape.

No fly zone

As Iceland continues to pump out ash like a chain smoker at a sexual harassment hearing, all flights remain grounded over Europe. This has led to ‘travel disruption’, ‘travel chaos’ or ‘travelgeddeon’ depending upon your choice of media but it has also led to skies of perfect blue.

This may be somewhat ironic, an ash cloud is blanketing Europe and frankly, I was expecting to see some Hollywood special effects. Indeed I was busy practicing my embarrassing pose to be doused in. In 2,000 years time, bored schoolchildren would be shown round the ruins of the city that was once London and snigger at the natives, frozen forever in the poses of everyday life, texting, sitting slumped at a keyboard or deciding what coffee to order. However, what we have are clear skies.

And I mean clear. This was the weekend to sell your house if you lived near a major airport ‘oh yea, it’s always like this. Flightpath? Nowhere near it.’

So we have a sky clear of the vapour trails that normally criss-cross our skies like graffiti and enjoyed a balmy summer’s day…in April. This has led to the green of the parks turning pink and then red as people enjoy themselves in the sunshine and of course that other great British summer institution. Iceland may have an ash cloud, but Britain has around ten million active barbequeues, all sending sizzling sausage fat high into the troposphere. With luck, we can keep this up all summer – Europe a no fly zone, Britain warm and sunny and the World Cup to look forward to. Let’s just hope to god the lager arrives by boat.

Match report

A colleague of mine one mentioned the surprising fact that she was a season ticket holder for Watford Football Club. Presumably, that means she has a designated seat that she always sits it, just like the others who sit around her and presumably that means that the chap who sits in front of her must be getting fairly fed up with hearing her favourite phrase to employ when Watford are underperforming: ‘Oi, Watford, it’s a good lot the other lot are shit too!’.

When, though, does our enthusiasm for sport take on that abusive edge? I’ve just come from my nephew’s little league game, where his team won three two after extra time. Now, I’ve been to little league games before but this was a cup final and, if it was decided on decibels, I would have been impossible to call between our coach and theirs – although I award extra points to their coach for the aggressive way he managed to scream ‘get up!’ every breath. This could refer to keeping the ball in the air, moving up the field or stop rolling on the floor blubbing and wanting your mum to stop the bleeding after a particularly nasty tackle.

I’ve attended various little league matches over the years, watching my nephews progress from basically bumbling tots chasing after a ball to morose teens who, on a Saturday morning, stop: growing, sprouting hair, producing acne or thinking about girls and divert all that energy (and that’s a LOT) into sprinting around a football pitch for ninety minutes like a ball-seeking missile made of elbows, knees and aggression. When the kids are young, every action is met with applause, even when the opposition score a goal. Because we ant them to learn sportsmanship.

Tonight was different, tonight when the opposition scored there was, from our side of the pitch (oh yes, it was like the Sharks and the Jets out there), polite applause. There’s a difference.

So I’m used to shouty coaches and screaming fathers trying to live out their dreams of footballing glory through their sons (or daughters), but tonight as a special treat we had a footie mum. A footie mum is just like a pushy mum, but louder. Think of the sort of woman with scary hair and glittery eyes who breeds show dogs, cross her with somebody who lives in a caravan with a satellite dish attached and who breeds dogs for illegal fights and you’re getting the picture.

Looking at the kids charging round that pitch and listening to a coach screaming ‘fame and glory!’, one does wonder if the kids are doing it for their benefit or our entertainment. It was certainly thrilling, if only because I know that there is no child so inconsolable as one who feels he has let down his team, himself and his coach and the fallout from defeat would be grim, but there was a little bit of guilt, like you always get when you see a kid performing, when you think ‘is this worth it? Look at them, there’s fear and anxiety and desperation but is there enjoyment…is this exploitation?’

Then the final whistle went and I thought ‘fuck it, we won, who cares?’. Then the kids sprayed lemonade like it was champagne. Which is ironic, because when I have the opportunity I drink champagne like it’s lemonade.

Cherry blossom

Sage sorts with a flower bed full of soil under their fingernails advise that the current riot of colour in the gardens, parks and hedgerows is down to the cold Winter we had. After snow, frost and rain Spring has finally come and mother nature has decided to strut her stuff.

This is especially evident in the cherry blossom, which appears to have flowered in the time it takes one to make a cuppa. One moment there will be a bare tree, you turn your back, hear a faint popping noise and then turn back to see a cloud has apparently sprouted where the tree used to be.

However, this being Spring, the cloud is then blown by a fresh wind and, before you have time to fiddle with the settings on your camera, you’re left looking at the collection of sticks that is a cherry blossom tree in its natural state.

This, I am now convinced, is why the haiku is the preferred verse form of the Japanese, where these sorts of trees adorned the landscape as well as plates and bowls. The Japanese scribe would look at the tree and barely have time to dash off three lines before – poof – the blossom is gone for another year.

The more permanent bed of geraniums, daffodils or hardy perennials ensured that the English verse form tended towards the sonnet or even epic, essentially something one could spend a few weeks perfecting, without fear of any great change.

There must be an ode to a lawn somewhere.

Postcard from Ireland - Dublin

Dublin’s not a large city, it just seems large compared to all the villages, hamlets and sheep grazing points that constitute habitations in the rest of Ireland. It is, though, incredibly busy – mostly due to the hoards of tourists who crowd the streets, but especially crowd the Guinness souvenir shop. Judging from the number of people walking around clutching Guinness shop carrier bags, at any one time the population of Dublin is around 90% tourist.

Traffic is a problem, especially if you have spent the last week driving roads quiet enough to allow the absolute necessity of stopping in the middle of a secluded road to photograph yet another breathtaking view. To cope, Dublin has many pedestrian crossings, which announce when it is safe to cross with flashing lights and the sound of bongos!

If you are young or an alcoholic, then there’s lots to do in Dublin, and by that I mean that there are lots of bars to visit.

For those of us who have been battering their liver all week and were actually looking forward to spending some time not in the pub, there’s the Book of Kells. Housed in Trinity College this is a display about bibles, just the thing for a God fearing country. And while it is amazing to see illuminated manuscripts, you get the feeling that justice is not being done. The public, for whatever reason, love Dan Brown’s books and so we’re happy to learn a lot more about hidden symbolism in the pictures. And I’m sure that the older tourists would have appreciated labels on the artefacts that were slightly easier to read than the minute latin text they were describing.

A missed opportunity to make more of a fascinating subject. Frankly, if I were a monk doing nothing but sitting freezing all day, copying out text and dodging buggers, I’d want a bit more credit when my work went on show.

After that disappointment, the Long Room at Trinity College was a revelation. Simply put – I want one. It was like a cathedral meets a bookshop meets a computer game arena meets the opening of a Dan Brown thriller. Dr Bob Langdon has to find the secret of the Book of Kells, but discovers that it’s not in the museum after all, but rather hidden in plain sight among the thousands upon thousands of volumes in the Long Room. But is it filed under ‘K’ or ‘B’. That Dan Brown, I don’t know how he comes up with such fiendish puzzles.

The other place of pilgrimage is The Guinness storehouse, half shrine, half funfair, all about drinking. Years ago when you went to Dublin you could do the brewery tour. Now because of heath and safety gone mad you go through this specially made tourist attraction. Actually it’s not half bad, the start of the tour describes brewing and it’s a bit like Willy Wonka’s factory, but with beer.

The tour finishes at the Gravity Bar, where you get your free pint of Guinness or a soft drink. There is no cash bar and that, combined with the worst service I got from bar staff in Ireland, ensures that you have your one pint and then go. Otherwise I suppose people would be up there all day, enjoying the panoramic view of Dublin and drinking beer, enjoying themselves.

Better to make a swift exit, find a pub and watch the tourists over a pint.

Postcard from Ireland - Glengarriff to Dublin

Just when you think you’ve seen all the rugged beauty of the wild west Atlantic coast, you round (yet) another bend and some other view is revealed. If you gave into the temptation to stop the car and take a picture every time you wanted to when driving through the Killarney National Park, your progress would resemble a stop-motion animation crossing of the hills and valleys.

There are those of course that have to drive the roads every day – like the chap with the van stopped by the side of the road hefting a sack of sheep feed onto his shoulders. The feeding troughs for the hillside sheep are within easy tipping distance of the road and the sheep seem terribly pleased to see the feeder – I don’t know what sheep feed tastes like, but it’s obviously an improvement on the normal fare of tuft and thistle.

In Killarney itself we stopped for coffee and cheesecake. In accordance with the rule that no meal or snack in Ireland shall consist of less than seven million calories, the huge slice of cheesecake comes with a scoop of ice cream. Nothing sets one up for a long journey quite like metabolising a lot of sugar.

The motorway in Ireland was a revelation – a smooth ribbon of tarmac and, compared to the crowded motorways at home, blissfully free of traffic. Possibly the locals are put off by the signs that adorn the junctions, explaining that motorways are not the place for scooters and learner drivers and, right at the bottom of the list of prohibitions, stating ‘no animals’. Trap racing may have its place in Ireland still, but that place is not the overtaking lane.

The road signs on the motorway continue in gaelic and English. Normally having signs in both languages is a sign of trying to resuscitate a dying language that is dwindling but here in Ireland people do actually speak gaelic and for those who don’t, it adds a delicious sense of being abroad. Visiting Ireland, English speaking and driving on the left, can be somewhat unsettling. There’s much that is familiar but you’re constantly reminded that the place is different to home, in a way less obvious than when you visit, say, France (which is bloody different from home, what with everyone being French).

Gaelic and English may be thriving languages in Ireland, but the most common language is Romanian. I’ve never been anywhere were there are so many foreign workers – including abroad. Obviously the thing that’s done is that

After the wild romance of the south, Dublin is a much more cynical place. It’s the capital city of course and, as cities go, it’s intimate but still manages to hang on to some charm with a historical centre, making much of the Georgian architecture. And, indeed, if you’re looking the craic, then Grafton street is the place to find it. Buskers busk and tourists move along slowly in a Brownian motion of gawking. Possibly the best addition to the street are the flower stalls. They turn street corners into tropical gardens, with the flowers raked up, like waterfalls of colour against the drab city centre.

Tourists too at Temple Bar, this time French school children, all sporting identical orange backpacks, clustered round a busking rock and roll band. Tres cool.

Postcard from Ireland - Cork to Glengarriff

Taking the N71 from Cork to Glengarriff; a word about Irish main roads. One of the most charming things about them, as they twist and turn along the wild Atlantic coast or wind through beautiful countryside (FACT: Ireland contains over 90% of the world’s twists) is that they will suddenly plunge straight through a wee village. You’ll be happily hammering along with only bemused sheep there to witness your speedy progress and the next thing you know you are in a street rather narrower than an anorexic’s belt (usually with cars parked on either side of the street) and pondering the possibility of shopping for a newspaper simply by extending your arm out of the car window, into the newsagent next to you.

To get to the Drombeg stone circle, one of the most famous tourist attractions in the area, you turn off a road, turn off the side road and, just when you’re starting to wonder whether or not you’re actually on a goat trail, you enter the car park.

Walk past the tiny model circle of stones that some wag has put in a nearby field, along a twist in the path and there, emerging from behind the hawthorn hedge, is the stone circle and, behind that, the Atlantic.

This is no henge, so don’t expect something on the scale of Stonehenge or Avebury, but it’s impressive. You can walk around it, touch the stones and take a moment to think.

Or leave an offering. People had – a few coins and a flower (a daffodil, the flower currently in season and, perhaps more importantly, the flower of the Marie Curie cancer charity in the UK and also the leading cancer charity in Ireland) or, on one of the uprights, a mound of coppers in a sea shell placed on top of the stone.

Looking round, you can see why the circle was raised here. Circles are raised in sacred places, they do not make the place sacred. With the hills embracing the field and the Atlantic stretching to infinity, this is a special place.

Knowing how seriously the Irish take their food, it comes as no surprise to learn that next to the stone circle is a Neolithic kitchen. There are two rock lined pits in the earth; one for fire, the other for water. Sudies showed that hot rocks from the fire depositied in the pool of water could raise the temperature to boiling in eight minutes, and it would stay hot for three hours. If this is true then it shows that the priorities in neolitic times were boiling meat; the lack of a soap dish shows that this was a kitchen rather than a bath. So, Neolithic Cork man was well fed with hot food, but smelly.

Glengarriff is a small village running either side of the main road, like many other little villages. The only thing different about this one was that it had our hotel in it. Like otrher irish hotels, this comes with a pub attached to it (that’s right, sod the hotel bar, why have one of thjose when you can have an entire pub?). This was the second pub I happened across a breast feeding mother in. Nursing her three and a half month old baby the lady and I had a brief conversation, while I practiced the art of looking anywhere but at junior and resisted making some quip about draught versus bottled.

Thirty twisty turny minutes away is Castletownbere, a fishing village with a particular claim to fame. There are, I learned, very very many pubs called McCarthy’s bar in this part of Ireland. But this is THE McCarthy’s bar that adorns the front of the book of the same name by the late Pete McCarthy. After walking through the town and trying to wrestle with the apparent defiance of logic that suggested there were more pubs in the town than there was actual town, I ended up in McCarthy’s bar. It is, indeed, a grocers at the front and a bar at the back (actually it’s more like two thirds bar) and it is, without doubt, one of the most charming places to drink I’ve ever been. There must be something about a pub with a literary connection – the Woody Creek Tavern in Aspen is the same, it has a certain quality; maybe it’s the relaxed bar staff, maybe it’s the slightly shabby furniture or maybe it’s the beer (it’s the beer), but the place was fantastic.

It also served, without doubt, the best Guinness in Ireland.