Kerry beat Cork to win All-Ireland. Ireland flop against Georgia. Villa lose to City. But…

As you can see, sport dominated my weekend.

Time was, All-Ireland Football Final Day would have been one of the biggest days of my year. But my move to “hurling fan” has seen an erosion of the football final’s importance. Add in the fact that this year’s final was an all-Munster affair – with relatively little enthusiasm for it in other parts of the country – and the big occasion proved a sort of big anti-climax really.

The other big Irish sporting occasion of the weekend was the Rugby World Cup clash of Ireland and Georgia. This didn’t affect me very much as I personally think that rugby is a game for toffs and oafs. Oh yes – and idiots too. Why else would you have a referee constantly shouting the rules out to players? Imagine if that happened in other sports. Can you imagine it in tennis? “Hit it. Hit it back. Hit it again. Hit it back again.” Or in hurdling: “Run, run, run, run – jump. Run, run, run, run – jump.”

My beloved Villa didn’t do too good today losing out to Manchester City, one of the few teams I actually loathe. But…

The really, really, really big sporting occasion of my weekend, however, was seeing my son’s hurling team reach the finals of their P7 championship. Played in Cushendall on a bright sunny morning, with views of Ailsa Craig and Scotland in the background, the setting was pretty much perfect. Unfortunately, they lost the final but they managed to capture a couple of big scalps along the way. And my boy scored two goals. So he was happy.

We celebrated by going to the shop and buying the kids ice cream before we hit the road. Then, in the car, Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacherman popped up on the radio on the way home. For some reason, one of the kids knew all the words. So the rest all joined in with him as best they could and then they sang it over and over and over again as we drove back to Belfast.

Stuff like that you just can’t plan.

Why Bruce used to matter to me and my mates

Continuing the Springsteen theme, and just to prove that Bruce meant a lot to me a long, long time ago, I attach “The River.” See below.

When this came out it was a bit of a revelation. For some Americans, it was the start of a realisation that there were tough things happening in the land of Apple Pie. For many Irish, it was a real-good feeling because somewhere in Springsteen’s Dutch and Italian heritage he had proudly resurrected a Catholic Irish background that he referred to often. And we Irish certainly made the most of the fact that Bruce was almost one of our own, someone who could tell a story in a really engaging lyric – big time.

Me, I was at University at the time this came out, reading people like Flannery O’Connor  and soaking up much of the vibe about Springsteen as a short-story writer – one who, in the guise of a rock and roller, could almost beat the big American short-story giants at their own game. Better than that, it was like he was Flannery O’Connor, Ansell Adams, Georgia O’Keefe all rolled into one. Writer, artist, image-maker – he could paint vivid scenes or break your heart with just a couple of words.

Back then too, I was also friendly with a beautiful native of Philly – blonde, witty, intelligent, musical (she could play guitar better than Chrissie Hynde, we thought) – who told us great stories of nights travelling the turnpikes, skipping from one bar to the next – chrome wheeled, fuel injected, steppin’ out over the line. The trip from Enniskillen to dances in Bundoran was never quite the same after that.

That’s why this Video is the best – and because it was the first video we ever saw on a great big video juke box. So while we should have been doing lots of other things – like essays and tutorials and the sort – we stood in the Edgewater Hotel in Portstewart and pumped coin after coin into the slot and watched one helluva short story unfold… time after time after time after time…

The honeymoon’s over

According to The Belfast Telegraph on Saturday, the honeymoon between Paisley and McGuinness is over. Apparently, the sight of the love-ins and laugh-ins that the two men shared were just too much for everyone – diehard provies and stalwart DUP members in particular. Not to mention the rest of us gullible sods who have had to put up with the sight of nearly 40 years being laughed off overnight. So the word is out to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister from their own grassrooters – get a grip of yersel’s.

Carnival mood, smoke-free bars – could Belfast be getting better?

I come from Fermangh and despite the fact that I have lived in Belfast for about 30 years, I think I have always done so somewhat begrudgingly. It has meant that I have never given my all to the city. Indeed, I have always made determined efforts to escape it whenever possible – Fermanagh, Donegal, wherever.

But could I be changing? Am I mellowing, embracing the city a little more? I actually think I am and here are two instances when I felt a little more pride at being part of the city.

The first was on Tuesday night when we working on an edit until after midnight in a city-centre studio. Editing is a very slow process and there were frequent trips to the window to look out on the Donegall Square below. It was a warm evening and for the first time I had to admit that I could have been looking down on a Paris or Amsterdam scene: couples lazily walking hand in hand well after dark, people sipping beer at tables outside the hotel below us and a general feeling of ease and contentment.

The second was when I left work this evening in the Cathedral Quarter and felt a palpable buzz of excitement about the opening of the Quarter’s Arts Festival. I took the pic above as I rushed home, sorry that I couldn’t hang around and take a little more of it in.

I realise that this is only a snapshot but I’d like to be right about the mood change in the city. Maybe it’ll be tested come the weekend and the rain that’s forecast – then it’ll be back to dreary old Belfast again for a night. But I do hope that this new spirit won’t be dampened for very long.

Hey – it’s Willie Nelson’s birthday

I seem to be in the mood for writing about music tonight. So to celebrate Willie’s birthday I’m reminded of one night he played in the Dundonald Ice Bowl on the outskirts of Belfast. The seating arrangement involved covering up the ice with a series of tarpaulins of some sort. Why didn’t they just melt it for the night, then make some more the next day? (There may be a pretty obvious technical reason for this, I don’t know).

Anyway, the upshot was the floor was freezing, and messy too, with the cold penetrating your shoes and working its way up your legs. Having sat through a support act, most people were getting hacked off with the prospect of frost bite. When Willie came on, people starting standing up, just to move their legs about I guess. Then lo and behold, everyone gradually moved up to the front of the stage despite the protests of the stewards.

I got up real close and a group of us were dancing down in front of the stage. As we smooched along to a slow one, I looked up at Willie and Willie looked down at me. Then Willie Nelson smiled at me – and winked.

Just one moment on a night when it was so cold we had to dance – but what a memory, and what a smile. Happy birthday Willie.

Trying to be a Punk

Back when punk was happening here, I was somewhere else – in my head, that is.

While my friends donned leather, plastic, zips and all sorts, I was having hippy patches sewn on my jeans, trying to recreate the look and feel of the pair on the back cover of Neil Young’s After the Goldrush. That’s the type music I was listening to: Neil Young, Bruce, CSN, Joni Mitchell, etc. Real bluesy east coast stuff like Southside Johnny’s I Don’t Want to go Home, or laid-back west coast stuff like Jackson Browne’s The Pretender. I was reading American literature too, at the expense of everything else: John Updike, John Irving, Kerouac, Heller, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, William Faulkener et al. Even Henry James. Anything remotely hip.

Why was that? Why was I so focused on the other side of the Atlantic while casting a snooty eye on the burgeoning punk scene here? I have no idea really. Maybe I liked the look of life in Rolling Stone as compared to the NME. The girls were better looking. They had all-American teeth, resembled Ali McGraw or Candice Bergin and looked good in Haines Active Leisure Wear. 

The upshot was that I largely missed out on being part of the biggest cultural/music revolution that we’ll ever see.

Having been reminded of this recently, I therefore went out yesterday and bought music by Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Ramones, Sham 69 – bands I hadn’t really listened to at the time.

Siouxsie was someone I always meant to investigate more and one of her albums Nocturne is particularly brilliant – a gothic blast of attitude and swagger recorded live and proudly boasting No Overdubs. It has two great Beatles covers too - Dear Prudence and Helter Skelter, the latter being amongst the best covers of any song ever! I’d love to have been there.

These CDs will flesh out other albums I have of the time – all of which I came to like in retrospect, especially everything by The Clash. In fact, all of this was brought on by news of the new biography of Joe Strummer - and my trying to capture a bit of the mood that shaped the things he wrote about.

I’m just about to order the book now at Amazon. I’ll let you know about my own redemption when I’ve read it!

New Anti Speed Ad Ireland

Just saw the much hyped ad. Excuse my language, but what a load of tosh. Not only that, a load of tosh that we’ve seen too often before – bad acting, mediocre stunts, corny soundtrack, and maudlin melodramatic reactions from the ensemble. If it’s supposed to shock, it might be an idea to try something shockingly new rather than re-hash this codswallop. This just doesn’t work, full stop. It’s a bit like the drink-drive ad the same crowd produced some years back – shock, horror, pathos, kitchen sink et al. And what happened – people switched channels as soon as it came on and the drink drive figures went up. This is a million quid down the toilet in my opinion. (I’ll come back to this with a more sage and reasoned argument – and statistics – once I’ve calmed down.)

The Killers vs LCD Sound System

In our office today, someone popped on Sam’s Town by The Killers. OK, he thought it was the new Take That cd (long story). But we haven’t listened to Sam’s Town in maybe a month – after it being a constant for as long as it has been out. Someone else immediately piped up: ‘How good is that? Album of the Year – any year’. And most of us would agree.

But wanna know the next Album of the Year? I mentioned it here before but it just keeps getting better and better: Sound of Silver by LCD System. Please listen. It’ll do you good.

This first clip is just track – no pics. But best track on album. Following clip is the excellent North American Scum.

Album of the Year? Maybe. But I also got a few other contenders. Update you later.

If this is comedy, I’m going back to Donegal.

Dear God, I thought that nothing could be less funny than BBC Northern Ireland’s Hole in the Wall Gang comedy show. ‘Dire’ didn’t come close. But I come back from Donegal to find that the same crowd have surpassed themselves with their new offering Dry Your Eyes. Please watch it some Tuesday night when you are suffering from the worst toothache imaginable – believe me, that pain will disappear when confronted with something as excruciating as the bunch of clowns pictured above. Not only was it patently not funny, but it exhibited enough vulgar, racist and xenophobic vibes that I can’t understand how it got approval.

And while I’m on the subject, on BBC Radio Ulster on Good Friday evening I caught the final twenty minutes of another supposed comedy show. I actually listened to it daring the next sketch to be worse than the previous one. And yes, each one was. It’s no wonder the South laughs at our comedy output – for all the wrong reasons.

View the award-winning Charlotte’s Red

This is a charming and very good short film from Downpatrick based director Colin McIvor. It has won loads of awards all around the world. The standard of acting is exceptional. Oh, and I’m in it. See it at www.colinmcivor.com. Tell him God Save Ireland sent you.

John Kelly, Bono and The Big Electric Cats.

I remember John Kelly’s last edition of The Mystery Train last August. I was driving over from Donegal to Fermanagh to pick up a reception on my phone, something strong enough to drag down the internet for half an hour. As I was passing through Ballyshannon, Bono dialled in from somewhere in France and boy did he sound rat-arsed. Like many other celebs, he had called in to wish Kelly all the best and to thank him for all the music. As I headed up to Belleek, I was like many others that night who were wondering what Kelly would play as the last record. We might have guessed it would be Johnny Cash’s version of We’ll Meet Again.

And meet again we have. Kelly announced that night in August that he would have a new show up and running on Lyric FM. I’ve now recently gotten into the habit of listening to it on the ‘net of an evening. It’s very good, of course, and a good way to unwind when typing away late at night. Very like BBC 3’s Late Night Junction. But far better, I’d say.

As I type I’m listening to last Friday’s show and the Tallis Scholars’ rendition of Spem in Alium. (Nope, don’t know what it means, but it’s very celestial).

All I’ll say is it’s a long way from the time Mr Kelly would leap on stage in Belfast with mouth organ at the ready to play along with the fantastic Big Electric Cats – a group that Rolling Stone once described as the best unsigned band in the world.

Kelly is wonderful at what he does. Like Andy Kershaw, he has cost me a lot of money in the past as I’ve bought a hell of a lot of CDs on the back of one tune or other that will be on his playlist. I won’t hold it against him though. He’s another fine erudite Fermanagh man after all.

Belfast poets

Bumped into two Belfast Poets the other night. So check them and their mates on www.belfastpoets.com .

The Decemberists: Shankhill Butchers

I only came across this song at the weekend and while it is very good, I’m intrigued as to why a band from Portland Oregon should be singing about a gang of cut-throats in Belfast. I must find out more. The band are very good, by the way.

The shankill butchers run tonight
You better shut your windows tight
They’re sharpening their cleavers and their knives
And taking all their whiskey by the pint

And everybody knows if you don’t
Mind your mother’s words
A wicked wind will blow
Your ribbons from your curls
Everybody moan, everybody shake
The shankill butchers wanna cut you away

They used to be just like me and you
They used to be sweet little boys
But something went horribly askew
Now killing is their only source of joy

And everybody knows if you don’t
Mind your mother’s words
A wicked wind will blow
Your ribbons from your curls
Everybody moan, everybody shake
The shankill butchers wanna cut you away

The shankill butchers run tonight
They’re waiting until the dead of the night
They’re picking at their fingers with their knives
And wiping off their cleavers on their thighs

And everybody knows if you don’t
Mind your mother’s words
A wicked wind will blow
Your ribbons from your curls
Everybody moan, everybody shake
The shankill butchers wanna cut you away

Saint Patrick vs Standy-still statues: a measure of how cosmopitan we’ve become

Every Saint Patrick’s Day brings a flurry of fresh analysis about ourselves as a nation and a perspective on how Irish society is changing. In The Irish Times on Saturday we were treated to the wonderful Fintan O’Toole – and others – navel-gazing on Irishness and the changing face (quite literally) of the country. One in ten of us now, it seems, is born outside the country. And while – day-to-day – we thankfully seem to be losing a lot of the cuddly, chatty stage-oirish image of the past, I’m frankly a bit concerned about how quickly many of us don false Leprechaun beards (Gerry Adams not included) and play the part of the caricatured Bog Paddy.

Meanwhile, a cynical friend of mine claims that the direction our society is going in is reflected by the growing number of those “standy-still statue people” that grace our town and city centres – two of them were spotted in Belfast yesterday, he says. He claims that these people are an under-represented and much put upon minority in our society. People don’t just poke fun at them – they actually poke them in attempts to elicit a response or simply just to make them blink. He says that it is standy-still people - not beardy leprechauns – that point the way forward. More statue-people, he cries out over his chablis, less of the old blarney. I think he has a point in all of this, especially when you look back at the time when the country was besotted by moving statues. We certainly have come a long way since. So maybe it’s time we all stood up for statues.

Armenian buskers, Bairbre de Brún & grey skies: it must be Saint Patrick’s Day in Belfast

 

Greetings fellow Gaels – I hope your St Patrick’s Day festivities were as good as ours.

Because of the day that’s in it, I may break into rud beag Gaeilge anois is arís as I bring you this eye-witness account of events in the northern capital of this sceptred isle. So if you don’t understand the native tongue of the Gael, gabh mo leithscéil.

I have to begin by saying that the day started on a veritable and unexpected high when my son burst into our room with his violin (sorry, fiddle). ‘Let’s get this party started,’ he cried before launching into St Patrick’s Reel – something he had been secretly practising all week. Bullaí fir!

Cascades  of presents were then heaped upon God Save Ireland because today also happens to be my birthday. (My parents obviously thought that it might be a bit of a predictable cliché to simply call me Patrick. So after much thought they opted for God Save Ireland. Incidentally, my brother was born on the 4th of July when the family were on holidays in New York. So naturally he was called God Bless America. Our sister – Advance Australia Fair – was born in Earl’s Court in London.)

But I digress. Mrs GSI quickly rounded up all the children and we made our way into the city centre (lár na cathrach). We assumed it was going to start ag cur fearthaine (raining) so we looked a bit like the Michelin family as we proceeded to City Hall (Halla na Cathrach), following the lilting sound of music that sounded distinctly non-patriotic. And sure enough, as we rounded a corner, there they were – a very lively bunch of elderly Armenian buskers who were belting it out on accordians, trumpets and guitars. I assume that the tune was their treatment of Hail Glorious Saint Patrick, but it swung a little too much, so níl a fhios agam.

By this stage, we were half an hour late for the official beginning of the parade (tús na paróide). As it turned out, we were actually half an hour early for the actual beginning of the parade (tús na paróide).

Although it was officially billed as the St Patrick’s Day Parade (Paróid Lá Fhéile Padraig) it might just as well have been billed The Irish Papier Maché Parade (Paróid Pháipéir Maché na hÉireann) such was the amount of hardened wet paper that passed  us. All painted forty shades of green of course.

The SDLP Mayor of the city – Cllr Pat McCarthy – led the first stilt walker (fear mór) out of the gates of City Hall and we were off. There followed three more stilt walkers who wowed the large group of spectators. This is going to be good, thought everybody!

Alas, the third of the stilt walkers was followed by a school group who interpreted the theme of St Patrick by wearing their football kit and doing keepie-uppies. (Who knows – maybe St Patrick supported The Southampton ‘Saints’ or St Patrick’s Athletic or just plain old Man Utd.)

Then came lots of little school groups. And more little school groups. And even more little school groups.

Thankfully, the sequence was broken by none other than one of our MEPs – Sinn Féin’s Ms Bairbre de Brún – who seemed to have a whole section of the parade to herself and her two minders. With Cllr McCarthy of the SDLP leading the parade, Mrs GSI pointed out that this was probably the only time in recent memory when Sinn Féin trailed the SDLP on anything.

So we dutifully stood and watched the end of the parade (deireadh na paróide) before we popped across the road to do some Mother’s Day shopping (siopadóireacht Lá Fhéile Mamaí). We then had a very posh lunch and watched the Irish rugby team battle against Italy in the sunshine of Rome. It then suddenly dawnwed on me why there were so many of us poor people out watching the parade in wintry Ireland – all the rich Irish people were off in Rome watching the rugger and sipping Frascati in the sun. Ah well, at least we saw Bairbre de Brún strutting her funky stuff down Royal Avenue.

We then left the centre of this beautiful city and headed home to our own part of this beautiful city, passing through one of the many British sectors of this beautiful city. These sectors don’t actually celebrate St Patrick’s Day as all that Irishness is too offensive to them. Too much green. Too much Gaeilge (barraíocht Ghaeilge). Not enough keepie-uppie.

Pity they didn’t know about the Armenians. Who could be offended by that?

Only in Belfast…

This arrived this morning via email. Not quite sure what part of Belfast this new chip shop is in – but I sure as hell know lots of areas it’s not in.

Gerry Adams, The Duke of York and a Circus Pony

On Friday evening, I was frog-marched along – much against my will – for an after-work scoop to the Duke of York public house in the beautiful “Cathedral Quarter” of Belfast. Well actually it was my idea. For those of you not familiar with the city, or for those who never venture further north than Castle Court, The Duke is an old pub with a young crowd and is famous mostly for once employing a young Gerry Adams as a barman. The subject of Gerry always comes up when someone enters the pub for the first time. One of the guys dutifully brought it up on Friday night. “Do you think Adams had his fingers in the till when he was here?” His question took us aback. But he wasn’t casting any aspersions on Gerry. It seems our friend had read that anyone who works in a bar will have dipped the till at some stage. We were just about to quiz him on his own time behind the student union bar when our attention was diverted by a commotion at the door. It seemed a middle-aged man in a cossack hat was attempting to bring a circus pony into the bar. As you do, on a Friday after work. For some strange reason, he wasn’t allowed in (that presumably accounted for the long face) but the barman had drinks sent out to them. We then got back to the subject of Gerry Adams and someone wondered if Adams is actually the coolest man in Ireland. I wouldn’t have been in this camp previously but in the light of the election results, I think there might be a case – if you take Sean Og O hAilpin out of the equation. For example, Adams is probably about 60 but on the day of the election count he was wearing what people half his age are wearing in our office – jacket, jeans, open shirt – and he looked better than any of us. He has the knack of always effortlessly capturing the look of the moment. No doubt about it, the guy is in a league of his own. The only others who have a similar presence are Blair and Clinton. (But Paisley too has something about him. I met him once at a shindig in Stormont and half expected dandruff and hairy ears. Not a bit of it. He was very spick and span.) But Adams is a different class. Whether he’s Gerry the Author, Gerry the International Diplomat, Gerry the Antrim GAA supporter, Gerry the I’m-just-taking-my-grandaughter-to-Clonard-Novena-so-no-photographs-now-please, he nails the right look perfectly. I just wonder where the ‘peace process’ would be without him. Not because there aren’t the others to espouse the vision. Clearly there are. It’s just that ‘cool’ brings clout, and ‘cool’ keeps the cameras clicking. Remember John Hume? He didn’t make any of the cameras click and look at his party now. And is it Adams that is cool, or is it Sinn Fein? Well, picture any recent photo you’ve seen of the uber-casual Adams and just slot McGuinness/Kelly/McLaughlin in there. It doesn’t really work without Gerry. (Hey – there’s a slogan.) The only fly in the ointment is when Adams is moved away from the “We have to move the peace process forward” rhetoric. After his party’s Ard Fheis in Dublin, he was quizzed on RTE about Sinn Fein’s tax proposals and it was patently obvious that he knew few if any of the facts. He squirmed and looked seriously uncool. In fact, I think the circus pony would have had more of a clue than Gerry had. I’ll tell you what, check back here later – I’ll maybe have my pic of the said horse up by that stage. Then you can judge who’s coolest – Gerry or the one trick pony.