Belfast For Me

When I was a kid in the 70’s there was a place in Ireland we used to hear about on the news, in black and white of course, called Belfast, and back then I thought it must have been Africa or Israel or somewhere, because wherever it was, it was one of those far away countries in the throes of war. But Belfast really was in Ireland and what was going on there were ‘the troubles’, which is a word the Irish use for war when it’s happening in their own country.

By the 80’s I knew a bit more, and I did take a trip to Belfast, not on a political mission or anything, it was to buy a telly and condoms. When we headed down the main shopping streets we were frisked by armed soldiers and I vaguely remember a lot of barbed wire and wasteland.

Two years ago, I was invited back there to represent Connacht in the BBC4 All Island poetry slam. ‘All Island’ is the new word for ‘Ireland including Northern Ireland.’ It was a riot, but not like the riots back in the day. The audience were a bit rowdy, but they were great, and after the event there was a mad open mic. session where people just grabbed the mic. and recited their own poetry or other peoples poetry or  sang a song or just ranted on about something or other. Some Arts organisation put us up in an apartment near town, and even though there were only two beds for about ten of us, the beds weren’t really that necessary because most people didn’t get to bed at all. It wasn’t until last year that I managed to get to see Belfast by day: a mix between steamy chip shops, trendy European Boulevards and the odd bit of wasteland here and there. I gave a reading in some pub and I didn’t dare ask what part of town I was in, I just pretended to be really cool about the whole thing.

But it was only last week that I really saw Belfast, and that’s when I fell in love with the place. Pulling into the bus station brought back all the nostalgia of travelling through Siberia twenty years ago, and it’s great when you start to get to know a place. I was able to tell a few tourists on the bus that the Hotel Europa at the station is the most bombed hotel in the world. Belfast just started feeling like home.

Later that day, a taxi drove me to the West Club on the Falls Road. Housing estates, the famous Divis flats and mural upon mural (Derry eat your heart out) For some reason I love this place. I love the betting shops, the chippers, the cheap hairdressers and the net curtains on houses. You really don’t need the Bobby Sands memorials or the half peeled away ‘join Sinn Fein’ posters to know you’re in Catholic Belfast. Even the yelping dogs on the street have a catholic look about them, and the virgin Mary gives you the eye that only a catholic virgin knows. The West Club on the Falls Road is full of middle aged working class men and women and all of them know how to dress well. The women are actually able to walk in their heels and there’s enough jewellery flashing to give the place the feel of Christmas.

And this is why I love Belfast. Where else in the world do ordinary every day people fill a place in the middle of the day to listen to poets? In a way I feel small, because every piece I read could surely only be a shadow on what some of these people could write about if they weren’t busy doing real life things. There are no hecklers, drunks or smart wannabe poets like me, and I’m glad I’ve downed two gins for my nerves when I spot Gerry Adams in the audience. They’re a great audience and I’m loving it, but still, I do want to be on the right side of them.

It ends on a high when Gerry Adams buys my book and asks me to sign it. I mean, Gerry Adams asking for MY signature. Leaving the West Club was a total anti-climax. I didn’t want West Belfast to be over for me, but it was.

I left early next morning with a rotten hangover and an appointment in Budapest. Arriving in Budapest at dusk and greeted by illuminated castles and bridges was an experience. But my heart was still in Belfast. Who cares about castles when you could be booking into a wee room in the Europa Hotel?

A Head of Lettuce for €200?

A few months back I was feeling a bit frustrated with myself. You see I couldn’t understand how it was practically impossible to get from one end of the week to the next on my deserted wives pension. I reckoned that the wise and important people who govern our country must have worked out what the minimum requirements are in order to keep your hungry little beak just about bobbing above water. But somehow I only found myself getting from Thursday to about Monday and then making pancakes and chasing away the T.V. license man until the next handout.

So I decided to be clever, it’s a recession after all. Down I went to the Credit Union and talked them into lending me the grand sum of €120. With it I headed over to my local Garden Centre and bought the following: a little wooden frame thingy called a raised bed, three bags of muck (no, not make up, real muck. You have to pay for that too.), a few packs of seeds, a bottle of fertilizer, a shovel and extravagantly, a pot of green paint to paint the raised bed. It all came to €142 but the man in the Garden Centre said he’d round it off at €130 what with our kids being in school together and all that. They delivered. I got to work.

Well let’s say if you were to pay yourself the minimum wage, I’m owed around €2k from the garden. But you can’t pay yourself so I fantasised that I was on a work placement and kept at it. I tossed snails over the garden wall, nursed seeds in little pots on the kitchen table, planted, dug, weeded and generally got my hands filthy while neglecting other things like writing a CV or doing job searches on the internet.

There were hidden expenses: weed killer, replacing plants that didn’t make it, a garden hose, a fork, a pair of cotton gloves…

Today was the first harvest home. Salad made with lettuce and onions from the garden and a zucchini quiche with home grown zucchinis. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I’ve just worked out that that head of lettuce cost about 200 quid. And to make it worse, the local fruit and veg place are selling the very same ones at 19c a head.

So now I’m off to pick my €50 bunch of rhubarb and come up with a new money saving plan. Maybe next year I’ll keep hens. 

Sex & Guilt

Having lived away for years, I’ve always felt there’s a kind of bonus connected to being Irish. I don’t mean the fact that people come up to you and say ‘ah, you are Irish, the green island, you have shiny yellow face from Kerrygold butter.’ And I don’t mean the Americans’ with their ‘I love your brogue’. What I mean is the sex.

As a rule, sex and guilt are inextricably connected for the Irish, and let’s face it, sex without guilt would be banal. I know, because I’ve had sex with people from at least 27 countries spread across the globe, even if I’ve never been to bed with anyone from Wales. Believe me; having sex with someone who doesn’t feel guilty about it just dampens the whole thing. They leave the light on; they ask you things like ‘am I getting the right spot there?’ and they’re loud. They fart in bed, they examine your privates the way a doctor does and they make you orgasm the way an Irish person might make you a cup of tea: too often, too sweet and not hot enough.

Guilt is sexy. You can really only talk dirty to a person if you have been blessed with guilt. Someone who doesn’t understand Irish guilt might be offended if you say ‘you filthy bitch, you dirty whore’. For example, let’s say you’re in bed with a German. The reply might be that the said woman immediately retrieves her clothes from the floor and leaves, saying (read in strong German accent): I zink zere has been a misundershtandink, I am not a filzy whore, I vas doink it for free, jast for fan.

There’s nothing sexier than having sex with someone when it feels oh so damn wrong and forbidden and filthy. If you’re Irish you’ll know what I mean. That surge of sexiness just because you shouldn’t.

And another thing, because it’s a very human thing to want to do the forbidden the Irish actually have more sex than any other nationality; and I should know, because I am Irish. The other proof is in the amount of kids that the Irish have had over the years. In fact, if you are Irish, you should be thankful for guilt, because without it, you probably never would have been conceived and never would have made it into the world to enjoy the joys of guilt. Imagine that. Without guilt, you would probably never be here today. So go spread the guilt. It’s damn sexy. 

A Tooth Or A Campervan?

There’s something about dentists, and I should know, because I’ve been in a dental surgery twice in the space of the past week. Granted, before last week I hadn’t ventured into one for at least five years, but still.

The first visit was made possible due to severe pain. I had an infection or an abscess or whatever the dental definition is for: €1500 and do you want insurance with that?

I was told to come back in five days time, and this time it was even less daunting, as the painkillers and antibiotics had cured the screaming pain, which made me feel richer by the €1500 which I’d written off but now felt I could spend on sweets and chocolate instead. But apparently no: just because I feel better doesn’t mean it’s gone away. I’m not to trust the tablets says Mrs. Gleaming Teeth, the young dentist who looks about twelve years old. The pain will come back. I’m to hand over the money and we’ll discuss some other cosmetic work while I’m at it. But not today. Today we’ll just do two fillings. She tells me she can only do two fillings on the medical card. I tell her that two fillings per visit sounds reasonable to me, but no, she informs me that it’s two fillings per year. So basically, if you have a medical card you’ll be given free healthcare should you get into a fist fight, get blind drunk, take an overdose, abuse your health to the point of life support, or just have a general addiction to prescription drugs which are all free. But a third filling to your tooth, no, that’s not covered.

Not that it will matter in my case. Once she began to prepare for the first filling, I politely told her in my best shaky voice that I’d have to pass on it as despite having given birth on numerous occasions, having pack packed across China and chased snakes out of the toilet combined with surviving various illnesses, attacks and life changing events. But a filling. Not a filling.

There isn’t a dentist in Ireland that believes I can still feel everything even after they’ve supposedly numbed my gums, and even when they are numb, it’s the horrible drilling noise and the pressure and the poking and then no matter how numb you think you are, all of a sudden you get a piercing pain up your tooth and not only can you not scream but you can’t even swallow your own spit and the evil stranger who is doing this to you also has their fingers in your mouth.

There was no argument. She sent me packing with a prescription for valium and told me to make another appointment and take the drugs before I come.

She also did an inventory of my mouth and suggested four crowns in the front and two in the back and some bridge yoke and to get them cleaned and bleached and what not. And no, the medical card doesn’t cover it, but they’ll do me a good deal. It’ll only cost about the same price as a camper van.

I decide that I’ve gotten away with spending the past five years in denial anyway, so I get home and remove the mirror. They’re only teeth after all, and if Shay McGowan from the Pogues got away with it why wouldn’t I? I spent the rest of the day surfing the internet for camping vans and Eastern European dentists. I may as well toss a coin.

No Money In Poetry

Today I drove to Sligo and back in the pissing rain. Well let’s say my beloved did the driving and I sat in the passenger seat passing bitchy remarks about other drivers and the state of any poor innocent who happened to be walking along the pavement.

I had been invited to Sligo to read a poem of mine which was ‘highly commended’ in the iYeats poetry competition. In other words, a poem that didn't win. The invite had been called ‘an award ceremony’, however, we runner ups only got a cup of tea and a dry aul’ biscuit.

I’m used to the pomp that goes with poetry by now. I reckoned that if the ceremony was on at 12.30, it would be enough to skip the wine, crackers and speeches and get there about 1pm for the start. I made it at a quarter to one, only to find that it was half way through and I’d missed my slot. Gracefully, they did let me come up and read, and the whole thing was over by 1pm, say a quarter past if you count the cuppa.

There were a few poets hanging around, laden down with bags of poetry books, saying ‘I’m very reserved about pulling out my book at readings, but I do have a copy or two in my bag at €12.50 thank you very much and will I sign it?’ I’m not sure though, if poets will ever have a huge market in flogging poetry books to other poets for the simple reason that most poets are broke. As Robert Graves said:  There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. 

He’s right about the no money for sure. I’ll tell you why that is. The petrol money to Sligo was about €30, lunch out was about the same and I had to stop on the way back for a large box of Solpadeine painkillers and whatever you’re having yourself. That’s nearly half of my deserted wives’ pension blown in one day, and not a bit of inspiration out of the whole event.

I decided that maybe I just don’t fit into the literature circles. I’m no good at name dropping or mentioning other competitions that I also didn’t win, and when someone suggested I send my manuscript to what I consider to be the Supermacs of Irish poetry publishing, I just said that ‘yeah, I must’, instead of saying how much more damn exciting I find it to write about things that fire my passion than to collect gold stars from learned people who judge said writing.

In many ways, writing poetry is a curse. I wish my inspiration would come in the form of best selling chick lit novels, or that my passion could be channelled into inventing something like the Dyson vacuum cleaner instead of sitting up nights mulling over words. I should really stop giving out, but, as Yeats himself once said:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

So for what it’s worth, here’s the non-winning poem:

View From a Ditch

Here. Look at my face on a faded photo.

Cast a glance and roll your eyes up. Say you’re

Sick of these streets pasted with posters,

Boasting young lads winking at passers-by

With their Missing Person dead eyes.

Say it’s not your job to find me alive.

Believe me. These streets breed premature ghosts.

Pull in knife fighting kids on gear. Paint

The town blue with sirens, still you can hide:

Glue sniffing with the belly-topped hep-c beauties.

There I felt warm: shared needles and ice cream,

Said ‘I love you’ and the sun split filthy skies.

Look. In this ditch water flows without a tap.

Since State Care, the longest home I’ve had.

Hawk stoops for its’ prey. Bird murders worm.

The rain on my dead cheek makes me my mother’s son.

A shot - a fox lies victim of a bad deal.

And I am quiet now. I know these rules too well.

The Right Age For Sex

Recently I was explaining to a friend how now that my kids are all hitting puberty, I intend to buy a gun, build a ten foot wall around the house and vet any prospective admirers by pointing the gun at their face and letting them know what’s the what. After all, I’m the parent and I need to protect my innocent children from the risk of being exposed to sexual predators, or worse, having sexual desires themselves.

My friend asked me what age I felt was the right age for sex, and I had to think for a minute. I reckon mid thirties is a good age. You know what you want by then and you’re beginning to experience the feel of being a grown up. And sex, after all, is for grown-ups. Or is it?

Recently I was staying in a house where the 15 year old daughter had her boyfriend stay over for the night. Luckily, it was in Germany, where the legal age for consensual sex is 14. In Ireland it is 17, with a clause that allows non-carnal contact at 15. Now who the hell knows what ‘non-carnal’ contact means? Does it mean you can go to bed with someone and have oral sex instead? Typical Irish really: there’s a rule, but there’s a way around it and it’s all hazy and unclear and in reality everyone is having sex from an early age but we all pretend that they’re not, so that we don’t have to deal with it because nobody wants to talk about sex anyway. It’s the Irish guilt thing. And after all, guilt is a quintessential ingredient in sex if you're Irish.

Well I can’t say it didn’t make me think when my friend’s daughter was merrily taking the boyfriend home for the night at her young age. Wondering if it was legal or not, I looked up the age of consent in various European countries. Spain was the sexiest, with the age of consent being a tender 13 and most countries came in somewhere around the 15 mark.

I suppose what scares me about my teenage kids having sex, is the thought of them doing it for reasons other than pleasure, affection or the love thing. A lot of the younger generation just do it in order to have done it. And I’m terrified at the thoughts of girls being used by boys – old fashioned, I know, but I am old, so I’m allowed to be. So I changed my mind about the ten foot wall and the gun. I’ve decided that my kids can bring home their smelly, spotty teen beaus if it means the objective of the encounters is consensual pleasure. I just don’t want to hear them though, and I refuse to give breakfast to any of them. At a stretch they can use the kitchen and have some cereal once I’ve moved into the living room in order to pretend to myself that my children are playing with Action Man and Barbie and only love Mammy and will never grow up, well not until they’re 35 anyway. 

For those planning to travel. A list of the age of consent in Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe

Is This Berlin?

I’m a couchsurfer, ( www.couchsurfing.org ) Being one means you’re a thick idiot who hosts strangers for free in your house. The deal is meant to be that after the strangers have come and emptied out your fridge, been sick on your spare bed and nicked a few books, they will also write feedback on the website saying that ur not a psycho killer and that it’s ok for other people to let you stay on their couch should you ever recover your losses and get out of the house. Then you can travel the world by asking people if you can stay on their sofas and they say yes because they read all these nice things about you online.

I had this notion that it would be interesting to meet people from all around the world and show them Galway, but most of the visitors we got were extremely boring eastern Europeans who kept their food in a separate plastic bag and got up early to do yoga.

So last week when I arrived in Berlin I wasn’t sure whether I should really go and stay in some weirdo’s house or not, but given that I was broke and on my own, the idea of talking to a grown up and not spending my life savings on two nights in a cheap hotel did become attractive.

I stayed with Angie, a woman of my age (and that means the age where you stop saying your age), and her 15 year old daughter. Angie handed me a key and told me she’d be out all night. The daughter was going out somewhere too, but she’d be back.

Suddenly I was glad that I was staying. It meant that Angie could stay out all night and there would be someone there to babysit the daughter. I could make myself useful. But the15 year old already had a babysitter for the night: her boyfriend.

The apartment was only one stop away from the central station, but I was tired, so I strolled to the corner of the road where a convenient sidewalk pizzeria lured me in with pizzas for €3.50, the same price as the wine. I’d spent all day seeing the sights: Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and I’d sat in café’s around Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. But this pizzeria on the street corner was the business. Women in burqa’s stuck their heads out of pokey apartment windows, shouting at kids playing street football in Turkish jerseys: the kind of kids who speak broken German but have never been outside Berlin. And old girl sat at a table opposite me and ordered another beer. She had the usual collection of bags full of things that should be discarded but would always weigh her down.

A fat couple ordered ice creams after their dinner: massive big coupes with cream and syrup. I wanted to do the same, but I was too embarrassed to, being a fatty myself. There was one of those walk aids parked at their table, the type with wheels and a handy ledge to put shopping on. I didn’t know which of them it belonged to. Maybe they took turns. I could see my future.

It wasn’t the best pizza ever, and the wine wasn’t a 1985 Barolo, but it was real Berlin. The old girl lit a cigarette. I wondered what she was thinking. I hoped nothing. People destroy themselves with thinking.

A man in a turban parked his bicycle and a car drove past blaring oriental music.

I could hear the waitress scream angry Italian at someone in the kitchen. A peroxide blonde with a red faced, bearded man joined the old girl with the beer. They ordered more beer, and when they sat down I noticed that the blonde had a dog in her handbag.

I ordered another glass of wine and pretended to read a book. Another burqa leaned out of an upstairs window and screamed at a child. Forget my fluent German, I couldn’t understand a word and I was loving it. The heart of Berlin.