tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42230312595244862232024-02-07T19:33:51.668+00:00Heatseeker ReviewsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger365125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-62605618396842967742014-03-04T18:47:00.003+00:002014-03-08T15:25:32.679+00:00Show, don't tell - but what does that actually mean?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Writers who escape from the malign and clammy fingers of the English teacher and take to fiction are always being told that the way to connect with a reader is to 'Show, don't tell'. But what does it actually mean? If you say, for instance:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"> – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.</span></i></span></blockquote>
is this showing or telling? I'll tell you what it is: it's telling. Because the reader is being given a nice big slab of information; you, the writer, are gracing that reader with your opinion and your viewpoint, and nothing's actually happening.<br />
On the other hand, this –<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Is that the mill?” he asked.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Yes.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I do not remember it.” </span></blockquote>
- is showing. But why?<br />
This is why: in the first piece, the beginning of Charles Dickens' stunning pageturner about the French Revolution, <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, Dickens is setting out the <i>mise-en-scène</i>, he's setting up the action first by telling the reader what to think.<br />
In the second piece, Ernest Hemingway's filmic <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i>, we jump straight into the action. We have a hero – for Hemingway's characters are always heroes – and a wise old man – for if they're not heroes then they're archetypes – planning to blow up a bridge.<br />
Not that Hemingway's averse to giving you his opinions, but he slithers them into your back pocket under the pretext of telling you what sort of explosives to use, or how thirsty his characters are, or – well, here he is describing his hero:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The young man, who was tall and thin, with sun-streaked fair hair, and a wind- and sun-burned face, who wore the sun-faded flannel shirt, a pair of peasant’s trousers and rope-soled shoes, leaned over, put his arm through one of the leather pack straps and swung the heavy pack up onto his shoulders. He worked his arm through the other strap and settled the weight of the pack against his back. His shirt was still wet from where the pack had rested.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I have it up now,” he said. “How do we go?”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We climb,” Anselmo said.</span></blockquote>
Very sneaky. But very effective. Not that it's the only only way to write. But it's the only way to write when you're starting to write fiction, because Show, Don't Tell is the magic spell that will free you from the cruel enchantment of those evil English teachers.<br />
When you start to write, you're almost always delighted with all the gorgeous words. Wow! You can use words like 'evanescent'! And 'recursive'!<br />
But you'll go badly wrong if you let the words get you into their net. Because the purpose of writing fiction isn't to show that you've eaten a dictionary. The purpose of writing is to change your reader, by causing an emotional reaction in him, by moving him, by making him see things as you do.<br />
And to do this, you have to get him breathing in synch with you. You have to get the reader feeling that he's experiencing the action.<br />
The best way to do this is to write in action, in scenes. You can give the reader information, but do it in a way that makes the reader control it. I don't know if you remember a film from the 1980s called <i>Diva</i>, about a Vietnamese courier in love with an opera singer who's visiting Paris? In the middle of an intensely complicated and arty and très très French series of twists and turns, the villains corner one of our heroes in a friend's warehouse, where he's hiding out.<br />
We've met this friend, Gorodish, before – when we first meet him, he's chopping onions, wearing a snorkel and a mask to protect himself against the tear-inducing fumes. Later, as one of these same villains is smirkingly about to kill someone, Gorodish appears from behind him, cracks an ampoule of something magical, and the villain's eyes turn up and he folds up into unconsciousness.<br />
Now, Gorodish reappears in the dark, and quietly swings the switch that controls the lights so that it's over the un-railed-off hole where the industrial lift comes up and down. The switch has a red bulb lighting it up so you can see it in the dark.<br />
Teeth gleaming in anticipation, the villain reaches over for the switch, and "Aaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!!" disappears, and there's a crash below.<br />
Now, that's good writing.<br />
What do you remember from the books you love most? Almost invariably, it's a scene. You may love it for what it portends, like this scene from Pádraic Colum's <i>The King of Ireland's Son</i> –<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Prince," said the old fellow looking up at him, "if you can play a game as well as you can sing a song, I'd like if you would sit down beside me."</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I can play any game," said the King of Ireland's Son. He fastened his horse to the branch of a tree and sat down on the heap of stones beside the old man.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"What shall we play for?" said the gray old fellow.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Whatever you like," said the King of Ireland's Son.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"If I win you must give me anything I ask, and if you win I shall give you anything you ask. Will you agree to that?"</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"If it is agreeable to you it is agreeable to me," said the King of Ireland's Son.</span></blockquote>
- when you immediately know that this easygoing young lad, who'll go a bit of the road with anyone, is about to get himself into more trouble than he can easily get out of.<br />
Foreshadowing like this is a lovely compliment to the reader: the writer gives the reader a bit of information that's going to come in handy, and the reader is delighted to guess what's likely to happen.<br />
Colum could, of course, have simply told the reader:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Now, little did the King of Ireland's Son know it, but the man who was asking to play a game of chess with him was a dangerous enchanter"</span></blockquote>
– and a less skilled writer would have done so. That would be telling.<br />
Instead, he chose to show the unfortunate young lad as his inattention and sloppy good nature topples him from the indulged life of a spoilt boy into all the difficulties and sorrows of an adventurer. And because he showed it, the reader followed eagerly after.<br />
What's your favourite book? What do you remember from it? You may, for instance, remember Jane Austen's famous first line from the comic romance Pride and Prejudice –<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.</span></blockquote>
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- but you only remember this nice piece of cattiness because of the action that starts almost immediately -<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"My dear Mr Bennet,'' said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?''</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Bennet replied that he had not.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"But it is,'' returned she; "for Mrs Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.''</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Bennet made no answer.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Do not you want to know who has taken it?'' cried his wife impatiently.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.''</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was invitation enough.</span></blockquote>
And what you remember from the story that follows, with all its satisfying misunderstandings and star-crossings, is almost certainly not Austen's superb prose, the epitome of a well-informed maiden aunt's murmurings, but the action: Mrs Bennet's efforts to get her daughters married to wealthy Mr Bingley and other good prospects; sensible, ethical Elizabeth's dislike of high-nosed Mr Darcy, the schemings of the seducer Wickham, and Elizabeth's turnaround when she discovers that Mr Darcy has secretly paid Wickham's debts so that he can marry… well, you know.<br />
What do you remember of <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>? Certainly most of the rest is lost to you, while that scene where the worthless Sidney Carton changes place with his heroic lookalike Charles Darney and steps onto the platform of the guillotine with the words "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done…" to save his life and give him to the woman Carton loves.<br />
What do you remember of <i>The Call of the Wild</i>? Every word of Jack London's book is action – and you'll remember the scenes where the dog Buck is rescued after long episodes of brutality, when Buck saves his rescuer from a river, and the end, where Buck, now free, returns to mourn his master.<br />
<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>? There's plenty of resonant language, which you remember because it's woven in with the emotions: if you're asked to recall any scene, it'll be the balcony scene and the death of the two lovers through misunderstandings.<br />
Every good writer does this: brings the story into the consciousness of the reader. Look at Chekhov starting a story:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a béret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same béret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You know immediately what kind of person Gurov is, from just this short passage. Even when Chekhov goes on to give you some information about the character – </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago -- had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race."</span></blockquote>
- he does it in such a way that it's causing you, the reader, to form your own opinions, slyly making you feel a sharp dislike of Mr Gurov.<br />
Even in Tipperary man Laurence Sterne's hilarious 18th-century romp through France, A Sentimental Journey -<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They order, said I, this matter better in France. - You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the world. - Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, That one and twenty miles sailing, for ’tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights: - I’ll look into them: so, giving up the argument, - I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches, - “the coat I have on,” said I, looking at the sleeve, “will do;” - took a place in the Dover stage; and the packet sailing at nine the next morning, - by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestably in France, that had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the droits d’aubaine; - my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, - portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King of France; - even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from my neck! - Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast! - By heaven! Sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, ’tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with! -</span></blockquote>
while Sterne is chattering like the chattiest friend you've ever had, you're getting lots of info from <i>the music of what's happening</i>, from what you're being shown, not told.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-91542812283701930712014-01-28T10:07:00.000+00:002014-01-28T10:07:29.931+00:00Violent prologues<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Reader by Derek Kinzett</td></tr>
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Fashionable thrillers of the 2000s have an editor-driven trope: the violent prologue, involving someone dying horribly, killed by an unseen villain or a villain who appears only peripherally as a figure of evil in the rest of the book. I find it a pain in the ass, frankly.<br />
It seems to have been brought into the mainstream by the Scandinavians. You know the kind of thing -<br />
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Nothing for two thousand miles but snow. The only light: a blood-red seeping of lamplight from the windows of a wooden hovel. If someone is screaming, no one is around to hear.<br />If you could go inside, you would see a child, strapped to a bed stolen last year from the Ásgeir Haraldssen Hospital for Unfortunate Mites. She is unconscious, yet one wrist still strains at the bindings made from antique Rolex straps. Blood falls slowly and sinks into the ice. Below, somewhere deep below, the ice fish sense the scent of cooling human corpuscles…</blockquote>
Editors love this kind of thing. "That's it, bring the reader into the story with a bang," they say, rubbing their hands. "A good strong opening. Involve the reader. Get the heart pumping."<br />
Yet some of the most wonderful book openings in the world, that drag the reader in by the hair of the head and make it impossible to put the book down, have no violence at all. Looky:<br />
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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.<br />The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. <i>(George Orwell: 1984)</i></blockquote>
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Or the opening of <i>The Man in the High Castle</i>, Philip K Dick's dystopian multiple-parallel-futures novel, set (mainly) in the Japanese-run San Francisco of a world in which Japan has conquered and occupied the United States in World War II:</div>
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For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. But the valuable shipment from the Rocky Mountain States had not arrived. As he opened up his store on Friday morning and saw only letters on the floor by the mail slot he thought, I'm going to have an angry customer.<br />Pouring himself a cup of instant tea from the five-cent wall dispenser he got a broom and began to sweep; soon he had the front of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. ready for the day, all spick and span with the cash register full of change, a fresh vase of marigolds, and the radio playing background music. Outdoors along the sidewalk businessmen hurried toward their offices along Montgomery Street. Far off, a cable car passed; Childan halted to watch it with pleasure. Women in their long colorful silk dresses . . . he watched them, too. Then the phone rang. He turned to answer it.<br />"Yes," a familiar voice said to his answer. Childan's heart sank. "This is Mr. Tagomi. Did my Civil War recruiting poster arrive yet, sir? Please recall; you promised it sometime last week." The fussy, brisk voice, barely polite, barely keeping the code. "Did I not give you a deposit, sir, Mr. Childan, with that stipulation? This is to be a gift, you see. I explained that. A client."<br />"Extensive inquiries," Childan began, "which I've had made at my own expense, Mr. Tagomi, sir, regarding the promised parcel, which you realize originates outside of this region and is therefore-"</blockquote>
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Or what about the opening of Marian Keyes' first book, <i>Rachel's Holiday</i>?</div>
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They said I was a drug addict. I found that hard to come to terms with. I was a middle-class, convent-educated girl whose drug use was strictly recreational. And surely drug addicts were thinner?</blockquote>
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You want to write an opening that your reader can't put down? Bring the reader straight into your protagonist's life. Slap the protagonist with the central problem of his or her story. Now you've got your reader. Keep talking.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-89819343060622788952013-11-05T14:56:00.000+00:002014-04-27T18:22:34.130+01:00State murders of children in Ireland's early years<div style="text-align: left;">
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The 1922 government run by the immediate successors of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith was responsible for the murders of children, members of the republican boy scouts body called the Fíanna.<br />
These murders started just before the sudden deaths of Collins and Griffith - Collins killed in a gunfight on August 22, 1922 in his native Cork, Griffith of a heart attack 10 days before, and continued until after the end of the Civil War.<br />
The epicentre was their Criminal Investigation Department, the sinister group based at Oriel House on the corner of Fenian Street and Westland Row, which assassinated a series of anti-Treaty republicans in 1922.<br />
Kevin O'Higgins, the Minister of Home Affairs, a nephew of Parnell's sidekick and betrayer Tim Healy, had unleashed them with the cool statement "what was needed to put down the 'Irregulars', were more local executions, and we should just kill them anyway". The 'Irregulars' was what the Free State government called the anti-Treaty republicans, carefully moulding the language.<br />
The CID began with the killing of Harry Boland on August 1 1922; a week before his death he'd said "I know too much about Mick [Collins]; he won't let me live."<br />
Three days after Collins' August 8 1922 death two Fianna boys were picked up at Newcomen Bridge - the bridge where James Joyce sets the beginning of his paedophile story An Encounter, in <i>Dubliners</i>. They were shot dead in front of witnesses in Whitehall, near what's now Dublin City University, in what was assumed to be a reprisal for Colllins' killing. The killings continued, at the rate of one or two a week.<br />
One of these long-forgotten dead was 17-year-old Edwin Hughes, who, on October 7 1922 was picked up by the secret police based at Oriel House, along with two friends, Brendan Holohan, also 17, and 16-year-old Joseph Rogers.<br />
Edwin had grown up in a respectable civil service household headed by his father Mark, a temporary clerk in the Public Record Office, and his old uncle Martin, a former assistant clerk in the Education Office.<br />
In the 1911 census there were four boys in the house: Edwin, then six, and his brother Gerald, eight, and his cousins Martin and William, aged 16 and 18.<br />
His friend Brendan Holohan was the son of a telegraphist in the GPO, and was one of a stepfamily of six children.<br />
The third lad, Joe Rogers, was the youngest of a commission agent's long-tailed family of five children - his eldest brother was 26 years older than him. A 'commission agent' was a bookie; his father was the popular Dublin bookmaker Thomas Rogers; Joe was already a promising apprentice mechanical engineer.<br />
A pal of the boys, Jennie O'Toole (probably the child who appears in that 1911 census as Mary Josephine O'Toole, daughter of a railway auditor living in nearby Richmond Road), was pasting up republican posters and received some abuse from another neighbour. This shouter was Captain Pat Moynihan of the Irish (Free State) Army, who lived on Clonliffe Road, and whose home had been one of Michael Collins' main typing depots. As a postal worker, Moynihan had been Collins' inside man fingering mail deliveries that could be raided. Now he was the senior officer in Oriel House…<br />
To free Jennie from being shouted at, the three boys took on the postering with her, and were arrested. They were taken into a lorry at Clonliffe Road in Drumcondra by Charlie Dalton and Nicholas Tobin, G-men from Oriel House and also from this same neighbourhood.<br />
Charlie Dalton was just 19. He lived a coupe of streets away from his victims, in St Columba's Avenue. Son of an American father (now the manager of a laundry) and an Irish mother, he was second of a family of five. His brother was Major-General Emmet Dalton, now aged 24, head of intelligence for the Free State, who had been at the side of his adored friend Michael Collins six weeks before when he died in a republican ambush on August 22.<br />
Nicholas Tobin wasn't much older; he was 23, son of a hardware clerk from Cork; the 1911 census has the family in Kilkenny - the parents plus William (soon gaelicised to Liam) Tobin, who would be Collins' chief profiler of assassination targets during the War of Independence, and Nicholas, and their sister Katherine, along with two boarders, a literature teacher and a cycle mechanic; life is full of interest and variety.<br />
The CID men Emmet and Charlie Dalton, Nicholas Tobin and Pat Moynihan had all been members of Michael Collins' 'Squad' – the group of assassins who carried out the targeted killings of British agents in Ireland, most famously wiping out the British intelligence network known as the Cairo Gang, who had been sent to kill the Irish leaders, on November 21, 1920 (an account from the British parliament's record, Hansard, quotes Charlie Dalton's own book on the events of that night <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1931/may/06/with-the-dublin-brigade-1917-1921)">http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1931/may/06/with-the-dublin-brigade-1917-1921)</a>.<br />
Now, however, Charlie and Nicholas were on a different job: the killing of those who opposed the new government, including children.<br />
The three teenager leafletters left the Hughes house in Clonliffe Road at 10.30pm on October 7, 1922. They were seen in Charlie Dalton's military lorry a little later; this was the last time they were seen alive. Their bodies were dumped near the Naas Road, where the Red Cow roundabout on the M50 is now, and were found the next day. Soon, Nicholas Tobin would be dead too, shot by his Oriel House colleagues as they attacked a bomb factory in Gardiner Street.<br />
At the boys' inquest, Dr Frederick Ryan, who performed the post mortem, described the wounds that killed them.<br />
"Joseph Rogers' overcoat was saturated with blood," he said. "He had 16 wounds altogether. There was an entrance wound in the back of the skull, about an inch and a half from the ear. There was no exit wound. It was possible for a man to inflict this wound while both were standing. There was no singeing. In the left upper jaw there was an entrance wound, but no corresponding exit wound. There were superficial wounds on the left side of the body corresponding to the nipple, on the left side of the abdomen, a punctured wound on the left side of the nose, an entrance and exit wound at the base of the left index finger, superficial wounds on the left arm, an entrance and exit wound in the middle of the left thigh, a large contused wound on the left shin bone, and an incised wound on the left knee, probably caused after death." In his opinion, the wound at the back of the skull would be sufficient to cause death; so would those through the right jaw or in the nose. There was no singeing in the head. His body had been identified by his brother Michael.<br />
Brendan Holohan's father identified his body. The doctor reported that "Regarding Brendan Holohan there was a bullet hole through the peak of his cap, but no mark on his head. The coat was torn on the right elbow, and there was a wound through the flesh of the arm, corresponding with the perforation in the sleeve. There were two entrance wounds, four inches from each other, in the right chest, but he did not find any exits. They were clean cut, such as might be made by an instrument of the same diameter as a pencil. The clothing was perforated at the place corresponding with these wounds. There was a wound over the right shoulder blade, which was an old one. There was an entrance wound in the lower portion of the abdomen, and he found a bullet lodged in the surface over the left hip bone and the shin. There was a wound in the back of the skull in the occipital protuberance, which took a downward direction into the neck and severed the spinal cord. This was sufficient to cause death immediately. If a man was standing on top of a ditch he could have been shot in the head, otherwise he must have been lying down."<br />
In the case of Edwin, he said, "The first wound, on the right-hand side corresponding to the second rib, took a horizontal direction and pierced the great vessels of the heart. There was no exit wound to it. There was no singeing. Another bullet pierced the overcoat on the right side, but there was no mark on the inner coat or vest. There were wounds in the abdomen and on the left thigh. On the right knee and right arm there were superficial wounds, such as might be caused by grazing bullets. The clothes were cut as if by barbed wire. The abdomen wound might possibly be caused by a prod of some instrument, but that was not probable." In his opinion, the wound to the chest caused death.<br />
Edwin's body had been identified by his elder brother, Gerald.<br />
A particularly tragic aspect to the killing comes from the Waterford Quaker diarist Rosamond Jacob, who wrote on January 25 1923:<br />
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"[Mrs Kiernan] told us about Edwin Hughes & his brother too. He had an elder brother Gerald, who was offered a good job at Oriel House some time ago (he had been in the IRA & was still republican, but was engaged to a girl who said she wd have nothing to do with him if he didn't take this job). Against the wish of his mother & brother he took it, for the sake of the girl – not liking it at all himself. The night Edwin was arrested, Gerald passed by the lorry as it was standing still, & saw Edwin in it, in a navy light overcoat. He scarcely believed it was Edwin till he went home & found E not there, and learned from his mother that he had gone out in that overcoat. Then came the news of E's murder, & the investigation at the inquest. Gerald gave up the job at Oriel House, and seemed to lose all interest in life – thought of nothing but Edwin & his own late association with the CJD [Criminal Justice Department] - and in 3 weeks died of a broken heart – no illness apparent at all."</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-22103661756239955432013-10-16T15:21:00.002+01:002013-10-26T13:47:17.425+01:00Dublin City Council arts funding<br />
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<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/politics/files/2009/06/big-jim-larkin-by-frank-miller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/politics/files/2009/06/big-jim-larkin-by-frank-miller.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The deadline for applications for arts funding from Dublin City Council is November 4, 2013. The council's arts officers ran a seminar on Tuesday October 15 to help people to apply.</div>
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Four things to remember: that deadline is 5pm on Monday. If you get your application in at five minutes past five, it will be refused. There are no days of grace.</div>
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If you're applying for funding, this is not given for 'arts practice' - it won't fund you sitting at home and writing your novel or painting your picture, or going to London to research your history in the libraries there. It is given as a community grant, to help the arts in Dublin, so your project must have some outreach into the community.</div>
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The council prefers for at least 30 per cent of funding to be provided by other sources - so if you have a project, get a commitment from other sources to pay for a third of it, and you'll have a better chance of your grant succeeding.</div>
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And all applications need proof backing their claims: if you say that your community group is going to have a play put on in the Abbey Theatre, you need a letter from the Abbey management saying this. "The more you can give - backup letters of support from organisations you've worked with, the more we can see of your practice," the audience was told."</div>
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City Arts Officer Ray Yeates presented a seminar and question-and-answer session on these grants in the Wood Quay conference venue on October 15, with help from arts officers Jim Doyle and Sinead Connolly, administrative officer Victoria Kearney and Jonathan Ekwe of the arts office's administrative team.</div>
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There are three types of funding, Ray Yeates said: revenue funding, project funding and neighbourhood funding.</div>
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Revenue funds groups that have an ongoing relationship with the council; no more of these are being added, this group has been capped, and the groups being currently funded are being evaluated randomly.</div>
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So that leaves project funding and neighbourhood funding, each of which offer grants ranging from €2,000 to €10,000.</div>
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The arts staff said that there are much more applications for project funding - so neighbourhood funding might be a good place to target. </div>
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Your supporting material for your grant application - letters from artists and theatres and community groups and so on - should fit into A4 folder</div>
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The applications are read by four people - arts officers or qualifiers - with the applications randomly distributed to lessen the chance of people being swayed by knowing applicants.</div>
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Dublin is small, so the arts officers probably know nine out of ten of the applicants, but with new applicants, everyone gets interested. "At the team meeting, we start to debate, if there are new things, if there's a change in a grant, differences or exceptions," said Mr Yeates.</div>
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At this stage a shortlist is made.</div>
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Arts grants are not given by arts office, but by the City Council, they stressed. There are two external examiners - for example, last year's were visual arts curator Cliodhna Shaffrey and a playwright from Cork.</div>
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If there is a governance issue - for example, a conflict of interest or a concept that's not filled out, these examiners will look at the application.</div>
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Then two councillors come & are given all of the applications. These councillors ask searching questions - "We sometimes have to advocate for a project". </div>
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There's more than 100 years of experience going to debate your application, between the arts officers, the councillors and the external examiners.</div>
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This procedure can be sent to you in written form - it's public and transparent. (<a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/RecreationandCulture/ArtsOffice/ArtsFunding/Documents/ArtsFundingCriteriaGuidelines2013.pdf">http://www.dublincity.ie/RECREATIONANDCULTURE/ARTSOFFICE/ARTSFUNDING/Pages/ArtsFunding.aspx</a>)</div>
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The core criteria used for judging applications are: </div>
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<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Quality of artistic work - innovation, imagination, deeper thinking, work that has reframed an idea into another idea - "Knock us out," said Mr Yeates.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Audience being served - is there an audience and what is it.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Feasible project design with realistic financial projections: "If you only give €2,000 and we have to raise €10,000, how can this be realistic? Proof, for example if you've had a funded project and it worked. Common sense - we're looking for if it'll <i>probably</i> work."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Accessibility for diverse audiences and participants in terms of location, cost, people with special needs.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Ability to secure other source of funding, including in-kind funding (such as a free theatre, or a fashion designer who has given costumes, etc) (see specific criteria relating to different grants). "We want to see the money going on <i>this</i> project. You can value in-kind funding yourself - for instance, if you get a week in Smock Alley that's worth €2,000."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Artists' fees in accordance with professional practice. "It is OK for artists to take shares, for example, in the box office, but we prefer them to be paid. We really don't want artists to be working for nothing." The context is very important. "But if we saw most of the money going on marketing, not on the artists, that would break the criteria."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Public presentation of work in the city - "We represent the public - though action research projects will be considered, for example, workshops, etc in neighbourhoods. We don't fund research." </li>
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Research projects may be covered. "If you're at home researching the impact of 17th-century arts funding on today, we won't fund that; but if you're studying impact on different communities, and going to do an installation, then that's in the public area, involving more people than just you on your own - it's <i>action research</i>. You need to name this community - 'hope to', 'aspire to' don't work, and you need supporting documentation showing that they agree. Verify everything. Don't say 'we're going to play at the Abbey Theatre' - prove it."</div>
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Because this funding comes from Dublin City Council, the council is only allowed to fund things that happen in Dublin.</div>
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In the case of a non-Irish person applying, "We're entirely blind to where you're from; as long as it's happening in Dublin you're as welcome as flowers in May," said Mr Yeates, to a happy laugh from the audience. "We're doing our best to engage with others who are non-Irish, non-graduates, etc."</div>
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The arts office has done an analysis of the residential spaces; 50% have gone to non-Irish applicants - and about 50% of the non-Irish are north American, so non-European. Some of these are employed to live here for a year and work, for example in the Red Stables residential studios. </div>
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The specific criteria for Project Grants:</div>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">A specific thing that you want to do that will start & finish at a particular time. </li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Quality and artistic ambition.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Track record of the individual or team - "Tell us about it, we'll get help to understand it. If you're new, we have to judge. We have a tiny amount of money for an enormous number of applicants. You may, for instance, form partnerships. Track record is important. If you've no track record, you've never been to college, etc, it's difficult, so show you have help."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Feasibility of project within known and realisable resources: "We want crazy ideas, but we want them possible. Put the thought into the left brain: time, planning, numbers. Known and realisable, not aspirational."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Ability to secure at least 30% of your funding from other sources. "We're an investor. We're hoping to give you a stamp of approval."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Budget to include professional fees </li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Public presentation of work in Dublin City. "We're all for making things happen, and there isn't a hierarchy," said Mr Yeates.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Project must have a start and finish date - three months, one day, etc; better if it's within one year, but not necessary. </li>
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If you don't use up all of the grant - if the arts office give out 100 grants and 15 come back and have difficulties, the arts office may have trouble keeping this funding. "If you get into trouble with the project, don't suddenly change the project, come back to us. Change of date isn't too bad, but change of core details will have to go into an appeals project. Sometimes it's too much of a change and we can't do it."</div>
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Who should apply: "We realise that to make something happen in the public domain you have to apply - but you may need to have a team of people. Or if it's an individual, you have to tell us how it's going to happen.</div>
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"We're very used to visual artists applying as individuals; we're not after subsidy of practice, but after a specific project - show how you'll go into a particular venue, etc."</div>
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A question from the audience: "The 30% funding requirement from partners - how do you get over the problem of funding being related to possibility of other funding - for instance 'I've got a promise of money if I do the event'?" Mr Yeates said: "You just have to have it on paper. We want the application to help your project work. Think of it as if it were your own money you were putting in: what would you believe. And the 30% needs to be - at least some of it - in cash and not in kind."</div>
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Any individual arts organisation can only be funded for a single project per year. </div>
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The response on funding comes in January, and the project can't start before January, because the project is for a particular year. "If we can be flexible we sometimes give an indication - but without the city council voting, sometimes we can't give the grant till February because of date of council meeting - we can't give the grant without the vote."</div>
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You can draw the fund down pretty quickly when it's announced; it depends on what time of year your project takes place. "If you get your letter saying you've received funding, just contact us and say when you're starting, etc. We do have a draw-down procedure, with reporting, etc."</div>
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Neighbourhood funding criteria:</div>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">To animate & support local arts activity in the city. Not to support community development primarily, though it may do that powerfully.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">To contribute to enhancing/creating a sense of local identity. For example, consider, if you're working in Inchicore and you're doing something with no local relevance 'is it a mushroom or a parachute' - are local people growing up into it.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Connection and interaction of the arts activity to the neighbourhood.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Involvement of a professional artist or artists in the project. "This is important because local people can't just think 'let's all be artists' - we want a professional input."</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Reaching specific populations (for example, young people, old, underserved populations) - like a project that used Muslim women in dance project using the movements they use in prayer.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Ability to meet cultural diverse interest through inclusion.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Level of involvement of participating groups, eg input into project design.</li>
<li style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;">Ability to secure at least 30% funding from other source.</li>
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"We're not getting as many applications for neighbourhood funding as we want," said Mr Yeates.</div>
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An artist can apply for neighbourhood funding by herself, if the project has relevance to a Dublin neighbourhood.</div>
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As many as possible should be met; "otherwise I get into picking which are more important".</div>
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Almost the same percentage of the available money goes to neighbourhood and project funding; "even though we get vastly more applications for project".</div>
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Applications involving sport, for instance, are acceptable, but the project needs to be something of quality.</div>
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'Neighbourhood' refers to a specific geographic area, but a group could be in a neighbourhood. If your group straddles two areas, for instance Dublin city council and SDCC, "it's ok, but we're going to debate it". </div>
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If you apply and fall into wrong section - you apply for neighbourhood funding when you should have applied for project - "I just cannot get over how kind people are; I've seen people say tthey applied for the wrong thing' - so applications can get sent to correct one of neighbourhood or project if the application was wrong in first place."</div>
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The arts officers will go to Vimeo or YouTube to view links in applications - "but test your links, and also give an alternative in case one link doesn't work; and don't rely on your link to make the case for you; your case has to be made in writing. Think about us - there are five of us and if you've got an error, we really can't be calling you up to ask for elucidation."</div>
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In the neighbourhood category, "we often get excellent ideas but no proof of the quality of the artist you intend to work with, and that really weakens your application".</div>
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Also, you need to document the fact that the artist is happy to work with you, happy to work in the community, etc. "Get them to say, in a letter, that they are happy and involved. Evidence, evidence, evidence. Your vision must be based on reality."<br />
<br />
<b>Apply here: </b><br />
<a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/RECREATIONANDCULTURE/ARTSOFFICE/ARTSFUNDING/Pages/ArtsFunding.aspx" target="_blank">Dublin City Council Arts Office</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-83848129110910149892013-10-03T13:09:00.000+01:002013-10-19T13:16:15.533+01:00Chicken Normandy, a delicious winter treat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgklcVT55IIWclSNBxWtFU-tMZSrlAcrAOwPNJOhiJLHNcGFOEkMArwtFWNV4O91Mx120p17z4-GVhxS0rcaKXbB17COSnqkDnK1LSsF7_sJl3gJTxzo8Sh3q1dwCRx-J-LT0F6XBF9iT-0/s1600/Brid+and+red+unbrella.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgklcVT55IIWclSNBxWtFU-tMZSrlAcrAOwPNJOhiJLHNcGFOEkMArwtFWNV4O91Mx120p17z4-GVhxS0rcaKXbB17COSnqkDnK1LSsF7_sJl3gJTxzo8Sh3q1dwCRx-J-LT0F6XBF9iT-0/s320/Brid+and+red+unbrella.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
In the depths of winter, come home to this Norman treat, a chicken stew combining the rich meaty taste of chicken, the sweet of apples, the tart of dry cider, the salt of bacon and savoury of moutarde à l'ancienne, and the umami of mushrooms. This is the low-fat version; if you like fat, replace the yogurt with cream and don't skin the chicken.<br />
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<br />
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<b>Chicken Normandy</b></div>
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Serves four people</div>
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Ingredients</div>
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One chicken</div>
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A pint of good dry cider</div>
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Four onions</div>
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Four apples</div>
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Four streaky rashers or some lardons</div>
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2 tablespoons grain mustard</div>
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One cup yogurt</div>
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Four large flat mushrooms</div>
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2 tablespoons olive oil</div>
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2 cups rice - I like Basmatti - rinsed and boiled till fluffy</div>
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Joint and skin a chicken. Fry off the pieces in good olive oil. Add four onions, peeled but whole, and four apples, peeled, cored and chopped, and a container of lardons from Lidl or four streaky rashers. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add two tablespoons of grainy mustard and a pint of good cider ('hard cider' if you're American). Cover and cook for an hour, giving an occasional stir, then take off a cup of the liquor and add it slowly to a cup of good yogurt (Lidl's Greek yogurt is good). Add this back in gradually to the other ingredients as they cook, and add four big flat mushrooms. Stir, cover and cook for a further 30 minutes. Serve over rice or with crusty bread.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-8679108645125648482013-06-15T08:41:00.002+01:002013-06-15T08:41:58.403+01:00'Our nursery rhymes were English'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/xc528OW7p2M?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
Dublin in the 1900s "was totally Anglicised... an English city... our nursery rhymes were English and we knew all about Dick Whittington, Robin Hood and Alice in Wonderland, but we never heard of Fionn or Cúchullain.<br />
How has Ireland changed? Discuss.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-79603168124271746282013-05-11T13:19:00.001+01:002013-05-11T13:19:20.134+01:00Dialogue<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://geektyrant.com/storage/post-images/Dan%20dare%201.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1268354320585" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://geektyrant.com/storage/post-images/Dan%20dare%201.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1268354320585" width="205" /></a></div>
Where narrative is the roadway of a story, dialogue is the stream-fed pool where we stop to drink. For new writers, the fatal words their friends will always say is "Your dialogue is great - you're really good at it." This leads the unfortunate writer to neglect the story and plunge into long, self-indulgent runs of dialogue, to which their embarrassed friends respond: "[Oh no, do I have to read more of this stuff, but] your dialogue is really great."<br />
Dialogue, delicately used, is a close-up of character. Here's Vronsky watching Anna Karenina, the first time he sees her, from that old sensationalist Tolstoy's book of doomed passion:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not have said why. But recollecting that his mother was waiting for him, he went back again into the carriage.<br />"She’s very sweet, isn’t she?" said the countess of Madame Karenina. "Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We’ve been talking all the way. And so you, I hear ... vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux."<br />"I don’t know what you are referring to, maman," he answered coldly. "Come, maman, let us go."<br />Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the countess.<br />"Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother," she said. "And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell you."</blockquote>
We see Anna through Vronsky's eyes - warm, impulsive, and, of course, resolute. Then we have his mother mischief-making - and Anna letting him know that she knows full well, and making a little intimacy with him against his mother.<br />
And look at how Ernest Hemingway uses dialogue to describe love at first sight:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They were all eating out of the platter, not speaking, as is the Spanish custom. It was rabbit cooked with onions and green peppers and there were chick peas in the red wine sauce. It was well cooked, the rabbit meat flaked off the bones, and the sauce was delicious. Robert Jordan drank another cup of wine while he ate. The girl watched him all through the meal. Every one else was watching his food and eating. Robert Jordan wiped up the last of the sauce in front of him with a piece of bread, piled the rabbit bones to one side, wiped the spot where they had been for sauce, then wiped his fork clean with the bread, wiped his knife and put it away and ate the bread. He leaned over and dipped his cup full of wine and the girl still watched him.<br />Robert Jordan drank half the cup of wine but the thickness still came in his throat when he spoke to the girl.<br />“How art thou called?” he asked. Pablo looked at him quickly when he heard the tone of his voice. Then he got up and walked away. </blockquote>
Nothing is said - he just asks her what her name is. But the sensual description of the simple meal, followed by that question - a question that is really a declaration - immediately tells the reader what's going on here. More doomed love.<br />
Dialogue, if it's used right, shines a light into the character you're writing about. Dialogue is the lamp Diogenes carried: it reveals an honest man in daylight.<br />
It should never be trimmed around with the author's instructive adverbs - we should never write:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Oh, yeah?" he laughed sarcastically.</blockquote>
because if you write that, you're stealing from the readers, who should be discovering the character of the people whose story they're following, by the tone and content of their speech, not through a big authorial finger pointing down from above, saying: "Looky, this is what I mean."<br />
And remember that dialogue doesn't have to be the truth. Sometimes the most powerful words are those your readers know to be lies. In <i>Casablanca</i> there is a scene where a naive English couple is approached by a helpful stranger on the street. He puts his arm around the man's shoulder and says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I beg of you, Monsieur, watch yourself. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere, everywhere.</blockquote>
Naturally, when the Englishman pats his pocket, his wallet is gone. A wonderful piece of dialogue. A beginner would have had the earnest warning, but <i>Casablanca's</i> writers whip it around and give it a spin, by making the very man who's warning them be the thief. Fabulous.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-78743771368657502692013-05-07T10:25:00.000+01:002013-05-07T17:39:07.497+01:00Not listening to Irish radio<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Note: after writing this, I suddenly realised that the tweeter may have meant the other A word of the day: Abortion, not Austerity. Same thing is true of this, mind you: people unlikely ever to experience something sitting comfortably telling the poor and unfortunate how to live their lives.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
"<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Might we get through </span><a class="twitter-hashtag pretty-link js-nav" data-query-source="hashtag_click" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23marian&src=hash" style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #990000; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><s style="color: #c16666; text-decoration: none;">#</s><b>marian</b></a><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> without mention of the </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">word</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">?" a young woman tweeted on Sunday. "I have </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">14</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> coming for </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">lunch</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and am really not up </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">to</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The <b>A word</b> is Austerity. She didn't want to hear about poverty, debt, fear, people losing their homes - a constant topic of discussion on Marian Finucane's Sunday morning discussion programme, where well-heeled members of the middle classes chat for a couple of hours each week. </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tweeter's attitude is pretty typical of middle-class </span></span>people's feelings, though they don't necessarily express them with such brutal frankness. They have learned to put a nice veneer on their distaste, disguising it under the traditional Catholic middle-class surface of charitable pity.<br />
The attitude is why I hardly listen to Irish radio any more. Well, I do - I listen to Lyric, which drenches the house with beautiful music, or in the car to Raidió na Gaeltachta and Radio na Life, whose discussions in Irish are by people nearer to the pointy edge of that A word. But mostly I listen to them for the music too.<br />
For talk radio, it's BBC World Service. There are two advantages. The first and more serious is that the World Service takes journalism seriously. There are hardly any of the programmes that are the core of RTE's oeuvre, the groups of well-fed folk sharing their similar opinions. There is little propaganda, and when there is propaganda, well, it's from a foreign country and I can mutter "Codswallop!" and ignore it. The core of the World Service's programming does what it does best, what it has always done best: the kind of journalism that comes out of the stringent, scholarly academic training of the great English and Scottish university.<br />
The BBC has stringers in every obscure corner of the world: educated people who are also get-down-in-the-dirt journalists. If there is a political scandal in Bhutan tomorrow, you can be sure that there will be a BBC journalist opening out its layers of complexity on the airwaves within seconds of the scandal breaking. The journalist will be an insider in Bhutan, but will have no axe to grind.<br />
On the <b>A word</b>, the BBC is superb. They interview the well-heeled slavemasters in the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission, and the robber barons of the trading houses. They also keep listeners up with the latest research and theory in economics - the BBC loves academics, especially if they're fluent.<br />
They don't do much of the Talk to Joe moaning of RTE's Liveline, where the presenter presides over a series of woeful people wringing out their handkerchiefs in public over truly terrible misfortune. Instead, the World Service has phone-in programmes where experts of one sort or another answer questions from around the world, on every subject conceivable. The brilliance of these programmes lies in their absolute sense of egalitarianism. The world's greatest experts on a subject - and sometimes just well-informed and -educated amateurs - sit in panels, and the questions and comments from listeners are often as deep in their scholarship as the answers from experts - I was practically eating the radio during a wonderful recent hour-long World Book Club on F Scott Fitzgerald's <i>The Great Gatsby</i>. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p017pz6y<br />
So, no RTE for me, or rarely. I read the papers - online, I have to confess - for news about each new horror that strikes Ireland: the brutal greed of Irish politicians and their friends the developers and bankers; the latest revelations about the rape of children and the bishops' actions as accessories to the rapists in concealing their crimes, bullying their victims and sending the perpetrators on to new parishes with fresh victims and unwarned parents; the lies, the endless lies, about the enormous wealth of the Catholic church and the protected wealth class that grew out of the big farms that survived the 1840s Famine. I can't take the way Irish radio pretends - or perhaps believes - that we are the republic of equals that the republicans of the early 20th century dreamed up. I can't stand the way that salaries are growing at one end of society while at the other end people are terrified and losing everything -<i> and we're still pretending</i>. I absolutely can't stand the way that Irish radio - and it's not just RTE, I should say - is so deeply based in the world and worldview and accents of the well-heeled.<br />
RTE is particularly bad in this way: people paid hundreds of thousands of euro pontificating on the lives of those living at the officially poverty level. Do they not see how brutal this is?<br />
So for me - and, I increasingly find, for many of those I know, Irish radio is an irrelevance, an unpleasant buzzing in the ear. They listen, like me, to world services from the BBC or the American NPR stations, or they listen to French stations, or to the wonderful classical stations from Belgium or Canada or Latvia or America.<br />
It's so sad seeing the divisions coming in Ireland. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they were always there, and I didn't see them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-20043144397181787672013-04-27T20:51:00.001+01:002013-04-27T20:51:05.222+01:00Writing tips 2: the end<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A good end is as important as a good beginning, and nearly as important as a great middle. And surprisingly unusual. A perfectly ended story remains in your mind forever, its faintly astringent taste lingering on the tongue.<br />
The most famous, and one of the best, is the end of F Scott Fitzgerald's <i>The Great Gatsby</i>. Our antihero, Jay Gatsby, has spent his misspent life one one ambition: getting to the point where he can be the husband of adorable young socialite Daisy Buchanan (née Fay; good thing boys don't take their wives' names or he might have become Jay Fay).<br />
At the end Fitzgerald has his narrator, the slightly louche but perfectly socially placed Nick Carraway, standing on the edge of the sea, looking out across the bay at the house once lived in by Daisy and her horrid husband - the house Gatsby gazed longingly at every night.<br />
And Fitzgerald does a wonderful thing: he encapsulates his story, but more, he encapsulates all of fiction, every story, because what are stories about but seeking the future in the past:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.<br />Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning —<br />So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.</blockquote>
Fitzgerald has done a fabulous thing: he has made a philosophical statement, and it's a world-changer, but it's also not the 'moral' of his story - Fitzgerald would not be so cheap or so ill-mannered as to offer the reader who has done him the honour of entering his story a moral.<br />
<br />
Not so with the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitisyn, whose story <i>Matryona's Place</i> is a wonder and a jewel - until its last two lines. He manages to take a lovely, delicate story and turn it into a finger-wagging lesson, undoing all the subtle, gorgeous storytelling of the previous 38 pages and leaving the reader going "Bleaghhhh!"<br />
In<i> Matryona's Place</i>, our narrator arrives home, and goes to the Personnel Office to ask for a job in some remote village where they need a mathematics teacher. He's sent to one place, but it's not of-the-soil enough for him - they buy their food and drag it home in sacks. So he goes back to Personnel, and describes what he wants, and they send him to the village called Peatproduce.<br />
Here, the only person who can put him up is the aged Matryona. Her wooden house is lovingly described - its traditional Russian stove, her beloved fig plants set all around the windows, the mice, and the five layers of thick ribbed wallpaper stuck together and standing out from the wall that the mice run behind; the lame cat that pursues them; the miserable goat.<br />
It becomes gradually clear that the teacher has returned from a prison camp. He and Matryona live happily together. She's hard-working - apart from her daily work, every day she has some special job, like collecting a load of turf semi-illegally, making pickles, collecting mushrooms in the forest.<br />
At the time the teacher goes to live with her, Matryona is spending a lot of time going from office to office trying to get a pension. Her husband disappeared in the war; she always worked on the collective farm, but apparently not on "productive work", so she's not entitled to any pension for herself, but only as her husband's widow.<br />
Meanwhile, all the neighbours call on her all the time for work - harnessed in the five-woman plough, collecting turf, digging, etc.<br />
Eventually, Matryona is dragged into an unwise enterprise by her brother-in-law - the man she really should have married, and a thoroughly bad lot, spoiled by disappointment in love. She is horribly killed by a train, and her mangled body is brought home. Her body is prepared, the relatives quarrelling over who will get the house.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Everything she said about Matryona was disapproving: she was dirty, she was a bad housekeeper, she wasn't thrifty, she wouldn't even keep a pig because she didn't like the idea of fattening up a beast to kill it, and she was stupid enough to work for other people without pay...</blockquote>
Solzhenitsyn beautifully writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only then, listening to the disapproving comments of her sister-in-law, did I see an image of Matryona which I had never perceived before, even while living under her roof.<br />It was true - every other cottage had its pig, yet she had none. What could be easier than to fatten up a greedy pig whose sole object in life was food? Boil it a bucketful of swill three times a day, make it the centre of one's existence, then slaughter it for lard and bacon. Yet Matryona never wanted one...<br />Misunderstood and rejected by her husband, a stranger to her own family despite her happy, amiable temperament, comical, so foolish that she worked for others for no reward, this woman, who had buried all her six children, had stored up no earthly goods. Nothing but a dirty white goat, a lame cat and a row of fig plants.</blockquote>
It's the perfect ending. But then Solzhenitisyn loses it. He can't trust the reader to get the point; he takes it out and slaps it down on the table like a side of fish:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
None of us who lived close to her perceived that she was that one righteous person without whom, as the saying goes, no city can stand.<br />Nor the world.</blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-81351738230247738942013-04-24T09:34:00.000+01:002013-04-24T09:39:35.170+01:00ElsewhenThis is the first story in my collection <i>Love</i>. When I wrote it years ago, it was a playful homage to the mediaeval love stories based on the model brought back from the Middle East. I never knew it would prove so prophetic.<br />
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ELSEWHEN, the sky darkened over Fatima Mansions. Friday night, the call of a muezzin mixed with the Angelus bell and the handbrake turns of a stolen BMW. Joy spoke from the concreted yards.</div>
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The Omurchu caravan was coming into town, the camels tired and cranky as they trudged down Christ Church Hill. Tomáisín saw a door open, glimpsed in the blue paraffin light a family saying the Rosary, detailed as a Mansur miniature: grandmother, wives, daughters, faces lifted to the statue of the Virgin. </div>
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The door closed, Tomáisín and the lead camel swinging forward to guide the line of beasts through the evening traffic jam.</div>
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A Guard held up his white-gloved hand as the Angelus rang, sounding its eighteen notes from the cathedral high behind them, the notes echoed and tolled by mosques here and there in the city. </div>
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The traffic drew to a halt, drivers bowing their heads as the bell-notes struck on car radios. A one-handed man begging for a cigarette stopped with his mark, both faced east.</div>
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As the notes faded the spell of stillness fell away. Tomáisín's camel was bitten and lashed back. The ex-thief's cigarette was lit, the prosperous mark cupping the flame of the petrol lighter. The Guard repossessed his anger, stormed over, saw Tomáisín's Omurchu features -</div>
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"Is it yourself, Mr O. Go on ahead, so."</div>
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Tomáisín steered the camel train around, into the square, kicked up a leg and slid from the camel he rode. "Hang on a tick, I just want to check the bookings," he said to his overseer, Pangur. Pangur led the string of beasts in and parked them by the wall.</div>
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As Tomáisín called the hotel, the Perspex door of the kiosk framed a picture, another picture for Tomáisín. Two women with buckets of disinfectant and floppy mops washed blood from the cobbles. A tipper truck full of boulders backed into position, directed by a porter from the bank. By the fountain an old lady stood, her eyes above her veil fixed on the barred truck from Mountjoy Gaol.</div>
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Tomáisín felt a shudder run down his back at this ordinary scene. He turned away.</div>
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The booking cleared, he remounted and led the caravan along the one-way system and across the bridge to Capel Street market. </div>
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"You go on, Tom," said Pangur in his high voice, "I can clear up here." His broad Welsh face turned, checking the loads against the bills he held. </div>
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"Are you sure?</div>
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"Sure, why not. I'll settle the lads in their hotels and join you after. Get this lot stabled. Go on and have a few pints."</div>
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Tomáisín Omurchu walked away, the sound of his shoes sharp, echoing through the streets following the dying echo of the bells back across the city, into the valley where Fatima Mansions rises, and where Ayishe is waking from her sleep.</div>
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I awake from sleep, the photograph of death, and go immediately to check my image in the mirror. The face is the same: had I expected it to change? I put on my grandmother's chador, consider, does it look as well with my red hair as it did with hers? My eyes stare back, Celtic grey, Moorish downward slant. Their expression does not reflect my thoughts. The stranger in the mirror is there again. "Ayishe, come to serve the food," calls my co-wife, and I go. Is the pictured person the mirror shows me a representation of creation?</div>
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I look out from the top flat, looking over at Christ Church and the river. My husband, like my family, is a thief, a super thief as he boasts, and an elderly one who has never lost so much as a finger. He sends me to work for him, setting up the men. </div>
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We sit and watch television. First an American programme, guns and heroics, then a veiled Irish newsreader, her eyes furtive. We are laughing at the news when the call comes: I am sent over to the hotel by Capel Street Market. </div>
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Tomáisín turned on the television. A newsreader. Little news. Stock market report: Omurchu up 4. </div>
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"Can I get you anything, sir?"</div>
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Plausible face, blank, serviceable. "A pipe? Newspapers?" The face watched him. "A woman?"</div>
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"Why not?"</div>
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"Any preference, sir?"</div>
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"Not really. Clean."</div>
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So in she came and turned on the bath. "I want the tap end, mind."</div>
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"Hey — you're supposed to pamper me, make me feel like a master, not squabble over the bath."</div>
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"Oh yeah? And risk my life too?"</div>
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I climb out of my shalwar and dress and shake off pants and vest, sit on the edge of the bath and put the toes of one foot into the steamy water.</div>
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"Is it very bad at the moment?"</div>
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"You have to be joking. The Legion of Mary are everywhere, handing out immaculate medals and brown scapulars. Again you get a pint in your hand it's whup out and you're handed a Pioneer total abstinence pin. Girls being stoned to death wholesale in Dame Street. Bad? Are y'in earnest?"</div>
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She was in the bath, blue lights showing in her red hair as she fanned it behind her, careful to keep it out of the water. One strand escaped and he lifted it clear, wrung it out like a washerwoman.</div>
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"So what do you want me to do? Tell you stories?"</div>
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"Stories?"</div>
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"Some men like that." His skin is smooth, dark and gold. His wrists are full of grace, widening to where the muscles run under the sleeves of his T-shirt. "Diarmuid and Gráinne. That's a racy one." My voice doesn't break but it roughens. What is this?</div>
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Tomáisín sat on the edge of the bath and looked at the woman. The rich flesh of her belly appeared and disappeared shyly as the water moved. Her nipples were small, unusually so. He could have covered them with a finger, a forefinger pressing each button. Her lips pressed out, a warm rose. </div>
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I take the soap and begin to lather myself. I can feel my heart beat, even with my fingertips. Is he going to get on with it? In the way of business they sometimes need encouraging. Why is my heart beating so. I must have a fever coming on. Have I frightened him with all that old chat about executions? Of course he could buy himself out, no bother, but sometimes it's the rich fellows who are the most cautious.</div>
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"Did you come far, today?"</div>
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"Mullingar."</div>
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Is he not getting in the bath, or what?</div>
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"You must have been fairly shifting."</div>
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"The old camels can cover the ground, all right."</div>
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She kicked out the plug, wrapped herself in a yellow towel and sat on the edge of the bath, steaming, the steam rising gently into a cloud around her. Abruptly she dropped to her knees and caught his foot as he tapped it.</div>
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<i>"Shoe the little horse,</i></div>
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<i> "Shoe the little mare,</i></div>
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<i> "But let the little colt go</i></div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; margin-top: 8px; text-indent: 18px;">
<i> "Bare, bare, bare." </i></div>
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She looked up at him, her lip caught between her teeth as she smiled. "What age are you?" She stood and walked to the bed, the towel falling until it trailed from one shoulder and she was a collection of shadows: her shoulder blades, her neck, her waist, the hollow which put a stop to the line from back to bottom. "Turn up the light." Her voice trembled.</div>
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He turns to the globe, but instead of pumping the pressure up he opens the valve and with a brief hiss the light turns from blue to yellow and shadows shoot up the wall as the light fades. </div>
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"What's your name," he whispers, and when I tell him, he whispers, "Ayishe."</div>
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He crosses his hands and strips up the black T-shirt, falls beside me.</div>
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They lie together. Downstairs the porter is calling the Guards. Yes! He is a member of the Pádraig Pearse Youth. </div>
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I look at him, Tomáisín. His eyes are very black, big and glossy. We have finished making love, he licks my lip with the tip of his tongue and my mouth floods with fresh water. </div>
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"Love," he whispers, "Oh, love."</div>
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"Oh love," I whisper, "where did I find you?"</div>
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"Sweet one, I'm here."</div>
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Yes, they have found each other, and they lie together, these two strangers, his tears running into her eyes and her fingers holding the soft hair beside his ear.</div>
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When the knocking comes on the door I am safe in his arms.</div>
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"Open up. Open up. I am a Garda." The door shakes as the men kick it and hit it.</div>
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How sweet his kisses are.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-33324940041518046482013-04-14T16:51:00.000+01:002013-04-17T18:59:08.949+01:00Tips for writers, 1: Introducing your characters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Starting a story? Start it with your hero. One reason Edward Bulwer-Lytton's famous opening<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;"><i>It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">is so famously bad is that there's no one there. Lots going on, but where's our hero? </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">We meet him soon:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;"><i>Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the _quartier_ in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative...</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;">but don't really get to know Mr C until he takes action:</span><br />
<i style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;">He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person</i><span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;"><i>"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;"><i>"Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow--"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 18px;"><i>"Pish, you fool!" cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. "Vy, it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So there's the poor cretur a, raving and a dying, and you--"</i></span><br />
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But enough - you can read Paul Clifford by Bulwer-Lytton on archive.org, should you wish. </div>
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For an opening to be good, your reader has to sit inside the head of your hero and look through his eyes. Or her eyes. Looky here:</div>
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<i>Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.</i></blockquote>
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See what Gabriel Garcia Marquez did there? You want to know immediately what's going to happen to the colonel in One Hundred Years of Solitude. And look at James Stephens' opening to my favourite dog story of all time:<br />
There are people who do not like dogs a bit--they are usually women--but in this story there is a man who did no<i>t like dogs. In fact, he hated them. When he saw one he used to go black in the face, and he threw rocks at it until it got out of sight. But the Power that protects all creatures had put a squint into this man's eye, so that he always threw crooked.</i></div>
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Stephens' readers immediately sit down and settle in for the story. Even the dog-lovers do. Especially the dog-lovers, in fact, since they're the ones who have a stake in the fate of the dog we know is definitely going to walk into the story. The fact that the dog is an aunt of Finn Mac Cumhaill's will make the story all the more interesting - but that's for later. </div>
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So when you're starting your story, start it with your hero, and make sure he's about to face a challenge that will define him and make your readers root for him, or hate him, but anyway make them absolutely want to know what's he's about to do. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-84564349364956040092013-04-07T18:35:00.000+01:002013-04-08T00:17:16.043+01:00Did chicklit cause the crash?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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According to the Palma Index, the fate of the tax system, and of society, rests with the middle classes. The Palma Index is a measure of the ratio between rich and poor in society, just like the Gini Index, only different. Whereas the Gini measures the whole spectrum from the poorest to the richest, the Palma takes a new approach, comparing the richest 10 per cent against the poorest 40 per cent. The reason for this is that the Gini is oversensitive to changes in the middle, and as a result, it's less sensitive to changes at the top and bottom.<br />
So if you have a society like Ireland at the moment, where there's a group in the middle who are getting along just about ok, but at the bottom 40 per cent you quite suddenly have people living in utter desperation, while at the top 10 per cent you have enormously rich people, the Gini won't measure this so well, but the Palma will.<br />
When Gabriel Palma studied inequality, he found that the middle classes generally have around half the gross national income everywhere.<br />
What's different is how much the very rich and the very poor have. And Palma said that how this shakes out depends on who the middle classes side with.<br />
(All this is thanks to a great blog by Alex Cobham of the Center for Global Development and Andy Sumner of King's College London here http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=13982)<br />
It set me thinking. The literature of the 1960s was plain about where its loyalties lay: with the working classes, the angry young men, the scholarship boys.<br />
But when the 1970s segued into the 1980s and 1990s, there was a change of view. Now the heroes were men in red braces gambling and becoming millionaires and brash women in high heels and cutthroat shoulder pads kicking them out of the way to be millionaires themselves.<br />
The chicklit that was a craze of the millennium had the same loyalties. I except Marian Keyes, whose warm, funny books were about girls from a working-class background, often baffled in the new world they'd found themselves in, and wanting only a nice guy like their dad who'd mow the lawn in a woolly jumper and be a strong and comforting love.<br />
But an awful lot of the chicklit was set in an entrepreneurial world fuelled by gallons of crisp white wine, and with money as its beau ideal. Sure, the heroine was looking for true love, but they were using the model the Edwardians used to advise: "Don't marry for money, but marry where money is".<br />
I wonder will we see a new kind of story, now that the rampant greed has led to rampant destruction.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-39080397571158100492013-04-02T19:52:00.000+01:002013-04-02T20:33:48.857+01:00Grace Plunkett's wedding<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZSYs7eF-CCPDGKFgMNzCOm0O14bU1tdvc0m0dBnRtfSzOEEmAv72rTxn3oswtnnAnrgJhimLxGRkBloHQDDv0Z4atdiX_bR2CMoowRL6oTU3kAM-Aw-7iXEeMP64a_Sa6cPF_xnHG2gOK/s1600/Drawing+of+Grace+probably+by+Muriel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZSYs7eF-CCPDGKFgMNzCOm0O14bU1tdvc0m0dBnRtfSzOEEmAv72rTxn3oswtnnAnrgJhimLxGRkBloHQDDv0Z4atdiX_bR2CMoowRL6oTU3kAM-Aw-7iXEeMP64a_Sa6cPF_xnHG2gOK/s320/Drawing+of+Grace+probably+by+Muriel.jpg" width="204" /></a>The report of Grace Plunkett's death in The Irish Press of December 16, 1955 describes her wedding to Joe Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol on May 4, 1916:<br />
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<i>The couple were married at midnight in the Prison Chapel, by Rev. Eugene McCarthy, Prison Chaplain.</i></div>
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<i>The gas supply in the prison had failed and for the wedding ceremony the chapel was lighted by a single candle held by an armed British soldier.</i></div>
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<i>Two soldiers moved their rifles from hand to hand when they were called upon to act as witnesses to the ceremony. The couple were separated immediately afterwards.</i></div>
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<i>The newly-wedded Mrs Plunkett was taken away to lod§gings found for her by Father McCarthy, while her husband was led back to his cell. They met only once again. She was summoned to the prison on the following morning, just before his execution on May 4, 1916. Fifteen soldiers with fixed bayonets stood by while she talked to him for ten </i><i>minutes.</i><br />
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<i>The </i>Irish Times of October 3, 1967 has an extract from RM Fox's 1935 book on the women of 1916, Rebel Irishwomen, including a description of Grace in jail with her elder sister, the (formerly) unionist and (always) strait-laced Katy Wilson, née Gifford. Mrs Fox paraphrases Grace's description of a search by warders:<br />
<br />
<i>The prisoners massed on the landing, and at 9 o'clock in the evening soldiers entered, attacking them, dragging and throwing them down the iron prison staircase from landing to landing. At the bottom, women searchers, like demons, fell on them, scratching and pulling. Mrs Wilson had her face ripped as if with an animal's claws. All night from 9pm to 7am, the struggle went on. Grace Plunkett describes it as being like a picture of hell, with screams and oaths and struggles. Women were being kicked and punched, while they packed close together and made what resistance they could...</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-81203227102566535102013-03-09T10:11:00.002+00:002013-03-09T10:11:28.552+00:00Bríd, Dog of Genius<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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THIS is Bríd, an old lady now, her spine raked with spurs so that she can't race and play as she once did. But still the same sweet, kind nature, the same naughty playfulness, the same sense that she is the guardian of the household who must sleep in the place best sited to guard those she loves.<br />
And superdog.<br />
Bríd is a dog of language; she understands a surprising amount of what you say. I first copped this when she was a pup of around nine months old.<br />
I have fairly nasty asthma and spend a lot of my time sick, and Bríd is a hairy girl. There was no way she could be allowed upstairs if I didn't want to suffer from the effects of her shedding. At the time I was minding <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYqOtHykYx8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Luna, </a> a cat for an American friend who had re-re-re-emigrated, and Luna lived mostly upstairs; despite Luna's own furry generosity, she was homeless; what could I do.<br />
Bríd's ambition was to make friends with Luna, and have her as a <strike>plaything</strike> playmate. Luna's was to have a peaceful purry life without more than a courteous touching of noses with this bounding pup.<br />
So there I am hoovering around the living room, and chatting away to Bríd in an absent-minded way, sometimes singing along to La Mer or Boum, sometimes just maundering on, as you do when a pup is dogging your footsteps. And I said those fateful words:<br />
"Wonder where that pussycat is?"<br />
Bríd laid her ears back and gave me a thoughtful glance. She switched her ears forward again - and with tail going like mad, she ran out to the hall and put her forepaws on the bottom step, and peeked up the staircase.<br />
I was gobsmacked. I hadn't made any gesture, anything like that; it was purely the word 'pussycat' that she'd responded to.<br />
A few weeks later, another job having gone from under me in the collapsing employment scene of Irish journalism, I decided the hell with it, I was going to spend recklessly on petrol and drive out to Greystones for a walk.<br />
I drove out, we walked up and down the almost-deserted beach, I lay down with a book and tried to read for a bit while Bríd nestled against my side, but it was a windy day and I got tired of spitting out hair and sand, and said the hell with it again, and got up and went back to the car.<br />
And found that I'd dropped my keys.<br />
I looked at the expense of the beach, tried to work out where we'd been lying, made my way there and looked hopelessly at the empty sand.<br />
Bríd was romping in and out of the waves and galloping around. I turned on her and gave her (natch) dog's abuse, telling her that we couldn't drive home if we didn't find my keys. "Where are they?" I cried wildly. "Find the keys! Keys, Bríd! Keys!" I wasn't, of course, expecting any action; this was purely relief of spirit.<br />
But Bríd looked keenly at me, looked keenly at the sand, started nosing around, then digging, and up came the keys.<br />
Never was a dog so praised or so proud. Mind you, her genius (apart from understanding every word you say) has failed to show up much in recent years; she hasn't found any thousand-euro notes, say, or chosen the right Lotto numbers (though that may be because I don't actually buy Lotto tickets; my fault, really).<br />
But still. Bríd, Dog of Genius.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-65844362796399618262012-12-20T20:39:00.000+00:002012-12-20T20:39:54.573+00:00The Landlord's Friend - free ebook (download link at foot)<br />
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MARY LEADBEATER was the postmistress of Ballitore village on the border of Kildare and Carlow in the heart of Ireland, and a birthright Quaker. She was the first girl pupil in the school run by her grandfather, Abraham Shackleton, in the village <span style="font-size: 12px;">—</span> a famous school, where Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy studied together, and Quaker parents from as far away as Norway, the Caribbean and France sent their sons to study. </div>
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She is best remembered for her journal, published as <i>Annals of Ballitore</i>, which includes on-the-spot reportage of the horrors of the 1798 uprising of the United Irishmen and its suppression by the Anglo-Irish yeomanry, with the lynchings that followed. </div>
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Mary also wrote several pamphlets — a popular pastime for well-got ladies of the time. Her <i>Cottage Dialogues</i> are unusual in their approach, because Mary lived among her poor farmer neighbours, rather than seeing them from on high, and understood how it was possible, if difficult, for someone hungry and impoverished to claw the way into modest prosperity.</div>
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<i>The Landlord's Friend</i> consists of 20 dialogues, between two landlords — the Quakerly Squire Hartely and the more typically Anglo-Irish Squire Wilfort; and two landladies — the Quakerly Lady Seraphina and her ditsy friend Lady Charlotte; as well as Mrs Wilfort, and Lady Seraphina's tenants. </div>
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The squires discuss schemes for the improvement of the peasantry; the ladies get down to practicalities, and their dialogues involve visits to the model village under Lady Seraphina's patronage. (<i>"What neat, white houses and pretty gardens are here! Do, Lady Seraphina direct your coachman to drive slowly that I may take a survey of them."</i>)</div>
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In her earlier <i>Cottage</i> <i>Dialogues</i>, Mary had used the experience of her grandfather: Abraham Shackleton had been a poor English boy who gained an education through growing sallies and weaving baskets from them; by planting and selling his produce, seeds and plants; by working for anyone who would give him work, and finally by becoming first a monitor then a teacher in the small school where he was a pupil, until he was called to Ireland to open and run the new village school in Ballitore. By Mary's time the family were quietly well off.</div>
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Mary was unusual as a 19th-century pamphleteer in deciding to turn her instructive hand to her betters, the Anglo-Irish landlords who were the scandal of the empire to which they gave their loyalty. When she came to write <i>The Landlord's Friend</i> she used her keen ear for dialogue to capture both the speech and language of the Ascendancy and those of the Irish tenants who laboured under their rule. In these dialogues Mary strokes the egos of her landlord audience by picturing the delighted praise of tenants for those who will help them — while accurately reflecting the brutality of landlord attitudes. Here, for instance, in a dialogue on bedsteads, one landlord tries to persuade another to set up a scheme whereby his tenants may buy beds, and improve their health:</div>
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<i>Squire Hartely: You cannot but have observed the lodging places of many of the poor.</i></div>
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<i>Squire Wilfort: I have, with disgust. I would scarcely lodge my hogs in such a manner, but I suppose they imagine that dirt keeps them warm. </i></div>
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Even in the model Quaker village (such places were regarded with astonishment at the time, as Italianate freaks of cleanliness and order), the tenants flustered by the visit of their landlady on an errand to award annual prizes to the nicest homesteads, show themselves lax:</div>
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<i>Lady Charlotte: Judy O'Flinn, why have not you had your window mended? Is not that your husband's sunday hat stopping the broken pane?</i></div>
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<i>Judy: Indeed, my Lady, I’ll not tell you a lie. It is Bill’s best hat, sure enough. We were laid out to get it mended these six weeks, and, I don’t know how it was, but we did not get it done.</i></div>
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Amid Mary Leadbeater's feeding of landlordly egos, her true loyalties sometimes break out, as in her story of a baby taken in by a wetnurse for cash. Years later, the foster parents tell a visiting lady of their fosterling's death and how the garden he planted remains a comfort to them:</div>
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<i>Thomas: We strove to divert ourselves with [our garden]; and I loved these little trees which he planted, and I cut off the straggling boughs, as he used to do, that they might grow up handsome. Ah! He was suddenly taken from us.</i></div>
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<i>Lady Charlotte: How old was your son?</i></div>
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<i>Thomas: Just the age of Kitty there. Three and twenty last Patrick’s day!</i></div>
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<i>Lady Charlotte: Twins!</i></div>
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<i>Thomas: No, my Lady.</i></div>
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<i>Lady Charlotte: How is this? Did you not say they were of the same age?</i></div>
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<i>Thomas: Please, your Ladyship, our dear Henry was a nurse child from Dublin. We were paid very well for him the two first years, but after that we never heard of his father or mother, and we were often in dread that they would come and take him from us, and my poor woman often said she would beg the world with him, sooner than part with him. But now we are obliged to part with him.</i></div>
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<i>Lady Charlotte: What uncommon affection!</i></div>
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<i>Lady Seraphina: Not at all uncommon! There are many such proofs of the strong attachment of the Irish to the children committed to their care, and of the humanity and generosity of the Irish character. </i></div>
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What effect <i>The Landlord's Friend</i> had on its audience is difficult to gauge. It was published in 1813, which is to say 15 years after the 1798 Rising — and 32 years before the outbreak of the Famine that cleared Ireland of millions of people, when landlords and merchants shipped out food crops and grew rich, while their tenants starved to death or, if they were lucky, emigrated to a country without landlords. </div>
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Download The Landlord's Friend here: http://www.4shared.com/file/-3qQjw9Y/The_Landlords_Friend.html?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-8757819434074654522012-12-05T12:11:00.001+00:002012-12-05T12:11:45.176+00:00Lest we forget, lest we forget<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When we were growing up we learned that the real wrong of the Famine of 1845-50 was that Irish goods and food were shipped abroad while the people of Ireland starved.<br />
We swore - and we believed our own swearing - that such a thing was unconscionable, and it could never happen again. Yet this year alone, €20 billion was paid out to banks abroad by the Irish government while the budget imposes increasing need, deprivation and hardship on the people of Ireland. We are doing exactly the same again.<br />
Here's a contemporary quote, from May 1, 1846, from the <i>Anglo Celt</i> newspaper in Cavan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is indeed painful to consider the state of Ireland. In a land teeming with plenty and abundance we have a famine. More than two million Irishmen are starving while we export more provisions than would feed five times our population. Out state would be much improved were those who derive large incomes from this country to expend at least a portion of it among the people from whom they receive it.</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-8785136856301060672012-12-01T10:50:00.001+00:002012-12-01T10:50:30.530+00:00How to have a dog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dogs, according to a new scientific theory, may have taught humans to love*. We've been together now for hundreds of thousands of years, but while dogs know exactly how to treat humans - like beloved friends, dear companions, providers of food, exercise, play, comedy and entertainment - we haven't a bull's notion of how to treat dogs.<br />
And it's not so hard. Every dog owner knows that the dog should be fed, once or twice a day according to your routine. Good dog owners know that dogs need exercise. That's about it.<br />
But if you want a healthy, relaxed dog, there's more.<br />
For a start, there's the walk. A friend with a guide dog tells me that her vet insists that her dog have daily walks, off-duty. "The sniffing dogs do is essential to their health," he told her. "No matter how much exercise your dog has, it's not enough without that walk where the dog can sniff and pee and walk and mark the trail. It doesn't even have to be a very long walk, if your dog gets other exercise, but a sniff-walk is necessary for a healthy, happy dog."<br />
There's the way in which the dog is fed. Either you share the feeding experience, by doling it out in bits, which dogs usually enjoy - they love the interaction - or you eat yourself, then give the dog its food affectionately, and walk away. Don't stay there staring; this is unnerving and not good for a dog's digestion.<br />
And play. Every dog from a six-week-old puppy to an 18-year-old aged gentlewoman, loves to play, and should have a daily session of play that's suitable for its age and abilities. Tug-of-war, 'fetch', chase - any game where you interact together for fun.<br />
And finally, the evening grooming. In wolf and wild dog packs, the dogs groom each other in the evening, licking each other's faces, ears, necks and shoulders. It's probably not a great idea to lick your dog, but an evening session of petting, which can be done with a brush if your dog loves being brushed, will have an enormously calming and settling effect on your dog.<br />
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* http://www.salon.com/2010/10/09/jeffrey_masson_the_dog_who_couldn_t_stop_loving/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-54223713573488864772012-11-30T08:19:00.001+00:002012-11-30T08:19:39.383+00:00Payment system needed for international small business<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I HAVE a stove in my living room, a wonderful thing that pours out heat. It's well assisted in this by a device called an Ecofan, a Stirling engine assisted by a small electrical motor. The Ecofan sits at the back of the stove, and as soon as the iron surface beneath it heats up, the fan starts to turn, sucking in cold air from behind and pushing forward the hot air that would otherwise be trapped above the stove. The Ecofan makes quite a difference to the heat in the room, as well as being pretty and cheering as it whirls its golden blades.<br />
But it's important not to put it at the front of the stove, because if you do that, the heat from the chimney can destroy the motor. This is pretty counter-intuitive: it would seem more sensible that it should sit at the front and push the air out from there. So naturally the fan gets put to the front; and naturally the motor gets nuked.<br />
No problem. You can get new motors, at various prices. And a north-of-England chimney sweep called Andy offered to buy a motor from the English supplier (which, strangely, doesn't ship to Ireland) and wander down to his local post office and post it to me. It would cost under £15.<br />
Now, it should be easy for me to pay Andy for this kind act. Both of us have PayPal accounts, checking accounts in the bank, local post offices. But it's not that easy.<br />
Euro cheques are regarded as the work of the devil by British banks; in fact, you can't even pay someone in France with an Irish euro cheque, or vice versa - so much for the vaunted single currency.<br />
Sterling bank drafts and the like are designed for businesspeople doing huge transactions. They'll charge you an arm and a leg for your £15 deal.<br />
PayPal seemed the best solution: I could pay the chimney sweep from my PayPal account into his. But even this proved a shocking palaver. I sent the money out of my bank and it never arrived; turned out that I had never linked my bank account to my long-disused PayPal account. When I rang PayPal they were helpful, and sorted it through, but I was surprised that it was all so complicated and difficult.<br />
It seems to me that there's a gap in the market for a payment system that would allow ordinary people - and especially small businesspeople - to pay each other across international borders for small transactions.<br />
As the founders of the Irish Sweepstakes discovered back in the day, many small transactions can make for one big profit. Irish sole traders could be bringing a lot of money into the country - if it was very easy for ordinary people to pay them, without the sole traders or SMEs having to set up expensive payment methods. The country needs that money, and small exports grow into large business. When's that method coming?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-90709485711262741742012-11-25T14:13:00.000+00:002012-11-25T14:13:02.931+00:00Living the old-fashioned way<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Then, the cottages of the west of Ireland looked like a handful of marshmallows thrown across the islands' fields. In the early 19th century, Irish cottages were grey, the colour of the local stone - <i>My Little Grey Home in the West</i> was literally true. But by the 1920s they were white, and by the 1950s they were a mixture of lovely pastels.<br />
Whitewash was introduced to the rural areas of Ireland as a sanitary measure against the regular outbreaks of cholera and typhus and the endemic tuberculosis in the 19th century, and by the middle of the 20th century, it was a matter of pride to whitewash your home regularly; one islandwoman famously whitewashed her home inside and out once a week, removing all the furniture to do it.<br />
The marshmallow colours came from some creative woman's discovery that food dye worked perfectly with whitewash. You could throw in a few tablespoons of the cheap food dye and tint your whitewash a tasty lavender or blushing pink or a shadowy indigo.<br />
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There was virtually no electricity then, except in towns. People ran the big old valve radios and the new TVs from car batteries. Lights were largely Tilley lamps, which gave a beautiful bluish light; the paraffin was expensive enough, so people waited through the lengthening dusk till it was dark enough to light the Tilley, then there was a ceremonial, silent, happy time of lighting it - heating the lamp with methylated spirits, then gradually pumping up the paraffin, making a fine pressurised gas, so that the light blossoms and blooms. Then the lamp was set in the window, and in each cottage one light showed across the sea, a beacon for the homecoming fishermen.<br />
The west of Ireland has a warm microclimate because of the presence of the Atlantic Ocean and the limestone crags acting as a giant storage heater.<br />
The traditional cottages of the 19th and 20th century were a masterpiece of insulation. Typically, the walls were two feet (60cm) thick, solid stone mortared with a mixture of sand and bull's blood, then plastered and whitewashed.<br />
A turf fire was kept going all day, every day, winter and summer, with the embers smoored over with ash at night so it kept alight and warm under there. The cottages were built directly on the crag, and this limestone floor and the limestone walls took in the heat and radiated it gently back.<br />
Turf was cut all over Ireland from the bogs; islanders who had no bog of their own bought púcán-loads of turf from mainland farmers. All winter, every cottage had a pile of turf stretching from the ground to the rooftop, against the cold northern gable, providing superb insulation against the winter wind and cold.<br />
This was so universally recognised an image that Padraic Colum wrote it into the longing of his poem <i>An Old Woman of the Roads</i>:<br />
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<i>O, to have a little house!</i><br />
<i>To own the hearth and stool and all!</i><br />
<i>The heaped up sods upon the fire,</i><br />
<i>The pile of turf against the wall!</i><br />
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All gone now. If country people have a pile of turf outside the house, it's neatly ranged against the garden wall, or sitting on the universal patch of lawn that fronts Irish rural houses' road access, outside their walls.<br />
Other customs have gone with the turf. Then, the main room of the house - kitchen and living room - was set around a gigantic chimney. On the left, as you face the fire, was the woman's place - all women sat here, from the tiniest baby to the old, old lady whose place was on the stone bench actually inside the chimney; and on the right was the men's place. A hole in the wall on either side kept things handy for each sex: the woman's knitting and magazine or novel; the man's pipe.<br />
Every house had musical instruments - with luck, an upright piano, but at least a fiddle or a melodeon; everyone could play a little, and many people played and sang beautifully.<br />
Everyone also sang and whistled at work: the production of music had not yet been outsourced to professionals.<br />
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Cooking was done in big pots using a crane, a device that swung the pot in over the fire and could lower it or raise it to boil or simmer or sauté. A kettle was always purring on the hob of the fire, and bread was made in a pot oven or on a griddle set against the fire - delicious smoke-scented breads and stews and roasts came from these methods.<br />
People collected seaweed - dillisk for drying and chewing and putting in soup; the gourmet treat slabhcán - sloke or nori or laver - for rinsing and frying up with rashers; carrageen for jelly and sore throat cures. They dried fish on the thatch in the salt wind, and cooked it with milk and onions and ate it served with buttery mashed potato. The lamb and beef produced on these crags was sweet and tender. Every woman kept a few hens and ducks, so there were eggs for eating and for sale and the odd cockerel for the pot. Most people had a cow, or if there was a 'delicate' child in the house, a goat, for milk. For Christmas, people raised geese and turkeys.<br />
All this makes the life sound idyllic. It was not; it was a lot tougher than now, with no farm or fisheries payments or dole to provide a cushion against poverty. At the time that JM Synge - himself a tuberculosis patient who defied his illness by rambling and walking all over the country - wrote about the Aran Islands, a medical investigation reported almost universal malnutrition among the islanders.<br />
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When better times came, people fled the smoky, draughty cottages and built snug, well-insulated homes with slate rooves (thatch was thought of as a fire hazard and a home for the tubercules that spread TB). They put in Stanley and Aga ranges to keep the house warm, and later oil-fired central heating. The drifting turf smoke that scented the approach to every house in the old days was gone: more efficient combustion burned even the smoke.<br />
A whole way of life has changed utterly in half a century: now, the typical country house runs a 4x4 and a runaround, cooks on an induction hob and in a fan oven, heats with oil - though the Stanley may still be on the go.<br />
What will the next half-century bring? A natural pessimist, I'm reminded of the famous account of a visitor to Connemara in the 18th century being feted with a board piled with good food and wine imported from France and Spain; a few years later the Act of Union sent capital fleeing from the country, and another half-century later starved creatures crawled through this countryside on their four bones.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-64527004749858738882012-11-10T08:19:00.000+00:002012-12-20T20:40:24.167+00:00Writing about the past in the words of the pastUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-89371402033972401062012-11-09T19:20:00.004+00:002012-11-09T19:21:57.837+00:00Hot 'n' toasty wood 'n' stovey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<br />
I SHOULD be writing about editing, and offering to edit CVs, and to write press releases, and to help you with your business books, but... later, later. For now, I want to talk about the toasty-warm wonderfulness of woodstoves.<br />
We got a wood-burning stove last year. I wanted to have a backup for the gas central heating, but it looks as if it's going to be a total replacement, as the price of gas goes higher and higher. Twenty years ago when we moved in, we changed from a back boiler heating the radiators to a gas system, as it was the cheapest and best value. Now that's changed. How that's changed.<br />
So, stoves. I was nervous - how on earth do you choose a stove? There's new technology that means modern stoves are waaay more efficient than the old-fashioned kind. Airwash. Secondary burning.<br />
Here's a video that explains it.<br />
A stove heats a million times more efficiently than a fire. With an open fire, you're basically heating (and polluting) the open sky. But with a stove, all the heat comes booming out into the room, heating the whole house.<br />
The design of modern stoves burns the fuel, and then burns the smoke that rises off the fuel, lessening pollution by 90 per cent.<br />
The heat that comes off a stove is quite incredible when you're used to open fires, or central heating for that matter.<br />
You can get two styles of stove: free-standing, and inset or insert stoves. Free-standing means the stove stands there on its little legs out in the open. Like this:<br />
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You may also like to add a fan on top of your free-standing stove. These range from classic Stirling engines, which have no wiring but work purely from the heat of the stove:</div>
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to the Ecofan, which has some wiring and electrical magic. I have an Ecofan - because the Stirling engine is a big yoke, a foot high, and there wasn't room above my stove's top. The Ecofan, I can attest, makes a heck of a difference, throwing the heat out into the room:</div>
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An insert or inset stove it sits into your existing fireplace, like this:<br />
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or if you prefer a stylish, modernistic look, like this:<br />
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If you're going for an insert stove, and if you're in Ireland, you're better off to buy one of the Irish or British brands - the English-made Clearview (my own stove is a Clearview free-standing one and I love it, so I'd definitely recommend the brand, and Co Down Stoves where I got it), or the Boru Croí Beag<br />
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or the Stanley Cara<br />
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The reason for going for these rather than the superb European brands - top-of-the-range Nestor Martin or Morso or J otul or Stovax - is that Irish fireplaces tend to be both narrower and shallower than the European ones. Unless you're rich enough and patient enough to tear out the whole fireplace and rebuild it, you're not going to get one of the European brands.<br />
This isn't necessarily a bad thing - though they're fabulous stoves. The Nestor Martin, for instance, can run two pipes off a stove, piping heated air for other rooms. And some of these stoves have soapstone sides or inserts, so they'll act as storage heaters, radiating heat long after the fire is gone.<br />
Inset stoves sound as if they wouldn't give off as much heat, but they certainly do; they're toasty. Part of this is the fact that they block off the giant sucking draught that chimneys bring into the room; part is that they just radiate enormous amounts of lovely hot hotness.<br />
I wouldn't be without a stove ever again; if I ever can, I'll put one in upstairs as well as downstairs and leave the central heating behind altogether.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-39154128407391705172012-09-09T14:33:00.002+01:002012-11-22T10:35:25.132+00:00Solar panels - why not get together on them?<br />
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One of my buddies was telling me the other day about her friends, an electrician, a plumber and a marketer, who were made redundant just as the Celtic Tiger's claws fell out.<br />
<br />
There was a grant at the time - with the Green Party in government as they were then - for putting in hot water solar panels. It wasn't much of a grant, but it gave people an incentive and lots of households were installing the panels to get their water heated for free. It looked like an opportunity to avoid emigration, which was the friends' only other choice.<br />
<br />
So the three friends got together and formed a company to instal the panels. They pooled their redundancy money, started marketing and started putting in panels on houses all over their locality. They were an instant success: reliable, reasonably priced, honest, fast. The order book filled up in no time.<br />
<br />
Then the new government, under the evil aegis of the Troika, withdrew the grant. The orders dropped away in a few days, and the three friends were out of a job, and had lost all their money.<br />
<br />
It's kind of insane that Ireland, where we're desperately trying to cut down our carbon footprint, isn't using the economies of scale to get everyone using the sun to heat their water. This is one of the most successful green technologies for our climate: you have water heated to 65 to 70 degrees Celsius for most of the year.<br />
<br />
Fitting solar hot water panels costs an average of €4,000 per house including the cost of evacuated tube solar panels (the best kind), new piping, a specialised immersion tank, and labour. For that you get a 60% average cut in your hot water bill - the largest part of your electricity bill.</div>
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But €4,000 is too much for most people at the moment; people can't commit to spending that much on one payment.</div>
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Ireland could cut our carbon footprint enormously - and give jobs to thousands of people currently out of work - if there was a State scheme which would buy the panels wholesale and hire the skilled plumbers, electricians and builders now out of work to instal them. </div>
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If economies of scale were in place, and if no corruption was involved of course, it could be possible to instal solar hot water systems in every home in Ireland for an average of €2,000 per home.<br />
<br />
If people could then repay that money over five years on their utility bills, there would be no cost to the State, yet thousands would be returned to work and Ireland's carbon footprint would be enormously aided.<br />
<br />
This is really a no-brainer: it won't cost the State anything, because people will pay back the price of the technology on the never-never, but will slash our carbon costs and save the environment. As well as making life a lot more comfortable for Irish households.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-59803007281739698662012-09-01T09:48:00.000+01:002012-09-01T09:48:14.951+01:00The RIC<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>From Padraic Colum's book My Irish Year, about the midlands of Ireland in 1912 (downloadable from archive.org)</i><br />
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That evening I had an adventure with two members of the army of occupation, or, as some would prefer to call them, the army of no occupation, the Royal Irish Constabulary. </div>
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Between the town of B and the village of C I came upon a brace of constables. They were lying in the ditch, smoking their pipes. As I passed I remembered that there was an inquiry in my mind that the patrol were competent to answer. I determined to raise the question on our next meeting. </div>
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Outside the town I met the children of my friends and turned back. We caught up a country woman who was carrying some packages and a heavy basket. The children helped her with the parcels, and I took possession of the basket. When we came to the police again I was one of a group of country people. They were still in the ditch. </div>
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I turned to one with the query, '' Would you tell me the meaning of a proclamation that I saw in Carrigallen last Tuesday?" Now, unawares, I was asking an invidious question, as this proclamation had reference to the withdrawal of extra police from the County Leitrim. </div>
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" The meaning of the proclamation—would you like to know ? " </div>
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" Yes." </div>
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" Why didn't you read it ? " </div>
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"I was too far away." </div>
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" Then you can go to Hell." </div>
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There was notliing to be done at the moment, so I lifted the basket and went on with my friends. Later I came on the patrol ; they were leaning against the parapet of the railway bridge. </div>
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" Your pardon, gentlemen," said I, " were you the constables I met a while ago ? " </div>
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" Would you like to know ? " said one, and " What's that to you ? " said the other. </div>
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I asked for an apology for rudeness, but they said, " Go home now, or we'll throw you over the bridge." </div>
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Their insolence came from the fact that they regarded the country people as Eastern officials regard the provincials. Such a woman sold porter illicitly ; if her friends were uncivil to the constables they could show their power. So-and-so's children grazed a few cows along the side of the road ; if their father raised his head there would be a case of technical obstruction. I saw how easy it was for the Royal Irish Constabulary to fall into the insolence of Turkish officials. </div>
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Next morning I called at the barracks. The sergeant, good, easy man, was recovering from an attack of delirium tremens and was " shook " as the saying is. He asked the constables to apologise, but again they used the word " Hell." I might have communicated with the authorities had I not a prejudice against addressing myself to DubHn Castle. </div>
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The Royal Irish Constabulary are a force of 11,000 armed men, distributed through 1475 stations. They are not under local control, but are ordered directly from Dublin Castle. For their upkeep the Imperial power raises £1,400,000 in Ireland, an amount largely in excess of the grant for national education. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
In the main they are a rural force, but they are extended to the cities of Belfast, Cork, and Londonderry. In country places individual constables look bloated and patrols have an easy-going air. One comes to regard the Constabulary as a rural police with little to do. But let us go into Connemara and enter a police hut in a lonely place. The constables are probably idle and unbuttoned, but there are rifles and bayonets to hand, and the hut has the position of a blockhouse. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
The life of Ireland has been forced back on the land, and the most powerful of Irish efforts has been directed to the liberation of the land in the interest of the majority. Against all forms of agrarian agitation stand the Royal Irish Constabulary with their rifles and bayonets, their drill and revolver practice. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
Why does Murty Flynn join a force that stands against the interests and passions of his class ? There is the bribe of a livelihood, and the fundamental muddle of the human mind prevents him from seeing the conflict in clear terms. They tell of a constable who had to assist at the eviction of his father, and Murty himself knows of a recruit, sent down with an extra levy to the County Clare, who found himself guarding a rancher's cattle against his father's hazel stick. The direct conflict rarely occurs. </div>
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Murty's father has four sons. One of them will inherit the farm, and another may obtain the means of getting some land. For the rest there is emigration or casual labour. Murty is not studious enough to become a teacher, nor has he enough application to succeed as a shopkeeper. He is a big, healthy lad, with a fair intelligence and a fondness for outdoor life. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
He offers himself to the Constabulary. There are many applications, but Murty obtains a place, and his people are as glad as if they had got two acres of land. Constable Murty Flynn begins with a renumeration exceeding that of the assistant teacher in the local school. With twenty-one shillings a week, he has various allowances, and is lodged in the barrack at a slight charge. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
Promotion is almost inevitable, as there are 1859 sergeants and 451 acting-sergeants to 8380 constables. He is sure of a pension, and is under no necessity of saving. There are three Constabulary men in the station — an easy-going sergeant with a wife and family, Murty Flynn, and another constable. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
His day is really idle. He goes on parade at 9 a.m., when there is elementary drill, then for a while the three sit in the station smoking, going over the rules of the Constabulary and the Acts of Parliament governing the action of the police. Two go on patrol at 11 a.m. —that is to say, they stroll through the country for a couple of hours. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
They attend the arrival and departure of the Dublin trains, secure the newspapers, and read them on their way back. There are more patrols in the evening, and each constable has to put in six hours per day in outdoor duty. </div>
<div style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 13px; text-indent: 28px;">
Sometimes the constable has to collect statistics for the Department of Agriculture, and some writing has to be done. Murty Flynn is well content with the life. He knows in the force men who are good Irishmen, good Catholics, and good citizens. After seven years he can obtain permission to marry, and many goodlooking girls would be glad to wed a man who can take them away from the hardship of the farm — a man of assured position, moreover, with a pension, who need not make himself anxious about a dowry. Murty's comrade intends to remain single for the next twenty years ; then he can retire with a pension of at least £42 per annum, when he intends to marry a girl with a dowry and set up a shop.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-76366925120502110332012-06-21T16:40:00.000+01:002012-06-21T16:40:16.619+01:00Eavesdropping for beginners<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have a stupendous commercial idea - a series of language courses that would cover the deepest needs of anyone visiting a strange country (and most countries are strange). French for Eavesdroppers, Basic Eavesdropping in Italian, Listening In On the Next Table in Spanish, and so on.<br />
One of the things I miss about pubs, now that I hardly ever go into them, is the enjoyment of listening to Irish people bawling their most intimate secrets to their neighbours over the loud chatter. Mind you, as one gets older this is more difficult: a request to science - would you ever design a cochlear implant with a directional microphone?<br />
On Friday, in a pub in a Liffeyside street, some stáitseirbhísigh - couldn't work out what Department, but you'd know by them - were questioning their colleague. "She was teeny!" he said. I was earwigging like mad. Love interest, I thought, or new puppy. But then he made all clear: "But the second she spoke you could hear a pin drop." He must have been among those present when Aung San Suu Kyi visited Ireland. To my annoyance, a flood of fellow civil servants came in and I couldn't hear the rest of it over the racket.<br />
But next to me were two men discussing their cases - social workers it seemed. I conscientiously closed my ears. Not so, though, when one started talking about his love life - this is, obviously, something that the conscientious eavesdropper considers well within her moral ambit.<br />
"My friends all tell me I always fall in love with crazy girls," the man next to me confided. I nearly ricked my neck stopping myself from turning around to get a look at him.<br />
"Do they so?" his friend said. "Do they?" He seemed to be in the position of wise old adviser. Unfortunately, I hadn't got a good look at him either when the two of them sat down, and now I couldn't.<br />
"She bought me this yesterday," Crazy Girls said. He laid a spectacularly ugly watch on the table.<br />
The other man turned it over. "Inscribed!"<br />
"One hundred and twenty euros! And that's before she paid to have it inscribed!"<br />
"Your name and everything."<br />
"She's spent €180 on me in the last three days."<br />
Then my own friend arrived and we solved the problems of the country for the next ten minutes. (Expel Germany from the euro, the mark would find a proper level, as would the euro, and then stiff the banks; they've had enough by now. Simples.)<br />
At that stage Crazy Girls and his adviser got up to go, and like a flash my eyes swivelled over and gobbled them up. The adviser was a grey-haired man of sober mien. Crazy Girls, to my disappointment, was no prize. A nice enough looking youngster, but you wouldn't want to be spending all your money on him. Still, maybe he had hidden talents.<br />
Anyway, I was telling my pal about the two of them afterwards, and she said she'd nearly died of frustration on a recent visit to Italy, because she was in a train carriage where everyone was talking about sex and politics and she could only understand one word in ten. It wouldn't have been so bad, she said, if she could understand nothing at all.<br />
So, Basic Italian for Eavesdroppers. The vocabulary would have to include "married man", "sister-in-law", "love", "spent a fortune", "politician", of course "bunga-bunga", "brown envelope" - and so on. I give it freely to the company that wants to make a fortune.<br />
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<b>Lucille Redmond's ebook, Love, gripping dark and funny stories of love and revolution, is available on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-ebook/dp/B007P5MECA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333797105&sr=8-1" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Amazon</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/love/id528921262?mt=11" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">iTunes</a></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsF3VzqJMTxNyTO4S42WGr2J4zifm8aiarfiASLn9srhjmldcVRpiYnspAkbmFY4KXxkE_vHK8xymbdmKNPB8MSBAq_70XVr3azUZuVlu5XeVe4mvtSllBHMO4n-cGg5dx3o_5PYeS2K6/s1600/Love-flyer-screenshot-for-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #336699; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsF3VzqJMTxNyTO4S42WGr2J4zifm8aiarfiASLn9srhjmldcVRpiYnspAkbmFY4KXxkE_vHK8xymbdmKNPB8MSBAq_70XVr3azUZuVlu5XeVe4mvtSllBHMO4n-cGg5dx3o_5PYeS2K6/s1600/Love-flyer-screenshot-for-web.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; cursor: move; position: relative;" /></a></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223031259524486223.post-12317080236469282712012-06-12T13:20:00.000+01:002012-06-15T18:18:44.502+01:00Notes from the Seanad, 1934In 1934, in the middle of the 'Economic War', when Ireland stopped paying Britain compensation for land confiscated and redistributed to tenant farmers, and Britain reacted by placing a 20% duty on food imports from Ireland, crippling the Irish economy and resulting in mass emigration, the Special Branch killed a group of protesting farmers.<br />
In the Seanad debate, Kildare Senator Richard Wilson spoke, in terms that could be replicated today:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It is not political bias or political conspiracy that is at the bottom of this unrest. The farmers would pay their way if they were able, and as they have always done, and it is not to make any political capital out of this situation that I am speaking here to-day. </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I am urging the Seanad to ask the Government to set up a tribunal to examine the situation. I have stated the case in a rough and ready way, and I will just finish my remarks by a reference to the payments which are being extracted at the present time on the basis of the low prices. Last year the British collected from the farmers of this country £4,500,000.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> The Free State Government collected in land annuities</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">£2,000,000. That is £6,500,000 collected, and out of that they gave in bounties £1,750,000 leaving a sum of £4,750,000 net loss to the farmers. That, in fact, is more than all the annuities and the other moneys that are in dispute.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The farmers have to pay that money out of produce which they are selling 20 per cent. below pre-war prices.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">If civil servants who get a bonus were suddenly to find themselves deprived of that bonus, and, in addition, if they were to find their wages cut 20 per cent. below pre-war level, what would they say about it? If the Guards or the servants of the local authorities, the school teachers or the artisans—if all these people had their remuneration reduced to the same extent as that to which the farmer's remuneration is reduced, surely we must all agree that the farmers are really mild in their protests in comparison with the protests that would be made by those people?</span></blockquote>
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<b>Lucille Redmond's ebook, Love, gripping dark and funny stories of love and revolution, is available on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-ebook/dp/B007P5MECA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333797105&sr=8-1" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Amazon</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/love/id528921262?mt=11" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">iTunes</a></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsF3VzqJMTxNyTO4S42WGr2J4zifm8aiarfiASLn9srhjmldcVRpiYnspAkbmFY4KXxkE_vHK8xymbdmKNPB8MSBAq_70XVr3azUZuVlu5XeVe4mvtSllBHMO4n-cGg5dx3o_5PYeS2K6/s1600/Love-flyer-screenshot-for-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #336699; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsF3VzqJMTxNyTO4S42WGr2J4zifm8aiarfiASLn9srhjmldcVRpiYnspAkbmFY4KXxkE_vHK8xymbdmKNPB8MSBAq_70XVr3azUZuVlu5XeVe4mvtSllBHMO4n-cGg5dx3o_5PYeS2K6/s1600/Love-flyer-screenshot-for-web.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; cursor: move; position: relative;" /></a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0