Category: Doodles

I was recently alarmed to see questions raised in the media about the relevance of Who Farted?, that hilarious programme that comes on just before the six o’clock news. You know the one – mournful bells chiming over a succession of touching vignettes, each featuring an ordinary Irish citizen pausing and sniffing the air with suspicion. Although I find it hard to imagine the meeting where the idea was first floated (pardon the pun), the end result has proved to be a piece of art that, truly, we can all be proud of. Those sixty seconds of film tell us more about the human condition than a dozen earnest documentaries. For who among us can honestly claim that they’ve never been stopped in their tracks – scrubbing a monument, say, or piloting a fishing boat – by the sudden realisation that the very air itself has turned foul? And which of us has never looked around for likely culprits only to realise that he or she is alone? It’s a fundamental human experience, one of God’s regular reminders that we are frail, imperfect things who have no good reason to act so uppity all the time. Speaking of God, I believe that the Catholic church is the principal sponsor of Who Farted? Well, good for them. It’s nice to see the faithful displaying a sense of humour for a change instead of just moping about, po-faced, gloomy and utterly bereft of the joy they claim to know so much about.

As part of my ongoing series “Things That Are Harder Than They Look”, I now present Module 8: Interviewing People. Many (many) years ago I briefly worked for the worst publication in Sydney and quite possibly the world. It was a freebie listings sheet called On the Street, which was evidently where the owner had picked up most of his staff. I remember conducting a survey one boring afternoon and discovering that only half of those present were “confident” or “very confident” that they knew what day it was. Don’t get me wrong, nice people and all. But you shouldn’t come to work drunk, much less drunk and drugged up and severely depressed. Anyway, the lack of coherency and in some cases clothing among the regulars meant that any old tosser who happened to be standing around – me, for example – was occasionally sent out to interview bands and comedians and so on. The first time it happened I was dancing on the spot with excitement. My big chance! I felt like hugging the editor – think stick with a beard – as he wished me luck and tried to remember the word “dictaphone” (I think he went for “tapey-tapey” in the end.) The band I was to interview had been formed about a week previously and were keen to advertise the fact that they were almost definitely getting a gig in a local pub soon. In the interests of brevity I will present everything I learned about interviewing that day in bullet point form: 1) Make sure you switch on your tapey-tapey. Don’t just put it out on the table and smile like you do this all the time. 2) Find out the name of the band well in advance. Don’t have that as your first question. 3) Think of other questions in advance too. Don’t end up sighing and terminating the awful silence by asking them if they like being in a band. 4) Take written notes (see point 1) so you don’t end up having to more or less make the whole thing up when you get back to the office. Interviewing. I’m telling you – harder than it looks.

I spent a lot of time this week standing around town blinking very rapidly  as Joe and Geraldine Public hurried past. It was a neat effect, like flicking through a clothes catalogue that was not only Autumn/Winter but also Spring/Summer. For the weather has turned (or has it?!?) and no one knows what the hell to put on them. In the same place at the same time you see t-shirts and scarves, sunglasses and mittens; some dressed for the beach and some dressed for the peak. How we relish those brief periods during the day when our choice is proved correct. Slicing through the sunshine in cool cotton while our pal tugs at the thicker of his two jumpers or grinning snugly from the depths of foot-thick coat while he hugs himself against the wind. And how we hate to get it wrong; it’s always a peculiar shock to the system when you find your clothes at odds with the weather. You thought you were smarter than that. You thought you knew a nice day when you saw one and this wasn’t (or was) it. Clear skies, sunshine – dress lightly. Grey skies, rain – wrap up. It seemed so simple. And now lookit … Sometimes it’s enough to make you wish you lived in the desert or on the tundra where life, hideously complicated in any event, is simplified in at least one regard. Mind you, they say the people reflect the climate and we’re probably better off being moody and changeable. Or are we? How should I know? Ah, feck off the lot of yiz.

I was stuck in traffic in Dublin city centre the other day – no, really – when a girl of about twenty walked past my trapped car. I looked up just as she drew level and was fortunate enough to catch the precise moment when she decided to void her nasal cavities all over the footpath. First she furrowed her brow and wrinkled her nose as though she had just smelled something foul. Then she raised her chin, frowned like Judge Dredd and, well, hawked. I heard it above the general city din and through my closed window. HAWWWWWWWK. My stomach had no sooner begun to flip than she pursed her lips and expelled whatever goopey material her exertions had gathered together. The projectile hit the ground with an audible splat and, I swear to you, it bounced. Am I the only one who finds this deeply erotic? No wait, not erotic, what’s the word I want … oh yeah, revolting. I presume not. I presume that anyone with a modicum of civility finds the idea of women gobbing snot on the footpath utterly repellent. But here’s the rub – is it any more repellent than the idea of men doing likewise? Is it sexist to even propose such a notion? I don’t know. On the one hand, bad behaviour is bad behaviour. On the other hand, we expect better from women, don’t we? But then again, that’s sexist in itself. Damn, this is giving me a headache. The whole thing is a moral minefield and I’m sorry I brought it up. But she brought it up first.

We’re not very keen on formal rites of passage in this culture, are we? And confirmation doesn’t count. A confirmation candidate is a child who was inducted into a cult at birth and then fed cultish propaganda for a decade or more. Dressing her up and asking if she’s still “in” is not a rite of passage, it’s a Movie of the Week. But I digress. We don’t abandon our adolescents in the woods at midnight, for example, leaving them to find their own way back to the village using nothing more than a sharpened bone and a cow’s heart. “Last one back’s a succubus!” No one does that, mind you, I just made it up as an excuse to say “succubus”. And yet our adolescents seem perfectly capable of finding the woods all on their own. Take a walk through any leafy glade in the land – even a park will do – and you will find unmistakable traces of the ceremonies that they themselves have been conducting since time began in the late sixties. As far as we can tell from the detritus, these ceremonies are brought to us by the letter C: cider, cigarettes, crisps and an occasional crusty condom. (That was an image you could have done without, I’m sure, but don’t shoot the messenger. Take a walk in the park.) What have crisps got to do with it, that’s what I want to know. “Right, I’ve got the booze and fags and johnnies. And take a look at this bad boy – a six-pack of smokey bacon!” Is that what they imagine adulthood is all about? Drinking, smoking, screwing and eating crisps? Jesus. If only.

Rooting around in the back of my wardrobe recently, I came across a small deposit of ancient footwear. I immediately forgot all about Narnia (it wasn’t working anyway) and started pondering the great gutty mystery. Remember gutties? They used to form one corner of the young Irish male footwear triangle, along with “proper” shoes and 12-hole Docs. The Docs were for pretending to be hard at junior discos. The proper shoes were for mass and, if praying didn’t work, juvenile court. Gutties were for everything else, including twenty-five-a-side football, watching telly, cycling, and climbing your friends. They were battered, dirty, smelly things whose physical integrity was under constant threat. One wrong scuff and you’d find yourself in a battle to save your very sole. Not that you cared, of course. When a pair of gutties finally flew apart (just as you were taking the crucial penalty), you simply bought another pair. They cost a fiver, for Christ’s sake. They were practically disposable. Looking back, it’s hard to see exactly how and when the modest gutty of yore began its journey to the promised land of trainerdom, with its air-sacs, fashion shoots, and three-figure price tags. It was done with such stealth and skill that you really have to wonder if anything is safe. Could they do it with socks, for example? Will we be looking back in twenty years time and saying, “Remember when you could get a pair for a few Euros and they were just bits of wool that kept your feet warm?” I hope not. Because if that were to happen, the first thing to go would be the word. I can live without “gutties”. But I’m really very fond of “socks.”

Attempt a haiku;
lose interest half-way through.
Something something wind.

No good with names, me. Useless altogether. I hear a name, I smile and say it back to the person, I say it to myself thirty-five times, I come up with a little mnemonic and then, boom, it’s gone. This is no way to live. For a start, it’s rude. Or, more correctly, it comes across as being rude. When someone forgets your name, you can’t help but feel devalued, trivialised. I know I do when it happens to me. It’s no good telling yourself that people meet people all the time and that, since each and every one of us insists on having a name of our own,  mistakes are inevitable. You drop your chin and wonder “Christ, am I that forgettable?” Then you say your name again, only quieter this time, your confidence in bits around your feet. Well, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of making people feel that way. I’m tired of calling people “Ehoheh”, as in “Hello there … eh … oh … eh …” I’m tired of the squinting and the brain-racking and the excuse-making (“Me got parasitic worm living in head”). So I’ve made a decision. From now on, unless I have documentary evidence to the contrary, I’m going to call everyone “Pat”. Men, women, young, old, I’m not discriminating. Pats as far as the eye can see. Granted, I’ll be wrong 99.9% of the time but that’s not the point. The point is that I will say “Pat” with total confidence, as though I had thought of nothing else but him (or her) since the last time I met her (or him). There’s a big difference, I’m guessing, between simply getting someone’s name wrong and just staring at them like a goldfish, all flapping gums and inadequate memory. At least I hope there is. Because my problem’s getting worse. If matters continue to deteriorate, I’m liable to get bludgeoned to death one of these days by (brace yourself) an unknown assailant.

I first realised that I needed glasses when I was about fifteen. The horrible penny dropped during mass one Sunday when I looked up and noticed that the priest had gone blurry. I was impressed at first. Wow, I thought; I didn’t know they could do that. But then I noticed that the altar boys had lost some of their definition too. A sweaty-palmed trip to the optician confirmed the worst. I would need to go from two eyes to four and could rest assured that no girl would ever speak to me again as long as I lived. My first pair of specs were exactly like Ronnie Corbett’s, only grey. Soon they were exactly like Ronnie Corbett’s, only grey with one arm superglued permanently open (the wee screw fell out and I panicked). It wouldn’t have mattered what they looked like, of course. I would have hated them anyway. But people change. We grow, we evolve, we mature, we stop letting our parents pick our glasses. Over the years I’ve gradually come to terms with the old goggles and have even had a pair or two that I was quite fond of. For one thing, they make an excellent prop, which is more than can be said for contact lenses. Lenses may not steam up in the rain and it’s very difficult to accidentally sit on them, but you can’t look over the top of them while saying something sarcastic. You can’t chew on the end of them while pretending to be thoughtful. You can’t take them off and shake your hair down, thus revealing yourself to be a beautiful woman after all. Hmmm. Note to self: work on examples.