Back on the Hobby Horse

I mentioned Keith Waterhouse's 1979 collection of newspaper columns Rhubarb Rhubarb in a previous post. It contains an article on the role of aunts at Christmas, in which he writes: "Some aunts sing. They sing: "Come Into the Garden, Maud". Some aunts recite. They recite "The Lady of Shalott" (by the author of "Come Ito The Garden Maud".)"

Here's an excerpt from another book I'm reading, A Memoir by Terry De Valera: "It was while she was in Edenderry that mother took up serious reading. She read Dickens, Scott, George Eliot, and a great deal of poetry, particularly Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Longfellow. She had of course a great love for, and knowledge of, Shakespeare's works, and her love of poetry was apparent throughout her entire life. She said: "I have always had a delight in poetry. When I saw the rain drops on the leaves in the morning, Byron's lines came into my mind:

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves

Dewy with nature's tear-drops as they pass."

Many years later, I remember Father often asked her to find some apt quotation, and seldom, if ever, did she fail to find or provide one, often from memory alone."

How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear twenty-first century! It's impossible for me to imagine anybody reciting "The Lady of Shalott" at a Christmas party today. Presumably, it must have seemed at least plausible in 1979, or Waterhouse wouldn't have conjured it. Remember he was writing for the Daily Mirror, not some posh paper.

Everybody has their hobby-horse, and this is mine. (Well, it's one of them, at least.) Perhaps a hobby-horse is not the best vantage-point from which to see clearly. But I'm convinced that the decline in poetry-reading has had profound effects on society. We hear constantly (and I mean constantly) about the addictive, "dopamine-seeking" behaviour which is inherent to social media and smartphones and all the rest, and the way it's reshaping our brains. It's such a cliché, in fact, I'm ashamed even to mention it, except...

Except that it seems to me that this is really just a continuation of something that was already happening even before computers or smartphones came along. Even before television came along! It seems to me that most fiction involves the constant arousal and satisfaction of curiosity. Who knocked on the door? Who is that mysterious figure in the mist? How did Sherlock Holmes know what Dr. Watson was thinking about at that precise moment?

You might say: that's not fair, not all fiction is like that. Literary fiction is not like that.

But all fiction and almost all prose is more like that than poetry. There is no suspense in a sonnet.

And even when there is a story, even when it's the most popular poetry imaginable-- a folk ballad about a murder, say-- the essence of the work is not suspense and gratifying curiosity. Because you could do that much better in prose.

I think the essential difference is that poetry is inherently contemplative and prose-- along with most other artforms and entertainments-- is inherently analytical. (I realize I have said this before.)

They don't have to be in competition. Of course you can enjoy both-- you should enjoy both. But the inescapable truth is that, although people used to read combine fiction reading with poetry reading, they no longer do so. People today seem more willing to read even the most difficult and longest fiction (or books, films, music) etc. than to read even the most accessible poetry.

And I'm aware of this reluctance myself. I never feel like reading poetry. The reward always comes later. Either during the reading itself-- like the glow that you get during exercise-- or much later, when the lines and rhythms and phrases have entered into your mind and become a part of you.

As media become more based upon instant gratification, we're all going to have to make a more conscious effort not to enter a vegetative state. Maybe it's a good time to make that little bit of extra effort and read some poetry, especially some long poetry.

How to Deal with Anti-Label People

You've probably heard them: "Ooh, I don't really go in for labels. I can't be pigeon-holed as conservative or liberal, left-wing or right-wing, traditionalist or progressive, nationalist or internationalist, or anything else. My thinking is far too subtle and profound to be contained in boxes. I fly, eagle-like, beyond the nets of convention and your limited human frameworks. I am large, I contain multitudes."

I suggest such people should be called anti-labellists, or an-labs for short. That will settle their hash.

Trucking Horror Stories

Are you familiar with the YouTube channel Mr. Nightmare? It's a brilliantly simple concept. People send in their "true" horror stories and Mr. Nightmare reads them out. It's on the internet, but it could have been done eighty years ago on the wireless. The videos get millions of views.

Many of the videos are themed, which I like. Today I was listening to these three trucking stories. They were pretty good.

I can't even drive, but I'm quite fascinated by truckers. Now that's a manly job!

Tea in the Poolside Café

There's a café called The Poolside Café in UCD. It's beside the fifty-metre indoor swimming pool that dominates the cavernous Student Centre. I like to drink tea and coffee there, read a book, and enjoy the atmosphere of the swimming pool-- the sounds, the beautiful colour of the water, the shimmering light, etc. (The pool itself isn't pay-as-you-go and the annual fee is more than I would want to pay.)

I bought a cup of tea there at the weekend. The tea in the poolside café costs 1.50, which is cheaper than you'll get anywhere-- except, perhaps, a church fete or a school jumble-sale or something like that. All the same, they only ever fill two-thirds of an already small paper cup. I like my beverages filed to the brim. (And in a big mug, for preference.)

The lady serving me asked if I wanted her to leave room for milk. I said: "Yes". When she handed it to me, it was half-way filled. I said with a smile: "That's a LOT of room!" If she heard me, she didn't react.

The thing is...why did I say "Yes" when she asked me if I wanted to leave room for the milk? I foresaw clearly what would happen.

I suppose I said it because I can't imagine replying: "No, you already leave more than enough room for the milk, thank you very much."

Or because I can't imagine just saying: "No", and then putting milk into it in front of her.

What abominable cowardice!

A Personal Contradiction

I've noticed this contradiction about myself:

1) I'm becoming more and more libertarian all the time, more of a believer in the principles of the American Revolution. Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have said I was a traditionalist conservative rather than a libertarian because freedom-- while it's obviously an important value-- isn't the most important value, or the overriding value.

But in recent years my position has changed to this one: freedom isn't the most important value in itself, but it's the most important political value. Not only because authoritarian government always has the potential to become a flat-out totalitarian regime like the USSR or the Nazi Germany (and surely preventing that is the most important thing), but also because of the more insidious soft tyranny we've seen creep over all publicly-funded or government-controlled institutions over the last few decades. The arm of government only stops short of your own home and your own mind. Political correctness is omnipresent. Civil society is replaced by NGOs. "Human rights" have become an excuse to hammer society into the shape desired by our elites-- which inclines me to think that positive human rights were a mistake from the first, and we should instead favour the "negative" human rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, corporations can be just as enthusiastic at spreading political correctness (or any other ideology) as government. But government always has the whip-hand. Recent events in America have shown this to be the case. (The fact that this whip-hand might sometimes be used for good doesn't make me any more keen on it.)

2) And yet...the sort of community I would like to live in is a paternalistic and closely-knit and somewhat rigid community. I like reading about boarding schools and monasteries and old-fashioned colleges with dormitories and honour codes and all that sort of thing. I love the word "canteen", both because of how it sounds and because I like the idea of a communal eating space where everybody eats the same thing, or chooses from a limited menu. (The word "canteen" is intrinsically poetic, in my view.) I want some rules that are a little bit arbitrary and nonsensical and unreasonable. I want village elders, town worthies, and city fathers...even if they have feet of clay, even if I thumb my nose at them. My own taste would not run to the maximum amount of freedom-- except in the all-important areas, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Triple-Take

 I've frequently noted this "triple-take" in my own mind, including this morning:

1) Reading about some other time or place, before I was born, and finding myself yearning for the idyll I have constructed around it. In this case (although I've never really been a proud Dubliner) it was an ill-defined idyll of old Dublin life, the sort I would glimpse when I heard people talking about "the rare auld times": images of barefoot children playing hopscotch and chanting rhymes, streets without billboards or engine fumes, thick Dublin accents, "porter running from the taps with a head of yellowed cream", broad Dublin salt-of-the-earth accents, a general atmosphere of piety, shabby gentility, patriotism, etc.

(It could, of course, just as well be some other idyll attached to some other time and place.)

2) The painful realization that it wasn't like that...that people back then also made stupid, smutty jokes (as I frequently have), that there was just as much small talk, that people craved excitement and novelty and convenience and garishness, that the washerwoman would have preferred a washing machine (who can blame her?) and the kids playing hop-scotch would have dropped it for video games at the speed of light.

3) The sudden, momentarily overwhelming urge to at least-- as far as I can-- live my life as purged of banality as much as possible, even to the point of caricature and becoming an object of ridicule. Much as I love jokes and comedy, I have very frequently felt the sudden urge to become completely humourless, as a a sort of counter-weight to all the tedious and depressing buffoonery around us.

Of course, this "overwhelming urge" has quickly passed on every occasion...

The Ilac Shopping Centre and the Daffodills

A fountain bubbled dreamily.

Above it, a hot air balloon
Rose and descended endlessly
Then higher still, a tiled cartoon
Of Moore Street shawlies. Just across
Tinkled a mezzanine café
And, further up again, there was
A mirrored ceiling. All the way
Above that ceiling, Space Age-style
Glass lifts took shoppers up to see
The streets below. My juvenile
Soul swooned in quiet ecstasy.

One year they put some banners up
With lines from Wordsworth's "Daffodils"
I guessed this was the FA Cup
Of poetry; the Orson Welles,
The Sergeant Pepper, Everest,
The Parthenon, all that could boast
Of being best, the very best,
The poem the whole world loved the most.

I was a Stars Wars baby with
Strange knowledge of things long ago
Things all but lost, like sunken myth,
From long before the Late Late Show.
Optimus Prime and Patrick Pearse
Looked over me from infancy
Queen and Iron Maiden filled my ears
Arcadia my memory.

My innocence was ten miles deep
To think the world loved poetry
Enough to care that much. The creep
Of time-thieving technology
Had choked us less, and Ireland still
Trailed clouds of glory from its birth
(Since grand ideals take time to kill
And dreamers to be thrown to earth)
But even thirty years ago
The gig was up, and Pegasus
Was saddled tight and kept to show
The kids around the syllabus.

Must shopping centres kill the soul?
Can daffodils sustain the heart
At second-hand? Does time unroll
Away from nature and from art
Unstoppably? Or did I snatch
A glimpse of something possible?
Some promise that the soul can catch
(Even in suburbs, even still)
The light that never was on sea
Or land, or blue remembered hills?
Is there a place for poetry
So far from daffodils?

Keith Waterhouse Again. Words Again.

I've written previously about Keith Waterhouse, the English newspaper columnist, screenwriter, novelist, and general man of letters, whose writing career stretched more than fifty years until his death in 2009. He's not exactly forgotten today. But he's not exactly remembered, either. I've actually toyed with the idea of creating a Keith Waterhouse website as none seems to exist at the moment.

(In terms of politics and cultural politics, Keith Waterhouse very much fulfils the recent stereotype of a "centrist Dad. He was a Labour supporter, but something of a cultural conservative and nostalgist, while also being dismissive of Euroscepticism and concerns about immigration.)

In the last couple of days, I've been reading a collection of his newspaper columns that I'd never encountered before, Rhubarb Rhubarb. They're hit-and-miss in quality, but one thing that makes the book interesting are the period and ephemeral allusions-- the view from 1979, as it were. Newspaper columns are similar to sitcoms in that they give a particularly vivid window onto the time they were created (much more so, I think, than films or novels or almost anything else).

In one column, "Words for the Weary", Waterhouse writes about words: specifically, "hundreds of new words that we have had to familiarise ourselves with as our lives have been mucked about with over the last few years. Or, if not exactly new words, words that have taken on a different or sharper meaning."

The rest of the column is mostly a list of these words. Many of them greatly surprised me, and made me think: can that really have been a new word (or even a new usage) in 1979? I won't reproduce the whole list, but here are some of them-- not just the ones that surprised me, but a fairly representative sprinkling.

Aggro

Additive

Audio

Backlash

Bionic

Computer

Gay

Graffiti

Hostage

Immigrant

Inflation

Junkie

Mugger

Motorway

Multi-storey

No-go

Security

Topless

Unisex

Vandal

Whizz-kid

Zone

Can all these words really have been unfamiliar in 1979? In many cases, it's hard for me to believe. But Keith Waterhouse's whole career was focused on words and the use of words, so presumably he's a trustworthy commentator.

Things that are newer than one might think are fascinating. At least, they fascinate me. There's a whole TV Tropes page called Newer Than They Think which lists all sorts of surprising examples across different categories. I've spent hours reading and re-reading it and I wish it was ten times longer than it is.

One example that particularly intrigues me is abortion and the religious right in America. I'd picked up the notion that Christianity has been on a path of continual liberalization from about the late nineteenth century. So it seemed only natural to assume that, the further back in time you go, the more solidly pro-life you'll find Christians to be.

So I was very surprised to learn that this isn't the case, at least not in America. Conservative evangelical Christians were not nearly as anti-abortion in the seventies as they are now. (The rise of IVF has complicated the whole issue, though.)

A more trivial example is the white smoke in Papal elections. It seems like the kind of thing that might go back a thousand years, or even further. But, even though the cardinals burned their ballots for many centuries, the smoke only became a signal to the public in the eighteenth century-- and that was accidental, when a chimney was installed in St. Peter's to protect the frescoes from it. And white smoke was first used in 1914!

Bruce Charlton on Children's Chants

A few days ago I read Professor Bruce Charlton's autobiographical fragment Lucky Philosopher, which I found very interesting.

I was especially interested in this passage:

At playtimes in primary school, we would gather in large mixed groups to perform ritualistic singing and chanting games such as Oranges and Lemons, or the Farmer's in his Den.

I used to get a strange and excited feeling from engaging in these, because they seemed incomprehensible yet significant. Why was the farmer in a den? Why did the Farmer song end with patting a bone? Why did Oranges and Lemons end with someone having their head chopped off?

One factors was the frisson of playing with "the girls" en masse - of having an excuse to play with girls. There was a strange thrill from dancing hand in hand, or being the farmer then choosing a 'wife' in the Farmer's in his Den.

The whole thing was bizarre - almost as if we kids had-to perform these things for a forgotten reason: it was our special job in a way that did not apply to the normal free-for-all games or the chasing-and-catching games (like Up-and-Down or British Bulldogs). Certainly, they left behind a special satisfaction when completed.

Some scholars have suggested that these games are garbled pagan or magical religious residues - this may not be true, but certainly it felt like that.

This truly speaks to my depths!

I've had very similar reactions to childhood games, chants, and rituals. "A strange and excited feeling" is exactly what they provoked in me.

When I was a kid, there was a sort of game whereby someone would say: "Silence in the courtyard, silence in the street. The biggest fool in all the world is just about to speak. Speak, fool, speak!"

The joke, of course, was that the next person to speak was the biggest fool in all the world.

But what excited me were the opening words: "Silence in the courtyard, silence in the street". "Courtyard" was an archaic word which made me imagine a royal court, so that pleased me in itself. I further imagined silence falling suddenly on all the people in the royal court, and in the street outside, as though some enchantment had come upon them.

The fact that the biggest fool in all the world was just about to speak make the event seem grandiose, epic, even awe-inspiring.

And this little idyll was invoked by the words of a child-- that was the best part of it, although I was only dimly aware of it.

There was another game called King Silence which involved children having to walk across a room without making a sound. I learned about this one from a book, although I think I persuaded some of my friends to play it once. It was the name that enchanted me-- the idea of an actual King Silence.

The magic of children's games and chants is very closely related, in my own experience, to the magic of tradition and ritual in general.

I don't know why, but the sight of a Halloween bonfire or a Christmas tree has always excited me in a way that's very hard to describe. It's like it awakens something deep in my soul.

But not just a Christmas tree or a Halloween bonfire. I have the same reaction from things like:

The green cross on a pharmacy or the red and white pole outside a barber's shop. (The serpent wrapped around a staff, even more so.)

The suits and characters of playing cards.

Astrological symbols.

All the traditional iconography of the cinema-- deep red curtains, the stylized image of celluloid film, cinema marquees, projector beams, etc.

Proverbs.

Highly decorated pub mirrors.

Old-fashioned jokes with a fairly elaborate set-up and a punchline.

Children's games like Blind Man's Bluff (or Buff?).

Coats-of-arms.

The image and idea of Big Ben or the white cliffs of Dover.

But traditions, especially-- rituals, observances, customs.

When a ritual is performed, even if it's something totally banal-- like hanging Christmas tinsel in an office, or reading fortune cookies, or answering the door to trick-or-treaters-- it feels like something deeply important has happened, something that somehow creates or opens another world, or another dimension to this world.

I have such a craving for tradition that once I even persuaded some friends to participate in a totally made-up, arbitrary one. I called it Sliggens's Day. I decided we would all get together in a pub, drink red lemonade (distinctive to Ireland) and read out a one-act play by Lord Dunsany called Mr. Sliggen's Hour. I chose the play at random and, in fact, none of us really understood the point of it-- which rather added to the occasion.

There was never a second Sliggens's Day. It was more than ten years ago. I keep thinking I should try to hold a second one.

In fact, I constantly feel a sense of shame that I haven't created more traditions. This really bothers me. I feel especially that it's lamentable to have worked in a university for twenty-five years (on October the 15th of this year) and not have created at least one tradition. Universities are incubators of traditions. You might think I'm joking here but I'm serious. I really do feel very bad about this.

For the past three years I have attended the annual Ivy Day commemoration in Glasnevin cemetery, when a wreath is laid on the grave of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist leader who died in 1891. The tradition has been held every single year. Only a few people turn up, even though it's generally a prominent figure who lays the wreath and gives the speech. (Last year it was the Taoiseach.)

I'm not really a fan of Parnell, not particularly-- in terms of Irish leaders, I think, he very much falls into the category of a modernizer. I'm more a De Valera kind of guy. But I go for the sake of the ritual. I hope never to miss it again.

I especially love hearing about hyper-specific traditions such as standing for the Hallelujah Chorus at performances of Handel's Messiah.

I haven't even mentioned religious traditions. They go without saying, I think.

This is such a huge subject for me that I could write this blog post for the rest of my life-- so I might as well stop now, with a threat to continue at some point.

Time and Space

One of the themes of my life has been a fascination with special times and places, or rather, the specialness of times and places. And one of the anxieties of my life is a fear that this specialness is declining.

I have occasionally suspected that this is a projection or morbid fear, but I have heard other people express the same fear, unprompted by me. (People seem much more concerned about a loss of specialness in place rather than time.)

I do believe that this loss of specialness is happening. But at the same time, there seems to be a certain irreducible diversity in time and place.

I've noticed how often it arises when somebody is talking about something else. For instance, the inspiration of a work of art. Somebody will say quite spontaneously: "Well, you have to take into account the sort of city I was living in..."

Or take, for instance, the episodes of the Journey Home I've been watching, the show in which Catholic converts describe their paths to the Church. Geographical location seems to play a massive role in many of the stories. A convert might say something like: "In the area where I'm from, I'd never met a Catholic in my whole life..."

When I look for this specialness it's hard to find-- when I'm not looking for it, it seems to be everywhere.

Here's another example. A while ago I visited Newry, a town just across the Irish border. I wandered around it for an hour or two and was disappointed that there was nothing to see. But, in retrospect, I have found myself mentioning several things I saw, almost without noticing. (Its hilliness, a historic enclosed market that was just closing as I got there, the number of statues and particular statues, a cheap restaurant that served very abundant cheap meals and whose waitresses were extremely friendly....)

Here's another example. I recently found myself in Granby Lane, the little side-street where the famous Dublin ascetic and holy man Matt Talbot collapsed and died. It isn't much to look at, aside from a plaque commemorating Talbot. But in the time I lingered there, to say a rosary, a couple of people passing by stopped to touch the plaque. I was there such a short time, it must be a very regular observance.

Forty Years Ago: A Poem

I wrote this poem in 2005, in a rented bedroom in a family home in Stillorgan, which was probably the nadir of my fortunes-- or at least, felt like it. I was obviously still suffering from the "end of history" vibe which 9/11 was supposed to have dispelled.

The critique of modern life is quite unfocussed but I do like the lines: "Time is an air-conditioned office now, and history an infinite replay." I could even claim that this is prophetic given the horror of limitless office space expressed by the film The Backrooms (which I haven't yet seen), and also the now-widespread observation that pop culture is just regurgitating the past indefinitely.

My notion that this "end of history" would be a post-ideology, post-deprivation, post-compulsion landscape of endless consumerism couldn't have been more wrong, though. I didn't foresee Covid lockdowns, the development of political correctness beyond purely negative speech-codes towards demands for positive affirmation, Trump, Brexit, and all that. Little did I realize there were a whole load of new taboos, privations, and social upheavals on the way. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that these are often more welcome to me than the stagnation of the "end of history" that I feared-- although I'm not saying that's a healthy reaction.

I don't think this a great poem. I think I've written about ten good poems in more than thirty years of writing poetry. It's not as bad as others.

One of the weaknesses of my poems has always been the use of characters and settings that seemed clear to me, but that really weren't. In this poem, a young man is watching old movies and TV shows, behind closed curtains, alone.

Forty Years Ago

Behind closed curtains, forty years ago
Fills up the screen in black and white.
Oh, what he wouldn't give to grow
Amongst the craters the Luftwaffe made,
To be a baby of the Blitz! But night
Has fallen now on history's parade.

He watches mini-skirted women jive
The pale young hero cursing TV sets
And package holidays. To be alive
When time was like the weather! When the news
Was like a story! Now nobody gets
Excited about class, no-one has views

About the Common Market, no-one talks
About how things were different in my day.
That's gone the way of Cromwell and Guy Fawkes.
Time is an air-conditioned office now
And history an infinite replay.
There's nothing left the world will not allow;

No rationing; no walking half a mile
To hear a radio, no being called
To spend two years in khaki, no big trial
For dirty books; at last nobody cares.
Curse on the telly, no-one is appalled;
Puncture your face with studs and no-one stares.

Nostalgic for small-mindedness, he feeds
On scenes of caps and queues and kitchen-sinks
And every month the whole damned lot recedes;
That guy who played the miner's son just died
And she's a Dame, that mini-skirted minx
In this last room where history can hide
He lives a past unseen, self-mummified.

The Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook-- Perhaps my Favourite Church

Today I went to Sunday Vigil Mass in the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook. I'm falling in love with this church, despite having visited it for the first time many years ago.

A few years ago I started a series of blog on Dublin churches, and I included this church in it. I actually stopped that series because I had a few whingy comments (not from regulars) about the modern churches I featured. Personally, I'm very fond of many sixties and post-sixties churches, and I think the inability to see anything good in them is a form of philistinism, a lack of imagination. Ugliness is just ugliness, but there are different sorts of beauty.

Funnily enough, it was the post on the Sacred Heart where I announced my intention to end the series.

Plainness has generally been the thing that has pleased me the most about churches, so now I'm surprised to be falling under the enchantment of a more ornate church. Actually, the marble altarpiece is one of my favourite things about the Sacred Heart. But my absolute favourite thing about it is the very finely-detailed gold ornamentation on the walls behind the altar, and in other places. I also like the marble pillars. The profusion of little detail greatly pleases me, but it never becomes overwhelming or gaudy or heavy.

Churches that appeal to me nearly always do so because they have an atmosphere I can only describe as "spacey"-- transcendent, otherworldly, outside of time. This one seems very spacey to me.

It was deliberately built on the location of the old Donnybrook Fair, an event which became notorious for its drunkenness and fighting, giving rise to the term "donnybrook". I like the historical transposition of that, the palimpsest quality. Perhaps all that was good about the Donnybrook Fair is redeemed and sublimated in this sacred space.

(Anticipating a potential "nobody goes to the Ordinary Form" reaction to my pictures-- no, I'm not being paranoid, yes, I have had this reaction before-- I should mention that I took the pictures long before Mass began. There was a good congregation.)

The First Defenestration of Prague

This historical event occurred on this day back in 1419. It's described by an "On This Day" website I subscribe to thus: "First Defenestration of Prague: Anti-Catholic Hussites, followers of executed reformer Jan Hus, storm Prague Town Hall and throw the judge, mayor, and several city council members out the windows. They die in the fall or are killed by the crowd outside."

This was obviously a real tragedy and I pray God's grace on the souls of the victims. But it's also an example (perhaps the best example) of a historical (or perhaps historiographical) phenomenon that I like very much: that is, unique and often poetic names being given to historical and political events.

Here are some more examples:

The Election of the Snows: The 1917 by-election in which Count Plunkett was elected for Sinn Féin, a turning point in Irish history. As you might guess, it took place amidst snowy conditions.

The Night of the Long Knives: Most infamously the night when Hitler violently purged the SA leadership, but (more interestingly, because more figurative) the cabinet reshuffle in which British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan gave seven of his ministers the boot.

The Three-Year Summer: A term used by Harry Potter fans for the long wait between the fourth and fifth books of the series. Presumably because it represented the summer term in Hogwart's. (I'm not involved in Potter fandom. I just came across this factoid on TV Tropes.)

The Winter of Discontent: A time of heightened industrial action in the winter of 78-79, in Britain.

The Tallaght Strategy: When the leader of the Irish party Fine Gael announced (in a speech to the Tallaght Chamber of Commerce) that his party would not oppose the economic policy of the Fianna Fáil government when it was in the national interest. (Shouldn't that just go without saying?) Not quite following the pattern of this list, but close enough.

The Barebones Parliament, the Rump Parliament, the Mad Parliament, the Cavalier Parliament: Colourful names given to various parliaments in British history.

The Spring Tide: The 1992 General Election in Ireland, in which the Labour Party doubled its representation under the leadership of Dick Spring.

The Pilgrimage of Grace: A violent rebellion against the dissolution of the monasteries in Reformation England.

The War of Jenkins' Ear: An eighteenth-century war between Spain and England supposedly sparked by an English sea captain having his ear chopped off.

The Battle of Britpop: When Oasis and Blur both released their new singles on the same day in 1995, prompting intense media speculation on which of them would reach number one. Blur won the battle, although Oasis won the war. (I like to joke: "I saw some hard times. I lived through the Cola Wars and the Battle of Britpop.")

You get the point. Any other suggestions? I'm agog.

Blessed Barney Casey

Today is the feast day of possibly my favourite saint (although John Paul II is another candidate). That's Solanus Casey, the Irish-American Capuchin friar whose life was filled with extraordinary miracles. He's not actually a saint yet, he's only been beatified so far, but I fully expect him to be raised to the altars before long. (He was called Barney before he took the name Solanus.)

I like him for many reasons, but one reason is that he was a humble man who (so to speak) had a lot to be humble about. It's never easy to be humble, but I can't help thinking that it's a bit easier for people like St. Thomas More or (indeed) St. John Paul II-- people whose brilliance is quite obvious to everyone.

Solanus Casey wasn't like that. He just barely managed to be ordained. In fact, he was ordained a "simplex" priest, which meant that he couldn't hear confessions or give homilies. (I've never encountered the word "simplex", in this sense, outside his life story.) He actually had to sign this declaration: Since I do not know whether as a result of my meager talents and defective studies I am fit to assume the many-sided duties and serious responsibilities of the priesthood, I hereby declare that I do not want to become a priest if my legitimate superiors consider me unqualified.

(Admittedly, part of the reason he struggled in his seminary studies was because much of the instruction was through Latin and German. He went to seminary in Milwaukee which had a large German population.)

Solamus had to do the more menial jobs in the monastery, such as sacristan and porter-- the latter, Providentially, became the ideal context for his calling, as a never-ending stream of visitors sought his advice and prayers.

He wasn't even good at his hobby. He loved to play the violin but apparently he was terrible at it. Also, he was disappointed in love before he pursued his vocation!

A Big Light on Misinformation

I regret to inform my readers that I have committed the deadly sin of misinformation. In my recent blog post on interesting words, I claimed that those big lights that you see on movie sets are called "Krieg lights."

This is not the case. This was a mistaken claim.

They are actually called "Klieg lights", named after the brothers who invented them, whose surname was Kliegl. (Why they dropped the final "l", I don't know.)

I'd like to apologize to my blog readers, to my family, to my blog readers' families, to their pets, to the interesting words community, and most of all, to God. This morning I am a sadder and a wiser man. I am going to work hard to regain the trust of my blog readers. God bless you all.

Happy Feast of St. Celestine I!

He was, according to tradition, the Pope who sent St. Patrick to Ireland. There is actually a street named "Celestine Avenue" in a Dublin suburb.

If we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, why shouldn't we celebrate the Pope who sent him?

The papacy is such a strange thing. They have the most spiritual power (and responsibility) of everybody in the whole world, and have often wielded great temporal power as well. But how many of us know more than a handful of them? I actually rather like this fact, and not for any Ozymandias-style sense of forgotten grandeur. Perhaps I like it because it makes history seems so spacious and irregular.

Interesting Words

I've frequently bored my blog readers to death with my fascination with words. And here I go again! Take it as your Friday penance!

Recently I've started keeping a notebook of interesting words. I've done this for two reasons:

1) Because I love interesting words, mostly for their aesthetic value-- "aesthetic" understood as a combination of sound and sense.

2) Because of the gargantuan, colossal, extraordinary amount of time we spend in limbo, doing nothing in particular. Taking the lift, and waiting for the lift. Walking down corridors. Waiting for buses. Waiting for meetings to begin. The US military has a saying I like, and that I find applies to much of life: "Hurry up and wait". So I like to carry notebooks with which I might, possibly, improve my mind while hurrying up and waiting. (Quickly looking in a notebook seems respectable no matter what you're doing. It appears official and diligent. As opposed to browsing your phone.)

How many of these words did you know, and do you have any other suggestions? (Guidelines follow the list.) Please tolerate my approximate definitions and correct them if they're wrong. There's a good few architectural terms at the start.

Symploce: A figure of speech in which the middle of a phrase is changed while the beginning and end stay the same, e.g., "Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley deep enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep me from you..."

Apse: The rounded end of a cruciform church where the altar is.

Architrave: The lintel of a row of column capitals.

Ashlar: Masonry that is finely cut and symmetrical.

Cantilever: A structural element attached to a fixed structure at one end, unsupported at the other. I'm glad I know what this means now as I've been hearing it all my life and felt stupid.

Clerestory: The upper part of a nave of a large church, containing windows.

Dentil: A small block used as a repeating motif in a cornice.

Heliograph: An early form of photography using bitumen. Used to create the first surviving photograph. (I wrote a poem about that photograph in my teens, and I still find the idea poetic.)

Calotype: Early photographic process that used paper.

Corral: A "slot" in a race (like a marathon), so that people begin at times commensurate with their ability.

Aspect ratio: The proportion of a movie picture's width and height.

Foot lambert: A unit used to measure luminescence on a movie screen.

Pop-o-matic: That plastic bubble in the centre of a board game that contains dice, and that you press to roll them. (I'm particularly fond of this word.)

Transom: The beam between the door and the pane of glass (or panel of wood?) above the door. The glass above it is called a "transom light" in the USA and a fanlight in British English. 

I know this word mostly from the movie This is Spinal Tap, in which the lead singer says: "Before I met Jeanine, my life was cosmically a shambles. I was using bits and pieces of whatever Eastern philosophies happened to drift through my transom."

Dewar: Name of a particular sort of flask and also the container in which cryonically preserved people are preserved (upside down, since the theory is that their heads will be preserved longer that way if there's a power-cut). Named after a Scottish guy called Dewar.

Non-rhotic: Languages, dialects and accents that only pronounce "r" when it comes before a vowel.

Cornea: The transparent "windshield" over your eye. Probably everybody knew that apart from me, right?

Sclera: The white of the eye.

Conjuctiva: The delicate tissue that lines the eyelids.  (Before we move on from eye-related terms...isn't the eye the most beautiful part of any human body?)

Hyperopia: Far-sightedness, the opposite of myopia.

Hue: In colour theory, one of the twelve basic colours of the colour wheel.

Chromaticity: In colour theory, the "purity" of a colour on the colour wheel. Measured by the presence of otherwise of black, white, or grey. (I'm not sure what that means exactly.)

Ferrule: The metal band on a paintbrush.

Emesis basin: A metal basin for holding medical instruments and also for puking into.

Debridement: Removing dead and infected tissue from a wound.

Alickadoo: A member of a sports club who isn't actually a player, just a hanger-on. Said to have been coined in Ireland. (I also particularly like this one.)

Mysophobia: A morbid fear of germs. (I personally wash my hands more often than almost anybody I know.)

Thaumatrope: A Victorian era toy or optical illusion. There are pictures on two sides of a disc and when the disc is spun fast enough, it looks like the images merge. Cool!

Zoetrope: Simple form of animation using a cylinder on a rotating wheel. I've watched videos of this and honestly I don't think it's all that impressive.

Theremin: Musical instrument that is played without being touched. Developed by some Soviet scientist. Most associated with "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys although that wasn't exactly a theremin but some kind of variation on the idea.

Klieg light: The big light they use on film sets.

Carcenet: A type of jewelled metal necklace from medieval times. I came across this while reading Idylls of the King by Tennyson. it's pronounced carkenet.

Diagetic: Something that exists within a fictional world. Most commonly music: diagetic music is music the characters can actually hear, as opposed to most film scores.

Libfix: A "liberated affix". Like the -gate in every scandal that was called -gate after Watergate, or like the -thon in telethon, walkathon, etc.

From that list, you probably have a good idea of the sort of words I'm looking for, but these are my basic principles:

1) It has to be a real word that has a real function, no matter how obscure or rare it might be. I'm not really interested in funny or whimsical words, although these seem to predominate in every "interesting words" list I can find. (The compilers of such lists have a particular love affair with "flibbertigibbet".)

2) I like words that are drawn from some particular field or specialty, such as (on this list) optics or film projection. But not so obscure that they would never be relevant for general usage.

3) I like somewhat extravagant names for inventions: Jumbotron, kaleidoscope (probably my favourite word of all), Pop-o-matic. (When I was a kid, I became acquainted with a machine called a ray-ionizer which supposedly purified the air.)

4) I like words with a bit of a Greek sound to them, like zoetrope and symploce.

That's about it. Don't forget, I'd be interested in hearing how many of these words people already knew, as well.

Interesting Anomalies

Lord Alfred Tennyson asked for every copy of his Collected Works to end with the poem "Crossing the Bar", which expresses his hope for the afterlife and the circumstances of his death. And so they have, as far as I can make out.

Nepal is the only flag in the world which is non-rectangular.

You can't pump your own "gas" (as the Americans say) in New Jersey, by law.

I love anomalies like these and I have an endless appetite for them. Does anyone have any other examples? (No facetious responses, please. This is serious business.)

The Ghostliness of Buildings

Have you ever thought about the ghostliness of buildings? Once a building (of any kind) is thirty or forty years old, several generations have most likely passed through it. Not necessarily generations in the strict sense, but generations of occupants.

Who were they? Where did they sit? What were their routines? What did they think of this space you are currently occupying? How has its mood flickered over the decades?

It's the complete lack of a record (in most places) that is most ghostly of all. It's not like every house and train station and shop has its historian. The vast, vast majority of the events that take place are utterly forgotten in the place where they happened.

Another strange thought is this one: "Some day I will never see the inside of this building again." Whether that's because you die, or because you move, or because you change jobs, or because you change towns...One way or another, the thought often strikes me on the mental funny-bone.

St. Praxedis

 

Today is the Feast of St. Praxedes, an early Roman martyr. I'd never heard of her before. The painting above is by Vermeer.

These early saints and martyrs are fascinating, partly because we know so little about them and yet their fame must have been considerable for generations after their death. How did the details fade from living memory?

I've always liked that one of the busiest train stations in London is called St. Pancras. It seems strangely appropriate, Perhaps because so much of national life is built on train stations, and the ancient Roman saints are a foundational stratum of the Christian society that still undergirds our world.

Definition of a Sadist

Somebody for whom "hurt you" is its own reward.

A Faint Memory

Today a long-ago memory swam back into my consciousness, a throwaway reference in some movie review (I think it was a review of Poltergeist) that referred to "the good old nuclear family"-- something like "the good old nuclear family triumphs again".

I think I was a kid when I read this, and I can't remember what I thought of it at the time. But it seems a good example of something that's been going on my entire life-- that is, the constant diet of obliquely dismissive comments regarding this or that social institution. But never saying exactly what's wrong with them.

A common example of this used to be sardonic references to "2.4 children." Of course, the birthrate has dropped well below that now, and our societies are dying, so maybe 2.4 children wasn't so bad after all.

But nobody ever really said what was wrong with it. It was just a standard snide comment meant to portray people as-- what? Bourgeois, average, complacent, white-bread, banal...something like that. It was never actually articulated.

I'm sure you can think of many other examples of this. Perhaps the most obvious one these days is "white male". If you refer to somebody (or an institution, or an audience) as "primarily white and male", or something like that....you don' t have to explain what the problem with that is. It's just a generalized expression of disapproval or disdain. Somehow just using the words is scoring a point.

"Middle America" is another example.

I think this is one of the way the left has exerted its cultural dominance for decades now...a constant drip-drip-drip of this sort of derogatory reference, so pervasive and almost subliminal that it's a type of conditioning.

Because really, what's wrong with the nuclear family?

(When I hear leftists use the slogan "It takes a village to raise a child", I have the strong sense that they really mean: "It takes the government to raise a child". The slogan itself is unobjectionable.)

Possibly My Favourite Newman Quotation

"Here I will not shrink from uttering my firm conviction, that it would be a gain to this country, were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be. Not, of course, that I think the tempers of mind herein implied desirable, which would be an evident absurdity; but I think them infinitely more desirable and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a cold, self-sufficient, self-wise tranquility."

This is a passage from John Henry Newman's sermon "The Religion of the Day". It very often comes to my mind.

It come to my mind especially when I read about some religious controversy of the past. For instance, the hostile reaction in England when the Catholic Church restored its hierarchy there in 1850, definitively emerging from its post-Reformation underground.

I hesitate to use that example, since the last thing I ever want to do is appeal to Catholic triumphalism. (In fact, I rather regret calling this blog "Irish Papist"; I'm scared it sounds whingy and petulant, since "papist" was a pejorative term.) What I'm saying is that I entirely sympathise with the Protestant reaction. I entirely sympathise with almost all religious passions.

If religion is the most important thing in life, then surely it should be the focus of public controversy.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've recently been watching episodes of The Journey Home, the EWTN programme in which converts to Catholicism tell their story. The show is American, so most of the guests are American. Quite often they relate stories of family turmoil and estrangement arising from their conversion. This is sad, of course, but it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. It seems quite understandable.

I greatly admire Americans for taking religion so seriously.

As Newman's quotation suggests: it's better to not be bigoted, it's better to not be fanatical, it's better to not be narrow-minded. But only if you've actually risen above such failings, not if you've never even risen to them.

Happy Feast of our Lady of Carmel!

Today is the Feast of our Lady of Carmel. Remarkably, it was approved all the way back in 1587.

I'm always fascinated to hear people talk about different "spiritualities" within the Catholic Church, often associated with different religious orders. Some people even become lay members of tertiaries of these Orders. (I've just learned that Bishop Fulton Sheen was a member of the Third Order of Carmelites. So was Eamon De Valera, and he was buried in the Carmelite habit.)

I've pondered whether I feel especially drawn to any such "spirituality". I don't think I do, but I do feel a certain attraction towards the Carmelites. I was married in a Carmelite church and I especially like reading about Carmelite saints, since they are contemplatives. But it's only a faint attraction-- Carmelite Lite, as it were. (I couldn't resist that.)

Poems I Like: "The Workman's Friend" by Jem Casey (AKA Myles Na Gopaleen AKA Flann O'Brien AKA Brian O'Nolan)

This comic poem is from At Swim Two Birds, the staggeringly precocious novel written by the young Brian O'Nolan, who accumulated an impressive list of pen-names throughout his life. In the novel, it's attributed to Gem Casey, a working-class poet. Apparently Jem Casey was a stealthy dig at the Irish priest-poet James Casey, who wrote temperance poems. The irony is plain (pun intended).

At Swim Two Birds is a complex and intellectual novel, but the poem is delightfully simple. Myles (I think of him as Myles) probably intended it entirely as a joke, and possibly tossed it off in a few minutes. It has that air of inspired breeziness. It's clearly a comic poem, but it's seriously good. I like any poem with a running refrain, if it's done well.

"Your only man" is a Dublin term that means "just what the doctor ordered". It's still occasionally used, albeit rather archly. "A pint of plain" is a pint of porter or stout. "Darlint" must be an ephemeral version of "darling"; I've only ever encountered it in this poem. Many versions render it "darling", which seems fine to me.

My favourite line is "and no rashers grease your pan". Everyone knows rashers are streaky bacon, right?

The Dubliners recorded a spoken version of this poem. Try not to die of nostalgia as you watch it.

The Dublin literary scene in Myles's time was an immensely boozy one, as immortalized in one of my favourite books, Dead as Doornails by Anthony Cronin. Personally, I'm not much of a drinker (I was a teetotaler till I was twenty-seven), and I haven't spent much time in pubs. But do I have a rather romantic view of them-- I grew up listening to stories of all the discussions, debates and drama that happened in pubs. My own experience of them has been more disappointing. But isn't that life?

The Workman's Friend

When things go wrong and will not come right
Though you do the best you can
When life looks black as the hour of night
A pint of plain is your only man.

When money’s tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran
When all you have is a heap of debt
A pint of plain is your only man.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange
And your face is pale and wan
When doctors say you need a change
A pint of plain is your only man.

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan
When hunger grows as your meals are rare
A pint of plain is your only man.

In time of trouble and lousy strife
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life
A pint of plain is your only man.

(This is a painting of the author that, extraordinarily, I came across in UCD today, purely by accident. It hangs in the Engineering Building, five minutes walk from the library where I've worked for twenty-five years. I'd never been in it before.)

The Late Ted Bonner

More than ten years ago, I wrote this article about Don't Shoot, I'm Not Well!, an excellent book of humorous essays by the late (indeed, the Late Late) Ted Bonner, who died in 2002.

I think he's a much-undervalued Irish humourist. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page!

I've been doing some research on Mr. Bonner but I've hit a bit of a wall. So-- this is a long shot, but if any relatives or close friends of Ted Bonner come upon this blog post, could you get in touch? My email address is Maolsheachlann@gmail.com.

Mr. Bonner was a frequent guest on The Late Late Show, and even presented it once. Hence the reference above.

(And maybe this appeal is not such a long shot after all. My poem on a record-breaking snooker marathon that occurred in Preston Polytechnic in 1981-- or, more accurately, a photograph of the post-marathon celebrations from an old Guinness Book of Records-- gleaned, over a few years, three comments from people who had been in attendance, including one of the record-breakers.)

The School of No Escape

What happens when a mysterious new headmistress called Miss Voor takes over a girl's school called St. Juniper's and starts making mysterious changes?

Well, you can find out by reading The School of No Escape, a serialized story from the comic Misty which appeared in full in the Misty Annual 1979, free to read on the Internet Archive. It begins on page sixteen. It's pretty good. I like stories set in schools and other self-contained environments.

(I was curious to see if there was actually a St. Juniper. There is, kind of. Brother Juniper was the name of one of St. Francis's original companions. He's never even been made venerable, but the famous Franciscan missionary St. Junípero Serra was given his name when he joined the Order. Whether the writers knew this, or whether they just plucked the name out of the air, who knows?)

To a Shopping Channel Presenter

I was scanning through my blog archives and came across this bit of silliness. I rarely engage in free verse, but this is one of those rare occasions, and I'm mildly fond of it. It's not a satire on consumerism or anything lame like that.

To a Shopping Channel Presenter

I'm sincerely sorry that I can't afford
To buy your non-stick frying pan.
But listening to your evangelical zeal
Makes me strangely happy.

We seem to live in an age without belief;
An age, it often seems,
Where socialists don't believe in society
Liberals don't believe in freedom
And Christians don't believe in God.

But you!
You believe in this non-stick frying pan
(And the free spice rack, if you phone in the next hour)
More than anyone has ever believed in anything.

I get the impression, hearing your excitement,
That if everybody bought this non-stick frying pan
All the wars of the world would cease
Dandruff would go away
And teenagers would never fight with their parents again.

Alas, alas, I cannot afford to buy it.
And the agents who are just waiting for my call
Are destined to wait
And wait
And paint their nails
And look out the window
And say to one another, mournfully,
"I don't think that he's ever going to call."

My Two Reasons for Reading

I've noticed that I read (watch YouTube videos, etc.) for two main reasons:

1) To learn something.

2) To savour an atmosphere.

I get annoyed at myself for the second motive. What do I ultimately get out of it? That's what I ask myself.

Recently I became very drawn to the whole idea of "campus horror". I read a horror novel set in a university and watched two horror films set in a university. I wanted to savour the atmosphere. But then I feel a bit guilty, thinking: what do I take away from it? What did I get from it? How am I enriched or improved?

Of course, you can both learn and savour an atmosphere at once. Sometimes I start reading a particular author or blogger (or just a book) to learn something, but then revisit it to savour the atmosphere. I can't seem to liberate myself from this preoccupation with atmosphere, and I'm not even sure I want to.

Effort Inflation

If you can give 101 per cent, then why are you holding back on 110 per cent?

And if you're giving 110 per cent, why not 200 per cent?

And if 200 per cent...

Maybe we should just keep (or rather, restore) 100 per cent as the ceiling.

(No Nigel Tufnel references, please.)

People Should Use Their Titles

I've just been watching an interview with a bishop (on a Catholic TV show). The host was addressing him in quite a familiar way. Which is fine, but I did find myself once again thinking: "I prefer it when people use their titles, and other people's titles."

There's no self-interest in this belief, since I have no title, unless it's "Mister".

It seems more suitable, and interesting, to address a Bishop as "Your Grace" rather than "Bishop", as the host was doing. (Although I've just seen that American bishops are generally addressed as "Your Excellency", and "Your Grace" is reserved for Archbishops-- which is interesting in itself.)

My job involves emailing academics a lot, and I greatly enjoy addressing them as Dr Such-and-Such or Professor What's-His-Face. They worked hard to get that title. (Even if they're a doctor of Media Studies or a Professor of Women's Studies or something.)

It's only a small thing, but I think it adds a little bit of colour to life.

Congratulations To Me

I'm awarding myself the Basil Fawlty Award for not mentioning the war-- I mean the thing-- you know, the thing that every other Catholic blog on the face of the earth is talking about. (Well, not blogs per se. There aren't any blogs anymore-- this is the last Catholic blog, except its sister blog across the Irish Channel. I mean Catholic YouTube channels and Substack columns and the like.)

On the one hand, why can't the Vatican duh duh duh. What about the German bishops duh duh duh. On the other hand you can't openly defy duh duh duh.  Faults on both sides duh duh duh let's pray for reason to prevail duh duh duh. Large families duh duh duh homeschooling duh duh duh accusations of Pharisaism duh duh duh go back to the actual documents duh duh duh.

I almost mentioned it there but I think I got away with it.

Leftists Talk About Bread-and-Butter Issues for Public Consumption...

...but, when it comes down to it, what they really seem to care about is identity politics and political correctness.

This fact was borne upon me for the thousandth time recently when I got an election flyer for a left-wing candidate. Everything in the flyer was about local amenities, public transport, and the like. Not a single mention of the liberal social agenda, globalism, or anything like that.

It always seems to be what they lead with in ordinary, everyday debates as well. I'm constantly asked, by my leftist friends and colleagues, why the rich should dominate society like they do-- or some such question. I rarely have the courage (or the appetite) to reply: "But this doesn't really seem to be what you care about, or the threat I think you represent. What you really seem to care about is changing all the immemorial traditions of mankind."

More of the Same

The BBC posting another highly newsworthy and socially relevant story-- some women (enough to make a news feature, apparently) are wearing "divorce rings" to celebrate the destruction of their marriages.

For a long time now, the media and entertainment industries seem to have gone full blast to sow hatred and resentment between men and women.

Every time I see a couple walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm along the street-- especially an old couple-- it feels like a little victory against this agenda of hatred and separation.