The Chimes at Midnight

If I were to die this very day...

If I were to die this very day, I would have walked alone on a deserted beach, and stood in a crowd of untold thousands in London on New Year's Eve, with my wife-to-be.

I would have flown over the Atlantic Ocean, looking at the clouds glowing beneath me. I would have heard a tune played on an organ made of stone, in an underground cavern.

I would have played blind-man's-bluff, charades, beggar-my-neighbour, Cluedo, hide-and-seek, Pooh sticks, and a game invented by me and my brothers that involved trying to hit each other with the rubber base of a hospital crutch, first bouncing it against the floor.

I would have been a socialist, an Irish nationalist, an anti-Irish anti-nationalist, an anti-modernist, an atheist, an agnostic, an anglophile, a Judophile, a Luddite, a monarchist, a eugenicist (unfortunately), a Catholic, and a fan of Liverpool Football Club.

I would have sat in a field with other neighbourhood boys, at dusk, after playing football for hours, and listened to ghost stories. I would have lain awake in bed that night, desperately trying not to say (or rather, think) the Lord's Prayer backwards, thus summoning the Devil.

I would have been to a single baseball game, and come away entranced, with the song echoing in my head: "Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd..."

I would have watched bats flitter through the twilight in Limerick, and watched lightning-bugs glow in Virginia.

I would have worn: sideburns, a Marseillies soccer jersey, silky tracksuits, fingerless gloves, massive square-framed glasses, a pink wrist-watch, denim corduroys, a blue jumper with pictures of space invaders, and slacks and shirts and jumpers that made one girl tell me, "You dress like a seminarian".

I would have sat in an empty cinema watching a movie alone. I would have been to see the same movie five times-- for two different movies. I would have watched three movies in the cinema, in a row, on one day. And all this after having nervously bought a cinema ticket on my own, for the first time, in my early twenties.

I would have eaten five cream cakes in a row, walking around Dublin city centre in my college days, because I could afford all five for a pound.

I would have heard an old Jewish man recalling his memories of Krystallnacht, the night when SA troops and ordinary Germans smashed up hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses.

I would have prayed to God in Westminster Cathedral, in the café of a cinema, in a completely dark budget hotel room, at the top of Croagh Patrick.

I would have actually slipped on a banana peel, in Moore Street.

I would have stood in a dole queue, and sat in the first-class section of an airplane.

I would have lain awake in bed reading all night until morning, not once but several times, reading To Sir with Love, David Copperfield, The Ragged-Trousered Philantropists, and a Sexton Blake book.

I would have forgotten my own birthday at the age of fourteen, but never have lost a child's excitement about Christmas-- even when I half-wanted to, in my late teens.

I would have collected Batman cards, Transformers toys, the Tranformers comic, The Eagle comic, Carry On movies, Subbuteo teams and accessories, and unusual words.

I would have been on a picket once, rather reluctantly.

I would have drawn a map of a fantasy world on the back of a roll of wallpaper, as part of a plan to out-Tolkien Tolkien, before my voice had even broken.

I would have lain in bed crying, wishing Aslan was real.

I would have visited the National Museum with my class, and have been frightened because everything there was so old and belonged to the dead.

I would have heard kids in my French class excitedly discussing the odds of a white Christmas that year-- a white Christmas that never came to pass. But I would have lived to see a real, gleaming, perfect white Christmas, many years later.

I would sat in an Accident and Emergency department for twelve hours with my future wife, on her first visit to Ireland.

I would never have milked a cow, because my farmer uncle would never let me when I asked him.

I would have pompously told my father that "I renounce Shakespeare", some time in my teens, only to receive the withering response that I wasn't the first person to do that.

I would have been shown a rock with Satan's footprint on it.

I would have watched with awe as my older brother and my cousin played games like Back to Skool and War of the Worlds on my cousin's Spectrum computer.

I would have been caught in the middle of a riot.

I would have gone on my knees (plural) and proposed to a woman, and heard her say "Yes" through tears.

I would have written a love-note to a girl, and then chickened out of putting it in her school-bag.

I would have smelled freshly-mown grass, tasted greasy chips, seen the night sky glow orange with the reflection of street lamps, shivered with cold as I walked around the school-yard on a Winter morning, and lost all taste for red wine after I drank too much of it at a dinner party and almost threw up in the taxi.

I would have been in detention once, and struggled with scruples about promising the supervising teacher that he wouldn't see me again, since I didn't see how I could conscientously promise that.

I would have known neighbours knock on our door to ask if they could use our telephone, long years before every ten-year-old kid had his own mobile.

I would have been given a snow-man snow-globe, for Kriskindle, at a work Christmas party.

I would have played a computer game for sixteen hours straight, then gone out to walk the dog in the early hours, have been so light-headed that I felt I was walking on the moon, and resolved not to play any more computer games.

I would never have been in a wax museum, seen E.T., played spin-the-bottle, read Treasure Island, been in a helicopter, or had a headache.

I would have known what it was like to have no friends, and what it was like to have wonderful friends.

I would have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but never seen an episode of Cheers.

I would have received a Valentine's card-- for the first time, in my thirties.

I would have written poetry in a café in Wales, in Dublin airport, in Philadelphia airport, in a pub in Chester.

I would have sat down in an almost-deserted school hall, during one study period towards the end of the day, reading my history book as silence fell over the school, and suddenly realised that history had actually happened.

I would have been almost mugged, with a bottle waved in my face, until my would-be-mugger relented, when someone he knew shouted from a window to leave me alone.

I would have had one line to say in a school play, and forgotten it.

I would have got trapped behind a china cabinet, that was placed diagonally in a corner of the living room.

I would have heard children playing outside my window.

I would have seen what seemed like hundreds of crows filling the sky at dawn, out my bedroom window, when staying with my step-grandfather, in Croom.

I would have volunteered for a psychological study in Trinity College, which involved spitting into a glass dish.

I would have made shadow-puppets by candlelight, with my family, during a power-cut.

I would have lost my glasses in a water-slide.

I would have once written ten thousand words before breakfast.

I would have had debates about capitalism, poetry, euthanasia, gun control, the existence of God, Irish history, cinema, national traditions, immigration, superheroes, and dozens of other subjects.

I would have carried two bunches of roses, one white and one red, through the streets of Richmond, drawing thumbs-ups and cheers from a group of young guys, a deadpan comment that "you've got it covered" from a passing girl, and-- months later-- a mention from some acquaintances who had passed me in a car at the time.

I would have heard a ghost story about the Titanic, told in a school dressing room, that involved deep-sea divers seeing the words "Leave us in our watery grave" written on the hull, and walked home feeling a chill all around me.

I would have walked into a shop with clothes-pegs in my hair, as a child, just to top a story that my brother told me about a friend who had started eating a paper bag at the cash desk of a bookstore.

I would have missed my train on a visit to Sheffield, because I couldn't resist going back to the pub where I'd had dinner, to look one more time at the red-haired barmaid who'd served me. But she was gone.

If I were to die today, I'd be grateful.

But I'd rather live for many years to come.

Pictures or It Didn't Happen

Our wedding photos have finally started to reach us...a chance to show off my lovely bride on my blog!

Regarding Titles

It's regularly remarked that movie trailers are often better than the movies they promote. Personally, I feel that a trip to the cinema is almost wasted if I don't arrive in time for the trailers. The cynical explantion of this phenomenon is that all the best moments in the movie are shoe-horned into the trailer and the rest of the running time is just filler, more or less. This might sometimes be the case, but I think there is a more interesting explanation. I think the very format of trailers gives them an appeal that movies can't have, since a two-hour long trailer would be unbearable.

Typically, what a movie trailer seeks to convey is a sense of excitement, since it is trying to get you excited about seeing the movie itself. This it achieves by various devices: a rapid succession of scenes, images of people and things in motion (ironically, often in slow motion, which simply makes it more dramatic), brief and often intriguing snatches of dialogue, unusual camera angles and lighting, and in general by a kind of exaggeration of ordinary cinematic techniques. What you are left with is a sense of compression, of concentration, which it is impossible for a full-length film to achieve, by its very nature.

I think this fact about trailers also applies to a rather similar art-form-- that is, the art of the title. By "title", I mean the titles of movies, books, stage-plays, music albums, paintings, computer games, and so forth. But mostly I am thinking of the titles of books and movies. (I took movie trailers as my point of departure, because I thought my remarks would make more sense that way.)

I think the titles of books and movies, just like trailers, often have an appeal quite distinct from, and sometimes superior to, the works that they "promote".

In his much-underpraised Autobiography, G.K. Chesterton asserts that every wilderness looks bigger when seen through a window. Our own Patrick Kavanagh, in a phrase that is well-known in Ireland because it comes in a poem featured on the English syllabus, said that "through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder". I think both of these claims are very true. And I think that good titles, just like good trailers, are windows through which the landscape outside looks bigger, narrow chinks which let in floods of wonder.

But-- and this is an important point, and one which motivates me to write on this subject-- good titles don't just excite us about the books and films that they label. Good titles excite us about life itself, and do so in a manner different from anything else in the world. At least, I have always found that powerful titles have this effect on me, and I suspect that they have it on other people, as well. I have often found that, at times when I feel dull or uninspired, or when the world itself seems dreary to me, some evocative title will come to my mind and give me a new zest for existence.

I will have to start giving examples, won't I?

Well, this being a Catholic blog, I think I will be unpredictable and choose (perhaps) the most unlikely of titles out of the hundreds that suggest themselves. I work in a university library, and we hold copies of the academic theses submitted to the various departments of the university. One of these theses caught my eye, because I liked the title so much. (Quite a few have snappy titles, actually.) This one concerned the experience of gay teachers in Ireland, and it bears the magnificent title Echoes Down the Corridor.

Now, I don't know about you, but that title makes me shiver with pleasure. I think it almost defies analysis, but here goes, anyway.

First of all, it is dramatic. It not only takes a moment from the flux of everyday life, but it takes a particular evanescent and fleeting moment. The moment it evokes is almost ghostly. And something inside of us thrills to words like echo, whisper, shadow, phantom, ghost, silhouette, rumour-- words whose very vagueness or faintness makes them, paradoxically, all the more vivid.

(Incidentally, I should admit that the word "corridor" is a word that I find very exciting. After all, a corridor is an exciting place. Anybody could walk down it at any moment. It seems to invite whispered conferences, chance meetings, glimpsed figures turning a corner. If you think this is a far-fetched idea, ask yourself why "the corridors of power" is a much more powerful phrase than "the halls of power" or "the chambers of power".)

Now, imagine if the writer of Echoes Down the Corridor had chosen a more prosaic title instead. Imagine if he had used his sub-title, An Examination of the Lives of Gay Teachers in Ireland, as the main title. In that case, wouldn't his work seem strangely diminished in importance? It would seem business-like, dutiful. But the lyricism of Echoes Down the Corridor seems to raise the whole thing to a higher level, to lend it a larger significance.

And this, I think, is true of all acts of naming, and of bequeathing a title. Adam in giving names to all the animals, we dimly feel, somehow shares in God's creative power. Giving a name to a child is an act of immeasurable significance and poignancy. Parents who choose to give names to their babies when those babies don't survive birth are making a very touching declaration of love. Giving a name to a season of a particular year-- The Summer of Love, the Winter of Discontent-- gives them an air of heightened importance, and even (I would claim) a heightened reality. In the famous line from Shakespeare, the poet is said to "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

Naming does not only identify. It creates. It exalts.

Here are some of my own favourite titles. Many of them are titles of books I've never read and films I've never seen. Sometimes I've hated the book or the film but loved the title.

Porterhouse Blue, by Tom Sharpe. (A great book that I only read because I was attracted by the title. The book itself is a bawdy farce, and an excellent one, but a million miles away from the contemplative novel of ideas that the title seemed to suggest.)

Ice Cold in Alex. Cider with Rosie. Goodbye to All That. A Dry, White Season

No Tigers in Africa! (a memoir by a producer of a famous Irish TV documentary series, which often went to Africa for its stories.)

Like a Tree Planted (a biography of an Irish priest). Snow Falling on Cedars. The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild. A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin. Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis.

The Jungle is Neutral by Freddie Spencer Chapman. Sex, Lies and Videotape. The Wonder Years. The Breakfast Club.

On Golden Pond. The Philosopher on Dover Beach by Roger Scruton. All the Way to Bantry Bay by Benedict Kiely (a travel book on our shelves at home.) Postcards from the Edge. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain. Who Will Love Polly Odlum? (a chick-lit book I saw a colleague reading once). Not Without My Daughter. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The Road to Wigan Pier. Stay Me with Flagons (a book about wine; the title is drawn from The Song of Songs). Never Say Never Again. A Man for All Seasons. A Prayer for Owen Meaney. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Love and the Russian Winter (a Simply Red album).

Writing out that list (and it could be expanded indefinitely), it occurs to me that there are several things that can make a title stick in your mind.

First of all, and perhaps most fundamentally, a title is rarely appealing if it is not memorable-- which usually means that it should avoid the obvious. Books or movies that take their title from the main character of the story, or describe the subject matter in some very straightforward way, are unlikely to give any special pleasure. Indeed, I've often thought what a wasted opportunity it is, not to give a book or movie some more imaginative title. (Of course, titles that seems straightforward may be subtly ironic or significant-- for instance, Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 seems to have a very mundane title until you read the book and realise that it may not be set in 1984 at all-- that the Party have twisted truth so much that nobody really knows what year it is for sure. But you don't know this until you read the book, so it is not intrinsic to the title.)

Hitting upon a memorable and poetic title, however, is not as simple as coming up with something outlandish. There is a danger of going too far, a danger of falling flat on your face and choosing a title that seems irritating or smug rather than evocative. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmie Dean, Jimmie Dean comes periously close to doing this-- but it has just enough poignancy to save it. But titles like The Possibility of an Island, The Sun Also Rises, The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind do (I think) fall into this pit.

(Sometimes a title is so audacious it gets away with it-- for instance, Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me?, a 1971 Oscar-nominated film starring Dustin Hoffmann.)

I think a good title often tends to use simple and vivid imagery. A Dry White Season is such a vivid description, and so devoid of explanation, that it satisfies the part of our mind that enjoys haikus or still-life painting. The same is true of Snow Falling on Cedars.

A title is often good because it is rather mysterious-- though there is a big difference between mystery and obscurity. The Postman Always Rings Twice is mysterious, but we feel that it means something and we are intrigued. A title like Blood Simple or No Present Like Time is simply annoying-- we don't know what it means, and we don't care. The difference, I think, lies in the poetry of the first title and the lack of poetry in the other two. In the same way, if we saw a woman with a mysterious medallion hanging around her neck, we would be deliciously intrigued-- but a code made of random words and letters on a cardboard box would leave us cold.

Soem titles are powerful because they are poignant. Goodbye to All That is one such-- in fact, I think that any title that begins with "Goodybe" or Farewell" is automatically poignant. Tuesdays with Morrie is a poignant title, as is Life with Father or Cider with Rosie.

Titles that address somebody or contain an imperative are also evocative-- Take a Girl Like You, Throw Momma from the Train, Cathy Come Home, Save Me the Waltz.

I think that this subject is a very important one, obscure and trivial as it may seem. In fact, it is a subject so important to me personally that I struggle to find words adequate for it. And, though I am not simply using book and movie titles as a point of entry, the subject is really much, much bigger than those.

So much for titles.

My deeper subject-- my deeper theme-- is one that can only be approached indirectly, as I have done here. I don't approach it indirectly out of craftiness, or reverence, or subtlety. I do so because of its very nature it can only be thus approached. I am not ultimately talking about movie titles or books titles per se. I'm talking about the kind of poetry, the kind of beauty, that you find specifically in such titles-- but that has analogues elsewhere.

It is similar to the beauty of imagined pictures in a flickering fire, or the spirit that we hear in a street vendor's cry-- "Get your apples and oranges!". It is similar mental sensation that we so often try to describe by saying "it was like trying to remember some half-forgotten song".

It is seen in horizons. It is heard in myths, and legends, and skippping chants, and in nursery rhymes and ghost stories.

It is the feeling that makes every child, at some time or other, day-dream about the world behind the mirror, or the upside-down landscape that they see past their reflection in a puddle.

It occupies the margin between dreams and waking life.

It lives in a snow-globe, in an old wooden street-sign, in a music box. It haunts empty theatres and deserted cinemas. It's heard in music that is softly playing in the background of a restaurant or a shopping centre, music that seems overheard rather than heard.

It is the reason nobody ever forgets Plato's Allegory of the Cave once they've encountered it.

It is a beauty, perhaps even an ecstasy, so fugitive that it cannot be glimpsed except for the briefest of moments, and even then, not directly. It is never on the surface, never in focus, never to be found in our ordinary stream of time and place-- though it may be seen, or half-seen, in the slow rhythm of decades and centuries, or in the twinkling time-outside-time of sunlight glinting on the ripples of a river on a summer's morning.

Perhaps it has never been expressed more perfectly than in the words of St. Paul: "We see now through a glass, darkly."

All This and World War Two

I remember when I was a little boy, looking at a field of grass and reflecting that the bodies of countless soldiers were buried underneath. I assumed that the War had happened everywhere and that every piece of ground had been a battlefield. I don't think I even knew there was a difference between World War One and World War Two. This was when I was very young. But it shows how, even in the early eighties (and indeed, still today) we are all living in the shadow of the two World Wars.

Come to think of it, though, I'm not sure that "shadow" is a good term. When I was a boy, I was conscious of the World Wars without having any notion that they had been a cataclysm or a Valley of Darkness. It was a very matter-of-fact awareness, based upon war comics, Action Men (doll-size soldier figures with moveable eyes, real hair, historically accurate clothes etc., much like the American G.I. Joe) and little plastic soldiers that came in packets of fifty or a hundred or so. Americans were deep-green, the Germans were grey, the Japanese were yellow (of course), and the Russians were a very pleasant purple colour. I can't remember what colour the British were. I seem to remember them being yellow, too, but that would make them the same colour as the Japanese. My favourites were the Russians, because of their colour, but I was also fond of the Japanese. They were less widely available, giving them an air of exoticism, and I liked the Japanese flag which often came in the packet. (I still think the Japanese flag is one of the nicest national flags, along with that of Canada and Israel.)

I can remember playing soldiers with some other children in the school yard once. I imagine I would have been eight, nine or ten. First the commanders of both sides were chosen. I volunteered to be the German commander, and was surprised nobody else did. Then I was surprised that nobody would agree to be a German soldier, even though I theoretically had the authority to conscript them. I realised, even then, that the other boys did not want to be Germans because the Germans had been the bad guys and had lost. I remember looking down on them for this-- so obvious, so predictable!-- and thinking I was very grand and original for wanting to be the bad guys, the losing side. I think I also liked the German uniforms and helmets.

(I still like the Nazi uniforms. I will go further and admit that I like all the National Socialist regalia, symbolism and style. Nor do I think I am at all uncommon in this. Can anyone look at the footage of the Nuremberg Rallies and be absolutely sure that they would not, if they had been alive back then, have been in the crowd cheering? I am not at all sure that I wouldn't have been. This is one of the reasons I am not at challenged by the concept of Original Sin.)

War comics in my childhood were a curious mix. Some were as jingoistic and crude as you could imagine, with Allied troops shouting, "Eat lead, Fritz!" (and much worse), and German soldiers popping off like flies left, right and centre. Others were more sophisticated, and yet others were downright anti-war. (The most famous was Charley's War, which I think might have achieved the difficult feat of making World War One seem worse than it actually was.) It only occurs to me now that having anti-war comic strips in comics whose whole purpose was to draw entertainment from war is rather hypocritical.

All this makes it sound as though I was fascinated by war, and by the World Wars. But I wasn't. That is what I find so interesting about all these memories. It was simply assumed that boys would be interested in war, soldiers, war comics, and so forth. My elder brothers were interested in it, and that's why we had the toys and the comics. The other boys in school were interested in it. But I was never very interested it.

The funny thing is, I felt rather ashamed of this. I thought it was very grown-up to know the names of fighter planes and rifles, and to understand those maps with arrows showing the fortunes of military campaigns. I noticed that when grown-up boys, and men, and people on television, spoke about the nitty-gritty of the world wars-- the tactics, the equipment, the squadrons-- they spoke in a particular voice, at one dispassionate and absorbed, that I recognized as the voice used for Adult subjects. Or more particularly, for those Adult subjects that were interesting and important for their own sake, as opposed to all the horrible stuff like money and sickness and jobs.

All this has been on my mind because, a few weeks ago, I had some pretty heavy things on my mind and I was eagerly looking for some distraction. I found it in a "World War Two weekend" on the Discovery History channel. It was episode after episode, all weekend long, of a documentary series about the war-- not The World at War, but obviously modelled on it, with non-stop archive footage and an unseen narrator with a Laurence Olivier-like accent.

It was exactly what I needed, and after decades of having no interest in World War Two I was suddenly enthralled and couldn't get enough. What really intrigued me was how comforting it was. Why should a documentary about the most awful period in human history be comforting?

I think I know why, though. Even though, by all rational standards, everything to do with World War Two should carry with an air of Apocalypse, and darkness closing in, and the future of civilization hanging in the balance, the atmosphere that actually seems to hover over the War is quite the opposite. The best word I can use to describe it is "boyish". Documentaries about World War Two don't seem to show us a civilization coming to an end, but-- somehow-- the bright light of morning.

I don't seriously believe that this is how people felt during the siege of Leningrad, or the Battle of Berlin, or the bombing of Dresden, or indeed any other combat situation. If I had people shooting at me or dropping bombs on me, the only emotion I can imagine is pants-wetting terror. But I also believe this perception is based on something real.

Partly, I think it has something to do with the footage itself. I can't separate World War Two from the footage we have of it, which I find very aesthetically appealing. I like the grainy black-and-white. I like its rather jerky, slowed-down tempo (or does it just seem slowed down?) The sky always seems cheerfully bright. The lack of colour gives it an internal harmony that colour footage lacks.

And the footage all seems so dispassionate. Soldiers go into battle with impassive faces, even smiling and laughing faces. Outside the battle-zone, everyone seems implausibly cheerful. I don't for a second believe this reflects the realities of war. But the fact that it's what you see on film can't help producing a certain effect.

Most of all, I think there is this air of boyishness about the history of World War Two because it's all so matter-of-fact. Everybody was thinking about the same thing, and busy about the same thing, and the thing was something self-evidently important. Most of the time (I think it's fair to say), there's an air of unreality over everything we do. Is it important? Will it amount to anything? Does anybody else care about it? None of this seems to be true of war-time, at least seen from the outside. Everything then is public, outward-looking, solid.

I begin to feel like a fascist, writing all this. But all I'm trying to do is understand why the footage and documents and records of World War Two carry this oddly brisk, even cheerful air about them. Of course, it could be that it's simply my perception, but I somehow imagine it's not just me.

(One exception to all this-- the actual monuments and memorials to the dead of both World Wars, which I've encountered in both England and America. Somehow, it's only standing before these soul-chilling monuments and reading their inscriptions that awakens me to any sense of how unfathomably awful and macabre the whole business really was.)

The Bookshops of Dublin (2)

In which I continue my "biblio-crawl" through the bookshops of Dublin. This might be of interest to a bibliophile coming here on holiday or a Dubliner curious to see how his or her views compare with mine. I don't understand why there are so few reviews of bookshops, when newspapers and magazines and the internet are crammed with restaurant and hotel reviews.

Veritas Books, Abbey Street

Considering this is Dublin's city centre's premier Catholic bookshop, it might be expected to feature pretty highly in my favourites. Alas, such is not the case.

First of all, the good things. Veritas Books is clean and bright and well-laid out. It smells and looks nice, because of all the ornaments and candles and calendars and other decorative items on sale. (The giant nativity sets and rosary beads and the enormous holy statues are especially striking.) It's fantastically well-stocked and the staff are helpful and pleasant.

But I can't spend more than ten minutes in this shop without getting strangely depressed. It has many interesting and scholarly and worthwhile books, but the vast majority of its books seem to be of a rather wishy-washy, bland, candles-and-muzak type. Pluck a book from its shelves at random and its likely to have a title like: "Rediscovering Celtic Christianity". There will be a soft-focus cover of a ripple in a pond, or a bird in the sky. The blurb will probably begin something like this: "In our fast-paced society, many increasingly feel a sense of emptiness..."

Now, I'm not necessarily dismissing this type of publication. Goodness knows our society is lacking in gentleness. The last thing I would ever want to do is sneer at this sort of "Thought for the Day" spirituality. But such perfume, pleasant enough in moderation, positively makes your eyes water when it is present in such overpowering quantities.

In short, Veritas Books seems too much like the Mind, Body and Spirit shelves of an ordinary bookshop, except with a little bit of Christianity (as Fr. Brian Darcy might put it) sprinkled on top. It's a good port of call if you are looking for a particular Catholic book, but not somewhere I like to browse.

Dubray Books, Grafton Street

Every Dubray bookshop is pretty much the same as every other Dubray bookshop. You are unlikely to find anything even a half a step off the beaten track in Dubray. The classic literature section is usually quite extensive. The Grafton Street branch has a fairly wide stock, and if you are looking for a particular book that was either recently published or that is a classic everybody has heard of, you'll more than likely find it here. It's a bit pokey, but not in a pleasant way. Again, anything but a browser's paradise. They pack the shelves uncomfortably tight.

Eason, O'Connell Street

Everybody calls this shop "Eason's", even though the name is quite clearly spelled Eason. An odd Dublin quirk.

This shop, of course, is more of a municipal institution than a mere bookshop, being in the centre of Dublin's main street, and under whose clock generations of Dubliners have arranged to meet. Considering its size, it's not as well-stocked as you might suppose, and it's often surprising what books you can't find there. On the other hand, it has more of a grab-bag flavour than the drearily predictable Dubray Books (and such like stores)-- especially on the basement, where the classics, poetry, religion, philosophy, and all the other more chewable subjects are shelved.

It has probably the best selections of newspapers and magazines in Dublin, and a walk around this area is quite depressing-- there seem to be any number of publications devoted to karate, soap operas, TV vintage tractors and record collecting, while the more literary and philosophical magazines hardly make up so much as a drop in the ocean.

The first floor is full of stationery and greeting cards, while there is a Tower Records shop on the top floor. Both of these are pleasant to walk around.

There are other Eason bookshops scattered around the country, especially in train stations and airports. You're unlikely to find anything outside the latest bestseller lists in these. Recently, Eason have taken over the Hughes and Hughes chain of bookshops, which was (I always assumed) an Irish version of Barnes and Noble and was even more soulless than Dubray Books. They can't get any worse under the new management.

(There is one former Hughes and Hughes shop, now an Eason shop, which is not entirely soulless. The branch in Stephen's Green Shopping Centre has a discount section downstairs that throws up a fair amount of surprises. The "For Clearance" shelf especially is worth checking out.)

Years and years ago, Easons used a very distinctive and attractive combinaton of colours on their branding-- navy and emerald stripes. They have replaced this with a blander, brighter green. I think it's a shame.

More to come!

The Man Beside Me On the Bus This Morning

I like to think of myself as a pretty public-spirited fellow. I do worry about the privatization of society, about the dangers of everybody getting locked into the metallic bubble that is the motor car and the mental bubble that is the MP3 player, or the mobile phone, or the laptop computer. I get irritated when I hear people complain about Jehovah's Witnesses or Hare Krishnas or charity collectors or people with petitions approaching them on the street. I feel annoyed when I hear people moaning about door-to-door canvassers at election time. Is Come Dine With Me really more important than the democratic process?

I've even written to the papers to take issue with other correspondents who moan about their fellow passengers' activities on the bus-- as though putting on make-up, or eating, was a monstrous invasion of your fellow-passenger's privacy.

But I think we are all anti-social to some extent, as I had to admit to myself today.

I take two buses into work. The first stops in Dame Street. Today, I decided (since I had rushed out of the house without breakfast) to buy a baguette in the Londis near the Wax Museum. The dusky-skinned fellow at the sandwich counter seemed in a bad mood. He put chicken on my baguette without asking, and then-- when he was about to wrap it up, and I asked if I could have coleslaw as well-- protested, "That will cost extra, you know". Later on, as I was queuing to pay for it, the entire shop was listening to him declaim: "We need more baguettes! We just need more baguettes, that's all!"

Buying a freshly-cut sandwich on the way to work, and eating it on the bus, is something I've never done before. I felt strangely gleeful about it. I wasn't in any especial hurry. In my carrier bag, I had A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis, which I had started to read the evening before and which I was enjoying even more than I expected to. The morning was the kind of bright, fresh morning that is (to my mind) the weather summer has to offer. I was greatly looking forward to my morning treat.

My second-bus arrived almost immediately I reached the bus-stop. There was plenty of room, and I got my second-favourite seat-- the upstairs seat immediately behind the stairwell, with plenty of room to cross your legs in.

What more could a man ask for? I opened my book on the place I had left off, I took out my wrapped baguette, and then-- he sat down beside me.

He was a rather portly man, though not excessively so. He was perhaps ten years older than me, wore a crisp business suit and spectacles, and was particularly well-groomed (though his chin was rather stubbled). There was nothing objectionable about him. Except--except-- he was sitting right beside me, exactly when I wanted to be alone. I couldn't cross my legs (I can't remember if I uncrossed them as he arrived). I felt inhibited from eating my baguette, especially in such close proximity to his nice suit. He'd completely ruined the moment. I could have thumped him.

I decided to wait it out. I was going all the way to the terminus-- probably, he would get off in the city centre somewhere.

But then something even more outrageous, unthinkable, unpardonable happened. The other seats began to empty, so that there were plenty of window seats available, and he didn't get up to take one. What the heck was the matter with this guy?

I sneaked a glimpse at him. He looked a little unsettled. He was glancing around himself a lot, as though unsure where he was going or where he should get off. He gave the impression of hovering a quarter-inch over the seat. And, though he never looked me full in the face, his expression seemed rather nervous and anxious. Or was I just imagining it? After all, he seemed to be a business-man of some kind. Shy and nervous people didn't inhabit the hard world of commerce.

I thought of my teens and early twenties, when I had struggled with crippling shyness and social anxiety. I could remember sitting on buses and watching all the other seats filling up, feeling shattered that the seat beside me (as it seemed to me then) was always the last to be taken. I remembered how the smallest perceived slight or rejection would throw me into a tailspin. It was awful. Maybe this was a fragile soul who would feel much the same way if I moved seats.

And yet-- despite my letter to the paper, despite my outspoken public-spiritedness, despite my memories of my own morbid sensitivity in previous years-- it wasn't too long before I said, "Excuse me", stepped past the man in the suit, and made my way to a window seat at the back of the bus, to cross my legs and enjoy my book and my baguette undisturbed.

Oh hypocrisy of humanity!

My Most Self-Indulgent Post Ever

Having a blog means never having to say you're sorry. I've been going through an old folder on a computer and looking at stuff I wrote over the years. I came across this list.

I don't know what to do with this list. It's a list of things that give me what Coca-Cola executives (regarding their nostalgic marketing) call "the warm fuzzies". I've wondered whether I can work it into a poem or an article or-- well, goodness knows what.

I spent a fair amount of time and energy writing it out, a few years back. I remember I decided (being rather addicted to random and mildly strange behaviour) to read it out when meeting some friends at the pub. One gentleman present (who I'd never met before or since) was a German with all the stereotyped Teutonic earnestness of that race. (He is a communist, to boot, which only deepens the earnestness.) I smile when I remember his polite but perplexed expression as I read the list. My other friends were well-acquainted with my whimsical ways and didn't bat an eyelid.

I wasn't kidding, though. I was (and I am) just as earnest after my own fashion.

Here is my list of things that give me the warm fuzzies. (Or rather, the idea of them gives me the warm fuzzies. I have no direct experience of many of them.) Who knows? It might make you smile or cry, "I feel exactly the same way you do!". Here's hoping.

Christmas trees

Christmas decorations

Christmas baubles

Christmas carols

Christmas wrapping paper

The jokes in Christmas crackers

Christmas dinner

Christmas pudding

Decorated Pub Mirrors

Hanging Signs

Ships in Bottles

Snowglobes

Nursery Rhymes

Fairy Tales

Old Wives’ Tales, and the term "old wives' tale"

Playground Songs

Proverbs

Woolly jumpers, especially colourful and chunky woolly jumpers

Artistic Window Displays

Sandwich Men

Sepia (the colour, especially in photographs, but also the word)

Bonfires

Halloween bonfires

Fireworks

Office sweeps

Fireplaces

Big white mugs for tea

Cloth caps

Cardigans

Slippers

Handwritten Signs in Shops, especially when they have spelling errors

Jumble Sales

Coffee Mornings (though I hate attending them)

Trainspotters

Lipstick

Headshawls

Dust motes dancing in air

Seeing out a back window through a front window

Rubber Ducks

Hot Water Bottles

Pyjamas

Gingerbread Men

Charades

"& Sons" in the names of companies

School Uniforms (not in a pervy way, obviously)

Cinema Usherettes (though I've never seen one and doubt they exist anymore)

Round Towers and Greyhounds and Harps on copy books, shop signs, pencil-cases, and so on, as symbols of Ireland

Flags

Bunting

Singing in the Bath (though I don't)

Jukeboxes (though I've never used one)

Peanuts in pubs

Popcorn in cinema (though I don't eat it)

Cigar store Indians

Barber poles

“Licensed to sell beer and malt” etc. on pub signs

Campfire tales

Photo albums

Jokes, especially formulaic jokes

Regional accents

Regional jokes

Movie studio logos

Family jokes

Nicknames

In-jokes

Trade terms

Clockwork toys

CB radio

Trainspotting

Toffee Apples

Ornamental biscuit and sweet tins (Quality Street, Season's Greetings, etc.)

Silhouettes, and the word silhouette

Mythological and Classical names for Restaurants, Entertainment Venues, etc. like the Odeon, the Apollo, etc.

Commonplace Books

Shadow Puppetry

Town Rivalries

Discussions over the Proper Making of Tea

Sitting Down Together for Meals

Hopscotch and All Other Children’s Games

Debating Societies

Amateur Dramatic Societies

Knitting Circles

Sleepovers

The past imperfect

Ballads

Riddles

Pub Debates

Board Games

National Personifications (Uncle Sam, John Bull, Kathleen Ni Houlian)

National symbols (leprechauns, bulldogs)

House Names

Vehicle Names

Breaking Champagne Bottles over Ships

Names for Occupations, such as Clippies, Gofers, Trolley-boys etc.

So, if you can cobble a view of the world out of all that....well, that would be my philosophy of life, I suppose.

Dear Father (Yahweh)

I am a regular visitor to the church in University College Dublin, and I usually look in the book of intentions. Today, I saw that one of the latest entries began with the words I have used for my post title. I couldn't help finding this amusing.

I remember hearing the term "Yahweh" used in some kind of prayer service in my Catholic school, by some of the older pupils (though doubtless they were reading prayers written by the teachers or nuns). I was shocked. I can't remember exactly why I was shocked-- whether because I thought God should be unnameable, or because I assumed Yahweh was a Jewish and not a Christian usage. (Actually I have just checked on the internet and have discovered that the name has been removed from Catholic liturgical use in recent times, for several reasons).

When I look back at my years in secondary schools, I am amazed at the awe with which I viewed the older pupils. If you asked me at the time, I don't think I would have admitted to viewing them with awe, and if I had thought about it, I may have come to the conclusion that I did indeed view them with awe but that it was silly to do so. I'm glad I didn't think about it. I'm glad I didn't lose my unreflective naivety.

When I remember that prayer service, especially, (it was some very informal occasion in a class-room), the image comes into my mind of one of the pupils who was reading the prayers aloud. He had wavy, aesthete-like chestnut hair, round-rimmed glasses with golden handles, and thick lips. My visual memory is usually negligible so this is an unusually clear picture for me. I think he was the one who spoke the name "Yahweh", and I instantly assumed he understood sacred things and that he had a grown-up, calm relationship with God, free of all my callow and shallow reactions. In hindsight, it was probably more likely that he was squirming with embarrassment as he spoke, and that he made childish jokes about the prayer service afterwards, if he even paid it that much attention. (But who knows? Perhaps he was a saint.)

I can remember on another occasion, having a fleeting crush on a senior girl with wavy black hair and rather Asiatic eyes, whose name I never knew and to whom I never spoke. (A line of all the girls upon whom I harboured crushes without them having the slightest awareness of me, could probably reach from one side of O'Connell Street to the other.) I remember developing a whole imaginary, idealized lifestyle for her. I imagined her eating dainty slices of cheese-on-toast with the cheese slightly blackened here and there, (which seemed unimaginably classy to me), reading serious books, burning incense sticks in her bedroom, and drinking liqueurs. Then it struck me that she probably watched television (just like me and everybody I knew). Instantly I was crestfallen. All the imaginary sophistication and refinement had disappeared at once. Of course she watches television, I realized. Everybody watches television. The magic was gone. Watching television seemed far too plebeian for the cloud of aristocratic glamour I had surrounded her with.

I remember, as well, a small group of older boys who kicked a rugby ball around in the grounds of the school, during break and lunch. Although consciously I despised them, being very left-wing and considering rugby to be a toff's game, secretly I thrilled at their Etonian, Harovian, Belvedere College aura.

Where does all the wonder go? Where?

(I rather lost the run of myself in this post, having merely intended to write a few lines about that book of intentions entry, and instead gettting waylaid by nostalgia. Oh well.)

The Exaggerated Death of Christian Europe

Writing this in a beautiful hotel room in Innsbruck, Austria. The room overlooks a gorgeous Catholic Church, whose name I can't seem to find right now. (I would simply ask reception if the reception wasn't closed and in complete darkness when we returned from dinner, through the almost deserted roads, at the outrageously late hour of eleven o'clock or so. Innsbruck believes in early nights-- or, at least, early Sunday nights.)

This was my first ever trip to continental Europe. We went to a small town in Germany called Garmisch-Partenkirchen (a town formed from two towns, through a shotgun marriage by Adolf Hitler himself), where we stayed at a five-star hotel (a new experience for me). I rode in a cable car there-- another new experience for me, and much less frightening than I'd expected. We went to look at the fairy-tale castle of King Ludwig, Neuschwanstein, although we didn't actually go in as the wait for the next tour was too long. We had a jaunt on a horse-drawn carriage here, too. We moved on to the Italian town Merano, which (despite being within the borders of Italy) holds slightly more German speakers than Italian speakers. It was an interesting experience to walk into a shop or restaurant and not know what language you would be addressed in. (My schoolboy German was stretched to breaking point and beyond. I had one completely German conversation with a Genuine, Authentic German speaker. I asked for an ice-cream, then I asked for cream on it. It may not seem much, but I'm very proud.) Today we moved on to Innsbruck, preparing for our return trip to Munich Airport tomorrow.

I have been very struck by the sheer obviousness of Christianity in continental Europe-- or at least, in Bavaria, South Tyrol, and Innsbruck. Churches are everywhere. Jesus is everywhere. Indeed, you encounter Jesus here in places where you would never expect to encounter him in Ireland. Restaurants, shops and public places are not at all bashful about having a crucifixion or Last Supper scene where, in their Irish equivalents, one would not look for anything more significant than a watercolour of lilies, or perhaps of a dreamy sunset.

We stepped into a few churches, and were impressed at how well maintained they were. When we eventually attended Mass this evening, at the small (but magnificently decorated) Catholic church beside this hotel, we were pleased to see that the Church was pretty much full and that people of all ages attended-- in fact, there were several families. Even without understanding German, I could see that the priest and congregation took part in the celebration with real reverence, that this wasn't simply some inherited cultural tradition, kept up out of inertia.

Everything I had ever read or held about Christianity in continental Europe had led me to expect nothing but a few feeble embers still glowing here and there. From what I've seen, the reality seems rather different.

A Whole New World

Well, it's already two days in the past and I'm still getting my head around it. I remember in primary school I had an English reading text-book called A Whole New World (it was part of a series with titles and covers themed around space exploration). That is how I feel now. I imagine my first impressions of marriage will be about as accurate as the "discovery" of nineteenth century astronomers that there were canals on the moon, or the reports of headless men and Amazonian warriors in South America by early European explorers.

The ceremony was just too huge to take in, a sense of surreality (or maybe hyper-reality) hanging over all of it. It was not a blur, but just the opposite, every little detail standing out in crystal clarity.

But by the time we reached the reception in the Maples House Hotel, Glasnevin (and I intend to plug them as much as I possibly can), both myself and Michelle began to enjoy things. I made a long speech thanking everybody (there were about sixty people there) in rather florid terms, and then read a poem about Michelle (which I published on this blog as "A Poem for Michelle" a good few weeks back). Then the dreaded first dance, for which we had a routine worked out but which, let us say, deviated from it. So much fretting about that first dance and in the end....nobody gave two hoots what went wrong. Soon everybody was up and dancing to the golden oldies we had lined up, and the Irish folk musicians who had kindly volunteered to play, led by my sister's boyfriend.

It was a joy to see all the work Michelle put into the ceremony and reception-- and it was untold hours and weeks and months-- coming together so well. Everybody was in love with all the little details like place-holder cup-cakes (you took the cup-cake with your name on it and went to wherever you wanted to sit) and the little welcome packs including cow-bells for ringing. Every time someone rang a cow-bell I had to kiss the bride. That was a pleasant task.

Thanks be to God for a wonderful bride, a wonderful day, and may always keep us in the palm of His hand. Off on honeymoon now!