MJ 26 June 2009
well, what a strange day – michael jackson dead at 50 – the finger of mortality is pointing and sometimes i feel it is random in the pointing, which is SO unfair – but youse all know how against death i am so i won’t go into all that ( and we don’t know in the case of MJ re: random as no one is sure just how random it may be but it so doesn’t matter – a spark has been extinguished). so, what we del with is that people go sometimes before their time – whatever that means because, in fairness, when you’re gone that’s it so that WAS YOUR TIME. i dunno, really…As to michael jackson, he seemed to have such a messed up life BUT the music was, at times, sublime and that legacy will abide, i hope.
also farrah fawcett gone – tragedy too – seemed like a truly wonderful and talented gal who was also blessed with beauty.
RIP
bees 26 June 2009
Actually, bees are big favourites of mine so I take back any slight slagging off I did of them while praising the lone butterfly I saw yesterday. I have let the wild brambles in my garden go a bit nuts this year and they are going to give me masses of blackberries and in the meantime the bees are having a ball with the blossoms. The red admiral enjoyed them too. Worryingly, of course, there are a lot of unexplained bee deaths and disappearances now and it seems it’s because of the widespread use of chemicals but also intensive single crop farming. We humans are our own worst enemies and no doubt about that. If the bees die out we will be rightly shanghaied and will probably have to take to pollinating all of our crops by hand with a little fluff ball! – time consuming and something the bees do for free for us.
Am up early to leave the house in some sort of order for those that take over while I do the mad journey I told you about – today is the start of it with the easy and regular for me as getting a bus journey of Dublin to London.
bees 26 June 2009
Actually, bees are big favourites of mine so I take back any slight slagging off I did of them while praising the lone butterfly I saw yesterday. I have let the wild brambles in my garden go a bit nuts this year and they are going to give me masses of blackberries and in the meantime the bees are having a ball with the blossoms. The red admiral enjoyed them too. Worryingly, of course, there are a lot of unexplained bee deaths and disappearances now and it seems it’s because of the widespread use of chemicals but also intensive single crop farming. We humans are our own worst enemies and no doubt about that. If the bees die out we will be rightly shanghaied and will probably have to take to pollinating all of our crops by hand with a little fluff ball! – time consuming and something the bees do for free for us.
Am up early to leave the house in some sort of order for those that take over while I do the mad journey I told you about – today is the start of it with the easy and regular for me as getting a bus journey of Dublin to London.
admiral 25 June 2009
i saw a red admiral butterfly today and it was SO long since i had seen a butterfly that i was really moved – i still feel that way – and in case you wondered it sucked where the bee does – WHO, if you want my opinion, gets away with a whole lotta stuff
dribs 24 June 2009
Well, in dribs and drabs (and with no apparent urgency), the builders are tackling the ‘finishing’ of their work here – as usual, I will put a horrible perspective on this by saying that it was originally a 5 month job that has become over a year’s worth of them being here…hmmm…SO the ‘leak’ from the tank in the roof, and the awfullest waste of water I have seen in a LONG time, seems to have been dealt with now – and yet the morning may bring its own verdict on that. A few more tiles have appeared. There may be magicians – sorry, electricians – on site tomorrow. We’ll see, we’ll see…
I am to do a talk at Dundee Literary Festival on Saturday (27th), 4 – 5 pm so anyone in the area is most welcome along to that.
Anyone know anything about synching i-pods? I want to synch my music onto it but not the spoken word stuff – please advise.
And how about this for a travel schedule over the weekend – I go Dublin to London Friday (cab, plane, tube), then London to Dundee and back to Edinburgh on Saturday (tube, plane, car, car), then Edinburgh to London on Sunday (train, tube) and later Sunday London to Johannesburgh (tube, plane) arriving 6.20 AM Monday morning in Sith Ifricah…righto so…
interval 23 June 2009
Most of you that I do a few, but not too many grown-up things – I suppose we all must at a certain point…anyhow, that means I am on the board of ROUGH MAGIC theatre company, patron (with Vic Smurfit) of WORLD VISION IRELAND, patron of DOVER YOUTH THEATRE and patron of the FRIENDS OF INNISFREE (housing development charity that looks after, particularly, the ‘home-challenged’ Irish in London) – all tremendously wonderful companies to be associated with. As I say, sometimes you gotta and WANTA – but you also learn stuff that only happens ‘on the ground’ – for example, turns out that a fab arts centre in Dublin (= Project: GO SEE ANYTHING GOING ON THERE when you visit Dublin) is having problems in as much as the vogue for 90 minute plays without an interval means there ain’t a bar revenue at, well, the interval, and during the year they went from jan to march without a single interval!!! Bear this in mind next time you attend such a show, no matter where, and have a drink before or after – it all adds up to the theatre’s revenue and can make SUCH a difference!!
fathers' day 22 June 2009
I thought a bit about Fathers’s Day yesterday, of course, though my own is gone now. You’d miss him around the place for the sheer sense of badness – wickedness, really, I suppose, is more accurate…actually, I wonder if my keen sense of wanting all of that in life and work is from him – you know, laughter mixed with a taint of dark reality, satire, whatever you want to call it…but always CALL IT. Anyhow, it got me to thinking about the whole family thing, as in when you make your own. I am unlikely to go there now, and that’s fine, it’s not an issue and I am not curious enough to know why or why not as ‘twere. But I think there must be something really special about having your kids make a fuss of you on a particular day (even a cynically manufactured one) and that’s gotta be worth a lot of the rest of the raising of the wee dears…
THE CALLING was great, I thought. Jan Dunn has a unique vision for her movies and each is SO different from the others – a rare and special talent and I cannot wait to work with her again. I collected my pass from the Delegates Centre before all of our shenanigans commenced yesterday and as I got up, TRAGICALLY early, this morning I was moved to opine that it might more correctly be called the Delicates Centre most days…
strimmer 21 June 2009
I had a very informative dream last night. I need to buy a strimmer for my garden (actual, not a euphemism for anything else at all, at all…) and I want something that’s not too heavy or unweildy. Well, in my dream I found the perfect one and the man who sold it to me gave me some safety advice about its use too. Now seems to me, that’s one top dream and even Freud would be hard-pressed to make it into something else. I know exactly what I want and how to handle it when I get it. Reminds me of some graffitti I saw painted on a wall once in Corsica which pointed to the nearest town and said how far away it was (official signs were scarce) and it was the most helpful I have encountered, if not a little against the rebellious principles usually associated with street art.
A friend posted a message congratulating a newly wed couple of our acquaintance recently and teased them about their first sacred night together (they have been living ‘in sin’ quite a while now). Unfortunately he spelled it ‘secrete’ and, whereas I know what he means, I can’t help but think he has added just a little too much information with his dyslexic version of the word sacred….
Off to hear Ms Brenda Blethyn speak at the Film Festival now, then a doo, then the World Premiere of THE CALLING and then, all too quickly, a flight at cock-crow tomorrow. Showbiz, sweeties!
postcards 20 June 2009
I got a plea from a pal recently for addresses as she’s away on her hols and wants to send postcards – probably just to torture all of us with what a great time she’s having and we are not. It reminded me of a friend of mine, now sadly departed, the late and great Gerry MacNamara – a wonderful wit, writer and general menace to society. He would pluck random names and addresses of strangers from the phonebook before he left and send them greetings and details of his adventures – a splendid and hilarious way to mess with people’s brains, I think, and one that I may someday employ to scramble the minds of those I have not met and will probably never will meet.
The wonderful filmmaker Jan Dunn (GYPO, RUBY BLUE) premieres her film THE CALLING at the Edinburgh Film Festival tomorrow night, starring Brenda Blethyn – oh, and I’m in it too. The industry screenings have been very well received = huzzah and all of the public showings sold out = more huzzahs. I hear i am ‘funny’ in it, which I’ll take as a compliment, but I have to say I didn’t intend to be, far as I remember…If any of you get to see it do give it a vote for festival favourite – it’s getting an extra showing on the last day as an eligible film for the prize – enjoy!
late 19 June 2009
Sorry – late today – reason is I got to watching the episodes of SHAMELESS that I have missed over the years, as I want to be straight in my mind as to who’s who and what they have done, and the time got away from me. MOST enjoyable, though, and very strange to see the younger members of the cast looking like kids, which they were int he early days – all very grown-up now in the present series. What a fantastic show.
The leak was ‘fixed’ today – it’s now back to leaking like a very VERY leaky thing. I am totally depressed by it all. Defies logic – not the depression, the leak…
Also I find I am VEXED by much right now : STUPID, covering-arses letters from types attached to banks (not truly even the banks themselves who/which are shites anyhow), frustration that I cannot dust a shelf or wipe a floor because it’ll all be fecked over again while the ‘finishing’ of the 5 month/over a year job is happening (hopefully in the next week, otherwise might as well sell the gaff and move to somewhere that is ready to be inhabited properly), worry that I will never write another 3 good consecutive words in my life, and that I will be an injustice to the finest series on tv = NOT a good mix. My friend, Lorcan, told me today that I probably just need a holiday – mate, it ain’t gonna happen till 2010. And I still need a lot of actual stuff sorted. Oh well, onward ho…
Husband is in South Africa producing Chase The Lions each night – check it out (google will lead you, my friends) – v v good.