November 22, 2010
The implications of the bail out for the poor in Ireland are terrifying. Sovereignty was about the only thing protecting them and with that gone it’s open season on social welfare, old age pensions, health, minimum wage, education, students and so on. Before the boom it might surprise people to know that there was a small sense of social conscience from the govt (regardless of political affiliation since I lived there under both Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael govts). There was some understanding of what being poor actually meant and what was a living wage, even a basic one. I’ve a hard time imagining that decisions taken by a non-elected body, who have no experience of living in the country and whose only goal is the recuperation of their billions will have any consideration for these people and what they live with.
Carl O’Brien had a series of moving articles about suicide in The Irish Times this week. Each day another story was told. What came through in all of them was how ill-equipped the mental health system was to help any of these individuals. There was no effective front line response whatsoever when their loved ones sought support for the individual who went on to die by suicide. That was the mental health system under the boom times, add the undoubted savage cuts that are coming to this system and the increase in the suicide rate as people crumble under the stress they’re living with and what will we have then?
November 21, 2010
This morning at 8.19am, a laughing Dingle came across the radiowaves from Luxy.
Number of times expletives were exchanged = often.
Number of times expletives were used in sentences related to the bailout = incalculable.
Number of kettles known to have been boiled in different time zones during the conversation = 3
November 20, 2010
Parallels
Listening to Jack and Jimmy Coen on flute and guitar, tea in the pot as the snow melts outside the window. Pas mal, except an exit must, alas, be made.
Last night we had the glorious pleasure of minding Macdara the “wain” as they say in Donegal. He’s besotted with my son and even though he’s all of six or seven months old cackles laughing at him. My boyo recorded the babog laughing on a Garageband track, which later he played back to him when he became a bit restless over his teething. It was astonishing to see a baby demonstrate emotional memory, for the little dote settled down and laughed and laughed again each time he heard himself laughing on the track and heard the words and sounds that made him laugh the first time. Very touching indeed.
Also touching was the sight of a second bookmark in my own small man’s novel. What’s this? Says I. Oh he explained another boy in his class had borrowed his book to read during recess, so this was the other boy’s bookmark of where he’d read to …. Who says boys don’t read?!
November 20, 2010
Chicken soup, hot port with cloves, a stack of trad CD’s bequeathed by a friend ce soir, hot water bottle, cashmere cardigan, bed socks, book and flurries outside the window.
Nest. Nesting. Nested.
This is the winter of perfecting the art of nesting. The small male and myself agree on this heartily. A couch per reading penguin, we intend to double the volume of hot water bottles (2 per penguin) and I have to stop snaffling his bed socks. (only one pair permitted on one respective set of flippers) We have not quite perfected his choice of hot drink. We believe strongly and severely in coziness and comfort in these parts. We are dedicated to comfortable reading the way others are to the pursuit of the puck.
November 19, 2010
Patience of a saint…
Especially for those experiencing trickiness in and about the lung, and mamasitas’ near to them. I love the octave the woman sings at the end! High.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA&fs=1&hl=en_GB]
November 19, 2010
Rhotic intermission
Along the theme of collapse, my tumbling has entered a state of its own arrest. An unrecognizable slide backwards. A more useful slide would the powerful up and over and on momentum. The calamity is, as ever, in the linking moves. Independently the moves are rather dashing, but there just not much use if you cannot link them together. You have just that — — —– — – — instead of ____!______!__!_!_______!
I continue this beat of agnosticism. The physical reciting of prayer minus every third word. Not exciting. Not compelling. A line of broken up despondency. Not even the despondency is consistent!
As detailed in my ongoing Rhotic titled “transactions” around and with the topic my iron levels are low and need to go from a number 11 up to a number 35. Except the iron supplements, even liquid, make me sick. I am officially blaming the 11 that needs to be a 35 for this arrest in progress. Once it’s a 35 I’ll have to concoct some other beauty of an excuse. But it will take consuming a field full of broccolli to drive it up. The fact of the matter is that after a period of exertion — and tumbling repeatedly even when you’re failing is just that — the body is like a JCB digger with no tires and no front or rear bucket. The bones do their clunky thing with insufficient votes from the muscles. Then there follows the supine protest. The flat pack obliteration.
The documentation arrived this week for our (Lori and I) performance art collaboration at Open Space. They detail in the video projection … what now evades me.
November 19, 2010
The mild mannered Bryan Dobson betrays his (and the country’s) annoyance in questioning a belligerent Brian Lenihan who is like Tufty the Squirrel no icecream truck will ever knock me down, not even if I happen to be driving one into the wall.
Have the IMF already introduced austerity measures on Nob Nation podcasting — we went over there hoping for big time treasure given the endless material all week — and only found the Cork Special with Roy Keane.