The truth is

I haven't been abducted by aliens, nor have I been recruited by the Irish Secret Service for some glamorous and fantastic mission involving using my jacket as a parachute while escaping from a helicopter, I didn't get so confused by the new look of blogger behind the scenes that I fell down a well, nor have I had more children or dogs, I haven't failed to notice all the brilliant exciting achievements of people I know from blogland (are you listening Niamh Boyce, Peadar O BusaJewel?!), nor have I won the lotto and spent the last month recruiting a new blog team from all corners of the earth to bring you the BEST blog ever known to anyone, and I certainly haven't had a surreal wardrobe exploration which resulted in me being missing for almost a century in wardrobe time but only a few weeks in time here on this place.... I am coming up on almost the 3rd anniversary of me finishing writing my difficult 2nd novel. I've never reread it, not more than a page or two anyway, I haven't edited it, I haven't sent it anywhere. The sad truth right now is that I wouldn't even have time to read it. I'm in a book club nowadays and I'm still half way through February's book - I get a half page of it read every so often. Where else is my time going? Not into writing. And I think this needs a bit of correction. I spent half an hour writing last night, what I wrote wouldn't be worth telling you about, but I actually felt better for it today, like - slightly less stressed, more creatively brained, more like myself... I think It could possibly be something I need to do - even if what I write never sees the light of day...

Nothing against Easter

I mean, I've been known to partake in a cup of tea from time to time, have dabbled in Eastenders during my wild youth - even spent a day being an extra in a bollywood short film... and I do like the odd sunrise as you walk home after a crazy night out - but what's with all the focus on the Eastness? There's not a single holiday celebrating any other direction and I think it's about time we put a few dates in the diary for Norther, Souther and Wester!!??!
in all fairness like

Something Fishy

Below I've pasted in a long list from the fish prizes - titles of storys/ memoir pieces - it's kind of heartbreaking to scan down through all of them thinking what hard work went into all the writing.
I didn't enter this time round, so there was no hope in my scanning down through them - but what I am thinking ... is that next year... my entry will encompass all of the below in some way or shape - so that it'll be guaranteed to win.

(in fact I might never enter Fish... I'm not that into salmon [unless it's of the poetry or knowledge variety, ok bad choice of example but you get what I mean] and I always feel like I could do better things with the money. Like if you had to enter a poetry competition or rescue a dying child - which would you do? of course you'd rescue the dying child, not that I actually rescue a dying anything every time I fail to enter a competition - but you get my drift - it's sorta a philosophical question)


A little Scar

A Room in my First House

A Song In The Night

A to Markworthy

A Trio's Travels

Accident-Prone

All I Know is a Door into the Dark

Approaching Death

ARGONAUTS

Ask the London pigeon

Bad Hair Day

BAGS

Been Here Before?

Before Without

Beneath These Feet of Mine

Biryani Mountains, a Lake of Lassi, and enough Kebab to fill the Grand Canyon…my ‘Lowe Marriage’!

Blackberries

Blessed are the Cracked

Born a Dublin Lad

Boystown S.A.

Braveheart.

Breakwater

Building a Sandcastle

By Invitation Only

Casenotes (i)-(vii)

Cattle Market

CAUSE and EFFECT

Changeling

Chivers Road E4

Chocolate con Churros

Christmas at No.3

Cold

Colours

Come Again Another Day

Confirmation Shoes

Conformity and The Art of Skipping Stones

Cows and Lies

Crossing Glaciers

Daddy

Day Day

Dear Sorrow Madam

Death By Fire

Death of a Family

Digging

Disjointed

Driving on Empty

Dumber Than Buffalo

Epiphany

Etiquette

Excerpts from Doing Time with Nehru

Fake

Family Bones

Fashion Victim

Final Contact

Finding Nick

FIRST KISS

First Trip to Poland

Five Cities

Flashback

Footloose

Full Circle

Ganja Girl

Gentiles

Growing Up with Jimjones

HEARTS AT THE SACRED HEART (MEMOIR)

Heaven

Heritage: A Memoir in Fifteen Parts

Hesperus' Daughter

HORIZONTAL HOLD

I Killed My Landlord

I Very Quick

I Was Here

Images Through a Smokescreen

Imprint

Inside the Fence at Buchenwald

Inside the Nation's Most Respected Freak Show

It Happens Like This

IT WAS LIKE THIS: EIGHT VIGNETTES

IT'S BEHIND YOU!

Jailhouse Rock

Keep Hope Alive: Post-Racialism in America

Lament

LANDING MY FATHER

Leaving the Ark

Legacy

Letter from Alaska

Lies That Bind

Life after Death; Grief and the Seven Deadly Sins.

Life and Death Perspective, From Eastholme

Life Drawing

Life is Like a Daisy

Life Without Parole

Little Billy

Livin' on Silver, Parts 1 & 2

Loosened

Losing Dave

Love Letters From Transylvania

Made in Libya

Martha

Masks of Freedom

Material

Me v. Dad

Memoir, The Last Territorial

Memoirs on a noticeboard

Memory Bubbles

Memory rings true

Mirrors

Miss Valentine

Mother and Troubles

Motherland

My Father's Garden

My First Job

MY LIFE AS A CROW

My Teenage Romance

National Pastimes

Okavango Safari

On the Road in Limerick: Forms of Apprehension

One Summer, Way Back

Only for the Summer

Our House

Over Cast Days

People Can Surprise You!

pike parnell and tom finn

Postcards

Purim & My Bangladeshi Friend

Quentin

Raising Up Horsies

Rejected by God

Reminiscence

Resistible: A Comic Memoir about Comedy

Reunification

Rotting sharks, smoking volcanoes and the deadly end-game

Sailing the Kungsholm

Scenes from the boxes in my bedroom

Sea Shanty

Searching for the Centre

Selbach, Germany

Sheffield

Skinning a deer and other stories

skykickers

Slap that Bass

Smalltown Shadows

Societas Post Pubertatem

Soft Shadows in the Mind

Some Tea Towels, a Turkey and the Running

Somewhere in the black-out

Speaking for the Big Shot

Squirrel

Stains

Stardust

Stina and Vino

Strangers

Stung

Suffer The Little Children

Susan-the Big Girl

Taking Education, or a Love Letter to my Student Loans

Talking Double-Decker Bus Tour Guide

Tea with Immortals

Ten Things You Should Know About Grandad Jack Price

That Day

The 1966 Kilrush Fleadh Cheoil

The 27-Year-Old Sister Addresses the 29-Year-Old Sister

The Bella Boys

The Border Crossing

The Border Crossing

The Burden of Memory

The Carer

The Castle

THE COAL TABLE

The Color of Love

The Commonwealth Club

The Crystal Glass

The Crystal Glass

The Curse of the Five Note

The Dog Kill Squad (Kosovo 1999)

The Drowning Girl: Riding the Rapids of My Son's Psychosis (Excerpt)

The Exciting Agonies of War

The First Sneeze

The Fragile Frame

The Gate

The Green Chairs on Ward B

The Guy In Frankie's Hatbox

The house we live in

The House-Keeper

The hunger

The Jaded Slave

The Joyful Mysteries

The Knot

The LPA

The Mad Marine

The Magic Teaspoon

The Paintings in the Rafters

The Particulars

The Pinochle Players

The Secret Lies in Remembrance

The Sinking of The Lancastria

The Sorrowful Songs of Monkeys

The Spider

The Stenographers

The Strange Laptop

The Sungazer

The Talkies

The Town by the Bog

The Village at Lakeside

THREE WHIZZES: FOR DAVID (Dec 4, 1939-June 23, 2001)

Ticket to Ride

To Laugh at Dandelions

To Whom It May Concern

To You, A Thousand Thanks

Tolkien, My Love

Tolstoy's Family

Tracey's Rug

Treacle mining

Trigger

Turning the Wound: A Memoir

Twenty-Three : Twenty-Four

Vasectomy

Viva Madrid!

Walking Around

What Kind of Mother?

When I Come Around

Where We Went and What We Did There

Wilbur

Working

An Exercise

No, the nice weather hasn't got to my brain - I haven't begun jogging or anything. Yes, the exercise I speak of is a writing one - and one I found surprisingly good - it was one of those "oh this is going to be so lame" in your head before you do it and then you do it, and it's surprisingly interesting. It came from a workshop I attended yesterday, given by the fabulous Afric McGlinchey, and it went something like this...

Spend 90 seconds writing down all the nouns you can think of relating to hospitals.

Then spend 10 minutes writing something that uses as many of those nouns as possible, without referring to illness/ hospitals etc...

11.5 minutes in total. Here's mine

George opened another banana while the children watched. He could have kept a whole corridor of kids entertained with the faces he pulled, magicking thoughts of flowers and balloons just from the way he held his arms. George never spoke, but he never stopped playing. One minute he was reading pretend leaflets or nailing posters to the trees, the next he'd be holding a stethoscope to the earth, listening to its heartbeat.
"Why does George only wear pyjamas?" Tom once asked his mother, when she was towelling him down after bath time, but she only smiled. Adults didn't see George and thought the kids were only joking when they said they needed the thermometer to check George's tea, or when they were playing statues and George was watching for who'd move - adults would always interrupt. George would be sucked up in a tube of sensibleness then, and kids would start to see him only in their glasses of water, or when they took mammy's pills or if they fitted themselves into a bedside locker.
It was getting harder to see him all the time.
He was only apparent from a giggle in the curtains or a drip from the railings on a dry day.


Funny how myself and another guy in the group both had banana's in our story - would you have included banana's in your hospital list?

Doors and books

So Danger does love the Doors, but while he was swinging out of the living room door there recently - hitting himself on the backside with the door, having forgotten to get out of the way, such was his enthusiasm to open and close it - it struck me that he's pretty darned adept at the motion of opening and closing doors, and I was wondering why that might be... well if you are wondering the same, dear friend, wonder no more!!
He's been practicing on his books. Books all have little doors on the front of them - most of em less heavy than the ones we have separating ourselves from the world outside or segmenting our mini kingdoms into different colour coded places for living. There's even a door on the laptop for gawd's sake, that swings up to let us see through and into the whole world (or onto the next humour related stumble page - whichever comes first)
Books and doors have a lot in common. They can both surprise (remember bosco)
Actually anyone who doesn't remember bosco - you have to check this out. Seriously cult youngsters tv... They both can educate... and lead to unexpected places. An open book could be the source of a draught, might let in some flies, or just act as an invitation... A door can become an old familiar friend when you've been through it often enough - or might become a rueful memory, something best avoided.
And the difference?
A book will not generally cause you to hurt your fingers if closed suddenly.
A band called "The Books" would not be quite as genius (or cool)

And for those of you wondering what Danger's library consists of you'll be glad to hear he counts such classics as
"El Catita"
"Baby Touch"
and
"Catch my tale" among his favorites.

Sore throat

I've a sore throat, poor me, it means I mightn't even make my course thing tomorrow night, which is sad, as I also managed to miss it last week... So here is a tiny snippet of creativity that I managed to get down this evening... - though you should really check out Emerging Writer's Wedding poems if you want to see some real gems. I put mine in the comment box. seriously, everyone should do one - they're brilliant.

Danger mouse has graduated, by the way, to mocking his parents - when he goes to chew through a wire with his little Danger teeth and we say "aah Ah" in that all-knowing and authoritative way we have, he actually laughs, and says it back to us... All that's left now is for him to be completely mortified by our presence and we'll be fully fledged parents.

Anyway - here's my little effort, that may not even be a poem at all, since it doesn't rhyme or do anything much of any great importance... maybe its modestly is its greatest strength.

Sleep wants you

Sleep wants you so bad it writes your name in the air
It laughs at all your jokes, widens its eyes at your anecdotes
Makes your eyelashes want to hug, tug tug tugs them together
Answers teen magazine questionnaires to find out if you’re interested
Waits for you at the end of every long and lolling day
Warm arms enfold you in everything your mind wanted to do
And everything you’re scared of
While your body turns a blind eye
Sleep loves you, even when your mouth is slack
When the saliva drizzles softly past your chin
Or skin is twitching with weird imaginings
Sleep creeps through your every part
Relishing the journey

Trying to guess

- do you think a child who is interested in opening and closing doors of all kinds (bathroom doors, dresser doors, locker doors) will be interested in "The Doors"?

By the way - on a somewhat related note - the dog is proving to be a great aid to parenting efforts.... in the life lessons department mostly... things she has taught Danger include...

that shouting will not necessarily always result in being picked up.

that not all toys belong to him.

that sometimes large objects can move - without warning - so check for stability before using them to pull yourself to standing.

that the yellow bowls are full of interesting things, but you'll be in trouble for investigating them...

Dya know what

I'm posting another poem, already, and you'd think I'd have better things to be doing, but I really don't right now, Mr VC is out at a school concert of some sort, Danger Cushions is miraculously in bed - preparing for his big day tomorrow (9 month old check up!! - I'm very excited, they're going to tell me he's a genius and that I win a free years supply of nappies since they've never seen a child so advanced, in such a modest understated kind of way)... so I sat me down and wrote a poem, I have to acknowledge it is somewhat inspired by another poem I came across in class last night - a little number called Similes - by Charles Reznikoff. Yes I'm going to classes by the way. Just one a week, and just for a few weeks... it has the intriguing title "Parallel Worlds, how to build them with words" and is facilitated by Trevor Joyce, and I'm rather liking it.

Anyway - here's me poem

Hiss

She’s eating her words now.
Fierce watery words they are too.
She could never wash with them, they’re too scarce and sputtering.
She tried to drown Seanie in them, but it was only a drip drip drip, drilling
a hole in his ear.
Through to his brain.
True, and down the drain with that relationship.
No type of a ship could’ve gotten across that tempest, the temper on her.
And her holding up each phrase as if he should listen.
She wrote him a letter too.
She wrote him a poem.
She carved his name on her arm, and on a tree, and in cheese from the fridge.
She soaked herself in soft old talk about his early days with her, their
happy times.
Her mouth is dry with calling him.
What she said was what she said, and it hailed out of her frozen sometimes, or misted in her quiet breath, or lashed with the warm enthusiasm of a summer storm, fat drops of things she said, thick streams of sayings, flowing, leaking.
All she ever said gushes with the rest -
white noise tearing through the string vest of space.









and now the poem by Charles Reznikoff -


"Similes

Indifferent as a statue
to the slogan
scribbled on its pedestal.

The way an express train
snubs the passengers at a local station.

Like a notebook forgotten on a seat in the bus,
full of names, addresses and telephone numbers:
important, no doubt, to the owner—
but of no interest whatever
to anyone else.

Words like drops of water on a stove—
a hiss and gone."




- and yes there's a heap of sweeping still to be done here....

Spring or - I should be sweeping the floor now

Inspired by the word Spring - as a people's republic of bus monday poem - otherwise known as the scooter.... I have written the following


Earthy

Ground tilts, warms towards life
Locked away in homes the Ordinarys
See new telly schedules
The arrival of the Oscars

Walkers see excitable shoots
Animals are squelching out of older bigger animals
And getting licked and loved and discarded
Vets elbow deep rooting for hooves or heads
Thinking of their tea, the summer holidays,
the Oscars
Shiny tiny people taking tiny shiny people home

In school the frogspawn arrives in tanks
Boys wait in gleeful horror for brothers to awake
and eat each other
the world writhes with excitement of the new
stuff from ash reborn into
the tilted landscape
shiny

in other news

I've decided not to join the secret service after all... Turns out since they're all secretive, I wouldn't get to brag about my big fancy job with them, and their canteen is rubbish. All it is is a can machine and a few sweets and foodservice instant coffee with a burker boiler that hardly ever works and drips boiling water into the sink constantly.... Or was that my last job? I can never keep these things straight in my head.

Anyway - yesterday I went on what can only be described as a trip through time.
Meself and himself and the other himself, found ourselves in the city, in the early part of the day and a big latin mass about to be said in one of the churches. By god, we said, we'll have a bit of that, bit of culture, bit of language, bit of religion, sure why not?
Well. They should sell tickets. It was amazing. The priest and his two assistants stood with their backs to the congregation for all of the latiny bit, so you only got the odd "carpe", or "labia", here or there. It gave a great sense of how alienating the old church was though - with their mysterious non layman language, and how you'd be looking at the backs of their heads for so long. Then yerman turned around, and that's when the fun really started. If there was a theme park in the vatican, with haunted houses to visit where you could see priests as they might've been in the old days handing out fire and brimstone, this guy would be the top man.
Did you realise the pain of childbirth was a punishment because of Eve's misbehaviour in the garden? We could've all saved ourselves a lot of money on epidurals if only... There was a punishment for Adam too - probably manflu - I missed hearing exactly what it was because I was so shocked by the former.
Anyway he was going on and on about giving up things you like for lent. And I was thinking he should give up giving out. He referred to this letter sent by the pope a couple of years ago - when we were trying to get over the abuse scandals, anyway - one of the recommendations in the letter was that we should give up things we like every friday for a year. The priest didn't mention whether he had adhered to this recommendation himself, but you just knew he knew no one in the church (out of the whole 30 or so of us in the place) would have done it, he wanted us to feel bad. (I did, but only because I was so affronted by the cheek of such a recommendation forming part of what was hoped at the time was going to be an apology). He also asked that we refrain from "Googling" he didn't mention any other search engine - and if google were present they would have surely thought it unfair - but "Googling" was mentioned in much the same tone as "looking at porn" He also said 30% of the bold angels, ie the ones turned into devils, were still on the earth. I feel kinda bad passing this info on, but I was so impressed by him having statistics to hand like that...
We were just leaving when he started in on "Nice People" too. "Nice People can lead you astray" he was saying - as us 3 relatively nice people sailed out the door, not for the first time I was glad to have a loud chirrupy little fella with me who didn't know or care about the correct social conventions and had decided to sing all the way through...
The church has changed a lot, but if you ever want a glimpse into the guilt laden/ bizarre past, there's a definite tourist attraction for you.