Who’s afeard?

So, on this bitterly cold January night, we head back to the heights of Durlston Castle where the jet black sky is packed with enough stars to put the Cornish firmament to shame. Light and traffic pollution is non-existent up on this cliff-top. The only sound comes from the waves beating on the shore far below where bottle-nosed dolphins swim silently in the freezing winter sea. Time and tide wait for no man although, inside the castle, they wait for us; the late arrivals to a hidden performance by the folk group of the same name. In the middle of nowhere, I spy the welcome and unexpected surprise of missing friends from the past, also gathered to listen to the songs and tales of long-gone Dorset sea-dogs and smugglers. The yellow standard with the red-edged, white cross is draped to the fore.

Here am I, bold Jack, just lately come from cruising now the wars are o’er.

No, it’s not the man-child returned from distant climes but another Jack who took the King’s shilling to escape a cruel, apprenticeship. With his buttons shining, he preferred the battlegrounds of the Napoleonic wars to rural hardship. Jack’s mother had to be propped against the stone walls of the cottage, her jelly-legs having given way on first sight of her son after twelve despairing years. His boots were, at last, back on beloved Dorset clay despite his infirm and speechless father having mourned his son’s presumed death.

While the battle rages loud and long, the stormy winds do blow

Sailors, enlisted and pressed, fought the elements along our otherwise tranquil Dorset coastline. In 1786, two hundred and forty men and women fell from the East Indiaman, the Halsewell, into treacherous waters off Worth Matravers. Alongside most of the crew, the women drowned, weighed down by their skirts and petticoats. Above, the quarrymen, alerted to the wreck, hauled seventy-four souls up the cliff to safety.

We’re raking the moon, sirs, for the girt smiling cheeses lie there in the pool

And only tonight did I learn what a Moonraker was. The line from the song refers to the answer that smugglers gave to excise men on being asked what they were doing with their poles in the water. Simple Dorset folk, who thought the moon’s reflection on the sea was a round yellow cheese, were playing the simpleton’s role. In truth, they were searching for fine cognac and other contraband purposely disposed of near the coast.

But the boats are coming through the night

It doesn’t end in the distant past, boys. There are enough stories of the bravery of lifeboat men to make you want to give them all your money. I’m amazed the RNLI fundraisers don’t cotton on to their emotive history more proficiently. And, of course, there’s June, 1944. If you think sea-dogs and shanties were lost in the seas of the very distant past, think again. The little boats of Dorset sailed bravely to the shores of Dunkirk whilst, later, the bigger ones left Poole to land on the beaches of Normandy. Our songs tonight told tales of those who were aboard on their first voyage. Who’s afeard?

Singing the New Year blues

I hate this time of year. You go to work when the stars are out and come home when they’re back again. Before that, you have to decide whether or not to go for a swim before work which means getting up whilst the owls are still hooting and taking a random guess at what to wear because global warming has resulted in no clue as to what the day might hold weather-wise. Then you have to plan the timing in order that you leave the leisure club…leisure?... at a point early enough to miss the school run but late enough to pick up a coffee on the way. And should it be a coffee or could it be a hot chocolate which is more filling. Too many decisions for that time of day.


Then there’s the compulsory post-Christmas diet. An early rise precludes breakfast so a healthy banana, tucked in the work-bag, is good for the conscience but comprises an insufficient, and generally subsequently bruised meal. Which necessitates the purchase of a healthy/unhealthy flapjack: healthy because it’s full of roughage and unhealthy because it sits in your stomach like a large, sodden brick for several hours afterwards.

The winter evenings might as well be written off. They start at 4pm and finish about seventeen hours later. You get home, full of good intentions to clean the place up a bit, put the heating on, draw the curtains and fall asleep. Around five o clock, aged parents phone with the aim of having an enthusiastic conversation about something or other. Bleary-eyed and incapable of making any decisions other than picking up the receiver…and this is a BAD decision…the conversation has to be resumed a couple of hours later. By this time, the sun has theoretically passed over the yard-arm of aged parents’ planet and they can’t talk coherently, having imbibed the aperitif, eaten their complicated dinner and joined those in the land of the ‘asleep in front of the television’ set.

Meanwhile, you have your own dinner to consider. The plan to cook something healthy whilst drinking a glass of red deteriorates into drinking three glasses of red and speaking to younger members of the family who are also recovering from the working day.

What are you having for dinner asks daughter number two?
I found two courgettes in the fridge I say
There are always two courgettes in your fridge
Yes. Possibly, they’re the same two courgettes. Anyway, I’ve cooked them with some onions, covered them with cheese and shoved them in the oven.
Are they still there?
What?
The two courgettes

Oh. I’d forgotten about them

Last night I went straight from work to meet a friend at the cinema. She was hungry and so was I. We went for dinner. Then we went home at twenty past seven without seeing the film because we were too tired to stay out any longer.

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

Not quite what you'd expect

To be fair, you wouldn’t anticipate there being anything or anyone left in Kilmainham Prison. Last man out was Eamon de Valera in 1924. Eighty eight years down the line and it’s bound to be a bit quiet. So what’s that tap, tap, tapping then?

Leonie and I are at the very end of a tour party numbering around fifty folk; and a very cosmopolitan bunch they are. We can’t see our knowledgeable guide, Michael, but we can still hear him. We can still hear that tapping business too. I peer through the spy-hole of the cell door from where the noise issues. It stops.

Did you hear that?
Yes. Listen it’s started again
Tap, tap, tap

I turn back to the spy-hole and take a furtive photograph.

The tapping stops again.

Oh my God mum, I can’t believe you just did that.
Tap, tap, tap.













And to be fair, you would expect to see something in the Dublin City Gallery. Pictures, for example. And have equally knowledgeable men who sit in the corners of rooms waiting to tell you all about the contents. Oh look. There’s one.
Excuse me. Where are the impressionist paintings please?

Brendan sighs, puts down the newspaper he was reading and stands up wearily

I’ll show you the room
Thank-you
There aren’t any fecking pictures though.
Oh?

We follow him into a large gallery. He’s right. On the walls are all the name plates but no paintings.

Do yooz want to know what happened here?
Yes please we say, thinking there must have been some sort of catastrophe.
The gob-sh***s took them down. There’s no fecking money to pay to maintain the temperature. Monet’s, Manet’s…you name them, we had them. Now the place is full of fecking cr**. I’ll show you.

We enter another gallery, this with some paintings. Brendan points to an unattractive image of a woman.
Do you know who that ugly bitch is? Mary fecking Robinson. Our first female president. Female! Jayzus. She was so fecking ugly, even the tide wouldn’t take her out. You’d want to be fecking pis*** to take her home. Mind you, that painting’s not as bad as the real thing. You can’t see her fecking beard. Do you want to see some more?

Well, actually we do because this is the best art tour we’ve ever been on. Here’s a room full of inexplicable pictures. Brendan stops in front of one that looks like a blue bucket.

Do yooz know what that is?
No.
No. You’d have to be on fecking acid to work that out. What fecking gob-sh*** did that? What the feck is it? It’s a fecking disgrace. And look at that! More fecking cr**.

We look round politely, but Brendan’s had enough.
Where are yooz from?
The south coast of England.
Oh really? I was there once for seven years.
Oh..how interesting.
Yes and I wish I was fecking back there instead of this gob-sh*** of a country. And he strides off.

The next room is full of large paintings: a red one, a green one and so on. There is another man sat on another chair in another corner.

Good morning we say. Your colleague doesn’t seem very happy today.
He tells it like it is. Would you like to sit here all day looking at this cr**? Eight fecking hours a day staring at a blue fecking wall.
Yes, it must be tricky we sympathise.
Have yooz been upstairs yet?
No
Well if yooz think this is cr** you’d want to see the fecking boll***s upstairs. Fecking Margaret Thatcher over a fecking bed. Tony fecking Blair in a fecking cowboy’s outfit. Fecking cr**. Get up there and see it. It’s a fecking disgrace.

We can’t wait and bid him a happy new year