Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some Useful Things

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Notebook – to write stuff in. This is stating the obvious, but you need somewhere to write down stuff when it occurs to you. Ideas, quotations, lines of copy, jokes, nonsense, names telephone numbers. (That’s a failing of mine, writing down random telephone numbers without noting who they belongs to. Chances are I have your number but I don’t know it’s yours!) Moleskine variety preferred although the binding can fall apart which is annoying.

Also, a hard copy diary, again the Moleskine variety – the binding hasn’t fallen apart. Are the diaries different?

Thermal mug for drinking tea, keeps it piping hot in case I’m busy and I forget to drink it. Still find half full cups of cold tea about the place (note half full, not half empty – used to be half empty).

My glasses – eyesight not as bad as it was I feel, but I still need them.

iPhone –  no-one rings me on the landline very much. Most irritating thing – the reception in the office is patchy. My iPhone has access to most of the info I need, much to the frustration of a few people!

Macbook – one of the best things that I ever bought and getting better. Linked to wireless Time Machine wireless backup yoke. Currently road testing Apple’s MobileMe. We’ll see what that does apart from duplicate all my phone entries which irritated me.

Bose Wave speakers – another great buy. Music is the order of the day when I’m working or serial time-wasting. Broadcast direct to the speakers wirelessly. Great job.

Vanilla candle – spark it up, essential part of the day.

Oxford Dictionary, Dictionary of Quotations, Dictionary for Writers and Editors and so on – need to be within arm’s reach.

Printer ink – expensive, annoying, indispensible.

Paper – see above.

Decent pen –  don’t have one. Still mourn the loss of my father’s pen my mother gave me. I’m a bollix.

Four walls – various photos, signed Tyrone & Kilkenny shirts, scraps of paper, print of Picasso’s Lunatic (reminds me of my friend Micky). Photo of myself and Decky Coyle. Myself and Sr Anne. Picture of me da. Signed Peter Canavan football. Collage picture of Eoghan Rua senior camogie squad from 2009 – from Dubai to Dublin. Highs, lows, Gráinne’s All Star, Méabh’s sheer enthusiasm, Ulster Premier & Derry Premier League Winning team. Great times. Photos of Angela & weans.

Armchair and sofa, when sleep beckons I’m ready. Great believer in the recuperative power of a Scooby sleep. And I used to slag Angela for sleeping on the sofa. Now I can sleep anywhere. Some places I’ve slept? Copenhagen Zoo. Seated in Croke Park. KFC in Dubai. At the NW 200 last Saturday (tells you all you need to know about my attitude to motorbike racing!)

My desk – £26 in IKEA.

Two guitars on stands, beckoning me to please, please come and play. Rarely happens.

Extensive array of sports books, novels, poetry, loads of (best inspiration for writing I believe, helps you find the right word) DVDs and other odds and ends that mean something to me but little to anyone else.

The Irish News. No day is complete without it. Read from the back cover of course.

Every day’s different but some things stay the same.

Today’s List

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Some songs, I forget how much I like them until they turn up on a playlist here or there during the day.

My Girlhood Among the Outlaws, Maria McKee

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Bob Dylan

Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen

Chan Chan, Buena Vista Social Club

Lonely is the Word, Black Sabbath

You’re So Vain, Carly Simon

Quiet Desperation, Christy Moore

The Maker, Daniel Lanois

Blackhawk, Emmylou Harris

Sign Language, Eric Clapton

Only One and Only, Gillian Welch

Hurt, Johnny Cash

Days, Kirsty McCall

My Lonely Sad Eyes, Maria McKee

Yes, McAlmont and Butler

Powderfinger, Neil Young

A Million Miles Away, Rory Gallagher

When I Fall, Steve Earle

I’ll maybe put this together and see what it all sounds like.

Children Separated By a Common Language

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When I was a student at Queen’s University I studied English language and one of the areas that we touched upon was language acquisition among children. I have little recollection of what we were taught other than there is an ideal time for children to pick up languages.

So my two year old daughter Treasa has a little Polish friend by the name of Anna, pronounced ‘Anya’, and the two of them witter on to one another, one in English, one in Polish. They seem perfectly capable of understanding each other. Treasa understand a little Polish, what I don’t know but they are very good friends indeed.

A while back I got my wife three hens for her birthday. The thought of having hens about the place was anathema to me. Just the idea of them pecking and poking about did nothing for me. It’s not as if I am particularly green fingered or good in the garden.

But I have to say, the hens have grown on me. Maybe it’s the wonderful fresh eggs. Or the unexpected sight of one pecking in round your feet in the kitchen when the door has been left open. It could be comical sight of them staccato strutting about the garden stopping here and there to fertilize another part of the grass. Leo and Peter aren’t that impressed when the hens do the business on their football pitch, although it doesn’t have the same capacity for match abandonment as the dog lightening her load.

But, on the subject of language, when they arrived Treasa immediately christened the hens with the delightful name ‘buk buks’ responding instinctively, intuitively and linguistically to the noise they made pecking their way round the garden.

Listening to the children talking is one of the great pleasures although occasionally you realise they are sponges, picking up on every word you have said.

Last Friday night we were all at a camogie match in Swatragh. I returned in one car and the rest of the family were in the other car, a seven seater. I found out when I got home that Sorcha, my second youngest daughter had puked. And so, to get a first hand account of the drama I asked her what had happened. Solemn faced she replied:

“I felt sick in the car Daddy, so mummy stopped the car and I sickeded on the pavement.”

I was delighted with her. Not only did a four year old have the presence of mind to keep it in, she ‘sickeded’ on the pavement, in the process coining a new verb.

You Ask Me Why I Dwell in the Green Mountain

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One of my clients is a cancer charity, CHARIS, that specialises in offering complementary therapies and tailored counselling for people that have been diagnosed with cancer. It is recently opened.

CHARIS is located in the most beautiful scenic location overlooking Lough Fea. It is a remote and achingly desolate part of the Sperrin foothills. I first visited in February 2010 to meet the centre Director Imelda and Valerie, the CHARIS fundraiser, herself having survived a cancer diagnosis.

I found talking with Imelda and Valerie to be unusually inspirational and optimistic, and I found myself at times in awe of their upbeat enthusiasm for their difficult but necessary work. Thank God I have not been closely exposed to someone suffering from cancer although I watched from a distance as a number of friends and family members passed away. In many instances these individual were inspirational in the way they faced their future with indomitable courage on the outside at least.

In briefing myself on the reality and rigours of cancer, up to the our final hours in this life, I found it a difficult but strangely calming subject to understand. Nietzsche wrote that “If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.”

And so, it was with a curious realisation that it dawned on me that death like life must be faced and dealt with head on. We know not the time or the hour, but a peaceful end to the journey has to be a good thing.

In researching the background to complementary care I came across the story of Maggie Keswick Jones after whom the Maggie’s Centre in Scotland takes its name.

In writing of her own cancer journey, Maggie confronts her own future with a fearlessness I could recognise from the illness of one of my closest friends. She wrote:

“I mean to keep on marching, down the tail of the statistical curve and on, into the sunset, and then, when I eventually I must die, to die as well as possible.”

It is a strangely cathartic experience to read the personal, confrontational and ultimately brave account of this woman. It is inspiring and devastating in equal parts.

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;

I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.

As the peach-blossom flows down stream

And is gone into the unknown,

I have a world apart that is not among men.

Li Po