Sniffle&Cry’s Weblog

There’s a killer pub on Nickels street, backs onto the river. Used to be a time when the tide turned, the day’s filth was washed away. Not anymore, not on Nickels street. Fitz knew the barman, he knew all the barmen, but this wasn’t a social call. It was a dank and dark gaff; a dim light above a torn pool table vaguely illuminated a movement at the back. They were still there, he was always there.

Fitz sat down, laid his hat on the table and rolled a cigarette between thumb and forefinger. He looked up at the face.

What does evil look like, he thought and inhaled deeply. He saw a residue of generations of depravation of decent things, he saw a denial of warmth and love, and a lifetime’s inhalation of hatred and fear stared coldly back at him. A boy still, in his early twenties,  his tongue flicking, lizard-like, testing and tasting the fear around him.  

His brothers sat either side of McKano. A near empty bottle of vodka, three shot glasses and a girl’s salty make-up mirror lay on the table. It was an edgy 3.00 pm.

You looked for me Fitz,

Fitz threw out an envelope and a photograph, 

I’m looking for him and that’s an incentive.

The uglier brother reached for the envelope but Fitz slammed his hand to the table and flicked the cigarette to the ground.

You owe me since the girl, McKano, I still have the file.

McKano’s pock-marked face pinched into a smile and he nodded to his brother. Fitz leaned back, casually slipped his hand beneath the table and felt the trigger. He looked McKano directly in the void where eyes should be, and saw a bead of sweat forming on a greasy hairline. Timing is everything and this was not a good time.

I never seen the guy before, now take your money and leave quickly while you can still walk.

Fitz  had a weak hand so there was only one move left, bluff.

Come across with his whereabouts or the file goes to the cops.

McKano flared, bolted upright and leaned into the table,

Come back tomorrow at five, I’ll have information then. maybe….. 

Fitz stood up, slowly backed away and nodded to the barman. Afternoon sunlight hurt his eyes and he kept a steady pace till he’d left the Island, his hand stayed in his pocket, his finger on the trigger. He felt anxious, more then his usual edge. He needed to think and he needed a drink.

Fitz looked down from his sparse top floor office at the lunchtime SUV and yummy mummy traffic, rolled a cigarette between tar stained fingers and thought, anywhere but here. A gale blew down Main Street, and the sky promised another deluge soon. His life tied up in that room, desk, two chairs, a cluttered filing cabinet and a phone which rang less and less. He looked at the clock and tried to reason why he shouldn’t open that drawer when a shadow paused outside the door. He pulled back his shaking hand and told the dame to come in.

Willowy,  five eight with a trench coat over a cut suit, a veiled hat hiding her face, she sat away from the desk, legs leaning to one side, gloved hands resting on her lap. One look told him a lot, the wedding band, the classy shoes and poise, he waited.

 I’m looking for a man, Mr Fitzgerald.

 The wise cracks piled up quickly and screamed to be let out, but her voice was sad so he let it go.

 Call me Fitz

 I’m looking for my husband Mr. Fitzgerald, she wasn’t there yet, he’s missing six weeks now and the police don’t want to know anymore.

 He’d heard this one a hundred times before, but this broad didn’t fit the bill

 Tell me about him, about you and him

 He’s tall, six three, broad shouldered, slim, strong and handsome. Thirty-eight last birthday and we were happy, very happy together.

 He heard her voice trail off and only then noticed she’d been crying.

 Joe Courage, you may have heard about him, he was in the news.

 Fitz took out his cigarettes; she declined, he lit up and caught himself gazing down at the drawer again. The name had thrown him; he exhaled slowly and watched the smoke curl round a rare afternoon sun-beam. His mind flashed back to the head-lines, Stand up guy, role model, and this in a town sucked down to the depths by a gang of scum-bag killers. Joe Courage missing.  His disappearance became another piece of trivia to a national media who craved trivia.  Their kid had been beaten up and didn’t understand the other kid’s connections, so he hit back. Joe tried to do the right thing, tried to talk and hadn’t been seen since. 

Did I need this, Jesus Christ I need a drink. Fitz looked into her eyes and saw despair, the man had turned his back on her and she was alone and helpless. He knew she couldn’t pay much but also that she was proud and wouldn’t ask for charity. 

Can you find my husband Mr Fitzgerald?

His diary wasn’t exactly full. She looked tired and she looked like trouble. He heard himself give her his knock down rate, a hundred a day plus expenses, one week in advance. He asked where he’d last been seen and told her he’d call her that evening. He opened the drawer.

 Spluttering, snuffling, snot full hankies, coughing and green spitting, a bad, no a very bad case of the Boo, a true man flu. He sits in a vapour of Vicks and cloves, slurping hot whisky, drawn into himself and his ailment. In a corner of his local spreading germs, sneezing and slurping miserably. Too hot, throws off his coat in a torment, and immediately feels the chill from the open door. Bastards, selfish unthinking bastards puffing away knowing he can’t smoke. Rhinitis, the unrelenting runny rhinitis, the itching red-rimmed eyes and then the collapse and wet smoking anyway.

The Boo’s beginnings are in a star burst of sinus, a desert dry aching throat, and impaired senses. Coordination, never a strong suit, deteriorates before plunging into a free fall of bruised knuckles and stubbed toes. Confined to chair, to bed, to cabin, his anxiety to move builds to a contrary crescendo.

She enters the sick kitchen á la river dance, rummages for food, and settles on another bowl of cornflakes.

Hi Dad, still sick?

More an accusation then a question.

Omar Shariff tumbles in for chocolate chips.

Dad, sick, still?

Ask your sister.

Buzz lightening arrives, so fast it hurt’s his sick eyes. Decelerates road-runner like to a quivering standstill.

Sick?

Mmmm

No one understands man flu or can fully assimilate the Boo excepting 48 ½ year old grumpy fuckers who have soared like eagles and touched stars.  

It’s important isn’t it, in a developmental way, to nurture stuff in the early years. And then during the adolescent dance, the preening and pouting, the presentation of us in the best light, that’s good too, for gene selection. So if you want to get laid, comb your hair, brush your teeth and wash yourself. Keep doing this and you have chances in the gene pool, and since you don’t have anything by way of an idiosyncratic compensation, stick with it so that people will sit beside you in pubs, on buses and at work. I’m reminded of Billy Connolly hugging Michael Caine on one of the final Parkinson shows, and whispering that “there was a smell of piss from him”. Look there are no two ways about it, look after you.

But what if that bitch, that motherfucker Mother Nature conspires against you and your best efforts at the presentation thing. Or worse, when she conspires with a younger generation to point and giggle behind their hands, and when you turn to face them, they tell how fresh you look for a man of your age.

I miss my fucking hair and have done since that day in the shower, that evening when I avoided what it is that most men have showers for, that same evening I bade goodbye to the first of my lost tresses. For tresses is what I had, luxuriant and lustrous, and curly too, so very fucking curly as many very fucking girls had whispered to me. And there are photographs of my tresses, and like Picasso I too had a mysterious blue, a dark navy blue period, which so suited my shouldered tresses.

And there must be a legitimate lament, a Pegeen-Mike Celtic hag, misty-eyed lament suitably suited to my lost coiffure.  And have I mentioned that I still miss it, still reach up with four fingers to push and lift it, settle it remembering how well it looks that way, or when I’m on my bike, I miss it’s wispiness as it flicked my ears or flickered across my sight. And those barber visits to a multi-generational male domain, Victors and Hornets and the red tops we never got at home, I miss those too for I will not pay €20 for a “number wan”, when I can do it myself with a €16 Argos machine. Soon, very soon, when winter has pushed me back from it’s bountiful table at which I have supped well, and when I slim down a little, it will be a “number nought” for my river tanned pate.

Since March 12^th 2007, near enough to one year folks, that same bitch who took my hair has been tugging at my teeth, and this one in particular as I tongue right now the latest dental McIvor patch. And I am not complaining, so not complaining, because not too long ago a butcher turned orthodontist’s hands shook so much that  he couldn’t smoke the Major he needed to sooth his nerves, as the blood ran down my chin and his pliers held half the stubborn tooth.

But yes, since last March an angel from above, a dental genius has been sent down to save this final, left sided and upper molar whose three brothers have long since been causalities in an unjust war with Coke and sweets and sugar and spice and all things nice. And there will be financial reparations, oil for teeth already lost, needed to pay the projected salvage cost of my final upper left Private Ryan molar. And even after loosing half of it to a pea-nut, we’re still trying, still re-building. To summarise folks, because there is a message here, albeit a lamentable one,  even if you brush your teeth and hair, mothefucker nature will stick it to your vanity.

 Howrtings Lanky

Grand, grand, which quickly covers a multitude. He held up his bag,

Veggies for the week.

You couldn’t miss Eugene at 6′6”, towering above the crowded  market. I remember a smell of beer from him when we were kids. The doctors said he was growing too fast and couldn’t put up weight. So after the instant it took him to hoover his dinner, he’d drink a pint bottle of Guinness. He and I sat together in secondary school and I also remember him snoozing during the first two classes in the afternoon.

39 quid he cost me last week, and the previous week the same thing.

He’d noticed the dog limping. Lanky doesn’t work, so money’s tight and there are no veterinary subsidies.

So what happens if he’s not right this time?

We’ll have to operate and stitch the tendon.

And how much will that cost?

300.

It’d be cheaper to bring him to Lourdes.

The veggie stall is just in front of the arch, under which sits a man with an accordion and a friendly face. He’s there most weeks and there’s another fella, with big black horn rimmed bifocals, who stands it with him singing unfamiliar songs. Have you heard Luke Kelly sing, he played with the Dubliners? Well Luke had a unique talent, beyond description. I remember my mam crying one day as she listened to Luke sing a Phil Coulter song on the radio, “Scorn not his simplicity”. Makes me cry to this day, but it’s the voice, Luke’s voice.

There have been Luke imitators since he died and more often then not they get it arseways, his songs are laments and their voices too thin. But the guy with the glasses who stands in with yer man who sits under the arch, he has the Luke voice and if you wait a while he’ll sing Raglin Road.

Paddy Kavanagh loved a girl he could never be with, and wrote a poem and put it to this old air. The combination gets me, always, Paddy’s words, Luke’s voice, the lament, the arch, the unrequited love. If you want a little cry, ask him nicely to sing the song.

http://www.last.fm/music/Luke+Kelly/+videos/+1-mbaU0LEALY0

Okay, when there’s more then one blogger present, the collective adjective is? Anyone?  A conspiracy folks, a murder of bloggers maybe, but conspiracy works for me. And if you’re asked to be there @ 9, be there on time cause when I arrived later, all the drugs were gone and I passed some tired hookers on my way into Flas. Security was just about coping with a swelling crowd, and the foundations were shaking from the satanic hell being pumped out from the Blogger’s Banquet.

More Led Zeppelin then laissez faire, Darwin stood centre stage, in that arrogant centre-stage standing way, all lycra and cling film, mascara running into the chicken dribblings on his chin. (he had ripped off its head with bared teeth). Bock was transcendent cause I like the word, and it suited his Ian Curtisness. Techno control freak, the keyboards and chanting were his, and the crowd were lamped rabbits from his demonic stare. Axe in one hand, guitar in the other, Dan held a bottle of Tequila with his third hand and screamed at everyone, screamed at everything. 

Baileys on Ice, Sniffle? 

Yes Pat (the barman) and a package of salted peanuts, please. It was gona be that type of evening.   

And after the ninth encore (that’s a Bock number folks 9), well after the encore, and the groupies and the cocaine, we fell into chill out.

You taking the minutes Sniffle?

Bolox, I suppose it is my turn.

Right so, who’s first? 

Darwin    How many piercings can an average man have on his genetilia?

Bock      Average, piercings? Testicles, how many testicles Darwin?

Darwin    Standard two.

Sniffle    180 (Sniffle can be a right fucking Monica sometimes)

Darwin   Excellent and this particular individual with the penis and the piercings, what happened next? 

Sniffle    Tattoos? Puppetry of the penis maybe?

Darwin    Well here’s the thing lads; he wanted a second penis, a second source of amusement. So they cut it down the middle, re-did the plumbing, stitched it back together, except now in two pieces, and hey-presto, twin peni (that’s plural for penis)

Bock    Can we go back to the Polish hot chick story now? 

 Voices. You hearing the voices again Sniffle?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

What?

Voices, telling to you moan and whine interminably and bore people to tears. You listening to them again?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

What, me, boring people to tears? I so beg your abrupt pardon, so I do!

That whiney voice you use, the one you reserve for your ”existential angst”. That’s a load of bolox Sniffle, isn’t it?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? 

Just a cotton picking minute. Now just stop right there. I have been suffering, I am suffering, and you know my pain, my so hurty pain. How can you be so callous, so insensitive?

That’s some load of shite, Sniffle.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Sparkly Sam says it’s Spring in California, and her loved up bunnies are dancing. Are we there yet? Bock’s gowling around, wrecking heads and making us think and answer questions. Are we there yet?  Gimme, when he gets back, soars. Are we there yet?

Well Sniffle, are we there yet?

Fuck right off…… 

 A thought, a re-occurring thought about a walk. A longish one, three miles, three days, three years, three lifetimes. In essence, a walk away from stuff, from clutter, from baggage, shedding and unloading, leaning up, returning to an ideal. Not a heavy philosophical journey because I like walking and seeing stuff. A walk that can take me from Doolin to the Himalayan foothills.

So here I am, all of me and all of them whom I love dearly, and me gets submerged in them. But I love the cover of fatherhood; it fits well the paternity thing. Dad stuff, cooking, shopping, working for the man, cleaning, bringing to soccer, to rugby, to hockey, the parent teacher meetings, community games, mortgage and bills, 24-7 kisses and hugs. A wonderful life, no really, it doesn’t get better.

And something happens.

And it’s on their part not mine. It’s about their opinions and attitudes not mine, about their thoughts and ideas which are very fine but hey, they’re not mine. Not originating anywhere near my heartfelt philosophies, I’m cast adrift. They’re on board an ideals QE2, looking back at me floundering. Paddle like fuck or be dammed!

So I go for a walk in my mind, a longish walk as I mentioned earlier, and I shed belongings. It’s a process, but one which gathers momentum in an inverse exponential, the less I have, the more I loose. And less is so very much more now. A journey which takes me through all climates and climbs. The rhythm kicks in, the perfect breathing, heart slows to optimum, to a meditation. It’s a foot-fall, a repetition, the warm sun on my back, the care-free childishness of a rambling journey home from school, it’s a dreaming.

Alone and ignorant of loneliness, passing through the wonders of the world from my primary school geography book, from my father’s Encyclopædia Britannica.

What do I see?

 ”We dun gone and lost our shape Pa, don’t know how, don’t know when, but she sure aint round here no more. Musta lit out before sun-rise and took all that was good in this here family with it”.  Pa clenched his fists and seized his self tight, squinted, took a deep breath and glowered at him, “You go and tell that ornery critter, that if he don’t have our shape back here before sun-down, well you tell him that Willie boy’s a comin, he’s a comin after him and there’s gona be trouble, big trouble.”  

“Something happened”, I explained to anyone who’d listen, or else I’d mouth the words silently when they gave up on me, ears bleeding, heads aching. “Something happened”, whispering at my computer screen or staring blankly into the distance, drooling. “We were in a groove you see”, not to be confused with a rut, we were very much in a “working together, each of us knowing and doing our own shit”, a “living and letting live” type of groove”. Harmonious, we had a shape which was getting us there, a synergy and I’m using that word seriously for the very first time.

Forensics will show the little things leading up to the loss, the lunches being made in the morning instead of the night before, the additional five minute snooze in the morning, the prevarication over teeth cleaning. The moaning and whining started later with the negative vibes.

“So, what happened Sniffle?”

“The Builleogs bui, builleogs bui, loads of them, tons of them”

” Builleogs bui?”

Oh God, the notes, the fucking yellow notes home, from Darla’s school. Notes are okay, mean nothing to me really, what can a piece of paper tell me that I don’t already know about my child, my teenage child, my Christina Aguilera look-alike daughter. Notes can’t come between us, or take from what we’ve shared for the past thirteen years, notes can’t inform or direct our relationship, can’t alter the shape of our lives.

“But there were loads of them Sniffle , how many , ten , twelve ?

“Yeah, but they’re only scraps of paper, meaningless pitter patter, harmless really”

And when did the noise start Sniffle, the whine thing ?

Right round the avalanche of notes I noticed a change in the background noise, sort of a low frequency moaning, you’d hardly notice with the notes and the chatter. But gradually, imperceptibly the frequency changed, the volume picked up and it was only then we saw the origin, the emitter, the source. You see Buzz dun got pissed off with the winter, got withered with his parents and with his sister and brother and went into perpetual whine, a condition designed to drive us from the family home or change said home, into one for the bewildered. He whined in the morning, whined at his unwashed cornflake bowl, at his bitten nails, his whine soon became an existential howl, and to look at him , to hug him, would only make it worse.

So Sniffle, the Builleogs bui and the whining, is that it ?

Throw in a little cabin fever, Squeeze’s stuttering assault on Moscow, and my middle years, did I mention my middle years, mix them all up and then ,well then …….

Pa lit out later that morning searching for our shape. Hooked with his old hunting pal Two Moons McCarthy and they headed for the hills. Jaw set, hat brim pulled down, collar turned up, one hand tucked in under his rawhide jacket, the other holding the reins loosely, wind howled and in the distance a coyote did too. They kicked on up through the brush till sun-down, made camp and brewed up a pot of thick black coffee.

“What we looking for Sniffle?” Two-Moons said quietly.

“Our Shape, Moonie, the family shape”

Two Moons went back to sippin his coffee.   

( Bock got me thinking, and it hurts) 

Okay John here’s a thing and it’s only my thing but here it is anyway. 

Your Irish Times, useful or not?

What value is it bringing to Irish society, are we better informed, or are we even informed by it. Has it kept pace with the world, and does it bring a unique or challenging perspective on general goings on.

Does it?

Does it John?

John, I presume, makes most of his crust from this institution, which I now confess to having lost patience with, and his writing is one of the reasons why.

The Ireland in the Irish Times is a staid, unforgiving, right leaning and self serving child of a different generation. I was frequently alienated by its Dublin (not Tallaght) centred focus, it’s obsession over finance and property values, it’s proclaiming of captains of industry as heroic, it’s elitist social networking. It is not my Ireland and John W doesn’t inhabit my world. The phrase fat, dumb and happy springs to mind when I read it, smug, well nourished and self-satisfied are other adjectival rhetoric I might apply.  

It would be cruel to say that John writes fluff pieces for this daily and I’m not cruel and recognise that he has championed men’s right today, when we are very much discriminated against in family law.

I have never felt engaged by his IT writing, nor has anyone I ever asked. He appears isolated within a paper whose influence and credibility as a vibrant report, is diminishing.  I think professionally, he lost his voice some time back, and his only constituency is somewhere between Ballsbridge and Sandymount.  

John’s view on blogging is malnourished. Adjectival rhetoric in a horizontal society, easy with the negative vibes John.

What are you afraid of?

Come back good buddy!