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Category Archives: Junkies
Rebel Yell
He turned onto Moore Street where his Ma slipped on a rasher and croaked. That was a good while ago now though he couldn't be sure, it was all mushed. 'Coconut head', she'd called him in her fond no vodka moments, not because of the shape of his noggin but for the way his Da kicked the nelly out of it, side to side, smashing him into navy dots. Army boots with a clown's mouth rip covered from the inside with a plastic Knorr soup packet to keep the rain out. She thought it was gas. Seemed a bit twisted to him now. He still snagged memories of her freckle-splattered arms doing the octopus sway in the bingo halls here when he was knee high to an ashtray, small as a mouse's diddy.
Aul Ones with Rothmans-stained chins shouting, 'Two fat ladies, go on Jimmy, get up and run, thirty one…dirty Gertie, clicketyclick, staying alive, eighty five!' Some were able to handle four and five bingo cards at a time, marking the numbers like Phil Collins on drums. Bash bash bash. He'd lay on his spindlies gazing up their A-Line skirts, musty whiff of brown tights on an afternoon in November 1970-something. Disco lights, apples sours, dusty bin.
Now he was out of the Seventies into a new Century where the whole world had descended onto the same street. "Anthony! Anthony! over here!" yer one shouted. A right carrot top. "This way!"
He hoped she wasn't a social worker. Bottler, not Anthony. No-one called him Anthony these days. He couldn't stomach those smug tarts from the Health Service Executive. He hadn't practised what to say but his choice if she gave him one would be a course on computers. They'd blinked by him the years he'd been on the gear. Missed the whole digital revolution. Couldn't even look up The Google now. Survived on stale pineapple cake and sloppy kebabs from out-of-date food skips outside Aldi. Got by on mobile phones. Plucking them from Luas carriages. Selling to teenagers in pink lycra. He felt bad about that shit. Pinching, grabbing, punching. Felt bad about not remembering. Found out in rehab over a cup of Rosie Lee that he'd slept in a dog kennel for a year, had half his guts removed, grew a batch of holes on his tongue the length of a scallion. But his Da was right, all you had to do in this life was survive no matter what and hope a rhinoceros doesn't shit on your head.
She was standing on the corner at Buffet 79, holding a plastic folder, looking the mutt's nuts.
"So nice to finally meet you! I tell you what, you're a hard man to get hold of! We've been writing to you for weeks. Well look, you're here now, thank God you answered your phone. I'm Aoibheann!" She was gripping onto his arm like they'd known each other since nippers. He was throwin' a reddener on account of her being so over fucking familiar 'n all.
"Howayea," he said, unhooking her. "Ye alright, wot's de buzz?"
"This is it here, what do you think, huh?" Hadn't a crusty what she was on about. They were outside an orange building with spitting air vents and roast duck stink. A poster with 'group love' on the wall and a load of slappers in red Tulip dresses dancing in a circle. She stuck a folder into his hands. Snap of a man facing sideways with a giant hooter on the cover, military uniform, oval cloud of mist behind him.
"I know what you're thinking, not much on the outside. That was the planners' intentions, you know, to retain the façade throughout the lane way, renovating the inside a la modern day."
Her voice trailed off as he glanced at more posters on the opposite wall: a gold man pulling his torso apart to get to the gold coins inside him. Paul Weller looking on in dark glasses, arms folded. Two dykes sitting up on new Audis, whipping the bonnets goodo.
"There's only sixteen apartments Anthony. You're in the Padraig Pearse suite. Well now 'suite' is a bit American isn't it!? I prefer to call them apartments or you might like 'flats'. Whatever you're comfortable with. Sure we won't argue over it!"
He'd slip her one alright. Queer bit of skirt. Air bags knockers. Cheese puff lips.
"Will we head in so, shall we? Do you know who this is Anthony?" she asked, pointing again to the big-nosed spamhead on the brochure. "It's Pearse himself! This is where it happened. Well, here and up the road…whole block is on the Record of Protected Structures now. While the main building is a good bit up, this is where a lot of the men actually died. Though it was a new beginning for the rest of us, that's for sure, but oh God" – she stopped to grab her heart through her mint lambswool jumper – "It's a desperate sad story. Brutality of it. Dozens fell on the stones right here. Bled to death in the gutters. O'Rahilly, riddled with bullets, managed to pen a letter in his own blood to his wife and kids. Sure you wouldn't even have time to send a text these days, can you imagine?"
Well yeah, he could. It was in an alley just like this that they dealt with Scuttler for a €500 debt. Still gave him the night rattles. Draino sticking the knife in just above the belly. Flipping the fucker over to get to the spine. Doin' his girdle sack, screams, like a girls'. 'Shut that cunt up till I get the work done,' he told him. Slicing upwards to make sure he was paralysed. Chinee sticking his head out from the back of a restaurant door and shutting it again, pronto, bolts clanking. Rain coming down, steel pin rain in goose grey, washing yer man's wails away. Bleeding out. They lit two joints, watched him wriggle. "It'll be over in a minute, stop stressing!" Draino roared. "I thought you'd take it a bit better than this, for fuck's sake!"
"This is the entrance hall to the apartments," Aoibheann explained. "The walls tell the stories of the ordinary lives, OK, not just the heroes! See this little man and woman, James Rooney and his wife Cora…they were in their eighties…braved the machine gun fire to hide some of the men in their basement that day, 29th April, 1916". She turned to her paperwork to double check the date. Then pointed to a laundry room out the back and a shared shed for storage and locking bicycles.
"Fair balls to them," Anthony replied, though to be honest, they looked like a right pair of spanners. The woman in particular.
"And here we have The O'Rahilly's letter to his wife. We got a calligrapher from the National College of Art and Design to do it in gold leaf and flecks of bottle green. Beautiful isn't it?"
Darling Nancy, I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street, took refuge in a doorway. While I was there I heard the men pointing out where I was & I made a bolt for the lane I am in now. I got more [than] one bullet I think. Tons and tons of love dearie to you & to the boys & to Nell & Anna. It was a good fight anyhow.
Names of more hoagies doused on the plaster, fucking eejits who shot themselves trying to bash down doors with rifle butts to save their own arses. Whacked some of their mates in the scuffle. Others lying with bits of legs hanging off, firing off orders. James Connolly on a stretcher, guts dangling. Some wounded plank tripping over him with all the gunsmoke, grenades and other shit the Brits had at their disposal. Must've been a right bunch of psychos. Photograph of a nurse who'd booted around like a blue bottle with messages for the main boyos, trying to get them to grab the white flag. He remembered none of this from school. The Safe Cross Code, how clouds formed from condensation, Christmas carols in Irish. That's what he remembered in eight years of primary school. Not these maggots.
"This is your apartment, No. 3, well, that was the date Pearse was executed: 3rd May, they've thought of everything."
His apartment? Was she a fucking brandy snap short of a picnic? But he'd keep stum, say nothing, sign nothing. A short stroll around a sitting room painted in hospital white looking out over McColgan's Butchers. Her talking shite about skirting boards a quarter up the wall for an easy clean, plug holes, an interactive Wi-Fi telly with built in CCTV, steam mop in the cupboard. It was a lottery system, with all their names bunged in from the Rehab gaff. Irish men and Irish women, in the name of God and the dead generations, and whatever else. His name, third pulled. Lifelong sublet deductible from the scratcher. Part of the planning regs for the commemoration block and new Insurgents Visitor Centre.
"You have twelve days to sign the lease and get the documents back to Dublin City Council, OK? The address is here," she told him, rubbing her fingers up and down where Pearse's hoop was at the back of the brochure. "Make the most of the opportunity Anthony. You're a hero now in your own right, the way you've knocked the drugs on the head for good. How long is it?"
"Two years," he told her. "This Christmas or thereabouts, anyways."
"Well good for you," she said, "You should be well proud!"
He knew plenty who died for Ireland or because of her. Hasslebat, with his ginger eyebrows lit up like hot worms in a snow of forehead. Face half eaten by his own Jack Russell after overdosing in a boat-house down the canal. Gonzo and Widearse Wendy in a car smash down the docks when they were sleeping rough in the Punto. Many more in slob fights, knife slices, ganger brawls. He'd been too out of it in those times to make any of the funerals. Didn't see the point when they were already wormfood.
If Pearse could be President of his own Republic, then he could be too. Sixteen thousand troops swarmed into Dublin in 1916 to wreck the bleedin' gaff. That was more than the entire Garda Drug Squad and army reserve now. Who the fuck did they think they were!? He'd call up his troops too:
Dickie who'd do anything for a six pack of Dutch Gold. Brains, the nasty little dwarf from up around Sheriff Street who'd stick a gun up your hole quick as a bum doctor in the Mater. The Finglas twins who loved to scrap for no reason, mad bitches. The preparation would have to be secret, no dribblers, no rats.
He could see himself in full Pearse pose swaggering down Moore Street commanding the charge: "We're going to take on the Somali pushers," he'd tell them. "Yez'll horse up the lane here when I give the word".
Each of them swinging a fifty euro shooter.
"We're putting a stop to this Zimovane shite the kids are selling for €8 a pack. It's feeding their gaming addiction. Only a matter of days or weeks before they're snorting the yayo or chewing the gat, are yez hearing me?"
"Yes Bottler!" they'd roar. "Yes Bottler!"
"We're gonna free all those hookers they send into Jury's Inn to suck off concert promoters, there'll be no women sellin' their holes in my Republic."
"Yes Bottler!"
"We're gonna clean up this town, no more stabbings or stupid fucking killings."
"Yes Bottler!"
"We're gonna bring eternal peace to these poxy streets."
"Yes Bottler!"
"We're striking for freedom, do yez even know what that means?"
"Yes Bottler!"
He stared across the sitting room towards the microwave. Never thought he'd own one of those pingers. Draino would be out of the clink in two years and he didn't forget. No matter where he was, he'd find Bottler. Oh his Ma always said he'd be kicked to death by some loon if she didn't get hold of him first. Her arthritic claw reaching down the banisters, pulling him up onto the landing…stamping on his ankle bones when he was cowering on the ground before she'd start proper. It wouldn't be that hard to find a plonker to sell a pizza warmer to. Had to be worth at least a tenner up around Argos. He took the SIM card from the phone, flicked it into the fancy swing bin, grabbed the keys. Snatched the €100 Dunnes Stores voucher Aoibheann left for 'essentials', mozied to the door.
"Losers!" he screamed at the faces pinned to the wall. "I've never seen a bigger bunch of fucking losers!"
** This story was short-listed for the 2016 The Sunday Business Post / Penguin Ireland short story prize. It was also read at the Bogman's Canon Fiction Disco and Staccato Spoke Word night in Toner's pub, Baggot St.
Where I write, why I write
The totally wonderful and short story obsessed Paul McVeigh – whose blog on all manner of creative writing is the best I've ever read – invited me to join this blog tour, though I'm horribly late given the month that was. Paul is a short story writer, blogger of renown and curator of the London Short Story Festival at Waterstones in Piccadilly. I took part in a blog hop last year too, asked by another wonderful writer and having read what I wrote then, I haven't moved an inch. Sick family members aside (one dead too soon, one toying with the notion, the other hoping for renewed life beyond), it's very hard to etch mental space to write but it's still not a legitimate excuse either. Two months ago I pulled the old musty back bedroom apart, got the walls slopped in 'warm grey', carved out some book space (well, IKEA billy book cases), shoved in a cheapo writer's desk, a lovely new bed, lobbed Annie Sloan chalk paint on the woodworm wardrobes, bribed a mate for an old rocking chair and away I went. This is the year it happens, says I. God belss June and all who ride and confide in her.
1. What am I working on?
I'd love to say I'm working 'on a collection' of short stories, because that's oh so in vogue. Something's happening with Irish writers at the moment a bit like the property bubble. Nothing less than a collection and even better if it's a disaffected theme: gouging the retina of the young male psyche, drug-addicted Georgian basement flat living, a swanky flâneur destined to skim the city sewers in a terminal loop looking for mislaid love, stories from a fucked-up suburban street (twitching curtains, lawnmowers, Shepherd's pies), or the ageing psychopath's screaming regrets in rural Ireland, all rolled into a tar barrel with a dead woman decomposing in a purple wedding dress. Humour and intolerance get in the way. Once I tell myself to write on a certain theme, I can't be arsed with the mental rigidity of it. I hate being told what to do.
Last year I was stuck in rigamortis fiction, some stories published about my dead brother in literary magazines. It seemed a great way to process the shock. I thought that maybe this could be a theme if I worked on it backwards, from death to life, a bit like Jim Grace did in Being Dead (I love this book!) but off I ran on the Elipsos overnight train to Spain with my repackaged grief. I toyed with the idea of a 'Dublin city' book of stories but it seemed so vague and pointless, the kaleidoscope of packed place is no longer interesting or fun. Phases of life. A collection based on lovers. Places I've lived. People I've met and hated. My years as a journalist shouldn't be wasted. I could take snippets of real stories, steal the kernel and crumple into something new. A plotless story I wrote for Literary Orphans in the USA is based on a real snippet from a journalist pal: a junkie having his ass robbed [of drugs] in Talbot Street…it never made the papers. The editor thought it was too unsavoury, so I stole it instead. Another story remnant I sent off for a competition was based on a man who lived in a tree in Broadstone in Dublin 7 for the last few years, before he was dispatched, unmourned, to the madhouse. So, real stories, with an unreal twist, maybe. Where an ex journalist sees some unholy scrap of truth and does something with it.
After that's over, it's back to the Domestic Blitz novel that's more a 'movel' – part fiction, part memoir – a longer project that'll take me into winter and some of next year. There's already periphery interest in this from a potential agent in UK so I have to take my time (now that my time is back to being my own) and feel satisfied with what I write and how I write it. At the moment it's blather fragments written in two time frames and it's not exactly gelling. I know instinctively it will work if I get into it. It has universal appeal. My heart is in it. The story is worth telling.
I even know what I'll write after this is done, a story I ditched about one of the missing women, told backwards from two perspectives. I tried that on the MA at Queens' and got caught in a hamster run. Stories for when I'm distracted, novel as a means of protracted focus, a novella I promised a dead woman I'd write if it killed me on the situation that killed her. In a nutshell.
2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
Er, dunno. Social surrealism. I write like Joyce, says one (being all tea party nice), but I don't at all! A nice lady whose course I was on a while ago said I write like Eimear McBride; the new best thing since the electric waffle maker. Anne Enright, sort of (yeah right!). An old humper from the past (now a novelist himself in London) emailed to say I write like David Foster Wallace, though his marriage recently ended and he might be trying to get his cyber leg over. I think comparisons with other writers are silly, hard to live up to, useless. I value and look forward to difference in writers, not sameness. I don't know who I write like but I just know I get in a zone where sometimes I don't even fully understand the language incursion, or the voice that 'happens' or the tone or the story or the need to write a certain way. There's definitely a rage there and a feeling of 'I don't have a reputation to lose, so I'll write it like this anyhow'. I even know when I'm writing something that it won't be popular, will probably make a decent editor barf and a reader unfriend me on Facebook, with any luck. I also feel it could be different because part of me never wants to write for publication, so I don't target it that way. The freedom of an affair! What I do know is there's a lot of good people giving me the thumbs up at the moment and it feels very odd and reassuring.
3. Why do I write what I do?
I've no idea. Am I supposed to say it's cos I'm lonely? I'm not. Writing is hard. But there really is nothing else.
4. How does my writing process work?
Snippets of mind dust. A journo interview I did a decade ago still haunts me. A woman being told in the early days of training to ignore a phone box in O'Connell Street where boys were being brought to and abused. The magazine in question didn't want the feature in the end, as it seemed a bit libellous and kooky, but I still have that info and want to write it as a fictional story. Another who sought out a journalist to expose a cult who allegedly forced her to have tantric sex and when her husband found out, he dumped her. If the group was exposed then the husband would leave her best friend he ran off with and take her back (I'm not even kidding!) The radical feminist with the tea cosy on her head who's spent a lifetime already living off men but fails to see the structural flaw in her politics. The man who chopped off people's fingers in the Troubles and kept them as souvenirs. A swinger who travels the length and breadth of Ireland shagging abandoned wives but cries his lamps out because his own wife won't dish up the turkey. A child who told her teacher that mummy 'makes fire' on her legs. An alcoholic taxi woman raped as a child by a farmer who used butter so he wouldn't hurt her too much. Stories we tell each other in semi-occasional moments of privacy or hilarity: 'I can't print this but wait 'til I tell ye…'. Stories full of holes and for the birds. Start with a sentence that makes you sick or scud. I don't want to write about good or perfect people. I don't see the point. At the moment I'm writing Jesus of Wexford for a competition in July. I haven't sent anything off all year so it's a good self-recruitment exercise. He lives in a wheelie bin and his bible is a pizza box.
At some point I always manage to disturb myself and leave whatever I'm trying to write aside…I may dump a work in progress for good or come back to it. I don't really know why I write, but as I said in a recent Irish Times article:
This is about spilling your guts in a dignified way, but don't be frightened if a speckle of madness rears its head, too. Let it bring you where it will; don't look back. Be excited. This compulsion is a courtesy, not a curse. Don't compare your writing to others'. Instead get totally obsessed with what you want to write and start chewing the cud of the storyline or idea every day. Feel the words, develop a voice, put manners on your demons, write regularly.
I've nominated three writers I love to answer these same questions how they see fit… look out for their blog posts! Two are in a newly-formed writer's group (with me!) and all are friends! Oh and one I roamed the streets of Dublin with at age 13/14 during the feral mod years. They're all stupidly talented, dedicated, quirky and wonderful. Enjoy.
Alan McMonagle has published two collections of short stories, Liar Liar and Psychotic Episodes. Earlier this year his radio play Oscar Night was produced and broadcast as part of RTE's Drama on One season. It's about two sweet old ladies who go to the bad when their annual ritual is interrupted by an escaped felon.
Doodle Kennelly was born in Dublin and spent her early years there. As a teenager, she moved to the United States, to Massachusetts, where she completed her secondary education. Later she returned to Ireland and attended the Gaiety School of Acting. In addition to her regular newspaper column, she has published autobiographical essays relating to the subject of female identity and body image. She has also appeared on national television. Doodle is the proud mother of three daughters; Meg, Hannah and Grace Murphy.
Lisa Harding completed an MPhil in creative writing at Trinity College Dublin in September 2013. Her short story Counting Down was a winner in the inaugural Doolin writer's prize 2013. This summer she has been short-listed for Doolin, Cuirt, Listowel and the Bath short story awards. A story Call Me Moo is to be published in the autumn issue of The Dublin Review. Playwriting credits include Starving at Theatre503, And All Because at Battersea Arts Centre (as part of an emerging writers festival: Connect Four) and Playground at the Project Theatre Dublin. She is currently working on a new play Pedigree for which she was awarded an Arts Council bursary and a Peggy Ramsay award. As an actress she has appeared at the Gate, the Abbey, the Lyric and on RTE, among others. Her collection of sixteen short stories Crave is a work in progress, alongside an embryonic novel with the working title: Transaction.
Dubstopia is a long short story where nothing and everything happens junkie Gonzo as he wanders around Dublin – and his head – on a dodgy errand. It's deliberately ugly & experimental and has plenty of swear words, bad grammar and other unsavoury linguistic bits flung in. It was written on a short story course at the Irish Writers' Centre a few years ago now and was published recently [in April 2014] in US journal Literary Orphans, ISSUE 12: Swift (Ireland & the Irish). The journal also features work from:
–Background Art & Illustration for this story is by Zak Milofsky
–Photo Art of building by Sarah Hardy
Scrambled egg beside a steaming gee-pad Carol left on the mattress. Lidl brownie with ants. Two packs of Amber Leaf. Wet jeans. Sun tearing in the window through an A-Line skirt she stole from yellow teeth bag-face in Oxfam. Book of Yeat's poetry open on a fumble in a greasy till and add a halfpence to the pence. Leather Joe's address book with dead dealers whacked by the Nike gang in Finglas. A picture of his granny curled on a couch holding a bunch of Chrysanthemums; monster Holy Mary in a Punto blue dress peering down her seersucker top. Carol's shoe stuck in an antique trumpet. His passport. Loose turf. Sunglasses mounted on a Stanley knife.
It was too late in the morning to leave The Old Bank: PinStripe would be downstairs showing clients around giving it the high-dough this and that: sash windows, safe room intact, De Valera around the corner, locked horses on the towpath, ladies with hats, worth a packet when the stock market convulses back, priceless mirrors, legend says there's a ghost, sixteen rooms; would make a cracking hostel, Real McCoy Victorian chimneys. Gonzo decided to hang back a while and have a wank.
He wanted to bang the nurse in The Mater who took bloods. He wanted to bang her cos she talked down to him. He wanted to bang her cos of the dirty way she leant over and smacked the vending machine, pillow tits blobbing all over the gaff and well she knew it and well the old codgers with the fucked hearts knew it and well the pleated receptionist with the tall latte knew it and well the trolley-pushing hunchback in plastic green knew it and well he knew it: they'd jelly when he gave it to her goodo. She'd have to shut the fuck up saying shit about Hep-C, muscling, skin-popping, if Carol took mushrooms when breastfeeding the day the baby died. He wanted to bang her for saying things he didn't understand – subcutaneous – posh words for abdominal bloating and liver damage, infertility and testicle shrinkage. He wanted to bang her.
She'd be down at the Old Mill on the canal sucking off Leather Joe for a bag. Willy would be there too with the scab-ho wrestling over a lukewarm tin of Stonehouse, suckin' her face off. Beamer the old tramp with the no veins. Hasslebat, his ginger eyebrows lighting up hot worms in a snow of forehead. Smell of piss hacking the sun-up. Widearse Wendy with her tales of Berlin, before Guzz floated down the river with a bag of leaves in his mouth. Guzz who survived winters in Leeds in the eighties sleeping under truck stop Lorries, draining antifreeze through slices of white bread under the engine holes. Phib, their Jack Russell in a rusty pram lickin' stolen Satsumas. They'd be swaying by now, talking bollox, tapping passers-by. 'Scuzzz me scuzzzz me scuwizzzzmeee. Do you want me to be like you? Is that it, do you want me to be like fuukin' you?'
He didn't mind what Carol did as long as no-one came in her. She'd be back with the gear in the afternoon, giving it the full candy: 'Darlin baby I fuckin' lurv you, d'ye know dat? I'd fuckin' keel over fur yew.' They'd lie on the wet mattress and roll into the Mournes biting sweat gashes off rivers, green slime, bits of broken helicopters, church bells in ears, cold tinny blue and God's feet, big as cheese urns, landing unceremoniously in a crumpled scared heap, pulling at Carol's scraggly hair to see was it a bastard lion's head, vinegar swish-crash, fluff cellophane greed stirrup blood mount. Sometimes the bank would turn into a spinning barrel turning shrill pork belly with them naked rolling and banging into the ridges with running whiskey gag, the wood burner he nicked farting out leftover specks of fire on cling-film skin, until they couldn't breathe alone or together and then Carol would hear the ghost of the bank inside the old windows, telling her to pick up the horse shit and bring it to the man in the Botanic Gardens for the flowerbeds.
"D'ye hear hiyim?" she'd say.
"He's in heeyore, talk'n aggen."
"Curse he is, shurrrup an' he'll go 'way, fuuksaike!"
She'd hear the dead baby too, asking for his doo doo. 'Gimme boy doo doo, doo doo mine!', and he'd have to pretend to hand the absent baby something, anything that might look like adoo doo and then he'd slap it into her to get her to stop seeing the baby and she'd ask for another one – tits well gone since they'd started using again – nipples were teacher's eyes squintin' at the crap way he pronounced Irish words. Sometimes he'd bash them, but she never seemed to give out about that.
"Gimme a baybeee, I want mi babee back".
He stopped bursting into her cos all three kids were reefed away. No way would he be doin' that again. So he'd pull out and squirt on the wood floor, and she'd slip on it going to the jacks and call him a 'prick', falling asleep until the others came later. He'd collect them on the fire escape, one by one, no way hosay during de day in case PinStripe got to know about the squat. Couldn't use the burner until late at night cos of the smoke snakin' and they weren't able to cook in it just on a camp hob so over and over again went without food for days sambo'd into a lot of other days. Lucky to have de place. Most had to sleep in the bandstand on the canal or in de laneway behind Doyle's Pub that burnt down, sausaged in giveaway blankets with Leather Joe screamin' inside night terrors of ginger arse rape Da until the sun flew up over the broken roof tiles and car beeps gnashed at them, pong of Spar hash browns, burnt dry, useless as donkey pelt.
By three o'clock the pains were rippin' and no sign of her, so he lashed down the ladder with its shitbag of miry snails, out onto the North Circular Road. Chink Man was outside his shop with its windmill of sweeping brushes, Jesus clocks and Sudoku toilet roll. 'You no come in here!' he shouted. Carol dipped him too many times, taking a slash-swipe at his Mrs another time when she was packing the window with animal motion sensors. 'Mine's a beef satay bud!' Gonzo hissed back, sticking his middle finger up in the air. 'You complete b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' Chink Man roared. Only once did Gonzo wonder why he hated him so much for taking a job he'd never want.
Quick glance down Goldsmith Street and onto more bump of side road. Every step up step down hurt like fuck. Fatsos by the cattle-cart stomping into Curves gym to the lyrics of I Will Survive. He sang along to stop the pain from slit-sucking out his intestines. And now you're back from out der space…I jus walked in to find ye 'ere with dat sad look on yer face. 'C'mon now ladies, knees up and up and up again, that's it, keep going, let me see those knees!' The Russian tattoo shop and Made By Mary with its calf hole carvery, Brenner in De Joy on the left, IRA prick, dying for Mother Ireland in a 15 X 20 exercise yard, the hospital with its wheelchair morgue; militia of swollen ankles, around by the battered yellow flower shop and on and on, holding onto his guts like a stolen Christmas present. Sweats horsin' down under denim, face the dye of fresh snot. Passed the launderette where his Ma used to wash the boy's clothes on a Saturday before packet potato soup with dinosaur lumps. 'Don't sit on the machines Patrick, what did I tell you Patrick, are you listening to me Patrick?' When he was small enough to be growing that snorkeler that would give him 'Gonzo' for all his days. He'd probably never see her again. She certainly didn't want to see him again. Most days he'd clear forgot what she looked like.
Outside Reproductive Choices on Berkeley Street: he could see a scrape-load of them, redder than Mars moons, holding up placards for their right to life like taxi drivers at Dublin airport on the pick-up. He read in The Sun that Obama got rid of aborted baby cell flavours in fizzy drinks, the ones that make you belch. Bowed de corner onto North Frederick Street bucklin' to puke; stream of moss green gooey liquor pouring into slick brick. "Look at de state of 'im!" he heard a voice bellow from a basement flat. Gonzo wiped de puke with the corner of his jacket, using the other sleeve for his eyes. The worst was the misery of desperation. Digging up dead people for pocket watches, the scrap metal run, bashing old people in old houses for a twenty euro bag. He could hear more voices. More laughter. More bawl. Howling from inside the ancient sewers under Dublin filled with fibre-optic cables, calp, acorn turds, fermented Vikings, diagonals of dead birds flying through Centuries of tidal pools to get here to nowhere. 'Down here ye wankorrrr! Gonzo, 'ere!'
At Bustlers' Gym, the ugly bake of Dessie Kearney peekin' up, a cortege of dagged ewes geekin' out from the slip of lace curtain with meringue holes for suckin' in the day. 'Have you got any gear?' Gonzo asked. 'I'm in de bads'. Dessie beckoned him down the spinal. In the sitting room on the table, he could see the spoon, tang of cotton fever. Plug-in neon wolf picture on the wall to send heads carroty spinners. Two cans of UHT cream on de mantle. Skinner in a Sideline jacket handed him a leprechaun head of Nescafé. They could sort him out, Dessie said. He could sort them out too, with a favour. Gonzo wasn't known, or wasn't that known, or cared about. Bob's your uncle. Fannywollop's your aunt.
Dessie held him down like a barber might do with a six year old boy. 'Scank the Russians are sellin' is drivin' the cops plinky plonky,' he explained. 'Low grade cack that makes punters scrabble around dem streets like hogs. Dublin City Council having a right old mickey fit with collapsing junkies everywhere and those Triad muppets fucking about chopping gigot chops off wackos owing as little as a tenner. Kip so it is. It's not how we ever did things. Even dem grannies are gettin' in on it selling horse tablets down the Boardwalk till new stashes arrive. Bitches used to be happy shifting cauliflowers & pears. All of it needs sorting or we're toast'.
Skinner piped up: 'Going for a song as well, so it is. And they're lobbing chemical splatter into the gear Gonzo. No competition. More addictive than Big Whippet or Mullingar Mud'.
The drug scene in Dublin had got boiled egg bad. Four friends in as many months had dropped dead from bad gear. He looked at Dessie who was eyeing two lesbos on the couch. One of them, skinny as rashers, was pretending to grate her tongue. 'Yewer fuukin' gas', she said to her mate, bending over to kiss her full on the gnashers. Both wore matching Dolphin necklaces.
'There's small kids farting about on bicycles picking iPods like apples off O'Connell Street,' Skinner told him. 'Muggings are up a thousand per cent, robbed cars selling for under €500, all cos of this new shit that's on the streets. Havoc. Operation Stilts Gardaí are calling it. Clamping down like steel clips on a dirt-bird's nipples'.
Gonzo hated Dessie even in school when he lobbed custard out the window at passing priests and pensioners, chasing after seagulls on de Buckfast zig-zag, giving his 15 yr-old girlfriend a black eye for buying de wrong smokes. Skinner was worse, he could tell. Grade-A psycho who'd snap yer fingers off quicker than a fat kid at de zoo smashes a Kit Kat. Now they were turkeychesting with Russians dealers, taking on the entire muscle-for-hire empire. Russian gangsters in silver jackets trafficking teenagers by day, raping dogs of an evening. Ghetto of mayhem and fear papers were calling it. Funnel-dump from ringworm roads right up to Talbot Street, Gardiner Street and down the flank of docks to Fairview, casting into surf and howling out of rust-caked eyes into waves, sand shifting beneath drug boats, narrow little sea gods sucking at gravel and dancing a slithery leap. Low-cost booze and spat-back-up methadone from lippy whores in slippery capsules was all you could see in the city centre before one o' clock in the day. By early afternoon the needle peddlers creaked into the gush of lanes behind Moore Street, Abbey Street and beyond, sliding to a stop the same way drops of water do on Carol's shampooed hair. Cops didn't give a gypsies' as long as people like him hurried de fuck up and died. Junkies only made news when they snuffed out at tourist sites or were found lynching from concrete tongues high up between those buildings on Dame Street.
He didn't take much convincing. Skin's hands spread his furry cheeks apart to do the business. Arse was a humongous burger, the ones he used to get in Wendy's in O'Connell Street when it first opened in 1987: spongy warm baps, melted Easi-singles, hot pickle sauce. Slip slop, slip slop, up with de cacks. Three bags of scank in his butcher's bin, street value: €90,000. He'd drop de sludge and be back by three ticks, home to Carol for around five.
The city tipped down in a duck beak towards the Garden of Remembrance, rain scattering Swarovski beads on the path as he plonked along. He thought of Carol's fresh face at 18. Cement angels leaned chin forward from Georgian chimneys. Dogs of light barked down. 'I'm out of me bleedin' nugget!' he said, out loud. Pains fostered out elsewhere, he felt boundless, happy. Met her roight here with a gang of inner-city boys from de flats around Dominic Street, drinking cans and dancing to U2 songs on a ghetto-blaster sometime in the middle of 1994. She'd weight on her then, chubby sweet smile, horse-tail of hair whooshing from end to end in de sunbeams. They kissed for an hour without stopping: wet balmy tongue slosh he'd never done with any other burd. Sometimes he still felt guilty, but Leather Joe said, 'There's no stopping some, and ye never forced her to take it.' The counsellor from NewPaths also explained that 'damaged people have a knack of stumbling on one another no matter what, in the way that water always seems to meet its own level.' It made sense that first time they tried to get off it together. Both their dads were alcos and bashed them. Both their Ma's couldn't see anything wrong with their Da's and bashed them. Few weeks later, they fumbled and gorged and slopped into one another under the flat-leaf bushes in the Gardens. 'What ye doin' to me boy, wot ye bleedin' doin' to me!?' Lads circling de railings, clutching chimps, uuumphin' them on. 'Slapper! Do her one!' Afterwards they said Gonzo was a right grunter, like those fuckin' mating seals on RTÉ. 'It's you and me babe, no-one else babe, you'll do me babe.'
At the edge O'Connell Street where pigeons shat on the cement noggin of Charles Stewart Parnell, a crowd of mallets warbled about pay cuts. Aulone clutching a salad cutter was ranting blue horror about pension rights. 'Sixty four billion to those feckers in the banks so they can fix their own balance sheets!' Grey-haired Sinn Féin geezer smellin' of haddock was giving it welly about Éire needing a game changer. Group of girls, no more than five or six with banners: It's My Ireland Too. Normally he'd stick around for de dip, but Dessie warned him not to feck about, get it done & dusted 'pronto'. Skinner held onto his social welfare card and Carol's dead Ma's gold locket she asked Gonzo to keep safe for always. Cash and more gear when the job was done.
Gonzo wolfed sideways shrieking his childhood battle cry: 'Me head! Me head!' He spottedHot Wok on North Earl Street, stomach doing a Hare Krishna pink salmon drum. Thai waitress with ladyboy lips looked like a hot slapper off the internet with a rake of sausages slithered in so her shaggy wangle was a filtering system inside an astronaut's suit. He sat at the window starin' out at so many formless faces, then back down at strips of steaming courgette. 'Tolkuchka' was the word Dessie used to describe the Russian drug cartel that had taken over. All those words ended in a choke. Carol had done a few down the canal when they were clear out of dough…said they were rough as horseshoe crabs, cocks reeking of sauerkraut.
'Every bit of 'em smells like a belch,' she said. 'Love slappin' their wimmin' as well'.
Pumped up on steroids, egg hatch maggot breeders, dripping sex trade, artificial money, begging scams. He could even see those Soviet-bloc prozzies too, a whole PVC red army of them soggy-spread over the back seat of metallic Audis', slurping on mafia peckers. Head nut was like Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects except taller again, well able to giraffe over the walls of Mountjoy Prison, boiled eggs in his gob crammed full of heroin, dropping straight into famished jaws. Baba Yaga they called him, because of his man boobs. Lived in a steel hut at the edge of Rooster fields in North County Dublin. A gaff that stood on electronic chicken legs, garden fence emblazoned with teeth he'd personally knocked from debtor's heads.
When the crowd in Foley Street got this new gear that Dessie and Skinner had messed with out onto the streets, napalm vomit and bedlam would rain down on Dublin town. Hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land, both man and beast. 'Nuclear button is up me crack,' Gonzo murmered. He had a looming vision of advancing Russians from every stone wall and crevice in Ireland, marching into Dublin, fat knuckles fisting indigo sky. There'd be black smoke meandering their necks, hiding bricks in plastic bags, Glocks in socks, AKs, MAC-10s with their spray and pray facility, lumpy grenades, nail bombs, acid pellets, even animal traps to pull down the enemy at window displays outside Cleary's. Вы ирландского народа умрут самой ужасной смерти! Где твой Бог сейчас!
He spotted Widearse Wendy out de window crouching down at the door of Dunnes, knickers on display, damp with piss maps of the Philippines. She was swinging a bottle of Old Cellar at passing shoppers scouting cut-price gizmos from the pop-up shops. 'Gonzo, ah me old bud, GONNNNNZO!' she spattered.
'Carol was reefin' for ye,' she said. 'Some onion head lookin' for you, says ye owe him a wormload of Euros'.
She was sitting with a Roma pleb, trombone full of bronze; old feet smashed up for begging bone pickle. He was only ten minutes now from de clop. 'I owe no-one nutin',' he said, trying to figure out who yer man might be. 'Is Carol alright?' he asked. 'Hope she's not giving dem uns much grief?' She could get snarky sometimes when juiced up to de girders. 'Ah she was givin' Phib a bit of a kickin' cos he was in and out of the water,' Widearse said. 'Leather Joe says yez should get rid of the smelly little fucker, more mischief than worth. But I says 'no way' sure it wouldn't be nutin' round 'ere without him, mad little yoke. Ah Gonzo ye shoulda seen him, in and out of dat water, de little ears on him, smellin' of knacker nappies so he was. Have ye any odds for uz?'
Gonzo told her discretely he'd no spondoolies but he'd soon be in de loadser if a certain thing worked out later on. They'd have 'em around the squat in de morrow, beer and boiled cocktail sausages, Bord na Móna goat turds in de burner, enough gear so they could all stay stub for a few days, sopping in boogie. He leaned over slowly, down to her waxy ear crack where he murmured de score as a morning prayer O Lord open our lips told her what was inside him in anyways in the darkness of this age that is passing away. If she said ought to any fucker dem Russians would make sure he was floating beetroot body parts in a stinkin' pot of Zharkoye in some nameless side-door soup kitchen down the quays.
'You always end up on your feet while the rest of us are on our bleedin' heads,' Widearse Wendy laughed, handing Gonzo de Old Cellar. Then she bowed over and whispered in Trombone's ear. 'Don't be tellin' that cunt anything of a consequence!' Gonzo snapped, sorta raging now she'd trust a metal nicker with anything he prized on dem der Russians. 'Don't be a mean bollox! Ferka's me good pal an' he doesn't have an easy go of it 'ere'. He looked at Ferka who was by now grinding his teeth, some of 'em small wallets of gold. Gonzo wondered if he picked this patch deliberately cos it looked out onto the towering stainless steel spire stuck in the Vena cava of O'Connell Street. 'Him and his crew are probably going to melt dat fuckin' thing down and live off de pickings for the next forty years and you won't see him for angel dust!' Gonzo told her, taking another glug. Metal was big business for his lot and they seemed to be spreading across Europe melting whole cities and trapping as much heat as possible. 'Youza faggot fucker!' Ferka roared, punching him in the crotch with his trombone. 'I'll bash de fucking granny outta ye with dat poxy yoke!' Gonzo said, lunging at Ferka, crushing Widearse Wendy in the push forward. She started roaring and banging at the window: 'Stop, will yez fuckin' stop dis!'
Two security guards ran out of the shop to see what was going on. Big black blokes in fiend blue, large dangly batons, torches on their belts, fortified faces, boulder braces mineral ore. 'If it isn't the all-important rent-a-cops!' Gonzo quipped, still gripping Ferka's greasy swab of hair. 'Dis fucker needs to know his place, but it's nothing to do with youse, no trouble here.' Widearse was beside herself, leaping about like Marlin. 'He's not bashin' my mate's head in, he's not!' she told the taller security brawn, smashing Ferka from Gonzo's grip. 'They're both having a go for no bleedin' reason,' she wailed, deep now in her tiny grief of fly speck and goose egg, big fat smelly daddy raging up into life to bang her head off the rusty washing machine one more time in the small Cabra garden. Rolling around she was – from Marlin of the Seas off Cotez to a cuntarse cement mixer in an industrial sandpit on the outskirts of a Cappagh horse camp – too drunk to see what was really going on.
'Get out of this doorway now! Our customers do not appreciate this!' Ruby eyes looked like he'd seen his fair share of gang rape and coercive migration. He was pointing his liverwurst finger up the road where the curtains flailed in the wind outside Guineys'. 'Fuck off back to Bangurawopa or wherever it is that youse eat one another, fukksake,' Gonzo said, trying once more to kick one over at Ferka's head. Ferka had fear soldered onto his face: wankstain nomad from North India following the Bisto fart of Alexander the Great to fertile lands where they settled on roundabouts melting metal and washing scarves. 'It's in his trousers!' Ferka began to roar, 'He is up to no good that bastard!'
Wendy bundled up the street, her chondrite meteorite arse blocking out the sun. Ferka too, gone in search of iron seraphs. Arms grabbed Gonzo from behind, smashing him forward, bursting his face open on the pleated gravel below. Arms, maybe even more arms (the city seemed so full of them) reefing his jeans down. 'Fuck's sake, stop it, I ain't done nothing!' But still the voyeurs fanned in, mud-puddling butterflies to blood. Three, maybe four or more fingers…drilling turnin' twisting into his insides deep inside his trousers. Never crazed up pain like it. All the fists he ever knew in the big clench of years: priests, uncles, mad burds, the fat cat who owned the billboard company and beat the bollox out of him in front of faces outside Mass, nothin' was worse than the arms smashin' him up in this dirt-bucket of Dublin day. Blood, a lot of blood, that'd grow darker with the afternoon, if he ever managed to get out of it.
'Shut it or ye'll get it in the head,' one of the arms said.
An aulone in brown bandaged legs shouted, 'Bowsies, feckin' bowsies!'
There was no way he could explain this to Dessie and his Basement Bandits. Already he could see Carol's head mashed open; these cunts didn't mess about. Arms conked like a discarded doll in the playground up de flats, broken bottle rammed right up there for good measure. He was flung and rolled, rammed and kicked down the street into a side lane, where the bashing went on for barbed eternity.
'I'm fucked, I'm fucked!' Gonzo roared as he saw two teenage girls pointing, laughing.
Dilly no douse no dee, dilly no douse no douse no douse dilly no douse no deeeeeee.
'Yez 'av no idea, I'm a gonner!'
Did he tell Dessie & Skinner where the squat over the bank was? Was he boastin' about the gaff before they iglooed his arse? Carol would be back by now, pissing the mattress, eating a batter burger, waiting on Gonzo to come back with new gear. 'Yer nothin' but fuckin' trouble,' she'd say, 'useless prick like ye, and ye gave dem yer card?'
Ring stinger, so much so, he could barely toddle up Church Street. Now he knew how she felt the first time he gave it to her in the arse. He had to use HB ice-cream to cool her down after. A seagull played the bodhrán gliding up the street squawking about ham. Nothin' would ever be the same. These were serious heads. Dangerous heads. Mavericks. Think nothing of using shooters. Maybe they'd be OK just hidin' out in the bank for a while. Rest of Ireland was doing the same. Stay gizmo'd until he heard of them being popped. All of 'em uns ended up popped. Time & time again, saw it rolling. He wasn't going back inside either, leaving her to her own devices.
The city tipped down in a duck beak towards the Garden of Remembrance, rain scattering Swarovski beads on the path as he plonked along. He thought of Carol's fresh face at 18. Cement angels leaned chin forward from Georgian chimneys. Dogs of light barked down. He didn't know if he was here already an hour ago. He didn't know where he'd end up or how he'd come down and if he was really here or half here an hour or more ago. 'I'm out of me bleedin' nugget!' he said. They'd have to lay still when he got back home, until a different kind of light shined. 'Come out of charity, come dance with me in Ireland,' that cunt Yeats said in the book under the mattress, but he didn't know jack shit about the skank or de Russians or fiddlers like Carol, all thumbs and kettledrums, sucking off ghosts at the window in The Old Bank on Doyle's Corner.
I will be reading more fiction in Cavan town on May 6th:
The Lotus Eaters (Deliverance)
Pain in me love spuds. On Moore Street the aulwuns are wailin' bananas four for €1.50! while Madikane is tryin's to drag me ta' Wire Corner where Ruskies in blacked up four by fours drop off bags a'brown under the gawk of a goon with binos above in the unwashed windows of the apartments over Tesco. Slug killer she said to nab to mop up fat, black slime-balls trailing across the carpet. There's an iPhone booth stuffed with hookers' ad-cabs offerin' smartin' arse cheeks for bad-boy trainin' and a fat pleb sweepin' up nose gravy.
Not even the dill pickler Poles providin' brassers for horny and abandoned nugs inside Jury's Inn, or the Somali crack-hustlers <"Meth €20 a rock!> stop off at this spot. Best ta' get out of dis hole Madikane I tells her and keep yer whims about marryin' a gangy for a baby, bling alive as hive any which way you want it.
Two hefty yanks in tartan shorts and puke green & yellow polo shirts butt in. "Excuse me sir, where's the spire, the O'Connell Street spire?" squashed nose asks. Scuzze me, scuzze me, are ya' blind or wha? roars Midikane with her anti-Gathering gobbin' and her pointing backwards. Doin' me bit for da country I jump in: Ya see that giant needle stickin' straight up God's jacksey, right there..that's it! Oh my, yankee doodle says. Oh my.
Before Madikane has de tramp's claw out for da price of a cup a tay me head jerks and turns to a horsebox of knocked up wimmin outside da Rotunda; balloon-bellied in frog pyjamas puffin' away while scangie-gangies in Adidas play rocks, scissors, paper guns with each other. Air bullets in the atmos. Gulls plop their spunky payloads on the pavement, King Leers smirk from taxis and bus stops, kids squashing their kidneys in railings, drills and beeps and howling, cranking umbrellas open on the dozen.
There's no slugs I says to her dat morning. Eyes on me like it's ten seconds to go on the X-Factor final. Hoppy hoppy. Curse ders bleedin'slugs I ain't no thick mo-fo she says. I says it's the garden. You're not used to having a garden and the shed going in is after freakin' ye right out. I can ask the landlord to get rid if you'll only calm down a minute. It's not the fucking shed I'm not mad she says I'm skiing on the fucking things. Ders something wrong with you not clocking dem! Slugs on her legs. In bed. On saucers. Inside the hotpress. They're even in the high gloss kitchen she says. Wot? Your head is blowin' since ditching de skank with my noggin' taking a right rumble on top, not easy doing it like this, I says, maybe we were better off back then in de squat with half-o-nothing. It's not my fault you're blind as a crow, she says. I never knew crows were blind, but I'll take your word for it I says. Off I go.
There's a church in Parnell owned by the prods. Black calp, dark in rain, murky baked banana cake. Backwards after midnight under full moon, devil's yours. Not the kind of gizmo for a priest with a beard and guitar singing Stairway to Heaven to make the likes of me feel all furry. I don't bash grannies no more, dat's gone. Clean as a spleen five hundred and thirty three days, going backwards, learning about computers and plants, painting walls and budgeting. I go there to pray, ye can laugh yer nebs off but it's been happening sure as shit, and him talking back sayin' he knows I'm taking some gamble, appreciates what I'm going through 'n all, but I gorra shun the bad road ahead, narrow, strewn with thorns; dem people who walk along it, spine tears and all kinds of suffering befalling, big cunting wheelie-bin of vile words, curses and blasphemies, each eye ball looking on to another of the eyeballs, twice the size of earth, gummy as honey, seeing on to nowhere. You don't want to be doing that son. No way hozzay, I says, no way Mr Righteous, Top Man, you know more than most, took the bullet for us. Well keep coming back here to pray then he says.
It's hot as snot in here. She's never in the mood and me forever on the soft. So I took the Moore Street card into the church, Deirdre the Dominatrix. Wonderful Corporal Punishment. Tie & Tease. Guaranteed Happy Ending. Sitting on red sofa red tartan slippers red PVC red sky. Has Peter been a naughtie boy? Well, yeah, I suppose. Suppose is not enough she says. Suppose is for morons. Has Peter been a naughtie boy? Yeah, a dreadful boy, totally banging I says. And then him hanging there kinda implying I'd take the lad out and sorta sayin' I'd be cottoned onto, with the caretaker coming in, his big lumpy head, asking what I was doing. Me putting the lad in an envelope on my lap, one of those church offering envelopes with a flower stuck on it. Well give it 'ere then he'd say, me scarpering, wood and musk laughing, candles burning, God's pantyhose worn by a thousand shitarse clerics, all them fuckers gooing. He's only gone and wrecked me buzz, and there was me hiding from da' slugs in me head by playing fingermouse down the crotch, thinkin' of Deirdre-the-Dom swaggerin around the pulpit, all proddy-proud and in full control. The lad's no longer at half mast, flyin' the flag now, upright and uprooted, on the road back to Phibsborough.
I get back and she says, dead casual, have ye got the bleedin' slug killer? I left it in the church I says. You're a stupid bollox she says. I know, I says, but I'm learning.
Strange times; sharp sickle peaks
Three months since my brother died, laid out in his naff crocs & Hawaiian shirt, coffin stuffed with kid's presents in a flat-pack funeral shed whiffing of piss, ulcers, Airwick and necrotic tissue. Since then there's been a number of misadventures: his mate was found dead in the Orwell river a month later, an early morning gynae plunge from a doctor in Cathal Brugha Street after bleeding for a month (stress, it turns out), low-blood pressure blackout in the Botanics, an easily forgotten triptych, frenzied attack from a phlegminist with duck eyes, drink binges with a purple cauliflower and an unpleasant encounter with an S&M coked-up oily intellectual I mistook for a friend. All of it: a dance with neutrons and protons. The kind of weird shit ghosts probably do with each other. Grief is not what I imagined it would be. Some mornings I wake up kicking like a frog.
Days when I cannot slink out of bed at all. Ceiling seals me in and I crave the very thing that's set to ruin me. Lanky spiders dangle as doom so often does, perilously, timidly, lowering and hiring like arcade claws.
I didn't see my brother for months on end as he lived in the UK but I always went over for New Year, booking a flight around now. This year it'll be early-February for a fund-raiser to pay for his headstone. Everything and everyone in the ever meantime is getting on my tits. Junkies sucking jam at the ATM, flat cap aulfellas snailing on crutches smelling of tobacco and cabbage, gym bunnies, crusties who tie terriers to the trolley train outside Tesco, colleagues talking incessantly, cultural crusaders who turn up to events blah-blahing for litre dollops of free wine, nosy neighbour frog-sprawling the compost bin to scavenge for news, backpedal/backtrack/capsize, geriatrics sky-diving into scones in the cafe. Isn't it well for them, long life!? Remembering how shit and old and thin and tumoured my bro looked, dead in his 40s, neat little blood clot at the end of his nose where they'd drained him. "Madam, would you like a glass of water before you go in?". Will I ever forget that day, limping into the cheap shit-arse industry job-lot of death, intestinal stench, tiny lobby where the receptionist filed her nails, fan buzzing on the desk, being led through a door to a pencil-case line of collapsible booths – one open at a time – other refrigerated bodies waiting for family members to park-up. Back home in Ireland, the witch in the off-licence around the corner counting the bottles of wine & winking, headless woman struggling to goo out her own body, forgetting she no longer has eyes.
I walk out past the squiggle of purposeless shops and homeless men who nudge their heads up like broken birds from splintered eggs in the basement of the church, and on to the Tolka Bridge where an orange city fox once followed me in the first draft of morning, calling me a slut.
My head has been [and is] a tin of mushy peas. As of this week I've told friends to piss off till mid-2013 and have dived back into the novel. It's about junkies squatting above an abandoned bank in D.7 who get mixed up with the Russian mafia. There's a rake of Band-Aid fleeting characters; Beamer the old tramp with no veins. Hasslebat, his ginger eyebrows lighting up hot worms in a snow of forehead. Widearse Wendy: 'Scuzzz me scuzzzz me scuwizzzzmeee. Do you want me to be like you? Is that it, do you want me to be like fuukin' you?' There's end-of-rope junkies all over the city and everyone's ignoring it in literature. Writers are still concentrating on haybarns, finches, the country-girl's lightening exit to London, angry farmers and the phasing out of EU quotas, lonely men sitting on Calor Gas barrels in winter! That's the global impression of Ireland in books. There are amazing Irish writers like Kevin Barry who are beautifully pissing about with form, with language, Mike McCormack's dazzlingly strange short stories, Mary Costello's quiet collection of small agonies. Few are writing about Shit City with the exception of maybe naff detective novels. I grew up in the city so I feel compelled to write about it. I was a Mod at 14, roaming the streets when the first heroin users were struck down with AIDS, that sliver of time when girls were still sent to laundries but the morning after pill was just available if you knew where to go. This novel is about Gonzo & Carol and their Jack Russell, Phib, a story of second-generation drug use, turgid love, the grisly struggle to survive. It's grim, hairy, stupid, and it'll be told from three different points of view. I've no idea if it'll work but am determined as hell to give it a good go. Here's a [wee taster!] on how they got together, part of the back story late in Chapter One:
The city tipped down in a duck beak towards the Garden of Remembrance, rain scattering Swarovski beads on the path as he plonked along. He thought of Carol's fresh face at 18. Cement angels leaned chin forward from Georgian chimneys. Dogs of light barked down. 'I'm out of me bleedin' nugget!' he said, out loud, pissing himself. Pains fostered out elsewhere, he felt boundless, happy. Met her roight here with a gang of inner-city boys from de flats around Dominic Street, drinking cans and dancing to U2 songs on a ghetto-blaster sometime in the middle of 1994. She'd weight on her then, chubby sweet smile, horse-tail of hair whooshing from end to end in de sunbeams. They kissed for an hour without stopping: wet balmy tongue slosh he'd never done with any other bird. Sometimes he still felt guilty, but Leather Joe said, 'There's no stopping some, and ye never forced her to take it.' The counsellor from NewPaths also explained that 'damaged people have a knack of stumbling on one another no matter what, in the way that water always seems to meet its own level.' It made sense that first time they tried to get off it together. Both their dads were alcos and bashed them. Both their Ma's couldn't see anything wrong with their Da's, and bashed them. Few weeks later, they fumbled and gorged and slopped into one another under the flat-leaf bushes in the Gardens. 'What ye doin' to me boy, wot ye bleedin' doin' to me!?' Lads circling the railings, clutching chimps, uuumphin' them on. 'Slapper! Do her one!' Afterwards they said Gonzo was a right grunter, like those fuckin' mating seals on RTÉ. 'It's you and me babe, no-one else babe, you'll do me babe.'
Junkies, sirens, a city of half-eaten ears
Shell suits shimmered. A middle-aged man munched Wotsits. Someone else gurgled a gollier up and down an out-of-view nose shaft. Lovers in fake fur jackets, cuddled. Cineworld Parnell Street on a Thursday night for Brendan Muldowney's debut film: Savage, starring Darren Healy and Nora-Jane Noone. I was really apprehensive. Most films about Ireland – and especially Dublin – are of the Carrolls Gifts & Souvenirs variety. Jovial women with croissant-shaped curls scrubbing doorsteps, their bacon rumps facing the sky…orthopaedically-challenged husbands bandying down to the pub for a game of cards. Or when the shit-grit is tackled, it usually depicts gangland scangers as dotingly hilarious, in-between ripping nails off with a pliers or disembowelling with a blowtorch for a €200 cocaine debt while a St. Patrick's Day parade carries on as normal outside.
I was apprehensive too because there's a PC-tendency to deny what is freely available to the naked eye all over Dublin: junkies lurching forward in Zombie mode spouting delirium ("scuzzzzzz meeeeee, hav yi got mi bus fayerrr"), Romany kids being led to beg for people who can't look after them, homeless men covered in piss eating out of bins, mothers fag-choking their fetals to birth outside the Rotunda, shoplifters and car thieves creating 'opportunities' in a country where policy stolidly lacks them. And so on. Nothing is as scary as the streets of Dublin at night-time, even if you're terminally twee and desperately want to pretend you're blind.
There was a 300% rise in muggings in the city centre in the first quarter of this year, some of which were grotesquely violent (one guy had part of his ear bitten off in the process): the youngest perpetrator turned 12 a few weeks ago. Stab statistics are higher than ever with a notable rise in 'unprovoked' attacks. Murder stats are no better: 59 murders and other violent deaths in Dublin in the past two years. Almost as many guns now as hurley sticks begorrah: a gaggle of machine guns were seized by Gardaí last week on the North Circular Road, no doubt business aids for the burgeoning drug market. Staff at Mountjoy Prison staged a walk-out last month in protest against the rise in inmate violence. Out beyond in the suburbs a few bored thugs shoved a firework into a female terrier's mouth and blew off her jaw. The same thing happened to a bunch of swans in a city park that were fed fireworks concealed in folded slices of bread. Shit City at its best…
…so would Savage be able to colour Dublin with just the right shade of gritty realism? The plot is plain-flour simple: a man tries to come to terms with a brutal random attack and its consequences:
To me this is a film about the effects of personal trauma using Dublin as a whirring backdrop. The cinematography is incredible (filmed in drained monochrome and with shades of oppressive gun-metal grey) which makes it even more of a horror film as you witness Paul, the main character, sink further and further into a Dantesque wheelie bin. There's such an odd sense of detachment and otherworldly strangeness about him. It's no surprise that Darren Healy, who plays this lead-role, received a 2010 IFTA nomination. His is a stunning and memorable performance. In many ways this victim turned killer is already a peculiar character before the life-changing assault. He floats above the daily drudge and its cruel realities….which is the life of many press photographers and journalists. The periphery actors who walk the track suit catwalk around Dublin's mean streets at night, are also superb. They are idiotic and gratuitous and bored and dangerous and unaware. The city for them is a dystopian scrapheap from which to extract shiny bits of metal at any [human] cost.
There's actually very little violence in the film, despite what you might hear (!), most is suggested but the nugget that is in-your-face will have you pulling your retina clear off. Sound is very cleverly used too ("a visceral rollercoaster ride", Muldowney called it) assaulting the senses, dragging you wincingly and mincingly inside Paul's mountingly paranoid trauma. The Director drew his inspiration from various real-life stories including that of New Yorker Bernhard Goetz, the 'subway vigilante'. He shot four young men on a subway in Manhattan on December 22, 1984, after they tried to mug him. He'd been mugged before and starting carrying a gun 'just in case' but was accused in court of actively seeking out trouble. Also the brutal deaths of British soldiers Derek Wood and David Howes, dragged from their car in Belfast in 1988 during an IRA funeral, found later that day in wasteland beaten and executed and bloodied.
What works is that the revenge is not exacted on those who deserve it, but on mere incidentals. It happens a lot. It's how and why we have victims of crime. Person A is desensitised by a mix of familial violence and lack of care. A meets B, from a similar background and they pathologically wreak havoc on F who spends the rest of his life wondering what happened, himself now desensitised, etc. Ireland grew this particular bacterial brand of densensitisation en-masse in the 1950s/60/70s, with a great deal of help from church-run institutions. Knead this with an ungovernable drug problem and you have a city that is as much about random acts of incredible violence as it is about bodhrans and dead heroes.


text:
01670 519 952 / firstname.lastname@example.com (North East)
01372 610 000 / firstname.lastname@example.com (South)
Luxury coach travel
4 nights All Inclusive*
Cream tea
Complimentary bar each evening from 6pm-9pm (selected brands)
2 excursions
Nightly entertainment
Day at leisure in Newquay
With our packed lunches in hand we drive to England's most westerly point, Land's End.
From here we journey along the Atlantic Coast to St Ives, where we have time to explore this medieval fishing port with its maze of stone cottages, narrow streets and old-world charm.
We arrive back in plenty of time to enjoy our 3 course dinner, complimentary bar and tonight's entertainment.
Today we travel to a city steeped in history and awe-inspiring architecture. Truro, is the retail centre of Cornwall and this compact city centre is a unique and great little city which offers art galleries, bars, restaurants, the Hall for Cornwall, Truro Cathedral and the Royal Cornwall Museum.
This afternoon we visit Padstow, an historic fishing port on the edge of King Arthur's country and renowned for its colourful cottages which overlook the Camel Estuary.
We return to the hotel via the coastal route.
Enjoy a day at leisure in our resort of Newquay, you may like to relax in the hotel or explore this lovely coastal town.
This afternoon there'll be a hot buffet served in the restaurant from 1pm and an Afternoon Board Game Bonanza with Tea and Homemade Cake.
A picturesque hotel overlooking the world-famous Fistral Beach in Newquay.
The on-site restaurant serves international fare and offers stunning views of the beach, you can also relax in Peebles Bar or make use of the indoor pool with a hot tub and sauna.
Your accommodation offers en-suite bedroom, hair dryer, free Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs,and tea/coffee facilities. Some also have floor-to-ceiling windows or balconies facing the sea and beach.
The hotel has a lift.
Pickup Points for this tour are:
The following room types are still available on this tour:

subset: commoncrawl


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Government support tools such as grants, preferential credits, financial guarantees, co-financing the expenses have become the traditional on the Russian hi-tech market, but are they demanded by business?
What markets bare the most promising potential in terms of nanotechnologies application in the nearest 10-year-persepective?
What development strategy is chosen by CEOs of nanotechnology companies today? These and many other questions has constituted the agenda of the public talk session – interview together with interactive communication with the audience.
Public-talk moderator:
Ilya Kopelevich
Edior-in-chief, Business FM
Anatoly Chubais
Chairman of the Board, RUSNANO
The new global markets of autonomous cars and automated flying vehicles, marine intellectual systems, personalized medicine, intellectual energy are now only taking shapes but will come out surely in true colors and scale in 10-15 years. Establishing new areas of growth in Russian economy within the frameworks of the National technology initiative (NTI) is the step toward creating the opportunity areas for Russian companies and fostering leaders of the markets of the future. By developing the so-called pass-through technologies that can be applied to any market (Net) that is in NTI's focus, NTI gives a real opportunity to fight for the global leadership. One of these technologies might be the one of creating smart materials with customized properties – which is applicable to any material-based industry. How new materials can reshape the world markets chessboard and leadership, what role do nanotechnologies play in this game?
Denis Kovalevich
Co-founder and CEO, TECHNOSPARK
Denis Kovalevich
Co-founder and CEO, TECHNOSPARK
Martin Hinoul
LRD (Leuven Research & Development) KULeuven
Alexander Pinsky
Deputy CEO, TRANSAS Group of Companies Deputy head of the Working Group of MariNet
Sergey Polyakov
CEO, Fund (Federal) for Assistance to Innovative Enterprises
Alexey Borovkov
Vice-rector for innovative projects, Professor - Mechanics and Control, Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), co-leader TechNet
Alexander Shumsky
Executive Vice-president, Russian Fashion Council, co-leader FashionNet
Dmitry Peskov
Head of «Young Professionals» Initiative, Agency of strategic Initiatives
Vlaimir Gurdus
CEO, RMI Partners
Mikhail Samsonov
Chief Medical Officer, R-Pharm, Deputy Head of the HealthNet work Group
The discussion will bring together members of the Federal Educational and Methodology in Higher Education in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Professions Group Association, universities representatives, CEOs of nanoindustry enterprises and representatives of the Innovation ecosystem development institutes.
New industry – nanoindustry – has required new types of human resources since its appearance, therefore rebuilding the system of engineering education. It was not only about new knowledge but about project management competences, about readiness for changes. The development of human resources for Nanoindustry required rebuilding the existing engineers basic education system, development technology entrepreneurship education programs, create a new system providing constant competences update process. The session participants will discuss what they've learned from training professionals for nanoindustry, and directions of professional education development in this sphere.
Isak Froumin
Academic Advisor at the HSE Institute of Education
Sergey Panin
Head of Department at Tomsk Polytechnic University, Chairman of the Federal Educational and Methodology in Higher Education in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Professions Group Association
Yury Udalstov
Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, RUSNANO MC LLC
Sergey Yushko
Acting Rector, Kazan National Research Technological University
Sergey Tsybukov
CEO, LLC "Plastic processing plant named after "Komsomolskaya Pravda"
Vladimir Kosteev
Executive Director, iR&D Club
Andrey Senyut
Vice-president, OCSiAl, CEO, OCSiAl Energy
Topics for discussion:
• What's going on with logistic chains and technologies in Russia and all over the world?
• Why do Amazon and Alibaba finance the logistic of delivery to their clients and how long will it stay this way?
• How many robots does Russia need to change the performance of the logistic centers drastically and who manufactures these robots?
• How are Yandex and Sberbank going to contest with Alibaba/T-Mall on the Russian market?
• What nanotechnologies are vital for raising the logistic effectiveness 100 times?
• Robots in logistic sector: absolute humans' replacement or future employers?
• When does Pochta Rossii buys the first robot?
Denis Kovalevich
Co-founder and CEO, TECHNOSPARK
Stas Naumov
Director GR, X5 Retail Group
Igor Chebunin
Head of Logistic Development Department, Pochta Rossii
Tatiana Lyubimova
CEO, DHL eCommerce Russia
Evgeny Belov
CEO, Kosmos Logistik
Vladislav Davankov
Vice-presdient, Faberlic
Alex Vasiliev
Head of Russian Office, Cainiao
• System of Control and Supervision Reform;
• Out-of-date Technology Requirements and Norms Modernization;
• Brining to life Road-Maps aimed at Business-Friendly Environment Development;
• Mechanisms of Development Innovation Business friendly Environment: Regulatory Experiments.
Ekaterina Shapochka
Member of the Government Committee on Open Government Activity Coordination
Alexey Kachay
Deputy Director – Strategy, Fund For Infrastructure and Educational Programs
Alexander Bragin
Director, Non-commercial Fund «Forum Analytical Center", Member of the Expert Committee at the Government of te Russian Federation
Sergey Shtepa
CEO, Metaclay
Andrey Mitin
Commercial Director, ICM Glass Kaluga
Veronika Djujoma
First Deputy Director of the Project Office - System of Control and Supervision Reform Realization at the Analytical Center of the Government of the Russian Federation
In our VUCA and technology revolution world the appearance of the new professions is not an extraordinary thing but a routine one. At least 10 of today's most demanded and highly paid professions did not exist 10 years ago – such as big data specialist, mobile applications developer, etc.
90% of the information that we have today have been generated during the last 2 years. Under such circumstances the meta-skills like soft skills start prevailing over practical knowledge in certain areas of occupation. The meta-skills mean cognitive flexibility, ability to study fast in today's changing world, manage correctly the information flows and develop memory, be creative, be a leader, be communicative. The upcoming decades will make the trend stronger, therefore the questions arise: are people ready for the changing education paradigm, what technologies of tomorrow determine the competences to be studied today?
Denis Konanchuk
Academic Director, Moscow School of Management SKolkovo
Andrey Gromashev
Chief Technologist, Aerocomposite
Inga Gerasimenko
HRD, BARS Group
Vyacheslav Blagirev
Director Digital, Rostelecom
Igor Sergeev
Head Department – Civil Instrumentation Development, Shvabe
Stanislav Rozmirovich
Director – Center of Innovations Research, Innovation Management Institute, Higher School of Economics
The Silver Archer award, the competition and rating "Tehuspekh", other competitions such as GenerationS Tech-In-Media, StartUp Village, National Rating of the Technoparks in Russia, corporate competitions such as VIK.Nano, Green Chip, Science Slam – the key speakers – invited experts from Russian Venture Company, Skolkovo, Moscow Government, companies – competitors will talk about the role of these events.
No doubt, the companies submit applications for the competitions to promote their products as well, but at the same the competitions still determine the best practices in different industrial areas and innovations product consumers. But does it all help to stimulate the R&D, the demand, does it attracts the venture funds, private investors, how it contributes to the synergy of entrepreneurship and science?
Topics for discussion
· What and whom do the ratings and awards established for? For the organizers, competitors, consumers.
· Does the winning influence the company's capitalization fir reputation?
· Does demand grow – on the prdoucts that have been highly rated by the award committee?
· Do the companies need to arrange their own competitions and tale part in the ratings and awards? If yes – who, when and how to do that?
· What is the best way to "pack" the products for the award participation?
Yakov Minevich
Director – Federal part of the Silver Archer Award, secretary – Board of Trustees, Board of Experts, Silver Archer Award
Sergey Filippov
Head of the Popularization Division, Fund for infrastructure and Development programmers
Ilya Kurmyshev
Director – Technology Partnerships Development, Russian Venture company
Valentina Suslova
Head of Competition – Innovation Technologies in education, creative industries, smart city "Mosgorteh", Moscow Agency of Innovation
Olga Kuzmina
Head of "Open Submission" Programme, Moscow Agency of Innovation
Pavel Gudkov
Deputy CEO, FASIE
Ekaterina Inozemtseva
Vice-President - Strategy, Skolkovo Fund
Supported by Russian Export Center:
• The programs and tools developed by government in cooperation with innovation ecosystem development institutes and relevant agencies.
• Client-friendly service development by One-stop-shop principle priority;
• Developing list of services of financial/non-financial support for export –oriented manufacturers;
• What Instruments of financial and administrative support of export developed be the Russian export center are mostly demanded by the manufacturers?
• Cooperation of Russian export center with innovation development institutes in developing the complex export support measures and tools;
• What is the Russian manufacturers experience in hi-tech products export and in Russian export center support tools usage?
Mikhail Antipov
Director – Export Projects Support, Russian Export Center
Mikhail Antipov
Director – Export Projects Support, Russian Export Center
Alexander Meshscheriakov
Managing Director, Russia Export Center DmitryKogan, CEO , Prepreg-ACM
Andrey Belousov
CEO, Elvees Neotech Maria Isakova, Head of Logistics and Processing Management, Lanxess


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International Services Center
In response to growing client demand for international expertise, we created the International Services Center to help CPA firms achieve their goal of obtaining and retaining clients that have international service needs and aspirations. Here you will find practical information, guidance and tools for firms of any size or structure. Check back often for updates!
You're ready to dive in, but where do you begin? Get familiar with International Services and where the opportunities are for your firm.
U.S. companies are increasingly looking overseas for new opportunities. Help your existing or potential clients expand or operate internationally.
U.S. companies are increasingly looking overseas for new opportunities. Help your existing or potential clients expand or operate internationally.
Highlighted Resources
Business after Brexit
The recent vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union may affect your clients. Be prepared to assist them by understanding some of the potential effects of Brexit and mitigating actions to consider. Check out Helping Clients Prepare for Potential Effects of Brexit and Hedging Against Currency Fluctuation Risk for insights you can use to assist your clients that may be impacted by recent developments.
International Associations
Many CPAs who are entering or expanding their international practices turn to global networks, alliances or associations for the resources and contacts they need to support their efforts. Learn about the opportunities for your firm, and why association membership may be preferable to going it alone.
Contact Us
International Services Desk
Have a question about International Services? Email or call (212-596-6048) the AICPA International Services Desk. Or e-mail a member of the International Services team, Yasmine El-Ramly or Lindsey Yopp.


text:
By Kate Brian
Lila Beckwith has the perfect life. She has the looks, the body the popular group of friends, the perfect boyfriend and is about to throw the party of the year.
There's only one thing in her life that isn't perfect and that's her 8 year old brother Cooper.
First he tells her parents about the party. Lila is forced to cancel it- putting her perfect social image at risk, is grounded and better still her parents now refuse to buy her a car which she was promised.
Secondly Cooper and his friend Tyler take off on a cross country adventure. Lila now has to work with Tyler's brother Beau to find the boys and bring them home before their parents find out.
And thirdly Beau is Lila's ex boyfriend. He has an obvious lack of fashion sense, hosts an 'I hate the world attitude' and thinks that Lila is fake and self absorbed. And she's stuck in the car with him for two days straight. Could things get any worse?
Full of fun and mischief Ex-mas is a great read for anyone who loves teen romance stories.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
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Labels: family, popularity, romance
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
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Taylor Swift- Speak Now
Speak Now is the adequately named third album from singing sensation Taylor Swift and it sees an evolution of Taylor's skill as a singer-songwriter. Critics say that Swift is undeserving of the accolades she's received, she doesn't have the strongest voice out there, but one cannot discredit her song writing skills, showcased on Speak Now.
Once again Swift is singing about life, love and boys although this time the songs come from personal experience rather than her fanciful ideas of love. Many public questions are answered on the album; 'Innocent' was inspired by the incident of the VMA's last year. Taylor also offers an apology to ex Taylor Launter in 'Back to December', a beautifully constructed ballad. She slams John Mayer (who would have believed that!) in 'Dear John', using the electric blues style that John Mayer's is the master of, to convey her message. Some have dubbed this her best song yet. 'Better than revenge' is a scathing attack on 'an actress/ better known for what she does on the mattress.' OUCH! 'Mean' sticks to her country roots while sticking it to all her critics out there but my personal favorite is 'Never grow up', an ode to mothers, daughters and the innocence of youth (have a listen below).
Speak Now is Swift growing up she experiments with different styles, rhythms and emotions. Some songs may not appear to be 'Taylor' made but it's good to see her spreading her wings musically. What makes Taylor Swift such a sensation in the music world is the fact that she intelligently connects with her audience with open and honest lyrics making you feel like a friend rather than a fan. At twenty Taylor is just at the beginning of her career and it must be said that greater things are to come for this singing superstar. But for now Speak Now is out and it's one album that is worth the hour of your time (yes it runs for an hour and four minutes) it takes to get through the collection of 14 songs.
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Labels: music, Speak Now, Taylor Swift
Monday, 24 January 2011
Author Interview - Wendy Orr
The love of stories, books and being read to goes back earlier than I can remember; the passion for reading books for myself – and perhaps the start of wanting to write them – wasn't till I was nearly 7. We lived in France, so I'd learned to read and write with rather boring French readers. However one night before we moved back to Canada, my parents left three 'Dick and Jane' readers on my bedside table for me to find. I've never forgotten the thrill of reading real stories in my own language!
When did you first realise you were a writer?
Do you find it difficult to read purely for pleasure?
Does what you read while writing have an effect on what you write? In what way? I don't think it affects what I'm writing at that moment, but every book one loves and gets involved with must bleed into the subconscious to some extent.
Name five authors or books that have influenced or inspired your own writing in some way?
If you were travelling and were told you could only take one book with you, what book would it be and why?
What makes a book 'too good to put down'?
What makes you put down a book without finishing it?
Do you have a favourite author? Who is it and what is it about their writing that draws you to them?
What was your 2010 'best read'? What was it that made it number one?
What do you think of the non-traditional publishing methods – eBooks etc? Do you think the new technology will encourage more people to read? Do you think there's a future for print books?
Wendy started writing seriously in 1986, with her picture book Amanda's Dinosaur. In 1993 Leaving it to You was shortlisted for the CBCA awards, junior readers; Ark in the Park won the same award in 1995. Peeling the Onion, based on a serious car accident Wendy had in 1991, was widely published internationally, with awards including the CBCA Honour Book, older readers, in 1997, and an American Library Association Book for older readers. LOST: A Dog Called Bear, the first of the Rainbow Street Animal Shelter series, will be released by Henry Holt in the North American spring 2011. Find out more at http://www.wendyorr.com/
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Labels: author interview, children's author, Nim's Island, Raven's Mountain, reading, the princess and the panther, Wendy Orr, Writing
Monday, 17 January 2011
Bad Boy + Good Girl = Perfect Chemistry
What happens when your head refuses to conform?
What happens when you challenge everything you've been told you are?
Alex Fuentes and Brittany Ellis are about to find out!
Ask Alex Fuentes who Brittany Ellis is and he'll tell you she's a blonde, stuck up rich kid. Brittany Ellis would tell you that Alex Fuentes is a gang banger and drug dealer with no hope. But when paired up for chemistry class these two are about to find out how wrong they are. Brittany has a sick sister and a complex with being 'Perfect'. Alex is the man of the house,jumped into the 'Latino Blood' to protect his family and trying to stay as clean as is possible while in a gang. It doesn't take them long to realize that the other is not what they expected. Soon they find themselves impacting one another's lives in ways they never imagined
A romance tale this Perfect Chemistry is, a modern day Romeo and Juliet, but Elkeles takes the story one step further by exploring the pressure that teens feel to fit into their 'roles' deemed for them by society and the 'roles' they want to play for themselves. The story takes a while to get going and I'll admit the characters in the beginning appear one dimensional but give this book a shot and you'll find a beautifully written tale about a boy and girl falling in love and discovering who they are.
Next in the series is Rules of Attraction and if you fell in love with Alex just wait until you meet his brother Carlos. Check out the trailer for Rules of Attraction below.
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Labels: Perfect Chemistry, romance, Simone Elkeles
The sky is everywhere
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, follows a girl whose sister has recently died. It shows the weeks after the death where Lennie falls in love and tries to get a grip on life. It has amazing poetry throughout it (she scatters her poems across town) and is really deep and meaningful as well as funny.
It's well worth the read!
Shelver - Narre Warren Library
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Thursday, 13 January 2011
Author Interview - Sherryl Clark
Have you ever wondered what writers read? I decided to ask some authors to answer that very question and more. This is the first in a series of author interviews to come during 2011.
Enjoy! - Lisa.
Sherryl Clark is an Australian writer who writes mainly for young readers - her latest book Meet Rose (the 1st book in a new series Our Australian Girl published by Penguin) is due for release on Jan 31st.
What authors/books did you read as a child? When did you first discover your love of books?
I basically read everything I could get my hands on! My country school got boxes of books from the School Library Service every three months, which was never enough for me. I joined the town library when I was about 11, I think, and went berserk. Favourite authors were Arthur Ransome, TH White, Malcolm Saville and, yes, Enid Blyton. But the big winner was the Narnia series – my sister gave me 'The Magician's Nephew' first and I was hooked.
When did you first realise you were a writer? What do you hope your readers will take away with them from reading your books?
I didn't start writing seriously until I was close to 30. That was also when I went back to school and did an arts degree at Deakin, with a major in Literary Studies (and writing). It took longer than that to feel like a writer, though. Publication helps! I hope that a reader will love the world and the characters I've created, and want more – more books, by anyone. If I can help a child to become a keen reader, I'm happy. With my adult fiction, I guess I want a reader to take away more than just what's on the page, something to think about. A big challenge as a writer.
Do you find it difficult to read purely for pleasure? Does everything you read come under your 'writer' microscope?
I do read for pleasure all the time. I'm a reading addict. If I am somewhere where I have to wait and I have nothing to read, I get twitchy! I do read as a writer all the same, although I've been doing it for so many years that it's like a computer program running in the background – it logs on when I read something I think I can use in class, or learn from.
Do you have to avoid reading certain types of fiction while writing your own? Does what you read while writing have an effect on what you write? In what way?
If I'm writing something historical (like my pirate novel) I avoid similar kinds of novels in that age group, but I'll maybe read a Bernard Cornwell just to see how he manages the factual detail, and how he weaves it into the story. That feeds into what I'm writing on a craft level, but I think I read so much that no single book influences me. However, I have written the start of something a couple of times and then realised it's too close to a book I've read, so I've had to throw it out.
Name five authors or books that have influenced or inspired your own writing in some way?
"The Bone People" by Keri Hulme was a book that changed the way I thought about books and how they could be structured. Billy Collins' poetry always inspires me. Sharon Creech's verse novel "Love That Dog" was what led me to writing verse novels for kids myself, I think. Michael Connelly – he's a crime writer who talks about "the telling detail" in setting. I also like James Lee Burke for the same reason – great details and settings.
If you were travelling and were told you could only take one book with you, what book would it be and why?
To be honest, I couldn't pick just one. I couldn't stand having to slave over Proust or James Joyce because I felt I should! And once I've read a book, I rarely ever want to read it again. These days, I'd cheat and take an e-reader and a power source and about 1000 books on the one device.
What makes a book 'too good to put down'?
Characters that intrigue me, that I care about, who have interesting things happen to them both outside and inside. Plot on its own is not enough, language and style is not enough. I think I like diving into other people's (characters') lives.
What makes you put down a book without finishing it?
Boring or unlikeable characters. My pet hate is the male character in his late 30s who has just discovered life sucks and can't deal with it. I think I just dislike characters who are pathetic or apathetic in some way. I can't wait 250 pages for them to get a grip!
Do you have a favourite author? Who is it and what is it about their writing that draws you to them?
At the moment, my favourite is Kate Atkinson. I've just read the four Jackson Brodie novels and loved both her style and voice. Also her range of characters and how she weaves their lives together. She always surprises you and yet everything works.
What was your 2010 'best read'? What was it that made it number one?
"Case Histories" by Kate Atkinson – it's great when you discover a writer whose books you haven't read before and you love their writing. And you know there are more to come! (See above)
What do you think of the non-traditional publishing methods – eBooks etc? Do you think the new technology will encourage more people to read? Do you think there's a future for print books?
I hope there's still a future for print books! I hope we'll continue to have print books for kids for a very long time, especially picture books. Books can be really precious possessions, things to hug and put under your pillow! But I'm moving to ebooks myself for several reasons – one is that books are just too expensive in Australia. $36 for a paperback! And a lot of them I no longer want to keep on a shelf as I have no room, so having them digitally will mean I think I'll actually buy more, as long as the e-versions are cheaper. Also I'm the person who's always over my luggage weight at the airport because of my books, so an ebook reader will be a bonus there, too. But books I want to keep, I'll buy in print. I've heard of people reading ebooks and then buying the print version to make sure they never lose them. Print books just feel more permanent and real to me.
Sherryl started writing poetry and adult fiction in the 1980s. Her first children's book, The Too-Tight Tutu, was published in 1997, and she now has more than 40 books in print. Her verse novel Farm Kid won the 2005 NSW Premier's Literary Award for children's books, and her second verse novel, Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) was an Honour Book in the 2008 CBCA Awards. Other recent titles include Motormouth, One Perfect Pirouette and her picture book of poems, Now I Am Bigger. Her books have been published in Australia and overseas.
Sherryl teaches in the Diploma of Arts – Professional Writing and Editing at Victoria University TAFE. Her website is at http://www.sherrylclark.com/
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Labels: author interview, children's author, One Perfect Pirouette, reading, Sherryl Clark, what writers read, Writing
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Skate, scoot and ride
Date: Sunday 30 January 2011
Time: 10am. Registrations at 9am
Where: Pakenham Skate Park, PB Ronald Reserve
John Street, Pakenham (Melway ref: 317 8E)
Entry: $5 for ALL categories, U13, U16 and OPEN
Participants must wear helmets and bring their safety equipment.
Skate, Scooter and BMX professional demonstrations on the day PLUS
Council's MYBus.
Entry forms available online www.cardinia.vic.gov.au/youth or
contact Council's Youth Services on 1300 787 624.
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Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Annexed: Life with Anne Frank
"Put it into words," she whispers, "and begin."
"Are there words for this?"
"What else have we?"
And so I begin.
A thirteen year old girl and a sixteen year old boy enter a secret annexe where they will spend two years of their lives in confined isolation. They clash at first; she's a darling and he's a sulk but before long the pair are unexpectedly falling in love. This is the tale of Anne Frank and the boy she loved, Peter van pels (van daan in Anne's diary). Over 31 million people have read Anne's version of their blossoming love story, Dogar delivers a possible representation of what it was like for Peter being 'Annexed'. How did Peter feel about being hidden, being Jew and what did he feel for Anne?
Sharon Dogar tells Peter's story on two fronts, the first being the two years in hiding and the other Peter's last days in the concentration camp. Both stories are intermittently entwined to emotionally impact the reader to the horrors these kids ( as well as others) incurred during the holocaust. Peter is constantly asking 'Do you understand?', and although only those who lived it can truly understand it, if even then, Dogar's account is fresh look at one of the most horrific events in recent history.
Although I knew how the story ended, having read Anne's diary and other materials, I was still gripped to the very end of this novel, because although on the face of it the novel is fiction 'this is not a story. This is the truth. These things really happened.' (even if maybe they didn't happen to Peter.) Annexed is compelling, devastating and tragically honest. This is one book that cannot go unread.
Courtney :)
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Labels: Anne Frank, Annexed, Halocaust, Per Van Pels, Sharon Dogar