Fandom

On June 12^th 1988 I was in Co Wicklow with the 47^th Cub Scout troop camping. Before twelve year old had a mobile phone, we pitched our tents on the floor of a river valley surrounded by the greenest woodland and with the exception of the occasional plane flying over head the outside world could not get near us. That was until Ian Corcoran took his contraband transistor radio out of his rucksack.

We were not supposed to bring such things on camp; it was all about getting back to basics. Anyone caught with such an illicit item would be punished by having their mother told. But ‘Corco’ was willing to risk it. He wanted to hear what was happening in the match.

“What match?” I naively asked.

“We are playing England in the Euros.”

This was news to me although I did twig that by we he meant Ireland and that by the Euros he meant soccer. I didn’t have much interest in sport back then. I occasionally played 5 a side football (not very well as I have mentioned previously,) but I had always assumed that Ireland weren’t very good.

“They’ll slaughter us,” I said both unpatriotically and insensitively, considering the violent history of both nations.

“Not necessarily,” his scorn barely concealed. “We’re much better now that Jack Charlton is the manager.”

I remembered my dad giving out about the disgrace of having an Englishman as manager. And there were few more English than Jack Charlton; he’d won the world cup with them and everything. To hear my friend sticking up and praising this guy now was very confusing. So with a mumbled “so what” I went about the business of taking down our camp while Ian listened to the match.

He screamed when Ray Houghton put the ball in the English net. He gasped at every save Packie Bonner made. As the match progressed more and more scouts, including me gathered around him to listen to what would be a famous win for the Republic of Ireland.  A victory I didn’t fully comprehend until we were driving back to Dublin later that day.

As we drove through towns and villages people were dancing on the street, waving their pints in the air. Cars beeped their horns in celebration. Irishmen kissed each other on the cheek in an outpouring of emotion that had never before been seen on Isle of Saints and Scholars. It was a party.

And so my interest was piqued. I made a point of watching the next Ireland game against the USSR. They were definitely much better than us, surely. The England game was a fluke. The Soviets would wipe the floor with us, wouldn’t they? They didn’t and when Ronnie Whelan scored one of the greatest goals ever (with his shin) my teenage love affair with football was concreted.

Sadly over the years, as is the way with life, I have allowed myself to become cynical about soccer. Millionaire footballers running around the pitch with impeccable hair and sculpted chests mean nothing to me. I have no connection to someone who just wants the ref to blow so that he can get out and pick up his latest wannabe WAG.

It didn’t help that Ireland became a horrible team to support. Poor results matched by poor performances meant that the joy I got from being a plucky underdog had dissipated. We could barely beat Wales.

Then came Giovanni Trapattoni. The Italian embraced negative football. If the other team can’t score we can’t lose was his thinking. Not necessarily the most attractive way to play the beautiful game but it has been effective.

Today for the first time in ten years, the Republic of Ireland takes to the field in a major football championship. So for the day that’s in it I will allow myself to to be the hopeful, cheering pre pubescent that I was in 1988.

Come On You Boys in Green.

Employment

With the desperation of a man reduced to scavenging one and two cent pieces to pay his bus fair, I renewed my thus far fruitless search for fulltime employment. It’s not something I do lightly, my current lifestyle suits me, working part time in retail and focusing on my writing and philanthropic work (yea that’s what I’m calling volunteering to write stories with kids,)for the rest of the week.

The lack of money doesn’t really bother me. I try keeping my spending simple and extravagancies to a minimum. I occasionally miss being able to bang tickets for gigs on the credit card but generally I know this is a much better way to lead my life. That said I could do with some extra money.

Logging into Jobs.ie resulted in what I feared. Nobody is hiring a slightly lazy writer in his mid thirties who starts work at 11:15. This meant I would have to go back to what I did before, namely customer service and admin.

It will be hard for me going back into that soulless atmosphere and following the protocol of a faceless management who view employees merely as cogs in the profit machine. I hoped I might find something a bit more personal. I didn’t. What I found was even more vile and despicable than I could have imagined.

Instead of multimillion pound looking to hire overqualified people to do basic jobs for minimum wages I found this. Insurance company Aon are hiring an intern under the Jobbridge scheme.

JobBridge is programme set up in order to help people new to the workforce gain experience through internship. To qualify the jobseeker needs to be claiming social welfare benefits which they are allowed to continue to collect, with a stipend of €50, for the duration of the internship. To me, this sounds like a great initiative allowing people to use their time to improve their skill set and increase their chances of finding full time employment.

The interns that I have met through Fighting Words were all doing it for these reasons even before the inception of Jobbridge. I think they deserve the opportunity to improve their lot without risking their benefits. I was under the impression that it would mostly be NGO’s and other non profit bodies like Fighting Words that would benefit from the scheme

The job Aon are advertising appears to be a basic entry level customer care position. Low experience shouldn’t be a problem and is probably expected as they would need to train any suitable applicants in company specific products and procedures. I can say this, having looked at hundreds of such Job specs in my time with similar requirements, aptitudes and specification.

It seems to me that they are taking advantage of the intern scheme and offering what other companies advertise as low pay, low experience jobs but with the benefit of them having to not pay the applicant a penny. The employee would be expected to work a full week for and survive on his, which works out, against an average 39 hour week, to be €6.10cent per hour as opposed to a minimum wage of €8.65.

Aon are a pretty successful company. They have a long term sponsorship deal with Manchester United and according to their 2010 Annual report they are “the #1 intermediary of primary risk insurance and #1 intermediary of reinsurance” And “created the #1 human resource consulting and outsourcing firm with unmatched talent and capabilities.” They don’t seem like a company who would need to save €337 a week for the sake of one employee.

They might argue that working with Aon is a priceless opportunity and all experience garnered would be excellent reward when it comes to future employment opportunities. I’d argue that if they need someone to the job, pay them fairly.

I won’t be applying for this job. I can survive on what I have and I don’t need the experience of being a dogsbody. And if I do get a job elsewhere and buy things that might need insuring I would be reluctant to use Aon based on this. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys, so you would have to wonder what they get.

Readers Block

For the last couple of days I have been hobbling around my house, in agony, using a pitching wedge as a crutch as I attempt to get from one room to another. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I have had a sore ankle for the last five days. Actually that should read ankles as the pain miraculously jumped from one ankle to the other.

I’ve been to the doctor (again with the aid of my golf club) and he’s suggested further tests once we get the pain under control. I have a theory on the cause of the problem but that is based on diagnosis by Google so I’ll wait till the experts confirm my suspicions.

Boredom truly is a killer. Sitting around watching daytime TV is doing my head in. I know I’ve written before about turning the telly off and reading a book or doing something constructive instead but there are two problems with that.

Today is the first day that the pain hasn’t been such a distraction that I can actually sit and write something. Concentrating on reading would have been an exercise in futility. Secondly ever since I began my efforts and writing my own novel (some days it’s a masterpiece, others its awful and a waste of time and effort,) I’ve found it really hard to finish any piece of fiction that is more than a few pages long.

I don’t know what it is exactly; I just can’t keep going till the end. I read the first couple of chapters and then I just stop. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them as such; it’s more that it is physically impossible for me to open that book. In the last twelve months I have started novels by Stewart Lee, T.S. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy and Graham Greene among others and have yet to finish one.

The latest is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, one of my favourite authors. Up to page the 196 the characters are intriguing and although a plot has yet to reveal itself I want to know what happens to them. The book itself was a gift from a loved one and has a lovely personal inscription which makes me determined to finish it.

The thing is I’ve been stuck on that page for the last three weeks. There is at least another 500 to go. Every time I pick it up I start texting or I fall asleep or I think about something I want to write myself or…I continue to make excuses for a lack of self discipline. When I was younger, before fancy digital TV and android phones a few days in my sick bed usually meant catching up on reading.

So for the next few hours, I’m switching off my phone and my laptop and I’m going to read Owen Meany and I won’t switch them back on until I’ve read at least the next fifty pages. Take that technology.

Unfortunately I’ve left it upstairs beside my bed so it might take a while before I can even get started. Now where is that golf club?

Adolescent

It would appear that my fifteen year old brother is turning into something of fairly cool individual. He has started to form his own identity with hobbies and opinions of his own. Growing their hair and taking an interest in their appearance is probably standard for guys his age but is learning to play the banjo and a general interest in traditional music?

Shouldn’t he be playing computer games, planking (it’s an actual thing) in shopping centres and mugging grannies? I’ve been led to believe that the youth of today had been assimilated into text speaking dumbots who are willing to sacrifice any kind of dignity to become a YouTube meme.

From what I remember, it is far from easy being a teenage boy. Your body starts doing things you were not expecting at the most inopportune time. Hair begins to spurt on appendages and in orifices. You don’t know which way is up unless you use a seemingly constant erection as some sort of body compass because it’s always pointing that direction.

Yes, greasy hair, spots and loss of voice control make adolescence hard enough but body betrayal is only the start of your worries. Peer pressure and outside influence can be just as challenging. It takes a strong will to be your own man when you are still, for the most part, a boy.

It can be time in your life when the last thing you want to do is stand out so it can appear that the thing is to just blend in with the crowd. Wear the same clothes, do the same things, same is good, different is bad. You are still trying your personality out for size, so the more friends you have that approve of you the better.

With boys it can be hard to tell if your part of ‘the group.’ I’m don’t know if it’s just an Irish thing (I’m pretty sure it’s not) but boys make fun of everyone, whether they are friend or foe. They insult each other’s mother. They use cruel and mean nicknames. They highlight each other’s difference. It can be hard tell who is on your side and who wants to belittle you.

This was certainly the situation in my case. I was just about the most average teenager you could find. I wasn’t particularly gifted at anything, but neither was I rubbish at stuff. I was ok at sport, ok at school work, ok at being a teenager. I was made fun of and pranked but I would never claim to be bullied. But when I remember other kids and how they were treated, bullying is exactly how I would define it.

On a class trip, ‘the group’ once grabbed a boy, a guy I would have called a friend of mine, picked him up and threw him in a fountain. I knew it was going to happen, I’d been told earlier they were going to get him as soon as the teacher was distracted. I could have warned him or I could have tried to stop them. I didn’t. Maybe I thought if I stood up to ‘the group’ then I would be the one taking the swim.

I don’t think anyone in ‘the group’ turned out to be a mass murderer or corrupt politician. They are all probably decent people with families of their own now. But the pack mentality of teenage boys can lead to them doing some very horrible things.

Everyone wants to be the alpha male and the best way to show that is to force your way up the food chain and take out those weaker than you along the way, and if you can’t be the leader of the pack it’s better to be with him than against him. When you are trying to show the world that you are becoming a man, boys can behave like beasts.

I don’t think the mistakes of a teenager should be held against them. It’s a very confusing time and there are bound to me missteps along the way. But if you can be strong minded and try to stand up for what you believe, you will do just fine.

The important thing to remember is, that if it feels like life is hard at the moment, it changes, I promise. Whether that’s for better or worse is up to you. You’re at the start of a journey and you should have a good time figuring out who you are and if you need any help you can always ask.

Crush

I almost started this blog with one of those cutesy “While I was chatting to ‘her’ I thought about ‘x’” openings that really grind my gears. Firstly, no one cares that you have a loved one unless the blog is about them. And if it’s about them you shouldn’t refer to them as a pronoun. Her, she, him, themselves, it and yolky bobby are not terms of endearment.

If your girlfriend doesn’t want to be mentioned in your blog, but is an important part the content, then find some other way to bring it in. You’re a writer, use your imagination.

So myself and Jack Nicholson were playing basketball against Burt and Ryan Reynolds (no relation) when Burt started talking smack to Jack. Saying how his momma was an astronaut and what not. Jack Nicholson was having none of it and things got a bit heated when he mentioned how The Bandit had let the love of his life, Sally Field, slip out of his grasp.

While Ryan Reynolds was busy separating the two Hollywood veterans I couldn’t help dwelling on the image of Sally Field. When I was younger I used to have such a crush on her. I’m not sure I even knew what a crush was. I certainly didn’t know what the funny feeling I was having in my tummy every time I saw the star of Smokey and the Bandit and Mrs Doubtfire on screen. I just knew there was something special about her.

Of course she isn’t the only celebrity fancy I had when I was a young boy developing a curiosity for the fairer sex. Like every straight (and probably some gay) man my age Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia definitely stirred something in my pre pubescent self. Gold Bikinis and hair in funny buns will forever be fetish wear for men of a certain generation.

Of course these are both no brainers, Sally Field and Carrie Fisher were both beautiful women who radiate a cuteness while at the same time being can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it sexy. They tended to play sassy women who were more than capable of standing up to any moronic man. Had all my young attractions were so obvious I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

I need to point out that I was very young at the time. Not really sure what I was looking for in a girlfriend; I didn’t even know I was looking for a girlfriend. So I ask that you don’t judge ten year old me so harshly because he had a crush on the following women:

Carol Decker, the lead singer of T’pau who sang Heart and Soul and China in your Hand. She had curly red hair and could belt out a power ballad. Maybe it was the sepia tone lighting in all their videos but I always thought she was pretty. I followed her on twitter recently but that felt a bit weird.

Sonia. A bubbly Liverpool singer who was dubbed the new Cilla Black was another ginger chanteuse who appealed to my little boy sensibility. This penchant for redheads is not something that I have carried forward into my actual romantic life. I don’t know what it was about Sonia. Maybe it was the pinchable cheeks or twinkly eyes. Most likely it was the floppy hat and yellow bolero combination that she sported on her album cover Everybody Knows (which I owned on cassette tape, by the way.)

Dana. There I said it. I used to fancy Dana. All Kinds of Everything, Dana. I didn’t know she was a religious nut at the time. Before she wanted to be president and sign Ireland over to the Catholic Church I used to think she was very cute. She had big brown eyes and rosy cheeks. She had a seemed to have a kind heart; she helped Finn and Derval in Flight of the Doves. Playing Snow White in pantomime and winning the Eurovision proved how talented she was. How could anyone not be attracted to this woman?

In a time when Georgia Salpa is considered a sexy celebrity, it’s hard not to yearn for a simpler time. Or maybe I just have strange taste in women. Oh, I don’t think herself will like me saying that.

Zenith

It is a good job I didn’t resolve on January the first to update here on a more committed basis. So far, it looks like 2012 will have the same random regularity as 2011. That’s not to say it won’t change, in fact I’m planning that it will. I have set myself some goals and targets for the New Year.

So far, this year I haven’t had an alcoholic drink. Its only two weeks but I’m happy with my little achievement. Unfortunately, for that habit at least, I’m going on holiday in a couple of days so that won’t last much longer.

I’ve also set myself some writing objectives that, if anyone is interested, I will keep you up to date with as they happen. In the mean time I just need to get on with it. So let’s do that shall we.

A friend of mine, whose opinion I have some respect for, tells me that my Blog is better when I’m not talking about me. He prefers when I pick a subject and talk about that rather than discuss how my life is going. I’m generally inclined to agree with him, but it could be just that this friend doesn’t like people sharing their lives online. This argument is backed up by his disdain for Facebook.

He hates it, refuses to have it. Well, he did have it for a while but was so abhorred by people ranking themselves and their friends, poking, tagging and all that other nonsense that he got rid of it. I’ve decided I’m going to try and follow suit.

I’m not a hater of Facebook. For a long time I’ve enjoyed its usage. Setting up my account in 2007 to keep in touch with my friends off on their travels I found it an excellent tool. I took advantage of the games and the quizzes as a way to pass the time and when I was trapped in employment hell Facebook was a window to the outside world.

But at this stage I’m a little bored with it. And let me say to my Friends, it’s not you it’s me. Most of the stuff that appears on my newsfeed these days is from organisations, bands or charities or businesses. If it’s not that it’s somebody pointlessly complaining about the state of this or that. As a regular ranter about both I know that this is completely futile and I hate to see intelligent people like yourselves wasting your time.

The thing is, I’m a five year Zuckerberg addict. I’m under no illusion that quitting ‘the book’ is going to be easy. So I’ve started to wean myself away. My status changes are infrequent, especially when compared to the last days of Meteor when I would update twice maybe three times a day. If I do that a week now, it’s a busy one

I have deleted most of my photos. I don’t think there is anything really wrong with sharing your snaps with friends but you have to question the validity of a lot of them. Memories are to be captured not posed. How can you really show the world what a good time you had when you are spending most of your time deleting and retaking that perfect profile pic.

I’ve hidden a lot the stuff I follow. By my reckoning, at this rate I will only have a few updates a day and trick myself into believing that everyone else is kicking the habit. So eventually, in a few months I might be ready to take that final big leap and delete my account. Although it has its uses, I let a lot of people know about my blog through Facebook, so I’ll have to find a way around it.

Some of you are probably thinking if I’m serious why don’t I just delete it now?’ Others might be of the opinion that I won’t be able to quit, that I’m an addict, that I can’t live without Facebook. Well I’ve seen people who quit cold turkey and they just come back worse than ever before. That’s not going to be me. I’m going to do it right.

Year in Review 2011

It’s the third day of the New Year and so far most people seem happy to see the back of the year that was 2011. And who can blame them? Earthquakes, uprisings, riots, political upheaval and recession do not make for a joyous end of year summary.

Not that we talk about those kinds of things here at Insert Witty... No, we tend to stick to the stuff we know about, music, movies, books and giving out in general. Unfortunately the last twelve months haven’t been great for those either.

Movie wise it been a pretty ‘meh’ year. Far too many ‘it was ok I suppose’ (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Super 8 and Oscar winning The Kings Speech) or ‘I can’t believe people thought that was good’ (Black Swan, Puss in Boots.) In fact a lot of reviewer’s movie the year fits perfectly into that second category.

Drive, starred Ryan Gosling as a moody, broody, stunt man turned getaway driver. As a movie it was a shallow homage to movies of the 80’s, a decade whose style over substance emptiness Drive emulates to perfection. There is absolutely no need for any of this movie to exist. From the horrible Day-Glo credits and appalling synth music soundtrack to its lack of script and video nasty violence, it is of zero artistic merit. Ladies tend to swoon over Gosling but he was in three other movies this year which are miles better than Drive.

In fact, one of those movies, Blue Valentine makes it into what I would consider the top five of the last year along with, in no particular order, Submarine, Tree of Life, Animal Kingdom and possibly Bridesmaids or Warrior. Like I said, it wasn’t a particularly great year for cinema but of what I saw, these were probably the best.

It was reported today that album sales (including digital units) for the last year are down. I can appreciate this. While there have been some good records, there hasn’t been anything that makes me want to listen to it over and over again. Bon Iver, Adele, Elbow and PJ Harvey have released decent efforts but nothing that has blown me away. So there is no JH album of the year.

My musical highlights have come from live gigs this year. As a huge Prince fan I was very sceptical about his gig in Malahide Castle. It was too expensive and the sound was bound to be terrible, I wasn’t going.


In the end my love of the man’s music got the better of me and I’m so glad it did. It was the fifth time I had seen him live and this was easily the best. It was definitely the best outdoor gig I’ve been at, possibly the best anywhere. A hits collection from start to finish (almost three hours,) he interacted and had the crowd eating out of his hand.

Then at Electric Picnic, I saw lots of great bands playing to appreciative audiences that where there to have a good time. Bands like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Public Enemy, Caitlin Rose, Midlake, Santigold, DJ Shadow and others all put on great sets to make for an enjoyable weekend. The Headline acts then went and turned it into an amazing experience.

Arcade Fire on Saturday night put on an incredible show, every bit as good as their performance in the O2 in 2010, and should have been the highlight of the weekend. That was until Sunday night when the man god that is Jarvis Cocker strode on stage with a reformed Pulp and sent me and my friends back in time to 1996. Singing and dancing along to Disco 2000 was an experience I have waited fifteen years for. It was worth the wait.

On a personal note, 2011 was a great year. I continued my efforts to become a proper human being and writer. I spent a lot of time helping kids write stories (I even appeared on the news doing so) and I helped educate some of them in the ways of proper comedy. The best bit, without doubt, was that I ended the year all loved up and in a relationship with a fantastic woman who I personally think is brilliant.

If I can keep that stuff going forward into this new calendar I will have a very Happy New Year.