On Joyriders

For all the hand-wringing that goes on in the media about death on the roads, it’s unlikely that people realise just how serious the problem is. A court case in this morning’s Irish Independent gives a rather distressing illustration of just why the problem is as bad as it is, and exactly how far it is we are from a resolution. Very, very far indeed.

The facts are these. Aengus Ó Snodaigh, a Sinn Féin TD but also a citizen as you or I, was at an ice-cream van investing in ice-cream on March 6th last year when one Mark Moran, 23 years old, drove along and started doing wheel-spins on the public road. As one does.

Mr Ó Snodaigh went over to Mr Moran to remonstrate, as doing wheel-spins in a residential area is dangerous. This is not as one does, for fear that one will be treated as Mr Ó Snodaigh was. Mr Moran told Mr Ó Snodaigh to “f*** off, you and your IRA mates, I’m not afraid of you.” Mr Moran then got out of the car and headbutted Mr Ó Snodaigh. The Guards appeared, and Mr Moran evacuated the scene con brio.

The Guards gave chase, and when they caught up with Mr Moran, Mr Moran gave his brother’s name. Sound of him.

While he was doing his wheel-spinning, Mr Moran was under a five year ban for uninsured driving. Mr Moran has managed to amass, at the tender age of 23, 32 previous convictions, mostly for driving related offences, including a three month stretch in the slammer last year for uninsured driving. And to put the tin hat on the story, Mr Moran told the court that not only was he driving while banned from the roads, he also had a few drinks “for Mother’s Day.”

To recap: Mr Moran was up before the court for driving without insurance, driving while banned from the road, driving with drink taken, and assault (sticking the nut on Mr Ó Snodaigh). And that’s just today’s racecard – Mr Moran has thirty-two previous convictions at the age of 23. Thirty-two. How did he fare before the court? To quote the Indo, “Judge Ann Ryan found him [Moran] guilty and said he must realise, as the father of a young child, the danger his driving was posing to children in the area. She remanded him on bail to January 26 to see if he is suitable for 240 hours community service.”

The Irish Times report of the case tells us that Jude Ryan added that “she was prepared ‘to give him a chance to give something back to society.’” Now. What exactly do you think are the chances of that happening? God help us all.


Technorati Tags: Ireland, society, crime, joyriding

Howard Goodall: How Music Works

Fans of music – that is to say, those people who are captivated and enthralled by this spooky art form that stimulates at a level beyond words, as opposed to that brutish herd who queue overnight outside HMV to stick their snouts in whatever some ghastly conglomerate has filled the trough with this morning – will sing a joyful Te Deum this Saturday when the incomparable Howard Goodall returns to our screens, getting down to brass tacks in explaining to a rapt Channel 4 viewing public “How Music Works.”

Mr Goodall first swam into An Spailpín’s ken in 2004, when he presented a series called “Twentieth Century Greats,” and An Spailpín was hooked for ever more. Here at last was the ghost in the machine, the reason why Lennon and McCartney operated at a different level to anyone else, why Cole Porter was unique, and those other mysteries that seem so impenetrable to the novice or amateur. You all love “America,” from West Side Story, of course, but have you ever wondered why it’s such a great song? Have you every asked of America what Pete Townsend asked of the Pinball Wizard? How do you think he does it? What makes him so good? Well, Howard Goodall knows, and what’s more, he’s able to explain it.

Howard Goodall is one of these unique experts in a field, who not only fully understands his or her brief, but is also able to teach. Most people have teaching thrust upon them, in every sense, but Goodall, like all great teachers, just wants to share the fun. He does not eschew jargon – every craft needs its specialist vocabulary, of course – but Goodall, unlike some leading literary intellectuals whom An Spailpín chooses not to name, doesn’t use jargon to disguise his own deficiencies. Like the great teacher he is, Goodall uses jargon to explain, not to confuse. Goodall has nothing to hide; all he wants to do is share, so that the masses will be able to enjoy music, great music, at a little higher level than perhaps they are enjoying it currently.

Not that the masses will be watching, of course; they’ll be annoying some poor little girl behind the counter in HMV about some new product from Coldplay, or whomever. But never mind – Mr Goodall will find his audience, and front and centre among them shall be An Spailpín Fánach. All yours, maestro.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Music, Channel 4, Howard Goodall

Ella Fitzgerald Sings Loch Lomond

This is either inspired or grotesque - or, more likely, both at the same time. Ella could fairly swing, but some songs just aren't made to swing and An Spailpín gets the feeling that the Bonny, Bonny Banks is one of the them. Although Noel Coward did record a wonderful swinging version of the old song, to give him his credit. It was easier keep a straight face with Coward's version, because the man was as a camp as halting site so you expected unusual stuff from him, and he only had a piano accompaniment. It's the brass with underlying pibroch motif that's curdling An Spailpín's blood.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Music, Ella Fitzgerald, Loch Lomond

So. Farewell Then, Gaughan's Bar and Public House

One of the most evocative images of exile in An Spailpín Fánach’s fragile psyche, for whatever reason, is of Frank Ryan taking his last look at the Irish shoreline from the conning tower of German U-boat, on his way from Franco’s Spain to Hitler’s Germany, exile, and death.

An Spailpín resonated a little with how the incorrigible old Republican must have felt last night when a text message confirmed, once and for all, that Gaughan’s Bar, O’Rahilly St, Ballina, Co Mayo, is no more. The premises still stands, and the lunch trade of international renown continues, but from this moment on Gaughan’s is that most deconsecrated of churches, a pub with no beer. The license has been sold and from now on you can get nothing stronger across the counter than coffee, tea and porter cake. And a tremendous sadness settles on An Spailpín as he contemplates that thought.

When people talk about their locals, they try and pin down this ineffable thing that we refer to, with doubtful spelling, as “craic.” This is not the case to those that raised a glass in Gaughan’s, and left it down empty. One of the many delights of a Saturday night in Gaughan’s was watching the slow implosion of a visiting hen night in Ballina who made the mistake of visiting Gaughan’s instead of finding a hostelry that might have suited them better. They would arrive glammed to the nines, cackling happily around the big table just to the left of the door, their bottles of Smirnoff Ice clutched in scarlet talons. After half an hour, all hopes and dreams of the future would have left them. The chief bridesmaid would dream of nursing the poor in Mozambique or along the coast of Malabar, the bride-to-be’s sister would swear to dedicate her life to fighting injustice and inequality where-e’er she found them, while the inchoate blushing bride herself would think of taking the veil, and signing up with the Poor Clares first thing in the morning.

An Spailpín well remembers the night some broken hens left Gaughan’s in silence, trailing their wings out the door. One of their party had just come down from the ladies, and scurried out to rejoin her sisters. A knight of the back bar high stools put it best: “she took one look at us boys, she turned on her heel and she left.”

And fair weather after her – I hope she found better luck nursing beneath that Indian star. Her disappointment was only ever equalled by that of Gunther, Fritz and Johann who had bought Dubliners records by the dozen and had now come to Ireland to participate in this thing they call the “craic.” Porter ordered, smiles all around, one of that visiting tribe would push the chair back from the table, and launch into the Wild Rover or the Black Velvet Band. But before he could tell how he had spent all his money on whiskey and beer, or of a sad misfortune that caused him to stray from the land, the curate on duty would have materialised at his shoulder, and told him, gently but firmly, that if he wanted to sing he had better sing on the street, and not be disturbing the customers. Nonplussed is too weak a word to describe the typical reaction.

The singing ban was lifted for the Ballina Fleadhanna of 1997 and ’98, and An Spailpín is happy to remember that, as he drank what I now sadly realise was my last ever pint of stout in Gaughan’s, Mick Leonard was belting out that sad old ballad about the Boston Burglar, who went midnight rambling, breaking laws of God and man, and paid for it dearly. Why was Mick not shown the door now the Fleadhanna are eight years past? I guess we all get mellow towards the end.

Dreadful curmudgeon that he is, An Spailpín is not a fan of Christmas, but I will miss Christmas Eve in Gaughan’s dreadfully. The town is busy, and people go in and out, meeting, greeting, drinking and departing. There’s an excited hubbub at all times, and we exchange presents – almost invariably booze, as I recall, as if we hadn’t enough of the stuff as it was. Those Christmas Eves were all smoky as well, not just from that warm stove just inside the door, under the pipe racks, but from the fact that ever sinner in the joint was puffing gaspers. The smoking ban has been good for the people and the country, but for a bar that was famous as pipe-smokers’ corner, and that had pipes for sale worth hundreds of pounds, it was perhaps a premonition that the centre couldn’t hold.

And now it’s all gone, never to return. Is it allowable, I wonder, to think of those who have been and are also gone, or is it a sign of disrespect to their memory? It’s facile and juvenile to compare the closing of a bar with a death, but at the same time, it is the closing of another door, and presager of our own mortality, in its way. A way of life has ended, and while I mourn it, it seems unfair not to remember those with whom I shared happy times there, and on whom time was called early, in a manner that seemed neither fair nor just. And as such, in memory of those many nights together, I raise a final glass to Brendan and Bernie, one whom I knew a little, and one whom I knew a little better, and say that another little piece of the past has passed on with you. We that are left move on while those that are gone stroll the Elysian Fields, and while we’ll always have other bars there will never be another Eden, Camelot or Gaughan’s. We can only hope for that happy day when we’re all together again ar slí na fírinne, as that lovely expression goes, sharing a glass together. And even now An Spailpín can but smile as he foresees, just as the archangel takes a deep breath and raises the Last Trump to his lips, a man comes out from behind the bar and says “lookit, you can’t play that thing in here, disturbing my customers.” And so, until that happy, blissful day, farewell then, Gaughan’s; hail and farewell.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, Ballina, bars, Gaughan's

Exclusive Footage of John O'Mahony's Meeting with the Mayo County Board

An Spailpín Fánach, through his many contacts in the underworld, has come into possession of video footage, taken suruptitiously by mobile phone, of John O'Mahony's arrival at a meeting of the Mayo County Board in Castlebar last night. Click here to view the astonishing scenes.

Everybody Must Get Stoned - More Fun on the Buses

At half-past seven tonight, a 123 double decker bus was following its usual route - having crossed Gardiner Street from Parnell Street, it was travelling east along Summerhill, moving into Summerhill Parade and on towards Ballybough and Fairview. Contemporaneous with the moving bus, three static children - ten year olds, according to an eye-witness - were arming themselves with missiles in the flats along Summerhill, waiting for a sufficiently rewarding target.

As the bus drove by, the children let fly with their fusillade. The two youths on the ground floor did no damage, but their Hannibal, who had the wit to station himself on the high ground of the first floor balcony, scored a bull's eye. He struck one of the windows of the upper deck of the bus, shattering it.

As the bus crossed the North Circular Road into Summerhill Parade, the remaining glass began to fall out of the window and render the bus unsafe. Another was called from the depot; as the passengers waited for the lifting of the siege, they compared notes about other horrors. One girl had suffered double jeopardy - her father had the back window of his car broken in the same area, while her dog had been blinded after being struck by the glass. Eventually, the second bus arrived and we continued on our way.

There are one million stories in the naked city, and this hasn't been a terribly interesting one. If anyone wishes to kick up the dust about it, and perhaps remark that when one is travelling home from a day's work one does not expect a re-enactment of the Alamo, that plaintiff will be met with a shrug of bureaucratic shoulders and be reminded that Dublin is a big city now bud, these things happen. Friend bureaucrat will remark in confidence that, were it up to him, "scumbags" such as these would have their coughs softened but, in his official capacity, the bureau's shoulders remain shrugged.

Unfortunately, if there is one stubborn, spiteful, selfish son of a bitch on this Earth it is your faithful narrator. An Spailpín Fánach is not willing to accept that being fired upon on the way home from work is beyond our control, or a small price to pay for living in "this vibrant city [that] hums with a palpable sense that it is creating a new cultural heritage", or any of the rest of that buncombe to which we're so often treated. As such, though he only be a voice, crying in the wilderness, An Spailpín will continue to record these incidents so that, when the Chinese or the Muslims or six-foot mutant ants or extra-terrestrial invaders like the Martians or the Jovians, whoever it is takes over from our now clearly past its sell-by date Western Society, will know what it was like in the final years. Stubborn, as I say.


Technorati Tags: Dublin, Dublin Bus, Anti-Social Behaviour, Hooliganism

Rince na Leice san Irish Independent

Tugadh le fios oíche aréir go raibh deireadh ag teacht ar Sky News Ireland, an chuid den gcraoltóir ilnáisiúnta Sky News a bhain le cúrsaí na nGael. Is brónach an rud é, toisc go bhfuil postanna a chailliúnt agus toisc gur gá duinn níos mó gúthanna a chloisint ins na méain, in ionad níos lú. Ach ní n-aontaíonn gach duine leis an tuairim seo, mar is soléir ón alt dóchreite a fhoilsiú san Irish Independent inniú, ina ionsaíonn duine éigin (níor fhoilsíodh ainm an scríobhnóra, ach tá boladh Ian O'Doherty ar gach focal, sílim). Tá an Indo ag tabhairt amach faoi lagadh caidhéan iriseorachta agus ag foilsiú ionsaithe mar seo ag an am céanna? Sin an citeal ag dubhú ar an bpota, sílim.