Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if he doesn’t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is … Read more
Foreword Sometime in early 2022, in the middle of the fourth or fortieth wave of the corona virus, I got a message from my old friend, Stefano Schiavocampo. He told me that he was editing for a magazine in Dublin and he’d like me to contribute. “Me?” I thought, “What would anyone need to hear … Read more
I can barely make out Richard´s handwriting on the piece of torn paper. “Second left” I say, looking down at the words. “After the farm…with eh, the eh, big stables.” “I think we just passed it.” Richard says, looking behind him. “Eyes on the road dude!” I shout. “Please!” I´d almost reached for the wheel. … Read more
Mowing How dare you go, leaving me alone to do the mowing? You used to dig the plantains out by hand and rake the moss but after you went I called in a firm to weed and feed the lawn. It is green and even now, clear of buttercups and daisies. I start at … Read more
Oscar Wilde said that the tragedy of being old is that one is still young. I am eighty-six, going on nineteen. Is this a record? I’ve been pruning and wood carving with my chainsaw for years. There is no shortage of wood from the trees that I planted thirty years ago. The resultant grotesque heads … Read more
I’m living in cloud cuckoo land And this just feels like Spinning plates Radiohead, Like Spinning Plates, Amnesiac 2001. Ten years on from the Irish Banking Crisis and the subsequent taxpayer funded bailouts, how are we faring in term of regulating the financial sector? In view of the possibility of another property bubble, it is … Read more
In a quiet room, two men smoke hashish and discuss the inevitability of the Apocalypse. All the signs are apparent: unusual weather conditions, social unrest, unendurable suffering caused by poverty and war. Searching for a loophole, they weave theories of increasing complexity, involving Messiahs, the reversing of the Old Laws, and the triumph of the … Read more
The process of discovering sounds has always been an aspect of music I’ve been connected to, even when I wasn’t aware of its potential and possibilities. During childhood and adolescence, I experimented with instruments, recorded and improvised. It was a somewhat chaotic, intuitive process without pretensions. In my early teens my parents offered me a … Read more
“Il y a longtemps,” I repeated. “A long time ago.” My French felt clumsier every minute. Renard Busquet, leading me through the pearl-gray dimness of the silent east wing, let his own native Poitevin French drop like a thin stream of Vouvray wine. “A long time… Tell me again how your honored ancestor sat in … Read more
Safe To Say How ghastly the day before yesterday was now everyone associated with it is dead. In the future I’ll be against what’s going on now. I’ll be on the television, horrified. But not yet. As a civilised person, I’m absolutely in favour of the nice policeman now, one hundred percent against the tear … Read more