Ode to Sandy
This is a poem for Sandy, Grandad’s faithful mutt.
I brought a puppy home one day.
Bring it back! No hope! No way!
These words were spoken far too often;
Pup in arms, his heart did soften.
She chewed it all, she peed on floors,
Molted hairs and scratched the doors.
Forgotten now is naughty Rover;
Fluffy puppy love took over.
Parting now would be disaster.
Bearded buddies, dog and master.
Tennis balls contented sighs,
Collie fur devoted eyes.
Best of friends for ever more
Grandad, Sandy, chair and floor.
Ode to Wouldye
Loyal doggy dog
Wet nose dig dig woof woof.
Pure affection in black fluff.
Manic eyes window canine soul
Abundant love and a water bowl.
Back paw thumping scratch scratch scratch
Distinguished looking grey-ing patch.
Wolf-like gait protect my home
Bark and growling face of foam.
This is but an act you see
To guard his loving family.
Rescued from a drowning fate
Gets me thinking more of late;
How life is short my canine friend
Unspoken love shall never end.
Moral Dilemma Upshot
Poker was cancelled.
Or so I was told 10 minutes into the start of mass. I threw me revised transcribed chords onto paper to coincide with fucked up tuning of electric organ, stubbed out me fag, and legged it down to the church, after failed attempts by b.f. to persuade me to dig in to our Good Friday stash of beer.
Once a barely legal parking spot was found, I ran up to the door, planning a whole ‘I made it!!’ entrance, and began unzipping my guitar case. The priest’s voice echoed through the doors of the secret stairway to the choir balcony… “May the peace of the Lord be with you…”. I froze. The pious statue of Jesus beside the stairs winked at me. I zipped my zipper and fled. With 5 minutes left of mass, there really was no point. I was absolved. I spent the rest of the evening watching Wentworth Miller do his thing in ‘Prison Break’… HEAVEN.
Moral Dilemma
I joined a choir about a week ago. It’s a church choir with lots of kids in it and it makes my heart pump honey to hear their little voices sing off key. I play the guitar to accompany the organ. It sounds crap but who cares?
They just told me that they’re doing a gig tonight for the communion kid’s mass. (During which each child has to go to the alter, remove shoe and sock, and have priest wash their feet… is it just me or does that sound strange?) It’s an ‘emergency’ gig, last minute sort of thing. The thing is, my other half has worked like a dog all week and was invited to a game of poker tonight. I’m giving up going camping on Saturday night so that I may perform with the choir for Easter Mass. AND I’m completely shagged out from entertaining my friend and our kids today.
Am I being tested here? Is the Good Lord having a laugh at my expense and taking bets with his Apostles? If I tell my boyfriend he can’t go play poker, I don’t think I could bear the look of dissapointment on his little face. I got to go last week, so it’s only fair Christian.
Ok, so I think I’ve just answered my own question. Let him play poker, at least there might be some capital gain out of it. I’ll sleep on a bed of pins tonight to make up for it.
A Ghost Story
This isn’t a joke, there’s no scrolling down to any punch-lines for you, I’m afraid. This is just something that happened to me that I can’t explain, and that weirded me out a little bit.
We lived in Wicklow Town for a few years, renting a house that had been owned by our landlord’s uncle. Let’s call this uncle ‘Mr. Murphy’. Our next door neighbours told us that Mr. Murphy was a religious man, who loved classical music, and cycling. He would cycle about 75 miles a day, and for an octogenarian, that’s not to shabby by my standards. He had set up a very elaborate sound system with large speakers set in to the living room wall which we could never get to work. Apparently he would play his electric organ loudly for hours and hours every Sunday, thus pissing his neighbours off no end.
There was a bit of a mystery as to how and where Mr. Murphy died. As nobody would give me a straight answer, I presumed he’d died naturally in his home.
I remember walking in to the house for the first time when we were sussing it out with a view to renting it. The house felt warm, homely, and had a familiar smell. It was as though we were welcome there. You could almost feel a kind sort of energy in it.
We had been living there for about a week, and were watching television in front of a coal fire, when the noises began.
BANG… BANG BANG BANG. BANG. Not rhythmic, but sort of sporadic, and very very loud, trailing off to quiter taps at the end of each set. Sort of like as though somebody was hanging pictures next door. Next door was empty that night though. This banging lasted for about 30 minutes, and then stopped.
The same thing happened the next night we lit a fire. That got me thinking that the chimney must be heating and expanding, causing such loud cracking noises. It happened again and again, on various nights, fire lit and unlit. We got used to it. It was creepy, but what can you do?
I discovered one night that the source of the noise seemed to be upstairs, as it was pretty deafening up there. So, up I went to where the chimney breast continued into our bedroom.
BANG BANG BANG. BANG… As I opened the door, the noise stopped. Iwas really starting to get irritated now, I mean- not only was this noise disturbing our peace, but you have no idea how un-nerving it got when I was alone in the house.
4:00am. The last straw.
BANG! BANG BANG BANG BANG
I woke instantly with a shocked “WTF?!?!” and drew the duvet to my neck. Cold sweat. I listened to the ominous din for about 10 minutes before I was able to move. It wasn’t the chimney breast at all. It was coming from the old carved wooden wardrobe in the corner of the bedroom.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. BANG BANG.
I went to the wardrobe door, sucked in a tight breath, opened it quickly and jumped back Kung Foo style. There was nothing there, save the usual stuff you find in wardrobes. (BANG BANG) I grabbed a chair, dragged it to the wardrobe (BANG BANG BANG BANG), and was about to stand on it, when the sound suddenly got louder… then stopped. To say that I was bricking it would be putting it mildly. Empowered by adrenaline, I stood on the chair, and reached up to the top of the wardrobe to feel around in the dust. My hand rested on a spanner, the only thing to be found on the surface. I took it down, and examined it closely. Just an old, rusty double ended spanner. I tapped it on the wood that decorated the top of the wardrobe door. BANG BANG. Fair enough. Stepping off the chair, I put the spanner into a drawer, and went back to bed. As I pulled the duvet around me, I spoke into the darkness.
“I don’t scare that easily.”
The atmosphere seemed to lighten instantly. I went to sleep. We never heard the noise again.
Petri-dish
I woke up this morning to find the blog fairy had left this spanking new site under my pillow. It’s been sitting on my shoulder all day waiting for me to write something, but my mind is like a washing-machine and I can’t think where to start. So I’ll start with something simple.
Imagine you have a car. It can be any car… like a simple old Rover Metro, or as complicated as Kit, or a Lexus hybrid or something. It’s sophisticated. It can tell you what temperature the road surface is. It can warm your bum for you. It can even provide you with a road map and tell you very politely to ‘take a left at the next junction’. However, no matter how complicated the machine is, by its nature, it will never be able to understand its maker, who is infinitely more complex. The car can sit in its garage under it’s tarp for years, trying to figure out how it came to be, or why it was created. It can even talk to other cars maybe, and come up with amazing car theories. Even if its creator does think to explain these facts, it’s highly likely that the car won’t understand, and will most likely blow a piston trying to figure it out.
I have a lot of respect for faith, I really do. It takes a lot of willpower to believe in something with no evidence or material fact. I can only guess at how caveman must have felt gazing at the stars above and not knowing what those tiny pinpricks were or why they were there. They must have felt so lonely. Much as we do still today… even if we do have theories written in blood.
Let’s say our galaxy is just a plate of mould underneath the huge bed of some behemoth dude, it’s still very pretty. It’s wonderful not knowing what it’s all about, as I’d imagine it would be pretty boring if we knew the answers. We’d probably want to pack it all in out of pure disillusionment. Perhaps the meaning of life is that ignorance is bliss…
