Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff

The (Scandinavian) Emperor's New Clothes?

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 27 May 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Oh boy, I’m going to annoy some of you today.

It’s a question I keep asking myself so I thought I’d ask it here on the blog, to set the thoughts down and see how they might look in black and white. It’s not a deep moral question – mine rarely are – but sometimes the more trivial questions can lead on to the deeper truths.

Not this time, mind you, but never mind.

Why are we all watching Scandinavian Drama and, perhaps more interestingly, is it really as good as we all like to think it is?

Annoyed yet? Hang in there.

Actually before I go on, I need to place myself firmly in this picture. I love Scandinavian Drama. Saturday nights, Beeb Four, I’m there with my can of beer, lapping it up (the drama, not the beer) (well…). So I’m not on the outside, looking in here, I’m on the inside_ you get the picture.

We recently finished watching ‘The Bridge’ and Patricia and I really enjoyed it. This was more fun for me that The Killing if only because my wife stayed along for the ride instead of falling into a semi-comatose state within minutes of Sarah Lund appearing on screen. So, yeah, we watched ‘The Bridge’ and Saga took a while to warm to and Martin was loveable but a bit of a dog and we thought we knew who did it but we didn’t really and it was all good. When it was over, we looked at each other and we agreed that it had been good and then I went on Twitter and agreed that it had been good and then we met our friends and they had quite like it too (although don’t tell them the end cos they had Sky Plussed the last two episodes). It was all good. Roll on the second series.

Yes, but how good was it really? Eh?

After it was finished, I got to thinking about an ITV Sunday Night series called ‘The Bridge’. Two hours a week for five weeks. We would watch it, sure we would, we would give it a good chance, but would we like it? If it was the same story, the same script, the same quality of acting, would we similarly adore it?

I don’t think we would.

I think we would probably come to hate it. We might find the characters over-simplified, we might bemoan the lack of sophistication in the script, the woodenness of some of the lesser character actors. We might also worry about the promising sub-plots unceremoniously dumped along the way, the jarring tendency to incidental melodrama, the ‘Relationship 101’ approach to affairs of the heart.

You get where I’m coming from now. You’re getting annoyed. I can tell. I'm like that kid, in the crowd, shouting at The Emperor, "Hey, I can see your willy!" (Which, in Scandanavian Drama, is often the case anyway).

But, remember, I like all this Scandinavian Drama, just like you do. I’m on your side. Hell, I even wrote a whole blog thing about The Killing over here. So please don’t shoot me, I’m just asking the question. Sit down again for a moment and let’s think some more about it.

The answer, as it often is, is simple.

It’s Different.

That’s it, isn’t it? It’s good but that’s not the main reason we migrate towards it. We go there because it’s Different. It’s a different world. They speak a different language for a start but that’s only one thing. All the actors are new to us, we’ve never seen them before, it’s like they’ve dropped from a different planet. The landscapes are markedly different, cold and bleak and wild and cold and, oh, I said cold, and cold and cold and cold.

Even the doors open the wrong way for Chrissakes! It is Different and that’s why we, myself firmly included, love it so much. It’s good too, if it wasn’t good we wouldn’t be there, we’re not stupid. But it’s not quite as good as we may think it is, it’s the Difference that makes up for that.

I think the subtitles play their part too. Obviously they contribute to the Difference but it’s a little more than that. They simplify things considerably. You’ll have noticed that the characters on screen often seem to be saying much more than the subtitles are. They use each other’s names a lot and the subtitles hardly do this at all. My pal Jason Arnopp has written an enlightening blog post on the art of writing subtitles for film, here’s a link. Everything is pared down to the quick. I think this becomes an attractive aspect of the Scandinavian Dramas too, this simplification of the text. We get the pure drama without the embellishment of the everyday nuances.

I loved The Killing and The Bridge and I’m loving Borgen at the moment (I’m late to it, I know). Borgen is sharp and witty but it’s no West Wing for sharpness and wit, yet is seem almost comparable because it is so Different. That’s a little illustration of my point right there.

That’s it. Now I’ll just read this back and see how it sounds.

Tak and goodnight.

Druid Murphy Starts a New Conversation on a Hot May Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

Our waiter is all business and intuition. “You’re going to Druid aren’t you? Don’t worry we’ll get you out of here on time.” Galway is proud of Druid and rightly-so. Even the waiters conspire to assemble the audiences in a timely fashion.

This evening was the opening performance of an epic run for Druid Theatre Company. ‘DruidMurphy’ presents a cycle of three of Tom Murphy’s most acclaimed plays in a tour that will take them to New York, Washington DC and Tuam, to name but a few. Tonight, I was lucky enough to be in the Town Hall Theatre (on time) to see ‘Conversations on a Homecoming’ for the second time in my life.

‘Conversations’ holds a special place in my heart and memory. When I met my wife-to-be in London, she was newly arrived there from her hometown of Galway and, before leaving, she had seen Druid do ‘Conversations’ in Flood Street. She told me all about it and, when it finally arrived at the Donmar Warehouse in London, she brought me to see it. Then she bought me a linen-bound edition of the text which I have here on my desk now.

I had to explain that. I had to explain that I can’t really tell you about the performance I saw tonight as an isolated event. I can only tell you about the amalgam of the play I saw over twenty-five years ago and the one I saw this evening.

For me, ‘Conversations’ is about many things. It’s about going-away and coming-back, failure and embitterment, friendship and enmity, small town morals and big city vacuums. It is, above all else, an utterly ‘Irish’ play. More specifically, it is a ‘Galway’ play and the subtlety of the writing can make us believe that we actually know real people who are the actual doubles of the characters in this play.

I thought the original cast were Definitive and did not see how this (mostly) new cast could carry this play off again for the old-timers like me. Indeed, for the first five minutes-or so, it was as if the Theatrical Ghosts of McGinley and Stafford hung over the characters as they assembled in the bar. Not for long though. Rory Nolan as Junior was the first to win me over. God, he was so like Trish’s brother Enda, it was unbelievable. (He wasn’t, really, I suppose, but Enda is Real Galway and so was Junior.. Real Galway). Aaron Monaghan as Liam was simply outstanding. His descent from marginalised compadre towards belligerent drunk was recognisable to anyone who has ever spent time in an Irish bar. Like a Crumpled Pacino or a Displaced Bada-Bing Back Room Sidekick, he radiated shady dealings and dubious integrity. He was a black hole for respect and affection. A wonderful performance.

Garrett Lombard as Tom had the harder sell. Tom is not the most likeable character but he is, perhaps, the one we most identify with. He wraps himself in rhetoric and cynicism but the overriding fact of his existence is that he has failed and this failure has crept up and blindsided him and left him solid and lost in the corner with his borrowed newspaper.

Marty Rea is Michael, the returned friend. He gets to deliver the killer line of the play, which I wouldn’t dare throw away here. As a moment, it was extremely effective and Tom’s reaction to it was equally so.

The wonderful presence of Marie Mullen onstage gives this new production this deeper context of time passing. Marie was here twenty five years ago too, being just a brilliant and funny as ‘Peggy’ as Eileen Walshe is now. Now, however Marie plays this aged ‘Missus’ and the sight of her (playing older than she is) in Pat Leavy’s role is nonetheless our own personal sucker-punch of nostalgia and aging.

Garry Hynes directs the play with precision. The sequential placing of pint glasses on tables seem almost musical at times and the choreography of chairs and cigarettes and money and drink is an integral part of the whole.

‘Conversations’ puts us in a place where a licence is granted not just to serve alcohol but to argue and berate and fight and curse and laugh and hate and love. A place where you can finally admit that everything is ruined and without joy only then to wipe it all on the doormat on the way out the door to stumble home and perhaps come back and do it all again another evening.

‘Conversations’ isn’t always easy. It’s preachy at times because the characters in it tend towards the preachy. It’s rather bleak in its outlook and there is real sadness in so many of the characters therein. But there is recognisable truth in it and that is always ultimately uplifting.

Congratulations to Druid for bringing back ‘Conversations on a Homecoming’ with even more weight and depth and truth than it had twenty-five years ago.

And that’s saying something.

A Fifteenth Duck Variation – A Bit of David Mamet Fan Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:37:00 +0000

I like David Mamet very much. He is, for me, the consummate playwright. This week, I’ve been rereading one of his earliest plays, ‘Duck Variations’. I’d like to read it aloud sometime with someone, I might get onto my old acting buddy Eamon and see if he would come out and play with me, 'have a little read-through.

‘Duck Variations’ is a two-hander. Two guys sit on a park bench and watch the ducks. They talk and sometimes argue about the ducks, their lives, and their relevance to their own lives and life in general. It’s funny. It’s like a sort of a ‘Waiting for Goduck’.

There are fourteen ‘Duck Variations’ in all. As with variations in music, they are all on the same theme (Ducks) but each takes a slightly different approach.

Given my policy of ‘blogging what I’m thinking about this week’, I thought I would mess-around-a-bit and try to write my own ‘fifteenth duck variation’. Damn it all, if Harry Potter fans can do it, why can’t I?

Who knows, maybe David Mamet will come by and kick my sad little ass.

That would be cool, right?

FIFTEENTH VARIATION
(That ‘Less is More’ Thing)

George: Well?

Emil: Well what?

George: It’s been a while.

Emil: It certainly has.

George: We ain’t getting any younger.

Emil: We’re certainly not.

George: You must have something.

Emil: The Ducks?

George: What else?

Emil: Well.

George: I knew it.

Emil: It ain’t much.

George: I bet it is. I just bet it is. I wish I came sooner now.

Emil: Don't overexcite yourself.

George: Tell me. Tell me right now.

Emil: The thing about the Ducks is.

George: Yes? Yes?

Emil: The thing.

George: About. Yes.

Emil: I got nothing.

George: What?

Emil: Nothing, I got.

George: All this time?

Emil: All those years.

George: Nothing?

Emil: I know.

George: It’s a crime.

Emil: I know.

George: Against Humanity.

Emil: Against Duckdom.

George: Against?

Emil: Duckdom, I know.

George: But wait.

Emil: I’ve let you down. I’m sorry.

George: But that’s not bad, not bad at all.

Emil: What?

George: What you said.

Emil: The ‘Having Nothing’?

George: The ‘Duckdom’ thing. Where have we heard that before? When has it been spoken?

Emil: I don’t know.

George: Never. That’s when. It’s an original thought. Right there.

Emil: Are you sure?

George: I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life.

Emil: Really?

George: Well…

Emil: An original thought.

George: About Ducks.

Emil: From me.

George: Go figure.

Emil: I know.

George: Duckdom. It’s good.

Emil: I might have another.

George: That would be difficult to believe.

Emil: I was too shy to say, at first, but I feel encouraged now.

George: To speak.

Emil: To take the leap of faith.

George: It’s inspiring, is what it is.

Emil: Thank you. You’ve raised me up to this place.

George: And?

Emil: And? Oh yes.

George: In your own time.

Emil: Well. All right then. The Duck, in one respect at least, is like the very antithesis of the Iceberg having, as it does, over sixty-six percent of its body mass above the water line at all times.

George: Hmmm.

Emil: Well?

George: Hmmm.

Emil: What did you think?

George: I preferred the first. The Duckdom one.

Emil: Did you?

George: Yes.

Emil: Is there a reason?

George: It’s like that thing.

Emil: Thing?

George: Less is More. That ‘Less is More’ Thing. You know.

Emil: No, I don’t.

George: You should look it up. It’s good.

Emil: I will.

George: You should.

Emil: You can count on it.

George: Good.

Anyway, check out the original. It's obviously better.

As a foot note, if you have a penchant for the art of two characters speaking to each other, you could do much worse than visit Jim Murdoch’s blog ‘The Truth About Lies’. Jim uses his characters Aggie and Shuggie to ponder, in turn, each of the reviews his excellent books receive. It’s a very funny device and very well done. Click here for an example.

Good Art - Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Crown and Treaty – A Sort of a Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 13 May 2012 10:24:00 +0000

It’s a point I consider often. Art and, more specifically, how your appreciation of it can be enhanced by having some knowledge of the person who creates it.

I tend to think it breaks down in one of two ways and which way it goes largely depends on the Art.

If it’s not Good Art, then the knowledge of the person adds a specific burden to it. A requirement to be kind, perhaps dishonest, perhaps kindly dishonest. I know you, you’ve made Art, I don’t think all that much of it. So what do I say to you? I want to encourage you, to be your friend but, hey, it ain’t all that great.

That’s the downside.

The upside? Well the upside far-outweighs the downside.

When you see Art done by someone you have some knowledge of, and it’s Great, and it’s Bloody Great, then the Art is enhanced a number of times over. It’s wonderful.

I’ve never met anyone from the band Sweet Billy Pilgrim, not in person, but I’ve been talking to some of them for some years now. Yes, of course I’m talking about Social Media, the wild animal that is as valued by its users as it is reviled by its non-users. I’ve talked with some members of Sweet Billy Pilgrim quite a bit, enough to know them to be smart, funny, moral, deeply-human, talented, dedicated, grounded and, well… sweet.

In among a number of nice things people have recently tweeted about me, someone called me ‘unassuming’. I think that’s a word that actually describes me quite well. I don’t tend to ever assume much, especially in terms of friendships-and-such. So I can only say I feel I am friends’ with some members of Sweet Billy Pilgrim and, without assumption, I hope they are ‘friends’ with me too. So this, then, is a prime example of what I’ve been saying for some time. That Good Art is that bit better when you know the Artist.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim have a new album out called ‘Crown and Treaty’. I like it very very much indeed and this liking is deepened by what little I know of the good folk behind the sounds.

Would I have found this album if we hadn’t ever exchanged words? It’s tricky to say. Possibly not. I tend to move in very restricted musical grooves - pretty eclectic, yes – but also pretty limited in its own way. I like what I like and I am lazy about moving out into new musical realms. This tendency is worsened by the fact that I don’t often like new things at first-hearing. It takes me time to adapt and fall in love with something new. This also means that, when I find something I really like, I tend to cling to it and never let it go. So, no, it’s fair to say I might not have found this album, not this early in its lifespan, at any rate.

And, supposing I had found it, and had not known any of the people involved? Would I have liked it still? That is much much easier to answer. Yes. I would have loved it. As I do. I would have loved it. Because it’s Great, you see. It’s brave and moving and engaging and inventive and I feel considerably better whenever I listen to it.

Bad Art by Friends can make you a slightly lesser person than you are. It can make you practice avoidance and deceit in the name of friendship, it can bring you down. Thankfully the converse is also true. Good Art by Friends raises you up.

I suppose I should say something about the music rather than speak in fancy generalisations all the time. That’s what the music-press do, isn’t it? They draw comparisons and pick out moments to illustrate their points. Sometimes reviews feel like an exam answer, “I think this and here’s the bit that made me think it.” I’m not sure I am equipped to do that. My response to music is not really set on a verbal level. It’s the same with visual art. I am sure there are words which would reflect my reactions. I am even sure that I know those words. I’m just not sure which ones they are or what order they go in.

There’s certainly a fun game you can play with this album. A sort of ‘Spot the Influences’ thing. I can’t help do it myself. The music is so utterly original and yet it seems to nod, now and again, to things which have gone before. I could sense Thom Yorke, in places, Tom Waits, Mark Isham (in early Wyndham Hill days), Pink Floyd, Blue Nile, on-and-on. I bet you could find your own, if you listened. Come and play.

Lyrically, too, it is beautiful. Off-beat, informed and never-ever obvious. I know more about words than music, perhaps, and this stuff gets me in that regard too.

So may I recommend this album to you? Can I give it five stars like most of the real music reviewers have already done? Not because I’m trying to get a sale-or-two for people I know a little about or neither because I’m trying to ingratiate myself with them. None of the above. Just because I like this album a lot and I think you might like it too. Seek out a bit of it, on YouTube, at the bottom of this post, or streaming somewhere and see what you think.

I have quite a number of online friends who I owe reviews to. Friends who, by continually making Good Art, and by my knowing them a little bit, make my life more full and more fun. People like Jim and Andrea and William and Rachel. I jumped to Sweet Billy Pilgrim because they are in my head now with their wonderful new music and it helps to write about what’s in my head.

It always helps.

Lost My Sense of Humour

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Love means nothing to a tennis player.
The Dirty Rat.
Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy’s really just a cat.
That horse’s face, it ain’t so fucking long.
I’ve lost my sense of humour now you’re gone.

Wing the Wong Number?
Fancy that.
That Chicken crossed the road cos he’s a Prat
What goes up a chimney down? That’s just fucking wrong.
I’ve lost my sense of humour now you’re gone.

Don’t ‘Knock Knock' me,
I’ll ‘Knock’ your bloody head
I’ll make you wish that you were bloody dead.
You’ll say ‘Who’s there?’ then find that it’s just me.
Then you’ll be ‘Funny Fucker RIP’.

That Young Girl from Madrid
can simply go away.
There’s no place for dirty Limericks here today
There’s no Tweetment or no Oinkment to put on
I’ve just lost my sense of humour now you’re gone.

Way To Go

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 06 May 2012 09:46:00 +0000

There are quite a few photographs and they are good.

But words often spark more memories in me than photos do, so it’s important that I write down a few words, really just for myself, about Dad’s 80th Birthday Party which, as most of you know, we had about six weeks ago.

I could do it privately and put the words in a drawer somewhere but this blog incites me to do my writing and to do it a little better. Besides, I like sharing my words with whoever cares to read them so this seems best, to me.

* * * *

I’m not usually the one who wants to celebrate anything. I’ll go along and I’ll generally love it but I won’t be the one pressing to organise it, to get it started. This time, though, I was right at the front of queue. This one, I felt, was worth celebrating. Very few people, you see, had expected Dad to reach 80 years old. There had been so much heart-trouble, so many operations, it just didn’t ever seem terribly likely. Yet here he was, smart and strong, independent and enjoying life more thoroughly than he had in many years. It was something to celebrate for sure.

So, on the eve of his 80th birthday, we all gathered to eat. “Let’s go to that usual place,” I said, “we all enjoy it and it will be perfectly fine.” Some of the others wanted a bigger deal. “That lovely place which overlooks the lake. It’s a bit of a drive but who cares? It’s an occasion.” So we went there. I’m so glad we did. We had a private room, overlooking the lake. The early evening was beautiful. The fishermen in the group, Dad included, must have looked wistfully down upon the lake and the island and pictured themselves out there in their boats. Even I did a bit of that and I was not one of the fisherman in the group.

The food was spectacularly good. If it was longer ago, you could be forgiven in thinking that I am viewing this evening now with rose-tinted spectacles but I’m not. It was only a few weeks ago and I remember it clearly. That’s why I’m setting it down like this. So, yes, the food was very good. We had two tables in the room and there was much chatter and even photographing of each other’s dinners. That was new to me. In between courses, we went out onto the balcony to sniff the lake air and Auntie Della’s cigarette smoke, then we came back in for more.

At the end, Dad made a little speech. Can you believe the perfection of it? He got to make a little speech. Nothing grandiose, he just thanked us all for being there and said how it meant a lot to him. Then we got pictures taken. He looks good in the pictures, happy that we’re all together and having such a nice time. That’s what I think anyway.

We had started dinner early so, by eight thirty, we were on the road again, convoying back into town. The pub had set aside the entire rear section for Dad and his family for a few drinks and an open invitation, for anyone who cared to, to come and have a drink and say ‘Happy Birthday.’

They came in droves. People we see every day, people we hadn’t seen in years. Dad and Berney and Della set themselves up in a corner and sort-of ‘held court’ while wave upon wave of well-wishers landed, greeted, laughed and joked, remembered, then mingled among themselves and chatted and drank.

The pub laid on sausages and chips. If Jesus had them when that multitude showed up for his gig, he wouldn’t have needed any miracle. There was plenty to go around. Soon the place was buzzing with friends and family, old work colleagues, neighbours, fellow-Rovers-fans and God knows who else.

Late in the evening, there was a big cake. It was a lovely cake. It showed Dad on his boat on his lake, wrapped up warm in his Rovers scarf, having hooked a friendly shark-like fish who was popping out of the blue water to wish him a Happy Birthday. The cake was much-admired then cut and enthusiastically demolished. The noise levels got louder and then, eventually, quieter as the congenial evening slipped away from us. Dad enjoyed it all, his friends, the fun. I could always tell when he wasn't enjoying something, I always knew. He enjoyed this evening. He enjoyed it.

Sometime after Midnight, I had to go. I had to get back to my boys. Dad was still holding court in the corner, so I went over to see him.

“I have to go. How are you doing?”

“Oh fine. I’m thinking of going home myself fairly soon.”

“You should, you’ve done all you have to do now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

It wasn’t the worst conversation to have had.

That’s all I know, first hand, until the morning.

I know he stayed a while longer. He needed to get a big black plastic bag to put all his presents in. A bar man obliged. He brought them home and he and his daughters opened the presents and exclaimed over the thoughtfulness and kindness of people.

Then he got ready and went to bed, in fine form. He curled up and went to sleep.

And that’s how we found him in the morning. Curled up and asleep. Sometime towards morning, he had slipped away. He hadn’t been expected to ever hit 80, but, at midnight, he had. He'd done it so well we hadn't been expecting him to go.

I was glad I was there, that morning. Otherwise I never could have believed that somebody could die so peacefully. I would have thought there must inevitably have been some moment of pain or discomfort before you’d go. But I was there and there was nothing but deep sleep. Deep sleep.

Even in the first moments of shock, I couldn’t help but think what a wonderful way it was to go. To see everybody, share a last meal untroubled by any foresight, get to tell everyone what they meant to you. Celebrate, socialise, make plans for a little trip in the days to come and then go home and go to sleep.

I’ll have it that way too, please, when my time comes.

Heike Investigates

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:51:00 +0000

The light was back on again, where it hadn’t been on for months. Suddenly it glowed once more, orange and unclear in the coastal dusk.

Heike moved the telescope. She manhandled it away from the main window, the one facing out into the bay, where it was used to study the sea and the stars and the lights that twinkled on as dusk fell over the distant island.

“What are you doing?” asked Uli, from his favourite chair.

“Ssshhhh,” she told him, “read your book and ssshhhh.”

Despite the protestations of her poor back, she dragged the telescope and tripod into the side conservatory and she set it up so that she could peer at the window in the adjoining house where the light had so recently reappeared.

“If you can see them, then they can see you,” Uli observed, from deep within his book.

“Ssshhh.”

“I’m only saying…”

But Heike wasn’t listening. She had finally fixed the telescope on the upper floor window and she could finally see inside. But what could she see? The light was still orange, as if through a shade or a filter, and things were stacked up inside, like rolls of carpet or fabric or_

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. Ssshhh.”

Nobody lived in the house. For all the years that they had been coming to their retirement home-away-from-home-by-the-sea, nobody had lived there. But, sometimes, there had been this light, in the upper floor gable window, glowing out into the night. No car to deliver a person down the lonely lane to light the light, no other light anywhere else in the house to match it. Just that one orange glow in the dusk, for a short while, and then gone again until the next time.

Heike realised she wasn’t breathing as she peered deep into the orange room. She pulled herself away from the eyepiece and forced herself to inhale for a moment. Through the naked eye, the puzzle of the distant window was now solved, carpets, or fabric, piled up in rolls, but no person, no movement, no hand to light a light.

Perhaps they were smugglers. The coast below her house was rocky and challenging but a small boat could be landed there by a skilled oarsman and there had been plenty of reports of illicit cargoes intercepted not too much further down along the coast. Why not here then? Perhaps the house was a stopping-over-point for ill-gotten goods… like carpets or rolls of mysterious fabric.

She reproached herself. Mustn’t let her imagination run away with her. It was probably just the owner of the house who came down intermittently to check that everything was okay, stay an evening and then go away again.

How?

How does he get there? How does he go away again? Why do we never see him?

She peered once more into the eyeglass. Orange light, carpets, no sign of life.

“I’m going over.”

Uli looked up, surprised, “What? Where?”

“Over, over,” she pointed with her chin, “over.”

“Surely not.”

“I have some of my Tiramisu left. I’ll put it in the blue bowl and cover it with foil and bring it over, as a welcoming gift,” she nodded decisively, “it will be… neighbourly.”

Uli had been contemplating a small Whiskey. Nothing fancy, a little Crested Ten perhaps and then bed and eventual sleep to the sound of the waves. Now it all seemed suddenly rather distant and unattainable. “Go in the morning, if you must,” he said.

“But the light will be gone by morning, it always is.”

“All the more reason to wait and go then.”

Heike tried the telescope once more. Nothing had changed. The smugglers orange light, the carpet cargo, the impending dusk.

She decided, snapped up straight, headed from the fridge, “I’m going.”

“It’s too late to go,” Uli protested.

“It’s seven thirty, it’s not late at all,” said Heike.

“It’s late for us.” And perhaps therein lay the crux of the matter.

* * * *

The house was only fifty metres away as the crow flies but to get there on foot was a more substantial proposition. The driveway down toward the coast had to be negotiated and then onto the lane and back up away from the coast to the entrance to the other house. It took ten minutes or so to navigate it and the Tiramisu slipped and slided in the blue bowl all the way around.

Uli had presented her with five finals words as she stomped out of the back door in her favourite green Wellingtons.

“You are not Miss Marple,” he had said.

The words stayed with her as she tromped her way down towards the sea and her back itched in the exact spot that she knew Uli had the telescope focused on. What on earth did she think she was doing? Was she going to single-handedly round up the smugglers in time for the nine o’clock news? Was that it?

The sea before her was choppy and black. The lighthouse swept its rotating beam along the island with reassuring regularity and the lights along the far side of the bay were as many as they were going to be all evening. She walked on.

They had happened upon a Whale, along the shore, earlier in the week. Dead of course. A Pilot Whale, Uli had said. It had been assailed by the gulls and it stank to high heaven. It wasn’t the smell that had bothered her though. It was the finality, the suddenness of the finality. One moment bolting through the black cold waters, the next impaled on a barren shore, life leaking away…

The front door of the neighbour’s house arrived quicker than expected. She had almost expected the front door to be ajar, to creak open as she tapped gently upon it. But it wasn’t, it was closed and it looked like it had not been opened in the longest of times. In fact, the whole place looked deserted. Perhaps that’s the way the smugglers liked it.

She glanced across at her own house and, yes, there was Uli, eye glued to the telescope. He saw her seeing him and straightened up quickly to beckon her back home. Come home Miss Marple, come home to the shore.

No.

Not yet.

She turned and raised her fist to the door. A moment’s hesitation and then she knocked. A hard confident neighbourly knock. Then she waited, hardly nervous at all.

Was that a movement within? She couldn’t be sure. Who would come to the door? Would it friend or foe, smuggler or aged owner? What would they have to say to her?

Heike didn’t know and she suddenly realised that was just fine.

She didn’t need to know the answers, not at this very moment.

At this very moment, she was just out in the world asking the questions.

And that was enough.

Honk – A Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:07:00 +0000

I shouldn’t write when I’m buzzin’. It never works out well. Still I’m here… so…

Two of our loveliest schools here in Castlebar, (County Mayo, Ireland) – St. Gerald’s College and St. Joseph’s Secondary School - have joined forces to produce this year’s school musical and I’m just back from seeing it and, yes, I’m buzzin’ so watch out.

‘Honk’ is not a widely-known musical but it has a pedigree. It won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical in the year 2000 many years after a fledgling version played in Newbury in 1993 (yes ‘fledgling’, I told you I was buzzed… leave me alone!).

Anyway enough with the history already. ‘Honk’ is a bright, clever, show with a witty, ever-so-slightly-saucy book and a brace of hummable tunes. It’s also ideally suited for a teen cast to kick to life bearing, as it does, messages of Tolerance, Anti-Bullying, Stranger-Danger and Frog Admiration.

It’s the ‘Ugly Ducking’ story, you got that, right? There once was an ugly ducking… It’s well suited for a musical, there’s all the farm animals, waiting anxiously for the hatching of Ida and Drake’s brood, everyone a little curious as to what’s in that big egg right at the back. What eventually comes out is a bit ‘different’ and the farmyard is not slow to let poor ‘Ugly’ know all about this. Isolated, starved of attention (and French Bread) Ugly turns in despair to the Cat for friendship but the Cat has other things on his mind.

This is all done with a great big huge cast of super-energetic teens – a boys school and a girls school thrown together and allowed to wear outlandish clothes and belt out huge show tunes… where were you, Mr Director, (Ronan Lardner) when I was young?

And the cast is Phenomenal. No, really they are. They play it to the hilt and it’s a complicated show with as many different conflicts as you might find in the boys school and as many different mood shifts as you might find in the girls... (I’m in trouble now, right?)

Let’s name some names.

Gerry Sheil plays Ugly with a gentle vulnerably – a sort of Clark Kent waiting to learn he is Superman. I’ve known Gerry a long time and he really threw himself into this. He fearlessly allows himself to play gawky and naïve in front of his peers and then effortlessly rises to the heights required to carry the finale. For me, Gerry showed an elusive quality that I sometimes see in the likes of Johnny Depp, a sense of assured restraint. Listen to me rattle on… I just thought he Aced it.

Katie Rooney, who plays Maureen, has a lovely voice – why did nobody tell me this? She’s a little underused but she commands attention whenever she’s onstage, particularly when interacting with Ida and, of course, when she’s singing. Have you heard her sing? I mean really!

Neil Kernan is a great Cat. He brings this Bob Fosse quality to the part – he probably doesn’t even bloody know who Bob Fosse is but you do, right? You remember when he did that ‘snake’ thing in ‘The Little Prince’? Yeah, that (I know that none of you have a clue what I am talking about and, guess what, I don’t care). Neil is a great Cat. Miow.

There’s another great Cat too. Jane Murray is Queenie the Domesticated Cat and I can’t talk about her too much in case I get arrested. Queenie, as a character, brings a little ‘edge’ to the piece and when the two cats get together… well… Changing the subject rapidly, Queenie’s accomplice Lowbutt is played wonderfully by Katie Glynn and she’s got a belting voice and all.

Michael Hall as the Bullfrog is given one of the best parts in the show and he doesn’t miss a single opportunity. Rasping Durante-like gags and croaking one of the show stopping numbers ‘Warts and All’ he owns the stage while he is on it. Well done Sir.

I could name loads more, Drake and Jack Daw, Penny and Greylag the Goose but it’s nearly bedtime and we all have to be up in the morning.

So let me name just one more. Tanita Tolan. Tanita, as Ida, is simply a Star. She delivers the emotional payload of the story with consummate ease and she sings like a dream. People will return to this paragraph in decades to come and cite this as one of the first of her many subsequent glowing reviews. I don’t mind, I need the page views. Watch for Tanita though, mark me on this.

A word too for the band. It’s lovely to see a show with a real live band, it’s a real treat and the guys were great.

I just had a great night. It’s not just about the show or the music, it’s about growing up and making memories and taking part and bonding in adversity and doing things that scare you and showing yourself boldly to your friends and family. It’s about the fear before and the buzz afterward, the catcalls from friends down the back, the onstage disasters that the audience never even notice…

… it’s about that frisson, innit?

Look, it’s finishing tomorrow night. If you’re in Castlebar, you should get your ass up to Breaffy House Arena and see it. Go on, you can come back and read this again after, I’ll still be here.

Thanks, then, to St. Gerald’s and St. Joseph’s for a grand evening out.

I had fun.

Can’t you tell?

Neighbour’s Dog Hates Me

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:22:00 +0000

It’s all in the title this week folks, no real need to read any further. The dog hates me, what else do you need to know?

It’s disappointing though, mightily disappointing. You see I rather fancy myself as a dog-person. If you’ve seen some of my earlier blog posts like this and this, you’ll know this already. You’ll know that I think I’m actually ‘part dog’ myself.

Plus, I like dogs, I’m not afraid of them and I tend to get on really well from them right from the off. I like to make an effort and becomes friends with them and, like The French, they generally appreciate that.

Not this mutt though. Not him.

He’s a little furry runt, this neighbour’s dog, not at all intimidating, and I would quite like us to be mates. I been trying but I think I’ve given up hope now. I think this little post is the final nail in the coffin of our relationship.

He’s usually holed up inside his master’s house, this little tyke, and then he’s obviously not a problem. It’s when they let him out in the garden that all hell breaks loose. He’s just a bit overly-territorial, I guess. He stands in behind the railings of his steel gate and he peers out the gap and when someone passes, he barks at them.

Fair enough, you might well say, he’s a dog.

All very well. It’s just that he’s got a different routine for me and frankly it gets on my nerves. You see, he doesn’t bark at me, not at first, not for the longest time. I generally see him when I’m walking down to the shop to the get milk or something. He sees me approaching his gates and I see him…

… and he doesn’t bark.

I get right up beside him and he’s watching me intently and I walk past him and he seems fine with that and then, only then, when I’m gone past him, does he bark. And, no, he doesn’t just bark, he goes friggin’ Ballistic. He hurls himself at the gate, as if trying to tear it apart with his tiny jaws, he bawls abuse in his little doggy voice. You would get the impression he would tear my throat out, if he could only get through the gate and if he could only reach up.

There’s more.

Once he’s started, he doesn’t stop barking. Ever. The shop which I go to is over five minute further past his gate and, all the time until I get there, I can hear him barking, barking, barking. When I come out of the shop again, milk in hand, I can hear that he’s stopped and he doesn’t start again until I do the same thing again; walk past his gate, get eyed up intimidatingly and then barked all the way home.

“Why don’t you stop at the gate and make friends with him?” I hear you ask. (I do, I’m like that) To this I say, “Do you really think I haven’t tried that, I mean, do you really?” Trying to make friends with him is the very worst thing you can do. Believe me, I know. Friendship-attempts raise the level of apoplexy in the mutt to literally terrifying levels. Not the sort of terror that applies to my own personal safety, I’m not that big a wuss. No. It’s that terror that this dog will drop dead at any moment from the sheer force of his hostility.

So I can’t win. I suppose I could go around to the shop in the other direction but it’s a long way to go just to keep a tiny dog alive. Hate me if you must but it’s a price I find myself unwilling to pay.

And here’s the rub, the truth of the matter. The barking of this little dog doesn’t make me sad or scared or philosophical. I wish. It’s makes me angry, almost as angry as the little dog gets. This is my street, you see, and I bought this house on this street and this little… this little… Shit… doesn’t get to tell me to back off on my own street. Why if I could have five minutes in that garden with him, just five minutes, I would take him and I would_

Deep breaths, Ken, deep breaths…

… maybe I will walk around the long way after all.

Beautiful Fascinator

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:35:00 +0000

I saw you first behind a hedge
You were something fine to see
A lovely top to a lovely Head
Beautiful Fascinator, thee.

Some net, a feather, arcing wide.
Across the wedding spree
Too much for hair, too less for hat
Beautiful Fascinator, see.

I walked round to you
Bold as brass
And asked would you be mine
T’was then I got to see your ass
And that was also fine.

So now you’re mine and I am yours
We’ll marry, you and me
I will wear my fine top hat.
Beautiful Fascinator, thee.

Waiting for the Hype to Subside

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:22:00 +0000

Come home
When the party’s over
When the tears have dried.
Come on home
I’ll still be here
Waiting for the hype to subside.

Come back
When the crowds have left you
On the falling tide.
You’re not alone
I’ll be here for you
Waiting for the hype to subside.

Find me
When the light is fading
When the roar has died
To a monotone.
You’ll find me silent
And waiting for the hype to subside.

The Theme Nut

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 09:56:00 +0000

Everybody has different ways of writing. Sometimes I’m a bit jealous of the way other people can write. It often looks so much better then my way. One example of this relates to ‘Theme’. You know, ‘Theme’ – the higher purpose of your story, the basic tenet which drives the whole thing… you know ‘Theme’.

No?

No, me either.

I sometimes envy writers who start out with their theme. “I know, today I shall write about ‘Man’s Inhumanity to His Fellow Man’, that’ll be good for a few smiles.”

It must be great to be able to do that, just grab a Theme and off you bloody-well go.

It’s not me, I’m afraid. It’s never a Theme that starts me off on anything. It’s more likely to be a phrase or a tune or a two-line dialogue between two unformed characters. Some scrap will start me on a writing road and I will follow it along as best I can.

But, chances are, I will never find my theme. Not until I go hunting for it. And I have learned never to do that until I am really close to the end.

You’ve got to play to your strengths when you write. If I was forced to sit on a chair and not write anything until I had my Theme all sorted-out, I would never get anything done. I’d sit there and look at the wall and eventually I would give up and decide I would never be a writer and go and cut the grass instead. But I want to be a writer so I don’t do that.

Here’s what I do.

I do everything but Theme. I do story and character and pacing and dialogue and editing and spell-checking and rewriting and… everything really. I do everything.

And then, when everything else is done, I go Theme Hunting.

It sounds silly, I know. It sounds wrong. But it works for me.

When it’s all done, all written – whatever it is – I sit and look at it and I say, “Now, what is this fecker actually about?” After a little looking at it, I start to see, very clearly, what it is actually about and then I have it, I have my Theme.

You must be disgusted with me. “How can you do this? This is not writing. How can you possibly write anything of value if you don’t know what you are really writing about?”

Fair points, all.

The thing is, I do know what I am writing about, I am just not aware of it. An element of writing is sub-conscious. If I’ve thought up something I want/need to write then there is a reason I’ve arrived at that thing, there is some good reason why I want it written. That, for me, is a given. But if I mooch around trying to figure out what that reason is, then I may never get the writing done at all. So, instead, I get the writing done and I wait for that sub-conscious driving force to turn up. And, generally, when most of the writing is done, when all the clues to the Theme are assembled on the page, then it will reveal itself as if by magic.

“But,” you cry, “it’s too late then. You’ve written an entire ‘Thing’ without any knowledge of the Theme. How can it possible by any good?”

And here’s the thing. The most important thing. It isn’t any good.

That’s why we rewrite.

Think of me writing a story as putting a wheel on a car. I tighten all the nuts to hold the wheel on. I tighten the ‘Story’ nut, the ‘Character’ nut, the ‘Pacing’ nut – I tighten them all. But there’s one nut I leave loose, mostly because I don’t know where it is. When I find it, that elusive ‘Theme’ nut, I tighten it and tighten it and then I’m done… right?

Wrong.

Because this late tightening of the Theme Nut has only gone and made all the other nuts loose again.

Yes indeed. When I finally find my Theme, as I invariably do, that Theme colours and changes and tightens everything I had written before I found it. Everything gets twisted to synch with my new-found Theme.

And, for me, this is the very best piece of the writing process. It’s a wondrous polish where all the work I have done gets tuned to subtly compliment the theme. You might not ever notice it, as a reader, listener or viewer but the product - the writing - becomes vastly more coherent and convincing as a result of this work. At least I think it does.

So don’t hate me too much, if you’re one of those blessed people who start out with their Theme. I may envy you a bit but I’ve found my own way to work around it.

It might not be great but it’s better than staring at the wall.

In Praise of John And Marian’s

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:46:00 +0000

I’m late with my blog post this week.

There’s a good reason for that though. We’ve been to John and Marian’s for the weekend. We just got back.

We’ve been going to John and Marian’s for many years now. John and Marian effortlessly bridge the gap between being Family and Friends and there’s no better place to go. You kind-of forget how true that is, if you haven’t been for a while, so it’s always good to be back.

John and Marian have a magical home in the country and they welcome you with open arms whenever you happen to call. They feed you magnificently and there’s plenty to drink too if you want it. There are beds that are as deep as they are wide and the sun always seem to shine there whenever we go.

Even the back garden is a magical place. Birds sing in binaural stereo, the pond ripples with industrious tadpoles and every tune that wafts across the subtly tempered stereo system is bound to be another of your own personal favorites.

John and Marian’s is a haven of rest, entertainment, challenging discussion, artistry, friendship and peace. It’s really pretty good all-in-all.

But it is not a static place.

That is perhaps the best thing of all. Rather, it is a place that calmly reflects the years that have passed in-between visits. The trees are that much taller, the greenhouse that little bit less transparent, and the beloved pets who resided so happily there now mostly lie beneath cool stone markers as the solitary survivor moves among them, ageing gently, and mourning their mysterious departure into the soil.

A visit to John and Marian’s is mostly about fun and food and friendship but it’s impossible not to reflect a little too. “Time passes. Listen. Time passes” and a visit here is a moment out of time to remember, to look forward and, for that moment, to just ‘be’.

So thank you, John and Marian, for another lovely time spent in the safe haven of your magic home. We’ll come back again soon. We’d be fools if we didn’t.

I recommend that you all take a weekend out of time quite soon and go and visit John and Marian’s.

And, yes, I am fully aware that I haven’t really told you who John and Marian are or, even more importantly, where you can find them. This was no accident.

This John and Marian’s is ours, you have to go and find your own.

And, hey, I wish you the best of luck with that.

Many Dishes to Wash

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:48:00 +0000

(After Jimmy Cliff)

Many dishes to wash.
And I don't know just when it will be over.
The Fairy liquid is lost.
So I'm having to scrub.
Them with Rover.

And this kitchen-mess won't leave me alone.

Is there no service that I can phone?

I left it too late and I don't know why

Plus there's no-one here to dry.

(I got)

Many dishes to wash.
But just where to begin, the decision is mine
It's one of times that I find myself
Thinkin' of resorting to cryin'

And I'd really like to go to my bed
Got a pain right there inside of my head
Can't I leave them til the mornin' comes?
When I could wash them in the sun?

(I got)

Many dishes to wash
And it's only my will that keeps me from bawlin'
Stood at this sink; washed-up for years
and I stand here alone
Only hope I don't fall in.

Finally Feeling it Again

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:23:00 +0000

I think I’ve only really felt it once before but now I’m finally feeling it again.

The last time it happened I was sixteen. Before I was sixteen, I always seemed – to myself at least – to be older than my actual age. I was always following what my older brothers did, always trying to sneak into the older person's movies, always giving back-chat beyond my years.

When sixteen hit, that was it. I was sixteen! There was simply no doubt about it.

Then, after I got past sixteen, I didn’t really progress on to seventeen, not in my head, not for a while at least. The effect lasted a while with the result that I have always, ever since, felt younger than my actual age. When I was twenty five, I felt about nineteen. When I was thirty two, I felt twenty five and so on.

Two weeks ago, I reckoned that I felt about thirty six years old, yes that was about right.

Today? Today I am forty eight and I feel forty eight. It’s finally come around again, I feel my age.

I suppose losing someone can do that to you. It’s wearying, not having that loved-one around anymore. The very misery of it would tend to age you, you would imagine. Also there’s the fact that the generation above me has now fully departed and suddenly, I belong to the old one, the one most likely to die next. There’s reason-enough to suddenly feel your age right there, I reckon.

It’s not a crisis. Hell it’s not even a bad thing. I’m only bloody forty eight, it’s not (necessarily) the end of the world. I ain’t doing too bad either, I still have all my own hair and teeth, I can jump a wall, if needs be, and I can still throw in a funny line here-and-there without working too hard at it.

So it’s all good, really.

The question is, will I continue to feel my age as it changes or will this new forty eight ‘watermark’ now hold for a few years as I progress on through middle age, secure in the belief that I was only ever my real age twice in my life.

Perhaps, by following a simple mathematical progression, I will not feel my real age again until I am, let’s see (48-16=32, 48+32=80), gosh, Eighty years old.

Is that how it will be? At 50, will I still imagine myself to be 48? At 60, 54? Until the big 80 comes around and gives me another of these little wake-up calls.

Damned if I know.

I’ll keep you posted.

Bluffing the Condolence Line

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:55:00 +0000

In Ireland, when a very popular member of your family dies, a lot of people will probably want to come along and express their condolences to you. To accommodate them, you generally arrange yourself and your family in a line at some preordained place – usually the funeral home – then wait for all the good people to turn up.

As you may-or-may not know, my Dad passed away this week. I’ve written about him now and again here, here and here. He was a great man and will be sorely missed by many, not least myself.

Anyway the best way I can honour him now is by continuing to share my little stories with you here and elsewhere. So, on that note, back to that condolence line.

Those aforementioned good people started to flow into the funeral home at about five o’clock and they were still coming at seven thirty when we had to depart for the church. In that time, hundreds of people filed past to shake hands and say, among other things, how very sorry they were. I had one of my brothers on one side of me and one of my sisters on the other and we backed each other up as best we could. If I evidently didn’t know who someone was (a regular occurrence) then I might get a nudge or just a blatant name-drop from my sibling neighbour to help me along. I was glad to do the same whenever I could.

Of course there were lapses in helpfulness. Once, I was accosted with the line, “surely you know who this is?” as some nice lady stood before me. I didn’t. Another time, after introducing some great friends of mine as, literally, ‘great friends of mine’ somebody from my family said aloud, “you sure do have a lot of great friends.” It was all good-natured stuff.

As the hours went on, and the good people continued to come, so the temptation to ‘riff’ a little on the commonly accepted condolence script increased. This was perhaps a little cruel because offering condolences can be a hard thing to do and if the person who is receiving them is intent on talking about the decor or your shoes then that can be a tad off-putting. Mostly, though, the good people liked my lightly off-beat approach to the condolence line and responded warmly in kind.

Near the end, a lady appeared in front of me and offered her hand in sympathy. There had been a drought of familiar faces in the previous few minutes so I was somewhat excessively glad to see her.

“Hello!” I gushed, “I haven’t seen you in the longest time.”

The lady peered at me, she was a peerer. “Do you know me?” she asked.

Somewhere over her right shoulder, Doubt came riding towards me on a pale Pinto, waving a red bandanna and whooping to get my attention.

“Of course I know you, how could I not?”

The lady peered some more. Doubt drew closer and I could see now that he looked deeply concerned.

“But how do you know me?” This lady asked.

Of course, I didn’t know her. I had mistaken her for somebody else. In a deeply ironic analogy, I had dug a little hole for myself and climbed right in.

“Tell me, how do you know me?” she asked again.

Basil Fawlty would have been proud of me and not for the first time in my life either. I acted without conscious thought and I like to think that what I did was just a tiny bit daring and cool. Not knowing who she was, having no way to escape, I proudly slapped myself on the chest and grinned broadly.

“How do I know you?” I said, with revived gusto,” I’m Ken Armstrong, that’s who I am. So go away and think about that and then you will know how I know you.”

The lady looked deeply unimpressed but she moved on up the line and I quickly turned to greet my next sympathiser. I could still feel her quizzical stare on the back of my next until she was safely gone out of the room.

Ah, Sod Basil Fawlty, Dad Himself would have been proud of me.

RIP, Dad, I’m going to miss you more than I yet know.

On Running On

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 12:15:00 +0000

I’ve started doing a bit of running. Ah there I go again, making something small and stupid-looking sound cool and interesting.

It’s actually too strong a word to call what I do ‘Running’. It’s much more of a ‘Flopping and gasping from Point A to Point B in the Most Ungainly Way Possible'.

It’s awful, in many ways, but still I find that I like it and, like one of those old Country and Western singers might mumble as they raise the microphone to their bearded lips, “I wanna tell you why.”

(cue slide guitar)

I’m 48 and I’ve never run in my life, apart from the odd burst to catch a bus or to escape autograph hunters. That’s why I think it’s worth writing a line-or-two about the accelerated shuffle which I can now achieve. You may well be just like me.

I believed I could never run. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with me – nothing that would stop me running anyway. It’s just that, anytime I tried to run anywhere, I would get fifty metres up the road quite fast and then would come to a destroyed halt, breathless and stunned. No I couldn’t run. Not me.

But I needed to be doing something. (That’s an Irish sentence-construction, I meant it). I have a family history of heart trouble that would make a cardiologist blush, plus I’m knocking-on a bit, plus the considerable amount of walking I do never seems to quicken my pulse or knock the wind out me. Maybe I was doing it wrong but walking, for me, was too damn easy and if I was to do enough of it to make it work, then that was taking bloody hours.

So… I needed to try running.

Here’s how I made it work for me.

First, I did it late at night, under cover of darkness, when fewer people would see me. That’s important to me, I don’t like looking like a gobshite. Second, I looked up some beginner-running schedules on the internet. They’re good because you only start out by running for something like thirty seconds and then taking a break – even I could manage that. Thirdly I followed an excellent piece of advice from Eamon Coughlan, one of Ireland’s greatest runners, which I heard on the radio. He said, “Run for as long as you can, as slow as you can.”

With these three things in mind, I set off.

I ran for thirty seconds, I timed it on my phone, and then I stopped. I didn’t need to stop at thirty seconds but that’s what the internet programme said, so that’s what I did. I walked for the requisite time and then ran again – as slow as I could.

I didn’t get very far. My heart was working and my breath was coming hard and fast. It was awful really.

The next night, I ran for a little longer.

And the next night.

And the next.

Six months on, it’s still not pretty – matter of fact, it is decidedly unpretty but who cares? I keep running a bit longer every time. Sometimes I don’t manage it but most times I do. There have been weeks where I haven’t run but I try to go out at least three times a week. I even venture out in daylight now but I hate meeting people and I still find it embarrassing.

These days I run for about 20 minutes then walk a little bit then run again. The odd thing is that I don’t really have to stop running after twenty minutes – my legs don’t hurt, I can still breathe and my heart is not failing on me. It’s my mind. My mind keeps telling me that I cannot run, it shouts it at me as I am trudging along and I have to ignore it. I humour it by only doing a little bit more every time and that seems to be working.

But the mind is a powerful enemy. Every time I start to run/jog/whatever it is, I know I will have to stop after thirty seconds. I know it. It’s just that I don’t. Not these days. These days I keep going, despite what my mind tells me.

And it’s hard. Don’t let me tell you it’s not hard. But I needed something hard to do.

Benefits? I think it’s mostly self-esteem, at this stage. I’m learning how to run, something I thought I could never do. I don’t think I’ve reached the speed or distance where major health benefits would accrue but I’m getting there and exercise is exercise. I don’t know much about Endorphin rushes, all I know is when I’m done and showered and watered, I feel at peace. I know that sounds all self-aware and bullshitty but it’s true. It’s a nice feeling, after the run/jog/whatever it is.

The reason for writing this is obvious. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Start slow, hide from the world, build up slow.

It’s good.

(I did it again, didn’t I? Made it sound all cool and powerful, like a Rocky montage or something. When I run, it’s a horrible horrible spectacle, an embarrassment, an outrage against sporting types everywhere… but I’m running, me, running… can you believe it?)

(I can’t. )

A Writer All of the Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:29:00 +0000

I consider myself to be a writer.

I didn’t arrive at this consideration quickly or easily and certainly not by way of any great success or breakthrough in writing. I’ve had my moments, I suppose, and I hope to have many more, but they’re not what allows me to (quietly) think of myself as a writer now.

It’s more the state of mind.

I’ve found that I’m happiest when I’m writing and that I’m most content when some good writing has just been done. I berate myself if a day ever passes without my having written something and my unhappiness increases in direct proportion to every additional hour that passes without getting down to it. So, yeah, for better or worse, I can think of myself as a writer now.

But that’s not what I want to write about at all. That’s just sort of validation, citing why I think I am allowed to say what I want to say.

So… what is it that you want to say, Ken?

It’s not a big deal, really, all I want to say is this:

I have a sort of mistrust of writers who are writers all of the time.

Most writers – the ones I know anyway – are not writers all of the time. They put enormous time and energy into their writing work and they do it brilliantly but then, in downtime, they are just themselves rather than writers.

I realise I’m not making much sense and possibly causing a bit of annoyance too but it’s a tricky one, this, and I’m just trying to get my head around it. You might be saying something like, “he’s wrong, the real writer is a writer every minute of every day, constantly questing for the truth and insight of each and every situation that arises.” Yes, they’re the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones that worry me a bit.

Don’t get me wrong. The sub-conscious level is always working away, it really is. Some piece of amorphous writing-thought, left alone to ‘stew’ in the back of the mind, can come out so much more sweet-and-tender for the stewing. I’m not talking about that stuff. I’m talking about the writers who go around being writers all the time. I think it’s a confidence thing. If you have the confidence and the faith in yourself, I think you tend to put on the writer’s mantle when you sit down to write and you are just ‘you’ the rest of the time.

That’s why people are often surprised when they meet writers. “I thought he’d be all-flowery,” they might say, “I thought he’d offer some marvellous insight into the Human Condition over tea.” “Instead, all he wanted to do was chat about the Football.”

It’s so natural to not be the writer all of the time. The similarities in other professions are legion. Does the Joiner assess every stool he perches on in the Pub, every bookshelf he scans in the Library? Does the Butcher eye-up every beast in every field he drives past, thinking about how he might carve it up? No. Writers become writers when they are writing and they express themselves in a markedly differently way in the writing than they do in the rest of their lives.

I’m doing it now. You don’t think I talk like this in real-life for Chrissakes?

There are exceptions to everything and sometimes I’m just plain wrong about stuff. Maybe you are an excellent writer and maybe you do spend every minute of your day in the same mode as you do when you are writing. Well done, I don’t mean you. You’re great, you are. Really, great.

I think I’m talking about quite a lot of aspiring writers. I think there’s a misconception that the way you carry yourself, the way you deal with others, the way you promote your efforts, will be the things that will catapult you into some mythical limelight.

Save all that energy, I would say. Save it up and spit it all out onto the page when you are alone with your writing weapon-of-choice.

If I’m totally wrong, that’s okay. We all have to do things our own way and if your way is the way of the constant writer then I wish you well. But even if I’m only partially right, then there’s still a very useful practical application to my notion. Simply put, it is this; you won’t do your best writing by walking around and thinking/talking/making faces about it. It’s when you are closeted in your writing place, faced with the blank paper, the blank screen, that’s when the valuable writing will pour from you.

I just think it’s worth thinking about. If you aspire to be a writer and are working hard at it. Put your writing-juice in the place where it counts, which is directly between you and your computer monitor. Be all-of-your-writer there. Then go out and be yourself at the riverbank and in the woods and at the cinema and in the shop. Because it isn’t being a writer abroad in the world that will make you a good writer. Not in my opinion. It’s down here, quietly, on the page, that the big work gets done.

I probably haven’t said this right at all.

I’m not really a writer this morning.

I have to get to Tesco before it gets busy.

This time last week

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:41:00 +0000

This time last week
I had written two songs
Drove down to Oxfam
Brought some old things along

Done all the laundry
Polished my shoes
Painted the back door
Left it like new

This week you’re gone
And all I can say
Is the tomatoes you left
Should not taste this way

Three Score and Ten

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:31:00 +0000

This week’s short post will doubtless be pretty obvious and hackneyed and such. Given the week it’s been, it would be churlish of me to try to write in any other way. The week has put my head in this particular place and so it here that I must try to write.

Somebody died this week, a friend. It’s not for me to eulogise. That has been done well-enough in other places. Neither is it for me to name the lovely friend who left us. That is for elsewhere; in my head and in my heart.

What is for me, here, is just to try to consider the thoughts that run through my head when sorrow and loss raise up and cause me to reflect, once again, on the nature of a life.

One thought in particular has recurred to my this week. The thought of a ‘Life Cut Short’.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

(Psalms 90)

I have perhaps entertained the thought, in my head, that there is a set-time span which can be held up as a gauge to any life to see if it passes that test of having been ‘Full’ or ‘Cut Short’. Having thought about it for a while now, I find that I no longer wish to subscribe to this point of view.

We have no control over the time span we have to live. I don’t want to say the time span that we are ‘given’ because I don’t believe we are 'given' it by anyone or anything. It simply is what it is. It therefore follows that every life cannot be assessed against the criteria of any particular set life span, where exceeding it is a success and falling short of it some kind of life-failure.

I now think that life should not to be valued by how long it is loved but rather by how well it is lived. Perhaps this, then, is the elusive 'Meaning of Life', or at least one theorem of it – that life is all about the fulfilment of a person's potential, no more no less. We are, after all, physical beings, bound by physical laws. Even the mysterious chemical brew of our minds are governed by these laws. Our potential is therefore, inevitably, limited. To live life as well as possible is to travel as far within our own personal potential as we can. We can, ultimately, do no more.

To a six hour old baby who dies, this may mean mean no more and no less than simply drawing breath or passing a little fluid or touching and ultimately breaking the hearts of all those who are near. The six hour life, when completed, can be as beautiful and fulfilled as a one hundred year long life which was replete with creativity and joy. Simply because it rose as far within its potential as it could humanly go.

And, if this is true – if it could only be true - what is there to learn from it?

That, too, is pretty easy.

We are, none of us, living close to our potential. Whatever it is that we aspire to be, we are simply not enough of it. We are not 'loving' enough, 'expressive' enough, 'risking' enough, 'angry' enough, 'alive' enough. We owe it to ourselves to push the boundaries of who we are, not so that we can live to the year ninety or one hundred but to attain our best within the limits of our potential.

Regardless of whether you die at 44 or 67 or 2 it’s always going to be a tragedy for those left behind. Those who must miss you and grieve for you and somehow travel on without you. It’s a real unavoidable tragedy for them.

But it doesn't have to be a tragedy for you. Not if you’ve lived every day you had, regardless of the circumstance that finally whisked you away, regardless of when it happened. If there had been a few more of those beatitudes, perhaps one might have said, “Blessed are those who live close to their potential for they will have truly lived.”

It's like I said at the beginning, there are no original thoughts in this week’s post but I guess it’s good that I am at least thinking these old-old thoughts out for myself.

ITV2 (For Poor Adele)

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:52:00 +0000

(To the tune of Someone Like You)

‘Hadn’t heard
We were over time
Damon
Got a min
And took
Fucking Nine.

I hadn’t heard
About that bloody farce
Til I felt James Corden
Up my friggin’ arse

The bugger turned up out of the blue uninvited
And he put me off, he made me shite it
I’d hoped to say my bit
With my fans be reunited
Ah but now the show is over.

Never mind, I will find ITV2
I can take as long as I want on you
You won’t stop me, I know
Cause the next show’s just Poirot
Sometimes the Brits are good
But mostly they do my head, yeah
Sometimes the Brits are good
But mostly they do my head.

Liking Someone New – Whitney Houston in 1985

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:33:00 +0000

It was a Friday morning in December 1985. I remember it well. Barry waltzed into our office, hung up his scarf and coat and plopped himself down at his desk. He gripped the edges of his seat and spun around on it contemplatively once or twice. He had news and he couldn’t keep it in.

“Guess what?” he said, “I like someone new.”

Barry and I shared a corner of a screened-off open plan office on a roundabout in Bracknell. We worked hard and well-together but there was always time to dissect the crucial occurrences of any given day.

I didn’t have to ask Barry who this ‘Someone New’ was. Nobody did. On that Friday morning, not as long ago as some of you might think, Barry was not alone in having fallen instantly in love, a little bit, with Whitney Houston.

Thursday night was ‘Top of the Pops’ night. Nobody was avidly glued to it in 1985, nobody was drooling with anticipation of the next act to debut, but nobody was missing it either. Everybody was keeping an eye on it, to see who or what might suddenly appear.

And I think a lot of people fell a bit on love with Whitney that evening.

The song was, of course, ‘Saving All My Love for You’ and we didn’t see a live performance of it that evening, we saw the video.

Who couldn’t fall in love a little bit with that girl that evening? She sang like a dream, she had the most extraordinarily beautiful, open, face and she looked so very happy to be saving all her love for me. Natural talent and beauty simply exuded from her.

We had never heard of her before that evening and we have never forgotten her since.

Every Sunday morning, the radio alarm comes on at the normal week-day time and usually gets clicked off again within a grumpy New York Minute. This morning, in the brief moment between coming on and being switched back off again, a snippet of news slipped through. Whitney Houston is dead.

When I got up and thought of her a bit, I thought of a Friday morning in December 1985 when Barry came in and proclaimed his latest flame.

To touch someone’s life, however briefly, what more can we ask?

Tennis Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:01:00 +0000

I’m in love with a tennis girl
It’s been going on a while
I like to watch her at the net
Her backhand really makes me smile.

We like to play together all the time
To my court she has the key
I am in love with my
Tennis Girl.
Love may mean nothing to her
but her love
means something
to me.

I’m looking forward to the next time we meet
We’ll rally back and forth in rhyme
We’ll drink Robinson’s Barley Water
Like the pro’s do all the time

We’ll have big showdowns in the future, I know
They will be wonderful to see
I am in love with my
Tennis Girl.
Love may mean nothing to her
but her love
means something
to me.

Our games will go on to the twilight of our years
Arthritis will not lay us low
The intensity will still stay the same
Though we may get a little slow.

There’ll be no tie break in our final set
We’re just as close as we can be.
I am in love with my
Tennis Girl.
Love may mean nothing to her
but her love
means something
to me.

(c) Ken Armstrong 2012

One Particular Memory of Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:43:00 +0000

If my computer is anything to go by then England is, this morning, blanketed beneath a silent bed of snow. Here in Ireland we have no snow at the mo’ – the snow is a no-show. (sorry).

Oddly enough, I think I’d quite like some. As ever, my novelty with it would only last an hour but that hour might be worth it. The white, the crispness, the transformed landscape, the sudden re-awareness of the birds in the garden.

Watching everybody tweeting about their snow with excitement/annoyance/joy/pain, I got to thinking about whether I have any particular memories of snow.

I used to go skiing quite a bit, back in the Eighties, so you’d think my snow memories would emanate from there but, no, my most vivid memory was of an evening in my hometown where there was probably no more than an average dusting of the white stuff.

We were sixteen – me and the boys – and we were out drinking. Well, to say ‘we’ were out drinking was only partially true. I was the one who didn’t drink. Never touched a drop until I was twenty. It’s not that I was particularly pious or anything, perhaps the fact that I worked part time in a bar made me a bit over aware of the vagaries of alcohol… perhaps I was just a boring little bollix – that’s a scenario too.

Anyway, it was Saturday Night and we were all going to ‘Valentino’s’, the night club of choice. ‘Valentino’s’ was strictly Over 21’s so it wasn’t’ a foregone conclusion that we would get in. Still everyone always did – except me, of course. Week after week, just after it first opened its doors, I was turned away from ‘Valentino’s’ while all my mates sidled in. I guess I was the runt of that particular litter and just that inch too far away from being twenty-one in any imaginable universe.

There was a girl in there too and she liked me and wanted me with a passion that burned like the fire of a thousand suns and all I had to do was get in and claim her for the slow dance and she would be mine and…

… eventually, as business tapered off, I too started to be allowed in and that ‘Fire of a Thousand Suns’ thing did not quite work out as planned.

But that’s another story.

I got in. It was a big thing for me. No more trudging home alone to watch ‘The Late Late Show’ on telly with my parents. No more catching up with all the stories the next day. I got in.

And, hey, it was great. Loud music, dancing, girls, lights… great. We had all the hits of the day: Billy Joel, Meat Loaf, Boomtown Rats… fast sets, slow sets. Oh, and fights, there were great fights too – mighty barnstorming affairs between grown men and their knock-kneed women. Great stuff altogether.

What else?

Yes, drink. There was drink.

My friends had different expectations of ‘Valentino’s’. Some expected to dance until they dropped, some expected to get a girl, some expected to drink as much as humanly possible and one of these was Martin. It’s not his real name, his real name is Peter (no, it’s not) but we’ll call him Martin.

Martin was a good guy, quiet and sensible and funny and nice. But, on Saturday Nights in ‘Valentino’s’, Martin would ‘get his drink on’ in a big way. While others danced and cavorted, Martin would sit in the corner, at a paper-tableclothed table, with a long line of flat pints of Smithwicks in front of him and he would slowly and unceasingly work his way through them all before the night was through.

“Ken,” you might well say at this point, “this is all very well but where’s the snow? Where is the snow?”

It’s here, look, outside the night club doors.

It’s two am and ‘Valentino’s’ is over. Nobody expected snow, it is late February and everything is frozen solid. It is too cold for snow. Yet there it is, like a calm surprise, a glistening blanket for the small town grime.

And Martin can usually make his own way home. He is a large boy and he seems to be able to accommodate the vast quantities of beer he consumes, usually. Tonight, though, he has consumed one too many or perhaps two or three.

We rally round, those of us who have not found a girl, and we resolve to get Martin safely home through the ice and snow. It’s across town, out of our way, but those were the adventures which defined our teenage years, those occasional sojourns off of the beaten track.

Overcome with Smithwicks, Big Martin soon becomes a largely immovable force. We cajole him and encourage him and roar at him but his progress is slow, terrible slow. We arrive at the top of the ‘The Promenade – ‘John F Kennedy Parade’, which is a gently sloping wide paved path along the Garavogue River. It’s three am now and there’s another hour of ‘Operation Get Martin Home’ to go. Unless…

“I have an idea,” says Tommy, “let’s get him down on his hunkers and slide him along the promenade.”

It seems like a ludicrous notion but the snow is falling large and sticky and the night is fading fast.

“Martin, Martin, get down on your hunkers and we’ll push you down The Promenade.”

“No, no, no, no, no… no… no.”

“Come on, it’ll be grand.”

So Martin gets down on his hunkers and we slide him along down the slope, keeping firm hands on his shoulders.”

“I feel sick,” says Martin, the unusual motion doubtless contributing.

“Sing a song,” says Tommy, who seems inspired tonight, “sing a song and it will keep your mind off the sickness.”

So Martin starts to sing. An unlikely choice. And, as we ease him down The Promenade, the gentle slope becomes less gentle and Martin slips away from us. We try to hold him but his bulk and his momentum is simply too great and for a time he is gone, away from us, down The Promenade, off into the snowy night

And this, then, is my one particular memory of snow:

Martin, on his hunkers, easing gracefully off down The Promenade, singing Rod Stewart loudly at the top of his voice,

“I am sailing… I am SAILINNNNNG...”

Stephen King – 11.22.63 – A Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:24:00 +0000

I don’t often write reviews of books I read but Stephen King is different, for reasons which I have doubtless already set down elsewhere. You see I started young with Stephen King and I have never-ever stopped. I read Salem’s Lot in ’76 when I was 13 and, with the exception of some of the ‘Dark Tower’ series, I’ve since read everything he’s ever written.

So, like many other people in the world, I perhaps feel that I have a stake in Stephen King (no pun intended, not really) and that I know his work pretty well. For this reason, I like to write at least a note about his new books after I read them.

One of the difficulties that Stephen King has, in his real world, is with people who think they own a piece of his soul because they’ve read all his books. I’m not one of those.

The reason I think I can write about his books with some insight is different for me. It’s simple, it’s this: I don’t like them all. I like reading them, I like his style and I love his story-weaving skill but all of the books have not set me alight, not by any means.

And this one, this new one ’11.22.63’ well, it had me a bit excited. The premise, you see, it seemed to portend that Stephen was veering off into unknown territory, that a historical/political perspective would be incorporated into the novel which would break new ground in his writing and garner him a larger chunk of the respect and love he undoubtedly deserves.

I requested the book for Christmas, got it and launched in.

I will do what I always do now – I will tell you what I thought of it but, perhaps annoyingly, I won’t tell you the story of the book. Lots of reviewers seem to take up two-thirds of their piece doing that and I don’t see the point.

Here, though, in one sentence, is the gist of the story.

A man finds a time portal and travels back to exact change on history, primarily to stop the assassination of JFK on ’11.22.63’.

I loved reading this book.

Stephen King always does this for me. He writes in such a lovely way and he weaves his story in such a lovely way that I am invariably drawn-in and involved and entertained and encouraged to read on. He is, in my opinion, a magical writer. He gives himself colossal problems in his stories and then he solves them without flinching away from them.

So, again, I loved reading this book. It provided me with a highly-enjoyable reading experience through every single page and, as a reader who has seen some dry times this past year, I am enormously grateful for that. Thank you, Mr. King, for making my reading of this book such an enjoyable thing that I oftentimes longed to get back to it. That's the best gift I can ever receive.

There’s a ‘But’, though, isn’t there?

Well, yes there is.

This thing I expected – this historical/political veer-off into new unexplored territory… it didn’t happen. This is a Stephen King book, with all the Wonderful and Brilliant things which that statement implies. What it is not , however, is markedly different from his other books, in fact it is markedly the same. That, for me, was a wee bit disappointing.

There are two key aspects to this sameness. The first is the scenarios in the book and the second is the characters. With so many books now to his credit, I find that King has both scenarios and characters that he returns to regularly in order to tell his stories. His characters give me the clearest way to illustrate the point. He will, so very often, use these characters;

The Brave Everyman with the Tragic Past.

The Lovely Girl Who You Cannot Help But Fall in Love with Along With The Brave Everyman.

The Grizzled World-Wise Old Guy With The Rough Exterior and the Heart of Gold.

We see them in so many of his books.

And scenarios? At various times through the book, I felt I was revisiting other King novels. This, of course, is overtly done with the novel ‘IT’ because the town and some the characters actually reappear in what was, for me, a rather unsuccessful device. But I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about the ghosts of earlier stories which haunts these pages. The ghosts of ‘Christine’, ‘The Dead Zone’, ‘The Mist’ and others.

For all the promise of this new high-concept premise, Stephen has not broken his mould in any meaningful way. Rather, he has made this new mould from salvaged bits of all the old moulds. This works and makes a good archetypal ‘Stephen King’ book but, alas, nothing more.

This sounds churlish to me as I read it back. I enjoyed the book, what more should I want? The man has been grossly injured, suffers with eyesight, has written a Gazillion books… why should I have even wished for some radical new departure at this late stage of his wonderful career?

I don’t know. I just did.

Anyway…

The book is masterfully done. The writer could hardly have given himself a tougher narrative challenge – one man, alone, in the past for years-on-end – and he not only makes it work, he makes it work well.

But there’s a certain tone that was prevalent in ‘Christine’ and also in ‘IT’, lurking behind all the comic-book horror shenanigans. It’s a tone that implies that there was a time, in the late 50’s and early 60’s, which was simply Perfect. Even though it was not, for this reason and this reason and this, it still just was. Perfect. It’s a gloss that King either can’t or won’t scratch too hard. Perhaps it’s just nostalgia, I don’t know. The entire mid-section of the novel is permeated with this ‘Everything Was Perfect’ sheen. No matter how horrible the action gets, it all still somehow remains… Perfect.

Hmmm.

Anyway. I loved reading this book much more than I loved the book.

Sorry, but that's the best that I can do.