Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff

Last Apollo - Sean's Bar, Athlone - 18-04-26 – A Tough Act to Follow

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Sean’s Bar in Athlone is the oldest pub in Ireland, dating back to a bewildering 900 AD. To emphasise this, there is a sparse scattering of wood shavings on the floor which seems to have a simultaneously apposite and opposite effect. Never mind, the place is replete with customers, from the blue rinse lady with the incongruous glass of white wine to the trendy beard folk with their compact pints of Guinness. The bar staff are totally on point and that’s what really counts. They’re got your order before you quite know what it is and are already cueing up the person behind you.

Behind the intimate huddle of the front bar, as is sometimes the case, there lies a rather cavernous space which half feels inside and half feels outside. There’s an upstairs bit that’s out of bounds and a stage and lots of stools and timber surfaces on which to rest a drink.

Into this arena, as part of the Croílár Music and Arts Festival, comes Last Apollo and her band. Lucy Rice is Last Apollo in much the same way as Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is CMAT. The stage name gives her breathing space to evolve from the lovely human she is, to the questing artist that takes the stage. Along with all the bagged-up musical gear the band bring, there is also a bagged up supply of hamburgers and chips from the local establishment. Some of these will be rapidly consumed before the impending show, some saved up for after when a drop in adrenaline will hopefully ease digestion.

The cavernous space is three-quarters full as the band set up. The two longest tables are occupied by a) a bunch of old pals who haven’t seen each other in a while and b) a hen party, thankfully devoid of fake nurse’s uniforms but replete with home made cupcakes. These two tables contribute much to high ambient pre match melee.

The band are ready and into the early Saturday evening audience bustle steps Last Apollo, Lucy Rice left temporarily languishing out in the car park. A single vocal note is released into the room, then another, then another. The friends who haven’t seen each other in a while are fairly instantly conquered. Vape dribbles ineffectually from the corners of their surprised mouths as these notes from the stage fly out and explore the room. This was not the start one might have expected from the lively looking foursome on the stage, all armed with lead guitars, bass guitars, violin, synths, and drums.

The hen party are tougher to conquer. Clearly excited at the prospect of fresh cupcakes and marital congress to come, they continue to produce a noise that may explain why a hen party is so called. But isn’t this part of the essence of a real live pub gig? It’s not a concert hall; it’s not a convent. The band is owed nothing unless they can earn it.

By song three, the hen party is also won over. The cupcakes lie ignored. Last Apollo songs tend to build and build and build. And you may be able to roar about vows and contraception for the first part of a song, if you so desire, but the conversation will not survive when the dirty foursome on stage ultimately hit their stride.

Last Apollo’s voice weaves and spins in a most extraordinary way, the music carrying a depth of emotion that is often far beyond the performative. Naoise is a consummate guitarist and he unobtrusively maintains complex and engaging structures on his side of the stage. On the other side, Kate works her violin magic. Kate could hold her own in any concert orchestra in the world but here she is not above occasionally dragging some nasty riff from her instrument, reminding ourselves that this is no mere pub band, really. Serious work is being done here. Sam plays the drums like they have owed him money for far too long. One moment, cajoling subtle rhythms with one ear almost down on the skins, the next pounding the living shit out the poor kit. Hair, hands, and sticks flying every which way.

Instruments swap around like snuff at a wake. Kate takes up Lucy’s bass, Lucy takes up Kate’s violin (actually, it’s probably her own). Naoise has a violin too. Sam has some piece of technical gear on his tom that he manipulates like a ham radio operator trying to bring in Hungary.

Half way through the gig and the place is full and fully appreciating the set. The folk in the beer garden at the back and the 900AD pub at the front have all percolated in, although the blue rinse lady with the wine does not materialise. Nods of appreciation from the music heads circle the room as the songs build and explode into the space. Lucy comes in from the car park and occupies Last Apollo for a moment and it’s plain to see how touched she is by a room that has momentarily put aside all their other concerns and given themselves over to her music.

The band, as a whole, smile broadly throughout and interact warmly with each other. They have been friends for many years, through thick and thin, and the evident love and camaraderie adds warmth and spice to the music. Last Apollo’s online videos often feature shots of travelling the roads, countryside, the wide green spaces between gigs. One feels that the getting there and getting back is a crucial part of the story she tells. The bohemian life out on the road, the hauling, and the setting up. It all feeds into the art. It all means something.

The set ends with a heartfelt ‘thank you’ and promise of a summer album to come. Last Apollo spent February completing a national tour in support of Imelda May and, in those 22 gigs, she played many of the most auspicious venues in Ireland. It seemed like a lovely upward rung on a ladder of sorts. One hopes that the next rung is right there at her feet now. A rung that allows an ever increasing number of people to see and appreciate the quality of the music that is being made here. One hopes and expects.

Gig over and the band get their gear back into bed and make way for the next act. The sack of burgers are re-found. Cold and a little congealed, they have probably never tasted better.

As the next band set up, the sound system strikes up a Fontaines DC song and a young man behind me nurses his drink and sings along with his friends in a warm voice. I say to him jokingly that he should be up there on the stage. Two pints in, he stares longingly at the microphone, considers the notion for a moment, then sadly shakes his head.”

“On another day, maybe,” he says, “but that lot? They’re a tough act to follow.

Don't Drive at Me

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:44:00 +0000

I’ve had eighteen years of writing this blog. Gosh. I had to go and check that. Yup. Kicked it off in 2008, or last week as it’s otherwise known. It’s indicative of something, I suppose, that I started doing this back when lots of people were doing it and I’m still doing it after practically everyone else has stopped. I think it demonstrates how I’m not very good at letting things go. Old shoes, books, blogs. If I’ve got something I tend to hold on to it.

None of which has much of anything to do with this week’s post. If there is any relevance in that first paragraph it is probably this; After eighteen years of (more-or-less) weekly posts, it becomes quite easy to categorise the entries into quite a small list of subjects. I tend to wander around in the same circles I have always wandered around. A list of recurring themes for the 900 or so posts on here might include ‘Stupid Things I do', Trying to Write’, ‘Memories of Childhood’, ‘Movies’ or, in latter years ‘The Cat’ or, in latter months, ‘The ‘Thing.''

Another of these regularly revisited categories would certainly be ‘The Poor Quality of Driving in the World.’ I seem to have come back to this time and time again, usually with some instance of less-than-optimal interaction out there on the road, each time with a slightly different complaint. I’m aware that it’s one of the less engaging themes I pursue but you type where your heart takes you with this type of endeavour and I am often taken there, out onto the road, the footpath, the pedestrian crossing.

I think the reason I often swerve back to this subject is potentially interesting. It’s almost a ‘split personality’ kind of a thing. When I’m on foot, observing the ways of the everyday motorist, I maintain a stoic, frequently troubled aspect. But, when I’m behind the wheel myself, I can sometimes step back and see myself as the kind of prick who would piss me off if I was standing on the pavement watching me go by. Does that even make sense? Split personality stuff is tricky at the best of times.

Which takes us, rather convolutedly, to this week’s subject matter, which can be summed up neatly by the title of the piece. Don’t drive at me.

I think this is a relatively new thing. Or maybe I just started to notice it when my ambulatory skills became a little compromised in recent months. No, we won’t talk about the ‘thing’ again except to say that I may not be able to get out of the way of oncoming traffic as nimbly as I used to. Perhaps that’s why this behaviour is now on my radar where it rarely seemed to be before.

What is it, is this:

At a pedestrian light, or a zebra crossing, or, lord help us, a courtesy crossing, cars will stop and I will cross. Sometimes the driver will wave me across impatiently as if I am some waif who has been permitted into their sitting room to light the fire. “Get it done and begone as quickly as possible, fool!” Man, that pisses me off. The implication is that the driver’s time is more important than mine because, to quote David Byrne, they’re behind the wheel of an automobile. While, to quote Richard Pryor, the only thing I’m pushing is my Hush Puppies. ‘Verily, fuck you,’ I say to myself as I amble across in front of the belligerently gesticulating hand of the driver.

This relates to my current problem. It’s perhaps a second cousin to it. But it isn’t it.

What it really is, is this:

Cars stop and I amble across. Then, when I’m about half way over the road, and when I’m often right in front of the waiting car, said car starts to ease forward. Gently, gently, rolling towards me, encouraging me on, and almost brushing my declining butt as I pass beyond the fender of the car.

I don’t like this. That’s the point of this week’s blog post. I don’t like that shit one little bit.

Granted, my example is an extreme occurrence. Not every car brushes me as I get past them. But this gentle rolling towards me as I cross, that is a very real and a very regular thing now. “I’ll let you over,” the driver seems to be saying to themselves, “but I’m going to give you the absolute minimum time to do it. I’ll roll towards you a bit, as you walk, where’s the harm in that? Eh? Eh?”

Where’s the fucking harm? You tow rag, you asshole. I’ll tell you where the fucking harm is.

You are pinning my life, or at least my continued wellbeing, on your clutch control.

Here you are, easing towards me, letting your clutch pedal out gently. Coming at me but under such wonderful control. Supposing your foot slips or your control slips? You are a millimetre from leaping your horrible little motor forward and hitting me, rolling gently towards me as you are. And for what? Where are you going with such sacred urgency that you can’t just sit and let me cross the goddamned road without spaffing your need to get on all over my day.

It annoys me. Can you tell?

Don’t be rolling forward gently at the poor soul crossing the road in front of you. You’re not in that big a rush and, frankly, you’re not that good a driver. Sit there like a good person and let me get over the road. Then on you go.

I sometimes think that if those public service driving adverts had a little more swearing in them, they might have more impact.

I’m here if you need some input on that.

Puddy Has Not Been Up to All Sorts, Really

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:32:00 +0000

At the end of last week’s blog post I intimated that our cat, Puddy, has been up to all sorts of stuff. This was a bit disingenuous because, as the title suggests, Puddy hasn’t been up to all that much remarkable stuff really.

Sorry for misleading you.

To explain, I was just concluding a series of posts about an illness I’m busy getting over. Enough said. At the end of the last post (blows trumpet) I said I’d give you a break from the illness updates and threw in how Puddy, “... had been up to all sorts and you needed to be told.”

Here’s a couple of reasons for this patent untruth.

Firstly, quite a few people seem to like the posts about the cat. I suppose they show a rare human side to me. Also, in fairness, Puddy has provided me with some darned good stories. Not least how she died, was retrieved, stiff and cold, from the roadside, placed in the coal bunker on a purple blanket and then came back to life (sort of). You can get that story by clicking here if you want to. It’s got a bit of an Easter vibe about it, now that I think of it.

Secondly, it’s like the ending of Back to the Future. In that finale, Doc comes back from the future, all geared up in spacy gear, in his funked-up flying DeLorean. “It’s your kids,” Doc pants, “Something must be done about your kids.” It’s a line that sets up the whole new adventure to come, a future world of possibilities. So, yes, I did the same with the cat. The second Back to the Future was a load of old cobblers and so is today’s post. But the hook? The hook was good, man.

So, accepting that there are no amazing tales to tell, what of Puddy? How fares she?

At the moment, she’s sleeping soundly in the front hall in her basket with one of those heating pad things under her, even though it’s not all that cold. These days, she spends as much time in the house as she likes. She generally spends most of her indoors time sleeping but, when she’s awake, she likes to be out in the neighbourhood, arguing with the other cats and haranguing the local wildlife. When not asleep and indoors, she watches telly, studies the fire, rolls around, and stretches out and chases treats across the room with a scary intensity.

We kind of thought she would become a more tactile cat as the years progressed and maybe that will still happen. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Puddy is a detached cat in almost all respects. She shows involvement by the aforementioned rolling around, occasional rubbing against calves at mealtimes, and a very rare low volume meow when something important needs to be imparted. But she does not welcome touch or fusses or any kind of direct human contact. With one notable exception, Patricia. Patricia is, of course, my lovely wife. Puddy permits gentle head fussing from Trish and certainly seems to enjoy and welcome it. Anyone else had better approach her at their peril.

Puddy… well she’s a cat, isn’t she? We never had one before so everything she does is like the first time any cat in the world did anything of the sort. Which we know is not true but still sometimes it seems so. When she licks her paw and repeatedly washes her face with it, that’s the greatest thing ever. That and a hundred other stupid little things. She also manages to do exactly what you don’t want her to do at the exact time you least want her to do it.

I just looked back over blog posts and it’s five years this weekend since Puddy had her litter in our garage. That was the moment it all began for Trish and the Cat and me. It’s been a silly, infuriating, and lovely time and one senses the cat could have taken or left it all without too much anxiety either way. Still she’s been well cared-for and that will continue to be the case for as long as we have her.

So, there you go, nothing new on the Puddy front. I got you here on false pretences. Sorry about that.

Except… wait… maybe there is one tiny thing.

The most relevant new development in the Puddy saga? Did you notice it? It came right back there in the very first line of this post. Puddy is no longer the semi-feral cat who strayed into our garage and had kittens. No longer the errant street cat who pissed in my car when I accidentally left the door open.

No. Puddy is our cat now

95%

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:58:00 +0000

Once more, my apologies that the blog posts have been a bit intermittent thus far this year. Apologies also that this year’s posts, such as they are, have been little more than the ‘Guillain–Barré Diaries.’ This trend will continue for today’s entry and then I’ll try to give it (and you) a rest.

I feel these posts may be useful to me in years to come if the gods spare me. Who knows, they may also be of some minor use to someone who will walk, or shuffle, the same path as me.

As the title suggests, I would now rate myself as 95% recovered. Not everyone may necessarily agree with my assessment. It has been a (mostly) unrelenting wave of personal positivity that has at least helped to carry me this far this quickly. So why stop now? In the spirit of ‘Fake It Til You Make It,’ I am at 95% and there I shall stay, at least until I hit 96%.

So what does that mean, in actual terms? In my slightly biased view, it means I can now present a front to the world which is convincingly well. I can present myself so that a person meeting me might say, “I thought you were sick,” which is quite satisfying. I can walk pretty darn well, so long as I focus a little on it. I can climb stairs until the cows come home… a time when it is often necessary to climb stairs. I can walk to work and work all day and walk home again. I can tie my shoelaces and button my shirt in a manner that no longer draws sympathetic attention. In a recent examination, the reflexes which were markedly absent are mostly back and the huge tuning fork, which previously brought zero results from many corners of my frame, now vibrates joyfully through my bones. In a dodgy moment on a road the other day, I picked up speed to get out of the way of a car that was bearing down on me and a passer-by remarked, “you’re running now!” and I replied, “only when some fucker tries to run me down.”

So, yes, I’m back. 95% worth.

So, what of that other 5%? What does that constitute?

Mostly, it’s the darned tingles. That’s what they’re called, it seems, although I personally think it’s too small a word. Until I learned the word ‘tingle’ I referred it the sensations as ‘buzzing’ or ‘pins and needles,’ neither of which was quite right. ‘Tingle’ is good but it does need that capital letter out front, to add at least a bit of oomph to it. For it is no small thing. As I sit and type, and 24/7, my hands and feet tingle constantly. Finger tips are highly sensitive to touch, creating an electric shock effect every time I touch the keyboard. This has been a constant since the early onset of the syndrome and it currently (currently, get it?) shows little sign of easing. That is okay. I know it will abate over the coming months as the Myelin Sheath that ‘insulates’ my nerves slowly rebuilds itself. Until then, I have grown accustomed to the tingle and can work around it and with it pretty well. I’m typing away good-oh at the moment and the tingle is the tingle. I hear that it fades away, rather like a light being very slowly turned down, until it is one day gone. Or not. Some people of my age group may be left with a residual tingle. I’ll live with that if that’s how it pans out. I’ll consider myself lucky.

I believe that there are things you can consider taking, to ease the tingling. But my understanding is that it is better for me to get as much sensory input as possible, rather than dulling anything down. For some people, their own personal tingling might simply be too much to bear and drugs will be required. Again, lucky me, I can get by with my level of tingle and so I do.

Without diving too deep in this bit, feelings are at 95% too. 95% of the time I feel so lucky that I was in a position to recover as quickly and as well as I have. Others have needed much, much longer. And, let's be clear, my good fortune here has not been due to strength or wisdom or good looks on my part. It has been 95% luck, pure and simple. If I’d been worse, as other people often are, I would still be in my chair. So, if you ever end up there, it’s not a competition. Just keep doing everything you can to get better, for that was the other 5% that got me here, and that’s all that you can do.

As for the other 5%, feelings wise. Well, I sometimes think about how I was on the 14^th of January and how I am now. Now I am a man who can walk well, so long as I focus. I can work hard, so long as I know I will be very tired afterward. I can type, so long as the tingle remains my friend. Because sometimes, late in the evening, it is not my very best friend. It’s more like a slightly irritating schoolmate, who turns up late to the reunion, and only wants to talk about how terrible you were at sports.

95% of the time, though, I walk out in my town and I see Spring coming to the trees on the Mall and I know I wasn’t expecting to see that this year. I revel in my new-found strength, in walking and in general resolve, and I look forward to all the good things to come, now that I know I can handle a little bit of the bad.

That last part sounds a bit like a creed…

Normal service will now resume in these-here parts.

The cat is up to all sorts… you need to be told.

K x

In Search of the Swagger

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:07:00 +0000

You might do something for me. It’s not terribly hard.

The next time you go for a walk, even if it’s just one of those short ones from A to B, stop for a second and congratulate yourself on how brilliant you are. I mean, look at you. Nothing less than balletic is what I would say. A masterclass in balance and forward momentum.

As for me, (thanks for asking), I am now walking pretty well and covering quite a bit of Castlebar territory every day. I walk to the library and practice going up and down their stairs. I also walk around the Mall, which is something I promised myself I would do again, after the hurly burly was done.

One kind neighbour, who must have spotted me on my excursions, told Trish that I had got my ‘swagger’ back. That was kind and I appreciate it a lot. But the truth is, I haven’t quite retrieved my swagger yet. But I’m working on it. I walk quite well… mostly... but the walk retains a studied, 'relearned' quality and is not quite second nature yet. If I meet somebody who I know and I walk along with them for a while, the conversation causes my stride-concentration to wane and the quality of the walking wanes a bit with it. I can walk pretty darned good and for a good long time. I just have to concentrate on it a little bit. When I’m by myself, I often quietly berate myself. “Walk right, you fucker,” I hiss, “stop fucking around.”

Today (Saturday), I dropped in on Anthony in the butcher’s shop, who shook my hand and sold me some stewing steak. Then I ambled along the river to Tesco and got the makings of a severe chilli. ‘Amble’ is good. When I am concentrating well, I can carry off a convincing amble, I reckon.

I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not all-better yet. I’m doing pretty great, that’s for sure, but, for example, while preparing my severe chilli, I found I couldn’t get the tin opener to work nor make the ring pulls on other tins bow to my will. (Don't judge me harshly on all those tins, there's lots of fresh stuff in my seevere chilli too, just kidney beans and tomatoes for the tins.) Time, and patience, that’s what’s needed. And a gently pushing on the door of the things I cannot yet do very well. An everyday ‘not settling’ for where I am at, while not pressing too far forward either.

It’s a balancing act… a bit like the walking.

Another aspect of this ‘getting better’ lark is how some of the details of my respective stays in hospital and rehab seem to be gently fading away. I want to hold on to them, as much as I can, because they help me appreciate how fucking amazing my life is. On the other hand, I don’t think I can write all those things out, as that’s too much work and also many of the things that happened involve other people whose privacy I wouldn't want to mess with.

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to allow myself a few keywords here. They may serve as an ‘aide memoir’ to me when I look back on this post in years to come (which is something I do). Each word tells a story, to me at least, and I don’t want to forget any of them.

So…

The Fist Fight. The Man Who Died, The Lady Who Came to Bed, The Man with the Three AM Toast (I’ll never forget that), The Tiktok Man, The Traditional Music Session, Brent, The ‘Write Down That He Is Afraid to Walk’ Man, Prune Juice, The Unassisted Walker, Delia, The Tuning Fork, Stan Laurel Reflexes, Cleetus’ High Fives, ‘Vincent’, If It’s Good Enough for The Baby, It’s Good Enough for Me, Naoise, Madeira Cake, The Expanding Room, The American Invasion of ‘Medical B’, Shane’s Playlist, MC’s AI Documentary, Peaceful Piano – American Songbook, ‘Tiptoes’, ‘Heels’, ‘You’re Hardly Using It At All… Put It Down,’ Porridge, How Uncomfortable a Wheelchair Gets, Alternating on Crutches, How The End of the Cycling Programme Looked Like a Crematorium, The Teeny Tiny Immunoglobin Bottle’…

Enough for now. Each of these things tells me a story. Maybe I'll recall them when I reread this.

For now, though, it’s time to go out in search of that swagger again.

Walk right, you little shit!

GB

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:10:00 +0000

I remember seeing a joke in a comic when I was a boy. One character asked another, “If an ‘L’ sticker on the back of a car means ‘Learner,’ what does ‘GB’ stand for?”

The answer was ‘Getting Better.’ Not very funny, not very memorable. Except it is, because for some reason I remember it.

Anyway, that’s the context for the title of this week’s post. Getting Better.

I’m getting better.

Those of you who read my previous post will know that I have landed myself with a thing called ‘Guillain-Barré Syndrome.’ (Note that GB can also refer to that… just in case you think I just throw these things together.) When I posted that last blog, two weeks ago, my GB (Guillain-Barré) was just on the verge of GB (Getting quite a bit Better). So I thought I’d better do a little update, for myself as much as for you, gentle reader.

A little over six weeks on from being admitted to hospital, I am pleased to report that I am back home again and walking, unaided, on my own two feet. I figured you’d be pleased to hear this… as I am.

I'll always say I was very lucky, because I was, but I pushed for it too. The medical advice was that it would take many months to get back to walking again and then the best part of a year to (hopefully) recover fully. In the six weeks it took me to get back to this stage, I have progressed through a sizeable list of moving devices and walking aids. These included, but were not restricted to, a wheelchair, sara stedy, standing support walking frame, gutter walker frame, regular walker frame, two crutches, two sticks, one stick and, um, no stick at all. That latter event happened quite recently. After a weekend of quietly practising with one stick, I was encouraged by my Physio to ‘just walk’ and, after a disbelieving few initial steps, that’s just what I did. And I’ve been continuing to do it ever since.

I think, somewhere in my head, I had equated the act of walking unaided with my being fully repaired. That is patently not the case. Although I can manage most things, albeit slowly and for a limited period of time, the 24/7 ‘electrical buzzing’ in my hands and feet is a constant reminder that the myelin sheath covering my nerve fibres is still largely stripped off and will need time to regenerate. In the meantime, I'm like a second rate Marvel Superhero. Let’s call me 'Minor but Constant Electrical Shock Man'. My Achilles Heel is that I can only inflict it on myself.

Although it was very far from glamorous, the strong feeling is that the most glamorous part of my repair/recovery is now over. My return to being fully ambulatory had elements of a Rocky training montage about it. I worked as hard as I could, pushed, was regimented, made faces, and finished with a gratuitous flourish. Then, wonder of wonders, I walked away.

Now as I fumble with my shirt buttons and try to walk discreetly, the impressive part is clearly over. My mission now is to be patient, do what I need to do, and let the healing continue.

This patience part will not be my forte. But I mustn’t forget that hospitals were not my forte either. Nor were immobility or total dependency. But I learned, first how do them and then how to get past them. I will learn how to do this patience thing too.

One of the challenges may be for me not to forget how bad it got for a little while there. I have a tendency to deflect and create diversions around negative things. I belittle them to deal with them. But I sense that a key part of this patience thing may be the holding on to the memories of those scary early parts of this thing. The cool feel of the hospital floor tiles on my cheek. The scrunching discomfort and bleakness of the hoist.

I could easily trivialise what happened, particularly given my lucky speed of recovery to date.

But this was not a trivial thing.

Is not a trivial thing.

Patience? Let’s do it.

A Suitable Case for Rehab

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 09:31:00 +0000

Apologies for being absent from the blog for the past five weeks or so. Apologies, too, for not being terribly responsive on my rather limited array of social media thingies.

As with most things in my life, there is a story.

I will try to tell it as succinctly as possible because it is actually physically hurting to type this out and my progress on it will be grindingly slow and riddled with mistakes.

“Jesus, Ken,” you might well say, “what the hell happened to you?”

Sit back, I’ll tell you and, as I said, I won’t take long.

It will be five weeks ago today, Sunday, that I carried the small aquarium style tank up the stairs in my friend’s house. The tank contained Tiny the Newt, who deserves a blog post all of his own someday. My friends were going on holidays and I enjoy calling around and looking after Tiny when they are gone. This time they were going for longer than usual so I had to learn how to clean out Tiny's tank too. I was carrying the tank back upstairs (less repetition, Ken, this typing stuff burns, remember?) when my legs started to feel heavy and sluggish. I announced I might be coming down with something and went home.

The next morning I drove to work, climbed the four flights of stairs to my office and immediately decided I wasn’t up to working. I went home again – something I had never done in my life before that day. I sat on the couch. I was convinced I was suffering from a post-flu fatigue. I’d had a good lick of it over the Christmas. A day of couch and Netflix would see me right.

The next day, Tuesday, I found myself using walls, chairs and tables to aid my progression around the house. Post-viral fatigue, I said. Couch and Netflix. You’ll be fine.

On Wednesday I offered to give Patricia a lift to yoga. Parking is tricky at the place. Walking might be a challenge but I could sure-as-shit drive a half a mile. I stepped out my front door, holding on to the jamb, and my right leg went from under me.

I went down.

“Hang on,” I said to Trish, “give me a second to get myself organised here. I’ll just get myself back up.”

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t get myself back up.

Eventually, by some awkward trial and error, I made it to the couch.

Reading this, you’ll reckon that it was ambulance time for yours truly but I am nothing if not a stubborn old fuck. I promised to see the GP the next day. Post-viral fatigue, with a little wonky leg action thrown in. The GP will sort it in a jiffy.

The next day, Trish and I went to the doctor. She parked as close as she could to the surgery and I got inside somehow by hugging walls and window cills and hanging on to doors.

The doctor looked me over and said he had read an article just recently and he reckoned he might know what was wrong with me. In truth, Mr. Google and I had spent some time on the subject too and I also had a fair inkling what I had.

He said, “You need to go to The Accident and Emergency Department immediately. I think you have Guillain-Barré Syndrome.”

And sorry about the repetition, fingers, but I rather thought so too.

As we left his surgery, the kind doctor said, “I hope and pray that this does not prove to be too bad for you.” I agreed with him on that as well.

You can look up Guillain-Barré Syndrome if you want to know more about it. It hurts too much to type it out. Perhaps the most famous GBS sufferer is Sufjan Stevens. When I told my younger son I had it, he already knew a lot about it on account of Sufjan. It is important to say that outcomes are generally good and I do seem to be headed for a good recovery myself.

Fingers Crossed.

I was admitted to hospital and they found a bed for me. Several days, one CT, one MRI and one Lumbar Puncture later, the diagnosis was confirmed. Guillain-Barré. By then, the confirmation came as a considerable relief to me and my family. There were other things this could have been and none of them would be terribly high on anybody's wish list.

There was medical stuff that had to be done to help me and that took five days. During that time, the limited response I could still muster from my legs slipped away and my hands became ungainly and awkward and alive with electrical pins and needles. Which is why it still hurts to type this. I could stop, I know, but I’m a writer at heart and this writing-pain seems to make me feel happier and stronger. That’s writers for you.

After the medical stuff was done, I was rapidly dispatched to an excellent Rehab facility where I quickly started on my brand new hobby – learning how to walk again.

And that’s where I’m at now. Well almost. I’ve been allowed home for the weekend and should be home permanently quite soon. It turns out I’m quite a good student of walking and - no, God, strike that. Out of respect for the other people who have had this syndrome and who fought tooth and nail to walk again, I’ve been fucking lucky. I’ve had it easier than many of you had and I know it. I respect your battles, fellow GBS People. Make no mistake, I’ve had to work hard too, but perhaps not as hard as some of you.

So, anyway, that’s my excuse for missing some blog posts. Good, eh?

I have a way to go in my recovery but I’m on a good trajectory. I don’t need, want, or request anything from you except perhaps your continued friendship, which is highly valued.

I may write more about what it is like to be in hospital for the first time in fifty years. I may write about the excellent people who have treated me and looked after me. I may write about the fellow patients I have met.

But, for now, I think that's enough.

Fingers; rest.

A Little Modern Day Tortoise and Hare Action

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:20:00 +0000

On Friday, I was around and about in Tallaght in Dublin. Tallaght has quite a modern centre and, when I was done with my thing, I found myself in my car on a nice long stretch of bright and sparkly dual carriageway which ran along the periphery of the modern bit. The sign said I was allowed to do 60 kilometres per hour so I resolved to do 60. In a major glitch in normality, there was not another single car in sight, even though it was the middle of the day.

So I did 60.

Did I say there was no other cars on the road? I told a lie. There was another car. One other car. A smallish black thing. I pulled up behind it. It was doing 25 kilometres per hour. I gave it a minute. I reckoned the guy was getting up to speed and, any moment now, would cruise up to the allowed 60 and on we would go. I was wrong, the guy was on 25 and was staying on 25. The road ahead of him was clear for as far as the eye could see.

At least he was in the inside lane. I pulled out to the overtaking lane and I overtook him, getting myself back up to my beloved, and permitted, 60.

As I accelerated past him, I couldn’t help but dart a look over. I was expecting an old geezer, wedged in second gear, trundling along. But no. This was a youngish guy, skinny and weedy-looking laid back in his seat, cool and relaxed. If somebody were to play him in a movie, I would have voted for Steve Buscemi. As I drew out in front, the road once more stretched out in front. I stayed in the outside land as I had a right turn up the road a ways. I mumbled a few derogatory thoughts about the dude receding in my rear view mirror. Idiot, slow-coach, some more colourful ones which I will spare you. He got smaller and smaller in the mirror and he dropped from my thoughts in direct proportion to that receding.

On I went, all alone, free as a bird. Then, up ahead, there was a traffic light. It was green. As I approached, it was still green. Then, just as I was almost up to it, it turned first amber and then red. I stopped, all alone at the lights.

My rear view mirror became that desert scene from Laurence of Arabia. You know the one, where Omar Sharif rides out from the horizon. In my mirror, a black dot appeared and then commenced to grow and grow. The dot became a smallish black car which came on and came on at an unaltering 20 kilometres per hour. It drew up, still in the inside lane. It kept coming and kept coming. It didn’t accelerate at all; it didn’t slow down at all. And, just at it arrived at the red light, at precisely 20 KPH, the light changed to green and the car rolled on through without changing pace one single iota.

And I was left sitting.

Now the little black car accelerated. It quickly brought it’s speed up to 60 KPH and left me in its wake.

That’s my story.

I feel there’s a lesson to be learned from this. Something about running around like a headless chicken. Something about how knowledge is power. I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out what it is.

I’ll let you know when I do.

Do Not Sigh, Do Not Weep

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 10:25:00 +0000

Whenever our Aunt Rosaline came home to visit, it inevitably caused quite a stir.

Rosaline, my mother’s younger sister, had gone to live in Boston when she was just eighteen years old. And we, being just kids, had never known her as a person who came from our home town of Sligo. She was America through-and-through and when she came to visit, she turned our world upside down in all the best possible ways.

As I recall, from a distance of over 55 years, Her coming was foretold in strange ways. My Dad, who never veered into poetic quotation beyond a stray line from Lake Isle of Innisfree, started randomly reciting the opening lines from a poem by James Clarence Mangan, “Oh my dark Rosaleen, do not sigh, do not weep. The priests are on the ocean green, they march along the deep.” All my life since, I have secretly almost-believed this poem was about Rosaleen coming across the ocean green to see us. I also firmly believed that the song, “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,” was about the arrival of Rosaleen and the surprisingly circuitous route she might take to get to us.

Rosaline brought with her a blast of warm air from a newer world. She set herself up in the front room of Granny’s (her Mother’s house) and lived out of a set of white suitcases that overflowed with cartons of Pall Mall menthol cigarettes. My Dad took a moment to acclimatise to her American accent, sitting on the winders of Granny’s stairs, looking out the front door over Sligo Quay below, and quietly repeating the affirmation ‘Riiight’ after every time Rosaline used it.

I don’t know what age I was when Rosaline first came home. I know I was small. I thought she was a celestial being of sorts and I was in awe of her. She taught me things that have stayed with me all my life. How to use a nail brush to keep dirt from gathering under my fingernails. The taste and texture of Yogurt (completely unknown to me before that) and most resiliently, the importance of always walking on the outside of the pavement when stepping out with a lady. This is something I still insist on doing in my everyday life, as a given, and Rosaline showed me that.

My beloved Aunt Rosaline passed away on 28^th December 2025. May she rest in peace.

When Rosaline got married, I would say around 1970, her Mother and Father, my Granny and Grandad, travelled to Boston for an extended stay around the time of the wedding. This was an unheard-of excursion for two people of their vintage. My grandad, a stevedore on the Quay below his house, may have dispatched many ships in that direction but could not have dreamed of ever going there himself. Rosaline lifted them across the ocean and showed them her world and, upon their return, they seemed to my young eyes to be bigger and stronger and easier in themselves, having struck out into the wide world and seen their youngest daughter so excellently wed.

Granny and Grandad returned with an album of the most amazing wedding photos. Grandad tall and proud in a white suit. The bride and groom resplendent. They also brought an eye-watering array of gifts for me and my brothers. A cassette tape recorder for one, a Polaroid camera for the other (back when each of these things were James Bond-level exotic technology) and for me, as the youngest, an unthinkably special thing. The story I was told, at seven, was that Rosaline and Evan couldn’t think what to send me until, one day, Evan went out and came back and said, “This is for Kenneth.” A gold watch. A real gold wrist watch. I wore it everywhere for many years. A sign that I was special, all the way from America.

Rosaline’s husband, Evan, was an extraordinary man. He was very tall and strong and handsome while also being very gentle and thoughtful and kind. He came to visit us with Rosaleen and we had never seen his like in Sligo. He struck up a quiet, special, friendship with my late older brother Michael. They were both quiet, special, guys. He scoured the town of Sligo for a bottle of wine because, being Yugoslavian, he liked a tiny tipple with his dinner. He found one of those bottles of Chianti with the straw covered based to the bottle. Years later, I remember reminding him how he enjoyed that type of Chianti and he smilingly whispered how he hated it but it was the only red wine he could find in our town.

After Rosaline and Evan had Evan Junior and then Amy, they all came home on several occasions and it was always a whole new breath of a different air. They were beautiful children with auburn hair and brown eyes which stood out among the Sligo brown hair/blue eye mix. Evan Jnr. ate Ravioli, which we had never heard of, and drank apple juice, which we had never tasted. He had a games console back home called ColecoVision and it annoyed him that the episodes of The A Team on TV in Ireland were months behind his. But he really liked our white sliced bread with butter on. We couldn’t imagine how something so ordinary could elicit anything more than the most basic response… but it did. Amy was littler and didn’t express her likes or dislikes so memorably at that time.

In December 1989, my fiancée Patricia and I set off on a year’s trip around the world and our first stop was in Boston with Rosaline and Evan Snr and Evan Jnr and Amy. We spent three weeks with them, on the run-in to their Christmas. I have never felt more welcomed or comfortable in another person’s home than I did then. I skiied with Evan Jnr and his friends in New Hampshire, gaining an interesting injury and a lifelong scar. I helped Amy with a book project deadline, showing her how reading the first line of every chapter might get her through. I drank Evan Snr.'s Draft Mickleob from the little bar in the corner of the kitchen. This, I feel, was when I got to know Rosaline best. The excellent cook, the ultra-generous host, (which was always echoed by gentle hard-working Evan), the feisty defender of her family and her beliefs. We sat up late into several nights in her kitchen, conversations ranging across all kinds of broad subjects. Her energy never waned, no matter the hour. Her light was always burning brightly, from where I was sitting at least.

To my regret, I lost touch with Rosaline after my Mother – her sister – died. No good reason, just life and perhaps stasis on my part.

Although I will continue to regret that falling off of communication, I will know that Rosaline Mihaich has always been, and will always remain, a very large influence in my life and in how I deal with people and challenges.

My Dad’s ancient recitation of ‘Dark Rosaleen’ may not offer much ease, at your sad passing, but his fall-back material of ‘Inishfree’ may offer us some word or two of solace.

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…”

Rest in peace, Dear Rosaline.

You were very special indeed.

K x

Worrying About Schrödinger's Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 11:43:00 +0000

I always enjoy Julian Simpson’s writing; in whatever form it takes. Last week, he shared a piece from his website about how we might cope with the looming 2026. The piece has now gone back behind the paywall. Julian is well worth the cost of getting through the paywall so, if you fancy it. Here’s a link:

https://www.cartoongravity.com/how-to-cope-with-2026/

In the middle of the piece, he says, “Whether it's a global pandemic or an issue at work, the moment we're inside a problem, we're not worrying, we're acting. Worry is not the response to a problem, it is the anticipation of something that has not yet happened and, crucially, may not happen.”

I do that. I worry about things that haven’t happened yet and that may not ever happen. I worry about some of them a lot. I think of the various ways these things might go and what I will do if they go one way or go the other. I give it all a lot more time that I should.

In my head, I call it ‘Worrying About Schrödinger's cat .’

Like me, you probably know a little bit about Schrödinger's cat . It’s a thought experiment in which a hypothetical cat in a closed box may be considered to be simultaneously both alive and dead while it is unobserved, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. I lifted some of that out of Wikipedia. I’m not that smart.

The key takeaway from the above spiel is that the Cat may be simultaneously both alive and dead. Hold onto that. I know I do.

If I had a hypothetical box and Schrödinger's hypothetical cat was inside of it, I would worry the shit out of that situation. There it is now, on my living room floor, right in front of the telly. It’s the size of a shoe box – no, wait, a box that had knee high boots in (more room to breathe in there). The box is wrapped in brown paper and there’s twine around it and it’s sealed with a blob of red sealing wax. And there’s a cat in there. And it may be alive. And it may be dead.

Shit. I’m worried now about this hypothetical non-existent cat. She’s alive. Does she have water, enough room to move around? Is he stressed? Lonely? He’s dead. Will he start to smell. Can I throw the box out as it is or do I need to open it and take the deceased moggy out? Do I have to bury it? Will the council or perhaps a vet take it away?

This box doesn’t exist. There is no cat, no alive or dead. Yet, here I am, worried about it.

I’m being silly to make the point but I really do this quite a lot. I love a problem, to a certain extent. If it’s a choice between having a problem or no problem, I’ll take the no problem option every time. Who wouldn’t? But if it’s a choice between a problem and a potential problem with more than one possible outcome then give me the problem. Please, the problem.

It’s like Julian said, the moment it’s a live problem, I’m off trying to solve it. That I can do. But I have a lively and rather vivid imagination and, before the potential problem becomes an actual thing, I can practically exhaust myself by worrying about it.

I’ve being through a rather earnest bout of this recently. The problem hasn’t materialised but, if it had, I had it sorted in fifteen different ways. It just never arrived… well, it hasn’t yet. Maybe it will… (stop it, Ken, just stop).

I manage these tendencies. I try to be mindful in a half-arsed sort of a way. I notice the trees and the quality of the air and the sunlight when there is some. I tell myself that, “at this moment, everything is all right.” And all that helps and works to a certain extent.

But the ghost/non ghost of Schrödinger's Imaginary Cat is never very far away. Lurking around some corner or leaning stiff again some wall. I’m never sure which.

But I worry about both.

I’ll be fine though. I’ve been doing this a long time now and I just need to keep reminding myself not to.

For the week that’s in it, can I wish you, Dear Reader, a warm and pleasant Christmas without too much worry and stress. And if it’s a bad time of year for you, I get that. Just remember that Winter will pass soon and better, brighter days will be with us again.

Thanks for coming by this year and all the very best

Ken x

Losing Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 10:39:00 +0000

I’ve been on Social Media for a long time and, along the way, I've come into contact with a lot of very fine people. That was mostly on Twitter. I would go so far as to say that I made good friends there. For a considerable number of years, it was really great and, sad and all as it may sound, it was an important facet of my life. But these days, I find that I’ve largely lost touch with most everyone I used to interact with back then.

That’s the blog post for this week. There’s no real need to read any more. I may expand on the above couple of sentences a little bit. I may waffle. But I don’t expect to reach any meaningful insights or conclusions beyond that which has been set down in the lines above. It just is what it is.

I could make it easy and say that my giving up on Twitter (or X, as at became) was the primary reason for losing touch as I have. I had to leave. A critical point was arrived at, where I could no longer countenance sharing my words on such a spoiled and demeaned landscape. I went over to Bluesky and found some lovely people to chat to, some old Twitter renegades, some new delightful folk. But the loose interactive cohort of old Twitter days was gone from me.

I could certainly pin all this on my departure from Twitter and wrap everything up nicely that way. But that wouldn’t really be the truth of it. The truth is that the cohort had disbanded long before Twitter descended into X and it all fell apart, for me at least.

So I ponder sometimes what happened. I am well capable of dreaming up scenarios and reinventing history to suit some creative narrative of my own making. So, I have to keep all that in mind if I ever embark on a flight of fancy as to why so much contact was lost. In truth, I’ve only ever come up with a total of two part-meaningful theories, both of them probably incorrect.

My first fanciful theory is that the death of my friend Simon Ricketts marked the end of something substantial. That he was a glue that held it all together, a beacon towards which many people sailed. I think there’s some truth in this but I don’t think it’s a final reason in itself as to why the fellowship broke. If Simon could, I think he would be aming the first to pour a trickle of cold water on the idea. He might remind me that he was just a fella and that was all there was too it. As a bonus, he would reassure me about the niggle I have about using the word ‘friend’ about him in the first line of this paragraph. We only met a few times and Simon was famously friends with most everyone who came into contact with him. So how sad am I to still apply the word friend to the rather passing acquaintance I had with him? But, like I said, Simon would soon straighten me out on that, if he were here. He would assure me that we were indeed mates and that that will never change. He’s not here to do it, so I do it for myself, in honour of him. Simon was my good friend. Deal with it, Ken.

Was his passing an end of something? I have no doubt in my mind that it was. But was it the end of everything? That, I’m less sure of.

My second fanciful theory is best summed up by a line from a Neil Diamond song, “… as though I’d done someone wrong somewhere, but I don’t know where…”. My over-active mind could easily conjure a scenario where I did or said something wrong and, even though I have no idea what that might have been, my involvement in the loose cohort ended as a result. Somewhere, on some remote electronic interface, all of the old friends and confidants are still there, chatting away to each other as they always did. Once every couple of years referring briefly to the terrible faux pas that Armstrong made, shuddering briefly, then moving on.

I don’t believe this. Not at all. But I feel it’s worth mentioning because I bet I’m not the only one who could think like this, if I permitted myself to do so. Sometimes it’s a long trek across Social Media without a drink of water and one can get to wondering where the hell everyone has got to. So I set this notion down, not to make myself look foolish, which I fully realise I am doing, but to show other like-minded people that they are not alone if they ever think like this.

And finally, to quote another song, Tom Waits this time, “Charlie, for Chrissakes, if you wanna know the truth of it…”

The simple truth of the entire affair is that time passes (“listen… time passes"). We move on and we move away. We slip apart. No one, two, or three things made it happen. No horrible incident made it happen. It just… happened.

I run into members of that Old School all the time, on the electronic highways. Someone likes something I typed or sends me a warm little message or I do the same for them. There was never any dissolution or break up of fall out or loss. There is only time and moving on.

And the final truth, if one could face it?

There never really was a cohort.

There was a lively, warm, engaging, occasionally messy, juxtaposition of messages from a time when a lot of good people were all in the same place at the same time. It never really existed and paradoxically, it could never really last.

So, as you can tell from all of the above, I don’t really know what it was, let alone where it went.

And, if I miss it now and again, from time to time, well that’s okay too.

Castlebar to Ballina – A Setlist

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 10:49:00 +0000

I sing in the car. So shoot me.

In actuality, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been singing in my car. The way I figure it, there are two basic reasons. Firstly I haven’t been in the humour for singing too much and, secondly, I haven’t been in the car too much. Two fine reasons, I think you’ll agree.

And when I was making the short, thirty minute, drive over to Ballina the other morning, I had no predetermined intention of doing any of my patented car singing. But these things just tend to happen. What happened was, a song came on the radio and it just fitted into my head very well at that moment so I sang along with it. With considerable gusto, I might add. After all, it was just me and the curious faces of the drivers going in the opposite direction. So why not?

The song, in case you’re wondering, was, “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song’ by Jim Croce.’ It’s one of those songs that seems to fit with my ramshackle old bass voice. It’s also one of those songs I forget about when I think about songs that I might be able to manage. So, catching it on the radio was a good moment. I sang along, all the way through. Then, when it was over, I fancied singing it again so I turned the radio off and did just that. I discovered I‘d forgotten a few of the words in the middle eight but never mind. On we ploughed. Incidentally, here’s something else I just discovered. Until today, I would have sworn to you that the song was called ‘I Had to say I Love You in a Song’ and, as you can see from the text about, it clearly isn’t. I’ll probably keep singing it the wrong way now because it’s embedded that way. That is, if I ever remember to sing it again.

Anyway, I digress. After finishing that little number, to copious internal applause, I moved on to ‘King of the Road’ by Roger Miller, which works well but I wish I had a better way of ending it. Then I did a bit of ‘La Mer’ by Charles Trenet, bluffing the French lyrics as best I can and morphing the entire hot mess into ‘Beyond the Sea,’ as I tend to do. After that, there was a bit of ‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You’ by Tom Waits, from his very first album ‘Closing Time, back when he wasn’t gravelly. It’s an album beloved of a large number of Irish people of a certain age. Quite right, it’s a lovely record, but it’s a shame they don’t know more of his wonderful catalogue. As if to punch home this point, I did a bit of ‘Chocolate Jesus’ for the passing motorists. I wound the random little recital up with a brief refrain from the Broadway show ‘The Fantasticks’ with ‘Try to Remember.’ I think I can sing this one but, deep down, I know I really can’t. I was in Ballina by then and it’s not cool to sing in towns. It’s strictly an open road pursuit.

I figured I was done then but there was another bit of a remote road out the far side of Ballina and I was self-encouraged to attempt an assault on ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ by Neil Diamond. It always amuses me to pretend in my head to be introducing the song and explaining how it is actually an ode to a sparkling rose wine. It’s a song that seems to be designed to catch the unwary car singer out. But if I start it off in a low enough register, I can sometimes get by just bawling out the higher stuff that unleashes in the middle.

Then I was at my destination, a little hoarse but ready to work.

I think my unprovoked resurrection of my truly awful car singing may be something of a good sign. Maybe I’m getting back to a little clear water after a short period of rocking and rolling on the high seas of life. I’ll try to keep at it if I can, even if it clearly benefits nobody but me.

It reminds me of an age-old Limerick I saw in some book once:

There once were three owls in a wood

Who always sang hymns when they could

What the words were about

One could never make out,

But one felt it was doing them good.

Til next time…

Books Etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 10:29:00 +0000

I thought I might take a moment and mention a couple of books I read this year that I enjoyed a lot.

I am a reader and, although I have been called both, I am neither a ‘voracious reader’ nor a ‘widely read' person. I think it’s safe to say I have have read some part of some book every day of my teenage and adult life. But my reading is confined to one serious session before sleep, twenty minutes over lunch, and the odd ‘sit on the couch and just read’ sessions. With this occasional, erratic, but constant routine, I get through quite a few books and I’ve been doing it for so long it’s added up to quite a list of books read. But ‘voracious’? Alas, no.

As always, I am indebted to the Castlebar Library Book Club, where I’ve been going monthly for the best part of two decades. Every month, the good people there put their heads together and suggest a book that I probably would never have found all by myself. Because of this, my reading horizons have been broadened from the murky corners I would have previously habituated. Every month doesn’t hit 100% home but that’s kind of the point. It’s like a taster menu in a better class of restaurant than the ones you normally frequent.

So the two books I want to mention specifically were both choices at this years Book Club sessions.

Here’s the first:

West by Carys Davies: A slender, but wonderful, novel set in Pennsylvania an 1819 in which a bereaved father sets out on a misguided and very lengthy expedition to find prehistoric animals which he believes could still exist. He leaves behind his 10 year old daughter, in the care of his sister, and off he trots. Along the way, he enlist the help of a Native American boy and, together, they face the immense hardships of the American Frontier while, back at home, his daughter has her own severe challenges to meet.

My Grandfather, Sammy, used to love ‘Cowboy Books’ and, as a lad, I used to delight in rounding up and driving home volumes of Louis Lamour and Zane Grey from the local library. I have since found much to admire in various books set in the so-called ‘Old West’. A friend pointed me towards ‘Lonesome Dove’ which carried me along with it like a tide. More recently, there was the wonderful ‘The Heart in Winter’ by Kevin Barry, 'Butcher’s Crossing' by John Edward Williams, and the unshakable horrors contained in ‘Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy. There is something rooted and without guile in so many of the stories set in this era. The older I get, the more I seem to appreciate them.

‘West’ is one of those books I would be happy to recommend to anyone. It is moving and insightful. It is unexpected and human and it rattles onward to a thundering (if slightly unlikely) conclusion.

And here's the second:

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: I would never have read this, if it weren’t for Castlebar Library Book Club. I mean, never. This is one of those books where anything I tell you about it would tend to lessen its effectiveness. I had read one review before I read the book and, although the reviewer was ultra-careful in what they revealed, I still found myself primed for the arrival of certain moments in the story and subconsciously expectant of where it was going and where it ultimately went. Have I said too much already? I hope not. We give our reads star ratings out of five and I gave this a very rare five. The writing and the insight into the characters wrapped me up and engrossed me and the story, which is outside of that which would normally engage me, did exactly that. This one won’t be for everyone, I reckon. But, damn, it worked for me.

Other non-Book Club books that hit some this year included ‘On the Calculation of Volume – Book 1’ by Solvej Balle. I came to this with a lot of expectation. It sounded right up my street. And, in fairness, it turned out to be a little slower and more reflective than I expected it to be. But I am still looking forward to getting to the second (and, hopefully) subsequent volumes, so it must have done something right.

In retrospective reading, I became immersed in ‘A Fringe of Leaves’ by Patrick White. This book has been pointed out as including negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures and that should be taken into account. Respecting this, I found the heightened language and slowly unfolding misfortune of the story engrossing.

Finally, at the moment, I am reading, and having a good time with, ‘The Lincoln Highway’ by Amor Towles. Amor hit big with the Book Club some years ago with ‘A Gentleman in Moscow.’ And, whereas this book did not meet the same critical and general success, I am enjoying the ride, nonetheless. Towles writes in an accessible, straightforward style of a kind I always admire. He takes you along with him with a deceptive ease. If you enjoyed ‘Gentleman in Moscow’ and fancy an American road trip which doesn’t go quite where you expect it to go, then you might like this one.

Books are great. Whenever I crack the spine of my current one, at the end of any given day, I feel like I am home.

Goodbye Halloween Frog

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 12:10:00 +0000

The Halloween Frog is gone now.

This morning, while it was quiet, I went up the street with my trusty spade and I slid it under him, lifted him, and carried him to the copse at the bottom of the green. There, among the grass clippings and the secateured twigs, I laid him to rest.

This wasn’t good neighbourliness or even civic duty. The Halloween Frog had been playing on my mind, sufficient to be the subject of this week’s blog entry. So it was in my own interests to see him moved on to somewhere less public.

I can close the book on him now… right after I’ve told you a bit about him.

The Halloween Frog showed up a few days before Halloween. At first, I thought he was still alive. He was sat on the pavement, right on the corner where one street in the Estate becomes another. It was nice to see him, a perfect little frog right there on our street. It wasn’t a normal sight. It was kind of cool. Except. Well, except he was dead, of course. That became clear pretty quickly, on closer examination. I wondered what had killed him. He was in a perfectly natural Froggie pose and there wasn’t a mark on him. Not then at least. I gave a mental shrug and moved on. Nothing to see here.

He was still there on my way home from work and he was a slightly less welcome sight, now that it was clear that he had not moved since I saw him last nor would he ever move again. Not of his own accord anyway. If he was ever going to move again, somebody was going to have to move him.

And nobody did.

He was quite the little stroll from my house so I didn’t see it as my thing to be going up there and moving him. Maybe I should have. Eventually I did. But not soon enough. Not quite soon enough.

On the second day, the day before Halloween, the frog had developed an extrusion of white foam from its mouth area. It seemed a little flatter on the ground. Not quite the firm, rounded, figure of the day before. On Halloween itself, the foam was slightly more pronounced and the roundedness was slightly less so. Something was happening, that was for sure, and it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fun.

And, because of the day and night that was in it, this thought started to rattle around in my head. Death is not fun. The rapid deterioration of the mortal frame is not cool or attractive by any stretch of any imagination. Yet here we were in that day and evening when little corpses come out and circumnavigate the neighbourhood in search of sugary treats. Their homes are decorated with long haired skulls that scream silently at passing folk, their front gardens boast half open caskets with skeletal hands groping their way out.

And, all the while, a very real creature was slowly turning to corruption, right out there on the front street.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Halloween. Always have. As a kid I was fascinated by walking skeletons and spooks and Hollywood monsters. Just like all the other kids. Hell, I still am. It’s just, this year, the little frog and its insalubrious public deterioration made me wonder a bit. I wondered about what logic drives us to encourage this fascination in death and ‘the skull beneath the skin’ in our little kids. Are we preparing them for something in the nicest, most fun, way possible? Or are we cocking a snook at the fate that inevitably awaits us all a little way down the road?

You can see why I needed to get my spade, this sunny Sunday morning, and commit the frog-corpse back the wood from whence it hopefully came. By this morning it was a flat jelly-like simulacrum of a reptile, covered in billows of grey viscous foam.

Halloween is a very good thing, to my mind. But it is also good that it keeps itself a considerable distance from the truth of the things it proports to celebrate. It also helps that it dodges two of the most unavoidable realities of death.

One, that we won’t really continue to look all that cool after we go.

And two, that we are not ever coming back.

Getting Back on the Horse

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 09:31:00 +0000

In any given year, there are two danger moments in the life of this little blog.

This is one of them.

The first always comes on New Year’s Day or, to put it more accurately, on the first day of the year when a new blog post is required. The second comes when the produced work for the year is finished, as it is just now. This year, just like last year, it was the plays with Castlebar Musical and Dramatic Society. A wonderful experience but, as the man says, it’s all over now.

The two moments are the same but different. Try to imagine a little writing demon sitting on each of my shoulders, one being bad and one being good, and both of them whispering in my ears. At both of these danger times, the bad demon’s whispers are way, way louder than the puny good demon perched on the other side.

“What’s the point?” she says.

“Blogging died ten years ago, yet here you still are. Give it up. Instead of piddling it up against the wall, why don't you put this bit of writing energy into something that might actually become something, that might actually do something,” she says.

“Just stop,” she says.

The good demon, on the other shoulder, stays largely silent.

The reason that these danger moments occur is straightforward. On each of these two occasions, you see, I simply fall off the horse. The first occasion has a reason that is both straightforward and universal. Christmas. Once again, as with other years, I will have gleefully allowed my brain to stew in an orgy of old movies, family visits, and tins of Cadbury Roses. By the time the New Year comes around, I can no longer remember how to ride the horse that is my blogging habit.

It’s much the same thing when the production of the plays comes to an end. Although I’ve been writing blog posts all the way through that process, the majority of those posts will have been about the plays, the rehearsals, the actors, the production. They sort of write themselves. Now that the plays are over, here is that famous blank screen in front of me once again and that girthy little demon sitting at my ear, telling me over and over that I simply shouldn’t bother. It’s a persuasive voice.

Yet here I am, scribbling.

Why is that?

Easy.

I don’t listen to my little demons, good or bad. I listen to myself. Also I find it hard to stop doing things… any things. If I have a pair of old shoes with holes in the soles and catastrophised uppers, I find it hard to stop wearing them. The Status Quo must be maintained wherever possible. This imperative drives me back, time and again, to the blank page. Even when the current blog post will only be a directionless ramble, as this one will clearly be, I am still here. Putting down the words.

But it’s more that that. This thing that brings me back and back to this rather fruitless endeavour, after 15 plus years of it.

Simple.

It’s good for me.

It’s good for my head and it’s really good for my writing. This almost-weekly act of compiling some increasingly elusive thoughts into a passably coherent thousand word post is an exercise that keeps my writing muscle in trim. When I come to write my other stuff, my fingers know where the keys are and my brain largely knows what is readable and what is not. (Said he, in a largely unreadable sentence).

I’ve said it before. I love it when people come and read these silly words and I love it even more when they tell me what they think of them, good or bad. But, over the years, this exercise has become far more about me than about you. Sorry about that, but it’s true. The thing that drags me back here, after Christmas revelries and Theatrical adventures are all done, well, it’s not good demons or force of habit or anything like that.

It’s just me.

So on we go. What will the next blog post be about, or the one after that? Not a clue, sorry.

All I know is, if I don’t get hit by a tram or something, I’ll be here working on them.

Be still, bad demon.

I’m writing here.

An Open Letter to Cast, Crew, Arts Centre, and Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 17:15:00 +0000

Our two evenings at The Linenhall Arts Centre, which culminated last night, ticked several bucket list items for me. These included, bringing The Doubles Partner back to stage with a dream cast, finally having a go at subverting a raffle, and, joy of joys, getting to see my slightly rogue ‘A Sort of Whodunnit’ play realised at last for an audience.

Both nights were wonderful for me, in slightly different ways. On Thursday I got to be what I like to be on these theatrical evenings: a man who has most of his work done, who just needs to make sure a few final bits and pieces are in place. On these occasions, and last Thursday, I tend to lap up the atmosphere and commit all the loveliness to careful memory.

Friday’s show came from a different angle. By prior agreement, I had undertaken to play a part myself in the middle ‘Raffle’ half a play. I resolved many moons ago to stay firmly on the dark side of the floodlights but needs must and the show must go on. So, Friday evening I was a sweaty little bag of nerves, trying to memorise all the blasted lines I had so blithely written. Serves me right. In fairness, it was a memorable experience, to momentarily become, once again, a part of the nervous pre-show actorly energy. And, also in fairness, it was a genuine treat to get to stand on stage with my good friend Ronan Egan, a place where he so clearly belongs and I so clearly do not.

I want to write some heart felt "Thank Yous"…

To the actors (in order of appearance on stage):

The Doubles Partner: Donna Ruane, Eamon Smith, and Vivienne Lee.

The Raffle: Ronan Egan, Katie Padden, Jim Finan, Caoimhe Halligan, and Kate Loftus.

A Sort of Whodunnit: Eithne McGreal, Matthew Largent, Brendan Mullins, and Eimear Philbin.

Each and every actor made me feel lucky and grateful for what they brought to our little party. Thank you all!

I am always shaken and amazed at the levels of time and commitment that such talented folk are willing to give to my inane scribblings. I am forever in debt for the depth, width, and breadth you bring to the black and white words on the pages.

To the people who make the shows happen:

Anne Marie Gibbons: The ever-smiling powerhouse, the Maestra of the Direct Message, the Vixen of the Voicemail, without whom nothing good would ever happen and nothing tricky would ever get done.

George Bernard Gallagher and Barry Keavney, Technical Gurus at The Linenhall Theatre: Ever stalwart, nothing too much trouble, did everything possible to provide us with a gleamingly lovely theatre space replete with lights and sound.

Sandra Gibbons and Declan Gibbons: The hardest-working Stage Managers this side of the Shannon. Ever cool, always with a solution to any problem. You both have saved my skin several times over and I am eternally grateful.

All of the Castlebar Musical and Dramatic Society esteemed members, who came to help at front of house and with the raffle (boy, did I mess you up with the raffle!!) :)

The Entire Staff of The Linenhall Arts Centre, from Management through Front of House peeps: You’re doubtless fed up looking at me, coming and going, with my sound effect skirting boards tucked under my arm, looking for something else. But you never say 'no', if you can help it, and the yeses always come with a friendly smile. Who could ask for anything more from their friendly neighbourhood Arts Centre?

Castlebar Musical and Dramatic Society: For a second year running, you let me run amok in your joyous sandbox of talent and commitment. It’s an unbelievable gift to be able to display my writing through your titanic society (‘Titanic’ as in ‘large’… not as in 'hitting icebergs'). I’ve got to do all these bucket list things with you. I’ve made highly valued new friends. I’ve lived the dream, really, these last few months.

And, finally, to the audiences. Each night, you came out and paid your hard earned dosh to see us. Rest assured, your money will all go to ensure a great musical production in March ’26. It couldn’t happen without you. More than anything, though, you came with your smiles and your pleasure at being out with friends and family and, for me, that’s one of the very best things.

So thank you. Thank you all!

And now, suitably inspired, I intend to retire to my untidy room for the hopefully short Winter, to try to write something entirely brand new, and to then see if anyone might like to meet up for a small reading…

K x

18^th October 2025

Bringing the Doubles Partner Back

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:14:00 +0000

It’s Show Week!

Eek!

We’re on, at the Linenhall, this Thursday and Friday.

Eek!

This past week has been the wonderful Wild Atlantic Words Festival here in sunny Castlebar and I’ll write more about that next week, after all the current melee has died down. But, all through this great week, people have been coming up to me and smiling and saying things like, “We’ve got our tickets,” or “We’re looking forward to Thursday/Friday night” or ‘Break a Leg” or “You’re some bollix,” though less of the latter, admittedly.

You can still grab a ticket or two if you’re in the humour for a theatre evening of smiles and surprises and maybe catching up with a few familiar faces. If other years are anything to go by, the tickets tend to run out and there’s often someone I’d love to see there who didn’t get in so, if you’re at all into it, don’t let that be you, eh?

The longer of the two plays is ‘A Sort of Whodunnit’ and I feel I’ve said all I should say about that one, prior to its first ever production on Thursday night. Suffice to say, I am buzzed about it and highly interested in how it greets the audience and how the audience, in turn, greets it.

But, having not said too much about it, to date, I also do want to confirm my overall high excitement about the first play we are doing this week.

The Doubles Partner was written as an entry for the inaugural Claremorris Fringe Festival, back in 2016. A three-hander, it feature Donna Ruane, Tara Kelly, and Eamon Smith. A stellar cast. To be able to revive it with two of the key players coming back to reprise their roles is a dream come true. Donna Ruane and Eamon Smith play a married couple in a slightly less than idyllic relationship. In the original, Tara played the eponymous doubles partner who comes to call, largely unannounced. I have collaborated with Donna and Eamon for many years and I adore them both. Eamon is a consummate actor. Donna had directed more of my plays than my characters have had hot dinners and is, herself, a wonderful award-winning actor.

To get Vivienne Lee to play the part of doubles partner is enormous for me. I’m a terrible little fanboy of Vivienne’s onstage work. At the end of every big musical she appears in, I’m up there by the stage, trying to get my word in about how bloody brilliant she was.

Having this power threesome devote their energies to my little play is a total joy and I am so delighted that it will open our theatre evening later this week.

Be there or be square.

Tickets for A Sort of Whodunnit and The Doubles Partner can be booked on 094 90 23733 or via this link: www.thelinenhall.com

Privileged and Scared

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 08:23:00 +0000

How do I feel?

The answer is right up there in the title. I feel privileged and scared. Sometimes one trumps the other. Sometimes the opposite one is winning out. Of course, I feel other things too. Excited, nervous, proud, amazed. It’s a time for feelings and there are plenty of those little suckers about.

But mostly… yes.

And damn right I should feel privileged. I am a local playwright, with a full time job that has nothing to do with playwrighting. Just another Joe with a laptop and a dream. But, man, what support I have. What support I get. I have Castlebar Musical and Dramatic Society on my side, that local behemoth of talent and endeavour. And I have The Linenhall Arts Centre on my side, our Castlebar community institution of all things creative, artistic, and good. As a writer, it is an utterly fantastic sandbox to be permitted to play in. CMDS provides such support and warm encouragement. Their top people schedule and organise and corral everything into place for my scribblings. Extraordinary stage managers hunt high and low for elusive props and ways to make things work. Show programmes are designed and finessed. Tickets are announced and announced again and, finger crossed, sold. And always the encouragement. The willingness of the incredible cast members to give their valuable time up for my writing. The huge commitment to the theatrical cause.

And then there’s the 'scared' part.

How could it not be scary? I remind myself constantly. It’s a play that’s never been seen before. How will it work in front of an audience? There’s sure-as-hell only one way to find out, and that’s to lash it out there and see what happens. Again, how could it not be scary?

But I’ll tell you one thing. I might be a bit scared for my writing and my directing and my whatever else. But I’m definitely not scared about the actors. When I set to work rewriting this play, in the aftermath of the joy of last year’s productions, I had four of the actors, from last year’s plays, firmly in mind for playing these roles. I rewrote for them and around them (which was interesting) and then I braced myself and went and asked them. And they all said yes. All four. Again, with the 'privileged'. And they are amazing. Amazing in their commitment to the work and in their willingness and skill in finding their way through the play. Working with them has been a joy and they don’t make me scared at all. My scary bits, such as they are, are all reserved for yours truly. The sneaking imposter feelings that we all get from time to time but which knowing doesn’t make any less potent.

But it’s all good. Very good, in fact.

I was looking at a Facebook video from John Breen and Mikel Murfi’s new production of The Quiet Man in the Dublin Theatre Festival, which I would love to see (I hope it tours). It looks incredible. At any other time, I might be somewhat jealous of the wonderful theatre endeavour, wishing I could be a part of something like that. Not this time though. This time, I have my very own thing, thanks to CMDS and The Linenhall Arts Centre. It makes me scared, yes, but that’s an integral part of the game. When they say do something that scares you, they don’t mean something that scares you a little bit. You have to just go for it.

Thanks, guys, for helping me do all this.

It’s a great, great privilege and, man, don’t I know it?

Tickets for A Sort of Whodunnit and The Doubles Partner can be booked on 094 90 23733 or via this link: www.thelinenhall.com

Whelmed

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 11:15:00 +0000

There are two reasons why the next few blog posts will be about my upcoming plays at The Linenhall Arts Centre here in Castlebar.

The first is because it will be a major focal point of my life in the coming weeks and I probably won’t be able to think about anything else to write about.

The second is that I need to be talking about it to try to encourage you local readers to come along and see the plays. We have two nights worth of seats to fill and would love it if your bum was in at least one of them.

(Not implying that your bum needs more that one seat. Perish the thought!)

We’ve been rehearsing the plays for quite a while now and if you were to ask me where we are at right now, (Where are you at right now, Ken?), I would say it is all coming together but it hasn’t quite come together yet. Are you familiar with that particular moment? If you’ve involved in any kind of creative endeavour, I bet you are. It’s an exciting time, a rather nervy time. A time of excitement, anticipation, and bricking-it in approximately equal measure.

Yesterday I had the teenage playwriting workshop for three hours. I had a rehearsal of one of the plays straight after. This morning, I’ve been out early to the car boot sale, doing dodgy deals on antique stuff required for one of the plays. Flashing the cash and spitting on my hand. As I write this, I’m playing various bits of music and wondering how they will work if they're playing as the audience come in. I'm also simultaneously WhatsApping about the stage set up.

I have a lot of help from a lot of great people in bringing these plays to the local stage. Castlebar Musical and Dramatic Society is a great big machine that puts on great big shows and to have their Rolls Royce engine driving my little plays is an amazing thing.

The casts are amazing too. The crème of acting talent coming together to bring these tatty words to life.

Yes, it’s nervy.

Yes, it’s busy.

But, yes, it’s incredible too.

I feel so darned encouraged and accepted. All I need now is for the casts to get a warm round of applause from two packed houses on the 16^th the 17^th October. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

You can help by purchasing your tickets at www.thelinenhall.com or on your phone via 094 90 23733 or by clicking on this part of the blog right here or on the image of the poster above.

It’s a lot to take on. Some might kindly tell me it's a little bit too much but I would respectfully disagree. These kinds of opportunities come along only very occasionally and you have to seize them with both hands, and a foot or two as well if needs be.

It’s a lot of pressure but I gladly accept it.

I’m not overwhelmed.

Whelmed, maybe, but not overwhelmed.

Puddy Resurrection

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 09:31:00 +0000

Paraphrasing the first line of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Puddy was alive: to begin with.

As stories go, that is a rather spoiler-heavy revelation to throw in, right there at the outset. But I have to be mindful. At the centre of this story there is a deceased cat. Possibly somebody’s beloved deceased cat. I want to keep that in mind, as I tell you about last Sunday’s rather outlandish events. I want to keep a level tone for the poor unknown feline who lost its life out on the New Line Road.

So, to recap:

Puddy is our adoptive stray cat of about five years. She lives a predominantly outdoor life around the gardens and quiet streets of our housing estate. She is known to several of the neighbours and we like to think we have a special relationship with her because she spends her evenings in our living room and any nights she wants in her basket in the front hall. We feed her twice a day and she has a nice pied a terre in the garage in a straw-laden kennel, whenever she needs to have a night out and about. Puddy pretty much sticks to the neighbourhood, picking up her kindnesses wherever she can, but sometimes she has been known to go on a hike.

Puddy went missing on Friday 5^th September and was still missing on Sunday 14^th September. This was a long time by her standards and both Patricia and I were concerned she had come to harm. We did all the recommended things, I patrolled the adjoining areas, and we hoped for the best. By Friday the 12^th, I was covertly watching the Social Medias for advice on cats found dead on our local roads. There was one such advisory late on that Friday night and I drove out to see but it wasn’t Puddy.

On last Sunday morning, which would have been the 14^th, I had one of these blog entries all prepared to post. It was intended to raise a little more local awareness about missing Puddy. It also reflected how other-worldly cats become when they go away. It’s almost like they slip into another dimension or something.

But before I could hit the ‘publish’ button on my post, one of those dead cat updates landed. A white cat, with black markings, lying at the side of the road about half a mile from us. Could somebody check if it were alive or dead? I got in the car and drove down. The cat was dead all right. I looked it over. It was largely unmarked by whatever had hit it. It had happened recently.

I was sure it was Puddy.

I got a bag from the car and gathered the body up into it. I drove it home and placed it in the coal bunker on a blanket. That may not sound terribly dignified by it is dry and protected place. It seemed for the best. I felt very sad and wished I had searched a little more thoroughly and a little further afield for my cat. She had many good years left, mooching around our back yards and snoozing in our spare armchair. It was a shame.

I had to tell Patricia and she was justifiably very sad. Patrica and the cat had bonded in a gentle way that had hardly seemed possible when the hissing little demon had first entered our lives.

I went back to my desk and reread the blog post that I had been ready to share. I rewrote it in a rather mournful tone, telling the sad tale while it was still very raw. I hit send. There were a lot of warm, sad, reactions from good people and I appreciated them all.

Are you with me so far?

In the afternoon, Patricia said she would like to see the cat. To say good bye and maybe help with a little closure. I went back to the coal bunker to make the cat as presentable as possible.

It was while doing that that I started to notice things. Were the black markings in the exact position where Puddy’s black markings had been. Was Puddy really that heavy? I got out my phone and started to compare photos of Puddy with the cat I now had. The markings were very similar. One black patch over one eye. A blotch of black on the spine. But was the photo reversed and was the black patch over the right eye? Surely this was my cat. A little altered in her deceased state, as was inevitable, but how could it not be? Then, a thought occurred. Puddy had been neutered and, because she was a stray, the tip of her ear had been snipped to confirm this to anyone subsequently checking her.

This poor unfortunate cat’s ears were intact.

Patrica had her jacket on, in the hall, and was ready for her viewing. I looked at her.

“I don’t think this is our cat.” I said.

What was meant to be a quite respectful viewing turned into a forensic examination. It didn’t take long. The cat we had was not Puddy, no question.

I often feel stupid. I sometime wonder if it’s my default setting. But I have rarely felt as stupid as this. On the one hand, and with all respect to the deceased cat, there is an element of dark humour in it. Not only had I brought the wrong cat home but I had also published a dirge to my own cat and shown it to my occasional readers at large. But, worse than this, I had brought a little unnecessary grief into our home when there has been grief enough there already. That was what really got me. My carelessness.

I went back to the housing estate adjacent to where I had found the cat and did some door to door visits. Nobody I could find knew of the cat. That cat has now been committed to eternity in an entirely respectful manner but their identity remains unknown. If you are missing a cat that looks like mine, and you live in Castlebar, you can contact me via the comments section and I’ll tell you what I know. I’m sorry if you find out this way. I really am.

The next evening, as we were having dinner, a hangry meow wafted in from the back yard. Puddy was out there, stressed and very keen to have some food. Perhaps the notes I had dropped around the estate had speeded her release from somebody’s shed. Perhaps she had just got lost and taken this long to find her way back.

Whatever happened, she’s back now. Old routines re-established. We are glad to have her back. We always valued her but maybe now we value her a little more and, who knows, maybe she even values us- no, let’s not be silly.

All I know is that, on the second evening of her return, she jumped up on the couch and settled her head in Patricia’s lap. A thing that has never happened before.

Perhaps it’s true what they say. That there’s no place like home.

Puddy in the Wind

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 09:47:00 +0000

FURTHER ADDEMDUM - Puddy came home last Monday. More info at the next blog post. Click here.

ADDENDUM - The story below took a twist this afternoon when it became clear that the RIP cat I brought home this morning is not actually our cat. I was really sure it was. A detailed inspection showed some differences in its markings and no TNR ear snip. I'll leave the words below up for now, if only as a record of my ongoing stupidity. Sorry for taking those of you who read it on a rather misguided emotional journey.

Puddy is still missing and I intend to search with continued dedication, to hopefully find her and bring her back home.

And if you're missing a cat that looks a bit like her, please let me know.

* * * *

Puddy had been in the wind for nine days, as of this morning.

She didn’t turn up for her evening rendezvous in the armchair, on the Friday before last, like she always would. We didn’t think anything much of it. Puddy has always been an outdoors cat, who would only come in at the times that suited her, which was every day but only on her own strict terms. An evening of telly watching, a five hour daytime snooze in the hall basket, an overnighter whenever the mousing was slow.

So this morning made it a full nine days since she had been around. And I had a blog post all written about how cats seem to become quite mysterious and otherworldly after they go away. It wasn’t a terribly bad post.

But Puddy always had her own plans.

One feature of her years with us was her uncanny ability to subvert whatever we were just about to do. Late for work? In a rush? Puddy would turn up, needing something urgently. It was a given.

So I should have known that Puddy might retain the power to undermine my intentions one more time, just for Auld Lang’s syne.

As well as notifying the neighbourhood of her absence, and hanging her blanket out on the clothes line, I had been monitoring the notifications on all the ‘missing cat’ forums, and I’d been to visit a few sad roadside tableaus in the past few days, always pretty sure that our lass wouldn’t be found there.

But this morning’s one felt different.

Not only because the description seemed right, but also because of that aforementioned penchant for the disruption of best laid plans. My blog post about her continued absence was ready to hit ‘send’ on. What better moment for dear Puddy to shake things up, one last time?

So, with a rather heavy heart, and with apologies for getting nine paragraphs in (a paragraph for every day) without saying this, Puddy, alas, shuffled off her mortal coil last night. I retrieved her from a bridge down in the centre of town early this morning. Unmarked. Almost sleeping, but not quite. A swipe from a car the most likely cause, as she looked both strong and clean. I guess she got lost out on her travels, and hadn’t managed to wind her way home, as she had done several times before.

Many words have been written by me about Puddy in these pages. Our early battles, kittens, giving shelter, growing mutual involvement, coming into our home and our lives. I’ve enjoyed setting it all down and I’ve enjoyed being a part of it all unfolding. Our consolation will be that, from the moment we chose to look out for her, Puddy got to lead her own personal best life. Never wanting for food, warmth, care, or company. Never prevented from wandering free in her compact little neighbourhood, stalking, skulking, or just dozing in the sun.

She brought a considerable quantity of elegance and attitude into our lives, and after I became her friend, I was never not happy to see her coming. It will be a while before I stop glancing to my front door to see if that familiar brilliant white flash is out there beyond the glass.

Puddy has been in the wind for the last nine days and she will remain in the wind now, I guess.

It doesn’t matter at all that the only time I ever managed to touch her was when I gathered her up in her blanket and drove her back home this morning.

She managed to touch me every day.

Puddy - ? – September 2025

A Message from the Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:37:00 +0000

Down at the petrol station, people park in front of the pumps but don’t buy any fuel. They just block the pumps for the people who need them. They saunter in and get their bacon rolls and their Mint KitKats and they saunter back out and they don't give a toss. It drives me a little bit askew.

A few months ago, one person managed to park their car strategically so that all four of the centremost pumps were rendered unusable. It required a pinpoint level of accuracy and an immeasurable absence of empathy. I applauded the person as they returned to their car, having bought no petrol, of course. “Amazing parking,” I said as I slow handclapped, “truly amazing.”

Yesterday morning, I was setting off on a bit of a journey and I felt I should fill up the tank before I hit the road. Getting to a pump was a battlefield. Abandoned cars were strewn all over, as insensitive punters stocked up on toilet rolls and hash browns and no fuel whatsoever. I got to a pump eventually, unlocked my fuel cap, released the nozzle, jammed it into the appropriate orifice, squeezed the lever, and waited. And waited. The display showed the cost of the previous fuel fill. Forty Euro. Any moment now, it would reset to Zero and my fuel delivery would begin. I knew that a little alarm was sounding at the cash till inside the shop, alerting the staff to the fact that I was out here, in advance of my trip to Athlone, waiting to get a little gas in the tank.

Any moment now.

I waited.

My own personal fuel temperature began to rise. Badly parked cars, battles for space at the pump, delays en-route to destination, being ignored in my hour of minor need. I started to get the right hump. Perhaps I should let out a roar at the shop window, a Dustin Hoffman like protest along the lines of, “I’m waiting here!!” I could do it too. I have the lung capacity. That’s for damn sure.

Then I looked down.

Beside the petrol pump there stood a stainless steel circular bollard, about a metre high. It has a black plastic cap that fitted on top of the tubular fixture. It was evidently there to prevent errant vehicles from banging into the petrol pump. A guard, a protector, quietly doing its job.

Someone had taken a pencil and written on the top black surface of the plastic bollard cover. Where most writing instruments would not have made any impression on the dark surface, the graphite of the pencil had seemed to taken to the medium remarkably well. The single word, that somebody had written there, stood out in subtle but legiible relief from the background. The almost childlike cursive style seemed all the more personal and intimate. Somebody, probably somebody in my own heightened state of annoyance, had taken a moment, produced a pencil, and written a message to whoever may come after them.

A one word message.

The message said, “Smile.”

I don’t think I smile as much as I used to. I don’t think I’m alone in this. The world is a harsh place, in many ways, and we are plugged into the harshness of the world in a way that previous generations could not dream of. Two hundred years ago, a horror or a sadness on the other side of the world would never be known or considered. Today, it is in our heads two minutes after it happens. I'm not bemoaning this connectivity, I think it helps us to keep the world straight, to not let horrors be enacted without any repercussions. It's necessary, but it's also hard. We are plugged into the whole wide world and it is a pretty tough narrative to keep up with.

I remember an illustration the appeared in a copy of the Radio Times when I was quite young, decades before Internet and Cable News. It showed a humanoid figure reclining in some kind of comfy chair. The naked form was connected by hundreds of cables running from every corner of its body to devices and machinery, being fed every aspect of the world directly into its being. The figure in the chair was charred and frazzled, twisted, and distorted, obviously in significant pain. I sometimes think we’ve kind of become that character. Wired to the whole planet and all of the grief and horror it has to offer. Bearing it all as best we can.

Maybe that’s why I don’t always smile as much as I used. Maybe it isn’t.

All I reckon, having read the single word message on the bollard at my local petrol station, is that it’s okay to smile now and again if we can manage it. More that that perhaps. There is, perhaps, an onus on us to smile and live and enjoy our lives as best we can. Because when we do that, we can remain strong and able to assess and fight and resist where necessary. If we try to carry the world on our packs, forever unsmiling, we will surely break in two and be of no use to anyone.

The petrol pump clicked and the fuel started flowing. I was on time for my meeting in Athlone and it was a useful meeting. I had a coffee afterwards and a nice chat with the guy I met. Not about the job or the cost of it or the difficulty in doing it. It was about his sons, and how he loves books about history, and how he can sing for hours if you give him a guitar.

And, somewhere in the middle of all that chat, I had a smile.

Weight Loss, Crunchy Gravel, and Guilty Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 09:01:00 +0000

My current attempts to lose a few pounds are going okay, I guess.

The scales move downward, but only at the slowest of paces. Sometimes they go back up again. But the overriding trend is a downward grind over a period of months and I tell myself that’s all for the best. A slow loss of weight will make it easier to keep it off. All bullshit, of course. Any slight decline in poundage can so easily be undone by a couple of double size Mars bars and a litre of 7-Up.

Still, on we go.

My methodology is low key and old-fashioned logical. Eat less and exercise more, with neither of these things being done to any great extremes. Rather like a smoker (which I’ve never been) I have one big vice which it immediately benefits me to give up. I’ve already alluded to it and we’re only three paragraphs in. I will eat loads of rubbish and sugary things, if left unchecked. So I’ve checked it. The rubbish is out of the equation and, like the smoker, I can feel better by making that one adjustment alone. Add to that a drive to eat smaller meals with no in-betweens and that’s the full extent of my calorie-reducing regime. As for exercise, I do what I’ve always done except I try to do a bit more of it. I walk. I always walk quite a bit anyway but now I throw in an extra quota of walking whenever I can.

That’s all I do. You can tell I’m no expert, nor am I a person driven to weight loss excellence. I just want to continue a slow decline into Christmas then hope to fuck I can get through that festive season without piling it all on again in one short week. If I had one word of insight or help to anyone who is thinking of doing the same, I would offer that fact that every half pound lost feels like a victory and evokes a little increase in self-esteem. You don’t have to become Where’s Wally to feel like a success at this game, however misguided that may be.

None of which is the point of this week’s post.

Some of the walking I do is around our local lake. We have a designated pathway around half of the lake, a circuit with two bridges, and it is the best thing since sliced bread. Peace, nature, a view of The Reek in the distance, ducks, swans, reeds gently swaying in the breeze, wild flowers, little dogs, big dogs, smiling people… it’s a good place for a walk. There’s a car park you drive into, along with all the other cars, and you set off in one direction and you arrive back from the other direction (in the nature of circuits all over the world) and it takes about 25 minutes to get around so you go around twice or even three times. It’s all good.

But, just lately, as an added bonus, I’ve started parking in another car park which adjoins the lake path in an altogether different location. This public car park is much less used and parking my car there gives me the feeling that I have my own private access to this most public of places. It also has a remarkable, hard-to-define bit of loveliness that makes it a slice of heaven for me.

Gravel. It has gravel.

You heard, the car park is finished with lovely, crunchy, loose stone rather than the utilitarian tarmac of the main car park. And shoot me if you want, but I bloody love gravel. That crunch underfoot is one of my favourite things in the whole world, seconded only by the crunch under my tyres as my car pulls in. I can’t really say why. That crunchy, cornflake sound just makes me feel as if I am off the beaten track and away from all the concerns that come with being in a town or a city. I’m on the gravel, dude, and life couldn’t be better. Since re-discovering this quiet, tree-lined parking area, my walks are exponentially better. And, no, I’m not telling you where it is. Sod off.

As I walk the lake circuit, I’ve got my earbuds in and I’m listening, listening. What is Ken listening to, the entire population of the lake wonders (as if!). Is it the very latest scientific or political treatise? Is it some in depth analysis of the current state of the Arts?

(Guilty secret incoming.)

Nah, it’s Reacher.

I listen to Reacher books. Not all the time, obviously, but quite a bit. I’ve often got one on the go and, of late, if I’m on a long drive or walking our esteemed lake, I’ll have Jack Reacher in my ears, kicking ass in stereo.

Part of the attraction of my listening to Reacher audiobooks (which I get free from Castlebar Library via Borrow Box) is the person who reads the books. Jeff Harding is the absolute voice of Lee Child’s Reacher books and his rather harsh, uncompromising tone eminently suits the material and, after listening to quite a few, has become like an old friend to me. Jeff imbues Reacher with a voice that is an utterly American blend of capability and wariness, and it brings the character to life in a way that no visual adaptation has come close to doing. Not even that enormous guy on Amazon.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Any pleasure we can extract from the world is okay as long as it’s not hurting anybody or putting on weight. Although, if there was one element of the Reacher audiobooks that is a little guilt inducing, it would be the way that Jeff portrays the females in the Reacher books. Jeff is either an extremely macho person or else he is really good at portraying a really macho person. The ladies in the book suffer a tiny bit from this fact because, as Jeff switches from Reacher’s trademark machismo tones, the ladies all fall into a similar vocal pattern that is slightly prissy, matter of fact, and declamatory.

In smaller words, all of Reacher’s women sound the same. Similarly, the bad guys and authority figures all sound the same too. They all get a rather weaselly borderline belligerent voice. The overall effect is that, as Reacher traverses the United States and the wider world in search of justice and fair play, it sounds rather like he’s meeting the same people over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I like all this very much. There is a comfort in knowing that Reacher’s next lady will sound just like his last one and the next bad guy will die making rodent noises, just like the last one did.

Reading back, this has been a rather random trek through weight loss, loose gravel, and voiced anti-heroes and it seems to be of limited value to any one right-thinking person.

What can I tell you? This is my mind.

'Welcome to it.

A New Autumn

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 12:12:00 +0000

“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date...”

In my head, autumn has already begun.

I know that might be an annoying thing to say. Summer holidays have weeks to go yet and, if you’re in school in England, your holiday has practically only just begun.

Conventional wisdom would also say that the 1^st of September is as good a time as any to resume calling the world ‘Autumnal’ and, for most of my life, I would have agreed with that. When we were small, autumn started on the night ‘The High Chaparral’ was on the telly and we were sitting on the floor, trying to sellotape wallpaper covers onto our new school books. School was starting again the next day and another supposedly endless summer was sudddenly at an end.

But, as I’ve clocked up a few years, I now tend to think that autumn arrives as soon as the very first signs of it peep through. A leaf or two on the trees turn golden and brittle, the daylight slips a little sooner out of the evening sky. Signs like these speak clearly to me that autumn is now here and, even though it’s only the 10^th of August, summer’s lease has once again prematurely expired.

It’s an age thing, I think. To find Autumn present so very early in the year. But it’s an Irish thing too. The season is historically caled 'Lughnasa' and it’s that time when harvesting begins. (I’m a townie, I don’t know actually much about harvesting). And, like I said, the natural signs are there too. The first of the blackberries on the thorny bushes on my back garden have ripened and are now dark and luscious. “Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it.”

I like Autumn. For me, it’s a time for getting things done. Nothing is in the way. No Christmas edge, no summer doldrums. Let’s get it work. But I tend to mourn the passing of summer a little bit too. I’m always left with the feeling that I never even came close to celebrating it enough. I have worked all the way through, as I always do. I have let it sidle past.

But another part of me knows that I haven’t really done that. For every day of thsi summer, I have taken a moment and looked around me and acknowledged the full trees, the endless evenings, the kids on the green doing their holiday hurling classes. I may not have rolled around and covered myself in summer, but I have always known it was there. It that sense, I haven’t missed it at all.

One other slightly sad note. I had written somewhere before about how a Chestnut tree that sits across the river from my childhood home was always the first to turn golden at the end of the summer. If I went to Sligo now and looked across the Garavogue, I’m sure that same tree would have the new season written all over it. Every year I noted it. When I moved here to Castlebar, I found a new ‘Early Tree’ right there on The Mall. Another Horse Chestnut. Most years, I would sit on one of the benches in the town green and just note for a moment that the tree had turned and autumn was here once again. This year, the tree is gone. I wrote about the cutting down of a few trees last Christmas, for safety reasons, and, silly me, I never realised that my tree was one of them. I guess I’ll have to find another tree to stare at.

As an antidote to all this morosity, I went for a walk yesterday just after writing the bulk of this thing and found large residues of summer to be still in the air. I guess it’s just one of those times of the year when everything is on the turn. One day one thing, the next day another. Best not to sweat it too much. As my old pal Rod McKuen sang, “And to each season, something is special…”

And anyway, you mustn't pay too much heed to me. I'm a law unto myself. I hope that your own personal summer runs right on up to the middle of September. The weather is usually at its loveliest then anyway. Summer isn’t over yet, for most of us, not even close. As for me, I’ll be just fine, down here in my own new Autumn.

Summer will come again.

With a little luck and with a fair wind.

Service Will Resume

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Armstrong) — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 08:31:00 +0000

This will mark a couple of weeks without a new blog post.

Well, yes, this is a sort of a blog post I suppose. But, then again, not really. It’s more of a note that there isn’t one this week. And that doesn't really count. Not for me anyway.

We lost someone lovely in the past week. A family member. A great friend. I don’t want to say more. This isn’t the place. Nor am I seeking condolences or kind thoughts. Thank you but I’m not sitting in that chair. I’m only saying, someone important and wonderful is no longer on the end of the phone or an hour down the road.

Losing a person is a bit like losing a tooth. There is a new and enormous gap that we explore tenuously. We feel older and more easily breakable. We miss what was, so recently, so thoroughly there.

And it's hard to write blog posts when all that is going on.

So service will resume. Next week perhaps. What will I write about? Your guess is as good as mine. But that’s always been the way. Something will arise. Or not. If it doesn’t, we’ll make something up.

Service will resume. Maybe not normal service but, you know yourself.

It’s hardly ever been that.