Bijoux Carleau

I want briefly to mention a thought that crossed my mind yesterday. Carlow's population is just shy of seventeen and a half thousand people. There is probably one home furnishing store for every two families (or so it seems). All have reduced prices to the point that proprietors are nearly giving you cash and one of their children in order to encourage a shift of their stock: sales that reek of 'last ditch effort'.

The answer to this is simple: Noone has any money, their stock is shite and everyone has everything they need anyway.

What do you think this means for the out of town shopping malls which are still insisting on mushrooming around the edges of a town for whom the word bijoux might have been invented?

Just a thought.

What did they do with our money??

I’ve always thought there’s something scary about Fianna Fáil in power. Long before I got wise to the notion of endemic corruption and incompetence, Fianna Fáil were the worrying shower who’d turn up at a state shindig and look like knives and forks were used not for consuming food, but for picking wax out if their over-hairy ears. Then they got in 1997, and declared that everything was fantastic, and let the good times roll!

Some years ago, at the height of the boom, I was at a barbecue in the former Stasi stronghold of Wandlitz, where those loyal to the East German Secret police were rewarded with plush villas, whilst everyone else was sitting in small flats with mullet hairdos. During what turned out to be an extremely drunken night, a German fellow asked me a question that to this day sends a shiver down my spine: ‘What did you do with our money?’ I regaled him with tales of the Luas, the BertieBowl™, of decentralisation and other, apocryphal tales of state wastefulness.

Now that our state’s tax take has a hole about the size of a small country, that’s a question I’m redirecting to Leinster House. What did you do with our money, Brian?

Well, all good things come to an end, but if the last eleven years are like anything, then it’s like the three night bender on the heel of payday. You think you’re amazingly wealthy, so let’s go nuts. Afterwards, you go to your ATM because you need to get a burger and a cure, only to have the scary green words “insufficient funds” flash in your face, taunting you, ‘cos the homeless guy tugging at your trouser leg has more savings in his paper cup than you have in your current account.

Maeve Higgins has the best analogy for our current problems, of the child who spent all their pocket money in one shop. Well, there won’t be any more pocket money until they've earned it. I think Brian Cowen’s pay, and that of his hench-people, should be withheld, until the mess we're in is cleared up. God knows what Mary Coughlan will do for a new pair of slingback Manolos. Knowing how things are, and how long it’ll take to fix things, the next time you’re at the hole in the wall, the guy who’s tugging at your trouser leg will probably be Brian Lenihan.

Euro 2008 - an apology

I would like to unreservedly apologise to anyone who read my previous blog on the future of German football. Any similarity between the German team I described and the one that showed up in Vienna last night was purely coincidental.

I would further like to say to any Germans who may stumble across this page, that you should write to your MP, get out on the streets and start petitions for the banishment of Per Mertesacker, Christoph Metzelder and Philip Lahm to a country far less pleasant than Germany, but which for their own torture, will behave like a creepy imitation of the Heimat: remaining in Austria is the only way to properly torture them for their cretinous antics against a Spanish team which was far superior.

Then again, the Leicester Celtic under-12's C team would have played both sides of the park. The only winner last night was King Juan Carlos of Spain for his "Jim Robinson from Neighbours" impression. uncanny....

Mediterranean football - balls to it!

Euro 2008. Quarter Finals. Italy versus Spain. The pundits said it would epitomise the ballet of modern football. It turned out to be garbage. Spain went through on penalties, and they did so possessing a set of principals only slightly more attacking than their Italian counterparts, whose game is as negative as it is morally and tactically bankrupt. Not long before, Portugal went out to Germany. France never turned up. The teams of the south, who claim to set the standard for beautiful football, are on the wane. Infuriatingly, some pundits are like stalkers in their obsessive love for Mediterranean football. The sooner they get help, the sooner they may see positive, attacking football is also found north of the Alps. And no amount of tired clichés about German football are going to hide it.

During this European Championship, southern European football went on trial, and Christiano Ronaldo has been the first prisoner marched to the scaffold. Behaving like a play-acting, narcissistic arsehole, he does as much for football as out of season oysters do for encouraging bulimics to keep their food down. The fans of Man United know this by the shabby way he has treated them in his move to Real Madrid. So when Portugal got knocked out of the Euro 2008, I punched the air, wishing he was Patrick Battiston to my Toni Schumacher. When watching Germany versus Portugal, one thing was clear. Germany has a hard task ahead to earn unqualified credit for a new style and attitude that confounds and irritates British pundits. And after the Turkey match, it proved impossible. They’ll always prefer the likes of Ronaldo.

What bothers me is not his skill. He’s got oodles of it, that’s for sure, but I have two problems. One is his dreadful attitude to the game. He spends half a match querying, barracking, harassing officials, then walking away like a petulant schoolboy when being reprimanded for unprofessional and unsporting conduct.

The second problem is watching football with UK commentary. British commentators are so pathologically smitten with Mediterranean football. They don’t look past the fact that it’s long been no more than hype: no style bar some dodgy haircuts, and definitely no substance. Even the BBC, following the epic semi versus a resilient, brilliant Turkey, could have had the decency to say that truly, this was a game for attacking teams, and Germany was one of them, as inventive and frantic upfront as they were wobbly at the back, pound for pound as good as the Turks. No new analysis, no good will.

Typically, there’s mention of the traditional German style – mechanical, efficient, bla bla blah. So when David Pleat admitted that the England team lacked the flair of the Germans, I nearly fell off my chair with laughter. The reality was that Germany played at times with skill and panache. Not that this fact should be surprising. Michael Ballack plays for a top English team. He can do just about anything, from skilful play on the deck, to wreaking havoc in the air. All of which has been improved by thankless trips to Middlesboro and elsewhere. Between Ballack, Jens Lehmann and Thomas Hitzlsperger, there’s a decade’s worth of experience playing in Britain. They know the best and the worst of the English game. A new, positive German game is infused with the running, passing style the Premiership displays week in, week out.

The one player who incorporates old school and new school Germany is Christoph Metzelder. Bearded like Manni Kaltz, he has the heart warming presence of a Bond villain. When he wasn’t steaming with adventure down the middle of the pitch, he was happy kicking lumps out of Portugal players, who were themselves busy lashing out at German players when goal number three found the back of their net. Germany wasn’t blameless in sticking the boot in, no way. The petty chicanery of continental football was there for all to see from both sides.

ITV’s coverage in particular is geared towards casting Germany and Germans as footballing hate-figures. They could play the sexy football of Arsene Wenger and it wouldn’t be good enough, because British pundits don’t see the ooh la la frills of southern European football. German goal number one is the prime example: a goal from nowhere, created in space no greater than Paris Hilton’s waist size, crossed to seemingly to no one, when Bastian Schweinsteiger, tracking the creators Ballack and Podolski on the far side, swung in towards the near post to kung fu-kick the ball into the back of the net. The flair is there, but the commentators were unconvinced. They just saw it as a freak.

When the German team clung on at the end, the whole game was won on grit and determination alone. All the same old stereotypes we’ve heard before were rolled out.

German football has changed drastically in the last five years, reverting to their classic style of the late sixties, embodied by the glorious 1972 team that stuffed England at Wembley. Similarly, Portugal is reverting to the thuggery of 1966, when they all but ended Pele’s World Cup, and could have ended his career. Things always come full circle.

There’s the odd shade of injury time doggedness from Germany, that’s been around since the 1930’s. Still, I prefer that to the childish antics of Ronaldo’s camp, referee-hectoring, Ronald Koeman-style lack of sportsmanship. That, frankly, football can do without. He may have skill, but he’ll never be a great player with that arrogant head on his shoulders. Thank God he’s leaving United. I can hate them a little less next season.

The final will show the truth about football in Europe. That messy as it is, at least Germany have tried their best to have a go. Spain has been underwhelming, and were involved in the most tawdry, tiresome game of this tournament against the discredited Italians. The pressure is on them to show their mettle, just like the media will sweat if their blind spot for good football is put to the test.

Watch out, Sammy's about!!

I tired this morning of Lyric FM's ultra soothing strains of 'Queen for orchestras' laced with Prozac or whatever it was. As I was weaving through the traffic, I had a mental picture of Nurse Rachett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, her steel blue eyes sharpening as she calls for medication time. Cajoling the inmates of Ireland Mental Hospital into consciousness, I flicked over to the news, which was it's own peculiar medication time, with some very bitter pills to swallow: Take one lost Lisbon treaty (which was eminently winnable for any competent government) followed by the bitterest pill of them all. Sammy bloody Wilson is Norn Iron's environment minister. God help us all, the chief lunatic has the running of the asylum!

Apart form the fact that I bet he can't even spell the word 'environment', it seems that our boy Sammy has a novel idea for Norn Iron's econonmy - let's take in nuclear waste from around the UK in exchange for what he calls 'high paid, high tech jobs'. Very environmental. The jobs in question, it obviously never occurred to him, mount up to the same as being high risk, high paid rubbish dump attendants. Not only will the waste be pretty rank, but it won't stop being fatally toxic ... ever. So unbelievably dangerous and bad is radioactive waste, that when Rapture comes, the Almighty himself will come down with a bad case of radiation poisoning, and the Apocalypse will have to be postponed until his recovery.

Hang on a sec - maybe he's on to something...

...No, on reflection, he's not. He's out of his bloody mind.

It's not surprising that a government official in Ireland comes to a position he neither has an aptitude for nor interest in. Ireland has a great tradition of putting unsuitable people into unsuitable positions of power, particularly in environment and heritage. This is where ministers for years have taken a nickels and dimes attitude to things they should be more mature about, e.g. Tara, the Luas, Wood Quay back in the 70's - the mac daddy of all environmental policy disasters to face our capital.

What is clear is this. With Sammy Wilson's particular brand of madcap policy initiatives, if a China Syndrome doesn't kill us all first, then at least he'll be synchronising the North's policy making idiocy with that of the South - Irish unity is on the way. Thanks to the D.U.P!!

Unnatural Habitat

Habitat’s closure of operations in Ireland last week had zero fanfare. Not so much as a fart from the saddest little trumpet in the world. There was just a simple notice on the door of Habitat’s bloated flagship store on Dublin’s College Green, which informed customers that trading had ceased. There was no special help-line for the one and a half million billion slightly pushy well-to-do ladies, who now have one less place to drag their bored, slightly embarrassed partners around. I bet the men were quietly punching the air though, now that Saturdays will be less one other completely boring, utterly vapid obstacle to watching football on the telly.

Habitat is the glamour club – the Spurs ca. 1989 - of interior furnishing stores. So when its closure in Ireland failed to cause hysterical national mourning, I was so shocked, I spilled my vanilla latte all over my gorgeous DKNY shirt, covering my freshly waxed chest with second degree burns and a vague smell of burnt milk. Instead, you could feel the country exhale with relief that times are finally changing: Bertie is gone, and good riddance, and so are the shiny distractions of his culturally vacuous times. The arrival of Brian Cowen as head honcho means that for the first time in a generation, we stand a chance of finding ourselves again, and not before our souls have been completely sucked out of us by the UK high street cloning project that we've been involved with for the last age.

There were, however, a few thirtysomething wannabe yummy mummies sitting on the curb outside the entrance, clutching their ageing Fendi handbags, the stitching coming undone like their feeble new-monied minds, as they sobbed into grande Cappuccinos the price of an Italian football bribe from the filthy, overfull McStarbucks across the road. Morale is low with these label monsters: Their Fake tan is peeling like wall paper in an old folks home and their Mastercards have burst their limits, in much the same fashion as their once swanky Guess jeans. No-one told them that Cappuccinos make you fat and even if you did they wouldn't believe you. Within minutes, the riot police were able to disperse them efficiently, luring them down dark alleys using knock-off Marc Jacobs sunglasses as bait, then bundling them into the back of a cattle truck for processing.

I'm delighted it's gone, though, and not just because I was stupid enough to pay a million Euro for a Chinese lantern I could have made with some Kleenex and straws. Habitat was a place that had about as much class as a B&Q-store rampaging on a cocaine binge. Habitat flourished on business drummed up by pandering to our worst instincts of fetishistic consumption. Their stock was overpriced, over-hyped, and worth a fraction of what they demanded, all in the name of lifestyle shopping. And we were the gobshites, blinded by our own vanity, for buying into that lifestyle in the first place.

The decade and a bit that is bookended by Bertie Ahern’s tenure as Ireland’s leader gave us plenty to reflect upon, but absolutely nothing substantial. A lot of dumb show, embarrassing melodrama at the tribunals, the odd bit of excitement. The one golden moment of history in Norn Iron owed its momentum to Tony Blair's 179 seat majority in Westminster, rather than Bertie ineffectually shambling up to Stormont. In short, Bertie achieved nothing substantial, because he wasn't a politician of substance. And his only gift to us domestically was a divided society and the economy, which is slowing down rapidly.

The fact is, however, that the the Celtic Tiger never existed anyway. It was just a myth cynically dreamt up in the rush to spin Ireland into being like Britain in the 80’s, all brash and tripping with on a dangerous cocktail of hubris and credit cards. The truth is most people are fighting to make ends meet. The truth is, that somewhere during the last decade we confused expense with success. That's why Habitat closed down, and that's why it's a sign of better things to come.

So to all the temporarily hard up, maturing Terenure Totty, worry ye not - a brighter future beckons! IKEA is on the way – classy, straightforward and affordable. A bit of substance after bloating yourselves on the pre-dinner breadbasket you were looking at during the Ahern years. Admittedly it’ll be on Dublin’s north side, but at least if you take off your blinkers, you’ll learn to keep it real about what you’re doing and who you are.

The same is true of our leadership. Cowen, is IKEA. Clever, pragmatic, he can stand up to be counted when it matters. Bertie never did that. Not because he was some masterful politician, but because he had absolutely nothing to say for himself.

Consumption has always afflicted Ireland. In the forties, it was the name of a disease of the lungs that ravaged our In the naughties, it was the frenzied purchasing of any old shite we could lay our label-craving hands on.

Times are gonna be tougher, but they'll be more satisfying than we realise, and we’ll be better off for them.

Austria's Life of Lies

Austria wants to avoid attention at all costs. Austrians want privacy. We know why from the case of Josef Fritzl, who created the bleakest hell for his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years. And when it takes courage to confront the truth about child abuse in our society, I'm not surprised that most of Austria doesn’t have the guts to face up to its most sinister secrets.

The neighbours say they noticed nothing, knew absolutely nothing. How could nobody have noticed this tragedy unfolding: A man kept his daughter locked up in his basement for 24 years, where he raped her on a regular basis, and who fathered seven children by his own flesh and blood.

Even his wife, the 68 year old Rosemarie, believed his tall and terrible tales: They brought up three of the children he had conceived with their daughter, after Fritzl claimed their daughter joined a cult and was unable to take care her kids. Austrian social services, a tragicomic cousin of the Keystone Cops, also swallowed his bizarre claims about their daughter, and let him adopt the children without any real investigation. No alarm bells, no questions, not even a peek at his ID card. Everything went at face value. Attitude soundproofed the screams coming from beneath Fritzl's home.

Like a lot of places in central Europe, Austria claims to have a sense of family and community. Safe, friendly, peaceful, open, civilised. So how could this monster go unnoticed for 24 years? How was this possible? Every report says that nobody saw or noticed anything unusual. Not even a previous conviction for attempted rape, not even a conviction for arson could point to the reality about this outrageously evil man: both had been deleted from his records. Official memory had conveniently lapsed, letting him off the hook.

So the jackal Josef remained a well thought of man. One neighbour said of course he was a good man, his garden was so neat. So was the basement, from the pictures we have all seen. Hell can be a very tidy place.

The same thing happened two years ago, when Natasha Kampusch escaped her decade of imprisonment by a paedophile, David Priklopil. He cheated justice by jumping in front of a train. Noone noticed him before, when he resembled a normal, civilised person. The neighbours didn’t know and didn’t bother to find out more about the unusual man who lived among them.

It’s not unusual for Austria to ignore its darkest truths. But they do it for the convenience and they always have. Austria lied about its enthusiastic collaboration with their countryman, Adolf Hitler, for decades after the war. They ignored their own sins, when they were anything but the Führer’s ‘first victims’, as they cynically characterised themselves.

They knew nothing, which everyone else on the planet knew was rubbish. This, like with the Fritzl and Kampusch cases, can only be said with brazen dishonesty or spectacular self delusion.

I don’t believe for a second that people didn’t notice anything. No-one can be possibly that naive. Official Austria is full of cowards, who abandoned the young of their country. It filters its way down through every level of society. The reflex is to ignore delude, deceive, explain away.

Further soul searching, if they bother to be brave, will reveal much, much more. Maybe redemption might be possible, but don't hold your breath.

Labour Pains

Bertie Ahern will never have any conviction as a politician unless he gets three to five in Mountjoy. On the bright side, the Labour Party's Kathleen Lynch will give him a letter of recommendation for his parole board. Sure, she’d do it for anyone. And that’s what makes me sick.

If you’ve never heard of her, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, or the sheriff of Nottingham, you’ll soon hear of her in song and legend. The TD for Cork North Central wrote a letter vouching for the character of constituents of hers, the parents of a convicted rapist. The son, Trevor Casey, was sentenced on Friday to 13 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of the two teenage sisters of his former girlfriend.

Kathleen's brain must have been totally scrambled. On one level, sending a letter to a Judge who is sentencing a rapist of young girls is stupid, ill-conceived, and insulting. On the other hand it's even worse. It's dangerous, meddling and seditious, and it seriously compromises the separation of the legislative and executive powers of the state and it jeopardizes forty years of progress in women’s rights and the rights of victims of sex crimes.

Given her fame as a pop star Women's Libber and darling of the Irish Left, Ivana Bacik’s silence is notable. Her silence, however, is nothing when compared to the deafening screech of nothingness coming from Labour boss, Eamon Gilmore.

Labour is the oldest party in the state. It’s the one not borne out of the arbitrary lines drawn in the civil war. It has an ideology. It’s the party of James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson, that guy from the Phoenix Park scandal...okay, so they’re not perfect, but at least they could pretend to know right from wrong.

As usual, there was no demand for Kathleen Lynch's resignation. No public example making. No press conference saying that Labour doesn’t tolerate its TDs being dumb shits. The Labour leader couldn't even manage an angry note scrawled on the back of a beer mat from Toner’s Pub. Everybody wanted the issue to go away, just like Bertie wishes Des O'Neill would vanish.

By behaving like all the other hard-necked chancers in Leinster House, Kathleen Lynch, lobbed a grenade at her own party's already wobbly credibility. The Gilmore gang are now in serious danger of a second rate rehash of Ahern and his ten years of Shyster-ism . Right now, too many politicians behave with the moral instincts of a sewer rat. A Bit of straight thinking from them, before it's too late, might just trick us into thinking they stand for something resembling decency.

Besides, this is a clear moral issue. Do those who committed the worst of crimes deserve to be “got off the hook”? Or should the legal system be let do its work so that rapists will get their comeuppance.

Olympia

The Olympics look as failed as a Ben Johnson dope sample. Fact.

Wrestlemania has more credibility than the Olympics, and unless drugs tests and fatalities are televised there'll be no reason for us to switch off our reruns of CSI. But I've come up with an idea to rescue the Olympics and make us sit up and take notice - let's get the games some much needed credibility and make Hulk Hogan head of the International Olympic Committee.

Desperate times do call for desperate measures. The sheer volume of gaudy glitz and cringe-inducing kitsch that 'Olympics-incorporated' has generated needs the dignity that only a bald fiftysomething in day-glow yellow speedos can give. It's all in the name of humanity's best interests.

The modern Olympic Games are hair-pullingly awful. From the opening ceremony, where athletes dress like low class estate agents to the pointless end ceremony, no-one should watch this rubbish without being sectioned.

It's dire, on and off the athletics track. VIPs attend the opening ceremony in Beijing, the ranks of scumbags and gangsters swell massively. World leaders, with the exception of the Dalai Lama, cozy up to corporate fat cats in the reassuring glow of the Olympic flame. The spectacle leaves a foul taste in the mouth. It's like watching your parents snogging, but with Jimmy Magee providing the commentary.

Past Olympic Games are like a rogues' gallery of disasters in putting mankind's best foot forward. The games of 1920, 1936, 1948, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004 were all charged with chauvinism, racism, stupidity, opportunism, incompetence and dishonesty. Each one revealed our worst characteristics.

So why can't I despise and dismiss the Olympics, and simply take up gardening for the summer? The reason is, the original intention is unmistakably noble: that people stop being nasty to each other once every four years and do something pure and simple to express the goodness we aspire to - to push our limits and become stronger, faster and higher beings.

Sadly, this Olympic 'spirit' is so brazenly pimped out and debased by the organizers and their corporate playmates, that it shatters the dreams French academic Pierre de Coubertin had, when he organized the first modern Olympics in 1896.

Over a century later, how would de Coubertin have reacted when his countrymen attacked the Olympic flame as it passed through Paris on its way to Beijing? There have been protests everywhere the flame has passed through. But when the French go on the offensive, they do it with gusto. They extinguished the Olympic flame twice, despite strong arm tactics from annoyed Chinese and French officials.

The French love big gestures and make them with flair. Eric Cantona and The Sarkozys support my little hunch about our continental cousins. When the shit hit the fan at Crystal Palace, all those years ago, Eric’s ‘Gallic temperament’ was to blame for doing to a yob, what most of us can only dream of, and left a generation of youngsters with injuries caused by trying to copy his trademark kick.

Twelve years on, the Sarkozys visit London, and Madame Sarkozy appeared from her jet, every inch a playful Marlene Dietrich. The fearsome din of drooling Fleet Street paps scrambling for a front row seat at those photo-calls with the Queen, echoed all the way from London to the mangled Mercedes in the Alma Tunnel in Paris. Royalty as tabloid Gold returned revamped and ravishing.

As big and loud as the protests are, they’re hypocritical, snooty, and wrong. The Olympics don't need to be perfect. They just need to happen. If the world wants the Chinese government to get the message about everything we don't like about them, then let the Chinese have their games. Let them have what they wish for.

We'll just sit back and sip a glass of sparkling, vintage 'I told you so'. We'll have a hearty chuckle when the Chinese leaders go purple with injured pride, just like Hitler did when he tried to hijack the Olympics in 1936 to promote his Aryan racism. His plans backfired spectacularly and the puffed up nastiness of the Berlin Games bestowed on us an icon of poetic justice, America’s black sprinter and longjumper, the great Jesse Owens.

The Munich games saw a hostage drama and the tragedy of murdered athletes. The corporate toadying to Coca Cola when Atlanta, Coke's global HQ, got to stage the 1996 Games made many want to drown the International Olympic Committee in their soft drink of choice.

The odds may be stacked well against the Olympics, but it always finds a way to redeem itself. Its good intentions shine through, justifying its miserable existence. And it does this despite the best efforts of the worst kinds of people. Allowing these corrupt, embarrassing, tedious, sometimes despicable games to go ahead, is the correct and only option.

Munich witnessed the swimming phenomenon of Mark Spitz. Atlanta was the scene of the emotional reconciliation with Mohammed Ali and the USA, 26 years after the former Cassius Clay threw his Gold Medal won in Rome in 1960 into the Ohio River, in protest at the vile racism of 1960's America.

The Chinese can spin the news, control the internet and walk out of meetings where their excesses are highlighted. It's no use. Between Beijing's blanket smog and bloody tyranny in Tibet, the Chinese PR train has seriously derailed.

That's how it is. The Hulkster isn't needed just yet, even though it's appealing. I can't live with the Olympics, but we can't live without them. In the meantime, we can go back to CSI, and have some peace from the routine strangeness of the Olympic rigmarole.

Ristorante Italiano - What's Italian for 'shut up, dumbass'?

I can't adequately express my disdain of lazy commentary, but the world is so often filled with inane, fatuous, trite drivel that ignores the difference between opinion and fact. I read too much of it in the papers every day. So when this absolute dickhead loudly described the Pope in terms of the Nazis, I was well beyond my stupidity quota for the weekend: I felt the most wonderful release when I realised patience with tossers is by no means necessary. Quite the opposite...

I spent the day prancing about town like the boulevardier I wish I was, meeting up for a pint in Neary's with a friend of mine, with whom I had a short story-writing race. We went to my favourite pizzeria, Pizza Stop, which is down a seedy little lane behind HMV on Grafton Street and anticipated an evening comparing stories and talking in lofty terms about our work. How were we to know that the occupants of the table next to us were full of finger-clicking-for-the-waiter's-attention gaucheness? It wasn't as if they had t-shirts to let us know. When their starters came out, one man's man's talk had already intruded our airspace . Then his pasta starter came out as a main course portion. His fingers clicked loudly as he squared up for a fight with a whispy Italian waiter who couldn't stop laughing at the sheer awfulness of this man. Well, there was drama, and 'it's just not good enough' - just short of 'do you know who I am?' No was my silent answer, and my world is certainly better for it.

My friend and I were dumbstruck. We strained to evesdrop, but the place was so small, we kept retreating to our corner with Parmesan in our ears. Their conversation started into the Pope and his predecessor. I could feel my stomach sinking with disappointed expectation. One of the occupants of our neighbouring table was Italian, and our loudmouthed 'Mr. Somebody' was clearly looking to impress him with his witty take on the state of the Papacy. 'We loved the old guy [cue John Paul II impression], but the new guy, we don't like him. He's got SS written all over him'. I knew he was going to say this. I just knew he was going to say something brash, boring and utterly offensive. And what's more, I carry a German bloody passport. 'I don't agree with that', the Italian politely mumbled.

Over at our table, I was incandescent, my friend just looked at me as if waiting to see if I would stick a fork in our neighbour's fat head or cry like a baby with frustration. Unfortunately for the entertainment value of this story, I'm more repressed emotionally than that. Definitely a westbrit, if ever there was one. In our tiny eatery, I got up noisily, banging my cutlery against the plate like my Da would do when I was a kid, before bollocking me out of it for talking back to mum. I asked the manager if there was another table we could sit at, and grabbed our coats before he could say a thing. Their conversation stopped dead in its tracks when we moved down to the other side of the restaurant. Our displeasure had been noted, and I could hear his plaintive 'whaat?'

The current Pope was twelve when the war broke out. He was 18 by the end of it. He is a man of certain conservative views that I don't agree with, even if I do go to church. He was liberal, then got old and with it, very conservative. He was God's Rottweiler for an age and a bit, and then had to play the fisherman once J.P. II's superstar Papacy came to its strange, sad end. And what's more, he's German. In the British and Irish media, that carries a whole load of baggage that makes it too easy for lazy journos and even lazier readers to make assumptions about people.

I wish I had the guts to tell him as such, to reason with him, or simply to tell him to shut up. But, hey, I've better things to do, and our pizzas - the best in Dublin - were getting cold.

Bertie and his rubber duckie

Of all the things Bertie Ahern has been credited with, healing lepers, translating the bible into Icelandic and discovering a cure for Westlife are only a few of the more believable acts from this most improbable statesman. The timing of his leaving was magnificent and all of his own making; he deftly grabbed the news cycle this week, receiving the plaudits and kudos of his peers. Robert Mugabe is also grateful, because our guy’s stolen the limelight, so the least talented liberator in the history of Africa the chance to shuffle off the political stage himself, maybe making off with a few quid and some diamonds. Who knows, but maybe the French will give him a cosy villa like they did when Mobutu left Zaire with all the diamonds.

Bertie saw the writing on the wall. Going was just about the only option, and as the dogs in the street were noticing change in the air, Cowan had to bite his lip harder and harder, hoping not too many Fianna Fáil councillors from some swamp or another would demand Ahern’s resignation ‘for the good of the party.’

This platitude cracks me up, ‘for the good of the party’. Why would anyone want to do anything for the good of their country, when a bunch of greasy county councillors and Neanderthal developers could be there for consideration in the national pecking order? It had been the same thing when Charlie Haughey had been booted out. The party comes first. What becomes abundantly clear is that for someone like me who watches the West Wing each night (I’m on to season 5), nothing in that series resembles in intention or design or manner how Irish politics is conducted: small time turf wars, low politics which, frankly, is embarrassing for it.

And after ten years of Bertie behaving essentially like Ernie from Sesame Street, to Enda Kenny’s Bert, maybe having a Taoiseach for the first time for, well, at least two years, will be a welcome change. To date, Brian Cowan is the only guy in the running. He’s got a different style to Bertie. Hands on, knows his brief, Gordon Brown without the hubris, and wit way more sex appeal. Things are about to change. As for Bertie, Abraham Lincoln said we will be remembered in spite of ourselves, so there may be hope yet for him.

PC Whirl

As Ireland revels in having nearly caught up with the 21st century, man's latest developments bring us one step closer to the clinical 'superfuture' we saw in 2001: A Space odyssey, 1984 and Spaceballs: For what the founders of our state had fought, bled and died for was that we could enjoy freedom's bounty in outlet shopping centres with PC World, Harvey Norman, maybe a Reids furniture place, Woodies and of course, the obligatory KFC (only the hi end ones have Cost-lotta Coffee, and the majority of the great unwashed think ristretto is Italian for 'restrainng order' anyway).

I got a laptop last July, which reminded me that hell is the impossibility of reason. I could be one of those guys sitting alone in pubs that have wireless, because, hey, there's a whole bunch of money to be made by someone demanding solitude and nursing a Cappuccino for three hours, and I wanted in on the ground floor. Initially, it worked like a dream. Until I had to go to a conference where I was in charge of the registration. And guess what? It wouldn't detect the cable, couldn't be charged up and hey presto, I had a pretty big, cool looking paperweight, which looked like someone had taken Darth Vader to a scrap yard, crushed him into a cube, before glossing him with the sauce from a Sweet and Sour Chicken.

I brought it into a computer superstore which will remain nameless as PC World. The IT guy (who really looked like one), wouldn't take it to be repaired. It had to be taken to the branch it had been bought in, he mumbled, like Marlon Brando, with half a Breakfast roll between his teeth. That inevitably meant a leisurely jaunt down the M50 in 1st gear.

It was left in the shop in December. By February, I had their phone number off by heart, several times being 'put through' to someone, before the line mysteriously went dead, as if I was being hung up on. Finally they decided it couldn't be fixed, and I should come in and get a replacement. Even this I had to fight for. It took serious negotiation and more rage than I have ever felt to get it, and at least one employee is seeking therapy from the ordeal. I discovered the man I had spoken to had left, and was at the Customer "Service" Desk for several hours, whilst they looked for, and then fondled, my laptop in the most suggestive manner possible. Suggestive, that is, of their not having a breeze as to why a 29 year old ginger guy was rocking back and forth on the floor of a PC World crying, to the strains of a dance remix of the Birdy Song over the PA system.

I got a replacement eventually, but not on the day I described above. Still, it's all worth it for access to the internet and a solitary Cappuccini (that's like, the proper plural, OK?!).

There is, of course, a little postscript. Last week I got a phone call. "Hello Mr. Morgan , you're laptop's been repaired and is ready to be collected. "

The line went dead again.

I can't see clearly now the rain ain't gone...

When I was younger, I used to say that we should get a giant tugboat to drag Ireland to the Carribean. Even today, I'd be willing take tropical storms in exchange for good weather, strong Guinness and cricket. And after yet another endless, dark and miserable Winter, it'd better happen soon. Things have become such, that my wife has taken the next evolutionary step towards becoming a creature of hibernation, and my work on finding clothes that can be worn without getting sodden by a renegade gang of rain clouds continues.

Furthermore, my balcony is now a makeshift shipyard, and once I find info on Google about building tugs, then there's no going back! Short story race goes well, and the radio show script stays rooted in reality.

He is an Irishman! He remains an Irish-man!!

Easter, it seems, is upon us, and for the life of me I can't find my copy of St. John's Passion by Bach (God knows why - bet he hid it, cos he doesn't like Bach). I have spent the contemplating deciding a few things, a little like Winnie the Pooh after sitting on a log. And like Pooh, my head is full of not very much at the moment.

I went to Kilmainham Gaol on Wednesday, after my depressing encounter with the Royal Hospital, and was enthralled. Why? Because there's nothing sacred in Ireland, and yet places like this loom in the back of our consciousness. The leaders of 1916 were executed here, and many other poor, nameless, unfortunates passed through the old place until it was closed in 1924. What got me though, was the fact that the tour guide, whether by his own eloquence and apparently earnest republicanism, or by my mood that day, swayed me. He managed to bring across something that every person, be they Irish or the New Irish, of which there were many, visiting the place on any particular day should be encouraged to foster: That people sometimes feel a sense of duty which goes beyond self gratification or self preservation.

More telling was the fact that our government's indifference towards our heritage did not stop miraculously at the gates of Kilmainham. Dublin's secular shrine to our violent, tragic, beautiful history has been just as neglected, and would have been demolished in 1960, but for volunteers who fought the good fight and saved the Gaol by the skin of its sad, grey teeth. They felt a sense of duty to do what the government of the day refused to do.

Maybe it's the building, but that's a noble virtue to encourage. So long may it stand!

When you can't see yourself...

Certain things remain constant when it comes to St. Patrick's day. The weather will be as predictable as a drunk squaring up for a fight with a barman wanting to avoid serving him. So, we thought, was the date, but it turned out that the church got into a tizzy because a feast day can't be in the same week as Easter. The confusion was remarkable. Paddy Power was taking bets as to when the parade was on. People were stocking up on tinned shamrock, just in case it never came and the fallout would mean the next Paddy's day might be after some kind of Bord Failte/Vatican sponsored Apocalypse: a haphazard, Mad Max-like Paddy's day, with renegade gangs attacking each other with shillelaghs. As it happened, the catastrophe I imagined was averted when I went to ask in the tourist office. I get a very definite "Monday. It's gonna be great", from a guy with an accent as mid-Atlantic as the Azores. I really wanted him to say "Begorrah", just for good measure.

The big day just didn't feel particularly special. Everyone went home for tea, and the city was calm and clean. I didn't feel it particularly the day before either, when I was in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. This is a place where Dublin normally make sense to me, and I am reasonably at ease with my Irishness. The Museum is housed in the Old Royal Hospital, which is a gorgeous, and a criminally neglected, part of Dublin's underrated heritage. It looks starkly like a French chateau, which is good, because that's what it was styled as.

I walked through the entrance gate and walked around to the front of the Royal Hospital Building, which overlooks the Liffey valley and stands as on of two towering sentinels as you arrive on the train into Heuston Station below. Whereas the Wellington Obelisk, which stands on the other side of the valley is as imposing as it always was, I discovered that Kilmainham, a more elegant, nuanced structure, has been cut off from the rest of the city by a new development of apartments and offices. My heart sank, because this was a new development by and Irish architect and an Irish contractor, and so it wasn't like you could say it came out of the mind of someone who hadn't a breeze about where it was being plonked.

If you can't knock it, hide it. And its a sorry fact that Dublin people never wanted the building to survive. To some it might be a relic of our colonial past. Others probably don't know it exists and don't even care. In the 80's, they wanted to demolish it to make way for a bus depot. Well, that was then, and Ireland hadn't yet discovered the delights of prefabricated KFCs. The Royal Hospital is just otherworldly, and from the ornamental gardens, you could look down river towards the city and feast your eyes on a view that probably hadn't changed much since the 18th century. It would have to take an act of utter tastelessness to cut off the old building from the city. Maybe it's development, but it seems to be predicated on the notion that development comes at the price of beauty, which has its own, ethereal value. And the banks can't touch it.

Alone it stands, and thank God it does, if only you could get chicken twizzlers in the cafe...

A New York State of Mind

There’s a scene I really like in King Lear, which is on my mind because it’s bloody windy outside and but for the fact that I have to work indoors, I’d probably be outside in my dressing gown ranting on the moors with the best of them. I don’t remember the scene word for word, but it’s the moment when Lear’s inflated sense of himself causes his fortunes to unravel. His youngest daughter, the apple of his eye, Cordelia, says she loves him as much as she does, no more, no less. Her scheming sisters in the meantime are busy buttering daddy up before doing the Shakespearean equivalent of cutting granddad’s tags and leaving him in a park so they can take his stuff. Cordelia is a real I am what I am kinda gal. To the old man, however, Cordelia’s lack of flowery language somehow doesn’t go down too well: she gets the heave ho, and her sisters get everything else, at least for most of the play. She accepts who she is and it’s for the world to accept that, not the other way around. Enter Eric Spitzer, governor of New York, has a surname that means "pencil sharpener" in German. This is certainly appropriate, given that he has definitely been putting his lead in the wrong shaft, as it were. This week, the governor of New York State admitted having used the services of a call girl ON VALENTINES DAY, before doing something way more important, such as going home to his wife, or something like that. The man was on the political ascent, having taken on corporate misdealing as NY’s Attorney General. His reputation as an Elliot Ness-style corporate corruption buster meant that he had the potential go as far as he liked, perhaps becoming the first bald geeky guy to be in power since Anthony Hopkins in Amistad. And at 47, he's the political equivalent of a foetus.

Twas not to be. Spitzer reminds me of an unctuous, sleazy Lear. Lear rejected truth and Spitzer did so for the same reason - vanity. He had the world at his feet, the potential to go further, and instead ended his career in a spectacular belly-flop of hubris, which could potentially damage Clinton’s already ropey campaign to beat Barack Obama to being the first [insert novelty] president of the USA. Furthermore, whereas financial ill-behaviour can sometimes be brazened out, as evinced here at home, or by John McCain’s recent problems, sex is a different kettle of fish, particularly in the States. Bill Clinton nearly went that way, but got away with it because it was essentially a personal matter and the case against him was partisan. Spitzer, on the other hand, was using prostitutes, and will end up paying for it in every sense.

Commuting with Steve McQueen

Waking up in the morning is not simple process. My wife and I have a ritual which begins like a Mexican stand off between reality and our undying desire to be paid for staying in bed. Maybe if we could get on some bizarre clinical experiment for sleeping, could our ambition be fulfilled. Instead, every five minutes another one of about 20,000 alarm clocks strategically hidden around our bedroom goes off until our stubbornness caves in, and we end the beautiful dozing I seem to enjoy more than the actual sleeping. We get up, turn off the other 19,995 clocks and listen to serious radio news about the utter serious nature of seriousness. Eventually I get frantic at 8.10am, when it's clear neither of us wants to be late, but also, we haven't displayed the wherewithal to just leave. Mrs does her makeup, I invent little things that need to be settled, and become more frantic, until finally the collective fear of being late AND GETTING CAUGHT, cause me to grasp Mrs. Morgan's hand and jump off our balcony in the hope we'll land in our car. Given that we don't actually own a cabriolet, this is perhaps foolhardy, but unfortunately needs must.

The thing is, we live in a suburb in the Dublin mountains. Not to be confused with the Alps, it is not very high, and we aren't that far away from things. The problem is, that although the last fifteen years has seen our neighbourhood explode from being a hamlet, which is all it was, to being a regular, bog-standard expanse of suburban tundra. In turn, absolutely nothing has been done about the public transport servicing the area. The two or three busses that do go near us, the 63 and the 44, are so rare, you should do the lottery including those number when you do see one. It's actually easier to drive to the airport on the other side of Dublin, check in, face the humilation of the 'simon says' style of security favoured these days, and fly to London, than to get from our flat to Dublin city centre by public transport.

I'm not just bellyaching for the sake of it, despite appearances. Our daily rituals and panics were played out to the news today that none of the flagship infrastructure projects earmarked for completion this year have met their completion date. In one instance, a project has not even issued a revised completion date. Ministers barely shrug their shoulders, and look sheepish when the issue is brought up. It wouldn't be so bad, but the same newscast mentioned that the Irish economy is likely to lose out on international investment to countries like, Burundi or The Shire or Legoland, because of our pitiful transport infrastructure.

In the meantime, we'll continue our daily adventure to work, a daily homage to the frustration in 'The Great Escape', when Steve McQueen tried to jump barbed-wire on his motor bike to escape the Nazis.

Papa Doc

The event of a great statesman's retirement should be massive: tears, flowers, and plenty of blood on the cabinet room floor. More and more long serving political and public figures instead are being put out to pasture in the most banal and, to be frank, not very interesting way. They name a date after what feels like an eternity of barely spoken speculation, and then leave quietly. No fanfare, not even a pants down table dance in the middle of the UN general assembly. No fun. Tony Blair was one example. He was beginning to act like the guest from hell at a (Labour) Party. Politely cajoling the man into taking his tins of beer and kindly pushing off obviously hadn't worked, and everyone was too scared of him to tell him outright to go take a running jump. So he held off, and Gordon brooded even more, like the curious hybrid of Heathcliff and Gordon Banks that he is, until slick Tony handed over the keys to No. 10.

So when it came to the political demise yesterday of Big Ian Paisley, surely this man was going to give us something more exiting. Long serving politicians on these islands don't come bigger than him, so it's no more than you'd expect. He's like the Queen. Always there, he's been around since the days of Churchill, and his presence is somehow an absolute, like rain.

Nope. Not a sausage. For Paisley, the end came a little more low key. He quit his Free Presbyterian Church, all nice and nearly civilized. Then his son, Ian Jr. resigned for what in the Republic seems absolutely mystifying: he had business dealings with a developer. Bertie Ahern must have nearly choked on his Coco Pops: In Northern Ireland, they'll govern with men they'd have gladly seen off the planet twenty years ago, but dodgy land deals are a no-no. And then it was announced yesterday, he was leaving after an investment conference in May, and that's that. the end. No fire, no brimstone, no 'get stuffed ye Papish scum'. Nothing. In fact, he has a place in his heart for all Irish people, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

Ian could have had a greatest hits tour, gone hell for leather and we'd have had a bit of fun for the next month, instead it seems only Robert Mugabe is willing give us that, and the laughs ain't great there. Chances are, that when Bertie goes, it will be even less satisfying for Political junkies like myself, unless on leaving, his state car is replaced by a Securicor van and some outriders, or a balloon and ruby slippers. Let's see what happens, and try to enjoy the show.

Ireland, and they way we might look at it...

Until recently, I found it extremely easy to ignore the fact that people in Ireland might be unhappy, that the lives people live might be flawed in some way. They are. Such is life. But events in south Dublin over the last week have provoked fury from the public and media, and as I write, not one person has answered for what has happened. 1,000 people, including President Mary McAleese, Justice Minister Brian Lenihan and the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin attended a special memorial service for two men who lived in the south Dublin community of Drimnagh and were brutally murdered last week. The pictures went out showing how Ireland was in solidarity with Poland. Of course we care. And ‘Thank God it was an isolated incident’ as Bertie said, in some inspired sound biting.

Only it wasn't isolated. Two men, both from Poland, allegedly refused to buy some youths alcohol from an off license in Drimnagh. Walking home, they were followed by those youths, one of whom had gone home and returned with a screwdriver. The two men were stabbed in the neck and head respectively and died of their injuries early last week. The reasons are unclear. The Polish community, hard working and often reticent, don’t seem to be the focus of a racist attack, despite reports, that the men were verbally abused as they walked home from the off-license. Thank God, it was an isolated incident.

Many are wondering what has become of our society. The turnout at the memorial service says a lot about how people feel about the event. Then again, the behaviour of our young people says even more, and this reflects more accurately how we interact as a society, as opposed to reflecting our aspirations. A visible minority of our young people are out of control, and some might say that violence is now a staple means of social interaction. As people try to come to terms with this incident, the Archbishop of Dublin has called for a community based “summit” to tackle the increase in violent crimes in Ireland. His suggestion is noble. We must debate, discuss and act upon what has the potential to become one of the defining tragedies of the last five years. Sadly, I don’t think it’s that simple, and the Archbishop's response reflects the difficulty we all have in confronting the issue of violence in our society. All the more frightening is the mess of conflicting, misleading stories and an almost total absence of cooperation to date from those young people who allegedly witnessed the tragedy.

And yet we still seek an explanation. Sociologists might tell you that some people do it to relieve their boredom and sense of isolation. Others do it to exercise some power in their lives over others, like kids pulling the legs off unfortunate spiders. Problematic is that these people aren't the ones who take part in the types of dialogue that Archbishop Martin suggested. They don't recognize their role in society, or the existence of society in the first place .

The killings may not have been racist, but also can’t be explained away as being a freak attack. Maggie Thatcher said there’s no such thing as society. True, when people act as if there is no higher sense of justice. To me it’s like believing in ghosts: if you don’t accept the idea in the first place, then it won’t be there when it should be. The next few days will tell us a lot of where we have come to, and where we may be headed.

Turkey Ahern

The Sunday papers were absolutely fizzing with stories this weekend about this, that or t’other, and the consensus seems to be that apart from carnage on our roads, a third world public transport system and social turmoil, an inert political class and myriad other problems involving guns, drugs and general mayhem, things could still be worse in Ireland. So when commenting on the state of things on our island, Gerry Adams made headlines by pointing out that Bertie Ahern might be displaying the same aptitude for government as Dustin the Turkey, Ireland's favourite puppet. It’s great to see that he is known in the UK, and that Gerry has an appetite for pop culture in other countries. Either that or he wrote all of his script in the sense that professional footballers all write their own autobiographies. I suspect he probably needed some clarification. No, a party hack explains, Dusin is not the wee bloke from "Rain Man", he's a puppet on children's TV, and the line will absolutely get a laugh.

Gerry's analogy, as populist as it was cringe inducing, works in the sense that both like act as if they were fluffy and a bit of a lark. However, whereas Bertie the Turkey is facing the prospect of being told to 'pluck off' by his party, Dustin the Turkey is very much flavour of the month at the moment in Ireland and even has the blessing of Bob Geldof.

Importantly, our endeavour to win back that most coveted of cultural prizes, the Eurovision song contest, is based on a popular vote, which backed this offering over more traditional acts. Not everyone is happy, though, and the reactions in the media suggest that maybe we chose wrong, and that sending our esteemed bird of cultural commentary to Belgrade might demean the event. After all, Dana is upset because she fears this will be the outcome. I didagree. The choice is inspired, and not without precedent.

The Eurovision song contest has for years been the repository of lame acts, moments of sheer genius and the occasional display of amusing disdain at what is as high-brow as a Butlin’s talent show. How else do you explain the Zero Mostel lookalike who won it last year for Serbia? Or Dana International, the transsexual who I reckon was actually Cher who represented Israel (a European country?) Dustin is just part of that. He’s the kid who plays a rude song at a school concert just to see if he’ll get detention or at least a few giggles from his mates. He won’t get douze pointes for Ireland as his song’s chorus suggests, but he might relieve Terry Wogan of the car crash television he has to endure every year. I hope Terry will be sniggering, knowing Dustin probably shouldn’t but there are worse things in this world than a musical novelty act. Bon chance, Dustin!!