These Foolish Things

Some time ago, prominent Irish playwright Gavin Kostick remarked that he thought that nowadays, the theatre should offer you an experience that you can't replicate on television or in films, and he vowed to come up with such theatrical experiences.

Deborah Moggach has made no such pledge that I know of, and that much is fairly obvious from this book. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly pleasant story about an Indian doctor living in Britain, married to a British woman with a dreadful father. When the father moves in to their house, the doctor complains to his entrepreneurial cousin, and the next thing you know, they've set up a retirement home in a dilapidated hotel in Bangalore. It's a cute idea, the characters are well sketched out, people's motivations and actions are believable, and there's even a bit of action and intrigue thrown in. But you just can't help thinking, as you're reading it, that there's no reason for this to be a book at all. It's got Sunday Night Drama With a Quality Cast of Veterans written all over it. Like the novel of The Commitments, there's nothing to it that you couldn't get onto the screen, and a production designer could have so much fun with the creeping entropy trying to reclaim the hotel even as older people try to carve out a new meaning for it.

Perhaps that's underselling it a little--it does have some nice themes of changing lives, shifting priorities, cultural ideas of getting older, dealing with families, and the new place of India in the world. But it just lacks some depth for a modern book. As anyone will tell you, you have to be competitive in the modern market.

Books about motherhood: Can Any Mother Help Me? and We Need to Talk About Kevin

If I was a writer for the LRB or some similar heavyweight publication, I'd have added Anne Enright's book about motherhood, Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood in here as some kind of bridge between these two books. Having read several extracts from it, I know that it addresses many of the problems tackled in them, but in a humorous fashion. However, I'm not, so I haven't.

Can Any Mother Help Me? is one of them there social history type books. It deals with the history of a circulating magazine started in the 1930s by a group of mothers in the British Isles who felt isolated and bored with their lot in life. Most of them were middle class and well educated, and several of them had been in good jobs before they were forced to give them up when they got married and/or started families.

Although none of them would go so far as to suggest that they resented their children, they most certainly felt the lack of adult company and the drudgery of domestic engineering, not least because they had never really done much housework as children. Moreover, they became housewives at a time when people of their class no longer had servants, but before the great era of affordable labour-saving devices came in, so they genuinely spent most of their time washing and cleaning and cooking and minding children, and they were mostly quite isolated from friends they would have had in their early adult lives. The book contains many fascinatingly ordinary and matter-of-fact entries about things I found quite shocking.

The two stories that really stood out for me were one in which one of the women talks about what would now be called an attempted rape by a male friend, but which she just treats as a silly incident in which he had too much to drink and became overly amorous (things end fairly well for her, however). This reminded me of Beryl Bainbridge's attitude to rape and sexual politics, which is very much one of "so you didn't want to have sex but he made you. Well, there are worse things, eh?" Clearly a major generational difference.

The other was when one of the women found out that her child had Down's Syndrome. The two things about it that struck me were the way in which she found out: the doctor took her husband into his office and told him, then the husband drove her home, got his courage up, and eventually told her some hours later. Again, this seemed perfectly normal to her at the time, but to me as a modern reader it just seemed the most insidious abuse of male power. The other thing, however, was the public admission of the fact that this would make her life more difficult to deal with than if her child was "normal". Offers of help from her friends and family poured in. People rallied round. Now, okay, I know that having Down's Syndrome is not the end of the world, but it does seem to me that on a societal level, accepting the full spectrum of the human condition as part of one's family does seem to put an extra strain on families, because they're expected to behave as though everything's fine all the time, when it may very well not be.

The admission that motherhood may be harder than it looks, that it may turn out to be a mistake for some women, and that some women feel even more pressured into it today than they might have done in the past (because obviously today it doesn't mean that you have to give up your career, or give up anything at all in fact) is at the heart of We Need to Talk About Kevin. On the surface, this is a horror story about a monstrous child who is the product, in a magical realist fashion, of his mother's failings as a mother. She does not really want him, she does not bond with him, he is angry and distant and weird and violent and destructive from the word go, and she has made a horrible mistake with her life. Underneath, it's a book about family pressure, success, failure, the disintegration of larger society, the whims of the unreliable narrator, and the struggle between the genders. I know several people who were expecting one thing when they started reading it, and got something very different. To say I enjoyed the book would be untrue, but it was very good in its coldness and stiffness and lack of humanity.

I would recommend reading these two books together, as I did by accident. The first really does make an excellent antidote to the second, and both give you a lot to think about.

ComedyB and BuntyB are married

It happened last Thursday in God's Own County of Derbyshire, where BuntyB is from. We had a great time, the weather and food were amazing, the people were lovely, and all the family and friends were on top form. The day after the wedding, BuntyB's farming family held a hog roast, with bathtubs full of champagne and beer, a whole roast hog, and field games. It turns out that her family are CHEATERS at tug of war, and that my family are lethal at welly wanging.

A game of scotch was also played, and there was a whiskey chase, in which many members of the party ran (or scrambled) up a very steep hill to try to grab a bottle of whiskey, which was then chugged by all and sundry. An excellent tradition, and just the kind of thing there should be more of after roast pig and copious booze. Mrmonkey did not win the whiskey chase.

It turns out that BuntyB's brother is some kind of superhuman being (or "farmer", if you prefer). The night before the wedding, he was in the hotel bar with us till midnight. Then he took BuntyB home and sat up with her a little while longer. He got up at 6am on the morning of the wedding to take his cattle to market, went home and scrubbed up for the wedding, stayed there till 1am partying, then got up at 6am again to do more farm chores and clear the field for the party. He then proceeded to win 4 tug of war matches and the first whiskey chase. He brought his final trailer load of party-goers home at about 1am, then was up at 6 again for what he referred to as a quiet day, but which still seemed to involve a list of about 40 chores, including cleaning up after the party.

He is going on the list (along with The Man from Roscrea and Queenie's Himself) of people who will be airlifted to my compound when the zombie threat level reaches critical.

It's cool to link to The Onion again

This is how you write books.

It's hard to home black dogs

Apparently nobody wants them. Particularly large ones. I find this kind of funny given how funny they are to look at when they try jumping into the air; we derive much amusement these days from watching Woody fall over himself when he leaps after a kicked football.

Guys, big dogs have less energy than small dogs. Sure, they can reach more stuff and you have to put things like pot scourers and chopping boards up on high shelves out of their reach. And okay, their tails can sweep your coffee table clean with one swipe. And they are at the perfect height to dip their noses into your tea, coffee, or beer when you're relaxing on the sofa.

But they are relatively easy to exercise if you like walking for hours and hours, and they have satisfyingly heavy heads when they put them in your lap and sigh heavily at you. Plus, when you're playing tug rope with them, they look really cool when you lift them up off the ground and swing them around. And they keep the horrible young people away from you.

And you can't hurt them when you step on them, or when they slam their heads into doors. This is not the case with small dogs, who yowl vigorously at the slightest provocation. Big dogs save that kind of nonsense for when it's needed. Such as when another dog somewhere within a 50-mile radius is saying hello.

ACROSS Benefit Comedy Night

This was great, and hopefully will become an annual event. More about it when I have time, but thanks to those who came along and supported it, and really, four top-class comedians for €20? You can't say fairer than that.

A Respectable Trade

I love to have a Philippa Gregory book to read when I'm going anywhere. They're easy to get through and I don't mind leaving them behind if necessary. So I was glad to pick up A Respectable Trade in the bookshop for €4, but almost put it down again straight away, because it seemed, um, exploitative.

The story concerns a lady of the upper classes who is penniless and unmarried. She ends up marrying a Bristol slave trader, who has this idea to bring slaves into England, have her train them as fancy house servants, and sell them on at a vast profit. Unfortunately for him, his wife develops an, um, relationship with one of the men (which is, of course, the bit I found a bit yeesh) and his business more or less collapses and he goes a bit mental.

On the whole, the book is simplistic and a bit slavery-is-bad-DO-YOU-SEE? But there are some lovely touches in it. Gregory reminds her readers, for one thing, that the kind of investment and trading behaviours she talks about in this book (and has, as is typical of her, meticulously researched) are the kind of behaviours that the men in Jane Austen's books would have been engaging in when not flitting around the countryside saving ladies from consumption. The ridiculous social climbing and the horror of debt that seemed to be a feature of the merchant class in the late 1700s are also well sketched. Overall, I'd have to say her intentions are good, her detail is excellent, but her plot and characterization are weak. The book wasn't quite as cringey as I expected, though.

Excellent appearance from ComedyB

In case you missed him on Graham Norton's show, saving Preznit Bartlett from certain PAINT, someone has handily put the whole thing up on YouTube.

(You know you can embed these nowadays)
(Yes I know, but I don't like doing that)

Woody has had his balls off

It's true. If I was better with computers I could probably make some sort of mock up of the poster for Face Off, but call it Balls Off and put Woody's face in it instead of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's faces. But I'm not good with the graphics, so you'll just have to accept the tortured joke instead.

So now Woody is wearing a buster collar and banging into all and sundry. My legs are a mass of black bruises, Milo and Cody spend most of their time hiding, and the bin gets knocked over about 50 times a day.

Having a labrador with a buster collar in your house is a bit like having a poltergeist you can see.

Hey, Sky HD, I have a question for you.

It is this:

Why exactly am I paying for a Sky HD subscription in order to watch LOST, when RTE is showing it almost a full week before you are?

Why is that, you cocks? Hmm?

I feel safer already

Good time moustache man Willie O'Dea has sent us all a handy bilingual, glossy handbook in the post. It tells us what to do if there is an emergency. It makes useful suggestions such as "do not use lifts". Thanks. I will be sure not to use the lifts IN MY HOUSE if there is an emergency. What makes this information doubly redundant is the fact that every lift in the country has a sign in it saying "in case of emergency, do not use lifts."

The booklet also has an entire page saying "it would be useful to learn first aid", and suggesting you call the St. John's Ambulance in order to do that. It does not teach you first aid, or even provide you with a money off coupon for a first-aid course.

Frankly, the Kleeneze catalogue that comes uninvited through the door several times a year is more welcome than this useless piece of junk mail on which who knows how many thousands of euro have been spent.

Essentially, instead of sending us an actual iodine tablet, this time round the government has sent us a note saying "you know what? You should get some iodine tablets."

Tossers.

Edited to add: in even greater tossery, they've even got radio ads telling us to watch out for these useless booklets coming through our doors. So that's more money fucked away, then.

Dear people who make Heroes,

Please note that I used to really like your show. However, you have turned it into total shite. I can't believe you were allowed to make another series of it, but it seems you will be bringing it back in September.

I will not be joining you. So, yes, Milo, put your shirt back on and go back to your Oirish girlfriend, because we are finished.

That is all.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It's not just me, right? This book is rubbish, isn't it? I know I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan under the sun, but I enjoyed all the other books, and would actively rep for The Prisoner of Azkaban as being a really good and genuinely quite creepy children's book. But, man, this is a tedious, overlong, confused book. It really pisses away the whole build-up and, as William rightly points out, contains one of the worst epilogues ever.

Starfish and Coffee

Mister Monkey came back from America. Sadly, I completely forgot that he's going away for a week almost immediately, which makes me all a bit sadface. At least I get a week of proper coffee under my belt before he's off again.

On the dog front, everything's settled down a good bit. We're working on Woody's recall (food, the great motivator), and he's getting much better at coming back, even if he sees someone further up the beach who might be interesting. The other two have actually started to play with him, and the sight of the three of them running around together in their pack would do your heart good. He's an adorable dog.

I've never had much time for labradors in the past. Most of the ones I meet are pretty unruly and a little bit mental, and I've always had this idea that they're essentially crazy and uncontrollable. Woody's not like that at all, and, now that he feels safe here, he sleeps more and more during the day when we're not out running around. Yes, sure, he needs a huge amount of exercise, and he really likes you to play with him, unlike our dogs, who mostly just lie about if they're not actually chasing each other around. But he's a nice dog, even if he does absolutely fill up the room.

I am worn out, though. I slept when I should have been out a party on Saturday night, and I sprained my arm today throwing stick. Good times.

Living by the Sea

It's that time of year again, when the sand and salt blasts your hands and legs, and the cold cracks your skin, and you notice that the local chemist shops all have huge displays of intensive moisturisers and industrial-looking tubs of slather.

Naturally, at such a time, the wisest thing you can do is decide to foster a slightly gawky and somewhat unruly (only through lack of training, not through any personality defect) labrador who your resident dogs have taken a dislike to, and who is still at that stage in his rescue process where he runs after every human he sees, no matter how far away they are, because they might be his owners. This means he always has to be on the lead, except when there's absolutely nobody around. And this means going down the beach at 7 am, when there's nobody around. It also means that he has to be lead-walked separately from the others, because they don't like him touching them. So, the number of daily walks has been bumped from a total of three to a total of seven.

A pain, right?

But his big nogginy head is soooo lovely and heavy when he plonks it on your lap and lets out that big dog sigh that just seems so contented. It almost makes up for my red raw hands and wet, sandy clothes.

If only we had a bigger house...

Today! Today!

The new dog is coming today!

He's called Woody, and he's an 8-month-old lab, who apparently is very friendly with dogs, cats, and children. The slightly worrying news is that he's probably very bouncy. The good news is that he hasn't been straying all that long, and it's quite possible that someone is still looking for him, so he may only be here a short while and could be reunited with his actual owners as opposed to being shuffled around from pillar to post again.

Poor Milo and Cody. Look at them, snoozing away over there on their sofa. They have no idea what's about to happen.

Men called Paddy and their little dogs

Most generalizations about people are negative in some way: fat people are jolly, BMW drivers are arseholes, Londoners are cold and stuck up, accountants are boring, and so on. However, one positive generalization that I can never help believing in is that old men called Paddy who are friendly and have friendly Jack Russell terriers are always nice and should be helped wherever possible.

And so it was that when I met an old man called Paddy on the beach this morning with his little, delicate-looking JRT, we had a nice chat and remarked that it looked as though the rain was on the way. Sure enough, when I met him going in the opposite direction 20 minutes later, the rain was like darts being thrown the length of the beach, and my two dogs were huddled behind me for shelter as I walked. Worse again, Paddy's dog was gone, having disappeared off to chase the seagulls. And now Paddy was worried because he couldn't find him and the weather had really turned very nasty, too bad to be traipsing up and down the beach looking for him. So, because I have a car and waterproof clothes, I took Paddy's mobile number and packed him off to wherever he was going and said I would look for the dog. I walked about and drove about and couldn't find him anywhere. I rang Paddy.

"He might have gone home," he suggested. He gave me his address and asked me would I mind driving by the house to see if the dog was there. I did not mind. I did drive by, and the wee dog was there, shivering on the doorstep. So I bundled him into the car and turned up the heat full blast and away we went to reunite the little chap with his owner, who was waiting for us up the road.

Paddy was delighted to see him, and I was glad that the little dog wouldn't have to sit in the cold and maybe even wander off again before his owner could get home to see him.

The whole time this was happening, Milo and Cody sat in the back of the car and stared at the new arrival, but otherwise accepted the situation. I have high hopes that the new foster (if it ever comes at this rate) will fit in well.

More Havers!

How am I only seeing this now, I ask you?

JPod

I didn't listen to Kev-lolz, and I paid the price.

There are four explanations for why I thought this book was completely rubbish:

1) There is some kind of cultural disconnect going on here. This is, after all, Microserfs updated for the Google generation, which might mean it's too young and hip for me to understand it, which is why it sounds to me like the dialogue is utterly unrealistic and the list-making games and the obsession with Ronald McDonald are just bafflingly desperate.

2) I hate fun, which is why I didn't think there was anything funny in here at all.

3) The book is crap.

I think it's option 3. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I knew what I was letting myself in for when I saw that the first sentence said something like "I feel like a character in a Douglas Coupland novel," which made me want to throw the book away. And yet, against my better judgement, I persisted with it. I should not have done this.

Edited to add: As Ray points out, I left off secret option 4. When I started writing the blog entry I was convinced I had four reasons, but then I could only think of three, but I went ahead and published it anyway. Maybe I'm hoping someone will find a defence of this book that I haven't come up with. I would rather think I misunderstood it than that it really is that bad. Because, you know, it certainly seemed that bad.

Look, it are a ickle dog what is singin'

We all love the VW Polo ad with the Jack Russell who is very shy and nervy in social situations but comes into his own when he is happy with his lady owner in her VW Polo. Of course we do.

I would, however, really like to know how they made him shiver so much in his nervy scenes. I really hope they didn't traumatise him too much or blast him with loud noises or something else. I'm hoping it was just some trick they taught him to do.

It isn't a trick, is it? They've done something awful to that poor little dog, haven't they?

Oh no. Now I have to hate the ad. I can has conflict.

Oh no, wait. Having looked at the comments on YouTube (always a great way to make yourself feel better about your opinions and those of your friends), if I am worried about how they made the ad, I am a crackpot protestor. Because, you know, humans aren't really sad when they cry in ads and shows and films and things. They are, apparently, acting. Which means obviously this dog is as well.