Sorry, I could not resist this blog title.

It’s that time again.  Well, it’s always that time.  Time to talk about going back to Ireland.   There are some of us who never tire of talking of Ireland, thinking of Ireland, looking at pictures of Ireland.  Going to Ireland.  We all know who we are.  We love it.  If you haven’t been, or feel no connection to it, go ahead and skip reading this.  Stop.  There’s no point on continuing.

Unless you want to.  Then go ahead and keep reading.

So those of us who love it probably love it for various reasons.  But I bet there are some reasons we all share.  Or not.  But those of us who love it, understand another’s love for it also.

One thing every one should remember, it’s an island.   For someone who has never lived near large bodies of water, with constant winds and rains and freshness, this is an experience its self.  I stepped off the plane in to Ireland and in to air that felt soft.  I don’t know that I had ever breathed air that felt sweet as it filled me up.  I always felt healthier there.  Foggy, rainy, sunny, cold, warm, hot.  It just felt healthy to me.  Clean.  Yes, fresh.

One of my (many) favorite things about dear old Ireland is the old of it.  The old buildings.  Old relics.  The ruins fascinate me.  Going in to buildings or structures that are hundreds, thousands of years old amaze me.  I am standing, walking, sitting and touching where our ancestors walked.   Where great things happened.  Where great people took stands for things they believed in.  I look at the ruins of some places and try to imagine it in its grandeur and completed state.  I can imagine it.   Then I remember how long ago it was created and I stumble over my perceived image of it.  When I picture things I do so from a 21st century perspective.  I have to go back to before Christ to get a full picture of some of these places (New Grange) and how they were developed .  I think it is difficult for us to totally get the magnitude of what the ancients created in this world.  We picture it with using our knowledge base.   How did they create it from their knowledge base.  Some of the buildings we went in to were only a couple to three centuries old.  Only? In many of the older businesses and homes you have to take 2, 3 or 5 steps to get through the doorway.  The walls are that thick.  Makes me come home and shudder at the insecurity of my 2×4 walls.

Food.  Before going to Ireland my first time I read in many places that Ireland was one of the most expensive places to eat.  Silly travel guides and advisors.  Or idiots.  I don’t know where they were going, but it was pretty food friendly to me.  Oh how we loved walking down streets in little towns and bigger cities.  Hungry?  Step in the bakery and buy a fresh scone.  Bakeries every where.  Walk by the butcher and see the fresh meats hanging for the folks needing to stop in and get something for dinner.  Gas stations with chefs and fresh baked goods.   Five pounds of stew.  Beef stew.  Lamb stew.  Tuna salad with corn.  Cookies, pardon me, in Ireland it would be biscuits.   Pub food.  Yes.  Pub food.  Good.  Good.  Good.  Stuff.

Fortunately we never stop when we are there so I can eat more.  Yay.   It’s non stop walk, look, walk, look.   I can’t see enough!  Not only do I want to see more, I want to go back and see what I already saw.  My first trip around Dingle Peninsula I had my eyes stretched so wide open my eye sockets hurt.  Oh, we were on our bikes for that one.

So we are always talking about going back to Ireland.  Or talking about about having been to Ireland.  Or talking about the ancestors who came from Ireland.   Or talking about the family found and connected with in Ireland.  Right now it’s the talking about going back.  Regardless of what points we have to ponder:  cost, flying (my fears), family situations, planning around all other responsibilities it comes down to what David once told me.   If we have a chance and put it off, who’s to say another chance will come along.

So if all things come together, it is likely to Eire.

Today it was very foggy. So foggy the roads seemed to lead into nowhere. At times an odd car would pass.

And it was one of those nostalgic mornings. Where she woke up thinking of the fog in early autumn.  Those last two weeks her and her cousins would spend in the country house in the mountains enjoying the last bit of sunshine before the real winter struck.

It reminded her of too many things to even tell. She regretted having such a good memory and such vivid images in her head of the days and years that have passed.  She hated time passing so fast and not fast enough when things needed to be done. She hated being powerless,  just like walking through the mist and fog and being unable to see far. It reminded her too much of her current situation.  She wanted to run and leave, but there was nowhere. Just waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Nostalgia, she hated that awful lady so much. Especially today.  Jill did a lot of hating today, but it was becoming O.K., it was natural, as long as it was over by the following day, she didn’t mind. Much.

Please note, all the images are copyrighted, see the flikr link on the about page for more. Or email me if you like.

Today Jill went to his office again, to get the annual dose of positive promises. It was around this time last year that it happened. The memory was too clear to forget and at times it seemed as if no time has passed since January 09. In a way, this was true, things were moving so slow, hardly any progress could be felt. Another year gone, she didn’t count them anymore, there was no point, they were not as significant as one would hope, just numbers and statistics to tick off on the file.  Speaking  of files, just like last time, there was a stack of them on his desk, some neatly placed with rubber bands and ticks on them, others open, letters peeking here and there. Those were lives, of people like her, lives that this young intelligent man held in his hands and was about to rescue.  This time last year she handed her life into his hands too. It was an emotional hour. Just over an hour in fact. He was on the phone for some of it, then sending emails, sorting out his desk. She waited, the eyes about to burst and release the years (and many years at that) of hidden mistreatment and empty promises which have left a good chunk of her life crippled for long. A year ago, she was asking the same questions she was asking today. He didn’t need to hear the end, he knew from the words “will it…”, “can I…”, he knew what was  to follow. He kept on saying “It will, cause it’s the right thing to happen“. And she believed. She believed and kept repeating those words like a secret prayer, each time turd came flying at her, she’d scrape it off, fix the life back in line, it is the right thing, it is the right thing, it is the right thing. Like a mantra. For a whole year this is what she ate, drank and used to start everyday. Every day. Every single day. And today it was becoming so clear, a new promise was made, more solid than previous. She was told to tick off another five years of her life, just five, just five. That was all, just five years. She could do it, she could so do it. If only she has not already ticked off double that before. But this is what it takes. It is the right thing to do. Of course, he would not lie to her. She glanced around his office again: numerous awards on the wall, random decorations here and there, filed lives and himself. He was still a young intelligent man who saw her cry and promised her hope and unlike some, actually delivered it.

It was a long day and Jill ended up with a migraine which will last around 48 hours. She knew that for definite, it happens often enough. It was more of an inconvenience than anything else.

 V

‘My father still reads the dictionary every day.
He says your life depends on your power to master words.’

         Arthur Scargill
         Sunday Times, 10 January 1982

Next millennium you’ll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.

With Byron three graves on I’ll not go short
of company, and Wordsworth’s opposite.
That’s two peers already, of a sort,
and we’ll all be thrown together if the pit,

whose galleries once ran beneath this plot,
causes the distinguished dead to drop
into the rabblement of bone and rot,
shored slack, crushed shale, smashed prop.

Wordsworth built church organs, Byron tanned
luggage cowhide in the age of steam,
and knew their place of rest before the land
caves in on the lowest worked-out seam.

This graveyard on the brink of Beeston Hill’s
the place I may well rest if there’s a spot
under the rose roots and the daffodils
by which dad dignified the family plot.

If buried ashes saw then I’d survey
the places I learned Latin, and learned Greek,
and left, the ground where Leeds United play
but disappoint their fans week after week,

which makes them lose their sense of self-esteem
and taking a short cut home through these graves here
they reassert the glory of their team
by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer.

This graveyard stands above a worked-out pit.
Subsidence makes the obelisks all list.
One leaning left’s marked FUCK, one right’s marked SHIT
sprayed by some peeved supporter who was pissed.

Far-sighted for his family’s future dead,
but for his wife, this banker’s still alone
on his long obelisk, and doomed to head
a blackened dynasty of unclaimed stone,

now graffitied with a crude four-letter word.
His children and grandchildren went away
and never came back home to be interred,
so left a lot of space for skins to spray.

The language of this graveyard ranges from
a bit of Latin for a former Mayor
or those who laid their lives down at the Somme,
the hymnal fragments and the gilded prayer,
how people ‘fell asleep in the Good Lord’,
brief chisellable bits from the good book
and rhymes whatever length they could afford,
to CUNT, PISS, SHIT and (mostly) FUCK!

Or, more expansively, there’s LEEDS v.
the opponent of last week, this week, or next,
and a repertoire of blunt four-letter curses
on the team or race that makes the sprayer vexed.

Then, pushed for time, or fleeing some observer,
dodging between tall family vaults and trees
like his team’s best ever winger, dribbler, swerver,
fills every space he finds with versus Vs.

Vs sprayed on the run at such a lick,
the sprayer master of his flourished tool,
get short-armed on the left like that red tick
they never marked his work with much at school.

Half this skinhead’s age but with approval
I helped whitewash a V on a brick wall.
No one clamoured in the press for its removal
or thought the sign, in wartime, rude at all.

These Vs are all the versuses of life
From LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White
and (as I’ve known to my cost) man v. wife,
Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right,
Class v. class as bitter as before,
the unending violence of US and THEM,
personified in 1984
by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,
Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind,
East/West, male/female, and the ground
these fixtures are fought on’s Man, resigned
to hope from his future what his past never found.

The prospects for the present aren’t too grand
when a swastika with NF (National Front)’s
sprayed on a grave, to which another hand
has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.

Which is, I grant, the word that springs to mind,
when going to clear the weeds and rubbish thrown
on the family plot by football fans, I find
UNITED graffitied on my parents’ stone.

How many British graveyards now this May
are strewn with rubbish and choked up with weeds
since families and friends have gone away
for work or fuller lives, like me from Leeds?

When I first came here 40 years ago
with my dad to ’see my grandma’ I was 7.
I helped dad with the flowers.  He let me know
she’d gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.

My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers
came home with clay stains on his trouser knees.
Since my parents’ deaths I’ve spent 2 hours
made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.
Flying visits once or twice a year,
And though I’m horrified just who’s to blame
that I find instead of flowers cans of beer
and more than one grave sprayed with some skin’s name?

Where there were flower urns and troughs of water
And mesh receptacles for withered flowers
are the HARP tins of some skinhead Leeds supporter.
It isn’t all his fault though.  Much is ours.

5 kids, with one in goal, play 2-a-side.
When the ball bangs on the hawthorn that’s one post
and petals fall they hum Here Comes the Bride
though not so loud they’d want to rouse a ghost.

They boot the ball on purpose at the trunk
and make the tree shed showers of shrivelled may.
I look at this word graffitied by some drunk
and I’m in half a mind to let it stay.

(Though honesty demands that I say if
I’d wanted to take the necessary pains
to scrub the skin’s inscription off
I only had an hour between trains.

So the feelings that I had as I stood gazing
and the significance I saw could be a sham,
mere excuses for not patiently erasing
the word sprayed on the grave of dad and mam.)

This pen’s all I have of magic wand.
I know this world’s so torn but want no other
except for dad who’d hoped from ‘the beyond’
a better life than this one, with  my mother.

Though I don’t believe in afterlife at all
and know it’s cheating it’s hard not  to make
a sort of furtive prayer from this skin’s scrawl,
his UNITED mean ‘in Heaven’ for their sake,

an accident of meaning to redeem
an act intended as mere desecration
and make the thoughtless spraying of his team
apply to higher things, and to the nation.

Some, where kids use aerosols, use giant signs
to let the people know who’s forged their fetters
Like PRI  CE  O  WALES above West Yorkshire mines
(no prizes for who nicked the missing letters!)
The big blue star for booze, tobacco ads,
the magnet’s monogram, the royal crest,
insignia in neon dwarf the lads
who spray a few odd FUCKS when they’re depressed.

Letters of transparent tubes and gas
in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP.
Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class
and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.

And there’s HARRISON on some Leeds building sites
I’ve taken in fun as blazoning my name,
which I’ve also seen on books, in Broadway lights,
so why can’t skins with spraycans do the same?

But why inscribe these graves  with CUNT and SHIT?
Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure?
This pitman’s of last century daubed PAKI GIT,
this grocer Broadbent’s aerosolled with NIGGER?

They’re there to shock the living, not arouse
the dead from their deep peace to lend support
for the causes skinhead spraycans could espouse.
The dead would want their desecrators caught!

Jobless though they are how can these kids,
even though their team’s lost one more game,
believe that the ‘Pakis’, ‘Niggers’, even ‘Yids’
sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?

What is it that these crude words are revealing?
What is it that this aggro act implies?
Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?

 So what’s a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can’t you speak
the language that yer mam spoke.  Think of ‘er!
Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
Go and fuck yourself with  cri-de-coeur!

‘She didn’t talk like you do for a start!’
I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had been.
She didn’t understand yer fucking ‘art’!
She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!

I wish on this skin’s words deep aspirations,
first the prayer for my parents I can’t make,
then a call to Britain and to all nations
made in the name of love for peace’s sake.
Aspirations, cunt!  Folk on t’fucking dole
‘ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they’re dumped in, cunt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t’fucking fire.

‘OK, forget the aspirations.  Look, I know
United’s losing gets you fans incensed
and how far the HARP inside you makes you go
but all these Vs: against!  against!  against!

Ah’ll tell yer then what really riles a bloke.
It’s reading on their graves the jobs they did –
Butcher, publican and baker.  Me, I’ll croak
doing t’same nowt ah do now as a kid.

‘ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed ‘er.
Death after life on t’dole won’t seem as ‘ard!
Look at this cunt, Wordsworth, organ builder,
This fucking ‘aberdasher Appleyard!

If mi mam’s up there, don’t want to meet ‘er
listening to me list mi dirty deeds,
and ‘ave to pipe up to St fucking Peter
ah’ve been on t’dole all mi life in fucking Leeds!

Then t’Alleluias stick in t’angels’ gobs.
When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void
What’ll t’mason carve up for their jobs?
The cunts who lieth ‘ere wor unemployed?

This lot worked at one job all life through.
Byron, ‘Tanner’, ‘Lieth ‘ere interred’.
They’ll chisel fucking poet when they do you
and that, yer cunt, ’s a crude four-letter word.

‘Listen, cunt!’ I said, ‘before you start your jeering
the reason why I want this in a book
’s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!’
 A book, yer stupid cunt, ’s not worth a fuck!

‘The only reason why I write this poem at all
on yobs like you who do the dirt on death
’s to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.’
 Don’t fucking bother, cunt!  Don’t waste your breath!

‘You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn’t know
and it doesn’t fucking matter if you do,
the skin and poet united fucking Rimbaud
but the autre that je est is fucking you.’
Ah’ve told yer, no more Greek…That’s yer last warning!
Ah’ll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come.
They’ll find yer cold on t’grave tomorrer morning.
So don’t speak Greek.  Don’t treat me like I’m dumb.
‘I’ve done my bits of mindless aggro too
not half a mile from where we’re standing now.’
 Yeah, ah bet yer wrote a poem, yer wanker you!
‘No, shut yer gob a while.  Ah’ll tell yer ‘ow…’

‘Herman Darewski’s band played operetta
with a wobbly soprano warbling.  Just why
I made my mind up that I’d got to get her
with the fire hose I can’t say, but I’ll try.
It wasn’t just the singing angered me.
At the same time half a crowd was jeering
as  the smooth Hugh Gaitskill, our MP,
made promises the other half were cheering.

What I hated in those high soprano ranges
was uplift beyond all reason and control
and in a world where you say nothing changes
it seemed a sort of prick-tease of the soul.

I tell you when I heard high notes that rose
above Hugh Gaitskill’s cool electioneering
straight from the warbling throat right up my nose
I had all your aggro in my  jeering.
And I hit the fire extinguisher ON knob
and covered orchestra and audience with spray.
I could run as fast as you then.  A good job!
They yelled ‘damned vandal’ after me that day…’

And then yer saw the light and up ‘eavy!
And knew a man’s not how much he can sup…
Yer reward for growing up’s this super-bevvy,
a meths and champagne punch ini t’FA Cup.

Ah’ve ‘eard all that from old farts past their prime.
‘ow now yer live wi’ all yer once detested…
Old farts with not much left’ll give me time.
Fuckers like that get folk like me arrested.

Covet not thy neighbour’s wife, thy neighbour’s riches.
Vicar and cop who say, to save our souls,
Get thee beHind me, Satan, drop their breeches
and get the Devil’s dick right up their ‘oles!

It was more a working   marriage that I’d meant,
a blend of masculine and feminine.
Ignoring me, he started looking, bent
on some more aerosolling, for his tin.

‘It was more a working  marriage that I mean!’
Fuck, and save mi soul, eh?  That suits me.
Then as if I’d egged him on to be obscene
he added a middle slit to one daubed V.

Don’t talk to me of fucking representing
the class yer were born into any more.
Yer going to get ‘urt and start resenting
it’s not poetry we need in this class war.

Yer’ve given yerself toffee, cunt.  Who needs
yer fucking poufy words.  Ah write mi own.
Ah’ve got mi work on show all ovver Leeds
like this UNITED ‘ere on some sod’s stone.

‘OK!’ (thinking I had him trapped) ‘OK!’
‘If you’re so proud of it, then sign your name
when next you’re full of HARP and armed with spray,
next time you take this short cut from the game.’

He took the can, contemptuous, unhurried
and cleared the nozzle and prepared to sign
the UNITED sprayed where mam and dad were buried.
He aerosolled his name.  And it was mine.

The boy footballers bawl Here Comes the Bride
and drifting blossoms fall onto my head.
One half of me’s alive but one half died
when the skin half sprayed my name among the dead.

Half versus half, the enemies within
the heart that can’t be whole till they unite.
As I stoop to grab the crushed HARP lager tin
the day’s already dusk, half dark, half light.

That UNITED that I’d wished onto the nation
or as reunion for dead parents soon recedes.
The word’s once more a mindless desecration
by some HARPoholic yob supporting Leeds.

Almost the time for ghosts I’d better scram.
Though not given much to fears of spooky scaring
I don’t fancy an encounter with mi mam
playing Hamlet with me for this swearing.

Though I’ve a train to catch my step is slow.
I walk on the grass and graves with wary tread
over these subsidences, these shifts below
the life of Leeds supported by the dead.

Further underneath’s that cavernous hollow
that makes the gravestones lean towards the town.
A matter of mere time and it will swallow
this place of rest and all the resters down.

I tell myself I’ve got, say, 30 years.
At 75 this place will suit me fine.
I’ve never feared the grave but what I fear’s
that great worked-out black hollow under mine.

Not train departure time, and not Town Hall
with the great white clock face I can see,
coal, that began, with no man here at all,
as 300 million-year-old plant debris.

5 kids still play at making blossoms fall
and humming as they do Here Comes the Bride.
They never seem to tire of their ball
though I hear a woman’s voice call one inside.

2 larking boys play bawdy bride and groom.
3 boys in Leeds strip la-la Lohengrin.
I hear them as I go through growing gloom
still years away from being skald or skin.
The ground’s carpeted with petals as I throw
the aerosol, the HARP can, the cleared weeds
on top of dad’s dead daffodils, then go,
with not one glance behind, away from Leeds.

The bus to the station’s still the No. 1
but goes by routes that I don’t recognise.
I look out for known landmarks as the sun
reddens the swabs of cloud in darkening skies.

Home, home, home, to my woman as the red
darkens from a fresh blood to a dried.
Home, home to my woman, home to bed
where opposites seem sometimes unified.

A pensioner in turban taps his stick
along the pavement past the corner shop,
that sells samosas now, not beer on tick,
to the Kashmir Muslim Club that was the Co-op.

House after house FOR SALE where we’d played cricket
with white roses cut from flour-sacks on our caps,
with stumps chalked on the coal-grate for our wicket,
and every one bought now by ‘coloured chaps’,

dad’s most liberal label as he felt
squeezed by the unfamiliar, and fear
of foreign food and faces, when he smelt
curry in the shop where he’d bought beer.

And growing frailer, ‘wobbly on his pins’,
the shops he felt familiar with withdrew
which meant much longer tiring treks for tins
that had a label on them that he knew.

And as the shops that stocked his favourites receded
whereas he’d fancied beans and popped next door,
he found that four long treks a week were needed
till he wondered what he bothered eating for.

The supermarket made him feel embarrassed.
Where people bought whole lambs for family freezers
he bought baked beans from check-out girls too harassed
to smile or swap a joke with sad old geezers.

But when he bought his cigs he’d have a chat,
his week’s one conversation, truth to tell,
but time also came and put a stop to that
when old Wattsy got bought out by M. Patel.

And there, ‘Time like an ever rolling stream’’s
What I once trilled behind that boarded front.
A 1000 ages made coal-bearing seams
and even more the hand that sprayed this CUNT

on both Methodist and C of E billboards
once divided in their fight for local souls.
Whichever house more truly was the Lord’s
both’s pews are filled with cut-price toilet rolls.

Home, home to my woman, never to return
till sexton or survivor has to cram
the bits of clinker scooped out of my urn
down through the rose-roots to my dad and mam.

Home, home to my woman, where the fire’s lit
these still chilly mid-May evenings, home to you,
and perished vegetation from the pit
escaping insubstantial up the flue.

Listening to Lulu,  in our hearth we burn,
As we hear the high Cs rise in stereo,
what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern
at least 300 million years ago.

Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D
lifted from a source that bears your name,
the one we hear decay, the one we see,
the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.

This world, with far too many people in,
starts on the TV logo as a taw,
then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin
to show us all, then shots of the Gulf War.

As the coal with reddish dust cools in the grate
on the late-night national news we see
police v. pickets at a coke-plant grate,
old violence and old disunity.
The map that’s colour-coded Ulster/Eire’s
flashed on again as almost every night.
Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers
men in masks with arms show off their might.

The day’s last images recede to first a glow
and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen.
Turning to love, and sleep’s oblivion, I know
what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has  to mean.

Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood
may and apple petals, browned and creased,
fall onto the carpet and bring back the flood
of feelings their first falling had released.

I hear like ghosts from all Leeds matches humming
with one concerted voice the bride, the bride
I feel united to, my  bride is coming
into the bedroom, naked, to my side.

The ones we choose to love become our anchor
when the hawser of the blood-tie’s hacked, or frays.
But a voice that scorns chorales is yelling: Wanker!
It’s the aerosolling skin I met today’s.

My alter ego  wouldn’t want to know it,
His aerosol vocab would baulk at LOVE,
the skin’s UNITED underwrites the poet,
the measures carved below the ones above.

I doubt if 30 years of bleak Leeds weather
and 30 falls of apple and of may
will erode the UNITED binding us together.
And now it’s your decision: does it stay?

Next millennium you’ll have to search quite hard
to find out where I’m buried but I’m near
the grave of haberdasher Appleyard,
the pile of HARPs, or some new neonned beer.

Find Byron, Wordsworth, or turn left between
one grave marked Broadbent, one marked Richardson.
Bring some solution with you that can clean
whatever new crude words have been sprayed on.

If love of art, or love, gives you affront
that the grave I’m in ’s graffitied then, maybe,
erase the more offensive FUCK and CUNT
but leave, with the worn UNITED, one small v.

Victory?  For vast, slow, coal-creating forces
that hew the body’s seams to get the soul.
Will earth run out of her ‘diurnal courses’
before repeating her creation of black coal?

If, having come this far, somebody reads
these verses, and he/she wants to understand,
face this grave on Beeston Hill, your back to Leeds,
and read the chiselled epitaph I’ve planned:

Beneath your feet’s a poet, then a pit.
Poetry supporter, if you’re here to find
How poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT
find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind.

.tony harrison.

Tak fajn, už jsem nasbírala tři věci, od nichž se distancuju.

• 1. dělejte si layouty sami
• 2. obstarávejte si konverzaci sami
• 3. můžeš se to naučit sama, mami

Teď se zase předvedla matka. Vůbec spousta lidí pro mě poslední dobou má ohromný pochopení. Ale ona nejdřív neslyší, co říkám, a já jí to musím několikrát opakovat, což mě vůbec dobře nenaladí, zvlášť po ránu. A pak se vzteká nad tím, jakým tónem jí říkám, jak je to správně (neumí totiž za těch čtrnáct let ani pořádně mluvit, což mě irituje). Jakým tónem jí to asi můžu říkat, když mě vysírá, že se rozčiluje nad tím, že to nemůže pochopit a “kde se to jako mám naučit” (co takhle při konverzaci nebo čtení?), a předtím mě ještě nasere, jak na mě několikrát vyjede jenom proto, že slyšela něco úplně jinýho, než jsem řekla? Chápete to?
Já ne. Nemůžu se s ní normálně bavit, protože ona je vždycky tak pevně přesvědčená o svý vlastní pravdě, že jakejkoli argument, kterej to vidí z druhý strany (z tý mý) je pro ni blbost.
A chytám z této situace perfektní záchvaty sarkasmu. Vůči všem. Takže jestli se vám něco nelíbí, doporučuju se o tom ani nezmiňovat, pokud ovšem nemáte v úmyslu se se mnou rozhádat. Tohle je můj blog. Tady si můžu psát, co se líbí mně. Nebo nelíbí.
Jinde mě totiž nejspíš nikdo neposlouchá, natož aby je to zajímalo.
Takže mé hlasivky budou odpočívat v pokoji, stejně jako můj zájem o to, o čem se kdo baví a co kdo neumí. Moje snaha totiž není nikdy oceněna.
Včera jsem si cvičila tanečky . Na waltz jsem stejně pořád nepřišla (jen jsem jednou nebo dvakrát zvládla udělat tu otočku jako chlap, ale v ženský pozici to bylo stejně na nic), jive už se mi dařil mnohem líp, párkrát jsem si vytočila valčík za doprovodu Čajkovského a pak jsem tančila polku (ano, já ) na Loitumu. Bylo to fajn, ale ještě lepší by bylo, kdyby to, co jsem tančila, uměli i kluci, se kterejma budu tančit dneska na tanečních. O čemž však silně pochybuju… Doufám, že tam dneska bude normální učitel, aby mi konečně vysvětlil, jak je to s tím waltzem, a přinutil kluky, aby se trochu snažili.
No, díky spánkovému deficitu jsem šla spát v jednu a v jednu i vstávala, takže se mi rapidně zkrátil čas na přípravu a případnou návštěvu Lily, ale aspoň jsem se konečně vyspala. Nejspíš zas na tejden dopředu, než začnu opět dospávat, haha.
Z tohoto příspěvku každopádně vyplývá, že moje drahocenná existence je nejspíš na tomhle světě totálně k ničemu. Dřív jsem si myslela, že mám sloužit aspoň jako kamarádka nebo jiná spřízněná duše pro lidi, který smysl mají, ale jak tak na to koukám, ani té pocty se mi nedostalo. Ale ještě pořád z toho nemám depku, což signalizuje buď zlepšenou duševní kondičku, nebo onen ledový základ, na němž od těch krásných posledních tanečních stavím svoje reakce. Pořád lepší, než se hroutit z toho, že jsem na nic. Já přece k něčemu jsem – zařizuju si vlastní život. I sama můžu žít skvěle. Aspoň mě nikdo nebude v ničem rušit. Stále pozitivní.
Ale Irsko… Než já se tam stihnu dostat, asi se tam už nevejdu. A Irové se nejspíš brzo sbalej a odtáhnou pryč od těch hald cizinců, co se jim tam nakvartýrovaly. Nemá nejspíš ani cenu tam jezdit. Na každým rohu potkám místo domorodce nějakýho Čecha, Slováka nebo Poláka. Nejspíš mi to akorát zkazí iluze. Takže tam nejedu. Leda na dovču, jestli ovšem někdy budem mít tolik peněz, abychom se mohli jen tak sbalit a jet na dovolenou.
A už vůbec se mě nedotýká, že spousta ostatních lidí si jezdí na dovču k moři každý léto. Kdyby se mě to totiž dotklo, nejspíš by se mi rozbořily i jiný základy ignorace a já bych měla takovou depku, jakou už jsem dlooouho nezažila. Takže je všechno v pořádku.
Prej nezapírat… aby se nezastavila energie apod., bla bla. Kdybych nezapírala, co bych s tím asi tak měla dělat? Nikdy se mi nic nepodařilo změnit, tak proč bych měla trávit čas tím, že bych se litovala? Jestli je někdo příliš skoupej na to, aby mi fláknul na účet pár melounků, abych si konečně mohla žít aspoň zčásti tak, jak si představuju, je to jeho věc a já ji nebudu řešit. Holt se musím spokojit s tím, co mám. Pohybovat se v tom kanále pěkně podél, abych si nezlámala nohy, až zase spadnu při pokusu pohybovat se směrem vzhůru. Není problém.
No, radši končím. Ještě byste mohli mít dojem, že mi na tom nějak sejde .

“Il calcio risveglia le peggiori passioni” [Jorge Luis Borges]

E’ sorprendente che finora il calcio abbia provocato solo una guerra, quella del 1969 tra Honduras e El Salvador (ndr: la cosiddetta “Guerra del Calcio”, breve conflitto armato scoppiato il 14 luglio 1969 e terminato 6 giorni dopo, a seguito della partita per la qualificazione ai Mondiali di Mexico ‘70 tra le due nazionali, per saperne di piu’ clicca qui). L’orgoglio nazionalistico si infiamma in tempo di Mondiali di calcio, in modo effimero ma pericoloso, e i risultati aggiungono al fuoco la benzina dell’umiliazione o dell’ingiustizia, reale o immaginaria che sia. Com’e’ successo la settimana scorsa all’ego russo, fragile e aggressivo. Umiliato da uno dei suoi piu’ piccoli ex satelliti dell’era sovietica. La Slovenia, un paese con 2 milioni di persone, si e’ classificata al Mondiale del 2010 a scapito della Russia, che ha 142 milioni di abitanti.

Gli egiziani invece sentono di aver subito un’ingiustizia con la fine del sogno dei Mondiali dopo la sconfitta contro l’Algeria. Non si sa bene perche’ ma in Egitto si sono convinti che c’e’ stata qualche scorrettezza. L’ambasciata algerina al Cairo e’ stata assaltata, i due paese hanno ritirato i loro ambasciatori e il presidente egiziano ha dichiarato che “bisogna colpire in testa chi ci insulta”.

Trapattoni, CT dell'Eire

Irlanda e Francia invece sono state molto amiche, unite dalla religione cattolica e dal comune disprezzo per la perfida Albione. Oggi non piu’. Ecco i fatti: gli Irlandesi di Trapattoni hanno giocato meglio e meritavano di vincere. Ma nell’istante decisivo della partita il capitano francese, Thierry Henry, ha confuso il calcio con la pallacanestro. Ha toccato due volte il pallone con la mano e l’ha passato a Gallas, che ha segnato il gol piu’ facile della sua vita. La Francia ha pareggiato e si e’ classificata per i Mondiali eliminando l’Irlanda. La Fifa ha fatto orecchie da mercante, respingendo la richiesta irlandese di ripetere la partita, percio’ l’unica possibilita’ di vendetta dipende paradossalmente dal fatto che Henry non e’ un farabutto ma una brava persona. Henry ha ammesso pubblicamente la sua “vergogna” e sara’ condannato a un rimorso per la gioia di partecipare ai Mondiali in Sudafrica non cancellera’ mai. Ma c’e’ qualcos’altro di cui dovrebbe rammaricarsi. Il poveretto forse non non se n’e’ reso conto, ma quella sera di fronte all’Irlanda ha perso un’opportunita’ di gloria eterna. Se Henry avesse detto subito all’arbitro “era fallo di mano, annulli il gol”, sarebbe passato alla storia non solo come un grande giocatore, ma come uno sportivo immortale.

[articolo di John Carlin, per El Pais -Spagna]

I’ll admit it.  I would never, in a month of Sundays, put Sadie on my daughter’s birth certificate.  It would be Sarah, thanks very much, just in case she grows up to run for office or take up brain surgery or otherwise wants to sound like a mature, serious adult.

I’m not necessarily in the majority.  And I’m not necessarily right, either.  Plenty of women named Julie and Jodie have turned out just fine.  And plenty of Sarah/Sadies are irritated at having to constantly explain that yes, Sadie is a nickname for Sarah.

So for your consideration, I’ve pulled together a list of ends-in-ie-names just might stand on their own.

I’m excluding choices like Katie and Maggie -  names easily connected to formal versions, as well as feminizations like Billie and Charlie.  And if it more commonly ends in -y, you won’t find it here – so no Mollie, Lillie or Lucie.

That still leaves bunches of names:

• Arlie – Arline started out as a well-born child kidnapped by gypsies in a nineteenth century opera, but today she’s the outdated Arlene.  Arlie might be a short form, or she may related to a surname.  Either way, she sounds fresher than the -een ending original.
• Birdie – Lady Bird was worn in the White House.  Actress Busy Phillips bestowed this avian appellation on her daughter.  While there are more subtle ways to evoke the finely feathered, Birdie isn’t quite unthinkable.
• Bonnie – Worn by the ill-fated daughter of Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With the Wind – who was actually named Eugenie Victoria.  She means pretty – and she is just that.
• Callie – If Kelly and Kaylee are independent given names for girls, why not Callie?  She’s also a possible nickname for classics like Caroline and Charlotte, as well as the less-expected Calla, Calista or Calliope.
• Dessie – In Ireland, Dessie is a nickname for Desmond – and thus, exclusively masculine.  In the US, it sounds more like a riff on Bessie.
• Dulcie – She’s sweet – literally, from the Latin dulcis.  Longer form Dulcinea conjures up the Judybats, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Don Quixote – though the literary Dulcinea was actually named Aldonza.
• Erie – Eir was a Norse goddess; Éire, a Celtic one – she lent her name to Ireland.  Eiry is a Welsh girl’s name – related names abound, all meaning snow.  Erie may be linked to any or none of the above, and could rhyme with fairy, or have a totally other pronunciation.
• Hattie – You might put Harriet or Henrietta on the birth certificate, but millinery references aside, Hattie has some style.
• Hettie – Another possibility for Henrietta,  as well as Hester or Hestia.
• Lettie – Formal name options include the salad-esque Lettice, or the lacy Letitia.  If Victorian valentine isn’t your style, Lettie might appeal.
• Lindie – Lucky Lindy was aviator Charles Lindbergh’s nickname.  The Lindy Hop was a swing-era dance craze named in his honor.  Linda is a Baby Boomer – as are elaborations like Melinda and Belinda.  But today, Lindie might work as a nickname for hippie chic tree name Linden – or on her own.
• Lottie – Charlotte is in the US Top 100 and rising, but it seems as very few Charlottes are answering to this nickname – so far.
• Maisie – Like Maggie, she could be a diminutive form of Margaret, via the Scottish Mairead.  But if Daisy stands on her own, maybe Maisie does, too.
• Millie – Mildred might be too dowdy to ever make a comeback, but Millie is Thoroughly Modern.  She’s also a spunky nickname for the super-sweet Millicent.
• Minnie – Yes, there’s the mouse.  But there’s also the actress – who was actually born Amelia Fiona Driver.
• Tillie – Matilda is ever so fashion forward.  Short form Tilda brings to mind the actress.  Then there’s Tillie – perhaps a bit too cute, but possibly wearable on her own.
• Trudie – It’s hard to imagine naming a daughter Gertrude.  But Trudie seems like a logical sister for Sadie – spunky, retro and not too flimsy to stand on her own.
• Zadie – If Sadie stands along, why not her zippy cousin?  The z-to-s switch has worked out just fine for novelist Zadie Smith.
• Zelie – There have definitely been women named Zelie, but her exact origins are unclear, though some link her to the French Zéline and she brings to mind the Yiddish Zelig.

I could go on – there’s Winnie and Elsie, Flossie and Roxie.  But I’ll stop here and just ask: would you consider a short, ends-in-ie name for a daughter?  And if so, would you put it on her birth certificate or opt for a more formal version?

Sudafrica 2010/ Ministro Lagarde: rigiochiamo Francia-Eire – Wall Street Italia

Sudafrica 2010/ Ministro Lagarde: rigiochiamo Francia-Eire

(Apcom) – Il ministro francese dell’Economia, Christine Lagarde, sarebbe favorevole alla ripetizione della partita Francia-Eire, valevole per la qualificazione al mondiale di calcio di Sudafrica 2010, dopo le polemiche sul fallo di mano di Thierry Henry nell’azione che ha portato&

(129 commenti) (116 commenti) (106 commenti) (102 commenti) (94 commenti) (80 commenti) (74 commenti) (66 commenti) (62 commenti) (61 commenti)

Fonte:

http://www.wallstreetitalia.com/articolo.aspx?art_id=819595