Best Of John B Keane E-Book

John B. Keane

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1999

Beschreibung

In this volume are hundreds of short pieces which represent the distillation of the experience of a funny, witty, wise and passionate observer of the bright tapestry of Irish life. All human life is here, and Keane tells its story in an astonishing procession of remarkable characters and in rare humorous glimpses of his own career. This is a collection to prize.

Leseprobe

The Best of John B. Keane

Collected Humorous Writings

MERCIER PRESS

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© John B. Keane, 2011

ISBN: 978 1 85635 265 9

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 021 2

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 020 5

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Life – the Incurable Illness

Watery Eyes

People who wear lonely faces are not necessarily lonesome people. Much the same applies to people who have watery eyes. We tend to think that these are teary eyes. The truth is that tears and eye-water come from two different fountains. Do not ask me where these fountains are situated. All I can tell you is that they are in the neighbourhood of the noodle. Go to your doctor if you want exact information but don’t tell him I sent you.

Watery eyes are just about the most priceless possession a man or woman can have in this little globular demesne of ours. Since, unfortunately, it is a demesne where hypocrisy is more abundant than charity, watery eyes can be greatly undervalued by those who are lucky enough to possess them. I myself do not possess watery eyes except when there is a strong wind blowing into my face or, on rarer occasions, when I am the victim of a head cold.

My ancestors, however, were not deficient in the matter of eye-water, and there was one particularly vicious relative who had a good word for nobody but who was greatly liked and respected by his neighbours. They said that in spite of his scurrilous tongue he had great nature. Nature, in those days, was a thing no sensible man should be without. A man with nature, whatever else he might not have, was always accorded respect, and if ever his neighbours were heard to criticise him someone was always quick to point out that for all his faults he had great nature. This generally nipped the criticism in the bud.

Anyway, this relative of mine was a great man for attending funerals. The only reason he went to funerals was to pass away the time. He did not like plays or pictures and besides you had to pay good money before you were left inside the door of a playhouse or cinema. Funerals cost nothing and he never failed to express his delight when he heard somebody was dead. He had as little time for the dead as he had for the living. Ordinary people who were fond of criticising a deceased party when he was alive always stopped the practice when he was pronounced dead.

There were two reasons for this. A dead man was harmless and therefore praise couldn’t do him any good. Secondly, the louder the praise given at the dead man’s wake the greater the quantity of strong drink given to the bestower of the praise.

But to get back to my relative. On the morning of the funeral he would shave and dress in his Sunday best. Always he would make his way to the front of the funeral where he would be seen by all the relatives of the deceased. He always walked with his head well bent and his hands behind his back. This sort of posture impressed everybody.

At the gate of the churchyard he would precede the coffin party to the grave and stand watching all those who came to pay their respects. Those who did not know him often mistook him for a detective.

At the graveside his eyes would begin to water. He could not keep it back and it often ran down the side of his face. He would produce his handkerchief and blow his nose. Then he would wipe the water away. I once heard a woman behind me say to another: ‘God bless that man but he has wonderful nature.’

As the water coursed down his face others who were at the graveside, particularly middle-aged women who were in no way related to the dead man, would sniff at the sight of him. These sniffs were the harbingers of genuine salt tears. They would look at my relative again and, believing him to be genuinely crying, would start off themselves. Soon every woman at the graveside was crying. They could not stop even if they had wanted to. Handkerchiefs appeared by the score and eyes were dried, only to fill again from the inexhaustible well of tears owned by every woman. If there was a fresh breeze his eyes would really swim and very often sympathetic souls would come forward and place the hand of consolation on his shoulder.

When he died he had a large funeral. It was dominated by women. All had a plentiful supply of handkerchiefs but they were never called upon to use them. Not a tear was shed because they had nobody to lead them. Their tear-leader was no more and he who was the cause of so many was buried without a single tear in the end.

Corns

I once knew a woman who wore out three bicycles in search of a cure for corns.

She spent the price of a bubble car on guaranteed remedies when all that she really required was a larger size in shoes.

I heard of a man who won seventy cups for waltzing but he would have forfeited them all unconditionally if his corns gave him a moment’s peace.

Whenever I see a really beautiful, well-coiffured, immaculately dressed woman, I always arrive at one of two conclusion. She is extraordinarily wealthy or, on the other hand, she has very little to do at home. Similarly when I see a stout woman sitting on an upturned box at a point-to-point meeting I hazard the guess that her shoes are too tight or that she forgot to look after her corns that morning before leaving home.

Corns thrive nowhere with such exultant disregard for man’s comforts as under the patronage of poorly fitting shoes and additionally a man is never conscious of his corns when he patters about on bare feet. Corns have often dictated the humour of a man’s day and not infrequently instituted the beginnings of minor lawsuits because many regard the act of standing upon a corn accidentally under the same light as assault and battery and it would not surprise me to learn that the error made by Napoleon in attempting to subdue Russia was brought about as a result of wearing tight-fitting boots.

Until recently I have had little sympathy for those who suffer from corns. Frequently after football matches where men are compelled to stand for hours in congestion I have scoffed at older colleagues who sat themselves relievedly upon convenient windowsills after leaving the football pitch and proceeded, without regard for caution, to unlace their shoes. The sighs and other ejaculations of pleasure heard upon the occasion were proof of the relief enjoyed and we laughed, some of us, in derision at these comical situations, unconscious of unforeseen martyrdom and blissfully unaware of the latter-day development of constricted paunches which come with ripening of age.

The era of the casual corn-cutter belongs to history because these days there are as many cures as there are corns and the neighbour whose forte was corn-cutting is no longer called in.

There are many who may say boastfully that they have never been afflicted by corns but in the toes of each of us is the nucleus of a horrifying harvest and all that is required is a pair of new shoes to bring them forth. Man for the most part is safe enough from the scourge because if he is once bitten by an ill-advisedly purchased shoe he will lower his sights for future occasions but woman will never see the light. She will persist, God love her!, in carrying the day, and admittedly it is hard to burden a shapely foot with a shoes that looks cumbersome. It is unfair to expect a woman, whose figure is preserved in spite of maturity, to wear flat sensible shoes. If she picks up a corn or two in the process it is a churlish husband who would not bend his knee to bring her relief. It was a wise man who said that nothing should ever be thrown away. The derelict razor blade, unwanted and unsung, can play a powerful part in extremity and whatever is said about peculiar and particular cures, corn-paring is as classic an example of practical art as any.

The principle which would have us credit the fallacy that any instrument which pares a pencil will pare a corn has seen to its own share of sore toes. Wood is dispassionate and unmoving but a sensitive toe is liable to unite with its four brethren into a strong assault force which could readily loosen a tooth in the mouth of the administrator.

Never before, in the history of mankind, have such advances been made in all the sciences but man in his blindness has overlooked evils under his nose. The corn will always be with us so let there be a school devoted to corns. Let there be an investigation made as to their culture and origin. Let the habits of the dormant corn be brought to light and let our womenfolk fulfil their feminine and fanciful indulgences without suffering and discomfort. Let stout men stand with impunity and let us, for once and all, clear the air in respect of corns.

Invalids

This world is full of people who look worse than they are. A number of my relatives go around like invalids all the time because they haven’t the gall to go around looking healthy. Our family, and yours too, I’m sure, has always been afflicted with its fair share of professional convalescents. In fact, if things were to change I don’t know what I’d do without the whining and the complaining and the long faces and the shuffling and the shifting.

I don’t think I’d be able to carry on I’ve become so used to it and there’s the dreadful thought that if the ailments were to go away altogether they would surely be replaced by something worse because there’s a fly in every ointment and when one fly goes there’s another ready to take his place.

I have one particular connection who can be very trying but there may be worse waiting to take his place. He is not a relation. He is a distant in-law but distant as he is he has the same destructive potential as distant thunderclouds, distant rainstorms and distant explosions. He would arrive at any minute. He paid me one of his rare visits last week. It beats me how he always manages to look so pale. He is a martyr, according to himself, to many unknown and incurable diseases and there is no moment of the day or night that he does not endure some form of suffering.

A relation told me lately that the reason he is so pale is that he avoids the sun the way a lazy man avoids work. The sun is anathema to him for the good reason that if he were to expose himself to it there would be the danger of his face assuming a healthy hue.

‘You will always find him,’ said the relation, ‘at the shady side of the house when the sun is about its business.’

When he arrived on the premises he stood at the doorway for a while wheezing and whining and nattering and snuffling and casting baleful looks all around.

‘God help us,’ said a visitor, ‘that poor chap isn’t long for the world.’

I recalled about forty years before that an uncle of mine passed the very same remark about the very same man. The uncle is dead and the very same man is to the good.

All eyes were upon him as he stood near the door. Then an elderly woman, struck by compassion, raised herself with considerable difficulty and found him a seat. She asked him if he was all right but do you think he favoured her with an answer after her kindness to him? He sat for a moment and indicated by a series of the most terrifying facial grimaces that his buttocks found the seat unbearable. He rose with the customary wheezing and dragged his feet after him as though they were somebody else’s.

Slowly he made his way to the bar counter and fixed his eyes on me as though I was personally to blame for all his imagined woes. I was having none of it.

‘You’re looking well!’ I called out to him. This stopped him in his tracks. The enormity of such a statement was tantamount to blasphemy but before he could utter a word I told him that I had never seen him looking better. The cold truth was that he had a hollow look about him like a sausage roll without the sausage.

‘Give me a half o’ brandy,’ he said. I duly dispensed the brandy, and when he had it paid for he demanded a drop of port.

‘Sandeman’s,’ he insisted. This is an old trick. He knew well that if he called for a brandy and port together he would be charged for the port, whereas only a heartless publican would charge a poor invalid with a foot in the grave for a drop of port.

I am happy to be able to report that he didn’t die on that occasion and I have the eeriest of feelings that he will be calling after we have all gone.

Under the Bed

‘Where were ye when this man was under the bed?’ The question was posed one heady night in Listowel while all around lighted sods impregnated with paraffin blazed on pitchforks and men with glazed eyes sought to dismember each other for no other reason than that they had different politics. You’ve guessed it! Dev was in town, and while he wasn’t the man in question, the man about whom the question was posed was, nevertheless, a significant figure in local politics. He hadn’t died for his country or anything like that but he had kept his head and remained under the bed when all seemed lost. At first the listeners were baffled by the question but he repeated it defiantly. ‘Where were ye,’ he demanded at the top of his voice, ‘when this man was under the bed?’

‘There aren’t that many beds in Listowel,’ a wag shouted from the edge of the crowd.

What I’m trying to do here is defend those who hid under the bed when there were murderous gunmen abroad. It was at least better than leaving the country and, if one was shot itself they would have to find him first, and will you tell me what sort of blackguard would pull a man from under a bed with a sick child and a nursing mother inside in it?

What went wrong with this country after the War of Independence was that there was no society for men who had been under the bed. Remember that those who had been under significantly outnumbered those who hadn’t. I make out that for every hundred men who went under the bed only twelve did not. At least those are the figures we arrived at here in the pub the other night and many of those present were not a bit ashamed to admit that they were sired, even legally sired, by men who had been under the bed.

We all hid under the bed as children and what could be more natural than that we should return to the scenes of our childhood at the first sign of trouble. I mean, where else would a man with no courage and a powerful instinct for preservation go unless it was under a bed. If we have had ancestors who hid under beds we should not be ashamed of it. At least they didn’t turn their coats which is regarded as the most heinous sin of all on the Irish political front. Some day I will be passing through a graveyard and I hope I will see what I always wanted to see – that is a Celtic cross dedicated to the memory of the UBS.

UBS simply means Under-the-Bed-Society and I know of no man in this country who was fully compensated for being under his or any other bed. I have always regarded those who were under the bed as a sort of back-up, a last reserve who would emerge when all fruit failed, when their country needed them most. They were never given a chance and have been relegated to a lousy role in history by begrudgers who had no beds to go under.

Imagine what these men went through as they waited to be discovered by their would-be executioners! They must surely have died a thousand times before they were dragged out and even then they were treated disgracefully because no self-respecting soldier would shoot a man found under a bed. It was beneath them. It was work for Black and Tans. I’ll put this question to the begrudgers and vilifiers who would belittle those who went under the bed: Did you ever try to eat a four-course dinner while under a bed? Of course you didn’t. You left that to men of sterner mettle who were used to four-course dinners, who always had enough to eat before the Johnny-Jump-Ups arrived on the scene.

Those of you whose fathers were under the bed have a perfect right to ask the question of begrudgers and others – ‘Where were you when our fathers were under the bed?’

Pipe Down Please

I have written on numerous occasions about pipes. These include tobacco pipes, drainpipes and bagpipes, to mention but a few, but I honestly feel that I have never devoted enough time or study to tobacco pipes. Daily I become more convinced of this when I see growing numbers of people who have no qualification at all or no right to go around with pipes in their mouths. Many people carry pipes in their mouths whose heads, jaws and teeth were never designed for such a purpose. They rarely smoke the pipes. They carry them purely for effect or to give the impression that they know a lot more than they are prepared to divulge. Another conclusion I have drawn is this: When a man has nothing to say, as for instance when he is badly beaten in debate, his clenched teeth are fit for nothing else but the holding of a pipe. In effect it could be said that he is hiding behind his pipe.

For a while after I gave up cigarettes I apprenticed myself to pipe-smoking. I could make no fist of it so one day while watching a local football final I took my pipe from my mouth and flung it in disgust in the general direction of the referee.

Since then I have left pipes to those who know how to smoke them. However, let us now list, for the benefit of the student, some of the many ways in which pipes are misused by those who smoke them and those who pretend to smoke them. If I overlook some of the more glaring misuses it is because I am by nature a soft-hearted and well-meaning chronicler who wishes ill will to no one and who would not like to make a show, as it were, of certain guilty parties in front of their wives and families.

There is in every community a man, sometimes more than one who lives in perpetual fear of being assaulted. There may be good reason for his fear but, whatever the cause, he believes that footpads, thugs and others of evil intent are waiting for him behind every telephone pole, in every open doorway, around every corner and even under the bed in his own home. This is the sort of innate fear that breeds its own particular defence mechanism. So what does our friend do? He buys a pipe and every time he ventures out of doors he places it firmly between his teeth. The idea is to suggest, through his bared fangs, that he is not be molested. It does not matter if the smoke gets in his eyes or if his tongue is a mass of blisters from the excessive drawing.

His likely enemies are wary of him while he has the pipe in his gob. His lips are drawn back from the two rows of clenched molars and there is a snarly look about him that is almost wolfish in its ferocity.

At heart he is as windy as an overblown balloon but lesser men get out his way as he strides through the streets with tobacco smoke billowing behind him. The problem here is that, sooner or later, he will foolishly believe that he is as tough as he looks and risk a collision with a man who is either too short-sighted or too stubborn to get out of his way. A man with a pipe in his mouth is easy meat in a clash of bodies. The pipe automatically leaves the mouth at the moment of impact, and as a result our friend is without his armour for the rest of his journey.

Let us now look at the man who taps his pipe against the heel of his shoe. A man who does this is one of two things. He is an incompetent and daring bluffer or a very proficient fellow indeed. Since there is and always has been a woeful deficiency of very proficient men in this world we may safely presume that the vast majority of those who tap the bowls of their pipes against the heel of their shoes are inefficient, incompetent and always late for appointments.

The tapping against the heel is to imply efficiency, to suggest to onlookers that the heel-tapper is a practised pipe-user who has forgotten more about the art of pipe-smoking and pipe-handling than most ever learn and that because he is practised at one thing it should follow as the night the day that he is practised at everything.

Your heel-tapping pipe-smoker fools nobody and in the long run all he has to show for his gameze is a broken pipe.

Let us now press on to a very rare type indeed. This is he who continually carries a pipe in his hand but never puts it in his mouth. Just when it seems certain that he is about to place it between his teeth he withholds it and waves it in one direction or another to indicate a point in time or a place in distance. He may even use it to stress an aspect of his argument or often he may use it as a pointer for maps, charts and the points of the compass.

The case I would like to make is that he will use it for anything but smoking and this in the last analysis is the greatest misuse of all.

Before I close let me parade another type before the reader. This man walks abroad with a pipe in his mouth and with his head in the air. Yet he is neither fearful nor alert for attack. He is just another proud man with new false teeth and he is using his pipe to exhibit them in public for the first time.

Losing One’s Way

I have lost count of the number of times I have been stopped in the streets of Dublin by people who have lost their way. When I answer that I am a stranger to the place myself they look at me as if I were to blame for their misfortune. I would dearly love to help these people and send them on their proper roads but I am not omniscient and I am prepared to lay odds that I have been lost more often than they. I can sympathise with them when their questions bear no fruit because I have asked these questions countless times myself and I know the resultant feelings of frustration.

In the early days when ordinary passers-by would explain that they were unfamiliar with the places I desired to visit I would always wait until I saw a member of the Garda Síochána. I discovered that most of the Garda Síochána one met on the streets of Dublin were as familiar with the city as I was myself. That is to say they merely knew the basics, such as the way to Kingsbridge or Amiens Street and even a short cut to the Pillar, but if you asked them where was Mooneys of White’s Lane where they sold the clay pipes there would be the familiar lifting of the cap and the inevitable scratching of the head. The best bet was to bide one’s time and inspect convenient shop windows until an old woman with a handbag happened to come the way.

I discovered after years of trial and error that elderly women with handbags knew their immediate vicinities like the backs of their hands.

There are many reasons for this. Old women in cities seldom wander far from their own doorsteps, preferring the small neighbourhood shops to the bewildering mazes known as supermarkets in the busy areas of the city. There is another reason. They no longer possess the confidence to mount buses or cross busy intersections. Frail and uncertain, they cling to quieter streets within a short radius of their abodes. They listen patiently when asked a question and sometimes, due to faulty hearing, will ask for a repeat. They take their time and ponder well the name of a shop or the street in question. With a sad shake of the head they will sometimes tell you that it is not there anymore. I well remember asking an old lady who carried a handbag if she knew the whereabouts of a typewriter-repair shop which I had visited many years before but of which I had forgotten the precise situation in the meanwhile. She shook her head to indicate that I had posed her a tough one but at the same time I could see that she relished a challenge, that it was test for her failing memory.

‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘ that would be little Mister Lollery.’

‘That was the name of the man,’ I said.

‘The Lord be good to him,’ she said and she made a sign of the cross. Then, changing her bag from one hand to the other, she launched into an account of his death and decline. When he found he wasn’t feeling well he sold the goodwill of the shop to a tailor who now had a flourishing business but who hadn’t half the heart of Mister Lollery who’d give you the shirt off his back. Before we parted company she told me that he had gone to live with his daughter for a while but after a few months he got ‘what I hope you’ll never get, sir,’ which meant some malignancy, like cancer, against which there was no defence. She was right about Mister Lollery. On the one occasion I did business with him I found him to be a decent oul’ skin who looked downright apologetic when he had to take a few bob.

Another good source of directions is your postman – that’s if you’re lucky enough to catch one. Then there are publicans. Publicans and their assistants, while they may not know the place themselves, will always find somebody who does. Most people, however, you meet on city streets just haven’t a clue so that it’s no use fuming or losing one’s temper when, after a long period of probing and counter-probing, one is as near to one’s destination as one was in the beginning.

In the country, where everybody knows everybody else, it’s much easier, and there is little likelihood of losing one’s way for long. When you meet a fool treat him like a fool, that is with respect and courtesy, two commodities incidentally for which fools always long. When you meet a smart alec treat him like a smart alec, with a nod of the head and a click of the heels. Never bandy words with his ilk for he battens upon these and distorts them with relish to suit the digestion of his loquacity.

Then there are certain uncommunicative gentlemen who cannot be bothered using their brains and time to ponder questions. These are best left alone because under pressure they could wither you with words.

I recall the plight of a certain gentleman who once lost his way in a maze of country roads. He came upon a small man who was seated upon a milestone at the side of the road.

‘Do you know such a place?’ asked the man who had lost his way, naming a townland in the area.

‘No,’ said the man on the milestone. The lost man tendered other places and names but every time he received a blunt negative. Finally the lost man lost his temper.

‘What a fool,’ he exploded, ‘what an ass, what a lout.’

‘Fool, yes,’ said the man on the milestone, ‘ass, yes, and lout, yes, but lost, no.’

Middle-Aged Men

Middle-aged men, from the first of mankind, have taken unto themselves full rights of pious pontification in every generation right up to this present one. With the immunity that is guaranteed by age and standing they hold forth at length to those under their control. To give them their due it must be said that their pontifications have always been confined to two favourite themes to the almost total exclusion of all others.

These would be, in order of merit, the perfidy, villainy and total wantonness of the youth of today and, secondly, the terrible times we live in.

I remember hearing my own father holding forth when I was a schoolboy. He had just eaten a hearty breakfast and was in the middle of the morning paper. Suddenly he folded the pages, the better to concentrate on a particular item of news. He read it out for us. It had to do with the overthrow of a South American government by means of a revolution which claimed the lives of thousands and the lifelong incarceration of thousands more.

‘We live,’ said he, ‘in terrible times.’

What he should have said was this: ‘We have always lived in terrible times, we live now in terrible times and, if experience is any guide, we will continue to live in terrible times.’

When dealing with the youth he was never given to oral expression. So awful were the current crop of miscreants and so heinous their crimes that all he could do was shake his head in horror and disbelief as new stories of drunkenness, debauchery and assorted devilment came to hand. If what he heard from another shocked parent was bad in the extreme he would take his pipe from his mouth and make the sign of the cross with the stem. Then and only then would he permit himself one profound yet simple comment.

‘Ah,’ he would say with a simultaneous shake of the head, ‘the youth of today beats all.’

Nothing has changed since the first father expressed disillusionment at the waywardness of his and everybody else’s offspring. We may take it then that the two predominant areas for future parental dissemination will be those we have mentioned, i.e. the youth of today and the terrible times we live in.

In my own youth there were famines, plagues, wars, bombings and all the usual suffering that thoughtless men inflict upon each other. There were revolutions and overthrowings of governments. There were religious and sectarian killings and there were assassinations. There were ceasefires and truces and breaches of both but man learned nothing at all in spite of everything.

That is why I have always maintained that life should not be taken too seriously and that even the most cherished ideologies should nearly always be taken with a grain of salt so that men and women might live natural lives and wonder at the beauty of creation rather than conflicting opinions and the carnage created by man.

There are times when I am reminded of my father. I sit reading the paper and I am aghast at the same terrible news. I am on the point of saying to myself that the times we live in are the most terrible of all and I chide myself for repeating age-old inanities.

With regard to the youth of today I must say that, allowing for circumstances, they are no different to the youth of all the other generations since man first woke up from his sleep wondering about the whereabouts of his son or daughter.

The moral here is that you cannot put an old head on young shoulders no more than you can account for the doings of selfish and heedless men. In short, nothing ever really changes and the youth of the day will always be the bane of those who are safely ensconced in middle-age security, who fear for their possessions and their survival and who forget that they were young themselves.

It will always be thus, and the statements being made today about the youth and the terrible times will be repeated in every generation till Gabriel wipes his lips and trumpets the close of the long game.

As for the past, be certain that it has all been said. If you don’t believe me listen to what Shakespeare has to say in AWinter’s Tale:

I would that there were no age between sixteen and twenty-three or that youth would sleep out the rest for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.

Shakespeare surely was attentive to the pontifications of his father. How else could he so accurately convey a middle-aged man’s intolerance?

Bucket Handles

I was entering a hostelry in Killarney when I was approached by a man who accused me of never having written about bucket handles.

‘Buckets you have,’ he said, ‘and chamber-pots you have, garters you have and half-doors you have but bucket handles never.’ I admitted to the charge and pointed out that my accuser had never written about bucket handles either.

‘It’s not my job,’ he said, ‘it’s yours.’ With that he left me. I do not know the man nor do I know where he hailed from but let us, in the interests of open-mindedness, take up the challenge as it were and have a gander at this business of bucket handles. In the first place there are as many types of handles as there are types of buckets so that we must not presume that the most celebrated of all buckets, i.e. the old wooden bucket, had an old wooden handle for the good reason that enamel buckets do not have enamel handles, so that we are without guidelines of any kind at the outset.

Let us, therefore, take a particular bucket. We have enamel, steel, wooden, tin and galvanised. Let us take your common-or-garden galvanised bucket for no other reason than it is the most common of all buckets and also because it has a galvanised handle. This, at least, is consistency of a kind, and we are now better girded for our investigation having, so to speak, a recognisable subject, to wit, the galvanised handle of a galvanised bucket.

It is an object which is not without artistry. Delicately shaped like a sickle and with curls at both ends it is highly musical in the best metallic sense. It has a pleasant, silvery appearance and, while its intrinsic worth is negligible, it can be used in a hundred different ways, as any handyman will tell you. It is a thing of great endurance, and I know of no instance where the galvanised bucket has outlived the galvanised handle.

It is without peer in the matter of tethering goats, asses, mules and small ponies, and I have seen a pair of galvanised handles from modestly proportioned parent buckets used as hinges on a gate which was created from an iron bedstead. This composition of discards cost not a single penny and yet it served the purpose of an article which could cost a small farmer a considerable sum of money.

I also recall an elderly whitewasher who, in my childhood, used to whitewash our backyard. He had his own ladder and tools of the trade. These latter consisted of a large galvanised bucket, two brushes, one as wide as a handlebar moustache for the rough work and the other purposely narrow as a Chinese pigtail for the whitening of niches, cracks, holes and assorted cicatrices. In addition to these expected paraphernalia there was also a galvanised bucket handle. This was used only when the whitewasher was operating from the higher rungs of the ladder. It served to attach the whitewash bucket to the most convenient rung. Few whitewashers can whitewash and hold on to a full bucket at the same time while also endeavouring to manoeuvre at the top of an unsteady ladder.

What the whitewasher did was elevate the bucket handle which was attached to the bucket and place the extra or spare bucket handle underneath it. He then squeezed both ends of the spare in an arc over the chosen rung so that the bucket hung safely. Whenever he climbed higher all the whitewasher had to do was pull the ends of the spare handle apart and reattach the bucket in the elementary manner aforementioned.

Let it be carefully recorded, however, that the spare bucket handle did not complete its services with this action alone. No indeed, for when the whitewasher returned to terra firma for the purpose of mixing more whitewash he used the spare bucket handle for stirring the lime which made the whitewash. Not only this, but when the job of whitewashing was complete the spare handle was rapped smartly against the sides of the bucket to disengage loose flakes and foreign bodies which attached themselves to the bucket during the day’s whitewashing.

Your galvanised handle had no peer when it came to lifting the covers of roasting-hot skillets and bastable ovens. All one had to do was insert the handle under the little handle which was attached to the lid and place the cover to one side of the hearth while the contents of the utensil in use were examined to see if they were properly cooked or a few more minutes were required to finish off the job.

Now, because of space restrictions, I will have to draw to a close but not before I make a few final, meaningful observations. As a back-scratcher your galvanised bucket handle is to be seen at its best. Its natural curvature assists the scratcher in a way that few other implements can, and if it served no other purpose than this it would occupy a valuable place in the history of therapeutics.

Lastly, if one should happen to be locked out at night after a dance or carousel there is nothing more effective than the handle in question. It will not break a window if thrown gently in that direction but when it strikes the pane the resultant noise is far more irritating and lasting than if the window were smashed in the first place. I hope that in making these few observations regarding bucket handles we will have answered our friend in Killarney and also shown that there is no subject under the sun about which a decent treatise cannot be written.

Insomnia

A word or two about insomnia – that scourge that has divided homes and shattered more nerves than all the income tax assessment forms ever wrongfully designed.

There is not a single, solitary soul reading this treatise who has not suffered at some time or other from the scourge of insomnia. Imagine then what it is like to be a chronic insomniac, to know not what the sleep of the just is, to know not what it is to savour sweet slumber when the day’s toil is over.

The trouble is that people have forgotten a very important thing about sleep. First of all it’s very difficult to locate when you really want it. The thing with sleep is that you must pretend you could not care less about it. That way sleep will come to you but if you persist in hot pursuit you will never catch up with it.

Some wag once said that you would never find a woman or a policeman whenever you really want one. The same thing applies to sleep.

Another thing to remember about sleep is this: It’s not to be savoured like a woman. When sleep comes, take it at once or you may well have to do without it. You should remember that it’s not the sleep itself you enjoy. How could you when you’re not conscious? What you enjoy is that brief period before you go to sleep and, of course, that longer period in the morning when you don’t want to get up.

When sleep makes its opening bid be sure to take it at once. It will not bid a second time in a hurry and you may be left waiting a long time. That’s how insomniacs are made. Don’t muck around with your sleep. Sleep is a very tricky business, best defined as a cross between lightning and quicksilver. When confronted with insomnia the thing to do is to really concentrate on staying awake. That way sleep will come in good time.

Insomnia is no fun. I am not trying to make light of it. Why should I? I know not the hour nor the minute that it will lay hold of me.

When I was a garsún in Renagown in the Stacks Mountains there was no such thing as insomnia. I’ll grant you that a man or a woman might stay awake occasionally thinking of a distant sweetheart but that wasn’t insomnia. That was a form of sleeplessness which could easily be cured by joining forces with the missing party. The farmers of the Stacks Mountains when I was a boy blamed insomnia in their labourers exclusively on books.

‘Books,’ they would say, ‘are the sworn enemies of sleep.’ But this could have been because farmers’ ‘boys’ who had a habit of reading books late into the night were unable to get up in the morning and a farmer’s ‘boy’ who could not get up in the morning was worse than a hen that could not lay an egg.

The reason why there was no insomnia in the Stacks Mountains when I was a garsún was that feather ticks were the order of the day. Let me tell you now, those of you who have never slept on a tick of green goose feathers do not know what sweet sleep is like or what it is to dream the sweeter dreams. A tick of green goose feathers transported a man straightaway to the sublime climes of slumberland.

Pills and potions won’t cure insomnia. They’ll satisfy it for a while and make it hungry for more but they won’t dismiss it for good.

Diphtheria came and went in the Stacks as did scarlatina which sounds like a ballet dancer but danced on human life instead. We were exposed to everything except insomnia but now that the feather beds have vanished there is talk of this newfangled sleeplessness in places where it was never heard of before.

Foul Talk

Quite recently I beheld a youngster fling a stone at an old woman as she made her way past the back door of my premises on her way to the post office. Greatly shocked, she turned around and, upon beholding her tormentor, was about to reprimand him. He beat her to the punch, however, and assailed her elderly ears with a torrent of four-letter words, to the amusement of his adoring mother who stood talking to another woman nearby.

Indeed, in my time, I have stood with ever-increasing disbelief while parents almost suffocated themselves with laughter at the awful sayings and dreadful doings of their own children. I am also aware of large numbers of parents who consider it great fun, entirely, when their offspring use a four-letter word. They even go so far as to insist that these toddling prodigies hold forth through the medium of effing and blinding for the benefit of friends, relations and other admirers who might happen to be in the vicinity. Over-indulged by doting parents, the children exult in expressing themselves illicitly. Indeed, there is many a parent who believes that every foul utterance should be preserved for posterity.

Nobody can now deny that the use of the four letter word is at its most prevalent ever. When it was used in my boyhood days there was awe and shock. The user was branded as an authentic transgressor of the first water, bound to end his days with a rope around his neck and certain to sizzle, endlessly, on the scorching spits of hell!

This loathsome form of expressing oneself is also more prevalent among parents but I believe that this can be partially explained by the fact that it has now become too costly to smash plates and saucers as a means of letting off steam. Banging doors is even more expensive because sooner or later a carpenter will have to be called in while the cost of replacing broken windows has risen to astronomical proportions. The cheaper alternative is to avail of the four-letter word. This might be, in view of what I have said, justifiable in itself, provided no children are listening.

Expensive as are the banging of doors, the breaking of windows and the smashing of delph, I would opt for these safety valves instead of the four-letter ones. There is no satisfaction like the satisfaction that comes from a well-banged door and no outlet for frustration so beneficial as the smashing of a dish, plate or saucer. Likewise the flinging of saucepans and pots here, there and everywhere is a highly rewarding exercise. Effing and blinding, on the other hand, is not lasting and the treatment has to be repeated ad nauseam.

I was once witness to a row where the female of a partnership flung an alarm clock through her sitting-room window when her spouse arrived home with four of his cronies at one o’clock in the morning. Since I was one of the cronies aforementioned I had a front-line view of the proceedings. We arrived with two dozen bottles of stout and a span new deck of playing cards with a view to indulging in a spot of poker. All would have been well had not our host insisted that some rashers and sausages which happened to be in the fridge at the time should be fried on our behalf. As the contents of the pan sizzled there arose the unmistakable aroma of frying rashers. Whilst our entry and subsequent comings and goings in no way disturbed the woman of the house, the smell of frying rashers quickly penetrated her slumber.

‘Who’s there?’ she called harshly.

‘Only us,’ her husband responded foolishly.

‘Who’s us?’ she demanded.

As he started to reel off the names of his companions ominous noises began from upstairs. Two of our number silently vanished. The rest of us stood idly by. Down the stairs she came with only her nightdress on and nothing in her hands save a well-developed alarm clock.

‘Out!’ she screamed, and with that she let fly with the alarm clock. It whirred harmlessly if speedily over our heads and crashed through the sitting-room window before landing on the street, where it alarmed at great length.

Some weeks later I met her on the street and apologised profusely for invading the privacy of her home at such an ungodly hour. She gladly accepted my apology and informed me in a dulcet voice that not an angry word had crossed her lips since the flinging of the alarm clock.

‘I won’t have to smash a thing now for months,’ she explained, which all goes to show that there are better ways of unleashing our frustrations than effing and blinding and that a good alarm clock can be used year after year without any real damage to its structure.

Fear

I am convinced that fear is the only malady that man will never conquer. By degrees, slowly and painfully, disease after incurable disease is being taken on and overcome by man’s persistent efforts. It is man who mostly manufactures fear. We can elude the wild beast, destroy him if necessary. We can survive the elements at their worst by taking precautions. There are disasters from time to time but only because man has persistently underestimated the elements.

But where does fear begin? For me, it began in the school, the very place where it was not supposed to begin, and it didn’t begin with teachers. It began with garsúns a little older than myself. A year is an awful difference in a garsún. Often, when there is such a difference between two small boys, it is much the same as a confrontation between a lightweight and a heavyweight. All other things being equal, the boy with the year advantage is a cast-iron certainty to win out. I was afraid of bullies at school and they were afraid too of bigger boys or of brutality in their homes, and so forth and so on ad infinitum.

Two distinct advantages in any confrontation between schoolboys were squints and scars. Let the boy with the squint be a disaster as a pugilist, he had, nevertheless, the edge on his opponent if he played his cards right. He could look at him in the eye with the most advantageous consequences because, when confronted with a squint, the chap at the receiving end hasn’t an earthly from what quarter the attack is about to be mounted or whether the left or right hand is going to be deployed as a decoy.

Often, too, a chap with a squint would seem to be looking over the shoulder of his opponent, giving the impression that aid might be forthcoming from that quarter in the event of emergency. In my time I was frequently confronted by a squint. I would sooner face a chap twice my size than one with a squint.

A scar, however, was another kettle of fish. A chap with a scar on his face was rarely called upon to defend himself. The scar was better than a weapon to him. Better still, it had the value of a battle citation, and the bigger the better. In my time I have seen garsúns with scars swagger through crowds of bully boys who would normally interrogate every innocent who passed their way. The bully-boys would always make way for the scarred. There would be nudgings and eggings-on by ringleaders but nobody wanted to find out if the scar had been earned in combat or by accident. The result was that the scarred veteran of six or seven had a right of way wherever he went.

The same applied to a chap with a lame leg or a crutch. However, one needed to be a very good actor to get away with a lame leg and if one presented a lame leg without a scratch or a swelling or some other outward sign of injury, the jig was up. Bandages didn’t always work either. Bandages could be peeled off by the bully boy and God help the invalid if there were no marks or bloodstains underneath.

Of course, all these subterfuges were created by fear. The innocent quail will pretend to be possessed of a broken wing when danger threatens her young. She will divert the passer-by or the overly curious by giving the impression that her wing is really broken. Man is no different. He uses subterfuge to save his own skin most of the time.

Spectacles were also a great subterfuge. A young chap, when offered to fight against his will, would take off his glasses and pretend he couldn’t see. He would, instead, volunteer to wrestle, wrestling not being a very dangerous exercise so long as the victim allowed himself to be pinned to the ground.

Fear was at the back of it all, mostly fear of what might happen. How’s that Shakespeare puts it in Julius Caesar:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Yes, indeed, as I said at the beginning, there is no known antidote for fear unless one faces up to it. This is not always wise because it is how orphans and widows come into being.

Fear is a malady but it need not be that bad a malady, like miserliness or grandeur. Take it away and we are without the body’s last line of defence. A modicum of fear is necessary as well as good. It brings us prudence which is another name for our guardian angel.

Without a leavening of fear, most people would be unbearable. On top of that, the human race would annihilate itself in no time at all because without fear we would be at each other’s throats morning, noon and night. We would be without respect for each other, and courage, one of man’s finest possessions, would be absolutely worthless.

So maybe it’s a good thing that we have cowards and that they die many times before their deaths. Fear, I believe, is one of the most essential ingredients in man’s make-up.

When I was young I often heard it said of a man that he was without fear. This could not have been true. The man in question, I am certain, was merely better at concealing fear than most men. He was possessed of fear without doubt but he always gave the impression that he was not, and this is a great sign of a man. He can carry the day by keeping his cool. We are all, give or take a taste, possessed of the same leavening of fear but it is how we handle that fear that distinguishes us from the coward, and this is the very essence of our treatise here today.

I remember after a football game, many years ago, several of us players who had remained behind in the village were surrounded by a hostile mob as we were about to leave. Our enemies, egged on by a well-known blackguard, were whipping themselves into a frenzy and it looked as if we faced a terrible beating. Then one of our party spoke in low tones which only we could hear. He was a half-back.

‘Don’t give it to say to the hoors,’ said he, ‘that we’re afraid of them. Stand fast now and we’ll get out of this no bother.’

So saying, he leaped forward in front of the egger-on and challenged him to single combat. The egger-on crumpled, and suddenly the danger which threatened had evaporated and we were allowed to leave the village in peace.

Our half-back, as we all knew well, was not exactly the bravest man in the world. In fact he always maintained that he was cowardly.

‘I’m windy,’ he used to say, ‘but don’t tell me because I already know it.’

Yet he concealed his fear and succeeded in averting a potentially nasty situation. How did he bring himself to do it?

Very simple. He knew exactly how little courage he had but, little as that was, it was more than the amount possessed by the egger-on. In fact, I doubt if the egger-on had any courage at all. Men with courage don’t behave the way he behaved. Only men with too little courage and too much fear behave in such a fashion.

Now I have to leave you, for I am also possessed of a fear, and it is a fear common to all writers. It is the fear of boring his readers, a crime of which every writer stands terrified of being convicted.

Female Wrongs

In recent times there has been no scarcity of radio and television programmes concerning the victimisation of the female of the species, concerning the reluctance of the male of the species to involve himself in household work, concerning his unwillingness to participate in all meals and his unwillingness to participate in the washing-up. There’s no doubt but that he has gotten away with murder for generations.

Let me be among the first to say mea culpa. With ninety-nine percent of the male population of the Republic of Ireland I plead guilty to the crime of non-participation in household chores except on very rare occasions when the woman of the house was indisposed. The only defence I can offer is that after initial efforts to render assistance I was thereafter never encouraged to take part. I was accused of doing more damage than good and wrongfully accused of doing so deliberately in order to avoid involvement in such goings-on in the future.

I will concede, however, that there are many glaring injustices being perpetrated against the Irish female and if I have been guilty in the past I hereby resolve never to be guilty in the future.

Bad as we are in respect of victimisation of the female we are only trotting after our ancestors. When I was a garsún it was unthinkable for a woman to present herself in a licensed premises unless she was on the warpath after a drunken husband who had neglected to carry home his wages and was content to see his wife and children starve so long as he could fill his gut with porter. Even then women were frowned upon and the one thing, acceptable to male customers and male barmen, was to send in a child to tell the offending wretch that he was wanted at home.