Cruiskeen Eile

The Soapy Vulva Monologue

2009-11-17T00:55:00.009Z

Prologue

The light in the copse was dappled as the early spring sun shone bright and hard through the leaves of the thick-trunked oaks of the wood. Its rays flashed on the pale skin of my penis as I pummelled it with my manly fist; ah, my penis, like the sunlight, bright and hard, like the mighty oaks, thick-trunked and, uh, wood.

Ah, penis! Penis, penis, penis! That correct, scientific word. How wonderful it felt in my mouth!

Open and propped against a protuberant root were the last unstuck pages of an aging Gentleman’s Relish and there a French maid presented her fine hindquarters to my gaze as though she wished her vulva to be soaped, or indeed, the secret place between her buttocks.

I was seventeen and knew that soon the horizons of my erotic world would expand beyond those increasingly cracked and brittle pages. I had explored and accomplished all the arts of Onan. But now I was becoming a man. The sap was rising in me even as it rose at the march of spring through the stems and stalks of the green willow, nearby banks of which were often in my contemplation.

Yes, I was becoming a man. Had I not the bar of soap that would stand proof of my earnest to she, the lady o’er whose breasts and in whose bathwater I should have the great quickening of my coming of age?

Yes, I had it. I had that bar of soap. I had, yes!

George Lee, Wunderkind Unleashed

2009-05-09T22:07:00.000+01:00

The one-time RTÉ economics editor and now-FG candidate for the By-election in Dublin South has unleashed his grand plan for getting the country out of a depression. Conor McCabe over at Dublin Opinion:

Apparently, housing construction is being held back by big government and its VAT rates, and not by the fundamental crisis in the Irish and international banking systems. not only that, more housing is what we need to get us back on the straight and narrow. And mortgages. fucking lots of them. Happy days again.

As if on cue, we've also now got EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevey begging us not to eat the rich:

"But it is essential that we remain focused on the dynamic and human nature that drives risk-taking, economic activity and tax revenues forward and that we guard against policies and tax-rates that drive risk-taking, economic activity and tax revenues backwards.

"Put simply, it's not higher tax rates that generate higher tax revenues, it is higher economic activity that generates them. We can sink or swim, but if we lose sight of these simple facts, we will certainly sink," he said.

Damned right. If not for our altruistic rich class who continue to selflessly pump money into the Irish economy, where would we be?

The Colonel Would be Proud

2007-02-11T20:36:00.000Z

While a combination of the Col. moving to the Indo and general weariness have resulted in operations grinding to a trickle here on Cruiskeen Eile, we’ve still managed to secure a few nominations in the (recently-released) Irish Blog Awards “Long Lists”.

So if you’ve enjoyed watching Myers with us, you can drop us a vote here (Note: Only one vote per person, per category, allowed - so don’t be shneaky). You can find us in the “Best Blog Post” and “Best Specialist Blog” categories.

Who knows, a place in the "Short Lists" might even see the Col. himself turn up on the night to challenge us to duel (or a game of Cluedo).

Google Juice

2006-12-13T02:33:00.000Z

Cruiskeen Eile's Myerswatch (watching Kevin Myers since 2006) is the Number 1 result on Google when the term "mad irish bastard" is entered into a fresh, virginal search field.

It's the little things that give the greatest joy.

69

2006-11-03T10:27:00.000Z

69 is not a reference to a position of mutual affection adopted in the course of his priapic peregrinations by the youthful Sir Myers na gCopaleen, but to a test proposed by that theorist of media ecology Marshall McLuhan for persons humming and hawing over the purchase of a new book.

Professor McLuhan may be familiar to readers from Annie Hall in which Woody Allen magic-realistically pulls him out of a hat as the ultimate slapdown for the cinema-queue loudmouth who pontificates on the great man's work.

The key word here is indulgent.

According to an extract from John Sutherland's How to Read a Novel published in The Guardian recently, McLuhan's test applies Occam's razor to breathless blurbs, prominent product placements, 3 for 2 deals, bestseller lists and "quote whores" and requires us, simply, to turn to page 69 of whatever book it is we're browsing in the book shop. If you like what you read there, buy the book.

Apparently, a better test has never satisfactorily been devised, and having applied it to a number of books about the old homestead, I confirm its efficacy. Whatever the strange alchemy at work, page 69 seems to be usefully representative of the text as a whole, to embody the general tone and style and, curiously, to be a point at which some initial waymark of the plot is passed or epiphany occurs.

So here's page 69 of Watching the Door for those readers agonising over whether to submit themselves to Shagger's tender mercies.

SIX

BY LATE MARCH 1972 the British government had grown tired of the grotesque effrontery of the Northern Ireland government at Stormont directing policy (and the British army) in the Province, and abolished it. Unionists were perplexed, astounded, indignant: they had grown used to this absurd dependency status, wherein for fifty years they had been given capital grants by the British government, and had even been lent the British army, but nonetheless expected the British to have little or no say in the conduct of policy. What had once been a favour had over time become a right, and you do not easily remove a perceived right from a Calvanistic Covenanter - well not without using large earth-moving machinery, and much blood, sweat and tears.

The night that Stormont was suspended, I walked up that heartland of Protestant sensitivity, the Shankill Road, to test the mood. I had expected maddened crowds, as there usually were when loyalist power had gone down another notch, but this night there weren't. Instead groups of men stood at street corners, glaring angrily. Had any of them discovered a reporter from Dublin wandering all alone, I would probably have been torn limb from limb as a spy.

I walked into the Eagle chip shop, which was beneath the headquarters of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the illegal paramilitary organization whose existence was now effectively tolerated in an utterly one-sided security policy. The Eagle, justifiably, was believed to be one of the best chip shops in Belfast.

In my strange accent I chatted away about how quiet the road was, before sauntering past the groups of leather-jacketed young men simmering with ire, back to my car, parked in a side street at the botom of the Shankill Road. I was, deliberately, testing my nerve: that is, going just a little mad.

As Withnail might say, look at the size of his head, imagine the size of the fucker's balls!

Readers who feel the above seems unusually politically correct for the Colonel should note that the next paragraphs feature a noble and anguished intervention by a British soldier of the officer persuasion. Interestingly, I could swear I've read another anecdote by Sir Myers some time back which features a very similar officer uttering the same irate words but in a very different context. A cynic might believe the character is a mere cypher and something of a moveable feast, a crack trooper whom the Colonel can deploy at a moment's notice to some corner of a foreign argument.

Cruiskeen Eile, however, is very, very far from a cynical publication.

Phwoarr. How to Report on the Troubles While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink

2006-10-16T21:23:00.000+01:00

Well, well. It appears that fusty old Colonel Myers - he of the prissy Edwardian prose and antique patrician values - rocked out with his cock out for much of the 1970s. Looking like a cross between Jim McCann on a stint with the Dubliners and a six foot public school beef injection, Kevin "Shagger" Myers was able to play fast and loose with the ladies right across the sectarian divide. And they loved it.

Hard-man republicans annoyed by Kevin's attempts over the last two decades to get up their noses would do well to reflect that at least he's discontinued his '70s hobby of getting up their women.

For it transpires that the Colonel spent much of the decade in the nip, "nakedly" sequestered under the beds or behind the wardrobes of a lush cast of classic '70s dolly birds straight out of an episode of Minder. Night after night, Caoimghín came and went through their windows and down their drainpipes, like a cheeky Irish version of Robin "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" Askwith, at the heart-stopping sound of burly paramilitary husbands slotting unexpected keys into front doors and dum-dum rounds into Webleys.

"Reporting the Troubles", this weekend's Sunday Times breathlessly explains, "was a deadly game laced with as much casual - and sometimes dangerous - sex as any red-blooded journalist could handle, according to Kevin [McDonald Fraser] Myers in his new book, Watching the Door". And with one eye on the door and the other on the magnificent, quivering breasts of the married conquests straddling his war-weary bones, Shagger engaged in a Rake's Progress of "such galant cross-community endeavours [that] peace was surely at hand". Nobly indifferent to the hot-house sectarian atmosphere of the time, the Sexy Pimpernel's palid arse was as likely to be seen lamping into the night down the Falls as the Shankill having emerged from a bit of the old flagrante with a Taig or Prod.

In fact, it seems Shagger Myers was the one thing on which community defenders on both sides agreed. Wherever the Colonel found himself sinking a restorative post-coital libation, be it seedy nationalist pub or squalid loyalist drinking den, the patrons had one thing in mind. To nut the bastard before he reduced the entire province to a vast montessori of mop-headed mini Myerses.

“They’re going to nut you,” he whispered. “The guns have just arrived. Do as I say or you’re dead. Slip out of the side door there. Get behind my car. Do not move until I come out. Now GO!” Instantly sober, my fly still open, I turned and walked out of the side door on to the street, where I hid on the far side of Bob’s taxi, gazing through its windows at the pub door. The two young men ran out with revolvers in their hands. They scouted immediately around them, but, just feet away, still missed me.

Later, in a confessionally distinct part of town:

...I visited another city centre pub with a few friends. The IRA leader known as the Fruitcake was there with a woman known as the Black Widow because of the power she had derived from her marriage to a now-dead IRA leader.

I was enjoying myself when a stranger came over and whispered that the Black Widow and the Fruitcake were arranging to give me a hammering, and that I should get out. I didn’t ask why. This was Belfast. That was why. Flanked by my friends, I got to the door before my would-be ambushers were aware of my escape. They ran after me, with the Black Widow in their wake, screeching “Kill him!”.

Fortunately, they didn't succeed and the Colonel lived to shag another day.

While I think we can discount this particular gent as Kevin's 1970s loin fruit, does anyone know what Hugh Green looks like?

Manchester Rovers, the Colonel, and a Late Late Partridge

2006-05-27T15:33:00.000+01:00

A few years ago, when Sir Eamon of Dunphy was having The Last Word on Today FM, the bould Colonel used to be dragged on air to hang out with "the lads" (Dunph and Johnny Giles) and chat about football and other matters. On one such occasion the Colonel was moved to comment on Alex Ferguson and his stewardship of Manchester Utd…or Manchester Rovers as the Colonel called it/them. Cue sniggering behind hands from Dunph and Gilesy as the poor Col. pressed on, trying to convince his pals that he was a fountain of knowledge RE: football, as opposed to a geyser of faeces.

Speaking of faeces, the ever-nauseating Pat Kenny (or "Pat Partridge" as Copernicus likes to call him) was engaging in a similar bit of cringe-making, "all lads together" type banter on the Late Late last night. The guests were three "ligends" of Munster Rugby - Paul O'Connell, Ronan O'Gara, and Anthony Foley (fresh from their epic Heineken Cup triumph) - who asked Pat to put a Munster jersey on before they got cracking with the interview.

In true Partridge fashion Pat opted to try (with the help of Paul O'C) to get the jersey on over his jacket! The struggle lasted for some time before Mr. Partridge surrendered, whipped the jacket off and revealed a substantial gut normally hidden by careful tailoring. Cue a few deranged wolf-whistles from a traumatised audience…before Pat declared "I feel like a real man now!". Gwan de lads!

When the chat finally got going Pat displayed his knowledge of the population of Limerick City by declaring that there were 100, 000 people on O'Connell St. watching the match on the big screen. Er…

The boys, in fairness, let Pat's dodgy arithmetic go, but he wasn't finished embarrassing himself yet. Not by a long chalk. With the testoesterone flowing (thanks to the jersey) Pat turned to the mighty (and modest) Paul O’Connell, and came out with the following (and I paraphrase):

PK: You're very scary aren't you?

POC: (clearly embarrassed) Em…I wouldn't say that now…

PK: (undaunted) Oh you are! You're very scary. I've heard that you're so scary you sleep with the light on because you're afraid of the dark!

[A few strained titters from the audience]

POC: (looking even more embarrassed) Er…I think that's Chuck Norris…

Gah! Partridge had obviously been saving up that gag all night - you know, the one about the dark being afraid of Paul O'Connell- but when his big moment came - with "de lads" all watching and waiting - he dropped the ball spectacularly.

Knock on. Scrum to the opposition…

Please Define Your Terms

2006-05-27T11:28:00.000+01:00

While CE has been rather lax in its duties of late, exams are out of the way and it may well be that some of us might now find the time occasionally to pop into the local library or house of public resort to have a read of the Colonel's diurnal emesis over a quiet pint of Uncle Arthur's opaque and bitter nectar. However, disappointed readers of myerswatch should be cheered to find that someone was on the job. Over at talideon.com the Cruiskeen crew will find a rather excellent "fisking" of a typically deep and coherent consideration of the topical issue of same-sex unions by the bould Kevin.

Keith of talideon picks up on some of the themes which have been explored here, not least the Colonel's bizarre, near fascist attacks on the notion of "law" and his unfair, unprincipled attacks on those advocates who refuse to compromise on their common law, ethical and moral duty to advance arguments and evidence to protect and assert their clients' interests. I was personally gratified to read Keith's acute observations re the Colonel's use of the word "decent". It rather reminds CE of certain philistine young bloggers who don't read, don't watch interesting films in case, just in case, it might be a waste of time and whose musical "ear" extends across a very narrow range of compositions and who, yet, likes to bandy around words like "degenerate" - vile, dehumanising, intolerant and degrading language - to describe the cultural and intellectual lives of other human beings.

Kevin Myers adopts a totally wierd and inconsistent line on the law. While on the one hand he asserts a macho vision of robust individualism characterised by ex-rugby playing billionaires with virile bouffant haircuts - when it suits - he nevertheless suggests that lawyers should represent their clients and judges interpret the law in accordance with outcomes which take account not of freedom, liberty, fairness and the complex balance to be achieved between public and private interests, but rather in a way which ensures that nobody does anything that his Kevness might find distasteful or upsetting or which gives him to perceive that they have got away with something, the bastards. The only mild point of disagreement CE has with Keith is his assertion that judges are answerable to the people. While that is correct as a matter of constitutional aspiration, the practical means of disciplining members of the Judiciary are unsatisfactory, to say the least, and, in essence, non-existent for anything less than being caught with images of pederastic abuse on your home computer.

Following yesterday's furore at an event in the Royal College of Physicians, superbly live-blogged by Suzy of Maman Poulet (a stout-hearted supporter of the myerswatch team whose blog archives are a good source of comment on the very issue of same-sex unions) the blogosphere has some interesting posts and comments at, if memory serves, such diverse forums as the aforementioned Maman Poulet, Mulley dot net, Back Seat Drivers, Reality Check dot ie and Freestater.

As Keith points out in his post, the slippery Kevin refuses at any point to actually define what it is he means by "marriage". Of course, if he did, the cracks in his logic would begin to show. Of course, again, Kevin's position is a matter not of logic but of reaction. I have a lot more respect for people like Boris Johnson whose approach to this issue might best be summed up as "Look, I'm instinctively against this notion that marriage doesn't necessarily refer to nuptials twixt man and woman, but I can't justify it rationally or by reference to the other principles I have articulated and as such I have to really examine my position." I think it behoves us to consider that our reactions to the idea of gay marriage are probably a matter of chemistry and as such, should be scrutinised on that rather than, initially, on "moral" grounds.

Homosexuality as with any other orientation is a product of both nature and nurture; nurture in so far as one's environment has an impact on the development of the brain in childhood and adolescence. As such it's entirely a matter of biology and in no respect a lifestyle choice. Of course, there are degrees of sexual identity along the whole awesome spectrum and I am sure it is open to some people to choose the sexual life they will wish to lead on the basis of inclination and a personal even societal determination of what would be a good and happy life for them. That's really beside the point.

We are a reproductive species, machines for the replication of our genes, and as such our sexuality is at the very heart of our identity. But we are each and every one of us mutant beings, which is why we aren't clones of our parents or, simpliciter, the first ameobic lifeforms. And given the complex interplay of our mutant cells and the reproductive and environmental processes to which each and every one of us is subject it is approaching the miraculous that there are any ordinarily heterosexually adjusted people around at all.

If Kevin Myers has been lucky enough to develop a sexual identity against all the odds of his mutant genes, and the impact of the things he saw as a little boy on his brain architecture, which co-incides with the straitened Edwardian standards that confuse reproductive efficiency with social order, he should count his blessings. Life is hard enough for people, especially those whom the exigencies of evolution have determined will have as the most fundamental aspect of their identity as human beings a sexual orientation which, on the face of it, is confounding of reproductive effects. The compulsions are the same for all of us, it's in the consequences that difference lies. And the reactionary likes of Mr. Myers have an incredible cheek not to mention little of the milk of human kindness in expecting people to resist billions of years of cosmic and evolutionary forces during their brutish, short four score years and ten (CE is very lifespan optimistic) when he and his ilk can't even be bothered to define their terms and explain a) what is "marriage" and b) by what logic is that definition immutable and binding on everyone else?

Anyway, go read Keith on Myers, dear, loyal readers. CE is sure you are hanging out for news of the Colonel's doings. CE is only sorry that Keith's post didn't appear here.

And when you're done, why not have a read of this.

Tally Ho

2006-05-22T23:50:00.000+01:00

The jaded blogger hacks here at Cruiskeen Eile rejoice in seeing that the Colonel's transfer from the D'Olier Guards to the Talbot Fusileers (© The Phoenix) has resulted in his popping up on hitherto unvisited front lines in the Glorious Conservative Counter-Revolution - namely, everyone's favourite pre-scripted panel discussion, RTÉ's Questions and Answers.

(Is Myers indeed going to take the fight to the enemy (i.e. the great unwashed Irish public?). Time will tell, though undoubtedly fellow scribe 'Copernicus' is sharpening his pencil in anticipation as we speak and will return with a vengeance once exams permit...)

Noted longtime Myers fanboi Richard Waghorne, meanwhile, is left bemoaning Kevin's deft handling by pinko socialist union riff-raff - and what's (undoubtedly) worse for the Colonel's manly aura - a woman. Cheer up, Dickie! It could be worse - it could be Senator David Norris doing the deed.

Finally, though we recognise that it is a tad ungentlemanly to speculate on the nature of a fellow officer's relationship with a lady, we cannot but wonder if the Colonel and Madam Editor have yet worked a time-share arrangement for custody of the, ah, airwaves at RTÉ. We can't see Ms. Kennedy too long forsaking her favourite public platform, and confidentiality agreements may not stand up too well once the protagonists are trapped in close proximity...

The Colonel's First Indo Column

2006-05-11T13:19:00.000+01:00

Like you, dear reader, Cruiskeen Eile was expecting great things of the nation's top polemicist and scholarship boy on his first day at big school. Alas, he produced one of those jobbies he used to knock off over a glass or two of claret whenever he was a bit stuck over at the Old Lady of D'Olier Street. Cruiskeen Eile managed to get hold of an earlier draft which we've reprinted in full in the last post. This is the version which finally made it into the Independent.

As I was saying, before being so rudely interrupted . . .

MAY, 1980, and I start from my sleep after the most extraordinary dream, one in which I am working for years and years as a newspaper columnist for The . . . no, no, I won't go into the details of where and who and so on. It's all too preposterously unbelievable.

I gaze at the alarm clock, before leaping up, yelping with horror. I'm late for my morning shift at The Indo! I leap out of bed, and in my panic, feel I am drawn into a strangely trilateral flush, which suffuses my entire being. Then I recover, and tumble downstairs from my flat above the Family Planning Clinic - my condominium - and hurtle through the doorway into Mountjoy Square, which is as you know, a sad wasteland resembling Berlin circa 1945.

What! Overnight, someone has completely rebuilt it with elegant offices and apartment blocks. A strange flat-faced gentleman passes by. "Excuse me, sir," I ask, "but can you tell me what's been going on here?"

"Xctlgh Abklds vhghta," he murmurs melodiously. "Bnhghstd mklllp."

"I see. Thank you very much."

How odd. The Dalai Lama apparently has moved here. But why? After catastrophic economic mismanagement through the 1970s, tens of thousands of people are fleeing this Ireland of 1980. I'm the lucky one: this morning I have a freelance shift in Independent Newspapers. I scurry past the ruins of Gardiner Street: but stay! The ruins are gone: vanished! Indeed, horrible old Gardiner Street appears to have been transformed into a boulevard in the 17th arrondisement.

Now I didn't touch a drop last night. So what is going on here? I head towards the once great Gate Theatre, now in an abysmal decline. No modern drama ever here. Sad, sad, sad. Yet hold on! Hoardings insist that the Gate is staging "Waiting for Godot". What? Mac Liammoir as Estragon? And Edwards as Vladimir? But that'd be like John Wayne - who died just nine months ago: RIP - playing Lady Bracknell. No, no, it cannot be.

Dizzy with incomprehension, I totter down O'Connell Street, of all of Europe's capital main-streets, perhaps the most depressingly dereli . . . My God. It's utterly unrecognisable. There's a big shiny yoke sticking out of the street between the GPO and . . . The Anne Summers' what? kind of shop? Indeed, just about the only thing that remains from yesterday is that newly-opened McDonalds, the first one in Ireland, and the last, I'll be bound. McDonalds will never catch on in this country. Irish people just won't take to fast-food.

Irish people? What Irish people? The Tower of Babel has come to Dublin. Everywhere there are Balts and Bosnians, Gauls, Galicians and Greeks, never mind Poles, Apaches and Pathans. Some are spouting languages without vowels, others flute ones without consonants, and others still without either. What's happening to me? Is there something in the Mountjoy Square water? I half expect to see a chanting impi of Zulu warriors come trotting over O'Connell Bridge . . .

Then I finally realise what's going on. This is all part of that mad dream, the same one in which I was writing a newspaper column for decades. So I lower my head and scurry to Middle Abbey Street, hoping to wake up when I reach the sanctuary of Independent Newspapers.

Except it is gone. Yes, it too has vanished. It was there yesterday; but not today. Should I go back to bed? Probably. A gentleman who rather resembles the prime minister of Ghana, complete with fly-whisk, passes by. And I know I'm having a true Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds experience when a ban-garda shimmers into view, and on horseback. Naturally.

"Excuse me, ban-garda," I cry to the she-Mountie, "What's happened to Independent Newspapers, please?"

She looks at me curiously. "Moved to Talbot Street. And a little less sexist talk, if you don't mind." She then clops out of my dream.

Talbot Street? But Talbot Street is Stalingrad. You couldn't have newspaper offices there. And what's "sexist talk"?

I stagger back to O'Connell Street, past bistros selling mysterious comestibles I've never heard of: lattes and chorizos and pannini and mochas and even wraps. Why, we'll be munching sock-pie next. Meanwhile, the dream is getting steadily more ludicrous: Talbot Street, once populated by wizened, whey-skinned jailbirds with soggy cigarettes drooping out of their mouths, is now almost as cosmopolitan as Manhattan. I ask a little Eskimo for directions, and with the aid of his harpoon, he politely points out the new Independent building.

"I'm feeling a little out of sorts today," I gibber haplessly at some swagman at reception. "Is this newspaper still run by that O'Reilly fellow?"

"Of course, mate."

"Hallelujah! I thought I was having the weirdest dream, in which Ireland of 1980 is incredibly prosperous and attracting immigrants from around the world, and the receptionist at this newspaper is an Australian . . . "

"Which I am, cobber. But the year is 2006."

"TWO THOUSAND AND SIX? What! Am I some sort of Rip Mac Winkle?"

"Rather well put, sport. You used to work here, until you missed your shift back in 1980. Did you feel your complexion redden first thing after you woke up?"

"Yes! How did you know?"

"Because you vanished into the Florider Triangle. You're just out of it. Do yourself a favour. Don't look in the mirror, not quite yet, anyway. Otherwise, welcome back to the newspaper you used to write for, 26 years ago."

Ah. Really? So, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted . . .

The Colonel's New Adventure in Full

2006-05-11T13:05:00.000+01:00

May 2006, and I am prised from the sweet arms of Morpheus having had the most extraordinary reverie, one in which I work for year upon Sisiphusian year as a crazed polemicist for The Telegr…no, no, I won’t go into the details of who did what to who, where. ACHAB* as Alan Clark used to say.

I glaze at the alarm clock, er gaze, before leaping from my bed looking like an immortal god, the rosy fingered Dawn indicating that I am late for my morning shit at The Bindo! I leap forth, and in my panicked search for loin girding, feel I am drawn into a strangely trilateral flush, which suffuses my entire being. No, I don’t know what that means either. Realising that never mattered before, I recover and tumble downstairs from my flat above the Family Planning Clinic – tripping over my condominimum, left with the milk bottles at the threshold; not for bastard-getting I – and hurtle out into the street. Still, sharp-eyed readers will have noted, in a state of ungentlemanly undress, I stay my gallop for a moment outside to take in my surrounds.

Mountjoy Square?!

Oh sweet Christ! I'm on the northside!!

What! Overnight, someone has completely moved me to the northside! As I had long suspected, they do not look like us over here. They have flat-faces and speak inscrutable oriental mishmash. “Excuse me, sir,” I ask one, “but can you tell me where the white rabbit went. I’ve come down the wrong hole”.

"Xctlgh Abklds vhghta," he murmurs melodiously. "Bnhghstd mklllp."

“I see...I want my mummy!”

Not for the first time, I am dizzy with incomprehension, and totter down O'Connell Street, like a working class female in stilettos and white mini. Of all Europe's capital main-streets, this is perhaps the most depressingly dereli . . . But what’s this? Anne Summers? What kind of shop can it be?

Two hours later I re-emerge blinking into the daylight, a brown paper bag clasped to my ample bosom. But where are the Irish people? The Tower of Babel has come to Dublin, and that gives me an idea for a column or two. I know just how to put the willies up people, especially since I acquired this brown paper bag. By the time I’m finished, people will half expect to see a chanting impi of Zulu warriors come trotting over O'Connell Bridge . . .

It is then I finally realise what's going on. This is all part of that mad dream, the same one in which I was writing a newspaper column for decades. A mad newspaper column. So I lower my head and scurry to Middle Abbey Street, where I have no desire to wake up when I reach the sanctuary of Independent Newspapers. But it’s not there.

Provoking even greater suspicion that I haven’t bothered to research the latest developments on the northside for my column, I completely fail to notice the rather obvious tram system and turn my attentions instead to immigration and my obsession with Edwardian social values. I think of an African gentleman in the language of H Rider Haggard and mischievously use the arcane and dismissive term "ban-garda" to describe a female police officer. In my dreamscape, however, I cannot help but imagine her astride a snorting stallion adopting the tones of a stern governess…

Having returned to Anne Summers momentarily, I make my way to Talbot Street.

Eskimos are funny, by the way.

Having located Independent Newspapers, I rush inside and gibber “Is this newspaper still run by Doctor Sir Anthony O’Reilly Pasha, God keep him?”

“Of course, mate. That’s him over there stroking that white cat.”

“Thank God. Ever since the Major went at the other place, I just haven’t felt comfortable.” My voice cracks slightly. “I had…I… They made me work for a woman over there.” Oh God, the shame burns my cheeks. Another flush, another triangle. Still no idea what the hell I’m on about.

“I had a dream that things had moved on in this country and that there was incredible prosperity and progress in our attitudes.”

“Oh that doesn’t matter around here, mate.”

“Hallelujah! You mean I can go back to saying what I was saying in 1980 and to what my forefathers were saying in 1880?”

“’Struth cobber”.

“Ah really? So, business as usual then...”

*Anything can happen at backgammon. If you have to ask, you'll never be U.

That's all I had/have time for. It's almost as phoned-in as the Colonel's own jaded effort, but it's exam time and so....exeunt copernicus, stage right.

Fathers of Bastards

2006-05-09T19:51:00.000+01:00

For those who'd like to get in on today's joke, the full text of Mr. Myers' (phoned-in) column is available here, at the ever delightful Clare Hurlers forum, where the crack goes on, on anfearrua.com. I haven't had a chance to revert to my posting of the real version all day as an t-Idirlinn was on the blink at work.

However, my purchase of the Bindo! yielded the following great story. It seems a disgruntled German ex-politician is doing the satanic work of hundreds of MoBs by adopting up to 1,000 fatherless urchins by year's end, presumably in Paraguay in which country he now resides, as a form of revenge on the German State. According to himself, Mr. Jurgen Hass (56) was wrongly convicted of fraud and "treated like a dog" and is now exploiting a 1998 children's rights law whereby he can adopt fatherless boys with the consent of their mothers thereby entitling them to passports and a lifetime of social welfare freeloading at the expense of his former countrymen.

I mean, it's one thing when a 15 year old slattern from a tenement does it, but a man! Whatever would the Colonel say?

The Colonel Has Left the Building

2006-05-09T18:50:00.000+01:00

Just a quick Cut and Paste job of the letters in The Irish Times today, bidding fond, and not so fond, farewells to the bould Colonel.

Madam, - Who else is going to horrify and humour me in equal measure? Since his departure I have become a more placid person. Other journalists don't seem to provoke me to the point of rage the way "An Irishman's Diary" did. I miss him. . . - Yours, etc,

EVA McDONNELL,
Aiken's Village,
Sandyford,
Co Dublin

Madam, - Please allow me to express my joy at the departure of Kevin Myers from your newspaper. Experience has taught me that everyone finds their own level in life eventually and in joining a newspaper group with "tabloid" standards, Mr Myers has found his. I have no doubt he will be among his own at Independent Group. - Yours, etc,

ALAN McPARTLAND,
Grange Court,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.

Madam, - It is sad to hear that Kevin Myers is leaving The Irish Times. Under his stewardship, the "Irishman's Diary" was entertaining and always a worthwhile read. I met Mr Myers a number of times when I was involved with the UCC team on Challenging Times - one of the abiding memories of my time in university.

I would like to wish him all the best for the future! - Yours, etc,

NIALL TWAMLEY,
Blarney Road,
Cork.

Madam, - With the departure of Kevin Myers to his natural home in the Independent Newspaper Group, I'll be deprived of a daily ritual of mine.

His "Irishman's Diary" was the first article I went to every morning, so I could read it, cut it out, bin it and continue to read the rest of your refreshingly liberal paper.

His usual right-wing rant was bad enough, but his pathetic efforts at humour were even worse.

He has found his true home beside the syndicated Daily Telegraph pieces and the "hang 'em and flog 'em" columnists of Mr O'Reilly's empire.

I look forward to becoming a regular reader of "An Irishman's Diary" from now on, - Yours, etc,

ÁINNLE O'NEILL,
Osprey Drive,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W.

Madam, - We shall miss his contribution and craic.

However, one Kevin Myers doesn't make a good newspaper so I, for one, will not be moving with him. - Yours, etc,

GERRY LOWE OBE,
Windmill Road,
Saintfield,
Co Down.

Madam, - Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! . . . - Yours, etc,

JONATHAN WHITE,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.

More bits and pieces to come...

The Colonel's Adventure Through the Looking Glass

2006-05-09T10:24:00.000+01:00

Mountjoy Square?!

Oh sweet Christ! I am on the northside!!

"Xctlgh Abklds vhghta," he murmurs melodiously. "Bnhghstd mklllp."

“I see...I want my mummy”.

*Anything can happen at backgammon - Clark, Goldsmith and other London clubland poshos.

[The adventure will continue this afternoon. I have to get my bus through the northside.]

What Price Independence?

2006-05-08T13:15:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow sees the Colonel embark on his maiden voyage aboard the bad ship Indo. Will he come out fighting? What effect will the (allegedly) more generous remuneration have on his distinctive patriarchal rage? Will he now slip into cosy, slipper-wearing mode - writing chuckling prose that bubbles with chummy self-satisfaction?

Whatever happens, we, at Cruiskeen Eile HQ, will (at long last) have some meaty chunks of Myers to dissect once again.

*Spits on hands and prepares to get down to work*

Manufacturing Dissent

2006-04-29T12:59:00.000+01:00

I was having a browse through the back catalogue here at CE and came across a scathing comment on this report about the adventures of the Colonel and Bastard Baby which was buried in the archives. Like Fox, CE prides itself on being fair and balanced, so I reprint it here to give readers a flavour of life in the enemy trenches on the other side of no-man's land. Despite invoking a dismissive "yawn" in respect of CE's output, stats indicate that "eoin" has spent a long time with our content and put a great deal of time and effort into deleting our external link on the wikipedia on the spurious grounds that it's presented as a source. It's not.

Disturbingly, I have to admit I agree with eoin on the TV licence "poll tax". At least I think I do. Just at the point when he mentions it, the burden of coherence starts to get a bit too much for his prose. Enjoy:

Yawn. How very *obvious* that the liberal bourgeoisie would find any hint of politically incorrect deviance in the Irish Times to be appalling, and the geekiest and saddest of them all would found a Myerswatch blog. One would assume that the bllodletting on the afternoon radio shows for *any* deviant opinion Ireland were good enough for that. Maybe this blog should just round up the liberal posse and get the man kicked out of Ireland. Try the same mob that ran Mary Ellen Synon out. Get together with the Muslims who were "offended" by the cartoons, with whom you have much in common.

Possibly Myers best chance now is to go down the Breda O'Brien route and suggest we all be nice to the childers, and the travellers and arent she marvelous altogether: or alternatively he could do a vincent browne and demand that "we as a society " pay him more money, for good egalitarians must have four jobs and one must involve sequestering money from a population poorer than him in the form of the TV license poll tax.

Which is to say, these targets would be easy, but pompous idiots from the millionaire suburbs are probably not going to involve themselves in attacking the actual hypocrisy of their "moral" betters, since the liberal bourgeois hypocrisy of the Irish Times discourse is designed to propagate privilege while pretending to be opposed to it.

Myers breaks ranks and draws too much attention to said discourses, so round up the posse, drive him out of town, for Breda O'Brien has another article about how "we as a society" are responsible for the failure of teachers, managers, and health board officials to educate or treat us properly or fairly, and it is our fault - not the fault of the elites - that they fail . So let's put her in his position lest we be too "offended" too often, and whatho - look! - not really caring to read boring prose one must just turn to the property pages which show one that mamskis and dadskis house is worth millions.

It's just mervelous, roysh. One gets to be a millionaire without any work whatsoever, and it gives one so much time to tackle the hegemonic discourses that make ireland such an unequal place, and bring down that weactionary Myers who said the word bastard!!!

coud one be more radical?

...[sic]

Millionaire teachers, managers and health board officials, for shame! Please leave comments explaining yourselves below.

Where the Grass is Greener

2006-04-23T03:16:00.000+01:00

Mere moments ago, I suggested that it would be interesting to see what effect the Colonel's departure from The Irish Times would have on the paper of record's circulation. Simon of The Dossing Times commented:

It will be interesting. I guess he will bring some [my italics, copernicus] readers to the paper.

By readers I meant people who like to write letters to papers. half the letters page is about him what will they do ?

The Sunday Business Post article in the direction of which Simon was kind enough to point CE makes much of the Colonel's clashes with The Irish Times during his long tenure at the paper:

Myers has previously clashed with Kennedy, notably over a January 2005 column which was spiked. In it, he blamed the IRA for the Northern Bank robbery. However, the precise reasons behind his decision to depart are not clear.

[...]

Myers landed in controversy in February last year when a column he wrote described the children of unmarried mothers as ‘‘bastards’’.

He subsequently apologised.

As far as I know, Kevin has long felt seriously under-remunerated for his contribution to the IT's circulation (At least if memory serves, I've been reading as much in The Phoenix since I was a little boy). It was certainly the case that at the height of the Colonel's powers he was putting serious numbers of bums on seats. If he goes, we'll see if that was still the case. (Check out the tense grammar in that sentence, parsing nerds). I may be wrong in playing up the money angle in contradistinction to the SPB, but I wonder at the suggestion that Kevin necessarily considers the Indo a bastion for such as he from the intolerance for his views which has led to conflict with The Irish Times, editor and trust members both.

If memory serves (again), didn't the Independent family (patriarcus maximus, AJF O'Reilly) bring bastard-baby type pressure to bear in respect of the services of the Colonel's good chum and tabloid-christened "Bonk of England", Mary Ellen Synon for what those of a certain cast of mind are disposed to call "crimes" (I'm attributing the ironical inverted commas to them) against political correctness? Readers will remember her apology and subsequent resignation from the paper following the furore which greeted her disparaging remarks about the Special Olympics. (Just who do these bastard babies and persons with intellectual challenge think they are to presume to irritate sensitive souls like Kev and Mary anyway?)

To return to the Sunday Business Post article:

Two years earlier, he attacked the lack of transparency in the financial management of The Irish Times and the large amounts paid to executives.

He contrasted this with the Independent group, writing: ‘‘I am frank in my admiration for Tony O’Reilly.”

Ms Synon's wikipedia entry gives a little background to her disassociation from the group:

The article which was criticised by the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) was subsequently discussed in the [Seanad] where Maurice Hayes, a Senator and director of Independent News & Media, which owns the Sunday Independent, said it was indefensible, indecent and hurtful: "It should not have been written and if written, it should not have been published. I know that my views are shared by my colleagues on the Independent board and in particular by the chairman."

How long before the Colonel incites a similar level of outrage among his expanded readership and causes "the Chairman" to feel certain of his musings should not have been published either? Kevin's passionate support for Ms Synon in her darkest hour was obviously at odds with the attitude of his future board.

On a final, touching note, it seems Ms Synon has continued her journey through the looking glass with a defence of [un]intelligent design. So all is right with the world then.

They seek him here...

2006-04-23T02:18:00.000+01:00

They seek him there,
Those bloggers seek him everywhere.
Is he gone insane or just gone awry,
That damn'd, elusive Col. Myers?

Ok, ok, we had to stoop to half ryhme, but the sentiment holds. Quo vadis, Colonel? Your public needs you.

It has been three whole weeks since Cruiskeen Eile had a fresh outrage from the Colonel's quill with which to amuse itself, and we were beginning to fear that we had chased him from the national stage. But we reckoned without his plucky spirit. One does not steep oneself in the glorious lore of the thin red line without learning a thing or two about the true meaning of doughtiness, and the Colonel it appears has departed the field merely to make tactical manouevres on the enemy's flank. According to the Sunday Business Post (hat tip, Dossing Times), Mr. Myers has put the heart crossways in Madam Editrix and is at an advanced stage in negotiations with the Irish Independent.

If the Colonel does decamp to open up a new front in the fight to restore the patriarchy to its rightful place in society, it will be fascinating to see what the effect is on the respective circulations of each organ.

Stay tuned, folks. The party is just getting started up in here.

For King and Country

2006-04-01T13:48:00.000+01:00

Dublin is a small and gossipy town and ever since we started this modest diary, people who move in those overlapping media, civil service, legal and other circles have been keen to pass on all sorts of juicy stories about our good friend, Kevin Myers. Among the more interesting tidbits Cruiskeen Eile has been more than a little bemused to learn - from a source in the know - is that in the wake of the terrorist atrocities of “9/11” and the establishment of the coalition of the willing, the Colonel quietly contacted friends in the Royal Irish Regiment, with whose officers he has happily messed on occasion (Irishman’s Diary passim), to see whether it would be possible to obtain a short-service commission and, presumably, do his bit in the great civilisation clash he described in such histrionic tones in the pages of the Irish Times – the beast slouching towards Bethlehem, the blood-dimmed tide, the falconer bidding the falconer etc.

This action isn’t unprecedented among older, conservative celebrity types, of course. Bruce Willis attempted to join the US Special Forces to help prosecute the war on terror, but was also turned down on grounds of age. Both men are known for keeping fit, Bruce through the punishing schedule of physical exercise required by any action star, and Kevin through bracing walks in the Kildare countryside.

Denied the opportunity to square off against the terror merchants, Bruce intends to put a big smile on Mark Humphreys face by making a movie about the activies of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment in Iraq.

Congratulations Mark. We hope you and this movie are very happy together.

We haven't gone away you know...

2006-03-23T12:25:00.000Z

After an initial flurry of activity, Cruiskeen Eile has been diverted by myriad demands on its time and energies, not least work, night school, domestic bliss, the leading of Plato's examined life. But the Colonel remains under watchful eyes and continues to provide much in the way of food for thought. CE plans to expose the Colonel's overarching goal which is nothing less than the renormalisation of Edwardian patriarchy in Ireland - and sadly it seems from a cursory inspection of the young people of the Blog O'Sphere that this may not be as dementedly lost a cause as it prima facie appears to be.

Fans of our particular brand of infantile humour - playing man and ball, rugby style - will be pleased to note that among the delights coming their way will be the Colonel's Modest Proposal For Preventing Bastard Babies in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public - yes kids, we are getting cannibalistic on your asses - a riotous tableau involving Austin Myers international sexist of mystery - Yeah baby, it's shagadelic. Lock up your Mary Robinsons - and, oh joy, oh bliss, a very special episode of University Challenging Times in which mein host demonstrates not a whit of bias against Sligo RTC.

On a serious note, however, we have discoverd that some rat fink has been interfering with our link over at the Kevin Myers wikipedia entry. Who could it be? Well, the IP of this censorious prig is 137.43.144.175, which a prodigious feat of detection reveals, o frabjous day, callooh callay, to be the campus ethernet out in Belfield. That's right, someone in UCD, bastion of academic disinterest though it purports to be, has taken it upon themselves to censor from delicate eyes the fact that someone out here looks askance at the Colonel's regular forays beyond the wider shores of reason.

Who do we know in UCD who's priggish, censorious and somewhat lacking in the humour stakes? Perhaps the gents at FI FIE or persons with a similarly impressive quality of mind can help us out. Answers on a postcard to Cruiskeen Eile.

If any wikipedia browsers notice the link has been deleted again, they should feel free to repost it - the satisfying work of seconds - and perhaps check the history to see from what IP the dastardly deed was done.

Once more into the mailbag

2006-03-19T03:34:00.000Z

This time it's from a Morgan in Co. Dublin. He writes:

Steyn and Myers

I find Mark Steyn’s writing gratuitously offensive and often unsubstantiated. Why do I bother saying this? I responded to an article of his recently. This got me a letter in the Irish Times which another columnist of similar ilk picked up on [...]

Read the rest here.

The Cat's in the Cradle

2006-03-17T02:38:00.000Z

On foot of the happy news that the Blog O'Sphere has begun to reproduce itself, Cruiskeen Eile takes a trip into the future of An Irishman's Diary. But what's this? It isn't an Irishman's diary anymore!

Timeline - 2021. The place - Pembroke Street, Dublin 2. Celebrated polemicist and newly-appointed Irish Times diarist Noam Delevan and his son Fox News Mulder are about to enter Louis Copeland’s emporium of bespoke suitery:

The truth is in here son. Ha ha.

Fuck’s sake Dad, you bastard.

Sorry son.

!

Anyway, big day son. Your first suit. Soon to reach a man’s estate, we must enshirt you in like manner of your patrician antecedents. It is the tailor’s cut which separates us from the Trots.

That doesn’t sound like you Dad.

Oh sorry, the writer must have forgot I’m American. There, that’s better.

You lose Dad. Big time.

I’ll have you know son that back in the day the old man was considered quite the hep cat, the mack-daddy, el gran queso with cheese. I had game. All of us beleagured neo-cons did. George Dempsey, Mark Humphreys – I defy anyone to tell me they weren’t steeped in cool.

What the fuck, who the fuck, Dad?

George pulled a Salinger son. Writes one anti-Irish, energy security techno thriller per half century.

Never heard of him.

Well, give him a chance. It hasn’t been 50 years yet. Mark was killed leading a Marine Expeditionary Force in Iran.

I didn’t know there was a war with Iran.

There wasn’t. It was for a movie. But there was a mix up with the shooting permits.

Er, you guys kept it real huh Dad?

We sure did son. We sure did.

Dad.

Son?

I think I’ll pass on the suit.

Post script - congrats to Richard on the birth of his fine son. Cruiskeen Eile confidently predicts a bright future of blogging for the boy, perhaps on this very space!

The Feast of St. Kevin

2006-03-16T14:50:00.000Z

The Colonel comes down hard today (Irishman’s Diary, 16th March) on the public drunkenness and loutishness that has become associated with St. Paddy’s day in Dublin (and elsewhere).

Hard not to agree with his disdain for public pissing, punching, and puking, but is it all a case of making mountains out of molehills? While there will (with certainty) be drunken feck-artistry on the streets tomorrow afternoon/evening/night there will also be families and couples in their thousands out watching the strange, bewildering, bricolage that is the St. Patrick’s Day parade. They will, of course, vastly outnumber the drunken idiots (nationwide) so why is there always a need to fixate on the gobshites rather than the good folk? Grumble…

I still feel Paddy’s day to be something of a 'festival' without a clear purpose or direction (some people fill the gap by just getting hammered), but that is fairly understandable when you consider both the history of the parade/day, and the recent changes in Irish society itself. As Hugh Linehan informed us in yesterday’s Irish Times:

…in the early years of independence, the Irish state saw no need for a parade, restricting itself to a celebratory Mass and a march past by the Army. After the Second World War, the day was reserved for an industrial pageant "showcasing Irish industry and agriculture".

That pageant was replaced in the 1970s by a Dublin Tourism parade, which saw as its major goal the boosting of revenue by attracting Irish-Americans and others back "home" so that they could step out on the streets of Dublin.

Since then, of course, the Celtic Tygger has left its mark on proceedings, leaving us with the curiously ahistorical, postmodern mishmash of the Dublin “St Patrick's Festival” (things have changed rather more gradually in other parts of the country). It’s still a day that just doesn’t know what it wants to be. Are we selling ourselves or clapping ourselves on the back? Are we celebrating ‘authentic’ Irish culture, or reinventing it? Are we simply, as the Col. might suggest, getting langered?

Lost in the body of today’s Diary was an admission that sent alarm bells ringing here at Cruiskeen Eile HQ. After offering casual speculations about the real origins of a mid-March festival the Colonel amazes us with the following:

Did the same axial shift which changed the shortest day to December 21st also shift the spring equinox from March 17th to the 21st? I don't know. Indeed, I am almost equally ignorant of just about everything that is now going on in Irish life.

Is this further evidence of the ‘chastened’ Myers I spoke of before? Is this a throwaway comment or an attempt, by the Colonel, to allow a touch of vulnerability to shine through? I couldn’t possibly say, but it’s a curious statement for a man who’s been ferociously commenting on ‘Irish life’ for aeons.

Thoughts?

Colonel "Category Error" Myers

2006-03-14T22:50:00.000Z

Not a week since Irish commentators began finally to ponder the meaning for our narrative of Statehood of the violence done to 188 women by Michael Neary over 30 years, Colonel Myers offers us a sober reflection on the complaints of women at the violence done them and their children by their menfolk and, by extension, the need for women to knuckle down under the patriarchy and get on with it. Neary operated with the licence of the Church, State and medical profession and his handiwork with the scalpel and surgical saw was cloaked in collegial, professional and complacent silence. Not only that, but doesn't a man like Neary represent something of a ne plus ultra of the social order the Colonel espouses so passionately as the means to protect ourselves, and especially our women, from the paleolithic horrors which continue to haunt our libidinal selves?

So he removed women's reproductive organs to no medical purpose? Not to worry, in the words of the man himself "I took away the cradle and left the playpen". What japes.

Cruiskeen Eile is not entirely sceptical of the Colonel's thesis that man is a beastly creature of infamous mein, though we take great issue with his hoary prescription to save us all, which he seems to have cogged out of Baden Powell's book of scouting and back issues of Boy's Own. However, in the red mist which descended after he read Mary Robinson's recent incendiary remarks in his very own paper, the Colonel lept astride his high horse (all 16 and a half magnificent hands of him) and made straight for a massive and dangerous category error. Citing his statistically compelling Google search for "violence against women", Myers concludes that far from being cloaked in silence as Robbo avers in the most witless contention the Colonel has ever heard, physical abuse of the fair sex is being shouted about from the rooftops. (Putting the phrase in inverted commas produces a mere 7 million hits, by the way, and how many would you get from Ireland only?). But one wonders how many of the sites he managed to unearth are on the side of the feminazis. Cruiskeen Eile expects that if he checked out some of those 44 million hits, the Colonel could well find the odd celebration of man's inhumanity to woman.

On to the category error. Violence against women is quite rightly a matter on which many people are compelled as a matter of justice to speak. But the academics, politicians, lawyers and feminists Myers is tired of reading about have in all likelihood impinged not one whit on the consciousness of the wifebeaters, domestic rapists and professional butchers whose attentions it is the wretched lot of too many women to continue to put up with. And in many of our institutions, neighbourhoods, families and even operating theatres, the cloak of silence has, over the years, remained very firmly in place. In fact, it is difficult to understand how Myers can have lived in this State in particular and the world in general - a world of child rape, oppression and abuse of women and their "bastard" offspring, white collar crime and even uncomplained of meals in bad restaurants - and conclude that what injustice calls for is a little bit more shutting up.

Myers is a privileged, educated member of Ireland's media "elite" and for better or worse a significant player in the intellectual life of the State. He may be under the impression as one of the relatively few people in Ireland (adult population 2.7 million) who read The Irish Times (circulation 117,500, ABC1 readership) that violence against women is a subject constantly on everyone's lips out of all proportion to the level of violence to which women worldwide are subjected, but I'm sure the sexist bores and bourgeois knuckledraggers of places like Portmarnock Golf Club*, to whom Kevin expects us all to bend the knee (Diary passim), wouldn't know what to make of a sociological report dense with fact if it was shoved without ceremony up their fat, stupid arses. It is to be expected, however, that they would seize with alacrity on the Colonel's fatuous whinge as a way to prop up their molly-coddled world of ridiculous privilege and self-regard.

A penultimate point. Kevin asks how the Defence Forces (of whose members he takes a childish, unsophisticated and unhelpful view) have come to be one of the organisations engaged in the global fight against gender-based violence. He should have asked fellow Irish Times contributor Dr. Tom Clonan, a commentator for whom Cruiskeen Eile has great respect. A former Army captain with 12 years service and someone in a slightly better position than the Colonel to judge, Dr. Clonan found that 59 of 60 women serving in the Defence Forces whom he interviewed for his PhD thesis had suffered bullying and harrassment. Twelve claimed to have been sexually assaulted:

Just two of the women said they felt that they could complain to the authorities about the harassment.

I don't know, Kev, but in those words I cannot help but hear the whisper of a cloak of silence being unfurled.

Last word to Senator Geraldine Feeney commenting on the violent physical invasion of women at Lourdes Hospital occasioning the removal of their reproductive organs:

If a man had a minor procedure carried out on his reproductive organ and he emerged from the operating theatre minus that organ, there would be outrage. It might happen once but would never happen 188 times.

I think we can safely conclude that the cloak of silence wouldn't be thrown over that sort of thing.

*Under Irish constitutional law, Murtagh Properties v Cleary [1972] IR 330, the courts do not consider as an issue of equality for the purposes of Article 40.1 economic discrimination against women. So pay 'em peanuts, it's in the Constitution! According to Mr. Justice O'Higgins, the gobshitery of Portmarnock Golf Club also has the protection of the Irish Constitution despite being the site of a licensed premises and the beneficiary of planning permissions which benefit few in an area where there is severe pressure on property prices.

Boys will be Boys

2006-03-14T22:21:00.000Z

The Colonel returned to his Irishman's Diary duties today (after a weekend of solemn reflection) in typical form - looking to boot our former president squarely in the trousers, while indulging in a fine bit of gender fatalism.

On the bill this Tuesday was (yawn) yet another Myersian attack on "liberal and ideological disingenuousness", this time perpetrated by Ex-Pres. Mary Robinson, whose recent Irish Times article caused the Colonel to foam at the nostrils in righteous rage.

The topic of the Robinson piece (which, alas, I was unable to source…thanks a million subscription-only Irish Times) seems to have been the persistence, despite advances made in the last 50 years or so, of "gender based violence" (or GBV as the Colonel fatuously calls it).

Myers first takes issue with the opening paragraph of Robinson's piece which, he informs us, spoke of "A cloak of silence [covering] one of the world's most widespread and persistent human rights abuses", i.e. 'gender based violence', involving victims who are "mainly women and children." Instead of focusing on the real substance of the issue under discussion, the Colonel instead fixates on the use of the phrase "cloak of silence", declaring that "this is very probably the most idiotic and inaccurate opening paragraph it has ever been my misfortune to read."

Hmmm…well if nothing else the above statement proves, as we've long suspected, that the Col. clearly doesn't re-read his own stuff (that sorry job is left to us).

Moving on, Myers shocks us with his internet savvy by declaring that he "[Googled] 'violence against women'", and found "4,580,000 non-specific global items". If the Colonel has become au fait with Google, how long can it be before his frantic searching leads him to our door? Surely it's only a matter of time…so quick, everyone, let's hide behind the sofa and pretend we're not at home!

Anyway, you can make your own minds up, dear readers, about what these Google stats tell us about the "cloak of silence" in question , but we need to press on, as the 'good stuff' is yet to come. Feeling that the sex of which he is a vigorous and potent representative is taking it on the chin a bit from Ms. Robinson, the Colonel launches into a bout of 'spade-a-spade-ism':

Cut to the chase. We all know that men are capable of the most appalling infamies - the atrocities in Darfur, the suicide bombings in Iraq, the "honour killings" of rape victims in Muslim countries, the catastrophe of the Congo, and the joys of Yugoslavia.

All of which, I suppose, one would have to put in the minus column (along with the Irishman's Diary of course). But hark!

Unsocialised, this is what men do - but far more to other men, as it happens, than to women and children.

I see. Ah well, that's alright then. Boys will be boys! However…

We also paint the Sistine Chapel, put a man on the moon, create grand opera and invent antibiotics.

Good for us. Hoorah! I feel like getting the lads round and toasting our collective ingenuity. I don't, mind you, actually remember helping to paint the Sistine Chapel, but I'm sure there's some tangential responsibility on my part. So what, Colonel, have the ladies done in comparison?

Name me a female composer, a female artist, a female war criminal. Not impossible, but. . .

You're right Colonel, it's not impossible. In fact it's remarkably easy, at least as far as the first two are concerned. The only reason anyone would find it remotely difficult would be if they had ignored the cultural products of the last century and a half, which (you can be sure) the Col. is only too happy to do. I'll leave it to our female readers to pitch in with lists if they feel the need, though there really isn't any necessity (Myers probably won't have heard of any of them anyway).

Moving towards a conclusion, the Colonel informs us that Ms. Robinson (or 'Robbo' as he dubs her) explains the "root causes" of "gender-based violence" as lying in "the imbalance in power relations and gender equality." Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like a 'liberal' red rag to the Myersian Bull (& I mean bull), and so it proves:

Not true. The root causes are not institutional but hormonal. Long before the first king was crowned or the first law promulgated, man was violent towards other men and towards women.

Well there you are. We just can't help ourselves. It's all in the blood. Just a simple case, to use a term reactionaries are inordinately fond of, of 'human nature'.

Now I must away and find mah shootin' iron. I've got a hankering to do me some violence. Woo hoo!

Later.

Tumbleweed

2006-03-14T18:57:00.000Z

Two thirds of the Cruiskeen Eile team members were in Dublin this weekend for the Irish Blog Awards...and we're still recovering from our...em...exertions. Expect new details of the Colonel's adventures to follow shortly.

Today's Irishman's Diary was a doozy, so I should have something to offer as soon as I get my thoughts together (and have me tea).

Old Slugger O'Toole, I'll still beat you at Pool

2006-03-11T10:54:00.000Z

With apologies to Mr. Tom Waits for the above, we are delighted to greet this morning's sluggerite traffic spikers - hat tip Mr. Naoise Nunn, wunderkind impresario and good chum of Cruiskeen Eile. As Aine Chambers would say, you are most welcome to Myerswatch dot blogspot dot com. We hope you enjoy our site and maybe you'll be tempted to hang out and experience for yourselves the many delights and enchanting atmosphere of Cruiskeen Eile.

Are you a gentleman of generous carriage? Why not pop into the library, settle into one of our capacious armchairs, its soft leather mellowed by antique use, and relaxing in our clubbable surrounds - you're among friends here - browse our mission statement, consider our meditation on Green Willow or follow the exciting adventures of our heroic protagonist in his quest to bring arch-nemesis BASTARD BABY to justice?

If you'd like us to freshen your scotch, just ring the bell by the Italian Marble fireplace. We'll hear it in the servants' hall.

No One Writes to the Colonel: Pt. 1

2006-03-10T16:03:00.000Z

[Scene: The Irish Times post room, early morn. A hive of activity. Employees race hither and yon laden with parcels and letters. The guardian of the post bags, a dacent old skin by the name of 'Charley', leans against the wall, supping his tay and planning his day's labours. Enter Col. Kevin Myers stage left…]

Myers: Morning Charley, what, what!

Charley: [rather wearily] Oh…good morning Mr. Myers…how are you today, sir?

Myers: [nonchalantly] Oh fine…fine…can't complain. By the way it's Colonel Myers, Charley.

Charley: Ah yes, sorry about that Colonel…

Myers: Not at all Charley, not at all. [Distracted] Em…how are the wife and children?

Charley: Well, the kids are fine Colonel, but the wife…well, you know, she passed on about two years back…

Myers: Ah, of course! Murdered in her bed by a pair of glue sniffing ragamuffins, was she? Abominable, Charlie! Abominable! And for what? The meagre contents of her purse, and the few paltry bits of cheap jewellery she owned?!

Charley: Err…no, Colonel…it was actu…

Myers: [ignoring him and rising to the occasion] I feel ill Charley. I may vomit on your shoes momentarily. A decent woman, in her way, brutally cut down for a few pittances… to be used, no doubt, in the procurement of more bags of glue and another pair of those…um…sports running shoes. The world is a sceptic and vile place Charley, is it not?

Charley: It was actually breast cancer, Colonel…

Myers: [bewildered momentarily] Ah…are you sure, Charley? Perhaps it was just made to look that way…Yes, yes…that must be it! And what do these vicious, sub-human, scum get for all that, Charley? I'll tell you: A gentle slap on the wrists and six months in our Ritzy 'prisons' enjoying the Gamestation Playbox and internetwork access in every ensuite room, while the likes of you, my dear Charley, sit eating cold beans from a can in the lumpen squalour of your kitchen! I fear I may really wretch this time, Charley…

[The Colonel dry heaves thrice before reaching for his lavender-soaked handkerchief. A few deep breaths and he seems 'calm', once more]

Charley: [Attempting to change the subject] Em…was there anything in particular you needed this morning Mr. Myers?

Myers: [Muffled, through his hanky] That's Colonel Myers, Charley…but no, no, nothing in particular. Um…while I'm here though…I might as well enquire…has anything addressed to me come through yet?

Charley: Er…nothing you'd really want to see Colonel…the usual stuff…you know yourself…

Myers: Ah yes! The vile hate mail and death threats of the liberal 'intelligentsia', scrawled in hand-wringingly anguished prose on recycled paper no doubt! They really mean to stop me this time, Charley, but if I die (a victim of one of their home made explosive devices) who will take up the crusade in my stead? My demise would not, of course, be merely a personal tragedy, robbing me of my own company, but an unprecedented disaster for the whole civilised world! I must go on Charley, I shall go on! If not for myself, and Mrs. Myers, then for the hundreds of millions of readers who depend on me to raise my voice on their behalf. Speaking of which, Charley…

Charley: [Awkwardly] Ah…nothing from the fans yet, Colonel…maybe in the next post…

Myers: [Sadly] They are afraid to speak, Charley…so cowed are they by the vile, bullying of the quasi-liberal, politically correct media. Their silence speaks volumes though, Charley! [Becoming more animated] I hear their voices in my quite moments of meditation, rising up to a pleading, but magnificent, crescendo…they are scared and flaccid, Charley…they need me at my most robust, and toweringly erect, to boom forth their message…they love me, Charley…I can see their eyes welling with tears…I can SEE them Charley, they look to me as their saviour…their last hope…the lone voice in a wilderness of lesbo-feminist, tree-huggers! "Save us, Colonel!", they cry, "Save us from the damn'd jaws of bastard liberal hell itself!!"

Charley: [Shaken] Well…I'll let you know if anything arrives for you Colonel. [Finishes his tea] Back to the grind now. See you later Colonel M. [exits]

Myers: [wiping the foam from his lips] Yes…yes…later brave, noble Charley…if there is to be a 'later'. The signs align, the omens speak of ill fortunes ahead. The end times may be drawing near. But what can the Colonel do alone? He is but one man…one magnificent man…

[Exit Myers, lost in thought].

Fan-mail for the Colonel

2006-03-09T23:16:00.000Z

Correspondence in from one of the natives.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

2006-03-09T13:16:00.000Z

Thus spake Dick the Butcher in Henry VI and, as our darling and erudite readers will know, his villainous prerequisite for the imposition of tyranny has been carefully observed by some of the worst fuckers who ever wore shoe leather. Narcoterrorists in South Amercia, for example, are never found wanting when it comes to vaporising lawyers and their families, and Palermitan Mafiosi have made something of a sport out of the murder of those noble advocates and magistrates who have stood up against their subversive, corrupting stranglehold on Italian society, politics and economic cromulence. Sad to relate, today the Colonel joins this fellowship of infamy.

His Colonelship is in full-on, foam-flecked-in-the-Shires mode today as he rails against various bits and pieces of the State, the legal profession and, of course, council estate scum. Myers gets stuck in from the off, setting out the horrific crimes of one Stephen Phelan of Kimmage, Dublin. And indeed, the serious and sobering outrages Mr. Phelan perpetrated on his peripatetic spree appear to demand the severest sanction from the bench. Alas:

The judges who are so judicious and measured with their sentences do not live in the same estates as such savages.

Cruiskeen Eile is under the distinct impression from his priapic evocation of yelping beagles, pinkly jacketted huntsmen and fox-ridden coverts that Kevin doesn't either. Furthermore, Cruiskeen is prompted to ask whether it is the judiciary or the Colonel whose quotidian labour it is to interact with council estate "savages" and attune themselves to the contingencies of life on the fringes of the Celtic tygger. We are also intrigued to know, given the particularly sensational nature of Mr. Phelan's crimes, which seem linked less to his social class than to certain psychiatric pathologies, why the Colonel felt it necessary to even mention his socio-economic origins. Is this unfocused rant about sentencing policy or lack thereof, or the endemic scumbaggery of poor people? Again, he cannot help but draw attention to the fact that the Cunninghams, another charming crew, could formerly be discovered in a "council" home. Bastards.

High horse hurtling towards the horizon with the Colonel flailing and bouncing in the saddle, attention is turned to another extreme and horrible criminal:

At Healy's trial, Det. Sgt Murphy agreed with Patrick McEntee SC, defending, that the accused did not get treated for a fractured arm as a result of a baton strike in the course of the arrest until the following morning. To which I can only say, good.

Great. In order to punish one man whose crimes and background are in no way typical, Mr. Myers wishes to deprive the rest of us of our civil liberties and protection from oppression by agents of the State. Funny how the very punters most often railing against the untramelled power of the State, its insidious influence and marginal propensity to expand its powers are the quickest to place us at its tender mercy. Let us not forget that when he was in Garda custody, Healy had not yet been convicted of any crime and was innocent until proven guilty. Ah, I hear the Colonel say, but he was subsequently found guilty. Let us not forget either that, while populated by plenty of decent coppers, this is the force that gave us Donegal, the May day beatings and plenty of other profoundly disturbing and undemocratic carry on. Does Mr. Myers wish to introduce a dispensation wherein we decide retrospectively whether or not to condone the failure of the State's agents to observe a person's rights? Readers will be well able to imagine the lengths to which certain unscrupulous gardaí would go to ensure that anyone whose rights they'd violated was convicted.

Don't worry readers, Cruiskeen Eile is not about to skip lightly over the two fingers the Colonel gives Mr. McEntee, one of the most eminent practitioners at the Criminal Bar. We can well imagine that if the Colonel ever has the misfortune to be accused of anything untoward - like shooting a scabid oik caught rummaging around in his coverts - Mr. McEntee might well find a flustered Kevo battering down the door of the Law Library looking for him. And yet, how dare he introduce argument in the court on behalf of his client, Mr. Healy, provide him with the best possible defence and, as an officer of the court, point out the failure of the gardaí to do their duty. Cruiskeen Eile, however, is sure readers will realise that it is not Mr. McEntee's fault that he is able to obtain relief for his client on this basis, but the Garda Síochána's. And if they are forced to do better next time, isn't that a good thing?

Not for the Colonel it seems:

Anyone who has had the melancholy distinction of studying our courts will know how dangerous professional criminals and sexual deviants over the years have been the beneficiaries of an endless diet of lawerly babble and judicial clemency.

While Myers' scholarly survey of the legal system involves the words "wuzzums" and "lawyerly babble", Cruiskeen Eile will prefer to put its trust in the ancient freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the common law and protected by the professional and grave men and women in the wigs and gowns. That is not to say that there aren't problems with sentencing policy; of course there are. But the judges are governed by statute and statute is the preserve of middle-class, middle-aged politicians who represent very strongly the views of middle-class, middle-aged men like, er, Colonel Myers.

Sentencing and social disadvantage are related but different issues. The true dysfunction of the State is that middle-income taxpayers are required to subsidise the private education of creepy, stupid ingrates whose avowed aim in life is to function as the running dog cheerleaders of a class whose raison d'etre appears to be the taking of a giant shit all over the rest of us while the most downtrodden and wretched children in our society, whom the Colonel appears to view with such aversion are, in effect, deprived of their constitutional right to an education. Alas, no mention of that from the Colonel today.

Myers v Bastard Baby; the adventure continues

2006-03-08T01:08:00.000Z

Following a bout of his usual sedulous detective work, Special Agent Myers produces a lead. Hot on the trail of his arch nemesis, Bastard Baby, Myers undertakes HALO* insertion into the British Army OP** at the top of Derry’s Divis Flats. Far below, working class Fenian teenagers swarm, their bellies swollen with cash-crop whelps.

The Bastard is down there somewhere Lieutenant. I can smell him.

Pardon sir?

His nappy, you fool. I can smell his bastard nappy.

Yes, sir. We’re brewing up, Colonel Myers, would you like a cup of char?

Oh, how delightful. I shall have it in a dear little china cup, with a crumpet balanced just so on the lip of my saucer.

Er, we only have tin mugs sir.

Sigh, they don’t treat me like this when I mess with the RIR.

The who, sir?

The Royal Irish Regiment. You probably know them by their original name, the UDR***. They bagged many’s the Tadhg when you were still in nappies. Speaking of which, Lieutenant, you’re not a bastard are you?

No sir.

No. Of course not. Couldn’t let the side down what, what.

Er.

The Bastard is an unreliable cove, Lieutenant. A creature of low cunning, and the litter whelp of the professional bitch, a confused, lazy and backward species of gel**** in whose womb the embryonic bastard finds easy purchase.

Steady on, sir.

WHAT DID YOU SAY?! Are you mired in the schoolgirl swamp of what is “hurtful” and “offensive”?***** Doth thith howwid talk make one want to cwy?****** Dear God! Has the media’s quasi-liberal, politically correct agenda******* penetrated even the doughty red line which held at Rorke’s Drift, and drove the Madhi into the White Nile?? This is your work Bastard Baby, YOU BASTARD!

Sergeant.

Yes, Lieutenant.

Show the Colonel the window, there’s a good chap.

At the double, sir.

*High Altitude Low Opening parachute jump - black ops tastic stuff.
**Observation Post.
***Ulster Defence Regiment - a fine body of men, not remotely a disgrace to their uniforms.
****I'm not making this up.
*****Really, I'm quoting here.
******This is the Colonel speaking, honestly.
*******Just look at the last post on Cruiskeen Eile, seriously.

Ms. Myers Investigates

2006-03-07T13:45:00.000Z

The Col. kicks off the week [Irishman's Diary, March 7] with an extremely patchy and unconvincing broadside against one of his favourite targets: The (allegedly) all-pervasive culture of 'political correctness' in the Irish media (or specifically, in this case, The Irish Times).

Myers first views the apparently casual use or of 'Ms.' (in a story about a Romanian mother who stole 100 Euro from a "young mother's house in Blackrock"), and the non-declaration of a culprit's nationality (in the case of a 'foreign-sounding' woman "who attempted to steal an elderly woman's handbag on a bus") as damming evidence of the media's "quasi-liberal, politically correct agenda".

The Col. goes on to build on these (reasonably) minor details, suggesting that:

the terms "Nigerian" and "Romanian" are now allowed into headlines only if there is an implicit victimhood in the stories which follow. If there is any question of culpability, then their national identities would not be a main feature of the story.

Not only that, says he, rising to the occasion, but a 'reverse' scenario also applies. If the perpetrator had been a member of that (horribly put-upon) social group, "white, middle-class, heterosexual British males", then the same meedja would have been the first to crow about the individual in question's nationality (presumably due to inbuilt Irish bias against 'perfidious Albion'). The poor little lambs…they have it tough. It must be a terrible curse being a "white, middle-class, heterosexual male" in mainstream British society, as opposed to media darlings like "asylum-seeking, circumcision-fleeing, Nigerian lesbian Traveller[s]".

Em…hang on…

Naturally Myers makes no mention whatsoever of right wing media scaremongers like The Daily Mail and The Daily Express who routinely trumpet the nationality of alleged criminals (or 'welfare spongers') as a matter of course, all too aware that keywords like "Nigerian", "Gypsy", and "Immigrant" will set off reactionary alarm bells in their alarmed readers.

If he'd done so he might have been forced to ask himself the awkward question - "Which is worse: underplaying a perpetrator's nationality for fear of adding to the 'negative impressions' surrounding certain minorities, or using just that nationality to advance your paper's own 'anti-Johnny-Foreigner' agenda?"

Answers on a postcard to Cruiskeen Eile HQ...

The Duke of Cruiskeen Eile

2006-03-06T22:25:00.000Z

For reasons noted elsewhere, I've been out of blogly circulation over the weekend. As a result, Myers' contribution on Friday went unblogged (not least because my girlfriend chucked the paper out that evening while getting the gaff ready for her parents' visit). Cruiskeen Eile couldn't help but notice, however, that it was mere days on the case when clear evidence that it had already flashed up on the colonel's radar emerged. How else to explain his invokation so close on our heels of the Anglo-Gaelic peerage in general and the O'Briens in particular, with special reference to the schooling of its scions at Eton College?

Rufus's fag at Eton had been Paget Plantagenet O'Brien Paget, who had inherited Donegal on his 10th birthday. He had been sworn into the IRB when fagging for Rufus.

At this point in his riotous narrative, the colonel sets out a hackneyed tableau of public school bumlordery, but Cruiskeen Eile will pass over the episode in deference to Kev's superior knowledge. By way of comparison we note the recent Cruiskeen Eile posting to the effect that:

[I]t is...evocative of the essence of the human condition to stumble upon the graves in the grounds of St. Mary's Cathedral in Limerick of Right Honorable young O'Briens, killed flying Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, listed in Burke's Peerage but Dalcassian princes still; old Etonians, sure, but descendants in primogeniture of Brian Boruma himself, High King of all the Gaels.

Myers deploys his weak hyperbole in an effort to demonstrate the absurdity of the proposition that anyone coming not merely from a Protestant but Anglo Irish and even Anglo Celtic background in this country could ever think to make common cause with the nationalist strain of thought in what was under colonial rule a socio-economic basket case. It intrigues us it must be said that the voices raised most often to decry and denounce the people who tried to reverse the baleful influence of colonialism in this country are also those raised most often in praise of an open economy, self-interest and self-determination. But, of course, we have our own suspicions about their motivations.

Re the nonsense of Myers' position, it suffices to point readers in the direction of Freestater who advertises a forthcoming series of lectures on Church of Ireland figures involved in the struggle for independence. Those who claim that the people as a whole were not in favour of the overthrow of British rule might also like to dig around the folklore archive in UCD and check out the songs and stories of the plain people of Ireland rather than to look into their hearts and Winston Churchill's diaries from the period.

Sadly, the colonel's rant rips the piss out of the Irish Guards, a fine regiment whose men fought with such distinction in the marshes around Anzio in 1944. For shame.

The target of Mr. Myers' bile this week is an American punter who claims to be the legitimate heir to the Leinster Dukedom of the FitzGeralds, former occupants of Leinster House, the cockpit of Irish democracy, as the son of Desmond FitzGerald. Mr. FitzGerald Snr. is believed to have been blown up in 1916 in France during a training exercise involving a carelessly handled grenade. The colonel characterises the claim as a conspiracy of the order of the sang real intrigue at the heart of Dan Brown shitefest, The Da Vinci Code:

And that is the key to confections as trivial as that of the claimant to the Duchy of Leinster and as profitable as the "novel" The Da Vinci Code. What you need to believe is what makes you believe.

Wait a minute...

Having damned himself out of his own mouth with a pretty convincing diagnosis of his many ludicrous positions, Mr. Myers gets down to business:

Few deaths in the first World War have been quite so thoroughly attested to as Desmond Fitzgerald's. He didn't vanish mysteriously on the battlefield, but on a beach in Calais, surrounded by the cream of English and Anglo-Irish society.

And they, it appears, were surrounded by the cream of him. As soon as Kevin finishes tugging his forelock in the direction of his betters, he makes his thesis known:

You cannot prove that the Catholic Church is not covering up the origins of European Christianity. You cannot prove that Paul FitzGerald is not the true Duke of Leinster.

And I guess, Colonel Myers sah!, you cannot prove that there are no weapons of mass destruction buried under Iraqi sands or that prior to the Anglo-US invasion, there was no undocumented link between that state and the terrorist Hydra, Al Qaeda.

Cruiskeen Eile had previously read about the FitzGerald case and feels it only right to point out to readers that the legitimacy or otherwise of Paul's claim can, of course, be proven through a blood test and it is around this issue that the case currently revolves. Wonder why Kevin didn't mention it.

Mired in Green Willow

2006-03-06T14:20:00.000Z

In the interests of thoroughness and good research practice, I suppose I (or Copernicus) should have a crack at reading Myers's 2001 foray into the world of fiction Banks of Green Willow…but you know what they say about life being too short…

The handful of reviews I've found online prove that at least 3 or 4 people (not including members of the Myers family) have trawled their way through it, but impressions are decidedly mixed…(although no less a figure than John Banville - perhaps out of a dutiful chumminess - called it "As fresh as tomorrow’s headlines", and, "a moving and accurate portrait of our terrible age").

The Sunday Times dwelled on the modesty of Myers's advance, and its deleterious effect on the Colonel's plans for a new conservatory (or possibly not):

Unlike the six-figure deals that some of his Irish Times colleagues have enjoyed, Myers's advance was modest. Nuala O'Faolain sold her first novel to Penguin for £500,000 and John Connolly got almost £1m for Every Dead Thing, but Myers's advance was in four figures. "It was under £10,000. Obviously you hope for a £1m advance and £10m on the film rights, but I'm just happy to get it published," he said. [Sunday Times, August 26, 2001]

The Scotsman took a rather different approach, implying that Kev may have let his love of girls and guns overwhelm the romance at the book’s core:

What may linger longer in the mind, however, is Myers's approach to sex and war, both of which are written about in such a graphic style that an uncomfortable sense of vicarious thrills being played out looms over an otherwise classic tale of love across the barricadess. [The Scotsman, November 9, 2002]

The Telegraph (surprisingly) ticked off their boy for being excessively maudlin, while hinting at a potential post-Irishman's Diary career as a Fair City scribe:

This is a novel full of incident - far too full, in fact. Ironically, it is the account of the activities of a Serbian death squad that provides the story with its most understated and convincing narrative. Gina's life, by contrast, is ripe with climaxes straight out of a soap opera. Virtually everyone who comes into contact with her ends up suffering some appalling tragedy, from car crashes to cancer. It is all shamelessly tear-jerking. The worst of it is that, as the Bosnian sections demonstrate, Myers had no need to resort to such cheap tricks. He plays the melodramatist, but has the makings of a sensitive and intelligent novelist. [The Daily Telegraph]

The bizarrely monikered "Dr. Seamus Earwicker”, over at irishresistancebooks.com, undoubtedly launched the most ferocious attack on the Colonel's opus, being particualary scathing about the book's more 'steamy' passages. Mind you, in fairness to 'Dr. Earwicker', he didn’t exactly try and hide his disdain for Myers and all his works:

I once read a book worse than this – mind you, it was written by Barbara Cartland. However, in the interests of fairness I, should point out that since I, along with most right thinking sentient human beings, despise Kevin Myers, what I write must be taken with a dose of strychnine.

The last word on the subject goes to a reviewer who found himself so captivated by the novel that he was moved to explode rapturously thus:

Banks of Green Willow is the finest work in all of Western literature. Its author is an outrageously talented man. Anyone who doesn't buy at least 10 copies of this book so that there is one in every room in the house is a fool. I nominate the author for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The name of that passionate Myers fan? Why, Kevin Myers (in 'humourist' mode) of course...[The Irish Times, November 7, 2001]

Myers Resplendent

2006-03-05T15:29:00.000Z

Though it was tough work finding any useable images of Col. Myers's large (pumpkin like) head, I have managed to throw together a rather groovy 'photoshopped' portrait (see 'header') that captures KM in all his pompous, 'wind-baggy', glory.

Hope you like it Myers fans.

Backing the Wrong Horse?

2006-03-03T16:52:00.000Z

Any kind of 'back down' by Col. Myers is (or should be) blogworthy news, particularly when it involves matters military. While yesterday's Irishman's Diary (2 March, 2006) didn’t exactly see the good Col. popping out to hug the armies of peaceniks and feminists that camp (at least in Myers's imagination) on his front lawn, the tone of the piece was equivalent to a tame, Myersian version of "War, huh, what is it good for?":

But I concede. Since the invasion led to the present appalling state of affairs, my principled support for the invasion was in practice wrong. I backed a horse which had been trained for seven furlongs, when ahead of it lay a grand national.

Of course there was plenty to offend/exasperate certain Irish Times readers in the rest of the "Diary", but perhaps we’re finally seeing a cuddlier, more chastened Myers emerging from the wreckage of "Bastardgate". He even had time to 'humorously' send up his own predilection (noted by EWI) for rampant inconsistency:

Some letter-writers - apparently expecting intellectual consistency of some kind, always the sign of a boring mind - have been contrasting my opinions over the Easter Rising and the Iraq war. Why not?

I've never, I should add, bought Myers as a humorist (despite the hallowed newspaper ground in which he resides) for his brand of 'humour' always reeks of smug 'preachiness' and self-satisfaction...but perhaps the above hints at a jollier, more self-deprecating Myers (trapped within)?

Hmm…maybe not…

Sticks and Stones...

2006-03-01T21:49:00.000Z

To dig what Saturday's riot tells us about our society, Jack, you also need to know that that while the average house price in Ireland is approximately €300,000, the average mortgage held is a mere €100,000. Bear with me.

Kevin Myers made much of the sectarianism of Saturday's events, attributing that vile motive not only to the particular mob in the instant mayhem, but to the denizens of the southern polity as a whole. If memory serves, he called the outbreak of disorder an anti-Protestant riot, a curiously ahistorical charge with not a little whiff of the 19th century and Punch magazine if not the Wars of the Three Kingdoms about it. I didn't know, for example, that Charlie Bird was a Protestant, but according to Kevin that was what particularly exercised his attackers in their assault when they called him an Orange bastard. It's a good thing Charlie was the loin fruit of happily married individuals, or Myers might have had it in for the "bastard" himself. While Kevin might well be technically correct about the facts of the assault, his implication is that a) we all knew Charlie Bird dug with the other foot and b) any one of us would have been delighted at the opportunity to give him a good Fenian hiding. (I have strong views on the notion of coterminous religious and national identity in Ireland, but that is the stuff of another post.)

However, as Richard Delevan can attest, Charlie was not the only journalist threatened or physically assaulted on Saturday and the reason for that is related, not to the endemic sectarian colour of the State but to the same circumstances which led to the murder of Veronica Guerin. Yes, there is a sectarian element in our society, and yes, the State in particular and the population in general have not always covered themselves in glory in embracing the minority denomination, but this is a republic and efforts have been made, belated and inadequate though they may occasionally have been. Protestants live happily among us, practice their religion, enjoy the benefits of the Block Grant in education and on occasion adorn with aplomb and elan the chambers of our bicameral parliament. Seymour Crawford, this means you.

It should also be remembered that there are natural contingencies in our history which divide loyalties and cloud issues. I, for example, find it poignant but intellectually stimulating and evocative of the essence of the human condition to stumble upon the graves in the grounds of St. Mary's Cathedral in Limerick of Right Honorable young O'Briens, killed flying Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, listed in Burke's Peerage but Dalcassian princes still; old Etonians, sure, but descendants in primogeniture of Brian Boruma himself, High King of all the Gaels.

Article 44 of our Constitution guarantees not only the free profession and practice of religion, but not to endow any religion in particular. And the State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status. Across the water, however, the heir to the throne - in whom is made flesh the will of the divine and through whom the realm itself finds its corporeal expression - is prohibited from contracting a marriage with a person of the Roman Catholic persuasion. The Prime Minister of the self-same sceptred isle appears to head up a Roman Catholic household, but has refrained from taking the plunge into that particular Jordan, perhaps on grounds of conscience (he has reportedly taken the RC sacraments), perhaps on foot of more temporal considerations.

The point is that Myers himself wrote in 1995 in respect of the hideous Parachute Regiment having watched being beaten himself in turn a 16 year old boy with whom he was attempting to assist a victim of that outfit's red-beret-wearing thugs:

What happened to that 16-year-old boy? Did he join the IRA, as I suspect I would have done if I had been him? Is he now dead in Milltown Cemetery? Did he find himself doing 15 years on terrorist charges because of what happened to him that night?

If Kevin could reach those conclusions and recognise the villainy of the Parachute Regiment, especially on Bloody Sunday, why can he not admit the possibility that certain of Saturday's protestors had engaged in a similar intellectual process in respect of the injustices of the past 30 years? I don't agree with them either by the way, but that's not really the point. Instead, Myers sought at the expense of the truth of what Saturday's riot has to tell us - and compels us to understand - to bolster others of his hobby-horse arguments. And that's not very cool.

The political fallout from Saturday's public disorder is disproportionate and unilluminating because of administrative failures on the part of the authorities rather than the inevitable result of a sectarian tendency in Irish society. The lesson we should learn involves the complacency and incompetence of the State at every level; senior Garda management who not only failed the public but their own officers whom they exposed to an unacceptable level of risk; the incompetence of the local authority which authorised the intended route through the O'Connell Street building site and the Government itself, to whose members it seems not to have occured that these were significant events with a potential public order dimension. Of course, there are intolerant, ignorant and short-sighted elements in our society, but we have a right to expect the Government to ensure not only that limb and property are protected but that the likes of Kevin Myers does not have the excuse to tar us all with the same brush at the expense of peace on our island.

The other lesson we need to learn from the riot is that we have complacently allowed to develop among us a poisonous and dangerously thuggish element because people with glass houses have generally kept them in leafy suburbs and away from any stones; unlike O'Connell Street. Gay Mitchell reacted on Six One directly after the riot, correctly to my mind, by referring to the fact that the behaviour we witnessed in the city centre on Saturday afternoon is the quotidian stay of those whom we have, by the corruption in our planning process and our disdain for the lower orders (despite republican pieties of a classless society) relegated to the peripheries of our socio-economic imagination. But they don't vote, or if they do, trouble the polls in insufficient numbers to attract the extensive attentions of the political classes. The lack of services, educational opportunity and diversity of experience and expectation unfortunately coincide with a reactionary drugs policy which has enriched and empowered criminal gangs who communicate their lack of values and inculcate in vulnerable, blank-slate youths a casual attitude to violence and authority the fruits of which we see in the throwing from point-blank range of a Molotov cocktail at a garda officer in broad daylight in the commercial and social centre of our capital city in full view of the media and a hundred mobile phones and digital cameras. Attacks on journalists also took place in an implicit assault on free speech and the right to know, very seriously compromising all our rights to help effect criminal activity. It is something you would scarce see in parts of the world in which order has broken down almost entirely, and of far greater concern than the fact that there are a couple of hundred bigots among us with whom the authorities, if motivated, could easily have dealt. If someone had asked you on Friday if you would see looting in Dublin city centre the next day, what would you have said?

We are all responsible for how the country is run. We vote, or don't vote, to allow the parties of complacency to enact their narrowly focused, populist, lobby-influenced agendas. In the same way that working class areas are left to deal with anti-social elements (I'm not in favour of ASBOs by the way), the underrepresentation of young people at the polls means that any party which attempts to address the difficulties of getting on the housing ladder will inevitably be taking approximately €200,000 (in equity) from middle-class, middle-aged people who do vote and can punish them at the polls and giving it to people who don't vote and affect very little various party political careers. To be honest, a politician would be mad to do it. We should remember that the Minister for Finance in office for the greater part of the Celtic tiger's development prescribed for its beneficiaries a rather vulgar, undignified existence about as far from Plato's examined life as it is possible to get without entering the same philosopher's cave and chaining oneself to one's fellows with one's back forever to the light. In the same way, we were all responsible too for the way in which the likes of Fr. Sean Fortune were permitted to conduct their repulsive abuses as the rest of us faffed about, unwilling to upset the status quo and deal with the undignified hassle which would inevitably result.

But the chickens have come home to roost. It is no longer the working poor who have to deal with the consequences of the nihilism the rest of us have incubated among them by our neglect, complacency and corruption. Imagine wanting desperately to join the tygger world and leaving your west-Finglas, terraced abode to go to work only to find that for the umpteenth time your car has been stolen, joy-ridden and burnt out. A police officer might easily have been killed on Saturday as a journalist has been killed before. It was not for want of trying that one was not. And that should terrify us more than a few embittered, misguided flagwavers whose greatest wish is to fight and die for an Ireland which never really existed.

'Mad Myers' is M.I.A.

2006-03-01T12:36:00.000Z

This is getting worrying…

Day 2 of "Myers Watch" is upon us, and the Colonel is (once again) in restrained, sensitive (for him), and reflective mood.

Two days of sober commentary in a row! Is this some kind of record? Where's the Raw Myersian bile we know and…er…'love'?

Not only was there an alarming absence of the usual lunacy in today's "Irishman's Diary" but the Colonel actually came off sounding like a multi-culturalist embracer of the huddled immigrant masses (no, seriously). Take the following for example:

So it's worth bearing in mind that the black girl with the funny accent serving in the supermarket, the Filipino changing your bandages in the hospital, the slender Pole serving you in the restaurant, the Ukrainian builder struggling to make himself understood - why, these are not foreigners at all. Our foreigners are the violent, vicious natives we saw rampaging through Dublin last weekend.

Will the real Kevin Myers please stand up? If things don't change we’ll have to pack in this venture for lack of good, old-fashioned, scandal…

The Riotous Mr. Myers

2006-02-28T19:17:00.000Z

Well, KM didn't exactly give us anything too fruity to get our bloggy juices going today, alas, choosing (instead) to steer a fairly predictable, but restrained, path through the wreckage of Saturday's riots.

The following snippet, however, was (reasonably) worthy of note:

Saturday's anti-Protestant riots cannot be taken in isolation, for they are a reminder that ours remains a deeply sectarian society. How else would the rioters know that the RTÉ journalist Charlie Bird was a Protestant, and accordingly beat the bejasus out of him?

Well obviously one shouldn't take the riots "in isolation" but then there are very few events/phenomena that one should take in isolation. It's hardly saying all that much to suggest that there is a wider issue/problem suggested by the thuggish shenanigans, but it may be overstating things a tad to suggest that we've witnessed definitive proof that Ireland "remains a deeply sectarian society".

The whole fiasco does, admittedly, suggest that mindless scanger idiots often have a tenuous (and ill-thought-out) affinity for hard-core Republicanism (and opportunist looting), but that's not exactly news to most of us. Does anyone seriously think they represent 'mainstream', 21st Century, Irish society any more than the BNP and football hooligans represent 'mainstream' British society? Surely not...

Well...maybe Kev does...

COMING SOON

2006-02-27T22:21:00.000Z

We're hoping to produce as a regular treat for readers certain [not particularly] exclusive extracts from the secret undercover diary of Special Agent Myers; a chronicle of derring-do and heroic exploits detailing our hero's efforts to track down and destroy his Arch-Nemesis, BASTARD BABY. Here's an appetite whetting sample of the hard-bitten prose our cherished band of dedicated fans can expect!

Babies are not merely filthy, incredibly noisy nuisances who require constant attention, [they] are monomaniacally selfish and thoroughly unreliable.*

In our next installment, Myers vows "I'll get you Bastard Baby, you unreliable bastard. I'll get you if it's the last thing I ever do!"

*From "Unmarried Mothers" pg 192 of Kevin Myers (Four Courts Press, Dublin 2000) and reprinted from An Irishman's Diary, The Irish Times, December 1994.

Sir Myers na gCopaleen of Cruiskeen Eile

2006-02-27T10:04:00.000Z

Colonel Kevin Myers has been tending in his Cruiskeen Eile the most coveted real estate in The Irish Times for quite the number of years, much to the frustration of aspiring gCopaleens the length and breadth of the island. But it's been hard, thankless work with our hero often having to note the reluctance of his vast, silent army of supporters to out themselves among the letter writers of the adjacent acreage.

I have to admit that I'm quite fond of Mr. Myers really. I was among the first to defend the beleagured Colonel during Bastardgate when the feminazis and anarcho-syndicalist freedom haters descended on him like a ravening horde. Sure I would say, he did argue from the particular to the general in an intellectually disreputable manner and without the benefit of substantial and credible evidence, he did launch an attack on a vulnerable and largely voiceless social group by deploying in its most shocking iteration a word (bastard) which it is dubious in the extreme ever enjoyed the neutral value he claimed in his defence to have ascribed to it. But you have to understand, the poor man is as mad as a fucking balloon.

Like the Colonel's, my shelves groan under the weight of ponderous military history tomes, though I own myself a little more sceptical of the enthusiasm for the glorious crucible of battle than thin red line cheerleaders John Keegan, Dicky Holmes, Max Hastings et al, than perhaps our Kev might be. Given the faux Edwardian tone Caoighmhín fancies he carries off with effortless aplomb, it is appropriate to refer readers to one of them, War of Nerves by Ben Shepard, a survey of military psychiatry among whose delights is a potted history of early psychoanalysis, the immutable verities of which, believe it or not, are still with us. The early days of the science coincided with the rise of cerebral, white collar employment giving rise to fears among the newly minted middle classes of "brain strain". And that I fear is what Sir Myers has. You can't put out polemic after polemic under tight, Sisyphusian deadlines without putting the old grey matter under unwise levels of stress.

I've been reading Myers' output since my teens and there have been many times over the last 15 years when I've bought The Irish Times simply to read his column and do the crossword (Simplex), giving no more than a cursory glance to much of the rest of the paper. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Alas, having blown vast chunks of its trust fund out the collective arse of its board of directors, the Times has been a shadow of even its former self for quite some time. Many of its contributors and payrolled journos have been cut adrift from their former world of expense-account lunches and company cars with only their generous pensions to console them. And this degradation of the brand has coincided with the ineluctable diminution of the colonel's mental powers.

Of course, it's a tidal thing. The Colonel ebbs as well as flows. He was at his most hysterical and incoherent in the aftermath of the events of 11 September, 2001. Myers vascillated from pole to pole as the beast slouched towards Bethlehem and he exhorted the falconer to bid the falcon gyre and gimble in the blood-dimmed wabe. Deploying all the lit-crit powers a UCG undergraduatcy can bestow (not many), I managed to identify his weltanschauung as an alarming comingling of the terrifying perspectives found in two poems; Yeats' apocalyptic classic, The Second Coming and the, er, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.

I'm hoping Myers provides a bit of gold for my reading pleasure tomorrow. But if not, I noted as I sat in typical Rodin pose on the jacks yestereve and thumbed through his collected Irishman's Diaries, a volume of which is a mainstay of my privy library, that he addressed himself in February '95 to the case of Lee Clegg and the mischievous doings of the illustrious Parachute Regiment. So maybe I'll blog about that instead.

Argument

2006-02-26T04:33:00.000Z

I'm place holding this blog/idea until Tuesday, when the Kevin Myers article comes out. It might be fun to fisk. I've been reading Myers since my teens so I reckon I know his form at this stage.

Let the falconer bid the falcon take wing among the eddies in the gyres above the blood-dimmed tide. Yada, yada, yada.