Harmony Rocket - August 15th, 2007

02:06 am - Red Sky at Night: Shepherd's Delight...

It is dark and the sirens are blaring all around, but the room is airtight and Hopewell's record of Alamo-like refuge, The Curved Glass, drowns out the rest of the noise. It is very dark.

Things are a wholesale mess right now – fiercely unhappy. I say this not to up my status in the self-pity stakes, but to ask for some patience while re-adjustment runs its course. I'm happy enough to talk about it, but not here of course. Some general headings would be: impending college, familial trials, the perpetual lack of a band and continuing artistic ineptitude of course... but most importantly, the departure from Dublin of too many interesting and intelligent people who provided good conversation, exciting times and warm friendship. This in particular hurts.

So if I'm not myself, the picture is a little fuzzy or I'm disgracing myself even more than usual, know there's a reason. But we move on, I hope. Shush now.

What I really want to know is exactly how many people, nationally and globally, are hospitalised every year by kicking something in blind frustration. A door, wall or radiator probably feature prominently, but I'm sure cars and... perhaps plate glass too... must be up there. Kicking something really dangerous like a sword or maybe a tiger would be particularly embarrassing, I think it's a perfectly human reaction under certain circumstances.

I nearly booted the bus the other day. I could see it happening, played out like a trailer for a movie ten seconds before I actually acted on it. Just standing there with an unflattering scowl on my face, and then bam! Broken ankle. And then again on the bus a few minutes later, broken toes.

***

After The Curved Glass, This Sporting Life will be on TV and according to the guide it is both an 'acclaimed drama' and a 'classic of British cinema'. It is also about rugby, and hopefully it won't be so much about rugby that I'll have to go to bed.

***

I am completely at war with music these days, but still have time to recommend Richard Hawley's new song 'Tonight the Streets Are Ours' to anyone who cares. It sounds like a ghost from the '50s haunting a Protools studio. Matt Munro could be singing over it.

Let's see now...

“Those people, they got nothing in their souls/

And they make our TVs blind us/

From our vision and our goals”

Yes, I like that quite a bit.

***

We are now in the closing stages of renovating my grandfolks' old house somewhere in the Terenure/Templeogue/Kimmage Bermuda triangle. It is a house of many stories; my grandfolk were wonderful people who collected others' tales and lived full enough lives to leave their own. I can't tell them here, but one – the so-called 'Guns of Wainsfort' episode – makes me very much wish I could.

The place has been empty since 2002 unless you count a bunch of lazy, disrespectful and clueless students which I certainly don't. The old personalities have moved on, though a wise cat seemed to know the score when I spoke to her tonight. The neighbours also have long memories, but the grass does not. It used to be finely tuned, with dandelions routinely attacked, but now is just green bits struggling in a soil as dry as gravy granules.

It is a treasure hunt. I found £3 (that's £3, not €3) behind a sofa, and also two tricolours are in the kitty although I might just burn them if I feel like pissing people off - which I do. Unparalleled bounty. The Papal flag in our front room was plundered in a similar conquest some time ago. I have a pocketful of New Zealand currency for when I'm next in Wellington. There's a stack of 78 rpm records and maintenance manuals for both a Morris Minor and Ford Prefect, neither of which are any use but both of which I will value. Soon enough there will be no more of this house – of mucking about in the coal shed, of sugar sandwiches, of the funeral procession pausing outside and of hearing news that my sister was born, late one night as orange street light and the sound of motorcycles invaded through the windows and the walls.

Before moving when I was 18, I'd only ever spent three nights in the city and once the place is stripped of holy pictures and the walls are fully painted then it will be up to a new family to make their own stories; fill the place with new life to orange street light and the sound of motorcycles once more. In the front room there's an old table; on its surface you can still read the 'Dear Santa' impression of my mother's pen as she wrote her annual letter to Father Christmas. New children will use that table for the same purpose and, sadness aside, it's hard to argue against that.

***

Johnny Marr is to be seen on the cover of The Word magazine holding my guitar, except his has leaves on it and he plays it like a demon whereas mine has flowers on it and I play it like a cabbage.

***

Shut up. The film's starting.

Oh good, it's in black and white.