Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging for a while. In truth, I’m too exhausted to write much; even an e-mail seems to take it out of me. Anyway I’ve got the feeling that nothing I say matters much. The world continues turning, war and distress multiply and I seem to earn nothing but the smirks of Cavan’s corner-boys.

In Somalia the ship MV Fain that was taken hostage by pirates is being released by its captors, no doubt after the payment of a huge ransom. Anyway what were the pirates going to do with the cargo? You can’t really get rid of dozens of tanks on the “black market”. A new president has been elected but whether he can make a reality of the Somali state, ruled by anarchy for nearly two decades, is anyone’s guess.

In Guinea Dadis Camara seems to be pursuing a policy of questioning the way in which the country’s wealth has been siphoned off, usually into the pockets of multinational mining companies who throw some baksheesh to local officials who ferret the sums away in foreign bank accounts.

And in Zimbabwe a national unity government has finally been agreed between the autumnal patriarch Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. The country is fucked, there’s 90 per cent unemployment and a major cholera outbreak. What’s more inflation has rendered the national currency into a joke. The perpetrators of political violence still walk tall and their directors are sitting down at last with their victims. The decision by Mugabe to grant Tsvangirai the job of Prime Minister is a little like an offer of a lift in someone’s broken down car.

There are so many wars and conflicts. We all know of the genocide in Gaza, but other wars go unrecorded, such as that in Sri Lanka, which sees the civilian population often made into unwilling human shields by either the Sri Lankan government or the ever more desperate Tamil Tigers.

In the borderlands of Uganda and the Not-So-Democratic Republic of Congo (NDRSC), the grim antics of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has spread from its original nursery bed in the north of Uganda the northeast of the NSDRC. This leaves in its wake burned villages and massacres of church-goers. The LRA has a “no-frills” approach to recruiting soldiers; no one can accuse them of ageism – the younger the better. Indeed their approach to winning friends and influencing people is basic – after seeing your loved ones raped and chopped into pieces, you’ve got two choices – join us or join them.

And as for events closer to home all I can say is that they’re just like a demented pantomime. But then everyone knows this. I don’t know whether anyone else has noticed how incredibly well-fed the pantomime managers are. Our Minister for Finance, for example, who may well tell everyone else to tighten their belts, but can he without giving himself a hernia? The same is true of our prime minister. None of them are showing any signs of the financial squeeze – far from it. A few weeks’ ago there was an edition of RTE’s rural programme Ear to the Ground, in which it was mentioned that the present financial straits affecting many people had led to greater demand from Irish butchers for cheaper cuts of meat. I was glad to see a restaurant critic who said that many of these cuts have a far better taste than the more expensive joints. But something tells me that none of our senior politicians or civil servants are tucking in to oxtail stew. And as for our minister for health! Look, no more nudge-nudge, wink-win, sexist jokes about fatsoes. But the fact is she is obese. Obesity is a medical condition which can be alleviated, but what’s she doing about it? And then there’s her husband, the man who was for so long implicated in the exorbitantly costly mix of Hi-De-Hi and Absolutely Fabulous which was FAS. They were supposed to be finding jobs and training opportunities for the unemployed, but I feel that if Mr Harney had ever been told that he might meet an unemployed youth, maybe from “the wrong side of the tracks”, his response would have been “Heaven forbid.”

Our rulers try to look statesman-like, but they always come across as at best incompetent idiots, at worse as three-card cheats. There was a particularly heart-wrenching interview with a senior banker today in which he revealed that due to the economic downturn his “disclosed” renumeration package would probably be less than 2 million euro this year. Think of it – less than 50 thousand euro a week, ten thousand a day. How can anyone survive on that? Picture his poor children, his desperate spouse no doubt tearing her false blond hair from its roots as all of them have to wrestle with the indignity of approaching the local Vincent de Paul. And with everybody in a bind there is no possibility of picking up some week-end work mowing grass, while the little chizzlers will look in vain for any paper rounds.

Funny isn’t it the type of stuff you remember from your school days. I have some great memories from my time in Cavan’s Royal School, but I have one over-arching regret,

There was a teacher (I won’t name her to save her blushes) who was, quite frankly, on another planet, and she was unashamed at demonstrating how out of touch she was by saying really stupid things. Now one of the girls in my class was a very good-looking female called Juliet (not her real name). Actually she didn’t really do anything for me but my good friend Keith really fancied her. Now on one occasion this teacher made one of her many verbal gaffes, prompting Juliet to titter uncontrollably, whereupon the teacher turned to her and prophesied: “There will be a time in the future when you take your Leaving Cert results out of the drawer or wherever you’ll keep them and you will say to yourself ‘I now wish I had worked harder when I was at the Royal School.’ “

The moral of this story is that I often think of MY leaving cert results and my not inconsiderable achievements since then, and I say to myself. “I wish I hadn’t worked nearly as hard.”

Thank goodness the Christmas piss-fest is coming to an end, though there are still those who want to drag it out. I really feel that Christmas should be renamed Cuntsmas as it seems to give so many people an opportunity to act like cunts.

The world seems to be so full of hatred that any signs of love and amity are deeply hidden. If we have one New Year’s resolution surely it should be: “Let’s try to hate people less in 2009”.

I can say, hand on heart, that I cannot understand people who hate large sections of their fellow men. It is true that there are some people I dislike intensely. These include people I have never met and do not wish to meet, like North Korea’s “dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il and Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. There are others closer to home. Usually these are people whom I’ve never met but who have arrogantly decided that they can treat me with disrespect. I make friends for life, and enemies as well. I’ve always worked hard to try and overcome any disabilities I have. I see myself as a winner, but sometimes I get well tired. These people may have brains that make an average pea look like a football, but at the end of the day they are “bigger than me”.
I’d like to send them my special malediction this Christmas. They include Dr Brendan Scott, Research Officer of Cavan’s County Museum. Until this summer he was just a name. I’ve never met him but yet he decided to snub me by not inviting me to his little conference. Why? I’ve heard that it was “because there had been trouble between me and the museum, but it had been before his time, and the second reason, because he didn’t want to embarrass me. How nice and considerate Dr Scott. Are you sure it hadn’t more to do with a fear that I might embarrass you by my presence?
But why dwell in the past. Any plans for conferences this year? How about one on Masturbation in 17th century. Get people who are REALLY big this year, like Bruce Forsythe or maybe Britney Spears. Pricey, but sure fuck it the council will pay. This isn’t hatred: it’s just pity.

People with flashy and gaudy titles signifying nothing always remind me of Francisco Macias Nguema, first president of Equatorial Guinea. He amassed quite a bag-full of titles before his nephew ousted and shot him – he’d also ordered all the people in his country, called by some the Belsen of Africa – to be happy, on pain of death. One of these silly titles was El gran milagro – the great miracle. Did he believe he was miraculous, especially as he stood in front of the firing squad at Malabo’s Black beach?
 
And then there is Dr Scott’s boss, County Manager Jack Keys. I was told informally that one of the reason’s he didn’t reply to my letter was that he was sick. I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who is ill, but if I am prevented through illness from working so many people smile indulgently, shrug their shoulders and say that it’s proof that in spite of all my bluster and rhetoric I cannot and never can operate at the same level of an able-bodied person. His illness however is the result of the great strain and responsibility he has to carry, and if anything is viewed as almost an inevitable though unwelcome side-effect of his job.

This New Year I feel slightly uneasy – under threat in fact, not from any hob-goblins who may be swimming around, or from any of the multifarious baddies and criminals who are lurking in the undergrowth. No, I feel threatened by An Gardai Siochana, especially the goons attached to the station in Ballyconnell Co. Cavan. I haven’t done anything – I am a paragon of civic virtue. The gardai should be protecting my welfare and defending my peace; instead they are only interested in aiding and abetting criminals from beyond our shores. The gardai may not know it but there are criminals who are NOT Nigerians.

But I want to be happy and have a laugh. One of my mottoes for 2009 is “Don’t give a shit for little pricks”. I’m going to settle down nearer the witching hour with my darling Rosie, maybe a glass of fine scotch, and waft into a sea of domestic calm and good will. I might sing Auld Lang Syne, but I doubt it as I’m determined to remain sober.

There are a couple of people I want to send new Year’s greetings to. The staff of the Cavan Echo, as well as my dear readership. I also want to send gree4tings to my dear friend Noel Monahan. Let us hope that 2009 will be a year of verdant verbiculture.

So Happy New Year and remember, it’s only 358 days till Christmas.

This world is such a sad place; who’d want to go on for yet another awful year on it?

Over Christmas it is estimated that 400 innocent people have been massacred by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in the north east of Congo. The LRA, incidentally, claim to be fighting to create a state based on The Ten Commandments.

There has also been heavy fighting in Somalia, but perhaps the most egregious example of evil this Christmas is in Gaza. Those poor innocents slaughtered in a Congolese church died at the hands of crazed madmen with weapons, no doubt pumped full of drugs, whereas those who have died in Gaza have perished at the hands of a state which is allowed to belong to the international community. I’m no anti Semite but the state of Israel is a terrorist state, which belongs on that hypocrite George W. Bush’s axis of evil as much as Iran or North Korea.

You hear Israeli spokespeople trying to defend what they’re doing and you ask yourself: Is this the blackest of comedies? Do they really believe their own crap? Yesterday the Israeli foreign minister blamed Hamas for civilian deaths, because Hamas had their offices and buildings in civilian areas. Hold on now Tzipi Livni, who’s dropping the bombs? Is it not Israeli artillery which is blowing people up? Such a statement might be used in a court of law by the defence as evidence of the defendant’s insanity and how far they were affected by a disease of the mind. Let’s take the argument out of Israel to, well, anywhere with a bank. It is held up by a group of robbers who, intent on getting their hands on the money decide to shoot their way in, killing customers who just happen to be there, or maybe they decide to use explosives. The results are the same: a high body-count. The robbers are caught charged with robbery, but no less so with the murder of the innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The robbers deny murder, claiming that it wasn’t their fault that the people were killed but rather the bank’s for having civilians in the building.

Reasoning of a sort – the reasoning of terrorism.

Christmas comes but once a year to Cavan and Ireland: if it came any more frequently nobody would bother working at all.

As I write it is December 29th – four days since Christmas. Transport services are working, as are the emergency services and the police. Yet the place is still suffused with the sense of inactivity. Non-emergency County Council staff won’t return to work until Wednesday – New Year’s Eve. This effectively means that they have a one day week – nice work if you can get it! Non-essential County Council staff – the really important people who never do anything like work – well, no one knows when they’ll be back. But they work so hard for the rest of the year no one can begrudge them taking a fortnight off at Christmas. In fact a lot of people wouldn’t care if they took the whole year off – but not look for payment for their inactivity.

I hear on the grapevine that tomorrow is a public holiday. How come? What does this celebrate?

I inhabit a type of Chinese maze: I know when the denizens of Cavan’s offices are not working – visits to this blog-site decline.

I really feel pity for those folk who, this Christmas, have no jobs to go back to in the New Year.

Some of the questions posed by the coup in Guinea are being answered, yet some of the biggest remain unresolved.

Captain Camara is not a stalking horse for the whole military establishment, but it is unlikely he was acting solely on his own initiative. He may still therefore be the front man for a faction of the armed forces. It is interesting that the headquarters of the coup appear to be at the Alpha Yayo camp. This is where members of the former regime have been requested to come for their own safety. It is also the headquarters of the elite paratroop BATA batallion, headed by Commandant Sekouba Konate. It is now clear that the Guinean military is far from being a homogenous monolith and is faction-ridden. The head of the armed forces, Diarra Camara (no relation of the coup leader) is a long-time Conteh loyalist, has distanced himself from the coup and had repeated a more-or-less identical mantra that the leaders represented a disgruntled minority.

Yet the situation is very fluid. The plotters did not act with the support of the whole of the army, but they don’t represent a small faction. They are in the process of negotiating with other sections of the military to throw in their lot with them.

Little is known about Captain Dadis Camara. He has told Radio France Internationale that he is a graduate of Conakry University and that he has spent time training in Germany.

But is he really in charge? It is interesting that he is hardly mentioned by name in any of today’s communiques. Is this a sign that the coup plotters are falling out amongst themselves?

The biggest unresolved question is what will happen next? The army is divided; both factions claiming to hold power. Unless one side gives in, which seems unlikely, or is able to persuade the other of the rightness of its position, the horrible spectre of armed conflict, maybe even civil war underlain by ethnic cleavages, appears on the horizon. The coup leaders have already spoken about certain “loyalist generals” who are planning to regain power with the help of mercenaries from neighbouring countries, some of whom they believe are already in the country. This is worrying for Guinea’s neighbours,, many of whom have only just stepped out from the shadow of bloody civil wars, often engendered by unresolved power grabs. It was a coup on Christmas Eve many years ago led by the late General Robert Guei which plunged Cote d’Ivoire into paroxysms of violence.

The next big turning point for Guinea will surely be on Friday when General Conteh’s funeral takes place. Who will turn up and what will they do?

I’m not going to say “Happy Christmas everybody”, because not everyone deserves it. I am sick and tired of the way in which Christmas in Ireland is an excuse for large sectors of employees, especially in the public service to take a fortnight’s holidays. Two years ago they only deigned to come back to work on January 8th. This year I expected that they would drag it out till the fifth, the nearest Monday, but no! I’ve heard that some aren’t going back until January 7th.

And then there is Christmas Day. Why must this be an excuse for a national shut-down? There are no busses, no taxis though how people are supposed to visit loved ones in hospital I don’t know.

And what are they celebrating? The birth of their saviour in a stable. Well the hypocrites! There is isn’t one of them who wouldn’t queue up to hammer nails into His palm if offered a few free drinks.

I’m not a killjoy. I think Christmas should be a time of celebration, but let’s not overdo it. I think of how God was made flesh and came into this world naked, born in what might be described as a disadvantaged place, his parents denied lodgings in even the most basic accommodation. If He were coming into the world now He might find that His parents were denied a roof over their heads although they were on a waiting-list.

I would have no difficulty working on Christmas Day for a decent wage. But then I have been told that I’m not entitled to any decent job on the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days on such specious grounds as not being a driver and able to get around. So I might have a doctorate in history and be able to speak a dozen languages, I might be the author of eight or nine books (not all about history) and the job might not be for a chauffeur. But then no doubt my doctorate wasn’t good enough – it had been gained by a cripple and had probably been granted on grounds of sympathy rather than merit. None of my books have been published by Four Courts Press, and in Co. Cavan (no less than in any other county in Ireland) the only language you need to know is the one of sycophancy.

Another year is drawing inexorably to its close. I always count as happy and worthwhile any year in which I add to the number of my friends and I consolidate existing friendships. Many of these contacts have sprung from my work and my writing; I believe that such friendships are the most important result of my work. Many have flowed from my contributions to the Cavan Echo, and I am cheered to know that I have a loyal readership many of whom I’m able to reach though I haven’t yet met them.

And then there are the friends I’ve made through the book on Co. Cavan. One friendship stands out; that with artist Jim McPartlin, whom I had not met until we were brought together on such a rewarding journey. Then there are the wonderful people in Cottage Publications in Donaghadea, with whom it was a true joy to work. I will never forget the night the book was launched.

For all my friends, both those I have the pleasure of knowing, as well as the many I have not yet met, I hope you have a really wonderful and peaceful Christmas and New Year marked by enjoyment and contentment, which will be marked by the pleasantest of memories.

For me writing is a pleasure because it is a means of expressing how I feel about things. It is also a medium of communication, for I always see my words and phrases as not being pieces of waste paper thrown into a void but being meant for an audience. It is very frustrating when I try to communicate with people and they are too rude to reply. I use two of the most common forms of communication available today, e-mail and standard mail (often referred to snail-mail), yet nothing can apparently penetrate the indifference of some. Am I to use pigeon post or maybe talking drums? Of course I know it is outrageous to think that important people like county managers or TDs should have the time or inclination to even think of replying to a mere cripple whose father is not a member of even a town council.

I have a special message for them. I hope they have a really miserable Chrimbo, that they get the skitter for three days and that they’re not able to get off the jacks until the New Year.

But remember girls and boys, don’t drink and ride this Christmas; it’s dangerous and it’s far more fun when you’re sober.

December was a time when some Cavan lads got the oul’ horn on them. No, this did not mean that they were lustier than usual, or that they had any less fear of approaching the opposite sex when sober. It refers to the practice of some youths who climbed hills from which they sounded horns. This was noted by among other the late Tom Barron, and seemed to be especially prevalent in the Cornafean and Bruise Mountain areas. It was obviously linked to Christmas. The horns used must have been fairly simple, no doubt of the hunting horn variety and the cacophony produced must have been ear-splitting. It would seem that this was somehow linked to the notion of the winter solstice and that the whoops of the horns were an attempt to try and summon the forces of life and light from their dark slumbers.