Soupy Norman

This from Time Trumpet, but it's the only relevant clip I could find for a new series that began on RTE last night called Soupy Norman. Stupendous enough for me to break my habit of not posting videos on my blog. See for yourselves.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent, you morons!

So. It turns out this whole blog thing is public - who knew?
Now, before you hit me with all those Snigger Out Loud acronyms, I did actually know that and all, kind of in the same way I know where the kerb is but still manage to park light years away from it. But, as I am the only gombeen in the blogosphere who has used her own name on her blog (ah, there's no end to my smarts), several people who know me and who clearly have far too much time on their hands have happened upon this little corner of the internet. Curses. I mean, I knew every post was out there to be read by all and sundry - I just expected all and sundry to be strangers I would never meet, cyber people as it were, not people I know or have known in my ramblings and certainly not gentlemen I might have stepped out with on occasion. So I knew it was public - I just forgot that I actually know members of the public, and now they know a lot more about me. Oops.

First up was the Neurotic Philosopher, who stumbled upon my last blog. And the one or two entries that, you know, may or may not have referred to him. Yikes! Abashed, I immediately erased all the relevant posts, along with any that revealed me as anything less than a Nietzsche-spoutin' Barthes-totin' genius. You can imagine what that left - the odd pilfered photo and some tumbleweed. Luckily I changed domain name and learned from my mistakes. Ha! Turns out you can't teach an old blog(ger) new tricks. So along came the new charming friend with whom I was attempting to come over all coy and mysterious. Yep. I'm such an enigma, me - read all about it in my highly personal online journal! And yesterday, lo and behold, the delightful Aussie Ex (I am compelled to use such adjectives as I now know he reads this, but in your defence AE, it's sincerely meant) mailed me to let me know he Knew Where I Lived. Cyberly, I mean. So any airbrushed version of my love life I might have been tempted to create, along the lines of a millionaire-rocket-scientist-human-rights-lawyer boyfriend who plays guitar to ailing children in his spare time, makes furniture and rescues baby seals in his manly arms - well, kinda scuppered, frankly.

So just to set the record straight, my name is Juan-Paddy and I am a very tall gay farmer from Tuvalu. Google me!

Progress? Pah!

Sometimes I come over all poetic-like and enter posts like that previous one, which, on re-reading, makes me want to womit a little. Even though it was meant in the best possible way, I could have just said something along the lines of: "My very good friend is coming to see me in a week. I haven't seen him in three years. I hope he got rid of that anorak."

Last night, full of such melancholy sentiment, I sent a mail to a certain gentleman - he of napkin fame - positively dripping with overwritten pathos. This morning I have no idea what mad woman got into my email and sent such overwrought balderdash out under my name. This is why I should NEVER write at night. There's something about 3 a.m. and wi-fi and a glass or two of vino (veritas indeed) that allows me to act immediately on such powerfully-felt emotion in a way that snail mail - ah, the days of several kindly hurdles to be jumped before a letter could even set off for a destination - would have prevented. If only I'd woken up this morning and found a scrawled epistle by my bed! I could have shredded it, laughed at it, maybe even filed it, but certainly not put it in an envelope and posted the shaggin' thing.

Alas, I have no way of inserting my hand into a street-corner postbox and retracting the offending document. Why? Because it's already In His Inbox. Marvelous. What kind of ludicrous system is that? And they say technology has improved our lives!

Amistad

It's been three years since we stood by the rusty bridge in La Boca and looked out into the gloom together. I remember you wearing an anorak, and that we'd walked a long way, and I remember our friendship wrapping around us as the light eased into the dark. We both had absent loves oxidising in a future we couldn't see back then. Things would happen - sooner, later - to change the contours of our hearts. Our lives were behind us and stretching ahead, but we were present then, you and I, in a city neither of us were born to but where, right then, we belonged.

When you touchdown in Dublin airport, you and I will be three years more than we were back then. Our geographies have shifted - seismic changes, shifting plates - but we'll both be in the same place. Three years will have been and will be gone. We'll walk a long way, along a different river. You may not be wearing an anorak. But our friendship will wrap around us and the light, as it does at the end of the day, will ease into the dark.