How to tune up for throw-in
In attendance: me, on my own. Top of the agenda — alone on the agenda, in fact — was one topic: music to drive to games by, with apologies to Andy Williams, who once had a song of similar syntax.
This is a serious topic, one that is not to be addressed lightly.
For one thing, the listening choices in the car are dictated the rest of the week by a pair of totalitarian musos, neither of them older than five, whose tastes run either to The Best Country Album... Ever! or Now That’s What I Call 21st Century.
If it’s not Dolly Parton, it’s Avicii, to the consternation of an aesthete friend (“Swedish chancers exploiting bluegrass melodies and heavy beats, it’s terrible, what are you doing to those children?” “Them? I’m the one who has to listen to it”). For another, it can get a bit tiring to flick between the radio stations on a Sunday morning in search of some light relief.
There seems to be a set cast of voices — economists, politicians, general-purpose miseries — who turn over the latest issues in an eerily coordinated sequence: just as your appetite for dreary complaints about abuse of the democratic process on one station falters, you switch to another only to find that the dreary complaints etc., etc., on that outlet are only just beginning (Honourable exception: Shane Coleman on Newstalk of a Sunday for the simple reason he had me on once as a guest).
Therefore when yours truly points the steed to a league game around this time of the year, the accompanying tunes get careful consideration.
A hardy clash of, say, Tipp and Kilkenny in Nowlan Park? Probably some We Cut Corners as I steam up the motorway, good to get those buzzing guitars acclimatise me for the conflict.
A lengthier jaunt, to say Pearse Stadium to see the Galway hurlers? How about some Neil Finn providing the mellow stylings to soundtrack that meander up the west coast?
Later in the summer, it might be necessary to hit straight for the Great Satan, when we start talking All-Ireland semi-finals, so what goes into the CD holder for those trips?
Got to be The Blades as you roll past the Green Isle on the way in; Rory Gallagher, who else, Messin’ With The Kid for the road home.
Feel free to disagree with me but grant me my choices on that one day. After all, come Monday morning I’m back listening to Katy Perry and Kenny Rogers all over again.
You’ve probably seen the footage of the Chelsea fans pushing a black man off the train in Paris (if you haven’t, we can beam up the clip to your laptop on the space station).
If you have seen the incident, you’ve probably also been tracking the reaction from it’s society to blame guv on one hand to it’s the game what’s at fault on the other, by way of it’s the train manufacturers who are culpable with those quare doors, and all points in between.
One take-away for this observer is whether we’re moving to a point where nobody will be able to mobilise his or her outrage about any matter without YouTube clip as a central plank in constructing their position. It can’t be too far away for someone to offer a lack of uploaded, jerky smartphone film clip as their sole reason for not having an opinion on an incident.
Tough times approach for reasoned debate; tougher times, maybe, for teachers of history.
“It might only come in flashes, but without the flashes there was never a true fire.”
Clive James had that to say about Norman Mailer, and having chopped my way through the jungles of Michael Lennon’s biography of Mailer, I can tell you there’s plenty of flashes and fire involved.
I mention it here in connection with somebody else. Henry Shefflin is not likely to pop up on TV chat shows goading feminists, nor is he a live contender to bite Rip Torn’s ear, as Mailer did on film (see my point elsewhere about incidents only living if they occur on YouTube).
What there is, and continues to be, is a wearying drip of questions about Shefflin’s plans. The man obviously has the exit door in his sights, and the voyage of Ballyhale Shamrocks to the All-Ireland club final is postponing any question of whether or not to go through.
This is understandable. Wanting to know exactly when the best player you’ve seen intends to hang it up is a matter of some significance.
The one thing about the focus on departure is that, to this observer, it’s obscuring the reality a little bit. The focus on how the Kilkenny man intends to step off the merry-go-round misses his gaiscí for so many years in the arena.
Clive James added about Mailer that the hints deserve to be followed back to their source — the cameos that Shefflin has provided recently are tending to overshadow the pomp: the second half of the 2012 All-Ireland, or the opening statement of intent in the All-Ireland a mere 10 years earlier.
In the last 12 months those feats have been less evident, certainly, but the defenders who see the green helmet come into their jurisdiction operate with a dazzling highlight reel playing on their internal screens.
“The creative imagination can prove it exists merely by suggesting itself,” was James’s view of the artist.
Whatever Shefflin’s plans for the future, all of Kilkenny will be hoping that he decides to defer the pipe and slippers for another year. They’ll be keen to see him making those suggestions for one last season in black and amber.
Can everyone calm down now? Is that too much to ask?
I refer here to the non-stop erotic cabaret we’ve been subjected to since the release of Fifty Shades of Grey. Not so much the movie itself, but the concomitant rush to pun as a result.
Fifty Shades of GAA.
Fifty Grades of Shame.
Fifty Shades of Great Goals.
Everywhere I turned last weekend, I saw the evidence of a general amnesty, freeing everyone from the necessity of good taste with their puns.
Can I just point out that it’s a week after the event now. Can we move on before someone gets hurt? More to the point, before someone enjoys getting hurt?
