Dave Lordan, one of my favourite poets, is just back from a Mini-tour of Newfoundland. I was very interested in how he got on and invited him to guest blog here about it.
And so Dave very kindly sent me a story about Clonakilty.
And Seamus Heaney was in the audience. I didn't know until afterwards. There I was acting all too cool for school and then yer man Famous Shaymus comes out the door and I was actually a bit star struck. Fame man, it's like a pheromone.
Towards the end of February I was scavenging pine cones with my brother from the row of dark, sheltering pine trees that separate the old GAA pitch from Waldashaff Park.
Waldaschaff Park is beside the Model Village on a patch of leftover land in front of the water treatment plant, and on the crest of the hill that marks the start of the Inchadoney Road. You can see, and smell, Inchadoney Bay from there. The smell is not bad now, more salt than shit, due to the treatment plant.
Waldaschaff is the name of a village in Bavaria twinned with Clonakilty since 1989. The town council built the little park to mark the twinning. You might wonder why the town’s wise burghers chose to build the twinning park right beside the sewage facility, a most unlikely place to picnic and take the air. I think it is because they believed that the universal capacity to produce endless amounts of shit is what unites us across national borders. They are right. The unceasing nature of shit is something we all have to deal with.
These days, evidently, no-one looks after Waldaschaff Park. Its stone paths have overgrown, its gates are chainlocked, its melancholy benches are flaking and cracking with years of drizzle and woodrot. To pause and peruse and especially to enter the dilapidated park invites suspicion. Only those with some underhand purpose could have any use for the place.
We hopped over the low slate wall. Joseph made straight for the pine trees that run along the raised border with the remains of the GAA pitch. Much of the GAA pitch is now occupied by the recession halted construction of unoccupied and unsellable ‘luxury’ or even ‘boutique’ apartments. It had been intended, before the bust, to be ‘Clonakilty’s Waterfront.’ In fact, it’s nothing but a hideaway for gluesniffers and rodents.
The rest of the pitch, the part nearer to us, was still grass, being kept down by seven or eight old horses, belonging to local travellers. They were tethered up loosely there, drowsily munching away on the grass they spend their lives transforming into shit, which in turn fertilises the soil to produce copious grass.
Next to the vainglorious fuck-up and waste of ‘The Waterfront’, destined to cave-in or collapse, these rough, shoddy old survivors looked like the truly long-lasting and significant monuments.
There was some manshit hidden in the untended grasses of Waldaschaff Park. I had to avoid stepping in it at the same time as watching where the pine cones were landing in the grass- they were plopping down all over the place at a rate of three or four a minute now.
Nothing disgusts like manshit on your shoe. Give me dog shit anytime. Or horseshit. Horsehit hardly even stinks.
Between the pine cones and the shit there was also a randomly distributed selection of faded liquor cans, empty flagons, and broken green bottles. Weather-bleached chocolate-bar wrappers. A scorched circle that had been a bonfire a long time ago.
I didn’t want to look into the bushes or the tall grass around the edges of Waldashaff Park. You wouldn’t know what would turn up on an irish catholic wasteground. I didn’t fancy a caul or a fucking foetus stuck to the bottom of my shiny new slip-ons.
Pine cones burn and glow like the best of coal, and they last for hours, and they’re free. When Joseph was done climbing and plucking, and I had filled the large shopping bag, the house in Fairfield would have fuel for two or three nights to come.
I had arrived down the previous afternoon from Cork City, where I had done a reading as part of the Cork Spring Literary Festival. It had been grey and damp when I got in, but not raining. It was another small town weekday with nothing much for anyone to do but suppress their urges to do something mental to make the time pass quicker towards the weekend, when going mental is obligatory.
Everybody would be better off around here if they were just like those horses, just ate grass and shat. No need for prozac or alcohol then.
I sat and stretched out on the sofa, flicking between the 400 or so channels my parents have on their TV. It was mostly news I watched. The Libyan revolt was going well at the time. Whole cities were falling to the youth. I love it when the police, those riff-raff and half-wits with their tear gas and batons and worse, and dressed up like beetles from Pluto, are run out of a place. There’s no better sight upon this earth. I could watch police being thrashed and run out of it all day long. If cop-thrashing was on in the cinema I’d never leave the place.
The evening turned out a bit milder and, as the light declined, Joseph and I took a walk around the ring and up to St Mary’s graveyard, on top of a hill on the other, northern side of town. Joseph has an intimate knowledge of the graveyard and he was able to show me the plots that held the remains of many old friends, neighbours and acquaintances, many of them young men who had died by their own design. It slapped me awake to be reminded, one after another, in the particular sequence imposed by our walk and the layout of the graveyard, of all of these departed I had once shared the small territory of Clonakilty with.
I never heard of a policeperson killing him/herself. Why is that?
I am a kind person generally but my imagination is a cruel and mocking old bastard, toying with worst of possibilities all the time. How many towns in the world could Clonakilty twin with based on its suicide rate? Suicide Park, anyone? Of Shit and Suicide- A Local Guide! Perhaps, somewhere down the long tracks of future desperation, the tourism mandarins would have us rebrand ourselves as the shit and suicide capital of the western world, and put such on large glittering neon signs on all the approaches to the town. I saw Joseph then as the chief guide on the grand shit and suicide tour of Clonakilty, loving his work, surviving by it. It’s a science fiction story. A science fiction comedy. Someone should write it down. To think it is enough for me.
Anyway in a half an hour or so we had made our way all along the row of five or six pine trees and were down in the corner now right up against the fence surrounding the sewage plant. The shopping bag was brimming over with pine cones. They’re heavy in bulk. It would take the two of us to carry the bag of them home, a handle each, side by side.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tall man approach us through the grass. I didn’t figure it at first. At first I thought it was just some guy out for a stroll or walking his dog, or looking for a good place to take a shit. I wasn’t bothered either that he was staring at us. I thought he was just a nosey old dickhead, of which there are a few around town.
It was then I noticed his two colleagues approaching from a slightly different angle to my rear. Some alert citizen had called the station on us and three Gardai had been sent along to find out, precisely, who we were and what we were up to.
The tall Guard reached us first. Trying to figure out what kind of an outfit we were, he scanned back and forth between us: myself stood upon the earth and Joseph high up in the pine tree, like some kind of angel or demon or woodsprite. Then- without any hint of hostility it must be said- the Guard addressed us:
Conkers lads is it that ye’re after?
Myself and the brother were momentarily frozen somewhere between hilarity and disbelief. Surely the man would know that we were as likely to be picking sapphires and rubies or melting gold watches off a fucking PINE TREE in FEBRUARY as conkers. I was surprised Joseph didn’t fall off the tree in a tsunami of laughter. But he kept his cool admirably:
No Guard, Pine Cones, said Joseph.
Pine Cones, the Guard repeated. Pine Cones. Alright, he said, and walked away, satisfied or stupefied, I don’t know which. I know he didn’t have a clue why we were gathering pine cones and that he didn’t want to ask us about it either.
A few seconds later his female colleague arrived. The third Guard, another mangarda, had decided to hang back, intending to tackle us if we breached the first line of defence I suppose. This female guard had more of the sleuth in her than the last fella and so she asked us our names and addresses, which we gave without hesitation. Whoever called them had probably told them who we were already anyway. I don't know if tree climbing or pine-gathering are on the statute books as crimes. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were. She didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter any further though and she let us go without any further questions.
After that the three Guards went on into the sewage plant for a snoop, I guess to see if we had been interfering with it. I reckon the last place I will ever be tempted to rob or to vandalise is a sewage plant. Things could badly backfire on you there.
As soon as they had satisfied themselves that myself and the brother had not been tampering with the shit product of Clonakilty, the three Guards made their way slowly and warily out of Waldaschaff Park. They got into their marked car, and drove off intrepidly in search of Blackberry pickers and Apple scrobbers and the like. I am sure that they stopped along the way to pick some conkers off a Pine tree, and some wine gums from a gorse bush while they were at it.
Well actually, he told me he was working on the aforementioned story and I said I'd like to post it instead. We might get around to the Canadian shenanigans later.
Dave also performed twice at the DLR poetry Now festival this weekend. I saw him at 'For This: Poems for our Ireland'. Someone jokingly called it 'lets all wring our hands for Ireland' but it was quite good to be fair, Dermot Bolger, Senator Norris, Leanne O Sullivan, Miriam O Callaghan, Kavanagh Award judge Brian Lynch, punk poet ledgebag Jinx Lennon amongst others reflecting on our current circumstances.
And Seamus Heaney was in the audience. I didn't know until afterwards. There I was acting all too cool for school and then yer man Famous Shaymus comes out the door and I was actually a bit star struck. Fame man, it's like a pheromone.
You don't get to be in presence of such a genius everyday so, never being one to miss an opportunity, I duly crossed the room and head-butted him.
Course I did.
Anyways. Here's Dave's story.
Clonakilty Special Branch
Towards the end of February I was scavenging pine cones with my brother from the row of dark, sheltering pine trees that separate the old GAA pitch from Waldashaff Park.
Waldaschaff Park is beside the Model Village on a patch of leftover land in front of the water treatment plant, and on the crest of the hill that marks the start of the Inchadoney Road. You can see, and smell, Inchadoney Bay from there. The smell is not bad now, more salt than shit, due to the treatment plant.
Waldaschaff is the name of a village in Bavaria twinned with Clonakilty since 1989. The town council built the little park to mark the twinning. You might wonder why the town’s wise burghers chose to build the twinning park right beside the sewage facility, a most unlikely place to picnic and take the air. I think it is because they believed that the universal capacity to produce endless amounts of shit is what unites us across national borders. They are right. The unceasing nature of shit is something we all have to deal with.
These days, evidently, no-one looks after Waldaschaff Park. Its stone paths have overgrown, its gates are chainlocked, its melancholy benches are flaking and cracking with years of drizzle and woodrot. To pause and peruse and especially to enter the dilapidated park invites suspicion. Only those with some underhand purpose could have any use for the place.
We hopped over the low slate wall. Joseph made straight for the pine trees that run along the raised border with the remains of the GAA pitch. Much of the GAA pitch is now occupied by the recession halted construction of unoccupied and unsellable ‘luxury’ or even ‘boutique’ apartments. It had been intended, before the bust, to be ‘Clonakilty’s Waterfront.’ In fact, it’s nothing but a hideaway for gluesniffers and rodents.
The rest of the pitch, the part nearer to us, was still grass, being kept down by seven or eight old horses, belonging to local travellers. They were tethered up loosely there, drowsily munching away on the grass they spend their lives transforming into shit, which in turn fertilises the soil to produce copious grass.
Next to the vainglorious fuck-up and waste of ‘The Waterfront’, destined to cave-in or collapse, these rough, shoddy old survivors looked like the truly long-lasting and significant monuments.
There was some manshit hidden in the untended grasses of Waldaschaff Park. I had to avoid stepping in it at the same time as watching where the pine cones were landing in the grass- they were plopping down all over the place at a rate of three or four a minute now.
Nothing disgusts like manshit on your shoe. Give me dog shit anytime. Or horseshit. Horsehit hardly even stinks.
Between the pine cones and the shit there was also a randomly distributed selection of faded liquor cans, empty flagons, and broken green bottles. Weather-bleached chocolate-bar wrappers. A scorched circle that had been a bonfire a long time ago.
I didn’t want to look into the bushes or the tall grass around the edges of Waldashaff Park. You wouldn’t know what would turn up on an irish catholic wasteground. I didn’t fancy a caul or a fucking foetus stuck to the bottom of my shiny new slip-ons.
Pine cones burn and glow like the best of coal, and they last for hours, and they’re free. When Joseph was done climbing and plucking, and I had filled the large shopping bag, the house in Fairfield would have fuel for two or three nights to come.
I had arrived down the previous afternoon from Cork City, where I had done a reading as part of the Cork Spring Literary Festival. It had been grey and damp when I got in, but not raining. It was another small town weekday with nothing much for anyone to do but suppress their urges to do something mental to make the time pass quicker towards the weekend, when going mental is obligatory.
Everybody would be better off around here if they were just like those horses, just ate grass and shat. No need for prozac or alcohol then.
I sat and stretched out on the sofa, flicking between the 400 or so channels my parents have on their TV. It was mostly news I watched. The Libyan revolt was going well at the time. Whole cities were falling to the youth. I love it when the police, those riff-raff and half-wits with their tear gas and batons and worse, and dressed up like beetles from Pluto, are run out of a place. There’s no better sight upon this earth. I could watch police being thrashed and run out of it all day long. If cop-thrashing was on in the cinema I’d never leave the place.
The evening turned out a bit milder and, as the light declined, Joseph and I took a walk around the ring and up to St Mary’s graveyard, on top of a hill on the other, northern side of town. Joseph has an intimate knowledge of the graveyard and he was able to show me the plots that held the remains of many old friends, neighbours and acquaintances, many of them young men who had died by their own design. It slapped me awake to be reminded, one after another, in the particular sequence imposed by our walk and the layout of the graveyard, of all of these departed I had once shared the small territory of Clonakilty with.
I never heard of a policeperson killing him/herself. Why is that?
I am a kind person generally but my imagination is a cruel and mocking old bastard, toying with worst of possibilities all the time. How many towns in the world could Clonakilty twin with based on its suicide rate? Suicide Park, anyone? Of Shit and Suicide- A Local Guide! Perhaps, somewhere down the long tracks of future desperation, the tourism mandarins would have us rebrand ourselves as the shit and suicide capital of the western world, and put such on large glittering neon signs on all the approaches to the town. I saw Joseph then as the chief guide on the grand shit and suicide tour of Clonakilty, loving his work, surviving by it. It’s a science fiction story. A science fiction comedy. Someone should write it down. To think it is enough for me.
Anyway in a half an hour or so we had made our way all along the row of five or six pine trees and were down in the corner now right up against the fence surrounding the sewage plant. The shopping bag was brimming over with pine cones. They’re heavy in bulk. It would take the two of us to carry the bag of them home, a handle each, side by side.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tall man approach us through the grass. I didn’t figure it at first. At first I thought it was just some guy out for a stroll or walking his dog, or looking for a good place to take a shit. I wasn’t bothered either that he was staring at us. I thought he was just a nosey old dickhead, of which there are a few around town.
It was then I noticed his two colleagues approaching from a slightly different angle to my rear. Some alert citizen had called the station on us and three Gardai had been sent along to find out, precisely, who we were and what we were up to.
The tall Guard reached us first. Trying to figure out what kind of an outfit we were, he scanned back and forth between us: myself stood upon the earth and Joseph high up in the pine tree, like some kind of angel or demon or woodsprite. Then- without any hint of hostility it must be said- the Guard addressed us:
Conkers lads is it that ye’re after?
Myself and the brother were momentarily frozen somewhere between hilarity and disbelief. Surely the man would know that we were as likely to be picking sapphires and rubies or melting gold watches off a fucking PINE TREE in FEBRUARY as conkers. I was surprised Joseph didn’t fall off the tree in a tsunami of laughter. But he kept his cool admirably:
No Guard, Pine Cones, said Joseph.
Pine Cones, the Guard repeated. Pine Cones. Alright, he said, and walked away, satisfied or stupefied, I don’t know which. I know he didn’t have a clue why we were gathering pine cones and that he didn’t want to ask us about it either.
A few seconds later his female colleague arrived. The third Guard, another mangarda, had decided to hang back, intending to tackle us if we breached the first line of defence I suppose. This female guard had more of the sleuth in her than the last fella and so she asked us our names and addresses, which we gave without hesitation. Whoever called them had probably told them who we were already anyway. I don't know if tree climbing or pine-gathering are on the statute books as crimes. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were. She didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter any further though and she let us go without any further questions.
After that the three Guards went on into the sewage plant for a snoop, I guess to see if we had been interfering with it. I reckon the last place I will ever be tempted to rob or to vandalise is a sewage plant. Things could badly backfire on you there.
As soon as they had satisfied themselves that myself and the brother had not been tampering with the shit product of Clonakilty, the three Guards made their way slowly and warily out of Waldaschaff Park. They got into their marked car, and drove off intrepidly in search of Blackberry pickers and Apple scrobbers and the like. I am sure that they stopped along the way to pick some conkers off a Pine tree, and some wine gums from a gorse bush while they were at it.
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