Máiméan - scéal. scríofa.

Bhíomar ag bun an tsléibhe. Ní mór dúinn fágáil, bhí an oíche ag titim anuas. Bhí teas sa ghréine go fóill, agus tar éis an dhreap, ní raibh éinne dínn nach raibh tart fulaingteach orainn. Cuimhnigh mé go raibh uisce sa charr agam. Iontach dearfach. Bhí Cholm an duine is deireanaí síos ón tsliabh. Agus, mar is gnáth, bhí seisean ag tiomáint. Muide thíos ag fáil bháis ón tart agus eisean ag siúl mar ná raibh aon dualgas air ar domhain. Shroich Choilm an charr, agus shín sé a lámh ina phóca chun eochair an charr a fháil.

"Ó MO DHIA!!!!! CÁ BHFUIL NA FECKIN EOCHRACHA!!!!!"

B'é sin an chéad rud a chualas uaidh. Fear ciúin ann de gnáth, ach nuair a bhreathnaigh mé thall ina threo, bhí sé ag déanamh hurlamaboc den chineál nach chreidfeá dá raibh aithne agat air. Gach uile rud tógtha as a phócaí agus caite ar an talún. Chuile rud caite as a mhála chomh maith go dtí nach raibh pingin aige nach raibh i gcnoc beag ag a chois.

"Jhaysus, caithfidh siad bheith fágtha agam ar bharr, áit a raibh an phic-nic againn..." ar sé agus ní fhaca mé fear chomh dólásach agus díomách riabh, agus é ag smaoineamh faoin sliabh a dhreap arís. Ansin thosaigh sé ag rith, ar ais i dtreo bharr a sléibhe. ní raibh sé imithe i bhfad nuair a fhuair muid amach nach raibh an charr faoi ghlas in aon chor. Chuaigh Dáire, Caomhín, Aindrias agus mé féin sa tóir ar na heochracha laistigh den charr. Bhíos féin ag tógáil rudaí amach as tóin an charr, nuair a chonaic mé iad ansin: ar an talamh. Ar an feckin talamh. Nach muide uilig na heejits cheart? Bhíomar.

Nuair a bhí fhios ag gach éinne go raibh na heochracha faighte, bhí sceitimíní orainn ar fad, thosaigh Caoimhín ag rince ar díon an charr, bhí sé chomh áthasach. Rinne muid iarracht scairt a chur ar Choilm. Bhíomar in ann é a fheiceáil, agus é fós ag rith, igcéin uainn. Bhí an fón aige fanta ar an talamh sa chnoc bheag. Faoi dheireadh, agus na guthanna beagnach imithe uainn agus le cabhair ó chorn an chairr, thug sé faoi deara muid, agus thuig sé céard a bhí i gceist.

Deich nóimimt ina dhiaidh sin, bhíomar ar ár bhealach abhaile.

The Golden Hills

The cattle they were sleeping, and the hillside it was bare,
Even the farmers were getting out of there,
Monaghan was freezing, the ice was cool and still,
When Richard Conroy and his miners found gold up in the hills.

Clontibret, they all say, is a sleepy little town,
And the most gold they’ve ever seen might be a half a crown
But the news of the find shook them all up to the gills,
When Conroy and his miners found that gold up in the hills.

The councilmen unwrapped their shovels and their picks,
Loaded up their Transit vans, and headed for the sticks.
With silence and intent, the moved in for the kill,
To stake a claim, and make their name, in Monaghan’s golden hills

The press soon smelt a story, and came from far and wide,
To see the hills from where soon would flow a golden tide.
Such a crowd had not been seen before in these quiet hills
Since Sir Paul McCartney got himself hitched to Heather Mills

Well, now it’s two months later, and the cynics still abound,
They say Clontibret’s gold deposits never will be found.
It’ll never stop the optimists, who seek their glass to fill,
And they still continue searching for the gold in them there hills.

Feeling lost?

When you've happened to lose
that thing you most need
there's only one man
who can help you indeed

He doesn't ask much
whatever you can give
and he'll always be there
for as long as you live

So say it three times
and mean it as well!
His name is St. Anthony
couldn't you tell?

mind how ye go

Catharsis: a fairy tale

I'd been travelling for nearly three months. This was as close to a home as I was likely to experience for some time to come. My hosts were lovely, gracious people, wonderful cooks, and understanding of my need to meditate quietly, write my journal, and digest the experiences that I had had up to that point. Don't get me wrong, I revelled in their company, as enjoyable as any I'd had up to that point. We ate and drank our fill most evenings, went for walks in their beautiful springtime countryside during the days, and often as not spent the wee hours singing songs and telling stories. My hostess Christiania had spent some years in Eastern Europe, and had such a trove of songs as I couldn't imagine a girl of her age possessing. It was on my fifth day there, that I saw them. It was almost as if it was something that was meant to happen. A catharsis of sorts, I suppose you might say. It was close to dusk, and I had come to the veranda to smoke an evening pipe before dinner. I heard Ludwig in the kitchen, preparing some portion of flesh from a carcass he had shot and skinned himself the day before. I had begun recording some thoughts in my journal, and looking out on the peaceful pastoral scene before me, I started to feel a profound melancholy. I could only imagine it was sorrow at having to leave this place so soon. I had to spend another two months heading northward across uncharted territory before I could return to my offices in the regional capital. There were other settlers in the region, even some frontier towns, but I doubted any could match the joyful mixture of refinement and rustic self-reliance that this couple displayed. As I tamped the bowl of the pipe, sitting on a carved wooden bench, I saw a flash in my peripheral vision. I whipped around, thinking one of my hosts had troubled to come and offer me a light, and found myself alone. The thought ran through my mind that I would always be alone, and the melancholy seemed to settle even firmer on my shoulders. It was then I saw the second flash, as if someone had struck a match in the long grass, but it had been just as quickly snuffed out. I thought then of some of the old stories my grandmother had told me, of the fires of the Good Folk, and I also recalled some of the tales Christiania had related over the fire on previous evenings. And just as if they read my thoughts, I saw another flash to my right, and an answering flash to my left. Rising from the bench, I leaned on the railing of the porch, my pipe unlit in my left hand, and gazed awestruck across the sloping meadow leading toward the small stream at the foot of the hill. It seemed as though each blade of grass were home to a dancing flame, now visible, now gone. The stand of trees on the far edge of the brook lit up occasionally, and brought the hoot of an owl to life. The weight on my shoulders lifted perceptibly, and I almost felt something speak to me. I knew that this was nature's way of telling me it was time to move on. The introspection I'd been brooding on was pointless, and the past felt like just that: the past. I felt elated. The dancing lawn was my burning bush moment. I knew what I had to do. At that point I felt a soft hand on my wrist. "Fireflies" she murmured. "They always arrive this time of year. I've never seen quite so many though." She looked at me with an amused glint in her eye, as if she knew what I was thinking. "You've never seen them before, have you?" She was right. We stood in silence for a long moment after that, as the twilight deepened into the dark of night. By and by we smelt the aroma of roasted meat, and turned to go inside to the roaring fire and a beautiful meal.

Dreams?

I am currently reading 'Lord Jim' by Joseph Conrad, which is extremely dense with descriptive passages. It's rather impressive when you consider that English was not his first language. Nor was it his second. It was something around the sixth language he learned. Good man Joe. His intoxication with the East is apparent throughout, and passes on something of the impression of what India must be like. I very much want to go there. I've always dreamed about travelling, to wherever life and fortune might take me..

This is Córdoba in Spain. I was there recently, and loved the place. I also went to Seville:

While I was in Seville I had a most unusual sequence of dreams. This led me to wonder if travel encourages more vivid and lucid dream states. Is it that the brain is taking in so much new information and sensory experiences that it increases the amount of dreaming in order to clear more room on its "internal hard drive" as it were? I'd be interested to hear from other people who are regular travellers and find out their views on this. If one was to travel extensively for four to six months, for example, does dream activity become heightened, and if so, how long does it last after they have arrived back to wherever they started from. I know very little about dreams, psychology, Freud and all that, but this particular experience led me to wonder a bit more about how it all works.

thoughts

the previous two posts were written in a fairly short space of time. it's been weighing on my mind recently that I haven't been doing as much writing as I'd like. I went along to the local poetry evening today and was once again reminded of the vast scope that poetry entails and the endless opportunities for inspiration that are out there. I hope this means I've overcome the block I was experiencing. I'm making no promises though. I also did not blog about life on the road this year. There was a reason for that. danged if I remember what it was now though. Anyhow, I was once again made very aware of the vastness of the US, and the huge range of life and experience going on all over it. I would like to say that I kept notes, even mental ones, but that would be untrue. All I have is a jumble of disjointed anecdotes involving a huge number of genuine characters, and a feeling that I'm one step closer to some form of understanding.

this view across Austin is beautiful, and the colonial-style architecture reminds us that Texas has a long and colourful history.

Cresting the ridge of a pass in the high Appalachian country, Kentucky

a fiery sunset over the buttes and dunes and sagebrush of the Mojave Desert, California

a houseboat anchored in the Mississippi River, beneath a sign epitomising the upper Midwest and Plains region, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Captain's warning to a sailor who started getting Notions above his station.

Don’t be so dismissive, mate
Of race, gender or creed
Because everybody’s got something
They want or they need
to be happy, to be rich, to drink rum and act wise.
And will all cling to the lifeboat if the ship
Happens to capsize.
Ponder your own faults
The things that affright
You and leave you to shudder and shrink from their sight
And yet you pass judgement
on those who admit to
being less brave when the storm finally hits
because you personally can handle
the howling of gales and tie a neat reef knot
in the foremast topsails
But you know they have courage
and would face you down
and might acquit themselves better in a bare knuckle round
so the captain’s cabin is no place to throw stones
and there’s no place for haters
‘neath the Skull and Crossed Bones
“Heal thyself, physician, or I’ll see you becursed,
and let the crewmen rest easy, without fearing the worst.
For Davy Jones is waiting to swallow us all
whether tis by noose or by knife or by cannon ball that
we finally succumb to the disease they call life
and we don't need your judgements to cause us more strife."

A Big Man

Foxy McFagan
From far Follyertha
Travelled through wars
and deaths and rebirths
He was the man Uncle Sam wished he was meeting
And the man who moved cities
with the food he was eating

Ol' Foxy McFagan
with fulsome frowns
looked at the mountains
and they followed him down
Foxy ran across lakes and dived up through the sky
and after he left them
the deserts were dry

he rode an old mule
with worrying ways
so he hobbled its legs
and stuffed it with hay
he lit the hay on fire and roasted it through
and ate the mule's innards
and he ate the outards too.

he kept the mule's hide
scarred, scorched and sleek
and made a huge tent
where he slept for a week
not a person could wake him, his snores drove them deaf
he woke with a sneeze
and felt much refreshed

Foxy McFagan
from far Follyertha
could leather a volleyball
clean through the earth
his arms were the size of mighty Hoover Dam
and the people he'd meet would say
"That's a Big Man."

Introducing... Bruce Livingstone, Pirate Hunter

Having a TV crew following him around wasn't making Captain Bruce Livingstone's new commission any easier. They were annoying, they were demanding, but worst of all, they had no clue about shipboard life. The sound recordist had already bashed his skull off a bulkhead at least twice, so far as he knew, and they were barely a week out of Perth. 'Do the bugger good, probably,' thought Livingstone. He had been given command of HMAS Maralinga after his previous command, HMAS Toowoomba was decommissioned. It had been a dirty old tub, and patrolling the northeast coast from the Torres Strait down to Cairns had been a hell of a job. Fever and disease were rife up there, and if that wasn't bad enough, the people smugglers had upped their game. Their detection systems and weaponry were twice as technologically advanced as the Naval Command had led him to believe. One of his sailors had been shot from a rusty little barge that he wouldn't even expect to see ferrying passengers between Port Pirie and Whyalla. He had survived, and received a huge lump of compensation. The incident had highlighted the Toowoomba's elderly deficiencies, and it had been put out to pasture. 'Probably running powder out of Brisbane' Bruce mused miserably. He had enjoyed his time on her, despite the rigours of the job.
Not that he was unhappy with the new assignment. His experience dealing with the smugglers had elevated him on the list to take over from veteran captain, James White Sr., as captain of the Maralinga. It was a frigate, the biggest ship Bruce had yet commanded, and he liked that it was named for a town in his home state of South Australia. 'Bogans united, eh, old girl?', he muttered, as he stared out at the vast blue expanse of the Indian Ocean. They were about 200 nautical miles northeast of Mauritius, and had passed within sight of the island of Rodrigues early that morning. The TV crew had collared him on the way from breakfast. "Do you know what island that is? Could there be any pirates there?," the blonde presenter asked him. "Rodrigues is part of Mauritius, and their government are part of the anti-piracy agreement signed by the UN. Anyway, there's too many bloody tourists there anyway. Now excuse me, I've things to see to." With that Bruce stepped into to the bridge. "Do these kids know anything?", Bruce asked his first mate, Steve McMahon, after the door had clanged shut. Steve looked at him wearily, then shrugged. "Gives the crew something to talk about, at least." He directed his attention back to whatever he'd been doing. The TV crew obviously had no idea about what the pirates were actually up to, and Steve obviously didn't care. "They're probably expecting Blackbeard or something," he continued, from the position he was occupying in the corner. "Reckon the crew probably are, too."
Aside from what had been in the brief, Bruce had been researching the pirates himself recently, even before getting the news that he was to lead a team of 'international peace-keepers' patrolling the sea lanes between the Gulf and Madagascar. His interest in the sea had been a passion since childhood, devouring books on the history of the oceans, especially the Indian Ocean, where he now sailed. Bruce knew from the journals of the RAN and the online Naval Archives where the main pirate nests were likely to be, and he had decided to base himself near the island of Socotra, known as a regular refuelling point for the pirate's captured prizes. Bruce wasn't the type to preen, but there was no harm in making himself look good on camera. After all, even the Chief himself might see the show when it aired, and there was no harm in being the assertive, yet affable "Bruce Livingstone, pirate hunter."
Bruce was musing on his possible TV career when a junior officer called to him. "Captain, we have reports of a commotion on the foredeck, looks like somebody's gone overboard." Bruce caught up his binoculars. "Where exactly?" he asked. "Port bow, just forward of the guns, sir," came the reply. The guns were blocking his view. "Come with me, Steve." He dropped the binoculars on the desk and made for the door. "I'm going to see what's going on." This was likely to be the most interesting event for the next few days, and he might at least be there to see it. "Wonder who it is." Steve caught up with him. "Reckon the dip will have sobered him up at least." Bruce smiled grimly at Steve's directness. As they reached the main deck, a sailor ran up and saluted. "Captain, sir, we've noticed a person floating about 400 yards to port, should we launch a boat to pick them up? Only, they could be dead, these are dangerous waters." Bruce thought about it for less than a moment. "We'll launch. Lieutenant Commander McMahon will organise it." He turned to face Steve. "Here's something else for the crew to talk about. Keep me informed." "Aye, sir" came the salute, as he was already halfway up the ladder to the bridge.
Bruce wondered who they would bring aboard. It was unlikely to be one of his own crew, as they would not have let themselves float 400 yards without raising some sort of alarm. The likelihood was that it was a corpse, especially since they had not raised another vessel on the radar all that day, meaning that the body had been floating for at least 3 to 6 hours. Under the blazing November sun, that was almost equivalent to a death sentence. He watched the boat swing out on its davits and converge on the floating object. He wouldn't have noticed it himself, not from here. Just then his radio crackled with static. "Captain, sir, we've picked up a girl. Medic says she's alive, but only just." "Thank you Mr. McMahon, bring her to the ship, and see what can be done for her," Livingstone replied. He raised the field glasses again and noticed the film crew fussing agitatedly at the rail beside where the launch would be raised, while junior officers attempted to herd them to a safer distance. He narrowed his eyes, and turned away. He would attend to his other duties until further news arrived. Steve would field any questions. He had a way with words. Bruce often told him he should have been a politician. "You can say absolutely nothing with a lot of words." It meant that he could be silent and aloof while making decisions. They made a good team. 'Steve ought to get plenty of airtime on this TV show.' Bruce checked himself. He shouldn't be thinking about the TV documentary as anything other than a minor nuisance, and certainly not thinking about himself as a TV star. He forced himself to put it out of his mind as he recorded this incident in his log, and took care of some other business. He was examining a satellite image of the northern Somali coast when Steve returned to the bridge. "Captain, can you come down to sick bay, Doc John's got some interesting news to report." Bruce glanced up and nodded. "Right with you, Steve."
As they ducked through the hatch into sick bay, Medical Officer Richard John leapt up from where he sat writing a report. He saluted the Captain, and cleared his throat. "Sir, the girl hasn't regained consciousness, but she should live. She will have extensive skin damage from the long exposure to the sun. I've estimated she's been afloat for nearly twelve hours, and was probably conscious for most of that time, because she has very little water in her lungs." He paused for a breath, looking for a reaction from the Captain. It was his first time sailing under him, and this was their first professional interaction. The Captain's green eyes glinted. "First Officer McMahon informed me that you had interesting news. This isn't something I needed to come down here to find out." The Captain looked as if he was about to turn and leave. John ploughed on. "Captain, sir, I hadn't gotten to the interesting part. We've decided she's of South Asian heritage, and what is her natural skin tone is deeply discoloured by bruising all over her body. An extreme fall, such as from an aircraft, could have caused it, but we've also discovered chafe marks on her wrists and ankles, from a coarse-fibre rope, most likely, and concluded that she was a prisoner of some sort, and received a beating. No signs of sexual assault though, which is strange." The Captain looked thoughtful as he pondered the report. John waited nervously for his reaction. "Thank you, Doctor," he finally said. "Send your fully detailed report straight to me when it's ready, and make sure nobody else sees it. I also want to be alerted straight away when the girl revives." John was relieved the Captain had taken his conclusions seriously. "Aye Captain" he saluted smartly. As they were leaving, Steve looked back and added "keep that bloody film crew out of here as well." The medic nodded, and returned to his report.

Character Sketch - Giovanni Vertese

Giovanni Vertese was a man on the run from Fortune. Fortune had deserted his grandfather in the Bosphorus, long before his birth, and Fortune had left his father bitter and poverty-stricken in a damp apartment in a poor quarter of Venice. La Serenissima held no allegiance for him. Giovanni grew up hearing his father curse the Doge, curse the Sultan, curse the Greeks, and curse his father. Before his grandfather's fatal decision to defend the Greek capital, they had been wealthy merchants trading in fine silks and textiles. Now, the family scraped a living making cheap clothing from cut-offs scavenged on the wharves. Giovanni learned the scavenging trade early. Not just cloth, either. He had sewn pockets inside his tunic capable of holding all sorts of items. Apples and oranges were most common, but he often came home with pockets lined with candle butts, nails and other useful objects.
After a few years, he grew too tall and gangly to be as useful, though he was still nimble on his feet. He was too restless to be a tailor, and refused to live in the same squalor that had embittered his father. Giovanni resolved to flee the city. He saw the sea as the root of his family's woes, and so, unlike most young men of Venice, he took to horse, and faced west.

Hi Winter. Welcome back!

hey folks, sorry I haven't posted anything lately. to be honest, I'm not sure why, I think I just got lazy. Or maybe I started getting out of the house more. I've been doing stuff here and there, moving around. I'm looking for teaching jobs at the moment. Hopefully something will come up in Galway, or else I'll be leaving the country. So I'm going to be moving house soon. I've joined the gym again. Just finished recording with one of the bands. Trying to be an all-round good citizen and to keep the winter at bay. Everything's looking up. Just thought I should probably do some blogging to let you all know that I'm still around, just keeping busy getting on with my life! Might call back soon with a more developed idea for a subject. in the meantime, keep an eye on my facebook page for updates: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Diarmaid-Hurley/157404240989594
Peace and Warmth
Dermo

Somali Pirates

so this one is vaguely related to the last one, in that I wanted to write a song containing the line 'Somali Pirates in the night'. the finished song is a metaphorical musing on how sometimes we can be our own worst enemies, and the pirates symbolise that in this song. you can hear a version of the actual song on my Soundcloud page: http://soundcloud.com/diarmaid-hurley/somali-pirates-08-09-2011-15

My smile is turning upside down
Like a clown left out in the rain.
I wandered through the empty town
And never saw your sun again.
I wanted to think about you and me
And the times when we were just all right
But instead the only thing I see
Are Somali pirates in the night.

Sailing in their motorboats
Their grins and guns give me a fright
I hope I never ever see
Somali pirates in the night

You left me with a head of dreams
Melting like some toast on cheese
My river now is just a stream
My trees, some paper leaves.
My thoughts turn to my memories
Like the time you set my fire to light
But the fire will only ever remind me
Of Somali pirates in the night

Atlantic Drifter

Storm clouds gather in the north
The North Atlantic Drift's in force
But the sun still shines down from the west
as i enter the sea to take a rest
The tide is close, but not too high
The shallows stretch for half a mile
This stretch of busy beach is mine
and the passers-by just nod and smile.
For there's naught so good as clean sea air
To blow away impending doom
So here I will abide a while
before returning to my dank bedroom
The cliffs and rocks have a sallow hue
partaking of the late sun's rays
It gives me pleasure, content, and peace
To write down that 'pon which I gaze.

The Colours of Weather (or, An Amazingly Ordinary Extraordinary Journey)

Today was a lovely day, but like waves lapping on the coastline, the tiredness washed over me from time to time, due mainly to the fact I stayed up until 5am yesterday writing the previous post. Anyway, the day which greeted me upon arising from my sleep in Galway was a little drab, to say the least, slightly drizzly, and very windy. As I drove north and veered into the wilds of Mayo, the landscape changed with the weather, or vice versa, I'm not sure. The grey skies continued while I journeyed through the flat boglands around Kilkelly, but upon reaching the main road, at Swinford, the bogs turned to green fields and the sun broke through the clouds. I was able to enjoy the scenery due to the constant slow driving of almost everyone who was in front of me. The road rage was never far away, but it was tempered by the beautiful ripples of the dark-flowing river Moy, which I crossed and recrossed on my journey. This is a view I took when I stopped at Crockettstown, outside of Ballina.

And this one was taken from the same vantage point, facing north over Killala Bay to the Atlantic, where I saw clear blue skies. It was a good omen.

So as I arrived in the village of Enniscrone (or 'Inniscrone', depending on which road sign you read) I was treated to the sight of an elderly gent in a hi-vis vest directing traffic flow. I knew that there was a community 'festival' on (i.e. 'entertainment' on the side of a truck with a bad sound system and a bunch of market vendors selling trinkets nobody really needs. It's a phenomenon in many Irish country towns, and I have participated in a few myself over the years. Some quite recently. But I digress.) I was not surprised to learn that this fellow was keeping traffic away from a riverside boreen which was packed with people to watch rubber duck racing. I had an hour to kill before setting up for the gig (which was not connected to the 'festival' in the village itself) so I set myself up in the sand dunes, facing out to sea, with the sun on my neck, and fell asleep.
(One final photo, Enniscrone beach, 2pm ish)

So back to the theme, after we played the gig, we loaded the gear into the vans parked out back of the venue, which was on the sea side of the building. The sun was low at this point, and sparkled gold on the waves, bathing the town in front of me in that pretty yellow-orange shade that's so hard to describe and happens so rarely that it's almost impossible to capture on camera. (I tried, but see previous post as to why it was futile.) As the road climbed out of the village, the sunset was in my rearview mirror, but ahead of me, above the golden light was a massive thunderhead, stark grey, and directly over my path. As I drove into the rain, I saw a clear double rainbow very close to my right. The fields were that bright colour of green that you get when the rain has freshly fallen, so bright that you could almost see the life in them. As it happened, the road veered around to the right, and I felt myself passing under the storm clouds, the light changing from yellow to dark grey, and then almost blue in a matter of seconds. And then, in the middle of it all, around a bend in the road, I saw the base of the rainbow, almost like it were directly blocking my path, challenging me to chase it. I drove through it, and felt like I had achieved something intangible, but I couldn't say what that was. A minute later, the road veered east again, passing between the sea and the Ox Mountains, and in my mirror I could see behind me, from the other side of the storm clouds I had just passed, the last rays of the sunset streaking up, making the clouds bleed purple, scarlet and many shades of pink. From there, the light began to seep away, dusk taking over the weather palette. The sea on my left was a black-grey motion, with headlands and dunes in a lighter shade of blue-grey. On my right, the mountains were green, with fog and drizzle misting over the peaks. As I got closer to Ballisodare, the road became almost enclosed by overhanging trees, the type which will always remind me of horror stories heard as a child. In the final stage of my trip, it was actually dark, and the headlights lit up a rolling green landscape, crisscrossed with narrow country lanes until finally I reached my folk's place.

I can't really explain why I felt the need to describe the day, but it occurs to me that the colours of nature and weather, and especially the influence that each has on the other, are all to often taken for granted. I do it myself. But sometimes nature and weather combine, to almost roar 'TAKE NOTICE OF ME', and you can't understand why you ignore this so much of the time.

I don't know how to end this.
Peace and Love
Derm

Photography (and the lack thereof)

Hello all.
this is a test run, to see if I can post photos and/or links. I've not figured it out yet, but when I do, expect a lot more than just words.

My digital camera unfortunately suffered major brain damage after a drunken fall at a house party in New London back in April. It wasn't my fault, honestly, but luckily I managed to do some stopgap surgery to mitigate the damage done. The result is that my once-proud Canon has now been reduced to the most basic functionality. In fact, not even, as basic functions include a flash, which has ceased to work. Colour and view options are no more, and film mode is unthinkable. At least the screen works.
The reason I mention this is to explain why I have very few photos from the last few months, especially from gigs or road trips. Those that I do have (some of which are up on http://twitpic.com/photos/dermhurl if you're interested) are mostly from my phone camera (a SonyEricsson if you want to know) which is blurry at best, useless in anything but very bright daylight, and on the verge of packing in also. I plan to upgrade it within the next 6 months. As for the Canon, I have no idea whether it's salvageable at all. Will have to look into that.
I brought a disposable camera to the Prince concert. Once I get that developed, I'll post any worthy photos, with a short gig review. It was actually almost too good to be able to describe. It was enhanced by being there with a few friends whom you could easily call 'die-hard' Prince fanatics. Anyhow, that's a story for another day.

so, just to conclude here, I played a gig about two weeks ago in Shrule, a small village on the Galway-Mayo border. In the field directly beside the local hall where we played was the castle in the photo above. I'm almost certain that it should probably be called a 'tower house' but since I'm unsure, a castle it shall remain. I find the area east of Lough Corrib to be particularly intriguing historically, as there is a huge string of these castles dotted all the way from Galway city to Castlebar. I have friends who claim that to see one is to see them all, but I disagree. Each one has a story to tell, and has impacted the historical landscape it's in. This one happens to dominate a riverbank at a crossing point. Strategically placed, but now in ruins and mostly ignored, lying in the middle of a field of cattle, the interior strewn with empty Buckfast bottles, Dutch Gold cans and who knows what else. It really is a pity that we have to fight so hard to preserve historic monuments, and it seems to me that one of the biggest fights we have is against general public apathy.

Until later,
Peace, Love and Photos.
Derm