I know, hard to believe.

So if you’d just slip over here, I’d be very grateful. I’ve shifted over all the posts, and set up all the categories and even included a picture of, um, myself. No, really.

Sorry about this.

Oh, and if you’ve left comments here I’d not be averse to you leaving them again, in the same places. They’re my wages, I’ve heard it opined.

This season sees two plays that premiered in the Studio getting a full run in the theatre proper. I’ll be curious to see how they work out. The first, The Flags, won a ganseyload of awards last year, and had a healthy run at the recent Dublin Theatre Festival, although it didn’t get unambiguously positive reviews.

Written by Bridget O’Connor, and directed by Greg Hersov, who seems to direct everything at the REx, the play is apparently a hugely funny tale of two lifeguards:

JJ and Howie are lifeguards on the second-worst beach in Ireland. The job running the BEST beach in the country is unexpectedly vacant and these two are determined to clean up their acts and get the job. The trouble is JJ and Howie are not very good at being lifeguards. In fact, they’re alarmingly bad…

The best beach in Ireland, according to the play, is Banna Strand, perhaps best known as the spot where poor auld Roger Casement was captured in 1916, trying to smuggle in arms for the Easter Rising. In the play it’s described, apparently, as the perfect beach ‘with tits and ass as far as the eye can see’.

A big hit in Manchester, but met with scepticism in Dublin. I’m intrigued. It could be worth a look – maybe on a Monday.

Anyway, speaking of lifeguards, have you ever considered what happens when an enormously fat person is drowning? No, I hadn’t either, until today, when I read that a Denbighshire company has created a 28-stone training dummy so that lifeguards and firemen can practice rescuing obese people. Lifting them takes some doing, I gather.

All of which reminds me: if you’re ever at Alton Towers, about to set off on the stomach-churning launch of the Corkscrew, it’s best not to glance over towards Rita, Queen of Speed, at least if you’ve not yet braved its insane acceleration.

Because if you do you’ll see, piled on the ground below the tracks, heaps and heaps of crash test dummies.

I’m not sure if they were intact.

‘I like this. It says “bollixed”.’

‘No it doesn’t,’ I said, scrunching my face up to dismiss such an absurd idea.

‘It does! Look!’

And indeed, to my astonishment, he stretched out his hand to show me page 144, dealing with the Second Punic War:

‘Hannibal’s daring march across the mountains and sudden arrival in the Po Valley bollixed Roman plans for a pincers attak on Spain and Africa: the Roman force sent to Spain was allowed to proceed, but an expeditionary force in Sicily under the consul Tiberius Sempronius – intended for a seaborne thrust at North Africa – was withdrawn to defend northern Italy.’

Yep. Bollixed. Spelt after the fashion of Roddy Doyle, no less. Had Professors Strauss and Ober been reading The Commitments, I wondered. I didn’t wonder very long, to be fair, instead just filing this episode away under ‘A’ for ‘anecdote’.

Until today. Mark Shea, over at his (professional Catholic) website, discussing the State of Israel, comments:

‘I regard Israel as a secular nation state, not as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. I think it subject to the same rights and responsibilities under natural law that all nation states are subject to. I do not think it is the object of Special Revelation, much less the recipient of Special Privileges.

So I think views like the one expressed here are mischievous because they bollix up the political conversation with theological claims which I think form no part of the apostolic deposit of faith and are, emphatically, human tradition masquerading as revelation.’

There it is again. Bollix. Is this part of standard speech in American English?

A few years ago a report was commissioned in Britain for the likes of the BBC and the the Broadcasting Standards Commission in order to establish what words people found most offensive, and ‘bollocks’, rendered in its traditional British manner, fell in ninth place, dangling between ‘prick’ and ‘arsehole’.

If ‘bollocks’ is so bad in England, why is ‘bollix’ okay in America? Not that I’m objecting, I’m just a bit surprised.

The answer, oddly enough, doesn’t feature in this otherwise fascinating article. You could do worse than give it a gander, especially if you’re wondering how some people might be offended – or might not! – by religious swearing, where the author observes:

‘The defanging of religious taboo words is an obvious consequence of the secularization of Western culture. As G. K. Chesterton remarked, “Blasphemy itself could not survive religion; if anyone doubts that, let him try to blaspheme Odin.” ‘

Worth pondering, that.

Still, the top four were pretty decent, despite, say, Eddie Izzard having gone off the boil nearly a decade ago. They could certainly be argued with some credibility, unlike, say, Robbie Williams being voted the sixth most influential musician of the last thousand years, ahead of, say, Bach, who barely scraped into the top ten.

All of which reminds me, I see Ian Cognito is performing at the Manchester Comedy Festival. He’s on this Friday and Saturday at Charlie’s on Harter Street. No, he doesn’t make the list at all.

I think the brother saw him back in the day, back when the likes of Eddie Izzard, Sean Hughes, and Jo Brand were working the circuit and Frank Sinner was holding court in Birmingham, and was impressed. Though I may have imagined that.

He’s pointed me in the past – and did so again the other day – to A Comedian’s Tale, Ian Cognito’s rather rough and ready account of the often harsh and occasionally very strange realities of life of the road for stand-up comedians in the UK. It’s certainly worth a read, not least for jokes like this:

Not only did he clear the land of snakes, St Patrick was responsible for the Irish adopting the shamrock as their natural emblem, when he sayethed

“And isn’t the shamrock a bit like the blessed holy trinity. That mystery which none of us can truly understand can be seen in the humble shamrock. The three leaves coming from the one stem, similar to the three people in the one God. . And if we think…..”

So interrupted someone in the gathering

“For fuck’s sake Pat, if you’ve got the ace of clubs will you just put it down.”

Okay, that’s not the best there by any means, but in truth what makes it worth reading isn’t the jokes so much as the anecdotes and observations. If you read it you’ll probably conclude pretty sharpish that it’s badly in need of an editor, but there’s a fine book there trying to get out.

My point being, if I were in Manchester this weekend, rather than – say – next one, I think I’d be very tempted to go see what he’s like. It’d be the only way to find out, after all, seeing as he ‘doesn’t do’ television, and is banned from half the comedy clubs in England.

In the absence of Mr Cognito, though, I shall be happy to make do with the Moose.

I’m sure you’ll be glad to know, however, that Bellacorick’s most remarkable landmark is still intact, only a few hundred yards from the fallen tower.

If you’re ever in that magically desolate part of the world, avoiding protestors at Pollatomish and Rossport, you could do a lot worse than make your way to Bellacorick and stop by the bridge over the inappropriately named Owenmore river – inappropriate because ‘Owenmore’ derives from the Irish for ‘big river’, which it’s anything but.

Anyway, park your car, bike, or donkey or whatever, and pick up a stone, and go run it along the bridge. Or just hit stones at random.  It won’t take long before you realise why it’s known as ‘The Bellacorick Musical Bridge’.

How this architectural xylophone never made its way onto ‘Father Ted’, I will never know.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Barring the providential talents of Jonny Wilkinson, they’re still rubbish. They’re not even a shadow of the team that conquered the rugby world four years ago. These guys are journeymen and crocks. They play ugly rugby, and haven’t an ounce of creativity. They’re shocking to watch. They’re the same team that was humiliated 43-13 by Ireland just six months ago, and 36-0 by South Africa only a few weeks back.

And yet…

There’s something heroic about this, isn’t there? I thought they’d lose to Tonga. I thought they’d lose to Australia. I thought they’d lose to France. And yet somehow, they’ve ballsed it out. They’re giving everything they’ve got, refusing to be beaten, refusing to go away. It’s really hard not to admire that.

And on top of that, look at their reactions after each win they’ve somehow battled for. Look at Brian Ashton, at Phil Vickery, at Martin Corry, at Wilkinson himself. They can’t believe it. They’re amazed, ecstatic, and somehow really humble. There’s not a hint of the smugness of the Carling era, or the arrogance of the Woodward-Johnson era.

Humility. This is something I’ve never seen from an English team. I like it.

I’d kind of like Argentina to win tomorrow, and to win the whole thing. But if South Africa win tomorrow, I’ve a feeling I’ll be cheering on England next week.

Perhaps I should lie down.

Anyway, have you seen this left brain/right brain test?

It troubles me. For ages I watched the dancer, thinking she’s clearing spinning clockwise, pivoting on her left leg. So I’m right-brained, apparently, which may come as a surprise to those poor unfortunates who’ve experienced me in strategist mode, cautious, painstaking, and with an eye for every detail.

And I showed it to a physicist friend, who was even more surprised to see the dancer spinning clockwise. How can she be right-brained, for heaven’s sake? She’s a physicist!

And then I showed it to Neil, who saw her turning anti-clockwise. This astounded me. How could this be? I could well believe that my comrade-in-arms is thoroughly left-brained, but not that he’s mad.

She’s blatantly turning clockwise!

And then I read the lists of characteristics again, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her turning anticlockwise, spinning on her right leg.

And now she does whatever I tell her to, the saucy minx.

Neil says that it’s a sinusoidal projection, whatever that is, and that both directions are valid. I have no idea what that means, but I’m sure he’ll explain it on his blog. I certainly hope so.

There’s a comment below the dancer which says ‘Her breasts are very perky…I’m mesmerized. Been watching her for 2 hours now.’

That’s all. He’s happy just to watch her – admittedly – perky breasts. But which way does she turn for him? Can he make her turn at will?

Now that’s the challenge.

It’s like poledancing for nerds.

When I was a child I heard stories of a horrific murder of a child by a teenager none too far from my house, and growing into my teens I decided that it hadn’t happened, it was too monstrous, it was just a scary story made up by older brothers to frighten me. And then, a year after Jamie Bulger’s death I read an article that referred to it. I spoke to friends in work, knowing they were from the area where it happened, and the right age to remember. And I listened, horrified and spellbound, as the great unmentioned nightmare of our parish was described.

But how much was true? How much rumour? I’ve never known, and always wondered.

And so last night it took just minutes to find the initial reports and the official story of what happened here on that summer day in the seventies. How the child was initially reported to have died accidentally, and then, a few days later his killer was brought to court. Details on the murder weren’t published either at the initial hearing or the subsequent trial, and the killer’s identity was kept out of the papers, but the dates were there, the address of the murdered child, the ages of both killer and child, the names of the psychiatrist and psychologist who dealt with the killer, and the guard who headed the investigation. But what happened? All the Irish paper of record notes is that eventually a full statement was made by the accused and all the facts were made clear. It was a different world, and the facts aren’t featured. Still, the 1993 article gave the gist.

I’ve written it all down. Some horror stories are true.

The lad who was killed would have been the same age as my brother, had he lived. Over tea after reading the reports, I asked my brother about this. He hadn’t known the boy, and had never heard of this. Was he sheltered from this? Were all his friends? And if so, how did it become a ghost story for the next generation of kids in our parish?

Nobody knows now, of course. Maybe that’s for the best.

‘Turkey plans to track down rebels in Iraq‘ it blasts as a headline.

I’m glad planning is involved. That could be dangerous without some advance scheming. It wouldn’t be good to have turkeys running around the place like headless chickens. Mind, if turkeys are anything like mice, those plans could well gang aft aglay.

No, seriously.

Meanwhile, on BreakingNews.ie, I’m mildly puzzled by the headline ‘Boy, 17, left detective with “life-long injury”‘. What does this mean? Did a seventeen-year-old boy have an altercation with a detective and depart the scene, having injured the detective? Or did he depart having received a serious injury? Or had he long associated with a severely injured detective, and only recently decided to leave him? And should I just read it and find out?

I know, you probably think I need to get out more. Trust me, nowadays I think I need to get out less.

A few weeks back I read that 3,000 protestors were due to descend on to the Hill of Tara. Yes, you read that right. They were going to descend on to a hill. I only hope that they used parachutes, and that somebody took pictures.

And then today, I was listening to the news with half an ear when I heard that the national airline would be suspending four pilots because of a dispute. It wasn’t clear whether they were to be suspended from one plane or four, though I think one would be best. Yes, you can picture it, can’t you, a sleek Aer Lingus airbus gliding over Belfast, with two pilots dangling from each wing. That’d teach them.

I was drowsing off when I heard of some fierce gloomy news on the Irish wildlife front. It seems that dirty, disease-carrying foreign squirrels are not just destroying the landscape but are well on the way to wiping out our native reds. Such, at any rate, have been the findings, they said, of a nationwide survey of red squirrels. Now tell me, how in the name of all that’s holy, does one survey a squirrel?

I mean, it’s hard enough trying to corner a shopper when armed only with a clipboard.

I suspect nut bribery is involved.

You know, chuck your average panicked red a nut and you’ll surely get her attention, and then, while she nibbles warily, occasionally freezing and looking around as she wonders if she’s left the gas on, you can ask her how she feels about all these immigrants ruining the place. West of the Shannon now, don’t you know?

Not in my day, I tell you.