The Blindboy Podcast - 62 minutes of me talking about the word Gantry, enjoy !

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Psychogeography, Derive, Alienation, meaning  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Swelter heavily in the bent gantry, you gelded Emmets. Welcome to the Blindbuy podcast. Why am I using the word gantry? I just scrapped an entire podcast about the etymology of the word gantry. I frequently mention that this podcast is about, is about failure. Not just failure, but having the time to fail. And sometimes I'll write and record an entire podcast.

And it's just not good enough and I'll scrap it. And that's what happened this week. When I tried to do a podcast on the etymology of the word Gantry, I thought I had it out of my fucking system. I'm just fascinated by the word Gantry, okay? But it's not interesting enough to merit an entire podcast. I wasn't going to talk about it. So Gantry is an interesting word because you don't hear it much.

and when you do hear it, it's just one of those words that it reveals something about the person who's saying it. If you heard a person say gantry in everyday parlance, chances are that person works with electrical equipment of some description. A gantry is the type of balcony. You'll hear someone calling a balcony a gantry, but that's not correct. So a balcony, a balcony is about pleasure and leisure. a gantry is about function. If you're driving now along the motorway and you look up at

a large motorway sign or lights and then in front of that sign there's a little balcony, it's not a balcony that's a gantry. Same big giant billboard, big advertisement on the side of the road. Sometimes if you're lucky enough, usually very, very early in the morning

if you're lucky enough, you get to see the person putting up the new billboard, board with a bucket of paste and a roller. Will that person, a little metal grate that they're standing on in front of the billboard? They're standing on a gantry. Are you walking around a city now? Is there any construction going on? Is the economy doing well?

Is there construction? Look for a crane and follow all the way up to the top of that crane where you see the little cabin. Where the crane operator is. and outside that crane operator's door, the little metal grate could caught at a balcony, it's not its gantry. If that crane operator needs to get out of their cabin and walk along that long arm,

that big terrifying fucking walk, looking down on the city, the metal grate that they'd be walking on is called a gantry. What if I meet a stranger? And for whatever reason, we point up at a balcony. A balcony now is a balcony now. that that's for pleasure, that's for enjoyment, it's an architectural feature.

If one of us points up at a balcony and calls it a gantry, then I know that person works in some technical capacity. I use the word gantry because I work in the live entertainment industry. If I'm at a gig, I'm sound checking, I'm up on stage. And when I'm up on stage, I'm like, can we change the lights? I look up to the ceiling and all the lights are up there. Can we change those lights?

No problem. Let me just climb up the ladder there and I'll walk along the Gantry and fix the lights. Because that's the balcony that's in front of the lights. It's not a balcony, it's Gantry. And the word you saw I was stuck out. Gantry. Gantry, what a strange word. But also in Limerick, when I was growing up,

there's a clothing brand called Gant. Okay? And you couldn't walk around with a jumper that says Gantt. on it because in Limerick City, Gant also means vagina, which gives us in Limerick a complicated relationship with the word Gantri or the word Gantt. It's a Limerick city specific word. I've never heard it used outside of Limerick City. I've heard Limerick people try to use the word outside of Limerick City. It's never been understood. Gant is a Limerick thing. When Limerick people would go to Dublin or Cork and see people in Gant, jumpers. Limerick people.

would laugh and point and everyone would say, but the fuck you laughing and pointing it. Your jumper says Gant. And then I just start thinking, Gantri, what a strange name for the technical balcony. What an odd name, Gantri. Why is it called a Gantry? So, Gantt is an old French,

Norman word that means glove. But then the word Gantry emerges in middle English, not old English, but middle English, to mean a stash. land or Iraq. And it appears to be one of those things that reveal power structures in the English language. The Normans were French.

They conquered England in 1066. So words that cannot, consumption, ownership and wealth tend to be French. And then the words to do with labour or poverty or hard work in the field tend to be Saxon, English. I've spoken about this before. Food. poultry on the plate that comes from French poulet chicken in the field

it's beef when it's on the plate because a French Norman person is eating the beef and then it's a cow when it's in the field as it was the Saxon English who were raising the cows so you have a power structure within the English language itself there but with Gantry

Gantt means glove in old French and then you see this new word appear in Middle English or on the 1400s called Gantry which doesn't mean glove but it means frame or a stand so I went down

a research rabbit hood and it would appear that so like the Normans just French Vikings effectively William the Conqueror 1066 the current fucking royal family over there in England right I think 60%

of the wealth in England can be traced directly back to 1066 and the fucking Normans Okay. But then... So the Normans didn't like... They didn't invent sir names. But...

So before the Normans, you could have a name like... Ethelrod, the barrel maker. Because your name is Ethelrod. And you make barrels. But then maybe you stop making barrels and you just become Ethelrod of York. And...

Your second name there is kind of fluid. Well, when the Normans conquered in 1066, they were obsessed with recording everything. Like William the Conqueror did this thing called the Domesday book, which was just this massive survey of England. So the Normans went up and down England, recording the names of everybody. So Etelrod, the barrel maker, became Ethelrod Cooper, Cooper being the French word for making barrels, or Fletcher. if you made arrows or if you worked with metal

you were called Smith or if you made candles your second name became Chandler is your second name Webb well you were a weaver Skinner

worked with fur some people got names based on physical characteristics if you were tall you might have been called Long if you were tall and unemployed they wrote Ethelrod Long

so a lot of the names that people have it's this colonising force came over called the Normans and they went up and down England and was like, what the fuck do you do? I make barrels. All right, Cooper. So like with food, right? Venison. Venison on the plate, deer in the field. It's another example. So like with food, the people eating the food are Norman. They're using French, but then the people raising the food are using Old English. So you have a class structure of margers within the English language. So with the fucking Gantan, in Gantry.

Gloves were a luxury item in medieval Europe, so the people who were purchasing the luxury item, the glove, they called it a Gant. Gauntlet is another one. That still has that old French origin. Gauntlet. Big fancy metal gloves that only knights wear. Like what's posher than that?

A gauntlet. But then the people making the gloves for the rich people, they start to hang the gloves on this rack called a gantry. So now Gantry starts to enter the English language, Middle English. Then time passes and Gantry starts to mean any kind of rack that you're hanging tools on. Like a rack or a frame. And then by the time you get to modern English, it refers to like a frame or a balcony used exclusively within technical contexts. If you're using a Gantry, you're probably.

working. There's no such thing as a pleasurable gantry. That's called a fucking balcony. You're using a gantry. You're working. But then what, why? Glove, then, is an old English, Germanic word. That's a Saxon word, pre-norman. So why in the English language, are we wearing gloves and not gants? The working word survived, the glove. And the posh word didn't. But then I'm thinking, why in limerick? is vagina called Gant. What's going on? And then you start to think,

you know, Gant, French, glove. There's a bit of animatapia going on with glove there. But what business has a fancy French word doing surviving in Limerick there? And I thought I had my hot take. You see, Limerick actually did have a thriving international luxury glove industry in the 19th century. Limerick chicken skin gloves. These were incredibly thin, soft gloves that were stored inside a walnut shell, and they were so expensive and fancy that they were only purchased by European royalty.

Queens and princesses used to wear these gloves and their hands to keep their skin soft, these limerick chicken skin gloves. They were made out of the hides of aborted unborn calves, and from about 1760, up until the end, 1830s, these were being exported from Limerick. They were world famous as a luxury item, these luxury, fancy Limerick gloves. And they would have implied a lot of the working class people of Limerick

making these chicken skin gloves. So I was thinking, there you go, fancy glove industry. Maybe that's how we picked up the word Gant. But I couldn't find proof. I came to a dead end. And I would reckon I think the word Gantt, So a lot of limerick slang words. Bjure, which means girl or woman.

Shade, which means police officer. Sketch, I think, I think sketch too, which means look, take a look. A lot of these limerick words, they actually come from Gamin or Shelta, the language of Irish travellers, which again reveals power structure in language because Irish travellers are an incredibly marginalised group. So it's possible that the Gant comes from that. So if anyone knows any Irish traveller words and you've heard of Gant, please let me know. But yeah, if you're out for a walk and you see a billboard and you look at that little balcony in front of it

or you look up at a crane and you see that platform outside the cabin of the crane and you go, that's called a Gantry. You can trace all that back to 1066. and the old French word for glove. But even though it's changed context so much, it's still deeply attached to manual labour. Anyone who looks up at a balcony-like structure and refers to that as a gantry,

I can approximate what that person's job is. And I find that fascinating, but it's not grounds for an entire podcast episode. So I scrapped it. Scrapped it the other day. And I was a bit annoyed. And what I do to to come up with ideas for this podcast

to process my thoughts to achieve flow is I go on walks I've been mentioning my walks quite a bit recently I was even on the fucking radio I was on the radio before Christmas

on the Pat Kenny show and Pat Kenny who's a seasoned broadcaster I was on promoting some gig I'm contractually obligated to promote gigs so I was on the Pat Kenney show promoting Vickers Street or Belfast or something and Pat Kenny who's a seasoned broadcaster

I'm talking 40, 50 years he asks me do you have any plans for Christmas and I answered honestly I just said yeah I'm going to go for some walks and that answer was enough to provide a situation that a broadcaster is never allowed to happen on radio

radio silence. There was a period of about maybe a second and a half where nothing was said there was just silence on the radio. Dead air that's called in the industry and it must never happen. But it happened.

Because I suppose it was the wrong answer. You're not supposed to say that on the radio. When the presenter, it was like three days before Christmas, when the presenter on the radio says, what are you doing for Christmas? You're supposed to say, go for Christmas drinks, spend,

time with family. I don't know what the fuck, but I answered honestly and said, no, I'm going to go for walks, because that's what I did all Christmas. I went for a walk every single day. Mindfulness walks. No distractions. Not looking at my phone, not even listening to anything. Just checking in with all of my senses. What am I seeing? What am I smelling? What am I hearing? What am I feeling underneath my feet and at all times breathing in diaphragmatically. I breathe in and feel my tummy expand for four seconds, I hold it for two seconds and I breathe out for six seconds and that there is that's based in neuroscience. I'm doing this to let my brain and body know that I'm safe to experience the feeling of sense.

safety. Some people call it resetting your nervous system. Nervous system regulation. I just prefer to experience the feeling of safety. Because I'm on high alert as default. I don't know why, but I think since COVID. COVID wasn't great. So I'm on high alert as default.

And I just want to get back to that feeling of safety. and breathing mindfully as a continued discipline. That's a proven way to get to that point. And yes, it's working. I've been doing that now as daily practice for six or seven weeks. And things which used to be emotionally triggering for me, they're not anymore. And I mean something as simple as an uncomfortable email. If an email comes into me with some bad news, I don't over-examining.

react to that email. I don't immediately experience fear. I don't start to catastrophize about, I don't fantasize about potential terrible outcomes. Those catastrophic thoughts still come. But I noticed them. Oh, I'm thinking about the worst case scenario here. I can see that. I noticed that. That's not real. That's just a piece of fiction that I'm after writing in my brain right there. and I notice it that way, but I don't feel it. I don't feel the catastrophe. My breath doesn't become short. My heart doesn't pound.

Then I move on and just respond to the email and say, fuck it, we'll see what happens. I can't control what's happening in this email, but I can't control how I respond to it. Two months ago, I wasn't doing that. I was reacting emotionally first. So the fact that I've gotten to that place, and that I'm there because

as daily discipline and walking and practicing mindfulness. That's wonderful progress. That's great progress. And it lets me know my nervous system is returning to a place where it understands that it's safe. And when I say nervous system there, what I mean is not just my brain, but the connection that my brain has to my body. Very simply. An email comes in, threatening information.

I physically experienced that as my chest pounding and then a gut wrenching like something grabbing my belly that's my nervous system. My amygdala in my brain detects a threat the hormone of adrenaline is suddenly released. Blood is then direct to my muscles and my heart

and then digestive control is disrupted and my body says, get the fuck away, run, something bad is happening and I very quickly think oh oh I feel like something bad is happening something bad must be happening better catastrophes and think of the bad thing that's happening to justify this feeling

that's a nervous system that doesn't feel safe that's been my default I think since COVID since all the big frights of lockdown that's been my default so I'm working on my default going back to the reality is I'm perfectly safe

and this email here it doesn't make me unsafe in any way. And the only time I should be feeling that heart pounding shit is when I'm cycling my bike and I slip on some leaves and I'm now falling off the bike, that's grounds for a pumping heart. And then I'm not even thinking, like I just break my fall when I come down onto the ground. My muscles just do that. And that actually feels a bit exhilarating afterwards because the very emotional response was appropriate to the situation. In that moment, I want to was actually in a bit of danger. So this week I was disappointed because I'd scrapped the podcast

so I went on a walk. But it's not just mindfulness walks that I do when it comes to writing this podcast. I also, again to use another French word, I engage in what's called a Dereve. It's a French word that means a drift to drift. It's an anti-capitalist way going for a walk. I'm conscious of how pretentious that sounds but I did my master's degree in this shit and I find it very useful it's to walk in a derive is a bit like automatic writing

it's like a stream of consciousness way of walking the derive it was formulated by French philosopher called Guy de Bourd in the 1950s and DeBoard's theory was that cities not just cities

that the built human environment are built around capitalist utility. That roads and buildings in a city they're not built for people, they're built for the flow of goods and services. Cities optimize traffic flow,

labor, discipline. Try it have an enjoyable walk in Los Angeles. You can't. The whole city is built around cars and transport. It's overwhelming. Contrast that with an older European city that's built with humans and walking in mind. It's a different experience. And together,

walking through a city can create the feeling of alienation, which is, it's a Marxist term and what it refers to is what capitalism does to us as human beings as something unnatural. You're alienated from your labour. You might work a job just to receive money, but you don't actually experience any meaning from the job that you do. It's just a way to receive. money. You do it because you have to. Then you want to, you have to pick when you can socialise or meet friends and that's all around. You know, when you're not working, when they're not working, how do you meet up? Now you're alienated from others. Or the friends that you do have, they're at work. So you can't tell is this a friendship or is it something more strategic?

Or neurotypical or neurodivirgent, everyone does a bit of masking at work. You're performing your personality. Too much of that will alienate you from yourself and from other people. Alienation is the grind. It's the forces of capitalism that we don't question. I'm going to say don't question there. We accept these things as natural, as inevitable. Alienation is when your life is structured around survival in a system that you don't control, the pain and lack of freedom of having to pay insane rent because getting a mortgage just isn't possible.

That's not natural. That's policy. That's the financialization of housing. It doesn't have to be that way. The terror of losing your job for no reason or not having a full-time contract and not being able to predict and plan. Someone decided that.

It's not how it has to be. Unions and rights and contracts and a social net and social housing. these used to exist. They don't exist because of policy. And I suppose the big one with alienation, it's when your job, your status,

how much money you have becomes tied to your sense of self-worth. You look at what other people have and you then assume that you're less than them, your locus of evaluation. Instead of simply you have worth, just because you're a human, which is, that's the reality.

That, that's, that, that is the hard reality. All humans have equal worth. You have worth just because you're you. And someone else might have a better job or a better car or a better whatever the fuck. None of that has to do with your actual, your worth. But yet we have a system that it has, not only have us believe otherwise, but thrives on the alienation. Thrives on the lack of self-worth.

because under capitalism, it sells you the solution and the solution is consumerism. Advertising doesn't sell you a product, it sells you a better version of yourself. And that's the cycle of capitalism. So back to Guy de Board, he argued that the way that modern cities are designed, that they actively produce and enforce the feeling of alienation

because cities, the way they're designed, they move workers to jobs, They move consumers to shops. They move goods efficiently. They prevent lingering, lightering. They prevent freedom of thought. So when I go for walks, for my mindful walks,

I incorporate the dreeve, the drift into my walk. And how I do that is, when I walk around Limerick City, if I find myself following a usual path, I'll cut the opposite direction just for the crack. I'll walk through alleyways. I look at the tops of buildings. I look up.

I follow curiosity. You know, this week, I was very upset about the Gantry podcast that never happened. But as I was walking, I started to think about how utterly capitalistic a gantry is as a structure. You've no business on a gantry unless you're working there. A gantry on a crane is for construction. The gantry at a venue is for the lights.

I went wandering alleyways looking for gantry. that don't solve a purpose anymore. I've found one. In a little alleyway called Griffith Row. The back of a... A marvellous limerick restaurant called Canteen. You see, there I am now servicing capital again. At the top of Griffith Row is Costalos.

You can see Costalos, Costalos. You'd remember this from earlier podcasts. Fucking years ago. Costalos was a great Limerick nightclub that closed during the pandemic. Costalos wasn't capital. It was a public house in the truest sense.

There was a man at the door called Flan and you had to give him five euro in cash. That was it. The price never changed. And if you didn't have a fiver he just let you in anyway. So it was more of a suggested donation.

You could have 18 year olds in there. You could have 80 year olds in there. There was a man in there called Floppy Mickey. Head to toe, white denim, tight white denim, head to toe. He used to drink pints of milk and would only speak about the band's status quo. He was either 25 or 55

And you couldn't tell Because of just this thing that was going on with his skin The smoking area was a pitch black concrete cage That looked out onto an alleyway The remnants of the old textile factories of limerick Alleyways where you'd witness the ghosts Of Victorian limerick women making luxury gloves Out of the fetuses of aborted calves

The music was They could play three pixie songs back to back You weren't allowed in with holes in your jeans because Flan at the door thought that meant you were a punk and punks were trouble but punks hadn't been seen since the 70s you couldn't dance because the carpet was sticky

and everyone used to just bump into each other because there was no lights and in the corner there was a little couch where people would abuse aerosols it was a portal to the other world that disoriented your sense of space and time but if you've gone up to cost close you've gone too far so you have to come back down

but I found myself down the little alleyway Griffith Row which used to be called Theatre Lane and I was staring up at this old cordoned off rusted gantry

at the top of the building it was the gantry that used to serve at the back of the theatre Royal a theatre from Limerick that was built in the 1820s

hasn't been used since the 90s Charles Stuart Parnel spoke there the man who organised widespread rent strikes in Ireland in the 1800s

Oscar fucking wild Emily Pankhurst, the Suffragette, Roger Casement, the founder of modern human rights. The Limerick Boat Club was founded there in 1870, the boat club that I'm named after. The Prodigy played there in the 90s. The Father Ted episode, My Lovely Horse, was filmed there. And now I'm just staring up at this, a dead gantry,

a rusted dead gantry, that's cardined off, that's dangerous, that's a hazard. And I got an eyed and I said, I'm trying to get away from fucking gantries, and now I'm staring up at a gantry. I looked up and I said that gantry has been stripped of its role within capitalism. It doesn't generate income anymore. There's a beehive across the way from it on a rooftop. It's supervised by bees.

That was relevant to me because it got me thinking about the Brecht Baja, which were an early medieval Irish legal text from the 7th century within the Brehan laws, where bees were legally viewed as a public good rather than a commodity. Under the Breckbaha, nobody owns the bees. the bees decide who they own by swarming. The honey produced, it wasn't valued for speculation or hoarding or accumulation of honey or the resale profit of honey. The honey was valued as food, medicine, for ritual purposes, for hospitality.

A pre-colonial system where the bees, they're semi-autonomous, they're not property and they have natural rights, a system where there's no capitalistic alienation. and I thought fucking head all that from an old gantry, a gantry that no longer has a purpose under capitalism. That gantry is now just a balcony. I found two crack pipes underneath it

so people were using it as shelter to smoke crack. But when I looked at the old building, this is a building from the 1820s. I realised that gantry is now a book. It's a staircase that very clearly used to service an old theatre and you can use it to tell the story of 20th century history.

I promise myself this wouldn't be a fucking podcast about gantries. Here's the thing. Because it's an old rusted gantry, it's decommissioned infrastructure. It's lost its exchange value.

It doesn't generate revenue, efficiency or circulation. There's an old Irish text called the Dinshenkis. Twelve hundred years old. It's place lore. It's why places in Ireland have their names

because events are stored there. Before writing, the poets would memorize myth, stories, laws, and permanent structures in the landscape, like a very old tree or a river or a stone or a mountain, became memory nodes. The poets would read the landscape and to remember the stories, the stories would reveal themselves through the landscape,

through objects in the landscape. And that all-rusted gantry is now a memory note. You can stand there and tell the story of the theatre and all the people who visited there and everything that happened. Those stories don't generate capital, can't be commodified, they're shared amongst everybody, they're collectively owned. The rusted gantry is now, it's a tree, it's a river. It has meaning now, and that disrupts alienation.

And then I thought, geez, that'd be a great art project, I wonder could I get commissioned doing that. And then I'm back into capitalism again. Speaking of capitalism, it's time for me to fulfill my contractual obligations. and tell you about my upcoming gigs. But first let's have an ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina. I've got a little...

A little ponnet of chewing gums that doesn't have a top. I'm going to shake these around and hopefully the chewing gums will not jettison from the ponnet. Let's go.

You're going to hear an advert for some bullshit. Don't have an ocarina. Just not feeling the ocarina recently. I prefer shaking you. chewing gums. That was the chewing gum pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listened to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. Because this podcast is my full-time job,

it's how I earn a living, it's how I rent out my office. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I pay my bills, it's how I have the time and space to deliver a podcast each week, to remain consistent, to fuck a podcast up, scrap it and then record a new one. Even though this is kind of about gantries. No, this is not as gantry centric. Gantries are merely being used as a device to explore Marxist themes of alienation and the derive. All right. So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint.

or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. For that, you get four podcasts. But you know what? If you can't afford it. If you're suffering under alienation, if you don't have a job, don't worry about it.

Listen for free. You listen to this podcast for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast. Whether you pay or whether you don't pay and I get to earn a living. I'm happy with that.

What's most important to me is having the capacity to show up each week and do what I love doing and make sure that I'm passionate and congruent. So if you want to support this podcast directly, patreon.com forward slash the blindby podcast. This is a listener-funded, independent podcast.

I am not beholden to any advertisers. There's no editorial input or say on this podcast whatsoever. I put out what I want to put out. Alright, upcoming gigs. Just January the 23rd, I'm up in Waterford at the Theatre Royal. That's sold out. 31st, I'm in at the spirit of Kildare Festival.

That's almost sold out. Wednesday the 4th of February, Vicar Street. Pretty sure that's sold out now. You're literally talking. I think that one of... is sold out. But fear not, I've added a second Vicar Street date. On the 20th of April, there's a second Vicar Street date and there's tickets available for that. The 12th of February, Belfast Waterfront Theatre. We're down to the last tickets there. Galway on the 15th of February,

Leisureland. Very nearly sold out. Killarney in the eyeneck, my beautiful broom closet. All right, that's the 28th of February. A couple of tickets left for that. March. Carlo. Is that sold out? Carlo at the Visual Arts Centre on the 14th of March. 26th of March. I'm down in the Cork Opera House at the Cork Podcast Festival.

April 4th, Castle Blaney. I don't know if tickets are even out for that yet. Oh, they are, yeah. And then, Limerick, the big one. On the 9th of April, come along to Limerick at the University Concert Hall. I'm sure there's other gigs over the summer we'll get to those in time. But let's chat about England, Scotten and Wales in October 26. A lot of these tickets went over Christmas,

so if you are coming to this tour of England, Scotland and Wales, get your tickets now, because a lot of them are going quickly. London's nearly sold out completely. October 26, what have we got? Starting on the 18th. I'm in Brighton. Then I'm off to Cardiff. Then the Warwick Art Centre in Cavendry.

then Bristol, Guilford, can't wait for a bit of Guilford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead and Nottingham. That's all happening there in October 26. Looking forward to going back to Nottingham. Really enjoyed it the last time. And I was unaware that Boats, the chemist Boats, was born in Nottingham. I did not know about that. So I'll be doing an extra special visit to Boats in Nottingham. So this week's podcast was actually supposed to be about geopolitics.

People have been asking me to speak about Trump in Venezuela and I wanted to do an entire podcast about American interventions. The interventions that the US has led in Central and South America. My research is done. My writing is done. How do I intend to do a podcast about the history of US intervention Fuck interventions. Desstabilization.

I shouldn't be using the word interventions. They don't intervene to destabilize. How does that turn into a podcast about Gantries? It's because of the derive. I follow a feeling of curiosity. I follow stream of consciousness.

I follow where creativity takes me. I try not to go back to a fixed path. Even when I know what a podcast is about, if I find myself wandering we chase that feeling and that's what I've always done something within me is telling me not this week I think it's probably Iran

last week it was Venezuela now it's Iran I'm not I'm not massively informed on Iran this is my reading and please correct me if I'm wrong there's no goodies or baddies here in any of this so Iran is it's fairly clear that Iran is

theocratic fascism I don't think the people of Iran have the privileges of the type of freedoms that we in Europe take for granted so there's people there who want fucking change the media is reporting that there's 2,000 people dead

2,000 protesters dead and the other hand you have the US and Israel clearly doing an influence campaign clearly gearing up for an opportunity to bomb Iran clearly and explicitly wanting regime change in Iran but here's the thing like the US and Israel history would tell us that what they want is regime change

and then destabilisation chaos chaos violence and destabilization so that they can extract resources and gain geopolitical dominance. That's what Israel and the US do. I do not believe that Israel and the US want an outcome which benefits the people, the human beings of Iran. It's very difficult to get trustworthy information at the moment. Google's broken, Google's fucked. Five years ago, I do you Twitter. Twitter used to be great.

For reliable information, for knowing what journalists, what people to follow, that's gone. I don't trust 100% trust a lot of... It's the corporate media, Western corporate media, when it comes to Iran. Because right now they're going to be fed fuckloads of US propaganda, which is then fed to us as news. You don't know what to trust. You want to root for the people. of Iran. What do the people of Iran want? And if you're Iranian and you listen to this podcast,

please give me a shout so I can recommend who should I be following? Who should I be listening to here? Who is a good source of information? Because I want to be very cautious that I don't, that I don't offend anyone or talk out of my arse or unknowingly become a mouthpiece for propaganda because I'm being fed misinformation myself. So I think that's why this week I didn't go down the geopolitics route. And instead I went down a little alleyway. And that's the nature of the derive. To wander.

To not follow the predetermined route. And instead to... To wander and ramble. To disrupt, to momentarily disrupt alienation and find meaning. Another journey I took yesterday when I was going on my walk after I'd gone down. That lane, the theatre lane. I'll found myself wandering down a place called Joseph Street, kind of weird old Victorian Limerick, it's just near the barracks, the army barracks, which used to be a British army

barracks because Limerick was a garrison city. See, you have all these red brick row houses, little cottages that soldiers might have lived in, and there's parts of Limerick, Limerick City, especially around Joseph Street, and it doesn't feel like Ireland. It feels like being in Sheffield or Birmingham. Limerick is weird as an Irish city in that way. There was a good bit of loyalism in Limerick. A lot of Limerick people were very happy with the British presence, with British soldiers, because it drove a little mini industrial revolution and provided people with employment. British army uniforms were made in Limerick. So as Wauk, down this Joseph Street area, tiny little streets, small red-bricked, one-story Victorian houses,

little bungalows, soldiers' cottages you'd call them, kind of Angela's Ashes' territory around there. And when I'd look at old footage, there was a lot of pubs, a lot of pubs in that area, because there was a lot of soldiers, and there was a lot of people getting work from the barracks and from the soldiers. And even when you'd see songs being sung in the pubs, footage from the 50s and 60s. They weren't singing Irish, trad. It felt more like, like a fucking East End pub. There was like vaudeville songs being sung

or operas. But I ended up on the derive down Joseph Street because something pulled me there. I followed a feeling. I didn't decide I'm going to go up to Joseph Street and get a look at the red brick buildings. I followed a feeling and it took me there. And when I got there, I remembered.

Well, this is where my dad lived when he was in his early twenties and he moved to Limerick. When he moved to Limerick from Cork, he stayed here when he was a young flat. And then it dawned on me. Fuck it, he died 20 years ago this week. My dad died 20 years ago this week. And I kind of have forgotten because it's 20 years ago. 20 years is a long time. And there has been, at the middle of January, this week.

over the years this week has passed and I'd have forgotten I'd have forgotten oh fuck that this is the week that my dad died because so much time has passed and I think that's the emotion

that pulled me down Joseph Street this week and I was walking around all the little red brick Victorian cottages wondering which one did he stay in because he used to tell me fucking hilarious stories he used to stay in this little

in digs he called called it. This would have been that said the 1950s. My dad was old. My dad'd be 90 now. He died when he was 70. He had me in his 50s. But he lived in Joseph Street in the

1950s as a young fella, in Diggs, which was he didn't rent out an apartment then. There was no apartments. There would have been widows. There would have been widows. Or spinsters. And

their house, they would rent out rooms. in their house to young men who were working. So my dad lived in Diggs in Joseph Street, up in at a tiny attic, the tiny attic of a little bungalow in these Victorian red brick cottages. And he lived there with about three or four other lads. I think it was a woman called Mrs. Murphy, when she was old,

and she had a tiny dog by the name of Toby, a little Jack Russell, who would just bark and bark and bark. And my dad and his friends, they all worked out in Shannon Airport. Shannon Airport would have been fairly young at that point. But they'd have kept mad hours because they're working in an airport, so they might have to sleep during the daytime because they worked all night. But they couldn't sleep because of this fucking dog downstairs, this tiny dog barking and barking.

And there was one lad there in particular. And he just couldn't handle the dog barking. He'd go fucking nuts. and he used to wait for when the little dog would go asleep downstairs and when the dog would sleep, then this fella would go, I have to sleep now because the dog's asleep. At least he's not barking.

So he got into bed and he was in the nip. And he's like, the dog is sleeping downstairs now, so I'm going to sleep up here. And then he went to sleep. But beside his bed was an alarm clock. I've definitely told you this story before. Beside his bed was an alarm clock, one of the old ones. All the alarm clocks that you have to wind up

so there's mechanisms in it, there's moving parts. So he's in bed, nude. Alarm clock goes off. He's like, fuck, fuck, fuck. I don't want to wake the dog. The dog wakes up, he stops up, he stops barking. So he grabs the alarm clock, shoves it under the bait covers. But as he shoves it in towards his crotch,

the fucking moving parts on the alarm clock start to get stuck into his pubes. And they're winding and winding. And fucking now he's got an alarm clock stuck to his bollocks with these... He's running around the gaff. The dog is awake and barking. And he's running around this tiny Victorian bungalow. Bullocks naked with an alarm clock covering his dick,

making a loud noise. And he's to run downstairs to the old one Mrs. Murphy's screaming at her. Get a scissors, get a scissors. And I think she had to cut the alarm clock out of his balls. And my dad used to tell me that story when I was a kid. fucking love it. And it ended up. You see, my dad, my dad died when I was, I was so young that he never got to see any of my career, nothing. No professional work I've ever done. He had no idea that I'd do okay for myself. He died when I'd just gotten out of school and I failed my

leave insert, which is a death sentence in Ireland. And all of the indicators would suggest that I was going to have a very difficult life and wouldn't amount to much because look as you know in Ireland if you don't have a fucking leave insert things are very difficult and one thing in fairness to my dad

and he said this on his deadbed not to me but to one of my brothers and he said about me I'm not worried about him he's going to be fine and I always cherished that because he didn't say it to me as he said it to one of my brothers which means he believed it and I always cherished that

because it means even though all of the signifiers from society from the system were saying that I wasn't, that I wouldn't be okay that I wouldn't be fine that I didn't have a leave insert

my dad recognised something in me where he went no I'm not worried about him he'll figure out a way and he was right but he never got to see anything I ever made prank phone calls songs, podcast, nothing.

No idea. Because I was just a young fella just straight out of school and then he died. But that story about the alarm clock and the testicles, I ended up using that in the first ever, the first ever television pilot that I wrote, which was for Channel 4. And I'd been in my early 20s. I took that story about a man being in,

bed and the alarm clock getting stuck into his balls and it moving around. I took that. It was for Channel 4. It was a pilot for Channel 4 I think. Fucking ages ago, probably 15 years ago. I had a character who got into bed in the nip, same circumstances. The alarm clock gets stuck in his pubes. It's twisting and twisting and moving around. He's running around with an alarm clock over his bollocks. But in my story, the alarm clock and the alarm clock, the alarm clock, sent his sperm back in time so that his sperm impregnated his own mother.

So effectively he became his own dad, but then by becoming his own dad, he'd been an absentee parent to himself. So he had to engage in a journey of becoming both a father and son to himself. And then he broke his back

by trying to sit on his own lap. And I have to say, I'm very I'm very proud of that because that was a long time ago and I'd have been in I'd have been quite young doing that and I'm very proud of the madness of that idea

didn't get commissioned a course because it's fucking mental but there you go and then I was as I was walking around the Joseph Street again I was thinking back to the other stories he used to tell me the same house

and the same dog and the same fella so after the incident with the alarm clock and his bollocks he was fucking furious. And he hated this dog, this little Jack Russell downstairs who'd just yapping, yap and bark.

And one day this fellow was up in bed. I think it was late night. And the dog starts barking, little Jack Russell downstairs. And he'd had enough. He said, fuck this. So he crept downstairs. He got the Jack Russell and brought it up to the attic. And open the window. And threw the dog out the window. Now here's the thing It's a bungalow

So it's not Wasn't that high up You're talking about eight feet It's still not a good idea To throw a little dog out of window But the context He did it knowing that Like the dog wouldn't die

Still shouldn't have done it But he didn't fuck it out of a three-story window It was a really small Old Victorian bungalow So anyway look he gets the dog He throws the little Jack Russell Out the attic window Furious

and he shuts the window and just gets back into bed and said that fucking dog, you won't bark now. And then, like two nights later, my dad is up in the local pub, and there's a kerfuffle in the corner. There's all these people gathered around, and they're listening to someone telling a story. And my dad looks and there's a man there,

and his arm is in a sling, and he's there telling everybody how he was walking home one night in the dark and Mrs. Murphy's little Jack Russell came from nowhere and jumped into the air on top of him and broke his arm. So when the dog was thrown out the window it landed on him but he didn't think that the dog could be thrown out of the fucking window

he thought the dog actually jumped eight or nine feet into the air and attacked him by landing on his arm. And I always remembered that story from my dad And that's another one of my dad's stories that I ended up putting into my work. I have a short story in my second book, Boulevard Wren. And it's literally, it's about that, it's about, it takes elements of that story.

The dog called Toby. I think I write it from the dog's perspective of being thrown out the window and breaking a man's arm. But that's what drove me on my derive, my wonder, my drift this week. finding myself in a place in Joseph Street and only when I get there do I realise what pulled me there

it was my unconscious mind telling me your dad died 20 years ago this week because the thing is too like I'm not hard on myself for forgetting because I have forgotten in the past it was very painful when my dad died fucking awful

because I'd only just become friends with him. I was only just old enough to see him as a fellow adult. I wasn't a little child looking up at my dad. I had a little bit of meeting the human being, the person, and then he died suddenly from a brain tumour. Now I'm an adult man and I struggle to remember him or to hear the sound of his voice or to think of what he looks like.

It's all fragmented. It's all unreliable. It's all from the frame of reference of being a child and I'm not a child anymore. I'm a middle-aged grown fucking man. And I relate to the world as a middle-aged grown man. And it's difficult to remember somebody when my only context is speaking to them as a little kid

or as a teenager. And I don't know what it's like to have an adult conversation with my dad. I haven't a clue. But Joseph Street there became a memory node. The landscape revealed the story to me. The landscape brought those stories back. The place brought the stories back. Because I might have trouble remembering,

I've no idea what he smells like. Like that just hit me there. Like the senses. I can faintly remember his voice. visually it's his legs for some reason because he used to wear these cream pants but maybe just

the height that I was I'm remembering childhood shit the texture of his jumper maybe the colour of his hair it's all bits and pieces pieced together nearly the touch of his jumper but I can't rely upon that

and then I know smell I can't remember what he smelled like the most detailed information that I have are those ridiculous silly story because that's the power of storytelling, that's the power of narrative, the set up conflict resolution.

I can never forget those. And I suppose me putting them into my own fiction, that first TV pilot 15, 16 years ago, and then in my book of short stories, in 2019 or whatever it was, putting his stories into my work is, it's like me trying to fucking let him know what I've been up to.

To honour his prediction, to honour his prediction that I'm not worried about him, he's going to be okay. To let him know, you know what, you were right. And I suppose a part of me that wants his approval to impress him because he was always very supportive of, not just my creativity, but just me being a lunatic. Because I was a lunatic. I mean, fucking autism, eccentricity, whatever you want to call it.

He was a bit of a lunatic as well. But he used to just say, he's an artist, he's an artist, this is the way that artists are. And that was a lovely way of framing. Norodivergence. And I personally still frame it that way. I know I'm diagnosed as level one autistic according to the DSM. But noradivurgence is a spectrum. And I'm diagnosed autistic because that's the criteria that I fit.

But like if you were to ask me, what am I? Am I autistic? I'm like, no, I'm whatever lunatic artists are, all right? Lots of artists are quite eccentric. They might say or do strange things, and this appears to be the price that you pay in order to have access to creativity. And that's how I feel, that's what I...

That's not in the DSM, you see. Probably because it services capitalism. That's probably fucking why. But that's my neurodivergence. That's my own diagnosis for myself. It's whatever that mad artist thing is. I'm okay with that. And that's what my dad was okay with.

That's what he would say about me. When I was a teenager, when I wouldn't wear my uniform in school, because now I realize it was a sensory fucking thing, or deliberately getting kicked out of class because I knew it meant I could go and draw or come home and listen to music. So I just want to leave you with that.

That was the end of my derive this week. My unplanned wall. where I follow what feels right rather than the predetermined path. All right, dog bliss. I won't make any promises about what next week's podcast is going to be about. In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a swan. Jen, you flick to a snail.