The Blindboy Podcast - A theory about the colour Grey

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

A Hot Take about the colour grey that delves into the history of offices, renaissance paintings and 2000 year old monasteries Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dia duit. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast, you glorious cunts. We haven't started a podcast off with a poem in a few weeks, and I keep getting poems submitted to me. This poem is submitted by... Can you hear the barefoot accountant as he shouts outside my door? He was roaring there now. He was roaring there now he was roaring I'll have to listen back it's possible you did not hear the barefoot accountant

and he went for a good old shout outside my door there and if you don't hear it that means that my soundproofing is working I'm not going to explain that I'm not going to explain what that was about if you didn't understand it

it means you weren't listening to the previous podcasts we were interrupted by the barefoot accountant but I have a poem for you this week I found it in a mouse's nest behind a microwave in my mother's house that's a true story by the way my ma over the winter, I can't believe I didn't tell you this, I'd forgotten it. It was so funny I'd forgotten

it. Over the winter my ma, my ma noticed that all the sticks, as she referred to them, the sticks on the top of her apples were disappearing from her kitchen, right? So do you know when you have an apple and it has that little bit of a stick, the stick that connects the apple to the branch? So my ma noticed that all the sticks on her apples were disappearing. And then she found a mouse's nest behind her microwave composed entirely of her missing apple sticks. So this is a poem I found in that nest and it's called Patrick Swayze's Daycare. Bring your children to Patrick Swayze's daycare, with branches in Kerry and Sneem, where toddlers can coddle and dream. Patrick Swayze is dead, but his memory is alive in

Patrick Swayze's daycare. We play pool with Malupa, we draw pictures of Oprah. There's big long nappies for big long babies, and rashers for daddies who were born in the 80s. There would be no colic, no crope, no cradle cap, not in this fucking creche. It's not a room, it's a corridor. It's Long Creche Prison. Big lanky corridors for big lanky children. Did you enjoy the 1995 road comedy film

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, starring Patrick Swayze and co-starring John Leguizamo and Wesley Snipes? Well then drop your inference off at Patrick Swayze's daycare with branches in Kerry and Snean.

So that was a poem that was written poem that was. Written by a mouse. Who steals the sticks off the tops of apples. And makes nests behind my mother's microwave. And she. When it happened. She'd found the nest.

And she was like. Kind of pleasantly surprised. That like wow the mice have built the nest exclusively out of apple sticks but then the mice started to kind of get out of control she wanted to leave the nest be but then there was just more and more mice and they were really I think the moment

that made her decide, that she needed to get mousetraps, was, she, she was on the phone, to her sister, sitting, sitting on the couch,

and a fucking mouse, came up, onto the windowsill, and just, that's it, they're staring at her. And it was the temerity and brazenness of that mouse's stare that got like all of them killed. He'd broken the rules of mouse-human cohabitation.

And the rules basically are, if you've got mice in your house the mouse's job is to stay out of the way like mice don't want you to see them they run between couches they hide and that's the contract that humans and mice have in a house together and my ma was willing to adhere to that contract but then your man broke it with his fucking stare she said he looked like Hugh Hefner and then she'd start ringing me up talking about Hugh Hefner and I'd forget that she's talking about a mouse and then I'd say to her because she had a cat called Judy and I'd say to her why the fuck you know why are the mice in the house like is Jodie not getting them are they not scared of Jodie

but then she said that Jodie moved into the neighbours house because they had better food so that's why the mice she was overrun with mice because the neighbours had tastier cat food Jodie moved away and then she was like

fuck it I have to do something about these mice. So she started laying down traps, but then hated every time she'd caught a mouse. And then she'd ring me up every time she'd caught a mouse. And it was like listening to a fucking, a war reporter documenting a genocide and Hugh Hefner was killed. And so to this day I refuse to accept an apple off my mother. Would I eat an apple that a mouse had to stick off? Do you know, for some reason I would. I'd just wash it under a tap.

And I don't know what goes on in orchards anyway. There could be mice all over the branches all the time. And I don't know what goes on in orchards anyway. There could be mice all over the branches all the time. You get bananas nowadays and you might find a South American orb-weaving spider inside it, you know. I'll tell you what fruit I'm legitimately wary of. And I don't know is it an urban legend or not. But certain shops in Limerick City Centre, okay. Now this could be an urban myth

it's what people say I don't have proof for it but people have said to me that don't buy oranges out of that shop I'm like why and they said it's because people who use heroin

stick their needles into the oranges to clean them now I don't know if it's true or not but it's such that's such a violent and vivid image that it's put me off

city centre oranges tiny bit of housekeeping before we proceed live podcast gigs I've got three Vicar Street gigs at the end of March gigs at the end of March one at the end of March and two in April they will be fantastic crack, I've only got two months

I've one month left to promote these fucking gigs because of lockdown please come along to my Vicar Street gigs you'll get the tickets on Google if you liked last week's podcast with Dermot Whelan you're going to love these Vicar Street gigs I've got class guests. It'll be a load of fun.

Also Cork, Opera House and Two St. Luke's. That's in March. I think Opera House is sold out, but there's tickets left for St. Luke's. And I'm in Mayo this Friday. Come along to the live Blind Boy podcast gigs. They will be tremendous fun. And you can find those tickets on Google if you type in the relevant details

also fucking Barcelona and Madrid in May those gigs those gigs are selling out quickly so I might add extra dates but Barcelona and Madrid so this week's podcast is not about tainted or adulterated fruit

in a way actually it is it is about tainted fruit in a very roundabout way. But I'll get back to that. I'll get back to that later. So this week's podcast is a historical hot take journey, which I know that you enjoy. So I had intended this week's podcast to be about the history of offices. And the reason for that is, you'll know if you've been listening to this podcast recently, that I've acquired an office and I'm now recording this podcast in an office. And I love this office.

It's soundproofed. It's always clean. It's soundproofed. It's always clean. I can have clear thoughts in this office because everything is so structured and grey. I love it. However, my thoughts have been so clear

that the only thing I can think about is offices because I'm in one, if that makes sense. So I haven't been able to not think about offices for quite a while. And the only solution to this was to address that head on. All right, if you can't stop thinking about offices, then learn as much as possible about offices and then get it out of your system. So that was my intention for this week's podcast, because that's my process with hot takes there's

no rules for hot takes and I tend to follow whatever my brain wants me to follow I won't fight it if my brain says to me you can't do a podcast about offices you can't do that then I know that that that little negative voice is my own insecurity and it gets in the way of creativity so the best thing to do is embrace the failure that's what I mean when I say embrace failure if I have a recurrent thought and my mind says to me that's a silly idea never allow it be silly go with the silly idea because it's actually my brain telling me something good so I went looking into the history of offices, and it led me down a wonderful journey that had absolutely fuck all to do with offices.

And that's the story I'm going to tell you today. Offices are incredibly interesting because, right now, they're really becoming irrelevant. Over the past two years of lockdown, people are being asked to return to work. And a lot of people are going, what's the fucking point? What's the point?

We've been working from home for two years and a lot of people are actually happier and they have more time in their day to get that work done. Also, the phrase return to work is in itself ridiculous because the work is getting done. It's just happening in a different place. It's happening in people's homes. So when you say return to work, it exposes a flaw in the ideology of what an office is. Because the thing is with office culture, you think you're working a nine to five, but you're not really because it doesn't include that commute and you're not paid for that commute. And that commute isn't leisure time.

It's time that's put in place against your will to get to and from your office. And as rents increase around the world, our distances that we have to travel from our home and our office are getting bigger so people's commutes are getting bigger and it's not weird or out of place for someone living in London or Dublin to have a two-hour commute each way to fucking work so you think you're doing a nine-to-five but there's four hours out of your day there that certainly aren't leisure and that you're not getting paid to 5 but there's 4 hours out of your day there that certainly aren't leisure and that you're not getting paid for and a lot of people are rejecting this

saying fuck that I'm not going back into the office we've shown that the office is irrelevant it's also exposing unnecessary hierarchies and a kind of a sinister ideology around office culture and I'll tell you what I mean by that

I'm going to base this on my own experience when I once worked in a proper office office in a call center you know and I remember it feeling a little bit like school the bosses would come in or the team leader would come in and they're just another adult like me and I had to treat them differently the way you treat a teacher and it wasn't simple me taking accountability and answering to another person it was more than that it was emotional

this person was the teacher and I was the student and I was less than them and I fucking hated that because I'm an adult and they're an adult as well it's different when I'm a child and the physical office environment amplifies that emotional ambience right there. Now the office that

I'm in right now it's a shared office space so there's multiple companies here. I'm here doing my own thing but I go down to the canteen and I speak to people and I've been conducting research about whether they're happy to return to work or not. And I've been using this office for me to practice small talk, to speak to people, to use empathy, to do all these things that are very beneficial to me and my mental health. Shit that I didn't get to do over lockdown. I really fell out of practice with just speaking to people, speaking to strangers over the past two years and it had a quite a poor effect on me and my mental health. So I've been asking people working in the different companies here when I've been down in the canteen, are you happy to be back at work? Would you prefer

to be back home doing your Zoom calls? And I've been learning some interesting shit. Most people aren't happy at all and here's some of the feedback I've been getting so you know that feeling where your boss or your team leader isn't another adult but they're actually like a teacher that they're a more important human being you can't do that in a fucking zoom call on a zoom call you're in your own gaff you have that sense of protection and safety of being in your own home. And then you're speaking to your boss and they can't use their webcam. And all of a sudden you're presented with a fallible human being who it becomes quite apparent that because they're middle or higher management,

they haven't had to use a computer in a long time. They haven't needed to exercise skills or flexibility in thinking and quite a lot of people are going holy fuck my boss is incompetent. I kind of felt it in the office when I was there but they're the big boss in the suit but now they're just a man in his 50s sitting in front of a child's wardrobe wondering which button is google so the process of zoom calls and working for home has shattered the emotional boundaries of hierarchy not the structural boundaries but the emotional ones and what that does is it causes people to lose respect for the people that are above them which is very dangerous if you're running a company and it's also shown that quite a lot of managers don't actually do a lot of work instead they require the physical office space so that they

can walk around telling other people to do the work and that's harder to pull off on zoom as well so i've been getting some championship gossip i've really enjoyed uh doing that and speaking to people and finding things out like that i'm'm not going to rat anyone out. But I also kind of hope that I cause a mutiny in some accountancy firm, that I get asked to leave the entire office complex because of that. I think I'd like that on my CV. But I think this shit is why so many managers have the absolute horn to get everyone back into the office when the employees are saying, what's the point we're happier and doing the same amount of work what's the problem and I think this is the problem and you can see it reflected in the words of the government the phrase back to work is meaningless if you've

been working perfectly well from home if you work in a restaurant and it was shut down or if you work in my industry the live industry then you and it was shut down, or if you work in my industry, the live industry, then you're actually going back to work. But if you've been doing a grand job at home on Zoom, then you're not going back to work, you're going back to the office and you're asking questions about why it's relevant. And another very telling statement that I saw, I can't remember who said this, but it was someone in the Irish government and they basically said okay if some people don't want to return to the office maybe we can agree that

however the offices should get to pay less wages now tell me how that makes sense because if a company doesn't need an office because the workers are working from home then surely the company's bills are reduced they now don't have to rent an office and the workers are working from home, then surely the company's bills are reduced. They now don't have to rent an office and they're saving money. So they should be paying their workers more money to work from home. That seems fair, not less money, unless you are middle or upper management and your job is irrelevant when the office doesn't exist. Then, working on Zoom is literally pointless for you

and your work is actually walking around the office doing fuck all, telling other people what to do while your ego is getting polished. So if that's the case, what you need to do is have a think about whether your job is actually work. And I'm not shitting on anyone who's in management all right what do I know about your job maybe you do tons of fucking work what I'm doing is reporting back opinions that I've heard in a very large shared office space with multiple corporate entities the other thing that offices do and this is particularly relevant in the kind of the tech industry the

startup industry the cool office space the office spaces of giant social media companies where you have your pool tables and your bean bags and your breakfast is free and your dinner is free and you don't have to wear a uniform and you don't even have a desk because all the desks are floating and it doesn't even feel like an office because it feels like just being in college and having a laugh. Often these office environments are the most hostile because your boss doesn't feel like your teacher. Your boss feels like your really friendly cool parent who's given you lots of lovely toys. And that office space is actively infantilizing you. That boss wants you not to be a student, but to be a child. And they want you to have the type of loyalty that a child gives to a caregiver, because that's what that space is doing.

It's giving you toys, it's giving you fun, it's giving you food, but it's not giving you as autonomous adult rights, like a union for instance, or a full-time contract. And when you ask for these things, you're not standing up for your rights, you're disappointing a parent. I covered all that before in a podcast, Can't remember the fucking name of it. It was from about 2018. But I did a hot take where I said that

tech companies have based their office environment on the Tom Hanks film Big. But this podcast isn't about offices. It started off about offices but it went in a different direction. So I went looking up the history of offices and

how offices came about because they didn't really exist in the middle ages in the middle ages like if you didn't work on a farm or something but if you were someone who was a shopkeeper or you were a crafts person or you made shit you didn't go somewhere to do it. You did it out of your own home. So you lived where you worked and this was normal. And offices kind of came about around the 1500s with mercantilism and colonialism. The large-scale trading of goods internationally. Modern capitalism, colonialism. Countries, the great nations of Europe taking over countries all over the world, colonizing them, extracting the wealth and goods from these countries and then trading them around the world using ships. These are the roots of modern corporations.

So once you had these companies that were selling all this shit, then you needed to have someone who could document and record all that information. So, for example, the Medici family. The Medici family were this dynastic family of bankers and traders in Florence, in Italy, in the Renaissance period, who became incredibly wealthy from trading goods. They were also hugely important patrons of the arts but the Medici family were shipping shit all around the world and they needed a new class of worker to record all that activity. So now you don't have manual labor you've got bookkeepers and people doing clerical work to keep track of massive amounts of money and trade that hadn't really existed before that

point. There's a gallery, an art gallery in Florence in Italy, which I haven't been to, but I intend to go there at some point in my life, because it's one of the most incredible art galleries in the world. It's called the Uffizi gallery in Florence and you have some of the most important paintings in western visual history in this gallery you've got work by Giotto, Paolo Uccello like I covered these lads in great detail in a podcast I did about the history of perspective. You've got Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht D'Oro, Caravaggio's paintings are there, Rembrandt's paintings are there. So this massive gallery, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, has got all these important paintings there.

But it wasn't always a gallery. You see, the Medici family, who were these huge merchants and bankers in the 1500s and in the Renaissance, the Medici family used to own this building. And the thing with the Medici family is, yes they were these huge traders and they were

making all this money, but they were also patrons of very important artists. The Medicis were the patrons of the turtles. Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, all of those painters were able to make art because the Medici family said, we're your patrons. We give you money. You make the art. All right. And what we're going to do with that art is show it off it's going to become a visual

representation of our power and our closeness to god because artists back in the renaissance times like you have to remember there's no tv there's no fucking magazines a painting is not something that you can copy and see on a screen it's something you have to physically visit so paintings were very very important things and people would have genuinely believed that someone like Leonardo or Michelangelo were like angels on earth their talent was so phenomenal that the only explanation was that these special people are conduits of God. So when you see a Michelangelo sculpture or a Michelangelo fresco or a Leonardo painting, you're not just seeing the work of a human being, you're seeing God working its way through a human being via their talents. So if you're the Medici family and you're the person paying for this work to be made,

So if you're the Medici family and you're the person paying for this work to be made, then you're close to God and you're as powerful as God. And this Uffizi gallery that I'm speaking about, the place that's a gallery today, it wasn't always a gallery. It was the clerical offices of the Medici family. That's why it's called Uffizi. Uffizi means offices. And it would have had loads of people working there doing clerical work doing bookkeeping keeping all the records these were

office workers and in their office in the Uffizi they were surrounded by these wonderful pieces of artwork from these masters that were the hand of God and that there is corporate branding. Now the church had been doing this for years and so had royalty all right. Get an artist to paint a picture to paint a portrait become their patron then you look closer to God and this visually legitimizes your power via the overwhelming spectacle of art. Because art in the Middle Ages was overwhelming. It didn't have anything like it. And it didn't really have science to explain it away as just the work of a talented human.

This was God working through humans. But the Medici and their Uffizi building in Florence, this is the first real example of the corporate office and corporate branding and it legitimized colonialism because people were human beings and even in the 1500s people would have asked questions such as where are you getting all this gold? Where are you getting all this opium? Where are you getting all this silk? Should we really take over a country and extract their resources and kill all the people there

just to get the nice things and sell them? Is that okay? And often it was legitimized via proximity to God. Yeah, it is okay. These people aren't Christian. These people don't believe in the word of Christ. So we're going to take all their shit but also teach them about Christ. So it's absolutely totally okay. These people aren't Christian. These people don't believe in the word of Christ. So we're going to take all their shit

but also teach them about Christ. So it's absolutely totally okay. Look at that class painting. So art was used in a corporate way by the Medici's in their Uffizi offices to legitimise power. And this is something that's still present in offices today. Not as much

but you will find large offices like it. very fancy offices will buy expensive artwork for the offices for a couple of reasons you can buy artwork for your office and put it against your tax bill so you're investing in an asset that you're not paying tax on and also can appreciate in value if you sell it. But in the 20th century, modern art, modern art was, a load of it was bought up by offices. You look at an episode of Mad Men. Mad Men is a brilliant TV series,

but it's about an office space, an advertising office space in the 1960s in America. But sometimes Mad Men can be good crack to watch if you know your art, because you'll see in the background they might have a Robert Motherwell painting or have seen a Franz Klein painting in the background and these are 20th century modern artists of a school known as American Abstract Expressionism. Again I've done a podcast on this. American Abstract Expressionism was heavily funded by the CIA and this is one of the reasons that American Abstract Expressionist paintings ended up in American 20th century corporate headquarters and offices. But the main point I'm making is,

in the history of offices, the Uffizi in Florence is the first real modern office. That's the first real modern corporate office. A building that not only contained hundreds of these clerks and accountants and bookkeepers, but a building that represented corporate power and corporate branding. Then I started to think more about the people who work in offices.

People who work in offices are often referred to as clerical workers. A clerical workers. A clerical worker is someone who does administrative tasks. It's kind of a broad definition. You don't know what a clerical worker or a clerk does. You just know they push papers, they enter data. It's a catch-all term for someone who works in an office. So I started to look into the word clerical,

and this is where my hot take starts to take quite an odd and fun, enjoyable term that takes us away from offices. The word clerical can be traced to the 11th century. Clerical work was considered unnatural. Unnatural work in that it was very distant to nature. This is not work that's done outside, it's work that's done inside. Cleric is, it's an old English word, it's early English. And it's a religious word, it literally means a priest, scholar or a student. That's what a cleric is.

So I'm thinking, how the fuck, why today are office workers called clerical workers? What does office work have to do with religion? The answer is nothing. But what clerical work does have to do with the modern office is the unnatural quality of it. It's distance from nature. This is where my little hot take is. So in the office that I'm in right now, that I'm sitting in right now, the walls are what I can only describe as office grey. This is a very bare room. I've added some sound panels in here, but the carpet is grey. some sound panels in here but the carpet is grey. Everything is office fucking grey. It's the same grey as my school pants. Now me personally I want this because my studio at home is cluttered and colourful and fun and enjoyable and this was a bit overstimulating for me. So when I got this office that's grey and clinical and sparse and austere,

it helps me to focus and it helps me to work. But these are only positive things for me because I'm in this office on my own terms, on my own boss and I'm doing work that I thoroughly enjoy. I love being here and I love doing this work. If I was in this office doing work I didn't enjoy or I had to lick the sack of a boss I didn't like then I'd be very unhappy and these grey walls would make me follow the rules and feel a bit shitty and not question anything and not think about enjoyment. The visual purpose of these grey walls and they're ubiquitous in offices all around the world. The carpets are grey, the walls are grey. The visual purpose of this is to make me toe the line, to not think about my life, to not think

about enjoyment, to remind me at all times I am here to work and I'm on somebody else's time. And this is why too you can often tell a person's hierarchy within an office number one by the fact that they have their own little office and number two by the amount of individual flair that they're allowed to add to that office if you walk into the office of a manager or a boss they're still in an office but they've got photographs of their family and they might have artwork on the walls that they enjoy. This communicates power and freedom. The freedom to express who they are and to make the rules rather than follow them. They might also have a novelty item like one of those singing fish on the wall to communicate

that I'm your boss but I'm fun. Sit down and have a chat anytime you want Niall. The door is always open and there's going to be some layoffs. But your average clerk, your clerical worker, they're not allowed to add this individual flair. And office grey means business. Do your work. Shut the fuck up. It's not home time. And this is why school pants are the same colour. I guarantee it. To condition us, your pants become the walls. And evidence of this can be seen in the news cycle right now. The Olympia Theatre in Dublin, which is a famous Dublin theatre, was recently bought and rebranded by Three, the mobile phone company.

And the Olympia Theatre has traditionally been red on the outside. phone company and the Olympia Theatre has traditionally been red on the outside and this week they announced that they'd be painting it grey as part of the corporate takeover and people got very upset, very very upset and you might be thinking who cares they're painting a building grey. People are annoyed because we understand the semiotics of what grey means. It has become a visual representation of the corporate takeover of Dublin. If they painted it purple, no one would give a fuck. We all know what grey means. This grey is quite oppressive. But why is that and where does it come from? And this is where I have a little hot take. There's a tiny island off the coast of Kerry called Skellig Mickle. Skellig means in Irish

jagged pointy rocks. You might know Skellig Mickle from the recent Star Wars films. It's such an odd little rock that they figured it would be a good environment for an alien landscape. There's mention of Skellig Mickal going back 3,000 years in Irish mythology. One of the most beautiful things about Irish mythology, in particular the Irish annals, is we now know using genetic data, we know that Ireland was first inhabited by people from Spain. And there's evidence for this in Irish scriptures going back thousands of years where they say that Ireland was first inhabited

by the Miletians and the son of the Miletians Mil Espana literally means from Spain is said to have died and been buried in Skellig Mikkel like 3000 fucking years ago but Skellig Mikkel

is this weird little jagged rock island that you can only get to by boat off the coast of Kerry. And for years and years it was a monastic settlement. And one of the most important groups of monks to settle on this tiny little weird rock off Kerry, there were a group of monks known as the Culdees. And the Culdees were ascetic monks. Now an ascetic monk meant they lived almost a life of torture in order to be closer to God. So ascetics, they want the absolute basics. Anything in life that is remotely pleasurable or that leads to temptation

an ascetic wants nothing to do with it. Water, plain food and absolute isolation. They barely want to even see other people so that they can focus on their work and be closer to God and that's it. And the Kuldees founded a settlement on Skellig Mikl in the year AD 60. So that's 60 years after the fucking birth of Christ, nearly 2000 years ago. They set up this monastery here on Skellig Mikl. And it began a tradition that lasted another maybe 1500 years, could be wrong with that, but it lasted well over a thousand years. A tradition of monasteries existing on this tiny little island that's miles away from anything. Completely unnatural. The only thing on this island are, you can barely walk anywhere because there's not that much land to actually walk around.

There's a few birds, there's gannets, puffins. And I think there's a couple of seals that the monks used to possibly fuck. I'm not sure about that but I heard that the monks used to fuck the seals. But these monks were clerics. They lived in tiny grey stone buildings shaped like beehives that were known as clachans and what these monks would do is they would dedicate their entire life to creating illuminated manuscripts

think like the book of Kells but not the book of Kells they would dedicate all their time to working in these little grey clachans and they would they would create the gospels, or they would document Irish mythology,

in these beautiful books, in utter isolation, with no distraction, with only the grey stone walls, to remind them to focus on their work, focus on their work, that's it. And these monks, a bit like the Medicis being patrons of Leonardo

and Michelangelo, these monks were, they didn't consider this stuff to be their work. They weren't skilled humans. What they were, were ascetic monks, so far removed from the pleasures of being human, that they could communicate directly with God and focus only on their work. And create the works of God. And this is why people who work in offices are called clerical workers. Not specifically Skellig Mikkel, but Skellig Mikkel was very important in what a cleric was to become. but Skellig Mikkel was very important in what a cleric was to become. So you can trace the term clerical right back to monks who worked in ascetic environments where it was all grey and that's why I think my office is grey today.

And it's not insane to think that. If an office worker is still called a cleric, then why should that survive millennia and then not the aesthetics of asceticism along with it? I'm here in this austere little grey room designed for a modern cleric. Just like a cleric in Skellig Mickle was in another little grey room of stones in the Atlantic Ocean on a little island

and that's where I think the office comes from I think that's the roots of office culture and it's a hot take but it's a very plausible hot take Ireland was a very very important place within the known world before we were invaded by the Brits. While Britain was collapsing in the Roman Empire,

Ireland was creating illuminated manuscripts. It was the land of saints and scholars. There were many monasteries, especially before the Vikings came. And there were two places in Europe where this shit was happening. There was Ireland and also the Islamic Caliphate that was in Spain. So I think the modern office, it's a very Irish thing. It's monastic, it's ascetic, it's grey stone walls that are now reflected all around us in the offices that we visit today. The colour grey latched onto the word cleric and still survives. And the colour grey latched onto the word cleric and still survives. And the colour grey in contemporary office culture

means the same thing it meant a thousand years ago. It's unnatural. It's distant from nature. It's grey rock. It's not green. Don't be thinking about the trees. Don't be thinking about the Garden of Eden.

Don't be thinking about the apples. Think only about the grey rock and the work that you must do today so that's part one of this hot take because part two again is related to Skellig Mikkel and it's not about offices it's about something else

so before we move on to part two of the hot take let's have our little ocarina pause now I'm here in my office and I don't have an ocarina I don't have a lot of shit in this office because I'm trying to be austere like an ascetic monk so what can I do to make

a noise for the pause while you hear some advertisements I'm going to take off my shoes in memory of the barefoot accountant who's probably gone home now because I'm recording here at night time. I'm going to take off my shoes and I'm going to rub my feet on the office grey carpet and hopefully generate some static while I'm at it. So here's the office grey sock carpet pause in memory of the barefoot accountant. Hope you can hear my feet on the carpet now.

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Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you.

No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? It's the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey!

Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first omen. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. You hear that? You probably can't hear it, but I'm...

I am definitely rubbing my feet on the ground. I am definitely rubbing my feet on the ground and I built up quite a bit of static electricity there I can feel it in my bones I can feel it in my body that was actually quite nice I experienced that as a a type of sparkly energy

I might have a go at that again maybe that's what the fucking barefoot accountant is trying to do. So you would have heard an advert there while I was rubbing my feet on the carpet. I don't know what the advert was for. That advert was algorithmically generated by ACAST, depending on what you search for. Support for this podcast

comes via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you enjoy this podcast if this podcast is providing you with solace during your working day a lot of people listen to this podcast

while they're at work and they do it because they're trying to escape. The austerity of the work that they don't enjoy. Your walls might be grey. But if you're listening to this podcast. You have a little internal freedom inside in your head. And I'm very happy to provide you with that.

But if you do enjoy it. Just please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. I adore making this podcast. But it is quite a bit of work to do all the research that I do. And only because this podcast is my full-time job am I able to do it. Do you want to become my own personal, the Medici family, without colonising the country? Well you can. By becoming a patron of this podcast by being

a patron i get to earn a living and make this podcast and do the stuff i do on twitch and have time to write my books so this podcast allows me to exist as an artist so thank you to all my patrons for making that possible. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Buy Podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And for that, you get four podcasts a month. If you can't afford it,

if you're out of work, if you just don't have the money, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. And if you can't afford it, you're paying for the person who can't afford it to listen for free. It's a lovely model that's based on kindness and soundness.

Also, it keeps the podcast fully independent. I'm not beholden to any advertisers. No advertiser can come to me and ask me to adjust my content. Don't speak about this. Don't do a podcast that mentions a rival brand. Don't do a podcast that uses that word. Don't speak about this don't do a podcast that mentions a rival brand don't do a podcast that uses that word don't speak about this speak about that instead because i have patrons i can tell advertisers to fuck off and advertisers advertise on this podcast on my terms because i have to have advertisers as part of my contract with acast And also thank you to my patrons for making it possible for me to have this fucking office

because I rent this office and that costs money. But that's just an overhead now as part of this being my full-time job. Support all independent podcasts, not just mine. The podcast space is being painted grey. The podcast space is being painted corporate grey at the moment because huge amounts of money is being pumped into all these massive podcasts where they're getting celebrities and all this stuff to make a podcast. Quite a lot of it isn't good quality content

and then independent podcasters who are making podcasts about things they're passionate about are getting forgotten and buried amongst all that corporate grey shite. So support all independent podcasters. You can do that monetarily or simply by sharing it, talking about it, leaving reviews. Dog bless. So part two of my hot take. Firstly, actually, I do want to report that it is a reasonable time I'm recording this podcast at a reasonable time. It's late-ish.

It's 9pm and I'm in my office. But that's okay. I'm going to be finished soon. I'm going to hop up onto my bike. I'm going to go home, have a cup of tea and I'll be in bed at a reasonable hour. That's one of the main reasons as well I got this fucking office because I was losing track of time.

So in here I can keep track of time and the monastic austerity of it is allowing me to maintain focus. So I'm going to sleep well tonight at a reasonable time and get up early, well rested and go for a little run which is something I haven't been able to do over the past two years. Because I've been fucking recording the podcast until eight in the morning. Like a lunatic.

So while I was. Tracing the origins of the office. The Skellig Mikkel. I found out something quite fucking weird. And interesting about Skellig Mikkel. So Easter. Happens at a different time. On Skellig Micol. So Easter happens at a different time on Skellig Micol. So when Ireland was invaded by the Normans, the Brits, in the 1100s, and I covered this in detail in a podcast

from a few months back called Topographica Hibernica, but one of the justifications that the Normans used to invade Ireland is they went to the Pope at the time who was English and said here the Irish are doing Christianity wrong have you seen what they're up to they're fucking lunatics they are doing Christianity wrong and then the Pope said okay Britain go and invade Ireland and teach them how to do Christianity properly. So there were many accusations made against the Irish. One of them was that Ireland had a different ecclesiastical calendar to Rome. Ireland had calculated that Easter fell on a different day than Rome calculated it.

So Ireland's Easter time was different to Rome. Then eventually Ireland was made to toe the line and say, look, everybody in Christendom has the same fucking time for Easter, Ireland, alright? Cop on. So Ireland did cop on, except for Skellig Mickle. So Easter happened at a different time on this tiny rock off the coast of Kerry. Easter happened at a different time there than the rest of Europe. And this lasted well up into the 1900s.

And it led to some very bizarre traditions in Cork and Kerry as a result. So Shrove Tuesday is, it's next Tuesday. So this year Shrove Tuesday is next, the 1st of March, right? We know it as Pancake Tuesday. Next Tuesday, everybody is going to eat pancakes. In Christian countries, Shrove Tuesday marks, it's the last day before Lent begins. And Lent is a period of asceticism.

Lent is when you begin penance. You live the life of an ascetic, historically. You don't eat meat. You might flagellate yourself literally. There's Christians who beat themselves with sticks. You abstain from sex. You pray every day. You try to do good acts. Basically everything that's in any way temptuous or enjoyable, you avoid it for the 40 days of

Lent. So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance you have to go mad. Now we eat pancakes. Why is that? Because historically flour, milk and butter were luxury items. These were real and sugar. Flour, butter, sugar and milk were luxury items. So you couldn't eat these during Lent. So on Shrove Tuesday you went mad and cooked them all at once and had delicious, fatty, milky, sweet pancakes as your celebration before you begin fasting. But throughout history, Shrove Tuesday is also where huge parties happen. Mardi Gras happens on Shrove Tuesday. Carnivals across Europe happen on Shrove Tuesday. In Poland, people dress up as bears and get pissed on Shrove Tuesday. It's

the last day you get to go absolutely apeshit, drink, fuck, eat, without committing a sin. Now, as I mentioned, Szczeleg Mikl, right, off the west coast of Kerry, had a

different date for when Shrove Tuesday and Easter and Lent happened. So it was a little bit after when the Roman calendar said it happened. And this led to some very bizarre traditions around Kerry and Cork. Some of them exist in right, they might still be going on, but I'm talking very recent, like 30 fucking years ago. Like in Blarney and Cove right in Cork

up until the 1980s guards right Irish police would have to come to certain schools in Blarney and Cove because there was a tradition on Shrove Tuesday where the

boys would tie up the girls and pour water on them. And I read that and I'm going, what the fuck? In Blarney and Cove they're tying up girls on Shrove Tuesday in schools and throwing water on them. What the fuck is that and where does that come from? So down around Cork and Kerry, Shrove Tuesday is sometimes called Skelliging Day

or Skeleton Day, even though skeleton has nothing to do with skelliging. It's called skelliging because of skellig mickle and its delayed calendar. So in Ireland in 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, there were certain things you couldn't do in Lent obviously you couldn't eat meat couldn't eat dairy products but also you weren't allowed to have sex you couldn't have sex during Lent in Ireland for those 40 days

so this meant that a fuck ton of people used to get married in the days leading up to Shrove Tuesday they were called Shrove Weddings because people people didn't fuck outside a wedlock. Well, they probably did, but if they did do it, they were like, I'm going to hell. So if you were 18, 19 and you wanted to have sex

and you fancied somebody, you had to get married and then you could have sex. So a lot of people got married in and around Shrove Tuesday but never after. Except down around Cork and Kerry who would observe the time of Easter that was being declared by Skellig Mickel and the monks in the monastery. So people if they missed the chance to get married on Shrove Tuesday they had a couple of extra days to get down to Cork and Kerry and get married so they could have sex.

And this was Skellig King Day. And this account here from 1895 says, All the marriageable young people, men and women in Annie Parish, who were not gone over to the majority at Shrove Tide, are said to be compelled to walk barefoot to the Skellig Rocks off the Kerry coast on Shrove Tuesday night but you can imagine what this became. So there's one place in Ireland where if you're like a young person who wants to ride there's one place you can go to finally get married after Shrove Tuesday. This became a pilgrimage of absolute lunatics so the trip became a trip of utter debauchery.

This was like the last night of electric picnic, but the 1700s, the 1800s. Irish people, young Irish people would travel down, they'd get drunk, they'd go mad, they'd get married and they'd all ride each other on the beaches. So the thing is with this type of tradition is that would have been seen as, I don't know, as embarrassing the word. It was scandalous. It was scandalous behaviour. If a young couple, rumours would start about a young couple. And they'd say they're going down to Skellig on Skelliging Day and they're going to get married. And they're going to get piss drunk and they're going to fuck each other on the rocks of Skellig Beach. And rumours would spread about a couple. It was a scandalous thing.

And this form of poetry emerged around it called a Skellig List. And what would the modern day equivalent be? Do you know the way you'd see on social media now? People would make jokes about someone going over to Turkey to get a new set of teeth do you ever see that you'd have a joke going oh they're heading over to Turkey they came back with new teeth

and it's seen as like a scandalous thing to do it's not a terrible insult but it's something you'll get the piss taken out of you if you go to turkey and come back with new teeth are rumors about influencers you know if like an influencer fucking someone says oh they're showing off on instagram that they have this fancy car but they're only renting that from a car dealership i saw them driving around the place in a punto and these rumors spread around that are kind of scandalous and they go all over social media and you don't know if they're true or not but it

doesn't matter. It's seen as scandalous, it's seen as amusing, as funny, kind of shameful but something everyone wants to do and the Skellig list became this, this type of poetry and it was like social media. It was like if something scandalous happens now with an Irish person. So not something that's a crime, but something that's kind of embarrassing and makes us giggle. You know, it'll be spread all over WhatsApp groups or it'll be spread all over Twitter and everyone will talk about it and share it. That's what these Skellig lists were. So there were poems that were,

some of them were printed out and they were spread all over Munster. They were memes. So I went to, there's a fantastic website called duchas.ie, d-u-c-h-a-s.ie and what this is, is it's a digital archive of Ireland's folklore and all these folklorists go around

Ireland collecting things that'd be lost and there's quite a lot of these sceilidh lists on duckist.ie if you just type in sceilidh list so I found a few of them and this one was collected by Eilis Ní Théagáin who's a folklorist in UCD so this this is an example of a Skellig list, a scandalous poem that was written about couples who might be going down to Skellig to take advantage of the Skellig calendar and get married and fuck on a beach. First comes Eileen Buckley, that small red-faced girl. She is courting Eddie Glavin whose face is like a squirrel. Next comes Danny Slattery, that tall and saintly boy. He's all in love

with Nora Callaghan. He says for her he'll die. Next comes Charlie Egan, that boy from Limerick. He is all in love with Hannafin, but I think he'll let her down. Next comes Mick Joe Slattery, the pride of Lackamore. He is all in love with Maggie

Callaghan who has question mark in scores galore and no one knew who was writing these poems and they'd be printed out or written out and put all around Limerick and Cork and people would read them and sometimes they'd say that the person writing them would actually put their own name in it so that they would never be accused of writing it. But it was gossip in poetry form about young couples and some of them would be pure bitchy poems like slagging a girl because of the clothes she's wearing and stuff. From Dominic Street, Hannah Barrett is gone with an old cow's tail slung around her. Oh dear, what a boa the damsel has on. That's someone writing about some poor

girl called Hannah Barrett in the 1800s saying that she wears a cow's tail around her neck. And sometimes the Skellig lists, the poems would have like details, like they'd be gossiping, they'd be spilling the tea. Like this one about a fella called Paddy. The few mean

pints that Paddy stood to gain the heart of Sheila the Wood will long remain a real heartbreaker and file his path to Cat the Raker. And that's basically saying Paddy is going out with Cat the Raker but I know that he was buying pints for Sheila

the Wood the other night and he shouldn't be doing that if he's with Cat. But what would happen with these skellig lists on the show of tuesday night where everyone was going mental and drinking because it's the last night before 12 tuesday is if you were mentioned on a skellig list people would grab you and they'd bring you down to like the water pump in cork city or in cove or in blarney they'd bring you down to the water pump and you were doused with water and this was like crack it was crack so these Skellig lists they were scandalous they weren't harmful they were gossip and fun and crack and if you were mentioned you got doused

with water and this was seen as the Irish Mardi Gras this was the equivalent of the Irish Mardi Gras. This was the equivalent of the Irish Mardi Gras. You didn't just make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. You possibly had a few extra days to get married down in Skellig Micol because they had a different calendar. And if you made that pilgrimage, it was a wild pilgrimage of drinking and debauchery and madness where young people had crack because they were young people and if you want to see a visual representation of what this Irish Mardi Gras was like if you're down in Crawford Art Gallery in Cork go in there and look for a painting called Skellig Night by an artist called James Beale he was a Cork artist I believe from 1845 and James Beale painted this painting of Cork

on Skellig Night in 1845 and it's a beautiful painting because it's so dark it's Cork before Cork City had streetlights and it takes place on I think what is now Patrick Street because in it it contains a

statue of George II on a horse and that was ripped down in like the 1860s because why the fuck does Cork want a statue of George II? But it's this beautiful dark painting of Patrick Street in 1845 and there's just loads of young people all out on the streets lighting bonfires, dancing, having crack, going absolutely mad and then you see, if you look closely, all these little flittering bits of paper, and those bits of paper are the

Skellig lists that everybody's reading. And what's so beautiful about it is that's 1845. You know, that's the famine. That's times were very, very, very hard in Ireland. And you just have this, when you think of 1845, what you think of are people starving to death, people emigrating, terrible, terrible destruction. And it's just wonderful to have this painting of 1845 and it's young people celebrating and having crack, even though they're surrounded by such

phenomenal misery. We don't have a lot of that. We don't have joyous representations of the 1840s but that painting by James Beale is. It's the Irish Mardi Gras. It's fantastic. So check that out if you're in Crawford Art Gallery and I want to give credit to a folklorist in UCC called Shane Lehan whose work I consulted to find out all that stuff about Skellig Night, the Irish Mardi Gras so that was this week's podcast I hope you enjoyed that

winding hot take as much as I enjoyed making it and telling it to you I'm going to hop up onto my bicycle it's 10pm which is a fine time and I'm going to hop up onto my bicycle

and cycle home and go home to bed at a reasonable hour I'll go to bed at 12 I'll have a cup of tea and I'll be up early in the morning nice and relaxed for my run

God bless you all you cunts oh one last thing for my run. God bless you all. You cunts. Oh, one last thing. At the beginning of this podcast, I said, this podcast isn't going to be about tainted fruit. Well, it will be

in a roundabout way. And I forgot to mention. So I mentioned Shrove Tuesday and Shrove Tuesday was the lead up to Jesus dying for all of our sins and those sins would never have happened if tainted fruit wasn't eaten in the Garden of Eden. So there you go.

There you go ladies and gentlemen. Set up conflict resolution. The three act structure. Okay. I don't have a song for you at the end of this week's podcast because I'm putting the songs out quicker than I can edit them down. So there's no Twitch song this week. Even though I am making several songs a week on Twitch.

God bless you all. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.