The Blindboy Podcast - The Bourneville Chorus

Episode Date: November 1, 2017

In this Episode, Blindboy tackles death and gowls Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm starting today's podcast by gradually approaching the microphone in a very gentle fashion because a girl on Twitter called Arla said that last week's introduction startled her because it was very abrupt. So apologies for that, Arla. So yes, this is the second podcast. thank you very much for listening and thank you very much for listening to the podcast last week I got loads of feedback off ye mostly you were quite happy with it and I'm very grateful for that um thanks to everyone actually who's after buying the book the book the gospel according to blind boy landed last uh fucking last Friday and a lot of you went

out and bought it and sent me photographs on Twitter and thank you very much for that. I spoke last week about how much I enjoyed writing the book and I read you a short story called Did You Hear About Erskine Fogarty? This week I'm going to read another short story from the book, but I'll do a bit of chatting first. What will I chat about? I was on the Late Late there on Friday, advertising my book in front of Ryan Tuberty and on television. Um, for any Brits or Yanks or Australians listening, the Late Late show show is it's an Irish talk show it's one of the only things on our national broadcast or RTE that people actually watch because TV is a dying medium all around the world but very much so in Ireland as well and anytime I do the late late it brings

me to a larger audience than I'd be used to, which means it draws all sorts of criticism from goals. And mostly the criticism, I opened up about my mental health on the Late Late Show, right? I opened up about my experiences with panic attack and anxiety and depression, which I suffered a few years ago. And now if you've been following me you know that I've been talking mental health we both have for about four or five years longer Jesus if you go back to the early prank phone calls from like 2005 I was talking about panic attacks in the middle of that because I actually was having panic attacks and doing prank phone calls was my way of um dealing with it as such creativity like

i spoke last week about flow if you're uh in a state of anxiety or depression and you can get a little lash of flow that's a lovely relief and a release of that energy and that's what i used to do back then when i didn't have tools i uh if i was experiencing a panic attack i would do a prank phone call about ringing up a bank saying that i got a panic attack because someone burst a balloon in my ear and an arrow melted in my pocket but i opened up about my anxiety because um i want to be part of the proactive solution to the mental health crisis in ireland and i've got like half a million followers online who are mostly uh young men and i would like to be able to help those young lads

if i can because why the fuck not it's no skin off my balls and i consider it my duty but there was some criticism people going um oh no another another comedian opening up about their mental health yawn as if it's uh something i'm doing to further my fucking career and i don't like that type of criticism that's like normally i don't you know who gives a shit about a negative comment but that's that's a fairly toxic type of comment isn't it i mean whoever wants to open about the open up about their mental health leave them off let them do it because we still have a climate of uh stigma around mental health issues and until that conversation is completely normalized then shut the fuck up you stupid prick um however i am aware and i thought about it more some of these people that are threatened by

people who open up about mental health that could could actually be them kind of unaware of their own issues, unaware of their own mental health issues or not ready yet to disclose to themselves or other people. So in that respect, kind of, you know, it's fair enough. But in general, just keep your mouth shut. If someone wants to talk about their depression, talk about anything, leave them off. Let it happen. Because for every one person that's pissed off by it, there's nine people at home that feel that little bit more normal

when they can hear another person talk about their distressing experience. Because that's the thing with them. If you've ever suffered anxiety attacks, they're terrifying attacks they're terrifying and they're freaky and you think you're going apeshit mad but other when you hear someone else describe their panic attack or their anxiety attacks it tends to be the same type of stuff and when you hear somebody else going through the exact same shit you go oh i'm normal do you know and that's why i'd like to hear mental health spoken about

the way that we would speak about, I don't know, an abscess on your tooth. If I describe my experience of an abscess on my tooth, you know, I'd have a fever, a terrible pain, this desire to have a gulp of cold water at all times because it's the only thing for relief. When you hear that, you go, oh, that's like my tooth abscess. So let's try and move towards

that with a mental health uh conversation please and don't be a kind and but as well this is important ladies and gentlemen every single one of you and me is going to experience some degree of a mental health issue at some point in our lives and that's a given and i say mental health i separate uh mental health from mental illness which is you know quite a separate thing but regarding mental health which can be about a depression about of uh anxiety bit of ocd this can come and go in our lives and it's going to happen to every one of us at some point not getting away with it because that's how normal it is, because the thing about life, life is, contains guaranteed suffering, and, you know, life is class,

there's, you know, there's a lot of, lot of, lot of happiness in it, but there is guaranteed suffering, uh, someone that you care about is going to die, you're going to be disappointed, you're going to embarrass yourself, you're going to feel shame and it's fucking grand it's grand and the thing is too according to the uh school of psychology cognitive psychology right which cognitive behavioral therapy comes from and it's like cbt is one of the few empirically tested um schools of psychotherapy right they can it's evidence-based and cbt says that the pain we experience in our lives is not caused by what happens to us by but because of the attitudes that we have towards what happens the thoughts that we have towards events so therefore if you can change the thinking pattern towards the events you can change your the end result emotion now that doesn't mean that you avoid you you can avoid pain you can't avoid pain pain is inevitable but you can avoid excessive levels of pain and that's what a mental health

issue is it's when you have excessive levels of fear excessive levels of depression fear and depression or fear and sadness are a given anxiety and depression they don't really have to be a given you can learn some fucking tools so that shit doesn't happen and that is the proactive approach and we should have been taught this shit when we were three years of age in school because if they were smart enough to do religion they can do it with psychology not a bother now i speak about cbt a lot as if it's the be all and end all but it is not the be all and end all and you know what cbt doesn't actually work for everybody it worked for me but each human being is incredibly different the reason i pre-settlize cbt so much is because I think out of all the schools of psychology, it's the easiest one to understand.

In this situation of crisis that we have in our country and over in the UK as well, I always recommend CBT to people because it's a great first rung onto the ladder of self-help. But there's no guarantee it's going to work you know we need proper services we need money the government needs to react but uh you and me we can proact is that a word um so that's the deal another thing i speak about a a lot is is uh mindfulness and emotional intelligence and i use mindfulness and emotional intelligence together mindfulness is uh trying to be aware of what's happening to you in the here and now in the present moment because our kind of natural state in modern society is to continually be distracted and to not be fully aware of what's happening here and now and mindfulness works for

me big time i meditate i love it i meditate when i'm running and it's a huge help but meditation doesn't work for everybody and i learned something recently like people who've got like uh ptsd from body trauma we'll say i don't know they might have been they might have been assaulted at some point and they've got ptsd mindfulness can and meditation can actually be harmful to these people because the source of their pain is a kind of a physical memory in their body so mindfulness can be irresponsible for these people you know so i'm just an advisor don't be listening to me there needs to be people better than me there needs to be a proper fucking

doctors and shit that you can trust psychotherapists that you can trust so that we can all gain proper free access to the mental health services that we need but we don't have that in ireland because of greedy bastards um then the other criticism that gets directed at me when i appear on the late late is i can't take this man seriously because he has got a plastic bag on his head now that's fair enough um one thing i would i would i would it's not fair enough no it's foolish i should be judged on the content of my words but what annoys me about it is that like so what if I've got a fucking plastic bag on my head I'm a clown, I'm supposed to be

supposed to look like a clown but it's just like the people in western society who have the most authority in their voices tend to be like judges like a high court judge they've got a fucking wig on their head Who have the most authority in their voices. Tend to be like. Judges.

Like a high court judge. They've got a fucking wig on their head. They look like gulls. The state of them. A fucking powdered peruke wig from the 17th century. Look like a fucking. Judge's wig looks like a. A dehydrated poodle. Or a sheep.

That's been turned into a jerky. A jerkied sheep with all its hair on wearing it on your head talking law mouth and these people have the most authority so don't be talking to me about having a fucking bag on my head discrediting the words that come out of my mouth um priests as well like people listen to priests stay the fucking priests what are they wearing they look like the priest look like they're wearing a set of curtains that they found in the bin outside

a brothel talking about fucking haunting bread religious preachers across the world look ridiculous at least Mormons are honest about it they look like they're trying to sell you kitchen knives along with your spiritual awakening Mormons look alright yeah I'd listen to a mormon suppose but uh most religions have

that shit so chill out now the other thing i get asked a lot why are you wearing a bag on your head um to be honest it's just for privacy it's not really anonymity at this stage it's privacy um i don't want to be noticed in public because i'm a z-list irish celebrity and that is a very cringy existence to be carrying around with you in your daily life but i don't have to um i can go to aldi i can go to tesco i can go into tesco and buy a lot of toilet roll no one knows who the fuck i am no one cares who i am do you know and i quite enjoy that existence um i can use public transport i can sit down quite comfortably beside someone on a bus as just a regular person and i don't have to worry about having a big long bus conversation about horse outside

so that's convenient too i don't want neither of us are interested in fame or notoriety of any description um it's not it's something i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy we genuinely both just want to make future ones um put out creative work but you know not everybody's cut out for fame not everybody wants fame or notoriety it's it's uh it's kind of shit for your own mental health as well do you know the thing is i'm one of the few people in ireland who can tell you what it feels like to walk into a room as a person of note and what it feels like to walk into a room as a regular person i can put the bag on walk into the room everyone, everyone looks at me, everyone knows who I am,

or I can take it off, walk in later on, no bag, no one has a fucking clue who I am, I will take the latter every single fucking time, because when you're on television, or when you're on the radio, or whatever, people kind of, you become part of a spectacle, and people will look at you and speak to you differently. Often it's positive. It's this strange look of awe and novelty and amazement. And if that was my daily life, if going to buy Jack's Roll meant people looking at me and clocking, there's that fella on the TV, I'd turn into a cunt fairly quickly because um you'd go

up your own hole you'd start to think you're special because people look at you as if you're special when they first clock that it's you you're not fucking special you're just on the television and people are going wow check it out this i thought this guy was 2d now he's 3d oh my god and uh that can make people travel a little bit up their own halls and i don't want that because i'm trying to look after my mental health and a crucial element of uh maintaining good mental health is to have a healthy sense of self-esteem the key to good self-esteem is to never uh give any value on yourself based on external things based on the approval or disapproval of other people that should not matter for self-esteem self-esteem is about having an

internal locus of evaluation it means that no aspect of your behavior can define your value as a person do you get me high self-esteem is i am no better than anybody else and nobody else is better than me because human beings are too complex to evaluate off each other that's high self-esteem it's not about high confidence confidence and self-esteem are different it's about an internal locus of evaluation and if you go around the place looking for other people's approval and whether people like you or don't like you kind of influences how you feel about yourself you're asking for mental health uh trouble there because you cannot control the opinions of other people and if you know if people disapprove of you and then you end up feeling like shit over that that's a bad way to be we all have intrinsic human value and humans

are too complex to be kind of basing our value on external circumstances it's bullshit you know if you can go home at night time and look into the mirror and say, today I had a good day, I didn't hurt anybody's feelings and I tried that little bit to be kind to someone, to have a bit of compassion and also to have some compassion towards yourself, very important to have self-compassion, then that's the best you can do as a human, that is the best that you can do. best that you can do but placing your self-worth in in external things that's a losing game and if i was walking into aldi like i said and people were noticing me and if they were either coming up to shake my hand to say i liked you on the late late the other night that was very nice what you said or going um i i think you're a cuck i think you're a cunt, and I hate what you do, either of those things would be damaging to my self-esteem, so I choose to opt out, and that's why I wear a bag on my head, and I'm not going to change that, what if I wanted to quit in the morning too, I can, I can quit tomorrow, go and do a fast course, or decide to become an accountant no one knows

who the fuck i am i quite like having that option if i was uh famous you can't do that really can you what you have to do is you have to allow your career to slowly fade as it gets more and more depressing i don't have to do that i can just fuck off and uh move to loud and become an accountant if i want to. And even, what else happened? Did a gig in Vicar Street a couple of weeks ago. And we went on the lash afterwards. We had some very merry and cheerful drinks.

And we drank excessively. So the next morning I had a hangover, right? And we got out of the hotel. And I was walking down, what's it called? It's a very very busy in the middle of Dublin right so I was walking down Dame Street with a roaring hangover and all of a sudden I needed to puke my ring up so there was bumper to bumper traffic and I was standing on the side of the road puking my ring up violently puking screaming puke out of my mouth such was my hangover and everyone in the car was like looking at this dude puking and i didn't have a bag on my head obviously and it didn't matter i was just some lunatic puking onto the side of

the ground and that's fine if i was fucking des bishop that'd be all over the papers so that's fine. If I was fucking Des Bishop. That'd be all over the papers. So. That's why I wear a fucking bag. And I'm very happy for it. And most people respect my privacy. Human beings people do. The media don't. Because they're cunts.

Thank you to everybody for buying the book. The Gospel According to Blind Boy. My collection of short stories. Which is still available and uh the reason i'm the reason i'm pushing it so much is just because i spent the last year writing it and for free now i want to get paid by people buying it um and i got a fantastic uh very good review in the irish independent for the book which is as an artist is that's very challenging right the key to creating good art it's it's like i spoke about with self-esteem

you have to have an internal locus of evaluation an artist must create for themselves because that's the only thing an artist knows how to do. If an artist starts to create for an audience. Starts to create for somebody else. You lose control of your heart very quickly. You won't get into flow. You start creating with your brain. And not your feelings. So.

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 don't the first o-men i believe the girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying 666 is the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that 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 host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

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. I have to not take positive feedback on board, right? And that's tough because I'm insecure, you know, I'm a human being. I'm insecure. I like, uh, I like it when people approve of me and I find it distressing when people disapprove of me and because I am a fallible human being and

that is my kind of base level but as an adult I can uh I I can have control over that I can manage it so I uh what I'm grateful to get a kind of a positive review or positive comments I have to be very careful that I don't allow myself to um feel too good about myself because of someone else's approval of my work because if you take the positive on board if you take it to heart and start going oh i'm class look at all these great reviews that means when someone says something negative it cuts like a knife so again the key is whether someone likes or dislikes the work that i create it doesn't really matter those are individual opinions and negative and positive are both as valid but what is important is that i enjoy the work that i'm doing that i approve of it that i am happy

and i am very happy with it um and that's it's a tough it's a tough kind of skill of years and years and years and years trying to develop that skill to put a set of blinkers on and not take positive or negative criticism on board in the interest of creating more enjoyable art for myself before I get into the reading and the ambient music piece

of this week's short story there will be a short story coming up with some ambient noises that I created alongside it to fully immerse you in the work I want to talk about a story I read in the news over in Madagascar

and it's just one of those mad stories, there's an outbreak of plague in Madagascarar like a hundred people are after getting bubonic plague because they have this they have this mad tradition in madagascar of dancing with the corpses of their relatives every year the families uh it's called the turning of the bones or body turning and if the family families exhume the bones of their deceased relatives and they like wrap them up in fresh cloth and dance with their remains and like you know they get the children

of the family the youngest children come up and start playing with their grandmother's bones and body and they start ripping off bits of shrouds and people sleep with bits of the shrouds and playing with rotten corpses, you know, in various stages of decomposition. And this is the, that's the tradition in Madagascar. And it seems like to us as Westerners, as Irish people, like that freaks the living fuck out of us, you know, because that's our culture. Our culture is to treat death as this, this dirty thing you don't think about, you know. And there is a strange beauty in the people of Madagascar dancing in tears and celebration with the remains of their relatives. Because it's a very healthy attitude towards death do you know death is um death is one of the givens of human existence i mentioned earlier that suffering is unavoidable

you like the suffering is happening that's it but so is death you're not getting away from death that is a given but we spend so much of our time not thinking about death at all you know we really try and avoid it and understandably you know it's the cessation of existence um but we sanitize it you know with our coffins and our burying things underground and other cultures don't um over in tibet the buddhists the but geez the way the buddhists fucking behave towards death is is is again it's very healthy now it's ironic now that i said this is healthy because the poor people in madagascar are getting fucking bubonic plague for carrying their granny around like a skateboard but um the people in tibet they've got a thing called a sky burial so in tibet there's um

high up in the mountains there's not a lot of soil so you can't really bury nothing so they get when a person dies they chop them up into little bits and they let the vultures eat the bones and then the vultures scatter

body parts and bones all over the valley right so you'd have this valley which is nothing but rotting corpses and bones and bits the valley right so you'd have this valley which is nothing but rotting corpses and bones and bits of heads and hands and legs and the young trainee monks spend hours and hours on end meditating amongst the stench of death and rotting corpses for them to fully accept the inevitability of their own death so that they may live in the present moment to truly admire the present moment and to live in the here and now you have to know that you that you're going to die and to also understand that um you can hit by a bus tomorrow

you know and this is a part of to live fully in the in the present moment and the experience of the present moment just to to take that on board um but i found that that story in madagascar it's nuts isn't it how different cultures we're all human and it's it's like we're we're supposed to be disgusted by death we're supposed to be disgusted by death. We're supposed to be... Like there's a chemical that makes us wretch. And this chemical is known as putrescine. It's where the word putrid comes from.

You know, we have an innate biological reaction to really feel fucking disgusted at the sight of a dead corpse. And these people in Madagascar are like in a frenzied happy tears dragging their uncles around the place and it's pretty cool it's pretty class i think aside from the bubonic plague do you know um got me thinking about human evolution which is a bit of a weird thing like i said it right, okay, imagine this. A human is walking down on a lovely sunny day. And the birds are singing and the sunshine is, you know, coming in through the trees.

And you're having a beautiful, wonderful day. And then you go down into a little wooded area and you accidentally fall over. And you fall over onto a dead body that's decomposited decomposited is that a word a decomposed dead body you fall onto it and your hands are in its guts and you feel like getting sick and you're terrified because you're face to face with a rotting skull with maggots coming out of it and this is one of the most horrifying experiences that you could give to a human being you know it fills us with terror because it's the opposite of life for us life for us is the the sound of bird song and the beautiful smell of the flowers and

the sunlight that that's what reaffirms our lives that's what makes us want to procreate and create more things and dirty smelly rotten corpses with maggots crawling out of the guts that is the opposite of human life right but what if you're one of those worms if you're one of those worms now you're not going to have a incredibly complex brain that will allow you to you know think on the level of you're not going to have a incredibly complex brain that will allow you to you know think on the level of a human but you'll have a fairly binary brain you'll be like you'll know the difference between what you like and what you don't if you're a little worm or a little maggot i'm guessing of course you do you know you'd know what i like and what i don't like

so for a little maggot the trees and the light is terrifying to them because it means that they're exposed and a bird can come down to eat them so if you put that little maggot out into that lovely valley with the birds singing and the sun shining that maggot feels disgust and terror and wants to get the fuck away because either a bird will eat him or the sun will dry him up but if you place that maggot into the skull of the dying man this stinking rotten skull with these chemicals like putrescine then that maggot is in its element that maggot is incredibly happy because that environment reaffirms that maggot's existence so who's right us or the maggot do you know what i mean we're both life forms and what i've just

described there with the you know describing that beautiful sunny valley that's like that's heaven that's what humans describe heaven as you know so like is a maggot's heaven inside of a rotting man's arse do you know if maggots had a had a preacher with a bible saying if you behave yourself you'll be a good maggot now when you die you're gonna end up in in a rotting hoop of a man do you know what i mean so heaven's probably bullshit maggots heaven is our hell i don't know what i'm getting at i haven't a clue it was just a rant so why the fuck not it's a podcast it's not 2fm there's no producer knocking on a window saying i'm gonna get fired they replaced me with marty marty so i'm gonna read a short story now from my book the gospel according to blind by and this short story is called

The Bourneville Chorus and if you enjoy it please subscribe to the podcast on whatever app you are using and leave a pleasurable review and don't leave a bad review please

because that would make you a goal this is The barnville chorus the circumstances of this story can't be described using traditional logic. Most stories have a shape to them. This one doesn't have any shape. But it has a shadow, which isn't a projection that's becoming of something sans shape. I can try to describe the shadow of it,

but by the time I get to the end, the sun will have shifted position and the dimensions of the story's shadow will be a geometric perversion of what they were at the start but I'll have a half of it anyway a few years ago I was sitting down in my grandad's parlour watching Saving Private Ryan, a class film.

It was the only thing worth watching on TV, because grandad didn't have broadband. And there's nothing wrong with a war film when it's on. All the boys were on the beach in Normandy, invading, running toward German pricks, the way terriers run away from a wheelie bin full of fireworks on Halloween night. Bang, blart, cuck, cuck, cuck. Bullets flaking off helmets, tearing through chests, baiting on rocks, martyrs howling through the sky like injured kestrels, twenty grand worth of Hollywood blood splashing off the lens every ten seconds, old tinnitus Tommy Hanks with determination in his eyes, big dirty stinking grey skies above saying prayers for the ground below.

Big part actors getting their names in the credits for having guts drooping below their goaches and dragging them off the Frankish sand. Sandy kidneys, speckled spleens, gritty lungs, sullied bowels, bang of seaweed and raw black pudding

in the ether. I bet it was butcher shop awful too. None of this rubber shit with red sauce smeared on it. Real lamb's liver. Hanging off their distressed khaki fatigues. If it wasn't for the banjack speakers on Grandad's TV, I'd have been fully immersed. There on the beach with all the goons.

The slice of adrenaline giving me a mind horn, but also safe from harm on the couch. I couldn't get immersed though, not that night. I knew that it wasn't the beach in Normandy that I was watching, because they'd shot it down the road on Curracloe Beach in Wexford 20 year ago. Grandad used to tell me that's the beach where the Normans first landed in Ireland. Strongbow et al. English cunts, but French cunts at the same time, in the 12th century. They weren't fully English yet. They got so cosy in Wexford they never left, like hot water bottles under a tie. The Normans had their own language, he'd say.

It was called Yola, a pidgin of Gaelic and French, lasted 800 years. The Normans were sound, they joined in on the crack, they became our own. Then he'd keep repeating the word Quare and looking off in the direction of Normandy. Because quare is the only word we've got left from the Yola language. I wondered if Steven Spielberg was having a snaky chuckle with his beaches. Did he choose Cot-a-Claw to shoot Normandy because that's where the Normans landed? Did the word quare ever march across Spielberg's tongue? I snapped out of it and gaped back at the TV. Tom Hanks and his battalion had managed to breach the

Nazi defences at the top of the beach. Have you the Bourneville? It was my aunt calling. I'll have it up to you, I said. The Bourneville chorus meant that my poor old grandad was awake and needed calming. I walked through the tiny dark hallway, which smelled like fairy liquid and the cider vinegar tang that piss can get when you don't drink enough water. The kitchen was bare, with a blackened stove and wax jackets piled against the corner. They made the room honk like old smoked bacon for some mad reason. Marble effect lino draped the floor like a slab,

with those grey patches of guff around the areas that see the most footwork. Clear menthol moonlight snaked through the single glazed window, distorted by the pane of glass that had concaved in the centre from years of being eroded by mountain rain. On very hot days, it concentrated sunlight to a beam and discoloured the wood on the presses like a magnifying glass. My nan used to say that it would set the house on fire eventually. She said that Dickie Rock's car

once broke down when he was in Wexford on the way to a swingers party and he called to the house to use the phone. Nan made him tea and billy roll sandwiches and she spent the whole time sitting upright on the counter to hide the discoloured wood so that Dickie Rock wouldn't see the sun stain. She said that's where she first got the melanoma on her ear, from the concentrated sunbeam illuminating her lobe while Dickie Rock talked about swinging with a disabled couple from Two Mile Boris. Grandad says Dickie Rock never visited and she was just trying to make him jealous. He said she'd always lie to get attention.

She used to claim that tiles fell off the roof any time Gay Byrne mentioned Augustinians on the late late. I reached up to the sun bleached press and took out the barnville. I fucked a pint of milk into the pot on the black stove. I thought about Nan as I stirred the bitter cocoa into the mug. The skin of the hot milk on the shaft of the spoon like a child wrapped around its ma's arm. No sugar. Grandad likes it plain.

Bring it up, will you? My aunt's voice from the bedroom above. I'll be up now. Have it made, said I. I hated walking up the stairs to see him. It was always like when Archie Dardash took me to the back of the creamery to watch the crow that had gotten its neck caught in the blades of the treasure.

The thick velvet blood shimmering on his feathers, barely able to muster a caw. His eye was a button on a leather couch staring up at me in bemused anguish. I wanted to free the crow's wings from the blade but Archie said to leave him be. Crows get caught in the treasure blades when they're greedy for worms, it's his own fault. Archie took out his eight-year-old cock and pissed on the crow. The piss washed off the blood and the poor old crow felt a moment of strange relief.

We watched for another few minutes while his life left his eyes. I always wanted to take the crow from the blades, sort out his wings and the cuts to his neck. Wouldn't have mattered if he couldn't fly. I'd have bestowed on him all the crowly desires he'd have. Gave him a life better than any other crow. My nan said that crows can learn to talk like parrots if you slit their tongues down the centre like snakes. But I let the crow die, because that's what Archie wanted. Archie died in a fire when he was 19. I was at the top of the stairs with Grandad's Bourneville

and I pushed open the door. There he was, in the bed, like a melted chalk ice. His skin was fog in November morning. It's hot on his bones. His lips had shrunk, his ivory teeth on display. Bright blue veins protruded from his wrists the way that the biro scribbles of a lunatic jump out from a page. You took your time, my aunt said. I was letting it cold, I said. I gently raised the mug of Bourneville to his mouth. I pressed it against his lips with love and care. I tilted the vessel gently. I negotiated every degree his lips with love and care I tilted the vessel gently I negotiated every degree of tilt with a sense of guilt

when somebody you love is dying everything you do for them is an act of guilt it reminds you of all the times you snapped at them all the times you ignored them one tiny gesture for the dying is an attempt to right all those times you fucked up when they were healthy. Grandad was dying. The shadow on his liver had migrated to his kidneys and was creeping up and down his bones.

When he asked for the cup of cocoa, it meant that he had a brief moment where he could concentrate on something other than his agony. Dr Condon gave us a pain chart for us to use as inquiry for the old lad. But it was full of words you'd never use when you're in the throes of hurt. Bothersome or uncomfortable called for a handful of analgesics.

Little green opiates with some paracetamol thrown in. The type your ma would give you if you were scared of flying. Severe or excruciating meant the big lads like Oxycontin and if it was really bad the nurse had to come over

in her purple car with the fentanyl lozenges. My buddy Sonia Kinsella said I should have kept the fentanyl cos she can get 50 quid a pop for them up in Dublin. She'd have gone halves. I wouldn't even risk it though.

There was a shade up in Drimna. Who reached into a junkie's pocket. And caught a fentanyl in a lot of inch. It melted in his fist. He went into shock. Opiate overdose. It's why all the guards in Dublin wear those little rubber gloves like burly surgeons. Fuck that. I'm not giving a load of Dublin pricks my grandad's lozenges.

It was a bothersome or uncomfortable day. Thank fuck, cos he had the codeine for lunch. He was on his little Bourneville oasis. Every night had been like this for a month. Either myself, the aunt, or mad Uncle Richard would keep watch. If we saw signs of a death rattle, we were to call the fat nurse in her purple car, and she'd let the old lad fade in comfort. We'd often mistake a coughing fit for the rattle. The nurse would arrive, get an eyed, and then walk out of the room backwards,

talking about how she used to earn double looking after Maoris with bad hearts in Brisbane. The wall behind Grandad's bed had a patchy black mould that ate at the paint because of the damp mountain air and smelled like fancy mushrooms. The curtains were dark yellow from when he used to smoke, but if you pulled them open you could see the original white cotton in the folds and creases. They had a pattern like a giraffe

with gradations of brown, yellow and auburn, damaged from three popes worth of fag smoke. Whenever I saw that it made me want to quit smoking but also want to have a puff at the same time there was a little resin plinth on the wall beside the door and on it a statue of Saint Gerald with the gammy leg

the Norman Saint Grandad was mad into his Normans our family name is Purcell the Purcells were Norman nobles that came over with Strongbow. I'll always be reminded by the family of my Norman surname and to be proud of it. Grandad used to get called a West Brit in the pub and he'd go apeshit as he never considered the Normans to be full Brit. They integrated, they started the old culture ye show of ignorant pricks.

Read a book, he'd roar at all the boys at the taps, who'd be wearing pints of porter around their necks like brooches. When he was 56 my nan died. He kept drawing her pension and bought a partial suit of Norman armour from an antique dealer up north. He consulted illuminated imagery he found in a 12th century salter and recreated the missing pieces using a petrol engine to a design worn by the Fitzwilliam clan. He would wear the full suit of armour in all his daily transactions, whether it was putting money on dogs in the bookies, getting prostate exams at Dr Condon's

and especially when drinking in the pub. The other owl lads stopped drinking with him when he started wearing the armour. He was barred from all county GAA matches after his presence caused an umpire to suffer a nervous breakdown. The clattering of his chain mail became well known up and down the town. You could hear him coming towards you before you'd see him. He sounded like a shopping trolley full

of knives. Tourists would ask him for photos and he'd threaten them with his bec de fausson, which was his lanky French hammer that had the metal beak of a falcon on the end of it. He had it with him when they were shooting Saving Private Ryan down on Clurrclough Beach in 97. The guards confiscated the weapon after he lashed a caterer across the collarbone with it. Grandad had applied to be an extra and was removed from the set

for refusing to wear an Allied uniform. He argued that his armour was more historically accurate than pretending the beach was 1940s Normandy. He managed to sneak back on the set and hid in the background when they were filming the opening scene. No one spotted him among the chaos of the bombs and blood until they looked back at the footage. It cost the Yanks millions to digitally edit out an elderly man wearing full medieval armour

from a World War II film. A journalist wrote an article about it in New Jersey. When he rang on the phone, Granda accused Steven Spielberg of Zionist Freemasonry and the mayor of Wexford had to apologise when the story went to print. He was a fucking legend in his time he was. More neck than a gin pigeon in a tin man's bin bag. A fearless fella. Looking at him

in the bed, a lump made its way up my belly to my gob like a furry golf ball and I got that stinging tickle on my cheeks and behind the eyes that you get when you're about to cry. The little shot of adrenaline too. The feeling of being really alive for half a second. A few small drops came out of my ducts and I felt the sad heavy breath that leaps out of your chest and carries the bones of everything else you ever cried about.

I waited for the tear to reach my top lip so I could lick it and taste the salt. Then I clenched my fist and put the lot away. Grandad lifted the lid of one of his eyes and threw his jaw in my direction. Are you singing queer tunes? There's to be no queer songs for me, no misery hymns, I'm grand. I'm not crying, Grandad. The mould is getting to my lungs, I told him.

The aunt looked across at me as if I'd committed a crime and gestured with her head that I should leave the room. We were to protect Grandad from acquiring knowledge of the severity of his affliction. He wasn't to know. He was fierce contrary and wouldn't take news of his illness well. Crying and sadness were off limits in the bedroom. Acceptable topics of conversation were darts, the price of pints, lottery tickets, early medieval history, the music of Neil Diamond and the condition and conservation of the local pine martin. Death was not to be discussed. I decided to head outside to the back garden

as the curtains had given me a fag pang. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door. The freezing night was fizzy and bit at my skin. The moon had fucked off to the other side of the gaff. I flaked open the yellow pouch of amber leaf tobacco that I keep wrapped tight so that the moisture stays inside.

I stuck my nose in and inhaled first to get a lash in that damp, earthy, burnt chocolate. Stink. I pinched out a lump and put it in my palm. Under the dark,

it looked like that huge spider that kept me from sleeping in my room for the whole summer of the year of my junior sort I rolled it up into a risla and grazed my tongue across the sticky part A tiny tobacco bristle rested on my lip and burnt the tip of my tongue with a pointed sting That's how you really know this shit is bad for you Whatever mad Mayan bollocks first came across a tobacco plant must have known on first bite that it wasn't for eating.

You'd never eat something that burns like that. Unless it's chillies, I suppose. But at least they have a sweetness to them. The Mayans discovered them too, and cocaine, and chocolate. Fuck it. Maybe that's what they meant by their calendar saying 2012 would bring doomsday. How many poor pricks have died from cocaine fags and chocolate? Millions I'd say. I raised the lighter up to the flaccid attempt at rolling in the dark that hung off my lip. The familiar flick lit up my hands and the house gable end with an honest looking

glint of orange, a small bang of sulphur in my nostril. I could have sworn that I saw the outline of a woman standing at the end of the garden, but we're in the middle of nowhere here. So what would some bure be doing out my grandad's back garden? I reached in the kitchen door and threw the light switch on with my right arm, still gaping down to see if there was really some beard out the back. And there she was, looking off into the distance. Pure long blonde hair and a dress that was sure to get wet in the tall grass. Who the fuck was she?

Was she out of dabs and lost her way after too many naggins? Maybe she was one of the gay cases from the Halton site trying to rob copper from the byler. And all her brothers were going to call her own later in the punto to fleece the place. I started thinking about Grandad in the bed. Getting his head smashed in with a hatchet

while I was locked in the wardrobe. Fuck that. The fag in my hand had burnt halfway down And there a pull taken off it I roared at her Hey No reply

She kept her back to me Like she was in a daze She looked like she was singing towards the sky But not making a sound I thought she must have been one of them Backpacker ones from the continent Who picked a lot of magic mushrooms From the golf course sound. I thought she must have been one of them backpacker ones from the continent, who picked a lot of magic mushrooms from the golf course. And now she was off her tits, wandering

around the garden. But what if she needed help? I was ready to go down towards her. Then the top window in the house opened up and it was my aunt's turkey skin wrist pushing it open. The aunt roared at me in a panic. aunt's turkey skin wrist, pushing it open. The aunt roared at me in a panic. Call the fat nurse. He's rattling. He's got the rattle in his throat. His eyes are going back into his head. Call her. Fuck, I said. This is it. I thought he was grand tonight. The aunt closed the window and went back in. I frantically reached into my pocket for the phone to ring the fat nurse when a hand grabbed my wrist. It was the woman. She'd walked up the garden path. She was in full view of the kitchen light now and was staring at me. Looked like a startled Taylor Swift, but older. Not too bad to be honest, bit of a milf. Sunken eyes,

but with a body that was graceful and sexy. This Björ was after taking something for sure. I couldn't stop staring at her though. I couldn't speak. I knew I was supposed to be ringing the nurse, but this one's eyes were captivating. She was definitely looking for filth. What's her name? I said half flirting if I'm honest. No reply. She had to be pure some foreign one who'd lost her way and couldn't speak English. But she seemed fairly steaming for me.

I hadn't had sex since I went to Santa Panza with Claire and Mark. I felt like a fucking goal. Grandad, above in his last moments and me downstairs flirting. She still had her hand on my wrist and moved it towards my chest I felt a tingle, I felt pure horny Without thinking, I leaned in and ate the face off her She rammed her tongue in my mouth Shifting the minds off each other we were Pure dirty one too

Make a little moaning noises mid shift and scraping her nails off my back and playing with the lining just between my jeans and stomach. What the fuck you doing? My aunt screamed. I had to snap out of it. Stay here, I said to the one. I ran upstairs

feeling unbelievably horny. I couldn't concentrate. The old lad was in a bad way, shaking in the bed. Eyes pointed at the mouldy wall behind him, teeth chattering. Grasping for breaths like there were 50 euro notes on the floor.

It was the death rattle for sure. I called the fucking nurse, said the aunt. The doorbell rang. It was the fat nurse. I brought her upstairs and left her into the room. I ran downstairs out the aunt. The doorbell rang. It was the fat nurse. I brought her upstairs and left her into the room. I ran downstairs out the back. The bjorn was gone.

The Ford car coming up the drive frightened her away and she on mushrooms. I felt a surge of guilt in my belly. I felt like a rat for shifting someone with grandad dying above. I ran back upstairs. The statue of St. Gerald with the gammy legs staring me out of it. I avoided his plaster eyes.

The nurse had that pissed off look. She was talking about Brisbane. Talking about cocktails under the brutal sun with her ex. And the tall palm trees. And the giant fruit bats that fly across the city every Aussie sunset to sleep upside down under the big suspension bridge with white yachts underneath and the Korean tourists getting batshit into their mouths from taking photos.

Cursing Wexford. Cursing my aunt for calling her out of the house. One more false alarm and I'm transferring, she spat. Grandad was sitting up. He was grand, his eyes were open, looking better than I'd seen him in a while. The fat nurse left the house. I felt relief.

I went out the back garden to look for 43-year-old Taylor Swift. No sign of her. Total gowl, why'd she fuck off? I walked all around the fields through the bog over Curriclub where they shot the film. No sign of her. She'd gone. Then I went to bed. The next night, mad Uncle Richard came around to keep watching Grandad with his friend Pregnant Dennis outside in the shit Porsche that he bought off eBay from a man in Switzerland who was in an accident and couldn't drive it anymore. Pregnant Dennis outside in the shit Porsche that he bought off eBay from a man in Switzerland who was in an accident and couldn't drive it anymore.

Pregnant Dennis always steered clear of Granda in case he caught the cancer off him. Pregnant Dennis only ever wore corduroy and would listen to Brian Ferry's solo albums fairly loudly in the car. Mad Uncle Richard shared Granda's passion for dogs, but contested his views on the Normans, preferring instead the 8th century Moors of Islamic Spain, to which he had no genetic lineage. This angered Grandad, and he wasn't fond of the nights Uncle Richard was on watch. Richard gained the mad moniker after he trained a greyhound to put bets on him. He would race greyhounds himself in a pair of shorts and lost his redundancy over the course of eight months.

The greyhound was lost in a wager to the gay cases and studded with a cocker spaniel bitch. Richard had a problem with the drink and would drink naggins of Aldi vodka from a Costa coffee cup I wasn't too fond of mad Uncle Richard either so I spent most of that night outside smoking amber leaf and hoping that the woman with the long blonde hair might return

It was cloudy that night the type of clouds that hug the valleys like a thick continental quilt and afford the atmosphere a queer warmth about it. Fine fag-smoking weather for the winter. I scraped a bit of grey alabaster off the wall with my fingernails and looked off towards the sea, eating fags. The girl was back, down at the end of the garden again.

Part of me wondered where the fuck she slept last night. What was her game? But she was back. Looking better too. She must have had a gaffe nearby. This time she had bright red lips and cracking cheekbones like she'd spent time looking at YouTube makeup tutorials. Eyebrows on fleek like an

Avon seller. I knew she'd come back to me. She walked up, pure cocky, newfangled confidence, distracted. I was going to have sex tonight for sure. She leaned in for the shift straight away, not a bother on her, not a word spoken, lashing her tongue off mine. Mad Uncle Richard stuck his head out the window. Your grandfather's making strange noises. She stuck my hand up her dress and I started fingering the box off her. Richard went back inside, but she felt weird like when you open a fridge and there's nothing inside only the cold waft of chilly barren nothingness

I stopped feeding Horny and started to realise something this wasn't a foreign backpacker on mushrooms who couldn't speak English this wasn't a sister of the gay cases this woman wasn't even human I was fingering the fucking banshee. The night before,

she'd come here to sing her shrill scream into the valleys, to announce Grandad's departure. If she screamed, then Grandad was dead. So I distracted her by being pure suave. I left her for a minute and hurried upstairs.

Grandad was debt-r debt rattling, not a doubt calling for his mother like that lad in Saving Private Ryan who was shot by the Nazi sniper Tell pregnant Dennis to ring the fat nurse said Richard Grandad was moments from death for sure I scurried down the stairs

and passionately grabbed the banshee by the hair at the back of her neck. Started feeding her through her dress, rubbing her inside thigh, getting her hot as fuck. She commandeered my hand and gestured towards the house like she wanted to get naked with me. I pulled back, took the rollie from behind my ear, pure coal like Samantha from Sex and the City. Lit the fag and said, sorry love, you're not my type. Not interested. The kitchen light illuminated her shrill face and tears dropped down past her nose. She was sickened. She turned her back and walked back into the dark. I legged it upstairs. Grandad was fine.

Richard was drinking Aldi vodka from his coffee cup. The next night, Grandad was awake and alive too. And the night after that. As I tell you this story now, the fat nurse is gone. Mad Uncle Richard died when pregnant Dennis drove his car against a bridge. But Grandad's still here. He's 109 years of age, with no sign of impending death. Just a shitty cancer, eaten away at every inch of his body.

But he's alive, and I'm alive. I broke the banshee's heart. She'll never return to this house. Svemi © transcript Emily Beynon ¶¶ that was this week's podcast which was about fingering a banshee. Please like and subscribe and have a very gentle, gentle morning. God bless. 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

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