Celtic Tiger Penis Soup anyone? I hear it is recuperative and much sought after in the East. It certainly puts some fire in your balls.

As the Celtic Tiger ceased to prowl and instead lay emasculated and humiliated, we were forced to take on board the truly awful implications of gombeenery, corruption, bankruptcy and poverty.

Everyone has been burned.

I myself did some work for a guy who had been declared bankrupt and left tradesmen unpaid. Guess what, in my naivety, I now remain partially unpaid. Stupide fucker me, serves me right. I won’t pursue the matter. As with many things in life I have ended up the sadder and wiser fool.

The recent election campaign has shown the contempt in parts of the Southern media for the people in the North. We have more in common with the local unionists who must be taken aback at the vitriol and abuse from the forty shades of green towards Martin McGuinness.

This version of revisionism states categorically, confidently and ultimately wrongly that the Provisionals were at the root of the mayhem we experienced here. It absolves the British Establishment of responsibility, likewise the RUC and UDR, loyalist paramilitaries and the cheerleaders and godfathers who sent people out to do their bidding costing lives in the process.

One positive thing that the so called peace process has brought to the surface is an increasing accepting of responsibility across the Islands as more and more people have the humility and sense to say I accept my share of the blame.

Not so in the South. Where commentators have forgotten their own antecedents. Where Gay Mitchell, self-styled tormentor in chief of McGuinness, has forgotten the genesis of his own party. Micheal Collins, one of the greatest ever Irishmen, up to his elbows in blood, a hero of Old Ireland.

We have had a succession of them. The media pundits, the ordinary people, the vitriol and ignorance is shocking. I reserve the right of people to have their voice but when it is offensive I say no.

What has emerged is that the population voted for the Anglo Irish Agreement through the referendum, but they didn’t really know what they were enacting. So Martin McGuinness might be good enough for us up here, but not for the people down there.

So now, a shame on both your houses. James Joyce was right. As are the thousands of young people forced away from Ireland in what is our inevitable national condition.

Exile is good. Who in their right mind would want to live in this God forsaken place? No country for old men.

Let the she-pig at it.

Reactoblog

I don’t know whether there is such a thing as block but certainly in a creative sense it can be hard to constantly invent something to write about. Having said that, I nailed on a Christmas campaign theme for a fashion client today. Myself and Fehin are probably more on the same wavelength than ever before. It is a strange alchemy but it works. If the client runs with it, I’ll maybe post it here. And fuck it, I think it’s good. But in the case of this particular client I can’t get inside their head in the same way as others.

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Working also on an old long standing job. My kitchens, I have been working with Lairdo for BA for several years now. And again we seem to get the stuff right almost by second nature. Primarily I suppose because they are a very good client to work with, open to ideas, there’s a good relationship there. We have done some very creative work and they like the approach we bring to design and copy. I get a free reign to throw copy ideas at them and they mostly are happy to run with them. Just now I’m chasing my tail on one big job, trying to produce a patchwork based on what I have already done. It looks like I’ll have to put it in the ditch and start again.

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Reading. I was amused to read that the book club I attended for while had taken on poetry as the assignment for a particular month. The book selected was a collection of the usual suspects and indeed one of my erstwhile colleagues was peddling the virtues of Gerald Manley Hopkins to some of the younger girls of our camogie team during one of our road trips. Firstly I wouldn’t inflict Hopkins on anyone, there are more accessible poets around even moving beyond the Seamus Heaney et al set of Irish writers. In the last year I have discovered Norman MacCaig, Paul Durcan and Charles Bukowksi. That in addition to rereading the likes of Yeats, primarily for work purposes, Derek Mahon and Wordsworth. I find that for writing, poetry is by far the best stimulus along with music. I dread however to think what might emerge were I relying on a diet of Hopkins. Note to self to read Omeros by Derek Walcott. Note to others try it also, great stuff. Put that in your book club!

* * *

I watched a documentary about U2 the other night. I admit to having gone form being a fan of their music to finding it tiresome. I put that down almost entirely to the pomposity and self importance of Bono (or Bonio as my former boss used to call him) The Edge and Larry Mullan Jr. Certainly they put on one hell of a show and if playing in Flowerfield or the Crescent I might go down to watch, but otherwise I’ll gently pass.

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Finally for this particular episode, I have watched and listened dismayed at the response of commentators and pundits in the south to the entry in the presidential race of Martin McGuinness. I don’t think Martin has handled his campaign that well – more attention should have been given to prepping him for the incessant and inevitable questions he would face. But no-one perhaps could have envisioned the non stop vitriol coming from every quarter, much of it not so much anti Sinn Fein as anti Northern and highly subjective. When probed many southern commentators and mouthpieces have little or no understanding about affairs up here. Therefore as empty vessels, the noise is deafening.

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I just had for lunch a toasted ham sandwich. It was delicious. What made it even nicer was the detritus of some earlier sandwich that attached itself to the outside of the bread. Hmm wonderful. Lunchtime bliss.

I like mine with white bread, the sort of terrible and tasteless white bread that if you roll into a ball it doesn’t crumble but squishes together like a white paste. More food value in its wrapping. Probably. But when you stick a bit of ham between two slices the inside of the bread sort of liquidises and adds to the  texture. Brown bread just doesn’t do the same job. White bread is toastie bread, the way it merges and joins together in communion with your filling.

I remember the first time I came across toasties was in my uncle’s bar in Omagh. The Hogshead served them, ham, cheese or ham and cheese. Simple. A drop of Worcester Sauce too if you wanted it. I was only about four at the time but I remember the daytime drinkers getting a toastie with their beer or stout. It looked tasty and it was tasty. Mmmm.

My mother-in-law Patsy loves to have one with a glass of Irish Whiskey. Angela loves a toastie and makes a tasty one herself, sometimes for me too if I’m good. In fact, so big a fan of toasties were we that we got a yellow one for a wedding present. A lovely fancy Breville jobbie, it busted after a while and was replaced by one costing a fiver from Tesco.

You can wipe your toastie maker down but for me, like an archaeologist digging up some oul bones, I love that taste of cheese cooked a couple of times over that clings to your latest creation. Wherever it lurks, it manages to affix itself to the next sandwich. How could you not like that?

My sister Mary was the first in our house to get one and we tried all sorts of recipes. Mars and apple was one. Stinking. At Queen’s we used to crack an egg onto the bread and have an egg toastie. Filling and functional for beer purposes and late night snacking.

May not be the trendiest kitchen gadget on the market, and overheated cheese and tomato toasted sandwich has stripped many’s the layer of skin from the roof of my mouth. But they’re still the business. I love the wee sharp corner bits, sometimes you find a wee bit of filling fused in the corner. When the dog wants a bit, I’d nearly rather she had the part with the filling than the corner. I love the way the bread fuses and seals – white bread does it the best. The seal round the sides are a treat too, the little beards of cheese hangin’ out there to be nibbled off.

Nowadays every fancy lunch joint has a panini for sale. But all hail its predecessor, the toastie maker.

Hungry? You know what to do.