Fancy A Dip?

Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t set foot anywhere near a public swimming pool if there is even the slightest of chances that there are going to be small children present. I would willingly take a blowtorch to my armpits in preference to spending an hour in a public swimming pool in the presence of kids. This is not the irrational, ill conceived statement of a grumpy bastard; this is knowledge that has been hard earned at the coalface of bad experience.

In a leisure centre that is occupied by the janitor and two pensioners the noise is already unbearable. Ratchet things up to the tune of forty eight year old kids with the intermittent shrill blasts of lifeguard whistles and you create conditions for noise reverberation that are the equivalent of sitting inside an airtight steel fuel tank while the entire Kilkenny senior hurling team are held at gunpoint and ordered to batter it mercilessly with their camans until told to stop.

In a public swimming pool you encounter the whole spectrum of disagreeable factors – the noise, the heat, the smell and the remote chance of unwittingly catching a glimpse of twenty eight stone Fionnuala from Station Road in her birthday suit should the tarpaulin she brought to protect her modesty accidentally slip.

It is a symphony of the most offensive and unpleasant conditions imaginable. The thermostats are unerringly set to 120 degrees regardless of the weather conditions outside. When you come through the sliding front door you are assaulted with a cocktail of heat and humidity that can’t be too far down the discomfort scale from being slapped repeatedly with a sheet of plywood. Then there’s the smell. Jesus Christ are you sure that stuff is not going to harm my skin? Based on the pungency of the odour I would say it was a chemical concoction designed to eliminate every living organism within a ten mile radius. And I’m going to swim in it? If the noise, the heat or the smell don’t get you, fear not, you’ll probably dislocate a few vertebrae when you inevitably slip on the ceramic tile some genius installed in the communal shower area. Non slip tile, anyone heard of it?

Add it all together and you come up with an experience broadly comparable in terms of enjoyment to being bound, gagged, blindfolded and duct taped to the fuselage of an F16 fighter jet on a nocturnal surgical bombing mission over Fallujah. Avoid like the plague unless of course you want a dose of the plague because I’m pretty sure that, after yesterday’s visit from Tadhg the dairy farmer for his bi annual fumigation, it is now residing in the shallow end.

You'll Never Walk (Alone) Again

An American boy wonder named Corey Carter from the Chicago Fire club signs for Blackburn Rovers in the English Premiership. In his first match he holds the opposition goalkeeper at gunpoint for a corner kick. He gets his red card rescinded because there is actually nothing specific in the rules to say that such behaviour is not allowed. It starts a worrying trend which culminates in Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard losing both his legs in a guerilla style grenade attack during a Carling Cup quarter final match against Sunderland. At this point UEFA President Michel Platini steps in and issues a directive limiting allowable on pitch weaponry to 9mm calibre handguns and 16 inch Samurai Swords. Sky introduce a new interactive channel and Robert Mugabe launches an audacious takeover bid for Manchester United. Football enters another global golden age. Millwall win the treble.

Gordon's Wry Grin

He would scratch his head at a lot of things, our friend the visitor from another planet. He would wander around constantly perplexed at some of the bizarre spectacles on display. None would illicit more confusion though than the priceless Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay at the helm.

On a recent instalment Gordon was informed that some chicken had been overcooked. To describe Gordon’s reaction as demonic would be a good start. You would then be forced to go on to use words such as apocalyptic, cataclysmic. The stranger would look on bewildered and wonder what pioneering process, what phenomenon on the outermost frontier of scientific endeavour was being attempted which could provoke such emotional investment. Were they putting the atom back together, or translocating matter? He would gaze in awe at the flame haired maestro at the centre of it and wonder if he was the leader of our civilisation, a kind of deity. This must be the scientific nerve centre of humanity, he might think, with all manner of experiments being conducted and radical new hypotheses being put to the test, elements being fused and dismantled in gleaming circular vessels over infinite heat sources. What was he willing his minions to accomplish, what monumental project was afoot? What attempt to alter the galactic equilibrium was he exhorting his subjects to with such urgency, such seemingly insatiable desire? Were they against the clock, had imminent Armageddon been put in train by an unseen enemy and these were the chosen ones in their curious chrome laboratory, the crack squad tasked with finding a way to head it off? Had they only minutes in which to unearth the impossibly complex encrypted algorithm which would save the planet?

And then it would arrive, the plate of rice with a few bits of parsley on it or a lump of ice cream. And the stranger would shake and scratch his head simultaneously and think how he’d hate to see the hoor trying to lay a patio, or put up a few shelves in the spare room.

This Is A Local Victim. For Local People

Have you ever noticed the little verbal protocols that RTE correspondents seem to observe when reporting on anything of a judicial nature? “A file is being prepared for the DPP”. It never varies, you will never hear “prosecutions are likely” or “evidence is being compiled to pursue convictions”. It’s always the exact same sentence. A file is being prepared for the DPP. Or how about “the victim was named locally”, my personal favourite.

Are you aware of any circumstances under which the victim would be named remotely? “The incident took place in this remote townsland south of Tubercurry; the victim was named near Budapest as thirty eight year old welder Sean Og O’ Shaughnessy”. Are we not to presume at this point that in the case of a victim of a crime being named at all that this is an event which would exclusively take place locally.

How has it come about, this fixation on pinpointing the co ordinates at which victim names are released? Is it intended to clear up what has heretofore been seen as a grey area? I’m not aware of any confusion having existed in this regard. I could be wrong of course. Maybe there is a little known piece of European legislation, perhaps something buried deep within the Maastricht protocols which, unbeknownst to everyone, created Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaties between regions within European Union member states.

There may previously have existed, for example, a pact between Leinster and Provence whereby we get to name their victims and they get to name ours. If this is the case then maybe the reporter should reference it in his summation “As the Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaty between Connacht and Bratislava expired last May, the victim was named locally”. That’s better.

If these agreements do indeed exist they are more than likely constantly being re drafted and implemented. Are we soon likely, for example, to hear an RTE reporter outside a courthouse in Kerry say something like “the victim cannot be named locally due to the existence of a Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaty between Munster and Tuscany”. How likely is it that we will shortly hear Ann Doyle tell us “still to come on tonight’s Six One news all the weekend sport, weather and a round up of today’s Venetian murder victims” while simultaneously Italian news anchor Fabio Lippi invites his viewers to stay put in order to catch the names of the subjects of the day’s homicides in Tralee.

Could this be the basis of another leg in the No to Lisbon platform? I can just see Declan Ganley in his next press conference urging us to reject deranged European democracy and, ahem, keep victim naming local. Wrestle back control from the Brussels bureaucrats, first it was straight bananas, now they’re messing with the deceased. What are they trying to achieve? If they’re not careful the identity of these people will become the subject of baseless speculation, conjecture and gossip and none of these are areas in which Irish people are particularly comfortable. Oh God no.

Of course if there was any real commercial acumen to be found in the management of RTE they would recognise the commercial potential here. Especially in these straitened times with advertising revenue dwindling at an alarming rate. It’s an alternate revenue stream staring them in the face and they can’t even see it. Naming rights could be auctioned off to the highest corporate bidder in a manner reminiscent of the Point Depot or Landsdowne Road. Tonight’s manslaughters are brought to you by Nokia. Connecting People via blunt instruments.

The victim was named in Frankfurt as forty two year old Kilmuckridge man Fiachra MacGillacuddy. A cake is being prepared for the DPP.