Grace a sushi zoo, surprisingly famous

People set up stalls to sell food at the various agricultural shows (here) in West Cork. And that’s fine. I’ve become irrationally addicted to agricultural shows this year (a welcome chance to stare at animals: cows, people, ducks – a wide variety, anyway) and it’s always nice to look at food. So this is a pleasing combination, nothing to worry about.

However.

At just about every show I’ve been to – and my hoppity agitation has heightened with every single sighting - I’ve seen the same guy selling sausage beneath a sign that reads:

Frank’s Chorizo Sausage
As seen on TV

(Surreptitious – well, would you feel entirely comfortable taking such a picture? - and thus poorly composed evidence here.)

Yes, but on what, exactly, Frank? Crimewatch? Sausages From Hell? When Sausages Attack? How Pretty White Babies Die: Frank’s Chorizo Sausage – The Silent Killer In Our Midst?

I mean for crying out loud, why do people blithely assume that “as seen on TV” is a good thing? Would you ever just get a grip, please? And so help me Mary, but the queue was out of sight - Out. Of. Sight. - and I just bet that far too many of those people had been convinced by the seeming validation of a TV appearance by Frank’s chorizo sausage. I pity the fools, I pity them. And even those people who may initially have failed to notice the sign will soon enough be seduced.

Customer: I’ll have six of your chorizo sausages, please.

Frank: You do know that they’ve been on TV?

Customer: Ah, ya rascal, Frank. Gwan then, I’ll take a million.

Frank: That’s the spirit.

You bandit, Frank. You terrible, terrible bandit. Those are rational people you’re destroying.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. But then I’m trying to concentrate on the “Heifer born between 1st September 2006 and 31st August 2008 not in milk (also open to the progeny of a foundation shorthorn cow and sired by a registered Bull)” awards and my eyes keep on wandering back to Frank’s infernal stall. Does he not know that the highest placed heifer in classes 169 and 170 will compete for The Desert Perpetual Challenge Cup? No. He. Does. Not. Frank’s too busy raking it in to care, the callous beast. And his till is by now so wildly overflowing that he’s having to store money in his mouth to keep it from blowing away.

Customer: I’ll have six of your chorizo sausages, please.

Frank: Oo oo oh ah ay ah ee aw ee ee?

Customer: Ah, you’re a born salesman, so you are, Frank. Gwan then, I’ll take a million.

But nobody’s asking any questions. Nobody. The very first thing I’d want to ask Frank is what programme his sausages were on. Wouldn’t you?

Me: Alright, wise guy, what programme were your sausages on?

Frank: When The Thinnest And Best Celebrities Eat Sausages And Truly Savour Them And Then Recommend Them To Their Attractive Friends – Ireland.

Me: Hmm. What channel was it on?

Frank: Bravo2+6

Me: Damn. You could be right.

Well he could be, couldn’t he? What the feck do any of us know now that we’ve forty zillion channels to choose from? Besides, if Frank is even half the cad I think he is, he’ll have spent long hours perfecting the believabilty of his answers to such a line of questioning.

I don’t really know how, precisely, but this is all somehow linked to unthinking unhappiness (as opposed to a well thought out depression), violence on YouTube, the stupefying veneration of celebrity, fame for the sake of fame and the Wikipedia intellects of the can-do, must-have, surface-smart generation. Someone clever needs to write a book.

(I know, I know.)

A marbled normality, confused

My dad, an abysmal human being in almost every respect, once told me a magical tale which, for various reasons, was rapidly and permanently placed in the semi-sacred pile marked Do Not Touch.

Sometimes you don’t feel inclined to look at a good story too closely, do you, lest the thing turns out to be untrue? It just feels better and easier to shut out the alternatives and keep faith in the original version. Normally, of course, there should be no fear of being completely wrong about anything at all – and I’ve had many, many opportunities to put this assertion to the test - because the act of discovering what’s right and true is both exciting and a sufficiently rewarding consolation.

Sooooo.....in a story familiar to most fans of classical music, the young Mozart, he assured me, went to Rome and heard a performance of Allegri’s Miserere. At the time, apparently, it was forbidden for this music to be performed outwith the Sistine Chapel - some things are too sacred, it seems. The child genius saw far beyond this, however, and saved the very day. In a spasm of divinity, he memorised the music and wrote it all down, thus freeing it from the strictly jealous confines of the Vatican.

I was young and indecently stupid, but even I could see that this was an astonishing triumph. The piece of music was not only very beautiful, it also lasted forever. Mozart must have been superhuman, I reasoned. It was a joyful story and I needed to hear it again. And again. Details, man, details.

He must surely have been wearing fantastical purple shoes created by wizards and the queen? And he had green flowing hair and a brooch and he simply drew one long breath as the music was sung and then gently exhaled stars from his mouth and they landed on the paper perfectly and..........

Dad: And so when Mozart arrived at the Sistine Chapel.....

Me: Did he have golden wings?

Dad: What? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.

Me: I saw you with Mrs Hunniford.

Dad: ....all heads turned to marvel at his golden wings.

Me: Good. Good.

Anyway, I was reminded of this when I recently discovered that Barack Obama’s favourite character from The Wire is Omar Little. If you haven’t seen The Wire this won’t mean anything to you, unfortunately. It seems fair to say, though, that it is The Best Thing Ever and that Omar Little is also The Best Thing Ever.

I only found out that Obama watched it whilst “researching” Baltimore - the city in which the series is set – online. This information delighted me and was thus also promptly set aside in the pile marked Do Not Touch.

It’s a tiny example of strange behaviour, common to most people, I imagine, but I didn’t want to read any more articles in case someone, somewhere, said something along the lines of “see that thing about Barack Obama liking Omar Little? Entirely untrue – guy doesn’t even watch the show”.

It just feels good to know that America is in the hands of a man capable of liking Omar Little. (Less good to know that I still indulge the art of dishonest non-discovery.)

Stripped of childish embellishments, however, the pared down Miserere story remains untouchable. Whenever I come across something that seems about to suggest that the tale is apocryphal, I simply try to blank it, or put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly. Unedifying, perhaps, although it sometimes feels very necessary - because it’s nice to avoid disappointment and because some things need to be true.

The rose of all the world is not for me...

Oh dear.

Scotland seems to have upset an awful lot of people with the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. According to the weight of news coverage, the general consensus appears to be that this action has brought great shame on Scotland - and that someone, somewhere, needs to apologise. I’ve even seen a few people take it upon themselves to apologise on behalf of all Scots.

I wish they wouldn’t do that, really, because some of us - a minority, granted - don’t feel like apologising at all. Some of us feel quite comfortable with the decision, actually. To publicly profess pride in such a thing, of course, would be to stretch the boundaries of good taste - given the shocking pain endured by the families and their continued and obvious distress - but the sentiment may be said to come close.

In a fraught (often painful) public debate, it’s been quite hard not to agree with absolutely everyone, really, even when the things they say are diametrically oppositional. Most of those angry, bewildered voices, for instance, denouncing the decision of Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, seem genuine, convincing and highly credible (to me).

There is political posturing, naturally enough, which looks and feels cheap, but the generally principled nature of the opposition (to Megrahi's release) excites respect and understanding of – and every sympathy for – some heartfelt points well put.

Less impressive, however, was the intervention by FBI director, Robert Mueller. His open letter to Kenny MacAskill – an incautious, shatteringly parochial, factually confused travesty - is simply too unremittingly awful to cover in any great detail. This stood out, though:

Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.

No, in fact, it does no such thing. It may run contrary to Robert Mueller’s own particular notion of justice, that’s true, but it upholds (to the very letter of the law) the Scottish approach to such matters. A cursory understanding and acceptance of the fact that different people around the world do different things differently, of course, should make the actions of Kenny MacAskill entirely (legally) explicable to the dullest, crudest mind.

He goes on: your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988.

No, in fact, it does no such thing. A more carefully worded approach would have taken pains to reflect the realities. And so, for example, the following would have been harder to dispute: your action may cause – and seems already to have caused - further grief to some of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988.

A number of British families, after all, actively welcomed the release of Megrahi, believing him to be innocent – which is a separate issue, right enough, to the principle of “compassionate release”.

Indeed, if you are to accept the principle of compassionate release - as Scottish law does and some Scottish people do - then everything becomes a separate issue, temporarily.

(Normally, with terrorists, I would like to see the families of those they have killed given access to punch their faces for an hour or so every day for the rest of their natural lives – and Megrahi was no different. But then a bigger and better idea fell out of the sky and somehow landed in the clumsy mouth of the drastically unimpressive Kenny MacAskill.)

Someone wrote convincingly – in The Economist, I think - about the importance of symbolism (if all else fails). Basically, the writer argued, it is important for people to feel that justice is at least being symbolically served by the continued incarceration of the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. I agree.

Taken at face value, however, I just happen to agree more with the symbolism of a society daring to offer compassion - even to men like Megrahi. In fact, especially to men like Megrahi, especially to those people we may actively fear and despise.

Blow me like thistledown

According to some recent outbreaks of opinion, haggis is English. Who knew? Cross-border sniping has been picking up pace since Catherine Brown (historian) revealed that she had found a reference to haggis in a book called The English Hus-Wife. This book was doing the rounds in 1615, apparently, a time when the letter E was still viewed with a certain suspicion and O had yet to be invented. Ha ha, olden days folks is proper stoopid, doesn’t them?

The date, however, is only really important because it pre-dates any evidence of the dish in Scotland (as found by the same historian) by many, many years. Philosophical battle-lines have been drawn:

Englisher: I think you’ll find that we invented haggis, you pasty little Jock.

Scotcher: No, I think you’ll find that we did, you effete, mummy-fixated ponce.

Englisher: No, we did.

Scotcher: No, we did.

An edifying debate, most surely, and one that seems set to rumble until the very end of days - a tantalising glimpse of An Actual Futility. What price victory?

As we breathe, excitingly firm opinions are being angrily invented all over the place and seem set to intermittently escape from a spate of human heads. But do you think these people actually know what they’re fighting over? Quite randomly chosen, here is (part of) the recipe for haggis (as provided by the BBC):

1 sheep's stomach or ox secum, cleaned and thoroughly scalded, turned inside out and soaked overnight in cold salted water


Heart, liver and lungs of one lamb


450g/1lb beef or lamb trimmings, fat and lean


2 onions, finely chopped


225g/8oz oatmeal


Water, enough to cook the haggis


Stock from lungs and trimmings

Englisher: I think you’ll find that you invented haggis, you chippy, skirt-wearing parasite.

Scotcher: No, I think you’ll find that you did, you politically inarticulate, seethingly repressed, oil-thief.

Englisher: No, you did.

Scotcher: No, you did.

Englisher: You.

Scotcher: You.

Englisher: You.

Scotcher: You.

Get a room.

Nodding under the paperweight

Most reasonably objective and well-dressed people will probably say something along the lines of “why?” or “make me” or “I just can’t see myself being interested enough to do so, I’m sorry” when confronted by one of those ubiquitous Follow Me On Twitter signs so very muchly favoured 'pon the Internettle. However, I recently watched myself write the following to an actual girl:

“…..although some Romanians got attacked in Belfast and Twitter seems to be sustaining the Iranian revolution. I loathe the hopeless, vacant, desolating nothingness of Twitter more than I loathe most things, in fact, but this made me stop and think. If it turns out to be true that Twitter has helped Iranians get information out of their country then I'm entirely scuppered in my attempts to think of anything sneery or mocking to say - a relief to everyone, really, especially me.” *

Between ourselves, I think it’s an absolute certainty she’ll fall for me after that smoothly erotic outburst, you know. But yes, of course, it’s too early (and crazy) to claim that Twitter could be the difference between an ossified theocracy and any other system of governance you may care to mention, that much seems obvious - and the madder mullahs will probably have a Tiananmen or two up their beards, in any event. But still, it's a relief to finally have something positive to say about Twitter (and that’s probably what matters here, historically speaking).

Good people use Twitter, lovely people, people I actively like and admire. It’s upsetting, then, to have to imagine them being tortured (with torquemadan efficiency in the dungeons of some Moldovan castle by an epicene sadist with strappado eyes and a lisp straight from central casting) and forced to admit they are insanely wrong to twitter, tweet and twat.

Oh, but I bore myself with my negativity (or realism, as I call it in moments of happy delusion). I bore myself so much, in fact – not just in this, in everything – that the urge to confront my head with a spade is powerful, present and real. I’d love to smash my stupid face with a flurry of fatal blows, begging for a forgiveness most indulgently self-denied. (I often suspect I’m a particularly fierce Catholic just waiting to happen.) Plus, there are few things less impressive than someone mocking something they don’t really understand - and I don’t really understand Twitter.

In fact, I know nothing. And not just about Twitter, either, but about anything much at all. It’s probably best to acknowledge, then, that Twitter – under certain pre-revolutionary conditions in certain countries ruled by certain pre-clever men, religious or otherwise (China comes into play here), and with all necessary qualifications, reservations and misgivings attached – is not entirely abysmal.

Incidentally, I’ve just heard on the radio that Facebook is being credited with helping the would-be revolutionary Iranians, too. I can’t fairly be expected to be as positive about Facebook as I’ve just been about Twitter - that’s an unreasonable stress to put myself under, I feel - but what I can say, however, in a slight paraphrasing of a once fatefully reviewed book, is that Facebook fills a much needed gap in our lives.

(Good grief – things move fast. Now I’ve just heard that Supreme Leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei has called Britain Iran’s most treacherous enemy. Where did that come from? Take it back, you cad. We love Iran in Britain. Love it. You’re the problem, numb nuts, now move over and give clever a chance. And be sure to take your grimly agrarian, Jew-hating puppet - the effortlessly rancid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - with you. That's one deeply unpleasant little peasant. The cheek of it. Tsk.)

*