Findush bit my frozen monkey

I have to hand it to the Ice Queen of Findus, the one that traverses the icy globe and freezes veg just to get away from her man, but their [relatively] new offering of Frozen Soya Beans has done it for me. Of course the mere mention of the word 'soya' to any man brings about mock childhood horror that really is unaccountable as we're not talking about Fray Bentos pies or cans of 'stewed mince' (which was really 'minced excrement' of low-lying 1970s midlands cattle with large toenails); and it ain't spinnach or tinned mushrooms either. The look of repugnance equates with the phrase "I don't swallow". When I explained - that I purchased a bag by mistake - cos Tesco are c--ts like that and get your shopping delivery wrong all the time, he was aghast. "No, keep it simple, something like a vegetable curry would be better......love". There was no convicning him. Predictable as bacon. The bag sat in the freezer for a few months; disregarded, infrigned, jilted. Then, as part of my 'get fatter then cry' diet, I looked at the pack, fell for the marketing bumpf about lowering colestoral & being super high in Vitamin C, I started lobbing them into some cooking. They do take a few minutes more than those tiny shrivelled frozen pea yokes that look like Gulliver's Travels mini scrotums, but they came out a real treat. They are splendid and crunchy and weird. As I'm a major OCD merchant, I got super obsessed super quickly. Not only did I menu them in to the most stupid of inappropiate dishes, but once a day I'd take the packet out of the freezer and smile at them, as if I had something in common. The Marketing Minges at Findus assert "Birds Eye are experts at producing tasty, nutritious and high quality frozen vegetables so Soya Beans are a natural extension for the company. We're proud to be leading the way in introducing natural and pioneering foods that are healthy and easy-to-use." But that's no real reference, considering those fuckers ruined a lot of childhoods, but I found a new type of frozen faith. They are way more superior than peas, a bit like Alba has never been really able to stand up to Sony, and they have a superincumbent crunch a bit like nashing a beetle's back in a nightmare. They fucking rock. The best way is to boil some Seeds Of Change Organic Spinach Trotolle from Tesco (two handfuls), simmer yezer soya beans in a separate pot for a few minutes (don't steam them as they'll have the consistency of carcinomas), drain, add in with a few spinach leaves, Channel Island Extra Thick Double Cream, two spoons of pesto, warm and serve in a TV-affable bowl. It's the dog's knackers. And the green elongated poo you have the next day would put any bicycle-helmet-wearing environmentalist to shame. You will suddenly find by midday, after the shock-poo and a few emails later, you're suddenly hovering around the freezer mauling the bag and thinking up new frozen crazy lows. Trust me or die ignorant.

Floody fuck almighty

The floods are completely scary, bringing with them sandbags of fear and rivers of eh, not much hope. Having a quick goo on Google though quickly tells you that they are not a 'new' phenomenon. Back in 2003, the BBC reported flooding on a scale not seen since the disastrous autumn of 2000 - on both occasions, torrential rain and flash flooding caused nightmare conditions for thousands of homeowners across the UK - even causing a landslide which derailed a train. The UK responded by spending £390 million on flood defences in a year. Back in the mid 1990s there was further 'major' flooding in the UK, so much so that many insurance companies dropped their flood insurance component of their policies. England actually developed a special 'flood insurance' scheme back in the 1950s, after another prolonged series of major floods. A storm surge in February 1953 - from Yorkshire to the Thames Estuary - caused coastal defences to be pounded by the sea giving way to 'huge' floods. In fact, it's roughly every 50 years since time immemorial that it happens; 1950s, 1930's, 1840's, 1820's etc., etc. Forget the fact that for years in the UK rivers have not been dredged sufficiently, most ditches around the countryside were not regularly cleared and many local authorities have not maintained the drainage systems in their areas. However, I think we should leave aside the obvious for the moment, like the politicians - the flood pawns (or prawns) - and even the environmentalists (is the second half of that word 'mentalists' or is it my imagination?). The Bible nutjobs are using this as another excuse to tell us it's all our own fault. Let's get on board Noah's Ark with the Apocalypse junkies and blame it all on human sin/error/indulgence/consumerism and even masturbation. I'm not even going to give them leaway here by pasting their insane theories. If you read your book of Genesis on the bus on the way to work in the morning, you'll know that there was a worldwide catastrophic flood prior to the creation of that nifty duo Adam and Eve in their south-facing garden. My theory is that Eve went and spoilt it all by inventing the world's first sex toy - the snake (it would take another 3,000 odd years for the Rabbit to be invented), all of which condemned us to ruin. It's her fault that women earn, on average, 18% less than men. Anyhow, in the interim we were warned to pull up our socks and did we listen? Did we fuck, and here we are, on the brink of Armageddon. It's all there in Luke 21:11, the floods and so on, along with drought, famine, tsunamis, earthquakes and a new dictionary of diseases (Mad Cow Disease, SARS, Bird Flu and Ebola to name a few). "How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? A time, times and a half," says some other Bible passage or other. According to the bible bashers who are now reacting gleefully to the new bout of floods, that 'time' is a new deadline date for the end of the world: 2060. So what can you do in the meantime to develop your Noah's complex and save yourself? There's the obvious stuff like buying/building a house high up on a hill and not having children so they won't drown when the sea levels rise again in 2020 & 2030 & 2045, turning down your washing machine to 30 degrees, composting your rubbish, not coveting your neighbour's wife and buying vegetables locally. Other than that, you're fucked. As for the current floods, Browner needs to dip into his pocket and spend more on flood defences, stop dishing out planning permission for housing estates to be built on known flood prone areas, and educate Joe Bloggs on how best to protect his bricks-'n-mortar investment. Medieval Britain may have been full of barmy bastards who lobbed their poo out of windows, but back then they were savvy enough to build their houses on stilts; only the pigs and chickens were stupid enough to live underneath...

Special K doing my noggin in...

Well, Special K the photographer is here in Belfast for his annual visit - staying at my gaff for the duration of Orangefest (yes folks, that's what the 12th has become artistically known as). My fondest memory of K's visit last year was being out in the car with him traversing the walls of Belfast that still separate Nationalist communities from Loyalist communities, and so on. Peace may be here but it's not settling as fast as concrete. To elaborate on the concrete metaphor; the walls form a protective barrier system pretty much in the same manner as when making concrete, except that while it keeps moisture and water out of a structure, it can also can trap moisture inside the concrete. While both communities still feel that the walls around Belfast are needed, the existence of them continues to keep low-level sectarianism alive. On this particular day, a wild bunch of kids on the nationalist side surrounded K's car, jumping all over it and throwing stones at the windscreen. Nice. A young girl no more than eight years of age reefs open the passenger door and shouts at me: "are you a fat hippy?", which was fantastically feral of her and blew me away. Bless. After which she began explaining her reasons for throwing stones at the "Orangees" (i.e. protestant kids on the other side of her section of wall) because they are bad and usually throw stones first. "My da says not to trust the Orangees". This is a child born after the 1994 peace deal was brokered, but it seems her family are just as intent in justifying the walls in a 'wee' mollycoddle aggressive manner to the next generation. Cute, that'll really help move things along. K recently launched a new book in New York chronicling areas around the world that erect walls and/or barriers reminiscent of Germany's Berlin Wall. His latest collection also includes 51 pictures stemming from five journeys he made to Israel and the Occupied Palestinians Territories from Autumn 2003 to January 2006. And for some reason, this is what we spend our time arguing about every time he's here. As you know by now the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a focal point of the crisis between the West and Islam, with liberal lefties fallilng over themselves to convince us that the "whole Palestinian" thing is wrong and it's all Israel's fault....all the torturous build up of violence in the Middle East stems from this small corner, and in the absence of looking any further, it's obvious the jews are to blame. Last night I suggested we watch: The War on Brtain's Jews which was aired on Monday night, presented by Littlejohn. The documentary basically covers a lot of the findings in an All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism last year that found violence, desecration of property and intimidation directed against Jews are all on the increase in Britain. Richard Littlejohn talks to victims and analysts and argues that antisemitism, once the preserve of the extreme right, now has a foothold among some Muslims and says even elements of the Left are fuelling the fire. K said the programme was "totally simplistic" and didn't cover the issues objectively and once again, veered back to the Israel/Palestine arguement to finish off his singular debate. I was too drunk to argue so sucked on a mint Baileys and secretly wished he'd break his ankle and his lens sometime soon. Maybe this is all about inherited German guilt and nothing whatsoever to do with the hotbed of political discord straddling the Middle East right now. The Palestinians refer to K as: 'Habib al-Schaab', friend of the people...and why wouldn't they as his work is totally biased in their favour. I thought the programme was brilliant, specifically Nick Cohen's comments (Observer journalist) about how it's almost 'trendy' these days to be anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish... even at "Islington dinner parties" it's a top topic that gets thrashed about over canapés. On the Indymedia website following the programme, some masterful idiot wrote: 'the pro-zionist lobby already have a vice like control on much of the world's media which is why the desparate plight of the Palestinians is allowed to continue'... This posting has been hidden because it breaches the guidelines but still it's readable and not really that hidden after all. In K's case, there's not much point reiterating the fact that Israel's barrier has, in reality, dramatically lowered the number of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians in the central and northern regions of Israel where it's erected. His mind is staunch on the matter, but in general, I find it incredible that the mega-left are shamefacedly displaing the sort of racist behaviour they are surely meant to oppose? Or are am I missing something crucial here? Who knows. Anyway, I've told K the discussion is out of bounds this year as I'm not spending a week in my own house hopping mad in response to his potent ignornace even if he is an award winning photographer of international renown. Watch this space for updates (or details on how I was forced to bludgeon him to death with an empty lasagne dish) over the coming days. In the meantime, the loyalist bomb fires have started; bangs and farts in the skyline here. UTV showed a veritable 'wee' Wickerman type of scenario up the Shankers earlier.....a stockpile of about 300 wooden crates with a stiff scarecrow figure on top, a bit like a bizarre Christmas tree with the night sky turning burnished red and trails of snake smoke slithering around those Lidl cans of beer. Someone nearly always gets fried and someone else will get beaten up on their way home but it doesn't have the same level of fear & abhorrence of previous years. And it's all becoming that much easier to flout. K is out taking pics of it all and I told him to be careful, but he just sniggered in my face. "It's only Belfast!" he muttered, "it's not like it's the Gaza Strip or something." True K, true, but don't ever underestimate the latent madness that gripped this place way before you ever picked up a camera or tasted your first Musakhan.

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! K came back last night (well this morning at about 2.30am) very shook. Their cameras got reefed off them (him and a colleague) by some scuzzbuckets at a bombfire after a fight between Catholic & Protestant youths. They were chased and harassed and got into a fight before the police intervened. There you go.... it may not be the Gaza Strip here but Belfast's Geezer Strip can be just as unpredictable! You should've listened to the blow-in with the big tits K.

Ma, me arse is bleeding

Well no, not really, I don't have a bad dose of Hematochezia [Rectal bleeding] or Melena, the passage of black, tarry stools containing digested blood; it's more to do with the barrage of heavy 14% + wines consumed on this premises last night, that gave me a pain in the arse. The head, for once, escaped unscathed. It was lover's birthday and I cooked a seafood lasagne, laddered the sitting room with cheapo Tesco Tealites and even dressed up for a change. An altogether charming intimate evening apart from geezer falling asleep and me getting way too rat-arsed on said same 14% wine. It's too fucking strong! The lighter brighter Bordeaux from my favourite region in France, that we started off with, was the wisest choice. If only I had bought three bottles of that instead. The 14% wines are obnoxious, taste like berried armpit & turn your head a tad mad... making young ladies like me shout at the Live Earth televised concert that Madonna has clocked up more air miles than Jesus (well, technically speaking Jesus is omnipresent, and with an unbounded or universal presence, his carbon footprint isn't that big) so what is she doing on stage strutting her pelvis in the name of saving Planet Earth!? Al Gore is a pain in the arse just as much as 14% wine except maybe worse, because millions of people believe his man-made climate change horror mockumentary. Actually, it was during this drunken moment that I had an inspired idea for Islamic terrorists. Why don't they blow up the polar ice caps and bring on Armageddon? That way us free-thinking Westerners who speak our minds, indulge in endless materialism and enjoy depraved sex as a leisure activity, can be sunk into a damnable, depraved, destructive, disastrous hell that we, as non-believers, deserve. The Holy Foot soldiers can wipe us (and those just-as-non-believing Polar Bears) out in one earth-shattering moment of extreme religiosity. My best ideas come to me when I'm drunk as a Beckett. Who do I write to about my idea or will I just turn up at a Mosque? There's a great opinion piece by Eoghan Harris in today's Sunday Indo that says it in a nutshell, so consummately that I won't even attempt to gist it. It's getting harder and harder for the career-soldier lefties to convince us that panicking re: the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is nothing more than a type of westernised Islamaphobia. A few months ago, I interviewed an amazing man for an article - an Imam based in Ireland - who reiterated that Ireland is under increased threat from fundamentalism and it's about time we stood up and took notice. He reiterated what MI5 already know; that Islamic terror groups are alive and thriving in Ireland - specifically linked to al-Qaeda; Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Gama'at al-Islamiyah, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Talking to this man, I was bowled over by his intelligence, objectivity, ability to talk openly about what he has experienced in Irish Mosques (he was totally shocked to hear Irish Muslims praise 9/11 and calmly acquiesce the need for suicide bombing missions in the West). Of course, when he spoke honestly about his findings, he endured the wrath of a left-wing media who cannot handle the mere mention of 'extremism' while at the same time, many Irish Muslims were not happy with the increased attention being focussed on them in the light of his claims. He told me: "Islam has to be re-thought; extremism has infected Islam in Ireland. I came here because I was in fear of my life and thought I had left fundamentalism and hatred behind me. I could not believe my ears when I visited some of the top Mosques in Dublin…there was obvious support for suicide bombing as well as prayers and support for the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq who died after an air strike in June 2006]. This man had killed Muslims." He also cited widespread espousal for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian born sheikh who has spoken candidly in support of suicide bombers, issued fatwas on gays and instructed Muslim men that it is OK to beat their wives. The interview both terrified and intrigued me. He also believes that thanks to the level of PC-ness in Ireland it actually allows extremists to 'hide'. "The Irish are nonchalant; they don't know much about Islam," he told me. "I soon found when I got here that there's this attitude of: 'it's cool to be anti-British, cool to be anti-Israeli, cool to be anti the war in America', but as soon as I speak out and use the word 'extremism' I am demonised. Some sections of the leftwing Irish media have also undermined me. They cannot accept that Muslims here could be a threat or that there is a genuine danger of terrorism. We have two types of extremists here. One hates the West, because the west is morally decadent but they want the money and they want to live here – many of them are on social welfare, that's the dichotomy. The other type of extremist not only hates the West but wants to destroy it. But how can they live here in that case? Extremism does not allow for cooperation or conciliation. Some of these people find it impossible to believe that not everyone in the West is bad." He also made the point that the Gardaí do not have the resources to cope with any real threat and the political establishment would rather ignore it, so it is a potentially explosive situation (no pun intended, honest). So perhaps we've every right to feel scared as fuck and to even scaremonger in the wake of attempted terrorist attacks. I'm with Eoghan Harris on this one and just in case I need to keep my wits about me when the polar ice caps get bombed by a brilliantly clever engineer/doctor/PhD student indoctrinated with irreversible hatred, drinking 14% red wine from now on is out of the question. But remember lads, blowing up the ice caps was my idea, patented from this week onwards and © to yours truly, so there's a borrower's fee if you adopt it for your own insane ends. OK?

The balm of calm

I had a lovely moment today when a person who needs their story told was subsequently informed by me that a publisher is interested in their story. This is on top of another book I am writing, so after 10 months of total lethargy and military-style avoidance; there's officially two books getting squeezed out over the next 6 months. Oh, not to mention a business that's about to be launched with a colleague and of course, an imminent MA. Serves me right for procrastinating. The person in question was so overwhelmed at the news, she had to pull in at the side of the road when I rang, because she was crying so much. It's been a difficult year and I swore I'd never write someone else's story again, but heart won out over ankles and I'm delighted to represent her. It makes this [often] shity job worthwhile. I had previously attempted to cover this way back when for a series of Features, but became so frustrated that I once locked her in my Dublin apartment and stormed off for a few solitary pints to calm down. (I'm sure that's probably a criminal offence). For years I wanted to write books; human interest stories mostly because other people's soujourns through life fascinate me. I suppose it's a fond form of Voyeurism that's easy for me to do with some amount of care. Writing for me is all about chipping in and sharing in some small way, satisfaction of actually completing something, and of course, seeing your name in print is like having your nipple licked. This is why I chose journalism as a career although it never quite worked out that way: I've now concluded that I would've made a better checkout girl or horse brusher than a newspaper person/ego/tosspot... ipsy dipsy: individual with a good wage & not a freelancer who lives in pyjamas & is soaked in uncertainty. I can't wait till it's all done and dusted and sometime in 2008 when both books are on the grimy bookshelfs, I can hang up my hocks and concentrate on fiction. The problem with fiction is that every time I try I usually end up living a story instead (journalism with engagement is another name for it, when you end up entrapped with interviewees instead of working with them. Or setting out to research a subject and suddenly becoming it. I have chameleon-like qualities) and it's always a tawdry mistake. The time has come to separate non-fiction from invention and look after myself better. That way, I might eventually make some money and get that holiday home in the Languedoc I've been salivating about since I first grew a tongue. Onwards and upwards and let no man step on my snail. PS. If anyone is travelling down to Dublin from Belfast, take note that if you book on translink.co.uk it's only £10 return and not the usual £27 day return they charge at the ticket office, or the outrageous £62 return of first class. I was down in Dublin today to do the cop mag in Phibsboro and met a lovely woman on the train who told me about the 'special offer' the mudderfookers in the ticket office are keeping quiet about. This was after the taxi guy on the way to the station farted out his life story to me... the most memorable bit was the nervous breakdown his wife had after they woke up one night to see a spide standing at the side of their bed with a kettle full of boililng water in the 'pour' position demanding the keys to their car. And the geezer taxi driver on the way back to the station confessed that he used to be a cocaine dealer and had to have treatment in the Rutland Centre. "Every fookin note in Dublin now has coke on it...but people here are fookin' stupid and think it's cool. I used to go on €3K binges binges and not give a bollix. I loved it.". The woman on the train told me a conspiratorial story about dead babies in Donegal. When Chernobyl happened, the wind of change blew over Donegal and for a good while meat was banned for export. Now, all these years later, there's a iltany of young people with cancer and the graveyards are full of dead babies. None more so than the graveyard on the outskirts of Killybegs. Is it my face or wha?