It’s been a while since I last wrote an entry here. And a lot has happened in that time. The pandemic has continued to be an utter bollox, we’ve had a pandemic child - a pandemic boy to be more precise - we got married, we moved back home to Dublin. It’s been some ride, I think, it’s hard to know what the hell is going on at any given time let alone remember it. And that’s what has brought me back to this, the blog, and the act of documentation.
We’ve moved in with my father while we wait for the bin-fire that is the Irish property market to have a word with itself. I have now reached half my father’s age, which means that I wasn’t around for the other half. So I’m asking him about it. How he and my mother survived with three kids and no money in 1960’s Dublin? What was it like to manage book shops in Northern Ireland that were frequently firebombed? What was he thinking having two more kids in his 40s? Why did his father think the Beatles were never going to make it? And as you would expect from a life full of life some details have slipped through the cracks of time.
I’ve been wondering about what our child will ask us about what we’re living through now? I’d maybe like to give him a more succinct answer than “it was a turd of a time my dear boy, now eat your re-hydrated fake ham sandwich and stay out of the solar flares”.
Speaking of the Beatles.
I’ve been watching The Beatles: Get Back, the Peter Jackson documentary that is streaming on Disney+. It’s a confusing piece of entertainment. The cameras roll and roll on four men sitting, talking, humming, arriving late, bickering, and occasionally singing the same song over and over. It’s compelling and ridiculous. It’s history that lives and is allowed to breath. And Peter Jackson, who seems to have willingly lost the ability to edit, knows this. He allows you to hang out in another time in rarified air with rarified talent. George Harrison yawning and all. You can smell the damp studio and the cigar smoke. It’s a social media tonic…if you have the time.
And so the blog. A document that has the potential to be as interesting as a man yawning. But isn’t that the job I’m in?! Point the camera, press record, and hope that whatever happens is interesting to somebody, somewhere, at some point in time.