My brother, driving me home from dinner, said “I know you’re a great believer in the classless society and all that but, for the sake of the kids, would you not move somewhere more normal?”
It’s not rough here, it’s just very…urban.
Siblings
Films
My sister goes to see a lot of films and her return to Ireland has meant that I too am going to a lot more films. Here’s a pretty unsuccessful batch
Waltz with Bashir – Ari Folman
The best of the bunch. I saw it in the Kino in Cork and was able to take a snack bar and a cup of tea into the auditorium which alone would have justified the price of admission.    The last film I saw in Hebrew was Kadosh, true, that was a long time ago but that experience has kept me away from Israeli films for a while. This was really very good, if somewhat disturbing. It’s an animated film about a former  Israeli soldier’s experience at the Sabra and Shatila massacre.  I went with my younger sister and her friend and I was astounded that neither of them had ever heard of Sabra and Shatila.
The film did get me thinking again about the state of Israel.  It is the most extraordinary thing.  If you made it up, no one would believe you.  A state founded largely by central and eastern European intellectuals; people who had been in hiding; in camps; fleeing for their lives; people whose relatives had been killed in vast numbers.  They go to a patrt of the Middle East where the climate is a bit different from say, Odessa; revive Hebrew (very guttural language and that is the least of its challenges); win wars against their Arab neighbours; and go about building and protecting their state with a stubborn single mindedness. You cannot but gasp at the improbability of it.
The tale of Depereaux – Sam Fell and Rob Stevenhagen.
This is an animated story of a mouse who rescues a Princess.  I didn’t think much of it myself but I wasn’t the one to be pleased.  The Princess and Daniel found it middling but Michael found it absolutely terrifying and watched it sitting on my lap while  sobbing in fear and peering through my fingers at the scary cat.  At the same time he refused to leave. He is still traumatised.  Not recommended.
Twilight – Catherine Hardwicke
Now that my sister is back, I don’t have to drag my unfortunate husband to this kind of film. There aren’t so many people in their 30s who are in the market for teenage vampire flicks.   I must say that I quite enjoyed it and am now toying with the idea of trying the books.  Does anyone have views on the books?
The Spirit – Frank Miller
This is a beautifully shot film with a hilariously over the top performance by Samuel L. Jackson.  It mixes real people and animation very cleverly.  It is therefore a pity that the plot is atrocious and the dialogue worse.  After about 10 minutes I begged my sister to abandon ship and a stream of wiser people left the cinema.  We stayed to the bitter end.  It was, undoubtedly one of the worst films I have ever seen.  Wikipedia quotes Robert Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times on the film, “There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material”. Mr. Ebert is spot on.
Credit Worthy
My sister has pretty much always earned more than the rest of us. And she’s good at saving too, she probably still has her first communion money salted away somewhere. When we were little she always had her sweets after my brother and I finished ours (then she would share them with us – she was the youngest, we were bigger).
She has, however, not borrowed much and travelled around a lot.  When she lived in England it took her months to get a bank account. When she lived in America, she was refused a store card for some big department store. The guy in the shop said that this was the first time this had ever happened. When she moved back home, for a long time the bank wouldn’t let her have cheques. Now that she has her own little business, they have reluctantly allowed her to have the odd cheque but they continue to be suspicious.
My sister is the most solvent person I know. She likes to have six months’ living expenses in the bank in case of an emergency, yet she has consistently had difficulty with banks due to living all over the place. Meanwhile, the world’s economy is going belly up because of the sub-prime mortgages. Oh God, why did we decide to give our economic well-being over to the banks? I mean, really, the banks?
Happy Birthday
Today is my little sister’s birthday.
I am seven years older than her. Despite this, we are great friends. She is mature and wise for her years, I am not. When my parents used to go away and leave us to look after ourselves (sometimes for whole days at a time), they used to leave her the money to mind and dole out as appropriate.
She hasn’t lived in Ireland since she was 22 (10 years ago, since you ask) and for a lot of that time, I’ve lived abroad as well. She has lived in England, Germany, China, India and the US. I have lived in Ireland and Belgium. She’s a bit of an overachiever my sister. So we haven’t seen much of each other though she has made Trojan efforts to visit us, even travelling from India for long weekends (if the words carbon footprint escape your lips, may you spontaneously combust). And we are always on the phone.
On Monday, my sister moved home to Ireland. I am so glad that she is back that I am surprised. I had no idea that I was so sorry she was away.
I hope that she has the happiest of happy birthdays and wish to extend a fond welcome home to the returning yank.
NaBloPoMo – I is for Ishiguro and also for Irving
Yesterday, I forgot George Hagen. H is such a marvellous letter. I was a bit disappointed with “Tom Bedlam” but I really enjoyed “The Laments” which was a bit like John Irving only better. Which brings me on to John Irving. I read “The World According to Garp” in my early 20s and moved on speedily to everything else I could lay my hands on but by the time I got to “The Hotel New Hampshire” I was tired of it all and washed my hands of him. Not entirely sure that I am keen to go back in the bear filled waters, particularly when I see that his latest offering, “Until I find you” got dreadful reviews.
I have read “The Remains of the Day” a couple of times, it is cringe making and sad but very real in an odd kind of way. Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” is completely unreal but in a spooky mysterious, science fiction kind of way and I absolutely loved it. I am willing to try others on the strength of it. I should say that I have a weakness for science fiction having spent my youth reading the box of it my mother had brought to her marriage and kept in the attic for her own obscure reasons. I think I read “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke a dozen times, lots of Asimov, Poul Anderson and so on;I was bred to appreciate science fiction, it’s possible that you were not. Just a friendly warning on the Ishiguro offering.
Any suggestions?
Action/Reaction
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” So said Mark Twain. My father is a charitable, kind-hearted, Irish, reactionary, pro-European Daily Telegraph reader. I am a wishy-washy, left leaning, hand wringing Observer reader. I have always tended to snort at my father’s views but the older I get the more I find myself in charity with them. The anti-smoking people are a curse (tick, though I like the smoke free pubs it’s the sanctimoniousness of it gets to me – you can’t smoke in the workplace so no, if you work outside cleaning the streets and have smoked all your life, you can’t have a cigarette on the job, really, we’re only thinking about you). French intellectuals are responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the 20th century (tick, Pol Pot). I was once friendly with a very strait laced lawyer who had grown up around the Haight-Ashbury and whose mother was an aging lesbian hippy. I can’t help wondering whether Dina is now into beads.
I’m getting to my point, bear with me. My sister is leaving her job. Today is, in fact, her last day after nine and a half years of faithful service. Yes, that’s right precisely a week and a half before we pitch up on her doorstep to get a feel for where she lives. She’s going to move back to Ireland in the autumn; she’s decided that she’s been away long enough. I was astounded when she told me; this is a girl who was able to pay the deposit on her first flat with the profits on her wisely invested first communion money. “With no job lined up?†“With no job lined up†she confirmed. Having grown up in Ireland in the 1980s and left before the boom got going in the 1990s, I cannot really view this prospect with anything other than horror despite the fact that it means that she will be much closer to us and I will see much more of her which will, of course, be wonderful. I was one of the first people she told. I rang her back a week later to see what everyone else thought. “They were all really pleased, they feel it’s a great moveâ€. “Even Mummy and Daddy?†“Especially Mummy and Daddy!†I think I have become more conservative than my parents.
You’ll be pleased to hear, though, that she’ll still be in Chicago when we arrive and, obviously, there’ll be no escape to the office for her. She’ll be begging them to take her back.
Off to Ireland tomorrow before flying on to Chicago next week (we like to travel so much that we always make complex arrangements like this), wish us luck.
Please feel free to sympathise
I recently failed to get selected for a post in Ireland. Yes, I know my job here is perfect but, supposing that we wanted to move back to Dublin, wouldn’t it be nice if I could get paid?
My family in Ireland, in the manner of families, delved into the details with more enthusiasm than I might have wished successfully bringing out the peeved adolescent in me: “How many candidates were there?” “Dunno, can you leave me alone please?”
I rang home the other day and got my brother. I heard him calling my mother “It’s John McKenna on the phone”.
“Who’s John McKenna?” I asked when she picked up. “Nobody,” she said hastily “just your brother being foolish”. In the background I heard him say “No, no tell her he’s that golfer who never makes the cut”.
And to think that the poor Princess has two younger brothers.
