Driving with Graham Greene, Master of Imagery

                There are few better ways to pass the time on a solo journey by car than by listening to an audiobook.  My long-distance driving this year has been especially enlivened by Graham Greene novels – Brighton Rock read by Samuel West, The Human Factor read by Tim Piggott-Smith and A Burnt Out Case read by Richard Morant.   All three voices are smoothly urbane and perfectly capture the cool detachment of the central characters. 

Listening to a good reader is as pleasurable as reading a book for oneself and the only drawback to the audio medium is that it’s harder to track back to a sentence or passage you would usually re-read (and perhaps underline) immediately.  What’s most startling about Greene’s prose is his imagery. Here are three examples from the first twenty-five pages of A Burnt Out Case of moments where I’ve laughed or gripped the wheel a little tighter than usual.

‘Father Thomas, with eyes sunk like stones in the pale clay of his face, swallowed his coffee in a hurry, like a nauseating medicine.’

‘(Rycker) had a small black moustache like a smear of city soot and his face was narrow and flat and endless, like an illustration of the law that two parallel lines never meet.’

A scene in The Congo: ‘On the other shore the great trees, with roots above the ground like the ribs of a half-built ship, stood out over the green jungle wall, brown at the top like stale cauliflowers.’

A Burnt Out Case, like the other two Greene audiobooks mentioned above, is available in Dublin City Libraries.

Is 'safety first' the best policy for city cycling?

The death of Padraic Carney has brought to eleven the number of cyclist deaths on Irish roads in 2017 and there is a growing perception that Dublin in particular is a hazardous place in which to ride a bike.  In the last few months, there have been calls to introduce fines for cyclists who fail to wear high-visibility clothes, and to make bike helmets mandatory.

                One can sympathise with lorry and bus drivers forced to share narrow roads with vulnerable (and sometimes cavalier) cyclists and much of Dublin is friendly neither to cyclists, drivers or pedestrians.  But the ‘safety at all costs’ approach may only discourage potential cyclists.  For many, the great appeal of cycling lies in its accessibility – fuel, parking, insurance and road tax do not apply and it’s hardly surprising that the Dublin bike scheme (in which lights and lock and basket are included with each bike) has been so phenomenally successful.  Many cyclists do wear helmets and high-viz jackets (only front and back lights and bell are required by law) but if they were made obligatory, I’ve no doubt that for some, it would make cycling seem like too much hassle.

                With regards to infrastructure, it’s hard to see how the streets can be made safer for cyclists in the short term – they are generally too narrow to adequately accommodate two lanes of traffic, long uninterrupted stretches of cycle lane and bus lanes and radical change to road lay-out seems unlikely (the Dutch solution of permanent segregation of two-wheeled and four-wheeled traffic with kerbed lanes would impinge on the effectiveness of the buses as the city’s most important people carriers).

                But regardless of the apparent dangers, Dublin’s mild climate and generally flat surface make it an ideal city for cycling and Irish children, who are now seriously prone to obesity, clearly need more exercise. It is grimly ironic that the latest fatality was a primary school principal who was setting a good example to his young charges by cycling into school every day.  Perhaps the only way to make the streets safer for cyclists is to promote cycling, rather than safety, with initiatives such as a ‘Bike to Work’ scheme aimed at schoolchildren.  Effective lobbying depends on cyclists becoming the primary road users.    

    

Paterson and Love & Mercy - New Angles on the Creative Process

Presenting the creative life on screen has always been difficult.  Films tend to focus on domestic disputes and personal demons rather than on the work itself which is often slow, disjointed and repetitive.  There is more dramatic potential in showing Jim Morrison being arrested for exposing himself rather than in scenes in which he and the other Doors run through ‘L.A. Woman’ for the hundredth time in some sweaty studio. And few novelists (Hemingway and Jack London being two of them) have led outwardly adventurous lives; most of them have more in common with Emily Dickinson, living quiet, deskbound existences.  As a result, films often skirt around the process that consumes much of the artist’s day. 

                Two recent films that have made admirable stabs at showing the workings of the creative mind are Love & Mercy and Paterson.  While there is plenty of friction between the main characters in Love & Mercy, the most compelling scenes take place in the studio where Wilson commits to tape the lush, technicolor sounds we can hear swirling around in his mind.  To give the viewer some idea of what it might be like inside that acid-drenched head, the film opens with a plethora of sounds in the form of rays of light pouring and in and out of darkness.  It’s a brilliant evocation of torrential creativity.

                In much the same way, the lingering camerawork in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson replicates the intensely deliberate gaze of the eponymous bus driver and aspiring poet played by Adam Driver.  By the end of the film, we have a variety of objects firmly lodged in our minds – a matchbox, a beer glass, a waterfall – that he has meditated upon as a first step in turning them into poetry.  With its repetitive structure – seven days divided by the same tasks and activities with just a few surprises – and its overwhelmingly quiet, unhurried mood Paterson reminds us that poetry is a slow, still art that rejects the loud and the showy and celebrates what’s quietly there.   As a result, it makes for a life-affirming viewing experience.

A New Media Landscape for U.K. politics.

When Theresa May called a general election in the U.K. seven weeks ago, I doubt that Jeremy Corbyn himself imagined he would be welcoming ‘an incredible result’ for Labour on the morning of the count. But the result demonstrated how the traditional media and most political commentators are struggling to read the intentions of the electorate. 

Since he was elected leader of his party by popular vote in 2015, Corbyn has been pilloried by people of all stripes (most of the shadow front bench resigned in protest) and no Labour leader had ever been criticised as fiercely by the left-leaning press. He has been labelled ‘unelectable’ and for most commentators, was the kind of old-school socialist who could never be a proper fit for Number 10. And yet, here he is, the leader of a revitalised Labour who will lead the party into the next election as a genuine contender. 

                Yes, Theresa May had a poor campaign but the result was still a major surprise.  And I wonder does it give more credence to the view that many of the people who used to help shape opinions are spending too much time in their own echo chambers listening to and hearing from similar voices? Watching the BBC’s online newsfeed last night with its minute-by-minute updates punctuated by snappy comments on twitter, snatches of interviews, Instagram photographs and statistics, it seemed to me that the world of social media was an endlessly lively place full of wits and nuggets of information. So maybe it’s no wonder that those who make the predictions are so regularly wrong-footed these days – it must be hard to get out and talk to potential voters when your phone is so alive with colourful activity.

        Regardless of whether or not Corbyn ultimately becomes prime minister, perhaps his greatest achievement was to effectively mobilise the youth vote (who of course is more plugged in to social media than anyone else). Many of them were understandably browned off by a referendum result that appeared to curtail their future options but Labour’s promise to abolish tuition fees and their more caring agenda obviously struck a chord and resulted in a surge in the registration of twentysomethings.  This was a section of the population that traditional media sources such as the hitherto highly influential popular press didn’t take seriously because they rarely vote in large numbers.   The days of ‘It was The Sun what won it’ are gone and the real power is with modern publishers Google and Facebook      

Taste Sensations from Nepal

 

Nepalese Home Cooking Master-class

With Lina Guatam

Monty’s of Kathmandu, 28 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

www.montys.ie

Last Monday, in the cosy wood-panelled basement room of Monty’s of Kathmandu, I was part of a small group who witnessed Lina Guatam’s sense-tingling demonstration of Nepalese cooking.  Guatam, a sunny presence and excellent communicator who pitches her masterclass perfectly, begins by passing around samples of the various spices before proceeding to cook two mains and two side dishes with great efficiency and little fuss. 
As this is a ‘home cooking’ class, the emphasis is on simplicity and the mains – achari chicken (pickled chicken curry) and chao chao (noodles) are hearty affairs that anyone could rustle up provided they had access to the spices. The side dishes – chana chat pat (chick peas with red onion, chillies and lemon juice) and aloo dum (potatoes with yoghurt and tomato) – provide good ideas on how to de-monotonise starchy fare.  
Gautam has plenty of sensible tips for those with rudimentary cooking skills but there is never a sense that she is talking down to us. Along with a glass of wine, we are given a sample of each dish as soon as it is cooked, all of which leaves us nicely teed up for the excellent three course meal that follows the class.  At a very reasonable 50 euro for the class and meal combined, this is well worth a punt.