Pegida Rally

My latte was Columbian, a new type of coffee-bean that the man behind the till sounded very excited about, but I didn’t notice a difference.

 I was more concerned with the warmth it could lend me to counter the dampness an hour and a half standing in the rain had bestowed on me.

Wisely, we chose a seat near the window. Gazing out onto the crowd that had gathered on O’ Connell Street in protest of Pegida, a far-right anti-Islam group, we slurped our latte and white chocolate mocha admiring the rain.

               “We don’t condone racists,” a woman we had interviewed earlier had said as we gathered vox-pops from the crowd. She wore her purple scarf tied around her head, protecting her silver curls from the downpour.

Kyle noticed it first, my head was turned to the sleepy American worker who forced his smile through gritted teeth as he collected empty Starbuck’s cups.

Just as the clock was nearing three o’ clock a crowd of people nearing one hundred people ran across O’ Connell Street.

               “Quick, run!” Kyle said.

Grabbing our things, we dashed through the door, Kyle leaving his mocha behind, a tiny trauma he never quite got recovered from.

We followed the mob that rounded a corner and stampeded onto North Earl Street, not entirely sure who or what we were tailing.

Rushing down the street towards Talbot Street, a man with a skin head and black bomber jacket ran towards us, his head was bleeding profusely.

We pressed on, pushing past on-lookers until we got to the front of the crowd. The gardai had gotten there first and blockaded one group from another.

Was this Pegida that we were surrounded by, wearing masks and scarves over their head, I asked myself.

They huddled together on the streets, up against the gardai who were now assisted by the garda public order unit in their navy stab vests and carrying batons. Next the dogs came. A large Alsatian bared its teeth and barked at the crowd, almost as intimidating as the people surrounding us. 

     

                “Peter O’ Loughlin is making his way on the Luas now,” one man shouted making his way back up towards O’ Connell Street.

The crowd scattered a little with the presence of the gardai.

               “What’s going on here?” Kyle asked a garda who looked three years his junior.

               “I know just about as much as you,” he replied, despite the fact we could hear a voice coming from the walkie talkie in the front pocket of his uniform.

Slowly the gardai pushed us back up the road onto O’ Connell Street. We found ourselves standing outside the GPO once more. A lot of the counter-protesters were still gathered on the little island of concrete in front of the biggest post office in Ireland.

Posters reading “united against racism” and “Peter O’ Loughlin eats falafel” lined the sides of the now blocked off O’ Connell Street.

Some people began to leave as a new crowd took its place. Teens and men in their early twenties, wearing uniforms of jeans with Adidas and New Balance trainers began to congregate.

Giving each other friendly pats on the backs and man-hugs, they smiled and formed inwards circles revolving around each other and creating an atmosphere of tension in the street.  More and more of them coming together until perhaps another 100 of them had gathered and began to launch across the street and run towards Parnell Street.

At Burger King they rounded the corner and once more ran into a collision with the Public Order Unit.

Kyle and I followed, along with dozens of other reporters who had now made their way in to cover the demonstration.

The street was frantic with chants of ‘Nazi Scum off our street’, and the gardai were raising their batons, hitting those who were at the top of the group. A surge in the crowd down Cathedral Street and we were lunged forward only to be pushed back a few moments later.

               “The guards are going to come through the centre of the crowd in a second and let the protesters down the street,” one reporter gave us the warning. We ran into Beshoff’s fish and chip shop, perching ourselves at an upstairs table in order to get a good view of the action.

We waited and waited, but no police broke through.

Making our way back down the wooden staircase and onto the street once more we walked towards Abbey Street.

“What’s happening now?” I asked an organiser who was wearing a yellow high-visibility jacket and a thick north-side accent.

“Basically there were extreme left on one side and extreme right on the other and the gardai facilitated them meeting in the middle.”

Later I would learn this was completely incorrect. That the left were on one side of the garda wall and the left on the other, both side believing that the other was Pegida.

Peter O’ Loughlin of Identity Ireland and one of the founders of the Pegida Irish branch who was attacked on the Luas heading into O’ Connell Street that day would inform me that the AFA in Britain had sent over groups people to disrupt Pegida’s rally.

He would say the following Monday that this was a rally to attract people to join Pegida Ireland, there were handfuls of them in the crowd scattered amongst the counter-protestors and there would never have been enough present for the right-wing party to clash against the left wing.

Nevertheless, we followed the straddlers who were making their way towards Abbey Street. O’ Connell Street was now full of gardai and vans full of the public order unit had unloaded their men out onto the street. Gardai on horses walked along beside us as we came closer to the Luas lines.

Bouts of shouting and confusion still lingered on the street, but the tension had fizzled out. A vague air of disappointment descended upon O’Connell street.

It was time to return home and digest what had happened, for each side to place their spin and know their decided angle when their phones rang from the national press early Monday morning.

Review: A Nightingale Falling

A review of the independent Irish film.

Globalisation and the World Wide Web

A look at the effects of the internet on our culture.

Response to the Paris Attacks

I wrote this the Sunday after the Paris Attacks. Since then the debate seemed to really blow up, which in a way stopped me from publishing it.

Fabric

Lady Ardour attempts Travel Writing ...

A Journey of Freedom: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Book Review of Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

A Town the Roman's Built

Travel piece on Uzes in France.

A Cruelty Free 2015?

A look at some acts of animal cruelty

What About Reeva?

Opinion piece on why how the media have forgotten about Reeva Steenkamp.

‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’

With the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lady Ardour takes a look at the city as it stands today.

Why You Should Watch America Horror Story

A persuasive article on why the world should watch American Horror Story, including you.

Party Blues

Hand me an apple and an orange

perhaps a champagne bottle,

full of course. For my party

you can take a few pictures

of the things I will wish to remember

and please make a cake that remains uncrushed.

 

So I can keep it in my bag uncrushed

and when I reach for my pen or pencil, the orange

Happy Birthday icing will stare me in the face and I will remember

You. And when I reach for my perfume bottle

the little rabbit and squirrel pictures

will dance around my fingers, like animals that like to party.

 

And next year when nobody comes to my party

and my heart is crushed

then I will remember the pictures

you took last year in the tungsten orange

light as you gulped off the last of the champagne bottle.

I will smile and remember.

 

The next day you will call to say you just remembered

my birthday. Ask if I had a good party,

that you are busy now with baby bottles

and making your new husband strawberry crush

pie. You will tell me you’ve picked orange

paint for the nursery, and you want to see the pictures.

 

You will hang up before I say I have no pictures,

no memories made to remember

because you were too busy picking orange

paint, too busy to party

to make some uncrushed

cake and finish the champagne bottle.

 

Only interested in baby bottles

and baby pictures

and crushed

baby food to remember

my party,

to hand me an apple or an orange.

 

So ill bottle it up and try not remember

burn the pictures of last year’s party

you crushed my heart choosing paint that’s orange.

 

As part of a Creative Writing class that took place here at five oak avenue one of my fairies took my piece of prose,  "A Lonely Back Garden" and changed it into a poem. It turned into something extremely different, yet the sentiment is still there.

 A Lonely Back Garden

A labyrinth of sunny days and fairytales.

Forgotten fields of climbing trees.

Smashed flower beds of soccer balls.

Cracked windows and an angry mom.

Winter nights of fireball stars,

smells of sleepy logs.

A different kind of waiting room,

Spider webbed Silence.-

Washing lines of socks and ties.

Whistling birds in gutters.

Beneath empty shells and broken dolls

 just swingless Silence-

Laura Roddy

This was the original ( which I had posted on here, but somehow managed to delete)

The worms are coursing through my veins, my blood I need to breathe. The wind glides through the grass upon my crown; it helps me to keep warm. But, its winter now and the frosty mornings make for ice down through my tummy. It’s the time of year when I’m coarse and hard and have no sympathy for pecking birds. Birds that must fly south every year and I blame it on the elements. The ice and cold are not my friends too much of them cause me damage; they stunt the flowers within my growth and cause for municipal rooting. In the spring time when it’s wet and windy and I just wish to be left, its then you come with your spade and start to dissect.

            You tear the grass from my head and start to dig holes, placing flowers in me that reach down to my bowels, extracting my life and nutrients. You have dug me up before, built a wall on me, an extension and a garden path, but don’t you realise... I am the soul of a lonely back garden, the foundation you needed for your family home, your wooden shed, your happy children. They played soccer on me, they made scuff marks on me, they slept on me and like you tried to dig me. You placed a swing on me, stabbed its feet into me. It hopped every time she swung on it, and I felt jabbing pains in my stomach, but I didn’t complain. I liked the sound of your children’s laughter, it helped me flourish. Your dog’s bountiful leaps on me, the sound of his bark, the way he too tried to dig me up with his snout burying bones that are still embedded deep under my skin.

            Your children have grown up now, and you took the swing away. The dog sleeps in his basket all day, occasionally getting up for dinner or to greet you from work. It seems that I am the only part of your family that is still left. I wait for the sunny days, when you come to the outer shrine, lay down your blanket and lie on me, the worms still eating through me -Our pulses beating as one. I am the soul of your back garden, please don’t forget me.

Keep calm and call batman

“Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued.” – Jodi Picoult

Trapped on the top floor of a hotel in Gotham City, forced to walk the ledge alone because the ‘sweet’ guy from the club you were just in decided to... pick you up, bang your head and throw you into the back of his truck. You awoke here, to the sound of heavy drums. Wait,  that’s just the the blood in your body pushing its way through the swollen vessels in your brain.

It’s freezing in here, and there’s a gross smell coming from the corner of rotting cabbage (at least you tell yourself it's cabbage). You fumble about the room in a drowsy frenzy. Your eyes unable to focus and your hands rummage around the floor. You are looking, searching for a way out. But, as your thick clumsy fingers glide across the cheap dusty- carpeted floor of this hotel room they encounter something slimy. Still warm and wet, it sends shivers down your spine. There’s a noise from the corridor, a droning sound of a man’s deep voice and the whimpers of a higher pitched voice. Your heart is in your mouth, racing. But... Then you see it a yellow colour lights up the room showing you the way to the curtains, you pull them back and peer out the window to see the night sky lit up by an illuminated yellow sign.

Your heart drops down to your gut and the voice in your head repeats: ‘Don’t fear my dear- Batman is here’. You make the lunge from the window to the ledge that connects you to all the other windows on this level. Just in time too. As your left foot departs from the shadow of the smokey room the key of the door twists in its lock. The cold night air hits your lungs and sends shock waves through your system. High above you on the opposite building you can see the caped crusader, a black figure standing strong against the largeness of the city; you know you will be safe now. You stand on the ledge of the building – exhilarated – waiting to be saved by your favourite superhero.

Super heroes, begin in the mind of the creator and grow in our imagination. Batman is one of the most realistic superheroes. He in fact does not adorn super powers. Instead he uses human intelligence in the form of technology and physical prowess to safe the citizens of Gotham City.  He leads a double life, and the people of Gotham City are left in awe as they wonder who Batman really is. His true identity lies with us. Bruce Wayne, son of a billionaire. As a child he watched his parents die in a gun-down in Gotham City and since then has fought to save the lives of those who need him most.

But where was Batman last Saturday Night when faithful fans gathered in a cinema theatre in Denver Colarado to see The Dark Knight Rises?  The caped crusader was nowhere to be seen when one villain entered the screening and shot into the darkened terror of the red seats lined with people. 12 people were shot dead at the scene. All of those gathered had one thing in common, their interest, fascination and perhaps love of The Batman, "The Worlds Greatest Detective". Film fanatics who had booked their tickets weeks, months perhaps in advance, sat together in excitement under the big screen, and watched as the fear and violenceof Gotham CIty poured through the film screen and into their reality. This time there was something amiss.

From their childhood perhaps they watched the programme series on Saturday mornings, played with Batman figurines on Christmas day and read DC comics during their teens. However, in their moment of need there was no yellow illuminating light, no batmobile, no caped crusader or ringing in their ears that said: ‘Don’t fear my dear- Batman is here’.  Instead they lunged to the floor of the cinema and remembered Batman’s teaching, his words ‘No miracles. No Mercy. No Redemption. No heaven. No hell. No higher power. Just life .Just...us” ...no batman.

Fire Hazard

Hazard sat on the couch in his apartment. From here he could just about make out the sound of the fire alarm out in the corridor.

            “Jeeze, that’s not very alarming,” he thought to himself and carried on watching ‘The Simpsons’.  Little did Hazard know, as he sat engulfed on the couch that the apartments in his block were evacuating the building. The fire alarm did little to ignite any interest of his, not even a spark. He was far too consumed with Springfield’s dysfunctional family to pay any heed. This was typical of young Hazard’s behaviour, whose high notions and aspirations of himself were difficult to extinguish. In his mind he was gorgeous and handsome, fit to be famous; his picture would one day hang in the hall of flame. This blaze of glory was too ‘cool’ to participate in a silly fire drill.

            Outside onlookers watched as the building went up in flames.  Johnny searched around him but could not see Hazard amongst the group of people! He looked towards Hazard’s apartment and caught a glimpse of him. Waving his arms he shouted:

            “Fire Hazard, Fire Hazard.” Unfortunately, through the window Hazard’s face showed no sense of rec-ignition.  Johnny was not in his line of fire.

            “What are those flaming idiots doing down there?” Hazard posed the question as he looked out his window. He gazed down among the blazing commotion below. A rapid smile spread across his face as he tried to make light of the situation. People were shouting and roaring at each other, things seemed to be getting a little hot and steamy. Hazard decided to go down to see what all the fuss was about. He bolted down the fire exit only to look behind him and see his apartment engulfed in thick black smoke.

I know but one freedom ...

A wise man once said ‘I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery). A phrase that always comes to the tip of my tongue at times least expected. I find myself repeating the words ‘freedom of the mind’, what do they mean? I roll it over on my tongue play with it a little, accidently spill my tea on my fresh white shirt and the words disappear from my mind as quickly as they will appear the next time.

They popped into my head last night, as I lay in bed recalling the sleepless hours I had spent before. Freedom of the mind, I pondered, perhaps it is the right to think what you like, to be free from things that restrain us. Is it to cast away the ball and chain that squeezes our imaginations shut, an abusive husband, a school bully, society? I like to think that freedom of the mind is the power to imagine. So what if there is no such things as ghosts? It would still be fun to visit a haunted house, walk underneath creaking floorboards, through draughty rooms, along dusty corridors and believe.

 Most people would call me delusional if they knew that last night as I lay in bed I could see the flickering of lights around my room, I could hear the buzzing of wings and there was a tugging at my feet and my arms. They had come for me, my heart lilted. The fairies were here and they had spun fishing line around my ankles and my wrists. I could hear the beating of their hearts quicken and their groans as they tried to lift me from the depths of my dream and out of my bed. I laughed and rolled over, my ankles stung and I heard a loud thump on the floor similar to the sound of a fly hitting against the window pane.

Peeping over the edge of my bed to see who was there I saw a white, bright light glowing on the wooden floor of my bedroom. It was Gem. I picked her up and placed her in the palm of my hand.

            “What’s the matter my dear?” I asked, rubbing the tip of my index finger against her cheek.

            “It’s you that’s the matter,” she sobbed. “You’re turning into an adult and won’t be able to play with us for much longer. We can’t even pull you from your bed. Soon we won’t have enough fairy dust to give you so you can become one of us.” I chuckled at the spluttering fairy as she tickled my palm with every hiccupping bump she gave.

            “Don’t be silly Gem, I will never be too old to play with you and the other Fairies at Farthen Abbey,” I smiled and from her pocket she procured her tin shaker. Fluttering around me she sprinkled me with white fairy dust. My ears began to tickle and my back felt itchy. Looking at my hand I watched as it shrunk in size. We giggled and holding hands flew out my bedroom window and descended through the night.

 Perhaps freedom of the mind is the art of not growing up, holding onto our dreams and never letting go. ‘I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.’

          

Human Duties

Some use it to disguise themselves, to cover their blemishes but really it’s for scars. Not the visible scars you received from falling off a swing when you were four or from jumping over barbed wire at the age of seven. These are the scars you got at eleven playing in the school yard, the scars of rejection from your first crush. When your mother called you ugly and your friends sniggered. We try to cover them over. Try to be what others want us to be. Be what we are not. It is what is expected of us.

We walk around like clones because we all want to look the same.  Like an army of soldiers we wear the same uniform upon our face, all of us are in unison. To walk out of line, not step to the beat we would be scowled upon. 

It is used in the morning, before you leave the house, depriving our skin from the morning sun. You can put it in your handbag, in the back pocket of your jeans. You must make sure it is always near. For those moments of vulnerability when we are coming undone we find comfort in knowing it is close. We run to the toilet and procure it from our pockets in the middle of the day.

They say it’s what makes us beautiful. It hides away our imperfections. But it doesn’t last forever. It fades away. We are revealed to the world once more. We don’t like it. We fear they mightn’t like us.

Queen of Hearts

Life is like a game of poker, all about the bluffing. At this very moment a group of people sit down to a game of poker. Whether they sit around a dining room table on Wisteria lane, the old kitchen table at their granny’s home or in a dank cellar of a brothel they all play the same game. They smile to their play mate, pull out their chair and sit down confidently, gulping their drink in case the liquid gets trapped in their tight throats.

Sitting around the table peering at each other, the housewives done a brave veneer upon their faces, flawless to each other but inside less fearless. Like Alice they see one another as the Queen of hearts, the person they must face to figure out the puzzle of Wonderland.  A fake laugh, a flutter of eyelids, a tap of a wine glass and their puzzle is solved, one walks away with the money, while the others wonder where it all went wrong.

At a rickety table in the back-ass of nowhere a family sit around a table; they drink tea and play a ‘friendly’ game of poker. The beloved son bluffs his way through to the end, but his sneaky smile is a give away the others know all too well. His ends in tragedy.

The smell of tobacco and cheap gin fills the grim room of the tavern cellar; the scurrying of rats can be heard by the four men as each sits around the keg of beer. They stare through each other, waiting for one to cave under the pressure. A gun is pulled, a struggle ensues and Mr Unfortunate goes home to tell his wife they are moving house the following morning.

Yes, poker is a game of deceit and trickery; one man bluffs his way to the end with a dead hand and the guy with the two aces has pulled out long ago; It is a game where one person wishes for more and the other is happy with their set of four.

 As we sit in the dining room underneath an ornate chandelier or in the old musty kitchen beside a purring cat or whether it be in the basement of an illegal brothel with creaking floorboards above our heads we watch each other intently to call each other’s bluff. Little do we know that the person beside us has it all, a full house. They sit in the dark, as their queen of hearts wiggles in their hands saying ‘off with their heads’. We take another glass of wine, heat up of tea, sniff of cocaine and the game resumes.

Until someone overdoses from their tea and the others realise the white stuff floating on its surface wasn’t lime scale from the kettle.

Planet Nedward

Nedward sit on their inflatable couch, flicking through the channels.

“Oh look Ned, were on telly they’re doing a replay of us performing Waterlone, our brilliant new song, on the Eurovision” Ward says in his irritating girlish voice, his Rs rolling over each other.  Neds face jolts to the television screen.

“OMG OMG Ward we look so good! I especially love our badassness””

 “...and the winner of Eurovision Song Contest twenty twelve iz *drumroll* Sweee-den.”  The crowd cheers, the lights flicker and Ward switches the channel.

“It’s only a load of poo anyway Ned, don’t mind them, they don’t realise who we are, wait until next year! Third time lucky eh! “

“You know what you’re right Ward, next year we will show them people from Europe how out of this world we really are,” Ned winks at Ward and pulls at the zip on the back of his neck. Pulling his face, his skin stretches like elastic from his skull and his brown tentacles emerge. His eye snaps back to place in the centre of his head. Coughing and spluttering he reaches back his mouth and pulls out his ‘voice box’.

“Thats better,” Neds raspy voice is unveiled yet again to his brother. He burps like a ribitting frog. “Get me some jelly and ice-cream Ward I’m like sooo hungry,” he orders.

“OMGOMG, like its waay to early to undress Ned, like what if someone comes to visit are you stupid?”

“Seriously Ward, chillax bro, no one’s going to travel all the way to Planet Nedward to visit, do you realize how many gazillion light years we live from earth?”

“Yeah I suppose like but I just love looking this cool! Like up this high we don’t even need wax for our hair to stay up! How cool is that isn’t that sooo cool Ned?” Ward asks his brother while he sucks some helium from a balloon and jumps around doing somersaults.

Ned turns his attention back to the television. “Three giant alien spaceships are again heading for Earth!  Scientists predict the new ships will arrive in November of  2012,” the man on the television  announces. Neds jaw drops to the black spots circling his chest. He looks up toward his brother.

“Aliens?” He asks... “But were the only aliens allowed on earth, like were the ones that are heading for world domination”

“Yeah and were going to lotsa cool stuff like hand out loony shots and give everyone free jelly and ice cream and stuff,”  Ward exclaims, still in the same high pitched voice. Ned rolls his eye and turns over the channel. 

What Goes Up Must Come Down

‘Mirror mirror in my hand, who’s the fairest of them all?’ Beckie stares into her gold encrusted hand-held mirror. Eyes blinking and lips pouted, she waits for her name to be announced.

‘Well not you anyway’ replies the evil ghoul reflection. His laughing ‘mwahahaha’ fights its way around the stifled air of the room. Startled by his evil groans, her hand falls to her side and with it the mirror drops to the floor, shattering into millions of pieces.Her hands rush to her head as she grabs hold of her red curls.

‘How could this be?’ She wails and throws herself on the concrete floor, barely missing the shards of glass that now lay beside her.  

In the fragmented glass on the ground her reflection is cast around the dank room: orange overalls, to match her scarlet hair, a protruding nose and like most other witches a massive wart to accompany. From her corner hovel she rises, blurry eyed, and makes her way to the bed. A shard of glass glints in the corner of her eye and unveils the fat lump of extra skin on her nose. In a fury she scrambles through the unending shards of  broken glass to find the one that caught her eye. Success .In triumph she holds the piece in her bloodied hands high above her head, as a thank you to the gods. Squinting into it she laughs at her silly relapse and turns her head admiring her beauty from all angles.

‘Why, I am the most beautiful thing the sun ever shined on,’ she reassures herself.

            Meanwhile, outside an angry mob assembles itself, pitchforks at the ready and blazing torches to scorch the witch that hacked their telephone lines.

            ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let your hair down sweet Rapunzel,’ one man shouts from the back of the crowd.

            ‘Yeah so we can set it on fire,’ another jeers and the crowd shakes in unison with laughter.

 From the recess of her window, Beckie stares out at the crowd below. Their hungry eyes fasten on her pale fearful face as she clenches the bars of the window in an angry rage.

            ‘No Rupie here to rescue you today my dear,’ they bellow. Unfortunately for Beckie this is no fairytale nor is it one of the twisted versions of The Brothers Grimm. Her fate has been navigated by a supreme court not by prophecy. This rapunzel will not be able to let her long red curls down the tower for her shining prince to come rescue her. From her cell window the only way out for Beckie will be her descent down the wisteria tree, which she fought so hard to climb up Once Upon a Time.