flight of the iguana

Midnight at the old chateau.
Behold the mighty Heelers.
He is flumped in front of his computer.
In six hours he is due on a plane to the United States of America.
No point in being a genius if you don't spread it around a little, thinks he.
But look at him.
He does not look happy.
He looks like a Heelers who must somehow magic up a page of newspaper stories before the night is out along with a page of photos or else he cannot go on his transatlantic odyssey.
He looks like a Heelers who has not the least chance of doing so.
He looks like a Heelers, in short, who is on the brink of despair.
And lo!
At his shoulder appears Petal.
Petal is the artist formerly known as my Yogic sister Marie.
Petal says: "Could you put a few of these photos in the paper this week?"
She spreads an array of photos from the recent Kilkea fashion show on the table.
"And I have a few stories about the golf club I want you to write for me," she adds. "They're typed out here," nonchalantly producing a sheaf of papers.
She pauses.
Pause finished.
Petal produces an envelope.
"I know you're going to America in the morning," she says. "I want you to have this."
The envelope contains a fat wodge of American dollars.
A fat wodge.
My favourite sort of wodge.
For a moment Heelers is too moved to talk.
It's a Christmas miracle.

keeel bont

Sitting in the front room at the old chateau with the Mammy and Paddy Pup.
A James Bond film has just started on the television.
It features an oddly zestfully politically incorrect opening scene.
James Bond, played by Roger Moore is leaving flowers in a graveyard.
We see that the grave is that of his wife, the one played by Diana Rigg in the oddly good 1969 pre Rodge movie where Bond was played by the Australian George Lazenby.
Rodge stands at his wife's grave a moment.
A Padre approaches and tells him that Bond's office has phoned that they are sending a helicopter to collect him.
A helicopter arrives and picks up Rodge.
Rodge glances out the window and sees the Padre blessing him solemnly.
It seems the Padre has a premonition that trouble is ahead.
The pilot of the helicopter is then electrocuted by remote control.
The electrocutor is Bond's old nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld who we see sitting in a wheelchair on top of a London factory building nearby, with a spectacular silver grey furry white cat on his knee, now controlling the helicopter using the aforementioned remote,
Blofeld is controlling the helicopter, I mean, not the cat.
The cat by the way is a damn fine actor.
(Really. I liked the cat.)
So Blofeld is controlling the helicopter via remote
He is also mocking Rodge through some sort of radio system.
Rodge gets out of the rear seat of the helicopter, exits onto a helicopter strut, and gains entry to the front seat having first slung out the dead pilot.
He does this as Blofeld cackling madly all the while, sends the helicopter up, down, all over the sky, and careening precariously among industrial buildings.
Rodge shorts out the circuit board on the helicopter control panel thus rather improbably regaining control of the aircraft which has been directed by Blofeld into the interior of a factory and is about to hit a wall.
Blofeld's cat delivers a great line as Rodge regains control of the aircraft.
The cat goes: "Reeargh."
Now Rodge flies it back to the roof where he's seen Blofeld and his cat.
He flies towards Blofeld and scoops him up still in his wheelchair on the helicopter strut.
The cat escapes and may return in a later movie.
As the helicopter flies high, Blofeld is panicking.
He offers to make a deal.
Rodge leans out the window and slaps his bald head.
Rodge says: "Keep your hair on." (And somewhere the ghost of Benny Hill is smiling.)
Then he flies the helicopter over a huge industrial chimney stack and tips it downwards so that wheelchair and Blofeld are deposited into the blackness.
Blofeld's last words are: "Meeesthair Bontttttttttttttttttt..."

The Mammy and I watch this scene in an odd admixture of horror and fascination.
Paddy Pup meanwhile noses a handkerchief from the Mammy's lap and departs into the hall.
"You're an anarchist dog," I call after him.
And ain't it the truth!

dublin street art

JAMES BONG AND THE VILLAINS

NOT THE THEME TUNE TO CASINO ROYALE
lyrics James Healy
studio producer Sean Corcoran
art Medbh Gillard

bleak heart

a boy stands in a field above the town
he does not know what the years will bring
dark night touches him and the rain
his spirit leaps in his imagining

a man writes at table in the dark
he wonders of all things what we are
spirits creatures objects worse
pitched forth comets about a dying star

tell me if all time is one time
and what is was and will be
was the boy already corrupt as he looked upon the town
am i already dead as i write