Anything Else – Page 5

Life In The Backwards Lane

Life carries on at a pace never known before. It appears there are now only two speeds in this life. Dead stop and backwards. In the last week I have managed to leave the house just twice, each for about ten minutes, as long as it takes to walk up to the local parade of shops to restock the supplies of Pepsi, Crème Eggs, bread, milk and cereals. I’m doing quite well at this isolation thing. If only another member of the household took it so seriously, not content with going out several times a day, including round to their friends flat, over the weekend they’ve now wangled their effing girlfriend to be living with us. It was thought this might reduce the number of exits from the house, but it hasn’t, they still aren’t paying a blind bit of attention to an increasingly irate Helen.

We had booked a couple of days off to bookend the Easter weekend, so instead of four days sat in the house unable to go anywhere whilst not working, we now had six. Which meant that there were a number of things that needed doing around the house. And worse for me, the garden. If you haven’t heard me moaning about being outside, then you haven’t known me very long. There was a reason I liked living in second floor flats.

However, to get me to do jobs you have to prise me out of my office chair at the kitchen table. Whereas the previous weekend had been spent doing a physical jigsaw, this extended weekend found me unable to continue in the same vein, as I had bitten the bullet and ordered a frame for the old London map one I’d completed the weekend before, and needed to wait for that to turn up before I could start on a new one. (Jigsaws have to be zipped up in the case overnight to prevent pet related problems.) What I was doing instead was using the jigsaw world app on Facebook to do virtual jigsaws instead. Twenty-eight of them since last Friday. I’d say it was helping me to pass the time. Helen may have other words for it (effing obsessed for example).

When I did manage to drag myself away from jigsaws, it was rarely to jobs anyone wanted or needed me to do. I did shuffle the records and books around in the living room, cleaned the patio with the pressure washer and erm that’s probably about it. I’m fairly sure an accurate spoonerism to describe me in the last week will have been twazy lat.

I did spend some time away from Jigsaws. Mainly reading and looking at maps. Three old ordnance survey maps of Leicestershire from various years back to 1831, a modern-day A-Z of Crawley, and two old maps of Crawley and Three Bridges. I’ve read this year’s Playfair Cricket annual, and I’m now fully up to date on all the cricket matches that won’t be taking place this year. Then a book called “Logo for London” about the design and use of the roundel, and onto a very geeky book called the “Atlas of Closed Railway Stations”. I’ve also read five novels, Dean Koontz’s “The Night Window”, the last in his Jane Hawk series, Robert Crais’ latest “A Dangerous Man”, Phaedra Patrick’s “The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper”, Gail Honeyman’s “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine”, and last night finished Stephen King’s “The Outsider”, which means I can now get round to watching the TV series that is stacked up on the Sky box. I like to read the book first before watching things. I did the same with “Good Omens” earlier in the year.

Some of this reading has lea to me doing bits of writing. A couple of pieces on the lost railways and station of Leicestershire and Rutland (I know, riveting stuff), and a couple of pieces for Crawley Library’s competition on writing inspired by Crawley’s history. But, despite all this enforced time inside and no work for six days, not one word written towards any of my three novels in progress or any of the list of competitions I’ve ringed in the diary to try and enter. Refer to my previous twazy lat comment.

Of course, because I was on leave, the large screen I’d ordered from work turned up in the middle of the Bank Holiday weekend. I managed to ignore the urge to rip open the box and use it to plug into my personal laptop and do jigsaws on (that really might have pushed my luck too far), and left opening it up and setting it up for work use until last thing Tuesday night. Knowing full well that my eye hand coordination is even worse first thing in the morning, so it would be better to set it up whilst awake the previous night.

Which was probably a good job, as Wednesday morning, as Helen was setting up to start work in the spare room, my previous DIY (more apt to be Destroy it Yourself) handiwork was coming to its inevitable conclusion, as the wall mounted desk parted company with the wall. Therefore, we are both working with big screens on the kitchen table, which is doubtless distracting for both of us. I don’t need any excuse to be distracted at home (no squirrels, but a demented cat chasing and harrying a stationary tennis ball and falling out of a tree have kept me entertained this week), so my efficiency might not even hit the high of thirty percent it did last week.

Now it’s a case of waiting for lockdown to be over so that I can pay for someone competent to put the desk back on the wall so that it will manage to stay attached for more than two weeks (during which over half of those days were non-working ones). Buying a foldaway table in the meantime is a sensible stop gap measure to prevent the wall ending up with more holes than a string vest.

On a positive note, as I’ve been away from work for most of the last week there has been a great reduction in pest led skype messages. Speaking of which, where’s that Do Not Disturb button?

P.S. The frame has turned up, to paraphrase myself when timekeeping on pub crawls. NEXT JIGSAW.

WFH Continues

So, lockdown continues (well for sane people it does, but they appear to be in the minority in this country), and so does working from home. It seems somewhat ironic to be writing about working from home when I’m on a day off. It seemed a great idea at the time to book the day before and day after Easter off as leave to extend it to a six-day weekend. That was before all the madness started, and it’s now an extended break of looking at places we can’t go and visit.

I’m typing this up on my own laptop, sat in the place I sit when I am working from home. After the third week of it I can safely say, I’m still not a fan. I doubt I’ll ever be a fan. It’s not the isolation I miss, not having to see people on a daily basis is great, if only I didn’t have to speak to them or communicate in any way at all it would be perfect. It’s the environment. It’s home, and no matter how you try and dress that up, it’s never going to change.

I find myself absently looking out over the back garden and to the park beyond. One day last week I spent an inordinate amount of time watching a tree surgeon coppicing a tree in the park. Like a monkey he moved from branch to branch wielding his chainsaw. The bottom of the back garden has seen various landscape changes. One by one the holes in the fences caused by February’s storms and the crazy dog’s attentions have been filled, with the last hole plugged last weekend as the neighbour put up their panel that had blown down. It’s now safe to let the dog out unsupervised.

I have been noticing what the cat does as well. Being doorman to the furry pest I get to see him make his way down the garden to escape to freedom. He has a routine. He jumps over the low side hanging stem of the rose bush at the top of the path. He jumps rather than go around it as that means going onto the grass. When he gets to the end of the path he stops and looks around for a bit, then it’s a leisurely jog down to the bottom of the garden to sit on the stump of the tree that was cut down a couple of years ago. He sits there contemplating whether to leave the property. Then he turns and has a look down the side of the shed; comes around it and looks at the mess of a fence covered by chicken wire where the dog has been trying to get into next door to eat the bread they leave for the birds. He then turns and scratches a discarded patio tile. After sharpening his claws, he makes a dash across the garden and hides under the bush halfway down the other fence. And finally, he goes back to the bottom of the garden and leaves.

He has been a poor confused cat the last couple of weeks though, as with the fences being mended his open access to the park beyond has been cut off, and the poor old fella has seen every walk out route become blocked. He now has to jump up the fence to get out. As it isn’t fully secured it wobbles a bit as he does so before he jumps back down on the other side to freedom. Fortunately, the dog hasn’t figured out how wobbly the gate panel is, as if he rushed it, he could easily knock it over.

Inside the house the layout has changed as well, Helen is no longer working from the kitchen table. We finally got around to putting up the wall mounted desk in the spare bedroom. It had only taken two years between buying it and putting it up. Mainly because I’m a cack handed danger when it comes to DIY, and I’ve been putting off having to drill holes in a wall and attach something to it. The desk that came out of the box bore no resemblance to the one we thought we had bought, and it was heavier than remembered. The desk is in place, and Helen is using it quite happily, but it doesn’t stay plush to the wall, and if it were not for the T support it may well come away from the wall. There will be no way it would support my usual work pose of heavily laden elbows on it holding my head in my hands at the idiocy appearing on my screen.

The commute to work gets no easier. I have taken to managing to avoid the sudden warm downpour every morning on the way downstairs, it has dwindled down to two or three times during the working week. The beard has grown quite wild and is getting to Grizzly Adams proportions. It will have to be hacked off if necessary before it gets to full on hipster style. My jeans are looking at me forlornly each morning as if to say, “give us a break – you’re wearing us out with this everyday malarkey”. Which is fair considering they are now in use seven days a week instead of just three. I feel as if I am well on the way to a full-on hobo look. I think the next step will be the acquiring of a shopping trolley, and the change in storing clothes in drawers to a collection of mismatched carrier bags.

Roll on (not the deodorant mind you, that’s totally against hobo rules) a return to a normal working environment, where it actually feels like I’m at work and I can concentrate on work and I can see the interruptions ambush coming, instead of skype surprising me. (Fortunately for everyone concerned the camera is covered.)

At least I know that on my own laptop typing this I can’t get interrupted by the biggest pest know to man (and woman).

What now Katya?

Update on That Tree

And so another storm comes along. It rips down our back fence and gate, exposing the park beyond and Charlie’s eyes light up at possible escapes (temporary work including cable ties stops the gaps for any potential escapes).

It steals Nathan’s motorbike cover and deposits it in lands unknown, probably never to be seen again.

Yet it only managed to dislodge a few apples from the strange local tree. It still hangs on to most of them on its spindly leafless branches.

Come the apocalypse, when everything else on the planet has died, that bloody tree will still be standing with most of its apples attached.

That Tree

That apple tree. The one that stands by the corner of Baker Close and Southgate Drive. The one that pays no attention to the seasons. It’s been at it again this year. It has apples on it all of the time, but its most popular time for fruit is October to January.

The more the damn tree loses its leaves in the autumn, the more apples hang from its branches. And it is very reluctant to let the fruit it has go. You may see the occasional apple lying in the footpath from time to time, but it doesn’t tend to dump many of them at the same time. I think someone must come out and pick the ripe apples in the middle of the night every so often.

Yet Tuesday morning saw a whole host of apples lying on the ground around the tree. It was all Brendan’s fault apparently. Storm Brendan that is. The gale force winds had managed to go up against the stubborn tree and dislodge more apples in a single night than any other wind, or gravity had done in the past.

Brendan had had a good go at it and managed to throw dozens of apples to the ground overnight, yet the tree stood unbroken and had managed to keep twice as many of its apples on its leafless branches as the storm had managed to shake free. It really is the strangest tree going.

No Surprise

If anyone is surprised at the results coming through then they shouldn’t be. It is a continuation of what we have seen, not just in this country, but elsewhere in the world. It is all about the cult of personality / celebrity. It doesn’t have to be a good or nice personality it would seem, just a huge personality and the tang of celebrity. Policies are secondary.

If we look back to the 2016 referendum, it was in place there. Who led the remain campaign? You are probably struggling to remember. Yet you will know the two main leaders of the leave campaign as being Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, two of the most hateful characters in recent UK politics.

Then there is the obvious example with the US Election in the same year when they voted the screaming scotch egg into power. It’s been the case in countries such as Russia, France, Italy, Greece, Brazil, The Philippines and Canada as well. And it is certainly the case in this current election. Despite everything that he has done and said, Boris Johnson’s cult of personality seems to have taken the day. (No, that isn’t a spelling mistake, it is supposed to be an L and not and N.)

The 2017 election was strange, as there was a personality vacuum. Neither Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn had the forceful nature to take it by the scruff of the neck. By all rights, Labour should have won that election. Theresa May went out of her way to deliberately run the worst campaign possible in an attempt to pass over the poisoned chalice of Brexit to Labour.

But it failed. And part of the reason for this is the flip side of the cult of personality / celebrity. Back in the eighties we had a time where actors, comedians and singers brought their backing to good causes. Band Aid, Live Aid, Comic Relief all started. We were all willing to listen to what these celebrities were telling us. We shelled out money hand over fist to these causes. However, somewhere along the line we grew tired of celebrities preaching to us. These people who have more money than most normal people could earn in a dozen lifetimes were haranguing us to give more money. And so we got tired of them and railed against it.

Nowadays if these celebrities tell the public what they should do, then the public tends to do the opposite. And the main issue is that most of these celebrities are left leaning and speak out against the perceived (and often actual) injustices that right wing parties / policies were bringing. Yet the public have taken to opposing what celebrities say.

Stunts like Bob Geldof’s fishing boat up the Thames cost the remain campaign votes. The Hollywood tide against Trump backfired spectacularly. And the same is seen here. The wall to wall support of all things Labour and Remain by celebrities in the UK has turned people against both of their causes as they are sick of having those views shoved down their throats at every turn.

It may be something for them to bear in mind for the future that if parties want to win elections then they need two things. First, get a leader with personality (it doesn’t matter whether it is toxic), and secondly get celebrities to shut the fuck up as they aren’t helping at all, they are only making it harder for Labour (or Democrats in the US) to win.

And as for the SNP surge in Scotland, I’m sure that Nicola Sturgeon will say it is clear mandate for another referendum for them to leave the UK. Personally I don’t, I just think that Scotland had an opportunity to vote for a party that wasn’t on an extreme and could do something for them. The rest of the country didn’t have a sensible middle of the road party to vote for. That is something that needs to change going forward. We need to be able to move away from the dangerous extremism that is plaguing our politics.

I Choose ……… Ben Richards

An obscure reference to the very cheesy eighties action film The Running Man, when given a list of people to choose from the little old lady chooses someone not on the original list.

This is exactly what I feel like doing at this election. If I was to go by party leader then it would be difficult, as the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, The Greens, SNP, DUP and Sinn Fein are all utter swine. If you lined them up then they could easily be referred to by another film title – “The Hateful Eight”. The only major leader who wouldn’t be considered in this way would belong to Plaid Cymru, and I can’t vote for them as I live in England.

Never have I despaired so much of the political system as for this election. I hate all the parties going, and today, with the election taking place tomorrow I don’t have a clue who I am going to vote for.

I am bombarded by opinion – that is all most of it is – facts are outside the realm of this election; something I expect will get worse which each election going forward. All media outlets have their own agendas, and the truth is very rarely a driver towards it.

It would seem that the people I know who post about politics all the time are firmly at one end of the spectrum or the other. There really doesn’t appear to be any middle ground. And that is the crying shame for the majority of the population in this country, there isn’t a party that covers that middle ground properly. There is no moderation, only extremes, and that is driving the nasty, divisive atmosphere that surrounds this election.

I respect that people have different opinions, but it is amazing how an opinion can skew a person’s view on the world. One of the prime examples of this is the differing views on the BBC’s output. I regularly see posts screaming that the BBC is anti-Corbyn and is up Johnson’s arse. Then the very next post is screaming how anti-Tory they are and how much of a left-wing bias they have. It would appear that they can’t win either way.

If I look at policies, then there would be more of a lean towards certain parties rather than others, yet none of the parties can help themselves, just when you think “yes, this is a sensible, balanced set of policies”, you get to the ones that make you think, “Christ on a bike, they are all fucking mad”.

There is a lot of talk about don’t vote selfish. Vote for everyone, vote to help those who can’t help themselves. I can see the attraction in this, and it is the most noble of sentiments. Yet for a lot of people that is difficult. It certainly is for me. There needs to be a certain level of self preservation. I’m doing OK, I wouldn’t claim to be well off, but I know I’m better off than a lot of people. But I have worked hard for that.

So why would anyone vote for a party who is threatening to take their job away, and to rip up the numerous years of pension they have been accruing with their current company. This is the dilemma that hundreds of thousands of voters face.

Then there is the issue of the politicians themselves. I have no doubt that the majority of candidates, when they first get themselves into politics, do so because they feel they can make a difference, and that they want to help their constituents to the best of their ability.

Yet within a couple of years the vast majority of them become self serving parodies of what they set out to be. They like the power that becoming an elected representative gives them. They fall into the trap of playing politics and not listening to the will of the constituents who voted them in in the first place. They turn their back on their campaign promises, they are where they want to be, they don’t need to pay any attention to the plebs who put them there. And the main problem is, if we, the constituents vote them out and replace them with another candidate promising us the earth, we know in the bottom of our hearts they are going to do exactly the same as their predecessors.

I don’t know what it is like in other constituencies, but in Crawley, there is the definite feel that the two main parties should both be reported to the electoral commission. The volume, both in size, and in frequency, of pamphlets, flyers, letters and other general bumf we get is ridiculous. There can’t be any way that if they are sending this volume to every household in the constituency that they are keeping within the spend allowed for an election campaign.

If they were only allowed to send one item per campaign, just think of all the money it would save that could be used to actually fulfil some of the, quite frankly ludicrous, campaign promises they make.

They all annoy me so much, that the need to vote outside the box is required, it is time to choose Ben Richards.

A Mad Five Minutes

We were later getting out of work than we had intended, the plan had been to nip in to town and do a couple of bits and pieces. However after a day at work, it was a case of can’t be arsed. So it was straight home instead.

But there was a need to get some dog food, so I said I’d nip up to the shops.

And so it began.

The main manager of McColl’s was outside her shop having a cigarette, and a white van had just pulled in to the disabled parking space outside the shop. Words had been exchanged between the driver and herself and they were shouting at each other.

He was shouting the same thing over and over “are ya parking there ya self” in a fairly broad Irish accent (possibly pikey). She was shouting back, “What are you saying, I can’t understand you, speak English”.

I nipped into BestOne, it was no better in there. There was a weaselly looked bloke in there running around with a bag of flour in one hand (leaving a trail of flour behind him, like an older version of Hansel and Gretel), whilst randomly picking up items from the shelves and throwing them on the floor. All whilst an ever increasingly annoyed looking member of staff chased the man to get him to stop, and to get him out of the shop. It took two or three minutes before the weasel man was shepherded out of the shop.

I could hear an Irish accent shout “What’s wrong with the word dyke?” and the response “I know who you are” whilst the door was opened.

When I got out of the shop, the bloke was back in his van, still shouting, “you don’t know me, but I know where you work you fat bitch.” The reply as I was leaving was, “Jog on, take your tiny dick and find a hole to stick it in, that’s all you can do isn’t it”.

Out of earshot of that, I thought it was the end of it, but as I turned back into our close, I could hear another bout of shouting, but I could only see one person. He was yelling at someone, “It’s not like that, she’s just a nice person you dick. No, she isn’t a fucking whore, she’s a nice person. Fuck off you dick, I’m not fucking her.” Followed by an constant stream of “Shut Up, shut up, shut up……..”

I’m not sure who he was talking to, I assumed it was to someone on a phone, but the volume suggested that he might not have needed a phone and was speaking to someone a couple of streets away.

Never a dull moment around here.

Obsessed With Snatch

Stop sniggering at the front there, and get your minds out of the gutter, I’m not talking about that. I am talking about the film called “Snatch”, and a long time obsession with it.

For a start it isn’t my favourite film, it would be in my top ten I suppose, but wouldn’t be in my top five. You really don’t want to know what’s there. Such a collection of random (and mainly critically savaged) films you are less likely to see.

I had seen Guy Richie’s previous comedy / crime classic “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” when it came out. It got a lot of airplay on video (remember them?) and was quite quotable. I even saw the TV stories “Lock, Stock and…”, which weren’t bad (and certainly not as shocking as the recent “Snatch” TV series inflicted on us by Ron Weasley.) But for some reason I’d totally missed “Snatch” when it was released, and it was two years before I first saw it.

“Snatch” is funny and very entertaining; but it is violent, sweary, and definitely not PC, and followed on from “Lock Stock” in keeping with the London underworld theme. It just expanded to bring in a more global set of players. Guy Richie had kept Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Alan Ford and Vinnie Jones from “Lock Stock”, but added Hollywood clout with Brad Pitt as the pikey bare knuckle boxing champion, Dennis Farina and Benicio Del Toro as American gangsters, and Rade Sherbdgia as ex KGB and the almost impossible to kill “sneaky effing Russian”. It plays on some well-established stereotypes that it gets away with due to the pacing not allowing the watcher to pause long enough for it to sink in. You got all that years later with his absolute stinker “Revolver”.

By the time I got to see “Snatch”, my life had changed beyond recognition and I’d found myself washed up in Manchester, leading a faux student lifestyle in and around Fallowfield. It was the Christmas and New Year period of 2001-02 when I was introduced to the film by Mike. It is probably something he regrets doing as further commentary will show. From then on I would watch it at every opportunity. A lot of which were at 3am on stumbling back from a club. There were a lot of times that I woke on the sofa in the morning light with Klint’s “Diamond” playing on loop from the DVD’s main menu.

The obsession came from the fact that it is so eminently quotable. Eighteen years on, there is barely a day where I don’t slip a quote from “Snatch” into a conversation. Watching a film so many times during my Manchester years when I spent most of my time in an alcoholic haze seems to have embedded the script into my mind. I rarely break the DVD out to watch it now, but if there happens to be a live showing on any channel, then it is highly likely that I will dip in and watch it. The only thing I can’t promise is to keep my mouth shut during it.

By the summer of 2002, Mike had moved into the shared house I was in, bringing with him his PlayStation 2 and the DVD, and therefore a way to watch the film at home. This led to an increase in screenings. By the time he had broken his leg and was bed-bound in the room next to the living room, Mark had also moved in.

He got tired of us stumbling home and putting “Snatch” on, so he hid the DVD, putting it in the case of one of the other DVD cases. This didn’t deter me. I went out and bought my own copy (well I actually bought two, just in case the first went missing). The next day whilst we were out, Mike hobbled through to the living room and removed his PlayStation 2. I went to Argos and bought a DVD player the same day.

When I started writing my first e-zine – Surerandomality – I littered it with quotes from “Snatch” and kept a running total. By the end of issue eighty when I stopped writing it; the running total was over two thousand.

By then we had been through another shared house, and there was the day I got up on a Saturday morning and spoken in pikey all day. To everyone. Not just my housemates, but to those who served in the Co-op. Barmaids in pubs, doormen in clubs, bus drivers, taxi drivers and the all-important server of the kebab at three in the morning. How I didn’t die that day is one of life’s little mysteries.

When that shared house broke up I moved in with Mark when he bought a flat. His girlfriend Amanda moved in not long afterwards, and pretty soon bought a kitten. Somehow we managed to persuade her to call it Pikey. This obviously led to a lot of quoting “I effing hate Pikey” whenever it did something. One day it escaped, it got out the flat door, and down to the ground level and outside. When I got home, Amanda (and Mark to an extent) were looking for it. My immediate response to this was to quote from the film, “You won’t find a pikey that doesn’t want to be found. He could be in a campsite in Kampu-effing-chea by now.” This went down like the proverbial lead balloon. Her frantic searching got Mark a letter reminding him that the covenant to the flat prohibited the keeping of pets. Pikey turned up a day later, and it wasn’t long before I moved out.

At the outset my most used quote from the film would have been “Nothing, it’s tip top, I’m just not sure about the colour”, where colour would get replaced by whatever was relevant at the time. Now that I’m driving again, “it was at a funny angle” probably gets used the most, followed by “You can help me out, by showing me out.”

I must have been an annoying SOB for years with the “Snatch” obsession (I was bad enough before it). Yet when it gets triggered I can’t stop myself. One of the guys I went to school with, Dino, posted about watching the film on Friday night, and I had to jump into the chat quoting from the film. Nearly eighteen years on from the first viewing it’s a part of me. Other films may be better known, or be more obviously quotable than “Snatch”, just not by me.

Lonely Luggage

Have you ever noticed that when you are waiting for your luggage at an airport carousel, there is always that one piece of luggage that has been abandoned? It glides around the meandering track of the conveyor belt almost screaming out “Please retrieve me. Why have I been deserted?”

And as we wait for our luggage to make its way from our flight to the terminal at Tegel, there it was. That lonely suitcase. Doing endless laps around the carousel, like a brightly painted horse on a fairground ride. A pale red hard cased midsized suitcase, with definite signs of wear and tear. Scuff marks, a small dent, various stickers from previous journeys, and the little tag for its current one.

It was a remnant from an earlier flight from Istanbul. A poor lost lonely wanderer, forgotten by its owner, or discarded like a piece of paper in the wind. The number of laps it had made in unknown, but by the time our own bags turned up it had done well over twenty.

It had been turned around, and turned over, as people either looked to see if it might be theirs (despite one person who then picked up a black cloth bag instead), or nudging it out of the way as they struggled to drag their own heavy bags from the carousel.

We left with it still going around unclaimed. Had it even turned up to the correct airport? Was there a poor soul stood at Schiphol or Dubai waiting for their trusty pale red case to pop out onto the carousel there? The last person standing forlornly looking at the now empty carousel willing their bag to pop out so they can go to that meeting, or catch up with those long lost relatives. Only to find they now have a long lost case instead.

Will the case and the owner ever be reunited, or will they be doomed to circle luggage carousels for the rest of their days? Or when the airport closes for the night, will the suitcase be packed off to a lost and found, only to be auctioned off months later and only for the excited winning bidder to find it is full of now decidedly green Twinkies. What goes around comes around I suppose.

St Kevin

Hard as it may be to believe, there is actually a St. Kevin. If you can manage to get your head around that fact then it probably won’t surprise you to learn that St Kevin was from Irish stock. Records about his life are a bit sketchy, and they would have us believe he lived a very long life that spanned across three centuries. Granted it’s not as long as some of the ridiculousness of the ages quoted in the old testament (i.e. Methuselah at 969 years old etc.), but for someone to live to the supposed age of 120 in the fifth, sixth or seventh centuries is stretching the bounds of credulity.

He was born on an unspecified date in the year 498 and died on June 3^rd 618. His name was Coemgen in Old Irish, which means “Fair begotten” or “Of noble birth” and is anglicised to Kevin. It took nearly thirteen hundred years from his death for him to be made a saint, but he eventually was in 1903 by Pope Pius X.

He spent most of his life in south east Ireland, mainly in Wicklow, and founded the Glendalough abbey c540. Glendalough meaning the “glen of the two lakes”. Having founded the abbey he spent most of his life being a hermit, trying to avoid those who would become his followers. He took refuge in a bronze-age tomb in the Wicklow Mountains, which is now known as St. Kevin’s Bed.

He was immortalised in the Seamus Heaney poem “St Kevin and the Blackbird”, as St Kevin is the patron saint of Blackbirds. Who knew? Blackbirds have their own patron saint. He also features several times in James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”, and made it into song in The Dubliners “The Glendalough Saint”.

I was born in the right month for it as well, though still a fair few days off of his saint’s day on the 3^rd June. A day that seems to delight in being the saint’s day for other numerous obscure saints – Charles Lwanga, Clotilde, Ovidius and Vladimirskaya to name a few. But falling as it does it gets somewhat overshadowed in the ecclesiastical calendar by the heavyweight St. Peter and St Paul’s day on the first of the month.

There are a few churches named for St Kevin, two in Dublin, one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland, two in Glendalough and then others in Kilkenny and Kildare. He doesn’t seem to have made it to the UK or USA, but there are colleges named after him in both Australia and New Zealand.

It’s so much easier nowadays to find this kind of information out. When I was a kid growing up in Leicester with the name Kevin, the only saint Kevin that would have been mentioned would have been the saint Kevin of Keegan as celebrated by Liverpool fans. Well right up until the moment he buggered off to Germany to play for SV Hamburg, and they inherited King Kenny instead.

Now you can track all the information down in the internet. There is no being stuck in a Catholic school where everyone had obvious saint’s names like Andrew, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Adverts ridiculed the name as well. There was the advertising slogan (for a now forgotten company), “So simple even Kevin could use it”, then the “Kev, Bev, Bev, Kev” adverts that came at the start of recent Oscar winner’s Olivia Coleman’s career, plus Aldi’s ridiculous Kevin the Carrot. And don’t get me started on Roland Rat’s sidekick Kevin the Gerbil.

Despite all this I do like the name and I now use it as a badge of honour, especially in its shortened version (as can be seen from the website etc.)

I was named after a saint, despite what many people seem to think. I’m not sure personally about the whole blackbird thing, but I can say there are churches (and colleges) bearing my name.