A Little Bit Of Me On The Radio, Talking About Dining In Public Toilets

Hi,

Marian Finucane

I was on Irish radio recently - the Marian Finucane show on our national broadcaster, RTE.

I was talking about an amazing dining experience I had recently - we got the chance to have lunch in the Peer's Dining Room of the House of Lords, it's basically the most exclusive (and then some) dining room in London and normally host to the great and the good - including US presidents.

You can listen to the radio bit Here - there's a small preamble about the Irish Navy rescue missions in the Med - then me, talking about the House of Lords and then about the latest trend to hit London dining - restaurants and bars in former public toilets (seriously).

Peers Dining Room

The Peer's Dining Room in particular is an amazing experience and they are looking to open it again in September - if you are in London or can get there, I would recommend keeping an eye on the website - http://www.parliament.uk/ and regularly checking out the section on the Peer's Dining Room.



Joe

Summer In London? Try Something Different.

* Hi - regular readers might know that I am based in London at the moment - still doing/available for work in Ireland, but enjoying one of the great cities of the world, especially now that the summer has arrived. And London does summer very differently to Ireland - it's an actual season, with lots of sun and very little chance of having your kids battered senseless by hailstones while you cower in a park in Dublin or Galway.

ANYHOW! We have a lot of visitors who come to stay with us (popular, natch) and they always ask me about things they can do in London that are a little different from the usual touristy activities.

So here - in a bid to educate others but also have a handy one-stop guide for annoying visitors who "forgot" to get a six-pack of Tayto coming through duty-free - is my off-the-top-of-my-head guide to doing summertime in London differently....

"Sarf of the River at this time of night? You're 'aving a laff, aintcha!?"

LONDON! City of a thousand gourmet burger bars, botoxed Russian billionaires and prices so steep, you'll want to exit the Euro!

It's a fantastic city, and great in the summertime, if you can avoid the tourist hordes (don't go to Oxford Street and NEVER stand on the left on the Underground's escalators)

But what about the London that only smug blow-ins and locals (if you can find one, seriously, endangered species) know about?

I love exploring the city - and I love its more hidden spots, where you can see London from a different angle, get a real sense of a madly hectic, ever evolving city where people fondly remember the last wave of immigrants who used to live round 'ere before the current wave of immigrants. Seriously, just look at Brixton - posh-ish suburb in the '30s, Irish enclave in the fifties, Afro-Caribbean in the '70s and '80s and now full of South & Central Americans, hipsters and Africans (also a lot of Aussies, but that's more the Clapham end so don't go up there).

So in no particular order, and if you are gonna find yourself in London this summer I would recommend;

* Pop Brixton

Yes, yes, it's a "pop-up market" in a very hipsterish part of town - but don't let that put you off - this brand new addition to Brixton's thriving street-life is a collection of re-purposed shipping containers and cleverly designed walkways, outside seaingt areas and public spaces that is REALLY buzzing at the moment and offers lots of colour, good food, drink and great atmosphere - really worth putting at the top of your list if you are coming over the summer - more info Here


Also Brixton is also worth visiting for the great old reliable......

* The Brixton Market

Would seriously recommend this place if you are down in South London - just take the Victoria Line South to the very end, come out, turn left then left again down Electric Avenue (say hello to Eddy Grant) and you will find a series of huge, indoor arcades stuffed with weird shops and some of the best eating and drinking you will find in London. It's very trendy, but still very "local" and always surprises - take a few hours and wander around - great food, loads of outdoor seating and lots of colour.

Brixton's great for a wander - but being gentrified at an alarming rate - so get down there fast.

* Visit Eltham Palace

Bizarrely located in a pretty nondescript, dowdy part of Suburban East London, this Medieval royal palace, a childhood home to Henry VIII - has an amazing secret. The fabulously wealthy and glam society couple Stephen & Ginny Courtauld bought what was a derelict site in the 1930s and built a stunning art deco country house within the ancient moated grounds - grafting it onto the remains of the Medieval Great Hall.

Entrance Hall At Eltham Palace - Art Deco Glam 

It's a stunning example of British Art Deco that was only their home for a brief few years before and during WWII (when the couple and guests would sit on the lawn on a hill high over the city, looking at the Luftwaffe pounding away at London).

It's now run by English Heritage and may seem like a bit of a trip out of the city centre - but it is gorgeous (with great gardens) and can be done in a morning or afternoon.

More info Visit Eltham Palace 

* Franks Bar - Peckham

Frank's Some - View 

Hardly a secret to those in the know in London - but this bar and street food place on the top floor of a very dingy multi-story carpark in Peckham (another hipster hotspot) is well worth a visit for good food, drinks and vast panoramic views over London. Try and get there early-ish if it's a weekend and the sun is out because it gets RAMMED! Also - the toilets are a bit music-festival. So not for the squeamish. Their site is Here

* Have Lunch In A Toilet

Latest craze amongst novelty-obsessed diners in London? Having drinks, dinner etc in a former Victorian Public Convenience.

"Excuse me, where are the toilet...oh, right!" 

Seriously, there are now about 15 mostly high-end cocktail bars and cafes in porcelain palaces that once only had menu options Number 1 and Number 2.

The Attendant Cafe (geddit?) up on Foley Street in W1 offers high end coffee and sandwiches in a urinal based setting - really, you sit in former urinals.

These are all underground and all magnificent tributes to the love lavished on public toilets by the Victorians.

And "Story" down by Tower Bridge is a Michelin starred eatery in another disused Victorian WC.

See more about Attendant - on their website.


* The Grenadier Pub, Belgrave Sq

Down a mews-lined laneway in Belgrave, right in the heart of the embassy district, this is a small, lovely old London pub - a real star of the pub scene - if you find yourself in this neck of the woods and fancy a lovely pint of beer in a very unusual, quiet setting, check it out. Hard to find - would recommend you downlond the CityMapper app https://citymapper.com/ - a great, free way to navigate your way around the city.



* Gordon's Wine Bar - Villiers Street near Charing Cross

A real London Institution - a subterranean wine-bar open for 125 years - in the winter, a real cave, in the summer, a large, long outdoor seating area that's very popular with Londoners, post-work crowd etc - it's down near Charing Cross Stn, in a very busy part of London - and it can get VERY busy at the weekends, but definitely worth popping in for a glass of vino if you are in the area. And if it is too jammed - a tip, go to the nearby Sainsburys, get some drinks and go to the small park in front of
Gordon's just by the river - you can have a little alcoholic picnic in a lovely setting for little money (but just keep the bottles discreet, strictly speaking, you are not supposed to be drinking there - but everybody does).

* The Cutty Sark - Greenwich.

Greenwich is a bit hard to get to - and very packed with tourists - but go to the market for a bite to eat (great Lebanese falafel stall there) and then walk down the river path in front of the Royal Hospital to the Cutty Sark pub - pub itself is so-so - but the long row of tables right on the river bank give you a great view of the river and the city - the nearby Trafalgar Inn is also worth a visit.


* The Festival Hall On The SouthBank

Right - here's a good one - if you are down by the South Bank - the London Eye - in front of the Festival Hall main entrance there is LOADS of seating, right up over the river with views of the Houses of Parliament etc - and you can bring your own drink (or get drinks from the bar outside - or cheaper pints from the festival hall bar inside) - I LOVE this place on Fri afternoons - you see lots of colour and lots of people and can watch the boats going up and down the river and a Waterloo Sunset.

There is also an amazing terrace upstairs in the festival hall (see pic) which you can access for the price of a pint in the bar - gets busy at weekends - and they won't let you smoke up there - same goes for the nearby roof terrace (just look for the big yellow sign) so they can feck off.

* Brockwell Lido

Go for a swim in the city - this is near Brixton - a lovely, 50m outdoor pool that's very popular with Locals and visitors alike in the summer - again, tends to get jammed at sunny weekends so get there early - great food as well and a lovely cafe.

There are Lidos all over London - well worth checking out to see if there is one near where you are - the Serpentine Lake is one I plan to visit this summer.

* Hampstead

Yes, very posh and very expensive - but get the Tube up there and wander around - you can walk on the heath (good views over the city) visit the Lido or just hang in the cafes - very fashionable crowds and great place to have a goo at the quality.

* The French House, Soho

Soho is changing fast - and not for the better if you believe the anti-gentrification/keep Soho raw crowd. It's very busy but I would recommend the French House for drinks and the Bar Italia for coffee - to get a sense of the Old Soho that is very, very quickly disappearing.

* Artusi - Peckham

If you love your food - this relatively recent arrival on the scene is now reckoned to be one of the best in London - it's in a lovely part of Peckham (!) Bellenden Road, and there's a great pub called the Montpellier around the corner - book ahead though, it's jammers. Link - Artusi

If you can't get into Artusi - check out the Begging Bowl Thai resturant nearby - cheap-ish and reckoned to be one of the best in South London.

* AND FINALLY - THE WILTON MUSIC HALL - Tower Hamlets/East End

A rare survivor in a very unglam part of town - this is a mid-19th century music hall that - through a weird quirk of fate - survived being knocked down.

There are great music events on here all week and it's got fantastic history and surroundings - real, old London, down by the docks - see more Here




* I realise I am only scratching the surface here - but hopefully there are a few suggestions you'll think worth following up - thanks for reading!

The Ballerina, Her Mother And The Genteel Art of Forgery.

* This story is perhaps my most obscure yet. But the idea of  a genteel daughter of the Anglo-Irish peerage pulling off one of the most brazen art-frauds of the early 20th century appeals to me. Also, the fact that her daughter was the great, ferocious Doyenne of modern English ballet - Dame Ninette De Valois also adds a bit of colour. I really think Ealing Studios, or perhaps P.G. Woodehouse could have had a lot of fun with this one .........

* The gentlemen of Sotheby's Auction House on New Bond Street in London were in something of a pickle.

They had been consigned one of the greatest collections of antique Irish and British glass ever put together, the famous Harding Collection, for sale in their venerable auction rooms.

Ninette - 1925

But the collection of 17th and 18th century glass, previously estimated to be worth in the region of £16,000 (just over £1m in today's money) had failed to generate any excitement amongst the buyers. In fact, the Harding Collection was under something of a cloud. There had been whispers in the showrooms on New Bond street, dark mutterings about pedigree and provenance. Some had even gone so far as to utter the one word that could send a shiver of fear through the genteel staff of the world's greatest auction house, a business which had traded on its impeccable reputation since 1744.

That one word? "Fake!"

There was a huge sum of money on the line. The reputation of the great auction house, the ridicule facing a gullible, sadly departed philanthropist and millionaire. There was also the scandal that could wreck the career of the greatest ballerina and choreographer of the age, the fierce Irish dancer who had starred under Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes, worked with WB Yeats at the Abbey in Dublin and charmed the British Royals.

Dame Ninette de Valois was about to create one of the great dance dynasties, the company that would become The Royal Ballet. But in the early 1930s, one lady could still wreck all of that.

And that lady was her mother.

Elizabeth (Lilith) Graydon-Stannus, born into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy at a country house in Lacken, Co Wicklow in 1876 was an artist, entrepreneur and star of the British Art-Deco movement. She had become an expert in highly-collectible antique Irish glassware, established her own glass-works in amongst the post-war bohemians of Battersea in London and watched her daughter Ninette become one of the most celebrated prima-ballerinas and choreographers in the world. Ninette had changed her name from Edris Stannus to the more French sounding Ninette de Valois when she made her professional debut in London in 1911. Aged 13.

Ninette Aged 16 - Already a Seasoned Pro

 Ninette was a child prodigy. But also fiercely determined. She went from child dancer to prima-ballerina to Godmother of British dance through the 20th century. The Irish woman made a star of Fonteyn and sensationally brought Nureyev to London.

Her mother Lilith was, if one contemporary is to be believed; ""The greatest villain in the manipulation of the history of Irish Glass". 

Ms Graydon-Stannus might have begged to differ.

To her mind, she was not copying or faking rare and highly valuable antique glass - heaven forfend! She was merely "creating" and "improving".

Or as she once declared herself; "My endeavour is to create. Not to copy!"

And if the buyer, usually very rich but perhaps not expert collectors, were under the impression that they were actually paying for the real thing, well, these things happen, darling!

What Elizabeth Stannus did - as far as we can tell - was mix straight up forgery with very clever and sophisticated "reproduction" and "improving".

In some cases, she would take genuine old Irish glass pieces - decanters, goblets, etc - and "improve" them by getting her highly skilled workmen to do additional engraving and cutting, turning a commonplace, boring piece of glass worth £10 into a rare jewel worth £100.

Or, she would find old moulds, the ones used to produce the original pieces, and use them to churn out scores of new-old copies.

Elizabeth even went so far as to melt down old Irish glass to use its unique look and qualities to create highly convincing "reproductions" (even if that particular word was nowhere to be seen on the label).

It was clever, sophisticated and totally against the rules of the antiques business. It was fraud.

The real kicker is that Graydon-Stannus was something of a great artist herself - her highly colourful, beautifully designed Art-Deco pieces were very popular in their day and are hugely desirable to collectors today (look for the Gray-Stan mark in your local junk-shop).

She could produce modern classics - but she also had the skills and the, er, nerve to copy, fake and fool. And in her marvellously genteel way, charming the American visitors to London, hob-knobbing with the artistic elite of 1920s London, she set out to rake in the cash.

There has also been speculation that Lilith didn't stop at forging Irish antiques - she may have also tried her hand at famous contemporary names such as Lalique.

Strangely, it was the lady herself who gave the game away. In a speech to the Royal Society of Arts in 1926, she vehemently rejected growing claims that she was faking. But admitted that she owned old Irish moulds and had been working on reproducing the look and design of Old Irish Glass.

Lilith had literally written the book on Old Irish Glass - her handbook of that title had been considered at the time to be the bible on the subject, but today, the copy in the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford has a sticker on the front that says; "Use With Caution! Contains Many Factual Errors!"

The errors contained inside are mostly images and drawings of old Irish glass pieces, that had either been hacked-about or "created" by the lady herself.

Her reputation went into sharp decline. But it was too late for well-heeled buyers like Walter Harding, who visited her shop in Battersea in the 1920s and bought up almost her entire stock of "Old" Irish pieces.

When Harding - a millionaire philanthropist from Liverpool - died in the mid-1930s, his collection came up for sale in Sotheby's in London. Expected to fetch at least what he had paid for it, £16,000 (or almost £1m in today's money) - it sold for just £900 (£57k). Word about Elizabeth and her creative ways had obviously got around.

It should have been a huge scandal, perhaps resulting in legal action. Curiously, it was not. Some have speculated that her daughter Ninette - using her connections at the very top of British society - had the affair hushed up. There were rumours of some of the more irate customers being paid off, of favours being called in and mother being quietly packed off down the country.

The affair quickly died down. Sotheby's went on making money, Ninette went on building her Ballet empire and Lilith? Well, she is accused of many things, including creating such a mess of the history of Antique Irish Glass that many of her fakes may still be doing the rounds as the real thing.

But where's the harm? After all, new, old, fake or "improved", aren't they all simply lovely things?

Now, would you be interested in a lovely Jacobean wine goblet, at all? Fresh in from a gorgeous old Irish house..... so perfect! It looks as if it could have been made yesterday, darling!

**HEY! THANKS FOR READING!******* And by the way, if anybody is interesting in paying me to make a doc/write further about this, I will work for food. Also, antique glassware.

Easter 1916 - The Gorgeous Wrecks & The Cricket Bat That Died For Ireland.

* This is a piece I wrote for the Irish Independent newspaper - a personal take on the events of 1916 - the Easter Rising or Rebellion that hit loyal, peaceful Dublin like a thunderclap on a sunny Easter Weekend. I learnt about it in school - at the hands (and sometimes fists) of the Christian Brothers. But in recent years, I have tried to approach the events from a different angle.......

Captain Jack White - Free Lovin' Irish Revolutionary 

 * The Christian Brothers who taught me about Irish history presented Easter, 1916 as a heroic epic, the founding myth of our Republic.

They were muscular men, a generation or so on from the Rising, the War of Independence and our brutal Civil War, the latter being a subject that was still too raw to even mention in the classrooms of Cork in the 1980s.

They revered Pádraig Pearse, a teacher and strict disciplinarian after their own hearts, and believed in his doctrine of blood sacrifice, linking it to the men of 1798 and even further back to our original muscular Christian, brave, martyred Brian Boru.

Brian Boru - the High King of Ireland and scourge of the Vikings! - was presented in the same way we learnt about the early Christian martyrs, the Roman Legionnaires put to death for refusing to chuck their fellow Christians to the lions. 

In many ways, in their admiration for Pearse and mania for discipline, they were the paramilitary wing of the Catholic Church.

To my young, over-active imagination, Pearse was a cross between the hot-tempered Brother who tried to “bate” Irish into us and John Wayne at the Alamo, running his young volunteers through the tuiseal ginideach even as he fired his rifle from the burning wreck of the GPO.

In our homes, Michael Collins was revered, his portrait hanging alongside a picture of John F Kennedy and the Pope, Cork’s own Blessed Holy Trinity. DeValera was mentioned only in dark whispers, a bogey-man.

The events of 1916 didn’t seem real to us, even though they happened when our grandfathers were alive. And there was no connection made to the Troubles, to the nightly news reports about the Hunger Strikers, names such as Bobby Sands, heard as we sat around the table for our tea.

It is only in recent years, having gone back and looked at the events of 1916 for myself, that I have been able to find a way into the Easter Rising via some of the small, forgotten stories behind the Great Myth.

As a history nut, and having written a book about long forgotten Irish men who did everything from run the French slave trade to invading Imperial China, I see the small stories of individual men and women as a valuable way to approach Great Events from a different angle.

And 1916 has a wealth of small stories which can give us a sense of what it must have been like to live through those times, the sudden chaos, the trauma and the conflicting emotions and loyalties.

(The video below is only six minutes long and sets the scene well.)

One episode, a tragic side-show to the doomed struggle on O’Connell Street, gives us a striking picture of the confusion and tragedy of Dublin, Easter 1916.

It is the story of The Gorgeous Wrecks, how, on Easter Monday, April 24, a small party of volunteers occupying Clanwilliam House by Mount Street Bridge fired on a detachment of Home Defence Force volunteers.

The Home Defence men were a sort of Dad’s Army, mostly elderly Dubliners, loyalists, veterans of the British army and colonial wars. They wore armbands with the inscription “Georgious Rex” (King George) and their creaky, grey-haired ranks were known affectionately to Dubliners as “The Gorgeous Wrecks”.

The Wrecks had been out on an Easter Monday parade in full uniform and just stumbled into the volunteer strong-point. The 17 volunteers in Clanwilliam house opened fire, killing four of the Wrecks and wounding others before they realised, to what some later said was their horror, that these were not British Army regulars, but the Dad’s Army that Dubliners were accustomed to seeing parading on high-days and holidays. The jolly old Gorgeous Wrecks.

We could hardly find a better snapshot of a peaceful, loyal city of the Empire suddenly overwhelmed by sudden, shocking violence and confusion.

I am also drawn to the story of The Cricket Bat That Died For Ireland.

The Bullet Still In the Cricket Bat That Died For Ireland

This bat – now in the National History Museum – was in the shop window of Elvery's Sports in Sackville Street when it stopped a bullet from a British gun (the spent bullet still lodged in the bat is a .303). To me, this strange, very Anglo-Irish memento vividly represents the destruction and chaos of the Rising.

Contemporary accounts tell of street urchins looting bats, balls, lacrosse sticks and polo mallets from Elvery's and parading them like trophies around the edges of the fighting. One of the many surreal sights of a battle being fought in the heart of a busy, mercantile city.

Recently, I also came across the story of Captain Jack White, the son of an Ulster-born British Field Marshall and a decorated hero of the British Army himself.

Jack followed a strange path from Winchester Public School and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, fighting in the Boer War and then throwing in his commission to embrace radical socialism, free-love and the cause of Ireland.

It was White who brought his military experience to organising The Citizen’s Army. 

He did not fight in 1916 but when he heard his great friend James Connolly would be shot, he tried to organise the Miners of South Wales to come out on strike to put pressure on the British Government to commute the sentence.

White, who later went on to fight for the Republicans in Spain, battled sectarianism at home and tried to organise a socialist party in Ulster, was (in his own words) a miss-fit, one of the many men and women who saw the ideals of Connolly and brotherhood turn to dust in the years after 1916.

In the stories of Jack White, The Gorgeous Wrecks and the Elvery’s Cricket Bat, we can see past the epic myth, the cold revisionism and the strange, current need to treat 

Easter 1916 as some sort of profound, teachable lesson for modern Ireland.

Thanks to the internet and the great efforts of historians (academic and amateur) to put a wealth of history online, we can all now go back and look at the events of 1916, and look at the people and smaller events that never made the history books or the heroic myth.

These are the stories that I would tell about The Rising.

*** You can read more about the cricket bat Here - an excellent blog about its history and significance. 

**** HEY THANKS FOR READING**** 

The Pursuit of Happiness -The O'Shea Institute of Sociological Spoofery Comes Out On Gay Marriage.

* Everybody else has a Same Sex Marriage Referendum Blog. So Why Can't I?

"Is That A Girl or a Boy?" 

* Around the time I was leaving school and leaving home, two people that I knew took their own lives.

One was a middle-aged man, a friend of the family. The other was a young guy in my peer group, somebody I knew from around town, a quiet, friendly guy I would see at music gigs.

By the time it happened, I was already gone from my small city on the south coast. It was only years later that I really thought about what happened, and realised that both these men (well, one almost a boy) had almost certainly been gay. And they had looked at their lives in late 1980s Ireland and decided that they were not worth living.

But it was never talked about. Their deaths, the reasons behind them, the existence of gay people in our lives. I only really knew one Gay guy in our entire city. I hung out with him (shared an unhealthy obsession with The Smiths), but we never talked about why he, every weekend, he had to fight some twisted bastards who saw the blue streak in his hair, his clothes, his manner, and tried to pound him into the ground. I didn't really know how to talk about it and I think he didn't want to take the risk that I would stop being his friend. Around the time I left, he left too. Went to London to try and make a life.

It just wasn't talked about. It was never mentioned on the radio, on TV, in the newspapers. The first time I vaguely became aware of "otherness" was seeing Boy George And Culture Club on Top of the Pops and hearing my dad, like millions of other dads who witnessed the strangeness of that apparition, splutter; "Jesus Christ, is that Queerhawk a boy or a girl?".

It was only later that I found out that Boy George was working-class London-Irish. And as tough as that particular breed of people comes. Tough because he had to be.

My parents grew up in a cold, grey, utterly repressed and terrifying Ireland. I only found out recently that a Great Aunt, who helped to raise us, was forced to give up two children of her own because she was not married to the man she loved. They literally took the children from her in the hospital. Years later, she plucked up the courage to track down one of her daughters. When she went to her house, she had the door closed in her face. The shame was still there. On and on it went, down the generations. Those who could, left. Many who stayed endured misery and a kind of madness. Many - gay, straight, whatever, self-medicated via alcohol.

Ireland was a strange, cold place for so many. In 1990, in one of my first interviews as a student journalist, I talked to Richard Branson, who had shocked the country by offering condoms for sale over the counter at his Virgin Megastore in Dublin. Seriously, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, you basically couldn't buy condoms in Ireland unless you had a letter from your priest/doctor. Richard Branson is a polite, media-savvy man. But you could see he just wanted to shout; "What the F**K is WRONG with you people?"

For most of the '90s, I worked in a newspaper industry in Dublin that apparently employed no Gay men and women. Not one. LGBT people were invisible. Non-people.

David Norris. A Brave Human Being. And Great Craic. 

Homosexuality was still illegal in Ireland until 1993. It took the European Court of Rights and the fearless campaigning of a great Irishman called David Norris to force the Government to decriminalise it.

As recently as 2002, the newspaper I was working for had a front page "splash" - with Government Minister Brendan Howlin declaring; "I'm Not Gay!". There had been a whispering campaign against this popular politician, one which some say cost him the leadership of his party. So he felt he had to say it.

So on May 22nd, my country votes on Same Sex Marriage. The polls suggest the referendum should pass, though some are worried about the Irish habit of saying one thing to the pollsters and doing another in the voting booth. And there's Donegal, of course. Going on past form, Donegal may take the chance to bring back the death penalty or vote us into the Russian Federation.

Can't Argue With That 

But the vote is still very much in the balance.

There has been a loud, sometimes strange, often hysterical campaign against granting this basic civil right to Irish men and women. The veteran and respected journalist Bruce Arnold this week said we shouldn't vote Yes because we feel sorry for gay people.

Let that one sink in for a moment. "Banish your empathy, people of Ireland! It is merely a weakness of the flesh!"

The Catholic Church, once the power in the land, now grimly marching towards some dark, obscure place, says No.

The self-appointed experts say Say Same Sex Marriage will destroy the fabric of Irish society, lead to child abuse, compulsory gay adoption, cloning, cataclysmic genetic experiments in Leitrim, brother marrying sister and plumber marrying florist. Your basic frogs, blood and Elton John albums raining from the sky, scenario.

The arguments against Gay Marriage have mostly been high, wild and crazy. And have been shouted endlessly on the airwaves and in print by a class of people who up until very recently had total control of our society and yet now claim (in their newspaper columns and on endless TV and radio appearances) that they are a persecuted minority without a voice.

One leading politician and Noted Idiot said this weekend past that he was against Gay Marriage as he didn't want "any Elton John scenarios". We'll leave that one to future historians to work out.

What they are really saying - actually, screaming - is; "We are terrified. We once ruled this land. We imposed our morality on a cowed people. And now they are turning their backs on us, on Mother Church, on the old ways. We have lost our power."

Divorce didn't destroy the fabric of our society. Allowing gay men and women to live out in the open without fear of criminal prosecution didn't destroy our country. Giving them the same rights to marriage as enjoyed by the rest of the country won't either. You really would have to be in full flight from reality to think otherwise.

Rock On, Bishop Michael Burrows

Some people of faith have stood up for the Yes side. Church of Ireland Bishop Michael Burrows has said; " 'The rights of gay people have become, very properly, the great justice issue of our time just as the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women were in the past'.

Of course, being a Godless Protestant, he would say that. 

So I think back to those two human beings that took their own lives that year I left school. And the countless lives that were lived in misery, fear and waste because the Catholic Church and others has had such a bizarre obession/problem with human sexuality. With love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Y'know, your basic Christian-values stuff.

I think Ireland has changed greatly. Since Gay people have been allowed to live openly amongst us, the famous, probably mythical block known as "Middle Ireland" has seen them for what they are. Brothers, sisters, friends, neighbours, sons, daughters, barmen, brickies, politicians and cab-drivers.

I think most people see same sex marriage for what it is. A basic civil rights issue. And more importantly, a Happiness Issue. We want our friends, neighbours and family to have that chance of being happy.

I think we will vote Yes with a significant majority on May 22nd because most Irish people will look at the real issues with clear eyes and decide it is the right thing to do. The human thing to do. And yes, the Christian thing to do.  

So hopefully, we will choose happiness. Knowing we were mired in misery for too bloody long. 

One final question - how could any country that loves the Eurovision soooo much (and guys, that's another thing we need to talk about), possibly vote against Same Sex Marriage? 

Think about it, people. And VOTE! 

***HEY, thanks for reading!*** 

In Deepest Yemen - With The Heavily-Armed Hamsters

* A Few Years Ago......I went to Yemen by mistake. 

It may sound strange, but at the time I was writing travel pieces (still do, available for hire, cross my palm with silver). But being a freelancer, I was at the bottom of the pile when it came to press trips. 

There were three kind of travel junkets in newspapers. The first, were the ones you never heard about. You would just realise that somebody got a free fortnight in the Bahamas or Australia when the news-editor turned up after a being off with a deep tan. In January. The second, the week in Spain or Italy, went to the staffers. The third, the Weird Ones, went to us freelancers.

Yemen At Bottom Of Map

And so it was that I ended up going to Yemen. A place that is now in the news thanks to tragic events. The Iranians and the Saudis have joined in an already volatile situation - bombing and killing in a bid to find out which version of Early Medieval mysticism is the correct one.

And every time I hear about the conflict there, my heart sinks a little - because going to Yemen was an amazing  if accidental experience.

I took the trip on a last-minute, "Yeah, Sure why not?".

It was the weirdest place I have ever been too (and I talk as somebody who once bounced around the highlands of Uganda and Rwanda for ten days. AND trekked thru deepest Leitrim). But it was ....stunning, other-worldly. In parts, it was as if we stepped out of our Toyota Jeep and straight into the 13th century. 

And I did drugs with heavily-armed hamsters. AK47s and all. Talk about an Idiot Abroad.....

Me With My Bros - Highlands of Yemen

'You're going WHERE?" It was the standard and understandable response when I told people I was about to go to Yemen for some sight-seeing. There are places where we go on holiday (Spain, France, Italy), places we go travelling (Peru, Vietnam and Tibet) and places which, for even the most committed global wanderers, are fated to remain forever off the map. Yemen was definitely one of those places for me. The only thing I knew about it was that it was somewhere near Somalia (in the news then because of recent piracy in the Arabian sea) and Chandler from Friends once had to go there in a bid to escape from his annoyingly-voiced girlfriend, Janice. Also! Bonus Strange Yemen fact, English comedian Eddie Izzard was born there.

A quick Google later and that vast caché of knowledge had expanded to include: where it is (at the bottom of the Arabian peninsula underneath Saudi Arabia); some economic facts (very little oil, poorest state in the Gulf region); and a little bit of history. Yemen was the land of the Biblical Queen of Sheba (one of the rulers of the ancient Sabaean Kingdom) and was known to the Romans as Arabia Felix, or 'Happy Arabia', because of the riches generated by the spice and incense trade.

The Republic of Yemen is slightly smaller than France, has a rapidly expanding population of around 21 million, and many of them are daily users of a narcotic plant called Qat (more of which later). Yet even knowing all of this this could not have prepared ne for the culture shock of landing in the ancient capital Sana'a at 7am on a Saturday after a 12-hour flight via Cairo, or the hypnotic calls to prayer of the muezzins bouncing off the mudbrick high-rises.

An old Yemani Royal Palace - Made Out of Marzipan. 

It's one of the weird side-effects of 21st-century travelling. You leave your familiar surroundings in Dublin one grey morning and within half a day, you are standing, bewildered, in the middle of a crowd scene from Arabian Nights as women in full-length black sharshafs shove past you, with only their dark eyes showing through narrow slots in their veils. Sana'a itself, once you start to get your head around it, is a lofty 2,000m above sea level and appears, at first glance, to be the capital of one of the dustier planets from Star Wars (especially when the moon looms hugely out of the high desert sky). Five or six-storey mud brick buildings, with roofs and floor levels picked out in black, white or red stone and whitewash framed arabesque stained-glass windows, crowd inside ancient walls.

The Capital Sann'a - Mud-brick Sky-Rise

Like much of the rest of the country, it's dusty and crowded, weird and wonderful, and incredibly beautiful all at the same time. The Yemeni tourism ministry had arranged for a driver and a guide to meet myself and my two travelling companions, a young Englishman and a fiftysomething Englishwoman with a lot of experience of the Middle East.

"Hello, where are you from?" (the standard question from all Yemenis and one that we would hear at least 20 times a day over the coming week, there not being a lot of foreigners around). When we informed our guide, a local man who had lived in Canada, that we were "one Irlanda and two English", he made an executive decision. "It's better if you say you are all from Ireland -- too many questions about Bush and Blair," he said. Score one for the former colonies (Irish and Yemeni) and a week of stiff upper lip declarations of Gaeldom from my English travelling companions.

Of course, the fact that Yemen has long been on the British Foreign Office list of countries you should not travel to -- under the reassuring headings of 'Terrorism', 'Kidnapping' and 'Hostages' -- may have also informed our guide's advice. At the time we visited, there had been several incidences of tourist kidnappings. And botched rescue attempts by the Yemeni army. There was a long list of incidents such as the one in July, 2007, when eight Spanish and two Yemeni nationals were killed and a number of others injured in a suicide bomb attack in Ma'rib, 100km east of Sana'a. We could only travel outside Sana'a, with an official guide and, every 100km or so, there are army checkpoints that record your passing through and inform the next checkpoint down the line when to expect you. "If we don't show up in a couple of hours, then they will come looking for us," explained the guide, with the nonchalance of a man who was never going to be suspected of being a close personal friend of George W Bush..

Within hours of landing in Sana'a, we were going through our first checkpoint as we began our long climb up into the Haraz mountains. And after the exotic otherness of the ancient capital, this was where the great secret of Yemen was revealed. While the east of Yemen is classic Arabian desert, the western half is spectacularly, jaw-droppingly beautiful mountain country. We climbed from a high desert plateau into endless jagged mountain ranges, with every mountain top and foreboding rock crowned with a heavily fortified village that appeared to be made out of blocks of marzipan. Every mountainside is terraced in the style that would be familiar to people who have travelled through the former Inca empire in Peru. At the top of each mound rising above us were yet more impossibly beautiful castles in the air under milky-blue, Alpine skies.

The Village of Al Hajjara - very typical of mountaintop villages in Yemen

Our four days in the mountains went roughly like this: get up at 6am for breakfast, climb into the Land Cruiser, drive vertically for six hours (stopping off for lunch in fly-blown mountain villages), walk for two hours from one village to another over knife-edge ridges, then find a ramshackle guest house for an evening meal and bed. The hotels/guest houses were mostly primitive, but usually clean and very welcoming.

There were some hitches. At the mountain village of Manakha, the four brothers who owned the local hotel we stayed in played music and performed a traditional dance while we sat cross-legged on the floor eating rice, flatbread and spicy goat meat (which I love). There was a collection of dusty old rifles in the corner. I picked one up (an ancient British Lee Enfield), thinking it was an ornament. When I pulled back the bolt, I saw the live round in the chamber. My shock produced a few laughs from our hosts.

Yemani Man With Jambiyya - Pic BY Ashley Jonathan Clements

Now, no man in Yemen is ever seen without his traditional J-shaped Jambiyya dagger in his belt, in the way that our granddads would have never gone outside the door without their caps. And the traditional dance performed for us that night was, as far as I could make out, the famed 'Brandishing the Fearsome Daggers Under the Noses of the Terrified Tourists Dance'. But in a country where you regularly see guys wandering around the markets with AK47s, it wasn't that scary -- at least not until they picked up their rifles for the big finale. Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured and when midnight came, we retired to our bedrooms on the third floor.

And that was when the fun began. As well as the knives and guns, most males in Yemen spend virtually every afternoon chewing Qat, a mountain bush that apparently has mild cocaine-like affects. It's chewed like tobacco, which makes the men, chawing on huge wads of green leaves in their cheek pouches, look like heavily armed hamsters. I actually tried some with the Homicidal Manaka Brothers, sat in the room with about 14 guys chewing away for a while. And all it did was keep me awake for 48 hours. Which would prove to be a bit of a problem. Late that night, as we settled down to sleep, our armed and by now drug-addled hosts decided to put a fourth floor on the hotel, using a cement mixer, pneumatic drills and hammers. At about 4am, my fourth attempt to get them to stop saw me come as close as I ever want to be to starting a knife-fight with a tooled-up, drug-crazed dance troupe. I was standing there in my shorts, screaming threats at any man who picked up a drill. Remarkably fool-hardy given they had a stack of AKs next to the shovels.

All very colourful (and true, I swear), but not representative of a country where I always felt safe and the people were gentle, friendly and delighted to meet foreigners.

But there is a reason that people still live on the highest rock of the highest mountain. And men often carry around automatic rifles. A reason that we have been reminded of in the past couple of weeks, with the Saudis and Iranians (and all the rest of the neighbours) joining in the civil war to fight a proxy, sectarian war. The utter bastards.

So now Yemen is about bombs and terrorism. But when I see the headlines, I remember how, when I went into the highlands, a pocketful of cheap pens (the man from the tourist ministry told us to buy some in the capital) would win lots of smiles and Kodak moments from the kids who popped up from behind every boulder and wall.

Down With The Kids In Yemen

Unfortunately for those kids, Yemen was in no way ready for mass tourism in the way that, say, Dubai had established itself.  Despite having all of the scenery, history and culture that Dubai lacks.

Yemen is now a country in agony. And it makes me sad. Because it is just so unbelievably beautiful and interesting. 

It should be a world class travel destination. It is a dream location for mountain trekking, wild, spectacular, friendly and almost totally deserted. And in a world of increasingly jaded travellers, Yemen could be that rare beast, an unspoilt, unexplored desert and mountain paradise, travel Nirvana for the truly adventurous.

Or course, this is an outsider speaking. What really matters to the people there now is peace and stability. I hope they get it.

*Hey! Thanks for reading* 

Perkin Warbeck - The Male Model Who Fought A Tudor King

* This is a quirky story from history that has long intrigued me, partly because the outlandish plot to usurp the first Tudor King of England was hatched in my home-town, the southern Irish port city of Cork. It's also the real reason why Cork is still called "The Rebel City", a title that has nothing to do (as most people think) with Michael Collins and the 20th century fight for Irish independence. In fact, the title is not so much about Michael Collins as Derek Zoolander.

"some dudes brainwashed Derek to off the prime minister of Micronesia!"

It's a strange one - the tale of a late medieval male model who suddenly found himself thrust into centre-stage in the European power-politics of the day. It's the story of a charismatic, foolish young man who found out there was more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking.

Perkin - The Tudor Zoolander 

* In the autumn of 1491, a Flemish merchant's ship docked in the southern Irish port of Cork. The city had been welcoming trade from the continent for centuries and the small ship, loaded with fine silks, furs and other luxury goods, would not have excited much comment. 

On board was a Breton silk-merchant called Pierre Jean Meno and his young apprentice, the son of a poor but respectable burgess of Tournai called Jehan de Werbecque. The apprentice was 17-year-old Perkin Werbecque.

These were turbulent times in Ireland, Britain and beyond. Ireland was still a stronghold of the York family, who had been defeated by the Plantagenets in the recent, insanely complicated dynastic struggle known to us as the Wars of The Roses (My kingdom for a horse, and all that).

The Wars of The Roses - Florist Against Florist

The Yorkists still believed they could take back the crown from the usurper Henry VII (father of Henry VIII of...er...Wolf Hall fame). But they lacked a candidate to unite around, the York family men being prone to having large steel blades inserted into various parts of their bodies.

Edward & Richard - The Royal Brothers Who Disappeared In The Tower

Henry VII was the first Tudor monarch, having invaded from France and seized the throne from the Plantagenet King Richard III (whose body was recently found under a car-park in Leicester) who in turn had taken it from the 12-year-old Edward V, one of the two Princes In The Tower, who had disappeared while being "protected" by Richard in the Tower of London (try to keep up).

So! Confused times. And into this, or at least into the small port of Cork, many miles across the sea from London, walked the handsome young apprentice, Perkin Warbeck. 

His job, while in Cork, was to be a sort of Male Model. He would don his master's finest silk clothes, stroll about the town and basically act as a human mannequin, telling those who asked where they could find the merchant with the exquisite cloth. 

And Perkin was, by all accounts, a handsome and charismatic kid. So charismatic, that the rumour soon went around the city that this beautiful, finely dressed young man with a funny accent must be an aristocrat. In fact, as the whole of Cork was soon saying, he was really the Earl of Warwick, one of the many missing Yorkist noblemen with a claim to the Crown Of England, Wales and Ireland!

Sure, he didn't exactly speak English. But look at those clothes! That fine face and noble carriage! He HAD to be a nobleman!

As the tumult went up and the mob gathered, Perkin denied that he was the Earl. No, he was in fact....Richard, Duke of York, one of the disappeared "Princes In The Tower" and the one true King!

Historians have long argued how, exactly, Perkin pulled this one out of his silk-clad arse (although they tend to dress up the language a bit). Was he a foolish young man, who knew all of the stories about the tragic Princes which had scandalised Europe, and gotten a little carried away with all the attention? Or had he been sent by the French king to ferment trouble for the current King of England, whose grasp on the crown was shaky at best?

But whatever the reason - this was SENSATIONAL! The Duke of York, in Cork! The streets ran wild with Yorkist sentiment. 

Cork had some previous in the Pretender Game. Just a few years earlier they had welcomed another unlikely claimant to the Throne of England, a young man called Lambert Simnell, who had arrived in Cork, was proclaimed Earl Of Warwick (who apparently made more comebacks than Sinatra) and managed to lead a rebellion into England which was finally defeated in battle, but not before Henry VII had gotten quite the shock. 

For the vocal support of both Simnell and Warbeck, Cork would be dubbed a "Rebel City" by King Henry VII, a moniker that has stuck to this day. 

Having seen Simnell come a cropper, the people and city fathers of Cork were a little less hasty when it came to Warbeck. He was given a bit of a party and then sent on his way back to France with plenty of "Good luck to ye now, and if it all works out well with the whole Claiming the Crown thing, make sure to get back to us!". 

The French King Charles VIII did welcome Warbeck/Richard and - together with Margaret of Burgundy - backed his claim. Further headaches came for Henry VII when the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian (the real Big Cheese) also recognised the good-looking guy in silk. 

It looked like serious trouble for Henry. But he was a smart operator with a very good spy network in Europe who informed him of two salient facts. Firstly, the support for Warbeck amongst his kingly rivals was luke-warm at best. And secondly, Emperor Max had money problems and his attention on Italy. 

Henry wisely bided his time. When Warbeck and his small band of supporters tried to invade England at Deal in 1485, it turned into a fiasco and Warbeck was forced to sail first to Ireland and then to Scotland to try and find a safe haven and regroup.

In August 1497, after more adventures and another failed attempt at invasion, he was persuaded to give himself up at an Abbey in England, where he had tried to claim sanctuary. 

Henry was remarkably lenient with the young man, keeping him at court so he could keep an eye on him. But after he tried to run away several times, the King's patience ran out and Perkin was tried and executed in London on November 23rd, 1499. He was 28.

At best, Perkin Warbeck was just the dupe of powerful men involved in the long-running dynastic squabbles of the era. They said he went to his death with dignity. And dressed in a simple white linen smock. 

**** hey, thanks for reading!*****