Beer with subtitles

Brick purports to be a film noir high school murder mystery. This it is; it is not, however, twice as good as, say, Clueless and The Big Sleep (not that I’ve seen that, but I’ll bet it’s at least as good as Clueless – there’s a safe bet if ever there were one).

The lead has a lot to answer for. Perhaps it’s typical for a film noir “hero” to appear superficially unaffected by events surrounding him but even this hero’s interactions with others fail to construct an interesting, deeper, picture of his character. The audience is thrown in at the deep end; within five minutes of the opening credits this guy is making deals, playing other characters off each other and, the most satisying part of the film, acting as a double agent for the school authorities.

I felt that we never really know who he is and that, more importantly, without any context or hint of a life beyond this film we never really care. It’s as if he exists only the purposes of this film and then pops out of existence immediately after the closing shot.

The worst and most annoying aspect of the film is not the lead, however, but rather the dialogue. The fish out of water dialogue experiment can work, as Romeo + Juliet proved, but here the lines are delivered lazily and without any intensity.

The saving grace of the film is how it occasionally pokes fun at how the characters are really just school kids: once separated from their “moms” and the school vice-principal they are written as adults. The dialogue, however, ruins this amusing conceit: even in “adult mode” it still sounds delivered by children.

The film overall is a mixture of two styles which, although muddled, is worth seeing but not terribly memorable.

Thursday was another fabulous evening.

Nassau Street never looked so good.

Wednesday was a glorious day. On the trek into work I remarked how lovely it would be to head out for a nice long wander after work. Against all form the sun was still shining at 7pm so, to as if to honour my half of the bargain, I hit the road.

No maps: just a bottle of water, a camera and a vague notion that Ringsend was at the bottom of the road.

Sure enough, it was.

I soon realised I wouldn’t be seeing Fitzwilliam Square this evening (going out towards the sea in completely the wrong direction probably didn’t help); however, unbeknownst to me, Sandymount Strand lay ahead.

I wasn’t expecting the beach “smell” a few minutes walk from my apartment but that was why I set out walking. A nice little park leads into Sandymount beach.

The novelty of walking to the beach made the journey worthwhile by itself. Of course, everywhere is within walking distance if only you have enough time.

What struck me about this beach – apart from the ginormous power station conveniently located nearby – was how far out the tide goes. This leaves acres of space for the actual sand and stuff.

That’s where the pleasantness ended, unfortunately; it was getting dark so I decided to take the bus home. Although not the most frequent of routes (or regular, or reliable) I threw caution to the wind and waited.

40 minutes later I gave up only to see the bus whizz past while I stood stranded 10m from the stop flailing arms about. A short sharp kick to a lamp-post later I was on the DART. Even on the south-side the buses don’t work.

I have a policy of taking the train whenever possible.

To explain: as a techy I can see how aircraft have trains beat when it comes to technical prowess. However, flying itself is almost too easy: aside from distance and some other factors like proximity to emergency landing sites enroute then if there’s money to be made flying from Dublin to Dubai (or any two other seemingly unrelated cities) then there is essentially nothing stopping an airline from creating a new route.

Contrast this with the effort required to implement a new train line: this involves, at a minimum, years of planning, consultation and, sometimes for really important lines, calls to the public for their opinion on proposed routes. Lastly, just when you think it’s complete, a never-ending cycle of maintenance and upgrades begins.

That’s the distinction for me; the lines are what make trains interesting, not the hardware. The line symbolises trade, energy and, most importantly, a destination. Somewhere important. To me, the train line represents civilisation and a piece of history.

Ireland’s routes are fascinating for all these reasons. Ours are among the oldest in the world and, thanks to a policy of road-building which has lasted decades, virtually all of the lines still operating have a history extending back over well over a hundred years.

Consequently, when I have to travel outside the Pale I always look for a train route but rarely expect to find one. So, when I had to play two gigs in Castlebar this weekend I was delighted to discover that it lay on the Westport line. What are the chances?

There’s only 4 services to Westport each day and they leave from Heuston, which just so happens to be awkward for me to reach. Bearing this in mind I made sure to arrive at the Luas Connolly station precisely 14 minutes before the 12.40 to Castlebar was due to leave. By an amazing coincidence the next connecting tram to Heuston was due to leave in precisely 14 minutes. Fortunately for me, a short taxi ride fixes most planning disasters.

The Westport service looks disappointing at first: it’s a fairly old bone shaker-era train from Platform 6 which is about 3 miles walk from the entrance to Hueston Station. I’d been hoping to take one of the new bullet train (for want of a better description – they do look much cooler than anything else around here but they certainly won’t travel at 300kph), mostly because I couldn’t imagine when I’d ever see myself travelling over to Castlebar again.

These trains are actually reasonably nice inside, however. The most disappointing part is the restaurant, where I rather shamefully declined to pay €4.25 for a BLT sandwich. A three hour journey needs more than that.

The scenery outside of the train is great though. Like all the Hueston lines it passes through the open countryside of Kildare. Shortly after that it branches off somewhere and ends up in Athlone (I had no idea Athlone had a train service), passes through Roscommon and some other places and eventually reaches Mayo. The gorse is in full swing at the moment so I caught a few blurry pictures.

Upon arriving in Castlebar I was very amused to note that there’s only one track. This might explain the 4 hour gap between services!

Castlebar itself is a fairly…provincial town. I stayed “downtown” in a bed and breakfast just a few moments’ walk from the concert venue and the local pubs – in other words, just a few moments’ walk from everywhere.

Saturday afternoon was exploring time; a walking tour of the entire town takes almost 30 minutes. Along the way we encountered a brilliant little shop which, although primarily a music shop where we sampled some trombones, also had a pile of metal detectors and sold guns, too. What a combination!

The nights in Castlebar were spent in a genuinely nice little pub which sold, I am reliably informed, fabulous Guinness. However, it has to be said that there was little else to do in Castlebar town but visit the pubs. Had I a car or simply more time I would have explored the region and probably enjoyed it much more.

The pub session made the chances of rising for a 7.58am train home on Sunday morning seem vanishingly small. However, it was either that or wait until 2.30pm for the next service.
Upon returning to Dublin, the taxi was enthused to hear that I was just back from Mayo. A beautiful part of the country, apparently, but once he heard I’d only been to Castlebar he offered his apologies.

It never stopped raining, either.

The Porterhouse is quickly becoming my favourite pub in Dublin. Much to the bemusement of my friend I had somehow classed this place as just another Dublin pub (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course). Having been introduced to their beer menu, however, I am now singing a different tune.

Last night’s pick was Rochford 8, a Trappist beer from Belgium. It was expensive, strong (9.2% – the 8 refers to an older measurement system) and described as possessing a very strong flavour. Already a fan of another Trappist brew, Chimay, I didn’t have to be asked twice.

I really don’t know what ingredients the monks use, nor are my tastebuds senstive enough to guess. Whatever’s in there, this beer ends up like a soup. A very pleasant soup, at that. If I had to pick a word, I’d say it was fruity. But, like I say, I can’t really tell.

I think mainstream beers have ruined my ability to distinguish one from another – and then when something like this comes along I’m just so delighted to have any taste at all that I’m not fussy!

However, my ignorance notwithstanding it’s genuinely hard to imagine a better beer…except perhaps Rochford 10.

Or maybe just anything else from the Porterhouse menu.

Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.

Finally, it is finished. For a few short moments at least that’s how it appears. Soon it becomes apparent that more is required than the stock “Hello World” post. It’s finished only in the sense that everything is finally in place to allow me run the blog.

It seems forever since I bought the server. That was the easy part. Next came the test deployment. That wasn’t too bad, either. After that the domain name was registered. Now, tonight, the blog – the real thing – is here.

All that took four weeks. A wild, erratic four weeks for both a baby blog and myself; two musicals, two competitions, innumerable rehearsals and a European Championships. It’s a wonder it didn’t take six.

Wordpress’ (the free software behind this blog) appoints a default description reading “just another Wordpress web-log”. Now to avoid becoming just that.

Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.