brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: May 2013
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2013_05_01_archive.html
Tuesday, May 28, 2013. The woman is kissing Charles Aznavour on the wrong street in. She is much younger than he and he seems to be accepting her admiration with benign patience. It is early morning and I wait politely for her to conclude. She has asked me for directions to a conference venue. She and a male companion, not Chuck the singer, are on a street parallel to where they should be and have declared themselves to be lost, to me. By now, Charles is peeling the woman away from his presence. She smil...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: July 2012
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html
Tuesday, July 31, 2012. A cast of thousands. Cineplexes are no fun at all. The inventor of multiple screen cinemas has missed the point. People do not go to the cinema to see a moving film with sound and colour and to eat overpriced popcorn. They go to be with other humans in the dark and to listen to a story and see actors play the story out before them. Once, our local cinema ran continuous programmes with no lights up in between for shuffling bodies to stumble out of or move in to the rows of seats.
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: March 2014
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_archive.html
Monday, March 31, 2014. I am walking along, determined to be a better person than I am when I meet a smoking runner coming towards me. She has just completed a 5 kilometre course with others wearing the same pink shirts that proclaim they are all individually members of a group dedicated to some common cause. Either the word women, or, ladies is printed among the other words on the shirts; but I am too polite to stare to see which, for I may be perceived as a predatory male walker. She does not know this...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: September 2012
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html
Tuesday, September 4, 2012. I am minding a market stall for a friend while she goes away to eat a sandwich in peace. She has had enough of people bargaining and walking away when she gives in. But she has paid for the day and will stay until the bitter end. The trader beside me tries a different approach. When the price is ten and he is offered five he says you can have it for twelve. This has the effect of confusing people no end. I say thank you. Will there be anything else? Disconcertingly, she depart...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: June 2012
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html
Tuesday, June 26, 2012. A child dives out of its mother's arms and heads headfirst for the concrete path at her feet. She catches her by the ankles just as she is about to re-arrange her brains on a busy city street. The child goes over the mother's shoulder in this manoeuvre. The tall slim mother catches the falling ankle, sight unseen. I say: it was close; she says yes and laughs; someday I will miss. Are you circus people, I ask; no she says it's just something she likes to do. Wednesday, June 20, 2012.
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: A lot to be said for a good shout
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-lot-to-be-said-for-good-shout.html
Monday, July 14, 2014. A lot to be said for a good shout. Not enough people shout out loud any more. There was a man once who did not like silence and so he used to shout every so often just to make the blood flow a little faster in the veins of all who heard him suddenly give voice. He called it "having a bit of gas", gas being fun, not exhaust fumes from a metal pipe, or, the inside of a domestic cooker, however temporarily visited. And some jaded listeners. He used to encourage all about him to join h...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: Doing the marathon
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2014/11/doing-marathon.html
Friday, November 21, 2014. Some 14,600 people set off in Dublin City Marathon. Just 12,267 cross the finish line hours and hours later. For the first time, I am one of them. I walk though many run. In the weeks that follow, emails pour in offering me photographs of myself in the race. Nobody looks good in a marathon, except the elite running at the front as if everyone is chasing them, as they are. People head off in great spirits. The route is geared towards runners, I come to realise as I saunter along.
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: May 2014
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2014_05_01_archive.html
Monday, May 26, 2014. Will you vote for me? There are more candidates than could be elected in a millennium of polls; but they are all hopeful. I semi-recognise this candidate, so I ask the name? Which is a mistake; for I am then showered with many different pieces of colourful paper in many shapes, according to the printer's current megalomania. All extol the merits of the candidate, mostly in bad grammar. Are you going far: to the shops, maybe," he asks in hope. Though my running is so slow that I am w...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: July 2014
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html
Monday, July 21, 2014. What if your head was truly on fire? Race walking with your head on fire is a strange sensation. This, even after I walk in bright sunshine through a water shower made possible by a local fire tender. More than 3,000 people, myself included, pass through this quiet rural road on our way around a ten kilometre course. Later, I discover some jog on stretches where nobody is watching them. They offer a choice: walk dry or take a soaking. My head cools down somewhat as I hit a shady ar...
brendannolan.blogspot.com
Brendan Nolan: January 2015
http://brendannolan.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html
Friday, January 2, 2015. Selling books is easy for desperadoes. There is an air of the desperado about an author in the weeks before Christmas. The slithering writer may be seen painfully pursuing sight of a published work in bookshops so they may place it in a more advantageous position, sales wise, going forward. That way, someone will surely buy a copy. And perhaps they will, unless a prowling assistant returns it to alphabetical order in the stacks, whence it came. Alas, for ambition. Not for them th...
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT