In defence of licking dirt off a window

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Stand abreast of Heston Blumenthal's professional testicles, you spectacled Emmets.

Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast.

If this is your first episode, consider going back and listening to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

Thank you for the wonderful feedback.

For last week's podcast, where I spoke to Mancon Magan.

That was actually supposed to be this week's podcast.

Because last night I was gigging in Vicar Street.

Sold out gig, absolutely magnificent night.

A lovely calm Monday night audience.

But usually, usually I don't record a podcast the day after a live podcast.

Because I was up on stage last night for like three hours talking into a microphone.

So My voice might be a little bit scratchy this week.

But the reason I put out the podcast interview with Man Man Con last week was because

my fucking office, my office where I record my podcasts,

it's just started to get really, really busy.

Since about October, there's just loads of people coming into work in my office.

I'm guessing it's because businesses are cracking down on work from home, but my office is now an incredibly noisy place where it's really difficult for me to record my podcast.

Just because there's loads of people walking around the hallways and banging doors and talking.

So I couldn't record a podcast for you last week, not a monologue podcast.

But right now I'm in the middle of moving my office.

I'm going to move my office to a much quieter part of the building, to a floor where there's fuck all people.

It's a much smaller office, but there's a window.

There's a window where I can look out on Limerick City.

So hopefully in a week's time, I'll be recording podcasts and writing while looking out a window that has a view.

And if you're a writer, you'll understand the importance of a window with a view.

Anything that will induce daydreaming.

Think back to being in school.

You couldn't put me near a window.

If my fucking...

I remember one year, I think it was in third class.

I didn't learn long division because my desk was beside a window.

that had a wonderful view of trees and those trees outside my window in third class when I was like 11.

I just daydream all day long when I should have been concentrating on long division.

Even thinking about long division, that genuinely gives me chills.

Like I've spoken about how poor I am at maths.

I genuinely haven't done like a fucking sum, like arithmetic with pen and paper

since school.

to the point that

I should probably try.

Like the attitude of embracing failure and trying that I bring to

writing stories or any type of art.

Maybe I should just have a go at long division again or multiplication and not necessarily to get good at maths.

Just thinking back there, thinking back to being in third class, being a little kid, I was never particularly good at maths.

But when I try and visualize, when I try and remember and visualize writing long division on a page,

the feelings and memories that come up,

it's wherever I go to when I have nightmares.

My brain does not want to visualize or think about long division, defense mechanism shit.

I've pushed long division away somewhere deep into my unconscious mind.

because I associate it with some type of pain or shame.

I'm speaking about this because

these are the feelings that are coming up for me right now in the moment.

When I thought about the joy of getting an office that has a window with a view, the idea of having a window with a view, it fills me with a feeling of calm, safety, optimism.

I'm really looking forward to going upstairs and getting that window that has a view outside of it.

And it must be reminding me of feelings.

Feelings of when I was 11 in third class and I had a desk and I'd stare stare outside that window and daydream.

But I must have been doing that as a form of escapism.

First off, I don't even know what the fuck long division is.

It's where you put numbers on top of each other, and I think you cancel or cross some of them out.

Long division was...

long division was the moment that I really fell behind, like badly felt, like I could not do this.

I could not do this.

I do remember it as being

the first time homework became something that was scary and frightening that I procrastinated.

Before that, I used to do homework.

There wasn't much of it.

Spelling, multiplication in a fucking copybook.

But as soon as long division came in, I really, really got left behind.

And I'm old enough to look at the...

like 11 is old enough to look at all the kids around me.

and notice that well they don't have a problem with long division.

I thought I was really smart.

I'm interested in geography and science and I'm good at drawing and I'm brilliant at spelling.

I thought I was really smart.

What's going on here?

And that comparing myself to the other kids at 11 years of age, I'm just noticing in myself right now

when I try and remember.

A deep doomy feeling of inadequacy.

A deep feeling of inadequacy and not being good enough.

So I think when I get my new office, I might try and do some long division.

Because when I visualize it it now, I can see the copybook, I can see the lines, I can see the pencil, the numbers.

And I'm remembering the page is really close to my eyes.

So maybe I thought if I could see the numbers better, I'd understand what was happening.

Not a happy memory.

That's not a comfortable vision there.

But I know enough about psychology

that I should probably revisit that.

I should probably just try, try some long division, not to get it right or to get it wrong, but to do long division so that i can notice and name some of the feelings that pop up these feelings that i'm i'm scared of that i'm avoiding and then hug and reassure my 11 year old self be a parent to my 11 year old self who i'm guessing was incredibly hard on himself when he couldn't do long division and you might be thinking what's the point of that what's the why not just move on why do you need to revisit emotions when you're 11 in in school you're a grown adult now why does this matter because sometimes i still feel that way now like a part of my job that i find challenging is like online criticism and reviews bad reviews which are an unavoidable part of my job and 2019 i got a scathing review of my book and it hurt me so much that I got writer's block for like a year.

When I got a bad review of my work as as a grown fucking adult, I froze.

I froze to the point where I couldn't create anymore.

Because something about getting a bad review for my book, it felt too much like being back in school.

And instead of just being mildly disappointed by a bad review, it thrust me into a mental health crisis where I'm responding to a problem with the emotions of a child, 11 year old me who couldn't do long division, who felt utterly useless and hopeless and inadequate, stupid, not as good as everybody else.

I can't understand these maths, these sums, I can't understand them, I don't know what they are.

There's no way to describe to me what they are.

This feels hopeless, this feels pointless, I want to die, I don't want to exist, I don't want to go to school, I just want to stay at home, I just want to look out the window.

All of those feelings can back up.

When I got a bad review as an adult,

to use the language of transactional analysis, which is a school of psychology, it triggered a childhood script.

If an 11-year-old child is harshly criticized, that child can really believe that criticism, really believe it and take it on board as an assessment of their worth or value.

They can internalize it as self-blame, shame and feeling vulnerable.

So as adults, when shit pops up in our lives that reminds us of those painful childhood feelings, we can emotionally revert back to those states and have difficulty dealing with the triggering situation because we're responding to it with the emotional literacy of a child.

Whereas the mentally healthy approach is to deal with issues as an adult in the here and now in the present moment in an evidence-based way.

Like if you as an adult now,

if

If your sibling, if your fucking brother or sister, like your grown fucking adult, your brother or sister or your parent criticizes you, You could experience it as deeply hurtful and it feels strange.

And you're like, why am I so hurt by this?

Why can't I stop thinking about that thing that my brother said to me or my sister said to me?

Why is this so painful?

I can't get past this.

What's going on?

I feel awful.

I feel terrible.

Because your sibling or your parent has reminded you of a pain or an instance of shame from your childhood and you're replaying that script.

Unfinished business.

An emotional echo from your past that you experience as real.

So becoming mentally healthiest is to learn to deal with these things as an adult.

So in my situation, I got a bad review for my book.

Like seriously, does that mean I'm worthless, hopeless, there's no point in going on?

I feel like I don't want to be alive.

I feel like I can never ever create again because this criticism has taken away all the joy of creativity from me.

No, that's how 11-year-old me felt.

Because I was fucking autistic in school with no support, no diagnosis, nothing.

The expectations of me were unfair.

That was too much.

Adult me, in the here and now, in the present moment with evidence, you got a bad review for your book.

That's disappointing.

That's not very nice.

It's okay to experience that as not very nice.

What a shame that someone doesn't like your work.

Your work, which has absolutely nothing to do with your value as a human being whatsoever.

And now how do I feel about that bad review?

Like five years on, six years on.

I'm really glad it happened.

I'm so thankful that I got a terrible fucking awful review because it motivated me to get better at the craft of writing and without that motivation I wouldn't have written my last book Topographia Hibernica which I'm so proud of which I fucking love.

The review which hurt me so much that I got creative block made me a better writer and I'm glad that it exists.

That's a night and day response to 2019 where it triggered deep feelings of childhood inadequacy.

So that's why I want to have a crack at Langdivision to be a parent for young me.

And this is just part of being human.

Like I promise you, you have the exact same shit going on.

This is just part of being human.

All of us have pain from our childhoods for whatever reason that we didn't resolve and it'll pop up as adults.

And when it gets triggered, you'll go into a childhood script like here's a good one

do you ever feel like an does anything ever happen to you as an adult where you feel like you're in trouble you're in trouble let's just say you're you're late for an appointment late for an appointment at the bank 10-20 minutes late notice the feelings that come up in you the next the next time you're late for an important appointment Let's look at it from an adult perspective.

It's disappointing.

It's regretful.

You will need to explain yourself to the other adult because you're late so that you can inform them why.

You can apologize.

You're late.

It's done.

It's okay.

You can't change it, but can I repair it?

So that's the adult way to handle being late.

It's about thinking about it in the present moment with the facts that are at hand and having a solution focused view.

But most of us don't do that.

Instead, you're late for an important meeting and you feel like you're in trouble.

You're a bit frightened.

You're a bit scared.

You're worried.

You're worried that you're going to get in trouble and that you are in trouble.

And notice what that feels like.

Like being in trouble, you feel smaller.

You feel powerless.

You're scared about punishment.

You want the person, the person who you're being late to.

You want them to think that you're good.

And then you you walk in the door late to the meeting at the bank and you present yourself physically as a child to another adult.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I didn't know what time it was and there was traffic and there was all this other stuff.

I'm so sorry.

And we all do that.

And that there is, that's going back into a childhood script.

You go back into a childhood script because we've all been late in school when we were kids.

and we got in trouble because we were fucking children we got in trouble and we were publicly shamed in front of the class.

Or you got your name put down onto a list of people who are late.

And if your name is in the list too much, they're going to tell your parents.

And you had the feeling of being...

I remember being in trouble in fucking school.

A feeling in my gut that was so tight that I was worried that I was going to shit my pants.

And you know that feeling, that feeling of being a little kid?

And you get in trouble because you're late and you want to shit your pants.

That exists, that feeling in our brains is so old and I mean evolutionary.

Like there's a part of our brain called the basal ganglia and this controls the most basic instincts of like fear response.

That part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective you can go back millions and millions and millions of years before humans before mammals back to when our ancestors were like little lizards.

There's a part of our brain that's so primitive that when that little lizard got scared millions hundreds of millions of years ago when that little lizard got scared if it shat itself it could lose enough of its body weight that it could run away faster and we still have that when you get enough of a fright or you feel like you're in trouble all of a sudden you want to take a shit so if i'm late now or if i miss a deadline for something and a kind of an angry email comes in I get a sudden little stab in my belly that it's like, oh no, I need to take a shit, I'm in trouble.

Then my adult critical faculties go out the window.

I'm hijacked by the emotion of fear.

Now I think that I'm in trouble.

As a fucking adult, adults can't get in trouble.

I think that I'm in trouble.

And now when I'm responding to the email or trying to explain why I'm late, I'm not trying to solve any problems.

I'm not solving a problem in the here and now.

I'm trying to get the other person.

to tell me that I'm a good boy.

I'm trying to let them know that I'm a good boy and I don't deserve to be punished.

Nothing gets solved now.

You're people pleasing.

Nothing gets solved.

You just want to be told that you're a good boy or a good girl.

And then the mad thing about that is

that can then trigger the other person into what's known as a parent script.

Now what I'm describing here, it's a school of psychology called transactional analysis, but it's very interesting.

So I'm late for the meeting in the fucking bank will say.

I arrive in, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because I want the other person now to tell me that I'm a good boy so that I avoid being in trouble and my childlike behavior then unconsciously triggers the other person to go into what's called a parent script which means they unconsciously role play

how their parents or teachers were to them when they were children and in trouble so the person in the bank might go this isn't acceptable we expect people to be on time Now it's a little bit awkward for both of ye.

Or if you feel like you're in trouble and you're late for a meeting you could trigger what's known as the other person's nurturing parent ego state see you arrive oh I'm so sorry I'm late oh my god I'm so sorry and then they go oh don't worry about it oh don't worry oh it's okay don't worry about that and then you feel this weird temporary reassurance those are what's known as complementary transactions in human communication where certain emotional triggers can unconsciously send us back to scripts, like script-like behavior that we learned at a very young age.

But the problem is with scripts,

you want to be responding to things like an adult, an adult in the here and now that's using the information that's available to him with critical thinking.

I'm so sorry that I'm late.

It was out of my control.

I hope I didn't hold you up too much.

No problem at all.

We've got 20 minutes left.

You're here for alone, is it?

I'm trying to make the case here about why there's value, why there is value in me having a crack at Langdivision again.

I believe that by revisiting sources of childhood stress and terror for me as an adult with my here and now faculties, I might actually be able to heal some shit in my inner child that's still giving me trouble to this day.

And I got all that from talking about looking out my window.

But I associate looking out my window and and daydreaming and getting lost in the vista that was my calm happy retreat

that was where I could escape to in the terrifying land of long division in third class

the reason I was so close to the window as well in third class because I'm just remembering now so I had a very very bad teacher I had a very bad teacher his name was Fecky Cunt and it wasn't just the kids would call him fecky cunt the parents parents would call this man fecky cunt and if you're american or canadian you might be recoiling now but like no this teacher's name was fecky cunt and it didn't even register as a swear word like people's parents he was fecky cunt everyone called him fecky cunt like obviously not the other teachers but it

This was his name and this was okay.

Like I'm a child coming home from school and my ma's like, oh, how's Fecki Cunt today?

Was he in a good mood?

And he was notorious for being the worst teacher in the school.

He didn't give a shit.

I remember, you see, because my brothers, my brothers had been in that school like 15 years before me.

So as soon as my ma found out that Fecki Kunt was going to be my teacher in third year, she was heartbroken.

She knew that Fecki Kunt was not going to give, Fecki Cunt

was going to let me do whatever I wanted.

And he did.

I was sitting near the window because I was sitting in a special desk.

Do you remember in school?

Because every fucking class had this.

If there was a student in the class who was just really misbehaving, just a lunatic, then there was one special desk and this was right beside the teacher's desk.

Well, that was my desk because...

Because I was a lunatic, couldn't sit still, couldn't focus.

That was the year I became obsessed with the IRA.

11 years of age is when my dad started telling me stories about my grandda and the IRA.

So I just wanted to talk about the IRA all day.

And Fecki Kunt,

he put my desk up beside his desk, beside the window.

And he would let me stare out the window as much as I wanted and wouldn't help me at all with my maths.

And I remember, it's a bit nasty now that I look back at it.

He used to do this thing.

So I'd be really struggling with my maths.

Really, like just the most basic shit.

So bad at maths that you would assume that I'm actually joking.

I mean three plus three equals four.

So sometimes I was so bad at maths that

Fecky Cunt thought I was taking the piss out of him.

He thought I was joking.

Thought it was part of me being disruptive.

And he used to do this thing.

and he'd say to the whole class he'd get me and he'd go

are you stupid

or are you not interested?

Now tell the whole class now, and bear in mind, I'm up at the front, I'm already in the separate desk, I'm already separated from the rest of the class.

Are you stupid or are you not interested?

Tell the class.

And I would always say, I'm stupid, because that's how I felt because I couldn't do these fucking maths.

And then what he would do, which is really fucking sneaky looking back, he would then go to the class and said, you heard it there.

He called himself stupid.

I didn't say it.

I didn't call him stupid.

He just said that himself.

And I'd love to go back in time and kick him into the bollocks over that.

Because that's a teacher with the full awareness that you can't call a kid stupid.

You cannot do that.

You can't call a kid stupid.

So he's after figuring out an advanced manipulative way to get an 11-year-old to say that about themselves.

for whatever fucking reason.

That's probably why he was called Fecky Cunt.

Fecky Cunt is like an anion bastard.

He's dead now.

His son used to be in the class.

His son used to be in the class and he used to slap his son into the face in front of the class.

And that was

it's not funny.

That was okay because it was his son.

This is the 90s.

Fucking hell.

This is like the internet existed.

But anyway, I'd be sitting in my special desk, the special desk near the teacher's desk beside the window.

And he used to come up to to my desk not just my desk everybody's desk we all dreaded it

he used to instead of teaching us he'd just come up and lean he'd lean on a desk in such a way that the corner of the desk was digging up his arse right going right up his fucking up his asshole and he'd spend a good half an hour deep scratching his arsehole on your desk with his arms folded

smiling into the air while having imaginary conversations, having these...

I used to look at him, huge big glasses like Coke bottles.

He used to have these fucking imaginary conversations in his head and they were always great.

They were never arguments.

He'd be there agreeing with himself, mumbling, having these huge...

he was at a party.

He was forever

at an imaginary party.

Where everyone thinks he's really funny and agrees with him while using his anus to eat the corner of my fucking desk?

And he used to send students down to the shop to buy fucking butter.

Because he'd be making, he'd bring in loaves of bread and make his own sandwiches at the top of the class.

But he'd

he'd get the butter

and the butter would be too cold.

This big lump of butter would be too fucking cold.

So he'd put the butter on the radiator

to warm it so that it was spreadable.

But then he'd fucking find some poor young fella's desk, dig his rectum into the corner, have an imaginary party, and the butter would melt.

And then we'd all have to go, sir, sir, sir, the radiator.

And the radiator would be dripping fucking butter down onto the floor.

But the radiator was beside me when I was staring out the window.

I also can't think about long division without the the stench of rancid butter because it used to go down underneath the tiles.

The stench of rancid butter which smells like

if cheese was an animal and it died and the vision of a man called fecky cunt looking satisfied with himself as he navigates his fundament with the corner of my desk the sharp corner of my fucking desk and then

when he left the class

we dare each other to go over and smell the corner of the desk I never did it obviously.

He's the same teacher who

when my brother was in his class in the 70s, Fecki Kunt told him to go to the shop to get a newspaper and my brother was wearing shorts, you know.

Now at the same time, this is the fucking 70s now.

My brother wanted fizzy drinks, like fizzy orange.

But my ma would not buy fizzy orange in the 1970s.

Because in the 1970s, a bottle of fizzy orange was just an extravagant luxury.

Like who the fuck do you think you are?

Prince fucking Charles.

You're not getting fizzy orange.

It's 1978.

So my brother used to make his own fizzy drinks by getting Andrew's liver salts, which is a laxative.

But if you add water to it, it is fizzy.

This laxative powder, if you add water to it, it does become fizzy.

So my brother was mixing laxative, fizzy laxative.

with this squeezy lemon that you get in the plastic lemon for pancakes putting that into laxative and drinking it as a fizzy drink because my ma wouldn't buy him fizzy orange because it was the 70s and that's extravagant.

So anyway my brother's in Fecki Cunt's class.

So Fecki Kunt says go to the shop and get me a newspaper.

So my brother says yes of course and he's wearing shorts.

So he runs to the shop, he gets the newspaper.

But on the way home as he's running back his tummy starts violently rumbling because he's been drinking laxative.

So he does a mad mad dribbly shit while he's running back But he's also scared of getting into trouble He's scared of getting into trouble and being late But he's shitting himself as he's running big long diarrhea going down his legs going down the legs of his shorts So he's like fuck this.

I'm gonna have to go into the toilet before I go back to the teacher So he does he goes to the toilet He wipes himself he cleans himself up as best he can

And then he goes back to the teacher and now he's late.

He's late because he got fucking explosive diarrhea when he was running.

But because he's scared of being late and because he's scared of getting in trouble, he's not thinking.

So he goes back to the classroom to Fecky Cunt, ready to apologize for being so late.

But as he hands,

as he hands Fecky Cunt, the teacher, the rolled-up newspaper that he'd brought from the shop,

he hands him the rolled-up newspaper and it's covered in yellow shit.

because he'd been running he'd been wearing shorts and running with the newspaper but all the shit was down his legs the newspaper was rubbing off his leg and he was so scared of getting in trouble that he didn't notice so he handed fecky cunt a dripping shit newspaper and i i had that i had that lore

i had that lore i had that story about this teacher well before I went into his class and my ma, my ma was worried.

My ma was worried that he would remember the diarrhea incident for the 70s and that I'd be punished for the sins of my brother.

And I think eventually when I got put in the special, the special seat, my ma would be saying, yeah, that's because of the diarrhea newspaper.

No, that's because of the diarrhea newspaper that he's doing that.

What the fuck is this week's podcast about?

This has all been triggered by a window.

So I'm going to be moving office probably next week

and i feel very positive about this and i cannot wait to be sitting upstairs in an office and to have my desk and i'm looking out a window that has a view because right now in the office that i'm in i do have a window there's no fucking view it's one of those windows that has a wall outside so i get sunlight But there's a wall outside my window and there's been a wall outside my window for the past three years.

And I I don't, I don't daydream.

I never look out the window.

I don't want to see that wall.

I don't want to look at it, and I don't daydream.

The window has been reduced to a light source, and currently, as I look at my window right now,

it's splattered, it's splattered with all this weird mud,

which I've never ever seen before.

And it's because we had that storm Owen

that red red warning storm Owen

happened there at the weekend incredibly fucking vicious and violent.

I've never experienced a storm like that in my life.

Winds that powerful.

And my office window is covered in specks of mud.

And I actually, I licked it.

I licked a little bit of the mud.

And there's a very good reason why I licked it.

And I'm going to tell you right after the ocarina pause.

No, really, there is a good reason why I licked the mud on the window.

So I've got my bass ocarina made out of stone here in the office.

And I'm gonna play this bass ocarina and hopefully you'll hear an advert for some shit.

AI is transforming customer service.

It's real and and it works.

And with Finn, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service.

We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses.

This includes the real-world, complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order.

And we also see it when Finn goes up against competitors.

It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard.

And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all.

Check it out for yourself at fin.ai.

You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks.

You buy a pair of bomba

Go to bombas.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase.

That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com and use code audio at checkout.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

There you go, there's that sweet spot.

The gentle monotone of that ocarina.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page.

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

This podcast is my full-time job.

It's how I earn a living.

It's how I rent out this office.

this fucking office which is no longer fit for purpose because it's too bloody noisy in the corridor well I'm going to be getting a new office upstairs and you the listener you're going to be paying for that because I rent it out you're going to be directly funding the little office upstairs that has the window with a view this view this view that is going to inspire hot takes I'm going to be looking out the window I'm going to be looking at pigeons I might see a fucking UFO.

I'm very, very excited.

I'm very excited that I'm gonna have an office with a desk, with a window, with a view.

So you're directly funding that.

If you become a patron of this podcast, if the podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck as you listen to this podcast.

And I'm not looking for much.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.

That's it.

But you know what?

If you don't have that money, If you're out of work, whatever the fuck, if you can't afford that, it doesn't matter.

You can listen for free.

Because the person who is paying, they're paying for you to listen for free.

And if you're one of the people that's paying, becoming a patron, you're paying for all the people who can't afford it to listen for free.

So every single person gets the exact same podcast and the exact same experience.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

And also,

sign up on a desktop.

Avoid becoming a new patron on

the Apple iPhone and the Patreon app because

Apple are dirty bastards and they take 30%.

They take 30%,

which is really unfair on creators.

So if you are becoming a patron, a paid patron, do it on a desktop.

Upcoming gigs.

Galway on the 9th of February, sold out.

Crescent Hall, Drahada on the 21st of February, not sold out.

Belfast 28th of February.

in the Waterfront Theatre.

Tickets still going for that.

March, 7th of fucking March, INEC, Killowni.

Thursday, the 13th of March, Cork Opera House.

Australia and New Zealand tour.

That's sold out.

Then

Wednesday, the 23rd of April, I'm in Limerick fucking concert hall.

Biggest ever Limerick gig.

That'll be good crack.

Doing a gig very close to Yarti's coach.

I think I'd like to spiritually reflect on that.

This podcast started in 2017.

And a huge part of this podcast starting was

I used to meditate by the river.

Meditate by the river near University of Limerick.

And this otter used to show up called Yarti Ahern.

And those early meditations that I used to do would have given me the clarity and courage to begin this podcast.

So I want to pause and reflect.

It's not fucking manifesting.

It's just a beautiful synchronicity that

eight years on.

I'm gigging in the Limerick University Concert Hall.

My biggest ever gig in my home city.

But it's like three minutes from Yarty's Coach.

I bet you a lot of people who are going to the gig are going to go down to Yarty's Coach.

If you are, please don't litter.

And then what gigs have I got?

That big, that big tour of Scotland and England in June.

Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex, Edinburgh, Norwich.

They're in June.

That tour is almost sold out.

But you can get those tickets at feign.co.uk forward slash blindby.

So I did.

I licked my window, the window of my office.

I licked storm mud off this window.

I made sure the coast was clear.

I made sure that nobody would see me.

I didn't want to fucking repeat of the incident from two weeks ago where I dyed my hair and walked into the canteen holding a bag of lemons.

The reason I licked the window is

when that storm was happening last weekend, storm Owen,

the red warning storm,

it was so loud.

and so powerful.

It was a bit scary.

It was kind of frightening.

I've never experienced a storm storm that big.

Unfortunately, we're going to have more, more storms that are that powerful and more frequently because of global warming.

But the last time in Ireland that we had winds that were that strong was in the year 1839.

There was an event known as the Night of the Big Wind in 1839.

And this, this fucking storm in 1839, it was like a biblical event.

It killed hundreds of people, destroyed people's lives.

Ireland in 1839 was a very different place.

Now this was before the famine, but you have to realize

there were like 8 million people in the country.

Before the famine, before the genocide of the 1840s, where we lost half our population.

Ireland had a population of 8 million people and these

people didn't live in towns.

Their houses were speckled around the countryside.

It's hard to imagine what that that was like but twice as many people in Ireland distributed around the countryside.

And people lived in utter fucking poverty in shitty little shacks.

And the night of the big wind in 1839,

it destroyed people's houses and uprooted crops.

It happened on January 6,

1839.

which was the Feast of the Epiphany and the people genuinely believed that it was the end of the world.

they believed that this was the apocalypse the apocalypse was happening because

you've no fucking there's no weather forecast there's nothing it's 1839 in ireland and all of a sudden you've got this powerful storm that nobody's prepared for so they believed that it was the end of the world others believed that it was the fairies you see on the day before on the 5th of January is the feast of St.

Kira

and Irish folklore says that on the feast of Saint Kira the fairies have a party they have a big mad party so when the night of the big wind came and destroyed everything people thought the fairies had a party last night but their party was too big and this generated this massive storm and of course you have to remember 1839 in Ireland people believed in fairies fairies in Ireland they're not like cute winged creatures they're

demons from the parallel reality from the other world.

So they would whip up a storm if they had enough crack.

But the other night as the storm was raging outside my house and I was just feeling a bit, it was frightening.

It's not nice to hear winds that loud and that powerful.

To calm myself,

I decided I'm going to go reading about this the big wind of 1839.

So I went looking in the national folklore collection, ducas.e

and and there were so many stories.

There were fucking hundreds, hundreds of pieces of recorded folklore about this night of the big wind in 1839.

There was more stories about this one night of the big wind than there was about the fucking famine.

So the folklore that I'm reading, it's written down in the 1940s, I believe.

So there wouldn't have been a huge amount of people who directly remember the night of the big wind who are being interviewed here.

Mostly people who had a parent who remembers the big storm.

And there was all these little vivid details and the ones that stuck out

were someone saying my grandfather remembers the night of the big wind

and he lived inland and he found fish.

There were fish all over his field.

So this wind was so strong that apparently it was blowing fish in from the ocean and they were landing in farmers fields which also contributed to the belief that the world is ending.

If fucking fish are falling out of the sky, then the apocalypse is coming.

But another detail in the folklore, which I found absolutely gorgeous,

there were so many people saying

that

inland trees, trees that were inland,

turned silver.

And people would go to the woods to the silver trees after the night of the big wind

and then they'd lick the bark of the trees and it tasted salty.

And what had happened is that the wind was so strong that it blew sea water hundreds of miles inland to the point that

it deposited salt in forests and people were licking the bark of trees.

And I found that so beautiful because

no one's going to bother their arse doing that today.

Nobody who has Instagram is going to decide, I wonder what that tree tastes like after the storm.

Only a person who has no distractions decides, I'm going to go lick that tree.

But when I look through the folklore collections,

it's full of these very vivid descriptions of the night of the big wind.

and specific details like that of forests covered in a salty frost or people licking trees or finding fish in your field all these beautiful little storytelling details like I said there's more

I can find more folk recollections of one night of a storm where a couple hundred people died there's more stories about that storm from 1839 than there is about the famine from 1847 where half the population disappeared.

Like what's that about?

How strange is that?

So as it turns out,

the Old Age Pension Act of 1908 was introduced into Ireland in 1908 to give pensions to people who were over the age of 70.

But the government, who in 1908 it would have been the British government,

all people didn't have birth certificates in 1908, especially not very poor Irish Catholics.

So people who were over 70 in 1908, none of them had fucking birth certificates.

So old Irish Catholics, they couldn't prove what age they were.

So when the old age pension came in, you got an old age pension depending on whether or not you could remember the night of the big wind in 1839.

There's something very rich about that.

Like there's no internet.

The wealth of information that I found out about this one night, this evening, just because I had access to academic articles, to records, I was able to find out so much about this one night on January 6th in 1839 where there was a big storm.

How did that work in 1908?

Old people must have gathered around and went to the local pub and all of them together tried to remember the night of the big wind.

So if you were 80, if you were 80 in 1908, It meant that you were 10 years of age when the night of the big wind happened.

Ireland in 1908, you're talking fucking third world country under British occupation.

There would not have been a lot of 90 year olds.

There would not have been a lot of poor Catholic 90 year olds who survived the Great Famine around in 1908.

So think of who was left.

Think of the Irish Catholics in their 70s who survived the famine, who had to try

who had to try and remember a storm from when they were a child.

Like you're 10 when the storm happens, And then when you're 20, the great famine, the genocide happens and half the country disappears.

So all we have left are these little strange stories about people going to the woods and licking the salt from trees and finding fish in the fields and the fairies having a party.

The strange memories of a few deeply traumatized old people trying to remember a storm from when they were little kids

and that's very powerful that's very very powerful and it's why we have it's why we have so many stories about that storm the night of the big wind

and this weekend storm owen that's the first time we got winds it's the first time we got a weather event as powerful as that one from january 6th 1839.

So when I came into my office and I saw that,

geez, my window, my window's dirty, it's splattered with mud.

I knew what it was.

I'm like, fuck.

The storm, storm on,

that was as strong as the night of the big wind from 1839.

My window is all stained.

The fucking storm carried water or dirt across a great distance and deposited it on my window.

And I don't live near the sea.

I'm in Limerick.

So of course curiosity got the better of me.

I'm there looking at my fucking dirty window sitting at my desk going,

what if, what if, what if it blew seawater?

What if it blew, what if there's fish?

What if there's fish somewhere in Limerick City?

Because fish blew in from the ocean.

What if my window has seawater on it?

There's only one way to find out.

Now I'm up on the third floor.

Okay, this is an external window.

There's no easy way for me to lick this fucking window.

This is the outside.

There's a small chance I could die.

And then I started to think,

yeah, I'll take that.

I'll take that.

That'll be a good death.

How did he die?

How did Blind Boy die?

He was so inspired by stories of the 1839 storm where people licked salt off the bark of trees that he felt compelled to lean out his office window to see if sea salt was present.

So that's what I did.

I carefully leaned, I had to lean my fucking body out the window.

I made sure no one saw this.

I made sure nobody saw this leaned my back and my body out the window held on to the desk with one of my feet as well and creaked my neck out and it was very sore and I extended my tongue and managed to get just a little bit just a little bit of the window dirt on the tip of my tongue and I did

And I waited for that, you know, salt, is there salt?

The presence of salt, which I'd know immediately, there was not there was no salt there was no salt

the dart on the window

it tasted like what I would imagine the rancid fucking butter that dribbled down fecky cunts radiator tasted like this was disgusting I think

I think it's sewage

I think there's

Fucking sewage, human shit and piss

is what blew onto my window and I stuck my head out and I licked a bit of it and I got I got a tissue and wiped my tongue like it was an arse But there was a nice synchronicity to it too because in a way I was saying goodbye to this window

This fucking window with no view outside it.

I was saying goodbye to the shit covered sewage window as I transition to the new window that has a view and will hopefully inspire podcasts and short stories.

That's all I have time time for this week.

I'm aware, I am aware that I, when I did that podcast two weeks ago about how I accidentally walked into the fucking canteen with the dyed hair and the lemons, I am aware that I promised you a part two.

You're going to get your part two, don't worry.

In the meantime, rub a dog, lick a window, genuflect to a swan, to a cygnet.

Dog bless.

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