The Woman whose name was Horse

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Pretend that Elvis pressed his breast against a tennis racket in Ennis, you venerable denises.

Welcome to the Plain By Podcast.

Think of too much bass in my voice here.

You kind of

consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

I'm here in Limerick City, and it feels like we're after getting a slap into the face off winter.

It's only the 2nd of September

and it's cold and dark and wet.

Feels more like October.

It's not usually this bleak this early in September.

It doesn't feel like you've downloaded yourself into the middle of winter.

That's what it feels like right now.

I'm looking out my window and it's it's sunset.

Now I can't see any fucking sun

it's as it's as purple as a Paul Henry painting out there it's very very bleak oh there's the starlings

sorry about that

I was just about to say it to ye

literally I was just about to say it to ye it's so dark and bleak out there and it's evening and the sun is setting and I haven't seen the starlings do their murmuration around Limerick City and I was worried that they thought, because it's so bleak, I was worried that they thought we were in the middle of November.

No.

So the Starlings right on fucking time.

They just did that now at 10 minutes past 8.

Now three weeks ago, I think it was.

Three weeks ago.

When I spoke about the Starlings doing their evening murmuration live, three weeks ago, I think it was...

They're much lower tonight though.

That's interesting.

I'm so sorry to be speaking about the starlings again, lads.

What do you want me to do?

I'm looking out a fucking window.

Three weeks ago, they were doing their murmuration at

10 to 9, I believe.

Now they're out there about an hour earlier.

This lets me know that, you know, the days, the days are getting shorter.

There's less light out there now.

Things are about to get bleak.

And they fly low.

They fly low when there's big, heavy, overcast cloud out there.

When the skies are clear and beautiful and pink, then they do their huge displays up high.

But when it's overcast or when it's when it's raining, if there's heavy rain, they don't do any fucking murmuration at all.

They go straight into the trees when it's raining.

Four weeks ago, I told you, I told you I wasn't gonna get dragged onto the fucking radio.

Talking about starlings, sounding like a lunatic.

But the starling situation, it ended up being national news here in Ireland because of of

because of tourism, because tourists were coming to Limerick to look at the bird shit.

And then journalists came to Limerick to interview people who were coming to look at the bird shit and see the starlings.

And then this, a big huge article got written about it in the Irish Examiner.

About the bird shit district.

Limerick Council are fucking livid, livid with me.

Very, very upset.

And then this week,

a radio station asked me on, asked me on to speak about the fucking starlings, and I couldn't resist it.

I couldn't resist it, even though I said a month ago, I'm not gonna let that happen.

Don't go onto mainstream media and interrupt people's Dermot Kennedy songs with a Starling rant because you risk looking like a fruitcake publicly.

See, it's different here on the podcast.

You're making a choice.

You know what to expect.

On the radio?

On the radio, it's like...

That's into people's offices and their cars.

And

on the radio, it's...

Oh, that fellow blind boy with the plastic bag in his head from Limerick, who I haven't thought about in four years.

Who I haven't heard about in four fucking years.

Why is he on the radio talking about bird shit?

And then, because that's so strange,

what happens then is...

I then get attacked by conspiracy theorists who think that...

they think that I'm like a paid actor.

A paid actor who's brought onto national radio to push the climate change agenda.

So I went on the radio anyway.

I spoke for 20 fucking minutes on news talk just about bird shit.

And I willed into existence.

The very role play.

The role play of me talking to a fucking radio DJ that I roleplayed four weeks ago.

I willed that into existence and then it happened.

On news talk,

Blind Boy Bo Club is just back from Electric Picnic.

He'll be appearing next on September 23rd in Vicar Street, and on the 27th in the Millennium Theatre in Derry.

But he's not joining us today to talk about any of that.

Rather, the gift.

That is Bird Pooh.

Blind Boy, good afternoon.

Oh, Yashon, what's the crack?

Thank you so much for having me on.

Tell us about Bedford Row.

Okay, so this.

There's this street in Limerick called Bedford Row.

It's our main pedestrianized street.

And so you get the point.

You get the fucking point.

I'm on the radio talking about pedestrianised streets in Limerick for 20 fucking minutes.

I promised myself I wasn't gonna do it.

Promised myself that that exact thing wasn't gonna.

At least it wasn't me arguing with a councillor from Limerick City Council.

At least that didn't happen.

And you hear I'm going, you

sure you don't want to promote your gigs, no?

You don't want to talk about the upcoming gigs that you have there.

No, I'd like to talk about bird shit, please.

My fucking agent rang me up.

My agent rang me up afterwards.

Livid.

Like, when I have gigs, I'm supposed to go on the radio

on TV to promote gigs.

Like, that's what I'm supposed to do.

And I don't do it.

So my agent was like,

you'll go on the radio and talk about fucking bird shit.

And the radio host has to read out your gigs instead.

Multiple gigs that we need to sell tickets to.

You want to talk about bird shit?

And I'm like, yeah.

But I explained to him, I said, here's the thing.

Look.

if i go on the radio and speak about bard shit that's literal genuine passion i actually want to speak about this that's legitimate passion i don't like going on the radio

oh my god

so blind boy tell us about your upcoming gig in vicar street what are you gonna do in vicar street any surprises That's not an impression of that DJ, Sean Moncrief, who's actually fairly sound.

That's not an impression of him.

That's just generic radio DJ voice.

But

like, I don't like going onto the radio to fucking talk about a gig.

I've tried it before.

What's it like in a blind my life podcast show?

Why do you just go up on stage and do something nuts?

Is it crazy?

Do you ever get nervous?

Do you ever get nervous walking out talking to a lot of people?

And would you not take off a bag?

So that's most of that's going on the radio promoting your gig.

Like, I don't want to do that because then I have to lie.

I have to lie and pretend that I enjoy that conversation, and that's really difficult.

So, if my agent is listening, which they are, Mark,

it's not that I don't want to promote my gigs, it's I have extreme difficulty engaging in that type of performative small talk.

Like, what am I gonna say?

Well, you know, I'm gonna do-is that me doing an impression of me?

I'm trying to do an impression of me.

Well, you know, I'm blind by.

And, do you know, it's just going to be a great laugh in Vickers Street.

It's just going to be loads of fun.

I'm going to bring out a guest and we'll do a live podcast.

That's me doing an impression of me.

I'm not going on to the radio.

I want to go on the radio and talk about bird shit.

And with all due respect to Sean Moncreef, he'd a very eager set of ears.

And he willingly let me go on a bird shit rant.

I filled his ears with bird shit for he gave me 20 minutes on news talk.

He wasn't even supposed to give me 20 minutes.

He gave me 20 minutes on news talk to do an autistic rant about bird shit and biodiversity.

So, fair play to him.

Then I forgot I was on the fucking radio and this happened.

As to why these starlings are coming back to that specific point

or that specific location and why is that

um actually i forgot i was on the radio there sean should i be saying poo-poo and stuff?

I know you've said it about 17 times now, so I think we're we're gone.

And it's it's it's official name, uh, uh, rather than the bard shit bardshit district.

Yeah.

Goodness me.

My laugh is really hoarse there now.

Sounds like a whistling kettle on the roof of a moving ambulance.

Blindboy, you said on last week's podcast that your laugh was like a whistling kettle on the roof of a moving ambulance.

Rather irreverent description of your laugh.

What did you mean by that, Blondeboy?

The Doppler effect.

My laugh, my laugh there, it went up in pitches.

It sounded like the Doppler effect.

That's what I meant by that.

What's up, a wall am I breaking here?

I've got fucking...

So actual conversations of me on the radio with a radio DJ, which I willed into existence.

by doing a role play of me and a radio DJ a couple of weeks ago.

But now I'm then responding to that

with a role play of me in a radio DJ, but then commenting about that happening.

It's not breaking the fourth wall.

It's...

I've broken the fourth wall and now I'm constructing an ironic metamodern partition.

But my ma, my ma's going to be listening to this and she's going to say to me, you were smoking cigarettes at electric picnic, weren't you?

Anytime I laugh, and if it sounds hoarse, she'll get on to me saying you were smoking cigarettes.

I wasn't smoking smoking cigarettes at Electric Picnic.

I wasn't.

But I was.

I was speaking to...

I'd say I must have spoken to

maybe 36 people.

Easily I would have had conversations with 36 people at Electric Picnic backstage.

People in the entertainment industry, people that I know, performers who I haven't seen in a year.

So my voice is hoarse from talking.

and my social battery is very heavily drained.

And thank you to everybody who came out to Electric Picnic to see the gig.

I should have done it.

I did a fucking tiny tent.

So my gig at Picnic, I wanted to do a little tidy, simple gig.

It was on at half one, which is early.

It was myself and Daryl Breen, the comedian, and Ruth Freeman.

who's been on it she's she was a guest on this podcast before Ruth is a scientist but the gig it was on at 1 30 the tent only held about six or seven hundred people which i thought was grand because i'm like who the fuck's gonna get up and come to a gig at one o'clock it'll be fine we can do the small tent but then people started sending me videos and there were giant queues for the tent and people couldn't get in to see the gig so i apologize for that you know i'm not mad about festivals i didn't want to be staying late so i took an early gig but i'll do something different next year in a tent where more people people can come in.

I really regret taking that.

Taking the earlier gig now, I really regret it having seen the people who queued in the fucking rain to come along to the gig.

I apologize.

Also, if you're interested in hearing that, my radio appearance where I spoke about bard shit,

just look up the Sean Moncreef show.

on News Talk's website and I think it's on the the Go Loud player as well which is an app And

I think they have...

My interview is there as a little separate segment.

Just type Blind by Sean Montgrief show up bird shit.

That'll give you the results.

I think this week's podcast is going to be a bit of a phone call because

I was at a festival.

I was working all weekend at electric picnic.

And also.

Anytime I do a fucking festival gig at the weekend, the podcast the week after is usually a bit of a a phone call because I'm so

not burnt out but rattled, disoriented.

That's how I feel.

Disoriented, which is I love that word.

Orient comes from the Latin word aureens, which means

the rising sun, east.

So when you're disoriented, you can't find east.

And that experience perfectly describes the feeling of neurodivergent burnout for me.

Do you know when you're on holidays and you know where your hotel is and after about day three

you kind of have a mental picture of the streets around your hotel.

By about day three of a holiday you can walk to the bar or the shop without needing to look at the maps on your phone.

You have an idea of ah I feel oriented.

I know that when I come out the door of this hotel, the shop is in that direction and city centers over in that that direction.

You don't really know the streets, but you have this.

You have a feeling of north, south, east, west.

You just feel it in this new city.

And then suddenly, you turn a corner around or whatever, and boom, you're hit with this sudden sense of

a lost.

A lost feeling of confusion.

And you don't know what direction your hotel is anymore.

You don't know what direction town is.

You're very confused.

That's what I feel like.

That's what I feel like after a good day of speaking to 36 people.

And if you're like that on holiday and you don't know, you don't have your bearings, and you try to guess where your hotel is and you walk, well you might find yourself lost and even more confused.

And then you might feel anxious and frightened and unsafe.

And you'll have difficulty helping yourself and you don't speak the language.

That feeling, that feeling there is what autistic burnout feels like after being overstimulated.

And very simple,

very simple skills of being an autonomous adult who's able to look after themselves and go to the shop and fucking write shopping lists and figure out what to eat for dinner.

That shit becomes difficult for a day or two.

So, what I do is I mind myself, and I mind myself by

acceptance, accepting these things and mindfulness, consistent watching my breathing, reminding myself at all times where I am, noticing my feet on the ground, grounding mindfulness.

This is where I am.

This is what's happening.

I notice the coldness in the air.

I notice the darkness of the clouds.

I notice that the starlings are behaving differently.

I notice that the air smells differently.

Consistently checking in with every single one of my senses

so that that I don't fade away.

I reorient myself through the present moment and the here and now.

There were jackhammers outside my window earlier on,

and they were making loads of noise, and just workmen doing some work somewhere in the city.

And it was really noisy and loud.

And I was worried, I was like, fuck it, how am I gonna record the podcast with jackhammers?

That's not a pleasant noise at all.

And then I noticed

there was actually a tiny hole in my window.

It's a PVC window, but it had obviously been forced at some point.

And there was a tiny little opening

where sound was getting in.

And the reason I noticed the opening was

while I was listening to that jackhammer, going, fuck it, I can't record a podcast with a jackhammer.

There was a wasp.

There was a wasp outside the window and I'm up on the like the fourth floor.

There was a county September wasp

trying to get in my window, because that's how they conduct themselves at this time of year.

Poor old wasps.

You see that wasp outside my window who was trying to come in the hole in my window.

He was buzzing around outside, and he was trying to come in the hall of my window.

That wasp, he spent the entire summer, the entire summer, living in a wasp nest,

and his job was to feed protein

like bits of meat, fish, whatever the wasp could find.

His job, because wasps are decomposers, this wasp's job all summer was to feed protein to a little larva, a grub in its nest.

And when the wasp gives the the meat and the protein to this larvae, the larvae excretes a sweet sugary substance and that's what the wasp eats.

But by September, now the larva's gone.

The larva that that wasp has been feeding, that larva has grown into an adult wasp and it's after fucking off, it's gone, it's gone from the colony.

So now

the poor fucker who was trying to get in the hole in my window is actually slowly starving to death.

That wasp has lost its food source.

It's lost its source of sugar specifically because it's spent its life eating this real sweet sugary shit that it gets out of babies that it gives meat to and now the meat babies are gone.

So he was trying to get in my window because I don't know.

I'd bananas.

I'd a bunch of fairly fucking ripe bananas in my office.

He was outside.

He could smell him.

He was trying to get in that little hole.

All I could hear was the jackhammer outside.

Gone, I can't record a podcast with a fucking jackhammer outside.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to do?

I'm going to need to fill that hole.

That hole in the window that the wasp wants to get in, that the jackhammer noise is getting in.

I'm going to have to fill that hole.

What am I going to fill that hole with?

And I've been reading about a field of science called biomimetics.

It's where you try and find solutions to problems by mimicking the behavior of animals.

Like in 1995, there was this professor, Professor Andrew Parker was his name, right?

And so this is 1995, about a year after Jurassic Park.

And if you remember Jurassic Park, remember it starts with mosquitoes trapped in amber.

Fossilized mosquitoes trapped in amber.

So after Jurassic Park,

an interest exploded in fossilized amber with insects inside.

So there was this exhibition of amber in a museum.

Amber, if you don't know, it's when the sap of a tree fossilizes and sometimes an insect gets trapped inside that sticky sap but it fossilizes over millions of years.

So there was this fucking exhibition of amber in a museum anyway and this professor Andrew Parker went along and he saw he stared at a 45 million year old fly stuck inside amber.

But there was a magnifying glass there in the museum.

So

he could go real, he could hold the magnifying glass up to this fly, this 45-million-year-old fly that was stuck in the amber.

He could hold the magnifying glass up to it.

And he looked at the fly's eyes.

He saw like a really unusual structure in the fly's eyes, like up close, there was these really fine ridges and grooves.

And Professor Parker started to wonder, well, they must be there for a reason.

So then he built a model of the fly's eyes in a laboratory and shun light into the model and found that the ridges on a fly's eyes encourage light to pass through it rather than reflect.

And it's a very specific, specific adaptation that flies have to soak light up that comes in from all various angles because it allows the fly to then see in the dark and this is such an efficient adaptation that the flies have that they've had it for 45 million fucking years and nature hasn't even come in and changed it.

That's how good it is.

The point is that little that little observation about the fly's eyes and building the model and understanding how the fly's eye responds to light that then revolutionized solar panels.

That made solar panels a lot more powerful than they had been beforehand.

And that's biomimetics.

Where you look at

an animal or processes in nature to try and solve problems.

So I'm back in my office

and there's that tiny little hole in my window and I can hear the jackhammers outside and the wasp is acting like a prick.

Doing September wasp stuff.

I've spoken about September wasps.

They're aggressive.

They're not aggressive.

It's just they're starving.

They're starving to death.

They've lost their food source.

And humans, we just tend to have sugar in the form of drinks or perfumes.

And they're just, please can I eat?

That's what they're doing, okay?

But the wasp is outside the window.

So I'm like, how am I going to fill that hole?

How will I fill that hole?

And then I started thinking, what would a wasp do?

Paper, paper.

Why can't I fill that hole like a wasp would fill that hole?

Now ironically,

my preamp that I have here, it has a limiter on it and a gate on it and this is the piece of equipment that's supposed to drown out, we'll say, the noise of it of a distant jackhammer, right?

That's what this piece of equipment does.

You might even notice it now.

It's raining on my roof and every time I speak you probably hear a little crispy crystally noise.

That's the rain and then it cuts the sound out when I'm not talking

so i reached for the the manual

the paper a4 manual of my preamp was on my desk and i ripped open i ripped off a page from this manual

and started chewing it proper chewing this fucking paper like a wasp like a like wasps wasps

wasps decompose old wood they go to old wood, they bite it, they chew it, and they make that into fucking paper, and that's how they build their nests.

I was doing this with the the manual.

The manual for my for my preamp.

And I chewed a load of paper and and stuck it into the hole like a wasp's nest.

Really jammed it in there.

And it worked.

The wasp couldn't get in, and I couldn't hear the noise of the fucking jackhammer.

It's raining heavily now, let's just let a little bit little bit of the rain sound in.

The point I'm trying to make is

the other thing I have to be mindful of when it comes to

experiencing a bit of burnout

or overstimulation or low social battery is

I can have a propensity towards eccentric behavior during these times.

Because what I just described to you there is fucking mad.

I'm sorry, sir.

What are you doing?

Oh, what am I

Oh, I'm just chewing up this manual here.

I'm just chewing up this manual here because there's a hole in the window.

Why are you doing that?

Well, that's what wasps do.

Oh, yeah.

Why are you doing what a wasp does?

Cause there's a wasp trying to get in.

I'm copying the wasps.

This is how they build nests.

So I'm chewing this manual.

Is that okay?

No.

No, that's odd.

That's not okay at all.

That's socially unacceptable.

There's a better solution.

There's better solutions.

Alright, I could have bought some blue tack.

I didn't have to chew my manual and

try and make a wasp's nest plug out of it.

If someone had seen that,

they'd laugh at me.

I'd be a subject of ridicule.

I'd be a subject of shame.

It would increase my social anxiety.

I'd get a nickname.

They'd call me the wasp.

They would.

They'd call you the wasp.

If you did that, there was no one around to see it, but

I was around to see it

and I found myself shaming myself I found myself shaming myself I found myself being a bit hard on myself why can't you be normal why the fuck can't you be a normal why'd you have to do that

could you

what is wrong with you what's wrong with you that you couldn't stop yourself and go just cause wasps make paper nests Doesn't mean that it's a good idea for you to try and eat an A4 sheet of paper and make a wasp's nest, okay?

And I was shaming myself, I was shaming myself for every time before that I've done something like that and experienced being laughed at, being laughed at.

That was most of my time in school, all right?

Being pointed at and laughed at because you've done something mad.

I'm aware that it's funny.

I know it's funny.

I'm telling you about it on my podcast.

I can see that that is

humorous and a good story, but I also don't like it.

I don't like it because

it's not that it's not a choice, but when I have when I experience burnout,

the part of my brain that should step in and go, no, no, no, that's ridiculous.

Come on, be serious.

You're not chewing paper.

Be serious.

That bit's gone.

That bit's gone.

And the curiosity is then untethered, untethered curiosity.

And then the end result is doing something eccentric.

And then when you do something eccentric, that invites social rejection and ridicule and then shame and in this case I socially rejected and ridiculed myself and then experienced shame.

Eccentricity is what happens when neurodivergent people are trying to meet their needs.

So what I'm working on is acceptance.

Accepting these things about myself.

It's not bad, it's not mean, it doesn't hurt anyone.

It's not intended to hurt anybody.

The only victim is me looking silly.

That's it.

So learning to accept these things about myself.

I had a great-great-grandaunt whose nickname was the horse.

Her real name was Magine.

Which

it's Margaret.

It's Margaret, but it's if your mother is also called Margaret, you were called Magine.

And she's like great-great-grandaunt or possibly just distant cousin on my ma's side.

And the story

of why she was called the horse was

this would have been around

probably 1910.

So Maguine,

she was a widow.

Her husband had died for whatever reason.

She was a youngish widow.

And she had a little son who was a teenager.

Now Maguine was from

I think like rural Tipperary,

quite poor.

This is 1910, so like she'd have literally grown up in a stone hut with a thatched roof

she grew up in mud because she was a widow because she had a teenage son

she had to earn money she had to earn money and this wasn't possible in ireland so maggie and her son she emigrated to manchester She went to Manchester around

1910, 1911

to go and work as a maid, to work as a maid in a wealthy person's house in Manchester.

Now this would have been difficult because Magin was a widow.

She'd have been in her 30s and then her son, let's just call him Patrick, he's about 13.

So she's like, I'm qualified in nothing.

I'm qualified to be a maid.

I know that Irish women can get jobs as maids, but I'm gonna have to get a job in a house that will also give a job to my son so that the two of us can live in this house.

So she goes to a part of Manchester called Victoria Park.

It was

posh

big Victorian houses, Georgian houses

and she goes knocking door to door with her son.

You know, I'm I'm look I'm a woman from Ireland.

I've got a son.

I work hard.

Do you need a maid?

She goes door to door until eventually

one house is like, yeah, we need a, we actually really need help.

We really need help and we'll take your son as well, no problem.

We actually need a young fella to work out in the stables.

So this house was so big that it had a stables at the back for the horses.

So Maggie is thrilled.

Not only does she have work in this big fancy house as a maid,

but she's living with her son, her 13-year-old son, in the servants' quarters.

And now both of them are living together.

She has work.

He has work.

Like,

he's 14.

He's not in fucking school.

Not an Irish kid in 1910.

He's not in school.

Or 1911, whatever it was.

So she begins her work anyway.

And

they give her a bucket and a pail.

And the woman of the house says to Maguine,

I want you to wash all the floors downstairs and and upstairs.

So Maguine takes the bucket and pail and goes, All right, fair enough, okay.

So she washes the floors on the first floor, and then when she's finished, she's like,

Right, I gotta do the second floor now.

So, in the house is a

big, huge staircase leading up to the second floor.

And Maguine walks over with her bucket and pail to the staircase, and then it hits her.

She grew up in rural Tipperary,

in like effectively a mud hut,

like extreme poverty of rural Tipperary.

And

she'd never seen a staircase.

She'd never seen a person walking up a staircase.

She'd seen people using ladders, but she'd never been confronted with a fucking staircase in a two-story house because this is 1910 tipperary now all of a sudden she's in Manchester she'd never walked up a flight of fucking stairs ever adult woman

so

she gets the bucket and pail and she goes down on all fours and she climbs up the staircase on all fours really slowly because she's trying to figure it out as she goes along.

So she's climbing up the stairs real slowly And as she does that,

the fellow who owns the house, the barrister or whatever he was, he walks in the door and looks and starts roaring, laughing at her.

Roar and laughing at the Irish one, the maid, who's climbing up the stairs on all fours.

And he gets his wife in and he gets his kids in.

And they're all roaring, laughing because she's like a horse.

She's like a horse.

And then they name her the horse.

Maggieen, the horse, who climbs up up the stairs on all fours.

And Maggie is terrified now.

Maggie is like, she feels awful, she's embarrassed.

And as far as she's concerned, she's gonna lose her job.

She's now, she thought she had it fucking sorted.

Herself and her little son Patrick have got jobs in this house in Manchester and now it's all gonna be gone because she fucked up.

She climbed up the stairs on all fours and now they're calling her the horse.

But she didn't lose her job.

And it turns out that the

family

were kind of sound.

They started to like Maggie and her son Patrick.

And Patrick was working out the back in the stables, cleaning up the stables.

And months passed, and they had a life for themselves now.

They had a life for themselves living and working in this

big Victorian house in a posh part of Manchester, a roof over their heads.

Then Christmas time comes,

and the barrister fellow who owns the house.

Now he might have been a bit of a prick because

whenever anyone would visit,

he would say, Get the horse, where's the horse?

Referring to Maguine, and he'd bring Maguine down, and just every visitor that came, he'd say, Do you know this woman tried to climb up the fucking stairs on all fours like a horse?

Did you know that?

Fucking Irish.

And she had to put up with it.

But one Christmas, anyway, the man of the house actually buys young Patrick a horse.

Buys young Patrick a horse so that he can learn to ride.

And young Patrick is thrilled.

He's like 15 now.

Fucking thrilled.

My God, a horse for Christmas.

I'm going to learn to ride.

I get to ride the horse around Manchester.

Now, unfortunately, the barrister who owns the house, he named the horse Maggieen.

So now Patrick, he does have a horse.

But

he has to ride a horse that's named after his ma because his ma tried to climb a flight of stairs on all fours.

But still, they're happy.

It's better than being stuck back in fucking tip

in 1910 in poverty as a widow, as a widow who can't work back in Ireland.

More months pass

and now Patrick on his time off is gets to practice on Maggieen the horse every single day, and he gets good at riding.

And he has the reins, and the fucking barrister got him proper horse claws.

I don't know what they're called.

Riding chaps, I don't know.

It's 1910 in Manchester.

Long story short,

Patrick took the horse out onto an area that was very heavily cobbled.

The horse fell.

Patrick fell as well.

And then Maggie the horse

fell on Patrick's leg and broke it so badly and irreparably that Patrick had to have his leg amputated.

He's got one leg now

and for now of course

Maggie is fucking heartbroken.

She's gone from poverty

She's already devastated because her poor little son lost his father at a young age.

She was so happy that they managed to come to Manchester to get a life, that he was developing into a young man riding a horse.

He might have a fucking shot, he might have a chance, and now he's got one fucking leg,

a leg amputated, and her heart is absolutely broken.

Just the sheer bad luck of it all.

And worst of all,

Patrick couldn't work anymore.

He couldn't do the bits and pieces that he was doing out in the stables.

He couldn't clean up, he couldn't lift things.

He wasn't any use as a worker anymore.

So Maguine was terrified.

Oh my god,

are they gonna kick us out now?

Patrick can't work.

What's the point?

But luckily,

the barrister, the family, they seemed to be kind people.

They were kind people and they weren't gonna kick Maggie and her son out on the street and fire them because of something as unfortunate as the young fella losing his leg.

So Maggie and Patrick got to stay in the house, Maggieen still worked and Patrick got room and board and nothing was asked of him.

And even better than that, the barrister was like, well, let's try and get this young man an education

because he quit school very, very young back in Ireland.

So he hired a private tutor who would come every day.

and help Patrick to read and write so that eventually he could go to school with lads his own age.

So bad luck, he's after losing a leg that's terrible but now at least he's receiving an education now.

The luck is coming up again.

And another year passes and it must have been

1915-1916 because World War I has kicked off

and this thing comes in called the National Registration Act where basically

Every every man of fighting age in Britain had to register for conscription to be sent to the fucking trenches of World War One.

Now, Patrick, at this point,

he's, I think, 15, 16.

But the thing is,

during World War I, Irish people were not conscripted because of the fucking shit kicking off back in Ireland.

Like, when Britain introduced conscription,

in England, Scotland, and Wales, three months after that, the 1916 rising happens in Ireland.

Like shit is really kicking off.

So the Brits didn't want to fucking poke that hornet's nest.

So Irish people were not conscripted to World War I.

So Maggie and Patrick are in Manchester in this big fancy house.

And they're not really thinking about it.

They're going, sure, I'm Irish.

Irish people don't get conscripted.

But because the barrister,

because the man of the house had begun steps for Patrick to be educated and to eventually join school that put Patrick into the system.

And a letter comes in the door with Patrick's name on it, basically saying, report for training.

You're shipping off.

You're being sent to fight for your country in World War I.

You're going to go die in the Sam.

And Magin's heart is ripped out of her chest again.

They're going to take her son.

They're going to take her little son away.

Things were were looking up.

She was happy.

She thought there was a future.

So there's about a week of absolute misery and pain.

And then the day comes where Patrick has to go to the recruiting office, basically to be sent away for training.

And

they knew.

They knew no one comes back.

Being sent to the front fucking lines as cannon fodder.

No one's coming back.

So when they go to the recruiting office, he's got his papers.

Your man calls up Patrick Clancy.

His name wasn't Clancy, let's say Clancy for the crack.

Patrick Clancy.

Any Patrick Clancy here?

And Maguine is there, and Patrick is there.

And Patrick hobbles up to the Army officer in his crutches.

And the Army officer looks at him and says, Oh, I'm sorry.

You shouldn't have gotten this letter.

We can't use anybody with one leg.

Bye-bye.

And they went home happy.

And

Maguine got to live the rest of her life living in that house.

They were very, very kind to her.

And then they took her in as almost a family member.

And Patrick then went on.

I think he became a solicitor.

He became a one-legged solicitor over in Manchester.

He was like a second or third cousin of mine.

His name wasn't Patrick.

I can't remember his fucking name.

This is a story I heard.

But her name was definitely Maggie.

and she was called the horse.

Maggie the horse because she climbed up the stairs on all fours.

Now why am I telling you that story?

Because

my ma's been telling me that story since I'm a little kid and every time she's been telling me the story I'd say to myself, what if she wanted to be a horse?

What if that was Maggie's choice?

What if what if it wasn't?

Oh the poor woman, the poor woman had never seen a set of stairs.

No.

What if Maguine wanted to be a fucking horse?

What if she knew how to climb stairs?

But for whatever reason, she said, I wonder what it's like to climb this stairs like a horse would climb it on all fours.

And then she got caught and was laughed at.

We'll never know.

And in 200 years, is one of my descendants gonna be talking about.

Oh, I had a relative, your poor old poor grand uncle had a podcast and he used to chew paper like a wasp.

He'd plug holes in windows.

The wasp they used to call him.

The wasp.

They'd laugh at him in the office.

I suppose I'm telling you that story because it's a wonderful story about accepting.

About accepting that life is full of suffering, that life is suffering.

Maggie, Maggie, and Patrick

had a lot of suffering, a lot of terrible things happened.

But at the end of the day, she coped with everything along the way.

And she responded to everything.

proactively despite the misery she got to live to be a ripe old age with a roof over her head and her son became a one-legged solicitor in Manchester.

We can't try to create certainty.

You can't create certainty.

Life is a roller coaster, you just gotta ride it, to quote the great Roland Keating.

And I find that this time of year is wonderful for acceptance.

Because it's horrible outside.

It's grey and bleak and the leaves are about to fall off trees, and the starlings are going to disappear, and everything is going to become a strange, shitty shade of navy.

It's going to get cold, it'll be getting dark and half war in the evening.

The bird shit will be replaced by slippy leaves that have that strange, cheesy tang as the decay, the wasps are going to die, the kylak is coming.

The goddess of winter is going to strip the trees bare.

Your mental health is going to suffer

because

it's going to get a bit bleak, isn't it?

It's tough staying positive and

enjoying life

when winter is creeping upon us.

When you have like what we have right now, those first few little signs of that chill in the air.

No more t-shirts.

I have to start thinking about gloves on my bicycle now.

I knew that today by the pain in my knuckles.

But I'm not going to resist any of it.

I can't change any of this.

I'm going to accept it.

And when you accept winter and the coming of winter and you accept the darkening evenings,

when you accept them and just try to notice them,

the beauty will unfurl in front of you like a carpet scratching at Jack Russell's wormy rectum.

Autumn and winter are beautiful because summer and spring wouldn't exist without them.

They're all part of the same cycle.

Jack Russell isn't going to jump up on your lap looking for rubs unless his arse is scratched first.

Okay, let's have an ocarina pause.

I don't have my ocarina.

Let's not get into that.

I've got an empty yogurt pot.

Well, not yogurt specifically.

Kvarg,

which is

it's marketed as a yogurt, but technically it's a type of soft cheese.

I quite enjoy it as a snack.

So,

yeah, let's crinkle a bit of tail foil after

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That was the crinkly Kvarg pause.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever it does, please consider supporting this podcast directly.

This is my full-time job, this is how I earn a living, this is how I rent out my office, this is how I pay my bills.

This podcast is possible because it's listener funded.

Because it's listener funded, that's why I show up each week, even when I've been at a festival and haven't had much time to research and when I'm burnt out.

There will be a podcast each fucking week unless I fall off a horse and have my leg crushed.

I'm unbelievably grateful

and every single day I reflect on gratitude.

I reflect on that gratitude of how fortunate I am that I get to have this as my fucking job because I love doing it.

I adore it and that's why I've been doing it for eight years.

This is only possible because of patrons.

So patreon.com forward slash the blindby podcast.

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

That's it.

And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it you listen for free listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free everybody gets the exact same podcast i get to earn a living if you are signing up for patreon

don't do it on the iphone app if you're new because apple will take 30 do it on desktop or on a browser on your phone and also don't sign up as a free member sign up using money if that's okay because when you sign up as a free member patreon just gets your data you don't get anything from that upcoming gigs in a couple of weeks

we've got vicar street which is a tuesday night gig on the 23rd of september that's only a few weeks away vicar street is very nearly sold out we're literally down to

maybe the last 30 tickets so if you're thinking about coming to the Vicar Street gig which is a choose and don't be put off by it being a tuesday night gig I deliberately pick I deliberately pick the nights that nobody else wants deliberately I'm actually I'm one of the few acts that can sell out Vicker Street on a Tuesday night because a lot of other acts

if they're putting their gigs on it's you want to have a night out you want to have a few fucking drinks you might want to go mad Whereas with my podcast, I put it on on a Tuesday night because you're not going to go mad at my podcast.

This is like going to the cinema or going to see a play.

You can go to my podcast in Vicker Street on a Tuesday and you'll be home in bed and ready for work the next day and you won't even want to have a fucking pint.

It's an evening of relaxation and conversation and that's why I put my Vicker Streets on on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

And then on the 27th which is a Saturday, Derry.

I cannot wait to go up the dairy.

I haven't been in dairy in about two years.

I'm in the Millennium Theatre.

That's a Saturday night gig, so you might have one or two pints, but not so many points that you start shouting and rolling the gig.

But you might have one or two pints.

And I can't wait to come up to Derry.

And if you have suggestions for guests for dairy, please give me a shout.

And

Blind by Ball Club on Instagram, just send me a DM, please.

Or the interesting people to speak to.

up in Derry.

Over the coming weeks I'm going to be announcing some new international tours which I'm very excited about.

So I can't wait to tell you about that.

This weekend I'm off to Garnish Island down in Cork.

I'm doing a tiny little gig, very small gig down there.

That's sold out.

It's sold out in about five minutes.

But I can't wait to go down to Garnish Island for the island itself, which is aesthetically beautiful.

And also

there's a national park nearby with some proper ancient Irish broadleaf forest, I believe.

So I'm gonna head-butt that nature and be very mindful and gonna recharge my social battery down in Garnish Island.

Alright rubber dog.

Embrace the beauty of early September.

Don't turn away from the decay.

Accept

accept the suffering that exists.

Suffering is part of being alive.

Accept it.

And don't try to create certainty.

I've created

I create huge amounts of pain for myself

by trying to create certainty.

Accept uncertainty.

Uncertainty is reality.

And when I mean creating certainty, you've got a job interview coming up.

You're terrified.

So you ruminate over and over about this is going to go so terribly.

I'm going to fuck this up so bad.

Oh my god.

I shouldn't even show up.

I'm going to fuck this up.

That's creating certainty.

Because the uncertainty is so uncomfortable to sit with.

The uncertainty of, I don't know how this job interview is gonna go.

What I do know is I can try my best.

That's what I know.

I think I can control that.

I'm gonna try my best.

But I can't really control the outcome of this thing.

It's very uncertain.

I think I'll worry about it.

I think I'll worry about it and think about all the ways that it's going to go wrong.

That's creating certainty there.

Because uncertainty is uncomfortable.

You broke up with your boyfriend or your girlfriend.

And now you're spending all your time

searching their fucking Instagram page to see if they might have moved on to a new romantic partner.

That's creating certainty.

You're creating certainty there.

You're trying to manufacture certainty.

Because the uncertainty that is very painful, very difficult to sit with uncertainty.

Constantly seeking reassurance from other people.

Do my clothes look okay?

Do you think this person is mad at me?

I didn't say anything offensive at that party, did I?

Creating certainty.

We have to accept uncertainty.

Accept and embrace it.

Let it wash over you

like the suds in a bath.

All right, God bless.

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