TN2 Issue 8

tn Fancy footwork: The pick of the best shoes for Spring FASHIONP10

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POETRY MY ARSE!

Trinity poet and legend Brendan Kennelly interviewed

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VALENTINES, CHEAPLY

Avoid bankrupcy but still do romantic dinner for two

COVERNOTESP2

Catriona

Notorious In which our heroine discusses the true meaning of “Love Day”. Words: Victoria Notaro St Valentine’s Day comes but once a year, to fill the gap between Christmas and Easter for the retail industry. Oh yeah and to celebrate love and all that jazz. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a very romantic person, I write a relationships column! What I don’t approve of is enforced romance. And how days like “Love” Day make us feel.

We don’t need a special day to tell our significant other we love them, but expectations are always high on February 14th. “Oooh what did he get you?” is a common question heard among groups of squealing girls. “Well, my fella got me ten bottles of perfume, six dozen roses and a car!” is the likely response. Valentine’s Day, like Christmas, is an opportunity for one-up-manship with all your friends “Well MY boyfriend bought me an island, a pony and a Me to You bear!” How sickly sweet.

Vomit.

By mid January I had already been asked what I was doing for Valentines five times. Well considering it’s on a Thursday, my birthday was two weeks ago and I’m saving for a holiday in March, nothing much! It’s just another day, a religious celebration for that matter. And not even a fun one like Paddy’s day when you can just get plastered.

What do you even buy a bloke anyway?! Flowers, chocolates, teddies, they’re for ladies! A posing pouch, some lubricant, sex dice? He’s not a porn star! I bet he’d rather beer. Or silence.

When I was between boyfriends a couple of years ago, all my girly friends who were also conveniently single at the time got together and watched DVDs and ate chocolate. This female solidarity is wonderful, but why did we do it of a cold Wednesday evening? Because we wanted to spend time together? Probably. Because we enjoy romantic comedies? Definitely. So we didn’t feel a) lonely, b) depressed c) pathetic or d) all of the above on this particular day? Bingo. Safety in numbers and all that. We had fun. I even received

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Photo courtesy of The Hollows

which you know you have to come to terms with sooner or later, but the trauma of stalling in post-rugby match traffic in the centre of a large town isn’t lessened by this knowledge.

On a more optimistic note, for this issue we bring you the pick of the new season’s shoes in the Fashion section, David Lydon interviews Trinity poet Brendan Kennelly, and in Film, Conor O’Kelly talks to Mark O’Halloran.

Until next issue,

Valentine’s Day, like Christmas, is an opportunity for one-up-manship with all your friends.

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a sweet card from a girlfriend. But what annoyed me was that we felt we had to mark the occasion.

It’s also not a fun or exciting day for single people, as we might be led to believe in rom coms.

We are not waiting to see if we get a card from a secret admirer. Either you do, and he/she is all the weirdoes/stalkers/mingers under the sun. Or you don’t, which is usually the case as people do not really put themselves out there like that unless they’re sure of reciprocation. I blame my beloved Hollywood for spreading this wicked assumption.

Sure, Valentine’s is as good an excuse as any to show your love and affection. But so is any other day of the week. I will admit when I didn’t get flowers last year I sulked a bit (instead Himself spent a fortune on actual presents, which in theory I disapprove of on such a day!).

But what was even nicer was when he returned from work one Saturday afternoon in May with a large bunch of summer blooms. Of course my first words to him were “What have you done?!”, but I soon realised this was him making an effort to be romantic, and it was lovely – once I’d been convinced they weren’t a guilty conscience present that is!

COLLEGE BANDS: The Hollows

I

t’s ten o’clock on a Saturday evening in the Publications office. The Kings of Leon are being played very loudly and I am clutching a can of Prazsky in my hand, trying desperately to blot out the memory of the driving lesson I had earlier. Indicating, changing gears and navigating a major roundabout are not things that I can do simultaneously.

Driving has taken up my time, money and increasingly my sanity. It’s one of those things

Having self-released their debut album back in 2002, the Hollows are by no means newcomers to the scene. Evoking Sparklehorse and Grandaddy at their most intimate, Greg and Gary make beautiful, unhurried music filled with comforting waves of organ and electronics and fringed with faint, melancholy guitar lines. The musical equivalent of one of those hazy, sunny afternoons in the park from your childhood, then, or maybe a night spent in front of the fire with a significant other and/or a bottle of wine. “We’re not really a party band,” as Greg puts it.

The last six years or so have produced two albums and one EP, with another release due out soon. It’s clear that they’ve developed considerably over the years, with 2006’s It Was On Fire Before I Lay Down On It LP displaying an advanced level of confidence and quality song writing. Gary promises that the new material sounds even more professional. “We’re looking at a March release for the EP. We have a band coming over from Austria, Son of the Velvet Rat, to support at the launch. It should be a good night.”

Speaking of supports, The Hollows have enjoyed some enviable warm-up slots in their time, including a spot with Final Fantasy in 2006. “That was a Foggy Notions gig. Getting the slot was a case of getting to know the promoters,” Greg explains. “And the promoters being nice,” he adds, with a smile.

Highlights so far for Greg have included the release of It Was On Fire… and getting that record distributed in the UK and Germany. Released on the Slow Loris label (which, over the years, has put out releases from other noteworthy Irish acts, including Herv and Goodtime John) you can find the album in Road Records on Fade Street. Keep an eye on their website and MySpace pages for updates on the EP launch. www.thehollowsmusic.com www.myspace.com/thehollowsie

Patrick Kielty

P3INTERVIEW

A slightly groggy Patrick Kielty discusses his new departure into theatre.

Words: Hugh McCafferty

A

w man, I’m hangin’ here.” So begins my interview with the slightly delirious Patrick Kielty. It seems the previous night’s spot on A Question of Sport led to some post-show partying. “I made the mistake of going drinking with Ricky Hatton [English boxer]. I feel like I’ve gone twelve rounds with him although I can only remember buying the first six.”

Hangover or no hangover, the County Down native is talking to me to promote the one-man show he’s taking to the Olympia from 11 February.

Written by Marie Jones, A Night in November tells the tale of Kenneth McCallister, a true-blue Ulster Protestant who decides to support the Republic of Ireland during the World Cup campaign of 1994. Disillusioned by the sectarian hatred displayed by his coreligionists at a qualifying match between Northern Ireland and their southern counterparts in Belfast, McCallister ditches his wife and his golf clubs and follows the boys in green all the way to New York.

Described by one internet blogger as “nationalistic self-wankery”, I asked Kielty whether he thought the play was essentially nationalist or not. “The thing is, with a play you can only tell a story not the story, if you know what I mean.

I can see how it could have fallen into that trap, but people forget that Marie herself is a Protestant. I think that if you wrote a play where everyone decided that ‘well, we’re all as bad as each other’, it’d be a smug, twee piece of bullshit.”

Whatever the politics of the play, it

marks Kielty’s first venture into theatre, one that appears to have been received relatively well by critics. “It wasn’t something I’d planned. Marie just approached me and asked me to do the play. I initially said no, but then I talked to some of my mates who told me I’d be an eejit not to give it a go. So I thought, ‘ah, yeah, you’re right there, actually.’”

In light of recent work on Celebrity Love Island and Fame Academy, it’s easy to forget that Kielty’s entertainment career began with political stand-up in the highly tense environment of late 80’s/early 90’s Belfast. When he was still a teenager, Kielty’s father was murdered by the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist paramilitary group. I asked him whether this influenced his first attempts at political stand-up. “I think it did allow me to go a bit further than other people; no one could pull me up and say ‘you can’t say that’. I don’t think that it was the catalyst, though. I was a student in Belfast and I wanted to write about what was going on in my life and in other people’s lives.”

On the subject of Belfast and the changes it has gone through, Kielty muses, “Belfast is weird. There was a time when it was normal to have police on the street, land rovers going up and down and all that. Now, there’s a sense that people are wondering ‘did that actually happen?’ They don’t really want to talk about it, so instead it’s more like ‘have you been to the new Ikea?’ I think that time solves everything, but at the moment, there’s still some discomfort.”

Speaking of discomfort, Kielty caused some himself last year with two

controversial incidents earning him tellings-off from industry figures. The first in March involved Kielty calling Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray “a big gayer” live on the BBC. “The minute you call somebody a name with “-er” on the end, you know it’s not going to be serious.

It’s the social equivalent of calling someone a ‘big girl’s blouse.’ I got a letter after that from a gay rights organisation saying that people really have to grow up and stop overreacting about that kind of thing.”

The other incident centred on a joke involving the ever-touchy subject of Madeleine McCann. “The thing was there, I didn’t actually make a joke about Madeleine McCann; I wouldn’t joke about a four-year-old child who’s gone missing. I was talking about the hypocrisy of papers, who just want to up their circulation with her story. A guy in the audience heard her name and was offended before I was even finished what I was saying. He walked out and didn’t get a refund, so he went to one of the papers, who, of course, had a headline like ‘Kielty’s Mad, Vile McCann Rant’ the next day.”

Controversy aside, Kielty seems to be doing well for himself. After the upcoming run in the Olympia, plans are afoot to take the production back to the West End. “After that, I’ll be writing more stand-up and doing more television, but I won’t go into that in case it all falls through.”

In the much more immediate future, though, I suspect a glass of water and a bit of a lie down awaits the hungover Northerner. I decide to leave him to it.

FEATUREP4

P

icture this, if you will: in the autumn of 1953, a young Kerry lad with an interest in literature arrives in Trinity, aged a mere seventeen. He is from a close-knit community and is a keen Gaelic footballer, going on to play in the 1954 all-Ireland final for his county. However, despite his obvious flair and ability, he lasts only one week before deciding that college life was not for him and sets off to London without knowing a single person the other end.

He works in a series of jobs, eventually settling on being a bus conductor. He enjoys his life in England, but by the time he has reached his twenty-first birthday, he has a yearning to return to the academic surroundings of Trinity.

With several years of life experience and a heart full of fond memories, he returns to Dublin to take up an undergraduate in English and Irish and flourishes over the next four years.

This might be one of the shrewdest moves in the history of the college, for that young man went on to become Professor Brendan Kennelly, perhaps the most distinguished Trinity alumni of recent times, and the prolific writer behind such epic poems as “Cromwell” and “The Book of Judas”. His name is renowned within Irish literary circles, and is often held up with Seamus Heaney as this country’s most critically acclaimed and popular poets. Yet, despite all of his notable achievements, he remains a figure of mystery, even within Trinity’s walls. Who is this esteemed artist (and academic) who lives and works amongst us? What lies beneath the public exterior of perhaps Trinity’s most popular resident? I decided to attempt to shed some light on these questions and was fortunate enough to be granted an audience with the enigma that is Brendan Kennelly.

I had received a call from Brendan at two in the afternoon, from which a meeting at four was arranged. Given the speed at which the whole process had accelerated from its original idea state to the full-on interview, I had now found myself conducting, I panicked slightly at the impending meeting and proceeded to jot down ideas for questions when I should have been recording the many pearls of wisdom dispensed during my class. With more than a little displaced attention, I began wondering what I’d ask a man who seems to have been at the forefront of Irish literary circles for thirty years and sped off once my class had finished to arrive at our meeting place early, thus allowing sufficient time to appear debonair and aloof, as I have been told this is how one should conduct oneself whilst interviewing poets.

However, any conceptions of aloofness were soon quashed by the ferocious winds I encountered, leaving me looking dishevelled and, more accurately, disorganised. Not the ideal first impression.

Poetry my arse!

Contradicting all notions of staid academics and pretentious poets, Professor Brendan Kennelly has led a life like no other.

Words: David Lydon

Meeting someone who you see on a regular basis around College is a strange experience. However, such was my state of disarray that I completely forgot to worry about meeting my interviewee and before I’d realised it, we were chatting away comfortably in homely New Square surroundings: the perfect backdrop to discuss a Trinity institution.

A relaxed nature and fondness for anecdote make Brendan Kennelly an intriguing conversationalist, often pausing to recount a personal experience or

private philosophy. As a result, we soon breezed past any trace of formality and discussed his life and works at length.

Having just returned from a guest lectureship in Boston, Prof. Kennelly recently had a pacemaker installed. That operation followed a quadruple bypass he received ten years ago and this was followed by a back injury sustained only a few days before Christmas in his campus home. However, he appears to be returning to full strength thanks to the Trinity College Health Service and speaks highly of Drs. Thomas and Black,

P5FEATURE his physiotherapist Karita and his “own Nurse Ann”. I inquired as to whether his health is always this troublesome, leading him to recall previous brushes with his own mortality. In particular, he remembers an incident that forced him to encounter his alcoholism head on.

Whilst spending time in Antwerp, he stopped at a set of traffic lights, reached down to his liver and realised it was severely swollen. Upon returning to a Dublin hospital, he was duly informed that his liver had enlarged to approximately “three or four times its proper size”. It was this enforced time in intensive care that put an end to his life as a famed raconteur of the Dublin pub scene and which also saw him embark on a new literary direction. For whilst he lay recovering in the ward, he met several women who had been admitted on mental health grounds.

These meetings were to prove inspirational: “I remember one woman who stood facing the wall, thinking she was talking to her lover and began to confront him for all the hardships she had endured. She said that she was “not going to let him treat her like that any-

“

Writing poetry has always been part of Brendan Kennelly’s life (he wrote his own first ballad aged twelve) to the extent that it was almost inevitable that he would go on to be one of Ireland’s most renowned poets.

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more and said that she knew exactly how to deal with him now.” The sympathy Kennelly felt with the plight of such women provided the catalyst to write his version of Euripides’ Medea, which, as well as The Trojan Women and Sophocles’ Antigone, saw the poet embarking on a dramatic career that was to garner him acclaim for his portrayals of wronged women. Following performances in the Gate and the Peacock, Kennelly’s translation of Medea proved to be a vital part of his rehabilitation from

the alcoholism of his previous life, and ultimately led to the publication of “The Man Made of Rain” in 1998. a poem about an imaginative encounter with a mysterious man whilst he lay dormant in the hospital.

When asked about his introductions to poetry, Kennelly traces his vocation back to his upbringing in Kerry, where members of the community would take turns in composing their own ballads about local heroes and, more often than not, sporting achievements. His own interest in Gaelic sport was accentuated by the glorification of local heroes through this poetry, but there was a deeper element to the custom than this. “Back in those times, it was still common for the men of the community to emigrate to Britain or America and send their earnings back home to Kerry. It was these men that inspired most of the ballads that we created”, and it was the women that were to inspire his interest in the plight of the women in literature. Writing poetry has always been part of Brendan Kennelly’s life (he wrote his own first ballad aged twelve), to the extent that it was almost inevitable that he would go on to be one of Ireland’s most renowned poets. He is an advocate of the oral tradition that, combined with the fondness for folklore, comprises Irish literature. He speaks fondly of these sessions, most often after matches, where he found the atmosphere conducive to creativity. “It was natural to both teach and write”, he recalls in relevance to the older generation of his community, offering an insight into his own academic life. This is, after all, a man who dropped out of Trinity a week after arriving and later took a night course in Trinity in Public Administration, a far cry from his eventual distinguished career in academia.

His proper return to Trinity aged twenty-one, saw him come back with a whole world of experience – he is quick to point out to me that the man who drove the bus he conducted was a former Black and Tan who wouldn’t speak to him for a year – and a whole different perception of college life. He says that his time away from Ireland, and Dublin in particular, helped “cut through the labels we put on people”, an attitude that he has retained, he claims, thanks to Trinity’s refreshing approach to individuality.

When asked about his own career within the College, Professor Kennelly (for he was appointed a Professor in Modern Literature by the English department) is keen to emphasise the duality of education. He recites a favourite quote of his: “Education is not about instruction, it’s about transformation” and claims to learn as much from students as he teaches them. Sadly his teaching days are no longer, but it is without doubt that those who experienced his lectures on subjects much more diverse than poetry will have come to cherish

his words.

As someone who, in his own words, has witnessed Trinity’s transition from “post-Victorian to modern”, Brendan Kennelly is ideally placed to comment on the current state of play within College. Having lived in College rooms for a combined total of thirty years he is has seen much change, for lest we forget that during his term as Junior Dean, he was so shocked at the curfew for women to leave campus by six that he success-

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It was this enforced time in intensive care that put an end to his life as a famed raconteur of the Dublin pub scene, and which also saw him embark on a new literary direction.

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fully lobbied for the much less restrictive hour of ten as the deadline. This decision has been widely seen as a significant moment in the modernisation of Trinity and Kennelly is keen to emphasise the good that has come of the presence of women in all parts of College life, although only because there is no “belligerent feminism”, as he is quick to add. Bearing this in mind I ask his opinion on the current accusations of an Arts Building bias in the running of the college. He reflects on this for a moment before recalling his good friend Ernest Walton, the Nobel-winning Irish physicist whom Kennelly used to lunch with in Trinity. Using Walton as the example, he illustrates the potentiality for science and the arts to have a relationship whereby both learn from the other.

Kennelly remembers Walton as a very shy man who, despite achieving world fame for smashing the atom, was equally as fond of music as he was of science. “I believe that zcience’s faith in factuality can help the artistic mind, and that the naiveity of the artistic intellect should be open to the imagination that science can provoke.”

I ask him about the use of the word faith and how it might be problematic in relation to science. “Yes, but faith, like science, is a fascinating mystery. It forms a kind of dialogue, most often between yourself and God. In fact, the ‘Our Fa-

ther’ and ‘Hail Mary’ are both direct addresses to God”. In the same way that poetry can be a dialogue between the poet and the reader? “Exactly. Or, in the case of ‘Cromwell’ or ‘The Book of Judas’, between the reader and the central figure within the poem.” In relation to the performance aspect of poetry, Kennelly admits that the ownership of art is surrendered to its audience, but that poems, in particular, still haunt him.

Mind you, given the controversy that “Cromwell” caused, (it does sympathise with one of Irish history’s greatest monsters, for which Kennelly was once punched in the street by a stranger), it is no surprise that a text can still haunt its author years after its publication.

Given the universal acknowledgment that writing is one of the loneliest pastimes life can provide, I inquire as to his own thoughts on the subject of isolation. After all, his own poem “Connection” contains the philosophy “Self knows that self is not enough” – hardly the words of a man who is content in his own company. “Yes, the process can be one of loneliness – I remember meeting Patrick Kavanagh, perhaps the loneliest man you could meet – and loneliness can be the creation of your own world, but the response to a poem can be nothing sort of life-affirming.” He recalls how his poem “The Man Made of Rain”, written in intensive care, gained such favourable responses that he found new faith in writing. “Writers always must create their own environment”, he decrees and part of that environment is often loneliness. But what concerns Kennelly more is his preoccupation with memory, itself a voice. “The human voice finds a new meaning in memory and can provide the company one so sorely needs”. The fascination can be traced back to the Writers in Prisons incentive that he founded in 1980, where he encountered men who had been robbed of their freedom, with memory their only possessions. “People become memories and life is often about how you remember those who are no longer with you.”

With thoughts of freedom of expression and the ability to connect with others still ringing in my ears, my meeting came to its natural conclusion. Brendan Kennelly is alien to pretension and a raconteur of the first degree. Mind you, why should I be surprised? Kennelly is famous for his no-nonsense approach to poetry: “Cromwell” was published after a chance meeting with publisher Neil Astley in O’Neills on Suffolk Street and he once published a poem entitled “Poetry My Arse”. Any doubts I had of his status as an atypical poet were soon dismissed when I asked what his mantra in relation to writing was. “Simple” he said. “Allow me to quote Philip Sidney – ‘Fool said my muse to me, sit on your arse and write!’”

I think we can all learn something from that.

FILMP6

The Bleak Sexy Word According to Mark Words: Conor O’Kelly

M

ark O’Halloran has been acting and writing for theatre for sixteen years, but it’s fair to say he has only become well known, to the general public at least, in the last three. Since putting in an exceptional performance alongside the equally talented late Tom Murphy in Adam and Paul in 2004, a film which he also wrote, O’Halloran has taken somewhat of a hiatus from theatre and has concentrated his writing talents on work for the big and small screens. In 2007, O’Halloran wrote for RTÉ’s Prosperity series and the Cannes prize-winning feature Garage was released. Moonlighting as a magazine editor, O’Halloran guest edited this month’s Film Ireland magazine, choosing “Sex in Irish Cinema” as his subject. TN2 sat down with the prolific O’Halloran to ask about his work practice and his own sex issue.

Given his prolific output in the last couple of years, I asked Mark how long the gestation period was for the major dramas he has been involved in. Interestingly his writing speed seems to be increasing. “With Adam and Paul I wrote for a year, had about eighteen drafts and went into production immediately. But that’s because the team of producer and director that were there, the director Lenny Abrahamson and producer Johnny Speer, so there was a production team already there. Garage was ridiculously fast; I wrote it and a year to the day that I sat down to write it, we wrapped it. And then Prosperity was

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I would defy anyone to stand at the top of O’Connell Street and look around them and see laughs. It’s bleak.

There’s bleakness in town wherever you look for it, but you have to temper it.

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even faster – which is kind of ridiculous – I sat down to write on 1 January 2007 and it went into production in May. How and ever, I wouldn’t do it that fast again.

At the moment, I’m writing a television series and I’m going to take a year to write it. I’m thinking of writing two episodes, then taking time to write a screenplay and then come back to it.”

Prosperity, the four part drama for RTÉ was set in Dublin, O’Halloran’s

new project is also based in the capital.”It is Dublin, yes, but a very different kind of place though. It’s set in a sixstorey apartment block and it’s called Six Stories. Its kind of exploring how we live in a city now, what does a modern community mean and also looking at the variety of people who live in a city environment, ranging from your homosexual couple to, say, your Jewish lady to your religious Muslim man. There is a huge diversity of people living in a very confined space. It’s interesting to see how a secular community holds all that together... if it does.”

If there is one comon thread in his work, O’Halloran’s dramas invariably tackle dark and ominous subjects from paedophilia to heroin adddiction to alienation in the immigrant populations.

He agrees it’s a major trait of his writing.

“Yeah, I don’t really believe in happy endings, but I think its also humorous. I think, for instance, there’s a lot of pretty damn good lines in Prosperity that people seem to have bypassed... There is humour in there, admittedly it’s stark, but I would defy anyone to stand at the top of O’Connell Street and look around them and see laughs. It’s bleak. There’s bleakness in town wherever you look for it, but you have to temper it. There’s a difference. I think some writers are deliberately dark and deliberately abuse their characters. Someone like Ian McEwan, for instance, a brilliant writer, but I believe he is deliberately cruel to his characters for no reason only than he is smarter than them. There was this

woman who said it was the province of art to throw buckets of light into the darkness, sometimes I think writers like him throw buckets of darkness into the light so we can look at it. But that’s not what I want to do in my work, I just want to show people in their helplessness and their suffering, sometimes it’s not profound, it’s very small pieces of suffering, but if we can understand that and empathise with that, then the world is a better place, I think” Adam and Paul, Garage, and the Prosperity series were all directed by Lenny Abrahamson, while both of features were produced by the production company Element Pictures. Some of O’Halloran’s upcoming work is also in collaboration with Abrahamson. I asked him how crucial this team was to his work and O’Halloran was modest in describing his abilities. “Well, I think not everyone is an auteur, there’s very few of them in the world, I think that generally the creation of a piece of art – and I learnt this being an actor and working in plays – the creation of a piece of art is generally a team effort. To find creative collaborators that you can work with is of vital importance, I would say.”

When O’Halloran was invited to guest edit the latest issue of Film Ireland magazine, he chose to focus on depictions of sex in Irish cinema. Included in the issue was the results of a survey that asked readers to nominate their fantasy couplings of Irish screen actors. It’s fair to say the result was the most “sexed up” issue of Film Ireland to date. I asked him

P7FILM how he enjoyed playing around with their rather conservative format. “Sure – I took a mature, adult orientated magazine and turned it to trash. Yeah, what I was interested in... Film Ireland generally, they’ll probably kill me for saying this, they generally orientate themselves towards being an industry magazine, whereas what I was interested in was it being a consumer magazine, a film consumer magazine. That still maintains a sort of intelligence about it, that isn’t about doing articles about P.S. I Love You. The Irish media is so stuffed with dreadful corrosive cynicism, but I think there’s room for what I call ‘Positive Cynicism’, that takes a glad eye to something and just plays with it. I think audiences like it. As for sex, I’m interested in it, I’m interested in why people don’t see themselves as sexy, I thought I’d commission a few writers to write about it.”

Thats a claim that O’Halloran has repeated in other outlets. I’m not sure that I agree, is it not perhaps a generational issue that we have outgrown in the last ten years, are we not sexier postCeltic Tiger? O’Halloran is not conviced. “I do think they don’t see themselves as sexy. I don’t know what it is exactly. I think it can be encapsulated in the phrase that I used in the editorial: Footballers Wives is sexy, but ‘Gaelic Footballers Wives’ could never be sexy.

When people say ‘I’m going to make a television series called Gaelic Footballers Wives’, people just break their shite laughing. I think that Fintan Walsh very interestingly goes into it, when he talks about a queer identity in Irish cinema. He says that personal couplings in Irish films are generally shown within a context of national struggle or the context of politics. That’s interesting, we’ve never done sex for sex’s sake, or sex for relationship’s sake, cause y’know, there’s an emotional geography that goes with your sexuality. Sexuality is vital to who you are as a person, I don’t know why we don’t touch it. Our literature is steeped in sexuality, going back to Joyce, but our film-makers never did and when they did, they generally got it catastrophically wrong.”

It’s an interesting point, while writers were certainly censored or banned, they have at least produced the work.

Film-makers in Ireland have never really been known to push boundaries of taste and decency. Was it simply a question of the censorship laws? “I don’t know, I didn’t find any answers. I don’t think we also... In the film industry, they have a shorthand for going about it, but I don’t think we have a shorthand to go about it, we don’t know where to go with it.

Whenever I tell people that there have been Irish porn movies made they all go ‘eeewwwww’. I have an idea for a film that I’m thinking about, which is called Laid Up, which is a gay romantic sex comedy set at an Irish funeral, which I think would be rather funny and which would be very graphic in its representa-

tion of sex, but only graphic because it’s fun, not because it means anything.

That’s what happens; in Irish films it has to mean something. In Irish films generally it’s an Irish person and some foreigner getting it on together or else it’s somebody and an IRA fugitive getting it on or else it’s two foreigners. If it’s two Irish people usually they’re heard for another room. I dunno what it is.”

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As for sex, I’m interested in it, I’m interested in why people don’t see themselves as sexy, I thought I’d commission a few writers to write about it.

”

I put it to him that his own films display some of that repression, there are no strong sexual relationships portrayed in his own writing. “Yeah, no, I’m a complete failure myself; I was asking myself the same questions that the magazine was asking everybody else. Adam and Paul is a buddy movie, but Fintan Walsh was quite funny when he said they were the queerest couple in Irish cinema.

They are based on quite obvious things like Midnight Cowboy and say Laurel and Hardy, which are generally seen to be quite homoerotic couplings. I mean there’s no sex there and when a girl is introduced and there is a thought that one of them has fathered a child, she muddies the waters by saying “say day-day to you daddies.” With Garage, I mean Garage was pretty much more about tackling the issue than Adam and Paul was. Garage was about tackling the issue of sexual loneliness and how that can be sublimated into inappropriate behaviour and inappropriate responses can come from that, that panic around paedophilia, it just gives me a pain in my gick, there’s such a panic about it.”

One of the strengths of Garage is its quiet, understated story development. It is very believable in the manner that small, almost banal details build to a dramatic climax. If you haven’t seen Garage, you might want to skip how O’Halloran describes the film’s climax: “I think within cinema, sometimes we tend to almost overdramatise ordinary people’s pain. With Garage there was an attempt to make a super ordinary man, and allow you to see a super ordinary man in a very mundane way, kill himself,

to see what effect that has on people.

There aren’t heaps of strings following you down to wherever it is you’re going to hang yourself. There’s none of that, it’s mundane and it’s dirty and lonely and we wanted to get to that, I think.”

His frenetic work schedule shows no sign of letting up. Besides the RTÉ series, other projects on the boil include working with Lenny Abrahamson on a Chinese adaptation of The Playboy of the Western World, a big screen adaptation of a succesfully staged Chinese interpretation which toured both here and in China and he’s also writing a film set in Cuba with Cuban transvestites to be directed by Paddy Breathnach.

O’Halloran sees the Irish film community as underdeveloped and far too reliant on individual personalities without any established industry per se. That said, he is enthusiastic about the support for drama, which he feels has grown in recent years and he sees a synergy developing between television and feature production that can be mutually benefi-

cial. O’Halloran has established himself firmly at the centre of the some of the highest quality drama to emerge from Ireland in recent years; given his energy and enthusiasm, it’s likely he will remain there for some time to come. At one point our convesation was interrupted by a phone call from Pat Shortt – the actor who portrays Josie, the super ordinary protagonist at the centre of Garage.

It’s immediately noticeable how O’Halloran slips into a thicker brogue on the phone with a fellow countryman: O’Halloran is from Ennis and Shortt from Thurles. It is undoubtedly a very natural tick, but also an indication of how adept and comfortable he is in communicating most effectively in different environments.This is O’Halloran’s obvious talent – he is is a phenomenol communicator, whether as actor, writer or conversationalist.

Thanks to Mark O’Halloran and Element Pictures. Garage will be available on DVD in March.

MUSICP8

In it for the long run Jason Stollsteimer of the Von Bondies talks to Tim Smyth about getting the most from your music - and giving it back to the fans. Words: Tim Smyth

T

he term “hardest-working man in music” is bandied about a fair bit, but it's not as if there's much competition: the average arts student has more motivation than most musicians.

But Von Bondies frontman Jason Stollsteimer – who has the work ethic of a subsistence farmer from Termonfeckin – seems worthy of the title. At least to me, lazy arts student that I am.

When I phone him, he's in Canada, “out in the frosty tundra, driving from Toronto to Montreal – that's about seven hours. We've got a show there tonight. Actually it's a show pretty much every night for the next nine months.

When we tour, we really tour! We're not a schtick band.”

No, they most certainly are not.

After their last major go-round, Stollsteimer put the band on hiatus for three years. “If I'd kept going any longer, I was so tired, I'd just be stealing

people's money. We'd been on a three year tour, playing these tiny venues most of the while. We'd gone from playing to 150 people in 2001 to audiences of a few thousand, but when we got to our peak, I was so exhausted I just had to stop.”

I ask if he thinks taking a break just as they were hitting the heights has done more harm than good. Stollsteimer disagrees: “Compared to the bands that started out around the same time as we did, I don't think we've done so badly.

The Vines haven't really done anything since and The Strokes have pretty much stopped touring, too.”

Besides, they've ploughed their own furrow. “We were pretty different from that indie, lo-fi, sort of anti-Foo Fighters sound. We weren't quite grunge and we weren't quite blues.”

Certainly, 2004's Pawn Shoppe Heart stood out in a year of great albums, with a glam-punk stomp as sharp and shocking as a punch to the nose. But every band in the NME is

now mining that seam of winning jitteriness and neither Stollsteimer's personal life (he's just come through a divorce) nor the band's line-up (guitarist Marcie Bolen and bassist Carrie Smith have been replaced) are the steadiest.

The odds are stacked against him, but he's adamant that it's going to work and he's proud of forthcoming album Love, Hate And Then There's You. “We've put organ on two songs and there's piano on another three. The organ really thickens up the sound – makes it sound good and evil. On the surface it might seem like the usual straight-up rock'n'roll from before, but they're slower, more subtle.

We've been through line-up changes, but it doesn't really matter.

Usually it's me and Donnie [Blum, drummer] on the record – we've been writing songs together since 2000. It's just about getting the songs as good as they can be – I mean, back when I started writing, I used to get friends of mine who weren't actually in the band

to play guitar on them because I knew they could do it better than me.”

The attitude might strike some as mercenary, but it's yielded results. The Billy Corgan-esque approach has yielded the EP We Are Kamikazes Aiming Straight For Your Heart, whose coolly anthemic “Pale Bride” looks set to scale the heights of spiky gem “C'mon C'mon”. Besides, he's determined to get it right.

“I'm in it for the long run. The break made no sense to anybody but me, but now it was the best decision I could have made. I'm like a fifteen year-old, I've got so much energy. If you caught the tour last time, expect a definite upgrade. We're getting the best out of the band, and the fans are getting the best out of us.”

The Von Bondies play Dublin's The Village on 17 February, with support from Stagger Lee and Fight Like Apes.

Tickets are €19 from Ticketmaster and all usual outlets.

INREVIEW

Sia Furler Some People Have Real Problems Words: Tim Smyth

S

ia surely does not include herself in the “people” who inspired the title of her new album Some people have real problem. It’s hard to imagine that these tinkly, airy tunes are about anything more tragic than a fairy who tore her dress or a scolded puppy. This album is not short on the trademark indulgent melancholy of her sound, which is not a guarantor of success, but provides at least a couple of gems. Pregnant with emotion, the tracks are beautiful, intimate and only occasionally threaten to lull you to sleep.

“Little Black Sandals” and “Lentil” are mellow, soulful tracks on which she’s not afraid to show that her sugar frosted whispers can be nicely

contrasted with some liberal, open throated vocals reminiscent of an upbeat Fiona Apple or a lovesick Aimee Mann. “Day Too Soon”, which is to be the first single, while not the strongest on the track, perhaps is the most marketable– it sounds like a lot of other radio-friendly, factory line assembly pop.

She would have done well not to overdo it with the somewhat soporific warbling on “You Have Been Loved” or the truly stultifying “Lullaby”. Don’t listen to these tracks unless you are already downhearted or want to be. “Buttons” provides a welcome change, an upbeat, catchy, electro track that seems just made for an advertisement full of cool, quirky people. People just like Sia.

INREVIEW

The Mystic Underground It Really Shouldn’t Be This Hard Words: Leah Sullivan

P

lease don't deny us the right to be famous” implores the Myspace website of The Mystic Underground. The plea does not set a confident tone. Whether you decide that the confidence is misplaced or the tone just plain wrong, the New York based electro pop duos latest offering proves that if a good start is half the battle, then surely a bad start is a crushing defeat.

The songs, which all sound remarkably similar, have a distinct 80’s vibe. Which, I hasten to add, would not be problematic if they weren’t like the filler material on 80’s compilation albums that you can only order from daytime infomercials.

“Madeleine”, to be the first single, has a retro synthesized sound which clashes somewhat awkwardly with singer Vladimir Valettes’ voice and makes us yearn for Annie Lennox’s pure vocals in her Eurhythmics era.

Keyboardist/programmer Benedetto Socci has clearly been at work at bouncy club track “Where have the club kids gone?” whose title begs the follow-up questions “Who cares?” and “Why on earth are you making music about them?” It really shouldn’t be this hard to make an album with nary a saving grace in it, but somehow, against the odds, The Mystic Underground has succeeded.

P9MUSIC

I Saw the Light You know you used to love them once, and here they are again: Tim Smyth keeps it real with The Saw Doctors. Words: Tim Smyth

I

'll admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard who I'd be interviewing for this issue. I knew it wasn't going to be a case of teasing monosyllables out of a long-fringed, skinny-jeaned poseur who wished he lived in Camden. Because Leo Moran – lead guitarist, lyricist and sometime singer with Galway group The Saw Doctors – is hardly what you'd call affected.

I've interrupted him in the middle of his lunchbreak, but he seems glad of the chance to chat. The band are set to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Awards on 15 February, and, while Irish Independent critic John Meagher may think the fact “hilarious”, it's about time their 22-year career received the notice it deserves.

Moran doesn't really mind, though. “I don't mind being criticised – we've gotten it for the right reasons, and I accept them. It can seem as if there's this style police who don't like us because we're not fashionable or whatever – but, then again, we're not really that stylish anyway!”

I ask him if he expected to receive the nod at any stage. “Oh, God, no – we were as delighted as we were surprised. But the thing you have to remember about these awards is that they don't mean you're at the end of the line. It's got us wanting to show there's still life in us.”

Well, they're still aware of what's going on around them, anyway. Recent single “I'm Never Going On Bebo Again” saw them taking a swipe at the social networking site which has robbed so many of us of our precious time, while other songlyrics see them addressing the downside of the recent economic boom.

Moran is self-deprecating when I bring up his ability to marshall ordinary observations into songs. “It just comes down to stating the obvious in a bit of a rhyme! I mean, no one else is

bothered saying it because it's in front of their face and they're waiting for something more spectacular to happen. It might seem boring, but when I was young I'd be listening to Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen. They were just talking about their ordinary experiences and I knew that if we kept sticking to our version of that it'd seem exotic to somebody somewhere.

And it's especially important to hold onto the likes of that these days. The world's becoming more homogenised and when kids stop speaking in their local accents, there's a lot of information being lost.”

Another thing Meagher overlooks in calling them a “pub band” is the sheer amount of touring The Saw Doctors have done in their long career.

With 52 United States tours under their belt and another circuit planned for this spring, the band members have so many stamps on their passports that customs must be sick of them.

“Ah, yeah, I mean, touring's so important.

We love going to Europe – we don't tour there often enough. It's great to see different cultures, and while the crowds tend to be small, they're so enthusiastic. It's not about chasing huge crowds.

Playing for 27 people in Kilkenny can be as much fun as that time we played Knebworth with Genesis. The audience are just waiting for the next band, so there can't be any messing about – and then there's a polite round of applause and off you go.”

As he heads out to RTÉ for an interview with Dave Fanning on his favourite album, he and I have a chat about Bruce Springsteen. “The thing I love about his albums is that you can put the headphones on and there's this consistency, this sense of being on a journey. He's just a master of crafting that kind of album. I don't feel like we've achieved that, though. That's still to play for.”

Poetry, literature and a swollen liver. David Lydon interviews poet Brendan Kennelly FEATURE P4-5

the soft bulletin Words: Carolyn Power

W

here music and pretty much everything else is concerned, blatant armchair consumerism is all very well and good – extremely so, in fact – but it is nice to get a bit more involved every now and then.

Yes, buying tracks and dancing your wee cotton socks off are both perfectly valid ways to pass your practical musicrelated time quota; but how about something a little farther off the wall for a change? Well, there is plenty to choose from without even having to leave the cozy confines of the Big Smoke.

First up, if you missed their stand in the Arts Building last week, the Trinity College Dublin Digital Arts Society are cooking up a night of multimedia-stylee goodness bound for the Bernard Shaw, either 16 or 23 February (depending on which night suits the people better I assume, making them a very considerate bunch indeed). They are on the lookout for interested parties to make it, well, an interesting party; and if you want to have a bit of an old go at DJing, visual tomfoolery or live playing, drop Dermot a line at solonw@tcd.ie and get your foot on the first rung of that mighty Beckbound ladder. The night, when chosen, seems set to be one for the diaries, so why not get in there?

Early in the year as it might seem, the good folks at FringeFest ’08 are already working away at the setup for the alternative stage event due to take place in September. They are scouting around for performers, organisers, movers and shakers of all descriptions (they specifically mention punks, romantics and clowns among others, so we’re all sorted) and if their shoutout is to be believed, they want you, me and everyone we know to get on board with them and their infamous lunacy levels.

Check out www.fringefest.com for more details – and remember,the deadline for all submissions is 20 March, so affix your skates sharpish.

Naturally we all need a bit of a break from even the most enjoyable of involvements; so for those slightly more relaxed events, please see the following: DJ David Guetta @ The Academy, 17 February; Johnny Flynn&the Sussex Wit @ Crawdaddy, 16 February; and don’t forget the Choice Music Awards, 27 February at Vicar Street.

FASHIONP10

?

1.Nina, Black Ribbon with silver heel, Barratts, €75.

2.Black Patent leather with white trim, Soft Step by Marta, Korkys €79.99.

16.Firetrap, Cream leather brogues, Office, €125.

E

veryone loves new shoes, but unfortunately, this time of year can come with some significant financial restraints. If you have found yourself broke and depressed, here is something to cheer you up. We decided to do the shopping for you and here are some of the cutest shoes on the market! We checked out Topshop, Topman, Korkeys, Awear (Buffalo), Office and Barretts. Just because you try them doesn’t mean you have to buy them, but be warned, both our photographer and our model simply couldn’t resist. Don’t forget to take advantage of your student discount.

Womenswear

New shoes

10.Croco Classic, Buffalo, Awear, €115.

3.Super Grey Patent leather heels,Topshop €91.

13.Turquoise ankle boots, Irregular Choice,Korkys €134.99.

6.Lydia Blush,Brown Patent Leather peep-toe, Topshop, €84.

14.Koko, Black and Cream Patent leather flats, Topshop, €68.

9.Purple Platform heels with bow, Buffalo, Awear, €145.

4.Black Patent Knee-high boots, Topshop, €137.

5. Brown Boots, Koi Couture, Korkys, €49.99.

7. Tartlet, Silver peep-toe, Barratts, €60.

15.Babycham, White trainers with pink detail, Office, €43.

P11FASHION

MENSWEAR 18.Shark Coral, Red Patent leather with Black heel, Topshop, €91.

M

en’s shoes can be hit or miss and it’s very hard to find good shoes on a student budget. Topman and Office are always favourites for the trendy and budget conscious man about town.

20.Park Lane, Red Patent Leather with bow and ribbon detail, Buffalo, Awear, €50.

21.Imperio 500 Red Satin, Buffalo, Awear, €118.

D

VALENTINE’S DAY

19.Panent Red open-toe highheels, Buffalo, Awear, €95.

oing something special this Valentine’s Day? These lucious red shoes are just the thing.

Great with a little black dress to make you feel really special. Or if you want to go a little more casual, team them with a pair of jeans for retro-style, casual Hollywood glamour. No plans?

Sporting a pair of these seductive red heels might change all that!

26.Shoes Lab arcade, White Leather High-tops, Topman, €58

27.Transit, Black Shoes, Topman, €69.

28.Rustic, Charcoal ankle boots, Topman, €84.

22.Kooky Patent Red Flats, Topman, €46.

29.Shade Lace, Brown shoes, Topman, €69.

30.Asics Onisuka Tiger trainers, Office, €80.

24.Slack Reflect Silver flats, Topman, €69.

31.Eclipse, Black Perforated Leather, Topman, €69

23.Dark Brown polished leather brogues with detail stiching, Office, €145

32.Rana, Brown shoes with light seam stiching detail, Topman, €114

25.Vice Lace,Black Patent Leather shoes, Topman, €76.

33.Tan Stragger Boot, Topman, €76

BOOKSP12 Reviews French Letters The Last of the Just

Atomised Author: Michel Houellebecq

Life: A User’s Manual

Author: André SchwartzBart

Author: Georges Perec

Price: €11.60 384pp.

Price: €12.15 608pp.

Price: €12.15 374pp.

Publisher: Vintage

Publisher: Vintage Publisher: Penguin

First published in France as Les Particules Elementaires in 1998, Atomised has garnered something like a cult following in the decade or so since its publication. The novel, which earned its author a hefty prize sum at the IMPAC Awards, follows the diverging lives of two half brothers, Michel and Bruno, one an introverted molecular scientist, the other an insatiable sex addict.

Unlike a great deal of modern novelists, Houellebecq has a very clear vision of what he does and does not wants to say. One of the few current French novels which gained just as much publicity outside of France as in the metropole itself, Atomised deserves to be read for this reason alone.

In the century since its inception, France’s Prix Goncourt has only ever alighted on two masterpieces: the first was Proust’s In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower way back in 1919; the second came forty years later with Schwartz-Bart’s The Last of the Just, generally regarded as one of the greatest French novels of the post-war period. Bart takes both Eastern and Western Europe as his canvas, tracing the history of the Levy clan, a Jewish family damned to live as exiles and outsiders, from the period of the Crusades right up to the chilling “Arbeit Macht Frei” of the gates of Auschwitz.

Often cited as masterpiece of French postmodernism, Life: A User’s Manual is an oddly-structured collection of tales (the title-page renders it as a series of tiny “novels”) centred around a single day in the life of a fictional Parisian apartment block. By modern standards, Perec’s technique isn’t very revolutionary, but it was something of a novel concept when the novel was first introduced in the late 70’s.

Ripping off the facade of the apartment building and letting the reader peek into the private lives of his characters, Perec attempts through a succession of 99 short chapters to document the trials and tribulations of the inhabitants of 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier.

The Oprah Effect Andrew Lynch profiles one of the most bizarre phenomenons in recent publishing history: the Oprah Book Club.

L

ast month, Oprah revived her annual Book Club for the year 2008. Since its inception in 1996, the hugely successful and controversial Book Club has catapulted some of the more obscure authors to the top of the bestseller list in America.

With an estimated membership of one million viewers (and readers), inclusion on the list can make instant millionaires of authors - and publishers - lucky enough to win Oprah’s seal of approval.

The first title chosen for 2008 was Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Tolle is a counsellor and spiritual advisor who advocates (according to his website) “transcending our ego-based state of consciousness” as a “prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet”.The book’s choice signals a departure for Oprah’s Book Club. She has said in the past that she wants the Book Club to focus mainly on fiction, since she promotes so many non-fiction books - and in particular books dedicated to better the spiritual lives of

her viewers - on other sections of her show. A New Earth, subtitled “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”, is a book about finding your place in the world. Tolle, born in Germany but educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge, has written three others books (Oprah lists his first book, The Power of Now, as “one of my favourite books”) and more than twenty audiobooks (his latest being: Through the Open Door to the Vastness of Your True Being). As predicted, within hours of the announcement of the book’s inclusion in the Book Club, Tolle’s work shot to Number 1 on Amazon.com’s sales list, another testament to Oprah’s visceral power and her influence over American culture.

Though she often lauded for inspiring millions of viewers to pick up books by authors whom they wouldn’t have previously considered (Faulkner and Steinbeck, for example), Oprah’s Book Club has, in the past, come under a considerable amount of scrutiny. In 2001, the Club was in the headlines for the first time when Jonathan Franzen

criticised the position of his own novel, The Corrections, among other books which had previously be selected for inclusion. Franzen remarked that although Oprah had “picked some good books [...] she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she’s really smart and she’s really fighting the good fight”. In response to his criticisms, Oprah promptly disinvited Franzen but didn’t remove his book from her selection.

The Book Club made headlines again in 2005. A slow reading year for Oprah, only two authors were chosen for inclusion: three novels by William Faulkner and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a supposed memoir detailing the author’s life as an alcoholic, drug addict and criminal.

Almost immediately after A Million Little Pieces was selected in September 2005, critics began to question the truth of Frey’s claims about his own life. A considerable amount of media pressure forced Oprah to invite Frey back to the Oprah Winfrey Show in early 2006.

During the ensuing showdown, Oprah forced Frey to admit that he had lied about the time he spent in prison. She then turned her sights on Frey’s publisher Nan Talese, asking why the book was billed as a “memoir” and why no attempt had been made by the publisher to ascertain the veracity of the book’s content. The showdown itself was applauded by members of the media, with the New York Times declaring that in an age of delusion and lying in American politics, it was still possible to see “the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying.”

This incident, and the decisiveness of Oprah’s reaction to allegations of child abuse at her US$40 million school complex in South Africa, have shown that Winfrey’s status as an American icon is almost untouchable. Her Book Club remains the single most influential driving force in the American publishing world and even if Oprah does eventually retire from the world of television, it is likely to remain so for some time to come.

P13BOOKS

Nigella Express Paul Earlie welcomes the return of the Domestic Goddess and wonders if we’ve seen the last of Nigella’s trademark wordiness.

T

he following figures will shock you: a government survey conducted in September 2007 found that 5.2 million members of the British public would be unable to understand a typical Nigella Lawson recipe (in particular, her Slow-Roasted Aromatic Shoulder of Pork was singled out for worried disapproval). By way of contrast, it was concluded, any sevenyear old could thumb his way through Gordon Ramsay’s latest without the slightest difficulty, the hot-headed chef’s fondness for monosyllabic four letter words being well-established. This says a bit about current literacy rates in Britain, but a great deal more about the intellectual-chic persona Nigella so gracefully cultivates around herself and her occasionally literary oeuvre.

So what is it about Lawson’s style which some readers find so alienating?

For starters - and this may surprise those readers who view Nigella as little more than a busty pornographer of fatty foods - Lawson graduated with a degree in Modern Languages from Oxford. Her prose betrays that same yearning to put a typical arts degree to work that afflicts many an insecure belles lettres undergraduate. The immediate result is that one often comes to Nigella’s recipes as a head-scratching student comes to a teacher for guidance (“Clafoutis?” “A baked custardy batter

filled with cherries”, our buxom headmistress sensibly purrs). A less obvious result of her more formative years is that a great deal of her recipes revel in allusion, with a conspiratorial nod to the heavy-hitters of European culture and thought. In her first book, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food, she provides a fiddly recipe for “Proust’s Madeleines”, compares making mayonnaise to reading Henry James (she never found it difficult until someone suggested it might be) and likens the colour of her patented meringues to Baudelairean sunsets.

There are indications, however, that Nigella’s infamously adjectiveheavy prose and penchant for book chat is in its proverbial death-throes. Nigella Express, unlike her previous efforts, makes a virtue of culinary simplicity. In her “Introduction” she confesses that “I can’t - couldn’t possibly - eradicate all witter from my writing life, but I have tried to restrict the babble to the introduction to each recipe and have then given the method in a number of short, precise steps”. This is reasonable enough. Unfortunately, and with the kind of literary irony which doubtlessly would not be lost on Nigella, your reviewer was unable to locate the meaning of the word “witter” in any dictionary, hardback or otherwise. But this is only a freakish slip: Nigella really

is making the effort to skim the fat from her epithet-laden prose style. Gone is the “lightly aerated mass” of her whipped egg whites, replaced with the more pedestrian basic English of “whisk the egg whites and salt in a bowl until peaks begin to form”. The unfortunate trade-off is that with her newly inclusive style, something of the old Nigella is lost, with the layers of personality and anecdotal evidence which always shined through her recipes conspicuously absent.

Stylistic considerations aside (and let’s be honest, prose is put on a backburner when confronted with lavish, full-colour illustrations of Jumbleberry Crumble and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake), Nigella Express is an exceptional collection of recipes. As always, Nigella’s strength lies in her heady postmodern mix of the high and the low as she comfortably transitions from the unabashedly trashy mac-and-cheese to lustier, more obscure incarnations such as Saké Sea Bass and Wilted Greens or Black Pasta with Red Mullet. Each of the thirteen sections consists of twelve or more recipe clustered around a particular meal time, theme or ethnic origin. So whereas Section 10, “On the Run” promises “food for eating on the hoof: packed lunches and picnics” and Section 4 promises “Breakfast at Breakneck Speed”, the bizarrely-titled Section 5, “Quick Quick Slow”, contains

recipes which can be prepared well in advance for speedy assembly at a later stage.

Variety is the name of the game here: sticky desserts (White Chocolate Mint Mousse, Glitzy Chocolate Puddings) sit side by side with heavier offerings such as Chicken Caesar Cornets and (deep-breath) Griddled Venison with Pink Gin Apple Sauce and Roast Pencil Leeks. This isn’t student cuisine by any means, but this doesn’t mean the book is out of the typical student’s financial comfort zone or culinary competence (though the Smoked Trout Pate can admittedly be saved for a more fiscally-sound future).

Nigella’s influence is unprecedented: the book outsold its nearest Christmas competitor (Jamie at Home) by 100000 copies in the UK. After she aired her Coq au Riesling recipe on her BBC television show, sales of Riesling in Britain rose by over 30%.

Similarly, after extolling the benefits of goose fat for that perfect Christmas turkey to Jonathan Ross, Asda reported a 65% increase in sales of goose fat in their supermarket chain. She may have stepped out of the media spotlight to make room for Jamie Oliver’s Fowl Dinners, but for the time being, Nigella remains queen of the celebrity kitchen.

Nigella Express is available in hardback from Chatto & Windus priced €29.99.

THEATREP14

Forgotten

I

t would be simplest to describe Forgotten as a play about the experience of old age, in which four elderly Irish characters talk about their lives. Yet its initial moments depict an elaborate, highly stylized Japanese dance executed by an actor dressed in a long maroon kimono.

It is clear from the very beginning that something unusual is happening. Forgotten, written and performed by the Irish actor Pat Kinevane and produced

by Fishamble, is a complicated play.

In essence, there are two sides to Forgotten. The first contains the monologues of Flor, Gustus, Eucharia and Dora, four compelling personal histories; Dora talks about her youth, Gustus his wayward daughter, while Flor rails against the treatment of the elderly in the modern world: “Has no one a shkitter o dignity left?” The backgrounds and stories of these characters vary widely and each has his or her own distinct voice. Each has experienced the pain of life in their own way. Secondly, there is the Japanese kabuki, which occurs between and occasionally

Words: Dominic Esler

during the monologues. There is a striking division between the two styles.

The initial effect of this elaborate dance, accompanied by music and changes of lighting, is one of bewilderment as the audience struggles to relate it to the naturalistic depiction of the characters. But the incongruity of this unlikely fusion soon disappears.

It’s more than likely that nobody in the audience will have any familiarity with kabuki. It’s not necessary – in Forgotten kabuki invites a personal interpretation. Certain moments are easier to connect to the monologues and seem to articulate an emotion, a memory or a fear for the future. At other times, patterns are clearly visible in the dance, but we can only make a guess at what they represent. Often the kabuki works on a subconscious level and its impact on the play is powerful but hard to describe.

Kinevane’s performance is incredible. For an uninterrupted hour and a half, he switches effortlessly between monologues and tortuous dance positions. He inhabits each character enti-

“

He inhabits each character entirely, bringing men and women to life while wearing not much more than a pair of tattered pyjama bottoms and the sparse set fades away as we become increasingly involved in the lives that he is creating.

rely, bringing men and women to life while wearing not much more than a pair of tattered pyjama bottoms and the sparse set fades away as we become increasingly involved in the lives that he is creating. The play is often hilarious and Kinevane’s skilful interaction with the audience results in a very personal piece. Special mention should also go to the sound effects, which have had real thought and effort put into them; for instance, each character has his or her own musical own theme.

There is so much more that could be said about Forgotten. The play expects its audience to work and the initial disorientation gives way to deeper meaning. By the end, crucial connections between the four stories have been revealed and we have even been offered a possible reason for the play’s aesthetic connection with Japan. Forgotten’s final moments mirror its beginning, but are now full of more obvious significance.

Forgotten will be at The Helix (Glasnevin) at the end of February.

P15THEATRE

Reading in the dark Playwright Marina Carr played her audience at her recent visit to the Samuel Beckett Theatre.Words: Polly Graham

O

ne would have been forgiven for thinking that the audience with Marina Carr at the Beckett Theatre was something of a publicity stunt on the part of the drama department. Greeted with a flyer, advertising Trinity’s M. Phil in Theatre and Performance – which Carr herself will be helping to teach – I was left hoping that recruitment wouldn’t take long.

Carr was hailed to whoops and hollers more appropriate to a legion of rock-chick teenage groupies waiting to see The Strokes. Although no rock star, Carr has earned numerous literary accolades and has an undeniable glamour. Her striking appearance was accentuated by the lighting; the auditorium was plunged into darkness with a wavery spotlight focused on the

M

aeve Stone, her cast and crew, should be congratulated on their admirable performance last week. Whilst somewhat short of perfect, it was one of the most captivating pieces of theatre I have seen in a while. This was partly attributable to the fact that Frank McGuiness’ work is famously a gift to perform and as much fun to watch. None the less, Stone’s shrewd choice of play and evident hard work helped to secure the audience’s attention.

The stark and intimate set (composed mainly of breeze blocks) helped create an intensity which was held throughout the performance. To set the scene: Lights come up on two figures chained to a radiator. One is the American, “Good and Kind” Adam, played by Justin Hall. The other is Ed, a Northern Irish journalist, played by Ciaran Clarke, all sinews and sarcasm. The two have been working in the Lebanon during the war. They are being held hostage by Arabs. This is all they are ever told. The rest of the action deals with their struggle to keep a hold on sanity and the change of dynamic when a third prisoner, Michael “an Englishman”, is introduced.

Hall and Clarke dealt deftly with the characterization demanded of them.

Hall, as Adam, was every inch the gentle American, mediating the conflicts of the cell’s other inhabitants. The strong bond

podium.

Carr read extracts from a selection of her plays: starting with her first; Low in the Dark (1989) and concluding with her most recent, Woman and Scarecrow (2006). Carr’s reading seemed a little fast, but it was but it was animated and included fascinating variations of accent and tone – all but lost on this British student!

The lyricism of Carr’s writing lends itself to being read aloud and is reminiscent of the Irish poetic tradition and the balladic style of individuals such as Yeats.

Carr’s natural inclination was hampered in the writing of her first play which, as she herself frankly admitted, was profoundly influenced by Beckett.

Beckett’s austere, intense style is worlds away from Carr’s mystical and evocative language. Her fifth play The Mai (1994),

between him and Edward was particularly believable. Clarke as Edward oozed a menacing charm, fierce, but at times compassionate, even towards Michael and mostly very, very vulnerable.

Equal recognition should be afforded Paddy Ferrante, who had by far, the greatest challenge of the three.

Though all three of McGuiness’ characters leant slightly towards stereotype, his depiction of the English Michael was most cartoonish. For the most part, Ferranti did himself no favors by playing to this. However, at times, he invested fully in the circumstances of his character, proving he could captivate and move the audience. In describing his shell-shocked father, Ferrante’s performance reduced a number of the audience to tears.

Mention should also be made of the music. Hussein Sarhan and Michael Carrol succeeded in creating a hauntingly melancholic atmosphere. But the most moving musical moments were the solos sung by Hall and Clarke in breaking voices.

It was difficult to believe entirely in the play’s setting; the “Pinteresque” sense of external menace, which the play suggests, was not fully realized. I could not envisage the Lebanese captors.

However, given that the rehearsal process for this show was a mere two weeks and the challenge of each role, I think they can be forgiven these shortcomings.

Carr’s second reading of the evening, revealed her own distinctive, dramatic voice. She read a long monologue about the Legend of Owl Lake, an Irish myth of spring and winter (inspired by the myth of Persephone), highlighting her unique blend of rural Irish domestic tragedy and classical re-writing.

The extract Carr chose to read from her most recent play, Woman and Scarecrow, was from the final deathbed scene. Scarecrow reappears as death and Woman begs her for a little more time. Scarecrow refuses, asking Woman for an existential justification of her life.

Woman’s ultimate justification for life is the transcendental joy she once felt listening to a piece of music.

Carr expanded on the concept of the transcendental in the question and answer session. She claimed that there are two schools of thought in

contemporary art: those who believe that there is life beyond the grave and those who believe death is the end. Such things are never easy to explain in a limited time, but this seemed a grossly over-simplified take on the debate.

Carr was refreshingly open during the question and answer session. She hopes to write for the screen, sees red at being classified as a “woman” playwright (a little unreasonable, given her feminist claims during the evening such as “it’s never a good time to be a woman!”), is unfamiliar, at best, with academic criticism of her plays and has occasional problems with theatre directors’ interpretations of her work.

Carr’s honesty and genuine enthusiasm for art was not only inspiring, but reflected favourably on her plays, which I had previously thought rather self-consciously literate.

INREVIEW

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me Words: Ivy Fogarty

ARTP16

Paintings hanging on Merrion Square.

Photo: Rachel Kennedy

Is commercialism killing Irish art?

Words: Caroline O’Leary

T

he rise of the Celtic Tiger has brought many benefits to Irish society, not least to the Irish art market, which has boomed in the past 30 years. Never before have so many people in this country had the disposable income to buy luxuries such as art and this support has created a thriving and everexpanding market.

Yet walking around the Irish Art Fair last November, you can’t help but think something is missing on a grand scale. Though full of mostly beautiful and (varyingly) talented works, a staggering sense of sameness began to creep in as I walked between booths, as if I had seen it all before somewhere but wasn’t quite sure where… also more glaringly apparent was the lack of sculpture or any other sort of non-paint art.

Suddenly I realised that despite the numerous exhibits, there was nothing shocking, little that was bizarre and nothing particularly original. This uncomfortable feeling wasn’t helped by the detached attitudes of the majority sellers when they were approached to comment on their work; most mumbled monosyllabic answers before turning to chat to the middle aged housewife behind, who must looked far more likely to buy a piece. One memorable artist, when questioned about the variety of techniques used in his work, waxed lyrical about it for approximately three minutes before spending the next ten trying to sell me a place in the art class

he runs on the side. Off-putting and a little condescending, to say the least.

One of the few exceptions to this was artist Daire Irwin who, at twenty years old, is one of the youngest people to ever exhibit at a major Irish Art Fair.

Irwin was showing and selling a selection of his own diverse works, from large-scale portraits to masses of cartoon eyeballs he claimed he simple painted “For fun, as a break from the exact portrait stuff”. Happy to chat away, he told me about his painting, his inspiration and how he enjoyed experimenting with his work. When questioned about his opinions of the other works at the fair, he attempted to remain neutral but did admit that there was very little original or exciting featured. However, he offered some justification adding “You have to remember, artists and galleries pay €3000 for a stand here. So they have to sell €3000 worth of art before they even break even. So none them are going to bring anything that isn’t commercial, it won’t sell.”

And so the answer becomes clearmoney is the reason for all. Irwin, at only twenty and still attending college in the North, can afford to let his creative side have control and paint what inspires him without having to worry about whether selling it will be necessary to pay next month’s rent. Since the general decline in patronage in the art world, artists have had to start ensuring that the work they produce will publicly

sell and support them. Ironically enough, the development of the middle and upper-middle classes that evolved since this decline has now in turn led to the development of a whole new kind of art market where everyday people seek reasonably priced works. Of course this commercialisation does not apply to all Irish artists, many of whom are producing original and exciting works, but the art market in Ireland simply isn’t big enough to support both this “artistic” market and a popular commercial market. It is a sad fact that many artists today have chosen to pander to the latter.

This dramatic shift in the focus of the Irish art market seems to have led to artists focusing their work solely on how commercial and how sellable it is, which means sticking to tried and tested techniques. Many artists, instead of developing their own techniques and forms of expression, are simply reverting to the successful techniques of those that have gone before them. “Homage” paintings to previous masters, a number of which currently feature in Kildare Street’s Apollo Gallery, seem to be simply an excuse for a new artist to copy their hero’s techniques, while exhibits such as the recently displayed “soup cans” in the Temple Bar Gallery cross the line between inspiration and downright replication. One of the most blatant of these perpetrators seems to be artist Kevin Sharkey. Though he has proven in the past that he is capable of original and

unique works and is acclaimed by publications such as the Sunday Tribune, the majority of his work seems to show little of the creativity and originally he is credited with. Anyone familiar with American artist Jackson Pollock’s “drip” paintings will see more than a little similarity between his famous works and Sharkey’s far more recent canvases.

Though lacking Pollock’s intricate harmony, Sharkey uses almost identical techniques and colours and in short, there is little real creativity or originality in any of his work. Yet he continues to paint and prosper because his work is colourful, commercially viable and suites the price bracket of the upper and middle class that now dominate the Irish art market.

What has happened to creativity?

Of course I am not condemning artists for wanting to make money, they have to eat too and the days of the shivering bohemians suffering for their art are long gone. But is it too much to ask for a little of the originality, variety and flair that can make art so compelling and fascinating? Masters such as Picasso and Dali were criticised in their careers for producing work that was aimed to sell, but at the same time, the work they were producing was still significant, beautiful, emotional and different. Though certainly not common to all current artists, art production in Ireland is slowly starting down a worrying path. Let’s hope we can find a balance and start producing more Picassos than Sharkeys.

P17ART

Turning Violence into Art Gerard Mannix Flynn’s No Ifs, No Butts, No Violence installation in Dame Street’s Gruel Café has taken an unorthodox approach to Ireland’s bloody history.

Words: Nicholas Hamilton

G

ruel Café on Dame Street has an eclectic approach to interior design: family kitchen tables are combined with salvaged pews and old school desks with classic modernist-design chairs, so that, rather than being in a café, the experience of eating in Gruel is often more akin to that of having a snack in a used furniture shop.

At first, therefore, the latest addition to the fit-out of the downstairs eating area appears to be a natural continuation of this mishmash aesthetic: a shelf running the whole way round the basement is loaded with what appear to be abstract wooden sculptures of the same roughly triangular shape and size but carved to different levels of finish.

Lit from below by the lamps on the tables, the grain of the wood and skillful carving are thrown into relief and, like the game that people play at Halloween or when camping, by shining torches under their chins, the blocks assume a variety of different appearances: the profile of somebody with a particularly stuck-up nose, rabbits standing in rows on their hind legs or given the season that is in it, the Three Wise Men in procession.

A quick look around, however, reveals the true source for these wooden blocks, as two photos in the corner -one of shelves of gunstocks yet to be mounted with arms and the other of a well-stocked arsenal- make clear the final destination and purpose of the blocks of wood: they are the butts of rifles. The centrally placed balaclavas in the latter photo –one black, the other green- and green and white colour scheme of the room shown in the photo make clear the intended terrorist use and Republican ownership of the weapons.

Realisation that you have been en-

ART

EVENTS

TRINITY ARTS WEEK- (11-15 February), events taking place all over campus for the week. See posters and website www.trinityartsfestival.com for details.

Part of the installation in Gruel, Dame Street. Photo: Rachel Kennedy joying your cup of coffee in -and admiring- an apparent IRA lair filled with gunstocks, is unsettling. The shapes of the wooden blocks take on more sinister associations, now looking more like shattered, brutalised limbs or crude prosthetics than bunny rabbits.

The gunstocks and photos are part of No Ifs, Not Butts, No Violence, an installation by Gerard Mannix Flynn. As with much of Flynn’s work (such as James X, which dealt with abuse in State institutions), the intention is to raise awareness of hidden or overlooked aspects of national history and facilitate catharsis. No Ifs... attempts to give a physical form to IRA decommissioning –the most important event of recent Irish history, but one which denied the public a sense of absolute closure, as

SCULPTURE OF JAMES MCKENNA: exhibition of sculpture and drawings by the acclaimed Irish artist at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (until 2 March) NICK MILLER, TRUCKSCAPES-acclaimed black ink drawings of the Irish landscape.

Rubicon Gallery, 10 Stephens Green. (19

photos of the decommissioned arms were not permitted, only the testimonies of independent witnesses–and enable the public to process its feelings about The Troubles and its conclusion.

No Ifs... builds on one of Flynn’s earlier works, Letting Go of That Which You Most Ardently Desire, in which an audience of 150 people was brought to a secret location to see decommissioned paramilitary weapons. Gruel seems like the perfect venue for expanding on the earlier project, not only because it makes the work available to a wider audience, but also because of the particular character of the place. In a café such as Gruel, with a slightly knowing and ironic approach to interior design, it is not always clear whether what you are looking at is part of the normal of decor of

January - 15 February).

BETTER IS SOMETHING YOU BUILD: collection of sculpture and installations by five international artists at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Strand Street. (7 February- 1 March) ONE HUNDRED ASPECTS OF THE MOON: Japanese Woodblock Prints by Yoshitoshiat

the place or a specific artistic intervention.

In such an environment, awareness of the installation dawns on you gradually as you piece together the individual parts and is all the more effective and in this case, unsettling, for so doing.

Things are a little less ambiguous upstairs, where gunstocks are used to create a series of abstract tableaux, though they are still removed from their original intended function, looking like part of a bog find. The centrepiece on the back wall is a circular mirror framed inevitably by gunstocks, with the words “They Were A Much Better Target For a Kiss” printed on it. Although written about an unchangeable past and filled with regret and maybe anger, the installation as a whole appears to take its cue from this expression of the desire to find a positive alternative.

Aesthetic considerations and curatorial concerns are unlikely to ever be prioritised in a commercial environment. It is highly commendable of the proprietor of the cafe to allow his/her premises to be used for the installation, however, a number of small setbacks – the result, no doubt, of health and safety regulations, rather than the whims of the management- are also caused by exhibiting in a working environment: the red strings that keep the gunstocks tight against the walls on shelves, preventing them from falling on the heads of unsuspecting customers and the “Please Don’t Touch” signs are clumsy, with the one that reads “Please Do Not Move Gunstocks” is unnecessarily descriptive and shattering any possible illusion.

Also, on the day that I visited, the headphones at the back of the seats downstairs were not working.

Notwithstanding these minor issues, however, No Ifs... stands as proof of the often greater power and effectiveness of art beyond the gallery wall.

the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.

(Until 17 February) PUBLIC DISPLAY OF THE ABSTRACT-: exhibition of Mairead deBlanca’s beautiful water inspired paintings. The Mill Theatre Gallery, Dundrum (19 January - 14 Febraury)

EDIBLESP18

Be mine, (cheaply) Valentine Valentines Day is just around the corner, and a romantic meal for two is up there on the list of things to do to show your other half how much you care. Student budget? TN2 can help you out.

Armed with different budgets we sent out reviewers to test the romantic hotspots of Dublin to see what you can achieve with a little bit of cash and a lot of ingenuity. Words: Beth Armstrong

€75 Fitzers

51 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 Tel: (01) 677 1155

W

ith 75 euros as a budget for a romantic meal for two in the Valentine’s Day spirit, we opted for Fitzers to spend the dosh. Situated a short walk from Trinity, Fitzers is synonymous with elegance and great food at reasonable prices. Opting for the evening dinner menu with dishes such as sea bass with roasted fennel or sirloin steak with béarnaise sauce would leave us with little cash to spare, as one course alone would have been upwards of 25 euros. Instead we opted to go at a slightly earlier time and take full advantage of the pre-theatre menu, available from Sunday to Friday if you have a booking before 7pm. Arriving at 6.30 pm, we were given an amazing table, by the window and were provided with the pretheatre (or early bird) menu.

Using this cheaper option did not affect our meal in the slightest, and with one course for 14.95

euros, two for 18.95 euros and three for 22.95 euros, we were able to enjoy a three course meal and bottle of wine and still be within our 75 euros budget. The wine list was extensive, with various bottles costing between 24 and 40 euros. We opted for the house white, a 2006 Sauvignon semellion for 24 euros. It was perfect. Light and delicate, it was a great compliment to the meal. While reading through the menu, we were given a plate of various breads and after making our decisions from the three options per course, we both ended up ordering the mango chicken salad as a starter. It was delicious. The portion size was perfect, and the mango, chicken and leaves worked really well together and were served with a delicious dressing. As a main course, I opted for the fish and chips.

With light-as-a-feather batter, they were out of this world. Good, uncomplicated food done deliciously. Rather bizarrely the fish was served with poached eggs, though the tastes did compliment each other! The other main course ordered was a manly steak and Guinness pie, served with

mashed potatoes. This was apparently delicious and the pastry was perfect - not too stodgy. For dessert I opted for the chocolate pot. This was a dark chocolate mousse concoction served with crumbly warm biscuits and was extremely good! The vanilla crème brulee with chocolate chip shortbread was just as amazing and was the perfect end to a delicious dinner. Despite opting for the early bird option, we didn’t leave the restaurant until 9.30, with no distinction made between us and other diners who opted for the more expensive options. The bill came to a total of 74.05 euros (no tap water here - a large bottle cost 4.15 euros!) Fitzers is an excellent place to go for a Valentine’s meal, though if you do chose the early bird option, be warned the restaurant can be quite empty, with only two other tables seated when we arrived. However, by the middle of the evening the place was buzzing and the atmosphere was superb. A three course meal and bottle of wine came to just under 75 euros - an excellent option for a romantic meal for two.

P19EDIBLES

Bar12 Pintzo Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, (01) 672 8590

€25 Dunne & Crescenzi South Frederick Street, Dublin 2 Tel: (01) 677 3815

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A

Valentine’s Day romantic meal for two on 25 euros (including wine) was always going to be a challenge. Requests to go instead for a romantic lunch were rejected, so we walked the short distance from College to Dunne & Crescenzi for some Italian food and ambience. We were not disappointed. Following last year’s extension, this once small little restaurant is now cavernous, but has not lost its heady atmosphere. The place was packed and we had to wait in the doorway for about fifteen minutes to get our table for two. The clientele was a huge mix - students, couples, families and interestingly, Italians - a good sign that the food would be topnotch! With wine bottles stacked across the walls, a hum of conversation and music in the air the place is most definitely Valentine’s Day dinner-worthy. The wine menu was incredibly extensive, with bottles from across Italy, and the staff were incredibly knowledgeable on the subject.

However, on a 25 euros budget, a bottle of wine is out of the question, so too is a glass of Italian Prosecco or sparkling wine (though at only seven euros, it is one of the

The char-grilled chicken skewers cooked in lemon and garlic were the most delicious form of poultry we had tasted in a long time. A grilled lambchop was marinated in thyme, garlic and olive oil and came with an unexpected extra helping of patatas which made it all the more appetising.

The wine list offers a dizzyingly extensive selection of Spanish wines, ports and sherries. Some ports are also served straight from the cask. Feeling slightly out of our depth we chose the house red, a Rioja, which came in a carafe. With neither of us professing to be sommeliers, we could instantly tell that this was a good wine. It was so delicious and easy to drink that I intend to make good use of Bar Pintxo’s off-licence in the future.

The restaurant is entirely candlelit, with the upstairs combining a blend of modern and antique furniture positioned in full view of the open plan kitchen. The downstairs seating area resembles a romantic cellar-like library where the shelves are stocked with wine bottles instead of books.

Even if you don’t need to, make sure that you pay a visit to the decadent and utterly bizarre bathrooms.

With limited funds for the night of

just €50, we were determined to make our cash stretch as far as possible. Six plates of tapas and a half-litre carafe of wine, rounded off by two perfectly blended espressos brought the total to €42.70. We discovered that, had we been so inclined, adding two desserts to the bill would still have resulted in the dinner coming in under budget.

The restaurant does not take reservations, so expect roughly half an hour wait on weeknights and double that on weekends.

However, there are many watering holes nearby where the time can be whiled away or you could choose to prop up the bar at Pintxo itself and treat yourself to a preliminary taster of what the wine list has to offer.

Bar Pintxo is the ideal spot to grab a quick selection of tapas or to sip a few glasses of Spanish wine. Its off-licence and proximity to college make it a handy place to pick up the perfect compliment for your home cooked meal. It equally provides a welcoming atmosphere in which to linger for hours and hours and a candlelit glow which casts just about everybody in a flattering hue. Perfect for a Valentine’s night supper.

menu’s bargains!) Instead we plumped for a glass of the house wine, coming in at four euros each. The white was light and delicious and the red a fruity Tuscan. These (and a large jug of tap water) kept us within budget on the drinks front, at least.

Onto the food. Despite an amazing array of possible starters (including what sounded like a delicious bruschetto and antipasta platter), we knew this was going to have to be a one course meal to keep within our 25 euros stipend. There were many scrumptious-sounding possibilities that would have kept us on budget, including a wide variety of salads, but we both opted for dishes off the specials board; a hot and spicy penne arrabiata for eight euros and a spaghetti with prosciutto parmesan and balsamic vinegar for nine euros. These both came up trumps and were incredibly tasty… the portion sizes were spot-on and the wine complemented both perfectly. Knowing we couldn’t afford dessert, we took a peek at the menu anyway. The choices were

great, Italian fruit and chocolate tarts, assorted biscotti and tiramisu. Our bill arrived at a spot on total of 25 euros, which is great for wine and two fabulous main courses. We were under no pressure to leave as soon as the bill was paid and instead meandered at our table enjoying the ambience. Dunne and Crescenzi is perfect for a romantic, low budget Valentine’s Day meal. With a great atmosphere, amazing food, delicious wine and a Italian voices in the air, it gets top marks for the beginning of a seductive night.

Photo: Peter Rowen/Dubliner Magazine

€50

ucked away off Dame Street and close to the IFI, Bar Pintxo is a traditional Spanish tapas bar which also stocks an eclectic array of wines, ports and sherries. The tricky to pronounce name comes from the Basque word for tapa. It is a sister restaurant of the equally excellent Port House of South William Street and offers a similar menu, and it is here we went to spend our Trinity News budget of 50 euros on a Valentine’s Day meal for two.

Aside from those listed in the menu, there is a selection of pintxos displayed at the bar and some daily specials to sample.

We helped ourselves to a varied and tasty assortment. We chose the patatas bravas with garlic mayonnaise and also tried them served with a fiery tomato sauce. Both were hugely satisfying. The foie gras presented on a bed of sliced apple with a Pedro Ximenez reduction was delicately mouth-watering.

Creamy croquettes filled with Serrano ham are also available stuffed with cod.

ENDNOTESP20

Tall Asians only Dear Mrs Fix-It, . Only I’ve I am in love with a boy. I love him s girls just been told that he exclusively like . I’m hair k who are tall, Asian and have blac I can short, white and have red hair. How make him love me?

Swooningly, Antoinette.

Pedantry: If you’re right, you’re right.

End of. Feelings may be hurt, friendships may be broken, but your right-ness will shine on.

Dear Mrs Fix-It, My friend has just started a new job in a café down the road. Th at makes four of my friends working in the sa me place. They al l have injokes and spend m ost of their time ha nging out at work. I feel left out and bored.

What to do?

Lonesomely, Luke.

Dear Luke, There are two poss iblities- a) Your fri ends have the best job in the world and you’re a fool not to join them or b) Like everyone else, they don’t particularly like w orking but are dete rmined to make the best of it.

It’s probably b). Su ck it up and either get a job yourself or quit whi nging.

Dear Antoinette, to me I’ve a feeling that you have written love in ly mad also you before. Weren’t let’s with someone else? Nevertheless, nge cha t can’ You . ions opt examine your itive pos a ect exp your race and outcome (we needn’t even mention Michael Jackson here). Secondly, neither can you viably permanently change your height- bar wearing high heels a lot. As regards hair colour, black with your doubtlessly pale skin would make you look like an illDear Mrs Fix-It, ld cou you ybe Ma advised Goth. e bounce lifornia has got mor fall in love with someone else?

It is claimed that Ca . d” I’m scepti“all y’all combine than, and I quote, is up. cal. Please clear th Analytically, George.

Bouncy

Have you got problems of your own that need fixing? Email Mrs Fixit at mrs.fixit@trinitynews.ie

H T

Men at Work

ience stuDear George, ll have to grab a sc u’ Yo . ld fie y m ’t This isn ey move in t prove difficult, th dent. That shouldn’ ring khaki. droves and like wea

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Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, .... FASHION P10

Mrs Fixit

www.thesetoday.com - saves you the bother of trawling through the internet in search of amusement.

Finding Someone With the Same Birthday As You: You’re an Aquarius? The 15th of February? Me too! A life-long bond is formed, thanks to fate.

The Turner Watercolours: Only shown in January, they’ve now been put away until next year. .

Overstaying Your Welcome: “Dropping In” means Dropping In. It is not an invitation to stay for dinner, drinks and Green Wing.

Heath Ledger: His death is properly sad and doesn’t justify the horrible responses it’s gotten- picketed funeral, photos at the morgue. Boo Hollywood.

Boo.

N T