Hail, Hail Ricky Hoops! part three (scroll down to read one and two first)

I was waiting to meet Ricky on a wet November Tuesday night in Norwich city. He had told to meet him in a car park at the back of a supermarket, again on the scruffy side of town. So I stood in the darkness and rain, waiting for him to arrive, wondering what a men’s shed was.

I heard Ricky before I saw him.

“Hail, Hail!”

He took me across the car park and towards a warehouse next to the dual carriage way.

“Good boys in this place,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

I just wanted to get out of the cold and wet. I would have liked the waiting area of the Motor Tax Office. My socks were soaked through my shoes.

There were no lights on in the warehouse, from what I could see. When we reached it, we walked around it to the other side. Five or six men were standing with their backs to the warehouse’s walls, shielding themselves from the wind and rain. They were all smoking in silence, standing a few metres apart, alone.

Most of the men were in their 40s and 50s. Some looked nervous or uncomfortable. Like students chain-smoking before an exam. Ricky nodded hello at a few of them as we walked past, but most kept their heads bowed.

I followed Ricky up a steel staircase at the side of the warehouse. Light was coming out of an open door at the top.

Inside the men’s shed was like a straight male college student’s dream. There was a room with a pool table and a dart board and a fuseball table, a room full of random couches facing a projector screen, a room full of half-built cabinets and furniture with tools laying about, and a kitchen full of toasters, microwaves and George Foreman grills.

The whole place was no bigger than a normal two-bedroom flat, but every inch of space was being used. It was quite cluttered. Every wall had a poster or a notice board on it. There were shelves stacked with plants and books and DVDs anyone could borrow. Random but useful everyday appliances lay about wherever, like bike pumps, a guitar, a vacuum cleaner, garden shears and high-vis jackets. There was also a desk with a computer and a printer.

Everything in the men’s shed looked like it had a use or a purpose, except the men.

I gathered that a men’s shed is a place for lonely men; Down-and-outs, lost souls, the socially awkward. But that’s not really fair, because I don’t mean to judge them. Not everyone there fit those descriptions. But for the likes of Ricky, the men’s shed definitely seemed like a haven.

In the few days between watching football with Ricky and now coming to the men’s shed with him, I’d been comparing my life to his a lot.

I had hundreds of names in my phone book – I wondered how many Ricky had. I lived alone in a ground floor flat with a garden and a big tree. Ricky rented a cheap tiny single bedroom in an old house and wasn’t allowed use the living room. And his landlord was always on his back, looking for a way to get rid of him.

Every day I woke up and went to university and studied something I loved. Ricky either went to get his dole, or hung around the Norwich city library using the computers to search for jobs that might hire 50-something men with no qualifications, basic formal education and very little job experience.

In the evenings I went to the gym or for a drink or stayed in watching Netflix. Ricky lay on his bed watching whatever free movies he could find on YouTube.

Ricky introduced me to some of the men in the men’s shed. They were friendly. Some seemed shy, but most were chatty and very welcoming. One man stood in the corner sucking on the sleeve of his jumper, his legs shaking. He was in his 40s but had the demeanor of a nervous twelve year old boy on the first day of summer camp.

I asked who would be watching the football. Most wanted to, but they said there was only a laptop hooked up to the projector, so no TV channels.

“Aye, but he says there’s free channels online,” Ricky said, pointing at me.

I went to the laptop and quickly found a pirate football stream. Everyone clapped me on the back or let out a whoop as if I’d just invented fire. We sat round on the random couches. Someone took tea orders.

The man sucking his jumper sleeve didn’t sit with us. He stayed where he was, looking around nervously and not making eye contact with anyone. He had the scared look of a threatened animal.

“One sugar, cheers.”

“Two for me.”

“No worries, mate.”

Tottenham were playing Borussia Dortmund in the Champion’s League. Everyone spoke about the players’ form and gave predictions. This happens any time strange men meet for the first time, and football is on.

Ricky told stories about Borussia Dortmund’s stadium, comparing it to the other German stadiums he had been in. He also gave histories of what German fans were the most passionate, like Borussia Dortmund, comparing them to Celtic.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. They seemed comfortable or at ease now that the tension had been broken by the football. At first our conversation was awkward, as if we were the boyfriends at a wedding where all the girlfriends were actually friends. But football saved the day. The sport was something to focus on.

“One sugar, there you go.”

“Lovely stuff.”

The man making the tea seemed out of place. His clothes were nicer than everyone else, and I noticed he had new looking Audi car keys in his hand at one point. When I had arrived with Ricky, he seemed to be asking everyone how they were doing; He was keeping tabs, checking in.

We hadn’t been introduced. I got up and followed him into the kitchen to ask if he needed a hand with the drinks.

His name was Ken and he asked me what brought me to the men’s shed. I could tell he was suspicious about me, but not in a negative way. I told him about Ricky bringing me along. He said he liked Ricky a lot. And that Ricky was one of the more sociable and confident members. But Ken also worried about Ricky, because Ricky still couldn’t find any work and apparently he was having issues with his landlord.

Ken wasn’t a member of the men’s shed. He looked after the members, locked up at the end of the night and basically ran the place. Ten years ago his brother in law hung himself, so that’s how he got involved in the men’s shed. He wanted to help vulnerable, lonely men, like Ricky. I liked Ken.

As Ken and I were speaking, the nervous man sucking his jumper sleeve hurried past the kitchen door. Ken excused himself and went after the man. I finished making tea and handed out the mugs. Ricky updated me on what I had missed in the match. Then I went back to the kitchen to clean out my empty mug. About twenty minutes had past. Ken came back.

He said the man sucking his jumper sleeve was one of the men who struggled the most with anxiety and nerves. He was a bit on the spectrum too. Socialising was terrifying for the man but his family made him come to the men’s shed because they felt he needed to socialise, and Ken agreed. Some nights he was better than others. But tonight had been a bad night. He had wet himself.

When the football ended I stayed with Ricky to help Ken clean and lock up. Then we said goodbye and Ricky and I headed towards my bus stop.

Ricky said the shed was open again in a few days, and asked if I wanted to go again. I made up an excuse and told him I was busy. Then he asked if I wanted to watch Celtic again on Saturday, and suggested my flat. (I had told him I bought the sports channels along with my WiFi from BT.)

I told Ricky I couldn’t watch Celtic, I had to study on Saturday. He looked at me strange, wondering how a fellow diehard Celtic fan could ever not make time to watch a match. Then he asked if I was free on Sunday maybe?

I told Ricky I wasn’t sure yet, and that I’d let him know. A look came over his face that I felt he was used to making. He seemed to understand. Here I was, another person making excuses not to see him.

To be honest, even though I liked Ricky and he was a nice guy and everything, it was all a bit much for me and I didn’t really want to be his friend, which sounds mean. But I didn’t want to keep meeting up, and I knew he would want to often. Also, it was getting difficult pretending to be a Celtic fan. And in the few days between the Celtic match together in the pub, and now at the men’s shed, Ricky had texted me many times. He was only looking for a chat, but I wasn’t bothered.

I felt bad.

For the next three weeks I kept making excuses when Ricky texted, and I never answered my phone. I felt mean, so one day I agreed to meet for a coffee. Ricky looked very upset when he arrived.

His landlord had kicked him out. From day one the landlord had never liked Ricky and was always trying to get rid of him. I can’t remember exactly what it was that he used an excuse, but Ricky had finally been kicked out.

He was sleeping on the couch in the flat of a friend from the men’s shed. Ken had helped arrange it. But it could only be temporary. Ricky said if only he could find somewhere else, someone else’s couch. An awkward silence followed.

Ricky looked visibly stressed and said he was thinking of going back to Glasgow. Coming to Norwich had been a failure. He said he knew someone in Glasgow who might let him stay with them for a bit. Or else he could just keep couch surfing online. He was also thinking of reaching out to his brother, but didn’t sound optimistic.

He asked if I knew anyone who would buy his bike? He needed money. I said I don’t know anyone. I told him I’d put a sign up in the Arts block at UEA though. He shook my hand and said I was a good guy. I never put the sign up.

That was the last time I saw Ricky. A week later I went back to Dublin for the Christmas holidays and when I came back to Norwich I stopped using my English phone number. Not because of Ricky, but it definitely helped with avoiding our friendship.

I felt guilty for a long time for going cold on Ricky, and sometimes I still do. I reckon he is – or now perhaps was – used to people like me in his life. People who disappeared as fast as they had arrived.

I’ve no idea what happened to him.

Ing-Ga-Lish ”Set.”

If English is your first language, there’s a massive chance you can’t speak any other language.

Out of the world’s approximately 7.5 billion inhabitants, 1.5 billion speak English – that’s 20% of the Earth’s population. However, most of those people aren’t native English speakers. About 360 million people speak English as their first language.

I don’t know what the percentage of 360 million people out of 7.5 billion is. Because that’s mental maths. Get that shit away from me. But I know it’s not much. So, if so few people speak English, why is it such an influential language?

It’s a complex question. There are thousands of contributing factors to the dominance of western culture as perpetrated by the English language. Many involve pointing a gun in someone’s face.

So I’m not going to try and answer the question of why. Instead, I want to highlight one single word, and talk about how English is so difficult to learn because of that word.

If you only speak English, grew up in a western culture, and then were tasked with trying to learn another language – “fuck that” might be your immediate response. Western arrogance assumes we only need one language, English, and that everyone else should get up to speed and learn English, rather than us learning Chinese or Arabic.

Imagine trying to learn Mandarin Chinese. The way it’s written, the pronunciation of words and the structure seems so alien to anybody who can only speak English. The same could be said for Arabic or Punjab.

The appearance of those languages on paper with their strange – to us – symbols and markings makes us imagine the languages as strange in our heads. It’s like the enigma code and we can’t crack it.

Now, imagine trying to learn English. It’s hard to imagine, but consider it. Just think of how difficult it would be to learn English.

English is a crazy language. There are so, so many ways to say the same thing. It’s a highly expressive language. But we often use the same word and give it countless meanings. For example, think of the word “set.”

“Set” is a deceptively simple word. Three letters, easy to say. But imagine learning English for the first time and trying to figure out the meaning of “set.”

I can speak French, poorly, but I get by. “Livre” means book in French. I know that. It doesn’t mean much else at all. 99% of the time when I hear the word “livre” used in French I know a book is being spoken about. Nobody in France says “livre une table,” when making dinner plans. They say, “faire une reservation.”

But think of “set” in English. There are so, so many meanings.

“Are you set?” (Ready) Adjective

“Set the table.” (Make) Verb

“My daughter has a train set.” (Item) Noun

“Quiet on set please!” (Location) Noun

And so on and so forth. Seriously, Google the word “set” and just have a scroll through how many different meanings come up. And then imagine coming from China to Dublin with little to no English, and then going to a BBQ and trying to understand the following conversations.

“Set the table please. Where’s your Dad?”

“He’s outside showing John how to set the time on the clock in his new car.”

“I just checked the golf. Woods looks set to take it.”

“We should eat outside and watch the sun set.”

“Mary, you have try the new Italian. They do a lovely set menu.”

“The food looks fab, Mary. Great set up.”

“Wasn’t it wonderful news about Jim’s son’s engagement? Have they set a date?”

“Woods just won the golf. And he set a new record.”

“So, Kate, are you all set for your holiday?”

“Ah he was innocent, no? He was set up.”

Just imagine trying to understand that load of shite. You’d be fucked.

What’s interesting though is that if we all just spoke in numbers, like how computers communicate, that Chinese person would understand. Think about it. We all have different languages and forms of writing to essentially communicate the same thing. But when it comes to numbers we only use one language: Numbers. We might pronounce the words for each number differently using our own unique languages, but on the page, we use the same script.

But fuck getting into that subject.

Smoked Salmon Carbonara

This recipe has four ingredients, takes ten minutes to make, and might be one of the easiest dishes I know of. And it’s very delicious. Serves 4.

You will need:

Tagliatelle (or whatever you want really)

Smoked Salmon

A standard carton of Cream or Crème Fraîche

Parmesan Cheese

Salt and Pepper to season

That’s it. That’s all you need.

Put your pasta of choice into boiling water and follow the time instructions on the packet. Most pasta takes between 8-10 minutes to cook. You knew that.

While your pasta is cooking, chop up your smoked salmon into little bits. Or whatever size you want. I like small pieces for this recipe.

Grate your Parmesan. You’ll need two handfuls, and a little extra to garnish.

Now, just wait for your pasta to be cooked. That’s all. This is almost the end of the recipe. Seriously.

When your pasta is cooked, drain the water and leave the pasta in the pot. Or drain the pasta in a colander then return it to the pot. Or else drain the pasta and put it into a big bowl. Nobody cares. You do you.

Then simply mix everything together. Your cooked pasta, your chopped smoked salmon, your parmesan cheese, your cream or crème fraîche, and some salt and pepper. Just mix it all up.

And that’s it. That’s the recipe. It’s crazy quick and absolutely delicious. If you’re feeling mad, throw an egg yolk in as well. Madness. Mental, Fitzy. But don’t go too mad now. Don’t have me worrying about you, like.

Put some of your finished masterpiece into a bowl for yourself and top it off with a little more grated parmesan. And that’s you. Done. Finito. Concluded. Over. Kevin Spacey’s career.

Dinner = sorted. And cheap too. I like this recipe a lot. Great on a damp dark night when your cheeks are still cold from walking home.

Try it. It’s lazy, half-assed, hassle-free but absolutely excellent. Just like this blog post.

Winter is almost here

I’ve been living in fear since 2017, afraid that I’m going to die. The thought of dying isn’t what scares me though, it’s the thought of dying without knowing how Game of Thrones ends. I can’t think of anything worse than dying without knowing what happens in Game of Thrones.

Like any sane person, I’m obsessed with Game of Thrones. Watching the show isn’t enough for me though. I have watched hours of Game of Thrones theory videos on YouTube. I’m also currently subscribed to three different Game of Thrones related podcasts.

But the YouTube videos are my favourite. (I love the illustrated history and lore videos HBO make after every season, narrated by the actors themselves.) I honestly can’t get enough. No matter the topic, if it’s Game of Thrones related, I watch it. You could make a theory video about Jon Snow actually being a cloud of smoke and I’d watch it. (Remember the random black smoke in Lost? What a crap show, after season 1 of course.)

But yeah Game of Thrones YouTube videos are my buzz. Episode breakdowns; Predictions; History and lore; Fight scene montages; Character recaps; Greatest moments; Even script leaks. Basically, anything I can get my hands on. I also read Game of Thrones blogs.

And, of course, I rewatch the series itself like mad.

I read the first five books, but once the show went further in terms of the story, I stopped. I recently bought a hardback book called The World of Ice and Fire. It’s full of highly detailed background histories of Westeros and the major houses. It wasn’t cheap, but it was so worth it.

So yeah, I like Game of Thrones. A lot. And that’s why I hope I don’t die.

Game of Thrones is the greatest fantasy story ever told. No argument. That’s a hill I’m so ready to die on (but not until season 8 is over.) Yes, it is better than Lord of the Rings, George RR Martin’s favorite book. Apparently George RR Martin was pissed off by the ending in Lord of the Rings though.

He wanted to know if Aragorn would actually make a good king. He wondered if being a good warrior meant you’d make a good king. And he also wondered about how Aragorn would have dealt with the politics and power dynamics involved with being king. These questions inspired him to write Game of Thrones, the greatest fantasy story ever.

Don’t even mention Star Wars in the same breath as Game of Thrones. Or the Avengers. And Harry fucking Potter doesn’t even get into the house, let alone get a seat at the same table as Game of Thrones. JK Rowling can stick to retrospectively tweeting about how her characters are all gay and ethnic so as to appear inclusive, even though she never makes those facts canon in her work, because she’ll never write a better story than Game of Thrones. So yeah, Harry Potter can fuck off. As far as fantasy is concerned, there is only one GOAT.

(While we’re here, talking about fantasy authors – how come they all have similar initialised names? J.K Rowling. George R.R Martin. J.R.R Tolkien. C.S Lewis. It’s a mad buzz. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, dying.

I don’t want to die, because I love Game of Thrones. I need to know what happens. I live in fear. Summer 2017 was the last time I rested easy. The moment episode 7 of season 7 ended, with Viserion tearing down the wall with his blue fire and the Night King his rider and resurrector, I’ve been bricking it. Everything is a potential threat. I know I could go at any moment, without ever seeing Clegane Bowl. I’m terrified.

There’s so many possibilities. Just like your favourite Game of Thrones character, I could die at any moment.

A bus could hit me. That’s too cliché though. I might choke on my next meal, also a cliché. Too Joffrey. Or else it could be something sneaky that kills me, like just dropping dead. Brown bread. Toast. Pat the fucking Baker.

Anything is possible. At any moment. Heart failure is definitely on the cards if I don’t stop drinking like a fish. And I live in Australia now, so snakes have just been thrown into the equation. Maybe I’ll get drop kicked by a kangaroo. (I don’t hang out with many though.) It’s also possible that a shark could eat me. I’m going swimming with them in a few weeks. Awful decision in hindsight, but the deposit is already paid.

Only one thing is certain though: Potential death lurks around every corner. Nothing is safe. I can feel the Grim Reaper’s icy old breath on my neck.

Every time I get on a plane I worry about whether Jon Snow is the prince that was promised, and if Jaime will kill Cersei. Because that metal flying tube could fall from the sky at any moment, and that’s me done, without ever knowing. It’s too much.

But finally, today, I’ll get to hear that wonderful intro music again, knowing something new is coming after “Directed by David Benioff and D.B Weiss.” And then all I have to do is make it through the next six weeks.

It would be hilarious if something actually did happen to me though, now that I’ve written this. (Depends on your sense of humour.)

But I feel like I’ve jinxed myself for making my anxieties public. By admitting my fears I’ve made my own demise inevitable. It’s like I’ve willed my downfall into being.

Or maybe by saying something, I have un-jinxed what I had already jinxed by staying silent, which in turn jinxes me again all over. It’s a vicious cycle.

Do you see where my mind is at? I’m an absolute mess.

OMG. TBH, LMFAO.

Every day more acronyms crop up online that I don’t understand. I’m often Googling things like, “What does SMH mean?”

It means “Shaking my head.”

Others I’ve had to search include: ICYMI (In case you missed it), NSFW (Not safe for work), and TFW (The feeling when).

It’s no revelation that the internet has changed language. The faster our access to information gets, the faster we communicate. Whole phrases become single words. “LOL” being arguably the most famous.

We speak in emoji now too.

🤯. 🙌. 😍. 😜. 😩. 👌. 👀.

Each one of those is a sentence in itself, easily understandable. Emojis are commonly used as reactions. More and more they’re replacing words. Don’t forget that the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2016 was “😂.”

This can either be seen as the evolution of communication or the degeneration of it. In many ways you could argue the latter is true. Humans went from cave drawings, to stone carvings, to Egyptian hieroglyphs, to Shakespeare, to emojis. It seems we’ve come full circle.

What this means for language going forward, in my opinion, is that we’re becoming the same. Indistinguishable. A bit boring.

Languages are dying out at the same rate as mammals. Nobody is fucking plastic bottles into the ocean of communication though. There’s no global warming for speech. If the sun blows up we’re gonzo, but language has no sun. However, something else is already blowing up. Our phones.

The more connected we become the more we all speak the same language, literally. Everyone can understand an emoji. The phrases we use are now born online, instead of coming from regions. For example, “slay bitch, yaaaas” didn’t come from Dublin the way “scarlet for ya!” did. Thanks to the Internet we mimic speech, adopt it, and then it’s ours too. Slang has become universal.

I’ve noticed Irish people saying “y’all” a lot online lately. Particularly on Twitter. It’s strange. When did Mary Murphy become Hannah Montana? When she started following Miley Cyrus et all on social media.

I’m not blaming celebrity culture for this development though. Nobody is to blame. It’s merely a by-product of mass exposure to multiple media platforms that has caused this.

Young Irish kids now have what I call the Disney Channel accent. They sound more and more American by the year. The accents they hear at home mix with the ones they hear on their iPads and come out of their mouths in a mid-Atlantic twang. Irish kids now meet for “play-dates” where they drink “soda” and go online to “hit up” their favourite celebrities in the hopes of getting a “shout out.”

But none of that terminology is new to us. We use it too. And the rest. Think of “Oh my God.” It’s a very new phrase. Also, our parents never said “my bad” after a mistake. And they didn’t punctuate speech with “like” as if they grew up in California. Disagreeing with a point of view didn’t make people “haters.” This is all new.

But even our parents’ generation went through it. Think of the word “cool.” There’s no way your grandparents saw something they liked and called it “cool.” It’s very American. But our parents adopted these phrases, normalised them, and passed them down to us.

Go and listen to any 70s Thin Lizzy lyrics. I doubt Phil Lynott’s mother told him “them cats are crazy,” whenever the “boys” were back in town. She didn’t reminisce about “chicks” who danced a lot “on the floor,” “shaking what they got.” And these chicks weren’t so “cool” that “they were red hot” – “steaming.”

Language evolves. Time goes on. Ob la di, ob la da. Phrases come and go too. Nobody says “groovy” anymore. Nobody did before the 60s, and nobody does after.

Maybe it’s a marker of my own aging that I’m now moaning about change. Perhaps I should just go along with things like most people. For the most part, I do. And I don’t actually care that much at all. But some new phrases need to GTFOOH. (Google it if you need to.)

For starters, nothing is “fire.” Fire is fire. A good song isn’t fire. Your ma’s roast dinner wasn’t fire. (And while we’re here, get that shit off my Instagram. It looks gross. After seeing your ma’s roast I’d rather be in the Manson family than yours.) So, if you think something is fire, then jump into it please. Seriously. Burn alive. For all of us.

Here’s another one: Someone doing something mundane isn’t a “mood.” Behaving in a normal way isn’t a “mood.” Taking a screen shot of a reference to normal behavior you see online, like “Lions sleep 23 hours of the day and only wake to eat and mate,” and then posting your screen shot with the caption “mood,” is lazy banter. “Shite patter” as the Scots say. If you are someone who does this, please go and head butt an oncoming train.

In the remoulding of languages into the same ball of dough, I hope we don’t lose phrases and idioms that define Irish speech. Basic terms like “the head on your man” or “get out of that garden you.”

Maybe we are degenerating. The way we communicate now definitely seems to suggest that. Sending pictures instead of words. A day might come when we all just revert back to grunting and pointing. And that day could be sooner than we thought.

Try and read a book from the 20s. An era that spawned many works of English often regarded as the height of literature, like Ulysses and The Great Gatsby. The language in those works can seem stiff and formal. That’s because Anglophones no longer speak the Queen’s English. Because Elizabeth II has been usurped by Cardi B.

And I’m here for it.

Nemo Can’t Be Found

Finding Nemo is my favourite Pixar movie. Funny fish, vegetarian Aussie sharks, stoner turtles and beautiful animation. As a film, it is everything that’s great about the Pixar studio. However, Finding Nemo is also full of shit.

This is because Nemo the clownfish, Marlin’s lost son and the titular character, is not what you think he is. He is not Marlin’s son. In fact, he is nobody’s son. If you look closely, Nemo doesn’t even exist. He never existed. Therefore, Nemo can’t be found.

I’ve seen this theory being peddled online before, and I agree with it. So here is my breakdown of the theory that Nemo doesn’t exist.

In the opening scene of Finding Nemo, Marlin’s wife and unborn fish eggs are eaten by a barracuda. (It wouldn’t be a Disney film without murder.) However, one fish egg survives. Marlin names it Nemo and promises to always protect it. Heartwarming.

But no, I don’t think any fish egg survived. I think the one surviving egg, Nemo, is a figment of Marlin’s imagination. I believe this because I think the film is an allegory for death and the grieving process. And Marlin’s journey to find his son actually represents the five stages of grief.

The five stages of grief are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

In simple English, Marlin’s search to “find Nemo” actually represents his journey to get over the murder of his family.

The theory of the five stages of grieving is usually presented as a chronological process. A person goes into denial, then feels angry, then bargains with questions like “what could I have done to prevent this?” before becoming depressed, and then finally accepting the situation and moving on.

I think Pixar distorts the chronology a little in Finding Nemo, but every element of the theory of the five stages of grief is present in the film.

The first clue to Nemo being a metaphorical character is in his name. “Nemo” in Latin means “nobody.” Having Nemo be a physical character also shows Marlin’s Denial stage of the grieving process. He refuses to believe his family have all died, so he creates Nemo, an imaginary son.

Stage two of Marlin’s grief – Anger – manifests itself in many ways. Marlin often snaps at Nemo and generally has no patience for the people trying to help him, lashing out irrationally. Mr. Ray the singing stingray gets a telling off for bringing his class to the “drop off” on Nemo’s first day of school, while Dory constantly bears the brunt of Marlin’s short temper when Nemo goes missing.

Marlin blames himself for the death of his wife and eggs. He tells himself it will never happen again and obsesses over Nemo’s safety. This shows stage three of his grieving – his Bargaining stage.

In blaming himself for not being more careful, and for not protecting his wife and their unborn eggs, Marlin develops a feeling of self-loathing. Nemo even says “I hate you.” But this is Marlin’s subconscious speaking to him.

Marlin’s self-hatred also manifests itself though an extreme fear of the ocean and a lack of trust for anything. He is wondering what he could have done differently to prevent the death of his family. This causes him to no longer take unnecessary risks regarding Nemo’s safety, no matter how ridiculous his over-protective behavior is. And so, Marlin isolates himself and Nemo from the world. Everything beyond their home becomes a threat.

Stage four – Depression – is constant throughout the film, and understandably so. Marlin’s family were murdered. Perhaps the most obvious example of Marlin’s depression is when he gives up the search for Nemo.

When Marlin sees Nemo lying dead in the dentists office after the dentist’s niece Darla has shaken Nemo’s plastic bag too hard, Marlin gives up. Nigel the pelican brings Marlin and Dory back to Sydney harbour and says goodbye. Marlin drops his head and swims away melancholically into the dark blue.

Marlin has no idea that Nemo was actually playing dead in order to escape by being flushed down the toilet, but by this moment everything has come to a head for Marlin, and he gives into his hopeless sadness.

But Nemo, “nobody,” isn’t dead of course. He escapes the dentist’s office and Marlin reunites with his son. They go home with Dory and live happily ever after. This can be seen as Marlin’s Acceptance stage of the grieving process. He has learned to move on.

Despite all the struggles Marlin had to endure to get there, he finally manages to get through it all. And it is thanks to the help of community that he achieves this. Pixar is telling us to reach out to people.

Marlin couldn’t have done it without Bruce the shark encouraging him to open up, Crush the turtle for teaching him how to let go, and of course the amazing Dory for never giving up on her friend.

The moral of the story, and the film’s most quoted line, is “Just keep swimming.”

African Text Messages

I always get sent text messages from Africa. That’s not uncommon. Africa has a population of 1.2 billion people. A lot of those people, like everywhere, have mobile phones. They’re bound to send text messages abroad.

The messages I receive aren’t from an unknown source. Nobody is mailing me to ask if I knew that I had a rich uncle in Nigeria who died, and that he left me a few million quid in his will, and the money can easily be sent to me if I could just provide all of my bank account details. My messages come from a friend, Jules.

Jules lives in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, working as a pastor in a church. It’s a well paying job and he was only recently ordained. Originally, Jules wanted to be an accountant, but couldn’t afford the school fees.

Jules is from Togo. That’s where we met. He likes to text me once a week. He usually sends me bible quotes, funny videos, or photos of his newborn son. Sometimes he sends me photos of himself posing in his best outfits. I often respond with viral WhatsApp videos I get from group chats. Things like middle-eastern farmers fucking their goats, or beautiful women pulling up their skirts only to reveal a massive hairy cock. I do this because I’m a prick, but he always laughs via emoji. I enjoy our texts.

Our conversations often end in the same way – Jules asking me to go into business with him. He recently started a fruit juice company, and wants me to invest in it. No matter how many times I tell him that I don’t have the money or business acumen to get involved – never mind the interest – he persists.

I’m not a business man. I’m not a salesman either. My biggest dream is to write a book that a lot of people read and enjoy, so it’s safe to assume that my chances of becoming the next Jeff Bezos are slim. Jules might though.

When I first met Jules in Lomé, Togo, he was working as a pastor’s assistant making fuck all to no money. A mutual friend introduced us.

I spent close to three months in Lomé. Jules was with me most days and we became good friends. We often argued about God’s existence, or lack thereof. My main issue with religion wasn’t so much the belief in a divine God, but rather the organisation around such beliefs.

I told Jules that I believed organised religion does more harm than good. I told him that they’re money-hungry, often corrupt, and that many regularly abuse their subjects in horrific ways. I used the Catholic Church in Ireland as an example. He didn’t believe me though. In the end, we always agreed to disagree. He had his beliefs, and I had none.

Whenever we weren’t talking about religion, Jules was always trying to come up with mad schemes to make money. He had a fiancé he loved, but couldn’t afford a wedding, and was barely providing for her. They also wanted to start a family. One of Jules’ ideas was to start a fish farm. However, he didn’t really know how to fish.

Before I left Togo, Jules asked if I had any business advice for him. I reminded him of my lack of business sense, but because I had been to university, Jules was adamant that I might have some sort of wisdom to pass on. I didn’t.

However, I told him to pursue becoming a pastor. I said that was his best chance of becoming wealthy, not fish farms. He was confused.

A few weeks previous, I had tried to rent a car on the cheap. I had asked Jules if he knew anyone with a car, and if they might be willing to part with it for a week for a decent price. He didn’t. Anybody Jules knew with a car needed their car for work, and couldn’t afford to be without it. But then he remembered something. Jules said the only person he knew with more than one car was his pastor. His pastor had three.

We visited his pastor. Through Jules, I asked about renting one of his three cars. The pastor said no. So that was that.

“Become a pastor,” I told Jules again before I left. “You’ll be so rich you’ll be driving three cars in no time.”

Jules knew I was being a prick. Soon after I left, he heard a parish in Dakar needed a new pastor. Now he lives there, and drives a motorbike.

Gatekeeper

My job is to open gates. Every day for eight hours I sit on a chair on a construction site in Melbourne, opening the gates at the site’s entrance whenever a truck or van needs to get in or out. That’s it. That’s all I do.

The gates are made of steel and look more like fences, the kind you see at music festivals. They have wheels at the bottom. When a truck or van pulls up, I push the gates open. Once the vehicle has passed through, I close them again. From 8:00 am to 16:00 pm, that’s my life.

I know it sounds boring. If someone told me that was all they did at work – open a gate – I’d think the same. It’s hardly the most stimulating job. But I like it. Instead of being sat in an office, I’m outside in the sun. And vehicles don’t show up very often, so I spend most of my day reading books, something I love to do. As a legal requirement and safety precaution, I have to wear high-vis clothing and steel-cap boots. However, the only danger I face is losing the page I’m on in my book, or running out of battery on my phone from constantly refreshing Twitter. Some days I have to charge my phone three times.

I understand how some people would go crazy from boredom, but I genuinely don’t. I’m never not reading my phone or a book, and sometimes I write stories, like right now. Nearly two months into this job, I haven’t experienced serious boredom yet. I know I will eventually, but for now I’m OK with being paid nearly $30 an hour – a standard general labourer’s wage – to read and sit down.

The ridiculous nature of my job isn’t lost on my colleagues, if you could even call them that. (I doubt skilled carpenters, plumbers and electricians see me as their equal, and fair enough.) Workers on site walk past me and laugh, or screw up their faces in a way that says, “How the fuck is that guy still doing this job?”

I just laugh and smile back. Sometimes they joke and say things like, “I reckon you have the cushiest number in Melbourne mate,” or “All you need is a fucking beer, aye?”

The construction site we’re on is a retirement village. Most of the houses are finished and now occupied. It’s beside a golf course and a river, away from the noise of the city. Unless someone on site is using a drill or an angle grinder, all I hear is chirping birds and the occasional crack of a well struck golf ball in the distance.

The elderly people who live here seem to like me. They often come down for a chat. I enjoy it because a lot of them have dogs I can pet. Sometimes they also bring chocolate. A lot of them have Irish relatives or ancestors, so they like talking to me about “home.”

I keep applying for better jobs, and by better I mean jobs that aren’t such a piss take, because I can’t do this forever. I want a writing job, or something in publishing, but jobs like that are difficult to come by. Also, the “working holiday visa” I’m on is designed to make it more difficult to find good work. For example, you can’t work for the same company for longer than six months unless the company “sponsors” you, which means they have to pay a few thousand dollars for you to get a different visa.

A sponsored visa means you also get to stay in this country for another four years. Those of us on the working holiday visa only get one year. If we want to extend our visa for another year, the Australian government makes us work on a farm somewhere picking fruit for nearly five months. Fuck that.

If someone gets sponsored it’s considered a big thing. A lot of my friends here are sponsored, but it’s because they have a highly skilled profession or because they worked hard at convincing their employers to help them out. I have a BA in English and a Masters degree in Creative Writing. They’re hardly the sort of qualifications that get employers foaming at the mouth. I’m optimistic something will come my way though.

Before landing the gatekeeping gig, I worked odd shifts as a general labourer on other construction sites. I was carrying heavy steel, clearing debris, or pushing wheelbarrows piled high with bricks. The work was hard and I would come home tired.

So for now, I’m happy being interrupted from my book to push a gate open.