28 Days later..Day 58… The Handmaid’s Trump

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

There are many stages of a pandemic and apparently one of these is called the divisive stage.  I sense it coming already in Li’l old Ireland. Patience is wearing thin and the understandable frustrations are bubbling close to the surface, as it looks like we are about to get our lockdown extended. It is 2 months now to the day, since our first diagnosed case here and over 1100 people have sadly died.

This is a small country and we have done reasonably well, to have kept an overwhelming surge to our health system at bay. Maybe the problem to some extent, is that people can be quite selfish and they just see numbers, not the close family members who have passed without a proper send off. 1100 seems small when compared to global numbers. Sadly in a country this size it is not. Only 3,600 people died in the 30 years of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. I apologise for the only, but over 1,100 have died in 2 months. Still the majority of us are keeping the ship sailing and doing our best to follow the rules for the sake of our whole community.

More worrying is what’s happening across the water in a country that while it is relatively young as a nation state, is starting to sound older by the day. I know many Americans have a difficulty with liberalism, which they identify as basically socialism if not almost communism for some on the extreme right, and that still remains a word that evokes a cultural, visceral response.

It is largely due to the cold war antics of both sides creating fear and waging global puppet wars especially post WW2. What is odd therefore, is how America seems to be afraid to speak about the Stalinist utterances from their own president. The press being the enemy of the people is straight out of Stalin’s playbook, suppression of truth and dissemination of state sponsored spin on a daily basis, are all reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. I’m surprised there aren’t giant pictures of Trump in every major city like there were in other dictatorships. I know I exaggerate but leave me some licence and forgive me for my sins.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As a multi genre writer, I have yet to dip my toe into Dystopia but I wonder if the Dystopian novel might not be in trouble.  Look around? Like I say it’s not my traditional genre but when the world is in the state it’s in now, how bad can things get?  Maybe I’ll have a go at it, only, and apologies to my family and friends in America, I have to pick on a setting and at the minute it’s just the obvious choice. Let’s fast forward a few months.

We enter the world of U.S. elections in November 2020 and Sleepy Joe has apparently become the favourite given the rest of the country are in their bedrooms as well. The Covid-19 pandemic has resurged in the Autumn (or should I say Fall – oh the trouble we International writer’s have) and desperate to gain in the polls, Don has tried and failed to improve his polling, resulting in increasingly crazy conspiracy theories being spun from the Whitehouse.  The elections take place and lo and behold, Joe wipes the floor with Donald with a greater than imagined majority, as more and more Americans just want rid of the increasingly despotic and erratic leader.

But a man so obsessed with power, simply can’t’ imagine conceding such a massive loss. It is unimaginable for him to say he was wrong, or that he has lost to anyone, let alone a man that over the months he characterised more and more as a loser. The only solution is to declare that it’s a fake result.  The election has been stolen from him through a number of conspiracies and he insists on something he cannot have, a re-run. In the run up to Joe’s inauguration in January, Don invigorates his still strong base of supporters, the do or die type, and calls for them to liberate their states. Gangs of armed militia, repeatedly protest in states still believing every word from the man they cannot believe is ever wrong. Sound familiar? Is this too soon?

Alright, I’m not writing a novel here but you get the idea, a beaten man, unable to hand over power generates momentum for a break-up of the Union.  It is nothing short of civil war. Now don’t get me wrong this might sound familiar if you’ve read Margaret Atwood’s splendid The Handmaid’s Tale, but I can’t help it that Margaret thinks like me. Perhaps we are all plagiarists. There was a time when such a notion would have been unimaginable, but as extreme as it seems, is such a thing really that unimaginable now?

It is weird how a young country has gone from strength to strength in just a couple of centuries and from a once envied state, it has now and very quickly descended into the country most pitied. All the while, there is a man at the helm shouting “Lets make America great again.” A man with such a narcissistic approach to everything, a person incapable of yielding the floor and capable of telling one bare faced lie after another to achieve his goal, is not now, nor never was suited for high office.

That America has been seen to try to assert pressure by what looks to the rest of the world like ugly bullying and threats, simply isolates the country from other nations that once allied themselves to an America they trusted in the past. To lie, bully and renege on promises, to insult those world leaders who once respected the office of the American President, was never a good idea. To feign friendship with enemies of the state, only to go back to hating them at the drop of a hat, then to try and pretend to be friends again when it suits, is adolescent at best.

The lack of maturity embodied in the President of a country that styled itself successfully at one time as leader of the free world, has diminished all things American to the rest of the world, and it should not reflect on the good people of America upon whom he has unleashed his nonsensical polices daily. Unfortunately, it does.

My politics carry no bias in this matter. I am not American and who the leader of that country is only impacts on me in terms of business and economy. The problem for America at the moment is that the man in charge is so vain, that he can only live in a world where he is always right and can never admit to a mistake. I can say for certain our government in Ireland, have made a bucket load of mistakes and will continue to do so. But what government or leader hasn’t? You can’t think of any leaders like that?  Here’s a few hints for you, Kim Jong-Un, Hitler, Stalin.  Now don’t get me wrong, he’s no Hitler, as far as I know, Hitler had a plan.

There is a hole in the old door of St Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin, with an interesting story. In 1492 two feuding families, the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds, ended up fighting over who should become Lord Deputy. The Butlers took refuge in the Cathedral and when Gerald Fitzgerald cut a whole in the church door then subsequently put his hand through to offer it in friendship, he risked getting it cut off with a sword. Instead, the symbolism was recognised and they shook hands to end the dispute. This is where the term ‘chancing your arm’ comes from.

When this is all over the United States of America’s light will be at best, an ember in the fire of the pandemic, but largely because the man in charge of the fire was too busy on twitter to keep the fire lighting. Bringing their country back is not simply a matter of rebuilding the economy. It is about finding a leader who respects their constituents and looks outward to re-join the world of diplomacy and proper commerce. It will depend on social solutions never contemplated, much as it will here in Ireland.

We have to change our ways, but we are a country that has learned from being on its knees. I know that here in Ireland, we will find our way back to normal, perhaps a new normal, but that’s part of the secret, being able to adapt. Perhaps I should share the secret. Remember my story about the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds? Hold out your hand not your sword and you will be helped to get back on your feet. Let’s hope when this is all over, we have survived with a new understanding of what community means in a global sense. I fear worse may yet be to come for many. May you all stay safe wherever you are, and my dystopian tale be nothing more than that…

The shops may be closed but you can still download my books with the links below.

https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood

28 Days later…Day 52… Under-crackers…

Making adjustments…just be careful

I can see it start to become too much. It’s like a bad pair of underpants. Once you become aware of the discomfort, it just never leaves you for the rest of the day. People quickly become used to a situation no matter how difficult and they become weary of it. I’m like that with the aforementioned undergarment.

Men and women are so very different in all sorts of ways, but I venture to suggest that the under-cracker department, is one area of significant divergence. I can really only speak from personal experience, but it is a subject in an odd way that’s important to all of us, and one that we generally take for granted. 

It’s no secret that I was far from wealthy when I was a little chiseller and living in Ireland it rains a lot, so the ‘drying’ isn’t great. That combination of factors once placed me in a dreadful predicament. For those of you unfamiliar with the Irish phrase and small-talk opener, “great drying today” it is a reference to a warm, perhaps breezy day, when you can actually hang the washing out on the line to dry, without it getting re soaked before you have time to run out and take it back in again.

If you live in a Mediterranean climate, (Lucky Baxtard) you will of course have no true experience of having your mother scream at everyone to get the washing in, with a shriek of “The rain!” It’s not funny how many times you have to rehang washing out to dry in a single afternoon. If my Ma left you alone in the house and it rained while the washing was out, you might as well slap your own arse if you forgot to bring the washing in before she got home.

Anyway back to the point at hand which I was making in relation to being a working-class child in Dublin, back before we had tumble driers or radiators in the house. Bad drying meant a shortage of dry clothes, which when you’re short of a few quid to have extra, or spare clean clothes is an issue. It certainly became one for me specifically when I was eight years old, and was obliged to go commando or wear my older sisters kecks to school, as there were none of mine dry. Little boys back then wore little shorts, so commando wasn’t an option as my dangly bits would eventually flash one of the Christian brothers who thought us, and I didn’t need that sort of attention believe me.

Now to be fair, no one was going to see them or ever know about it, (until now) but the trouble was that I knew. I swear I nearly had a fit. I threw a little eight-year-old wobbler. But having a conniption wasn’t the same back then. If I pushed my luck, I’d not only have to wear the offending lady jocks, I’d get a clip around the ear and a reddened arse for my trouble so in the heal of the hunt, I went to school wearing my sisters keckers. It was the first and last time I tell you.

But as I was saying, men and women have very different pant challenges. I say pant as in the singular of pants, which for some bizarre reason Americans call trousers, but everyone knows pants are your smalls right? I can’t speak to the lady issues and quite frankly it might get either disturbing or creepy if I did, so I’ll stick to what I know, which with the one exception when I was eight, are men’s Jockeys.

Of course, over the years through lack of choice, accident, design or just plain fashion, I have had the pleasure and sometimes discomfort, of trying many different variations of this particular form of packaging. When I was a kid my Ma insisted on y-fronts. Lord knows why it was her preference, but I hated them. Structurally they are such a poor design and make that, which they are supposedly designed for…impossible. That little y shaped hole at the front, I mean seriously, even my eight year old little tiddler couldn’t be winkled out of there through the fly of any normal pair of trousers.

I hate y-fronts as they led to the pee-pee in the zipper incident of 1971. I’m still traumatised. That my mother, decided to invite the mothers from the two houses either side of us in to assist with the winkle extraction, is something that I will carry with me to my dying day. Zippers and chonklers have a long and murky history that most of us men would care to forget.

But like I say I moved on and over the years, I went through the tightey-whitey phase, the loose boxer phase, the tight legged boxer phase, high wasters and the loose crotch fit, all with their own distinct disadvantages. These days, I’ve sort of found a grove and stuck to it, but there is never a perfect fit when you are carrying a man bag that has a life of its own, when it comes to dressing to the left or right. Don’t mention the trouser fit, because unless they are tailored, dressing to either side is not necessarily something one has control over. The tight jean trend of the 70’s and 80’s really did us no favours. Which leads me on to the adjustment factor.

Oh yes, whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re familiar with the jiggler and to a lesser or greater extent, every man is guilty of a jiggle now and then. Sometimes it’s an adjustment jiggle, but other times it might just be a casual jiggle. We do have a fondness for a subconscious if not unconscious fondle every now and then.

If you have an adjustment emergency and they can happen, it’s best to find a discreet location to just get everything back into some level of control. But of course there are times when you get caught short and you have to play pocket billiards, while drawing as little attention to the offending issue as you can. If one is in a small group, let’s say in a business setting, especially if there are non scrotum carrying attendees present, and the need presents itself, then the discomfort can be quite distracting. It’s like an itch for the uninitiated. Not that it actually itches, I’d see a doctor if that’s occurring, but like an itch, it grows in your mind if you can’t actually attend to it.

There are also those moments where it’s ok. A group of male friends chatting in shorts by the Barbeque for example, won’t think twice about pocketing a hand for a not too subtle adjustment while swigging a beer with the other. At home on the sofa watching Netflix, or standing in the garden admiring your rose bushes, all perfectly acceptable self-fiddling opportunities, although you may find your wife disagrees. But you have to be careful.

If you get too relaxed or become accustomed to a little private rattle to make yourself more comfortable, such as in times of pandemic where no one can see you at home, that habit may come back to bite you when you return to civilisation. Remember lads, when it comes to property it’s location, location, location. When it comes to tweaking or correction of the nugget satchel, its discretion, discretion, discretion. Don’t relax the kacks too much just because you’re working from home for a while. Its OK to grow a beard, you’ll remember to shave again when this is all over, that’s like riding a bike. Bad habits are harder to shake…maybe shake was a bad choice of words in this instance but you get me… remember stay in, stay safe and stay discreet…

The shops are closed but you can still download my books with the links below:

https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood

28 Days later … Day 46, Opinionated, imperfect and flawed…

Who the hell am I ?

I haven’t decided what kind of man I’m going to be, and I’ve been around a long time. You see it’s not really up to me and that’s the mistake people make when trying to work out who they are. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who you are, everyone else has that pretty much worked out for themselves, not that what they think really matters anyway. It’s a paradox.

Who you want to be is something entirely different? Adolescence is when we become most aware of it and that can be a cruel learning curve. If we only knew then what we know now eh?  When I was very little, the choice was simple. I was more certain of what I wanted to be than at anytime in my entire life. I wanted to be a cowboy. Not just any cowboy either. Technically, I didn’t get the whole notion that being a cowboy involved actual working with cattle. In my head I wanted to be the Virginian or Manolito from the High Chaparral. I wanted to be the Sundance Kid, or Chris from the magnificent seven. It was easy.

That I lived in a council estate in working class Dublin seemed irrelevant. What was relevant was perhaps that it wasn’t so much the cowboys that I admired, but their character. To me, when I grew up, I wanted to be the kind of man who would stand up for the little guy and protect his gal. When push came to shove, I wanted to be Clint Eastwood lighting a cigarillo in the face of 10 heavily armed bandits and telling THEM, that they might need more men.

Perhaps it sounds foolish, and maybe more foolish to any women reading who don’t get the pressure on young men to measure up. I remember being afraid when I was very young, for many different reasons and all of that fear was real and presented itself in very tangible physical threats. Figuring out how to bridge the gap between wanting to run away or hide, or indeed stand tall and face up to the threat, was a thing bigger than many people can even imagine. 

I remember taking a beating for not backing down to four guys when I was 10 years old. I should have run away that day, I could easily have outrun them, but I knew that I’d come across them again so I had to make a decision.   I’d love to say I go them back one by one, but that was the real world and they moved on as did I. There was no retribution. But I did learn  from it. Sometimes you have to jump from the moving train, even when you know it might kill you. 

In my teens it got worse because the fear manifested itself in a far more dangerous way. Where I grew up you never left your friends to face trouble alone and I recall with frightening clarity, the time when my then girlfriend’s brother challenged a group of guys threatening his neighbour. It was a very brave thing to do on his part. Me? I was sticking to the rules of the street nothing more. When I saw the iron bar in the first guys hand, I realised what it was to be afraid. But I stood by his side keeping a close eye on the pick axe handle that one of the guys was holding by his side, while Thomas reasoned with a gang of very unreasonable assholes.

For whatever reason, they walked away that day and I got to feel how terrible fear can be when it grabs you in the pit of your stomach so tight, that you literally feel sick. I also learned how to walk a walk I hadn’t walked with such confidence before and it stood me in good stead for the rest of my life. I won’t go into detail about how that same fecker of an in-law, challenged an entire biker gang in Melbourne for interrupting a show we were watching in a club, with me once again as his only back up. All chains, tattoos, muscles and knuckle dusters they were, and that was just the women.

But I grew up and got out of that life. I moved on in life. I travelled and felt the touch of success. I married had a family, divorced and found love again and through every second of that life, my life, I learned something new. My parents taught me something valuable. If you don’t know or understand something, look it up. Find out what it is. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, but don’t avoid them either. Go learn what they mean, then you can talk about them with understanding the next time. Be true to yourself and don’t be so stubborn.  I never really fully learned the stubborn lesson but I listened to the rest.

Every book I write is about love. That’s what I always say. The power of it, the absence of it, the desire for it or what people will do for it and in writing about love the way I do, many people miss it entirely. They read Darkly Wood and feel the fear and terror for example, but all of it, and I mean all of it, even the despicable Mr. Wormhold, gain their power to instil fear through their relationship with love.

I haven’t decided what kind of man I’m going to be. That’s how I started this piece. Of course, I haven’t. It isn’t me that gets to decide and while it may take some people a lifetime to realise that, it’s true. I know some of the things that go into making me whatever kind of man I am. I know that I will take action, make decisions and act, and I know in having these traits as part of my makeup, that I am sometimes wrong.  People like to say that when your moment comes you have to take it. I know I certainly do and that’s definitely a part of me.  I’m a thinker, I’m opinionated and I am often too quick to criticise. I can be many things that I dislike. I am indeed an imperfect, flawed and sometimes difficult man. 

But all of these things are just traits. How they combine to make me whatever kind of man I end up being, is most likely something I have yet to discover, and perhaps I never will. We all like to see ourselves in our best light. I have had the misfortune of coming face to face with the grim reaper and I think if it changed me in any one way, it was to realise that it not only doesn’t matter what other people think about me, it really doesn’t matter what I think about me.

All that matters is what I do. How I live my life. What good if any, I can conjure up and how I can avoid doing as little damage along the way as I can. I haven’t decided what kind of man I am going to be, perhaps because I long since abandoned the fantasy, that I can be any more or any less than the sum of my actions words and thoughts.

Today I am a grumpy old man with a bad back. That is not my destiny I hope, so I work to be more than that. Maybe I’ll fail today, but you know what, I might do better tomorrow.  Remember, do or do not, there is no try. Now I’m going to pour myself a nice glass of Sangiovese and maybe I’ll work on what sort of man I’m going to be again tomorrow. Stay inside my friends and stay safe…whoever you turn out to be…

You can find more details about Max Power’s books here : –
http://www.amazon.com/author/maxpower
https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood

28 Days Later…Day 34 A terrible beauty is born…

Post Touching Covid Disorder and don’t be talkin’ Bollix...

If I wasn’t for my tablet box, I wouldn’t know which day of the flippin’ week it is. Seriously, since I started working from home, the whole weekday thing is gone a bit sketchy. It’s not that I’m taking it easy. To be quite honest, I’ve been flat out since I took the office home. Sometimes it feels like half the country has had to stop working, so I’m taking up the slack!

It is a little weird though. I’m lucky because I have my own home study for writing anyway, so the dedicated space makes it easier than working from the kitchen table. That and the fact that I have no small children going…Dad…Dad…Dad…Dad…Dad until my head explodes.

We do of course have 3 dogs and one of them is my personal guardian angel, so he won’t leave me alone, and because he comes into the study the second boy has to follow. Our girl doesn’t do needy. She stays where the food is. Clever girl – but as Father Ted might say…”Aren’t you all clever girls.” Please don’t correct me on that one, I know he said something about lovely bottoms, but I’m using licence here.

There is a lot of noise about boredom in the home at the minute and while I won’t deny it can be a challenge, this period of difficulty really is going to end, so it can be exaggerated. I am not denying that some people, those who are alone in particular, may find this very tough, but leaving aside the vulnerable in our society, for the most part sitting at home watching Netflix, eating too much chocolate and discovering our inner alcoholic, shouldn’t be an impossible challenge for us to cope with. Or is that just me?

For the most part, when I’m not working, I’m pretty much doing nothing and waiting for the Bollix. Now in case you are confused, I am not talking about a person here. The Bollix in question is not a person.  I am using the noun Bollix as in “He was talking Bollix.” You know it, I know it. When this is all over, we’re all going to have to listen to some colossal amount of shite.

It’s like a guy coming home from a warzone shiteing on about how heroic he was, while at the same time insisting, he doesn’t want to talk about it, despite the fact he never left his job dishing up food in the officers’ mess 100Km from any danger. Yep, that’s what we’ve got to look forward to.

Just you wait, there’ll be some bloke who normally never left his room except to work his shift in the local Londis, telling us all how he risked life and limb on the frontline. There’ll be stories about how; “There was this time right, I swear I was on my knees after working 2 hours straight without a break, down to my last pair of gloves, hands dry from sanitising…bleeding actually … they were bleeding yeah… and I still have a scar from the face mask… you can’t really see it now…it’s faded, but you can see it in the sun… but to be fair I have to avoid direct sunlight now… my body has had to adjust to the trauma of always being inside, protecting and serving cold hams and coleslaw… anyway.. there I was in the soft drinks aisle and this guy…crazy he was… you could see it in his eyes, you know the sort, lethal, a virtual assassin…he was on me before I knew it and he… he came within 2 metres of  me.. It was…I…I…I can’t talk about it… I have PTCD… Post Touching Covid Disorder.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everyone who has to work through this and there is a risk, but I’m not talking about the silent heroes, just the noisy feckers whose shite we’ll have to listen to afterwards. There are the true heroes on the medical front line in particular, and we all need to appreciate those who care for us in our society. I have already come to respect, admire and thank those in the medical profession, for they have saved my life in the past and without them, I wouldn’t be typing this piece. This crisis has really highlighted just how special they are and let us all say it now and more importantly remember them after this is all over…Thank you. That I mean, from the bottom of my heart.

I know there is a lot of worry and stress out there at the moment, but we do need to keep it in perspective. Ultimately, we can all be or own hero. We can all be heroes for each other. I am reminded of a fellow Irishman, far more talented a writer than I should ever hope to be. From Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats…

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey 

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said  

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I 

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly: 

A terrible beauty is born.

…And later in the same poem, perhaps something we can all connect with;

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

A century later but in a different context, this seems oddly appropriate. Stay safe everyone and remember, don’t be talkin’ Bollix when this is all over…

You can find more details about Max Power’s books here : –
http://www.amazon.com/author/maxpower
https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood