That's not the shape of my club

The names Spade: Sam Spade. People in this town might tell you I’m a bit of a card.
people in this town don’t know Jack.

People in this town don’t know Jack but I do.
I know Jack . Jack the knave I call him.
Not really a friend but more of an acquaintance
We share the same taste in suits.



This story aint about jack.
This story is about Jill.

Jill heart.
Said her middle name was ted.
But then Jill Ted Heart said a lotta things



It all began last Tuesday when she came into my office.
She was a dame alright, The dame of hearts.
She looked like she’d broken a few.
“Are you Mr Spade” she asked with honey dripping
from her voice like golden dew on an autumn morning

One look at her and I was ready to fold,
But you gotta stay professional in this business,
“Just call me Ace, sweetheart”
I said with my best poker face
Then She flipped.
“Oh Mr Spade, I don’t know where to turn”

“Why don’t you just lay it all out the table cupcake?-
Patience aint a game I’ve ever been good at”
“Oh Mr Spade…Ace- It’s Louis the king,
I think…I think he’s been cheating on me”.


“Louis the King?” I’m guessin’ that’s your fella,
Hope you don’t mind me sayin’ so,
But anyone dumb enough to cheat on a dame like
you aint playin with a full deck”

“That’s nice of you to say so ace.”
But I’m sure of it.- something’s going on
and I want…”
I want revenge Mr Spade.

“Just what are you sayin’ sister?”
I think you know,
I’m prepared to give good money,
I want him , I want him off the deck”

So that was the play, she wanted louis to take his mortal coil,
and shuffle it.
“Can you do it?” asked Jill Ted Heart with a pair of flashing blue-eyes
That said: “you’d better buster”.

Like I say, I’ve been called a card and it’s true I know a few tricks:
“Say..How do I know you really mean that toots?
How do I know you aint been at the Gin?”

“Rummy? Is what you think of me? That I’m a drunk?”
“ I didn’t mean for you to get all bent out of shape,
How about you make like my old Irish mother used to say and ‘whisht’?

First of all, this is some serious business here,
I mean if someone was to hear what we been talking about now,
I could be in some serious trouble.

“‘Snap’ Mr Spade”.
Well Okay, maybe we’ll play that bridge when we come to it.
First off, you may be the queen of hearts sugar
But I aint, I call a spade a spade,
I can use a club or a blackjack,
And I know Diamonds aint forever.
But cutting the King from the deck
is dealing from the bottom
Whatever way you look at it… "

"You think I’m bluffing? "

"I think I might wanna hedge my bets.
I don’t wanna end up in some penitentiary,
There’s a lotta Cops in this town’d be mighty
pleased to see ole’ Ace in the hole".

"Please Mr Ace you gotta do Something! "
"Okay Cupcake, how’s about you take a seat while,
I put a call through to my Club",

I picked up the receiver:
"Operator give me number 2".
“What? -The Deuce?” asked Ms Heart,

"Certainly Ms Heart, it’s 2 man operation
And Club’s the best 2 man I know",
“Yes I suppose but..”
“You didn’t think I was playin’ Solitaire didya?”

"Say while we’re on numbers; maybe now we talk about what you’re
Plannin’ on putting in the pot.
I mean, I’d do this job for the sake of your big blue eyes,
but I got deuce to pay".

“Whatever you ask Mr Spade”
Smilin' slyly- Like the cat who was the Queen,
“ I been bakin’ my own tarts for some time now”

Then I got through to the club
“Hey Deuce!” Deuce or clubby to his face,
Deuce never liked bein’ called number two,




"We gotta game over here Deuce,
Why don’t you just shuffle over
and I’ll lay out the deal, and Deuce,
bring the necessaries".

I put down the phone and upped the Ante,
“ Jill Ted Heart, The Queen of Hearts
I never heard of a Queen without a King,
And you just said you don’t care about the cost of this caper,

How about you come clean,
Nobody bakes that many tarts
How long it’s been goin’ on with you
and the King of Diamonds?"

Ace you have … you have information?
“I don’t need information, I got instinct,
You want instinct, I’m the guy you come to,
Hence my slogan; Instinct- we got it in Spades”

“ Oh I couldn’t help myself,
When I saw that cute crown,
That crazy moustache, that fancy collar…”



"Yeah I spose you aint the first dame to go for a Diamond in the ruff.
But this time the cards aint gonna fall the way you want them to.
“what do you mean Mr Spade?”
"I mean this, for someone who calls herself the 'Queen of hearts'
You’ve been playing some heartless game here tonight.
I’m sayin’ I know a wildcard when I see one.”

The door flew open and in came Clubby Deuce,
With a load of Cops and some leg irons.
"Here he is!" I told them…
He? Asked the deuce, still starin’ at the Queen,
“Yeah! It’s a helluva disguise, but then they say he
can pass himself off as anyone”

"This is ridiculous! Shouted Queenie
The guys on Dope I tellya,- that’s what it is: Ace’s High!"
The Cop sniffed his nose in the Air;

"Number Two?"

" You smell something?"
He asked Clubby the deuce,
"I smell a rat is what I smell" said clubby,
The cop smiled:"That’s right, Ace’s on the level,
The only dope in this room tonight is you ...
Joker!"

And once he said it the game was over.
Same old Joker, well there’s one in every pack.
Always tryin’ to be some body else,



Tonight the Queen of Hearts,
But with Louis outa the deck,
Joker’d soon be looking to play the King of Hearts.
Permanently.
Good Job me and Clubby always called the cops
“ The necessaries”
As for how things played out,
The Cops got their Joker,
I got some well earned rest.
And Clubby number two got handsomely renumerated,

Cause Like I say:


I always pay my Deuce.

Stuff I done:

Pomes; Rat Pome Ned Song Toast Pome A Dreadful Sonnet Forest Pome

Plays; Complete: Bull Spinal Krapp Something Rotten, A Load of Rubbish, The Maltese Falcon May Be Already Taken, Dreamgirl

It really tied the room together did it not?

I met a friend recently who confessed difficulty putting their thoughts into text.
"Nothing unusual there" says you, "not everyone can, it's a bit of a thing really isn't it?" and yes I suppose it is.

Some folks seem just born to do it but for the rest of us poor mortals it takes practice.

What astonished my friend though was that he had never realised this about himself; he'd presumed that, because he is an articulate and well-read person in conversation, that his writing would just 'come out' and 'be good'. He was a bit humbled to find out how difficult it was to do, once he'd sat down to do it.



Having difficulty writing stuff doesn't make you thick, and writing quickly and easily doesn't make you clever. I know my mate be clever, (He's smarter than me anyway) all that was really wrong with him was not that he 'couldn't write' but that he hadn't written anything in ages. Not incapable, or incompetent; he just is, or was, rusty.

Watching him struggle and feel bad frightened the bejeepers out of me though.



Micheal Caine got a lot of stick throughout his career for being in silly crap things just for the money. He makes the point in his autobigraphy that the actor who rejects 'unworthy' projects is not acting wisely.

Mr Caine suggests that the 'selective' actor is in danger of being hopelessly out of practice: they turn down roles theey consider beneath them and by the time this elusive gig that they can deem 'worthy of their craft' finally comes along, they may be too rusty to do it properly.

I can see what he's getting at. Incidentally, don't be distracted by the mysogynist advertisement with the rug there's nothing to be read into these things, absolutely nothing. It is not a reflectionof my deeper feelings to the fairer sex at this time.

Stop looking at me like that.

Where was I? Yes!
I gave up this blog some time ago, originally to concentrate on a Hamlet adaptation and then I read somewhere that the greatest factor in blog popularity is not the quality of writing or the subject matter but simply the frequency of posts. Well that put me right off.

Sure you might as well start tweeting altogether if that's your notions!

Tweeting may change the way we live and communicate in a revolutionary way but 'tweet' has got to be the crappest verb in history. Real men dont tweet.

Anyhoo, long-blog-short,- I've been out of it; I've been havin'a bit of Darrentime, just for me; I've been coastin' for way too long I admit it.
So it's time to roll up the sleeves and get back into the Stuffinthangs swing of things. I'm not gonna do this everyday because it's just too hard, I shant be taking over the interweb anytime soon either but 'tis a good discipline to be writing. Even if I'm just blathering away. Nobody minds that I don't have a point.

I hope.

It's just like,my opinion man...

Images stolen from B3ta

More Ballycotton

This is'nt really a post so much as an excuse to display more of the ballycotton photos.


Handlines


Mothman


Pier pressure


Curley Cuisine


Happy happy head-bangers.

Ballycotton

For them as don't already know, there is a bit of a phenomena in Limerick by the name of Anne Curley and better known as 'Curley'.
She runs one of the more chaotically organised thrift-shops in Limerick, a place called 'Second-Time Round' on Wickham St.
With the proceeds of 'Second-Time Round' she runs a kind of holiday home in Ballyandreen in Co.Cork.


The kids all call it; 'Ballycotton', after the name of the nearest town, and so do I and so does Curley. I've been going there for a number of years , and it aint easy, but the craic to be had is none of your oul' normal craic that you wouldn't bother sayin' hello twice to, oh no. The Ballycotton craic is the top-notch stuff.
So there you have it, a few weeks out of the year down by the seaside. We swim every day, we go on long walks every day, we eat sandwiches on the beach every day, we do our jobs every day and we eat plenty of wholesome food whether we like it or not because Curley has rules about these sort of things.
The beach is really close and also really rocky. It's not the long white sandy number that you think of when you hear the word 'beach'. When the tide is in, it's pebbles and rocks only. But you don't mind that when you're down in Ballycotton.
There's a whole different set-up in Ballycotton.

For me, I can only describe it as the nearest thing to the 1950's summer holiday you can get. The entertainment seems pretty slim by the standards of todays generation; No Telly, No Interweb, No phone coverage,No videogames.
All you can do is be there, and yet strangely that always seems to be enough. Corned beef sandwiches and polluted orange and Mrs McCarthy's Cake on the beach.
Every day. Walking 'over the mountains' -past the Sheep's head, past the wooden bridge, past the savage cabbages, past the water-you-can-drink, and past the lecktrick fence, and past the concrete box and past the picnic tables and into Ballycotton town, to spend your euro -if you haven't been 'docked'.
You can fish off the peir if you have a rod or a handline.
You can jump off the peir if Curley reckons you're a strong enough swimmer.
Any fish caught will be cleaned and gutted and eaten as near to catching as possible.


There is nothing as lovely as a fresh mackerel fried and seasoned with a bit of lemon. It's 'UNHUMAN!'