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NEVER LOOK DOWN!

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Looking at these images reminds me of my own time in the steel/construction industry. In more than 30 years I worked variously as a welder, rigger, banksman, foreman, and sometimes all 4 at the same time. The pictures show a time when health and safety didn’t exist as a concept;there were no safety nets, hard hats, harnesses; you were your own safety officer, comon sense prevailed. And if you didn’t have any you didn’t last very long.

We had all the modern safety equipment bu t it still still didn’t prevent accidents or deaths. I remember working on the biggest construction site in Europe in the early 1980s, Aughinish Island Aluminium Extraction Plant in west Limerick, and on the first day we had to attend an induction course. We were lectured about safe working practices, and told that according to statistics x amount of workers would be injured and seven would be killed. I don’t remember how accurate the injury forecasts were, but over the course of the 4 years the complex took to build 7 workers were killed. Most were falls but a couple were hit by falling objects.

Remember, the construction site is a dangerous place. SO TAKE CARE

to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent

 

 

ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY

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ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY

 Oh beautiful chromed perambulator

You of the sleek wheels

And wayward inclinations

Carrier of booze and babies

And, occasionally, goods and chattels,

You were a lovely mover once

 

Look at you now;

Silt to your midriff

Capsized for eternity

Gathering flotsam and jetsam

For a stinking old stream;

Fit for nothing but stopping gaps

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

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THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

 

Old women with polished perms on fat heads

Men tinkering with diseased cars

Dogs taking their owners to the park –

Where they converse with their friends

And crap indiscriminately.

The Postman, the Milkman and the Gasman,

Two door-to-door leaflet saleswomen

A stray cat or two

And twenty five chimney-stack pigeons.

Then there are all those aerials-

Like one-legged storks-

Looking down on the patched-up pavements.

 

Where have all the front gates

 Absconded to, I wonder?

Frightened away by all the leering

FOR SALE signs

Constantly peering over their shoulders?

I guess that must be it.

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CONFESSIONS OF AN ALTAR BOY

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EXTRACT FROM MY BOOK ‘THE SHINY RED HONDA’:

Religion was taken seriously in those days. Every season brought is own festivities and duties.  March, for example, usually signified the beginning of Lent and weeks of fasting and devotion.  Each of us owned our own prayer books and rosary beads, mother’s missal was stuffed to bursting with relics and Holy pictures.  Blessed Martin himself had never been kissed as many times as had that faded picture of him she carried around with her. She had great faith in his powers as a healer. Whenever one of us was sick she kissed his picture and placed it on the afflicted part of our body.  Holy water, Lourdes water, water from the healing well in Mothel lurked in every corner of the house and was dished out like tonic.  As soon as sickness appeared she reached for one of her bottles and administered three sips to us.  Never mind that it tasted like bog water, it still had to be swallowed.

            The coming of Lent heralded a change of attitude in the lives of almost everyone in the community. From the priests whose sermons became more vociferous to the women who beat a path to the altar daily now, their eyes downcast, their heads shrouded in black veils. Continue reading →

DEAD IN A WHEELBARROW

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DEATH IN A WHEELBARROW

 (on reading of the corpse of a murdered youth being pushed through the streets of Leeds one night in a wheelbarrow)

 So this is life in our civilised society

First bludgeoned away

The trundled through un-inquisitive streets

In a squeaky wheelbarrow

Like manure for somebody’s allotment

 

Not that it mattered to him

Whether he was headed for the rubbish-tip

Or some knackers yard

On the other side of town

 

But you, good people of Leeds,

How can you live with your indifference?

You walk your dogs

Roll out of your pubs

Wait for your buses

Admire you plate-glass images

And piss in your alleyways

 

Not caring that a mile

Of your bumpy city-centre pavements

Wheel-barrowed your dead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES.

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A MUST-SEE NEW PLAY

WARNING – THIS PLAY IS NOT FOR THE COMPLACENT!

THIS PLAY MAY MAKE YOU THINK!

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The following is a synopsis of the play;

The dysfunctional Kennedy clan are having a re-union. There’s the father, Con, a successful building contractor in London who has had to relocate back in Ireland because of tax irregularities in the UK.  Con is secretly bisexual, although not-so-secret from his wife, Marion, who has known it all along and kept quiet about it. His estranged son, Michael, turns up after five years in Australia with Cathy, his new aborigine wife.  To say his parents are surprised would be putting it mildly. His nephew, Jimmy, also turns up and it is soon apparent that his racist, bigoted views haven’t mellowed any as he has got older. We learn that he is there at Con’s invitation; his real reason being to spy on Marion, who Con suspects of having an affair. Jimmy also has his own agenda, selling crack/cocaine to the local drug users – a plan which backfires when the drugs, which he has buried in the back garden, are discovered by Michael, heightening the already tense atmosphere in the house. Add in JJ, construction manager for Con, whose attraction to Marion must be obvious to everyone except Con.

IRON AGE

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IRON AGE

Phoenix rises

Cobbled together

By a compendium of pyrites

 

Forged to link all destinies

Shaped to gird our worlds

And outreach Babylonia

 

Igneous intrusion

Metamorphic rock

Freed from your sedimentary bed

 

White heat in the crucible

Running now

Red ingots of desire

Ladled to all requirements

 

Manacled by steel

This shining age

Rusts towards a new millennium

 

THE WATERFORD COLLECTION – 3 plays

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to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent

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CIVIL SERVANTS SHOULD NOT LEAK

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CIVIL SERVANTS SHOULD NOT LEAK

 He said it, my God he said it!

Brazen-faced, to the watching nation

‘They should not leak’, he said

‘After all, they are servants of the Crown’.

 

Leaking in public?  How revolting!

And where would it begin?

A seepage from the ears perhaps?

Or a welling-up from beneath

 

All those virginal starched collars?

Or would it occur in the nether regions?

Visible only as a steady trickle

Down around the ankles.

 

A telephoned enquiry brought no joy;

‘I can assure you, Sir, we have

No leaking Civil Servants here

Why don’t you try MI 5’

 

 

HOLE IN THE GROUND

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Don’t dig there, dig it elsewhere

You’re digging it round when it ought’a be square

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listen to the inimitable Bernard Cribbins sing it on here;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGk4AKOwJbc

 

I was reminded of this song earlier today when I saw 5 workmen around a hole in the pavement. One man was actually digging the hole, the other 4 were standing about in various relaxed poses watching him do the work.  Maybe they were acting as a kind of barrier from the wind or something because nothing else made sense to me. I mean, you don’t need much instructions to dig a hole do you? You just get your shovel and dig. Or could they possibly be part of a relay team?; one man at  the time, dig furiously for 10 minutes,  then you hop out and the next in line hops in. Yeah, that could be it.

I don’t know what any of the above has to do with writing, but I do know that we writers often dig ourselves bloody great holes – and invariably have no idea how to get out of them again!

 

to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent