unironedman

The European Athletics championships are on this week, and although the national broadcaster are showing a lot of the events, on Friday evening, they have opted for the testosterone-fuelled rugby instead. The athletics has been relegated to the Player on the laptop, for those that have it. Ordinarily I would be stuck to the rugby, especially when it’s Munster in a quarter-final. But tonight, there is a real chance of a medal, and those don’t come around very often.

Our 4x400m mixed relay squad are hoping to better their bronze medal performance at the World Relays last month, when they set a national record. But there is some serious competition, not least from Belgium and the Netherlands, who have the ominous and hugely talented Femke Bol as their anchor, plus the home side, Italy.

You can watch the race here, assuming RTE aren’t as picky as the BBC about geo-blocking. Look, it’s not really a great spoiler to say we did well, is it? If you click on the link, the headline might just give it away. Regardless, I have watched it several times since, as have many other Irish athletics fans. It’s absolutely bloody brilliant!

Just as a by-the bye, it’s easy to forget the amount of amazing technology at my disposal here. I was watching the rugby live on the big screen – a game I could pause at any stage if I wished, and restart at my leisure. Something akin to witchcraft to a previous generation. In front of that is the laptop; a fabulous tiny box of wizardry that is not connected in any way by wires to anything else. It’s battery-powered, and gets its feed wirelessly. It’s so easy to take it all for granted. And I am watching the programme live from Rome, and the quality is excellent.

It doesn’t seem that long ago when it would take an hour to download a 1MB image on dial-up. Line by excruciating line…

The performance from the relay team obviously triggered a tsunami of social media excitement. It also fed into another narrative; that of the ‘success of modern Ireland’. I am paraphrasing. Let me explain. We had our local and European elections on Friday as well, and there was a record number of right-wing candidates running in both. Most are closet-racists, but a small handful are really out-there hateful, and have spent much of the last couple of years aggressively agitating up and down the country. Their shtick is the same wherever they go. Their wrath is aimed at anything they perceive to be ‘woke’, and this usually means anti-immigration and anything to do with sex education and gay rights. They are a particularly nasty bunch, and have been filmed attacking people, and are happy, it seems, punching women. They can be found invading libraries and removing books they perceive to be corrupting the minds of our poor young children. These same evil fuckers orchestrated the Dublin Riots. They are, in short, arseholes.

Well, on our mixed relay team, we have the rising star of Rhasidat Adeleke. She was born in Dublin in 2002, and is a member of Tallaght Athletics Club. She has the most wonderful Dublin accent, even though her parents are from Nigeria. She is currently training in Texas, and holds the Irish records for 200 and 400 metres. The pictures of the relay team celebrating at the end of the race on Friday, plus another wonderful image of Rhasidat and Sharlene, were splashed around by a lot of well-meaning commentators, keen to say that this is the real Ireland, and not the small-minded ugliness pushed by the racists. I have no idea how the various team members feel about this. I suspect they are rather insulated from a lot of it, but I guess they can’t be unaware of recent events in Ireland. They haven’t asked to be frontline ambassadors for integration in this country, and perhaps they are uncomfortable about this particular angle. I have no idea. Overall, I am delighted for their performance, and I am also thrilled to see many ‘second-generation’ athletes take to the world stage with an Irish vest on. But perhaps they don’t always need this extra weight to carry, and we should be sensitive to this.

And speaking of being sensitive, I might recount a little tale from this morning’s run. I had brief ambitions about doing my half-marathon route which takes me to the M50 aqueduct and back. But I scaled back, partly due to the four bottles of beer I had consumed the night before, plus a lengthy early morning call from an old friend who has recently moved back to Australia. Again, the tech is worth a mention here; literally on different sides of the world, and both of us chatting away on mobile devices. He was walking in the outback, watching the sunset; I was still slumbering in the bed, a few hours after sunrise…

As I was tipping along the canal towpath, I spotted someone up ahead, walking two dogs, chatting to a gent sitting on a bench. As I approached, the conversation finished, and the dog walker turned away, heading towards Louisa Bridge; the same direction I was going. It was then that I recognised him: someone I used to work with. To be more accurate, my immediate superior. And someone that in the end, just about everyone I knew who worked with him also fell out with. I made a point of saying a cheery hello as I ran past. Nothing. I didn’t expect anything, to be honest. I have said hello to this person numerous times since we parted company, and have never had any reply. It has become something of a mental challenge, like a game to see who will blink first.

I mentioned this to S on my return, and she had some choice words. We both had a chuckle over it, even though it felt a little juvenile. I made some remark about him being childish. And then not long after, I began to wonder who was being the childish one? Perhaps at this point, I should cut my losses here and just ignore this person from now on. It would certainly be easier, even if it feels like a concession. Hey-ho. Odd how these little things bubble up in our lives. As mildly irritating as a tiny bit of grit on your shoe on a long run. Which as we know can be very irritating…

I am not going to try and segue into the next piece. I am just going to mention that if you like silly shark films, then Netflix have you covered. Under Paris is about as silly a premise as you can imagine, but it’s a bit of fun while it lasts. It’s not really a spoiler to say it’s about a huge shark that finds itself swimming up the Seine, and causing mayhem as it goes. Most of the cast play it straight (including the shark) until we meet the mayor, who clearly was fired from over-actors anonymous, and didn’t get the memo.

It’s hard to pick the silliest bit, but for my money, it’s the triathlon. Avid readers will probably know that the Olympic triathlon event will indeed be held along this stretch of the river, and I suspect the film-makers knew this. And what better a set-up for ultimate gore than a river full of churning swimmers. But this is the bit that got me. As the camera panned along the pontoon before the off, I scanned the hundred or so ‘competitors’ in wetsuits and goggles. I am willing to stake my very meagre reputation that not one of them has ever done a triathlon in their lives. And this was somewhat proved a few scenes later when we see the leading swimmer with his head well up out of the water, staring at the camera as he swims towards his doom. Nope. Not buying it. Deserved to get eaten, if you ask me. (OMIL, don’t make this rookie error, okay?)

Of course, there are far more serious problems in the world. We watch silly films (and sometimes go running) to take our minds of these things. Well, I can only speak for myself. Regardless of where you are in the world, you cannot be unaware of the conflict in the Middle East, and more accurately, Gaza. I won’t call it a war, for it is not a war. And it would seem there is a battle in the media too. And this one, depending on where you find your news, seems to be every bit as lopsided as the conflict on the ground.

This page caught my eye. It shows happiness in the top-left image, as an Israeli hostage is reunited with her family, but in the middle, there is the true agony from Palestinian mothers grieving over loved ones killed in the raid to release those same hostages. (Worth pointing out we are currently residing in Israel’s bad books following our recognition of the Palestinian State, along with Spain and Norway, last month).

Let’s just say it’s complicated, and that’s a gross simplification. Even a reasonably straight media broadcaster like RTE, when it just reports the news, can seem insensitive. But as we know, language is important. I have lost count of the number of news items I have read in the last nine months that tell me how many Israelis were ‘murdered’, and how many Palestinians were ‘killed’. We need to be so much better than this. And ironically it won’t do anything for our home-grown right-wing problem, as these nut-jobs genuinely believe (as much they are genuine about anything) that the state broadcaster is a rotten cabal of left-wing loonies, shills for the WEF, and all part of the Great Reset. Or something, something, blah, blah, bollocks. I can’t really open this maggoty can of maggots, because it will just infect my posts like the toxic sludge that it is.

Running. I am going to stick with the running, and other nice things.

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How to wrap things up after that? It can only be humour.

I popped this little meme above into the family WhatsApp group (that’s just the four of us). Dallan was first to respond with ‘The flanged mace, personally. Simple, effective, that’s a weapon.’

Next up, Saoirse responded with ‘Morning Star. Kind of stylish.’

Tamsyn, ever the wit, came back with ‘I shan’t begrudgel the cudgel.’

And all I could think of was ‘Oh I don’t know. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a maul…’

Welcome to the family 😉

Here are some nice things I saw on my runs this week:

A nice little bunch of lilies from our garden:

And from the sublime to the ridiculous:

I was in Aldi this week when I suddenly had the feeling I was being watched:

And finally, some dog pics:

P.S. Huge apologies to Ciara Mageean, who won the 1,500 metres final last night. Another great result for Irish athletics. You know how it goes; once you hit the ‘print’ button on these blog posts, it’s very hard to stop the presses! 😉