LP was a key combo of letters back in the Fabulous Fifties. It dealt with combos, of the musical sort, and, as the records show, it stood for Long Playing. Back then a dozen songs were required for a LP.
Off the top of one’s masthead, LPs of that special aural era in the past, such as ‘The Buddy Holly Story’, ‘Songs our Daddy taught us’ by The Everly Brothers, ‘Reacaireacht an Riadaigh’ le Seán O Riada agus ‘Brendan O Dowda sings Percy French’ (see below ) remain in that whch one is still uneasily pleased to call one’s memory. Albums with little ornamental ribbons, back in the day, were for stamps and Stanley Gibbons, only.
Millions of Millennials wouldn’t know a LP now even if it fed them kelp or helped to source an ojous SDLP trojan horse for them. Sadly, The Vinyl Solution was implemented for the LP around the turn of the century for the seasonable reason that in, say, the pre- and post-, twelve years barely a dozen half-decent songs have surfaced. Oh, but they have, you say? Ok, name ’em.
(Belowcost Deniers are always vague when it comes to terrific specifics).
Great production values, pity about the product.
In a serendipitous way this anachronistic acronym LP made something of a spectacular comeback the other week (though, strangely, not among the hacketariat of the uber-hubris) with the twinning of Liberty Hall and Powercourt Gardens: naturally, there was a link.
And the link, as some might think, was not just about their appearances which are completely out of sync: whereas smug Liberty Hall, is quite the ugliest building in Occidental England, a true beast of a least elegant edifice, a highrise byword for hideousness, ar an lámh eile, the Powerscourt Gardens are really the most mellifluous slice of real estate in all of All-Ireland. And of whch pastoral symphony the long-gone, Bonn-born Ludwig Van the Man’s inner gardener and outer green fingers would have been proud.
In a phrase: booty and beauty, shoebox and musicbox.
Knowledge is power, mar a deirtear, and anybody who has ever visited this exquisite Feis Ceoil of harmonious countryside in the flesh (the Gardens, that is) can only nod knowingly that it makes a powerful rhyme for sublime. By a smiling Royal mile it is the cutest of Irish beauy spots, Fitt, oops, fit for our Celtic Cousins, Cornwall and Wales to focus upon this lilac locus of the crocus etc etc :
(- CAW, said the crow; Small spherical spheres ! said Milligan.) .
And what an Irish mile that is: bookended by the palladian Powerscourt House, designed by the eminent architect Richard Cassells (who also blueprinted Castle Hume and Frenchpark etc– see above and below) atop the hill to the north and Ireland’s only virtual volcano (féach thíos/ see below) the Sugarloaf Mountain to the south.
The Gardens stretch over Green 47 acres and offer visitors a sublime blend of formal gardens, sweeping terraces, statues and ornamental lakes, secret hollows and rambling walks and a waterfall. Powerscourt Gardens were designed from 1731 onwards, with the desire to create a garden which was part of the wider surrounding landscape. Powerscourt Gardens include The Walled Gardens, The Italian Garden, The Dolphin Pond, The Japanese Gardens and Pepperpot Tower, among other features and attractions.
Chief among the latter is one which was thoughtfully chosen to lend the showpiece a beguiling, royal touch:
-Pet Semetary.
Specially undertaken (by appointment to Die Hausfrau) by that serial filler of pages with horror stories well worth the telling, Stephen King. As for the peculiar Capital S it is not that, yes, the protean genius from Maine, in the land of Uncle Sam, had a bone to pick with cemeteries. Simply that, since he was a school boy in short pants and longer underpants (why does the inner garment always betray its mortally ashamed nine-year old wearer by showing itself?) he was ever better at plotting than spelling.
Happily, The Sun (Irish edition) shone down on the joyous occasion of the The Game of Crones, having every alternative, on the nothing new.
If there were a fillum to be made of Adam and Eve oops, (this is a shared space), Adam and a peeved Steve, Paddy Power would lay the shortest of odds that Powerscourt would be the favourite as a location. Despite the claim of even that perceptive surveyor of trenches, Percy French (see above), that he was still privy to the lie of the Garden of Eden; advising the asphalt-tramping traveller to turn to the left by default at the bridge of Finea and to call halt when half way to Cootehill.
But what made the visit of Prince and Duchess (honorary PADs for the media-dizzying duration) all the more intriguing was the who’s who in attendance from The Unionist Times. That ever reliable barom of good relations between the Mainland and Occidental England in the dotcom era, not least on the Beauty Spot scale, came up with a result that made Paddy Power himself glower.
That TUT score: Non-attendees: 2; Attendees 1.
The sole attendee was, of coures, Lady Miriam Lord, that unbribable scribe and mistress of the jibing diatribe, who wears her pro-Royal-it -y (Sean Lemass-pronunciation) on both sleeveens. Oops, sleeves of her fetching, up-market, fawn-coloured ensemble which she always reserves for such auspicious occasions. LML even mimicked her namesake Mimsy’s legendary farewell to deserving hereditary monarchs-to-be and their first-choice consorts who came second:
-Call-Again !
The first scorer for the Non-attendees was, of course, Mutt. It was confidently assumed that Mutt the Hack’s inner Mick Hucknell would be on hand without fail to serenade the wince-prone Prince of the simply red son, with his wailing hit of yesteryear. Rendered in a cockney style by the last remaining (sob) Sunday Times (Irish edition):
-’olding back the ‘Ears’
To show with a wink in one eye and a tongue in another cheek, that his Persona of the BBL (Bulldog-Biting Lapdog) of latter Times was just a way of winding up the Non Gratises of the Gnashionalistic Bog-oak Monolith. And a hint, perchance, that an imminent return by The Unionist Times to its natural habitat of Thamesside might be nearer that one imagines, your Eminence. Lock, stock and apperel.
Other reasons for the confident assumpion (see above) were as follows:
It is a linguistic honour bestowed upon only a select few and far-between Irish clans to have their names, man, enshrined in a seanfhocal / proverb.
Powerscourt has two.
–Beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach.
And:
–Chonaic mé Cailseán Ui Thuathail agus An Tuathalach féin.
Whilst the first is a remote ancestor of T.A.L. truth to tell, the second seanfhocal, while it literally means, ‘ I saw O’Toole’s Castle and The Toole himself’ it is only ever said in (gasp) the context of (gulp) ‘one who has had a narrow escape’.
Hmmmm.
And, indeed:
Eh?
Wicklow / Cill Mhantáin is, tar éis an tsaoil, the home turf of the Clan O Toole. In the age of Shakespeare a visiting team of benevolent quantity surveyors (with an eye to quality) from over the water, appeared on the horizon of Wicklow. And quickly, within a quarter of an hour, picked Powerscourt as the most promising place to show their mettle by settling down. A Demesne from the Mainland, as it were.
Even if it required the (yawn) necessity of persuading some, if not all of the more stroppy nativists to stop their inconvenient existence by being hung, drawn and quartered.
Agus , bhí fadhb eile ann / There was another wee problem. Actually more of a faidhbín.
The Leprechaun was spoken back in the day by the local Taidhgíns, broken-toothed oafs whose fluency went a tad beyond the token cúpla focal, Brad. Naturally, the vocal blokels were officially designated ‘cultural terorists’. Some trads die hard.
WITHERSHINS FÉIN
Ciallaíonn ‘tuathalach’ casadh ar chlé
No, an treo micheart, sin é i dtreo ‘Sé’
Ní hí Tír na nOg
Mian na gCiotog
Ní tír shaor, aontaithe ‘a gcupán tae’.
So, how exactly was the Leprechaun / Erse whacked on and out of the backside, albeit in a tender, open and generous way?
Look south: the clue lies in The Sugarloaf. The sugar canes on its slopes which then grew profusely in those Green pre-climate change times, provided the raw material for the manufacture of the Tally Sticks. A factor of which Mutt’s inner Continuity Sticky (aka Finchely Fintan of the Fuckáil Focal ) is inordinately proud, but not, be it noted, in a loud way to this very day.
Thus, Phelim, the Bolshie Taoiseach of Clann O Tuathail aka Chief Executive of Powerscourt Demesne, who suffered from delusions of grandeural fever, was quickly dispatched, on May 14, 1603 on his way to The Big Sleep. Although this corporal work of mercy took place in a looty spot which soon became known as An Luas-Chuas / The Murder Hollow. But is now known as, erm, Sleepy Hollow.
So, were the Major League Diplomats (it rhymes with doormats) of Iveagh House antsy that Mutt’s inner Rip Van Winkle on arrival be advisable ? At what, after all, was once the family pile.
Would he suddenly hear the ‘wakey wakey’ Billy Cotton-call, reluctantly Brexit from his lengthy rest, release suppressed memories, stir up long-forgotten atavistic rancours whose rosc catha is ‘Atta, Boy’, and proceed, in a riled way, to wreak revenge, havoc and míle murder?.
No wonder they all felt a warm tinkle in their pinstriped Protocol panties.
.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT : TO BE CONTINUED
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