Fintan and Jeffrey – they see things differently from me

 Some days, I come on statements and claims which make me wonder if I haven’t lost my mind. Can this person really be saying this? Have I totally misunderstood the King’s English? As I type these words, beads of perspiration popping out on my forehead, I’m staring at two newspaper reports that seem – well, let’s be moderate and call them barking mad.

The first one is by Fintan O’Toole and is in today ‘s Irish Times. As people go to food banks, as people live in the streets, as working people can’t afford a down-payment on a house, Fintan takes a different tack. “Everybody is entitled to enough money for a dignified life. But too much money is as corrosive as too little”.  That subheading is so riddled with vagueness I’m beginning to  wonder if it isn’t me but Fintan himself who’s gone a bit weird. “Enough money for a dignified life”- what does that mean? How much is “enough”? When do you know if your life is (stop giggling, Virginia)  “dignified”?

Fintan goes on to talk about Seamus Heaney (did I mention that he’s writing Heaney’s “official biography”?) and how good the Bellaghy man was at reading his poetry to an audience. Anyone who’s ever heard Heaney read will testify to the truth of that: Heaney had a truly great voice for public poetry readings.  But Fintan’s point is that Heaney’s American agent had been asking for $1,000 a reading and Heaney had objected and said that was too much. Heaney spoke of “moral scruples”, of being considered “a freak” among his poetic friends, and of imposing hardship on US departments of literature. “ Much as I enjoy the rewards of reading, the first basis of the enterprise is artistic and not financial.”

I’ve been trying to figure this one out. Of course Heaney wrote his poetry for artistic and not financial reasons: if he hadn’t, it would have turned out contrived and false.  But to tell his agent “Don’t ask for so much” is  the directive of someone who either doesn’t want to price himself out of the market – better five gigs at $500  than one gig at $1,000  – or the words of a man saint-like in his attitude to money. Or the words of a man for whom money is no problem.

Fintan goes on to tell us that he too has an agent  and that when the agent suggested selling the Russian rights to one of his books, “I of course refused”.  Of course you did, Fintan. And now we all know how high-minded and anti-Russian you are in your world outlook.  Shouldn’t doubt that Putin is at his wits’ end.

Maybe Fintan and Seamus exist/existed on a different plane from me, but I can’t remember ever having a transaction of any kind, whether for a book or for my second-hand car, where I’ve told the potential purchaser “No, no – you’re giving me too much money, I can’t accept that and live with myself.”  I’m afraid my life has been one that was without dignity when it came to making a living.

The second fuck-me moment today was on reading a report in The News Letter, where Jeffrey Donaldson is reported as saying that he has “too much respect” for his nationalist neighbours to press for a hard border in Ireland, and calls on them to return the respect. “Sadly, some [nationalists] viewed the NI Protocol through their border poll advancing spectacles rather than the 20:20 vision of what is best for peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland.”

I mean, Jeffrey old banana, you cannot be serious. The DUP didn’t press for a hard border in Ireland? So that whole alliance with the Tory hard Brexiteers was a bad dream I had? And if I press for a border poll, as stipulated clearly in the Good Friday Agreement, I am putting in jeopardy the peace and prosperity of NEI?

To put a twist on ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’: “The room is spinning harder/As Sir Jeffrey tells his tale/ And taig faces, once just ghostly/Turn a whiter shade of pale”.