Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux

Clumsy title but a great travel book by an author I've long admired. Thereoux is retracing a journey he took 33 years earlier and wrote about in The Great Railway Bazaar. He seems mellower this time around but his powers of observation are not diminished and he can be acerbic when it's merited. He casts a particularly cold eye on the autocratic regime in Singapore where free speech is not encouraged. Its leader Lee Kwan Yew, a cold and domineering control freak, gets a memorable bashing. Lee is the guy who famously backed the Chinese government after their massacre in TiananmenSquare. He's also good on the new India of call centres and IT wealth. However he flees that country in horror at the relentless tide of humanity that floods the cities and make every venture on foot a nightmare. Other things that stick in the mind were the bleakness of rural Russian life and the cultural vibrancy of Turkey.

What I like about Thereoux is the way he engages with the country through which he travels - he talks to the people he encounters on trains, he stays in cheap hotels where the real people go, and he eats what's available on railway platforms. The book has many incidental pleasures: rueful reflections on his earlier callow self, his spat with the monstrous V. S. Naipaul, compact descriptions of the politics and topography of the host of countries he traverses, and a colourful cast of characters met along the way.

Michael Jackson RIP

Never got his music or his dancing but boy did he add to the gaiety of nations. Like Elvis and John Lennon he had a long dying fall as a performer - his best days were 20years ago. It might seem a strange thing to say about an erstwhile black boy but he lacked soul. Listen to his version of Ain't no Sunshine... and then listen to the original by Bill Withers and you'll see the white boy's version is the one with soul. Or watch his dancing and then look at the early Elvis, or Robert Plant in his priapic prime. There was always an aura of Disneyland about Jackson - an absence of the real and the visceral. In Disneyland there are no genitals. He was Peter Pan -living in Neverland in perpetual childhood.

Test Travesty

This was one that got away. If only, if only, if only. If only the French referee Christophe Berdos had the moral courage to give a red card to Berger for the most blatant piece of eye gouging I've ever seen in a rugby match. (By the way, contrast the lack of repeat showing of the incident by SA TV with Sky's public hanging of Alan Quinlan in the Heineken Cup.) If only the TV replay had given a clearer view of the scorer's trailing leg for SA's marginal last try. If only Ronan O'Gara had jumped for that fateful ball like a man rather than backing into it with eyes closed like a big girl. (OK, OK, the sun may have blinded him.)

But you know beyond all this lies the thought that SA are that bit more brutal and just don't countenance losing. They take physical commitment to a level that our boys just will not entertain - and rightly so. The SA attitude is encapsulated in their coach's refusal to see anything wrong in Berger's actions. He will be suspended, I suspect for a very long time, but that's too late for the Lions.

The Lions - a Progress Report

Don't be fooled by how close the Lions got in the First Test. South Africa took their foor off the pedal and replaced some key personnel. Also, the Lions were appreciably fitter due largely to having had more competitive action. South Africa will be fitter and forewarned for the next Test. They have two key advantages, their forwards are more powerful and more evil, and they are better at kicking for position. Stephen Jones is past his best. His distribution is sluggish compared to O'Gara's and he can't kick as long as Hook. This is a fatal flaw in the team. The South African forwards will dominate the Second Test and the Lions backs will live on scraps. This brings us to another fundemental flaw in the Lions team, Paul O'Connell should not be captain. He is no Martin Johnson, he's not mean enough. He is an NCO rather than an officer. It's clear that McGeechan made a mistake in not making O'Driscoll captain. He has that mean streak (yanking at Gavin Henson's expensively coiffured hair and snapping: "How do you like that, you cocky little fucker.")and that fanatical will to win that eludes O'Connell. I'm not sure that it would affect the overall result but it would have brought the Lions closer to SA.

Ry Cooder at the Olympia

I don't care that he's a white boy, he's still the greatest slide guitar player in the universe. Himself and his old sidekick Nick Lowe were in fine form - running through Ry's back catalogue and adding a fair few that were new to me. Ry wore a wooly hat, his trademark Hawaiian shirt and extraordinary goofy glasses - he's no longer going for the handsome rock star look obviously. He is beginning to resemble some of his grizzled old musical heroes.

Cooder's guitar can transform the most unlikely material - he did a haunting version of the old Jim Reeves song "He'll Have to Go". But there wasn't a false moment. I noticed Brendan Gleeson nearby drinking his Guinness and enjoying the music.

Chicago Blues Festival

My first trip to Chicago - a solid city that looks after its citizens. You can't but be impressed by the amount of outstanding public sculpture including a giant Picasso, a Miro, and a huge Chagall mosaic. There are plenty of playful pieces also that are clearly enjoyed by the people out for their weekend walks. There's the giant reflective bean by Anish Kapoor that catches the spectacular skyline and the fountain spewing water from the mouths of changing images of Chicago citizens. Add in the Art Institute with its wide-ranging permanent collection (Hopper, Van Gogh, Rothko, Seurat, Gaughin, and even Remington's paintings of the old West) and you get one of the best art destinations in the US.

The blues festival is entirely free. There were four or five venues going non-stop from early afternoon to late evening over three days. All courtesy of the city and its mayor, Richard M. Daley. All the venues had his name emblazoned over the stages. Who's your daddy. It was well policed and attended by a huge good-humoured and heterogeneous crowd. There were food and drink stalls, loads of toilets and a huge support team to organise the crowds and the traffic. (Lord Mountcharles take note.)


I hadn't heard of most of the acts but they were unfailingly excellent. The highlight was probably Magic Slim and I enjoyed Lurrie Bell and Jeremy Spencer as well. Magic Slim was a truculent looking old buffer (and far from slim) with a missing little finger (severed by a cotton gin apparently) but he made his guitar sing. He was helped onto and off the stage but once there commanded his band with good old-fashioned autocratic hauteur.

For those who liked it a bit more lively Lil' Ed with his fez and his Chuck Berry sound got the people bopping. Late on Sunday Jeremy Spencer did a set that was redolent of the old Fleetwood Mac, before they became a Californian pop group.

Moving around Grant Park over the three days of the festival you couldn't but be struck by how well-behaved and relatively sober the crowds were. And how you had every class of citizen from the professorial to the janitorial. Would we be able to do the same thing in the Phoenix Park? Would you get the same mix? I doubt it. It would be dominated by hordes of marauding cider heads and the older citizens would give it a miss.

Bosie by Douglas Murray

Do we really care about the life of Lord Alfred Douglas? Oscar Wilde's nemesis did little interesting after carelessly ruining his friend. He wrote a number of exceedingly precious sonnets none of which were memorable, he developed an unfortunate appetite for litigation that ended in tears and jail for 6 months, and he even got married to a rather masculine looking woman. Murray's book takes a more sympathetic stance on Bosie than Ellmann does in his definitive life of Oscar Wilde.

It was extraordinary the sense of entitlement young aristocrats had in those days. He was always angling for an annuity that would keep him in the manner to which he was accustomed - and eventually got one from Shaw's widow. The notion of work was alien. He claimed to like pretty young boys and only succumbed to Wilde's grosser charms because he was a famous writer. And even then was very keen to establish the limited nature of their physical contact.

Far from being the effete figure he is often depicted as, Bosie was a keen angler, an excellent shot, and at one period he successfully trained racehorses.

The most remarkable thing about this book is that Murray started writing it when he was fourteen - and finished it when he was twenty. Precocious or wha'.

Simon Schama at Liberty Hall

A very fluent performance by Schama facilitated by Fintan O'Toole. You can see why the BBC paid him £3 million. He gave an amusing and illuminating perspective on American history unaided by any notes for about half and hour, before he started a rather po-faced dialogue with O'Toole. It was interesting to find out that Arlington cemetry was built on Robert E. Lee's garden. He is a keen admirer of Obama - particularly the way his world view is informed by a sense of history.

The one false note was when a venerable old dear asked him a question about the Israeli lobby in the US. He scoffed at the idea that any such monolithic entity existed - suggesting instead that there were conflicting Jewish views on Palestine and that this was typical of the Jewish liking for disputation; cracking a joke about the two synagogues on a desert island to illustrate this lovable trait. He described himslef as an "old Labour zionist" who favoured a two state solution in Palestine. Before this he had a go at the Taliban (and their hatred of writing and education) and the Wahhabis. Fair targets but dragged in perhaps.

Antony and the Johnsons at Vicar Street

What a strange androgynous blob of a man, but amiable with it, and what a heavenly voice - the body of a Caliban and the voice of an Ariel. He was wearing some weird voluminous black toga over his trousers. I expected some posturing arty band but instead he was accompanied by a very sober and serious collection of musicians incuding a severe lady cellist, a violinist, and a sax and clarinet player. The show was preceded by a dance piece where a lithe lady dressed in paint and little else threw angular shapes to some electronic music. It worked for me.

Antony's haunting and pellucid voice means you don't really notice the banality of his lyrics. The voice is so evocative that the words are irrelevant. And the band were stupendous. Antnony's patter slightly deflated the mood as he banged on about the superiority of the female - but it was hard not to like his shtick.

Vincent O'Brien

Vincent O'Brien died today - Ireland's greatest racehorse trainer and probably the greatest racehorse trainer in the history of the universe. He mopped up all the great National Hunt races (3 Gold Cups, 3 Champion Hurdles, and 3 Grand Nationals) before becoming Ireland's first great flat trainer - winning Derbies and Prix de L'Arcs. And he certainly was responsible for the replacement of the aristocracy by the meritocracy in that particular profession. But not before a bitter feud with the Irish Turf Club when he was banned on spurious grounds for over a year.

I first came across Vincent O'Brien unknowingly when I walked across the Curragh plains in 1953 with my mother to watch the Irish Derby. Chamier trained by O'Brien and ridden by Bill Rickaby finished second but was awarded the race on a disqualification. My mother put a shilling on for me at 8-1, thereby sowing the seeds of a lifelong interest in the horses. Being a sanctimonious little prig in those days I used my winnings to buy plaster statues on the Blessed Virgin and the Sacred Heart.

Nijinsky was his most famous horse although I always had a soft spot for the incomparable Golden Fleece and for the battling qualities of Sadler's Wells. O'Brien was a class act and he stood by the old rogue Lester Piggot when he had that spot of bother with the English revenue commissioners.

Colm Tóibín and Brooklyn

I first came across Tóibín in the early 80s when he was editor of Magill. You'd see him in places like the old Project Arts Centre, bearded like a patriarch and with a fine head of dark hair. His heart seemed generally in the right place - he was a critic of Haughey long before it became fashionable, for example. A position he retains with added vehemence today.

I remember one incident that gave me doubts about him. A friend of mine, back from the US, who used to be vaguely connected with the Irish arts scene was drinking with me in the Shelbourne bar one evening and he spotted Tóibín at the bar. Up he sprang, walked over and greeted him effusively. Tóibín blanked him - stared at him coldly and didn't respond. My friend repeated his greeting - again nothing. Just a cold stare. He rejoined me and we continued talking. As there were a few other people there I never got the chance to ask what might have caused such a creepy reaction.

In recent times I mainly encounter him reviewing or being reviewed in the NYRB or the LRB. Always great stuff. He did get a rap on the knuckles from the late great John Updike for inferring that Henry James was gay in his The Master - Updike chiding him for ascribing homosexuality to one who was merely asexual. Recently I heard him give an elegant and thoughtful speech at the Chester Beatty Library for the opening of the Graphic Studio's Artist's Proof exhibition. He praised the combination of craft and graft that is the printmaker's lot.

Impressed by this speech, I decided to lift my embargo on him, inspired by the Shelbourne incident, and read Brooklyn, his latest novel. I'm happy I did. It's a chamber piece without a false note. It charts the modest viscissitudes of a modest life. The scenes of small-town life in Fifties Ireland are beautifully observed and totally convincing. From our current free and easy perspective we are horrified by the conclusion - how the restrictions imposed by Church and convention limited the choices of his characters. Thank God we're out of that. Also, there's plenty of incidental fun to be had from the cast of characters (Mrs. Kehoe the landlady especially) and the period detail.

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

This was a real find - thanks Paddy. It's the story of the the ill-fated Essex, a whaling ship rammed by a sperm whale and sunk in the middle of the South Pacific in 1820. The crew were cast adrift in three small boats. A couple of them kept diaries so there is a wealth of visceral detail about what happened. It ended of course in cannibalism but we got all the stages before that with Philbrick showing an impressive knowledge of the pathology and psychology of starvation and dehydration.

While the story is gripping, the real beauty of this book is the wealth of incidental detail. Life on Nantucket at the height of the whaling boom is lovingly depicted with details of how the Quaker women amused themselves while the men were away on their lengthy voyages. We also told what butchering a whale at sea was like -a bloody inferno. The head was a particularly important source of oil and was lovingly tapped of its contents.

Melville went to sea subsequently with one of the survivors, and the story inspired him to write Moby Dick.

Forget Patrick O'Brian, read this.

Judgement on Sky

One disquieting aspect of the Quinlan affair is the way that the agenda was set by Sky Sports. I was at the match and saw nothing. Neither I expect did most people who watched on television until Sky started showing the incident repeatedly in slow motion. Cullen didn't complain after the match and neither did Leinster. However the amount of attention it got on Sky meant that a citing was inevitable. And so I expect is the suspension that will cost Quinlan his Lions place. Looking at the incident on YouTube I'd say that at best he can plead carelessness. He didn't gouge but he did grab Cullen roughly around the eye area - that'll be enough to condemn him.

The problem is that every rugby match contains many such incidents, some captured on TV, some not. Sky have it in their power to focus on one incident and ignore another - to suit the agenda of whoever controls these things. A smidgen of jingoism is enough to set such an agenda. And let's face it Sky are hardly famous for objectivity.

Bob Dylan at The O2

I was disappointed and bored for much of this show. But then what did I expect. I know his voice is shot, I know he famously does not engage with his audience.

The man is a gurning caricature of what was - wearing a wide-brimmed caballaro's hat and what looked like pyjamas. The voice can no longer handle the rolling grandeur of pieces like Desolation Row. The songs are broken into choppy segments and Dylan croaks out incoherent lyrics with random emphasis. It was as if he could only utter a few words at a time before running out of breath. He murdered Like a Rolling Stone and Blowing in the Wind and I only realised after the show that he'd performed Ballad of a Thin Man.

But the band were great and there were more than a few bright moments: Summer Days sounded like a rockabilly classic, Highway 61 Revisited was passable, and If You Ever Go to Houston accommodated his ruined voice better then the older work. The crowd in general seemed to like him and the new stadium is a huge improvement.

One notable flaw was the absence of big screens. Maybe this is part of Dylan's increasingly uncommunicative attitude at concerts. At the Leonard Cohen gig last summer you could see every expression on the great man's face no matter where you were sitting - and this added greatly to the atmosphere. Here Dylan lurked somewhere under his hat brim but his appearance and expressions were lost on most of the audience - half of whom he had his back too for most of the show anyway. And of course not a single word of greeting or thanks. Not that his fans care a whit. I can't help but see it as self-indulgent arrogance. And strange in one who talks to us on his radio programmes and confides to us in his Chronicles.

A Visit to IMMA

IMMA: what a wonderful resource for Dublin. One of the few things our Government got right. If you never go in to look at the art you can visit and enjoy the wonderful landscaped gardens - ideal for fractious children to burn off energy on those long weekends. We pay a visit to see the Hughie O'Donoghue show and to take in the Bank of Ireland bequest and the Seamus Heaney show, and we discover on the way in the added bonus of some Alexander Calder. Enrique Juncosa's reign has encompassed some preciousness and some political decisions but he's hit the spot with this lot.

With Le Brocquy atrophying and Blackshaw waning, it's clear that O'Donoghue is our pre-eminent living artist. And I suspect that history's jury will find in his favour also. He works on a scale that few Irish artists have attempted. Some of the pieces in this show are so big that IMMA cannot accommodate them sympathetically - there's one (An Anatomy of Melancholy IV) that's a whopping 10 feet by 20 feet. Like Shakespeare there's something for everyone in O'Donoghue. For those who feel insecure around abstraction there are the figurative elements - both painted and photographic: usually bodies, dead, adrift, or asleep. For the sniffers after the numinous, there's the big encounter a la Rothko and the emphasis on death and evanescence. For the artist and art buff there's the technique: the varnish, the matt, the layers of paint, the photographs encompassed, the newspapers painted over, the thematic coherence. There is an absolutely riveting video of the way he develops his work, the building up of layer upon layer, the going back and rejigging it, the use of photographs, the care and craft. It's a relentlessly elegiac show that will linger long in the mind's eye.

The Heaney show features a lot of prosaic art (Martin Gale's work is the exception) but some great manuscripts of Heaney's poems that make you want to go back and read more of the great man - one about a first encounter particularly struck me. The Bank of Ireland show is a disappointment, apart from a late Yeats' and an exquisite early William Scott of a young girl.

Irish Media Portraits

I have been subjected to these creatures on radio and TV over the past 20 years or so, and impressions have formed. If RTE figures predominate it's probably because that atrophied organ appears to assume that once it hires someone they cannot let them go no matter how rancid they have become. RTE observes no sell by date, so some of them had a fresh appeal that is long gone.

GERRY RYAN: Strictly for shop girls and taxi drivers. Mild scatology and bludgeon wit. His bloated self-regard a thing of wonder. Are his heaving bosoms the bellows of divinity?

EAMONN DUNPHY: Veers alarmingly between fawning uncritical unctuousness (Anne Madden interview) and ankle-biting spleen (Ronaldo, Sin Fein etc.).

JOHN WATERS: Beyond crankiness. The mute beside a ranting and deluded Christopher Hitchins (in a Gate debate on God) defined his true heft. His hair an objective correlative for his mind.

MARION FINUCANE: The heroine of Hume Street has become a cosy spokesperson for establishment Ireland with a strange undercurrent of antipathy towards the male of the species.

DAVID NORRIS: For God's sake David shut the fuck up. I admire your courage as Ireland's first unashamed homosexual (see Nell McCafferty) but you do go on a bit and you are the worst interviewer in the universe - but one of the best interviewees.

TRACY PIGGOT: Why? A seeming decent woman but with all the wit and charisma of a malt loaf. Surely her father's famous terseness should have been a clue.

NELL MCCAFFERTY: A clown for the media to patronise. Want a harsh-voiced lazy and predictable opinion on the North, Men, Women, or anything they can't find anyone else to talk about? Let's ask Nell. At least her erstwhile partner Nuala O'Faolain had the courage to admit she was a lesbian. For years Nell put up with the likes of Gay Byrne asking her when she was going to get married without reaching for the obvious rebuttal.

GAY BYRNE: Forgotten but not gone as the graffiti in RTE allegedly said. A nasty man gloating over the lengthy sentences drink drivers get - on some mid-afternoon show he has fetched up on. Who can forget his fawning interview with Margaret Thatcher when she was in Dublin her pushing her appalling autobiography? Or his less than gallant treatment of the unfortunate woman who had a child by his old buddy Bishop Casey.

Munster Mugged on Jones's Road

Went with the brother to watch Munster's lap of honour against Leinster in the Heineken Cup semi-final last Saturday. The portents were good. It was a beautiful sunny day and as we drove through town all the pubs we passed had their red armies in place. Yet I had a vague feeling of unease, Leinster's rearguard action against Harlequins showed a fortitude that had been missing in the past.

I had planned our route to embrace a trip to the Gravedigger's - cunningly hidden away in the heart of Glasnevin. It's an ideal staging post for Croke Park, away from the frenzy of the immediate environs but only a bracing 15 minute walk along the canal to Jones's Road. There were some of the more interpid Munster supporters around but there was plenty of parking and elbow room at the bar to quaff a couple of pints. The pub is a fine relic of bygone days and its only deviation from full-blown authenticity was the t-shirts for sale. A quibble.

And so to the match. There seemed to be more Munster than Leinster supporters initially but as the ground filled up it came close to balancing out. The organisers had laid on thousands of free flags for both sets of supporters - a nice touch that helped demonstrate the way the supporters were intermingled.

The match was a full on faction fight. At one stage there were four bodies stretched on the turf receiving attention and all through the referee seemed very lenient in allowing ministering medics come and go. The first significant incident was Contemponi going straight through O'Gara with malice aforethought. A statement of intent from Leinster. Rugby is all about motivation and intensity and it became clear very quickly that Leinster had it and Munster didn't. It showed in Elsom's ferocious marauding and it showed in the fearless tackling of D'Arcy and O'Driscoll in mid-field. It showed in the ferocity of their front five. Munster never got a chance to play - they were blown away. (Was that all-star pack minding itself for the Lions tour?) It was hard to feel too upset, the Leinster try scorers were the same guys we cheered on for Ireland a few weeks ago. And I have grown a bit weary of the Munster triumphalism that has been creeping in.

There is the sneaking feeling that this was Leinster's final. Can they build up to that level of intensity again? Or we will have to endure the roundheads of Leicster winning yet another Heineken Cup.