joedonnellan.com

Schillaci

Subscribe to the audio blog on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0w9MmdCaV9ymALlnnre6oC] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJsp2pj21BWrth9g9e3noV7qNQ6hmZRp] | Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joedonnellan-com/id1799350141] Seamus sat at the table, leaning forward, cereal box in one hand and his spoon moving methodically from his bowl of Corn Flakes to his constantly accepting gob. He was ferociously consuming the ingredients that were printed on the back of the box, ingredients he had probably read half a hundred times now. He finished the cereal, drank the remnants of milk in the bowl, and excused himself from the kitchen table with a loud burp.  His mother swooped in behind him to clear the table as he made his way to the bathroom to do the needful. As he sat astride the toilet, he picked up the toilet paper package and read every inch of that. Down the hall, he could hear the back door open because he hadn’t bothered closing the bathroom door. His father was back from the shop! He gave a hurried wipe and flushed the toilet. His hands passed the sniff test and he ran down to the kitchen. “Where is it? Where is it?” “Here, I got a shite one for you and a good one for me. If I catch you so much as glimpsin’ at Page 3, I’ll burn the fuckin’ thing.” His father handed him the folded Sun newspaper. While Seamus was definitely going to sneak a look at the tits on Page 3 later, that’s not why he wanted the paper. Today was the day, the Quarter Final. Not only were Ireland in the World Cup, but they were in the knockout stage for the first time – and they were playing the hosts. There hadn’t been a bigger sporting event in Ireland in his lifetime, probably ever. He rifled through the back pages, reading every column inch he could find about the World Cup, the match today, what the experts thought, what the regular person on the street thought, how many people were still making their way to Rome for the match even as late as yesterday, the convoys of cars all dressed up in green, how the Irish fans were beloved by all other fans at the World Cup. The entire thing was magic to Seamus, absolute magic.  The flags and bunting and painted cars all about town were something he had never seen before. It was similar to when Galway were in the All-Ireland a few years before but on a different scale and all over the country. “… and I’ll be back late tonight. The old lady out in the dirty paddock might go tonight so keep an eye on her.” His father was talking to him now. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are you goin’?” “There’s an auction up North, I might buy a blast of heifers if they’re half decent.” “Alright, sound.” “Make sure you get the cows milked in good time.” “That won’t be a problem.” “Make sure you keep an eye on the aul wan.” “Mam or Granny?” “The fuckin’ cow in the dirty paddock.” “Sound, good luck.” “Will ya shake a couple of bags of manure in the cliff field, too?” “I will, yeah.” Seamus went back to reading the paper but had exhausted the sport section so scoured the rest of the paper for more articles. It was front and back page news. Thirty extra flights had left Dublin the previous day. There were now reports of 20,000 Irish fans in Rome. Cinemas were closing. The buses in Dublin were stopping for the few hours around the match. The match was all anyone could talk about – except for his father, who was only interested in the farm. Heifers, grass, milk, land.  His grandfather would have been vying to go up north today too, right up until a few short months ago when he finally took to the bed. Even then, he continued to give his opinion on every single matter up until the very end. During his last couple of weeks, Seamus was the only one who could understand any of his rambling utterances during his more lucid moments and became his de facto translator.  This bothered Seamus as he didn’t hold too much love for Auld Mick. Christ, his own father was an old man when Seamus was born, a few days shy of his 57th birthday. Auld Mick had been nearly 30 years older again and had lived a few months past his 100th birthday, long enough to get his letter from the President that sat proudly on the mantelpiece.  Proudly for most of the family, at least. His grandfather didn’t like President Hillery because “he’s a sex pest and he’s too close to the Brits.” Seamus was admittedly a political novice but didn’t see any evidence to support either of these accusations. He did think that there was a distinct possibility that Auld Mick had died at the thought of a woman being the next President of Ireland, which was starting to look like a real possibility. Seamus didn’t know much about his grandfather but didn’t really care to know. The fact that he spent probably 90 years of his life farming did give him some room for sympathy at times. 90 years! That was two full careers, and to dedicate them both to the abject misery of farming was unthinkable to Seamus. No wonder he was such a miserable old bastard. Seamus knew as the only son, only child, that the farm was coming to him whether he liked it or not. He did like it well enough but not full time. No, he would be a teacher and keep a few beef cattle that he could take care of on weekends. The milking parlour was both an escape and a prison in equal measure but farm life was never not lonely. He didn’t want to be lonely. Seamus rustled the paper in his hand in an attempt to remove himself from inside his own head. He opened it to Page 3 and exhaled sharply. They were nice. He could hear the telly in the kitchen. His mother was obviously engrossed in some shite. He jumped up off the couch and headed for the bathroom, newspaper in hand. ************************ Seamus threw a third bucket of water on the aisle and ran it over with the brush again, making sure it was spotless. For a milking parlour that had seen 37 shits this evening, it was in surprisingly good shape. The cows could often sense a bit of added excitement or a change in schedule, and that caused them to shit a lot more often in the parlour.  Seamus didn’t care. It was half six now and he was done with the milking, about an hour earlier than usual. He turned off the machine and ran out the door of the dairy and jumped on his bike to cycle back to the house. The tractor was parked in the front yard, manure spreader on the back from when he had shook a couple of bags of nitrogen earlier.  A quick wash in the sink now and he’d cycle into the village for the match. You couldn’t be watching this one alone or worse, with just your mother. Seamus was picking the team in his head when he passed the dirty paddock and squeezed the brakes hard.  This silly bitch.  He glanced at his watch and looked on up the field. The old cow was a good hundred yards away. She looked fine from here. Her pins probably weren’t down, there was no visible slime around her tail, she was standing up eating grass. She was ready to go to be sure but she wasn’t going to calf between now and the end of the match. She probably knew how big a night it was.  Seamus washed up in the sink, scrubbing his hands four or five times with the nail brush to try to get the smell of the ingrained cow shite out of the ridges in his hands. He soaped up his armpits and, after quick consideration, his balls too. He didn’t know what girls might be at the pub and he didn’t expect this to be the night of his first handjob, but you can never be too prepared.  He brushed his teeth, shouted bye to his mam, and jumped on his bike. The village was just a short cycle away and he made it there shortly after 7 o’clock, leaving his bike around the back of the pub. No one was going to steal it because everyone knew everyone and, if he saw some prick cycling around a shit covered BMX in the next few days he’d know whose it was.  The pub was already jammed but shockingly quiet. The telly in the corner was turned up full blast but was so small, only the ten or so people around it were able to see what was happening. Father Hoop was tinkering with a projector over by the far wall and seemed to be having some success.  Mass would usually be at 8 o’clock on a Saturday evening but even the Catholic Church had sense enough to move it to 6 o’clock so people could be home or in the pub on time to watch the build up. Seamus saw his friends in the corner had saved him a tiny stool so he headed over there and was soon deep in conversation about tactics, how they were going to keep this new fella Schillaci quiet tonight, and other such talking points he had read in the paper. By the time the teams entered the stadium, the projector was beaming a perfect image on the back wall of the pub, and the telly had been hooked up to a couple of speakers that were booming sound, both inside and out. The crowd was substantial enough that there was an overflow outside and some of the late comers would need to be content with hearing the commentary and catching the odd glimpse through the door. The Irish national anthem was sung with gusto in the pub and the first half hour of the match went by in a flash. Devastation reigned when Schillaci hit the back of the net to put the Italians one-nil up and all of a sudden it was half time. There was great belief around the pub that Ireland could still pull off a surprise goal. “Is Mick the Ram not with you, Seamie?” Seamus recognized Jaws, their milkman. He didn’t know his real name but thought it was something fairly generic like Mark Kelly. Jaws was better. “He’s off up North looking at springing heifers. You’ll see him in the mornin’.” “Typical Mick the Ram,” Jaws chuckled. “You can tell him I’ll be a couple of hours late in the morning,” and he held up the three pints he was carrying by way of explanation. The second half wore on and it felt at times like Ireland could pull off the unthinkable but with each wasted chance it felt more and more unlikely. When the referee blew the whistle to end the match, the pub was like a morgue. Seamus’ friends were talking about trying to get a bottle of something and go drinking behind the church but he was too deflated to join in.  He said he needed to go home and check on a cow and that he might be back but he had no intention of returning. He exited the pub into what was still a perfectly bright evening, even though it was after 10 o’clock now. The sun was getting low in the sky and it would be dark in the next hour. When he got home, there was no car outside the door so he figured he better check the cow once more before his father came home. He wasn’t ready for bed yet anyway. He cycled down as far as the dirty paddock and could see the cow was sitting down near the tree line at the far end of the field. Just my luck, he thought, the bitch is calving. He didn’t know what it was about that spot but there was usually a good chance if they were sitting over there that they were in active labour.  Seamus hopped the gate and closed the distance between him and the cow, all the while trying to gauge how far along she was in the process. He couldn’t see any crubeens protruding from her arse but she did seem to be actively pushing. He knew nothing actually came out of the arse in this situation, it was just too weird to talk about a cow’s vagina so they always talked about anything in that area as the arse.  She was definitely trying to get this calf out but the lack of any sign of hooves was worrying. Seamus pulled up his sleeve past his elbow and knelt in behind the cow. The family did not name their cows which Seamus was glad for, but it would also be useful at times like this to have something to say as he was about to get very intimate with the anatomy of this particular bovine.  He pressed his five fingers together and pushed his fist inside the cow as far as the wrist. There he was met with a little resistance and probed with his fingers to understand better what the situation was. These were no crubeens and that was not a good sign. He felt a nose and the rest of the head as he ventured a little further in.  The sun was descending now and it was getting chilly. The inside of the cow was always so warm that there was a shock when his hand came out and the warm slimy goop met the cold air and started to crust up. Seamus looked back towards the house. Still no car. This cow was in trouble and he had no idea how long she had been like this.  She was fine when he was leaving for the match but his father wasn’t going to see it that way. He wasn’t known as Mick the Ram for no reason. They didn’t even have any sheep on the farm. At least Jimmy Bull down the road did breed and sell bulls.  His father was just hard headed. He was going to assume Seamus neglected to check on this cow and that was why she was in difficulty.  He traipsed back to the dairy for a bucket of warm water, Fairy liquid, the calving ropes, and overalls so that he wouldn’t ruin his good clothes. He would come back for the calving jack if he needed it later. Back at the tree line, he decided it was going to be necessary soon anyway and shed all clothing from the top half of his body. He squirted Fairy liquid on his right arm up to his elbow and threw a handful of water on it. The lubrication would make things easier for all present.  His fist entered the cow again and began to search. The head was definitely in the right position and wasn’t upside down or anything out of the ordinary. The only problem – and it was a big one – is that the crubeens didn’t precede it. When a cow is calving, the front feet come first with the head resting on top of that. Once the head is fully out, the rest of the calf usually follows very easily. Seamus had dealt with big calves, with cows that just weren’t ready or able, calves coming slightly sideways, and he’d been present for a couple coming backwards, but always needed help with those ones. This was a new one to him.  He felt around the entirety of the head. It was hard to tell but felt a little swollen to him. Venturing off to the right side, he finally felt something. That was surely a crubeen. He felt the little points of a hoof and continued up along to what he was certain was a leg. The whole thing was at an odd angle to the side of the head and pointing outward. He delved deeper, all the way to his elbow now and this didn’t seem that bad.  He grabbed hold of the leg, pushing the calf back inside its mother a little to free the hoof from where it was pushing up against the cows hip and then pulled the entire leg in under the calf’s head. It didn’t line up perfectly but he knew it would once he found the other leg.  He pulled his arm back out from inside the cow and the cold air hit it all at once. He washed his arm with the now lukewarm water which wasn’t much better but got rid of the crustiness. Lubing up his arm again, he guided it back inside the cow who seemed thoroughly unperturbed at this point.  This time Seamus went searching along the left flank, assuming he would find a crubeen stuck in a similar position to what he just had. There was nothing there. He pulled back out to the forearm, finding the nose again and tracing along the calf’s head. He followed the neck down along the left side and to the shoulder. Things felt very wrong here and he drove his arm further now. He was inside this cow up to his shoulder with his head resting on her and he was mapping out the ultrasound in his own head.  The calf’s left leg was folded in underneath its body. Seamus had never dealt with this before, with his father or without. With just one hoof accessible, he could try and pull but he suspected that, if he was able to get the calf out, it would almost certainly break her shoulder or damage the cow somehow. The calf was small enough that she was almost certainly a heifer so getting her out alive and unscathed was a priority. She was worth a lot more money than a bull. He looked back at the house. Still no car. Why the fuck had he rushed off to the match without properly checking on the cow. If he had done what he was told, this wouldn’t be happening.  But it was happening. Right now. Should he call the vet? That was going to cost money and he was afraid to make that call and he didn’t know the number and what an awful night to call him into work anyway. No, this was happening now and he needed to make it work. He had seen his father twist and bend a calf to his will inside its mother before. There was no reason he couldn’t do that right now.  Seamus took his arm out and lubed up both arms with the now cold water. This was going to be a struggle. This time he went in with both hands. The cow’s passage was loose and accepting at this point as she was fully ready and expecting to push a calf out.  Using his right hand, Seamus tried to push the calf back into the womb while at the same time he went in all the way deep to the calf’s right leg and tried to find enough space to bring the leg forward.  It was a long leg.  The womb was finite and this was not advantageous to bending the leg how he needed. The further he pushed the calf back into the womb, the more room he had to play with but the womb was simply not big enough for what he was looking to do.   The leg was jammed and Seamus needed to pull it towards him another few inches before it would be free again. Those inches were simply not there. He did everything he could, pushing the calf up towards the top of the womb to try to give a little more room to move the leg, pushing the calf back as far as possible into the womb. Nothing was working and he found himself getting more impatient.   He began to exert more force now, and found there was a little more give. He wrapped his fist around the hoof and gave one last pull and the hoof came all the way with him.  He had done it, he’d freed the leg and the calf was now in the correct position.  Seamus pulled both arms out of the cow to take a well earned breather. His muscles ached and his forehead was beaded in sweat that was sticking to his head against the chill of the night.  When we retracted his second arm, it was accompanied by a significant amount of blood. Not uncommon with dealing with the birth of a calf but an uncommon amount and it seemed to be pure blood. No mix of mucus or fluids or shit, just straight blood. This was not good. He needed to get this calf out immediately. He took the ropes from the bucket and made a large loop in each, slipping them onto the calf’s front legs which were still inside the cow at this point. The ropes extended to the outside and he pulled until they were taut. The calf started to slide a little towards the opening. The cow had obviously been dealing with two muscly arms of a 14 year old somewhere between elbow and shoulder deep for the last 30 minutes so she was very much ready to pass a calf through her opening.  She was breathing heavily. Seamus relaxed a little on the ropes and waited for her to push, but her breathing was becoming a little more ragged and there was no push forthcoming. He pulled the ropes taut again and waited for any sign of effort from the cow. He pulled with all the strength he had left in him for the next four seconds that felt like an eternity and the calf’s nose and most of its head were now touching the fresh night air. He relaxed, letting the cow also relax and the calf slipped a little back inside.  Nobody got much of a break as he pulled again, this was the toughest of all pulls as the widest part of the calf’s head needed to slide out next. Seamus pulled steadily but firmly, all the while judging whether this was the time it would happen or not. It was and the head slipped out relatively easily. Another 10 seconds of breathing before Seamus pulled tight on the ropes again and the entirety of the calf’s body slipped out as easily as a windy fart.  The cow took in some sharp breaths but Seamus couldn’t relax. He moved to get the calf’s hind legs out from inside its mother, while ensuring the umbilical cord was still intact. There was a lot of blood coming from the cow and Seamus couldn’t tell if it was all part of the birthing process or if there was something wrong. He couldn’t worry about it now. The calf was his priority. With the calf’s head in his lap, he started to shake it to loosen the mucus from its mouth. It didn’t appear to be breathing yet so he stuck his baby finger up her nose to try to force that first breath. Nothing was working so he took the calf by the front legs and dragged her around her mother, breaking the umbilical cord in the process, and presenting the calf to the mother who would hopefully lick her to life.  Seamus took a couple of steps back, breathing heavily as he wiped his bloody hands on his overalls. He looked up to see if it was working. Not only was the calf still laying motionless but so too was the cow, her head resting on one side in the dried mud and her visible eye wide open looking up to the starry sky above.  Seamus slapped her face.  Nothing.  She was dead.  He started to cry which quickly morphed into an open sob. Desperate now, he moved back to the calf and tried frantically to save her life.  “Come on, you bitch. Breathe. FUCKING BREATHE!” When a finger in the nose still didn’t work, he took her by the hind legs, lifting her high into the air and swinging her back and forth. This is how his father found him. Mick the Ram wordlessly took the calf’s hind legs and pushed his son forcefully out of the way with his own body. He lay the calf down on the ground and moved to inspect the cow, first her head and then her hind quarters. “What the fuck happened here?” he finally asked gruffly, as Seamus sat in a ball sobbing his eyes out. He couldn’t answer, only cry harder. “Hey,” his father asked sharply, “what did you do?” Seamus tried to compose himself through the tears and told his father everything. He told him how he checked her after the milking and she was fine and how he went to the pub to watch the match and how he checked her straight away when he came back and he’d only been gone two hours but he’d obviously fucked up because the calf was coming wrong and he wanted to fix his fuck up and he managed to fuck everything to the point where it now – beyond fucked. His father listened in silence save for his heavy, measured breathing that was barely masking the anger inside the man at that moment. Seamus fully expected that he was going to hit him. He probably deserved it. It was madness going to watch the match when there was a cow due to calf. They didn’t even have a chance of winning. He deserved whatever he got here, on top of the guilt of killing a cow and her unborn calf. When Seamus finished his story, the heavy breathing continued for what felt like several minutes before he heard movement. He braced himself but instead his father knelt beside him and removed the ropes from the calf’s leg and threw them in the bucket of water.  “C’mon,” he beckoned. “They’re already dead, there’s not much more we can do here tonight.” ************************ Half an hour later, Seamus had showered and changed and was sitting on his bed, alternating between crying and berating himself for how stupid he had been. The door to his room creaked open and he could see his father’s lanky silhouette in the light from the hallway. It struck him how tall his father looked now, like a stick figure he would have drawn at the kitchen table while he was still in National School. Seamus, who was just coming to the end of a cycle of crying, dabbed at his stinging red eyes with his damp sleeve. “That calf was dead before you even finished the milkin’, I reckon. You had no chance of savin’ it.” Seamus sniffed and steadied his breathing. “I still killed the cow though.” Mick the Ram moved softly into the room and sat at the end of his bed. “That’s true alright, you did kill the cow, but she was old and should never have been in calf in the first place. If Lynch’s bull hadn’t got at her, she’d have been fattened up and on her way to the factory around now. If anything, I should go and murder Lynch’s bull in retribution.” Seamus let out a laugh then, one of those really ugly ones when you’ve been crying where his face became subsumed by a ball of mucus and caused him to laugh even more. His father cracked a smile. “It could be worse, I suppose,” said Seamus, for the sake of something to say. “It couldn’t really,” countered his father, himself almost laughing now. “A dead cow and a dead heifer calf is about as bad as it can get in this scenario. Tomorrow morning, Jaws will pick up the milk, we’re going to have to bring the tractor up the dirty paddock and drive them down to the gate and write a big check to Burnhouse to take them away.” Seamus had composed himself enough to be able to look his father in the eyes now, albeit with body language that reeked of shame and guilt. “Do you think I’ve ever done anything like this?” “I doubt it,” the guilt already beginning to rise up again in Seamus, his eyes welling up unbidden. “Cold winter morning and there’d been a right, dirty frost the night before. One of the heifers had sat herself at the base of the dung heap. I went to check on them in the morning and she was calving but she was frozen solid to the dung heap.” His father stopped long enough to suck his teeth. He was clearly starting to relive the memory. “She had a big bastard of a calf in there and she was already weak from pushing and under serious stress from trying to free herself from the dung heap. There was no way she could push this calf but I’d be fucked if I didn’t try anyway. I forced him out as fast as I could. Tore her half to pieces. The calf came out dead and the heifer never recovered when we did get her unstuck. She died a week later.” “That… that doesn’t sound like it was your fault?” “It was or it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter now. What age do you think I was when that happened?” “I’m sure you’re going to say you were fourteen, just like I am now?” “I was 47 years old. That was the first calf I’d ever pulled on my own.” They both sat with that for what felt like several minutes until Mick spoke again. “There was no good outcome here, a mhacin. We’d have needed to get the vet to get the calf out. C-sections are expensive and hard on the cow, especially an old one like her, she might not have survived it – and we’d still likely have no calf to show for it at the end. Once the Burnhouse lorry rolls up the road tomorrow with them in the back, we’re going to take a breath and forget about this one.” Seamus nodded, trying his best not to set off the waterworks again. Minutes passed in silence. “Why do they call you Mick the Ram?” “Because I’m a thick cunt,” his father smiled, without moving his mouth. Seamus laughed. “How was the auction?” “Never mind that, what about that bollocks Schillaci?” The post Schillaci [https://joedonnellan.com/2025/03/26/schillaci/] appeared first on https://joedonnellan.com.

The Rat Bastard

Subscribe to the audio blog on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0w9MmdCaV9ymALlnnre6oC] I glared down at my empty piece of paper. Maybe empty was the wrong word. Quiet, it was a quiet piece of paper, as quiet as the room in which I now sat. The mood, the humor, the sense of any frivolity had been sucked clean out of the room.  The man at the top of the classroom saw to that with his posh, put-on accent and the way he pursed his lips to somehow prove to this room of veritable children that he was better than them. Not just significantly older, but superior in every way. It didn’t matter that he spent his weekends scouring his local golf course for balls that other people lost. He saw nothing improper with bringing hundreds of these balls to the school on days that the other teacher was out. It was just good business for him to have students spend the day washing his balls so he could sell them second hand on whatever black market existed for beat up golf balls in rural Ireland in the 90s. Students washing golf balls. Student. Always one specific student. His stupid fucking glasses hung limply around his wrinkly neck. My back was to him but I could tell from the sounds and subtle movements behind me. He was moving his false teeth around in his mouth. The sound was unmistakable, a mix of saliva and pure, unbridled loathing for the children who sat in front of him.  He was cutting his apple now. I could hear the knife slice through what sounded like a particularly juicy one today and could visualize the apple now balanced on the knife moving methodically towards his mouth. Next would come the chewing, made ever more gruesome by the false teeth. I didn’t know much about false teeth at the time but I knew that they shouldn’t move around inside the mouth so much. I dry heaved but didn’t dare show any movement in my body lest I be called upon in front of the class. I set to the task of drawing something that would knock this man’s socks off, forgetting for a second that it was an impossible task and that for this one hour every Monday, I was the worst student in the class.  With significantly lowered expectations, I set to work. How hard are horses to draw? Could I draw a nice horse? Maybe, let’s give it a go. Fuck.  That doesn’t look like a horse at all. Maybe a Connemara Pony or a malnourished donkey. Does it look like it might be a little like a dog?  Okay, it’s a dog now.  Let’s get a sun up in the corner and a line of trees to show that this dog is in a field and we can pretty much call it a day. I spent the next few minutes tinkering around the edges in case any sudden inspiration or artistic talent might strike out of the blue and cause this to look more impressive. It’s not bad for a seven year old, I thought to my seven year old self because I was, in fact, seven years old.  “Eau-kae, let us behold your creations,” he finally said, his voice dripping with a level of cuntiness that put the heart crossways in most of the children in the room but none more so than the one he was about to call on. “Young Joseph,” the glasses were on his face now, balancing impossibly on the tip of that nose he so smugly looked down on everyone with. He extended his arm slightly and produced a curly index finger for added effect and summoned me to the desk. I knew my horse-cum-dog wasn’t going to be a hit but I hoped that he would go easy on me. I was Young Joseph because there was an older Joseph who already resided in the classroom five days a week. Since I was just a visitor on Monday afternoons while the girls set about learning how to knit in the other room, I was resigned to junior status. I was pretty sure the man himself was also Joe so you would think there would be some semblance of brotherhood between us all. Why was there so many fucking Joes in such a small school? He was studying the drawing now, his face fully pointing down but the glasses somehow held fast on the end of his nose. Were they glued on? I was getting very nervous at the silent judgement and knew the dog did not please him. I chanced a look up at the rest of the room. All of the other boys were sat up straight, elbows on the table and one hand rested flatly on top of the other. If they weren’t sitting like that, they could expect a glower from the top table and to see the false teeth move around in the mouth until they got the message.  Finally he took the glasses off and looked at me smiling. It was not a kind smile.   “And what, prey tell, is this craythur supposed to be?” he asked a question with no right answer. I might as well have said it was a koala bear standing in front of a eucalyptus farm for all the good it would have done me. “A d-d-dog. It’s a dog in a field, sir.” “A d-d-dog? It doesn’t look very much like a dog, does it, Young Joseph?”  He held my drawing up to the class. Somewhere behind me, the court jester held up a sign with ‘polite laughter’ scrawled on it. The room duly obliged. I turned red although I’m sure I probably already was. “It is my belief that you were trying to draw a rat. Were you trying to draw a rat, Young Joseph?” He paused for just a second before adding a “Hmmh?” for emphasis.  Did he expect me to answer that? I suspected not until I got a second, more condescending “Hmmh?”   “I don’t know, sir,” I muttered to the floor, shame engulfing all my senses now as the chorus of obedient laughter continued from the floor. “My assumption… is that you were trying to draw a rat and you ran out of time. Here let me help you.”  He elongated the tail of my dog and added some comic-villain-like whiskers. It was a shit rat but might have been less shit than my dog. He held up the doctored drawing and asked the room what they thought of Young Joseph’s rat to which the laughter continued.  The laughter was empty. The eyes in the faces that held the mouths that were doing the laughing were empty.  Only one person in the room was enjoying this. The whole ordeal lasted probably not much longer than half a minute but was filled with enough shame to damage future generations as he handed me back my bastardized rat and I traipsed back the impossibly long seven steps to my desk. I couldn’t wait for this day to be over.  He picked a couple of people who could actually draw next to showcase their pictures. They received limited praise and the afternoon wore on. He probably told one of his “Here’s how I was a total cunt in real life recently but I think I am the hero,” stories to which he expected a standing ovation. He had a captive audience afterall.  I was counting down the minutes to three o’clock. However much of a complete prick he was, he never liked to stay a minute past three.  At ten to three, I heard the two worst words I could possibly hear at that time. “Young Joseph…” a pause so pregnant I could almost hear the nurse telling it to push. “You may put my milk bottle in my briefcase.”  He wore the very same shit eating grin on his face that suggested this was not going to be a good time for me either.  He gestured towards his bag which sat flaccidly on the floor beside his desk, old beaten leather that was once brown, sporting a lock that locked like it was probably older than the man himself. From the glorified bag that he liked to call a briefcase hung a sad length of twine with a piece of plastic tied to the end of it. The lock was closed and the piece of plastic was obviously the key. I walked whatever-the-opposite-is-of-confidently past his desk, gathering up his empty milk bottle as I passed. I didn’t even have time to wonder why a grown man brings a bottle of milk with him to drink every day or how warm it likely was by the time he did actually drink it, considering the distinct lack of a fridge in the school. I was concentrating on the task at hand. I put the milk bottle on the floor, took the piece of plastic in one hand and shoved it roughly into the keyhole of the lock. A normal person in a typical situation would have expected the lock to give, and the briefcase to open. I knew not what to expect but I knew not to expect that. Nothing happened and nothing gave way.  The man was saying something to the rest of the class. As I continued to fumble with the lock, every so often trying to open it with all the sheer brute force a seven year old can muster, I could hear his voice turning in my direction.  I could hear the smile widen on his lips and I could feel the eyes of the room on me. I knocked over the milk bottle and it clambered onto the small, inexplicably tiled area beside where I was. I fumbled to pick it up, causing a bigger ruckus and set about continuing my task that lasted a full 8 minutes. At this point, he announced that I had failed to open his briefcase and asked for one of the older boys to volunteer to show me how it is done. One of them did so with great aplomb and a level of grace that suggested he had been me before. He returned to his seat as I put the milk bottle safely into the briefcase.  I looked the man in the eyes, questioning without words if I should now close the briefcase again. He gave an imperceptible nod and I obliged. The room was quiet enough that we all heard the lock click together. A perfectly, crisp click and one that signified more than just the shitty bag closing. It was the closing bell of my ordeal.  “Young Joseph… my apple knife.” His hand was already outstretched. He had waited until I had locked the bag again because he hadn’t seen me fail enough yet.  He was holding the knife by the blade, handle facing towards me, and wearing that gruesome duck face he made when he was really enjoying torturing a child. I crossed the distance between us in two quick steps, grabbed the small, wooden handle forcefully so that it sliced the palm of his hand, and before he had a chance to fully survey the damage, I drove the knife deep into his neck and through the back of his throat. The blood spurted violently, spraying his desk and knocking the core of his rapidly decaying apple off its axis. The boy who opened the bag in the front row had his glasses covered and older Joseph fell backwards off his chair trying to escape the cartoonish squirts.  I plunged the knife deeper still and looked in his eyes as I twisted ever so slowly before pulling it back out of his mangled neck. He had lost so much blood so quickly that he couldn’t fight back and pathetically clawed at my blood soaked hands as he gargled on a gallon of his own blood. It was filling up his lungs now and covered his chair before draining onto the carpet below. I didn’t know the human body could contain so much blood. As quickly as it started, the gargling subsided and his lifeless body slumped back into the chair, no more hatred left to spew, no more shame left to impart on his innocent audience. I dropped the knife into the pool of blood at my feet and looked back to the room of the other schoolboys who had been enduring this for years like me. They were all on their feet, and a slow-clap began to reverberate around the room before descending into raucous cheering and wild applause. I took a moment to smile to myself and drink in the adulation. “Young Joseph. My knife,” he repeated. “It is three o’clock.”  I blinked and looked at him, stood up and took the knife by the faded, wooden handle. I turned to the briefcase and found enough of an opening on one side to be able to slide the knife in without having to attempt to open the lock. I returned to my own desk and started packing my bag.  Small victories, I thought as I began to conceptualize a plan to shit my pants in the car on the way to school next Monday morning so that my mother would have no choice but to keep me home and I could avoid this. The post The Rat Bastard [https://joedonnellan.com/2025/03/11/the-rat-bastard/] appeared first on https://joedonnellan.com.

Audio Blog | Intro

Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0w9MmdCaV9ymALlnnre6oC] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJsp2pj21BWrth9g9e3noV7qNQ6hmZRp] Hello, my name is Joe Donnellan, and welcome to the introductory episode of my audio blog. I actually invented the concept of an audio blog just last week but then I Googled it and realized I was not the first. Think of this as a mini podcast but without any banter whatsoever.  Each episode, I will read a blog post that I have written any time from 2011 when I made the move from Ireland to the US. Many have yet to be written but I do have a stable of more than 30 to draw from at present.  WordPress suggests most of my blog posts can be read in anywhere between 3 and 9 minutes. At the speed I read, I reckon I can easily add 25% to those times.  These audio blogs are suitable for the blind, illiterate, those who enjoy a characterless monotone failing at enthusiasm, or just those looking for something to listen to in the car.  Today, I am going to read my About page. Then, believe it or not, I read my About page [https://joedonnellan.com/about/]. Thank you for listening. I make no promises on a release schedule. That way I don’t need to issue an apology to the internet at large every time I miss the deadline.  Thanks very much, Bye-ba-bye-bye-bye. Bye. The post Audio Blog | Intro [https://joedonnellan.com/2025/02/28/audio-blog-intro/] appeared first on https://joedonnellan.com.

I Ran Away From Home

Subscribe to the audio blog on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0w9MmdCaV9ymALlnnre6oC] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJsp2pj21BWrth9g9e3noV7qNQ6hmZRp] | Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joedonnellan-com/id1799350141] I was the rural 90s Ireland version of Michael Bluth when I was a child. I never uttered his famous words “I’m done with this family,” but during my childhood, I walked out of the homestead with no intention of returning more times than I care to remember. Kids can be cruel to each other but sibling cruelty transcends to another level. My two older siblings were both born in Spring but I was born in Autumn. I kicked with my left foot. I had an outie belly button. When the fourth and fifth children arrived and conformed closer to the first two, the case for me being adopted began to grow legs. I often threatened to run away, and sometimes I went through with it. This usually entailed walking to the head of the road, by which point the fresh country air and the endless angry mutterings under my breath had cooled me off sufficiently. I’d return to the house ready for a full round of apologies and some special treatment. Mostly no one even realized I was gone. When I was roughly eight years old, I decided it was time to leave and never come back. If they were going to keep accusing me of being adopted, I was going to adopt a policy of getting the fuck out of there. I’d run away for a few days, weeks at most, before they’d be begging for me to come back, complete with my left foot and outie belly button. I planned out in my head where I was going to go. It had to be our own land and it had to be far away. It couldn’t be Noone’s because that bordered three other neighbour’s lands and they might spot me. I also didn’t have a line of sight to the house or farm from there, so I settled on the New Line field instead. That was also much closer to school so it would be a handy walk since I didn’t yet possess a car when I was eight. There were more than enough nuts and berries growing on the hedge down at the New Line for me to survive on. During the few days of the month that the cows were there or my father was spreading fertilizer or fencing, I had the genius idea of hiding on Billy Warde’s side of the hedge. My biggest issue was going to be the rain, but I figured the trees would shelter me pretty well. Note to self: why don’t people just live under trees? I took off on Saturday evening. I had strongly considered breaking the handle off the brush and tying a little polka-dot handkerchief to the end of it where I would store all of my worldly possessions. I watched a lot of TV with hobo cartoon characters when I was a child. The first step in my daring escape was getting across our little front garden. Later that year, we would convert it into a football pitch but now it was a mess of mounds of dirt, swamp water, thistles, nettles and dock leaves. If I knew anything about warfare at the time, it would probably have resembled an abandoned battlefield for really tiny people. Getting from the back door of the house across no-mans-land and out the gate behind the wall was where my plan would live or die. If I couldn’t cross it, I was doomed to spend eternity in that house. I took off under an imagined hail of enemy fire, careful to avoid the minefield of ankle-breaking craters that were in the way of freedom. My heart raced as I imagined being spotted by someone in the house and my escape ending prematurely. In reality, my mother was probably washing dishes while looking out the dish-washing window and saw the entire thing without giving it much thought. I did this exact thing all the time when going down to the yard or to my granny’s house. In my recollection, I did this incredible dive through the bars of the rusty gate that hung listlessly from the pillar at the end of the battlefield. This maneuver likely ended in a sick barrel-roll that somehow took me 90 degrees to the left and in behind the wall, avoiding all cow shit and nettles that usually littered this area. I army-crawled along the base of the wall to the corner. The top of the wall here had been knocked by an overzealous cow who thought herself a horse. It was about eight inches shorter than the rest of the wall – just high enough for me to be able to see over. It also happened to be right beside our bothareen. Fun fact, that word – bothareen – essentially means a small road, “bothar” meaning road and “-een” meaning small. The word bothar is actually two words, “bo” meaning cow and “thar” meaning way – so bothareen actually means the “small way of the cow”. Most old roads in Ireland follow old cow paths. I was in the corner with the shortened wall, peeking over to see if my escape had gone totally unnoticed or if the police had already been notified. The 90 seconds I’d been gone already felt like an entire childhood and I was a little disappointed they weren’t already conducting a search of the premises, using the sniffer dogs that I assumed all rural Ireland police forces possessed. After a good 30 or 40 seconds of spying on my own house from 50 yards away, my father approached unseen by my scouting party. He nonchalantly asked what I was doing, with his elbows resting on the top of the wall. “I’m running away from home,” I told him, my plan of absolute secrecy abruptly tossed out the window. “The rest of them are being mean to me and keep saying I’m adopted. I’m going to live on the New Line*.” My father looked at me with a mix of admiration and second-hand embarrassment.  I saw only the admiration.  I told him all about the berries and nuts that were growing fat and juicy in a field in Cooloo, and asked if he would wash and replenish my clothing supply from time to time. He very nobly agreed to help me out in any way he could without exposing our secret. With that particular worry crossed off my list and a new ally firmly in my back pocket, I was ready for the next phase of my plan – getting more than 50 yards away from the house. * The New Line is so called because it was a long, mostly straight new road connecting two other roads. It always bothered me that there was a slight bend in the middle of it but I am told that’s perfectly normal. Now that I had let the proverbial cat out of the bag and handed the furry little bastard right over to my father, the rest of the journey was somewhat uneventful. I walked the fields I had walked a hundred times already and crossed the New Line into my new home. I set myself up nicely on the hedge as the first pangs of hunger aggressively announced themselves.  I had now been a fugitive for closing in on 45 minutes.  I considered climbing up to the lowest branch on the tree that was to be my new home but wanted to save some excitement for the coming weeks. A car passed by on the New Line. I crouched low in the grass so as not to be seen, smiling the entire time. The life of a fugitive was packed full with danger and I lived for it. Realizing nuts didn’t really grow in Cooloo was the first big blow I encountered. Bigger still was the realization that I didn’t really like berries. Mrs. Mitchell did grow rhubarb but I had also never eaten any of the bags of it she used to gift us. I would just have to go back home the following day and raid my Granny’s orchard to get me through a few days.  I would need a knife as I didn’t like eating apples by biting into them. I could probably take a few bits from her kitchen while I was there. Even dock leaves would taste good with a couple teaspoons of wheat germ. I was pretty proud of myself for overcoming my first crisis as a free man. It was all plain sailing until the heavens opened and raindrops fell like daggers from the sky. Despite my careful plan of hiding under a tree, I was soaked through in minutes. My father always said that there was only one thing worse than getting bet, and that is getting wet and bet. I knew it was time to admit defeat and made the long, lonely trudge home. The walk home was filled with even worse decisions than I had already made. Rather than waiting for the worst of the belting rain to subside, I took off at the height of it and chose the route that was likely to contain the most muck. I arrived at the old homestead and entered through the same old back door I had slammed so many times as a mere eight year old. Everything was different now, but somehow still seemed the same. The same old TV played an episode of Superman, which had been my favourite show as a child. It was still my favourite show since I had only been gone for a small portion of an evening and was heavily invested in the story line from the previous Saturday. There was no search party of neighbours frantically serving each other tea and sandwiches and lamenting my disappearance. I washed and dried myself, and by the time Superman ended, we were on our way to Mass. Life went on as if nothing had happened. Since no one else noticed, at least I could tell Jesus of my escapades.  It was another 13 years before I ran away from home again. I went a little further than the New Line and it’s taken a little longer than expected but I think they’re starting to miss me. The post I Ran Away From Home [https://joedonnellan.com/2019/06/25/i-ran-away-from-home/] appeared first on https://joedonnellan.com.

Cheating on Ireland

Subscribe to the audio blog on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0w9MmdCaV9ymALlnnre6oC] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJsp2pj21BWrth9g9e3noV7qNQ6hmZRp] | Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joedonnellan-com/id1799350141] While on a late evening chocolate-biscuit-run (that’s picking up biscuits to accompany a cuppa, rather than knocking out a quick 5k to offset calories from previously consumed biscuits) to our local grocery store recently, I picked up a tube of Hobnobs. That may not clear the increasingly high bar of things to write home about, but before I left I also picked up a box of Yorkshire tea. When questioned by Christina on why I did this, my response was a rather defensive “Because I like it!” “Are you cheating on Barry’s?” Christina asked, somewhat incredulous. “No, I’m cheating on Ireland,” I realized, shame enveloping me like the brownish color in a mug of hot water that has recently obliged a teabag. Her reaction was similar to my own – faux outrage that actually had a slight tinge of concern beneath. Irish people are very particular about all things tea-related – squeeze the tea bag or no? Milk before or after tea? If there’s sugar involved, is it still actually tea? – but they are most particular about the type of tea bag used. I’ve been involved in many the heated argument as to whether Lyons or Barry’s tea bags make the better cup of tea. There are also those who believe using a bag at all makes you a fraud. Whatever side of the argument an Irish person falls on, it is universally accepted that this is an argument for best and second best, a fight to see who is first among equals. Kind of like in American politics (pre-2016) where two bitter political rivals come together post election and help the party/nation to heal, extolling the many virtues of their worthy opponent. It’s been over a year since I had the best tea of my life, brewed in a little pot in a tiny tea shop in a small village at the edge of a National Park in the heart of Yorkshire. I won’t go into gratuitous detail as to why this was the greatest cup of tea in my living memory but suffice to say it ticked some boxes that I didn’t even know applied for a humble cup of tea. Little did I know that this “mug o’ shcald” (as a college friend used to call it) would be the catalyst for an awakening inside me, a little tea seed that was nurtured by pouring tea on it and is now sprouting little tea leaves… I have no idea how tea grows and have completely lost the run of this analogy.  It gave me the stunning realization that maybe Ireland isn’t the best at everything – or at least I don’t have to think it is the best at everything. I really love and enjoy Barry’s and Lyons tea but it is also okay to enjoy Yorkshire tea – and God forbid even like it better. I travel more now than I have before and this is teaching me a lot about what I like and making me less ashamed about it. I feel like a little Irish Catholic boy who just discovered masturbation and realized that my palms remain hairless and I can still read the eye chart from all the way across the room. Ireland is still the best but we can learn from other cultures. A national identity is constantly evolving. St. Patrick, in all his wisdom, didn’t give a flying fuck who was a Barrys or Lyons household when he invited himself into their huts to spread the word of God. When the Vikings landed on our shores to rape and pillage a thousand years ago, they weren’t greeted by a chorus of Guinness-swilling, potato-growing, God-fearing luddites. They were probably really getting into the whole Catholicism thing considering the venerable Saint Patrick had landed on our shores a mere 200 years earlier, but Guinness was just a glint in his father’s eye at that pint… sorry, point, and the first potato only preceded Guinness by a single lifetime. We only need to look to daft bucks like St. Brendan and St. Columba to see where Irish people get their sense of travel and spirit of adventure. It enriched their lives and improved the lives of their countrymen, but also the world. In the same way the Irish and Italians and Jews and Mexicans have shaped Americans culture to what it is today, the Irish have the Vikings and the Normans and Anglo-Saxons and the fucking Spanish Armada for what we are today. De Valera, in 1934, said “No longer shall our children, like our cattle, be brought up for export,” but I find it tough to argue with it being a bad thing. Over generations, we have borrowed from all of these cultures and all of these different peoples have integrated into our culture (becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves, as the saying goes), leaving little markings of their own behind. I had a meeting with a man from Ireland today with a view to partnering with the chauffeur company he worked for. He couldn’t hide his excitement when he heard my Irish accent and expressed his absolute amazement at the amount of Irish people he had already met today – but he was still really excited to be talking to me.  This man has chauffeured Sean Penn and Mel Gibson around Ireland, and spent a full week with Kim and Kanye on their honeymoon. He’s clearly seen some shit – and yet this quick visit to Boston was eye opening to him as to how spread out the Irish are around the world. We’ve found our niche on the world stage and are embraced throughout. That wasn’t always the case, and we all carry that – and many other chips on our collective shoulder – across the world and impart our many historic sufferings with a dry wit and a poetic humility. It also helps that we’re mighty fuckin’ craic! I’ve decided to forego my Catholic guilt over this particular crisis of conscience and enjoy my Yorkshire tea from time to time. I’ll try not to beat myself up when I take down the bottle of Laphroaig instead of the Kilbeggan, or when I order a Lagunitas over a Guinness. I can enjoy bacon and eggs instead of bacon and cabbage, or prefer (some) Icelandic Eurovision entries to our own.  I can even dream of a vacation in Montenegro over one in Mountbellew – although that is an unfair comparison as Mountbellew holds all the aces. One thing’s for sure though – if you ever see me drinking chamomile “tea”, you have my express permission to revoke my citizenship on the spot. The post Cheating on Ireland [https://joedonnellan.com/2019/02/25/cheating-on-ireland/] appeared first on https://joedonnellan.com.