In defence of licking dirt off a window
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January 29, 2025
TLDR: Exploring ways to connect with an inner child by doing long division and gazing out open windows in this episode of The Big Wind podcast.

In this episode of the Blind Boy podcast titled "In Defense of Licking Dirt Off a Window", the host shares a reflective and humorous narrative that revolves around his childhood experiences and emotional responses triggered by simple moments in life, like moving into a new office with a view. The podcast explores themes of nostalgia, psychological healing, and confronting childhood fears, making it relevant for anyone looking to understand the impact of their past on their present selves.
Moving Offices and Dreaming of Views
- The host discusses his upcoming move to a new office in Limerick City that has a view, contrasting it with his current windowless workspace.
- He reflects on how having a view could inspire creativity and allow for daydreaming, connecting this need for inspiration to childhood memories of daydreaming during school.
Childhood Education and Long Division
- Long division serves as a metaphor for feelings of inadequacy and childhood trauma. The host recalls how challenging maths were for him, triggering memories of the anxiety and shame related to his performance in school.
- He reflects on the importance of revisiting these memories, suggesting that confronting painful emotions can lead to personal growth and emotional healing.
The Effects of Childhood Trauma
- The episode dives into how past experiences, such as receiving criticism or feeling inadequate in school, can resurface in adult life:
- Adult emotions may revert to childhood responses when faced with criticism or failure.
- The host illustrates how receiving a bad review on his work brought back feelings from his childhood related to academic struggles.
Handling Adult Challenges with Childlike Fear
- The discussion touches on the idea of adult reactions being influenced by unresolved childhood emotions leading to perceived failures in their professional lives.
- The host emphasizes the importance of emotional literacy in adulthood and acknowledging one's feelings as a means to healthily process criticism.
Childhood Memories & Folklore
- The conversation shifts to a fascinating folklore story related to the "Night of the Big Wind" in 1839, how it affected communities, and the vivid storytelling that emerged from it.
- The host narrates that despite the trauma associated with storms, this particular event became a rich source of cultural storytelling, emphasizing how folklore can preserve collective consciousness and memory.
Licking the Dirt from the Window
- The podcast culminates in a humorous recount of the host licking the dirt from his office window, drawing a whimsical parallel between his childhood curiosity and current introspection.
- This act symbolizes a farewell to his old office environment while also representing an exploration of his inner child’s curiosity. Although the taste was unpleasant, it served as a metaphor for confronting and acknowledging what was on the surface.
Conclusion
The podcast intricately weaves together personal anecdotes, psychological insights, and cultural references, offering listeners thought-provoking reflections on how our past shapes our present. Listeners are encouraged to embrace their inner child, confront past fears, and recognize the emotional echoes from their childhood that influence their adult lives. This episode not only conveys a sense of humor but also delves into the universal impact of childhood experiences, making it relatable and enriching for anyone who has ever grappled with their past.
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Stand abreast of Heston Blumenthal's professional testicles you spectacled emmits. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back and listening to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast.
Thank you for the wonderful feedback. For last week's podcast, where I spoke to Mankarn Megan, that was actually supposed to be this week's podcast. Because last night, I was gigging in Ficker Street, sawed out gig, absolutely magnificent night. A lovely cam one day night audience.
but usually, usually I don't record a podcast the day after a live podcast because I was up on stage last night for like three hours talking into a microphone, so my voice might be a little bit scratchy this week. But the reason I put out the podcast interview with Mankan last week was because my fucking office, my office where I record my podcasts
It's just starting to get really, really busy. Since about October, there's just loads of people coming into work in my office. I'm guessing it's because businesses are cracking down on work from home, but my office is now an incredibly noisy place where it's really difficult for me to record my podcast.
Just because there's loads of people walking around the hallways and banging doors and talking, so I couldn't record a podcast for you last week, not a monologue podcast. But right now, I'm in the middle of moving my office. I'm gonna move my office to a much quieter part of the building, to a floor where there's fuck all people.
It's a much smaller office, but there's a window, there's a window where I can look out in Limerick City, so hopefully in a week's time, I'd be recording podcasts and writing while looking out a window that has a view, and if you're a writer, you'd understand the importance of a window with a view. Anything that will induce daydreaming. Think back to being in school, it couldn't put me near a window, if my fucking, I remember one year.
I think it was in third class. I didn't learn long division because my desk was beside a window that had a wonderful view of trees and those trees outside my window in third class when I was like 11. I just daydream all day long when I should have been concentrating on long division.
even thinking about long division that genuinely gives me chills like I've spoken about how poor I am at maths I genuinely haven't done like a fucking sum like a arithmetic pen and paper since school
To the point that I should probably try, like the attitude of embracing failure and trying that I bring to writing stories or any type of art, maybe I should just have a go at long division again, our multiplication and not necessarily to get good at maths. Just thinking back there, thinking back to being in third class, being a little kid, I was never particularly good at maths.
But when I try and visualize, when I try and remember and visualize, writing long division on a page, the feelings and memories that come up,
it's wherever I go to when I have nightmares. My brain does not want to visualize or think about long division, defense mechanism shit. I've pushed long division away somewhere deep into my unconscious mind because I associate it with some type of pain or shame. I'm speaking about this because
These are the feelings that are coming up from me right now in the moment. When I thought about the joy of getting an office that has a window with a view, the idea of having a window with a view, it fills me with a feeling of
calm, safety, optimism. I'm really looking forward to going upstairs and getting that window that has a view outside of it. And that must be reminding me of feelings. Feelings of when I was 11 in third class. And I had a desk and I'd stare outside that window and daydream. But I must have been doing this as a form of escapism.
First off, I don't even know what the fuck Lang Division is. It's where you put numbers on top of each other and I think you cancel or cross some of them out. Lang Division was... Lang Division was the moment that I really fell behind. Like, badly fit. Like, I could not do this. I could not do this. I do remember it as being...
The first time homework became something that was scary and frightening that I procrastinated. Before that, I used to do homework. There wasn't much of it. Spelling, multiplication in a fucking copy book. But as soon as Lang Division came in, I really really got left behind. And I'm old enough to look at the, like 11 is old enough to look at all the kids around me. And notice that, well they don't have a problem with Lang Division.
I thought I was really smart. I'm interested in geography and science and I'm going to draw on an umbrella that's spelling. I thought I was really smart. What's going on here? And that compare in myself to the other kids at 11 years of age. I'm just noticing in myself right now when I try and remember a deep, do me feeling of inadequacy, a deep feeling of inadequacy and not being good enough. So I think I think when I get my new office,
Am I trying to do some long division? Because when I visualize it now, I can see the copybook, I can see the lines, I can see the pencil, the numbers, and I'm remembering the page is really close to my eyes. So maybe I thought if I could see the numbers better, I'd understand what was happening. Not a happy memory. That's not a comfortable vision there. But I know enough about psychology.
that I should probably revisit that. I should probably just try, try some long division, not to get it right or to get it wrong, but to do long division, so that I can notice and name some of the feelings that pop up, these feelings that I'm scared of that I'm avoiding.
And then Hogan reassured my 11 year old self. Be a parent to my 11 year old self, who I'm guessing was incredibly hard on himself. When he couldn't do long division and he might be thinking, what's the point of that?
What's that? Why not just move on? Why do you need to revisit emotions when you were 11 in school? You're a grown adult now. Why does this matter? Because sometimes I still feel that way now. Like a part of my job that I find challenging is like online criticism and reviews, bad reviews, which are an unavoidable part of my job.
And 2019, I got a scathing review of my book and it hurt me so much that I got writer's block for like a year. When I got a bad review of my work as a grown fucking adult, I froze, I froze to the point where I couldn't create anymore. Because something about getting a bad review from my book, it felt too much like being back in school.
And instead of just being mildly disappointed by a bad review, it thrust me into a mental health crisis where I'm responding to a problem with the emotions of a child. Eleven-year-old me who couldn't do long division, who felt
utterly useless and hopeless and inadequate, stupid, not as good as everybody else. I can't understand these, these mats, these sums. I can't understand them. I don't know what they are. There's no way to describe to me what they are. This feels hopeless. This feels pointless. I want to die. I don't want to exist. I don't want to go to school. I just want to stay at home. I just want to look out the window.
out of those feelings can back up. When I got a bad review as an adult, to use the language of transactional analysis, which is a school of psychology, it triggered a childhood script. If an 11 year old child is harshly criticized, that child can really believe that criticism, really believe it and take it on board.
as an assessment of their their worth, their value. They can internalize it as self-blame, shame and feeling vulnerable, so as adults when shit pops up in our lives that reminds us of those painful childhood feelings, we can emotionally revert back to those states and have difficulty dealing with the triggering situation, because we're responding to it with the emotional literacy of a child, whereas the mentally healthy approach
is to deal with issues as an adult in the hearing now, in the present moment, in an evidence-based way. Like, if you as an adult now, if you're sibling, if your fucking brother or sister, like your grown fucking adult, your brother or sister, or your parent, criticizes you,
You could experience it as deeply heartfelt and it feels strange and you're like, why am I so hurt by this? Why can't I stop thinking about that thing that my brother said to me or my sister said to me? Why is this so painful? I can't get past this. What's going on? I feel awful. I feel terrible. Because you're sibling and your parent is reminded you of a pain or an instance of shame from your childhood and you're replaying that script. Unfinished business.
An emotional echo from your past that you experience as real. So becoming mentally healthy is to learn to deal with these things as an adult. So in my situation I got a bad review from my book. Like seriously does that mean?
I'm worthless, hopeless, there's no point in going on. I feel like I don't want to be alive. I feel like I can never ever create again because this criticism has taken away all the joy of creativity from me. No, that's how 11-year-old me felt. Because I was fucking artistic in school with no support, no diagnosis, nothing. The expectations of me were unfair, that was too much.
Adult me, in the here and now, in the present moment with evidence. You got a bad review of your book. That's disappointing. That's not very nice. It's okay to experience that it's not very nice. What a shame that someone doesn't like your work. Your work, which is absolutely nothing to do with your value as a human being whatsoever.
And now how do I feed about that bad review? Like five years on, six years on, I'm really glad it happened. I'm so thankful that I got a terrible fucking awful review, because it motivated me to get better at the craft of writing. And without that motivation, I wouldn't have written my last book, Topography of Hibernica, which I'm so proud of, which I fucking love. The review, which hurt me so much, that I got creative block.
made me a better writer, and I'm glad that it exists. That's a night and day response. The 2019 were a triggered deep feelings of childhood inadequacy. So that's why I want to have a crack at Lang Division, to be a parent for young me. And this is just part of being human. Like I promise you, you have the exact same shit going on. This is just part of being human, all of us.
have pain from our childhoods for whatever reason that we didn't resolve and it'll pop up as adults. And when it gets triggered, you'll go into a childhood script. Like here's a good one.
Do you ever feel like a, does anything ever happen to you as an adult? Will you feel like you're in trouble? You're in trouble? Let's just say you're, you're late for an appointment. Late for an appointment at the bank. 10, 20 minutes late. Not as the feelings that come up in you. The next, the next time you're late for an important appointment. Let's look at it from an adult perspective. It's, it's disappointing.
it's regretful you will need to explain yourself to the other adult because you're late so that you can inform them why you can apologize you're late it's done it's okay you can't change it but can I repair it so that's the adult way to handle being late it's about being in thinking about it in the present moment with the facts that are at hand and having a solution focused view
But most of us don't do this. Instead, you're late for an important meeting and you feel like you're in trouble. You're a bit frightened. You're a bit scared. You're worried. You're worried that you're going to get in trouble and that you are in trouble.
And notice what that feels like. Like being in trouble, you feel smaller, you feel powerless, you're scared about punishment. You want the person, the person who you're being led to. You want them to think that you're good. And then you walk in the door late to the meeting at the bank and you present yourself physically as a child to another adult.
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't know what time it was and there was traffic and there was all this other stuff. I'm so sorry. And we all do that and that there is that's gone back into a childhood script. You go back into a childhood script because we've all been late in school when we were kids and we got in trouble because we were fucking children. We got in trouble and we were publicly shamed in front of the class.
or you got your name put down onto a list of people who are late and if your name is in the list too much they're gonna tell your parents and you had the feeling of being I remember being in trouble in fucking school a feeling in my gut that was so tight that I was worried that I was gonna shit my pants and you know that that feeling that feeling of being a little kid and you get in trouble because you're late and you want to shit your pants
That that exists, that feeling in our brains is so old and I mean evolutionary. It's a part of our brain called the basal ganglia and this controls the most basic instincts of like fear response.
That part of our brain, from an evolutionary perspective, you can go back millions and millions and millions of years before humans, before mammals, back to when our ancestors were like little lizards. There's a part of our brain that's so primitive. But when that little lizard got scared,
Millions, hundreds of millions of years ago, when that little lizard got scared, if it shattered itself, it could lose enough of its body weight that it could run away faster. And we still have that. When you get enough of a fright, you feel like you're in trouble, all of a sudden you want to take a shit.
So if I'm late now, or if I miss a deadline for something and that kind of an angry email comes in, I get a sudden little stab in my belly that it's like, oh no, I need to take a shit. I'm in trouble. Then my adult critical faculties go out the window. I'm hijacked by the emotion of fear. Now I think that I'm in trouble. As a fucking adult, adults can't get in trouble. I think that I'm in trouble. And now when I'm responding to the email or trying to explain why I'm late,
I'm not trying to solve any problems. I'm not solving a problem in the here and now. I'm trying to get the other person to tell me that I'm a good boy. I'm trying to let them know that I'm a good boy and I don't deserve to be punished. Nothing gets solved now. Your people pleasing. Nothing gets solved. You just want to be told that you're a good boy or a good girl. And then the mad thing about that is that can then trigger the other person into what's known as a
parent script. Now what I'm describing here is it's a school of psychological transactional analysis, but it's very interesting. So I'm late for the meeting in the fucking bank will say, if I arrive in, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because I want the other person now to tell me that I'm a good boy, so that I avoid being in trouble. And my child like behavior, then unconsciously triggers the other person to go into what's called a parent script, which means they unconsciously role play.
how their parents or teachers were to them when they were children and in trouble. So the person in the bank might go, this isn't acceptable, we expect people to be on time. Now it's a little bit awkward for both of you, or if you feel like you're in trouble and you're late for a meeting, you could trigger what's known as the other person's nurturing parent ego state. So you arrive, oh I'm so sorry I'm late, oh my god I'm so sorry. And then they go,
Oh, don't worry about it. Oh, don't worry. Oh, it's okay. Don't worry about that. And then you feel this weird temporary reassurance. Those are what's known as complementary transactions in human communication. Or certain emotional triggers can unconsciously send us back to scripts, like script-like behavior that we learned at a very young age. But the problem is with scripts is
You want to be responding to things like an adult, an adult in the here and now that's using the information that's available to them with critical thinking. I'm so sorry that I'm late. It was out of my control. I hope I didn't hold you up too much.
No problem at all, we've got 20 minutes left, you're here for alone is it? I'm trying to make the case here about why there's value, why there is value in me. Having a crack at Lang Division again, I believe that by revisiting sources of childhood stress and terror for me as an adult with my here and now faculties, I might actually be able to
Heal some shit in my inner child that's still giving me trouble to this day and I got all that from Talking about looking out my window, but I do I associate Looking up my window and and daydreaming and getting lost in the vista. That was my cam happy retreat That was where I could escape to in the terrifying land of of long division in third class and
The reason I was so close to the window as well in third class because I'm just remembering now. So I had a very, very bad teacher. I had a very bad teacher. His name was Becky Kant. And it wasn't just the kids would call him Becky Kant. The parents, parents would call this man Becky Kant.
If you're American or Canadian, you might be recoiling now. But like, no, this teacher's name was Becky Kant and it didn't even register as a swear word. Like a people's parents, he was Becky Kant. Everyone called him Becky Kant, like obviously not the other teachers.
But this was his name, and this was okay. Like I'm a child coming off from school, and my mom's like, or how's Becky Kant today? Was in a good mood, and he was notorious for being the worst teacher in the school. He didn't give a shit. I remember, you see, because my brothers, my brothers had been in that school like 15 years before me. So as soon as my mom found out that Becky Kant was gonna be my teacher and third year, she was heartbroken.
She knew that Becky Kant was not gonna give- Becky Kant was gonna let me do whatever I wanted and he did. I was sitting near the window because I was sitting in this special desk. Do you remember in school? Because every fucking class had this.
If there was a student in the class who was just really misbehaving, just a lunatic, then there was one special desk and this was right beside the teacher's desk. Well that was my desk because I was a lunatic, couldn't sit still, couldn't focus. That was the year I became obsessed with the IRA. 11 years of age is when my dad started telling me stories about my grandad in the IRA, so I just wanted to talk about the IRA all day and Becky can't
He put my desk beside his desk beside the window and he would let me stare out the window as much as I wanted and wouldn't help me at all with my mats. And I remember the bit nasty now that I look back at it.
He used to do this thing. So I'd be really struggling with my maths. Really, like just the most basic shit. So bad at maths. That you would assume that I'm actually joking. I mean 3 plus 3 equals 4. So sometimes I was so bad at maths that... Fecky can't thought I was taking the piss out of him. He thought I was joking. Thought I was part of me being disruptive. And he used to do this thing. And he'd say to the whole class, he'd get me and he'd go,
Are you stupid? Are you not interested? Now, tell the whole class now, and bear in mind, I'm up at the front. I'm already in the separate desk. I'm already separated from the rest of the class. Are you stupid? Or are you not interested? Tell the class. And I would always say, I'm stupid, because that's how I felt, because I couldn't do these fucking maths. And then what he would do, which is really fucking sneaky looking back.
He would then go to the class and said, you heard it there? He called himself stupid. I didn't say it. I didn't call him stupid. He just said that himself. And I'd love to go back in time and kick him into the bollocks over that. Because that's a teacher with the full awareness that you can't call a kid stupid. You cannot do that. You can't call a kid stupid. So he's after figuring out.
An advanced, manipulative way to get an 11 year old to say that about themselves for whatever fucking reason. That's probably what he was called fecky cunt. Fecky cunt is like an annoying bastard. He's dead now. He's- he's son used to be in the class. He's son used to be in the class and he used to slap his son into the face in front of the class. And- and that wa- it's not funny.
That was okay because it was his son. This is the 90s Fucking hell. This is like the internet existed But anyway, I'd be sitting in my special desk the special desk near the teacher's desk beside the window And he used to come up to my desk Not just my desk everybody's desk. We all dreaded it
He used to instead of teaching us. He'd just come up and he'd lean on a desk in such a way that the corner of the desk was digging up his arse, right? Going right up his fucking up his asshole. And he'd spend a good half an hour deep scratching his asshole. And your desk with his arms folded.
smiling into the air while having imaginary conversations. I used to look at him huge big glasses like Coke bottles. He used to have these fucking imaginary conversations in his head and they were always great. They were never arguments. He'd be there agreeing with himself, mumbling, having these huge, he was at a party. He was forever at a party.
an imaginary party for everyone thinks he's really funny and agrees with him while using his anus to eat the corner of my fucking desk and he used to send students down to the shop to buy fucking butter because he'd be making he'd bring in loves of bread and make his own sandwiches at the top of the class
But he de- He'd get the butter. And the butter would be too cold. This big lump of butter would be too fucking cold. So he'd put the butter on the radiator.
to warm us, so that it was spreadable, but then he'd fucking find some poor young fella's desk, diggies wrecked him into the corner, have an imaginary party, and the butter would melt, and then we'd all have to go, sir, sir, sir, the radiator, and the radiator would be dripping fucking butter down onto the floor, but the radiator was beside me when I was staring out the window.
I also can't think about long division without the stench of rancid butter cause it used to go down underneath the tiles the stench of rancid butter which smells like if cheese was an animal and it died and the vision of a man called Becky can't look unsatisfied with himself as he navigates his fundament with the corner of my desk the sharp corner of my fucking desk and then when he left the class
We dare each other to go over and smell the corner of the desk. I never did it, obviously. He's the same teacher who... When my brother was in his class in the 70s, Becky can't turn to go to the shop to get a newspaper. And my brother was wearing shorts, you know? Now at the same time, this is the fucking 70s now.
My brother wanted fizzy drinks, like fizzy orange. But my ma would not buy fizzy orange in the 1970s, because in the 1970s, a bottle of fizzy orange was just an extravagant luxury. Like who the fuck do you think are Prince fucking Charles? You're not getting fizzy orange. It's 1978. So my brother used to make his own fizzy drinks by getting
Andrew's liver salts, which is a laxative, but if you add water to it, it is fizzy. This laxative powder, if you add water to it, it does become fizzy. So my brother was mixing laxative, fizzy laxative.
with this squeezy lemon that you get in the plastic lemon for pancakes, putting that into laxative and drinking it as a fizzy drink because my ma wouldn't buy him fizzy orange because it was the 70s and that's extravagant. So anyway, my brother's in Becky Kant's class. So Becky Kant says, go to the shop and get me a newspaper. So my brother says, yes, of course. And he's wearing shorts. So he runs to the shop. He gets the newspaper.
but on the way home as he's running back his tummy starts violently rumbling because he's been drinking laxative so he does a mad mad dribbly shit while he's running back but he's also scared of getting into trouble he's scared of getting into trouble and being led but he's shitting himself as he's running big long diarrhea gone down his legs gone down the legs of his shorts so he's like fuck this
I'm gonna have to go into the toilet before I go back to the teacher. So he does, he goes to the toilet, he wipes himself, he cleans himself up as best he can. And then he goes back to the teacher, and now he's late. He's late because he got fucking explosive diarrhea when he was running. But because he's scared of being late, and because he's scared of getting in trouble, he's not thinking. So he goes back to the classroom to Becky Kant, ready to apologise for being so late.
But as he hands, as he hands Becky Kant, the teacher, the rolled up newspaper that he brought from the shop, he hands him the rolled up newspaper, and it's covered in yellow shoes.
Because he'd been running, he'd been wearing shorts and running with the newspaper. But all the shit was down his legs. And newspaper was rubbing off his leg. And he was so scared of getting in trouble that he didn't know. He handed Becky cunt and dripping shit newspaper. And I had that, I had that lore. I had that lore. I had that story about this teacher.
Well, before I went into his class, and my ma, my ma was worried. My ma was worried that he would remember the diarrhea incident for the 70s, and that I'd be punished for the sins of my brother. And I think eventually when I got put in the special, the special seat, my ma would be saying, yeah, that's because of the diarrhea newspaper now, that's because of the diarrhea newspaper that he's doing that. What the fuck is this week's podcast about? This has all been triggered by a window.
So I'm gonna be moving office, probably next week. And I feel very positive about this and I cannot wait to be sitting upstairs in an office and to have my desk and I'm looking out a window that has a view. Cause right now in the office that I'm in, I do have a window. There's no fucking view. It's one of those windows that has a wall outside.
So I get sunlight but there's a wall outside my window and there's been a wall outside my window for the past three years and I don't I don't daydream I Never look out the window. I don't want to see that wall. I don't want to look at it. I don't daydream the window has been reduced to a light source and Currently as you look at my window right now
It's splattered with all this weird mud, which I've never, ever seen before. And it's because we had that storm on.
that red warning storm on happened there at the weekend incredibly fucking vicious and violent I've never experienced a storm like that in my life wins that powerful and my office window is covered in specks of mod and I actually I licked it I licked a little bit of the mod and there's a very good reason why I licked it and I'm gonna tell you right after the ocarina pause
No, really, there is a good reason why I licked the mod on the window. So I've got my base ocarina made out of stone here in the office and I'm going to play this base ocarina and hopefully you'll hear an advert for some shit. There you go, there's that sweet spot.
the gentle monotone of that ocarina support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast this podcast is my full-time job it's how I earn a living it's how I rent out this office this fucking office which is no longer fit for purpose because it's too bloody noisy in the corridor well I'm gonna be getting a new office upstairs
and you the listener, you're gonna be paying for that because I rent it out. You're gonna be directly funding the little office upstairs that has the window with a view. This view, this view that is gonna inspire heart takes. I'm gonna be looking out the window, I'm gonna be looking at pigeons. I might see a fucking UFO. I'm very, very excited. I'm very excited that I'm gonna have an office, what a desk, what a window, what a view.
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upcoming gigs, Galway on the 9th of February sold out. Crescent Hall, Drahada on the 21st of February, not sold out. Belfast, 28th of February. In the Waterfront Theatre, tickets still going for that. March, 7th of fucking March, Aineke, Killarney, Thursday, the 13th of March, Kirk Opera House, Australia and New Zealand tour that sold out. Then,
Wednesday the 23rd of April, I mean, Limerick fucking concert hall. Biggest ever Limerick gig. That'll be good crack. Doing a gig very close to Yarti's couch. I think I'd like to spiritually reflect on this.
This podcast started in 2017 and a huge part of this podcast started and was, I used to meditate by the river, meditate by the river near University of Limerick. And this author used to show up called Yertia Hearn and those early meditations that I used to do would have given me the clarity and courage to begin this podcast. So I want to pause and reflect, it's not fucking manifesting.
It's just a beautiful synchronicity. That's eight years on. I'm gigging into the Limerick University Concert Hall, my biggest ever gig in my home city. But it's like three minutes from Yarti's couch. I bet you a lot of people who are going through the gig are going to go down to Yarti's couch. If you are, please don't let her. And then what gigs have I got? That big, that big tour of Scotland and England in June. Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield Manchester.
Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex, Edinburgh, Norwich. There in June, that tour is almost sold out, but you can get those tickets at fain d'accorda.uk forward slash, blind by. So I did.
I licked my window, the window on my office. I licked Star Mod after this window. I made sure the cost was clear. I made sure that nobody would see me. I didn't want a fucking repeat of the incident from two weeks ago, where I dyed my hair and walked into the canteen, holding a bag of lemons. The reason I licked the window is
When that storm was happening last weekend, storm on, the red warning storm, it was so loud and so powerful. It was a bit scary. It was kind of frightening. I've never experienced a storm that big. Unfortunately, we're going to have more, more storms that are that powerful and more frequently because of global warming. But the last time in Ireland that we had winds that were that strong,
was in the year 1839 there was an event known as the night of the big wind in 1839 and this this fucking storm in 1839 it was like a biblical event it killed hundreds of people destroyed people's lives Ireland in 1839 was a very different place now this was before the famine which I have to realize
But there were like 8 million people in the country, before the famine, before the genocide of the 1840s, where we last half our population. Ireland had a population of 8 million people and these people didn't live in towns. Their houses were speckled around the countryside. It's hard to imagine what that was like, but twice as many people in Ireland distributed around the countryside.
and people lived in utter fucking poverty in shitty little shacks and the night of the big wind in 1839. It destroyed people's houses and uprooted crops. It happened on January 6, 1839, which was the feast of the Epiphany and the people genuinely believed that it was the end of the world. They believed that this was the apocalypse. The apocalypse was happening because
You've no fucking, there's no weather forecast, there's nothing it's 1839 in Ireland and all of a sudden you've got this powerful storm that nobody's prepared for. So they believed that it was the end of the world. Others believed that it was the fairies. You see on the day before, on the 5th of January, is the Feast of St. Kira.
And Irish folklore says that on the feast of Saint Keira, the fairies have a party, they have a big mad party. So when the night of the big wind came and destroyed everything, people thought the fairies had a party last night but their party was too big and this generated this massive storm. And of course you have to remember 1839 in Ireland people believed in fairies
fairies in Ireland. They're not like cute winged creatures. They're demons from the parallel reality from the other world, so they would whip up a storm if they had enough crack. But the other night is the storm was raging outside my house.
And I was just feeling a bit, it was frightening. It's not nice to hear winds that loud, that powerful. To calm myself, I decided I'm going to go reading about this, the big wind of 1839. So I went looking in the National Folklore Collection, Dokas Dari.
And there were so many stories. There were fucking hundreds, hundreds of pieces of recorded folklore about this night of the big wind in 1839. There was more stories about this one night of the big wind than there was about the fucking famine. So the folklore that I'm reading, it's written down in the 1940s, I believe. So there wouldn't have been a huge amount of people who directly remember the night of the big wind who were being interviewed here.
mostly people who had a parent who remembers the big storm and there was all these little vivid details and the ones that stuck out
where someone saying my grandfather remembers the night of the big wind. And he lived inland, and he found fish that were fish all over his field. So this wind was so strong that apparently it was blowing fish in from the ocean, and there were landing in farmer's fields, which also contributed to the belief that the world is ending. If fucking fish are far north of the sky, then the apocalypse is coming, but another detail in the folklore.
Which I found absolutely gorgeous. There were so many people saying that's
inland trees, trees that were inland turned silver and people would go to the woods to the silver trees after the night of the big wind and then they licked the bark of the trees and it tasted salty and what had happened is that the wind was so strong that it blew seawater
hundreds of miles inland to the point that it deposited salt in forests and people were licking the bark of trees and I found that so beautiful because no one's gonna bother their arse doing that today. Nobody who has Instagram is gonna decide
I wonder what that tree tastes like after the storm. Only a person who has no distractions decides, I'm going to go lick that tree. But when I look through the folklore collections, it's full of these very vivid descriptions of the night of the big wind and specific details like that of forests covered in a salty frost or people licking trees or finding fish in your field.
all these beautiful little storytelling details. Like I said, there's more. I can find more folk recollections of one night of a storm for a couple hundred people died. There's more stories about that storm from 1839. Then there is about the famine from 1847 where half the population disappeared. Like what's that about? How strange is that? So as it turns out,
the Ordage Pension Act of 1908. It was introduced into Ireland in 1908 to give pensions to people who were over the age of 70. But the government, who in 1908 would have been the British government, all people didn't have birth certificates in 1908, especially not very poor Irish Catholics. So people who were over 70 in 1908, none of them had fucking birth certificates.
So all Irish Catholics, they couldn't prove what age they were. So when the old age pension came in, you got an old age pension. Depending on whether or not you could remember the night of the big wind in 1839. There's something very rich about that.
Like, there's no internet. The wealth of information that I found out about this one night, this evening, just because I had access to academic articles, to records. I was able to find out so much about this one night on January 6th in 1839 where there was a big storm. How did that work in 1908? All people must have gathered around, went to the local pub and all of them together, tried to remember the night of the big wind.
So if you were 80, if you were 80 in 1908, it meant that you were 10 years of age when the night of the big wind happened. Ireland in 1908, you're talking fucking third world country under British occupation. There would not have been a lot of 90 year olds. There would not have been a lot of poor Catholic 90 year olds who survived the great famine around in 1908. So think of who was left.
Think of the Irish Catholics in their 70s who survived the famine, who had to try and remember a storm from when they were a child, like your 10 when the storm happens, and then when you're 20, the great famine, the genocide happens.
and half the country disappears. So all we have left are these little strange stories about people going to the woods and licking the sod from trees and finding fish in the fields and the fairies having a party. The strange memories of a few deeply traumatized old people trying to remember a storm from when they were little kids.
And that's very powerful, that's very, very powerful. And it's why we have, it's why we have so many stories about that storm, the night of the big wind. And this weekend, storm on, that's the first time we got winds. It's the first time we got a weather event, as powerful as that one from January 6th, 1839. So when I came into my office and I saw that, she's my window, my window's dirty, it's splattered with mud. I knew what it was.
I'm like fuck. The storm, storm on. That was as strong as the night of the big wind from 1839. My window is all stained. The fucking storm carried water or dirt across a great distance and deposited it on my window. And I don't live near the sea. I'm in Limerick. So of course curiosity got the better of me.
I'm there looking at my fucking dirty window sitting at my desk gone.
What if, what if, what if it blew seawater? What if it blew? What if there's fish? What if there's fish somewhere in Limerick City? Because fish blew in from the ocean. What if my window has seawater on it? There's only one way to find out. Now I'm up on the third floor. Okay, this is an external window. There's no easy way for me to lick this fucking window. This is the outside. There's a small chance I could die. And then I started to think.
Yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that. That'd be a good death. How did he die? How did blind-by-die? He was so inspired by stories of the 1839 storm where people licked salt off the back of trees that he felt compelled to lean out his office window to see if sea salt was present.
So that's what I did. I carefully leaned, I had to lean my fucking body out the window. I made sure no one saw this. I made sure nobody saw this. Leaned my back and my body out the window. Held on to the desk with one of my feet as well and creaked my neck out. And it was very sore and I extended my tongue and managed to get just a little bit, just a little bit of the window dirt.
on the tip of my tongue. And I did. And I waited for that, you know, salt, their salt, the presence of salt, which I'd know immediately. There was not there was no salt. There was no salt. The dark on the window.
It tasted like what I would imagine the rancid fucking butter that dribbled down Becky Kant's radiator tasted like this was disgusting. I think... I think it's sewage. I think there's... fucking sewage, human shit and piss.
It's what blew onto my window and I stuck my head out and I licked a bit of it and I got a tissue and wiped my tongue like it was an arse. But there was a nice synchronicity to it too because in a way I was saying goodbye to this window. This fucking window with no view outside it. I was saying goodbye to the shit covered sewage window as I transitioned to the new window that has a view and will hopefully inspire podcasts and short stories.
That's all I have time for this week. I'm aware. I am aware that I, when I did that podcast two weeks ago about how I accidentally walked into the fucking canteen with the dyed hair on the lemons, I am aware that I promised you a part two. You're going to get your part two. Don't worry. In the meantime, rob a dog, lick a window, genuflect to a, to a swan, to a sickness. Dog bless.
Thank you.
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