A conversation on a subtropical Irish Island with Bird expert, Sean Ronayne

I travel by boat to garnish Island in west cork, to chat about wildlife with Sean Ronanyne Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Repent from the devil's tennis racket, you henpecked Declans. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack, you know the story. I have a magnificent, scattered and bizarre podcast for ye this week. I'm literally just back from West Cork. I was in West Cork for the entire weekend. I was at the Island Drift Festival and I did a very, an intimate podcast recording on Garnish Island to a very small audience of maybe, let's say only about 150 people. I spoke to Sean Ronayne.

• 2:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sean is an expert in bird song. He's an ornithologist. He records and documents the sounds of birds, insects, wildlife. He's written books, he's made documentaries. He has his own podcast now, it's called The Sean Chorus. This is his third time on this podcast. And the reason I ask him back is it's not just that he's an incredibly interesting person. It's because we both have very similar flavors of neurodivergence. So the conversations we have are like a spectacle of double empathy. It's like we're playing a game of ping pong with four balls.

• 2:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And as mad as the back and forth is, we seem to make it work. We both interrupt each other. We both info dump on each other. We both go on tangents and we both feel incredibly comfortable chatting with each other. What makes this recording so special for me and this journey, this pilgrimage down to Garnish Island so important to me is there was a lot of Jungian synchronicity. We're talking about an area of West Cork that is deeply loaded with mythology. And for me, personal mythology. That area of West Cork is where my grandparents come from. It's where my dad was born. It's where Michael Collins is from.

• 3:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's where some of the most intense and important fighting and military campaigns of the Irish War of Independence took place. My granddad was involved in that, in the IRA. And then I grew up with those stories from my father. Jungian synchronicity, it comes from Carl Jung, who was a psychologist. Jungian synchronicity is meaningful coincidences. While I'm on this island, I'm speaking about very, very powerful, site-specific mythology. I was speaking about Christian mythology and indigenous Irish mythology. And something mad happened during the podcast.

• 4:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  While I was on Garnish Island, speaking to the audience, and we're all outdoors in this beautiful garden, I noticed that the sun was setting behind me. And I drew attention to it because the setting sun in that specific location is very important. See, we're on an island just at the mouth of the Atlantic. And the next island up from us, about 30 minutes by boat, is Bull Rock. Now, humans can't really get to this island. The, the waves around it are too extreme. No one really goes on to Bull Rock unless they have to. In Irish mythology, Bull Rock is the mouth of hell.

• 5:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, that's the best way that I can describe it. But to a people who didn't really, who didn't have heaven or hell or even linear time, it was something different. But it was a supernatural passage to the other world for the souls of the dead. Later on in the podcast, I speak about ancient Irish flood mythology. Our mythology says that the first people to come to Ireland came here by boat, escaping an ancient flood. One of the lads on this boat, his name is Finton, transforms into a salmon for a thousand years and lives in a mountain near Limerick called Finton's Grave. Another one of the lads on the boat called Dun doesn't escape the flood.

• 5:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  This big deluge, Dun drowns in the flood and his body is washed off to this rock, Bull Rock, and this becomes Chock Dun, the house of the dead. And as I was speaking to the audience on Garnish Island, I'm telling them this story and I'm saying, right behind us now, out in the Atlantic, is this Bull Rock. And the reason it's important is the sun is setting behind me. And at certain times of the year, especially when viewed from the, there's these Bronze Age wedge tombs on the coast of Kerry. And apparently if you stand there at certain times of the year and look out at this rock and the natural arch,

• 6:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  the sun sets perfectly inside the arch of this rock. And when that happens, the sun within this arch, setting on this one day a year, it looks like a single red eye. This one demonic red eye in the Atlantic Ocean. And the spectacle of that to our ancestors is probably what drew them towards mythologizing that rock, making it supernatural, making it the place where souls go before they transcend to the other world. But anyway, as I'm telling this story to the audience and saying the sun is setting behind me and telling them about this single eye, just as I say that,

• 7:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  my guest Sean Ronayne got stung in the eye by a wasp, came up on stage and he did the entire podcast while one of his eyes swelled bright red and remained shut for the entirety of the podcast as the sun went down behind him. And that, that's deep Jungian synchronicity to me. Now, am I here saying to you, that's what actually happened? Some mad, crazy magic happened and then a wasp stung him in the eye? No, it's country wasp season. It's very, it's very aggressive wasp weekend. That's what's going on. In fact, throughout the entirety of the podcast, I'm vaping like a mad cunt.

• 8:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't vape that much anymore. I don't vape on podcasts. This weekend I was vaping because we're outdoors and I was vaping with strong menthol to create a steam halo around me at all times to keep wasps away, because ye know about me and wasps and my plastic bag. So that's what happened. I wa, you know, he got stung by a wasp on country wasp weekend. But Jungian synchronicity, it's, it's, it's not just a weird coincidence. It's, it's a coincidence in which an external event and then like...

• 8:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  A psychological or symbolic event become connected through meaning. And not just like a causal mechanism. It's the writer in me that's excited by this. It's the artist in me that's excited by this. I wish Mang Khan Magan was still around. I wish Mang Khan was here. So I could tell him this because Mang Khan would hear this and would go fucking wild. He'd be a hundred percent onto this with me. He'd, he'd ring me up and say, I need to come on the podcast and speak to you about this. It's just, I'm here on this powerful location, bringing up powerful mythology. And then that happens, speaking about the one red eye on the rock.

• 9:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then fucking Sean gets stung by a wasp and arrives up with an eye that becomes, his eye became swollen and red as the sun set. He became that fucking rock. It's the poetry of that that I adore. That's, that's the basis of a novel. That's the basis of a short story. And I only had that realisation this morning throughout the podcast. When he arrived on and the wasp stung him in the eye, I wouldn't let it alone. I kept going back at it because I was like, no, there's some connection here. I need to join the dots here. What is it? What is it? And this morning it hit me. That's what the fuck it was. Wow, wasn't that incredible? Another very enjoyable thing about this recording was there was a dog in the audience

• 10:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  who started barking at the end when I said, dog bless. And I loved that. So I'm going to be playing you the entire recording. I did very little edits. I want to play it through. It's long. It's one of these podcasts that you'll probably enjoy throughout the week. You can come and go as you please, rather than listening to the entire thing in one go. But you can do that if you like to. I also recorded myself on the boat coming out to the island. The whole thing's like a little journey. Another thing too is I read out an excerpt of a short story, which I'm going to leave in, I'm going to leave it into the podcast. I usually don't do that with live podcasts. But this time I'm going to leave the excerpt of the short story in because it feels appropriate.

• 10:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Before I do any of this, I'm going to do the Ocarina Pause now. Because I don't want to be interrupting this. I want to let the whole thing flow as one and for you to be able to listen to it that way. So I'll do the Ocarina Pause now. First, just want to remind you, this is a listener funded podcast through Patreon. And if you find yourself listening to this regularly, because it brings you entertainment or math or merriment, just understand that this, this is my full time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I rent out my equipment. It's how I rent out my office. Most importantly, it's how I have the time and space to write and record this podcast

• 11:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  as my vocation, as something that I show up and deliver each week in a professional way. And that's only possible because of the listeners. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by a podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint or a cup of coffee? Well, you can do it digitally. But if you can't afford that, if you don't have that money, not a problem. Listen for free. Listen to the podcast for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So every single person gets the, the exact same podcast and I get to earn a living. And I want to stress that too. I don't upload exclusive content to the Patreon page.

• 12:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you message me on Patreon, you're not necessarily going to get an answer quicker than anywhere else. Since the start, I've always, I want everybody to get the exact same experience, whether you pay or not. I just like that model. It seems fair. It seems sound. So if anyone's wondering, like, why don't you have exclusive Patreon content? That's why I'd rather not do that. I'd like everyone to get the exact same experience, whether they're paying or not. And I'd like to keep that going for as long as I can. It's a model based on soundness and kindness. So that's Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And if you're a new subscriber on Patreon, sign up on a web browser or on the web browser on your phone.

• 13:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Don't sign up as a new subscriber on the Apple app on your iPhone, because Apple will take 30%. Upcoming gigs. You know, I've got my Abbey Theatre play, Animals, that's going to be running for six weeks in the Abbey Theatre from, I think the end of September. Go to the Abbey Theatre's website if you want to go along and see that up in Dublin. It's a play that's been adapted from my short stories and it's really looking fantastic. And the people that are working on it are unbelievably talented, the top of their game. Next month, beginning from the 18th of October, I'm going to have my England, Scotland and Wales tour, starting off in Brighton on the 18th, then to the New Theatre in Cardiff

• 13:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  on the 20th in Wales, Coventry on the 21st in the Warwick Arts Centre, Beacon Hall in Bristol on the 22nd, G Live there in Guildford, London at the Barbican, Glasgow, the Pavilion Theatre, Gateshead, and then finally Nottingham on the 1st of November at the Theatre Royal. I'm still open for, for guests. If there's any guests, if any of those areas that I read out there, if you can think of interesting local guests that you'd like me to speak to at those podcasts, give me a shout on Instagram, DM at blind by boat club. And you can get tickets for those, that tour at fan.co.uk forward slash blind by.

• 14:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm going to come back from that and I'll do a gig in Sligo on the 19th at the Hawxwell Theatre on the 19th of November in Sligo. Nice little small gig. And then I won't do anything. I won't, I won't be doing any gigs in December. I'm terrified of Christmas parties. I'm terrified of office Christmas parties coming to one of my live podcasts. It makes it quite difficult. So I don't do, don't really do gigs in December. April 27th, look, Australia and New Zealand, fucking Auckland, Melbourne, nearly sold out, Brisbane is sold out, Perth is sold out, Sydney Opera House is about to go, but I'm releasing a few extra tickets for Sydney Opera House because it's about to sell out. All of my, all of my gigs are on the blind by podcast.ie.

• 15:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Let's have a quick Ocarina Pause so you can hear some adverts for bollocks. And then we'll get into the, the odyssey, the odyssey to Garnish Island. It felt like a mythical journey to me. Every part of it was loaded with meaning.

• 15:39Speaker 03

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• 16:51Speaker 04

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• 17:27Speaker 05

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• 18:12Speaker 05

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• 19:09Speaker 05

  MOD.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. To learn more, go to MOD.com.

• 19:55Speaker 05

  Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, MOD Alert ships straight to your door. Go to MOD.com to get started. That's M-O-D dot com.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Do you snore? Did somebody hand you a CPAP and did you quietly stop using it? The mask that never quite seals? The hose tugging at you every time you roll over? A machine sitting abandoned in a closet? Excite OSA works a different way. It treats a root cause instead of managing the noise, and you use it while you're awake. 20 minutes a day, while the coffee brews, while you set your fantasy lineup. An FDA-cleared prescription device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Then you go to bed like a person. Nothing strapped on, nothing plugged in. In clinical studies, 90% of patients saw a reduction in snoring.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  No sleep study required. Prescribed online, shipped to your door. Excite OSA at springsleep.com/sleep20. Code SLEEP20 for 20% off. Excite OSA is an FDA-cleared prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Not for everyone. Individual results vary. Risks and benefits at springsleep.com.

• 21:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  I kept that nice and low just in case there's any dogs listening. So here we go. I'm gonna start off on the boat. And this won't be interrupted by adverts. I'm gonna play the whole thing straight through. And it's quite long, I'd say it's between 90 minutes and two hours. But you're fucking, it's a podcast. You don't have to listen to it all in one sitting. There might be some noise in the background here of chatter and people talking. I'm not sure if it makes a difference to you. This is gonna be a chaotic recording. I'm currently on a boat. I'm on a boat in West Cork, in Glengarry.

• 22:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Going into the mouth of the fucking Atlantic. Surrounded by beauty, surrounded by nature.

• 22:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, how do I describe the area to you?

• 22:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  The rain is beating down on top of me. I'm looking at the Atlantic waves lapping up. When I say the word harbor, I'm referring to a natural harbor. It's not a man-made harbor. This is a glaciated harbor. Lots of tiny little islands.

• 22:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this would have been the foot of a glacier. And it ripped the landscape open, left space for loads of water and then a couple of little islands poking out. So we're here in a natural glaciated harbor. But this natural glaciated harbor, because it's protected from the Atlantic wind, protected from the Atlantic cold, has got a Mediterranean microclimate. And that's what makes this area of West Cork so special.

• 23:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was here last year. This, this area was, this was the Dubai. This was the Dubai of the 1700s and the 1800s.

• 23:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  The British came here during colonization and filled everywhere, filled the place full of magnificent gorgeous country houses. I'm looking at them right now as I'm in the middle of the ocean, staring at beautiful palatial mansions up on hills, looking upon the harbor.

• 23:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've just noticed my first seal of the day.

• 23:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's many native seals out here.

• 23:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  We're inside Bantry Bay, but the Glengarry Harbor itself is, it's protected by islands and surrounding the mountains, the mountains of West Cork. And it reduces the exposure to the Atlantic swell and creates this sheltered, intertidal habitat it's known as. The seals love it here.

• 24:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a strange meeting of Atlantic marine and temperate rainforest ecosystems. The journey out to Garnish Island, which is where I'm heading. It's about a 20-minute journey by boat. It does feel like I'm on the river Styx.

• 24:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Going to enter hell. I'm going out to this island to interview Sean Ronan.

• 24:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Apologies for the scattered nature of this podcast, but I'm spending all weekend in West Cork. On the drive down here, we were up the mountains. We got lost. Google thought that we were a lot of Yanks and Google Maps sent us on a very, very strange journey up these mountains. And we came down to a bohrine. I suppose you'd call it a very, very old, strange road that didn't see a lot of traffic. And at the very bottom of this road, the bottom of a hill, there were thousands of frogs. Frog Valley. I don't know what they were doing. But we had to get out of the car and push the frogs away with our feet so that we didn't crush them.

• 25:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  The islands that I'm looking at here in the harbor. Oh, the mist, the mist, lads. The mist is purple. I'm looking at a bull seal. I am looking across now at a large male bull seal basking on a fucking rock. And all around him are islands with strange tropical plants that don't belong here, but the Brits decided that it was a good idea.

• 25:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is a spiritual place. Yonder, I'll be passing it very shortly, is the nest of one of, I think, I think it's Ireland's only nesting whitetail eagle. I'm still being distracted by that, that bull seal. He's a huge fucker. He looks like a lion. My God, I never thought I'd see one in the wild. Looks like a cross between an elephant and a slug. Some cormorants, some ink.

• 26:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Seagulls, lads, in their natural habitat. All right, I have a huge amount. I've nothing against seagulls, but I love seeing a seagull in its natural habitat. And the natural habitat of a seagull is on little islands. On little islands is where seagulls like to live. Seagulls have no business in cities.

• 26:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Their indigenous habitat, habitat is islands. The other thing about this natural harbor is as I look around, I'm seeing beautiful explosions of pink and purple. But the pink and purple that I'm seeing is, the pink and purple that I'm seeing is rhododendrons. Again, no business being here. They're beautiful, but they are acne on the landscape.

• 26:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  We're coming up to Garnish Island itself now.

• 27:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is not natural. This is unnatural. The tree, the, the island itself is supposed to be covered with just moss and lichen.

• 27:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the British family that's, I think it was the Eccles family, possibly. I'm staying in a hotel called the Eccles Hotel. The Eccles Hotel was built in the 1740s. So I'm staying in a hotel that was built in the 1740s. And from about 1890 up to 1920, this hotel was used for the officer class of the British Army. So it was for very, very wealthy, posh British officers to stay in this magnificent hotel in order to treat their shell shock. In the way that the IDF now go to Goa in India and listen to terrible trance music. In the 1920s, the poshest British soldiers were returning from World War I

• 27:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  and curing their shell shock in this beautiful landscape. And as I was lying in my bed, that an auxiliary or a blackened tan lay in many years before, I was thinking about the Kilmichael ambush, which my grandfather participated in.

• 28:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm lying in the bed of a British soldier that my grandfather might have shot a gun at.

• 28:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I enjoy the poetry of that.

• 28:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  We're now coming into the harbor here on Garnish Island.

• 28:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  The island itself looks like it's wearing trousers.

• 28:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Very strange. Not, not mangroves, but the trees, because of the tidal, because the tide goes up and down, the tree line on the islands, it has a very strict, straight line. And it makes the island itself look like it's wearing a pair of green trousers.

• 28:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this is gonna be slightly chaotic, but sure, what are you gonna do? It's on an island, you know what I mean? We got the weather for it as well. It was, was anyone here last year? Do you remember the rain? When it was more than rain, what was happening is that it was, it was pooling upon this, what you call, not a terrapin, a tarpon. What's it called? What's the full word, full name, name of a tarp? Tar-paulin.

• 29:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not a terrapin.

• 29:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  The water was pooling on the tar-paulin and then it was just coming down in one go and scaring the shit out of everybody, mostly me. Which was very difficult in the middle of a podcast.

• 29:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who left a giant bunch of grapes?

• 29:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who left the erotic grapes? Did you leave them? Are they real grapes? Well, I know they're real, but are they from a shop? They look like they're picked straight off the...

• 29:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Were these grown in Ireland?

• 29:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go away out of it, you're growing grapes. Don't they look fantastic? They actually look a bit like Ireland. Or possibly Brazil.

• 29:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wow, I've never seen... Well, they're not indigenous grapes, but I've never seen grapes that are grown in Ireland. Fantastic, thank you so much for that. They're very, um... Theatrical looking, they're like, do you know... Very... Actually, it's the same thing, because this is kind of a Roman garden, Greek garden type of thing.

• 30:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  I went for another walk around. Did you all go for a walk around there? It's fucking fantastic, it's, um...

• 30:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's the brown sauce of architecture. And what I mean by that is, is... So, everything you see there, right? You've got, there's a little bit of Indian stuff going on, there's a little bit of... Is that my vape fluid? Thank you so much, Eminem.

• 30:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, I needed my vape fluid. The... So, there's a little bit of Japanese stuff going on, there's some bonsai trees, there's a bit of a Chinese pagoda. It's what the Brits would call oriental.

• 30:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Which, even the word itself, oriental, I think it has something to do with ships and the way that they orient themselves. And it was just that whole place over there, the Orient. We don't give a shit about what the countries are called, just the Orient. And this whole place is the memory of the Orient. And the reason it's brown sauce is... The history of fucking brown sauce comes from Yorkshire relish, right? So, there was, it was about 1860, I think it was. There was a greengrocer in Yorkshire. And back then, a greengrocer was like, it wasn't just like walking into Sentra, it was a shop that made their own produce and stuff. And this Yorkshire greengrocer, a fella used to walk in every week, he was a British soldier,

• 31:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  who'd spent time over in India. And he's back in Yorkshire, and he'd call in and he'd say, "I was eating this stuff over in fucking India called chutney, and it was amazing, and I can't stop thinking about it. And there's no internet, there's nothing, I can't ring someone up, phones don't exist yet. I cannot get my hands on this chutney, and I don't think I ever will, because I'm back in Yorkshire, and it's very difficult getting over to India, because I'm not a soldier anymore and it's 1860." So, the grocer says to him, "Describe it to me." So, each week he comes in and starts describing the taste of chutney. Going, "It's a bit vinegary, it was a bit fruity, it was a bit spicy as well." And the grocer tries to make him chutney from this fella's description, from this fella's memory, and eventually ends up with Yorkshire relish.

• 32:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's what Yorkshire relish is, it's one English person describing chutney to another English person. And this garden is that. But it is. It's like, "I think I was in Japan once." "You sure it was Japan or India?" "I don't know, just that fucking oriental place, but can you build it like that, and that, maybe a bit of that? And put that tree there and that plant?" And you end up with this. It's Dubai, this is Edward... It's Edwardian Dubai.

• 32:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  So, I have a cracker of a guest for you, right? But before I bring the guest out, I usually read a sh... You can hear me all right, you can? I usually read a short story before every live podcast, and... As you know, I'm doing a play up in the Abbey Theatre at the moment. And what we're doing is taking a fuckload of my short stories and trying to make it into a play effectively. And as a result, I've been revisiting some short stories. And there's one I've never read out live, and I'd like the chance reading out an excerpt of something I've never read out live, purely because we're on an island, what are you gonna do, leave?

• 33:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I just feel it, it's the right environment where I can chance it, because I don't know if it works live or not. So, it's a short story from my last book called Pamela Fags. And, oh god, it's kind of biographical, because a lot of it is about my own childhood. But it's about a chain-smoking solicitor called Pamela,

• 33:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  and her chaotic brother, who calls into the office one day with a dirty suit. Which is true, that did happen, my brother called into my office with a dirty suit. And so, I'm gonna begin halfway through the story, and we'll see if it works. It might work, and if it doesn't work, fuck it, look at the British Dubai behind you.

• 34:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  "There was a loud knock on the door, and I went to answer, assuming that it was Noel Reardon returning for his jacket. It wasn't Noel Reardon, it was my brother Brendan. He pushed straight past me with a plastic bag in his hand and began smoking my cigarettes. He was uneasy, taking rapid puffs, blowing national smoke and tiptoe-stepping over the mess on the floor like a flamingo. This is what he proceeded to tell me, in more or less these words. He went back to the outlet store and retrieved his 50 euro deposit like I had asked him to. I'd completely forgotten about all of this, if I'm being honest, it was a week ago and I have a job. But anyway, he took the money to the security guard, who worked in the multi-story car park, and the security guard looked at him like he had 12 arses, and said,

• 35:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  'How in the fuck are we supposed to locate the owner of a 50 euro note? No one reported it missing, it's not in a wallet, there's no ID, it could be anyone's money. It might have even blown in from the road. If you want my advice, pal, just keep the 50 euro note, it's yours, man.' And that was enough to clear my conscience, said Brendan. His forehead sweat frizzled his corals and made him appear particularly clown-like. He was still jittery with anxiety, and then he infected me with his anxiety. And I said a bit loud, 'Then what's the problem, Brendan? What are you doing in my office, all upset?' He took another fag from the packet and tried to light it with a stapler. 'I thought it was one of them novelty lighters,' he said.

• 35:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  'I lit his fag with my fag and called him a useless prick.' And he went on with his story, recounting it like a little boy. So, he'd returned to the outlet store today and said, 'Hello, I was here last Friday, I'm ready to buy the suit that I put a deposit on, the Hugo Boss one.' And then the outlet store were all like, 'We sold the suit, sir, it's gone.' And then Brendan was like, 'But I put a deposit on the suit, you can't sell the fucking suit, I put a deposit on it.' And then they said in response, 'You did put a deposit on it, but then you took the deposit back, and during that time, we sold the suit.' So, he was like, 'I know I took the actual 50 euro note, but I still had a deposit on it.' And then they were all, 'That's not how deposits work, sir.

• 36:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  But we have another suit that's similar and it's much cheaper, do you want that instead?' Brendan was awfully disappointed, but he swallowed his pride and bought the cheaper suit. And that was the end of his formal wear saga, or so I thought. 'Ah, you got a suit for the wedding, well done,' I said, relieved. 'What's your specific problem then, Brendan? What is bothering you? Why are you here in my office?' We had both worked each other up at this point. Brendan didn't say a word, he stood there with a big, serious face on him, and he reached into his plastic bag and held the trousers of the suit in the air like they were a severed head and said, 'Sniff that, Pamela.' 'Sniff the crotch, sniff it.' 'Tell me I'm not going mad, go on, sniff that.'

• 37:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  He spoke the words in an affected English accent, and I knew immediately what was happening. So, I buried my face in the gusset of the suit pants and began inhaling. And there it was, the pain in my tummy. Actually, no, I'll pause this. Before I continue sniffing the crotch of these suit pants, I need to tell you some details about my childhood. I grew up in a house with four much older brothers. When I was five years of age, they were in their late teens and early twenties, a lot older, so they were forever attending Debs. There was a plethora of graduation ceremonies too, maybe a wedding or three, I can't fully recall. Numerous situations where my older brothers had occasion to rent suits or tuxedos.

• 37:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was a significant part of my early years compared to other children. All incredibly stressful and unnecessarily dramatic events, instigated and exacerbated by my daddy, God rest him, who was very passionate about stains and odours. He was quite an eccentric man, you could say. My father would become deathly serious when there was a risk of rented formal wear smelling like someone else's sweat. The sweat of a strange man, so to speak. He had two theories about this, aptly named, the first theory and the second theory. One of them I completely agree with, and the other one is quite far-fetched and brings the pain in my stomach. The first theory concerned dry cleaning,

• 38:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  which my father didn't consider to be real cleaning at all, because in his words, "The fabric was merely agitated by a solvent, as opposed to being deeply cleansed at a molecular level by a detergent." Dry cleaning, he maintained, was a form of masking, which could never truly eliminate the lipids and proteins that were present in human sweat. So, if there was even the tiniest hint of another human sweat on a rented suit or tuxedo, it must be returned. "As soon as you put on that suit and attend the formal occasion, you were in serious trouble," he'd say. "Especially if you have a couple of pints to heat up the blood, or maybe chance a bit of dancing. 'The moisture and warmth of your own body will awaken the odor of the previous wearer.

• 39:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  The dormant stench blooms with the catalyst of your sweat, and you'd start to really stink.' It doesn't matter how thoroughly you've cleansed your own body, or how much deodorant you've worn, it's not your sweat, it's someone else's sweat. Now you're the smelly person at the function. You smelling like someone else.' And that's just the truth of it, there is no acceptable aggregate of another person's sweat that can be permitted to acquiesce in a rented suit or tuxedo. 'Send it back and demand a fresh one,' he'd repeat that throughout my childhood like a mantra to all my brothers. My father was correct about dry cleaning, however.

• 40:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  It can be a risk, but it was his second theory that consumed him. My father formulated his second theory while watching David Attenborough nature documentaries. He grew tormented by footage of wild animals and how they would mark territory using scent or pheromones. Leveraging this knowledge, he asserted that humans subconsciously glean information about others' mental states, dispositions or personalities through scent and sweat. So if you arrive at a wedding and the suit begins to smell like the sweat of another man, if that man was a bit of a prick, we'll say, or if he was an aggressive man, other people will then act aggressively towards you. You can be as polite as you like, but the sweat will override all rationality.

• 40:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or worse still, the smell of the other man's sweat can rise up into your own nose and you will take on aspects of his personality and behave accordingly. All occurring beyond your awareness or control, absolutely insane stuff. Of course, my mother disagreed. She reasoned that my father always drank too much and would consistently make an arse out of himself at formal occasions and his theory was just an excuse to avoid accepting responsibility for his drinking. "You're poisoning the children with nonsense", she'd scream. And he'd be on the verge of tears with her howling. "Then how do you explain the job interview with the porridge people, Marion? Was there any drink taken when I met the porridge people?"

• 41:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Referencing an incident in his 30s where he self sabotaged a potential role as a contamination chemist at Adlum's porridge because he believed his suit had previously been worn by a man with low self-esteem.

• 41:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't even think my father had faith in the second theory himself, it was just something that he held on to so my mother wouldn't win. He was saving face and that was what I had for a childhood. My daddy would spend the daytimes dressed in a three-piece suit, cleaning the house impeccably, pretending he wasn't hungover. He'd rub the surfaces down with a rag of industrial alcohol so he couldn't smell it on his breath. My mother waiting to pounce, I'd be getting pains in the pit of my belly watching them. I must have been six years old when my youngest brother, Andy, returned home one evening with a rented tuxedo for his Debs. I remember him dragging the smell of cold winter air in the door when it closed and my father used a poker to anxiously molest the fire

• 42:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  and waited in the living room with a grave set of eyes on him. I didn't understand how fucking stupid it all was back then. My father used to put on like a kind of an English accent in these situations and he'd he'd tap on the coffee table with his wedding ring and say, "Did you inspect the undercarriage? Did you inspect the undercarriage of those trousers, Andrew? Brandish the garment hither." And then he would take the suit between the tips of his fingers, like it might bite him, and sniff all around the crotch and underarm in a loud performative way that communicated a level of expertise and experience. Puffing his nostrils, we'd all be watching, he'd make us go quiet too. He'd say, "I'm currently receiving olfactory information and I require serenity",

• 43:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  which, which made no sense at all, who needs silence to smell?

• 43:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  All of my brothers staring at him with big red clown heads, believing in his theory, waiting for his judgment. "I need alternative counsel", he'd say. And the suit was passed along to my brothers in order of age and they would each have their turn snorting at the fabric. Occasionally, the suit was impeccably dry cleaned and neither my father nor my brothers could agree on whether they detected an odor of sweat or not. Furious arguments arose in those situations and my mother would get involved. It must be pointed out that she refused to participate in the act of suit sniffing. Instead, she'd scream, "You're all mad! I'm not smelling that fucking suit, I'll wash it, I'll wash the fucking suit with hot water and soap, just stop talking about it!"

• 44:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  My father would reject this offer. "Get the child, get the child, bring forth the child", he'd say. Oh, Dickensian, I was the child. He would hold the crotch of the trousers in front of my nose and instruct me to inhale and report my findings. An extension of his pheromone theory was that I had the most acute sense of smell because I was a child. And as a prepubescent girl, I possessed no context for the odor of adult male perspiration and thus could not be enchanted by its persuasive effluvium, his words. All of this meant that my assessment was the final ruling. If I said yes, I can smell something bad, my father and brothers would cheer

• 44:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  and my mother would let me know that she expected better from me. If I said no, I smell nothing, my father'd be heartbroken and he'd disappear for two days. My mother would scold him and call him a whiner.

• 45:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I remember it all being a terrible amount of pressure. I usually lied, depending on who I didn't want to upset that day. So where was I? In my office, in my office, yes. Brendan stood there with a big, serious looking face on him. He reached into the plastic bag and held the pants of the suit in the air like a severed head and said, "Sniff that, Pamela, sniff the crotch, sniff it, and tell me I'm not going mad, go on sniff that." He spoke the words with the same affected English accent as my father and I knew immediately what was happening. I felt that old funny pain in my stomach. I instinctively began to sniff the crotch of his outlet store suit and searched for testicular musk around the gusset. Sniff, sniff, sniff.

• 45:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  But my experience had altered somehow, there was nothing. Not that I couldn't smell sweat specifically, I couldn't smell anything at all, not a thing. It must be the fags. The years of smoking fags had done away with my sense of smell. To tell you the truth, I felt a relief. "I can't smell sweat, Brendan, but if you think you can smell sweat, then return the suit", I told him. "I smell balls, Pamela." "That's some other fellow's balls, some fucker bought the suit and then returned it after he had his way with the crotch, a full weekend's worth of balls too." "Oldest trick in the book, them gangsters in the outlet store sold it to me as if it was new", he whimpered. "Well then Brendan, as per the Sale of Good and Supply of Services Act 1990, you are legally entitled to return this suit. The fact that the suit is pre-worn is a breach of implied condition

• 46:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  under section 14.2 of the Act, which states that goods must be sold and of merchantable quality. Therefore, you have a rightful claim to redress, Brendan." He crumpled the trousers back into the plastic bag and smoked another one of my fags. I joined him. "So you will send them a letter for me", he said, I laughed. "If you weren't my brother, I'd happily waste your money, Brendan. Just go back into the shop and demand a brand new suit that doesn't smell like arseholes or whatever. They'll probably get all embarrassed and will replace it, they might even throw in a little dicky bow." "I can't do that", he said, looking down at my fire retardant carpet. "It's half four, the shop is closed for the weekend now and the cunt of an architect's wedding is tomorrow." I gestured towards the office door and said,

• 47:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  "Just wear the fucking suit to the wedding, Brendan. Just wear the fucking suit and cop on to yourself, give the cracker once over in the sink and go at it with a hairdryer if you're paranoid." Brendan took on a childlike gait, he looked directly into my eyes and said, "But daddy's second theory."

• 47:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  What if I take on the personality of the previous wearer and disgrace myself at my wedding in front of my ex? The pain in my tummy dissolved into anger and I said, "The man was a roaring alcoholic, Brendan. He was lying to himself, there's no second theory. Wear the suit and go to the fucking wedding and don't be getting rat arsed and whatever you do, don't be ringing ma about it tonight because she's in her 80s and she doesn't need more crotch discourse at this hour of her life. You're right, Pamela", he said.

• 48:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's a little excerpt, I enjoyed that story.

• 48:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  What actually happens with that is, is so first off, most of that was my actual childhood. Well, like, not the trauma parts, so, like, that is true, like, in my house growing up, my brothers were older, they were always going to Debs and, look, anyone who's worn a rented tuxedo, you know what I'm talking about. You put that fucking tuxedo on, you think it's clean, you go to the wedding and you start to smell like sweat. And it's like, "I can deal with smelling like sweat, I can deal with this, I've smelt like sweat before, but not this sweat, this isn't my sweat." Do you know that, when you smell like another person's sweat? So that was a big deal in my house growing up and, yeah, my brothers would be coming home with suits and my dad had an impeccable nose on him and he'd be sniffing crotches on suits.

• 49:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then, if a fight broke out, nothing serious, I was walking out of bed at about six or seven years of age because of my young nose. And it would be straight up, he doesn't know what adult sweat smells like, but give the crotch to him. So, but for me, it wasn't like terribly traumatic, I remember it as quite happy and fun.

• 49:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  But for that character, I wanted to make it trauma. I wanted to make it trauma and I wanted to make it, "I don't know, she's smoking fags", and then you go, "The reason she got so addicted to fags is because of what it did to her smell." And then later on in the story, actually, another part of that fucking story is based on my life as well. She's a solicitor who shit at her job and she takes on clients who like, the cases will never go to court, she just likes making money from the legal letters, you know what I mean? So she takes those cases and she has an old man called Noel Reardon who kind of fancies her and he's being sued by the, no, he's suing the Limerick Greyhound Association because they've accused him of feeding teabags to greyhounds. Which happened to my uncle.

• 50:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  My uncle used to have greyhounds and he was dosing them with teabags.

• 50:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because of the caffeine.

• 50:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 50:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  But anyway, what happens in the story is, the old fellow dies, he's about 80, an old greyhound man and he leaves his jacket in her office. And then later that, that day, he dies in the night and she goes to Limerick Greyhound Stadium with her brother Brendan, who's just come from the wedding. And then she ends up like taking on the personality of that old man and calling the committee, "Bastards, you bastards and bitches, I didn't", and then she ends up taking on his personality, but she doesn't really, what she's actually doing is taking on her dad's alcoholism.

• 50:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  So they're turning that into a play up in the Abbey.

• 50:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  What we're doing with the play. Fuck me, um. Yeah, it's mostly stories from my last book and then one story from my first book, which is called Arse Children. Which I cannot wait to see on the stage of the Abbey Theatre, because this, this story is about.

• 51:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Eamonn, Eamonn de Volera discovering that Holy Mary's womb is in his bowels. And then Michael Collins has to ride him up the arse to get him pregnant. With these. Arse children, they're called.

• 51:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're these weird basketball shaped lumps of skin with West Cork accents. That are master assassins. And Michael Collins gives birth to them from, no, no. Eamonn de Volera gives birth to them from Holy Mary's womb in his bowels. And then the Irish children are the ones who actually take out the Cairo gang. In Dublin in 1921. So that's gonna be on the, the stage of the Abbey Theatre.

• 51:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Which is what should be on in the Abbey Theatre, because the, but that's the thing, the Abbey is all about starting riots, that's the crack like, it's about. It's not about offending people, it's about asking people, why are you offended? And for me, the why are you offended there is. It's the homophobia part, it's what if, so what if fucking Michael Collins, I'm not saying Michael Collins rode Eamonn de Volera up the arse, I'm just saying, but what if, who cares? Who cares? What are you offended about here exactly? The Catholics might get offended, but even who cares about that? Who says Holy Mary's womb can't show up in someone's fucking bowels? Like, who, who makes the rules?

• 52:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  But like, if anyone was to challenge me on that, I'm having an argument with myself now.

• 52:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  But like, I, I know that's absurd, right? That's absurd, but like, I'll tell you what else is absurd. Do you know what the Catholic Church's explanation is for the rings of Saturn? So fucking. Christ, right, who was, Christ was definitely a real person, we can agree that Christ was, there was, there was someone called Christ, okay? And Christ was born, he was born Jewish. And every Jewish kid got fucking circumcised. So Jesus Christ, the human being, most fucking definitely got circumcised, that is a given, we know that happened. But Christ is also like. Not human, he's, he's, every part of him is totally sacrosanct, right? So the Catholic Church was thrown into this, this terrible situation in the 12th century where.

• 53:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  A couple, a couple of people claimed to have Christ's foreskin. Because they're like, it was cut off and I have it in a box, right? A relic, because that's the thing within Catholicism, we've got a saint's bones, we've got fucking Saint Valentine's heart is up there in Dublin. So the greatest relic of all is gonna be Christ's foreskin. So in the 12th century. It was given to King Charlemagne of France in a box. And they're like, Charlemagne buddy, it's Christ's foreskin. So Charlemagne is like, well, this is the best relic of all, I've got, I've got a piece of Christ's cock. And they took it really seriously, okay? But then, other competing foreskins started to arrive around Europe as relics. And the thing, the thing is with relics, this is what you have to realise about relics in Catholicism. Relics in medieval times, they were a bit like.

• 54:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Putting Facebook up in Dublin, do you know what I mean? They were, they were for tourism. If a village or a city or a place with a cathedral could get a fucking relic, that meant non-stop tourism, people, and that meant the economy, it meant money. So relics were really important, so if you had Christ's fucking foreskin. There's gonna be billionaires in the 12th century equivalent. So the church anyway were like, fuck, there's competing foreskins, what are we gonna do? So they said. There's no foreskin of Christ. What do you mean there's no foreskin of Christ? And this is the official Catholic explanation, they said, Christ. Christ died at the age of 32. Yes, his foreskin was cut off. But it danced around the earth for 32 years and then became the rings of Saturn.

• 54:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's the explanation for Christ's foreskin, right? So. Eamonn de Volera can have Holy Mary's wounds in his bowels if he wants.

• 55:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sorry for offending you all here in British Dubai.

• 55:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Isn't it gorgeous? Is that the sun yonder? Is the sun over there, is it? There's a fucking. A beautiful, if, if you go off that way. And out past the mouth there at the Atlantic, there's a rock. Someone might know the name of it, is it called Bull Rock? So Bull Rock is incredible, it's. So in Irish mythology, it's there in the fucking thin Shankas, I think, which I think is the 11th century. This, so it's a rock and it has like a, a natural archway, right? And in the mythology, it's called a chock doon, right, which it means house, house of the dead one or something like that. And what we reckon is.

• 55:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was kind of like Hades, like a river Styx type of thing, that that rock was where. Because we didn't really have heaven or hell in Irish mythology, but it's where certain souls went to live in the house of the dead. And apparently at a certain time of the year, you can look at that rock from the Bairre Peninsula. And the sun goes down perfectly with that arch and kind of winks. You know what I mean? Like a little Atlantic New Grange type of thing.

• 56:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, how much did I fucking talk for there now? Okay, grand. I have a magnificent guest. He needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway for autistic formities. Sean Ronayne, who is a bard expert, come on out Sean.

• 56:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Would you like to partake in an indigenous grape?

• 56:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's the story? They were given as a gift.

• 56:54Speaker 06

  I thought they were yours.

• 56:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm quite like the fact that the sunlight is on them and, and they might turn into raisins before I've read the eyes.

• 56:59Speaker 06

  I mean, after being stung in the eye by a wasp.

• 57:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  You got stung by a wasp in the eye?

• 57:03Speaker 06

  Look at this.

• 57:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh no, you did not, not just there.

• 57:07Speaker 06

  I did?

• 57:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  My greatest fear.

• 57:09Speaker 06

  I found it. Alright, nice one, thanks.

• 57:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, how often do you get stung by wasps?

• 57:19Speaker 06

  I try not to do it too often, like.

• 57:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  How did you manage that? That's actually, I must have put some type of fucking widow's curse on you, even though I'm not a widow, but you know what I mean?

• 57:26Speaker 06

  I don't know what happened, because I'm all for wasps and bees at the moment and hoverflies and, I don't know.

• 57:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are you aware of, um.

• 57:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know why, why wasps are, are like pricks now? Like right now?

• 57:40Speaker 06

  I've heard you speaking about that.

• 57:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, it's, it's interesting because it goes into, um, addiction theory. So, so the thing is with the, I'm gonna explain this for them now, because I'm, I'm sure you know a thing or two about wasps. Wasps, like, I love wasps, I used to not like wasps, but. They don't, they, they do a small bit of pollination, but it's not their main thing. They do what the odd bit, but it's not like this, I'm not into this, it's like someone who'll have a pint every so often. They're not serious drinkers.

• 58:08Speaker 06

  They're, they're carnivorous, like.

• 58:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're carnivorous, so the wasps do.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  Catpillars.

• 58:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  A wasp, they, they eat meat, they'll eat meat, a wasp will fucking, there'll be a dead rat on the ground and the wasp will go, I, I need that, that rat's anus for dinner.

• 58:20Speaker 06

  I actually, I actually saw a wasp eating a rein the other day.

• 58:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's what they do, they, but, but they, they get the meat, but the wasp. The wasp isn't necessarily eating the meat, it's holding on to the meat, but then the wasp goes back to the, the wasp nest. And then in the nest, there's the baby wasps, right? The wasp gives the meat to the baby wasp. The baby wasp, the larvae eats it and then excretes a sugary substance, that's what the wasp eats. So when the wasp goes back to its colony, it's like, I'm eating a rat's arse, but in exchange for this rat's arse, I'm getting some delicious tasty sugar, this is amazing. Wasp goes there, but then. About now, the colony collapses and all those baby fucking wasps grow into adult wasps.

• 59:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then you have all these wasps flying around who no longer have a source of this sugar, they don't have it anymore. And they're kind of strung out, they're addicted to this sugar. And the people who, who does have it is us. So that's why the wasps are country right now. They, but they might have smelt a fucking bit of aftershave that you had on or whatever, or something about your, your eyes.

• 59:25Speaker 06

  Maybe I have meaty eyes.

• 59:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and how are you feeling about getting stung in the eyeball by a wasp?

• 59:32Speaker 06

  It wasn't great, to be honest with you. I didn't even know, my eye felt a bit tight. And then I looked in the mirror and it looks like there's a red grape in my eye.

• 59:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Here's just, like, I don't want to fucking jinx myself now, right, because I'm pretty good at not getting stung by wasps. Like, I'm, like, seriously, I had a couple of incidents at the weekend.

• 59:50Speaker 06

  This has given me a very strange deja vu. I listened to a prank call by you when I was a teenager about keeping a pet wasp in a matchbox. Do you remember that?

• 59:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was obsessed with wasps.

• 59:57Speaker 06

  Do you remember that?

• 59:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've never been stung, so I don't know if I'm allergic yet.

• 1:00:00Speaker 06

  You said it was a rare type of Himalayan wasp that answers to the note of E.

• 1:00:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was traumatizing my fucking children at the weekend, unfortunately, right?

• 1:00:10Speaker 06

  You were traumatizing your children?

• 1:00:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, overreacting to wasps in front of a fucking three-year-old. My dad was very, very anxious and I learned anxiety off my dad, you know? And I'm trying to break that cycle, but I was there in B and Q with my children at the weekend and then fucking a wasp, well, two wasps, with all due respect, came from my head. And I screamed. My three-year-old's going, oh, the adult is screaming, the adult is screaming at insects. So that's a core memory there. That's learned now. That's a nice bit of trauma there.

• 1:00:39Speaker 06

  I actually did the same.

• 1:00:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're going to be 30.

• 1:00:41Speaker 06

  I did the same thing with Lian, but except for me, it was a spider. Do you know there's a new spider discovered in Ireland?

• 1:00:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go away.

• 1:00:48Speaker 06

  Only in Limerick City.

• 1:00:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  What? And that's not the first thing you didn't tell me. You met me a fucking hour ago and you didn't tell me that immediately.

• 1:00:57Speaker 06

  Come here, man.

• 1:00:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  What the fuck?

• 1:00:59Speaker 06

  There's so many things I'm keeping in my back pocket.

• 1:01:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I need this. Come on to fuck.

• 1:01:02Speaker 06

  I have a list of things here for you.

• 1:01:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, no, no, no, come on. What?

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  I actually, right, seriously, and it's, it looks like the evil villain from a Marvel comic. It's, it's jet black. It's probably lovely now, in fairness.

• 1:01:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's its name?

• 1:01:15Speaker 06

  Its name? I've written it down, right here. I'm going to read you the Latin name first because that looks a bit sexier. Sigestria florentina.

• 1:01:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  You get into a nightclub with that name?

• 1:01:26Speaker 06

  Well, the English name is, is, it's very apt. Green-fanged tube web spider. And apparently it has a bite like a deep injection. Yeah. But like.

• 1:01:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  When did it, were you, were you talking to Colly about this?

• 1:01:39Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 1:01:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  When did you, how did you hear this? And when did you hear it?

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  I, I'm going through a kind of a spider obsession at the moment. And I just started photographing spiders for the last two weeks and I just started reading up about it. It was discovered in 2023 and it's only known from Limerick City. So it lives in the cracks of mortar between red brick and like under the capstones of walls. It's a giant, it looks like a giant tube, right? And they've got these, these trap wires coming out from it. It waits with its leg on the trap wire. And if you, if you touch it, it comes out and it gets you. Yeah.

• 1:02:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because that's an interesting thing. When I first went to Australia in 2011.

• 1:02:14Speaker 06

  Oh, they've got crazy things.

• 1:02:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  They've mad things over there, but what, what, what I found interesting from talking to the lads there was, so they've got a redback, right? And if you get bitten by a redback, it's, you have a half an hour to get to the hospital or else you're in serious trouble. You could get a heart attack. And the Irish lads kept getting fucking bitten by redbacks and they couldn't understand why. And it's because of the, the culture of brickies. So the brickies in, in Ireland, they're on the fucking sides. They're, they don't need gloves. They're not using gloves. But Australian lads are using gloves because of the spiders. So the Irish fellas were putting their hands into where the redbacks live and kept getting fucking bitten by the, the redbacks. So now Irish people are going to start wearing gloves.

• 1:02:55Speaker 06

  All right, yeah. Oh, does, I came.

• 1:02:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  You had a nice little trauma response to a gnat. There was a little midger on the back of you there and you flinched.

• 1:03:02Speaker 06

  No, no, I got a drop of water on my nose.

• 1:03:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I think, I have a theory about how you got stung on the eye there.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  I'd love to know.

• 1:03:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, like.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

  I, look, if we, if we look at those photographs we took.

• 1:03:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  You hang around with, with, with cameras and microphones and you probably allow insects crawl all over you all the time in order to listen to a bird.

• 1:03:20Speaker 06

  Well, that's true. Do you know why?

• 1:03:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't introduce him at all or what he does. He's just about.

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  Shalug. We, we'll get there. We, we usually do. I, I was out last night until half 11 looking at moths on a cliff. And then, and then I got a text that said, you have two shows tomorrow, you know? I was like, oh yeah, fuck. So I went home, went to bed, got up at half five, went back out to look at moths and then came here. But, uh, I'm sure I had more to say about that spider.

• 1:03:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  I need.

• 1:03:45Speaker 06

  You should go looking for it.

• 1:03:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  I would, I'd, I'd, I'd think about its existence.

• 1:03:50Speaker 06

  It's a bit, you know what?

• 1:03:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I need to get onto Colly about it.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  We, we could do a road trip.

• 1:03:57Speaker 06

  Colly would love to see it on tour. But it's, oh yeah, that's what it was. It's the biggest, the biggest funnel web spider and it's a tank.

• 1:04:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a funnel web?

• 1:04:04Speaker 06

  It's a funnel, it goes, like, it has this hole, a big, big, it looks.

• 1:04:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're cons men. They're over in America, the funnel webs. They'll be dangerous. They go into people's beds and bite their toes.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. This, this one knows fairly sound, I heard, like, you have to, you have to step on the trap wire to lure it out at night time. Look at it though, like, look at, look at that wasp, it's following me. That's probably him.

• 1:04:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd be very upset now if he gets.

• 1:04:26Speaker 06

  I heard you talking about a Spanish long wasp there as well, because I'm going back, I forget which episodes I've listened to.

• 1:04:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have seen some long wasps in Spain.

• 1:04:34Speaker 06

  You were doing a live, you were, you were doing a live recording somewhere, you were on about a long.

• 1:04:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, Jesus, I was doing a live recording in Spain and there was a very long wasp.

• 1:04:41Speaker 06

  Do you know what that probably was?

• 1:04:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  One of those Asian hornets?

• 1:04:45Speaker 06

  Maybe, but also there's another thing, and I have a photograph of it. There's parasitic wasps and they have these huge long ovipositors. Maybe it was that. But they.

• 1:04:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's an interesting thing. We used to say wasp in Limerick and we stopped, but Cork people held on to it. Because I say wasp, but ye say wasp.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  I say wasp. I have a recording of a wasp here. Do you want to hear it?

• 1:05:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on, yeah.

• 1:05:07Speaker 06

  Hold on. This might, I'm going to have to talk about something while I look for it. It's going to take a while.

• 1:05:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  This isn't even his fucking territory. He's just after going autistic about insects recently, so.

• 1:05:14Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  His thing is birds, like, so he just decided to become Mr. Insect recently.

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  I love a bit of everything, really. Uh, look, I'll come back to the wasp. I'm going to multitask. I'm brilliant at that.

• 1:05:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  This vape actually is good at keeping wasps away. It's like a little Holy Mary's halo.

• 1:05:30Speaker 06

  Oh, come here. I have something else to tell you.

• 1:05:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Maybe you got stung because I was blaspheming.

• 1:05:36Speaker 06

  About the wasp? Hang on a second. Let me get it. This is the sound of a wasp eating, um, the hollow stem of a hogweed plant. Have you ever heard that?

• 1:05:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Giant hogweed.

• 1:05:48Speaker 06

  Oh, just a normal one. So this is a recording I've always wanted, this is a recording I've always wanted to capture. So look, do you ever see a wasp's nest? It looks like a giant, um, piñata, like a paper mache piñata. They make that through mixing their saliva with the chewed up, dry hogweed stem. Yeah. And so you can hear it. It's a really, really distinctive sound. It sounds like somebody's eaten crackers in the bushes, but, uh, there's nobody there. So you have to get down your hands and knees and eventually you find this wasp gnawing on the, on the hogweed. So this is it.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  These are the kind of things I, I occupy my, my life with.

• 1:06:29Speaker 06

  Like this.

• 1:06:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I have to ask, right, were you in the middle of trying to listen to a bird and then you, that, that's just an accidental artefact? Like, were you out, were you going, I'm, I'm on a wasp listening day today? Or are you on a bird listening day?

• 1:06:52Speaker 06

  Like, I'm not, I'm, it's like, I love everything, really. It's not, it's not just birds. Birds is just my, are just my favorite thing. I've always liked wasps and slugs and all sorts of stuff.

• 1:07:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you studied birds, though.

• 1:07:04Speaker 06

  I did.

• 1:07:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 06

  I did, like, officially, like, in college, but, I mean, most of the stuff I learned about birds was just out in, out in the garden, out in Cusco and just being out there, do you know? And the stuff that I studied was more of a, kind of a formality, like, you know, survey techniques. Like, you know, the sounds of birds and the behaviour and mimicry and all of that. That was just all, just obsession, like, deep obsession, you know? But, uh, what, what was I out there for? Um, oh no, I was out looking for spiders out there. That's what I was doing. Come here, I have something to say to you before I forget it.

• 1:07:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:07:36Speaker 06

  Um, I find, uh, I find it very distracting when I listen to your, uh, your outdoor recorded podcasts because I can, I can hear birds in the background. And I'm identifying the birds. And I have something to tell you. I was going to message you, but I thought, she's, I'll wait, I'll wait until this. There was one where you were in, uh, Berlin. Was it Berlin?

• 1:07:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Speaker 06

  Re- fairly recently.

• 1:07:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  And you were saying you had to be careful about speaking about a certain topic and whatnot. And it was a very.

• 1:07:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Will you say it here? Free Palestine.

• 1:08:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 06

  And like, it was a, you know, it was a very serious conversation. And in the background, all I could hear was a black red start. It was following around. It was singing through the entire episode. Yeah. Do you know what that is?

• 1:08:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on, masad.

• 1:08:15Speaker 06

  It's a.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  It actually, it actually is a bird connected to war. It is connected to war in a sense, right? Where am I here? My notes are all over the place. Oh, yeah. So black red start, right? Normally you find it up in the tops of the Pyrenees or the, the Alps. It's a bird of like, extreme places, like well away from people. They love scree slopes. Um, but like in recent years, when they start to expand their range, they, they've turned up in urban habitats. And after the blitz in London, uh, in World War Two, all of the destroyed buildings represented scree and rubble, like they get in the Pyrenees and the Alps. And they colonized London after that. And they, they nicknamed it the bombsight bird. Yeah. And, and I could hear it. There's that connection, like when you were in Berlin, you know?

• 1:09:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's like the poppy, the, the red poppy only grew, it's a roader of the planet.

• 1:09:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  It would grow on disturbed earth that was bombed.

• 1:09:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Do you want to hear it?

• 1:09:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on, yeah.

• 1:09:12Speaker 06

  It's actually really beautiful. And it does this really strange thing, like, first of all, they're really mimetic, like, it can imitate all kinds of different things. But they all do this really strange thing where in the middle of the song, they suddenly stop. And it sounds like somebody's standing and, and swiveling in gravel. It's, it's really, listen, you'll hear it. So this actually was recorded in a place called Call the Pal. Call the Pal is out there. Call is like a, is a pass. It's, it's Catalan. It's a pass. It's, it's like this lovely pass right up in the Pyrenees and it's full of birds. Anyway, this is it. I was sleeping in a Pusar 206.

• 1:10:07Speaker 06

  That's the gravelly part. And the whistling in the background, that's a marmot.

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  Anyway.

• 1:10:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just something I want to observe there, right? So like, so where we are right now, like this fucking island, is none of these, not none of them, but I would say 98% of the plants here are not indigenous, right? So we are in a deeply unnatural landscape. This island should be, you know, the islands you saw when you're coming out on the boat and they're just covered in moss? That's what this is supposed to be like, but every, all the beauty that you see, this was British gardeners just going, mad shit is growing here because it's protected by the Atlantic. So we're in a deeply unnatural environment, right? The birds here are aware probably that it's an unnatural environment. Do you think they might have gotten less freaked out by you playing a Catalan bird? Because they're like, well, everything's nuts here anyway.

• 1:11:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because remember the thing you told me about how it can be dodgy to play the sounds of birds?

• 1:11:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the wild. What's the name that you have for us?

• 1:11:12Speaker 06

  Playback, it's playback, playback. It's a survey method, but sometimes people kind of abuse it, like.

• 1:11:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can coax a bird or you can, you can bully a bird.

• 1:11:19Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, it's like you're chatting to it, you know, like, so birds, like, why do birds sing? They're, they sing to attract a mate, but they also sing to intimidate a would be, eh, you know, blowing, you know? So if they have like a really powerful, complex song, it's a sign of, of, eh, you know, fitness, of, of sexual health. And, and so if it's like this great song, another male will think, oh, Jesus. And if it's singing like that and we fight, I'm probably going to lose, you know? So there's that, but anyway.

• 1:11:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's like when we were kids and you fancy all the girls and then all the Spanish students come and you're like, fuck.

• 1:11:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. So like, yeah, exactly. I guess so. Yeah. Like the, the people with the, the most impressive, eh, beautiful sounding, eh, accents, I guess, if you look at it that way, are, are going to be more attractive. Yeah. I mean, you can always, you can definitely, eh, compare.

• 1:12:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  But there was some. Weird those birds that are doing their thing now, right?

• 1:12:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you think they would have stopped for a bit now because you played that recording and said, what the fuck is this?

• 1:12:20Speaker 06

  I actually do have something to play and we should put on some safety goggles when I do play it. But let's say that to later.

• 1:12:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're gonna get us attacked by sparrows now.

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  Let, let me tell you something, right?

• 1:12:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, that fucking eagle. Yeah, let's fuck the birds on the one island that has two fucking eagles. Let's do that.

• 1:12:33Speaker 06

  I have the eagle. I have it, right?

• 1:12:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Don't be, well, you're the bird expert. What would happen if you started, like, there's two, they're, they're the real deal, those fellows on, on this, this island, aren't they?

• 1:12:42Speaker 06

  They're under the canopy or grand. You, you'll see two, two talons coming through the roof. No, but like, I, some people might have heard this, how much overlap is there between my talk earlier and this? Like, how much can I get away with playing again?

• 1:12:55Speaker 06

  All right, Grant. Grant, so let me tell you something, right? There's a guy, right? You're, you're gonna love this. There's a guy who studied owls in, in the UK. I forget his name now. And there, there's one owl in particular, eh, no, it wasn't in the UK, he went to further afield. So there's one in the UK called Tawny Owl, but there's a relative of that. Yeah, the ural owl, and it's really hyper aggressive when it's on the nest, when it has young. And the way to survey them, because they're rare and because they're nocturnal creatures, how are we, are we gonna survey them? This was before the time of infrared cameras and all that playback. And you wait for a response. So you wait for a hoot back. The only thing with these is because they're so aggressive, they can attack you. And so this guy was attacked by one.

• 1:13:38Speaker 06

  And, you know, towards the end of his career, he wrote biography on his, on his lice work. Do you know what he called it?

• 1:13:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:13:45Speaker 06

  An eye for an owl.

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  Took his eye, it took his eye out. For real. He had an eye taken out by, by one of these owls. True playback. So there are, eh, there are definitely risks. Well, you should, like, it's illegal, first of all, you can't, you can't.

• 1:14:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  What were you doing to get stung in the eye by that wasp?

• 1:14:03Speaker 06

  I don't know. I didn't even realise. I just felt my eye getting tight all of a sudden. I said, Alba, is there something wrong with my eye? But eh, I'm guessing it was a wasp because there was one around me a little bit earlier. So it's the only thing I can think of.

• 1:14:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think I noticed if there was a wasp on my eye, man.

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  But look at that. It's like, it's enormous. What, what else could have done that? It was hardly a midgy. You think?

• 1:14:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  So go on, anyway, he, he wrote a book called An Eye For An Owl.

• 1:14:31Speaker 06

  An Eye For An Owl. No, because he was using playback and the owl came out and plucked his, plucked his eye out, like, it took his eye clean out. So there are definite risks, like, with, with playing bird song. That's why I'm saying put on your safety goggles. But no.

• 1:14:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Were you playing the eagle earlier?

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  No, no, no. Look, we're outside the breeding season now, so it's pretty safe, like.

• 1:14:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you get a squint at the eagles?

• 1:14:53Speaker 06

  I haven't seen them.

• 1:14:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are you interested in the eagles or you're on the, on the insect vibe at the moment?

• 1:14:57Speaker 06

  Eh, oh, no, yeah. No, I love them. I love them. Yeah. Eh.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  I keep getting flashes on my, eh, my playlist here and there's one, there's one title that keeps hitting me. It says aggressive fart. I'll play for you later. But anyway, eh, the eagles in Killarney National Park, I, I recorded them. They used to, they used to duet. They duet every morning, eh, right across on the microphone on a place called Ronay's Island. Have you, did you hear about that? Did I tell you about that? No? So I, like, I did like a, a bioacoustic survey with Killarney National Park and we put recorders running for, I think it was a year, in different, different habitats to sample them. Because the beauty about leaving recorders like this is, like, the, the amount of effort that it puts in, it can be replicated.

• 1:15:44Speaker 06

  Like, you know, you're not going to be out 24 hours a day for six months at a time. But this, this recorder can capture all that data. And so it's an amazing way to, to study big places like that. So one of the places that they put the recorder was called Ronay's Island and they did it knowing that that's my surname, like. And so obviously I was curious and I started to look into it. And it turns out there was a guy there by the name of Philip Ronay. Philip Ronay was, he was friends with Isaac Newton. He was this, eh, he was a mathematician. And he, he kind of found it difficult to, to understand and to understand people and to move through society.

• 1:16:23Speaker 06

  And he, he found his way in nature and so he made all this money doing what he, whatever he did with, with maths. And he retired and bought this island out in Killarney National Park, built a cottage in the 1700s, the ruins of which are still visible. And it was, eh, it was named after him. Yeah. Eh. So my friend Harry was saying, eh, like, he was this total recluse, like, and if people would row to the island, which they did, they were curious about this hermit. He would launch stones at them. Like, there's, there's writings about him. And he used to like roar abuse and la- launch stones and he was like Man Friday. Eh, so anyway, my friend Harry was saying like, that would have been you if Alba didn't find you, like, you know?

• 1:17:02Speaker 06

  But like, but like, there's more to it then, like, because Ronay isn't a very common name. Like, Ronay is a name, I'm gonna turn there because my, my wonky eye is getting all the sun.

• 1:17:11Speaker 06

  Ronay isn't a common name, like, it's, it's from East Cork and, and West Waterford. And so we did a bit of digging. Turns out Philip Ronay was born in Cove. That's my hometown. And we're the only Ronay's there, so I think he's actually related to me. Yeah. Except I'm not good at maths and I'm definitely not an aristocrat. Yeah. But we both like eagles.

• 1:17:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's fucking mad that shit could pass genetically. That's, well, you don't know with the all autism, like.

• 1:17:39Speaker 06

  Do you know I'm autistic? Maybe they don't know that.

• 1:17:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know I was autistic, don't you?

• 1:17:42Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  All right. Yeah, the two of us.

• 1:17:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Actually, I meant that, the last time I had you on, the last time I had you on, like, I, I announced it and I said, Shaun Ronay, the autistic bird expert, right? And a load of people got pissed off.

• 1:17:59Speaker 06

  Oh, that's grand. Betrayal, like.

• 1:18:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did, you are. And, and they were saying to me, eh, he's just a fucking, he's just, he's, he's a bird expert. There's no need to bring the autistic into it. And what, where I'm coming from is.

• 1:18:11Speaker 06

  Well, I'm, I'm proud of it. Like, you know what?

• 1:18:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you, it was harder for you to get to where you are. It was harder for you to fucking, like, eh, my thing, I'm an autistic fucking writer. I don't have a leaving cert. I was shit in school. I was the last person in school who they would think would end up in the Abbey Theatre writing. It was harder for me to fucking get there. It was harder for you to go through this, you're ADHD as well, which is.

• 1:18:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's, that's a recent achievement.

• 1:18:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  But to be able to do what you've done and to get where you are despite those barriers means I'm fucking proud to be this way. And if I said you're an autistic bird expert, I'm like, fucking class, brilliant.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm sure that that's the way it was intended, like.

• 1:18:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm thinking about autistic kids who are interested in birds.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Going, I can never do that because I don't know how I'm gonna go to school or this fucking uniform. I go, well, this fucking cunt did it.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  It's the ADHD. I was telling you, it's the ADHD is the killer for me. Like, I'm brutal. Like, I'm always, I'm always forgetting stuff. Can I tell you a story there?

• 1:19:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  You just took a ritalin there before we came on stage.

• 1:19:09Speaker 06

  I did, yeah, I did, yeah.

• 1:19:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that hitting you?

• 1:19:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, it just makes me focused, you know?

• 1:19:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  What if, imagine, right? Just, just, just, what if, eh, but putting the ritalin in your body did something to your blood that made your eyelid attracted the wasps?

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  Could, could.

• 1:19:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you know, that's the way, that, that's the way this shit works though, isn't it? That's science.

• 1:19:26Speaker 06

  I know, yeah. It's very annoying.

• 1:19:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  You pop the ritalin and then come out with a fucking eyeball on you.

• 1:19:30Speaker 06

  I feel I need, I feel I need a cocktail stick to pop it now. But eh.

• 1:19:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  It, no, it, it feels worse than it looks.

• 1:19:35Speaker 06

  All right. Grant.

• 1:19:39Speaker 06

  I hope it wasn't in those, eh, promo photos we did at the back.

• 1:19:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, they weren't there at that point. Sure, I, listen, you're worried about, does my eye look stupid while I stand beside a man with a bag in his head? Come here. You know what I mean? I hope I don't look like a cunt here.

• 1:19:55Speaker 06

  I was gonna ask you. Come here, we're doing that tangent thing again. And I have so many things I want to tell you. And then we end up on so many tangents, I forget all the things that I wanted to finish. I'm gonna have to start writing them down.

• 1:20:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  You fucking did.

• 1:20:07Speaker 06

  Where's my, where's it gone?

• 1:20:10Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, alright, alright, hold this for a second. Oh yeah, what I wanted to ask you was earlier was, do you find it hard to smile on cue? But then I thought, sure, you're wearing a fucking bag.

• 1:20:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, I do, like, to be honest, part of the reason, like, there's many reasons I have the bag, but one of them is to hide the impropriety of my face. I look furiously angry a lot of the time. You'd never know about it because I have a bag on my head. I look fucking pure angry all the time. I used to get in trouble, people used to think I want to fight them. And like, I'm just thinking about fucking, thinking about wasps.

• 1:20:40Speaker 06

  I tend to kind of like adopt this kind of a garments look.

• 1:20:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  A dormant look?

• 1:20:45Speaker 06

  A garments look.

• 1:20:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I get pure fucking anger when I'm thinking about something.

• 1:20:49Speaker 06

  Like, I went on, I went on with Brendan McConaughey earlier today, and I have to tell him, like, I'm not saying, no, but like, in order for me to smile, somebody has to whisper something into my ear to make me laugh. So Alba has a certain thing that she, which is, should I say it?

• 1:21:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, listen, I've said worse shit before you came out, so.

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  Look, Alba says something, come.

• 1:21:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Tell her what she says, man.

• 1:21:13Speaker 06

  Alba, are you there? Oh, she's gone, right?

• 1:21:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know what, it's not your wife you'd be worried about, it's the child.

• 1:21:21Speaker 06

  Look, she says it because I told her to say it, right? I say, say something absolutely outrageous in this formal setting to make me laugh, because I can't smile on cue, and she says, eat ass in my ear.

• 1:21:34Speaker 06

  So, whenever, if you ever see me like in a photo shoot, and I'm like looking really happy, it's because Alba's whispered that in my ear. Yeah, or I'll have a little voice, no, if she's not there, I'll play it. Eat ass.

• 1:21:47Speaker 06

  But here, come here, what was the thing I was gonna say? Some weird thing is I'm always forgetting things, like, I'll lose my phone, I'll find it in the freezer, like.

• 1:21:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 06

  And then I'll find it in the freezer, and then I'll lose the ice cubes and find them in the oven or something like that. But like, Alba's friend went away on holiday there, and she was away for a while, and there was a delivery, there was a package on the doorstep, and it had been there for a while. So she was like, she called Alba, Alba, can you go and collect the parcel off my door? Because I don't want the neighbourhood knowing that I'm not home, you know? In case someone breaks in. I was like, you know what, Alba, I'm gonna change a microphone, I'll get it. So I went, I went down and I followed the address, I got it. The next, everything else was a blur. Because I think I got distracted by thinking about the spiders that I wanted to find out in Knockadoon. And I got home, went up to bed, and Alba was like, where's the parcel? And I was like, I left it in the front seat downstairs. She was like, okay, get it in the morning.

• 1:22:40Speaker 06

  So went down, no sign of it. And we spent, we spent hours like driving around Carrot Tool in Middleton looking for this package. And I was like, Alba, look, I think it was just a few t-shirts, it'll be brand. She was like, yeah, I know, but she's gonna think that, oh my god, she's gonna think I'm a, you know, a lunatic. And I was like, no, just tell her it was me. And we were so nervous, like, how are we gonna tell her? What are we gonna do if she came back? And we were like, listen, we've got something to tell you there with the parcel. And she's like, oh yeah, it was at the front door, why didn't you take it?

• 1:23:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh my god.

• 1:23:12Speaker 06

  But the thing is, I did take it. And it took me a while to think about it, I put it on the roof of the car. And I drove around, and someone found it and then delivered it back to the door.

• 1:23:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's, that's not just.

• 1:23:24Speaker 06

  But this happens every day.

• 1:23:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you were asking me earlier, like, am I, like, when I went for the autism diagnosis, I was like, I think I'm ADHD. And then they went, you're definitely not ADHD, it's autism, right? So what that thing is, it's a neurodivergent thing, it's called object permanence. So, like, I said in a podcast recently, I worked in an office, right? And I got in trouble in the office recently because I eat yogurts three times a day, right? And I was fucking throwing the yogurts into the bin with the spoon, and I caused complete depletion of the spoon ecosystem in the fucking office. All the teaspoons were gone because I'd been throwing them in the bin. And the secretaries had to bring it, they had to put a message out to the entire office, like, who's throwing the fucking spoons in the bin?

• 1:24:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had to own up and just go, look, I'm autistic, I've been throwing the spoons in the bin. I am only aware of it now that you fucking pointed it out. But that's, that's object permanence, right? And the big problem with that, it's not, objects are fine. I was able to go and, now, I went to a Chinese website and ordered like, something like 25 spoons, right? But then, to replenish the office store of spoons, but when they fucking, they were cheap. And I'm like, this feels wrong, these shouldn't be so cheap. And then the fucking spoons arrived in the post and they were tiny.

• 1:24:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  They were tiny Chinese spoons, right? Tiny. And then I put them into the fucking, like, I made the problem worse. So now everyone's going around with these tiny spoons, burning their fingers in their coffees. But object permanence, where that becomes difficult, it's not when it's objects, it's when it's people. So as you, this is what I find, so, like, I have no friends, right? I have no fucking friends. Like, I did have friends in my twenties because I was part of a friends group, but then, when you get into your fucking thirties, the act of having friends in your thirties means actively staying in fucking touch with people. And if someone isn't around, and they're not like my immediate people, I fucking forget about them. So I cannot text someone for three years,

• 1:25:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  and then in neurotypical rules, that means you're not friends anymore. So that's the tough part of it, it's when that object permanence starts to affect people, and then you lose contact with everyone. And it's like, why did I do that? Because I'm thinking about spiders, because I'm thinking about bird shit.

• 1:25:39Speaker 06

  I've got two things to say to you, I'm trying to keep them there.

• 1:25:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:25:43Speaker 06

  Am I interrupting? I'm sorry.

• 1:25:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Was it relevant to the topic?

• 1:25:46Speaker 06

  I think so.

• 1:25:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:25:48Speaker 06

  I pee sitting down, right?

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  I can bring this, I can bring this back, okay?

• 1:25:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:25:58Speaker 06

  I pee sitting down, not because I like to treat myself or anything, but because, do you know, like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of splashback. And so I pee sitting down, and I was like, oh, well, you're pee sitting down because it's splashing all over the place. And I used to forget to move the seat and all that, so now I pee sitting down. But lately, I know I'm peeing sitting down, but somehow the toilet seat is ending up, and I don't know what I'm doing yet. But I think, I think.

• 1:26:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Have you gone for the sitting on the toilet with the toilet seat down and you fall into the toilet?

• 1:26:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, that hasn't happened to me, but like, well, it has.

• 1:26:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I don't like pissing sitting down, my problem is pissing into the sink.

• 1:26:40Speaker 06

  No, no, but, no, but what I think, what I think was happening, right? Is I think I've gotten into a strange routine of, even though I'm peeing sitting down, is I'm standing up and I'm cleaning the toilet seat above and below, and then I'm putting it up neatly. I think that's what's happening. This is related to what we were talking about.

• 1:26:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  It is, but, well, you're obviously thinking about something while you're doing it.

• 1:26:59Speaker 06

  I'm gonna put a camera trap in the toilet to, to monitor, not a hidden camera, to monitor myself, like, you know.

• 1:27:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not a hidden camera, it will because you'll forget about it. To catch where you start.

• 1:27:11Speaker 06

  I'm gonna go into the toilet every night.

• 1:27:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  You'll end up being a peeping tom in yourself.

• 1:27:14Speaker 06

  No, no, no, I'm gonna wink in, I'm gonna go into the toilet every night and wink at myself.

• 1:27:19Speaker 06

  What was the other thing I had to say? Oh, it doesn't matter.

• 1:27:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  We were talking about object permanence. So there was the issue with the parcel on the roof of the car, pissing sitting down. Pissing sitting down is good at night time if, actually, yeah, I am. So I piss into the sink, right, because it's easier, I need to stop doing that. And then my other fucking huge thing with pissing into a milk bottle beside my bed.

• 1:27:42Speaker 06

  But if you're stuck, like.

• 1:27:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  But this, have you heard this story?

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  Our bathroom's been renovated at the moment, actually.

• 1:27:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  So where do you piss?

• 1:27:51Speaker 06

  Out the window.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  I wanna joke.

• 1:27:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I once, I pissed out of a helicopter on leash, on leash, on the county of leash, out of a helicopter once.

• 1:28:01Speaker 06

  Come here, can I, can I tell you?

• 1:28:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  On the way to a Jedward gig.

• 1:28:05Speaker 06

  Can I tell you a slightly unrelated thing before I forget it, right? You know, do you know what, bird watchers can have like this, this name as like, you know, it's like a hobby that you take up when you retire. It's seen as like a nerdy thing. Can I, let me tell you something, right? It's not like that, really. I have, I'm not gonna name any names now because this is so, well, you'll tell me if it's wild or not. There's some people I know, right, in the birding community, who have these competitions. And so, it's all related to taking a dump, really. So one of them is, they have this competition to see how high they can take a dump from into a river. And then they measure it, the winner is the one with the greatest plop factor, right?

• 1:28:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  But they're recording the sound, is it?

• 1:28:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're recording the sound. I'm not involved in this now.

• 1:28:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  What a way to die.

• 1:28:54Speaker 06

  But I think, look, none of us are getting out of this alive, like, so you may as well have a bit of crack, like.

• 1:29:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  But he died trying to shit out of a tree to impress his friends.

• 1:29:05Speaker 06

  But that's not all they do though, right? So I always thought I was a myth that you can light your farts on fire.

• 1:29:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, it's nice.

• 1:29:11Speaker 06

  No, it's not, it's not, and I saw this play out on the table of Kieran Danny Mikes in Cape Clear Island, in a lock-in, and they would, they would stand on the, they would stand on the tabletop and, and, you know, you know, kind of put it open. And they have these, like, they're essentially, they're pros, like, you can't wear polystyrene pants because it'll actually melt, it'll actually melt.

• 1:29:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sweat is a problem.

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  It'll melt the arse, like, when you, when you blow, so, and then, there's a lot, there's one person, like, there's the lighter, and then there's the farter, and then they would get up and they'd go, light me up! And it would be, and it would be like a flame twirl.

• 1:29:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 06

  Like this, yeah.

• 1:29:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did a lot of that and got involved in a lot of that.

• 1:29:51Speaker 06

  Did you?

• 1:29:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  In school, like. But eventually, the fellas who are good at it, you have to be comfortable with proximity to male anus.

• 1:29:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because it's like, you can't do it in school pants, you can't, so an effective fart lighting is.

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  School pants are gone.

• 1:30:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Reptile.

• 1:30:06Speaker 06

  It's gonna melt onto your arse.

• 1:30:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, but, Jesus, this is unlike us now talking about this kind of stuff.

• 1:30:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  But anyway, um.

• 1:30:19Speaker 06

  I better get back to this list.

• 1:30:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah. You've no more facts about that spider from Limerick, do you?

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  Um, no, I don't think so. Uh, no.

• 1:30:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's his name again?

• 1:30:28Speaker 06

  I do have another spider fact, though.

• 1:30:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on, please.

• 1:30:30Speaker 06

  So I was talking to Colly, right? So I've been in spider mode now for a while.

• 1:30:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is our artist, our artistic friend, Colly, who's into spiders.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  I haven't. Ah, that was the other thing I was gonna say. I only have one friend. I only have, well, you know, I have, uh, friends, acquaintances, but I have one, like, really close friend. And, like you were saying, like, you don't.

• 1:30:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that a friend, or is it someone you work with? Because that's another artistic, like, so when I say I don't have friends, right, I do have, like, friends, but I can only be friends with them if we're working.

• 1:30:59Speaker 06

  No, no, um, we ring each other and rant about birds for hours every day.

• 1:31:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's not a friend. Is he, how professional is he in the bird world?

• 1:31:07Speaker 06

  No, but, like, I, I like birds before it was a profession for me. You know, it was just something I loved. You know what I mean? So I don't.

• 1:31:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Does he record birds?

• 1:31:14Speaker 06

  I feel strange when people say that that's your job. Well, he does, yeah, he does.

• 1:31:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, so under the rules of artistic, if I, if, if, I had this argument with the psy, with the psychologist who was diagnosing me, see, that's the thing.

• 1:31:26Speaker 06

  So is Harry, is Harry my colleague?

• 1:31:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  But that's the thing. I was, he was asking me, like, who are your friends? And I was listing them out. And it's like, when was the last person, time you were with this person? And my main one would be, be my buddy James, who I write all, on my TV shows with. And was there reverb on that the whole fucking time?

• 1:31:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, okay, I heard an echo.

• 1:31:44Speaker 06

  I hear it too.

• 1:31:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I heard an echo.

• 1:31:45Speaker 06

  I heard it earlier and I.

• 1:31:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah. It would sound like when I put the recording out that I'm lying about where I am. Because you'd have recorded that in a church, not on Garnish Island, you couldn't. Um, I was, the psych, psychologist was like, look, list out who you're friends with, list out who you like spending time with. And every time it's like, I enjoy spending time with this person, but only when we're writing television together. So it's like, that's quite artistic. What I mean is, do you ever just ring someone up and go, let's hang out? And I'm like, why the fuck would I do that?

• 1:32:15Speaker 06

  I don't do that anyway.

• 1:32:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  No.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  So like.

• 1:32:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, why would I possibly want that? Why would I, do you, do you wanna go and hang out? Do you wanna have a coffee? What the fuck does that mean?

• 1:32:22Speaker 06

  Like, well, I might, I might have a coffee with Harry sometimes, but we'd be showing each other pictures of birds and spiders and, and, and talking about where we're gonna go next to photograph birds and spiders. Um, I'm gonna have to break up with him now because he's my colleague, though.

• 1:32:36Speaker 06

  And gonna.

• 1:32:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you're, you're my friend, but I only talk to you when we're doing a podcast together.

• 1:32:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. And we, we talk about artistic things, I guess, you know.

• 1:32:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, you do. We mail each other a lot about, uh, bird sounds. Actually, the last thing I mailed you about was, um, yeah, it was very depressing. I wanna find out about this.

• 1:32:52Speaker 06

  Oh, I know what you're gonna say. Yeah.

• 1:32:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I wanted to know if it was clickbait. Someone, a, a, a recording of, this is the sound of wildlife in 1920. Here it is in 1960. Here it is in 2006. And literally each time, there's less and less birds.

• 1:33:09Speaker 06

  That's facts.

• 1:33:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  So devastating. I thought it was bullshit.

• 1:33:12Speaker 06

  Check out the work of Bernie Kraus. Like, he's a, he's a legend. Um, he's like the godfather of, of wildlife sound. Um, but he was like, he was like a serious musician and worked with musicians too, um, like in the production side of things. But, uh, yeah, like, he was the one who, who coined the terms biophony, geophony, and anthropophony. Have you heard of those?

• 1:33:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  No.

• 1:33:33Speaker 06

  Uh, so like, uh, biophony is the sound of living creatures. Geophony is the sound of, uh, you know, inanimate, uh, things in nature, like the sound of a, a river or thunder or things like that. And then anthropophony is the sounds of us and our stuff.

• 1:33:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wow.

• 1:33:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. Was he coined that, like? Um, but anyway, like, he's big into long-form soundscape recordings and he really, like, he has a number of sites where he's been going to for 40 years, like, you know, again and again and again and again. And, like, to listen to his first recording there and his most recent recording there is, is like shocking. In some places, in fact, he's just doing it for the sake of it, like, the, the trees are gone and there could be a skyscraper there or whatever, like, you know, and it's, uh, it's quite profound, like, you know?

• 1:34:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  I just discovered an interesting piece of antrop, and what you call it?

• 1:34:21Speaker 06

  Anthropophony.

• 1:34:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I just discovered one right there, which, if you got a man from the 16th century, one of those English cunts here, he'd have a heart attack. Listen to the sound of this. It is the, this, when I engage my vape and turn the battery on, the electrical interference that it causes with the top of the microphone. Listen to this.

• 1:34:39Speaker 06

  Oh my God.

• 1:34:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's an, an.

• 1:34:41Speaker 06

  Anthropophony.

• 1:34:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  But it is. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you think a Victorian cunt is gonna have that with his cigar?

• 1:34:48Speaker 06

  Do you remember, do you remember?

• 1:34:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm smoking the internet. I charged this off my laptop. I'm smoking the internet.

• 1:34:52Speaker 06

  Do you, do you, do you remember the dial, the dial-up internet? And you used to be able to predict when somebody was gonna call you?

• 1:34:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  You used to be able to hear that. Um, come here, I have a load of sounds to play. Can I play some sounds?

• 1:35:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Give us some, give us some good shit.

• 1:35:05Speaker 06

  Right. I know that there are some people who are here earlier, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna play something, uh, different, right? But I might play some of the other stuff later as well. Okay, this is the one that's been staring me in the face for a while, so I'm gonna have to go with this. So this is very relevant to where we are now.

• 1:35:26Speaker 06

  So this is a common seal, a harbor seal. So these are the seals that you saw out, outside. So they're, they're ferocious farters. They, they fart a lot, like. So here's a combination of one farting and sneezing at the same time. It isn't only, it isn't only us, right?

• 1:35:45Speaker 06

  I, I actually have, right, because now I have about 40,000 wildlife sounds. And so because I have so many, I have to be descriptive, or otherwise I'll lose a particular recording. So I have to, like, think of imaginative ways to describe the farts of these seals, like, you know, so I can pick one out from the other. Um, aggressive fart is the best one. Uh, I've got vicious fart in there as well. Oh, come here, I, I found something as well. I wrote this down because I never would have remembered it otherwise. Do you know that common seals can play the drums?

• 1:36:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  No.

• 1:36:12Speaker 06

  Um, so there's a whole paper on it, and it's called rhythmic percussive signalling in common seals. Yep. So they play drumbeats on their chest with their, with their, with their.

• 1:36:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And is, is it in time? Is it, or like, could you hear it as music or?

• 1:36:25Speaker 06

  You do have the musical here. Let, let's see, because it sounds pretty good to me, like. Um, I didn't even realise that that's what it was. It's when I was researching this, I thought, Jesus, what's that? And then I, and then I saw that I actually had it. So here, I just had it down as fin slaps at the time. But it's definitely musical, like, I think, anyway. Is that, is that the one? Oh, no, this is it. I named it odd fin slapping.

• 1:36:55Speaker 06

  What do you reckon?

• 1:36:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 06

  It seems to be in to, in time, is it? Yeah, so this is a thing. So they actually create music with their fins to impress the females, you know, so it's not just.

• 1:37:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're humans.

• 1:37:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know what?

• 1:37:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Playing the spoons.

• 1:37:11Speaker 06

  Oh, man, this is leading me into, this is leading me into so many things here now, right? Um, so that's the seal done now, right? So this is the next one. I don't know if I sent you this or not, uh, before. Right, so this is another thing. Uh, some of the people that were in the other show would have heard this. Please don't say it, right?

• 1:37:38Speaker 06

  Oh, that's a bit quiet, is it?

• 1:37:42Speaker 06

  I'll get, I'll get a better one. Hang on. Uh, what did I call that? Jesus.

• 1:37:49Speaker 06

  Lovely robins singing there. They're really mimetic, you know?

• 1:37:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  How do you mean by that?

• 1:37:54Speaker 06

  Like, they, they imitate the sounds of other things in their environments.

• 1:37:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go away, robins.

• 1:37:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Robins are really good mimics. And you can tell if a robin, a robin is a migrant that's come from further afield. Like, how else would you know? Like, that's the amazing thing about mimicry. You can, I've got, I've got something to show you with that actually.

• 1:38:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that robin showing off? Is that, is that robin like this garden? I've been to India, I've been to China.

• 1:38:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, well, not so much of that. It's more like, um, you know, it knows that the more complex and impressive the song is, uh, the more likely it's gonna attract a mate. And so eventually it runs out of its own idea, so it starts to sample. It starts to sample other artists. Do you know what I mean? It's, it's like that. Look at the dragonfly.

• 1:38:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, I've heard bad things about those cunts.

• 1:38:34Speaker 06

  Migrant hawker.

• 1:38:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who was it? Ed, who's running the festival, got bitten by a dragonfly last week, and I didn't know that was possible. And he already told me this evening, so that's another insect to be afraid of.

• 1:38:43Speaker 06

  Here's the other one. Yeah. Maybe it was the dragonfly bit me, although I think I would have seen that one. All right, this is the one, right?

• 1:39:01Speaker 06

  Do you know what that is?

• 1:39:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on.

• 1:39:02Speaker 06

  Frog hopper.

• 1:39:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  The little insect.

• 1:39:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, in the, in the cuckoo spit. So that's another one that duets. So that's the male.

• 1:39:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Could I hear that with my ear or is that your brilliant microphone?

• 1:39:11Speaker 06

  No, microphone only.

• 1:39:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay.

• 1:39:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So it's a vibrational song, if you will. Like, so imagine this is the hollow stem of a plant. It, it like vibrates really quickly, vibrates out the tune and then it travels down the hollow stem. And there might be a female at the other end of the hollow stem. And if she is there and she hears it and she's impressed, she responds with her own tune, they duet and they meet in the middle.

• 1:39:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  So he has a sound system.

• 1:39:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. It's like an amplifier. Yeah.

• 1:39:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  That is amazing.

• 1:39:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really cool.

• 1:39:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Here, we have 10 minutes to do audience questions.

• 1:39:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is there a microphone? Look at that dog getting a good fucking belly up.

• 1:39:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fair play.

• 1:39:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Does anyone have a question about anything in the whole world? We can throw on a mic around the gaff.

• 1:39:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go on there, Eminem, just throw it up the first hand that you see.

• 1:40:01Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:40:04Speaker 07

  I have a question about Merlin Bird ID, an app.

• 1:40:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:08Speaker 07

  I use to help me learn bird sounds.

• 1:40:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:11Speaker 07

  I found that it completely ignores the song of gulls and won't distinguish them or even say that it's hearing a bird.

• 1:40:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, really?

• 1:40:19Speaker 07

  I wondered if there's any, any reason that it does that or there's less distinctive calls. To me, they will sound really distinctive.

• 1:40:29Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, but that's my little girl imitating the sound of a cuckoo over there.

• 1:40:34Speaker 07

  That's brilliant.

• 1:40:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  What it was.

• 1:40:36Speaker 06

  Oh, she is.

• 1:40:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Brilliant.

• 1:40:39Speaker 06

  And so I was listening to it. So gulls, gulls are, the thing about gulls is that they're extremely subtle in their differences. So like, they have like, they have calls, flight calls, but then they also have long calls, which is the term for song in gulls. And they're just so similar. And I'm guessing it just, it, it isn't accurate enough to, to dare and separate them yet. I would imagine that's what it is. Merlin is a great thing, like, because it, it brings people into that, into that world, like, you know. But you do need to take it with a pinch of salt because it always wants to give you an answer. And it's because it's programmed in North America, it can, I, I think now you can actually put in, you can tell it,

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  tell it where you are based and it'll rule out those things. But also, like, I think that, you know, if you're using it, you know, to solve a mystery now and then, great. But sometimes people go out and they just let that guide them through nature. And I think it takes away from the whole point of being out there. Like, you know, I think the most beautiful thing about being out in nature is to get away from the technology that just smothered us, smothers us in our, in our day to day lives, like, you know. But it is, it is great.

• 1:41:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who, who owns, what is Merlin doing with the data of all that bird song?

• 1:41:55Speaker 06

  So it's Cornell, it's Cornell Lab.

• 1:41:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a university?

• 1:41:59Speaker 06

  Cornell Lab of Ornithology. So it's a legit.

• 1:42:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that ethical then? You think they're?

• 1:42:03Speaker 06

  I haven't really looked into the, into the depths of it.

• 1:42:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because you saw today, I don't know if you saw it, but today there's headlines saying that they're trying to use AI for us to literally talk to animals based on their calls.

• 1:42:15Speaker 06

  Ah, yeah. I don't like that. Yeah. I think, I don't know, how like, how far can?

• 1:42:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  But say, what are you gonna ask? Imagine asking an animal, like, we spend all this money, data centers destroying the environment. Let's, let's ask the animals what's up. And then they turn around and go, you've destroyed the place. You fucking, that's what I wanna say. You've destroyed the place.

• 1:42:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  With the data centers to try and understand me. I'm telling you, the place is ruined.

• 1:42:39Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's definitely things that you can understand from their, from their conversations by really like digging deep. Like, again, going back to mimicry, it's something that I'm working on a lot right now. So I spoke about a bird earlier, like, it's a rare bird in Cork. In a, they, they nest kind of, well, on a scrape on the ground, often in abandoned quarries. And I had a suspicion, like, they're, they're just coming up now, like, they're just kind of colonizing. They're, they're kind of a more southerly species. And I, I suspected that they would eventually turn up in this place. And one year I heard a blackbird imitating the display of this bird. And I thought, where did you hear that? And because of that, I focused my search in the quarry and found them.

• 1:43:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wow.

• 1:43:19Speaker 06

  So you, you can really, if you really dig into mimicry, and this is something that AI can do. If you really dig into it, you can learn like amazing things, like. So that, that's what I'm working on in the background now.

• 1:43:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  So one bird will tell you about a new insect, a new moths, because they're mimicking these new sounds in the same way that birds will do chainsaws, cars, all that carry on.

• 1:43:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, like common whitethroat now is, is my, is my thing, like, it's my deep, deep dive obsession. And I've recorded, I think nearly a hundred individuals now, and I record them for a minimum of 48 hours. Like, they're not seen for 48 hours, but the recorder will be there. And it usually takes about 45 minutes of, of song to get their full repertoire out, you know. And that is, especially when they arrive up from Africa in the spring, when they've just arrived in, it's laced with mimicry. And like, you can literally take the mimicry, especially if it's mimicry of a sedentary bird, one, one which doesn't migrate. You can use that as an exact coordinate from where it's passed through.

• 1:44:22Speaker 06

  And so by getting enough whitethroats, I now have the visual map of where it migrates from what they told me, from Senegal to Ireland and back.

• 1:44:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fuck, man. And that's all the storytelling.

• 1:44:32Speaker 06

  It's exactly what it is.

• 1:44:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's all the storytelling. That's how we remembered fucking giant epics before we could write them down.

• 1:44:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. And like, sometimes like, I, I can listen to a, like on Ballycotten Cliffs now, I listened to a whitethroat there this spring. And it was, it was just bringing me to the wetlands of Catalunya, where Alba's from, like imitating marsh harrier, tawny owl, European beater, flamingo, doing all sorts of stuff, like, it's, there's another world in there waiting to be uncovered. And I think that it's beyond the area, like, because the mimicry is often not exactly accurate. It's like, you know, if somebody hears a song on the radio and then they hum it and, and sing it to themselves. It's like that, you know?

• 1:45:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:12Speaker 06

  You, you, you know what it's doing, but it's not, it's not the exact match.

• 1:45:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  So your expertise, we'd say, means that you can pick out that nuance.

• 1:45:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. You can match it up and, and like, and with that then, like, you can get an idea of the habitat that it's been in. And you can look at other species that would be in that habitat to help you verify one that may be a little bit on the age. But I use kind of confidence intervals too, like, you know.

• 1:45:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are there any birds singing the songs of extinct birds?

• 1:45:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Well, extinct in a, like, in a national context.

• 1:45:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:45:45Speaker 06

  So I've recorded windchat, which is a migratory bird. It, it winters down in Africa, related to stonechat. And I recorded one in Coronation Plantation in Wicklow. And it's imitating the song of corn bunting, which was the last bird to go extinct in Ireland. And so like, they can pass down, like mimicry can, can be generational as well, right? So they can pass it down. And, you know, like, even though the bird is long gone, the young are still learning it from the adults. But it can become degraded, like a, like a Chinese whisper. There's another mad one, like of a starling that was imitating the sound of a two-stroke engine in a boffie in Scotland. And the ruins of the engine were below the boffie from where it was singing. It was generational mimicry. Yeah.

• 1:46:28Speaker 06

  The mimicry is wild, I'm telling you.

• 1:46:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  But that's.

• 1:46:32Speaker 06

  I'm gonna disappear for a while and, and come back with some mimicry.

• 1:46:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  The thing that I'm fucking obsessed with, right, is, so where we are right now, so, so all of these islands were, this was the end of a glaciated valley, right? So the glacier flooded, when the glacier melted, it flooded this whole area. And that's what these islands were. It was the bottom of a glacier. And the glaciers melted in Ireland 15,000 years ago, right? I'm fucking convinced that flood mythology, whether it be in the Epic of Gilgamesh, right, which would have been written down four and a half thousand years ago, the Bible, Noah, written down three and a half thousand years ago. And then in, in Ireland, we, in our mythology, we have, it's, it's in the Lower Gavalla area.

• 1:47:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, just, just in, in Nimerick, by the River Shannon where I am, right? I can go to an area, and this area is called Finton's grave, right? And that's there in the Dinsankas from like the 10th century. And Finton was, the story is, and because it's been corrupted with Christianity, but there was a great flood. And Noah warned people about this flood and they left before the flood happened and came to Ireland, right? And one of these people was a fella called Finton. Finton then transformed into a salmon for a thousand years and lived in that mountain as a salmon. But like, then I can go half an hour up and there's a site called Hermitage. And that there is where we found

• 1:48:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  the earliest human settlement evidence in Ireland. It's 11,000 years old. So the people there likely witnessed, when the last ice age ended, there were deluges, like what you saw in, was that on the Pal, though?

• 1:48:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  So with the Pal, what happened is that a glacier fucking melted and you saw a deluge. Human beings saw that, you know, 20,000 years ago, 15,000 years ago. And like those birds minicking and getting things wrong, that's what I think our flood mythology is. It's someone remembered this great deluge event and it stuck with us through mythology, through these stories that you see when this shit was happening.

• 1:48:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know? And we do the same shit.

• 1:48:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. What about that mad one as well with the, with the people in Australia who could recall an exact watering hole that was no under.

• 1:48:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's the best one. That's, that's because the indigenous Australian people, they have unbroken oral mythology that reckon could be 30,000 to 60,000 years old. So that it was the indigenous people of Melbourne, I think it was, and they had songlines, so they're stories that they can tell that they don't need writing for. And the way that they would tell their story is that it's a very, very long walk. And they're telling this epic tale and then it ends at the coast.

• 1:49:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Their story doesn't end at the coast. Their story is like, no, off there in the middle of the ocean, there's actually watering holes. And then geologists went and studied it and they found, holy fuck, they're right. So they may have had a story that's older than the landscape, you know what I mean? Which is, ah, it's beautiful, you know? And we can take one more question.

• 1:49:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  You pick Eminem.

• 1:49:42Speaker 06

  We finish with one sound, doesn't it?

• 1:49:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, we, we, we let, we let. End with a sound.

• 1:49:47Speaker 04

  I have a question about, like, it's sort of related to, like, I do gardening. So like, I'm always like wondering about plants in like places like these, because obviously you're saying.

• 1:49:57Speaker 06

  This is super alien environments, right? And with, you know, with introducing things like this, or like you look around here like rhododendrons everywhere and obviously when you introduce plants, it drives out. Yeah, it drives out like species and things like that. But do you ever get a case of when you introduce things like species of plants that you get, birds that you wouldn't see kind of coming in and things like that? Or? Yeah, I mean, let me think. So like off the top of my head, not, not birds now, but you know, budlia, you know budlia? Like that's like, that's, well, actually I can think of a bird example too. Like budlia butterfly bush is technically an invasive species like, but it's so good for, for, for butterflies and bees, not so much in the larval stage though, but like, you know,

• 1:50:42Speaker 06

  in terms of pollination and, and, and, you know, nectar source, it's amazing. Then right, there's the, the dreaded conifer plantations, you know? And look, they're, they're smothering the landscape and generally they're terrible for biodiversity, especially because they're planted in straight lines, really close together, which forces them to grow tall and straight, highly acidic, so on and so on. But they're actually very beneficial for a few species. But I mean, a few species is, is, you know, not as good as planting a forest. That's good for many, many species. Crossbill, coal tit, gold crest, woodcock have actually done pretty well because of conifer plantations. Crossbill was once a kind of a sporadic nomad that turned up now and then.

• 1:51:26Speaker 06

  Now it breeds like, it's a, it's a common breeding bird. Well, not common, but widespread.

• 1:51:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Could you then end up with too much crossbill because there's too much conifer?

• 1:51:34Speaker 06

  Um, no, like the thing about crossbills is they're eruptive. So, um, they can, like, if they have a really good year, like they'll wander, like they'll, they'll explode and they'll wander to other places. Like that's how we used to get them before we had all of the conifers, like explosive, eruptive movements, like, and they'd feed them what they could. And back then, because there were no conifers, they probably kept going. The other thing about crossbills, like there's another world there. So crossbills have their own call types and they can, I think there's 29 dialects distinguished and you can tell what part of the world the crossbill has come from based on the way it's calling. And so we have a UK and Irish type. So the, the one that ended up coming to Ireland clearly came from the UK because it had the same call type. That's not a mad thing. When I'm looking at mimicry, if I see crossbill in the mimicry, I can get an exact pinpoint

• 1:52:18Speaker 06

  because I'd say, okay, what's this, what type of call type of crossbill is this white trout mimicking? Okay, so this crossbill is the call type from North West Spain. Okay, so this white trout has been in North West Spain, you know?

• 1:52:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:29Speaker 06

  It's nuance after nuance with mimicry like, and it's, uh, I'm going way off course, aren't I?

• 1:52:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, we're still on the topic of bird song. So we're grand. And do you know what? We, we gotta, we gotta leg it so that these people can catch their boat. So you play one last sound, one last tune.

• 1:52:48Speaker 06

  Put on your helmets.

• 1:52:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd love if it lashes out or on Levine.

• 1:52:53Speaker 06

  All right, we'll just, just one.

• 1:53:03Speaker 06

  An evil duet.

• 1:53:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's a bit distant, so we're good. Get the eagles, now it's pissed off now while everyone's about to get on a boat.

• 1:53:20Speaker 06

  Generational stick nests. They can be passed down for many, many generations.

• 1:53:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Generational stick nests?

• 1:53:26Speaker 06

  Yep. The eagles pass down their nests for, for, I think there's, so the, the equivalent in, in America, bald eagle, I think there are nests documented over a hundred years old, like antique nests that were passed down from the great, great, great, great, great grandparents.

• 1:53:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just a quick one there, right? So when you were saying, we're grand to play that sound, right? Because it's not breeding season, but if it was breeding season here with these two eagles on the island, would you be a bit more cautious about playing?

• 1:53:50Speaker 06

  Ah, yeah, but like, um, I, I think they're, they're not close to us anyway and it's kind of distant, but definitely not like it's, it's illegal, it's disturbance. And so what could happen like that bird could suddenly get up to defend its territory. It could knock the, the eggs out of the nest in a panic. You know, it can have serious repercussions like, um, I worked in the Faroe Islands.

• 1:54:12Speaker 06

  I worked, is that my little one crying?

• 1:54:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, is it? All right, I thought it was an eagle, sorry.

• 1:54:19Speaker 06

  Maybe the wasp got hurt. No, but when I worked in the Faroe Islands in, in, in England, helicopters sometimes used to come in and do maneuvers from the army. They had to write to them. They were, they were panicking the seabirds and the adults were fleeing and they were knocking the young, which couldn't swim off the cliffs and they were drowning. Like, so you need to be very careful and mindful with.

• 1:54:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm sure the British army will listen to you.

• 1:54:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, they did, they did.

• 1:54:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go way out of it, did they? Tell them about the north.

• 1:54:44Speaker 06

  It was a seabird sanctuary.

• 1:54:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. But, uh, yeah, I hope you enjoyed our attentions.

• 1:54:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, listen. Thank you so much everyone for coming along. Thank you for getting on a boat and coming to an island. The dog is barking too. Go on.

• 1:55:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Dog bless everybody. Shaun.

• 1:55:07Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, it was hard.

• 1:55:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm taking these breaks, man.

• 1:55:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's important.

• 1:55:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I enjoyed the bollocks off all of that. That was so much crack.

• 1:55:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I, I love listening back to it too. I really enjoyed that and I loved the dog. And the dog.

• 1:55:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  He stayed quiet for the whole thing and barks at the end when everyone's clapping. It was a dog bless, that was beautiful. He spent the whole podcast lying, lying on, in the middle aisle, pointing his bollocks and ayeing us at me. But, uh, I thank you to my guest Shaun Ronayne. I have so much crack with Shaun. It's, I love chatting to him.

• 1:56:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Check out his books, check out his documentaries, check out his podcast, The Shaun Chorus. I'll catch you next week, I don't know what with.

• 1:56:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  We'll figure out a hot take. In the meantime, genuflect to a rein, wink at a worm, blow kisses at a snail. Dog bless.

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