The Woman whose name was Horse

A phonecall episode about accepting the sufferinng of existence 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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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 1:14Speaker 01

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• 1:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Protecting that Elvis pressed his breast against a tennis racket and NSU venerable Dennis's. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. Think I have too much bass on my voice here. Are you kites? If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

• 1:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm here in Limerick City, and it feels like we're after getting a slap into the face of winter. It's only the 2nd of September, and it's cold and dark and wet.

• 2:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Feels more like October. It's not usually this bleak, this early in September.

• 2:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  It doesn't feel like you've downloaded yourself into the middle of winter. That's what it feels like right now. I'm looking out my window and it's, it's sunset. Now I can't see any fucking sun. It's, it's, it's as purple as a Paul Henry painting out there. It's very, very bleak. Oh, there's the starlings. Sorry about that. I was just about to say to you, literally, I was just about to say to you. It's so dark and bleak out there and it's evening and the sun is setting and I haven't seen the starlings do their murmuration around Dimmerick City.

• 2:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I was worried that they thought, because it's so bleak, I was worried that they, they thought we were in the middle of November. No. So the starlings, right on fucking time. They just did that now at 10 minutes past eight. Now, three weeks ago, I think it was, three weeks ago, when I spoke about the starlings doing their evening murmuration live, three weeks ago, I think it was. They're much lower tonight though. That's interesting. I'm so sorry to be speaking about the starlings again, lads. What do you want me to do? I'm looking out a fucking window.

• 3:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Three weeks ago, they were doing their murmuration at 10 to nine, I believe. Now they're out there about, about an hour earlier. This lets me know that, you know, the days, the days are getting shorter. There's less light out there now. Things are about to get bleak and they fly low. They fly low when there's big, heavy, overcast cloud out there. When the skies are clear and beautiful and pink, then they do their huge displays up high. But when it's overcast or when it's, when it's raining, if there's heavy rain, they don't do any fucking murmuration at all. They go straight into the trees when it's raining.

• 4:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Four weeks ago, I told you, I told you I wasn't gonna get dragged onto the fucking radio, talking about starlings, sounding like a lunatic.

• 4:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the starling situation, it ended up being national news here in Ireland because of tourism, because tourists were coming to Limerick to look at the bird shit. And then journalists came to Limerick to interview people who were coming to look at the bird shit and see the starlings. And then this big, huge article got written about it in the Irish Examiner about the bird shit district. Limerick councillor fucking livid, livid with me, very, very upset. And then this week, a radio station asked me on, asked me on to speak about the fucking starlings and I couldn't resist it. I couldn't resist it, even though I said a month ago, I'm not gonna let that happen.

• 5:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Don't go onto mainstream media and interrupt people's Dermot Kennedy songs with a starling rant because you risk looking like a fruitcake publicly. See, it's different here on the podcast. You're making a choice. You know what to expect. On the radio, on the radio, it's like, that's into people's offices and their cars. And on the radio, it's, oh, that fella Blind Boy with the plastic bag in his head from Limerick, who I haven't thought about in four years, who I haven't heard about in four fucking years. Why is he on the radio talking about bird shit? And then, because that's so strange, what happens then is I then get attacked by conspiracy

• 5:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  theorists who think that, they think that I'm like a paid actor, a paid actor who's brought on to national radio to push the climate change agenda. So I went on the radio anyway, I spoke for 20 fucking minutes on news talk just about bird shit and I willed into existence. The very, the very role play, the role play of me talking to a fucking radio DJ that I, that I role played four weeks ago, I willed that into existence and then it happened.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  On news talk. Blind Boy Boat Cub is just back from Electric Picnic. He'll be appearing next on September 23rd in Vicar Street and on the 27th in the Millennium Theatre in Derry, but he's not joining us today to talk about any of that, rather the gift that is bird poo. Blind Boy, good afternoon.

• 6:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  How are you Sean, what's the craig? Thank you so much for having me on.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Tell us about Bedford Row.

• 6:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, so this, there's this street in Limerick called Bedford Road, it's our main pedestrianized street and... So you get the point, you get the fucking point, you, you, you, I'm on the radio talking about pedestrianized streets in Limerick for twenty fucking minutes. I promised myself I wasn't gonna do it, promised myself that that exact thing wasn't gonna, at least it wasn't me arguing with a councillor from Limerick City Council, at least that didn't happen. And you hear him going, "You sure you don't wanna promote your gigs, no? You don't wanna talk about the upcoming gigs that you have there?" No, I'd like to talk about bar shit, please. My fucking agent rang me up, my agent rang me up afterwards, livid. Like, when I

• 7:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  have gigs, I'm, I'm supposed to go on the radio, to, on TV, to promote gigs, that, like, that's what I'm supposed to do, and I don't do it. So my agent was like, "You'll go on the radio and talk about fucking bar shit, and the radio host has to, has to read out your gigs instead? Multiple gigs that we need to sell tickets to, you wanna talk about bar shit?" And I'm like, "Yeah." Well, well, I explained to him, I said, "Here, here's the thing, look, if I go on the radio and speak about bar shit, that's literal genuine passion, I actually wanna speak about this, that's legitimate passion. I don't like going on the radio." Oh my god. "So Blind Boy, tell us about your upcoming gig in Vicar Street, what are

• 8:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  you gonna do in Vicar Street? Any surprises?" Now, that's not an impression of that DJ Sean Moncrief, who's actually fairly sound, that's not an impression of him, that's just generic radio DJ voice, but, like, I don't like going onto the radio to fucking talk about a gig. I've, I've tried it before. "What's it like in a Blind Boy Live podcast show? What, you, do you just, you just go up on stage and do something nuts? Is it crazy? Do you ever get nervous? Do you ever get nervous walking out, talking to a lot of people? And would you not take off the bag?" So that's most of, that's going on the radio promoting your gig, like, I don't want to do that, cause then I have to lie, I have to lie and pretend that I enjoy that

• 8:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  conversation, and that's really difficult. So if my agent is listening, which they are, Mark, it's not that I don't wanna promote my gigs, it's, I have extreme difficulty engaging in, in that type of performative small talk. Like, what am I gonna say? "Well, you know I'm gonna do..." Is that me doing an impression of me?

• 9:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I tried to do an impression of me.

• 9:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, you know, I'm Blind Boy and, uh, you know, it's just gonna be a great laugh in vicar's streets. It's gonna be loads of fun. I'm gonna bring out a guest and we'll do a live podcast.

• 9:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's me doing an impression of me. I'm not gonna answer the radio. I wanna go on the radio and talk about bird shit. And with all due respect to Sean Moncrief, he'd a very eager set of ears and he willingly let me go on a bird shit rant. I filled his ears with bird shit for, he gave me 20 minutes on news talk. He wasn't even supposed to give me 20 minutes. He gave me 20 minutes on news talk to do an autistic rant about bird shit and biodiversity. So fair play to him. And then I forgot I was on the fucking radio and this happened.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  As to why these starlings are coming back to that specific point, uh, or that specific location, and why is that?

• 10:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, actually, I forgot I was on the radio there, Sean. Should I be saying poo poo instead?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  I know. You've said it about 17 times now. So I think we're, we're, we're done. And it's, it's, it's official name, uh, rather than.

• 10:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  The bird shit, bird shit district.

• 10:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Goodness me. My laugh is really hoarse there now. Sounds like a, a whistling kettle on the roof of a moving ambulance. Blind Boy, you said on last week's podcast that your laugh was like a whistling kettle on the roof of a moving ambulance. Rather irreverent description of your laugh. What, what did you mean by that, Blind Boy? The Doppler effect. Um, my laugh, my laugh there, it, it went up in pages. It sounded like the Doppler effect. That's what I meant by that. What type of wall am I breaking here? I've got fucking, so actual conversations of me on the radio with a radio DJ, which I willed into existence by doing a role play of me and a radio DJ a couple of weeks ago.

• 11:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  But now I'm then responding to that with a role play of me and a radio DJ, but then commenting about that happening. It's not breaking the fourth wall.

• 11:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's, I've broken the fourth wall and now I'm constructing an ironic meta-modern partition. But my ma, my ma's gonna be listening to this and she's gonna say to me, "You were smoking cigarettes at Electric Picnic, weren't you?" Every, anytime I laugh, and if it sounds hoarse, she'd get on to me saying, "You were smoking cigarettes." I wasn't smoking cigarettes at Electric Picnic, I wasn't. But I was, I was speaking to, I'd say I must have spoken to maybe thirty-six people. Easily, I would have had conversations with thirty-six people at Electric Picnic backstage. People in the entertainment industry, people that I know,

• 12:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  performers, who I haven't seen in a year. So my voice is hoarse from talking and my social battery is very heavily drained. And thank you to everybody who come out to Electric Picnic to see the gig. I should have done, I did a fucking tiny tent. So, my gig at Picnic, I wanted to do a little tidy, simple gig. It was on at half-one, which is early. It was myself and Darrow Brain, the comedian, and Ruth Freeman, who's been on, she was a guest on this podcast before. Ruth is a scientist. But the gig, it was on at one-thirty. The tent only held about six or seven hundred people, which I thought

• 13:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  was grand, because I'm like, "Who the fuck's gonna get up and come to a gig at one o'clock? It'll be fine, we can do the small tent." But then people started sending me videos, and there were giant queues for the tent, and people couldn't get in to see the gig. So, I apologize for that. You know I'm not mad about festivals. I didn't wanna be staying late, so I took an early gig. But, I'll do something different next year, in a tent where more people can come in. I really regret taking that. Taking the earlier gig now, I really regret it, having seen the people who queued in the fucking rain to come along to the gig. I apologize. Also, if you're interested in hearing that, my radio appearance, where I spoke about bard shit, um-

• 13:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just look up the Sean Moncrief Show on Nose Talk's website. And I think it's on the Go Loud player as well, which is an app. And I think they have, my interview is there as a little separate segment. Just type Blind by Sean Moncrief Show, Bardshit, that'll give you the results. I think this week's podcast is going to be a bit of a phone call because I was at a festival, I was working all weekend at Electric Picnic.

• 14:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And also, any time I do a fucking festival gig at the weekend, the podcast the week after is usually a bit of a phone call because I'm so, not burnt out, but rattled, disoriented. That's how I feel, disoriented, which is, I love that word. Orient comes from the Latin word audience, which means the rising sun, east. So when you're disoriented, you can't find east. And that experience perfectly describes the feeling of neurodivergent burnout for me. Do you know when you're on holidays and you know where your hotel is?

• 14:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  And after about day three, you kind of have a mental picture of the streets around your hotel. By about day three of a holiday, you can walk to the bar or the shop without needing to look at the maps on your phone. You have an idea of, ah, I feel oriented. I know that when I come out the door of this hotel, the shop is in that direction and city centre's over in that direction. You don't really know the streets, but you have this, you have a feeling of north, south, east, west. You just feel it in this new city. And then suddenly you turn a corner wrong or whatever and boom,

• 15:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  you're hit with this sudden sense of.

• 15:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  A lost, a lost feeling of confusion and you don't know what, what direction your hotel is anymore. You don't know what direction town is. You're very confused. That's what I feel like, that's what I feel like after a good day of speaking to thirty six people. And if you're like that on holiday and you don't know, you don't have your bearings. And you try to guess where your hotel is and you walk, well, you might find yourself lost and even more confused. And then you might feel anxious and frightened and unsafe. And you'll have difficulty helping yourself and you don't speak the language. That feeling, that feeling there is what autistic burnout feels like after being overstimulated.

• 16:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And very simple, uh, very simple skills of being an autonomous adult. Who's able to look after themselves and go to the shop and fucking write shopping lists and figure out what to eat for dinner. That shit becomes difficult for a day or two. So what I do is I mind myself and I mind myself by.

• 16:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Acceptance, accepting these things and mindfulness, consistent watching my breathing. Reminding myself at all times where I am, noticing my feet on the ground, grounding mindfulness. This is where I am. This is what's happening. I notice the coldness in the air. I notice the darkness, the clouds. I notice that the starlings are behaving differently. I notice that the air smells differently, consistently checking in with every single one of my senses. So that I don't fade away, I reorient myself through, through the present moment and the here and now. There were jackhammers outside my window earlier on.

• 17:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they were making loads of noise and just workmen doing some work somewhere in the city. And it was really noisy and loud. And I was worried. I was like, fuck it. How am I gonna record the podcast with jackhammers? That's not a, not a pleasant noise at all.

• 17:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I noticed.

• 17:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  There was actually a tiny hole in my window. It's a PVC window, but it had obviously been forced at some point. And there's a tiny little opening.

• 18:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Where sound was getting in. And the reason I noticed the opening was, while I was listening to that jackhammer going, fuck it, I can't record a podcast with a jackhammer. There was a wasp. There was a wasp outside the window and I'm up on the, like the fourth floor. There was a country September wasp. Trying to get in my window, because that's how they conduct themselves at this time of year. Poor old wasps. You see that wasp outside my window who was trying to come in the hole in my window. Because it was buzzing around outside and he was trying to come in the hole in my window. That wasp, he'd spent the entire summer, the entire summer, living in a wasp nest.

• 18:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And his job was to feed protein.

• 19:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like bits of meat, fish, whatever the wasp could find. His job, because wasps are decomposers. This wasp's job all summer was to feed protein to a little larva, a grub in its nest. And when the wasp gives the, the meat and the protein to this larva, the larva excretes a, a sweet sugary substance and that's what the wasp eats. But by September now, the larva's gone. The larva that that wasp has been feeding, that larva has grown into an adult wasp. And it's after fucking off, it's gone, it's gone from the colony.

• 19:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  So now, the poor fucker who was trying to get in the hole in my window is actually slowly starving to death. That wasp has lost its food source, it's lost its source of sugar specifically. Because it's spent its life eating this real sweet sugary shit that it gets out of babies that it gives meat to. And now the meat babies are gone. So he was trying to get in my window because I don't know, I had bananas.

• 20:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had a bunch of fairly fucking ripe bananas in my office. He was outside, he could smell them. He was trying to get in that little hole. All I could hear was the jackhammer outside going, I can't record a podcast with a fucking jackhammer outside. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? I'm gonna need to fill that hole. That hole in the window that the wasp wants to get in, that the jackhammer noise is getting in. I'm gonna have to fill that hole. What am I gonna fill that hole with? And I'd been reading about a field of science called biomimetics.

• 20:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's where you try and find solutions to problems by mimicking the behaviour of animals. Like in nineteen ninety five, there was this professor, Professor Andrew Parker was his name, right? And so this is nineteen ninety five, about a year after Jurassic Park. And if you remember Jurassic Park, remember it starts with mosquitoes trapped in amber. Fossilized mosquitoes trapped in amber. So after Jurassic Park, an interest exploded in fossilized amber with insects inside. So there was this exhibition of amber in a museum. Amber, if you don't know, it's when the sap of a tree fossilizes.

• 21:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  And sometimes an insect gets trapped inside that sticky sap, but it fossilizes over millions of years. So there was this fucking exhibition of amber in a museum anyway. And this Professor Andrew Parker went along and he saw, he stared at a forty five million year old fly stuck inside amber. But there was a magnifying glass there in the museum, so he could go real. He could hold the magnifying glass up to this fly, this forty five million year old fly that was stuck in the amber. He could hold the magnifying glass up to it. And he looked at the, the fly's eyes. He saw like a really unusual structure in the fly's eyes.

• 22:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like up close, there was these really fine ridges and grooves. And Professor Parker started to wonder, but they must be there for a reason. So then he, he built a model of the, the fly's eyes in a laboratory and shone light into the model and found that the ridges on a fly's eyes encourage light to, to pass through it rather than reflect. And it's a very specific, specific adaptation that flies have to soak light up that comes in from all various angles because it allows the, the fly to then see in the dark.

• 22:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this is such an, an efficient adaptation that the flies have that they've had it for forty five million fucking years and nature hasn't even come in and changed it. That's how good it is. But the point is that little, that little observation about the fly's eyes and, and building the model and understanding how the fly's eye responds to light, that then revolutionized solar panels. That made solar panels a lot more powerful than they had been beforehand. And that's biomimetics, where you look at an animal or processes in nature to try and solve problems.

• 23:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm back in my office and there's that tiny little hole in my window and I can hear the jackhammers outside and the wasp is acting like a prick, doing September wasp stuff. I've spoken about September wasps. They're aggressive. They're not aggressive. It's just they're starving. They're starving to death. They've lost their food source and humans, we just tend to have sugar in the form of drinks or perfumes and they're just, please can I eat? That's what they're doing, okay? But the wasp is outside the window. So I'm like, how am I gonna fill that hole? How will I fill that hole? And then I started thinking, what would a wasp do? Paper, paper.

• 24:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Why can't I fill that hole like a wasp would fill that hole? Now ironically, my preamp that I have here, it has a limiter on it and a gate on it. And this is the piece of equipment that's supposed to drown out, we'll say, the noise of a distant jackhammer, right? That's what this piece of equipment does. You might even notice it now, it's raining on my roof and every time I speak, you probably hear a little crispy, crystaly noise. That's the rain and then it cuts the sound out when I'm not talking.

• 24:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I reached for the manual. The paper A4 manual of my preamp was on my desk. And I ripped open, I ripped off a page from this manual and started chewing it. Proper chewing this fucking paper like a wasp, like wasps.

• 25:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wasps decompose old wood, they go to old wood, they bite it, they chew it and they make that into fucking paper and that's how they build their nests. I was doing this with the manual, the manual for my preamp. And I chewed a lot of paper and stuck it into the hole like a wasp's nest, really jammed it in there and it worked. The wasp couldn't get in and I couldn't hear the noise of the fucking jackhammer. It's raining heavily now, let's just let a little bit of the rain sound in.

• 26:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  The point I'm trying to make is the other thing I have to be mindful of when it comes to experiencing a bit of burnout

• 26:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  or overstimulation or low social battery is...

• 26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can have a propensity towards eccentric behaviour during these times. Because what I just described to you there is fucking mad. I'm sorry, sir, what are you doing? Oh, what am I doing? Oh, I'm just chewing up this manual here. I'm just chewing up this manual here because there's a hole in the window. Why are you doing that? Well, that's what wasps do. Oh, yeah. Why are you doing what a wasp does? Because there's a wasp trying to get in. I'm copying the wasps. This is how they build nests. So I'm chewing this manual, is that okay? No, no, that's odd. That's not okay at all. That's socially unacceptable. There's a better solution, there's better solutions. All right, I could have bought some blue tack. I didn't have to chew my, a manual and,

• 27:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  and try and make a wasps' nest plug out of it. If someone had seen that, they'd laugh at me, I'd be a subject of ridicule. I'd be a subject of shame. It would increase my social anxiety. I'd get a nickname, they'd call me the wasp. They would, they'd call you the wasp if you did that. There was no one around to see it, but

• 27:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was around to see it.

• 27:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I found myself shaming myself, I found myself shaming myself. I found myself being a bit hard on myself. Why can't you be normal? Why the fuck can't you be normal? Why'd you have to do that? Could you, what is wrong with you? What's wrong with you that you couldn't stop yourself and go, just because wasps make paper nests, doesn't mean that it's a good idea for you to try and eat an A4 sheet of paper and make a wasps' nest, okay? And I was shaming myself, I was shaming myself for every time before that I've done something like that and experienced being laughed at, being laughed at. That was most of my time in school, all right?

• 28:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Being pointed at and laughed at because you've done something mad. I'm aware that it's funny, I know it's funny, I'm telling you about it on my podcast. I can see that that is humorous and a good story, but I also don't like it. I don't like it because. It's not that it's not a choice, but when I have, when I experience burnout, the part of my brain that should step in and go, no, no, no, that's ridiculous. Come on, be serious. You're not chewing paper. Be serious. That bit's gone. That bit's gone. And the curiosity is then untethered, untethered curiosity. And then the end result is doing something eccentric. And then when you do something eccentric, that invites social rejection and ridicule,

• 28:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  and then shame. And in this case, I socially rejected and ridiculed myself and then experienced shame. Eccentricity is what happens when neurodivergent people are trying to meet their needs. So what I'm working on is acceptance.

• 29:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Accepting these things about myself. It's not bad. It's not mean. It doesn't hurt anyone. It's not intended to hurt anybody. The only victim is me looking silly. That's it. So learning to accept these things about myself. I had a great, great grand aunt whose nickname was the horse. Her real name was Magine. Which, it's Margaret. It's Margaret, but it's if your mother is also called Margaret, you were called Magine. And she's, she was like great, great grand aunt or possibly just distant cousin on my ma's side. And the story of why she was called the horse was,

• 29:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  this would have been around probably 1910.

• 30:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Magine, she was a widow. Her husband had died for whatever reason. She was a youngish widow.

• 30:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  And she had a little son who was a teenager. Now Magine was from, I think like rural Tipperary. Quite poor. This is 1910. So like she'd have literally grown up in a stone hut with a thatched roof. She grew up in mud because she was a widow, because she had a teenage son. She had to earn money. She had to earn money. And this wasn't possible in Ireland. So Magine and her son, she emigrated to Manchester. She went to Manchester around 1910, 1911.

• 30:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  To go and work as a maid, to work as a maid in a wealthy person's house in Manchester. Now, this would have been difficult because Magine was a widow, she'd have been in her thirties. And then her son, let's just call him Patrick, he's about thirteen. So she's like, I'm qualified in nothing, I'm qualified to be a maid. I know that Irish women can get jobs as maids, but I'm gonna have to get a job in a house that will also give a job to my son, so the two of us can live in this house. So she goes to a part of Manchester called Victoria Park. It was posh, big Victorian houses, Georgian houses.

• 31:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And she goes knocking door to door with her son. You know, I'm, I'm, look, I'm a woman from Ireland, I've got a son, I work hard, do you need a maid? She goes door to door until eventually

• 31:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  one house is like, yeah, we need, we, we actually really need help. We really need help and we'll take your son as well, no problem. We actually need a young fella to work out in the stables. So this house was so big that it had a stables at the back for the horses. So Magine is thrilled.

• 32:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not only does she have work in this big fancy house as a maid, but she's living with her son, her thirteen year old son, in the servants quarters. And now both of them are living together, she has work, he has work. Like, he's fourteen, he's not in fucking school, not an Irish kid in nineteen ten, he's not in school. Or nineteen eleven, whenever it was.

• 32:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  So she begins her work anyway. And they give her a bucket and a pail. And the woman of the house says to Magine,

• 32:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  I want you to wash all the floors downstairs and upstairs. So Magine takes the bucket and pail and goes, all right, fair enough, okay. So she washes the floors on the first floor. And then when she's finished, she's like, right, I gotta do the second floor now.

• 33:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  So in the house is a, a big, huge staircase, leading up to the second floor. And Magine walks over with her bucket and pail to the staircase and then it hits her.

• 33:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  She grew up in rural Tipperary, in like effectively a mud hut. Like extreme poverty of rural Tipperary. And she'd never seen a staircase.

• 33:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  She'd never seen a person walking up a staircase. She'd seen people using ladders, but she'd never been confronted with a fucking, a staircase in a two-storey house. Cause this is 1910 Tipperary, now all of a sudden she's in Manchester. She'd never walked up a flight of fucking stairs, ever. Adult woman.

• 34:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So she gets the bucket and pail and she goes down on all fours and she climbs up the staircase on all fours really slowly, cause she's trying to figure it out as she goes along. So she's climbing up the stairs real slowly and as she does that, the fella who owns the house, the barrister or whatever he was, he walks in the door and looks and starts roaring laughing at her. Roaring laughing at the Irish one, the maid who's climbing up the stairs on all fours. And he gets his wife in and he gets his kids in. And they're all roaring laughing because she's like a horse. She's like a horse. And then they name her the horse.

• 34:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Magine the horse who climbs up the stairs on all fours. And Magine is terrified now. Magine is like, she feels awful, she's embarrassed and as far as she's concerned, she's gonna lose her job. She's now, she thought she had it fucking sorted herself and her little son Patrick have got jobs in this house in Manchester and now it's all gonna be gone because she fucked up. She climbed up the stairs on all fours and now they're calling her the horse. But she didn't lose her job. And it turns out that the, the family.

• 35:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  They were kind of sound. They started to like Maggeen and her son Patrick. And Patrick was working out the back in the stables, cleaning out the stables. And months passed and they had a life for themselves now. They had a life for themselves, living and working in this, this big Victorian house in a posh part of Manchester, a roof over their heads. Then Christmas time comes and the barrister fellow who owns the house, now he might have been a bit of a prick because whenever anyone would visit, he, he would, he would say, get the horse, where's the horse? Referring to Maggeen and he'd bring Maggeen down and just every visitor that came, he'd say, do you know this woman tried to climb up the fucking stairs on all fours like a horse?

• 36:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you know that? Fucking Irish. And she had to put up with it. But one Christmas anyway, the man of the house actually buys young Patrick, a horse, buys young Patrick a horse so that he can learn to ride. And young Patrick is thrilled. He's like 15 now, fucking thrilled. My God, a horse for Christmas. I'm gonna learn to ride. I get to ride the horse around Manchester? Now unfortunately, the, the barrister who owns the house, he named the horse Maggeen. So now Patrick, he does have a horse. But he, he has to ride a horse that's named after his ma

• 37:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  because his ma tried to climb a flight of stairs on all fours. But still, they're happy. It's better than being stuck back in fucking Tip in 1910 in poverty as a widow, as a widow who can't work back in Ireland. More months pass and now Patrick on his time off is gets to practise on Maggeen the horse every single day and he gets good at riding. And he ta- he has the reins and the fucking barrister got him proper horse clothes. I don't know what they're called. Riding chaps. I don't know. It's 1910 in Manchester. Long story short, um,

• 37:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Patrick took the horse out onto an area that was very heavily cobbled. The horse fell, Patrick fell as well, and then Magine the horse fell on Patrick's leg and broke it so badly and irreparably that Patrick had to have his leg amputated. He's got one leg now.

• 38:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  And for now, of course, Magine is fucking heartbroken.

• 38:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  She's gone from poverty.

• 38:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  She's already devastated because her poor little son lost his father at a young age. She was so happy that they managed to come to Manchester to get a life, that he was developing into a young man riding a horse. He might have a fucking shot, he might have a chance. And now he's got one fucking leg. A leg amputated and her heart is absolutely broken. Just the sheer bad luck of it all. And worst of all, Patrick couldn't work anymore. He couldn't do the bits and pieces that he was doing out in the stables. He couldn't clean up, he couldn't lift things. He wasn't any use as a worker anymore. So Magine was terrified.

• 39:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh my God, are we, are they gonna kick us out now? Patrick can't work. What's the point? But luckily, the barrister, the family, they, they seemed to be kind people. They were kind people and they weren't gonna kick Magine and her son out on the street and fire him because of something as unfortunate as the young fella losing his leg. So Magine and Patrick got the stay in the house. Magine still worked and Patrick got room and board and nothing was asked of him. And even better than that, the barrister was like, well, let's try and get this, this young man in education. Because he quit school very, very young back in Ireland.

• 39:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  So he hired a private tutor who would come every day and help Patrick to read and write so that eventually he could go to school with lads his own age. So bad luck, he's after losing a leg, that's terrible. But now at least he's receiving an education now, the luck is coming up again. And another year passes and it must have been.

• 40:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  1915, 1916, because World War One has kicked off. And this thing comes in called the National Registration Act, where basically every, every man of fighting age in Britain had to register for conscription to be sent to the fucking trenches of World War One. Now, Patrick at this point, he's, I think, he's 15, 16. But the thing is, during World War One, Irish people were not conscripted because of the fucking shit kicking off back in Ireland. Like, when, when Britain introduced conscription

• 40:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  in England, Scotland and Wales, three months after that, the 1916 Rising happens in Ireland. Like shit is really kicking off. So the Brits didn't wanna fucking poke that hornet's nest. So Irish people were not conscripted to World War One. So Maggie and Patrick are in Manchester, in this big fancy house. And they're not really thinking about it. They're going, sure, sure, I'm Irish. Irish people don't get conscripted. But because the barrister, because the man of the house had begun steps for Patrick to be educated and to eventually join school that put Patrick into the system.

• 41:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  And a letter comes in the door with Patrick's name on it, basically saying, "Report for training. You're shipping off. You're, you're being sent to fight for your country in World War One. You're gonna go die in the Sam." And Maggie's heart is ripped out of her chest again. They're gonna take her son. They're gonna take her little son away. Things were looking up. She was happy. She thought there was a future. So there's about a week of absolute misery and pain.

• 42:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then the day comes where Patrick has to go to the recruiting office, basically to be sent away for training. And they knew, they knew, no one comes back. Being sent to the front fucking lines as cannon fodder. No one's coming back. So when they go to the recruiting office, he's got his papers. Your man calls up Patrick Clancy, his name wasn't Clancy, let's say Clancy for the crack. Patrick Clancy, any Patrick Clancy here? And Magine is there and Patrick is there and Patrick hobbles up to the army officer in his crutches. And the army officer looks at him and says, oh, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have gotten this letter.

• 42:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  We can't use anybody with one leg. Bye bye.

• 42:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they went home happy. And Magine got to live the rest of her life. Living in that house, they were very, very kind to her. And then they took her in as almost a family member. And Patrick then went on. I think he became a solicitor. He became a one-legged solicitor over in Manchester. He was like a second or third cousin of mine. His name wasn't Patrick. I can't remember his fucking name. This is a story I heard, but her name was definitely Magine. And she was called the horse, Magine the horse, because she climbed up the stairs on all fours. Now, why am I telling you that story? Because.

• 43:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  My ma's been telling me that story since I'm a little kid. And every time she's been telling me this story, I'd say to myself, what if she wanted to be a horse? What if that was Magine's choice? What if, what if it wasn't all the poor woman, the poor woman had never seen a set of stairs? No, what if Magine wanted to be a fucking horse? What if she knew how to climb stairs, but for whatever reason, she said, I wonder what it's like to climb this stairs? Like a horse would climb it on all fours. And then she got caught and was laughed at. We'll never know. And in 200 years, is one of my descendants gonna be talking about? Oh, I had a relative, your poor old, poor grand uncle had a podcast and he used to chew paper like a wasp. He'd plug holes in windows, the wasp they used to call him, the wasp.

• 44:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  They'd laugh at him in the office. I suppose I'm telling you that story because it's a wonderful story about accepting.

• 44:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  About accepting that life is full of suffering, that life is suffering. Maggie, Maggeen and Patrick had a lot of suffering, a lot of terrible things happened. But at the end of the day, she coped with everything along the way. And she responded to everything proactively. Despite the misery, she got to live to be a ripe old age with a roof over her head and her son became a one-legged solicitor in Manchester. We can't try to create certainty. You can't create certainty. "Life is a rollercoaster, you've just got to ride it", to quote the great Ronan Keating.

• 45:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I find that this time of year is wonderful for acceptance. Because it's horrible outside. It's grey and bleak and the leaves are about to fall off trees and the starlings are going to disappear and everything's going to become a strange shitty shade of navy. It's going to get cold, it'll be getting dark and half-won in the evening. The bird shit will be replaced by slippy leaves that have that strange cheesy tang. As they decay, the wasps are going to die, the kylak is coming. The goddess of winter is going to strip the trees bare. Your mental health is going to suffer. Because it's, it's, it's, it's going to get a bit bleak, isn't it?

• 45:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's tough staying positive and enjoying life when winter is creeping upon us. When you have like what we have right now, those first few little signs of that chill in the air. No more t-shirts. I have to start thinking about gloves on my bicycle now. I know that today by the pain in my knuckles. But I'm not going to resist any of it. I can't change any of this, I'm going to accept it. And when you accept winter and, and the coming of winter and you accept the darkening evenings, when you accept them and just try to notice them.

• 46:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  The beauty will unfurl in front of you like a carpet scratching a Jack Russell's wormy rectum. Autumn and winter are beautiful because summer and spring wouldn't exist without them. They're all part of the same cycle. Jack Russell isn't going to jump up on your lap looking for rubs unless his arse is scratched first. Okay, let's have an Ocarina pause. I don't have my Ocarina. Let's not get into that. I've got an empty yogurt pot, well not yogurt specifically, Kavarg, which is... it's marketed as a yogurt but technically it's a type of soft cheese. I quite enjoy it as a snack.

• 47:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  So, yeah, let's crinkle a bit of tinfoil off the...

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• 51:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  C- Cavar and you'll hear adverts for shit.

• 51:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the crinkly Cavar pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever it does, please consider supporting this podcast directly. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. It's how I pay my bills. This podcast is possible because it's listener funded. Because it's listener funded, that's why I show up each week, even when I've been at a festival and haven't had much time to research and when I'm burnt out. There will be a podcast each fucking week unless I fall off a horse and have my

• 52:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  leg crushed. I'm unbelievably grateful and every single day I reflect on gratitude. I reflect on that gratitude of how fortunate I am that I get to have this as my fucking job because I love doing it. I adore it and that's why I've been doing it for eight years. This is only possible because of patrons. So patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford this, don't worry about it. You listen for free. Listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact

• 53:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  same podcast. I get to earn a living. If you are signing up for Patreon. Don't do it on the iPhone app if you're new, because Apple will take 30%. Do it on desktop or on a browser on your phone. And also, don't sign up as a free member. Sign up using money, if that's okay. Because when you sign up as a free member, Patreon just gets your data. You don't get anything from that. Upcoming gigs in a couple of weeks.

• 53:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  We've got Vicker Street, which is a Tuesday night gig on the 23rd of September. That's only a few weeks away. Vicker Street is very nearly sold out. We're literally down to maybe the last 30 tickets. So if you're thinking about coming to the Vicker Street gig, which is a Tuesday, and don't be put off by it being a Tuesday night gig. I deliberately pick, I deliberately pick the nights that nobody else wants. Deliberately. I'm actually, I'm one of the few acts that can sell out Vicker Street on a Tuesday night. Because a lot of other acts, if they're putting their gigs on, it's, you wanna have a night out. You wanna have a few fucking drinks.

• 54:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  You might wanna go mad. Whereas with my podcast, I put it on on a Tuesday night because you're not gonna go mad at my podcast. This is like going to the cinema or going to see a play. You can go to my podcast in Vicker Street on a Tuesday and you'll be home in bed and ready for work the next day. And you won't even want to have a fucking pint. It's an evening of relaxation and conversation. And that's why I put my Vicker Streets on on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And then on the 27th, which is a Saturday, Derry. I cannot wait to go up to Derry. I haven't been in Derry in about two years. I'm in the Millennium Theatre.

• 55:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's a Saturday night gig, so you might have one or two pints, but not so many pints that you start shouting and ruining the gig. But you might have one or two pints. And I can't wait to come up to Derry. And if you have suggestions for guests for Derry, please give me a shout. And Blind by Ball Club on Instagram, just send me a DM, please. Who are the interesting people to speak to up in Derry? Over the coming weeks, I'm gonna be announcing some new international tours, which I'm very excited about, so I can't wait to tell you about that. This weekend, I'm off to Garnish Island down in Cork. I'm doing a tiny little gig, very small gig down there. That's sold out, it's sold out in about five minutes.

• 55:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I can't wait to go down to Garnish Island for the island itself, which is aesthetically beautiful. And also, there's a national park nearby with some proper ancient Irish broadleaf forest, I believe. So I'm gonna headbutt that nature and be very mindful and gonna recharge my social battery down in Garnish Island. All right, rub a dog. Embrace the beauty of early September. Don't turn away from the decay. Accept, accept the suffering that exists. Suffering is part of being alive. Accept it.

• 56:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And don't try to create certainty. I've created, I create huge amounts of pain for myself by trying to create certainty. Accept uncertainty. Uncertainty is reality. And when I mean creating certainty, you've got a job interview coming up. You're terrified, so you ruminate over and over about, this is gonna go so terribly. I'm gonna fuck this up so bad. Oh, my God. I shouldn't even show up, I'm gonna fuck this up. That's creating certainty. Because the uncertainty is so uncomfortable to sit with.

• 57:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  The uncertainty of, I don't know how this job interview is gonna go. What I do know is I can try my best. That's what I know. I think I can control that. I'm gonna try my best, but I can't really control the outcome of this thing. It's very uncertain. I think I'll worry about it. I think I'll worry about it and think about all the ways that it's going to go wrong. That's creating certainty there. Because uncertainty is uncomfortable. You broke up with your boyfriend or your girlfriend. And now you're spending all your time searching their fucking Instagram page to see if they might have moved on to a new romantic partner. That's creating certainty.

• 57:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're creating certainty there. You're trying to manufacture certainty. Because the uncertainty that is very painful, very difficult to sit with the uncertainty. Constantly seeking reassurance from other people. Do my clothes look okay? Do you think this person is mad at me? I didn't say anything offensive at that party, did I? Creating certainty.

• 58:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  We have to accept uncertainty. Accept and embrace it, let it wash over you. Like the sods in a bath.

• 58:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Alright, Doug, bless.

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• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Thank you.