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June 05, 2005

Kicking Christmas Where It Hurts

I’m like the White Rabbit, eternally late. Destiny dictates this. If I were ever early for a train at Newbridge Station I would have to talk a walk up and down the extended platform to pass the time. If I were ever early for doing lunch I would have to sit idly ordering hot chocolates until my friend had arrived. But, as stated before, I am eternally late. Thus I always reach the Station just as the train is pulling in and at the café just as my friend is pushing off. And so it was that I was late down to the Riverbank Arts Centre where scouser Paul Winters was idly ordering cups of coffee as he waited for my arrival. The second in the Reading Series was due to kick off at 8pm and so I was due down there to assist Paul in the setting up of the twisted literary event. I managed to buy myself a little more time by sending texts reading “I’m on my way” and “Nearly there.” So I eventually meet Paul outside the Credit Union and we proceed to walk up town. The plan is to buy the most tragic looking Christmas tree in Newbridge so we scour the Pound Shops along the way. The tree we’re looking for manifests itself in the shape of some wire bent to look like a tree and wrapped with green tinsel. At €2 it was just about in our budget range. Just about. I’m stuck with carrying the unfortunate thing as we stroll over to the Riverbank and past the grand Christmas tree that Paul says appeared outside the Arts Centre over night.

As part of the Reading Series video introduction, it is hinted that I will be given a Christmas tree to grace the stage with only to find out that it’s the tragic looking one from the pound shop. But as Paul and myself rehearse the intro with the tree we can’t help wondering about another tree we had seen. A tree that not only lit up but that sang Christmas songs and danced and was highly irritable. It was one of those toys designed to give endless amusement to kids and endless harassment to adults. We had to have it. Originally, at €20, it was so outside our budget that we have been in debt for several years but something greater possessed us and we knew that a singing, dancing Christmas tree with a twangy American accent would prove ultimately a thousand times more tragic than the coat hanger wire tree. The coin was tossed and it was my lousy luck to go and pick up the tree from the shop where the woman behind the counter said “Are you sure you want to buy this? It’ll only drive you nuts!” Sufficed to say I asked for a bag to cover the eerie smile of the robotic tree as I carried it back to the Riverbank.

So forward on a few hours and the Reading Series was nearly ready to start. Me and Paul waited anxiously for an audience at the front entrance as we plotted the night’s madness. We greeted the night’s readers as they arrived – the wonderful Mae Leonard and Mary Duffin. Even Pippi and Roxy from the Naas band The Isohels turned up. Roxy gave me a copy of “Brain Juice” a fantastic new local magazine she’s an editor for that specialises in music and contempery topics that “hopes to offer an alternative piece of reading to fellow students and to the general public.” And this is one of the most remarkable things about it – its created by an all secondary school student team. I particularly relished the article by Orlagh Gill on leaving things like writing until the last minute as I am typing this now at 2.45am. Brain Juice is available in Mattimoes in Naas and Eddies in Newbridge.

Now where was I? Ah, yes. The Reading Series was juts about to start. I made my entrance on stage with the singing Christmas tree which proceeded to interrupt my introduction with . . . eh, singing. Mae Leonard read two of her marvoulous stories including my old favourite, Tarzan Clancy. Mary Duffin, one of Mae’s students read. And in one of the funniest things I’ve ever experienced, I introduced Paul Winters as he ran like the clappers all the way down from the lighting box. Every few seconds we’d here a door slamming and some footsteps until Paul reached the microphone wheezing for a few minutes before declaring “He promised me an audience! I’ve slept with more people than this!” To which a member of the audience rather vocally replied “Yeah, you wish!”

As the evening came to a close, yours truly was already off stage when the all singing, all dancing Christmas tree suddenly came alive and was coming out with the most appauling puns know to man. Eg. “I don’t just sing. I tell jokes too. I’m branching out!” Right. There was only one thing for it. I leapt back on stage and drop kicked the thing into next week as Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” blasted through the speakers. I’m led to believe the thing survived and has now taken up residence upon the Riverbank Recepetion counter. I urge you all to go down there, listen it singing live and then punch it in the face.

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist (page 6)

Posted by LiamG at June 5, 2005 10:20 PM