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May 11, 2006
Shopping Centre: A Whitewater Diatribe
Has it really come down to a time where the biggest thing to happen to Newbridge is a shopping centre? Aren’t there any Giant Balls of String we could be known for? Will Newbridge simply become a name synonymous with a big shopping centre in the way that Tallaght, Blancherstown and Dundrum have? In fact already Newbridge has featured in the The Irish Times "What’s Hot / What’s Not" list. We’re listed as "not hot" with the reason cited as that first we were bypassed and now we’re "dwarfed by huge shopping warehouses." And we must have set some sort of record with all the traffic lights we have in the town.
But bad publicity or no bad publicity, a new shopping centre is still a new shopping centre and by God, if half the town wasn’t attracted to it like moths to a flame. Its all that people are talking about. Its become a new choice for small talk. "Awful weather out there isn’t it?" "The traffic is bedlam! I spent half an hour trying to get into Dunnes Stores," and now "Have you been to the Whitewater yet? Its very big." Very big it is, missus. Feckin’ huge. Like a mountain or something. The other most common Whitewater comment at the moment is how its like "stepping into Dublin when you go in it and stepping back into Newbridge when you exit it." Well that’s a comment and half, my friends. Not only is the Whitewater "very big" but it’s a flippin’ transportation device to boot.
The name of the place is causing all sorts of speculation on its origins as well. Enough in fact to have Ray Darcy ponder aloud on air that "maybe its because Kildare’s county colour is white and the Liffey flows through Kildare so - White water." Well fair play to Ray. It’s the best explanation since the one where they called it Whitewater because it’s their feckin’ shopping centre and they can call it what they like. The young local males seem to be disgruntled by the dominating presence of women’s clothing boutiques in the place, for they are not women and what want have they for women’s clothes. There is, however, an outlet of that bastion of tracksuits - Champion Sports just in case there was any chance of the town being corrupted by high fashion. Newbridge will continue to wear Nike runners.
The food hall in the Whitewater is also being described as "very big" by locals and people are reported to be enjoying queuing several days for a bagel. The presence of music store Virgin and Irish book giants Eason’s has been welcomed by those who can hear and those who can read. A huge gaping chasm is said to occupy the space where the Whitewater’s promised cinema was to be housed. Several small children have been reported to have fallen in.
Not easily distracted by big new shiny things like most Newbridge folk were, protestors made there presence known through various techniques such as shouting and wearing t-shirts bearing there cause which attracted a TV crew who, it seems, are not only attracted by the opening of big new shiny things but also by the opening of mouths shouting about the opening of said things. Despite their rescue efforts down the chasm, no cinema was to be found and no brick of it was even in sight. Protestors are alleged to be keeping vigil outside the Oscar Cinema where its play bill rather sinisterly states "CLOSED FOREVER." Some believe it is now haunted. For the most part, reaction to the Whitewater, apart from being "very big", has been good. Like the Spire in Dublin, its too late to complain about it anyway - the things built. Sources say that all the public can do now is to urge the County Council to pull together funds to construct a Giant Ball of String. The County Council has stated this plan as "ropey."
Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist
Posted by LiamG at 05:54 PM
EASTER BUNNY: An Exclusive Interview
Last weekend I managed to catch up with the Easter Bunny in a secret Dublin location to quiz the holiday mammal on life as the world’s second favourite pagan/Christian mish-mash mascot. The following is the transcript from the interview:
Liam: So how are you finding Dublin?
Easter Bunny: It’s colder that what I’m used too but overall a relatively nice city. Perhaps relatively is too strong a word.
LG: Colder that your used too? Where are you from?
EB: Well, me personally, I’m from Long Island, NY, but the whole Easter operation is based in Mexico.
LG: Mexico?
EB: That’s what I said. Where did you think I was based? The North Pole?
LG: I wasn’t sure to be honest. Speaking of the North Pole, what’s the relationship like between you and Santa Claus?
EB: He’s not into trans-species dating.
LG: That’s not what I meant…
EB: Oh…? Oh! Yeah, right, relationship wise, um, well, we really don’t see that much of each other. People always act as if Santa is the head honcho or something. As if he’s higher than me, you know? We do practically the same thing. We both travel around the world delivering gifts to children.
LG: Have church abuse scandals made any difference to the fact that your delivering gifts to children without any real apparent motive?
EB: What are you implying? I can’t speak for Claus but I know that I do this job not out of the goodness of my heart, but for a salary. It’s a full-time occupation. I’m employed by a holiday committee.
LG: You’re employed? So anyone can apply to be the Easter Bunny.
EB: Well it helps if you’re an over-sized pink rabbit but they can give you hormones to develop you if, let’s say, you were an overly ambitious hutch rabbit.
LG: Has a human ever taken on the position?
EB: When the Equality Act came in, the committee were forced to let other species apply for the job. An eccentric man from Ohio was hired once but didn’t last long. A couple of week’s maybe. He started doing holiday conventions in Japan for extra cash and that’s not allowed in the contract. There was a lot of ill feeling over the whole thing. That guy fell into a vat of chocolate in one our factories.
LG: Suicide?
EB: Well, there’s an ongoing investigation by the holiday fatalities unit so I really can’t comment anymore.
LG: Are fatalities regular in the holiday business?
EB: More than you’d expect for a normal corrupt business, but I can’t really comment on that either. In fact, that was off the record.
LG: Too late. So who actually makes the eggs? Do you have elves like Santa?
EB: Are you kidding me!? Santa hasn’t used elf labour since the scandal of ’93.
LG: Scandal?
EB: He was practically running a sweatshop. The authorities warned him that they’d take severe action if he didn’t start paying his staff regular salaries. They were just bluffing of course. I mean whose gonna throw Claus in the slammer? It’d be a mistake of epic proportions. We’d have kids revolting across the world. Definitely not a good situation to be in.
LG: So who works in your factories?
EB: I answered that already.
I answered that already.LG: Actually you went off the point and began talking about an elf scandal.
EB: Ah yes, the elf scandal. It was a terrible…
LG: Your doing it again. What’s the problem? Are you running a sweatshop too?
EB: Our staff conditions are perfectly legal for the country they’re based in.
LG: Mexico?
EB: No. Mexico is where my office is based.
LG: Where then? If it’s all legit then surely you can tell me?
EB: Look you journalist s**t, it’s none of your God damn business! You said this interview would heighten my God damn profile!
Look you journalist s**t, it’s none of your God damn business! You said this interview would heighten my God damn profile!LG: I’ve a feeling it will.
EB: YOU B*****D!
At this point the Easter Bunny stormed out of the room. Upon leaving the building he attempted to steal an ashtray from the lobby. Security pursued him at which point he burst through the revolving door out onto the busy road where he was hit by a bus. He’s said to be in a stable condition and should make a full recovery by next Easter.
Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist
Posted by LiamG at 05:48 PM
When Newbridge won an Oscar, then lost one
What a kick in the teeth. Anyone walking through the Whitewater Shopping Centre last week would have seen the advertising posters for the film Mission Impossible III - coming soon to a cinema near you. What a sense of humour those folks have. "Coming soon to a cinema near you." What like Naas cinema? Portlaoise? Dublin perhaps? Gone are the days when you could go to the legendary Oscar cinema Newbridge. So this week with one part nostalgia and two parts tribute I’ve decided to publish a interview I carried out with Michael Roycroft, owner and friendly face of the Oscar Cinema, that was carried out several years ago put has never been published - until now that is.
I’m sitting in a small office in the Oscar Cinema, Newbridge. Boxes of sweets are stacked in small towers along the floor. Adorned upon the red stripy wall are framed movie posters from by-gone eras. ‘The Outlaw’, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ to name but a few. Sitting at a cluttered desk is the cinema owner, Michael Roycroft. But how exactly did he become the owner of the cinema that was once known as the Palace? "I was always interested in films. I suppose that is the first thing. Anyone going into the movie business must be interested in films and unsocial hours. When I was in school we had a film club. That’s how the whole thing started for me. Then of course when I went into secondary, they would have been stuck the odd night for somebody to show films so I took an interest in projection and sound and all that type of thing," he explains. "In the early seventies, I got more and more involved when you had, what we would have called a revival of cinema at that time. Old cinemas that had closed down were now re-opening, if you like and this was in pre-video days and DVD days. So I got involved in the opening of refurbished cinemas."
The wall to the right of Michael is covered in a menagerie of old photos. I spot an old black and white photo of Michael, Paddy Melia and none other than Tom Hanks! What was that all about? "That was about Tom Hanks first film called ‘Splash’ which was released in 1984 and he came to Ireland to promote the film. A few of us got to meet him. We had lunch with him and I found him to be one of the nicest people I had ever met. Very genuine. I’m not sure if he’d even remember me at this stage of his career. He’s done so much and he’s gone into so many greater things, winning Academy-Awards left right and centre. But ‘Splash’ was his first. That’s almost twenty years ago. It is. It’s twenty years next year. But that explains the photograph of Tom Hanks."
I’ve always wanted to go up into one of the projection rooms so I put my wish to Michael who’s only delighted to oblige. We arrive at a little door. Michael opens it up to reveal a small wooden stairs leading up into the projector room. I follow him up there to see a large tower projector facing a small window looking out into cinema one, the largest of the three screens in the Oscar Cinemas. One or two small movie posters are stuck to the wall and various movie memorabilia are scattered around the room. "A great deal of films must have passed through this room over the years," I say haphazardly. "Oh very much so. God yes," replies Michael as if every film he’d ever seen had suddenly flashed across his eyes in some sort of horrifying vision. "Thirty years of it. Don’t even ask me to tell you how many films! You’re probably familiar with all this yourself, are you Liam?" says Michael referring to the projector. I point out that I haven’t the foggiest so Michael proceeds in showing me how a projector is set up.
"I’ll make a little bit of noise while I turn this on," he says. Noise is an understatement, I’m thinking. He switches a few dials and a sound, not unlike a car engine, begins humming. "I’ll just turn on what we call the tower. This is our feature film," says Michael pointing to the immensely large film reel. "That is approximately 115minutes long. I’m now just going to strike up the bulb." I hear a strange noise. "I’ll just let that go for a second and then we’ll run the machine and we’ll let you see the system in operation." I ponder out loud what film he’s going to put on. "This is the ads actually," Michael replies. "So I won’t actually get into the film. We’ll just run some of the ads to let you know how the system works." Damn! My secret agenda to see "Harry Potter" before anyone else is foiled. The reel begins to start spinning. Slow at first but then faster and faster. It sounds like a small airplane is about to take off. I wonder out loud about really long films? Do they have two reels? "Yes, if you had a picture like ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’, yes. You’d never be able to fit it all onto the one spool. You’d have to take an intermission. Again, the multiplexes would have a different projection system than we have so they wouldn’t be using what we call a tower. They would use what is called a ‘cake-stand’.
Michael begins to turn off the projector so we can hear again. "So what we’ve done here now is cooled everything down and we can now pitch off," says Michael as he begins to feed the film back into the spool. "Just bare with me now for a moment because as I say it’s not like video or DVD. You have to rewind by hand." It’s at the end of my tour of the Oscar Cinemas and I can see the job is certainly something Michael enjoys very much, but what is the main attraction? "Well I suppose the fact that I get to see the films first. It’s a nice little perk," he says smiling. Michael Roycroft is one lucky man.
Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist
Posted by LiamG at 05:44 PM