Just Like A Man

Christmas planning for separated dads

2011-11-28T08:08:00.000Z

(That's Men column from The Irish Times Tuesday 8th November)
This is the time of year when separated parents need to consider how
to handle Christmas with their kids. Here are some tips which assume
the traditional arrangement, namely that the children live with the
mother:

Talk to your ex. Organising Christmas satisfactorily when people talk
to each other is difficult enough - if they fail to communicate at
all, it's likely to be a mess. If you and your ex are not on talking
terms, perhaps a mutual friend/relative could help. Do not use the
children as negotiators or go-betweens: they should not have to carry
this responsibility. And if at all possible, keep solicitors out of it
- little if any peace and goodwill can survive their incendiary
letters.

Work out the where, when and how. Can both parents be in the room when
the children open their Christmas presents? If not, when and how will
you give them their presents? Where will you meet them? If either or
both of you has a partner, will/should the partner be present? This
needs working out between you and it needs mutual respect in the
conversation.

It doesn't all have to happen on Christmas Day. If you can't be with
the children on Christmas Day, perhaps they can be with you on St
Stephen's Day. Perhaps the children might have a Christmas celebration
at your place before Christmas Day by agreement with the other parent.

Consider extended family. Grandparents matter to children so try to
arrange for them to see both sets of grandparents.

Avoid jealousy. If your child is living with half-siblings from your
ex's new relationship, could you include presents for these other
children as well? Children are children after all, and this could be a
smart move to help cement relationships all round.

Respect the live-in parent's opinions on presents. If you want to give
your child an iPhone 4s and the live-in parent thinks this is a bad
idea then it's important to respect the opinion of that parent and not
to undermine her. This is not a time for getting into a competition
with the other parent.

Consider what you can preserve from the past. If you recently
separated, think about what sort of activities the children are used
to at Christmas. How much of this could they still do with cooperation
between both parents? Visits to grandparents might form part of this
tradition, for instance.

What is the role of the new partner/partners? What involvement should
the new partners have in the planning? What involvement should they
have when you are with the kids on the day? Now may be a better time
to work this out than the 25th of December.

Consider the children's needs. Will coming to you completely disrupt
their Christmas because of distance, for instance? Will they have to
miss their Christmas play or some other important (to them) event? If
so, consider changing the arrangement to accommodate them.

If it all breaks down. If you simply cannot arrange to see the
children, think of sending cards and presents. Take care of yourself
on Christmas Day. There will be other days: keep yourself in good
shape for them.

I would like to acknowledge that some of the ideas in this article
came from the Family Mediation Service of the Family Support Agency
and others from the Equal Rights for Separated Dads website at
www.separateddads.co.uk It's an excellent website which I recommend to
separated dads (and mums).

I am sorry if any of what I have written here is patronising. I have
never been in the situation I am writing about and if I have struck
the wrong note with those who are living through it, that's why.

However, I am well aware that Christmas is an emotionally difficult
time for many separated parents. The key message is to start thinking
about and planning the Christmas arrangements right now - do not wait
until Christmas Week.

________________________________________________________
www.padraigomorain.com

No Irish Embassy in the Vatican? Yawn.

2011-11-04T11:56:00.005Z

Oh Happy Days!

What I like most about the planned closure of the embassy in the
Vatican is the shrug of complacency with which the move has been
greeted. It's not just that the people no longer scurry or fawn at the
sight of a clerical collar - it's also that huge numbers of young
Irish people have no memory of that carry-on at all. Whatever you may say about the faults of today's society it is far better than what we have left behind in so many regards - and the closure of the embassy symbolises that sea-change.

Gilmore may claim that the move has nothing to do with the Vatican's
disgraceful response to child abuse in Ireland but there was a time
when we would have shut embassies to almost any other country to keep the Vatican presence. The decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland began, in my opinion, in the 1950s when the bishops opposed the introduction of free medical treatment for mothers and children.

The Church's reputation never really recovered though I doubt if, in their arrogance, the bishops saw that at the time. The closure of the Vatican Embassy brings the process of kow-towing to Church almost to an end.

19p for 16 paracetamol? Yes please!

2011-11-04T11:47:00.000Z

During the summer I paid 19p for a packet of 16 paracetamol in a Tesco in Newcastle, England, ten times less than the cost in Ireland. So I'm ok with the chain's plans to compete with pharmacies in the Republic. Does it mean the end of the independent pharmacy? In many cases, yes, but this trend was already under way as big pharmacy chains bought single stores around the country.

In the grocery sector, the supermarkets wiped out many small shops but we now have thriving local stores operating under franchises such as Centra, Mace and Spar. In the pharmacy sector, chains such as Boots and McCabes are already on the scene and will be able to compete with Tesco. I also love the fact that Boots are competing with doctors by offering the morning after pill and flu injections.

As consumers in the medical field we deserve a break - maybe we're about to get it.

What Mary Davis and Gay Mitchell could learn form Rory McIlroy

2011-10-31T12:41:00.000Z

When Rory McIlroy blew it at the Masters six months ago he was gracious in defeat - through his attitude, he made friends, not enemies: that's why we can all be delighted at his mega-win in Shanghai at the weekend. We like graciousness in defeat. That's why Mary Davis and Gay Mitchell will be remembered for their failure to show up when Michael D's victory in the presidential campaign was finally announced. They thought it was all over when the votes were counted but it wasn't. There was still the matter of how they would handle defeat and in that failure they added one defeat on top of another. We didn't coin phrases like 'bad loser' and 'gracious in defeat' for nothing and they would have done well to remember that.

I don't love myself and that's ok

2011-10-21T09:25:00.001+01:00

This concept of self-love is alien to me

PADRAIG O'MORAIN

The Irish Times 18th October 2011

THAT'S MEN : I DON'T LOVE myself. Never have, never will – and it doesn't bother me in the least.
The thought struck me for the first time last week when I eavesdropped on two women on the bus, tearing an
absent colleague to shreds (a pleasure I realised I have greatly missed since I began to work from home).
The colleague had many faults, ranging from not having a clue how to do his job (from which I deduce that he was a manager) to sporting a suspect head of hair which his critics believe may be dyed.
Note, by the way, that men "dye" their hair which they are then supposed to wear as a badge of shame, while women get a "colour" in their hair and bask in the admiration of everyone in the vicinity.
Of all his faults, though, one in particular stood out: "He just loves himself. Oh, he loves himself. He thinks he's the greatest thing ever," one declared. "He'd sicken ya," her companion chimed in.
That was it – his besetting sin, the one from which, judging by the scorn in their voices, there could be no coming back.
It was when I was thinking over that episode later that I had my realisation: if these harridans ever accuse me of loving myself they'll be sorely mistaken because I don't.
In certain quarters, loving yourself is seen as a prerequisite for happiness. Moreover, if you don't love yourself you can't love anyone else, we are told.
Tosh and nonsense. I have encountered many people whose love for others is undiminished by the fact that they don't love themselves.
Indeed, up to the later part of the 20th century, people would have looked at you as though you were mad if you announced that you loved yourself. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, self-love was not a concept we heard about.
Still, my new realisation that I did not love myself surprised me. Why had I never thought of it before? Is it because I grew up at a time when people didn't think about such things? Or could it be that self-love isn't, in fact, a prerequisite for a satisfactory life?
Whatever the answer, what most surprised me about the realisation was that it seemed to matter so little.
When I say I don't love myself, does that mean I hate myself? Not at all. I even like myself a lot of the time.
I look on myself as a sort of butler to myself. A butler who has stayed in the job for a long time has grown, I imagine, to have a tolerant affection for his master who still annoys him intensely from time to time, but who has sufficient good points to keep the relationship going. That is where I stand in relation to myself.
That will do.
Addendum: What a pity we have lost our ability to express joy physically in everyday life – or, more likely, have lost permission to do so.
At the official opening recently of an extended facility for Enable Ireland in Crumlin, Dublin, we all stood or sat to listen to a choir who had come in from the nearby Rosary College.
What took my attention, and that of some of the members of the choir, was a man who moved to the music as he sat, not just listening but expressing his joy. He simply allowed the vivacity of the choir to flow through him.
It was great to see the joy of the occasion put into movement – after all, there is much to be joyful about when you see a service like Enable Ireland expanding a facility in these times.
But what, I wondered, has happened to us as humans that a person expressing joy on a joyful occasion should be noticeable? Are we losing the connection with the natural flow of our feelings? And where does that leave us?

Parade children in a secret location to deter perverts? Don't make me laugh.

2011-06-04T22:38:00.001+01:00

Here's a novel idea: hold a children's beauty contest in a secret location to thwart perverts. I'd laugh if I wasn't so pissed off. It's not the absurdity of holding holding children's beauty pageants that pisses me off; nor the nonsense of holding them in a secret place (if you're that worried about attracting pedophiles don't hold the bloody contest in the first place); nor even the whole questionable business of having children keep the whole thing secret from their friends (which I assume they will have to do if it's all to be 'our little secret.')

What pisses me off is the reported declaration by organiser Stephanie Murphy that everybody who has anything to do with the event such as jewellery sellers (jewellery sellers?), photographers etc must be Garda vetted. This pisses me off because Garda vetting takes about three months (ridiculous but that's another story). In the queue for vetting are child care agencies and other bodies working with children who cannot take on staff until they have been vetted. Frankly their work matters a great deal more than Ms Murphy's distasteful nonsense - and it sickens me that these workers have to stand in line with Ms Murphy's jewellery sellers.

Garda vetting is a scarce resource - it shouldn't be but it is. I resent seeing that scarce resource wasted on these idiotic pageants and for that reason I wish Ms Murphy would find something better to do with her energy. Read the whole story here.

Sense of self destroyed by control freaks - The Irish Times - Tue, May 04, 2010

2010-05-04T11:26:00.000+01:00

Sense of self destroyed by control freaks - The Irish Times - Tue, May 04, 2010

Unmasking the daddy of control freaks - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 27, 2010

2010-04-28T09:57:00.000+01:00

Unmasking the daddy of control freaks - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 27, 2010

Working hard to justify my existence (Tuesday - Health, 30 Mar 2010, Page 14)

2010-03-30T13:48:00.001+01:00

Working hard to justify my existence
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is available fr
Tuesday - Health
30 Mar 2010

AFEW years ago I estimated, with a mixture of pride and ruefulness, that I had worked every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included, for three months. This was partly due to being self-employed and partly due to being stupid about this whole issue...read more...

Tech Tags: Tuesday - Health newspaper Men’s Health

A Man's World - Carry on working for good health

2009-11-21T11:54:00.001Z

My column A Man's World on everymonday.ie

Padraig O'Morain advises people facing into retirement to take on some kind of part-time work; there are plenty of health benefits, both physical and mental, and you can earn a bit of extra cash.

Read Article

Book review - Under the Dome, Stephen King

2009-11-21T11:45:00.000Z

From Arena, RTÉ Radio 1, 16th November 2009:

Stephen King's latest tome 'Under the Dome' is being hailed as a return to form for him. The book is published by Hodder & Staughton. Sinéad Gleeson & Padraig Ó Morain review 'Under the Dome' by Stephen King with Sean Rocks.

Theatre review - Twelve days in May

2009-11-21T11:42:00.001Z

From Arena, RTÉ Radio 1, 10th November 2009:

Twelve days in May opened at Liberty Hall in Dublin last night and tells the story of James Connolly and his family in the days preceeding his execution. (Website: www.12daysinmay.com)

Padraig O'Morain and Sinead Fitzpatrick review '12 days in May'

Theatre review - Spider's Web

2009-11-21T11:26:00.001Z

From Arena, RTÉ Radio 1, 27th October 2009:

The Queen of crime, Agatha Christie's "Spider's Web" opened last night in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre. Padraig O'Morain & Sinead Fitzpatrick review the play's opening night.

Theatre review - The Age I'm In

2009-11-21T11:17:00.003Z

From Arena, RTÉ Radio 1, 7th October 2009:

'The Age I'm In' is one of the international productions running at this year's Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival. Devised by the Australian company Force Majeure, it's a show all about the ageing process. Reviewers Padraig O'Morain and Sinead Fitzpatrick discuss the play with Sean Rocks.

Time to invest heavily in a little generosity

2009-11-21T11:04:00.001Z

My Irish Times That's Men Column published 17th November 2009:

THAT'S MEN: If you're trying to impress a mott, dig deep and throw a few bob about. Could be the best investment you ever made, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN

PEACOCKS' TAILS, giving to charity and mating – they don't seem to have a lot in common, do they? But if that's what you think you'd be wrong and if you're a man you might be missing out on some useful information about snaring a woman's heart.

Giving money to charity is an altruistic act but if you do it publicly, it can serve the same purpose as the peacock's tail which is to attract a nice peahen.

It works like this. Charles Darwin wondered what was the point of peacocks having those beautiful tails. All they did, so far as he could see, was to attract predators and make it harder to run away.

But then he wondered if the purpose of the tail was to attract peahens and if this made up for the disadvantages. If so, then the peacock tail played its role in the perpetuation of the peafowl species.

Since then, people who research this sort of thing have established that peahens actually favour the males with the best tails. Why? The males with the best tails are the healthiest and strongest and more likely to pass on "good" genes.

Darwin also wondered about altruism. Being generous to your children is understandable – each child carries 50 per cent of your genes, so your generosity increases the chances that your genes will be passed on.

If you don't have children, then being generous to blood relatives such as nieces and nephews also makes evolutionary sense because every niece and nephew carries 25 per cent of your genes – be nice to them and they'll pass them on for you.

But why, Darwin wondered, would we be generous and kind and giving of ourselves to people we have nothing to do with and who are unlikely to play any role in passing on our genes? Why, to take a modern example, would we give money to save lives in Africa?

What if altruism for men is as the tail is to the peacock? What if being generous actually attracts women? Suddenly the whole thing makes sense.

And, according to a fascinating article by Wendy Iredale and Mark Van Vugt, from the University of Kent and VU University Amsterdam respectively, in the current issue of The Psychologist , that's exactly what's happening.

We like to show off our generosity. For instance, if a man is walking along the street with a woman when he is approached by a female beggar, he is likely to give her more money than he would if he was alone. Why is that?

The clue might lie in the fact that men in the earliest stages of a relationship with their companion are far more likely to put their hand in their pocket and give something to a beggar than men who are in long-term relationships. If displays of generosity attract females, then such displays are likely to be more ostentatious in the early stages of the relationship when the chase is still on.

And displays of generosity do, indeed, attract females. In one study, men who were described as donating blood regularly and as volunteering to help out in a local hospital were rated attractive by women.

Why would women be impressed by altruistic acts? Researchers suggest that generosity in a man implies that he is a good bet for investing in a relationship and in his offspring and is more likely to stick around to do so instead of going around sowing his seed hither and yonder.

For immediate short-term relationships, women are quite impressed by heroic acts. But for longer term relationships, it's kindness and generosity that floats their boat.

So if, like me, you're not the heroic type, go for kindness and generosity. That phrase, nice guys finish last, just isn't true when it comes to the mating game.

Christmas is coming up. The choirs will be out on the street trying to part you from your money. Forget your inclination to growl Bah! Humbug! and walk past. On the contrary, if you're trying to impress a mott, dig deep and throw them a few bob. Could be the best investment you ever made.

Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times , is published by Veritas

How fear can point us in the right direction

2009-11-21T11:01:00.001Z

My Irish Times That's Men Column published 10th November 2009:

THAT'S MEN: Fear should act as a catalyst for action rather than instil a feeling of paralysis

FEAR IS all around us. Even Harry Crosbie of The Point/O2 fame said on the radio the other day that for the first time in his life he has the feeling that "it's dangerous out there", or words to that effect.

I thought it refreshing to hear a man in his position acknowledging the fear that so many feel.

Then I read an article on fear by one of my favourite Buddhist bloggers, life coach Sunada Takagi, on the Wildmind website. What she wrote is worth repeating because with the Budget, Christmas and the bleak month of January coming towards us, we are not short of sources of fear.

The Buddhist approach to fear and other discomforts is to turn towards what is happening instead of running away from it.

If you were a primitive man strolling through the jungle and you came across a fierce tiger you would run away as fast as your little legs could carry you. That's not running away from fear. That's running away from the tiger. Fear in this case has done its job.

Fear today, of course, is more likely to be related to money problems, threats to a job or a business, health issues or challenges in relationships than to tigers.

Back to that primitive man. Fear can save his life if he happens to meet a tiger. Even if he doesn't meet a tiger, though, fear of meeting one means that he is mentally and physically alert.

As Sunada puts it: "He's in a state of readiness – not to the point of hyper-anxiety – but a clear, focused alertness that can respond intelligently to whatever comes his way."

That's a different take on fear. If a person defines fear as bad and as something to be got rid of, he or she may run around like a headless chicken, snort cocaine (not easy if

you're a headless chicken) or become paralysed. I should add that these examples are my creation – as she is a Buddhist, talk about headless chickens would not go down well with Sunada.

Instead of running from fear, she writes, "if we tone down the intensity of fearful energy and strip away our idea that it's 'bad', we find underneath it an intrinsic motivator for actively and intelligently engaging with our world. It also has the potential to draw out our inner resources that we may not even be aware of. It's a force that can move us forward."

To experience these benefits, "when the fear temperature rises, stay with it. But don't fight it or indulge it. Recognise any doomsday thoughts that come up for what they are – just thoughts.

"In that moment, with your heightened awareness, look for what's really calling for your attention. What's one step we can take to move forward?"

Since I read her article I've been experimenting with this approach. When the fear stirs, instead of lamenting that fact, I ask what the fear is telling me I need to do. It helps me to prioritise and to get on with doing what needs to be done.

I have to confess that when I'm feeling lazy I sometimes opt to have the fear instead of getting up and running away from whatever metaphorical tiger is baring its teeth at me.

Still, this approach to fear brings a clarity to how I see things and there is a relief in just being afraid of what the fear is about rather than also fearing fear itself.

"I've grown to see fear as my ally," writes Sunada. "When I listen to it, it points me in no uncertain terms toward where I need to go."

Afraid of the expense of Christmas? Well, what's your fear telling you? That now is the time to start lowering your kids' pre-recession expectations? That you should forget flying to Lanzarote on the 27th (hey, remember that?)? That you should put a realistic limit right now on what you're going to spend?

Isn't that approach better than going around shouting at people and drinking too much cheap wine to calm your nerves?

You can find Sunada's article at www.wildmind.org

Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, The Best of the That's Men Column from The Irish Times , is published by Veritas

Plan early to avoid tension at Christmas

2009-11-21T10:59:00.001Z

My Irish Times That's Men Column published 3rd November 2009:

THAT'S MEN: Separated parents shouldn't leave it until the season itself to decide what will happen with the kids

THE EARLY arrival of Christmas advertising annoys many of us, but if you're a separated parent it brings an extra twist of anxiety.

I am sorry to add to the talk of Christmas, but if you are a separated father – probably living apart from your children – then you need to start thinking about and planning for Christmas now.

Christmas itself tends to stir up all sorts of emotions, including anger and loss, so don't leave it until the so-called festive season itself to address the question of parenting and what will happen with the children. Deal with it now, while emotions are calmer.

Hopefully you can talk to your ex about this. If you cannot talk to your ex, perhaps there is a mutual friend or family member who could act as a go-between. If not, then you will have to do the best you can yourself. If possible, try to keep solicitors out of it – an exchange of vicious solicitors' letters really isn't going to make for a happy Christmas for anyone.

Christmas is very problematic for separated parents because it is full of details, each of which carries an emotional charge.

For instance, what presents will the children get? Who will buy what? If one parent thinks junior shouldn't get an iPhone is the other parent willing to respect this?

How and when and where will the live-apart parent give presents to the children? Is it possible to agree that both parents will be there during the opening of the presents? If one of the parents has a new partner should that partner be there?

Suppose Christmas day is not one of the access days granted by the court? Can both parents agree that each of them will see the children nonetheless?

What about grandparents and other extended family? Can the extended family on both sides get to see the children over Christmas? How will that be done?

One way to address the situation, especially if you are newly separated, is to ask what sort of Christmas the children had in the past? What did they do? Where did they go? How much of this is it possible for the children to have this Christmas?

Are the children now in a "blended family"? In other words, are they living with half-brothers and half-sisters because of the break-up and a new relationship? If so, when giving presents can you avoid jealousy between the two groups of children, which could have repercussions after Christmas is over?

Many families have a tradition of visiting graves on Christmas day. Can this be done this year? And if so, how?

What will be the role of either parent's new partner? Should they be brought into the Christmas planning? Should they be there when the live-apart parent delivers presents?

You will notice that I have answered none of these questions. That is because there are no neatly packaged answers that will satisfy everyone.

Parents are going to have to do their best and to muster what sensitivity they can in dealing with what can be a painful time. It can be especially painful in the absence of sensitivity.

And friends and relatives also need to remember that this is no time to ratchet up the stress between separated parents.

I know there are parents out there who will use Christmas as another battlefield in the ongoing war against the absent ex. If you are that absent ex, you need to get yourself through this painful experience in a way that leaves you in as good shape as possible, for the sake of your future relationship with your children.

Most separated parents are more reasonable than this. But because Christmas is an emotional minefield, they need to start planning for it now. I would like to acknowledge that most of the sensible ideas in this article came from a conversation some time ago with workers in the Family Mediation Service, which is part of the Family Support Agency (www.fsa.ie). Those ideas that are not sensible came from me.

Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book That's Men, The Best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times , is published by Veritas

The minefield of political correctness

2009-11-21T10:57:00.000Z

My Irish Times That's Men Column published 27th October 2009:

THAT'S MEN: I've been taken to task over my comments about gender issues in last week's column, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN

LAST WEEK'S column has brought accusations that I insulted nuns and wrote "balderdash" about entry to medical schools.

I began by saying that after I left High Infants I never again saw a female teacher and I went on to suggest that now it is males who seem to be vanishing from the system.

I noted that all my teachers in Junior and High Infants were nuns and, I said, "they didn't really count as females. They were a higher and more scary order of being."

"What kind of language is that for a counsellor, who is dealing with both genders, on all levels of society, to use?" asks reader Meabh Ní Uallacháin.

"I don't care just what point you were trying to make, it is a total insult to the many good, gentle and caring women religious, who down through the years have made the Irish educational system what is, and the hospital system also and it's only when they are no longer visible in both, that their true worth as women will be appreciated . . . and they were 100 per cent women, with all the strengths, weaknesses, gifts and struggles that all women have . . . why demean them with that insult?"

Nuns did many great things in education, health and social services, but I would maintain that to schoolchildren at the time they were not ordinary women like our mothers or aunts but had a special and daunting status of their own. And I don't think I'm insulting anybody by saying that.

Michael Kane, professor emeritus of physiology at NUI Galway, suggests that the pressures of writing a weekly column account for "a piece of balderdash" in last week's effort.

In it, I mentioned that the proportion of women in the medical profession is increasing all the time. I then added, in brackets (and this was my downfall), "though the lads have now introduced a personality test for entry to medical school which they blatantly laud as boosting the proportion of men in the profession – how did they get away with that?"

Prof Kane points out that the HPat test is not a personality test but is supposed to evaluate one's ability to use knowledge rather than just learn things off by rote without understanding.

I should have known that, he says. Actually I did know it but lazy writing let me down. My substantive point remains, though. The medical establishment expressed great satisfaction this year that the test boosted the number of males entering medical school.

If the owner of a corner shop introduced a test to boost the proportion of males behind the counter, how long do you think it would be before he or she was up before some authority or other and fined for discrimination? Not long at all, I believe.

Prof Kane defends this aspect of the test. "It seems true that to some extent, perhaps to a major extent, one object in picking such a test was to give a more even balance of student genders entering medicine," he writes.

"If you are genuinely PC, then you should feel that is laudable. If you are pseudo PC, then you might feel the opposite."

If one believes that men and women are equal in intellectual ability, then selecting on the basis of the Leaving Cert alone, with females making up about 70 per of entrants to medicine, "was actively discriminating against male applicants", he adds.

Finally, Seathrún Mac Éin reminds me that in his book, Speed Write in Exams , Joseph F Foyle MA drew attention to the fact that women often have more nimble fingers than men do. Thus they can write far faster, which is an enormous advantage in nearly all written exams. . . Males in a hurry frequently tend to press so hard on the pen that they plough furrows in the paper, which can be felt by running a finger over the underside of the sheet! This actually slows them down. Females, on the other hand, tend to use a light touch – barely skimming the paper."

Well, my poor fingers have been soundly rapped already – so no speed writing for me.

Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, the Best of the That's Men Column from The Irish Times , is published by Veritas

Rising status does little to stem abuse

2009-11-21T10:50:00.002Z

My Irish Times That's Men Column published 20th October 2009:

THAT'S MEN: Despite women appearing to be more powerful, domestic abuse is still a huge problem for many, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN

AFTER I completed High Infants and got sent off to the Christian Brothers in Naas, I never encountered a female teacher up to and including secondary school. Recently I read that almost two-thirds of children in fifth class in primary school are taught by females.

This seems to mean that men are in as much danger of becoming as a rare an event in the classroom in the near future as women were when I was going to school. I wonder what this will mean for males' view of females, especially where the boy is raised by a single mother and taught only by women?

I said at the start, by the way, that I had not encountered a female teacher after High Infants. However, all the teachers in Junior and High Infants were nuns and they didn't really count as females.

They were a higher and more scary order of being. So even before I went to the Christian Brothers, the concept of being taught by a female who wasn't a nun never entered my head.

Of course, there have always been female teachers, especially in the national schools, so my experience may have been unique. Nor were all these women necessarily soft and gentle females.

My grandmother went to a two-teacher school. Both teachers were women. She was lucky – she got the kind teacher. The children in the upstairs classroom got the cruel one, and she recalled hearing them begging for mercy as they were beaten. In a two-teacher school, you were stuck with the same teacher from the day you arrived until the day you left, so life was hard on children who got the harsh teacher.

Boys at that time, though, were living in a male-dominated world. Today, they are more likely to live in a world in which, to their eyes, women are not only the equal of men, but in which there may be no man around or at least not living in the home.

As today's children grow up and go to schools in which male teachers are the odd ones out, how will this mould their view of women and of themselves?

And why did we hear in the past week or so that between 2007 and 2008, the demand for services for women suffering domestic abuse rose by 21 per cent, according to Safe Ireland?

Somehow the increasing status of women in the schools, home and workplace seems to me to be contradicted by this rise in abuse in the home.

This is happening in a world in which women, on the surface, are increasingly more powerful.

An ESRI report a couple of years ago forecast that women would make up the majority of business, financial and legal professionals by 2012. The report forecasts that more than two out of five managers throughout the whole workforce would be women by that time.

Increasingly, men who go to the doctor, an authority figure to most of us, will be seen by a woman (though the lads have now introduced a personality test for entry to medical school, which they blatantly laud as boosting the proportion of men in the profession – how did they get away with that?).

On one level, then, the environment in which boys grow up has shifted dramatically. The concept of never encountering a female teacher from the age of five onwards would be seen strange to the point of being unhealthy.

And a woman is more likely to be the sole authority figure in the home. Most of the students in many third-level courses are female. Many of the colleagues and bosses at work are female.

And yet there is that rise in domestic abuse. Change in the relationship between the sexes, is, it appears, messy and unpredictable. And domestic abuse seems to have increased with the recession as financial troubles bring stresses into relationships.

As women progress in education and the workplace, are the genders lagging behind in how they handle their emotional conflicts? And shouldn't we be teaching boys and girls more about that subject in our schools, regardless of whether the teachers are male or female?

No longer sure if PSA screening for possible prostate cancer is such a good idea

2009-10-16T11:19:00.001+01:00

Irish Times That's Men Column published 13th October 2009: I used to think it a very good thing to go off and have a PSA test done every year to screen for prostate cancer. Now I'm not so sure. Doctors seem divided on the value of the test for screening. Some suggest it could do more harm than good when used on men who don't already have other symptoms.

PSA stands for prostate specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate gland. Higher than normal levels of PSA in the blood can indicate the presence of prostate cancer.

Screening for PSA levels involves a simple blood test - and it has seemed to me that if you are a man above middle age it's wise to get it done every year. Now I read of research reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine which raises all sorts of questions in my mind, some of them unpleasant.

One study at the University of Sydney found that screening 1,000 men every year between ages of 40 and 69 reduces the number of deaths from prostate cancer by two - yes, two - by the age of 85. Meanwhile, about 640 will have died from other causes. Kirsten Howard of the University of Sydney made the remarkable statement to HealthDay News that men who are screened are two to four times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than those who are not screened - yet the death rates for both groups are similar.

The difficulty is that the PSA test cannot predict which prostate cancers are agressive and need to be treated and which are developing so slowly that the patient will die of other causes long before the cancer kills him. Because of the uncertainty, people may be treated who don't need to be treated and this can have side effects such as impotence and incontinence.

That's scary.

The dilemmas posed by the PSA test have surfaced among Irish doctors too. In a letter to the Irish Medical News earlier this year, Dr Ray O'Connor wrote that "PSA is a far from ideal screening test and its general use in asymptomatic men is a very questionable practice, I feel."

Professor Tom Fahey in a letter referred to "the ongoing dilemma of how best to treat men with localised prostate cancer - watchful waiting, radiotherapy or radical prostatectomy, because of the substantial trade-offs involved in terms of improved survival versus common side-effects such as urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction."

Last March, the Irish Medical News reported on a symposium organised by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in association with the National Cancer Screening Service (NCSS). Dr Alan Smith, consultant in public health medicine from the NCSS told the symposium that population screening for prostate cancer could do more harm than good, the newspaper reported. Population screening involves screening everybody in a particular group in the way that Breastcheck, for instance, offers screening to all women aged 50-64 in 17 counties.

While population screening for prostate cancer "would undoubtedly identify more cancers in men, it is also likely that a population approach to screening would expose the majority of men participating in such a programme to unnecessary harms. Unnecessary biopsies and the complications of treatment can cause side-effects including impotence and incontinence."

I have quoted the views of doctors at some length here because it is the fact that these views are coming from doctors - including doctors in respectable research institutions - that impresses me.

If you are thinking of having a PSA test I suggest you discuss these issues with your own doctor who knows more about this than I do. Those men whose lives were saved by a PSA test would certainly think it worthwhile, whatever the findings mentioned above.

Work is currently being done by the Prostate Cancer Research Consortium to find a more accurate test to address these issues. The consortium includes Trinity College Dublin, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin City University and the hospitals linked to these institutions.

Meanwhile, I think we need a debate on this topic and I hope that medical and non-medical people will now weigh in.

2009-05-24T10:35:00.001+01:00

Money worries make women spend more

2009-05-24T10:30:00.000+01:00

Our services for children are still a disgrace today

A single act of suicide can destroy many lives

2009-05-24T10:26:00.001+01:00

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/a-single-act-of-suicide-can-destroy-many-lives-1740208.html

Lack of inspections leaves thousands in care vulnerable to abuse - groups

2009-05-24T10:05:00.001+01:00

DISABILITY GROUPS: DISABILITY GROUPS have warned that hundreds of children and thousands of adults in residential care are vulnerable to abuse because of the Government's refusal to introduce independent inspections or care standards in the sector.

At least 400 children are in residential centres. A further 28,000 adults are in residential settings which are not subject to standards or inspections.

Independent inspections and standards for such residential centres have been discussed at Government level for the past decade.

However, last week the Minister of State for disability John Moloney announced he did not have the funds to implement the plans.

Carl O'Brien The Irish TImes 23rd May 2009. Link [Expires after one year]

Husband has no right to stop use of embryos, court told

2009-02-03T08:31:00.001Z

A man cannot prevent his estranged wife from using frozen embryos created during their marriage because of the right to life of the unborn, the Supreme Court heard yesterday, says this story in The Irish Independent.

The claim was made on the opening day of an appeal by a mother of two against her failed High Court action aimed at having three embryos implanted in her uterus with a view to becoming pregnant, against the wishes of her estranged husband, it says.

Irish priests engaged in sexual abuse in the United States - a cancer that spread from the West

2009-02-01T09:49:00.001Z

It wasn't always a desire to spread the Gospel that drew priests from Ireland the US over the years. I recall an American priest calling to our school around 1960 to persuade a class of 14 year olds to join the priesthood in the States. He talked about money, cars and the good life a lot more than he talked about spreading the word of God. This article by Donal Lynch in the Sunday Independent provides a good background to, and outline of, the abuse of children by by Irish priests in the US over the years. I'm sure most priests who went to the US from Ireland did their job as honestly as they could but Lynch argues that a disproportionate number of clerical abusers were Irish.

Violence and coercion by teenage partners

2009-01-29T11:41:00.002Z

(This is my That's Men column from The Irish Times, Tuesday 27th January 2009): School programmes on dealing with physical or emotional abuse from a dating partner might seem a step too far.

Yet a number of states in the US have required schools to introduce such programmes. In some cases, the legislation followed the murder of a teenager by a jealous ex.

The fact is that controlling behaviour and abuse occurs between teenagers as well as adults.

That teenagers would stay around to be abused may seem highly unlikely - but the cycle of abuse for teens is no different than that for adults. I will explain more about that cycle later.

First, look at the story of one teenage boy as told on the Teens Experiencing Abusive Relationships (TEAR) website.

He went for a night out with the guys and with his best friend Marie. He was flattered when Angel, their pretty waitress, slipped him her phone number at the end of the night.

He rang, they met, they dated and he fell in love.

Then Angel began to get jealous of his best friend Marie. If he loved her, she told him, he would end his relationship with Marie. So he did. She still went out her friends, both male and female, but he accepted that. Angel liked him to keep in touch with her so that she knew where he was at all times. Soon he was spending all his time with her except when she was with her friends.

Once, when she met him after being out with her friends she flew off the handle because she found out he had called Marie. She screamed at him, slapped him, pushed him, punched him and kicked him. Then she walked out.

Next day she was back, full of smiles and they kissed and made up. Then the jealousy and the fighting started again. But, at the end of his story he states that he can't break the cycle "because my love for her would always be stronger than that."

The website includes stories of teenage girls who went through the same sort of experience with their boyfriends.

The cycle of abuse has three stages which can be thought of as the green, orange and red stages.

In the green stage, all is well and the relationship is enjoyable and loving. In the orange stage, one partner is making escalating demands on the other, controlling the other, perhaps threatening him or her. In the red stage, the abusive partner explodes, into physical, sexual or emotional violence.

And the next stage? The next stage is the green stage again, the hearts and flowers stage as it is sometimes called. The abusive partner apologises, is loving and romantic and swears it will never happen again.

In all likelihood, it's the return to that green stage that keeps the cycle going until the person at the receiving end realises what is happening and gets out.

But teenagers? A couple of years ago, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US surveyed 15,000 tens on the issue of abuse. Ten per cent said they had been hit or slapped by a romantic partner. Nearly one in twelve said they had been forced to have sex. (CDCP Factsheet - pdf).

If it happens there I think we can assume it happens here. What's behind it? In the case of the abuser I suspect it's a fear, even a terror, of abandonment. That terror of abandonment leads the controlling personality to put extraordinary and intolerable restrictions on the other person.

And why does the other person put up with it, even for a time? Partly out of love, partly because it takes time for the penny to drop, partly out of fear of the consequences of trying to leave (a justified fear in too many tragic cases) and partly because the return to that green stage, the romantic stage, keeps the person trapped.

The TEAR project is based in New Jersey and was started six years ago by four teenage girls.

Their website contains lots of useful information for teenagers trapped in this sort of situation. Actually, it contains useful information for people of all ages.

If you're being controlled by another person or if you're worried about someone in this situation, take a look at it. It's at www.teensagainstabuse.org

The Roscommon child abuse case - what we need to know

2009-01-25T10:43:00.001Z

The Health Service Executive has appointed Norah Gibbons of Barnardos to head an independent inquiry into the Roscommon child abuse case. Few people in child protection work in Ireland have higher credibility than Norah Gibbons. She is nobody's fool. I wish her well.

Below is my article from The Herald of Friday, 23rd January, 2009 on the questions to which we need answers:

The history of child protection is signposted by a series of inquiries.

Each inquiry marks a failure. Each comes too late for one or more children - such as the inquiry into the death from extreme neglect of 15 year old Kelly Fitzgerald in 1993. She died even though when she moved to Co Mayo, West Lambeth Health Authority warned the Western Health Board of its worries and sent its child protection files to the WHB.

And now we have the Roscommon case and another inquiry inevitably on the way. In a sense this inquiry is different from the others because this case marks such a widespread failure on the part of the whole social system that surrounded the children.

Here are questions to which we need answers:

- Court evidence suggests there were concerns about child welfare in this family since the birth of the first child in 1989. What was done about this?

- Why did it take until 2000 for an arrangement to be made to put the children into the voluntary care of a maternal aunt and uncle given that further concerns had been raised in 1996?

- Why did the High Court prevent this arrangement from going ahead and who helped the mother to take the case?

- The court heard that a "Catholic right-wing organisation" had helped the mother to seek the injunction. A social worker stated in court that he suspected the involvement of Mína Bean Uí Chroibín in the application. Who are these people and what was their involvement, if any, in the legal process?

- The health authorities applied to have the High Court order lifted in 2001 but was told it should stay in place until a child care order was made by the District Court. Why? Did the health board seek such an order? If not, why not?

- The children went to school in a condition which made it obvious they were being neglected. What did the school do about this?

- Were these children seen by doctors of nurses during their childhood? What did they see?

- An official Garda investigation began in 2004. Did anybody make a report to Gardaí in the years prior to that?

These are just some of the questions to which we need answers about this specific case. There are wider issues too.

Legally it would appear that social workers can only take a child into care on a compulsory basis if there is a serious and immediate risk to the child. Is this too restrictive and should it be changed?

Where is the promised constitutional referendum on the rights of the child?

Is the health board/HSE system capable of running an effective child protection system or is it time to give this task to a separate, dedicated agency?

A statement from the Irish Association of Social Workers this morning gives a strong impression that other children may be at risk of the same sort of neglect and abuse in other families. Let's get to work.

Let's hear it for the lazy guy

2009-01-25T10:20:00.006Z

(This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 20th January 2009): I have hinted more than once in the past that when I was working for a salary I was far from being the most diligent employee on the floor.

That's when I was on the floor. More often than not I was to be found wandering around bookshops in the city centre, looking for the answer to everything.

Now that I am self-employed I actually have to work in order to get paid. Unfortunately the HR Department neglected to mention that little point when it put up a voluntary severance package that had 200 of us charging out the door.

Now that the jobs are vanishing and we're all going to live in caves, emerging now and then to be heckled by David McWilliams, I'd like to celebrate the world of the not-very-good worker.

I came across a few examples the other day in reports of a heartening survey by an American management consultancy called Caliper (now there's a name to conjure with).

One woman, on her second day in the job, was found fast asleep in the CEO's office. Anybody can fall asleep on their second day at work but to do it in the CEO's office takes a lot of class.

Actually, women can be a bit of a pain in the neck about doing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. We men are better at slacking off so I'm a bit disappointed that it wasn't a man who chose the boss's office for his nap.

But fair play to the guy who, after starting work, looked for a week off for a trip to Florida. The employer said no so he went sick for a week and came back with a tan. I bet this man remembers his week in Florida with more fondness than any week in the office. Good luck to him.

Then there was the new guy who came to work late and went home early, explaining that he was going to be sick tomorrow. He has many brothers and even some sisters here in Ireland.

What is heartening about the Caliper survey is that it found that most managers will keep a worker who is not very good because they don't want the hassle of hiring someone new.

Nearly seven out of ten managers said they would persevere with an existing worker, according to a report on management-issues.com

Thank heavens for that, whether you're an underperforming bishop, bank manager, politician, or drone.

By the way, Caliper don't necessarily think this is a good thing, judging by their website which contains frightening sales pitches like "Get the most out of every interview and hire more people like your top performers." Tell you what - I wouldn't be too keen on seeing those guys walk in the door.

Talking of interviews, one of my most dispiriting tasks as an employee was sitting on interview panels. Somewhere around Day Two, the thought would hit me: If I was applying for this job, against this opposition, I wouldn't get it.

Assuring myself that all job candidates exaggerate their energy, dedication and commitment to the point of fantasy did not help to dispel the dark cloud that would hover over me until I finally escaped back to my bookshops and my long lunches.

I like the attitude of Alexander Kjerulf. He speaks all over the world about making people happy at work and, I suspect, makes a happiness-inducing truckload of money out of it.

On his blog, Chief Happiness Officer, Denmark-based Kjerulf suggests bosses tell their new employees: "My most important priority is your happiness and productivity at work. If there's anything I can do to make you happier and more efficient - tell me right away. This isn't idealism, it's good business, because happy people are more productive."

I couldn't agree more and don't be bothering about measuring productivity either.

"Life is more than work," he suggests new employees be told. "If you're regularly working overtime, you're just making yourself less happy and more stressed. Don't join the cult of overwork - it's bad for you and the company."

This great man has a book called Happy Hour is 9 to 5. It's available in many languages including Chinese. Laid-back Chinese workers - now there's a novel idea.

The blight of sex trafficking

2009-01-19T19:09:00.003Z

(This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday 13th January 2009): We all know, if only from a glance at the newsstands, that Barack Obama was Time Magazine's Man of the Year.

But Time also picks its most important people of the year and one of these is very important indeed though most of us have not heard of her.

Her name is Somaly Mam and when she was a young girl in Cambodia she was sold into sexual slavery. She was made to work in a brothel with other young girls. They were kept in line through torture and beatings.

She eventually escaped and later established the Somaly Mam Foundation which helps to rescue other victims of this vicious crime. The Foundation also works to raise awareness of the scourge of trafficking.

The term sex trafficking, I should clarify, refers to the practice of forcing women to work as prostitutes, often by tricking them into the belief that they are leaving their home or their country for a normal job. It is known that women are trafficked into Ireland - legislation on the issue was passed last year. Irish men visiting brothels may very well be abusing women who are there against their will.

One of Somaly Mam's helpers is Sina Vann. Journalist Nicholas D Kristof recently wrote about her in The New York Times.

It is a shocking article and I urge you to read it. Sina was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia. She was drugged. She woke up naked and covered in blood beside a white man who had paid to take her virginity.

She was kept in a hotel and sold to male customers. Vicious beatings were inflicted if she did not act seductively enough. No customers meant a beating.

If she resisted she was brought to the basement where water was poured on her and she was given electric shocks. She was also locked in a coffin full of ants. The coffin was so tight she could not move her hands. This could go on for a day or more.

This is not rare. According to Sina, many Cambodian brothels have torture rooms in their basements. The girls' screams cannot be heard from outside.

She was rescued in a police raid organised by Somaly Mam.

Somaly Mam has paid a price for interfering with the sex trade. Kristof notes that to punish her, the brothel owners "kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter." The daughter of the woman who interpreted for Kristof in his interview with Sina also disappeared.

This is the very heart of darkness. It is modern slavery of the most brutal kind. According to the Somaly Mam Foundation, two million to four million women and children will be sold into prostitution this year. Some will be as young as five. They face a future of rape, torture and forced abortion. Many will die of AIDS.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn't only a problem that happens in faraway countries. Here in Ireland Ruhama, which works with women involved with prostitution, recently ran a television advertising campaign aimed at men who use the services of women trafficked into the country.

The campaign aimed to highlight the fact that the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act of 2008 criminalises men who use trafficked women.

That we have this legislation in place is a good thing and so is the fact that the Department of Justice gave funding to the Ruhama campaign.

But confusion remains about the rights of victims of traffickers when they are identified, as Ruadhán Mac Cormaic reported in this newspaper in December. Despite a government scheme to provide them with 60 days respite to recover from their ordeal they can end up in prison. Prison may be better than what they have been rescued from but as a response it's not good enough.

We need to change our treatment of victims - but most of all we need a change in our hearts and a recognition that the trafficking of women for sex is evil and a blight on our society and our world.

Fatima Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto - no love lost

2009-01-13T08:10:00.001Z

Well, there's no love lost between Fatima Bhutto and her late aunt, the assassinated Benazir Bhutto. According to this article by Fatima in the New Statesman, Benazir's tomb has become a tawdry, Disney-like monument designed by herself and the Pakistani people are deeply unhappy about where their country is heading. Good read.

A people neglected - Tony Gregory's North Inner City Dublin

2009-01-08T12:08:00.000Z

(My article on the North Inner City in the 1970s and 1980s appeared in The Evening Herald on 7th January 2009 in a feature marking the death of Tony Gregory TD):

To many people today, Dublin's North Inner City is characterised by the Irish Financial Services Centre and the O2 concert venue.

Neither existed in the North Inner City which, in the 1970s and early 1980s, shaped Tony Gregory's subsequent political career.

The main public building of note, more dreary then than today was the still-dreary Busaras.

In the 1970s, when Tony Gregory was a teacher and community activist working his way into local politics, families lived in dreadful conditions.

At the time I lived in a flat in Upper Sherrard Street. My journey home each evening brought me past old Georgian tenements from which you could smell and sense utter poverty and deprivation.

Fr Peter McVerry, speaking at a Combat Poverty exhibition in 2007, explained far better than I can what conditions were like only 30 years ago:

"I went to live in the old Summerhill flats in 1974. They were just awful. They were small, the only heating was an open fire in the sitting room, Dublin Corporation had obviously never been told that sound-proofing had been invented, and the place was crawling with rats, rats the size of little kittens and immune from every poison ever invented. Parents would tell you of waking up in the morning and finding a rat on the baby's cot.

"Some blocks of flats had to share an outside toilet and the children had to be washed in the local Sean McDermott St swimming pool, as they had no baths or showers."

While the poor had the same rights as everyone else on paper, these rights meant little enough in practice, as that extract makes clear.

I remember Gregory as a community activist coming in to borrow a few minutes' use of our photocopier in the National Social Service Council in Leeson Street. Needless to say, our masters in the Department of Health knew nothing of this.

Today, community bodies have their own photocopiers and staff but at that time this rarely happened. To pursue community activism in places like the North Inner City as people like Tony Gregory, Mick Rafferty and Fergus McCabe did, you had to have immense faith in what you were doing because little or no encouragement came from official Ireland.
At the time, the National Social Service Council was establishing what are now called Citizens Information Centres to tell people about their rights. I still remember the protests from one puffed-up minor official in the North Inner City because women, living in the conditions mentioned above, were now actually looking for their entitlements. Far better, he argued, to tell them nothing - that way they would look for nothing.

In this scenario of depressing poverty people turned, in too many cases, to drink or drugs. The heroin epidemic of the 1970s ravaged the North Inner City with precious little being done about it by officialdom. A social worker who tried to alert his boss to what was going on had his report thrown back at him. There is nothing I can do about this, he was told, so don't be sending me reports about it.

The outside world seemed to care about this area of poverty and unemployment only when people's property was robbed from their cars while they were sitting at traffic lights.
One has to wonder how many of the crime problems of today can be traced back to that indifference and to the failure to help families lost in poverty.
Nonetheless, the 1970s was also a period of social optimism and people like Combat Poverty and Kilkenny Social Services (Sr Stanislaus Kennedy was a leading influence in both) raised awareness of the need for change.

"They demolished Summerhill and Gardiner St. and Sean McDermott St in 1980," Fr McVerry recalled in that speech to Combat Poverty. He moved to Ballymun and it says a lot about the grinding poverty and dreadful conditions in the North Inner City that "after Summerhill, the Ballymun flats were paradise."
But the North Inner City was no paradise. Poverty and unemployment remained high and in the 1980s the country entered a decade of cutbacks as it tried to cope with a frightening national debt.

When Tony Gregory was first elected to the Dáil in 1982, he held the balance of power. Charles Haughey, determined to form the next government, came looking for his support, the outcome was the Gregory Deal.

Tony Gregory could have looked for, and would certainly have got, a junior ministry - a terrific prize for a newcomer to the Dáil.

Instead he looked for, and was promised, a range of measures which included specific numbers of jobs and houses for his constituents.

But Haughey's government didn't last and so the Gregory Deal fell by the wayside.

Yet the people knew Gregory was on their side and they knew he was absolutely genuine. That's why they voted him back in election after election. He was as far removed as you can get from some of those politicians who strut about their constituencies with little or no appreciation of what life is like for many of those whom they claim to represent.
Gregory remained involved with the North City Centre Community Action Project, founded in 1978 and one of the oldest such projects in the state.

He brought a sense of pride to an area which could so easily have slid into a depression. He lived through a second heroin epidemic. He got deeply involved with local efforts to boost education, training and jobs. He was as much a part of the area as a brick in the wall. If you wanted to meet one of his right hand men such as Mick Rafferty you didn't have to seek him out: you would probably bump into him walking down the street.

The North Inner City still has many problems but there is no doubt that these would be immeasurably worse, and the area's capacity to deal with them weaker, but for Tony Gregory's relentless work since the 1970s.

Who let the dogs out? Top Dog, Bottom Dog and your New Year resolutions

2009-01-06T15:13:00.001Z

(This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 30th December 2008)

Are you working on your New Year resolutions in the hope of creating a bright and shiny new you for 2009?

Heed my advice and take the whole idea with a pinch of salt.

We can all do with making some improvements in how we treat ourselves and other people. But all too often we think the old self has to be shoved into the black bin and left outside to be taken away to the nearest landfill. In its place we look for a completely new self which will win the admiration and even the applause of all.

But this doesn't work, and here's a doggish explanation as to why not:

In Gestalt Therapy there is a concept called 'Top Dog/Bottom Dog'. Top Dog is that part of your mind that knows what you ought to be doing with your life, how much you should weigh, how much exercise you should take, what you ought to eat, what time you should get up in the morning, how efficient you should be at work, how much you should be earning and so on.

Bottom Dog doesn't really want all this and resists the demands of Top Dog. Bottom Dog will have sausages and rashers for breakfast rather than a healthy bowl of porridge; prefers wine to water; snuggles in bed on a Saturday morning instead of getting up for a jog around the park; and has a to-do list with uncompleted items stretching back to the time of Tutankhamen.

Bottom Dog is very good at what he does. In fact Bottom Dog usually wins.

So what you want to watch out for is that it isn't just Top Dog who is sitting there writing out the New Year's list of resolutions. Leave the job to Top Dog and you can be pretty sure Bottom Dog will get busy sabotaging the whole thing.

I said above that we can all make improvements in how we treat ourselves and other people. Top Dog won't settle for improvements – he demands perfection. Bottom Dog knows better.

Top Dog would have you join the gym for a year. But you would do better to try it out for a month because that's about all the time Bottom Dog is going to give you on the treadmill.

Top Dog would urge you to cycle to work regardless of the weather. Bottom Dog would encourage you to leave the bicycle at home when it's cold and wet, and maybe even when it's warm and dry so don't go spending €500 on a new bike until you've tried out a second-hand banger for a while.

Top Dog would have you eating a grapefruit for breakfast, a few leaves of lettuce and a tomato for lunch and a sliver of chicken for dinner. Bottom Dog will tempt you with a Full Irish, a hot beef sandwich with chips and a half roast chicken with loads of gravy, so devise a human diet rather than a Top or Bottom Dog one.

Top Dog wants you to get to work an hour early and leave an hour late in Bill Cullen style. Bottom Dog thinks getting to work an hour late and leaving an hour early is the way to go. Actually, I'm with Bottom Dog on this one as all my former employers know.

You might be getting the impression that I like Bottom Dog more than I like Top Dog. Well, Bottom Dog has more fun than Top Dog in the same way that Catholics have more fun than Presbyterians (as I was born a Catholic I am entitled to make remarks that are mildly insulting to the old religion). But Bottom Dog suffers from a bit of Catholic guilt over his behaviour. He is motivated partly by anxiety at Top Dog's demands and he's not quite as laid back as you might imagine.

So when making your resolutions, don't let Bottom Dog dictate them or you'll go to hell in a handcart. But don't let Top Dog dictate them either because Top Dog's plans inevitably collapse.

Go for something that might work for a human being with human faults. Go for a middle way, in other words, and let sleeping dogs lie.

The torture that makes 14 year olds smile for sex tourists

2009-01-01T11:57:00.001Z

"The abolitionist cause simply hasn't been completed as long as 14-year-old girls are being jolted with electric shocks — right now, as you read this — to make them smile before oblivious tourists," writes New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof in this article. Kristof rightly sees forced sex trafficking as slavery. In the article he outlines the horrors to which young girls in Cambodia are subjected to make them comply with the demands of the brothel owners and of the men who pay to have sex with them. Most of these men, I assume, do not know what has been done to these young girls. One such girl was Somaly Mam who later escaped and started the Somaly Mam Foundation to rescue the victims of this slave system and to campaign for an end to trafficking around the world. She was named by Time Magazine recently as one of the most important people of 2008.

Check out this website if you're bullied in the workplace

2008-12-29T12:29:00.001Z

Workplace bullies destroy lives. Employers, in my experience, usually lack the courage or the will to do anything about it.

So I was really pleased to see that the Management-Issues website has put up a micro-site on this scourge.

If you're a target of workplace bullying, or if you' re a union officer or HR officer, check it out here.

Good radio from Speechification

2008-12-28T19:35:00.001Z

If you're into radio, check out the marvellous Speechification blog with an eclectic selection of radio programmes, mainly from the BBC but also from English-speaking stations around the world. You can download the programmes as mp3 files. Some of my favourites include The Only Hooker in the Village, an ABC documentary about a primary schoolteacher turned sex-worker in small town in regional Australia; a BBC programme on Walter de la Mare's poem The Listeners - seems he wasn't too sure himself what it was all about; and I Was Douglas Adams' Flatmate on the early days of the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Ireland's botched bank job? I hope David McWilliams is wrong this time

2008-12-26T23:53:00.001Z

I really, really hope David McWilliams is wrong when he condemns the Government's bank rescue as a botched job which "will plunge Ireland into a much longer recession than is necessary" in this post on his blog.

"Make no mistake about it: our money will disappear in the next 12 months," he warns. "Irish bank shares will continue to fall steadily as the extent of the dire loan book is revealed and we, the taxpayers, will be asked to stump up again and again."

What scares me about this is that McWilliams was right, well before the event, about our current crash. And both the Government and the financial system are still being run by the people who steered us into this iceberg in the first place.

Ronelda Kamfer - a necessary voice from South Africa

2008-12-24T18:17:00.002Z

I discovered Ronelda Kamfer's work on the always excellent Poetry International Web. From the age of 10 she lived in Cape Flats, a place in which getting to school involved getting past three gangs. Cape Flats at one time had 150 gangs and perhaps still has. She saw a schoolmate shot dead in crossfire outside her school.

It's unusual to find a poetic voice coming from a background like this and I really like her poetry and recommend it to you. She writes in Afrikaans and there is just a handful of her poems available in English.

She developed her poetic style by compressing sentences into a few words to stop her little sister from reading her private stuff, according to this interview with Fred De Vries. I've never heard of that method before - but it worked.

A 58 year old married to an 8 year old - bad male behaviour in Saudi Arabia

2008-12-23T14:19:00.001Z

A 8-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia has been married off to a 58-year-old man in Saudi Arabia, by her father, according to this report in The Guardian.

A judge has turned down her mother's plea to divorce the two. Instead the girl will have to enter a plea for divorce when she reaches puberty - but what's going to happen to her in the meantime?

The girl's parents are divorced and it seems that this sort of arrangement is sometimes made by men to get at their ex-wives.

What does this say about Islam? What does Islam say about this?

Cloyne sex abuse scandal - who matters most, Church or child?

2008-12-22T10:54:00.003Z

When I covered clerical sex abuse stories for The Irish Times in the 1990s it was clear that children who had been abused by clergy in the Archdiocese of Dublin and who later complained were seen as a nuisance and a threat to be sidelined for the greater good of the Catholic Church.

Judge Yvonne Murphy will shortly publish her report on abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese and I expect it will be devastating for the Church.

Meanwhile the latest report into clerical abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne shows that little has changed in that diocese. The response of Diocesan authorities makes the attitude clear: the Church matters more than the children.

What the Irish economy might not need: an attack on the public service

2008-12-21T11:55:00.001Z

It seems to be taken for granted by many commentators that an all-out attack on the public service is needed to help get us out of the economic hole we have got ourselves into - but I'm not so sure.

If it is true that we need people to spend money to get things moving again, then how does it make sense to throw public servants onto the dole queues who could otherwise be earning and spending money?

Of course we need public service reform and we need to work out just what we can afford in pensions and other benefits in the future - but let's do it in a measured way and not in a feeding frenzy.

'Tis the season to be narky

2008-12-20T23:00:00.003Z

(This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday 16th December 2008):

WELL, THE season of peace and goodwill is upon us so stand by for lots of tension and rows in many households.

That's why I was glad to come across "10 rules for friendly fighting for couples" on the excellent Psychcentral blog.

I don't agree with all of them but even a few of them could help you move from a freezing doghouse to a blazing log fire for Christmas. Here they are:

1 Embrace conflict. There is no need to go into a three-day sulk just because you and your partner have had a row. Quarrelling is normal among human beings. Accept it and get over it.

2 Talk softly. Now, this doesn't mean scary softly as in Hannibal Lecter. It means conducting the argument, especially the beginning of the argument, softly rather than harshly. You don't change people's minds by shouting at them.

3 Make peace sooner rather than later. Dragging the conflict out, punishing your partner for disagreeing and so on is unpleasant and exhausting. Since rows are inevitable, the sooner you can make the peace the better - otherwise you are going to be spending a lot of time at war. Making the peace can mean resolving the conflict, agreeing to differ or just letting the matter drop.

4 Attack the issue not the other person. "You're such a daddy's girl/mammy's boy. Why don't you just move back home and let daddy/mammy take care of you." That's attacking the other person.

"I'd like to have Christmas dinner here and visit your parents beforehand/ afterwards." That's attacking the issue.

Attacking the issue doesn't guarantee agreement, especially over the dreaded Christmas dinner with the in-laws. But it's still a superior approach to attacking the other person which only harms the relationship.

To me, the four rules above are the important ones. The other six are:

5 Listen respectfully. Good advice but if it's a proper row you're unlikely to be listening respectfully - otherwise it wouldn't be a fight.

6 Get curious, not defensive and

7 Ask for specifics. These two very similar rules I would regard as a counsel of perfection. To actually ask for details of your partner's complaints while you are being scolded would require the saintliness of Mother Teresa and Padre Pio rolled into one.

8 Find points of agreement. Yes, very good but hard to do in the middle of a fight.

9 Look for options - ask for suggestions. Again, we are in Mother Teresa territory here. Most of us are more likely to make (unhelpful) suggestions than to ask for them in a fight.

10 Make concessions. Marie Hartwell-Walker, who wrote the piece on the Psychcentral blog, points out that even a small concession can help defuse a conflict and I would agree with her. Probably you are more likely to make a concession after the row has died down but even so, it's worth doing.

As Hartwell-Walker points out in her article at www.psych central.com, couples in mature, healthy relationships seem to understand these principles. I suspect they learn them the hard way and that many relationships break up or are unhappy for want of following a few simple rules like these.

So take a look through the list and see if there's anything in it you can put to use. It might be the best Christmas present you'll get this year.

• Last week's piece on the often-hidden issue of eating disorders in men drew this response from Ruth Ní Eidhin of Bodywhys - The Eating Disorders Association of Ireland:

"At Bodywhys we are keenly aware of the issues that can arise around Christmas, and in fact we tend to see an increase in calls to our helpline immediately after the Christmas period from people who have had difficulty over the festive season . . . It is particularly encouraging to see the issue of men and eating disorders being addressed, as we are seeing more and more men coming forward seeking support. The more we can challenge the stereotype of eating disorders as a 'women's issue', the easier it is for other men to come forward without fear of any stigma."

The Bodywhys helpline is 1890 200 444 and www.bodywhys.ie is its web address.

• Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor. His book That's Men , the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times is published by Veritas.

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Hooked, even after the pleasure goes

2008-10-25T22:11:00.005+01:00

(This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday 14th October 2008):

The term 'porn-zombie' was new to me until I came across it on addiction therapist Jason McClain's website .

McClain was referring to the way in which viewers of porn on the Internet - and I think it's fair to say the vast majority are men - lose track of time as they watch pornography for hours on end.

He takes the view that you have a pornography addiction if your consumption of porn interferes with your relationships or with key aspects of your life away from the screen.

He doesn't see it as an addiction, or necessarily as a problem, if you have a genuinely take it or leave it attitude to pornography. He is not, of course, referring here to child pornography and neither am I.

There are reasons, though, why the journey from 'take it or leave it' to 'porn-zombie' can be a quick one. Anything involving sexual stimulation has a powerful draw and when the stimulation is available free of charge, as it is on the internet, then the draw is all the more powerful.
And remember the collapse of the Internet bubble about eight or nine years ago? Very talented people in Silicon Valley found themselves out of work. Some gravitated towards that area of the web which continued to make money - pornography (the free pornography is, of course, meant to lure people into subscribing to pay sites). The result? Pornography websites became among the slickest and most sophisticated in the world. Link that sophistication with sexual stimulation and you begin to see how easy it is for internet porn, in particular, to draw people in and keep them there.

And the new browsers from Internet Explorer and Google come with what sceptics call a 'porn mode' option that allows people to surf without leaving a trace on their computers.

Add to all this the human tendency to escape into pleasure to avoid the stresses of life. By this I mean that we tend to drink too much, comfort eat, spend too much, do drugs, do pornography and so on and on as a response to emotional pain.

If you can do these things and then put them aside while you get on with sorting out your life, fine. But all too often, they become an end in themselves even after the pleasure has gone out of them.

In relation to pornography addiction, McClain identifies three stages.

The first is anticipation. Here the consumer of pornography is anxious to get people out of the way so he can get to the computer. Next is consumption where the user may well get into that 'porn-zombie' state. The third stage is self-hatred and a sense of time wasted. Then the cycle is repeated, sometimes as a way of escaping from that painful third stage - a bit like taking a drink at lunchtime to help with a hangover.

He suggests measures such as evaluating the effect of porn on your closest relationships, and maintaining an awareness of your behaviour while you are actually consuming porn instead of falling into the 'zombie' state.

He also advocates using software that doesn't allow you to go on to pornography websites. You can always disable the software temporarily but he argues the hassle involved in doing this may give you enough pause for thought to change your mind.

He recommends a free filtering system called OpenDNS, which you can find at www.opendns.com. The only problem is that it involves, according to its website, "taking a few minutes to unbundle your DNS service from your ISP's Internet connection" which would frighten the living daylights out of me.

But there are lots of filtering programs and if you can find porn you can find them too.

Final thought: people who have a dependence on pornography are not bad people. They are just people who are hooked on a very strong drug and who need to make new choices.

They could start off by looking at McClain's website at www.quitpornaddiction.com which promotes his ebook but also has a link to his blog with lots of good, free information. If you are married to somebody with a pornography addiction, you will find much here to interest you as well.

How a German sex education film and Vatican II ruined my taste for Maltesers

2008-10-12T14:51:00.002+01:00

(This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday 7th October 2008):

The Malteser is, I think you will agree, a jewel of the confectioner's art.

But thanks to Pope John XXIII and a movie called Helga, I can't look at a Malteser.

My tale illustrates the dangers of liberal Catholicism and of sex education - for the latter is what Helga purveyed - particularly when both conjoin.

Let me explain. The other day, a friend confided that she cannot face a Fry's Chocolate Cream. This product is another confectioner's jewel, a shining light of sophistication in a coarse world. I know this because one of my grandmothers, a sophisticated lady if ever there was one, used to give Fry's Chocolate Cream bars to myself and my sister when we were children, after she had corrected our grammar.

Anyway my friend, at the age of five, was handed an entire box of Fry's Chocolate Cream. She did what any intelligent five year old might be expected to do - she faded into the background and scoffed the lot.

The results were as you might expect. That's why she can no longer experience the joy of eating Fry's Chocolate Cream.

In psychology this is called the Garcia Effect after an experiment in which...no, let's not go there.

Anyway, her sad tale reminded me of my Maltesers issue.

In the 1960s, a West German health minister called Käte Strobel decided to promote sex education. One of the fruits of her endeavours was a 1967 sex education movie called Helga.

Helga was special in its day because it was a mainstream sex education movie and because it featured a childbirth scene. It was also special because the film censor allowed it to be shown here.

And the Pope? Even before Ms Strobel got going, Pople John XXIII had convened the Second Vatican Council. This had the effect of liberalising the church and making us all think we lived in a new era.

A cohort of liberal priests emerged from Vatican Two and these priests were convinced that it would be a good thing for the young people of Ireland to be exposed to Helga.

Buses were organised to bring young people up to, I think, the Savoy in Dublin to see the film and be educated.

A have a dim memory of an earnest priest flitting about a bus in Naas that had been organised for the young people of the town and environs.

A major attraction of the Helga movie was that people were reputed to get sick during the childbirth scene. So we didn't go to it so much for the sex education - we knew bloody well there'd be no sex left in it by the time the censor was through - as to see if we could get through the childbirth scene without throwing up.

On the way into the movie, you will have guessed, I treated myself to an entire box of Maltesers. I'm talking about 1960s boxes here, big boxes - the sort of boxes you're meant to share.

I remember absolutely nothing about the movie. A Canadian contributer to the Internet Movie Database says that "I remember naked girls in a school shower," but it's a safe bet that the version we saw omitted this key scene.

What I remember is that I ate all the Maltesers myself while wondering if the childbirth scene was going to make me sick. It didn't but the experience created assocations in my mind with Maltesers which have prevented me from ever again eating one of those wonderful (as I recall) taste bombs.

So in the end, Helga was a let down. The church went on to implode and we all became heathens and went to hell in a handcart.

It wasn't worth it, not at the price of putting me off my favourite chocs.

The star of Helga, Ruth Gassmann, went on to make a number of movies including the 1972 Robinson und seine wilden Sklavinnen shown in the UK as Robinson and His Tempestuous Slaves and in France as Trois filles nues dans l'île de Robinson.

Now. why couldn't they have bussed us up to that one? I'd even have chanced another box of Maltesers.

Check out my Poetry Daily feature today

2008-10-04T07:58:00.002+01:00

I'm delighted that Poetry Daily, a website I've been reading with admiration for years, is featuring one of my poems today, Saturday 4th October. The poem, The red heifer, is from my collection You've been great. Click on over there and take a look.

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'Wholly inappropriate' behaviour by the Irish Nationwide?

2008-10-03T12:10:00.003+01:00

I just love the outrage over the attempt by the Irish Nationwide to get British investors to move money into its coffers in light of the Government's new guarantee scheme. "Wholly inappropriate" is the phrase being used by the great and the good about this attempt by a bank to capitalise on an opportunity. What did they expect? If you lock a drunkard in an off-licence overnight you are hardly in a position to bleat "wholly inappropriate" when you find him pissed the next morning. Not that I'm suggesting the folk in the Irish Nationwide take a drink. It's a metaphor.

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Award-winning poems published

2008-09-15T12:04:00.002+01:00

You've been great, my collection of 20 poems which was a winner of the Poetry Business Award 2007, is published by Smith/Doorstop. Smith/Doorstop, based in Sheffield, publishes the poetry magazine The North as well as books and pamphlets and was founded by poet Peter Sansom. The collection of 20 poems was one of four winners of the competition run by The Poetry Business which is associated with Smith/Doorstop. The competition was sponsored by the Arts Council of England and Kirklees Cultural Services. Also winning and having their collections published were Julia Deakin, Yvonne Green and Ann Pilling.

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Just Like A Man is in hibernation until September

2008-06-01T12:20:00.004+01:00

Just Like A Man is hibernating and will be updated next in September. Meantime, there's plenty here to read. Have a good summer (or winter if you're down there).

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Billy Keogh has a dependent mother, seven employees and he's a good businessman - so it's two years for rape

2008-05-22T10:18:00.004+01:00

Rapist a man of good character, says judge

If you're a good businessman, have employees and support your mother, you can now have all this taken into account if you're being sentenced for rape.

Businessman Billy Keogh raped a prostitute after she refused to take off his condom. According to the woman, he also claimed to be a member of the Garda (police) and threatened to throw her out the window of the Waterford Hotel in which he met her.

The Waterford businessman later offered her €30,000 compensation but she rejected it. The judge, Mr Justice White, noted that she had been threatened by phone the day she returned to Ireland to give evidence in the case.

Yet the judge went on to tell Keogh, “It is quite clear to me that you are a man of good character..."

He gave him a five year sentence but suspended the last three years, says, according to this report in The Examiner, he was impressed by how Keogh re-established himself after losing his business in 2004 and that he also had an elderly dependent mother and seven employees to support.

You may wonder what the hell these factors have to do with sentencing in a rape case and so do groups like Ruhama - which works with women in prostitution - and the Rape Crisis Network Ireland.

“Our judicial system needs to give the women the confidence to come forward and seek justice," said Ruhama in a very restrained response. "Rape, no matter where it happens or to whom, has a longstanding impact on the victim. Sentences need to reflect this and act as a clear deterrent.”

Some deterrent!

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French-style kissing not for the Irish!

2008-05-20T10:30:00.002+01:00

Women learn lots from kissing

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 13th May, 2008. "That's Men - The best of the 'That's Men' column from The IrishTimes" is published by Veritas.

A year ago this month, president Ahmadinejad of Iran was accused of indecency for kissing a woman in public.

The woman was a retired schoolteacher and he kissed her hand at a ceremony and she was wearing gloves at the time but still.....

As the newspaper Hezbollah poined out, you never know what this sort of thing can lead to.

How, I wonder, would Hezbollah feel about Madonna's latest kissing escapade? Madge got loads of publicity five years ago for kissing Britney Spears in what the Daily Mail called a "steamy stunt" during the MTV awards.

Last week she grabbed a backing singer during a show in Paris and planted a kiss on her but a jaded world failed to pay much attention. That the recipient of Madonna's attentions looked like someone struggling in the grip of a grizzly bear did not help.

Since French women kiss each other - on the cheek - all the time and do it much more elegantly than dear old Madge, she may just have picked the wrong city for her display.

I might add that when you watch a bunch of French people kissing you have to wonder if a simple "Howya" Irish-style wouldn't make life a lot easier. Here in Ireland we're not much good at the kiss on the cheek thing, though. Attempts are more likely to end up as bone-crunching crashes than as exercises in European flair.

Romantic kissing between men and women is usually a more complicated affair.

Researchers on kissing - oh, yes, there are such people - suggest that when a man and woman are engaged in a deep kiss there's a lot more going on than a conjunction of lips and tongues.

Women, they suggest, are noting the taste and smell of the man as part of their assessment of his suitability as a mate. Our brains devote a disproportionately high amount of processing power to what's going on with our mouths and tongues so perhaps the suggestion makes sense.

And if a woman judges you to be a "bad kisser" she is far more likely to refuse to have sex with you.

Research conducted among 1,041 students at the University of Albany - and that's a lot of kissing - found that with men it's all more simple. We're mainly focussed on the chances of getting the female into bed. Most males in the research would be happy to skip the kissing preliminary altogether but most females insist on it.

Which adds credence to the view that with women there is some sort of assessment procedure going on that even they themselves are not consciously aware of.

This in turn suggests that women who refuse to kiss on a first date are depriving themselves of valuable information and should rethink their position.

Men are fonder than women of big, wet kisses. Susan Hughes, the psychologist who led the study, suggests that because our sense of taste and smell is less sharp than that of women, we use the saliva to help us make our assessments. Well, yuk!

And since women's breath changes during their menstrual cycle this may be mother nature's way of telling the male brain that the woman is fertile and to go for it. Not that mother nature would tell the guy upfront - it's all unconscious, otherwise it wouldn't work.

You know what? Hezbollah is right - you never know where this sort of thing leads to. Do yourself a favour and keep yer gob shut.

Death of motorcycle champion Robert Dunlop - a fatal attraction to risk?

2008-05-18T10:17:00.003+01:00

Fans defend dangerous sport

The death of motorcycle champion Robert Dunlop reminds us again that risky behaviour has a huge attraction for people and maybe for men in particular. He died in an accident during a practice session for the North West 200 in Portrush last Thursday evening. Next day on the Liveline programme on RTÉ, caller after caller lined up to defend the sport while acknowledging the recent deaths of motorcyclists and of Dunlop's brother Joey in 2000. The basic message was that people who get hooked by the sport wouldn't want to live without it. Do they get addicted to the adrenalin rush? Following his death, his widow Louise said Robert Dunlop knew the sport would one day kill him.

"He was prepared to accept the risk," she told The Irish Independent.

"He had to be in the thick of it himself. That was just his way."

"The lights have gone out for us," she added. "Nothing will ever be the same."

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That's Men launched in Dublin

2008-05-16T13:16:00.006+01:00

Collection of Irish Times columns published

The collection of my Irish Times columns, That's Men, was launched at a 'do' in Veritas last night. Pictured above in Frank Miller's photo for The Irish Times are Veritas publications manager Ruth Kennedy (left) who steered the ship home safely, yours truly and (right), Maura Hyland, Veritas managing director. Also launched were other books including, notably, When a child dies: footsteps of a grieving family, by Jim O'Shea. His account of the aftermath of the death of his son Cathal at age 13 is truly written from the heart. If you are involved in bereavement work in any way, you really ought to read it. If you know somebody who has lost a child you should read it too.

To order That' s Men, click here.

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Prime Time Investigates - will this exposé of a collapsed child protection system have any effect?

2008-05-13T22:19:00.004+01:00

With children left at risk, there is little hope for change

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has told the Dáil that new Minister for Children Barry Andrews will be following up with the HSE the findings of last night's RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme on children at risk, says this story on RTÉ. (Scroll to the bottom of the RTÉ story for a link to the programme).

But the Health Service Executive and its predecessors, the health boards, have known for years and years that the child protection system is in collapse. Barry Andrews can whistle Dixie for all the good it's going to do. And on tonight's follow-up he was doing just that, informing a sceptical nation that our child protection services are 'cutting edge'. That's the HSE line and the old health board line too - all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

For as long as this amoral organisation is running child protection services we will get nowhere. The job just must be given to an independent body with its own statutory underpinning and funding. How many children must be destroyed or die before this happens?

Quite a lot, actually.

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Men and cosmetics, from eyeliner to guyliner - am I missing something here?

2008-05-11T09:26:00.005+01:00

Are more men wearing makeup than meet the eye?

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 6th May, 2008. "That's Men - The best of the 'That's Men' column from The IrishTimes" is published by Veritas.

Is there a hidden world out there of guys who wear makeup? Or is it a not-so-hidden world? Am I completely out of touch with trends in the male world?

I have to admit that I am one of those guys who won't be seen wearing makeup this side of the funeral parlour. In fact, I would gladly declare that "I won't be seen dead wearing makeup" except that the decision will be out of my hands.

In all this, I think I'm still a member of the majority - but the world of men and makeup is changing, however slowly.

My eye was caught recently by a blog by journalist Natasha Hughes in the Sydney Morning Herald in which she expressed amazement at seeing the groom at a wedding wearing what she called "slap-full coverage foundation."

What is "slap-full coverage foundation"? I guess it's something you slap on your face and that's awfully obvious to the onlooker, especially to the sharp-eyed female onlooker.

Natasha's amazement at the groom with the foundation mirrored my own surprise at another manifestation of the interest of men in makeup. Last year on my blog I wrote a single paragraph piece under the heading Men, eyeliner and sex appeal. It was just a little link to something I read somewhere else. Since then, that headline has drawn readers to the blog day after day. Never mind my more serious meanderings on the meaning of life. No, it's eyeliner and sex appeal that gets them going.

Why? You don't see that many guys going around wearing eyeliner unless they're Goths and I don't think the Goths are big readers of mine.

Do some of us have a secret habit? Are there lots of guys standing in front of the bathroom mirror wielding the eyeliner and slapping on the "full coverage foundation" and then removing it before the wife comes home?

Well, I guess there are some, but that many?

And anyway are we reaching the stage where fellows won't feel the need to whip off the eye shadow when they hear the key in the front door?

Right now, being caught wearing your wife's make-up might result in several expensive therapy sessions - but it's all a matter of context and maybe context is changing to the point where the makeup thing just wouldn't matter anymore.

Indeed, I read that Boots has a men's makeup line and that the H&M stores stock a line of men's mascara, in London at any rate. I don't know whether they stock it in their stores here. Maybe one of the lads would drop in and check it out?

In the music world, barriers are increasingly being breached when it comes to men's cosmetics. High School Musical star Zac Efron set tongues wagging last year over his fondness for foundation. Other male stars' attachment to eyeliner has given the world the word "guyliner."

And how much money does/did Bertie spend on makeup? Is it €5,000 a day or €5,000 a month? It doesn't really matter, does it? It's the principle that counts. [Note: Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach - Prime Minister - of Ireland]

And the major question is this: will Bertie keep wearing makeup when he's no longer Taoiseach and he's not before the television cameras every day of the week?

Should a grateful nation not provide him with a small 'makeup' allowance so that he can look his best when, say, he's being filmed entering and leaving the Mahon Tribunal over the next decade or so?

You might think that this is all on the fringes and I suppose it is, but fashions have a habit of working their way from the edge into the centre.

How long is it since a man would be embarrassed to be seen buying a male moisturising cream? Not long at all - but now nobody could care less.

Actually, there is a possible use of male make-up which I hadn't come across before and which just might appeal to Irish boyos. One guy responding to Natasha Hughes' article revealed that he finds "a little concealer" is always useful "to hide those bags under the eyes after a big night."

So there you are. If a night on the tiles has left you unable to face your jumbo breakfast roll, just dab on a little concealer and make those bleary eyes vanish.

Nuala O'Faolain dies age 68

2008-05-10T09:04:00.003+01:00

I was sorry to read of the death of Nuala O'Faolain just before midnight, 9th May 2008, last night at Blackrock Hospice. Her interview with Marian Finucane a month ago startled and touched many people. It also tore away the veil of "don't talk about it" that surrounds terminal illness. It is some consolation that she died in a hospice where the experience would have been made as painless as possible. I hope she found some peace towards the end.

RTÉ's report of her death is here.

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That Bulmers video

2008-05-09T21:00:00.004+01:00

Here's a link to the YouTube video that got eight guys in Bulmers fired. I would have thought a bollocking in the form of a month's suspension and some mandatory health and safety training would have been enough.....

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Empathy in order for Derry family in Algarve nightmare

2008-05-08T10:28:00.004+01:00

Ill, not drunk?

Perhaps a little human empathy is in order for the McGuckin family from Derry. Did they drink too much on the first day of their holiday on the Algarve or was one of the couple, as they claim, just ill?

Either way, it may have been an over-reaction on the part of the hotel to contact the authorities and an over-reaction on the part of the authorities to take the children into care.

Their holiday turned into a nightmare. No need to burn them at the stake as well.

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Young women becoming more violent, says study

2008-05-05T11:34:00.000+01:00

Young women and men commit physical and psychological violence against each other

Story from AKI News: Rome, 29 April (AKI) - Young women are committing more violence against their boyfriends, according to a new study conducted in Italy.

The study of 672 adolescents found that 22 percent of young women admitted they had committed physical aggression against their male partners.

But more than 60 percent of the males surveyed said they had acted violently against their partners.

Forty-six percent of female adolescents said they had committed some form of psychological aggression against their partners, while 40.8 percent of young men said they had acted violently towards their partners.

The research in Italy was conducted by the Universities of Rome and Florence and published in the Italian daily, La Repubblica, on Tuesday.

"The violence between young couples is no longer asymmetrical like we have seen over the decades," said Ersilia Menesini, associate professor from the psychology department at University of Florence.

"And in all countries that we follow, the phenomenon seems to be linked to the growing empowerment of women in society."

Menesini, a specialist on bullying in schools, was one of several teachers behind the project which is one of the first of its kind conducted in Italy.

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Tony - father and career alcoholic in a Manhattan bar

2008-05-04T10:24:00.002+01:00

Also, global warming and how to look young

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 29th April, 2008. "That's Men - The best of the 'That's Men' column from The IrishTimes" is published by Veritas.

“I am a career alcoholic,“ Tony declared.

I had ducked – alright, walked deliberately – into an Irish bar near the Ground Zero site in Manhattan to escape from the rain and a cold wind and to have a drink while I was at it.

Tony materialised beside me with a bottle of Bud in his hand and a smile on his face. He was dancing lightly to the music and he continued to dance in place as he talked.

He established my name and country of origin, introduced himself – he had what I take to be, in my ignorance, an Italian-American accent – and then made the announcement about his career as an alcoholic.

“It makes me feel good,” he declared. “What else matters?”

I agreed. He was in that state of elation which, in some people, can turn ugly in a second if you express a point of view different to theirs – especially if they have a lot of alcohol on board.

Tony was in good shape for a career alcoholic. He was fifty years old, he told me but I would have put him in his late thirties. His hair was jet black and this, he assured me, was entirely genuine and without benefit of a hair colour. He was only a little overweight and he was light on his feet. Maybe the dancing kept him fit.

It has been a while since I’d been to the barber’s and Tony spotted this. “Lose the hair,” he advised me. “It will take ten years off your age.”

He spoke very fast and with a thick sort of accent so I couldn’t figure out everything he said. For instance, I could not make sense of his explanation as to why he, personally, knows global warming is real (he had moved seamlessly from my need for a haircut to environmental issues). “See this burn mark?” he said, putting his hand to his forehead, as he explained how he knew global warming was for real. There was nothing there but I said I had seen it anyhow.

Then he moved on to his main topic for our encounter, namely his ex-wife, “the evil one”, and how she had unsuccessfully tried to get his kids to say he had molested them.

“I am telling you this because you are elder,” he said. I am definitely going to lose the hair, I told myself.

He took out his wallet and showed me photographs of his kids. All were graduation photographs, three boys and a girl, all looking happy and proud of themselves. It hurt him, he said, that their mother had tried to turn them against him.

“You’re a good listener,” he said. Not bad, I suppose, when all you’re trying to do is avoid an argument.

I was wondering how I was going to get out of the conversation and leave with politeness when two young women, maybe in their twenties, came into the bar and sat down at a table. Tony danced over to them and started to chat them up. The young women laughed it off but Tony’s attention had definitely turned in their direction.

I said goodbye and left.

It struck me that Tony seemed to have the ability to create company for himself. He was a man whose whole life was a performance for an immediate audience. Well, whose isn’t – what I mean is that Tony’s one-man show is more direct and up-front than most of us manage. Clearly, from what he told me about his wife, not everybody in his audience is a fan.

Then I remembered last Christmas Day when my wife and I went to a bar on Second Avenue for a drink in the evening. This was an Irish bar too, and their prices certainly lived up to the name. But the other Irish thing about it was the number of men who sat up at the counter, alone, drinking, talking to nobody. It was a somewhat depressing sight for Christmas Day.

They could have done with Tony in there to brighten up their evening. I expect he is still dancing in the bar in Manhattan, chatting women up, explaining global warming and showing pictures of his kids to other customers. Good luck to him. I hope the career works out.

Depression alone cannot explain murder-suicide of Flood family in Clonroche

2008-05-03T15:28:00.004+01:00

Depressed people rarely engage in physical violence towards others

Text of my article in The Evening Herald, Friday 2nd May 2008:

Depression and anxiety are the twin scourges of our emotional world but society views each of them very differently.

It's 'alright' to be stressed out - in some settings it may even be the done thing to complain about stress on the idiotic grounds that if you're not stressed you're not working hard enough.

But it's 'not alright' to be depressed and people with the condition often keep it to themselves for that reason. Some, for instance, will not state on an application form for life insurance that they have suffered depression because they fear they will be denied cover.

That said, it is unlikely that depression, or depression on its own, could account for acts such as the murder-suicide of the Flood family in Co Wexford.

It seems reasonable to suppose that some level of delusion, perhaps including hallucinations or voices, could have provided the impulse for the tragedy.

Depression involves a debilitating mixture of low mood, negative thoughts and fatigue. The sufferer loses interest in his or her usual activities.

Depression can arise as a reaction to life events. The birth of a child, for instance, can be followed by post-natal depression. Grief can turn into depression. So can a sense of helplessness or of being trapped in an unhappy relationship.

Researchers believe depression has increased over the past one hundred years. The reasons for this are not clear but depression may be the price we pay for our increasingly sedentary lifestyle. We no longer 'work off' negative moods or feelings and we have too much time to brood which, in itself, can trigger or prolong depression.

People suffering from depression generally begin to seek help by going to their GP. The GP will probably prescribe medication and may also refer them to a counsellor. Counselling can be very effective in helping people to overcome depression and to change the thinking patterns or circumstances that may have led them to become depressed in the first place.

Depressed people are the last you would expect to indulge in violence. Indeed, some psychologists believe that people become depressed because they turn their anger in on themselves instead of inflicting it on others.

This, again, is why we need to be cautious about attributing the terrible events in Clonroche to depression in the father. As a report in yesterday's Evening Herald pointed out, it is highly unusual for a depressed person to kill someone else.

But there is, as we all know, a strong link between depression and self-harm including suicide. Sometimes this happens when the depressed person starts to feel better because it is only now that they have the energy to carry out the act. This, obviously, is a point at which counselling can be crucial.

Many depressed people also turn to self help groups such as Aware, Grow and Recovery. These can provide a real lifeline for people with depression, especially for those who cannot afford private counselling fees.

The most important step to take in depression is to seek help whether from a counsellor, GP or self-help group.

This is not as easy a step to take as it may seem. A considerable amount of prejudice against persons with mental health problems persists, as research by the National Office for Suicide Prevention revealed last year. The researchers found that 52 per cent of people interviewed did not believe people with mental health problems should be working in jobs such as medicine. One third would be uncomfortable talking to a person with mental health problems - completely ignoring the fact that they have probably talked to people with mental health problems quite often without knowing it. Thirty nine per cent thought the public ‘should be better protected’ from people with mental health problems.

We all get a touch of the blues from time to time. Very often depression lifts by itself but when it persists people should seek help - we need to make it easy for them to do so.

Aware has a helpline at 1890 303 302 and has self-help groups throughout the country. The Samaritans are at 1850 60 90 90. Grow is at 1890 474 474. Recovery can be contacted at 01 6260775.

Tragedy of Flood family murder-suicide in Co Wexford

2008-05-01T08:20:00.002+01:00

No satisfactory explanations for murder-suicide

(This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on 28th April)

The apparent murder-suicide of the Flood family at Clonroche has one thing in common with most other suicides.

This is that we have no satisfactory explanation as to why it happened and we are unlikely to get one.

When an individual commits suicide, the person's family may spend years seeking an explanation. But even suicide notes usually fail to give a satisfactory reason for such a drastic step.

In the case of murder-suicide, the mystery is even greater. Why would a man who, for some reason, has decided to take his life, bring his family with him? Why - if this is how it happened - did he do it in such a way that his children were left to die in a fire after their parents were dead? (Note: since this article appeared, there is reason to believe that the children were drugged before the fire began).

Gardaí have been unable to find anything at all in the background of the family to explain what happened.

A Garda source is quoted this morning as saying that there must be people who can throw light on the event. It may well be that today or this week we will find out more.

And yet a description of the events that lead up to a murder-suicide does not necessarily constitute a satisfactory explanation for it.

Studies of murder-suicides by researchers suggest, unsurprisingly, that stressful life events are often involved. These can include financial losses and marital discord.

But a great many people suffer financial losses and marital discord without killing themselves or anyone else - and we don't know whether such factors were present in the Flood family.

Depression is also a frequently found factor in murder-suicide, especially where a person kills his or her own children as well. There have been tragedies over the years in which a parent a depressed parent has taken this course of action.

But depression is one of the most common emotional problems and is something which almost all of us have experienced or will experience to an extent at least. Again, it rarely leads to tragedies of this kind.

Something additional is needed and it is thought that psychosis is often the ingredient that can turn a 'normal' depression into a murder-suicide.

Psychosis is a state of mind in which a person loses touch with reality. A person may hallucinate or hear voices telling them to act in a certain way.

Research suggests that more people hear imaginary voices than we think but that they know the voices have no independent reality and ignore them.

In psychosis, however, the person may believe the voices to be real and may obey whatever it is that they are telling him or her to do.

Paranoia, or an extreme and unrealistic level of jealousy, can also be behind murder-suicides insofar as experts have been able to deduce their causes.

Were any of these factors present in the Flood family? We may or may not find out.

Because of the devastation caused by these tragedies and because of their horrific nature, it is important that an attempt is made to establish causes.

This can best be done by a psychological post-mortem as it is called. A psychological post-mortem is carried out by interviewing everybody who might have information about the state of mind of the perpetrator in the period leading up to the event. It is quite separate to a Garda investigation or a physical post-mortem.

It is also of the greatest importance that people touched by this tragedy get psychological help, if they need it, in the future.

The death of the Flood family has left friends and relatives in shock. But when the shock wears off there will be people among them who will never be the same again.

These people need emotional support and may need it for years to come.

That is what is important now.

That's Men - printed and ready to roll

2008-04-30T13:50:00.004+01:00

The best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times

Veritas has just published That's Men, a collection of my Irish Times columns. In picking the columns to go into the book I threw away the ones which had a lot of preaching in them. To me, preaching is the besetting sin of writing on well-being and I'm as guilty on that score as anyone else but I believe that what ended up in the book is informative, entertaining and occasionally annoying - and that's not a bad mix. Readers of this blog will, I think, enjoy the book. A few of the columns that are in the book are also on this blog under the That's Men or That's Men for You (the old name of the column) labels. The launch is on 15th May so here's hoping for a successful run.

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School retreats, 1960s Jesuit-style

2008-04-28T23:23:00.003+01:00

Days of silence at Manresa House

The Tubridy Show this morning featured school retreats which seem to be very pleasant affairs involving boosting pupils' self-esteem and all that sort of thing. Ryan Tubridy even mentioned allegations about a retreat which resulted in several pregnancies - and frankly I think someone was pulling the wool over his eyes on that one.

I went on a school retreat in the late 1960s when the Christian Brothers in Naas took us up to Manresa House, a Jesuit-run retreat centre in Clontarf.

All I remember is that:

(a) We were not allowed to talk for three days.

(b) Each morning at breakfast we listened to someone reading the lives of the saints on tape.

(c) Every night a gaunt man in a soutane burst into our rooms trying to catch us using transistor radios.

(d) One classmate had a crisis of some sort and was sent home. This was never explained.

(e) A priest who came in to give us a talk declared when we stood up on his arrival that "When I enter the room, boys, you don't stand, you kneel." He then went on to roar and shout about a girl in a miniskirt whom he had seen on the bus. Something to do with her tempting boys to "destroy a temple of the Holy Ghost." She being the temple, of course.

That's it. God bless you all.

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Sex with minors: the mess we've made of the law

2008-04-27T15:27:00.004+01:00

What a mess we've made of the issue of sex between adults and underage children. A 15-year-old boy is charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. A 27-year-old man who makes a 15-year-old babysitter pregnant gets away with two years in jail. We need to get this confused nonsense sorted out. At least the 15-year-old boy, now 17 years of age, is challenging the constitutionality of the law which allows him to be charged while giving immunity to the girl - all part of Michael McDowell's legacy to us as Minister for Justice in 2006.

And while we're getting that sorted out, let's remember we have been promised a constitutional referendum on the rights of children in general. It would suit politicians down to the ground to confine this to the issue of under-age sex and to ignore the myriad of other ways in which the system lets down kids. Campaigners on children's rights need to keep a close eye on that one.

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From lesbian mums to multiple dads - the concept of fatherhood gets more complicated by the week

2008-04-26T14:18:00.003+01:00

With traditional families in decline, can fathers meet the new challenges of the role?

This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 22nd April, 2008. "That's Men - The best of the 'That's Men' column from The IrishTimes" is published by Veritas.

The concept of fatherhood grows more complex by the week.

The case of the lesbian couple who were successful in the High Court in fighting off a bid for guardianship and access rights by the child’s biological father provides one example – though not a common one – of this growing complexity.

Recent stories from Britain which featured single mothers with children by several fathers provide another.

In Ireland, the significant number of births outside marriage means that, in many cases, the men the mothers in question eventually marry will not be the biological fathers of at least some of the children in the family.

Divorce, too, means that the role of father becomes blurred when new families form.

Once upon a time, it was all so much simpler. A father was a man who was married to a woman who gave birth to their children and stayed home and minded them while the father supported the family.

When people stepped outside of that basic concept by getting pregnant outside marriage, matters were put to rights either by a hurried wedding or by shipping the mother off to a mother and baby home and the baby to an adoptive family. In this case, the father remained invisible and – to outward appearances at any rate – untouched by the whole thing.

Well, that has all changed and about time too. But are fathers up to the demands of these new roles (I will get back to the issue of same sex couples later)? I haven’t had to do it but it strikes me as a tough job to take on where a man marries, or lives with, a woman who has children from a previous marriage.

Well, that has all changed and about time too. But are fathers up to the demands of these new roles (I will get back to the issue of same sex couples later)? I haven’t had to do it but it strikes me as a tough job to take on where a man marries, or lives with, a woman who has children from a previous marriage.

On the one hand, the man is not the children’s father. On the other hand, he will inevitably find himself taking on some of the “care and control” aspects of a fathering role. If a young teenager who was meant to be home at nine o’clock doesn’t turn up until one in the morning, it would be a poor show indeed if he shrugged his shoulders and declared it was nothing to do with him. Similarly, if a child from the previous marriage was being bullied at school, it would be despicable of the mother’s new partner to wash his hands of the whole thing.

Suppose we are not talking about children from a previous marriage or from one previous relationship. Suppose, as in those British cases that have been in the news, there are several children with several fathers. Is any subsequent partner up to fathering all of these children? I know there are other fathers in the vicinity, so to speak, but the partner is “on site” and the one who faces the most immediate challenges. Frankly, I don’t think any partner is up to facing those challenges in this situation unless he is an extraordinary human being. Most of us are not extraordinary human beings. Most of us would fall down on that particular job.

In same-sex couples with a child born either through sperm donation or through surrogacy (in the case of men) the situation is either more or less difficult, depending on how you look at it. In the UK, as I understand it, if the child was conceived from sperm donated through a licensed clinic, then the biological parent has neither rights nor obligations. If the child was conceived through a private arrangement, the biological parent may have rights and responsibilities – a man could be forced to pay maintenance for the upkeep of the child, for instance.

In the same-sex couple, will one partner take on the role of father in an emotional and psychological sense? I expect that is how it will work out. I hope so – if I was a bold child I wouldn’t want to have two mothers angry with me at the same time (sorry, girls). Oh alright, for the sake of balance, two fathers either.

So, fathering has become as complicated as it could get and we have a lot of work to do to figure out how to handle it. A little courage on the part of policy makers would help. And so would a determination to deal with the world as it is and not as we think if ought to be.

Oddments No. 6

2008-04-22T09:22:00.000+01:00

Weekly bric a brac from Padraig O'Morain

Photo property of Ellen Kent Productions

The opera: a celebration of frailty?
Two trips to the opera this weekend left me wondering if part of the appeal of the opera is its celebration of human frailty?

The operas, in National Concert Hall in Dublin were the Ukrainian National Opera of Odessa's presentation of Madama Butterfly and La Traviata in an Ellen Kent touring production.

In both operas there is a wealth of human frailty on display: lust, gullibility, prejudice, general foolishness, greed and so on. Frailty of one kind or another is displayed by most of the main characters and the consequences are catastrophic. In the end, characters redeem themselves through remorse - not something we often see happening in modern dramas.

But there is something healing, I think, about this display of frailty: it normalises what is, yes, normal human experience but which we often fail to acknowledge as such. It also undermines the notion of perfectionism which causes more trouble than it is worth.

Opera does all this sumptuously and beautifully - and these lovely productions from the Odessa opera company were no exception.

Indian texters hiding behind the burka
Young Indian guys and gals are using texting to get around strict social conventions on dating, says this fascinating story by Anand Giridharadas in the New York Times. "Young Indians, girls especially, are taught not to show any interest in the opposite sex," says the story. "The prohibition extends to such behaviors as giggling at a man’s jokes....Most young, middle-class Indians live with their parents, leaving few opportunities for trips back to 'my place.' They often share rooms with siblings into their late 20s, making it hard even to speak privately by telephone. And should they canoodle in public, they risk being found out by ubiquitous uncles and aunts and family friends, who are likely to snitch on them."

Texting helps the young to communicate without being scrutinised by family. For this reason, it has caught on, big time. In Jamshedpur, a steel company town, "the desire to text became so fervent at one all-women’s college that students began renting burqas from Muslim shopkeepers, according to a local news report," the story says. "From under the folds, the women typed amorously to boyfriends and arranged secret trysts off campus."

Imagine that - the burqa as a facilitator of illicit meetings!

False teeth - a memory from the 1960s
The messenger boy got new false teeth, too big, too white, big gawky gob on him, always hanging around, grinning to make sure everybody saw the new teeth. Then one of the guys said, "Hey, those teeth, yah know?" The messenger boy grinned a big, toothy grin. "They make yah look like shite, yah know?"

That wiped the grin off his face alright. That's all I remember.

Quote
It's my world, really, and you're all just living in it. Patton Dodd's description of an attitude of mind in Shambala Sun, January 2008.

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Kissed - thanks to Ireland's smoking ban

2008-04-19T14:31:00.003+01:00

Two women "starting again" deliver kisses in the garden

Photo by Lady_AnnDerground (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 15th April, 2008. A collection of That's Men columns will be published by Veritas this summer:

It's not every day you get kissed by two women while you're minding your own business but, thanks to the smoking ban, it happened to me last week.

I was having a pint in the conservatory bar of a public house when the heat from the sun sent me out to the pub garden. Sitting in such a place is like watching a series of one-act plays as customers – ranging from the young and beautiful to those with one foot in the grave – come out for their smoke.

Among them were two well-oiled, as they say, women, one in high spirits, the other subdued. The one in high spirits was advising the other on the question of chatting up men. The subdued one did not know how to chat up men, could think of nothing to say to them and didn't know what to do about it. Her companion urged her to have a go - "All you have to do is say Hello Gorgeous" - and see what happened. Her own philosophy, she explained, was that when she was in the nursing home in her old age – “They’ll send me there to get their hands on the house,” she said of her loving family – she wanted to be thinking about the fun she had and not be marooned on a chair watching Bosco on the television. I certainly identified with her on that one: such indignities as might be inflicted by incapacity must be endured but being forced to watch Bosco counts as an act of inhumanity.

This did not reasurre the subdued one who objected that the men you meet in nightclubs only want the one thing. "Well don't give it to them," her companion advised. “That’s what I do, well, most of the time,” she laughed.

At their age - fortyish - most of the good catches were married or gay so it wasn't all that easy to get a man worth having, she added. That's why you had to get out there where you could be seen.

"Amn't I right?" she asked me, well aware that I had been listening to everything they said despite my pretence that I was absorbed in my Irish Times and my packet of peanuts. I agreed, of course – there was no future in disagreeing.

Having established that I was on the right side, she returned to the demanding task of educating her doubtful companion on how to become a woman of the world. Then the cigarettes were finished and it was time to go back.

"But I'm kissing him first," she said and bounced over to me, threw her arms around me and administered a good, solid kiss on the cheek, almost smothering me in her ample bosoms.

But it seems that her efforts at persuasion had not been entirely lost on her companion.

"I'm going to kiss him as well, so," said the subdued one when her mentor had withdrawn. She then gave me an appropriately subdued kiss on the cheek and off they both went, leaving me alone with my peanuts.

That ended my adventure but I have to say that my sympathies were entirely with the subdued lady. I gathered from their talk that they were both “starting out again” on the search for an enduring relationship.

The ebullient one may have seen it all as great fun but I suspect the subdued one has many more sympathisers among those who are separated, or dumped, or still single after all those years.

For many such people the thoughts of having to go anywhere near a nightclub is off-putting to such a degree that they just can’t face it. The same applies to chatting people up in bars. Their motto is, Never again!

I suppose they could try internet dating like the service run by ireland.com and I’ve met a couple of people who were happy they took the internet route. They hadn’t yet found their soul companion but they had found people they liked.

But if you don’t want to do that, or to suffer in nightclubs or embarrass yourself in bars, you could just hang around the smoking areas of pubs minding your own business and see what happens.

I’ll be the one with the Irish Times, the pint and the packet of peanuts.

Lesbian couple with child a family, Irish High Court rules

2008-04-17T07:25:00.003+01:00

Ireland's High Court has ruled that a lesbian couple living together in a long-term committed relationship with a child can be regarded as a de facto family enjoying rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, says this report in The Irish Times.

The ruling, I suspect, will have wider implications than are inherent in the case itself. For instance, how will it affect the position of same-sex couples, whether gay or lesbian, who have children, in relation to tax, social welfare and employment benefits? I expect this will be working its way through the system for the next few years

The court denied guardianship and access rights to the child's biological father who had donated sperm to the mother, says the Irish Times report.

Mr Justice Hedigan said there was nothing in Irish law to suggest that a family of two women and a child "has any lesser right to be recognised as a de facto family than a family composed of a man and a woman unmarried to each other".

He said the rights of a man who acted as a sperm donor were at least no greater than those of an unmarried father. In considering his application for guardianship the child's welfare was the paramount consideration, the Irish Times report says.

He believed there existed such personal ties between the couple and the child as to give rise to family rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which do not conflict with Irish law.

For more details, see this report in The Irish Independent.

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Nuala O'Faolain opens the way for other terminally ill people to say how they feel

2008-04-15T19:04:00.005+01:00

This is the text of my article which appeared in The Evening Herald on Monday, 15th April 2008. Please note that many listeners found listening to the interview distressing. A transcript is here on the Irish Independent website. O'Faolain is author of Are you somebody, Almost there, My dream of you and The story of Chicago May.

[Note: Nuala O'Faolain died on 9th May 2008]Many people have wondered if Nuala O’Faolain’s interview with Marian Finucane on RTÉ Radio One on Saturday was distressing to persons with terminal illness. I would suggest that the interview was distressing to all of us but potentially comforting as well, two reasons.

The first is that we all have a terminal illness because, like her, we will all suffer death though not all of us will know about it at the time. The second is that people with terminal illnesses are expected by society to face the end in a particular way, namely with serenity, yet for many this is not the way they want to do it.

The bleakness and despair in her interview struck home particularly, I think, because it echoed that awful bleakness that a person can feel when they are awake alone in the middle of the night and the gloomiest of thoughts come to haunt them.

Nuala brought that bleakness into the light of a Saturday morning when most of us do not want to be reminded of it.

Psychologists say that one of the great crises we face in our lives is the realisation that we are going to die. We all know intellectually that one day we will die but it can take decades for us to feel the full force of that realisation. It can be triggered by the death of another person, even somebody we do not know very well.

When the realisation happens, we must come to terms with a reality that shakes us to foundations. Some people respond to the reality by denying it. They aim for eternal life on earth and take any treatment that promises to prevent the inevitable. Others become depressed or anxious or turn to drink or drugs. Most of us, I think, take the realisation of the inevitability of death as a wake-up call suggesting that we had better get on with doing the things we wanted to do in life.

In her interview, Nuala sound like somebody whom that realisation only hit six weeks ago when she got her diagnosis of terminal cancer. She is trying to cope with the realisation and the reality at the same time, an enormous demand on any human being. In saying that, I realise that I am presuming a great deal and that I may be entirely wrong.

One of the ways we deny the reality of death is to expect other people to die with a smile on their lips. Nearly twenty years ago, Therese Brady, who was then director of post-graduate training in clinical psychology at University College Dublin, complained about the expectation that people should face the death in ways that everybody else approved of. She developed the bereavement counselling service for the Irish Hospice Foundation. People who were dying were expected to do so in line with the expectations of a society which had, she said, “outlawed distress.”

It seems to me that by outlawing distress we have denied dying people the right to talk about this most significant of events. How often is the person who is dying told, when they want to express their feelings about it, “Don’t be talking like that, shure you’ll outlive us all”? What does it feel like, I wonder, to have to put up with that sort of nonsense when you are trying to make sense of your own death?

We will all face death in our own different ways. What Nuala’s interview has done, I hope, is to give permission to those who wish, in the words of Dylan Thomas, to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” to go right ahead and do so regardless of how the rest of us feel about it.

I wish Nuala some comfort in her journey.

Oddments No. 5

2008-04-15T06:31:00.001+01:00

Weekly bric a brac from Padraig O'Morain.

Au Clair de la Lune – not Mary had a little lamb – the world’s first recording?
From the New York Times, 27th March 2008, via Cronaca: For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, (above), a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.

Full story here.

Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, on the bus
In his recent autobiography Good Times and Bad, veteran foreign correspondent Seamus Martin has this childhood anecdote about his brother, Diarmuid Martin, now Archbishop of Dublin: "My brother had no interest in football and in any case this playmates were from a diffferent age cohort, so we didn't see much of each other out on the streets. At home, however, there were elaborate motor races in which mother's clothes pegs were used as cards, and in the backyard Diarmuid's fascination with the bus routes of Dublin was indulged. He knew the number and destinations of all the buses in Dublin and drove them around the yard in his imagination and much to the fascination of his elders. One neighbour, Paddy Keller, made quite realistic-looking bus stops that were planted in the ground at suitable intevals to allow him to stop and take on imaginary passengers."

No such thing as a free lunch? Try New Orleans about two centuries ago
The free lunch is said to have been invented in New Orleans when 19th century midday drinkers were given snacks on the side. As snacks go, the free lunch was substantial by today's standards: soup, ham or beef, a potato, meat pie and oyster patties, according to Omni Hotels which claims its invention for the St Louis Exchange Hotel, destroyed by fire in 1841, resurrected and now trading as the Omni Royal Orleans.

Sleeping commuter - sign of the times?
Seen on the Luas (tram) from Dublin to Tallaght: A woman asleep, holding in her right hand her mobile phone, open and with her fingers in mid-text; in her left hand, a cup of coffee. All perfectly co-ordinated.

Waiting to cut the hay
Like me, Erica Funkhauser grew up on a farm. I, too, remember the old tractors with the metal - perhaps cast iron?- heart shaped seats. In Waiting to cut the hay here's how she writes about the tractor:

In the toolshed the best thing
is the heart-shaped seat of the tractor.
You don't have to know anything to sit in it.
You don't have to squeeze out the choke
and pump the gas pedal before you can go anywhere.
You don't have to steer the front wheel around
like the neck of a stubborn horse
in order to get out to the fields.

Read the rest here, on Poetry Daily.

Got an opinion? Comment here.

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And here is the rest of it.

From sex to hot coffee - how the unconscious shapes our choices every day

2008-04-13T11:05:00.006+01:00

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 8th April, 2008. A collection of That's Men columns will be published by Veritas this summer.

Oh dear, can it really be true that those sexy images in the ads influence the behaviour of men?

I am afraid it is. But the women need not snigger. They too are prone to being influenced by attractive men in ways they might not expect.

Researchers at Stanford University showed men a series of erotic images and then invited them to gamble some money. The gambling exercise had no overt relationship to what went before. And yet the men who had viewed erotic images took greater risks in gambling than did men who had not seen these images.

But women interviewing men for jobs can find in their decisions influenced, unconsciously, by the attractiveness of the chap in the seat opposite.

Women in a mock job interview situation who were shown photographs of applicants tended to pick the more attractive looking men for the more high status jobs. They were also more generous to attractive men than to attractive women applicants.

Men in this experiment did not seem to discriminate between more and less attractive females. That surprises me given the number of guys in high status jobs who just happen to choose very pretty secretaries.

So I am not saying that these pieces of research are the last word on the influence of sex on men and women. And yet the influence of the unconscious on our everyday behaviour – sometimes in remarkable ways – is well established.

Consider this piece of research reported by Dr Christian Jarrett in the latest Psychologist (access restricted). A number of university students was asked questions, individually, by a researcher. While the questioning were going on, there were asked to hold the researcher’s drink. In some cases this was a hot coffee and in others it was an iced coffee. Later, another researcher came along and had a little chat with each of them.

The students were then asked whether they would recommend the second researcher for a job. The ones who had held the hot coffee cup said they would. The ones who held the cold cup said they wouldn’t.

So if you want someone to give you a job, buying them a hot coffee might work. This is especially so since people who drink coffee are more open to persuasion. For instance, in an Australian study, participants given a drink laced with caffeine were more likely to change their views on controversial topics such as euthanasia than those who were not.

Which goes to show that fellows who ask a girl in for a “coffee” at two o’clock in the morning are being a lot more clever than you might think.

Now, suppose you got a job from the manager who had a coffee in his hand at the time and suppose he sends you into a negotiation which you really need to win.

You take the bright new shiny briefcase your mother bought for you and you plonk it on the table, just to show you mean business, right? Wrong. If you ask two people to play cards and you place a briefcase in view, they will play more competitively than otherwise. So no briefcase, please.

Needless to say, you will offer your competitor a nice cup of coffee, though, won’t you? And if you want to be really sneaky, you yourself will just have a glass of cold water, thanks very much.

Here’s another one you can use. Getting people into a state of disgust or sadness will strongly influence their subsequent buying behaviour. In one experiment, students shown a film calculated to make them feel sad (The Champ) were later prepared to pay more for a bottle of water than people shown a film which made them feel disgusted (Trainspotting). So don’t make ’em laugh, make ’em cry and you’re on the road to riches.

And if you can’t make ’em cry, at least you can imitate them. Studies show that if you mimic the body language and mannerisms of a person with whom you are negotiating, you will end up with a better deal than if you do not. And, by the way, persons whose behaviour is mimicked are subsequently more benevolent towards others, a Dutch study shows.

The lesson? Don’t beat yourself up too much over your sillier decisions. It’s nothing to do with you, really.

Now, coffee anyone?

Got an opinion? Comment here.

Surely not another complaint about Quesia.Com's billing methods - where is Ken Lay when we need him?

2008-04-12T09:23:00.003+01:00

Questia.com provides access to thousands of academic texts and newspaper and magazine articles - but you need to beware of its trigger-happy billing system which can mean that using Questia.com could very easily cost more than you think.

I'll come to my gripe (and explain the Ken Lay reference) in a minute, but first some other gripes from the Net:

Sara, on ripoffreport.com complained of difficulties in cancelling a three month subscription with Questia which renewed the subscription without reference to her. Kerim, on the anthropology blog, Savage Minds, complains also about the ease with which Questia.com turned a trial subscription into a recurring subscription. Here's one on complaints.com about Questia.com's habit of renewing people's subscriptions without telling them.

And I notice that Lansbridge University, which uses Questia.com, warns students of "Questia's policy on automatically renewing subscriptions. If you decide not to keep your Questia account before your trial period is up, be sure to contact Questia to have it deactivated. Otherwise, it will automatically be switched over to a monthly billing and you will be charged accordingly."

In my own experience, I signed up for a package which they renewed at a higher price than agreed. We sorted that out a year ago, or so I thought. This March they helped themselves to $8.62 from my credit card (which, incidentally, had expired six months earlier, thanks a lot, NIB Visa) with no explanation when my subscription, which I had no intention of renewing, still had a month to run. A small amount? Yes, but I don't exist for the purpose of giving Questa.com money for nothing. I could not get an explanation from them as to why they took my money - their emails when I complained largely side-stepped that issue - and, of course, I didn't get my money back.

I wouldn't deny for a minute that this company has thousands of satisfied customers but I wonder how much Questia.com's renewal policy makes for them every year? I don't know but if you don't want to be a contributor to their coffers, be very careful about doing business with these guys.

And Ken Lay?

This item from a report on Questia.com on Wired.com in 2002 said that "In three previous rounds of financing, over $165 million dollars had been raised, including an investment from former Enron CEO Ken Lay. Lay is also on the company's board of directors." Publisher's Lunch reports that Lay will stay on the board at least for the time being and quotes Questia's Helen Wilson as saying it would be 'premature' to speculate about his future."

Well, she was right about that alright.

Got an opinion? Comment here.

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Annoying? Yes, but I don't mean to be so don't be mean to me

2008-04-11T07:53:00.006+01:00

Photo by slushpup (Flickr)

The photocopier is out of toner.

Typical.

You wait until all the bosses leave so you can make a hundred copies of your CV and the photocopier is out of toner.

What do you do? Some people will just shrug their shoulders and walk away. Some will swear, under their breath or out loud. Some will kick the photocopier.

What makes the difference? Everybody is annoyed that the darn thing is out of toner but only some get really angry.

In all likelihood, the ones who get really angry are the ones who believe, at some level of their minds, that the photocopier ran out of toner for the express purpose of annoying them. Or maybe it's not the photocopier. Maybe it's the gods. Maybe they're sitting up there on Mount Olympus figuring out ways to annoy people. Or it's the company. The company, which doesn't even know how badly its employees need to photocopy their CVs, has let the photocopier run out of toner so that the people who work there will be annoyed.

The essential point is that people get madder than usual if they think something that annoys them was done in order to annoy them. I believe we all think in this way far more often than we realise. The belief that people do things to annoy us is running along there at the back of our minds along with all those other beliefs to which we don't pay much attention.

It's annoying enough if the secretary doesn't type a letter on time, a delivery arrives late or the boss or waits until Friday evening to ask you to stay back on Friday evening. That, however, does not mean these people do things things for the purpose of annoying us. Similarly your teenage daughter did not paint the walls of her room black just in order to torment you. It's enough to be annoyed over the black walls without also assuming she actually set out to bug you (hang in there, by the time she's 30 she'll be a regular Martha Stewart, hopefully without the criminal record).

In the self-help movement Recovery Incorporated, they like to say that disappointments, accidents and annoyances come along about every five minutes so don't make it worse by assuming that these things are being done intentionally to get at you.

Every five minutes? Well, I've had days like that.

But how do you know that things are not being done deliberately to annoy you? Sometimes it's obvious, of course. The rain doesn't really wait for you to leave the office before it comes pouring down. You know that, however much you might grumble that it does. And it's very doubtful indeed if any supplier in his or her right mind is going to delay a delivery just to make you mad at them. In other cases you don't actually know what the motivation of the other person is. That's ok. You can just stay in that "don't know" zone instead of assuming the worst.

If you insist on assuming the worst, you're going to give yourself a much harder life than is necessary and you won't exactly be a bundle of joy for other people to be around either.

We live in a world which, almost of necessity, is largely indifferent to us. It cannot revolve around any one of us because you cannot organise a world that way. Therefore the world is full of events which don't suit any one of us. In fact it is an absolute dead certainty that our lives will be peppered with inconveniences. Some of these inconveniences we can change but most have to be accepted with grace. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming, in the oft-quoted words of George Bernard Shaw, "a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy".

Let me admit at once that I have been that clod and will probably be that clod again from time to time. But I hope to avoid cloddism as much as I can. And I think my best chance of avoiding that fate lies in repeating to myself, as often as is called for, a favourite phrase of members of Recovery Inc:

People do things that annoy me, not to annoy me.

(This article first appeared in my series The Other Side in Business & Finance magazine in September 2004).

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Oddments No. 4

2008-04-08T07:36:00.002+01:00

Weekly bric a brac from Padraig O'Morain

In remembrance of things to come

I read in Rory Sutherland's Wiki Man column in The Spectator that in 1911 Marcel Proust (above) "found another excuse not to get out of bed by subscribing to Paris’s Théâtrophone service. This allowed him to enjoy live Paris plays, concerts and news broadcasts via headphones in the comfort of his own cork-lined home." Sutherland was writing in the context of developments in the US and UK which allow cinemas to broadcast simultaneous "livecasts" of concerts and sporting events. ".....chains in Tennessee and New Jersey now sell $25 tickets to La Scala operas, while there are cinema simulcasts not only of the New York Mets but of the Met: live cinema audiences for the Metropolitan Opera reached 300,000 in the first year, and should reach a million in 2008."

Christmas in New York
"I'm never asking them to mind the children again," a Dublin woman at a table in the dining room of a fancy hotel in Manhattan on Christmas Day says to another woman. "They" are husbands who had left the table for the bar and who, she says, had declared that "We didn't come to New York to mind effing children."

"I was stuck with them yesterday and the day before," the woman, who had a washed-out face and dabbed at her eyes with a table napkin, complains. I had noticed that the two guys had looked tense throughout the meal. A third woman, who had left for the bar with the men, had looked ready to explode.

The second woman says something I can't catch about "not doing it again." "Me too," the first woman says, "You can bet on that."

Then they get up and follow the others to the bar. What are they not doing again?

Poetry too as You've been great wins a Poetry Business Award

My first collection, You've been great, will be published this May by Smith/Doorstop which publishes the poetry magazine The North as well as books and pamphlets. The collection of 20 poems was one of four winners of the 2007 competition run by The Poetry Business which is associated with Smith/Doorstop. Also winning and having their collections published are Julia Deakin, Yvonne Green and Ann Pilling.

Anyway, here's the title poem from the collection:

A bronzed man pirouettes
on the TV in the corner
for his afternoon audience
in the nation's dayrooms.
They ignore his antics,
they are viewing re-runs
of home movies in their heads.
He spins faster and faster,
still no-one one takes an interest.
He cracks a joke, he titters,
he says you've been great and winks
to what he thinks is his audience
of frustrated housewives.
Someone says see you soon.
A medicine trolley rattles.

More poems here.

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Still driving the cattle - men as stubborn as mules in the face of illness

2008-04-04T22:14:00.004+01:00

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 1st April, 2008. A collection of That's Men columns will be published by Veritas this summer.

I have a childhood memory of my father insisting on driving cattle along the road to a mart in Kilcullen even though it was raining and even though he had been diagnosed with pleurisy.

By “driving” cattle I mean walking after them with a stick and a dog while they headed up every side-road they encountered.

I don’t know what the treatment for pleurisy is but I’m pretty sure that walking after cattle in the rain is, as they say, “contra-indicated.”

But my father got into that stubborn state that men get into about these things and was quite determined that pleurisy was not going to deter him from selling cattle regardless of the consequences.

As it happened, there were no consequences. He survived both experiences.

Nevertheless this type of behaviour in the face of illness is, I think, a particularly male thing and I was reminded of my father’s stubbornness on reading of new research from Holland and the US on how couples react to a diagnosis of cancer.

The researchers found that if one member of a couple is diagnosed with cancer, the woman suffers more distress than the man. Even if it was the man who had the cancer, it was the woman who was the more distressed, according to a report on the research in the Psychological Bulletin.

"In practical terms, breast cancer patients are going to be, on average, more distressed than their husbands; but the wives of prostate cancer patients are going to be, on average, more distressed than their husbands," according to the study’s lead author, Professor Mariët Hagedoorn.
In coming to their conclusions, the researchers analysed 43 studies from around the world on distress in couples with a cancer diagnosis.

I wonder if this has something to do with men’s resistance to “giving in” to illness? I have very often heard women shaking their heads at their husbands’ reluctance to go along freely with the treatment laid down by the doctors.

In many cases, though of course not all, it is left to the wife to oversee the medication regime, especially if it’s complicated. If the doctor needs to be spoken to, that is left to the wife as well.

Some of what is going on here is a power struggle, I suspect. By accepting that you have an illness – cancer, pleurisy or anything else – you are putting yourself in a weak position in the sense that you are not the big, strong man you are expected to be.

Now along comes your wife with concern, advice, medication and an eagle eye – a caring eagle eye certainly, but an eagle eye nevertheless. This must be resisted in the same way that Superman must resist anyone who might suggest that he expose himself to green kryptonite.

But how do you resist? Why, by only grudgingly agreeing to take your medication, by forgetting out-patient appointments and by insisting on driving cattle along the road in the rain.

This behaviour is also linked, I think, to the “it’s only a flesh wound” scenario in the movies. A bad guy fires a bullet through the hero’s shoulder, an experience which would knock most of us into the day after tomorrow. Not our (always male) hero. “It’s only a flesh wound,” he declares and carries right on, fighting the good fight, perhaps with a fainted female slung over the good shoulder. When it’s all over there’s not a bother on him, except for the bullet holes in his shirt – and with luck that fainted female remembered to bring her sewing kit along.

By the way, that study also found, perhaps surprisingly, that cancer patients in general suffer only moderate levels of distress when compared with the general population.

"Only a minority of cancer patients suffer clinically significant distress," according to Professor Hagedoorn. "The myth that all cancer patients are distressed gets in the way of getting the proper attention to those patients who do become significantly distressed and who could benefit from a clinical intervention."

But that’s another story. Meanwhile, what about all those stubborn men? We are, of course, in the 21st century, the era of the New Man so all that stuff really belongs to another age. We new men would never behave in such a silly way.

Would we?

Got an opinion? Comment here.

Oddments No. 3

2008-04-01T07:16:00.001+01:00

Weekly bric a brac from Padraig O'Morain

Photo by Ijcybergal (Flickr)

Coffee beats beer?
Strolling in Nice on a Sunday morning I pass a café where men sit outside drinking small cups of coffee. Given the absence of booze, I assume they're Muslims. On another street I pass a bar where two Aryan types are drinking beer. I realise afterwards that the men drinking coffee looked happier than the men drinking beer.
So, am I ready to abandon the beer for the coffee? Sure. But only on Sunday mornings.

L'Oréal pour les hommes - c'est pour vous ?
I am one of those guys who won't be seen wearing makeup this side of the funeral parlour. I think I'm still a member of the majority in this, though it's changing it's changing slowly.

My eye was caught recently by a blog by journalist Natasha Hughes in the Sydney Morning Herald in which she expressed amazement at seeing the groom at a wedding wearing what she called "slap-full coverage foundation."

Now, I don't know what "slap-full coverage foundation" is but her amazement reminded me of my own surprise at one manifestation of the interest in men and makeup. Last year on my blog I wrote a single paragraph piece under the heading Men, eyeliner and sex appeal in reference to something I had read somewhere else. Since then, this headline has been consistently in the top three drawing readers to the blog.

Why? You don't see that many guys going around wearing eyeliner unless they're Goths and I don't think the Goths are big readers of mine.

Do some of us have a secret habit? Are there lots of guys standing in front of the bathroom mirror wielding the eyeliner and slapping on the "full coverage foundation" and then removing it before the wife comes home?

Well, I'm sure there are some, but that many?

Actually there is one possible use of male make-up which I hadn't come across before. One guy responding to Natasha Hughes' article revealed that he finds "a little concealer" is always useful "to hide those bags under the eyes after a big night."

So there you are, chaps. If a night on the tiles has left you unable to face your usual jumbo breakfast roll, just pop into the pharmacy and ask for a little concealer.

So, how would you like to die?
Here are three questions that brought me up short. They're from an article by Joan Halifax in the Buddhist magazine Tricyle. The article, about the care of dying people, invites readers to ask themselves these three questions and to reflect on them:

What is your worst-case scenario of how you will die?

How do you really want to die?

What are you willing to do to die the way you want to die?

As the article says, "Practicing dying is also practicing living."

Or is it? Over to you.

Got an opinion? Comment here.

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Caring not only a female role - four out of every ten carers is a man

2008-03-29T10:29:00.013Z

Photo by Sea Frost (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men column which appeared in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 25th March 2008. A collection of That's Men columns will be published by Veritas this summer.

What’s your image of a typical carer? It’s probably of a woman looking after a family member and in most cases you would be right.

But census figures show that about almost 40 per cent of carers are men. For these, as for their female counterparts, caring has certain negative consequences but some of these consequences may be different for men.

For instance, research in Northern Ireland has shown that 24 per cent of men looking after a dependant at home suffer “a severe lack of support” (the quote is from a booklet published by Derry City Council) compared to 15 per cent of women.

This suggest to me that women are more likely than men to keep in touch with a friend who has had to get heavily involved in caring. Perhaps it also means that men’s friendships are more likely than women’s to be linked to the workplace – if so, then a man who has to give up work to care for, say, his wife or a parent loses not only his income but also his social network.

Maybe we men need to follow the example of women and do more to stay in touch with friends who disappear into the world of caring.

The research from Northern Ireland shows that both male and female carers experience “a great deal of stress” to a greater extent than those who are not involved in caring – 17 per cent as against 9 per cent. Note that we’re not just talking about stress here, but “a great deal of stress” and we could expect general stress levels among carers to be higher than 17 per cent.

In Northern Ireland, 49 per cent of those caring for someone at home have a long-standing illness themselves, possibly an indication that these carers tend to be older.

Illness contributes to stress, of course, but I suspect there are many other sources of stress for carers, male and female. For instance, family members have a tendency to leave the carer to get on with it – it’s so much more convenient to say “Sure isn’t he great?” and to maintain a safe distance than to help out. The carer notices this and resents it but often lacks the assertiveness to insist that other family members play their part.

Then there are the endless battles with authority to get social services – a nursing or home help service, for instance. And there are the long hours in A&E waiting to be seen, waiting for an X-ray, waiting for a bed.

And the person being cared for may not help. If you were a contrary, awkward, impossible so-and-so all your life you’re probably not going to change when you need long term care. And some previously reasonable people can actually get contrary and demanding when confined to bed. Pity the poor carer who bears the brunt of it. (Memo to my kids: cut out this article and read this paragraph to me if I ever get like that. Better still, go live in Manhattan and keep out of the way).

Because women are seen as more capable and caring than men, I suspect that male carers are in a better position to get help from the social services. I also suspect that men are more reluctant than women to ask for such help, which cancels out the advantage they would otherwise have.

Caring can be based on love, duty or both. I expect that caring based on love can be very fulfilling, though tinged with sadness if the person being cared for is not going to recover. Caring based on duty is, it seems to me, a far more stressful proposition.

Love or duty, men or women, carers get only a fraction of the support and recognition that is owed to them by our society. I wonder if this is because caring is perceived to be something that is done by an army of invisible women who can be ignored?

And I wonder would this change if caring also began to be seen as a men’s issue? Perhaps it would – but whether it would or it wouldn’t, caring is, indeed, a men’s issue too and this will increasingly be the case as our life expectancy goes up.

Got an opinion? Comment here.

Irish rape survey - distinguishing between recklessness and the guilt of the rapist?

2008-03-27T07:48:00.001Z

This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on 26th March 2008:

It is too easy to dismiss as outrageous the views of those who believe that, in some circumstances, women carry part of the responsibility if they are raped and to leave it at that.

But the views expressed in the latest opinion poll are not those of a small, deviant minority. For example, the poll found that 37 per cent of those questioned thought a woman who flirted extensively was complicit to some extent if she was the victim of a sex crime.

Thirty seven per cent is a massive proportion when it comes to opinions in a society, so we need to look at what is going on here and at what these results might mean, unpalatable as they are.

I expect that almost all of those who see women in certain circumstances as having contributed to their situation, would also favour the current life sentence for their rapists.

I think that what people are doing here is drawing a distinction between the responsibility of all of us to ourselves for our own survival and the responsibility carried by criminals for their crimes.

There is also behind these figures, I think, a belief that in a society in which rapists usually get away with it, people need to look to and take responsibility for their own safety. This belief has nothing to do with reducing the degree of guilt belonging to the rapist. It is a question of survival in a dangerous world.

To me the most revealing finding in the Irish Examiner/Red C poll is that 38 per cent of respondents believe that if a woman walks through a deserted area and is raped, she carries some of the blame for what happened.

Does this mean, that 38 per cent of people believe the rapist is somehow “less guilty” in this situation? I don’t, for a second, believe it does.

I think those 38 per cent would regard the rapist in this situation as a predatory thug who carries one hundred per cent responsibility for his actions and who deserves a life sentence.

So what are they saying about the woman? I think what they are saying is that the woman who walks through a deserted area needs to take responsibility, not for the rape but for having comprised her own personal safety in a foolish way.

So there are two separate issues going on here. One is the issue of the rape which is completely the responsibility of the rapist. The second is the issue of responsibility towards one’s own personal safety.

It is a feature of this and all surveys that it’s hard to know just what is in people’s mind when they answer questions. Take the finding that more than 30 per cent of people would say that a woman is responsible in some way for a rape if she has flirted with a man or has failed to say ‘No’ clearly.

It seems to me that there is a major difference between flirting and failing to say ‘No’ clearly. If you are in bed with someone and you fail to say ‘No’ clearly, I am not sure how you would sustain a charge of rape, morally or in the courts.

But flirting? How can 30 per cent see flirting as making a woman somehow complicit in rape? Does it depend on what they mean by flirting? Even extreme flirting, in my view, does not excuse rape but we don’t know what was in the minds of those respondents and I assume – I hope – they do not mean ‘normal’ flirting.

The issues raised in the survey are complicated and emotional. They need to be debated. Let’s not walk away from these findings, uncomfortable as they are. Let’s talk about them.

Got an opinion? Comment here.

Oddments No. 2

2008-03-25T08:39:00.001Z

Weekly bric a brac from Padraig O'Morain

At last - a patron saint for procrastinators
In a church on Rue de France in Nice, a shrine to St Expedit. Never heard of him before but it turns out he is the patron saint of urgent business. In other words he's the guy to turn to if you want to get things "expedited." He's generally depicted holding a cross with the word "hodi" (meaning "today" perhaps from "aujourd'hui"?) and with his foot on a raven bearing the word "cras" (from the Latin, indicates "tomorrow" as in pro-cras-tination). So he's a patron saint for people who need to get things done fast. Since we procrastinators always need to get things done fast, he is the man for us!

Balloon man
Later, on Rue de France, in a café area, there are four sudden bangs. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Then there are more. The noise is made by a balloon seller whose balloons - twisted into novelty shapes but not very well - have failed to sell. So he kills them all - Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! To add to his woes, he's drunk. He shouts his frustration to customers sitting outside the nearest café. They feign interest. Then he turns towards a pharmacy across the road, gives them the finger and fucks them out of it (didn't think the French said fuck but this guy certainly did). Finally he is chased away by the security guard and leaves, calling down curses on all of us. I don't think he is cut out for a career in selling.

A pale lady on the subway
She sits on the subway from Canal Street to Times Square, a pale woman, her skin so white, so bloodless. She could be a figure from a wax museum before it is painted. A green, woollen, peaked cap on her head. A green, soft bag. She is leafing through a large book, what might be called a coffee table book. It is open at the chapter on floral cushions. Her eyes rest on the page with seeming scepticism. She has a sceptical mouth too. Now she's move on to "pretty aprons". Did she buy this for someone? No, it has "Brooklyn" and other words stamped on the edges of the pages. Borrowed from a library. Her eyes light on me for a second. I look away.

Someone
someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass

Click here for the full poem by Dennis O'Driscoll. Sobering stuff about the suddenness of death but a fascinating read.

Quotes
The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are.

.....a word has its own definite meanings. A word is its own little solar system of meanings. Yet we want it to carry some part of our meaning, of the meaning of our experience. Ted Hughes, Winter Pollen.

..... responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet changes nothing. Sydney Morning Herald on Kevin Rudd's apology to Aborigines.

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Saving face - not just for the Japanese

2008-03-23T21:59:00.007Z

Photo by Mike9Alive (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008:

You are at work and you make a mistake. Your boss is a bit of a bully and she berates you in front of your colleagues. Even customers and people from other departments can hear the dressing down you’ve been given.

It’s bad enough to be told off for making a mistake but to have it done in public is many times worse. Why? Because you have lost face in front of colleagues and customers. In the aftermath of such an event, you find it hard to look them in the eye.

We tend to think of ‘saving face’ as a particularly oriental preoccupation. And in our individualistic society we may even regard it as a redundant concept.

I think we’re wrong on two counts. First, saving face is more important to us than we admit. Second, a desire to save face has, in my opinion, a softening effect on an otherwise harsh society.

Each of us has a social face. Your social face is the aspect of yourself that you can show to other people without shame. Sometimes you can’t even look at yourself in the mirror but you still have a social face – behind which a multitude of sins may be concealed – to show the world.

Your social face can be physical. The sudden appearance of a blemish on your face will send you to your doctor faster than any invisible discomfort. I read in a recent New Statesman that many Iranian women see having a small nose as an essential component of an acceptable social face. In Teheran alone, 35,000 women had nose jobs in 2006. Even the Ayatollah Khomeini reckoned nose jobs were okay though I don’t think, on the evidence, that he had one himself.

But there’s more than this to saving face. Countries such as China, Japan and Korea which inherited the Confucian philosophy all have a strong concept of face and of saving face. There, your moral okayness and your abilities all contribute to your social face. If you lose face you feel shame. You can lose face in your own eyes because you know you have not lived up to an acceptable internal standard. You can also lose face because others believe your performance or your behaviour are not good enough.

It is losing face in public that is the most devastating – think of Japanese businessmen committing suicide when they fail spectacularly. Think of your own darkest, deepest secret being revealed and how hard it would be to walk down the street afterwards.

So when the bully mentioned in the first paragraph attacks you in public she is targeting your abilities in a way which hurts at a very deep level. This is why such incidents have a profoundly unsettling effect, especially if repeated.

It’s the same with the person who attacks their partner in public, making no attempt to spare their dignity in front of an audience. The audience, if they are half-decent at all, is embarrassed to witness someone’s social face being spat upon, so to speak in their presence. As an audience, they have been made to collude in what is going on.

Which leads us to the softening aspect of the culture of face-saving: it takes two to do it.

When people are polite with each other, they help each other to save face. If you are in trouble and someone you love treats you kindly, she is helping you to save face. Gardaí who are good at defusing situations are skilled at allowing people to save face while stopping what they are doing. Good negotiators in industrial relations know that enabling the other side to save face while climbing down is essential – otherwise there may be no deal. Doctors, nurses, care attendants, hospital porters and other health workers can be very good at helping patients to save face in otherwise embarrassing situations – and when they’re not the patients feel diminished and hurt.

Sometimes we’re silly about this. The waiter asks you if everything is alright and, though everything is not alright you say it is. I did that myself only the other week. It’s almost as though you are saving face for the waiter. Silly, yes, and very Irish.

That said, though, it seems to me that face-saving, far from being an odd, oriental notion is a core part of what we are. And if we play the face-saving game with compassion we can make life better for ourselves and for all those others who also badly need to present an acceptable “social face” to the world.

Old time management theory - the tense walk

2008-03-21T09:42:00.003Z

Photo by JR Robertson (Flickr)

From the vaults: This article first appeared in my then column, The Other Side, in Business & Finance magazine in February 2004:

Many years ago I came across a colleague furtively reading a large, heavy book with strong, black covers.

I wondered if it was a Bible or a missal and as such a development would constitute a prime piece of gossip in our office I made it my business to take a look at it when she went to lunch.

It was actually a book on management. Specifically it was about how to behave at work so that the company will make you a manager and what to do after you get the big job.

One of the key strategies which the ambitious employee should adopt, it told its unfortunate readers, was to "cultivate the tense walk".

As you walked around the office - yes, once upon a time people used to actually walk from one desk to another instead of sending emails - you should tense up your muscles, especially those of your shoulders, neck and face. You should march instead of walking. Maybe you should tense up your buttocks as well, I don't remember, though I think you'd probably fall over if you tried that while marching with scrunched-up face, neck and shoulders.

Anyhow, there you are, marching around the office looking like the bad marine sergeant in one of those movies in which the sensitive guy always ends up shooting himself.

Your colleagues will be impressed by this, the book insisted. What a serious fellow, they will say, clearly executive material.

And one day one of the top men will see you marching around and will say, Make that man a manager and look sharp about it.

I say "man" because I have a feeling this book was written for a man's world - though, on reflection, I've come across one or two women managers who can do a pretty terrifying tense walk.

Now, the thing about this ridiculous book is that it buys into the idea that a manager should be one particular type of person and that particular type only.

Clearly the manager, in this vision of the world, should be Mister Tough - there he is marching around the place ready to leap into action at any moment. And he should by no means be a shrinking violent. He should be a tough-minded extravert who can put himself out there and not give a damn.

But is it necessarily the case that only certain types of people suit certain jobs? If you are building a team, should you surround yourself with tough minded extraverts and ban all sensitive souls from the premises?

After all, if you were putting a football team together you'd want it to be made up of tough extraverts, wouldn't you?

Would you really? Would you leave Roy Keane off the team, then? I've never seen the result of any personality tests on Roy Keane but he seems to me to be an introvert. Tough-minded, yes, but an introvert, inward looking, more likely to retreat into the kitchen during a party than clown around in the living-room. An extravert just couldn't have sat alone in that room in Saipan waiting for a plane to take him away from the world cup.

So keeping introverted people off your team makes no sense at all.

But would it be good for everyone on your management team to be a tough guy, of whatever gender and whether introverted or extraverted?

Not necessarily. Shut a whole bunch of tough guys in a room and ask them to agree on a project and you could still be waiting at Christmas. And when they finally emerge, having slugged it out until everyone's exhausted, there's a good chance they will have come up with the wrong approach.

Why? Well, without some introverted and/or sensitive people on the team, who's going to actually listen to what other people have to say? Who's going to take a thoughtful approach to what's going on? Who's going to point out the need to take account of the sensitivities of other people who are not in the room but whose cooperation is vital?

On every team you need a mix - tough, sensitive, extravert and introvert. Oddly enough, it's often the extraverts who recognise this and it's the introverts who beat themselves up for not being tough guys.

Remember that whatever your personality style is, you bring something valuable on the table.

So relax, accept yourself - and forget the tense walk. It's bad for your back.

Oddments No. 1

2008-03-18T07:20:00.005Z

Weekly bric-a-brac from Padraig O'Morain.

Photo by genewolf (Flickr)

Le chien qui pisse
My meditations in Nice, where I have gone to escape reality for a week, are interrupted by yelps from my wife who is having her cornflakes on the terrace. I look up to see what appears to be water pouring down from a cloudless sky. We hurry to the edge of the terrace and stare at the balcony above. There's the source, a dalmatian dog with his leg cocked, pissing onto our terrace. On his face he has a "what's all the fuss about?" look. The pissing goes on for some considerable time. We wash the terrace. Then, phone calls to our landlady in Switzerland. Finally the dog owner appears, apologetic. She reprimands the dog who remains unmoved. He does not do this very often, she explains. The dog must remain on the terrace while she is at work but he will not reoffend, she promises. Our sojourns on the terrace are now accomanied by frequent glances up to ensure we are not in the line of fire.

A bedouin in Belfast
A man in arabic headgear browsing in a bookshop in Belfast. Black woollen shawl covering head and shoulders. Walking stick with a black and white fabric wound around it. Sunglasses. The scuffed trainers give the game away - this is no billionaire from the Gulf. The bag slung over his shoulders a womans' handbag. An identity cobbled together from what was thrown away and what he knows how to do.

A mysterious couple observed at Grand Central, Manhattan
A couple at Grand Central at night. She is the more striking. Tall, in her fifties, wears one of those FBI type raincoats, black slacks, slip-on shoes that could be a man's. Red hair. It is her animation, her affection for, almost her infatuation with, her companion whom she jokes with, smiles at, touches, holds hands with, that strikes me. She is the taller of the two. He is thin, same age as her, five o'clock shadow, glasses, almost skeletal-like grey face. Skin stretched tight. He wears a trilby and also an FBI-type raincoat. His hands are stuck in his pockets. His face is impassive but now and then he flashes a remark and a grin without actually looking at her. He could be a secret agent. She could be a controller of secret agents. Are they married? She wears a wedding and engagement ring. Are they lovers? They seem like excited conspirators, he holding his excitement in, she letting it out.

Fecklessness World War Two style
Sending the kids to the chipper for their dinner - modern fecklessness and money-wasting? Feckless but not modern. According to Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography which I'm listening to on CD, kids evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz demanded to be fed on fish and chips, sweets and biscuits. They couldn't wait to get back to the city either. Thousands returned every week despite the bombings.

Quotes
.....The Buddha's declaration that disappointment, pain and apprehension of pain accompany all human activity like a shadow. Felix Holingren, Tricycle, Winter 2007.

Poems are not made out of ideas. They are made out of words. John Whitworth in Writing Poetry (A&C Black).

An object only acquires worth through memory and ritual. Explanatory notice in the National Museum of the American Indian, Manhattan.

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Cathal Ó Searcaigh - the questions

2008-03-16T08:15:00.005Z

Photo by aNantaB (Flickr)

In all the furore that surrounds the documentary Fairytale of Katmandu about poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh's sexual relationships with teenagers and young men in Nepal, there is one piece of analysis that stands out. This is an article in Saturday's Irish Times by Dermod Moore who is also a columnist with Hot Press. The article is part of the Irish Times' premium content but Moore raises the following questions which I think go to the heart of the matter:

"Firstly, roughly what proportion of those men in his coterie has he had sex with? This goes to the heart of his motives for being there in the first place - was he a sex tourist, masquerading as a philanthropist? Or was he, as he and his friends claim passionately, a philanthropist who occasionally had consensual sex?

"Secondly, we need to establish whether or not his "legendary" generosity was conditional on having sex with him. Was it generally understood among his friends that "boogie-ing" was how to please him, in order to reap financial reward?

"Thirdly, concerning those who did have sex with him, what long-lasting effect did their relationship with him have?

And, lastly, what understanding does Ó Searcaigh have about their motives for having sex, never mind his?"

Ó Searcaigh raised money in Ireland for his charitable works in Nepal. A lot of NGOs in Ireland raise money for projects in the Third World. If it turned out that the chief executive of an NGO was, while visiting one of these projects, having sex with teenagers in his bedroom and then buying bicycles and other gifts for them, questions would be raised as to his ability/inability to maintain suitable boundaries between his sex life and his work.

There is no evidence in the film that Ó Searcaigh has established a structure in Nepal to distribute the money he raises. It may be that there is such a structure but that the film maker did not address this in order to keep the focus on his sexual activities. However, in all the protests coming from the Ó Searcaigh camp, I have not heard any mention of any such structure. A charity should have a structure and accounts. We have not heard of either in relation to Ó Searcaigh's charity. If these do not exist, if a structure does not exist, then that is a long, long way removed from best practice or even good practice in this field.

Three more questions: Was film-maker Neasa Ní Chianáin right to show the faces of Cathal Ó Searcaigh's sex partners? Wouldn't it be normal practice to blur them out in this sort of documentary? What consequences will their exposure have for them and their families in future?

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All the world's a stage

2008-03-15T12:27:00.005Z

This is the text of my That's Men column published in The Irish Times on Tuesday, 11th March 2008. A collection of That's Men columns will be published by Veritas this summer.

Have you ever spotted a young man and woman walking along of an evening and realised that they were on their first date? Assuming you were right, how could you have known that?

it is because they were playing a role you recognised. They were well scrubbed up. Although they were talking to each other and perhaps even joking there was a slight formality and unease about them. Each was on parade, under scrutiny by the other.

If such a couple goes on to get married, they often begin to play different roles. One may take on the role of being feckless, or domineering for instance. The other may nag or be compliant. One may be playful and the other may be serious. One may drink too much and the other may play the part of caretaker.

Neither necessarily enjoys his or her role and neither necessarily realises what is going on.

Then perhaps something fundamental changes. One goes off on a personal development course, or maybe just off the rails, and begins to play a completely different role. Maybe the compliant person becomes assertive. Maybe the nagging person quits giving out and leaves the other to get on with it. Maybe the drinker gives up the booze and becomes a health freak.

Changes like this can shake up a relationship no end - sometimes terminally.

The roles we play with each other are described by a theory called Transactional Analysis. According to this theory each of us, right now, is probably playing one of three roles: parent, adult or child.

You are behaving like a parent when you give out or lay down the law or act in a nurturing and loving way. You are behaving like an adult when you are logical, and reasonable. And you are behaving like a child when you are mischievous or playful or sulky or whiney.

If you and your partner are sitting there giving out about the bus service or Bertie or the HSE you are having a parent to parent conversation.

If one is talking down to the other, accusing them of being irresponsible, of wasting money, of never keeping the house tidy, then you are having a parent to child conversation.

So given are we to role-playing that if you are being treated like a child, there is a good chance you will behave like one – so you might respond to your bossy partner by storming off or whinging or whining or sulking. Similarly, if one partner actually wants to behave like a child, the other may very well take on the role of parent.

How would you stop this game playing? The advice from the Transactional Analysis people is to drop the complementary role.

So when you are being talked down to by someone in parent mode you could respond, not like a child, but like an adult talking to an adult. "If you have something to say to me I would be grateful if you would address me like an adult,” could be an adult response to someone in full parent mode. And when they say, as they will, “I’ll talk to you like an adult when you start behaving like one,” you could walk very calmly out of the room saying something like, “I’m behaving like an adult right now and when you’re ready to do the same, let me know.” By the way, if you’re in a relationship in which it’s dangerous to act like an adult, you might be in the wrong relationship.

But couples also get locked into parent to parent communications with each other and that can be stultifying, especially if the kids have grown up.

Their main topic of conversation is still the children who may be off on the other side of the planet. Worse, the “children” or one of them may be in the living-room on a permanent basis, having taken out a 99-year lease on the family sofa. The parents may grumble about this but actually the son or daughter who refuses to leave may be helping them, the parents, to continue their parenting role. If they want something better for themselves they need to step out of that role.

In that case, one of the partners might need to start acting like a child by coming up with fun things to do or just by refusing to take life quite as seriously as before.

They might even consider dating each other again. They might consider getting scrubbed up and walking out like they did on that first date. If reviving your winning performances works for ageing rock stars, it can work for you.

The DUP - change of leader, change of hairstyle?

2008-03-10T22:42:00.005Z

Peter Robinson with small animal on top of head (left) and traditional look (right). Still likes great big specs though.

What is it with men and hair? We adopt a hairstyle and stick with it for far too many years while the women are changing their look every six weeks. Consider Peter Robinson, soon to be leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. That sticky-up hairdo looked just about modern when he adopted it and it was certainly an improvement on his traditional look. But it's reached the stage now where it looks like a small, distraught animal perched on top of his head. When he takes over from Big Ian, I hope Peter will fall in line with the rest of us who have reached a certain age and opt for the number two haircut until, well, death. And as the number two is favoured by large loyalist chaps in teeshirts it should give Peter street cred as well as getting rid of the wee, spikey animal.

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Guilt - helping you get what you want

2008-03-08T20:30:00.004Z

Photo by Ayala Moriel (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 4th March 2008:

A couple of days after Christmas a few years ago I was away, along with my family, staying with relatives. I had arranged to return to Dublin on my own a few days before the others. When the day of my departure arrived, I found myself filled with guilt although nobody had raised any issue at all about what I was planning to do.

What was going on? I think I had two contradictory ideas in my mind. The first was that I wanted to get back to Dublin by myself, a wish which possesses many people at that time of year. The other was that proper parents don't abandon their families in the Midlands at Christmas.

One way to resolve this would have been to stay with them. But I came up with a better way, one that allowed me to do what I wanted while preserving my self-image as a good parent. That way was to go back to Dublin as I wanted but to feel guilty about it.

Only a cad would run off to Dublin without a thought for what he was doing. A good parent, on the other hand, would feel guilty about it. So by feeling guilty I could do what I wanted and still be a good guy. Guilt, bless it, oiled the wheels.

William Glasser, who invented Reality Therapy, and who takes as jaundiced an attitude towards guilt as I do myself, has suggested that when a person feels guilt about what they have done they are probably planning to do it again. Recognise that, dear reader?

Now, there's guilt and there's guilt. Sometimes you do a thing that's just plain wrong and guilt, accompanied by what the Catholic Church used to call "a firm purpose of amendment" is very much in order. What that adds up to is remorse which, it seems to me, is a powerful agent for change if you let yourself experience it when it's deserved.

Outside that, though, guilt is a tricky thing. Ever see a parent say to a child, "Alright, go on, do what you like, I give up"? The child protests and the parent says "No, no, do what you like, it's nothing to do with me anymore." What the parent is really saying to the child is "You can do what you like so long as you feel guilty about it."

So you end up with spouses who feel awfully guilty about having affairs and are thereby enabled to have more of them; with overweight people who will, simultaneously, have another slice of chocolate cake and feel a delicious surge of guilt and with sluggards who wrap themselves up in guilt and warmth as they abandon a morning's work in favour of another few hours in bed.

Irish Catholics used to be the world's great connoisseurs of guilt. A trip to the confessional got rid of your guilt and sent you out into the world squeaky clean. And when you sinned again you went back and got cleaned up again. You just had to make sure you didn't unexpectely depart this world before getting back to confession - otherwise you could expect a few thousand years in the flames of purgatory or an eternity in hell.

Now, so far as I can make out, guilt is frowned on in the teaching of religion in our schools, hellfire isn't talked about and purgatory is abolished. Everything is nice and there is no wicked Devil to tempt us into guilty deeds.

This is a mistake. We need guilt, for the worst of reasons of course. Guilt allows us to go on pretending that we're better then we really are while continuing to do whatever we want to do anyway. It allows us to get away with things by convincing others that we feel really, really guilty about whatever it is we've done.

Mind you, we have an alternative which is to be honest and open and to quit playing games with ourselves and with others.

Personally, though, I don't see myself going down that path anytime soon.

Now there's something to feel guilty about.

High time to end the trek for the morning-after pill

2008-03-06T23:00:00.003Z

This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on Saturday, 1st March 2008:

Every Sunday, women make long journeys to Dublin to attend clinics run by the Irish Family Planning Association. Their purpose is to get the morning-after pill.

Emergency contraception is available in this country only on prescription, though you can get it over the counter in the UK. So in Ireland, the woman who has unprotected sex or who fears that her long-term contraception may not have protected her, must find a GP, and fast.

But there are many rural areas in which it is very difficult to find a GP on a Sunday morning – and many a woman would be embarrassed to go to her family doctor looking for the morning-after pill.

For the morning-after pill to be at its most effective it should be taken with 24 hours of unprotected sex. If that is done, there is a 95 per cent likelihood that it will prevent a pregnancy which would otherwise have occurred.

Within 24 and 48 hours, the pill is 85 per cent effective. And it is 60 per cent effective if taken within 48 and 72 hours.

So time is crucial when it comes to the use of the morning-after pill.

In the UK and elsewhere the woman can go down to her local chemist and buy the morning-after pill without prescription. In Ireland, we make them go through the embarrassment and expense of visiting a GP.

If you can’t find a GP on first thing on a Sunday, then too bad. You should have thought of that before you got yourself into this fix. You have had your fun and now you must pay for it.

This is not a view any reasonable parent would want to inflict on, say, their teenage daughter.

When the Irish Pharmaceutical Union commissioned a survey of 1,000 people on this issue, 75 per cent favoured making the morning-after pill available without prescription. Nowadays we accept that people have sex and that we should not punish them for by forcing them to make penitential journeys to family planning clinics.

The Irish Medicines Board is the key body when it comes to deciding whether the morning-after pill should be sold over the counter or not.

It takes the view that requiring a prescription for emergency contraception is “appropriate” because it means the GP can “monitor” the reactions of patients using it. What a load of old tosh. Either emergency contraception is so potentially dangerous that it should only be given out on a doctor’s prescription, or it is not.

The fact is that the UK, with a regulatory system just as good as ours has found nothing to suggest that the morning-after pill should be a prescription-only drug.

It seems to me that somebody in power should lean on the Irish Medicines Board to help them to take a difference view. Why should women have to go on paying the price of this policy?

Is the morning-after pill an abortifacient, as some have suggested? It isn’t, and if it was, it wouldn’t be available here even on prescription. So far as in known, the pill works by preventing ovulation or delaying it or by preventing a fertilised egg from settling in the womb. It doesn’t appear to cause an embryo already implanted in the womb to abort.

We live in an era in which you can buy condoms in your local Spar. Why should this other form of contraception involve, for some women, a penitential journey of 100 miles or more to a family planning clinic at the weekends?

We really do need to end this nonsense and we need those in authority to take note of the fact that most people want to end it.

Beware the joy of text

2008-03-03T23:03:00.004Z

This is the text (!) of my That's Men column in The Irish Times on 26th February 2008:

“God, yes I….” began a text message I got on my way through JFK Airport after Christmas.
The gist of the message was that I was a fantastic lover and that the sender was, er, thinking about me and missing me already.

Clearly the text was not meant for me (my wife agrees). Sneakily, I looked up the number on my computer and nobody came up. Darn.

Naughty text messages sit in phones like unexploded grenades. The explosion comes when a nosey partner spots an unattended phone, reads the messages in the inbox and gets a shock. The result, needless to say, is rarely pleasant for anyone involved.

The text message is a sort of gremlin in the world of relationships. Gremlins are mischief makers which delight in tormenting the afflicted. So it is with the illicit text.

Now, there is nothing wrong with sending loving or even saucy texts to your loved one. It’s when the relationship ends that texting takes on a different complexion.

If one of the partners didn’t want the relationship to end, the texts are likely to keep on coming in a bid to reverse the break-up. If the two parted by mutual consent, the texts may still keep flowing, much to the discomfiture of new parties who, sooner or later, will take a peek into the inbox.

In other words, texting has meant the end of the clean break – splitting up is even harder to do.

There’s another side to texting and it’s linked with control. The day the mobile phone was invented was a red letter day for control freaks everywhere. The mobile provided them with the almost perfect tool for tracking another person’s movements. The control freak will ruin a partner’s evening out with friends by sending text after text demanding to know “where are you now?” “who are you with?” “what are you doing?” “when are you coming home?” and so on. Failure to respond to these texts can lead to a lot of unpleasantness later on.

And when the person who is at the receiving end of this nonsense decides to call a halt to the relationship, the texts and voicemails multiply like rabbits, necessitating an inconvenient change of numbers not once but perhaps a few times. This is because control freaks can be good at finding out your new number, especially if your friends are gobshites who can be plámásed by said control freak.

Needless to say, texting also offers a cowardly means of breaking up with someone. This can add to the pain of the person who has been dumped especially if that person’s texts elicit no response. And when the person who was dumped eventually forms a new relationship, a resumption of texts from the one who did the dumping – and who has now changed his or her mind – can create havoc.

If you’re not used to texting, this may all seem rather laborious. How can people have the patience to do all these things by text? Well, have you ever watched a dedicated texter – a teenager, say – texting? The really good ones do not even need to look at the letters on the keypad. They are like touch typists – their fingers know where to go. A secondary school teacher once lamented to me that she suspects the school’s anti-texting policy is frustrated by girls who are able to text without taking their phones out of their pockets. Needless to say, any attempt by the teacher to remove said phones from pockets could result in a costly trip to the High Court.

There’s something very human about all this carry-on. People stop and coort in cars which were designed to get them from place to place quickly. People use computers for playing games when, really, they could be using them to work out complex mathematical theorems. And people send dirty messages to each other on mobile phones when they could be exchanging uplifting lines of poetry.

We could be perfect. We could be uplifted. But, once again, humanity gets in the way.

And all I can say to that is, “God, yes I….”

As vicious acts of violence grow we need a two-track approach to dealing with the problem

2008-03-02T09:10:00.006Z

This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on 26th February 2008:

The other day, as newspapers were writing headlines about the apparent involvement of teenagers in an incident that has led to the death of at least one man, a caller to Joe Duffy’s Liveline programme described a bullying incident carried out against his son at school.

The incident was so vicious and so without mercy that Duffy described it as evil. On other programmes recently we have heard of families from hell who pursue vendettas simply because a neighbour has asked the parents to stop their children behaving in an anti-social manner.

And it is not uncommon to hear of random acts of violence, sometimes fatal, carried out against people who are doing nothing more than walking home alone at night.

That is the context in which the involvement of teenagers in a fatal incident in Dublin needs to be seen.

Very often, the people perpetrating acts of violence and terror against others appear to have no internal set of values to prevent them engaging in such acts – or at least no set of values that the rest of us understand. Indeed, some perpetrators glory in the violence they mete out. Far from being ashamed of what they do, they continue to torment others in full view of their neighbours.

What is most frightening is that in all too many cases the violence perpetrated by an out of control young person is backed up by the entire family.

There are a good many streets of our cities in which people live in fear of just one violent, anti-social family. Those who stand up to them even in the mildest way pay the price of in verbal and physical abuse for years afterwards. Others are fearful of getting the same treatment and keep quiet. The Gardai seem unable to do anything much about it.

What seems to characterise some of these perpetrators is an absolute sense of their own entitlement. They and, indeed, their parents are entitled to do whatever they wish without any regard, good or bad, for the effect on neighbours. Neighbours who complain about this are, by definition, attacking them and must be punished.

It’s a perversion of how society is supposed to work.

What can be done about this? It seems to me that it the issue needs to be tackled from two angles. One is the law and order angle. The other is working with young children so they will not become perpetrators in their turn.

From the law and order point of view we need to find a way to give Gardai either the powers or the resources to deal with this “low level” thuggery and intimidation. One of the reasons for the success of the zero tolerance policy introduced by Rudi Giulani in New York in the 1990s was that these low level crimes were taken seriously. Another is that New York invests in policing. To the Irish visitor to New York the sheer visibility of police on foot patrol is truly striking compared to the comparative scarcity of Gardai on the beat at home.

Law and order is never the full answer to anything. We also need to be able to work with children from certain families to turn them away from this kind of behaviour and we need to start before they begin primary school.

Programmes working with pre-school children and their families have a proven track record of success in the United States. In Ireland we have only a handful of such projects compared to what is needed.

It’s not enough to lament the dreadful things that happen in our streets and neighbourhoods. We need to take these things seriously and to do something about them. Otherwise the innocent will go on paying the price.

In this Sikh family, schizophrenia was no bar to being an affectionate father

2008-02-27T10:08:00.005Z

When Sathnam Sanghera was growing up in Wolverhampton his father suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia and spent hours and hours just watching TV during the day. He never brought his son fishing or showed him how to ride a bike.

But, writes Sathnam in his book If you don't know me by now (Viking, 2008) "The best offering a fathe can make his children is himself, and in this respct mine was fantastic. He was always around. He was there at breakfast and at teatime.....And he also walked me to school every day. Several times a day, in fact: he would be with me on the ten-minute walk from home to school in the morning; on the ten-minute walk back from school to home at lunchtime; on the ten-minute walk from home to school at the end of lunchtime; and on the ten-minute walk back from school at the end of the day."

When, at the age of seven, he started primary school, "I was old enough to make my own way. But when, on my first day at primary school, Dad appeared at the front door as usual - five minutes early, staring at his watch, repeatedly checking his pockets for his housekeys, as usual - I took his hand gratefully."

The full title of the book - about growing up in a Sikh family - is If you don't know me by now: a memoir of love, secrets and lies in Wolverhampton and it is published on 6th March.

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A mindfulness approach to chronic pain

2008-02-25T15:38:00.003Z

This is the text of my That's Men for You column published in The Irish Times on 19th February 2008:

I am always reluctant to write about chronic pain and about psychological approaches to coping with it. This is because it is so easy to patronise people who are in pain when you are not in pain yourself.

Chronic pain is pain that can only be managed – it isn’t going to go away completely. As a person who is a coward when it comes to pain, I cannot imagine what it is like to have to cope with this torment day in and day out.

There is some research into psychological approaches to pain which offer the possibility of improving one’s way of coping with pain and that may be of help to readers in this situation. These involve acceptance and meditative practices.

Why in Heaven’s name should you accept pain? You shouldn’t, in my opinion, if the doctor, the physiotherapist or the chemist can help you to get rid of it. But if the pain cannot be made to go completely, the methods described here may help.

People who are in pain can be said to suffer from two types of pain. The first is the pain which arises from their injury or illness. That pain is largely, perhaps completely, outside their control. The second is the emotional distress which they feel because of the physical pain. It is this second type of pain that acceptance and some meditative practices can help to reduce.

Last year, researchers from NUI Maynooth, NUI Galway and the University of Almeria, Spain, published research showing that people subjected (willingly) to electric shocks had a greater level of endurance if they accepted the shocks instead of trying to distract themselves from them. This, though a small scale study, seems to confirm what many have believed for a long time about the importance of acceptance in dealing with pain and, indeed, with much else in life. The report on their research appeared in the journal, Behaviour Research and Therapy.

Mindfulness meditation has been used for years now at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre to help people live with chronic pain and stress while experiencing a higher quality of life than before. Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, who runs the pain clinic, has published an account of his work in the widely-available paperback Full Catastrophe Living.

Mindfulness involves continually bringing your awareness back to what is going on right now whenever it strays off into the past, the future or into fantasy. It sounds easy but it takes more practice than you might think.

In mindfulness you accept the pain that is inevitably there while expanding your awareness of those parts of your body that are not in pain, of the room around you, of other people and so on. This is not a substitute for medical treatment – it is something you do alongside medical treatment.

Blue Sky based in Dublin and run by people with a Buddhist and medical background offers a low-cost course based on Kabat-Zinn’s work.

Here is a simple, four-part mindfulness exercise to give you an idea of what the use of a mindful approach might involve:

1.
Notice your breathing. Notice your posture. Notice the points of contact between your body and the chair, floor, ground. Notice your clothes touching your body.
Every time you drift into thinking, just return to noticing your breathing.

2.
If you feel pain, notice the pain without getting involved in thoughts about it. Notice how the intensity of pain rises and falls but rarely stays the same.

3.
Notice the area of your body that surrounds the area of pain. Notice how that area is tensed up. Imagine that you are breathing into that area and allowing it to relax.

4.
Now, as well as your body, notice the room you are in. Notice how your pain is part of your experience. It is not your total experience. Now notice your breathing again.

Exercises like this do not, of course, get rid of the pain. Instead they are meant to help you to cope differently and to reclaim parts of your life and experience that the pain has overshadowed.

Seven Weeks - a journey through new grief

2008-02-23T10:51:00.002Z

Seven weeks today. A July wind
is tousling the trees, rumpling the garden.
I have written five letters, washed the sheets.
A mistake somewhere – I’ve not finished
the crossword. Sit with the sounds of Sunday.
Thrashing leaves. Cows. Planes. My own breath.

This is how Christine Webb's prize-winning poem Seven Weeks begins. The poem, about the death of a partner, won the 2007 Poetry London Competition and is worth your time. You can read her poem and the other winners here on the Poetry London website. Follow the Competition link on the menu on the left of the front page.

(This is the complete post. Ignore "Continue reading" link below.)

And here is the rest of it.

Too easy to blame the internet for suicides in Wales

2008-02-21T07:26:00.004Z

Photo by Guillermo Esteves (Flickr)

This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on 20th February 2008:

The spate of teenage deaths by suicide in Wales has spurred speculation that the internet – especially tributes on social networking websites – has played a role in what has been going on.

The speculation has been rejected by the police. “They were all young people with big issues,” a police spokesman said. “There are a constellation of factors influencing these young people.”

So where has speculation about internet suicide pacts come from? Partly it comes from the belief that suicide pacts do exist and that the internet plays a role in these in some parts of the world.

Deaths arising from suicide pacts are a major source of concern in Japan where this phenomenon has been most reported. There, even complete strangers have taken their own lives as part of pacts made over the internet.

Closer to home, last summer saw the death of two young irish men who made a suicide pact over the internet.

Research in Britain suggests that about 12 couples a year take their lives in what might be called a suicide pact but this is not confined to teenagers and can be a response to depression or incurable illness.

But such pacts have existed since before the internet came along. So have copycat suicides. When singer Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994, some fans also committed suicide. In 1994, hardly anybody used the internet, most people didn’t know what it was and social networking sites such as Bebo and My Space had not even been imagined.

There have been claims that tributes on the networking sites to those who killed themselves have led others to do the same. The theory sounds plausible until you consider that such tributes are only a part, indeed a small part, of the mourning that surrounds a death.

If you attend the funeral of somebody who has committed suicide, you will hear the same tributes that are heard at funerals for other people. There may be an underlying, unspoken sense of anger at the person who has destroyed the life of his or her family by committing this stupid act but a desperate attempt is made to act as though this is a normal funeral.

Such funerals are, needless to say, very emotional especially if a young person has died. I would suggest that they are far more emotional than a website tribute can be – yet I am unaware of any evidence that they lead to copycat deaths.

Similarly are we to say that the loving death notices placed in newspapers lead other people to think of suicide, even when we know that this is how the person died?

To work out whether the suicides in Wales are linked, we need to know whether these represent a rise in such deaths compared to previous periods or whether we are seeing a statistical cluster of largely unrelated deaths.

Suicides among young men in England and Wales are at their lowest level for three decades and among young women they are at their lowest level since 1968. This makes the deaths in Wales stand out even more.

The internet is open in the sense that suicide pacts made online are fairly easy for the police to uncover forensically . It is likely that such pacts, if behind the deaths in Wales, would have been discovered by now.

Following a death by suicide the question that haunts family and friends for years afterwards is, Why did he or she do it? Could we have prevented it? Usually there will never be a satisfactory answer to the question and families have to accept this fact before they can move on.

In the long run I suspect that there will never be a satisfactory explanation for these pointless deaths in Wales either.

Fall in the suicide rate for young men in the UK - but more young women use dangerous methods

2008-02-18T16:23:00.006Z

When I read the headline on the BBC website about the fall in suicide among young men in the UK I thought I had come across a reason to hope that in one society, at least, a way had been found to tackle this painful problem.

Well, it has and it hasn't. The suicide rate for young men in England and Wales is at its lowest level for 30 years, the report says. But this isn't due to a change in attitudes. "One key factor has been a cut in toxins in vehicle exhaust fumes because of catalytic converters - making it harder for people to kill themselves," it says.

Still, it's a good outcome but how long will it be before young men turn to more dangerous alternatives? Young women seem to be doing this already, with a dramatic rise in hanging. Could this, I wonder, be an unintended consequence of measures that made it more difficult to put together a large supply of paracetamol? Nevertheless, suicide rates among young women are at their lowest level since 1968.

Suicide is an extraordinarily complicated issue but the UK figures suggest that in Ireland we can hope to get the figures down by a variety of measures - even if those measures and their possible consequences are far from straightforward.

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The grim reality behind that rural retreat

2008-02-16T08:39:00.006Z

Photo by Jasmic (Flickr)

This is the text of my article in The Evening Herald on 15th February 2008:

The rural retreat, complete with green fields, clear streams and singing birds seems idyllic when you’re stuck in urban traffic in the rain – but behind the pretty picture is a grimmer reality, judging by the latest comments from Dr Moosajee Bhamjee.

The Clare psychiatrist and former Labour Party TD has pointed to the demise of the rural pub and of other social facilities as a factor in suicide in country areas. The close-knit rural community of legend has, for too many people, become a thing of the past.

The link between the demise of the rural pub, depression and suicide is not necessarily to do with alcohol - it is to do with social contact. For men living alone, in particular, the pub provided a nightly or almost nightly immersion the affairs of the parish. It kept them connected. Drinking at home on your own is no substitute.

The concept of loneliness is one we are used to in the cities and towns. A city flat can be a very lonely place. So can a home in an urban housing estate where everybody else is at work all day. But at least in cities and towns you can go for a walk to the shops or to the post office and you can hope to meet somebody with whom you are at least on a nodding acquaintance. And if all else fails you can find a pub to go to at night.

There are still parts of rural Ireland in which there is a closeness between people that you will not find in cities and towns. Everybody living along a stretch of road knows each other; they have known each other for years and they look out for each other.

But if you live on the wrong road, if your nearest neighbours have gone, if you are unable to travel due to disability or if your local pub has shut down you can be utterly isolated in the countryside.

In any event, there is something wrong with the rural dream of the past. City people think of Clare as the quintessential rural county. In many respects I think it fair to say we were encouraged to think of the county of the De Valeras as more "real" than the cities. It was the home of traditional Irish music, of unforgettable sessions in the pubs, of poety, of wonderful natural scenery and of wonderful people.

Perhaps that was true and perhaps it is still true. Yet 17 people are thought to have taken their lives in Clare last year and two thirds of these lived in rural areas. Suicides in Clare outnumbered deaths from road accidents last year.

Six of these deaths were among men in their twenties and three were men in their thirties, forties and fifties. This suggests that suicide in Clare is not predominantly affecting elderly people. It is more likely that isolated, elderly people are prey to depression than to suicide.

More importantly, all of this suggests that the answer to rural depression involves social rather than medical measures. For example, there are roads in rural Ireland which a bus has never ever, ever passed down. If each rural area had an easily-accessible bus service even a couple of times a day the difference to the physical and mental health of rural dwellers would be enormous.

It seems highly unlikely that services like this can be run on a commercial basis. They would have to be subsidised out of taxes and, as far as I am concerned, it would be money well spent.

Meanwhile,though, I am for city and town living. The field and the stream may be attractive -but the lonely country road with the bus once a week definitely is not.

The common experience of feeling like an impostor

2008-02-15T08:43:00.003Z

Photo by autoreverse tiramisu (Flickr)

Do you see an impostor when you look in the mirror?

You’d be surprised how many people do.

Most of us adopt or are thrust into roles in life that we think we are not up to. Other people might say you’re great at your job or you’re a great parent or a great partner.

But they are looking at you from the outside. You are looking at yourself from the inside and you “know” you are none of these things. What’s more, you think, if other people knew you as well as you know yourself, they would agree with your unspoken opinion.
This is the text of my That's Men for You column published in The Irish Times on Tuesdsay, 12th February 2008:

The so-called impostor phenomenon was first described in the late 1970s. Then, it referred to young women who were doing well in managerial and executive jobs in the workplace but could not give themselves credit for their own ability.

They saw themselves as succeeding either because they were lucky or because they worked harder than anybody else – but not because they were intrinsically good at what they did.

Subsequent research has shown that the term can be applied equally to men.

The odd thing about the impostor phenomenon is that it seems to affect people who are genuinely successful rather than people who fail. The “impostor” may gain promotions, may be praised by colleagues, may be in demand among customers yet her or she feels like a fake.

Instead of basking in this praise and approval, the affected person lives in fear of being found out.

Another curious thing about people who feel like impostors is that they are less likely than others to behave like real impostors. For example, a study of college students found that those who felt like impostors were less likely than other students to cheat.

“Impostors” seem to dread the arrival of the day when their work will be judged, so they have developed ways to put off the evil hour.

One is to put off starting tasks for as long as possible, always completing them just before the deadline.

The other is to start work on a project long before everyone else, perhaps dragging out the preparations interminably and continuing to work beyond the point at which others are finished.

What’s the payoff for these strategies? The first – putting the work off until the deadline is nigh, as I have done with this article – allows the “impostor” to say the work was so rushed it was pure luck that it was any good. This neatly avoids the question of whether the person is inherently good at the job.

The strategy of working interminably on the project allows the “impostor” to assert that anybody who put in this amount of work would be bound to succeed – again, the “impostor” avoids the issue of his or her personal qualities.

The research on the impostor phenomenon has mainly concerned itself with the workplace and with college studies.

However, I have no doubt that it implies also to relationships. The person who cannot take a compliment may be an example of someone who feels like an impostor.

My own phrase for this is “the ah shure syndrome.”

“Aren’t you really marvellous to have rescued your aunt from that burning building?”
“Ah shure, I was heading in the direction of the door anyway and she just kind of clung on to me.”

If you feel like an impostor and someone expresses love and admiration for you, you will conclude instantly that they don’t know what they are talking about. And you will make sure they don’t get close enough to find out what you are really like.

You believe that if they find out what you are really like, they will no longer admire or love you. To avoid this fate you may have rows with people when they get too close. Indeed, you may even walk away from them altogether.

It’s a painful phenomenon and one that may be more prevalent at home and at work than we realise. I think it is also very difficult to get rid of but awareness is the first step to reducing its influence on our lives.

Grieving the death of a child - help from parents who have had the experience

2008-02-13T08:57:00.004Z

Photo by ericadwoodson (Flickr)

If your child has died, the only person who can really understand your loss is someone who has experienced such a loss, according to Anam Cara, a new website set up by bereaved parents. The website is full of information of people going through this dreadful experience and has links to good, international websites.

"There are no solutions or answers to your grief or pain on this website, but there is a huge amount of understanding and empathy. Everyone copes with the loss of their child in different ways," it says.

"No matter how your child has died, through an accident or long term illness, at Anam Cara we respect that your grief is your own. It also does not matter how old your child was, they could have only been minutes on this earth or grown up to be adults with a family of their own. What matters is that they are your child and the bond between a parent and child is the strongest bond of all and the breaking of that bond the hardest grief to come to terms with and accept."

Anam Cara means "soul friend" in Irish.

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Ambivalence towards violence keeps it thriving

2008-02-09T13:25:00.000Z

Photo by Pro-Zak (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men for You column in The Irish Times on Tuesday 5th February 2008:

The state pathologist, Professor Marie Cassidy, referred on a recent TV programme to a chilling aspect of violence today.

This is the tendency, when a group of young people attack a victim, to intensify the attack after the victim is on the ground, stunned and unable to protect himself in any way.

It is when the victim is in that defenceless condition that the attack really starts. By the time it is over he can count himself fortunate if he gets back to normal functioning.

I say ‘he’ because the victims are almost always male, as are the perpetrators. Indeed, we now live in a society in which parents worry far more about the safety of teenage boys than of teenage girls when they go out at the night.

Back in what I call the John Wayne days, there were certain taboos. You didn’t shoot a man in the back. You didn’t kick a man on the ground. Silly stuff? Maybe. But it beats getting some young fellow down on the ground, rendering him unconscious and then kicking him into rehab.

Of course, terrible things happened in those days, the abuse of children in institutions and in their own homes being a prime example. But the practice of going out on a weekend night to hunt down some poor sod who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and to kill or disable him did not exist then.

The taste for violence is not confined to those who carry out these vicious attacks on the street.

Some years ago, I escaped into a cinema out of a wet afternoon in Paris to watch the then newly-released movie Casino. The violence in the movie really shocked me – but when the lights came on again I was intrigued to see that the afternoon audience of respectable pensioners appeared quite unmoved by the whole thing.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. “It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war,” wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay, Decline of the English Murder. “The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World…..what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.”

There it is, then. A vicarious enjoyment of violence has become so commonplace we barely notice it. We hardly even register how extreme it has become – the violence on The Sopranos is just an example.

When it comes to real life, the terrible behaviour we see on our streets owes much to the influence of groups. When you are in a group you are capable of doing things which you would never do if you were on your own.

Research suggests that murders which follow disagreements and an exchange of insults are often carried out in the presence of an audience made up of friends and acquaintances of the killer. The need to play up to an audience can make murderers of us all.

But we are caught in a double bind about violence. On the one hand none of us wants our son and daughter to be the target of a vicious attack; and most of us would not want our son or daughter to be the perpetrator of such an attack.

On the other hand, society wants its members to be capable of and willing to go to war where necessary. Even in this neutral country of ours many of us demand that countries such as the US, Britain or multinational entities such as the UN or the EU should intervene in Darfur or other places where terrible events are happening. We know that such intervention may involve the use of violence – but we are all for it.

So we are ambivalent about violence – we want it and we don’t want it.

And that’s a major part of the reason why we may never come to grips with the violence that kills and maims our sons on the streets today.

Cardinal Connell takes sex abuse tribunal to court - an unwelcome blast from the past

2008-02-05T09:00:00.000Z

This is the text of my article in the Evening Herald on Friday 1st February on Cardinal Connell's (pictured above) surprise High Court intervention in the work of the tribunal investigating sex abuse by clergy in the Dublin archdiocese. Since then, on Monday 4th, the High Court adjourned the case for a week. Hopefully the Inquisition is working on Cardinal Connell in the meantime.

Update: On Monday 11th February, Connell withdrew his High Court action. I guess the Inquisition did its work alright.

“Saddened but not surprised” has so far been the reaction of victims of clerical sex abuse in Dublin to the court challenge by Cardinal Desmond Connell to the examination of files over which he claims privilege.

The files, reported as numbering 5,000, could help Judge Yvonne Murphy and her Archdiocese Commission of Investigation to arrive at the full truth of clerical child abuse in Dublin. Perhaps more importantly, they will reveal just what the Church did and did not do about the abuse when it learned what was going on.

The Archdiocese of Dublin has a great deal to fear from the inquiry headed by Judge Murphy. Those who have had dealings with her are aware that she has an incisive mind, capable of homing in on the relevant details in a mass of documents – even in 5,000 documents. The former journalist expresses herself with a sort of clarity that is foreign to the Church and especially to the Church of Cardinal Connell.

We know the general nature of the details that will hurt the Church when her report is eventually published. They will concern priests moved from parish to parish and therefore put in positions of moral authority despite their misbehaviour. They will also concern the legalistic response to abuse victims and their families which left them frustrated, angry and hurt.

As a journalist who attempted to cover such issues in the 1990s, I still recall the pain of people who believed the Archdiocese had little or no interest in them except to make their allegations go away. Their experience of dealing with the Church deepened the hurt already done.

I expect those in charge of the affairs of the Archdiocese at the time believed they were acting in the best interests of the Church and that their handling of these cases was entirely in accordance with the law.

But anyone who saw the pain of victims and their families at facing what they perceived to be a closed door when it came to having their complaints dealt with could only have welcomed a searching inquiry into the actions of those churchmen.

Such an inquiry, as we all know, can only be effective if it has access to documents outlining the actions and opinions of these churchmen at the time.

The Church already faces some very dark days indeed when Judge Murphy’s report is finally published. It is unlikely that the details of what went on will differ greatly from what we know already. It is the scale of abuse and the inadequacy of the Church’s response that will deepen the harm already done to its reputation.

To weather this storm in any fashion, the Church needs an archbishop like Diarmuid Martin who can demonstrate full cooperation with the inquiry and who represents a break with the past.

But now along comes Cardinal Connell who, by his legal challenge, will lead sceptics – and even those who are not sceptics – to believe that little has changed when it comes to the Church’s attitude to attempts to clear up this mess.

More importantly, his challenge reopens old wounds and old memories for victims of clerical abuse and their families. It is like a challenge from the past to the present. But Cardinal Connell is not in the past. Like the other men who ran the affairs of the Archdiocese when he was its head, he is very much in the present. Moreover, he is a man of authority in the Church, outranking Archbishop Martin.

When Judge Murphy’s report is published, this challenge will loom large in the minds of an outraged public. It will render more difficult the job of Archbishop Martin in convincing us all that the old Church has been replaced by a new one that deserves our trust.

The pain of shyness and the mistakes shy people make

2008-02-04T11:09:00.000Z

Photo by Sukanto Debnath (Flickr)

This is the text of my That's Men for You column which appeared in The Irish Times on Tuesday 29th January 2008:

I was much shyer when I was in my late teens than I am today and one of the great discoveries of my life was that other people didn’t know what I was going through. I found this out when a colleague casually remarked that I was “as cool as a cucumber.” In reality, I was experiencing agonies of shyness but the discovery that other people interpreted this as confidence helped me to take the risk of social involvement.

And shyness is, indeed, an agony when at its most intense. I suspect that the agony is greater for men than for women. This is because even in the 21st century it is the men who are expected to approach the women for dates and dances.

Indeed, you don’t have to be shy to have experienced the “will she, won’t she, will I make a fool of myself?” drama that can go on in the head of a man trying to pluck up the courage to ask a woman for a date.

If anything, the business of asking for a dance is worse – that walk across the floor can seem as long and as daunting as a journey to the Antarctic.

There are certain errors that shy people make and which worsen this wretched condition.

First, they assume that other people can see how shy they are. That is why it can be liberating to realise that this is not so, as I mentioned at the start of this article.

The second error is to assume that other people are thinking about you to the exclusion of almost anything else. A shy person will walk past a bus queue and assume that he or she is being scrutinised by everybody standing there. In reality, the others are almost certainly preoccupied with themselves and some of them wouldn’t notice if you stood on your head. Similarly, shy people at a party assume that everybody in the room is looking at them and judging them – a horrible feeling – when nothing of the sort is going on.

Shy people tend to compare themselves to the most outgoing person in the room. They could make life easier for themselves by aiming to be average – instead they curl up in a ball because they know they can’t measure up to the biggest party animal in the place.

This tendency to demand more of themselves than is reasonable is a major source of pain to shy people. Worse, they tend to assume that other people expect perfection from them when in fact other people, with the exception of a few bullies, are more tolerant and easy-going than the shy person can imagine.

Paradoxically, the shy person is the star in his or her own drama. That can be said of any of us but the shy person takes it to an extreme. To the shy person, nobody on the street, in the nightclub or at the party has eyes for anyone else. The shy person, therefore, imagines himself or herself to be under intense examination at all times.

This can begin to change if the shy person somehow manages to get involved with other people or allows other people to drag him or her along with them. Of course, it will still all be agony at first but gradually the shy person’s comfort zone will expand. Maybe the shy ones won’t ever be the life and soul of the party – though some people hide their shyness behind a façade of confidence – but at least they can be at the party and can function socially with a few people at a time.

If you know somebody who is shy, there is no point in berating them for failing to fight this socially crippling illness. Such criticism will simply drive them further into isolation.

It is far better to involve them in things and to accept that they will be the quiet ones in the crowd. This will help them to begin to accept themselves and acceptance of how they are is perhaps the most important first step on the road out of isolation.