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aoife

Kevin Barry 'Sometimes writing no longer seems like the thing I do, it seems like the thing I am'

The award-winning Irish writer tells us about his apprenticeship, and his journey from journalist to author.

WHAT IS IT like to be a writer? According to Kevin Barry – author of Beatlebone and City of Bohane – it’s challenging and difficult, but when it clicks there’s nothing more rewarding. Barry and a host of Irish writers (including Belinda McKeon, Anne Enright and Joseph O’Connor) have penned essays on their craft for the Irish Writers Centre’s new anthology, Beyond the Centre. Here, Barry writes about his apprenticeship as a writer.

Notes on Desperation – A Writer’s Apprenticeship

Twenty-five years ago I was living at 2, Pery Square, in Limerick city, in the basement of an old Georgian house that was then owned by an aunt of the politician Des O’Malley; the house now operates as a kind of Angela’s Ashes museum.

I was paying a rent of twenty-five Irish punts a week for the dark but rather characterful flat, or rather I was supposed to be paying this amount – in fact, the arrears had somewhat gotten on top of me, a situation that culminated in my being chased through the streets of the city by the auctioneer who managed the building; I was on a mountain bike, he was in a car. He eventually cornered me in Todd’s Bow, behind the eponymous department store, and I raised a placating palm and insisted that I would pay what was due, though in fact I wound up moving to Cork instead.

I had been working as a reporter on the Limerick Post, the weekly freesheet newspaper, busily covering the courts and the council meetings, and also gathering research materials for my novel City of Bohane (2011), though I had no idea I was doing so at the time – in terms of writing fiction, the best research is the research you don’t know you’re doing at the time.

I was also running house music club nights in local discos and organising one-off raves, on account of which the Henry Street branch of the Garda drug squad would sometimes park outside 2, Pery Square, and they would aim significant little smiles at me as I passed in and out of the place, paranoid as a goat.

I was reading Jonathan Raban’s hybrid travelogue/essay books, Don DeLillo novels and early James Ellroy slasher-fests, and I had very firm plans to myself write stories, novels, plays and screenplays – some weekends I would haul my Apple MacIntosh desktop computer home with me from the Limerick Post precisely for this purpose. But as is the
way when you are twenty-two years old, life kept getting in the way.

2

BEYOND THE CENTRE Final

In 1999, I was living in Cork city, freelancing for the Examiner and The Irish Times, but increasingly feeling rather haughty and put out by the fact that I was wasting all my writing energies on journalism. So I chipped in with a pal and we bought a tiny Father Ted-style caravan for four hundred Irish punts and agreed a timeshare on it.

The caravan was hauled out to the far end of the Beara Peninsula and situated in a field beside Ballydonegan beach at Allihies. My timeshare friend used the caravan maybe twice ever, so I more or less had the run of it to myself, and I spent the best part of the summer of 1999 living there – my address was c/o Allihies Post Office – and attempting to write a novel.

The novel focused on a migration that had occurred around the 1880s; workers from the played-out copper mines at Allihies had moved, en masse, to Butte, Montana. I was at this point reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy, and I was determined to have scenes with wolves. I spent months spacing out around the derelict old tin mines in the Caha Mountains, making plans, drafting long, elaborate paragraphs in a notebook held open against the sea breeze, and muttering to myself darkly.

I still have the notebooks containing this novel – they are in a box in the far room here in County Sligo – but I cannot bring myself to look at them. I know that there are something like 70,000 words in there. I’m pretty sure there is occasionally a line of sparky dialogue, or a half-ounce of decent description, but I’m certain that the great bulk
of it is pastiche.

Still, the fact of that 70,000 words achieved in pen and ink was enough to keep me going, and I had vague plans for other novels, and maybe some stories.

Every Thursday morning I would cycle or hitchhike the twenty kilometres into Castletownbere and from an internet kiosk I’d file my column for the Examiner. This was a 500-worder that could be about anything under the sun, and the writing in it was far superior to anything in my novel; I was writing in something like my own voice, and I had discovered that I could at least to some extent handle the intricacies of comic timing.

On August 13th 1999, I went for a walk along the headland cliffs past Ballydonegan beach. At a slipway leading down to the water, I crouched on my heels and made a very solemn vow to make a go of this fictionwriting business. I was so earnest that I imagine my lips were moving. But I believe that mad ritual gestures like this are very necessary for emerging writers, and I still hold to this date as my writer’s birthday – I was about
to get fucking serious about things.

I planned to make a trip to Butte, Montana, in the autumn. I would soak up the reverberations of the place, and then I’d go to Spain early in the new year and write a second draft of the novel. I can’t remember what the novel was called.

3

In late October 1999, at a room in the Capri motel, in Butte, Montana, I tearfully decided to pack in the Butte, Montana novel. I could sense that my abilities at this time were just not up to it. In fact I was years away from it. I had dutifully filled notebook after notebook at the Butte, Montana library with nuggets of Butte, Montana lore.

I even met a ninety-nine-year-old man who had been brought up on the Beara Peninsula, and who played me some Irish songs on his fiddle; his name was Yank Harrington. Big old lunks in cowboy hats paraded the Butte, Montana streets, and they had boiled-ham farmer heads on them straight out of Beara, and the phonebook was full of Harringtons and Sullivans, but I couldn’t get any purchase on the material. I didn’t know how to bring it down, to reduce it; it kept opening out, and expanding, and eventually it just floated away, into the blue, blue skies above the Rocky Mountains.

4

I was living for a few weeks in a pensione, in a former convent, in the city of Alicante, in the south east of Spain. It was late January 2000, and I was writing a short story. It was set in Cork city. It was about a man living in a bedsit who became dangerously obsessed with a mouse who had taken up residence behind his fridge. Going by the prose on
him, this fellow appeared to be a Corkonian first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov. The story was called The Linoleum Years and a print-out of it is probably to be found in a box somewhere in the far room in County Sligo but I can’t bring myself to go and root it out. I’m sure it’s not up to much, but I do know that when I was writing it, I heard a kind of resounding click – for the first time, a character seemed to come fully to life on the page for me; however wonky its construction, or predictable its denouement, this story contained a character who seemed to live and breathe.

I had saved enough money to avoid freelance work for a few weeks at least. I spent all of those warm winter days writing fiction. I lay on my belly on the bed in the pensione and I scrawled the sentences on a pad – I had read that James Joyce used to work in this way. I was obsessed with the sound of the sentences; I tried to put as much vitality and music
in them as I could. I was also obsessed with the fact that James Joyce preferred white wine to red, saying that white wine was like electricity, red wine was like the blood of an ox. I was trying hard to drink white wine rather than red – I was buying it in cartons at the supermercado.

‘Supermercado’ was about the extent of my Spanish.

Even at this relatively early stage, I knew that I would never have a quiet, unshowy prose style. Sometimes I yearned for one, for a clean, brisk, pared-down style, clear as glass, unobtrusive … but my style wasn’t like that at all; my prose behaved like an hysterical step-dancing gingerhaired child leppin’ up and down on the page looking for attention. I
discovered that winter in Spain that there is nothing mysterious about prose style – your style is merely a direct projection of your personality.

And after a certain period of time has elapsed – I was by now thirty-one years old – there isn’t much you can do about your personality; mine was composed of hysterical nervous energy and I was just going to have to go with it on the page.

After I had finished a writing session, I would walk the streets, aiming for the supermercado, walking in a cloud of distraction amid the happy babble of the voluble Spanish city and, as I didn’t have the language, I was entirely entrapped within my own, but now happily so.

5

I have carried over a kind of guilt complex from the 1990s and early 2000s – I don’t think I worked as hard as I could have at my writing; I was going at it in an occasional (and, just occasionally, in an ecstatic) way. Now, to counteract this guilt, I work like a dog.

For the past nine of these twenty-five years, I have been mostly based in an old RIC barracks, in south County Sligo, and seven days a week I perform the three-step commute across the backyard to the former turf shed that is now my office. Or the Black Lizard Studio, as I have dubbed it, because one day a black lizard walked across a
print-out of my novel Beatlebone, then close to being finished, and I immediately got down on the floor and wrote a black lizard into the text. I did so because I believe that a kind of sympathetic magic should occur around the edges of one’s writing projects; if it doesn’t, the project is probably fucked.

I write stories, novels, plays, film scripts and essays in the shed, and maybe on one or two days of the seven, it seems to be going well. But most days are sluggish, and the brain feels dull, and I’d rather be doing other things. But I persevere, and now and again, just for a while, the hand feels guided across the page.

I feel like I’ve earned the good days, because if I have not always worked as hard as I could have, I have stayed true at least to the idea of this practice, to this strange occult business of making fictions come alive in the world. I have stayed true to it for a quarter of a century now and sometimes writing no longer seems like the thing I do, it seems like the thing I am.

Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane and the story collections Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He also edits Winter Papers alongside his partner Olivia Smith. His awards include the IMPAC Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the Rooney Prize. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. He also writes plays and screenplays. He lives in County Sligo.

Extracted from Beyond The Centre: An Irish Writers Centre Anthology, out now. 

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    Mute denis silver
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:11 PM

    Do all the TD’s that are not running again get a severance payment as a final go on the gravy train at our expense .

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:15 PM

    @denis silver: no idea, but you could put yourself forward for the next GE and if you become a TD you’ll find out

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    Mute Liam Byrne
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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:05 PM

    @denis silver:
    But it’s not a final go on the gravy train, there might be a make up job for him, maybe take up that Zaponne ones position thats still vacant. This fella lived on government payments all his life, and will continue.

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    Mute Liam Byrne
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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:11 PM

    @Mary Toilet:
    Maybe if he had a millionaire T.D. Father to back him he could.

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    Mute Alan OConnor
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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:54 PM

    @denis silver: no they don’t.

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    Mute Paddy C
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    Oct 18th 2023, 5:58 PM

    @denis silver: can’t expect them to just walk out with nothing like ordinary people and then get asked what you’re doing to find work?

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Oct 18th 2023, 10:57 PM

    @Liam Byrne: he could always draw the dole and become a shinner ‘activist.’

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    Oct 19th 2023, 11:04 AM

    @John Mulligan:
    You’re right there.

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    Mute Luka Roche
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:24 PM

    We need a complete new Dail who haven’t made a political career for themselves. As the some of the old brigade is still there driving Ireland down the drain….

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    Mute Allo Allo
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:20 PM

    For article below it’s not antisemitism it is anti-Israeli genocide and elimination of the innocence, yes both sides are guilty of appalling crimes but Israel playing the antisemitism card is propaganda, Israel is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past

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    Mute
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:24 PM

    @Allo Allo: Well even the word “antisemitism” is a propaganda term. Not all Jews are Semites and not all Semites are Jews.

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    Mute
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:28 PM

    Please inform the IDF that not all Palestinians are Hama’s.

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    Mute David
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:02 PM

    @Allo Allo: Antisemitism is a weapon used by Israeli Zionists to silence everyone.

    @ Maurice Cohen, the Irish politicians are not like your American lap dogs. they don’t support the illegal murder of the innocent like Joe Biden does!

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    Mute Joe Kelly
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    Oct 19th 2023, 5:18 PM

    @David: what has Israel to do with above article?

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    Mute Sean oSuilleabhain
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:42 PM

    Name one particularly ex FF TD turned Independent/rural Ind yolk who is not still essentially a Fianna failer. they run on the same parochial, me feiner conservative platform

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    Mute P.J. Nolan
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    Oct 18th 2023, 5:31 PM

    @Sean oSuilleabhain:
    You are correct Sean but the same could be said of almost every ex member of a political party, Michael Lowry for example.
    On the other side of the political spectrum, parties on the left have had various internal falling in and out but they are still left leaning or socialist politicians.
    Happens all the time.

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    Mute Hugh Lynch
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:22 PM

    Why can’t we have a say on anti semitism.???? Is it anti Semitic to be pro Palestine ?

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:24 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: yes

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    Mute Hugh Lynch
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:33 PM

    @Mary Toilet: And what about the orthodox Jews who are anti Zionist and whose views I agree with are they anti Semitic?

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    Mute David
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:04 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: because those complaining of antisemitism have the clout to silence all forms of social media, antisemitism is the excuse for not supporting murder it seems.

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    Mute David
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:05 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: Exactly. Meanwhile all these news sites close comments and ban users.

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    Mute Corey Dalton
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:09 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: Good point Hugh, there is a small but important group of highly religious Jews who are anti Zionist and don’t agree with Israel.

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:13 PM

    @David: True. Mary Robot didn’t respond coz it wants us to lump Jews all in together so that any criticism can be accused of anti semitism. When clearly that’s not the intent. Lost faith now in The Journal as having any credibility as a news organisation because of its censorship (don’t rail on me asking why I ever thought they were). It’s so patently obvious what’s happening.Never more so than now.

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:18 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: news organisation?! Pmsl

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:19 PM

    @Mary Toilet: Toilet humour?

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    Mute Donal Desmond
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    Oct 18th 2023, 4:00 PM

    @Mary Toilet: The State of Israel has become the Nazi regime that once sought to exterminate the Jewish race. Not all Germans were Nazis, Same as not all Israeli,s agree with their country’s War Crimes against Palestine…Long Live Palestine.

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    Mute M Bowe
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    Oct 18th 2023, 4:31 PM

    @Mary Toilet: anti Zionism is NOT antisemitism. Anyone claiming so are using that accusation as a cover for an apartheid regime

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    Oct 18th 2023, 4:36 PM

    @M Bowe: Thicks will defend Hamas

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    Mute Hugh Lynch
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    Oct 18th 2023, 6:33 PM

    @Mary Toilet: who here is defending Hamas. The attack on Israel was abhorrent. But not unprovoked as the war mongers have claimed. People are dying at the hands of IDF everyday and at the hands of armed illegal settlers. Your ignorance of that is not funny. You just want airtime. I won’t be giving you anymore. And get a real name.

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    Oct 18th 2023, 7:20 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: only war mongers are Hamas, now get a life

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    Oct 18th 2023, 8:55 PM

    @Mary Toilet: Mary I really get the sense that you need to educate yourself about this subject. No point in getting antsy at the slightest of prodding. It gives the game away. I’d suggest The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk. Details all the history of the middle East. Unless of course you’re into burning books ?

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    Mute James Breslin
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    Oct 18th 2023, 10:22 PM

    @Hugh Lynch: No.

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    Mute John finn
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:47 PM

    Sleepy Joe backs Israel account what happened at the Gaza hospital, nothing surprising there judging the billions America send Israel every year for military equipment to Sur press the Palestinian people. America killed enough innocent women and children in Iraq. War criminals stick together likes flies on a you know what.

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    Mute David
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:14 PM

    @John finn: America are directly to blame for most of the problems in that region, their blind support of Israel and it’s continued expansion is 100% supported by Joe Biden.

    Civilians don’t matter to the white house, look at the rail crash in Ohio and the devastation in Hawai, almost went completely ignored by these “one sided democrats”.

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:21 PM

    Ireland stands with Israel

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    Mute Hugh Lynch
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:23 PM

    @Mary Toilet: don’t be making silly statements like that. I don’t. I’m Irish

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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:29 PM

    @Mary Toilet: No it doesn’t.

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:08 PM

    @Mary Toilet: How dare you speak for everyone. There is a story on this site where The head of JRC criticized Irish T.D’s for NOT supporting Israel.

    “You” support them!

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    Mute Corey Dalton
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:11 PM

    @Mary Toilet: The Israeli government certainly doesn’t believe that Ireland stands behind Israel.

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    Mute Donal Desmond
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    Oct 18th 2023, 4:02 PM

    @Mary Toilet: Long Live Palestine

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    Oct 18th 2023, 4:05 PM

    @Donal Desmond: they can keep their barbaric medieval sharia law to themselves, there is no place for it in western civilisation

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    Mute Tom Newell
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    Oct 18th 2023, 6:44 PM

    @Mary Toilet: u dont stand with anyone all u are good for is bad trolling

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    Mute Geoff Bateman
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:58 PM

    All leaving the sinking ship that is FG/FF or Independents that know their doomed at the next general election…still they won’t mind as no doubt they will enjoy their massively inflated pensions

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    Mute Paddy C
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    Oct 18th 2023, 6:00 PM

    @Geoff Bateman: the gravy train must be unreal be great to experience it and just waffle get paid either way don’t have to live up to one promise.

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    Mute John McDonagh
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:42 PM

    I wonder if I understand this properly? If it was the Israelis that bombed the hospital, it was a war -crime. If it was a Hamas rocket it was a misfire and a mistake.

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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:19 PM

    Wow you can only comment on these non stories. The weather. Wetherspoons boring pubs or this guy

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:48 PM

    And another one bites the dust

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    Mute The boot
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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:19 PM

    Vote for the boot in the next GE.

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    Mute Stanley darsh
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:24 PM

    I stand with Israel’s right to blow up hospitals in self defence.

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    Mute Mary Toilet
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    Oct 18th 2023, 1:26 PM

    @Stanley darsh: ah, you mean the one that Islamic Jihad blew up

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    Mute David
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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:15 PM

    @Mary Toilet: Evidence, or are you just going to parrot the words of Benny and Joe!

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:22 PM

    @David: any evidence to contradict me? Nah, didn’t think so

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:42 PM

    @Mary Toilet: I don’t need any evidence as I didn’t claim it was one side or the other, the person you responded to, along with the likes attached, coupled with yourself and the likes attached to your comment are the ones that need to seek evidence. Are you a child or an adult?

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:52 PM

    @David: You need to calm yourself down, you’re getting very agitated

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    Oct 18th 2023, 2:58 PM

    @Mary Toilet: I just can’t stand people making ridiculous comments

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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:04 PM

    @David: stop making ridiculous comments then, use a bit of will power, you can do it, I have faith in you

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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:46 PM

    @Mary Toilet: christ almighty, I have to get an app in order to mute you.

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    Mute Pato
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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:08 PM

    Is Marc MacSharry
    a) a rocket
    b) a Hammas
    c) a Sligo?

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    Oct 18th 2023, 3:43 PM

    @Pato: a ham ass parish pumper

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    Mute Ian McDonald
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    Oct 18th 2023, 5:26 PM

    I can’t wait to see how many of the political experts from this group put themselves forward in the next election

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    Mute N D K
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    Oct 18th 2023, 7:14 PM

    Journalism controlled by the journal

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    Mute Wayne Shoes
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    Oct 18th 2023, 6:05 PM

    Vote for the shoe in the next election

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    Mute Peter Reilly
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    Oct 19th 2023, 1:26 PM

    Bye now

    2
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