Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
irish times
Published: Irish Times, August 20 2011The Trawlerman
IT’S 3.45AM AND not a soul is stirring in Kinsale. As our jeep crunches to a halt on the roadside, the headlights reveal a lone heron wading in the tide below. Shane Murphy bounds down the gangway and boards Aurora Borealis, a 35ft inshore trawler he has skippered for six years.
He flicks a light switch in the wheelhouse and fires up the diesel engine. Mike McCarthy, his crewman, busies himself with the moorings. Our passage out of Kinsale this morning will be with the help of a baffling array of technologies: Decca plotter, echo sounder, radar, Sodena plotter, autopilot, GPS and compass.
“I might also look out of the window occasionally,” adds the skipper, deadpan. Read the rest of this article here.
I’d like to thank the (Royal Irish) Academy…
I was flattered to be included in Penguin’s collection of Great Irish Reportage, published last week. Not that you’d guess so from the above picture.
I had been trying to appear casual at the launch. As though my writing gets included in anthologies alongside Flann O’Brien, Fintan O’Toole and Conor Cruise O’Brien all the time, and I wasn’t particularly phased.
So one of my sisters taking flash photographs kinda risked botching that whole operation.
The piece selected, For God & St. Patrick, originally appeared in Mongrel magazine in September 2007. It’s about religious observance in Co. Mayo. If you have a minute, I’d like to relate a little (EDIT: actually a long bit) about how that article came about. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: The Irish Times, 12 January 2013Thank you for the music, Freddie
For rock stars of a certain age, death was once considered a good career move. Not any more. With record sales plummeting, and concert tours by so-called “heritage acts” frequently raking in hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, life has never been more lucrative for the rock n’ roll OAP.
Freddie Mercury would be 66 if he were alive today. Quite how many stadiums Queen would have packed out in the past couple of decades, had the band’s outrageously talented frontman not died in 1991, is a matter for conjecture. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Irish Times, August 25 2012There are three interesting jobs. They are president, astronaut and secret agent.
A FEW YEARS ago, my then-girlfriend and I had some friends over for dinner. While we ate, we listened to music. Afterwards, we relocated to the living room for a glass of wine. Rather than lug my old, clunky stereo and speakers with us, someone suggested that I play my CDs on the television’s DVD player.
It was a novel idea, and it worked out fine. There was just one problem.
All of our guests were now sitting staring at the TV screen. It was blank, save for the CD track number and a ticking time counter. But they stared at it anyway. That’s when it struck me. People will watch just about anything on television. Read the rest of this article.
Published: Irish Times, August 25 2012There are three interesting jobs. They are president, astronaut and secret agent.
A FEW YEARS ago, my then-girlfriend and I had some friends over for dinner. While we ate, we listened to music. Afterwards, we relocated to the living room for a glass of wine. Rather than lug my old, clunky stereo and speakers with us, someone suggested that I play my CDs on the television’s DVD player.
It was a novel idea, and it worked out fine. There was just one problem.
All of our guests were now sitting staring at the TV screen. It was blank, save for the CD track number and a ticking time counter. But they stared at it anyway. That’s when it struck me. People will watch just about anything on television. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Irish Times, June 2 2012Surf, sounds and Michael D by the sea
It’s just after midday on Saturday at the Sea Sessions in Bundoran and a handful of revellers are purging their hangovers by surfing the furious Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, the conditions that make this town a Mecca for surfing are, for the moment at least, rendering it unsuitable for doing just about anything else.
There’s a gale blowing up from the sea and, at the ticket office, a dreadlocked member of staff has mounted the portcabin roof in a desperate attempt to reaffix a torn away sign. Oh dear. We could have a Rod Hull situation on our hands here. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Irish Times, 24 April 2012One man and a little lady
His sister is going away for the weekend and he’s volunteered to babysit her sweet little two-year-old Lola – what can go wrong? Well, apart from a toilet incident, the lost buggy, mental exhaustion…, writes EOIN BUTLER
FRIDAY
There is a pigeon flapping in the rafters at Heuston Station. Below him, an endless procession of students tramp through the airy terminus, slinging their dirty laundry west for the weekend. My sister is seated at a tiny stainless steel table at the edge of the bustling concourse.
On her knee, my two-year-old niece, Lola, is slobbering over a bagel. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Irish Times, February 27 2012‘Eoin Butler has been driving for as long as he can remember, but has failed the test more times than he can count.’
GROWING UP IN rural Ireland, I don’t recall a time when I didn’t know how to drive. As a child, I would race my father’s car up and down the driveway, sneak it over the cattle grid, and peek out on to the road beyond. In my mid-teens, I traversed the back roads of east Mayo to collect my grandmother for her dinner every Sunday.
At 17, I applied for my first provisional driver’s licence. To put that event in an historic context, on one of my earliest (official) jaunts, my friends and I were questioned by gardaí hunting for the IRA killers of Jerry McCabe. We’d just been swimming in Errit Lake, near Gorthaganny. The lads were wearing wet Bermuda shorts. I was driving in my bare feet. Read the rest of this article here.
Clicking along the ledge
#5 David Norris would make a terrible, terrible president (June 10th)
Just because you like someone, and just because their election would generate positive press coverage for your country the world over, it does not make them that person a good – or even remotely suitable – candidate for high office. This blog was a fraction ahead of the curve on that one, I like to think. Read the rest of this entry »
“There are about a hundred of them and they keep wobbling around on the chopping board…”
“Explain it to me like I’m six years old” is Denzel Washington’s mantra in the film Philadelphia. It could just as easily serve as my motto in the kitchen. On a good day, I’m capable of boiling a potato. But that’s about as Jamie Oliver as it gets around here. Ciara O’Hagen claims her healthy dinner recipes are idiot-proof. Lady, we’re about to put that to the test. Read the rest of this entry »