Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
Eoin Butler
Published: Mongrel Magazine, December 2003Elvis… Is it yourself?
Mission: Trick a Psychic into Contacting Someone Who Never Existed
Purpose: My own amusement
Venue: Georges Street Arcade
Time: 13.57, 13/11/2003
Tools: Concealed microphone
Miscellaneous: Peckish, may need a sandwich later. Read the rest of this entry »
I feel like the title character from Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, confronted by the blank indifference of nature as he hurtles, terrified, through time and space.
There are anxious faces among the press contingent as the twin-engine plane swoops low over the craggy hills of northwest Donegal. Some on board have expressed doubts about the very existence of a Donegal Airport. So it is a relief when the clouds part and the runway at Carrickfinn looms into view. Read the rest of this article.
Torres scores the winner? You’re having a laugh.
I FELT I HAD A MINOR personal stake in Champions League: Barcelona v Chelsea (TV3 and Sky Sports 2) on Tuesday night. Back in 1997, Chelsea’s caretaker manager Roberto Di Matteo was just another brash young Premiership star with an apartment in the middle of London. I was working on a construction site next door.
When he fluffed a penalty against Manchester United in the Charity Shield that summer, I saw fit to offer him some constructive criticism the next day. At the top of my voice. From across the road. (In my defence, I was 18.) He complained furiously to the site foreman, and I could easily have been fired. Fortunately, my boss was a West Ham supporter. I kept the job. 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.
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 entry »
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 »
On Walsh’s Hill
The leaves run with the cars
The cars run to the town
Don’t expect the night time it will only let you down
Walk on Walsh’s hill
Look up at the stars
The town is full of lights and there are people in the bars
The nights are made of nothing
And the mornings are so cold
The television talks to you like you were four years old 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 »
How to get the girl
THE POLISH GIRL with the tea trolley is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. A tall, athletic young man in a tight-fitting black T-shirt is standing in the centre of Room 202. His hair is meticulously tousled and a tacky necklace pendant bobbles on his chest. He is a rising inter-county hurling star, but that wouldn’t ring any bells. She’s more likely to have noticed that he’s holding the hand of another (identically kitted-out) young man and leading him in a graceful twirl around on the spot.
On the far side of the room, a third boyband clone is filming the pair on a digital camcorder.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what this hotel worker is thinking. But I’d be very surprised if the words “gay porn” aren’t high up there in the mix. Read the rest of this article here.