Julian Gough

 
I am a great fan of the meaningless statistic. The New York Times seem to be a great fan of them, too. It certainly prints a lot of them.

The truly great meaningless statistic gives you the very precise, scientific-sounding parts of a real statistic, but the journalist leaves out one vital parameter, so that what's left has no meaning at all.

Here is a gem, from today's New York Times:

"The Center for Urban Forest Research estimates that each tree removes 1.5 pounds of pollutants from the air."

Wow! One point five pounds! They didn't even round it up, or down, to the nearest pound! That is so precise! Er, one point five pounds of pollutants every second? Every day? Every year? Over the course of the tree's life? Which might be what, two hundred years? Five hundred years?

And while we're at it, how big is this urban tree, the one that removes one point five pounds of pollutants from the air every second? Or every five hundred years... Is it a six-inch high bonsai tree in a pot on a window sill? Is it a six- foot sapling on a new housing estate? Is it a hundred foot high oak, in the centre of Central Park?

And what pollutants is this mighty oak, or pot plant,  removing with such astonishing speed, or sloth? A pollutant is just a chemical you don't approve of, in a place you don't want it. (Water in your glass is fine. Water in your petrol tank is a pollutant.) Carbon dioxide, for example, is now considered by many to be a greenhouse gas that will destroy the world. So are they counting carbon dioxide as a pollutant? Because trees do little else but remove carbon dioxide from the air. A lettuce could remove one point five pounds of CO2 from the air without even trying very hard. So a hundred foot tree that took five hundred years to do so would be pretty unimpressive. Or do they mean pollutants like lead? A bonsai tree that removed a pound and a half of lead from the air every second would be pretty damn impressive. I'd pay to watch that.

"The Center for Urban Forest Research estimates that each tree removes 1.5 pounds of pollutants from the air."

Jesus Christ.

I just discovered that Jude: Level 1 will be (again!) the Book on One, on RTE Radio 1, each night this week (Monday August 11th till Friday August 15th 2008). Each episode will start at 11.45pm, local Irish time (which is, in fact, UK Daylight Saving Time... which is one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time... and an hour behind Berlin time... which is Central European Time... you still with me? An hour ahead of me? Or behind?), and will run for 15 minutes. RTE Radio 1 streams live, so you should be able to catch it anywhere. (Here's how to listen... I've never been able to make it work, but you might have better luck.)

Incidentally, I found out my book was being broadcast across Ireland next week by reading the news in the Galway Advertiser. Jeeez, nobody tells me anything.

Jude was the Book on One in April, so this is quite a quick repeat. I didn't do the adaptation, which is by the producer, Aidan Stanley. Conor Lovett is marvellous as Jude.

I'll be reading (and singing) in Charlie Byrne's bookshop (in Galway) tomorrow, Tuesday August 5th, at 6pm or so. Vinny asked me to do something in Charlie's while I'm in Galway, and you don't say no to Vinny.

I reckon I'll read from the Galway section of Jude: Level 1, chat a bit, read a few poems, and then sing two or three Toasted Heretic songs, with Declan Collins fingering an acoustic guitar in a manner so sensuous that three-quarters of the women and a quarter of the men in the audience will be distracted entirely from the songs by the thought "If he can do that to a guitar, what could he do to my... wow..."

 

(Photo: Michael D. Higgins, Julian Gough, and the late Séamus Brennan, at the NUIG Alumni Awards Gala Banquet, on March 1st 2008. Photo by Aengus McMahon.)

 

The funeral of Séamus Brennan, the Fianna Fáil politician and former government minister, was held yesterday. Given that there's hardly a page of Jude: Level 1 that doesn't feature a prominent member of Fianna Fáil inciting vast crowds into a homicidal xenophobic frenzy, taking bribes from property developers, or using an illegally held firearm to try and kill a defenceless orphan, it's only fair to say that Séamus Brennan was one of the good guys. He stood up to Charlie Haughey when that was a dangerous thing to do, and he tried to clean up a corrupt and scandal-banjaxed Fianna Fáil when the task seemed impossible.

 

I met Séamus Brennan, for the first and only time, earlier this year. We were both receiving awards from NUIG (or University College Galway, as it was when we were there, back in the early Middle Ages). My award was for my contribution of the term "Ardcrony ballocks" to Irish literature. His was for his contribution to Irish politics, which was considerable. As Ireland's Minister for Transport in the early 1990s, he had broken the (state-owned) Aer Lingus monopoly on flights to Britain, and thus freed a tiny and struggling Irish airline called Ryanair to survive, then thrive. (The young, and the non-Irish, cursing at the 3 euros they've just paid for a small bottle of water on their 1 euro Ryanair flight, will not be aware that air travel out of Ireland, until Séamus Brennan's reforms, was far, far too expensive for 90% of the Irish population. Which was the only reason there was anyone left in Ireland by the early 1990s... My generation had to emigrate by bus.) Later, he was a highly regarded Minister for Social and Family Affairs. When I met him, this year, he was Minster for Arts, Sport and Tourism (the ever-mutating ministry which appears in Jude: Level 1, thinly disguised as the Ministry for Beef, Culture, and the Islands).

 

The NUIG Alumni Awards ceremony was a black tie affair, Gala Ball and all, and my noble punk spirit was seething after the third round of photographs, "Stand there", "Sit there", "Hold the award a little higher."

 

I said to Séamus Brennan (who was patiently cooperating, changing seats when asked, standing up, sitting down), you must get awfully sick of these events, I'd imagine this must be astoundingly boring for you. No, actually, he said. Politicians are always handing these things out, but we never get to keep one. In fact, I think this is the first award I've ever received. And it's a great feeling, it's a great honour.

 

He was so pleased, and humble, and as a result dignified, that I felt like a spoilt little shitehawk for not accepting the award more graciously. So I amended my attitude, and my mood improved enormously, and I had a great night, with my beloved and my family, feasting and dancing and generally knocking seven kinds of crack out of it.

 

I also talked quite a bit that night with Séamus Brennan, and with the blessed Michael D. Higgins, another former Minister for the Arts, and former recipient of an NUIG Alumni Award (and a former lecturer of mine, in sociology, who used to put the Labour Party's noble redistributionist policies into action by buying me coffee and buns in the canteen after lectures, when I was seventeen and staaaarving). We talked about everything from Beckett to Braveheart, and Séamus Brennan came across as a gentle, thoughtful man, at peace with himself. The shoptalk of two Ministers for the Arts gives a very entertaining insight into the peculiar mix of glamour and grind in the job. At one point, Séamus passed on Mel Gibson's best wishes (from a party the week before) to Michael D. (Michael D. Higgins had, as Minister, helped Mel shoot Braveheart here in Ireland by loaning him, among other things, the Irish Army.) I also heard some very entertaining stories about paperwork and three-foot-high piles of receipts (which reflected very well on Mel Gibson, and less well on some of our much smaller, native Irish film makers.) A mighty night.

 

Séamus Brennan was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, so he must have known he was dying that night. (Or dying a little faster than the rest of us, as Beckett would probably point out.) He still managed to bring something to the party.

 

I liked him a lot. May he rest in peace.

Forgot to mention, I'll be talking about the short story, and the BBC National Short Story Award, on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, later today (Friday July 4th 2008) at the maythesweetlordhelpus hour of 7.20 in the morning. (There's a seven-twenty in the MORNING as well? Who knew?)

 

Totally forgot to mention it in time for anyone to actually tune in, sorry. This is not because I'm blasé, it's because I'm totally untogether (and find it hard to believe anyone would be interested in my opinion of the short story).

 

 I will be talking for about ten seconds, probably, so you missed nuthin'.