Juggling With Turnips

Karl MacDermott

Description

An overweight Mafioso wants to dance like Michael Flatley. A comedian hires an unreliable heckler to disrupt the high profile gig of a rival. A young boy develops a bizarre addiction to communion wafers. Just some of the stories from Juggling With Turnips. A book with very little juggling. And no turnips. Juggling With Turnips contains twenty-three stories of short comic fiction. And stuff in-between about what's going on with the writer of the stories. As he tries to the find someone to read the stories. Just one person. Anyone. Is that too much to ask? It also contains some extracts from his vast and pointless archive. Seven poems. And one reference to Harry Dean Stanton.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Eyewear Publishing
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839780424
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in 2018
by Eyewear Publishing Ltd
Suite 333, 19-21 Crawford Street
London, W1H 1PJ
United Kingdom
Graphic design by Edwin Smet
Cover photograph by Gunther Kleinert, Getty images
Author photograph by Bernard Walsh
Printed in England by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved
2018-2020 Karl MacDermott
ISBN: 978-1-839-78042-4
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Set in Bembo 13 / 17 pt
WWW.EYEWEARPUBLISHING.COM

For Charlie and Phil
Contents
MEETING WITH SISYPHUS
THE THREE STORIES SISYPHUS WAS MEANT TO READ
A Series of Dim
The Life and Death of an Obscure Irish Actor
The Don of the Dance
ANOTHER MEETING WITH SISYPHUS
THE THREE EXTRA STORIES LEFT WITH SISYPHUS
Godfrey Give Me
Cupid Bicuspid
Ursula s Book Problem
A CUP OF COFFEE WITH OLD FRIEND ALAN
THE STORIES ALAN HAS YET TO READ
A Christmas Bell
The Comedy Junkie
Hard Shoulder
THE KARL MACDERMOTT ARCHIVE PART ONE
PRACTICING MINDFULNESS BEFORE ANOTHER MEETING WITH SISYPHUS
THREE STORIES ON A MEMORY STICK MISPLACED AFTER KARL S PHONE CALL WITH FIDELMA
The Lost Diary of Eva Braun
Carry on Doctor
Trip to Moynalty
KARL SPEAKS AT THE CHARLIE AND CONTENDERS EVENING
THE STORY FROM THE CHARLIE AND THE CONTENDERS CHAPBOOK
Mother s Day
AT HOME WITH RACHEL
THREE OF THE STORIES RACHEL PERUSED
Galway s Greatest Lover
Ziggy Stardust Ruined My Life
Whenever
THE KARL MACDERMOTT ARCHIVE PART TWO
KARL VISITS HIS PSYCHOANALYST
THREE STORIES THAT SIT INDEFINITELY IN DOCTOR KINSELLA S INBOX
The Malachy Mission
Heckler For Hire
Fate Wears a Blindfold
A PINT WITH OLD FRIEND ALAN
SOME EXTRA STORIES KARL DIDN T BOTHER GIVING ALAN SINCE HE HADN T READ THE FIRST THREE
The Carpenter and the Snitch
The Something of Something
Sisters are Doing it for Themselves
THE KARL MACDERMOTT ARCHIVE PART THREE
ONE FINAL MEETING WITH SISYPHUS
THE LIDL SHORT STORY OF THE YEAR ENTRY
Memoirs of an Unlikely Rebel
MEETING WITH SISYPHUS
Karl.
Sisyphus. Thanks for seeing me.
Why wouldn t I find time to see you? Sure, aren t you one of SOS Management s oldest clients?
1997.
Where does the time go? So what s the idea?
I m working on a book of short stories, short fiction... well, vignettes.
Hold it. Short stories are awful difficult to sell this weather. No one reads that kind of stuff anymore, what with the internet and all that carry on. Novels are struggling as well. Basically no one reads, like. So that s a problem for people who write.
Yeh. I just try and keep doing the work, so eh, bear with me, Sisyphus. I ve called the collection Snapshots of Inconsequence .
Snapshots of what? Ah, for fuck sake, Karl. That s not a great title, to be honest.
I ve brought the first three stories in with me. Would you like to read them?
Sure. Sure. Yeh. Yeh. Leave them on the desk. I ll do that later.
Promise?
Did you ever think of thinking outside the box, Karl, as the Americans say?
What does that even mean, Sisyphus? Thinking outside the box. Have you ever known anyone having to think inside a box apart from Harry Houdini?
Alright. Alright. Now, look I was thinking, maybe you should write a memoir.
A memoir?
Readers love memoirs. You know, Fidelma, my partner, she has contacts in Sludge Lagoon Press, and they say nothing sells like a good memoir.
But you need to be famous. My profile would be, uh, excruciatingly modest.
Stop it. Didn t you win that Nora Barnacle Anything To Do With Galway Literary Award a few years ago?
2001.
Ok. So you re not permanently in the public eye. Or intermittently, even. But that doesn t matter. All we have to do with this memoir thing is find an angle.
What do you mean?
Now I m just putting this out there. You weren t ever abused as a child?
No.
That always works. Readers love that stuff. No priest ever messed with you?
No.
Did you ever have a drink problem?
No. I m a very moderate drinker. I was once described by a friend as a clean-living Bukowski.
The Barfly fella?
Yeh.
Gotcha. Drugs?
No. I mean, I ve had the odd spliff in college but...
Jays, what ll we do with you at all? What about cancer? My cancer hell! Testicular cancer always works for the auld men. Publishers can t get enough of it. For the auld women it would be the auld breast cancer. And did they get the one or both removed. That always gets them in the news, or if they say they ve had an abortion fifteen years ago, that always gets them on the telly. But you wouldn t have had an abortion, you d have to be a woman for that.
I think that would be a prerequisite.
You ve never felt like a woman, have you? You re not like gender confused, or something like? That would be great if you were, it s really in at the minute.
No. I m a man. My gender isn t flowing. Fluid. Whatever.
Oh. Pity. You re not gay like? Are you? Although the auld gay thing seems a bit pass at this stage. You didn t grow up gay in Galway and have a tormented secret double life?
No. I was more like a closet heterosexual.
Uh?
I took my time. Nothing much happened to me when I was growing up. I had more of an unspent youth than a misspent youth. Sour sixteen. Not sweet.
Ah, for fuck s sake. Not even any hair-raising escapades then.
Not really. Oh, wait a minute. I raided an orchard once with a bunch of older boys. This guy Colin came up to me one day after school and said Hey, do you want to come along and raid an orchard tonight? And I thought, to raid an orchard! It sounds so exciting. All these images streamed into my head. Scaling walls. Searchlights. Ropes. Guard-dogs. And of course, apples. But at the end of the day, when we got round to it, all there was, was just the apples. And they were so bitter, we couldn t even eat them. Life can be so disappointing.
Arey, what ll we do with you, at all.
I think raiding that orchard was the first of my is that all there is moments.
What?
You know from that Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is?
Jesus! Peggy Lee. Houdini. The trouble with you, Karl, is you re living in the past. Your head is pointed in the wrong direction. It s the future you have to think of.
Sorry Sisyphus. Maybe I m just a bit depressed.
What?
I don t know. Maybe I m just a bit depressed.
Hang on. Are you serious about the auld depression? That would be great! A mental health angle for a memoir. Always works. Manna from heaven. Listen, have you ever had suicidal thoughts? Tell me you ve had suicidal thoughts. That s the biggie! Suicidal thoughts! Did he want to do himself in? How close was he to doing himself in! Jays, they lap that up.
Well, I m not that depressed.
That would have been too good. Are you on medication?
No. I m just a bit down all the time.
Arey, that s fuckin useless.
I get headaches. Chronic tension headaches.
Arey, will you fuck off! Everyone gets fuckin headaches. You re giving me a headache. Do you do mindfulness? For your auld depression and headaches. They fuckin love mindfulness. It s one of those zeitgeisty things.
No.
Do you want to try it? And then write a book about it. Me and My Mindfulness .
Me and My Mindfulness ?! Come on, Sisyphus. I consider myself an architect of the imagination. I do not write self-help books!
All right, look, it was just a suggestion. Listen, I m running a bit behind schedule, think we ll have to wrap it up for today. Have a think about some of those things we ve discussed. I ll try and read these three stories anyway at some stage and I ll get back to you soon. Alright. Keep the flag flying, Karl, keep it flying. I ll be seeing you.
THE THREE STORIES SISYPHUS WAS MEANT TO READ
A SERIES OF DIM
By the turn of the 21 st century, Cosmo Kincaid had stopped drinking with other men in bars to avoid the embarrassment of having to urinate side by side with an acquaintance. It was not that he had a particularly small penis, although it was nothing to write home about as his first and only serious girlfriend Doreen had confided to a mutual friend in the summer of 1989.
What also had to be factored into these situations was the possibility of being caught in the crossfire of urine spray. Someone else s urine spray. Cosmo, himself, was not a powerful micturator. He had a tentative sphincter muscle that automatically tightened any time he was forced to engage in a strained conversation with some young bucko, hands on hips, proudly watching his Thomas the Tank Engine create a powerful deluge. A deluge that inadvertently led to stains. On other people s clothing.
Cosmo always preferred going to the cubicle. It was safer there. No strangers (or acquaintances). He could relax. Although, once back in 1998, he got a dreadful fright when he looked up and saw an extremely tall man - must have been nearly seven-foot - looking down on him from the cubicle next door. Won t happen again, he thought. Abnormally tall people don t live long.
What took you so long?
Phyllis Bourke, Cosmo s (non-male) drinking companion, welcomed him back to their table.
Had to wait for a cubicle to be free.
Cosmo sat down and sighed.
You know you are getting old when you can no longer read the graffiti on toilet walls.
Phyllis sipped her drink.
Or write graffiti on toilet walls.
Cosmo looked at Phyllis.
You ve written graffiti on toilet w