We are sailing

There is a new book out about the Titanic (me and Ma was just saying we was needing a new book about the Titanic) and it is discussed in the Independent newspaper today. Apparently the quality of some of the steel rivets used might have caused the ship to break up and sink quicker than expected. According to the Independent “this latest book is likely to disturb both the shipyard and bereaved relatives.”

Now, to be honest, (leaving aside what an upset shipyard might look like) Granny still prostrate with grief over the loss of adorable little brother 96 years ago is an unlikely proposition. Indeed, Granny staring blankly as well meaning big boned girls feed her in her wing backed chair is more likely and Granny in a place far far away from the toubles of this mortal coil is the most likely of all.

Apparently the authors of this book have reproduced and stress tested these defective rivets. Ah look, have they nothing better to be doing? Ship sank fast in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Atlantic. Dead in water 12 hours before being hauled out or dead in water eight hours before being hauled out? Titanic the movie would have been even longer – is that not reason enough to leave the dead in peace?

I generally cannot abide the Independent and its preachy tone and dramatic front page cover stories which are more Leaders than something you might expect of a daily newspaper (the hint is in the title “Sir” Tony). A full front pager with something along the lines of a picture of the Earth and a headline “Countdown to Destruction” or somesuch is all very worthy and laudable but when divorced from immediate day to day affairs is not what you want from page one. I’m not of course singling out global warming – I care for the environment, lickle ickle dolphins, future of the children, blah blah, blah, its just over coffee in the morning I like to know what might be happening in the immediate term.

(Side bar – All this global warming stuff is the everyday plat du jour but what about acid rain? The scourge of the 90s student essay or Young Scientist project. No teenage girl could wash her hair in a copper bowl for fear of a green tinge. Is that sorted now or a still topical story lurking around the obits?)

Journalistic sloppiness is not of course confined to the Independent. The writer Nuala O’Faolain (wikipedia tells us it is pronounced “Noola O Fway-lawn” which is so right and soooo wrong. Just do your best non Gaels) is dying, which is a tragedy and I urge anyone to read her book “Are You Somebody” to appreciate this extraordinary woman in the apparently very short time left to her. This is a person who in the course of a recent unscripted interview can say on her death “‘I thought that it would be me and the world, but the world turned its back on me. The world said to me: ‘That’s enough of you now.’ We are not going to give you any treats at the end, even adoring nature.”, can describe her recently bewigged appearance as looking  like “a rather striking elderly chorus girl” and on being asked if she can offer advice to other cancer sufferers has the honesty to say simply “No”.  Her self pity is as unvarnished and harsh as the critical light she draws on herself and in revealing that human truth I think she is magnificent.

The Guardian has picked up this story and described her as daughter of “one of Ireland’s most famous writers of the 20th century”. In the age of Google, the good citizens of Farringdon street should be able to distinguish between the daughter of the the hack writer of the long defunct Evening Press’es “Dubliner’s Diary” and the writer Sean O’Faolain. I won’t bore you with the details of the thrown together article except to note that for them to conclude that an imminently dying woman, diagnosed in her home in New York six weeks ago,  has “now settled” in Galway ignores the point and story of how she finds herself where she is.

So, from ship to shore and ending at the sea again in Galway. I never promised coherence.