You may have heard that Derry is this year’s UK City of Culture. Coverage has been all good. But I wish more artists would break the rules. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Art should refuse to do what it’s told. It should shout out truths that authority would rather were left unsaid. Art should be suspicious to the point of paranoia when invited to put its shoulder to the wheel of a safe project. When told to behave, art should wreck rings round it.
If O’Casey had set out in the aftermath of a conflict that had ripped Dublin apart to write plays to encourage citizens to feel better about themselves or outsiders to praise Dublin as a darlin’ place, he’d have written rubbish. Instead, within weeks of the civil war ending, he gave us the Shadow of a Gunman…”They say it’s the gunmen are dying for the people when it’s the people are dying for the gunmen…” There were riots, and no harm.
If Goya had responded to the massacre of Madrilenos by Napoleon’s imperial army with a portrait of dignified heroism that the citizens could simper sadly at to console themselves, the image would now be an unremembered daub. Instead, he bequeathed the desperate fear and flash-lit horror of The Third of May and left it to ourselves to ponder its pity and rage. I wonder if anybody asked him afterwards what that sort of thing was going to do for inward investment?
Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. Would he have been better turning it into a travelogue, giving tourism a bit a boost?
The brochure for City of Culture tells that Derry has “a story which must be told.” Quite. It’s a tumultuous tale of hatred and suffering, generosity and love, marked by pain endured and also inflicted, a city of oppressed and oppressors, an expanse of beauty ravaged everywhere with ugliness. It’s a great yarn, right enough, but much of it not for the squeamish and much of it therefore not to be told. Not in front of the visitors, anyway.
Not the old story, then, not the story of how things really were, of the hotch-potch of actual experience which made us what we are, but a tale full of charming resilience to beguile the world and, perforce, to beguile ourselves as well. The most plausible way to tell untruth is to believe it yourself, which you can if you try, and Derry does…
The City of Culture’s story of Derry is of a happy shining place teeming with shiny happy people, with a song on our lips and a lilt in our step, all resolved to forget what’s regretted and keep the dreaminess alive.
We lack a theme song for the year that’s in it. But in my mind’s ear I can hear a chorus of cultural entrepreneurs, reformed radicals, winsome academics, council bosses, police commanders, social climbers, funding barons and representatives of the four main churches, all in perfect harmony. So, all together now:
“Oh, Irishmen forget the past
And think of the time that’s coming fast
When we will all be civilized
Neat and clean and well advised
Oh, won’t Mother England be surprised?
Whack fol the diddle fol the di dol day”.

I am tired of explaining why, in the Christian perspective, bestiality is merely a venal sin. So I won’t. Other considerations aside, Hot Press readers may not be particularly interested in religious attitudes to having it off with a consenting hen. But many bestialists are fervently religious and may be worried about the status of their souls vis-a-vis the Almighty. As a means of comfort, I bring you the tail of Dobbin and Bob.
Bob Newman, 23, from Devizes, had been due to stand trial for “penetration of a living animal”, to wit, an ass, at a farm in Wiltshire in April. The ever-reliable Wiltshire Times reports that Bob has pleaded guilty and been released on bail. He must obey a curfew between 7pm and 7am, and stay away from any land where farm animals are kept.
Meanwhile, a man who enjoyed dressing up as a dog called called Bubblegum Husky has been arrested for having sexual relations with a cat. Ryan Havens Tannenholz, 28, of Boise, Idaho, is alleged to have regularly abused the cat on several occasions last year. His lawyers intend to raise the question of whether the cat considered itself to have been abused when the case comes to trial next month.
Ryan has been charged with six counts of “crimes against nature” and one of cruelty to an animal.
Readers will, of course, be kept abreast of these important cases.
In the meantime, feel free with a ferret.

The original three and a half hour version of Heaven’s Gate has just been re-released. When it first appeared in 1981, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker declared it “a numbing shambles”.
Robert Ebert reckoned it “a study in wretched excess”.
Vincent Canby of the New York Times chipped in “Something quite rare in movies - an unqualified disaster.”
It closed after three days in a single cinema in New York - and after one day in Dublin. It effectively ended director Michael Cimino’s career and bankrupted United Artists.
In fact, it’s a masterpiece. It is scheduled to return to Dublin in the next couple of weeks. You owe it to yourself to see it.