The Keeper Hoop dee doo! Says I, loudly .mp3 (5.19 MB)
Gareth O'Callaghan
Poolbeg Press, 1999http://www.rte.ie/2fm/garethocallaghan.html
A Cautionary Tale
Skirting the dodgier estates of Corduff one overcast winter's day, I panicked to see a large object plummet from unseen heavens. It crashed straight through the roof of the stolen Opel Vectra that had just gunned around a sharp corner. Raven-locked young women scattered. Whistling bombs drowned their screaming. The car spun to a swift, kinetic bang worthy of primetime television.
What in the name of Sir Arthur-? I had my ratlike instincts to thank from under the newfound safety of an burnt-out cement mixer. Small bricks impacted with great fanfare and small ripples. Like shooting stars, but dimmer. A middle-aged housewife keeled over- knocked cold- by a rain that sent her starstruck. Books splatted down like rotten eggs, thicker by the minute.
One lightweight object, undamaged by its high-velocity discard, bounced into view, allowing me to read the author. My thoughts raced past Hearts in Atlantis straight into The Twilight Zone. Cathy Kelly. Cecilia Ahern. That heinously severe villain chick from the low-budget soap opera everyone calls Fairly Shitty.
God in his sublime wrath was covering Ireland with a plague of celebrity novels.
Your buddy Critical Mick is fool enough to read anything, it is true. Waiting the 559-page storm out, bored watching the National Aquatic Centre lose its roof yet again, I scooped up the paperback that with a pulpy splat landed at arm's reach. The Keeper, by RTE 2 media personality Gareth O'Callaghan.
Maybe The Keeper will prove entertaining and insightful, I gave benefit to my doubt. Maybe Gareth O'Callaghan has always wanted to be a novelist and the celebrity thing just happened by mistake. I started thumbing pages. God knows enough things have happened to me by random ill-fortuned mistake.
But then again, that same God was playfully plaguing West Dublin with mass-market bombs.
I soon discovered that if there is one thing I hate more than being trapped for hours underneath a burnt-out cement mixer, it's Nazis. Not real Nazis for their crimes against man. Nazis in popular media. They're sooooo cliché.
TRUE STORY: A German workmate of mine was recently suspended for three days under accusation of eating a canteen yoghurt he did not pay for. His situation presents greater moral challenge than The Keeper.
Not far from this spot in Corduff, a window washer once shook his squeegee at me in a prolonged and menacing manner. It takes three minutes for the lights to change at that intersection. The stopwatch on my mobile phone has since counted.
The Keeper's scenes felt like a retelling of TV shows. "Ah did ye catch that drama on UTV last night, with the Uzi's blasting away and the car bombs and shite?" Events as small-screen entertaining as innocent passers-by being whacked prostrate by pelting plagues of Cecelia Ahern and Claudia Carroll.
One interesting image: when the (qv Ye Olde Critical Mick's Patented Hardboil Checklist) alcoholic ex-cop enters the story, his drunken ass arrives muscling his standard-issue cop car into the flooding river. Not bad.
In 559 pages. One interesting image.
"Gareth O'Callaghan!" I screamed in desperation. "Would you ever get your worthy self up off that bed, off the radio, and give us a decent read?"
The silence of splattering Liz Allen novels was my only reply. Would The Keeper never end?
And then... dawn came breaking, from the North?
Three figures approached with the jugged glow of drunken angels. Though the flapping pages of the paperback rain flailed all around them, these critically beautiful celebrity models remained untouched.
"You muppet!" the first C-cupper cried. "There's no burnt out cement mixers in Corduff! Kids chuck stones through building site windows and gangsters are gunned down in its pubs, that's all!"
"Would you ever present an accurate depiction of Dublin's current scene!" lambasted the most appeasing spectre in her Double-D bounty. "True there's a plague of celebrity novels, but it's only one corner of town! Easily avoided, Critical Mick. Ya toe rag bastard."
Drums sounded as if from deep under the earth. My heart soared, for the beat drowned out the disgraceful thuds of stinking pulp.
"It is entirely within your power," the third vision spoke. Her hooters, making up for all the hellish cement cinder smells of rough Corduff! "to dodge these streaming sheets of publicity. Go to the underground, ya thick pig! Avoid these main streams!"
Not only beautiful, but fiery and critical too. Casting aside The Keeper I dove into the nearest sewer. There were frights! Ignominy! And action! Off subterreanean walls to a psycho bass-drum beat I read what hidden, magnificent, original books I found there. The three Critical chicks followed! Groovy, baby. I snapped photos with my cel phone camera as they re-applied eyeliner. While veins of goldschlager and chocolate snaked all around.
Is The Keeper a keeper? Men with squeegies are scarier. The theft of a fifty-cent yoghurt evokes more navel-gazing on crime, justice, righteousness and punishment. Critical Mick sez: Chuck all the rubbish aside and see where your imagination takes you.
Sorry, Gareth. Sorry, chick lit celebs. Critical Mick was not impressed at all.
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