Religion and dog poetry in my own loo library!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Don’t want to put you off your cuppa by describing in any detail my deliberations and deliveries on the loo, so suffice to say I like a good selection of reading material in there.

One book above all others is a permanent fixture: Mark Forsyth’s Etymologicon is a toilet treat. The brilliant and hilarious Inky Fool blogger takes a circular journey around the English language, allowing the passing visitor (pun intended) to dip in and out of his book and forever be at least interested; sometimes amazed.

Then there’s the weekend tabloid TV magazines and The Guardian’s Guide, with which I make a half-hearted attempt to stay in touch with popular culture. Throughout the course of the week I read about all the films, plays and exhibitions that I’m missing, give a glance to the TV soaps to see if anything vaguely interesting is happening in them, so that I can better make small talk with the stranger at the bus stop.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking down my nose at the soaps. Decades ago I used to be addicted to Corrie and Eastenders, and Brookside before that. Who couldn’t love Jimmy Corkhill?

Then, when I lived in a quiet farmhouse in north Mayo, I stopped watching all of them, completely. There I was, surrounded by ancient trees, with a heron on the rock by the river, and here were all these vile people shouting at each other on my TV screen. Why would I want to listen to them?

When the stress levels are high or the IBS is kicking in, I can require fairly lengthy visits to the loo library. For such sessions there is more meaningful reading matter available. Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion might not sound like it’s a laugh a minute book, but the pure authority of the 19th century philosopher’s voice rarely fails to make me giggle.

Unshackled as he is by the political correctness of our 21st century liberal agenda, he feels neither shame nor guilt in dismissing everyone’s religious faith. Where any writer would today have to declare their respect for the rights of others to believe in what they wish, brazen as a battering ram Schopenhauer suggests on the very first page: “I can’t see why, because other people are simple-minded, I should respect a pack of lies. What I respect is truth, therefore I can’t respect what opposes truth.”

It’s immaterial whether I agree with him or not. I simply envy his arrogance.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.