Jerry at ferrokes is to try out for the mounted real team. Is that right Jerry? Yes, sir right on the top too I suppose you're glad about that aren't you Jerry? Yes, sir. I sure am hope I make it do you know about the hunter Craig's trophy Yes, sir if we win it from Edson in this next contest it becomes a property of ferrokes That's right, and we want that trophy We very nearly won it last year But the judges thought the jumps of the ferrokes team weren't quite as clean as those of the EMI Well, they will be this year, sir, especially if Jerry makes the team. You're not modest. Are you Jerry? All I know is if I make the team I'll do the very best I can and I think that will be sufficient. Oh Just a minute Look at that smokestack on the powerhouse there Reaching majestically for the sky an imposing sight isn't it? Yes a pretty color too that pale gray against a background of white clouds Yeah, it sure is it's strange that some of the cadets think it would look better If it had the letters FMA smeared on it in gaudy blue paint Yeah Well, come on. I'm glad that you agree with me that the stack looks better plain gray Oh, yes, sir much better. Don't you think so Jerry? Oh, yeah, sure sure does me Say major Davis. Yes, I Completely forgot when I went into your office I wanted to ask you something but when you told me Sergeant Alden wanted to see me it slipped my mind Oh, what was it? Oh, well, sir. I got a letter from mr. Randall and he said he was sending me a surprise I was just wondering if some sort of a package came for me. No, there was no package for you in the mail today That's funny. Mr. Randall said that the surprise should reach here about the same time as the letter No, I guess it takes a little longer for packages, huh? Yes, it sometimes does. Oh, they're Sergeant Alden now He's waiting for you. She looks so stern. I wonder if he's angry about something. Hello, Major Davis. Hello, Sergeant Oh, I I have something to take up with you get at Dugan. Yes, sir I just got your message and came right out here, sir. Well does come with me now. Yes, sir May we come along? Yes, too. Oh, you took it at Phillips. I could have been here sooner But I didn't know you wanted to see me today. Oh, and thanks for putting my name on the list Well, I hope you make it Dugan. You know, I'd I'd like to have you on the team What are we coming back here to the stalls for? I just wanted to ask you something about Well Oh, yes, that's right. He's a pretty animal lean. Yes. He is very pretty that was Sergeant Alden's mouth when he was in the army Oh, right here Dugan in this next stall. Take a look at that horse and tell me Why it's winter. Hey, look Lee, Major Davis. Hey, it's blender from the circus Splendid am I glad to see you? Oh Jean you're glad to see me too. Aren't you fella? Where did he come from Sergeant Alden? I mean, well, well, how did he get here Lee isn't in the a beauty sure is Jerry I figured you'd be glad to see him glad say I was oh boy, you know, I Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say. Hey, can I go in the stall and pet him? It appears the boy was very much fond of that horse. It looks like a pretty nice friendship. Major Davis. Yes, Lee Isn't that isn't that the surprise mr.. Randall said Yes, that's right Jerry so excited it hasn't dawned on him yet. He told me many times how much he thought of that horse This is great. Isn't it major Davis? I didn't expect to see a welcome like that from either the horse or Jerry But first I got to find out what this is all about Say tell me Sergeant Alden. I don't understand. Well, I think at best we let Major Davis to the explain. Well Jerry That's the surprise mr.. Randall mentioned in his letter to you. Oh, sure. He said I might add a big surprise Oh, is it big enough? Well, I couldn't want anything more. I'll explain it to you Jerry I'll tell you why Splendor's here at Pharaoh. Yes, sir now It seems that you wrote mr.. Randall that you were trying out for the polo team. Yes, sir I did but that was some time ago. Oh, yes, yes I know but as soon as mr.. Randall received your letter He wrote me and asked if it would be permissible to send you your own mount if you made the team No, I see I answered his letter and gave him the ruling That is that no cadet is allowed to have his own horse at the academy Now then he wrote back and wanted to know if we would accept Splendor as a gift from him to Fair Oaks I thought this over for a couple of days and then wrote him that we would accept his kind offer and appreciate the gift very much But I added that you wouldn't be allowed to ride Splendor unless you took part in some of the equestrian activities Yes, sir. You want to stand now? Splendor belongs to Fair Oaks military Academy. Yes, sir. Sergeant Holden. Yes, sir Did I mention to you that mr.. Randall informed me that a mr. Quitey said Splendor had been trained as a jumper. Yes, sir I I believe you did say something about his being a jumper. Why? Gee He told me he was going to make a good jumper out of Splendor as Splendor's mother was a wonderful jumper The horse certainly shows very good early training. I broke him in. I was the first one that ever wrote him Yeah, that explains the friendship between you two that man. I nursed him through pneumonia.  Well, he knows plenty about him I should think he would oh by the way I'm I'm calling the boys for the riding test tomorrow afternoon. I'll give you your call right now I want you to be here right after class. Yes, sir. I will and can't May I try out on Splendor? Would that be giving a Dugan an advantage over the other boys? And why I don't think so major, but I'll tell you what I had in mind to do Dugan Yes, sir now in as much as Splendor is pure white and beautiful dudes, right major I thought we'd try to use him as a pivot horse on the drill team We'd look very well in pivot position You see Dugan all the other horses on the team are bays And I thought that the contrast would be very good if you were to hold down the pivot spot Excuse me. Am I interrupting? No, no, no not at all Morrison come in. Hello, Sergeant Alden. Oh, hello Morrison Dugan Phillips We were just talking about Jerry's horse this one here Jerry's horse. Well, not exactly You see mr. Randall Jerry's guardian just made a present of Splendor to the Academy. Hmm That's what I call a fine animal Splendor huh, that's right Hello Splendor a real circus pony Morrison and a beauty. Oh, what were you saying about the pivot position sergeant Alden? Well, there isn't very much more to say that's all I but I'd like to use him in that spot if I can And I think he can do the work all right pivot position on horseback is the same as in drill is that? Well, and that means that Splendor will have to stand still while the other horses go around in different formations That's right. You see that not only takes a good horse, but it takes a good rider as well Well, I think I could do it. All right. I mean I try out for that position. I surely I'll be glad to have you I'd like to put in my bed for that pivot position sergeant Alden. All right, Morrison I'll give you your call now. It's tomorrow afternoon just as fast as you can get here after class Then whoever gets a pivot position gets to ride Splendor. Mm-hmm now I'll have three of you trying out you and Morrison and oh, yes Paul Warren Gee, I hope I make it may the best man win. I wouldn't mind riding Splendor myself It's safe to say we'll all try hard for that position. Is that all now sergeant Alden? Yes, I think so as far as I'm concerned, but oh, how about you major? Well, that's all Jerry I just wanted to come out here and be with you to see how you'd take your surprise and it was worth the walk to see the Expression on your face. Goodbye Splendor. See you tomorrow Yes, I will. Well major, there's no doubt about that little horse remembering him. Yes as you said sergeant There's a real friendship there. You ready Lee? I want to get right back to the room and get a letter off to Mr. Randall before dinner Excuse us, please. Surely surely go right ahead. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. Yes, sir Goodbye. I Want to write to mr. Randall right away and thank him you should in fact He said in his letter for you to write him right away and let him know how you like the surprise boy He wasn't that a surprise though. Hey, you didn't know about it. Did you know I was just so surprised as you were well You know, I don't like the idea of somebody else riding Splendor though I think I should get to ride him. Well, don't worry about that. I think you'll get to ride him All right, but did you notice right away red put in his bid for a pivot position? That's just because he'd like to ride Splendor. Yeah, he might be right about that. I don't know But I wouldn't let it worry me any if I were you don't you think mr. Randall would want me to ride Splendor Yes, I guess he would but he gave Splendor to the school with the understanding Oh, I know what you're gonna say, but just the same. I feel like worrying till the time comes He isn't he a swell little horse though. It's pretty horses.  You could just see it in his face. Yeah, and did you see the way he kicked around in his stall and went eat? Gee that sure brings back memories of the circus. I've been so busy since I've been here I haven't had much time to think about it But I sure miss the animals and the clowns and makeup and the band playing and the lions and the crowds What are you trying to do? Tell me on the idea of running away and joining a circus. Well, I guess I am talking too much I just got to thinking you figure on being with a circus when you grow up Oh, I don't know Mr. Randall didn't do so bad He started with a circus when he was just a boy and wand up on in his own show Yeah, that's one of the biggest circuses too, isn't it? I'll say it is You know whenever I think about a circus. I think about the wild animal trainers. That's a job I'd like now who wouldn't and don't think they don't make money either Jason is one of the highest paid trainers in the world. Now he gets plenty. It's risky though sure it is But exciting Jason always said that the excitement kept his nerve up Here comes red and now what's he want slow down Jerry and listen, don't forget to salute We're not in work clothes today since no you're starting trouble. No, okay That's a grand horse the circus sent us What do you mean us? He belongs to the school now Did you used to ride him when you were with the circus? No, I guess they let anybody ride choice animals in a circus But here at Faro it's different Splendor's much too good for a plea to ride. I wouldn't say that but I said it and what's more I'm going to make it my business to ride Splendor. We'll see about that. Okay. We will see about that Don't forget Dugan that horse is school property and you have no more claim on him than I have or anyone else Is that so? Yes, that's so and what's more you can bet your uniform you won't be riding him on the mounted drill team


Everybody forced here ripping 20 22 origins football hobby 16 bucks full case number eight random divisions check out the results right here You could always find them a late in sports cards calm. Thanks for joining. Good luck. Everybody Oh, so so hockey they're kind of field hockey. Okay, I get it. That's I mean, I guess that's fair to do And when they say tennis they count table tennis as well Makes sense that makes sense Here Here we go. Okay, so okay. I misread your stuff. Shane. I'm sorry That's so funny to think that like Football is like huge here in North America. Like it's the biggest North American sport How Hamilton rookie a Mario Cooper to 75 James Robinson to 199 Jonathan Taylor jersey to 99 Colts AFC South Colts AFCE sauce gardener rookie silver ain't got it a 49 Nice card Brian P. There you go and Village Jones jr. Rookie jumbo Jersey auto NFC North That football is like so popular here and like certain things are so popular other places and other side of the world Nobody cares like at all hardly not like at all, but it's like niche somewhere else One they'll Robinson we got Lawrence to 199 Avantes fit the 299 Wanda Robinson rookie jumbo patch 25 or 49 NFC East. That's true to Shane They a lot of people a lot of people in those countries phone Crystal Lave a rookie on card auto for the NFC South And AFC South rookie jumbo Jersey auto Alec Pierce Yeah, I work tomorrow night Kirk. I'll be breaking Guys got Sam daytime. He's live at 11 a.m. Eastern with absolute and a flawless collegiate and Matt is live at 10 a.m Eastern with Stadium Club Triple release day you guys want to be wild Sam's gonna be here yelling kaboom so much 999 Tyree kill AFCE East To 299 NFC South Alvin Camara.  Oh, yeah, Sean. I'll be in chat for sure We watch the World Cup just chatting just heckling Wanda Robinson rookie auto to 99 NFC East Nice Wanda L And a Kenneth Walker the third orange RPA 29 of 75 NFC West with a three-color patch Nice Kenneth Walker von Walker. God's Michael Thomas to 75 NFC South NFC West Matt Stafford to 199 and AFC West rookie jumbo patch Skymore to 199 Johan Datsun rookie auto on card NFC East AFC East rookie jumbo Jersey auto Tyquan Thornton the Willis rookie got Jamar Chase the 299 AFC North and Burrow to 199 Rookie jumbo Jersey Wanda Robinson to 199 NFC East NFC North rookie auto Aiden Hutchinson 57 of 99 NFC North Romeo Dobbs rookie jumbo Jersey auto your Wilson rookie Lamar Jackson a 299 AFC North Justin Fields NFC North the 50 Kenneth Walker the third rookie jumbo patch to 99 NFC West Damian Pierce rookie auto on card AFC South AFC East rookie jumbo Jersey auto pier strong junior Damian Harrison 99 AFC East NFC South Brady to 299 James Cook rookie Jersey to 199 AFC East NFC North Aiden Hutchinson rookie auto on card 65 of 99 with a red parallel in NFC West Trey McBride rookie jumbo Jersey auto We're gonna make breaking the biggest sport in the world Got a boat coming Skymore. You got Davis Mills Texans to 299 AFC South Carcid Wentz NFC East the 50 Rookie auto Justin Ross the 99 AFC West Rookie Jersey Vilas Jones jr. To 199 NFC North AFC East Breeze Hall 17 of 49 rookie patch auto booklet You go AFC East three-color jumbo patch and Carson strong rookie jumbo Jersey auto NFC East Set guys Great dulcich AJ Dylan NFC North to 199 NFC South AJ trail to 299. I saw that video Jonathan. That was that was awesome, man Dude Lamar Jackson is the best rookie passion 99 AFC South Trevon Walker AFC East rookie auto Eric Ezu Kanma easy E and redemption Damian Pierce AFC South rookie jumbo Jersey auto AFC South Christian Watson Got AFC West Herbert to 299 and NFC West Conner to 75 Somehow rookie Jersey to 199 for the NFC East rookie auto Jalen Tolbert NFC East and Redemption goes to the NFC South again Trevon Walker rookie jumbo Jersey auto AFC South Lawrence to 299 AFC East Elijah more to 75 Rookie patch eight in Hutchison 26 out of 49 NFC South or NFC North. Sorry NFC West any gray rookie on card auto and South Skarner AFC East rookie jumbo Jersey auto a few more here guys We still have Star Wars after this and then we'll get the personals. I know we're a little later tonight Appreciate it guys triple release day tomorrow morning though 10 a.m. Start time with Matt with stadium club baseball on the baseball channel And 11 a.m. Start time with Sam with absolute football and flawless collegiate football He should be yelling at him Vaughan. He should be 299 mark Andrews AFC North AFC Zach Wilson to 199 If you want to do I guess like a couple boxes here, that's fine I'll have a few boxes. It's gonna. It's gonna be pretty late though. I've been calling it full, but I mean it's Just because we're so late 17 to 49 rookie patch eight in Hutchison NFC North John Mets you the third rookie auto AFC South and Wanda Robinson orange RPA 30 of 75 NFC East Paul's calling for an imba and in a mzappe Cup to 199 NFC West for any coaches to 99 AFC South NFC North rookie patch James Williams 10 of 99 Trey McBride rookie gold ain't got a 8 of 10 for the NFC West Nice McBride and Redemption Sam Howell NFC East rookie jumbo jersey auto I'm getting to the point with the teams that I like where if like if they're gonna continue stupid things Then why would I be a fan of them? Why am I gonna watch? Why am I gonna buy a jersey? Why would I go see them play? Can't do it Calvin Austin the third Vonte Smith NFC East 14 out of 50 David Montgomery to 199 NFC North Like I've been in a magic game in a few years. They don't deserve it Ricky jumbo patch Drake London NFC South 21 of 99 Trey McBride rookie on card auto to 99 this time NFC West and Redemption Brian Robinson jr. NFC East RPA redemption RPA red. I don't redemption his last few boxes here Vaughn you think Xander is gone. I think Xander is gone Yeah, I don't know Shane. He went from pretty decent defensive coordinator to bad head coach And they were like, oh, you know what you know, you know what he'd be good at offensive court What this team needs is map or just offense coordinator blank slate Broncos country. Let's ride Russell Wilson Fc West Let's ride Niners Eli Mitchell to 99 NFC West TJ Hawkins into 50 NFC North John it met you the third rookie Jersey to 199 AFC South Phyllis Jones jr. Rookie Auto NFC North So Brennan Brennan Desmond Ritter rookie jumbo Jersey Auto NFC South.  That's you know Power has gone down a lot of other stuff. It's just stinks to have the heart of the team That's that's the hard part about it sounded like Clint Eastwood there. Yeah, let's ride sound like a sound like a Nick Cage and Go strider Dalton Cook to 99 NFC North Cinematic masterpiece if you ask me Decay to 299 NFC West The dust is just like yet. I mean I'm not so much congested But like my eyes kind of it should like my face itches a little bit rookie jumbo Jersey Christian Watson NFC North to 199 Yeah, I've just I've been in here for what we've been in here. I've been in this room since Like 2 p.m. Easter That corral rookie on card auto NFC south and NFC North rookie jumbo Jersey auto Aiden Hutchinson All right guys. Thank you Due to time constraints gonna get on to the next break. It is getting late Thank you guys on a Star Wars


I spent $1,000 on TCG player. Let's see how it's doing. What's up guys, we're back with another epic video and today we're gonna be looking at the $1,000 I spent on TCG player. We're gonna see how those cards are doing about five and a half months later, not quite six months yet. We did this at the very beginning of 2022. I'm interested to see if we made any money at all. But first we have a giveaway. Since we're talking about TCG player, I'll be giving away a $50 TCG player gift card. All you have to do is like this video, be subscribed, turn on notifications and let me know what you think about the investments that I spent on. What would you spend your money on if you had spent $1,000 on TCG player, et cetera? So here is our spreadsheet, everything we bought. So a couple of them came in light play condition, three of them actually. Well, that was an unfortunate, well this is the deck so it doesn't really matter that much. Here's what we have. Here's our original cost. Everything we spent, we spent 1,063 cents. We're gonna check in on all the prices.  So we're gonna type in blue eyes white dragon. I don't remember if they have like an ultimate rare. It's really annoying. I see, look, they have like random designation. So if I didn't type in this UTR part, then it just wouldn't come up. It wouldn't be an option. So it's like, you have to know specifically, yeah, they need to fix up TCG player. Group them all in the same thing. So let's see what we're looking for. We're looking for near mint. I think, was it near mint first edition? No, near mint unlimited and then light play first edition. So near mint first edition, the lowest I always do verified seller because some of these sellers are legit that don't have a check mark, but some of them are not. So we're just gonna go with fry boy collectibles here with 9.99. That's what we're gonna stick with on our price. So let's go back here. Let's go near mint. This is the unlimited. So this one actually did go up. So that's a good sign. I figured that what we spent on this ulti was supposed to be near mint. I bet the light plays not even close. So we're probably gonna lose all the money back on that. So let's go back. So we have light play first edition. Yeah, so let's see if it had actually been near mint. Near mint would be 27. So yeah, it would be 27, but unfortunately we got a lightly played version. I could have returned it. I probably should have, I just didn't feel like it. So we're gonna go 10.99. It's barely more. So we're definitely losing money on this one right now. This is a factor you have to take into consideration in investing in cards on TCG player. They might not come in the right condition. You probably have to return them. If you don't, you're just gonna lose a lot of money. Like I just did right there, basically. The silent swordsman level five. This is the iconic one that took months to arrive. It finally did arrive. So let's see if we've made any money. It was lightly played, unfortunately, but it's from Flaming Eternity. So they're often lightly played stuff like that. So let's check it out. Silent Swordsman level eight. Was it Silent Swordsman level five ulti? Yeah, okay. Okay. So this card first edition lightly played 37. Let's see if it was near mint. Near mint would be, yeah, 125. So like, we would be doing okay if we actually got the right condition that we bought. We would actually be doing pretty good. But these lightly played are really killing us right now. So this is 37-10. So like this 87 that we paid is great for if it's near mint. It's terrible if it's lightly played. But I still think it's actually okay condition. It's just Flaming Eternity is often very scuffed up. So it's kind of hard to tell. So we're not looking good so far. The rest of these are near mint. So let's see if we actually made anything. Number 17 Leviathan Dragon Astral from Brothers of Legend. Let's see if this thing went up. Number 17 Leviathan Dragon. Where's the astral? There it is. Okay, to the very top. Don't miss that. Okay. Oh no. Is this really this cheap? 64.94. Wow, you can get an astral card for 64.94. That was not a good choice for sure. So we are looking really bad on our money right now, guys. This is not good. We're four out of our 10 items through. I think it's 10. Yeah. So we're gonna need to really step it up even I've chance to break even. So let's go with Lightning Storm. I don't know if Lightning Storm's really gone crazy yet. Let's see if it has Lightning Storm. This was our big one actually for the Starlight Rare. Let's see if it's gone up. It was at like, oh, look at that. We finally have one that went up. Okay. This is looking nice. 363.95. OG Fats, I think actually I've bought from multiple times on Instagram. So shout out to him. Let's go. 363.95. Or he's bought from me, I should say. 363.95. Oh, there we go. That's nice. A $65.54 profit. That's not gonna cancel out everything, but it's definitely helping it with those Silent Storms in the number 17. Number 17 really killed us. Now let's go to the solemn warning. Okay, Ulti Unlimited. All right, let's check this thing out. Ulti Unlimited, we paid 69.68. I don't know if it's gonna have gone up or not. Why did we buy an unlimited card? I don't know if that was a good idea or not. Okay, solemn warning, Ultimate Rare. We have, what was it, Nirmit Unlimited? Okay, so it looks like we lost. If this guy had not listed it, we would be fine. But this EJ Gaming is really killing us right now. It's 63.69. There's one option. Basically, we're broken even other than that.  So I think we're actually pretty even on this one, but we'll put 63.69 for now. All right, 63.69, cool. All right, a Dusted Gold. I don't know how this one's done from Brothers of Legend. Let's go check it out. A Dusted Gold, first edition, Evil Hero, Dusted Gold. All right, so it's out of stock? Is that right? No, maybe for unlimited. There we go. Okay, Nirmit is 748. So this one has also gone down. So a Dusted Gold being so hard to pull. It doesn't even matter, apparently. It's still really cheap. I guess you only play one off in the deck. That was probably the mistake we made investing in that. Here's one that I have faith in. Elemental Hero Stratos, Nirmit Ulti from the OTS pack. So let's go see what this did. We paid $149.99. I have a good feeling about this one. I think it went up. I think, I mean, I don't know. I'm just guessing. I mean, we invested in it, so there's a reason we did that. Okay, I didn't see an ultimate. There's an ultimate rare. Okay, we have, okay, German. We're good, we're good. That doesn't count. It was $63.98, so it looks like it did go up a little bit. And that's pretty good. So we're up about 14 bucks on that one. That's not too bad. This is gonna help us counteract. If you guys can see down here, we're still minus 278, but we have two cards to go. So that's fine. We could maybe break even. Next one is our last actual card. Then we have a deck. We have the Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon Ghost Rare. Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon Ghost Rare, let's see. This one was first edition, so oh yeah, you can't put the dashes anymore, which is weird. Dragon Ghost Rare, okay. Was it actually near mint? I can't remember. Yeah, it wasn't near mint. That's cool. First edition near mint. Let's go. Near mint, first edition. Okay, that's Italian, $190. That's what I'm talking about. So we spent 138. This one's $190 now. So we're up $51. So it looks like we actually are gonna go positive even with these terrible ones right now. Assuming the Warriors Triumph isn't for sale, like 40 bucks. So we're gonna go into the Warriors Triumph. I'm not even sure. Can you just search these decks? I don't know. Warriors Triumph. Was it first edition? Well, we can check if it's first edition. Here it is. First edition Warriors Triumph deck. Pretty cool that we bought that. Let's see what else. It is now, nope, that's not verified. So we don't count that one. He's also 97% feedback, nothing good. 100%, this is legit right here, $115. And we bought this thing for 99. We would be breaking even on the other guy anyway. So it looks like, okay, that's pretty sick. We spent $1,000.63. We now have $1,027.12. So we've made $26.49. We're up about 3% on our money, which actually is not that bad for half a year.  But it's not, I mean, it's not like, whoa, make crazy money. But it did go up, which is nice. And if we didn't make terrible decisions with our Leviathan dragon, and then we also returned these lightly played cards. So these lost us a total between Silent Swordsman and Blue Eyes White Dragon. We lost about $65, which could have been avoided just by returning the cards. And then I think we actually would have made money if we'd gotten a near-met Silent Swordsman instead. It would have worked out a lot better if I just, you know, bothered to return them. And then Leviathan Dragon, it's probably a bad idea to go with this one. I didn't think it would get to 65. This is way lower than I thought it would get to, but I thought $100 was extremely cheap, 110 basically. So I have faith that eventually this card will creep its way back up, being a pretty tough card to pull. I never pulled it out of all the cases we opened. So I don't think that 65 is like realistically gonna be the price for that long, even though it's not really that desired. So that could be really factoring in it. I mean, it's a rare card, but nobody really wants it. But overall, I'm pretty happy about how this is going. I mean, this is not that bad for how bad it started, like when we look through and we're losing a ton of money. I'm actually super happy about how some of these are doing. So if you guys are enjoying this kind of video and you wanna see more, I'm considering doing something similar to this, but with more people involved. So if you wanna see that, make sure to let me know in the comments. I'm really enjoying this. I think it's fun, even though we get to only revisit it like every few months, but it's still been pretty interesting to see how the cards are doing. I think I definitely could have made some better decisions. Let me know which cards I should have bought instead of these cards down below, and I'll keep those in mind for maybe a future episode. Shout out to TCG, Trust, Cards, Dome, Full Show, Tomato Juice, Stanley, Mike, Nance, Mimic, Echo, Drax, Tray, Ian, Mooster, Junior, Barrington, Hentai, Cho, JT, Cho, David, FJ, Josh Evans, Clayton, Fitzgerald, 87, and John Nolan. Thank you guys for supporting the channel, and I'll see you guys next time. Peace.


We had an amazing day at the Irish Writers Weekend yesterday, the sessions were all phenomenal and I hope you'll find the same today. Obviously we're starting with the first session today with Susanna Dickey, Megan Nolan and then the day runs on so pretty scrutinised the programme. Just a reminder that we have two sessions later in the main building rather than here. So you'll have an option on which to go to. We have a wonderful poetry session at 11.30, I don't even know my own programme, 1.30 is the poetry and then 3.15 is the tribute to the late Niall McDevitt. Obviously sessions all the way through here concluding at the end of the day with the film screening. So the festival is very delighted to have the support of Culture Ireland, the Embassy of Ireland in London and incredibly the support of the Doyle Collection Hotel who've housed all our wonderful writers this weekend and made them extremely happy indeed with their surroundings. So that's one thing off my plate. But today's session has been about writing other selves. It's Susanna Dickey, it's Megan Nolan and our chair is Sacha Daboul who is the former director of International Festival of Literature and a writer in her own right. So please welcome to the stage our panel. Hello everyone and thank you for the whoops, really appreciate that level of enthusiasm on a Sunday morning. I think that's entirely fair enough. John was saying welcome to the British Library for this brilliant weekend of Irish writing. This is our second day of our first ever edition but long may it continue. If anything just for the excuse to bring a bunch of Irish writers to London and have a really fun time. I'm Sacha Daboul and I am really thrilled today to be joined by two of I would say Ireland's most exciting new voices in fiction and other areas Megan Nolan and Susanna Dickey. A little bit about the format of our event today. We'll kick off with some readings and then Susanna and Megan and I will have a chat and then there'll be time for questions from the audience as well. So I'll probably start off with a bit of an introduction but you know once more with feeling a big bouleau bus and a welcome to Susanna Dickey and Megan Nolan. I have said bouleau bus about five times. I've got here I can't help it. I feel like because it's an Irish writers weekend that means a round of applause in Irish for any non-Irish speakers. I just can't stop saying it. It's like a children's TV presenter. Well done. So Megan Nolan is a writer of essays, reviews and fiction. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Right Review, The Sunday Times on The Guardian. Do you currently write a fortnightly column for The New Statesman? No, I do not believe so. That was a while ago. But your debut novel Acts of Desperation came out in 2021 and your second book Ordinary Human Failings is out next year. Would you like to start us off with a wee read? Oh yeah, sure. I'm going to let us know a bit about the book as well if that's okay. Yeah, of course. So Act of Desperation is my debut novel and told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who's a young woman in her 20s in Dublin. And she kind of begins this obsessive love affair with a man called Kieran who becomes the point of her life and focus for all of the ways that she's lacking direction and a purpose. And he kind of becomes the central meaning of her life. And this part is just after he's left her for one of many times. So yeah, I'll just read it. It's maybe like three or four minutes long. The loss of someone you love can make you go mad in the best of circumstances. But I did not just love Kieran but loved him darkly, wrongly. Losing someone you love in those ways can turn you not only mad but wicked too. When he left me, I dreamed of the two of them sometimes woke up sweating. I thought of going to his house and hammering on the window until they let me in. I dreamed that march of killing her and woke oddly calm thinking repetitively, well, stranger things have happened. Well, stranger things have happened. I'd slipped into his room as they slept and stood looking at them from the doorway. Moonlight was on their faces and made them look beautiful, already dead. I wrapped her beautiful dark hair around my fist and cracked her skull against the wall, one, two. And because it was a dream, I was strong enough to move her entire body in a violent wave with one hand. Her mouth was open and dribbling and bubbling and there was a black stain on the headboard behind and her long, thin arm was twitching and grasping uselessly until it wasn't. Besides her, Kieran watched calmly, his eyes raising to meet mine once she had stopped breathing. And then he turned back towards the wall in the same position he always slept, dragging the blanket tight around him. At night sometimes I called Lisa, the only person I could say the truth to, the truth that was so basic and so large. I need him, I need him, I sobbed to her. I can't do it, I'm not able to do it, meaning to live, to go on living without him. And I loved her for not bothering to contradict me or to tell me that I didn't need anybody, that I would get over it. She knew intuitively, knew always that she herself did not need anybody else to live. But this difference between the two of us didn't make my experience any less real than her own. She had seen how actual the need was with her own eyes. When once I gasped, I'm alone, I'm so alone, I'm scared, she didn't pretend that I wasn't. I know you are, she agreed. You are. I looked for other people who had felt like me, hoping for comfort or clues. My Google search terms were things like obsessive love, famous cases of unrequited love, incidents of obsession. I read about a story I had heard first on a podcast years before about a man named Carl Tanzler, a medical professional, though not a doctor, in Florida. He had fallen in love with his patient, a Cuban American woman named Maria Elena Milagro, in the 1920s. She had suffered from tuberculosis, which had also killed one of her sisters. Tanzler was instantly obsessed with her, offering her his dubious medical expertise and radiology equipment, going to her family home to administer additional treatments. He showered her with gifts and jewellery, declared her the love of his life, the realization of a series of visions he had seen of a mysterious, dark-haired angel. She offered no reciprocation. Her family undoubtedly must have found him an oppressive and disturbing presence, but allowed his advances as long as they held some potential to cure her. But it all came to nothing and she died in 1931. Tanzler paid for the funeral and constructed a mausoleum. In 1933, he visited the site of her burial at night and used a car to remove her decomposing corpse, putting it in his car and taking it home. There he used pins and wires and a ham-fisted, cage-like construction to keep her disintegrating bones together and wrapped them with gauze and muslin heavily coated in fragrance to try to drown out the persistent smell of her decay. He made a mask, blank and smooth, supposed to replicate her real features, but terrible in its inadequacy. Neighbours saw him through his window dancing with the figure of a woman. He was brought to trial but never sentenced and Maria Elena's body, such as it was, still dolled up with this horrifying artifice and inadequate mummification, was put on show in a funeral home where thousands of curious members of the public would go to view the spectacle. The first time I heard the story, I was angry. To demand ownership of a woman who doesn't love you, even when she is dead. To take that dead body and make it yours through hideous force, hideous care, hideous attention. It seemed to sum up all the ways in which men could take you without your permission and turn you into something you had never been, which had nothing to do with you. Now, as I read it again through my bewildered grief, I wonder if I was any better than him. I wondered if I ever had been. Perhaps I had just never loved someone madly until now. Perhaps I had always been as violent as a man. Wouldn't I do anything to reverse my loss, the absence of him? Wouldn't I sacrifice not just myself, but himself to get it? Wouldn't I make him everything he wasn't? Make him soft and tender and domesticated and weak so long as it meant I could convince him to be mine again. I read a case study of a woman, patient M, who suffered from erotomania in upstate New York in the 1970s. The woman was the child of first generation Chinese immigrant parents and a diligent student at a Christian college. She had a strict but normal upbringing, supportive parents, friends, a handful of supervised dates with boys. In her sophomore year of college, she began to take tutorials from a man, Professor X, in his early 40s. The man was a professor of theology, married with two children, all involved in the local church and community of which patient M was also a part. Patient M began sending letters of a personal nature to Professor X, telling him about her difficulties with schooling, her family and other relationships. At first, he replied, try to offer her comfort and spiritual guidance, but quickly her correspondence increased up to 10 letters a day, and he began to be alarmed by their overly familiar tone and strange references to affection and a shared bond that he had no part in. Though her family, her college authorities and eventually the police would warn her to leave Professor X alone, patient M continued and increased her campaign, perceiving their attempts to be proof of her theory that the professor's wife was determined to keep them apart. She began to stalk him at his office and his home until she was expelled permanently. Her letters continued to show that she believed Professor X loved her and was kept from her only by the constraints of their Christian culture. One July morning, professional acquaintances and friends of the professor were shocked to receive a wedding invitation, the marriage of him and patient M. The more distant of them presumed that he had been divorced and was planning a shock and wedding before he got hold of them and explained the strange situation. It was at this point that patient M was taken into institutional custody, after which her face is unknown. Several weeks after her detainment, her parents received a phone call from a local Chinese restaurant, wondering where the wedding party was, for she had booked a sit-down meal for 30 to celebrate their union. Thank you. Thank you so much and thank you for reading that part specifically. It's one of my favorite bits. Susanna, would you like to go next? I'll do the intro. So, Susanna Dickey is the author of Tennis Lessons and Common Decency. Her poetry has been published in the TLS, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review. In 2019, she won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and in 2021 was long listed for the Sunday Time Short Story Award. She's also an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by a poet under the age of 30 and her debut collection will be published next year. So, Common Decency is about two women living in the Siam apartment block in Belfast, one floor up from one another, down from one another, Lily and Siobhan, both of whom are kind of experiencing self-atrophy in different ways. Lily is grieving her mother who has died recently from pancreatic cancer and she is very much retreated into herself in response to this grief. Siobhan is experiencing a sort of preemptive grief because she's in a doomed relationship with a married man and she's sort of retreating into the memories of the initial stages of their courtship because she sees him so infrequently. So, both of them are kind of regressing in this way, like very much focused on the past rather than their present and are sort of spiraling into increasingly self-destructive behaviour. So, I'm going to read a bit where Siobhan is reminiscing on meeting Andrew, who is the married man. With every muscle in her body she willed him towards her and when she saw his feet next to her chair she felt telekinetic as though her lust was sanctioned by unseen forces. He said, how is it? And she said, I don't know, I can't read. And he laughed. She turned the book over and was surprised to see that it was Daisy Miller. He said, I really love the portrait of a lady and she grasping in the chambers of her memory for any information said it's good but my favourite is the turning of the shrew. He laughed again. He has an easy laugh which she theorises comes partly from his innate need to please people but also from a genuine pleasure he takes in living given the chance. He said, would you like to have a drink with me? And she said yes. And they de-camped to another archipelago of chairs in an empty lounge. They spent the next two and a half hours cross-legged on a sofa facing one another. He seemed young to her but not in the way she now knows her students to seem young. Brash so as not to betray their ignorance. He seemed young like conversation wasn't about using the other person's contribution as stepping stones to his own. Young like it didn't matter to him whether he spoke at all. He told her about his wife and daughter on the first night and later she was irritated with herself for being shocked given his wedding ring given the disproportionate gratitude he showed her which could only have come from a man who hadn't felt wanted in a long time. They held hands for three uninterrupted minutes on the second night while he told her that he'd never leave his family, that he couldn't. They kissed on the third, closed mouthed in chaste, his mouth seasoned with chip vinegar. When he checked out on the final morning he left a note for her at reception with his email address rather than his phone number as though that might absolve them. They exchanged emails every day for a month. A fortnight in she wrote that she loved him. A fortnight later he wrote it back. A month later he asked if they could meet. The day before they saw one another she spent the afternoon on Royal Avenue trying on skirts and blouses. That morning she curled her hair and put on layers and layers of mascara till her lashes were huge and rigid. When she saw him walk through the station doors from the platform onto the concourse she felt pangs of regret all the ways she could have looked better. He took four equine bones towards her and then her face was pressed to his neck. Afterwards he would reminisce about how it felt to hold her and hear her breath catch in her throat. A lot of their moments together are like this. They feel scripted in their enormity. He struggled to achieve orgasm with a condom on. They make them so restrictive he'd said, plaintively contemplating his strictured penis. So after she'd accompanied him to the station she went to the walk-in clinic and acquired three months worth of combined contraceptive pill. When the doctor asked if she wanted some free free prophylactics she replied no thank you with the smugness of someone who has captured monogamy. Something about him made her different recalibrated her emotional vocabulary. She was suddenly tender and saccharine prone to lengthy pontificating about her feelings. If he devoted a paragraph to telling her how meeting her had changed his life she devoted two. It became an emotional one-upmanship. Who could feel more and express it better? Which led to an agonizing sense of exposure when she was the more superlative. Soon it stopped being a conscious decision and she was the person she'd been emulating. She had become his emotional protege. After a couple of days spent together she'd returned to her dark sticky bedroom, the atmosphere like Sorbet and the surfaces piled with dishevelled coursework and she'd weep. She'd weep for the injustice thrust upon her, for the pain of wanting him, of being denied him. They still talk often about how they met. They discuss it at length, the immediate attraction, the initial resistance to the immediate attraction, the ultimate futility of such resistance. She talks about how beautiful she looked even in her hotel uniform with her hair pulled back. She says no there's no way because she knows her small featured egg shaped face is one that benefits from some hair around it. Yes he insists and then he says that it wasn't just how she looked, that from the first conversation he felt understood in a way that he never had, that she delighted him, that she was inimitable and clever and witty, that she made him feel young, that she made him feel wanted. She reciprocates. She tells him that he's the most handsome man she's ever seen, that she's never wanted anyone the way she wanted him. Through repeated framings of their history they solidify their love as mythic, canonical, almost preordained. This belies the more sordid elements of their pairing and casts them as beyond logic, beyond pedestrian questions of morality. She thinks they both mean it when they say that they are the loves of each other's lives, or at least they think they mean it, which she supposes is the same thing. A couple of months in she came to understand the negatives of being the extraneous attachment to an intact couple. She was on her first placement in a school that elicited the same unsavory response from everyone it was mentioned to. A response fueled by some composite of cultural tribalism, stereotyping of location, and sufficient anecdotal material to affirm those stereotypes. That said, the school did lack resources and things were difficult. One Friday afternoon, during a film screening, one child had a seizure. Siobhan quickly learned that 10 and 11 year olds are an unsettling mix of cynical and deranged.   When she messaged Andrew to ask if she could call him, the response came an hour and a half later. Sweetheart, you know we can't talk on the phone when I'm at home. The following day they messaged for several hours about his daughter's tantrums, a newly acquired fear of zips, and then he had to disappear to cook spaghetti hoops and replace the fastenings on her fleece with velcro. Tara called to ask how the placement was going, but somehow Tara's comfort felt less worthwhile than his would have been. She answered Tara's sensitive probing questions with non-committal mumblings, said she was too tired to talk. This was something else her relationship with Andrew had done. Invalidated the attention of the other people in her life. She needed his attention, only his. Thank you. It's funny because I know that YouTube were looking through readings just before I went on stage, so I'm aware that you did not plan that, but those readings just spoke so beautifully to each other. It's amazing, and I think it really sets up our conversation perfectly because both of these novels to me really capture obsessive love and obsession in a way that I think not many others do. And yeah I guess I'm interested to know where that kind of came about as a topic that you wanted to focus on for the book, for both of you. Megan do you want to go first? Yeah, so yeah it's kind of nice listening to that reminding me that like I really love Susanna's novel and part of that like I feel like we shared that concern with like the attraction of that resistance and like how exhilarating and sexy and eventually awful that like attempt to override resistances. And I think yeah so I wanted to write a relationship from beginning to end with sort of the initial idea that I had for the novel because I think I was about 25, 26 when I started to write the novel and I had just become single for the kind of the first time in my life and I was trying to understand that the end of a relationship wasn't the end of the world and I wanted to write the finality of a completely dead relationship in a novel in a way to explain to myself that it was okay for that to have happened in the world. And I was interested in romantic obsession and in that like my life sort of lacked a lot of narrative trajectory after school. I dropped out of college very quickly and didn't really know how to live or what to do with my time or what I was good at or you know what the world, how the world could find me good and so romance had to kind of become the narration to my life and then every time that I had fallen in love it became the point of myself and how I spent my time. And that kind of all encompassing totality that I had ended up in giving my relationships was very devastating and stopped me from kind of having a life for a long time. So yeah I was sort of trying, I was trying to like correct my own life by writing this in a way and I guess I wrote to heighten like more visceral and more disgusting version of things that I had experienced to try and like repel myself a little bit to like make myself not want to be in love anymore. Yeah it's interesting that you mentioned it kind of coming from you know personal experiences but out of a move because reading it and reading around it, I do see and this happens a lot with writing by women and people being like oh well this must be just a book about Megan and you're like well actually to me the book very very consciously is not about you like it feels like there's a distance between the emotions of the unnamed narrator and the person writing the book like there's a space there and that felt really important to me. Yeah definitely yeah I think that there was um you know there was enough time had passed between the sort of age of the woman in the book and then also the extremity of those feelings when I experienced versions of them myself that yeah I was able to to like create some some like heightened dramatic version of reality but I do I do want to say like because I know it is true that that women get asked that question a lot but I think in my case it is only fair because I've like used all of my biographical details I think it would be unfair of me to be like to be put out by people asking that or thinking about that but yeah definitely part of what was like fun in a way for me about writing the character was to make it a kind of you know theatrical version of myself or a past self of mine and to and to like lean into all the things that I hate about myself and to make them really blatant you know. Yeah and how about you Susanna? Um yeah I mean um I think something I'm really interested in is like I guess sort of she-im as a kind of um propulsive like um kind of effective force and there's this writing that talks about how she-im can arise from like your object cathexis the thing upon which you're primarily focused being taken away from you and you still having all the feelings towards it but now know where to put it and how those feelings then transmute it into like she-im um and I think for both my protagonists that's something that's happening they've both um have the kind of person around whom they've centered their emotional lives either already departed or seemingly in the process of a slow departure um and how you know and and so much of the book is about narrative um narrativizing either narrativizing the lives of other people or how we narrativize our own lives to justify our behavior and I think there's probably nothing more so than a kind of relationship like this one um that Siobhan is experiencing with this older married man um like a relationship like that requires narrative to to enable yourself to keep going through it because you're not having sufficient experience to justify it you're seeing him very infrequently everything logical is telling you that this is a bad thing to be participating in so you fall back on narrative to make it make sense to you to make it make sense within the context of your life um and yeah so I was you know interested in exploring that and kind of this obsession shameful like like catechus way um and yeah it sat as a kind of then um sat in opposition to what lily is doing um but they're both kind of um a kind of opposites to one another but also incredibly similar in that their feelings are the same but about such different losses um and yeah and I think probably I you know I'm touching on what the second question you just asked Megan um I think probably a lot of what was able to fuel my writing of that relationship was a time in my life when you know a lot of bad things coalesced I didn't have very much money I was in an incredibly dysfunctional relationship and I had no sense of purpose um and I used all those things uh also to justify having no friends or hobbies um and you know it's it's really great when that happens because five years later you can write about it uh yeah and yeah that's avoid it sounds like you you have friends and hobbies now so it seems really positive um you two are my friends that's right um I loved what you said there about how if you're not getting enough of an experience you have to kind of cling to those things and create a narrative and a journey and I have to say while picking up questions or anything but you know this interview um I feel like both of your works are kind of like a tool a lot of of you know female millennial stories of of the moment or whatever but actually I kept thinking of the tv show crazy ex-girlfriend have you guys seen it yeah it's like especially there's a song called love kernels which is like the funniest right yeah whatever it's just about like it's like I will give you the bare minimum and you will just like drink it up yeah um because I also think that for all that these are you know serious books with with moments of pay-thousand stuff I find them incredibly funny at points um and I was shocked when kind of reviewing notes before the event some of the reviews were like no these are very serious there's not someone said that there's no humor in in your book and I was I was like what are you talking about this is hilarious so I wondered yeah what what do you guys feel the function of humor in that is and was it important to you to include it I know I I honestly would have would have no I was very worried that it was um completely humorless myself as in as in because like um my my writing I wrote essays for for a couple of years before I wrote this book and uh they were all quite serious and not not completely lacking in any humor but but you know they're about very serious things that are very um painful a lot of the time but in my actual life like I I like to have a laugh and then like honestly like I feel like the point of life isn't for me it's not writing it's like honestly to have a laugh and and like that's what I like to spend my time doing and so it felt increasingly weird to me that all my work was kind of in opposition to that and so when I was writing acts of desperation um I finished it and just thought god what a fucking bummer and like uh I was I was happy to have written it and I and I had I had to write it but I was also kind of sad that I was putting another thing into the world that contradicted what I feel like I'm essentially like in a lot of ways but then my my editor suggested because I wrote a column at the time that New Statesman column which was sometimes funny she was like can you try and make it a bit funny I was like no honestly it's kind of hard to impose add a few guys exactly yeah so I did I wished I could have done that but but I wasn't able to kind of um yeah I couldn't after the fact go and and add in some like humorous anecdotes or whatever but but yeah I I do agree that some of it is funny and um and yeah with a bit of distance now when I read back on it there are things that I laugh at in it that I didn't at the time and that's also because it's like from the perspective of a very self-important and narcissistic young person and like yeah and I was a bit younger and probably more narcissistic when I started writing it I think and I hope and uh so maybe like even the little bit of distance because it's now five years since I wrote a lot of it almost all of it actually so even like that little bit of distance I think makes me find it funny in a way that probably I didn't at the time yeah yeah yeah and Susie how about you well I mean there's also that great scene where Kieran trips over a bucket and splits his trousers you see you see his heart shaped underpants fillowing in the wind many banana peels yeah um like I also I too also enjoy kicking back with a beer and a joke I heard it here first women writers actually like I love you think it's great well I mean I think you know because we are both writing um these quite narcissistic um solipsistic people and I think that really is very funny you know to an external perceiver there is nothing funnier than a person who is just so devoted to their own self-seriousness and so the humor kind of just arises I think organically from that um but also you know like these are you know we're writing people existing within the world and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a good you know realist novel dealing with some of the most miserable of subjects that doesn't at times find humor because people are fundamentally predisposed to finding humor as a sort of relief from that misery and I think to try and obliterate that from a novel would be to miss out on some fundamental aspect of how we cope of how we like respond to trauma to um grief to you know to heartbreak um so yeah yeah I mean I don't think I'd set out um to you know try to include humor in it but I just think by nature of what you're writing um also I'm just a really funny girl I'm trying to think now like can I think of any like contemporary novel dealing with similar things that is completely humorless that is like absolutely perfect yeah I'm not sure Gwendolyn Riley yes is oh my miserable but those novels are still so yeah yeah you're right you're right yeah although I find them probably they're like the extreme end of the spectrum like I probably have to read them in tiny little chunks yeah which is too grim um some of the the parts that I find the funniest uh in both books actually are are kind of about about like the artifice of being a human woman and like those moments where um both the unimprotagonist and um Siobhan um prepare themselves for a man and it just I don't know I've been thinking a lot recently about about about aging um and the fact that now we have this kind of other generation Gen Z who are in adulthood and who uh I feel like they've just they haven't come up through the same absolutely like batshit world of early 2000s feminism which really taught you that like you this is this is the utmost value in life is just to spend all of your time on the creation of this kind of mask of femininity um but there's an absurdity to that and and that I felt was captured really great in both in both novels and I don't know I don't even know if you I feel I feel like I know you're a millennial but I don't know if you're a millennial I'm actually 14 you're 14 oh jeez congratulations I looked I looked terrible a wonder came um but yeah they they both to me seem to capture someone who was kind of created by those structures would you agree yeah yeah I think um there was someone in water food run from when I went back uh the first time I was able to go back after COVID um my book came out in March of 2021 so I hadn't really I wasn't able to like do anything when I came out and then the first time I went back to water for this woman that I know who's uh yeah who's maybe like 21 or 22 was like yeah I really like the book but like what what why is she like that like why why does she care about that I think so you grew up with like healthy relationships and therapy didn't you yeah and I was like that's really nice that she actually can't empathize with the character at all you know like she she actually is quite confused if she was confused as to why she wouldn't just be like all right then if you don't want to go out with me fuck off or whatever you know and like she just couldn't really in any way understand what I was getting at with the character which I found kind of great you know um but yeah then also I don't know it's an interesting one because um I don't know I think there's also a little bit of Gen Z like reactive backlash to feminism though at the same time like yeah recently I was in New York and there was this there's this whole sort of subset of uh kind of like downtown reactionary cool people who are reacting against like uh even though it was kind of a nightmare for us growing up in many ways and like women's magazines were still really insane and like telling you to lose weight and be pretty or whatever but also it was like very much understood in my childhood and in my home that like feminism was good and yeah you know equality was something we should strive for and you know I feel like even when it wasn't enacted that was still like a given and then yeah I don't know I do talk to some people women younger than me now who find I guess like that that they find it to be like a little bit scolding or whatever and so react against that and and and go like you know what actually no I'm going to be a a traditional wife and that's like my yeah my reaction to all to all of the what they perceive to be like a little bit um prescriptive but you know interesting yeah because also I feel like like the period the early 2000s period to me was very much that post-feminism like well we have it all we don't need it like yeah fine and then you had the post-post feminism where we were like no actually yeah yeah this isn't okay and now we're in the yeah post-post or maybe it like maybe like 23 year olds are just stupid and there is a tipping point there's a I think especially uh sorry we've gone off topic and yeah I promise but I do feel like there's a tipping point at like age 24 25 where you've grown up and even socialized as a woman and everyone's like feminism is important you have rights you could do whatever you like and then you go into the world and you're like yeah this is bullet yeah yeah I know this is true and then you're like fine we're doing feminism now so maybe they just haven't hit that tipping point to carry on um yeah and I also feel like the kind of um very sort of conservatively minded will never cease to find kind of new heights of kind of conservatism in response to like the most incremental of steps forward in terms of progressiveness you know it's like oh um you know uh potentially we're narrowing the wage gap the very very natural response to that is to you know summon up this cabal of young men who know I want to murder everyone yeah you know it's like it's it's incredible how I kind of reactionary conservatively minded people can be and sort of progressive changes that really will have no practical impact on their lives can um kind of elicit such ire such fury that the reaction is to go like full-scale violence and and like just and it's it's it's remarkable and you know I do think like this weird trend now there seems to be for like the stay at home girlfriend thing yeah and and you know that's the kind of uh female response and then you've got the kind of Andrew Tate thing happening with young men is that his name Andrew Tate yeah I think so yeah the bold awful man yeah um yeah who works out all the time and definitely hasn't been late ever but um yeah you know those are who grow out of just the most like minor of achievements for look like liberal thinking and it's it's insane um yeah but yeah um you know to come back to like this idea of kind of um primping you know because I've got these two characters in comedy since they who are very very different in that Siobhan is obviously focused on her like ablutions in the service of being loved because she's desperate to have romantic love and Lily that's not her concern at all but you see in the book that in her kind of adolescent years she developed this sort of body dysmorphic thinking that her mum was always like a temperance to her mum would like say you know nobody's looking at you nobody's looking at you you are you are normal you are not a monster and then kind of knowing her absence those thoughts are being permitted to run rampant and that's not even kind of in service to a typical trying to win a man thing that is just by virtue of being a product of her environment those thoughts kind of implant themselves and then manifest in this sort of self mutation and yeah and yeah I wanted to explore kind of high self hatred or like um yeah being so um focused upon your physical form isn't always necessarily just in response to a romantic ideal by being a product of your environment as a person yeah that's brilliant and thank you so we will be taking questions from the audience and probably come to you just next but before we move on I would like to touch on language and also Irishness given the context and and I both of you are are within the diaspora now right because you also live in London Susie and yeah I wanted to ask you about about how you feel your language kind of sits within the greater tradition of Irish language uh Irish language writing as in hibernate English writing not in the Irish language and do you feel like that's influenced your writing style does it come through or do you feel like like your novel's kind of sit in that uh like I don't know empty space in the middle of the Atlantic very like mid-atlantic cool novels live yeah I think increasingly well increasingly I've only written one of the novel apart from this but in my second novel it felt like I really wanted to speak in an in an Irish way and or basically there's like a kind of way of speaking in Waterford that I wanted to capture and and I think in in my debut I didn't really do that I think I think I was still like kind of living in the internet when I wrote this book and I didn't really know where in the world I actually was going to settle and where I would spend most of my time I'd only just moved out of Ireland really but I wasn't sure if I would stay in England and I just felt a bit like I didn't have a real nation and I was I was like traveling a lot not in a fun way but because I had no money and so it just like going like cats it for people or whatever so yeah I just felt very unword and and I feel like my brain was very online at the time in a way that I think it's a little bit less now um so yes to answer your question I think the first novel is doesn't feel like especially Irish to me I think the story could have taken place in any number of of settings and the reason that it's specifically in Ireland is only because I didn't feel the authority to like go well she lives in Brussels or whatever you know like it was because I didn't know any other places to set it but I didn't like Ireland isn't like key to the story I don't think and then in this new novel yeah I just I just felt like interested in wanting to like capture some of the rhythms of the way that my family speak and and because I miss Waterford and I really love Waterford and and so I just kind of wanted to like pay a bit of tribute to it in a way and like and I liked the idea of people there having this novel to read that is set there also well some of it set there um so yeah I think it is important to me but it hasn't always been and I don't know if it will continue to be but but I think it was it was like very yeah very important to me to do it at least in one book to try and capture that yeah I think that's it's interesting that you're talking about like kind of citing the novel within Waterford and within Waterford's like linguistic idiosyncrasies because that's like there's kind of that zooming in and in Ireland that like every every small town every every county every region has its own linguistics and idiosyncrasies and that do fit within the whole as we know English but actually are so specific to themselves and I have no idea what those are for Waterford yeah look forward to discovering them and then Susie you're originally from Derry but the book is set in Belfast and so perhaps that speaks to you as well yeah um and I think something I'm coming because I think it um initially I would have thought about it explicit like um entirely in terms of language um and something I've noticed uh especially with poetry because um I wrote this long poem a couple of years ago that was in Hendicah syllables which is where every line has 11 syllables and um I was living in London at the time and was showing it to kind of English friends and had an English editor on it um and I realized that words to which I gave two syllables were words to which they gave one and they would say oh you know this line doesn't have 11 syllables it has more and I was like well it doesn't my voice so no I'm not going to kai-tai to your kissing point I'm not going to kai-tai um but yeah uh you know um I'm gonna remain faithful to the way I say words I'm not you know and poetry I guess canonically has um in the UK you know is so dominated by the kind of men of English letters um who would be saying these words different from differently from me and I was like well no I'm going to kind of think about how I say the words and I'm gonna um use syllabics accordingly um but even in terms of form I'm starting to think about it because um I've been reading this book at the minute called Enduring Time um by Lisa Beretser and um she opens it with um a quote by Denise Riley that is um about the death of her son and she talks about how after a sudden unexpected grievance time pools it becomes a circle without a rim and this book is all about how um kind of the modern ideology of time this idea of temporality was kind of born in the 16th century with the idea of wage labor and production and this was where time became reduced to this linear concept rather than something that is flexible and can be altered um and as the kind of colonial project went on this linear idea of industrial based time was imposed on more and more kind of places and peoples and the people from nations that were colonized were relegated to kind of antiquity because they didn't initially subscribe to this capitalist idea of time and yeah there's this idea that like linearity and um kind of um like set progress based time is as you know as the norm and it shouldn't be because time is entirely constructive and subjective um but yeah so yeah this idea that I've been thinking about it in terms of the the novel the arc of the novel um and because this novel is also about grief I wanted to kind of challenge that idea of of time as uh as a smooth arc and tried to capture that time pooling thing because I think also by nature of being irish um you know causing from the north and people in the north there's a very split I guess perception of the north of Ireland as being um a colonial project um and and so it was interesting to think about it in those terms but I do think yeah and you know how I want to start approaching the novel is to not subscribe to this like you know time as a fixed thing that we understand in module modules like not a modular entity something that is flexible and subjective to grief and can be altered and changed um and I think yeah that's that's buoyed up for me also with irishness that's absolutely brilliant I'm gonna read that book um okay I think we have time for a few quick questions we do have roving microphones um so what you'll do is if you put your hand up then I will call upon you um so let's see we actually want to put the back here could we start with this person up here we've got lots so we'll see if we can get around to everyone but we might not be able to hello hello thanks very much um just picking up on your last point there susanna do you think time heals um if time is not if time is not linear or may not be linear yeah I love that yeah see because I think there's this idea that you know recovery from grief from trauma will just happen as a consequence of times passing and I don't think that's true you know in the same way time isn't necessarily always going towards progress you know we're finding this right now in terms of the climate crisis which is happening as a consequence of this very um progress focused idea of time you know production time will lead to something better we need to produce in this time to make the future and the result of that thinking is that you know our future is now in jeopardy um and so I don't think time necessarily is a salve is a bam it all you know what will come down the road is entirely um dependent upon the actions you take in the immediate moment um which I think is why in this novel you know you have this woman grieving her mother but she's not she's dwelling within it she's focusing entirely on her memories she's not taking any active steps to heal herself and so time's not going to do it for her so as a consequence time doesn't get to pass in that way um how we interact with time is entirely you know of our own choosing so no brilliant thank you uh who what other questions do we have we have a lot of hands can we get this written on the left here thank you very much um just here thank you and please keep your hands up just so that we can maybe uh like for the next questions thank you Susanna it's really fascinating to hear you talk about um you know men of English letters in the world of poetry and obviously a katana tradition that you must you know inherently feel you're writing against and I just thought that two of you um you know your um I think you kind of said both Gen Z millennial post feminist novel not irish novelists and it seems to me that's a kind of category that the market has found and is promoting quite vigorously and I just wondered if you had any comments on what that feels like um particularly maybe thinking a bit about the kind of irish tradition and you know a kind of post field day post Celtic tiger sort of um denouement I'll go shall I yeah no you go oh um no yeah it did feel very strange to me to have the novel I mean of course there has to be categorized but it did feel strange for it to be uh marketed in a certain way and it felt ultimately quite frightening for me to feel that my career is dependent on a moment in publishing and so I've definitely reacted against that with the next one and completely like I just said this novel in the 70s in Ireland basically it's a family drama and it's completely non fashionable and like traditional really and uh and I think that was informed by my discomfort at being marketed to do with myself uh and again it's very understandable because it's a quite uh autobiographical novel but yeah I didn't um feel comfortable with my body being the way that it was that it was positioned in literature so yeah I think I've definitely reacted against that now um yeah because I mean you know if I'm being honest I'm very aware of the fact that I got picked up for publication because of Sally Rooney I was part of like a sudden kind of upsurge uptaking of young female Irish novelists because everyone was hoping to recreate that and I reacted against that by very bravely writing a novel that very few people read even fewer people liked but um I think yeah I'm in the next one that I'm working on and you know I'm doing something similar in that I'm trying to write something that is so unlike anything that could because you know critical culture unfortunately noi and marketing is it's very reliant upon comparison and so I am noi trying to write something that is incomparable to anything that might be popular that sounds great what is it about you say any more uh well its working title is Sex Horse please keep that I absolutely love that that's brilliant and I feel like that's also all we need to know right you just set it up perfectly and someone already has a microphone in the second room pardon me yeah it's sort of a question following on from the last one because as a kind of an older feminist I haven't read your books and I'd really like to and I think I probably prefer your second books to the ones the ones you're just writing now because I just felt I didn't get saliruni it's like oh my god these young people today super privileged super educated you know actually not poor either you know I mean honestly well waste of a life they were living you know like just obsessing about you know married men and trying to steal them from other from other I mean like oh the narcissism of it really freaked me out really turned me off and I just did not okay the films were different normal people was a bit different because they were much younger so I kind of forgave them but like you know it's like you're writing these books about aspects obviously of your younger selves and you're describing looking back and thinking oh I've kind of got over that now like you know I'm really different now I've lived through that you know and I I know better and you know you talked about your friend who didn't have any empathy at all and you were surprised I mean you know what and I just wonder what your own attitude is to the characters in your book I mean do you still kind of like are you still with them are you asking us to feel sympathy or just go oh my god grow up I think that's up to you isn't it as in as in I don't have a feeling in in my head about how you should take the character like people have very divergent feelings about her and and if you hate her and you kind of find that fun to read then that's great but you know if you feel some sympathy for her then that's also fine I I I don't I don't like her but I but I have sympathy for kind of any person and I yeah I don't I don't feel like scathing towards her I think I think being narcissistic and young is that is not new and it's not just us like like I think it has different expressions now but but I don't really believe that that I don't know that that people in the past weren't also self-obsessed when they were young younger and I can understand that like that I think that maybe like the constant need to self-describe that the internet encourages it makes it worse and makes it more apparent to other people but but ultimately I think yeah being being a narcissist is not specific to a generation yeah I mean I certainly don't you know the novels I love rarely have at their center characters I like you know I think a well-written awful person is brilliant and I think yeah I mean I I you know I have written two incredibly self-destructive people in this book neither of whom I like you know big thumbs up to their actions but you know I'm hoping to kind of write their self-destructive tendencies in a way that doesn't maybe necessarily make sense to someone outside of that experience but you can see the internal logic of their thinking as to why they're behaving in this way and you know I think you it's you know there are different ways of approaching it I think it's interesting to kind of look at which I think we're both trying to do kind of that narcissism within like the wider kind of economic milieu you know like how like self-destructiveness within a kind of precarious housing environment precarious environmental environment kind of yeah how how all these things kind of come together to make a person even worse you know how and I think that is what kind of might make you know these novels different from a novel written about a narcissistic self-destructive person 50 years ago is that it's how all these different disparate socio-economic factors feed in to that solipsism that's self-destructing yeah so yeah I mean yeah I mean they suck people I wrote they suck I think you're totally bang on though and like when reading commentings just see what struck me is that the the self-obsession and the kind of the narcissism in the book was not because because as well I would say some very like lazy reviewing of both books would be like no you know these people are this way because of the patriarchy and you're like actually they're this way because of like late-stage surveillance capitalism and the internet and the patriarchy that's a very specific context and the other thing is you did a beautiful interview in The Independent earlier in the year where someone was like oh you know these messy millennial women weren't we done with those and and you very rightly hit back and were like well we've been reading books about messy millennial terrible men for like a thousand years so you know there's space for many different explorations of that identity very small-round and there's somebody with a microphone here oh we're out of time perfect okay well I'm really sorry about that lads and but we will be selling books in the British Library after this and Megan and Susie will be signing and thank you so much for your attention for your care for your answers and for your lovely questions thank you thank you thank you


Residents of those states have condemned the viral video showing how some police officers ran over a young man with a sienna balls. They have described the incident as a dastardly and barbaric act. They however commented, the Inspector General of Police Kaya Day had been talking for condemning the act but asked him to take action against his men. You have police gone. You have police uniform. You can be oppressing civilians. It's bad. In western world developed countries, things are not going that way.  You are under arrest. You take the person to the station. But in Nigeria here, in Tangier, Buma here, some police will come to your house. You are under arrest. Maybe you want to follow them in a very peaceful way.  It's bad. So we are pleasing the government. They should come and interfere in this matter because that war is a commentary. We turn to disaster. Maybe police will kick somebody. They will kick some police officers. What we are expecting is for the government to do the needful, not what they are publishing on social media. Let us see here that justice has prevailed. It's a good one for the Nigeria Inspector General of Police. Since it came out to… It's a good start for him to have intervened speedily. It should have happened. And I believe since it is something that persons are interested in, it should be done properly. So at Nigeria's, we applaud the police for a good work done. Since the public relations office of the state police command Expe Chidi, Wabu is all noted that the seven police officers involved in the act have been taken into custody. The CP condemned the actions and described it as barbaric, inhuman and unprofessional. They therefore called on the good people of the low state, the general public, to remain calm and go about their businesses. As we speak, they have been identified, they have been arrested and brought to state police headquarters. Been in, where they are undergoing investigation in the state criminal investigation department. Been in.


I'll go box clips. Well, let's let's go over there and have some fun with that now. I'm plugged into What we call market replay. This is synonymous with market playback If you hear either of those two words market replay or market playback, these are synonymous back in the Trader 7 They used to call it market replay now. They call it playback. However, they still refer to the data itself as Market replay. So it becomes a little bit confusing Make sure you understand that we go over this in the market replay section But while we're here tonight, if you're wondering, well, how am I sitting here with trades here after hours? This is another great way of how our system has advantages that you trying to sit there and trade with a naked shark You have no advantage there. You can't do market replay like we can we can literally market replay Anytime we want we can practice on the weekends. We can practice intraday. This is how you do it So you want to set this up and you've got two options here You can use the historical data historical data is data that you already have on your system because if you connected To live markets today Then your computer downloaded all of that data, which is just at the end of the day It's one stream of data. It is quantity price and time. That's it That's it. That's the only three things that are streaming to your computer So as a computer programmer, you need to think in those terms What do we do with that three column wide data? Okay, that is thinking like a quant understanding what you're getting to your PC Now the historical data is stored in files on your machine and that's there every single day Now what is market replay data? There is a difference market replay data is you can have level one level two data I'm not gonna get into that here tonight But in general you are going to want to be using historical data with us because it's just faster to load However, if you needed to go back like let's say six a month ago, and you wanted to trade a specific day You would want to go download that market replay data From Ninja trader and it's very easy to do that. You can do that in their interface But I'm not gonna teach that here tonight. Just know that you can do that and right now I have this pressed I'm pressing play and you can speed it up or slow it down right now I am running at approximately 6x and you can see the time of day that it's running to 20 a.m As of today, this is a Monday, and I'm gonna actually run this to 9 a.m. Here in a few minutes Let's go and see if we can find some of those so in my market replay I'm going to go to if you right-click anywhere in the In this area, let me press control for here. I think Kind of try to use that more helps me to zoom and move at the same time. All right. Can I right-click this? Yes There we go. So go to this is the go to feature I'm gonna click on go to and I want to change this I want to go to 9 a.m All right, I'm gonna press okay So that should get our charts to where we want it to be give that a moment to do some calculation Press the like button share subscribe and comment below with your thoughts and what you learn