Celebrating a million readers, here's the second of my two favourite DVs: 'This is my Jerusalem!'

                                                             www.irelandinpicture.net

Happy Ever After... is a pointless ambition. Happiness comes like a swallow in Summer, a snowflake on warm grass.

Happiness lasts for a second or two years, and the important thing is to realise it, feel it while it lasts. 

I felt happiness for a few precious minutes last week, and I drank deeply of it. 

A brief hiatus appeared in the midst of the maelstrom that has been life in recent times, so I packed Blue Bag and headed off to Newport, Co. Mayo. 

Walking into the first Bed and Breakfast I found, just outside the small town, I lingered in an empty reception area as an older man and an invisible woman had a heated discussion in the kitchen.

I paced up and down, knowing they knew I was there, slightly irked that they were ignoring a potential customer, but patient; grateful to be there at all. 

Eventually the older man decided to acknowledge me, walking towards me, asking what I wanted. I was standing by a reception desk with a bag on my shoulder, so I was just a tad surprised when he raised his eyebrow at my request for a room.

He called for Herself, and out she came. Fifty year-old deeply-lined skin on the face of a forty year-old smoker, she refused to return the smile I was pumping at her, instead telling me she had to check her book to see if she had a free room.

While she did that I cast an eye into the Visitors Book. The last entry was made two days previously.

She had a room. She had loads of rooms. She was just looking for the least good room she could award to this single traveller. On the ground floor, two single beds and a tiny en suite, but fine, I’ll take it, I said.

How much? Oooh, er emm, bit steep, but okay. I was tired and even though she pitched her price at the top end of the B&B marketplace, I wasn’t going to argue. 

So I unpacked, put on my trackies and a fleece and lay back on the bed. The wall opposite was one huge window that opened out onto the rear car park, so anybody and everybody could see me.

I boiled the kettle and out in the hallway found in the fridge with some rank smelly milk. The little pre-wrapped 3-pack of Custard Creams on my room’s tea tray was beyond its Best Before date.

Refusing to let anything get me down, I lay back on the bed.
Peace and quiet, hoo yeh baby. I never ever nap or take a siesta, but here, now, I had a chance. 

No I didn’t. Outside my door, noisy as if in my face, fresh B&B guests had arrived. Herself was laughing and chatting and being generally lovely with them and I wondered why I’d lost out on her charm.

She showed them into the room next door and was oh ho-ho having a good old laugh with them, so she was, ho-ho. 

They went to their loo and took a shower and I swear I felt like I was immersed inside the runway of a major airport. Explosive noises shot over under and around me as symphonic plumbing went mental in my lug holes. 

I felt miserable. All I’d wanted was to find a quiet clean place  The place was clean alright but it was neither cheap, friendly, quiet nor private.

Facing Herself again would be a pain, but ah, screw it. 

Dressed and packed, I headed back to reception, where I had to knock on doors and wait for ages. I could’ve just left, but I wanted to be polite, offer her a couple of quid for her trouble and the cup of tea with off milk and stale biscuits (oh come on, of course I ate them - it was only a Best Before date!)

Her face was a picture as I mumbled some excuse as to why I had to go.

She shook her grim chin at my couple of Euro and then headed off at high speed to the room I’d been in, doubtless to see what I’d stolen from her. 

As I climbed back into the car I laughed. What was I going to nick? Her ancient grotty bedspreads? I think not. 

At the top of Newport's hill I headed into the hotel, where Roisin quoted me a price ten euro more than the B&B (ignore any rate cards you ever see in Irish hotels, absolutely). She listened to my needs and gave me a quiet room tucked away far from the bar.

As I opened the door I let out a whoop! It was huge and modern and clean and well worth the extra tenner. The skin-piercing shower alone was worth the extra dosh. All of a sudden I wanted to sing out loud. 

Feeling for the first time that I might be on holiday, I started at the furthest point from the hotel, sliding into each of the five pubs in town, ordering a Jameson in each and being given exactly that. No urban enquiries of whether I’d like ice or water or essence of Christian Dior in my whiskey: just a simple glass with a neat Jamie. 

Many evenings of my life have been spent in rural pubs and small town bars in the West of Ireland, but that night I didn’t really feel like chasing the craic.

I hadn’t the energy, so after I ran out of bars, and while the midsummer sun was still above the distant dark hills, I walked up the road to the church. 

At the top of the hill, I leaned on the stone wall and realised it was June 23rd, St. John’s Eve: bonfire night in Catholic countries.

Below green fields fell away toward the windy wee road, twisting its way to somewhere. Beyond the road the valley rose with stone walls and lush fields, blending into the black distant Nephin Beg range of hills.

Bonfires, everywhere, how many? 12, 13, 17, every house that might have been invisible in the fading evening light became a point on the map. Smoke spires dotted the landscape, as if a thousand new Popes had been announced. 

Small purple clouds clipped the fading sun’s dazzle, as it started to slip below the hills, and I found peace. 

This is my green and pleasant land. This is my Jerusalem.

This was my moment to be happy. I've learned how to spot it now. So many people miss their own happiness. It’s gone before their next bad time hits them over the head. They might then wonder why life is worth it, and that is a tragedy. 

The only thing I didn’t know was how long this happiness would last, but I didn’t care. The sun was gone, the sky crimson and pink as I turned away from the stone wall and took a wander around the church.

Recently restored with shiny pointing and a mini round tower, it was lovely.

A woman in a house behind me suddenly said hello. She was having a ciggie out of her window and I said hello back.

"Hello, lovely evening isn’t it!"
"Lovely!"

Strangers who say hello, just because you’re there.

Around the far side of the church I came across a door with a sign that said Sacristy and Toilets and behind it, I heard a young man singing. He had no idea that I was there, but I could tell he was writing a song. Maybe he was a young priest, composing something for his Sunday sermon.

He sang as a priest might, with a strong steady falsetto voice, ecclesiastical, lyrical and ethereal. 

"La la laaaaaaaa..." 

He was writing a song. I wondered what it was about?  

"Laaa laa la la laaaa..." 

He coughed and then sang the words of his song for the first time. 

“Property Tax, Property Tax,
They’re going to give us a Property Tax,

I’m looking forward to the Property Tax.
Water Tax, Water Tax, 

How will we pay the Water Tax?
I’m looking forward to the Water Tax...

We’ll all go to jail for the Property Tax....
lal la laaa...”   

and then he was wordless again, doubtless penning the lyrics to a second verse.

But it was perfect.

A priest in touch with the plight of his flock.
A scribbler at one with the splendour of rural Ireland.
Happiness, for which I am grateful.

 

©Charlie Adley

27.06.2011

 

Celebrating a million readers, here's the first of my two favourite DVs: 'A loving and thoughtful act brings about my confession!'

 

Jon Lewin

A couple of weeks ago I received in the post a package which reaffirmed my faith in human nature. Although it only contained a simple T-shirt, I was surprised, delighted and emotionally overwrought.

By way of explanation, I have to offer a confession.

Back in September I was sponsored to participate in the Galway Hospice’s Memorial Walk, a splendid and very successful event which raises much-needed funds for the most worthy of causes. Each walker wears a T-shirt on which is printed the name of a person in whose memory they walked that day.

I chose to walk in memory of Jon Lewin, a life-long friend who died of a brain tumour a few short years ago.

Upon arriving at Claddagh Hall I was given a package containing the T-shirt I had ordered, and went off to the Gents to put it on.

At the back of my mind, a wee small irritating voice had been nagging me for days, wondering if they would have spelled his name right. And lo, as soon as I saw the shirt out of its wrapping, there was the name a certain John Lewin.

And then I cried.

Clearly, I didn’t cry because they had spelled his name wrong. There are many things that upset me, as regular colyoomistas know, but an excellent institution such as the Galway Hospice awarding hundreds of walkers free T-shirts in a thoughtful tribute to lost loved ones could never be a cause for complaint.

No, I was mourning, and it hit me like a tsunami. I had written about Jon in this colyoom the week before, when I related our nightmare teenage holiday in Greece, so his memory was fresh in my brainbox, and I felt his presence with me on that day.

'Stop being a prat, Adley!’ I told myself, and put on the T-shirt, but each time I looked at the name, John with an ‘h’, I had a ridiculous and irrational emotional reaction.

This geezer’s name on my shirt was not Jon’s, but what did it matter? This day, this walk, this fund-raising event was not about me and my pedantic neurotic needs.

Somewhat foolishly, I decided to mention what had happened to the organisers, making sure to stress that it really was not a problem to me in the slightest, but that maybe in future, what with there being all manner of new nationalities and names arriving to live in Ireland, attention to detail might help avoid people getting upset.

I hated myself for saying anything, because however I emphasised that I was fine with it, that it wasn’t about me but potential walkers of the future, the more the friendly hospice professionals apologised.

Maybe, through their depth of experience, they could see more in my eyes than they let on. I was certainly unaware of how emotionally messed up I was.

Stepping outside the Claddagh Hall, I stood by the dock and watched all the wonderful walkers turning up in their T-shirts. Nobody seemed to be alone, and even though I would normally loathe to have company on a walk, I felt strangely lonely and, once again sad.

Looking at the Irish names on all the others’ T-shirts, I suddenly had a bit of a panic. Oh no, I should be walking for my little four year-old friend from Mayo who died last year.

How could I forget Alana?
How could I not think to put her name on my T-shirt?

And who is this person whose name is on my T-shirt? It’s not Jon. And why do I feel so nervous?

Why do I feel so scared of being a part of this crowded walk? And why and why and why …

Jon was a very beautiful and calm man. As if he stood at that very moment by my side, I heard his gentle whisper in my ear.

‘Stop being a prat, Charlie! Get yourself out of here, and walk somewhere else. This is not for you today. You’re too much of a mess.’

With the rain starting to fall, I ran away, jumped into my car and drove far away from the crowds. I felt horrible, hopeless, guilty as charged, and could not, for some reason, stop crying.

Eventually I parked at the beach in Furbo, and proceeded to walk long and alone: stumbling over rocks; squidging wet-booted through flooded fields, and finally sitting, breathing, restoring my mental order on a boulder covered with clams.

I walked for all those who had sponsored me.
I walked for the Galway Hospice.
I walked for Jon.
I walked for Alana.

Jon aspired to be a real rock’n’roll person, always cutting his own personal swathe. I felt that he understood and truly appreciated why I’d done a runner from the official Walk.

And I walked for myself, taking time to lie on my belly at face-level with a river, mesmerised by the beauty of the babbling flow, as I regained control of my emotions, and accepted that evidently I had seriously needed to grieve.

What better organisation to be the catalyst for such an emotional outpouring than the Galway Hospice?

So that is my confession: I threw a wobbly, cried a bucket and walked alone. But what of the package in the mail?

Yes - you guessed it! Reaffirming my faith in the future of our species, and going way beyond any hopes, expectations, even idle daydreams, Fiona at the Galway Hospice saw fit to print a T-shirt with Jon’s name on it, and send it to me, with an apology and a thank you note.

At this stage, all I want to say is no, please, let me thank you, for bowling me over and showing so much love and care that I am, once again, quite emotional. Oh and thanks to the Universe for sending us people like that!

©Charlie Adley
12.10.2006

Celebrating a million readers, here's the #1 most read DV of all time: Galway, City, where nobody needs a name!

Thanks to galwaytourism.ie/

“How ya doing?”
 
“Mighty. And you?”
 
“Good thanks. Bit tricky this, but your mate with the northern accent, the lad we were drinking coffee with outside Pura Vida? I’ve known him for years. We’ll often stop and chat. Thing is, I’m not sure of his name.”
 
As my friend stares at me over the table I’m not sure if I’m about to be reprimanded or helped out. How could I possibly be so shallow as to say I know someone, when I haven’t a clue what they’re called?
 
His mouth drops open, his eyes stare at the table as a gathering red flushes up from his chin to the crown of his head.
 
“Jeeze Charlie. Now that you mention it, I’m not sure myself. I think he’s married to the sister of that Dave from the market, because it’s his brother I was talking to. Not the brother from Letterfrack, he’s not been around, the other fella, the one who married the Yank and moved over there and came back after the crash, he’s working in Thermo King now I think, and …”
 
As he rambles I find myself forgetting who it was I was asking about in the first place and no longer caring in the slightest. Over the last couple of decades I’ve become used to this.
 
U2 sang about the land where streets have no names, but the truth is that sometimes in Galway City, people don’t need them either.
 
Even though this city has changed in many ways since I moved here in 1992, all the things I first loved about it remain almost intact, so I was saddened to hear Whispering Blue and Soldier Boy, both raised here, agree that the place had lost what made it special.
 
They felt that the place had grown too big, lost its intimacy and spontaneity.
 
Whenever I walk around Galway City streets with one of my local mates I’m still to this day astonished at the number of people they know. I’m a Londoner and over there bumping into people you know is a rare and special event.
 
To me this buzzing upcoming European Capital of Culture is still also a provincial county town, with an extraordinary smile on its face and a spring in its step. 

Home to dreamers, scribblers, dancers and software designers, you’ll know many people in Galway, just not necessarily by name.
 
This city of 14 tribes has many more now. Scores of Brit blow-ins like me; Europeans availing of free movement; 20,000 students and a welcome tide of others from further afield. Also, let’s not forget those poor souls lost in the limbo of Direct Provision. It’s easy to ignore them. Many of us do, but they live here too.
 
Many wonderful tribes from all over the world on this western seaboard, colliding with local culture, wondering what on earth everyone is talking about. 

If you are one of the many thousands recently arrived in this wonderful patch of the planet, allow me to share the following snippets of advice, gleaned from 24 years of simultaneously sticking out and blending in.
 
Despite what they tell you, never ask anyone if there’s any craic. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing will plunge a conversation into silence, a room into panic, a mood from light into darkness than somebody asking if there’s any craic. 

Unless there’s been a very recent death in the community, the air will hang heavy until someone starts talking about sport or a new dress on sale in Monsoon or, thank the Lord for its ubiquity and neutrality: the weather.
 
As a naïve new Galwegian you will at some point inevitably find yourself trapped by a local, who is convinced that you know somebody that you don’t.
 
You need to be prepared. There’s more than a little bit of Mrs. Doyle about it all, but instead of a cup of tea being forced upon you, the other person cannot rest easy until you either admit that you absolutely definitely don’t know the person never have never will now please step away from my face, or simply lie and say oh yeh, him? I know the fella.
 
If for you, as it was for me, you find neither of these options attractive, because you don’t want to upset someone and you don’t like telling porky pies, then learn this my friend, and use it freely:
 
“I’d know him to see him.”
 
Works a treat every time. The Galwegian who was for obscure reasons obsessed with you knowing this absolute stranger will breathe out, nod, smile and like a humpback whale across hundreds of miles of ocean, return the call:
 
“Ah you would! You’d know him to see him.”
 
After this blissful exchange life will immediately return to normal, whatever that might be in Galway.
 
Just room for one more quick-pick of idiomatic signposting. Even though the Irish are fascinated by death, preferring a good funeral to a bad wedding any day, they don’t mean someone’s died when they describe them as ‘up above.’
 
‘Up above’ can mean they’re still at home with Ma in Shantalla or taking a few months rehab in the cottage in Roundstone. I know from experience that this tiny bit of knowledge can save a whole heap of tragic confusion.
 
Only locals truly know how much this place has changed, but for me, never mind the streets, until the day comes when we need to know our friends’ names, there’s hope for Galway City.


©Charlie Adley
02.11.2016

Double Vision hits the million mark - thanks so much to my colyoomistas!

Double Vision started appearing weekly in the papers in 1992 and has been online since 2007. Last night we welcomed our millionth reader. 

A friend in London wondered how many of those visits were 'bot attacks', and certainly there was one day when DV had 6,000 hits from Singapore, so that must've been bot-mania at work. 

Beyond that, most visits are spread over the hundreds of colyooms posted here.

To celebrate this happy day I'll be posting three DVs: the most read colyoom posted here, along with a couple of my personal favourites.

Watch this space to see which ones I choose, and thanks so much for your loyal support.

 

 

©Charlie Adley 24.06.2026.

Thank you, Dagmar - only an artist could help as you did!

Scent of Memory by Dagmar Drabent. - click here to visit her website.

“Write it for fun!” Dagmar said, outside Tigh Neachtain - where else.

She’d asked me if I was writing, and I snuffled and blurbled a few imaginative excuses.

“Y’see, there’s this new nerve pain from a crushed vertebra high in my back...”

“Y’see when I was ill they put me on Disability and now I’m on a pension, and while I do need extra green folding most of the time, I’m loving the beach walks and staring into guilt-free space...”

“Y’see I’ve been rebooting the pre-online archive of Double Vision, as the online version nears a million hits...”

No, I wasn’t impressed either.

After 7 years of overwhelming, all-consuming misfortune, I was happy to be a human just being, so since moving in to my little house, I’ve avoided writing anything that requires a deadline.

I’d lived off my scribbling for 27 years, and I give thanks for that.

Wooh Yeh. Thank you so much!

I wrote whatever I wanted and newspapers paid me for it. Columns and features.
It doesn’t really get better for a vocational writer.

There’s this play I was writing. The Abbey Theatre were running a competition to submit an idea for a play, and if you won they’d work on it with you and make it happen. I think it’s become a permanent offer these days.

My play is called Townland, and I love it it, mostly because I haven’t written it yet. When it becomes words on paper I’ll love it a lot less. I’ll see only weaknesses and how it could be better, but it’s been in the file for a few years now.

Until, that is, I’m sitting on Galway’s Cross Street with Paul and Dagmar on a Thursday afternoon, and she says that:

“Why not write it for fun?"

Fun?
Don’t be writing it for the Abbey. Write it for fun.

How the hell had I forgotten Play, my core modus operandi?

I just finished teaching my first course since my illness, so for eight weeks I’ve been pummelling my poor pupils with the concept of Play, all the while ignoring my own rule; if it is a rule.

Play is my mindset; my canvas; my first draft; my everything. It’s the document I write in, the headspace I create in. 

When you’re playing you can’t go wrong.
When I’m writing I feel as free as a child in a sandpit.

Reflections on Galway Bay by Dagmar Drabent - click here to visit her website.
 

Dagmar couldn’t have known that I’d been avoiding Play, because I didn’t know either. Once in a while I should maybe listen to myself. And Dagmar.

For those colyoomistas who’ve spotted an absence of fresh DV content recently, here’s what’s been happening.

Back from Galway, I followed my instincts and trusted my experience. I fished out a bag filled with all the pics that have adorned the walls of my workspace, wherever I lived. They offered constancy in a life of many continents.

A postcard of an Utrillo street scene that evokes my teenage hitching years in France. A Modigliani woman that reminds me how strong simple strokes can be the most powerful and effective. 

 

Photos of my two dead Jons, both with no ‘h’, who used to live a mile from each other in London. Ancient photos of my posse, the Class of ’77. We have shared our lives all our lives. Significant cartoons which either illustrated my work or my ideas.

I didn’t put them up when I moved in, because I didn’t want a workplace.

Play.
Fun.

Then I ordered an office chair online, because if I’m about to write then I deserve it. Then I endured a ridiculous Saturday afternoon failing to put it together, while trying not to trigger the nerve pain. When that mutha hits it can knock me off my feet. Like someone put my body into a microwave.

I’m sitting on that chair now, with my workplace pics up around me. Home.

 

No, I absolutely am not several thousand words into the play.

I’ve opened the folder called Townland Stuff, and made some fresh notes. I’m not writing because the Abbey may or may not want to see the play. I’m playing.

I thought it was a rejection letter they sent, but Conor 'Monty' Montague told me it wasn’t.

Monty pointed out that they’d asked to see it when it was written. I’d only seen the words they wrote about not making into their ‘Ideas’ process.

Monty is, by the way, the living breathing Patron Saint of Scribblers. Unsung, unlauded, altruistic, helping scores of writers for the love of writing, and a damn fine wordsmith himself, if you like gonzo madness, gore and ironic excitement. Who doesn’t?

When you’re a scribbler you gain a broad collection of rejections. They differ and dither between hope and damnation. When I lived in Connemara a friend close by insisted that I was a much better writer than him.

“You’ve a much better collection of rejections than I have, Charlie.”

Please take note, one Iris Leal. Back sometime in the 1980s you had just described my writing as ‘a cave painting’, and told me (or screamed wildly at me, if you’re English and not Israeli) that one day I would read a lot of books.

You were right.

Over the last six years I’ve read an absolute shitload of books, mostly modern fiction.

I’ve calmed the fuck down.

The Townland folder is open, and I’m a better writer than I was back when I hid it there, before all those books.

I’m on my spanky new office chair; my pics are up; I’ve written some notes, and realised today that English Tom’s voice needs to be more clipped.

Dagmar could not know how incredibly apt her advice was.

Then again, as an artist she recognises the importance of freedom, of creating for the love of it.

Thanks Dagmar!


©Charlie Adley
12.06.2026

 Dagmar on Spotify