The Saw Doctors, Michael D, Eamonn Casey, the craic and the rain - DV from '93.

 

Recently it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online, so over the next few weeks I'll be posting excerpts from different years. Here comes 1993.

January 1993.
Taking a breather. 

Back in London for a few days, I can see that my first 6 months in Ireland have so far been very good to me. To someone born in London, Galway is like taking a breather.

Well, as far as stress and strain are concerned. However, the craic is far from gentle. The Galway weekend runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, if you let it.

February 1993.
To ash or not to ash. 

Classic entertainment from RTE last Sunday. A discussion on the midday radio show concerned itself with the important and weighty matter as to why it was that Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern attended the Budget debate with ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

One of the panellists declared that she thought that they had done it solely to detract from the poor Budget they were presenting. She thought that their actions had trivialised a solemn day.

The phone rang in the studio, and on the line was none other than himself, Bertie’s big brother, who testified on air that Bertie had always worn the ash on his forehead.

“He’s always done it, for as long as I’ve known him.”

“And how long have you known him?” asked the DJ.

I paused for thought.

How long has your big brother known you?

February 1993.

The state of the Church in the State.

There is a massive ignorance in England of all things Irish. Before I came here I didn’t even know that Ireland is the only country in the world, aside from Vatican City, to have the Catholic Church written into its constitution.

So on Sunday I tried and miserably failed to answer the questions asked by my friend Joanna, visiting from England.

We were strolling past Salthill Church just as the congregation was leaving Sunday Mass.

Two teenage girls walked out from the church in front of us, their hands covering irrepressible giggles.

“So what was he like? Did you shift him? Will you see him again?” 

Behind them followed two women in their 70s, engaged in fierce debate with each other.

“So he says to me it’s a feckin’ cert, so I put 10 on a reverse forecast and the other bloody one comes in. His is probably still feckin’ runnin’.”

I suggest we go to the pub in order to relax the raised quizzical eyebrows of my guest.

“The pubs are open? On a Sunday? But I thought this was a religious country?”

“Oh it is, but not in those ways. There are more fundamental ways in which the Church influences people here. Like there’s no divorce, and -”

Joanna is choking on her Coca-Cola. Her eyes plead at mine, as if awaiting a punchline, but there isn’t one.

“So do you just have to stay with your husband or wife, even if it’s a nightmare?”

“No no, there’s a lot separated wives and single mothers.”

“But if they’re not divorced they can’t remarry, so if they meet somebody they’re forced to live as adulterers, in sin?”

Confusion bounced around my vacant brainbox. I thought of telling her something of the recent furore about the open selling of condoms; about how chainstores didn’t even want to stock them for fear of alienating their customers.

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want her to think of Ireland as some kind of medieval anachronism. I do know that I love this country, even if I don’t yet understand it, and anyway, she was ready with more questions I couldn’t answer.

“So this Bishop, the one that everyone in Galway keeps saying is such a good Bishop, he wouldn’t be the one with the son in America, would he? Not the one who tried to persuade the woman to get rid of the baby? Not the one who stole Church funds to pay off his mistake?”

“Well yes, that’s him, but apart from that, he’s been a good Bishop!”

July 1993.
Festival of Life, or life of festivals? 

I’m standing next to a family of American tourists on Wolfe Tone bridge, when all of a sudden a vast crowd passes by. Actors, musicians, drunks and kids rush past, chased by restaurateurs, shopkeepers, publicans and hoteliers.

Everyone is singing, shouting, laughing and having a seriously good time. Merrymaking swamps us for a moment, and then it’s all gone.

“Wow! What was that?” asks the tourist father.

“That? That was a festival, mate.” I explain.

“Awww, I didn’t want to miss the festival.”

“Don’t worry,” I comfort him, “there’ll be another one along in a minute!”

July 1993.
Local boys slap city on the back! 

“Anyone want to know the truth about Eamonn Casey?” asks the Saw Doctor to an ecstatic Arts Festival crowd.

Is the Pope a Catholic?

We’ve just witnessed a flood of Macnas dancers twirling umbrellas up on stage, alongside dragons and drummers.

It’s party time, with the Local Boys Done Good Band playing at home.

Not only that, but Home is Galway, and Galway is giving itself a massive and well-earned slap on the back.

For a city that has no municipal theatre, Galway manages to put on a fair amount of theatre. At one stage during this year’s Arts Festival, we had a choice of thirteen live performances, with people and players moving from tents to warehouses; just about anywhere but the municipal theatre, because we don’t yet have one.

There were pictures in pubs, carvings in cake shops and sculptures on the street, some of them human.

Around midnight the atmosphere at the gig is peaking, and the feel of it is so local that, whilst I don’t in any way feel excluded, I do feel slightly detached. Mind you, there are many who've been saying that about your colyoomist for some time.

The Shams are singing about Presentation Boarders, a lyric that has to be explained to me later. My mind wanders to Race Week, and something clunks in my brain.

Race Week?
Again?

For the first time there is something on the calendar that I remember.
This time last year I was walking off a ferry from Roscoff to Cork, setting foot on Irish soil for the first time. Hiding from the rain in Cork City, I sat in my B&B and watched the Galway Races on tele.

And now I live here, and love it.

It was a great Arts Festival and doubtless an excellent Race Week to come. Never mind the weather, the punters want to spend, and who are we to stop them?

Galway even manages to market itself through the rain.

“Splish-splash splish-splash!” sing the Saw Doctors.

July 1993.
Fuck your politics, it’s your accent we hate! 

Last week I was hitching down to Limerick. Three Republican lads driving from Belfast to Lisdoonvarna in a Range Rover were in raptures of delight to have captured me, and the wind-ups came fast and furious.

I quickly became frustrated, and asked them why they presumed my politics. How could they possibly know how I felt about the Troubles, or a united Ireland?

The reply came quick and emphatic.

“We don’t give a fuck about your politics. It’s your accent we hate.”

October 1993.
By the way, what does the ‘D’ stand for? 

Michael D. Higgins floats a spoonful of whipped cream on top of his coffee.

The Piano Bar of Murray’s Salthill Hotel provides an other-worldly atmosphere of times gone by, and the present Minster for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht offers the same.

At a time when politicians are rarely anything more than pendulums, swung this way and that by public opinion, Michael D. offers a flashback to the days when people had principles and opinions, which they were not shy of airing in fiery manner.

At first glance he appears more elfin than ministerial, but as he sits, he rubs his hands over his face, pushing them hard down over his head, and the person that emerges is ready for action.

It is the movement of a tired man, which he repeats several times over the course of the evening. I resist the urge to send him off home to bed.
Michael D. speaks with fluidity and conviction.

He may be small of stature but he is not someone who can hide in a corner. Throughout the interview many who pass feel at liberty to say ‘Hello!’, and he responds to them all by name.

For someone doing what is essentially an inhuman job, he retains an accessibility that many others have lost, or never had.

December 1993.
Ireland has not yet ‘Gone with the rain.’

Last Friday I was as mad as a hundred hatters.

The full moon hung massive over the river, unleashing a torrent of light into the black velvet sky. Galway City on a wet windy December night.

Lovely. Bloody lovely.

Coming down from Mill Street towards Monroe’s, the south-westerly storm force wind tore blinding sheets of land-bound ocean into me.

Diving into a sheltered nook by a shop’s front door, I suddenly found myself in exceptionally close quarters with a wild-eyed white-bearded older gent, who seemed to be having far too much of a good time on such a night as this.

Turning to smile and appear peaceful in my intentions, I offered the simplest and what I thought the safest of openings:

“What about that rain, eh? Terrible isn’t it!”

We turned to look at the solid sheets of sideways rain flying up the street, as if God was emptying his bathtub by turning the world the wrong way up.

“Fannnn-tashtic!” cried he, “Fantastic! ‘Tis God’s gift to Ireland, the rain!”

With that he looked over at me smiling, searching into my eyes, and without a discernible trace of irony continued

“If we had no rain we’d have no Ireland. There would be hotels on every clifftop and towns on every beach. Everything you love about Ireland will be gone! Gone with the rain!”

‘Gone with the rain’?

The man was clearly a genius, but thirst was rapidly overcoming my desire to stop and chat with this gifted old geezer.

We looked at each other with suppressed grins and he suggested that after such a Winter, the Summer should be moity.

I agreed wholeheartedly, and we parted company, knowing full well what nonsense that was. 

 

©Charlie Adley

01.04.2026
 

Three Snippets from '92

Artwork by Allan at www.caricatures-ireland.com

After the recent self-congratulatory piece about DV passing 750k hits, it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online. So over the next while I’ll be dropping a few excepts from years gone by.

I first stepped onto Irish soil in August 1992 and was awarded the colyoom three weeks later. Click below to read three snippets from the following three months, when I’m all spanky fresh and green in the Emerald Isle.

September 1992.
Inside out in Cleggan. 

The people in the dining room of the B&B are trying their best to ignore me. The state of my brain is mirrored perfectly by the low cloud drizzle that is swamping and subduing the whole of Cleggan Bay this morning.

I am blissfully unaware that my T-shirt is on inside out and back to front.

In fact, far from matters of sartorial elegance, I’m having a great deal of trouble simply eating. I try ever-so carefully to secure a piece of toast and fried egg onto my fork, and manage to fumble it into my mouth.

At this precise moment an immaculately turned-out French couple glide into the dining room. These slickers were not in the pub until early this morning, unlike some scribblers I might mention.

They stop in their tracks as they see fried egg slowly slip out from my mouth and ooze its way down my chin, on its journey back to the plate. 

Plainly horrified, they disappear from the room, having lost their appetites.

Now everyone has turned to look at me, in their clean-cut European V-neck sweater kind of way.

Do I care?
Not while there is food to be eaten.

The rain continues to come down, so all my healthy intentions to climb hills and break a natural sweat are banished.

Back to Oliver’s bar, the scene of last night's crime, where today the big screen is up, and here we go again. Galway confound the tipsters, and I can think of no better place to watch the game.

Every time a point is scored the place erupts, and at a Galway goal small riots break out in various corners of the pub.
A brave female voice insists on calling

“Come on Tipp!”

and yet, so different to my native England, nobody here boos her. They don’t need to. It’s Galway’s day, and we eventually resign ourselves to the ensuing celebrations.

Nothing like a quiet restorative trip to Connemara.

Nothing. 

 

October 1992.

Illegal Numbers?

I was out on Saturday night on the trail of the obligatory craic, and found it in the shape of ‘Zrazy’, a two woman band playing in the wonderful Galway sleaze pit that is the Jug o’Punch.

They played a strong set of love songs and political songs, and soon enough the place was hopping. After the set I went to ask Maria of the band about one song that seemed to involve the constant repetition of a string of numbers.

What was that all about?

“It’s the telephone number of a Pregnancy Advice line, or an Abortion Advice line, depending on your way of looking at it. Either way, it’s illegal.”

“What’s illegal? I don’t understand.”

“The telephone number is illegal.”

“The telephone number is illegal? But how can a telephone number be illegal?”

“You can’t print it, broadcast it or dial it. That’s how it’s illegal.”

Holy cow, Ireland is so weird. Who is frightened of what? Even if it is technically possible to outlaw a string of numbers, how can it be morally defensible? The arguments of those who would impose such mindless censorship must be oh so fragile.


November 1992.
His business just didn’t add up. 

I wander into a shop in Salthill to buy two lightbulbs. Himself behind the counter smiles to see this stranger, and tells me how the weather has been fine.

“Do you sell lightbulbs?”

“Well now, I do, yes, I do, but, c'mere to me now ...” he hooks his finger and motions me to move closer, whispering. “I do sell lightbulbs, but truth be told, there’s a place just down the road that sells ‘em a mite cheaper than me.”

I stand flummoxed. If I walk out it will look like I am a cheapskate, but if I stay I’ll look like a fool.

“I will buy them off you, thanks all the same.”

“Ah good man. Now, so, it’s two you want is it? Well, they are 30 pence each, or 3 for a pound.”

Looking deep into his kindly eyes I find no trace of irony or humour in the moment. He clearly has no idea what he has just said.

“I’ll take 2 at 30 pence each please!” I say, and thank him for his trouble, leaving the shop amazed and confused.

It’s a business that looks like it’s been around for generations, but if that’s the way they operate, how on this good earth have they managed to stay in business?

©Charlie Adley

29.03.2026.

Happy Paddy's Day and 25 years of friendship!

It’s lunchtime on St. Patricks Day, 2001, and I’m sitting at the bar of the Anchor Pub in Killala, enjoying Sean the landlord’s icicle sharp sandpaper dry wit.

I’ve only been living here for a couple of months, yet even by my own introverted sociopathic standards I’ve barely left my new home, because there hangs in the air the terrible threat of Foot and Mouth disease.

Along with the Six Nations Rugby tournament, Paddy’s Day parades have been cancelled.

Even though the Celtic Tiger cub is firing up my freelance writing career very nicely, Ireland is still an agricultural economy. Silicon Bog is yet to rise from the mist of corporate tax evasion. If livestock are slaughtered on an industrial scale, local livelihoods will be devastated.

How much do I want to be the Englishman who brought Foot and Mouth disease to the Irish Republic?

So I’ve been resisting the urge to walk long and far, yet staying inside has been such a challenge for me, because North Mayo, my new home, has the lot: rolling green pasture and barren ancient bog; drumlins and mountains; flatlands and cliffs; subterranean galleries and ancient abbeys.

I’d fallen in love with its unique seascapes. So many white sand beaches are untouched by mass tourism, while at Downpatrick Head there are blowholes and the astonishing sea stack, Dun Briste, a sight that never fails to make my jaw drop.

Sipping my whiskey, dreaming of day I can walk freely in my new environment, I spot a bearded gent down the other end of the bar.

It’s early yet, so the pub is empty, save for us two and Sean. While living in Galway City I’d learned the hard way that Paddy’s Day is rather like New Year’s Eve: a messy event full of drunk people who are not used to drinking, overdoing it because they feel they have to.

Mr. Beardy and I start chatting, and as I sit here, 25 years later to the day, we haven’t stopped.

On that Paddy’s Day he explained that his family had arrived in the area only a few months before me, and over the next few weeks he introduced me to several other families of Blow-Ins who’d also recently arrived.

Tragically since then we have lost four wonderful souls to cancer, but that has served only to strengthen our bonds.

My friend and I share a passion for nature. We love to grow plants, study animals and stare at the night sky, wondering at the beauty of it all.

He has since graduated with a degree as a local guide, now expert in local geography, history, topography, geology, folklore, music and culture. To walk along a beach with him is a privilege.

His passion for our local flora and fauna bursts out as he grabs bunches of seaweed off the rocks, explaining how it contains all the minerals that made life possible. Then his head dives down to the sand, where a pinprick hole lures him to dig with his fingers, all the way up to his elbow, until he withdraws his arm clutching a lunch of razor clams. 

Over the quarter century of our friendship, life and death have visited us both in most challenging ways, yet we have survived, and occasionally thrived, if not in riches then in laughter.

The man is notorious for his tangential ramblings. He makes Billy Connolly appear succinct and to the point. However I’ve learned through my wild and wonderful life that rather than loving perfection, it’s our foibles, faults and fractures we humans truly love.

His wonderful wife and I have our own friendship, but on occasion we’ve further bonded at my friend’s expense, in that when he’s off on a verbal trek, we circle around his story, rather like jackals hunting prey.

Will he ever get to the point?
Do we even care?

On one most memorable occasion my friend and I had greeted a sunny Summer afternoon by chatting and laughing and drinking a little. Then we visited the village and had another little talk and a laugh and a drink.

Later we returned to his home where I watched as he fed the children and put them to bed. Then we had a little drink, a laugh and talked until his wife returned from work. Then we sat, talked, laughed and drank some more.

As the heat from the coal and wood roasting in their huge fireplace rose into the room and fuelled our hearts, the standards of conversation tumbled.

By this time all those little drinkies have combined as one. My friend's’ wife and I are mercilessly mocking himself, with all his wandering tangential amorphous storytellings.

He raises his hands to protest:

“Now now now!” he bellows, eager to plead his case. “All seriousness aside!” says he, blissfully unaware of the wee verbal slip that has caused us, his audience, to fall physically from our chairs in inebriated mirth.

Thinking back now, maybe my friend has had the last laugh. Wisdom lurks in his inadvertent and hysterical error.

All seriousness aside? Isn’t that the best advice?

Here’s to the next 25 years, my lovely friends, and happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and all my colyoomistas.
 

 

©Charlie Adley

16.03.2026

Double Vision passed 750,000 hits - thanks to all my colyoomistas!

It's been 33 years and 5 months since Double Vision was born in the Connacht Tribune and Galway City Tribune, with the first colyoom (pictured above) appearing in October 1992, and 19 years 2 months since we went online.

 

Since then there have been 732 posts, 762,953 visits, with 4,450 yesterday and 36,588 this month.

 

Colyoomista activity always rises as we near Paddy's Day, but nevertheless I'm extremely grateful to all of you who have read my blather. 

 

I'll be back in touch when we clear the million mark! Thanks again!

 

Just say it. Months of rain rain rain. We can handle the truth. Unsettled, me hole.

Great artwork from Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

Every Saturday I take my sabbath.
I don’t have to do my stretches.
I don’t have to exercise.

I can eat whatever I want, yet must cook as little as possible.
I go out for my Full Irish on Saturday morning and in the evening I shove something into the microwave. 

Yes, a dreaded UPF dinner for me, and that’s okay.
It’s my day off.

Wouldn’t want you to think that makes life simple. Doing exactly what I want is way more complex than simply doing nothing.

The Ireland England ruby match is about to start, and I’ll watch that with full sound and vision until half time, when I have to mute the TV so’s I can listen to the Chelsea commentary on my phone.

All good and eminently doable, until I send a text to my mate JB, saying I’m having a busy lazy rainy day.

This is when being a vocational writer becomes a bit of a pain. My so-called ‘calling’ hears Busy Lazy Rainy Day in capital letters: a working title, very probably a headline for a piece, ‘cos yeh, I’ve been meaning to scribble something new for a while.

Right now though there’s the rugby, which stretches my love and loyalty between my home nation and the nation I call my home. Unless it ends in an honourable tie, part of me will win that game and part of me will lose it.

The Blues playing Burnley doesn’t stretch my loyalty at all.

My writer thing knows there’s no better time than right now to put that thought down.

In fact, if I don’t turn the stream of thought that followed the idea into notes or better, a first draft, any potential will diminish; might be forgotten.

Do it now!
Engrained in my DNA after living off my blather for so long. Do it now!

There’s the rugby, the footie, and the laundry- oh! Didn't I mention that I chose my day off to do the laundry too? There’ll be drum-spinning ear-shattering whining splicing the air in a minute - oh, no, right now in fact.

Just before kick off. Not too bad. I’ll sort those clothes out at half time, before the Chelsea kick off. 

And there I am, on my day off, writing mental lists.
To Do lists.
Worse. Unnecessary To Do lists.
Chronological blah blah.

Having laid out my clean clothes on driers I reject the matches, the laundry the whole damn doodad that had me writing mental lists.

I go outside and stand in the rain. Mental behaviours, some might say.
I beg to differ. Busy Lazy Rainy Day. I’ve been busy and lazy and it’s been raining for several centuries now, or so it seems.

Relentless dancing drops hitting my mypex, standing pools of water on drenched clogged ground.

Juicy big wet-making raindrops slick through my hair. I can feel my jeans soaking in the rainspray drenching given by the wind.

Pneumonia beckons. Communing with nature is great and all that, but I like breathing too, so I go inside and watch the drops dance on the pavement.

Rain: saviour of Ireland. Rain that keeps our clifftops free from hotels, our beaches empty and clean, our fields full of flowers and our pasture rich and deep.

Alongside the absolute certainty of rain here on the edge of the mighty Atlantic the only other thing I can guarantee is that every local soul will utter some form of weather assessment thus:

“I don’t mind if it’s cold/hot/windy/foggy/frosty as long as it’s not raining. That’s the thing. Long as it’s not raining.”

After 34 years living on Ireland’s west coast I still cannot fathom why people choose to demonise that which they live with each day.
It’s going to rain, so we might as well enjoy it.

Masters of the meteorological euphemism, the English and Irish have created a universe of weather terms that are indecipherable to foreigners, and let's be honest, pretty much incomprehensible to ourselves.

Any ideas just what an 'odd shower' might be? One in which the rain falls upwards?

Anyone know exactly what they mean by bright? Are we talking clouds, sunshine, or what?

And when did the word 'rain' disappear from forecasts, to be replaced with 'unsettled weather'?
It's not unsettled at all.
It's days and days of rain.
Weeks, nay months of rain rain rain.

Just say it baby; we can handle the truth.
Unsettled, me hole.

We do rain in all shapes and sizes: soft; drizzly; damp; showers - but is that occasional showers, frequent showers, constant showers; heavy showers, or prolonged heavy showers?

We have light, moderate and heavy rain, followed by lashing rain and then, Top of the Rain Pops comes sideways rain, which conspires to come at you on gale and storm force winds from the horizontal.

For reasons I’d rather not understand, sideways rain seems to possess some kind of perverted predilection for travelling up inside a coat or even jeans, as if sniffing out your bits.

Not good.

With the coming of spring there arrive the early enquiries from friends for summer visits, asking the inevitable question: "What's the weather like?"

Let me think: what is the weather like? I’ve lived in hot dry places. I’ve lived where the ground moves under your feet, where forests burn, where the winters blow blizzards and snowdrifts.

I’ll admit to being generally happy living between 10 - 20C, or 50 - 60F in the old money.

We rarely have extreme weather here. When we do it’s mostly rain, and we have an extremely large vocabulary with which to describe it.

My own bȇte noir is when the media forecasters show off their state-of-the-art technology by predicting

“Sunshine at times, rain in places.” 

Aaaaarrggghhhhh.

Yes we know.
Times and places.

As opposed to the weather in Black Holes and parallel universes, beyond time and reason.

Maybe, just maybe, one day they’ll share with us which places at what times.

Today To Do lists begone!
I’m watching the rain.


© Charlie Adley
21.02.2026