Kill Me Now.
Dangers Of Joy.
Today is the day you discover joy.
Everything you perceived as happiness in the past was merely a confused cocktail of alcohol, hormones and drugs.
This is joy, and it’s not fleeting.
You’re about to feel joyful for weeks.
After two years in Galway City, a slave to the Salthill craic, you spend six months plotting your escape.
Today, under a sunny sky, it’s finally happening. You load all your worldlies into your transit van, and head west out of the city.
At 32, you arrived in Ireland ready to ease up on the partying. After four hectic years in Bradford, West Yorkshire, it was time to grow up.
Galway had other ideas, and your life is now immeasurably happier, thanks to friendships formed in city pubs and Salthill clubs.
You’ll always love Galway City, and you’ll need that craic for decades to come, but cohabiting has never been your strong point.
Driving through the majesty of Connemara, your heart calms; your spirit soars.
Cloud shadows scurry over the smooth slopes of the Twelve Pins.
This road started when you first left London in 1981, to live in Cambridge. Even then you knew that you wanted this. A part of you has wanted this ever since you stayed on a Somerset farm during childhood summers.
Of course you didn’t know at the age of seven, but that feeling of utter belonging was your country soul firing up.
You’re moving into a tiny house on the edge of Europe, beside a lake, a few hundred yards off the road, behind the landlord’s family farm.
The Atlantic ocean awaits, with white sand beaches on three sides of your peninsula.
Your house.
Your first house, alone, where you will be able to write; walk; calm the fuck down.
After decades of countless housemates, that sounds wonderful.
Finally you have your own lone sanctuary, with a front and back door.
Compared to all your other moves, in and out of city flats, lugging heaving straining boxes up narrow windy staircases, moving into this house is incredibly easy.
Your life is unloaded in 20 minutes.
With everything inside, you step outside to be greeted by a deep blue cloudless sky and Freddie, the farmer’s cattle dog. He’s not used to being petted, and delighted to have his ruff scratched. You’ll share a strong bond.
Behind the steel gate is Sarah, the neurotic Connemara show pony. She’s too twitchy to be a friend, but the farmer always says “Howya!” as he walks by, and stops to chat about grass temperature and the pregnant cow.
To keep you warm you order a trailer load of turf, which is dropped in a heap on your driveway.
Beside every other house you see the upturned hull shapes of turf reeks, expertly stacked by locals, so you try to build your own.
Turns out to be harder work than you thought. There’s thousands of the little sods. Failing miserably, you come over all Beckett, decide to fail better and walk to the pub.
In an act of perfect kindness, the farmer’s sons sort your turf while you drink. Arriving back at twilight, you see your year’s fuel perfectly stacked up by the wall.
Encouraged by pints of Guinness with Jameson chasers, you feel altogether emotional and very welcome.
There are people all around the world whom you love.
They have helped you through hard times.
You feel strongly they need to know you now live in this stunningly beautiful place.
Joy seems to make you feel strongly about many things.
Your soul has risen high into your chest.
Energy and power flow through your body, into the Connemara sunshine.
Your feet barely touch the grass; bog; cow pooh; white sand.
Unpacking the final box, you find your old Ricoh camera.
You step outside, breathing deep.
Even though the air smells rich in sea salt and cow dung, it’s so clean it actually tastes of honey.
Time to attempt a 360 degree photo of your new location.
First shot is of your house, the second of the gravel drive that winds to the farmer’s house and the road,
(you take a shot, and then turn a few inches clockwise)
which leads to the ruined castle on top of Dun Hill, where a 15 year-old Granuaille, Ireland’s Pirate Queen, moved in with Donaille of the Fierce O’Flahertys in 1546.
(and take another, making the pictures overlap)
A small turn to the right and there’s the moonscape.
Sparse grasses tousle glacial marble slabs, smooth as fallen headstones, in treeless famine fields, enclosed by dry stone walls.
The fields rise and sink at random, as if tossed by a gentle green tide.
(so that no detail is missed out)
A few degrees further finds the gashed grey silhouette of Erris Beg, the mountain that shields Roundstone and south Connemara from view.
(and as you take it all in)
Further round to the west lies Lough Anaserd, a small azure lake, squeezed between the coral white and pink sands of Doonloughan and Mannin strands.
(you gradually realise)
In the distance behind your house rise the sensual slopes and towering peaks of the Twelve Pins: God’s own fruit bowl.
(that this place is really your home)
Before them lies Errislannan, the mystical misty headland where Alcock and Brown landed, after their pioneering Atlantic flight.
(and for the first time in your life you are experiencing joy.)
Days later you pick up those photos from the chemist in Clifden, and arrange them into a wide circle on white card.
In the centre of that circle you stick a map of Ireland, on which you’ve circled Connemara with a marker pen.
Beside that circle you place a small portion of a local map, with your house marked precisely by yet another circle.
Then you draw manic arrows from the outer photos to the national map, and more from that to the local map, and your house.
Then you drive back to Clifden and take A3 colour photocopies of your white card montage, and mail those copies to family and friends around the world.
You can relax now.
They all know you’ve reached the end of this road, from metropolis to city, from town to these small clusters of homes, with neither shops nor church, known in Ireland as townlands.
As your local populations shrank from vast to minuscule, your world expanded wildly, allowing space for your spirit.
Must be a lucky person, whoever lives there.
The next day you plan a Sunday roast. You’ve picked up two cheap front shanks of lamb. If you cook them long and slow, they’ll taste sublime.
To minimise hassle you roast them together with onion and spuds, adding parsnip and carrots later.
Everything’s in one dish.
Dead easy for the washing up.
After two hours your house is filled with the scents of rosemary and garlic.
Your stomach rumbles.
The skies are still blue outside.
You lift the roasting dish out of the oven.
Dammit, you’re singing with pure happiness while you prepare the feast on your plate.
Just a few long slices with the carving knife, to ease the meat from its tendon and bone, and then one final slice to split the skin between your thumb and finger.
Blood gushes forth.
You know two things: there’s no way you’ll ask the farmer for help, like a useless blow-in English fool.
Not on your first full day in this house.
That is not going to happen.
You also know that, fuck it, you will sit and eat this dinner.
A bit of a wound won’t stop you now.
Belly driven, that’s you.
Thanks to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com
You wrap several sheets of kitchen towel around your severed flesh, and sit at the table with your bloodstained hand raised above your head, to stall the bleeding.
Your other hand grabs roasties, carrots and lamb from the plate and shovels them into your mouth.
“Oh, mmm, god, mmm, that’s so good!” you mumble, chewing the lamb bone like a primal predator.
“Howya Charlie! Just thought I’d put my head round the door, like, see if you’re settlin’ in okay, like!”
You’re not yet accustomed to the locals’ habit of ignoring closed doors.
If you’re there, they let themselves in, as your landlord has just now, finding you waving a blood-soaked hand high above your head, and a gravied gristly lamb bone in the other.
Your face is smeared with grease and unbeknownst to you, your left ear is covered with dried blood from your injury.
Your landlord stops in his tracks.
You try to decide which hand is best to wave.
“Grand thanks, Pat!” you cry excitedly, spittles of lamb exploding from your mouth, flying visibly through the sun-drenched air.
“All good here! Not a bother on me!”
“Sound, well, I’ll be off then.”
Shocked, unsure and hesitant, the young man smiles, turns and retreats.
You laugh as you wonder whether he thought you were eating your own self-amputated hand.
It’ll be a while before he pops in unannounced again.
Your reputation has been created. The locals in the pub hear this story, and they christen you Oddball.
In response you explain to this rural Brethren of the Bar, some of whom appear to have worn the same clothes for forty years, that coming from them, Oddball feels like a compliment.
Everyone laughs at that, mostly because they don’t understand your accent, and are unaware they’ve been slagged off.
The bleeding eases after your Sunday feast.
You sit by the fire.
Your energy crashes like an avalanche.
Joy is powerful.
Treat it with respect.
© Charlie Adley
05.02.2023
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