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!