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 grown 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
1 comment:
T'rriffic Chaz
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