One for you, Jon!

 

clashmusic.com

Decided to ease my Chelsea blues by going to see Billy Bragg play a stonking set to a packed house at the Roisin Dubh. Good to see all Galway’s old lefties come out of the woodwork, as well as those who appreciate a good song well sung.

As the set built I felt pounded by waves of nostalgia for my teenage London years back in the 1970s, and when he played 'Levi Stubbs Tears' I felt a rush of emotion and strongly and suddenly missed my dear departed friend Jon Lewin, who was by my side at so many gigs back then. He would've been should've been and maybe was in spirit by my side tonight.

Miss you Jon, did tonight, do often. This one goes out to you mate. X

After 3 Obits, a birthday, because life is for the living!

The last three posts in this colyoom have been about loss, and much as it’s important to celebrate the lives of those who have gone, we’d be missing the point entirely if we forgot to enjoy life as we live it. A few days ago I made it to my 51st, and was very appreciative of how the wonderful people in my life insisted we celebrate.

The fiesta started a few days earlier in Madrid, when my great friend bought me a massage as a present. With distant New Age mood sounds of elephants trumpeting and jungly creatures hooting, a petite masseuse found each of the golf balls that had been illegally occupying my shoulders, kneading those knotted lumps of angry tension into healthy loose fibrous musc-yools filled with smooth flowing bloodules (technical terminology, you understand.)

Doubtless I should have immediately gone to rest and drunk bucketloads of water, but there was whisky to be downed and a city to explore. “Happy Birthday!” said my mate, and when I pointed out that it wasn’t actually for a few days yet, he sensitively and thoughtfully retorted “Bollocks! It’s already started!”

On the day itself, back in Galway, I picked up redoubtable Dalooney and headed off to visit the Guru in his new rural eyrie, high up on the hills of Tonabrocky. We lads, friends for many a year, sat and drank tea, talking shite about dreadful things we’d done ages ago and last week, whilst eating fresh strawberries, enjoying as fine a morning as anybody into the second half of their century might desire.

The Guru said he wanted to take me out to lunch, but I had already stuffed my face with a full Irish breakfast at Lohans pub first thing that morning (I’d decided that I was worth it!), so it was off back down we went, to sea level, to sup a pint of Bay Ale in the Oslo in Salthill.

By the time I got home, the Snapper had been mighty busy, running an Olympic record tour of local supermarkets and delis. On the kitchen table were a pile of big balloons, pressies and cards, which I tore open like a six year-old. Books and chocolate and messages from overseas, by snail mail, e-card, donkey train and turtle dove.

Lovely! Off to shower my ageing boddaay before Dalooney and the Body joined the Guru at our gaff, whereupon we started to drink much English beer (no, not warm beer, just not chilled beer. What is it with the way the world mocks our bitter? Does anyone complain that most red wine is served unchilled? Does anyone say ‘Ooh yuk, warm wine?’) and Irish whiskey, a bottle of which was produced by the Body himself (as a gift, I hasten to add, not through his bladder!)

We four blokes than sat around the table and were presented with a roast chicken feast, followed by berries, lemon tart and finally, a home-baked birthday cake, all the work of my lovely wife. Raising our glasses to toast her, the mad shouting and exuberant drunken revelry that exploded from our mouths somehow formed into a rousing, very customised version of the Marseillaise.

Well, it was similar to the French national anthem in every way except none of us actually formed words, throwing grunty laughing noises into a mix of pure exuberance, to thank herself for her sterling and loving efforts.

And then a few minutes later, spont-an-naneously like, just for the craic like, we raised our glasses and toasted her again, producing another nonsensical chorus of “Aaaaalonzzz lay zer doo baarr doo berrr be dooo dan na na shoooobeeer doo be daaerrrr!”, accompanied by hearty table thumping and a healthy dollop of pure silliness.

We watched no TV, played no games, just talked and ate and drank and I looked around the room and couldn’t have been happier. Admittedly there were rather more testicles than wombs around the room, but sure, ye’ll have that. There were family phone calls, balloons on the walls and a room filled with the beating of excellent human hearts, good souls with one combined intent - to celebrate life and get on with the living of it!

Galway is the filling in Life’s sandwich!

Born 15 minutes apart and raised a few front doors from each other, the two fiftysomething friends each wrap an arm around my shoulders and we move as one body, away from the midnight cab, towards my front door, in a man-huggy drunken lope.

The relationship enjoyed by these two men might be called brotherly, but that would be unfair. I can recognise their bond, because I’m lucky enough to share similar ones in my life.

They are as close as brothers, but as friends they are unencumbered by the limitations of sibling rivalry and family obligation. Safely in the front door and ensconsed, sipping whiskey in my living room, I sit back and laugh as they cruelly slag each other off with the skill of decades practice.

It’s been a long night, so I head off to bed, leaving the life-long friends to their own company. In front of me they were behaving like men: neither sensible nor sober men, but grown-ups nonetheless. Now that I am above, lying in bed, their slagging has stopped. They have no audience any more, so they don’t need to display their wit; their repartee. From the room below rises the wonderful sound of two grown men giggling and chuckling like the eight year-old boys they once were, together.

I’m drifting off into sleep, awash with their distant laughter. My last waking thoughts of the night make my heart sing for Galway City. Earlier, as we had clambered leggy and locked out of that cab, my good friend who was down from the old village in Co. Mayo stretched his arms out wide, announcing

“I love being in Galway! It’s great to be in the city!”
His friend from Dublin stretched his arms wide, declaring in response
“I love being in Galway! It’s great to be out of the city!”
Naturally I had to seal the deal, stretching my arms and saying
“I love Galway! It’s a little bit of what you want, whatever that is!”

We three laughed smugly, they each taking one of my outstretched arms, sandwiching me as if I was Galway, in the middle of their rural urban sandwich.

No water, no minerals, just lashings of love and humanity!

 

My friend is disappearing into a hole in the ground.

 

“Pass me the empty bottle of Coke now, Charlie!”

 

 A few minutes earlier we’d been standing in the sunshine, chatting with his wife by a stone wall, by a field in north Mayo, when a young fella came up and whispered something into my friend’s ear.

 

He looks over to his wife, both of whom have worked for a month to help organise this wedding.

 

“There's no water left. No water and no minerals. Washing all those dishes has emptied the well.”

 

 “Well, we did three courses for 70, so that’s 210 dishes, and that’s a lot of water.”

 

No water and no minerals. 

Only alcohol then. 

Classic stuff. 

Great for the grown-ups, but what about the chil--

 

“Ah now, there’s another well just down the way there. I’ll go down now and draw some water.”

 

“I’ll come with you” says I, ever eager to do manly primal things. Bring water! Ug!

 

The Londoner in me expects to see a Hans Christian Andersen wishing well, but instead there’s an old pallet, which we lift from the grass.

 

He dives in head first, enthusiastically grabbing great handfuls of grasses and weeds, which he scoops out, only then to assuage my doubts and thirst by producing bottles of clear-(ish) water from the hole in the ground.

 

The well.

 

Three older locals meet us on the way back to the farm, and as soon as they find out the water came from the lower well, they raise the bottles to their lips, as if in eucharistic ecstasy.

 

“Now that is beautiful water. Didn't it keep our families alive not so long ago.”

 

The bride and groom have travelled all the way from their home in the Far East back to the village where I used to live in north Mayo, to celebrate their wedding with the groom’s family.

 

As if the great distance is not reason enough for emotion and love to run amok, there is also a tragic illness for the courageous couple to live with, and as the horse-drawn carriage takes the bride to the family home, I feel all passionate and think to myself 

 

‘Ah, that’s Killala at its best.’

 

Several hours later, I’ve gone past the ‘Killala at its best’ stage, straight on through the ‘This is the Irish at their best’ phase and settled finally and certainly for ‘This is the human race at its best.'

 

Admittedly by then I am ver’ ver’ drunk, but I know what I’ve seen, and I know what it means.

 

All the walls around the farm have been whitewashed; the garden has been cleared and planted; the barn has been transformed from ... from, well, from a barn, into a wedding fantasy land, with thousands of metallic twirly doodads hanging from the ceiling, a thousand tea lights lit and bails of hay lining the walls to reassure our spirits that we haven’t all lost the plot.

 

A pair of giant love hearts are mowed into the lawn, where the children’s swing has been wrapped with freshly twined leaf and summer flowers, so that poems and blessings can be exchanged under them.

 

There has been no ‘wedding organiser’. Nobody has been paid a penny. This is people acting out of love, friendship and community. There have been no caterers ‘In’, just neighbours and sons, and daughters of friends who have worked their fantastic arses off creating a beautiful wedding, alongside having cooked, served and cleaned up a sit-down 3 course meal for 70 hungry punters in the barn.

 

And then the well ran dry.

 

As the day drifts into evening we all drift back into the barn, to drink and dance and be entertained by the youngest lads, who climb bales of hay and delight us with their crazy belly-rippling dances, as 70s disco divas pump from the sound system.

 

Water has now arrived, but for me the day was made in that pure country moment:

 

No water, no minerals. 

Ah so, that’s the way it’ll be then.

 

And then again, I didn’t really need any alcohol.

Drunk on humanity, just for a few hours.

 

Oh boy it did me good.

All seriousness aside, if this is Spring Fever, I don’t want to be cured!

 

Thanks to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures Ireland at www.caricatures-ireland.com/

It’s 06:56 am, and I have been wide awake for half an hour, my head tumbling with all manner of pointless nonsensicals. 

Why? Because bright sunshine is bursting through my bedroom curtains and being a nerdy old prat from wayback, I know that Ireland is in one of those high pressure systems that tend to settle here in Spring and Autumn. 

As long as that breeze brushing the tall trees outside my window keeps coming from an easterly direction, we’ve got a couple of days of dry sunny weather, safe as houses. 

Yippee! It’s Spring! A mammal who loves his seasons, I leap out of bed eager to leave the cave. 

The fresh-squeezed juice of a lemon sees me out of the door and into Shiny Car. Ain’t got no money, but there’s a tank of fuel below me and a bright beautiful blue sky above. 

That’s all I need. 

In days gone by all I’d need was my thumb, but it’s good to be in Shiny as we sweep through a pre-rush hour Galway City, straight through town and out the other side before most school kids have forced opened an unwilling eye. 

The early morning mist has lifted from the fields either side of the N17, and the stone walls and green grass bring Sham tunes into my head. 

Having been way too healthy earlier on, I stop and snarf a sausage and bacon roll before turning off the main road. 

Slowing the car I now have time to spot the unbelievably white lamblets, gambolling in rolling lush pasture, and suckling calves lingering in old farmyards. 

Miles from anywhere, yet in the middle of wonder, that old hitcher inside of me demands I stop and get out of the car. The trouble with driving is that you become so intent on arrival you forget to stop, look and listen to the silence of the country. 

So now I’m standing in the warmth of the early morning sun, smelling the sweet dampness lifting from the long grasses, simply taking the time to appreciate the wonderful, almost intimidating power of Spring. 

Under the ground and all around, burgeoning and inexorable pumps nature’s desire to bloom, breed, blossom and billow. 

And yes, we are a part of that. Despite our arrogance, ignorance and notions of grandeur, we are part of it all. It’s so easy to become blinded by bills and banks and being broke, but here, now, this is mine, yours, free and everlasting. 

We are indeed fools if we think we’re above loving the country, unappreciative of how it nurtures us. 

A short drive through the back ways and bohreens brings me into the tiny car park by my favourite beach, near my old home in North Mayo. 

Not a soul in sight; golden beach as far as my legs will take me, and a tide that just turned, leaving damp hard sand for my feet to speed upon. 

Man, I am buzzing like a crazy happy beast. 

Aaahhve got the Spring Fever and ahh don’t want no cure! 

Isolated and ecstatic, normally I’d find myself a warm comfy rock and sit upon it for several hours, contemplating the ocean, my backside and all physical and philosophical points betwixt the two, but today that’s not going to happen. 

The strong south-easterly breeze is whipping up the sand into whispy twisty snaky strands, making it a little uncomfortable to linger.

But anyway, I am not on a mission of pure self-indulgence, having long-wanted to thank my friend who lives around the corner from this beach for the massive favour she did for me. 

Her text says she’ll be home at 11. At 11:20 I go up there, but she’s not home. 

Back to the beach! ‘How bad?’ thinks I, and by noon I am drinking tea in my friend's farmhouse kitchen. 

Another good friend, a man for whom I have the greatest of time, has texted to tell me he’ll be at his place by 2, so having had a good old goss and two slices of homemade fruit cake, I head off inland a few miles to find my other friend is also late. 

Well, no. 

Nobody’s been late, just running to the speed of a sunny day deep in the Irish countryside, while I’m still on Galway City time, where 11 means, well, 11:10-ish. 

I’m so happy to sit and wait and do nothing for a sunny hour or so in the country, and my friend's dog Boogie is overjoyed to have me around. 

We go for a wee walk, exploirfy an old house and investimagate a big muddy puddle together. 

A few years back things were far from happy in this friend's home, and during that time Boogie and myself became firm friends, so now he’s all over me like a licking loving rash. 

Mind you, he’s a soft git anyway, and would probably lick and love the Devil himself, were Beelzebub to take his hols in North Mayo. 

Yes, Charlie. 

Just stop. 

Slow down, sit down and play with Boogie. The greatest gift that money cannot buy: a free sunny West of Ireland Spring afternoon in the middle of nowhere. 

Eventually my mate turns up, and we talk, and laugh and drink and visit the village and have a little talk and laugh and drink. 

Then we return to his place, feed the children and put them to bed, have a little drink, laugh and talk until his wife turns up, when we sit, talk, laugh and drink some more. 

A perfect little road trip, costing next to nothing and filling every vacant hole in my soul. As the heat from the coal and wood roasting in their huge fireplace rises, the standards of conversation tumbles. 

By the 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 ramblings. 

He raises his hands to protest: 

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

But now thinking back, my friend has the last laugh, as some wisdom lurks in his inadvertent and hysterical error: 

All seriousness aside? 

Isn’t that the best medicine in the world?

There’s no friend like Galway City, and for that I’m thankful!

I’m stumbling over Wolfe Tone bridge into town. The afternoon is grey, the river is gushing brown, there’s an unusually large number of gulls flying and screeching overhead, and people are going about their normal daily lives.
I’m not normal. Right now I am an emotional, physical and mental wreck of a human being. Half an hour ago I finished the writing of a novel, and by the time you are reading this, I will have printed it out, left it be for a week and then read it as a book for the first time. Having done that, I will then ‘call it’, as the Americans say: Over. Finito benito. Dunded.
The End.
So right now I need a friend, but all my house calls and phone calls have come to nothing. Doesn’t matter. There’s still one friend I know will be around. As I cross the river I feel safe. I trust Galway City. Galway will be my friend today.
What do you look for in a friend? Loyalty maybe? Trust would have to come pretty high up on any list of friendship criteria, otherwise there’d be little difference between a true friend and a mere acquaintance. A friend is somebody you enjoy spending time with. Somebody who understands you and your needs, and of course, a friend is somebody that you can have fun with. When you go out to get your kicks, be that drinking in pubs, knitting in circles, licking the pavement with your bare tongue or collecting 17th century Argentine pickle jars, it’s a friend you’ll want by your side.
Finishing a novel is like climbing a mountain that disappears as soon as you reach the summit. There is no climb down. Just a void; a blank empty afternoon in which to exist somehow.
As far as loyalty goes, friendships are a two way street, and after returning from my life in America, I was welcomed back warmly, not only by all my friends and Howyas, but also by this noble rag. Galway was loyal, forgiving and accepting, just as a good friend might be.
First stop, a coffee and a Jamie outside Neachtain’s. I sit outside and and stare up High Street. Well, I think I am sitting and staring up High Street, but in fact, lost in my tiny world of exhaustion and insanity, I am sitting hunched, screwed up into an ugly twisted form, with one leg almost over my shoulder, my lips pursed, stretched outwards tightly and ridiculously.
“You’re in public , Adley!” I remind myself. “Wakey wakey! Come down here and join the planet!”
Trust is the foundation of any friendship, so do I trust Galway City? Well, depends doesn’t it. Do I trust Galway to nurture me, make me fit and well and return me safely home? If I do I am already dead. But do I trust Galway to be always ready and willing to offer me succour? Do I have faith in Galway City’s ability to transform any gentle straightforward day into a raving messy investment in tomorrow’s headache?
Just as I trust the ground beneath my feet.
As a good friend, Galway offers company, in the shape of our allocation of 10,000 Howyas, all those we recognise just enough to acknowledge, any one of which might be available for a wee chat, raising the stakes to friendship on the way. Galway is also good company without others, sitting alone, relaxed and at peace in a bar in Bohermore, enjoying a solitary stare at the optics and mirror. Thankfully, also, there are great friends, and others in-between, always available for that other ingredient of friendship: a laugh, a bit of fun, da craic.
Friends should be inspiring, and even though I hear several hundred great ideas a night pouring forth from the mouths of my fellow drinkers, none of these pint dreams elevates me more than the sight of the starlings at twilight by the Fishmarket/Buckfast Plaza, or the hills of Co. Clare bathed in orange twilight. Soul food and inspiration Galway has in spades, so chalk another one up to my good friend.
And before we get all schmaltzy and dewy-eyed, you can always have too much of a good thing, and just like any friendship, myself and Galway City have fallen out many times over the years. There was hardly a more joyful day in my life than that back in 1994 when I loaded all my worldly belongings into my Ford Transit van and fled to live in Connemara. Three times I have left, two of which were emergency escape hatch ejector seat type retreats, where my sleep patterns, liver and all points from sanity to dribbled dried-up porridge required and demanded I get the hell out of town.
Yes, there’s a lot to this relationship. I’m outside the Quays now, drinking another whiskey and trying to look as if I’m not completely nutsoid in the noodle, because today I am, but cannot help it.
There’s one other side to this friendship with Galway City, and it’s not the most attractive part of this city's personality. There exists what I have long called the ‘cruel craic’, which is what you feel and suffer if you know no better, and try to stay home expecting visitors. Out there you can feel the distant craic in Galway City raging unabated, but if you are not there, in the pub, you do not exist.
Thankfully, it has been ages since I suffered from the cruel craic, because I realised that by merely staying home I was not missing out on anything at all. But for years when I first arrived, and I am sure for many others to this day, if you cannot afford to go out, or are too tired and emotional to be seen in public, then Galway will betray you. It will shun you, turn its back towards you and nobody will even know you weren't there.
Galway City is not a friend who’s going to reach out, grab you and hug you. You have to make the effort and immerse yourself within it to appreciate its scary and wondrous talents.
And then there are days such as this, when I don’t give a hoot what people think, or how I look. I just needed to be with a friend, and for these two hours gone, I have enjoyed just that.

Don’t tell me you’re tired unless you’ve run around the world!

I’m tired. I’m so tired that when I blink my eyes stay down and before you can say ‘ga ga’ I’m off with the faeries, dribbling from the mouth and snoring a passable impression of the Flying Scotsman express train steaming through a tunnel.
Nobody wants to feel tired, but there’s good tired and bad tired.
Bad tired is where you feel like the world is against you and you don’t want it with you anyway because it’s a horrible cruel place where the bad people live, and all you want to do is go to bed and sleep and hide.
Interesting: I tried to define ‘bad tired’ and came up with a description of depression!
Whichever way it defines itself, ‘bad tired’, is always accompanied by feelings of frustration or anger, often an oneself. Maybe you’ve failed to meet a personal target, or let down a loved one; whatever it is, you just don’t have the energy to drag your sad sorry arse up and out to make yourself do the necessary.
And then there’s good tired, which is where I am today. Exhausted, yes, but satisfied. However deep down my spirit slumps when I try to remember the last day on which I awoke and had absolutely nothing to do, a proper day off, and even though I know that up ahead there’s still unfinished business; indeed tomorrow I have to sit and fill out my Tax Form 11 and prove once more to the Revenue Commissioners that I have not earned enough money to contribute anything to the nation except my own PRSI contributions, and, of course, my own madness; and the day after that I head off once more to England to spend a few days with my glorious lovely Mum, and then return to start work again; despite all of the above, I know that right now, while I may be tired (I think I mentioned that, didn’t I?) I am happy.
Four days ago I finished the second draft of the novel, which should now be completed by Christmas, hastening, as Sir Alex Ferguson so poetically put it, ‘Squeaky Bum Time’ when I must turn this manuscript into a good book, and then be judged.
The day after I finished the draft I found out that my friends from Melbourne were arriving at Shannon with their two teenage children the following day; the day that was going to be my day off, but no matter, because these folk are precious souls who I have not seen since 1989, so all was good. I raced around like a mole on speed, shopping cleaning and picking up mattresses, whilst also writing what you read in this space last week, so as to free more time with my Ozzy-tralian mates.
So brilliant, emotional and wonderful was it to see them that on both nights of their visit I lay awake insomniacal, brain racing, trying to come down from the fantastically intense work that I had just done on my book; the welcome sight and stories of my lifelong friends, and generally, as ever, needing time alone and awake to process the marvellous yet messy and mixed-up monstrosity that is life.
Rising before dawn on the second morning we all headed up to Knock Airport, whence I returned yesterday, so drained as to be barely able to stand and breathe at the same time.
In that state I knew I had to just keep on keeping on until all the boring necessities of life had been executed, so I made a shepherd’s pie from yesterday’s leftovers, stumbled, did the bins and recycling, dribbled, blinked but opened my eyes just before I fell over, then rushed backwards and forwards from garden to kitchen as I tried to cook whilst simultaneously listening to the most lucid engineer who came round to service the boiler. Then I passed out on the sofa.
So tired, yes, but feeling fulfilled, having reached my goal of the second draft just in time for my mate to fulfil his lifetime goal of returning to Europe to meet the mates he made growing up in the 1970’s.
Glorious stuff indeed, and yet my paltry pathetic tiredness pales into insignificance when I look at the goals that others set themselves.
As regular colyoomistas will know, this scribbler loves a good adventurer, and recently, thanks to the Sunday Times’ Camilla Long, I read of a woman whose story left my jaw dropping so wide and long it has scarcely recovered.
The woman in question is one Rosie Swale-Pope, a 61 year-old resident of Tenby in South Wales, who tragically lost her husband to prostate cancer in 2003. In October of that year she set off to run around the world, and two months ago she made it back home, after having journeyed alone though Europe, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada America, Greenland and Iceland.
Despite searing heat and sub-frozen temperatures, a breast-cancer scare, breaking five ribs and fracturing a hip, Rosie kept on running, raising awareness for Prostate Cancer Charity (www.prostate-cancer.org.uk), whilst dealing with her personal pain and loss.
When the sun shone she could run 30 miles a day, but when conditions deteriorated, she’d sometimes only manage 500 yards.
She explains:
“This is the scenario at -62C .... your hands freeze, and if your hands freeze you cannot undo the zips, so you cannot tend to your feet ... inside the (30 x 60 inch) rig, I would massage my feet, put some oil on them, stick them in the wet sleeping bag, and in the morning wake with eyelashes frozen shut. Every night I’d face bears and wolves ... No one else on the expedition except you, with the howling of the wolves and the blizzards and the storms. It’s extraordinary.”
No Rosie, you are the extraordinary one. She suffered frostbite, lost consciousness after eating raw spaghetti, and in Russia had to eat pasta with reindeer hair in it for days, before nearly starving to death in Alaska.
Worst of all was the business of being alone.
“Loneliness is like a knife wound.” she says,”It started out of cancer, loss, sorrow and heartache and a wish to turn something round. You can always turn things round, and if you can’t, then someone you love can do it for you.”
Tired?
Me?
Nah missis, you won’t catch me whinging about feeling tired while there’s people out there like the thoroughly splendid Rosie Swale-Pope.