I was meant to be beaten up Charlie - if not by someone else, then by myself!

You know how your brain can drift off in strange directions. I was reading about how Archie Young, a 14 year-old chorister at Westminster Abbey, recently foiled a mugger on the streets of London. Having been told to hand over his iPod, the youngster just said
"I'd rather not!" and precipitated a conversation that ended up confusing the would-be thief, who eventually walked away.
Instead of delving deeper into the magazine interview, my mind settled upon a Saturday lunchtime a good few years back, when I met the Guru in the Quays.
Much to my horror, my friend's face was bearing the scars of a terrible beating. There was a fresh red bloody scabby wound on his chin, and across his forehead another fresh long gash that had only recently stopped bleeding.
Clearly the Guru had been in a punch-up, and inside me this triggered a deep hurt and a feeling of offence. Not offense, as in attacking, a desire to go out and rip to shreds the people who had done this to my mate, but offence, as if to say I felt offended by the world on the Guru's behalf.
I felt embarrassed to be part of a world that could do such a thing to a man like the Guru.
I have known him since I was nine years old, and as youths we broke plenty of rules, rebelled more than most, and since then have both made sure to live our own lives, and not those proscribed by others, or convention itself.
The Guru has for several decades been a student of Peace: a spiritual, vegetarian, non-violent human of the first order, neither cloying with hippy sweetness, nor burdened with annoying New Age Evangelical nonsensicals.
Sometimes he has been unable to enjoy within himself the calm he projects to others, but he looks at the world in a most balanced manner.
"Bloody hell mate! What happened to you? Who was it? Tell me their name!"
"I didn't get beaten up, Charlie. Somebody wanted to, but it never happened!"
"But but, so then but why did you that how...?"
"Okay, so last night I went out to Arus na Gael, and then decided to walk back home along the river. As I was going past the university residences, I saw this bloke having a go at his girlfriend. It didn't look pretty, so I sort of yelled out to him 'Oi!' "
"And then he came over and thwacked you?"
"Well no, but he stopped fighting with her, and they both turned on me, and I thought 'Oh blimey, why can't I keep my mouth shut!' "
"Then what?"
"Well then he was standing in front of me, telling me to mind my own fucking business, and he pulled his arm back to punch me in the face. Suddenly I spread my arms out wide, stretched out as far as they could go, and looked him in the eye, and smiled a huge smile at him, and stood there ready to take it. He hesitated and I was laughing, saying
'You're not really going to hit me are you? You don't really want to, do you?', and then we looked at each other for ages, while his girlfriend stood there telling him to do it."
"Gordhelpus Guru, you've got some nerve!" I offered, looking at my bloodied messed-up friend's face.
"Not really! You see, before I knew it, he had collapsed into my open arms and was weeping and hugging me, and saying over and over again that he didn't want to do it. We hugged for a while, and then he pulled away, nodded at me, grabbed his girlfriend's hand and walked away."
"Ayyy-mayyy-zing! Bloody hell! Only you mate! Only you! But if he didn't beat you up, how did you ...who did it?"
"I did it to myself Charlie!"
For a second I considered the possibility of the Guru self-flagellating, but instantly I knew he was as unlikely to harm himself as he was to attack another.
"But how?"
"Well, after they walked off I was filled with a powerful euphoria... I was so full of myself, burning with light and love, and oh aren't I great, and wasn't that wonderful, and all that stuff, that I didn't look where I was going. My foot must have hit a tree stump or something, because before I could take a single step, I fell flat on my face right onto the gravel, so suddenly and quickly that I had no chance to put a hand out or anything!'"
"..and that's how you...?"
"...yeh, that made this!" he said, pointing to his two bloodied wounds.
"So you managed to save yourself from a beating, but you ended up beating up yourself!"
"Well Charlie, the way I'm coming to see it is that I was meant to be beaten up last night, one way or another."
"Jeezus peezus Guru, sometimes your thinking goes a step too far for me!"
For a while I just couldn't stop laughing.
Then I looked at my friend's face, his poor innocent mashed-up face, and thought of how strange the other guy must have felt; how confused his girlfriend must have been; how amazing the Guru is, not only to try something like that, but also to pull it off, make it work, and quite possibly in the process change the other man's life for good.
Sometimes I just don't know what to say. At such moments as this, I find the following most helpful:
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"Oh, go on then!"
"Good. At least that makes sense to me!"
We raised glasses and looked each other in the eyes, laughed hearty head-thrown back manly guffaws at the wonder and madness of it all, and drank to life, l'Chaiim."
****
So messy is my desk that only today I found an item meant for the 2006 DV Awards.
Better late than never, the 'Freudian Slip When I Say Udders I Mean Mammy' DV for Meaning What You Said The First Time goes to the newsreader on Today FM, who reported that Taioseach Bertie Ahern had declared 2006 his 'Anus Horribilis'.
Possibly Bertie actually said it was his 'Annus Horribilis'; thereby admitting having had a terrible year, but I prefer to believe what the female journalist stated in her story: that Bertie really knows he's a dreadful arsehole.

When hitcher becomes driver, there are new rules for the road!

What goes around comes around, but the way this idea is manifested in reality is often complex.
Most of the time the karmic cycle works not in any straightforward, but rather a most mysterious way.
If Johnny steals your cake, it's very unlikely that somebody out there will steal Johnny's cake. More likely, that particularly fateful roundabout will spin for thirty three years after you lost your cake to Johnny, until just when he needs it most, he will lose his mobile phone down a toilet.
Karma is not a linear phenomenon. As water passing through concrete, fate balances through æons of random and apparently inconsequential event.
But sometimes, just sometimes, it all comes together in a simple and poetic way.
A few weeks ago, I was driving from Galway City to visit a friend in Clifden.
The strains of the pre-Christmas rush had already created golf balls of lumpy tension in my back muscles.
My own needs and those of others were whirling around my tiny brain like a load in a tumble dryer, rising and falling, swirling incessantly.
All I needed was time to sort out my head, and no finer opportunity to do that than whilst driving through Connemara .
That's what I love about my hills. As soon as I am among the Pins and the Maamturks, everything somehow makes more sense.
The wind was blowing hard, driving the cold winter rain sideways. Flashes of blue sky disappeared and revealed themselves, as black white and grey clouds shot past each other on three separate levels of sky.
Just past Ballynahinch Lake I passed two farmers hitching at the roadside.
'Twas a dirty old day to be outside, and clearly the lads wanted a ride to Clifden for a bit of shopping, and a nip of festive cheer.
As I waited for them to walk up to the car, my mind imploded on itself.
Oh no, what have I done?
Why did I stop, when I needed this time and space to myself?
Why did I stop? Perchance because between the ages of 15 and 35, I hitched no fewer than a quarter of a million miles. I hitched to school and back; to countless pubs, clubs and many many jobs. I hitched all over the motorways of England, until there was barely a mile I had not covered. I hitched half of each year as a teenager, all over western Europe, and then in my 20's I hitched the east and west coasts of America; the Hulme and Princes Highways of Australia.
Over two visits and nine months, I lost myself and my inhibitions in New Zealand, for weeks on end achieving a rare and blissful 'On The Road' state of hitching nirvana: just 'going with the lifts'; that is to say, when they ask you where you are going, you just say:
'Wherever you are going, if you don't mind'.
Once they understood that I was merely suffering from an overdose of freedom, and neither a psychotic killer nor an obsessive weirdo stalker in search of rare satanic walnuts from the bad witch's mud bath, many people took me along with them.
During those weeks, I developed a trust in humanity alongside a faith in the process of 'journey' that has influenced me more than any other single phenomenon, person or place in my life.
So that's why I stopped for these two lads, and as they clambered into my car I sensed their massive physical presence.
Inside their sodden Day-Glo oilskins, I saw flashes of human hewn from granite; burly creased yet comfortable bodies packed with years of bacon and pints of da Harpic; faces mottled with clumps of white hair sprouting from inside ears, outside noses, even some on top of their heads.
Himself in the back tried to climb on top of a box filled with cassettes, and while I was waving my arms around trying to explain that he might want to slide across and sit on the other side, I saw out of the corner of my eye himself in the front about to settle his massive bulk onto the full plastic bottle of water that was just waiting to be squashed on the passenger seat.
Having sorted out safe landings for them both, and made sure they were safely belted in, I was showered with friendly and effusive greetings:
"Sh-cholar and Gentleman so ye are!" "Fair play to ye sir, Gentleman and a Sh-cholar!" "Not from around here then? Where are ye from?"
After 14 years in Ireland, I have been asked that question 83,459,869,803,929 times, and wanted to answer and engage in another such conversation as much as I wanted to choke to death on my own ligaments and entrails.
At that moment, all I wanted was to give these lads a ride, help them out, but also I desperately needed another 20 minutes of space, time and awareness of the beauty of the countryside.
Maybe it's because I am all grown up, or maybe it was goes-around comes-around karmic payback for all those decades of being a lift, but I decided that I could be successful if strong, tactful and assertive.
Surely there was a way to achieve all I needed, give them what they wanted, and still remain polite?
Speaking slowly, calmly and pleasantly, I felt a strong deep voice rise within me:
"Gentlemen, you are very welcome in my car. I am delighted to drive us into Clifden, but I'm not really up to chatting. No offence at all, but I have a lot of things on my mind, and I need a few minutes to sort myself out before I arrive in Clifden!"
"Sure! Not a bother! Fine, fine, go ahead, so!"
And so we drove on in silence. It was a good silence. A respectful silence.
I had managed to be fairly rude without causing offence.
Once again, the spirit of the road was working for me. For once, the karmic comes-around goes-around was working in a straight line of exchange through hitching.
As I dropped off the gentlemen - for that is what they were - I wished them a happy Christmas.
Himself in the front seat turned to me, and offered as enigmatic a chunk of Connemara wisdom as I could ever hope for:
"Ah well now, ye said ye have a lot on your mind. Sure, and isn't there a lot of that about!"