There really is no such thing as free beer!

Artwork by the excellent caricatures-ireland.com

More than any other time of the year, when we sit around our dinner tables on Christmas Day, we are aware of who is there and who is not.

At the age of 17, having performed impressive acrobatics with my Yamaha 250, a saloon car, a ditch and a barbed wire fence, I spent six weeks in hospital, over Christmas and New Year.

My femur was snapped in two, which is no mean feat with thighs like mine, and my tibia had a crack or two as well. Bed-bound, with my leg in traction, I developed a bronchial chest infection after an emergency operation.

So every two seconds I coughed in hacking spasms, thus shaking my smashed leg, which was hung in a sling, supported by a metal pole they had driven through me, just below the knee.

Then came the discovery that orthopaedics is a brutal art. In our part of the ward, there were four beds and three bikers with broken bones.

To my left was Kev, who'd fallen off his sleek and mean Suzuki GT750.

Opposite us two was brick shithouse Yorkshireman Gary, ex-SAS, and mighty embarrassed, having survived several covert tours of duty in Northern Ireland, to admit to falling off a Honda 125.

Then Gary was told that because his bone had set at a bad angle, they would need to re-fracture it, to re-set it, so that he might walk again.

Wishing him luck, myself and Kev waited in hushed anticipation for just under three hours, when finally the big guy was wheeled back onto the ward, writhing in agony, swearing profusely.

“How’d it go, mate?”

“Yeh, Gaz, all sorted, is it, eh?”

Gary was a hard man who could really take pain. He’d already told us how he hated himself for flinching after being stabbed in a bar in Belfast, but now he was hurting so much, it took him an age to form words.

“ ...they couldn’t ... break the bloody ... bone, lads ... they banged me with hammers ... smashed and chipped with chisels ... jumped on my leg ... couldn’t re-fracture it....”

Kev looked at me and then we both looked at Gary.

“But but but mate, you’ve been gone for two and a half hours! They can’t have been trying to break your leg for two and a half bloody hours!?!”

“Aye, but that’s what they did, lads. They tried, but it wouldn’t break. So I’m a bit sore now, like!”

So no, a fine and precise art it is not, but compared to the other patients in the hospital the three of us were well off.

We were not sick. We had all had our operations, and apart from antibiotics for wounds, and pain killers for broken bones, we needed very little medical attention.

We were young, male and bored, and allowed to drink beer.

Naturally, we tried to attract the attention of the student nurses as much as possible, and equally, they were happy to have a bit of a laugh with lads who were not ill, physically, at least!

By the time Christmas came around, the three of us were well aquatinted with all the student nurses, and then we were told we would be allowed to drink spirits during the Christmas period.

So we did.

We got plastered, if you’ll pardon the pun, and so did the student nurses. We told them that by having a tipple or three with us they were really doing their jobs, because they were helping us through a difficult time.

On Christmas morning, the Consultant Surgeons came around the wards, carving the turkeys at our besides, and general merriment was had by all.

Karen, my favourite student nurse, had had a lickle ickle bit too much to drink. She pulled the curtains around my bed, produced a half bottle of vodka from under her skirt, and taking some lemonade and a clean specimen bottle from my bedside cabinet, mixed us up a festive cocktail, after which she gave me a lovely snog, and left me feeling a million dollars.

Looking back now, I think how wonderful she was, because not only was I away from my family Christmas table, but so was she.

After the Christmas pud, we were all wheeled out of the ward in our beds, and taken to a large and crowded area, where the staff were putting on a Panto for the patients.

Gary’s wife, (a woman of such substantial proportions and brooding menace that she clearly put the fear of god into our man of iron) had turned up with several cases of brown ale, and so we sat up in our beds, enjoying the show, drinking frothing foaming pints of beer from plastic glasses.

Half way through the performance, I realised I needed to pee. I’d done precious little but drink all day, and now I really really needed to go, all of a sudden, with the fiercely demanding urgency of someone who knows that he cannot go.

There was no way I could ask anybody to wheel me to the loo. To get me and my bed out of that area would have meant interrupting the show, and causing a kerfuffle that would spoil everything for everybody.

So I did all I could do.

Uttlerly failing to understand Archimedes' Principle of Liquid Volume Displacement, I figured I'd drunk just under a pint of beer, so I should refill my glass to the same volume.

To my drunky head it made perfect mathematical sense.

Reaching out of my bed, I placed the foaming frothing pint onto a shelf, and watched the rest of the show, making a mental note to remember to pick it up afterwards and dispose of it myself.

Trouble was, when the lights went up, it was no longer there, and to this day I do not know whether some unfortunate alcoholic scrumper thought his luck was in.

Free beer! Whoopee!

Best not think about that too long.

But on Christmas Day, please, let’s all for a minute think of those who have given up their day to work: to serve us with safety in our homes, at sea and overseas; those who comfort and care, and those who volunteer to help others without a home to go to.

If you spare them a thought and give thanks, you won’t be far off pleasing whichever God you might worship! 

Happy Christmas, Diwali, Hannukah and Solstice, and may your God go with you.

 

17.12.25.

She’s nothing but a great hinge!

All over the world there are billions and billions of hinges that we never think about. They exist and operate in perfect silence. 

Then there is the rusty hinge. We cannot ignore the rusty hinge. It drives us demented, creaking and groaning with weary metallic sighs each time the door is opened and closed.

The rusty hinge fills our minds until we can think of nothing else. It gives hinges a bad name. We focus on it, obsess about it, just as we ignore its trillion perfect cousins.

I park outside the little shop in a North Mayo seaside village. Inside, the woman behind the counter has her back to me as she chops some onions for sandwiches.

Not wanting to give her a shock, as she has a knife in her hands, I wait until she senses my presence, which precipitates her subsequent flood of apologies that I rebuff as kind yet utterly unnecessary.

“So, what can I do for you?” 

“Well, actually, I’m looking for the Community Gardens. You wouldn’t happen to know where they are, would you?” 

“Follow me.”

We head to the back of the shop, where she stands on tiptoes as she battles with a long sliding latch. Bit by bit she manages to ease it across. The door opens and there, stretching out in front of me is the Community Garden. 

“Well, I really hit the jackpot, didn’t I!” 

“You did, now.” 

“Thanks so much !” I say as I wander off to explore the impressive efforts of the local crew. 

The morning temperature is only 2°C, but the northerly wind chills it to way below freezing, so I’m surprised and a little concerned to find as I return that she has left to door open, to allow me back into the shop.

I close the door behind me, and slide the latches, amazed at the tacit kindness and generosity of the woman. 

Back at the counter I thank her profusely for leaving the door open, as the cold wind has robbed her shop of all the warmth it held when I arrived. She waves her hand to dismiss the notion that she has been in any way inconvenienced.

I offer her my hand to shake.   

“I’m Charlie, and there’s a bunch of us looking into starting a Community Garden in Killala. I was told yours was impressive and that it is. Had no idea it was out the back of the shop, though. Dead lucky there, wasn’t I! Thanks so much for letting me have a look.” 

She tells me her name and the name of the other woman working behind the Post Office window. She shakes my hand and then she wishes me luck with my endeavours.

I leave the shop having bought nothing, but gained so much. The woman had asked me nothing about my mission or motives. She just let me out the back to prowl unfettered, and left the door open despite the freezing morning.

“Another beautiful hinge!” I say out loud to myself, as I get back into Joey SX and drive home.

Between the ages of 15 and 35 I hitch-hiked over 100,000 miles. As a teenager I hitched back from school, to the pub, to my girlfriend’s, and each summer I took the ferry to France and hitched around Europe and the Middle East.

In my early 20s I hitched in the USA, New Zealand and Australia, and then four years later went back and did it all again. I hitched just about every inch of the UK’s extensive motorway network, getting to know the best junctions and Service Stations so that I travelled faster than Public Transport.

When I arrived in Ireland back in 1992 I was delighted to find a fabulous hitching country, and explored the west coast from Cork to Donegal with my thumb and the generosity of others.

Somewhere along the way  - I cannot remember where or when - a driver shared with me the theory of the Rusty Hinge, which perfectly matched my own experience of people.

All over the world I met thousands of fantastic people. I enjoyed a special and sometimes intense one-to-one conversation with every type of human, save for the ones who don’t stop for hitchers.

That doesn’t make them rusty hinges. I don’t blame them for not stopping. Why should they? 

Countless times I was invited to stay the night at a driver’s home. Often an onward lift had been arranged for me by the time I awoke the next day. I was driven, housed, fed and watered, and in the process got to know and better understand the people of each different country in a unique way that guided tourists cannot.

The vital truth I gleaned from those years of travels is that people are good. Old young rich poor: doesn’t matter. After all my years on the road I recall only one bad lift, in a Jag in the middle of the night on a German Autobahn, with a man who behaved in a sexually predatory way, but he was my only rusty hinge.

With a rusty hinge in the White House and another in Moscow making all sorts of grating and offensive noises, it’s so easy to think of the human race as a bad bunch, but we are not.

When times are hard we might need some spiritual WD40, in the shape of hugs and care. Although we are incredibly different and hold opposing views on everything, we are all good hinges, getting on with our lives in fairly gentle, inoffensive and efficient ways.

For that, and for my awareness of that, I give thanks.

©Charlie Adley
23.11.2025

Farwell to a rare politician and president!

 

As Michael D. steps away from the presidency, here's a short colyoomistic excerpt from my first gentle encounter with him, way back in 1993.

 

I'm glad to say we worked together, successfully and happily, several times since this interview...

 

Double Vision - October 1993

By the way, what does the ‘D’ stand for?

 

'Michael D. Higgins floats a spoonful of whipped cream on top of his coffee. The Piano Bar of Murray’s Salthill Hotel provides an other-worldly atmosphere of times gone by, and the present Minster for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht offers the same.

 

At a time when politicians are rarely anything more than pendulums, swung this way and that by public opinion, Michael D. offers a flashback to the days when people had principles and opinions, which they were not shy of airing in fiery manner.

 

At first glance he appears more elfin than ministerial, but as he sits, he rubs his hands over his face, pushing them hard down over his head, and the person that emerges is ready for action.

 

It is the movement of a tired man, which he repeats several times over the course of the evening. I resist the urge to send him off home to bed.

 

Michael D. speaks with fluidity and conviction. He may be small of stature but he is not someone who can hide in a corner. Throughout the interview many who pass feel at liberty to say ‘Hello!’, and he responds to them all by name.

 

For someone doing what is essentially an inhuman job, he retains an accessibility that many others have lost, or never had.'

 

©Charlie Adley

11.11.2025

The truth we choose to ignore!

Fab artwork by Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com

Forget about speaking truth to power. It’s time for power to speak truth to people.

The simple truth we all know.

The truth an ever-increasing number of us choose to ignore.
The truth we trade for fear and hate, because for some that’s easier.

When will a political party refuse to seek votes through fear?
When will a political party refuse to slander and libel strangers?
When will a political party speak the truth to us?

Where is the party of hope?
Where is the party of compassion?
Where is the party which created the welfare state?
Where is the party that protected workers within Trade Unions? Where is the party which created our magnificent National Health Service?

Void of vision and courage, so-called ‘Left of Centre’ political parties appease the Far Right rather than oppose it.

Starmer’s Labour Party panders to the Right because it feels the only way to defeat hatred and bigotry is to swallow and spit some. It has lost its soul, lost itself, lost direction and Keir’s cowardice breaks my heart.

When will a political leader explain that what is happening is a massive human migration, driven by climate change?

When will a political leader explain that this is not going to go away; it is not going to get smaller; it’s only going to expand?

When will a political leader explain that these people are fleeing famine? They are fleeing war zones and they need help.

Show me one country in the world which has not sent people abroad to earn money and send it back home: such a place does not exist, and yet we turn our back on refugees, both economic and those seeking life-saving asylum.

When will a political leader speak out and declare what we already know: that no western democracy can succeed without the help of an underpaid, unprotected and often unwelcome migrant labour force?

When will a political leader speak out and say we need these people to do the disgusting jobs that our people will not do? We need these people to pick our crops, to harvest our yields, to wash our cars and dishes, to babysit our children and wipe our grandmothers’ backsides.

We need these people as much as they need us, because we are these people. We need to stop demonising immigrants, because who the hell are we? We are nothing but a bunch of immigrants as well.

Yes we are. Originally we all came from somewhere else. I am certainly an immigrant, because my great grandfather came to England from Germany, and I myself have lived in England, Australia, USA and Ireland, but I was born in London. This is the way of the world. This is the way we are, and it is a good way.

This way we mix our flavours, our art, our languages, our music and songs. We share our sadness and our stories. This is the truth of the melting pot. It does not mean that a country will lose its core culture. Italians will always be Italian. The French will be fantastically French, and you Irish will stay Irish.

Yet our culture can grow. Immigrants are not going to inhibit that, but they will contribute riches to it.

People say Ireland is full. As an Englishman who’s lived here almost 35 years, I say to them: “Slag me off by telling me there used to be over eight million people living here, before the English created your horrific famine, or you can tell me that Ireland is full, but you cannot do both."

Not both. No no you can’t, because if there used to be over 8 million here until the famine, how can the country possibly be full at five and a half million, especially when so many are now focused around the cities?

I have been to densely populated countries. I have travelled through Java. Let me tell you, emphatically and categorically: Ireland is absolutely blatantly not full. What’s missing is sufficient resources applied to social and public services, that can support an expanding population.

We do not need to hate other people simply because we don’t have enough GPs, nurses, teachers, surgeons and dentists. Instead of wasting money and energy making everybody terrified of immigrants, we should be demanding taxation and military spending be diverted so that we can pay GPs, nurses, teachers, surgeons and dentists.

We need to aspire to a nation in which every family can feel safe; where every individual, every child, every Elder can feel safe in their homes, regardless of where they were born.

That’s what we need.
That’s what we need right now.

We need politicians with vision, with courage, who do not appeal to fear, but choose to strive for hope and friendship; politicians who are driven by compassion and an understanding that the best way to get elected is to promise a brighter future, not a future where peoples’ fears are aflame, where hope is diluted by ignorant immigration hype.

We need a brave visionary of a politician. Every country does, right now, to speak out and tell the truth, the huge truth that we are witnessing a human migration the like of which we have seen repeated over and over again, throughout our human history.

No immigration policy will stop what is happening, as the Sahara moves north into Southern Europe, as sea levels rise, as fossil fuels run out, more and more people will be forced to share a smaller and smaller area that is safe to live in, a tiny area that is able to produce food, and we will all need to respect each other in that area.

It must be safe for us all to survive in.

We must appreciate each other.
We must understand that we are all equal in our right to be alive and live in a safe home.

A wise man once told me that if you go to bed with a full belly in a warm house, and nobody that you love will be taken in the night, you have nothing to fear.

If we set our sights as low as that then surely we can offer a welcome and safety for all.



©Charlie Adley
09.11.2025

I'll teach you in your home!

 

Now in County Mayo:

For the first time I'm offering my popular Craft Of Writing Course in bespoke form.

In the comfort and privacy of your own home, I’ll deliver my course at a time that suits you best.

Just as carpenters learn how to use their tools, so too writers must master their craft.

Anyone can learn these skills. There is no mystery to it.

In fun and supportive lessons I'll help you to discover how to overcome fear, write a first draft, develop characters, structure, plot and voice.

I'll show you how shape, pace, tense and dialogue can enhance the power of your words.

We will explore the art of editing and I'll give advice about how to sell your work. 

By the end of my enjoyable course you will feel much more confident about your writing, because you’ll be able to use powerful new skills that enable you to express your creativity.

 

To find out more, call: 085 729 4204
Email: cadley1@icloud.com

***

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