Cabbages in Kilkenny

Cabbages in Kilkenny

Jim had made it, top of the tree, no; he had made it to the “TOP OF THE FUCKING WORLD” as he said himself.

He looked out of the hotel room window….his hotel. The king of the world, surveying his empire.  At least it used to be his hotel and his empire, till they took it away from him.  Those fucking bankers, those fucking politicians.  The bankers were happy enough to buy him drink and whores and play golf with him a couple of years ago.  The politicians were happy enough to let Jim buy them drink and whores and play golf with him.  He caught his reflection in the window, raised his glass of whiskey and saluted himself.

“Fucking cunts, what do they know; it’s all about risk, fucking cowards”.  Joe had been steadily or maybe unsteadily drinking all night.

“Jesus that mini bar took a fucking hammering” he sneered, “still, it’s a long way from fucking cabbages in Kilkenny I am”.

The cigarette smoke still reeked from the bathroom where he had had to go to feed one of his many demons.

“£500 a fucking night and the fuckers won’t let me smoke, well pox to them” he said.

They could sort out the other mess in the bathroom too, Jim was nothing if not malicious and those who slighted him or those who he thought had slighted him always bore the full brunt of his anger.  The manager had called to the room an hour ago and told him to leave in the morning, the other guests on the floor had complained.  That stupid fucking bitch had wanted to call the police, the manager had sorted it out but now he’d had enough.  All the rich yank Jews, fucking Arabs and celebrity fucking arse bandits were welcome but “No, not Jim Folger, the man who fucking built it all”, he poured another whiskey.

“Getting fucked out of my own hotel ….” Jim sneered; well it had been his…once.

“Oh you’re right one” said Margaret as Jim carried her through the door on their wedding day.

“A right one am I” he laughed, “and who told you that?”

“My sisters warned me not to marry you” she smiled, “said I’d rue the day”

Mary Maloney had warned her too, but Margaret didn’t believe her, didn’t want to believe her, she loved Jim, he’d never touched her, never even put his hands where they shouldn’t have been.

“That’s ‘cause your sisters wanted me for themselves” he retorted and they both laughed together.

Jim had been around the block a few times with the women, he knew what went where and he knew where he liked it to go.  Margaret was as pure as the driven snow though on their wedding day and that’s the way Joe wanted it, didn’t want to marry a spoiled woman, not a dirty woman, not like the ones he’d often pay to meet in Dublin.  Jesus you could do anything with them and he frequently did, regardless of what they might have to say.  Joe’s thought he’d spent good money and they’d fucking well give him its worth.

Margaret never really got over their wedding night; she couldn’t look Jim or anyone for that matter in the eye for years after it.  He had gone from this tall, handsome, (by far the best looking man in the town), charming and funny man to….something….something else……a mad man.

Her sisters had sat her down and through many a laugh, had explained to her the night before her wedding, what would be expected by her new husband.  Although she was nervous, she wanted nothing more in life than to share herself with the man she loved.

At first it was gentle, stroking her hair the way she always loved, he undressed and she blushed, she undressed under the covers, he laughed.  Then…..her sisters had never prepared her for that, such things….

Margaret could have lived with the lovemaking, or what ever that was called, but the beatings were a different matter.  About a week after the wedding, that was when the first beating came, her sisters never told her that could happen, maybe this was real life and her sisters could manage…..maybe she just wasn’t a real woman or simply not woman enough.

Jim had seen her talk to Billy Duggan outside the new Supermarket in the town.  That was enough to set him off, it was the only time he’d actually hit her in the face though, after that his punishments were more controlled, he only hit where it couldn’t be seen.  But while his punishment became more controlled, his night-time machinations did not.  When he wasn’t in Dublin of an evening doing whatever he did there, Margaret would be tormented, sometimes for hours.  In later years she’d start filling him full of whiskey from the moment he got into the house, that way at least it didn’t last too long, although she may have to endure a few slaps if he couldn’t perform.

The years went by and Margaret both yearned for a child and at the same time begged holy sweet Jesus not to send one.  After 9 years though, little Matt was born.  At first things changed at home.   Jim calmed down, he only smacked Margaret once in the first year of Matt’s life and he left her alone completely in the bedroom for that time.

It was one afternoon when Matt was a little over one when Margaret suffered her worst hurt.

Jim had taken the pram from Margaret while she sorted her purse. John Byrne saluted them as they crossed the road and when they got home, Margaret put the kettle on while Jim brooded in the sitting home.  When the kettle started to whistle, he calmly came out to the kitchen, picked it up and poured it over Margaret’s shoulder and back.

“Now you fucking Bitch, don’t ever let me be humiliated like that again” he said.

In the bedroom a week later, Margaret’s faced Jim’s wrath for the last time, he never touched her again for the rest of their marriage, perhaps because of the burn scars.  On the morning after that, he moved into the spare room.

It was around the early 90’s, about the time those two prostitutes had gone missing in Dublin, that Jim was invited by the local politician to join a “little group” he was putting together to buy Casey’s lower field.  They were going to build houses on it and make a fortune.  Jim gladly accepted the invite and relished his new position in life, “See Matt” he’d say, “Your old man is the big man now, TOP OF THE FUCKING WORLD”.

That was when the whiskey started to mean more and more to Jim and when he’d get bored sitting down stairs at night while Margaret lay in bed, he’d make Matt get up and drink with him.  He’d tell Matt about his plans, the wonderful future he was making for his son, he’d even tell him how to treat women.

As it turned out Jim had quite the head for business and for cutting a good deal.  Pretty soon, not only was he building houses in rural Ireland, but he was buying large tracts of land in Dublin, London and anywhere else he thought he could turn not just a few quid, but millions.

He moved Margaret to a big house in Dublin, even let her learn to drive.  At that stage Matt was going to college and Jim gave him one of the apartments he’d built.  “Not one of those fucking dog boxes either son, I proper pad, a shag pad” he winked.

It was 4.00am when the phone beside Margaret’s bed rang, “Mrs Folger?” came the lilted London accent, “Mrs Margaret Folger?”

“Yes” she replied, heart thumping.

“Mrs Folger, my name is Inspector Bill Walsh of the Metropolitan Police…I’m afraid I have some very terrible news concerning your husband”

Margaret couldn’t remember the rest of the call, only how she couldn’t wait for it to end so that the police man wouldn’t hear her laugh and scream with pure unadulterated joy.

Like the dutiful wife, she followed behind Jim’s coffin as it made its way from the church to the old graveyard on the hill.  She dabbed her eyes and received hand shakes from respectful neighbours along the route.  She played the grieving window with grace.  It was a nice warm July day, so she decided to wear that dress she bought years ago, the black one with the little straps….the dress that she never could bring herself to wear.  She watched as people scanned her shoulder and winced at the scars.  She felt no guilt or shame for exhibiting the marks that life had given her.

Neither did she feel a sense of guilt or shame that when Jim had transferred all of his assets into her name to avoid his creditors two years ago, that she had hired a solicitor to have a restraining order placed on him.  Why should she, it was her right, the money was hers now, Jim had signed the papers to prove it.

Epilogue

Six months after Jim Folger had climbed the railing on the 30^th floor of the best hotel in London, Six months after he had fallen into the void of that wonderful airy atrium, two maintenance men where cleaning out the air conditioning ducts  in the lobby.  One of the men reached into the duct and pulled out what he thought was a rag, on closer inspection he brought it to the attention of the hotel manager who then called the police.  Jim Folgers heart, perfectly preserved by the cool, dry and sterile air in the duct, was sent back to his loving wife and son.

Late one night, it was thrown into a trench on one of Jim’s many unfinished housing projects, a hungry rat rushed to it, sniffed and scuttled away, still hungry.

The Crahan

A post from a while back, hope you enjoy 🙂

The Crahan

Pyjama legs stuck to me, rolling on the floor crying, head pounding where I’d banged it.  The whispers; just whispers all around and nowhere, fading away, into the shadows.

***

I remember when I was five years old, sitting in my Grandmothers bed, her drinking a glass of Guinness, me dipping my finger in the head, bitter, sour.  I would sit with her for hours, her telling me stories for the fairies and the fair folk.  My granddad would come home from work, smelling of wood and brylcreem.  He would take his dinner and sit beside the bed, food on tray and we would watch the news, magnifying screen in front of the PYE cabinet telly, black and white pictures yearning to be colour and almost making it.

My dad would come home too and they would lift granny up the stairs for her bath, I would watch as her polio twisted legs would flop, granny barking orders but always thankful.

7 O’clock; nearly time for bed and granny smelling of 4711 and baby powder would tell me my story.  Often it was of the Crahan;….preparing me.   Looking back, I would never tell my children that story but then maybe I should; perhaps she knew she needed to tell me that I needed to know.

The Crahan, if you don’t know are the cast aways from the fair folk, they took the side of the evil one in the great battle for souls before the world awoke.  They served his evil purpose but became even too much for him.  He too cast them away and they found no place in either the dark or the light, always living in the grey, so many shades of grey.

The Crahan have been mostly forgotten about, we prefer to think of the little people as happy, fair, singing, beautiful and not as vicious, snarling, ravenous creatures.  A few people remember them, a few people have “the fear” as it’s sometimes known.  The people with the “the fear” are the unluckiest of all.  They come from families or have learned from others who keep the secret of what the Crahan really are.  My grandmother had “the fear”, I think she knew I did too, but she had to bring it too the forefront.

At the moment of death, the soul leaves the body; waiting for the soul, can be either a dark angel or a light angel to take that soul to it’s eternal reward.  Sometimes both angels appear and battle for the soul.  Always are the Crahan, waiting in the shadows whispering, mouths dripping, licking lips with bile and acid spit.  Sometimes neither angel arrives on time and the soul is left to be devoured by the Crahan, torn, ripped, shredded, devoured by these slobbering creatures, the soul lost forever, feedstuff for the scavengers of eternity.

Souls are the Crahans food, their only food, their own immortal beings have been damned to the shadows, they seek out the dying, snarling at their bedsides, always hunting, always hungry.

My grandmother told me these things and taught me how to listen and how to feel “the fear”.  To overcome the fright and fight for time for angels dark and light to rescue souls from the nothingness.  “Nothing” she told me “is worse than nothingness, the soul, good or bad, deserves a place go, punishment or reward is a better fate than the Crahan”

“The Fear”, oh yeah, that’s a feeling, a sense when they are near, you hear the whispering, evil beyond evil, the grinding of razor teeth, the drip of spit; you see a sharpness in the shadows, a huddling mass broken with a ping/a flash of malice but mostly that whisper, a piercing sound, not a whistle, something older, if your not careful, something maddening.

***

The nurse picked me up,

“Jesus John, what happened ya?”

“Just a nightmare” I said.

“Do you normally walk in your sleep” she asked

“Sometimes”

She led me back to bed and I asked about Mr Peters.

“Ah he’s gone, the poor auld divil…” she said, “…but sure he looks happy now, no pain”

“Get yourself back to sleep now John, you’ll be getting out in the morning, bet you’re glad all those tests are clear…nothing to worry about after all…night night John”

I smiled.  That had been a hard one, if the angel hadn’t shown up when he did….I wouldn’t have been able to hold them off for very much longer.

***

I don’t know how long more I can do this, it’s not that I don’t want to, I’ve known all my life, well at least since I was five, that I had to do it, but I’m just getting older and there aren’t many of us left…….that’s why I’m telling you all of this.  By reading this, I’ve given you the secret, if you have “the fear” within you, you will now realise it.  You see, I need someone to help me fight, I’ll teach you all you need to know.  I need someone to make sure they don’t get my soul, they will come after it.  After all that I have denied them, they will.

***

Souls and stuff have always fascinated me, do they exist, I don’t know, but here’s the story of one man who fights for them, in an unusual way, most definitely.  The bit at the end, where you’ve been suckered into fighting along side our hero, that occurred to me a few years ago when I got one of those stupid and annoying chain letters, full of the usual crap and dire warnings about not breaking the chain, after I’d ripped it up a thrown it in the bin, the notion came to me that wouldn’t it be funny if by reading something, you had entered into a contract of sorts, but you didn’t find out till you’d finished reading.  Interesting idea, anyway thank you as always for reading my little pieces of nonsense….oh and by the way….listen out for those whispers……

The Haunted Glen

When I was a kid we used to go camping in a place called Glenmalure, it’s a valley located between East and West Wicklow and many of you familiar with hill walking will know it well. We would pack up tents, sleeping bags, pots & pans and bags of rashers and sausages and all pile into my dads friends cars and head off on summer Friday evenings for adventures, sing-songs, TK lemonade for the kids and Large bottles of Guinness for the men folk.

We would arrive around 8 o’clock, with the sun still shining, a sun which only ever briefly set in those summers. The dads would set about pitching tents, (and polishing off a few bottles of stout) and the kids would set off to gather dead wood and dried cow pats for the camp fires. By 10 o’clock we’d all be settled in, fire blazing and bread toasting on long sticks. The lemonade would be broken out and rations given and the empty bottles of Guinness would be piling up.

At this stage someone would turn to my dad and say, “Right Kevin, time for song”, he’d beam from ear to ear and crack into “The rocky road to Dublin”, followed on by the “German clock winder”. He’d pass the batten on and we’d be entertained for what seemed like hours by sad songs, happy songs and songs about war, fighting and killing that we didn’t all understand, except that they were sacred in some way and told the stories of brave men, good and true who died for Ireland, rebel songs, I know now, but back then to my father and his friends they were holy in some way.

Then the good part would start, as the evening had worn on and the short hours of darkness began, as a billion stars came out and danced above us, the Ghost stories would begin. We would pull our jumpers tight and listen, looking all around us, quivering at tales of deathly apparitions of legions of ghostly soldiers, of long dead rebels in the hills and rocks around us, of ghastly tin miners going to and from the local pits but best if all, the fabled, (at least to us), ghost horse of the Glen. A horse that gallops up and down the Glen when the moon is full. Neighing and stomping, listening and smelling for his rider, a gallant young captain of the guard, shot down and fallen to the swollen river, washed away to to sea and never seen by mortal man again. Oh how we feared that ghost horse and pitied him too, always to roam the haunted Glen among the unsettled soldiers, rebels and miners, always searching never finding.

I bring my kids there now and although we don’t camp, they’re far to genteel for that and prefer a serviced camp site, (so do I to be honest), we have picnics and I tell them the tales of the haunted Glen, especially the tale of the Ghost horse of Glenmalure, it still rattles me if truth be told.

So long folks and as always, thanks for all the fish.

Ah not again

Hello dear reader, been a while. Busy man you see.

So I changed jobs recently and my commute has gotten a bit longer, “what to do with all that time sitting in the car”, says I.

“Why not listen to the Bruce Springsteen back catalogue” I answer, “haven’t done that for a few years”

So off young Brophy goes, CD’s in boot, on his merry way.

Now Mr Springsteen has 18 studio albums and another 7 or 8 live albums as well as demo releases and so on, so I’m no where near through even a half of it at this stage but I’m working at it and maybe by the middle of the summer I’ll be done.

I decided to start not at Bruce’s beginning, but mine and off I went. I’ve told you before about my fist full of birthday money and my copy of “Born to Run”, all those long, long years ago.

I’m trying to remember and to keep to the time line of albums I bought and to listen to them in that order, I think I’ve battened that down and the effect of it all is quite astounding.

One of the things I have noticed is how listening to an album brings back so many memories. Different songs on albums remind me of people, places and situations that I haven’t thought about in years.

Listening to “Born to Run” and a song called “Meeting across the river”, I’m 13 years old again, looking out my bedroom window, watching rain rolling down and thinking about whatever long ago sorted calamity was bearing down on me at the time.

“Dancing in the Dark”, “Bobby Jean”, reminds me of, well…..my “Glory Days”.

“Racing in the Street”, a song I owe so much of my emotional health to. The song that got me through and still gets me through the death of my cousin.

My favourite lyric of all time “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come through, or is it something worse?”, from “The River”, I had it scrawled on my school bag and after I told my son Cathal that, he had it printed on a tee shirt for me.

So, what have I learned from my continuing trip down memory lane?

Well, along with the love of my beautiful wife, kids, and the very best of family and friends, these songs, I’ve realised, have contributed massively to me, at nearly 50 years old, being the man I have become, and I humbly submit that I’m not a bad aul sort.

I know it’s corny, I really do, but I’ve a debt of gratitude to Bruce for his part in that. I’ve never met him and most likely never will but I owe him, he helped me grow up, in fact he’s still helping me to grow up.

My Little China Girl

I had a coat when I was a young fella. Navy blue, big collar, reached mid way between my knees and ankles. I was about 14 or 15 at the time and I bought it a few days after seeing the video for “China Girl” on MT USA or top of the pops. 

I had a few bob at the time and was walking by a shop in Liffey Street, saw it in the window, went in and tried it on. Before I even saw it in the mirror, I knew I was going to look like the coolest fucker who ever wore shoe leather. 
I had a bit more, (ok, a lot more), hair then and it was brushed to the side, Simon LeBon style and when I eventually looked in the mirror, I pulled up the collar and there standing looking back was David Bowie in all his Thin White Duke style but with my face. All I was missing was a little China girl and I was all set.

It’s funny how songs, with all the thousands we hear in our lifetimes can sometimes stick in your head and bring you to a place and time in your life like a anchor pulling you into place. 

“China girl” is one of those songs, it reminds me of a young man full of dreams and probably fuller of shit but with his whole life ahead of him, standing there looking impossibly cool, to himself at least.

The coat is long gone but about ten years ago I found another, same length and navy blue, with a cool collar that’s begs to be turned up.  It’s kind of dressy so I wear it with a suit in cold weather and you know what, when I put it on and look in the mirror, I’m David Bowie again and singing, “Oh baby, just you shut your mouth….she says…..shushhhhh, she says…..shushhhh” Perhaps more Fat White Commoner than Thin White Duke, but we all have our dreams.

Mr. Jones

Supposed to be working on my thesis, but for the month that’s in it, this is for you G. G-D bless, stay safe

Scratch, sharp, not pain, familiar.  Scrapes against the vein, comfortable, is it never not there. Warm and chill rising up, numbing arm, never felt so un-numb. Shoulder, neck, chin, down to chest, back to eyes, stomach, groin, mmmmmmm, feet first, ears, coursing in hair. Here comes Mr Jones, juggling monkeys, no, turtles……with……….teeth. With tiger teeth and tiger tales.  Mr Jones, he makes everyone smile, all pink suit, cigar and white baseball cap. Sparks fly from his eyes, water from his ears. G, sitting, smiling, afraid, dozing and screaming, mama, mama.  No dogs here, move along. Brain looking, looking, never finding.  Needle falls, drops of blood follow, smiling at the pattern, seeing a picture. Turtle teeth, on G’s neck, push away, he’s not there, no one is.  Both lost, fuzzy minds, never see the world.  Mr Jones, laughing, knowing there’s no way back, taking us to circus town, nasty circus town, all Ghost trains and never clowns, turtles with tiger teeth.  No way back and gone forever.

For G, who never made it back from Circus Town or the Turtles teeth.

And Life Rolls On

33 years today, that is a long, long time.  I can still remember it, Starsky and Hutch was on the telly, I heard the door open and mam, aunty Norah and Uncle Gerry walked in. Mam and aunty Norah looked at me and put their heads down. Uncle Gerry put one hand on my shoulder, held my left cheek in the other and said “I’m sorry son”.  My mam took your watch and your gold Parker pen from her bag, gave it to me and said “these are yours now”.   My grandad sat looking in the fire, tears in his eyes, shaking his head.  My cousin Stephen, cried his eyes out, I went to my room, picked up my book and read it.

So here we are Dad, 33 years on today, that is a long, long time  I looked at each of my kids this morning before they went to school, each of them so like you in different ways.  I can see you in their eyes, hear you in their laughs, listen to you in their voices.  All so much like you without even trying, without even having met you, that makes me smile, and life rolls on.

The Vams

Some of you may find this little story a tad disturbing, you have been warned. By the way, it was written in a Texan accent, I suggest you read it in the same vein 🙂

 

The Vams don’t move around much during the day, we don’t know if it’s cause they don’t see too good. They certainly can smell good though, that’s why we keep the bodies in the freezers. We take them out a week before we need them, let them thaw, then we cut them up and cover ourselves in gore.

You see the Vams don’t like old blood, fresh is what they want, and the fresher the better.

All the old movies made us believe that an invasion from space would give us something to fight, something we could see. We didn’t know it would be something so small, only a microscope could find it.

It must be 25 years now, my little Ellie was three. The shooting stars had been falling all week and I came home from work to bring her out to the garden to watch them. When I pulled the truck up in the front yard, there were no lights on. I let myself in, went to the kitchen, turned on the light and there was Ellie.

She was sitting on her momma’s chest, her momma’s throat was ripped apart and Ellie had blood all over her face.

She had a look in her eyes that still wakes me screaming from time to time, I stumbled backwards and fell over the dog, his whole belly torn out. Ellie snapped out of whatever stupor she was in and lunged across the floor at me. She bit into my shoe before I managed to get up off the floor and I do believe I only just managed to get out in time before she would have killed me, just like her momma and the dog.

I guess I must have drove a hundred miles that night, and passed a dozen cars just stopped, right there in the middle of the highway. I drove clear across two counties before I noticed the gas light come on. I pulled off the interstate and found a station, open but abandoned. I went inside and found the old man who owned the place; at least I found what was left of him.

Jimmy told me I was just standing at the counter looking down at the pieces that once were the owner and I was screaming, screaming like a mad man. He watched me from outside, his gun pointed right at my head for 10 whole minutes before he came in, grabbed my shoulders and punched me in the face. I went down cold and when I woke up, he was standing above me, gun pointed and he asked, “You one o’ them devils?”

When Jimmy was sure of me, he told me what he’d seen that night. He was the Sheriff’s deputy in the next town over and well, you can guess what he saw. The Sheriff’s office started getting calls shortly after sundown. Kids gone wild, animals being attacked. It didn’t take long before humans were being attacked and that’s when all hell broke loose.

We packed up as much of the food, water and other stuff we could fit into my truck and his patrol car. We filled up our gas tanks and filled up 3 billy cans each too and we headed towards the city.

A few miles before we hit the city, the highway got choked up all to never-mind. There were bodies ripped open everywhere. We knew then, that whatever was happening was happening in the city and not just the towns. We stopped the cars and walked up the off ramp to an overpass where we could get a good view. The city was burning, the highway full of wrecked and abandoned cars, trucks, buses. The city wasn’t going to be safe.

Four of them came at us. Jimmy had given me the shotgun from the patrol car. Didn’t seem right to be shooting kids but I guess they weren’t kids anymore, not even people anymore. The biggest of them, he must have played line-backer in the school football team, he took 5 rounds before he went down, three of them to the head.

There’s four hundred of us now, living up here in the passes. Four hundred old men and old women. We have the place fixed up pretty good, it’s an old Army base, miles of tunnels and it’s easy to defend. We don’t have much cause to defend it of course; we only get a few straggler Vams up here, driven from the town and cities, looking for fresh blood. The Doc, Doctor Owens reckons they’ll start turning on each other soon enough but I don’t know. They don’t seem to breed. You get to recognise the same ones every time we go on a raid. We kill more of them now then they kill of us but there never seems to be any new ones, never any younger ones. Except that is, the ones that were young when they turned. Like my Ellie. I wonder if she’s still alive, or whatever you would call it for these things.

It occurred to the clever ones among us a couple of years after it all started, that the virus only affected people 18 years old and under. One of the ladies up here had a baby shortly after she came in and when the baby was born it damn near killed her. The baby came out with a mouth full of teeth and had bitten clean through the cord itself before Doc Owens managed get it in one of those clear plastic cribs. It lay there snarling and the poor mother, well she went mad with grief and headed off into the mountains as soon as she could after that, we never saw her again. Some brave soul tried to feed the baby milk, but it wasn’t having any of that and it soon faded away.

Since then, no babies have been born here. We’re not sure about the rest of the planet, but we guess anyone whose left will have figured out, what we figured out.

So there you go, the youngest among us is now 45 year old. If we don’t breed and the Vams don’t breed, I guess when the last of us is gone and the Vams run out of fresh blood, there’ll be no one left on this little ball in space, except maybe the virus. The doc reckons that a virus can live on for ever, maybe so.     

Not bad for an Aul Fella

A couple of years ago I had a bit of a health thing. Not so much a scare, more of a kick up the hole, cop the fuck on type of thing.  Anyway, I decided I needed to get my act together and started eating properly and taking excercise.

It’s all worked quite well and apart from the smokes I have to say I even surprised myself at how well I have manged to keep it up.  Normally I walk alot but given the time of year it is, I go to the gym.  Now I’m not into all that Rockey shite with the big mad weights and all but I just do a normal modest bit, start off on the treadmill, move to rowing and then go on to the machine yolks, none of which I know the name of.  Its the leg thing, the pully down bar thing, the lifty up bar thing, the pull your arms forward whatchamaycallit.

Being the OCD kind of person that I am, I do the same circuit, (I call it a circuit and I think that’s the right terminology), every time I go.  I get kind of upthight if I go to the next piece of equipment and it’s being used cause it throws me off kilter but anyway thats what happened last night.  Everytime I went to use something there were two youngfellas ahead of me so I was kind of waiting around.  The lads would move on and I would then jump in.  In the heal of the hunt meself and the two lads finished up roughly around the same time and they were walking out ahead of me.  They didn’t see me behind them so I had the benefit of sneakily listening in to their conversation.

“Jeez, did you see yer man there tonight” says bucko number 1, “yeah” says bucko number 2.  “For an aul fella, he was keeping up with us well”, says number one.

“For and AUL Fella” – for a fucking “Aul Fella”.  When in the name of Christ did this happen?  OK, so there’s more hair on me back now than there is on me head.  I don’t hear too well nowadys, modern music is, I consider, mostly crap.  I have to say that a nice glass of wine in front of the telly is much more my style these days than getting shit faced in a club, but I didn’t think it had got so bad as being an “AUL FELLA”.

What am I to do, suggestions on a postcard please……….

Bigalphy, Nelson and the Black Panthers

When I was born, the Almighty decided that instead of good looks or money, he would endow me with a sense of humour and a wit as sharp as the nib of Oscar Wilde’s fountain pen, (hey folks, give us a break, I’ve already admitted to being piss poor and ugly as sin).

In any event, whatever the man upstairs had in store for my part in the great divine plan, being somewhat funny and sarcastic were nowhere near as good as as being rich and gorgeous when it comes to being a teenager and trying to shift youngwans.

So much was my lack of contact with the opposite sex, that when, at the ripe old age of 15, (OK it was really 16), I finally got to kiss a girl, I nearly collapsed when the tongue action started.  I seriously thought there was something wrong with the poor girl and even considered that she had been taken by a seizure of some sort.

“OK, so far so good, but what has this got to do with Nelson Mandela and the Black Panthers?”, I hear you ask.  Well if you settle down, I’ll tell you.  As it happens, Nelson Mandela nearly helped me in loosing my virginity and in the process helped in building BigAlphy’s confidence with, and if such a thing is possible, understanding of; “The Ladies”.

Come with me if you will, to the dark and misty world of my teenage years.  Careful now, the light is dim, the scenery is in black and white with occasional Wizard of Oz flashes of colour.  The memories are so thick and so fast, that you have to brush them away with a flick of the hand.

Let us say her name was Kate.  Kate was fantastic, beautiful, fiery, passionate and full of fervour to right the wrongs of the world.  I got talking to her one afternoon and she suggested that I go with her to an anti-apartheid meeting the following day.  Now, I was never one for these types of gatherings.  I had once gone to a Legion of Mary meeting on the advice that it was a good place to meet girls, but you can imagine my complete disappointment about half way through the meeting when I realised the only physical contact these girls were interested in, was holding your hand during prayers.

So anyway, this anti-apartheid meeting was upon me and I decided to dress for the occasion.  On went the old scruffy jeans, the manky Adidas ROM’s, (remember them?) and a Che Guevara t-shirt.  I looked in the mirror and decided I looked too tame.  I took back off the jeans, half ripped the pocket off the arse, tore a hole in the knee to add to the “I don’t give a shit” look and reassembled myself in my new rebel without a fucking iota style.  I looked in the mirror again and thought I was the epitome of insurgent chic.  Thinking back, I probably looked more like Woody Allen in Bananas than than anything else, but youth, like love, is blind to even the most obvious things.

I found the meeting and walked in to find Kate talking to a ridiculously good looking, South American revolutionary wannabe from Wexford.  He was bearded, hopelessly taller than me and my heart sank .  I introduced myself to Beardy and after some small talk, he called the meeting to order.  I must have dozed off because I can’t remember a thing that was said until I was called upon to say something.

The only thing I could think of was some quotes from Karl Marx, (He hadn’t a patch on Groucho when it came to quotes), some platitudes about the working classes and the oppressed…..what really clinched it though was when I had run short of material, I raised my fist, Black Panther salute style and shouted, “FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM”.  I have to say, this brought the house down, (I could see tears in the eyes of all 17 people in attendance), and I was now a hero to Kate and I suspect an enemy of Beardy.

When we went outside, Kate grabbed me, pushed me up against the wall and attempted to perform an appendectomy on me through my open and surprised big mouthy gob.

We decided to go back to her place, now don’t get excited, when I say her place, it was her parents house, which she shared with Mammy, Daddy, 2 brothers and last but not least Granny.

We sat in the posh front room discussing politics and drinking coffee, (to be honest, I prefer tea, but revolutionaries apparently drink coffee).  We were getting along really well when she reached over, took my cup, put it on the floor and dived on me.  Well as you know, I am a gentleman, so no details will be forthcoming other than to say just when it was getting really bloody interesting, the door to the posh front room burst open and in walked granny with her knitting.  “Can’t hear myself think with the telly in the other room”, she said, “you don’t mind if I sit in here with you, do you?”

Well that was that, we went back to the coffee and had a chat with granny who told me when I was going, that I was a lovely young man, still a bleeding virgin thanks to her, but a lovely young man never the less.

I went back to the meeting the following week and walked in to find Kate sitting on Beardy’s lap, laughing and joking. She waved over at me and I waved back.  I slipped back out the door when she wasn’t looking and walked home, in the rain if I remember correctly, lonely, depressed, distressed and above all horny.

So there we are, it’s nearly 30 years on, I switch on the news and hear that poor old Nelson has died. As well as shedding a tear, I smiled a little smile at my Black Panther salute.  Done for all the wrong reasons at the time I know, but there was innocence in it too and such is the selfishness of youth.  Unlike youth though, which passes away to memory, Nelson Mandela shall not pass away from memory.  He will be kept alive by his compassion, his forgiveness, his willingness to accept the past and move on from it.  We will remember him, our kids will remember him and he will inspire and instil in us, memories, some silly, some profound and a desire to be better human beings. The mark of the man, in my humble opinion at least, is that I’m pretty sure no other politician in my lifetime, will ever cause me to shed a tear on their passing.

G-D bless you Madiba, have a safe journey home.

 

The Laughing Cyclist

Sometimes people make a lasting impression on you and you remember them long after you’ve lost touch or after they have died. Duane Delaney was such a person.  Duane was a draughtsman in my first proper job in the world of engineering and I had the pleasure of getting to know him many many moons ago.

He was happy, red faced guy, always quick to laugh his ass off.  Always quick to play a trick on someone, he ate way too much salt, by G-d did he.  He was kind and generous to a fault.  I remember once, I had a really really bad tooth ache and was sitting at my drawing board in the office almost crying with pain.  Painkillers were doing no good.  Duane was a bit of a tooth ache sufferer too and noticing, (t was hard not to), my discomfort, he went down to his bike, hopped on it and cycled home, reappearing half an hour later with various potions and salves.  “Try these” he said, “Give them about half an hour to work”.

Sure enough, within the allotted time, I was as right as rain. “Hold on to that stuff, till you get to a dentist” was what he said when I offered his medicine chest back.  That was some he didn’t have to do and the impression of it,well it obviously lasts to this day.

I mentioned he cycled home, well I’ll get back to that, Duane and his bike.  Another time at the office Christmas party, poor old Duane got so drunk I had to bring him home in a taxi because the taxi driver wouldn’t take him on his own.  I had to go “guarantor” for him.  In fairness, three pints of beer was Duane’s normal limit, drink wasn’t high on his list of priorities,which is where we get back to the cycling.

Duane was obsessed with bikes.  He was a member of the Ravens club if I remember correctly and every chance he got he was racing.  In 1992, all of us “draftys” were seconded from the company we worked for to an Irish contractor involved in the fit out of the Hotel de Las Artes in Barcelona.  Myself and another bunch of lads went out in the first and second wave of “grunts” and a few months later, more lads followed.  On the day Duane was arriving, I was (happily), dispatched to the airport to pick him up and bring him to where we were staying.  I toddled out to the airport, sat back in the bar at arrivals with that days copy of the Irish Times and had myself a few, ahem, coffees, shall we say.  Duane’s flight landed and I headed over to the gate to see him, big smile plastered across his face, strolling along…wheeling his bike.  He saw me, came over, shook my hand, I looked at the bike and said…”For fucks sake, how the Jaysus are we going to get that back to the apartment?”.

We walked over to the train station where the man looked at the bike and shook his head.  We walked back to the Bus stop where the man looked at the bike and shook his head.  We walked over to the taxi rank where the man looked at the bike and shook his head.

“We’ll have to have a drink” says I, “and give this some thought”. One, (or two), drinks later, Duane suggested I get a taxi and that he cycle along beside. I considered this, thought about the 3 or 4 lane motorway from the airport in and, well if I’m honest considered it again before discounting it.  I suggested we leave the bike at the airport and get someone with a van to pick it up later which a horrified Duane immediately discounted.  We tried out luck and the train, bus and taxi men again and then after a couple of hours, (and a few more drinks for me), Duane said, “Hey, I could just take the wheels off, look they just clip out”.  I need not tell you, I could have kicked him the length and breath of the Ramblas.

He took off the wheels and a taxi man welcomed us on board with open arms.  All the way in Duane laughed and such an infectious laugh it was. Pretty soon, both I and the taxi man where laughing our nads off and the poor old taxi man didn’t even know what he was laughing at.

Duane died in Australia in 1998.  He was knocked down while competing in a cycle race, his old cycling club hold a memorial event every year in his honour and I think no higher honour could befit him.  Duane was one of life’s genuinely nice people, as I mentioned above, a kind soul, a funny soul.  Duane, your family will always remember you, your club will always remember you and where ever you are now, I hope you know that I and your old friends from work will always remember you too.  Happy trails my friend.