A Dead Man’s Tail
It was the pit of winter. It was the pivot of time. Darkness was only broken by seven hours of short weak light. It was harsh on everyone. Some people made it harsher on themselves. Slanty was one of those people. Slanty, an irregular man living at the edge of the world in his family garage, who was prone to bouts of computer game blackouts and illegal downloading; broken with binges of conspiracy videos, while all the time digressing into trolling and other nefarious online activities, and all of it all the time laced with tins of cider and bottles of vodka. That combination of detachment from the world, and all its nonsense of say; what day is it; I need to be here at so and so; what time is it now and when do I need to go to bed. It all made it hard on himself.
Slanty, A man who had fallen into irregular ways awoke again, not knowing it would soon be his last . Slanty, named after a nearby rock, the name he earned after he died, did not work. He did not go to the library. He did not watch TV by schedule. He did not take walks around the town; instead opting for long lonely walks up the coast that led up to a big park on a hill, but he soon even gave up doing that. The only time slots Slanty kept too was his collection of the dole on Tuesday at the post office. The tides of the sea beside which Slanty lived meant nothing to him. He did not notice the cycles of the Moon. The evening and morning stars meant nothing to him. He did not go to any cafes. He did not go to the bookies. He had not been to a GP for many years; or a dentist, or an optician. The local cinema which he would’ve enjoyed he had never entered. He did not take any train journeys to places like Bray. He had not been on a holiday in years. The world for him was a tiny boundary that ended at Lidl a mere mile from his house. He did frequent, briefly, that shop Gamestop located in a mall on a hill called Millsfield, for a short time. But didn’t keep that trend going on for long. And he maybe even popped into McDonalds on occasion but gave up on that quickly too; most likely on some preposterous pretense; probably a staff member made some attempt of banter with him and he just grunted and ruminated over the the supposed embrassment for about a month. That’s the kind of guy Slanty was.
Slanty made a big ordeal over everything. Like that time he was in the post office collecting his weekly dole and an African woman broke the queue and he had a panic attack during the argument that followed. He bored people for many months about that story. Slanty never made small talk, not with anyone, not even a bit of banter in Lidl with the hot Polish girl he fancied.
This was a day after a marathon session of cider, vodka, online multiplayer shootouts and rampaging around New York killing people as a Russian Gangsta; followed therefore upon with nihilistic optimism a short YouTube video about Targeted Individuals presented by PHD Dr Kate Horton, who, surrounded by a tinfoil ceiling to block government attempts at mind control, explained how governments gang stalk people; the content of which all went easily into the bored and suggestable mind of Slanty. Slanty liked these conspiracy videos, it gave him secret knowledge and confirmed his withdrawal from the world. Slanty went to sleep in the black and woke in the black. All that was perfectly normal. He believed he was living and sleeping normal hours. Often he was, but the routine always slacked because he did not need time. After his supposed breakfast slurp of cider he partook upon his morning or evening walk with the dogs. There was little light and the poor weather made it seem to darken early and sure dogs don’t care when they’re walking – they’ll make 3am or whatever time of day seem normal with those wagging tails. He returned to his dark den compelled by his addiction. He cracked open his last few tins of cider over the next few hours whilst chatting with Americans; this was interspersed with nihilistic youtube videos and heavy metal music.
It should be bright out now he thought, he didn’t care to look though. Alcohol, dopamine and exhaustion combined together to drive him back to sleep. He woke refreshed, ready for his now daily evening trip to the shop to replenish his cider and vodka supply. But he wasn’t boring, sometimes he experimented with wine, but it lacked longevity; the cider was caffeinated and vodka gave him energy!
Dressed and decent he descended the slight incline of his driveway down towards the green that more steeply dropped to a cliff; that fell directly onto the beach, that then relented to the sea. His dog once jumped off that cliff chasing a tennis ball. After reaching the end of his driveway he swung a left. Now he was curving upwards through the middle class semi detached estate of Fancourt not Ferncourt. A grotty grey cement walled lane marked the boundary between his estate and the downwardly mobile one next by. Both estates were respectable middle class though. Back In the 1960’s the whole place was a huge potato field. A small strip of the potato field remained just east of The Bower at old Fancourt near the cliff. He glided up the slope of the grey 1970’s estate of Fancourt not Ferncourt, that gave a small overlook of the darkened town, before hitting the Skerries road. The local Costcutters shop was less than 5 minutes away. Now at the lollipops ladies spot he eyed left scheming. The road was completely void. So were all the streets. He attributed this rightly to good luck and good timing. Maybe a football match is on..crossed his mind, crossing the road. He rolled with the leaves past the play fields left uncorrupted by developers before the Pinewood estate. At the road sign pointing oddily towards Drogheda he followed. The path flowed down. With dimming eyes he entered the shop, into his desires. He squinted; shook off the dark and adjusted to the light, before heading straight towards the drink. Nothing seemed out of place as he went to the checkout counter. He plonked the cans and a two pint bottle of glass vodka on the counter. But he felt alarmed at the female’s lipstick stained teeth’s puzzled look who was working as the cashier.
‘IT’s ONLY 7AM!! I can’t sell you drink at this time!!’ she blurted out bewildered. This had never happened before, not with a local anyway.
‘OH’ was all Slanty grunted in return, before darting out of the shop blushing red. He rushed back home and took to comforts in his unusual distractions on the internet. Later he succeeded in buying a load of drink and washed away the ruminate cringe of embarrassment. Drink was still his saviour but would soon be his killer, that thing that would make him the Slantyrock.
A MOMENT IN BALBRIGGAN
Chapters In Stories In Chapters
OneThe Day At The Dump
Two MOSNEY Parade MEMORIES Meets Coke Can Pennies
III Rowan’s Little Alpine Dream
4Summer SchooLed Hashed
VI Climbed
the Cliffs
of Barnageeragh
Once
6THE OLD PHOTOGRAPH
7The Snowflake Sick Of Christmas
8The Last Hurray
9Back To The Dole Queue
XBye Zoned Perks
The Opera of The Sternly Defiant Magpie
12The Northern Ireland Refuse Collection
At Mayobridge
13The Interview of The Anonymous Man at Wuhan
XIV Symphony of The Kitchen
A Prologue
This book is an accident. It wasn’t meant to be. I wrote the first story A Dead Man’s Tail on a whim back in early 2017. I was venturing into writing, not really knowing what I was doing. Rory had left a nasty odd comment on a FB post of mine on my piano playing. I decided in a state of spite to write a story detailing his lifestyle based on a true tale of his. Other stories followed after that make up half of the book. All the stories, Shaggy Dog Stories, the original title I intended when started, in this book are true. I took very few creative liberties. You could honestly count them on one hand and they are trivial, only there for narrative purposes. So I continued scraping these stupid little tales of no purpose from my life, that ended nowhere. Then on February 9th 2018, with a ring of the doorbell and opening of the door, my world became an earthquake. Rory’s mom was standing outside. Rory was dead. He’d hung himself . 25 years of my life had ended in an instant. I’d known him since I was 6 years of age. A minute away from me lived this tragedy. This book or stories or rag of shaggy dog tails had organically come to life. It had become meaningful. Somehow suddenly so much became connected. What began as a vainful pursuit about me, a mere writing exercise, had become alive as the story of Balbriggan. Our youth. Growing up here, its places, becoming part of this town. Robo had written this book when he did the deed. It thus was childhood, my youthfulness, my innocence all ending. The writing after his death deals with grief, coming out of it and all that.
The Day At The Dump
The three boys walked up upon the road towards the travellers camp before two of them halted with prejudice . Kevob was now alone and nervous and felt hatred towards his friends left behind. As he came before the halting site two dogs gone wild with the glowing feeling of purpose grown from respect came barking at him, one of them gnawed at Kevobs trousers before being beckoned away by a higher authority, only after biting off the back end of the tracksuit end though. I,myself alone, entered the site like a little boy and approached a group of men, one of them made a joke of me by asking me to scrub his back with a mop he was holding. Kevob made his inquiries and a business like mode was entered into and a lean serious man in his thirties led Kevob over into a caravan. After handing over his twenty pound punt note Kevob left with his several boxes of bangers some of which all were once clearly wet. The dogs which had attacked on entry now merely meekly followed briefly sniffing at his leg before losing interest as they left with their tails wagging. I felt pretty brave and hardcore as I went back down the little hill to meet up again with my cowardly “friends” waiting for me. The message was clear, the brave one had made his declaration. Robo was not happy with this flexing masculine event. Going into a travellers’ halting site alone at fourteen years of age took risk, with all the stereotypes and lores of derogatory words, overhanging it. Macho man culture can get you killed. Twenty years later Kevob and Robo got caught up in a drinking contest with each other, with Robo finally declaring one day, before he dragged ME home that night, winning the battle but not the war,after I told him I could out drink him. Robo responded
‘I could drink you under the table any day Kevob ’
I drank you under the ground matey. But that story ends in 2018.
OneT
Now though It’s Autumn 1999; with Kevob feeling bravado mixed with glee was the indifference brought about between the bangers he now showed his envious friends forwarded towards the difference of oncoming big banging Cat Bangers Robo would get from up the North to justify him Robo not going into the travellers site even though Kevob had gone in on his own, remember. This is all spite driven. So the next few days me and the lads with just my bangers were used by me to blow up bottles and create little craters deep in lanes with my so called duds, smashing up wheelie bins that made the lids flap up such was the force. But this was not good enough for Robo, my Cat Bangers were lame. Yeah sure ok many of the bangers were duds due to the damp in the dried out boxes, but most worked, and the brisk musty Autumn air was still fresh, September air still lingered behind hanging on and we had many days until Halloween. So Robo disappeared one Saturday and it was just me and Nico awaiting; that day’s return. Robo had been up north, I need not mention it again, but since he mentioned that forthcoming journey so many times, i’m mentioning it again. Kevob still had some of his lame bangers, none of them had been complete duds, it was fair to say, only many of them had been a bit weak in delivery. The next day after his Saturday trip up North Robo came charging at me at my house to show me the real deal about what real bangers were.This, by the why, was well after he’d drawn a cartoon face of me, on the round faced pillar outside my house on the driveway, humiliating my crooked overbite teeth.
I was a fool for having the courage to go to the travellers and now the real thing was here. For two weeks now, since I got my bangers, he’d been letting me know who was boss. Kevob was afraid to be made to look like a fool that day. Kevob reasoned it had taken courage to go alone up to the halting site with dogs barking and biting at him. In that grim grey light with fall trees going watercolor green with mellow tobacco yellow leafs coming out like growing slow fireworks displays, and poor Kevob standing there alone in the halting site getting harassed to scrub some mans back and then entering into some strangers caravan house all alone with just himself. But he’d gotten the bangers, by himself alone abandoned by his two or actually three friends maybe, Noneck was there also in those days; and yeah some of which were duds from dampness but most worked and worked well and he got nothing from his friend but insults. Now was the time of reckoning.
So it was another mundane obvious grey overcast October day, that happened to be Sunday because that’s after Saturday, the day certain people always go up.
North to Newry. The place to go for this standoff was the Dump, A county council depo. The three boys clambered up the round top wall; struggling in three different ways that all ended the same; grabbing their legs up after their arms, hoofing up, until within the ability of agility writhing their bodies over beyond along the wall, legs now dangling over sitted and in unity again scoped upon the refuge given by the sightly opportunity of piles of gravel nearby only forescaped by ramped up weeds and nettles, needed to take cover from what would be oncoming shrapnel.
In the ripheral of the Fancourt not Ferncourt estate they climbed down through the bushes into the Fingal Council Depot known as the Dump. There to meet their moment.
Years later taking position under the cover of this wall Shinbob, presented with Kevob, would in his initiative rise above over to fire a stone by slingshot straight into the forehead of the local disgruntled man who lived in a house adjacent to the wall, that whose house they were firing pebbles at that night to entice. I remember the clipping sound of the stones on the porch window we made to bring him out, he deserved it though, thrust me.
Years before I trick-or-treated at that house, going at it alone ( I trick or treated alone, who does that at 8 years old, and got sent to Gormanstown Prison because I was too shy), anyway this is going well back in years now in this narrative and the miserable wife ,who for whatever reason gave bother to answer ,pretended to put something in my bag. It was so rotten and petty minded. Imagine that nasty.. I looked back at her like a mirror with her scorn on my face the way I thought only a child could, shoving her pathetic stupidity back down her throat.
‘Wha. I putted somethin in’ she croaked back hissily. Something as in nothing. I turned away without a say or remark. Some moments in your life, especially in childhood, those hammer time motions taking thee in sweeping currents of emotions, you remember and they just make you. You feel it in the moment, how will I respond to this and you walk away into yourself or into someone else. That day I walked down back the driveway towards myself, the lone youth trick or treating.
That’s the least of it with the notoriety of this that house. Anyway I digress. Last word, for some reason I think he got it into his head, I hit him with the stone that day, and then the sad loser elbowed me while walking up alongside the football fields before Pinewood one day. Soon after that the miserable man moved house.
Robo had already found the coke glass bottle needed for Kevob’s demolition.In the Dump up away from the buildings below were piled towers of different types of stones and gravel used for road construction and repair. The three boys came down into it from upon an tramped on passage trespassing towards the opposite of the wall in a derelict direction scraping through bushes and feral paths, and Robo’s moment in the light came. Abound the heaps into the place was placid and serene, here airily nips sweeped, the cold compass playing the leaves about beyond around, before rolling in to our spot, felt run down like a drab Saturday afternoon, even though it was Sunday in late October, and there was a general feeling of renewal, as the sun still spoke through the sky in little scattered pierces and the next school day was a week away. Kevob walked past back into the memory where he sliced his leg on glass and in that vulnerability had lost all hope now and knew that up North where the bombs were made would make mighty bangers. Robo lined things up taking over the drama of the moment.
‘Now let me show you a real banger Kev’, meaning to me, Kevob. Exclaimed Robo.
Kevob had already given up. The insults had been going on with such surety and for so long now Robo’s bangers would show him something beyond his imagination. Yeah this was going to be a grand explosion. A banger from Northern Ireland would be more like a bomb. The muddled history of that confused thing called troubles struck him, Canary Wharf and Manchester abstracted to the bombing in Omagh which felt real, and was very recent. Kevob had never seen or heard a bomb, it would be immense. The IRA, a shadow creature you heard whispers of, all the allurity, that thing called the Troubles was coming home. The trio made a calculated military position in the Dump, they had a clear open space of ground for the glass coke bottle to explode in, with close enough proximity to piles of gravel nearby to take cover in. They’d seen scenes like this in movies. Robo, demonstrating, lit the spark, then, we, all, the lads ran for cover and grouped into position behind a large heap of gravel as the fuse fizzled down. Nothing happened, as they sat staring above the gravel path into the morose sky grabbing the dying white lights in it’s overcast burden; a mere little blip the fuse had fizzled out. Things became dangerous now with a shortened fuse. The lads examined the situation. What else could they do but do the same again. The short fuse was lit again with dynamite danger, and the three boys ran away with the war fever; this was their Battle of the Somme, the boys sent off to war. All was quiet on the southern, or western, or eastern or wherever
they were front. Robo’s propaganda campaign had been a huge success; they lay there with ears covered behind the pile of county council gravel, as the big bang moment loomed into creation. Then; it; the moment; held still; happening into nowhere, morphed into carousels and candy floss. In the speclative silence the lads peeped over the gravel. They slowly with caution walked towards the uneventful event thinking the fuse was gone,until suddenly, Kaboom!
A little spit of smoke puffed up into the air.
The banger had exploded up; smashing up the skies with A whiff of smoke; speaking up so weakly; the coke bottle stayed perfectly still sitting dumbley before it’s audience, rattled more by the little cauldry October winds, that gave reason within to Kevob to burst out laughing in reaction. The bottle sat there undaunted; it hadn’t even rattled the few pesky puny pebbles left underneath that thwarted beforehand the thrust downwards towards the grounding desire of placement towards foundation, that solidly firmly crunching connection point back to the Earth, Robo had attempted haphazardly. Kevob choked for breaths through the laughter as he rolled about on a gravel pile , his ribs in a struggle to capture air. Unevenity came into this space of void, flexing. The bottle was more likely to fall over from a gust of wind then the pathetic whimper that the banger had had. Life is very odd and always roaming felt Kevob in the chasm of emotions the Gods were gleaming at him. The sun snook through a gap in the denty grey overcast clouds casting winds predictions to withdraw so only it could shine through into his face, and Kevob was still rolling about bursting out laughing without the sense of relief. Had life ever made a joke this long and rewarding. Robo was fuming, warranting in himself a revenge that might well kill him.
MOSNEY Parade MEMORIES Meets Coke Can Pennies
How I awoke I do not know. A blaring alarm I suppose; dragging myself out of comfort; my bed at 6:50am, with that heavy feeling, too young to know the unnatural discomforts. I jumped from my bed into my clothes and quickly left the house dehydrated and disoriented, squinting at the sun through a ghostly estate feeling sickly. The hot moaning morning air feels like me, disturbed. Robo with me, we meet up somewhere along the concrete lane, and cut through the direct passage from Hampton Cove straight up the short two steps into Fancourt. Our short pairing together ended as we partnered up with Nico. At the open concrete road spot, often used by cars for turning, first road of Fancourt; the place where Nico had his last smoke and bespoked with that climatic event his name in that manner of doing so, Nico crossed over the road and joined in with us in very good timing. The trio of us went on. On through the town for the bus that would whisk us away. We didn’t understand. At the T junction before the little shop on the corner came Noneck Casey, throwing shapes, probably carrying a knife, the usual menace he was as always. Nico gives up smoking then and me and Robo go into the corner shop to purchase smokes. We are aged 14 or something but on the way to a very hard day of work. I buy a new brand of cigarettes, I’m not sure why, the filters are white which is enticing to me . I like the look maybe or some advertisement brightened my mind; I was at a suggestable age, it’s an American brand and they have white tips. Did someone in the shop suggest I should buy them… Or the more probable; advertising was more forward back then and I’ve forgotten all about it. The year here is 2000 passing 1999, smoking is on the
decline. As soon as I leave the shop I walk back up to the lads who are waiting on the wall at the corner. I spark up one of my new cool smokes and we walk on. Down the street we go away from the sun we sunder back down under unusual cool shadows. It’s just past 7am now. I throw my smoke away under the light of the sun that races with us down the street. Cool air, with growing warm light tidally traverses over the place as we come upon the square. We waited there in the contrasts , looking inwards onwards and downwards, at ever changing Balbriggan until time caught up with us again.
The bus then soon comes and we take seats that are friendly places. Me alone cast astray looking out the window, an empty seat beside me. The other three together with Robo hanging out in the aisle to fit in. A journey in the sun, a journey held in the shadows, that weak straining light glowing in, grabbing in spots downcast reaching in through the windows, that tepid heat lingering a somber mood, the strength saps as it goes on. I keep picturing my unmade bed wishfully taking back myself. The road journey is just unknown jolts bolting about, a brief clutch up a hill, i’m too young and tired to take anything in, maybe we pulled in to take on some more passengers, I’m sure we did in hindsight, I can’t remember anything but the dim sun through the window, with my head dolted against it, jolting against the glass. The bus pulls into Mosney, that dread comes over me, at that matter of fact moment, of having to do something soon, we depart in pictures. I think back to my bed again, that safe warm comfy place, unmade awaiting my curl back into it. Almost 8am now, and that option has gone into harsh reality and barely has the day begun. Getting off the bus I spark up a smoke to observe with a look around. Mosney is bustling with buses from everywhere. The whole country is streaming in. It’s the Community Games. Something I’ve got no idea about what the importance of that is; but it means lots of people from all around the country, coming together; converging, to this spot. It’s a national yearly event as the word nationwide goes into Kevob’s vocabulary with the sounds of many dialects and accents chomping up through the cool warming breezes of morning air as he gets off the bus moving in through the bustle of crowds feeling very a bit lost.
Gasping and nervous through culchies I roam, hustle bustle crowds mounting yarns unknown and the obvious crusted mangled of the English language tortured through the air . Yet I see girls I know from school from not far away places.Even those accents a 1km away sound alien like. I see many more people I never knew who I will soon have very short relations with. For now though then I stay with my friends as we hustle along like cattle following someone who is
following someone who is following someone else. We march on like going into a camp, someone ahead is leading us. Past square bloc chalets of differential designs and shapes we walk on. Now we’re in a restaurant getting a disgusting breakfast. I spark up another smoke as others eat. They keep on eating. I have another one of my cool smokes. Not a morsel of this disgusting food touches my mouth, I have some cleansing tea though. A few people, or probably just one person, starts puking pink onto the floor. I’m getting worried about running out of cigarettes. I decide to have another cup of tea again and take a look in an opinionating manner upon the situation, which makes me feel sick with the heavy thought. The tea provokes it’s cleansing feeling through my body. I feel like I’m washing something down, while it also sparkens my mind. An upbeat clearing marks the way as that murky morning nausea suddenly clears away. I lubricate with cups after cups of tea along with an occasional cigarette whilst the pigs in clover around me chomp down lumps of relish delights. How they can eat such chomps of congealed pig bits in fatty clumps amuses me in this early hour. I drink tea and smoke and look on. They eat on, I watch on. A precursor to my future life dedicated to wine, still skinny and feeling fine. I must admit a blip though that wasn’t really me, mine, as in me, I was an interlocutor, a false fat, long ago, an interlude, in my early twenties.
After the restaurant a concentrated camp-like atmosphere takes hold. We’re funnelled into places of work, again with no idea who’s directing us. Some get lucky, a few win the lottery, most end up in the chambers. I end up in the chambers. A hot bustling kitchen. We’re allocated into spots. We rummage about the ignorance for an hour, skirting about, with not much happening, dutiful and awaiting something we know nothing about. The dishes start coming in to our spots. They pile up quickly, the lucky ones who won, bringing the plates smirk at their luck, seeing what they avoided. Most of the plates still have uneaten food on them. We all scrap and clean as fast as we can but to no avail. In every spot a towering Pisa of plates starts developing. Some of the stations are calmer than others but a general sense of disorder takes over the place regardless. One guy who’s taken loads of caffeine pills starts running amuck losing the sense of himself. I’m dripping in sweat and fighting the towering Pisa of plates that are precariously building about to pile over. Someone lost in the plot comes over to me and knocks the cap of plates I’m battling against onto the ground. This is only the morning bustle in Mosney worse is to come. What has this got to do with the Community Games. The torment of the almost four hour gruelling drool or fools of food or whatever it is, breakfast, lunch, brunch, hell shift ends and we’re set free. On a free for all four hour fooking long break. How is this legal we’re only fourteen years old. I’m utterly exhausted and this is only day one of whats planned to be a week of work. I know I won’t last, Robo is my canary, he cracks after day two, his fourth and second final day of work in his lifetime. Robo worked two days picking potatoes in his very yearly years with Nico, two days at Mosney, and one day doing manual labour at a house on the Skerries road during the Celtic Tiger, a job he quit and never got paid for after someone shouted at him for making too much noise smashing something up!
Lunchtime was an oddity of time. Young and horny youths. The carnival was on but I did not ride. I just smoked and smoked and smoked. My belly rumbled and grumbled with cravings for some things I did not know nor want. I was hungry but could not eat. The bumper carts were the only thing that interested me, what a strange thing to do. We mixed and mellowed in our groups, matching about, entering into little rivalries, bored out without purpose. It was tranquil in a vain way. Then somehow, by the strength of clock, or a supervisor shouting, or word of mouth, I found myself herded along again, going with the crowd. Then it happened again. Back in the kitchen at my post; resent grew. The food flooded in again. The smirks of those assigned to the servicing holding upright by arm dispensing again and again a tower of babel of plates upon me engulfed me. I was downtrodden with an optimal air at what was a quiet spot in comparison. The guy previously hopped up on caffeine, became a depressed creature, trapped in vague thoughts the plates grew into a bombardment. A shrewd slew of weakness came over all of us and we plundered on diminishing, into a robotic form, down into that basic survival instinct. Noneck and Nico cracked and demanded slyly I switch spots with them. I naively agreed optimistically giving them the benefit of doubt, assuming each station was as bad as the other. I went from alone in a quiet spot into a place where soon the plates were reaching the ceiling. The tower of Babel started falling down now, the sink was clogged with food, the supervisor shouted at me about the smashed plates and food ladden about the floor. We had all lost control of the situation, as they, the enemy blackshirted endlessly pounded us with the cracks of ceramic plates full of food, often, or more often, half eaten. Mindlessly we went on. Then the impact of time happened, the steady flow of plates ceased away into a trinkle. The stir of chairs, wood creaking back started to rattle in the restaurant. Soon it was all gone, away, for today. An emptiness took hold. We dispensed away from the kitchen and all took our wayward paths and met up again with frivolous notions as we lined up for the buses. Those who had escaped the kitchen. The servants I saw, met up with us again. These people who had escaped the day our enemies not so long ago, working for the detail. It all seemed strange. One guy, who I called the mop man, having overdosed on caffeine pills looked lost, staring dead eyed ahead in another new personality, his 7th of the day, going from gay, to odd, energyrised, bouncing against the wall crazy, madly philosophical, deranged and now depressed looking. We were all tired though, run down, in a defeated place, some pretended not to be, the next day would be the first question of strength in this Hell Week. The buses came from far and wide ,converged into the spot, and dispersed us away again, in direct opposition. The provision of the evening sun was very like the morning one, only it didn’t radiate, it cooled, blinking through the developed clouds, growing in colours. Back to square one, Kevob enjoyed his smoke after getting off the bus puffing the trails into the cooled air, the shadows had switched places. The smoke ignored by dawn wafted with dusk. He noticed his other friends had lost interest in the habit. They walked home, going into a mirror of their day, separating as the Sun was wounding down clockwise, dispersing where they met, away towards the collide again. Tomorrow was another day soon to be. Before he knew it, back home beside the sea, after eating his short hot meal taken from the microwave, Kevob closed his eyes into dawn again, waking abruptly by alarm blinking unnaturally into the dim light piercing the gap in the curtains. Every instinct within him said return to bed. Kevob didn’t and denied himself, by some dutiful bound, he dressed and raced out the door to meet yesterday again. This time Robo was not at the lane awaiting to meet him.
Slow miles are
Better than no miles,
Even better are
slow smiley miles
than those no smiley miles.
Rowan’s Little Alpine Dream
It’s late May 2019. The dust from the local elections has settled and I’m rolling down a once opaque road on my bicycle exhirlant with the wind roaring into my face. A car is coming up towards me, driving slowly, almost in a sombre mood if cars could display emotions and I suppose they do. As I go past the car a part of the dense green hedgerow strikes out at me, my eyes can’t avoid the black, it’s totally burnt out. A massive fire had obviously engulfed both sides of the tall hedgerow, the road is scarred black. Then I see the layers of tacky flowers thrown into the dead void on one side of the road. I’d forgotten about the murder here a few weeks or so ago and now I could picture the whole scene. It’s sad to see a pleasant place scarred for me. Thankfully nature is too old for scars and will grow back fondly, so if I live long enough, I will one day come down that hill and not think of that grim death.
Make a few wonders about that young man’s last few moments before the blaze at Walshestown.
Him, alone, going along the M1; into a lonely place, hoping he can stay here forever safe in the crowd until the car goes off the main road and makes a turn up to Rowan’s Little at Walshestown. He has never been here before. He does not know where he is. The place is black and empty. Nobody is coming to save him. He’s gone from a busy motorway to an empty black space in one minute. Rowan’s Little Alpine Dream I call this spot ,you can pretend you’re in the Alps cycling up it under the cover of dense trees, how innocent a star you were to me, an obscure place that came forth to the main headlines on the news all across the country.
Let’s go back a few years to yearn. When I was younger coming off the M1 motorway towards my hometown of Balbriggan this was the first sign I would see was to the place called Walshestown. Thousands upon thousands, everyday, drive past that spot countless times and never drive up that road. I would look down
the road at the redundant roundabout that had only two options, go back or go forward, and wonder about that road that disappeared up a hill under a dense canopy cover of trees.
Thousands upon thousands have, would, will, soon ,done and do so drive past that spot countless times and never drive up that road. The same experience for me was felt again for me back on the old Dublin Belfast road, a few kilometers from Balbriggan, a signpost to a place called Bog the Ring.
I’ve been looking at that sign, once rusty old Ireland now modern sleek white, since I was 5 years old. Back then the world was both huge and small to me. This was a strange place, back then road signs had this peculiarity trait of the fractions of inches after the miles cornered smally into the white of the signs that made it look like someone had painted the black paint on. As a child I was perplexed by the magic magnitude. Sure Bogs are outwards into the west of Ireland, depths and reason mean little to a five year old. Bog of the Ring, 1 and 1/5 miles could just as well be 100 miles which had to be in the midlands of Ireland, in my little mind of miles away, or could be or not be less than a one hour drive away. When I finally had the sovereignty to discover the place, I learnt it was a 3 minute jog off the Dublin road when I took up running. It’s queer to discover a Bog in Dublin, so neglected and ignored and unknown.
The last place of my youth that took my mind into the grand green bewilderment of the Irish countryside was a little road that came out of Balbriggan town center and went up a massive hill over which somewhere out there in the green bewilderment was a place called Naul, which on a signpost it was 3 and 3/4 miles away.
My parents had for years kept me on this narrow passage, running from Dublin and Drogheda. I never went further west than Swords. My childhood jaunts were all inside this boundary, places like Malahide and Donabate park, the beaches from Laytown to Mornington, mass on a Saturday after shopping in Drogheda, looking at Plunkett’s head, or even worse late mass on a Sunday in Skerries with the dread of school tomorrow hanging over me.
Both my parents were Dublin City folk, out of about the 24 siblings they were the only ones to live beyond the vicinity of the suburbs of the city centre and so naturally gravitated in journeys back towards the vicinity of Dublin. So I had Almost weekly drives into places like Artrane, Finglas, Cabra, Glasnevin, Ballymun, Drumcondra and so on and beyond. On and on it went to visit cousins, grandparents, uncles and aunts. Each time northbound on the drive back home, after going past a sign directing to a place called Ballyboughal I would look out the window at the green wonder. Even in the pitch dark I would look out into it and wander, the mystic of darkness just made it all more alluring. On the return home I’d often be sure we’d made a wrong turn hoping I was right in the imagination of the night, where left turns could become right, wishing we could disappear into the dark. Always, I could feel that countryside out there in the beyond calling me, it had imprinted upon my mind.
The 1990’s grew up. The small diminished into the big. The roads developed and so on and so on it went on. The N1, a major road in the 90’s became demuninated to R131 or something, driven down by a newly built Motorway M1 held sternly towards the strong bicep arm of the M50 flung firmly around the city of Dublin. Everything vast started becoming small. The giant big hill, leading out of Balbriggan at Clonard to the place called The Naul, got smaller. Things changed. Tribunals began and housing estates spread out, as Mosney holiday park became an Asylum center and the Celtic Tiger pyramid scheme started Roaring. And suddenly in 2008 it all went bust!
All the while meanwhile in between all of this that grand sensation of whats out there in the great green bewilderment, was felt numerous times by me as I grew up into it. Growing up as a country bumpkin with Dublin born parents and loads of Dublin relatives, this meant as forementioned frequent drives into the outskirts of Dublin city along the narrow corridor of the old Dublin Belfast N1 road. Along the way my young eyes would puzzle upon signposts, to places like Ballyboughal or Bog of the Ring, that intrigued me towards an older Ireland. I wanted to discover these places.
And then; when; later in life; after rusty mile signs with fractions became new EU metric signs and the N1 relented to M1 motorway flyovers going nowhere but where the mind could imagine, this gave me an urge to discover that countryside out there. The imprint on my mind needed to be filled. I had to go exploring, I had to make the journey west, I had to go out to the place called Ballyboughal.
III
So in 2009 I bought a bike and Lcyra and with some effort the grand green expanse surrounding me my whole life opened up to me. Up and down I went, winding this way and that way, discovering. There’s a little hamlet called Ardcath in Meath, with an Only Fools and Horses car outside the local pub and a place called Kilmoon and all of the signs directing towards it just have the word moon. Past that I go up through Garristown and down that town towards Ashbourne. Just like the Fingal IRA in 1916 on their bikes. Its no shame most of those roads around there are unchanged after a century, it’s nice to see history coming down towards you when you look up at the old tall trees only to see them as saplings in momentous events .
I went through it all exploring, back roads and main new roads, little dents, drags and big steep hills, all those with so many views of rewards, and feeling exhilaration beyond any comparison, where the earned delirium of going down a newly discovered hill at 50km/hr feels like 200km an hour with the wind roaring through you. Getting fitter and thinner everyday, the muscles start to bulge and veins under your tight skin become visible, like your in a Rocky montage. If I could go back and relive one moment of my life, it would be that transformative experience. Back in May 2009.
When I took up cycling this was also the time of 2009 local elections. Local elections are odd peculiar things for cyclists, odd things for anyone I suppose. I like them compared to the more rigid general elections. Local elections have the charm of parochial flavours. Being stuck in one parish must be a bore though, looking at the same faces over and over again. But I’m a cyclist now in 2009, the car can’t just escape into the feeling of nowhere like me exploring the realm of my land, finding and winding through every little nook and cranny, up down every little wee back road and into around fleeing beyond towards flaunting daunting hillscapes. Green is always on the horizon in this pedalling motion of movement. The world has opened up, and the local election is on and I’m out cycling through it and the soon to be very frequent thunderstorms and so called scattered showers that drench me every single day from around mid June onwards. Whether it was Slane or Dunleer, Annagassan, Garristown or Swords I was sheltering under a hedgerow at some point that summer, as hard rain belted down.
III
Back to the month of May, it’s display in the youth of summer, it holds a cold harsh reality, that sobers the rush of words.
Being based in Balbriggan right beside the Meath Dublin border I can traverse across several different electoral wards in several minutes on my bike. Briskly moments, fleet from one moment to the next. The faces and names change with the parishes like graveyards. I go up a hill onto Grougha and down a hill past Balscadden and suddenly all the familiar faces smiling down at me on posters have changed. I’m in the village of Stamullen now and one guy on the poles really stands out. He instantly strikes up my good responsive senses; I know him, this guy has the devil in him, he’s of the Hitlers of the world, something is reflecting, that capture like looking at a mirror if you like yourself.
He’s a charming good-looking young guy called James Carey. It looks sincerely like he’s a Fine Gael candidate. His imposter poster has copied almost exactly the blue style of Fine Gael uniformly used back in 2009. Look closely though and it does mention it that he’s running as an independent. There’s something about this James Carey, a glint in his eyes, a malice good natured smile, I know he’s trouble, but like him. I like trouble. I know whatever happens, more is to come.
The Carey name had familiarity to it. I remembered a local shop called Carey’s in Balbriggan that closed soon after the Bridgestone tyre warehouse became a Lidl store back in 2003.
This was after Ireland opened up to Eastern Europe. One day your buying heinz beans, Brennans bread, 10 packs of John Player Blue, Desperate Dan Bars, someone’s chocolate ice cream foot fetish, a crocodile shape lump of flavoured sugar, bubble gum, candy cigarette sticks that taste horrible on purpose, bland crisps the best of which have the brief wafter of urine, a frog of chocolate, what else only you know, all in some grotty shop been served by a gawpy sulken faced irish women called Susan or Sarah or Sharon, or someone who’s sure she’s too good to work here. Then before you know it you’re in Lidl been served by a blonde blonde Russian women called Luyba or Lina, with a perky chest and grand protruding bottom, buying good cheap French wine with packs of mutton chops from New Zealand at a reasonable price to go with it and italian panini bread.
I find it hard to believe Lidl has been here almost 20 years, is this really it, that long. Back I wander into my mind. I must be getting the dates wrong somewhere, or just getting old. Yes Lidl opened in what was a tyre store when I was about 19, so fifteen or twenty years, who cares, have passed since those days buying cheap Polish beer, with tall plain Sarah neighbour working on the checkout, you could buy cigarettes in Lidl back then, afterwards knacker drinking on the coast no matter what the weather. So much has changed, in little tiny details, history painting doing the most briskly paint strokes sleight by sleight, stroke by stroke, stealthily until the whole scene has marvelled into a perfect indifference. It’s all a capitalistic gimmick, grey clouds, where only tiny spots of lights speck through.
Back to 2009, In the end though, it came to nothing for James Carey, on the seventh recount history just about avoided itself again in embarrassment. His attempt to become an elected representative was thwarted by the establishment. The Garda arrested him at the polling station during the early morning of election day, on very spurious grounds, for firing a pellet gun at a woman’s bottom, with precision years before after which he had fled to Wales to avoid capture. James Carey had canvassed at her house not so long ago later or earlier. It did not matter. The thing was a set up. During the day of the election the news of the event spread like a fire as it would and should and could throughout the village of Stamullen, casting doubts down into the pools upon thoughtfulness where most of the votes for that ward came from, and that was the end of that. A few hundred votes was the unjust difference. The posters from the 2009 local election came down and I forgot almost all their names and faces, the elected or unelected. Even James Carey soon dissipated from my memories. And so I went on and so it goes on.
Let Time Roll On To Two Thousand and Eat.
There is so much I have missed out on. The stress fracture, the dog ripping bite, the crashes, the curses and all the horrible rain laden with pain. I forgot to mention those days I did computer science at DIT Kevins Street, when in September I could always tell when it was about to rain, the electric sense of pain my stress fracture would ping me, then I always got soaked, usually near and around Stephens Green.
The years rolled on and I kept cycling through them. Lance Armstrong came out of retirement nearly before that yearly passage,on a mission against cancer, only to get berated by Paul Kimmage, as the so called cancer of cycling and Lance disamused planned to slice and dice through the whole Cycling Season, doing every race in the calendar, sloping the scopes of Giro d’Italia, enduring the grasps into the Tour De France, soaking up the wet of Ireland and unaware riding towards me in some strange irony coming later into this is the Kimmage fellow shooting me filthies for smoking a cigarette, up a street in a village town, after my one and only race in Stamullen after I dropped the bunch going up the hills of Snowtown as the warps of time become mangled strangely.
The weird cold spell duration came within the latter days of the recession. I remember leaving Robo’s garage after a drinking session in early October and seeing frost on the ground I said to my undead friend Shinbob ‘it’s going to be a bad winter’. The first of my bad predictions that I made, that came true to him, who’s me,meaning you obviously. That Christmas just glittered with frost and every day the sun just glittered up through little specky spots in billions of speckled places. A crystal cathedral, weak cold light shining brightly, illuminating the land, sun and ice holding a handshake in friendship. Christmas winter of 2008 was high pressure dragging in cold arctic air, clear blue skies day after day with unbroken sun and the most severe frost helding on within the reach of each night. I tried cycling in it and slipped and crashed in a dangerous spot going up a junction that led towards a motorway. Retreating home a car had smashed into a hedgerow, the sides of the roads were ice rinks, the cars aggressively beeped for my refusal to endanger myself as I took up a tiny space of road beyond the icy patch known as the hard shoulder. January 2009 hardened to life and in its frequency of days the weather withered down into cold rain, awaiting a renewal.
The summer of 2009 was very wet, it rained every single day, from Gorey to Ballingarry, from Newry to Westport, Fingal to Ennis, Louth to Offaly, it was all the same, a scatter of scattered showers, coming in torrential intervals. They were generally short showers though and I would often sit them out under hedgerows eating chocolate bars, still in discovery mode, cycling to and from Navan, Collon, Slane, Annagassan, Dunleer, I could always find shelter. Expanding my world each day of Summer to 2009, I would find every road I could and would spend 5 to 6 hours a day out cycling, reaching out. Lance Armstrong came to Ireland in late August for the last Tour of Ireland. The last day, a day of exceptional rain he abandoned before attempting again St Patricks hill in Cork City, almost 20 years since he last raced up it two months as a nobody before he won the World Championship. I watched bemused in my bedroom, the highlights on a small cathode television, my fractured foot hurt a lot that day, my back to the wall, the rain cold dotting down my window, doing the same, riveting always, all across the country all the way down to Cork.
It went belting against the windows.
Happy days when the eerie snow came down and in the silent white blanket my border collie got lost chasing hares in the golf course. That day walking the dog past the fields of Ard Giollan or in modern english Ardgillan park the snow started and the birds in unison with nature just stopped at about 4:40pm in November. The snow of 2009 made a golf course I run through look-alike something from Finland. In the local park of Ardgillan people were snowboarding down a hill. Out past Duleek I hit my spot, my reckoning upon black ice slipping before retrieve or reprieve, upon the point that words have no imagination, hastily insights or delights amused the mind as you witnessed the fall into time, and then smashed the ground cracking my hip going into a fragment of time with long repercussions of pain. It’s a weird sensation to be grabbed down onto the road as you watch the wheel before you slip out of control. I go home into an ordeal of easterly winds, red faced into the harsh fresh breeze licking my wounds again. I stay out of the saddle the whole way home, as my fractured hip in agony won’t let me be seated.
My strange love relationship with cycling was developing. A few weeks before in mid late December aggressive drivers had honk horned beeped at me, on the Drogheda road; where a firetruck was taking a car out of a ditch, for me having taken the audacious decision to avoid the black ice glaicating from the hard shoulder. And this was just after I had slipped going up an incline over a passover and smashed my shoulder. I was learning the ruthlessness of the Big Car Society and how to survive. The singularity of cycling, the smallness against the bigness and the little passive given’t. And so it passes.
On and on it goes, happening in little snippets. The cold spell of winters passed. Tents are erected under the central bank as part of the 99% movement, as the global recession goes on.
III
Dates are rolled up.
I’m back at DIT doing a springboard course on computer game programming in the late evenings. It’s November, we’re having a smoke in the courtyard of Kevin’s street DIT and a redhead guy named Paul who doesn’t smoke remarks about how it was snowing this time of year last year. Later Paul comes in drinking coffee smelling of whiskey and starts screaming at the lecturer for the slide he showed titled with a joke ‘what the fook is that! what the fook is that!’, and he never comes back after that. And whenever someone mentions him afterward someone shouts “come out Paul, we know you’re out in the hall listening to us.”
And onwards, on and at it it goes. I go back to go, to start another course again out near Sandymount, this time studying electronics to avoid a job placement scheme the unemployed are being coerced into after the recession, it’s 2011 now or 2012, the years are mingling. Back to Education Allowance seems much more alluring than Jobseekers Allowance. The mass of unemployed are being put into bright orange jackets, clearing out plants and doing pretty much nothing. A friend of mine says they’re trying to embarrass people into getting a job. I’m not so cynical until I mention it to Robo. He bursts out laughing brightly ‘is that all who those people are, Jesus they really make them stick out in the orange jackets.’
Spot on observations I miss. Then it continues on in its flow. Lance Armstrong gives up lying and makes his confession, its 2013.I continue on in life’s frames and I progress from that another course near Sandymount back to DIT again, my third time here . The calamity of it is instant. Day one and i’m sitting in the middle of an electronics room with computers around me i’m middle aged now almost 30 years old now. I take a swig from my bottle of water and the teacher turns and scowls at me “no drinking in the classroom”. I finished secondary school ten years ago and here I am right back in it being treated like a child. I knew then almost in an instant I was done with formal education. The confirmation came when a math lecture turned into a rote learning class with the teacher walking around looking at our work, like it was primary school, the math was beyond beneath me and I was clueless, when the teacher came to me I just said I was working on Goldbach’s conjecture. The place of numbers meaning things numbed me. Numbers can go up and down and around I don’t care anymore.
III
I deviated from the pointless pathetic task of moving numbers around a page, simple circuits can do this mathematics I learnt, a capacitor and inductor can do the derivative mathematics that’s making my mind spin every night in my attempt to catch up and I want more from life from than this than little numbers. That was the end of my formal education, after 23 years, I vowed to do no more courses after that. Whilst in DIT with my course abandoned I went to the library everyday and in those months spending hours reading day after day I learnt more than any exam result could ever reveal.
Lots happened that year in DIT, like the time I got a text from an Iraqi girl (how did she get my number, that must’ve been the first text I ever got) asking me to come into college to help her with computer coding. An hour train ride into Dublin, three hours teaching her and even the most trivial things of coding like an if statement she couldn’t get her head around it. She still passed the exam to progress on to the next year. I tho of course, did not, I was back on the dole queue again.
It’s now early May 2014 and the college year is over, my results come out and I tear them up at the top Bellewstown hill and throw the fragments into the Irish countryside. Someone finds them though and uses my results as their numbers every month in the Euro Millions lottery.
The years had reeled on by feeling into a lucid dream, like an auld cinema clip reedited. I kept on cycling all through the years. The 2014 Giro D’Italia came to Ireland. The biggest race after the Tour De France. It was like Christmas for me as it came right through my hometown Balbriggan, on its way to Dublin. The rain was the clear winner of that day.
A peloton of clouds with sporadic frequent rain telling the story of the day, was always the moment as the race came out of Belfast towards Newry. Memory fruitfully dutifully blossomed up into the happenings. I remembered Into the collective as we sorted ourselves into places. Me buying wine in SuperValu at 1pm, as a bemused African woman queried the staff who told her the moment, TV Cameras, helicopters were coming and roads were getting closed soon. Walking back home through the forming crowds on the town centre square as dense clouds replicated the atmosphere above looming up on the horizon, nature in itself was making a sense of chase. That sense of time for once in my life having
energy. I reached home and turned it on, tuning on, living into Telly. Pure imagery in one space. The wind was bringing the weather in the same direction of the race towards me. I sat back and watched. The clock is ticking down; it’s raining in Dundalk right now I can see it on my television, it’s dry at the same time in Balbriggan, that’s a strange sensation you rarely feel. It’s grey and drab in Drogheda right now, but it’s lashing right now here in Balbriggan I can see it out my window. The race races on to Julianstown, it’s raining again there on the television but dry here as I leave my house to go out to meet the race and the weather on the television that finally meets me. It’s all coming together colliding into one spot, like that cartoon strip from Calvin & Hobbes I’d looked at many times. That thing called Telly, my oldest friend who brought Billionaire Donald Trump into my living room when I was seven years old, watching Prince of Bel Air, after skipping Neighbours for dinner and before having a headache with the peculiarity of Going Round the Twist, while drinking Ribena, which was the invisible marker between the grownup adulthood shows and the childish cartoons that started my daily routine after school, were all coming out of the box, the real and unreal were finally meeting up. Now; an augmented reality of course; and my real reality are finally meeting up for once in my life. At the exit of my estate onto the Skerries road the rain is belting down again from the west and I run for cover under the wall of the Dublin Belfast railway. Tick tock goes the clock and soon everything has converged into my history. The hum of helicopters above signals its arrival. I’m now living in the television spot I just watched, or so I like to believe, under the weather and I spot the go of action, the race is blurring coming towards me into focus. Four lone riders grunting and grinding grimaced their way through, into my sense of self, not taking much comfort from my clapping with pink gloves, as they went on by without a notice. Then the rest followed, the Peloton. A bunched up hunched up of a 100 to 200 bodies or more huddled up fighting into a tight space, with a low flying helicopter daring with roar above chopping over my field, the field of dreams and a sore sight of caravans of cars following behind. Bend down to tie your shoelaces as I did and you’d almost miss it passby. That was the end of that. Time moved on.
Soon after that event the local election posters went back up, some new faces smiling at me, some old faces still looking young, looking the exact same as they did back in 2009. Why are they allowed use the same pictures from years ago; I ask myself, it’s stupid, seems silly, but I continue on growing up into it without the within possibility of judgment of the world I move into.
Anyway the 2014 local election was of little interest to me, so I didn’t actively follow it or pay much attention to the results. What I do remember though is a neighbour of mine was running for the Labour party. He was also my former geography teacher. A week or two before he was smiling down at me on poles, I had noticed I was starting to walk by him everyday on the street. It seemed to me at the time he had taken up leisurely walking. It turned out his main election strategy was to walk up and down the main streets of the town all day saying hello to people. The thing was though if you didn’t know his name you wouldn’t know he was the guy on the poster. He was a small unassuming guy who just blended into the crowd. People thought he was probably just odd. I’ve seen it once before looking out a bus window going through Drumcondra, when I saw Bertie Ahern, how successful politicians have this gleam about them that makes them beam out into the world. I mentioned it briefly to be brightly to a friend in college once back at DIT and with brilliant Dublin glee he instantly upstaged me.
“Really yeah. I saw Tony Blair once getting out of a car in O’Connells street, he was going into Eason’s. He really stood out from the crowd. Your eyes are just drawn to him.”
In the end it came to nothing for my neighbour, former geography teacher, his diminutive stature doing lacklustre campaigning combined with his tainted Labour party creditdentals ensured he was not elected to Fingal County Council.
Over barren cabbage fields came a man wasted in times worn down by restless pursuit, up he ran to a place called at wits end. After he got his breath back he walked back down into the town center of Lusk.
It’s March 2019 now and the next local elections are looming. I’m out on my bike grinding up and rolling down the hills of Meath, still at it after almost ten years. It’s gotten lonely after about 80,000km, so I’m listening to the radio for some company. The Liveline show hits off with its iconic ceili sounding music and Joe Duffy opens the show with the name “James Carey”. A flood of memories pours up to remind me of what I knew then what I know now, the 2009 election would not be the last I heard of Jim James Le Carey. Then one day many years later was the scrap.
A litany of complaints from contractors and builders waiting on the line follows about this fellow “James Carey”, “living out in Preston Hill near Stamullen.”
I’m literally on Preston Hill as I hear this after navigating through the school run. No more details are needed for me to locate his house as I go up the hill. There’s a white van parked right now outside his house. I have this end of the Usual Suspects Keyser Soze moment, come over me. That strange sensation when you notice something odd that you would never had had noticed unless it was brought to your attention, even though you knew it was always there. white vans are always at this house doing work. The probable disgruntled white van man currently waiting outside this house makes me wonder. Maybe they’re listening to it on the radio too and so as I go past the van I point to my earphones and so I stick my thumb up for some strange reason. A minute later the van drives past me and then stops a few mere hundred metres ahead of me. Now it strikes me why I intrinsically liked the look of James Carey all those years ago. He looks similar to me, has my glint like in his eye. And with the helmet I wear ,after the coke can incident, obscuring me I’m following instinct and thinking the worst. Death from mistaken identity!
As I come up to the rear of the van it drives off.
“The biggest con man since John the Con, who featured on this show many years ago” says Joe Duffy. James has been on the rampage for years apparently, says Joe. Thank God I say. James in his perfect individual sense has stiffed many the pockets and purses of Gombeen Ireland.
Soon after that the 2019 local election kicks off. On social media the complaints flare up: that of posters. I notice most of the complaints come from women. In Islamic cultures they forbid depictions of the human form on the basis that it’s too provocative. That’s why they only have patterns in mosques for the mind to dwell in. That might explain something about the anger these posing posters provoke. A lot of them are ugly looking men. Power even the aspiration of power might be an unwelcome aphrodisiac .
One person who wasn’t running in the local elections was James Carey. He had made it clear on his Facebook page along with numerous pictures of himself always with his thumb up and smiling that he would not be running, as it was beyond and beneath him, with bigger things on his mind. The international airport was opening soon and Donald Trump was soon to be visiting his farm.
III
Weeks of cycling through names again. Posters smiling down at me everywhere I go on, no matter how remote. My boundary in this world of Ireland is about seven different wards. Each ward I go through has about ten or more people running. That’s a lot of names and faces to remember in lots of little pockets of short spaces. A typical bike ride out of Balbriggan; I go down through Balscadden, over the River Delvin border into Meath, past the village of Gormanstown, then continuing north up past the Army barracks a few klicks away from Mosney, In that short space I go through four different wards in under 2 miles. Thats a lot of smiles in a few mere miles. I like the poster’s though, they give me company. Out in the lonely countryside it is comforting to have so many friends. The human face does not bother me. Local elections mark the passage of time, unlike General elections they are cyclical, they come round the clock.
Maybe this regularity is the reason why on voting day I find myself drawn to walking around my local graveyard. All the different names on gravestones, names I didn’t know were Irish like Crane and Waugh, it reminds me of the election poster’s. They’re like a graveyard but with faces to go with the names, and like graveyards the names change with the parish. Out on the side of the road one of the election posters is bemusingly looking inwards towards the dead. After walking for a half hour through the paths around the buried dead I’m forced to realise I have to leave here to live. I buy my messages, which brings me to the beginning “help your da bring in the messages.” Now we’re back in the 1994 local elections, when they drove around with megaphones. And I made my way to the polling station. I click the boxes, I leave the building again, I hear the sound of time.
The strange crescendo follows, we hear the celebrations of the victors but feel all the highs and lows pass over the next few days. It’s like erratic weather. The losers must remain mute, the longest interview of their life is over and the effort has left most of them with nothing.
The noise rumbles away. And with that the election is over. To do and not to do. The imposing posters came back down in an instant. As quickly as they went up the poles, they came down the poles after the polls cometh in. As the months roll on you find a few here and there in ditches, smiling up at you in a distant looking pose, often the losers in the folly, the grin the sad same. Like they haven’t realised they lost yet.
And now I’m alone again with the cows out in the grand green expanse of the Irish countryside. I salute the cows and shout Sieg Heil for no reason whatsoever other than it seems acceptable in cohesion with bizarrity and I like the way they look at me when I do it, the cows are very reactive to that, sheep not so much at all, only the bell can herd them. All my smiling friends have gone home. I’ll live to see them all again in five years time, with some new faces and names to go with them, and some of the names will be gone, passed on to other things in life. I ring my bell on my bike at the sheep and they run flocking together into the further of I go the less sense it makes, picture of life. Whereupon the sheep stop, disperse and start eating grass again. Does it mean anything.Has I any purpose. Am I going anywhere.
What Next? I shout out into the wilderness ‘Sieg Heil’. Keep eating that grass.
Summer SchooLed Hashed
It was a chance meeting on summer break between friends from classrooms. School friends become of course disjointed mates during school break. Years later their lives would intermingle with brief passing on the street and the occasional quick chat in pubs or shops. They would glance into each other’s lives on Bebo or Facebook as they aged into maturity.
In school days though they were packed so tightly together into the same places and experiences, that they believed these would always be important relations, but when school ended for good for them, it was like summer holidays without the threat of return, and so happily they drifted away from these artificial friendships.
Today though during summer break; with the still forebodings of Septembers school return lurking; on this meek calm warm July day; scattered away friends from school; they met and mellowed together in the deserted school; that few a weeks from now would be a source of noise, torment, drama, suspension and much more noise. Trampling feet and hundreds of voices shouting in corridors. But for now the school was the most peaceful place in the world. Abandoned to summer it hung upon the sun with mutton clouds lobbing overhead. The school was still, and concrete, waiting for the comings’ pupils’ screams. Today its students came together with a dilemma, they had hashish and wanted a secure place to smoke it. The warmth of the day felt like it could be endless. Settled and relaxing, after lifting up, as they sat loafing atop a prefab, they disclosed little and focused on trivial matters, like girls, and friends who were sound or things of common ground like the teachers whose idiosyncrasies they shared with burden in the classroom. They were all the while inhibited by negative opinions that might reemerge when back in the restraints of school life. In each other’s company that day they all delighted in memories of school and were happy to be stoned and relaxed within the school grounds. School with no teachers, no uniforms, no conformity,no noisy shouts outs in the yard, just the blank staring concrete, with a silent blue sky above dotted with roaming white puffs. Lingering warm soporific air as the spliffs got passed around. One day all this would be lost to them, three weary travellers, stoned and bound to something and none of all them knowing what. They breathed in the calm of the empty school not knowing what they were making. As their minds mellowed smoking and toking, taking care not to be greedy, they breathed in together the experience. They were at that age where social boundaries were important and none of them knew the rules, so they took great care in being generous and selfish. Soon the air started to nip. Simultaneous dinners swept dances of scent across from nearby housing estates; A signaling response from respectable Ireland’s collective dinner time. The drop in temperature and smells of food made them hunger for home and then the moment; or scene; or act upon the stage; or whatever it was, was passing. Together they dismantled from the wall, going their own paths, happy they had survived the social occasion without exposing frailties within themselves, for it was a forced friendship of circumstance and they all secretly despised it, longing for the freedom to be alone.
They liked each other a lot more in later years when their relationships were non-judgemental, briskly based on momentary memories. He, Kevob, alone exited the school stoned and alone, happy to have bonded and left free, he was free of them, free of conversation, free of conformity, free of the school yard, free of other’s thoughts about him. He rolled home like a wave at sea lapping in from nowhere; six more weeks till school term begins again and a whole evening ahead to himself stoned, its endless self he felt. Years later jobless, childless, lifeless, I loved that moment. School during summer holidays. I thought that evening I’d be with that event forever. But only because he was thankful it was gone and would be and never could happen again. I miss the past but am glad it’s passed, so said the sailor to the soldier as they went out to sea. Life is a strange thing that deserves to be lived.
I Climbed the Cliffs of Barnageeragh Once
I climbed the cliffs of Barnageeragh once. The only person to have done it I like to believe. Too easy for the hard, too hard for the easy. It’s a story I’ve told to nobody until it mattered and only here does it matter in the pit of time I’ve fallen into. It was the mid summer of 2012, I was boyish, in the romantic stage of my life, listening to Wagner alluring me beyond the chromatic clouds blazing into Valhalla and the eternal Bruckner running along the shore, basking in the sun thinking I was going to live forever. I was in love at the time; a fake boyish love based on fantasy, the love of chivalry, knights and Don Quixote. A love I will never feel ill again that blended time and place into a delusional grand romantic opera. In the end proclaim it was so tragic she didn’t even know thy name.
The sandy Bay of Barnageeragh bends in to meet the Dublin to Belfast railway line. So in order to protect the soft sloping cliffs from erosion, sea walls have been built on the sea’s edge and big boulders laden down. The result is a sandy bay with very little dry sand, no vegetation, and the area between the two walls is more of a steep green embankment wildly overgrown with nettles; thorny bushes, coarse grass and even trees in some parts near the top. The Bay of Barnageeragh has very little natural flora left. This was all due to the fact the English wanted to avoid the private Ardgillan demesne and run the railway right along the coast up to Isaac’s Bower, then along the cliffs of whats now called Seapoint and right over Balbriggan beach on an enormous bridge (the townlands of Balbriggan was unsettled then). During construction though, Hamilton the owner of Ardgillan, proposed to have the railway line come through his estate and on condition he got his own personal train station. This allowed a redirection of the railway inland with the scope of a station now. And so the town of Balbriggan was born. Which brings me back to the Ardgillan Demesne on the ghostly Ladystairs.
I climbed the cliffs, where here, upon this sight, if you look it up*, you can see down all across Barnageeragh bay . I don’t know why I decided to do it that day. A short cut through the incoming tide probably. It was a day in the sun, me running barefooted, shorts and shirtless along the shoreline beside the encroaching sea listening to Bruckner’s 8th with lapping streams foaming up forever. I turned my back to it that eternity, as the sea ran across my imprints on the sand, eroding my presence there forever until the sea came in around me to wallow me up. The only place to go now was through the water or shimmy the sea wall embankments and scramble over the big boulders. I decided to go up, up along the cliffs, to save time, a big mistake!
The first obstacle was the embankment wall; it was slippery and treacherous, but I managed to clamor up onto the grassy area. I tugged my way up the grass until it became less steep, upon which I came into longer grass mingled with nettles, until it became just mere nettles. The place became a battlefield; the battle of the nettles. They sting you once and you go on, twice you try to forget about it, thrice you know what you’re getting into; three, four, five times; until it becomes uncountable and you curse the universe and scream back at the place. It just grows deeper and denser and wilder until you can’t go back, bits of blood on your feet and ankles mark this miserable progression. This is war, to back down now would be a surrender to nature. A madness takes hold in your mind and you troddle through.
Every step forward now I get stinged multiple times on my bare legs now (I got stung so many times that day, although the initial pain passed, I awoke that night with my legs burning like fire). As I work my way through the dense pack of nettles I come upon the Blackberry bushes. These thorny bushes block most of the path with menacing arms expanded out everywhere pricking and scraping the skin. The term scrap came into meaning to me with this bleeding as the outreached thorns cut at me, clung to the skin, filed down little white lines, it was the happening etymology of scrape, coming into meaning, in every waking moment, clawing into me a will to defeat me that forced me to on with every burdens as the situation just continually worsened. The sun beating down along with the effort caused the sweat on my brow to run down into my eyes, igniting another a sting as the salt stirred into the eyes an annoying confrontation of bodily functions. Now I was even struggling to see. All of nature felt like it was showing its forces here, nothing was coming to my comfort, luck had left this place. It’s a hard comfort and effort as I go on bleeding with cuts all over, sweating, and feeling the full depths of a newly discovered phrase just discovered, well and thoroughly stinged.
Eventually I break it through into a small passage through the roughage. Then I meet upon the wall. Heaven help me it seemed so small from down below on the beach, but I go on, what else could I do. The thing is twice, thrice my size, It didn’t look even nearly that big back down on the sand.
On both sides of the passage is impassable deep thorny bushes forcing my imparture into this tiny spot in between horny thorns up to the block of the massive wall. I can’t go back through that rainforest of nettles stinging me. The only way to go was to go up. A big mistake!
The wall was a barren thing with little to offer, built long ago for something else long before me with no mind for my current predicament . I clung to what I could, tried to lift myself upwards and getting my weight up above the ground instantly scratched back down the wall furthering my cuts and pains. The Thing had no grips. I try again and again, each time getting a bit higher and each time grinding my hands against the vertical wall as I free falled back down. My hands and in empathy with my knees are bleeding profusely now. The Thing is unclimbable. I’m just standing there wanting to scream, as the pings of pain overcomes me, flowing in the different colours of electricity, forcing my mind into a harsh moment of just then and now and why and how. Nature had delivered its lecture, I was fed up and defeated.
In the madness, and pain, and sight of my bloody hands. the energy surged up. I decided to attempt the ascent again, this time determined to give it everything I’d got. Finally I was going up, making progress. I’d never rock climbed before, maybe I was learning quickly. I followed whatever little grooves and grips I could find, up up up I went, slowly, but, surely.. I was getting there, closer to within reach of the top.
Even though now my movement was only following the fate of the wall I found myself climbing sleighty sideways in a northerly direction over to the right. Thats right, the Thing was taking me into a righteous path; right over the top of the biggest deepest darkly menacing thorny blackberry bush you can imagine. I climbed on to a point to what doesn’t look like will be within my arms length of the top of the wall, which for aesthetic reasons I suppose is cemented with rounded smooth curvy boulder stones. The one directly above my head ironically was as firm and shapely looking as Lying Gins African like bottom. Here I just stopped; there was nothing I could do, I had reached another impasse in this story, no grips or grooves anywhere within reach. I fumbled about for minutes, not daring to look back down hanging on a thread three metres over the deep black menacing blackberry bush awaiting me looking at me thankfully out of sight, as I stared forward for anything I could cling onto to get further up. One more rise of my body up is all I needed, I was stuck there in a gripping clinging gasping moment, looking up at that lovely rock bottom teasing me, as my heart raced.
As I clung there, the lactic built up and my arms started to dwindle their poor drain of strength. I had no choice; I would have to let go and reach out or give in and accept the fall. Every second I hung there knowing one thing, I was getting weaker in the seconds; and more vulnerable to what would be a nightmarish fall. It was a do or die moment. So I did this. I released my hands from the little grips, gave whatever little kick I could get from the tiny little ledge my legs had barely fitted in, and extended my arms out into it, the sky. For a brief moment I hung suspended in the air.. hanging there, hanging out with fate. What a triviality.
Splat! Went the smack of my hands on the rock; sorry to disappoint you and reward myself, as my hands in a pathetic sense of solitude slapped the edge of the Lying Gins boulder curvature bottom. I wasn’t nearly in the clear yet though, the position was positively tentative. I struggled to hold on. I reached in little stretches around the curvy rock, grasping with clawing fingers digging at the picture of the curvature rising the body up in little inches, until more solidly confirmed, then one arm at a time quickly scrambling myself up until I was more securely gripped around the boulder wall and with soaring adrenaline holding me on, I lifted my whole body up and over onto the top of the wall. I casually jumped down onto the footpath beside the busy Skerries road and back to normality I went. What a drama. What an experience. The cars veering by, following the rules of the road, haven’t a clue. Fools encased in steel, thinking their free, going somewhere. A strange tangent divergent into obscurity indulged by so many so nearby, a moment in one’s life that just happened without witnesses went on without an observation.
*Slantyrocks video channel on youtube of a paraglider
THE OLD PHOTOGRAPH
Its just a picture, some people you once knew long ago. You can place the place but not the time. One of them stares out at you as if knowing you’ll be looking back at them some day and knowing what it will all mean long ago after the event. The other one makes a face or gesture away from the prying eyes of time and sentiment and you wonder then if even then that fate had set its course for this person. It’s just a picture though before hurt and pain took a role in our lives. What our; you seeing; I wonder; maybe a family hunched up at Christmas with the dead one looking the most alive, center of attention gleaming glowing with a centerpiece smile, hiding some great pain that might be coming or is already here. But its just a photo, a cheap snap at Time. The brief build as they get into frame then click click and away again with the day, that I don’t know anything else about.
What I’m looking at are two friends, just young boys here. One reciprocates to the lens and makes rabbit ears behind his friend, the friend now dead mocks and makes a face. Maybe turning away from the loving father behind the lens. The Hampton Cove green and sea hanging behind them is unchanged. A dad on summer’s day taking a picture of his son with his friend; with a new camera maybe, and feeling content today, happy at his son’s happiness with his friend, and clicking away with carefree days ahead. But it’s just a picture though and you can’t look around it or before it or even a second after it, it just hangs there provoking you. Thinking about the things you can’t see in this picture. Like the Slantyrock down there on the beach below. You have to go there, it’s the only place to be, the unchanging thing. The unseen scene behind the picture. You walk into yours while I walk into mine. I walk into it.
To be a sea recluse, take time to be your friend there. Walk down the steps on to the feel of the fleeing sea breeze to take part in something very old. The rocks held in the sea are very stern looking now, with the tide out. You walk on by to meet the Slantyrock jutting out bravely from the cliff. Lay back on it and lay aside my old friend, think, then be something. Don’t be afraid of the crashing waves, thats the tides impending doom but it cannot reach this gravestone today, not yet. So many childhood digs among this Slantyrock know this, that this rock is safe. How did the tide ever reach this high you never wondered as a child. But yes as if you know watching the waves come up, the sea has been here before. The great storm departs your mind, still you don’t leave just yet, its earlily still here. Let yourself listen to the whispering grind depart in sounds, crinkle in rocky crackles, that dying day saying good day today as the moon is about to rise on the Horizon in its monthly patch against the setting sun.
So its warm and you’re laid back eyes closed into the warmth of the sky drawing colours of demise with the slantyrock resting with your back; and you hear the shoreline starts to shingle gurgle, crackling whips towards resting feet signalling the protrude of incoming water into the sea shell ear. You panic a bit, open your eyes, but don’t worry you’re not over yet. The light over the display cresting above the informative rock formations of jagged brown connections running wet and dry into the more taunt sight of Winkle Island is stroking brushes of purple and pink blending the cooling blue overlaying the whiplash white clouds about to be reflected from a differential perspective.
It’s amazing how a scene can change so rapid and suddenly the sea is rising in. I sparked my smoke. It rises uppily, taking the vertical sky, masking a smoke signal like from the redskin natives in Movies, that one I watched make guys run barefooted after and an arrow fired comes to mind, I roll back watching into the stagnant air of the overbearing heavy draining heat that was the summer of 2018 and close my eyes into a new meaning.
Gorose, my breaths in stench, the smoke puffs, sucks and weaves around my mouth, ghostly in it’s movements, an alleviate to define myselfs existence, it matches up to the atmosphere, gives chrome like pollution to the sky dying in colours and here I am the only person enjoying it. I open my eyes daring again times little changing patterns on the picture had moved, going slowly, downward sky bound seaward.
The slantyrock is sturdy and uncaring as you lay back upon it with a smoke. So you’ve met my friend now and he ain’t brave enough you tell me. I try to tell that the guy is just the rock now, that’s all that’s left.
Finally you get up to leave and scoot along the ledge over the incoming tide using the sharpened dense side, perched above the incoming waves, using the little dents left grinded by histories tides, this rock thing could trap you here. Before receding, back up above the steep steps into the cliff, you see looking back, the three nuns drowning in a harrowing swelter, bobbing troughs and peaks choking it’s onslaught, caught in the ruminating rummoring upon the sharpening knife jagged tide grossly captured upon impede who carves its existence around, and all those stern pointy rocks are going gone goodbye. It’s a harsh growing story, the everyday tide.
Behind them was the capturing darkness again. Beyond them was Slantyrock looking at them stern strong biceped on the cliff untouched again for another day and largely ignored. Over in another part, the knuckles stood still in dry crusty curns of shell sand unworried, the last mark before the jagged rocks, unnerved by time’s story storms, it’s been a long time since the sea impeached here. The bowl is filling up in bunged up crashes from waves now while afar in places, are the sames tormenting the wall of the grand canyon, and Winkle Island is ceasing to be its nameself again as the sea swirls developing around it, as it does most days.Far away in other spots on the other side; past the lone boulder precarious
put on it’s spot sitting breaking waves forever looking unnatural, into the oily cement sand pit through Crab Canyon on past the little enclave over wet slabs pointius ontowards slantrock minor jutting a slippery path in a narrow craven climax over a shoulder of blade rocks to the pool over China Wall in is reeling but holding up against its daily flood purpose, the Boulders Shoulders Bay. What follows sounds like a tv show. the grassy is safe and need not be mentioned, a great storm came here long ago, pools and exposed rocks remember but don’t bother , then the reed path comes into sight just past after the sewer tentacle; you jump into the frog swamp marked by the mossy spots craven into puddles, the dead crab pool running parallel on your right takes you to the Octopus patch. Again little patches of green are recovering from some amazing storm in this rocky haunt. The Octopus didn’t care about that, neither did all the others, it was swelling up again in its purplish malice valley, taking in the sea, holding the fort towards the Reeds Bay, here the sea rolled righteous around, behind that defiant promontory rock calming even the most ferocious waves into littler wavers, that could only always lap up into the sandy Bay of Reeds. Then after that it’s the grassy knoll and the cave, another oddity rock formation possibly man made, with more hard rocks that have stopped some strong storm, a memory held by puddles and bare rocks exposing the event, if nature could feel trauma, this is it.
A slither green passage follows and then a little meet and match of rocks and sea takes the picture up. A big hardy rock cliff face unshapely worn down protracts outwardly defensively against the sea giving protection to rough grass holding flowers around slimes of pools up into the highly plateau promontory, holding fort before the fortitude held before the large whale rock barnacled that breaks waves. In the reclusive spot behind that harshness is the thorough way to the grassy passage then after its strength and battle the exposure in the Bower begins. The slim rocks are raw here sliding up to the downwards, the waves when strong crest upwards always reaching into the green passage, before dissipating in envelopes of strength back down into retreat; during a storm here with the waves bobbing up, this place is very perfunctory in it’s telling and slipped me many times towards the sea on the slidey rock, that was scary. Before the picture becomes the deep chasm, is a cement diving jump on the periphery that has been eaten up by the demise, eroded by the tide. And the Kings Chair safely sits undaunted today in its pool staring against a rather calm baroque sea with stern cliff face to protect. Leaps and bounds up the cliff is the only way to go from here on in, up the indent of exposed rocks to the safe passage, again the energy of the sea meets up it matches here, grassy patches with rocks worn down. It’s a grand way down, I’ve been there, in that moment feeling it’s reach, the anger of the sea, watching it, it’s hard to believe how it reached this spot, where I feel safe now with danger once all around me, when it’s alive it’s alive is the uncaring insentient sea, grabbing at you with it’s angry frothy white claws. The noise alone is a beast, then this white foam river driven, roars up into your space, in a face off.
Down rumps of grass into the bare rocks, a vertical sharp shaped hard rock, narrow negative gradient ledge between the cliff and sea takes this picture story down along to a jump into a very dangerous cliff face that hangs downwards a looming doomily doom witnessed by the everlooking overbearing sea whether in the right or wrong conditions. Even on a calm day, one slip, on this it, and you’re a dissenter grabbing at the arguments a going gone creature, into the swallow of sea. Over this spot, it’s an alway if not this or that if not lucky the tide is in or out not situation. Of course during a storm swell it’s incredibly more dangerous, the crashing waves wet the rocks and the sea constantly vents a crescendo into the ear. When the tidally sea is resting in July outwardly exposing her always brutal domain, well then it’s just the burdens of rocks that smash you, the danger is a candy rock safe look of a cement cave postured indent, the place seems placid and is pale, the rock so smoothly cool when the tide is out. Harsh but harmless. When in February during a storm it’s a different story. Long ago me and the dog during that storm, she ran across the promenade rock face no bother, me crawling, knees to the ground, grabbing at scrubs, feet clipped to what the slippery rock offered, one slip and your a gone era, every step forward witnessing your error disappearing into the age of abyss the choking of raging waves foaming claws grabbing, and there was the dog on the other side safe looking at me like i’m some fool, as I jumped down relieved into a soft spot of salty whitish grass, wet underneath, squashy, feeling alive the salty sky smashed with delights raining the scattered coarsening waves, belted against the rocks in some memory I’m getting soaked by dribbles of a reckless fizz as I escape.
Which takes to you Iasscs hole into the justles that are the noise of waves reaching up its cave chasm. That sound underneath with the waves coughing up makes you shudder, a groundless earthquake accusation, it is as you laugh off the rumble below. The big boulder rock above sits awaiting, so slotted to shape in, it seems designed, like the other two beforehand it is out of shape, looking unnatural too awkward to be real, some people say Iassc put it there, it is his Bower. The last spot, up an enclave of green, over the Trench, the deepest ditch into the sea here, the fall grabs the eyes into the belly pulling at the feet falling into the jagged black rocks, the leg muscles below the knees tremble lightly in unison to the safety soft grass patches overlooking this death.
The only other thing down there is a cemented pipe, we; once; when schoolboys smoked spiffs down there and a posh guy overlooking scoffed at us, maybe he thought we were smoking crack through the pipe. Over the Trench is the rich grass that grows down ditchley, growling before barrening out intowards greyily patterns, to a haunted rock cemetery deserted crest area, deadened out with carbon ash and other remains still in the ground. Morose fragments flaming up, where the spirits still scream. This is and always the bonfire spot of the Fancourt Heights Gang, defeating Hampton Cove, Pinewood, Bathroad. The Battle of Bonfires. Whom in the year of the Mary Maclesse presidential election used her posters to wigwam the bonfire to eclectic heat and flames higher than the pointed cap of St George’s Church, that may have silhouetted in the hotly bright flicker of that night. I doubt that. But it was so so hot, you could feel the intense heat from a vast distance away (about 300 yards).This was over twenty years ago and the bitter black scars on the rocks are still there, the harsh dry ash permanently looking laced into the ground, the sense of death in this picture, battery acid washed, nothing grows here anymore but bits of rugged grass. After that hassle the picture dies out into deep panorama views, unrewarding in details it fondly grows in greyily colours over a rocky bay towered a little bit by a browny cliff running clockwise into an augmented building horizon, a chromes mis matched in the background and the colours then blend better together rolling into a dotted harbour wall, with a scopey lighthouse veerily up, holding the foreground to something green beyond with only one thing left to see before it. The Palace Beside the Sea. Balbriggan.
There are many more placenames Robo had has given to this historic walkway; I walk through in many different directions of time and space; if you really want to live it; walk it; even then time within space holds most of the details; it’s always ever changing.
The erosion of the cliffs is ongoing, we use to go into a secluded spot under trees along the cliff, and abseil down the cliff through cliffy grass, mucky pursuits, out onto the jutting rocks in the cold spot past crab canyon, with a blue chafing rope, that’s all gone now collapsed into the sea. Only the exposed rocks are left, uncaring in this scene. And Robo is dead, gone into the ground with it, as the muck did piling down the cliff face, like it did on his coffin.
The Earthly ongoing demise. What an emptiness, what a triviality, what a smallness, what a no nothingness, what a pathetic franticness, what a feeble mindedness.
A river, grey running into blackened depths along the wanting banks, is slowly rising, filling up its path, stirring the flow, a cauldron of desires created by the sea.
Soon it will be dark here and just the moon, and what light it decides to give. I hope to be here again you wonder, next year is coming. Just laying back on the rock, listening to the story, the Slantyrock oldest of them all.
Robo, aka Slantyrock man of the wild is here, always though, he took a picture here once, I found it on the Internet. Google it, meet time gone. If you look closely you’ll see him staring at you from the sandy spot right before his Slantyrock, listen to his footsteps on the crusty shells, just past the knuckles.
It’s just a picture though, as now and is, always really was, entropy is gravity, just fleeting moments constantly falling into time. You’ll have to look past time to see him coming towards you. And remember, it’s just a picture though, you stare, you pretend to care, feel something that can’t come back, the other side is blank, the imagination too weak to reach there, nothing here can harm you, nothing is here, just the resentment of time being captured in this way.
The Snowflake Sick Of CHRISTMAS
Everyone interesting has a miserable Christmas time. The stress of running over groves first laid down at youth is too much to handle. Nobody can be the same happy from four to forty. Things start to wear and the usual routines decay. A truly unhappy Christmas that’s what we all dread, its Russian roulette; it’ll come; we’ll all go full round from the carefree youth with Santa and a never ending world of mystery, to being old and sick and the end is neigh clutching to nostalgia. Boring people just go through it over and over again and a mild dose doesn’t bother them. Sick at Christmas is a taste of death. That most magical time in youth where there is no end, and Santa lives forever. But you never really believed it and when you were too excited to sleep you knew really it couldn’t be Santa entering your room. The power of imagination, youth is wasted with these lies. The lies they drive into the impressionable mind, lies of fear, control, anxiety, designed to tear you down. One generation conspiring against the next. A fool thinking he owns his children or something. Nobody owns anything, owning a slave is being a slave. There is no freedom but one, to be alone and not afraid.
Ten years ago almost to this day Kevob had been in the experience of a truly rotten Christmas.
He was in the midst of a sickness, a cold, sore throat, developing to chest infection, that had then became a sinusitis thing, with bunged up all the ways, and was getting battered with inflammation through his head, mouth, nose, throat and drips into the lungs causing constant coughing and also always heavy under the eyes and ears. Three weeks bedridden and Christmas was now a yearly hurdle on the horizon – let’s not do this again was the aim, as I banged my head against the wall as James Bond was skiing again.
7T
This was the worst of the worst; the next as bad as this would be the last again he reckoned as he lay bedridden for a month; sometimes but often banging his head against the wall the pain became so unbearable. Bunged up with pain behind the eyeballs, nose stuffed like concrete and a constant infectious nasal drip into the lungs. Nothing to do or watch but Bond Movies on Itv. Ski scene: bang your head against the wall. Car scene; bang your head against the wall. Dive scene, ditto. Everytime it relaxed, I took aspirin, a dialogue took place,then suddenly Bond was in some moment and Kevob clutched at his head as Bond clutched at the wing of an aeroplane or some other inanimate object often under water with harpoons involved.
This daily feeling of sickness and in health watching the television, struck Kevob as this bond was created. The Christmas season ended and in the sterile early days of January, with turkey stew and floor polish in the air Kevob’s health improved and the Christmas reflections diminished its spirits. When Kevob finally had the strength to leave his bed, his legs had grown so sullen into the weakness of jelly. He struggled on the small walk down to Costcutter to buy a pack of smokes, a habit he had just beaten by the will of sickness. And was determined to continue. The year is Christmas of the little white sprinkle on roofs 2007.
After that year Christmas after that was just sentences and words without a sense of experience. 2009 a crystal icy cold struck. 2010 was the year the snow stuck for a month and became a dirty burden. After that from inwards into 2012 onwards it was just wet wet wet. So he survived year on year, the Christmas reprisal, one year he did catch a cold but it was after the peak of Christmas day in the following day which was also special but in a way just a sad prolonging of the denial, in the day called St Stephen’s Day. Christmas from four to forty is enjoyed by denial, what happens when each one might very well be your last. Kevob thought much of Christmas and felt special before nothing dwelled in him again. Nothing was the monster that chased him, that anybody could hitch onto and use to attack him, because he lived alone in that room that was empty and needed to be filled. He had woken to despair again here in 2017, the cold virus infection had worsened, and today was the day he had scheduled to collect his new bike. But with the burn in his lungs it felt quite a task. He asked his parents to collect the bike and they agreed but then made disparaging remarks about how weak he was and the fresh air would do him good. So he set out on his own. The next few hours would be bliss or torment, this weighed on his mind as he headed for the train station. He met a friendly soulmate on the way to the station and this lifted him above the anxiety he was drowning in after tortures of months in the mind and he wondered with bedazzle why aren’t we all just nice to each other. And all the little incidents he had that day, everyone was nice and kind and it felt good to be good. Family and Government was the curse.
At the train station standing on the odd, pacing the unusual; platform, Kevob stalked his eyes about and captured the image of the 33 bus crossing over the county bridge a kilometer away up the railway. The magnitude of the world struck him again and clung him to the ground, anxiety with gravity danced together beneath his legs in a masquerade fashion deceitful as a mannequin, it pulled into the belly. Trauma and Alcohol withdrawal with Jobpath overhanging him kept dragging him into despair and the virus kept corrupting upwards, inducing pain under the eyeballs and altering the brain.
Against the emotions I capture my thoughts. On the train, near Laytown, Kevob jumped up as the bowels of English spoke, the weight could be ignored no more. He had no choice but to rush to the dingy toilet. Time wasn’t to spare from here to Drogheda; as he rushed about in the little cubicle; wiping ,swiping, flushing the dirt away; embarrassed by knocking, as the same girls raced in after him past Laytown. He imagined their giggles taking in his smell, the arousals on the nostrils. Kevob cuddled back into the seat awaiting the dread of the journey, clutching at himself and the window comforting away the cold as the train rolled into Drogheda station. It was a drab dark day, it was December remember, with intermittent light breaking the clouds. Time does not stop or care as the train stopped into motion.
Kevob did the only thing he could do and moved on with it. Departure. Little comforts though can stray a way through this way, and Kevob had his radio display held in the pocket of his bag. Liveline had ended. Ray D’arcy was talking to him now.
Interloping from the train a great mask of destiny was the place Kevob went into after the train station car park, the air was misty cold, indulging without choice Kevob rolled with the streets into car filled roads, buildings this way and that way, some were today, some a thousands years away, traffic lights new, hills ancient,walls aging, people varying in days of length, and pavements not needed before all of this, as the sounds roared and the light on horizon imagined itself over the dark hover jutted into the space before the place called Donore got dimmer. Let’s not get too romantic though, all the time in this walk, the world kept jumping up at me, biting at me, again the anxiety demon dragging me down. A few months ago I went mad from alcohol. Then I got beaten up by two guys. Jobpath hangs over me all the time. Now I’m sick and I know deep down worse is to come.
As he walked up the way up Watery hill, rolling into the business park of my destination, the first strange thing that met me was the new, a mini Tesco Garage. I had no idea they’d ventured into petrol stations and didn’t contuate for a second the thought of going in, it was beyond consideration.
With no toilet about, he scanned around the block nervously as his bladder pushed impugning into his thoughts. The worrying type after an accident in his youth and near disasters in adulthood he was always weary of signals from his bladder, and right now it said trickle and that was enough. But Kevob had great survival instincts and would never ask to use a toilet because the injustice of denial would break him, so he, as always, found a spot. He peeked into an Aldi shopping store and decided to chance upon it.
Fresh experiences were exciting to him; and I would indulge in it all day if it wasn’t for the change of day that brought about bodily functions. He would have to pee soon. He had released his bowels for the second time of the day in the train, so that was ok, food need was nearly always present and smells tempted him, the sickly cold had sucked the pleasure of smoking away, sleep was long way away, the cold was constantly biting him to go indoors, caffeine addiction gnawed his brain but the need to relieve that would bring about the bladder problems. Because he had a sickness he would have to cough and spit, the sneezing of the disease had passed but he would have to sniff up snot. All this bodily need eroded him into reality, made him self aware and worried about a future that was a nevermore ten minutes not more away. But always vague feeling, that force to not show weakness and then he remembered the grin on the girl on the train at the beginning part of this journey when he was still riddled with dread and thoughts of an unknown journey with himself losing controls of his bowels in some bushes with cars driving by and people going ‘did you see that,your man, in there was doing a..’
7T
Back on the train, in the beginning of this. Anyway this girl he noticed entering the toilet that he was huddled beside like it was a security blanket. It was and always has been his favourite spot on the train; its cold and it smells; and it has more room with less people, and you can nip in to the toilet without anyone noticing; if you get up at the other end of the carriage unless you return to a different seat everybody knows you’ve gone to the toilet; and then they feel fond about you; but also disgusted, and disgust makes a person vulnerable to the group. Anyway this girl, Kevob spotted her eyes, she had liked him because he embarrassed himself.
No; back in the moment; the primary thing now was the need to pee; thankfully he’d got that bowel burden out of him, and this was the most trivial of bodily needs. He entered the Aldi store and it was a no show, he panicked blowing everything out of proportion again, this was how anxiety functioned. And then he relaxed with two bottles of wine on the conveyor belt, the cashiers were all Irish and amazingly; male; except for one black guy which was a novel ping for the memory and the store seemed suddenly quaint, and the light on the horizon bouncing back through the big windows in reflections was mellow and he was calm. And here he was buying a new wine that was new to him, in a new store that was new to him, far away from home but he had cycled by here so many times and now he was here grounded into fierce reality and would never ever come here again, maybe. A brief interlude in life was passing before settling back on old ways. The cashier that served him had a nice face and looked similar to him but with a tawny accent which was different.
What a life did he live.. I could say anything. I want nothing but kindness to this nice guy and I would remember him and he’ll never think of me again and he said nothing but ‘by card’ and I said nothing but ‘thanks, see ye’
Bewildered by words and patterns, the sharpness of time struck me. Linear prospects get laughed at. For a moment I forgotten I had a heavy cold.
7T
One day many years later the cashier was walking up Donore road and spotted a cyclist through sheer familiarity and his eyes were drawn towards the recall. that gaye, the hairy smelly caip, i think th sniffing goy gav that cald ov me, sick at chrismas, tha socked.
Do people have accents in thoughts, pondered Kev Foy, as Kevob Fly left the store and weaved through the crazy traffic, it was busy and this alarmed him but then he spotted an embankment. Alone he rose up into the green bank, followed the bewildering trails, were they rabbits, more likely hare trails he wondered or humored. In solitude of purple blue and a setting winter day with dark green ruminates of dusk on the feet and humming cars unseen driving around and into the dying day of colours he unleashes into the Irish countryside, that land of rivers, it’s newest brook forming before his feet, a place which suddenly feels so strong in the ancient, Newgrange is out there and lots more and he returns down to the business park knowing how pathetic it is compared to hedges and fields and bushes and the sky. The sun is gone now and the Ray D’arcy show is over. All of Ireland is turning black. The setting sun drawing down dusk is running towards Newry now, Navan and beyond, that way.
A Dream hit me, I’m walking down a street and somebody is shouting at me to shut the doors, I pass many doors and one is just a tiny bit open and I slam click it shut. where did that come from, me worried about the house been burgled with that painting I suppose. Slowly reality was gaining on him like a tide.
It suddenly feeled funny how safe the world was in darkness, an hour before a virus choked his chest, smoking was painful, a stool was passing gas down his rectum and when he’d looked up at the county bridge a kilometer from the train station he’d felt panic at the madness, giving the sheerness of life, and that was all gone now. The journey through the black unknown with deteriorating health had passed, he was on the mend, his moods were tidal, his sickness seasonal tidal, three more days until the winter solstice, dusk was gone now, forgotten, and he entered Harfords in the retail estate at the top of watery hill in Drogheda. That spot, the spot where he entered those doors of Halfords, was the second closest he got to Newgrange in two months. When in Harfords when in Rome, like everywhere else he didn’t know what to do. After wandering about for less than a quarter of an hour someone noticed him. The sick beard and sharp eyes made the employee deferential. ‘Hi’ ‘ l.’
7T
He’d ordered the thing online, it was click and collect, but the whole thing seemed so distant and passa he was sure the order would be just plain forgotten. When they asked if it was to assemble or package he knew he’d have about twenty minutes to wait at least. Twenty minutes to spare in the shop and this guy’s nerves are shattered, but every human encounter seems to send diminishes towards his anxiety. This chap is not anxious from what people think of him, his fear is fear, the abyss, nothing becomes everything in your mind with nothing. Thoughts circulate. digress.
The guy, who this time is not me, came out with the bike and he was redheaded and redbearded and so sound, like everyone he, what’s his name, meaning me, was meeting that day. We chatted and he tried to end the conversation a few times with
‘well thats yu done then’
and next thing I know I’m leaving the shop with a girls mountain bike, that’s because a girls bike looks like a pro bike (I discussed this with the mechanic and he agreed). By instinct I heads south west and here after a paces I mount the bike, this spot is the closest I’ve ever been to Newgrange at winter solstice time; I feel something about it but not as strong as pissing into that green mound with purple dusk on the horizon and middle class Ireland zooming about by in their cars. A quaint green spot it was, protected by capitalism, you’ll never build nothing there. Now. He, meaning me, turns his back on Newgrange and rolls back into the pit of Drogheda with his new bike. Nobody cares as he or I or whoever crosses the main road with numb hands and goes back over the path Kev Foy had trodden by two hours earlier. Down down, back down, into Drogheda town I flows, into the pitness, past the cold dead stones. It looms above, over me, the Millmount Martello tower, my shadow walking up for the failed interview there ghosts me, trolling myself as a memory, before my numbing cold hands harsh me back into a stern reality.
Up to the station we went, cycling by the running lights, red, white, amber, glowing by cold, feeling green inwards, me with youth and you with I towards the endless dying story, where the end in glory shows. That makes no sense as Kevob looks at the Belfast train incoming by a LED screen in minutes moving by red dots.
7T
And there he is, a conscientious man directs with him the time and platform. Kevob has his bike as a very attractive woman comes onto the platform eying him with anxious glances about.
The Belfast train comes and the gorgeous girl gets on but her boyfriend arrives too late and runs with her along the window as the train departs. They’ll meet up later and make do it make up he thinks as she passes looking out the carriage laughing embarrassed avoiding any eye contact with strangers. He’s fooked up but will still get it. As she passed I tried to share in with the joke and even though she had eyed me when I entered the station, this guy’s mistake had overwhelmed her, and I the good looking guy was nothing compared to this fook up. Women are strange and wicked things. Sly Via, that Polish girl – don’t do me any favors blah blah blah, complaining every time I picked up anything she dropped while packing the shelves in Tesco, protesting the loss in attraction I was making from her to me, she soon went back with husband Bobvert Abusher.
I’m back on a quaint warm commuter train going home now with a new bike and knowing new experiences are coming. The carriages are quiet, serene and empty. That rolling motion of metal sounds holds the night out the window. In the Darkness Drogheda rolls on out until it becomes Laytown and then with little notice we cross the Nanny, back through Mosney, through the shooting grounds of the Army, it was all sleeping now in the dark, then through sleepy Gormanstown and back into Balbriggan that rolls into lights, is it the train moving or the town. The train is quaint in its light, calm and mellow, with some cold spots between the connecting carriages, one of which I stooped in throughout clutching my new bike. Only back at the stations mentioned beforehand when the train stopped, did the doors open and let the harsh cold dark beyond seep in for a few brief seconds. At one of the stations, Gormanstown, a doppelganger of Rosco Parks, gets on the train. It could not be him though, even though he smirks me a knowing look.
The smoking drama in the school’s toilet, that hostility, looking back I’m still right, I was not smoking, someone had just handed me the butt, before I got a puff. He came into the toilets before I got a drag. And then the drama dragged on. Yeh he caught me red handed with a flaming hot butt. But I wasn’t smoking. Was about too. The trio making me shake outside the principal’s office, brought back the bitterness. Got his full revenge when he expelled me.
The snap left and I clung to my new blue mountain bike not knowing how important it was about to come. And then I fall asleep into it all behind me. It was over. The train in poetic rhyme clink clanked as it rhythmically slowed, towards into, the stationary caution, above high in its pivotal mounted track passing Bremore Castle and the green fenced astro pitch under its watch, the place I worked a few months ago. Kevob looked at himself walking those pitches in different frames, from this new perspective, picking litter, moving goalposts, opening gates, turning on lights. Until the train stopped in balbriggan station, jolting the self back into the spot whereupon it left. I was home with my new mountain bike. I have a future ahead of me, imagined. It was brighter ahead than I could think, as I reunited with the cold damp December night. Lots of adventures. But with big ordeals ahead. I cycle over the promenade through the darkness going into the unknown.
Meanwhile not far away in a garage, divergent from time, is the coming strange tale, a black darkness brewing. Hundreds of fairies, eyes awaiting, in a garden. Robo feels the presence growing, is undisturbed and swigs away, down drowning the vodka, or doesn’t care, talking, drooling, with phoney American friends.
Ireland looks on, sitting; awaiting, creeping in, in increments. Shrunken rotten blackberries beholden by the desecrated dark thorns pointely. Its passive movements. Ready to unleash itself. To the broken mind.
A Start With The Threes
This Is The Story Of
YOUNG HOT & FROTHY YOGURT
Threesacrowd young and frothy, on the way to college, stood jolting with the motions of the train and eyespeced a hot girl sitted. Their eyes met and matched, staring together in a moment. The depth, he was young and horny. He could fall into them, those eyes, forever. The lustful rich hair bountiful, those protruding busts; curves shooting him, mainly on the groin. She was the one, the romance stinged desires. They locked eyes together again and again jolting with the train. At Connolly station, she left to leave, as she smiled, perky, looking down gleaming with the warmth of attention. He knew it. She felt it. This was the thing.
It was one of those regret a full depths of desires and emotions moments.
They on went there to separate ways departurted into their routines. He lamented the escape.
Later. Threesacrowd found her on facebook, somehow. And sent her a message, asking her out on a date. This scared the bejesus out of her. Terrified, she agreed, thinking the worst, as a woman always should do precautionarily. To get rid of this potential deviant stalker she devised a simple plan. She took her best friend to dinner with her. It was an awkward meal, the two girls conversed together in their native Polish, splitted between the long silences. He mumbled questions, all ignored in brief scant polite answers that made sure the conservation went nowhere. Threesacrowd of course footed the bill.
The Last Hurray
It started with a facebook message. The queer machinations of old friendships. Sly messages on who does the deed. Different nights for different sets of friends. Some, the ball rollers in charge, clear cut in their ways now with displays of their maturity and conformity, with the display of a profession, giving a false sense of adulthood, got invited to all three; others got a mere two; the outcasts got one invite. It was the three classes of school re-rendered without anyone noticing. Group messages were made for the economy of insult. The two waywards of the old gang got lumped together. Both long or rather more precisely always unemployed and still living at home or in one’s case the back garden garage, it has been arranged in a private whats app group they get one invite for the Christmas drinks. Messages are exchanged to explore, explain, pure rationale, this fiendish apartheid of Friendship. Sure enough they are right though. Shinbob’s moth wouldn’t have allowed him out for three nights, as she hesitantly put her foot down on the second night, a third night on the trot doing pub crawls would be fury. One of the dole moles Kevob couldn’t even afford one night out and had a heavy cold. Slanty aka Robo, the other oddity in the gang of friends that went back 25 years ago, though, was a man in need.
Robo, stuck in the moment now, never replied to the facebook message, inviting him and Kevob to the Central, a pub frequented by the middle classes situated right in the pit of Balbriggan embanked up alongside the Bracken river. Time had caught up with himself again with comfort and ease and it was now the 23rd of
December. Time. That thing that was always against him. Anxiety, the tide coming in; especially so when you’ve recently lived through bouts of delirium tremens. Problems with withdrawal long drawn out held the obsessive questions in his head; that had robbed him of his personality; he had given up fighting for. Kevob declined the invite for Christmas drinks, he was sick in body and mind, in a weird allegory he also was recovering from alcoholism.
They had both stood in the exact same spot in Ardgillan, a secluded place in the woods, beside a wall overlooking a field in the same frame of mind, a last melding in a place, at the border town of sanity, both unbeknownst to eachother, exactly one year apart, Robo September was here ‘16, Kevob September ‘17. If only he craved a message in the trees. Robo kept going on across, Kevob had turned back. Now, December 2017, Robo went to the pub. Kevob stayed at home.
Robo watching the clock gulped his medicine vodka before making himself worthy and clean with an attempt of dapper appearance as he steadied himself for the night out. Warm neat vodka tingled his veins as he got ready to project himself out, to make the massive leap out into the last grasp of dignity.
Maybe a meet up with old friends would help. Sordid and clammy with a mind rotten from vodka he stood out into the world to go back once again to a happy place long ago. He walked down his driveway towards the sea which sadly gave him his last nice thought of the night before he turned away from it and turned up the path towards the pub. His friends would help his narrow frame of mind. It was cold walking through the estate he had walked through his entire life and even though he had a vodka fire in his belly as he walked across the road on an exposed spot near the old Fancout ( not ferncourt) estate he shivered. Nobody knows what he thought on that walk down through the town.
Robo did the gracely walk to the pub that alcohol had cotton comforted him with, alone with his torments now at the back of his mind. He took the back road down seapoint along with the old wall of our Dublin to Belfast railway, for the comforts of least resistance. Following that instinct he went down the road under the arches of the viaduct railway, avoiding the possible unwanted attentions of his imagination in the derelict town square center. The quaint Quay street, he walked by now, where the old looked on the new, beside a greyish carpark, that in character naturally looked out before the more imminent imagery held by the sea and harbour dotted littlely in pictures held in a space under the offers of curvatures beholden to the dominant archway architecture built by the Brits to facilitate the Dublin to Belfast Rail passage. The Arches. The place had its usual somber attire, as Robo passed through history unnoticed. Then he, himself, Robo; who else; cast into himself into his self; going upwards past the Casino through his fond memories of pool playing and walked along with the old closed Quinnsworth mall building on the other side that downcasted morosely, neglected now to just mere shadows and shades along the narrow little road that brought Robo back up in a little incline upon the open main street.
In the pit of the town in the pit of winter; Robo, rose himself upon against the damp wet cold casting wind; and forced himself against the dense air breezing across the road brewing in through the inlet offered over the Bracken river flowing fierce with harsh stilly brews of sound; within this harsh nature, Robo sighted himself directly towards the Central Pub positioned in a singularity hanging partially along over the little grim Bracken river, and directed the picture of himself so self aware crossing the road; then in a moment; uninequivocated by all of that doubt within, in a scene, in a moment, in a flash, he rushilidly crossed over and pushed the door open into the warmth of the comfort pub that fanned his face as the stark contrasts struck him. Robo hung there at the entrance for a moment with the stark warmly contrast, mellowing a little. Waiting for a moment. Then the stranger in the Village feeling confronted him into an unease, and the doubts set back in.
Taverns in western films mentality; eyeballs and heads turning made him nervous. Then fiend, foe or friendship was spotted in the corner around a small round table laden with pints of beer clouding in chromes of black, brown and golden, fro. Robo, not too sure of himself, but barely noticed, took an uncomfortable seat from another table and settled in a seated awkward spot cramped in. The sadness motion was now in place as nobody took much notice of him. Little trivial back and forths were made. Robo didn’t have much to add as he was embarrassed by what was worth mentioning and the rest wasn’t worth mentioning.
‘What are yer drinking Robo. I’m going up ’
Risky Nohair was doing the rounds and knew the motions of the others in his circle. There were two sets of rounds doing motions, for two sets of friends. Robo felt uncomfortable in this peculiar strait he had flowed into, drinking in rounds was an odd conformity of drunkenness.
Fidgety feeling out of place Robo sat staring into the table as the conversations he intruded into bounced about around. In the shouts across the table the delights of Christmas receded and rebounded in fast tidal like fashions. Interwoven with every thought was the passage of time. That rest into comfort, igniting old displays of faith, he’d been here before, with friends, the challenge was to find childhood, adolescence, teenage adority, the 18’s, his early twenties, the frugal 25’s, the last grasp behind past 30 and grow again through all those spots. A way out, back into a better past. A futile pursuit that grows dimmer every year. But now more than ever he needed to relive the belief of carefree youth and his wish upon Santa Claus, he was grasping with breath for childhood nostalgia as the first pint plonked on the table.The cold priestly pint foamed down the edges of the glass and Robo already going back into the edges of withdrawal, dying to come into the moment, readily slurped the foam and gulped back to remedy the now near constant choking grabbing inside his throat. The same was happening again. Drink was becoming increasingly unfriendly and he labored with a half glass full with the foam on top, the fizz trophy he blurred into, looking heavy, laden, a burden and unnerving. The nerves had relaxed a bit though and he settled. This is the situation he looked at. He was not himself anymore. The evening went on. The grim gurgle in his belly settled away. The mind mellowed and the daunting perplexity of a social interaction receded. The conversations went on though, through him, with nothing to add. The lads went on laughing without him and he mimicked into place, snorting with tiffs, phiffs and whiffs, strangled by himself, trying to find a place to fit in. His friends talked through a movement of time driven by events, a narrative lost to Robo, as he was stuck in nowhere, doing nothing. The conservation in real time was always held up in the air awaiting more improvisation. Stories of girls; stories of relationships; stories of work; stories of houses bought, cars bought, children born, stories of other people’s stories; new circles of friendship added into this venn diagram of life. They were all growing out into the world. The Christmas drinks was to them part of the recessive procession back through time, an opportunity to admonish festive hostility against eachother, to mark success and show their own self worth, hidden under the warm comfort of nostalgia, thwarted into tradition. And here Robo sat alone in a single diminishing space, nearly innocent, with what was once the garage gang, with him still living in his garage. Over the noise blurring into the pub he cut down through the sound to his sitting neighbour trying to grab
into interests that only he knew or cared about. Risky Nohair too modest or meek with the held of history hanging over him to turn away, as much as was embarrassed getting cosseted into this protective dismissive spot away from the fray, he nodded along and alone, sodden and bored down trying to pull away as Robo shrugged and shared in a weird collective grief, some sad conspiracy, that he and only a handful of others knew about. Risky pulled away naturally from this pathetic burdened space and went back into the uproar comforted by the wild noise crowd. The night went on and the conversations strangled themself as the docile nothings shouted above eachother to reach beyond a skeleton cohort. The best thing to do, the lads soon all realised, without noticing it, was to ignore just Robo, was he even there, from here on in.
Robo alone; sat seated along; the towards; of an empty point; in life; swigging down his pint. The talk blended like tea, like the weather, like wind and rain,like the sunset meeting darkness. It was all meaningless drivel and Robo had nothing to add to nothing. Shinbob; momentarily lost from the conversation; misplaced by place in the social inclusion; awkwardly snook his presence across the table, in an reminiscentact act bounded by the nostalgia of youth, politely mixed with tradition, grabbed Robo’s attention and offered him the solidarity of the smoking area. The two left the crowd, wallowing into the mellow quiet spots, through doors into the toilet corridor and then past unused snooker tables before slamming the lid like door on what was once the fire exit. Robo didn’t smoke and lit up the smoke Shinbob offered him. Maybe this was that last hope, that Robo had imagined. A scene was set. Steel barrels up a ramp, a steel grid gate, dim lights, grey concrete ground, two stools along a wooden ridge tarred with varnish with ashtrays hushed up by piles of smelly smoldering butts. They stood in silence, glaring into empty space, into the atmosphere of a spaghetti western. Robo couldn’t start a conversation anymore. Fearing a meld of mind that would corrupt his thoughts again he awaited nervously, ready. The questionnaire began as he saw it, the passe pleastuity nature of friendship had passed, he retreated to a shadow, into a comfort spot called conformity. The interrogation coming would be solid.
‘So what are you up te, these days, doing much’ , so said Shinbob lost to passivity ‘
‘No, just ye know, watching a few videos, an podcasts, that sort of thing’
‘Are you still on the social. I hear Kevob has to do all these things like working at the a football club and now he’s on a job programme or something’
‘Yeah I got a letter for some.. thing like that, I just put itina the bin. They have me on a reduced payment on the moment’
‘You should go on a course, and get the back to education allowance’
‘ Nah. I wouldn’t mind just like getting a job, any job you know’
‘Yeah em… You know what. Look up. That eh.. fish place have jobs going, whats it calleeed em, Rockabill. They’ll pretty much hire anyone’
Robo nodded on reluctantly ‘Yeah I just would like a job’
‘I’ll send you an email link for it’ spoke Shinbob before sucking into victory.
They smoked and spoked as the conversation dithered out, going into nowhere. It was time soon to stub out into the forgotten ashtray.
Shinbob looked on, smoking at the last event, wondering who this stranger was; this person was not Robo. The guy standing before him was a shadow of that person.
Shinbob followed by Robo; crushed the ends of their smokes into the ashes, down upon a John Player smoothly curved blue ashtray that was already piled with stinking butts. The two returned deflated, they both knew something was over, lost and gone. The night wore on. The two seated back into the anonymous noise. Chorus of the shouted pub muffled the ceiling.
The pints were flowing now; warmly around the blood; creating that stilly misty vibe of upbeat alcohol; some half full, some almost empty, some just slightly capped off by a sweet sucky swig of froth; the table was getting full of brew and the season of rounds was gone into disrepair. And the Sing was just beginning. And the Rounds kept flowing disorderly. And it all seemed like great craic. But one person was struggling unseen, looking back longing into the garage days scene. Trees Acrowd laughed out loudly at another tale that blandly explained the mishaps of youth. Carebear Drummer mellowed in with softness, adding to the space with malicious critique carefully veiled under benign platitudes . Red Glenn carefully manning his space clung to his phone lifted himself into the group conversation when it suited him to tell his tales, mainly surrounding escapades with women, that him and his outer circle of player friends had had. Berry Hire soared in like an eagle poaching with every ridicule act and insult he could find. Shinbob acted in the singularity; with little to say in the group, he
struck up conversations with individuals around the table. One person remained quiet, adding little. Risky Nohair moderated from the back moving more than most into the roles of comfort delved into the different blend of converses passing. Trees Acrowd laughed out regularly into the main course of conservation, making sure of the stupidity of the friends he was burdened with, but was always polite and fitted in, especially so to the smaller groups of converse when it suited the situation the most. The roar of the night was on.
The Christmas lights dim looking and decorations above sat still observing unaware.This was the oddest ragbag of people ever assembled. Nobody realised. So much was behind them, and before them. As they sat seated in small dinghy wooden chairs around a small round table with one person clearly in the middle, lost. Then with the pub coming to closing time Jack The Black Meets Joe Fat, the bartender, with an overhanging name derived from the conjunctions of the fact he looked like a combination of famous people, he was an old friend from schooldays, now in better shape but couldn’t escape the names and bullying, came over and made jokes at the expense of the missing fiend tonight. Nico somehow was now a forgotten entity because he was placed on the other side of the world now in Australia which put him right out of the picture of mention or ridicule .
Meanwhile, Kevob, the one dominant wine drinker of the group was at home alone slurping into his consecration of the night. The first plonks from the first bottle swish swashing, gurgled and bubbled clonk plonking up the empty glass, filling up the round void space. Kevob greedily and readily slurped back to stop his shaking hand. Innocent that he was simultaneously in that moment a person of ridicule , a butt of someone’s else’s joke at his expense, as the feeling of alcohol entered his bloodstream relieving his heavy cold along with the lingering leftovers of substance withdrawal or PTSD ,or and probably, both that still burdened him from the days of borderline Delirium Tremens and getting beaten up with a smack about for fun soon after that, knocking him out of sobriety.
The time was now 12:25am.
The older Bartender of the pub who served with a friendly judgemental eye rang the bell. Hands flung up, nervosity shouted out.
8T
The bartenders raced about to end the night. Last cold pint glasses; full filled; in an action that encapsulated the imagery of Stonehenge; were placed in the few remaining spots on the perfectly round table. Golden tributes; frothy white waves; bubbling fizz; black brew; creamy foams; crystal dew. All labouring down a pint glass onto a placemat, it flowed. The lads drank against and with each other. The pub culture is an old ancient thing in Ireland that always brought about a frustrated race against time.The inevitable desperation to keep the night going started its motions. And in that most pathetic predictable way of motions the mention of the nightclub came up. A motion was set in motion as soon as someone mentioned it and truthfully all wanted the escape; into the endless night. Mobile phones came out of the pocket to take stock of the time.
They; the lads; relaxed slurping back the cold comforts of a warm buffer of 30 minutes, imagined to be endless when it began, that gave a clearance for a dreamlike state. The hubris and laughs of the night hit its height. Robo feeling left out trying to be interesting mumbled a conspiracy theory which was politely ignored and then he desperately got really pathetic and muttered about Hitler escaping to Argentina to Risky Nohair who indulged, but was irritated by the stupid intrusion.
Then the mode of talk fizzled out into active motions. Suddenly it was gone, the bleak night of time took over and the dwell of stagnant comfort talk ended. Nobody had anything else to say for this particular experience. They pushed out the chairs to lift their bodies up carefully as they all could, stumbled in variations of insobriety together, in a crazed pattern of menace. One person struggled grabbing a table behind his back, as the years he kept hidden behind him crept up. Coats back on, standing around, little jargon about, awaiting the stragglers in the jacks, mostly empty pints left behind, a few swigs left in some, white snowy foam down the glass. Time stood still on the table. And then they all turned and left marching towards the dark.
Out through the two doors and out upon the cold damp town street the lads poured out on a mission to the Milestone. Shinbob lit up a smoke to mark the moment, sending up wafts of smoke to showcase the wet damp breeze in the cold hostile air. Across the street was Deli Burger lit up with yellow, where stories eased out through the vast plain window panes emitting the few shadowy figures
within beaconing out other stories of the night, as those few within in the moment, against the counter pointed up, grabbing at grubs chips and burgers, to end the night. They all, the lads, just blinked and ignored this image. It was later in their timeline, they reckoned. Up the little wee hill they went in packs of two or three. Afterdark the nightclub was there, showcasing, on their daring horizon, a dark blot.
Then something bleak happened.
They, the lads, marching on in an odd sync; roaming about in the patterns of friendship, grabbing in and out of disjointed conversations; reaching back and forth through conformity; rumbling on bleating scanty frivolous speeches, crossed the road and then just before the closed front entrance of the pub suddenly, the thing happened.
Robo stumbled and smashed straight into a lightpost pole. Then in reaction he stumbled right back struggling to regain balance. Gravity and depth perception looked lost, as the lads stood back into an odd semi circle curve around him in instinctive distress.
The eyes all rolled into gaze, onto him with alarm, for a mere second before moving away with embarrassment as sobriety tinged up and judgment faded away. A mind meld of thoughts took over, they all held it up there together in a dispassionate dismissive pattern of compassion led into concerns. Robo attempted recomposing himself into the delusion he had control, while a dark whisper in his ear hissed doubts about that.
Meanwhile, as the lads, caught in the capture of a pub crawl, could not deny the night and continuing, reformed into a group, and went down the back alley of Covent Lane. Rishy Nohair and Shinbob diverged from the group at the turn and made their way on a mission up to the bank machine past SuperValu to take out cash, to make an insureness on their singularity tonight, that they would have enough money to keep the night alive.
All the while as the divergence continues, they do not know it, but in the background youthfulness has died in the night.
The others, the main group, on a folly march went behind the Milestone into the wooden maze of the summer days; and then embarked up through the smoking area; and following a pattern; awkwardly pushed through into the relaxed foray of the lounge where the stomp of security was already awaiting. Eagle eyed on the camera’s capturing the entrances, they had seen the awful thing, and with embarrassment their eyes were forced to dart fixating on the drunk. A do gooder felt right, took over and spoke out with his hand outright as he stood in the lobby before the door.
‘Sorry lads you’re not getting in here tonight’, he said it soberly as he could as his eyes were forced to judge upon the drunk in a guilty verdict.
Robo standing aloof in the background stood there hanging still, as events went on around him, gurprashading the situation, taking it in in intervals, unworldly in his state of mind.
Then mindless like a bug, Robo soon found himself positioned back outside in the cold with the lads.
Downcast; beaten; deflated; dejected and rejected; the half jury of lads turned away defeated; holding the guilt of verdict in their head, as the sin clung on behind embarrassingly, with the loss of the night hanging over them; to go back merrily, out into the cold night, meeting the memory they had just left behind on Convent lane. Meanwhile in the moment Shinbob and Risky Nohair walked away expectantly from the ATM.
Hanging on into this embarrassment thing was the becoming disgustful thought packaged by the tribe, who in sharp emotions pictured the feelings into words.
Thy Now Dye Heavy Burden Die.
It was felt in many different patterns. In this distorted background Robo walked into their subconscious by the actual reality. The guy in the back with nothing to add. Robo, although detached and reclusive living in his hidden nightmare,had not and could not withdraw from reality. All those missive eyes rolling towards him had not gone unnoticed. They walked on in their downbeat state pondering what to do next, retreated up the street and in the last remnant of the garage days; they all instinctively ganged up again and reengaged with Risky Nohair and Shinbob at Supervalu. As if they all knew it. This was it. The last moment. Only two members were missing.
Held in the departing silence. A coarse brief conversation was struck up to end this.
8T
Risky Nohair looking onward with Shinbob’s awkward stance, intervened to startle the awkwardness, punctuating the sterns, with restraints, going into the yearns, delving the dishevelled bunch back through the years.
‘What happened. Why did ye not go, or did ye not let get in’
Nobody said nothing.
Tree’s Acrowd nodded a disapproving glance at Robo. Robo, even stumbling on the path in his struggle against his altered alternating gravity pulling and pushing against him, could not help but notice it with that phrase that came meaningful to him in his dismantled blurry state. The merry hardship of silence endured into the moment. The last hope was lost. With eyes on the ground and petite embarrassed looks around. Nothing was left to say; or contribute; or to do. This was life’s calling.
A minute or so passed; or was it just a few intense seconds strangulating time. Robo noticed and had nothing left to give; and gave up, swallowed by time, he followed his mind into the shallow ditter of a pit. The pictures of himself walking home alone down through Balbriggan brisked their minds in a meld as they should. Robo decided to take himself out of that imagined picture they desired. It was now happening.
And so. With that. In an uncaring moment. With thumb nested inside the pocket, Robo lifted his hand up from the side of his jeans in a signal. Gave a little four fingered salute wave, the thumb still parked in his pocket, with his fingers stretched out and then turned and departed walking away without a word to say. Head down, with nothing left, he headed towards the black space awaiting him. The night would go on soon as his friends watched his shadow dissipate back down the street. A linger came over the atmosphere.
Awkward in a weird huddle together with a collective feeling of shame, neglect, and a sense of foreboding brought about by the within of shallow selfish desires. The old garage gang, what was left of them, in its last moments could not divert their eyes. They all stood and stared. Watching the empty space scene become something.
Berry Hire lost within himself in his good nature cut through the not knowing what moment that was in motion.
‘Wait. Did he already say goodbye?’
8T
Nobody answered again. They all stood still staring; all stalled by the building they needed for Robo to pass by; glaring; stuck looking at the morose thing walking away getting bleak, smaller, more diminutive, becoming dimmer, paleing into darker and weaker on the eye, fading into the vanish; awaiting his departure from the scene of the moment, before they could continue on.
And then before they knew it it was a fade to the black.
The moment was over. The shadow of rolling shoulders and bobbing head dissipated into nowhere. Robo, was gone, disappeared back down into the street. The lads looked on down into the dimly lit up greyish streets of the town. A procession of amber street lights standing dumbfounded was all that was left to view. Before anyone knew it, it was the bleakness that took over.
The night stood there for a moment in a manner hanging a moody presence.
The lads stillily all stood there still, stiff in a muddled huddle, like mourners, watching; waiting; detaching; turning away; looking at their shoes; confused. Not knowing what to do or think. He was gone. Robo was gone. Lost forever down that street.
Kevob at home alone was watching a Sky Atlantic series as the distinct sound of a wine cork he was pulling finally popped out of his second bottle of wine, plonking right into his face. He had struggled so hard at it his hand recoiling thumped his own face as the built up tension finally released itself. The irony hit him, hard, directly on the chin. He didn’t care that his lower lip was slightly busted and bleeding a little as his second bottle of wine partially partitioned into a domely vessel orchestrated towards his mouth via the hand. The first bottle was a good remedy for his cold, the second bottle would send him into a deep sleep. Kevob slurped and lay back. Into a perfect snippet.
The night was still on and back on, they retraced back to the Milestone pub and tried again what had failed ten minutes ago. This time the bouncers made little notice of the lads, The Garage Gang, now just a Whatsapp name, breezily flew through, and successfully up the stairway, they ascended, to the club, Afterdark. And fleeted the night away. Into the forgotten space. Into this open space of nothingness they took to their places; some went for pints; Shinbob went to the toilets before the smoking area; Red Glenn scheming found them a table. Christmas songs sang delighted, bounding back and forth comfort memories, into their ears, as each melody cringed yearns for years long ago away, into the melancholy that was now their past. Blasts from stereos robbed even of their senses of self with blackmail into the emotional turmoil of collective tradition. They only knew it was Christmas time because the songs told them so. Along with the decorations that sparkled winks into the eyes. The crowd of revellers, which the lads had anonymously joined ranks with at a small neat table near the bar, drank into it, trying to relive something that never existed. The more pints came, weighing down the table, sickly looking. Who knew it thought it, but someone did, as the music was so loud, it drowned out everything, held your mind, forcing you into the now sickly pint before you. People roared across the table, trying to, but to no avail. Words crumbled down on the table burdened down by the heaviness of loud sound. Sentences spoke into nowhere, tormenting against waves of noise. Music was talking now, it was the most present in the room and most people gave up and drank back into the mood of sound. Under the roaring blaze with sore voices, retreating, they all spoke internally, withdrawn across the table, into themselves. The thought of Christmas being every single day seemed like an endless prison of depravity. Last Christmas they had done the exact same thing. The New Year and what had they done.. the answer was nothing. They were simply not having a wonderful Christmas time. Their heart was in the wrong place. Actually there was nothing simply, having, or wonderful about what they were having in this withdrawn sunken feel of Christmas time. They did know it was Christmas time at all times during this ordeal with the endless bleating songs singing through the ears. And thanked God It was not going to be Christmas time every single day forever, wishing the night to end.
Trying to talk, but too loud, so just looking at the pint of Heineken or other before them on the table and thinking this is a pointless experience to extend the night into nowhere.
Christmas seemed like a grim dim thing as some guy now, was driving home for Christmas, through the stereo .
Robo meanwhile on a different timeline now, was alone along with his demons. He had passed back past the back lane that led into the back entrance of the Milestone, a moment of embarrassment just gone and cringed at himself. He forwarded on past the front entrance of the Milestone pub, seeking thoughts ofafrom the past, anything he could find, grasping to ping good memories, escape himself, he looked in at the doorway and saw yesterday. A warm image pinged his memory back. Robo grasped at it; that quiet day, in the corner of the pub, at the end of night, with just his close friends still left around, reminding him of the Garage days. Him, Risky, Kevob and Shibob struck a conversation with A deaf silent guy, who spent ages trying to explain his name until Risky finally got it!
It was Noel.
What was his name Robo wondered again, determined to stay external for as long as his could, as he passed the old sweet shop, glanced an eye at Mcnally’s Funeral place; thought it looked like a bank; maybe it was a bank -yes the AIB wasn’t it, he pondered; and then he crossed the road across from Spar. Looking up the road towards the railway station at the old tall red brick industrial buildings he saw the memory of Kevob, recalling the story of his walk back home in the aftermaths of a heavy storm; a day he Robo, had decided to just stay home in, before in good fortune, the school was abruptly shut that morning, and when heavy red bricked tiles from a roof landed and smashed right before Kevob’s feet.
Lucky brat it didn’t crack his head, thought Robo warmly.
On ago, on ongoing, he went on, on into the towards, walking into his memories. Back down past the Bracken River he pictured again the scene of the Fire Brigade sucking the water out of the river during the floods of summer 2008. Then was the remembrance spot of him and Kevob walking past Photo Tony and he lamented, while wishing for the laughs, about the time he got Tony in trouble with the town council for his youtube video. At the Bracken court hotel a memory of regret fizzed up past the alcohol, of the day he recorded Sean, The Street Seater, for a video he made with the legs edited to stretch out on the road. Robo was both glad and sad he deleted those videos. Why things he once found funny now tormented, he could not understand.
Robo walked up the square and took a glance over at aulds John D’s pub and saw the day the travellers took over the pub; smirked about his and Nico’s viral videos. Trodding past the library now, anxiety chased at him, that thing always chomping waiting to come back up. That lovely can of cold coke Kevob drank back in one swig, Noneck and Nico chasing back to get a slurp on a hot summer’s day, bought from that old shop on the square you could buy cigarettes in underage; but only when the horsey toothed woman wasn’t serving. That shop was decimated the second time FCC council decided to recreate the square, this time with concrete.It was so nice with the trees, wooden chairs and the garden. Robo’s eyes caught the benches outside the courthouse unknowingly to him the memory lured up and pinged him. Robo briefly grabbed the laugh into himself with the thought of the Rabbi complaining about the offensive symbol on the boarded up platform during the council’s redesign. That was around the time Shinbob got taken to court for being drunk and disorderly, reckoned Robo, and the newspaper claimed he was racially abusive in the Chinese restaurant. Yes that’s why he saw that story about the Rabbi. Both stories shared space in the weekly local Fingal newspapers.
All the memories were there, a life of thoughts, passive, rolling in the background of his timid mind, waiting for the chance; to bubble back up. Where everything was and always is. And all was connected, flowing back up into the imagery he walked through, coming back up for a second, before fluttering away again, faster than he could ever think. Robo went on past the lazily named Church Street, attempting to relax his mind into the memory of swingate in The Sunshine house playground. That was years ago, with that vomiting, he shuddered, was that real or imagined, so long ago now did happen, little of it was left, he remembered with warmth Red Glenn shouting in a state of nausea after the spinning dare,
‘re you fooking smoking Kevob’
Then Robo, did what he had to do, due to the mundane movements of time always forcing him into the now and forward, and without knowing it lost the memory of the blissful past down that street to stubbornly cross into the future across the road before him at the old grey dainty path that narrowed along the boundary set by a badly cemented wall as old as the town itself although more modernly torso shaped in it’s badly cemented stonely patterns, following within himself the relaxation set by the comfort of routines in his usuality of youth.
Crossing across that quaint corridor path that held beside it the old stoney shop where all the goods were kept behind the counter until it shut in the early mid 90’s. Robo briefly reached into the recall of that day Kevob and Nico finally couraged the venture into that odd store and came out empty.
Robo went on, what else could he do, past the old Murray quarry road, into those days of big trucks constantly bleating out, rumbling dustily. It was now a nice housing estate. And Robo went onwards, with future, towards the newer and now shut Carey’s shop. And a descriptive take of time was happening within him with the sight of the block like calm aesthetic of St George’s school held in opposition up the street against the unformidable shallow grim design of the 1970’s health clinic dented into the street, directly across the single storey bungalows. The Summer days, when that tv show called Big Brother launched, came to mind.
Those days were gone. Robo went on, noticed the burnt out shadow on the road was still there, caused by a burnt out car outside the Meals on Wheels den; that event Kevob pointed out a few years ago, as he detectively used banter against him, dismissively with admission, grasping at him burrowing with worry at his possible routines. And then Robo crossed the road again back onto what was now a more wider, spacious path before the old garage; set beside where the house with the tennis court was and still is.
He passed the old garage, where it all began and was ending in a way, those days that perluded into something else, thought little of it, the little lots in there, nervous with the older lads more experienced, crunching up, knee to knee in seats, passing joints, sucking away stoned, the hammer of time, memories lapsing up, going..going…gone, was happier there with his own garage space and the grand ventures it had. That was also gone now. And soon he would be back there in that happy safe space, back with his friends, now lonely diminished down to only an online presence in the internet, with the strange comfort of solitude that challenged his sense of self fortitude, that thing that was nearly eroded. Robo knew it even if he didn’t know it. He fought that thought. That immense space: between the border town of sanity and insanity; was reached, he wasn’t finally crossing it, he had passed it; before the night had even begun. And his mind was now lost in a place of no escape, captured within itself. Robo continued on with alarm, again reaching out for calm, in this bleak empty place, racing against him. He was finally really alone now with the rotten settling in, in galores, frothing into his thoughts. The demons were always there waiting for chinks in the armour to seep back through into his mind. And came back they did with menace, rotten into his thoughts. The drink could only hold it back for so long. Pursuant now in the pursuit, Robo pictured the space between him and the safe place of his garage as a giant void of terror, and focused his mind on the singularity of getting home. Everywhere was a threat. His mind was stuck again in the horrors and they just went round and wound and around and down and bound back up again in an endless loop.
Relaxing again, Robo looked on up the road over the green greyled by barren trees held by streetlights and waxing crescent moonlight dancing heavy burdened clouds roaming the night towards forwardly into the looming on the horizon, the Pinewood housing estate. The comforting thought, weak, suddenly died into self awareness. Robo looking at himself, walking, started to doubt himself. And started making questions about his existence.
continuing choking into his journey down the circles of memory and mind, went past Costcutter, tired to laugh at his mishap, that day trying to buy vodka at 7am, a disheartened weak guffaw was all he could manage as mere rectitude took over the attempts of comfort. He was no longer himself now. Robo; that person, now gone now, walked on leaving it all behind. Past the park at Pinewood, the barren bare trees there became shrunken skeletons of bones, screaming at him for remorse and he could not forgive in the fright. Across the Skerries road a bush with leaves all became licking tongues. A drain pipe became a nightmarish prison he was trapped in for an entirety. Robo started to relax again as he came to the home comforts of Fancourt Heights estate, he would soon be home again now and this was a safe place. The green square ESB tower. The rounded wall over the dump. Carefree days of jumping and climbing. Running around the dump; that black cat banger that went puff. Kevob picking wild opium poppies along the dump wall in the oddity space. It was all there, always there. The memories were just a lapse of time, hormones and emotions. He grabbed, his mind fought back, getting stronger, unleashing super strength anxiety.
And everything is just a memory, thought Kevob, as he, stuck in the same moment, stumbled upstairs and plonked himself into the bed mirroring the night now behind him, giving an allegory, in imagery, of drunken exhaustion.
The Coda of the day. Walking on through the middle estate of Fancourt, Robo’s eyes focused on the concrete path, he noticed that smooth whitish peculiarity in the pattern of the grey speckled footpath. The day the school closed due to ice. Fun was had on that slab until someone came out with salt. Miserable people, you can’t escape them in life. So many of them Robo could not comprehend and here he was stuck with them again. Robo was in the grip of a panic attack now. The world was too immense. The sufferings he imagined, too profound. Too much was happening, right now, everywhere, in this little moment. On the horizon was the dark brooding of fields around Ardgillan and Skerries held in varying shadows by daunting hills held over little twinkling lights. His mind melded into the imagination. Memories became people drowning in a well, bobbing heads fighting for space, grasping up for air, against the torment of water dragging them down, shouting up. The immensity of space from the fields from this little place in Balbriggan to out into Navan, Athboy, Bailieborough and beyond and beyond was so much and so vast he choked at the enormity of it. Suddenly then the racing emotions passed again.
Robo relaxed again with the reckoning from experience that his mere thoughts alone can’t end him. The ebb and flow of time was against and for him; anxiety comes and goes, his eyes settled into the comfort of the grey path. Robo almost home took it all in. The patterns of change on the path. There was a strange comfort there. He grew into it; the rolling picture landscape. In one last chance against the racing mind Robo settled into the path; the walls; and the gardens of the housing estate. A long walk of 25 years was ending. It all looked the same. Yet all looked different. He noticed little differences here and there. Although it was all the same, somehow. But changed in some way. Every wall; footpath; garden; every front door and porch; flower bed; light posts; driveways; curbs; cranny and nook, done by the effort of time in little brush strokes, bothering him with grim thoughts it brimmed on the horizon, all had changed unnoticed. Coming down towards home, the sea breeze struck his face, that alone had unchanged, he breathed it in, his last gasp, of the salty sea air. And that was that, it was a hard venture. Robo was finally home, the night was over, pushing the door of the garage back in his comfort zone. This would be his last sentence.
Nature had given a grim verdict.
Back To The Dole Queue
Yesterday I was about to go out on the bike, a glorious day to begin with, the sun was shining unimpeded and the next day I desired to do the same again . But then I remembered the letter I got from Employment Services last week, today was my sign on day. So I undressed from my cycling gear, made myself look respectable, and ran down late to the Employment Office, just about making it a few minutes after my appointed time. I signed on, filled in the new form of jobs I’ve applied for and posted it into the letter box as requested, otherwise I was told my claim might be suspended. The day was ruined now with this pointless bureaucratic task slotted right in the middle of my day at 2pm. Common sense then led me to the nearby post office to draw my dole like Picasso, the way I scribe my name now Kev Foy is so elegant. In the post office was my doppelganger, he like me was ponytailed and wore goofy thick glasses and to add to that similarity, he eerily, was the guy who replaced me on the TUS scheme at
Balbriggan Football Club. Strange how far apart we were and how near we were now, again. My year, replaced by his year, and now after his year doing my year on Tus, him now doing my year now on Jobpath no doubt. And now here we both were back in the same spot, boat back to the dole queue. He signed his name and I signed my name and we both withdrew back into our separate lives, away from the odd parallels.
The shakes of angst now gone from my social commitments, I was totally free and decided to relax with my first smoke of the day sitting on the bench beside the Bracken River, back down at the carpark near the Employment office, with a nice relaxed view, ridden of anxiety, upon the lapse of time, of thy anxiety riddled building with all it’s burdens of bricks and heavy emotions. Other dole moles came about from all different directions conveyoring within themself with awareness the same emotions into the building to do what I had just done. In with anxiety out with less anxiety. They came and then went. One guy on his bike, coasting up to the building with a still free flowing momentum, who’s journey I imaged behind my back, as I smoked outwardly upwards clasping breathily smoke up to the in rolling clouds, struck with me the triviality, as my white pales faded away. I pictured him rolling down the road from his home from the heights of Pinewood council estate, a downtrodden chap flowing down into the moment, into the pit of town, beside the Bracken river. As he got off the bike the pictures stilled into a crisp resolution. It turned out it was my next door neighbour actually, a cloud above in the upwardly mobile Hampton Cove estate hovered by, who I like to call Robbery.
Then I swept away the smoke, gone after a last suckle, as the hot butt torched my golden finger. Now finished, in the moment came roaming with the white clouds fostered by the weather, the senses of boredom which moved me on into the day. Hope gave me movement. I spotted the curvy butt of a cute girl I knew and it blotted out the fog settled on my brain. I decided to follow her up the street since I was planning to go that way anyway to complete my last errand of the day, getting my ventolin inhaler. Feeling nice and horny now in the sun, she with the nice butt left my pre-arranged path and social norms meant I couldn’t follow her. She was a nice distraction though and changed my mood. I came up upon Millfield shopping centre on the hill beside the old graveyard before I went on until a calling came. It said to me it’s a sunny day, made for those slow moments of reflection, where time stands still. Go into Clonard Graveyard, have a smoke with the warm safe glow of the sun in your face and relax. And I did. It is the early days of September, March or April or is it May, it all feels the same with my eyes closed resting in deep Sun warm beams but I have to open them again into reality. Sir Christhoper Keeling is marked on one of the gravestones, as he’s about to die in the Dublin Marathon, so it must be late September or early October, the last days of the dying Sun before winter. I smoked on a bench looking at the names on the gravestones. Fascinated by the names I did a little stroll about the place and one grave with a big pile of muck drew my attention. It was the grave of Tiny Tim, who only recently after a FB post of mine I learnt had died, from suicide I garnered from the whispering comments telling; from all the way over in New Zealand was his demise, some journey for a dead body, more than I’ve ever travelled. It turned out his dream of becoming a jockey came through until the dream died. I did a bit of research online, it was nice to know he made it, even if the ambition did kill him. I suspect drugs used as a weight thinner. The family kept it very quiet. Now the grand house was up for sale.
Moving on towards the gateway I walked to leave. Another grave caught my eye, like Tiny Tim’s it had a big pile of muck over it. Another very young man, Jim Cleary, had died very recently, only a few weeks ago; it has the grim, confirming look; the tower of life, a denial, we all rose up from the ground somehow after all and now some fullness miracle is back in the ground, mere muck. Then I left, it was time to go, my legs were getting tired, I needed food, toilet respites, those bodily functions and needs that keep it going regardless, the rest of us have to go on living, I’m afraid. So I got my ventolin inhaler in Boots and did my shopping. With plenty of food and the required medicinal two bottles of wine purchased, along with the ventolin attained and the dole in my wallet, the signing on done, the day was a successful done (really though I should be allowed to get the wine on my medical card, the Government take nearly all my money back in excise duties, if I was on prescription though, another story). Finally I was ready to march home with my bag full of stuff.
First thing I did when I got home; I checked in to get an update on my social media platforms.
I checked my strava dashboard (it’s social media for sport, mainly cycling and running) and Nicky Power, a follower I followed, had a post on his bike ride “RIP DAD SPIN”.
I had no idea his dad was sick or dying. So I checked the Death Notices and I saw it to make it true.
A Balbriggan man M Casey, in an address which was right beside the other Casey family I knew.
Below M Casey I noticed two Cleary’s from Balbriggan. Husband, then the Wife two days later, both predeceased by their son James (Jim) Cleary; it was the guy who’s grave I’d seen earlier by sheer chance. I shivered at how cold the day had become. Disjointed enough though to keep it cold, but warm in essence and the spirit so calm. That stupid bit of sprayed canned word art on a steel door coming into Bettystown northbound struck back at me.
“Death is around every corner”
Bye Zoned Perks
It’s June 2008 and Ireland is booming in money and sun and nobody can dare challenge the narrative; the sun is glaring down as my Dad and I play golf in a council golf course at Julianstown when suddenly a guy in a helicopter wings down it’s choppers from above with the patterns of ballet of a sycamore seed or some tree who seeds fly like that and starts landing on the green, bouncing up the rough and fairways, and even the greens, like he’s James Bond. Me and my dad accepted this unusuality, as we swung about our clubs, clipping and whacking balls about into perpetuity, watching them fly off into the distance, banging into steel frames, trees, dragged into grass, sunk into lakes and all sorts before putting in the hole. One day the hot sun bored me into cycling forever and I never played boring golf with my dad again. What followed was the creation of the story Rowan’s Little Alpine Dream.
Then came the rain; and it rained. Down casts heavy leaden pours of sky falls of water relentlessly shadowing above over, pelting bursting menacing pourings marching in grimly manners to shatter the phrase scattered showers was the summer of 2008. It was wet, very wet. All the rivers, streams, brooks, little ravines, ditches, potholes; swelled up across the land. The floods were so bad people got swept away into death in some places. Fire Brigades in a confusion state sucked water up from the Bracken River to stop an overflow in Balbriggan. The river banks everywhere were breaking after the crash of 2008. Maybe nature felt herself challenged by drama and struck back with a metaphor or similarly.
Stresses and strains upon certain points seemingly trivial in this time went unnoticed. In the confusion, a year later, the viaduct over Malahide to Donabate, not really a viaduct, more a mere passage of rocky stones, collapsed into a breach laden down by the stresses of water.
A commuter train coming bound rewarding towards Balbriggan rolled over the event just as it happened, signalling the alarm just after before the jolted brake away from falling into the disaster This viaduct thing, over the Broadmeadow was built in the 1840’s and now in 2009, for the first time the Dublin to Belfast rail line was down. It was brilliant. Ireland was deep in recession, downbeaten and getting bailed out by the IMF for getting bailed in by the EU and the EMF. 40 Billion, 120 Billion, 200 Billion, nobody knew the real figure, holding over the shoulders of Ireland now. The bankers of Europe would get paid no matter what. It was the grim tide of confusion. But there was no doubt. The richly overindulgence would be paid by the austere. In September of that year I was starting my first year in college. After dropping out two times before.
The sheer oddity; the unusuality; the randomness; the peculiarities; the stark contrasts from normality, in the depths of the recession, it had a wartime feel to it as I hopped on the last of a legion of buses that waited daily outside Balbriggan train station lined up in requent for the rush hour commute and got given out to by the bus driver for been late and told next time he would not wait.
The bus lifted itself calmly from its resting place, I looked out the window at little comforts, and on we all wept; wenting on into our journey. Soon we were on the grey motorway. Rolling along the Serpent snake towards the spotty grey cityscape under the background of the Dublin Mountains. The radio station cut off as we passed under the newly built port tunnel, finished in 2006 I believe, just before the economy collapsed.
Into the dark we embarked.
Then upon the light; the sun is shining bright; we emerged.
Now in the outskirts of the city center; Gerry, what’s his name crackles back onto the radio. As we funnelled our way about through meager roads and estates, all colours of concrete delight here, winding the way into Dublin City., Gerry talks about this and that and how Ireland with its climate isn’t a great country for cycling. I concur. A few weeks from now Gerry, what’s his name, will die. But that’s later in this story.
I disembark from the bus to embrace upon the grey city reaching my eyes up in a lament towards the blue sky and white clouds roaming freely above and before I know it, it’s 5pm and I leave college after lectures of boredom at DIT Kevins Street. Who’s Kevin and why am I here as I ditch the street. No point in racing to Pearse street, I’ve already figured out Tara Street is quicker and sure whats the point with the railway down.
Along with the Dart into Connolly we go and we depart onto the exposure of platform seven, windswept Aelous.
The commuter sense of community reaches over me as I follow the footsteps. I channel along with my crowd, flowing with sounds, resting within chomping feet, alluring with patterns, the stomping reality, not really knowing what I’m doing; as we all discommode crossing paths into different lives at the ticket barrier. I head down a narrow escalator and I’m just following accents. It feels right going under a bridge and down a back alley lined up with buses, but I have no idea which buses are for Donabate, Rush & Lusk, Skerries or Balbriggan.
Upon The Legion of Buses. The similarity of accents seems like sound advice to me and I line up for that bus. Little gestures are made, hand motions waving from bobbing inflated fluorescence jackets chafing . I follow the patterns. Suddenly I’m on the bus without a clue. I nervously look and listen around for confirmation, after taking a seat. A dark haired neurotic guy takes a seat before me and opens his laptop to watch the Daily Show presented by Jon Stewart. The bus is still only sparsely filled. A guy gets on, grey haired worn down by boredom and asks the two guys I had sheepishly followed onto to this bus,
‘Is this the bus to Balbriggan’
‘I hope so. Otherwise we’re in trouble’
They chortle in a mannerism together giving confirmation.
I feel foolish and out of the loop as this content commuter takes his seat without worry. Why couldn’t I do that, muddles my mind.
Too shy, I suppose, as I bitterly watched Jon Stewart’s masquerading body language in mute, shadowed on the screen before me. Workers from the national train service the CIE are directing the people into the bus. Constant counts are made as we await the departure. The CIE workers walk down the bus corridor and remark the numbers casually to their colleagues.
‘About 14 seats left’
Another CIE worker beckons with arm gestures to the line of people waiting. A random number of people cumbersomely come onto the bus. Then the same act continues in its same time consuming way.
The Jewish guy seated before me, who I had stereotyped as Jewish by his features before he became animated and got vocal, gets irritated. He starts scratching his dark semitic head intensely, a habit I’ve only witnessed in myself ( I used to rip whole chunks of my hair out when I was a child; the idiot doctor gave me hair lice cream for it!).
The CIE workers, doing their job, in repetition, walk sheepilsy back down the bus corridor, doing the count, which is obvious now.
The same gestures, modes and phrases flow into this story as a few more people embark upon the bus.
A strong whiny coarsey voice, a mixtured New York accent, with those undoubtedly subtle tones of Cohen, Madoff, Epstein, Goldman and Lehman, speaks out, confirming what I already know, and yet everyone else seems deaf to him.
‘Yeah there are seven seat’s left’ shouts out my new friend.
Me and him are the two foreigners here, I’m the only one who noticed him, nobody has noticed me, I notice everybody.
The CIE workers walk on by, strutting past him undulating with an unperturbed presence, in essence making no sense. My mind pictured something. This is Ireland, you just let them do their job Jew.
‘Yeh there are about seven seats left’ says some fat faced nobody from CIE in an inflamed orange jacket just doing his job.
The Jewish guy starts scratching his head again. He is me, doing what I want to do, but me an Irishman, I’ve already surrendered to the banality long ago. Then he looks around again and does the count and this time puts his arm up into the air and shouts out above.
‘Yeah there are two seats left.’
I admire this assertiveness even though it’s a neurotic grasp at what are timeless meaningless seconds.
The CIE workers walk strutting past him again,just doing their job, and with Dublin droll and possible malice, strut back again and confirm what we all, or at least me and my Jewish friend already know, and confirm it out loudly this time with fingers pointing reinforcing the point.
‘There are two seats left.’
‘Two seats.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’ve two seats left.’
‘Yeah there are two seats left.’
Goes the pointless back and forth. I’m half expecting a flare to be shot up to confirm the magnitude of their making of this banal procedure.
The last two passengers get on and one takes a seat near the bus driver and the other down the back. The trivialities within the miracle life make me feel bleak, a fixation on the allowing of wild growing of grass and so called weeds is ongoing; in whats dubbed a ‘grow wild scheme’ by Fingal County Council; local losers with nothing else to do are doing petitions to stop this torment of growing. Meanwhile I sit back as the Daily Show displays into my universe soundless and in the same second a Supernova is happening.
The bus jolts into action and we roll into movement. It’s the bus of the damned as we go on, winding a thorough way, through the back streets of the northside of Dublin City. Through narrow corridors we wove our mark and crowds of people have come out to greet us from the flats. Camera crews and photographers are here along with dolled up lassies perked up, to salute our departure from the city. It seems odd and out of place, but I’m in a strange recessive time.
Then I remembered with cunning the death of Shane Dedalus or whats his name. The girls are awaiting Sean Duffy or whats his name, to whisk them away. Shane Dedalus from the, what’s its name, Boyhood band or what not, has rightly justly just died according to some English journalist. Nick Drake or whats his name from the British Nation Party or whatever it’s called, will soon be on BBC Question Time the following Thursday night. It will be watched by 14 million people, to give more details on why we should not speak ill of the dead as he sweats with dread. Then it all gets forgotten, it’s all nothing. The camera crews and photographers dissipate away, behind me. The crowds disperse, turn their backs to the event and go back into their homes. The fragments of time are here, immersive.
I go on watching it; awaiting it; staring out at the window; watching the moving picture I have no control over. It is it, and the history is a moment;
And events I move through are the motions moving into rapids on a river. It feels strange to pass through so many stories. I feel fermented as I brew through it with the occasion gone, and now the bus reaches out into open grey spaces burdened by partially built concrete structures; those dwindling recession buildings depressing the place before the port tunnel. The bus of the damned rolled through the concrete, whisking this way and that, as the wheels of the bus go round and round. The Jewish guy before me had relaxed within the distraction of his Jon Stewart Daily Show and I enjoyed his soundly muted chuckles and slightly like snorts of shoulders bouncing about in piston rolls as he laughed about how ridiculous Ireland is. Then the mind darkened, caught by the lack of stimuli in the dark port tunnel. Conversations became sparse and the few who dared talk whispered in churchy funeral fashions as we drove through the concrete coffin perfectly lit up with lights; to which, to me; they perfectly witchly seemed like candles giving the sense of cleansing death into a furnace. What if a fire happened I thought provoked. My mind meld was all bleak, cursing into a panic of hell and I witnessed catastrophic events in the darkness. The ridiculous quickly became stale and was dismissed.
Then we struck out into the light, the concrete city had vanished away, and the Nags Head held hopes of pastures displayed in moments above in that wee little hill, hanging still on the horizon, holding its green firmament calmly in chanting clouds roaming up underneath.
Beyond this greenery shape of ancient time ran the thing of the was bliss, it was the sheer weather fronts striking streaks of font under the clouds, it was coming in from the midlands of Kildare and Meath; the stories from the west of Ireland, here today, rolling in from the Atlantic. I saw that story coming long ago, chroming in that purplish hanging cloud coming towards me on this bus of the damned. The beholden of colours were chromatic upon the panorama looking west into the bleak. The cloud came and started pelting against the window. The purplish burden grew over the hill to become dark and menacing. Little plods came down and then it became heavy burdens downcasting its fury, but I had my window. I watched the burrows of raindrops coming down the window and wondrously flowed into the little whisks of droplets torn away by the wind capturing time’s perfection. The cloud passed, the rain stopped, and then now only the wetness of the road could really remembrance the hostility nature had justily past, as the bus of the damned rolled down; swashing up the curse of rain, going down into Balbriggan it went, strangling against the air the memory, and distilling up polluted droplets, littered with miniature speckles of oil filling up fizzlily from the drill roll of the wheels, giving up the sight of stank going back into the town.
The bus churtled like with laughter choking through mean streets as it wetted and polluted the air by its stink robust intrusion.
Balbriggan blinked back with a few amber street lights coming on too early and the calm mellow yellow coming from some shops. We mingled and traversed through the same streets again, right turned at Spar back to the starting point of the train station and we departed. Little belittled me as always the last to leave, I didn’t even capture the motion of my Jewish fiend’s departure.
Leaving the bus the driver reminded or remembered me, not to be late tomorrow. I hasten to add I was late the next day, so I took the 101 bus instead, who accepted train tickets at the time. And I never insulted myself again by going on those CIE train buses again.
The Opera of The Sternly Defiant Magpie
Job interview for journalist at Ringsend, Dublin, 2019. Just writing that word Dublin fills me with dread. That lonely feeling you get at a train station thrusting yourself into the leave upon the comfort place you know into the inevitable, upon time catching up with you once again, the moment of anxiety grabbing you by the throat, dragging you down into the moment; to be stuck in alarming seconds; with everything on your eyes a sudden agenda; mixed bags of emotion holding you down; wishing they could be gone and you were back in your comfort of bed snuggled up; somewhere else long ago, letting time seep into sleep. It’s that long lasting sinking feeling through the heart, grounding into the belly; dragging the body down; sunken into a disorderly pattern towards gravity from where the body came; holding up the pulling strength of entropy fought against frontally lobed desire with the abstract mind always drowning behind, screaming into the embrace. Emotions and matters, feelings and desires, thoughts and hope, that worthy deliverance of pain, rumbling in the belly. An odd clarity comes over the body as it washes through it all and surrenders; or just runs out of options; as it depletes downward in evolution to a bug’s life existence before planting out.
As if then suddenly grasping my eyes out wide open spaced in a hope thundering an instinct retreat within me, blinking haltily away from the bleak depths; into the kaleidoscope bay of Balbriggan. I sparked. Before awakening again breathing back into life; taking in the sea air; reneging suddenly back into myself, taking back the feeling that rewarded living, I decided then upon a rathered towards; leading romantically outwards to those deep white clouds; wishful crashing waves; a boat on the horizon; taking me down, eye led blinking, the drowning depths of history in crusty, stern, falling apart, dotted along on the coast, in a see of I saw, buildings; walls; cliffs, and a Martello tower greyly sat silhouetted on the horizon; creating; holding together a story held in a pattern of time, that held all my sensations together.
Amazing everything is here, is the soaking depths drowning behind the shallow shadow of my half drunken self, as I mingled unchosen into escaping dreams dragged into morose reality with tiny little lingers of it circulating; resting with my chin on my folded arms laid out on the wall; as the train intervenes, towards it’s endless meeting battle with the LED clock; in scoping observations; I am rushed by the lurk ness monster; a magnificent painting drawn unbeknownst to me capturing my back and forth. The sea waves crashed and dined, then frothed battling back in a fizzling seep crushing fragments in a tumble roll of sound bubbling twinkling crinkles before remeanting again its vengeance to the soft onlooking sand pounding the shores rhythms. I heard none of it; only saw it, and didn’t need to comply. I’ve only just been told dreadly terrible news without any other senses to accompany and it made no difference. Mere words alone there made me rattle and shake in a blithely reaction. I shook then and the world went on, it was only me who was shaking. Picture people getting trapped into the triviality as the amass continues.
You want to shout stop. It cannot. Within my thousand yard stare newly attired I stared out to sea. And saw it again looking out to the abyss.
‘He’s dead. Robo is dead.’
Nothing answered back again, the big depths of the sea out there so callous, only the still murmur of the rolling waves, was to be heard in reply.
As the Earth is so long and old, story bound, it’s caught in a capture of can’t not stop spinning out and into whatever you do an ant digging in mud means more than you. The premanacne of nature transcends all, and all I can do is move through the moments. I know the individual means nothing, as I will die. It must happen.
I still haven’t worked it all out though, not even near to doing it and am soon to give up trying to do so.
Balbriggan train station is the worst of the worst for these tormenting feelings with its high panoramic view, an overlook; of the beach and harbour, peace and serenity beckoning up the shoreline, waves waving goodbye. It’s a nice sunny day, the raving parties loomed by the moon are lapping up calmly; slowly reaching out in white crashing tentacles to the epoch shoreline; bobbing to the beats of gravity; the sea comes back up, without a regards to clock time. The tide on the horizon will soon whittle it away, dragging night and day into its furnace creature lightly. The moon first rose with the settling sun long ago.
I don’t want to leave this place and I’m sure; looking over it; it doesn’t want me to leave it.
As I wait for the train I see familiar faces down along the promenade, the limping carpenter my age when he drilled into his leg is now old and decrepit unable to walk without a four legged crutch and I think of Robo; that picture he made on photoshop of Shinbob on his 30th captioned “I feel old” which reminds me the carpenter’s son who hung himself. Everything is tied together, nothing walks along in this world alone.
Except me soon to be in Dublin. It’s late in the day for most people, the sun is just past its warm equinox pivotally point of the day and starting to decline. I’ve already collected my dole whilst out running and into that, upon the matters of fact of life, after I left the post office, I gave my first handout of the day. A euro to someone selling that magazine. That’s a give up not a hand out or something, although I didn’t purchase it, just gave plainly, in a decently good trope of mannerisms I dropped into the box, in a lacklustre attempt to fit in. I’m already resigned to giving today and will be down almost a fiver by the end, I will not be and never will be again someone who ignores the downtrodden, to sit there already feeling a nobody grounded to concrete and not even get eye contact from thousands of people must make you feel like going off to die to unburden the world of your existence. A small gesture, even a look of grace will console empathy.
It’s duly late in the day, as the sun starts to blink through the rails on the other side of the platform, so says the starting to weaken yellow light. It must be November, or could be March, actually it’s April. A year has passed over already; how could it be so little, so early, undaunted, uncaring and easily that I’ve walked over his grave, and moved on; into a cold existence; that is unbothering to me that i’m extremely late for the ridiculous; a job interview, and don’t care or worry.
The Opera of The Sternly Defiant Magpie
Yet even within this gracious lateness, in bad luck fruits, upon comes the neverending stream of the Loreto Covenant girls, as another school day ends, and as I watch from the very afar end of the platform, the skirts flapping flowing metronome patterns over across the railway bridge onto the platform, that when the train arrives, I still luckily manage to get a seat for myself and my bag, which I’ve brought with me for my M&S wine treat.
I’m happy with content as we roll out of the station, I’ve my joke of the day on in my pocket, my big analogue radio playing Ray D’arcy through my earphones. The giggling school girls make me happy and even happier when later they run out the door at each station only to come back in the other door of the carriage, I try to hold back my smirk at the stupidity of it. One of the girls running around is cute, the kind of type I like, dark haired, blue eyed and horse faced, she notices I noticed and perks up with smiles when she sees I can’t help but look at her, when we both know I shouldn’t,
‘Hey babe I went to school with your dad’, could be my opening line. Thats where I’m getting in my timeline in life.
A train journey is a strange thing, you leave the things you know,into other things you don’t know, from Ann another odd perspective.
As the train follows back along the path, covering towards geography I fall to the woman called Ann I loved now lost in my memories and the what if’s. I’m taken back to what I’ve just walked by, up to meet again, rolling above on the rail, street images I’m refracting into, it takes me through, into a cracked mirror view perspective, and we get locked in with a car. This relationship cannot last long, car and train in a meeting together, it’s a mother driving her daughter home from school and soon we zoom by. Under the county bridge we go into a cover of hedgerow trees, to sneak past Robo’s house. How many times did I pass by him on this train, why did I never wonder or worry about him.
I think of my childhood going on the train, the magic of it, maybe that’s why I’m resenting it now. This is my first time on that train journey to Dublin since Robo died from suicide. The train memory is the straightest memory you’ll ever run through, it always follows the same path. And so as we pass Hampton Cove to rise back up from under the ground. I look at things I’ve always looked at since my youth.
This is why the start of the rail journey is the most profound, the place where the rail line goes straight past places you’ve walked through your whole youth, up above from a different point of view now, it flybys. I’m leaving the places I know. I know comfort is dwindling away. In the moving picture we come to my last spots of hope. The field above winkle island. I see myself running back through it in a wanderous fleeting moments disappearing as fast as we move and my mind whisks back to a meeting with Robo walking his dogs, as we chat about my barefoot running, it must be a sunny day, a train chugs by in the background of the scene with glaring eyes, watching us from where I am now. Thats gone now before I can even think much about it. The way of the world says you can’t stay anywhere for too long. Sadly the train reaches the last spot I belong to, Barnageeragh bay, where me and Talavs Riekstins had a long chat on the razor
rocks. I climbed the cliffs of Barnageeragh once, the only person to have done so I like to believe, A story I’ve told to noone. This scene is a stranger to thousands who pass over it every day never feeling the sea roars I felt there. That’s what makes this train journey most strange to me, the insulation from the sounds and fury, the disrespect to not dare feel it taking a brisk lookout through the window. You can’t even open the windows in the modern trains of this era.
I take my last glance over across the bay all the way along cliffs up to mine and Robo’s estate of Hampton Cove and then suddenly it’s all gone, passed my area of go.
My domain, the places I’ve walked my entire life, the childhood jaunts. And now I’m the stranger looking over Skerries. In the transition I go from feeling so much to feeling so little I feel relief as this stops the journey becoming an endless quest to capture something words can’t scramble to grasp.
Robo was here though, his video of the paraglider over the bay supplements this quest, but thats just a memory of a memory now as the train stops at Skerries station to let some people get off. And then some of the same people get back on.
It’s mundane from here on in. Towns give way to fields until the next town and me just noticing the little changes of the unrelenting world. A new housing estate spanning out of Skerries. I’m waiting for the day when Rush & Lusk station becomes the Rush Lusk station it is itself fortelled. Donabate already half building estate seems now poised to expand out greatly with all the fields uncultivated and growing wild. As we come into suburban areas past Malahide the ratio of countryside to concrete switches until it’s nearly all urban and soon I know the horrid city will be all around me soon.
All the way up to Clongriffin fields and fields waiting for the digger, already foolishly rewilded by nature, it’ll all be blocks of concrete thirty to forty years from now. Then at Donaghmede I passed the grey barren threshold of a single road that brought me into the vicinity of the old city. From here on it was or is all roads, buildings, football fields, schools, housing estates, everything zoned for humans. On and on it went until, It, was here. The atrocious concrete hustle and bustle into the all surrounding, so much movement was going on beneath me I didn’t need to hear the sounds to hear it. The torrid city. The Tolka river and Croke park marked my last claim of territory, I had no family history beyond this point. The train was firmly in the city center now, It was all around me and I didn’t really belong here. Passing over the Liffey river bound going towards Tara rail station, I looked down with my little face periscoped on the window pane outlooking at all the faces in the multitude who couldn’t see me, thinking do they really think like I think, how is that possible, all those minds, so many people thinking so many things just like me, It’s amazing.
On goodbye and over we sweeped past Trinity College, lots of places down there we’ve I’ve felt run down like a complete lost nobody, walking those streets, towards the rewards of the Anglo Irish Ascendancy. They built this railway. This train is cutting through time and history, I ponder, wondering pointely that this world makes little sense to me, as I come under the cover canopy escaping the immense grey city below into the clutch of Pearse station. This was the last stop the train said. A get out or else clause I suppose sputtered from the intercom. A hunched crowd around a door happened. We blurted out and went our different ways scattering into the variance. I was last to leave out of that subdued reality of the train and all the memories within it that I had flown through, into the grand gesture of the moving world. In a few steps the whole thing had flipped around, the city was moving through me now, I wish wistfully to moments back in my comforting train. Leaving Pearse station, entering the street I passed the last symbolic threshold in this journey to become a nonentity in the noisy city.
I was nervous as I gave myself away within the bloated crowded streets, walking. Where I live you look at someone when you walk by and give a nod or something.
Here nobody makes eye contact. I felt like the city was telling me I don’t belong in this place. In Balbriggan everyone knows me, I have a singular appearance with my long golden hair and I’m a personality, people think things about me ‘theirs that bohemian hippy freeloader who’s spending his life just cycling his bike and might have a drink problem.’
What they think in Balbriggan about me is probably a lot worse than that, but at least they think something. Who was I here. Nothing of course. On and on I went through generic junction after generic junction, the boredom of having to wait at red lights for cars who are given more importance than me is grating; i’m walking and taking up little space, they’re polluting taking up lots of space and also going a lot faster than me, so I have to wait for them, they get four minutes of green we walkers get less than one. The big car society hits me, almost literally later, I’ll write an article about it one day.
Then I took a wrong turn, almost on purpose to get away from the busy streets. Lost in Dublin city, now what. When you’re late for something here, the traffic and never ending junctions seem particularly cruel, lights turn red on purpose. The cars that almost hit me, and beep at me as I take risks don’t care that I am late. And neither does the cyclist who shouts “Ye bleeding muppet” at me. After a while, searching about, I come upon the Dodder river and it gives me my bearings, as I use it as a compass to my destination.
Finally I set upon the lofty sight towards Ringsend Community Hall, the venue for my job interview. Only twenty minutes late; or an hour, or two and an a half, or maybe four or five parsecs at this point; ( I can’t remember) I was only too embarrassed to go in at this point. I felt like a countrified rhubarb creature grabbed from it’s comforts, going about the village place moving along the blockly square; awkwardly; mosaically; spiraling around into a sitting position outside a queer square library block in the village center that gave a vantage point to spy upon the spectating drama of the Community Hall building. I didn’t belong here. To relax myself and betray outwardly my duplicity in this position as someone not from around here who doesn’t belong here but without yet showcasing myself too much as the stranger in the village that would put questions into myself as an outsider, I delightfully in comforts rolled up a smoke and watched on into the partition of smoking, looking through a new calm reality of poofs of white. I nodded my head sideways in a gazes of scope, taking in little looks and tucks around the village hoping something might happen.
Sitting there waiting for the plentiful, my eyes eaglerily rested on hope, awaiting some reaction of drama from the building I filtered my eyes towards.
Like what I dunno. Maybe the editor of this newspaper for this journalist job, lost after many bad interviews, coming out the door exasperated at 5pm stressed out, seeing me and then coming over to me and saying ‘Hey you must be Kevob Fly, we’re waiting for you. I read that movie review you sent us. Very impressive writing, come on in for the interview.’
That didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen. I got the impression people were looking at me and the strong strange accents made me feel like a stranger in the village. I sat down with a view of the Ringsend Community Hall to depart and say goodbye. I took out a pinch of tobacco and tucked it into the paper skin to roll up another smoke again. I smoked my stinking rollie watching the building. Nothing happened. And with the smoke finished it was time to leave. Still nothing happened, the editor didn’t come out of the building to spot me and say ‘hey your Kev Foy, we’ve all been waiting for ye, don’t worry about been a bit late’, nor did the maybe hope of one of the writers of the paper going out for a smoke and sparking up a conversation ‘oh your here for an interview, come on in, they won’t mind you been late at all, they’re all very relaxed here.’
The last hope was a sight of someone else going in for an interview and me feeling a positive judgemental feeling, because of how lowbrow they looked compared to me. Thankfully that didn’t happen either and even if it did, it would make no difference, desperate people cling to desperate ideas. Nothing happened because nothing could happen. It was time to leave. Walking back past the Community Hall my last lingering hope of something happening dissipated. I felt utter contempt for myself as I took one last look back at Ringsend Village and still nothing happened, nobody was chasing after me. And then I was gone forever from Ringends village. Back into the city.
The Great Global City of Dublin was beating me; it was confident with all the foreign accents I heard. At the Dodder River three trendy well educated hispanic Americans departed from a discourse they were having, with their well educated Irish friends from google, when they saw me sparking a coincidence incoming, I grabbed a few last morsels that would become lesser and lesser so. What followed was the longest follow, in following history, that ever followed, interrupting again and again into half cadence fragment sentences. I was walking behind these three American bros all the way from the Dodder river up to the Liffey River near O’Connell street, that’s a 30 minute walk. They were walking faster than me but I kept catching up with them at the traffic lights. Looking back at it; it is queer Dublin City has so many rivers in such a small vicinity.
At O’Connell’s street the radio transmission I lost way back at Donabate, starts to cut back in, crackling through the background radiation of permeating white noise fuzz that’s left me lost and lonely this past hour. All throughout this pathetic endeavor through the streets of Dublin I’ve been continually taking this chunky analogue radio out my pocket trying to get a signal from a station, any station. I was perplexed that here right in the city center I couldn’t get a signal, but reflecting about it I thought well of course the transmission comes from Kippure hill in Wicklow and I’m covered by buildings here blocking the lightwaves, still though it felt backward I couldn’t get a radio station in the city center. Everyone else of course was light years ahead of me with their phones, I bet they had no problem tuning in to Ivan Yates on Newstalk, probably streaming movies and podcasts over the G4 or G5 network most of them had. Hundreds upon hundreds of people all with their skinny delicate space age digital phones out. Whereas me, one man alone with no phone, just a big chunky analogue radio with nothing but the sound of fuzzy snow fizzing in my ear until nothing but a bad crackle reception when I crossed over the River Liffey back into the northside of Dublin. I felt like the joke of the day in Dublin city with that radio, every time I took it out I could see the eyes of Dublin City lift from their high fidelity smartphones to smirk at the country bumpkin.
Slowly but surely, feeling exhausted from the multitude of anonymous faces endlessly forming up into my line of sight, the inaudible stream of dim pouring in my ears, the complex mixture of perfume, pollution, food, coffee, cigarettes aroma’s constantly sniffing up my mind, I walked begrudgingly towards Marks and Spencers. As soon as I entered the store I regretted it. I thought of Brexit and the English mentality. Englanders, I earned my way, their proudest boast; and this is a country ruled by Aristocrats living off conquered land for almost a 1000 years. The middle classes were out to get me here, anything to make themselves feel good about their downtrodden position. At the wine section getting my treat for the day, staff swarmed around me. I got two excellent bottles of red wine. Before I’d even gotten to the self service, a member of staff came over asking if she could help me and before I could answer, she asked for ID: I didn’t have ID, because I’m 33. So then a manager had to come over and she smiled and said it was ok in a nodding patronizing manner. I forced a smile but inside I was dying and I asked out not in these exact words ‘with me being 33 years old if that was a record’ and she laughed loudly and nodded and said ‘yeah probably.’
I noticed the security guard cringing with his mistake as I left. I had won, in a very small way, my one little victory against this, the town called Dublin. I had made a small mark for myself in that enormous multitude of Dublin City to set myself apart from everyone else. The only thing was now I didn’t want to be alone as a singular presence anymore. Dublin City had grinded me into dust, I felt ashamed I’d been singled out, like the weak herd of the pack or something, I just wanted to blend in to anonymity now. I left the M&S store wanting to just escape back into the crowd. Please god don’t let this city notice me again today.
On and on into the go, feeling weary, I went down Henry’s Who’s street towards the getting getitude of the comforting train home to Fingal. I was tired, every step I took sunk me more into the ground, getting smaller and smaller. The city was pulling me down, dragging me down to downtown. Walking back down along the annals going beyond my mind rove like a bird going back on my day I flew by Bank of Ireland, Trinity, over the Liffey, then the GPO, all this towered by the buildings above driving the purpose of history growing up to shadow it, after passing the statue of Joyce I see a homeless guy crunched up in a blue bag that made me so down felt, feeling sodden down tired, I tried lying down with him in some way; picturing myself there with him, to become down and out in Dublin City. A few more hours here and the city will gobble me up and I will be that guy, a tramp without the will to leave, caught by the weight of this heavy concrete City. I have money in my pocket though and a train ticket that secures my escape from this concrete prison maze. Soon I will be rolling back through the countryside like it’s a hundred years ago. My mind wanders back into ancient greenery and then that’s when I hear the screechy, wailing, of a violin. It’s a strange scene, the notes colliding clumsily in the air, the way it’s vague from far away with the notes lamenting, the calling siren lures me in, it becomes real in slow moments, the tune sounds in and takes over the street. It’s old Ireland, one man alone with his chin rested on a fiddle, speaking up a soft sound against the turmoil, he speaks up his melody from near the middle of the pedestrianized road and I sneak a euro into his violin cover from behind for the great comfort he bestowed to me in his pursuit of individuality, in this wretched unforgiving city that tramples you into the street for standing out from the crowd.
The city is starting to go to sleep now as I go on. It’s gone just past 7pm as I walk towards the Kings station or Amiens Street or Connelly, depending who or when you are. Off the ball is starting, cutting through the fuzzy background din. This part of northside Dublin is more cooler and relaxed.
The Opera of The Sternly Defiant Magpie
Then a 5 year old girl runs out in front of a tram, the tram driver is focused and makes an instant stop. The mother is screaming scary at the child and everybody in the tram is looking out at me who’s standing right next to the screaming mother, probably thinking I’m to blame.
After that things mellow out, the traffic diminishes, the crashing din miffs out into a muffle outbound into the background, somewhere lost in the tussle of sound is that violin I miss reverberating dying grasping into the air, it is there. I’m at the edge of the city now, on the footpaths I can hear one to one sided conversations again. A village feeling comes over me now as a local spots another local named Jim and they stop for a chat. Under the hardy skeleton steel railbridge I go, it’s a triumphant procession under the arch as Connolly station looms up into my view. The area opens up into a grand plaza as I cross the street, the last busy road of the day I shall meet.
In the open space the radioactive waves beam down into me clearly, the sun says hello here saying goodbye, lighting my face life affirming with every opportunity through the clouds and building reflecting and refracting. It was only when I came to the entry of Connolly station did the radio station come clean and clear again with nice soothing audible voices, even though by this time it was that annoying show “off the ball”. They never get off the ball, it’s three hours of footballs every single night.
Entering the station I garner into myself, not knowing the meaning of that word, into the middle of the station, seeing everybody seeing me, I shake my head in the opposite direction of my feel for dramatic effect, doubtless nobody noticed and why would they because I’ve no idea what I’m doing or on about. I didn’t care, I was content with the prospect of a smoke without the worry of time. Out of the toilets I went not daring to click the absurd approval buttons. I might tap that smiley machine thing on the way in, but the thing is designed so you click on the way out to give your review, madness. I washed my hands and left to roll up a smoke with my knees bent together listening to a young man on his phone confessing his shyness in youth with his legs man spreaded out.
The People of Dublin versus Kevob Foy was over, I was totally beaten. I went out to the open platform of the station and had my smoke, looking at the big building around the city and the firmaments up above it I saw something bigger, that would never change. It was time to go, I channelled towards my train on platform seven. I eyed a hot black girl waiting for the same train as me. On the train leaving Dublin looking back over the city, in the grey demise, from the pale window, looking down at the blocks of shape formed by demented shadows cast by the passage of time, held quietly by the city, I thought of Paulie in that end scene from the Sopranos when they were lost in the woods and I saw the contrast upon the roll of the concrete that had defeated me. I reached around and checked my bag to make sure those 2 bottles of wine from M&S were still there. Of course they were still there. I relaxed back with a book. The train journey went on with or without me, lost regretfully furlonged as I turned pages of my life.
The Northern Ireland Refuse Collection
At Mayobridge
Newry. The new me. Wry. Yrwen. New. Ery. This play with words and letters is my experience of Newry, as I go back and forth, lost.
The drudgery of the hills as I search for the sign saying Mayobrigde.
This whole place is against me again and the road signs misdirect me with every chance they get. I am lost Lost in Newry with my only friend thy Radio; Ivan Yates on Newstalk.
I’m surprised and happy I can get this Dublin eccentric this far north, I thought some UK Broadcaster would take over the Frequency. And for a moment they did when I was lost in Newry near the top of some steep hills over the outskirts of the town; an English accent did break through on that wavelength, playing rave music, into my radio player.
All I thought at the time was here we go; as soon as I get lost in the UK, just after coming into the UK, a few miles over the border, and I’m losing my friendly Irish radio station to make me feel more lost. That was a strange stressful hour lost around Newry. Thankfully my radio friend did crackle back through on my way back down into Newry town. Although later the other English radio station did cut back through again as I crawled through with demented diminish sweating my way along past a housing estate with a tricolor mindfully playing at me a thought, maybe I should knock in for directions, as I went back up through the steep hills lost around Newry. Thankfully off the ball and its parochial Irish accents cut through to find me again when I was at my most lost, whilst winding my way up among the hills past Newry about to embark on the way to a place called Rathfeigh. Rathfeigh has a Catholic tinge to its name, a Gaelic vibe but my nose is up by internal instinct so I decide to turn back and roll back down into Newry I go. It’s 7:45pm now in this story and I’ve two hours to find the place called Mayobridge as I head back up again towards a place called Hilltown.
Back in Hampton Cove , Balbriggan. It’s June 2019 and the endless dilemma of Brexit and how to solve the Irish border riddle is covering all the news and fraughting the greatest minds of the land. Everyday is a media frenzy of headless chickens gabbling about impossible solutions to this great problem of the border between Ireland and Northern that none of the leaders of Europe and all their civil servants cannot square the peg. The UK is leaving the EU and the dilemma wracking the minds of everybody is thus; how does Northern Ireland part of the UK leave the EU whilst remaining borderless with the Republic of Ireland.
I had enough of reeling in this reading day after day with no end in sight. As an Irishman who can see the Mourne mountains of Northern Ireland from my bedroom, I decided I would make the journey up North to see with my own eyes the problem and try to come up with a solution for our world leaders.
So began that weird feeling of change of going into the motions. As I took my mountain bike out of the garden shed to embark upon the journey, I felt with this small act I was connecting many things together putting them into place, in our modern ordered world; packing my bag at noon to meet a strict timeline I’ve set before me; the booking I made on airbnb, my lateness from packing; I’m going into an event that I created.
As I roll my bike from the known of home into the great unknown, the feeling of the land before me, and all the challenges it will leap up forcing me to reckon with the depth conception we will all deal with deep within us; can I cope!
Time as always is the enemy as I roll into the undulating land exerting myself towards the melted Toberlone silhouette of the Mourne mountains on the Horizon. My only friend alone along the way for company in journey is my analogue radio, and as I come down into the pit of Drogheda a marker in time is made as Joe Duffy and his callers all leave me feeling alone already. It’s 3pm now with Catherine Thomas filling in for Ray on RTE Radio 1 and I have 5-6 hours to make it to Mayobrige; a village seemingly not so far from Newry Co Down judging by the map I briefly looked at.
12The
It’s a weird and wonderful life as I head north over the hill past Drogheda. Over the crest I go, and down below I flow. The voice on the radio starts to crackle until the beautiful mountain held over Dundalk suddenly looms up in my view. The radio starts to soothe me again with its company and smooth voices. I’ve gone from the radio mast signals from Kippure in the Wicklow mountains to the Clermont Cairn radio signals in the Cooleys. I stop down a little Cul de sac road just off the old Dublin Belfast road and switch from RTE radio 1 Drivetime, to the more informal formalites of Ivan Yates on Newstalk. I’m surprised and happy I can get this Dublin centric station this far north, I thought some UK Broadcaster would take over the Frequency from here on in.
After I crest the long drag of a hill past Drogheda I flow down towards Dundalk. The Toberlone silhouette is now beautimous mountains looming up growing out of its shadow into colours; merely now putting out into the distance; by roaming clouds in the foreground; that linger over a blue sky casting contrasts; into mirror reflections of the sea highlighted by golden sand beforehand. Aforementioned in this visual display is a sandy sea bay; beyond which lays the town of Dundalk a grey speck growing, poking through the imagery in chances and villages around it in the distance. I am travelling through a glorious moving picture. This is the only true way to travel, you feel the land you move through by cycling, the struggle up a hill, the ease of passage downhill, every little lump and trough along the way, the wind with or against you depending on it’s own persay; ok you can run it, but thats so slow, you only get a true feeling of motion when you cycle. Travelling on a bike you’re always feeling the feel of the land; it’s character, the rolling motion into the moving picture. It makes you fight for that glorious scenery on the crest of a hill. Where a plunge down into splendid panoramic views, rewards the narrow oblique daunt up a hill where the will to end, was fought with every push that beforehand weighed down the legs and burdened the lungs. As I lunged forward and upwards into the felt character of the land that is Ireland. It’s never truly flat here, Ireland is always either rewarding you or punishing you. A strange relationship bond is made when you cycle through a place. You always feel the land always pushing against you. Weather of course is the other major factor here, if it turns on you nothing else matters, but today as I head north the sun is shining with bless, full of bliss, radiating and I am calm.
12The
The picture becomes dull as I roll into the flat plain before Dundalk, a sleight grey overcast tinged with fiery displays develops overhead. The mountain of Slieve Foy is lost under concrete or residue on the outskirts of the town. The passage through Dundalk town is an annoying nothing, I’m saying nothing using past tense. But an Apple maps car captures me a few times, mazing around the town center to mark this monumental moment. After weaving around concrete blocks, dodging traffic jams and braking red lights “delights”, I feel the breath of historical relief as I pass over on a bridge that takes me over an estuary or a river that I know intuitively marks the boundary of the town.
Chromatic colours come waving up; kaleidoscope unformities; bounding up to me in rainbow fashions; along the varying depths of waters in ripples; instantly sparking the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold as I cross over the threshold into the romance of mountains. It’s the significance of going over a river; because bridges of this scope are rather new. From here on in after leaving Dundalk the scene changes dramatically. The border dilemma looms up now, just like the mountains that are now towering over with daunting menace, like they’d spit thunderstorms at me with relish if they could.
I can see weather systems even on this calm day getting hungry over the peaks. At the entry to the main road to Belfast in a cycle under passage, I stop to eat. I grab a toblerone or some melted chocolate bar from my cycling jersey back pocket and laugh at the funny jokes life makes. Chomping away with my mouth full quarelling with chocolate, it reminds of the yorkie bar that melted in my mouth during a magic mushroom’s trip outside Robo’s garage. I have come a long way from those days, and Robo is gone now, but thats another story. I feel safe, but sorry, and alone under the unrelenting traffic above, except, although, that is, for the comfort of Ivan Yates on newstalk; doing his condescending ridicule act asking silly devil advocate questions. The time is 5:30pm and I have plenty of time to reach Mayobrigde; which as I mentioned, judging by the map,that I briefly looked at on google maps, before leaving my house, is right outside Newry. It’s No Bother! Cycle into Newry then find a sign to Mayobridge. Boom! Easy peasy!
12The
The cycle path I follow I reckon will lead me away from the main roads but after a precarious roundabout throttled with cars I find myself forced onto the main road. What a wicked menace. The wee bike is forced to follow with the tons of cars and now I’m on the A1 dual carriageway. I’m scared and belittled, wishing with rightly just glances at the empty road across the way I could not reach.
Suddenly the feeling of this whole place is becoming against me, strikes me, as I head towards the border. I’m stuck on this major road with heavy traffic that becomes a growing menace on this passage lane cutting through the Cooleys, taking me right through the mountains that have been looming up all throughout this journey.
They, thy, Mountains. Have grown from the melted Toblerone bar on the horizon into a not gentle green giant towering over me with crowns of clouds roaming along its caps. Now they passively pass by me on my sides. I go into it; and before I know it, the mountain tops I’ve been chasing towards for four hours, my beacon that was on the horizon is now behind me again diminishing down into my past. Time is a strange thing, always moving beyond you, or against you, or whatever until you’re gone. That’s how it feels when you embark to travel into it and leave the ease of momentous life behind.
This whole place is against me though. The heavy traffic on the roundabout, the architecture of the road, the misleadings road signs intended for automobiles that has duplicitously forced me onto this dual carriageway, what essentially becomes a motorway; it all reveals the hostile welcome I’m getting coming into Northern Ireland. The journey goes on though, I can’t stop whats happening. Stuck now on the hardway of the N1 dual carriageway I become reminiscent; but there’s no stopping me now, my country is behind me, and this road is the straight and narrow path to Northern Ireland. Before the border though, still on the auld N1, an endless stream of cars with now mainly northern license plates starts zooming by. I am fighting time, cars, and the landscape as I roam on through, passing along the mountain passage that rolls by me in a moving picture on both sides. Deep green mountain hills are the last vestiges of old Ireland that peter out into plain hills before surveillance cameras on the motorway mark the spot of the border. I think for a second who monitors these cameras and I instantly have the answer of course. I have this whole place worked out. Clearly it’s the Brits monitoring these cameras; part of their mass surveillance society, I reckon. I wave at the camera’s and wave a long goodbye to my Ireland.
I am in the enemy territory of the Empire now. The dual carriageway has lost its hedges and is now without a doubt a motorway. Passing cars zooming by endlessly carcass my ears with a frustrating constant din , and I’m trapped on it on my bike. Although officially here in the empire this “little” road is not a motorway. I have this whole place already figured out though. The empire mentality of Great Britain is this; it can only be a motorway if it has three or more laneways. Zoomily Zoomby Zooming, zoom zoom zoom, swosh by the cars; it is unrelentless and dangerous. A few cars beep at me, sparking a thinking of thoughts within me. Like, this guy has no right to be on this road, not a motorway. They must be the Protestants, says my mind. I’ve been awaiting them and their moral judgments. I have this whole place figured out. And this whole place is against me. I am the outsider here on my bike on this lonely embrace. I am a long haired scruffy Catholic Irishman with a thick Dublin accent sticking out like a with what written before a whiff whaff.
I don’t belong here; get off the road; every beep says to me. The arduous ordeal of endless streaming cars fighting Protestant snobs beeping at me finally ends as a sign (the last sign!) directs me off the now A1. I head on down under, a passageway under the railway brings upon me normality, along the old main road, back on the old N1 Dublin Belfast road that leads down longly into Newry. Flowing down the hill into Newry I am in no doubt about my precarious position here. This is clearly a protest Protestant town, a large industrious place, and I, as an Irishman, am free falling down into a place that is clearly against me.
I roll down into Newry, it’s so obviously a Protestant town going by the name.
Now lost in Newry. The troubles are everywhere against me here. There are few or no road signs, a military tactic surely of ensuring Irish Paramilitaries struggle to find their way around i’m sure. I have this Whole Place Figured Out! I take the turn onto the road to Warrenpoint, a big mistake!
This whole place is against me feeling strikes me again, as I feel the road taking me away from where I want to go. I detour left in haste and find myself grinding up a very steep hill. The radio crackles and English voices crackle and break through Ivan Yates on Newstalk who’s calming Irish Dublin comforts are coming from the antenna in the Cooley mountains just over the border. I am lost now in a lost place and now in conjunction to that worry, now I’ve lost my radio comforts to this English twerp who slaps on a rave tune. I am not impressed, lost, in this place. The radio crackles again and Ivan Yates’ voice sings through clearly again. All hope is not lost. I follow the roads, but instinct knows I’m going nowhere. The hilly roads take me back down into Newry and back up out of Newry. I see a sign
for a place called Hilltown and notice the familiarity of the name. I’m about to follow it but instead I head to Rathfeigh. I am lost again.The grace of god makes me give up on Rathfeigh. This place makes no sense, my brain by instinct says yes, follow that sign to Hilltown, some internal process of genius that instinct works by says so, but I doubt the risk. I need a declarate sign of definitity to Mayobrigde, thats how things are in the Republic, when you’re heading the way, a sign points the way. But there are no signs around here for Mayobridge so I turn back again to Newry to restart. But they don’t do signs in Northern Ireland. This whole fracking fooking place is against me!
Again and again and again, I go. I head up and out of Newry up its hills, because the town is in a pit, expecting a sign to Mayobrige and nothing comes to direct me. Up and down I go; back down into the town center again and again searching for a simple road sign just to show me the simple way, just to give me a little clarity.
In the Republic you’d find 20 signs, and most of them not even in the right direction, just giving a general sense of direction. In the back of my mind,the internal dialogue runs through in the background. The troubles! Removing road signs in the UK during World War 2! Surely though the IRA would know the way around his place.
Then and once again I roll down town to reboot my travails in Newry. This time I head north towards Belfast and in the latter movement seeing the sign telling me I’m going to be sleeping out with the cows if I continue, I give up. I must do the undoable. I must ask for directions.
Newry. The New Me. Chapter Three.
Getting desperate leading out of the town on the road to Belfast 90 away I give up and ask a local out walking her dog for directions. The bland blend follows I barely need to listen to, I know the town so well now as she mentions Tesco and the courthouse and the junction after that a left turn, blah blah past this and that, those spots that your sick of looking at already, takes you up past so and so up to the roundabout at whatsoever, that feels like regurgitated vomit at this point in the venture.
‘Then follow the signs to Hilltown’ she tells me.
I was doing that an hour ago, feeling fed up, flares up in my head.
‘Are there signs’ I scream back in my demented diminish, dehydrated, exhausted and defeated by this stupidity.
‘Yes…I think..so… But Mayobridge is before Hilltown’
My saviour at what is now nearly 8pm. I even told her so. I give her a victory salute as I turn around across the road, I raise my arm high to give a Roman salute. God bless her, whoever you are!
Finally I come upon, after huffing and puffing, too tired and worn out for cursing, to the elusive village called Mayobridge.
Back aching from the weight of the bag on my back, salt lines throughout my lycra and face from the sweaty effort and now in near deliriousness from exhaustion and dehydration I reached the estate of my destination within the vicinity of Mayobridge.
Going back to how this happened my mind started reaching back through the muddled fog of confusion whipped with exhaustion. Just 8 was written on the road sign to Hilltown, it seemed so small then, just the number 8. Not 8 miles that became km like the signs here in Ireland when we went metric. No, here the imperial system of the empire was cast in stone, 8 would always mean miles, so no need to mention the reference, the empire is irrevocably. This whole place is against me feeling kicks at me again, as I grind up the hills. I suppose I should’ve realised from the signpost name “Hilltown 8” it was going to be a grueling crawl upwards. 5 miles is longer than 8 km, and all that uphill mean’s mean smiles, along the miles, on the way to Mayobridge.
Finally though I moved into the picture I’d viewed from google street view. As I rolled into the estate and took the weight of the bag off my back it was a strange lesson for me. I was raised in my early years with lessons in imperial measures( remnants of the British Empire) which then educated me into Kilometers (the EU Empire) and now northern Ireland which is leaving the EU, after miles with grimacing smiles the miles are giving me lessons again. Things in life, roll around in circles, it ain’t a linear path.
Smiley miles now roam though as the sun settles for a mellow rest down across north Antrim and I take brief relief with a smoke, feeling comfort in Mayobridge. Already I feel a bit self aware here smoking my rollie on the edge of this; what looks like an Irish council estate from the 70’s placed in the middle of nowhere. I put my reward smoke out against the wall before a small shop and continued now feeling strongly self aware. Looking across the street at the houses something was odd, out of place, I ignored it, what I noticed.
12The
The similarity ended there after that though as I stubbed out my smoke outside a small shop and I went looking for the Airbnb house I’d booked into and went into some other normality. At first It seemed straightforward as I rolled my bike into the estate, aspiring to the simple task of finding house number forty two. Everything seemed fine as I followed the house numbers in simple sequential order and or logic; 26; 27; 28; and then 32. The hunch from before brewed back.
Huh! I Ignore the glitch and continue on unabated, going into a state of perpetuity, that an unknown place gives. Some strange abnormality I reckon. I go on unperturbed,it doesn’t matter to me, the house I’ve booked is forty two, as in 42. The housing estate is odd, small and curvy with lots of cul de sacs, easy to get lost in. The houses have grotty little front gardens marked by a little railing you know children have sat on for pictures from the 90’s now posted on Facebook. I come upon house number 38, beside which is number 39. Ok, everything seems fine and normal again; Forty as in 40 is then followed by 52..Huh!
What the Fook is going on here then.
Whats going on here?, I shout out loudly in my head after already thinking so and soon verbally to be doing so.
I look around not believing my eyes. Is this actually happening? I go up and down the road in a panic again and again, a thing I don’t have time for. I look across the street and see houses beside each other; 33, 34, 62.
What. The. Fook!
The house is a ghost house. The place doesn’t exist. The whole thing is a con. I’m gonna be sleeping out in the fields with the cows. This whole place is against me feeling dread is coming over me again. A decision is made in desperation to knock on house 41. If anyone knows where forty two is, as in 42, it’ll be 41 right. The door is slightly ajay as if giving an opening feeling,so maybe this is the place and they’re awaiting me. A lie is told to myself for relief, they’ve left the door open as a signal for me. I ring the doorbell a few times and nothing happens. I ring again and again. This is getting embarrassing, so I pushed the door open. Strange Co Down accents echo through the hallway
‘de ye her the duor bill’
Still nobody comes. I ring again.
‘is thar kids missing aboat.’
No wait no longer; can I ponder; so I wander into the hallway pushing the ajar door open.
“Hello”, I go about shouting out, up the stairway. A youngish man comes out to meet and greet me and is puzzled by my inquiry about address forty two and calls for his mom. Both parents come forth. I give enquiries to them about my predicament.
‘How come the houses aren’t sequential?’ I ponder in not such an elegant way I won’t say how.
‘Sorry you wouldn’t know where house forty two is, the house numbers are all over the place’
They glance at eachother trying to avoid obvious answers. Mumbled words are all I hear in the jargon. Mother elder keeps trying butting in, behind in the background she keeps forwarding in, ‘te aren’t tethered, the houses.’
in a repetitive slogan manner, like it’s a phrase learned back in the 70’s during the troubles.
They continue on without me and have an internal dialogue about a mister Mc Mullen across the road who might be forty two, not his age, but his car is not in the driveway apparently and then send me on my way.
But I have this whole place figured out. In the back of my mind I have some vague feelings this comes from the troubles but i’m too tired and ignore that thought withning and instead tilt my head and proclaim loudly in a condescending way
“This is Fooking is Weird.”
Thanks anyway I say and the youngish guy frags me with a ‘no bother’ as I turn my back, with the second half of the word ‘bother’ weakened out by the resentful remorseful constraint in his lungs in the way it deserves.
‘No bother’ I thought that was a uniquely Balbriggan phrase.
On and out I went through the estate; Northern Ireland is a strange place, untethered houses, I think of the poor postman, who I will encounter later in his red royal mail van in this travail through the north. After finally finding the house in between 69 and 75 I reluctantly ring the doorbell and my second savior of the day answers. An attractive dark haired petite woman named Lada greets me. Her eastern European accent is the first time I feel the comforts of my diverse hometown Balbriggan. I go to shake her hand but her big burly husband imposes himself by routine into the scene and my hand turns toward him.
As strong as he seems, he’s acting purely in accordance with his wife’s role, who’s clearly in control and my eyes are drawn towards her.
Annoying ritual questions are asked about my journey.
12The
Making my declaration to the place and my hosts after the 7 hour long journey here; to unburden the stress and give respect to my entire aching body; I proclaim proudly and loudly,
“There are no fooking signs to this place.” Not in angry mode though, that’s a sad emotion and I’m feeling happy to be here finally.
Half cadence sentence replies and glances between husband and wife mean they, like me, both of us foreigners here, have noticed the same thing. She, Lada, who else, takes me around the corner of the house to the place I’m staying in; a little house to myself, showing me around and giving Wifi instructions before leaving me back to the kind comforts of my solitude. A few minutes later her husband comes knocking regretfully offering a lift to the shop nearby. The intrusion is declined politely, an informative response displays my sound splendid candor,
“I’ve just spent the last 7 hours cycling here, Its no bother for me walking to a shop 5 minutes away.”
And away he went. I made myself at home and followed the plan I’d made on google street view and chased the diminishing sun down the road at 9pm. The walk to Eurospar was admirably annoying with cars roaring up the narrow road. It was so annoying, why couldn’t they put the shop a few hundred metres up the road before the path ended, I wondered, pondering. You’d have to learn to drive if you lived in Mayobridge.
But I have this whole place figured out. They don’t want people walking here. Get a car, get fat, get a boring job, commit, conform, obey, fit in. The protestant mentality is embedded even into the road structure here.
All along the way as I went to O’hares Eurospar cars swifty paced by me in a packing manner as the cars zoomed by, zooming home on their daily commute home on their way to Newcastle, surely a Protestant town.
I’m sure they knew I was obviously a Catholic with my long hair, jumping on the verge to avoid Protestants in luxury 4×4’s and suv’s.This narrow road has no place for a mere mortal walking.
Cars are industrious and take you conveniently and efficiently to places of mundane repetitive work. Again and again and again, like a metaphor, the people zombies in the cars go past me. Again and again and again I jumped up onto the verge to avoid aggressive 4×4 cars who just didn’t care because they knew. The lesson was clear, I don’t belong here!
It’s Me, long and golden haired; walking on the road; against heavy Protestant traffic. Of course! He’s a maverick; an outsider; doesn’t belong here; clearly a devout Catholic. This whole place is against me. It was clearly not a place tolerant of walkers unlike the free Irish Republic.
Finally in this adventure walk, I venture through, alone among along, into the menace carpark that brings me to O’Hares Eurospar.
Inside the shop I became The stranger in a Village instantly.
Everybody is greeted with gestures as they passed eachother by, with each knowing greeting of each other’s names. I alone, was ignored looking for comfort in the aisles. A whole day of new discovery is hard and my only determination in this shop was wine. I grabbed up some unfamiliar but similar items to eat; mince meat, pasta sauce, along with some spagetellia and some sugary ice cream treats for my morning retreat from the wine.
Now the Story of the Wine quest. Now this is when I felt like a real stranger in the village. The wine I spot, on a rack was oddly placed behind a glass pane that looked like a fridge. Red wine in a fridge, what else; well this is Northern Ireland after all and i’m all alone and well this place is..well let’s not get too paranoid
Undeterred or just relaxed or realizing I have a major drinking problem I go up to the window pane expecting a handle to miraculously emerge and start clawing at the window. This whole place is against me.
I put my fingers in the cracks I can find to try prise it open to no avail. Then I try and make some suction on the window pane with the palms of my hand. This is getting embarrassing though. The stranger in the village sensation is growing. Heads are turning to look at me, the staff look a bit alarmed. Maybe they think I’m a bit simple and am obviously a Dubliner!
But I’m not giving up. I’ll smash through the window like The Terminator if I have to; to get at my red wine. But before I do that I go over to a member of staff and give the game away with my thick north Dublin accent.
‘Sorry how do I gette te the wine, I can’t open the dure’
‘Tha’s jst de display wandow, you’ll have te go round the side tere te ge inta off-lisence.’
I dunno, maybe it was just the moment I was in, but Co Down accents sound very condescending, and the smirk on his face didn’t help.
Sure enough the booze is cordoned off and I have to go through a pathetic little barrier that reminds me of Ireland in the 1990’s. I have this whole place figured out though. This must be some Protestant sin thing about alcohol.
But it was a very decent wine though, for such a small shop, a bit pricey but worth it. I had a good night and slept well. No actually it was really good wine. I slept perfectly, that’s what a good red wine does, especially when you drink two bottles.
The food I bought was a different story. The mince was ok, probably good, I live near Meath which produces the best beef in the world, so its hard to compare. The pasta sauce I bought was like tomato ketchup though. Utterly tasteless tripe laced with sugar. Still I got the meal down into me belly and as I passed midnight and opened my first bottle of wine I felt ready for the next day. Soon after my radio leaves me, the voices turn to Irish, no radio station gives me anything social and I am alone now, cause I don’t understand this language lost in history.
Later that night with my only clarity. All alone at Mayobridge, real alone, loneliness many will never feel. All alone with just my radio at Mayobridge, all along it has been with me, my only substitute, my only friend. Radio waves from the mast at the top of Black mountain overlooking Newry and Dundalk have been coming down towards me all along this journey giving me comforting voices from Dublin.
The next day is hard to describe in words so I won’t bother much. The shining sun. Apart from that phrase. The rest is mundane. Read on into nothing. If you want to. A happy paragraph. The boring capture of it follows. Happy days.
The sun caressed my skin that gave a pink warmth I felt later into the night. I went into the mountains. An Mtb trail found me, by pure luck I rode into a place called Rostrevor. I went up up up and away into the skyline. I felt alive and alone under trees. Where mountain crests gleamed down with or without judgment. Who knows what they think of us. All the whilst listening to RTE radio 1, whats her name, before that ended, marking the passage of time, and I had to return home to Mayobrigde. I switch back to newstalk along the path beneath the foothills before the mountains. Below, back in the valley I look back towards myself, from the mirroring vantage points my eyes venture. Below and above, I was there and am now here again, giving the different perspectives of time. I feel like i’ve no choice in the matter. I must follow the linear path back through time from which I came.
The amount of expensive big cars again passing me along the way amazed me. That glorious warm green smell of sweet grass pastures snorks my nose with fermented taffs. I’d call it the smell of yellow mellow yet I know it’s mainly just green grass or cows that smork my nose.
Then the next day happens. Hot June begins. Upon under a hot blistering sun I explore every road on the foothills of the Mourne mountains; sweating, cresting hills, cooling down and back around up I go past that dog again and over a stream that’s a road. Up and down sweating away in rolling green hills, pure bliss. Whats this; Lazy Hill. I must go on, up, down, and back around County Down, past that slumbering dog again outside a cottage farmyard and over that quaint stream thats part of the road. Down the curvy bendy roads I go, until up upon rolling hills valleys. Then comes upon me the striking Red Royal Mail van, on a tiny backroad recently repaved with still unflattened down loose gravel; as I baked under a sweltering hot sun; me alone doing a grinding going up on a gravel path, up a mounty steep hill, along into the prologue of the romantic Mourne mountains hills. That released its tormental agony with monumental far flung views across fields and hills right across the history of this Island into and far beyond to the Northern sea. These are just glimpses of those moments to remember.
Two days cycling around the roads surrounding Mayobridge and not one single sign directing to the place exists. Does Mayobrigde exist? It’s unfathomable! Mayobrigde is a place you just find yourself in. This whole place is against me. Must be because it’s a catholic town. Hilltown isn’t much bigger than Mayobridge, but has many signs directing to it, clearly from the name it is a Protestant town. I have this whole place figured out though! I am learning all the time, subliminal messages are everywhere here. For instance the signs before the road junctions say “Give Way” rather than “Yield” as in the Republic. Asintosay, Give way – Or give up! As in. Give yourself up! Surrender!
Surrender To The Empire. Oh yes yesterday is the empire, a mentality of 1880, a day is hundred years here. I have this whole place figured out.
Going back a day to yesterday. The man in the royal van sticking out like a red thumb as it comes down an unfrequented valley beeps at me a friendly hello just before I sweat crest into peak hills that finally relent to give upon a grand panorama view across vast parts of Northern Ireland. I can see the sea from here, from many directions.
12The
Last night in Mayobridge before heading home. I take a check of the weather forecast. It beguiles back luck, a prediction of blunder so precise, I ease to sleep with a wonder, no way can they predict thunderstorms that precise, ridiculous. I sleep soundly, not worried at all.
The next morning I awake late. The rush is annoying, doing many things at the same time to catch up.
It is time to leave this place, to asunder home. As I part to leave on cue, after clearing up and packing my belongings on a drab Saturday midday I hear a boom of thunder. Oh this whole place is definitely against me! It won’t let me leave.
A picture of the day ahead comes forth, hours of choking under heavy rain; drenched. That splish splash whoosh, drearily wearing me down soaking through every porous part of me. My clothing soaked; my poor bike begging; soggy socks all day long. That Dread Ahead. The rain starts smashing down belting against the window pane. I wait it out, for the sake of me the forsaken. And then, suddenly, it stops. A forelasting lingering dribble doesn’t even bother itself. The path is clear, somewhat. The time has come to embark upon the task no matter the troubles into the thunder. I start to head home. The wet road mimics up the rain, as I roll downward towards, into the terrain, back to Newry, splashing up its wet lingering remnants of the dark cloud that just passed above. As the road channels an ease of passage for little streams to foster through, the whoosh wash wetness from the roads in the warmly burdened June air dragging up the wet, dries up and depletes away as I come back down into the pit of Newry town, back down into that bad memory. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible but the traffic lights are against me. As I go through the town I realise now the traffic lights have this weird system here. You can’t just chance through an amber light like in Ireland. It goes red before amber and green into amber or something. I have this whole place figured out though. There’s no place for chancers like me here; you can’t chance through a red light right after the amber. It’s totally backward here. Bonkers though as it is I go on though, what else could I do. Struggling up through Newry on my escape a man crosses the busy road and is beeped at. A two fingered saluting retort is given in retort. I of course have this whole place figured out though. The guy in the car beeping is clearly a rich entitled Protestant snob and the poor man crossing the road giving the fingers is a downtrodden Catholic. This is what Northern Ireland is.
After a hard effort up mean streets I leave Newry and part ways from the North upon simple back roads. After that it’s a simple task; oddly enough I was enticed away from that horrible mainroad (not a motorway!) by a cycle lane that led onto
a back road running along the not a Motorway, A1 road. I’m confused, why didn’t they do this in the Republic of Ireland.
A beautiful road it was, the old road, now devoid of traffic, carefree with the countryside, the journey back was so much more pleasant, I roamed on through without a worry and I had a spacious hard shoulder comfort throughout. I had so much space this must be the old Dublin Belfast coach road, I reckoned. A point I already made. Musical words. Like games with chairs. It doesn’t matter much really what it was, the hard shoulder was a bike lane by default of space and I felt safe with little traffic about.
The journey continues on along speculative manners. Suddenly a road sign pops up and now the speed limit is denoted by km again.
I raise my hand again,even though there are no cameras around, or people, the second wave I’ve made in this journey, profound in gestures one way or the other. Rarity is the word of this moment, passing from one country to another without mention. The only mention I will make is the smell of lunchtime soup coming from hotel restaurants littered in the intermittents of this journey.
Bored I can’t help myself, so I detour at an enticing roadsign up a backroad and so depart from my boring straight course road to embark upon a risk on minor backroads. An opportunity arises along the forest path in Ravensdale. The instinct within me takes me into wooded trails. Ancient stone circles spark curiosity within forest dens and then gravel trails prevail as I go up up up into towards a grand view beyond the wooded veils of the mountain into the crests that bump over the green plain down into Dundalk. Looking out at all the green fields, the estuary leading outwards seabound, the townlands leading to Dunalk and beyond to far flung places. Profound reasons climax the horizon. Nothing can embrace death. Drogheda perps a blotted grey spot from here and the picture roams on towards my home. It’s a green way all the way with spots of little details, and Balbriggan is a grey dent far on the horizon. Yet I will be back there soon today, that is this place, as I look upon the quest before I descend back down the mountain into that picture. A moment of clarity comes over me to reflect the cresting of a mountain top view. I’m over the border now. High above, out of occupied Ireland, looking out into the Irish sea and I am perplexed as Brexit looms in my mind and the answer is right before me!
What is it that I am missing something, it’s so obvious. There it is a natural border. The Irish sea. What am I missing here, it seems so simple to me. The Irish Sea is the Border. Obviously.
Broadly near the crest of the mountain; I climb over a fence and take a picture over a vast flat terrain vaguely veiled by grey misty hanging clouds; that in some spots hung clotted in dense blots; laying a clump; masking the resolution of a few small dumplin hills; far beyond in the horizon; into dingy grey triangles; all the way along to Fingal, where I’m about to depart to. I parted away from that picture that I drew myself into and in a condescending way descended back into the pit of time, from where I came from, where we all really belong, or can’t really escape from. That the beginning is the end, no matter how far you go up in the struggle, the weight of the world awaits no matter what is pulling towards its end. I flowned back down uncaring into the homebound picture towards Dundalk without a bother.
I’m on my way home in this transient nature of time. Although of course I’ve always been home along this journey and of course always alone. Travelling for me is a shadow rehearsal of dying, a lonely adventure away from the places I call home that one day I will have to leave forever; thats why in the dusky night before I departed to Mayobridge I stood staring at Stanyrock, wondering. The return into common territory I know brings a feeling of phoenix revival into me as Clogherhead jutted out over the sea comes into view.
I write in past tense from memories created in the moment before the movement. Days, weeks, and months. Where I am writing from I will never know. But now I am almost home as I meet the estuary of the Boyne river.
Its very hard to go into the vast and come back into the empty. When you travel in the true way with the land controlling your exertion . When rolling through a moving picture on a bike you are at the mercy of the land. That green wander that once was only your imagination comes alive. It hurts you, it dements you, it inspires you, it beats you, It absorbs you, it amazes you, it exhausts you, it transcends you, and in the end it defeats you. It makes you lost and makes you find yourself; that sounds so corny but it’s true. You move through a moving picture that allows you to discover yourself. Running is similar, but not effective enough in its travails to reach out to little triangles on the horizon that look like a melted toblerone bar until they loom up over, it’s not a moving picture when it’s slow. And you can’t feel it in a car or train. The difference with cycling is you can move with it into a moment with the distance you can cover. The experience of all these different emotions when you work yourself into the land, into that moving picture, where little triangle silhouettes that envisage a melting toblerone bar, that grow and start to loom up before you, until they become mountains towering over you menacing with their grand depths, is profound. Four hours beforehand at my bedroom window looking out before I embarked on that journey north, the grand mountain looming up over me was a grey triangular cut out pasted on a window sill.This is what makes cycling a real sense of movement. When you are moving with your own pain, sweat, panting and energy and feeling the movement, you feel the rolling picture you are moving upon into.
That’s all it is, those fleeting little moments. Does it matter where you are; we have small moments and big moments. So much is so little in this world. That’s what makes it hard to come back to the trivial routine of life. Think about it and dwell into obscurity. The hardest place to leave is yourself and only do it if it’s for the better. The collective union of ending days says this -It is hard to go from mountains back to nothingness. It’s been a long ride home as I pull in at Laytown, a fitting name for a place to take a break, and look back at the mountains on the horizon I have just come from. They have melted back down into toblerone bar silhouettes. It’s a weird and wonderful life as I contemplate my existence through this moving picture. A few hours ago I was at the top of that mountain now a grey triangle looking down with beyonder at where I am now. Now, the moment, looking back at where I came from; a small groove between hills that only hours ago loomed up as the tormenting steep giants they were. Beyond and Behind that little groove is the village of Mayobrige, glad to be rid of me or never caring I was ever there.
At Laytown I take the weight of my bag that I’ve been carrying home for 5 hours off my back; recoil at my decision to take a vain detour along the coast; and relax to roll up a smoke. A memory from almost 15 years ago or maybe even more than 15 years ago pangs me. The first time I cycled to Drogheda and back along the coast roads. The comparison seems strange now. But at 20 years of age and unfit, cycling to Drogheda and back was a big deal. The only things I really remember from that day apart from a refreshing drink of coke when I got home,and walking through the outskirts of Drogheda distraught at my massive accomplishment, was passing my love crush Sarah teasing me on the Balbriggan proms and a girl near Laytown commenting she’d loved to be my bike. That was without a doubt the best and only bespoken compliment a woman has ever given me.
12The
The road home that was before me is now after me. What was a day ago will become a week, that will become months and the days will soon meet years in significance. All down at Co Down. The void of space, you go to a place and come back to a town to watch the same old man walking down the street. The familiar faces who didn’t notice you leave pass on by again, like nothing has ever happened. Life was bigger back then, when I was there in the sun panting away exploring the foothills of the Mourne mountains. You can travel to the never following main roads inclined to give nothing away. Stop here for a moment to take a rest, that’s the only way, a slow movement of effort that makes you feel the undulating land. You are watching the sad duel of time, the effort of tides fades away any plans I had. Will I, the last word I will ever write. This is lost space.Back home with the comforts of home drinking a cuppa I go back into the memory to explore myself and to confirm my prejudices. On my gmail my airbnb host is upset about a mishap of plates up in the air gripple grabble or some word I lost from in my vocabulary, something to do with dust from another guest and losing superhost.It turns out I erroneously gave a bad review by skipping the part about cleanliness. I skipped it because the place was too clean and by doing so I had inadvertently deemed the place unclean. A boring back and forth happens of exchanges before it peters out from blatant but reasonable responses from me regarding her hysteria. I ended it with ‘well you were a super host to me’. I checked up a few weeks later and she got her superhost thing.
Now back home at the end of this voyage I take to the Internet to reaffirm my prejudices about the journey I partook upon north. It turns out Rathfeigh is a protestant hill town, imagine how that would’ve worked out if I continued. But before more my Airbnb host Lada is upset about my review. I gave a really good review but skipped the part about how clean the place was (too clean) or something and this upset her and someone else complained about dust on a table and she wanted to become superduper host. The funny thing is my review of her was very well worded like this article, giving helpful details supporting the place, yet she just said of me in her review “Kevin is a nice guy, who follows the house rules” – so I’m smelly and left a bit of mess (6 bottles of wine and I do have strong body odour but I opened all the windows before I left). I don’t have time for this titter tatter after seven hours of cycling so I end it in a definite fashion “well you were a super host to me” whatever that is, she literally did nothing but show me the door into the place. Like I care if the place was messy or clean, as I said to Lada my host if anything it was too clean. The back and forth continues. I’m going back into the narrative now. Someone complained about dust on a table she tells me; pathetic people, must’ve been a clean cut protestant from Antrim I reckon. I let the argument slide, I just want to be done from it. I know one day I will die. That’s the thing that has been hanging over me from the moment I took the MTB from my shed. Can I cope.
I laid back to rest, with the kettle on the boil, from the come and go, the there and come back again, that has ended. The home comforts come forward; sugary snacks laden down with tea, as I laid back on my rocking like wooden chair. I take to the internet and google Newry, sure of whats to come. I click awaiting answers of confirmations. I am laid back, sure of myself. Wikipedia abounds with assurance answers. And sure enough my prejudices are confirmed. I’m wrong. Actually. Totally wrong It turns out. Everywhere about everything. Newry is not an industrious town of Protestants, actually it’s mainly Catholic. Mayobridge is also a Catholic town; they weren’t Protestants in the shop judging me as I purchased wine. The Give Way signs are like the amer before the green, it has nothing to do with the British Empire. The metric system is as seemingly bland and worthless as the imperial system, it’s just tokens plonked in the ground, heaven help those who pray to it. That guy giving the fingers wasn’t a Catholic and the car that beeped wasn’t a Protestant, they were both just pricks. Finally I took a look at Rathfeigh; what was my fate that day if I continued on towards that town. A grim thing I reckon, nothing or little to do with all that. I miss those days at Mayobridge.
Mayobridge
I miss those days at Mayobridge, at the foothills of Mourning mountains, alone; acast; astray; watching the sun not so far away, display its farewell goodbye today, away past north Antrim. Along the way, on the lonely day towards Mayobridge I go I hear myself say. What happened at Mayobridge I hear yourself say. I miss finding a place that was lost. A girl along the street in wee auld Newry, just out walking her dog, she pointed the way, to save the day, alone along the way to Mayobridge. Alone a long way off on a lonely way, before hills grew to mountains, the lonely day went on towards, to say, Mayobridge. Before towards; I go backwards to go back towards the place I stay, now lost in the town of Newry, I hear myself say ‘Are there signs along the way’ the lonely way to Mayobridge. Somewhere sometime lost in nearby Newry. Where’s the way to Mayobridge I hear myself say. Are there signs I say, pleading away. There are signs she says, not far away, along the way, odd signs of course, she tells me, as I go about, racing the diminishing day, lost and lonely and cast astray. This after hours going up and down, in what seems like all day. Heaving and weaving around through denty dark places; foothills little motifs; only to retreat back downtown, like estates were the trenches. An amber sun is chasing against me now; alone again along the sky. God smokes, spectating with cherished delights, my delay upon my way. A cigarette sun the world under its asunder. Rolling my bike wheels down under into town in Co Down before I see the phrase for the last time. In hills before mountains along the way, on the lonely day towards Mayobridge I go I hear myself say ‘Are there signs.’ Signs of time that almost took me to Rathfeigh, A place lost to rhyme. But before that matter of fact , I dismissed that road to thy dismal name Hilltown. This, after that, takes me back, in time I wonder to meet myself again as I roll back downunder. Down in Co Down back into the town I’ve downtrodden I quip a remark before I embark, my way away from all these things today and all the blunders that dragged me plundering back down, back to this town in Co Down.This is my last chance I say. Before delights betray, green hills cast the way, up I stray, I’m on the way. Green abundance hills, fertile gifts alive with life and forcing frightful delights towards mountainous doom and gloom. Up I go, I roam. This is the place to be. Finally along the way, on this lonely day, to Mayobrigde.
The Interview of The Anonymous Man at Wuhan
It started with Dutch courage and ended with a farkle in a cigarette box . He dithered from thinking of consequences,the undoing of courage. The nightmare scenarios ran around naturally over and over again in his head, but the positive outlooks had to be forced. Again and again he got that sinking feeling, in his gut, as he thought of his future self, bounded to a kitchen, working as a porter, alone, ripped out from the freedom he had now. Now, was him as often as possible as himself, a layabout, lying in a field reading a book under a lobbing sun, without a worry but the time of day, and he did not like the way this interview was impeding upon his thoughts. He began to resent it. It was ruining his present and possible future. It hung over him, seeped into everything he did, because everything he did now was threatened. Things that were trivial to others were cherished by him.
The weather of that month of May was a constant emollient radiating sun warming his skin as he was carefree and outdoors living, walking , reading, running, cycling, feeling life in breaths of warmth, sparkling sun lit seas and the buzz of bees under blossoming trees . The sense that this new future gave to his imagination was bad. He saw an image of himself working, enclosed away from that sun, sweating in a kitchen, from 4 to 11, and despaired at the thought. Eventually the unrelenting anxiety of the forthcoming felt like the sensation of the oncoming of death. He knew they were the same thing, both were the fear of great change coming and of being content with life, and a loss coming, he detested this. A hypochondriac is merely one afraid to lose the only thing you have.
The cure was within him and he was weak. He went into an argument with his brain, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to”, he clinged at these live imaginative words from a book he’d recently read. A self serving selective philosophy was developed around it. He took comfort from other references like The Simpsons, “If it feels good, do it” or “Just don’t do it” , an advertisement he upturned in its logic , or a mere memory he retreated into.
Sure didn’t your parents think you didn’t go to that other interview once. His mind argued on. Look I wanna go watch the Ras cycling race and not have this nonsense lingering over me, crippling me with its doubts.
It was a strong argument in favour of happiness and self indulgence. His brain was very shrewd and cunning when it came to making itself happy. A plan was devised kinda subconsciously, in piecemeal. But when it came , it was complete and with it, was submitted to the frontal lobe and accepted immediately. It was fail proof and with brilliance, almost, buckled by one alluring fault.
On the morning of the interview he woke and took on the role of interviewee immediately. When probed in the kitchen by his near and dear erstwhile parents, whilst getting his morning tea about the time of the interview, he shrewdly weakened his voice and slowed it somewhat to showcase anxiety and fear about the forthcoming interview he was not bothering going to, as he gave back the details they demanded.
His elderly parents left for the gym, a routine they would not keep up for long. Alone in the home, he had 2 hours free to himself before having to put his plan into action, he was very pleased with these two spare hours. Seated on his bed with laptop on top of his lap reading the Sunday papers online, he gorged on chocolate,forested down by glushes down his gullet with gulpfulls full of hot brewing teas of temperatures, statured tea held brewily by a long elongated cup. Swigging away he went with the melt of chocolate delights on the palate flowing down sugarated into the veins wafted by steamly tannins intermingled held gorsely by the hot tea. Slowly he shook off last night’s two bottles of wine with the sugar and caffeine. It was as mentioned a Sunday, but that did not matter, it was a medical habit and had nothing to do with the weekend. After the newspaper content was exhausted, he did a stroll down through Facebook, liking stuff like it was his job, clicking on a few items of interest, each which opened onto new
windows for later, between which, his attention was drawn towards carnal needs. And so he watched some porn and fapped. All the while, time started to close in around him. Eventually he could wait no longer and feeling ready he had to get on with his way.
He went into the motions of man in opposite directions, putting clothes on then pulling them down again scoping upon the weather roaming outside the window with hand out felt; embarking with a visit to the toilet for what he now called very recently a Tom Doulimin. Alan Clark’s diaries usually accompanied him during these sit downs and the coincidence of Alan calling it a Thompson amused him. The Thompson thing set in motion the process of leaving the house. Feeling clean and empty after it, a morning burden gone, he unwinded down through his routine. Washed, dressed, skin moisturized, and with hair brushed, the last step was reached. He gathered his things. On his travails he took with him: a wallet; phone; cigarette kit; mp3 player; house key; lighter; and a back bag containing; empty wine bottles, asirprin, a dried opium poppy, a book and a ventolin inhaler within the mouth of which held two tablets both laced with 8mg of codeine.
The transversion from top of the house to the bottom, and out the door was ready. He stepped onto the steps of the stairs twice before rapidly reascending back to his room, this was common anxiety behaviour. His mind was always a fog from the night before and he started to scramble in the effort to re-assembly order as everything was scattered about into disorder and locations forgotten. Finally. he. was. ready.
At ground floor; looking at the front door; with bag on back, and pockets filled; he redid the last acts of checking the back door and rechecking his back pocket for the house key. Now lastly ready steady, with necessities completed he could securely exit the front door which would lock behind him when closed. ClickClunk.
He was now exposed, out open in the open world with infinitely blue overhead and ran through the estate to limit the amount of time his parents might see him with head up racing towards the skerries road for they were due home at this time, he knew this from the timer of the oven which was cooking the Sunday roast. When he left the house it was due to go off in 20 minutes and often they were home early. The sense of relief when he reached the Skerries road unseen, was wonderful. He breathed in the hours of freedom that lay ahead without interference. It was 1pm now and he could not be home before 9pm. A day’s license, not from his choice, to do nothing though, outdoors roaming about; he took it with glee; doing nothing was his ambition in life. He walked on along the path, in an attitude of indifference to the world as the cars passed by, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In his bag as an intermission, in addition to his usual baggage was a good pair of shoes, slacks, shirt and tie. He walked towards the hills, a bit irate at the bottom of the Blackhills at a horse stable, he got stuck into a conversation with a local man who was polite enough to release him before the race went by. The steepest part of the hill was reached and he took his place at the side of the road and waited looking down the grim incline with glee. The bike race, called the Ras, came and went up the hill threely; once, twice, thrice, without much ado. Second time round, he spotted a local guy he knew in the main peloton and cheered him on, other than that he was silent. But on the third lap he did clap for the county riders, laggers and strugglers, and the last man before the Broom Wagon.
After the race; into the dispersing silence, he walked up the rest of the hill up to the Ardgillan, really called Ard Giollan, park entrance, as the crowd muted away. He proceeded on with his plan. The 33 bus at 4:20; beckoned; so to speak. This would take him to the interview, the interview he’d already politely cancelled, but he was planning to go anyway for reconnaissance, in case his parents interrogated when he got home, he would need details to elaborate.
The walk down to Skerries was immense, looking down into the grainy grey blot of the town in the green expanse mazed by hedgerows and little forested dents, that all forescaped towards the sea and the three islands beyond. The gentle country stroll is dead he reckoned as he descended towards Skerries. Whenever a car wasn’t present; which was rare; his mind melded with the past and he imagined this green scene that he saw in punctuated briefs of solitude unchanged for a hundred years. Yet in every moment of thought it was dented again and again and again by the interrupting car stirring up. He rose up in innocence past the graveyard and thought of Herr Foxy’s rotting corpse down in there, an auld school yard friend. A lot more memories were to come here soon unbeknownst to him. He passed her or him or whatever it was or will be now and then with cars rumbling by unnoticed and unscated to the depths of life that forced him again again into the moment with its burdens of hostility. Finally it was time to become; meet into the patterns; but in the meantime his bladder had become very active, interrupting upon his higher minded thoughts dwindling plans down to basic bodily functions. The drinking swell to quell the dehydrated morning was becoming a constant calamity. He hopped over a gate into a field and pissed away before foraging about awkwardly into the suitable interview clothes from his bag. During the brief interlude that he was naked; between switching clothing standing on his shoes in a field; he felt ridiculous and human again and loved the world. Dapper in his slacks tied tightly, clean shoes, and sharp cladden shirt, hopping the gate back onto the road his hands got tainted with oil. I can’t remember how that happened to him, maybe a farmer had laced the gate with oil. This was a strange transgression without doubt that held potential repercussions. He was a worrying type, the type who was constantly running through all future scenarios. He foresaw questions about how his hands became so greasy. Those oily hands would need to be cleaned, he would not forget. Before reentering townland, coming down the steep picturesque hill into Skerries, alarmed at his pushing bladder again he relieved himself again in the field just before the tunnel that harshly marked the boundary into Skerries townlands . He would need to go again soon and a plan was devised. The lower part of his groin bodily function was bursting with a near constant strain; he could feel its calamity bursting in again and again forthcoming; that forming up down future coming. St Patricks day was happening again* in his memory as he came down foreboding the steep hill into Skerries. At Shenick’s road under the tall pine trees he settled on a wall to pine and ponder, and rolled up a smoke to charute into the waffitudes of different futures escaping him. Exhausted, he trudged on into the dissipated blend constantly stirring up without any meaning, until it profoundly grew months later to September when near Delirium Tremens struck. He exited the middle class housing estate and met the scene of the sea. The 33 bus offered itself as planned but this was deviated due to the newly pressing needy pee plan. The bus was avoided with glee and regret, he was glad to be rid of that plan, but it offered problems that needed to be redressed. He walked the path along the ancient road. The old Fingal coach road, an ancient stretch into Dublin; the old pathway leading through the parishes, into the histories through Rush, Lusk, Malahide, with horses and carts, along with it, that brong long marches that brought history into Dublin. Along the way with him going into this singularity, he departed from that venture up to the remotely Ballyhavil lane that offered relief. How old the lane was he did not know, but it felt ancient. He loved Ballyhavil, it was one of those few spots that only he knew, a resting enclave.
He let go again, at a gate resting beside the sea, releasing the fastest foreignly travail from mouthful gulps to groundful god blends; swifter than any river or cloud; watched the trinkle stream form, then startled a hare; the hare ran away into history; and he hovered about in that secluded placid comfort in ease with time; like he’d often done in secluded places; all the while taking glances; differing in length, to views, of the rich green differing beneath, those clean white clouds fostering above and the comforting blue sea below, and the sky high up above in infinity reflecting; or was it refracting, about him above him below him. The globe of views was a vast open space that spread out thinly to the Mourne mountains. Behind him already in this history was his watery urine quickly evaporating into this future’s place of presence. Ballyhavil lane in a picture of words receded into times tide.
In between beyond grounding him to his place lay Skerries. Then bored, and worried about being found awkward, he returned to the normal world by taking the path back to Skerries.
Whilst returning to Skerries the 33 bus zoomed by again, dragging at him, sucking hot air, choking diesel from its sides.
He wondered into it, the moments he missed, the different story of history that just happened. What would’ve happened if he got on that bus, nobody will ever know.
Lost then in times lament; he went down onto the beach and walked, until he became solely alone. He found an enclave along the grassy cliff and laid down and watched. He smoked again and then the heavy burden forced down again, he let it go looking the fool if anyone saw him; and then after a bit again out of worry onto the grassy cliff looking out over the field with the crotch exposed out placed into the grass, he let go again. White water rafts sprinkling the long cliff grass. He could see the cars on the road driving by while he did it, eyes fetching in directions was his imagination of them wondering. He settled within the sense of depart, as the growing colours within the firmament signalled the growing run of the day. Time was running its direction again; so he homaged the skyline taking the light of time and returned to the main road. After looking at the bus time timetable on the pole he gave up his planned fake visit to Santry to do his fake interview.
His main priority now was not to be seen. He nightmared about people he knew gossiping about him to his mother,
“oh I saw David (sod that i’m Kevob) all the way up in Skerries the other day.”
“when was that so?”
“he must’ve been up there watching the bike race”
And then the deception would all fit together and then David ( meaning me, my middle name, I’m Kevob) would be in a world of shit reconciling my actions.
As I Kevob went on, in the background he, meaning me, could see with sound the imagination of the carnival of the Ras race happening by the echo of an intercom riveting through the town, even though it was a muffled confusion. He felt sad missing the moment listening to it in a manner befuddled, censored by the streets somewhere else, as he walked through a poshly middle class housing estate.
Kevob headed for the train station, the train ride home would be the discreet way home. Kevob reached the train station now feeling laboured and duly worn down and attempted to trick the ticket machine,but failing that Kevob floundered about noticing and acted in recognition to give way to those behind him in the queue as the Dublin bound train was incoming. Resigned, Kevob bought a short day hop ticket for 12:50 euro fifty and entered through the open wee wooden gate into Skerries train station on foot for the first time in his life. Kevob was grounded now, after growing up through this station train northbound, leaving the poetry behind into a stomp of reality prose. It jarred him that he could have entered for nothing but he needed evidence for his fake interview. Entering the train station which was empty he was happy at first because he thought his train was 40 minutes away which gave him time to loiter about the empty station.
Later after going through the motions of dangling about and smoking again and again he rechecked the time schedule and realised he’d missed reading it, because if he could go back and do it again he’d do it a lot better. The clock ticked on, departing its seconds with wisdom. His train was more than an hour away and he deduced that he’d misread 1:40 as 40. Now he, known as Kevob, needed to get creative. The cold Mayly dusk creeped on his skin, his dapier interview shirt was short sleeved, so he moved about, it was almost mid summer, with June on the horizon and so just about durable though in the middle endurance youth of May that still nipped the bitter winds of December’s winter.
Skerries train station is like any other train station in rural Ireland but it has a bottom passage for crossing as well as a top passage for crossing over. I always,
Kevob, meaning me, often wondered if I lived in Skerries would I be the type that goes under the passage or over.
The under passage was closed off and so he, or I, meaning me Kevob, climbed the little barrier and went down the steps to explore. The tunnel was blocked off by a steel door. On it somebody had written ‘Balbriggan is better’ another person responded with ‘no it isn’t’. He, who is me, with time on my hand, decided to write a short shaggy story on the steel door engraved with a stone. The theme was centered about the duality of being an upper or downer. Those who went down the tunnel were depressed and trying to narrow their scope. But uppers, those who went up the steps, were energetic, wanted to see and embrace the world. Some people might say “widen your horizon” but your horizon is only ever the size of your eyes. The stupid story was stopped short when other people entered the once empty rail station.
Finally the train came and I got on with that sense of the inevitable that always comes when getting on trains, why couldn’t I go on a train bound the other way or get off at another stop.
He got off at his destined station, sulked home tired, completed the circle and was now after 8 hours, back on track with his usual Sunday routine. He answered the few mundane questions about his job interview from his parents with lies about his day and went on his way. At the Off-Licence an hour later in Hamlets Square near the Chieftains way, he bought an extra bottle of beer on top of the usual 2 bottles wine that me or he or I bought everyday, and every Sunday at that shop and as said daily elsewhere, just to give them a bit of his of mine business for it was more expensive than the Supermarkets. On the way home he slouched down onto a football pitch and drank the extra beer beside the fancy All Weather Pitch where he used to work just three weeks ago. Gone it was those carefree days, that was the best job you could have in the world, someone somewhere thought. He enjoyed his extra beer that early night looking at Bremore castle, the Palace Beside the Sea, slurping away into the beer, taking in the flavours with dusky sky, patterned by purples out in the horizons of Antrim, taking himself into a soon becoming part of his habit. Extra drinking would become more and more habitual throughout that summer. The early night of May 2017 was only beginning.
Symphony of The Kitchen
Stately; bumptious; and glowing with warmth; the sun ascended into the sky and stood lobbing fiercely. It was on this warm early May day I partook upon a train to Dublin to live, transcend, through the place known as Ulysses. My morning began starkly with a signing on at the social welfare then I departed into the day away from human conformities. The book begins in Kingstown; I will enter the book passing Howth hill, a mere memory in the novel, where the book ends in Molly Bloom’s mind reminiscing.
It, the weather, the story, started yesterday, coldly with a northern high. It’s the 2nd of May, may I say in the year known as 2017, A year I almost miss with deluded bliss.
My day started blighted into sharpness by the forced signing on at the social welfare office. Afterwards with the relief of passing an appointment engraved in one’s passive passage of time, I went up to Balbriggan train station, to embark into the venture. And so among that thought I bought myself a day out on the train. Out to the Dargle I go. And on I go. I crossed over to the Dublin southbound platform in Balbriggan train station. The high sun had shifted a little southward and cool east winds went wifted; giving up clear blue skies. Balbriggan Train Station is as old as history. With a grand panorama view watching the tide upon time over the bay , until days without LED’s haunts over me again. How did train stations display time before digital days. Things I’ve forgotten, its gone, that memory feels fake, I rested into forgetfulness. Putting my elbows on the high wall to look out to sea. That stilly murmur resting comfort waves formulating into the pit pot of the beach bay; where a tuck of colorful contrasts displays into foaming delights; crashing into instants; waves crashing into the land; hoping to be grasped; if not whittled back into the sand; before being grabbed back into endless time. But romance is short lived against reality. Looking at the red dotted display I would rather not know, I saw it. Time is a deviant thing. I am not air, wind or rain, I am me with possibilities. And I need to pee. Time is sometimes always too long then later much too short yet always with me growing up past something else into some other place. Today though in this moment it was a menace. 42 minutes until the next . Fook. Must’ve, justmissed. Rolley. Where’s she going. Kinda. Hot. To shelter, is toilet still open. might need to before chance.
I checked and the toilet was locked. A naked flame in the air sparks notions and I took tucks of hot smoke from noxious glowing weed. There is no better way to fill a vacuum of time then by smoking. Then the train finally came in; what else was it going to do.
On the train looking at everyone, judging with indifference, I made passive judgments. Asian, would like to. A woman took the vacant seat beside him, who is me, but left when another became available. Do I smell?
He, who is me, raised my arm and took a sneaky sniff swiftly. sleight tang. better keepontopofpuff , bathroom and soap under the arm at station. Later a more attractive woman sat beside him, meaning me, and took out her diary. what’s in her diary.He,who is I, took some slide glances reading nonsense from the corner of his eye before giving up reading her gibberish. Makes no sense. what book is it. A grown man reading Harry Potter. no wrinkles. young face. easy life. The ambitious man beside the Potter reader was of a similar age but his face had a hard character. The train rolled on and I relaxed into the continuous jo
The first character of the book I encountered in this endeavour is the only one still alive. Slightly bigger in size now Dublin city begins at the first DART station past Portmarnock. Dublin does not expand as easily northbound as it does southbound, which I suppose makes the southside Dublin’s belly. Casual sleep feel takes over me; mere sound memories from my youth invoked, as the train justles about slowly in thud chugging metronome manners, calmly chunk plodding as it slows, directly into the grey concrete den of Dublin city. Suddenly the train stopped, snapping back reality, at Connolly station. A cold comfort awaits as I line up to depart. One step over. I am now towering into the bustle of Dublin City, chomping with the crowds. Down underground corridors we go; clamping our feet into sound echoes; tunnelling our will past a bleak hut shop pictured in the pit of a cave; ferrying our desires up a clapping stairway. Then on in, racing along train platforms again; past a train abound to Sligo, slowed only through bottlenecked ticket barriers; whereupon, beyond, to which, stairways and escalators bristle us down onto upon the horripilate sense of the city street, landscapes that stops me with us in our last moment together; a commuters last comfort. Beside traffic lights in our last huddle together, we immerse in this commune, before which we disperse away together into our lonely scattered stories. I admit I could not keep up with the rush hour commute. Even though it wasn’t even rush hour anymore. What was it like a few hours ago I wandered into weak paths of thought of unimaginable magnitude that sparsely led to nowhere I want to be. And so swiftly I drifted somewhere else. To leave this place forever. Becoming a nobody entity flowing in the city scape.
A writer, writing down this day of May 2nd 2017, imagines himself an old man, an esteemed writer of a Day In Dublin, been queried about the most profound moment of that day to which he answers,
“crisps”
The amount of people eating crisps for lunch that day, nothing struck me more than that. A similarly; struck me; later in the train going home as I sat across in my toilet seat spot. My favourite train spot, I like the airly breeze. Across from which beside a baby sat. In a buggy she was. Eating pringles from a pipe. Watching her hand navigate the crisps to her mouth was just utterly astonishing. But thats for much later on.
After a train trance took over I awoke. Now on the DART now near Poshtown in this story; somewhere past Sandycove.The time is close to 12 noon. How I got from Dublin city center back onto the Dart, I’ve no idea. I’m guessing I planned to go to Eccles Street, gave up abruptly with the realisation of time which I was already way behind on already and headed towards Tara Street Station. So suddenly I’m now on the DART short called for Dublin Area Rapid Transport, to ground you.
A Posh girl Darcy is beside me and a Rugby guy is opposite me. They discussed exams and the coming summer rollicks. I tried to listen, trying to learn, but meeting again what I already knew I became bored and drifted in and out of their gibberish; my intrigue was roused again by talks about drink and the south side lifestyle about which the latter was explicitly mentioned.
A memory lapse later awoke upon this wandering; I was so tempted many times that day out in Dublin, but didn’t speak a single word for 5 hours hence it might expose my outward distinctness. Not talking is an odd void you walk into on busy bustling streets. Cities are the most lonely places in the world, no doubt. The redheaded women on the train going home had a lovely strong Balbriggan accent that brought me home(a story in itself!). When I did finally speak; in Chapters book store; my voice had grown very weak. How do things grow so weak.I could barely speak at this point.
I went on with the DART. Short for Dublin Area Rapid Transport, just to remind you. It’s an E-Train, with wires above struck to a claw-like device to drive it. After the departing onto Dun Leary (can’t spell the Irish) station platform; he, who is me, stalked behind her, who is her’s Darcy’s robust curves with a sense of good luck and imagined himself; meaning me; approaching her; meaning herself, but me was of course, too embarrassed to even utter a single word. Me who is not me, wishing to be me, watched my shadow self in another reality sniffing behind up her curvy lusting bottom and making a pass at her, before I finally in reality passing back into the matter of convergence, walked on by. Gone. Forever, will never. On the Dart incoming from Dublin I had marked a Martello on passing that might be his, my, I, thy, destination, but it didn’t look suitable for bathing. I’ll venture south, I’ve got a feeling. He, not meaning you, or anyone else, other than me, headed south correctly on the path to the opening of Ulysses. A Martello tower emerged on the horizon and then the bathers confirmed it with imagery of what I had read. My mood of doubt changed. Rippling waves crashing in became beholden to my confidence. This was the right place. Things had changed profoundly surely, but the basics remained the same. People swimming in the unchanging sea, like it could still be the 19th century, or 20th, but that doesn’t rhyme like time. The tower rised until it towered in his path. This is it, the thing he had wondered about. I took in the scene; I was in Ulysses chapter 1, 1904. Inside the grey tower was Stephen, Buck Mulligan and the Englishman whose name he, I, could not recall.Take it in. breathe it in. Myself, meaning me, and I are walking through history.
The Sun hung huge unimpeded upon the deep blue sky like it owned the whole world scene. Shining brightly, history beckoned, everything belonging to nature’s hard grasp had remained unchanged here. Looking out to sea was eternity. The grassy knoll surrounding the tower was gone. I tried to swing round it like Stephen but met a high wall.
Disappointed but happy he left. He had lived it like Joyce wanted, an Irishman from the past had made a connection with the now and in my mind he had come alive again.
Because he could see it. The past thoroughly, through and though, into the valley torment of placid lamented scenes. 1904. A woman milking cows. The fields in the city. That village feeling everywhere in Ireland. Sad but through though the past is fast disappearing, I faded on in. Happier days that’s what that was, but that’s not still like that though in many more happy ways.
I am not confused for my forelongings for something I don’t desire. I only miss the past because it’s gone. Sitting on a rock exposed, by tide and time, smoking a rollie, I accepted it. Time has caught up with me again and I needed to go forward, I also needed to pee, that burden within, dragging me down. Through the motions I went saying goodbye to pictures. Bathers reaching for towels and onlookers helping; also people just out for a stroll, clicking past me in pictures along the diving pier unperturbed by my presence, before I turned my back on that scene and left forever thinking I would come back here again knowing I never would.
Walking back along the coast to Kingstown Dun Leary santuring in the sun I happened upon a curvy mother, with the softest sotte voice. My pants panged. It was the way she walked and talked. Almost whispering to my pants. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Actually it was about just past 1 o’clock; although in corruption`. But I was in no doubt caught in that burning scene. She was dittering with her children. I passed with relief, softening down there. The moment passed. But suddenly she caught up with me again and I could hear her behind me squealing to her boy who was running along upon the beach breaching the new Health & Safety Science State upcoming on the horizon.
“yessssh I see you” she hissed..”yessh I’m following you”, and her voice so softly sotte. Why do they bother cover women up in some countries to avoid this, what use is it if the voice alone can do it. She overtook me, dancing her butt about in those loosely tight jeans, designed to show shapes bountifully, filled in as she rhymed her hips about, curving domes before me, lushing up my eyes space. With her maternal instincts beckoning as she chased her children, I became firmly aroused in the situation.
Voice and curvy bottom now alluring me. Becoming strongly self aware against the battle of the bulge in my pants, with congested traffic challenging my privacy on the coastal road I followed an unnatural curve, tilting my path shyly, looking foolish, towards along the path that hugged the coastline seawall. It was no use; you can only walk in a slanted angle for so long. The battle of bulge was lost easily with the tight trousers I was wearing. Feeling practically naked ,I feigned a touristily like composure and turned directly peering out to sea, pretending to take in the view with my mounting erection pressed in against the wall. I then in one smooth gesture lifted my bag from shoulders onto the wall and observed out to the surroundings; confirming my movement of gestures to be merely admiring the view. Pan’s moment passed. Upon the continue; I desired on walking.
Lunchtime was now in full flow with the sightly sound of smells of munching crisps delighting everlasting wafty crispy delights onto the senses. I wafted past through the tang of vinegar, cheese and onion flavours and tinged bacon, blending all those tasting crispy delights, and re-entered Dun Leary station.
Going on I go. Rolled a rollie to mouth out of the mouth watering blended tang of smokey bacon flavour territory now panging my belly with grumbles of hunger. Listened to the clock, ding chime that sad musical interval, in that reverberating odd melancholic way, strange though it is, a glitch that makes it the opening of Beethoven’s 14th string quartet, echoing upon the station. That sound marked the quarter hour. I smoked my rollie, strolling the platform, filling my lungs to fulfill pangs with overladen tastes of baccy country, blending the smoke back and forth through my nostrils to ignite the delight. Burdens left my back, as I forget to mention the bag I carried throughout this day, and I basked in the sun; whilst taking intervals under the cool shadow cast upon by the high wall, as I plodded about into impatientalitly on the platform awaiting the inevitable, until it finally came and I hopped on the incoming DART.
The Dart back was uneventful and not worth mentioning but I only mention it because one day I’ll write a story about it. I had four seats to myself; including myself; most of the time during the coming and goings of frequent DART stops. I remember some Germans talking but only ever staring straight ahead in some avoidance. Never do thy, Germans stare a look out the windows do they though, oddball eyeballs all the way. When absconding, minding the gap, onto Connelly over the platform I stealthily took a look at them Germans and was dispassionately disappointed. No blondes. Germans are in the usuality, generally ugly, and by and large all myth allegory, so I was not anything, but nothing,although amused, in my yellow haired approach passing them with my displays of pure vulgarity and the depths of history bestowing. My Ancestors came here with Strongbow you diluted mess. I held my grudges high with modality having no idea what I was on about. Then in the background of my mind, urges of my Great Grandfather held sternly in the trenches gave weight to any weakly thin skinned thoughts sinking into doubts I might hold. It was an empires versus empires abyss. Vikings, Normans, English, they’ve all trampled through here, in Ireland.
Walking through Connelly platform I strutted by two African women in those funny bin bags, trying to entice them with my delightful knowing arse in tight pants, alluring curves.
At this point you, who is not me, might be wondering, why I, who is me, is not at Sandymount strand walking into eternity. Well back at the Martello tower I needed to take relief, not like that though, and unlike Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses I was not willing to do this in public.Dublin today is much more populated than in 1904. The nearest public toilet I know of is Pearse Station. I have a ticket for unlimited train travel for the day in the Short Hop Zone Dublin area and so I avail of my purchased privilege. But you’re at Connolley I hear you say. The idea was simply in its plan. Pearse, then back to Booterstown. Then ineluctable of the modality back through Sandymount, then on through Irishtown.Yes i’m a waffler, you only knew it was called that later. Give me a break. Dublin is a very complicated place with lots of odd place names like Ringsend.
And if I was going to Pearse station why am I at Connolly. Is this some political statement.. I dunno anymore. And is Tara somebody or anybody I provoke into myself. Flimsy Tara Station; what an embarrassment to that person. I don’t know why they named a station after her, Tara, who is she. Well there are no toilets at Tara, so that explains that avoidance but I’m still puzzled crossing over the Liffey river as I deviate. Pure emotions, I ponder into the wonder. I admit I’m more of a Connolly socialist man and I find Pearse station drab. Yet Connolly station has more romance, much more fitting to Pearse. Irish history it is; it’s of course flawed.Yes I admit it’s becoming a benign farce, my mind is all over the matter. These Spaghetti sentences express with exposure the blended mess going through my train of muddled thoughts. I knew that; from very early on; that that was the case. From the beginning of this Ulysses adventure tripe; I figured that this was a frailing flop of a venture. Ulysses is flawed. So why am I back in Connolly station platform 7 looking at the tunnel of light paved by the railway that illuminates in reflections the incoming sun. I have no idea. So on I go but I don’t know why.
Maybe I find comfort in this departure venue along train platforms. Casting ventures into galleries of sensory projections; this station can convert you into the whole country. A spot at the edge of the city in the northside high above in the platform seven station overlooking apartments and streets; in a city whispering place; capturing the humbling bustle below, with beckoning opportunities streaming in; thudding in intervals into view.Just after the signalling scramble; showing departing ways homebound towards Malahide, Drogheda, and Dundalk. The drab concrete dulls my fortitude; fostering into me a will to leave. Soon; here; always are opportunities, the green hills are within grasp; and my eyes are forced to make longing wishes upon an unknown ever changeling firmament. Watching the locomotives depart northbound; longing for home, sparks memories of purplish dud skies holding up the sun’s depart, holding up the day’s last demise over Nags Head. I see colours held in wispy clouds capturing a last lingering of light; clinging on; scattering fragments of the moment; under which the wee dull green hills hang silent, as grey cityscapes relents to green countryside escapes.
But that retreat back into the placid green territory of Fingal is for later on in this escapade. Giving up is for quitters. I am still ploughing on, back through Dublin City seeking Ulysses. I retreat back into the concrete den of the city deciding to not head home for now. I will continue on.
Connolly station; Amiens Street. The windswept platform 7, drab torments here. Ulysses connection. Aeolus, the God of wind. You, who is me; meaning I, not you, exited the platform southbound.The time is..I’ve no idea, does it matter, I’m way way way behind. It’s around 3 or 4pm, I reckon. I’m wrecked with tiredness and burdened down. As I take on time with an odd indifferential glances at the clock; contrasted brightly with my senses from within, that beckon towards the skies distraction above. Tunnelling down a subway I went, and then up a stairway I go, we’ve been here before in a different formula of words in this story, and onto the old train platforms that looked like so many more from lore in grey grainy pictures we are.
It’s easy here to see the memory of steam trains piping their organs here at Amiens Station and now I maybe know why I’m here. Maybe I saw an old picture that captured this place and have decided to walk back through it. The sense of history flows breezily here; under this darkly dusk terminal; you can taste it under the canopy frame. Feign old is here resting with the new, or the other way round I suppose. The linger of the Empire is held here tapering; it’s last and first stop, overhanging into this situation. You can see it in the shadows; feel it in the air; casts from history. Hanging likewise with significance overcasting in this almost forgotten place is the rebellion that only the hard cannot forget.
Imagination’s force strikes it into place. A 100 years ago and more; with the piping trains steaming under the vestibule awaiting their signalling departure away from Dublin; as they were about to shy away thinly to go all around the countryside bounding, a chugging belch of choking vapors forming up, about on their way to roam through a newly found path of unimpeding intrusion.
XIV
To where; is history. Green trails awaits. The rail routes are vastly diminished now, destroyed by the personal car, and its lobby group corporate globalist Ireland. But Sligo is still on my horizon, as a train about to be foregoing into this, venture departure sits; resting. In the oldest platform of the station.
I could hop on and change my life forever. Or more probably end up cast astrand on the west coast of Ireland huddled up in comfort against cold casting Atlantic waves. I walked on past towards the future histrionically marching towards the last viewing vying point against the incoming battling modernity and sliced my card into one of those mounty machines and got beeped with acceptance, giving me a green light, for now, into the future. The clean change was profound as you grasped into the opening. It was not long ago you showed your card to someone who clipped it and chancers chanced it. If you got caught you’d take out a 50 pound note and hope they couldn’t be bothered with the change and often they wouldn’t.
Overhead coming into this open spacely area is an LED screen display of all incoming and departing trains.
The Belfast Express looms motions for some, but not for me and Belfast doesn’t feel far away as I watch the screen make movements of people stream towards the Belfast Express on platform one. The toilets are nearby in the left top corner of this busy terminal. The main terminal of Dublin City Center, Connolly is really it, the grasp of the nation is within here. And it has a little shop, a cafe, a sitting area and more boring details. I’m sure there are pictures online if my pathetic words don’t cater the imagination. I wafted about stringing out time. Then inspected my armpits as planned, be it a bit late. Though not as planned by my projected mind in a dirty toilet cubicle unflushed and strewn about with stained dry toilet roll. Onwards I roll. Bought a packet of Marlboro smokes and a Daily Telegraph newspaper in the shop. Then I let time tick down with a fictional brand of coffee. The odours permeating from the cafe musking my nose was enough to percolate the experience and I smoked flavours into my nostrils overlooking the departing view into the city venture of trams and traffic, grey wise moving on the palate of eyes into the historic; the luring gaze of smooth luxury apartments looming calmly up above before worshiping championing strong strength buildings towering over in the overscape. I blended the scent; gasping up breaths of flavourish air feeling the nicotine city. It was a strange deluxe delight smoking into the contrasts of the city.
I walked back into the window pane entry of Connolly Station rewatching the scatter in the terminal going on without me. On the terminal screen the Belfast express was now gone and I faded with it back into my timeline and found myself back on a platform; now on desolate platform four or five, the middle terminal of the station. Awaiting. For a Dart southbound we go back,meaning I, not you. You are probably somebody across the platform smoking a cigarette looking at me.
There are 2 types of DART. Dart is an electric driven green painted train system developed in the 80’s, short for Dublin Area Rapid Transport( in case you have a very short memory). Commonly called the Dart here in Dublin, a muddle with words, amusing though it was, it confused people like me in the 1990’s as the Dart is much slower than a train. There are Flat back support Darts and Fancy back support Darts -which hurts my back. The difference between the two though is that there is less space between opposing legs in fancy Dart seats. Fancy new, are designed in Asia crunching you into place. The old flat ones are the original functional, plain green, comfy spacious ones, from the 1980’s and provide a sternly upright position. No fuss.
An old DART comes in from Malahide and I take a seat to replenish in a vacant couch seat all alone with myself. I know it won’t last though as we head south over the city center. The Dart pulls into Tara ( still can’t get my head round that name) and is generally ignored by the loafers on the platform. Then we come upon Pearse and the void is filled and the story changes profoundly.
At Pearse station a fat ginger man almost bald with mere fuzz left upon his receded scalp apologized before splatting himself directly opposite me beside the window on an Asian dart. I’m not sure how the Dart went from old Dart to Asian Dart, but it did for this narrative. His fat thighs developed a natural so called Manspread The other seats in the four set piece were all vacant. Due to his fat size I had to tightly crunch my legs together and place them in between his spread out fat legs with my knees pointed in towards his groin in a sexually expressive manner. He realised his error and abruptly switched to the other seat. I pretended not to notice and after a minute or so relaxed my legs back outwards. Then the Dart didn’t move a jolt. Hello awkward silence my old fiend.
The train directly across stationary in the opposite platform then did a tease. A darting movement jolted into action and for a few brief seconds I felt relieved thinking it was ours, as in our DART, going to action or ‘Darting’ into motion, moving away, and that the opposites were in fact stationary. That strange illusion passed without mention as eyes rolled about the space trying not to meet. Tension stood still. He was the elephant in the room, nearly literally. I thought it; he knew I thought it. So then he became self aware.
Comedy passed the baton onto the grim and left towards the door. When a person has a panic or anxiety attack they become so self aware of every aspect of their body they doubt their ability to breath. It’s a horrible sense of heightened existence panged with self doubt. This is what I witnessed in this poor man. I duly felt sorry for him in this captured situation. He started fidgeting. The arms folded; then expanded; then reached out; then onto the knees; and then he started rubbing them along the thighs. He continued this horrendous pattern with variations, conducting an orchestra that was going terribly wrong perfectly. I could hear the droning din’s screeching out the choppy violins. Beethoven’s 5th mimed by a fly; caught bouncing against a window; with a cat caught in a string instrument below; this happening in a wooden room with good acoustics; where a mouse was running over a piano, and a spider with a really bad web in the corner was overlooking. These variations; motifs; and fugues; was embarrassingly serene as I was dragged away from my attempts of any day dreams and as he was forced to move his arms about evermore in harmonic blocks trying to silence the embarrassed brass instrument sound he was not creating. The attempt at distraction of my mind failed, I was forced to be with this man, in the moment, and could not change or relax him. He was infecting me with his anxious emotions. Please God would this Dart move. The signal for departure dinged and the DART jolted backwards and then gilded forward smoothly. An apology was spluttered abruptly from the intercom muffling conforming dissent into distort and I continued pretending not to notice the agitated fat man shuffling about before me in musical fashions; ranging in infectious motions from folding his arms under armpits, tapping his torso, to grabbing his knee caps. It seemed like his whole body needed to be reassured of its continued existence.
XIV
Finality; finally without doubts; I reached the freedom that I always had a few steps away within me. I’d reached chapter 3 of Ulysses. Proteus, only five, six or seven or so hours behind schedule. The chapter about change. I got up to leave the DART, darting. I could see the tension slack as I got up to leave. Ashamed for him and within me by my discomfort for us in this comorbid connection, I kept my eyes down but that was not needed to spot the relief as he let himself go unbounding the tensions within himself as his fat belly pounced out unslacking. The saying “signed a breath of relief” had never felt so meaningful as I exited through the door of the dart onto the platform, to the wentful process over a wee wall and walked down some steps onto the beach, leaving enormity behind in a few brisk actions into the serene domain of the sea.
I had no profound thoughts on Sandymount Strand. But it felt profound, backtracking over the railtrack as if I’d been here before, hopping down a wall and then just like that, you’d had meaning. I had jumped from a bustling city to the biggest, most desolate beach you’ve ever seen.
A few black specks move in the distance. Apart from that it is a golden tan sand beneath you; deep empty blue above, and in the horizon beyond, looking out to sea hung all the hues of blue drooping downwards; with wafting in frothy white waves hanging underneath, tunnelling in endlessly under the blues of chrome sky , swooshy allures you can only see whisper, as they’re silenced upon the bay they’re wash into. The sound in the background stills out the sea. Ever hear a city in a whisper, dim hums lingering, that old sound of Television from times long ago. Bogged down noises blended together; a mankind river, mouthing into its creator, that streamless fizzing traffic; a blend of city fuzzed; a sound of nearly televised snow coming crackled over through concrete streets on a hot May day permeating onto captures into spaces, the city tidally flowing towards the sea in the endless entropy.
Was I walking into eternity on, along, and beyond, Sandymount strand. It certainly felt so, in my confused rapture of thoughts trying to capture into the grasps of Joyce.
Except for one thing.It had been gnawing at me, dawning upon me, growing for quite a while. I knew it would come. But not this soon. I was beginning to feel lethargic, exhausted even. The Thing which was This. Which is That. My biggest Ulysses doubt was now gnawing at me.
Could you stay out, doing this, walking about all day.
The heat was at sapping strength as I sunk back towards the city over the metaphorically into the literally clinging to the figuratively changing sands. Nature’s deviant delights; as I thudded about, an impromptu service; hopefully just a chance occurrence. Leaving the beach was a grim grind as the yellowing soft sand laboured my trodding trots back into the carnival of traffic.
Ulysses, a mere book, has made Dublin alive even now and I felt it breathing. I was now in Chapter Wandering Rocks. I know I’m getting Ulysses all mixed up but I am exhausted and won’t make it back here again today. Exiting the beach, slugging through the fine sinking sapping sand,which radiated hotly, I felt like I was getting stuck in a burning scene again as I entered a little green park. Mind over, Like to meet her, She’s hot, It’s so hot, Where am I going. My first time after 31 years as a Dubliner, here.
Where am I, wandering, pressing on.
Strong tiredness struck me down. The day was becoming a day of drudge. A few awkward trudging steps through the sand and I was back in the city among the exhausting traffic, putting into context two different words in the moment to mean the same thing. I crossed the road cresting out my presence back into the city and with little else to say, in the strange passing over from a beach, onto then a green park, and on into bustling noisy traffic. I strode beyond. Sandymount Strand is gone, behind it goes, it was beautiful though,spiritually energizing, all those golden tans of sand sparkling, sea and sky meeting together, winking in ripples of light.
Feeling hot and tired, bearing towards the stadium hobbling along on my walking horizon, I continued . Veering westward through Irishtown I was now in the beginning of Hades chapter six of ulysses. Location wise not timewise. I abandoned time, hours or years ago. Timewise Bloom is now at the National Library looking for some old newspaper cuttings. I’m admittedly all over the place. But here, where I was, Bloom is here earlier in a funeral carriage about to depart to Glasnevin cemetery in Finglas in the north side.I am Stephen Dedalus I suppose, spotted by Leopold Bloom after my exertions in Sandymount.
XIV
Me, meek me, downtrodden me, and feeling stamped on me, tired and lonely, worn out, wearily, I walked on, down a little road of bungalow houses and went over a small bridge to passby some river or stream or canal, above flowing into ignorance. Seeing boys heading home from school on foot, brought home the village feel of Dublin. This is an essential component of Ulysses, the locality within the parochials . A school boy on his way home, who was fat, crossed over before me and awkwardly plodded before my path. He was uncomfortable with me slugging behind him at the same pace on his heels. I hate when you find yourself trotted upon by someone who starks out suddenly in your path before you, walking at your exact same pace. It’s the same when someone is behind you clapping steps. So I found good excuses. Laces, good excuse to stop. Hot, Hot, Hotly. Would like to see her front to meet her behind.
Many a good looking women I almost courageously encountered while walking to Lansdowne station are now a distant thing I now as always regret. Then I got lost a bit and needed to do a turnabout thing. Too tired to do my usual vain 90 degree turn about across the street in a ballet movement doing a roundabout u-turn, instead I bluntly in the rushley, violated my inner rectitudes, twisting my heel into the exposure of myself into the multitude, those proficient commuters behind me, and then brilliantly readdressed my dignity by redirecting, resting on a wall rolling a rollie. Sitting on the wall I watched out for trained skilled workers who might be headed to the same Station and then followed suit. I had made a mere minor error trying to get into Lansdowne now clearly noted. Next time I’ll look like a seasoned user of that station; blending in smoothly with all the daily commuters. Not that I’ll ever be back here in this concrete cemetery of hell.
Soon I had risen from the streets to a platform looking over what looked like a canal. The platform was too small to lay down as I had done before at Dun Leary and Connolly. Dublin city centre has so few seats. The few it does have are often occupied by drunks and junkies (actually I mean drug addicts. Junkies is an outdated derogatory term related to a bizarre Retrovirus epidemic stemming from the 1980’s, be it). The lack of seating makes things hard and the force of gravity wears you down as the day drags on. I gave up and found a little plot and plonked myself onto the ground into a spot where the sun was held hotly in the reflection of the water below the gate I rested on. I fed on more baccy. Puffing on the noxious weed I pondered, glazing my eyes colours into the or a grand canal (wrong! it’s actually a river I was looking at, the Poddle or Dodder or something), and I was irritated by the reflecting sun; parching blinding sparkle lights in
rippling reflections; along the weakly dents darkly; and up upon smooth troughs brightly; in little sound like fashions, placing waves into sight in calm trickling furrows. Along with that flowed the pangs of gnawing hunger growing in my belly. That I fed repetitively, in hungrily pangs, with pulls of breath from the soon to be inducing smouldering pinches of brown leaf that I sparked into life; pinched from my pouch in my pocket.
Then the DART darted in. Guess what happened next. I hopped on. The narcissist within me thought of Where’s Waldo as I found myself backtracking into the grey den of the city center, as I watched the city in this overlooking moment .
Northbound back to Amiens Street Station. The Dart was Darwinian in quality as the so-called rush hour commute was in motion, it was now purely survival of Sittest!
Being fit and thin I surrendered to the weight of conformity, destroyed by Ireland in a mass of abuse, taking my stance near the door awaiting the relief of fresh air at least. The less fit stood in the narrow aisle and awaited for the available seats to arise which was rapidly. We chugged about in sleepy murmurs congested together; across; above; over; almost holding hands as our chests and breasts crested up against eachother, sardined into a tin can flowing the factory floor, with the grey den city exposure below holding our silence into view, as murky grey Liffey River slept past us into history. That thing, It always knew what it was, in perpetuity, it flew then and there, going on no matter what.
The moving picture through the windows was looking at me with smiles; dumb looking building casting glances. With the little Liffey River most smirky of all, as it held all the greys of the rainbow within its grasp of colours varying in the ripples. Deviant passions awaited here as the smell of women was tightly pushed up against me, to meekly contrast bright dim views projecting through the windows .Nothing can stop abreast acrest though, protruding up,as we crunched up together I became erect again. Blocky tall buildings from far away seemed so small compared to those robust firm curves pointely pushed right up against my chest. On the tightly packed DART I gladly felt those tight fixtures. Then absurdly the intense pressure within was relieved, releasing as a funnel of departures streamed out again onto Connolly Station platform. The DART became near vacant again,along the roam, as grey windows from buildings above reflected the timescaped sky.
Back to reality I snapped. Wenting back again on, into the future, onwards towards on back onto into windswept platform 7 on Amiens street station yet again. I cling to my daily short hop ticket. Location Chapter Circe. Time Chapter Sirens. I’m all over the place. Pondering through the station on a mission I ditter my motions hoping, or hoping, ee’s for a train of fate. Nothing happens. I look upon little things for comfort. As always the longer I see them the more fond I grow of them pigeons. Earlier I smoked with them, watching, bobbing their necks around my leg. If homeless people could easily hunt. Wonder if bums started hunting them. How long before them pigeons wised up. Develop fear. Or would the hobos die from disease before the birds adapted.
The half-hearted search for Eccles street, home of Leopold Bloom, began, or begun, or begins or whatever I give up. I don’t care anymore for words as I embark on a hapless futile march. Back into the concrete of the city, it feels like a heavy burden is dragging me down, the sapping sand from ages ago is bouncy in comparison. I walk on into faceless places, boring buildings, estates with no real names and red bricks.
Eccles street hosts two early morning chapters, and two very late chapters that comprise, comprise..wait is that the right word, who cares i’m exhausted, the end of the book. Composite, compose who cares. Sounds like. Would like an eclair. Chocolate soft with a sweetly crunchy delight. Head North, so fooking tired. Feel like I’m walking on wet cement dragging me down.
The village life of Dublin bubbled up, cars honked and people nodded and waved back. Greetings and acknowledgements of mutually known existence were made regularly. The most important busiest street in Ireland was 5 minutes away with a brisk walk. My walking pace, at this point 5pm, was not even close to brisk. It was, put politely, a shuffle. I could feel gravity grinding me down. I could actually feel myself getting smaller and it was not just from my slumbering posture. The question of Leopold Bloom middle aged back then in 1909 with his slender posture but pounce of sagging weight was beginning to be answered. I hauled my carcass into Chapters. No, not chapters of Ulysses ( and the Dublin Marathon was months away, even I don’t understand this reference), I mean Chapters the bookshop. Here I made some important purchases that add to the depth of Joyce’s writing. Friend Frank Delaney; Enemy Oliver St John Gogarty; And benign foe James Plunkett .
XIV
Am I reading fiction about Dublin or is Dublin the bystander becoming The Great Novel. The good, the bad, and here in itself me the ugly imitation. I purchased Strumpet city and as I came down Sackville street. I began charging, towards a steat. No, a street or I mean a seat. Racing onwards I go. Through the crowd populating against me.
A seat on a train at 18:40 platform 3 Connelly. Not directly though, first I had to do chapter Lestrygonians. Organ The Stomach. The time is now 3pm in Ulysses. My time though is about 5:35pm. Location. Me, I’m at Marks and Spencers buying wine and a pizza, packing them into my bag. Blooms not too far away walking across the Liffey. If I walk fast enough I could catch him, I’m only about 3 hours and 113 years behind him. I give chase to it. Loaded with pizza and wine around my shoulders, pouring through the crowds to my aimless aim, one thing matters, my crucifix will pull me from this world, whatever happens, no matter what, without repent, I will get drunk tonight.
After that I gave in to shattered thoughts of exhaustion.
To live without purpose is to live without reason. Racing through the Dublin city is a hard pursuit that renders your sense of self, down into pathetic triviality. Nobody cares here. It’s a mix and match multitude, mere entities are in a scrap for space. Looking back reflecting into images I see it.. Righteous ways confirmed his relaxed realisation of how cruel the world is, most of it to none all of it cared little to nothing about him.
That’s the only stream of thought you can have when thousands stream past you in the Dead of the city vibe.
Blooms Dublin must’ve been slower, more relaxed. I felt more part of the book on the outskirts of the city. Supposedly the city center had that village feeling in 1904. The city of Dublin was made from swallowing up villages built around it and when you entered it you may very well see many specks of your little town, taken all together it made Dublin.
I retreat home in memory or moment. Malahide station is a garden, wooden fences, leafy green chirping beckons all around you implying you too explore. I’ve always stayed put. Malahide station was built in 1844.
But that’s just daydreaming into the past of a departure back home into the green valleys of Fingal.
I’m tired now and retracing into jargon thoughts somewhere abound somewhere else so raced towards the mirage my muddled mind has created. The grasp of what I want looks so easy before me. I’m lost in a place between dreams and
reality going somewhere but nowhere until my mind sharpened back into the present. Then going back and forth it continued.
It’s wonderful to share something with history, a bridge, a wall. It’s The Experience in a different context expressed by history. Looking at the map now, when I made this thought, and now I knew then I was nowhere near Eccles street, and Glasnevin cemetery might as well be in Naas nevermind a mere mile up the road at one coffin point in a dream I had distorted. I awoke. Pure loss, a fragment, I was in a dream I had, that won’t come back. It was just a spark image and that’s a strange thing. Writing words into a dream. When, why was it, did it happen. I leave that space forgotten, you cannot capture dreams. Sleep is today rendered into a forgotten place where gravity pulls you into a labyrinth of memories, blending the emotive experiences, don’t forget, write about gravity, whats an apple on a tree falling, or of the occasion taking you down and daydreams seeds up from it’s prelude. What’s the difference in difference, when it’s just an appearance. Because that is, what it is, when somewhere is out of reach. Time suffocates everything, it constrains, tightens, makes us restless.
I had a restless walk, moving directly from a platform to a stationary train on another platform. Under and over through the cold white tiled subway and I’m in the old station. Blooms station, King up in history, where stern steely steamers whistled away chuffing and puffing working up to a sound cadence. Can you imagine the enormity of the occasion back then; listening to the piping steam; getting ready; the train being signalled in; chugging into view; the long departure; leaving an area you were confined in to your entire life. To leave a brown smokey smork ladden city tarred with dirt, then watch it pass by into the mere; the grey hard den fading away,towards to the green thoughts along its suburbs, while the intensity of green growing ever stronger, fosters; until it, nature among pastures, was all around you and you aboundly abundantly finally felt free. I leave Circe and the other odd chapters of Ulysses behind.
Kevob awakes. Dragged back down to reality, suddenly I awoke away from my daydream again by the clock; I had no time to think along the platform as I raced for a suitable carriage. An agony walk, time was closing doors, do I or don’t I take the first carriage. Reverse psychology beckoned. No, I have time, I’ll take the toilet seat. No, no, next carriage. There it is, spacious. A solidarity seat, neglected, made for the underdog waiting to be unfolded, with room to stretch the legs. Drawback it was situated adjacent to the toilet with a view opening straight into its interior. I rested down, spanning my legs across the plain and awaited with comfort for a harbinger of thoughts to mediate me home bound.
The next part of this is so badly written it seems like a dream. I remember it like a dream in fairness. But it’s not a dream, it actually happened.
Awkward to use with me here, for me and you. The ineluctable visuality, forcing us to share thoughts in the dispeansner’s needs. I hate it more than anything, everything being embarrassed about what we are as humans. A dog can do without provoking. it’s sexually teemed with the repulse. The horry came to be.
Me; in my toilet spot and a young ginger girl, two young children, some empty space and the toilet occupied the latter third of the tailend of a carriage. A man entered into the space and tugged then pulled frustrated at the toilet door. The door was electronic and I guided him to the button. He thanked me. The button was pressed, pop it sounded. He popped it again, pop! Nothing happened. Nothing could happen. Its was broken. Things stood still as he pressed the button over and over again like a mad monk expecting something different to happen from doing the same thing over and over again. A Strong Shrill, not her name I hope, lovely Balbriggan voice filled the vacant space in the carriage around the toilet.
‘I think its broken’.
I was indifferent, my mouth was too dry to perk up, I was defeated by Dublin city once again.
’The button is over there’ was abbreviated to,
’T button is Ther’
The effort to lift my arm was too much. This is my last 3 dimensional contribution to Dublin. I slumbered then, laid out my legs, closed my eyes into the space, wishing to be forgotten. And let the redhead take over.
’What other manipulations of the composite mixture of invisible odourless vapours were made in order to express information?
‘by ordering the air by vibrations through oscillation of the vocal box in the back of my throat, I was able to make approximately 4 ventures into 3 dimensional space that were external to the body. Each design was developed and deployed with clear intent. The first was to proceed through the ticket barrier after the machine spat my ticket illegitablely onto the ground. It was a success. The second was a polite ‘thank you’ in the bookstore named Chapters, in order to facilitate the gentlemanly cessation of holding upon the often reading, loafing, without purchase vice, into an exchanging of goods for paper denoting monetary value entered upon by me and when I proceeded to the cashier counter carrying 3 books, removed by me, several minutes beforehand, from the shelves labelled Irish fiction upon secondhand 2nd floor of the bookstore.’
’What was the intent in such short interludes?’
’I was merely being nice, decent and polite, it was hard though with the cotton mouth, exhausted and bored by such a routine exchange. But those little things can hold back the rot..like WD40
’Is it difficult writing this up?’
‘It’s very tiring. Even though I am writing this at a much later date, I keep putting myself into that day in order to write and the tiredness I felt that day is infectious. Thinking about now it saps me, the entire weight of memories, why do I remember so much, because I’m meant to. The walking weight of burden thought.’
He pressed the button. Nothing happened. Nothing could happen. The door was broken. The man returned to his seat defeated; or went to another toilet in another carriage. The red headed mother with the strong Bal Brig accent started with suggestions to entice a feed upon her child with pringles. The small hands with effort grabbed crisps from the box and navigated the potato chip to the mouth. Kevob was flabbergasted watching this trivial thing of motions.
The train journey home ended, Kevob was back in Balbriggan; it was dark duskly now; moonstruck, the latent dim circular body shadowing the Sun coldly starked it’s domain, casting yellowly into the sky stroking into the menace dark, the two bodies overlooking the earth converged with a handshake baton as the full moon rose above the sinking sun once again, in the forever dance. Kevob walked home into the sober chapter of Ulysses when Bloom and Stephen drink coffee in a late night cafe. Darkness was settling in. It’s strange, painting at this point converging our stories. I was heading home. Bloom was heading home.I’m doing all the chapters of Ulyssess. If you’ve read the book (you probably haven’t) you’ll see I’ve in a contorted manner that’s muddled and ridiculously confused, very covertly, captured, in eloquent essence, the book without really doing so at all in any manner whatsoever. A day of failure. The only chapter missing is half of all the chapters. But really mainly though it’s Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy at the end thats missing. Because yes I would and am, and always would be to the answer yes, today, tomorrow and yesterday filling all your questions. And if all that makes no sense the answer to the question, have you read Ulysses, the answer is of course, No!
THE INTRODUCTION ENDING AND BEGINNING TO THE AFTERMATH IN BALBRIGGAN
I
Robo is dead and the tempt to start off with something profound to grab your attention is gone. If you ever find yourself in this valley the wayward out of here is in small words. I was born two days after Robo, in the same hospital, and lived a minute away from him for more than a quarter of a century. School and after school, the garage, his garage. I lived in his presence more than any other human being. What do you do in this situation, he hung himself, why am I skirting around it. This Novella and its precursor “A Moment In Balbriggan” deal with grief. Deul would be more prefunct for this. A Moment In A Balbriggan was the ocean of life before and after. In this, The Aftermath, it’s rooted in the near moment, the funeral. Most of it comes from drafts written in the darkness of extreme grief. I had three reservoirs to write from. Memories. Dreams. Fiction. Those three depths got blended as the days departed away from the funeral. Here alone with the guilt of suicide I became a detective. The need to know to unburden the self, hours were spent collectively piecing it together. Robo, our best friend , was seemingly a minor celebrity online, living another life. A counsellor to many Americans he had even taken on an American accent, doing chat, according to his Brother Rob. He was in love with some girl called Autumn Frost. They, the onliners did a Go Fund
Me when he died. It was all very strange. One of them mentioned vodka in the memorial comments. Then I found the youtube comment from Robo about alcohol withdrawal and what sounded to me like delirium tremens. The knot tied. This Novella is all of that. Those crazy dreams you have. Diving into memories searching. The fiction I wrote was an escape, you’ll see its humour natureness. I wrote also from that dark place, the bordertown of sanity, as I had the same drinking problems Robo had had and more and turned back. The story of Alan Hawe is here, as I dealt that year beforehand for the first time with mental illness, from alcoholism and the knot of time choked. Here I soaked all my memories together, taking fiction into fact and somehow lurked a path out of the darkness. So I set it to his initial death. Suicide is the most lonely grief of place to be.
An AfterMath II
THE INFERNA
Ferocious, travelling through balbriggan meeting strange people to roam through certain parts forever. I was in the Inferna.
I’d been driving all night, meandering on snakey ladderier roads. Lost. In the bumpy rumble of the countryside I felt timid. Ploughing through the hours of darkness, nothing was yielded but farmsteads and homely cottages. These few pangs of humanity were enough to keep him contented in his aimless journey. The countryside’s usual bumptious shapes were lost in this journey. All now just seeped into just different hues of black on the canvas. He saw nothing but the road ahead and some sporadic square lights peeping out. Nothing beckoned much and I rolled on. I entered a few orange tinged outposts, built around a random river or a flat plateau on a hill or a monastery. But there was just a randomness to these little villages and hamlets, but maybe they had to exist. Earlier when it was turning dark I finally left the purgatory motorway from which I was obliged to journey in the light, it had no character and everywhere about it opportunities presented to places where I could never go. How did you end up there? My passenger asked. It was like I answered myself like this, that I answered ‘I was free living without any burden but myself -That’s as free as you can be, see, and anyway, roaming about drunk in my car and in a stupor I pivoted down some lane and misfortune found me again in life.’
But tell me about the motorways, your years of aimlessness, the passenger spoke. The motorways are the canals of modern Ireland. Where did you go, said the ghost suddenly seated behind me. It didn’t matter, I spoke into it
‘At night the which that it was was which is that night that which is. That is where the witches brewed.‘
I said tie tonguing myself outof it. A broomstick followed. An orange tinged river meandering in the darkness, the black swarmed around like an impenetrable jungle whatever way you turned. I entered the heart, head, stomach of this baby Island and it was always the same. The only stimulation was the atmosphere, I felt like this would be here forever. Rain was the only transient thing, it gave chromatic aberrations and sounds to the orange river. During it, the rain had an even more powerful effect. It dulled the world, but the green lush seemed more vivid, the surrounding countryside was more foreboding and tempted the imagination. At night there was not enough to imagine but just absorb, when it was sunny and bright the motorway seemed dull compared to the possibilities around lovely hills and meadows and bogs we were passing by unlived. But when it rained this ignited the imagination you wanted to be in, in those places you pictured yourself, but didn’t need to be there, cause it was wet and cold and in your head it was dreamy and thingely. The rain dulled a place and in one place it was easy to imagine you were in another. Yes I suppose it is something like that. I remember meeting a boy in the town I soon entered after the motorway. He’ed used to walk, carrying commas with wild mispronunciations in a heavy bag, as slow as he could to school everyday, but even slower if it rained, not minding being a wet thing all day. One day he told me he was leaving school and it was a grey wet beaver day. My words not his. A pile of cars had thronged the roads outside the school, he was happy with the hustle bustle that he would pass unnoticed and he alone would enjoy the rain. The boy was different, a changeling even maybe then and he knew it. He had known it since his first day of playschool where he wet himself because he was afraid to ask about going to the toilet. I remember the scramble to the ‘best’ toys. Survival of the fittest, or sittest, that I just took to, thoughtfully tearing apart from the crowd, I’ll take whatever is left. I didn’t last long at that little house in a prison, on the curates of Hampton Cove Rows. Tea towels I wanted for Christmas like a little loser one of those Yasser Arabs had on telly in the Pristine Palace. That set the precedent, freedom would be my pursuit in life. Youth is a prison, butt most like it. Tight sponge flabby firm thoughts in shapes come down onto a man’s face. Not me dough. Why is that, says a man in Pizza Hut. Butter fat Henry in the chipper of Trabolgan looks on dumbfounded and saddening as Nico And Robo run by shouting “Fat Faggot” into a vanished memory. I’m in a Cul De Sac, at a gate before getting berated by hostiles from a bungalow. Reminiscing now…
I Awoke Into Another Awake. The children started to pour out of St Teresa’s primary school below the bosom of Pinewood estate like the rain but heavier as she waited in her car. She kept a keen eye, beckoning each that she knew in turn. They were happy and relieved to be out of ghastly rain.Who would like the rain but a weirdo. The oddball rolling home, he knew right. Happy I, I stroll by watching the others otter with glee getting into the car, taking the offer. A plea is made at the oddity boy to follow this chorus of clamouring clamber ringing ill toned shaped kids disjointing into back seated car places badly tuning brass instruments. He alone looked forward to a drab walk home alone in the rain. In the drab and drips, A life affirming bleakness beckoned. It made him feel alive. The paths light grey greying matching the sky, here and there little puddles had formed in the troughs of the land. Piddle paddled the creepy rain. Splish splashed squashy splashed the silly children. Some stupid houses drained on going plok plok, plikily diddily plonk plik plik plank. In some places it poured, the sounds. A stirring pour murring dotty it momentarily poured now in little miniature streams. It was wet, and miserable and he was a melancholy child who only wanted to walk home from school in the rain and some woman shouted at him and grabbed him from that dream, for her sake not four yours. Yes she was worried his mother would be displeased that she, with him, let he be walked home alone soaked.
Four years of letters later. And you’re still bitter about it 25 years later. Yes. 25 years later an old lonely man reels back the years. 25 years later a grandad reflects on hard days now worth it. 25 years later a dead bitter body has finally let go and forgiven a now dead woman, neither cared. 25 years later a dead body is washed in the Bower. Your right, carpe diem, don’t dwell in the cave of the past. The past keeps washing up. Ok, time to move on from that. How many of these people you meet in this arc are actually just you stuck in time. Many are me, I’m layered through this town’s histories but many have roots much deeper than me.
We entered a town that was shutting down for the night, the ordinary day shops had closed, the petrol car stations were the only buffer between day town and night town. The place seemed very small because by chance we entered and almost exited in the quickest most remote way possible. Where was I?
Somewhere in Ireland. Yes, I was north of Balbriggan, after exiting the M1 at Drogheda we’d gone through many of the people’s histories on the old Belfast Dublin Road. Wait but don’t people have histories on the motorway. No the motorway is dead, no little shops, no little villages, no little towns, no little random cottages, no little enticing pubs, no little restaurants, no little scenic hills, no crazy curves, no black spots, no mysterious left and right turns that would take us to places like Rathfeigh or Ratoath. We were lucky. A procession of green men waved us through and we didn’t have time to think. A monotony mainstreet of mediocrity, perked up by a supermarket at the start, yielded along the path. The sudden changes were swiftly flying by now. Nightown was coming alive, taxi ranks and fast food joints poised tasteful delights on streets. We needed partners though and it wasn’t easy but also very easy to make friends in Ireland. We panicked and swung left down past a miniature grotty casino before swiftly churning wheels rightly up wheeling the steep hill. The old entrance to the Mall, left there, stood blinking sadly, through the steely neglected gates. Down there was youth, in an empty staring carpark. The Auld Quinnsworth Quay Street Mall. As many stork memories came tumbling down the main staircase, rolling in tandem with the shopping trolleys in the shute, was the bottom floor of the auld grotty Quinnsworth mall. Ivanka Pepsi perking her tight ass in her family cafe stood there in that salient space right beside the elevator, and came to life. Six trolleys like tumbleweed roamed across the barren landscape of the bottom floor of the old cauld mall floor. It was me heaving up the floor, rattling the way on firm echo ground, doing a job. The girls in the Salon notice me. The director of Toy Store 50 Bottom Of Tesco shoots filths of hate with his eyes, casting. Possibly I am stoned after my joint, smoking in Quay Street car park. Paranoid in this past; I see manager Mark staring out through a tiny little window up above at me down by the Bracken river. I roll back to the future. Six trolleys in the elevator, and race up the shute with six more. Sometimes In Balbriggan.
Kevob woke up by instinct with that peculiar feeling of after having a dream that was based on something real that had happened or was happening, it lingered for a time, with waves crashing against the rocks until it dissipated, kevob shook himself out of it as he; realigned his head on the seat and looked around out the side windows of the car. It was to show and tell where they were, but they were where they were supposed to be, off the motorway which meant only one thing.
‘So we’re almost there I suppose’ groggy Kevob gruellingly said.
Nobody answered the lout, as he was only half awake with the drink still on him and after being asleep throughout the journey his friends didn’t feel he was part of the present company.
Kevob shut his mouth along with eyes and ears and went back into a half asleep memory remaining aloof. He was back on the promenade, Balbriggan front beach, with teenage boys, school friends, not real friends, friends he hung out with outside school in an act that he got caught in, and they were gawking at each girl who walked by.
‘Look at the tits on her’ said generic boring teenager boy 1.
‘Look at the tits on her’ said generic boring teenager boy 2.
Kevob sparked up another smoke from the ten pack he bought that brought him into this to alleviate the boredom of this converse.
THE BOYS ARE BACK IN OUR TOWN
‘Almost there now lads, there’s Emma’s moms oar Science teacher’s house’ rambled Risky Nohair at the wheel, he’d been talking throughout the journey about the journey to distract himself. Unknowingly Risky’s near stream of consciousness hadbung germinating Kevob’s dream pattern. Suddenly the place where they came from came back upon them; to Kevob’s places.
‘Thats the field I used to have the car in’ continued Risky on his ramble, ‘I didn’t want to walk all the way out there that day, remember we were driving around the field.
You were driving around the field, I don’t know why, its was Robo’s and Nonecks idea.
‘Neither did I, I was coerced into it’
Risky ignored this out of embarrassment, he’d taken his frustrations out on Kevob about walking all the way out there that day, and so the conversation died away.
It’s hard but it’s easy doing this taught provocatively rummaged thoughtfully Kevob now learnt as they were laid back with just a few green fields left behind until they were back in the town. The last thing was a lasting thing, Kevob close your eyes to leave this place.
Where the wind whips up time. The car pulled in at the Sunshine Home, the lads were finally home. Kevob looked up out the window to a crested moon almost winking at him. Moonstruck, stuck in a moment of sick grief a memory spilled up to blend in with the bitter whine. He was very drunk as he ran back through looking for something to quieten the screaming pain surging up through him. Little fleeting images were found in that moon with one little sound. He tries to go back there but the present hurts too much right now and the wind is whipping and scowling with rain tonight disrupting his train of thought. Kevob is forced to leave one part of his life to meet another. His presence comes back into the car unfazed; the emotions he’s fighting are so intense right now he’s learning the distinction between emotion; logic, and art in the timeline of grief. You feel it on the day, after the initial grief passes you reason about it until it fades away into a feeling, the artistic contrast of emotion. Kevob like the other lads in the car was not in the mood for pseudo philosophical stuff. So the conversation remained dull with no one really wanting to say anything. Kevob lifted himself away from the constraints imposed upon him from human interaction and went back to looking out at the moon. The moon struck. When friends are with friends things are bound to happen. The little story line started to run. There are facts: the mushrooms were different in November and Kevob and Robo only ate 40 that are not seen. In a small corner of The Garage; A fleeting image of Shinbob getting smaller and smaller into the pocket corner eating a packet of crisps with 70 mushrooms, laced carefully within. They smoked a lot of hash into a smokey night, Kevob could see the smoke in the misty fleeting image. People came and went that night in the garage, maybe 6ix or 7even friends were there at the peak, until it was just Kevob, Shinbob and Robo; the three day trippers. Kevob’s last fleeting moment. They went out for a walk tripping through the town. They then came to the train station and that one sound he remembers from that day, the lost sound of the town, a sign post squeaked. Shinob and Robo thought it was the perfect sound for the town. Kevob was in a lost and found search moment looking up at the full moon, the last fleetly memory of a perfect mushroom trip. The moon was doing something he’d never seen before, since, or after; a thin layer of cloud huge over the whole skyline and the moonlight was piercing a perfect circle through the clouds and around a full moon you could see a few stars and the rest of the sky was a blanket cloud.
‘It’s like a portal hole into space’ said Kevob. That’s the only sentence he remembered from that day.
A PROLOGUE TO A NIGHTMARE
December 2017, 2 months before Robo hung himself. A permeditation maybe, of some forthcoming. Treesacrowd asking me about him during my alco withdrawals in September, me fighting the choking, that choking I noticed in Robo, but disregarded, a regret. We were all worried. This story in 2015 starts outside the church of a Treesacrowd wedding that Robo didn’t attend. It is a balmy September day, Kevob and Shinbob meet up outside the church after the very long mass and both light up smokes together. Little back and forths in banter and small talk are made mainly about who is not present. Kevob cuts through it.
‘The way things are going, he’ll be found in that garage in a pool of vomit’.
A nervous laugh ended the conservation in comforting puffs of smoke.
A Shrine Made For Ireland
The deed was done and the mess was like a red curtain following down on the act in a play and lifted to relieve the final act and he felt clear headed finally and with a purpose. No longer drowning in anxious thoughts, ruminating into despair, he had looked in the abyss long enough and walked into it. This was first time he felt free in twenty years of toil, trying to conform, fit in, not feel judged, to be accepted, to be alike, to be cared about, to be respected and on and on and always doubt going round and round each negative thought feeding the next and the whole world collapsing into itself and a tiniest little thing becomes every awful thing in the world until there is nothing in your mind but madness. He checked and rechecked the deed do+ne, like locking the back door before leaving the house, he was conscientious or at least the worrying type who made sure what was what. He remembered then at some point to lock the back door, just in case some burglars entered and got a terrible shock. He made a few checks upstairs to make sure the gurgling had stopped and it was done and dusted, but there was still grasping at the air and only when he was sure would he be clear headed enough to end the final act. So finally at ease and knowing it was all set in motion and it was just a matter of time he relaxed in that interlude of peace he had finally created for himself. He stood in the kitchen and it was almost silent and he wasn’t scared. The clock ticked and his thoughts seized him again and again in horror he checked with his wife but things were ok, she had settled away. He walked into the hallway and listened upstairs, those same stairs that he collapsed beneath in terror of nothing but his own mind on an empty page drawing terrors. But it had lifted now, it was gone, they were gone and soon he would be gone. And it was all for the best. The best for him, and those others so lucky not to feel what I feel he thought and with sober adrenalin he went back into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. Whilst it boiled he went back upstairs and it was all gone and done and feeling sober he wondered about the mess and thought about how nobody should see this, but he had no regrets it was for the best. I did it for them. A strong thought it was one of the few he had. Most thougths he’d had these last few months were vague, wordless fears about this and that but without any clear form of thought. But here now in the chaotic scene he had created a clear thought that went right to the front of his mind and sat there. I did it for their own good. And everything swept behind this brain wave frothed onto a beach and relaxed him. It’s no good thinking he thought bad leaning against the kitchen counter. The kettle reached its climax, the wife was no longer moaning and the kids had ceased their incessant whining. The world opened up and released itself for a few brief seconds and everything that had seemed oppressive was calm and still for a moment. People emptied from his mind and the world was just the hallway, the kitchen and fields roaming about the house this way and that, up and down into nothing. He pictured a cow in a field, the abundant hedges before the hill into the horizon, then suddenly it bubbled up into his mind as he noticed the enproaching dark, then the light was gone. Dread took him. Duty bound, back again in the community embrace he left little notes that denoted a civil mind. Outside he left a note warning people not to come in and to notify the authorities. Did he look upstairs again.. did he kiss his wife.. did he go to the toilet.., did he take one last look at his children.. did he clean the kitchen or take in the washing. Who knows. Then he strung himself up in the dark hallway, choking on thoughts dying away. The note outside was picked up by the postman the next day.
Childhood Sick in Cork
It wasn’t fair being sick in summer. Thankfully that only happened once, down in Cork. He was staying over with some old neighbours from back in the pale of Dublin and they shoved some rotten veggies down his gullet that must’ve been laced with something. That night sharing a bed with a ugly smelly heavy breathing illformed boy that disgusted him in every way he could not sleep and a headache developed and sure enough he relented and went into the bathroom and puked. But they wouldn’t leave him alone to be sick and confronted him on account of the noise he was making. He got given out to, it seemed to him forbeen in this sick, but this was normal for the boy as he’d been getting into trouble over every single bodily function he’d had his whole life. Peeing was shameless, the shits were shameful, barfing was disgusting, pooing was wrong, erections were to be scorned or sniggered about. In summary, being a human being was a disgrace, and life itself was a big lie. But being sick though was ok and it was great to be bedridden because he was let be and indulged in. You see when you’re sick the body has taken over and control is lost, you cannot will yourself not to be sick. But you can will yourself not to pee your pants. Or that’s what people seem to pretend. He has been shouted at his whole life just for being alive. The human form is offensive , thats why people don’t care when a dog pees in public. Here thou art thy thinge of rot’em that not giv’nt a hasp of noticeably tea rotten bad perfunctions. Then as he lay back to bed in misty Cork, completely and utterly lost. The headache throwing the puking had exhausted him, he’d laid back to that last blackness of his life. Black because he didn’t know where he was and it was his first time ever away from the sea and all the while, he didn’t know what town or street he was in or what direction he was pointed to, all he knew was County Cork, small town much smaller than his own. Like a dog that finds itself in a kennel, these were all the things he didn’t know he knew bothered about as he relaxed now hoping for home and fell asleep looking north he felt. He had a good night’s sleep because the next day he remembered little and that was a good sign of normality. What he did remember was bleak cold; that being, a creature, been bagged wrapped in his favourite coat to fight the chills even though it was summer; watching boys of similar age play a football match at the collective nationwide memory of some holiday resort, called Trabolgan. How he’d gotten, from barfing into a sink to being there was a complete mystery in his memory. One of the boys asked him if wanted to play and he did so he did and at that point he removed his favourite Arsenal jacket and that was the last time he ever wore it. The next thing that happened was tomorrow and he was vaguely aware of the passenger self of self on the train back to Dublin, before suddenly moving quickly through pictures back to his hometown Balbriggan, back in a yard, comfy in Hampton Cove bedridden. After that nothing, memories were no longer sequential, what happened next is like that mass of darkness that laid around him back in bed sick in Cork, where and when am I now, the man thought of the boy. The story begun with an indulgence at the chipper after the train journey, A queer green garden I walked around fighting my boredom, mingling within in moments between then or there back to the scape, strange accents hurtling against my familiarity, and a pile of packaged frozen carrots dumped on my plate later as we sat down for dinner. Then vomit puked through the moments.
The DOG LED Chorus Towards Trabolgan Squareness
A forgotten jacket laid there on a bench. A foreman saw its form void of body and realised the harsh reality. The poor thing had little hope he didn’t bother to think. It couldn’t stay there forever and so with a sense of duty he picked up the rag body with a pinch and reluctantly dragged the empty carcass back to the makeshift lost and found. Here the jacket lay lost and unfounded for several months. Finally a man of action took action. The burdensome jacket was removed from its coat hook and bungled into the action mans car. The lonely jacket lay forgotten again in the boot of a car. Did it care, not one bit, it did not.
18 Years later a lame dog lies on the jacket and knows the game is up. A work dog who can’t walk is no fool. All that was is is going gone and the last senses left are a prison. Things have taken on a primal almost pup like existence. Sight does not delight and smell is all gone stale, pet her and she goes frigid like she blames you for her demise, only taste sustains the poor thing and it eats. It’s lasting pleasure, food.
‘You can’t sit there forever’, says a mother knowing time is up.
The dog doesn’t react. Neither does the former boy who before the animal was even born laid sick in Cork on a bed that pointed to nowhere but into a bewildering mass that lay between him on a way home. And he looked at the dog and wondered if it thought, did it remember and he knew looking at it; into those yearning dumbfounded eyes it understood nothing and swam in emotions. Enslaved its own good nature; a misfortune in fortune, that it did not care. Not one bit about him.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
The wind blew and rattled a street sign outside the Train station that wrestled and resisted into the little creaks of creaking.
Seabob had to get a taxi the rest of the way. It was a strange path to this place. He couldn’t take the train, it was too indirect and the strain of fiction made him dizzy. The bus left him where he needed to be, which was 10 miles from where he was going.
I was stranded here in one of those orish towns with a narrow mainstreet, lots of pubs and a chipper at the square, where with signposts pointing 20 ways there, this way and everywhere and after much scanning one of them gave me a general sense of direction. I went into the chipper and had some fine grub and after with it, on a 15 minutes spare with me in hand and headed content now, almost to the cabbie.
‘I’ll be at that pub, what’s its name there at the river ‘
I was told, when they said, it’ll be 2 hours, wait. It was growing dark now as I finished off the last of the salty vinegar drenched chunky chips and walked back to that first pub I’d spotted when entering the town. I walked by the little river that flowed beside it. The taxi beeped and we met and talked. I tried to be witty in the cordial waning. I’d been holding onto to this one for days. Shinbob bounced a happy jaunt onto the backseat car relieved.
‘I used to make decisions but now I’m not so sure.’
‘Huh’
‘ No wait I got that wrong.’
‘I am use to the procrastinate. But now I’m not so sure.‘
‘Your not gonna puke in the car now are ye lad’
‘No wait I mean’ and it came to me properly now. As I felt a damn fool.
As the joke I’d lost fell down into the vacuum of time I laid my head back against the taxi seat and breathed in the night amber flowing freely through the condensed pattern of cold droplet dews formulating upon the window that sparkled the amber orange light into a horizon of colours until the grew got bored and decided to annoy the taximan
‘All these blacks who look the same coming into the country’
‘Whats that you say’
‘I can’t tell if its more coming in or they all look the same’
‘Your right there, the way things are going, I cant let anyone in here. There’s always a problem, you know.’
And I did know. I’d been seeing it coming for years and I was lost now , waiting to be found, so someone could solve this. The lost story.
Al short for Aldulla Oborewuleall original from Somalia didn’t consider himself to be a boring chap. He was boring though and deep down despised himself. He despised himself for the fat ugly wife he had settled for, and he despised himself for the insipid children she and him brought into this world on a vain pretext in an even vainer pursuit and the boring resemblance they had to himself. None of this bothered him though. Al contributed his negative outlook on life, he had spiralled into, on a thing called Direct Provision. Al spoke little English when he first heard the phrase Direct Provision, but this was one English phrase that was easy to understand, it was what it said it was, Direct Provision. Housed by state and fed by the state, he was been provided for directly.
For Fours years he had lay dormant living at the Asylum center located at “Welcome to Mosney”, that sign at the entry was like a bitter joke, work will set you free would’ve been more encouraging. As a devout Christian fleeing Muslim persecution it undeterred him that this limbo he was in, in this cordoned off former holiday camp, was very similar to what he imagined purgatory might be like.
Al could stay here forever. Boredom was easy for him to adjust to, the aimless 3 children running around the small holiday shack made boredom a relief and his wife was just something attached to him now the sex with that fat floppy saggy was just work to get you by. He liked being out of the house. Al distracted himself with life’s errands. Everyday he grew, by the by, resting on life’s altars, until it was feeling like this place he was looking at everyday, was as if his own coffin was being rolled down the aisle.
You can’t go on long thinking like that. So on the FB he looked for social groups, Balbriggan was the nearest large town, so he joined the facebook group Balbriggan Roadrunners. It was inconvenient, due to distance, for him to accompany this group out on their group runs, but it did spur him on to take up running. As bleak and boring as the Mosney center was, Al found the surrounding countryside quite nice, even beautiful some days. His mood was lifting. Aldulla became interested by the facebook posts and tried to copy the training the Balbriggan roadrunners were doing. If they were doing a 7km on a Monday run, he would run 7km on his Monday run. Aldulla became a fit guy, he was happy out on his runs flowing, somedays flying through the invigorating countryside that rolled by his eyes.
Aldulla is in the sunshine, happy and running, coming round a hedgerow, a cyclist is coming towards, a fellow athlete. So, Al smiles and tries to make eye contact. The guy merely stares steely ahead ignoring him. Al ignores this wonton subtle passive aggressive insults and forgets all about it as he runs on his glorious run.
Robo Cop on the other hand, can’t believe what the fook has just happened. He thought about it all the way home, until a car pulled out on front into him coming down the hill in the Balbriggan town Center almost killing him, giving a minor distraction. Then the bad thought struck back.
Later, the next day in fact, Robo vents this alarmaily traumatic experience of seeing a brown person with a comment on a youtube video, recently discovered by kevob.
“The other day I was going through the lovely Irish countryside and almost eye made contact with one of these shit skins”, he does this and then rushes over to do a commentary over a pool hall in the Crucible where Rooney O Doothery plays in a duel against Shinbob And Kevob Fly who both chalk the cues with cocaine, that they sniff at after each shot. Robo says even then he knew his friends were faggy shite.
Then the house got broken into. It was late. Kevob was drinking wine, celebrating, watching Prime Time on RTE, something to do with beef tariffs after Brexit, A grey old Minister of the state was waffling away with the backdrop of Cork City moving behind, like as if to say he was outside, or that was a window. Kevob found it enthralling watching the silently moving cars go over some bridge, so enthralling he didn’t notice the steps being made up the stairs.
Kevob was very drunk, he was celebrating the eviction of the Americans from the field. The farmer who owned the field had had enough and towed the coffin up onto the Skerries road and parked it at the railway gate where the old Ardgillan railstop used to be.
“It was a short sighted response to a long sighted problem.”
Nobody knew what that meant except Kevob, who gave his useless insights about the predicament facing them. He would run doing laps barefooted around the field and every now again whilst passing their array of tents he would shout down some claptrap slogan that bubbled up in his head past.
“Do or don’t believe” or “Change is a coin that rarely changes” or “When a rake rakes a wake, promotions are coming” It was very annoying and they would often debate what Kevob meant. Then the winkle pickers who parked their cars where the coffin was left complained and the Americans decided it was time to leave.
Kevob came out of the wine induced trance when he heard the floorboards creaking upstairs in what he deemed must be coming from his bedroom. Kevob was too drunk to be undeterred or deterred, he wasn’t sure which, and poured another glass of wine. The creaking stopped. Upstairs the security guard from Mosney had seen enough. The only thing worth taking was the mini safe that was bound to contain valuables. It was light and the contents inside rattled a bit as he lifted it off the top of the wardrobe. Money, a few family heirlooms and maybe some jewellery the usual things, he figured, as he left the room and went down the stairs with speed, grace, and silence. This was an artistic part, he pictured a ballet dancer to reinenforce confidence and tiptoed into the night.
Inside Kevob eyes drooped, he was in a place where dreams met dreams and became other dreams until he heard the clip of the door closing and he snapped outta of it.
‘Did you hear that Telly’
Telly remained silent because he wasn’t even there. Kevob laid back again underdettered and carried on. The second bottle was almost empty now. Kevob kept closing his eyes, he couldn’t stop it. None of it was real and what was real was hard to distinguish from.
The first yawn of the night, like Christ’s first fall. What’s wrong with looking like jesus. Tomorrow is the third day, he rises again tomorrow from his bed. They all walked up with dread towards the grim cold church. Hunch figures neatly dressed ghostly knowing something about this place. Kevob had woke late, 9:00am, got out of bed , 9:45 , and in the brief car ride down to the church drank lukewarm coffee laced with sugar to shake off the shakes. He even managed to snook in a smoke outside before the service. A watcher outside smoking, watching them all come in. I’d love to tell him all the who’s who came forth to his funeral dues. A familiar figure came up the churchyard, rushing forward with that gait that is his, and long ponytailed hair that probably isn’t. Worried he’s late. We’d used to talk about you mister.
‘Thats a wig that is’
‘Is it’
“Yeah I remember Barry Weldon going to Aoife “ – Ah your dad wears a wig. Remembrance.
Commented on my excellent rock skimming abilities one day, I told him about that and he laughed. When was that, I wondered, was the Moving on Moments.
A Moving Scribe Called Robo
Enter scene
Loads of women with big breasts walk on by in a sequence made by words and observations perking the scene firmly. The clothes come off and in a group they are all at it naked.
Exit scene
Kevob departs from this group of idle friends loitering and gives A soliloquy for history. Feeling wet.
AI Generated Movie Script
I’m just a language model, so I can’t help you with that. Anyway AI has not happened yet ye fool.
Kevob The Priest At The Altar Gives A Sermon
On inthe most boring conversation of my life, there I was trapped there afraid to leave a large group of peering people with no excuse to leave. How did i get reeled there into that long long long hour, me just standing there saying nothing and them, the lads, saying even less , ‘look at the ass on her’ ; ‘look at the tits on her’ ; until finally the time of day parted us and we departed our ways. Amen.
A JULY DAY 17TH OF SOMEYEAR
I saw him that day and many days after. I wonder what he thinks of me now. I saw him today in fact. A memory for a July day. He was on his bike and I was coming up the ladystairs lost in cosmetic thoughts about Lina Ozola.
‘Hows it going’
Who’s that. Him. Looks at me, knows me, wondering about me.
Beyond. The Depths Await. To the place called Skerries.
‘Good how are you’
Will can he reply. Nope. off he goes, can see his crack. See’s I’m ok and that’s enough for him.
Its nice to notice people and not notice any changes, all time blends.
Kevob finished his smoke and watched the black figures disappear into the shade of the church spires. Kevob will be the last to enter, he peers up at the cold dim February sun and wonders how long until spring and goes into feelings sick from many other things. He blows the last cigarette breath of smoke out going into the corridor; a mark of respect or disrespect. Later he would grimly think at least the mass didn’t contain any waffle about heaven.
SATURDAY At McNallY’S FUNERAL DIRECTORS
Didnt dare go, why traumatise myself more.
‘I remember we had such good laughs, me and him with you Kev Foy’
KEVOB THE SAINT
Kevob shook out of it as the journey interrupted him; as they; thou thy; the die; in dye, awaiting rye; be barraging back into town; was the garage gang coming back to life into Balbriggan and Kevob parted ways with the most boring afternoon of his life and came back to the most exciting experience of his life. The absurd eulogies ended.
‘I remember we had such good laughs, me, him and you’
“ I don’t know how such laughs ended like this.”
Roll back the years to A mirror of Slantrock Place
‘Aww, Barry Weldon sent me a friend request’
‘So’
‘Aw i just left it there, i suppose i’ll have to accept it’
Later Robo unfriended him.
RIP Rory Whelan
Died 9th February 2018
Meanwhile as we all shivered in the cold dark church on Winters morning in Ireland over in Australia it was night time near 10pm and a good time to attend a funeral in your shorts.
‘You got the popcorn Aine’
‘Yeah it’s about to start now i think’
‘Nice way to end the day’
‘Yeah its starting, bring over a can will ye’
A pint of Guinness came up to the altar.
‘Here , catch’
Click Clack. Fuzz Duzz. went the dovey foamy draughts of brizzy clouds foaming up aromatic around the round brewing place of sounds.
They set back into comfy seats, Aine and Nico.
‘Whos this eejit late’
‘Kevob is it, that’s him isn’t it’
They settled into the silent, crunching popcorn and sipping beer. And watched. And listened.
‘Welayheretodayagreatsadness.Wehavemanyquestions.Ididn’tknowRorypersonally.Septuralahadidniprononouncethatrightandmegadeth.theremanyhardtimesinthepast.hardstimesbehindthestruggles’ so said the priest waffling on.
‘God this is boring’
‘Who’s that over there’
‘I dunno. There’s all the lads over there, together. That’s the family at the front’
‘I think its starting to end’
‘No its just communion’
‘I’ll get some more beer’
Click clacked the brewery witch hatch, depths and smells and cool beer in the tummy and the blood warming up with it, a warm happy glow came over them.
‘There’s Aofie’s dad, didn’t think he would show up. Barely knew Robo’
‘That’s some head of hair he has, what age is he’
‘I dunno I think its a wig’
In unison the congregation all started to kneel.
‘Jesus even Kevob is kneeling, look. This is serious. He hates the church.’ ‘No wait. Looks like he’s just tying his shoelace, is he’
‘Oh my god, Nico, the priest is gesturing everyone to get up’
‘Shit he looks angry. And Kevob is still down.’
The congregation shuffled and stirred into murmurations dancing likewise in the hollows of wood. From above it looked like ballet.
‘Now what, everyone’s standing up. He was gesturing to stand up for fook’s sake.’
‘Wait Kevob is back sitting down.’
‘Oh god Nico, they’re kneeling back down again.’
‘Fooks sake. What do you expect, this Priest is like Hitler swinging his arms about the place.’
The screen watched, moved and panned into the harsh church. Reality subdued. A cold cast endured into this place.
Robo, the ghost, came up to Kevob who was kneeled at the aisle and spoke softly in his inner ear ‘How was my funeral ?’
Grim and cold it will be, I pondered, wearing slacks with a tracksuit underneath. From then on I just followed the daze. The coughing at the back of the church is very annoying. The coffin came out and got laid there. Moments are moments. Here I witnessed our last shared experience together. A quarter of A century had passed. The person in whom’s presence I had the most life experience lived in with is going.
Then along with everyone else Kevob perched into a place. The coffin came down the nave. Out the door. And was gone. The last shared experience and you weren’t even here. The next universe together away. You don’t care as we go from church to graveyard to into the ground.
The dreary crowd soon lifted and felt nervous as the coffin passed them. It drifted through the empty space passage of the corridor towards the door. The funeral was over. People rose their bodies and followed it’s path, back out into the open breath of space towards nature’s alluring callings. Outside in the grounds of the church history met itself again as funerals and weddings intermingled.
A sharp harp of some brightness of February was here in the air.
Meanwhile elsewhere the Americans had packed up their shit except for all the garbage they’d left behind under the fast growing grass that hid it from view. They clambered up the embankment up upon the exposure of the open field where cars zipping by beyond on the Balbriggan Skerries Road could see them. One by one they lifted themselves over the green ledge from safe obscurity into a scene of potential judgement and critical observations with every car that passed. This insecurity was the effect of Kevob’s constant harassment over the last few weeks, shouting about magpies and foxes as he ran loops barefooted in the field. Every passing and sighting of them was deemed to be judgemental as they come onto the open field. Soon they were all up on the field feeling silly. They walked with heads down in a single line across the field following the imprinted trail left by Robo’s coffin. When they reached the coffin they felt sombre and sad. The Americans, due to something close to instinct coalesced around the coffin, one of them took out some sheets of paper and broke the silence with a poem he’d said he’d wrote called
“How long have you been sleeping here my dear friend”
The crowd around the coffin came forward saddened to listen with solemnity and the right feelings.
‘You can live in tree places.’
‘Three or trees’ interrupted Frosty.
‘Not now Frosty’ hissed Nicolle.
“You can live in three places. In the past when the forests roamed without resistance only the rivers would give, up to the roots clawed into the river bed so when time slept sneaky branches crept over the river drooping down waiting to sing”
‘That’s beautiful Apigina’ said Frosty.
Apigina looked up at her and back down to the sheet of paper held steadily in his hand.
“Too drunk on life to go on Robo flung by those trees clinging at weak branches. Happiness is knowing who you are. Has anyone ever been as happy as Robo when his branch touched the river. Sometimes the branch can’t grow anymore or the river will sweep it away, living on here is the worried warrior. A mistake some people fraudulently laughed at long ago.”
Elsewhere meanwhile while all of this was going on, coming up the road, bouncing over the bumpy contours along the Skerries Road or Balbriggan Road if you’re going the other way, was the esteemed security guard of the Mosney Direct Provision Center. Seated beside him not bumping about due to his slender form was Al short for Aldullayay or something boring like that. It was a silly sight to be seen; a fat man in a car always is now no matter how big the car. Al sat with knee’s modulating nervously firmly clinched together in an upside v shape or a broken w shape or, and this was the clincher, an aggressive n shape, shaped by back complaints, that made it clear to back off. The security guard guarding guards, guarded, his big fat belly jelly bellied about the place and his stocky form bellowed about the car as he juldted up over the steep ramp that brought them into view. It was Al who spotted them first as they blinked over the new horizon that came into them as they both entered down into the new shape of the road.
‘Waats is this’ Al said in a mimic attempt to fit in.
‘What the fark is going on here’ said the highly esteemed Mosney Knight guard ignoring what was just brought to his attention by his belittled passenger.
Al felt a bit put off, again, as his driver who claimed to be his friend hadbung undermining everything he said since they left Mosney.
‘Look at these farkers, they’re al standing around a faking coffin.’
Al said nothing in reply, because he felt like nothing, whatever he might say in reply would be belittled more into nothing, or worse, ignored into something.
They went on past the funeral and under the Lady’s Stairs towards the carpark where the caravans used to be. Then things turned bad.
‘Hello. Whats this’
The car suddenly veered off the road and parked beside two bikes, right beside them to curtail the view of the deed from the passing cars. The bikes were tied to a wooden frame with a flimsy lock. It didn’t take long until the bikes were in the boot of the car. Al winced with the fulfilment of embarrassment as he wondered if the Irish would ever allow him to be Irish.
Elsewhile long ago in the same spot at the exact same time Kevob was clinging for his life as the first man to climb the cliffs of Baneeregaara. As Kevob lifted himself to hero over the cliffs the van in another space line on the continuum with the two stolen bikes drove off.
The doorbell routine again. Kevob was getting bored of this by now. His phone had been ringing all morning and he was ignoring it and now the ringing was on his doorstep. Some things just won’t go away.
And want away. I want away. Kevob slapped closed the laptop and went thumping down the stairs on the squashy thick green carpet newly laid and sprang the door open with a judo chop on the handle.
‘What is it’ , he snarked before even looking to see who it was.
A group of people were assembled into his front garden, laden with bulky rucksacks, clanging cutlery, rolled up sleeping bags and all of them with big smiles beaming at him.
Kevob, almost blinded by the whiteness of all their unnaturally straight teeth, knew instantly they must be Americans.
‘Hi’ said a neat but unshaven blonde haired guy at the front of the group, who to Kevob looked a bit like George Stobbart and had a similar but more dorky accent.
‘Hi’ Nervous Kevob mirrored back hand held nervous.
‘Hi’ he said again with a wave ‘You must be Kevob’
‘Eh, yeah that’s me’
‘Hi Kevob. I’m George.’ dont say Stobbart or this is gonna to get weird.
‘Em we’re here for the coffin’
‘Sorry the whatcha…what coughing, Kev Foy coughed. Coffin coughed. Or you mean coffee’
‘No haha. You see we’re friends of Robo’
‘Yeah I gather he had a lot of American friends’
A good looking girl with short jet black came forward ‘Yeah we’re all them, we’re all of his best American friends, we’re here for Robo.’
‘That’s right, we were all of Robo’s best friends’ said someone somewhere.
‘Yeah. If it wasn’t for Robo I wouldn’t have met somebody’ Shouted an hispanic looking guy wearing a name tag. Kevob squinted and saw that it said,
“Tagul”
‘Ok. it’s nice to hear he had such positive impacts on your lives’
Their Leader pushed forward towards the front door putting his unlaced mucky shoe through the gap it made to the hallway.
‘Kev, just go back to bed.’
‘No’ Kevob reopened the door so not to escalate the situation ‘look what do you people want with me’
‘Hey Kevob, no need to get narky. Just show us the way. Just show us the way to the grave.’
A girl came up shoving her way through the crowd, Kevob noticed she looked familiar, it was Autumn Frost in disguise.
‘We need you to take us to the grave’
‘Again’
‘What do mean again’
‘Nevermind. So you people are here for Robo. The go fund me thing.’
‘Go Fund him for what though.’ Kevob continued, ‘ He is dead, don’t you know’ Kebob backed up.
The criphey Americans perked up.
‘Are you serious’ said George
‘You really don’t know anything about it’ said Frosty
‘We’re all here for the….’ and the short haired girl turned to the crowd before a long pause and then… They All Shouted Together –
“ROBO’S TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD”
ROBO TRAVAILS AROUND THE WORLD
The usually repetitive knock of the door bell. The last time Kevob was here feeling this was FebRuary 2018. Not his greatest moment soon to be his worst. The bought for a joke card on his bedroom window didn’t help printed with “I’M SORRY”
Three times Robo’s mother had to ring the bell that day, each time looking at that card like it was a sick joke, before Kevob finally opened the door on that eventful day.
“What”
What was Kevob doing that day. I woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs with a Day in the Life by the Beatles stuck in my head like it was everyday and did my usual routine. It was Friday so I was in the house alone. I had a message on facebook, and I thought fook off, and ignored it. I heard the doorbell ring and thought fook off and ignored it. So I went out for my morning run and when I came back I heard the doorbell again. Fook I thought this person is persistent, why don’t they fook off. And they did.
Then there was the doorbell again, so I gave in and stormed down the stairs to deal with whatever shite this was. It opened with a door. Into another door. Then some more doors. Then came the earthquake.
Shock 1: It was Robo’s mother at the door.
‘Hey Kev’
Shock 2: ‘did you hear about Rory’
‘No’
Shock 3: ‘Yeah he died’
‘What’
Shock 4: ‘Yeah he hung himself’
The last door flung open.
Kevob exited the scene of his front door back into the hallway shaking beholding a plate of empty pistachios shells onto a window pane, as if to give grace.
So, doc, after that day I hadn’t opened the door again for a whole year, ye see, exactly a year.
A year after and I was going through the same routine again, I finally relented on the third ring of the bell and stormed down to answer. I opened the door and what do you know. I’m back in town with FebRuary 2018, and it is his girlfriend at the door, Autumn Frost.
“Can you take me to the grave Kevob” she says “I wanna see him for one lasting time.”
Why she’s holding a shovel is beyond reason.
Kevob aghast, alarmed, afraid, although not shaking in wonders what to do with this renewal into rushing emotions.
‘Autumn Frost, come in. I think it’s gonna be a short day’
‘What doyoua mean’ wisped Frosty in her hoarse American accent as she stepped into the hallway.
‘Or a short night even, eh’ Kevob said as he went into the kitchen to fill the kettle.
‘I mean we’re in that strange moment of the year, winters ferment’
Frosty followed Kevob into the kitchen and looked around with the stern face of disgust. She had seen enough of Ireland already not to be disappointed by anything, no matter how shabby, she uponed.
‘Look..’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ interrupted Kevob to dismiss her.
‘Yes I’d love a mug of tea. Or coffee. thanksss’
Her whiny AmeriCan voice was already starting to annoy Kevob.
’Ah yah ye gotta have a cup of tea here in Ireland. It’s the law, almost.’
Kevob snuck back under the duvet with her, not before taking back off his trousers.
‘So you and Robo were in a relationship. A real one.’ said Kevob in an incredulous manner.
Guilt ridden Frosty rose from the bed, but it was already too late. A woman could spend a 100 years talking to a man and she’d still be closer to the man who she’d let inside for what was about 50 seconds.
‘Look Kevob I really need to get out to the grave.’
‘Ok my love, no bother’ Kevob heaved himself up out of the bed fully erect now owning the room ‘whatever you want.’
She wanted him. She wanted repose. She didn’t know what she wanted ‘I’m not your love. I love Robo ok and I need to see him one last time’
‘I understand. Although you’ve never actually seen him.’
‘That’s my point.’
‘Eh ok’ Kevob bemusedly bemused now with the clothes back on, slurped down the rest of his tepid tea and encouraged frosty to do the same.
‘Are you going to drink that, it’ll keep ye going’
Frosty gulped back her milky tea and to keep things moving she made a few words roll from her mouth ‘There that’s that’s done. My mug of cold tea with bland flavours is gone, happy. Now let’s get going and get outta her’
‘How’ Kevob hadn’t walked all the way out there since his interview. ‘I mean we can get the 33 bus, but it’s still a long walk from there’
‘From where’ said Frosty shaking her head filling the whats and the whys. ‘The bus what are you on about going on a bus, I want you to drive me there’
‘Oh. I don’t drive. We’ll have to walk from the bus stop’
Frosty shook her head in disbelief, for her an American getting a bus and walking somewhere was near criminal behaviour.
’No, I have the rental car outside. I just need you to show me the way, ok. The roads in this country are hard to navigate. All little back roads everywhere going nowhere’
‘So how did you find me Frosty’
‘I knew Robo’s address. Google street view. It was easy enough to find his best friend who lived a minute’s walk away from him. Look are ar you going to take me to his r’
‘Yeh yeh, I’ll take ye, I’ll take yeah. Just making a bit of small talk like’ Kevob was only half listening as he looked for the tobacco pouch in the clutter basket where he kept it along with his ventolin inhalers, an LED light, a wire stripper, a harmonica, 5 volt DC adapter, a screwdriver, pens, scraps of paper, the remembering of Robo card and a whole lot more. Kevob eyed the remembering and noticed the “aged” 32 on the card. “We will remember you quirky humour”
‘You know Robo was the same age as Bill Hicks, I mean he died at the same age as Bill Hicks’
‘O’h’ Frosty considered the name Bill Nicks to be a nickname of someone Kevob knew from around the town and dismissed Kevob as a bit of a simpleton.
Kevob looked back through the silence to maintain importance ‘Yeah Robo was a big fan of his. Funny they died at the same age’
‘Yeah it is. With him been a fan’
‘I’ll tell ye one thing. I don’t know what Robo was like with you, what you and him talked about, but I was watching Bill Hicks the other night and Robo was ten times funnier than that guy.’
Frosty saw only Frosty Autumn with that statement. A river came to her mind and across the river was a white field frosted over and behind the field golden leaves were falling off the trees.
Kevob gave up on her and the smoke was rolled ‘ok I’m ready lets go to Robo’s grave’
So they left the house, Kevob now 33 instantly sparked up a smoke sparking the thought that Bill Hicks gave up when he was 30. And then checked his socks, 3 pairs left around the corner of the house under the ESB box to obscure them.
‘Christ they’re still wept, I mean wet. I put them in the oven for over an hour last night, how is that possible they’re still wet’
Frosty getting in the car wearily said in her usual American droll ‘You put socks in the oven’ and finished the sentence in the car ‘I suppose that’s normal for this country. Give some flavour with all their potatoes.’
Kevob leaped into the passenger seat and was a bit put off to see she had put the shovel in the back seat. He changed his subject of thought not wanting to go where he was going.
‘Can you believe that. I hand washed those socks last night, put them in the oven after cooking my pizza. Still soaking wet.’
They were on their way now.
‘A left turn here at the exit of the estate’
Frosty grew frosty and didn’t reciprocate, the two of them sat in silence going up the Skerries road.
‘A right turn and we’re turning the right direction.’
Frosty cringed at this abuse of the American language.
‘We already did it before, you know, well before you.’
Kevob said nothing ‘He was of real importance online. To his American friends. He helped them a lot. He didn’t consider himself a virgin, at the laptop we’d often.’
Kevob injected now ‘Almost there now. Just up this steep part. Where in America are you from?’
‘Boston’ she boasted.
They passed by the memorial plaque for Thomas Hand shot by the Brits on New Years Eve 1921.
They followed the path of Kevob’s anonymous interview at Mr Wuhan’s Noodles. In the fields around the graveyard ran mosaics of art. In one of them beyond the pine trees a dog played with horses running around the field. This was life.
Kevob leads the way.
‘Here we are Frosty, that’s him there beside his dad, the one with the crosses. So what’s with the shovel.’
Frosty walked up to the grave, read out the name loud to make sure, raised the shovel up and spiked it into the earth. She was fooked now the fairies were coming.
ThE WasTed Day Of LIFE ToWARDS RObOhOliSm
Everyday he did nothing all day. Ideas would come forth to his mind and then just drift away. His lack of progress; lack of purpose; it made him feel dirty, like he almost didn’t deserve to exist. But that wasn’t what bothered him most about his void of doings, the dirty feelings was nerves twitching, his whole body was bored with his existence. He felt unsatisfied and even worse felt he couldn’t be satisfied. There was not a pursuit that could fulfill him. Crippled by this doubt he avoided thought and action, instead dedicated his whole day to being distracted. In the morning he did almost pointless 8 km jog, it was like a life support machine that just keeped him ticking healthy, without it he would fall to pieces, so he took it like a medicine, but it served nothing really it felt to him; yeah it kept him healthy but for what; he got no pleasure from it like at the start when it was like a drug. The trouble began when he got injured. No longer could he get the feeling of fulfilling the day with exercise. Mental exercises substituted; he made arguments on the internet with writers and when that bored him he took on the hobby of playing the piano. He learned sheet music and musical notation and every day he did hours and hours of repetitive hand movements of broken chords and rote patterns. All of this was doused with alcohol every night, it gave the day a final fulfilment, like profound thoughts were coming through. But those great thoughts were forgotten in the horrible sober light of the early days where everything was just functionality, and everybody lied to themselves about where they belonged. Drunk one night it struck him. He was not working class, they actually worked half of the time. He was definitely not middle class obviously, and drinking had won. He was a member of the drinking class.
He’d Eventually Completed Yesterday Intro A New Nothing Tomorrow.
A HALL oF WeeDs WiTcheD RoBo’S ToWReTuRNs
When you live with the dead you live in another world. That world beneath, the world of the dead is here tonight, passing through always, they scream at you, the wind has that howls, with the scowls, and whispers that speak there that silent voice. Salient in the air.
Alone and warm, finally I embarked upon the mall this was the last point of the mission upon entering me eyes scanned for girls first then for people I might know and then potentially violent delinquents like always. I regretted the nuisance thoughts and focused inonat the divine. I registered many feelings coming to match the spot where I’ve already been two escalators going down to the carpark not much, and i’m falling asleep here in the mild, within the bleak grey day getting lost.
Robo in the special class, even though he solved that countdown conundrum in one second and the contestants didn’t solve it at all.
A profound moment on a train, with raindrops writing scriptures down the window. That was five years ago now, time has become a grand landscape looking for him out there wandering.
Robo without money 2015; he goes to the post office and he has no payment, they tell him to go to the welfare office. Robo doesn’t go to the welfare office for two years. Robo cut off the dole. Robo dry and stale for almost two years. Robo finally makes the decision to go back on the dole Jan 2017; how did manage that, what a feat, one day after two years he makes the leap to go down to the welfare office; an action put off for 2 years. What was he thinking as he walked home from the post office that day before, did he even consider going to the welfare. That day he was cut off and the people in the post office told him to go to the welfare, he could’ve gone down to the welfare and maybe been back signed on after a week. It’s like a murder mystery, but here’s what I think happened.
Robo and Seetac. Robo never went to Seetac, I made sure of it. That. But Seetac does hold an odd old knot in this, an anxiety knot. Robo was the first person I spoke to right after my “activation” and the ppp personal progression plan that was devised for me. I stopped, stomped, marked him, and better worded that creature; going into Lidl; told him how horrible it was, and asked upon a quest, was he signed on, because I wanted him to go through what I was going through. Regrets. It was a strange meeting up with an old friend, he was like a person I didn’t know, saying odd things, jittery and swallowing nervously. Why was it that that was, then and when and why. He was, the way he was, the ongoing question game. The circle that’s turning into this, I was dealing with then the stress of being on Jobpath, I was the one with the anxiety, yet unbeknownst to me he was going through anxiety far more intense than mine. Seetac would later send me to that anxiety and I still managed to hold things together, just about. That was June 2017. The next meeting was again at Lidl, this time in the store, probably mid July of same year. I went to checkout before and outside he caught up with me. He didn’t buy any drink that day. I’m sure of that, this was old Robo again, he was still a bit morose, but not shaky and saying odd things. The contrast between that Robo and the Robo a month before, why didn’t I see it. It does prove one thing I always suspected about Robo. He would drink heavily and then go through cessation, over and over again going through withdrawal, he probably thought this was healthy, detoxing the body. But confuse the mind Robo. After that day and our chat walking home it’s blank.
ThE REMeMBER SEpTeMBeR HeLLuViA oF 2017
Running through my grooves, going to places of comfort out on my run, with now constant nervous swallowing and a constant sick stomach feeling I bumped into Trees Acrowd near the martello tower. The first thing he asked was whether I had seen or heard any abouts of Robo in the rounds. I ignored what I knew because I had my own problems. Anxiety settled me into nonchalance answers, to keep conversation neat; act normal and get outta here. I was Robo now; the one I met in June 2017, so why didn’t I see it then. Then nothing again, the next few months I rewired my brain and brought the drinking back down to a sustainable level and learnt everything there was to know about alcohol’s effect on the brain.
Slosh. Plink Plank Plonk. The days with trembling hands as I relinquished another day in the battle withdrawing from withdrawal and the horrendous duress of a tremendous consciousness. Fierce is the reaction I have to my brain’s fierce reaction. It has adapted with A ferocious anxiety. I always thought I was killing it; that want I didn’t want; and it came back stronger every each day. Anxiety.
A delusion of control sets in, it goes away with drink you think, so drink to be thinkless. Mind control becomes the is of a swigging gulps of port in a toilet from a plastic bottle.
This is where you see the sign “Beware it Becomes Scary” in the walk back down into the border town. Although now its a walk I choose to make with thoughts I choose to think; that’s a memory. The real thing, finding yourself here by accident, the devil thoughts conjure up endlessly. It’s a higher plain of existence, where the external stimuli just endlessly flow in and warp your thoughts, always negative. I see a drain cover, it irritates me. I imagine a being, is it me or someone else, trapped in a prison cell walled by these drain covers and the imagination so much stronger, like the dream coming through into reality. Bark on a tree becomes bones, its a tree made of bones. Leaves, green pleasant leaves on a bush, become hundreds of tongues licking at me. And I see it all. The world becomes too real, reality is too much, how am I holding this cup and my hand starts trembling, my whole arm is shaking and you’re choking in the unreal reality. Rotten things you might think all the time and just dismiss as stupid become narratives with all the worst outcomes and things you took for granted are too much to comprehend.
This is the border town of sanity. Here the brain has pure malice as the only agenda. Here the miserable thoughts it whips up into the frontal lobe are so provocative, you feel the emotion so much, it spirals around, a feedback loop in the brain, making the thoughts worse and worse as we go on a an around, and an around.
Welcome to the border town. Where the sign says “Insanity 50 Miles away” Welcome now to OCD, the most wrongly named disorder I had the displeasure of ever experiencing. OCD, is OTD, Obsessive Thought Disorder, the compulsion part is a symptom that’s a curiosity. And now it’s starting to get scary, the next part, it seems so contrived to tell the tale. No matter what I was thinking, no matter how dark it gets, I knew it wasn’t real. The drink had grew; up a new self in my brain into a powerful imaginer, a mad priest, my mind was out of control. Yes I could feel the felt; thoughts daily growling up with insipid drink almost reaching reality, but I always knew it was only the thinking thoughts run amuck trapped by a strength unleashed. So I kinda know where you were Robo, that’s kinda the point of this. You reached the fairy path. You made it over that border without anyone noticing. Hear today last year, 2018 Feb the first, 1st, 2018/02/01. His last week alive, his last place in the horror where those thoughts, anxiety laced thoughts, became his reality. Grasping from the prism of dreams. Kevob Awoke Again. The room he opened his eyes into was pitch darkness. It was getting darker still.
December 2017
THE TROLLS & THEIR REVENGE
It began with his morning scroll through facebook. The troll was laid back on bed with laptop nested on lap for warmth and comfort, beside him was sugar laced hot tea that he sipped on to lifted his rest of body. The tea raised him from his dreary daily fog. Unemployed by habit he drank at night to escape the day and this left him low in the morning with little energy.
Rolling down the newsfeed with life growing in him again he wanted to feel alive. The story of the day was an Irish bloke aged 55 who’d gone to Leeds with intentions to poke a 13 teen year old girl. His name was printed in press. A vigilante group had duped him online within the confines of the law and seduced him into a meeting.He was hoisted by his own petard no doubt you’re thinking. The whole sordid affair was posted live on and to too onto facebook. They confronted him in Leeds city centre and exposed him with equal measure. It was the main news story of the day in Ireland. The man was a well respected journalist. None of this mattered one bit to the troll. The troll saw the story and like the vigilantes, bored and with time to waste, he put the poor perverted mans name into the facebook search. First result was him, the sap had tried to thwart an underage teen and left his facebook profile open to the world. Everyone could comment on his posts. A facebook mob began its march; in amongst them; in he slipped. He ran down through the comments for anything interesting, something that might spark his creativity. Here was upon his moment in a host midst of what was amongst all of that attention, where he lurked into a shadow to the most major of a story, everybody was logging onto to watch, even the authorities would be checking out this page. This was his way, his moment, he thrived in the chaos here he could stand out from the crowd and walk center stage back into the story but in such a subtle way nobody would notice. He would play the facebook game.
The troll looked upon some names from the paedo’s friends list, only girls of course. One was a very pretty girl pictured with a black guy. He clicked on her profile and cropped a picture of her declaring “I support migrants” A girl with a black guy didn’t bother him. A girl with a fetish though, that bothered him. He knew the reality was women had babies with men stemming from a fetish. Tattoo’s, aggression, abuse, fear, rule breaking. Every emotion in a woman could be rendered into something sexual. Women might like to claim it was something deeper, but its primal, they like a thug like a taboo. A blonde letting a darkie unload himself into her, she likes the submission, take my white away, the black taboo skin taking her, cannot resist. Mind you most girls aren’t wired like that he knew. That sort of thing is like male homosexuality, things have just gone astray a little. The sex thing for humans is all over the place.
The facebook mob was rioting, he never ran with a crowd, his goal was to disrupt it like a flock of flying birds and watch the fragments disperse around him. This traitor Jessica with her fetish for migrants and black babies was his number one target and a few other liberal looking girls.
The troll scrolled through the pedo’s timeline and it was just vile comments. One woman had gone through every post and just commented “sick pedo” on everything. Everytime the troll refreshed the pedo’s homepage the friends list had shortened. Don’t wanna be associated with him. An idea hit him. The troll logged on to his fake account, Lina Ozoola, the one with the eastern European as the profile pic that he’d gotten from a town news page. On the first post at the top of the pedo’s page he wrote “sorry K- but I had to unfriend you, I’ve known about the others Jessica, Tayna, and Siobhan, but 13 yr old girls is too much, bye don’t contact me”. Worst case, everyone thinks something is going on with them girls, best case people think its a coded message and those girls on his friends list are part of some sort of pedo conspiracy. Lots of people took the bait. His comment got lots of reactions, wows and angers, some replies,
“is his abusing these girls as well”
”how are these people still friends with him”
But not the one the troll wanted. The flock was scattering, but predictably. Then a creative of the types came along.
“There’s something not right with gender fluid Linn Ozola profile”, said sad Dave Graham
”Does anyone else think this is a coded message for a pedo ring” Mr Mister Predictable joined in to the chorus.
This got things going.
“Somebody should check this out” Said nobody somebody busybody
A Genius. thought the troll and then blocked Dave Graham.
”yeah something stinks” posted another pedo finder.
The troll waited for more comments so the conspiracy could grow itself but nothing happened so the troll took action again. He noticed that 2 of the three girls he mentioned hadn’t unfriended the pedo, so he wrote more cryptically this time.
-”Jessica, Sioban, if you read this I see your thing still on his friend list, I don’t know how you can stand by him, I can’t have anything come back to me, I’ve unfriended do not contact me”
This sent them mad. An internet explosion happened.
“Wtf I can’t have anything come back to me”
“Omg I checked Jessica and those other girls profiles and they have children”
“I think Dave Graham nailed it when he said this was a pedo ring.”
Very soon the girls 2 mentioned had unfriended K—-. On the trolls friends suggestion list was all now people with the second name ‘Decoy’. The troll knew if they’d been checking him out they were the girls he mentioned too, maybe even friending them and messaging them, so he re-checked K- ‘s friend list, it was down to 40 and the two girls he mentioned were gone. He had fooled the mob. He had scared a few girls. He had contributed to isolating a man from humanity. He’d probably even attracted the attention of the authorities. He was the individual and the rest they were the mob, and the conformists, and the sex pests, and the authorities. All were in the wrong except him. History would always exonerate him. The troll thought of that poor man, his life ripped away from him, it was conflicting for him and wondered about his own individuality, was it a duality of expression. He’d been part of the baying mob, that most terrifying form of re-enforced selective thought. He’d duped the mob and made them look silly but had not bothered to expose them. It was the leading story on the news throughout the day and he had walked straight center stage onto it.
The next day the troll entered his fake facebook account, it bemused him the journey it had taken, originally set up to stalk a girl that since blocked him and then another girl, now it was Lina, with a profile picture of lithuanian girl at work in his local Lidl. There were no new notifications, he was relieved, it had all come to nothing. A few hours later and he checked again, K– was now home for sure, his facebook account was gone.
The troll wondered if K- had checked his global notifications and saw the 1000 or so things needed checking. Had he read my comments and thought it, what a prick, or maybe took solace that someone was making a joke of it. Most likely in despair he had just deleted it as quickly as he could and hid away in a dark bedroom or took solace by watching some old sitcom taking respite in trivial distractions, trying to survive.
ROBO THE FURTHER Part II
Psychosis Takes The Path.
3:05 am
The video looping on Robo’s garage wall has finally stopped.
2018; this is it, it is time to say goodbye. Soon nowhere in the world will it be the last 2018. They’re already awake in Melbourne 2019. The final countdown is passing the black edge of the Atlantic ocean right now over Greenland. They’re watching the clock in New York, in Chicago the shops are closing early, In Las Vegas they don’t know or care what time it is and in California I’m lost to time, they are probably 7-8 hours behind. Is the sun of 2018 still shining anywhere?
I did my annual smoke at midnight watching the fireworks. What exactly are they celebrating, the passing of time, the fact that we’re all going to die. I’ve survived another year. Where was Robo this day last year, what was he doing, did he care as 2017 passed the baton to 2018, did he have any idea he’d never experience a new year again. How did he feel as those last days ran down, what was going through his mind, could he be saved. I’m lost here in these thoughts. You’re here, right here today last year and suddenly you’re gone. What happened, you were out drinking with your mates 6 weeks before you went mad. I walked and passed you about a week or two before it happened, there you were walking alive, a man at the peak age of life, a living creature, thinking, feeling, living and two weeks later you’re nothing in the ground. I dunno maybe you’re better off dead, no that’s stupid, just because I can’t understand this, life here on planet earth is profound.
So here we are now again, the sun is coming round the corner, the night is fading away into the light. Robo is dead and that’s that. We’ve almost passed his last living year. All throughout this year since late February I’ve thought, where was he on this day 2017, and never more so much more these last weeks to his final moments. The grand landscape of time he has painted, searching for him. Is gone. So here we all are, time to go to sleep again. I can’t fight it anymore, we’re in the New Year, if this was 2018 not now 2019 we’ve five weeks until you hang yourself. What would you think if I sent that as new year message to you. So what did you go through that January, its hard to to tie it altogether, little snippets, I saw you twice in January 2018 buying booze, you knew you had a drinking problem, one time you saw me and crossed the road instantly and just started dead on ahead sternly ignoring me.
A Wet Tuesday Day In NovembeR
Kevob woke into nothing, he felt nothing, a black pit inside him lay there draining him of all mirth. To feel nothing and have it wash over you, it drowned your thoughts. He reset the alarm and went back into dreams or even nightmares, better to feel something, anything than the horrible abyss that is the truth of life. The alarm went off again and still finding it easier to sink than rise he crawled back under the bedsheets, deferring the inevitable for a half hour. The alarm went off again but with still no energy he glanced out behind the curtain at the weak light that noted the day slipping by in an attempt to motivate himself before returning to sleep. This pattern of waking and sleeping continued for two hours, from 10am to 12 noon. It was mid November, and a fine sunny dry day and he knew he was wasting it. Finally exhausted from sleep he rose without any purpose, he was determined to waste the day. The first thing he did was hastily grab a cup of sugary tea from the kitchen. He dreaded getting that meagre cuppa because it meant entering the kitchen, the commune of life. He lived in a four bedroom semi detached and even though there was only four left now, the kitchen was always occupied. You could hardly move in it with just two people and the kettle just had to be there even though it could easily be in any room. Once in protest at this suffocating convention he had bought a mini travel kettle for use in his bedroom which brought about a monumental argument. That kettle now lies dormant in a cupboard. So he surrendered and retook to the kitchen kettle where everyday he was either ambushed from the adjoining rooms or forced into the trap by the already occupied kitchen. This day the kitchen was occupied. At the sink was his mother who connived by nature every time she saw him, and as he entered the room she snook a glance over her shoulder, he could not fill the kettle without going to the sink, she knew this and waited. He saw this and could not bear it, so instead boiled the empty kettle and hastily took half a cup of limescale tea hastily back up to his bedroom securely. The cup of tea settled him and he settled with it, his sugar levels restored and the contently vibe of being you in that distracted hymn of oneself with scrolling and clicking through social media rolled on through to a vibrating calm that dissipated along the shore of crashing waves to become discontentedly. Another hour wasted and then he defecated before his daily hour run. Hard to run after being bitten by the black dog, so to strengthen himself he ran through memories of happy days. Happy days are carefree days, like those blissful hours near 3 in the morning and it’s November and it’s raining and you’re drunk and still with a bottle of wine left and nothing to do but sleep till 11am. Those days were gone. The world would not leave him alone. His existence offended normality and he had been thrust into the sphere of other people’s care and they were determined to get him on his way, or get himself sorted, or get him on the make. Apply for jobs, interview for jobs, enrol on courses, personal progression plans. His family took on one flank to prod into the real world. A private company contracted by social protection took the other flank to probe him into actions which he might think was his own. Both on their own he could defeat, together they were chipping away at him. To add to this was the pressure of conformity, everybody was getting on, people who hadn’t changed for 10 years after finishing school suddenly had good jobs, homes, even families. He often thought of that time he met his friend, on the impressive bridge that links the head and tail of the old town bypassing the river dip. His mate was fresh out of college but nearing 30 and they were both on the dole, it was still recession and his friendly fiend joked about being a writer signing on. What happened now in his memory just seemed a blurry nonsense. His friend was offered a joke out of the blue, watching girls play football wearing some sports science gear that was monitored.
THE Lesser NAMED BALRUDDERY SPEAKS Aloud For Once
It’s late, so late it’s early morning and it’s November. Sporadic rain belting for three days on and off for three days on the go over the outskirts of Limerick. Risky, Crawls and Robo are with Telly who’s talking about MASH until he takes a break all of a sudden. The lads watch their best friend transform from a funny coherent witty chap into a drunken mess ranting all sorts of rubbish. Black thoughts run down through Telly as he makes no sense riddled with anxiety.
‘Compare the Market with the help of ferrets’ shouts Telly;
‘The fridge freezer has died, quick quids take out a payday loan and get quick quids of dosh quickly, it’s a 1000 percent interest and you’ll end up in the gutter. But don’t worry I have jaunty tunes ro relax and encourage you to bankrupt yourself. Quick quick quids in your pocket and restore some order in your life by hanging yourself on a later date. Hey check out this happy guy, he took out a payday loan and the day is perfect. He’s a junkie on the streets of Manchester wrapped up in a sleeping bag right now yeah ok, but live in the moment, take the cheap easy trill of easy money and let the criminally expensive consequences be ignored.‘
The lads were impressed with this mini story, that guy looked happy when he monied instantly for nothing. And that tune Telly hummed, that jaunty, ding ding di ding ding, gave the lads a usury gonna be ok thing vibe. Kevob who was standing in the hallway after coming back in after he had enough.
‘Telly go back to talking mash potato stuff, you lying bore.’
Telly ignored this and instead whipped out a smart phone and told Kevob he should buy it. Kevob sneaked a sniff at his armpit as this was going on and the smell of onions was, eh, ok, not a surprise, kinda rank. Telly though was stenching the place out with his man perfume, he went out to the bathroom beside the kitchen and came back and shouted “whatever goes down your plughole make sure it includes Buster”
Kevob knew it was going to be one of those rare nights and sat down. Telly cracked open a can and went on. Robo seeing it was going to be one of those nights cracked on with Telly and followed his example. Telly was getting into boring now, telling short little lies. A story about a vet he knew who mistook a hat for a cat and a horny love story about malt melt teasers.
Outside in A countryside at night here away from the sea in Limerick Shanob looked east into the abyss of black that only hours ago they’d all drove through. Shinob stubbed the smoke, three in a row was enough with dread, and he went back inside.
The lads asked me about the conditions outside and I said the moon was full now lost outside behind clouds. Robo, who was laid sick on the floor, looked at the magic mushrooms we had collected in the famine grounds of Co Clare. Shinob drank from his glass filled with frothy beer to forget. Kevob looked into his wine bottle as he refilled his glass and hoped he’d enough to get him asleep tonight; as he’d forgotten his blanket, and would be sleeping on the wooden floor beside the dying embers of the fire.
The dying fireplace spoke the last words into the night
‘I write a page a day, never with continuity, that way time is always wrestling with itself, instead of it sweeping me away into the sea’
‘What do you mean without continuity…’ Shanob rubbed his eyebrows to think through the drink drooping ’like it’s just all over the place you mean’
‘No no it’s all linked. I just don’t know how. Eventually I’ll have it all tied together. It’s like a complex matrix, everything is connected, like the complex network of wee little back roads around the land of Are Land. Its not just a river with tributaries flowing down to the end point of the sea’
‘I see. Sounds a bit complicated. Like your trying to be a bit too artsy’
Kevob feeling perked up with the mention of the word artsy, lifted up his wine glass in a pretentious manner and twirled the wine under nose wafting the aroma’s, felt the bosom and neck of the wine glass before taking a slurp, he then proceeded to gurgle the wine under his tongue making a relaxing bonging sound as the taste and smell panged his senses. Kevob necked back the mouth full with wine to the spot where he could taste, smell, feel and hear the wine flow down into him. Shanor, developing, watched wafting and took a pook at his swatch, It twas 1:30am.
‘You see I just wanna write it all down. I’d rather be a bad original writer, then a good cliched one.’
‘I’m so drunk right now, I haven’t drank in the weeds.’
Kevob, also a drunkard, sought out the fact that he was being boring and changed the subject. Here we meet Kevob’s demise.
‘I got blocked by this girl on FB.’
‘WHAT. What for’
‘Lyin Gin is her name, you might know her’
‘Why did she block you’
‘Ah I sent her this message full of French crap, how I could fall into her eyes forever’
‘Jesus. What did you say her name was’
‘Lyin Gin. She works in SuperValu.’
‘Is that her’ Shanok was already on her facebook page.
‘Yeah. Whats she up to’
‘No I don’t know her. how do you know her’
‘I’ve been seeing her for years down at SuperValu. I got her name from the receipt.’
Shinob was feeling alarmed. ‘So this is building up for years. Have you evered talk to her’
‘Yeah one day I came back into the shop after being served by her and asked for a lighter and then I said Lyin Gin I don’t really need a lighter. I just wanted to say, ‘You’re one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen.’
‘Holy fook, in public, with people there’
‘Yeah’
‘And what did she’
‘Nothing really.’ Kevob felt embarrassed ‘that’s really sweet or something. I just stormed outta there my heart was racing. That’s so sweet. You little boy.
‘So she blocked you. I think that tells you something. Now want, do you still talk to her’
‘Well yeah, not really. What can I do… She works in the post office now, so I’m going to fail college and sign on to the dole’
‘So what, so you can go down and see her’
Kevob was worried now. Was his behaviour odd he wondered. ‘Well yeah’
‘Kevob you practically declared your love to this girl and she absolutely regretted you. This is totally fooked, going unemployed to see a girl who’s blocked. She’ pretty much so said “Fuck OFF”.
‘Yeah but this all goes back to 2011. But the important choice of words here is she didn’t regret me’
Kevob The Alternative
by Kevob Fly
It’s January, 1919 and in a hospital at Posewalk, lays, a young man pondering his future after recovering from a gas attack. Upon leaving hospital that man will embark the whole world onto different timelines with a singularity of decision, the ramifications of which will last a 1000 years. The man’s name is Adolff Mitler and he’s about to enter politics. Wait no I got that wrong, Mitler left hospital in November. Its December 2018, whoops, I mean November 1919. Although saying that December was great, really dry with long periods of high pressure, even the roads are dry, usually the roads are just constantly wet here from November to late February. Not this year though, even now January the high pressure continues and the roads are bone dry, a bit of drizzle the other day, but other than that totally dry. The funny thing about this weather is that when we get high pressure this time of year, the high pressure drags in a cold front from up north, like it did in 2009-2010. This year though the high pressure is blocking out the freezing weather engulfing Europe, it’s even snowing in Athens. So let’s embark, well I already used that word.
Actually this needs a paragraph.
So dear reader, let’s start this journey on this great quest. Kevlin now in Europe, 19th century. In a deep green valley, where a little river ran through, into squishy soaked pastures where the rain came down from the sky and valley with so much ease, the few trees on the river bank were often in the river; where along the river up above from the embankment ran a narrow grotty back road, treacherous and thwarted with potholes, covered by dense hedgerows on both sides until one side gave way to a stony wall; where in small gaps now overgrown Valerian had long taken root; that led to an old Austrian police barrack, built to patrol the roads and burnt out during the troubles; beyond which you came upon to village hidden under the shadow of a hill; where peat smoke and mist intermingled, roving over the valley into fields trodden down into mucky patches by man and his livestock, beside which over the bridge was the parish pump where words flowed endlessly and meaningless and blended into the sound of river nearby; here where evening came at noon during winter; here where even the local priest seldom visited because of the long hilly walk into this cold chilly valley; there stood an inn. Not long ago tourists; Berliners, Dargles and Germamo Irish, on days out for fishing trips would come here. That tourism was all gone now and the few trout that remained in the river were being swiped out by locals who had crafted poaching into an art, an art rendered degenerate by its ignorance of the season’s and breeding. Nobody chose to come to this place. Sometimes people would come on through by mistake; they’d stop for dinner or supper or to take a break, usually cyclists or motorists touring France; who’d take a few looks around and realise the mistake; then after muttering a few words, off they’d go to the next town. Here in a village called the Naul was the place Kevlin had come to after cycling his bike from the Balbriggan railway station beyond the valley six miles in the distance, to hide his disgraceful escape from the war draft in Britain. He would hide it out here in the Naul.
1919; Adolff Mitler at Christmas; not much happened. Then at the beginning of February 2018, craving to do something, he agreed to do guard duty work at the POW camp near Traunstein, that’s near the Austrian border in case you don’t know. A month later the camp was closed and Kevob returned to Dundalk. Just follow his passport from here on in. Days later from here on Inn near the small town of Bal Brig Aginn Co Dublin, Kevob left with bandage over his head recovering from concussion nursing a long black out. What happened. A coke can nursed up a river. He did not remember. But had to find Robo before it was too late. Kevob set up a stalkout on the town square. Kevob followed Robo down the path towards the Milestone inn. On the way down he noticed a propaganda poster. Upstairs in the after dark club a current affairs meeting was going on tonight; Robo must’ve been going to it reckoned Kevob. Before reaching the pub, Robo was joined by a bunch of lads who were waiting on a street corner for him. The lads marched on nervously, Risky and Seanob departed the group to go to the ATM machine. Then suddenly Robo smashed into a lamp post. We entered the club together with me stirring to go.
‘Sorry lads you’re not getting in tonight.’
So we left and met up with the two deserters holding raspberry pies who asked what had happened. Tree’s are scared in a crowd nodding at me and we all stood around in silence for about a minute.You could cut tension with a knife. Finally I got the message loud and clear.
‘Fook off be gone’
The sound of silence is deafening. So I marched up, kicked the pole Robo had walked into and walked straight back into that club. This time I got in and so upstairs I went to attend the rally. They were discussing a proposal from the council to turn the library into a welfare center. I waited my turn and I stood up on the podium and started shouting out into the crowd my memories to last forever. Meanwhile outside hearing the crowd now go hysterical now from my speech. Robo with his thumbs in his pocket raised a hand from his trousers to signal a sad goodbye, as if he knew now what was coming and turned and walked away. Kevob had had enough and decided it was time to discharge himself from Lourdes hospital in Drogheda after his head traumatic bike crash in Bellewstown. Outside again after three days, the air had changed, the first cool of Autumn was in the early September air. School had started back. The Pope visited on the Saturday of the incident.
ELSEWHERE SOMEWHERE
After hours cycling west into the sun. This bike ride goes wrong. Dismal thoughts take you on the spiral road. Every sign you see directs you back to the place you’re trying to leave behind. You are so lost and the sign says 4 km at a crossroads and you make the turn. You wind around the road and come to the next turn, the sun is in the wrong place now. So you stop and drink and it goes away, the grey overcast strays, and you wonder how it happened. The clouds come over again and you feel your way through the blank flat boring Meath Countryside. The thing is the roads feeling like they’re taking you away from sanity and you can only follow. The insane road that makes you go around the bends. I was happy though, even though, at last, as I came down upon a hill, A familiarity I knew from suffer, I once ran up here once in a race, it’s on Strava, even though in my mind map I was somewhere completely different, thinking I was 3 maybe 4 miles northwest of this place, but the memory of pain put me in the place. It turned out I was going the complete opposite way. The strange thing is I felt like I wanted to be here; it, the place, that felt of that place. Familiarity, a thing, came caring for me. You were that was you four years ago running up towards you. So then I got lost near Dunshaughlin. Let me try getting lost into words from the following road signs. When you think you’re heading towards Slane and see a sign that says so. Then trying to escape signs to Ratoath for almost an hour. 1km away, then another sign 3km over this way a signpost strippend vaguely pointed directly into a church. Bare naked again we marched up to meet Robo for one last time in his coffin. A happening in 2km now 1km again way and then it starts again unrelenting signs for Dunboyne keep showing up as I go round and round the bends, whats going on. The road where, or were, I dunno, madness, hopes to go. Spinning around in loops that made no sense. But think, this thing of thoughts, going round and round, I left that rot and came again into horrible loops that made no sense. Dunboyne is that way, you’re going this way, 5km Dunshaughlin again, Ratoath 3km now, another sign for Slane, and Trim and Navan now and then. Confused, so am I. But think this thing of thoughts of horrible signs loop around you to places you don’t wanna go. Finality came of course and I broke free; Rory was stuck there on that road with terror thoughts going round and round, it in his head. But there are dismal thoughts. I’m a well rounded individual with wine, these thoughts are aspirin in water. Time for bed. I got home anyway, another 100km spin away from the terror of those days.
MeaN While AnYwaY agaiN
Mcdonald’s has come to town. Its ubiquitous entrails lie scattered around town and surrounding countryside, waiting in some cases to re enter the food chain via fallow fields that become feed for stock. The life cycle of this discarded cardboard strew about the place could be thus; Mcdonald’s decorative, convenient temporary holding container, inconvenient redundant inedible nuisance, trash dumped in a field, cattle feed, cow, abattoir, Mcdonald’s, and finally Euro saver hamburger nestled in some soon to be discarded cardboard. Its journey from human discard back to the food chain is more complicated I’d imagine.
So Mcdonald’s has made it to Balbriggan. Fifteen years ago or more Balbriggan had a chipper, on the mainstreet, thats orish for a junk food shop, just the one, everybody knew it and everybody used it and everybody knew everybody who used it. That chipper is still there, Marconi’s I believe its called. The famous chipper closed when the beautiful, recently rerendered with flowers and benches, town center was redesigned and demolished into a dull grey concrete square with nothing. But the council had money that it didn’t need to spend, and so in order to keep on spending it year on year it wasted it by destroying a space, a space with flowers, wooden antique benches harmonically styled around beds of rockery and flowers, and that most glorious pursuit of tranquillity in the square of the town held there.
Eat that Burger it’s sensational, two minutes of tranquil. I transversed into a Mcdonald’s after months of deliberation, deliberation around arguments of the past, that would settle the moment the decision was made ‘I’m going to Mcdonalds.’
It was the day I introduced ‘approached’ ‘targeted’ ‘stalked’ ‘mind violated’ Lina Ozola. I talked to her but was nervous. I asked her her name trying to salvage something from this crime of displaying wicked predatory intentions. She refused my request of course, I have no right to this woman’s name, who works in O’Briens Cafe have I mentioned. The coffee there is good, excellent, the service exemplary, with coffee or anything else bought comes the decorative display is a delight, a wonderful chocolate is left on the tray beside coffee, a superfluous receipt is laid there also on the tray never placed in the hand. On the receipt is a name, sometimes its Lina.
Kevob turned that corner and the blood sank into him. It felt like his whole body had twitched rigid and in release he pushed his belly out and rhymed ‘fat belly, fat belly’ in his head to unnaturally relax himself by doing an abdominal breathing. Was another panic attack brewing. Kevob took the wheel of the ship and steered rigorously, port side. Coming into port out of a storm. He composed himself watching the tense body of his friend who was not himself anymore. The walking dead coming towards you, you saw it then and many days before.
‘When did you first see it’
They left the church and now with that out of the way they could take stock of the day they were in but could not enjoy. A stork flew overhead. They all signed a momentary breath of relief as he hit the air of the pleasant September day that it was; its hold in its airs both the summer gone and the brisk autumns airs yet to come; barmy was the word of the day. The most formal part of the day was over but as Kevob stood there in the churchyard lighting up a smoke he felt it absorbed or absolved or something of that like that this would take his whole day. The morning had been well spent, he thought.
A hard and fast bike ride and a hearty breakfast. In that a wedding was much more polite than a funeral.
A funeral you must wake up early and it is the first thing of the day. Ruins the whole day. Thats the point. The dead punish us. They don’t have to get up early.
This is it he thought as he looked into the hills or rolling green. The smoke ended and he looked around. Most of his friends were still in formal mode and would be throughout the day. Groom, best man, yada yada. Shanob was like me though and as you do outside a church you gravitate towards people or away from others. A conversation began.
‘Christ that was a long service. Wasn’t it’
Yeah I know, it was like something from Father Ted. The family knows the priest you see’
‘Some of the shite he was going on about’
‘I don’t think rounds of golf has any place at a wedding mass’
‘But 20 minutes at least going on about church music.’
‘I think that was something to do with the guitar player’
‘Oh I see, he wasn’t happy with the singing ur’, and then Shanbo hastily interrupted
‘It wasn’t your usual stuff ur ‘
Ur forgotten fell down into a chasm.
A silence occurred.
The two friends sparked up in the silence.
Again I just had one. So had Seanbob.
The two minds collected. And we must mention him. We’ve distracted ourselves long enough.
‘No sign of Robo’
They looked at each other worried about whats going one way.
‘No. didn’t come, did he say anything to you’
‘Yeah I got the impression he wasn’t coming’
The sound of silence whispered in kevobs ear. And then he said it.
‘The way things are going he’s gonna be found dead one day in that garage’
Seanob laughed. A nervous laugh. The one you make when something funny is not true. Go back; into the beyond is what I do and it feels strong, but that was not the moment. Its hard to go back further. It’s reassuring I can’t, or I’d live there with the wine. You’re testing me with time. And I go back again to where I begin. Where it finally ends.
‘On the beer tonight’
‘What’
‘Having a few cans’
‘WHAT’
‘On the beer man’
Still nothing. Then one word. From behind.
‘VODKA ..caa.’
He made sure I heard it; a diminish as he vanished in his walk away.
The last conservation. What a last word to say to someone. You’re lost now, go back and wonder when you first knew. Its too hard to burrow into that memory field and here goes tally hoe.
And I’m lost again, the time warp takes us all into folds. Something there, yes. Why does that sentence lay dormant in my mind and it takes hold. I close my eyes and instant sleep comes. But then seagulls come to my rescue.
“Other candidate Peader Kelly wants to see a reduction in the number of seagulls in Balbriggan”
‘Robob, so what are ye up to’
Looks at me strangely.
‘Nothing. Just like, watching a few podcasts and stuff. ‘
Nothing left to say.
Liar you were chatting online with Americans.
DIE INTERMISSION
Hell Yell. She’s barking at the wind. The gas in my digestion keeps me awake and the telly stays to block out the howling wailing at the door. Rory is back, hammering at the door. We’re all fighting for our lives, says Telly and now thats his name. You don’t know what you want to do with the night until your last in his visions. Telly starts to leave after some ads and can’t keep up the routine any more. Think back and all the world around me smoothers me. Telly says you should just listen to me before taking off and sure enough I know its true. Telly is my oldest friend. They want to do you a favour but can’t. Oblique phonetic roaming charges cross over the radio barrier. Don’t try and understand, just feel the fields. And soon you are the are caught in the timeloop and away fades human things, human words, shapes and sounds of that horrendous form. If you can turn against yourself and be free. Now is the now is making you mad with words. I feel happy and free until the milk turns sour, then I realise it’ll all die soon. Death is coming up through the milk. Its in the in and on the tip of your tongue. I’ll write and write until it comes. The sleeping dog growls at the wind in the letterbox. Feeling terror yet. Impending doom death, you as you is always you is you staring into an empty afternoon, the sun is shining and the world around you is teeming beyond. Distract yourself away, one day, ten years, a century, its all passed with equal ease and still you delude yourself with importance. Nobody cares, only moments to go. I’m sick from sour milk and my gut is clenching bites at me. The milk duds churn in my tummy and I’m drinking to my last and only friend. The rest of the world is against me. I had other friends and I go back to last night. Coolock in the cool framing drome. That tree that hangs there not knowing what its done to him. Wolvo the wolf, missed my mark I lay upon onto him. They took him down from that tree and laid him to rest. My fist was the first. The blonde crown I laid in Lusk and beyond on to the 33 bus. Milk on a counter, laying out to churn my inside out. Retaliate, whats the point. It oozes out of me. Finally reach in and say it. It doesn’t matter. The wine brings the lovely dreams back in to me with a warmth. Oozing blood. I’m falling all or to sleep. Sheep I see now and don’t care about mice churning milk, drowing. The cheese is the ending, just write down that one thing. Reg was a shock pundit with Daily Mail (change that, Daily Express). Kevob’s other best friends was writing books on Cul De Sacs.
Kevob lifted himself from the bed sitted in position peed into the kettle took this normal over to the curtain pulled the line watched the light come through and then sat down beside the laptop pretending. Then went back to bed. Sleeparoused.
THE SHUTTERED COURSE
All of Kevob’s Chickens were coming home to shit at him or peck him in the eyeball. He’d been caught not smoking in toilets recently by Rosco. Peader had, as he had wanted, put him out into the corridor but in bad luck Goldfinger Gilbride was on the prowl, enduring the Balbriggan tech tribunal. Halpo the vice Principal had all the Kevob complaints as he was in the Mr Sincere of levity with the other teachers and the huge respect that came with that. And now in bad luck it all came together in a little hall outside the principal’s office that Kevob had been put in. Kevob at aged fifteen against this bad band of bandits didn’t stand a chance. The pressure came when they, his distractors of teachers, during the break followed rountinated protocols surfaced into the commotion. The three or four or five all came together into this little hall and challenged and funnelled it towards Kevob who in desperation started to stutter and would never remember how many were actually there pounding against him with these charges; ranging from; missed homework displays, abstintees, smoking in toilets, tardiness, forgotten books; copies; brown envelopes and journals, coming to class without a pen or pencil. All I remember for comfort is the only other student there was Chef, who later mocked me but then showed respect for standing my ground. That was the only time in my life I had a stutter and now I understood stutters. A few years later in Colaiste Dhulaigh studying Computer Science a guy with a very bad stutter would never stutter when alone with me in my singularity. We would work together, me helping him at the basics of programming, failing to explain an if statement, then candy butt AnnJob Kennedy our teacher with her mousey face in lean femininity would come over and the words became spaghetti for this guy. She likes it, this impression. Getting it now I reckon, an understanding. I wish I was needy and she rubbed her arse in my face. Hard Times. School wasn’t a complete waste of time for Kevob.
A Small Inn In A Town Called AfteR
Kevob came out of the church and looked around. It was a rerun of the wedding. Same scene, same people. Bored within it, the phone buzzed. Action was always needed in a space. It was a text message from beyond the grave.
”start counting the stones and hear the cows of Roscommon speak to me.”
Kevob nearly on his knees counted the stones and nothing happened from this. As the crowds spoke and gave platitudes in the courtyard. A smell of soup was on the horizon with this. A soup on tables, bread came with tea, smokes in palladian architecture, the father comes over and gives thanks at our table, the garage gang tuning heads, and us we all wheeling away back up the streets after.
The Aftermath happened in seconds. From the coffin in Church to the grief at grave, follows the weeping willows. That scene I was instructed to depart. Willy Whelan weeping into that grave. A broken man.
A little tripeling ending. The essences; after follows; Robo’s friends departure, and gorged into desserts of pints in the Central pub afterwards. Back home and frugal after the tragic. Scrolling, rolling down. Through facebook, Kevob alone finds and likes; the picture of Robo, and his coffin on the world tour with his American friends, soon to be becoming, to everywhere you could imagine. They were soon to be concurrently en route around the Asiatic continent. Now at an inn in Singapore. I sharpened my mind. Then I said goodbye for the last time to so many people at the Bracken Hotel. After which I walked back up through the streets of Balbriggan for the last time to nowhere.
THE INQUESTION
2018 Feb 8th Dying day
At some point in the day, early I say, maybe 4pm, Rory enters the house distraught and drunk. He attempts to ring his mother who he believes is down the town and in mortal danger. Those people, Antifa, that have been shouting over the wall at him, after putting a video on his wall which he didn’t get the link to down at his garage where he lived are threatening to slit his mothers wrist as she comes up the town. He is too drunk or probably more likely anxious to dial the phone, he mashes at it with his hand trembling. No worry, his mother isn’t down the town, she’s upstairs in her bedroom. He goes up to comfort. They talk. A lasting conversation is had. He returns, sent back there, to the garage. In the wee hours of Friday night or late Thursday he takes out the rope and hangs his neck around it. Then the weight of the world takes hold.
‘Mr Fly, when or if did you first get alarmed by Robob’s behaviour’
‘Well the alarm bells were always ringing. But they are for everybody aren’t they, well for me they are. I am suspected of everybody. Anybody could, well no wait, that’s not true. Robob was always different. Yeah there were clear signs that set him apart’
‘Like what’
‘That Budgie on the beach scared me. Years back. We were going on one of aour long walks that we partook about once or twice a week. Anyway we were walking this day from Hampton cove, up to the way to ladystairs and after passing this thing we called the Slantyrock we saw this budgie. I wanted to help the thing, it trusted humans and was obviously an escaped pet. Robob took that thrusts vantage so he walked right up to it and plummeted a rock into it. I started shaking. The next time I started shaking like that was 13 years later when his Mother mocked at my door and told me he’d hung himself. What goes around swings around I suppose.’
‘Did you raise your concerns about this incident.’
‘Yeah of course, I raised it with the lads and they took Robob’s side. “Big Hard Men” are always ok with killing animals. Gippy said it showed skill and laid out a beer can to see if I could do it and I did. I smashed that can with a rock like Robob did that bird.’
‘Anything else’
‘The mice he tortured himself with all sorts of under’
An interloper amongst the crowd roused up a sudden interjecting.
Up plucked and spluttered a drunken man in the gallery
‘It was the fairies that took him. Bad country out there. It’s getting grim out there in that I tell ye. Banshee. Pooka. Dark is coming. He drank the spirits’
‘Quite up in the gallery. All members of the public must remain silent during these proceedings’ , hammered the judge. Kevob was already starting not to care.
An Innocent Cloud
It began in the early morning, small enough over a little green hill beside the sea. The morning sun had risen the slight grey mist from its seabed that had held within it in the night coldly. The sea mist rolled along the bobbing stir. Upward it flowed and twirled up the green hill, a mere grey speck. Soon It was cool white, no longer a formless vapour but a fully foamed froth cloud with a bending pale shadow cast on fields lined with soldiers of rock walls in bad formation. Below as it started its day across Ireland a cow chewed the cud in a field, its tail flapped happy in the morning sun. The day was beginning to glorious and the cloud was high and happy looking to look at drifting over a deep blue field. Ribbon of river, bleak cottages, strange brick enclosures, houses in hostile places built on summer dreams, forgotten roads, sparse hedgerows, barren places, this was a rustic scene. The cloud blew inwards and grew, absorbing warm moisture around it. The blue strip behind on the horizon narrowed as the cloud blew away from the coast eastbound. The cloud continued to rise, a messenger now, below the fields took on the look of a bedraggled knitted blanket strewn together from bits of scrimped wool. The cloud reached a spire nestled among the trees, it was a church and below dotted grey came into view was a neat village. In its corner a schoolboy alone running late in a yard almost shuddered in its shadow. Beacon of the sea of lost now and it pinned forward up a hilly mass, looked at the vast green rolling expanse ahead, cooled and darkened. Below people shivered at its foreboding, it would hail rain soon in its quest to get back to its sleepy sea bed. Dotted tear drops and streaks of crying tears were strewn across the land, water piled downwards cutting its way to freedom and sometimes to pools that prisoned it inland. The cloud began to blow and grew stronger. And then it started to let leash its stirring rain, over all the land it passed, that is passed, became its brief dominion now. It pelted its cold wet wind like hate everywhere over fields of cow and barn, sheep and fence, collecting into little puddles anywhere, blades of green leaf grass, mud dips in pits of fields, potholes in roads. It drip drips dripped and it soaked into everything aggressively with its heavy cold drops and made all under its demesne miserable. Sheets of summer rain hailed down and nothing could be done but shelter. A cyclist in bliss met its terror and cried at the horror of nature which had deceptively soothed him for hours with warm kissing sunlight, and now drained the will of life from him as it reigned down a mass of cold sky river so heavy that it choked him and he drowned in water and emotions. Before simpering home wet and miserable with a shiver creeping into his bones. The cloud was twisting, turning on the map of the Met Eireann rainfall radar. He, who was he, clicked the button through the arrow that gave a timeline map of the clouds through the day. Dot dot dot jumped the mass of clouds, Growing shifting, weakening this way and that. His cloud seemed to be petering out. An enclave had formed into its main body and it would run south east from Slane through Drogheda before reaching back home, reaching the sea at Bettystown or Laytown. A plan was laid out for a plain mains evening cycle. Judging by the projections of the infrared on the rainfall radar map, he predicted a route through Stamullen up to Four Knocks, where there he assessed the clouds and it would give him a carefree ride. It would be a good summer evening spin. It began at Stamullen with a few little spits and driffs of rain; it soon grew, slowed to a becoming deluge, harvesting from the sky as he reached Snowtown and fourknocks. The cloud and him had met, the cloud had laid a painting on the sky and now was leaving. Shattering rainbows of colours cast the magnitude shadows of all its midst past over within. The great soak started for him in this little spot in Ireland.
AN Ending FOR The COURSE
Beep Beep. The same again.
“The cows of Roscommon speak to me”
In a field in a place on the corner of a little dent hill in the vast expanse plain green of Roscommon lived a herd of cows. When it was summer the cows were happy and ate grass. One day down moo too road the mooing cows moo moo moved to another field down the road. Here the cows were happy eating grass going moo. This happened a long time ago. The cows went about the place moo moo mooing, munching grass here, chewing grass there, and munching grass everywhere. There’s always something to do, mooed the moo town cows. One day one of the cows went moo and moved over to another part of the field where the grass was longer. All through July mutton clouds roamed above coming into a field and then leaving again, and now and again it was a black sheep Sunday and the sun would disappear followed by torrential rain. Rain pouring onto the moving pictures of the morning sky. When it rained the cows were not happy. On the days went and the cows went on moving about the field like art on a green canvas, until this happened. One day one of the smarter cows was chewing the cud and looked over and saw someone staring back at, outside the field. Then the someone starting moving on and the mooment was gone. So the cow went back to chewing the cud. Another cow saw all this happening and became alarmed, so the cow came over to ask what happened but realised she couldn’t talk. It’s here where this story mooed on to a darker place. Only read this if you’re sure of yourself. A field near the town center was re-zoned and a planning permission for a housing estate was put forth to the council. The council approved the planning permission and buildings commenced at the site. On the outskirts of a little town located nowhere in the middle of Roscommon there lay a pub beside a little stream. Inside the pub on a Friday night that was the place to be was always packed with locals yapping away into the night and nobody could understand a word spoken. The pints were pulled full and the empty words followed echoing down into the constantly diminishing glass. Into the echo chamber they mumbled away into the harmony of time. At 11 o’clock tired after a day’s long work on the farm, Tony entered the pub and his friends greeted him.
‘Hello Tony’
‘Alright Tony’
‘Tony how’s it going’
Tony ignored it all and took a seat on the isolated corner of the bay beside the toilets. The people who had greeted him felt ashamed and turned their necks to take him out of their lines of sight. Tony sat at the bar with his head down waiting to order a pint trying to shut out the clamour banger bangering about the place. Then we exited the scene.
And a breakfast roll at the camera panned into a school.
“Teachers. Trainers. Teammates. They inspired men.” Shouted the dullard generic sportsperson.
‘No, no, no. They inspired me. As in you!’ The director spoke, giving directions.
‘Oh I see. Sorry.’ He responded.
A feeling of mutual embarrassment came over both of them. They did not belong together, these two. The problem was they were totally reliant on each other for each’s income. A silence lingered where troubled thoughts brewed and to fill the space the sportsperson piped up.
‘You know it’s not a great script yev written for me. I mean the kid at the end has a better line than me.’
He’d started so he continued and to save face tried.
‘They inspired men is better in my in my’ Stuck in a stutter he stopped stuttering.
‘No stop’ Nobody said.
They all diminuendoed down.
‘I think he’s right.’ Cackled the old lady. ‘If I had better lines. I didn’t like my lines at all.’
She too was trying to save face.
You didn’t have any fooking lines, you had fooking one line. Shot out wild thoughts of words held well before coming to the mouth.
Earlier in the day Ms Fegan had held up production for two hours trying to recite the line “Who would’ve thought I’d have a future Irish Captain in my classroom.”
The thing was she kept getting it wrong. The problem was Ms Fegan was an idiot. The first time filming the director just meekly guided her.
‘Ok so you remember your line, yeah.’ just making sure you’re not a dotty auld one and we’re in the same tune ye mad bat.
‘Yes’ she nodded feeling insulted
‘Ok so I’ll say 3-2-1 and then..’ and then he pointed his hand open towards her.
She looked at him puzzled waiting for ‘0’ or something. She thought this whole thing would be more complex. Nothing happened.
‘And Then What!’ she shrieked back at him.
‘And then go.’
‘Go where’ she whined.
Jesus H christ gives me some strength.
The director smiled calmly, ’Just say yer line.’
‘But go where and say my line’
‘Sorry I just need te.’
He jabbed his thumbnail into his middle finger. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’
A minute or so later he came back with a purple haze layered over his lips and a relaxed slouch. Reengaging, he smiled at Ms Fegan who noticed the bottle of Ribena juice he carried with him to the toilet was now empty.
More carefully this time he moved.
‘Right, so I’ll say 3-2-1-go and you. Go . You will be sitting there. You don’t move. At all. All I say is 3-2-1-go and yew just say yer line.’
‘Ok. I get it. that’s is fine.’
‘Alright we’re ready’ shouted the director and people moved into places freeing up space around the place.
‘3-2-1-go.’
She got the directions alright.
The first time she tried again she said ‘You would not thought I’d a future Irish Capta’ and then started shaking her head dismissively.
‘I’m sorry that might’a, seemed a bit,’
‘No worries, try again’ interjected the director, he’d expected a few blips and just wanted to rush through them.
Ms Fegan composed herself ‘Ok ready, here goes’
He nodded at her ‘right ready’ and softly this time said ‘3-2-1.’ and indicated towards her with his right hand.
Nothing happened again.
‘Ms Fegan’
‘Yeah. Whats wrong’
‘Nothing’
‘Just why then didnt ye say the line’
’O’ .. ‘sorry you were waiting for me’ she pointed at herself genuinely shocked ‘I thought you had to say “go” before the filming could begin’
‘Nevermind. just take it as a given when I stop talking. You say your line.’
The Director’s two opened palmed hands pulsating at her seemed like an invitation.
He had stopped talking and was smiling at her. The indents of his nails were on his palms at this point.
Ms Fegan gleamed, tilted her head and said it.
“Who would’ve thought I’d have a future Irish Captain in my classroom” Just like I practiced, back of the net. Gleamed thoughts
‘Ok. Will that do.’
Ms Fegan was already risen and readying herself to go.
People stirred. The cameraman, the audio guy, the studio assistant were all lined up like sprinters at the gun line.
The director was unfazed and thought on his feet.
‘T’was brill, thanks but…let’s do it one more time..eh’
The port was disrupting his thought processes so he fumbled a boring ‘for editing purposes. We need two or three takes.’
Ms Fegan took this as a compliment assuming it must mean her line was very important.
‘Sure no problem’
Saucely sodden somehow so she said sincerely since surely it was no problem now to get the line right. Ms Fegan resumed the wooden tipsy seat that had emerged in the corner of the lighthouse pub. The place was shaking now. Sweety Barret came up the steep hill of Quay Street to the auld entry to Quinnsworth then. The forgotten generic sports person stood at the bottom of the road in a GAA T-shirt standing there all day. Kevob out of place was pushing trolleys into eternity. Robo somewhere there on the same street showing off emptied his pockets of thrash onto the wind swept road there in a cold cast of November. Along with 40 punts of my cash I asked him to look after. Idiots.
‘Ok ready’ now feeling important, her wooden seat creaked, rocked and shaked.
‘1-2. Sorry.’
‘3-2-1-go’ The director swiped his hand at her.
“Knew I would’ve thought I’d be a future Irish Captain in my classroom”.
‘Ok that was good. You nearly got it’
‘What was wrong with twat’ little miss moany Ms Fegan hissed.
The director stamped the ground. The last take rolled.
The movie ended and out of deference to the quality of the movie he decided to read through the credits. It most certainly was not something he was going to make a habit of because he noted very early on in life that his father had a habit for reading the end credits. Looking for names.
‘Oh there’s a Foy he would say in some of the movies,’ I noticed. At the cinema I would sit there till the place was empty, the full house lights come on, the staff were cleaning up and on the credits pecking order we’d be down at, and on a windy night that was a Thursday in November Kebob, Robo, Nico, Shinbob, Risky, are outside the auld Quinnsworth road on the hill overlooking the arches looking for forty punt thrown away as litter for a jaunt. The end credits of someone’s life rolled.
Social Media Management MICKY MCFLY
Twitter Coordinators TOM STOPPARD
SARAH EARDIMBLE
Coffee Quality Control Managers GEMME HANDOB
AGOTA FINBOTTOM
Waste Disposal Factilators IWONKA TONALOT
ROSEEN CUMEASELY
LYINEE GIN TOLAND
Hygiene Specialists MARINA SLYBOAT
KRISTINA SMIRKS
Hair Sweeper Upper KEVOB FOY
All of Kevob Cows were coming home to the rooster. The chickens came clucking at him, battering at his shins. He scrolled down through the facebook feed and got forgotten until a picture became uppity . It was Robo, in the coffin on a meander. Perched upon a grassy knoll outside The Naul it stood. The World Tour was on. A Facebook page had been set up. It was the Americans. Rory’s World Tour Was On. A Call at a phone booth. Outside Kanas in Corn fields. They had taken his coffin holidayings around Earth. Kevob liked the page and parlayed into it. The most recent pictures of them with Robo surfaced. The visual rolls up. And it was his coffin in the mountains of Mongolia. It was the queeriest peculiarity sight, a redundant crowd around a coffin smiling. Then a text message came in on his phone. “The Cows of Roscommon Talk To Me”
NATURE’S A WAKE
Kevob sitting here listening to the endless pitter patter on the window. A sharp cold seeps through the broken window gap. It has been horrid this past week. The sleety rainy snowy rainy row of pants only stops for brief intervals. It started on Saturday or was it Thursday, a horrendous easterly brew is here and wind came in with warnings. Storm Emma to foster the funeral. And with dire wet cold frizzy winds that whipped the sea up into a frenzy. It splashed, howled, hurled, seeped in against the window in my bedroom as I curled up into sleep after sleep dreaming in and out as the cold taunted me. I finally dragged myself out of bed at 3pm, on a Saturday or a Monday. As I went out for my daily run to watch the aftermath along the coast. The blizzard had stopped. That was the last time it stopped. On Saturday night it started up again and since then, it has just snowed and sleeted with intervals. Sometimes heavy downpours, sometimes trinkles of drizzly sleet, sometimes like now then, just shaper plank plank thuds and weak pluds. It is now Wednesday early morning, 4:15am. It’s winter and I ask myself if anything is happening other than the weather. Kevob awoke and curled back into the bed. The windows shimmied as Storm Emma Whelan went on knocking about on the window. Strangely this hasn’t happened yet
Ireland Along Alone The Lonely Roadside
The Race Against A Brook Dialogue River
Down a narrow road marked with a T sign lays the bland barren brown tree’s of worth.
It’s a fairy scope. Along it sneaking through the sneaky path its made for itself is the River Delvin.
I saw the river running lonely down through the field and everything else was washed away. An indent woven in a field, I roll around the hill, come down from Garristown village and stop at A,
The bridge, to watch a little stream that I thought was you again.
From here to there until I pass your little short cut you’re lost to me.
I have to climb up, following the road to stay with you.
At the top of the hill I passed another little village
while rolled around taking the easy path. Flow down feel grace,
you’ve earned it, the wind is in my face and you’re there waiting for me forever. I still haven’t heard a sound from you or even seen you yet you queer peculiar thing.
Continue on your lazy path until I come down to meet again at the Naul village.
The river Delvin runs down the valley and the road follows above. I race the river until I take the turn to the end of the road at Gormanstown and I finally spot you and hear that sound you make everywhere, the peaceful sound of time.
You, me auld friend, is cometh home, now towards the near sea.
I have little else to say.
Remember our days together.
My comfort hope, in the woods of Gormanstown, that trinkle sound that captured me.
Ye that wee stream you were allowed in your wits for self to flow as you, through my repressive boarding school.
Forage on by, I walked into the woods, a sad monk followed and saddened me.
Outcasts from the kitchen the roll of time is the river Devlin in a path.
Kevob you can’t be friends with rivers and hills and rocks. You’re not a god, or the wind, you’re not part of the land, you’re not going to live forever. Nobody writes this crap, nobody understands it, it’s nonsense.
A FINALE FINALLY
This at last was one that was without any doubts. No elusive intrigue here. The text message was clear and perfunct, doubts went under the horizon. Kevob’s phone buzzed and electronics warped by light graced a text message into a meaning starting with his eyes. The message gave a clear ordnance of where this talking cow was. This was Roscommon cow land. The patterns bespoke a mannerism. Kevob texted back the coordinates Robo gave him to himself. The crowd started to roll in, it was so obvious. And everyone else pulled in. Questions got darted like at the dart board, then we all left the pub to meet this cow and the message it had to say. A magnitude was in motion. The press wanted to know. A cow’s head started pushing notifications at the pockets in peoples phones. Through the fog came a cloudy white message immersed in candy cotton. Robo was alive. But at the same time dead. A motion of a train started running within tis was, was an auld caprice carriage ,thus, with pool tables, snooker, games of chess, decks of cards, checkers, marbles,pogs, gremlins, football stickers, and an all of the assortments of waffler soon to be mushrooms menaces. We marched towards the field. The cow in question spotted us.
All the MainStream Media was, lamely. Here. BBC, CBC , CBS, RTE, AMC, LSM, CNN; as Kevob suddenly randomly struck letters on his phone doing a porn search. A movie came up. Calli Cox and Lex Steele were suddenly at it on the verge, before the wooden gate along the spare barren hedgerow that led into the field. The broadcasters in a jostling; with cameras, ignored the metronome throttle back and thrust as much as the choral music played by a pianist playing at the black and white keyed Steinbach piano; and wrestled against each other over the gate; with the all shapes bodies can give together. Over and on the other side, clear now, a herd of sheep roaming bleated a chrome around Kevbo; the rainbow arrowed; disgruntled he looked on towards this unfolding history as the camera crew with journalists ran forwards, holding for words in placards to the cow for this exclusive interview. The Roscommon cow who spoke to Robo only, chewed the grass and looked up at the incoming scene. Robo, far away, dead sat still. Grass rustled. A cloud above roamed silent. Then. They Ran. A media frenzy; stomping over muddy patches; raced over the stewy black clomp thudding in patches, with the Now News fixation networks helicopters whirling into the fields vertically hand waving the grass aggressively chopping it into round patterns like onions getting cut chomping down dying, on a desolate dead boring breadboard. A growling scene was set. Limping, I went on. Trudging, I grabbed my ankle in agony, towards the crowd that had encircled around this talking cow. The Clintons were here, the Obama’s, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, Jared Tailored suits, Jamestown whiskey a deli pole dwelling distillery, a brand of smokes from Hitchen brother’s ghost, Steve Sailer on a yacht sailing to the store of Marks and Spencers and a brandy getting passed around called Bunch of Epsteins. The field was getting trampled on, Kebab despaired with the grass overwhelmed. Microscopes were put to the Cows mouth. A big giant eye staring back made people staring into it uneasy. After the errors came the microcosm. They shuffled about, uneasily shuffling. A rummage into pockets came to microphones. Around it swarmed to this cow in Roscommon, to within it all the answers. The mic was presented to the face of this wisdom creature. A dome of cat tails roamed down around suffocating the narrative. Finally the burden was gone and the quest was asked. The cow was questioned around a swarming encircle. The cow stipulated a certain amount of wants to the judge. Susan Boyle on a stage was set up and she sang Danzig before a herd of bees chased her off. All the drama had ended. Kevob walking with this crowd towards the cow got one last text from Robo. The cow lifted its head from the grass and turned to Kevob. They stared eye to eye. Around them two the whole world awaited. The sensitive crowd inched forward. Kevob fell to his knees before this beautiful creature in homage. This was the lasting moment; the grand gesture of this; a great big head in wisdom, moved smoothly up to look to the sky as if soothing a divine message. In a retro respect of what might be coming came a silence. The field became dormant almost as they all sat and stilled. Kevob sat, stilling and sitted with the set, losing will as they dismantled the stage. The celebrating Robo Festival was over. The cows roamed back into the fields giving the final lines. I looked down the theatre with sincere eyes. I was a sad cow. I was the cow coming. Thats a cow’s becoming; as Kevob read out Robo’s last text. The Cows in Roscommon gave one last look before wording the words and the ending phrase was clear. The cows of Roscommon who spoke to Robo said this and only this “Moo”
Kevob Awoke. It was the day of the funeral. And I was at the back of the dream queue.
AN
AFTERMATH
IN
BALBRIGGAN
EPILOGUES
THE NIGHT RAKE ROLLING THROUGH THE STREETS
It was a drab uneventful Sunday. The weather was starting to warm now, the claustrophobic cold of January had lifted, the biting was less severe and the light was now with feeling, whereas before it had just stung the eyes coldly. Spring was coming, there was no doubt now. The worst of it was long gone thought a man grabbing a jacket in his large soon to be not his house. Times werea changing, the world was swinging around again and without comprehension in varying degrees everyone accepted this. Although most understand it, the mechanism; that is Earth Sun Gravity. They could not see It. Instead most understood the world better in terms of routine. It would be possible to note the changes daily, but that would take an energy that would be distracting. Nobody watched the moon or sun move through the sky, because when you watch it, it never did move. And like that the human race accepted its circumstance, now and then gauging the change, but only when it was large enough to force upon their thoughts, often only in very matter of factly matters. But it when it wasn’t this frequent repetition that depressed a man is this evenings happening trap.
The passage of time is like a river, in the beginning things change quickly and you don’t care, but later the changes meander slowly but with more significance. Why would life have such a succinct metaphor in a river,and the sea is death. It was all a still stilly murmur, a beckoning to the ever awaiting silence. These thoughts or something else similar often rummaged around this young unemployed man’s mind,and today was no different as he charged for home with two bottles of wine in his bag, mission complete. I wonder what will be on facebook when I get home.
A dream hit me going west but up through Balbriggan at Conard Court into fields with people all going the other way. All the people were coming down the hills racing to school in Balbriggan community college. I raced with them, like a herd, we rushed around the school, in grazing patterns.
He was heading home now, with the people in his dreams, walking on that annoying path near Pinewood towards the county bridge that was always blocked with cars. Two people could not pass without giving way or syncing the gaps and so seeing another vexed each other, if ye get my troth. Another person was intruding on his path. He saw that, he saw. Him. Don’t want to. Better cover my head. Maybe he won’t notice.
Covered his head when he saw me, must be someone I know.
He hadn’t the energy to lift himself from his mood, but he did not know that, instead reason washed over as an emotion.
A mild blend of resentments, with hints of hatred, directed at this person’s existence frothed in his mind.
Passing he’s looking…Knows.. Its me
Both must respond. Two left arms raised and extended out in salute just as they were departing from each other. Hay-ye KeDavom. Too late to start a conversation, anyway you seen him conceal himself. That’s why those Muslims cover up, they gain anonymity and can go about unjudged, makes them feel comfortable. I know the feeling myself, hiding in that blue jacket when I was 6-7-8 years old , what a strange time that was. Taking a day off school on a grey day for day out with mother, the brisk walk to the station always on the side of road without path, then Drumcondra, threw fields to to Dantes house. That sterile house, a morgue had more going for it. In his youth he frequented relatives’ houses often and they were all different in their imprint.
After grabbing his hat while losing his town, he saw the town personified in him..
Later in the day reflecting.. i’m the drunkard lout Kevob Fiy. Was I at that nightclub kevin wondered drunk, have i ever been sober? he wondered later. This was his usual end of night ramble. Passed. At least there are some benefits to leaving this town. After his memorial walk around town he his regretful mood lifted as he began to think forward again, now dreaming of the once dreaded move to countryside. He was glad to be home on this Sunday evening and went about the house marking his goodbye coming to terms with change.
Two days later the placard cardboard for sale sign planted in his garden was plastered over with a sticker like thing that said “Sale Approved”. Running by the grand house, he, Kevob, noticed the sudden change. So that’s why he was so moody.’
Later, Kevob back in sobriety. Very abruptly, running by again, he saw a removal truck parked in the drive. They must of sold it under value for it to be this quick. A week later the family of four or more was gone and the house stood still and vacant. I’ll miss his wife and her lovely bottom. She was restless and constantly upwardly mobile. Another night rolled in. He plucked out the cork, wine wet at a base he rubbed it against his nose,noting that a good wine reminded him of nosing a healthy dog. Drunkard Kevob fly was merrily drunk and finally rent towed. I have no notion of what rent towed is or was intended.
The Wine Soiled Cloth
It was during a long period of purgatory youth. Too young to be certain of about anything but about anything other than what is crippled by doubt. But not old enough to have acquired that personal calm that came with knowing what you were. He used to doubt primarily his worth of existence, but that faded. And now after years of inactivity as an unemployed shirker, he didn’t much care about his lack of contribution. But he did worry that he might never find a career. How come so many people just know what they want to do and do it he wondered, often with such certainty. Some of his friends were like him, others invested years and money on their ambitions, others were pragmatic and had taken professions that paid the bills. So as he crested 30 he concentrated more, his mind, on the task. Professional athlete was the first pretension to be eroded by age. Army swiftly flew by. Musician clutched on forever but after he passed Jim Morrison’s age of death he succumbed to more realistic what do you do answers. Writer.. no too painful, poet.. no never understood, gardai.. no too much discipline, fireman yes but will need to learn how to drive, learn how to drive.. no too many forms to fill in, Gardener yes but will need to.. Nevermind, window-cleaner nope, binman nope.
In his youth fireman, postman, binman were like a holy trinity. It’s odd that they never made a cartoon about a binman, he wondered. Fireman Sam and Postman Pat, brings you back. A memory came to him. Sick on the couch, mother hoovering and the bin truck making such a fuss coming through the estate, what a delight. The old bins, black and oval. One day a thought came to him. A 2 time dropout he thought of his medico friend. I’d dropout if I was him. Then eureka a joke. He wrote it down. It read “I dropped out of medical school and by doing so I saved a lot of lives.” Boom boom. It was an ok joke but he needed to frame it right. Later at night two whole days later, he laid the laptop on his thighs, lit her up, opened a word document and stared sternly at the empty white field in front of him. Nothing happened. The silence was eerie but was soon broken by the television who after zipping to life became a constant stream of welcomed distraction . If only I could write like that.
Displeased at his lack of ideas, he watched comedy programs as a pretended education. At one point when he laughed particularly hard he paused the program and analysed the joke, bit by bit. Then he went out for a smoke and pondered. Feeling a bit guilty when he returned he recommitted himself to the task. He imagined himself on stage and thought for a bit. Nothing happened. Haven’t been on facebook for a while.
He had 2 notifications, 1 friend request and no messages. The notifications were, 1 like for his post on some something or another photo added in one of his groups. It was a picture with some inspiring words emboldened across it “hate , love, four, word, all have four words, but only three have o’s, don’t you love the letter o.” The friend’s request was from a sofa.
He scrolled down through his feed, the algorithm struggled to keep pace. One of his friends had posted a picture of himself in the toilets of the National Concert Hall with a half of bottle of wine. Another was a friend interested in an event ‘The mash potato run’, when it came up Sean Tolan had liked the page ‘ Dogs that looked like cats’ he knew to get off. He wavered between tasks and relented without too much shame to some porn. Done, got it out.
He felt shameful afterward, but now he didn’t understand, then he did. Never again. He went back to the white field with more vigour now. A bottle of wine was uncorked to lubricate and unhinge the doubts that prevented commitment. Soon A few words were laid down. ‘So I saved a lot of lives training to be a doctor, by dropping out!!’. Rereading it didn’t sound funny. The wine was flowing liberally now, plonking down the gullet of the glass to become a vessel ready to sail, it raised up to the sky tinted a bit in the lamplight, tilted and emptied in gulp full falls down into the pit of his belly. It felt warm in his stomach. Glowing now he started writing again. ‘I saved a lot of lives in my medical studies, by dropping out’ he swigged back more wine, the night was been being beginning to to bean wasted, but the wine gave him a sense of fortitude. I like it, that’s the right way round.
He needed more for his set. How do you…..BOB MONKHOUSE.
He googled Bob Monkhouse, he was impressed by the simplicity of it but nothing similar came to him. He pondered staring at the white wall like something might emerge on it. Nothing happened. Its like you get a saying and put it around in a different meaning.
Nothing continued to happen. He went back to unravelling jokes. ‘When I was younger, people laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian, well they’re not laughing now!!!’ It was similar to his medical but better, well much better he conceded. He wondered how Bob came up with that joke, but gave up. He wondered how he came up with his own medical joke and soon realised he had no idea from where it sprung. As the night progressed on, the wine started taking its course. The wine was emboldened now and took over the narrative.
The Wine ‘here’s a joke for ye ‘ima drunkem loser eh, hey remember that guy in the toilet with the perfume eh ‘don’t ye hate when go into the toilet and you can’t pee cause the toilet guy stares at you ‘ eh let’s just watch space.’
Suddenly he woke from his stupor feeling wet. He hastily grabbed some wipes and scrubbed vigorously, almost soberly. The wine on the wooden floor he wasn’t worried about, that would sit there and he would lick it up later. He reasoned that the very wet chair cover would still be wet in the morning exposing his nightly drinking sessions. He was in the habit of going into modes of self destruct on occasion. The climax of which was a few years ago with the stanley knife moment (he scarred his arm so badly there that day there was a very really risk of infection, which was the point of course and the chance of detection for over a month was,also the point, if your not sharp enough to see that, the blade had made its way all the way in to the muscle, in sheer luck bypassing a major vein), but his moods had moderated with age and in vanity it was all just to watch the massive wound heal to mellow the mind to fall in love with oneself. That was the lowest ebb he ever felt. A week later dying within himself his dog died. The scar was the dog before it was gone. The scarred skin is freckled by the sun now and his collie comes towards him alive again. I know deep down it’s not the same. That day is gone. Now here he was again in self destruct mode. He grabbed the linen seat cover and bunged it into the oven, setting it at a modest temperature. He casually went outside pleased with himself and had a cigarette. On his return he took the linen cloth out of the oven and found it was ruined.. He didn’t panic. Another bottle of wine was opened as a temporary remedy. It was very late when he finally went up to bed further adding to his disgrace. Waking the next day early and optimistically he turned off the alarm and put it back by half an hour. He did this 6 times before finally waking proper, each time blissfully unaware of events occurring below or anywhere else. Millions raised, cleaned, ate, and commuted. His parents discussed their prodigal son and his problems. Passing clouds gave some rain and sunlight shined intermittently. The only presence that the rest of the world made on him until midday was when he partook an occasional glance out with bended neck through the curtain at the world going by his window
. A few weeks later the ruined seat cover was presented to him with accusations. Due to the time lapse he’d gotten away with it. It was now the perfect crime. He protested ‘So you’re throwing it out now, but you didn’t even notice for over 2 months.’
Time took the argument with the emotions as a baton and ran on into the future and he went back more firmly towards himself as always.
‘Your getting worse’ his parents, actually just his mother, kept telling him, and she was right.
Strangely after this whenever he was needed to rise earlier than his natural, after he woke and lifted himself, on cue ‘A Day In The Life’ by the Beatles dinned in his inner ear lobes like a theme song for his life and he didn’t like it, so stopped getting too earilily. Reflecting one day about this he embarked again more confidently on his career as a musician. Then he awoke one day and came into the panic of lateness at the disrespectful unconformity time of 1pm and thought sure heck “I’m Only Sleeping” and went back to bed. Nobody cared. Because he was carefree, and a lonely person. And pays little to no tax, so relax. And he was Kev Foy. And he preferred that Album. And then he went down a river, floating down a stream to the sea upon a yellow submarine. And then the words mellowed in a tangle, getting smaller in fragments. The picture grew bigger than the letter. And then the provokes drowned the harsh thoughts of words, a strangler in it’s blend with imagery and the bigger beyond out ran the little words back towards the sleep and Kevob went into a dream.
The Last Sound Act Of Rebellion
The sound of seats pushed out resisting the force on the floor. It was the usual Friday, weekly meeting, ending. They grouped together towards the tight wooden stairway, clomping footfalls, that led to the exit door. Outside, with the Martello tower hosting over past the football pitch, there in the spacious, they went into a breakaway of motions quickly departing this brief unwanted encounter.
“Make sure you do the maintenance” quipped sharply that rake Kevob before he left, the words melded around his mind with grave suspicions. Self doubts, concerns, disconcerting perspicaciousness, thoughtful thoughts, drains within, the sagaciousness blended, waft fully blands of emotions troubled brewed in him. The guy had got triggered. What did he mean by that “make sure”.. I haven’t missed a shift the whole year. 12’oclock, I’m here before him, who’s supposed to be here at 12 and I’m not even supposed to be here in til 2. Do these people think I don’t give a damn, A whole year and I haven’t erred once.’
Without praise he served.
I expected more. Here it is, I’ve been anticipating for it for 6 months, the end.
Leaving he reviewed his time here,now there. The anxiety at the start, that gave way to the comfortable routine, then grew into all the different degrees of boredom. Like frustrated boredom or annoyed boredom and repetitious boredom and bore boredom, followed by just mere boredom. Finally boredom yielded to a fear of nostalgia. I’m going to miss this. Everything stirred. He had low tolerance for emotions. A nice guy, sensitivity from life meant he knew nothing of women and hadn’t hardened in the necessary ways from exposure. Also he was fat, very fat, and secretly despised himself. At 3’o’clock he commenced maintenance of the synthetic grass, raking up the rubber specks which helped maintain the soiled soil of the perfect fake grass. Up and down he went on the tractor following his trail-path and distracting himself listening to heavy metal music. The music gave an added dimension to his personality, it was important to him but he was dismayed that nobody asked about it. He felt masculine listening to it, but in reality it didn’t detract from what he knew was a real man.
Would he ever be a real man, he knew what that was and he wondered. He liked looking for sure but was embarrassed to stare afraid to scare.Too proud to be a “creep” but he couldn’t believe they’d ever be interested, it was a shame that male female relations had reached such a low point.
Afterwards with the rake securely back in the steel hut and tractor back in the boiler room where it was stored he relaxed. Laid back he was in his stony office under the stairs. ‘How many times have I sat here staring into this nothing.‘ He continued to stir. Doubt creeped into his vacuum of thought. ‘What am I gonna do now…’ He had little education, less ambition and was unsuited physically to anything else. ‘I Am fooked. This was perfect for me. I was so good at this they should’ve took me on of their own accord. They could afford it, but preferred the other free louts that Tus offered.’
He wasn’t like them, he reckoned. They’d regret his going, his replacement would be a poor copy he thought with glee. He sat back, and then decided the time had come to eat that pot noodle he’d been savouring. The kettle was put to the boil.Last time.
Eat and be merry, today many happy memories will be relifed scoffing this meal.
He ate his noodles with relish delight as the hunger pangs vanished. ‘The last time.’ He reclined a bit, and then performed his last remaining duties. Then with time to spare he sat down and continued to fantasise some more. Time unduly duly reached not it’s but his destination. ‘This is it then, a year..’ he reflected and resolved then not to be unsentimental.’Time’s up gotta go. Will I set this alarm.’ But in reality this rational thought unbeknownst to him had been rendered blunt already. He had been good, never missed a shift, was never late, never left early. And had once got bad sunburn labouring away filling the skip. That was July and now it was January and he was right back to where he started. Back to the dole queue. Bitterness bit at him and he bit back
His servile nature needed to be reproached and in that way his constitution would be reinforced. He was determined on his path and would not budge. What choice did he have? Losing weight, he was too far gone to reverse it for him the fat felt just as permanent as his baldness.
Gone.
Was the limit of his thought on that subject. He was completely bald, his head was like a pinkish cueball. But you could still tell he was a redhead somehow. Leaving, he laid the keys to the Balbriggan Football Clubhouse down on table with a display of such indifference to the significance of the ceremony that he had proudly left his own house key attached to the key set, an act that a few days later was to give him both a huge sense of embarrassment and relief. Relief that he had not been more rebellious. His servile nature later rebounded with approval over that error. But that was still to come.For now he was still in the act of leaving the scene of the play. The playschool, the office, the lockers rooms, the meeting room upstairs every Friday and the attic and lockers adjacent. And the Irish background to this scene: the playing field, the sea beyond, the Martello tower and finally the 72 steps or so that marked the path to the all weather pitch he had guardianship over. Forward, east seaward, left, left, then under the railway tunnel, right there.The crescendo was reached sitting on the school bench listening to the clock tick tock . Exit stage Christoff:
Christoff grabs his bag and makes to leave.
Christoff goes to set the alarm ’fook that’.
An occasional naughty thought entered his mind, he couldn’t help it, it frothed in his mind. ‘I could take a, no.’ ‘I could rob the, no’. But he was good natured enough to stop the image in his mind from becoming a full thought out plan. The bad ideas frothed in his mind and he let them die by neglect. Without reinforcement a vague idea that emerges like an image without dialogues forming into it, just dissipates. The path from thought to action can be impossible with enough negativity instilled in the brain. Eating was ok, but talking to a girl or shiting on a floor were both equally things he’d been raised not to do.
Christoff locks the door but then remembers he doesn’t have a key.
Christoff feels virtuous after his year of service
Chuffed Christoff Shuffled Home And Chuffed Christoff Stuffed Crisps Into His Face “FOOK I’M LOCKED OUT!!” ’
Nothing of significance resulted from these actions much to Christoff’s relief when he remembered his once forgotten house key. Later embarrassed he returned to the clubhouse to collect his house key without drama. Kevob the rake shaked his hand as he left wishing him “good luck” man.
The SMell of Lamb
Probably written around 2016 in late winter months, or early 2017.
He had bought it reduced to clear. Recently his nightly indiscretions had grown. Usually he was so careful to conceal his compromised nature but he was erring into error more and more often. A few nights previous he had spoiled the carpet and was now on watch. That same night, distracted by frantic carpet scrubbing, he had forgotten to take the rack of lamb from his bag to the fridge. There it lay succumbing to the life teeming around it exposing its rot. Two days passed without notice, provisions of food were made, planned and or anticipated out of routine. The Sunday roast for example; it was pure routine and even provided leftovers the next day.
The lamb was forgotten by mistake and remembered by mistake. A trigger. Then a flicker..a fire.Then a panic! The lovely rack of lamb bought cheaply was rotting. Waste disgusted him. It was late and he didn’t want to create a sensation. To curb its juices smelt, the lamb was wrapped in tinfoil to conceal its nature. A low temperature was used not to arouse the sleeping scent. He got doubtful, imagined a raw carcass cooked on the edges and ramped up the nozzle.I’ll come back in a few minutes, zap it to nothing and let it stew slowly in its juices.
A bottle of wine was uncorked in the intermission, a single glass would fill the interlude before attending again to the roast. He lapsed. An hour later quaffing the end of a bottle he became aware of a stench that had been growing in his mind. That sinking feeling. He grabbed the hot tinfoiled body, hesitated and stuffed it into the freezer. He opened windows, closed doors and covered gaps with clothes. if they smell the lamb and wake with hunger, they’ll blame me .
Things settled, no stirring where to be heard above and his mind lessened. He relaxed into a new climate,then realising he was sober, he became annoyed and frustrated like he’d been robbed. Another bottle was opened. The night was slipping away, things were starting to droop dragged by the clicking clock ‘even if I just write a few lines’. A short diary entry was made, it was A bland one, like a weather forecast, but more accurate and detailed, which is understandable since it was in the past tense and hence had more details of the day. He mused about how he would dish the lamb tomorrow. Panini bread sandwiches maybe, soaking up melting butter dripping into lettuce tanged with strewn about tastes of mayonnaise. Lamb stew with beef gravy dripping. Bolognese and pasta toppled by the flavours of mozzarella and melting cheddar on the crown. Or maybe just roast and veg, thinking turnip would suffice. Kevob had options. Always.
A
MOMENT IN BALBRIGGAN
end
Written, edited and copyright Kev Foy. Published by Kev Foy. Audio of the book is available on youtube @BalbrigganTelescope read by Kev Foy. C 2023.
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