The West is the Best

Based on the song 'The End' by The Doors

This is the end, beautiful friend; this is the end, my only friend, the end, of our elaborate plans, the end, of everything that stands; the end…

Jim Morrison’s voice holds the silence as we make the homeward journey from Doolin towards the hostel where we are staying in Lisdoonvarna. As our driver and trip organiser Prosser pushes his old style red Ford Escort to the limit Mister Mojo Rising barks out ‘The west is the best’. He’s right there and we’re right here. I can feel my spirit at one with its surroundings. There’s a purity to the air down here, and the people.

Dusk is finally settling on another beautiful summer’s day. Life doesn’t get much better than this. We are looking forward to a few pints in The Roadside Tavern. I just hope that there isn’t a killer on the road, but judging by the way Prosser is driving we’re already in his midst. 

No safety or surprise, the end; I'll never look into your eyes again, can you picture what will be, so limitless and free, desperately in need of some stranger's hand in a desperate land?

We have been making the annual New Year’s Eve trip to the west for the last three years. The town was usually in darkness when we collected our belongings from the bowels of the Bus Eireann coach, the locals resting up before the night’s revelry began. An adrenalin fuck that kicked in the minute we hit The Ritz. The dance floor was already buzzing. The raffle tickets waiting for the songs to be sung. Memories of the past year shared. Glasses raised to the dead and the dying. The living waiting for their turn to come. I got so drunk one night that I ended up dancing with the local priest. When I went back the next day to collect the coat I had left behind, the clean-up was in full progress as my feet crunched their way across the sticky floor to where a pretty girl was wiping down the bar. 

“I was here last night and...”

“You most certainly were,” she replied much to the others’ amusement, as she handed me the jacket and smiled.

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain, and all the children are insane, all the children are insane: waiting for the summer rain, yeah…

We are a raggle-taggle collection of gypsy souls keen to escape from Dublin for a few days. Our New Year jaunts were so successful that we decide to go back in the summertime. We go down three or four times, the makeup of the group depending on who is available. There is Prosser of course, who drives us whenever he can and charges us an arm and a leg for the privilege. It’s only later when we start driving ourselves that we work out the real price of petrol. Either that or his car is the thirstiest on the planet. Sometimes we get the bus and meet him there. It’s cheaper and we don’t have to listen to Neil Young on the way down.

There's danger on the edge of town, ride the king's highway, baby; weird scenes inside the gold mine…

We usually get on well apart from the odd argument about what music to play in the car. This time, after much debate, we settle on The Doors, The Pogues, and rather surprisingly Vanessa Paradis. I brought the tape just in case. The Doors because we love the lyrics and the haunting melodies, as well as the energy in the songs, which seem to match the landscape as well as the sense of freedom we are all feeling.

Ride the highway west, baby, ride the snake, ride the snake, to the lake, the ancient lake, baby, the snake, he's long; seven miles…

The Pogues because they remind us of ourselves. Duff even looks a little bit like a young Shane McGowan. The lullaby of their spell followed by a frantic restlessness in their music aligns with the way our days fall into place down here. The easiness of the morning captured in the long walks across the vastness of the stone in the afternoon, before it feeds into the craziness of the night. There’s a wildness in everything down here. The wind, the dawn, the summer rain, and the flowers hiding in the grikes, they have learnt to bloom despite the desolation. They are warm there, free to be themselves. Like them, this is a place where we are able to escape the expectations of modern life. Down here we can be ourselves amongst friends. Just like the characters that inhabit The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn and the other songs on Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.

Ride the snake, he's old, and his skin is cold, the west is the best; the west is the best…

If it’s hard not to like Shane then it’s easy to like Vanessa. Apparently, Lenny Kravitz has helped her with her latest album and we’re all jealous, reckon that the lucky devil is up to no good with the girl of our dreams. Vanessa is the gentle part of us, the bit we’re afraid of, the things that young men like to avoid talking about, except we do in a rough and tumble sort of way. These guys have hearts of gold tucked away below the humour and the brashness that pretends to be who they really are. They’re all of it, the kindness too.

So it’s The Doors accompanying us as we arrive on the outskirts of Lisdoonvarna. Another day out walking on the limestone has blown away the cobwebs from the night before and we are ready to do it all over again. This place is stoned immaculate. Trev, a teaching colleague, and a magnificent dreamer, wanders back to the hostel for a shave as myself Duff, Prosser, Stu and Quigley head towards the pub. If Stu is the quiet thinker, then Quigley is the stranger in our midst. It seems like he doesn’t even know himself. He lives in London where sometimes he sleeps in an open coffin. The story being that he bought it down the local market.

Get here, and we'll do the rest, the blue bus is callin' us, the blue bus is callin' us, driver, where you takin' us?

Quigley is our very own Cuchulainn. Tonight he is dressed head to toe in leather with a black cowboy hat perched on the top of his head. They are used to Quigley down here,, after all he isn’t the kind of person you’re likely to forget very easily. Earlier in the day, he had spent ten minutes trying to light a cigarette under a windy dolmen. Yes, the one pictured above. Quigley doesn’t mind what other people think of him and it doesn’t seem to matter down here. People in the west take things in their stride. The way someone dresses is no big deal. Characters are as welcome as the man without a story to tell.   

“Four pints of Guinness please barman.”

Prosser likes to make a connection. If the man behind the bar doesn’t know what he does for a living, he does now.

Quigley is still making up his mind.

After pulling the pints the barman pauses before looking up.

“And what’ll Zorro be having?”

Laughter comes easily in this place. Quigley’s eyes twinkle as they travel the length of the beer taps before he points to a particular lager he’s been know to frequent from time to time.

I spend my last day wishing it will never end. Prosser and Quigley drive me into Ennis to catch the train back to Dublin. I’m supposed to be back at work tomorrow which signals the end of a long hot summer and a return to the autumnal drudgery of the school routine.

This is the end, beautiful friend; this is the end…

When we get there the train has already departed. I mixed up the times. I ring the headmaster and tell him I’ll be on the next train back first thing in the morning. With the formalities completed we head back to Lahinch.

My only friend, the end, it hurts to set you free, but you'll never follow me…

I sit high up on the grassy headland above the beach and look down to where Prosser and Quigley are using damp sticks to write messages in the sand.

I lie back, think of Dublin, and let the golden sunshine pour over me. I should be halfway there by now, but thankfully I’m still here.

The end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die, this is the end; this is the end…

I breathe in the fresh air and pray that tomorrow will never come.