Lost in Music Part One
I was listening to Ed’s National Anthems on Today FM on a Wednesday evening only a few weeks ago, the same night Stephen Kenny’s Republic of Ireland side were kicking off our latest World Cup qualifying campaign away to Serbia. Ed decided to mark the occasion with the first song of the night. The Celtic mist rising and rolling through the juniper, birch, pine and hazel trees that covered ancient Ireland long ago as Moya Brennan’s haunting intro to Put Em Under Pressure brings me right back to over thirty years ago. Music has a habit of doing that. The hair on the back of my neck standing to attention to match the positive energy racing through my arms and legs…
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Write Said Fred, So I Did
Fred is the name I’ve given to my imagination. Ever since I was young there’s been a voice nagging away inside my head telling me that there’s something I have to do. I went into teaching because I like being around people and I loved history, also it was a safe job, with a good pension and lots of holidays, with the added bonus that it made my parents happy. But I was nowhere near working myself out. I still haven’t managed it, but at least now I know it’s a lifelong journey. Back then, I knew I was into sport, music, film and books, the kind of things and people that made my heart sing, but I had absolutely no idea how to go about handling what was going on inside me, the endless chatter of ideas and dreams desperately waiting to come true…
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Howlin' At The Moon
It’s sometime in early 1996 and I’ve moved back in with my parents temporarily as I’m waiting for my new house to be finished.
I love these nights. I think it’s to do with the not knowing. Not knowing if I’ll make it home in one piece. Not knowing where or when the night will end. Not knowing who I’ll wake up as in the morning. And now here I am at the arse end of the night lying against the wall in Iskanders waiting patiently for my number to be called. I do my very best to concentrate…
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Beyond The Story
I didn’t have a real understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland until I read David Beresford’s book called ‘Ten Men Dead’ which documented the terrible events of the 1981 Hunger Strike in the Maze Prison in Belfast. Ten republican prisoners starved themselves to death and the awfulness of what was happening inside the prison walls seeped outwards into a community already on its knees. I knew only what I was told on the news, but Beresford’s perspective was a human one, stepping back from the easy headlines to investigate the causes of the conflict from the different perspectives that lay beyond the tired rhetoric and the rawness of the everyday violence…
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Chasing Shadows And Hugging Strangers
To tell you the honest truth, as if there’s any other kind of truth, I’ve spent my life chasing shadows. They seem to be everywhere I turn. This search for who I really am goes on and on. Reminders of the places and the people I have been. Son. Brother. Schoolboy. Student. Postman. Teacher. Friend. Football fan. Boyfriend. Husband. Journalist. Father. Ex-husband. Writer. Counsellor. Jack of all trades and as some might say master of none. Jack the lad. Trainee psychotherapist and hopefully the real deal some day soon. Oh and I forgot part-time comedian. I’ve worn so many masks that I’m still not entirely sure where the restlessness that has always existed inside comes from…
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Meeting Myself Again
The last few months have resulted in a new world vocabulary. You probably don’t need reminding, but here goes. Lockdown. WHO. The new fucking normal. Cocooning. NPHET. Pandemic. Quarantine. Self-isolate. Zoom. Zoom bombing. Front-line workers. Just wear the mask, the mantra of the true believers who worship at altar of NPHET, Leo, Simon and Tony. Hopefully, we’ll get to burn them when this is all over. Flatten the curve was an early one. Flatten the bleedin’ world more like. Stay safe, stay home and stay the fuck well away from me whatever you do. Not forgetting the latest one, the circuit breaker. But for me the one that deserves to rot in hell more than all the others is staycation. Let’s just say it well and truly deserves whatever is coming to it…
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Finding Wisdom
I decided to call this blog ‘Finding Wisdom’ however more often than not it is the other way around: wisdom finds us. The first time I saw Michael Harding on TV I thought this man’s full of it. It was pouring out of him. It being the magic ingredient that comes with knowing. Michael has lived, loved and lost parts of himself along the way, but in doing so he has found so much more. The filter was well and truly off. Here was the real thing. I could have listened to him all day, the combination of his accent and his gentle drawl drawing me in. He spoke with a compassion that seems to be largely absent in modern Ireland…
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Character Traits
It only takes a moment. There I was stirring a spoonful of brown sugar into a cup of coffee in the kitchen of my apartment in Riyadh, the weekend stretching lazily ahead, when he tapped me on the shoulder. His name was Johnny Tattoo and he’s been travelling with me ever since. For seven long years he’s been doing summersaults through my mind. Begging for attention. What if I did this? What if I did that? What if you did fuck all instead Johnny? Not even the hint of an apology when he interrupts whatever I’m doing. I have to tell him to give it a rest, but Johnny’s way too excited to take any heed. It’s always now or never with him…
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Imagination Made A Man Of Me
Have you ever been lying in bed at night when you hear the hum of a distant car’s exhaust and you wonder where it’s going? It might be someone on the way to work or it could be a murderer on his way to dispose of a body. It could be anyone doing anything. That’s the beauty of the imagination, this restless, wonderful canvas on which we get to play out our fantasies, our dreams and our desires, as well as our hopes and our fears…
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Why You Should Never Leave A Writer At Home To Make The Dinner
I’ve come to the conclusion that people don’t get writers. They know what they do, but they have no idea why or how they do it. They seem to think that stories simply dream themselves up, write themselves down and get published. Therefore writing’s not a real a job. It’s something someone does when they’re bored or have a little bit of time on their hands. They’re not far off the mark when it comes to the first part, but someone has to transcribe the thoughts onto the page so that they become real, rather than remain lost behind the thin veil of the writer’s subconscious, and what good would that be to anyone? Imagine a world without Beckett or Behan, one with no Kerouac and no Dickens and very probably no Charles Bukowski…
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What Is It That Makes Your Heart Sing?
Have you ever asked yourself what is it that makes your heart sing? Maybe you know already or maybe you don’t. It’s a question worth asking and the younger you ask it the better, but fear not you elder lemons, because it’s never too late to front up to the passion that lies inside. In fact, the older we get the more necessary it becomes to ask such key questions, because when the Grim Reaper comes knocking, you don’t want any unnecessary regrets hanging over your head. There might also be the encouraging possibility of reincarnation to deal with, making it even more essential to tidy up any outstanding balances you might not wish to carry into the next chapter of your existence. My only regret is that someone didn’t have the necessary wisdom and wherewith all to tell me this a lot earlier…
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