However there are lots of run of the mill things that do not start with that line. And there are several extremely irritating things that do not start with that line. And one of that latter variety starts with this:
I went to Dalkey.
I went to Dalkey to see Michael the Mystic, my friend and sometime editor.
The Dalkey Book Festival was on. It seemed to be headquartered in the now closed down and lamented Exchange Bookshop. This struck me as akin to celebrating one's wedding night in the funeral home in which one lies lifeless in the box. But whatever. I avoided the festival. Last year I commented wryly upon it and the chief barker David McWilliams emailed me to tell me I was a sad bastard, or words to that effect. I avoided the festival and decided to move on.
Unfortunetly I moved on past this signboard.
Ah, I thought, good to see at least those two Irish media commentators confessing. But not so good to see the sign was pointing in the wrong direction. That blue door is in fact the Masonic Hall,( people like me born in Dalkey know these things). Holy Mother ! Can John Waters and David McWilliams not get the simplest things right?
Answer: No.
Moving on again... I made my way along Castle Street past Bloomsday sort of activities.
I knocked on the door of the residence of Michael the Mystic.
"Ah," he said, as he opened, "I've bad news."
"What's that?" I said, expecting something about the fabric of the cosmos shattering and a time warp dropping us into an alternative universe of absolute horror. Something Dante-ish with added California. And maybe a bit of Mayan cosmology.
"I've lost that manuscript of yours."
"Expand?"
"I left it on the DART. Come in."
I went in. Yes he'd been reading the manuscript on the DART and left it behind on the seat like it was a METRO throwaway newspaper.
I said "you mean some gobshite in Bray is reading my private draft material."
He said "don't worry they can't read in Bray."
People in Dalkey say things like that.
He gave me a beer. His beautiful daughter arrived. She calmed me down. Beautiful young women have that effect on me. Strangely they used do the opposite. I must be getting old.
So that's the waffle over.
Now for I met this woman and...I met this woman and...and I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery on a matter of genealogical interest.
Yeah right.
I cannot tell a lie. I arranged to meet her in Glasnevin Cemetery because I met her on the internet and our communications there revealed her to be a very interesting and attractive woman indeed. And I wanted to meet her in the flesh...and so I met her, there among the bones.
She arrived and didn't look remotely like the photo she had sent. And yes this can be a good or bad thing. In her case it was good. (Though I suppose it is a canny bit of feminine wile to send a photo of yourself at not your best...but enough of lookism.)
We didn't find her ancestral grave. But I did find my lost manuscript, in a manner of speaking.
Because that is a book in which the man guy meets the woman guy in a graveyard. And in the early chapter he stands there leaning against a grave stone, watching her in the distance, watching her as she moves from grave to grave, bending over to read the names. And in Glasnevin Cemetery I now found myself doing precisely that, watching the woman doing precisely that. And suddenly remembered...hey this is in my book !
How did I write that before I experienced it?
No, I didn't get any answers.
And we didn't find her ancestral grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.
So we went down the road to the Botanic Gardens. And strolled a few hours away among the lanes beneath the trees. And no we didn't find the ancestral grave there either.
So we went to The Bleeding Horse in Camden Street.
No, the ancestral grave was nowhere to be seen.
But at that stage we'd kind of moved on from genealogy.
As mentioned...I met this woman and...
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