Martin Sheen & Me

Not everyone can say this...but Martin Sheen (I read) is playing a priest in a new movie, Stella Days, to be launched in Ireland in March...and the priest he plays is....da dum...yes, the priest he plays is the priest who married me...the priest in question being Fr Paddy Cahill of Borrisokane, Co Tipperary...and the woman in question (whom he married me to) is on the cover of this very book.

And folks can read all about her, me, and Martin Sheen...oops, I mean Fr Paddy Cahill...by going to my website, finding the book, and clicking that PayPal button...

Just thought I'd get that out there.

It all hangs together in some strange sort of way.

Yes I'm having a quiet day.

Tubbercurry & Toronto

Just when you lose faith in Ireland and all its doings...which is more or less most mornings...and evenings...just about then something good happens...meet someone...hear something...see something...that sort of good. Which brings me to Tubbercurry. Largish town in mountains between...well, between lots of places. Ballina and Sligo and Boyle and Charlestown, places like that. Handy to Knock Airport.
Nice town. Was once on the railway and might be again some distant day if West On Track ever gets there. But sure as hell I won't be on that train. My Toronto Son might, he's 22, so he just might. Reckon he'll be pretty damn old, but make it? He might. Maybe his children? Whatever.
He did make  it to Tubbercurry this week with me. But by motorcar. En route to Toronto. Not to Knock Airport, no, Knock doesn't do Toronto, but en route to Dublin from our fastness in the west.
I'm not often in Tubbercurry. It's not on a direct route between Fastness in The West and Apartment in The City...but now and then when I need to breathe that mountain air and see Lough Talt, I drive that way. But this visit was nothing to do with mountain air or Lough Talt. It was all to do with H, the wife. She had a client to track down in the Tubbercurry area.
The plan: She would leave her husband and son in the town and drive into the hills to find that client. Then, that done, she would return to the town, pick us up, and we'd all drive on to Dublin. Very efficient woman. Not that that prevented her being defamed/libelled and traduced by a Sunday Independent journalist a week or so back. (You know who you are Ciara Dwyer).
Yes, efficient wife, a writer needs one. Very good looking woman too, same wife. I've lived with her so long I've forgotten that. But was reminded during the week by Eoghan Harris.  She's a  'stunner', according to that sage/scribe, telling me this and other stuff too embarassing to repeat. What happens in my email stays in my email ! (Much like events on a stag weekend.)  Enough to say he detailed her attractions. All this arising from a hames the Sunday Indo made of reviewing a book of mine, A Walk on The Southside.
I sometimes have my doubts about that newspaper.
The wife's Passat vanished into the mist (it was misty) and the son and I stood on Main Drag Tubbercurry. It was quiet. Too quiet? Probably.
I looked across the road and there it was, a place I knew, remembered. A hostelry. We'll go in there, we decided, have a cup of tea.
It was Killorans, coffee shop and bar.
Coffee shop and bar goes no way towards describing Killorans.Nothing really could describe Killorans. Maybe because it's not actually a place, more like a journey. Down sideways of memory and charm.
I told the son of the place I'd been there fifteen years ago for breakfast. He said "fifteen years...mmmnn...mustn't have been a great breakfast". His mother and I discussed Brendan Shine at some length, Killoran's being a centre of music and entertainment. (As well as coffee shop and bar). She told me about her Downs Syndrome daughter and her dealings (fraught) with the HSE to raise funds for the handicapped of the town. And the same daughter brushed the floor around our table. Smiling. And meaningfully mentioning the forthcoming Valentine's Day to  my Toronto Son.
It was a good place and human. And there's less and less of that to find.
And so the hour passed well.
I thought to myself this is what tourists in Ireland are looking for. But there's less and less to find. And then H the wife came back to collect us. I took a photograph. The rest is history.

We drove on to Dublin.
Toronto Son went out to see his mates. I reckon this involved pizzas and slabs of cheap beer in places that students live in Terenure. He went out with strict injunctions to reappear next morning for important visit. He did reappear next morning. By his demeanour it was obvious that his night before  had involved pizzas and slabs of cheap beer in places that students live in Terenure.
The important visit?
To my sisters, his aunts.
To say my sisters are eccentric is....well...quite right. But then I too am eccentric. Eccentric is good. Cherish the difference. Yes the  instructions to the Toronto Son was that he must visit my sisters/his aunts on his visit from Toronto. It was only right and proper. Childless aunts like visits from nephews. Granted, the converse  doesn't always obtain, but it's only right and proper for the younger generation to..etc etc...
Just to make sure he got there I drove him.
We set off to Greystones. We drove into the relevant housing estate.
It then became surreal.
We saw ahead of us a Garda Presence, by way of car and personnel. A knot of rubberneckers. A tow truck. And a vehicle up a tree in a garden. A particular vehicle with flowers painted on the sides. Yes, one of my sisters is an artist, and drives a particular vehicle with flowers painted on the side. How well she drives it is...hmmnnn...the owner of the garden and that tree may very well be able to fill you in on that.
We lept out of our car, son and I, actually quite shocked. The guard told us that the sister/aunt had been taken away in an ambulance, she too quite shocked, but apart from that...etc. She'd been taken to Loughlinstown Hospital.
Ah, I thought. Being old enough to have known people who referred to it as The Workhouse. Back in the '90's. The 1990's. And workhouse it was. And more or less still is. There's a mass grave in the back garden.
We drove to Loughlinstown Hospital.
Any empty parking spots were labelled doctors, with names of various consultants. The thought did cross my mind as to why those parking bays were all empty? It is mid morning, weekday, busy busy busy...why are all the senior doctors' parking bays empty?
Why am I asking myself stupid rhetorical questions?
Toronto Son and I thus spent most of the day in Loughlinstown A&E Department. There are better ways to spend a day and better places too. But needs must. The country is in freefall. But everyone knows that, so no point in adding words to words.
We drove the sister/aunt home. The garden she'd run into didn't look that great. Particularly with that tree cut down. A feature tree. A mature silver birch. Kind of made the house, really. Pity.
We left Greystones and drove back across the city. Toronto Son said goodbye to his sisters and elderly relatives. And next morning we drove him to the airport. And he said goodbye to his mother (stunner) and to his father (writer). It was five thirty, thereabouts. And his mother (stunner) wiped a tear. And his father (writer) touched her shoulder. And driving silently back towards Sutton I saw a glimmer of dawn beyond Howth in the east.
But it promised no light for the darkness.

and another week

Stroll out.  Mayo mist. Buy Sunday Indo and bar of chocolate. Eat one, read the other. And there I am. Nice photo. Well, nice hat. And nice architecture in background. The rest all a matter of opinion. And according to the journalist's opinion (hi Ciara !) I am argumentative, controlling, evasive and somewhat sinister.
Of course I am, woman. I'm a writer. That's why you were interviewing me !
Rest of paper fairly depressing.
Is there no end to the slow death of the Euro?
Cant it just be taken (I muse) to that place in Switzerland where people with terrible terminal conditions go to die?
What's the name of that place (I wonder) but the name escapes me.
And instead the word Davos comes into my mind.
That'll do I reckon.

Leonard Cohen

Listening to Cohen's new album...

Eat your heart out Seamus Heaney...

That week?

Hey it must be great to be a professional writer, writing books...and stuff....

Oh yeah?

Read on.

Mini-diary coming up.

Sunday.

Drive to Dublin with a wife from home in west of Ireland. That’s 160 miles. Stop at newish Applegreen service station on the N4. Very nice too. Particularly to someone who remembers that the stop along here was once Mother Hubbard’s...and not the roadhouse of that name, no way... Mother Hubbard’s was a caravan with a hatch and a canopy to keep the rain off your bacon sandwich.

Drive on, diary on. Call on Number One Daughter in her flat in Fairview. Lift up her baby. Baby howls. Put down her baby. Drive daughter to Ikea to buy mattress. Hell on God’s earth.

“What size bed do you have?” I ask, not being the sort of Irish writer who knows the finer details of his daughter’s bed.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean is it double or queen size or king sized or what?”

“Maybe that size there”, she says, vaguely.

I look at her, but my furrowed brow is water off a duck’s back (??) and she just bounces around, testing beds. I test them too, and notice that we never once test the same bed at the same time. As mentioned, I write for a living. But anyway this is a fast moving situation and we lose interest in mattresses and wander off. And a lifetime later we leave Ikea with a shower curtain, some picture frames and a bunch of silk flowers. Plus two jars of lingonberries. One for daughter and one for me, nostalgia reasons. One for daughter because she has been working as an entertainer on a cruise liner in Swedish waters. The other for me because I slept with a Swedish girl once. Well, not once. Lots of times. A Swedish girlfriend is the more correct phrase. She was very sweet, if gloomy.

We discuss the lingonberries but not the girl.

Daughters don’t want to hear that stuff.

We leave.

Back in her flat I lift up her baby. Baby howls. I put down her baby. I arrange the silk flowers. There’s nothing to stick them in. Except a wine bottle, half full of wine. Daughter pours wine down sink. She’ll never be her mother’s daughter I reflect. Then I (tastefully) arrange the silk flowers in the bottle. Thinking of Ikea, and All those vases there. But I’m not going back.

           

Monday.

6AM. Work. Til 9AM.

Make breakfast for wife in Sutton apartment.. Bring it to her in bed. That woman fell on feet. Go out to Centra. Buy paper. Daily Telegraph. (Myself and the Irish newspaper industry are at a standoff.) Read Daily Telegraph. None the wiser. Bring it to wife in bed. That woman fell on her feet. Back to laptop and go through earlier morning’s words. Oh God.  I should have taken my father’s advice and got a job in Guinness. Pensonable.Too late now.

Noon.

Drive to Dublin Airport to collect Number Two Son. With wife and Number Two Daughter. Number One works in Abu Dhabi, Number Two in Toronto. This is his Christmas visit. In mid January. Work commitments prevented earlier. Being a waiter in a Tex Mex restaurant he has responsibilities. Plane to arrive in the new Terminal Two. This is very exciting because I’ve never been in Terminal Two. It’s very big. Son emerges. Great excited hug for his mother. 18 months since last seen. Great excited hug for his sister. 18 months since last seen. Punch in shoulder and word ‘hey’ for myself.

Drive to Fairview again to flat of Number One Daughter for ceremonial meal. Pick up baby. Baby howls. Put down baby. Wife and I cook ceremonial meal. After ceremonial meal drive son into city to meet mates. His, not mine, I don’t do mates. He hops out of car and vanishes into Messrs Maguires at O’Connell Bridge.

“Ah it’s great to be young” says wife. Fondly.

“Twenty two? Twenty two’s not young. When you were that age you were wife and mother”.

“Those were different times.”

            Drive back to apartment in Sutton, reflecting. Yes, those were different times.

Tuesday. 6AM. Work. Til 9AM.

Make breakfast for wife. Bring it to her in bed. That woman fell on feet. Walk to Bayside Dart from apartment. Miss train. Wait. Walk up and down platform. Train comes. Go to DunLaoghaire to meet journalist who’s writing about me in Sunday Indo. We’ve never met, but she’s emailed to say I can recognise her because she’s got curly brown hair and earrings. There is no-one of that description in Royal Marine Hotel but I’m approached by a man. He has a grey beard and no earrings but is festooned with cameras.

“I’m the photographer” he says.

“Never”, I think, but do not say. Not wise to alienate photographers.

“Where’s Ciara?” I ask, referring to the journalist with curly brown hair and earrings.

“She’ll be along, we’ll do the photo first”.

“I’d like it at the statue of Christ the King” I tell him.

“No we’ll do it at the Town Hall”, he says, “trust me, I’m very good.”

We walk to the Town Hall. He takes the photo. We walk back. And gets in his car and drives away. I go back into hotel. A woman with curly brown hair approaches me. I see no earrings. But we do the interview anyway. Great, I think as we part, that’s a quarter million Indo readers think I’m a prat...though on bright side eight of them will buy one of my books.

Wednesday. 6AM. Work. Til 8.30AM.

Make breakfast for wife. Bring it to her in bed. That woman fell on feet. Email journalist Ciara to tell her on second thoughts don’t mention all that stuff I told her in the interview. Go to busstop for number 32 bus. Miss number 32 bus. Look at seabirds on mud over wall for ten minutes. Another bus comes. Get off bus at Fairview to get different bus. Because this number 15 crosses the river. And I propose to cross the river and am too tired to walk.  15 comes. Get off at Nassau Street and walk up to National Library. Work there until afternoon. Get bus back to Sutton. Collect wife and car and go to Tesco in Clare Hall to buy new TV for apartment.

€300...32 inch HD etc. Not exactly sure what HD is but it sounds good. Can’t say fairer than that. But just in case...drive to Power City to check out the opposition. Similar television is €320. Tell salesman he has a problem here. He reduces price to match Tesco’s. That’s good retail. Buy television. Bring television back to apartment. Excitement. Set it up. 18 channels on the pipe. Great. Flick from one to other. Nothing much to watch. Go to bed early.

Thursday. 6AM. Work. Til 9AM.

Make breakfast for wife. Bring it to her in bed. That woman fell on feet.

Get into car and head for traffic jam. Traffic jam on Clontarf Road always starts at that chiropractor’s with the yellow signboard. There’s a pattern there. Cross city eventually...price of crossing bridge has gone up since last visit...only realise that when barrier doesn’t open...and people stuck in cars behind are looking at my country numberplate thinking I’m a prat. Wait til they read the Sunday Indo, I think. That’ll convince them.

I go to Blackrock...call into Dubray Books. Mention to a woman womaning the desk that Indo are doing a feature on my good self, and wouldnt it be appropriate to stock up on a few of my books...she says she’ll order them when anyone asks. I say but that’ll be too late. This is a fast moving situation. They’ll buy another book instead. She says she’ll get a few from other Dubray branches. I say but you won’t have them here in time for when the queue forms. She stands implacable.

The meeting ends badly.

Stroll across to Superquinn. Buy two Danish and two cherry buns. Notice huge queues at the few open checkouts. But there is one that has checkout person stareing into space, untroubled by customers. Go to that one. No, she can’t take me, she says. And she’s probably right there but she refuses to serve me. She only does scanners. Or something. Go to Customer Service Desk. Large lady of a certain age. This is ridiculous, I tell her, pointing, your one sitting there staring into space, no-one with scanners for a mile in any direction.

“She’s doing as she’s told”, says large lady of a certain age.

            The meeting ends badly.

Drive to DunLaoghaire and Easons and carry out same book puffing exercise as done in Blackrock. Goes better. Woman says yes sure get them sent in. On a roll now... go to Dubray books in the shopping centre. Woman says yes sure get them sent in. Drive to Dalkey. Make presence known in Exchange Bookshop. Yes sure send some more in.

So that makes three out of four local bookshops for my local book.

Next call. Make some instant photographs in the Dalkey Fuji shop.. The girl asks me for my phone number. Not for social purposes, but to enter in instant photo machine. For record purposes. I tell her I don’t want to give her my phone number. That’s a Japanese machine there. Japanese people are weird. Have you never seen tentacle anime? I don’t want dealings with those people. Put my number in there and people in Tokyo will be contacting me. I don’t need that. She looks at me as if I’m mad. But she’s young and will learn about life. Pretty too. Could smile more.

Next call. Editorial advisor lives in Dalkey, so drop by his house to give him a manuscript to excoriate. He needs that, excoriating opportunities. His gorgeous twenties something daughter kisses me on the cheek. Which is nice. He doesn’t, which is nicer. I tell him I’ve done an interview with the Sunday Indo. “Have you no pride?” he asks.

Can’t understand why he’d ask such a question, he already knows I’m a writer.

Drive back towards the city. And in Monkstown nearly run over a familiar small man. Who’s that familiar small man, I ask myself, that familiar small man crossing the road foolishly outside Goggins with a woman? It’s Willie O’Dea the Limerick politician.. Wearing one of those compulsory long dark tailored overcoats favoured by politicians and people who go to Doheny and Nesbitts after work.

And who is that woman? None of my damn business.

Drive on. Visit a gentleman friend in Monkstown Valley. This was meant to be a breakfast meeting. Running late, late lunchtime now, but the pair of Superquinn danish and pair of Superquinn cherry buns are still just about fresh. Just about. Short shelf life, those items. It’s all in the baking. We eat them and discuss philosophical matters of import to major intellectuals such as ourselves. We also discuss Bewleys in Grafton Street and the cherry buns they sold when the world was young.

There was no comparison.

Leave Monkstown Valley.

Drive on to collect daughter in city centre. Daughter phones to say she’s not ready to be collected in the city centre. So don’t. Drive to apartment on north side. It is late afternoon now. The wife is cooking and dying of a cold. She is wearing new clothes. From TKMax she says. And does a twirl. The only worthwhile women’s clothes are those that inspire a man to take them off. I’m inspired. Reasonably, nothing I can’t handle...we’ve been married a long time. But both daughters and number two son are coming to eat. And none of them think their mother has ever been naked. They’re a conservative generation.

I take over the cooking.

Wife drinks large vodka.

Meal goes down well.

Number One Daughter tells us anecdotes about herself being brought up in gritty back streets of Dalkey. Wife and I look at each other. We were there too...but our memories seem vaguely different. Generation gap? No matter, the evening passes.  Daughter phones for cab. And goes out into the darkness, beautiful.

Younger daughter and son will stay night.

Shortage of beds. Daughter and wife will sleep in one room, son and self in the other. There’s nothing on the new (€ 300) television so I go to bed. Lie there and consider the inconvenience of the sleeping arrangements.. Particularly with wife so attractive in the new clothes and potentially even better out of them. Sleep restlessly.

Friday. 6AM. Work. til 9AM.

Bring coffee to wife in bed. That woman fell on feet. Pack car. Mostly with stuff left over from Christmas. This includes a living growing christmas tree which normally lives in a large pot in our west of Ireland garden. Wrestle that into car behind driver’s seat.

Say goodbye to number two daughter and number two son.

Drive to number one daughter’s flat in Fairview. She’s gone to work and her flat is empty. But it whispers to me stories of her life, her joys and enthusiasms and sorrows. You can only hear that whispering in the silence of someone not at home. We collect her christmas tree to bring to west of Ireland for storage. This one is from Her M&S, artificial in a box. It’s a generation thing. The living tree and the artificial tree together there in the back seats, strangely symbolic of something that escapes me at this time of morning. Drive to DunLaoghaire to deliver books to three out of the four local bookshops, the ones with flair and vision and imagination. Have breakfast in Graham O’Sullivans. €5.50 for three items including tea or coffee and toast. Extra items €1.20. Smiles from staff are not listed on menu. Wife buys 15 spiced chicken wings from Doyles the butchers. Bargain bag, where would you get it?

Drive to west of Ireland. 160 miles.

Put Christmas tree back in garden.

Wife’s cold worse, put her to bed.

(That woman fell on feet.)

Cook eight of the spiced chicken wings.

Put remaining seven in freezer.

There will be another day.

A Saturday. So far.

Got up. Drove wife to daughter's. Drove daughter to town. Drove back to daughter's. Took daughter's daughter for a walk/push in Fairview Park. Brought daughter's daughter back to daughter's. Gave daughter's daughter to wife to babysit. Left car outside daughter's for use of wife later. Got bus back to apartment. Read nice new review of my book The Colour of Her Eyes. Had shower. Drove a different car to son's. Had lunch. Wife turned up in first car. Left son's in second car. Drove to southside of Dublin. Visited bookshops to talk to bookshop owners. Got tired of all that. Went to Mass in St Michaels Church. Prayed. Left. Got in car (second car). Drove to apartment. Drank wine with wife. Drank more wine with wife. And realised I was living in a game of chess. Not quite sure which piece. Pawn? Bishop? The jury is out.

Bono's day off.

Oops. Sorry about that. Vanishing. Had to edit a book. The thing has to be ready by New Year. No time available to be writing blogs. Yes of course I know if you don't continually update your musings you will lose all your followers. Just like that. Fickle bunch, followers. But, being fickle, they'll come right back again just as quick. It's a fast moving situation.

The editing job almost complete I decided to visit Dublin. City Break sort of thing. Though if one can take a city break in one's native city is another point. A philosophical one. Whatever. I visited. By car rather than Ryanair.

It was a beautiful weekend. Weatherwise. And there hasn't been many of them. (Thinks: I'm writing about the weather. Pull yourself together man.)

People were out and about. The weather has been so bad. (I'm still writing about it. Stop.). There were hordes of us. All along the beaches and promenades and piers on the north and south side of the city. In  the city parks and up the hills on the outskirts.  

I went for the hills myself. I would've brought the wife. But she doesn't really do hills. And we'd been cooped up together in a house (in the rain) in the west of Ireland for a month. Twenty four seven. And needed to be apart. To realise how much we missed each other. That sort of thing.

But I didn't want to go up the hills alone in case I had a heart attack. So I called on my friend Michael the Mystic. Not that he'd be any good if I had a heart attack. Though I suppose he'd call an  ambulance. Whereas strangers up the hills would walk around me. That's the modern world.

MtheM was planting daffodil bulbs when I called. And he said they're going to be beautiful in Spring. I said if there is a Spring. What with the Euro, and that.

He agreed.

We went up Dalkey Hillon the southside of Dublin.

I was born up there. Well, not in the woods,in a house on the lower slopes.

It's kind of my place.

Yesterday it was also the place of hordes of fellow Dubliners. The weather. And it was Sunday. Not that the day of the week would make much difference. What with half of Ireland  being unemployed.

We parked at the top of the Burma. (Placenames coming up). We walked along the Green Lane. It was built for the visit of Queen Victoria. So's she could see the view from her carriage. And then we went up the hill itself from the Torca. Passed a house I designed. Bloke had built a big fence around it. But we peered through gaps. See that patio (I said). MtheM saw it.

Well (I added), bloke had an Indian wife. She lolled on that patio.

That's what they do (said MtheM), Indian women, they loll.

I didn't say a word. My new novel what I've just finished editing is called The Snake Dancer of Sati Chowra. And the character does not loll at all. She dances. And works for the Zurich Insurance Company. But I suppose there's Indian women and Indian women.

We continued the climb. And it is a climb. One side of the hill is a hill, so to speak, and the other sheer drops, hundreds of feet into old quarries. They dug away the hill on that side to get stone for DunLaoghaire Harbour. It's all very interesting. Topographically. We discussed these matters, and admired the view of the city spread out in the distance. The city has got huge. MtheM said there were now seven billion people on the planet, and the rats were getting worried. I told him that as a teenager I used come up here with an air rifle and shoot down at people in the quarry. There were no computer games then. Kids had to do things in real time.

A pleasant conversation. Then we were interrupted.

Three men passed us by. Two small balding middleaged blokes and one small Bono.

Hey that's Bono, said MtheM.

I didn't really notice, because I was transfixed...one of the small balding blokes was carrying an almost full glass of red wine. A crystal glass.

What's all that about, I asked MandM.

Well, he said, they were having sunday dinner down in Bono's house. And they got an urge to climb the hill. Simple.

No it's not simple, I averred. (Averred? Weather?) It's not simple at all. Bono's house is a mile or so away, down through woods and precipitous paths. As is every other nearest house.

Maybe they drove to the carpark?

But the carpark is also down through woods by precipitous paths.

So why the wine in the glass?

Because they're plonkers throwing shapes?

Could be, anything is possible.

But sure as hell one thing, that's not plonk in  that crystal glass.

We walked on.

The day somehow spoiled in its innocence.

Back down in the carpark there was a police car, the guards looking out for antisocial behaviour. People drinking in public parks, that sort of thing.

We were tempted.