To paraphrase my good mate Michael Jude Keogh on Facebook, aaaaaaah the middle of August, you just can’t whack it can you? Where has the summer gone?
Technically, well, officially it is indeed Autumn. Or ‘The Fall’ over here. Mark E Smith and all them lads must be on tour again.
The football season has rolled back into town with the same promise of all seasons before. “It’ll be better than the last one”. But truly, we are no more than a week in and already it’s Arsene Wenger moaning about something or other, Rio Ferdinand getting injured, Liverpool collating another series of excuses about why they’re not going to win the league, Jose Mourinho throwing a strop and accusing Barcelona of being c***s and Robbie Keane signing for someone and declaring it ‘a dream come true’.
Might as well be last January as far as I’m concerned.
I had been Joe Duffy free for four months. Never had I been happier. Thought I’d turned the corner. Like an ex-heroin addict hanging round a back alley in Temple Bar with his junkie mates I gave into temptation. On it went one day in the office. "So,nothing has changed back in the old sod then?" Off it went again. Like a terminal playing of ‘Suffer Little Children’ by The Smiths or the entirety of ‘The Holy Bible’ by Manic Street Preachers on repeat, RTE still peddles misery to the masses.
And I believe Tubridy got onto the BBC? The mind boggles. How the British nation would find aural pleasure in witterings on Twitterings and cartoons is beyond me. What next? A bird out of N-Dubz judging on the X Factor?
It was nicely summed up by a Canadian colleague of mine who said what I’ve been trying to say for years in one simple succinct sentence. “What the fuck is that shit?!”. Ne’er a truer word spake. A summation that has somehow escaped me for the best part of a decade, and for that I am forever indebted John.
Liam Gallagher is apparently suing his brother Noel over his “we couldn’t do the V Festival because Liam had a hangover” outburst. I’d love to see that come to court. “Mr.Gallagher. I’d like to show you Exhibit A. I present to you, footage of Oasis Unplugged from 1996”.Case dis-fookin’-missed-ah.
In my hankerings for the sunshine days of my youth, I do hope Noel’s album is a good one. ‘The Death Of You And Me’ gets stuck in my head until the trumpet bit which is reminiscent of the psychedelic bit out of Father Ted’s ‘My Lovely Horse’ don’t you think?
Something happened to me somewhere in summertime that I never thought possible. I got insanely homesick. The aforementioned MJ Keogh came over to visit us. It was wonderful to just sit outside and talk absolute filth and nonsense for a few hours every evening after our nightly, yes, nightly barbecue. I tried to explain to him that homesickness kicks in at the most ridiculous moments possible.
For instance, I heard Rupert Holmes ‘Him Him Him’ on the radio one day and I was instantly transported back to the sitting room in Broadford Drive with my Mam dancing around with me whilst my brother Alan dribbled and soiled his nappy. He was 19 at the time, but that’s besides the point. I could sense the smells(it could have been the drains),the feel of the sunshine pouring in through the net curtains onto my back and the feeling of absolute joy that it was nearly time for my Daddy to come home from work. That mystical place that you thought ‘Daddys Work’ was. He went round the corner in his car and bang, he disappeared into’work’. He worked for the ESB which meant that, in the Eighties any road, not a lot of work actually took place but, a child can dream can’t he?
“I’m on a course today!” he would shout gleefully. Yeah, Dun Laoghaire Golf Club. Oh, the ESB Social Club And Golf Society was not just a wonderful name for some sort of band but provided a wonderful day out for the lads in in the Eighties. Maybe even a 'dinner dance' was thrown in.But that was then...
No, the real low came one day when I’d flicked, by accident I hastily add, onto a country music station. And there I was thinking it would be somehow upbeat. How wrong I stupidly was. A song came on,extremely reminiscent of ‘North Country Boy’ by my favoured Charlatans. Glen Campbell. “Hey Little One! I’m just like you! I’m lonely too...”
Now, my daughter is nearly three and my wife is nearly five foot three so I don’t know which one of them I thought it was about. Hands up. I bloody cried. I sobbed my lil’ heart out. Guilt for taking them away from all we knew? Missing all the fuckers I know back home? I don’t know.But it passed and I composed myself as I pulled the car into the driveway.
"Daddy! Were you in work?!". I was. And I know what she's thinking.
Next day, I was down with the wife taking our daughter on her first waterslide, in 32 degree heat with beers and chicken wings perched on a nearby table, thinking quietly to myself “What the fuck was all that about?”.
Just like the football season, life is all swings and roundabouts.
It could be worse. I could be back in Benildus starting a new term in school and having Double Irish first thing with Pascal fucking Smith.....
