....In Green

Recently I have conversed with people I haven’t seen or spoken with in a long, long time. Something struck me about two such meetings. The people involved had turned their backs on football or ‘soccer’ as they are now want to call the sport and had fully embraced the game of rugby or ‘egg chasing’ as I am want to call it. They’ve been to see the ‘All Blacks’ and ‘The Pumas’. I just listened and probably looked perplexed with a touch of boredom thrown in for good measure ,all the while thinking to myself that I should have seen this coming and kicking myself for not doing so.

As long ago as 2007, a good friend of mine met an American in a pub. “So I guess you guys are soccer guys, yeah?”, “No, I gave up on the football” said my friend “I took up the rugby”...”Oh, so which position do you play Mike?” said American fella. “No, no” said Mike “I just watch it”. Now, that was a surprise to all concerned because a)-Mike never watched football and b) no one ever knew he watched rugby either. The rugby bandwagon had obviously been a-beeping outside his front door and he left his home and belief system behind to happily jump on board. It’s a familiar scenario in Dublin right now. Success breeds interest.
Who do kids look up to these days? A Robbie Keane flailing his arms around and moaning at a referee whilst feigning involvement in general play? Or a Brian O’Driscoll taking time out from watching a scrum of men with their heads in other men’s arses for a few moments to score himself a try and win stuff? Unfortunately and reluctantly you’d have to say if you were twelve, you’d want to be Brian O’Driscoll.

Where does the blame lie for the current malaise in Irish football?

You could go for the easy and obvious target in the village idiot in a suit posing as Chief Executive of the Football Association of Ireland, John Delaney, should you so wish. A man who, when turning up at a FIFA event such as a qualifying group draw looking like a Neanderthal scarecrow, would instantly provide comics such as Jim Davidson with a get-out-of-jail clause for their Paddy The Irishman jokes.
A man who fronts an organization responsible for ridiculously over-pricing match tickets for internationals resulting in half-full/half-empty stadiums such as at the Macedonia game just past, where you had to also buy tickets for meaningless friendlies in Lansdowne Road against Uruguay and Cloudcuckooland. Not great business sense is it?
You can go on and on and on about the FAI and their hare-brained nonsensical flights of fancy but the bottom line is, if your team is not successful, bums will not fill the seats. Bohemians may yet prove that theory wrong this season but that’s as maybe. And there are only about a thousand of them.

Can we trace the lack of interest back to Giovanni Trappatoni’s play-it-safe tactics?
About as interesting as watching paint dry, sure, but I don’t think that’s the root of disinterest.
I have heard the argument that he only has a small bunch of eligible players to work with and shutting up shop and hoping for the best is the only route we can take to try to eke out some sort of success.
Again, nonsense, for our good ‘friends’ in The North have beaten Spain and England in recent times with a pool of eligible players smaller than ourselves and it being diminished, it seems, by the week by the Republic legitimately taking players who have no wish to receive death threats because they go to the wrong church of a Sunday.

No, our current predicament is inherently linked back to the 19th October 1988 at Lansdowne Road when we beat a rather poor Tunisian side 4-0. John Aldridge got his long-awaited first goal in a green shirt. Ireland were still flying high from a wonderful performance in the European Championship Finals in Germany the previous summer. We were at the start of our first successful World Cup Qualifying campaign.
But...a rather large spanner had been thrown into the works. And it sat there for years festering. It became a part of the furniture and ended up being hung above the mantelpiece in the stead of many a beautiful oil painting. For that spanner made its debut that day. A spanner with the footballing imagination of a derelict block of apartments. Hoof the ball, if unsuccessful, hoof again. Score by accident from a corner kick and try every time again to repeat this ‘feat’. Somehow go on to play 102 times for your country. When your captain walks out on the squad just prior to a World Cup, assume his mantle. Albeit, with none of the respect (or disrespect depending on which side of the fence you wish to jump down to). He’d have pinched himself to see if he was dreaming only he’d have ballooned that pinch into the air. And probably done it again. And again, until retirement. Ole O-fucking-le.

Said spanner has no need to buy a lottery ticket again, for all his numbers came up on the 12th January 2006 when he was appointed as manager of the Republic Of Ireland.
I’d blame John Delaney but this spanner should never have accepted the job in the first place. I see no difference and will never see a difference between him being appointed Ireland manager and me being put in charge of a major banking institution.

Cyprus was not a surprise to me or nothing else that followed on for that matter. If the Celtic Tiger began as a result of Italia ’90 then surely it died following the frenetic stabbing that was the appointment of Steve Staunton.
For that was the day that I and many like me, lost any modicum of hope.

That's Entertainment

Every one of them has a story. They are, after all, a human life. Someone somewhere must love them. Someone somewhere must care for them. There is a reason how they found themselves in such poor circumstances. Everyone has come across them on our streets. They’re there hail, rain or shine with their little cups looking for them to be filled with the shrapnel from your pockets. Before you think this is turning into a plea on behalf of the Simon Community or that I’m begging you to buy a copy of The Big Issue, or that I have found God, fear not. For I am pleading with you not to give your hard earned cash to these degenerates. The degenerates I speak of are members of the street entertaining community.

Questions have to be asked. At what point in their lives did they wake up and say to themselves “You know what? I’m going to paint myself silver and stand still on a box in Grafton Street all day every day. Who knows? Maybe a bird will land on me. That will be the highlight of my week that. I’m going for it. Martha! Where’s that spray paint?”
Credit where credit is due, they must’ve put in some serious hours of training. But where? And most importantly, why?
Did they do a course down in the local community school of a Tuesday night? Week one: Pretend to be stuck in a glass box. Week Two: Stand still for a very long time and then suddenly move because people really do think you are a statue and you’ll frighten the shit out of them, but you, the consummate artist that you are, will be the only one to get the joke ‘lovey’. Week Three: The awarding of certification where nobody actually comes up to collect their award because either a) they’re stood perfectly still pretending to be a statue or b)the course director is doing the presentation through the medium of mime and no one knows what’s going on and it descends into chaos. Silent chaos. And hopefully a fight.

Their very near cousins on the food chain at least have the decency to perform their zany brand of ‘humour’ under a tarpaulin. Why people continue to buy into the deeply flawed travelling roadshow that is the circus is beyond me. There are two types of circus. And they’re both crap.
You have your run-of-the-mill big top with a few animals looking well pissed off and a few clowns. And you have one usually prefixed with the words French, where a load of blokes piss about on motorbikes whilst scantily clad ladies stand around moving their arms. Oh, it’s an illusion alright. The illusion being you’ve paid money to be entertained and that the entertainment simply doesn’t happen. The greatest swindle known to man.

It’s like the black economy. The public buy counterfeit DVD’s thus providing paramilitary groups with funds to buy guns. The public hire clowns for kid’s parties, thus providing these egomaniacs with a living. Over my dead body will a clown every cross my doorstep.
Even Cannon And Ball knew the game was up. They realised that they weren’t funny and thankfully retired. Clowns? Nah, they’re delusional, probably coked up let’s be honest, all the while refusing to believe that their day in the sun has long since passed.
The only way a clown would get a laugh out of me is if the bucket of glitter they were about to ‘hilariously’ throw over their clowning pal had been replaced with hydrochloric acid. Now that I’d pay to see.

He's Thinking He's Sinking In The Sands Of Time...

Getting older let’s be honest, is a bit shite. Having said that I’m quite happy to age as opposed to dying at say, twenty seven, but it is shite nonetheless.

I remember reading somewhere that you could tell who the older people in your workplace were by virtue of their attitude on a Monday morning. Those over 30 would be fresh faced and up for the week ahead whilst those in their 20s would be absolutely bollocksed and looking like they needed a morning in bed.

At thirty four, the last milestone in the sands of time that I have passed, people have started saying I’m a bit like my Dad. Have you seen my Dad lately? He looks a lot like Bob Carolgees wearing Spit The Dog as a coat. A ridiculous comparison. Or is it?....For I have started to sound like him. I speak to my daughter like he spoke to me. Loudly. All because subconsciously I reckon she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. And it is a well known fact that if you speak loudly and more slowly to someone with not much English, the message will get through. I have started shouting down the phone. I have started making that ‘Hep!’ noise when I stoop down to pick something up. I even made the mistake of wearing a cardigan on a lads night out. They reckoned I looked like someone’s Nan as opposed to my father. Pepped me up somewhat I can tell you.

Thirty four is scary. You walk through Dublin and you see people who look vaguely familiar and it’s only ten minutes later that you go “That was James Smyth! Fuck he looks old! Where’s his fucking hair gone? The last time I saw him he was up against a wall with some blonde!” and then you remember that that was probably sixteen years ago. And then you remember that it was the blonde you were ‘seeing’ at the time. And then you grin and go “Fuck ‘im”.

With thirty odd years behind you, by now you should’ve realised that you should start putting a bit of responsibility into that thick head of yours. Everyone else seems to find ‘Questions And Answers’ or any other political debate show massively interesting. Not you. To you it’s all a bit of load of old bollocks and you’d rather watch ‘The Royle Family’ or even, God forbid, a re-run of ‘On The Buses’ on Dave if they’re on at the same time. You’re not about to start nodding sagely or proffering your political opinion to every Tom Dick or Harry just because life tells you that it is the way you should be.

Talk of interest rates replaces talk of which band is playing in Dublin next week. Talk of what your kids are up to replaces talk of what you got up to at the weekend. 

And you wonder to yourself quietly, who wrote that line “At twenty five, your mind starts changing, regret starts paining, the sky starts raining responsibility not possibility”? And you want to get into your DeLorean and travel back to 2002 and punch him in the face. 

What an idiot.

A Head Full Of Ideas & A Handful Of Escape Routes

I’m a-gonna skip a couple of episodes of Viva Hate right through to the summer of 1996. I’d finished up working in the Ballinteer House as a lounge boy and in probably the best job known to a teenager, namely working in the Snooker Hall of said boozing establishment. John Weedle was the best boss I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. I’d met and worked every Sunday night in the bar with the future Mrs. O’C, unbeknownst to either of us. There was that frisson but it went fucking nowhere. Space and time would regurgitate that to the ultimate. Namely the day we exchanged vows on a beautiful sun shining day in Aughrim. But...fuck it. She wasn’t interested back then. She thought I was a right shaper. And she was very, very right. Even then she knew me better than I knew myself.

I’d taken to hanging round with a fellow lounge boy, Dave Doorly (not his real name). He had an older brother who was mad into his music. Doorly had, as I had previously under the tutelage of Messrs Bushe and Noonan, absorbed his older brother’s music. The Stone Roses were the stand-out. Their much derided opus ‘Second Coming’ had occupied most of the summer of 1995 in our CD players. I did and still do prefer it to their self-titled debut album. It was an eye-opener for me. I had spent the previous year listening to the greatest debut album of all time, and for all you nit-pickers, that is a fact, ‘Definitely Maybe’ by you know who. I had the haircut. I put on the swagger. I was ‘mad for it’. What ‘it’ was? I still don’t know. What a summer ‘it’ was.

One afternoon lazing about as 18 year olds do before they piss off to Club Sarah, the boy Doorly introduced an album by a band called The Charlatans called ‘Some Friendly’  to the room that now included fellow lounge boys and let’s face it, raconteurs, Ian Crotty and Gerard Weedle (of John Weedle fame, for he was his son). Alan Drennan who had tagged along in his position as my best mate was not going to miss out on a massive piss-up and the prospect of female company. “You’ll love this, it’s like The Stone Roses but with more wah-wah in it” opined Doorly. He was not wrong. I loved it. And The Stone Roses were forever consigned to the bread bin. Never to return. It was our Inbetweeners phase and let’s face it, what teenage lad hasn’t gone through that desperation of desperately wanting to ‘get yer hole’ but leaving empty handed at the end of the night looking like a contestant off Strike It Lucky that has gotten all the answers wrong? We struck gold once in a while, but it was a strike rate akin to Andy Cole in his early United days i.e. Fucking rubbish.

I was mesmerized by The Charlatans. The reasoning was that album was that fucking good they could not have been dropped by their label. A trip into Freebird records on the quays of Dublin proved me right. Me, with my meagre funds bought three of their albums on cassette. ‘Between 10^th & 11^th’ with bananas on the cover, ‘Up To Our Hips’ with a couple of models peering at me from behind the Perspex box...and ‘The Charlatans’ self titled with a stern black background with five stern looking lads peeping out through the gloom. At least thirty glorious tunes to become accustomed to. And all for fifteen old Irish pounds!

These albums kept me occupied from the summer of 1995 right through to the leaving of the Ballinteer House in May 96. You’ve just got to move on sometimes. In my mind I was Eric Cantona. I never stooped to kung-fu kicking a customer although sometimes I’ll admit, it did cross my mind....No! Love ‘em, cause a bit of fuss and leave ‘em. That was my ideology. In other people’s minds I was just a little Liam Gallagher-wannabe with shit shoes. And shite they were, let me tell you. And I was a little shite too, as only a Mam can testify. God Bless her Scouse socks.

One Saturday night, following the definitely tried but poorly tested “this place is full of birds, it’ll be no problem to us” route we headed to the Mean Fiddler on Camden Street. My old pal Barry Dunne had swelled our ranks to five. After another night of ‘hitting the bar’ in more ways than one we retired to my ‘gaff’, for the oul’ pair were away.

Through my drunken state I had remembered I had purchased The Charlatans new single. On cassette. Naturally. Stuck it in the Hi-Fi. Off we go. I had forgotten to mention that their keyboard player Rob Collins had been killed in a car accident a few weeks previously. But one of the lads brought that subject up. It added a danger to proceedings. “Fuck me! They’re bringing a single out? And one of them has just died?!”. “Shush, fucking listen. Listen”. Trippy drum loop intro courtesy of The Chemical Brothers. Piano (“that’s Rob that is”...shush!),guitarspianodrumsbass, bang. The roof lifts off my head. Fucking a-maz-ing. “One to another, sister and a brother and a change in the way that you feel. Pleased to meet you, hope I never see you, I’ll be at ease watching you sleep, watching you smile”...Fuck me, I thought to myself, Noel Gallagher doesn’t do tunes like that....”Love I adore you, always looking for you and I’ll be there whenever you need me, Be my Spiderwoman I’ll be your Spiderman!”...Okay, okay, do go on...”And I hear our day is coming, gets sweeter every year, tomorrow’s gonna be too easy  and today is gonna be too near”...That’s us lads...”Trust is for believers and love can keep the faith, I don’t need you I can’t buy you I can’t hurt you”...That’s that ugly mug from the Mean Fiddler, fuck her, she’s a dog anyway...Rob’s piano bit. Goosebumps appearing on all our arms at this stage. Listen to the drums. Fuckin hell! “One to another, peace to my brother always giving me his thing for free, sad to knock you, it’s good to rock you and I’ll do it the best that I can...”.  Chorus. Our day is coming lads, I’m telling you we’ll be fucking minted one day and all this will be a memory...Oh, piano bit. Fucking hell, sounds like Led Zeppelin with Chemical Brothers in the background, guitar joining in the riff now...”Stand by my accusations, I’m come clean don’t need no vice, I know you want to keep me waiting I think it’s funny that you might”...no pause for breath...”Love is hard to leave and it’s hard to never have, can you please crawl out your window you can blame it all my love yeah yeah yeah, box up all my records and a head full of ideas and a handful of escape routes. GONNA BURN YOU!”...Right lads. ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ this is not. This is our fucking anthem!

Then we played it again. And again. And again. Until we passed out due to being fucked on my Dad’s homemade wine.

Oh what a night.

License To Fill

The familiar rattle of the letterbox got me running this morning. What bills, for I presume they are bills, have been dropped in to induce mild panic now? Some crap about joining gyms and the like as ever but what’s this? An An Post marked envelope? I am intrigued. I open it slowly so as to increase the tension...and there it is. The greatest practical joke played by any national institution and fuck me, doesn’t it have competition. In my hands was a missal informing me that ‘Mr. Television Licence Inspector’ shall be targeting unlicensed households in my area. The Gene Hunt that does RTE’s bidding will soon sweep into my street in an Audi Quattro, shooting from the hip. “We’ve heard all the excuses and none of them work, for you are surrounded by armed bastards”. Have you really Mr. Inspector Man, have you really? While we’re at it have you actually watched or listened to RTE’s output of late? Because, if you did kind sir, you’d be taking the 74A back out of here with your tail between your legs.

Let me be your guide through what television is being offered up today Friday the 5^th November on the flagship station RTE1 yet paid for by the you’s and I’s of this world. We’ll start at lunch time because the dross on offer mid-morning is just not worth commenting on and is even worse than TV3’s and that is saying something.

1.00:RTE News: Laugh-a-minute stuff from the good folk at Montrose informing us through relentless state-sponsored propaganda that the nation is indeed fucked and seeing as we’re fucked anyway, they’re going to talk us further down the drain as a result putting everyone into a state of mute hysteria . Sure don’t we have the GAA to lighten our pathetic lives? That’ll brighten things up.

1.25: Home And Away: “Relationship, relationship...let’s go live in a caravan. We’ll take strangers in and hang around a coffee shop discussing feelings and relationships and maybe go to the beach, you fucking drongo”

1.55: Neighbours: Someone has a row with someone else, Toadie gets fucked over by some girl or other, Paul Robinson forgets to limp, and someone leaves in a taxi with all their neighbours out to wave them off.

2.20: Eastenders: A load of cockneys shouting at each other followed by a dramatic drumbeat.

3.00: Fair City: A load of country-folk with bad Dublin accents shouting badly at each other non-dramatically cutting to a badly ripped-off version of an already badly written Eastenders theme tune.

3.30: How Clean Is Your House?: None of your fucking concern.

4.00: Four Live: Imaginative yet inaccurate title. It’s not live as we know it. A TD’s wife is bound to discuss cutting-edge matters such as ‘Does your dog have piles?’ with an obviously uninterested vet who’s just in it for the fee and maybe that he might get recognized on Bray Main Street on Saturday.

4.50. The Daily Show: Losing the will to live? Call Daithi O’Se and the other one who’ll do their best to pep you up somewhat by falling all over the autocue.

5.40. Nuacht: Twenty minutes of programming so some fucker in Galway who’s spent his day sitting on a stone wall and picking spuds can cling on to the past.

6.00. RTE News: Still feeling fucked? Let’s lash on a bit more misery followed by a report from the Roscommon Minor training camp. Who the fuck are Shamrock Rovers anyway?

7.00. Nationwide: The jewel in the crown. More from Roscommon Minor’s training camp ahead of the Connacht final and an insight into drug-dealing in Blanchardstown with Mary Kennedy.

7.30. Come West Along The Road(3/13): With fiddle player Denis McMahon and friends, no less. THIRTEEN episodes of a load of blokes sitting around in a pub with their eyes closed producing sounds that remind one of a cat being fucked onto the hot coals of a sauna.

8.00. Eastenders: If you couldn’t get home on your lunch to get your fix of this Cockney misery fest, fear not. Ian Beale ponces about as if he’s Alan fucking Sugar despite only owning a chipper and a snooker hall. Dot smokes a bit. Another fucking row. A pub goes on fire. But the good folk of Walford are no doubt setting themselves up for another Christmas Day wedding with the reception in the Queen Vic which will invariably go wrong with ‘tragic’ consequences.

8.30. The Reluctant Taoiseach: Comedy.

9.00 .RTE News: Still feeling fucked? Let’s lash on a bit more misery followed by a report from the Roscommon Minor training camp. Who the fuck are Shamrock Rovers anyway?

9.35. The Late Late Show: Ok, thank you, roll it there Colette, postal quiz, thousands of entries....oh fuck... it’s Tubridy. Switch it Off.

“We’ve heard all the excuses and none of them work”. See you in court so.... because I ain’t paying a single cent for that excuse for televisual programming. Put on a real-life documentary following that DJ who was caught wanking on a plane as he attempts to rebuild his life on the streets of Cork City and maybe, just maybe I’ll give your Call-Centre a bell. For that would make one fantastic television programme.

Standing On A Green

You know the feeling you get? It’s eleven o’clock on a bright summer’s day. You’re only rolling out of bed. The bedroom window has been slung open all night long. You’re just turned thirteen so the room isn’t filled with the fug from the night before, so in reality there is no need to have it open. There’s calmness to the air. But there’s a buzz too. People are out in their back gardens doing things that people do. Mowing the lawn, having a blazing row, kicking a ball against a wall over and over and over. You’ve nothing much to do and all day to do it. It’s magical this stillness. Feels like heaven. So you get up, get showered and have a bowl of tasteless cereal. The cricket is still on terrestrial television so you watch a bit of that. You poke your head out through the venetian blinds to see what’s going on in the street. Maybe the tasty new Spanish student girl will stroll on by? In the summer, in the city. You check the teletext to see if United have bought someone less injury prone than Neil Webb. You slip into your track suit, for this is Broadford. Tuck it into your pristine white socks and cover them up with runner boots. This is the Nineties, man!... This is the Nineties. All that has to be invented has been invented. Days like this are sweet. Your Mam starts nagging you, your brother starts annoying you, your sister is watching a ‘Care Bears’ video for what seems like and probably is the ninety first time, “I wanna be a Care Bear!, I wanna be a Care Bear!”You leave. With a flick of the V’s to a sliding porch door. Feels like heaven. This is heaven.

 Ireland have just been in the World Cup. They were knocked out in the quarters by some fucker who looked like a bullet with pop out eyes. But so what? Your old man is mates with Andy Townsend. He’s been in your house. You’ve been cheeky and told him you’re not exactly proud at being Irish. Proper little Dunphy, you. You bought yourself a Leeds shirt for a fiver on a football club trip to Blackpool. Does it matter? Who the fuck  are Leeds anyway? They’ve always been in the Second Division as far as you are concerned. Johnny Giles? Didn’t he used to play for Vancouver Whitecaps? Fuck it.

You’ve gelled your hair beyond reason. You’ve applied some Old Spice to your baby’s bum-like face. You can’t fail can you?...Yes you probably can and most definitely will. The girls unbeknownst to yourself are just as nervous around you as you are of them. They’re more interested in fucking Bros or someone of their ilk than made- up-to-look-like-someone-out-of-Brother-Beyond-in-a-tracksuit-you. You used to be able to talk to girls before you started in all all-boys school. You used to have that ring of confidence until you started in that all-boys school. You were a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond until you went to Benildus. Now? You’re the equivalent of a rather rubbish sea urchin on a rock that doesn’t want you to stick to it. Inside, you are floundering. You are Calamari waiting to be cooked by a lecherous Greek bloke who will end up shagging the bird you will be mad into on holiday when you’re eighteen. Plate smashing bastard that he was.

You take a stroll down to the Green where you used to play football every day with the boys on your street. You’re on your own. The boys are all still snug in bed or failing that, watching ‘Swinging On A Star’ because the girl in it is tasty as fuck. You’ve discussed it with them at length. All are in agreement on that particular score.

Even Gero, the giant-of-a-man bloke you looked up to, couldn’t be arsed getting down onto the Green until at least seven, purely because he couldn’t be arsed. It’s a right quandary you find yourself in.  A pickle if you will. There’s nothing to do and all day to do it. Seemed fine earlier on didn’t it?

Then out of the corner of your eye you spy a dark-clothed gaggle sitting on the wall. One of them is brandishing an acoustic guitar. Upon closer inspection this wannabe Jimmy Page is one of the fuckers off your Broadford Rovers Under 13 football team...and sat beside him in Gothic dress is your first ex-girlfriend. Okay, you were only ten when you ‘went out’. Still though...At least four of them are wearing ‘The Cure’ tee-shirts. So you walk up and go “Alright?”. A muffled response. You don’t belong in their gang. You know that anyway. And you don’t pretend to ingratiate yourself with them. You’re wearing a fucking tracksuit after all. Then you pipe up with “So what’s your favourite Cure album then? ‘Pornography’ or ‘Standing On A Beach’?” And you are met with blank looks all round. So you fucking do one, knowingly. And you get home and you flick the V’s and you open the sliding porch door and you wait for the nagging Mam, the annoying little brother and the ‘Care Bears’ film on constant rotation and you thank the Lord that you are just like Catherine Zeta Jones in being reliant on the older lads to get ahead in life. There’ll be a match on the Green at 7 and the ‘Cure Heads’ will have long since dispersed. Feels Like Heaven.

Someone Somewhere In Summertime-Viva Hate Part 2

The autumn and winter of 88/89 spelt a sea-change in my life. The previous summer, the class I’d grown with since 1981 were disbanded and sent to the four corners of the Attractas sixth class corridors. Fifty kids per class whittled down to sixty-six. Made no sense then and it doesn’t now. And we had four teachers during our sixth class term. Four. We were the great unwanted. It was like being at Atletico Madrid with Miss Hosty the principal as our Jesus Gil (look it up on Wikipedia, Gil that is...not Hosty). It was unsettling to say the least. I found refuge down the back of the class sat next to my neighbour Thomas ‘Skippy’ Kavanagh. We whiled away the days pea-shooting at an ever more disgruntled Alan ‘Lynchie’ Lynch whilst a trainee teacher called Miss Collins fucked with our minds. Even the nicknames smacked of a football dressing room but I certainly don’t remember either of us nailing his shoes to the floor whilst he was doing PE.

My mother must have realised the effect all this was having on me because The Doobie Brothers album was loaned out to my Auntie Vera, never to return. In its place came Shakatak and George Benson. From the rubbish to the utter ridiculous. I’d needed something to fill The Beatles void. To turn off my mind, relax and float downstream if perhaps you might. INXS did the job for a brief period. ‘Need You Tonight’ primarily. Santy brought me their album ‘Kick’. I played it on loop. ‘New Sensation’ and ‘Mystify’ were particular favourites too. I quickly bored of it, as I suspect so too did Michael Hutchence.

One evening in spring ’89 I was sat watching Top Of The Pops as I was want to do, trawling my way through Yazz & The Plastic Population and any Stock Aitken & Waterman creation you could care to imagine when the number one song in the land, not our land, their land was announced and on came the video. Two magnificently coiffured Scotsmen standing on a hill overlooking the Harland & Wolfe shipyards in Belfast came into view. A brave move, particularly in 1989. Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill and their mates. Simple Minds. The song was ‘Belfast Child’. Seven minutes of an Irish trad song (‘She Moved Through The Fair’) set to guitars and keyboards coupled with their own lyrical take. Magnificent. It built and it built to a crescendo and then came back down again. I had to buy the album.

By this time my old man had gotten tired of funding my musical whims. “Save up your money and buy it yourself, you’re twelve now” was the response I got for asking would he pick it up for me.

I was not disheartened for my Confirmation was on the horizon. I tried taping ‘Belfast Child’ off the radio but Larry Gogan and Simon Young were not forthcoming with the tunage. Young and cohorts had a particular talent for sporting country and western style string ties with silver buckles, but as far as their musical tastes, well, let’s face it; it was rammed right up their arses.

I waited til that fateful June day having to stand there in a fucking stupid cardigan, cream chinos and wine slip-on shoes all so it could just be the following Friday when me and my new, yet brief, classmates tootled off down to Nutgrove to spend our winnings. I returned with the album ‘Street Fighting Years’ and the full United away kit and about twenty pence change. Skippy had picked up the yellow Celtic away shirt at the same time which he ended up wearing in the Confirmation class photo shoot. He refused to take it off. And why would he? I bet he still wears it underneath his doorman’s uniform.

 I’d been dragged off down to Wexford and missed said photo thus erasing myself from existence. A bit like ‘Back To The Future’ but with no need to get my Mam and Dad to have a smooch.

Wexford broadened my Simple Minds song cannon. My older cousin Geoff for some reason had an album of theirs called ‘Sons And Fascination’ in a cassette holdall along with Queen, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. ‘Fuck that lot’, I thought to myself. Upon a summers morn he taped ‘Sons And Fascination’ for me and suddenly I was a fifteen year old at twelve. I probably had more luck with the ladies as a result of hanging around with him, my cousin Colin and his mates at twelve than I ever did at fifteen. Then again I’m probably in possession of rose tinted spectacles. Spectacles were something which I thankfully had consigned to the cloakroom in Attractas at this stage.

My Mam couldn’t understand why I was listening to ‘that racket’. But it was sublime. It had been recorded in 1981 but even now it sounds current. Song titles like ‘Seeing Out The Angel, ‘In Trance As Mission’, ’70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall’ did not sit with what other pre-pubescent geezers were listening to. Sure, we played football every day until we dropped but I’d grown up, if only by a little bit.

We had called down to my Dad’s mate in Kilmuckridge. He had a son called Jason who was about eight years older than me. We were kicking a ball about but the ball was as flat as a witch’s tit. Jason struck on the idea of hopping in his Renault 18 and driving up to pump the ball up. On the way he asked what music I was into. Panic on the streets of Wexford. “Oh, eh, I like Simple Minds a bit, I suppose”...”Really? Well listen to this!” He popped in a tape and turned it up. Fucking loud. ‘Once Upon A Time’ rattled the speakers. To a kid in 1989 it was manna from fucking heaven. Little did I know that Jason Bushe was the biggest Simple Minds fan known to man? Street cred with the older lads turned up a notch.

We called around to his Mam and Dad’s the following Christmas Day. I had started in Benildus by this stage but was already being written off as what the chess-loving, bullshit-spouting, Doc Marten wearing brigade termed a ‘Soccer Head’. (It’s called fucking football lads, just a point I think needs making). I played up to it. I kept my musical counsel. I can’t remember what Santy had brought me as I found it quite strenuous to keep the pretence up as I had a sister eight years my junior and a brother who was nine. But I do remember receiving a gift that day that ranks as high as any gift I have ever been fortunate to be presented with.

Jason, massive Simple Minds fan that he was and still is, handed me vinyl copies of every Simple Minds album recorded to date. “Now. Bring them home. Tape them. And give them back”. Sure, yeah, no problem. “Oh. And every one of them is signed by Jim and Charlie. Even, look! Brian McGee the original drummer.”. FUCK. I carried them home in the old man’s car like someone coming home pretending to be sober at three in the morning to a waiting narked wife. I listened to them for days. And I gave them back unharmed. I couldn’t sleep for the worry that my little sister might use them as a Frisbee. Happy fucking Christmas and a Happy New Decade. I returned to Benildus in the New Year as a man of musical wisdom. Thanks Jason.