won’t even let you sleep to relieve the dead hand of boredom. I have no interest in books or papers, no interest in anything. Even the 1940s film on the TV does not entice me and I used to be such a movie buff and was regarded as an expert, in the pubs anyway; an expert on everything and anything and if you didn’t think so I’d let you know. That’s the way it was and it doesn’t seem funny now and I hate myself for the zillionth time. Jesus I’d go insane here except that I am up to my eyes with that stuff they gave me. You can’t go mad when you whole system is battened down. You can’t feel, can’t imagine and you certainly can’t laugh. Nothing to laugh about now. But how I laughed at the Unicorn. How they all laughed and it was a good joke even though I say so myself. Though I can’t think of it now. The laughter no longer empty, the exchanges are now all substance, no longer saccharine. There are my people. I am throwing dice amongst the throng, the stakes are high and bingo I scoop the pot. I am the ventriloquist, no longer the dummy. I catch her eye and she smiles. A little wave and my heart rockets to my head. I am heading for the winning tape; I win by a nose against the odds. I would always succeed against the odds, odds invariably laid by myself and they were always long commensurate with my massive inferiority complex. I have analysed this in and out and up and down and I am sick to death of analysis. I know it all and know nothing; that’s all I know. Yet in the white heat of that afternoon in the Unicorn, I could do anything, be anybody and not give a damn about anything or anybody. I was free for what now sees a moment to use my emotional credit card to the limit, a limit set by me, only me. I was in control, the puppeteer, the ring master, the conductor; the show would never end unless I said so. When tomorrow eventually comes you are beyond caring, beyond control and the analysts take you over, to dissect the indissectable, to square the circle you are encircled in. “We’re all going to Nesbitts”, she said. “Who’s we?” “Does it matter?” “No, in fact it doesn’t, actually I like my own company”, I said. “Not one of those, I hope”, she said. “No, but I’m easy in company and just as easy on my own.” “We should all get on fine then”. “I thought we were doing that already”, I laughed. “I’ll see you there then”. And her smile promised the universe. “I must get some cash”, I said. “Do that”, she said, “we’ll need it’’. And that’s the last I saw of her. As I passed O’Donoghues the magic of the 60’s, the Fleadhs on sunny summers, the nights in hay sheds, beckoned me in the door. Now this is where the real action is or was when my youth passed me by. And as I waited for my pint to settle, the blurred became unblurred and I understood everything and if I didn’t, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered any more. The music soared through the bar above the early evening bedlam, and I was a child again, my father on a Sunday evening in Summer, playing the Sligo Maid – his favourite reel and when I got older it became mine too, it was inevitable; surely I was my father’s son and that was always important to me still is. Absurd, in his shadow all my life, a life sentence, a death sentence in effect. (to be continued)
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