A rainy night in Dublin…
I’m just in the door. It’s a dirty aul damp night out there. But that’s okay with me.
Tonight I spent the evening with my immediate family. Nothing formal. A pleasant, unremarkable time of it. The men spoke of football, watched football and drank tea. The women spoke of cervical cancer, didn’t watch football and drank red wine.
Later we discussed the merits of Appetite For Destruction by Guns n Roses. It made my sister feel old to realise it was released in 1987.
When I got around to putting on my coat to leave my mother wished I’d take a taxi, due to the weather and the lateness of the hour. I insisted I’d prefer to get two buses and walk a bit in the rain. She even wanted to give me money for it. I couldn’t accept it even if I wanted to. I told her I have a good raincoat. Thankfully I do, for as Billy Connolly once remarked, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”.
So why not get a taxi? Well because sometimes I like to be out in the rain. Not for too long. And only if I know I’m on my way home and not to work or out. Plus I like the air when it rains in Dublin, and the atmosphere. It awakens the senses. Everything changes. In a good way. It clears the streets. Kinda like that “real rain” Travis Bickle spoke of.
Plus I don’t like being in taxis unless I really need to be. Least of all when I’m sober. And I don’t need to pay twenty quid to hear how the world is broken, that United got out of jail or that Fianna Fáil are cunts. I can keep my money and know that shit anyway.
So I walked up a very wet O’Connell Street with Sigur Rós in my ears, enveloping my brain, taking me home, while transporting me to another place. And that’s all good with me.
When Umbrellas Attack…
Anyone who braved the mean streets of Dublin today (or any Irish town for that matter) will have seen, or been victim of, a brutal guerrilla like stealth attack. By an umbrella. I myself didn’t even make it to my front gate before my usually trusty companion tried to decapitate me. And now it’s rendered lifeless, vertebrae broken.
Once I made it into town I witnessed all kind of umbrella led carnage. People old and young being dragged kicking and screaming by a gust fed attacker.
I hope you all survive. But hey, let’s be careful out there.
Come on progeny…
Summer always seemed too short when school beckoned and a new term dawned. I remember every time I had to put back on my moth-eaten uniform at the start of a new term one thing was for certain…. the sun would be splitting the stones.
This summer as the biblical rains fell and floods swelled I consoled myself, and anyone who’d listen, with the fact that once the kids are back at school the sun will finally come out. It’s karma. Universal cosmic forces make it so. “We’ll have an Indian summer” I said, with certainty in my voice. The schools have now re-opened and, I ask, where the fuck is the sun? Overcast, greyness abounds and I’m rightly pissed off. Did we endure all that rain for nothing?
Admittedly the ark has been put on hold, for now, but I foresaw glorious sunshine, bermuda shorts and thirst quenching Coronas. But no it hasn’t transpired.
Time, I reckon, for something uplifting. Something like Lambchop’s “Up With People”…
Thanks Kurt, I feel better already. Fuck it, time for some Corona I reckon. Now where did I leave those bermuda shorts?
Poem for a rainy day.
Rain
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.
I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can’t do a handstand–
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said–
I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.
