Uimh Tír d'Fhir Sean

(First published in Percy Main v Ashington Colliers programme 23/04/2011)

I’d like to apologise from the outset as this edition’s piece has very little to do with football, but I know what a highly cultured crowd we get reading the Percy Main programme, so I’m sure you’ll indulge me this once. As it’s St. George’s Day, I thought I’d take us across the sea to Ireland, for a change.

On Friday April 15^th, 623 days after his death, I helped my mother attempt the sad task of clearing out my Dad’s wardrobe. Most of the stuff went to charity shops, but, as well as a video of “The Dubliners Guide to Dublin” (She gave it to me presumably on account of the beard making me look like Ronnie Drew), Mam insisted I kept Eddy’s old Arran sweater, which he’d worn half a century ago when he sang in folk clubs and which made him look the double of Tom Clancy (the singer not the writer). As the old fella was 3 inches shorter than me and far less generous round the gut, it’ll never fit properly, but I wore it all the same as I watched Shamrock Rovers steal an undeserved point from the Fair City classico against Bohemians with a last second scramble on www.rte.ie

As I settled down to read that night, Eddy’s Arran sweater acted as my pillow, while I got acquainted with “Bullfighting,” Roddy Doyle’s fabulous new collection of short stories. It’s the first book I’ve ever read that’s made me genuinely regret growing old. While YouTube keeps me musically insulated in a cocoon of 1970s folk and folk rock (though I did escape to go and see the impossibly brilliant Trembling Bells on Monday; now there’s a band who are surely the reincarnation of Sandy Denny era Fairport Convention…), my Planxty inflated nostalgia balloon (Sé an truaigh nach mise, nach mise/ Sé an truaigh nach mise bean Pháidín /Sé an truaigh nach mise, nach mise/ S an bhean atá aige a bheith caillte**) was popped by Doyle’s unremitting exploration of the realities of the current recession from an Irish perspective.

Doyle takes us from Howth to Bray and inland to Lucan to gaze at the effects of negative equity, unemployment, ageing, illness and, ultimately, mortality on Irish men, middle class urban Dubs in particular, who are all in their late 40s to mid-50s. It was almost enough to make me forget the Setanta Cup semi-finals, but not quite; Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk will contest the final on May 14^th. After reading Bullfighting and internalising its mixture of farce, tragedy and, ultimately, loving hope, I find it a gas that a meaningless non-competition like this will be played in Belfast on a day when the entire island of Ireland will be watching the FA Cup Final from Wembley instead. Can I just say I want Stoke to win, as I’ve no time for Massive Club Citeh? Thanks.

Doyle is a Chelsea fan, so no doubt his Sunday will be made special the day after the Cup Final as the Pensioners clatter half a dozen past Pardew’s lads at Stamford Bridge. You know; if he can continue to write books as affecting as Bullfighting I don’t think I’ll care too much.

Ian Cusack

* Irish for No Country For Old Men

** It's a pity that I am not, that I am not/ It's a pity that I am not Páidín's wife/ It's a pity that I am not, that I am not/ And the woman he has is dead