Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?

by Tim Bradford

  9.45 pm

  Irish women on the other hand are amazing and beautiful and lovely and sexy and sensitive and intelligent and talented and successful and funny and strong. Slightly over the top maybe but it has to be said, as many of them will be reading this at some point to check I say nice things. I go out with a crowd of them – Sarah, Rachel, Deirdre Mac, another Deirdre – to a local pub, The Willows. More friends appear and the talk is of house prices (in Dublin, as in London, house prices are the new rock ’n’ roll), and various people say they can’t afford to live in Dublin any more. In Dublin now house prices have not just gone through the roof in the last couple of years, they’ve gone into orbit with a monkey at the controls like that old Russian satellite of the 1950s. Or was it a dog? You have to have the dosh of a past-it musician or populist politician to pick up a decent house these days.

  11 pm

  I am in O’Donahue’s in Merrion Row with Sarah and we name the first pint after David O’Leary, the man who scored the winning penalty for Ireland in the 1990 World Cup second-round match against Romania.

  12 pm

  We end up meeting the others again at the Bridge Club Bar, somewhere in the centre of town (but where is a secret. If I tell you I’ll have to kill myself before the Bridge Club gets me first). All I can say is it’s in a deep underground cave, a bit like Batman’s lair, underneath a normal Georgian terraced house. There’s a bloke on the door who asks for the secret password. ‘Er, we’ve … come to meet my Mum and her friend Mamie and … to get drunk in the Bridge Club Bar,’ says Sarah, concentrating hard. He lets us through. Brilliant. Inside are lots of big booths with bench seats. And a Big Beautiful Lock-in. A crowd of foxy looking middle-aged women sit at the table opposite us. It’s the Secret World of Bridge.

  We’re all gabbing about house prices – again. They all seem to really believe there is some sort of house price spirit at large in the country. It’s really all the Celtic Tiger’s fault. Where did the money come from? Lots of trade with Britain. Computer companies in from Japan and the USA. Tax breaks or something? U2’s crappy singles? I totter back to the bar for more pints.

  ‘Is it all going to end, this Celtic Tiger thing?’ I ask the barman, who smiles at me and serves someone else. The irony is that the term was coined after the phenomenal economies in the Far East, the ‘Asian’ Tigers. And we all know what happened to them. Most people seem to think it will hit the skids eventually, but they didn’t say it with that much regret in their voice (though it’s good that people don’t have to go abroad to find work any more). As though all good things must come to an end. And they seem to think that some of the old ways weren’t so bad. Perhaps shiny new Heritage Ireland and the old Ireland can live side by side without one taking over completely? A country of community spirit and condoms.

  It’s been another long day, and the lights are starting to go out all over my brain. Once again my short-term memory tank is full. What the hell have I been doing? It occurs to me that I am now some pissed-up wannabe-Boswell and all these assertive women, and everyone else in Ireland, are Samuel Johnson. Someone gets up to order a taxi. They have a card. Please God it isn’t ABC cabs.

  * * *

  1 An old Lincolnshire word meaning ‘pint’.

  2 Nothing to do with the magazine When Saturday Comes. If you stay to the end of the film, the last credit says that. But who in their right mind is going to stay until the end of the credits unless they work for the football magazine and are anxious to see that there’s a disclaimer somewhere.

  3 I just know here that some readers will be thinking of the kindly Roddy McDowell, and saying to themselves, ‘What’s this guy talking about – he’s got lovely eyes.’ Roddy McDowell is another famous actor with Irish roots. Roddy was How Green was My Valley? Malcolm was A Clockwork Orange – if Andi McDowell had been in a production of The Woman in White we’d have ourselves an Irish flag. As it is, she was in Green Card so my little theory is scuppered.

  4 Ah well – there goes the wealthy ‘vegan’ market.

  5 He needed some ‘Arrrrghhh’ and some mad eyes. I could have given him a lesson or two.

  IRISH MYTHS & LEGENDS 3

  A Brief History of the Leprechaun

  Unleash the leprechaun within

  1 Is it because people didn’t understand the laws of perspective in the old days so that they’d see someone in the distance and presume they were tiny people? It’s possible, they’d see rainbows in the distance as well, so the tiny people and the end of the rainbow might, in the eye of the viewer, converge.

  2 When rabbits run past you quickly, they might be mistaken for small people.

  3 Why do they always have that strange Afrikaaner-style facial hair?

  4 I once asked the singing leprechaun what he thought. He sang ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’.

  Who were the leprechauns? Some say they were one of the races who were defeated in the myth sagas – the Fir Bolgs, say, who got duffed up by the Tuatha De Danann. We have fairies in England but they were always a bit poncey, they were … fairies, really. All they ever did was twitty around the bottom of overgrown gardens belonging to nice middle-class families with over-sensitive daughters. Leprechauns were different. None of that New Age shite – it was pots of gold they were interested in.

  My theory is that they are a race of jockeys who couldn’t get work so went to live underground, learning to live off nuts and berries or in some cases rabbits and tigers that had escaped from zoos. Tiger meat is very high in calories so they would cure it and cut it into very thin slices, like salami. Jockeys have to watch their weight. If they get fat, they’re not jockeys any more, apparently. When St Patrick came to Ireland the jockeys were pagan, but he soon converted them and the Jockeys for Jesus sect of leprechauns was born. But were they good jockeys or bad jockeys? How can you tell the difference? Old people used to say that if you threw some ground ginger in the face of a jockey, then held up a mirror to his face, the bad jockey would start to smell of cheese. If a jockey comes to your door you have a choice – to either take him out with a punch and a kick to his little jockey genitalia, or be nice and say hello, after which he may lead you to his pot of gold.

  How do you find out more about leprechauns? The easiest way is to sit in an Internet café and type ‘leprechaun’ into a search engine.

  The Leprechauns are merry, industrious, tricksy little sprites, who do all the shoemaker’s work and the tailor’s and the cobbler’s for the fairy gentry, and are often seen at sunset under the hedge singing and stitching. They know all the secrets of hidden treasure, and, if they take a fancy to a person, will guide him to the spot in the fairy rath where the pot of gold lies buried.

  from Enchanted Forest

  (http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/2512/leprechauns3.html)

  He looks like a small, old man (about two feet tall), often dressed like a shoemaker, with a cocked hat and a leather apron. According to legend, leprechauns are aloof and unfriendly, live alone, and pass the time making shoes … they also possess a hidden pot of gold. Treasure hunters often track down a leprechaun by the sound of his shoemaker’s hammer. If caught, he can be forced (with the threat of bodily violence) to reveal the whereabouts of his treasure, but the captors must keep their eyes on him every second. If the captor’s eyes leave the leprechaun (and he often tricks them into looking away), he vanishes and all hopes of finding the treasure are lost.

  (http://www.ssncf.org/IrishLegends.htm)

  The Leprechaun: the one shoemaker seen mending shoes. Catch him and get crocks of gold. A thrifty professional. Take your eyes off of him and he vanishes. Red Coat seven buttons in each row and he spins sometimes on the point of a cocked hat.

  (http://members.tripod.com/foxylana/lep.html)

  Lucky Leprechauns, Inc. offers its unique and collectible good luck Leprechaun charms for players of bingo, poker, lotto, dice, slot machines and many other games of chance.

  Players of Bingo say our five Lucky Bingo Leprecha
uns spell the difference between winning and losing. Each Lucky Bingo Leprechaun has his own name and can be visited by clicking on the appropriate shamrock or name.

  (click on your favourite pastime)

  (http://www.luckyleprechauns.com)

  (I kid you not!)

  ORANGE COUNTY

  Midlands

  Hungover Adventures with the Sea-Urchin-Moustachioed Guard

  The Curragh, Co. Kildare

  Driving out of Dublin the car seemed to mirror my mood, stuttering, whining, cold. The N7 main artery southeast out of the city was pockmarked with roadworks, picked scabs in the tarmac ringed with cones. It was stop-start-stop-start driving where the subconscious takes over the clutch control and I just observed the other motorists with a red disinterested eye. Sitting in the passenger seat, without his seatbelt on, was that lazy little fucker the singing leprechaun. I couldn’t bear to look at him – his stupid grin was annoying me. As Gram Parsons whinnied and wailed out of the speakers about ‘The Streets of Baltimore’, I thought to myself how crap and unromantic the Emerald Isle appeared on this shittiest of frostdrizzled mornings.

  Before leaving I’d tried, pathetically, to get enthusiastic about looking for a good price for the car. There were a few garages in south Dublin that dealt with Opels but it seemed that I hadn’t done my homework properly (Not a first for me, admittedly) – plus most of the salesmen seemed to know they were talking to a crap negotiator. The Corsa 1.4LRi, ah sure I know that car, it’s a grand motor, they’d say, and this model is pretty rare in Ireland, but really it’s already been superseded, value-wise, by more feature-heavy Opel models over here. Ah shite, I thought, superseded value-wise. There’s a thing. And then there was the Registration Tax for cars being brought in and sold from abroad. The what? The Registration Tax. The cost of this varied depending on the size and age of the car, but in my case it would cost about a thousand pounds, which the dealer would have to work into any price he … might be … able to give me … as it were.

  The traffic started to thin out a little and I was able to speed up but still, I had to admit it, this was crap. I don’t mind driving but it’s boring on your own (cue sad eyes and ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’) and I felt like seven bags of shit. The landscape was flattish farmland with little villages in the distance and the occasional tree. At a roundabout, in automatic pilot mode, I saw a brown tourist sign for the Curragh of Kildare and turned off towards it. I stopped for a quarter of an hour in the Curragh, a vast expanse of open land that is covered in the turf of Irish stereotypes – springy, moist, gently rolling here and there and so very, very green that it dazzles. Somehow it suggested wealth and prosperity to me. I wanted to lie down and stare at the sky. All I knew of the Curragh was from the Christy Moore song:

  ‘The winter it has passed

  And the summer’s come at last

  The small birds are singing in the trees

  And their little hearts are glad

  Ah, but mine is very sad

  Since my true love is far away from me

  And straight I will repair (car reference – good)

  to the Curragh of Kildare,

  For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.’

  It’s nearly always a mistake, writing down the lyrics of songs you like. They never seem to quite work on the page. Plus that’s another hundred quid down the drain in royalties. Anyway, I didn’t see any trees. There was no-one around. Eventually a lone horseman galloped past, glancing at me. Then silence again. In the distance a jogger, wearing a white helmet, trotted towards me. Then about fifty yards away he stopped and just stared. Then he started up again and ran past me, still staring. And I knew what he was thinking. That bloke has nicked that car from a woman.

  Back on the road, about ten minutes later, I was slowing down as I came up to a roundabout and saw a guard standing in the middle of the road. The hotheaded singing leprechaun started to twitch (a bit like Dennis Hopper does when he’s being interviewed about who wrote the script for Easy Rider). I hoped he wasn’t packing a little leprechaun weapon (.09mm I think they use these days). All I know about guards is they are all six foot five, descended from some ancient race like the Fomorians and ride bicycles. This guard was a skinny bloke with bird-like face and a way-too-big-for-his-bone-structure ginger moustache. His body movements were like Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins – sort of twitchy, nervous and ever so slightly camp. The guard put his hand up, obviously desirous that I stop, with this other hand firmly on his hip. He looked like the ‘cop’ in the Village People, about to slink his hips and start boogying across the tarmac. As I stopped, he walked over to the car and did the international signal for winding down your windows, which when you think about it is also a bit of a 1970s funkster movement. What if I’d had electric windows? What then? He perhaps should have done a Marcel Marceau mime-like movement – a button press, followed by palms outstretched and slowly coming down.

  I wound down the window, to the rhythm in my head of ‘Car Wash’ by Rose Royce.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked, Peter Fonda-like.

  ‘Can you turn the engine off, please.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Turn off the engine.’

  He was edgy and seemed to be moving from foot to foot, as though dying for a slash.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Bradford.’

  ‘Is this your car?’

  What should I say? My name wasn’t on the registration papers, which were in an envelope on the passenger seat. If we had a fight and he shot me or whacked me on the head with his truncheon (‘Hit me with your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me …’) he would soon find them. And even if the car had been in my name, no-one would believe me. It didn’t have enough blokey paraphernalia, like souped-up speakers or alloy wheels.

  ‘I am now going to ask you to step out of the car,’ he said sternly, his moustache bristling like the tentacles of one of those multicoloured sea urchins in a David Attenborough Life on Earth special.

  (David Attenborough voice-over: ‘And so the sea urchin moves off from the coral, its tentacles bristling like the hairs on the ginger moustache of a jumpy Irish policeman who has confronted a perfectly innocent motorist on the road from Dublin to Cork.’)

  I waited to see how he would ask me to get out of the car. Perhaps he’d start doing the Harlem Shuffle. Suddenly I heard a revving engine behind me and looking in the mirror saw a police car coming up fast.

  It skidded to a halt about ten yards behind me and a burly copper jumped out. ‘It’s not him!’ he shouted, then jumped back in the car and did what can only be described as a Sweeney-style wheel skid before racing across the roundabout in the direction of Cork. Not to be outdone, Sea Urchin Boogie Policeman leapt into his car (without so much of a word of ‘sorry to have troubled you’), which was parked in the left-hand lane of the roundabout, and did what can only be described as a Starsky and Hutch meets Dukes of Hazzard wheelspin swerve skid with triple salco, before racing off in pursuit of his mate.

  An hour or so later my Guinness residue was now only just seeping into the part of my brain responsible for keeping the steering wheel in the right direction. I looked for a place to park and found a little road which led into another little road off which, as I was climbing a hill, was the official Worst Road in Ireland. Massive potholes that had turned into bottomless lakes peppered the road like a diseased lung, more hole than highway. Not the ideal road surface if you’re trying to keep a car in tip-top saleable condition. The Corsa was going up and down like a yacht in a storm – I managed carefully to either go over most of them or avoid them until another would suddenly loom up and the car would lurch downwards as I cursed my ill-fortune. I had to get off this somehow and when a small left turn appeared I took it. I soon realised that what I’d been on was actually the Second Worst Road in Ireland. This was the real thing, with thin flaky little ledges of tarmac – the r
est was simply hole under which could have been anything – Mineshafts? Bogs? The gateway to another world? After ten minutes I eventually found a little lay-by surrounded by pine trees and scrub and parked the car. Thanks to the highly effective police roadblock, my hangover which had been in swift pursuit of me for several hours, like some vengeful spirit, had finally arrived. It was starting to rain again. I wound the chair back and fell into a fitful sleep for an hour or so, then wound my way gingerly (the only way to do it in Ireland) back down the hill and headed west.

  Cupán Tae, Cáca Milis, Mo Ghrá Tú (A Cup of Tea, a Slice of Cake, I Love You)

  Adare, Co Limerick

  Adare is a thatch-roof, blue-green, neatly trimmed, tightly tweaked, sweet-flower-smelling village in the twee English style, with a rich and wrecked abbey and placid medieval river flowing through lush watermeadows at one end of the town and a little Irish music shop at the other. Walk around in a place like this for a while and take a deep breath. You can smell the sweat of giftshop fatigue. In the centre of the little town is a museum on the history of Adare which is basically about the Fitzgerald family, a crowd of evil-eyed baldies with goatee beards – at least that’s how they’re portrayed in the pictures. In fact they all bore a remarkable resemblance to Robin Cook, the Labour MP. They got too big for their boots and the English came along and beat them up. I walked from one end of the town to the other. And then walked back again. I sat in the park for a while reading the Limerick Leader. The weather kept changing very rapidly – sun rain wind sun wind rain fog snow. I hummed the Crowded House song ‘Four Seasons in One Day’ (though I’m not going to be tricked into writing it here as that’d be another fifty quid or so down the drain). Then I got up and walked back to the tourist centre. I had a pot of tea in the café there which reminded me of holidays in Yorkshire with grandparents in the mid-seventies – coach parties of old people in zip-up anoraks, the women all with the same curly blondish hairstyle, fried food, fat dads and side-parted hair tucking into fish and chips, harassed mums, bored children. I think I said all this aloud.