Long way into town.

The guest house was cool and quiet. From under its thatched roof and high ceilings I stepped into the already stale morning. It was like walking into a warm, damp cloth and the smell of ashes and the sea hung around the garden. The low moan of the ocean was not far away; above me the snap of palm fronds rattled in the air like a gardener shaking a fistful of canes. (I took too long labouring over that paragraph; at this rate it’ll be 500 years before I get the book finished. That was just the opening three sentences)

A cart was waiting as usual at the end of the garden. Two water buffalo with wide, orange-lacquered horns were shifting in their yoke, waiting to plod along the track that skirts the rice paddy. Before I reached the cart someone in the guest house started to play Gilbert and Sullivan on a 1960s gramophone player. The chorus spilled out into the garden after me, racing in my direction as if trying to catch me.

The buffalo were slow to start and the music overtook me. I was stuck with Yum Yum and Nanki Poo running around in my ears for the rest of the morning. (I suppose Gilbert and Sullivan are considered racist these days, but I can’t help the fact that someone in the guest house was blasting their music into the Indian countryside as I was trying to travel to town. Get over it – I had to.)

The buffaloes stopped along the way. They weren’t supposed to stop. By the side of the track they had spotted an enormous snake curled up and they wouldn’t approach it even though there was no way the snake would have taken on two hefty buffalo. The boy driving the buffalo jumped down and grabbed a few stones. Back on his seat where he felt safe, he lobbed stones at the snake till it headed off into the undergrowth. We could see from the swelling along its body that it already had eaten breakfast.

The buffaloes started up again. Mandovi bridge came into view half an hour later and with it the sound of motorised traffic. I jumped down from the cart when it stopped at the edge of the river and I took the small ferry across rather than wait for a taxi to drive me over the new bridge, the new bridge that was to collapse a few years later.

Kir Royal.

I took the number 46 bus from Gare du Nord and got off at Porte Dorée. It looked the same, smelled the same as it did when I used to live in a little attic apartment on Place Eduard Renard. Big, wide intersection, McDonalds on one corner, Burger King on another and Café les Cascades on another. I took my usual seat in the café looking right across at Hôtel Porte Dorée and ordered a whiskey. It was almost six o’clock. Whiskey’s more of a nine o’clock drink. Two elderly ladies came along propping each other up as they walked slowly along Avenue Poniatowski. They took the table next to mine. When they both ordered a Kir Royal I recognised them as the two ladies who always used to take an aperitif there at 6 pm and it was always a Kir Royal. The colour of the drink matched the shade of their hair, and even more so now that they were older. The dog one of them used to carry in her back was not in the bag. It must have died.

Underneath the lamplight.

The moon looks so conspicuous sitting in a sky that seems to be otherwise empty. No stars visible, no clouds. Just a velvety, royal blue backdrop with a pearl lying on it much the way in which a pearl might be displayed in a jeweller's shop, except that it would more likely be a string of pearls rather than a single pearl. A single pearl wouldn't be much use. So there it sits and I look at it. My eyes notice it first and then my heart and eventually my soul stirs. I'm drawn into the spell it casts and I soon forget the cold air of the night that begins to anaesthetise my skin as it brushes against it. The moon doesn't fire arrow-like rays of light towards earth as the sun does; it sends light pulsing through space and it falls on the earth like a sheet, maybe a shroud. I think back to the same moon in a different sky, a sky unpolluted by the garish, synthetic light of cities or by the dust of industry, the ancient sky that was the tent I played under as a child. As I look up I start to hear cicadas and other sounds of the night. The moon reflects off the waters of the lake at the foot of our mountain and my head starts to fill with the smells of burning and the distant rhythm of drums. I am alone again, wearied by new people who want to be my friends. As I stare at the moon it changes from being an Irish moon back into being an African moon then changes further as it synchronises it's pulsing to the beat of my memory-choked heart. The moon fuses with my heart, they distil into a drop, a single pearl perhaps, of pure emotion suspended in eternity.

Overdose on beauty

Sun-drenched beaches are drawing car loads of people out of the city today like a hot bread poultice draws poisonous pus from an infected wound, or like a jar of sweet, stale beer draws slugs from a vegetable garden. The beaches in Ireland will be crawling with people, most of them with lily white skin that is unprotected from the sun, skin that will be lobster red after a few hours. Music will be blasted into the atmosphere from competing boom boxes and life guards will strut and pose, facing into the breeze so that their permed and bleached manes will sit just so and wow the collection of thirteen year girls gathered to ogle them, even though the girls don’t realise that’s what they’re doing. I’ll resist the lure of yellow sunshine and limpid waters. It’s into the forest that I’ll repair this afternoon, to walk along winding trails in sparse company; to bathe my eyes in the wet, green balm given off by a dense undergrowth of ferns. The sun will forget me, will caress only the topmost canopy of leaves while I luxuriate beside streams and be serenaded by small waterfalls. It’s into green, shaded pools that I’ll plunge, in which no-one’s dog will have defecated, and no child will have peed. A mossy rock will be my dinner table rather than a sandy blanket. When my thirst has been slaked and my hunger assuaged I’ll lie back and sleep a while, confident that no football will land upon my dormant brow, that no prankster will have piled two mounds of sand upon my chest to make me look like a woman. There will be no need for alcohol or other mood-altering fixes in the forest. It’s not euphoria or inhibition that I’ll seek but joy, pure unadulterated contentment, a deep-seated satisfaction that comes from some place beyond myself and comes only when I take myself aside from all the yahooery of the beach, and, in solitude, move pass the brutal, cosmic “why?” to swim in the childlike confidence of the blissful, accepting “because”.

Just one sip.

Yesterday came to an end; the sun slithered quietly into the ocean and day turned into night while I took one sip of remarkable wine that was strangely laced with all the kisses and punches of a live lived on the surface of the waters like an electric blue dragonfly. In that one sip I tasted refuge: it was like sailing into a small, calm harbour in northern France at sunset in September 1853 after days on an open, stormy sea, my hands shredded with rope-burn that would take weeks to heal and my lips split, swollen and parched Just one sip and worlds I knew nothing and everything about opened again in my heart, tight rose buds responding to morning sunshine, relaxing and giving themselves in shy confidence to the new day, knowing that by evening their petals would look a bit tatty and their perfume would fade with the setting sun. One sip, and the clamour of market places and battlefields crowd the space under the apple tree where I’ve taken shelter. The goblet trembles and the wine within it foams; the scent of fresh death rises from trampled grass. I thought to myself, “If that’s what one sip can do, where might a full bottle take me?” I’d better not. I have to worm the cat.

Hotel in Donegal.

Old world charm is what you get in my favourite hotel in Donegal, and it hasn’t been falsely created - it’s always been that way. We’ve stayed in it a few times, but mostly we just stop off for a meal on our way elsewhere. And to use the toilets. Last week we called in on our way by for coffee, with another hour to go before getting to where we were trying to get to. The bar and lounge were quiet, the only music playing was the crackling of flames from the open fire. The young man on duty, a cross between barman, barista, waiter and night porter, was efficient, discreet and friendly to the correct degree. The dark, heavy furnishings exuded the comfort, pleasures and privilege of a bygone age; the thick, drapes were steeped in memories and the once opulent carpet worn down with the shoes of the passing generations. Ghosts hang out on windowsills set deep in the thick walls and they make the grand, wooden staircase creak at night. One day I’ll join them. That’s all. I just like the place.

The loveliest feet.

I sat and looked intently at my feet tonight, not a part of my body to which I pay a lot of attention, and I thought to myself, “Wow, I wonder for how many miles you’ve carried me?” These are the feet that I was born with, that I learned to walk on and that have served me so well over the course of almost 62 years, although I didn’t use them much for the few number of months when I didn’t know what they were for. But I learned. These are the feet that have been encased in shoes for so much of their time, shoes that on some occasions were rather ill-fitting; feet that, when left unwashed while travelling for days, have emitted unpleasant odours; feet that have walked rough, stony paths and have sunk into the soft sand of Algerian beaches. I’m sure they are so pleased that between the ages of 4 and 14 I rarely wore shoes. Goodness, I love these feet. I’d better start to take better care of them because I still need them. I might invest in a proper pair of walking boots now that I’ve started to do a lot more walking in the hills over uneven ground. One thing I will not be doing is paying for them to be massaged by a stranger. I find the thought of having my feet touched by others quite unacceptable, disgusting even. I don’t even like touching them myself and the thought of me touching someone else’s feet is beyond imagining. Foul idea. These feet have walked the cobblestones of many European cities, kicked up clouds of dust in desert places in India and Africa and have propelled me through the waters of many swimming pools, seas and oceans. They have kicked me out of a good lot of trouble when required and carried me swiftly out of danger on too many occasions. God bless these feet: may they last me all my days. Now what other bits of me do you all want to hear about?

Not Monet's Garden.

I do enjoy being entertained in a pleasant garden, and that’s what happened to me late this afternoon. When the worst of today’s heat had started to tail off we left the shade of the little copse of trees around the stream and took a slow stroll into the village. Our intention was to have a cold drink; a pastis for me, an impossibly chilled white wine for my wife and a coke for our daughter. As we settled at a table outside the café, in the shade of the church that so thoughtfully shielded us from the sun, an elderly gent asked if he could join us, there being only the one table. Of course we agreed, even though we are not gregarious people and find social chit chat exhausting with friends and strangers alike. It was obvious to him that we were foreigners and we chatted about that for a while till I managed to turn the attention on him. He lives in the village and invited us to bring our drinks into his garden beside the café. All I could see was a high wall, but the man led us through a red door in the wall into the most splendid secret garden I’ve ever wandered around. Colour was exploding everywhere, and the sweet, sticky smell of honeysuckle hung in the air. There was a lichen-covered statue of Minerva in among the wisteria, a fish pond and a vegetable plot all contained behind the high stone walls. It was a big garden, and at the end of it a small cottage where the man lived alone, and everything shut off from the world by high walls. In the walls were several doors: the door we entered through from the street, another that opened into the café (which he owned), one into the Church and another onto a wide terrace overlooking a lake. Little paths, big, floppy-eared Dutch rabbits wandering free, cats sleeping on sunny shelves built into the walls and little, leafy follies to shelter in. It was idyllic, but the centre piece was undoubtedly the gentleman who had spent decades putting it all together, and who entertained us with stories of De Gaulle and Malraux, both of whom had been friends of his father. We felt rather special having all this shared with us. Far more interesting for us than Monet’s garden.

Purloin: a memory-conjuring word.

Do you like the word ‘purloin’? Perhaps the activity to which it refers gives the word a bad reputation, but it’s not the word’s fault. If you need to be cross with someone then vent your spleen on those who purloin and not on the word itself. I think it’s a lovely word. It makes me think of raw meat kept on a breezy veranda in a meat safe when no other method of refrigeration is available. That’s where my mother kept meat when we lived in rural Malawi in the 1960s. We had no electricity, and every Tuesday a local farmer killed a cow. He chopped it up in pieces and one piece ended up in our meat safe, still warm and oozing blood, it’s ‘moo’ still disturbing the otherwise quiet, afternoon air, and flies gathering on the fine mesh of the safe, unable to reach the bloody flesh. I don’t know how the vision relates to the word purloin, but in my 6 year old mind the sight and smell and horror of slaughtered cow chimed well with the sound the word makes when uttered aloud

No sadder place.

I know of no sadder place to be than this café at six o’clock on a Sunday night in January. My wife is out so I’ve come to read a dreadfully sad book in a dreadfully sad place in the company of sad looking people who have nowhere else to be. The lights are bright and glaring, the music thin, trite and loud. Cold wind blows papers around the dirty floor each time the door opens and the atmosphere is bleak and futile. The toilets are padlocked, the newspapers gone from their rack and the coffee tastes vindictive. One of the girls at the counter is cheery, the other sullen. Jack, in the desperately sad book I’m reading, tries unsuccessfully to kill himself but he doesn’t get it right and ends up depressed because of it. And my feet are cold, which reminds me that I need to buy a new pair of boots for tramping round Donegal in February. I hate buying clothes and boots and all. Now I’ve gone and depressed myself.

Grow your own garlic

I grow my own garlic - that you already know. I derive great satisfaction from my industry, from the fruit of my labour, but there is a lot more to the activity than just producing a few head of garlic - it’s a symbolic stand against the empire that claims ownership of this world’s noble but willingly deceived citizenry. The empire of which I speak is big business, shareholders in supermarkets, those temples of our times who have bought and enslaved urban populations the world over. They pose as servants of the people making our dreams a reality, whereas the reality is that we have become their slaves, beholden to them at every turn. Growing my own garlic (at which I’m rather good) is a stab at the evil empire, a stab that they will probably not notice and from which they will not suffer, but a stab nevertheless. This small act of defiance is a throwing off of the yoke of bondage, a reminder to myself that I have a self and that my life is my own, not theirs. Growing my own garlic also reconnects me with the earth and with the natural order. Man was designed to be a tiller of the earth, a producer and not just a consumer, each person meant to own his means of production himself and to own (and share) the benefits of his labour with others. Supermarkets dictate our desires, tell us what we really want with their slick advertising; they put fancy notions in our minds and then sell us the objects for which they have made us desirous. They have convinced us that it is our right to have out-of-season vegetables and fruit whenever the fancy takes us. They tell us we’re worth it, it is our right, we are all gods. Growing my own garlic gives me the sense of escaping the clutches of the empire. It is an act of subversion. When I go to the supermarket to buy cheese I laugh into myself at their efforts to get me to buy their garlic. I feel like a member of some resistance movement and I invite you all to join me - GROW YOUR OWN GARLIC COMRADES.

Sail away with me to Crete.

Come up on deck. Lie back on this roll of we tarpaulin with me and watch the stars. Count them and name them. Feel the swell of the sea under your body as it lifts the boat then sets it down again, time after time, all the way to Crete. Smell with me the dry, savoury scent of rosemary and sage that the night breeze carries from the islands that we sail past, islands invisible in a night that's black as ink except for the last, late lights in village houses along the rocky shore. Taste on your lips the salt that has settled on them through the long, now-dead afternoon. Lick your own lips and I'll lick mine: it's only the evening I want to share with you, not my saliva.

Not very good at school and Church.

Could do better

Needs to try harder
Not reaching his full potential
Easily distracted
Needs to focus
Pleasant boy

These were the usual judgements passed on me annually by teachers of every school discipline except P.E. That teacher was always of the opinion that I was either “timorous or hard to motivate on the sports field” but he could never decide which. He was correct on both counts: I was afraid of being damaged by oafish louts who were motivated to inflict damage on my person by the daft prospect of reaching a line laid down in chalk in the middle of a field before anyone else. Under no circumstances was I going to enter that fray and I placed no value in the reward of people making loud, unpleasant noises by clapping their hands together when someone arrived at the white line.

Little did all of those teachers know how accurately they were describing my future journey into Christian faith.

Could do better

Needs to try harder
Not reaching his full potential
Easily distracted
Needs to focus
Pleasant boy

And here I am, ever resistant to throwing myself into the fray of Church life with all its brutality, danger and competition, so I don’t. I remain the timorous bystander who people are unsure of so that I don’t get damaged, preferring quiet personal reflection and observation to futile fist fights about baptism just as at school I preferred the wild delights of conjugating French verbs to football and jumping over fences like a horse.

Of course I don’t expect the righteous bully boys of the faith to give up their sport so that I can become a full member of their club any more than I would expect boxers not to punch people in the boxing ring so that I could join in without getting my face damaged. I’m happy for them – I just don’t feel the need to join their club. But in saying that we are all called into the one club if we profess Christian faith and we need to accommodate each other’s needs and interests within that club. So why do I feel excluded, marginalised? Is it their fault or mine? Is it anyone’s fault? Can there really be an accepting welcome for all believers in the one Church or is that yet another out of reach ideal?

It’s wrong of me to judge harshly; it’s wrong of me to judge at all. All Churches are welcoming but they tend to offer the kind of welcome they would like to receive themselves rather than the welcome that is appropriate to the stranger on the doorstep. When I arrive at a Church where I am a stranger I appreciate a smile and a hello, but please don’t go any further than that. I don’t appreciate being questioned about who I am, where I’m from and what I do. I just want to come in and worship.

Slack Daffodil Eye.

It’s two in the morning  The twelfth of November I’m warming my feet By the fast-fading embers The window is frosted The garden is dusted With snowflakes And moonlight And yesterday’s Cornflakes And Wendy The owl Has a mouse In her claws She tears it apart With her beak and her jaws Then The stars fall Down from their perches on high The Queen thinks That maybe she’ll die If midnight takes over the sky - Might she pay us to cry? You’re reading a volume Of whimsical nonsense You think that you’re clever You laud your own essence Weeds bloom when you smile at them Fade when you pee on them Raise a cracked glass to them Stop them from fidgeting Then Stella Comes up From her dark Lonely grave She says you were never You were always her slave - Were you ever that brave

Charlie's magic carpet.

It’s not an easy life being a carpet. I spend all day every day lying on my back and soaking in household smells like cooked food and feet. My colour fades another little bit each day, although I do take on a heightened blush when ladies walk over me wearing skirts, but I try not to look. And not everyone has the decency to wipe their shoes before coming into the house on a rainy day. I especially resent the dog with the dribbling bladder who showers me regularly in such an indelicate manner. Worst are the children who eat too much ice cream when they’re out and then complain of having sore stomachs and vomit up on me. I’ve been cleaned so many times which is quite an undignified process, and I don’t suppose it’ll be too long before I’m thrown out. I’ve become so threadbare that I tend to wrinkle up a bit, and it wouldn’t surprise me if someone were to trip on me, go head first through the French windows onto the lawn and break their neck.

Flasher in the graveyard.

Billy dug graves and they were dug to perfection: smooth, straight sides that never collapsed, always just wide enough but never much more, and no muck left where the mourners would stand. Undertakers and the clergy spoke highly of him and he had been headhunted by other graveyards. We arrived at the graveyard on a stormy day in November, a sad little band accompanying a friendless old biddy on her last journey. Her grave was at the top of the hill and she had squandered her money on the heaviest coffin available. The pall bearers, in the absence of family, declined to risk their backs by carrying the ton weight up the hill and trollied it. Irene would have been appalled, but was in no position to protest. As we trundled up the hill with Irene, we lifted our eyes to note the wild beauty ahead of us. Leafless trees stood stark against a grey mobile cauldron of raging clouds spilling over themselves. At the top of the hill Billy stood like a colossus waiting to receive and deal with the dead. He was big and he was young. His arms were folded across his chest and his legs were planted firmly on the ground as he leaned forward into the wind. As we all looked up towards Billy, steering towards him and struggling as we tried to guide the coffin-laden trolley with wonky wheels along the pitted path, Billy’s trousers fell to his ankles in one clean sweep. Our sorry little funerary band faltered, unsure of ourselves. It took a few seconds for the calamity to register in Billy’s head, and when it did he shuffled off to the side to hide the indelicacy of the scene behind a headstone that barely came up to his knees. The more he struggled with his trousers the more they refused to cooperate and the more embarrassed Billy became till he finally stumbled and fell into the perfect grave he had dug for Irene and out of which he could not climb. Eventually a ladder was procured from somewhere, but in the business of it all and in our rush to rescue Billy we had abandoned Irene in her heavy coffin on a trolley on a hill, and gravity had started to do its thing, and poor Irene was heading for the gate and the open road. We capered after her and stopped her just in time and eventually got her installed in her rightful place; and above all we gave thanks that she had died alone and that there were no distraught relatives to complain and be offended

From the Temple of Optimistic Squalor.

In the warmth of an empty café I take a cure, a double espresso, served up by a depressed looking barista. I observe the January world from the wrong side of a confusion objected to by not-yet-fully-awakened blue optic receptors, while struggling under a haystack of multidirectional hair – welcome to my world. It doesn’t get much better than this; nor would I want it to unless you try shifting the geography around a bit to let my morning play out in Caffè Roberto in Turin, the true home of the espresso. I could live with that. The darkness of the first morning of the year persists, but it soon gives up and falls apart revealing a town that has been marinating overnight in a dank-smelling vapour, gasping for air and weighed down by the empty bottles and queasy stomachs of distant, regretted, New Year celebrations. The needle sharp spire of a hitherto obscured Church rises above the city murk as if to pierce the unseen skin of the heavenly places in the hope of letting grace and mercy gush from them like water from a ripe, cracked coconut, refreshment from that sublime and longed-for country, a salve to soothe the miserable itch we call life

Auntie Kay and the poet.

Leonard Cohen reminded me tonight (funny how people can do that from beyond the grave) that my great aunt (but only by marriage, and my grandmother never allowed anyone to mention her) used to dance in cafés with Pablo Neruda. Not as an entertaining performance of course, just as friends. He was working as a diplomat in Madrid just before the Spanish Civil War and was between wives. It was Cohen performing "Take this Waltz" that sucked this piece of information fresh into my thoughts. My own generation of this family is nowhere near as scandalously outrageous. They are both dead now of course, but when I was in Madrid a few years ago I sat in cafes and tried to imagine the two dancing together, but the thought of my uncle kept getting in the way. This is the aunt who, as a not so young woman, manned barricades in Paris in ’68, and when I think of her I see a troubling vision of a surreal poem written on a lampshade in purple lipstick

Just arrived in Rome - I think.

It was through eyes heavy with fever that I first saw Rome. It was winter, a particularly hard winter, and the overnight train down from Geneva had been over-heated and uncomfortable. 1978 was altogether uncomfortable in Italy. Aldo Moro was only six months or so buried. The weak first-light that I stepped into hurt my eyes; the icy air attacked my throat as if with razor blades. But there was also a sense of home in the cold air that was made warm by the smells of coffee, bread and chocolate. Above everything there was fever. Sweats, shivers and nausea. Pigeons flying the length of the vaulted ceiling of Termini Station arriving and departing through missing panes of glass and ignoring the signs for wingless travellers like Lucia somebody and me - uscita, ingresso. Busy, busy all around, bouncy girls and valiant men, newspapers, taxis, invisible beggars and the ghost of Caesar. Rome at dawn. Or was it twilight? The two are often the same though so opposite. and easily confused. Sad, transitioning moments for the weary, fever-filled traveller far from home, facing a day or a night alone in a temperature-fuelled torpor with only aspirin and a bottle of thin water for company. Maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it wasn’t even Rome. It could have been Patrice steaming into Prague from Dresden in 1934, drunk with fever, haunted by the reflection of the hollow face in the train window that he had to stare beyond to rest his hot eyes on the passing, hypnotising fields of Saxony. The golden sweetness of Prague’s winter twilight was like a balm on his heated cheeks. Church spires, Church bells. Everything glinting. Clouds catching the rays of the low-hung sun and turning apricot; apricot lace against a blue sky, thrown over the city like a net; hints of approaching evening and Patrice still with nowhere to stay for the night unlike the birds who wheel around the bell towers of churches and get ready to roost

Hungary, Argentina and Ireland all in the one bar in Paris.

Isabella stared into her glass. Her husband’s phone had rung and he had gone out onto the street to take the call saying, as he always did, that he would only be a few seconds. She stopped watching him through the large plate glass window that gave onto Place de la Contrescarpe and its leafless trees. The cold, November wind was whipping his words from his mouth as he spoke and he had to shout to make himself heard. She could hear nothing from inside and turned back to stare at her glass as if she were contemplating either her future or her past. It was warm in the bar and there was whiskey in her glass. In her loneliness she began to wonder if she were real, or if the universe was playing a trick on her even though she didn’t exist which would surely mean that the universe was playing a trick on itself. That line of thought became too complicated for her and reminded of the doubts that assailed her mind as a sick child - was she adopted, was she really Hungarian, did she have a serious illness that her parents weren’t telling her about but of which all her friends at school knew. The barman offered to fill her glass and she let him. He was Irish and his wife had just had a baby boy. He was planning to return to Belfast after finishing his studies in Paris. He lived in the apartment Hemingway had once lived in. Isabella’s husband returned. He came up to the bar and the Irish barman could feel the sharp November cold coming off his face and his clothes, countering the heat coming off Isabella. Hungary, Argentina and Ireland all in the one place. Hot and cold. Whiskey. Everyone needed to start over