Charlie Adley - Double Vision

Roy Keane’s passage and Ireland’s angriest man!

2026-05-24T12:01:13.388+01:00

Great artwork as always from Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com

(The final collection of clips from the DV archive never before seen online - 2005-2007)

July 2006.
Roy Keane’s passage.

Alongside all football comes humour, and Ireland has in George Hamilton the greatest exponent of the Colemanball since the eponymous David Coleman started talking nonsense decades ago.

The following gems are all Hamilton’s own:

“And Hyypia rises like a giraffe to head the ball clear!”

“The midfield are like a chef, trying to prise open a stubborn oyster to get at the fleshy meat inside!”

“He's pulling him off! The Spanish manager is pulling his captain off!”

And my personal fave:

“Redondo is blocking Roy Keane's passage!”

April 2005.
"When I was your age, I could flyyyy…!"

It’s the Cheltenham Festival, so I’m on my way to the bookies at the Westside when I stop in my tracks.

A young woman is helping an older lady out of the back door of a small silver hatchback parked next to mine. She appears to be having some trouble, so I hang back.

Gradually she emerges, clutching an extravagant wad of €50 euro notes.

For a moment she stands like a statue, her body pointed toward the shops as a gun dog at a kill, her eyes slowly moving along, scanning her prey.

“It’s over there, Ma, the blue building on the far right!”

Assimilating her daughter’s directions, yer wan marches at high speed towards the bookies, hand with cash held high above her head. A more confident stride I’ve never seen.

How great it is to be living in Ireland, where an older lady can feel safe waving her dosh around like that.

The front door of the same Nissan opens to reveal an older gentleman, who looks like he stepped out of an Irish Tourist Board advertisement.

Impeccably dressed with tweed jacket, flat hat and blackthorn cane, he turns his freckled lined face to me, and I smile back.

As he talks, his eyes betray the weariness of age, although they shine too, with humour and a sparkle of gentle wit.

“Ye’ll have to be patient young man!”

“Oh, absolutely!” says I, not feeling particularly young, and eager to put him at his ease. “There’s no rush,” I offer, “It’s a lovely day, and the races don’t start for another hour!”

By now he has swung his legs out of the car, and I hesitate to offer a helping hand, because he has about him an air of individuality and independence.

He stretches out his arms in well-practiced manner, and assuredly lifts himself out and up onto his feet.

“Ah, yes, everything takes a little longer than it used to … ” he explains, as he turns back into the car to reach for his cane, “… and on occasion, that can be a very good thing!”

The septuagenarian’s double entendre surprises me a little.
He walks right up to me, and engages me eye to eye.

“Mind you …” he intones, somewhere between a wistful whisper and a challenge, his breath on my chin, “… mind you, when I was your age, I could flyyyyyyyyy!”

As he says ’fly’ he lifts his voice and raises his hand high to the sky, and for a second or two, I believe he could.

We both laugh and wish each other good luck on the gee gees. I’m delighted to be living in Ireland, where a gentle encounter with a perfect stranger leaves me enthralled, charmed and inspired.

March 2006.
“He’s my God, not yours!”

Last week I was attending a training course in a Galway hotel. When tea break time came around, there were three tables laid out with cups, coffee and tea urns.

On top of each table lay a piece of paper clearly stating the different company names for whom these cuppas were allocated.

A small group of women arrived, and much to the consternation of the young Polish lad running things, they started to lay into another company’s coffee.

He turned to them, waving his hands in the air.

“Sorry sorry no! No please no! This is not for you! This is not your coffee. Please to wait five minutes! I have your coffee then! Thank you!”

Even in less than perfect English he made his point politely and impressively. Everyone backed off, save for three older ladies who carried on as if he didn’t exist.

“Please no! Please no!” he repeated, “Then there is not enough for others! Please just wait two more minutes.”

The women completely ignored him and as he walked away, frustrated and upset, he muttered under his breath

“Jesus Christ!”

Immediately, one of the older ladies turned, waving her finger at him:

“Don’t you go cussin’! He’s my god, not yours!”

However much I think I understand our species, ye lot can still knock me backwards.

Never mind the fact that yer man was very likely a Catholic too, the utter crassness, bigotry and blind ignorance of her comment sent my head reeling.

My god, not yours. My god, not yours.

Having tried it out for size a couple of times, I decided that her simple sentence summed up perfectly the situation in the world today.

What better way to describe a crusade than: ‘My god, not yours!’

Ever since the Cold War ended, the West needed a new official enemy.
Islam and Christianity have been exploited by those with vested financial interests to be the colours of our new war.

Make no mistake: it is a crusade.

June 2007.
Gee it’s good to be back home!

When I return from England I’m so knackered I can function only after a long self-indulgent soak in a lovely hot bath.

Ahhhhhhh blisssss... now a flick of the radio, catch up with what’s going on in Ireland ...

‘... he claimed that he had been falsely accused of being molested by priests when he was a boy ...’

Accused of being abused?
How does that work?

Ahh, yes, back in Ireland.

August 2007.
Ireland’s angriest man wants the Irish to apologise to the English!

Climbing into a Galway city taxi yesterday, I encountered the most abusive and angry person I have ever met in my life.

A local man of slight build, he started hissing and spitting as he turned his car around, temporarily blocking the traffic emerging from Cross Street.

At first I took his torrent of ‘effs’ and ‘cees’ to be nowt but a burst of road rage, the like of which I suffer from myself, but it continued throughout the journey.

“Fucking bastards can’t bloody drive. Stupid fucking fuckers. Look at the way he’s parked, bastard. Who does that cunt think he is?”

For a moment, as we drove down Dominick Street, silence dwelt briefly and happily inside the cab.

And then I went and spoiled it all by thinking perchance a little light conversation might ease our journey.

“Well, at least it’s stopped raining. Looks like we’re going to have a lovely afternoon.”

“Don’t talk to me about the fucking weather. I am so fed up to the back teeth with this bollocks country and its fucking weather, God almighty. And look at the state of those grass verges. That fucking council of ours, they make me sick. Lazy fucking pigs. Fat bloody pigs getting rich while we wallow in the muck they leave for us. Look at those grass verges. All fucking weeds and bloody litter. Really, makes me sick. How dare they sit up there in their bloody council chamber talking bollocks and taking fucking bonuses while they leave the city to rot? Cunts. Pigs and cunts the lot of ‘em. And look at this abomination. Tell me now, what bright fucking spark decided to paint the Prom yellow? And were we asked? Were we fuck! And did we even know until it was done? Did we fuck. Ruined Salthill they have, the pigs. And the city. Lovely it was, and now it’s gone to shit. Shitty fucking Galway run by a chamber of pigs, ignorant cunts and filthy fucking liars. I tell you. I fucking tell you. And look at the state of the grass by the car park. Ignorant pricks. What did they expect with 100,000 people watching the Air Show? Did not one of them think that might fuck up the grass? Makes me sick. I have had it with this fucking country. And yes, we have the Big Wheel now, but only after they had to fight the fucking council for the right to power. Yes, huh. I’ll tell you one thing I know. There’s not much I know for sure, but some things I do know, and this thing I know for fucking sure. Oh god yes, that I do. They wouldn’t listen, but if they had, I can tell you, this fucking mess of a country wouldn’t be in the fucking mess it’s in. One thing I know. Old Garrett was right. Oh yes, you might laugh, but let me tell you, old Garret was right with what he said back in the ‘80s. If only we’d have listened to Garret.”

Clearly the man was fishing for a question. I was worried that if I didn’t give him what he wanted, he might have a heart attack, or worse, I might be considered a filthy fucking ignorant cunt-prick myself.

“So what did Garret FitzGerald say back in the ‘80s?”

“I’ll tell you what he fucking said. He said that we should go cap in hand to the English, and apologise! Yes, that’s what he said, and that’s exactly what we should fucking do. Go cap in hand to the English, apologise, and ask them if they wouldn’t mind taking the country back, and maybe please make it better again.”

Was I really going to take him on?

Nearly home, exhausted by his tirade of abusive language, I was feeling a better, more wholesome human being with each disgusting phrase and tortured clause that hammered into my ears.

“Wow! Did old Garret FitzGerald really say that? He - I - wow! Well, bugger me!”

“Yes he did. And he said a lot more besides. Fucking pigs. Lazy fucking pigs and stupid fucking cunts. That’s what we have become!”

“Keep the change!”

“Why, sir, you’re a gentleman and a scholar!”

©Charlie Adley
24.05.2026

10,000 Galway Howyas, Curried Wisdom and Freedom Fries!

2026-05-12T13:49:00.001+01:00

(clips from the DV archive never before seen online - here's come 2004!)

March 2004.

Freedom Fries and a Justice Burger!

It’s late as I stumble out of Taylor’s Bar, and follow my tipsy chin over the road to Vinnie’s Takeaway. While I wait for my chicken, I’m entertained by the Dominick Street late night show.

Over by the wall, two 20something American tourists are chatting, flirting, cavorting with the lads behind the counter.

One of the girls is quieter, hanging back, while her friend appears to want to embody the image we have of her Mother Country: she’s loud, proud, and wants everybody to know it, standing out like a beautiful sore thumb.

She's the one everybody is watching, and not only is she evidently aware of this, she seems to like it.

Standing centre stage, she yells

“Can I come behind the counter and see your kitchen? Do you have ketchup over here? Do you put beef in your burgers?”

Not USDA baby, I think to myself, but say nothing.

By now the air is thickening with the need for some kind of response, and sure enough, it comes, in a European way that contrasts with the brazen abrasion of yer one from across the pond.

One of the lads by the window calls out (in a thick and chewy Dublin accent)

“Err, couldja change moy orda to a portion of Freedom Froize … yez, oid loik some Freedom Froize and … and … and … a Josstiss Burrga, tanks!”

The place erupts with laughter, a sense of relief and camaraderie spreading throughout the non-American munchers.

I cannot help myself, and laugh alongside them.

The quieter American girl looks up, aware that not all in da Hemmarold Hile are the dingly-dell-leprechaun-luvvin’ folk we’re supposed to be.

Trouble is, I feel unsettled and displeased with myself for mocking the young lass. It’s not fair to exploit her naïveté, just so that we can vent our collective spleens over Dubya’s imperialist ambitions.

May 2004.
More Sligo curry than Tubbercurry.

Just south of Sligo I see a vision of my new Ireland.

We take sanctuary from the wind and rain in the warm glow of a pub, where an Indian gentleman behind the bar is chatting to two older farmers on barstools.

We’re excited to find a comprehensive curry menu, and as we peruse, I sit back and enjoy eavesdropping on the banter between the landlord and his customers.

“Yez cannot be sheerious!”

“But yes I am. I am being very serious.”

“Ye’d seerioushly prefer to have the Hin-glish back than have yer own independence?”

“I am being very serious. With the English yes, we had suffering, but we knew where we were. Now there is much fear. There is sometimes chaos and always there is fear. Fear of a war with Pakistan. Fear of many religions.”

“But but but to be free! Jaaayyyzus chroisht man, what can be more important? How can you shtand there and tell me dat dat’s not the foinest feeling?”

“Free yes, freedom is a wonderful thing, yes it is. But freedom is not about who rules you. It is about how you rule yourself.”

“Sure, and tell that to the millions who starved to death!”

“You are right, and I was wrong, but I am meaning no offence. I think what I am saying is that the country was much more organised with the English. Now it is a mess, yes, messy, and there is not an order to things as there was before.”

“So why are you opening a restaurant here?”

“Because I am not a good cook!”

Flash of toothy smile and all three men laugh together.

Our curry arrives, and it tastes really good, washed down by pints of Guinness.

I am in heaven.

April 2004.
In off the wall genius.

Big Ron Atkinson has taken the football cliché and turned it on its head.

No time has he for the ubiquitous ‘sick as a parrot!’ or the execrable ‘It’s a game of two ‘alves!’

Not a bit of it.

“Zola’s split the defence with a birthday ball. Candles, the bumps, and a sloppy kiss off his Auntie Rita. The lot.”

and

“Blanc’s been caught by the quick ball over the top. He was expecting The Troggs and they’ve gone and hit him with a right Frank Zappa.”

or my personal favourite

“You’ve got to blame the defence there. The left-back came home early for his tea and got jam in his eye.”

April 2004.
We raised the flag of Hollow Strangers on Mount Howya!

Walking from Nimmo’s - Seeya! Seeya!- through the Spanish Arch and onto Buckfast Plaza - Howya! - over the road to Quay Street - Howya! - Howya!- up to Cross Street - Howzit goin’? - Howya! - Howya!

If I was being watched by a tourist, they’d think I was the best-known person in the country.

But then again, if they watched any Galwegian, they’d see the same thing.

Galway is the Capital City of Howya Culture. There’s 10,000 faces out there that you recognise, and seemingly more that recognise you, and when it suits, when you’re in the mood, or have da hin-inclinayyyshun, you smile and raise an eyebrow, or even go mad and wave a hand to embellish your gesture.

At this time of year, before the tourist madness starts, it’s still possible to spot Howyas in the crowd. Sadly, most of us have lost just too many brain cells to remember who on earth all those Howyas are.

Maybe you chatted her up one night. Possibly you were the friend of a friend six months ago. Perchance he crashed your party, and you made a mental note to avoid him like the pendulous drop of snot hanging from a cavorting child’s nose.

Some Howyas you wish you knew better. Some you wish you’d never met, but every single one of them is part of this city.

Depending on your mood, your 10,000 Howyas can either be a wonderful phenomenon or a source of horror. If you’re on the up, they create within you a warm spreading glow of community and belonging; feelings of identity as part of the whole; a sense of place, time and history mixed up into a heady brew of humanity.

When you’re feeling down, they seem pointless, hollow and the worst possible representation of how false and fickle Galway life can be.

Sure, you say hello, but you don’t give a damn about any of them. The darkness within you asks ‘What’s the point?’

You don’t know their names, or where they live. You don’t care and they don’t care and yet you pretend to be a part of each other’s lives on some shallow and insincere plane.

More often, it’s neither one extreme nor the other. Most of the time, your 10,000 Howyas are a benign and relatively pleasant part of everyday life.

Sometimes, however, you stray from the path, and all of a sudden, you’re forced to break all the unwritten ways of the Howya.

As I stroll along Mainguard Street, I walk past a tall lad in a grey greatcoat, long grey hair sweeping over his shoulder.

We ‘Howya!’ and walk on, but for some reason, I double take, and look back over my shoulder as he passes me. He is a good five paces away, yet just as I have done, he too has looked back.

We stare into each others eyes.

Had we been old friends, this would be a moment of joyful reunion. We might jump in the air, and run toward each other, clapping manly hands on each others’ backs in that macho hug thing, both talking at the same time as we excitedly pour forth question after question.

But we do nothing of the kind, because we are mere Howyas. Trouble is, we have now strayed across a boundary. We have stopped walking, faced each other, engaged in something more.

A simple single salutation will no longer suffice. One of us has to have the balls, the cojones, to ‘fess up pronto, to admit we thought the other was someone else entirely, but we’re both social cowards.

Now we are condemned to cross into an unknown and slightly terrifying netherworld; a place that lurks way beneath the heights of real friendship, and yet outside the safety of the Howya.

I’m by Pound City, himself by Myles Lee. Slowly we shuffle toward the middle of the street, standing by the cycle racks, each shifting from one foot to another.

This is dangerous territory. One false move and there’s terminal embarrassment to be endured. Too invasive an approach, and the emotional wounding might be severe.

I have not a clue who he is, where he’s from, or what his name is. I do not know if he has led a happy or miserable life; whether he is a teetotaller or a happy drinker. I do not know if he’s straight or gay, whether he has kids; maybe a wife?

For a few moments I am silenced by fear. What if I ask about the kids but should know only too well that tragically he lost one years back?

In his deep blue eyes I see a similar nervousness, but by now we are two men physically facing each other, and so we must walk the high tightrope of Howya.

Without ever looking down, we must engage in conversation.

Stare neither to the left nor to the right. Just ask and acknowledge. Search not for details, specifics or facts.

Let’s test our Galway City skills, push our Howya abilities to the limit.

“So how’s life?”

“Moity!”

“Same here I have to say! Just moved back from the country.”

“Oh, were you out there long?”

“Three years.”

“Oh really!”

“And how about yourself?”

“Can’t complain, life's pretty good. How’s the house?”

“House is fine, same as ever, d'j'yaknow.”

“Oh yes, same as ever. And what about the ...errrm... social life?”

“Not bad. Can’t complain. I get out once or twice a week, not as much as I used to.”

“No no me too, can’t take it like I used to, not at all. So how’s your work?”

“Well, coming along, spend too much time not making enough money.”

“Yeh yeh tell me about it, seems never-ending, really doesn’t it? What about the ol’ love life, eh eh?”

“Well, not much happening there, and yourself?”

“Well, still with herself, so that’s not going to change.”

“Good good, can’t be bad. City’s gone bananas hasn't it?”

“Jaize you’re right there, can hardly hear myself think these days.”

“Ah well, great to seeya!”

“Yeh! All the best now, now so, now, so ... now! Good to see you too buddy!”

Pheeee-yeeeew! We pulled it off. Both of us walked away none the wiser, but with integrity and emotions intact.

Ironically, we now truly have a bond.

We made it!

Together, we raised the flag of Hollow Strangers on the summit of Mount Howya!

©Charlie Adley
12.05.2026

I'm so not super excited that I said 'Super excited!'

2026-05-09T17:03:00.009+01:00

Great artwork from Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures Ireland.ie

I can remember neither what I was talking about, nor to whom I was talking.

Maybe the horror of the moment blew a few neuronic fuses.

What I know for sure is that I said

“…super excited…”

to somebody about something.
I'm unsurprised yet sorrowful.

I know all that ‘language is a liquid’ stuff and I’ve had fun observing how my spoken idiom and vernacular have wobbled and whimpered as I moved around the world.

After three months of working in a garage in Melbourne, doing B-Hits with my Work Mates during Smoko, a city taxi driver said

“Chroist, ye dant sowned loik a Pom.”

Let me tell you, as a Pom speaking here: taxi drivers don’t like losing the chance to deliver a good slagging, so I must’ve talked pure Aussie after only 12 weeks.

Here in Ireland my accent wanders from full Mitchell Brother to Plastic Paddy, but errs mostly towards the Home Counties, as we privileged few from the Home Counties like to call the Home Counties.

I know I’ve been culturally colonised by the USA. I drink coke and wear jeans, eat burgers and watch movies. I love American writers and remember when people started saying “No Way!” in our suburban London lives in the early 80s. Might’ve been the 70s.

Who knows?
Who cares?

Do I sound American yet?

Point being, we all loudly cried “No Way!” with smiles on our faces, to get a laugh, because to us, back then, it sounded aggressive, impolite and over-assertive.

Yet now it sounds so weak that’s hard to believe.

The hyperbole that started way back with freedom, contraception and The Beatles, that’s all ended up as meaningless vacuous iconic super excited sick super great crap.

And it’s not going away, but it will morph into something else.

And I said “Super excited” and a part of me hates that I’m so weak.

And the other part of me knows that has nothing to do with it.

I’m just assimilating.

Grunt by grunt, inflection by verbal twitch, blow-ins like me start to osmose the Irish way of speaking English.

Despite Howya! sounding so similar to the English ‘How are you?’, the Irish person saying it requires no response, or one of three answers.

Back in England it would be perfectly acceptable to reply

“Bloody terrible actually. The dog bit me, I got burgled and then the bloody car broke down.”

But here in my adopted country, the only acceptable responses must be either

Grand!

Mighty!

Not a bother on me!
spoken as one word.

It’s tough on depressives, especially during periods when your voice doesn’t sound as convincing as it might.

At those times so as not to draw attention to your pathetic human neediness, it’s best to string all three responses together, and utter them at speed (for the more advanced class):

Mighty grand not a bother on me!

Then there’s the shopkeepers’ masterpiece of enigma. Now! fired across the counter.

Now what?
Now who?
Should I do something?

Takes you by surprise at first, alongside the So! and that much-beloved double whammy

So now! and Now so!

Next out of your mouth comes the positively effervescent Thanks A Million!

Such hyperbolic gratitude for buying a single postage stamp in England would sadly be seen as taking the piss, but here it offers a delightful alternative to the bland English Ta very much!

The wonderful Why Wouldn’t I? now tumbles out of my mouth alongside all variations of Yer Wan, Yer Man and the splendid No Finer Man.

Sometimes my assimilation can take me by surprise. Never thought I’d become a Day That’s In It person, but now that’s there, and on at least one occasion I’ve been deeply shocked to hear myself go

Lookit!
in public.

I had to take a moment.
What next?

I Do Be?

Now in the latter stages of my assimilation, I play arpeggios of my adopted lingo.

String together C’mere to me!, add a little Now! and a smidge of So! and all of a sudden I’m inviting Dalooney to

C’mere to me now, so! and it all feels right and good.

The first time I felt fully assimilated was actually a non-verbal experience.

From the moment I arrived in Galway, I noticed how people here sometimes offered agreement by sucking a sharp intake of breath onto the roof of their mouths, loud enough to be heard, yet too soft to be spelled.

Far from that dreaded disapproving flared nostril sniff, this hissy breath is used to offer some kind of guiltily-agreed censure, such as when your friend offers:

“Oh he’s an awful man, so he is!”you respond with the inward hiss.

Gathering words and picking up accents are understandable but this sharp inward breath is a physical phenomenon, so I was shocked to find myself unthinkingly doing the intake response.

My time in Ireland has changed my breathing patterns. That’s a different level of assimilation altogether, so it is now.

Behave, Adley.

Be respectful.

And while we’re at it, while this Grumpy Old Colyoomist is on a roll, I can’t be doing with any TV or movies that describe themselves as any of the below.

Madcap. Romp. Cringe. Caper.

What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?

Nothing, but it felt so fine dumping it out of me and dropping it here.

Caper, indeed.

©Charlie Adley
09.05.2026

Bertie, blaming and bar craic in Ballina - it's 2002!

2026-05-01T19:47:00.010+01:00

Thanks to caricatures-ireland.com

(More from the DV archive never before seen online - these clips are from 2002.)

October 2002.
Switch off your Irish blame reflex - sometimes life just go wrong!

In their ability to find blame, the Irish are united: in all 32 counties, you blame as one.

When colonised, the Irish naturally blamed the English for all ills.
Ireland still does, and probably forever will blame the English for anything and everything that doesn’t have a visible blame label on it from somewhere else.

In the Irish Dark Ages between Independence and joining the EEC, when it seemed like everyone else had what the Irish wanted. Ireland became the land of begrudgery.

Then, after 1973, Ireland behaved like a petulant teenager, pleading

“Leave me alone!” to the world, all the while enjoying substantial handouts from EuroMum on the side.

Now EuroMum has cut the allowance, and worse, those Bureaucratic Belgo-Bastards say they want Irish contributions.

Broke? Blame the EU.
Blame a loss of sovereignty.
Blame electronic voting.

So the boom didn’t last forever? Oh really? You poor sweet nation, that’s such a shame, because look, everybody else’s booms last forever.

Get real.

Rich becomes poor like life becomes death.
It’s nobody’s fault, it just happens.

Lost your job? Hey look, there’s a Romanian.
Bloody Romanian. Lost me my job.

I was in Ballina the other day, cold and hungry, in search of a small portion of chips. In my pocket sat the grand sum of €1.50. That must be good for a small chips in North Mayo, I said to myself.
But no, small chips were €1.85. I asked yer wan what was the story with the price?

“Oh I know, terrible isn’t it! Everything’s gone mad since the Euro came in!”

Want to put up your prices?
Blame the Euro.

Pissed of with inflation?
Blame the Government.

It was England and the Empire.
Then it became Europe and the Euro.
Now, it’s Mick McCarthy.

Never mind the fact that Mick took you out of a World Cup qualifying group including Portugal and Holland.

Blame Mick.
Love Keano.
Irish good.
English bad.

As if to prove it, there’s Dunphy on RTE’s ‘The Premiership’, claiming the English press are racist against Keane.

Give me a break. It wasn’t England that screwed up your World Cup.

It was your very own beloved captain, forsaking his team mates in their hour of need.

Roy Keane: diva and blamer supreme.
Eamon Dunphy: blame on the end of a glass.

Make like the Nazarene: check out your faults before you point your national blaming fingers elsewhere.

Sometimes life just dumps pooh on your parquet, and there’s simply no point in blaming anyone.

October 2002.
At least I wasn’t wearing a hat.

Arriving in Galway from my home in North Mayo, I say “Howya!” to the Guru at his market stall, and stray into the middle of Shop Street, my jaw dropping at the sight of the Saturday afternoon crowds.

Evidently, my transformation from cynical streetwise urban guerrilla to wide-eyed clueless culchie is more complete than I realised.

When I lived in Galway City, I never went out at the weekend: that was when the country folk came in, with mud on their boots and eager smiles on their ruddy faces, bursting to drink pints of ‘Special’ and enjoy the mad craic.

And now I am one of them.

Gone but not forgotten: Paddy Jordans in Ballina

December 2002.
Ballina: No better place to wait for a bus!

Opposite the bus station is a pub, red carpet brass rails, with a coal fire and a cluster of auld fellas.

I have an hour to kill, so I order a Jamie, approach the Observer crossword, and sigh with contentment.

The lads down the far end of the bar have had a fine day, are well oiled and good humoured, ripping the proverbial out of each other with the cruel sharpness of men who have drunk together for years.

The young barmaid hums happily, well able to handle her regulars.

“I love you Aoife!” exclaims bald rakey-thin oldie, as she hands him his ‘pointa spesh.'

“I’m glad somebody does!” she returns, leaving himself with a gaping toothless smile, mumbling “Ahh, but I do! I do, I really do do do...” as his mouth sinks towards his beer.

Chunky beetroot-faced flat-hat boy turns to his mates.

“Here’s one! Here’s one, I tellya! Tink of a number. Go on!”

“Oh, hmm, yesh, I have one.”

“Double it!”

“Ohhhh, jusht a second now. Hmm. Okay.”

“Now, times it boy ... boy ... boy shix!”

“Ohhh jeezze Mikey, what’re ye feckin’ at?”

“Just do it man. For feck’s sake, it’s not dat hard izzit? And now ... now add ten ... divoide by two, and take away the .. cof cof cof wheeze oh feckin’ jeezus mary and jo jo jo ... cof cof ... take away shix, and you have da nomber ye firsht tort of!”

“No ... no, I don’t. I have terteen, and I shtarted wid sheven!”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes oy do, ye old bollox!”

“Well, ye got it wrong den, dincha? Can ye not add and shubtract? I feckin’ said double it and add 22!”

“Ye never shed nuttin’ like dat, not a bit of it, oh no not a bit of it!”

“Ah well, try it again!”

“I will not. ‘Tis borin’ and you got it wrong anywayze. Here, I have one for you now. Listen to dis one. Hey, Aoife, c’mere and lissen to dis one! Now, if it takes me a week to walk a fortnight, how long will I walk in a day?”

“Eh? What da cof cof wheeze cof what da fock was that?”

“Oh, maybe I got him wrong, now ... lemme tink ... or is it a fortnight to walk a week?”

“I love you Aoife!”

“Like I said, thanks, I’m glad someone does!”

“I do I love you Aoife.”

“Thanks, and by the way, I’m Deirdre!”

Much roaring laughter from all, followed by some reassuring backslapping, and finally, from somewhere deep in the huddle:

“Ahh, a bit of auld craic, dats wha’ ye want! A drop of liquid in yer glass, and a bit of auld craic!”

Time for me to head off. I wish them well, and leave them to their lives. Outside the weather has cleared, stars peaking out of the night sky.

If there is a finer country in which to wait for a bus, I’m in no need of it!

May 2002.
Free ice cream anyone?

Of course Bertie will win, and lead his Fianna Fail into another long government, escaping the voter’s natural urge to go with the swing of the pendulum.

His main opponent, Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan, graduated with honours from the University of Bland Slaphead Opposition Leaders, in the class that gave us William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith.

Noonan’s dull droning monotone radio voice actually became life-threatening the other day, forcing me to wind down my car window, so that I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

Away from Treaty politics, Mary Harney’s boat race peers down at me from a million posters on the N17. On each is posed the question of what her PD’s might do with 8 seats in the Daíl.

God knows, and god help us if we have to find out.

Meanwhile Ruari Quinn and his Labour Party are offering more Bank Holidays and free ice cream for Senior Citizens and schoolchildren on the third Thursday of each month.

People don’t vote for holidays. They vote for ideology or money.

With no attractive political ideologies kicking about these days, those lucky winners with more money will vote for the status quo.

Bertie will win for just the same reason that Maggie Thatcher and John Major kept on winning: to borrow James Carville’s well-worn political maxim: it’s the economy, stupid.

But what of us, the bottom feeders who live west of the Shannon?

What of us poor folk who have only read and heard of this ‘boom’, yet never seen a penny of it?

We will do what the English did back in those Thatcher years.

We’ll vote for the dream too, in the hope that wealth might spread west, where so far the Celtic Tiger has looked more like a paper moon.

June 2002.
Come on ye boys in Green, stop reminding me of the English!

There’s a part of me that’s happy Ireland is out of the World Cup.

Whassdat?
Sacrilege!
Treachery!
Treason and unbelievable effrontery, from an Englishman of all things!

It would be impossible for the English to see any England defeat as a reason to celebrate. In Ireland, the celebration of brave (perennially losing) heroes is reason to party through the night, set fire to tyres, down gallons of Buckfast, inflate giant plastic hammers and most of all, feel oh so very proud to be Irish.

Well, that’s how it used to be.

Nowadays that Ireland only exists on postcards showing redheaded girls, donkeys and baskets of cut turf.

Above all I am an England fan, but I know that what you get out of a country is directly related to what you put in.

I cheer for the boys in green, the girls in green, and however scandalous it may be, I cheer for both Galway and Mayo GAA teams.

Last Summer, while the late afternoon sun shone bright, the locals in my village paid no heed to the efforts of their national team.

I though was to be found skulking in pubs, watching the Irish team play qualifying group games against Andorra and equally obscure opposition. I didn’t miss one Ireland game in the last couple of years; friendlies, the lot.

Without turning my back on my Englishness and Jewishness, I am totally committed to this country and its people.

Over the past few weeks, I have huffed, puffed, supped and screamed for the Irish lads, happy to watch the team that Mick built evolve from Saint Jack’s block and hoof into a mature modern outfit that likes to go forward.

As the national World Cup hysteria built up, a predictable ABE (Anyone But England) element grew in Ireland’s pubs. That in itself was no big deal. I’d never be happy in Ireland if I couldn’t take shtick.

I love the cut and thrust of Irish repartee. Each time a local gives me a hard time over being English, I in turn take the opportunity to offload back and everybody’s happy.

Recently however there’s been precious little wit in these exchanges.

It’s perfectly reasonable and even desirable that the successful 21st century Irish should see themselves and their country on a level playing field with other countries, but alongside their new affluence and confidence there has come an aggression that reminds me why I left England in 1992.

Being a mensch among men, I braved my local village pub to watch the England v Argentina game. Naturally, I was expecting and easily handled the hard time I got from the villagers.

Indeed, in some kind of weird masochistic way, I went down there so that they could have their go at me, and I was not disappointed.

However nothing could ready me for the reception I received when I turned up to shout for Ireland in the big game against Spain last Sunday.

I’d been looking forward to it; as excited and nervous as a native all week, but as I walked into the packed village pub I was greeted by a local lad pointing his finger at me, yelling

“Fuck off you!”

Over the long wet Mayo winter this lad and I had on many occasions sat watching Old Firm games at this very bar, himself clad in his Hoops jersey.

We had shared pints and a bit of craic, but now he’s infected with ABE, and I’m just not up to it. If he’d said something rude that made me laugh, I’d have been encouraged to enter.

“Fuck off you and go away!” he persists.

Don’t need it.
Fed up with it.
Not up to it; not today.

“Fuck you too!” comes my equally lucid intellectual retort, and I turn dejected and forlorn, heading home to watch the game alone.

If you’re going to slag, do it well. ‘Fuck off and go away’ hardly makes it to the group stage of the Wit Cup.

For the first time in my sojourn in this country I feel truly deeply weary of this Irish attitude. Now that Ireland is doing well, good old-fashioned patriotism could so easily have become internationalism, but no, instead they turn to wretched nationalism.

Such hostility is pathetic, especially given the level of goodwill and support that the English offered the Irish team.

The BBC, in the shape of Gary Lineker, described the Irish participation thus:

“It was a brave and bold effort by Mick McCarthy’s men. The World Cup will miss them, and so will we!”

This was followed by a montage of Irish goals and hysterical fans set to a soundtrack of Have I told you lately that I love you?

©Charlie Adley
01.05.2026.

The Winter of Burning Cars.

2026-04-24T09:50:00.002+01:00

Photo courtesy of LA Fire Department.

More from the DV archive never before seen online. This is from September 2002.

The Winter of Burning Cars.

As that Autumn of 2002 came around, we had no idea what lay ahead.

No idea that the war would be over without a shot fired. No idea that we would lose.

September came and went in a blaze of sunshine.

October gales plucked leaves from the trees, scattering them over the earth.

Talk of war seemed almost safe, remote.

‘Everything’s going to be alright’ I told myself.

We’d heard it all before. Same old macho politicians posturing and pratting around the planet, desperate to try out some strategic nuclear weapons in the field of battle.

Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice droned on and on, just like Daddy Bush back in ‘92.

“Blah blah U.N. resolutions, blah blah weapons inspectors, blah blah Saddam must go.”

Same-old same-old.

With the coming of a cold November, my first coal fire of the season was lit. More talk on the news about the protection of freedoms, limited strikes, and somehow, there’d been so many far-off wars I’d grown immune.

Of course it was a terrible thing and all that, but rain was still going to fall on Ireland’s fields. Still does.

Now I know how complacent I was.

This is the Winter of Burning Cars.

It happened so quickly. That was what shocked everyone.

We all felt so deep-down secure in our western civilisation. Whatever atrocities were visited upon distant villagers in crumbling stone desert huts, it wouldn’t really stop us living our day-to-day lives.

How could it?

One interview, that was what did it in the end.

The US and UK forces were building up on the Iraqi borders, trying their best to provoke Saddam into attacking first. They desperately wanted war, but all they got was entrenched defiance, and then Condoleeza Rice gave ‘that’ interview to CNN.

“So Condie, can I call you Condie? So, Condie, how is this war on Iraq going to help the USA’s war on terrorism?”

“Well, I see this chapter as part of a greater book. George Bush is a great man, a good man, and his policies will make the world a safer place. After the Taliban and Saddam’s regime have been replaced by democracies, the US can turn its attention to Iran, and then Saudi Arabia.”

“But the Saudis are our allies. Does this mean a shift in policy toward the Saudis?”

“Well, it has to be said that theirs is not a very attractive society.”

“So is it now US policy to gradually replace all Middle-Eastern regimes with the American-Israeli democratic model?”

“If you put it like that, yes, that’s a dream I hold dear. What’s so bad about a world where elections give everyone the leaders they want?”

“But what if they elect leaders who are anti-American?”

I missed Condie’s answer. My spuds had to come to the boil.

As I ate my dinner, reports were coming in about the beginning of the end. Condoleeza’s interview had provoked an immediate and massive response from a belt of countries from Libya to Pakistan. Sunni and Shia together for the first time: a consensus of outrage and direction.

No more oil. That’s what they decided.

Rather than sit and watch their own civilisations fall foul of the infidel predator, the western war machine was going to be starved of oil.

Middle-Eastern populations were already living with the threat of a costly deadly war with the US, which would leave their countries destroyed, the survivors condemned to slow deaths from depleted uranium.

The prospect of abject poverty was not too hard a sacrifice.

The US had stockpiled their Texan oil, and started to intercept (pirate) any tankers that sailed the Atlantic from the Venezuelan oil-fields.

The Russians managed to secure supplies from Azerbaijan, but for Western Europe, the brakes came on unbelievably quickly.

By the time European governments realised what was going on, it was too late.

The Americans shut up shop, becoming instantly uncooperative. They were plain doolally terrified that their combustion-engined world was going to dry up, and when your back’s up against the wall, you don’t look out for your mates.

Well, they didn’t, anyway.

Petrol stations and civil liberties are, naturally, the first to go.

All Ireland’s manufacturing industries are shut down in the first two weeks, but it doesn’t matter. People can’t get to work even if their jobs still exist, because their cars don’t run on air.

They turn our electricity off at 22:00 each night, while the military convoys escort road tankers from the docks to oil depots.

Riots swarm over Europe’s capitals as mould on an old loaf.

After a month, income as we know it is a thing of the past. We cycle, walk, beg, borrow and steal to get through this fierce cold winter.

And finally, as an expression of our pain, We The People push our cars out into the city streets. We build huge towers of our wrecked, impotent, pointless cars.

Tens of thousands of angry Celtic Tiger Cubs, who'd seen their brand new 99 and 00 reg cars as shiny proud membership badges of the club of new-found affluence: now nothing more than pathetic lumps of metal, as cheap as the 'high-flying economy' in which they were built.

We pile them high, and they burn beautifully; massive bonfires all over the land.

Drifting into the freedom of anarchy, the people of Europe finally grasp our chance to stand as one.

We stand together as we watch the flames of our burning cars.

©Charlie Adley 24.04.2026

Stolen Galway memories, Celtic Tiger madness, filth and debauchery. It's 2001!

2026-04-21T10:57:00.000+01:00

January 2001.
Galway isn’t a dream - it just seems that way!

It is the week of the Great Return. Whatever ‘normal life’ in Galway City may be, we now return to it after the double whammy of the festive season.

Herself returns from her European tour. The Guru returns to his life of contemplation, having made a rare excursion into the world of work for the month of December.

We raise and clink glasses in Tigh Neachtain with the furious happiness of reunion.

The Guru raises his pint of Murphy’s aloft and declares:

“We have all died and gone to heaven!”

and in a peculiar way I think I know what he means. Coming back to Galway is always a sincere pleasure.

My soul exhales a breath of relief as I see the raging beast that is January’s River Corrib.

As I look along the empty evening streets of the town centre, my brain always has a little trouble acknowledging that it is real.

No, this is not Toytown: it’s where I live and, more than that, where I belong.

Despite all this sentient knowledge, for the 24 hours following my return, Galway always seems somehow surreal compared the seething megatropolis that is the city of my birth.

June 2001.
The sun is out at night...

As I guide my wee blue car out of the car park at Knock International Airport, I punch the air out of my (open!) window, and let out a triumphal scream of return.

All the way down the slip roads of this little airport in the beautiful middle of absolutely bleedin’ nowhere, I join myself in an exuberant chorus of ‘Home on the Range’, adapting the American lyric to

“ ... where we drink beer watching culchie-lopes playy-aaayyy ...”

Back in the gentle buzz of early June’s Galway City, I’m delighted to find the Guru has once again signed away his soul to work alongside Grumpy Chef, the Snapper and Snarly Artist, down at Nimmo’s.

Within a couple of hours ingesting grape and digesting gossip, me poor auld ears are frothin’ wid a torrent of news about the utter filt’ and deborcheree that have filled the weeks of my absence.

Ah me, the midsummer sun is out at night, people are drinking like sponges, shagging like rabbits, and of course they’re digging up the city centre again.

All is well with Galway, I tell myself.

July 2001.
Hey, you, leave my memory alone!

‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’ claims the latest radio ad.

Explains a lot.

How many of you Galwegians have sat in the bright harsh light of the Morning After and complained that you’ve lost your memory?

There are hordes of ye out there, drinking coffee in the kitchens of Shantalla, lying sprawled on the sofas of Knocknacarra, straining your necks down the toilets of Newcastle, desperately trying to remember what the hell you did last night.

You sad memory-theft victims suffer the embarrassment of having to ask

“Was I bad?”, as well as the legendary “Who was she?” and that old classic, “How on earth did I get home in that state?”

This colyoom can now reveal where your memories have gone:

The tourists are robbing them. It said so on the radio:

‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’

I'm sure they do, but there’s only so many memories to go around. What could possibly be more private and personal than the process of recall, so give us back our experiences, ye shifty holidaying bunch of tea leaves.

We’ve all heard the stories.

“Well, I met this gorgeous French geezer, and then it all goes a bit blurry!”

“I can’t remember a thing after I started chatting to that Yank bird.”

Hmm, methinks another Galway memory nicked by a passing Dub; purloined by a touring pack of Americans; lifted by Franz from Mainz; all taken without permission, back whence they came.

Our only consolation for such vile robbery is the knowledge that at some point down the road, they are going to awake with a Galwegian’s memory kicking around their mind.

Let’s spare a moment for the ultra-swish Parisian accountant, staring out of the window of her minimalist Montmartre loft, wondering what hon hearth can means ziss bizarre memory of ‘... sheefting Donal in Central Park?’

Pity the poor 53 year-old Christian fundamentalist from Cookieville, Ohio, who came to Ireland to find her roots and buy Aran sweaters for all 15 of her nieces.

Now back home at a PTA cookout she suddenly ‘remembers’ taking Ecstasy, dancing in Salthill Park through the night and making love to a 20 year-old aerobics instructor in Bearna Woods at dawn.

Maybe everyone does deserve a Galway memory. But you can’t go nicking ours.

July 2001.
Diary of a dribbling fool.

Come with me, dear reader, all the way back to the timeless wastes of last week. Journey with this Jewish Gobshite into the long dark light of a Co. Mayo Monday:

Monday: Grey cloud. Write. Walk. Two movements.

Tuesday: Grey cloud. Rain. Write. Walk and get wet. One movement.

Wednesday: Rain. No writing. No walking. Just rain. Lashing rain. Think I might eat the cat.

Thursday: Rain. Lashing rain lash lash ha ha ha rain oh rain of my toes, rain of my athlete’s foot, rain on me. Hahahaha. Oh comforting warm wet showers of the goddess fly-producin’ rain.

Play the Ramones ‘It’s Alive’ with volume at ‘11’, and hoover like a sad basstid.

Win £8.00 on a scratchcard. Go straight to pub. Drink Guinness, eat cod and chips. Drive to Galway.

Arrive in Quay Street, and my legs stop moving. The Arts Festival hordes make me feel I’m in the middle of the river that flows past my house, but instead of water and sea trout, this is a torrent of Culture Wannabes.

The sight of all this bourgeois humanity gushing and splurting down Quay Street makes my legs refuse, like a horse in front of a jump.

Into Taylor’s Bar. Seamus Mulligan jabs me in the ribs and tells me a joke, which is in itself, quite a memorable event.
No idea of movements.

Friday: Morning sunshine in the city, so I grab a pew outside Neactain's, and drink coffee while thoroughly enjoying watching Galway doing its festival thang.

Hours later, gently off my head, I float off into Friday night Galway. A night now lost to me, you will doubtless be delighted to hear.

Saturday: Out of bed with the lark. I want to be a tourist. Jumping onto the first brightly-painted double decker Tour Bus that passes me in Eyre Square, I am entertained for the next hour, being driven past houses I used to call home.

As we pass the Atlantaquaria, our guide bursts into a slightly croaky but brave early morning rendition of ‘Galway Bay’, and fair play to her.

However, the highlight of the tour was not her singing, but her explanation of the route:

“For those of you following our journey on the leaflets we gave you, well, if you’re confused, that's because today we are doing the tour backwards!”

The Arts Festival crowd are not yet gone, and with the hot weather, the Race Week hordes have arrived early.

Galway City is building to a whirling frenzy of consumption, and I’m drinking Red Bull like a madman as I plot my escape.

February 2001. (From Irish Post UK)
The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast.

Mary from Ballycaloony is on a radio phone-in, giving out to poor Georgio, an Italian official from the European Union.

“Oh yes, Georgio, we hed some verra verra haird toimes in this conchee, so we did, back in da Aytiz, but do you know what we did, Georgio, do ya, do ya?”

Poor Georgio doesn’t quite grasp the rhetoric inherent in Mary’s question.

“Way-all, Mary, I donna hexackerlee-”

“Well, Georgio, oil tellya what we did. We pulled in our belts, and we pulled up our shocksh, and we ate bread and water, and we worked like divills, and we went without holidays to Shpain and da like, and gradjally … gradjally we made it to where we are today, the most succeshful conchee in da world, which we are, I think you’ll find. And now, soon as we have got ourshelves out of the gutta, and made some money so’s we can go on holidays to Shpain and da like, you lot in Europe come along and tell us that we are doing it wrong. Do ya know what I says to dat? Do ya? Do Ya?”

By now, poor Georgio is just the slightest bit wary of Mary and her rantings.

“Er, yes, I mean no, so, we are hall very ‘appy for hireland’s success and-”

“Do you know what I says to dat, Georgio? I says you have no right, dat’s what I say. Joss because your Euro is so patettic and all that, and you haven’t done as well as we have at making a go of it, you can’t shtand seeing the little cunchee doing well, can you? Dat’s da trobble widjall your brossels broorocrats.”

At this juncture, the radio show host jumps in, but sadly fails to bring any sense to proceedings.

“So, Georgio, you can see the feeling in the country is running pretty high. Answer me this, Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland score for unemployment?”

Naturally, poor Georgio evades a direct response to such a crass line of questioning, but our host continues unabashed.

“Okay, so Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland rate for old age pensions? How do we rate for education spending?”

Poor Georgio states the obvious, that it is pointless to score points in this manner, but our host, (and Mary, whose continued presence on the line is heralded by her 40-a day wheezy breathing) are in the mood for a scrap, and any European foreigner will do.

“So Georgio, tell me, would you like to take back the tax cuts? Would you like to stop the old people getting a rise? Tell me, Georgio, which bit of our success would you like to put a stop to?”

I can’t take any more and turn the radio off.

What on earth is it that possess the Irish when they talk about their economic progress?

Everyone, from Mary out on the bog, to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, chooses to behave like four year-old children, if that’s not being completely unfair to toddlers.

Personally no, Mary, I don’t get what you’re saying to be honest, because, to use the vernacular, you’re talking absolute bollocks.

As a child I was taught that when one friend tells me I’m wrong, I’m right, but when five friends tell me I’m wrong, I am wrong.

Charlie McCreevy came out of a meeting where all 14 European Finance Ministers admonished him for his inflationary budget, and just like Mary, Charlie stuck his tongue out and shouted:

“I’m the King of the castle, you’re the dirty old rascals!” Then he ate some mud and was sick on the carpet. Well, no, he didn’t, but he might as well have. Instead he adopted the same infantile argument as the radio host.

“Is anyone suggesting we take £500 million from health? Is anyone suggesting that we don’t go ahead with the very necessary roads infrastructure?”

No, Charlie, I’m not. I’m just taking a look at all those new roads, and Ireland’s improving infrastructure, and appreciating the billions of pounds that Europe have invested here over the last few years.

Everywhere you go in this country, huge signs proudly fly the European flag, informing us that European funds have helped build this hospital, that road, this causeway and that airport extension.

What planet is Charlie McCreevy on? Given the billions of pounds of Structural Adjustment Funds that pour into Ireland from Europe every year, how can he have the gall to say:

“Over the last five years we have not received any particular favours from the EU. Anything we got, we got on its merits.”

Right, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.

Why do Charlie and Mary both fail to realise that far from wanting to spoil the party, the European Commission is trying save the Irish from rampant inflation, a misery that affects the poor worst of all?

For god’s sake, grow up and smell the coffee.

You can’t expect kazillions of pounds in investment without some notional rules of control. You can’t sign up to a single currency, and expect everyone else to follow your lead.

Do the Irish really imagine that the Celtic Tiger economy has been built on Irish sweat and Irish money?

The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast, more of a chameleon really, fed by American investment, protected by the camouflage of European subsidy.

Until the Irish see that their success is very far from homegrown, they will have to mature quickly and answer to those who make their good lives possible.

©Charlie Adley

21.04.2026

Macnas parades, Non-Nationals, LGBT fears, Millennium night, Galway pubs and Wanderley Luxemburgo!

2026-04-16T14:22:00.008+01:00

(More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 2000!)

Sixty thousand people lined the streets to see the Macnas parade 'Listening Wind', involving more than five hundred performers.

February 2000.
‘Non-National’ - Is that the Irish for ‘Ni**er’?

If you can control your hate for just one moment, you’ll discover that not everyone eats bacon and laughs at D’Unbelievables, but everyone eats and laughs.

A shiver runs through me every time I hear the adjective ‘Non-National.’ My mind sees a sign pinned to Irish doors of the future:

No Dogs.
No Travellers.
No Non-Nationals.

Until you Irish stop constantly using the term ‘Non-National’ in a derogatory fashion, I will not tolerate any more hard-luck stories about us ‘evil’ Brits. I don’t want to hear about the famine, or songs sung of prison ships waiting in the bay.

April 2000.
Patriotic Pricing?

Full marks to the video outfit that was offering the Dublin gangster movie The General at £14.99, with the biopic Michael Collins ‘thrown in’ for an extra £3.99.

It’s good to know how the Irish prioritise their historical heroes.

March 2000.
Galway’s not glad that you’re gay.

Let’s get something straight here: Galway is not a good place to be gay.

Ireland is not a good place to be gay.

I know several gay men living and working in Galway today, yet I’m sworn to secrecy by all of them.

In a recent article about ‘gaybashing’ in Sligo, the couple who run Galway’s nascent Gay and Lesbian Centre declined to give their real names, for fear of reprisals.

Our society simply does not accept lesbian and gay people. To come out in Ireland today is not just a decision to be open and honest about your sexuality. It’s a painful and massive choice that will completely define you.

You will be seen as some kind of zealot, making a stand. It will be difficult for you to live your life the way you choose, but at least you’ll live as yourself.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life writing false names for my friends. I will never get used to hiding people who are guilty of nothing but their own sexuality.

July 2000
In love with Galway City again!

Right now I’m head over kerblonkers in love with Galway City.

I love all the water in Galway: there’s water everywhere.

The bay and the river Corrib are only part of the story. A few yards off city centre streets I stand and watch trout jumping by the stillness of the myriad canals.

Shortcuts slip me away from racing shoppers to meandering currents, and past the University my feet ease alongside the river in rich wild pasture.

I love the Prom and the walk to Black Rock. I love to watch the Galwegians for whom this walk is a sacred ritual. Everyone, humble or proud, all of us, we walk up there, kick the wall, spin around and walk back to town.

I love the bats that swoop over Wolfe Tone bridge in the dusk of July nights.

The bats?

Sure, let’s not forget the bats.

Of course, I love Galway’s pubs. A quiet get-away-from-it-all pint in Garavan's is as close as you’ll ever get to a city centre country pub.

A gentle afternoon coffee in a plastic chair outside Neactain’s, where I can mingle, catch some rays and breath in time with the rhythm of the Kangos and JCBs.

I love the front bar of the Quays, where Biddy Ward’s ghost sits and sups her Satzenbrau in the corner, scowling at how the rest of the place has become a Paddywood theme pub. Somehow the tiny old front bar retains its integrity, despite the efforts of its owners.

I love Harriet Leander’s Nimmo’s, the ‘Great Escape’ - the weird, the wood, and the wonderfully eccentric.

Onwards to the Blue Note, where Cian and Whispering Blue are flying behind the bar, legends in their own long-limbed lunchtimes.

Watch those lads serve alcohol to da eager yoof-full punters or, even better, watch them drink out of hours - it’s like standing by Niagara Falls. You never thought so much liquid could go down so quickly and still look natural.

Love it? I do, I will and I have, on many occasions.

I love breakfast at Spud Murphy’s, where the tea comes strong, the service smooth and unobtrusive. I love a ciabatta roll from McCambridge’s, where fresh warm wafty bread is filled with deli-counter goodies for around two quid.

I love lunch in River God Café, looking down to the Quay Street hordes while snarfing excellent gastronomic gobfuls, in gentle wooden surroundings, for under a fiver.

I love a late one downstairs at the Crane. Upstairs I get depressed watching the earnest faces of Euro Hosteleroes, as they discuss and ‘deconstruct’ traditional music.

I feel music is meant to be enjoyed. Downstairs, offering a neat and tender dividing line between what was and what is Galway, the local community survives and thrives.

July 2000.
Makes me feeeel gooood....

The Brazilian national soccer coach is called Wanderley Luxemburgo.

Just saying it makes me feel good.

Wanderley Luxemburgo......
Wanderley Luxemburgo........

Ahhh.......

July 2000.
The sun shone and Galway smiled.

It was impossible not to be infected with the happiness all around. Standing on a balcony at Jury’s Meridian I had a marvellous view of the parade as it emerged from Merchant’s Road, and the Londoner in me was impressed by the whole occasion.

Those Macnites hide away in Fisheries Field and work all year as acid-drunken elves on this explosion of vitality and colour, and then it emerges along our streets as the words of a secret finally being revealed.

Oh, so that’s what they’ve been up to! Wow, and fair play to ‘em! Here comes the excellent and much-loved local hero, Little John Nee, working the crowd, getting us all giggling and excited.

John is a performer with star quality and integrity, but who’s the guy in the marathon outfit, and the fat fella with the suitcases? What’s the story with the bride with the beard, and who cares?

The floats drift by, wonderful gigantic cycloptic Phil Lynotts and inexplicable wobbly inflated heads. Drums kerthrummping, brass bands pachowing, and children dressed in shimmering blue silk, dancing on stilts.

What was that one?
Dunno, but it’s pretty innit?
Yeeeeah!

More towering vacillating forty-foot people stamping immigration papers that spray water, and why?

What was the theme again?

Hey Macnas, if you’re trying to be political, share it with the group!

It looks utterly beautiful, even if I’m almost completely in the dark about who was what, and why, but that dancing caterpillar wiggles its arse as well as any Chinese Dragon I ever saw in San Francisco.

Just as that thought passes my mind, the local lass behind me shouts excitedly:

“Sure, who needs Rio de Janeiro when you have Galway City!?!”

Visions of months of rain and damp spores on my Claddagh bedroom walls rush through my mind, but they are hit head-on with the euphoria of this day.

Hell yeh, Galway is great at times like this, a town that hosts a three week party every year and invites sixteen times its own population to join in - we really do know how to have fun!

Most of the Arts Festival passes us everyday local types by. We don’t suddenly have fifty quid spare to take the kids and check out a show.

Sometimes it seems like the downside - the crowds, litter, madness and all the shite that succours the grouch - is all there is, but then Macnas come along, and give something back to the people who happen to live here.

Whether this year’s parade was better or worse than other years’ is not the point.

The sun shone and Galway smiled.
I felt proud to live here; to be a part of it.

August 2000.
Galway - a place with tourists, or just a tourist place?

It is with much relief that I welcome the end of summer - a good season weatherwise, and one in which I saw Galway city as something new.

No longer a real place visited by tourists, Galway is now a tourist place.

The regeneration of Quay Street, along with the Film Fleadh, Arts Festival, Race Week, and Salthill’s seaside season, has created an entirely new place.

We now live to serve the tourist. They dominate us in the Summer, and rather than the visitors getting a chance to see how we live, here in the West of Ireland, we live simply for them.

We now instinctively duck to avoid their pointing lenses, so as not to mess up their shot.

We are, of course, lucky to live in such a beautiful place, which attracts so many others.

Yet inasmuch as I will miss the swallows and the sunshine, I will not mourn the loss of feeling like a secondary citizen in my home town.
Bring on those autumn gales.

January 2000.
A Part Of It And Apart From It On Nimmo’s Pier!

I’ll always remember exactly where I was when we slipped into the 21st Century.

A few days before the big night I realised that as I was not going to be in the arms of my recently estranged wife, I didn’t want to be with anyone else.

A strange soul at the best of times, I’m often happiest in a state of reflective detachment.

The afternoon was passed in Neactain's, where friends from Ireland, Australia and America supped the black, and took surreptitious shots of absinthe which was being passed around in a bottle of Paddy’s.

Mixed with the Jamie’s a treat it did, hoh yes.

Life offers cruel and wonderful ironies. The only appropriate outfit for my personal night out seemed to be the linen suit in which I got married.

By 11:45, I was standing on top of the wall at the end of the Nimmo’s Pier in one swishy suit, Kenneth Cole shoes and a Jerry Garcia tie, listening to the shouts and sirens of the evening; only the hardest of misanthropes would fail to feel a thrill.

Directly overhead were Orion and Taurus, The Hunter and the Bull, still in conflict, just as they were a thousand years ago.

The swans were desperately trying to ignore us crazy humans. To them, and to the ink black sea sloshing on the beach behind me, it was just another night.

To us it was something special.

I took stock of the year just gone. I’d lost a marriage and gained a home. Matters that managed to pull a knot in my gut and water from my eyes.

Then the bells started chiming and the cheers rang out from Eyre Square; foghorns blasted cacophony from the ships in the docks.

All around Galway Bay there exploded an outpouring of noise, light and jubilation. Green showers of light from Oranmore, red fires in Kinvara, while scattered parties around the Swamp let off fireworks; families doing their own thing; children squealing.

I felt deliciously a part of it and apart from it.

A small crowd of people who’d emerged from a camper van at the other end of the pier were making their way towards me. With their backs to the van’s headlights they looked like the aliens in Close Encounters, but they were so very human.

“Happy New Year!” she said, appearing next to me on the wall, her eyes glowing with spirit, her skin beautiful in the light of the new millennium night.

“Isn’t it great to be alive!” she said.

I looked around me, knowing that good friends were awaiting my arrival, scanning the crazy beauty of the river Corrib, listening to the cheers of the people of the city of Galway, loving the power of the water behind me and the splendour of the sky above.

Not least, so aware that a total stranger was chatting to me as if she had known me from the womb.

The words stuck a little in my throat, but they did come out and they felt good.

“Yes. Yes it is. It’s good to be alive!”

©Charlie Adley
16.04.2026.

Curried Chips, Tribunals, Time and Neutrality - it's 1999!

2026-04-11T19:13:00.006+01:00

Your scribbler sitting at the bar in Terry's, Clifden, by Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

( More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1999, when we partied like … y’know!)

April 1999.
Not To Do List.

Back in Ireland after 4 years in America. Time lingers heavy in the air, like the scent of jasmine at twilight.

Economic booms will come and go, but the essential qualities of Irish life do not change, because this young nation is populated by an ancient race, and at the core of the Irish heart is a need and respect for time.

Time with friends; time to be alone; time to walk the dog; time to play with the kids; time to wobble on your bicycle as you balance it on your neighbour’s gate and chat; time to live your life away from work, to say hello and have a few shcoops; time to appreciate those living alongside, to realise who you are and what you want to do about it.

The very thing that America could not offer became the coveted object of all this scribbler’s craving.

Squeezed into the narrow walkway by the roadworks on Shop Street, my hurried worried Americanised legs are just itching to get a move on.

The bodies in front of me are ambling. There is simply no other word for it. Ambling they are, past the workers on the other side of the wire who, for their part, appear to be shovelling sand and sliding cobblestones at a luxuriously relaxed pace.

‘Things to do things to do’ I mutter like a maniacal White Rabbit, picking up pace as I clear the roadworks, until I’m wrenched to a standstill.

A pair of hands grab my shoulders from behind. The Guru suggests a coffee, which turns into a pint.

By the time I finally get to the shopping centre I feel late. I have neither a schedule nor an appointment; merely the legacy of anxiety from the offices of California.

Sixty feet above the shopping centre, raised on top of a pole, a sign proudly declares

NOW'S THE TIME FOR DIY!

Directly below, a giant quasi-digital clock reads

10:56

I check my watch.

It’s 12:15.

‘Now’s the time to fix your clock!’ I say out loud to myself, taking the time to enjoy the irony of it all.

July 1999.
The Riddle of Galway?

Ahh, the relief of finally lying down ... as that cruelly early Galway Summer dawn appears from behind the curtain ... ooohhhhh ... god, bed feels good.

Now, time to check the spin-ometer. Just close the eyes for a few seconds, see if the insides of my head are of a mood to start challenging the laws of centrifuge, physics, Copernicus and Pat Kenny.

Nope. Brain and senses feel calm and stationary.
Good.

Next see if the ooo ... aaahhh ... eee ... contents of my stomach are going behave themselves, or act out Newton’s laws of acton and reaction.

Nope. Lovely.
Smashed but safe and intact.

As I strain to lift my head, to see if the Scores on the Time Doors say 4:30 or 5:00am, she reaches across and soothes my partied brow.

“Ssshhhssshhh ... you’ve been feeding the Beast, babe, that’s all. You know how Galway City loves to be fed excess...”

So true, so very true, and the day being the Guru’s birthday, I drained it of every drop of celebration there was to be had.

A riddle for Galway occurs to me, worthy of the Sphinx herself: in which city can you step out in the morning on two legs, walk all day alongside many legs, and return to lie down, legless?

July 1999.
What next? Gardengate?

At any given time there will be at least one pathetic political tribunal going on in this country. I’ve never lived anywhere like it.

The Tories set new parameters for sleaze in the early ‘90s with ministerial auto-erotic deaths and toe suckers abounding, and we know too well all about presidential cigars and the Oval Orifices of America, but you have to hand it to the Irish for their far-from magical ability to make a court case out of truly boring nonsense.

Beef, speeding tickets and supermarkets do not grab the public imagination in the same way as oral sex with interns and princesses crushed in cars.

There will always be some belligerent TD adamantly denying that he ever met, knew or spoke to the person who absolutely did not, at any time, ever give him a brown paper bag with £80,000 in it, and further, he didn’t even know what denomination the non-existent notes were of, because he didn't ever look in the imaginary paper bag.

What’s next? Dana found guilty of trimming her hedge a little too far over her neighbour’s fence? ‘GardenGate’ could run for three years, easy.

Anything will suffice, it seems, if it diverts the powers-that-be from the onerous task of helping ordinary people in their day-to-day lives.

September 1999.
No place like it?

Vacating Taylor’s Bar at midnight I enter the chipper the proud possessor of £1.23, knowing full well that a small curried chips costs £1.30.

Engaging yer one with a smile and a joke about the big black dog that sits outside all day, I ask her for £1.23’s worth of small curried.

She smiles a little coquettishly and proceeds to cram the plastic tray with as many chips and as much sauce as the blighter will hold. Generous, warm, the Irish are ever-attracted to humans and humour.

Home.

She then carefully takes four paper napkins and slowly, ever-so carefully inserts them into the bag so that they are completely immersed in the sauce. The napkins instantly disintegrate into a papery curryfull mush.

Home.

October 1999.
Neutral? I Don’t Think So.

As an ideal, neutrality has always sounded safe, sage and civilised, but it’s not ideals that walk the streets.

Does ‘neutrality’ simply imply an avoidance of war, or does it aspire to purity of intent?

Ireland’s stance in World War Two lay rooted in the past, in resentment, the Empire and Partition. The nascent nation did not want to embrace Nazism, but had to turn its back on England, simply because it finally could.

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’, whilst a little naive, is a wholly understandable reaction, but is it neutral?

I don’t think so.

Four years after the war, the Irish Minister for External Affairs, Mr. MacBride, was explaining his government’s position on membership of NATO to the Dáil.

“As long as Partition lasts, any military alliance or commitment involving joint military action with the State responsible for Partition must be quite out of the question as far as Ireland is concerned.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

Michael Collins, writing in the Manchester Guardian on December 7th, 1921, saw Irish membership of a League of Nations as:

“… necessary if the old world of internecine conflict is to emerge into the new world of co-operative harmony … Ireland’s inclusion as a free member of this league would have a powerful influence in consolidating the whole body, for Ireland is herself a Mother Country with world-wide influences.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

As a member of the European Union, Ireland has already aligned itself with two of the world’s nuclear superpowers and several members of NATO.

The notion that the EU is simply an economic arrangement between wholly independent nations went out of the window with the EU’s recent involvement in wars in former Yugoslavia.

As much as Ireland benefits from EU membership, it can no longer ignore the conflicts that influence the collective group.

During the Kosovo war, some members of the Irish football team made it clear that they were so appalled by Serbian activities, they did not want to play the Euro 2000 match against Yugoslavia at Lansdowne Road. The administration refused to permit entry visas to the visiting team.

This tiny act, so far from neutrality, was made by the same government that now tells us that membership of PFP will not affect Ireland’s neutrality.

What neutrality?

The Irish will hopefully never become international aggressors, but it is preposterous for them to pretend that they are, or ever have been, neutral.

©Charlie Adley

11.04.2026.

Connemara Conundrums and my Paramilitary Paranoia! (DV 1994, Part Deux and 1995)

2026-04-06T13:13:00.000+01:00

More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1994, Part Deux and 1995. Enjoy!

September 1994.
Alan Sugar? He’s nothing like me. Oh, except he is.

It’s Sunday afternoon and almost the entire population of my Connemara village is in the pub, either watching the Arsenal-Spurs game, or having a good auld chat, d'ya'know.

On TV, the camera pans the North London crowd, and finds the head of Alan Sugar, the Tottenham supremo.

A voice chirps from the far end of the pub. “Jaize but doesn’t that yoke look just like Charlie!”

The souls who have got to know me in the six months since my arrival all mutter in agreement.

“Sure, but he’s an awful bollox, that fella!”

“Hexackerlee!”

Much laughter.

It’s time to protest my innocence.

“I have absolutely nothing in common with that ‘orrible specimen,” I plead, pausing to consider if this is the time to reveal myself to them, “… except, of course, that we share a religion!”

Long silent pause.

“But but but isn’t he wonna dem Jewish fellas?”

I smile, savouring the moment. The Jewish Community in the West of Ireland is just about non-existent. Like, I know all five of them by name.

Looking at the faces of these farmers and their families, jaw-dropped staring towards me, I can be pretty sure I’m the first Jew that many of them have ever met, let alone had living among them.

As with our shared respect for oral history (talking shite for hours) humour is as important to the Celtic people as it is to us Jews.

The Irish use it as well and as often as we do. Just in completely different yet equally amusing ways.

“Sorry lads! All these years you waited for the dark hat, the raincoat and long floppy curls, and instead you got a Chelsea fan!”

Another long pause as they all reconstruct their horizons of ethnic stereotype.

“Well, that’d be why you’re always in the pub during Mass then!”

“Don’t take it personally Máirtín, I don’t go to Synagogue either. I’m an Atheist.”

“Whassat?” coughs 88 year-old Packie, never a day away from the pub in 37 years. “Whassat he says about his pancreas?”

January 1995.
Paranoia can be fun!

“All I’m saying is you want to watch your accent when you’re up in Dundalk, Charlie.”

Whispering Blue is trying to feed my natural inclination to paranoia. What he doesn’t realise is that sometimes I just plain enjoy feeling paranoid. As an Englishman living in Ireland it can be an exceedingly helpful attribute.

“Why? What’s so special about Dundalk?”

“Well, let’s just say that about 60% of all cross-border missions are planned there. What is it this lad wants you to do, anyway?”

“He’s a friend of mine from Connemara, and his poor old mum has to move into a ‘home’, so he wants me to drive my van up there, pick up a few family heirlooms and then bring them back to Connemara before the house is sold.”

“His poor old mum, eh? A likely story. Tell me, this mate of yours wouldn’t be into any of that Republican stuff at all, would he?”

I could just turn my brain off.
I could just say “No, he’s as straight as a die!”
But it’s more fun to build the paranoia.

“Well now, let’s see. Ooh yeh, now that I think of it, he used to write for an Phoblacht.”

“Jeeze Charlie!”

“Oh, and he has a photo of Gerry Adams and himself sitting together on a rostrum. It’s got pride of place on his mantelpiece in his house out in Connemara.”

“Oh lord, what have got yourself into this time? Look, it’s a traditional route, you know, when the Brits want the guns handed in, the RA run ‘em to the west and bury them in the Connemara bog ’til they’re needed. I’d take a good look at what he’s loading into your van, Charlie mate, really.”

“Well, now that I come to think of it he said he didn’t like the idea of stopping overnight in Galway City on the way back. Said he wanted to get the stuff back safe. Said he couldn’t risk losing the contents of the van.”

“I’ll bet he did! They’d have him up against a wall for that! No probs.”

Fear is now running around my brain like a naked hippy at a free festival, but my mate continues to stoke my madness.

“And wouldn’t the IRA Army Council just love it if a Brit got caught doing the gun run for them?”

A vision appears in front of my eyes. My mum back in London, watching the BBC News on her tele, and there’s my face up on the screen, arrested for IRA gun smuggling.

This was no laughing matter.
A cool clear head: that was what I would need on the day.

Stay sharp, cool and clear-headed.

My mate arrives on the Saturday and we’re due to drive up to Dundalk on the Sunday morning.

Cool. Clear. Sharp.

We drive to Galway City, where a few shcoops are downed. By 4 in the morning the poker game back at the lads’ house has been going for hours. Blitz appears out of the kitchen carrying plates heaving with rashers, eggs and chips.

So, no sleep on the agenda here then.
Cool clear head.

The Body keeps us alert by calling the new game as only The Body can.

“Seven card stud, two in the hole, last card down, red threes, black sevens, queen of diamonds and nine of hearts are wild.”

“What??”

“You heard me, and don’t ask me to repeat it, ‘cos I can’t remember either!”

Around 8 in the morning we set off on our cross-country jaunt. Cool sharp and alert are not the terms that best describe my state of mind. The road dances in front of me and the signposts look like they’ve been written in Klingon.

I’m so worried about keeping on the tarmac that any fear of of terrorist activities seems secondary.

The sun shines, and gradually I relax and start to enjoy the trip. My friend turns to me.

“Oh yeh, I forgot to tell you. There’s something I think you ought to know about this stuff we’re picking up, Charlie.”

“No! No there isn’t! Please don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I’m just a lowly innocent scribbler. You can’t make me do it! I wasn’t there! I know nothing!”

“I was only going to say that some of it needs to be put in boxes when we arrive at my mum’s. That’s all. Why? What did you think I was going to say?”

“Who me? Nothing. Nada. De rien. Zilch. Zip. Hey listen, I’ve been practising my Ulster accent. Tell me what you think...”

January 1995
The nightmare is over... or is it?

We can open our eyes now. The nightmare is over. We have a new government, and it looks pretty much like the one we voted for two years ago.

When Dick Spring climbed into bed with Albert Reynolds he gave a raised finger to all those who’d voted for him. A stamp in the face for all those who voted against Fianna Faíl. If the ensuing coalition works, just call me Raoul.

Is this set-up what we want?
Who knows?

There was no General Election.
But did we want another General Election?
Not really.

This was the politicians’ mess, and they had to clean it up.
Free from the tyranny of the ballot box, the politicians came together and produced a Rainbow.

Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?
What chance a crock of gold?
Ha.

The Russian Doll that is Fianna Fail continues to shed its skin, reappearing in a form identical to the last, just a little smaller. Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was just the wrong shape. She didn’t fit the mould.

Over on the left, the Labour Party has become a bizarre vulture, lying on the ground as a rotting corpse, occasionally raising its head to tear chunks from its own stomach, rip flesh off its own body, feasting and gorging on itself until it rises again, stronger and larger than before it was dead.

John Bruton looks more like a turkey than a mythical phoenix. Pulled one way by his Tanaiste and another by his Treasury, he tries to regurgitate financial fodder straight into the left-wing beak of Social Welfare.

Our entire government sorted, and all without the stroke of a voter’s pencil.

Democracy is great, isn’t it?

February 1995.
Know your enemy!

If I hear one more Irish person wondering how the violent scenes at the Ireland v England match at Lansdowne Road might have been avoided, I think I might scream.

Take it from someone who knows:
It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that the England ‘fans’ were on the upper tier.
It was nothing to do with the Garda presence.
It mattered not whether the first goal was scored by Ireland or England.

Indeed, if there hadn’t been all this domestic browbeating, I’d have been happy to leave the matter well alone and starve the thugs of the oxygen of publicity. And when this colyoom starts to sound like Margaret Thatcher, you know there’s something rotten in the air!

What we saw that sad night was nothing more than a Party Political Broadcast made by a well-organised alliance of three right-wing English groups. They crossed the water solely to do what they did, and sadly, they succeeded with gusto.

But truly, I love this country. On the night of the game I was sat in what can only be described as a Republican pub in Belfast, chatting with a lad from the Falls Road.

As we watched the riot develop on the TV, I hang my head in shame, weary of the burden of Englishness once more.

Far from acrimony, the wit flies fast and furious.

“So that’ll be the headlines in the Sun tomorrow, eh?” shouts long-haired beardy across the bar. “ ‘IRA thugs dress up as England fans!’ Eh? Eh? Whaddyasay?”

©Charlie Adley

05.04.2026

When Connemara bliss turned into a messy nightmare - (DV '94 Part 1)

2026-04-03T16:00:00.000+01:00

More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1994, Part 1. Enjoy!

February 1994.

I’m sitting on a loo in a B&B in Clifden, but I am not alone. There on the window sill is a little plastic female doll who is wearing a long woollen skirt.

She stares at me with a certain dignity in her eyes, which is somewhat surprising, considering the fact that her skirt is stretched out, over and down the spare roll of loo paper.

There is something plainly disturbing about people who feel the need to hide lavatory paper in decorative nicnacs. It is bourgeois and hypocritical.

There are, no doubt, some among us who pass only perfumed wind and delicate stools shaped like handmade Belgian chocolates, but most of us are willing to accept that bodily functions are not clean and tidy matters.

We know it’s a messy business, and we need to use toilet paper, which when unused is doubtless the least offensive part of the entire process.

So why on earth is there something in the minds of 60-something women that requires the disguising of the clean spare roll?

I know that it’s not right to mess around with other people’s things, but the lines of ownership waver a little when you pay for a room for a night. Picking her up, I’m delighted to find out that she is not just half a doll, but a whole female of the plastic world.

Mercilessly, I plunge her head down into the spare roll, folding her skirt inside-out over the pink paper sheets.

As a protest it’s fairly pathetic, but the end result brings a smile to my lips. The loo roll is now protected by two long plastic legs.
Indeed, they are ever-so slightly parted, leaving just enough room to rest my cigarette during my ablutions.

My companion is concerned by my childish behaviour. What if we are turned out into the cold February streets?

She is showing understandably nervous reactions, given the day we've just endured.

We awoke earlier that morning to find Connemara glazed by Winter sunshine. A wicked frost the night before had left the air chilled to perfection.

A day to send the pulse racing.

Buying food for a picnic we head for the beaches of Ballyconneely, where the sea looks sublime, as tourquoise as the Aegean.

I turn the van down a bohreen towards a beach, but soon it becomes only a bumpy stony path, and then a suitable site for the world’s 4-Wheel Drive Championship Final.

My Transit van leaps boulders and crashes into puddles, finally parking in front of a seven foot lump of morraine that none shall pass.

Climbing over it we slump onto sea front slabs of sun-warmed granite, congratulating ourselves on being at the right place at the right time.

Well, no. Not quite the right time. As we close our eyes and soak up the rays, the tide is busy on its business.

Before you can say ‘What? No wellies?’ we are cut off from the beach, forced to paddle, fall, stumble and crawl through the shallows of the recently-arrived ocean.

Marvelling at our own stupidity we make it back to the van, and unable to turn around in the tiny space, I reverse all the way back to the main road, dripping sea water over the pedals and seats.

Don’t know what I was thinking, but I incautiously praise the van for making such a torturous journey. Naturally, hubris rules, and half a mile down the road there issues a terrible grinding sound from the near side front wheel.

‘Aha!’ thinks I, ‘A pebble is caught in the brake pads, so I will drive on until it frees itself!’

The grinding continues and deepens until it sounds as if the very gates of Hades are opening inside my front wheel. All of a sudden the brake pedal flops to the floor, loose and useless, and I pull over to the side of the road.

For a while I act the Mensch, trying to impress my companion with technical terms culled from memory.

“I’ll check the servo ... blah blah ... it’s not my big ends ... blah blah ... binding pads ... blah blah ... master and slave cylinders ... blah blah ...”

Then I lie on my back under the van and fiddle with this and that until my hands are covered with oil.

She asks what we are going to do.

I suggest we have a cigarette and wait. Suitably unimpressed she sends me off to find a house with a phone, which is no mean feat given our location.

Eventually I find a kindly old couple in a brown bungalow and call the local garage. Yer man at the other end says can I wait a few minutes and he’ll call me back.

The woman nods that I can wait, and so I settle into a seat by the range, where my eyes are assaulted by an impressive collection of religious icons hanging from the wall.

We have the Pope, something from Lourdes, Jesus holding his own bleeding heart, and I feel a little lost for words, until I suddenly remember that today is actually Ash Wednesday.

These people are clearly good Catholics, so I should pay them some respect.

“It’s Ash Wednesday today, isn’t it?” I offer, to be greeted by himself and herself sitting in absolute silence, staring stoically at me, as if they are both preserved in aspic.

“Yes.” she eventually replies, “I believe it may be.”

Spooky.

Beating a hasty retreat I make it back to the van where I try to cheer us up by preparing a wee picnic. Taking the loaf, I use my trusty penknife and slice through the bread until I feel the bone on my finger offering resistance.

My blood is oozing out in a steady flow, and trying to remain cheerful I cover it up with one, no, not enough, blood still seeping out, there, two handkerchiefs.

Look! At last, the tow truck is arriving!

The young mechanic is greeted by a seaweed-strewn soaking-wet Englishman, his hand covered in blood, brandishing a blade.
He takes a step back, fear etched on his face.

I replace the blade and offer apologies. I am a prat who has cut himself, stuffed his van and soaked our clothes. Saying nothing, he attaches tow chains to my van. We climb into the cab of his truck and set off for Clifden.

The journey is slow and eventful. I peer round to see my van lurching on its chains, swaying horribly from side to side. I decide not to look, and facing the front I become a bit perturbed when the passenger door against which I’m leaning suddenly swings open, the road beckoning me below.

“Oh yes.” intones the lad, “It does that.”

I appreciate the tip, entertaining for a moment the blissful irony involved in falling out of his truck and being run over by my own van.

Contemplating whether that might be a fitting end to our day, I continue to bleed over his spare parts, not to mention his hydraulic jack.

Later that night we return from a suitably heavy night’s drinking to find that the landlady has been into our room to deliver clean towels.

She has seen the plastic legs in the air and we have now been deprived of our spare toilet roll holder.

It’s gone. It is no more.
We are bad bad people, not to be trusted.

The next morning, possibly by way of some bizarre retribution for obscenely tampering with her doll, the landlady shows us to our breakfast table.

On the wall beside us hangs a painting of a stallion with a massive erection.

My sausage pales in comparison.

©Charlie Adley

03.04.2026

The Saw Doctors, Michael D, Eamonn Casey, the craic and the rain - DV from '93.

2026-04-01T11:49:00.009+01:00

Recently it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online, so over the next few weeks I'll be posting excerpts from different years. Here comes 1993.

January 1993.
Taking a breather.

Back in London for a few days, I can see that my first 6 months in Ireland have so far been very good to me. To someone born in London, Galway is like taking a breather.

Well, as far as stress and strain are concerned. However, the craic is far from gentle. The Galway weekend runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, if you let it.

February 1993.
To ash or not to ash.

Classic entertainment from RTE last Sunday. A discussion on the midday radio show concerned itself with the important and weighty matter as to why it was that Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern attended the Budget debate with ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

One of the panellists declared that she thought that they had done it solely to detract from the poor Budget they were presenting. She thought that their actions had trivialised a solemn day.

The phone rang in the studio, and on the line was none other than himself, Bertie’s big brother, who testified on air that Bertie had always worn the ash on his forehead.

“He’s always done it, for as long as I’ve known him.”

“And how long have you known him?” asked the DJ.

I paused for thought.

How long has your big brother known you?

February 1993.

The state of the Church in the State.

There is a massive ignorance in England of all things Irish. Before I came here I didn’t even know that Ireland is the only country in the world, aside from Vatican City, to have the Catholic Church written into its constitution.

So on Sunday I tried and miserably failed to answer the questions asked by my friend Joanna, visiting from England.

We were strolling past Salthill Church just as the congregation was leaving Sunday Mass.

Two teenage girls walked out from the church in front of us, their hands covering irrepressible giggles.

“So what was he like? Did you shift him? Will you see him again?”

Behind them followed two women in their 70s, engaged in fierce debate with each other.

“So he says to me it’s a feckin’ cert, so I put 10 on a reverse forecast and the other bloody one comes in. His is probably still feckin’ runnin’.”

I suggest we go to the pub in order to relax the raised quizzical eyebrows of my guest.

“The pubs are open? On a Sunday? But I thought this was a religious country?”

“Oh it is, but not in those ways. There are more fundamental ways in which the Church influences people here. Like there’s no divorce, and -”

Joanna is choking on her Coca-Cola. Her eyes plead at mine, as if awaiting a punchline, but there isn’t one.

“So do you just have to stay with your husband or wife, even if it’s a nightmare?”

“No no, there’s a lot separated wives and single mothers.”

“But if they’re not divorced they can’t remarry, so if they meet somebody they’re forced to live as adulterers, in sin?”

Confusion bounced around my vacant brainbox. I thought of telling her something of the recent furore about the open selling of condoms; about how chainstores didn’t even want to stock them for fear of alienating their customers.

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want her to think of Ireland as some kind of medieval anachronism. I do know that I love this country, even if I don’t yet understand it, and anyway, she was ready with more questions I couldn’t answer.

“So this Bishop, the one that everyone in Galway keeps saying is such a good Bishop, he wouldn’t be the one with the son in America, would he? Not the one who tried to persuade the woman to get rid of the baby? Not the one who stole Church funds to pay off his mistake?”

“Well yes, that’s him, but apart from that, he’s been a good Bishop!”

July 1993.
Festival of Life, or life of festivals?

I’m standing next to a family of American tourists on Wolfe Tone bridge, when all of a sudden a vast crowd passes by. Actors, musicians, drunks and kids rush past, chased by restaurateurs, shopkeepers, publicans and hoteliers.

Everyone is singing, shouting, laughing and having a seriously good time. Merrymaking swamps us for a moment, and then it’s all gone.

“Wow! What was that?” asks the tourist father.

“That? That was a festival, mate.” I explain.

“Awww, I didn’t want to miss the festival.”

“Don’t worry,” I comfort him, “there’ll be another one along in a minute!”

July 1993.
Local boys slap city on the back!

“Anyone want to know the truth about Eamonn Casey?” asks the Saw Doctor to an ecstatic Arts Festival crowd.

Is the Pope a Catholic?

We’ve just witnessed a flood of Macnas dancers twirling umbrellas up on stage, alongside dragons and drummers.

It’s party time, with the Local Boys Done Good Band playing at home.

Not only that, but Home is Galway, and Galway is giving itself a massive and well-earned slap on the back.

For a city that has no municipal theatre, Galway manages to put on a fair amount of theatre. At one stage during this year’s Arts Festival, we had a choice of thirteen live performances, with people and players moving from tents to warehouses; just about anywhere but the municipal theatre, because we don’t yet have one.

There were pictures in pubs, carvings in cake shops and sculptures on the street, some of them human.

Around midnight the atmosphere at the gig is peaking, and the feel of it is so local that, whilst I don’t in any way feel excluded, I do feel slightly detached. Mind you, there are many who've been saying that about your colyoomist for some time.

The Shams are singing about Presentation Boarders, a lyric that has to be explained to me later. My mind wanders to Race Week, and something clunks in my brain.

Race Week?
Again?

For the first time there is something on the calendar that I remember.
This time last year I was walking off a ferry from Roscoff to Cork, setting foot on Irish soil for the first time. Hiding from the rain in Cork City, I sat in my B&B and watched the Galway Races on tele.

And now I live here, and love it.

It was a great Arts Festival and doubtless an excellent Race Week to come. Never mind the weather, the punters want to spend, and who are we to stop them?

Galway even manages to market itself through the rain.

“Splish-splash splish-splash!” sing the Saw Doctors.

July 1993.
Fuck your politics, it’s your accent we hate!

Last week I was hitching down to Limerick. Three Republican lads driving from Belfast to Lisdoonvarna in a Range Rover were in raptures of delight to have captured me, and the wind-ups came fast and furious.

I quickly became frustrated, and asked them why they presumed my politics. How could they possibly know how I felt about the Troubles, or a united Ireland?

The reply came quick and emphatic.

“We don’t give a fuck about your politics. It’s your accent we hate.”

October 1993.
By the way, what does the ‘D’ stand for?

Michael D. Higgins floats a spoonful of whipped cream on top of his coffee.

The Piano Bar of Murray’s Salthill Hotel provides an other-worldly atmosphere of times gone by, and the present Minster for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht offers the same.

At a time when politicians are rarely anything more than pendulums, swung this way and that by public opinion, Michael D. offers a flashback to the days when people had principles and opinions, which they were not shy of airing in fiery manner.

At first glance he appears more elfin than ministerial, but as he sits, he rubs his hands over his face, pushing them hard down over his head, and the person that emerges is ready for action.

It is the movement of a tired man, which he repeats several times over the course of the evening. I resist the urge to send him off home to bed.
Michael D. speaks with fluidity and conviction.

He may be small of stature but he is not someone who can hide in a corner. Throughout the interview many who pass feel at liberty to say ‘Hello!’, and he responds to them all by name.

For someone doing what is essentially an inhuman job, he retains an accessibility that many others have lost, or never had.

December 1993.
Ireland has not yet ‘Gone with the rain.’

Last Friday I was as mad as a hundred hatters.

The full moon hung massive over the river, unleashing a torrent of light into the black velvet sky. Galway City on a wet windy December night.

Lovely. Bloody lovely.

Coming down from Mill Street towards Monroe’s, the south-westerly storm force wind tore blinding sheets of land-bound ocean into me.

Diving into a sheltered nook by a shop’s front door, I suddenly found myself in exceptionally close quarters with a wild-eyed white-bearded older gent, who seemed to be having far too much of a good time on such a night as this.

Turning to smile and appear peaceful in my intentions, I offered the simplest and what I thought the safest of openings:

“What about that rain, eh? Terrible isn’t it!”

We turned to look at the solid sheets of sideways rain flying up the street, as if God was emptying his bathtub by turning the world the wrong way up.

“Fannnn-tashtic!” cried he, “Fantastic! ‘Tis God’s gift to Ireland, the rain!”

With that he looked over at me smiling, searching into my eyes, and without a discernible trace of irony continued

“If we had no rain we’d have no Ireland. There would be hotels on every clifftop and towns on every beach. Everything you love about Ireland will be gone! Gone with the rain!”

‘Gone with the rain’?

The man was clearly a genius, but thirst was rapidly overcoming my desire to stop and chat with this gifted old geezer.

We looked at each other with suppressed grins and he suggested that after such a Winter, the Summer should be moity.

I agreed wholeheartedly, and we parted company, knowing full well what nonsense that was.

©Charlie Adley

01.04.2026

Three Snippets from '92

2026-03-29T16:25:00.003+01:00

Artwork by Allan at www.caricatures-ireland.com

After the recent self-congratulatory piece about DV passing 750k hits, it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online. So over the next while I’ll be dropping a few excepts from years gone by.

I first stepped onto Irish soil in August 1992 and was awarded the colyoom three weeks later. Click below to read three snippets from the following three months, when I’m all spanky fresh and green in the Emerald Isle.

September 1992.
Inside out in Cleggan.

The people in the dining room of the B&B are trying their best to ignore me. The state of my brain is mirrored perfectly by the low cloud drizzle that is swamping and subduing the whole of Cleggan Bay this morning.

I am blissfully unaware that my T-shirt is on inside out and back to front.

In fact, far from matters of sartorial elegance, I’m having a great deal of trouble simply eating. I try ever-so carefully to secure a piece of toast and fried egg onto my fork, and manage to fumble it into my mouth.

At this precise moment an immaculately turned-out French couple glide into the dining room. These slickers were not in the pub until early this morning, unlike some scribblers I might mention.

They stop in their tracks as they see fried egg slowly slip out from my mouth and ooze its way down my chin, on its journey back to the plate.

Plainly horrified, they disappear from the room, having lost their appetites.

Now everyone has turned to look at me, in their clean-cut European V-neck sweater kind of way.

Do I care?
Not while there is food to be eaten.

The rain continues to come down, so all my healthy intentions to climb hills and break a natural sweat are banished.

Back to Oliver’s bar, the scene of last night's crime, where today the big screen is up, and here we go again. Galway confound the tipsters, and I can think of no better place to watch the game.

Every time a point is scored the place erupts, and at a Galway goal small riots break out in various corners of the pub.
A brave female voice insists on calling

“Come on Tipp!”

and yet, so different to my native England, nobody here boos her. They don’t need to. It’s Galway’s day, and we eventually resign ourselves to the ensuing celebrations.

Nothing like a quiet restorative trip to Connemara.

Nothing.

October 1992.

Illegal Numbers?

I was out on Saturday night on the trail of the obligatory craic, and found it in the shape of ‘Zrazy’, a two woman band playing in the wonderful Galway sleaze pit that is the Jug o’Punch.

They played a strong set of love songs and political songs, and soon enough the place was hopping. After the set I went to ask Maria of the band about one song that seemed to involve the constant repetition of a string of numbers.

What was that all about?

“It’s the telephone number of a Pregnancy Advice line, or an Abortion Advice line, depending on your way of looking at it. Either way, it’s illegal.”

“What’s illegal? I don’t understand.”

“The telephone number is illegal.”

“The telephone number is illegal? But how can a telephone number be illegal?”

“You can’t print it, broadcast it or dial it. That’s how it’s illegal.”

Holy cow, Ireland is so weird. Who is frightened of what? Even if it is technically possible to outlaw a string of numbers, how can it be morally defensible? The arguments of those who would impose such mindless censorship must be oh so fragile.

November 1992.
His business just didn’t add up.

I wander into a shop in Salthill to buy two lightbulbs. Himself behind the counter smiles to see this stranger, and tells me how the weather has been fine.

“Do you sell lightbulbs?”

“Well now, I do, yes, I do, but, c'mere to me now ...” he hooks his finger and motions me to move closer, whispering. “I do sell lightbulbs, but truth be told, there’s a place just down the road that sells ‘em a mite cheaper than me.”

I stand flummoxed. If I walk out it will look like I am a cheapskate, but if I stay I’ll look like a fool.

“I will buy them off you, thanks all the same.”

“Ah good man. Now, so, it’s two you want is it? Well, they are 30 pence each, or 3 for a pound.”

Looking deep into his kindly eyes I find no trace of irony or humour in the moment. He clearly has no idea what he has just said.

“I’ll take 2 at 30 pence each please!” I say, and thank him for his trouble, leaving the shop amazed and confused.

It’s a business that looks like it’s been around for generations, but if that’s the way they operate, how on this good earth have they managed to stay in business?

©Charlie Adley

29.03.2026.

Happy Paddy's Day and 25 years of friendship!

2026-03-16T15:04:00.006+00:00

It’s lunchtime on St. Patricks Day, 2001, and I’m sitting at the bar of the Anchor Pub in Killala, enjoying Sean the landlord’s icicle sharp sandpaper dry wit.

I’ve only been living here for a couple of months, yet even by my own introverted sociopathic standards I’ve barely left my new home, because there hangs in the air the terrible threat of Foot and Mouth disease.

Along with the Six Nations Rugby tournament, Paddy’s Day parades have been cancelled.

Even though the Celtic Tiger cub is firing up my freelance writing career very nicely, Ireland is still an agricultural economy. Silicon Bog is yet to rise from the mist of corporate tax evasion. If livestock are slaughtered on an industrial scale, local livelihoods will be devastated.

How much do I want to be the Englishman who brought Foot and Mouth disease to the Irish Republic?

So I’ve been resisting the urge to walk long and far, yet staying inside has been such a challenge for me, because North Mayo, my new home, has the lot: rolling green pasture and barren ancient bog; drumlins and mountains; flatlands and cliffs; subterranean galleries and ancient abbeys.

I’d fallen in love with its unique seascapes. So many white sand beaches are untouched by mass tourism, while at Downpatrick Head there are blowholes and the astonishing sea stack, Dun Briste, a sight that never fails to make my jaw drop.

Sipping my whiskey, dreaming of day I can walk freely in my new environment, I spot a bearded gent down the other end of the bar.

It’s early yet, so the pub is empty, save for us two and Sean. While living in Galway City I’d learned the hard way that Paddy’s Day is rather like New Year’s Eve: a messy event full of drunk people who are not used to drinking, overdoing it because they feel they have to.

Mr. Beardy and I start chatting, and as I sit here, 25 years later to the day, we haven’t stopped.

On that Paddy’s Day he explained that his family had arrived in the area only a few months before me, and over the next few weeks he introduced me to several other families of Blow-Ins who’d also recently arrived.

Tragically since then we have lost four wonderful souls to cancer, but that has served only to strengthen our bonds.

My friend and I share a passion for nature. We love to grow plants, study animals and stare at the night sky, wondering at the beauty of it all.

He has since graduated with a degree as a local guide, now expert in local geography, history, topography, geology, folklore, music and culture. To walk along a beach with him is a privilege.

His passion for our local flora and fauna bursts out as he grabs bunches of seaweed off the rocks, explaining how it contains all the minerals that made life possible. Then his head dives down to the sand, where a pinprick hole lures him to dig with his fingers, all the way up to his elbow, until he withdraws his arm clutching a lunch of razor clams.

Over the quarter century of our friendship, life and death have visited us both in most challenging ways, yet we have survived, and occasionally thrived, if not in riches then in laughter.

The man is notorious for his tangential ramblings. He makes Billy Connolly appear succinct and to the point. However I’ve learned through my wild and wonderful life that rather than loving perfection, it’s our foibles, faults and fractures we humans truly love.

His wonderful wife and I have our own friendship, but on occasion we’ve further bonded at my friend’s expense, in that when he’s off on a verbal trek, we circle around his story, rather like jackals hunting prey.

Will he ever get to the point?
Do we even care?

On one most memorable occasion my friend and I had greeted a sunny Summer afternoon by chatting and laughing and drinking a little. Then we visited the village and had another little talk and a laugh and a drink.

Later we returned to his home where I watched as he fed the children and put them to bed. Then we had a little drink, a laugh and talked until his wife returned from work. Then we sat, talked, laughed and drank some more.

As the heat from the coal and wood roasting in their huge fireplace rose into the room and fuelled our hearts, the standards of conversation tumbled.

By this time all those little drinkies have combined as one. My friend's’ wife and I are mercilessly mocking himself, with all his wandering tangential amorphous storytellings.

He raises his hands to protest:

“Now now now!” he bellows, eager to plead his case. “All seriousness aside!” says he, blissfully unaware of the wee verbal slip that has caused us, his audience, to fall physically from our chairs in inebriated mirth.

Thinking back now, maybe my friend has had the last laugh. Wisdom lurks in his inadvertent and hysterical error.

All seriousness aside? Isn’t that the best advice?

Here’s to the next 25 years, my lovely friends, and happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and all my colyoomistas.

©Charlie Adley

16.03.2026

Double Vision passed 750,000 hits - thanks to all my colyoomistas!

2026-03-15T10:28:00.002+00:00

It's been 33 years and 5 months since Double Vision was born in the Connacht Tribune and Galway City Tribune, with the first colyoom (pictured above) appearing in October 1992, and 19 years 2 months since we went online.

Since then there have been 732 posts, 762,953 visits, with 4,450 yesterday and 36,588 this month.

Colyoomista activity always rises as we near Paddy's Day, but nevertheless I'm extremely grateful to all of you who have read my blather.

I'll be back in touch when we clear the million mark! Thanks again!

Just say it. Months of rain rain rain. We can handle the truth. Unsettled, me hole.

2026-02-21T21:02:00.003+00:00

Great artwork from Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

Every Saturday I take my sabbath.
I don’t have to do my stretches.
I don’t have to exercise.

I can eat whatever I want, yet must cook as little as possible.
I go out for my Full Irish on Saturday morning and in the evening I shove something into the microwave.

Yes, a dreaded UPF dinner for me, and that’s okay.
It’s my day off.

Wouldn’t want you to think that makes life simple. Doing exactly what I want is way more complex than simply doing nothing.

The Ireland England ruby match is about to start, and I’ll watch that with full sound and vision until half time, when I have to mute the TV so’s I can listen to the Chelsea commentary on my phone.

All good and eminently doable, until I send a text to my mate JB, saying I’m having a busy lazy rainy day.

This is when being a vocational writer becomes a bit of a pain. My so-called ‘calling’ hears Busy Lazy Rainy Day in capital letters: a working title, very probably a headline for a piece, ‘cos yeh, I’ve been meaning to scribble something new for a while.

Right now though there’s the rugby, which stretches my love and loyalty between my home nation and the nation I call my home. Unless it ends in an honourable tie, part of me will win that game and part of me will lose it.

The Blues playing Burnley doesn’t stretch my loyalty at all.

My writer thing knows there’s no better time than right now to put that thought down.

In fact, if I don’t turn the stream of thought that followed the idea into notes or better, a first draft, any potential will diminish; might be forgotten.

Do it now!
Engrained in my DNA after living off my blather for so long. Do it now!

There’s the rugby, the footie, and the laundry- oh! Didn't I mention that I chose my day off to do the laundry too? There’ll be drum-spinning ear-shattering whining splicing the air in a minute - oh, no, right now in fact.

Just before kick off. Not too bad. I’ll sort those clothes out at half time, before the Chelsea kick off.

And there I am, on my day off, writing mental lists.
To Do lists.
Worse. Unnecessary To Do lists.
Chronological blah blah.

Having laid out my clean clothes on driers I reject the matches, the laundry the whole damn doodad that had me writing mental lists.

I go outside and stand in the rain. Mental behaviours, some might say.
I beg to differ. Busy Lazy Rainy Day. I’ve been busy and lazy and it’s been raining for several centuries now, or so it seems.

Relentless dancing drops hitting my mypex, standing pools of water on drenched clogged ground.

Juicy big wet-making raindrops slick through my hair. I can feel my jeans soaking in the rainspray drenching given by the wind.

Pneumonia beckons. Communing with nature is great and all that, but I like breathing too, so I go inside and watch the drops dance on the pavement.

Rain: saviour of Ireland. Rain that keeps our clifftops free from hotels, our beaches empty and clean, our fields full of flowers and our pasture rich and deep.

Alongside the absolute certainty of rain here on the edge of the mighty Atlantic the only other thing I can guarantee is that every local soul will utter some form of weather assessment thus:

“I don’t mind if it’s cold/hot/windy/foggy/frosty as long as it’s not raining. That’s the thing. Long as it’s not raining.”

After 34 years living on Ireland’s west coast I still cannot fathom why people choose to demonise that which they live with each day.
It’s going to rain, so we might as well enjoy it.

Masters of the meteorological euphemism, the English and Irish have created a universe of weather terms that are indecipherable to foreigners, and let's be honest, pretty much incomprehensible to ourselves.

Any ideas just what an 'odd shower' might be? One in which the rain falls upwards?

Anyone know exactly what they mean by bright? Are we talking clouds, sunshine, or what?

And when did the word 'rain' disappear from forecasts, to be replaced with 'unsettled weather'?
It's not unsettled at all.
It's days and days of rain.
Weeks, nay months of rain rain rain.

Just say it baby; we can handle the truth.
Unsettled, me hole.

We do rain in all shapes and sizes: soft; drizzly; damp; showers - but is that occasional showers, frequent showers, constant showers; heavy showers, or prolonged heavy showers?

We have light, moderate and heavy rain, followed by lashing rain and then, Top of the Rain Pops comes sideways rain, which conspires to come at you on gale and storm force winds from the horizontal.

For reasons I’d rather not understand, sideways rain seems to possess some kind of perverted predilection for travelling up inside a coat or even jeans, as if sniffing out your bits.

Not good.

With the coming of spring there arrive the early enquiries from friends for summer visits, asking the inevitable question: "What's the weather like?"

Let me think: what is the weather like? I’ve lived in hot dry places. I’ve lived where the ground moves under your feet, where forests burn, where the winters blow blizzards and snowdrifts.

I’ll admit to being generally happy living between 10 - 20C, or 50 - 60F in the old money.

We rarely have extreme weather here. When we do it’s mostly rain, and we have an extremely large vocabulary with which to describe it.

My own bȇte noir is when the media forecasters show off their state-of-the-art technology by predicting

“Sunshine at times, rain in places.”

Aaaaarrggghhhhh.

Yes we know.
Times and places.

As opposed to the weather in Black Holes and parallel universes, beyond time and reason.

Maybe, just maybe, one day they’ll share with us which places at what times.

Today To Do lists begone!
I’m watching the rain.

© Charlie Adley
21.02.2026

How many emails for a one night stay?

2026-01-21T15:34:00.003+00:00

Your scribbler has been driven somewhat demented over the last two weeks.

What’s that?
Oh, okay. More demented than usual, as a result of booking a hotel.

Yep, that’s what I said.

Loyal and very attentive colyoomistas may recall that back in May 2004, I fessed up to being an anonymous reviewer of hotels for quality newspapers (not a tautology!) for over two decades.

Of course, as soon as I did, I had to retire from that particular gig, as in my opinion there is zero point in reviewing an hotel if they know you’re writing a review. All of a sudden you’re in a beautiful room and can I do anything else for you, sir?

Being a naive fool, I thought that once I’d left the reviewing game, staying in hotels would return to being a pure pleasure.

Someone comes in and makes your bed; gives you new towels, fresh coffee capsules and more putrid cartons of UHT milk.

You fill out and hang the breakfast menu on your room’s door handle and lo, at 08:30 there’s a knock and a young man is delivering your scrambles and bacon, tea and toast.

In sad little Adley world, that’s pretty close to as good as it gets.

And yes, I do still love staying in hotels, but that pleasure is now mitigated by the onslaught of bollocky emails that one has to endure when booking a room these days.

A couple of weeks ago, being ever-so-slightly brassic, I decided to make the most of the current price of gold by flogging a few small items I inherited from my grandparents.

An antique auctioneer advised me that yes, he could put one or two of my items into an auction, but I’d wait months for the correct collectors sale day, and then pay him a commission.

In a rare display of altruism, he advised me that I’d be better off going to a particular shop he knew in Dublin, mentioning his name and getting a fair price for the gold weight of the lot, there and then, in cash.

You can take the boy out of London, but you can’t take London out of the boy.

Cash?
A wad?
Yessirrreeee!

Well, if I’m headed to Dublin, I might as well make a night of it, I decided.

I’ve been at home since before Christmas, so a night away from my own cooking and dishes would be most welcome.

Over those 20 years of reviewing I learned that the first stop in any hotel search should be the hotel’s website. The prices offered on their own sites are often very competitive with third party bookers, like Booking.com, Trivago and Expedia.

If you’re offered a bargain elsewhere, contact the hotel and tell them. See how quickly they offer you the same discount.

This is presuming you’ve chosen an independent and ideally family-run hotel (like my West of Ireland favourites: Flannerys in Galway City and Rosleague Manor in Connemara), which is where I’d head every day of the week.

Trouble is, in Dublin ,all the choices were corporate chains, so I booked a room in an apart-hotel, close to the shop that I was aiming for.

All was good.
Here’s the email confirming my booking.
Perfect.

Here’s another email, telling me to make the most of my trip, and what’s available in the area.
Erm, that’s fine, I s’pose.

Here’s another email.

Do you want to upgrade your room?

I feel my inner grumpy git awake from surly slumber.

No I don’t want a bloody upgrade.
Stop it. Go away.
Leave me alone.

If I wanted a better room, I’d’ve booked a better room. I’d been to their website, looked on Booking, read reviews on Tripadvisor and made what a pretentious prat might call an ‘educated choice.’

Oh for god’s sake, it’s only an hotel room.
Let’s not get carried away.

Then I receive yet another email, written in what I can only assume is a style they believe Millennials or Gen Zees might find amusing.

It went 100% like this, in tone and format; I kid ye not:

“Hey Charlie
Whoop!
Whoop
doopy
doopy
doo!

We are so excited to see you.

It’s great you booked with us.

We’re so excited about your stay.
Yippee
Yippee
Aye ayyyy...”

As I read this nonsensical sycophantic drivel, my grumpy git engine moved rapidly up through the gears into overdrive, outrage and disbelief, but that wasn’t the end of it.

The very next day I received yet another email. The fifth for a one night booking.

Do you want to bid for a room upgrade?

You wot? Is this an effin’ joke?

Do I want to BID for a room upgrade?

Yeh, sure, of course I do, ‘cos my life is so crushingly empty I can think of no better way to spend my valuable yet vacant time than competing with other sad losers in a fight to give you more money for something I don’t even want and grrrr and grrrowl and roaaaarrr and -

I suddenly started coughing, instantly recognising the bad taste in my mouth as evidence of a nascent chest infection.

Given that half of Ireland was at that moment laid up with respiratory viruses, and my 1.5 very scarred lungs must be maintained with respect, I grabbed the chance to postpone my trip to Dublin and cancel my room.

Another email.

Would you like to take a survey, to share your reasons why you cancelled your room?

Would I?

In the modern language of hotel reservations:

Yabba dabba dooby dooo!

Hold me back and allow me to explain why to you!

©Charlie Adley

21.01.2025

“Move over girls - I’m coming in!”

2026-01-15T14:55:00.006+00:00

It wasn't these two....

It’s 1981 and your scribbler is a 21 year-old hedonist, driving south from my flat in Cambridge to my friend’s house in South Harrow.

We’ll call him Dave, to protect the less-than-innocent.

The world is not yet under the censorious yoke of Woke, and my militant feminism will not peak for another three years.

If you’re easily offended stop reading now, for this is a tale of drug taking and wanton behaviour.

As it should in all things nostalgic, the sun shines from a cloudless blue sky as I speed along, excited at the prospect of delivering my cargo.

Dave has never taken an acid trip, so I’m heading south to deliver blotters for both of us. I know he’ll be excited and trepidatious about it all, probably pacing up and down his living room, waiting for my arrival.

I feel calm and confident about the next 24 hours, as I’m very familiar with LSD, and I’ve known Dave all of my life.

I can see only fun times ahead, and hey, look over there. Two young females hitchhiking, so of course I stop to pick them up.

They both have roughly the same body mass: the shorter one a curvaceous beauty; the taller a gorgeous Amazonian. Both sport blonde hair, the shorter woman’s styled in a bob, the taller worn long and flying free, like ripe wheat in a breeze.

They wedge their smiling faces through the open passenger window.

“Hey ladies! Where are you going?”

“Er em sort of towards London, but we don’t know exactly, I think.”

“Well jump in then! I’m going to London too!”

They both sit in the back of the car, which makes me feel a little like a chauffeur. In my rear view mirror I see two suntanned faces, with Hollywood white teeth shining from broad relaxed smiles.

“So where are you from?”

“Oh we are from Denmark.” replies the shorter one.

“Lovely. And what do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh no, not at all. We are both nurses, yes?” answers the taller one.

My lack of naming them is in no way a device to dehumanise them. If anything, it’s a sign of respect. For the life of me, 45 years later, I can’t remember either of their names, and it would feel glib and ignorant to simply christen them Anni-Frid and Agnetha, so forgive me.

They talk almost perfect English, with only the slightest and most charming hint of a foreign accent.

“So what’s your plan, ladies? Where are you headed?”

“Well really we don’t know. Just towards London and sort of see what happens, kind of thing, you know.”

These two are humans after my own heart. I’ve hitched for years with just such a mindset.

“Well, I’m heading down to a northern suburb, to stay with a friend of mine. You’re very welcome to come along.”

In my mirror I see two faces turn to look at each other, and eyebrows raising in pairs.

“Sure, that sounds great. Thank you. Will be nice to stay in real London house.”

Oh so they’re staying, are they? I think of the grill pan down there, with weeks of bacon fat festering in it, and the loo where, oh, you don’t need to know.

“Well, erm, it’s not very glamorous. There’s three friends of mine living there, all lads, so it’s not the cleanest place in the world.”

“Cool. Real, like we said. Better than a Youth Hostel, I think."

“Anything anywhere is better than a Youth Hostel!” I cry, and we all laugh in accord.

I shove Hunky Dory into the cassette player and turn up the volume.

Okay, so I’m arriving on Dave’s doorstep with a sheet of blotters and two Danish nurses. Haven’t seen a camera anywhere, but this doesn’t half sound like a classic porn movie.

Dave is, as anticipated, twitching with nerves about the impending trip. He shows his unexpected guests to the spare room, and comes into the living room, where I’m rolling a fat one.

“What the fuck, Charlie!”

“Just a little hors d’oeuvres, Davie, to chill you out before the trip.”

“No, I‘m not talking about the joint. I mean the ... the … who are they?”

I shrug.

“Dunno mate. They’re lovely and they’re happy to be here, so what’s the prob? They know what we’re doing today, and they’re happy to just hang here in the house. Been on the road for months, apparently, so it’s nice for them to have a bath, and a kitchen to use, and, well, y’know.”

This, beloved Colyoomistas, is where my memory becomes unreliable, to the point of non-existence. We take the blotters and endure an hour or so of Dave going

“Is it working yet? Is it working yet?”

To which I offer

“Mate, when it starts working you won’t have to ask.”

I remember us leaving the house. Despite my advice to the contrary, Dave insists on driving his flash Lancia as the acid kicks in, so that he can emulate Hunter S. Thompson, which makes me Dr. Gonzo.

After that I have only the vaguest flash of an image, involving me and him standing on the walkway bridge over the tube line at Northwood Station, both of us wearing full face crash helmets while brandishing a stick and an axe at each other.

The other six hours are gone forever, and then we’re back in the house. Dave is having his first experience of acid comedown. Not unpleasant, to me it feels like I’m floating on a small rowing boat, but poor Dave doesn’t feel great, so he announces he’s off to bed.

All of a sudden I’m alone in his living room, high as a constellation and wondering where I’m going to sleep.

As I wander round downstairs I realise the place is immaculate. The girls have cleaned the entire place. Amazing. Fantastic. What lovely people they are.

Thing is though, they’re sleeping in the double bed that I usually crash in.

The following events I only know because Dave told me about them the next morning. After waking he went downstairs, following a trail of my clothes, from my socks and underwear on the upstairs landing, to jeans on the stairs and my T-shirt on the living room carpet.

Apparently, a few minutes after he went to bed, he heard me knocking on the spare room door, opening it and exclaiming

“Move over girls - I’m coming in!”

Tragically my memory returns only as I awake to daylight.

I’m in the middle of that double bed, the naked meat in a naked blonde Scandi sandwich. Clearly I hadn’t offended our guests in any way, as they were both asleep, curled into and around me in sublime fleshy hugs.

As I move, as the tall one wakes up too. Gracefully sliding out of the bed she stretches her long golden arms to the ceiling, as she slips on her T-shirt.

My god but she is magnificent.

“I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some coffee?” she asks, as if this is how we all awake every day.

“That sounds great! Thanks."

By now the shorter one is awake too. She smiles as she gives me a big squeezy hug, and heads off to the bathroom.

I lie there in wonder. I realise that this is probably going to be the only time in my life I wake up between two beautiful women, and yet I have zero recall of anything happening the night before.

I very much doubt that anything did, but I will never know. I do feel a purely sensory memory of jumping and then flying through the air and landing on the middle of that double bed, which ties in with what Dave heard me yell, but beyond that: zip, nada, nowt.

We four drink our coffees in that spotless living room, and then they thank us both profusely for our hospitality and leave to explore the West End.

Dave and I look at each other.

“Bloody hell, Charlie!”

I've lived by my writing - let me show you how!

2026-01-12T17:19:00.004+00:00

Loving what you do for a living is one of life’s greatest gifts. Before I took up writing professionally I worked in all sorts of industrial and corporate jobs, many of which sapped my soul and made me wonder whether life was worth the effort.

In all those jobs I felt like a visitor in someone else’s world. Yet sitting here at my keyboard in a typically ungainly position, with my ankles badly twisted underneath my desk, I feel completely comfortable.

Some of you already know what I’m on about. If you love your work then you know how lucky I feel.

Although I’m pretty much retired now (a vocational writer never stops writing!) I had the best gig in the world: I paid my rent for three decades by writing 1,000 words each week, about anything I wanted.

From the age of 15 I wrote every single day, keeping a diary until the age of 21. Those diaries contained as much fiction as fact. As a precocious teenager I thought it might be interesting for an ‘older me’ to look back and see what I was like in adolescence.

In truth those 6 volumes constitute a terrifying journey into petulance, paranoia and sexual fantasy, but their making instilled within me the discipline of a lifetime: to sit and write each day.

Since then I’ve had over two million words published in Ireland and the UK, and three plays performed. A month after I arrived in Galway in 1992, my one-woman show ‘Aileen Stays In’ won a Punchbag Theatre competition.

Alongside Double Vision I had a column in the Irish Examiner, and many features published in the Irish Times, Irish Post and other media.

I have dedicated my life to learning my craft. I’m still learning, and hopefully will always learn, because you never know it all.

Now I love to pass on what I’ve learned, through my Craft of Writing Course.

My course has been enjoyed by everyone from fresh 20 year-olds to wise souls in their 80s, who have plenty of stories to tell; from complete novices to published novelists.

Nobody can teach talent, but skills can be nurtured and imaginations stimulated.

More importantly, while mystery and wonder certainly inhabit the process of creative writing, everyone benefits from understanding the craft of writing.

Before you can paint a portrait in oils, you have to learn how to draw a straight line. Writing is like every other art form. All writers benefit from learning the craft of writing.

Anyone can master this craft.
There is no mystery to it.

Some of you will have talent, which cannot be taught, but talent is wasted without craft.

In fun, safe and supportive lessons I will show you how to overcome fear and write a first draft.

You’ll learn how to develop characters, structure, plot and voice, while discovering how to use shape, pace, tense and dialogue to enhance the power of your words.

My enjoyable Craft of Writing Course will boost your confidence, enabling you to write as you’ve always wished.

I will also share advice about how to sell your writing.

Come and join me in the Killala Community Centre this Spring, and together we’ll have fun learning the Craft of Writing.

Places are limited, so book your seat at the table NOW!

Call Charlie on: 085 729 4204

Or email: cadley1@icloud.com

Killala Community Centre
7:15 - 9:00pm Tuesday March 3rd - Tuesday April 28th.

€150 for 8 weeks (there's a break for St. Patricks Day)

*****

Here are some student testimonials:

“Thanks for a fabulous course. It was practical, factual, educational and jovial - a masterclass in how to teach with fun - and you managed to get stories from us each week!” - John.

“I was very familiar with the language of can't and couldn’t, but in your creative classes I have learned a vocabulary that involves embracing the terms can and could. Thank you for sharing your time, thoughts and energy and thanks for helping me to see life with a new perspective.” - Niall.

“The course was fabulous. I learned a great deal about the skills and techniques of writing. I have enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you so much for all your feedback.” - Gerry.

“I am learning so much. Thank you. You have an amazing passion for words - it oozes out of you - and a great energy that is wonderful to be around.” - Sindy.

“Many thanks for the excellent course. I found it thoroughly revealing. Thanks once again for the enlightenment and the fun.” - Frank.

“Your enthusiasm runs deep. It’s clear that you do this for the love of the craft. You have so much to give to people and are so generous with your time and passion. I can only offer you my gratitude for a wonderfully inspiring, educational and thought-provoking eight weeks.” - George.

“I booked this course with no real expectations. Little did I know that it was going to be one of the most enjoyable courses I have ever attended and that I was going to learn so much. The course layout, notes and your personal involvement made it a very easy and enjoyable way to learn.” - Walter.

3rd Round Saturday makes me miss my Dad!

2026-01-10T13:26:00.000+00:00

Exceptional artwork from Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

Today it's the Third Round of the FA Cup. To those of a certain vintage this is a day of magic and romance. For me it's also a day of remembering my beloved Dad.

Here's He Knew from my Kill Me Now short story collection.

He Knew.

In glorious rural Berkshire, jugs of Pimm’s are topped with mint and cucumber. There is laughter and lunch at the French Horn in Sonning.

Your entire family and many friends gather to celebrate your father’s 70th birthday.

The sun shines on the beautiful old coaching inn, nestled between ancient weeping willows on the banks of the Thames.

Your father stands to make his speech.
The masses hush.

After pursing his lips, there comes from this most lucid of men a long terrifying silence.

A crushing compassion falls upon you, as you watch him struggle to move his mouth. Your father remains stoic in expression, while hearts break all around the room.

After a while he regains control, and void of the cheeky aplomb you love so much, he delivers his words.

Since that most unwelcome arrival, you now know all about TIAs, these mini strokes that your father recovers from, over and over again.

Each one robs him temporarily of the ability to control something: the movement of his jaw, which for a while viciously and spontaneously chews his own cheek; his right arm, which suddenly shoots up in the air and waves around, as if he were a schoolboy desperate to attract teacher’s attention.

Each time a new behaviour appears, you long for the day when that symptom eases, not only for him, but also because of the pain you suffer by seeing him out of control.

Living in Ireland, you have developed a phobia of the phone. As soon as you hear your sister’s voice, you know that for who knows how long, your life must be put on hold.

You’re going to England on a flex-ticket, packing your bag with practiced precision and speed, desperate to arrive before your Dad dies.

Despite the fact you’ve felt this so many times, each hits you like the first.

You’ve slept on family sofas, in your mum’s spare room, in cheap hotels, and spent long terrible days with your mother and siblings, sitting vigil in his private hospital rooms.

Over these 12 years of your father’s decline, there have been moments of humour, like when he regains consciousness after surgery, and oblivious to the presence of his loved ones, appears excited only because the Chelsea manager is on the TV.

“Moo - Moo- Mourinho!” he splutters.

You laugh in relief, possibly privately hurt in a small yet personal way, because he notices Jose before you.

Other times you laugh out of embarrassment, because your father’s pain threshold is the lowest of any human who ever walked the Earth.

You want your father to be a hero, but it proves impossible not to squirm when he responds to a kindly nurse, gently cleaning his face with a warm flannel.

“Torture! She’s torturing me!”

All he ever wants is to go home, yet each time he does the challenges become greater, more testing for your mum, so back he goes to hospital, where you watch him close his eyes tightly, as if in complaint to the universe, and drop his chin onto his chest.

Arriving at the door of his hospital room on any given morning, in who knows which of so many hospitals, you and your mother are confronted by the saddest of sights.

This bombastic, jocular and opinionated man sits in the chair beside his bed. Instead of looking out of the window or reading a book, he chooses to bow his upper body so far forward, that the crown of his head presses down on the trolley-table in front of him.

His eyes are locked shut, his face wearing three hundred and forty seven varieties of angst.

You put your arm around your Mum and give her a reassuring hug, because if you find this sight sad, you cannot imagine how it must be hurting her.

A kidney specialist tells you two years ago that you should arrange for Dad to move to a hospice.

“It’s only going to be a matter of days.” says the consultant, but still he survives.

Looking at this man who made your life possible, you wonder why he hangs on.

For you, the moment your father lost his joie de vie, he was gone. Without that sparkly glint in his eye, which reassures you he loves you, (your parents only award the ‘L’ word to pets) this tragically wrung-out figure appears to have no desire to live.

You assume he must be driven to survive purely by terror of the alternative.

You decide you absolutely never want children: not if your dotage will force them to endure this horror.

You hope that when your time is up, you will not hang on through mere fear, and then you mock yourself, because you have been taunted by your own mortality ever since your first pubic hair.

The most painful part of Dad dying slowly is that you have to keep on leaving. You've given up your job back in Ireland, so that you can come whenever you need to, and stay as long as possible.

Yet eventually you always have to go home, and it is these times that test your heart.

Will you ever see him again?
Will he be dead before you return?

On a Friday night 18 months ago you decide to deal with this trial.

Before you drive your rental car through the snowy night darkness to Luton Airport, you decide to say a last goodbye.

You know of course that you might well see him again. You also understand that you cannot continue to torment your heart and twist your soul, by repeatedly arriving home in dread of missing his death.

You go up to your father in his bed, and throw your arms over his chest, forcing your right hand around and under his neck.

He awakes and you whisper “I’m going now, Dad. Good bye. Shabbat Shalom.”

and he replies

“Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for coming. Drive carefully.”

You hug him tightly and then climb off the bed. You hold your breath along the hospital corridor, in the lift, and as you briskly walk through reception. Outside, the cold air freezes your lungs.

You find your car, close the door, sit in front of the steering wheel and let out a wail; a crescendo howling cry of pain.

For ten minutes, twenty minutes, who knows or cares, you sit in your car and cry, heaving with loss and misery.

You’ve just said goodbye to your father, and although you see him many times after that, there is wisdom in that move.

It eases your pain, but now the time has come for the final farewell.

The nursing home gardens are truly splendid. Gravel paths surround trimmed lawns, gently sloping towards crescent flower beds, flush with roses, crimson and pink.

You’re unable to see beauty.

In the grey Victorian mansion above, your father is drifting lethewards, floating in and out of a morphine coma.

You struggle to move your aching legs through the stifling London heat. The humid still air is a rich soup of lavender.

You breathe deep its comforting scent.

You’re taking a break, doing a few laps of the garden, because you can’t sit there beside him forever.

You turn at the edge of the lawn and head up the gravel path, back towards this halfway house.

You go to the Gents and wash your face with cold water. Staring at yourself in the mirror you contemplate what you’re about to do.

Tomorrow you must leave once more for Ireland.
In two weeks you’re getting married.

You feel sure this will be the last time you see Dad alive.
You steel yourself and enter his small quiet room.

Beyond the tall sash windows the garden glows golden.

You move a chair to sit parallel with your father. Your back is against the wall beside his head.

You reach down with your left hand and lift his limp warm right hand, intertwining your fingers with his, hoping he might wake, respond in some way, acknowledge your presence and thereby give you the chance to say goodbye one final time.

But he doesn’t.

He sleeps on, lost to consciousness.

His lips part like a baby’s kiss as he exhales gently

.....pwaaaaaahhhhhh….

You sit, hold his hand and find comfort in the peace and privilege of being there at his side.

In the midst of the turbulence of weddings, illness, life and death, you appreciate these calm minutes.

You wish your father knew you were there, but he doesn’t. The nurse told you that he was on such a heavy dose he could barely keep breathing.

You accept that being beside him is enough.

Finally the hour comes when you must meet others, leave your father forever and return to the brash world.

“Dad, it’s Charlie. I’ve got to go now. I’m heading back to Galway tomorrow, to organise our wedding party. I love you, Dad.”

As you rise out of your seat, your father suddenly grips your intermingled fingers, holding them tight to his.

You look straight away into his eyes, but they are still clamped shut.
Nothing stirs, yet he has heard you.

He Knew.

He has heard your words and knows you are there.
He continues to grip your hand with such force it slightly unsettles you.

Reaching across his body you plant a long, lingering and most loving kiss on his forehead.

He feels your lips on his skin.
He exhales.

His hand relaxes and lowers to his side.

©Charlie Adley

10.01. 2026

A tale of two Santas - and buckets of generosity!

2025-12-24T16:08:00.001+00:00

Many thanks to zazzle.co.uk

Snow fell onto the sodium-lit London street

That winter of '86 was so cold the water in the loo of my Rats Alley flat froze over. Our cracked toilet bowls lay dumped outside all the way down the narrow road.

Chris and I sat in my living room, staring at each other in silence for hours. We were hunched against those old plastic sofas, wrapped in blankets.

Broke.

Boracic and lint: skint, the pair of us, with only two days to go until Christmas.

“Hey Chas! You got any old whisky bottles?”

“Yeh, there’s two empties in the kitchen. Why?”

“Aha! Bring them to me, and get out that fan heater you hide in your bedroom. We’ll have a drink yet!”

Ten minutes later we were lying on our bellies, eyes at carpet level, watching whisky appear from nowhere.

Chris had stood the two empty bottles in front of the fan heater, which was running at full blast. The heat from the fan was hitting the cold glass, condensing the holy juice out of the bottle.

Where before there was nothing, we suddenly had a couple of inches of Christmas Cheer.

So we did.

“Yay! Nice work mate! Happy Christmas to you and your cunning ways! You’re a bloomin’ genius!”

The phone rang. It was my landlord, who owned the shop below my flat. He was sorry to ask at such short notice, but he wondered if I wanted to earn some cash? And did I know anyone else who needed some too?

Did I?

He explained that the shop owners of the street were looking for a couple of guys to stand outside the shops on the Golders Green Road, dressed as Santa Claus. They'd be collecting money for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

“Sure, yeh, 'course we can do that!” I told him, “But how can you pay us if we’re collecting for a charity? We wouldn’t stoop so low.”

He explained that our presence was going to attract punters to his shop, so it was worth it to him.

Well, fair enough. More than fair, but just one more thing. This was the most Jewish suburb in North London. How kindly were the locals going to take to Father Christmas?

“Well, he was Jewish, wasn’t he, their bloke?” came the inscrutable, irrefutable reply.

Yes, Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew. 1,986 years later, in the tiny back room of a shop in frozen London, Chris and I were falling about laughing as we tried on our costumes.

We were unsure if Santa was meant to be naked underneath his regalia, but the freezing air settled our minds on that issue.

Somehow, fitting the scarlet tights over our jeans felt more than a little Superman-ish, but the beard was another matter entirely.

It got up my nose, tickled my lips, and after a minute or two, returned to my schnozz the less-than delightful scent of the previous night’s Rogan Josh.

And so, out onto the streets, followed by a gaggle of giggling shop assistants.

“Cor! Look at those two sex bombs!”

“Yeh, don’t fancy yours much!”

We asked the boss if it wasn’t a little excessive having two Santas out there, but once again, his answer was beyond reason.

“Most places they only get one, so in Golders Green, they get two!”

Chris and I started to shake our buckets, trying to catch a generous eye. People were ready and eager to give. Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital was a cause that crossed the barriers of race and religion, although I felt saddened to treat a hospital like a charity.

We'd been provided with bags of lollipops, for any sweet little kiddies who came up to us.

Unfortunately, (or maybe most fortunately) children are trained to stay away from strange men bearing candy. The combination of my costume, and the ultra-deep voice I adopted for my role seemed to scare the hell out of the wee darlings.

All it took was “Hellow lickle girlie! Do you want a lollipop?” and I was instant pervert, children scurrying away to hide behind their parents, safe from the nasty red man.

Suddenly, off in the distance, we heard a bustling commotion. Two police cars were creeping slowly down the street, followed by a massive demonstration by Hassidic Jews, they who sport the long hair curls, blue raincoats and big floppy velvet hats.

Hundreds of them were marching down the Golders Green Road, carrying placards written in Hebrew. Chris and I stepped back to watch this strangest of sights unfold, and then all of a sudden, it dawned on me that each and every one of them was a potential punter.

Leaping into the fray, I frantically shook my collection bucket. Each side of me, every which way, hats, raincoats and beards glided past, the marchers temporarily blinded by my flash of scarlet ripple in their river of dark blue.

I was sorely tempted to savour the feeling of being inside a roll of Pathé News film, but there was work to be done.

“Cough up for the kiddies! Great Ormond Street Hospital needs your help! Dig deep!’”

Dig they did. Hands reached into pockets, coppers started flying into the bucket, followed by silver coins and then notes.

To my left wallets were opened, to my right a passing beard, a glance of spectacles, everywhere hands putting notes into the bucket: fivers, tenners, twenties.

It was wonderful to stand there and see them give wads of cash; enough to bring a tear to my eye.

There was no question of Old or New Testament here, just a river of raincoats on a mission from God.

Two full buckets, a happy shopkeeper, and two very merry Santas in the pub that Christmas Eve.

May your God be with you.

©Charlie Adley

22.12.2024

The Power of Christmas to bring Peace!

2025-12-23T13:39:00.001+00:00

http://www.caricatures-ireland.com/

Thanks to Allan Cavanagh for the perfect illustration.

British Expeditionary Force,
Friday December 25th, 1914.

My Dear Mater,
This will be the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent or likely to spend:since about tea time yesterday I don’t think there’s been a shot fired on either side up to now.

Last night turned a very clear frost moonlight night, so soon after dusk we had some decent fires going and had a few carols and songs.

The Germans commenced by placing lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us - wishing us a happy Christmas etc.

Some of our chaps went over to their lines.I think they’ve all come back, bar one from ‘E’ Company. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir.

There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as today we are all on top of our trenches running about.

Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans.

I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I’ve also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat.

They say they won’t fire tomorrow if we don’t so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps.

We can hardly believe that we’ve been firing at them.It all seems so strange.

With much love from Boy.

Strange indeed, how wonderful is the human spirit. We humans have hearts the size of harvest moons. Given the choice of killing strangers or having a meal with friends, the vast majority of us pick up knives and forks.

I always find the Christmas Day truce of 1914 exceptionally moving, as for once, a religious festival was used to encourage exactly what it stood for.

As an atheist of Jewish stock, I have always loved the Nativity story. Evidently God was showing in the strongest possible way that social status meant absolutely nothing; that true power lay in the heart, mind and spirit.

All that matters is to be a loving human being; to shake hands with your enemy, love your neighbour and turn the other cheek.

Christian ethics are an admirable and glorious collection, never better illustrated than by those good men who lifted themselves out of their hellish muddy disease-ridden trenches and played a game of footie with the lads from the other side.

Christmas as a child was a big affair in my Jewish home. My parents felt it was important for us all to feel a part of the country that had taken us in, and so, in our own way, we assimilated the English culture of Christmas and left out the religion.

We had presents and decorations. Indeed, on Christmas morning my Dad would crack open a bottle of champagne and declare ‘Happy Christmas!’, and none of us felt any less Jewish.

Didn’t we still light the Menorah candles and celebrate Hannukah?

Didn’t we eat hot salt beef sandwiches with sweet and sour cucumbers on Christmas Eve night, feeling completely Jewish and comfortable within ourselves?

All wisdom and worthy religious creed is based around acceptance, a word I strongely prefer to 'tolerance', which pumps with a negative vibe.

Even though I cannot stand the censorial excesses and puritan overtones of wokery, I’m going to risk being accused of just that when I say that, unlike lots of Irish folk, I actually like the “Happy Holidays!” thing.

Many of you believe that maniacal liberals demand the saying of “Happy Holidays!” so as to avoid offending non-Christian members of society, but they are wrong.

No Irish Muslim, Sikh or Jew will be offended by one Christian saying “Happy Christmas!” to another, but there are other religious festivals that occur at this time of year.

No immigrant is going to wait for an Irish Catholic to wish them a Happy Hannukah or Diwali, so why not cover all the religious bases, spread the love and keep everybody happy?

People shouldn't be protective of their own religious festivals to the detriment of others. It feels like grown-ups who never learned to share their toys.

“Happy Holidays!” does not preclude you celebrating your festival: it merely includes all of us who might be celebrating ours.

I'm thinking of the bravery, love and compassion shown by the lad who wrote that letter, back in the trenches.

A victim of a pointless and disgusting war, he and his equals on both sides found the true spirit of Christmas and made peace.

So please, as you celebrate this most important of feasts, give thanks to your God for all that you have, and love the fact that we are all beautifully different.

©CharlieAdley

17.12.25.

Christmas alone can be perfect!

2025-12-22T13:24:00.008+00:00

Another oldie from my Christmas archive. This one was written in 2002, when I lived in a farmhouse near Killala, Co. Mayo, and felt very happy to be spending Christmas on my own...

lifehack.org

It’s the look in their eyes that gets me. They’ve asked you what you’re doing for Christmas, and you’ve said you don’t know. You might go to friends, but you might just stay in and do it on your own.

Then comes the look. The staring down the nose dewey-eyed 'you-don’t-know-what-you’re-saying-you-poor-sad-loser' look.

Drives me crazy every time.

Of course it's tragic that some people will be lonely and alone on Christmas Day.

But the time has come for me to stand up and be counted, on behalf of the multitude out here who will be alone and doing just fine, thanks very much.

Well, I wanted to be counted but there’s just me, so I’ll do it myself: one.

One person who will wake up when he wants to on Christmas morning. It’s a special day, so I’ll make sure to leave a few cards and pressies to open, at my leisure, whilst lying in bed.

Then I’ll take a wonderfully peaceful walk along a deserted beach and return home to build a massive fire.

Once the coal is crackling and hissing in the hearth, I’ll phone my family back in London, and chat to my nieces, sister, brother and parents as the phone is passed around their living room. Once again, I’ll reassure my folks that I am fine and happy.

Time to have a little snifter. Crack open the Jameson 12, feel the dark chewy whiskey flowing all over my far-flung bodily bits, warming my heart while cheering my soul.

Now it really feels like Christmas: time to play some music. I’m partial to the Vienna Boys Choir on Christmas morning (I hear they speak very highly of me), but I might just be tempted by ‘The Chieftains - The Bells of Dublin’ Christmas album.

Shocking behaviour.

I’ll play my music as loud as I want to, very probably do a silly little dance and nobody will complain or mock my natural sense of rhythm.

Time to warm up the oven, but what does a man cook to eat on his own for Christmas dinner? Well, exactly whatever he feels like, to be eaten whenever he wants.

All I know for sure at this moment is that the meal will consist solely of the most magnificently self-indulgent ingredients.

Possibly a roast shank of lamb, larded with garlic, wrapped in rosemary and honey; crispy roast shpuds; steamed carrots and leeks; a braised onion and a sweet roasted parsnip.

Sound good?

Oh, you don’t care for lamb?

I don’t care.

I’m cooking for one.

Such a feast requires a splendid bottle of French red, perchance a velvet St Emillion Grand Cru of great depth and sublime body - much like myself!

As the smells of the roasting meat inveigle their way around the house, I’ll make a few more phone calls, spreading love and good wishes to my friends, scattered around the globe.

Then it’s out the door, and up to visit the landlord farmer and his wife, drop off a bottle of whiskey and a message of thanks to them for housing me in such a happy home.

Oh, and donkeys celebrate Christmas too, so the usual carrots are out, and today it’s nothing but biccies and Golden Delicious apples for my closest ‘neigh-bours’, Kitty and her foal Molly.

Even an atheist Jew such as myself can be a hoary old Christmas traditionalist, so I put the Christmas pud on the steamer and glaze my home-made mince pies, to be snarfed later with brandy butter.

Most important of all, I take the cheeses out of the fridge to let them breathe. A friend in West Yorkshire once described me as 'a pathetic slave to cheese.'

I took it as a compliment.

At Christmas it has to be stinky creamy Stilton on digestive biscuits, and a pungent nutty cheddar on oatcakes, washed down with a healthy dose of vintage port.

After the meal, a stroll down by the river, enjoying the unique tranquility of the day that’s in it, and back home to watch a movie.

As a child in England, there was comfort to be found in the Christmas morning Beatles film on the box, and in the afternoon the Beeb always used to run Bridge Over The River Kwai.

Some traditions are best left unwrapped, so to be on the safe side I’ll make sure to rent a couple of vids - one new release and one old fave ,something epic like Goodfellas or Dr. Zhivago.

By the time darkness has fallen on my solitary Christmas Day, I will have exercised twice, been well fed and over-watered, ready to snooze a while in front of the fire.

I will not be woken up by any upsetting family rows, or Uncle George needing urgent medical attention after overdoing the brandy.

After my snooze, there’ll be an energetic walk to the bathroom, followed by a decadent soak, and then a bit of a wash and brush up to see if I feel like visiting friends, or prefer simply to stare at the goggle box and drift off into my own private Yuletide nirvana.

How bad does that sound?

I will spend money I don’t have; eat and drink as if I were immortal; enjoy my own company, and enjoy feeling eager to step into the pub at noon on Stephen’s Day, to quaff pints of black, whilst listening to tales of woe from sad souls who had to endure the Christmas everyone else wanted.

Whether on your own or in the company of others, enjoy a peaceful happy Christmas, and whatever your faith, may your god go with you.

©Charlie Adley

17.12.2002

We Blame Dumbo the Elephant!

2025-12-21T10:06:00.001+00:00

Alternative Christmas by the excellent Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

(All names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Decades before anyone had heard of burning bondholders, we burned the banker's lawn on Christmas morning.

I blame Dumbo.

Peter’s dad was a bigwig banker, whose friend had a timeshare cottage in Somerset. Clinging to the tatty shreds of youth and hedonism, our family of lifetime friends booked it for Christmas, and headed off to what we thought might be the Tudor-beamed thatch of our dreams, in a picturesque English country village.

The 'cottage' turned out to be a crushingly unremarkable suburban house, at the end of a cookie cutter cul-de-sac.

Bland and taste-free, it was white outside and wall-to-wall grey inside; nothing of character, history or colour.

Banker Daddy’s daughter Little Princess met us on arrival, and oh boy, she made sure we’d been warned.

“Look, like, this place has to be respected, like. Nothing bad must happen, okay? Rilly, now, because it’s just not on for one to damage other people’s homes, yah? And that goes for the garden too, okay? Daddy loves his lawn, yah? Super!”

She handed over the keys.

Loaded with drink and a wide range of nefarious recreationals, we crossed the threshold.

By Christmas morning domestic bliss had descended on the non-cottage. All of us, save for Sarah, were draped over chairs, sofas and each other, every eye sucked into the TV screen, where Dumbo’s mother was locked up in a cage.

The baddies claimed she was a mad dangerous animal. We knew she was a pure sweetheart of an elephant.

Sailing blissfully on oceans of mind-altering consumption, we allowed our emotions to undergo full Disney manipulation.

Poor baby Dumbo was losing his mum. Oh look, now he was putting his trunk through the bars of his mumma’s cage, and oh, so sad, look, Mummy and Baby Dumbo were linking trunks.

Sarah’s smiling face appeared around the door.

"Er guys - the kitchen’s on fire.

Collectively gone in the cerebrals, we ignored her as one.

"Oh cool!"

"Nice, nice!"

“Oh, poor lickel nellyphant’s mumma being taken away.!"

“Yeh, but it’ll be alright in the end.”

"No... er... guys, the KITCHEN is on FIRE!"

“Lovely! Be with you in a tick, sweetheart!"

Confronted by our overwhelmingly abject apathy, Sarah finally lost it.

"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire in the kitchen! Turn off the bloody TV you morons! There’s a FIRE IN THE KITCHEN!"

From under a cushion to my left I heard a distant quasi-Rasta voice bravely offer in whispering song:

“...there’s a fire in my kitchen, what am I gonna do!”

By the time we eventually got off our arses and made it into the kitchen, Sarah had rushed upstairs and was, rather superbly, dunking bath towels in water.

Flames were licking out of the oven, smoke billowing all over the place. It was dramatic and confusing.

Unable to drift becalmed, our feeble heads were suddenly tossed about on raging seas of impending disaster.

“Maybe we should we open the oven door and throw water in it?”

“Dunno. Think opening doors make fires get worse, dunnit?”

Immobilised by fear and mental incapacity, we stood at odd angles and frantically chewed our cuticles for a few minutes, hoping the bad scene might go away.

We ooo-ed, errr-ed and yelled “Don’t panic Captain Mainwaring!”, giggling like infants nicking cake mix behind Mummy’s back.

Sarah appeared with soaking towels, opened the oven door, and threw one over the flames in the roasting tin.

Gone.

Wow! Fire gone bye-byes!

We all stood and stared, while Sarah came to terms with saving the day.

Suddenly Paul spurred into action. Before any of us could stop him, he’d picked up the other towel and lifted the smouldering disaster of a dinner out of the oven, yelling:

“Open the front door!"

A man on a singular mission, he stormed out into the garden, carefully lowering the smoking dish down onto the velvet front lawn.

We all looked and verily, we knew this was not good.

Forget the smoke-stained kitchen. Black can be made white again. We could clean that damage, no problem.

But at some point, preferably as soon as possible, someone had to lift that dish.

All around, neighbours’ net curtains twitched in bourgeois ecstasy.

It had to be Paul. We tried not to laugh as he bent over the slightly-cooled dish.

As he lifted it, stuck to the tin’s underside, there also came up a layer of verdant turf, the exact size and shape of a large roasting pan.

In silence we stared down at the burnt hole below.

"Daddy loves his lawn!" offered some bright spark.

“Drink!” Sarah was inspired. “Drink! We need drink, lads! It’s Christmas Day! We need a drink!"

This time we all heard her, and I have to admit, from that moment on I remember nothing.

Not one wall-cleaning, oven-scrubbing moment.

A fine time was had by all, and that, my patient colyoomistas, is what I wish for you.

There really is no such thing as free beer!

2025-12-20T17:48:00.003+00:00

Artwork by the excellent caricatures-ireland.com

More than any other time of the year, when we sit around our dinner tables on Christmas Day, we are aware of who is there and who is not.

At the age of 17, having performed impressive acrobatics with my Yamaha 250, a saloon car, a ditch and a barbed wire fence, I spent six weeks in hospital, over Christmas and New Year.

My femur was snapped in two, which is no mean feat with thighs like mine, and my tibia had a crack or two as well. Bed-bound, with my leg in traction, I developed a bronchial chest infection after an emergency operation.

So every two seconds I coughed in hacking spasms, thus shaking my smashed leg, which was hung in a sling, supported by a metal pole they had driven through me, just below the knee.

Then came the discovery that orthopaedics is a brutal art. In our part of the ward, there were four beds and three bikers with broken bones.

To my left was Kev, who'd fallen off his sleek and mean Suzuki GT750.

Opposite us two was brick shithouse Yorkshireman Gary, ex-SAS, and mighty embarrassed, having survived several covert tours of duty in Northern Ireland, to admit to falling off a Honda 125.

Then Gary was told that because his bone had set at a bad angle, they would need to re-fracture it, to re-set it, so that he might walk again.

Wishing him luck, myself and Kev waited in hushed anticipation for just under three hours, when finally the big guy was wheeled back onto the ward, writhing in agony, swearing profusely.

“How’d it go, mate?”

“Yeh, Gaz, all sorted, is it, eh?”

Gary was a hard man who could really take pain. He’d already told us how he hated himself for flinching after being stabbed in a bar in Belfast, but now he was hurting so much, it took him an age to form words.

“ ...they couldn’t ... break the bloody ... bone, lads ... they banged me with hammers ... smashed and chipped with chisels ... jumped on my leg ... couldn’t re-fracture it....”

Kev looked at me and then we both looked at Gary.

“But but but mate, you’ve been gone for two and a half hours! They can’t have been trying to break your leg for two and a half bloody hours!?!”

“Aye, but that’s what they did, lads. They tried, but it wouldn’t break. So I’m a bit sore now, like!”

So no, a fine and precise art it is not, but compared to the other patients in the hospital the three of us were well off.

We were not sick. We had all had our operations, and apart from antibiotics for wounds, and pain killers for broken bones, we needed very little medical attention.

We were young, male and bored, and allowed to drink beer.

Naturally, we tried to attract the attention of the student nurses as much as possible, and equally, they were happy to have a bit of a laugh with lads who were not ill, physically, at least!

By the time Christmas came around, the three of us were well aquatinted with all the student nurses, and then we were told we would be allowed to drink spirits during the Christmas period.

So we did.

We got plastered, if you’ll pardon the pun, and so did the student nurses. We told them that by having a tipple or three with us they were really doing their jobs, because they were helping us through a difficult time.

On Christmas morning, the Consultant Surgeons came around the wards, carving the turkeys at our besides, and general merriment was had by all.

Karen, my favourite student nurse, had had a lickle ickle bit too much to drink. She pulled the curtains around my bed, produced a half bottle of vodka from under her skirt, and taking some lemonade and a clean specimen bottle from my bedside cabinet, mixed us up a festive cocktail, after which she gave me a lovely snog, and left me feeling a million dollars.

Looking back now, I think how wonderful she was, because not only was I away from my family Christmas table, but so was she.

After the Christmas pud, we were all wheeled out of the ward in our beds, and taken to a large and crowded area, where the staff were putting on a Panto for the patients.

Gary’s wife, (a woman of such substantial proportions and brooding menace that she clearly put the fear of god into our man of iron) had turned up with several cases of brown ale, and so we sat up in our beds, enjoying the show, drinking frothing foaming pints of beer from plastic glasses.

Half way through the performance, I realised I needed to pee. I’d done precious little but drink all day, and now I really really needed to go, all of a sudden, with the fiercely demanding urgency of someone who knows that he cannot go.

There was no way I could ask anybody to wheel me to the loo. To get me and my bed out of that area would have meant interrupting the show, and causing a kerfuffle that would spoil everything for everybody.

So I did all I could do.

Uttlerly failing to understand Archimedes' Principle of Liquid Volume Displacement, I figured I'd drunk just under a pint of beer, so I should refill my glass to the same volume.

To my drunky head it made perfect mathematical sense.

Reaching out of my bed, I placed the foaming frothing pint onto a shelf, and watched the rest of the show, making a mental note to remember to pick it up afterwards and dispose of it myself.

Trouble was, when the lights went up, it was no longer there, and to this day I do not know whether some unfortunate alcoholic scrumper thought his luck was in.

Free beer! Whoopee!

Best not think about that too long.

But on Christmas Day, please, let’s all for a minute think of those who have given up their day to work: to serve us with safety in our homes, at sea and overseas; those who comfort and care, and those who volunteer to help others without a home to go to.

If you spare them a thought and give thanks, you won’t be far off pleasing whichever God you might worship!

Happy Christmas, Diwali, Hannukah and Solstice, and may your God go with you.

17.12.25.

She’s nothing but a great hinge!

2025-11-23T12:03:00.001+00:00

All over the world there are billions and billions of hinges that we never think about. They exist and operate in perfect silence.

Then there is the rusty hinge. We cannot ignore the rusty hinge. It drives us demented, creaking and groaning with weary metallic sighs each time the door is opened and closed.

The rusty hinge fills our minds until we can think of nothing else. It gives hinges a bad name. We focus on it, obsess about it, just as we ignore its trillion perfect cousins.

I park outside the little shop in a North Mayo seaside village. Inside, the woman behind the counter has her back to me as she chops some onions for sandwiches.

Not wanting to give her a shock, as she has a knife in her hands, I wait until she senses my presence, which precipitates her subsequent flood of apologies that I rebuff as kind yet utterly unnecessary.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, actually, I’m looking for the Community Gardens. You wouldn’t happen to know where they are, would you?”

“Follow me.”

We head to the back of the shop, where she stands on tiptoes as she battles with a long sliding latch. Bit by bit she manages to ease it across. The door opens and there, stretching out in front of me is the Community Garden.

“Well, I really hit the jackpot, didn’t I!”

“You did, now.”

“Thanks so much !” I say as I wander off to explore the impressive efforts of the local crew.

The morning temperature is only 2°C, but the northerly wind chills it to way below freezing, so I’m surprised and a little concerned to find as I return that she has left to door open, to allow me back into the shop.

I close the door behind me, and slide the latches, amazed at the tacit kindness and generosity of the woman.

Back at the counter I thank her profusely for leaving the door open, as the cold wind has robbed her shop of all the warmth it held when I arrived. She waves her hand to dismiss the notion that she has been in any way inconvenienced.

I offer her my hand to shake.

“I’m Charlie, and there’s a bunch of us looking into starting a Community Garden in Killala. I was told yours was impressive and that it is. Had no idea it was out the back of the shop, though. Dead lucky there, wasn’t I! Thanks so much for letting me have a look.”

She tells me her name and the name of the other woman working behind the Post Office window. She shakes my hand and then she wishes me luck with my endeavours.

I leave the shop having bought nothing, but gained so much. The woman had asked me nothing about my mission or motives. She just let me out the back to prowl unfettered, and left the door open despite the freezing morning.

“Another beautiful hinge!” I say out loud to myself, as I get back into Joey SX and drive home.

Between the ages of 15 and 35 I hitch-hiked over 100,000 miles. As a teenager I hitched back from school, to the pub, to my girlfriend’s, and each summer I took the ferry to France and hitched around Europe and the Middle East.

In my early 20s I hitched in the USA, New Zealand and Australia, and then four years later went back and did it all again. I hitched just about every inch of the UK’s extensive motorway network, getting to know the best junctions and Service Stations so that I travelled faster than Public Transport.

When I arrived in Ireland back in 1992 I was delighted to find a fabulous hitching country, and explored the west coast from Cork to Donegal with my thumb and the generosity of others.

Somewhere along the way - I cannot remember where or when - a driver shared with me the theory of the Rusty Hinge, which perfectly matched my own experience of people.

All over the world I met thousands of fantastic people. I enjoyed a special and sometimes intense one-to-one conversation with every type of human, save for the ones who don’t stop for hitchers.

That doesn’t make them rusty hinges. I don’t blame them for not stopping. Why should they?

Countless times I was invited to stay the night at a driver’s home. Often an onward lift had been arranged for me by the time I awoke the next day. I was driven, housed, fed and watered, and in the process got to know and better understand the people of each different country in a unique way that guided tourists cannot.

The vital truth I gleaned from those years of travels is that people are good. Old young rich poor: doesn’t matter. After all my years on the road I recall only one bad lift, in a Jag in the middle of the night on a German Autobahn, with a man who behaved in a sexually predatory way, but he was my only rusty hinge.

With a rusty hinge in the White House and another in Moscow making all sorts of grating and offensive noises, it’s so easy to think of the human race as a bad bunch, but we are not.

When times are hard we might need some spiritual WD40, in the shape of hugs and care. Although we are incredibly different and hold opposing views on everything, we are all good hinges, getting on with our lives in fairly gentle, inoffensive and efficient ways.

For that, and for my awareness of that, I give thanks.