least?’ Turns out to be Chico, one of the boys in the band, all on for the dance. ‘Let’s rock,’ he says. ‘I’m fed up moping and brooding about Banbridge.’
So off we went to Oldcastle. We had a couple of spliffs in the car park and a few pints in a pub on the way, then fell into the dancehall, and who does Chico run into? Only this mad fan who never missed a Mohawk gig. Goes white she does. ‘I can’t believe it’s you, the drummer out of my favourite band. I just cannot believe my eyes.’
‘Well, believe them, baby,’ says Chico, and gives me the wink and that was the last I saw of him. Off he sweeps into the crowd as I went backstage to have a word with the guitarist, asking him to play our song. ‘No problem!’ he says, so, man, was I happy camper then. All I had to do was sit there and wait for those first few opening bars: ‘
I’m not in love, so don’t forget it, it’s just a silly phase I’m going through,’
that floaty feeling coursing through you the very same as when you’d find yourself dreaming about being inside Mona’s stomach all those years before, a tiny little baby sucking its thumb, in the original Karma Cave.
Against the odds, it had turned out to be a beautiful night, with all the windows thrown open and the warm air coming drifting right into the hall, the hippie chicks from Dublin hanging out in front of the stage, the Oldcastle headbangers pogoing up and down the maple floor. And as I waited for the song I don’t suppose I was in that dancehall in Oldcastle, Co. Meath, or anywhere fucking near it, tell you the God’s honest truth. For already I was halfway there, in the Karma Cave, where the only sound you can hear is the plinking of wind-chimes as cross-legged you sit,
Siddhartha
-style, three fingers touching your thumbs as you chant your mantra. The purple smoke of the incense writhing as yet another layer is dispensed with, bringing you ever closer towards that final goal, the unmasking of ‘the illusion of personality’, which, according to Hermann Hesse, had cost India thousands of years of effort …
I couldn’t believe it when I looked up and saw Boyle Henry. He was standing right in front of me, grinning. There was a half-drunk womanhanging on his arm. I had never seen her before. Just then the first mellow chords of the song started up and my heart began to pound. Between that and him arriving — just out of nowhere — I became alarmed and wanted a spliff.
No! A pie
! I thought. And then:
No! No pies
!
‘It’s stupid,’ I said to myself.
Fuck him
! I thought.
Fuck him and her
!
‘
Well, well, well
! Would you look who it is! How are they hanging, Joey?’ he began as the guitarist adjusted the mike and announced: ‘This one’s specially for Joey from Scotsfield! Roadie with The Mohawks! Hope Boo Boo’s making a full recovery! Don’t let the bastards grind you down, lads, you hear?’
The woman’s eyes kept swivelling in her head, looking up at him every so often as if about to say: ‘I’ve managed to get off with Boyle Henry? It can’t be, no, it couldn’t be!’
He pulled a hip flask from his inside pocket and handed it to me.
‘Always good to see a fellow Scotsfield man,’ he said.
‘What’s that, Boyle?’ I said, and put the flask to my lips. Then the word ‘pies’ came into my head again. That was always the way it worked. Just when it seemed OK I’d get afraid it would start up again, and sure enough it did. I spilt some of the whiskey and it went dribbling down my front.
‘There’s some gone down your jacket,’ he pointed out, and laughed. I could see the guitarist trying to catch my eye.
‘What?’ I said. Boyle winked.
‘I
said
, it’s always good to see a fellow Scotsfield man!’ he said again, and gave the woman’s buttock a squeeze. I was bathed in sweat. You could fill a glass with it, I thought. Then, for no reason at all, I found myself thinking:
I would like to be somewhere else right now. In
So off we went to Oldcastle. We had a couple of spliffs in the car park and a few pints in a pub on the way, then fell into the dancehall, and who does Chico run into? Only this mad fan who never missed a Mohawk gig. Goes white she does. ‘I can’t believe it’s you, the drummer out of my favourite band. I just cannot believe my eyes.’
‘Well, believe them, baby,’ says Chico, and gives me the wink and that was the last I saw of him. Off he sweeps into the crowd as I went backstage to have a word with the guitarist, asking him to play our song. ‘No problem!’ he says, so, man, was I happy camper then. All I had to do was sit there and wait for those first few opening bars: ‘
I’m not in love, so don’t forget it, it’s just a silly phase I’m going through,’
that floaty feeling coursing through you the very same as when you’d find yourself dreaming about being inside Mona’s stomach all those years before, a tiny little baby sucking its thumb, in the original Karma Cave.
Against the odds, it had turned out to be a beautiful night, with all the windows thrown open and the warm air coming drifting right into the hall, the hippie chicks from Dublin hanging out in front of the stage, the Oldcastle headbangers pogoing up and down the maple floor. And as I waited for the song I don’t suppose I was in that dancehall in Oldcastle, Co. Meath, or anywhere fucking near it, tell you the God’s honest truth. For already I was halfway there, in the Karma Cave, where the only sound you can hear is the plinking of wind-chimes as cross-legged you sit,
Siddhartha
-style, three fingers touching your thumbs as you chant your mantra. The purple smoke of the incense writhing as yet another layer is dispensed with, bringing you ever closer towards that final goal, the unmasking of ‘the illusion of personality’, which, according to Hermann Hesse, had cost India thousands of years of effort …
I couldn’t believe it when I looked up and saw Boyle Henry. He was standing right in front of me, grinning. There was a half-drunk womanhanging on his arm. I had never seen her before. Just then the first mellow chords of the song started up and my heart began to pound. Between that and him arriving — just out of nowhere — I became alarmed and wanted a spliff.
No! A pie
! I thought. And then:
No! No pies
!
‘It’s stupid,’ I said to myself.
Fuck him
! I thought.
Fuck him and her
!
‘
Well, well, well
! Would you look who it is! How are they hanging, Joey?’ he began as the guitarist adjusted the mike and announced: ‘This one’s specially for Joey from Scotsfield! Roadie with The Mohawks! Hope Boo Boo’s making a full recovery! Don’t let the bastards grind you down, lads, you hear?’
The woman’s eyes kept swivelling in her head, looking up at him every so often as if about to say: ‘I’ve managed to get off with Boyle Henry? It can’t be, no, it couldn’t be!’
He pulled a hip flask from his inside pocket and handed it to me.
‘Always good to see a fellow Scotsfield man,’ he said.
‘What’s that, Boyle?’ I said, and put the flask to my lips. Then the word ‘pies’ came into my head again. That was always the way it worked. Just when it seemed OK I’d get afraid it would start up again, and sure enough it did. I spilt some of the whiskey and it went dribbling down my front.
‘There’s some gone down your jacket,’ he pointed out, and laughed. I could see the guitarist trying to catch my eye.
‘What?’ I said. Boyle winked.
‘I
said
, it’s always good to see a fellow Scotsfield man!’ he said again, and gave the woman’s buttock a squeeze. I was bathed in sweat. You could fill a glass with it, I thought. Then, for no reason at all, I found myself thinking:
I would like to be somewhere else right now. In
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