“Let us go now
My darling companion
Set out for the distant skies
See the sun
See it rising
See it rising
Rising in your eyes”
Nick Cave
My cousin Cormac was infamous in our house for his love of sausages. When he finished college he worked with us for a while and lived with Mum and Dad. My mother is an accomplished cook and for the first week of Cormac’s residency served a different home cooked meal each evening which Cormac would push around his plate until Mam asked if he’d like something else.
“Do you have any sausages?”
“Yes.”
“Sausages please.”
Mam made him sausages and he merrily emptied a bottle of Heinz ketchup over them and devoured the lot. Dad was pleased initially, as he too liked sausages, but smothered his in a vile remnant of the British Empire…brown sauce.
After two weeks Dad was exasperated by Cormac’s dedication to sausages and tried to gently cajole him into eating something else.
“What age are you?”
“You’ll turn into a sausage!”
“Stop eating feckin’ sausages!”
This subtle approach failed to make any difference, so Dad started having his tea in a different room watching recordings of horse races and muttering about the amount of ketchup Mam was buying. In the olden days when we were kids and brown sauce came in glass bottles, when they were nearly finished and it was hard to dislodge the stubborn bits at the bottom, Dad would add some boiling hot water and shake it about a bit and then pour watery sludge on our plates. He thought squeezable bottles were the ruination of Western Civilisation.
My brothers and I loved Cormac. He was a great help to our John at work, he was enjoyable company, and we didn’t mind his sausage obsession at all. It was his drinking we had an issue with. Even though it was 20 years ago it still embarrasses us to recall that Cormac….drank Budweiser. We were mortified.
But we’re a forgiving family, so we only mention it once or twice each time we meet him now.
Up until recently Cormac’s most redeeming feature has been his family. Aunty Margaret, Mam’s giddy sister, who delights in telling everyone I introduce her to, even now, that she used to change my nappy, has always been there for me, subtly and kindly, Uncle Chris’ smiling stoicism, and Fiona, Niamh, and Maire, my cousins/sisters.
Cormac’s second most redeeming feature is his friends. Our Gerry was originally Cormac’s Gerry, and we will all be eternally grateful that Cormac lets us have a lend of him. Gerry is like alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of our problems. I’ve only been fortunate a couple of times to meet Eamonn, but each time has been like bumping into an old friend, and Ambrose…well Ambrose is wonderfully Ambrose, and please God, always will be.
“Dime, con quien andas, dezirte he quien eres.”
The quote is from Miguel de Cervantes’ classic, Don Quixote, and translates properly as “Tell me your company, and I will tell you what you are.” Translated via Google, it comes out as:
“Tell me who are you with, tell me who you are.”
This brings us to Victoria, who is now, quite literally, Cormac’s better half.
Last weekend My Soulmate, my Mam and Dad and I travelled to Salamanca to attend the wedding of Victoria and Cormac. The whole Duffy clan were there, and we met our other wonderful Dundalk cousins, the Burns and Uncle Johnny on the flight over. When I was born In Dundalk we lived on Market St., and Uncle Johnny and Aunty Anne owned the shop on the corner of Chapel St, six doors away. I got my first job, aged four, putting empty mineral bottles in crates for return out the back of the shop and Johnny loves telling everyone that I went into him after filling the first crate and asked for my wages. I spent a lot of time in the shop, filling the cigarette machine and eating cream donuts. Uncle Johnny was a great influence on me, so much so that when, aged 5, Mam asked me after dinner where my plate was and I said “In the fucking sink!” she marched me up the street by the ear to remonstrate with Johnny. He could barely contain his laughter, and winking at me behind her back, famously said “For fuck’s sake Kathleen, I don’t curse!”.
I was a page boy at Aunty Anne’s and Uncle Johnny’s wedding. We miss her.
And Uncle Johnny never paid me for that page boy gig.
The Duffy’s were already in Salamanca, the Burns were going Fancy Dan style via Uber, but we had opted for our own car hire. This got off to a great start when I went to the wrong side of the car to drive. Using Google maps on my phone and having three co-pilots, we bravely set off for Salamanca, and made it there unscathed by 3pm having traversed the only road system in the world with more roundabouts than Monaghan.
In the hotel we met Cormac and Victoria and an even giddier than usual Aunty Margaret. I hugged Victoria and whispered to her that it’s never too late to change your mind and that the family would understand. Plans were made to meet in the old town with all of the wedding guests at 9pm, and we went for a siesta. Mam and Dad, Eileen and I went into town early to catch the end of the Spain v France Euros semi-final. We sat outside a bar near a tv screen, ordered beers, and smiled and nodded politely along with an elderly Spanish gentleman who stood beside me and clapped me on the shoulder and explained excitedly something every time a Spanish player touched the ball. We could hear a roar from the next square and wondered what had happened, then there was a roar from the bar next door and eventually Spain scored on our television. There was a time delay between different channels. We celebrated the goal, and the win with our new elderly Spanish friend then we left to join the wedding guests.
We met the rest of the Duffy family, all of the Burns, Aunty Margaret’s oldest friend Briege, who, it transpired, had also changed my nappy, Victoria’s family, Gerry, Eamonn and Ambrose. We caught up with everyone and left them to it, heading home first.
We had breakfast in the hotel the next morning where they had a huge Nutella pump which I used liberally and often.
We drove into town and wandered around the University, library, old streets before ending up at the Cathedral. Mam and I share a love of old things, like museums, art galleries, and Dad. We were in our element strolling around the cathedral, listening to our audio guides. We ended up spending three hours there, and exiting through the gift shop, we saw the Casa de Lis house/art deco museum, and said we’d visit it tomorrow. There may have been some eye-rolling from Dad, but he was outnumbered.
We’d planned to have another siesta, but lunch with the Burns was such great craic that we’d only left ourselves an hour to get ready for the wedding itself. Luckily it was in the garden of the hotel, so we made it in time.
It was a simply gorgeous day. The sun was beaming, all of the Spanish guests were standing under a giant cedar tree in the shade, all of the Irish guests were worshipping their long lost friend, the sun. The ceremony was conducted in Spanish and English. The Spanish bits seemed longer and more effusive than the English bits. One of the readings, read by Fiona, was Heany’s poem ‘Scaffolding’
“Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.”
I remember reading that poem for the first time in the Heany exhibition in the National Library, the whole exhibition is done beautifully, and I visit most times I visit Dublin, and always get dust in my eye at the end when it shows an image of a wall mural saying ‘Don’t be afraid’. When Heany was ill and shortly before he passed away, the last text he sent his wife was ‘Noli temere’ , don’t be afraid.
My Soulmate squeezed my hand and turned to look at me.
“Are you crying?”
“No, it’s just sunscreen in my eye…”
She squeezed my hand again.
The ceremony ended with a Celtic hand tying ceremony and there was a loud and sustained round of applause, cheering and petal throwing.
We sat in the garden for the next two hours, being served beer, wine, soft drinks, and copious amounts of razor thin slices of Guijuelo cured ham from Victoria’s father’s farm, all while being serenaded by a string quartet. We sat with Mam and Dad, and college friends of Uncle Chris, having weird and wonderful chats among ourselves and with all those who passed our table. Dad teased and chased Niamh’s kids, Mam was in her element meeting old friends, Eileen got compliments for her dress, and I gpt compliments for my shoes, Adidas XLG Superstars in bliss pink/ acid orange/ cloud white….I knew you were dying to ask.
We ventured inside for the meal which was preceded by the speeches, by Cormac, Victoria, and the irrepressible Ambrose. All were heartfelt, good humoured and when Cormac gave his, Victoria looked at him lovingly…as did Ambrose.
The meal itself was stunning, and accompanied with delightful wines and liquors of indeterminate provenance.
The music afterwards was provided by a DJ, who Cormac had given a playlist to, and which the DJ ignored, playing Spanish techno for the next 4 hours. But, in fairness, it got the whole crowd out dancing. The evening passed in a gentle blur of contentment. Everything seemed to be just as it was meant to be.
We were some of the first to retire at 2.00am, hugging Cormac and Victoria as we left and wishing them well.
I suffered at breakfast the next morning. Not due to overindulgence the night before, but because I’d told too many of the guests about the Nutella dispenser… it was empty and the long suffering staff told me it wouldn’t be replaced until Tuesday. But I put a brave face on it and had three tiny chocolate croissants…and then two more.
A few veterans of the night before made it down for breakfast as we were finishing. They’d finished up at 6.30am, reluctantly. There had been a sing song, with the cousins holding court with rousing, drunken rebel songs, and feeling quite smug with themselves, until one of Victoria’s friends, who it transpired is an opera singer, sang ‘Nessun Dorma’.
I asked Uncle Chris if he knew why there were pictures all around the town of a frog on a skull, and he said he wasn’t sure, but said we had to go and see the wee spaceman carved into the Cathedral doorway, and also the Casa del Muertes, the House of Death. So we did.
The frog is actually a toad and sits on a skull carved above the doorway of the university, In a grand façade, Puerta de Salamanca. It’s tiny, and sits amid hundreds of other ornate carvings, but has intrigued people since it was made. Some say it’s lucky to be the first in a group to spot it, and others say that it’s very unlucky to be the first of a group of four to spot it, so I waited for Dad to point it out to us. People say it represents the doctor, Parra, who tried to save the life of Prince Juan, but failed. Some say it simply represents a symbol of life after death connected to the apocryphal gospel, The Vision of Paul, but the really clever ones know that it’s connected to Marie de France’s L’Espurgatoire Seint Patriz – The Legend Of The Purgatory of St.Patrick, a 12th century poem connected to the Gates of hell in Lough Derg.
We then went and found the Spaceman in the Cathedral, before dragging Dad to the absolutely gorgeous Casa de Lis, a Belle Epoque art-deco masterpiece of stained glass and effortless cool. We took a lovely group selfie, incorporating the stained glass roof, before being roared at by the security guard “NO FOTO !!!”.
We went back to the hotel for lunch where we met the revellers who were having their brunch. Some people were getting ready to leave, so we seemed to spend the next hour hugging cousins and promising not to leave it so long to catch up again.
We then had a siesta. I do love a siesta.
We went back into town to meet up with the survivors of the night before in the Playa Mayor, an ornate square with open air tapas bars and restaurants on all sides and an orchestra playing in the middle.
It was beautiful, we were in great company, and I felt sad.
It was almost over.
It had been wonderful, and now it was coming to an end.
My cousin Fiona noticed.
“C’mon, I know what’ll cheer you up.”
We left and walked a couple of streets to a shop which had a large life size plastic Friesian cow outside.
“There.” Fiona said.
“We’re surrounded by real ones at home.”
“This one has a bell.” She said.
“So ”
“Ring it!”
I looked around. The street was busy with people ambling about.
“No.”
“Go on.” My Soulmate chimed in.
“Alright!”
I rang the cow bell.
It was stupid, silly, childish.
I rang it again.
And again.
“That’s enough.” Fiona said, smiling.
It was.
The whole weekend was just enough.
Enough to remind us all of what’s important, who is important.
Enough to keep us going until the next time.
“Tell me who are you with, tell me who you are.”
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is the gorgeous Distant Sky, by Nick Cave, for the gorgeous Victoria….and Cormac.
