“I wish it was the sixties
I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish
I wish that something would happen
I wanna live and breathe
I wanna be part of the human race
I wanna live and breathe
I wanna be part of the human race, race, race, race
Where do we go from here
The words are coming out all weird
Where are you now when I need you?”
Selway / Greenwood/ Greenwood/ Yorke / O’Brien
There are lots of things that I do not react well to, such as weak tea, Matlock, camping in a tent, Shiraz, being wrong, salt and vinegar crisps, hypocrites, darts, deadlines , injustice, speed trap vans, Coors, well intentioned books about cancer, money, barbeques, companies that hide their phone numbers, pettiness, t-shirts that shrink, GAA clubs from Tyrone and Cavan calling to the house after 9pm selling raffle tickets, negativity, finance, the French Rugby team being sore winners, lazy journalism, right wingers, craft beer, Ticketmaster, the 1925 Boundary Commission, slacks, AI, Castleblayney, and growing up.
But what I react to worst of all is pressure.
I have a dreadful habit of internalising things and this becomes it’s own pressure. In that pressurised state everything that is not solving the original thing, is simply adding to the pressure. And I mean everything. Someone asks an innocent question, pressure. Someone texts, pressure. Tuna looks for second breakfast, pressure. The news, pressure. Jokes about the news, pressure. Ireland losing at home to France, pressure. Trying to speak to a human in a broadband provider, pressure. Trying to remember an old password, pressure. Realising you’re under pressure, pressure. Knowing that you’re an idiot, pressure. Trying to do something about it, pressure.
And then….
One weekend in the summer of 1981 , when I was 14, my Aunty Margaret was visiting Mam, and they were heading out somewhere for the afternoon, and I was asked to keep an eye on the pressure cooker in the kitchen which was steaming potatoes. Mam was carefully explaining that when the little plastic bit at the top had risen to the second mark above the little lead weight thing that I was to switch off the heat, let it cool down and then place the whole thing in the sink, run cold water over it, and then twist the lid past the catch and just let it rest. But my friend Adrian was there and we were trying to watch something on the tv, so I just said ‘Yes’ and nodded a lot. I’d seen her use the pressure cooker a bajillion times , so I knew how to use it.
At some point after she’d left we heard a very loud thud and ran to the kitchen , which was full of steam. I opened the windows and as some steam cleared I saw the hole in the ceiling above the cooker, which the lead weight had made when it flew off in disgust at being ignored. Adrian and I looked at each other in horror and then I said out loud “Ah fuck ! The potatoes will be ruined !” and then half remembering my instructions, I lifted the pressure cooker into the sink and ran the cold tap over it for a whole 5 seconds before turning it off and immediately twisting the lid to release the catch. There were four immediate and almost concurrent loud bangs. The first was the POP of the lid escaping the catch, the second was the blast of steaming mushed potatoes hitting us in the face, third was the lid of the pressure cooker hitting the ceiling and making another larger hole, and the fourth was the lid clattering back down into the sink. Adrian had been slightly behind me , so it was his arm, sleeve, shoulder and top of his head that were covered in potato. We were both in shock. When that subsided my face started to sting. I raced down to the bathroom and started to splash water on it. It stung more and more. The only relief I got was walking quickly up and down the hall, shouting “Oh my God ! Oh my God!” over and over again. Adrian ran next door to get Mrs.Turley, who was a retired nurse, but Mam and Aunty Margaret arrived home before she did. I don’t remember Mam saying anything to me except “Get in the car , now !”, and then we were in Dr.Duffy’s and Mam was explaining what had happened, and Dr.Duffy, after quickly examining me and removing the now crusty bits of potato under my chin that I’d missed, started to smile and tried not to laugh. He assured me that I’d live, and that there were likely to be blisters for a number of weeks, but after that new skin would form and I’d be right as rain.
Mam blamed herself for leaving me in charge, which made me feel worse, but we were laughing about it by the following day. I do remember a few days afterwards going to mass in the Cathedral and kids in the row in front looking back very shyly and nudging their brothers and sisters to look back, and then as the mass went on simply kneeling on the back of their seats staring at me and my bubbly blistered face. Their mother noticed that they were facing the wrong way and tugged at them to behave and then looked around herself and said “JESUS CHRIST !” a lot louder than she’d meant to, and then immediately whispered a mortified ‘Sorry’ to my mother.
By the time school started in September I still looked a permanent embarrassed bright pink, and having made the mistake of telling David Smyth what had happened , was called Tefal for a few weeks.
That’s what happens when you let pressure build, it eventually explodes and punctures and burns.
Releasing it too fast isn’t great either. That’s how you get the bends. It bubbles into the wrong place and causes a different havoc.
Ideally you’d talk calmly to someone about it. I’d love to learn how to do that.
As I’m writing this it’s late on Thursday, March 13th 2025, and 30 years ago today Radiohead released ‘The Bends’ album. This was the quintessential ‘difficult’ second album. Their first single ‘Creep’ had been a big hit in America and their record label , EMI, were pressurising them to have more songs exactly like that. The pressure became so intense that each member of the band individually sought legal advice on getting out of their contract. They moved to studios in Oxford, London , and back and forth. Nothing was gelling. Deadlines passed, producers changed, and then in the middle of their Mexican tour everything exploded.
“Years of tension and not saying anything to each other, and basically all the things that had built up since we’d met each other, all came out in one day. We were spitting and fighting and crying and saying all the things that you don’t want to talk about. It completely changed and we went back and did the album and it all made sense.” Yorke recalled.
They made a classic. At least, in hindsight it was a classic. Initially their American distributor refused to release it at all as they couldn’t find a single from it. Bozos !
I met Thom Yorke and the band at the after party for their gig in the Millenium Dome in London after they’d signed to XL Recordings, where my friend Ronan worked. Ronan and I loved Radiohead. Unfortunately my brother Stephen was with us and he would always say whenever the topic of Radiohead came up “Oh, are they still playing ‘that’ song ?”
At the after party I’d nodded and smiled at Thom on my way through the smoking area to the toilet and he’d smiled and said ‘Hello’. I imagine he thought he should know me from somewhere if I was at his party. In the toilet I’d thought up something witty to say on my way back and as I approached him I smiled, he smiled and I opened my mouth to speak when I was clapped on the back by Stephen who looked dismissively at Yorke and said “ Howya T-Hom !” saying his name as two words and laughing to himself and then grabbing my arm and shouting “C’mon, Heston Blumethal’s over here with Ronan and I’ve been showing him pictures of Sarah’s cakes.”
I blame our Stephen for the fact that Thom and I aren’t friends.
True story.
Today my pressure dissipated a little, then a little more.
I went for a run in Rossmore with Ray. I told him about The Righteous Gemstones , which I’m thoroughly enjoying, he told me about the horror film , The Monkey, which I will never ever watch. We discovered a new ancient wall along a path we’d run along countless times and never noticed before as it had been overgrown, and a fallen tree in the recent storm had knocked some of it over. And then , in a moment of magic, we ran past a person who we seem to encounter somewhere on our runs on almost every occasion and who never acknowledges us, but we always raise a hand in greeting and say hello anyway. And today, for the very first time he waved back.
Moments like that are my therapy.
Be kind to each other.
We’re all under a little pressure.
Remember that somewhere , someone just thought of you and smiled.
Stop making weak tea !
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. For those who wear us out …
