“I talk to the face in the mirror
But he can’t get through
I said, “It’s time that you deliver
We see through you”
I talk to the face in the mirror
But he can’t get through
Turns out we’re in this together
Both me and you”
- Greenwood/Godrich/Yorke/Skinner
Many, many, many years ago , ( 1985), when I worked in Mullan Mill while it still made boots, I somehow ended up on a course being run by the Irish Productivity Centre in that Dublin. The course was held for one day a week in Dublin for 12 weeks and every second week a mentor would visit your place of work. The ultimate goal was to come up with a 5 year plan for your respective business.
I think my plan basically suggested that we shouldn’t be making boots in Monaghan , we should be making sneakers which looked suspiciously like Converse All Stars. This got the reception you’d expect and, like every single 5 year business plan ever ever, it ended up in a drawer and was never ever ever looked at again.
But towards the end of the course the lovely IPC people asked us to arrange to stay overnight in Dublin on the last day as they were taking us to the Irish Cabaret in the Burlington Hotel.
This was very exciting to a boy from Monaghan. I’d been to a few functions in Monaghan’s Westenra , the Hillgrove Hotel and the ‘Not In Anyway Affiliated With The Real Four Seasons’ Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan, but to see inside the Burlington, where the movie stars stayed ? Where the All Ireland winning teams stayed ? Where the likes of me wouldn’t dare darken their door ???
And a cabaret, old chum ? Liza Minnelli type characters in lingerie and bowler hats sitting the wrong way round on chairs flooded my imagination.
When we arrived , there was a champagne reception and then we were called in to take our table for dinner. I was going to sit on a seat that Muhammed Ali , John Wayne and possibly a Beatle had sat on…or at least a similar one. We snaked our way past other tables where other people were already seated and tucking into something exotic, which turned out to be melon wedges and a cherry, the height of 1980’s sophistication.
And then just before we were seated I saw the chair I was to sit on. It was exactly the same as the ones I’d sat on in Monaghan’s Westenra, the Hillgrove Hotel and the ‘Not In Anyway Affiliated With The Real Four Seasons’ Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan. I looked at the chair beside mine, and then the other side, in case there was a bizarre joke being performed at my expense, and was doubly disappointed to see that they were all the same. And then , as if that wasn’t bad enough, the cabaret started. It was the most diddelyeye of diddeleye ‘Top of the mornin’ begorrah and ‘is it yourself’ shite it’s ever been my misfortune to see….and I’ve seen a fair amount !
I’d travelled all the way to Dublin to visit the Burlington Hotel , the most famous hostelry in Ireland and it , and that damned chair, was just the same as Monaghan’s Westenra, the Hillgrove Hotel and the ‘Not In Anyway Affiliated With The Real Four Seasons’ Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan.
I’d look behind the curtain and promptly wished I hadn’t.
The dream, or imagined reality was much better.
There are countless other examples , the time Lilo Lil from Bread stayed with us in Dublin, going to a Radiohead after party in London, getting into the VIP area in The Pod, having a Kobe beef steak in a 4 star Michelin sushi restaurant in Las Vegas.
And then there are times when nothing is expected , and everything turns out spectacular.
Titanic, the movie, not the boat. I would happily have lived to be a 100 years old without having seen it. And yet when my Soulmate and I went to see it in the cinema I was completely absorbed by the story and bawled my eyes out when little Leo let go. Six months later we bought the video… and I bawled my eyes out when little Leo let go.
Married life. We lived together, owned a house together, why get married ? And yet when I boomed ‘I DO !’ and suppressed a ‘Woohoo !’in St.Dympna’s church , Tydavnet, on April 5th 1997 , nothing was ever the same again. There has been a wee sprinkle of extra special space dust glittering all around us ever since.
In writing this I’ve come to the stark realisation that a chair is a chair, and that there was nothing wrong with the Burlo’s seating at all, it’s just that I , perhaps, hadn’t appreciated, or had taken for granted that Monaghan’s Westenra, the Hillgrove Hotel and the ‘Not In Anyway Affiliated With The Real Four Seasons’ Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan’s chairs wouldn’t be as good, when in fact they were.
I’ve also realised that I may have gone down a rabbit hole of analogies … but come here to me, did I ever tell you about the time that Lillo Lil from Bread stayed with us in Dublin ???
Take nothing for granted.
Especially yourself.
Love you all !
Toodles,
Paul
