“Baby, let me wash your feet forever
Baby, you can stay at my house forever and ever
Baby, let me dance away
Let me dance away forever”
Green/Winter/Bassin/Digesu
Saturday morning , 7.00am, the alarm doesn’t ring, as we’ve been awake for a few minutes already. My Soulmate and I are due to do a 10k training run and in order to have a relatively normal Saturday, we have opted to go out early and have it done before helping out at our Monaghan Town Parkrun , the most “gorgeousist” and friendly Parkrun in the known Universe.
We get up and stumble about , I make a cup of tea, yawn a lot and let Tuna in who whines at me until I feed her. I have a slice of toast and lazily tie the laces of my runners. I start to wonder where my Soulmate has got to and spot her through the kitchen window sitting in the car.
Out in the Park we saunter around Danny Murphy’s ultra runner route, up the Castle hill, down to the Yew Tree walk, up towards Lady Rossmore’s cottage, turn left before the Cootehill Road gate, go up a hill, and another hill, turn right through the old paintball battlefield, turn left down the hill, on to the lane, up Murray’s Street, turn right, follow the Big ‘C’, turn right at the stone circle, right again down past the Twin Lakes, up the wee hill, turn left up the Big Hill, and arrive back at the main gate…and add a bit more, making us ultra-ultra runners.
My Soulmate skips off then to meet someone for coffee and I change into grumpy , baggy, ‘Look AT Me I’ve Been Running’ tracky bottoms and top and mope my way over to the starting line for this week’s Parkrun. I had hoped to have a stationary role, handing out tokens, but my Evil Goddottir , Eimear, and her partner Paul have arrived from Belfast and ask if we can all walk the route together. I start to introduce her to various people and everyone interrupts me to say “We recognise her from your blog and your very rare and discerning posts on ALL the social media sites. We know she’s your Evil Goddottir !”. I am quietly proud.
We sauntered around the Parkrun route chatting about where Eimear was working and where Paul wasn’t, wishing runners well as they lapped us, and then gathering up the Parkrun signs on our second lap. We then went for coffee with Gareth & Angie, Brenda, Dominic, AnnMarie, Declan & Eleanor at the CoffeeDoc where we talked about lots of things that Eimear and Paul had absolutely no point of reference for.
We all split up then to do Saturday things. Eimear and Paul , went off to visit other cousins and Uncles and Aunties, while I went into the old Fire Station to sort out props, costumes and general debris for this year’s ‘Haunting’ in Rossmore. I arrive to find Bren with her sleeves rolled up directing 10 other volunteers about where to put what. These were very simple instructions “Take everything out, then bring back lights here, costumes, there, props against the back wall, and leave everything else outside.” I lamely carried a few things outside before offering to go and get pizza for everyone.
In Apache pizza I get distracted by the large menu, and anxious that I don’t order too much, or too little. My natural choice is always to go for the Hawaiian, the world’s favourite pizza. I would go so far as to say that if you object to pineapple on pizza that you are a soul sucking deflator of joy. In our house we call him Elliott. I remember as a teenager in Monaghan, staying with the McCormicks in the hatchery on the Broad Road and Micky and I being sent up to The Happy garden on Market St., Monaghan’s first , and at the time, only Chinese takeaway, affectionately known as ‘Dino’s. Micky came armed with the McCormick family order, which to a Chinese novice, all sounded terribly exotic with curries and various rice dishes. In our house the switch from Chef Brown Sauce to Heinz ketchup was considered traumatic and against the natural order of things. I looked at the menu and finally spotted something familiar ‘Chicken Maryland with chips’, so I ordered that. I’d never had it before either, but thought it must just be a fancy Chinese version of chicken and chips. When we got back to McCormicks and everyone descended on the large brown paper takeaway bags sorting out everyone’s individual orders , I finally got to open my tin foil oblong tray and say three pieces of deep fried breaded chicken , several peas, and some rather damp chips. I know this is a tangent off what is already several tangents, but to this day I have never once got decent chips from any Chinese restaurant or takeaway. Maybe it’s a cultural thing , that they find the potato truly repulsive, because they have absolutely no problem deliciously deep frying anything and everything else to perfection.
Where was I ?
Oh, yes, the Fire Station….no wait, McCormick’s kitchen, about to devour my first piece of chicken Maryland, via China. I picked up a small piece and bit into it and was immediately transported to some ethereal gastronomic plane. I had just bitten into and was now chewing a piece of breaded and deep fried banana. It was confusing. For a moment I tried to work out if ‘Maryland’ was a poor Chinese translation of banana. I nervously picked up the largest piece and closed my eyes and bit into it. Chicken. Delicious chicken. Possibly , to this day the nicest piece of chicken I have ever tasted. And then the last piece, which was a perfectly round piece with a hole in the middle, which I knew definitely wasn’t chicken before I tasted it, but had no other clue. I again closed my eyes and bit into a deep fried breadcrumbed pineapple ring. I was in heaven. This was so unexpected, and divine, that I was oblivious to Micky’s brother Paul arguing with his sisters Maureen and Una that the cashew chicken they were happily eating was his and that the gloopy , luminous yellow chicken curry he was staring at was theirs.
Anyway, so yeah, I didn’t order the Hawaiian pizza incase there was an Elliott in the group, and asked the guy behind the counter what was on the ‘Buffalo XL’.
“If you can think of a meat, it’s on that one.”
I ordered it , a vegetarian, for the weirdos, chips, onion rings, potato wedges with garlic sauce, and a combo box of wings.
Everything was eaten.
Then we went back to hoofing things about at Bren’s direction. The place looked amazing by 3pm. This year we might actually know what we have before we start.
Just as we were finishing my friend Ronan messaged to see if I’d meet him out in Rossmore to show him and his brothers and their families around the Giants. Ronan is one of my oldest friends , along with the aforementioned Micky McCormick. Only three weeks ago we were at a gig in Dublin together. He returned to London and his mother , Bridget, passed away a few days later. We were all at her funeral in Augher on Friday, which became , as sometimes happens, an uplifting family celebration, albeit tinged with sadness. The Hartney clan no longer live in Monaghan, so the tribe were wandering the town on Saturday showing their families places that they’d only heard about in stories and recollections.
I met them out in the Park, and we spent the next hour or so strolling about remembering old stories and making new ones.
Then I left them to collect our Elliott from the bus station as he was coming home to meet up with Eimear. We arrived home to find Jake, my Soulmate, Evil Goddottir, and Paul having cups of tea and chatting excitedly. I started boiling some spuds, and went for a shower, then started preparing dinner for us, and Gareth & Angie who were joining us.
Elliott and Eileen were baking an upside down pear cake. This sounds simple enough, but wasn’t ideal as I was trying to fry bacon, roast chicken thighs, make a delicious creamy sundried tomato flavoured sauce, and roast garlic smashed potatoes at the same time. Eimear, Paul and Jake helpfully sat around drinking beer.
I also lit a fire in the sitting room , with the intention of shunting everyone in there while I finished preparations for dinner, but , no, Gareth and Angie also sat at the table with the others staring into the back of my head as I tried to remember what stage everything was at, with vegan kievs now in the mix.
It’s a while since we had 8 people sitting at our table for dinner.
It was a gorgeous evening.
We talked about old Liddy visits, old Clogherhead memories, Paul’s impressions of us, stories the kids had never told us before, and stories we’d all heard many, many, reassuring times before.
Gareth and Angie left around 11pm, Jake said he was tired and was heading to bed, and my Soulmate was already planning tomorrow’s sauna visit in Hollywood. I suggested that Elliott, Eimear , Paul and I retire to the sitting room, to the fire, and something on the TV. I put on The Band’s ‘Last Waltz’. Elliott lasted a whole song and a half before saying he too was tired.
By midnight I was having a great time, gleefully pointing out who all of the guest acts were “That’s Van Morrison, before he became a tit.”, “That’s Eric Clapton before he…no, he was a tit even then.”, and “look ! Neil Young’s high as a kite !”.
Eimear was asleep.
Paul roused her and said it was time for bed.
As they headed for the door I said “If this ain’t nice , I don’t know what is.” It’s an old Kurt Vonnegut quote from his uncle who would say it to him periodically when he was a kid, whenever they were doing something nice, lying in the sun, peeling apples. He sometimes finished his lectures with that quote, and I’ve always loved it.
Eimear stopped at the door and said a sleepy “What ?”
I said it’s OK , I’ll tell you tomorrow.
Just another day….
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is stuck in my head since I first heard it on Monday , Cobra, by Geese.
P.P.S. This is an audio file of an old blog and NOT a podcast !
