“Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear?
Why on earth are you there?
You’re everywhere, come and get your share
Well, we all shine on
With the moon and the stars and the sun
Well, we all shine on
Everyone, come on, yeah”
John Lennon
This is not about Sinitta.
Sinitta was a singer who had a cheesy hit single called ‘So Macho’ which was unavoidable in the late 80’s , played at least twice a night in the Hillgrove, and 10 times a night if you went on holidays in Spain. Girls with perms and boys in leather shorts loved it.
But this is not about Sinitta.
This is about little things.
We all do little things that have a positive impact on others, mostly without us realising it. Last Sunday , after a three hour run with Ray, my Soulmate and I went to Castleblayney to attend the Monaghan Volunteer of The Year Awards. I’d been nominated by my former friend, AnnaMarie. She nominated me for helping out at Parkrun, which I found odd, considering that she set it up in the first place , practically runs it single-handedly, and has volunteered at it more often than I have.
Ray, Dominic and Brenda joined us for moral support.
As soon as we entered the hall we were handed a programme for the event and after we had taken our seats I read through the nominees and whispered to Eileen “I think we’re in the wrong room.” All of these people sounded amazing ! I knew Martin Maguire for all his work in Crocus, our local cancer charity, and I was embarrassed to be in the same category as him. He’s a living saint ! Brian Beano Clerkin and Emer Brennan were in another category, and similarly I felt very inadequate getting any credit for doing things I thoroughly enjoy doing, compared to Emer’s passionate contribution to Tidy Towns and Monaghan’s general well being for many years, and Beano’s commitment to every single damn thing that happens in town.
And they were only the ones I immediately recognised.
During the awards the MC read out little pen pictures of each nominee. Holy Smokes ! No wonder Monaghan is such a great place with all of these legends doing amazing things quietly and without fanfare in the background. The lives that they’ve impacted, the difference they make. It was rather humbling to be in the same room as them.
I got a lovely certificate and a tub of Cadbury’s ‘Heroes’, which my Parkrun comrades demolished.
I kept thinking of tiny little differences we make.
On Monday I presented our Dracula Origins idea to the council with Emily on behalf of the Town Team. This will be a free event for families featuring street theatre performances , a circus tent, palm reading, Blood Olympics, puppet shows, music, light installations, a Gargoyle Hunt, and two specially commissioned plays. On Tuesday I attended a Town Team meeting to go through the budgets for the festival we’d presented the day before. On Tuesday night I went to the Market House to meet volunteers for The Haunting in Rossmore and the festival. Wednesday I managed to help a group organise a visit to Mullan with the always generous help of Edel. Thursday I spoke with Donal about the site in Rossmore where we are installing Medb Michael, our latest Drumlin Giant, recently completed by Marc Kelly and Super Sean.
I’m only a teeny tiny part of any of these things, sometimes only making a phone call. Sometimes it only takes a phone call.
Sometimes it only takes acknowledging someone else’s concerns to get them on side.
Sometimes it takes a cup of coffee.
Sometimes it all just seems to happen on its own.
Anyway , Sinitta, whom this is not about.
In Ireland in the 80’s there were two television channels , RTE 1 and RTE 2. They were mirror images of each other and if you were older than 9 and younger than 30 they featured nothing of relevance. And then in 1984 RTE executives discovered the teenager. It started with MT USA an exotic three-hour music extravaganza on a Sunday afternoon which simply showed British and American music videos in blocks of 5 broken up with segments actually filmed in New York by the brilliant DJ Fab Vinny. You have to bear in mind that there were no satellite stations, no MTV and even if you were lucky enough to live along the border and could pick up stray BBC channels, even in the UK music was restricted to Top Of The Pops for 40 minutes every Thursday evening and The Old Grey Whistle Test for old farts, sorry , Hippies, on a Friday night. So three hours of new music was stunning.
We got to see Bruce Hornsby & The Range, Cyndi Lauper, A Flock Of Seagulls, Nena and her red balloons, A-Ha, Run DMC, The Bangles, Thompson Twins and The Psychedelic Furs for the first time. Unfortunately we also got to see Jennifer Rush’s excruciating Power of Love, Europe, Journey, Starship and….I can hardly force myself to type the next words….The Kids from Fame….shudder….
And then he appeared, dressed in purple, on a purple motorbike singing ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and the opening lyrics, Man oh Man, they were unlike anything we’d heard before :
“Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
Electric word life
It means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here to tell you
There’s something else
The after world
A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night”
After school on the following Monday Micky and I went down Dublin St to Monaghan’s only record shop , Devine’s, to purchase the vinyl album, Purple Rain. We listened to it endlessly. Sometime later I think Channel 4 screened a concert film of the Purple Rain tour and we sat mesmerised by the showmanship, the note perfect songs and the scantily clad dancers.
Prince released five singles from that album and all of them featured heavily on MT-USA and became part of growing up for us.
In 1988 Micky bought a bootleg tape on O’Connell St bridge in Dublin of Prince’s rumoured ‘Black’ album. He rang me when he got home and we listened to it that evening. It wasn’t like anything else. The quality was dodgy, but it was unmistakably him. The songs were explicit, mini-dramas, angry, lustful and all under written with stunning guitar playing. The album summed him up. He wanted to release it in a plain black cover with no name or notes, the record label wanted a glitzy follow on to ‘Sign O’The Times’ and refused to back this ground breaking ‘uncommercial’ diatribe. It ‘mysteriously’ got released onto the black market. Prince didn’t make a cent, but it got out there and only enhanced his mystique. Warner Brothers eventually released a heavily sanitised version in 1994.
And then we went out into the world and discovered other things, girls mostly. Our music taste expanded and explored. I remember going into Devine’s and buying The Pogues ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’ , U2’s ‘Rattle & Hum’. The Waterboy’s ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ and The Wonder Stuff’s ‘Eight Legged Groove Machine’ all in one go, Cyril , Mr.Devine, thought I was mad .
“Does your mother know you’re buying all these ?” he asked. I was 20 , working, but still living at home ,and his wife, Anne, played golf with my Mum. Four albums in one go was half my wages that week.
“Emmm…no, not quite. I was going to leave them in Micky’s and take them home one by one later.”
He smiled, winked at me and offered me a cigarette . “Only joking, do you want one of those ‘sale ‘ singles for free ?”
In a shoebox on the counter beside the till was a collection of singles that hadn’t sold and most likely never would. For those under the age of 30, singles were small 7 inch vinyl records that featured the hit single from an artist’s latest album, it had an A and B side. If both songs were good it was called a ‘Double A Sided Single’ mostly the B side featured something that hadn’t made it onto the album at all. Singles were £1.50 at the time and appealed to teens and DJ’s mostly. The box was marked , hopefully, “Singles 50p, while stocks last”. I flicked past various Shakin’Stevens, Five Star, Los Lobos singles and there it was , Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’. I handed it to Cyril who popped it in my bag and off I went. I couldn’t believe my luck.
When I got home I fished out the Purple Rain single and slid out the record. It wasn’t ‘Purple Rain’. I’d got Sinitta’s ‘So Macho’.
I wondered about the person who had bought the Sinitta single years before and ended up with the Prince one and figured that either they were too embarrassed to go back and argue that they’d been short changed out of Sinitta’s classic ‘So Macho’ , and then I thought if you were dumb or brazen enough to buy a Sinitta single in the first place you weren’t going to be phased by going in and fighting for it.
No, I like to think that some poor child was handed the Sinitta single by a well-meaning Aunt who simply asked Cyril for something suitable for her nephew or niece’s birthday and he was delighted to be rid of it and put the Prince single in by mistake. After feigning his ‘joy’ at receiving this gift from his Aunty he slunk off to his room and then discovered that he had in fact received Purple Rain and that changed his day and he beamed, he listened to the track and his life was never the same again.
That’s what I like to think.
Such little things can make a powerful difference.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is for the Heroes , real, and chocolate varieties, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’
