valorous idylls
Chapter 1
Early afternoon.
Lovely bright fresh clear day.
I step out with the dogs onto the avenue.
A certain optimism pervades.
Haircut, new shoes and new pair of trousers from Mr Dunnes Stores excellent emporium, also a new shirt someone gave me and a rather nifty jumper which, though not new, whenever I'm wearing it, seems to impute the notion that all is right with the world.
Now for a walk with the hounds.
Later I'll drive to the charity shop and leave off some donations or awful Heelers hand me downs as the homeless call them. My car is already loaded ready for the trip.
All is indeed right with the world.
The sheepdog forges ahead.
The Jack Russell is at my side.
I round the bend in the avenue.
On the high branch of a tree straight ahead of me a large crow sits.
The crow is the size of a man.
I estimate he is more than five feet tall.
No earthly crow could be that size.
I stop and gaze.
I'm thinking: Theoretically what I'm seeing now is impossible.
Still I'm looking.
Reviewing the situation calmly.
Checking my senses.
Measuring what can be measured from the ground.
Okay.
Just because it's impossible I'm not going to assume it's evil.
I decide to tell it to praise God.
The exact words I am going to use are "Hallelujah big bird."
I raise my hands.
I stop and gaze.
I'm thinking: Theoretically what I'm seeing now is impossible.
Still I'm looking.
Reviewing the situation calmly.
Checking my senses.
Measuring what can be measured from the ground.
Okay.
Just because it's impossible I'm not going to assume it's evil.
I decide to tell it to praise God.
The exact words I am going to use are "Hallelujah big bird."
I raise my hands.
I say: "Ha..."
Before I can say anything else, it is as though I am struck down.
My feel go from under me.
I fall to the ground like a ton of bricks.
Before I can say anything else, it is as though I am struck down.
My feel go from under me.
I fall to the ground like a ton of bricks.
**********
Chapter 2
Priorities.
Lying on the ground.
The pain tending towards the left.
The crunching sound as I landed can't have meant anything good.
Maybe it was the ground crunching rather than a bit of me.
Now what.
Disinclined to try standing.
It's a nice level clear stretch of the avenue.
I'd have to be unlucky for someone to drive over me.
No hurry.
Let's see if I can roll over onto the side that hurts less than this side.
Yes I can.
Ah.
There's the doggies.
The sheepdog sitting quietly.
Pancho looking a bit perturbed which is a Jack Russell talent, all frowns and big eyes.
"It's okay dogs, you didn't do anything wrong."
Pancho climbs up onto my leg and sits.
"Ah Pancho, you'll ruin the new trousers," I groan.
Mild realisation and I smile.
Trousers are fast losing their place of prime importance in the order of my universe.
***********
Chapter 3
Clement Weathers. (Brother of Carl from Rocky.)
Gentle breeze on the avenue.
Pain localising.
Thought processes clearing.
That's some pain right there.
Gentle breeze on the avenue.
Pain localising.
Thought processes clearing.
That's some pain right there.
Ye old dull ache from central casting around the shoulder and the arm.
It's not exactly pleasant but I've never yet heard of anyone dying from a dull ache.
Over on the left still not great.
Around the back not as bad.
The rest okay.
Right hand side really good.
Legs fine.
Optimism.
I've had a half hour on the ground.
And hey, it's not raining.
Around the back not as bad.
The rest okay.
Right hand side really good.
Legs fine.
Optimism.
I've had a half hour on the ground.
And hey, it's not raining.
And no one has driven over me.
Time to get up.
Let's see. A little bit of toe wiggling. Come in Big Toe, are you receiving me?
Time to get up.
Let's see. A little bit of toe wiggling. Come in Big Toe, are you receiving me?
Excellent Simpson. The legs will move.
Yeah baby, yeah.
Very good.
Very good.
Let's do this.
No need to make a production out of it.
Leaning over to the right.
Nice and slow.
The right arm works.
Doing exactly what it's told to do.
Up on my elbow.
There you go.
Pancho you'll have to get down.
Leaning over to the right.
Nice and slow.
The right arm works.
Doing exactly what it's told to do.
Up on my elbow.
There you go.
Pancho you'll have to get down.
That is not a good place for you to sit at the moment.
Thank you.
Now we just ease our way into a sitting position.
And the legs do their job.
I'm standing.
Wobbling.
But standing.
Steady enough.
We'll walk when we feel like it.
No hurry.
I look up.
The thing is still on the tree.
As I stand and look at it, it rises from the branch.
There is a mocking indifference to the motion.
The words are not heard but felt.
"Now you're ours."
It wheels about and flies away,
Thank you.
Now we just ease our way into a sitting position.
And the legs do their job.
I'm standing.
Wobbling.
But standing.
Steady enough.
We'll walk when we feel like it.
No hurry.
I look up.
The thing is still on the tree.
As I stand and look at it, it rises from the branch.
There is a mocking indifference to the motion.
The words are not heard but felt.
"Now you're ours."
It wheels about and flies away,
**********
Chapter 4
Looking After Business
Here's how to walk.
You tell your legs to move one step at a time in an orderly fashion and you tell the rest of you to go with them and to stop that wobbling.
I remember this.
Yes we're doing it.
Back at the house.
Clear the decks.
Look after immediate business.
Postpone everything else.
Use right arm to feed the animals.
Nifty eh.
Interesting new skill doing it one handed.
Now phone neighbours.
Neutral warning about possibility of icy spot on the avenue.
No mention of giant crows.
There might be some frost there.
I went down so quick.
It was late afternoon.
There could have been some lingering frost in the shadowy patches.
It wouldn't do to hear later on that a few others had falls that I could have prevented with a simple message.
You tell your legs to move one step at a time in an orderly fashion and you tell the rest of you to go with them and to stop that wobbling.
I remember this.
Yes we're doing it.
Back at the house.
Clear the decks.
Look after immediate business.
Postpone everything else.
Use right arm to feed the animals.
Nifty eh.
Interesting new skill doing it one handed.
Now phone neighbours.
Neutral warning about possibility of icy spot on the avenue.
No mention of giant crows.
There might be some frost there.
I went down so quick.
It was late afternoon.
There could have been some lingering frost in the shadowy patches.
It wouldn't do to hear later on that a few others had falls that I could have prevented with a simple message.
If the crow gets em, I'll chalk it up to experience.
So a few phonecalls are made without any reference to supernatural entites.
So a few phonecalls are made without any reference to supernatural entites.
Just a friendly warning to be careful of the frost..
Animals fed. Neighbours warned. Anything else?
Bring in clothes drying on the clothesline.
I wobble outside the back door and make a few half hearted passes at the clothesline.
Comical enough.
I can almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing.
This can't be a priority.
Back to the kitchen without the clothes.
Make a one handed cup of tea.
Sit.
Now come on Archangel Raphael this would be a great time for you to do your miraculous healing thing.
Come on old pal.
Let's see what you've got.
Animals fed. Neighbours warned. Anything else?
Bring in clothes drying on the clothesline.
I wobble outside the back door and make a few half hearted passes at the clothesline.
Comical enough.
I can almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing.
This can't be a priority.
Back to the kitchen without the clothes.
Make a one handed cup of tea.
Sit.
Now come on Archangel Raphael this would be a great time for you to do your miraculous healing thing.
Come on old pal.
Let's see what you've got.
**********
Chapter 5
Delirious Ramblings.
The old wisdom.
Pride comes before a fall.
Today I don't think it's that.
The perspective regarding pride can lead to errors and misunderstandings regarding our creator.
The creator of the universe isn't beating us with a stick.
He's not kicking us while we're down.
People fall all the time.
Much worse falls than mine.
The old wisdom.
Pride comes before a fall.
Today I don't think it's that.
The perspective regarding pride can lead to errors and misunderstandings regarding our creator.
The creator of the universe isn't beating us with a stick.
He's not kicking us while we're down.
People fall all the time.
Much worse falls than mine.
It's always because we're sinners.
That is to say, we don't go around judging each other as sinful every time we fall.
That is to say, we don't go around judging each other as sinful every time we fall.
Oooh look at that injury; You must be a hell of a heathen.
That old gag.
Sometimes in our hearts we may know pride or another sin explains an awful lot.
This time it doesn't seem to me that God is saying that I'm too proud.
I do get an intimation that the pain I've wished on my enemies in asking him to smite them, is something like what I'm feeling now.
I get an intimation that God feels for all of us.
It hurts him as much when they suffer as when I suffer.
This understanding is something I regard as coming from God.
With a little effort I can believe he is already turning to the good my fall.
He didn't cause me to fall.
But since I've fallen, he's showing me a few things.
The fall was an attack by evil.
I've no doubt about that.
And there are all sorts of reasons for falls.
Pride or sinfulness can indeed be one.
More usually, carelessness.
Or bad luck.
Slippery ground.
New shoes that don't have much grip.
Also if you take a step closer to God in life, the forces of darkness may run a little pass defence just for the hell of it.
I've heard a few people say that.
Hey.
For some reason I'm not saying "why me oh Lord!"
I'd have expected myself to at least blame God a little bit.
And what was my guardian angel doing?
Was it his day off?
Maybe the guardian angel did more than I know.
I went down like a ton of bricks but I didn't hit my head.
I usually want a free pass from suffering and look for it, and moan if I don't get it.
The cosmic battle is real.
We are in a war zone.
No one escapes the cross.
The royal one walked all the way to Calvary.
So my mind weighs the situation as my left arm swells and turns an interesting colour.
Sometimes in our hearts we may know pride or another sin explains an awful lot.
This time it doesn't seem to me that God is saying that I'm too proud.
I do get an intimation that the pain I've wished on my enemies in asking him to smite them, is something like what I'm feeling now.
I get an intimation that God feels for all of us.
It hurts him as much when they suffer as when I suffer.
This understanding is something I regard as coming from God.
With a little effort I can believe he is already turning to the good my fall.
He didn't cause me to fall.
But since I've fallen, he's showing me a few things.
The fall was an attack by evil.
I've no doubt about that.
And there are all sorts of reasons for falls.
Pride or sinfulness can indeed be one.
More usually, carelessness.
Or bad luck.
Slippery ground.
New shoes that don't have much grip.
Also if you take a step closer to God in life, the forces of darkness may run a little pass defence just for the hell of it.
I've heard a few people say that.
Hey.
For some reason I'm not saying "why me oh Lord!"
I'd have expected myself to at least blame God a little bit.
And what was my guardian angel doing?
Was it his day off?
Maybe the guardian angel did more than I know.
I went down like a ton of bricks but I didn't hit my head.
I usually want a free pass from suffering and look for it, and moan if I don't get it.
The cosmic battle is real.
We are in a war zone.
No one escapes the cross.
The royal one walked all the way to Calvary.
So my mind weighs the situation as my left arm swells and turns an interesting colour.
***********
Chapter 6
Come Back Doctor Zachary Smith From Lost In Space All Is Forgiven.
6.35pm. Movement in fingers and wrist. If I'm in shock it's lessening. Handwriting has improved. Damage primarily at elbow. Starting to hope it might not be broken. Come on Raphael. Do your thing. Have offered pain for X. So even if I'm not in shock, I'm clearly mad as a brush. Yoke, yoke.
9.30pm. Arm not flexible. Okay at shoulder. Hand tending to go numb. I suppose I'll have to cut off the jumper to get a better look at it. Will use a scissors and cut up front of jumper with other arm. Some comfort in arm if I let it hang limp. Some comfort if I place it gingerly on my knee while moaning softly "oh the pain, oh the pain." I do believe there is a throbbing in my lower back region. This is a symptom I'm not encouraging at all.
6.35pm. Movement in fingers and wrist. If I'm in shock it's lessening. Handwriting has improved. Damage primarily at elbow. Starting to hope it might not be broken. Come on Raphael. Do your thing. Have offered pain for X. So even if I'm not in shock, I'm clearly mad as a brush. Yoke, yoke.
9.30pm. Arm not flexible. Okay at shoulder. Hand tending to go numb. I suppose I'll have to cut off the jumper to get a better look at it. Will use a scissors and cut up front of jumper with other arm. Some comfort in arm if I let it hang limp. Some comfort if I place it gingerly on my knee while moaning softly "oh the pain, oh the pain." I do believe there is a throbbing in my lower back region. This is a symptom I'm not encouraging at all.
**********
Chapter 7
Revenge Of The Nerds I Mean Nurses
Farmer Jones called in at 11 o'clock that night after cards.
He appraised the situation.
"You'll have to go to hospital," he pronounced bluntly.
My gentle preraphaelite features contorted into a mute appeal.
"I was thinking of waiting the night," pleaded I mutely. "You know things might look different in the morning."
"Your hand is turning blue."
"It's always blue."
"Let me ring my wife. She's a nurse."
Quick as a flash the farmer's wife arrived.
I tried to get her on my team.
"I think we'll let it rest and see how things are in the morning," I proposed.
"You're in shock James," she replied.
"I honestly don't think I am," I said.
"You're shaking like a leaf," quoth she.
"That's because you two left the front door open," said I.
Farmer Jones closed the front door.
"Now James," said his wife, "I'm going to take off your jumper."
"I don't think you are."
"I'm a nurse. We have ways of doing it. It won't hurt."
"It's not me getting hurt I'm worried about if you try to take off that jumper."
"I can do it."
"No you can't. See. The other arm is still working. I can fend you off till morning."
"Let me try."
"Couldn't we cut through the front of the jumper with a scissors and sort of slide the two halves away?"
She removed the jumper with a minimum of effort while I was half way through the last sentence.
There was a pause as the universe took a breath.
Farmer Jones' wife and Farmer Jones exchanged meaningful looks.
This was too much for me.
"What are you doing exchanging meaningful looks?" I cried. "I know what a meaningful look means as well as the next man. I watched Little House On The Prairie too you know."
The two conferred.
"He'll have to go to hospital," said the farmer.
"There's a nurses strike," said his wife.
Farmer Jones called in at 11 o'clock that night after cards.
He appraised the situation.
"You'll have to go to hospital," he pronounced bluntly.
My gentle preraphaelite features contorted into a mute appeal.
"I was thinking of waiting the night," pleaded I mutely. "You know things might look different in the morning."
"Your hand is turning blue."
"It's always blue."
"Let me ring my wife. She's a nurse."
Quick as a flash the farmer's wife arrived.
I tried to get her on my team.
"I think we'll let it rest and see how things are in the morning," I proposed.
"You're in shock James," she replied.
"I honestly don't think I am," I said.
"You're shaking like a leaf," quoth she.
"That's because you two left the front door open," said I.
Farmer Jones closed the front door.
"Now James," said his wife, "I'm going to take off your jumper."
"I don't think you are."
"I'm a nurse. We have ways of doing it. It won't hurt."
"It's not me getting hurt I'm worried about if you try to take off that jumper."
"I can do it."
"No you can't. See. The other arm is still working. I can fend you off till morning."
"Let me try."
"Couldn't we cut through the front of the jumper with a scissors and sort of slide the two halves away?"
She removed the jumper with a minimum of effort while I was half way through the last sentence.
There was a pause as the universe took a breath.
Farmer Jones' wife and Farmer Jones exchanged meaningful looks.
This was too much for me.
"What are you doing exchanging meaningful looks?" I cried. "I know what a meaningful look means as well as the next man. I watched Little House On The Prairie too you know."
The two conferred.
"He'll have to go to hospital," said the farmer.
"There's a nurses strike," said his wife.
**********
Chapter 8
The Price Is Right
Brooding over their mobile phones in the corner of my kitchen, Farmer Jones and his wife hatched some plans.
I continued to urge the Archangel Raphael to go for a late touch down.
Before doing anything else, the good neighbours decided to call in another neighbour, also a nurse, who arrived quickly.
"Sure it's nearly better," I pleaded.
"That's a bad break," the new arrival said with quiet authority.
She suggested that I go to the nearby Vista Clinic and get a letter from a doctor there confirming I needed treatment. The letter would cost 75 Euro.
"Seventy five bleedin' Euro," I blurted.
"I'll pay it," said Farmer Jones.
In spite of the nurses strike, Naas hospital would admit me if I had that letter.
The farmer and his wife led me to their car.
Soon I was being seen by Doctor Donaldson in the Vista Clinic.
He was African with a cultured British accent.
Doctor Donaldson gave a cursory glance at my arm.
"How did it happen?" he asked.
I answered carefully
"I was walking in the late afternoon. It was sunny. Level ground. I had two dogs with me. There might have been traces of frost still about. One of the dogs was on the lead. He might have jerked suddenly. I was wearing new shoes. They mightn't have a great grip. I have a knee that gets a bit weak. I suppose it might have acted up. Whatever happened, I went down very fast."
I thought it best not to bring in the bit about the human sized scald crow.
A lot of doctors are surprisingly sceptical about such notions.
"Had you drink taken?"
"No. No drink. No drugs. I've no interest in those things."
Doctor Donaldson stood up.
"What I don't understand," he said musingly, "is why you're not screaming with pain."
Me and Snake Plisskan, eh bold readers.
But I didn't say this either.
"I will write you the letter," said Doctor Donaldson. "You can wait outside."
As I went to the door. Doctor Donaldson stood up suddenly, strode around his desk, and thrust his finger into my elbow.
I turned to face him.
"Oh?" I said.
Without a word Donaldson returned to his desk.
I left the room.
***********
Chapter 9
They Say That Naas Is A Terrible Place (But it's alright as long as you don't object to being murdered.)
The neighbours take me from the Vista Clinic to Naas hospital where we sign some forms and posit ourselves in the waiting room at the Accident And Emergency Department.
It is a quiet night because of the nurses strike.
Only a few other people there.
A young Muslim family trying to get one of their children admitted and some stringy looking street toughs fresh from the Monday night fight looking to be patched up.
I sip a coffee and think.
My spider senses are tingling.
I'm reviewing my list of mental reservations about Naas hospital.
Why exactly have I reservations about Naas hospital...
Okay.
Where I'm sitting is just yards from where paramedics murdered a 79 year old patient called Christy Byrne by setting an ambulance on fire with him in 2016.
The neighbours take me from the Vista Clinic to Naas hospital where we sign some forms and posit ourselves in the waiting room at the Accident And Emergency Department.
It is a quiet night because of the nurses strike.
Only a few other people there.
A young Muslim family trying to get one of their children admitted and some stringy looking street toughs fresh from the Monday night fight looking to be patched up.
I sip a coffee and think.
My spider senses are tingling.
I'm reviewing my list of mental reservations about Naas hospital.
Why exactly have I reservations about Naas hospital...
Okay.
Where I'm sitting is just yards from where paramedics murdered a 79 year old patient called Christy Byrne by setting an ambulance on fire with him in 2016.
I've made that charge in my public writings for several years in an attempt to get the police to do something.
We're within walking distance of the wards upstairs where Nurse Noreen Mulholland tortured and murdered at least two patients, John Gethings (aged 77) and Seamus Doherty (aged 80), during her rampage in 2003.
We're within walking distance of the wards upstairs where Nurse Noreen Mulholland tortured and murdered at least two patients, John Gethings (aged 77) and Seamus Doherty (aged 80), during her rampage in 2003.
I've made that charge in my public writings too.
Also an alcoholic man told me when I was a teenager that there was a devil worship ring active in the hospital.
Also an alcoholic man told me when I was a teenager that there was a devil worship ring active in the hospital.
I may have mentioned that once or twice on some internet blog or other.
And just a few years ago, I personally witnessed a nurse pleasuring herself by deliberately causing pain to an old age pensioner as she took a blood sample from him. Middle aged, hard faced nurse, with blonde/russet hair cropped short, and a distinctive Celtic circlet tattoo on her upper arm. She'd taken a blood sample, then spotted that the man was wearing a cross. She said: "I need to take some more." She jabbed a needle into his arm, gleefully, leaning close and staring into his eyes with a maniacal gloating expression in her own eyes. I was right there. It happened as I have described it.
And just a few years ago, I personally witnessed a nurse pleasuring herself by deliberately causing pain to an old age pensioner as she took a blood sample from him. Middle aged, hard faced nurse, with blonde/russet hair cropped short, and a distinctive Celtic circlet tattoo on her upper arm. She'd taken a blood sample, then spotted that the man was wearing a cross. She said: "I need to take some more." She jabbed a needle into his arm, gleefully, leaning close and staring into his eyes with a maniacal gloating expression in her own eyes. I was right there. It happened as I have described it.
Well at least I've never accused anyone publically of any wrong doing with regard to that one.
The hospital does have a very bad reputation in the hinterland going back further than any of this.
It's become a part of local folklore really.
A proverbially dangerous place to be treated.
Anything else making me uneasy...
Well it's a picadillo.
Hardly worth mentioning.
A thing of nothing.
During the last nurses strike I drove up to the picket line around this very hospital and shouted: "Go back to work you lazy overpaid ****s."
Surely the nurses wouldn't have taken that personally.
After all I've never played favourites.
I've done precisely the same thing to the cops and the teachers during their respective and repetitive strike action smash and grabs on the nation.
The hospital does have a very bad reputation in the hinterland going back further than any of this.
It's become a part of local folklore really.
A proverbially dangerous place to be treated.
Anything else making me uneasy...
Well it's a picadillo.
Hardly worth mentioning.
A thing of nothing.
During the last nurses strike I drove up to the picket line around this very hospital and shouted: "Go back to work you lazy overpaid ****s."
Surely the nurses wouldn't have taken that personally.
After all I've never played favourites.
I've done precisely the same thing to the cops and the teachers during their respective and repetitive strike action smash and grabs on the nation.
And during the abortion referencum, I think I may have driven up to a Kilcullen For Yes coffee morning and screamed: "You should all have been abortions."
Ho hum.
On a lighter note it's only a few weeks since I suggested in yet more of my largely unread public writings that the security staff at Naas hospital are gangland connected.
And here I am for treatment.
What could possibly go wrong!
Ho hum.
On a lighter note it's only a few weeks since I suggested in yet more of my largely unread public writings that the security staff at Naas hospital are gangland connected.
And here I am for treatment.
What could possibly go wrong!
With a bit of luck none of the nursing staff, or the doctors, or the ambulance drivers, or the security men will be lovers of good advocative literature.
That is to say, let's hope none of em read the Heelers Diaries.
Still.
All in all I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
All in all I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
**********
Chapter 10
The All Nighter
"How did you fall?" asks Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani.
"Walking in the afternoon, flat ground, maybe some frost, no drink taken, I might have slipped," I said.
He remained silent.
"How about letting me go home, Doc?" I ask.
"Is one of your arms normally twice the size of the other?" he enquired, answering a question with a question.
The hours tick away.
I've been admitted to the Accident And Emergency Ward.
Lots of patients lolling on trolleys.
This is a deceptive scene.
There is no shortage of hospital beds in Ireland but the trade unionised nurses will not allow access to a bed unless there are a particular number of nurses working at a given moment.
It's a power game.
Leaving patients on trolleys is an effective way to extort pay rises from the government or to force an increase in staffing levels.
When nurses say "no beds are available," they mean "we will not unlock the door into the room where lots of extra beds are available unless the government pays us more or hires more of us."
I've been lucky.
No trolley for me.
And some privacy.
They've put me in an examination room on my own.
I'm lying on an extended examination chair which is in some ways quite like a couch.
There is a sheet thrown over me.
I've been praying the rosary for a few hours.
The prayer has come alive to me, which has happened before, but tonight it's quite distinctive.
The prayer is more real than anything around me.
Farmer Jones and his wife have stayed.
There have been a few trips to the X Ray department and back to this room again.
It's 3am.
Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani beetles in.
He says to my advocates: "You two should go home. I'm going to keep him here all night. I'll get an ambulance to bring him to Dublin at 6am. They're going to operate on him at Tallaght hospital in the morning."
My good neighbours depart.
Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani stands beside me and says: "I heard you talking to the nurse earlier about parrots. In my country we have an animal. It has a human face. No. No. It's not a meerkat. It is a little animal. And its face looks human. It has little hands that look human. But it is an animal. And sometimes we mistreat it. You know children and so on. We mistreat it. We throw stones at it. Or we hold onto it and we won't let it go. And it cries. It cries like a little baby. Like a human baby. But it is not a human. It is an animal. There is a word for it in our language. I don't know what it is in English. And then maybe we let it go. And it runs up a tree. And it laughs at us. It has a laugh like a human laugh. But it is an animal. And it runs up the tree and laughs at us."
Boko Andrew Shingani stops talking and looks at me expectantly.
"Ah. " I say, " the dignity of creatures."
Boko Andrew Shingani seems disappointed by this comment and bustles off.
I return to the rosary.
"How did you fall?" asks Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani.
"Walking in the afternoon, flat ground, maybe some frost, no drink taken, I might have slipped," I said.
He remained silent.
"How about letting me go home, Doc?" I ask.
"Is one of your arms normally twice the size of the other?" he enquired, answering a question with a question.
The hours tick away.
I've been admitted to the Accident And Emergency Ward.
Lots of patients lolling on trolleys.
This is a deceptive scene.
There is no shortage of hospital beds in Ireland but the trade unionised nurses will not allow access to a bed unless there are a particular number of nurses working at a given moment.
It's a power game.
Leaving patients on trolleys is an effective way to extort pay rises from the government or to force an increase in staffing levels.
When nurses say "no beds are available," they mean "we will not unlock the door into the room where lots of extra beds are available unless the government pays us more or hires more of us."
I've been lucky.
No trolley for me.
And some privacy.
They've put me in an examination room on my own.
I'm lying on an extended examination chair which is in some ways quite like a couch.
There is a sheet thrown over me.
I've been praying the rosary for a few hours.
The prayer has come alive to me, which has happened before, but tonight it's quite distinctive.
The prayer is more real than anything around me.
Farmer Jones and his wife have stayed.
There have been a few trips to the X Ray department and back to this room again.
It's 3am.
Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani beetles in.
He says to my advocates: "You two should go home. I'm going to keep him here all night. I'll get an ambulance to bring him to Dublin at 6am. They're going to operate on him at Tallaght hospital in the morning."
My good neighbours depart.
Doctor Boko Andrew Shingani stands beside me and says: "I heard you talking to the nurse earlier about parrots. In my country we have an animal. It has a human face. No. No. It's not a meerkat. It is a little animal. And its face looks human. It has little hands that look human. But it is an animal. And sometimes we mistreat it. You know children and so on. We mistreat it. We throw stones at it. Or we hold onto it and we won't let it go. And it cries. It cries like a little baby. Like a human baby. But it is not a human. It is an animal. There is a word for it in our language. I don't know what it is in English. And then maybe we let it go. And it runs up a tree. And it laughs at us. It has a laugh like a human laugh. But it is an animal. And it runs up the tree and laughs at us."
Boko Andrew Shingani stops talking and looks at me expectantly.
"Ah. " I say, " the dignity of creatures."
Boko Andrew Shingani seems disappointed by this comment and bustles off.
I return to the rosary.
**********
Chapter 11
Relativity
Some time in the morning I finished the rosary.
Joyful, peaceful, glorious mysteries.
And the mysteries of light.
A feeling of peace swept over me.
I checked my senses.
No. It was real.
That's rum.
I'd spent most of the night on an examination couch. I'd been put on a fast (ie no food) as a surgeon was going to operate when I got to Dublin. I hadn't slept.
But I felt refreshed and happy, almost on top of the world, as though I was emerging from a perfect stay at a luxury hotel.
The ambulance was cancelled. The excuse given was that a decision had been made to do some more tests.
Some time in the morning I finished the rosary.
Joyful, peaceful, glorious mysteries.
And the mysteries of light.
A feeling of peace swept over me.
I checked my senses.
No. It was real.
That's rum.
I'd spent most of the night on an examination couch. I'd been put on a fast (ie no food) as a surgeon was going to operate when I got to Dublin. I hadn't slept.
But I felt refreshed and happy, almost on top of the world, as though I was emerging from a perfect stay at a luxury hotel.
The ambulance was cancelled. The excuse given was that a decision had been made to do some more tests.
The cancellation of an ambulance trip with one of Naas hospital's potentially homicidal ambulance crews did not cause me any displeasure.
Staff at the hospital gave me yet another X Ray and then a magnetic resonance imaging scan which involves being slid horizontally into an eerily isolating steel funnel while machine sensors measure things like the width of each testical and whatnot.
Towards midday they sent me, still spiritually content, by taxi to Tallaght hospital in Dublin.
Staff at the hospital gave me yet another X Ray and then a magnetic resonance imaging scan which involves being slid horizontally into an eerily isolating steel funnel while machine sensors measure things like the width of each testical and whatnot.
Towards midday they sent me, still spiritually content, by taxi to Tallaght hospital in Dublin.
Ah taxi.
The only way to travel.
I commend your attention gentle travellers of the internet, to the rosary.
I commend your attention gentle travellers of the internet, to the rosary.
**********
Chapter 12
Dude Where's My Doctor? (James And Fiona And Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure)
At Tallaght hospital the admissions procedure began again.
The front of house people were good.
I was sent to a cafe in the foyer to wait while the documents from the other hospital were sorted.
The woman who took my documents told me she'd deal with the paperwork and fetch me from the cafe in twenty minutes. She was as good as her word.
A lissom, dark haired, lissom, businesslike, but still lissom, triage nurse called Fiona assessed my injury.
I tend to hold with Professor Shappie Khorsandi's theories regarding Fionas.
In social science it's known as the Khorsandi hypothesis and states that people called Fiona are evil bitches.
This one was a particularly striking girl.
Not on strike.
The nurses strike had taken a pause in the past hours to allow the government to cave in.
Striking.
Her looks were of a peculiarly arresting quality.
Nothing to do with style.
She was wearing the neutral baggy overalls that hospitals rightly now favour for women staff members but which still can't quite conceal lissomness.
Nothing to do with glamour either.
She hadn't particularly accentuated her looks in any way that I could see.
Yet she was possessed of a most unsettling presence.
An almost primal something.
There was no denying it.
Nor was it easy to say what exactly it was.
It was certainly remarkable.
Hence my remarks.
All the more so for being unfathomable.
I don't know if I've ever seen a girl quite as beautiful.
The word whoargghhhhhhh kind of captures it a bit.
She was not completely unaware of her power of course.
Women are not idiots.
They know if people find them attractive.
The wise ones know not to over rate such things.
It seemed to me that she must get a lot of attention from men.
It doesn't always help a human being to be admired.
She handled it responsibly enough.
I for my part tried to keep my rubbery lechery face as neutral as a baggy pants suit.
"How did you fall?"
That old gag.
I gave her the truth minus one giant supernatural scald crow.
"Have you ever been in hospital before?"
"I think I was in for a night in 1983 when I cycled a bicycle into an oncoming car."
"1983?" quoth she musingly, "I was only a twinkle."
I resisted the urge to say: "You're still a twinkle."
Then I resisted the urge to do an Eddie Murphy impression from Trading Places: "Once you go out with a man from 1983, you'll never go back baby. You and me baby. Porgy And Bess."
Then I resisted the urge to say: "Whoargghhhhhhhh."
It was a close run thing.
She called in a doctor.
Doctor Calum Swift burst through the door like an actor making an entrance.
He was another whom nature appeared to have gifted in the looks department.
Slightly long hair, Mediterranean features. Big eyes. Plenty of muscles.
He could have been a male model rather than a doctor.
But his manner was good.
He didn't seem overly distant or vain or egotistical.
There was a pleasant, relaxed, friendly, youthful, instantly likeable quality to him, not incompatible with the possibility of professional competence.
"Hey," he said by way of greeting.
I digested this.
His cool as a breeze deportment evoked something.
My mind searched.
What was it? No, not so much a male model.
More like a surfer dude.
A surfer dude, yes that was it.
To a tee.
That was my doctor.
I glanced at his name tag.
The photo on it had the polarities reversed so that he looked like a black man with white hair and a white beard.
I did not find the frivolousness of this overly reassuring.
I felt like saying: "Where's your beard? And why aren't you black? And why aren't your polarities reversed? And what have you done to Dr Calum Swift you Mediterranean person you?"
For the beard, white or not, was nowhere in evidence on his person.
Nor was his skin black.
Details I suppose.
Nobody takes identity cards seriously in these pleasant relaxed informal times.
Dr Calum Swift had a look at my arm.
He asked how I had fallen.
I told him most of the details.
"We might be able to operate on you today," he said.
"Really?" I said.
"You've been fasting haven't you?" said he.
"I have," said I.
"That's great. We should be able to go straight ahead."
"Except for a quick sangidge and a coffee that I grabbed in the cafe a few minutes ago before I was called in here."
The doctor sighed.
"We'll operate on you tomorrow," he said.
"You're not seriously going to postpone just because I grabbed a coffee and a sangidge," I pleaded.
Doctor Calum Swift gave me a reproachful spaniel dog look.
"There's no problem," he said kindlily. "But we'll do it tomorrow."
Another doctor arrived.
Doctors seemed to like the ambience around here, I thought.
This I could understand.
If I was working at Tallaght hospital I'd have been bobbing in and out of Nurse Fiona's triage station too.
The new arrival introduced himself as Doctor Danilo.
Like a name from The Simpsons cartoon, I thought glumly.
He was young and built like a rugby player.
I checked his name tag.
He'd hung it around his neck upside down.
I would never know his last name.
Standing there, Doctor Calum Swift and Doctor Danilo looked quite the pair.
Surfer dudes, or rugby players, or male models.
But not doctors.
Perfectly capable fellows I'm sure but the generation gap, for such I admit it to be, meant I would never see them as anything other than Bill And Ted having another great adventure.
"Are you really going to operate on Heelers dude?"
"I totally am dude."
"You think we should attach his arm to his leg socket, and transfer the leg to his arm for a joke?"
"I'm totally there dude."
I could almost hear them.
I began to waver in my decision (such as it had ever really been my decision) to seek treatment for the injury.
"Do I really need an operation?" I asked. "Could we not just let the arm heal?"
Doctor Danilo drew himself up to his not inconcsiderable height and began a speech about how by inserting metal thingummies here, and cleaning up the shattered bone fragments there, and by a stroke of luck all over, I might, just might, recover significant usage of my arm but that otherwise I could be left with barely any movement in it at all.
He did the required thing and let me know a few of the risks associated with going under anaesthetic most of which seemed to involve a recurrent chance which he insisted was remote, of meeting the character Death also from Bill And Ted's Great Adventure.
He added that a great surgeon called Maloney was in situ at the hospital and about how really I'd gotten lucky because Maloney is one of the most famous and one of the best surgeons in Ireland, Maloney is a genius really, and happens to be on hand, so really I should have this operation.
His enthusiasm was Churchillian.
He proffered a consent form for me to sign.
Doctor Calum Swift smiled encouragingly.
"If it was me," said Doctor Calum Swift simply, "I'd be having this operation."
I began to read the consent form.
Doctor Danilo said: "I have to take a call."
He stepped out into the corridor.
Too important to watch me reading, I thought, but I read the thing anyway.
And signed.
Nurse Fiona was busy being elementally phenomenally gorgeous with some paperwork in the corner.
I handed the consent form to Doctor Calum Swift.
"What is Doctor Danilo's last name?" I ventured.
"I don't know," said Doctor Calum Swift, "I think it begins with an M."
Oh Dude.
Lame Dude.
L-a-a-a-a-a-a-ame.
D-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ude.
At Tallaght hospital the admissions procedure began again.
The front of house people were good.
I was sent to a cafe in the foyer to wait while the documents from the other hospital were sorted.
The woman who took my documents told me she'd deal with the paperwork and fetch me from the cafe in twenty minutes. She was as good as her word.
A lissom, dark haired, lissom, businesslike, but still lissom, triage nurse called Fiona assessed my injury.
I tend to hold with Professor Shappie Khorsandi's theories regarding Fionas.
In social science it's known as the Khorsandi hypothesis and states that people called Fiona are evil bitches.
This one was a particularly striking girl.
Not on strike.
The nurses strike had taken a pause in the past hours to allow the government to cave in.
Striking.
Her looks were of a peculiarly arresting quality.
Nothing to do with style.
She was wearing the neutral baggy overalls that hospitals rightly now favour for women staff members but which still can't quite conceal lissomness.
Nothing to do with glamour either.
She hadn't particularly accentuated her looks in any way that I could see.
Yet she was possessed of a most unsettling presence.
An almost primal something.
There was no denying it.
Nor was it easy to say what exactly it was.
It was certainly remarkable.
Hence my remarks.
All the more so for being unfathomable.
I don't know if I've ever seen a girl quite as beautiful.
The word whoargghhhhhhh kind of captures it a bit.
She was not completely unaware of her power of course.
Women are not idiots.
They know if people find them attractive.
The wise ones know not to over rate such things.
It seemed to me that she must get a lot of attention from men.
It doesn't always help a human being to be admired.
She handled it responsibly enough.
I for my part tried to keep my rubbery lechery face as neutral as a baggy pants suit.
"How did you fall?"
That old gag.
I gave her the truth minus one giant supernatural scald crow.
"Have you ever been in hospital before?"
"I think I was in for a night in 1983 when I cycled a bicycle into an oncoming car."
"1983?" quoth she musingly, "I was only a twinkle."
I resisted the urge to say: "You're still a twinkle."
Then I resisted the urge to do an Eddie Murphy impression from Trading Places: "Once you go out with a man from 1983, you'll never go back baby. You and me baby. Porgy And Bess."
Then I resisted the urge to say: "Whoargghhhhhhhh."
It was a close run thing.
She called in a doctor.
Doctor Calum Swift burst through the door like an actor making an entrance.
He was another whom nature appeared to have gifted in the looks department.
Slightly long hair, Mediterranean features. Big eyes. Plenty of muscles.
He could have been a male model rather than a doctor.
But his manner was good.
He didn't seem overly distant or vain or egotistical.
There was a pleasant, relaxed, friendly, youthful, instantly likeable quality to him, not incompatible with the possibility of professional competence.
"Hey," he said by way of greeting.
I digested this.
His cool as a breeze deportment evoked something.
My mind searched.
What was it? No, not so much a male model.
More like a surfer dude.
A surfer dude, yes that was it.
To a tee.
That was my doctor.
I glanced at his name tag.
The photo on it had the polarities reversed so that he looked like a black man with white hair and a white beard.
I did not find the frivolousness of this overly reassuring.
I felt like saying: "Where's your beard? And why aren't you black? And why aren't your polarities reversed? And what have you done to Dr Calum Swift you Mediterranean person you?"
For the beard, white or not, was nowhere in evidence on his person.
Nor was his skin black.
Details I suppose.
Nobody takes identity cards seriously in these pleasant relaxed informal times.
Dr Calum Swift had a look at my arm.
He asked how I had fallen.
I told him most of the details.
"We might be able to operate on you today," he said.
"Really?" I said.
"You've been fasting haven't you?" said he.
"I have," said I.
"That's great. We should be able to go straight ahead."
"Except for a quick sangidge and a coffee that I grabbed in the cafe a few minutes ago before I was called in here."
The doctor sighed.
"We'll operate on you tomorrow," he said.
"You're not seriously going to postpone just because I grabbed a coffee and a sangidge," I pleaded.
Doctor Calum Swift gave me a reproachful spaniel dog look.
"There's no problem," he said kindlily. "But we'll do it tomorrow."
Another doctor arrived.
Doctors seemed to like the ambience around here, I thought.
This I could understand.
If I was working at Tallaght hospital I'd have been bobbing in and out of Nurse Fiona's triage station too.
The new arrival introduced himself as Doctor Danilo.
Like a name from The Simpsons cartoon, I thought glumly.
He was young and built like a rugby player.
I checked his name tag.
He'd hung it around his neck upside down.
I would never know his last name.
Standing there, Doctor Calum Swift and Doctor Danilo looked quite the pair.
Surfer dudes, or rugby players, or male models.
But not doctors.
Perfectly capable fellows I'm sure but the generation gap, for such I admit it to be, meant I would never see them as anything other than Bill And Ted having another great adventure.
"Are you really going to operate on Heelers dude?"
"I totally am dude."
"You think we should attach his arm to his leg socket, and transfer the leg to his arm for a joke?"
"I'm totally there dude."
I could almost hear them.
I began to waver in my decision (such as it had ever really been my decision) to seek treatment for the injury.
"Do I really need an operation?" I asked. "Could we not just let the arm heal?"
Doctor Danilo drew himself up to his not inconcsiderable height and began a speech about how by inserting metal thingummies here, and cleaning up the shattered bone fragments there, and by a stroke of luck all over, I might, just might, recover significant usage of my arm but that otherwise I could be left with barely any movement in it at all.
He did the required thing and let me know a few of the risks associated with going under anaesthetic most of which seemed to involve a recurrent chance which he insisted was remote, of meeting the character Death also from Bill And Ted's Great Adventure.
He added that a great surgeon called Maloney was in situ at the hospital and about how really I'd gotten lucky because Maloney is one of the most famous and one of the best surgeons in Ireland, Maloney is a genius really, and happens to be on hand, so really I should have this operation.
His enthusiasm was Churchillian.
He proffered a consent form for me to sign.
Doctor Calum Swift smiled encouragingly.
"If it was me," said Doctor Calum Swift simply, "I'd be having this operation."
I began to read the consent form.
Doctor Danilo said: "I have to take a call."
He stepped out into the corridor.
Too important to watch me reading, I thought, but I read the thing anyway.
And signed.
Nurse Fiona was busy being elementally phenomenally gorgeous with some paperwork in the corner.
I handed the consent form to Doctor Calum Swift.
"What is Doctor Danilo's last name?" I ventured.
"I don't know," said Doctor Calum Swift, "I think it begins with an M."
Oh Dude.
Lame Dude.
L-a-a-a-a-a-a-ame.
D-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ude.
**********
Chapter 13
When Worlds Collide
Sitting alone in a waiting area in the secure part of Tallaght hospital.
It is about as secure as I am.
A brace of security men, leaning against a wall nearby, are indifferent to the presence of a rough looking wild haired inebriate who has apparently already outwitted all the security protocols in the building in order to access this supposedly inaccessible part of the hospital.
He must be one of those clever inebriates.
He is weaving about on multiple trajectories.
He'd be a good character in a tough urban television drama.
He'd be one of the scary ones.
Occasionally he goes up to the counter of a staff cubicle, bangs on it, and demands to be admitted to the hospital as a patient.
At other times he addresses one on one, the paintings hanging in the hall.
No one takes much notice of him except me.
Because I just know he is eventually going to find time for me.
Eventually his schedule permits and he does.
There's twenty empty chairs in the waiting area.
He sits beside me.
He turns and confides: "I wish I had cancer."
I look into the middle distance.
My handsome preraphaelite features betray a touch of strain.
Disappointed in my lack of anything, he gets up and weaves down a randomly chosen corridor.
He's about half way down the long corridor when a door beside him opens.
Fiona, the elementally beautiful triage nurse, steps into the corridor.
They are face to face.
Two worlds collide.
Their eyes meet.
Without hesitation the inebriate drops his trousers, seizes the Honorable Member of parliament for Nethers South, and waves him enthusiastically like an election banner.
I understand his idea but I have to tell you bold readers, this approach rarely works.
Fiona does a great expression.
It doesn't stop the guy brandishing.
But it's a really great face.
Leonardo Da Vinci would have had a field day.
She hasn't flinched.
Just a great face and a faint disappointed shake of the head.
Worth the price of admission.
She says nothing.
The inebriate is still waving the Honorable Member, possibly hoping to change her mind, when the security men arrive at a run.
They are gentle enough with him as they pull up his trews and lead him back to the parts of Tallaght hospital where such behaviour is permitted or at least less frowned upon.
Sitting alone in a waiting area in the secure part of Tallaght hospital.
It is about as secure as I am.
A brace of security men, leaning against a wall nearby, are indifferent to the presence of a rough looking wild haired inebriate who has apparently already outwitted all the security protocols in the building in order to access this supposedly inaccessible part of the hospital.
He must be one of those clever inebriates.
He is weaving about on multiple trajectories.
He'd be a good character in a tough urban television drama.
He'd be one of the scary ones.
Occasionally he goes up to the counter of a staff cubicle, bangs on it, and demands to be admitted to the hospital as a patient.
At other times he addresses one on one, the paintings hanging in the hall.
No one takes much notice of him except me.
Because I just know he is eventually going to find time for me.
Eventually his schedule permits and he does.
There's twenty empty chairs in the waiting area.
He sits beside me.
He turns and confides: "I wish I had cancer."
I look into the middle distance.
My handsome preraphaelite features betray a touch of strain.
Disappointed in my lack of anything, he gets up and weaves down a randomly chosen corridor.
He's about half way down the long corridor when a door beside him opens.
Fiona, the elementally beautiful triage nurse, steps into the corridor.
They are face to face.
Two worlds collide.
Their eyes meet.
Without hesitation the inebriate drops his trousers, seizes the Honorable Member of parliament for Nethers South, and waves him enthusiastically like an election banner.
I understand his idea but I have to tell you bold readers, this approach rarely works.
Fiona does a great expression.
It doesn't stop the guy brandishing.
But it's a really great face.
Leonardo Da Vinci would have had a field day.
She hasn't flinched.
Just a great face and a faint disappointed shake of the head.
Worth the price of admission.
She says nothing.
The inebriate is still waving the Honorable Member, possibly hoping to change her mind, when the security men arrive at a run.
They are gentle enough with him as they pull up his trews and lead him back to the parts of Tallaght hospital where such behaviour is permitted or at least less frowned upon.
**********
Chapter 14
Franks And Beans
Sharing a room with several other patients at the Short Stay Trauma Unit in the Franks Ward.
There's a Granny I'm not too fond of as she glares and mutters remarks when I recurrently use the shared toilet.
I've already discreetly asked a nurse could I use a more remote toilet out in the corridor.
The nurse laughed and said: "Ah they'll just have to get used to you. We're all in the same boat."
Which cryptic remark intrigued me greatly.
The way she said it suggested to me the Eagles song: "We are all prisoners here of our own device."
Sharing a room with several other patients at the Short Stay Trauma Unit in the Franks Ward.
There's a Granny I'm not too fond of as she glares and mutters remarks when I recurrently use the shared toilet.
I've already discreetly asked a nurse could I use a more remote toilet out in the corridor.
The nurse laughed and said: "Ah they'll just have to get used to you. We're all in the same boat."
Which cryptic remark intrigued me greatly.
The way she said it suggested to me the Eagles song: "We are all prisoners here of our own device."
Or Commandant Lassarde's answer to Mahoney in Police Academy when Mahoney said "So I'm a prisoner here," and Commandant Lassarde replied "We all are."
I return to bed smiling.
Also sharing the ward is a young mother who slipped on the mountains while playing with her infant child.
She's a teacher and speaks with a trendy city accent.
There's something very appealing about her aside from the accent.
It is a quality germaine to herself and to her personhood.
I've no idea what it is but I know I like it.
I'm thinking her husband is a lucky man.
Anyone married to this lady has won the lottery of life.
Between the jigs and the reels she tells me she hasn't slept for sixteen days.
The doctors have given her pain killers but she still seems to have a lot of pain.
I'm wondering could she really have been awake for sixteen days. Is that possible? Maybe on the medication.
Across from me, there's a family man who fell down the stairs at his house.
His teenage children cluster round the bed and clearly adore him.
The doctors have reassembled his leg with a metal frame around it.
Steel fixing rods seem to lead through his skin into the bone.
He says he has no pain in his leg, that they've controlled that, but that the pain in his chest is excruciating.
There's another guy with some sort of a handicap who is the soul of the place and who is also surrounded by a family of love.
There's a woman who's got an arm injury like mine which she incurred like the earlier mentioned guy by falling down the stairs at home.
None of them can believe that a day ago they were walking around hale and hearty.
They're all blaming themselves for their woes.
I'm sitting here quietly, shaking my head and saying softly to myself: "It's not your fault lads. You didn't ask for this. You are not to blame."
I return to bed smiling.
Also sharing the ward is a young mother who slipped on the mountains while playing with her infant child.
She's a teacher and speaks with a trendy city accent.
There's something very appealing about her aside from the accent.
It is a quality germaine to herself and to her personhood.
I've no idea what it is but I know I like it.
I'm thinking her husband is a lucky man.
Anyone married to this lady has won the lottery of life.
Between the jigs and the reels she tells me she hasn't slept for sixteen days.
The doctors have given her pain killers but she still seems to have a lot of pain.
I'm wondering could she really have been awake for sixteen days. Is that possible? Maybe on the medication.
Across from me, there's a family man who fell down the stairs at his house.
His teenage children cluster round the bed and clearly adore him.
The doctors have reassembled his leg with a metal frame around it.
Steel fixing rods seem to lead through his skin into the bone.
He says he has no pain in his leg, that they've controlled that, but that the pain in his chest is excruciating.
There's another guy with some sort of a handicap who is the soul of the place and who is also surrounded by a family of love.
There's a woman who's got an arm injury like mine which she incurred like the earlier mentioned guy by falling down the stairs at home.
None of them can believe that a day ago they were walking around hale and hearty.
They're all blaming themselves for their woes.
I'm sitting here quietly, shaking my head and saying softly to myself: "It's not your fault lads. You didn't ask for this. You are not to blame."
**********
Chapter 15
A Man's Life What Is It
The rosary through the night again.
Sleeping a bit.
Not able to dwell on the prayers as before.
In the morning a young man with a classic Dublin accent does the rounds giving sponge baths to the patients.
His name is Paul.
Some of the more able bodied patients he brings to the bathroom.
Most of them he manages to clean in their beds.
He is patient and kind, discreet and careful.
He speaks reassuring well chosen words, takes an interest in whoever he's focussed on, lets the interaction take whatever time it takes.
He never forgets each patient is a person.
Each person has his full attention, before he quietly and efficiently takes his leave and moves on to the next one.
I address the creator of the universe briefly: "Lord that man does more good in a morning's work than I have done in my whole life."
The rosary through the night again.
Sleeping a bit.
Not able to dwell on the prayers as before.
In the morning a young man with a classic Dublin accent does the rounds giving sponge baths to the patients.
His name is Paul.
Some of the more able bodied patients he brings to the bathroom.
Most of them he manages to clean in their beds.
He is patient and kind, discreet and careful.
He speaks reassuring well chosen words, takes an interest in whoever he's focussed on, lets the interaction take whatever time it takes.
He never forgets each patient is a person.
Each person has his full attention, before he quietly and efficiently takes his leave and moves on to the next one.
I address the creator of the universe briefly: "Lord that man does more good in a morning's work than I have done in my whole life."
**********
Chapter 16
Come Back Corporal Jones All Is Forgiven
Saint Brigid's Day.
A feast I've never remembered in my life.
I'll remember it from now on because today they're operating on me.
Saint Brigid is one of those spectacular Irish saints from 1500 years ago who can seem a bit mythic.
That is to say some of us aren't too sure whether she existed or not.
Fembos in Ireland often try to hijack her as some sort of goddess in a divide and conquer manoeuvre against the ancient church.
There's a Saint Brigid of Sweden too who is more recent in the historical sense and whose life has more credible attestation.
Still today I'll call on the intercession of the Irish girl.
A nurse with the name tag Ruth Ibeabuchi arrives at my bedside and attaches a monitor to my functional arm.
She frowns as the machine beeps.
"James," Nurse Ruth Ibeabuchi shouts suddenly. Calm down. Calm down James. James calm down."
The affect is quite quaint.
I'm sitting quietly in the bed.
Ruth Ibeabuchi is still shouting "calm down."
The sponge bath guy approaches and addresses me congenially.
"So James, what do you for a living?"
The machine goes: "Beep, beeep, beeeeeep."
I think this is hilarious.
Someone trying to relax me by asking me what I do for a living.
Ruth Ibeabuchi rounds on the other staff member.
"You go way Paul," she cries. "You go over there. You go over there. Do your work."
Now this is rum.
But the man does not retreat.
He says again quite gently: "Are you okay there James?"
Ruth Ibeabuchi lets another cry: "Go away Paul. Go to your work."
I say: "It's alright. I am okay. And thank you."
He goes.
For all the world it is as though he had been trying to protect me.
But from what?
Saint Brigid's Day.
A feast I've never remembered in my life.
I'll remember it from now on because today they're operating on me.
Saint Brigid is one of those spectacular Irish saints from 1500 years ago who can seem a bit mythic.
That is to say some of us aren't too sure whether she existed or not.
Fembos in Ireland often try to hijack her as some sort of goddess in a divide and conquer manoeuvre against the ancient church.
There's a Saint Brigid of Sweden too who is more recent in the historical sense and whose life has more credible attestation.
Still today I'll call on the intercession of the Irish girl.
A nurse with the name tag Ruth Ibeabuchi arrives at my bedside and attaches a monitor to my functional arm.
She frowns as the machine beeps.
"James," Nurse Ruth Ibeabuchi shouts suddenly. Calm down. Calm down James. James calm down."
The affect is quite quaint.
I'm sitting quietly in the bed.
Ruth Ibeabuchi is still shouting "calm down."
The sponge bath guy approaches and addresses me congenially.
"So James, what do you for a living?"
The machine goes: "Beep, beeep, beeeeeep."
I think this is hilarious.
Someone trying to relax me by asking me what I do for a living.
Ruth Ibeabuchi rounds on the other staff member.
"You go way Paul," she cries. "You go over there. You go over there. Do your work."
Now this is rum.
But the man does not retreat.
He says again quite gently: "Are you okay there James?"
Ruth Ibeabuchi lets another cry: "Go away Paul. Go to your work."
I say: "It's alright. I am okay. And thank you."
He goes.
For all the world it is as though he had been trying to protect me.
But from what?
**********
Chapter 17
I Owe Woody Allen Ten Thousand Dollars (And Bob Hope A Separate Ten Thousand Dollars For Stealing His I Owe Joke)
Hours drifting by waiting for the operation.
Can't pray full prayers now.
Now praying the rosary using shortened versions.
Like this.
"Our Father who art in heaven."
And that's the whole prayer.
Then.
"Hail Mary full of grace."
And that's the full Hail Mary.
I remember an account I read of Major Julian Cooke leading the crossing of the Waal river during the attempted Allied liberation of the Netherlands in 1944.
It was a hellish scenario.
Rowing across a wide river with no smokescreen cover with German guns zeroing in on them from the opposite bank.
Julian Cooke recalled that he prayed the Hail Mary all the way across the river under withering machine gun fire.
He had prayed the shortened version: "Hail Mary full of grace," over and over again.
I look up.
Some doctors are standing by my bed.
New dudes.
Not dudes I've seen before.
These two are also like Doctors Calum Swift and Danilo, cool as a breeze.
Only more so.
In fact, they're Charlie Choiseul cool.
Charlie Choiseul being an actor who appeared in my production of Woody Allen's Death a quarter century ago and who remained unperturbed even if the world around him seemed to be ending, as it usually was in my productions.
I still owe Woody Allen ten grand in performance rights for that one.
But isn't it extraordinary!
Everyone in this hospital is either cool as a breeze or extremely good looking.
I hope they're as capable in the practice of medicine as they are at style and deportment.
The ghost of Steve Tyler is standing on the far side of my bed.
He sings informatively: "Nah nah hah, Dude looks like a doctor. Nah nah hah, dude looks like a doctor."
He isn't helping.
The new dudes introduce themselves as Doctor Maloney's team.
They say it with an air of barely suppressed triumph like the character Colonel Hannibal Smith in a television series from my youth announcing to vanquished baddies: "We 're the A Team."
They have faint whimsical smiles.
They are quietly confident.
I like this confidence schtick.
Although given my druthers, I wouldn't necessarily have chosen BA and Murdock to do my operation.
Then they're gone.
More hours.
Now the bed is being wheeled down to the operating theatre.
I'm in a pre op holding area.
Large doors at the end.
We'll be going through those doors eventually.
That's where they'll operate.
A Pakistani girl says a few words about oxygen.
This girl's name is Jamie.
A shortened form of the Arabic Jameela which means beautiful.
I approve of the fact that staff at this hospital introduce themselves by name.
I smile at the coincidence of our names.
A guy joins her and introduces himself as Khaled.
He says: "So. We're operating on the right arm. Ha, ha, ha. Only joking. The left one, right? Ha, ha, ha."
Khaled recommends that I opt to have a further pain killing injection, something he calls a blocker.
He adds provisos as he is procedurally required to do, about how it could kill me.
"There are things that could go wrong," he points out cheerfully. "There's a small chance of killing you if we pierce the lung. But we recommend you have this."
Ho hum.
I agree to the blocker.
The girl explains what she's doing as she affixes an oxygen mask and gives me oxygen.
I look at the large door at the end of the room.
I think: Now we'll get a look at this Maloney.
I'm expecting an austere, tall, balding, portly figure with authority in his eyes and a stern face.
An heroic living legend type on whose broad shoulders the great momentous responsibilities of this hospital fall.
Yes, now at last we'll see this Maloney.
I am quite curious.
The girl says: "I'm going to give you some different oxygen."
I start to blink.
I'm still thinking: Now we'll see this Maloney.
My eyes blink and open.
I am in a different room.
There are six anaesthetists in gauze masks and green gowns around me.
Khaled is shaking me vigorously.
"Mr Healy, Mr Healy," he says. "Can you move your fingers? Can you move your fingers?"
The scene is a bit like in the movie Airplane where half the passengers are lining up to calm down an hysteric woman, and they're taking turns to shake her, and the shaking is getting progressively rougher, and there's guys in the queue with baseball bats and knuckle dusters waiting their turn.
There's an obstruction to my breathing but I can breathe.
"Can you move your fingers?" urges Khaled again.
I look at my arm.
It's encased in red plaster.
The fingers are visible.
Three of them move a bit when I try to move them.
"Look at that," I say to Khaled. "Not everybody can do that. Look. That's really good. Look. See that. Look. There you go. That's how you move fingers."
Khaled sighed.
He sounded relieved.
The clock on the wall behind him says 6.30.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Nothing," says Khaled. "Who said anything happened?"
"Well five hours have passed since you brought me in," I said. "What's been going on?"
Khaled muttered to one of the other anaesthetists: "Keep him on that mixture. It will break down the mucous."
He walked away quickly.
Five hours.
I had experienced it as the blink of an eye.
The blink of an eye.
Long enough for the surgeons to do the operation and for the post op team to nearly kill me.
Hours drifting by waiting for the operation.
Can't pray full prayers now.
Now praying the rosary using shortened versions.
Like this.
"Our Father who art in heaven."
And that's the whole prayer.
Then.
"Hail Mary full of grace."
And that's the full Hail Mary.
I remember an account I read of Major Julian Cooke leading the crossing of the Waal river during the attempted Allied liberation of the Netherlands in 1944.
It was a hellish scenario.
Rowing across a wide river with no smokescreen cover with German guns zeroing in on them from the opposite bank.
Julian Cooke recalled that he prayed the Hail Mary all the way across the river under withering machine gun fire.
He had prayed the shortened version: "Hail Mary full of grace," over and over again.
I look up.
Some doctors are standing by my bed.
New dudes.
Not dudes I've seen before.
These two are also like Doctors Calum Swift and Danilo, cool as a breeze.
Only more so.
In fact, they're Charlie Choiseul cool.
Charlie Choiseul being an actor who appeared in my production of Woody Allen's Death a quarter century ago and who remained unperturbed even if the world around him seemed to be ending, as it usually was in my productions.
I still owe Woody Allen ten grand in performance rights for that one.
But isn't it extraordinary!
Everyone in this hospital is either cool as a breeze or extremely good looking.
I hope they're as capable in the practice of medicine as they are at style and deportment.
The ghost of Steve Tyler is standing on the far side of my bed.
He sings informatively: "Nah nah hah, Dude looks like a doctor. Nah nah hah, dude looks like a doctor."
He isn't helping.
The new dudes introduce themselves as Doctor Maloney's team.
They say it with an air of barely suppressed triumph like the character Colonel Hannibal Smith in a television series from my youth announcing to vanquished baddies: "We 're the A Team."
They have faint whimsical smiles.
They are quietly confident.
I like this confidence schtick.
Although given my druthers, I wouldn't necessarily have chosen BA and Murdock to do my operation.
Then they're gone.
More hours.
Now the bed is being wheeled down to the operating theatre.
I'm in a pre op holding area.
Large doors at the end.
We'll be going through those doors eventually.
That's where they'll operate.
A Pakistani girl says a few words about oxygen.
This girl's name is Jamie.
A shortened form of the Arabic Jameela which means beautiful.
I approve of the fact that staff at this hospital introduce themselves by name.
I smile at the coincidence of our names.
A guy joins her and introduces himself as Khaled.
He says: "So. We're operating on the right arm. Ha, ha, ha. Only joking. The left one, right? Ha, ha, ha."
Khaled recommends that I opt to have a further pain killing injection, something he calls a blocker.
He adds provisos as he is procedurally required to do, about how it could kill me.
"There are things that could go wrong," he points out cheerfully. "There's a small chance of killing you if we pierce the lung. But we recommend you have this."
Ho hum.
I agree to the blocker.
The girl explains what she's doing as she affixes an oxygen mask and gives me oxygen.
I look at the large door at the end of the room.
I think: Now we'll get a look at this Maloney.
I'm expecting an austere, tall, balding, portly figure with authority in his eyes and a stern face.
An heroic living legend type on whose broad shoulders the great momentous responsibilities of this hospital fall.
Yes, now at last we'll see this Maloney.
I am quite curious.
The girl says: "I'm going to give you some different oxygen."
I start to blink.
I'm still thinking: Now we'll see this Maloney.
My eyes blink and open.
I am in a different room.
There are six anaesthetists in gauze masks and green gowns around me.
Khaled is shaking me vigorously.
"Mr Healy, Mr Healy," he says. "Can you move your fingers? Can you move your fingers?"
The scene is a bit like in the movie Airplane where half the passengers are lining up to calm down an hysteric woman, and they're taking turns to shake her, and the shaking is getting progressively rougher, and there's guys in the queue with baseball bats and knuckle dusters waiting their turn.
There's an obstruction to my breathing but I can breathe.
"Can you move your fingers?" urges Khaled again.
I look at my arm.
It's encased in red plaster.
The fingers are visible.
Three of them move a bit when I try to move them.
"Look at that," I say to Khaled. "Not everybody can do that. Look. That's really good. Look. See that. Look. There you go. That's how you move fingers."
Khaled sighed.
He sounded relieved.
The clock on the wall behind him says 6.30.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Nothing," says Khaled. "Who said anything happened?"
"Well five hours have passed since you brought me in," I said. "What's been going on?"
Khaled muttered to one of the other anaesthetists: "Keep him on that mixture. It will break down the mucous."
He walked away quickly.
Five hours.
I had experienced it as the blink of an eye.
The blink of an eye.
Long enough for the surgeons to do the operation and for the post op team to nearly kill me.
**********
Chapter 18
You Don't Know How Lucky You Are, Back In The, Back In The, Back In The Tallaght Hospital Franks Ward
Upstairs again.
Evening has settled over Dublin.
The night staff are starting their shift.
"Would you like something to eat?" asks a golden haired nurse.
"I would," sez I.
"What would you like?" sez she.
"Two pork chops, some rashers and eggs, a plate of chips and a caffe latte." sez I.
"I'm thinking something more in the line of tea and toast," says the nurse.
"That will be fine," sez me.
My mobile phone rings.
It is Rowena Baines a neighbour.
"I got your message telling us to be careful about slipping on the avenue," she exclaimed. "But I didn't realise it was serious. You never let on. How could you do that?"
"That's called acting," I told her.
"How did you fall exactly?"
"I fell. People fall all the time."
"Was it..."
Upstairs again.
Evening has settled over Dublin.
The night staff are starting their shift.
"Would you like something to eat?" asks a golden haired nurse.
"I would," sez I.
"What would you like?" sez she.
"Two pork chops, some rashers and eggs, a plate of chips and a caffe latte." sez I.
"I'm thinking something more in the line of tea and toast," says the nurse.
"That will be fine," sez me.
My mobile phone rings.
It is Rowena Baines a neighbour.
"I got your message telling us to be careful about slipping on the avenue," she exclaimed. "But I didn't realise it was serious. You never let on. How could you do that?"
"That's called acting," I told her.
"How did you fall exactly?"
"I fell. People fall all the time."
"Was it..."
"No. It wasn't them."
Bit late for her to start believing in the harassment now. Especially since it's apparently shifted to the supernatural plane.
"I've lit a candle to Saint Anthony for you," she said. "It will be burning all night here in the house."
She rang off.
I was pleased about this.
Among those believed by Catholics to be saints in heaven, Saint Anthony is in the most positive sense of an old fashioned phrase, a dude, right up there with earthly dudes such as Calum Swift, Doctor Danilo and Maloney's surgical team.
If you lose something ask him to intercede with God for you.
Go on.
Try it.
Another radiant nurse drifts into my ambit and plumps my pillow.
Plumping your pillow is a Tallaght hospital euphemism for plumping your pillow.
Sigh.
"I've lit a candle to Saint Anthony for you," she said. "It will be burning all night here in the house."
She rang off.
I was pleased about this.
Among those believed by Catholics to be saints in heaven, Saint Anthony is in the most positive sense of an old fashioned phrase, a dude, right up there with earthly dudes such as Calum Swift, Doctor Danilo and Maloney's surgical team.
If you lose something ask him to intercede with God for you.
Go on.
Try it.
Another radiant nurse drifts into my ambit and plumps my pillow.
Plumping your pillow is a Tallaght hospital euphemism for plumping your pillow.
Sigh.
If we could have our druthers.
"Did anything happen during the operation?" I ask her.
"It all went well?" she assures me.
"Why am I still on oxygen?" I ask.
"Oh your oxygen levels fell suddenly, that's all," she says.
"Would falling oxygen levels be dangerous?" I enquire fascinated.
"The doctors will talk to you tomorrow," she says firmly.
"It's just, Nurse, I'd hate to nearly die and not know," I plead.
"Stop thinking about it," advises the nurse.
"I mean I wouldn't be upset but it would make a great story if I knew," I persist.
She looks at me with the firstlings of fondness.
"Did anything happen during the operation?" I ask her.
"It all went well?" she assures me.
"Why am I still on oxygen?" I ask.
"Oh your oxygen levels fell suddenly, that's all," she says.
"Would falling oxygen levels be dangerous?" I enquire fascinated.
"The doctors will talk to you tomorrow," she says firmly.
"It's just, Nurse, I'd hate to nearly die and not know," I plead.
"Stop thinking about it," advises the nurse.
"I mean I wouldn't be upset but it would make a great story if I knew," I persist.
She looks at me with the firstlings of fondness.
In her eyes I saw no shadow of another parting.
"Don't worry about those things," she proffers and then as she's walking to the door she calls back: "Oh, We're going to keep you on oxygen through the night. So there's nothing to worry about there either."
"Don't worry about those things," she proffers and then as she's walking to the door she calls back: "Oh, We're going to keep you on oxygen through the night. So there's nothing to worry about there either."
She departs.
**********
Chapter 19
Who You've Got To Know On The Night Shift
The mighty hospital has fallen silent.
The mighty hospital has fallen silent.
All that mighty heart is lying still, as William Wordsworth would have put it.
Here we go.
Through the night.
Mind won't settle with a formal prayer now.
Instead I'm saying the names of saints.
Each Saint is a gift of God.
So I say the name of a saint, let what I know about him come to me, and praise God for the gift the saint is.
The names of the saints become a litany of praise to the creator and a celebration of existence.
Saint Joseph the worker.
Saint Claire who loved holy poverty a lot more than I do.
Saint Francis of Assisi, crazy about animals, people and all created things.
Saint Anthony with his candle burning bright tonight in Rowena Baines house.
I can see the candle.
Saint Joseph of Copertino who helps you get exams.
Saint Agnes.
Father Jerzy Popieluszko.
Bernadette.
Father Ragheed Aziz Ghani.
Father Francois Mourad.
Archbishop Boulos.
Martyrs of China.
Martyrs of Iraq.
Martyrs of Syria.
Martyrs of Russia.
Martyrs of Africa.
Martyrs of Europe.
Martyrs of the Americas.
Joan of Arc, wow, saint who by God's grace ended a hundred years war and incarnated France.
Saint Jean Vianney, the hilariously titled Cure d'Ars.
Catherine Laboure.
Therese of Lisieux who sent me buckets of flowers but no miracles. If you get a flower from her, it's supposed to mean she will obtain a miracle from God for you. It doesn't always mean that. Sometimes she's just sending you flowers.
Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta the seers of Fatima.
Maximilian Kolbe.
Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, the Lutheran imprisoned by the Romanian Communists, not especially fond of Catholics but who recalled a day in the Communist prison camp when an elderly Catholic Bishop was being tortured by the gaolers and everyone there, atheist, believer, criminal and political prisoner alike, wanted to shout out as one "Viva el Papa."
Sabine Wurmbrand.
Preacher David Wilkerson who wrote The Cross And The Switchblade about his time witnessing about the Lord to the gangs of New York.
Gwen Wilkerson.
Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin.
Bernadino.
Kateri.
Hugo Festa.
Mother Teresa, best nun uniform ever and best nuns.
John Paul, a cracking good pope.
Isadore Bakanja.
Josephine Bakhita.
Thomas Aquineas.
Ignatius Loyola.
Francis Xavier.
Francis Xavier Zeelos.
Solanus Casey.
Mother Angelica.
Sister Valsa John Beebey.
Frere Andre Bassette.
Saint Cyril.
Saint Methodius.
Mariam Bouardy.
Charbel Makhlouf.
Gemma Galgani whom a supposedly possessed person claimed the demons feared.
Catherine of Genoa.
Catherine of Sienna.
Here we go.
Through the night.
Mind won't settle with a formal prayer now.
Instead I'm saying the names of saints.
Each Saint is a gift of God.
So I say the name of a saint, let what I know about him come to me, and praise God for the gift the saint is.
The names of the saints become a litany of praise to the creator and a celebration of existence.
Saint Joseph the worker.
Saint Claire who loved holy poverty a lot more than I do.
Saint Francis of Assisi, crazy about animals, people and all created things.
Saint Anthony with his candle burning bright tonight in Rowena Baines house.
I can see the candle.
Saint Joseph of Copertino who helps you get exams.
Saint Agnes.
Father Jerzy Popieluszko.
Bernadette.
Father Ragheed Aziz Ghani.
Father Francois Mourad.
Archbishop Boulos.
Martyrs of China.
Martyrs of Iraq.
Martyrs of Syria.
Martyrs of Russia.
Martyrs of Africa.
Martyrs of Europe.
Martyrs of the Americas.
Joan of Arc, wow, saint who by God's grace ended a hundred years war and incarnated France.
Saint Jean Vianney, the hilariously titled Cure d'Ars.
Catherine Laboure.
Therese of Lisieux who sent me buckets of flowers but no miracles. If you get a flower from her, it's supposed to mean she will obtain a miracle from God for you. It doesn't always mean that. Sometimes she's just sending you flowers.
Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta the seers of Fatima.
Maximilian Kolbe.
Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, the Lutheran imprisoned by the Romanian Communists, not especially fond of Catholics but who recalled a day in the Communist prison camp when an elderly Catholic Bishop was being tortured by the gaolers and everyone there, atheist, believer, criminal and political prisoner alike, wanted to shout out as one "Viva el Papa."
Sabine Wurmbrand.
Preacher David Wilkerson who wrote The Cross And The Switchblade about his time witnessing about the Lord to the gangs of New York.
Gwen Wilkerson.
Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin.
Bernadino.
Kateri.
Hugo Festa.
Mother Teresa, best nun uniform ever and best nuns.
John Paul, a cracking good pope.
Isadore Bakanja.
Josephine Bakhita.
Thomas Aquineas.
Ignatius Loyola.
Francis Xavier.
Francis Xavier Zeelos.
Solanus Casey.
Mother Angelica.
Sister Valsa John Beebey.
Frere Andre Bassette.
Saint Cyril.
Saint Methodius.
Mariam Bouardy.
Charbel Makhlouf.
Gemma Galgani whom a supposedly possessed person claimed the demons feared.
Catherine of Genoa.
Catherine of Sienna.
Catherine of Bologna.
Catherine of Alexandria.
Catherine Laboure.
I love the name Catherine.
Any saint called Catherine I want to know.
The Irish bunch.
Matthew Talbot.
Oliver Plunkett.
Saint Patrick.
Saint Brigid.
Saint Colmcille.
Saint Aidan.
Augustine who wrote of God: "I came to love you late, oh beauty so ancient and so new... Our souls are restless till they rest in you."
Benedict.
Dominic.
Saints from Biblical times.
Mary Magdalene.
Saint Peter.
Saint Paul.
Thomas Didymus. (A friend of comedian Ken Dodd, I seem to remember.)
Philip.
Saint John the Baptist. (Upper class Brits pronounce his name Singe In Baptist.)
John the Evangelist.
Saint Stephen whose face glowed and who forgave his killers.
Old Testament dudes.
Abraham.
Moses.
Elijah.
David.
Isaac.
Jacob.
The great cloud of witnesses.
Edith Stein.
Alphonsus Ratisbonne.
John of the Cross.
John Damascene.
John Chrysostom.
Saint Jerome.
Thomas Moore, the man for all seasons, executed by Henry the Eighth, courage, great sense of humour, featured in a great play incredibly written by the self described atheist Robert Bolt, and the film version by the same atheist was even better.
Angels.
Archangel Raphael bring us the Lord's healing.
Archangel Michael bring us the Lord's protection.
Archangel Gabriel bring us the Lord's light.
The blessed mother under her titles of honour.
Star of the Sea.
Ark of the Covenant.
Tower of Ivory.
Vessel of Singular Devotion.
Our Lady of the snows.
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Our Lady of Pontmain.
Our Lady of Beauraing.
Our Lady of Banneux.
Our Lady of Lourdes.
I love the name Catherine.
Any saint called Catherine I want to know.
The Irish bunch.
Matthew Talbot.
Oliver Plunkett.
Saint Patrick.
Saint Brigid.
Saint Colmcille.
Saint Aidan.
Augustine who wrote of God: "I came to love you late, oh beauty so ancient and so new... Our souls are restless till they rest in you."
Benedict.
Dominic.
Saints from Biblical times.
Mary Magdalene.
Saint Peter.
Saint Paul.
Thomas Didymus. (A friend of comedian Ken Dodd, I seem to remember.)
Philip.
Saint John the Baptist. (Upper class Brits pronounce his name Singe In Baptist.)
John the Evangelist.
Saint Stephen whose face glowed and who forgave his killers.
Old Testament dudes.
Abraham.
Moses.
Elijah.
David.
Isaac.
Jacob.
The great cloud of witnesses.
Edith Stein.
Alphonsus Ratisbonne.
John of the Cross.
John Damascene.
John Chrysostom.
Saint Jerome.
Thomas Moore, the man for all seasons, executed by Henry the Eighth, courage, great sense of humour, featured in a great play incredibly written by the self described atheist Robert Bolt, and the film version by the same atheist was even better.
Angels.
Archangel Raphael bring us the Lord's healing.
Archangel Michael bring us the Lord's protection.
Archangel Gabriel bring us the Lord's light.
The blessed mother under her titles of honour.
Star of the Sea.
Ark of the Covenant.
Tower of Ivory.
Vessel of Singular Devotion.
Our Lady of the snows.
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Our Lady of Pontmain.
Our Lady of Beauraing.
Our Lady of Banneux.
Our Lady of Lourdes.
Our Lady of Fatima.
Great cloud of witnesses.
Greater and ever greater clouds of witnesses.
All God's army spread out in glorious battle array through time and eternity...
A nurse enters and thinks to waken me but I am awake.
"Have you slept?" she asks.
"No," I say, but I'm very peaceful."
Something seems to strike her.
She casts a curious glance around the ward.
"Hmm, it is very peaceful here," she says with a note of surprise in her voice, and goes.
I dreamed a few years ago that I was in hospital and people were coming to see me but they were all people who had left the mortal life.
"Have you slept?" she asks.
"No," I say, but I'm very peaceful."
Something seems to strike her.
She casts a curious glance around the ward.
"Hmm, it is very peaceful here," she says with a note of surprise in her voice, and goes.
I dreamed a few years ago that I was in hospital and people were coming to see me but they were all people who had left the mortal life.
That is to say, people who were dead.
The dream now came true.
The ward filled with saints and people I had once known.
My brother John and the businessman Pat Dunlea were there.
I addressed God as to what was happening.
"Lord," I said, "I'd love to actually see them. Feeling they're here is great. But it would make a really great story if I could see them. I wouldn't be a bit shy about telling people."
In my heart I heard: "When you see them James, you're coming home."
The dream now came true.
The ward filled with saints and people I had once known.
My brother John and the businessman Pat Dunlea were there.
I addressed God as to what was happening.
"Lord," I said, "I'd love to actually see them. Feeling they're here is great. But it would make a really great story if I could see them. I wouldn't be a bit shy about telling people."
In my heart I heard: "When you see them James, you're coming home."
**********
Chapter 20
Strange Harmonies.
Morning light.
A new patient is in the bed across the room from me.
She calls a greeting.
She heard me during the night praying for a guy called Christopher and thought I was praying to Saint Christopher.
The travelling community hold Saint Christopher as their own.
She talks to me.
She says she is from a family whose members are involved in crime, and that she herself has been addicted to drugs and doesn't think she'll ever beat the addiction.
I say: "When I was coming off drugs, it was given me to understand that there are two types of pain. There's bad pain like when someone shoots you or stabs you and your body is saying: Uh oh, trouble here. And there's good pain. Like when you're coming off drugs. Every day I knew, that the pain of withdrawal was my body telling me: 'You're getting better." Every cell in my body was crying out. But I knew that was a good sign. This is the good kind of pain. Every pain you feel coming off drugs is saying: 'We're getting closer and closer to freedom.' 'We're winning this.' 'Everything is restoring, mind, body and spirit.' That pain is your very being saying: 'God made me to get better and I'm getting better.' This pain is your body giving you a thumbs up. It's a sign of ultimate triumph. The good kind of pain, the kind you get from drug withdrawal is telling you every step of the way: 'You did the right thing. You're getting better and better and better.' That's what the good pain means. The good pain means you're healing. The good pain comes and you don't need to fear it. Jesus is perfect love and perfect love casts out fear. Know it. Drugs have no authority over you. You were made for victory."
Morning light.
A new patient is in the bed across the room from me.
She calls a greeting.
She heard me during the night praying for a guy called Christopher and thought I was praying to Saint Christopher.
The travelling community hold Saint Christopher as their own.
She talks to me.
She says she is from a family whose members are involved in crime, and that she herself has been addicted to drugs and doesn't think she'll ever beat the addiction.
I say: "When I was coming off drugs, it was given me to understand that there are two types of pain. There's bad pain like when someone shoots you or stabs you and your body is saying: Uh oh, trouble here. And there's good pain. Like when you're coming off drugs. Every day I knew, that the pain of withdrawal was my body telling me: 'You're getting better." Every cell in my body was crying out. But I knew that was a good sign. This is the good kind of pain. Every pain you feel coming off drugs is saying: 'We're getting closer and closer to freedom.' 'We're winning this.' 'Everything is restoring, mind, body and spirit.' That pain is your very being saying: 'God made me to get better and I'm getting better.' This pain is your body giving you a thumbs up. It's a sign of ultimate triumph. The good kind of pain, the kind you get from drug withdrawal is telling you every step of the way: 'You did the right thing. You're getting better and better and better.' That's what the good pain means. The good pain means you're healing. The good pain comes and you don't need to fear it. Jesus is perfect love and perfect love casts out fear. Know it. Drugs have no authority over you. You were made for victory."
**********
Chapter 21
Kabookie With Ibeabuchie
They're getting ready to remove some sort of a drain device that has been siphoning off stuff from my arm.
It was inserted during the operation.
Part of the device extends a long way into my arm.
Part of it is external.
I am lying on my side.
A nurse whose name I don't know, stands in front of me to observe.
She has a lilting Donegal accent.
The nurse with the name tag Ruth Ibeabuchie, joins her, goes behind me and begins trying to deliberately damage my arm under the guise of removing the drain from it.
The Donegal nurse frowns.
They're getting ready to remove some sort of a drain device that has been siphoning off stuff from my arm.
It was inserted during the operation.
Part of the device extends a long way into my arm.
Part of it is external.
I am lying on my side.
A nurse whose name I don't know, stands in front of me to observe.
She has a lilting Donegal accent.
The nurse with the name tag Ruth Ibeabuchie, joins her, goes behind me and begins trying to deliberately damage my arm under the guise of removing the drain from it.
The Donegal nurse frowns.
Ibeabuchie's face is manic and enthused.
I keep my own expression impassive.
The Donegal nurse becomes increasingly upset.
Minutes tick by.
Not one word do I speak.
Finally the Donegal nurse can take no more and raps out in a firm voice: "Do you want me to do that Ruth?"
The question is designed not to alarm the patient, but it means that the observer nurse is instructing Ruth Ibeabuchie to cease what she is doing.
Ruth Ibeabuchie is startled.
She becomes flustered and tries to cover herself.
"Who fitted that?" she gasps, straightening up.
Suddenly she loses control of herself and strides around the bed.
"If I hurt you," she screams, "you have to tell me."
I keep my face impassive as before and say nothing.
A third nurse is summoned who removes the drain apparatus from my arm without further shenanigans.
The Donegal nurse becomes increasingly upset.
Minutes tick by.
Not one word do I speak.
Finally the Donegal nurse can take no more and raps out in a firm voice: "Do you want me to do that Ruth?"
The question is designed not to alarm the patient, but it means that the observer nurse is instructing Ruth Ibeabuchie to cease what she is doing.
Ruth Ibeabuchie is startled.
She becomes flustered and tries to cover herself.
"Who fitted that?" she gasps, straightening up.
Suddenly she loses control of herself and strides around the bed.
"If I hurt you," she screams, "you have to tell me."
I keep my face impassive as before and say nothing.
A third nurse is summoned who removes the drain apparatus from my arm without further shenanigans.
***********
Chapter 22
Home Is The Hero By Which Of Course I Mean Me (A Chapter Also Known As Heelers Endorses The Hoover Corporation)
The house is dark.
I switch on the lights.
The neighbours have been in.
There is a new fridge, a new microwave oven, a new electric heater, and in the corner of the sitting room a brand new limb of satan, by which I mean a television set.
On the window sill beside the television is a paid up television licence.
The television licence is the documentary attestation of a compulsory tax Irish people are forced to pay if they wish to own a television.
And apparently also, as in my case, if they don't wish to own a television.
The tax is used by the monopoly State broadcaster RTE for its incitement to hatred activities (documentaries they call em) and to debauch the peasantry.
Yes.
So I'm now using my neighbours money to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church.
Hoo baby.
The forces of darkness would have to be some shower of humourless boors not to get a wry chuckle out of that one.
You know folks, I've spent a lifetime trying to escape television.
Now it looks like TVs are actually pursuing me.
Farmer Jones arrives.
"Your neighbour Joanna got you all this stuff," he explains. "I took your old fridge to the dump. There's new bed clothes upstairs as well. Joanna was in with her Dyson dust remover cleaning up too. You should have heard what she called you. The Dyson kept getting blocked with dog hairs. Every time it would seize up. she'd curse you from a height. It was the funniest thing I ever saw."
The noble Heelers nods sagely.
"A lot of people buy vacuum cleaners for style," I muse. "They look great with their Dysons. It's like an Oscar De La Renta handbag accessory. You could bring a Dyson to an Oscar ceremony and everyone would coo about how great it looks. But if you actually need to clean a really messy house, you're better off with a hoover. Never send a Dyson to do a hoover's work. The Dysons tend to panic when the going gets tough."
The house is dark.
I switch on the lights.
The neighbours have been in.
There is a new fridge, a new microwave oven, a new electric heater, and in the corner of the sitting room a brand new limb of satan, by which I mean a television set.
On the window sill beside the television is a paid up television licence.
The television licence is the documentary attestation of a compulsory tax Irish people are forced to pay if they wish to own a television.
And apparently also, as in my case, if they don't wish to own a television.
The tax is used by the monopoly State broadcaster RTE for its incitement to hatred activities (documentaries they call em) and to debauch the peasantry.
Yes.
So I'm now using my neighbours money to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church.
Hoo baby.
The forces of darkness would have to be some shower of humourless boors not to get a wry chuckle out of that one.
You know folks, I've spent a lifetime trying to escape television.
Now it looks like TVs are actually pursuing me.
Farmer Jones arrives.
"Your neighbour Joanna got you all this stuff," he explains. "I took your old fridge to the dump. There's new bed clothes upstairs as well. Joanna was in with her Dyson dust remover cleaning up too. You should have heard what she called you. The Dyson kept getting blocked with dog hairs. Every time it would seize up. she'd curse you from a height. It was the funniest thing I ever saw."
The noble Heelers nods sagely.
"A lot of people buy vacuum cleaners for style," I muse. "They look great with their Dysons. It's like an Oscar De La Renta handbag accessory. You could bring a Dyson to an Oscar ceremony and everyone would coo about how great it looks. But if you actually need to clean a really messy house, you're better off with a hoover. Never send a Dyson to do a hoover's work. The Dysons tend to panic when the going gets tough."
After much such light hearted reflections over a cup of tea, Farmer Jones grows weary of my stand up routine and departs stage left.
As he closes the kitchen door I notice a jagged tear in the floor linoleum which I quickly surmise had been made by the old fridge being dragged across it for removal. Ho hum. I had purchased the new floor covering with my own money a month before the hospital trip. As far as I can see, it's about the only thing left in the house that I paid for myself.
"My new lino," I cry bitterly and then with strange high ingratitude: "Four hundred quids worth. I suppose they spent three hundred quid on the new fridge. I'm a hundred quid down on the deal."
Herewith I end my chapter.
Herewith I end my chapter.
**********
Chapter 23
Home Is The Sailor Home From The Sea And The Hunter Is Home From The Hill And I'm Home From Tallaght Hospital And I suppose we should mention Sir Alec Douglas Home Whose Name Also Has The Word Home In It
Alone again.
From the corner the television watches me warily.
The ghosts of Paul Simon and the other one enter and set up their instruments.
They being to sing as follows:
"Hello TV my old friend.
I've come to sit with you again.
Because a neighbour softly epiglottal
Left you here while I was in Tallaght hospital
And the words of the slandering climate change pornographers are written in RTE halls
And Brexit Bawls
And whispered in the fake orgasms
Of Babe Station."
An appealing little lyric.
I switch on the sexevision.
A girl pretending to diddle herself greets me.
Ah yes.
If I want to watch that sort of thing I'll go to the Costa Cafe at Smithfield where the IRA have laid on a nice little honey trap for me who waves her booties and struggles manfully to get me to look at her magnificent silken clad thighs while I console myself with a caffe latte, thinking wryly of Professor Eddie Murphy's dictum: If the bitch is in the mafia there's something wrong with the pussy.
Grammer fans will note that pussy in this instance is a metonomy, ie the use of a signifier in place of the related actuality which is signified. or as the humorist James Thurber explains it, the container for the thing contained, his examples being "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," (Anthony doesn't want their actual ears, he wants the function contained in them which is hearing) and a wife saying to her husband: "Another word out of you and I'll hit you with the milk," (She is not threatening to hit him with the milk really but with the container that the milk comes in.)
In all probability Professor Murphy's assessment of a mafia girl's pussy does not refer to the girl's vagina but is a pessimistically speculative reference to the quality, sincerity and communicable diseasiness of her love making contained therein.
I flick the channel.
Ner ner, ner ner ner ner.
Dinging music. (Kildare colloquialism for really catchy music.)
Why it's UFO the old 1960's series.
Here's larfs.
This is the sort of thing I would watch.
It's so ridiculous it's brilliant.
Good shoot em ups too even with the pre Star Wars special effects.
Lots of louche oddly innocent sexiness.
The staff of the early warning station on moon base are mostly sexalacious women with purple hair and scanty work uniforms.
The blokes on the underwater submarines wear string vests which do not cover their pecs in any meaningful sense.
Their may be a realistic explanation why moon base girls have purple hair and short skirts and why submarine fleet guys all wear string vests, but I've yet to hear it.
The plot is a howl.
Earth is under attack from space aliens.
To prevent panic the governments of the world have joined together to fight the aliens in secret.
So the public must be prevented from knowing that aliens are attacking and every dog fight in the skies must be explained away as a meteor shower.
What a shower of old meteors!
It gets better.
The earth based defences are hidden under a film studio in London.
The guy who heads up earth's defences also heads up the film studio.
Ha, ha, ha.
Right there.
That's a doozie.
A top secret all earth anti UFO base under a British film studio.
The luvvies would run to the media, and blab the story in a movie minute.
I flick the channel.
Judge Judy is shouting: "Madam, Madam. I'll kick you in the bawls Madam."
I believe she would too.
I like Judge Judy and would willingly watch her or turn her loose on the Irish get out of jail free card for mobsters justice system.
I wonder what she'd make of Judge Martin Nolan last week refusing to jail a woman who'd smothered a three year old little girl.
Flick.
Lots of retro stuff.
The Prisoner, that McGoohan chap, is still trying to escape from his island.
More dinging music.
Great classic ham acting.
But just a tinge of nastiness that I wouldn't have about the place.
A secret agent resigns form M15 and is kidnapped by his former employers and imprisoned on an island from which for the next sixteen episodes between intermittent druggings and odd pyschological underminings, he will try to escape.
There's an avant garde 1960s surrealism to it that is quaint but the tinge of evil is ever present too.
I don't like it.
Although I do doff my cap to a stark touch of realism. a glorious homage, in the credit sequence each week as we're given a recap of the original kidnapping which shows the hero going home having just resigned from M15 and being followed by a ruddy great black limousine that is effectively the most noticeable car in London.
Whoever advised on that scene, knew the British secret service for real.
I flick.
Violence.
Flick.
Mind numbing music channels.
Ho hum
Desperation calls.
When all else fails.
I think it's time to have a look at RTE, the Irish national fraudcaster.
After all I've just paid a hundred and eighty quid of my neighbour's money for the privilege of doing so.
Flickatullo.
And lo!
The RTE station on this television is blocked.
Amid all the oddly charming clapped out retro channels, amid the inane cloned debauching music stations, amid the violence and porn dross, amid the conformist Russian propaganda of Putin's Russia Today and the fervourless leftist climate change Brexit Bawls propaganda of Murdock's Sky News, amid all the unthinking crap of the world on tap, the one piece of worthless fervourless unthinking pornographic propagandist State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I can't see, is the piece of worthless fervourless propagandistic State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I've actually paid for.
Alone again.
From the corner the television watches me warily.
The ghosts of Paul Simon and the other one enter and set up their instruments.
They being to sing as follows:
"Hello TV my old friend.
I've come to sit with you again.
Because a neighbour softly epiglottal
Left you here while I was in Tallaght hospital
And the words of the slandering climate change pornographers are written in RTE halls
And Brexit Bawls
And whispered in the fake orgasms
Of Babe Station."
An appealing little lyric.
I switch on the sexevision.
A girl pretending to diddle herself greets me.
Ah yes.
If I want to watch that sort of thing I'll go to the Costa Cafe at Smithfield where the IRA have laid on a nice little honey trap for me who waves her booties and struggles manfully to get me to look at her magnificent silken clad thighs while I console myself with a caffe latte, thinking wryly of Professor Eddie Murphy's dictum: If the bitch is in the mafia there's something wrong with the pussy.
Grammer fans will note that pussy in this instance is a metonomy, ie the use of a signifier in place of the related actuality which is signified. or as the humorist James Thurber explains it, the container for the thing contained, his examples being "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," (Anthony doesn't want their actual ears, he wants the function contained in them which is hearing) and a wife saying to her husband: "Another word out of you and I'll hit you with the milk," (She is not threatening to hit him with the milk really but with the container that the milk comes in.)
In all probability Professor Murphy's assessment of a mafia girl's pussy does not refer to the girl's vagina but is a pessimistically speculative reference to the quality, sincerity and communicable diseasiness of her love making contained therein.
I flick the channel.
Ner ner, ner ner ner ner.
Dinging music. (Kildare colloquialism for really catchy music.)
Why it's UFO the old 1960's series.
Here's larfs.
This is the sort of thing I would watch.
It's so ridiculous it's brilliant.
Good shoot em ups too even with the pre Star Wars special effects.
Lots of louche oddly innocent sexiness.
The staff of the early warning station on moon base are mostly sexalacious women with purple hair and scanty work uniforms.
The blokes on the underwater submarines wear string vests which do not cover their pecs in any meaningful sense.
Their may be a realistic explanation why moon base girls have purple hair and short skirts and why submarine fleet guys all wear string vests, but I've yet to hear it.
The plot is a howl.
Earth is under attack from space aliens.
To prevent panic the governments of the world have joined together to fight the aliens in secret.
So the public must be prevented from knowing that aliens are attacking and every dog fight in the skies must be explained away as a meteor shower.
What a shower of old meteors!
It gets better.
The earth based defences are hidden under a film studio in London.
The guy who heads up earth's defences also heads up the film studio.
Ha, ha, ha.
Right there.
That's a doozie.
A top secret all earth anti UFO base under a British film studio.
The luvvies would run to the media, and blab the story in a movie minute.
I flick the channel.
Judge Judy is shouting: "Madam, Madam. I'll kick you in the bawls Madam."
I believe she would too.
I like Judge Judy and would willingly watch her or turn her loose on the Irish get out of jail free card for mobsters justice system.
I wonder what she'd make of Judge Martin Nolan last week refusing to jail a woman who'd smothered a three year old little girl.
Flick.
Lots of retro stuff.
The Prisoner, that McGoohan chap, is still trying to escape from his island.
More dinging music.
Great classic ham acting.
But just a tinge of nastiness that I wouldn't have about the place.
A secret agent resigns form M15 and is kidnapped by his former employers and imprisoned on an island from which for the next sixteen episodes between intermittent druggings and odd pyschological underminings, he will try to escape.
There's an avant garde 1960s surrealism to it that is quaint but the tinge of evil is ever present too.
I don't like it.
Although I do doff my cap to a stark touch of realism. a glorious homage, in the credit sequence each week as we're given a recap of the original kidnapping which shows the hero going home having just resigned from M15 and being followed by a ruddy great black limousine that is effectively the most noticeable car in London.
Whoever advised on that scene, knew the British secret service for real.
I flick.
Violence.
Flick.
Mind numbing music channels.
Ho hum
Desperation calls.
When all else fails.
I think it's time to have a look at RTE, the Irish national fraudcaster.
After all I've just paid a hundred and eighty quid of my neighbour's money for the privilege of doing so.
Flickatullo.
And lo!
The RTE station on this television is blocked.
Amid all the oddly charming clapped out retro channels, amid the inane cloned debauching music stations, amid the violence and porn dross, amid the conformist Russian propaganda of Putin's Russia Today and the fervourless leftist climate change Brexit Bawls propaganda of Murdock's Sky News, amid all the unthinking crap of the world on tap, the one piece of worthless fervourless unthinking pornographic propagandist State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I can't see, is the piece of worthless fervourless propagandistic State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I've actually paid for.
**********
Chapter 24
His Excellency Regrets That He Will Not Be Throwing Out His Television Today
"If you get rid of your TV you're only denying yourself," said the ambassador.
"Honestly it doesn't feel like much of a denial," quoth me.
"But you're making the sacrifice," suggesteth he.
"Living without the Murdocks is no sacrifice."
"You won't really make a difference to anyone else," insists he.
"I'll no longer be complicit in the pornogrification of a generation of human beings," sez me.
"But what difference are you going to make?" wonders he.
"For a start I won't be helping the pimps of the television industry meet their wage bills for all those women and men they pay to have sex on their satelite channels," quoth me.
"Oh come on," sez he.
"By the way, what exactly is the difference between a satelite channel service provider who pays women to mime having sex on screen and a pimp who provides me with an actual prostitute?" wondereth me.
"You can get those channels blocked."
"I don't want to support anyone in business who would sell me those channels to begin with."
"I still think you're only depriving yourself of a modern convenience," sez he.
"How about this for an additional reason," sez I. "To own a TV in Ireland, I must pay a tax to RTE. The tax is used to finance RTE's slanders of the Catholic church masquerading as documentaries, and RTE's apologias for the IRA masquerading as history programmes, as well as the pornographic sex and violence which RTE routinely broadcasts masquerading as entertainment. Why would I willingly be complicit in financing RTE's attempts to intellectually and morally debauch the nation?"
"But you don't have to watch it," sez he.
"It's an easier decision not to watch TV if I don't have a TV," quoth me sagebrushily.
"Why not have a TV and only watch what you approve of?" sez he.
"If you agree with me that the sex and violence and ideological manipulation is as bad as heroin," quoth I, "if you really agree, tell me this. Would you keep heroin in the drawer over there by the sink, and say to your family: None of you have to use this, but let's not deprive ourselves by throwing it away. If you really agreed with me that the material being broadcast is as bad as heroin, and I haven't said anything less than that, my essential point has been that the sexualising material on televison is as disruptive and destructive to male and female personhood as heroin, if you really accept my key point, I think you'd be doing the same thing too. I don't mind you telling me I'm wrong. But if you actually agree with me, I can't understand why on earth you would let yourself be a party to what they're doing."
"If you get rid of your TV you're only denying yourself," said the ambassador.
"Honestly it doesn't feel like much of a denial," quoth me.
"But you're making the sacrifice," suggesteth he.
"Living without the Murdocks is no sacrifice."
"You won't really make a difference to anyone else," insists he.
"I'll no longer be complicit in the pornogrification of a generation of human beings," sez me.
"But what difference are you going to make?" wonders he.
"For a start I won't be helping the pimps of the television industry meet their wage bills for all those women and men they pay to have sex on their satelite channels," quoth me.
"Oh come on," sez he.
"By the way, what exactly is the difference between a satelite channel service provider who pays women to mime having sex on screen and a pimp who provides me with an actual prostitute?" wondereth me.
"You can get those channels blocked."
"I don't want to support anyone in business who would sell me those channels to begin with."
"I still think you're only depriving yourself of a modern convenience," sez he.
"How about this for an additional reason," sez I. "To own a TV in Ireland, I must pay a tax to RTE. The tax is used to finance RTE's slanders of the Catholic church masquerading as documentaries, and RTE's apologias for the IRA masquerading as history programmes, as well as the pornographic sex and violence which RTE routinely broadcasts masquerading as entertainment. Why would I willingly be complicit in financing RTE's attempts to intellectually and morally debauch the nation?"
"But you don't have to watch it," sez he.
"It's an easier decision not to watch TV if I don't have a TV," quoth me sagebrushily.
"Why not have a TV and only watch what you approve of?" sez he.
"If you agree with me that the sex and violence and ideological manipulation is as bad as heroin," quoth I, "if you really agree, tell me this. Would you keep heroin in the drawer over there by the sink, and say to your family: None of you have to use this, but let's not deprive ourselves by throwing it away. If you really agreed with me that the material being broadcast is as bad as heroin, and I haven't said anything less than that, my essential point has been that the sexualising material on televison is as disruptive and destructive to male and female personhood as heroin, if you really accept my key point, I think you'd be doing the same thing too. I don't mind you telling me I'm wrong. But if you actually agree with me, I can't understand why on earth you would let yourself be a party to what they're doing."
**********
Chapter 25
Dead Men Don't Wear Bobble Hats
"You really think you can live without a TV?" wonders Teresa wide eyed.
"I've lived without one for years, it's just the neighbours keep giving me the damn things," sayeth me.
"Do you not enjoy television?" sez she.
"Too much sex and violence," sez me. "I don't approve. And I don't like being forced to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church through the 180 quid licence fee which the Irish government insists we all pay every year for daring to own TVs."
"Well you've lost the use of your left arm, not your little finger. You can always change the channel," advises she.
"The problem is Teresa old pal," quoth me, "while not approving of sex and violence, I find myself strengely drawn to it."
"You really think you can live without a TV?" wonders Teresa wide eyed.
"I've lived without one for years, it's just the neighbours keep giving me the damn things," sayeth me.
"Do you not enjoy television?" sez she.
"Too much sex and violence," sez me. "I don't approve. And I don't like being forced to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church through the 180 quid licence fee which the Irish government insists we all pay every year for daring to own TVs."
"Well you've lost the use of your left arm, not your little finger. You can always change the channel," advises she.
"The problem is Teresa old pal," quoth me, "while not approving of sex and violence, I find myself strengely drawn to it."
**********
Chapter 26
Return Of The Man With No Bobble Hat
It is time to go meet my public.
I will venture down Main Street.
I perambulate wobblily.
Grit your teeth.
You can walk.
Gotta get back in the saddle.
Or at least back in the saddlery, arf arf, Berneys Saddlery I mean, to which I take a detour half way down the hill to buy a classic peaked cap from my cousin Jamie.
Helpful hint: If purchasing at the saddlery, always look for my cousin Thomas. He's the one who gives discounts. I have found this out the hard way.
On we go.
Arriving at the bookshop resplendent in cap, I am somewhat nonplussed to be greeted by red faced staff whose mouths keep twitching.
What on earth is wrong with these people?
"It's okay," I tell them. "You can laugh."
There is a general outpouring.
The new cap notwithstanding, I am indeed something of a picture with the bright green plastic cane I found in a cupboard, an old scarf from the same cupboard, a coat thrown over my shoulders because I can't wear one properly at the moment, and Lefty The Arm held high like the creature from The Mummy.
"I wish I was tough," I declaim. "You know like the Pet Shop Boys. Then you wouldn't laugh at me. Nobody messes with the Pet Shop Boys. I'm going out to buy a bobble hat. Then you'll all respect me. Nobody messes with a man in a bobble hat. Men in bobble hats are tough. They have to be. Because they're wearing bobble hats."
Personally I find this spiel highly amusing.
The staff at the bookshop for their part begin to look at me with the firstlings of concern.
**********
Chapter 27
My Bobble Hat Is Quick
Cousin John Berney arrives to jump start the car.
The car's engine is out in sympathy with Lefty The Arm.
John jump starts the car and enters the house.
I show him the new television.
"I can't abide it," I say. "In conscience I don't see how anyone can support satelite service providers who pornographically exploit the human form for profit. Whether it's sex or violence, they're wilfully and deliberately disrupting the mental health of successive generations. They're actually culturing people to commit acts of rape and violence. The sensualisation of murder is concealed in comedy zombie films like Shawn Of The Dead and Anna And The Apocalypse. You know, they're eroticising murder. Then there's the licence fee you have to pay in this country. I can't agree to finance RTE's culture war against Christianity and that's what they use the licence fee for. Then there's Putin's Russia Today and the Murdocks Sky' News and the Nazis' Al Jazeera all trying to convince people there's no Jihad only climate change. I don't want to be complicit with any of them. There's only one thing for it. I'm going to have to get rid of the television."
"I'll take it if you want," says the Cousin helpfully.
It was too late to back down.
It had all happened very fast.
My bluff had been called rather sooner than expected.
"Oh! Would you? You'd be doing me a big favour," I manage.
And he took my TV.
When he'd gone, the ghosts of somebody called Gordon Sumner and somebody called Stewart Copeland and somebody called Andy Summers entered and set up their instruments in the corner.
They sang thusly:
"That ain't working
That's the way you do it
You start a car
And you take his TV.
Oh that ain't working.
That's the way you do it.
You jump start a car
And get your tellies for free
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliverie-e-e-e-s
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta take James Healy's TV-e-e-e-e-e.
Wulla wulla."
Cousin John Berney arrives to jump start the car.
The car's engine is out in sympathy with Lefty The Arm.
John jump starts the car and enters the house.
I show him the new television.
"I can't abide it," I say. "In conscience I don't see how anyone can support satelite service providers who pornographically exploit the human form for profit. Whether it's sex or violence, they're wilfully and deliberately disrupting the mental health of successive generations. They're actually culturing people to commit acts of rape and violence. The sensualisation of murder is concealed in comedy zombie films like Shawn Of The Dead and Anna And The Apocalypse. You know, they're eroticising murder. Then there's the licence fee you have to pay in this country. I can't agree to finance RTE's culture war against Christianity and that's what they use the licence fee for. Then there's Putin's Russia Today and the Murdocks Sky' News and the Nazis' Al Jazeera all trying to convince people there's no Jihad only climate change. I don't want to be complicit with any of them. There's only one thing for it. I'm going to have to get rid of the television."
"I'll take it if you want," says the Cousin helpfully.
It was too late to back down.
It had all happened very fast.
My bluff had been called rather sooner than expected.
"Oh! Would you? You'd be doing me a big favour," I manage.
And he took my TV.
When he'd gone, the ghosts of somebody called Gordon Sumner and somebody called Stewart Copeland and somebody called Andy Summers entered and set up their instruments in the corner.
They sang thusly:
"That ain't working
That's the way you do it
You start a car
And you take his TV.
Oh that ain't working.
That's the way you do it.
You jump start a car
And get your tellies for free
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliverie-e-e-e-s
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta take James Healy's TV-e-e-e-e-e.
Wulla wulla."
**********
Chapter 28
Moral Equivalency
The house is quiet.
What to do.
My masturbation arm is out of commission.
And John Berney has taken the TV so there's no sex or violence or left wing Statist propaganda masqeurading as news to watch.
My eyes are drawn to the largest tome on my book shelf.
No.
Not this.
Surely after all these years, I've not been reduced to this.
I haven't fallen so low.
The house is quiet.
What to do.
My masturbation arm is out of commission.
And John Berney has taken the TV so there's no sex or violence or left wing Statist propaganda masqeurading as news to watch.
My eyes are drawn to the largest tome on my book shelf.
No.
Not this.
Surely after all these years, I've not been reduced to this.
I haven't fallen so low.
For lo!
What light through my bookshelf breaks.
It is Robert Fisk's The Great War For Civilisation, a 1300 page word heap that someone left in the house ten years ago to annoy me.
Over the decade it's sat on my shelf, I never threw it out because doing so would have been like surrendering to Robert Fisk, or admitting I was afraid of him, or something.
So there's it's sat.
Waiting for this moment of weakness.
Now it has me.
Still.
How bad can it be.
How bad!
Just think.
What if it brain washes me?
What if I actually like it?
What if I end up, heaven forbid, agreeing with Robert Fisk in his advocacy of Islamic terrorism?
Slowly, doom ladenly, as if in a dream, like a man walking to the gallows, I reach for The Great War For Civilisation, blow the dust off it and open the cover.
It is Robert Fisk's The Great War For Civilisation, a 1300 page word heap that someone left in the house ten years ago to annoy me.
Over the decade it's sat on my shelf, I never threw it out because doing so would have been like surrendering to Robert Fisk, or admitting I was afraid of him, or something.
So there's it's sat.
Waiting for this moment of weakness.
Now it has me.
Still.
How bad can it be.
How bad!
Just think.
What if it brain washes me?
What if I actually like it?
What if I end up, heaven forbid, agreeing with Robert Fisk in his advocacy of Islamic terrorism?
Slowly, doom ladenly, as if in a dream, like a man walking to the gallows, I reach for The Great War For Civilisation, blow the dust off it and open the cover.
**********
Chapter 29
Autumn Colours
Walking on the avenue.
Two scald crows in a tree go "caw caw" in greeting.
I pause.
This is a pickle.
Over the years one of the effects of my experience of malicious stalking and harassment by human beings has been to make me less trusting of human beings.
Am I now, simply because a giant supernatural scald crow knocked me down a few months ago, going to write off the whole animal kingdom?
The devil always likes to appear more powerful than he is.
"Hey big birds," I call back cheerily. "Praise ye the Lord."
A thought strikes me.
It may be time to change my presumption of guilt operational policies towards the human race also.
Walking on the avenue.
Two scald crows in a tree go "caw caw" in greeting.
I pause.
This is a pickle.
Over the years one of the effects of my experience of malicious stalking and harassment by human beings has been to make me less trusting of human beings.
Am I now, simply because a giant supernatural scald crow knocked me down a few months ago, going to write off the whole animal kingdom?
The devil always likes to appear more powerful than he is.
"Hey big birds," I call back cheerily. "Praise ye the Lord."
A thought strikes me.
It may be time to change my presumption of guilt operational policies towards the human race also.
**********
Chapter 30
Coincidences
Sitting in a cafe with the business woman Nessa Dunlea.
She says: "You know that a few weeks after you had your fall, Trevor Baines' brother had a fall. He died from his one."
Then she indicates a man across the room chatting to a group of people.
"That man is a teacher at the Cross And Passion Convent. He took a fall a few months ago. The doctors said he wouldn't live. Then they said he'd never talk again. Then they said he'd never walk."
As we watch him, the man says goodbye to his friends and walks from the cafe.
Later that week I meet Maggie O'Clare in the street.
"What happened to you?" she exclaims.
Evidently she missed the memo.
I give her a limited update.
She pales.
"When did it happen?"
"January."
"What day?"
"Er, Wednesday... the 30th."
"What time?"
"Some time after three o'clock in the afternoon. About 3.15pm. Why?"
"A priest friend of mine was killed in a freak accident on that day at exactly that time."
A few days after Maggie's consummate attempt to give me a permanent case of the heebie jeebies, I'm called back to the Dolce And Gabbana Fashion House, known as Tallaght hospital.
The dude doctors probably need a good laugh or to check on Lefty The Arm, or something.
As Farmer Jones is driving me there, I think: "What would confirm for me the providence of God in any of this? I suppose if I met that woman from gangland again."
At the hospital, A Muslim doctor taps my chart and asks: "How did you fall?"
Muslims are close to eternal things.
I consider telling him the whole story.
He might actually believe it.
I decide to restrict my account to the more prosaic sphere and say: "There must have been frost on the ground."
Out in the corridor. the throng of stylishly dressed health care professionals, clerical staff, nurses, doctors and patients, parts suddenly and the woman from gangland strolls up to me.
She looks about a hundred times better than the day she told me she couldn't give up drugs.
We both stare.
She gives me a hug.
Sitting in a cafe with the business woman Nessa Dunlea.
She says: "You know that a few weeks after you had your fall, Trevor Baines' brother had a fall. He died from his one."
Then she indicates a man across the room chatting to a group of people.
"That man is a teacher at the Cross And Passion Convent. He took a fall a few months ago. The doctors said he wouldn't live. Then they said he'd never talk again. Then they said he'd never walk."
As we watch him, the man says goodbye to his friends and walks from the cafe.
Later that week I meet Maggie O'Clare in the street.
"What happened to you?" she exclaims.
Evidently she missed the memo.
I give her a limited update.
She pales.
"When did it happen?"
"January."
"What day?"
"Er, Wednesday... the 30th."
"What time?"
"Some time after three o'clock in the afternoon. About 3.15pm. Why?"
"A priest friend of mine was killed in a freak accident on that day at exactly that time."
A few days after Maggie's consummate attempt to give me a permanent case of the heebie jeebies, I'm called back to the Dolce And Gabbana Fashion House, known as Tallaght hospital.
The dude doctors probably need a good laugh or to check on Lefty The Arm, or something.
As Farmer Jones is driving me there, I think: "What would confirm for me the providence of God in any of this? I suppose if I met that woman from gangland again."
At the hospital, A Muslim doctor taps my chart and asks: "How did you fall?"
Muslims are close to eternal things.
I consider telling him the whole story.
He might actually believe it.
I decide to restrict my account to the more prosaic sphere and say: "There must have been frost on the ground."
Out in the corridor. the throng of stylishly dressed health care professionals, clerical staff, nurses, doctors and patients, parts suddenly and the woman from gangland strolls up to me.
She looks about a hundred times better than the day she told me she couldn't give up drugs.
We both stare.
She gives me a hug.
**********
Chapter 31
The Credibility Gap
"You fell over because you were looking at a big scaldy crow when you should have been watching where you were going," said Siobhan Patterson of the Kalbarri Restaurant And Cookery School.
Her attitude irked me for some reason.
"It was a scald crow not of this earth," I tried again.
"You mean from another country?"
"I mean from another dimension."
"Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, ha, ha. ha."
"Seriously."
"Oh Lordy," wiping her eyes, "that was a good one. James, you never lost it."
"I'm close to losing it now," I told her darkly.
"You fell over because you were looking at a big scaldy crow when you should have been watching where you were going," said Siobhan Patterson of the Kalbarri Restaurant And Cookery School.
Her attitude irked me for some reason.
"It was a scald crow not of this earth," I tried again.
"You mean from another country?"
"I mean from another dimension."
"Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, ha, ha. ha."
"Seriously."
"Oh Lordy," wiping her eyes, "that was a good one. James, you never lost it."
"I'm close to losing it now," I told her darkly.
**********
Chapter 32
Obitcheries
Taking Lefty The Arm for his mid morning constitutional.
My cousin Trish hoves into view on Main Street.
"Gay Byrne is dead," quoth she.
"Thank heavens," sez me. "It was a blessed relief. For all of us."
"Do you not like Gaybo?" wonders she.
"It's not that I don't like him. I hate him," sez me.
"Why do you hate Gaybo?" asks she.
"For the same reason I hate you Trish," sez me affectionately. "Abortion. Contraception. Promiscuity culture. Easy divorce. Throwing abortion pills at kids and saying: There, I've taught you sexual morality, that's all you need to know, how to murder an unborn child, now off you go, fly, fly, fly. The liberal agenda. Telling kids and adults that they can change their sex. Telling kids if a speculative idea or an insecurity pops into their heads, then they must be homosexual. Telling kids that mutual masturbation between people of the same gender can be a marriage. Creating life in test tubes. Destroying life in test tubes. Need I go on?"
"Oh," said she.
Further on up the street I met Farmer Jones.
"Did you hear about Gay Byrne?" said he.
"Isn't it great!" said I.
"You don't mean that," said he.
"You know Ed," sez I, "I think the newspapers have made a big mistake saying he spoke for the nation. There's a lot of us, he didn't speak for."
"You're right there," said Farmer Jones. "I actually agree with you. There were one or two gobshites he didn't speak for."
I left him and found my way into a cafe.
Ordering a latte, I reached for a copy of the Irish Independent, which is available free in cafes now since no one is buying it.
The paper's cover announced that its first ten pages were dedicated solely to the subject of Gay Byrne's passing.
I thought to myself: I really want to sit here in the cafe for a few hours with a newspaper but I'm not reading this.
My latte arrived.
I sat.
I could see the newspaper hanging on the cafe's wall rack with about ten other copies of the same edition that no one else was reading.
It would be so easy to have a quick look through it.
My resolve weakened.
The big photo of Gay Byrne on the cover seemed to be challenging me.
"Never," I said aloud suddenly. "I will never read that newspaper. I'll sit here twiddling my thumbs till doomsday rather than read it. And I won't be mentioning your death on The Heelers Diaries either Byrne. You're not important enough to be mentioned by me on my website. I won't be writing you an obitchery, Byrne. No. No. Not now. Not ever. I'm not reading slavish conformist eulogies to you. And I'm not writing you one myself. I will never so much as let on by the merest flicker of an eyelid to have even noticed you popping your clogs. And I'm not reading that newspaper. No, no, no. Never. Not in this world possible. I'll die of boredom first"
A ghostly voice, not unlike that of the character Cartman from the opprobrious television cartoon South Park suddenly issued from one of the Gay Byrne photos on the Irish Independent front page.
Taking Lefty The Arm for his mid morning constitutional.
My cousin Trish hoves into view on Main Street.
"Gay Byrne is dead," quoth she.
"Thank heavens," sez me. "It was a blessed relief. For all of us."
"Do you not like Gaybo?" wonders she.
"It's not that I don't like him. I hate him," sez me.
"Why do you hate Gaybo?" asks she.
"For the same reason I hate you Trish," sez me affectionately. "Abortion. Contraception. Promiscuity culture. Easy divorce. Throwing abortion pills at kids and saying: There, I've taught you sexual morality, that's all you need to know, how to murder an unborn child, now off you go, fly, fly, fly. The liberal agenda. Telling kids and adults that they can change their sex. Telling kids if a speculative idea or an insecurity pops into their heads, then they must be homosexual. Telling kids that mutual masturbation between people of the same gender can be a marriage. Creating life in test tubes. Destroying life in test tubes. Need I go on?"
"Oh," said she.
Further on up the street I met Farmer Jones.
"Did you hear about Gay Byrne?" said he.
"Isn't it great!" said I.
"You don't mean that," said he.
"You know Ed," sez I, "I think the newspapers have made a big mistake saying he spoke for the nation. There's a lot of us, he didn't speak for."
"You're right there," said Farmer Jones. "I actually agree with you. There were one or two gobshites he didn't speak for."
I left him and found my way into a cafe.
Ordering a latte, I reached for a copy of the Irish Independent, which is available free in cafes now since no one is buying it.
The paper's cover announced that its first ten pages were dedicated solely to the subject of Gay Byrne's passing.
I thought to myself: I really want to sit here in the cafe for a few hours with a newspaper but I'm not reading this.
My latte arrived.
I sat.
I could see the newspaper hanging on the cafe's wall rack with about ten other copies of the same edition that no one else was reading.
It would be so easy to have a quick look through it.
My resolve weakened.
The big photo of Gay Byrne on the cover seemed to be challenging me.
"Never," I said aloud suddenly. "I will never read that newspaper. I'll sit here twiddling my thumbs till doomsday rather than read it. And I won't be mentioning your death on The Heelers Diaries either Byrne. You're not important enough to be mentioned by me on my website. I won't be writing you an obitchery, Byrne. No. No. Not now. Not ever. I'm not reading slavish conformist eulogies to you. And I'm not writing you one myself. I will never so much as let on by the merest flicker of an eyelid to have even noticed you popping your clogs. And I'm not reading that newspaper. No, no, no. Never. Not in this world possible. I'll die of boredom first"
A ghostly voice, not unlike that of the character Cartman from the opprobrious television cartoon South Park suddenly issued from one of the Gay Byrne photos on the Irish Independent front page.
"Very well," said the Gay Byrne ghostly voice. "We shall see. And let this be our final battle."
**********
Chapter 33
Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Flatter To Deceive
The doorbell rings.
It is my neighbour Joanna Baines with a bearded man in blue overalls.
"James can we come in and check your water pressure? Ours is very weak and we just want to let the plumber check yours to compare it."
This is a pickle.
If she comes in, she's going to discover I gave away the TV she gave me.
To buy some time, I let the dogs gallop out the front door and race around the garden.
"Oh, oh, oh, Joanna," I exclaim, "they're loose. Will you catch them? I can't chase them because of my arm."
Laurence Olivier couldn't have played it better.
Shakespearian acting.
I hurry into the kitchen and lock the door into the TV room where a giant vase of plastic flowers from Newbridge Silverware reposes in the spot formerly occupied by the TV, the same dearly departed TV which Joanna left here while I was in hospital and which remained until John Berney took it last week when I told him I didn't want to own a TV because of all the anti Catholic propaganda, the ideologically manipulative news reporting, the sex, the violence and because I'm mortally and morally offended by the really unentertaining programming generally.
Joanna and the plumber rejoin me, dogs in tow.
The plumber checks the water.
They leave happily enough.
But there's something bothering me.
She knows.
And I know she knows.
And she knows I know she knows.
The doorbell rings.
It is my neighbour Joanna Baines with a bearded man in blue overalls.
"James can we come in and check your water pressure? Ours is very weak and we just want to let the plumber check yours to compare it."
This is a pickle.
If she comes in, she's going to discover I gave away the TV she gave me.
To buy some time, I let the dogs gallop out the front door and race around the garden.
"Oh, oh, oh, Joanna," I exclaim, "they're loose. Will you catch them? I can't chase them because of my arm."
Laurence Olivier couldn't have played it better.
Shakespearian acting.
I hurry into the kitchen and lock the door into the TV room where a giant vase of plastic flowers from Newbridge Silverware reposes in the spot formerly occupied by the TV, the same dearly departed TV which Joanna left here while I was in hospital and which remained until John Berney took it last week when I told him I didn't want to own a TV because of all the anti Catholic propaganda, the ideologically manipulative news reporting, the sex, the violence and because I'm mortally and morally offended by the really unentertaining programming generally.
Joanna and the plumber rejoin me, dogs in tow.
The plumber checks the water.
They leave happily enough.
But there's something bothering me.
She knows.
And I know she knows.
And she knows I know she knows.
**********
Chapter 34
Gone With The Bobble Hats
"You can get those channels blocked, you know, the ones that bother you so much," said Maggie O'Clare.
My handsome brow furrowed.
"It's not enough for me to block them," I told her. "I want to oppose them."
"You can get those channels blocked, you know, the ones that bother you so much," said Maggie O'Clare.
My handsome brow furrowed.
"It's not enough for me to block them," I told her. "I want to oppose them."
**********
Chapter 35
Ebb Tides Caerulesce The Spirit
Another day another trip to Tallaght hospital.
Of course I met the gangland woman in the corridor again, and we embraced again, and I wondered had our meetings been providential again, and which of us was meant to learn from the other again.
This time my appointment at the hospital was to see Gary, the congenial physiotherapist, who's been doing his best to persuade Lefty The Arm to resume normal service.
"Where are you from?" I ask him.
"Cavan," says he.
"You don't have a Cavan accent," says me.
At this point a series of shrieks and whoops ring out from adjoining offices and work spaces in the physiotherapy unit of the hospital.
The sounds have a mocking tinge.
I hadn't realised we could be overheard.
"My colleagues," says Gary apologetically
"We all have our crosses to bear," I affirm.
Working with Dubliners bold readers.
You get time off in purgatory for that.
My thoughts turn to other matters.
"Something funny happened during the operation, they had me on oxygen and I never found out why, and I was wondering would I be able to see the charts and doctors reports from the operating theatre," I venture out of left field.
"You could issue a request under the Freedom Of Information Act," advises the physiotherapist without batting an eyelid.
Later I head for Tallaght village where I lived up to the age of eight years.
Memories of early childhood come flooding back from half a century ago.
I park at the church.
Here in 1970 my mother brought the infant me to collect chestnuts in a bower that's still there.
There had been a spectacular gale blowing through the trees.
It was like the world was ending.
A priest walked towards us.
I tugged my mother's sleeve.
"Is he God?"
"No but he's like him."
Today was sunny with a gentle breeze through the chestnut trees.
Outside Maher's real estate agents office I asked a distinguished looking man if any of the original Maher family were still in the business.
"I am," said Tom Maher the proprietor, who had lived a few doors down from us.
I wandered off down Main Street and spent half an hour looking with tear brimmed eyes at the house the Healy family had lived in from 1956 to 1974.
A Romanian woman came out and tried to sell me the house.
We chatted for another half hour before I realised I had the wrong house.
I went looking for the right one and spent another hour outside it talking to another new resident on the street, a man called Goldwater whose ancestors had emigrated from Russia around the time of the revolution and who had lived in England much of his life and who now was retired in Tallaght.
We talked for an hour.
I headed to a recently built cafe on the spot where I remembered the chemical factory.
I was sitting hatching a coffee when snother neighbour I actually had known when we lived in Tallaght, Emma Kennedy, wife of the champion jockey Mick Kennedy, joined me for some reminiscences.
Mr Goldwater had made an executive decision and fetched her.
He'd also told her that I was terrified of her.
"Why were you terrified of me?" she demanded in her strong Glasgow accent as she sat down opposite me.
"Mrs Kennedy," I cried warmly. "I was an uncontrollable kid. If there was mischief going on, it was me that was causing it. But there was never any doubt when you were around that there was order in the universe. You were in charge. And like I say, I was a very mischievous kid. I don't know where Mammy and Daddy got me. So I always had something to feel guilty about. When the other kids were with me, we were wild as hares."
"Your brother Peter used to ask me to adopt him," she said, "he had the right idea."
As dusk was settling in over my childhood I wandered back to the church.
Near my car, a young mother was putting a child in a buggy.
"Don't cry," she said, "we'll count your chestnuts at home."
They were real.
They were in the present era.
Not ghosts.
Interesting coincidence what.
I stood by my car alone.
A few roosting herons called to me from the tall trees.
Lovely big birds.
Not a bit like crows.
I couldn't mix up a crow for a heron.
Could I?
Another day another trip to Tallaght hospital.
Of course I met the gangland woman in the corridor again, and we embraced again, and I wondered had our meetings been providential again, and which of us was meant to learn from the other again.
This time my appointment at the hospital was to see Gary, the congenial physiotherapist, who's been doing his best to persuade Lefty The Arm to resume normal service.
"Where are you from?" I ask him.
"Cavan," says he.
"You don't have a Cavan accent," says me.
At this point a series of shrieks and whoops ring out from adjoining offices and work spaces in the physiotherapy unit of the hospital.
The sounds have a mocking tinge.
I hadn't realised we could be overheard.
"My colleagues," says Gary apologetically
"We all have our crosses to bear," I affirm.
Working with Dubliners bold readers.
You get time off in purgatory for that.
My thoughts turn to other matters.
"Something funny happened during the operation, they had me on oxygen and I never found out why, and I was wondering would I be able to see the charts and doctors reports from the operating theatre," I venture out of left field.
"You could issue a request under the Freedom Of Information Act," advises the physiotherapist without batting an eyelid.
Later I head for Tallaght village where I lived up to the age of eight years.
Memories of early childhood come flooding back from half a century ago.
I park at the church.
Here in 1970 my mother brought the infant me to collect chestnuts in a bower that's still there.
There had been a spectacular gale blowing through the trees.
It was like the world was ending.
A priest walked towards us.
I tugged my mother's sleeve.
"Is he God?"
"No but he's like him."
Today was sunny with a gentle breeze through the chestnut trees.
Outside Maher's real estate agents office I asked a distinguished looking man if any of the original Maher family were still in the business.
"I am," said Tom Maher the proprietor, who had lived a few doors down from us.
I wandered off down Main Street and spent half an hour looking with tear brimmed eyes at the house the Healy family had lived in from 1956 to 1974.
A Romanian woman came out and tried to sell me the house.
We chatted for another half hour before I realised I had the wrong house.
I went looking for the right one and spent another hour outside it talking to another new resident on the street, a man called Goldwater whose ancestors had emigrated from Russia around the time of the revolution and who had lived in England much of his life and who now was retired in Tallaght.
We talked for an hour.
I headed to a recently built cafe on the spot where I remembered the chemical factory.
I was sitting hatching a coffee when snother neighbour I actually had known when we lived in Tallaght, Emma Kennedy, wife of the champion jockey Mick Kennedy, joined me for some reminiscences.
Mr Goldwater had made an executive decision and fetched her.
He'd also told her that I was terrified of her.
"Why were you terrified of me?" she demanded in her strong Glasgow accent as she sat down opposite me.
"Mrs Kennedy," I cried warmly. "I was an uncontrollable kid. If there was mischief going on, it was me that was causing it. But there was never any doubt when you were around that there was order in the universe. You were in charge. And like I say, I was a very mischievous kid. I don't know where Mammy and Daddy got me. So I always had something to feel guilty about. When the other kids were with me, we were wild as hares."
"Your brother Peter used to ask me to adopt him," she said, "he had the right idea."
As dusk was settling in over my childhood I wandered back to the church.
Near my car, a young mother was putting a child in a buggy.
"Don't cry," she said, "we'll count your chestnuts at home."
They were real.
They were in the present era.
Not ghosts.
Interesting coincidence what.
I stood by my car alone.
A few roosting herons called to me from the tall trees.
Lovely big birds.
Not a bit like crows.
I couldn't mix up a crow for a heron.
Could I?
**********
Chapter 36
The Cloak Of Greatness
Sitting in a corridor at Tallaght hospital.
The only thing missing from the bustle is Darcy Bustle the great British prima ballerina.
All human life is here.
I reflect ruefully that for all my visits and consultations with doctors, I still haven't actually seen the guy who did the operation, the mysterious genius Maloney.
I buttonhole a bright eyed nurse.
"Which one is Doctor Maloney?" I ask.
She points towards a group of doctors conversing in the corridor.
"One of them?" sez I.
"No," she whispers, "beside them, there."
At last.
Maloney.
I had imagined him as an austere Victorian, imposing figure, with bushy eyebrows and a chrome dome bald pate, with maybe a few tufts of greying wildishly tossed side hair giving the only clue to the almost artistic wizardry of his surgeries.
I stare, fascinated.
My jaw drops.
To the left of the posing doctors is an ordinary looking, slightly built man, with closely cropped hair, with perhaps a tinge of Irish rust in it.
If you blinked you'd miss him.
"He's a callow youth," I exclaim inwardly.
But presently I see also that he is somehow in charge amid the chaos of the corridor.
The other doctors move in a phalanx to one of the examination rooms right beside me.
A Muslim doctor steps towards the doorway, then halts and steps back to allow Maloney to enter first.
Doctor Maloney says quietly but with iron in his tone: "Don't do that."
He's lowered his voice so that the other doctors won't hear it. But I heard because I was sitting right there at the door.
He is telling the Junior doctor not to defer to him.
My eyes widened.
What an illustration of character.
I thought this really was indicative of greatness.
Sitting in a corridor at Tallaght hospital.
The only thing missing from the bustle is Darcy Bustle the great British prima ballerina.
All human life is here.
I reflect ruefully that for all my visits and consultations with doctors, I still haven't actually seen the guy who did the operation, the mysterious genius Maloney.
I buttonhole a bright eyed nurse.
"Which one is Doctor Maloney?" I ask.
She points towards a group of doctors conversing in the corridor.
"One of them?" sez I.
"No," she whispers, "beside them, there."
At last.
Maloney.
I had imagined him as an austere Victorian, imposing figure, with bushy eyebrows and a chrome dome bald pate, with maybe a few tufts of greying wildishly tossed side hair giving the only clue to the almost artistic wizardry of his surgeries.
I stare, fascinated.
My jaw drops.
To the left of the posing doctors is an ordinary looking, slightly built man, with closely cropped hair, with perhaps a tinge of Irish rust in it.
If you blinked you'd miss him.
"He's a callow youth," I exclaim inwardly.
But presently I see also that he is somehow in charge amid the chaos of the corridor.
The other doctors move in a phalanx to one of the examination rooms right beside me.
A Muslim doctor steps towards the doorway, then halts and steps back to allow Maloney to enter first.
Doctor Maloney says quietly but with iron in his tone: "Don't do that."
He's lowered his voice so that the other doctors won't hear it. But I heard because I was sitting right there at the door.
He is telling the Junior doctor not to defer to him.
My eyes widened.
What an illustration of character.
I thought this really was indicative of greatness.
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