Notes on a life
Michelle Dooley Mahon has the attention span of a flea. This has manifested throughout her life in an abundance of appointments, abodes and amours. Born in Wexford in "Aul Gods time" ( when people still stepped off paths for priests ) - she has variously been employed as gynaecological receptionist/breakfast chef/ au pair/ / pub landlady/ tourist information officer/ chef/hostel warden/café owner / ships stewardess/film production assistant and hotel manager. She appears to have forgotten the remainder.
She is as much of a cherry picker in the home department and has a touch of gypsy in her, having moved 15 times in 20 years - alternately filling and emptying multitudes of skips - and believes that houses are bricks that you love only while you are in them. She has been writing since she could form words on paper and been a story teller and narrator of tall tales since she was a smaller child. She has however neglected to actually do anything with it.
Described as being “unteachable & unmanageable” and the class comedienne, she survived her school days – ( despite running away on the back of a motorbike and having mass said in the hall for her ) – and went on to become the Enfant Terrible of the Nuns at the Friary Gates where she committed a huge faux pass last week by trying to hug one of them. - * A nun, not a gate ……….. or a Friar*
She is late for all occasions, rendezvous and trysts as she engages with everyone she meets on an average day and is on first name terms with each member of staff in any business she ransacks – taking it upon herself to dress windows, answer phones, clear tables, take bookings, and read outrageous sections from 50 shades of Grey in book shop window displays. Dressing exclusively from charity shops and cast offs she is easily spotted and has been described as a cross between “an explosion in a paint shop and a cartoon character”. Every conversation – including and especially with random strangers - is conducted in the same forthright manner and as if she had just paused to draw breath. She does not stand on ceremony or suffer fools gladly and is honest to a degree that is as uncomfortable as is it refreshing.
She has of late eschewed the company of others (albeit ally or adversary) and although affirms in the positive her intention to attend every invitation, is loth to actually commit and subsequently never leaves the building after 6pm. She is an introverted socialite and conducts her assault on humanity through her facebook posts, and a Blogger account, and is the admin on the page she created to document the progression of Alzheimers in her beloved Mother, Siobhan. She submits to the Francis Mac Manus short story competitions, Ditto Merriman , and Molly Keane and is re-working and editing a collection of these, writing a radio play for the P.J. O'Connor award on Rte and also slaving over her first book to be published this year. Recently she has noticed that she has developed an allergy to crowds and is hypersensitive to noise. In an ideal world she would live in a lighthouse at the end of a private pier and just witness the recitation of life - whiling away the hours with hilarious movies, massages and maltesers.
Her ambition is to pretend that her working life was research and to live fully present and aware in the NOW.
shellshock@blogger.com
Notes on Franks Life.
Demented, Kind hearted, Generous, Outrageous, Tragi-comic, Hilarious, Impossible.
He has no filter and makes no apologies. Neither of us suffers fools gladly. He jumps around the kitchen impersonating people and making me howl while he shouts – “not too much sauce on the curry” – his lighter is like a flamethrower and almost has my eyebrows off. I wonder how his hirsute chin can stand it.
On spotting an unopened bag of shopping leaning drunkenly against the fridge – “THEY’RE ALL BANANAS !!!” – ( there is NO fruit in the bag )
“Mee shell is rooting in the shopping” – He narrates his day by giving a running commentary on every single thing that is happening around him. The first person he would ask to a party is Paul MacCartney, and the last would be - “Me Ma, as she is SOOOOO boring- I’m joking, the last would be Donncha Shine . Christy Moore has an amazing presence, he just fills up a room .”
“I’ll bring this roll of toilet paper with me to cover the chop suey”.
(It is kitchen roll and Carbonara.)
He rocks with silent laughter as I tell him about the sketch of W.C. Fields coming home to a house of women while he is 3 sheets to the wind and trying to pretend he is sober. Which is negated somewhat when he walks up a nest of tables instead of the stairs.
Staring at a sketch pinned to the fridge – “Is that you or me in the phone box? Throw up the grub , I have a race @ 1.35 pm.”
He ruminates on What Wexford means to Me and conjectures who he will ask, and who in his circle of friends is gay. This is a recurring theme and he seems to be fascinated and repelled in equal measure.
“Have a cake” I say handing him the plate.
“No”.
“Ah go on, go on , go on, go on, go on, there’s cocaine in them “ ( a ref. to the Father Ted sketch )
Wha ????
“I mean raisins.”
He begins to moo like a cow and then catches sight of the painting I have done of him .
“Oh, for fuck sake” – and then begins to laugh, loud and long.
“It’s good, Mee shell, I like it”
Praise indeed. He likes the way I have done his eyes.
He has bought himself some new clobber. 2 suits to be precise and a number of rather lovely striped shirts, and looks very dapper. Of course by evening he will have emptied the contents of various plates, dishes, cups and ashtrays down the front. And not one whit of a hoot shall be given.
Frank was listening to “The Clitheroe Kid” on BBC radio 2 when the announcer broke in with the newsflash that J.F.K had been shot in Dallas. “We ( the family ) were absolutely shellshocked, it was such a major thing and has had so much conjecture about it since – when I heard about John Lennon in 1980, ( who was and is a hero to him ) I went to Heffernans and got absolutely manky, “ I must have drunk 12 pints. I was shocked and devastated. “
“Some people think being gay is a sin. That’s fucking thick”.
As a child in his elocution classes, Frank did a ten minute monologue that had his peers in stitches. He has few memories of home at this point and says he has issues that counseling cannot resolve. He found confession cathartic, even as a small child, and found at times that he was drawn to a religious life, and contemplated ideas of joining the priesthood ( the mind boggles ) and became a daily mass goer around his late teens. He describes his relationship with God as “deep”.
As a child he was absorbed by Lego, commandeering a section of the living room, and the dining table, building his own little empire where he had factories, housing estates, and shops. At this point he was also a keen stamp collector, and something of a TV addict, and would in fact go into mourning when the Late Late, hosted then by the incomparable Gay Byrne would have its hiatus for the summer and would sit sulking in the chair for half an hour after the news was over. He remembers being desperate for affection and hugs and standing crying on the top of the stairs as his parents argued beneath him. His father bought him a blue trailer which he could attach to various toys and remove imaginary obstacles.
His first visit to the cinema was with Seanie Kehoe to see “King of the Kaiber Rifles” and he was so disturbed by the noise he ran shrieking from the building. The old Cinema Palace was a beautiful cinema and all the children would come running out after the westerns “baytin’ the arse off themselves running up the streets” .
Brendan Corish was a fabulous man. Loved the horses, and would put little tiny bets on, like a shilling. He was a very private guy and would not talk to the press. I organized an interview with the Irish Times but he refused to do it. His polar opposite was Garret Fitzgerald who would talk to everybody.
Sammy Coe has been a forgotton man, unfairly so. He was a raconteur and historian and had post delivered here just saying S. Coe, Ireland. He was a major local figure and should have a statue or something.
I woke up one morning in the big double bed at home and thought of a “Festival of Living Music” , maybe the idea came from God, or Satan, or Michelle Mahon, but Bernie Barrett called at lunchtime and he thought it was brilliant. Lorcan Ennis thought it was brilliant too. BP Fallon was the compere. And Danny Doyle, Billy Roche, and the RTE light Orchestra were there. Thin Lizzy, Sean O Riada, John Peel, T’ir Na N’og, The Chieftains, Fairport Convention, - I had to persuade Paddy Moloney to do their first ever gig to a rock audience. They nearly tore the stage down and they got a standing ovation. Although it was a massive success, I was nearly run out of town, as there was such an influx of hairy arse hippies, and they were sleeping in doorways and pissing on street corners full of drink.
“Imagine lighting a fire on a day like this. Myself and Dick Doyle and Jemmer Murphy took a spin out to Rosslare one day long ago. Dick and I took tablets called Dodo’s and waited for something to happen.
Frank : Can you feel anything ?
Dick : Nothin’. Can you feel anything ?
Frank : Nothin’.
( Eventually nothin’ happened. )
He went to London at 19 years old for the crack. Part of a rite of passage that would see him and his friends live like Withnail & I for the duration. There was about 10 of them in a small basement flat in Earls Court, and the three months there were edifying to say the least. Sleeping stretched between 2 chairs as the tiny bedroom was taken up by those with more amorous intent – ( “Your man was banging some young wan in the bedroom” ) he spent his days alternately flogging copies of “Oz” magazine – ( complete with nudie pictures )and writing home for more money. His one brief stint in a hotel would see him vacuum the giant carpet for 2 hours before flinging the hoover away from him in a fit of temper and storming off . He apparently survived on bottles of beer and egg curries from the West End when his Ma had sent on a few bob. It is the only time he has ever lived anywhere but here.
“I loved London and the West End and the buzz.”
He is wildly jealous when he hears that Dennis Watermann was a customer of mine in a pub in Bloomsbury when I was a landlady in a previous life. ( Light & Bitter was his tipple actually . . . half an ale in a dimpled tankard and a small bottle of light ale to top it – he was renowned for an afternoons tippling between shows with Albert Finney and Rula Lenksa. And never paying for the sandwiches - I digress).
You have led a far more interesting life than me , Meee shell. You should write a book about yourself. We should write books about each other and launch them on the same night .
If I win the lotto I will get you to open a small restaurant where you can cook for me and a few others.
I remind him that I have already done that - ( Tookay Café in the Arts Centre 1999 as in Y2K - although Y I employed a waitress named Kay is a whole other story ) and announce that in future I would cut out the middle man and fire the money straight over the quay.
He hands me a fiver for luck to do the lotto. Dear reader, I did not win.
(We laugh about my brother-in-law whose quiet understated humour and deadpan delivery can crack me up. He is a master of the one liner. After they had retired to the living room to watch the hurling I was passing tea to my Father and him and in leaning over him he enquired quietly to my Dad -
Is the telly still on Tom ? )
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