One Mahon Show

I spent a lot of time lying on the couch watching reality TV.
Christ, there is nothing that will make you feel better about your own existence, than watching some toothless, stoned craythur swigging cider from a can, talking shite.
Then I realised it was the mirror.
I jest.
"You can't pull this off in 3 weeks, Michelle" says a wise man.
So I cried and ate a lot of chocolate for 2 of them.
On the 3rd week I ransacked the town for Retro-Raffle prizes.
Remember when you woke up after being out on the lash and found a giant Teddy Bear on the stairs.
"I won it in the pub last night" one would protest when eyebrows were raised.
Nobody ever leaves a raffle prize behind, despite the machinations it may take to manuoevure home.
I once won a years supply of Budweiser in a pub quiz.
The catch was you had to take all the cases of bottles with you that night.
I did.
"Gimme the rocking horse there" says I to the man who is unscrewing the rockers.
He is taking it home for his child, not the horse -  the bits of wood.
I am left with a giant horse, with detachable saddle and a head that neighs and bobs.
It'll be a whore to carry.
Perfect.
In my wisdom, I decide I will also need a tin of USA Assorted Biscuits and Ker-Plunk.
Ditto Bacon & Cabbage Dinners, White Wellingtons, and a bag of meat.
It didn't strike me as vital to write stuff as I thought  I could pull it out of the sky the night before.
In that vein, I sourced a bottle of Blacktower, Sherbet Dib Dabs and a Naggin of Powers.
After, I consumed them, I realised they were destined for the raffle and got them again.
I jest.
On the morning of the show, I sprang from the bed at sparrowfart and clutched my temples and chest and staggered down the stairs to stare at the piles of paper all over the floor.
One should not look as if one is discovering the material - said the infernal wise man.
Discovering? It's not written yet.
With the clock counting down towards an actual audience, I decided to sketch and paint a number of illustrations to accompany the fictitious pieces.
I painted the last one of a lumberjack shirt  in the venue while the sound check was on, and wrote the intro in the beer garden.
Meals on Heels, in the form of my skin and blister, delivered a hot lunch, and a cold dessert, which were instantly transferred into the Chihuahua's dish.
He presented them to me again in the matter of a half hour,  still in their original shape, glistening on the carpet.
Name of Christ says the man who is driving me to the venue in a hurricane,  as he surveys the plethora of cellophaned parcels down the hall and halfway up the steps.
We got drenched to the arse.
When I went outside to get a breath before I began, there was only me and 2 men, and then suddenly the noise hits me and I open the door and see the place is full and they are scrambling into seats with their pints.
I called it  "Before I Forget  - One Mahon Show - but it was about men,  many men.
A man drove me to do it,  a man ferried me, a man opened, a man accompanied me on a duet, and all the stories and anecdotes were about men -
A clown who bleeds to death in a ships cabin,
 a perverted flasher with a pram,
 a lovelorn Samaritan,
a mute Dutch man who goes to the wrong Killarney,
a schizophrenic musician,
and a cast of thousands incorporating bar men, random drunks, and my own family.
It feels like an out of body experience now -
One minute, I am being announced, and the next they are on their feet applauding.
In the middle I managed to berate a man for having the temerity to have his phone on,  heckle latecomers and conduct the most outrageous raffle this side of the Rio Grande.
And sing with a musician for the first time in years.
They laughed, they cried, they asked for the pieces of paper I was reading from.
The only woman I spoke about was my Mother - Siobhan -  and had to edit the piece about her  and Alzheimers and how it impacts on the family dynamic, before I sang the song, specially  written about her.
"Would it be possible to buy your sketches, especially that lumberjack shirt?" says a woman.
"I'm afraid it would NOT be possible to buy them" says I - "You can have them".
The paint was probably still wet.

M.D.M. 05/02/14