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A Tax man with a hairy face who keeps bees for the crack insisted I write and sing a song with him in the Sailing Cot talent contest.   Because there was a big cash prize half the town entered and the other half turned up to heckle them. I took a look at the braying throng and got the fear. The lads  Jazus says Bridget the Midget as she saw me holding myself up in a wakeness at the toilet sink having a whitey, wait till I get you a Hennessy . The song was called kajoma and sounded passable in the kitchen of the An Óige hostel I was running in the Harbour, when they had left the gate open by an accident and I had got  back in AGAIN. The hirsute guitarist hit the opening notes on his guitar and then gave me a 4 bar intro,  and when I didn’t start singing,  gave me 8,  then 16,  then whispered ...... for the love of fuck come on. I was blonde then. It's NOT true ................... I started in the wrong key and knew I would never be able to hit the hig

A Swedish man asked me would I bring a group of his friends around the roads and tell them stories. Things I remember, characters I have met, the places and faces that make up the heartbeat of a town, the social archive, the nuances and nostalgia, that colour the light and shade that life's rich tapestry invokes. I write about memories. I wrote my own and my Mother Siobháns story in Scourged , a memoir  - where  memories unspooled and unribboned  from her mind became copper fastened in mine. So I thought it would be lovely to tell the men the old stories of long ago when I was young, and remember those who went before us, and the legacy they left. He mentioned idly that there would be paper folding money involved. I was in like Flynn. I offer you this time not text, but images ..........as a picture speaks a thousand words. A Jemmy to start A breath of air  The welcome Nervous as young foals the pack leave the Inn  The beau

I ended up cutting the tiny tablet in half with the blunt red handled knife I used to saw lumps off sourdough bread. “If this be madness, bring it Lord” I sighed as I licked the white powder from the draining board like James Woods in The Boost. And then into quarters. And one fine day there was none. I ring my GP and sit in the waiting room with the shrieking cartoons re-reading the tattered magazine about fancy houses and gardens that has a surgery sticker on it saying Do Not Remove “ I’ve weaned myself off the meds” says I to the Doctor in her room. “I can’t be sedated and dumbed down, my happiness is turned off, my spark is gone, I can’t write, I sleep for 13 hours and I have only a 30 minute window of normality in any given day when my eyes are not swollen and puffy before I take another dose, I’ll deal with it, I’ll recognise the cyclical nature of it and withdraw and meditate, and here you may take bloods and see if I have arthritis or some shit as even my ha

                              “ Scourged ” by Michelle Dooley Mahon                             A  Book Review by Richard Connolly   There are several worthy memoirs written by authors who have watched their loved ones suffer from Alzheimer’s, most notably: “ Elegy for Iris” by John Bailey and “ My Journey into Alzheimer’s Disease ” by Robert Davis. “ Scourged” by Michelle Dooley Mahon is another remarkable piece of work and documents her late mother Siobháns descent into Alzheimer’s. The book’s title cleverly plays on two meanings.  The “ Scourge ” is Alzheimer’s, but also it is an affectionate term that Siobhan uses when referring to her daughter throughout her life. An important aspect of Michelle’s writing, which separates it from other Alzheimer memoirs, is the unique artistry and configuration that underpins the text.  The juxtaposition of the author’s voice, in chapters beside her mothers, effectively creates a dissonance, reflecting the confused

Something about a suitcase I think ........... Having torn a page out of my passport in my cups to give a stranger my phone number, and thus rendering it null and void, and a moot point simultaneously, it came as a complete surprise that I could not actually use it when needed. The Skin & Blister had booked herself, the Quiet Leitrim Man and the child into a villa in Southern Spain and I was all over it like shite on a blanket. I let them get a good run at it by allowing them 3 days grace before I rocked up figuring they would have sussed out what the Jackanory was by then and allow me to get in like Flynn as soon as I stepped off the plane into a hot smell of Marlboro.   - “ What do you mean you have no passport??” the Skin & Blister asks with one eyebrow up in her hair. I drew a veil over the more outrageous truth and she informs that I may take myself to the city and join a throng of desperate hopeless people in a crush with their faces pressed up agai