A friendly finish for Cúirt Festival of Literature!

In the course of my travels I’ve lost count of the number of bars in which I’ve sat, alone and happy, staring at a bunch of blokes having an uproariously good time.

Alongside singular freedoms, being on the road brings an inherent loneliness to life. Even as I thrilled at being in that bar in that village in that foreign country, I envied those lads, hanging with their everyday mates, having a right laugh.

Like life itself, travelling is a wasted journey if you don’t learn how to be happy on the way. So I was very aware the other night that I was among those lads, those everyday mates who I’d coveted on the road.

Sitting between The Body and Whispering Blue, I was the Chelsea in a United-City Club Sandwich, and even though I was in a pub, I was completely at home, surrounded by my brethren.

I was, as the Irish are wont to say, ‘happy out’.

So I appreciated it. I enjoyed the moment and noticed the happiness coursing through me. The bad times you never miss. They come up behind you and hit you over the head with a baseball bat, repeatedly and rudely until you beg for mercy.

Yet our happy times are very likely more numerous and long-lived than any of us realise. We smile and share a chuckle, hug a brother or a friend and feel a rush of love back, yet walk away as if nothing happened.

So I try to make sure that I notice and appreciate the good. If my family are a gratefully-accepted given, then without doubt the greatest good in my life has been my friends.

At Public School I met and bonded with a fairly extrovert bunch of individuals who were kicking back in a mildly non-conformist way against the entrenched regime of the institution. Over the last four decades we’ve all remained in touch, becoming embedded in each other’s lives somewhere between family and other friends. We’re an incredible bunch, our friendships forged in the searing hot fires of teenage rebellion, and I am eternally grateful to have them in my life, as both individuals and a collective.

It’s over 20 years since I moved to Ireland and met Blitz, The Body and Whispering Blue, but such is my luxury and fortune that I’m able to think of them and all my Irish pals as new friends.

My awareness of how unusual it is to call friendships of 20 years’ standing ‘new’ came to a head a couple of years ago, when I was at a gig at the Roisin Dubh, hosted by Tuam’s revered poet and songsmith Seamus Ruttledge and Conor Montague, aka Monty, the creator of the hilarious series, Who Needs Enemies?.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.