Wherever you find my cat – that’s my home

Acclaimed comedian and writer Tommy Tiernan offers his unique perspective on the world at large in his column by ‘The Badger’.

I was at a funeral last week.  A woman I used to know (God be with the days when I used to know women) had passed away. She had a long and protracted battle with cake and in the end the cake won. Tis an awful dose, cake and she had it bad.

A man came up to me.

Did you know the deceased? he said.

I did, I replied.

Was it the Sponge Cake or the Madeira that got her in the end?

A Fruit Crumble, I believe.

Jayzz. There’s so much self-raising flour in that woman, she’ll be the first one up on Judgment Day.

I was sitting in the church and I fell into a chat with a fella who kept falling asleep. He was awful tired on account of the anti-allergy tablets that he was on. They made him very drowsy, he said.

I asked what he was allergic to and he said stimulation and that the only way to cope with living somewhere as vibrant as Galway was to keep taking the tablets. I’d rather sleep somewhere exciting than be awake somewhere boring he said, before heading off to snooze through the 2020 celebrations.

Anyway the stimulation out this side of the country can get a bit too much, there’s always something happening. Tis a place of great distraction and for creatures of a contemplative nature it can at times become a bit overwhelming, so meself and the cat headed east in search of peace.

Not that they don’t have their pageantry back that way too, there’s a statue of Joe Dolan in Westmeath begod, and I think they built a town around it and there’s a book in Kells. They gather round it once a year to look at the pages and some of it is coloured-in too.

I took the train as far as Athlone (I hadn’t the strength to take it any further, me back was done in), past the Irish Official Space Authority (IOSA for short) or St Paul’s Cathedral as locals call it and decided to walk the rest of the way. Sure isn’t that what feet are for?

I hopped off into a field and, following no man-made track, made me way towards the town where I was born. The further east I went, the flatter and duller things became. I ploughed on and on til the mind had been robbed of anything to fixate upon and there it was. Navan.

Spelt the same way forwards as it backwards. Handy if passed the sign too fast, you could look back and still know where you were.

The High Kings of Ireland used to live there, in MacEvoy Avenue I think. Some of their relations are still about the place. Oh you’d know by them that they used to be something, dressed in buckskin, walking round with their wolfhounds and the doorbell that sounds like a harp.

Newgrange is nearby, nearly 4,000 years old but that’s nothing compared to Oldgrange which is so old that they haven’t found it yet.

I strolled on past the meat processing plant that used to sponsor the football team. They were some team back then, huge athletic bovine men fed on nothing but silage and growth hormones.

Side effects, sure there were a few. The bigger lads grew hooves and all of them mooed. A lot of them earned more for their families as cattle after their careers were done than they ever could have as people. I had a slice of a half-back once, a tasty wee player as they say.

My father was at home listening to the radio, as he always does, with the sound turned off. I went in the kitchen.

Well, the Badger, he said.

Well, Dad, says I.

And then we said nothing. He made a pot of tea using rainwater and me mother’s tears. He keeps them in a bowl near the window. At least we know we’ll never run out.

Any plans? says I.

We don’t talk about the future here, lad.

Oh. When did you decide that?

We don’t talk about the past either.

And then we said nothing again for a day-and-a-half.

What with all that silence I got to thinking which is – as the Nun said holding a head dress made from old venetian blinds – a dangerous habit. Anyway the subject of a united Ireland came into me head and what we might do if it ever comes to pass. Keep going is what I say. No need to stop there. Sure isn’t Scotland Celtic too? We could go after that and then Wales and Brittany would surely follow. There’d be no stopping us then!

On to Scandinavia and our Viking cousins and from there the Slavs and the Rooskies (most of them is from Roscommon) and sure half of Poland is here already and then the Turks. We’d use them to lever our way into Persia and then the Indians.

Momentum by this stage would be huge, China is only dying to be told what to do and don’t they have half of Africa in their pocket? Before you know we’d be in charge of everywhere. Imagine it folks, a United World. Sure how could the UNIONists object to that? The sound of me conclusions were rattling round me head.

I looked up at the aul lad.

I came east in search of peace, I told him.

He thought for a while and then replied: But sure everywhere is east of somewhere else isn’t it?

Yeah.

And sure everywhere is North of somewhere else or South or West.

Yeah.

Well then.

Well then, what?

No matter where you are, you’re everywhere. You needn’t have come here at all, you were here where you were. That’d be the Navan way of telling you to go home.

The cat got up and left. I followed shortly after.