I knew you my friend
You knew your favourite tree
The best ponds and beaches
We always went out
Swimming days
Rainy days
Windy days
Sniffing days
Cloudy days
Stormy days
Scratching days
Sunny days
Wagging days
Last days
We went out
Everyday
Creative writing
Creative writing is i think like throwing a grenade into one’s brain – What memories are going to be dislodged? Sure who needs imagination – isn’t life imagination enough
Talking about french villages – I got married in one – in deepest France – Deepest Burgundy – as french as french can get – First in the village town hall and later in a church a distance away – When i walked out of the town hall – Shotguns blasting – Local hunters tradition – but nobody warned me nor my Irish family – Shotgun wedding means different things in different places
Here they were a celebration.
Start of a memoir
Once he’d travelled with mr c for a few years he didn’t really care anymore. Sure after that, what else could be thrown at him. Let the bureaucracy do as it will always do.
Does the world not know by now that this man is a determined fucker. Throw what you want, knock him down and turn away as if done. Turn back and he is on his feet again. It’s like what is shown in old westerns. Fists flying and he’s down. Right, look again and he’s back up. Bring him down with a bullet. He who shoots last wins.
He had always considered himself a gardener. Other things throughout his life as well but for him he was a gardener. Five years old. Living on the N2 – the Derry road in Finglas. Probably 65 years ago so plausible. Lancashire accent. But a gardener. Bringing his wheelbarrow 100 yards up the road to get some manure. Of course he was a gardener. Big back garden behind a bungalow on the North road. Can still see the drills and trenches. He must have been planting spuds. 1963 it must have been and spring because of the spuds. New school a few months away. He had done his first year in a Manchester School. Catholic school by all accounts, St Josephs. A woman he met years later told him so. Reality suggests he was with his step-fathers da, Benny. Surely they weren’t letting him out on the road alone and sure what would he know about cow manure. But in his mind he was a gardener.
