Jockey

Vol 3 of the short story books will be published June 15th. Entitled Jockey the 7 stories are set in Ireland and among the Irish in the UK – and they came together over many years; years of wandering, of listening, of digging holes in the roads of Lancashire with men from Sligo, and working on the building sites of Manchester with men from Mayo and Clare.

They come also from more than sixty years of travelling in Ireland; fishing on lonely loughs in Connemara, walking all the high hills along the western coast, from Cork to Donegal, and from countless nights making music in traditional Irish music sessions in Britain and Ireland. For  twenty eight years I also had a house in Ireland, which I built up from a ruin and which I still miss terribly. Am I Irish? No, my father was from Devon, but he died on Sept 23rd 1944 when his Lancaster bomber was shot down over Holland and, sadly, I never knew him.  But I was brought up in Manchester by three women whose roots were in Dublin and Tipperary; my Mum, my Aunty Julia and my Nanna. So for the formative years of my childhood I lived in a terraced house; a Catholic in a Protestant street, with everything that entails including a different way of seeing things, and nights that, until we got a telly, were filled with storytelling and song. 

I am often asked, ‘Are these stories true?’ Of course they are true, they are true in and of themselves like all stories; otherwise, how could I be telling them?

Here’s the opening of one of the tales … 

Cuplá Focal Gaeilge

(A few words of Irish)  

Easter was early that year, too damn early, as far as Anthony Quinlan was concerned. As he stood shivering, cold, alone and hungover, on a wind-scoured Connemara strand he asked himself what in God’s name was Easter doing coming on the first Sunday in April with an icy breath and battering gales? Why didn’t the Church do something sensible and give it a fixed date? Instead they seemed to work it out every year, as though they were surprised amateurs. It was something to do with it having to be on the fifteenth Sunday after the full moon before Rogation Wednesday, divided by the Pope’s height in inches multiplied by the square root of the number of pigeons on the Vatican roof. Bollocks! If Jesus died on the 3rd of April AD33, then Constantine, or whichever wanker it was who decided the date of Easter, should have stuck to that date. They don’t shift Christmas around every year, Quinlan thought, you don’t hear people say, Christmas is really early this year – it’s in November.