How old are you?

I meet a man from New York who tells me he did not go to Woodstock in 1969 because it was raining and he knew there would be a lot of mud. He says it was 80 miles from where he lived.

This revelation comes soon after Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and he and I are waiting for the Dublin marathon to start. The man and I; not Bob Dylan.

Without any preliminary he asks my age: straight out of the playground playbook.
I say it's my birthday in six days and he says he's already that age.

He says we went through all the same things.
Not wishing to be rude I say yes and wonder when our wave will be called to the start line. I've trained enough, I am ready to be away.
I enjoyed my twenties, yes
I enjoyed the thirties, yes


A woman walks by with a pair of creepy-looking dogs and I hope their leads don't wrap around my bare legs or I will be mown down by the hordes of hopefuls behind me.

Forties were rough. Huh? yes.
I lose interest.
I hear him saying flower power, yes I say.
Vietnam, righto.
Free love, for sure.

I say we are the generation that changed things: he says I hear you, man.
Man?
I still go on demonstrations I say, we're not finished yet.
This was before Trump fell into the White House and Leonard Cohen stopped singing in the same week.

He says I gotta go somewhere else.
I say, yes.

He walks away, still tied to his age.
I wonder how to loosen my new trainers so my feet don't bleed so much into my new white socks while I walk those 42 kilometres for the third year in a row.

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Not wanted

Being told to stop speaking halfway through a nuisance call can be a traumatic experience.

A female voice is conducting a survey into my home heating practices and will I speak to her?

A kind stranger asking how you keep your corporeal being warm and functioning is not something an ordinary male would pass up, generally, but I am busy.

I am reading letter from a man I do not know who says I am lucky enough to belong to a huge tribe of people scattered throughout the known world; I am now the sole inheritor of a fortune left swinging when the former owner fell from a tree while demonstrating acrobatics to a new girlfriend. This flying fool had my own surname and I hope his madness is not genetic.

If I will simply supply my bank details, my correspondent will let me in on the deal, tout de suite.

So I pass up the heating woman's suggestion that we get it together on my heating practices. She sounds strangely happy.

Some time later, a male voice telephones to talk heating. I have passed on the swinging deal, for now, and agree to speak.

He starts with the usual questions on which planet I reside on his way to the hard sell at the end, but, when I mention his female colleague and plead for no more calls from them in the future the tone changes.

He says he has enough people in my area, he is full up. He is going to stop asking me questions.

Then he hangs up.

Unlike the man in the tree who should have taken the same course of action.

I wonder what I said to cause such a reaction. Maybe I should have told him I was going to be rich.

Soon.

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Exiled leprechaun

The leprechaun has been sent to Austria.

It is my fervent wish that it never return.

I try to appear nonchalant when storytelling. I even answer questions on anything a visitor might ask. It's good fun, and helps me find an audience's level.

But, no matter what stories I present, a hand always rises above the assembled heads.

It's the leprechaun hand.

The question comes in many ways; but it is always the same:

"What's the deal with the leprechauns?"

By which normally sane people mean they would like me to explain to them where the leprechaun stands in the Ireland of today.

There is only one leprechaun story. It tricks itself out in many costumes but it's the same story.

The duty of the leprechaun is to mend the shoes of the sighe, the fairies, for which he is paid a coin. These coins he keeps to himself. If you catch him he is supposed to give it all to you if you can survive three distractions he offers to you. Having bested him he will tell you where the haul is to be found. Then he bests you again and you get nothing.

The problem is that tourist traps sell a little leprechaun doll to passing visitors.

Somehow, one of these dolls came to live with me in my work space.

I hung it from a nail as high up as I could manage.

The other day, in frustration at yet another leprechaun question, I exiled the little green man.

I dropped him into the bag of a man heading for the Alps.

If you are Alpine skiing and see a leprechaun hanging about a tree, avert your eyes for he will follow you home, given half a chance.

And I will not thank you for it.

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Selling books is easy for desperadoes

There is an air of the desperado about an author in the weeks before Christmas.

The slithering writer may be seen painfully pursuing sight of a published work in bookshops so they may place it in a more advantageous position, sales wise, going forward.

That way, someone will surely buy a copy.

One hopes.

And perhaps they will, unless a prowling assistant returns it to alphabetical order in the stacks, whence it came

For myself, I like to make my own display of as many of my eight published books as I can find on the shelves.
Once arranged to my satisfaction, I ostentatiously shoot pictures of the display on my phone camera.
This to impress the passing intelligentsia with how important the work by this author is in the world of letters, and semi colons.

Much of this is smoke and mirrors and nothing at all to do with writing a book.
But a book is not written until it is read.
And that person must be an unrelated buyer.

Else.
It's all for nothing, this typing of words.

The neophyte believes that to write a book is sufficient.
A publisher who has taken the work and made it their own with suitable branding and hoopla will take care of the child book as it would one of its own.
This, the new writer believes with reckless enthusiasm.
Alas, for ambition.

For modern publishers behave as if making a physical book from the mishmash of words and perambulating punctuation is sufficient.
Not for them the tacky selling of this latest addition to their publisher's list.
No.

If a bookseller somehow hears about the title and contacts the publisher they will send a copy to the store for collection by the aspirant reader.

And so, the desperado author is born.

 

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Doing the marathon

Some 14,600 people set off in Dublin City Marathon.

Just 12,267 cross the finish line hours and hours later.

For the first time, I am one of them. I walk though many run.

In the weeks that follow, emails pour in offering me photographs of myself in the race.

No thanks.

Nobody looks good in a marathon, except the elite running at the front as if everyone is chasing them, as they are.

People head off in great spirits.
Some end that way, others contemplate their own mortality on the journey and become introverted.

I pass a Lego man who started out so well. His outfit has become dysfunctional and is upended on a park bench for repair as I pass by.

The roads are strewn with the bodies of runners who listened to their memory rather than their present-day fitness. Voluntary ambulance people rush about to attend to self-administered malfunctions of the corpus.

The route is geared towards runners, I come to realise as I saunter along.
Each time I approach a water station or a local musician hired to create atmosphere they are packing up to go home.

Your time is up, their body language says.
Mine says keep going.

I do.

A solitary woman stands at the most difficult point of the marathon and claps like a crowd of one.
I almost propose to her dear heart in gratitude.

At the finish, I run a little to show I still have it.

A man on a public address shouts at me to stop running for I passed over the finish line a distance behind.

A barrier of women in official clothing place medals on ribbons on our heads like the champions we are.

My time was too slow but I know what to do next year.

Grand.

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What if your head was truly on fire ?

 

Race walking with your head on fire is a strange sensation.

This, even after I walk in bright sunshine through a water shower made possible by a local fire tender.

More than 3,000 people, myself included, pass through this quiet rural road on our way around a ten kilometre course.

Most run, I walk determinedly, as do a few others gathered in competitive cluster as focussed on besting one another as any Olympian contest, though they move slower, with more venom.

Later, I discover some jog on stretches where nobody is watching them.

Turning a quiet corner, I meet a parked fire tender belonging to the local Civil Defence Unit. Water hoses spray hanging moisture into the atmosphere from either side of the road.

They offer a choice: walk dry or take a soaking.

I stop beneath the silver spray and thank the god of walkers for sending these fine angels to us on this day in the 20 degree heat of near noon.

Not a very high temperature, but add body heat from competitive walking and the numbers climb.

Soaked through, I walk on with a new squelch in my step.

I do not take on water at the next water station. I am hydrated enough.

A short while later, in direct sunlight, my head heats up from the inside past ignition point to where I wonder what the protocol might be for a fiery head bearing down on the finish line.

I walk on, determined to finish or fall in the attempt.

My head cools down somewhat as I hit a shady area and I pick up my pace, once more.

I pass the finish line and wonder if steam is coming from my ears from the soaking.

Or if smoke is truly escaping from inside my skull.

 

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A lot to be said for a good shout

Not enough people shout out loud any more.

There was a man once who did not like silence and so he used to shout every so often just to make the blood flow a little faster in the veins of all who heard him suddenly give voice.

He called it "having a bit of gas", gas being fun, not exhaust fumes from a metal pipe, or, the inside of a domestic cooker, however temporarily visited.

He specialised in attending public meetings, on any subject at all, just so long as there would be a moment of quiet in which he could interject some noise.

And some jaded listeners.

Annual general meetings were always a good occasion, especially when the election of a committee for the following year came about.

Silence always fell then, it still does, when everyone's eyes settle on anything except the top table where a welcome awaits those with nothing else to do but serve on the committee.

It was then he came into his own for he would suddenly shout aloud to the exasperation of the committee formers and the consternation of those new to the experience.

He would shout nothing discernible at all, at times; other times, he would invent a title of a book or film.


If the chairman was wearing a nice green shirt and was called Wally de Winter for example he would call out:

"The Case of the Green Shirt, by Wally de Winter," he'd shout. "Has anyone seen that yet?"

He used to encourage all about him to join him in "Letting a shout, for a bit of gas,"

At which point someone officious would move to eject him.

He would demand that his freedom of expression be respected and glorious mayhem would ensue.

No.

Nobody shouts enough, any more.


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Never going home

Three flights on one journey will create misunderstandings.

I travel from Umea, in Northern Sweden, to Dublin.

My first flight is delayed landing at Stockholm. There is a long internal walk from arrival. My 100 minutes between flights begin to wither.

Eating french fries at a café I discover I have two minutes to check in, a kilometre away, through crowds.

Chips loosed in my pocket, I eat fistfuls. I gallop.
Through security. No time to re-trouser my belt.
I run with the wide leather belt swinging in one hand.
People step aside. I eat fries on the hoof.

The nearest gate is 21. Final check in time is past.

I am hailed on the public address. "Would Brendan Nolan please contact gate 33"

I want to shout I am trying to do that; but I am finishing my fast food.

Gate 33. All boarded.

An older stewardess calls my name at me?

Yes, it is I. Fame.

I sit, strap, breathe, fly. Nobody cheers, alas.

In Copenhagen, I transfer to my third plane for a two-hour flight. Onboard, I doze. I walk to the toilet. 

I wash my wrists in the tiny restroom. I splash my eyes and face with water.
I press a button on the towel dispenser.
 
Fists bang on the door.

Stewardess; "Are you alright? You pressed the alarm."

I invite her in to explain.

I hold her wrist to steady this slim Scandinavian who flies through the air every day, unaided by me.

She smiles into my eyes and says I was just seeking her company in that room.

I feel dizzy: perhaps I ate the chips too quickly.

We walk the aisle teasing one another, my face still damp.

Strapped men look at me with murder in their eyes.

I may never go home.

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Not falling down but walking

The sympathetic word can wound more deeply that any caustic taunt from an onlooker.

People in high visibility jackets clap politely as I walk the roads of Phoenix Park on my own.

They are stewards for an eight kilometre race organised as the first of four warm-ups for the Dublin city marathon, now only some 17 weeks away, down the road.

They say: well done, almost there, when I am still ages away from the end.

The running pack is gone ahead; the stragglers lost in the distance behind me.

Such words are meant kindly, for they believe me to be a runner who has run out of steam and needing encouragement.

Instead, I am a walker nearly losing consciousness from the thrill of passing out overweight joggers who it seems will reach their mortal end before they meet a finish line on this earth.

A man on a bicycle coming down a steep hill says gruffly to me that I should get to grips with matters athletic: I don't know his exact words for he is freewheeling down the hill while I am power walking up it.

I will finish in the low 3,000s out of 5,000 starters, mostly runners; but that does not seem to matter to the well-sayers.

The man on the public address at the end seems to be particularly concerned at my pace: that of a capable walker finishing strongly where he believes, wrongly, that I am a runner who has lost faith.

He addresses me by my name, having found it on the entrant's list.

The god of rain joins in to drench me with driving vertical rain.

I do not care; for I am home now.

I even run a little for the finishers' cameraman.

God forgive me.

 

Personal best, I'd say.

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Fame of a sort

Everyone likes to think they are right most of the time.

Dictators have an easy life. They know they are right all of the time; for those who survive around them attest to that fact earnestly and often.

Celebrities are dictators of a sort. They can dictate nonsense to those reliant upon them for their income and living.

Celebrity though is a fickle master, for who knows who will choose to recognise you in public, for long.

My own life as a celebrity is pretty much in its infancy.

However.

The question must be asked: how many unconnected people maketh celebrity?

I was in Stockholm  airport recently on the way to meet some other storytellers so we could tell one another stories, swap gossip, boast a little, tell lies about ourselves that would harm no one and generally relax in the company of fine beings such as ourselves.

An attractive woman approached me with hand extended in a fraternal gesture.

She hailed me by name, both given and inherited.

I assured her I was delighted to see her and enquired after her state of relaxation.

She assured me all was ship shape in her life and that she was looking forward to our mutual congregation with others.

This re-assured me almost as it upset me, for I now realised I had never met this woman before in my time on Earth.

The crux came when I had to introduce her to someone I did know.

I apologised for temporarily forgetting her name and asked if she might remind me of it.

It was then she revealed to me that she knew me solely through my presence on Facebook.

This to me is celebrity.

 

One so far, but sure it's a start as the mother hen said of the single egg.

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Walking with mosquitoes

It's not so easy to behave like a nomadic reindeer herder when all the mosquitoes in Northern Sweden have decided you are today's life source for them.

I  landed yesterday at Skelleftea airport en route to a storytelling conference in the Vasterbotten region of northern Sweden.

Today, I am deep in a forest studying the way of the Sami people with local guides.

So too are millions of flying tormentors, sent by the ancient gods to drive men insane.

Sami nomads followed their reindeer herds across Northern Europe as a way of life. Many of the modern Sami are wonderful storytellers; many still mind reindeer.

Mosquitoes do not seem to bother them as much as they do us Europeans from further south.

But no more than our own midges, mosquitoes do not like smoke, so a smoking fire is left smouldering all day.

The Sami inhabit an Arctic area, covering parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway Their portable dwellings were covered with the skins of their charges.

Modern Sami are recreating the old way of life, notably at Koppsele, an area newly won back for restoration.

We walk through the woods with a guide who points at protruding stones and says here was a home.

Sometimes you take these things on faith.

All I see are random rocks breaking the surface of the path; but no doubt they were someone's  pride and joy at one time.

Meanwhile, our blood is being sucked from us.

We cross a wooden bridge over a mountain stream.

We drink together, my friends and I with cupped hands.

Returning through the woods later we re-cross the same stream.

The woods look different now.

Something has happened.

Mystical day.


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Walking a mile in my shoes

Walking in drowned shoes is not something to be contemplated lightly. 

 

 

For, it is a sad sight to behold from above. Your once prized footwear sitting there with water dripping from every side.

Silently.

However, out of tragedy comes comfort.

New, expensive, trainers seemed to ask for a night outdoors, alone, on a fine summer's night.

I agreed, and left them at the door, away from smelling dogs and marauding night cats; they would be safe, I said as I repaired to bed and blew out the candle in my mind.

Next morning, the landscape glistened with early dew and the residue of overnight rain.

Alas, the trainers acted as miniature Noah's Arks sans animals or sense; they were soaked to their core and would not even float me through a day walking on the high tracks of Wicklow's mountains.

That's why a trawl began through old boxes and un-opened wardrobes where the raiments of personalities past hung awaiting the Resurrection.

A pair of battered boots lay silently in a remote corner, deposited and forgotten until a time of need called them forth once more.

Slipped on to impatient feet, they were like the caress of a lover of long ago, remembered in dreams and fond imaginings.

Once, they were new and impressed more than one other person with their design and finish.

They accompanied me on many adventures and never once let me down, whether the impulse was to dawdle or depart --- with all alacrity.

Now, they were brought into daylight once more to replace their replacers, if only while the usurpers dried out from the activities of the night before.

We three headed out onto the track.

 It was as if I was being guided by old friends.

All I had to do was relax, and walk.



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The Walking Voter

"Will you vote for me?" asks the candidate.

There are more candidates than could be elected in a millennium of polls; but they are all hopeful.
I semi-recognise this candidate, so I ask the name?

Which is a mistake; for I am then showered with many different pieces of colourful paper in many shapes, according to the printer's current megalomania. All extol the merits of the candidate, mostly in bad grammar.

His featured picture was taken a long time before this day, which is why I recognised him. I could recall the person in the picture, not the puffing would-be legislator moving along beside me, at a trot.

"Are you going far: to the shops, maybe," he asks in hope.

He slows when I explain I am out for a quick ten kilometre walk as part of my training for the Dublin City Marathon.

I entered for it back in the short days of late winter and here in the longer days of summer I am desperately trying to increase my speeds per kilometre.

Distance is coming along nicely as my body hardens up. Problem is: my mind wanders when I am out walking and I find myself slowing up to smell the daisies.

Which is how the candidate reminds me. I am slower than usual today.

I speed up.

We establish that at a particular time in the past our life paths had crossed. Now, here we were again, both of us running for something, together, yet apart.

Though my running is so slow that I am walking, his is for election, and he will soon come to a dreadful halt when not enough voters agree with him that he is the ONE.

I say I will vote for him, of course.

He falls away from me, in relief.

 

 

 

 

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A cycling ringmaster at the canine circus

No matter how fast you walk someone else will always catch you and pass you by.

I'm out training for the Dublin City Marathon. I bring the dog for company. The dog is not doing the marathon, she is 12 years old, too young in man years, too old in dog years.

A voice speaks in my ear and is then past me, like a bee on a journey somewhere and sounding a loud buzz to clear the way.

The woman's voice is jolly and encourages me to keep going.

It is a cyclist with a crash helmet on.

 

The bicycle she rides has a back carrier upon which rests a high vis rain jacket, though the warm sun is shining in the sky.

We are both travelling along the side of a long rectangular green open space.

Each of us is in the company of our respective dogs. Hers is younger than mine.

While I walk along and mind my own business and my dog does the same, this cyclist seems to believe she is a ringmaster in a circus.

She wears earphones and may hear different voices in her head to the rest of us.

She calls out commands and encouragement to her canine friend who by and large completely ignores her in favour of stray sniffing at who-knows-what in the long grass.

It is my habit to include this rectangle in my training walk to fill out a distance. Besides it's nice and soft on the paws of the dog.

My new acquaintance passes me by once more. This time she remains silent. Her dog is not doing what she commands it to do. I believe she is sorry she hailed me.

I quicken my pace as does my dog, unbidden.

We leave this mad circus behind.

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