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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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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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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I'll give you ten bob for it

A man who could not ride a bike at all offered my father ten shillings as a deposit on a bicycle Da had rebuilt from scratch.

This was long before the swaggering cyclists in The Giro d'Italia came flying down the east coast of Ireland and halted in Dublin on the way to Italy.

In high summer, and in his retiring years Da pulled the old bike from underneath a heap of other items that nobody would ever use.

He brought the red framed bike out to the sun and began work.

This was a signal for everyone and anyone passing by to stop and offer advice and opinion, both useful and useless, on the work in progress.

As often as not, stories would be told about great bicycles these people had known in the past; for a bike then was more than a conveyance, it was a part of a person's life, through all weathers and in all social and legal situations, the bike was always there.

That the work progressed very slowly as a result of opinions expressed was of no concern to anyone.

This was detailed work and should not be rushed.

The man from down the road was impressed by the attention the bike was getting and asked if the bike would be for sale?

Invited to state his price, he boldly offered ten bob down and ten bob a week after that.

He neglected to say for how many weeks, for the matter would be ongoing, as far as he was concerned.

"No thanks. Ten bob down and the rest when I catch you with you on the bike, and me running after you,"laughed Da. 

The man was affronted and left.

I dunno whatever happened to that bike.

It may be rolling somewhere still.

Mush away

You don't always need snow to mush a dog.

I am walking on an April day in Phoenix Park training for the city marathon six months hence when I hear an agitated male shouting at a dog.

The sound is behind me and approaching fast.

A dog pulls a man along on Rollerblades.

Perhaps, this muscle-bound Doberman at some stage had been amenable to guidance by his erstwhile master; but those Elysian days have slipped away like the snows of winter past or summers of distant memory.

For now he would create his own Elysium, it seems, freed from the fool who is even now pursuing him.

The fool is attached to the racing dog by a leash designed to keep the dog in check.

However, he does not wish to be kept in check. The man does not have the strength to restrain the wilful animal.

Besides, the human is aboard a pair of Rollerblades which looked fine in the shop; but which he is unable to manoeuvre to halt the dog.

The effect is that of a sleigh with a single dog pulling it and an out of control human behind it.

The man tries a nautical tack of steering across the road from the dog's wake; but it is no use, try as he might the dog pulls him along towards a bend in the road and a steep incline below.
When they pass beyond my ken the man has his posterior stuck in the air and his face dangerously close to the road in an effort to reduce drag.

To no avail.

They part company when the animal veers around the bend. The man continues down the grassed incline.

Alone.

On Rollerblades.

I walk on. I am in training. There is nothing to say, really.

Mush.

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Collateral damage

Not everybody in attendance at the Battle of Clontarf 2014 went away unwounded.

Some got badly fatigued on the retreat to the city when Dublin bus sent its fleet back from the battle stop full of people.

They were then unable to pick up stragglers on the five kilometre march back to town, though unarmed people waved in vain at the passing ships of the road.

It had been 1,000 years since Brian Boru and his Irish army defeated a heap of Norsemen and their Irish supporters in the area of Clontarf.

Many re-enacters arrived from all corners of the globe from Texas to New Zealand, Denmark and Ballymun to pretend to kill one another in front of thousands of people come to see a re-enactment in scorching sunshine.

There was the nub.

Sunshine on Irish skin is more dangerous than any amount of vaux Vikings roaring their heads off.

The glaring sunshine took many of us by surprise.

Including myself.

I had been chatting to the warriors before they assembled to march into battle.

I became trapped among the marching Dublin warriors and could not escape from within a funnel of people newly opened up to allow the column of fighting men through to the battle ground.

Before long I found myself at the corner of the killing ground where I stayed as my new friends walked on.

I was soon surrounded by several million spectators.

Grand so.

But I could not retreat from the beating sun, no hat, nor sun cream was to hand.

That's how I got my battle burns.

Standing in an Irish park in the broiling sun watching a re-run of a thousand year old battle.

Brian Boru was killed that day, though his army won the savage confrontation.

Nobody ever says whether anyone was sunburnt though.

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A knee in the groin

I am in a London airport.

I am mightily vexed with body frisks and repetitive baggage checks visited upon us.

This, in response to people with nothing else to do but attempt to blow up aeroplanes with, or without, themselves on them.

This always strikes me as boredom gone mad.

Anyone who thinks that blowing up other people is a worthy idea needs to meet more personable people than the morose mammals with which they are currently consorting.

A good tickle and a chuckle would not go astray.
 Like.

I am in a lift when a pained man in running shorts and a full backpack arrives in with his fully clad wife.

Her demeanour is one of a person on a mission. She wears a smart business suit. It's light in colour for it is a Sunday.

But she makes it very clear she is there to protect and preserve her man.

He wears a very large brownish medallion that somehow signifies he did something worthwhile, like completing the marathon, just now.

He is so stiff in walking that I am reminded of a crab moving along with determined motion.

I think to ask him what his time was; but if it was not up to his personal best standards, then he might be distraught and the woman in the nice suit might knee me in the groin.

Then I wonder if I will mention that I am in training to walk the Dublin City Marathon, a few months hence.

Perhaps not: I am fully clad for I need a pocketed jacket to carry my books past the airline's weighing machine.

I remain silent.

Next morning, when I tumble onto the road to walk, I am stiff of limb.

I wonder if the suited woman is waiting for me.

Security.


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Training Apaches

The scissors platform is raised high above the swelling mob on the big wide avenue that is the backbone of Phoenix Park.

On it are a man and a woman facing in opposite directions.

The day is warm for a foot race but this pair tell people they will warm them up for the event.
Many seem overjoyed at this news.

Humans jump up and down in response to the shouted commands from on high.

It's hard not to believe that, to a visitor from Mars, humans are a strange species, not to mention to any passing Messiahs, during Lent.

Mass obedience to shouted instructions is the order of the day.

These people have raised funds or paid an entry fee to participate in all of this.

They seem to think it very important to warm up when told to do so.

After all, they will run 10 kilometres around the leafing roads to arrive back here, warmed up and panting, to receive a goody bag of branded goods from various sponsors.

Camera crews are positioned around the course to relay the participants' efforts to a television audience happily sitting down to Sunday roast at home.

Everywhere you look, in hollow or glade, atop mounds of green grass, people gather in bright colours to prepare for the event. They stretch bits of their bodies in different directions to make them more supple.

It is difficult not to think of them as wild Indians preparing to descend in marauding groups on the capitalist intruders all around them.

Would the race entrants move faster if they were told the Apaches were after them? Someone should take a breath and shout a warning.

I may, when the elevated people cannot see who the mischief maker is in the crowd of jumping people.

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Smoking Runner

I am walking along, determined to be a better person than I am when I meet a smoking runner coming towards me.

She has just completed a 5 kilometre course with others wearing the same pink shirts that proclaim they are all individually members of a group dedicated to some common cause.

Either the word women, or, ladies is printed among the other words on the shirts; but I am too polite to stare to see which, for I may be perceived as a predatory male walker.

I smile at the sky above their collective heads, instead.

There is a 10 kilometre course up ahead to complete for those who did not want to go home.

But since that is the same course run twice it hardly seems to count as a longer distance.

More of an instant action replay of the previous distance covered, I feel.

The smoker carries a plastic two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola from which she swigs in between puffs of the fag. I can't help noticing she is a little overweight for a runner, but resolve not to stare.

She is walking towards me and I step aside, breaking my own training pace.

She takes this as her right for she is a veteran now, having chased the others around five kilometres of tarmac, for a while.

They sweep past me with the determined step of the righteous achiever.

The solitary smoker is on the outskirts of the group; a weak member to be left behind by the fitter members of the pinkshirts, when her time comes.

She does not know this as they pass me by, unnoticed.

I stopped smoking twenty years ago; but am overwhelmed with desire when her trailing smoke reaches my nostrils.

Jezebel I think, unfairly, as I resume my own pace.



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Getting dangerous in a hoodie

Buying and wearing a hoodie should not be taken as an act of aggression.

I walk now with more determination than a gardener seeking a site for a new rose bed; so, I buy some track suit trousers to allow for faster movement without chafing my legs to death.

While in the giant shed of a retail outlet I purchase a grey top with a zip front and a hood atop the whole thing. This is known as a hoodie, much loved by the criminal with a bad hairdo.

I buy it for the weather, not as a criminal disguise.
However, I cannot fight perception and find it more practical to wear this top with the hood down, a contradiction in design if ever there was one.

Solo walking takes application to the matter in hand, so when I first step out in the hoodie I seek a walker in the distance to pace.

I see a young woman in street clothes who is, I begin to believe, related to Superwoman. She walks with a measured gait that seems to set the universe spinning beneath her feet. She moves across distance at a pace a winged steed would find emotionally satisfying.

I lock in to her moving form with determination and she drags me along with her. It is a while before I realise she is fleeing from me.

For, I am wearing the hoodie with the top up against a vicious breeze that seeks to separate my ears from my body.

If I call out to say she is safe; her apprehension will be confirmed and she will phone the police to arrest me. For wearing a hoodie.

I take a less travelled path at the next junction. I put my hood up. For hoodie walking can be dangerous.

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