Brian O’Dowd was born in Dublin. He lives in Toronto. O’Dowd is a Professor at the University of Toronto. His novel ‘A Wicklow Girl’, was published in 2017. Available on Amazon etc. Publisher: Tellwell, Canada. In 2019 he won the prestigious Prix Galien 2019 Canadian science award, as reported in the Irish Times.
Look Back
Brian O’Dowd Ⓒ
“How’s your lad doing?
Did he finally manage to pass the trigonometry?
My Thomas is away now with the Clergy,
Siobhan’s well set, 7 honours in the Leaving.
Sure sky’s their only limit now.”
Parents souls hang on ambition of babies,
scoring immediate success after one another.
Better I pull up those much darned socks,
surrounded by swots propelled up ladders!
Budding Einstein’s in Dublin families,
they figured it all out, and so soon!
Summer in the Park
“How come atheist’s like you so afraid of ghosts?”
“Truly one great enigma mystery Horatio.”
“I’ve seen you in spooky places, remember that abandoned estate building in Wicklow? Woo, Woo! Then your Olympic bolt out!”
“Come on Tony that place was haunted, a basement with catacombs! Okay that had me with praying.”
Knees were shaking.
“Yet miracle of life leaves you nonplussed! Walk the earth replete with organs, no thanks to you, no matter how you stress them with wanton lusts. If without that generous cooler of beer I’d feel perhaps I’m wasting time being sat here. No offence.”
“You and me buddy.”
Me and Mickey shooting the breeze on that picnic bench by Seapoint, enjoying a gabfest by Dublin bay. Two nobody Profs in various states of progress/decline from the College. Adorned with ruddy summer Irish faces as you’d imagine. They say bugs appeared rapidly on a cooled earth, also when tanning on a Dublin beach. I’d been two weeks shut up working at home, hardly spoke to anyone outside necessary domestics, obviously.
‘Can I get more soap in the shower? Do I have to do everything round here?’
“I was a mutt delayed to figure what I wanted to do with my life at 17! Sitting with fellow miscreants on pub stools trying to settle for something. Other kids beginning training as accountants, solicitors, teachers, the family business. I’d been a postman over Christmas and I liked it.”
Gawky kid metamorphosing to be legal.
“Ditto with that.”
“Forsooth uncouth Sir Mickey! When art yon Romeo and fair Juliet approaching us hither with striding requests?” Rapping the Bard.
“Okay Tony no need setting that tone. Again Lea-Ann (not Lee or Ann) and Robert (not Bob or Rob) are coming, trying to extract anecdotes about your old Dublin. Their putting a play together and you’ve had exotic times. My job is to mull over useful stuff, separate chat from your chit, and even translate! You being the perplexing fellow as the Brothers realized.”
“Hey man I’ve prepared notes. Those love birds finish each other moronic sentences in weird tones like one morphed brain. I pretend to sleep when they show up nattering with the wife. Smug pair early committed, being in the snug not struggling learning to swim amid churning well of the anxious on bar stools and tight pub spaces.”
“They got off easy.”
“Staring at me with pity, when ignored by unattainable posh girls.”
Never skilled with ‘Do youse come here often?’ intro.
“That narrow uppity line Ballsbridge to Dalkey and beyond. Never a chance of dating those birds like that dog with a big stick getting thru’ a door. Look Tony by instinct knew they’d do better, no chemistry for poor students. Many a Saturday night kipping alone in huts on the Bray Esplanade, after the dance. Fair play, out of our depth even with a snorkel.”
‘Comparison is the thief of joy.’
(quoting Teddy Roosevelt)
With blind dates, I’m no surprise,
what’s expected on a western isle.
No apologies needed.
“They say every time you remember stuff you alter that memory, now my thinking of one ex-girl friend has shifted from dodder in Milltown to Seine in Paris. Brigid from Thurles to Brigette at Sorbonne. Double good times!”
Had a long swig of porter given intermittent heat of our fickle sun.
“If this couple says ‘You Guys’ even once I’m gone like Maud. Just so we understand where I’m coming from. Not negotiable.”
“Listen man just a day by the sea, they’re homebodies. Fill their brain’s with glorious tales, make a special day. If you’re a good boy we can walk, see the boat from Holyhead arriving.”
Ship that stirs wavy emotions for me.
“Only a journey man, judged stupid by department standards, a flaying Icarus. Wifey no way happy with reduced circumstance seeing they pulled the Chair stipend, she with high falutin Killiney friends desperate to impress. Old Prof Ricketts said I was too dumb, in my face! Sod turner, cobble walker in the yard seen him spit like an Alpaca, kills grass in patches look like crop circles. I told him outright ‘I’m smart, I know stuff, even lots’.”
“That’ll fix him good.”
“Shocked with my stuttering. Then I bolted.” Anxieties kicked in.
“Always cut and run man! You’ve more one way mail boat crossings than postcards from Bray.”
‘Lost on the slots. Can you help me? Coins preferred.’
“Those co-joins think you’ve an unusual perspective given your father’s unfortunate demise, and unusual family history.”
Dad’s legendary quirkiness, months sojourn in Central Americas eventually terminated by Banditos. Disagreement sparked by Dad’s ‘engañando / cheating!’ outburst too much foam on pint of beer in his ‘locale Catina’. Lesson learned for me, display prudence in foreign parts not be foaming at the mouth over crap beer trivialities. Don’t go expecting Dublin’s publican fortitude elsewhere.
“Never a buffet carriage from Holyhead to London those days. British trains cup of tea weirdly shaped like a cone. Did they think we’d not notice that’s half a cup?”
Although better than nowt.
“So how about school, anything? My opinion education’s mistake focusing on dead languages, Latin, Irish, that Shakespeare speak? Too much Parle vous? Needed chemistry, science language more worthwhile.”
“I spent a year in a gaelic boarding school. Parents visits with gooseberry and other sour jams, everyone else got cakes and boxes of sweets. Also had a breakfast boiled egg instead of piano lessons. At dinner normal kids went to the Master table to offer a slice of birthday cake with delicious marzipan and icing, me sitting ashamed with jar of rhubarb. Friday’s legacy lunch soup described as chefy’s vomit.”
“That’s it, a whole year?”
“After two months I was fluent being young and empty headed, that Christmas annoying cousins with gaelic. As years passed lost all that Irish, then obviously memories gone!”
“Begob! Like Maud!”
“I only recall soup and jam given the taste. Mmm … rhubarb pie! No one ever declared.”
“We under appreciate having bearla, a language to suit us. Ancestors short brutish lives tortured on the rack shouting confessions of dastardly deeds, made easier with no translations necessitated.”
“Mickey these days with my career faltering should be heading for the hills, Notting hill, Harrow on the hill, Hampstead hill, Muswell hill, likely Kilburn High road. Rejects like me find a home in the Big Smoke, Londinium now the swingiest city!”
Loved England and all who sail on her,
in my time good in many ways,
providing grateful harbour for me,
often departed Dun Leary with despair
dumped, sacked, else failing to thrive.
There from midnight’s gloom pier lights,
guiding, greeting enter from an empty sea.
Being right fortified by pints on the crossing,
time to restore to regain a footing.
It’s not all so easy for some of us.
“Anything else?”
“Remember being obsessed why people use ‘Xmas’? If I’d see that in a card straight in the bin. How you like Xickey, I’m Xony, sounds spacey! Appreciate we tossed away unflattering but once ubiquitous flat caps.”
“Hurley lads wore them playing at Croke park.”
“Loved Katharine Tynan’s poem ‘Euston station’, by the train she could see an Irish face, Dublin bay ‘exquisite’ from the boat. Robert Frost spoke at the JFK inauguration, after I got into Dylan Thomas, Thomas Hardy, loved ‘Far From The Madding crowd’ movie with Julie Christie.”
“Dubliner’s have similar memories, presidents, pints and literature, that’s our lot.”
“Shipped my poetry books from Canada, I’d once sit reading in my tiny cottage with the wood stove. Loons, lakes and ice fishing, they have it all! Oh! That first year forgot I stored the propane cylinder behind the stove, by then it was desperate to explode. With a glove on the handle flung it on the snow bank, balloons of steam rising. I’d no wisdom operating in that land. Well compared to Courtown.”
“Are you tout fini?”
“There’s a bi-literal treaty, our poems expose them to oodles of our mournful sadness. Give Ontario poems a chance.” All I’m saying.
“I’m promised a bar stool extra in the play, ‘sit nursing a pint geezer’. So don’t be an encyclopedia on spurious topics. Please no rants about round tables in restaurants not working.”
“Giant potted plant in the middle? Come on, need walkie talkies to communicate over foliage.”
“My fears our discussions a tough gig. Anything more, maybe not involving pints, old time poets or Blighty?”
“Once spied a ravenous crow eat a half dead squirrel, pick pecking away. That’s for real.”
“Where?”
“Ontario.”
“Permission for audible sighs? If their ‘Great’ lakes have Lough Ness monsters no one cares. Move to Lough Corrib I’d give a damn.”
“In the Arctic with polar bears, not including zoos, 73 documented attacks with 20 dead people. Prudent explorers carry guns! Over here our lazy badgers can’t even make close to that?”
“Honey badgers have hyenas for breakfast.”
“In Africa! Not what love birds hoping for, vicious and smart feral animals not popular in theatres. Specially if equipped with ringing cell phones.”
“Later parents came to Toronto, time at the Falls, CN Tower engraved names at the top, saw an Irish play at Stratford Festival. With me so worried with financials, as in not having sufficient. Dad always liked to order off menu even fast food joints. I was not fully appreciating the moment, worrying if the old banger wagon would make it on the highway. Now with tears remembering, do cherish God gifted moments. They are gone only nostalgic sadness with regrets.”
“Tony what can you do? You gave them great times that’s life pal, no return policy on God’s green earth. We live with that agreement.”
“Still see Dad with a beer on the St. Lawrence ferry smiling, passing tiny islands. I’d made that time for them, after Ma would come alone. Grateful moments, be there for ones you’re with, they too had torments. Always hoped back home they’d have loads of stories to entertain friends in the local. Times with their prodigal son.”
How different would we behave if gifted such moments again?
Moments of silence as our souls took a look back.
“Tony permission to alter the mood, I know you went down the rabbit hole.”
“Yeah man even saw that caterpillar smoking a hookah.”
“Not to be sneezed at. Oft asked question, influences from back then?”
Scanning scrawled notes.
“Dad had scored a fire salvaged TV.”
Oh and the family pleasure provided!
“Dixon of Doc green, Honeymooners, Dad’s Army, Christmas with the Marx brother films, Steptoe and sons, Benny Hill, Morcambe and Wise. Most hilarious Three Stooges, then the Twilight zone. Donna Reed’s showing how a family lived in USA suburbia, brown paper sacks from supermarket trips in the Pontiac. Lawns without railings, schools with girls and boys. Prosperity going right.”
“Yeah Tony! Homework got delayed, we watched till midnight, Coronation street and Emergency Ward Ten my parents were wary. Later being addicted, also with Lucy! The Bachelors (with Con, Dec and John) on Sunday night at the London Palladium. Singing ‘I Believe’. Magic!”
“Don’t forget ‘A Scottish Soldier’ Andy Stewart in the kilt! See now loads of stuff.”
“Mixed bag, further back?”
Fast scanning.
“Activities at dances, train to Belfast for rubbers. Me and my brother and neighbours had the Green door in Clonskea, plays in the garage ‘Happy as Larry’. Pennies charged to watch, all sent to the church. Not even kept a few coins for a toffee bar.”
Travel: our first Invasion
“What about those holidays?”
Mickey barrister stern, a corner got turned.
“First off I never went on a Med package holiday. Allow me to read my brief but exhausting, sorry exhaustive soliloquy.”
For longest time Europe a grim place, no Beach boys, heavy tome books from USSR. Weird serious movies with subtitles, Marlene Dietrich singing ‘Lili Marlene’. Continent battered by WW2, Kremlin imposed a cruel Iron Curtain, and banned Rock and Roll! Although in truth we had banns for wedding nuptials. Historical Eire damaged by invasion, emigration, famine, watched as a cascade of our females went to warm Mediterranean parts. This absurd screed focus is when girls returned from their week away.
Needed to wet the whistle right now.
Shop girls, haberdashery seamstress, uniformed secretary, Airline employee, hotel workers, civil servants all with punts stashed from Friday’s wage packet led the invasion. They’d cashed in with working, while I remained a college pauper, practicing delayed gratification many ways. Damascus moments planes touching down on Med runways, our girls no longer settle what’s offered on their jaded isle. Aye, faded isle. No ‘emerald’ isle, unreliable sod piled high with ashes of briquettes. Once our business, now young women exported with butter, porter and single lads on the lump. Girls stripped of pious green shirt when playing away, hormones bloomed under a warmer sun. They returned armed with a dipstick by which to measure us.
Escaped New Town Mount Kennedy,
no longer be their county barnacles.
Airport bus, splash in prime times.
Be wicked heading for you Med Boys.
What’s shaking on that gorgeous tree!
Endless walks by Glen of the Downs,
display well shaped Wicklow thighs!
Coming in pairs!
Full extent of this encroaching dilemma revealed one evening off Kilburn High road visiting a flat with Dublin girls in rhapsody about trips to Torremolinos, Adriatic and islands in the Med. So full of it drinking coloured liquor from duty free. Those girls put an indelible mark on me, sharing memories of their sojourns. Girls heads expectations got turned viewing such sights over there, became besotted by their strutting young men. With Italian roads to roam girls viewed David up front in Florence, and they liked it! No flat cap on this noggin, no nicotine stained lips for this Adonis. Returned with ceramic David’s secreted in the suitcase. After all boys watched Hollywood starlets and those magazines with staples.
‘Yeah good for his gander what about us?’
Only way we figured to sweep them off their feet was cross bar lift on the bike. Now they tarnished us hard working lads tilling in the fertile soil sticking with this lands bounty, lumped us like herd of Calibans and humpbacks occupying belfries. Although with other reports of lassies traipsing about stressed in unfashionable clothes. In hotels feeling overwhelmed, in Venice huddled in the gondola like fish out of water. By the Riviera feeling like timid spectators watching a parade. Searching to discover an Irish pub with plain welcome faces. Served by a lad from Limerick, not bothered by suave waiter palaver pouring a glass of spéciale Rose.
‘Oui madam.’
‘Luigi I’m no sommelier, it’s plonk pour to the brim. Tout suite and grazie.’
Disheartened knowing Kathleen
his third cast off of the season.
Wondering ‘can we leave now?
Carrying such emotional baggage.
Meeting to Begin
“Tony! Shut that stuff down, they’re coming! Hey ‘You Guys’ over by the table!” Mickey waving, pointing with shouting. “Tony’s ready for youse.”
Vexatious clod.
The Galway Review 