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Everything good in life is worth waiting for, even if the waiting sucks. So before I pass you to The Moron’s Guide to Ireland, pray let me tell you a short tale. If you simply can’t wait, click the link. You can always hit Ctrl+Home to return here.
It begins in Clifden, County Galway, a stopover gig when I was on the road to Belmullet after missing the Blues Festival in Dublin, where I was due to join An American Band in a listed gig, but that bit comes later in the tale..
I was just relaxing like in the hotel lounge bar where I’d finished guesting in a gig with some folk’s I’d joined the previous evening in another hotel bar, when this American woman approached my table and asked if she could join us.
I say us—I was on the road in my camper van with this dude from Galway. We’d met. . .. but that comes later in the tale too. Anyway, this dude, Peter that is, had been chatting up this woman at the bar while I was on stage. He’d been telling her about my relationships to the Duchess of Marlborough and Aristotle Onassis and making out I was some sort of rich eccentric English musician touring Ireland and how he was my bodyguard bla blab blah—the things some guys do to pull a bird like.
Anyway I looked the part—I’d been mistaken for Keith Richards on the Aran Islands a few days before—I was rich, eccentric and English and related to all kinds of weird and wonderful people but I wasn’t a millionaire, though many of my weird and wonderful relatives were. I scripted the sitcom based on a junk dealer that some spark at Aunty Beeb ripped off and screened two years later. Oh, I’ve done a few things in life, believe me.
After a fruggling pimple scratchin eternity of trivia talk that lasted probably a few minutes and several whiskeys I learned she was on holiday with her elderly mother and there was someone she wanted me to meet, or who rather wanted to meet me, or one of the two or the other. Her daughter had been watching the gig.
‘She’s tired and went to bed but she wants to meet you,’ said Mom in her perky Boston drawl.
‘Which room’s she in?’ I asked.
‘She’s with her sister. I’d like you to meet her tomorrow,’ she went on. Life happens like that sometimes. Mom apparently thought I was a rich eccentric English musician on tour and what I said convinced her all the more of the truthful baloney Peter had spiced her up with at the bar without my knowledge or consent. We both had our own rooms booked at the hotel on my account and he was firing on all cylinders, despite the wife and kids he’d left behind. Or maybe because, I don’t know, I don’t want to get into that one.
I told her I was planning to head off early the next day—I was too. When she all but begged me to hang on, I agreed to meet her daughter at 10.30 in the hotel bar.
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Several days later, having kicked Peter out of the camper and left him booked into the Clifden hotel for a few days paid stock and barrel and told him to go home when the booking ran out, newsly met Bostonian’s daughter and I were settling in for the night in the camper, parked in the Connemara National Park car park when just a few minutes to midnight there in the freaking middle of nowhere with an owl hooting somewhere somebody knocked on the camper door.
Keeping a hand on a jack handle in case it was some chainsaw wielding Jack the Ripper I opened the curtains to see some guy in a Ranger’s civilian uniform holding a torch.
‘Hello. You can’t stay here. We lock the gates at night,’ he said, kind of embarrassed.
‘That’s okay. We’ll wait until they unlock them before leaving. We won’t want to be going anywhere tonight anyway, so don’t worry,’ I said.
‘That’s not the point. You can’t stay here. No campers allowed over night,’ he read from some small print embedded somewhere inside his cranium.
‘Yeah, okay. I gotta get dressed so yous’ll have to hang on some before I get goin,’ I said and let the curtain fall back across the window.
‘JESUS! Can’t park in the fucking car park at night. What we gonna do, steal the whole of the fucking Connemara National Park?’ I said loud enough for the owl to hear while pulling my pants back on. A few minutes later we were driving off into the black of night.
What happens next is the whole point to this tale, but I’ll tell you about it after explaining about the Dublin Blues festival and how I came to bump into Pete, who ran up a sodding great bill at the hotel in three days and cost me my 80watt twin-channel stage professional Crate amplifier, much to my great dismay. He was still telling everyone how he was with this crazy English dude who was stinking rich and loved Ireland and the Irish and was buying everybody in the bar rounds on my account. When I came to settle the bill it exceeded my visa and amex limits so I had to give the hotelier my £500 amp. And that was in 1995.
I’d parked up in the square next to the Crane Bar in Galway. I’d been parking and sleeping there for a few days, taking time out of a gruelling schedule that saw me criss-crossing all over Ireland every week. One day Waterford, the next Sligo, the next Cork. In between somehow I managed to sleep, but not much, hence the Galway stopover.
I’d also needed to change the worn tyres of the van and had the job done at a garage in Southill. I’d paid with a cheque, but the cheque later bounced and the guy asked me to settle up so I did with my visa card. Then I met up with some famous US dudes on tour in Ireland and was invited to join them in their Dublin gig on the Blues Festival Saturday.
Saturday morning I woke about 7am in the camper, had a bite of breakfast and went for an early pint. I figured if I left about 10.30, there’d be plenty of time for a steady run to Dublin and get there without have to rush about like an idiot. I left the bar just after ten and walked the block back to the van.
There it stood on blocks, with the front wheels missing, like a gawky happy kid missing some front teeth.
‘WHAT THE FUCK?’ I yelled into the square and received some curious looks from people walking through.
I marched to the van and walked around it. Everything else was okay. I looked inside—nothing disturbed. Guitars, amplifier, all was okay. Stereo player still there. Food in the fridge untouched. Dirty crockery still in the sink. Ceiling neon lamps not nicked. Bed not slept in except for me. Wardrobe of clothes untouched. Hammocks in the roof not pulled out. And no note of explanation.
‘WHAT THE FUCK—?’ I yelled into the van. No-one answered. I went back out. It was a good job—the van was well positioned on sturdy blocks. I scanned the area and began calling on all the businesses and shops overlooking the square. Just one person, the greengrocer, reported seeing anything.
‘This breakdown truck pulled up and two guys in blue coveralls got out and removed the wheels with a trolley jack. It looked like they were doing some business, normal like, you know?’ He said he couldn’t remember but he thought the breakdown vehicle had writing on it and a local number. ’It was blue and white,’ he said. ’I didn’t pay it no mind—it was just a couple of guys doing their job.’
Now, Leyland Sherpa’s are fairly rare in Ireland and I only had one spare wheel and tyre. I locked up and went to a quayside bar where I knew one or two folk who could help. That’s where I met Peter, he was talking with the guy I’d gone to see and had a car parked outside.
‘I know where you can find a wheel that’ll fit. C’mon, I’ll drive you,’ Peter offered.
A short while later we had the wheel but it didn’t fit. A Sherpa wheel, but different bolt locations. A few more pints and phone calls and briff braff meaning nothing moonshine talk everybody utters when drinking beers in bars and we’d set off again for someone who had Sherpa wheels that would ’definitely fit’. And they did.
But it was now too late to reach Dublin in time for my gig. I decided to hang in for a few more days at Galway where I had a large number of friends before heading off to my next gig, wherever it may be. That’s what I did back then, travelled around and played in bars all over the country—yes, everywhere— when I wasn’t playing at one of the many festivals I was listed at.
I sank a good few jars with Peter but could always outdrink him—and most other folk—clean under the table. I was spending around £200 a week on beer then. Peter invited me home to meet his wife and kids and we all had a merry time but then I decided it was time to go.
‘Where are you going?’ Pete asked.
I didn’t know. I was looking in fact for a suitable location to stage a Greenpeace charity benefit concert—that was the plan and told him.
‘I’m just gonna head off from Galway and see where I end up,’ I said. Pete persuaded me to let him accompany me.
It turned out he was a co-organiser of an annual Galway poetry festival and thought he knew of a good location for my festival. It was on the Aran Islands, so we set off, leaving the van parked on the mainland for a few days. I took along an acoustic guitar.
Getting off the Galway Hooker at the slipway the first thing that struck me was the cliff with the castle tower perched on top. Halfway down the cliff I could see what looked like a wide ledge, big enough to be a large stage. It looked perfect. And there was a field beneath it, and a beach nearby, I learned. I pictured U2 and other performers on the floodlit ledge (I’d organised and played at big concerts before), the castle spotlighted by laser light from the Greenpeace boat in the harbour, the field below and the nearby beach packed with people. The only problem, apart from the minor one of getting consent, was that of getting the people, perhaps up to 70,000 out to the gig.
It would need a contract with the big ferry providers from the mainland and a local shuttle service from the ferries, which couldn’t enter the harbour, all included in the price of the tickets to the show and a two day event. Guinness, Murphys Beamish and Heineken would all be there—because this was going to be the ecological gig of the century for Ireland. And I was going to make my mark, pay my dues, fulfil one of my continuing ambitions.
We booked into the island’s solitary hotel and the first day I had to seek out the island nurse as I had developed an ear infection in a surgically reconstructed inner ear. I’d had them both rebuilt after they were perforated and became diseased from my earlier years as a drummer with a UK rock band of the old breed.
That afternoon we walked around the area, taking pictures of the cliff, field below and beach, building a portfolio for the project. We called on Pete’s friend, an artist/poet who lived in a house some minutes’ walk from the village beach. He was able to set the wheels in motion to get permission for the event. He knew a lot of folk, though he agreed the transportation thing could be a tough cookie.
The second evening Pete and I were in the hotel bar. We were among just a very few guests staying in the hotel, but soon the bar became fairly full. I became aware of receiving curious looks. During his break, the bar musician joined us at our table. ’You know the Rolling Stones?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I know them,’ I said.
‘I mean personally?’ he said.
‘Yeah, we know each other,’ I said, thinking nothing of it for it was true. I know not everybody gets to meet some folk, but I’ve already told you, I’ve done a few things.
The musician kind of talked the niffer nutter blatter screech that follows such an encounter before returning to his corner to play his accordion to the bar. I joined him for a couple of tunes then put the guitar away to my room and returned to the table and Pete, where he pointed out two girls at a table across the bar.
‘They’ve been watching us,’ he said. I walked over and invited the girls to our table. They were alone and joined us.
It kind of gets a little crazy here, cos they wanted to go down to the beach and we got some cans and did just that. Now, I was kind of tired like, you know. I’d been driving, getting little sleep, burning the midnight oil all day long. Anyway, cutting a long story short, I didn’t realise the girls had stripped on the beach until they returned from the water and started dressing. When it rained they all wanted to go back to the hotel but I wanted to linger on the beach so one of the girls stayed on with me. The rain got heavy and we stumbled up the beach, falling in the sand on the way.
Back in the hotel room the carpet was covered in sand that clung to our wet clothes. The girl who’d been with me crawled into the double bed and beckoned me over to sit next to her. I was comfy in the armchair and tired like, so didn’t get up straight away. Pete and the other girl, who wanted to go to bed in his room, got paranoid that I didn’t like her and hung around. Eventually Pete got pissed off and went to his room, leaving me with the two girls. Me, I slept in the single bed by the window, the girls together in the double. Why I didn’t crawl in with them both in the night guess I’ll never know.
We all returned to the mainland the next day, saying goodbye to the girls at Doolin harbour and setting off again in the van.
The next stop was Dingle, then we headed up across and around the country up to Clifden.
That's where I met the daughter and I was still with the American girl. We were travelling around in the camper together and having a mixture of sad and happy fun. Then one day we discovered a dead end road leading out to a promontory with nothing but a beach and sloping hill field to cliffs at the end.
And there, on the beach on the glorious hot summer day was a herd of cows. No people, just cows. Sitting, lying, standing on the beach, sunbathing. Some standing in the shallows cooling their legs and feet. About fifty of ’em. All colours, black and white, brown and white, ochre and mud. Young and old, grandpappies to granddaughters. One great big cow family having a day on the beach at the seaside, looking content and happy. We heard a few full blooded moos and gazed in awe, wondering where they’d come from. The only things missing were the towels, deckchairs, windbreaks and sun umbrellas and young calves sitting astride inflatable humans in the water.
And you know what? At that point, there in the middle of nowhere, 30 miles from a place further up the Mayo coast where I’d had a battery fire in the engine compartment and had to call out a breakdown van to get the specialist battery the Sherpa required, there beside that beach full of cows, a car pulled up close by and a fellow gets out and approaches the camper as we sit there drinking coffee and watching the bovine beach.
Up he walks, straight to the camper van door and taps gently on the window.
‘Mr Harris?’ he asks.
Am I going insane? This is the middle of freaking nowhere. Along comes this stranger in a car, stops and comes up and addresses me by my name, speaking in a Sligo accident. I opened the window. I had no enemies here, leastwise, none that I knew of. Or anywhere else for that matter, except for maybe the owner of the sparrow I’d shot with an air rifle dozens of years before as it perched on a house gutter on the edge of a row of small coalminer’s houses and cottages in a place called Hadley Hollow.
‘You called me out to replace your battery, remember? You’d had a fire and called me out from Sligo? You were thirty miles up north and I came out.’ he said, good temperdly.
‘Oh yeah, I recognise you now,’ I said. I hadn’t at first.
‘Your cheque was returned. Your bank declined to honour it,’ he said.
‘That’s crazy,’ I told him back. ’It was a guaranteed cheque.’
‘They still refused to cover it. And they sent a charge of £9.50 to me for returning it. So you owe me, let’s see, £90,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe this. How come you’re out here anyway?’ I said.
‘I recognised your van,’ was all he’d say.
‘You know you can insist on the bank clearing the cheque, as it’s within the guarantee amount, don’t you,’ I ventured. I was getting pissed off at my bank for refusing to honour my debts, even though they were becoming quite high.
If you live in Ireland, you might have seen me. I got everywhere in my blue and white Leyland Sherpa with the expanding roof and all round windows. I was on TV and radio several times, including two twenty minute broadcasts on national TV and local radio from Castlebar.
‘I don’t know. I’d rather you just settled up and we can call it quits,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I said. As I fumbled around the dash for the cash—there was enough scattered there somewhere, my American companion dug into her purse and handed me a wadge of Irish notes.
‘Take it,’ she said, shoving it into my hand when I hesitated.
I’d given her a good holiday, I thought. She’d seen a lot, peed in an Irish field in the middle of the night, was retracing her Irish ancestry and I’d been happy to be part of her trip for a while. What came after is Chapter 4.
Now, I’ll leave you to The Moron’s Guide to Ireland. Simply click
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