Home Sweet Home
One very hot day I was struggling to cope with 43 degrees and I had to go up to the shop. I was dreaming of a dip in the Atlantic Ocean to cool off preferably in Galway.
As I dragged myself towards the door I noticed a dog tied up to the bicycle rail.
A real live in the flesh actual full size horse-like giant hairy grey Irish Wolfhound!
If you've only seen the Irish Wolfhoundadoodle version you're in for a big surprise. These animals were bread to hunt deer. Absolute weapons. HUGE!
Well I felt a tear rise in my eye. I walked over and said hello to him and I sat down on the pavement beside him, gave him a pat and said " Neither of us belong here a chara".
On a sunny day I was busking in Galway in Ireland in 2003. I was sitting on the pavement as I often did, in Kirwan's Lane in the centre of the city which contains part of the 'Slate Nunnery' which belonged to the the Dominican nuns founded 1639. (Now 'Busker Brownes') This is a tiny Medieval lane about three and a half strides wide and not more than 100 long.
I used to busk down there because it was quiet and I could hear what I was playing and it had like, a vibe man.
Tourists come to Galway from all over the world so I knocked great value out of chatting them and finding out about their cultures.
One day an Australian woman came wandering down the lane and as she was having a bad day she sat and listened to me singing outside a small cafe and afterwards she put some money in my hat and asked if I played gigs locally.
She came to a few gigs and we got chatting and by jesus we hit it off and began a whirlwind romance that took us all over Europe and eventually back to Australia where we married and had a child and we now live in Maitland just five doors down from the school that our daughter Róisín attends, St.John The Baptist.
Inside the fence of the school about 100 meters up the street are buried the remains of the founders of the school, four Irish Dominican Nun's called Finnegan, Fagan, Dowley and Coghlan.
The weird twist in this tale is that those four Irish Nuns came out from the exact Slate Nunnery that I was sitting against that first day I met my wife 17,500 Kms away.
They came by boat in 1867 one hundred years before I was born. Today the sports teams in the school are still named after the four Nuns; Róisín was on 'Fagan' team and proud of it.
Sometimes I go up the street and tell them my troubles. Captive audience. They would have been able to say all their prayereens as Gaeilge , in Irish. Sometimes it's not very far from home here.
In the photo are my beautiful friends from home Marina and Phillip Dolan who came with their enormous souls for a while. As I was waiting for their train to pull in I felt a strange feeling. I began breathing into it and after a moment I realised that I felt at home. Like proper in Roscommon at home. Because my people were coming.
It is a small world but home is home is home is home is home.