AN IRISH ODYSSEY

Part 1 – 2005

Just over two years ago was the first time ... I headed to Ireland with the express purpose of finding the MUSIC and got utterly lost. Or so I thought.

This was my first true holiday away from Australia and years and years of work. Much of my writing is inspired by Celtic - particularly Irish - myth and legend and I was on a quest to smell the places I'd learned so much about in theory; written so much about through inspiration.

So I was with my mate Scotty, an amazing artist, and I'd hired a car. We started out by staying in a wee Bed and Breakfat just north of Dublin, seeing Newgrange and Knowth, before heading cross-country towards Galway, in search of the ultimate Irish music.

Shit it was hot! Might as well have been back in Oz! And tourists? Bleauch!

Got to the outskirts of Galway and from the vantage point of the car window it just looked like a dirty, industrial city (I was to discover the following year that you can't judge a city by its outskirts ... but that's another story!) so we kept on driving until we arrived, sweaty and confused, in a town called Spiddal where we parked up a side road.

Face facts ... if you don't drink enough water on a stinking hot day you dehydrate. Walk to town, buy a couple of bottles of water, walk back towards the car, check out the sign on the closed pub on the corner that looks like it's about to give an answer - distant title? TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC FESTIVAL. I go look. It's too late, the festival was last week.

Feck!

Walk back towards the hire car and there's this tall, lanky Irishman leaning against a silver BMW grinning at me.

"Best pub in Ireland that," he says.
"It's fucking closed," I say.
He gestures with his head to the sign. "That?"
"Missed it," I answer.
"You here for the music?"
"Yep, but I'm shitty today cause we're lost."
"Yer not lost ..." gestures with his head up the narrow road where we're parked, "just follow that road."
"Thanks," I say and walk away.

Beside our car there's a high stone wall with big trees showing behind it. Me and Scotty jump back over the wall, sit in the shade for a bit ... I cry.

When we've recovered we clamber back onto the street. The guy's gone.

"What're we gonna do?" asks Scotty.
I shrug (I'm the designated driver). "Follow the road?"
"You sure?" asks a skeptical Scotty.
I shrug.

We drive up the road and out of town.
Now this road is narrow, by the way, and as we travel beyond Spiddal I'm horrified because the landscape's dry, pockmarked with stones ... pretty-well a moonscape.

Fuck, I think.

Then we blow a tire ...

To cut this part of the story really short both front tires are down to the wire, we have to return to Spiddal, stay overnight in the only room available anywhere and wait till lunchtime the following day for the hire-car people to fix it all up.

Then we're off.
"Where to?" asks Scotty.
"We follow that fucking road towards the fucking music!" I hiss.
He's incredulous.

He shrugs.

So we do. Mile after mile of whatever! Then .......!!!!!!

We crest a hill and there are the 12 Bens! Majestic mountains! Green! Water, rivulets, islands in lakes, joy, joy, wow and ... breathe for a moment and revel.

Still following the road. Finally we come to a tiny village on the far west coast of Connemara called Roundstone. There's hookers (their sailing boats) and curraghs and dingys in the wee harbour; just the one street and a rather large number of touristy-type people. We park up the top of the road and ask around for accommodation.

Sigh.

"Aren't nothin' this time of year love," says the publican and the B+B and the hotels.

I'm grinding my teeth because I want to stay here. Scotty's looking like he wants to bite my face off but he's being very pleasant about it. Sit on the stone wall. Sit. Think.

Across the road is a little shop selling doilies (I'm serious!)
Now, if you'd read my intro you'd have seen the bit about me being psychic ... so I get this hit ... and stride across the road to the doily shop.

Inside's this little woman crocheting a doily.
"We need a place to stay," I beg.
"Nothin'," she says without looking up.
"Shit!" I explete.
She looks up and startles. Why? Well, for a woman I have rather a lot of tattoos ... and one small beautiful one in particular on my forehead of a crescent moon with a couple of ravens flying around it.
"There's one place ..." she says cryptically.
"Pleeeeeease!" I beg.
"There's the madman's house ..."
"Ah ... and where... Ah? what would that be?"
"Down the road. The big yellow house. Sign says CLOCH NA RHON."

Anything. We're tired. We're disillusioned. We're very hungry.

We drive back down the narrow road. It's late afternoon although by now we know that night won't happen till about 11PM so I'm not too worried. We park out front of the big yellow house and bang on the front door.

This tall, dark, VERY broody man, with the look of an axe murder about him, walks down the hallway towards us, his eyes downcast. When he gets to us he looks up and his eyes widen and he grins from ear to ear. Did I mention that Scotty's got facial piercings? No? Well he does.

"You rock stars?" asks the madman.
"No, we're witches," I reply.
"Even better!" he exclaims. "Come in!"

Wary.

He leads us through the old house to the kitchen .

But ... what name will I give our host for this little story? Okay ... it's not, but I'll call him Jack.

Jack's so happy! Drags us through to the kitchen where a peat stove is cooking very greasy food. He sits us down and makes cups of instant coffee (don't ask!). His little brother is there too, sitting on a stool looking all haughty and mysterious (turns out he's the bright one!). He's got Down Syndrome but shite he was sharp as a tack. Jack makes us instant coffee and sits us at a big table in a kitchen that's seen MUCH BETTER DAYS and puts more peat in the slow-combustion stove. He tells us the cost of the room for a week. I agree. We talk, smoke ciggies, drink coffee, talk some more. Turns out the house was his mother's pride. When she died it was left to the boys. Hadn't been open for business as a B+B for the past four years. Only happened this week. Isn't that kismet!

He tells us he's diagnosed manic depressive but is on meds. As he leads us up to our little room I need a double scotch but then ...
"Feck it," he says. And he drops the cost of accommodation by half. "Yer really nice people," he says, grinning, tears in his eyes.

I melt.

By the end of the conversation he figured we can have a room for half what he was asking because he likes us. Room's nothing to write home about but we're here. And its window overlooks the bay.

By the way ... I should mention ... we've already been all the way through Cornwall, up through Wales, north of Dublin at Tara Beach and across Ireland and the entire time I've been writing The Quickening and Scotty's been painting this amazing painting of the Wild God that's framed above my desk here as we speak but ...

... at the time Scotty had no black paint.
"MUST HAVE BLACK PAINT!!!!!!!"

PART 2 - 2005

Where was I? Oh yes!

... Crossed Ireland
... Arrived in Roundstone
... Got the madman on side
... Black paint is the next mission

The following morning Scotty and I are walking up the main street (the only street really) and I stop outside a door.

"What're you doing?" asks Scotty
"Black paint," I answer.
WTF?

I knock on the door and a woman covered with paint opens it.
"You know where we can get some black paint?" we ask.
"Here," she says.

We go inside. She's Rose McGurran!

Also inside, sitting on the couch like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth is Sheena Keen.

Now there's a long story in all this cause I'm writing a book about the Tuatha De Danann travelling around the countryside in a big old bus in the 21st Century, playing music, getting into trouble and coming to blows with a radical nasy right-winged bastard, pretending to be a Christian (Michael Blacker) who's determined to rid the world of magic no matter who dies and Sheena, it turns out, drove all around Byron Bay in a big green bus and was responsible for bringing the fabulous Irish band Lunasa to Oz.

Kismet.

Scotty gets his paint, we get new friends and Roundstone is now a second home.

Sheena is kinda queen of the Arts over there and, at the time, lived right next door to the graveyard. Loved that house!

She asks me for a quicky Tarot reading (of course I've got my pack!) and I only saw one thing in those 5 minutes: car trouble.

"There's nothing wrong with my car," she says.
"Don't shoot the messenger," I reply.

Next day she's off somewhere else but ... I walk uptown for my breakfast and there's Sheena with the bonnet of her car up.

Oh-oh!

The entire time we we're there it was tourist season but me and Scotty kinda became locals straight away.

And the chowder! And the Guinness!!!!!

And of course, the Tour de Bog.

Sun never stopped shining and I cried when it was time to go but ...

Little did I know I'd be back, 2 years later, when the book came out and I was invited to release it there prior to the rest of the world.

A whole other story waits to be told that has some seriously spooky moments, a shite-load of hard work and the premise for my most recent screenplay.