Once I happened to be sitting on an eastbound Hammersmith and City Line train at the Hammersmith terminus, reading a collection of John B. Keane’s essays and stories in an attempt to travel to Ireland for less than a tenner (I try to save money by applying for those cheap airline ticket offers but they seem to get booked up years in advance). I was reading a chapter entitled ‘My Personal Tramp’ when he – My Favourite Tramp – sat down opposite me. I wanted to say to him – I didn’t know his name then – ‘Well, do you know what? You, Mr Tramp, are my favourite tramp in all the world, and I’ve just found this story called ‘My Personal Tramp’. And here you are on the train with me. Incredible coincidence, is it not?’ I could tell from his worn-out, sad-eyed expression that he would not, in fact, find it incredible, he would simply think I was some ranting nutter and would probably get quietly off the train and move up a couple of carriages. So I didn’t say it.3 Some facts – tramps’ hair goes thick because the alcohol lowers their testosterone levels. They stand in overcoats staring off into nothingness. Many tramps are like angels and think other people can’t see them.
Then it happened. Ideas that had obviously been kicking around in my brain for a while decided to join forces. I thought about when I was seventeen, and obsessed with Jack Kerouac, when life seemed full of possibilities, when a car was a symbol of adventure and freedom.4 I was struck with the idea of heading off like Sal and Dean into the west, except I’d be doing it in this pretty little bright-red girl’s car, with a guitar and a crate of beer in the boot.
I had a feeling my mate Terry might fancy the trip. A knackered-looking handsome Irish raconteur, Terry looks vaguely like Sean Hughes, that knackered-looking handsome Irish raconteur. Which was ironic, as he had bumped into Sean Hughes several times at after-hours pubs and clubs and would invariably try and get into an argument with him. Usually because Terry was about to get off with a girl who thought he was Sean Hughes, then the real Sean Hughes would come along and spoil it. Like a Brian Rix farce, really. Or a Brian Rix farce co-written by James Joyce:
What the Finlan saw a Butler sore her Mother Mary.
(Scene – late nightshite midnight black jean bar under the chip smell tourist choking Tottenhemhem Caught Road. Finoola, Assumpta, Terry in chitchat inebriation)
Terry: Wear you froming to?
Assumpta: To? To? From? Live?
Terry: Chunky fleshy Finoola.
Finoola: The beer-stained sweat of old pine, belly stubble shaved.
Assumpta: Are you Sean Hughes?
Terry: Me funny Sean. Sunny, heavy-lidded sad Sean.
Sean: No me real deal feelme funny Sean. Who are you?
Terry: Doppelganger boy. Johnny Stalker. Johnny Walker.
Assumpta: Double Sean bedfun thrusting, eh Sean?
Anyway, I put it to Terry that the trip might be a good laugh. I said something like, ‘Let’s go off to Ireland for a week or so, try and sell the car, meet people who know the truth, get drunk, stand on mountain tops, go painting, sit in pubs listening to old men’s stories, laugh at and fall in love with mad Irishwomen, shout on the western edge of the world, sing folksongs, cry in the rain, puke in soft green fields, catch a moving statue and put it in our pocket.’
Terry took a sip of his pint and smiled at me. ‘Argh, yeah, why not?’
I regularly wander through Hammersmith and see Irish faces everywhere – heavy-set red-haired women, beautiful dark-haired girls, old guys with lined faces and sad eyes, tiny, grinning leprechauns made of felt who sing ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ when you press their bellies. Hammersmith is an old Irish area. At present around eight per cent of the population of the Hammersmith postal district is Irish born – the figure for London as a whole is four per cent and one and a half per cent for Britain (from the 1991 census). It’s hard to know the figures for second- or third-generation Irish, the fresh-faced youngsters who choose to spend their evenings bashing away on bodhrans at the wonderful and lovely Hammersmith Irish Centre. This hive of Celticity is opposite St Paul’s church, round the back of Marks & Spencer with a good view of the flyover and its dark underbelly and of Coca Cola’s UK headquarters. It’s a yellowy brick building built in the mid-nineties. They run music, history, language and dance courses as well as occasional gigs and Irish music sessions and manages to appeal to the generation who came over after the War with stout and dance-hall music coursing through their veins as well as the kids brought up in the borough on hip hop and alcopops. It’s at the north-west end of what I regard as the Irish village of Finnegania6 – the spiritual centre of which is a discarded can of Guinness under the flyover which can be reached by crossing over the curve of the A4 and walking round the Apollo Theatre.
Inside the centre it’s very pale and high ceilinged, perhaps in an attempt to be like a church, although the atmosphere is more akin to an English village hall, the world of amateur dramatics and pantomimes, cake stalls and tombola, prized marrows and dollies made of wicker, the tables left over from university seminar rooms. Looking at the group of lads with their great faces and lost eyes, come to hear their grandchildren play the penny whistle or sing a ballad, I couldn’t help thinking that this scene should be a smoky low-slung pub in the forgotten back streets of a midlands Irish country town.
The workshop was a collection of musicians of all ages and talents. Whistle players, people on squeezebox, uillean pipes, banjos, guitars. The music sounded like Irish music yet didn’t really ever get going. The notes were right and the rhythm and speed were there but something was missing. A bloke who looked like Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Féin, was sat at a table surrounded by friends and family. When a jig came on, Gerry started dancing. Do you reckon that’s Gerry Adams? I said to my friends. No they said, it isn’t. Well it looks like him to me. I wonder what he’s doing here. Gerry Adams was dancing away with a baseball cap back to front on his head. Look at him. I’m not sure what the hard-liners of the IRA would think if they could see him now. That’s not Gerry Adams, Tim. You’d think, if he’s going to make a public appearance like this, that he’d have learned to dance properly. Still, I bet he can dance better than Ian Paisley. The music workshop group started to crank it up a bit. Ffaafnaaa nfffnaa twiddleidsleeeeeeeeee ggieee doo deeed didddle dee deee did diddd ddiiiidie dieeeeiieee … pipes and fiddle and accordion, more relaxed this time and my foot started to tap. Then a middle-aged guy took the microphone and introduced a couple of female singers. They did ballads, one in a high-pitched and haunting style about some tragedy or other, then a slightly younger girl did ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsy’ followed by something about Johnny being the handsomest in the village (it’s always Johnny isn’t it, never Tim. How come it’s never ‘but Tim was the tallest and fairest and cleverest and funniest and most talented of them all’? – if there are Tims in Irish folk songs I’m pretty sure they’ll almost always be village idiots or something.)7
