Browned off in Ballina: The West's Asleep

MORE from my non-Fresher's diary of the late sixties:

October 4th, 1968

Jimmy and Seanin left on the early train for UCG this morning. I wish them well, and only hope they are as badly hung over as myself. We had a good night in O'Hara's of Foxford, marred only by the business of my ex girlfriend Maureen's betrayal.

Seanin and I had an unspoken agreement to avoid the subject, but he blurted out that she has pledged to write to him daily. I no longer care. Life beckons in all its glorious diversity, and there are more important things than romance. I swallow eight Anadin plus three pints of stout and go to the Estoria.

October 7th

There is not much glorious diversity of life in Ballina. Tomorrow being the first Friday of the month, my mother is busy with her impossibly complicated religious duties. High on her list of favours to be begged from the Lord is that I may find my way in life "before it is too late." Too late for what, I ask my apotheosis? Mother says she won't stand that class of language in the house and heads off to Devotions.

October 8th

This being the monthly Fair Day, the farmers pour into town from early morning. There is much to admire in these roughhewn bucolic men and their relationship with the beasts of the fields. Obviously the life of the intellect is a closed book to them, but their companionship and good cheer are qualities to be cherished.

As darkness falls, they all pour into the pubs and get mouldy drunk. It is a fine tradition. Long may they prosper: they will yet be the saviours of this besotted land.

October 11th

To my own surprise I have settled in well at my part time job in the town library. Miss Cartwright, despite an unnerving habit of hovering by my shoulder at odd moments, has thankfully not lived up to her local reputation as a crazed seducer of anything in trousers: indeed she is decorum itself (and physically not unattractive for a woman of 40 or so).

She has graciously invited me to visit her at home in Marian Crescent next Friday night to inspect her collection of rare Oriental book bindings and partake of a light supper. Thank God for one cultured person in this town.

October 10th

I buy a pint in Jordan's for my friend Walter, the slightly retarded porter at the train station for the last 30 years or so. He informs me that Seainin, on his way to Galway, mistakenly (he means drunkenly), "ch-changed train at M-M-Manulla and ended up in LLimerick J-J-Junction". This is the student whom the veterinary lecturers in Galway will be attempting to guide around a cow's insides. God help us all.

October 12th

I have been concerned about the following all day: since supper in my own home is usually a pint of warm milk and two Jacob's Cream Crackers spread with OldTime Irish marmalade (if my vicious younger brother Mickey has not already devoured them all), what then will constitute the "light supper" Miss Cartwright has in mind?

I suppose I must wait and see. This is the sort of uncertainty that arises when one is confined to life in a small town and cannot acquire the attractive veneer of European sophistication. To think it is almost 1969 and I have not yet seen Carnaby Street.

October 13th

I have the runs once again, and it seems I may have to switch my allegiance from stout to lager. Though there are unwelcome cultural connotations here, I cannot spend the rest of my life in the lavatory just to maintain solidarity with the working classes. Life is difficult enough already.

October 14th

I bump into Maureen - literally, as she emerges from Brennan's on Garden Street with a batch loaf under her arm and a bloodstained package of bones for her accompanying mongrel, Zero.

She cocks an eye as I ask her if she is wholly satisfied with an epistolary romance? "Ah, feck off" is her coarse response while Zero urinates on my trouser leg. I would give much to see what literary style Maureen commands in her letters to Seanin.

October 15th

Miss Cartwright leaves the library three hours early in order to "freshen up" and prepare the light supper she has promised me. Three hours! My mother cooks Sunday dinner for five of us in about 45 minutes. Is Miss Cartwright lacking in culinary skills or is she planning some gargantuan meal?

If I could have even a weekend in London and become more a man of the world I would understand these things better.

Almost certainly I have made a mistake going home in the afternoon for an enormous dinner. To be on the safe side I make myself vomit in the library toilet just before seven o'clock. Then I change into my yellow V neck pullover and set out for Marian Crescent, stopping off on the way at Geraghty's for a couple of pints.

There I muse on the evening ahead - a civilised supper, and cultural conversation with an intelligent if older woman. Perhaps I have been too cruel about this town's limitations.