Paddy Murray: I’m hoping I might survive the year despite the long odds

If there is one thing I have carried from the old year to the new it is this: hope.

Or maybe it’s hopes, because there are many things I’m hoping for this year.

I’m hoping that, soon, we’ll all be on the same side in the fight with this virus and I hope that by working together, we will see it off. And of course, I’m hoping that I might survive the year despite the long odds.

And I’m hoping for some certainty around the virus because, last year, it just seemed to be a different story every month or every week or, sometimes, every day. Dire predictions from some quarters matched by cries of “scaremongering” from others.

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If someone told any of my acquaintances that 'Paddy Murray hasn't had a pint for two years', they would assume I had died

It's two years since we were first told about a virus which, apparently, passed from bats or pangolins to humans in Wuhan, a city in China many of us had never heard of.

I never imagined then, that it would still be the number one item on news bulletins – well, at least it generally is when Boris isn’t doing something stupid/dishonest/corrupt/contradictory/undignified or all five.

I actually imagined back then in 2020 that, what with all the knowledge and science and expertise in the world, Covid-19 would be seen off in a matter of months and that it wouldn’t really affect us here.

But affect us it has.

For example, I can’t believe it’s more than two years since I had a pint of Guinness. (Prior to the pandemic, I was hospitalised with what I will call a “routine” chest infection. I think it was my 17th or 18th time in 10 years. It meant that I was effectively locked down from October 2019.)

If someone told any of my acquaintances that “Paddy Murray hasn’t had a pint for two years”, they would assume I had died.

Yes, I miss the pints but they’re not that important.

But they always remind me of a man I was told about who, thanks to free travel for pensions, made his way up from Waterford to Dublin once a week. He took his seat at the bar in one of the city’s wonderful Victorian pubs and, having no more than a couple of pints, chatted with friends for two hours before heading home. How lonely is life must be without that outlet.

But then, how tough is life for those who served him, for the pub owner, for the guys who used to deliver the barrels and others employed by pubs.

They could make me safe. But they couldn't make me feel safe. And so in the end I didn't go

And of course, restaurants. Some will never reopen and I hope that doesn’t include one near where I live, which last served a customer in March 2020.

In June 2020, I wrote (in another publication) about the threat to the live music industry. I was at a gig in Upstairs at Whelan's a few years ago. There were only about 40, maybe 50, people there. Turned out to be a good gig but what struck me that night was that not only was there a performer – it was a solo gig – but there was a sound man, a barman and a man collecting tickets. And I wondered for some reason, how many thousands of people around Dublin and Ireland depended on live music for their living. It's certainly not just musicians.

I funked The Stunning gig in the Olympia just before Christmas. People were incredibly decent making an effort to see if there was anything they could do to make it possible for me to attend. They could make me safe. But they couldn’t make me feel safe. And so in the end I didn’t go.

I hope this year is better. I have already got Ron Sexsmith lined up for a rescheduled Liberty Hall gig and Joe Jackson in the Olympia in March.

Then it’s Declan McKenna also in the Olympia followed by 10CC in Vicar Street (well, I am 68).

And then, well while I am sure there will be a few more optimistic purchases of tickets, there’s one in December for which the tickets are already bought and are sitting on a shelf in the livingroom.

Having been told by one doctor that he thought I’d be dead five years ago, by another that I wouldn’t make Christmas – 2020! – and by another that the tumour discovered on my right lung last summer meant that I hadn’t “many months” left, this gig would be the perfect one to celebrate “survival”.

It is, of course, The Cure.