Went to have my hair cut yesterday...I keep it very short indeed then sort of spike it up with gel...Trish...the hairdresser...can talk for Ireland so she can. She'll be standing behind me wielding her scissors while she tells me all about her daughters wedding...an extravagant affair which then ended in a honeymoon to Bali...Sri Lanka and the Maldives. I had a week in a lodging house at the seaside, paid for my new in-laws...lol
Then it sort of digressed into who has died...one was an old man I was friendly with, who lived on his own and was a great believer in the Faerie...he was a wealth of knowledge about many subjects...and once told me the sad story of Captain Jack, who was the leader of an IRA platoon...he was betrayed to the Black and Tans who dragged him out of the house he was hiding in and beat him to death. Captain Jack is buried just inside the walls of the graveyard after the Black and Tans patrolled the area for days to try and prevent his lawful burial...his body was snuck over the wall and the priest came out in the dead of night and dug his grave...
Eoghan used to bring his cattle from the fields each evening to spend the night in the barn so as not to leave them at the mercy of the Faerie...
He rode an ancient bicycle into town...long coat flapping...he waved his arms around like a whirly-gig when talking to me and used to sort of jump to one side every now and then...
There were the three of them once...all old friends...Paddy who said little enough...Sean and Eoghan. They'd go round the 'plots' looking in skips to see what they could find...Sean gave me a book he'd found...published in 1725, it was a series of rather rude stories written in rhyming form He had an old Collie dog and lived with his grumpy brother...Paddy had an affliction which made him suddenly jerk his head and he used to become excited and his words would tumble out all sort of scrambled...
It was they who told me about the days of the town fairs when people travelled from far and wide and the Tinkers came in Bow-topped wagons to sell clothes pegs and fine hand made lace and pretty ribbons...they told of the days when bonfires were lit on the hill tops and there was dancing at the cross roads and Paddy swore he'd seen a man hanged when he was a little boy...
Eoghan was the last of the threesome...he died softly and without a care, in his chair by the fire at the age of eighty-three.
I suppose there won't be another threesome quite like Sean and Paddy and Eoghan...they all spoke Irish fluently...they absorbed new knowledge like sponges...interested in politics' and local affairs and comfortable with their faith...none of them had ever married...they'd hint at the girl they'd once loved but had lost to another or who had died from TB while still young...Sean had his old dog...Eoghan his cat...Paddy also had a dog...a little Jack Russell who was fat and bad-tempered...
So I was sad enough to hear of Eoghan's passing...
The last of the three elderly men who were my friends for a little while.
There's A Whiting Close Behind Me...
A new reason to get up in the morning! 
