Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?

by Tim Bradford

  But does it work both ways? During half time in that cup final back in 1979 he may have had his ear to the changing room wall as I was explaining to our manager (after he’d asked what I planned to do at the end of my football career – in about 45 minutes) that I had dreams of becoming a writer and after my O-Levels was set on emigrating to Paris and moving in with one of the dancers from the Crazy Horse Club, whose picture I had seen in a Sunday supplement a few weeks earlier (she had already moved upstairs with me to my bedside table).

  Perhaps after that incident I became Mark’s representative in the world of literature, and in vain he would scour the TLS and bookshops throughout the East Midlands looking for my name in lists of Young British Writers, or a reference to my completion of the Great Lincolnshire Novel.

  Something eventually has to give. In the last couple of years I have realised that as players become ten or more years younger than me and Mark Smalley, that I am going to have to do something miraculous to make it in top class football. Reading old football books is becoming a bit of an emotional nightmare. I used to flick through old copies of the Topical Times Annual when I was in need of reassurance, such as after the break-up of a long-term relationship, but now I look older and more lived-in than the pictures of all my old favourites like Frannie Lee, Allan Clark and George Graham. Imagine what I’ll look like in twenty years time.

  Looking back over the distant dreams of childhood, I recognise that I have one advantage over Mark. If you check out the recent copy of The Topical Times Book of Young British Travel Writers, you’ll notice that most of them are aged between fifty and sixty.

  5 Apparently what happened was that Martin and his brother John, who also plays football – and is also a writer (though of Country and Western film scripts rather than plays, which sounds like an even better job) – were at an Evening Standard awards night and taking the piss a bit when presentations were being given. So Sean Connery who’s at a nearby table comes over and does his Sean Connery voice saying something like, ‘Dohn’t be show rood.’ And Martin goes er yeah sorry. Then John pipes up no Martin he can’t say that no-one tells my brother to fuck off. So Martin goes right fuck off Sean Connery and Sean Connery fucks off. It’s a great little story though probably not true, alas. It’s maybe not so interesting until you consider the sycophantic press Connery has had in Britain for most of his career. Though whatever you think about him personally I’ve only ever met a couple of people who didn’t think he was the best of the Bond actors (a gay guy I knew at college believed Roger Moore was ‘the one’ for some reason).

  6 Tom Matthews works for the Irish Times – I hope he doesn’t mind me saying it, but Martyn Turner is undoubtedly the most famous cartoonist in the country. Turner does grotesque caricatures in political illustrations – Matthews is more of a gag man. He also does cartoons in Gaelic for the Irish language section of the paper.

  7 Cue seventies-style British sitcom laughter track.

  8 Some of my friends have roses and rock ’n’ roll hearts. However, tattoos are usually done in the High Celtic style.

  9 If you are five and an alcoholic and can draw great Celtic swirls, I apologise.

  10 The Angles and Saxons may not have invaded Ireland in the Dark Ages but they’re certainly making up for it now, as are the Romans.

  12 Strangely, Irish people go to the cinema to watch a fillum yet cover their leftover food with cling film.

  Alone on Yeats’s Mountain with Only a Compass and an Egg Mayonnaise Sandwich for Company

  Sligo to Benbulben round trip

  The west of Ireland rises like some imaginary kingdom out of the sea, wild mountains pushing up like the heavily ripped deltoid muscles of a green-skinned steroid-abusing giant. Usually they are fringed with dark, messy charcoal smudged skies. Mountains have their own mythology and magic.1 It’s a deeply spiritual – perhaps religious, in the transcendent meaning of the word – experience, climbing a mountain staring down at the green patchwork fields below, the sea, feeling the rain beat your face and the wind clearing your head.

  I woke up in my B&B in Sligo and noticed something strange coming through the chink between the curtain and the window frame. On closer inspection my suspicions were confirmed. Sunshine. I realised that on this day I couldn’t piss away my time talking shite in pubs with locals. This time it was going to be different. This time I’d taste the sweet Irish air and really deserve my liquid refreshment at the end of the day. This time I really would climb a mountain.

  Benbulben, a mountain immortalised by W. B. Yeats in one of his mystical poems (Well, aren’t they all a bit mystical? But maybe it’s the one about death and the horsemen riding by, what is it …‘dum der something something something ride by’), is one of a group of plateaux that loom over Sligo town to the east, great hunks of rock that look like the prows of First World War battleships and seem more appropriate to a South American jungle than the soft-aired north-west coast of Ireland. Like the Venezuelan tepuis, giant rock plateaux straight out of The Land That Time Forgot, they’re often covered in cloud, especially the tops, which makes them seem even more mysterious.

  Yeats spent many of his holidays in Sligo, eventually settling there in the last years before his death. His grave lies in a village at the foot of Benbulben.

  I had a crumpled piece of paper on which was written a map and a vague description of the walk which I’d picked up at the local tourist centre. I set out for Sligo and headed North East-ish through the town until I got to the N15. The streets of Sligo are apparently so full of writers and artists that many ordinary people have been advocating an annual cull. I personally believe that’s a bit drastic – some kind of registration and rationing system like they do with cars in Mexico City would probably suffice. Near the N15 roundabout I slipped on some water-covered moss on the pavement, thanks to the lack of grip on my walking boots. They were cast-offs, given to me by my friend Spizz who’d gone off to live in Canada. I landed on my wrist, exacerbating an old sex-related injury.

  For a while I walked along the N15 – a main road with very heavy traffic – away from the town, then stopped at a gate and looked back to do some sketches.

  Little Sligo town was ringed by hills, the most prominent of which was Knocknarea, the mountain where the legendary Queen Maeve (the one who was always pinching other people’s farm animals) is buried, according to legend.2 My picture, needless to say, was very unlegendary.

  I then trudged the four miles or so to the village of Rathcormac, where I was supposed to turn off the main road. I stood at the sweep of the road as it wound into the village and admired the view of the mountain and the green plain below. The farmland appeared to have only just been reclaimed from some primeval sea, the mountain bursting out of it in a huge cliff. I was hungry by now, after using up lots of energy dodging the articulated lorries and camper vans full of German tourists on the N15, but I hadn’t brought any supplies with me due to my lack of organisational skills (Moira, my charming landlady, had even left a week’s supply of fig rolls next to my bed but I hadn’t touched them). At the junction, between a petrol station and a newish-looking white church, I purchased a soggy egg mayonnaise sandwich on white bread that had been curling up in a glass cabin for a few days. It was the best meal I’ve ever had. Just as I finished it started to sheet down with vindictive rain. I asked the stern-looking woman behind the counter which was the best route to the foot of the mountain. ‘Are you going up on your own?’ she asked me, disapprovingly. ‘I wouldn’t go up if it keeps on raining if I were you,’ she said. But she wasn’t me – I was a hardened traveller with high-quality walking boots (albeit with no grip) and a chunky waterproof jacket, whereas she was simply a countrywoman addicted to making white bread egg mayonnaise sandwiches. Still she could come in handy later – I thought about carrying her up on my back so she could make me some lunch in a few hours’ time. But she stared at me sternly with a ‘If-you-get-stuck-up-there-I-won’t-be-making-you-a-special-egg-mayonnaise-rescue-sandwich’
look, so I headed out into the rain.

  Which had stopped. In the neat churchyard I stared at the statue of Christ on the cross for five or ten minutes to see if it moved,3 really gave it a good hard look. Then it started to rain again. Like those venerable Princes of Piss who stand at a urinal for a while when the flow stops for five minutes or so then starts again as the next pint comes sloshing through their system. Benbulben’s sheer cliffs loomed powerfully in front of me. Following the map, I turned off onto a narrow road for about a mile, then turned right at a T-junction and walked for about thirty yards. A wizened old countryman with a long Sligo nose and sad eyes, sitting on a pony-driven trap, suddenly appeared in front of me, reminding me of the scene in Nosferatu (the original Murnau silent film, not the seventies remake with Klaus Kinski) where the hero is on a road looking for Dracula’s castle. A deathly carriage arrives and he asks for directions, before it moves off silently (obviously) at an amazing speed. The old man looked at me with ancient eyes and asked where I was heading. I said up the mountain. Ah, be careful, the mountain is dangerous, don’t go up if the light changes he said. Hah, he continued, but you’ll be wanting to go that way. It’s a lovely way up the mountain. He pointed back down the road. I hadn’t even seen the little path he was talking about but I went back ten yards or so and there it was … up a beautiful vale with flowers and mad sheep, with the sound of a stream, the wind and children laughing far off in the village, a ruined cottage, rotten gates, long-forgotten crumbling dry stone walls, small flowers in the lush grass, insects – I stopped to do a couple of quick sketches, then it started to rain again.

  I wasn’t sure whether or not this was a bona fide track – I was following the course of a stream, but ended up having to climb up sheer waterfalls, some seven or eight feet high. If I’d had proper walking boots I might have been able to scramble up the high grassy banks but Spizz’s cast-off Caterpillars were letting me down. I edged up one tall, almost sheer, bank then started to slip and had to stick my fingers in the soil for grip as I went back down again. I was on my arse several times. It was slow progress, and by five o’clock I had only done about a quarter of the walk, but kept going anyway, always keeping an eye on the huge black cloud hovering menacingly over the mountain like a monolithic German U Boat.4

  It’s exhilarating but unnerving being up a mountain on your own and I was getting a strange tingling sensation at the base of my spine telling me something – like ‘get a move on’, ‘send a flare’ or ‘order another egg mayonnaise sandwich’. Usually when you climb or walk there are loads of brightly clothed tourists around screaming, ‘Valdereee’, and ‘Schnell!’ at each other, and I could have done with a bit of company. It can get lonely when you don’t really know where the fuck you’re going. Group walks are OK, as long as there’s not some anal retentive who insists on following a map at all times, and I’ve been on some lovely routes with my parents in various places (my mother is an acolyte of the Walking with Wainwright books). But I usually prefer to walk on my own. I see things more. I don’t know why this should be – I’m not anti-social or anything like that but when there’s someone else there they psychically take up your space. You are aware of them as well as the scenery. I thinks it’s part of our primitive make-up – the presence of someone else means that a part of your brain will always unconsciously be thinking about them. Like they’re going to hit you on the head with a rock or something whilst you’re out hunting. Don’t worry mum and dad if you’re reading this (and I know you’ll buy several thousand copies to help me earn back some of that advance …) I never suspected you of wanting to hit me on the head with a rock. My father wouldn’t have to pussyfoot around with such underhand methods, anyway. He’d just face up to me, call me a prat and give me a good old Marquis of Queensberry jab in the ribs.

  The greyfogged cloud came down for a while and with it the rain. Even though it was very sticky, I had to do up my waterproof. It had been donated by Karen, Spizz’s wife, who had also migrated to Canada. And it was only now, as I struggled with the zip and realised that it was broken, that I became aware of the value of good equipment. I thought of the two of them posing on some swanky ski resort in Canada with their new Canadian celebrity friends like, Steve Podborski, Bryan Adams and, er, William Shatner, in all their shiny new designer sportswear and laughing as if through some echo chamber from the cheap Dr Who special effects department. It served me right for being so tight with my money.

  Luckily I had my trusty compass. I had to admit, though, that old red-faced beardy from Adare was right – it would have been far handier if the woman down at the sandwich shop could now have located me using my compass and brought up some lovely fresh (as in two-day-old) sandwiches for my delectation. But I managed to follow the rim of the mountain without falling off and at the top the cloud lifted. I started to walk with a bit more urgency. I had quite a bit of time to make up, I thought.

  The top of Benbulben is like being in a huge field, with craters of mud, tufts of thick grass – for a while I didn’t feel as though I was up a mountain at all, until I got to the edge and I saw the wonderful views of Donegal Bay to the north and Sligo Bay to the south-west. The dark submarine-like cloud above me was getting bigger. I started my descent. On the way down I slid no end of times,5 once going about six feet and landing on my dodgy left wrist (the mossy pavement/sex-injury one – also used for holding pints).

  I followed a barbed wire fence for what seemed like thirty miles, then wound my way through a gorse bush grove and over some walls onto a muddy track which I knew would take me off the mountain and back to civilisation. The sun was out again, reflecting off every damp surface and glancing off the bay. I eventually turned onto the elusive ‘metalled road’ and past a ruined stone farm house with no roof. At the side of the building was a lean-to with an old red cart inside that looked as though it hadn’t been used for seventy years. Behind it was Benbulben, in front the whole sweep of Sligo Bay. Good feng shui. I’ve always been crap at visualising my future yet for a brief moment I saw myself here. It was all laid out before me. This was my dream house. I stood for a few moments, taking in the vision. Then another vision burst through – me sitting next to a fire in a cosy pub holding a newly poured pint. My dream house got packed away somewhere in my undersized short-term memory tank.

  For years Irish friends have been banging on to me about how everyone in Ireland hitches around. Students, farmers, doctors, lawyers, TDs, guards, moving statues of Our Lady – they’re all at it. Why anyone would need their own car is beyond me. And – get this – no-one, at least according to the myth – ever drives past if you’ve got your thumb out. However, I’ve always suspected that car drivers are like small children and dogs – they can spot a suspect character instantly through some kind of sixth sense. But I decided to give it a try. I jauntily stuck my thumb out after twiddling it around a while to warm it up (didn’t want to pull any sensitive thumb muscles). Almost immediately a young woman in a little red Ford zipped past me in the opposite direction and smiled. I took this as a positive sign. I often do this – read too much into things. I am invariably wrong.

  A car then went shooting past on my side of the road – it was a posh-looking bloke. I laughed as he drove past. I pressed on with my Mr Positive persona. A second car went past. A mother with kids. Hey that’s cool, I said to myself. A few more cars followed. I smiled jauntily (again). And another car. I kept walking until I passed the church and reached the café, where I went in for another egg mayonnaise sandwich. The woman had sold out, but managed to persuade me that her cheese salad was of the highest quality, having been prepared only at the start of the summer. It was, indeed, delicious. I looked at her with a funny expression as if to say, ‘Remember me – I was that bloke you thought you’d never see again, but I’ve just climbed Benbulben on my own, naked, on my hands, while singing the complete Christy Moore back catalogue.’ She looked at me as if to say, ‘Sod off back to England, you smug greasy-haired fecker.’

  Out
side I walked slowly, thumb out, up toward the end of the village, as the cars roared past me. I decided it was because I was walking, so stood still for a while. I stopped near the school at Rathcormac – just before the bend in the road as it wound up the hill perpendicular to Benbulben. The location was good, with enough room for the cars to see me and stop in time, but it was necessary to achieve success quite quickly because there was a group of amused-looking latchkey urchins with big curious grins messing around on bikes around the school yard. I ignored them and haughtily stuck out my thumb. Cars zoomed past, one after the other. What was I thinking about? The mountain, that nice warm pub. I realised that my shades were probably making me look a bit dodgy so reverted to my normal pair of specs. Still no luck. An English car came towards me. I tried to look ‘ironic’, surmising that he’d give me a lift. After all, that’s what sets the English apart, isn’t it? – a sense of ‘humour’ where you say one thing but mean something else ha ha ha. He drove past. Then more cars. It was getting very boring. Then one car indicated and stopped further along the road. Elated I started to move off, casting a triumphant glance at the kids who by now had become bored and looked as though they were about to go home. Someone got out then the car moved off again. Bastard! The kids drifted back, intrigued.

  Fifty cars had gone by. I tried to be telepathic about it, saying things like, ‘Pick me up pick me up.’ I tried changing my thumb shape from an orthodox hitch angle to ‘Lincolnshire half-cocked’. I took off my glasses. I put my shades back on. Took off the shades again. Smiled. Looked serious. I was getting really tired. I tried to grin and be positive. Even the urchins were now starting to feel for me and giving me that ‘You can do anything if you really try’ look of encouragement.