A Glass Of Dandelion Wine In The Olde Brewery

"'You remember winning, don't you? A battle won, somewhere?'
"'No', said the old man, deep under. 'I don't remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War's never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns. But I don't suppose that's the kind of victory you boys mean for me to talk on.'
"'What about Shiloh?'
"'There's never been a year in my life I haven't thought, What a lovely name and what a shame to see it only on battle records.'"
- From the hauntingly beautiful "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury

By Charley Brady

OK, regular readers, I'm going to ask you for your indulgence for a moment. Yeah, it's a little bit unusual but since some of you have, judging from your emails, stuck with me through 133 articles for this newspaper I'm going to take a chance and ask you to stick with me through one article that is on a more personal level. Hell, come to think of it, aren't they all?

I met a fantastic woman this week. Her name is Margaret.

Don't bother salivating, you dreadful people, it was simply a meeting of minds.

Anyway, since Christine Hendricks, Jessica Lange, the great Adrienne Barbeau and my Aunt Mavis all have barring orders out against me at the moment, I don't need any more complications in my life, officer.

Margaret got me thinking, though. And as if thinking wasn't bad enough along came a spider in the shape of an ex-lady friend that I hadn't seen in a decade who emailed me in order to tell me something that I didn't know (sarcastic): that I was obviously as angry as ever and what a narrow escape she had. Well, that was myself told all right.

She's spot on. I am a very angry person. I was angry this week when I heard what came to pass because a victim impact statement by the family of Rebecca French was pretty much dismissed as if it was nothing by Mr. Justice Barry White. He called the family racists. You can dress it up in any legal language that you like, but that is what it boiled down to.

Rebecca French was beaten to death in a manner that should be almost unimaginable to any decent human being - judges are not included in that for obvious reasons - when four Lithuanian thugs who already had criminal convictions in their own country attacked her.

Rebecca died a horrible death before being stuck in the trunk of a car.

Well, I can only hope that she was dead when she was put in there. Afterwards it wouldn't have mattered too much as I suppose it was a merciful release when these pigs set the car alight.

I hope that it doesn't offend your sensibilities that I call them the lowest scum of the earth. I hope that it doesn't because you see, the victim impact statement from Rebecca's family was judged by the clown Mr. Justice Barry White to be racist.

They had said that these people were "animals" and "excuses for human beings". Even more crucially they had said:

"People with criminal records in their own country should never be allowed to live among us."

Now this is what prompted our learned judge to declaim to all and sundry that this was, to use his own word, "xenophobic."

In fact it has seriously thrown into doubt whether or not the four big masculine pond life that beat a woman to death will ever do time.

This has nothing to do with racism, you overly educated, and full of bullshit example of everything that is wrong with the system. I don't know what the hell is the matter with you, White. You don't mind if I don't address you as Judge, do you? And if you do, so bloody what? Go to hell.

White, did you go through law school with people taking the proverbial out of you because you had the unfortunate name of Barry White? Is that why you hate people so much? Did you secretly want to be a singing sensation?

Jeez, why did you become a judge instead of a politician? Oh yeah, of course: the money is better.

Try me for contempt of court on this one:

You are a f*****g disgrace and if that isn't enough to send me to prison for not respecting you in the manner in which you have become accustomed then ask me at the email address below and I will be happy to send you the asterisk-free original.

Then you can lock me up with people who never use bad language, you jack-off. Contempt for YOUR court? I have nothing but that.

By the way, the other word that I would use to describe your Learned Self begins with a C; a fine old Anglo Saxon word, first mentioned in Chaucer and describes you to a T (wedge). Oh, go on, get out your "Canterbury Tales" and work it out for yourself.

After all, you are a judge and therefore much more intelligent than the entire population of Ireland combined.

I was burning after catching up on White and his, to put it mildly, askew way of looking at the world: in other words, don't say anything nasty about those bad men who killed your daughter or I'll slap you on the wrist and tell you how to behave.

I wonder if Justice White stamped his foot as these thoughts went through what ever is left of his head after too many free lunches, free drinks and just generally being a gobshite with no contact WHATSOEVER with the general public who would have said exactly the same thing in that statement... and they are not even related to that poor girl, whose last moments on this earth must have been beyond Hell itself.

So, yes. I'm an angry person; and no apologies for it.

I was walking from Renville Village into my place in Oranmore just as this cold snap hit us. I was thinking of what I would write in this week's column and with more dead coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq on a far too regular basis it wasn't doing anything to change my jaundiced view of humanity.

Tony Blair may be flying around the world and making shed loads of loot because he sided with a fellow war criminal who was President of the United States, but that doesn't mean a damned thing to the poor parents or brothers and sisters of the people coming back in caskets from places that they should never have been sent to in the first place.

Don't give me that rubbish that I continually hear that says they shouldn't have joined the army if they didn't expect to die. That is a loathsome exercise in futility as far as I'm concerned. They didn't sign up to die in a war that can't be won and should never have been fought in the first place. There is not one of these kids that should have lost everything that was ahead of them simply because Blair wanted to get a few greasy, tainted quid for making after dinner speeches.

Sometimes I think that this insane world is just one big charnel house.

Then, as you are walking through the woods and taking the short cut that brings you on to the Maree Road you stop and look about you.

The snow is falling thick and the world looks great and you remember why you really like being alive.

Sure, the world is rotten and the politicians are corrupt and somehow along the road you had a hell of a lot of your rights taken from you, but as Alan Moore said in his majestic "V for Vendetta", if you want to blame someone for letting them do this to you then you need only look into a mirror.

This world is so damned beautiful. Looking around me I see the proof of that everywhere. It's in the very air that you puff from your cold lungs. It's in that wonderful squelching sound that comes as you lift your feet out of the snow. Later on it will be in that sunset over Galway Bay. As Arthur Machen put it, it is like great furnace doors opening.

So you continue on into the village of Oranmore. I've lived here for almost a decade now and if I died here it wouldn't be something I would regret. Sure, it's a lot more built up now than it was when I moved from Dublin but you can still walk down the street and know almost everybody by name.

You leave the Maree Road and turn onto the main street. You go past the school and cross the road to the library. It's surrounded by a graveyard and is located in a beautiful old church that was built in 1801. Push the door open and you might find John there. You'll recognise him immediately because he has this perpetual hangdog expression and behind that there is the kindest, most generous man that you could hope to meet. If you have a question about a book he'll tell you and if he doesn't know he will by God find out for you.

Or maybe it's Kay. She's got the brightest, most alert eyes that you will ever see; and I sometimes think that the word "lady" was invented for her alone.

Pick up your books and stroll over to the Olde Brewery and have a glance through what you might be reading tonight.

On the day last week that I'm talking about I was morose and surly - nothing new there, says you - but a word about the Olde Brewery: there's certain watering holes in every village that you just feel plain comfortable in. On this particular afternoon that I'm talking of, the delicious aroma of hot rums hit me as soon as I opened the door.

I'm not a spirit drinker myself - in the days that I tried them I tended to go completely bananas - but that yummy smell of lemons and cloves always gets me.

There was a roaring fire going and cozy just doesn't come into it. Brendan was behind the counter and you could write a book on this guy alone.

Can you imagine a machine gun talking? That's him. Words spray out of him like scattershot. And then there is Lynn coming in to do her shift. I think of her these days as Loved-up-Lynn. She's just gotten herself engaged to the nicest guy and is happy out.

Well, there's no accounting for taste. I mean, if she had played her cards right I certainly wouldn't have fought her off. Unfortunately (for her) she's not into older men. Her loss.

Then there's Darren: now if you want to have the most trivial question answered then this guy is your man. I sometimes sit there and think: "How the hell did he know the bloody answer to that?"

But on this particular day what took my attention was the couple who were sitting by the fire. They weren't regulars and for me it was a pure delight to sneak glances at them. You can always tell when a couple are just plain falling in love for the first time: the little tentative touches, the warmth in the occasional embrace. Just lovely.

Pete and Chrissie are at the counter and Johnnie English is looking for someone to play pool with him but nobody wants to play because he's a bloody shark.

Tony is there and he's usually pretty solitary until you make the effort to speak to him. When you do he turns out to be a thoughtful guy who seems to spend his life worrying about his children. When we got to know each other I once made the stupid mistake of sneaking up behind and grabbing him.

That was the last I knew of anything until I was on the floor nursing what I thought was a broken wrist. Nobody had bothered to tell me that he served in the Marines when he lived in the States.

I swear, it's always the quiet ones that you have to watch out for.

What I'm trying to say in my clunky way is that for all my anger at how our miserable government has treated and betrayed us, there are still places where you'll see the real Ireland in all it's tarnished glory.

You won't get away with being a gobshite in this bar. Take Pete: he'll bring you back to earth very fast indeed if you're talking rubbish; and if he doesn't let me assure you that the staff will do it for him.

You have to able to take a few metaphorical punches on the chin here. And that's why I love this place. They will cut you up and throw you out - the arguments are robust, put it that way - but there is a deep affection among the regulars.

Hell, look at the guy in the corner. Did you ever see that movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer"? Do you remember The Fisherman?

That's Seanie Walsh to a tee. He's usually just come in from scouting along the Bay from whatever the hell he does and is inevitably wearing his big old fishing wellies and his waterproof gear. It's snowing at the moment but it wouldn't matter if the sun was splitting the rocks, Seanie would still be wearing the same outfit.

I think the words "laid back" were made for him. The only time I ever saw him getting mildly riled was when some people who shall remain nameless stole his bicycle and put it on the roof.

Mind you, he has been known to get other people riled (me!) when he wants to have a country and western song played. Now that's something that there is no excuse for. As all sane people know by now the only happy country song is one that is played backwards.

I'm not including Kris Kristofferson here for the obvious reason that he's a genius and anyway I'm sick of explaining to Sean that he's not really country anyway. I tell you, one of these days Sean will come after me with that hook, screaming "Big Tom" at the top of his lungs and then I won't care what ANYONE did last summer.

By the time that you read this our budget day will have come and gone, giving me something else to moan about; but for this day I'm just plain happy out to be living here.

It's nice to be nice for a change - especially since Mike Bowen from Australia blew me out of the water with that great, heartfelt and truly angry from the gut piece in this paper's last issue.

Normal grumpy service will be resumed next week...

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net