. . . . On turning 40
I TURNED 40 yesterday. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that miraculously I don’t seem to mind. I keep waiting for waves of age-related panic to crash over me. But all I feel is a kind of relief. Imagine it, I say to myself. I got this far. Experienced yet still a novice. Mended yet still broken. Still wondering, what’s next? Still feeling, as John Spillane sings on his new single, that “the best is yet to come”. And I didn’t get through the past 40 years without picking up a thing or three and cracking some eggs and wearing the wrong thing to a lot of discos. Here is a smorgasbord of 40 things that happen to be true for 40-year-old me.
1 Just because it’s being carried out by a calm-looking Indian woman, having your eyebrows threaded is not relaxing.
2 Unless it is 1982 and Come On Eileen is number one, wearing dungarees to a disco usually ends in humiliation.
3 It’s perfectly normal to fall a little bit in love with the person who delivers your babies.
4 When you are eight and someone at school tells you that their plastic ring grants wishes, it’s probably not true. Wishing for more wishes is a good idea though, just in case.
5 It’s worth trying to be open and honest in my column.
6 It’s worth trying to keep a few secrets.
7 If Paul McCartney says no when you ask him to autograph a column you wrote about him, keep asking until he says yes. He will eventually say yes.
8 When you lose that autographed column somewhere in the pages of a misplaced book it might seem like you will never get over it but one day you will.
9 I am not really a “huggy” person.
10 I probably need more hugs.
11 Great lyrics move me. Thank you John Spillane, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Morrissey and Beyoncé.
12 Lyric FM soothes my soul.
13 The Grange Inn in Grangegorman, Dublin sells one of the finest down home ham and cheese toasted sandwiches in Dublin. There’s no extra charge for banter by one of the city’s most genial bar people.
14 I am not my thoughts.
15 Love is the question.
16 Wine/fried potato sandwiches are not the answer.
17 There will never be a better snug in any pub like the one in The Dockers (RIP) in Dublin on Christmas Eve when Paddy was behind the bar and certain members of U2 sat shooting the breeze with all comers. Amen.
18 Although it might seem like it sometimes, the number-one greyhound doesn’t always win.
19 Always meet your heroes.
20 Loving someone can sometimes feel like wanting to throw the Hoover at them.
21 Truffle oil smells rude and perhaps not coincidentally is delicious.
22 Sending thank-you cards and remembering birthdays is a sign of class.
23 Class is not achievable by everyone, for example, me.
24 Laughing until you are nearly sick is a really good idea at least once a day. Fake laughter is also recommended when the real thing won’t come.
25 The guy who sells newspapers outside the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre in Dublin is worth saying hello to next time you are passing.
26 Heroin addicts and homeless people and politicians and clampers are human beings who deserve to be treated with, at the very least, civility, even if on the surface you can’t find any common ground with them.
27 All most people need is a good listening to. (I stole this off a fridge magnet, but that doesn’t make it any less true.)
28 Mostly the things that annoy you are all your own stuff.
29 Life would be even more beautiful if I lived by these four agreements: don’t take things personally; always do your best; be impeccable with your word; and . . . sorry, I always forget one of them.
30 Don’t make assumptions. That’s it. Don’t make assumptions.
31 I could bang on for many expensive hours about dark childhood issues and how they’ve affected me but eventually I have to change how I react to those issues.
32 It’s hard to change reactions. But identifying with the light of my being instead of the darkness eases the burden.
33 It’s okay not to care about rugby even when Ireland are playing.
34 The playground at the Visitor’s Centre in Phoenix Park is one of the best in the country. The trees nearby are playgrounds all of their own.
35 I believe in what some people call God.
36 For a certain type of person it’s impossible to walk into Mira Mira in Sandymount, Dublin and not buy something. Ditto all branches of Avoca. There should be a law against these kinds of shops.
37 Discovering nail varnish pads and the Babyliss Big Hairdryer made my life 10 per cent easier.
38 My birthday falls on the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary. Because these two days coincided, Sr Christina in Sion Hill, Blackrock wished happy birthday to me every year of my turbulent secondary school career.
39 I’ve spent a lot of the past 40 years putting up barriers to being freed. I want to spend the next 40 tearing them down.
40 One day I will be free.
In other news . . . Former TD Paul Gogarty says he doesn’t know why he was asked to sing as part of the promotion of RTÉ’s Big Music Week which starts on Monday and features the likes of Neil Hannon and Aslan. His effort is well worth watching on YouTube, with Gogarty singing a Buddy Hollyesque tune called I Care For You. Compelling