I was sitting out in the sun this afternoon, just thinking to meself “how did I end up here?”.
The truth is that I love music,and always wanted to put a good live music bar together, but the plan was to do it in Ireland. It’s funny, because for 20 years I used to get up at 5am to go to work, and now I am going to bed every morning at the same time I used to get up! The memory of getting up at 5am on dark wet winter ornings and starting the artic that I used to drive before having breakfast, so that it would be warm when I got into it… Having said that, it was lovely in the summer mornings to be up and about. With no airconditioning in the trucks, we often stopped along the road during the day next to lakes or rivers and have a swim for ourselves. We used to make the most of life and always tried to have a bit of fun where the opportunity presented itself.
Here is one short story of the type of craic we used to have. At certain times of the year we would get phone calls in the middle of the night and we would have to head to Connemara with salt for trawlers landing with fish. A friend of mine (Pat the Bull) and myself got the call one night at about 12 o´clock. He loaded the salt before me, and was gone up the road ahead of me. It was a dead clear night with a full moon and somewhere up around Oranmore, I saw him miles ahead of me on a long straight stretch of road. We all had different designs of lights on the trucks and it was easy to tell who was who. It was about 3 am and I switched off all my lights, which I was able to do because the night was so bright. After about 20 minutes or so more driving, I caught up with him with no lights on all the time and drove inside the yellow line. As I was nearly neck and neck with him, I turned on all the headlights together and let the horn rip!!! Just checking his heart!!! Thankfully he survived and I survived the f*cking he gave me!! The money was bad, the hours were long, but the craic was 90… 
My weekends consisted of Sundays off, which I spent most of the day falling in and out of sleep on the couch and trying to find energy to play with the kids, and then I would go to this pub with the artic at abo10 o´clock and play the bodhran in a session, which I loved doing. When the session was over and all the lads were heading home, I would jump into the truck and head for Galway. That was the way then, with 3 kids, a wife and a mortgage at 23 years of age.
I don’t regret one bit of it and, as I said, we made fun anywhere we could. The cops used to be after us all the time for bald tyres, no tax, overweight etc etc. We had no money for such luxuries. I remember I taxed a truck for 3 months one time and one of the lads said it was a vulgar display of wealth and a shocking waste of good money. I’m thinking he was right – it must have been a rush of blood to the head – or maybe I felt cocky because I was after getting to within 3 months of my arrears on the mortgage and the judge was proud of me!!
I came up with this great idea then that instead of rolling ten cigarettes before heading on a 3 hour journey, I would only roll two and promised myself I wouldn’t stop until I arrived at the other end. I stood to my promise, but I was rolling cigarettes with one hand before I got to Mallow, laughing and congratulating myself on how clever I was. F*cking ejet.
There was a long chapter and a long road between them times and sitting here in the sun today thinking about them. I had a list of things that I wanted to do with my life from when I was 20 years old and was very careful to do them in an order that worked well with age. No point in going skiing or racing when you are 70. So far my plans have gone well, even though the road got bumpy from time to time and different courses had to be taken, temporarily, to avoid potholes.
I have four plans left in me, if I last long enough:
- I have designed a small spa hotel that I want to build whenever the opportunity and location arise.
- If possible, I want to get my hands on a very badly run-down farm and put it back on the map again in my 50s.
- I want to do two more seasons of rally driving.
- I want to end me days doing charity work, drinking dirty pints of Guinness, talking shit with the friends (in a pub called “Charlies Beag) I made along the road, singing the odd song, and have nothing to me name on my last day, just as I came into the world.
Let’s see how it pans out.
For the next 8 years or so, I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing because of the great people that I´m working with, and Anna (my partner) loves it here in Lanzarote as well. Then we will be calling into Charlie´s, telling the young fellows where they are going wrong. We might just get this hotel built in that time, with a little luck, and two seasons rallying might just fit in as well, if the whores would give me the odd weekend off!
Just to let you know how f*cked up my head is – I was thinking of building a dairy farm here on Lanzarote! One of the things I miss about home is proper milk. Why couldn’t you import the cows from Ireland (4 legged ones), import the feed, silage etc. and build slatted sheds to house them? Then we would have Irish beef/Irish milk fresh from cows that were eating Irish grass. Don’t laugh – it’s not so long ago since some clown went on the late late to say he was going to bottle water and sell it.
Have a nice day. I’m going for a swim. 
