Ten Years Ago, Today .....

  I set foot in Eire, for the first time in my life. April 30th. 2006.

  Dropped off here ~ then an empty shell of a place, without a sound window in it. I took stock and informed the Dogs that this was where we lived now. This was our new home. And smiled broadly.

  Today, a decade later, those Dogs have all passed on. Yet more have come and gone. But, I'm still here. I still have Dogs. I'm still smiling broadly.

  Today, when I mentioned to an Irish girl that I'd been here ten years today? She threw her arms around me and gave me a great big hug! Still can't get That fucking smile off my face! LMFAO!


  But, I decided, last night, I'd mark this anniversary with ye by sharing something only family has been shown before. 

  See, when I got here, I was surprised and delighted to find the place had electricity. Obviously, an internet connection was yet some way away. And me, a confirmed creature of the connection.

  How was I to fill these long nights of staring at the wall? How else? I began to write:



  Here's how it all began. I started this on, and so call it:

Day Three

  The ember ended twigs of what scraps obviously remained of the twenty gallons of Jackdaw nest I removed from the chimney earlier this evening seem to have finally just about stopped falling.  Now there's just a couple of pints of dry, unburned frass. The dust detritus of what once was an entire chimney full ~ Fireplace to, no doubt ~ stack.

  Now, as I feel the room begin to chill already, I'm thinking about Eddie, Noel and the, is it two, other members of what I already consider the Local Mafia. No, wait. Eddie, Noel, Patrick ..... and me. I'm the fourth man. Co Opted by inheritance, it would seem. A Good Fella all over again.

  But, I wonder; Is this Cosa Nostra, or perhaps Their  Thing?  Am I being inducted, or cajoled. Humoured. Groomed.

  The trip over here was as stressful and fraught as I'd fully expected it to have been.  No let downs or disappointments there then. I'd known, from the start, that Mikes Transit, no matter how large and 'stand up easily in' the model, wasn't going to be big enough for my space fillings.

 As it was, I had to toss Gray Dog in amongst the perfectly slotted together rubiks cube of my worldly possessions and then slot Pup and Buck into a small, low space behind the door. Like two Greyhounds in one trap.

  Hearing Pups pitiful and pained cries, every inch of the way to Holy Head was almost as bad as when I couldn't hear them. I reassured myself, every time another vehicle ~ few as they were up through Manchester and Liverpool, Wales ~ passed us and never flagged us.  At least it seemed the doors hadn't sprung open. Yet.

  The doors did spring open at Holy Head.  Upon reaching the terminal and joining a short queue, I determined, and even Mike spontaneously suggested, that I should allow the two bigger Dogs in the back a respite. 

  They'd been crammed in there I dread to think how many long hours already. And there was a two hour crossing ahead of us and then an expected few hours travelling across Ireland to my cottage.

  As it turned out, HM Customs took over for us.  Mike and John, Mikes relief driver, had left me in the van while they'd headed over to the terminals booking centre. When they returned Mike asked me to come with him, back there. I can't remember if he'd said then it was for booking or paying for the ticket.  As it turned out, it was pay. And pay. And pay how!

  The first thing that Mike said was that he needed the money I owed him.  That was, he reminded me when I'd had to ask him, eighty quid for the two deals of Dope he'd got me. And a ton for the gennie.  I'd had it in mind that I was paying him this from a Pay Pal payment I was owed, in a few days time. We'd agreed that ..... We'd agreed a lot of things.

  When it came to booking the ticket, Mike booked. He'd checked on the internet and we were both stunned and delighted that the price was only fifty four pounds for the crossing.  Then I heard the girl saying four hundred and fifty. And I inwardly shrugged and thought, " So what? If this is to be the cost of my getting out of england?  Cheap enough and soon forgotten. "  I paid, of course. This despite my ferry fare having been verbally agreed as part of the sale price of my property, to Mike.

  The price hike was because we had the 'choice' of taking the Sea Cat - Now. Or we could have waited around for the ferry. The ferry would have been cheap as chips ..... and taken god alone knows how long. My Dogs .....

  Then we were rolling.  Having, all three of us, taken out some of the tension by disparaging the invisible Welsh all the way through and round their incomprehensible ~ and seemingly deliberately so ~ traffic signs. Mike, I thought, went a little too ballistic when a Dutchman made some manouvere that left us one car behind in a line of only about three anyway.  But that was soon forgotten, which considering what was about to follow, is more than I can say for the last taste I had of britain's ways.

  We turned a corner and there we were, in Customs.   I made sure not to make my sweeping, searching scanning of the place obvious as we drove forward without seemingly slowing at all. Then, inevitably, just as my heart leapt to see the car in front of us drive straight on into the ferry, we were called to one side and the condensed nightmare began.

  " Could you open the back please, sir. What's in there? "  I jabbered, in as controlled a tone as I could muster, that I had loose Dogs in there. And that they were packed in as tightly as my worldly belongings and would surely burst out and largely out of control. I emphasised that they were friendly and even so, muzzled.

  The grand entrance onto the scene of all three Dogs was as could be expected and soon resulted in three individually tethered Dogs strewn about the small bay in which we operated. 

  My biggest concern being Pup's (my 'Staffie's) ever more strenuous cries from a bare ten foot away. I'd had to tie him to the next available point and that was by the office door. I believe he felt he was to be left there. His little heart was breaking with the stress of it all, unable to understand. Poor thing.

  My own stress came in the form of the Bitch from Hell Customs Officer cum Gods Own Busy Body for Dogs.  Upon opening the back doors, and the Dogs pouring out, a male officer, maybe the Policeman, had said he was not allowing us to travel further unless the situation inside was resolved.  My swivel chair had in fact fallen and was hovering precariously above where the Dogs had been cramming.

  I, of course, was in super stress overdrive, all the time trying to project an image of casual control. There was half an ounce of something I didn't need them knowing about inside that van. And I'd read, on line somewhere, that they have and use Sniffer Dogs at their Customs checkpoints. 

  I may well have appeared as desperate as I felt though, as I grunted, swore and cursed the wretched chair. Not only is it extremely heavy, when at head height, but it's an awkward thing to do anything with but sit on and it was an agony of brute force and little style which finally jammed it to where I could only pray my tormentor would see it as suitable.

  And all this while I had this damned harridan badgering me about my Dogs. I don't know what the hell her angle was, but she seemed obsessed with them.  I can't even say for sure, looking back, that she was even just what one may call a Doggy Person. She just kept seemingly wanting badly to have the power or reason to stop me boarding that ferry for something to do with my Dogs.

  That doesn't explain it at all well.  But how does one explain such an episode.  One more out of synch and senseless, yet accepted, part of an on going nightmare.

  The next thing I consciously remember is sitting in the cab, alone but for Orange Dog and Pup, staring, hardly focusing, at the strapping attached to the underside of a lorry in the next lane. Holding it to the deck. 

  It was flexing. This huge, articulated truck was rocking rhythmically and gently where it stood. Incredibly, and so soon, without announcement or preamble, we were moving. I was actually leaving behind england and all that meant.