Last weekend’s all-Ireland hurling final brought a swirl of distracting memories slithering back
I WAS WATCHING the match last Sunday, and although I have never hit a sliotar in my life, it reminded me of the time I used to have a hurley stick as a child. My mother kept hens, and the hurley was for the cock, because every time I went into the enclosure with a bucket of meal the cock would attack me.
Back in those days I feared the cock, like a monster, and I would say a prayer as I walked with my bucket of meal down to the back of the garden, in the hope that the lovely hens would come to me and that the big white cock would stand his ground in the corner and just make his plucky noises. I prayed he would not fly at me, with wings outstretched, his neck distended and his beak in mode for slaughter.
When things went well and I didn’t require the hurley to defend myself, I returned giving thanks to God.
Not that my religious faith was entirely driven by terror. There were other times when I personified the universe with cuddly names. “Hello, Jack Frost,” I cried. “Hello, Mrs Hen! Hello, Mr God!”
So that’s why I had hens on my mind on Monday morning as I drove out the gate and turned left towards Athlone, with the intention of buying myself some books and perhaps chocolates for my mother.
Suddenly a school bus came towards me, and I realised that I had drifted to the wrong side of the road. I swerved just in time to avoid it, and spent the rest of the morning contemplating the shortness of life.
In the window of a bookshop in Athlone I noticed a hen on the cover of a book for children, and was overwhelmed with an urge to buy it.
The book was called Jenny the Little Brown Hen. "It's selling well," the girl behind the counter said. "It's got lovely illustrations by the author ."
I said: "I'm also looking for The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity." She said, "I beg your pardon." Like she might not have heard me correctly.
“It’s a book,” I added.
What a man of my years would be doing with Jenny the Little Brown Hen, on the one hand, and a book about long life and sex, on the other hand, seemed to drain all composure from her face.
“Do you know,” I said, trying to be jolly, “that the pope [John Paul II] once defined sexual orgasm as a loss of serenity?”
She swivelled the Laser machine towards me. “Your pin number please.” I said: “You don’t have chocolates by any chance?” She said: “No.”
So I paid for the book and slithered out of the shop and out of her life forever.
In the car park I tried to squeeze my jeep between a Micra and a parked bread van, but misjudged the gap. My wing mirror clobbered off the bread van and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.
In the garage, the mechanic said: "We'll have it fixed in 10 minutes." Which he did, and as he attached a new mirror, he looked in at the passenger seat and said: "I see you're reading Jenny the Little Brown Hen. I got it myself, for the kids."
Eventually I got to the nursing home in Mullingar to see my mother, though I forgot the chocolates. She said that she had enough chocolates.
“Bring me oranges the next time,” she suggested.
“What did you do today?” she asked.
I said: “I bought a book.” She said: “What’s it about?” I said: “Hens.” “Oh,” she said, “That must be lovely. We used to have hens, years ago.” “Yes,” I said, “I remember.”
And later, at home, I looked out at the rain as the evening closed in, and I lit a fire, and then a candle, as if it was already Christmas, or as if God was still behind the clouds, a watchful presence that might yet love me. If I had found The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity, I might have tried to read a chapter or two; but I didn't find it.
So I opened Jenny the Little Brown Heninstead, and turned the pages slowly and smiled at all the lovely images, as I dozed by the open fire and dreamed of a thousand hens, and ferocious cocks, long long ago.