Canada, China and therapy, all via Skype

My friend Skyped me from a beautiful woman’s kitchen, north of Toronto, as I lay naked in the bed in Leitrim. My therapist says I should travel more

I WAS TRYING to learn Tommy Mulhair's Jiglast week, from a recording by Shaskeen. I spent an entire morning in the room, rasping away on the flute, while outside the window the leaves were falling off the beech and the Canadian maple.

At one stage I went walking, and the last red leaves of the maple reminded me of a friend who went to Canada. I got an urge to phone him, but he wasn’t picking up.

That night in bed I got Skyped, and suddenly there he was, smiling at me from my iPhone. He was just north of Toronto, in a beautiful woman’s kitchen, as I lay naked in the bed. I could see the woman in the background tossing a salad for their evening meal, and the sky outside the window was blue, and the woman wanted to say hello too, but I explained that I wasn’t dressed.

He said he was off to China for a week. I said, "Maybe I'll Skype you over there, if you're in a hotel with WiFi." In the meantime I persevered with Tommy Mulhair's Jig.

Two days later I texted him. “Are you in a hotel?” “No,” he replied, “I’m at the opera.”

Well isn’t he lucky, I thought – at the opera in Beijing and not wasting his time like me, spluttering into a flute; a pity I never had the energy to emigrate.

I remember flying from St Angelo airport in Enniskillen one time, over the hills and rivers of Fermanagh, and thinking, my God, when this country is viewed from the air there’s no doubt that she is our mother; soft and lush and beautiful; and it’s almost impossible to leave.

My therapist says I should travel more, and he doesn’t just mean Mullingar or Cavan. “More aircraft,” he urges, “That’s what you need.” I have a neighbour who is suspicious of my therapist, because I talk to him on Skype.

“Isn’t that like prophylactic sex?” she said. “Having a screen between you and your therapist. It’s like using a condom.”

I really didn’t want the conversation to go any further, so I said, “Do you know what I’m doing at the moment? I’m trying to learn new tunes on the flute. Isn’t that interesting?”

But therapy has helped me. I used to think I was just a bad morning person, with a hangover. Now I realise that I have woken every morning of my life with a terror of being unloved and abandoned, which, apparently, is why as a child I said the morning offering, or as a man took refuge first in God and then in Buddha – because therein lay hope of being cared for, in the face of a universe that appeared disturbingly inhospitable. It was a simple choice: either accept the consolations of religion or embrace the dark.

I took the flute to Cavan during the week, thinking I might learn it better over there, because Cavan has become the musical centre of somewhere; though where exactly, I’m not quite sure. When I arrived the streets were empty and the moon full, and I purchased yet one more bag of magnificent chips in Roma on Bridge Street, and ate them in the jeep.

I went up to the Farnham Arms, hoping for a session, but there was none because it was Tuesday. The place was empty except for a slim and elegant woman of about 40 with black hair and a strong leather belt in her jeans, displaying a firm waist.

I said, “You’re not from Cavan.” She said, “Colorado,” in an understated voice, like she knew how to handle a horse. Log cabins in the mountains, coffee on an open fire and real men flashed through my mind.

“What are you doing in Cavan?” I wondered.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I love travelling to strange places.” I made the usual joke about maybe having met in a former life.

“I’m married,” she cautioned.

“So am I,” I replied.

“And yet,” I persisted, “we’re like two old beetles. We may have met on the prairie in another life.” But she wasn’t a woman for romantic palaver.

“And maybe next time we’ll meet on the moon,” she whispered, before striding out the door.

I drove back to Leitrim and the phone rang. My friend said he was back in Canada and wondered what I was doing. “Nothing much,” I said. “I’m still trying to learn a tune on the flute, but it’s not easy.”