Continuing the unexpurgated diaries from Ballina in the late 1960s
Monday,
November 14th, 1966
Cassius Clay has retained his world heavyweight crown by stopping Cleveland Williams in the third round in Houston, Texas. Naturally, Mother and Frankie have been celebrating: when I arrived home last night I was greeted with the spectacle of my middle-aged mother dancing about the kitchen while trading punches with my nine-year brother, all the while noisily urging him to pay more attention to his "guard".
Also there, acting as referee, was Frankie's friend and schoolmate Michael "Scaldy" Muldoon, who recently created a sensation at the Mayo boxing championships. While he was beaten in the schoolboys' five-stone class, Scaldy apparently put some zing into a rather lacklustre night by grabbing the microphone towards the end of the night and belting out Walk Tall (he is about four foot three himself). As the Western People reported it, "Scaldy, with microphone in hand, rendered more 'knock-out notes' than practically the whole championships put together." This is the environment and household within which I am expected to behave maturely, and provide good example for Frankie.
I did not speak, but went straight to bed. I think Mother got the message.
Tuesday,
November 15th
Miss Cartwright seemed quite unable to concentrate on her work in the library this morning. She is planning a trip to Dublin at the weekend to see the legendary Marlene Dietrich (now a granny in her early 60s) perform at the Adelphi, and she has been going about singing in a peculiar throaty fashion a song which apparently is called The Boys in the Back Room. Her behaviour and general demeanour have been making me quite nervous.
Rather casually, Miss Cartwright asked me what I myself was planning for the weekend. Being unable to think about anything but my dinner date at Harriet's parents' house next Saturday, I dithered over an answer to the point where my employer looked at me as with as much suspicion as if I were about to carry out an armed robbery at the Munster & Leinster. I could tell her the truth since she does not approve of Harriet, whom she regards as a woman "without a proper sense of decorum".
It occurs to me only now that I have never been on a dinner date before.
Wednesday,
November 16th
Mother has become a slave to Telef∅s ╔ireann. Once dinner was over last night, she sat in front of the idiot-box for the entire evening, watching Quicksilver, then The Man from UNCLE and finally Markings, wherein T.P. McKenna read from the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, whom she professes to adore, not least because he hails from her own native county of Monaghan.
I joined her for the latter programme. There is no doubt that this fellow Kavanagh has a certain rude talent. In Mr McKenna's impressively sonorous tones the poetry comes across - or so it seems to me - as that of a decent countryman whose spirit has been defiled by his association with the city (Dublin), but who still desperately clings to honest rustic simplicities.
There are undoubted parallels in the behaviour and attitudes of the brutally simple country characters who gravitate towards Ballina and quickly find themselves baffled and frustrated even in such an unsophisticated urban environment as this.
I put this theory to Mother but she was not impressed: "What in the name of God would Paddy Kavanagh have done if he stayed in Iniskean? He was no more a farmer than you or I. Sure you couldn't be thinking about the useless soil of Monaghan, never mind writing about it, until you're well away from it."
Thursday,
November 17th
I bumped into Karl again in Jordan's last night and brought up the subject of Paddy Kavanagh and his poetry. But Karl has no time for any poet but W.B. Yeats. Not surprisingly, his favourite Yeats poem is "The Second Coming", with its fearsome promise of anarchy loosed upon the world.
If this ever happens, I remind Karl, Jordan's is likely to close down rather promptly. This made him think for a while (and order another round). Karl is very fond of Jordan's. And he has no sense of humour, or irony. Neither has any other German, apparently. I gather it is a racial failing.
Friday,
November 18th
Tomorrow night I go to the The Gables, Killala, already burnt into my consciousness as a romantic venue equivalent only to the Taj Mahal. I should be thinking of how to dress, how to behave, how to take part in a conversation with older people (Harriet's parents) and God knows who or what else. But all I can think of is Harriet. Paddy Kavanagh or W.B. Yeats would no doubt have come up with an appropriate line of passionate poetry for someone in my state of mind, but all I can think of is that this is the agony and the ecstasy.
bglacken@irish-times.ie
