The Word Cloud

Met a Irish dude in the pub tonight - a chance to practice my Irish? Nope, he doesn't speak any (except the usual "Pogue mahone"). Why did I bother to learn the language? No-one speaks Irish - and I've pretty much forgot most of what I learned (it's been ten years). But it did get me reminiscing about my years living with the Irish buskers of 'the County Kilburran'.

    It's funny how the people of the British Isles have such a reputation for the drinking (except the Welsh, who don't seem to have a national character as such). The English and the Scottish drink to get in the mood for violence, but the Irish drink to get in the mood for something much worse: folk music! In fact 'maudlin' is actually a Irish word which means 'having a tendency to sing through the nose and fall over'.

    We used to go busking in pairs: one of the Irish lot on rhythm guitar and vocals, and myself on lead guitar, adding diatonic riffs to the pentatonic melody, turning it into a sort of mellow acoustic folk rock. Well, I say folk, but we generally played classic rock from the 60s and 70s, anything from the Grateful Dead to Dire Straits. But every now and then we'd spot a group of guys with cement on their boots approaching, and we'd go straight into a rebel song, eg 'The Merry Ploughboy' ("Oh I am a merry ploughboy / and I plough the fields all day / till the sudden thought came to my mind / that I should rove away / For I'm sick and tired of slavery / since the day that I was born / so I'm off to join the IRA / and I'll be off tomorrow morn . . .") The lads would be like "Fair play to ye!" cos we were singing rebel songs on the London Underground, and they'd dig deep!

    But most Irish folk songs are kinda melancholy. Although some are sposed to be humorous, their lame attempt at humour is often more depressing than the sad songs. Sometimes we'd spot a couple of Irish girls approaching (they always go around in pairs, and are somehow easily identifiable as Irish at first glance) and we'd go into a Christy Moore song, eg "Well, goodbye to the port and brandy / the vodka and the stout / the Smithwick and the Harpic / the bottled the draught and keg / As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad / I could never figure out / how yer man stayed up on the surfboard / after fourteen pints of stout". We'd then get chatting to them, and invite them to the 'party tonight' at our squat - there was always a party, if not at our squat, then at one of the others.

    There were some great musicians among the buskers of NW London, some great characters - and some awful eejits, too!
    In my squat there was Sean the Tree (so called cos it was so hard to get him to go anywhere - we'd be all ready to go to the pub, and we'd be like "Sean a bhoucaill! Bfuill tu re anis?" and he'd be like "Cinte, ta'm re" and we'd be like "As go brachlinn anis!" and he'd still be on the sofa with his boots off. Excuse atrocious attempt at Gaelic spelling!) He played guitar and mandolin, and sang like a foghorn. There was Niall, who wouldn't jam with me cos I could play lead guitar and he couldn't, and 'Annie' who tried to come out as gay, only to be told "Sure there's no such thing, you've just gone a bit mad is all!"
    Then there were the Derry lads, foremost of whom was Marlin. He was a wolfish-looking dude with a wild mass of grey-brown hair which had a white streak in it from when he got burnt on the scalp when a petrol bomb was shot out of his hand by a rubber bullet. He played the most amazing freestyle improvised heavy metal guitar. He used to take a 50 watt Marshall down the Underground and plug it into the sockets used by the cleaners for their floor polishing machines. He stuck the bare live and neutral wires in with snapped matches, and rarely got to play long before the transport police turned up. Marlin struck on a brilliant idea: he squatted three houses in a row, and lived in the middle one. Whenever the Plod got called cos of his loud guitar-playing, he'd hop over the back fence and emerge from the house next door to join in with the complaining.
    Another character was Docker, one of the Kerry lads. His actual nickname was 'Doc', cos he could read and write, but he preferred to claim that was short for Docker, which is after all rather more macho. We had some great sessions in such Kilburran pubs as the Coal Pits - I pertickly remember accompanying him on tin whistle while he played guitar and sang 'Dirty Old Town'. Immediately afterwards, a drunken arsole grabbed his guitar and started shouting "Six Brits got blown to bits, down by the Bogside!" while bashing the guitar in a pretence at playing it. That was quite typical of hanging out with the Kerry lot. We had some good laughs (ever danced a 'Kerry set'? It's like the Can-Can on steroids) and myself and Doc did manage to record a few songs (execrable sound quality, unfortunately) but I had to stop hanging out with him after I got near killed by a nutter with a spirit level (for being a 'Saxon').

    None of us made much money from the busking, and we totally couldn't be arsed to sign on the dole, but we seldom did without cos of all the lads coming over from the Little Green Country looking for work in the building trade. They'd arrive in London with a couple of hundred pounds and some optimism, end up in a pub on Kilburran High Road, hoping to make some friends who'd give them a bed for the night, and who should they meet but ourselves? We'd take them in, and not even charge them any rent as long as they kept us in beers and spliff. They'd get a start as a roofer or brickie, find theirself a bedsit, and be grateful to us for the helping hand. We'd always find another one, so the partying never stopped.

    Ah sure, twas a grand life so it was . . .