Gypsies, Bacon & Pipes

A while ago, "her Indoors" & I went to look at a house in Lynchburg, Ohio. Totally by accident, we found ourselves on another street, outside a lovely old home...we adored the house but found out later that it was sold much to our disappointment.

Anyway as I stepped out of the car I smelled cooking wafting out from the kitchen of a nearby home. Instantly I was transferred in years and miles back to Cabra in Dublin, getting out of my dad's car and smelling the same smell wafting out from my granny's kitchen. A simple scent and you're transformed from the present to the past. A time machine of the senses....

Amazing the things that trigger our memories, "recall switches" if you like.

One of the things I remember from my Grannys house was stepping outside, going a few yards onto Leix road and staring down to Phibsboro and the floodlights of Dalymount park, (home of Irish football), standing sentinel like those aliens from that book by HG Wells.

My mother told me, she was there the night they switched those lights on (in 1962) as she was the lead piper in The Emerald Girl's Pipe Band who were the musical support that night! I understand incidentally that they were World Champions at the time too (I kid you not!). Until you hear Irish warpipes warm up in a 12' x 14' livingroom - you have never lived!

I remember one summer, football was slumbering in it's off season yet I could hear the tones of Bob Marley wandering up the concrete canyons of Old Cabra - my first real encounter with reggae. If I recall it was 1979. It was his last big concert before his death 6 months later....see Ireland & die, I guess!

Bohemians were & are my Irish team for that simple reason. That scene from leix road, those towers, that roar forever etched in my memory. I've been to the ground on several occassions for Boh's games and the odd international. Last one was v France, a cold bollox of a night which got worse as it started to rain and we along with 10,000 others slp slided away down to the front. Michel Platini was the French manager, resplendent in a long grey trench-coat, he looked more like "Colombo" than Napoleon as I think he intended. We 5, that came up from the the "Sceachs", muttered something like "F*ck this for a game of soldiers!" and headed around the corner to "Dalys" for a pint and to watch the game in the comfort of a Dublin Pub, then onto the haunt of my Grandad Mick , "the Homestead" and onto the "hole in the wall" in the Phoenix Park where we ended off the night! Enough of that wandering down memory lane, I'm getting a hangover thinking about it.

News from Dublin now says that "the Gypsies" are to leave Dublin 7 and move out to the Country netting them a cool $100m in the process with a new stadium to boot. I am sad of the news that "Dalyer" is no more but it was falling to bits when I was there last and I hear it was even worse now. The other thing is that it turns the Club from perennial paupers to eternally secure & wealthy..a bit like another team I know.

I always regarded "Bohs" as a sleeping giant now we'll see what a few bob in the arse pocket will do for them!

Boh's can be found here:http://www.bohemians.ie/dalyer.htm