Would I be able to convince my Belfast family that there was a better world out there?
Each night of our five -night derailment, when the hot sun went down, we’d go and sit on the still-warm tracks with a crazed old railway fettler who had befriended us.
We chatted with strangers who became friends, parading with the Indians and being part of some highly ritualised meetings with other gangs, where the Big Chiefs would decide who had the “prettiest suit” through dance and rhyming trash-talk – one would eventually step back and bow to the other.
It was, yes, a Jim fanatic who led me to visit the grave. We had parted ways in volatile fashion before my trip. He’d expressed a lifelong desire to visit Jim’s grave. I wasn’t sure whether a casual photo of it would be a peace offering, or a taunt. I was, truth be told, quite fine either way.
Why had nobody told me the descent from the mountain would be so much harder and more painful than the ascent? And when was this ear-worm going to disappear?
In the lee of an old wooden dock with barnacled pilings, fishing boats bobbed at anchor.
That’s it. That’s the bit in the song. The gulp catches my breath. Staring out the windscreen and emotion spills from me and fogs the glass.
As the sun set, a man took a seat at a truncated keyboard. A 60-key piano that barely fitted in the space, jammed between the door and a window. With minimal fanfare he played for the few of us there.
I couldn’t determine his age. Maybe thirty. Maybe sixty. Weathered, muscled and lean.
When my age reached a suffix of teen, I worked after school. Had disposable income. Or rather, had income, and disposed of it. Spent it on records, then cassettes and a Walkman.