Two Old Bloggers Walk Into a Coffee Place

Not ‘old’ old, you must initially understand. Not ‘old’ in the sense of ‘over the hill’. Not ‘Zimmer frame and tartan blanket on the knees’ old. Just old in the sense of having both done this blogging lark for an unfeasibly long time. Old in the sense that, while 95% of the world’s bloggers have long since packed it in and gone to something better and more current, we are still at it, bashing away.

William Gallagher was visiting my adopted hometown of Castlebar for indisputably sad reasons which we won’t go into here. Still, even with a full and trying schedule, he made a little time to meet up with me for a coffee and, even better, his lovely wife Angela came too.

This was a wonderful treat because William and I have been gently propping each other in blogging and in writing matters generally for what feels like fifteen years. And mark me on this, if it feels like fifteen years then it’s probably a darned sight more than that. That’s not to say that we’ve been in each other’s respective ears or eyelines unremittingly over the past decades. Far from it, really. As is the nature of well-formed online friendships, one is always nearby but rarely in the exact same place at the same time. A gentle level of mutual visibility exists, where small victories are acknowledged, and small failings are mulled-over and contextualized. Low wattage, perhaps, but providing highly-valuable illumination, nonetheless.

We met in Castle Books, which has long been a favorite place of mine, and which has become even more favoured now that they have a beautiful new refurbished shop with a cosy coffee place up on the mezzanine. It’s great for many reasons, not least because if you’re up there with your flat white and you feel an overwhelming need to have a book (as I often do) then they will sell you one down on the ground floor as quick as you like. I won’t go on about it but, next time you’re in Castlebar, go to Castle Books. This is not sponsored content.

Did I say we’d never met before? We’d never met before. Years and years of intermittent support and interaction but no face-to-face. These circumstances are not unusual for denizens of that social media thing. It happens, we make the best if it. But it is nice to meet up, if the circumstances align to allow that and that was certainly the case in this case. Certainly, in my case, I found William to be exactly the person I thought he would be and that, right there, is a compliment. People are always a little different, in some subtle way, to what you expect. The only thing I can contribute in that respect is that William is taller than one could rationally expect and Angela gives better hugs than one might righteously hope for.

The best part of an hour-and-a-half slipped away without anyone really noticing. I spilled my coffee, as I often do, and the ladies at the next table, who were clearly delighted to be convening their own coffee morning, were a pleasant counterpoint to our own chat.

As I said to William, my town felt a little different as I walked down to Castle Books to meet them both. I was seeing it, if only a little bit, through their eyes. I stopped at a place of worship, casually installed in a retail unit, and inspected the children’s drawings of Jeus and his gang. The simple drawings were faded and the sellotape holding them to the inside of the shopfront glass was perishing and losing its grip. The drawings were charming and reminded me of similar product we would have made when we were small. The only point to this paragraph is that I would never have stopped here, having passed it a thousand times, if I was not in a slightly different frame of mind. If I was ‘looking in on my town from the outside’ a little. It was an interesting vibe and the town did not disappoint. I was still pleased with it, even as a momentarily transformed visitor.

Although the subjects of cabbages and kings did not arise, our conversation covered many things and flowed along easily and warmly. Then, as Tom Paxton once wrote (an outrageously obtuse reference, this) ‘all too soon, it was time to go.” We walked to the corner together and suddenly, once again, our paths led off in different directions.

I proposed a scenario where we might meet again in years to come and, for me at least, it is a seductive idea which I would naturally hope comes to pass. It will take some doing but we’ll see.

Thanks for taking the time, William and Angela. It was truly lovely to meet up. We might fear that we might somehow disappoint in person after years of virtual contact but, to reuse a recently used phrase, that was certainly not the case in this case.

In fact, it was great.

In Search of Tutu House

 

What with all the excitement of returned family and food and presents, I had completely forgotten about the man who was looking for Tutu House. He only came back to me when I drove past the place the other day. I suppose that’s understandable as it happened on the morning of Christmas Eve and there was a lot of stuff going on. Anyway, I thought I’d set him down here before he vanishes completely, so here goes.

I was walking to Tesco to make one of those ‘quick in-quick out’ forays through the automated tills. Some small thing forgotten, like shallots or mustard or cider for the ham. There’s a hill down towards the Tesco car park where all the national buses stop so there is usually a collective of people there with baggage and sandwiches, all off to, or arriving from, somewhere else.

Halfway up the hill, away from the throng for the coaches, a man was talking to a tall slender woman. As I approached, I could see that the woman seemed ill at ease. Just as I passed the woman said, “I’m sorry, no, no,” or words to that effect and turned and marched quickly away. The man immediately turned his attention to me, even though I was a pace or two past him by then.

“Excuse me, please?”

I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to get my cider home and get the ham into it, as Delia prescribes. But I did stop. I’m a stopper, I guess. I stopped, turned, and looked back.

The man was from some part of Asia, I reckoned, India at a guess but I’m not great as detailed assessments of this nature. He was mid-thirties and a little dishevelled, as if he had recently come off one of the buses.

“I scared her, I think,” he said, nodding to the rapidly disappearing back of the tall woman as she ascended the hill.

“Did you?” I asked, slightly warily.

“Yes.”

The conversation dangled then, which was not a good look for me as I had to get on.

“Can I help you?” I asked. It seemed to be the best thing to do. In truth, I anticipated a lengthy pitch followed by a plea for some money. This expectation was not born from considerations of race or appearance or even demeanour. I’ve been around for a while and bus stop adjacent queries are generally either about directions or money and the direction queries usually get asked quicker than how this was going.

The man spoke.

“I need to find Tutu House,” he said. His accent was heavy. I tried to extrapolate some meaningful information from his query but largely failed.

“Sorry, where?”

“Tutu House. It was here last week and now it has gone.”

As I stood talking with the man, I started to get a faint scent of alcohol from him. He was smiling and coherent and amenable but I was still wary of the pitch that seemed to be inevitably coming. If that were the case, I needed him to get on with it so that I could refuse and escape. All good, except what and where was he looking for?

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where Tutu house is.”

He pointed back up the hill.

“It was there and now it has gone.”

If he had angled his pointing arm a few degrees towards the east, he would have been pointing directly towards the hospital. Was Tutu House some facility annexed to the hospital, perhaps the man needed urgent care.

“Is it at the hospital?”

The man beamed.

“No. No hospital. My girlfriend bought it for me. It is my very first time.”

My mind swam. Was Tutu house some kind of pop up Christmas brothel and was the girlfriend the type who gave unorthodox presents? Although I wanted to be done with this, it was also just a little bit intriguing. If the guy was a ‘pitcher’ then he was taking too long to get to it. Ninety percent of his pitches for money would end in nothing so he had to get through them quickly in order to get to one that paid. I am not a payer and I think that was probably self-evident. I’m also usually fairly good at reading people and what I was getting here was that the guy needed directions to Tutu House and nothing more. I tried harder for him.

“What is Tutu House?” I asked.

The man extended his forearm and tapped his inner elbow with the first two fingers of his other hand, as if he were bringing up a vein. This brought me some supposed clarity. The man was seeking a drug rehab unit. Great, the only problem was I had not the first clue where it was. I pulled out my phone, hit Google Maps and entered Tutu House without much hope of success. I was not disappointed. Well, I was. There was nothing to see. All the while the man stood and smiled and me.

“It is my first one,” he said, “fingers still on forearm, my girlfriend bought it for me. I will have many.”

A small light was dawning in my head. I looked at him and he looked at me.

The clouds parted.

“You want the tattoo shop,” I said.

“Yes! Tutu House. My first. My girlfriend_”

I grabbed him by the elbow. I knew where it was and I was delighted to have solved the puzzle. We set off back up the hill, smiling at each other inanely. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around a long time. I knew this could still be a just pitch that would be made at the front door of Tutu House but I comforted myself by knowing the guy wouldn’t get a red cent from me if this all turned out to be just another money-gaining charade.

We arrived at the Tattoo House. As I had suspected, it was closed up tight for the holidays. Seeing it was closed and fearing how the discussion might evolve from here (I pictured the man tucking into turkey at my kitchen table) I bade him a hasty farewell and a Happy Christmas and went on my way, leaving him peering into the darkened shopfront.

But I wasn’t leaving him entirely adrift. There was another Tutu House just down the way, smaller and lesser-known, and I intended to go down there and, if it was open, I was going to walk back and bring the guy there. But, as I looked back from down the street, the side door to Tutu House opened and, after a few words, the man stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Tesco was a bit manic, as was to be expected, but thinking about Tutu House kept me smiling throughout the visit.

A New Year, Sliced Very Thin

In our family, when required, we tend to drop little hints about what we might like as presents. Nothing binding or pressure-inducing. In fact, it’s intended to reduce the pressure of moments such as the recently passed festive season. To save a little running blindly around the shops. There is always room for a little surprise or two but our hints to each other tend to grease the wheel a little and that is no bad thing.

Late last year, the odd little hints I dropped to my sons and to my lovely wife all worked out well. I like the hints to be odd (well I would, wouldn’t I?). It adds a little grist to that already greased wheel.

For my elder son, I hinted at some kind of tool to sharpen my kitchen knives. To my shame, I have no device to sharpen my kitchen knives and, as a result, they are a disgrace to humanity. Bearing little resemblance to cutting and slicing implements, they are more like plates of metal that I press onto meat and vegetables in the hope that it will somehow separate them into smaller pieces. My present, therefore, was a nifty little device with three grooves which you run your knives through and from which they come out keener and altogether more worthy of the title ‘knife.’ But my Eldest went further, generous soul that he is. He bought me a whole new set of knives. Korean and deadly, they were among the sexiest presents I ever received. In receiving them, I demanded the completion of a ritualistic transaction that is pure superstition. Something I have no belief at all in. But still, I wanted it done. The reason for this is fairly simple. If my mother were still alive, she would have absolutely demanded that it be done. Like hats on the bed or new shoes on the table, it is a superstitious observation that has no place in a modern household… except it does.

So what was it, this transaction?

In addition ot the gift, I requested that John also produce a coin and give it to me along with the knives. This coin was then promptly returned to him and so the superstition was allayed. The old and obviously dubious wisdom is that a new knife, given as a gift, could potentially slice through the friendship between the giver and the receiver. A proffered coin, once returned to the giver, made the knives into a purchase rather than a gift and this removed the danger of any cut ties. Pure bullshit, obviously, but kind of cool and old fashioned as well. An acknowledgement of our past and of the good people who inhabited it.

I love my new knives. Their ability to cut things is beyond compare and I particularly love giving each one a little extra run through my new sharpener before each use, rather like Anthony the Butcher does in his shop down the town.

One of Patricia’s little presents probably doesn’t qualify as a hint at all. The only real hint was my undeniable incompetence at using the version I had before I got this new one. The present? A left handed can opener. I am very left-handed and although I am well-conditioned to operate in this right-handed world of ours, some things have always been awkward. That’s not quite right. Nothing ever really felt awkward until I was shown a left handed version of the same thing. Then, the ease at which I could use the new version showed me how literally ‘cack-handed’ I was with the right handed version. Recently, my grappling with a regular tin opener over the sink (to avoid unseemly spatter and spillage) was a clear indication of what I needed for Christmas. I used to have one of these gadgets before, in London times, but I lost it somewhere along the way. It used to provide two particular delights to me. First, and rather obviously, it would make it easy for me to open a tin but secondly, and less obviously, it would bring me pleasure when I handed it to someone in my kitchen and asked them to open a tin for me. Their confusion and ineptitude with the left handed device always made me feel better about myself. As a side note, I also got a pair of left handed scissors. These do not seem significantly better or worse than the regular versions. Perhaps an inevitable level of ambidextrousness had crept into my life in this regard.

My younger son would be the first to suggest that my present hint was a little inexpensive but, no matter, if is very much what I wanted and I have it now and it means more to me than you might immediately imagine. The present was a copy of the December 16^th, 2024, edition of the New Yorker magazine. My younger son lives and works in Brooklyn now, on a graduate visa, and he was home for a few days at Christmas. This is what I wanted and this, among other things, is what he brought. To me, it’s a lovely little treasure. On the cover, a portly red figure, trimmed with white fur, is carrying his heavy red sack up the steps of a subway station. A tall New York building towers over the exit at the top of the steps. The image, by Eric Drooker, is called ‘A Seasonal Delivery’ and it has a lovely retro fifties feel to it. The magazine itself is surprisingly small and lightweight. Oddly, the contents excite me less than the item itself. It is a piece of New York, from the streets of New York, and my younger son went there and brought it back for me. It will grace my desk for a long time, I think.

I hope the New Year is kind to us all, insofar as humanly possible, and I wish you all a really happy one.