Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? Page 9

  The thing was it felt more like England than the Ireland I always carried around in my head. Perhaps this was a good thing, showing me the common ground. But I was disappointed. There was a names survey centre there, which comprised a computer and a kind middle-aged woman with specs and a patient smile. Huddles of curious North Americans shuffled about, then the bravest would say their name. She’d obviously made many people very happy already that day.

  ‘Hot dangit Mary-Beth, we’re related to James Joyce!’

  ‘Wah, thyers wonnerful Heyank!’

  I wanted to have a go. Me me. English surnames are usually prosaic, said the kind lady. I didn’t think my name was prosaic, bottom lip sticking out. We don’t usually bother putting English surnames on the computer because traditionally they either denote a job or a place. I did my upset face.

  Kind Lady with Computer: OK, what’s your name?

  Me: (with triumphant smile) Bradford.

  Kind Lady with Computer: See what I mean?

  Me: (upset face) What?

  Kind Lady with Computer: Well, your family are from Bradford.

  Me: (with triumphant smile) Yes but it’s not the Bradford you think it is.

  Kind Lady with Computer: It’s in the north of England, Yorkshire.

  Me: (with triumphant smile) Aha! No, we’re from Bradford on Avon. (Half smile.) Possibly.

  Kind Lady with Computer: How do you know?

  Me: (no smile) Hmm. Isn’t there a Bradford in Ireland?

  Kind Lady with Computer: I’m afraid not – but there’s a Broadford.

  Me: (with triumphant smile) Ah well – I’m nearly Irish then.

  I have to come to terms with the fact that my surname is just sort of solid and uninspiring – Bradford is from Anglo Saxon and means ‘crossing in the river’. It’s also derived from the Norman Bras de Fer – ‘Iron Arm’. It could be more interesting with a little bit of fine tuning. On one trip over with Ryanair I received not only a ticket in my name to my address in Parfrey Street but also one for Mr T. Bravesford of Parsley Street as well. I phoned up Ryanair to sort it out. They said I had also paid for Mr Bravesford. But there is no Mr Bravesford. Well why did you buy a ticket for him? I didn’t. Well you did because it’s down on the computer. I would have to write to them and send the ticket to head office in Dublin, or else go in and see them personally. I then got it into my head for some reason that in a parallel universe I was called Tab Bravesford. This Tab Bravesford was a slightly more dashing and adventurous version of myself and had somehow punctured this world so that the two realities were coexisting somehow, and was travelling in Ireland simultaneously with me.

  If ever you (and your similarly-named alter ego) fly Ryanair, check out the inflight magazine. Tucked away at the back is an advert for the world registry of surnames, which supposedly tells you everything you need to know about your family name – ridiculous products like this are cashing in on people’s rootless existence, people who want to know the past, what they are from and who they are. Yet I suppose in a way they don’t go far enough – how about a potato with your name engraved on it in gold leaf? A singing leprechaun with your family crest that sings your name to the tune of ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’?

  I have also often wondered if there is an Irish version of ‘Tim’. I know a few Irish blokes called Tim but everyone seems to call them Timmy. An Irish guy called Barney the Cocktail Maker used to call me Taigh. The trouble with the name Tim is it’s not very impressive, coming as it does from a Greek name meaning ‘follower of God’ – it’s also too similar to the Latin ‘timorous’. That kind of reputation sticks – how many ferocious characters in history have been called Timothy? King Tim? Tim Hitler? Genghis Tim? Tim the Impaler. Tim the Lionheart. Tim the Terrible (mmm, not bad). Timorous. Timid. Tim the Conqueror. Tim the Great. Tim Bonaparte. I have never been interested in reading articles about tennis but once saw a Martin Amis piece about Tim Henman and he basically said what I already knew – Tims don’t put the fear of God into anybody. Your name is like a shop front and people make assumptions about you because of it – Tab Bravesford could be a tough and exciting travel writer, Tim Bradford – which, literally means ‘follower of God at the crossing of the river’ – sounds like a respectable lawyer in a small country town.1

  I had to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing remotely Celtic about me. Or in the way I sounded – Irish speech always gave me hellish problems too. To me Irish has always sounded not just like a language from another country but a language from another planet. I was once in a little pub in Spiddal, outside Galway, which is in the Irish-speaking area (Gaeltacht), and found myself listening to the locals who were speaking about a recent Man United game. They were all middle-aged blokes – one was huge, bull-necked, red-faced, close-cropped white hair, the other the same age but with a wild mop of black curly hair; the third older, about seventy-five, long nose, cap, leather skin. After buying a pint I slowly sidled up the bar until I could listen in on the conversation.

  Bull Neck: fnah snah a gorraa sna blah aa snah Ryan Giggs snah fnoor a snah blah blah mnar Manchester United.

  Curly: fnah snoor mnoor a snoo a mnaa a gn Roy Keane snaa.

  Big Nose: Bnaa ffoo munoora blah fnaa Roy Keane?

  Curly: Roy Keane nadir smir fir.

  Bull Neck: Ha ha … Roy Keane i Ryan Giggs snaa foloor moor a snoo fmaa.

  Big Nose and Curly: Ha ha ha ha.

  Gaelic Irish is an early Indo-European language, one of the Celtic tongues related to Cornish, Breton and Welsh and from which sprung Manx and Scottish. I’ve picked up two or three little phrases which come in mighty handy when I’m travelling round one of the Gaeltachts: cupán tae – cup of tea, cáca milis – slice of cake, mo ghrá tú – I love you.2 Though they weren’t really much help with the lads in Spiddal – I didn’t really fancy getting personal with Bull Neck.

  The thing is, I’m a totally lazy linguist.3 I won’t do drills if I can learn something quick. I once tried a book called Learn Spanish With Paul Daniels. Obviously, I think Paul Daniels is not a talented person but if he could let me in on the secrets of language I’d go with it. But of course, he couldn’t. I bought a CD rom for my computer called Learn Irish. You press on a picture and a voice says the word in Irish then you have to say it as well through a microphone. It’s pre-school stuff but very challenging for me. A few years ago I bought a twelve-tape language course called something like Hippy Meditation Higher Consciousness Zen Learn French in a Week Without Doing any Work You Lazy Bastard which came in a big box with a big thick book. The idea was based on a concept called Accelerated Learning. With classical music playing in the background the student is expected to take in and understand the new language subliminally. I can just imagine a French oral exam using this stuff – OK, now, Marie-Claude wants to reach a higher state of mind but doesn’t know the way. Can you direct her? Turn right at the charcuterie and left at the boulangerie and it’s at the end of the street.

  I found out from experience that there’s no substitute for being thrown in at the deep end. A couple of weeks hanging around with gruff French farmer types, tractor-driving weightlifters with purple noses and flat caps in Normandy pastis bars soon put hairs on my chest and verbs in my head. I could say the words, but whereas they made them sound like love poetry, my East Midlands voice box simply mangled them.

  The Celtic peoples simply have more attractive voices. Kind of sing-songy. What’s attractive in England? Cockney certainly isn’t. Manchester isn’t. Norfolk can be OK and sing-songy but Norwich is harsh. Geordie is OK, Brummie is terrible. East Midlands nondescript. Yorkshire blunt. West Country sounds thick. A lot of English people can mimic accents from other parts of the country and thus think that Irish accents are easy to copy. They’ve heard Mícheál O’Hehir doing the Irish Grand National, Johnny Giles’ staccato Dublin and Eamon Dunphy’s camp drawl when watching Irish games in pubs; they’ve seen the Hollywood films with Americans attempting a country Irish brogue. A
s for me, I’d always presumed I was brilliant at Irish accents, but I’ve only ever managed to remotely copy three people – Frank Carson, my uncle Cyril (although he’s not my real uncle), and the former footballer David O’Leary (currently manager of Leeds United but by the time this book comes out, who knows where he’ll be, maybe a fisherman diving for Dublin Bay prawns out near Howth, perhaps with my uncle Cyril captaining the boat – actually David O’Leary has a good physique for prawn diving – long and slender with an elongated neck for peering round giant clams or shipwrecks). My Dublin sounded like a melange of Scouse and Manchester, my Cork sounded Pakistani, my Ian Paisley sounded like Geoff Boycott. This is what I’ve been told, of course. By other people. As far as I’m concerned my accents are totally great.

  Perhaps I just don’t have the vowel sounds to do Celtic voices. All I can do is say ‘boy’ in a Cork accent and ‘nothing’ in a Dublin accent. My own accent is too flat. In Lincoln-shirese you can talk while drinking a pint because it’s mostly through the nose. Lincolnshire is mostly just flat fields and small, 50cc Yamaha motorbikes (the yammy fizz) – and the accent has developed sounding like the engines of these bikes, a nasal whine – particularly amongst bikers themselves. (Though I could never be sure whether the bikers talked like their bikes, or the bikes sounded like the bikers.) A similar thing happened in rural Norfolk, where people’s voices sound like the sheep that they tend. In London, the accent sounds like their indigenous species, the evening newspaper seller. Upper-class English people sound like horses and that’s mostly what they do all day – in feudal times the posh lads would have been the only ones with horses, after all. In Northern Ireland they made ships so their voices sound like foghorns. Dubliners sound like Scousers because of the popularity of the Beatles in the 1960s.

  Apparently in London now you have more chance of getting a job with an Irish accent than if you are a local.4 This is partly to do with the fact that the Irish education system is thought to be better than the English. Like France it doesn’t focus too narrowly on either the sciences or the arts and thus perhaps produces more well-rounded students, but this is not the main reason. It’s simply the way they talk. Irish people sound intelligent and enthusiastic and sharp. Or maybe it’s just the mad eyes which intimidate potential employers at the interview stage.

  In Adare my favourite reading matter was a guidebook to hotels in Ireland. I had become fascinated by the various hoteliers’ faces. I almost wanted to go to these establishments solely to gaze at their impressively idiosyncratic physiognomies. Big noses, broken noses, big jaws, little eyes, big eyes, no necks, five necks – I ended up phoning a fantastic-looking couple at Hanratty’s Hotel in Limerick to ask if I could come and stare at them. No, they said, so I asked for a room instead.

  I looked down the street and saw a red-faced bearded man in a jobo jacket staring at me from about thirty yards away. He then walked towards me and muttered ‘beautiful day’ as he passed. He stopped about three or four yards away, bobbing his head like a duck. I looked up and he was just staring at me. Then he coughed and started up a conversation.

  ‘Smoke? Smoke? Smoke?’

  I looked up and smiled, forcedly, then looked down.

  ‘Smoke? Smoke? Smoke?’ he said again.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said, still smiling weakly and wishing I was somewhere else. He shook his head. ‘Smoke? Smoke? Smoke?’

  ‘Ah no,’ I said, ‘I don’t smoke. I haven’t got any.’ My smile was now stuck. I think he thinks I like him, I thought. Or, I then thought, he thinks I thinks he thinks I like him.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and nodded. My smile was hurting now. He shuffled over to me, his medieval-looking rags flowing in the gentle breeze.

  Red-faced Beardy: ‘Is that a watch? I’ve got a watch.’

  Me: (smiling like a mad skull) It’s a compass.

  Red-faced Beardy: What’s a compass?

  Me: It shows directions. It stops me getting lost.

  Red-faced Beardy: Eh?

  Me: Well, if I’m lost it shows me where to go.

  Red-faced Beardy: Eh?

  Me: Well, say I’m up a mountain and it’s foggy I could find my way back to a village.

  Red-faced Beardy: Which village?

  Me: That’s not the point.

  Red-faced Beardy: Eh? Does it tell people where you are?

  Me: No.

  Red-faced Beardy: Mmm.

  He was clearly unimpressed. He bobbed his head like a duck, staring down at the compass. I paused for a while then he started to tell me about the Limerick bus that we were waiting for. Well, I understood the words ‘bus’ and ‘Limerick’ – the rest was wasted on me.

  He pointed at his wrist and smiled.

  ‘North!’ I said, pointing at my compass and looking up the street.

  ‘Eh?’ he said.

  ‘That way is north.’ I was jabbing my finger now.

  It’s a top technique. Out-mad the mad person – it usually works, and Red-faced Beardy looked at me as if I had just escaped from some secure institution, then shuffled away back to his corner. A couple of minutes later a tall guy who looked like an ex-surfer New-Agey type ambled up and said ‘All right’ in a strong Antipodean accent (My disguise – it worked!).

  ‘Smoke? Smoke? Smoke?’ said Red-faced Beardy, ambling up to the newcomer as if trying to kiss him. The fellow immediately walked straight off back down the street without looking back or uttering a word. Red-faced Beady looked puzzled, looked at me, then muttered a sheepish ‘Eh?’

  ‘South!’ I grinned, pointing at my wrist, then at the rapidly retreating Australian.

  * * *

  1 My uncle’s name is also Tim Bradford and he is a respectable lawyer in a small country town – he obviously has an understanding of the ways of the universe which I lack.

  2 Very recently Irish has become an official curriculum language in English schools. Which is some kind of victory when you think about it.

  3 At school I learned that Henry VIII could speak five languages – English for sensible things, French when trying to get off with a member of the opposite sex, Italian for explaining to the police that it was the other guy’s fault, officer, he jumped a red light, German for not understanding jokes and Spanish for exclaiming with joy as you chuck a donkey or goat off a church tower. The attitude to languages in England is such that many people are lucky to come out of high school with the ability to ask for a couple of beers and the way to the football ground. No wonder back in the eighties English football fans spent years rampaging around Europe. They only wanted to go to the toilet, but didn’t know how to ask.

  4 Irish Post 26.9.98, ‘An Irish accent is good for business’, by Paul Gribben.

  Looking for an All-encompassing Theory of the Universe in a Hurling Match

  Limerick to Thurles

  I have always loved the Victorian parts of towns near railway stations. Parts which have nearly always seen better days. Large red brick hotels, oversized pubs, once-genteel boarding houses now flaking and peeling, the smell of strong cider in the air. There’s always a Railway Hotel where once upon a time you would have been guaranteed a good basic room with a wash basin, but now you get wall-to-wall satellite sports programming, garish coloured chalk menus on blackboards, a thousand kinds of heavily chemicalled draught lager and a fight, if you are so inclined.

  Limerick railway station was an interesting mixture of big-nosed farmers, evil alcoholic villains and full-lipped long-haired Eurobabe backpackers. One interesting thing I noticed in Limerick is that backpacks are getting smaller. Maybe the Eurotraveller, particularly the Eurobabe backpacker, doesn’t use as much stuff, or maybe their clothes are getting skimpier. Anyway, the backpacks are now tiny. Personally I think it’s connected to the dumbing-down of our culture, people just don’t read as much anymore. In the old days a traveller would take a variety of reading matter to keep himself occupied. A small library, containing some classics, poetry, local travel writing, guidebook, Ulysses by Joyce (if in Irela
nd), À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust (if in France), Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less by Archer (if in England), a bible, a foreign language dictionary, a nineteenth-century novel, some Shakespeare, a post-modern writer and a history book. Now your average backpacker just goes down to the local Internet café, downloads whatever information they’ll need for that day, then sits in a coffee bar and talks gibberish about pop stars at 100 mph.

  This railway district has undercurrents and overtones – or undertones and overcurrents – of violence purely because of its inner-city feel, its grimy shabbiness. It probably comes from reading too many Dickens novels, though in fairness I’ve only read three. Old-fashioned violence as well, a Victorian blade between your ribs. There’s something intensely frightening about knives, something ancient and magical that sends a shiver up your spine. You can understand Queensberry Rules, a kick in the guts or even a headbutt now and then as the acceptable risks of bumping into people at nightclubs or, say, taking the piss out of a sixteen-stone skinhead’s Lambretta1 in a dodgy part of Birmingham, but there’s something darkly, secretly evil about knives, something silent and deadly.