Sunday, August 23, 2009

Hostel on Inishbofin






Treated my wife and kids to a no-expenses spared trip to Inishbofin Island last week. We stayed in the only Hostel on the Island ("blue baskets for your food and write your name on the milk carton - we've had some problems lately") - remarkable similarities to when I trooped around Ireland with you guys and a few other other misfits back in 1973 and 1974. It was all to come back then - 36 years and counting.
Art McCooey running to Killarney with a 15 ton rucksack, Richard Hudson stroking pussy in Black Valley, Gerry (was it you?) ripping the blanket off the Maharishi somewhere along the line, first drinks in Corrantouhill and robbing potatoes on the way home. Riding a tractor for hours into some arsehole of a place and letting the Sea Scouts ruin our food in Foulksrath Castle.
And if I sat round the fire and talked of some of these simple pleasures to my kids, they'd have said we were fucking mad. And you know we weren't - not in the slightest. Electricity arrived on Inishbofin in 1982.