Finding the ‘write’ way to be joyful again
LAST year was a big year for me in a number of ways, and always wary of the notion that things come in threes I was happy to see in the New Year.
The previous 12 months had not been too kind, me Mam died, my wife left and then we lost the irreplaceable Peter ‘Oaf’ Bromhall before Christmas. Some present that was Santa, but in the words of Oaf (who has featured so many times in these columns), ‘We’re not here for a long time Woody, we’re here for a good time’.
He was right of course, and in amongst the heartache there has been some real joy, which so far is continuing.
For example, as of last year I had written thousands of articles over four decades and published around two million words, but I had never written a book or a play - and I’ve now done both.
The book, The Crowden Years Volume 1, will be published by LB-Ink Publishing sometime soon and the play with songs, ‘The Angel On O’Connell Street’, has already been performed five times in England and Ireland, and is set to make its debut in Manchester at the beginning of the biggest Irish Festival in the world, at the Irish World Heritage Centre on Friday, March 2.
The difference between writing a play and a book of 90,000 words is not so great, as there needs to be a beginning, a middle and an end. However, unlike a five or six hundred word article, you need to take great care with how the whole thing links up and flows. It was a great learning curve and one aspect I have really enjoyed has been the chance to expand on themes you can normally only touch on.
Many of the themes readers will recognise; wildlife, countryside, Ireland and so on.
In the play, one of the Bronze Angels on Daniel O’Connell’s statue in Dublin swaps places with Tommy Mac, a musician, and she goes off in search of the ‘real’ Ireland with her Irish wolfhound Old Cotter, while Tommy sits high above the people on O’Connell Street and reflects on the ups and downs of his own life.
Tommy talks about his time on the uninhabited island of Oilean Maisean... ‘When the cuckoo is set fair for Africa, and her deeds on Maisean are done, her plump offspring will sit and wait, before making their own way south to September lands, that is, if the black-backs who sit as kings amongst the orchids, like penguins unperturbed by man, do not dine first’.
Later in the play the narrator describes how the Angel sets off in a boat…. ‘Pushing off, and the whale-back hull left tell-tale tracks on the beach as the Angel’s compass directed the hanger of pictures. Disturbed, the deep diving shags cut through the lime-green breakers and white sand spun to the surface in a frothyfiligree as the old boat lurched seaward and sliced in half the aquamarine crest of an Aran-bound wavelet. The Angel cheered the boys with tales of brown bears snuffling in the Ailwee Cave and of shell middens fresh uncovered in the dune, where sits the remains of a meal last touched by Beaker Man’. ●● Tickets for the play are available from the Irish World Heritage Centre or from https://www. eventbrite.com/e/ the-angel-on-oconnellstreet-tickets40143052952