Tommy Tiernan

The Tommy Tiernan column

Taking to the road, with family in tow

I’m a great man for work. Not the traipsing into an office to take the burden of some other man’s obsession on, to labour for him all day; no, not that kind at all. I’ve never had the gift for that type of drudgery. Not filling-thedishwasher work either — though, in fairness, I do love getting coal and bringing blocks in. What I mean is the doing of stuff that I want to do, which is mainly just talking.

Conversation as a creative act, or ranting left, right and centre up on a stage, ’tis as natural to me as breathing; and to be able to make my way through mortgages and pony-club fees by doing it, is a great boon to me altogether. I don’t know what state I’d be in without it.

Sometimes, though, I’m not reckless enough. I get trammed in by groupthink. When a beautiful irresponsibility gets offered to me by my own imagination, I’m often afraid of it. Easier to go along with the herd. Easier to do the done thing. But, as a parent, surely part of my remit is to be a memory maker? Surely in our time of breathing, I owe more to the opportunities for adventure than I do to the dull gods of conformity and habit?

So here goes. I am blessed by the fact that I can travel abroad for my work. But are my children? What do they gain from the fact that daddy is away again in Timbuktu, talking to strangers? Well, the benefit is this: either you come back with stories, or you take them with you, the kids. I’ve been dreaming up a world tour recently. But flying long-distance now feels toxic to me. A dirty enterprise of bad fuel spluttered through the gorgeous air. And hopping quickly from one white enterprise city to another in rapid succession is to partake in a groundhog day of capitalist repetition. There is a sameness to many parts of the world when you travel like this. City centres, airports and hotels echo off each other the world over. And besides, I miss the kids too much... so.

Let’s do it overland, with the children. All six of them and me missus and meself will take the boat from Southampton to New York. I’ll do a show or two there, and then we’ll train to Boston and Chicago. The tour will be entirely profitless, fiscally speaking, but in terms of story and experience, we’ll be loaded. We’ll choo-choo to Toronto, and across the Rockies to Vancouver. Doing shows for the exiles wherever I go. Down to California, and then a long crossing by sea again to New Zealand.

There’d be no schoolin’, no keeping up with whatever’s happening in Galway. No mobile phones or Snapchat. There’d be cameras alright, and notebooks and road. Miles and miles of road. And talking and crying and looking at stars. And meltdowns and stomach trouble. And desert heat and whales at night. And, overall, a deep appreciation of the wonder of it. We will have shed the sins of settlement, the neuroses that box-house living brought down on our heads. And we’ll drive each other mental, but sure don’t we do that anyway?

Shows in Sydney, and then the hiring of a motorhome to drive across the continent to Perth and, before we know it, sailing again to Cape Town.

And then, the journey of journeys, from South Africa to Paris. What a trip, lads, what a trip. And all of it, all of it hard and all of it wonderful, feeding into the children, and when Daddy’s dead and gone, many years from now, they’ll sit around a table and say, “The madness of it, wasn’t it phenomenal?”

And we’d arrive back in Ireland, hungry for Galway and a walk on the prom. Aching, we’d be at this stage, for familiar faces and rain. The bills’d be waiting, too. Gone for three months and not a penny to show for it. And stern reprimands from the Department of Education and the grass in the back in need of a mow.

What could possibly go wrong? The only virtue for staying at home is that at least you’re used to the pains that it causes you. You’re being hurt in the places you’ve been hurt before.

And you have no stories out of it. So go the road, go the road for yourself, if you have the chance.

“Miles and miles of road. And talking and crying and looking at stars. And meltdowns and stomach trouble”