The Irish Tales

The following tales were made up every night by me to send my daughter off to sleep snugly, when she was about five or six.
She recently asked me to commit them to print, so that she could read them to her two boys, Alex and Charlie.
And here they are............................................

The Life and Times of Patsy Scaremonster.

Chapter One


Once upon a bedroom, when boys were boys, girls were girls and packs of foxhounds roamed ...

The end of the road.
　
There were 10 or 12 of us; I can’t remember clearly now, after this time.
But, we were all riding race-prepped bikes and pumped full of adrenaline on leaving Assen.
And we needed to get to the Hook by 7.30pm.
Why ? Because England were playing Germany in a qualifier for the European Championship and most of us wanted to watch it before we boarded the ferry home.

And so began the most insane ride I’ve ever been on.
Once on the ...

The Long Road Back, to Assen. (Part three)


Without a shadow of a doubt, someone was watching over The Crow and I that weekend.
During the most intensive 48 hours I can remember, we both enjoyed moments of extreme peril, only to escape with a single, improbable bound.
Deux ex machina ? You’d think so, were this a fictional story.
Read on and see what you think, my anonymous friends.

Let’s start with the weather : both days, the ride to and from ...

Second Life (23)
The long road back, to Assen. (Part Two)
　
Peering through the fog of the years, some things, some people, some events, are will o’ the wisps, chimeras; unreal but possible, cloudy at the centre, vague at the edges. I grope for a hold on them, but they slip through my fingers like un-earned money.
Others are pin-sharp and succulent and no sooner called to memory than they appear, as if it were only yesterday.
My father, my mother, my first lover…. ...

Second Life (22)
The long road back, to Assen.
　
The neurologist had the last laugh. I was discharged from Charing Cross hospital, (which is nowhere near Charing Cross) one sunny day in September and walking to the main road to hail a cab nearly finished me.
I just couldn’t walk in a straight line and fell over twice, as my battered inner ear got it’s left, right, up and down all in a dither.
Added to this, all sounds were distorted and booming and when people ...