The Irish Tales

If ever I need reminding of my First Life, it is there before me as I type.
30 or so framed photographs, covered in dust, (some of it no doubt Columbian in nature) pinned to the wall in my study.It’s all there; the horses, the motorbikes, the men, the women, the children, the dogs and the drunks. If ever I want my ego boosted, all I have to do is look up.
Likewise, if ever I wish to know the truth, all I have to do is look for the un-framed photos in the files.
The pictures which show me grabbing a saddle in despair, which show me hard on the brakes after coming in too hot at the Loop, the one where only my legs and torso stick out of the manure heap I was dumped in, those dreadful "red-eyed" pics taken with a very old camera at some death-in somewhere – or was it that old ?
Sometimes I think it would be fun to take down the current lot and get all the duff ones framed and hung.
Then I think of the cost of the framing, not to mention the blow to my ego ( a delicate thing at the best of times) and I drift off to sleep again.
There is one picture though, which I would never take down.
Shot just as dusk is falling at a polocrosse ground outside Dublin,it shows my daughter, her pony for the day and my old mucker Thomas. Jay looks reassuringly young,(about 17, I believe ?) and so does Tom.
It was the day that Diana was killed, I do remember that; we heard the news on the radio at a diner on the way up and we all fell about laughing, thinking it was a stunt.
It pissed down all day, but two things made it memorable : Ivor’s boot-bar, which came equipped with gin, tonic, lemons, ice and glasses.
And Jay,Tom and I reaching the semi-finals of the All-Ireland Championship, more by luck and drunken bravado than skill, I ought to add.
We lost 2-1, but Jay’s goal was a cracker. She leant underneath her pony’s belly to score, western-stylee, then promptly fell off and the pony sat down on her.
I was laughing so hard, I missed the re-start, attempted to join in the melee near our goal and an invisible hand graped my boot and tipped me neatly out of the saddle. (That’s against the rules, but the rules are few and oipen to interpretation.)
My only memory of that was Tom, galloping by, calling me every kind of cunt and with a lit cigarette stuck to his lower lip. This is Ireland, remember.
Five years or so later, Tom was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Five years after that, I went to Tom’s wedding, as his best man.
He looked a little greyer, a little more drawn, but drank as much as ever and started fights with the same glee.
As his cancer goes into remission for the umpteen time, he has become something of a medical curiosity in Wexford.
He refuses point blank to have any kind of chemo or radio therapy, will only take the most basic of medicines and copes with the bad days using his best friend, Jamieson. The doctors give him six months or six years, depending on which one you talk to and how long they’ve been drinking with Tom at Denny’s bar.
He’s taken to texting me late at night, with every text beginning "Rossiter, you fucking English prick."
I point out that I am also half-Irish and he sneers at me.
I sneer back.
He, too, is in his Second Life. Not that you’d know. And I used to believe I was the only immortal one left.
I hope I’m proved wrong for many years to come yet.