Twink
“Has light entertainment been a trap?” Eamonn Dunphy asked his radio guest last Saturday morning. He was fishing for regrets, and he caught a big juicy one:
“I really regret not being a very fine surgeon,” she answered. “I would love to have done neurosurgery.”
Ah Jays, I thought, wouldn’t we all. Who hasn’t reached middle age and not stopped to assess the journey.
Aside: reminds me of a t-shirt slogan I saw during the week – “Ireland, Been There, Done That, Bought The Taoiseach”. Don’t know about you, but it made me laugh.) Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah, middle-age – you’ve negotiated half your life, juggled joy and sorrow, balanced sometimes being an eejit, with being sensible, learned to earn a buck, pay your way and even tackle the DIY. You can’t help but wonder, gosh, all this and I can hang a picture using nothing but rawl plugs, nails, a hammer and intuition - maybe I could have applied my marvellous abilities to better effect? I never considered it when I was doing The Leaving Cert, but how hard can it be to captain a Jumbo, asset-strip your way into the private-equity billionaire club, or, like the good lady on the radio, don a head-doctor’s wellies and green jumpsuit, and lead a team of awe-struck assistants into the skull of an ailing patient?
Well that begs another question: Hypothetically, would anyone be happy to let Twink loose on their hypothalamus? For it was indeed she, doyen of The Irish Panto, who was wistfully wondering about her parallel self – the Top Medic.
Twink went on to say that, if she could, she’d be happy to leave showbiz and all it’s trapping behind, and devote herself full time to her passion – sugar craft. “I would devote myself to flying to conferences around the world to see how different things are done,” she continued, in the same breath. If Eamonn found the juxtaposition of these revelations extraordinary he wasn’t letting on. He zipped up his lippies. At home, I too, was dumbfounded:
I had an image of her, in full Widow Twanky get-up, trepanning some unfortunate cranium with a Black and Decker drill, then shouting to her assistant (Mike Murphy in a fetching surgery mask and pirate’s eye-patch?) – “icing pipe”. Inserting the funnel into the fresh hole in the head, she proceeds to robustly pump in the sugar, explaining – “today I’m using Fondant instead of Royal, a tip I picked up in Hong Kong last week. Or was it Mullingar?” Sounds like a dyslexic’s career dream, to be an expert in brain sugary. Attending international confections.
Yes, her stream-of-consciousness wish-list may have sounded bonkers, but not half as bonkers as life itself, as it pans out.
Later that day I was browsing in Hodges Figges on Dawson Street when I noticed a big pink book poking out of The Irish Romance section. Nothing extraordinary in that, the sweetie-pie cover on the sugary fiction. Except that, even though I have never, ever read a romantic novel, indeed loath the very notion, I knew this book. I knew it inside out, upside down, cover to cover, backwards. Because I WROTE IT! After three years concentrating on writing prose fiction, with one novel binned under the bed, I managed to get a novel published last year. (Not my first novel, I joke: The first one was crap, it went straight to tape.) I thought I was writing a searing satire on the received perception of modern Irish womanhood, but nope, it was just a silly story of love thwarted and aborted, apparently. I was Twink-like in my aspirations when I set off on the novel path. It was up a mountain and I was headed for the top. Head down, resolved, after a long and arduous trek I got there. Phew! I stood to catch my breath and the publishers shouted up: “sure you’ve only conquered a drumlin, ya big eejit. We were expecting the Sugar Loaf, at least.” “Good night, and good luck” they added, and they weren’t talking about the George Clooney film.
“Has light entertainment been a trap?” Eamonn Dunphy will never ask me, but I’ll answer anyway Eamo. Yes, it can be. You get known for one thing, for me it was the seven years creating, producing, writing and performing The Nualas, and then you attempt to garner all that success, and carry on in a manner than honours all your effort, and encompasses all your experience: It’s uncharted territory, you’ve the benefit of knowledge that only comes with age – you’re older, but you’re starting again. And everyone sees you as a clown! You want to climb other mountains – or things - “but can you do it in those big silly shoes?” everyone wonders. Even you. That’s the madey-up biz I’m in.
As D’Unbelievables might tell ya, “dat’s life”. As Edith Piaf would have it, “no, bother regretting rien”. As Mr. Flintstone noted, “yabadabadoo.” Eamonn, if you were to ask me what I think of the past, I’d go: Well, as Twink’s audience would say, “it’s behind you.”
Then I’d quote T.S. Eliot: We shall not cease from exploration/ and the end of all our exploring/will be to arrive where we started/ and know the place for the first time.
“Eamonn,” I’d conclude, “as long as it’s not Tubbercurry, that’s good enough for me”.
