The first level of Purgatory was somewhat akin to being trapped in
Das Boot. The sound of metal creaking in the bowels of a submarine. Metal gates echoing for what seems like eternity. Steel everywhere, no color, no sunlight to speak of, and a bed made out of rough blankets which would fit right in the barracks on either side in World War II.
I thought of the joyous scene when they are drinking and feasting and break into "It's a long long way to Tipperary and Tipperary is our home . . . "
So, let's all travel back through my timeline to when I was a very, very young 20 year old living in Dublin, Ireland.
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| ASDA Bus Station, Bournemouth, England, Age 20 |
It was the darkest and most depressing winter of my life. I worked off Grafton Street with lots of young people from places other than Ireland. We had to dress in turn of the last century (1900) servant uniforms.
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| I had a pleasant conversation one morning with a man who used to tour with T. Rex about songs about Deborahs. |
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| The Bedroom I Let, Summer St. North, Dublin |
I lived in Summerhill in North Dublin adjacent to the Council Estates. I would walk to work in the dark down O'Connell Street with a solo garda on the beat.
At work, there wasn't a window letting in the misty grey daylight, and by the time my shift was done, there was absolutely no light. To get to the women's locker room, I would go through a door from the bakeshop near the entrance and go
down stairs then upstairs like I was inside a German Expressionist movie.
I once cleared Thom Yorke's breakfast plate and watched him read and drink his tea in my empty section. All of the Irish girls acted like I was special, but we all know I was just a freak.
I would go sit in Saint Stephen's Green somedays to enjoy the only green I could really find in the dreary city center. One day, I was sitting on a rock reading a newspaper, and I was approached by a cute, Irish guy. He asked me if I wanted some drugs. I laughed and wasn't sure he was serious. I mean as a child of the '80s, Nancy Reagan had prepared me for this precise moment: "I'm just saying 'No' to drugs. That means, 'No, thank you.'"
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| Broken Window Pane |
The children in Summerhill didn't know how to play. They would just fight and make each other scream. One day, they threw a rock through my bedroom window. I had to sleep in all of the clothes I owned that night; the landlord couldn't fix the window until the next day. The Frenchmen with Polish last names who I lived with convinced me to report the crime to the Garda station because I spoke the best English.
Now, let's go ahead and take a commuter flight to beautiful Scotland. I hadn't seen sunshine all winter, but when the plane approached Edinboro golden sun glistened through the clouds.
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| Edinburgh Castle, Scotland |
I called my friend from a telephone booth right in the shadow of the castle (too expensive for me to tour). And, what do you know a character right out of
Trainspotting starts yelling at me to get off of the phone. So, holding the phone in my hand, I turn to face him and I yell and scream back at him: I'm paying to use the telephone and he can wait his turn or go run around the corner to another payphone. He's Scottish; he should know where the hell to find another phone in his own country.
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| Squirrel, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh |
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| Edingburgh in the mid 1990s |
