At the top of the world…

I am not sitting and drinking in Speedy's Bar.

Diego "Speedy" Gonzales – that little man with his black moustache and his big sombrero – is not my alcohol dealer tonight. He is not my – imaginary? – drinking partner anymore. Not the one who comes out after four or five shots of vodka.

Tonight I am sitting in the house on the top of the world.

Himalaya mountains. Tibet. Home of the Dalai Lama. Visiting holy men – monks perhaps – in yellow robes.

And holy llamas.

Drinking? No more than water or fermented goat's milk at most.

Watching ice and stone.

Singing "Harem Christa" all night long.

Or am I not?

I got off the 45a somewhere around the new estates
which were advertised as being in Killarney but were really in just a field.
And I was going to the house at the top of the world.

Brian Carroll lived around here somewhere. And after school
I'd sometimes go back to his place and sing with his brother Dermot.
He knew all the Motown songs.

Sometimes I think about him
and I heard that he's a civil servant in Cork
which is funny for a guy who used to sing Motown songs.

Soon I'd come to the Leopardstown dual carriageway.
It was the first dual carriageway in Ireland and it was a 100 yards long.
I liked the name. I don't remember a town being there and I certainly saw
no leopards. But I had to cross it anyway to get to the house at the top of the world.

Everyone thought the dual carriageway was the great and modern
and every Saturday the bowsies, yahoos, guttersnipes and corner boys
would empty out of the pubs and scream like wild Saturday night leopards
drunk and fast and delirious for that blessed 100 yards.
People were always getting killed.

Well I ducked and weaved and it was fun and I made it over
and up the small road, past the Silver Tassie, along the river bank,
past the Proddie church and off left up the lane
to the house at the top of the world where you lived.

Your mother in her sensible shoes and you father in his tea-cozy wooly hat,
bright eyes and roomful of old hoarded yellowing newspapers
and 1920's photos of the Burren and you busy in the kitchen
half-glad to see me, half nervous with your parents around.

You'd take me for a walk around the field and down the lane
and when the evening fell your father would light the peat fire
and show me pictures of the West taken in the 20's
and then he'd go to bed. And the night was full of you and the evening
and the peat fire in the house on the top of the world.

And then it was time to go and risk death again in the dark of
the Leopardstown dual carriageway.

And on the way back I felt I could just jump the whole bloody thing.