RECONNECTING WITH MY OFFLINE COMMUNITY

Article #9

“So come on, ye full-time, small town heroes. Cast away your inbred fears of standing out from all the rest, the cynics and the pessimists.”

The Sawdoctors To Win Just Once

I’ve had worse Tuesdays. But I’ve had better ones too.

Still reeling from witnessing Oranmore/Maree senior hurlers’ walloping at the hands of Sarsfields in the Galway quarter-final the previous Sunday – the club’ first senior men’s quarter-final in half a century – I needed some serious cheering up.

Earlier, I found a cheque in my parents’ house, from Rabo Bank, for 100 big ones. They sent it to me after they pulled out of Ireland a few years back. There was only one small hitch - the cheque was dated June 2018.

Is a cheque good for 6 months or 6 years? The pessimist in me screamed the former. The optimist in me whispered the latter.

The world is full of pessimists so, I said fuck it, I’ll roll the dice and maybe the bank clerk will be feeling generous. There’s an actors strike on, so, you know, every little helps.

I parked in front of Glynn’s pub in Oranmore. As I switched off the engine, I was minded how much the surroundings of my hometown had changed but somehow remained the same. I was pretty sure on the short hop between Glynns and the Bank of Ireland, across from The Thatch, I wouldn’t meet a sinner I knew.

My parents’ words ringing in my ears: “Sure you’d know no-one in Oranmore anymore. It’s all new people now.”

Or “blow-ins”, as they were once affectionately known. I’m not talking about anyone from Timbuktu here either. My father came to Galway from Wexford in the early sixties and a fella said to me during the summer: “How’s that blow in from Wexford keeping? Tell him I said their strawberries are gone ta fuck!”

As of today, in the Oranmore boys national school, there are something like 30 different nationalities. In the Ireland of 2023, Wexford isn’t as exotic as it used to be.

Show Me the Money

Pulling the door of the Bank of Ireland in Oranmore towards me, a posse of memories flashed by. You see, it wasn’t always a bank. It took in plenty of cash alright, but under a different guise - as a pub called The White House.

The White House wasn’t just a pub. Oh no, it was an institution. Inside was a long narrow room separated by a wall. On one side, the lounge and bar. On the other, a pool table with a couple of stand-alone video games, the kind you’d see in Back to the Future.

That pool table cost me a year of my life. When I should have been in after school study I was down trying there to mimic Tom Cruise in that ‘Werewolves of London’ scene from Color of Money – “And his hair was perfect!”

At least that was my excuse to my parents as to why I flunked my Leaving Certificate exams the first time around.

But between me and you, the table was rigged you see. You lined up a 50p, a rapid jolt of the coin slot and BINGO! - the balls would spill down for free. If you were too slow on the draw your 50p was gone along with your street cred. But get it right, that glorious clickity clack sound of those yellows and reds would come gushing down to the end of the table, like a river to the sea.

And then there was Shinobi. I fed enough coins into that video game for the deposit on a small cottage. So much so its theme tune continues to live in my head, rent free, forever.

I remember the place being jammed one Friday night while Cigarettes & Alcohol by Oasis blared out the jukebox (an actual jukebox) and my eldest brother, Shane, won game after game of pool. The house rules were winner stays on with eager contenders bravely placing their 50p on the side of the table as their five sided silver gauntlet.

Some could hack the heat, others couldn’t.

So, on this Tuesday, I hoped Shane’s winning streak might extend to me as I approached the bank clerk, cheque in hand, ready to game the system once more.

Me: Howya. Lovely day for it?

Bank clerk: How can I help?

Me: Just want to lodge this cheque here.

I slide the cheque under the window, nice and smooth, maintaining non-threatening eye contact and my best non-threatening smile.

A moment.

Bank clerk: Ah… this cheque is from 6 years ago?

Me: Oh, is it?

Bank clerk: June 2016.

Me: Time flies sure!

Bank clerk: You’ll have to get them to re-issue it.

Me: There’s no chance that…

Bank clerk: None. Sorry.

And just like my futile efforts at Shinobi, it was game over.

The more things change...

The Centre

On my walk back to the car I was weighing up the pros and cons of the inevitable admin that would be involved in getting that cheque re-issued. I hate admin. Like, I hate it.

Then, I remembered a message I got on Linkedin from a fella called Adrian - I hurled with him a lifetime ago. He’s involved in running the Oranmore community centre now after being away for the best part of a couple of decades, I think. So, I said fuck it, why not reply to him in real life? And with that, I was off on the two-minute journey up the old Dublin road.

The Oranmore community centre stands adjacent to a GAA field, that was literally the playground of my youth.

Pulling in, I was met by yet another relic from my past that’s changed but remains the same.

Another posse of memories: the stoney gravel, the old church pews masquerading as dressing room seats. The smell of the dingy showers, the light bulbs not working, the patchy grass and stones and random bits of rusted this and that at the back of the goals, like some low budget Blade Runner set.

The community centre was where I attended my first disco. The high up windows were covered with black bags as it was late summer. I remember the slow sets to Bryan Adam’s Everything I do I do it For You and Boyz II Men Until The End of the Road – pure unfiltered teeny bopper spirit.

I remember Shane dropping me outside the door to a disco on his new motorbike, a Kawaski 125. I was gutted none of my tribe were there to see us pull in and he point blank refused to loop back around: “Do you think I’ve noting better for doin’?”.

I remember my father turning up at the door another night in a fluorescent Nike tracksuit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an MC Hammer video. I’ll never forget the words of my brother, David, in my ear “Dad’s here.” Such was my seismic shock I catapulted the poor misfortunate girl who happened to be on my knee, for fear I’d be caught. It literally gives me the cold sweats now, almost 30 years later, thinking about it.

But that was then and this is now. That is not the community centre unfolding out my front windscreen.

I park the car facing the pitch. Along the long side of the centre there’s a coffee truck, a launderette, leading down to the dressing rooms and an astro ball alley at the back, behind the goals. The car park is paved and as smooth as a formula one paddock.

I close the car door behind me and take the short walk past the coffee truck and launderette to the front door. I gingerly open it and, yep, the inside porch looks the same. I take a few more tentative steps to the door of the community centre and step inside, standing to my left, back to the wall. I stand and stare out onto the hall, just like my father did before me in his fluorescent tracksuit.

I turn around and go back the way I came, into the porch and knock on the door of a room, just inside the front entrance. Inside I find a small group huddled in deep conversation:

Man: Don’t tell me we have to move?

Me: God no. Is Adrian around by any chance?

Woman: Try upstairs.

Me: Thanks a million.

After a couple of attempts at locked doors, I find a stairwell and make my way up. I open a door to a freshly fitted out office with a couple of guys studiously contemplating whatever is on their computer screen.

Me: Is Adrian…

Young Man: [Without so much as a blink points to office to my right].

Adrian waves, points to the loudspeaker phone on his desk, where an engaged discussion of some kind can he heard through the glass wall and puts his five fingers up high and points downstairs. He then gives me the thumbs up and takes himself off mute to ask someone on the call to repeat the point they just made.

So, I wander back down downstairs into the car park. And I find myself gazing in marvel at the stand-alone launderette beside the coffee truck. Through the window of that laundrette, I see a man in the midst of a phone call that seemed from a distance of maybe 25 yards, to be of the animated variety.

Anyway, I was like: “Is that who I think it is?”

And it was. None other than Sean. A fella I’ve known for as long as I can remember and best man at my wedding.

He also gives me the five-finger salute and signals me to hold tight. No sooner had I got the message, he saunters out of said launderette:

Sean: What the fock are you doing here?

Me: Jaysus, a cop wouldn’t ask me that.

Sean: I thought you were gone back, no?

Me: Does it look like I’m gone back? Gettin’ the oul socks and jocks done are ya?

Sean: D’ya know what Bish, I had an hour to kill and the basket was pilin’ up at home and doing my nut in, ya know what I mean?

Me: Rapid spin, is it?

Sean: Go fock yourself.

We laugh.

Then the owner of said launderette arrives. He’s come to check up on his investment and is quick to offer some timely detergent tips to a customer who had just arrived. Within the puck of a ball, Sean is there asking him more questions than a keen-as-mustard FBI field officer.

Who knew a laundrette could be such a hive of curiosity? And that there was a special machine for washing dog towels, pet cushions and the like – it even had paw prints on the front lest there be any confusion.

Sean wastes no time in getting into the nitty gritty of the optimum detergent and fabric softener combo with the owner. Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Adrian emerge from the centre and I leave the lads at it. 

The Tour

Me: Well, Adrian?

Adrian: Well, Niall, welcome back.

Me: Good to see ya.

Adrian: Come on, I’ll give ya the tour.

We walk back through the front of the Community centre, back through the hall, scene of the slow sets all those years ago, Adrian apologising for the intrusion to the quartets of folk in there as we walk and talk.

We’re stood at the back of the hall now, where there’s an after-school class run by a woman I remember well from my school days – she hasn’t changed a bit. He goes to show me the gym behind the stage but it’s locked. He’s quick to tell me “the guy that runs is built like Schwarzeneger, he’s brilliant and the kids love him.”

Then, we’re off down to the dressing rooms: “you won’t know the place.”

And he’s right.

I might as well be entering Anfield. An astro carpeted corridor stretches out before me with images from Oranmore-Maree’s famous All-Ireland Intermediate championship win, among other inspiring sporting moments captured in time. We walk to the end of the corridor and take a left into one of the dressing rooms: “A bit different to our day – there was a school team in here earlier and look at the place – spotless. It’s a different ball game now Niall.”

I spot a sign on the wall. I was half expecting one of those ubiquitous WeWork nonsense ‘Do what you love’ or ‘Save the dolphins maaaan’ message, designed for an algorithm as opposed to a soul.

I couldn’t have been more wrong: “Start where you are, use what you have. Do what you can.”

I’m definitely guilty of sometimes thinking the answer is ‘out there’, be that a new city, a new idea, or the latest self-help book that might unlock the next level.

More often than not the answer is staring me straight in the face.

Eyes still fixed on those timely words, Adrian beckons me once more: “Come on, I’ll show ya the ice baths.”

We’re at the end of the corridor now and out the far side of the community centre, under a little sheltered roof area with two baths and a fridge freezer and astro covering the hard cold concrete: “The seniors jump in the ice baths here after training. The lads love it.”

Gluttons for punishment them young bucks.

And we’re on the move again. Adrian moves with a boundless energy, which, if you could bottle it, would move a small mountain.

We’re now at the back of the centre looking out onto the astro ball alley.

“We have a little hut, just there, for the lads who help out here, where they can have a cup of tea. And you wouldn’t believe the job they made of the tool shed in there. Unbelievable.”

Then we talk turkey.

Me: Why didn’t the development committee do all this 20-30 years ago?

Adrian: I asked my father the exact same thing. Sure he told me to get a loan that time the interest rate was 27%.

Me: What?

Adrian: TWENTY SEVEN PERCENT BUOY!

Me: Christ.

Adrian: Here, I have to take this, gimme two minutes.

He veers back toward the ice baths to take a phone call.

I make my way back up to the car park. Halfway up the small incline, I spot a young fella whose gait I’d know a mile away. He won’t know me from Adam.

Me: Well Ruben?

Reuben: Ah…

Me: What happened ye Sunday?

Reuben: Ah… I know, shtop, don’t remind me.

Me: The club’s first senior quarter-final in 50 years, it must have been the nerves was it?

Reuben: We just never got going, ya know?

Me: That happens.

Reuben: We were flying it going into the game, but just couldn’t get into it. We’re a young team though.

And with that his name is called from the ball alley.

Reuben: I’ve to go here, good luck.

He’s had enough of the random fanboy interrogation from me and disappears down to the astro ball alley with Jack Grealish, a young man whose father hurled with my father.

Jack’s father, affectionately known as ‘Spike’, once grabbed me by the scruff through a crowd in the Thatch pub one Christmas eve, when the place was heavin’ and raged in my ear “Tell that Wexford blow in of a father of yours I said he was a tinker on the hurlin’ field!” He then proceeded to bellow out a laugh that nearly shook the roof and disappeared through the throng of Christmas revellers once more.

Watching Ruben Davitt and Jack Grealish puck a ball around at 3 O’clock on a Tuesday, fills my heart with giddy hope. Young bucks like those lads, as well as Rory Burke, Ross Malone, Conor Butler have a maturity I don’t think I had at 35. I’d bet that Rabo bank cheque and more those lads will lead us to the promised land - the clubs’ first Galway Senior hurling title.

Feet firmly back on the ground, I walk back up to the car park to find Sean and the Launderette owner still buried deep in conversation.

Me: It’s a fine set-up you have here.

Launderette owner: Not bad.

Sean: It’s awful handy and it’s a great location.

Launderette owner: Location is everything with something like this.

Me: You must be making a fortune sure.

Laundrette owner: I don’t know about that now. There’s good days and bad days.

I leave the lads to it and wander back to the front of the community centre once more to see if Adrian has reappeared.

I find myself glaring at the doorway to the centre. I’m catapulted back to a Saturday in 1993. Me, Fordy and Brian, sitting in that very doorway talking shite for three hours after training. My mind is dragging snippets of the conversation from the vault and if memory serves, the majority of that high minded chat revolved around girls and who fancied who – for three whole hours.

No phones then, no Instagram or TikTok, or gut wrenching images of a bombed out hospital. Cut adrift on a Saturday, oblivious to the world around us. I met Brian’s third daughter for only the second time last March in Boston and Fordy doesn’t know it yet, but I’ll be texting him “Pint?” later.

Sean: Here ballbag, I’ve to go, I’m a busy man ya kna?

Me: Back home for another load is it?

Sean: Go suck a lemon.

Me: Pint later?

Sean: Not a hope. I’m up early.

Adrian returns.

Adrian: Sorry about that.

Me: Ya know Sean ya do?

Adrian: Why wouldn’t I – howya Sean.

Sean: Ye’ve a great job made of the place here Adrian.

Adrian: It’s more than just me, but we’re getting there. Some flowers out the front to take the bare look off that wall now will be the next job.

Sean: I’ll go lads.

Sean makes a beeline for his car.

Adrian: Hang on for a minute there Niall, I’ll be back.

You guessed it - another phone call.

Never Been Better

For me at least, the word ‘community’ has been hijacked in the last decade. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not getting all misty-eyed about the analog days. You can find your tribe online, without a doubt.

But the word ‘community’ is now more often aligned to some group or guru, with a slogan and a ready line of merch for you to purchase.

In this hyperconnected age, when we’re told things are only getting worse, be it the climate, house prices, political discourse, cost of living, quality of living, it’s easy to lose hope.

Standing in that community centre I saw, with my own eyes, the living embodiment of a place that has got only better. Standing there I knew, for a fact, that things in this spec of the universe have never been better.

And even when things seemed worse, they weren’t that bad. Stink and all as those showers were, the formative years of my young adulthood were shaped here. Some of the people I met here, played hurling and football with here, are still in my life. Even those that are gone are with me still, their voices, the sound of a Kawasaki 125 disappearing in the distance - they are all in there with that Shinobi theme tune.

What I got from this place and those people I’ll never be able to fully repay.

​A community isn’t a matter of life or death. It’s much more important than that: it keeps us alive.

But don’t just take my word for it.

When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard students in 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, they hoped the study would reveal clues to leading long and happy lives.

That study last​ed eight decades, becoming the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life. Researchers tracked the participants’ health and their triumphs and failures in life and love.

The study eventually expanded to include the 268 men’s wives and their children, of which there was over 1,000 and who are now in their 60​'s.

Some participants went on to become successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, and others ended up as schizophrenics or alcoholics. Among the original recruits was President John F. Kennedy - himself a descendant from a blow-in from Wexford.

Robert Waldinger details the findings in his Ted Talk which has been viewed more than 24 million times.

But, let me break down the secret sauce for ya - close personal relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep us happy and keep us alive for longer.

And that doesn’t mean you have to be consciously coupled with the love of your life either. Real-life ties protect us from the unavoidable turbulence of life. Those ties help to stem the tide of our mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of a long and happy ​life than our social class, IQ, or even our genes.

And that finding is as true for the guy in the Oval office as the guy in the gutter.

​Adrian returns with his hand outstretched.

Adrian: Great to finally catch up.

Me: Well done on all that ye’ve achieved here Adrian. I can’t believe the place.

Adrian: It’s a multi-year journey, but, hopefully, after we move on, we leave a profitable centre and pitch to the community, which really contributes to the fabric of the village. Are you around for the Christmas markets?

On my way back to the car, Sean slides down his window.

Sean: Here, don’t be putting anything up on the lads WhatsApp group now about me down here, ya hear me? You know what those whores are like.

Me: Not a word bud.

Sean: Mind yourself – tell all the Bishops I said hello.

And with that he wizzes out like the wind. His car pointed in the direction of the village, the washing done and a semblance ​m​ore order in his world than there was an hour ago.

I smile to myself.

I’m no longer a stranger marooned in my own hazy past, but a welcome passer-by perched on the cusp of a new dawn.

I feel ​h​appier already.