Where I come from is who I am: Tangled blackberry bushes Smoke rising from a solitary chimney The pine grove in the distance And Father shouting “More water in that barrel” As we bucketed it from our well To our asses cart, Creel-less for once. Other days Neddy would be laden down With wood from the nearby thicket Ash trees, young Sally’s, stumps of furze bushes. Sometimes he hauled sand and gravel From the quarry at Carroll’s Cross, Part of Father’s master plan To build us an outside toilet. This would mean more water from the well To feed the tank on its roof, Unless it rained a lot Which of course it often did In our neck of the woods.
451
Ah Montag, Montag, where are you now? Steeped in your kerosene world You burnt the books The houses and even the people. Then fire seared your brain And cleansed your senses Books were made to be read not torched. So you ran to the river The Mechanical Hound snapping at your heels.
The sun burns every day It burns time The firemen burn the books They burn them every day Ah Montag, Montag, time burns everything away.
I HAVE A GOOD BOOK IN ME
According to perceived wisdom Everybody has a good book in them I now have a good book in me I ate one this morning For breakfast I am still digesting the contents
RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
See all the down-and-out lickers and fuckers Down the Embankment they tumble Unable any longer to bear much reality Too much self-knowledge And time spent trotting Between the Tate and the National Or one of their endless reading groups Believing they had A story to tell If only things had worked out, If only the monkey had hit the right keys. Hush! if you listen carefully You can hear the dead click Of their keyboards In the raucousness of the Soho night; The minicabs, the limos, the rickshaws all screaming Take me…take me…I’m free And the hen nighters, the stag nighters, The whatever-the fuck nighters, Lingering in pools of their own vomit Waiting for the paramedics to call; Shirts open to the navel, skirts slit From here to eternity. Late summer, later winter, who gives a shit? The restaurants are all full Though nobody is really eating Just being there is what matters. Smokers stop the traffic Inspecting their mobiles What would a Martian make of that? No one sees anything any more Except the lampposts they walk into; There are no witnesses to crime; How anybody falls in love anymore is a puzzle Eyes no longer meet in lingering amazement Unless they are reflected In all those infernal hand-held screens.
Some poems from my collection STOLEN WORDS. Available on Amazon.
The playwright and novelist Tom O’Brien was born in Ballyhussa near Kilmacthomas Co Waterford, and he emigrated to Kilburn in London in the mid-Sixties. He took up residence wherever he could and shared a room with Vince Power – later of Mean Fiddler fame. Both had gone to school in Newtown Kilmacthomas; Tom had played with an Irish showband and learned songs from Vince’s collection of records. They worked at various jobs; at one time, Vince was a floorwalker in Whiteley’s department store in Queensway, and Tom worked in the Accounts department of Smith’s Radiomobile factory in Cricklewood. They danced in an Irish dance hall, The Banba and later at The Galtymore.
1971 Tom got married, and Vince was his best man in a borrowed suit. There was a building and demolition boom, and Vince began selling unwanted possessions, such as furniture, radiograms, and early television sets. Tom got involved in illegal scams like taking Green Shield stamps and gambling on dog races.
All this is told in Tom’s new book Bits & Pieces, which is full of his early trials and tribulations in Ireland and England. He once backed horses on a famous ITV Seven and won 2,000 pounds sterling. This was enough to pay for his wedding, and Vince persuaded him to open a second-hand furniture shop: Tom’s money and Vince’s expertise (as Vince said). They had a clapped-out Morris van, buying cheap, selling dearer, and delivering.
Soon, their venture turned sour, and Tom accused Vince of selling a painting at an auction house for an excellent profit behind his back. They fell out.
As Tom says, they renewed their acquaintance some years back in Newtown at the funeral of a childhood friend, Maurice Foran.
Tom writes, “Am I bitter? Not really. Life’s too short to dance with an ugly man, as someone once said”.
Vince went on to run the Mean Fiddler Empire, and Tom became a playwright (four plays were produced in London in one year). Today, he is a published playwright, novelist, and poet. Not bad for a life of Bits & Pieces.
If you buy Bits & Pieces on Amazon UK, you will receive a copy of his hilarious play, Miss Whiplash Regrets
A wonderful coming-of-age story set in the Ireland of the late fifties and early sixties,The Shiny Red Honda evokes images of a more innocent time, when life was lived at a more gentle pace and people were stoical in the face of hardship, taking the bad with the good as simply part of life’s cycle. Tom O’Brien’s writing is stark and vivid and straight to the point, but always tempered with a wry humour, never taking himself too seriously. We travel with him through his upbringing on a small-holding in County Waterford, sometimes hard, but mostly carefree, and then his emergence from fumbling adolescent to a young working man who played guitar in his spare time in the newly emerging pop/rock band scene of that era. Tom describes everything so beautifully that I found myself re-reading some pages, just for the sheer joy of it. This is one of the best autobiographical books I’ve read in ages, if not THE best, and I can’t wait to read more of Tom O’Brien’s work.
› Go to Amazon.com to see the review 5.0 out of 5 stars
When I first came to Kilburn in the mid 1960’s my residence was a less than salubrious double room in house that had seen better days, run by a certain Mrs McGinty in Iverson Road. It was the sort of place where you wiped your feet on the way out.
I was sharing the room with Vince Power – later of Mean Fiddler fame – with whom I had gone to school with in rural Waterford in a place called Newtown. Newtown comprised of a couple houses, the church, the school, two pubs, and a sweet shop, so the culture shock of walking down Kilburn High Road for the first time was quite something!
Within a few hundred yards I had seen two cinemas, The State and The Grange – monoliths of stone from a bygone era – an Irish dance hall, The Banba – and numerous pubs with names like The North London, The Black Lion, Biddy Mulligan’s, and so on.
There was also a Wimpey Burger Bar on the High Road, with a notice board just outside on the pavement which advertised rooms to let. It was here that I first read the legend ‘NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH’ It was also the first time I had seen black people in reality. I began to wonder what I was letting myself in for.
Vince was soon working as a floorwalker in Whiteley’s department store in Queensway, while I had got a job in the accounts department of Smiths Radiomobile factory in Cricklewood. In between times we listened to music from Vince’s collection of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline records.
Cricklewood, too, had an Irish dance hall, called The Galtymore, and it was smack in the middle of the Broadway. Big and bawdy It had two dance floors, one for modern music and one for Irish dancing, and was nearly always filled to capacity. And just a stones’ throw away was The Crown, even bigger and bawdier, and full of thirsty Irishmen washing the dust down after a hard day digging holes or pulling cables all over London and outlying areas.
Oh the crack was good in Cricklewood, but t’was better in the Crown
There were bottles flying and Biddies cryiing, and Paddies goin’ to town
Oh mother dear I’m over here, I never will go back
What keeps me here is the rake of beer, the women and the crack
The words of ‘McAlpines Fuseliers’, Dominic Behan’s homage to the expat shovel brigade, were regularly ringing in our ears as Vince and I danced our nights away at The Banba or the Galtymore. And sometimes our afternoons too; for there was a Sunday afternoon tea dance at the Banba, where hung-over Irishmen could sober up for the night ahead!
This was also the era of The Sunshine Gang, a group of expat thugs that plagued the area at the time. Said to have originated from the Longford/Westmeath region, they were into protection and other criminal activities. If bar and shop owners didn’t pay up they basically came in and smashed the place up.
The Banba, which was up an alley off Kilburn High Road was attacked during one tea dance while we were present; they wedged a Mini in the entrance, beat up the doorman, then started smashing up the hall inside. They were looking for Michael Gannon, the owner, who had presumably forgotten to pay his ‘subscription’. They left after a few minutes, having no doubt been paid! They occasionally put in an appearance at the Galtymore as well!
We weren’t long getting to know the pubs in the area. Biddy Mulligan’s was a favourite of ours, as was The Admiral Nelson in Carlton Vale, owned by Butty Sugrue. Butty originated from Kilorglin in County Kerry and was a Circus Performer cum-wrestler-strongman-publican-entrepreneur. He had toured Ireland with Duffy’s Circus, billed as Ireland’s strongest man and in Kilburn he had pulled red London buses up the High Road with the rope held between his teeth! A couple of years after we arrived, he had his barman, Mick Meaney, buried alive in a yard adjacent to the pub, where he remained for 61 days – a Guinness Book of Records world record. ‘Resurrection day’ saw thousands line the High Road as Mick was proudly paraded through Kilburn in the back of a truck.
There was always plenty of singing and dancing at The Admiral Nelson, and Jack Doyle was frequently seen at the venue singing for his supper. Jack had slipped a long way down since his heydays when he had fought for the British Heavyweight boxing title, or when he had been feted in Hollywood before marrying Mexican actress Movita, the couple moving to London, where they toured the country singing and performing to delirious audiences, and becoming the 1940’s equivalent of Posh and Becks.
The bigger they are the harder they fall is a well known saying, and Jack eventually fell further than most. Whenever anyone asked him what caused his downfall he always replied ‘fast women and slow horses’. Some years later he would be found dead in a park in West London, penniless and shoeless. Listening to Jack and Movita singing together would send shivers down your spine. Listen on the link below
Eventually Vince and I moved on to Harlesden where the 32 Cub in Harlesden High Street was the Mecca for the Irish population. Situated next to the Elm Tree pub on the High Street, in the building that was formerly the Picardy cinema, it was heaving every weekend.
By now Vince had met his first wife, Theresa, and before too long they got married and had a child. Somehow, I managed to miss the wedding!
A few years later I was married myself (1971) and Vince was my best man wearing a suit borrowed from his brother-in-law! Yes, he was that poor!
In between times a lot had changed in our lives; Vince was now working in demolition, knocking down rows of terraced houses in the Willesden area, I had been a guest at Her Majesty’s pleasure for eighteen months, been deported back to Ireland and come back again, and had won a tidy sum of money with my regular Saturday bet on the ITV7 at my local William Hill’s betting shop!
We put it to good use; opening a second-hand furniture shop on the Harrow Road in Kensal Rise, calling it the Bargain Store. We could only afford an old beat-up Morris van, but it was good enough for the house clearances and deliveries that we now had to deal with. And more importantly we were working for ourselves; much more enjoyable than clocking on and clocking off at some anonymous factory in Park Royal or Acton. Things were looking up!
My Writing Life 