Most likely not the best transcription of the signature jingle of
Rocky Took a Lover. Would Ding Dang … Ding Dang be better?

I’m ok in the morning.

They played together for the first time in more than two years.

And they created magic on a wet wet night in a field in the shadow of the restored
15th Century Tower of Claregalway Castle.

It was a night when we all felt alive.

I want to be that star.

There had been moments when we doubted. The weather forecast showed rain. It was more than a two hours drive. We would have to stay overnight. They would play late into the night.

Then we decided to ignore the weather, to pack the bags, and to head off West.

It turned out to be the best decision we had taken in a long time.

And it was the mid-week beginning of a great week.

A very good friend of Pádraig’s arrived with a belated birthday present on Friday. A gadget that connects to an internet-based synthesiser and plays whatever instrument you want to play by touching it wherever you want. By creating circuits between different people, or water, or an orange – it plays music by squeezing the orange or by touching another person’s hand.

And Pádraig had no problem using his and our bodies as an instrument.

We ended the week with a mass organised by the Dublin Diocesan Lourdes Pilgrimage Group who had invited Pádraig to join them and the new Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell. We had not met him before. When he was leaving the Church he stopped by and spent a few minutes talking to Pádraig and to us. He is a kind, intelligent, compassionate man. He is quoted in the Independent as saying, referencing the writer LP Hartley:

“The future is a different country, we must do things differently there” adding “This is not to forget the past, and especially not the painful past where so many were hurt.”

I am all with him on this one. Only that there are too many who are still being hurt and who are still being left behind in the present.