Days of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

up to his neck for generations.
    So while the 1980s were a hateful time in many ways, they may eventually be viewed in a kinder light, as bullshit’s last stand.
    A certain kind of bullshit, at least.
    Ultimately, we would still have ample quantities of it knocking around, and varieties yet to be discovered. It is a national addiction, which can manifest itself in many ways. And of course it
is not unrelated to our primary addiction, the same then, as it is now, and which unites so many of us in alcoholic fellowship, wandering unsteadily to the beat of the same drum.
    So when a load of cant by Bishop Brendan Comiskey appeared in a Church publication, accusing me of blasphemy in relation to something I had written in the Irish Press , it merely confirmed
to me that people like him were the enemy and that they must be done down.
    We had just about reached the stage when a ‘blasphemer’ wouldn’t lose his job and have to leave the country after being set upon by a bishop, and soon Bishop Eamon Casey would
be doing his own bit to advance the liberal agenda. But I still could have done without Comiskey’s ambush over one line that I hadn’t even intended to be blasphemous — and anyway,
it wasn’t much of a line, something about Madonna the singer possibly having a child, who will hopefully give her less trouble than the original Madonna had with her child.
    I would condemn myself for heavy-handedness and for the all-round lameness of that effort and I ask God’s forgiveness for that. Nuala O’Faolain defended me in the Irish Times ,
mercifully declaring that she wouldn’t mention the offending line because it was so innocuous, sparing both the zealots and myself a lot of grief.
    It took me a long time to realise that Comiskey and I may have had our differences over some minor matters of theology, but that in relation to the one true faith — the beer — we
were more or less ad idem. Comiskey was eventually treated for alcoholism, though at the time, when there was not even a mild suspicion about his weakness for the jar, he would have been
regarded as one of the more able administrators in Ireland, with newspaper profiles suggesting that if he hadn’t gone for the priesthood, he would have undoubtedly become one of our more
progressive business leaders.
    ——
    Our best and best-loved footballer, Paul McGrath, would also eventually be treated for alcoholism, though at the time, we were only worried about his knees. It would become a
national euphemism, Paul McGrath’s knees, somewhat complicated by the fact that he really had a problem with his knees, but that problem tended to be aggravated by his drinking. In fact, Paul
was drinking steadily — and so was I — on the night we agreed that I would write his biography.
    Alcoholism, they say, is a ‘progressive’ disease. Along the way there are mysterious lines that you cross without knowing it, which only start to become clear to you when it is all
over — if it is all over. If you could measure it on a scale of one to ten, on the night that I agreed to write Paul McGrath’s biography, in the run-up to Euro 88, I was probably at
about six. By the end of the Charlton era, I would be up there at about eight-and-a-half, pushing nine, and in truth, I probably never went beyond that — you don’t need to, really.
    Where was Big Paul at? Only he knows, and maybe he still can’t quite work it out.
    But it was quite a night, all the same.
    The Boys In Green, as they were now increasingly known, were down in Windmill Lane Studios recording the track ‘The Boys In Green’, which would be their anthem for Germany, and which
was written by a gentleman of the press, the late Mick Carwood.
    We are the Boys in Green
    The best you’ve ever seen
    We’ve just made history-ee
    We’re off to German-ee
    We’ve had to wait till now
    Big Jack has shown us how
    You’ll wonder where we’ve been
    When you see the Boys in Green
    And you’ll say Ireland,