stubborn ol bastard me and Leonard

a friend called me a stubborn ol bastard so i wrote a consideration

all my friends are gone and my hair is grey
im achin in the places that i used to play
and im prayin for love
but it's not coming on.(leonard Cohen)

There was a woman in the school.
skull na bra Haira crease tea is a very bad phonetic attempt at the Gaelic name of the Christian Brothers School, Sexton St. Limerick. I attended that school on and off between the ages of 7 and 16. In the earlier years it had a woman teacher. Ban de Bara or Mrs Barry as the queen would have called her if the queen were ever allowed to talk to a person.
She didn't have a class or anything like that but she taught elocution, moving from class to class with the freedom and breasts of a robin. She let us know that our English was contaminated. It was not for us to know that we were contaminated with the remnants of the ancient language that the other fuckers were trying to stuff down our confused throats the  rest of the week. It seemed that her main job was to teach us not to say dis, dat, dese or dose but there was other stuff too. She explained how polite people do, as in they don't talk to each other, they speak to each other and that we should start speaking to each other in the school yard and such or we would all end up as messenger boys for one of the butchers on Parnell St.
A good example of the differences in these tongues of the butcher-shop  and the butchers apron as we called the union-jack is shown in the joke about the little boy that came home from school on his second day at school,
his mother asked
Mikey
wha mamma
did you learn anything at school today
um yeah.... i learnt Johnny Connelly not to call me mammas boy

a polite person would say Leonard and I not me and Leonard
to me Me and Leonard sounds so much more, like we are buddies, like he knows me or at least we did this one thing together, you know, this is my small claim to something and me and Leonard says it, if Leonard was here he would back me up. He is my buddy in this. Hmmm maybe that's it, maybe polite people don't need buddies, or maybe it is not cool to need em.

Words and lyricists have always attracted me and Leonard Cohen's words go beyond words for or from me. he will probably be mentioned many times in my writing as he has carved many phrases that unlocked fragments of my soul. one of my friends said many years ago said that the record store in Limerick, I think it was Savin's , were offering free razor blades with every cohen LP purchased mid-week. The warring city has a wicked sense of humour.
From here on out if i quote or speak of a leonard it is leonard cohen i speak of. My familiarity is based on 40 years of listening and singing along, eating bagels with cream cheese in Montreal where men with ringlets, beards and black coats walk the sidewalks, two 3 and a half hour concerts here in Victoria and the fact that he wears a hat like mine.

I was 55 when a small fall on a ladder shattered my ankle. the medical people called it a pilon fracture and the discussion got round to the percentage of people that end up having a leg amputated. Now there's a thing that could get one to focus.
Recently just over a year later I was out walking with friend and as we walked I took my shoes off and walked in my bare feet.
Looking down rubbing his nose he asked "whatre you doin"
My ankle hurts at times and I find that taking off my shoes especially on uneven ground forces it to go through a wider range of movement.
It hurts some at first but then there is relief. Beyond that there are a whole lot of things that I haven't totally given up on yet that will be limited by how much movement I have in this ankle.
I want to play soccer with my son.
I am/was the father of three boys. Cian is the youngest of these and was born here in Canada.
The other boys are men by now I suppose. There are explanations and reasons and excuses for my actions in my life and all of those will emerge if I write long enough but the short story is that I deserted two sons in the course of my life up to now. The extent of the injuries I perpetrated and suffered in those actions is becoming clearer to me as i grow with Cian.
How does a man recoup the loss or pay the debt of having never kicked a ball with a boy?
Life is full of questions.
For the moment back to the ankle and if the opportunity arises i want to walk on a cliff and a beach with friends and then there is the fact that if i am middle aged now, and I have to live to 112 it is too early to start closing down the shop.
It feels a bit weird to me to be gardening and putting out laundry in public here especially as Mrs Google keeps telling me how many people are looking over the fence.
If someone wants to follow the thread or ask a question in the comments it would be like smiling, waving a hand or saying hi, and i would regard this as a kindness and be encouraged to continue, Mrs Google has placed convenient buttons for these actions on the page but I have yet to figure out how they work. I did see a little pencil thing that brought up a comment box. No it seems the pencil is just for me but if the title of the piece is in orange and you click it a different page will open with a comment box.
sleann lat which roughly translates as health with you....