bahern7

 

 

  Dear Readers (if you exist), Good replies at the link below to my original letter which is here: Sir, – I attended a cremation ceremony recently where the deceased chose to bow out to the strains of Four Country Roads by Big Tom and the Mainliners, and the song was kind of perfect for the occasion, so much so that I would consider using it when my own time comes. I wonder what musical choices readers may have for when they face, to borrow a phrase, the final curtain? – Yours, etc, BRIAN AHERN, Dublin 15. What song would you choose for your funeral? https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2023/08/21/letters-to-the-editor-what-song-would-you-choose-for-your-funeral/

 

 

She loved the June evenings When the light stayed long, bright and blue, I'm happy to see your face As pure as any saints. It was the coldest June she'd known for years When she formed her band The Bitter Tears. I'm a creative type she told them, I'm not at all like you guys, You say all the right things  And you climb your greasy poles. It was the coldest June she'd known for years When she formed her band The Bitter Tears. I'm the keeper of the stars' gardens, That's what she said, Yeah, I'm the keeper of the stars' gardens Look up for me when I'm dead. It was the coldest June she'd known for years When she formed her band The Bitter Tears. Ó Brian Ahern 2021

  Every morning Al drove his car into the same car park and exchanged weather related banter with the attendant. Today the sky was grey and heavy and the attendant was nowhere to be seen. Al couldn’t shake a feeling of loneliness that weighed upon him. He imagined the Brighton conjoined twins, trapped above the Queen’s Arms public house in 1911, had felt just as lost. As he walked towards the entrance of the hospital, he remembered the year he was born: the year of the hijacker; the year of the first Earth Day; the year the King visited Nixon in the White House. Then he remembered 2008, a portentous year, when he had been part of a band that performed in the aftermath of a devastating tsunami that struck Japan. As the world’s financial order crumbled, he and his bandmates stayed on the stage playing uplifting notes to a shell-shocked crowd. Al went to visit his first patient of the day. The hospital was marketed as resembling a 5-star hotel but Al saw behind the façade. What he...

The creepy priest seemed distracted and not inclined to conversation which was lucky actually as she was not in the least bit interested in chatting to him. What a creep he truly was and who would want to chat with him for too long, that was a bloody mystery. She was actually thinking of her mother now. Mark Nation had taken a second place in her mind and she was considering a trip back out to Churchtown, a Sunday lunch say or a trip to Dundrum Town Centre (so much posher in its way than Blanchardstown's cathedral of consumerism). It had been a while since she had seen her mother. ©Brian Ahern 2023

Readers (if you exist at all!), Before its demise in 2016, I used the short-form video hosting service Vine quite a bit.  Following some online digging, I've managed to locate my archive and present it now, for your exclusive delectation, at the link below: https://vine.co/u/957038392472961024   Best, BA