I was walking home along Vicar Street, near midnight, on Saturday night a few weeks ago. A car pulled up suddenly beside me and the window was rolled down. “John Cleere,” the driver asked, “do you not know me?”
I looked into the dark car and something about the smile gave me a clue. “Is it Charlie Walsh?” I asked.
“You got it first time, fair dues to you.”
Fair dues is right. The last time I saw this particular Charlie was during our Leaving Cert in 1968 up in the CBS. I knew he had headed off to England soon afterwards and that was that for the next forty years.
We chatted for a while, recalling old names and teachers and then decided to head over the bridge to the Nore Bar for a pint. Charlie just had the one pint of shandy and filled me in on his life in the intervening years. He is still based in London and has had a variety of jobs from journalist to bus driver over the years.
His memories of our schooldays were stronger than mine. Charlie was fullback on the Kilkenny CBS team that won a Leinster title in 1967. I could remember names such as Des Murphy, Seamus Kearney, John Gargan and Brendan Fitzpatrick from that team, but Charlie was able to name the full team from that day, including the subs. He then went on to name most of the CBS Junior team of that year. I was more involved with soccer at the time, but I would be hard pressed to name even half of the Emfa team that I played with.
Charlie knew more about our old classmates than I did, but I think this often happens when someone is away from home. We remembered most of the class over our pint. Some had “done well”, a couple had fallen on hard times and two had passed away.
Charlie said he had made a couple of efforts to organise a reunion over the years, but hadn't had much success. It's a suggestion that's been made to me also, but it's one of those things that takes a lot of organising. I'm not sure if they are really necessary any more, Google and Facebook will track down most old classmates if required.
I doubt if we will ever get the old class together at this stage, but if there's anyone out there who fancies doing it, I'll be there, just don't ask me to get involved in the organising end of things.
On your bike
How long will they last? The new public bike scheme in Dublin came a week too late for the All Ireland. It might have been handy to pick one up down around Heuston Station and cycle on up to Croke Park.
There are 450 bikes for use by the public, which doesn't seem an awful lot, especially as you can bet your bicycle clips that quite a few of them will disappear fairly quickly.
Paris was the first city to try this scheme with 14,000 bikes and there's now 20,000 of them. In the first two months, two million journeys were made. We imagine the French would be fairly trustworthy but thousands of the original fleet have been stolen, lost or damaged with reports of the bikes ending up in Africa or Eastern Europe.
I remember the Cow Parade in Dublin a few years back when life-sized cows were placed around the city. Ten of the cows were badly vandalised within 24 hours and the entire exhibition had to be moved indoors. The head of one cow disappeared, another was stolen and, presumably, is the prize exhibit in somebody's flat. It's a step up from traffic cones.
The Cow parade was held all over the world in cities such as New York, London and Sydney and in no other city had the exhibits ever needed to be relocated.
That doesn't augur well for the bikes. I'm sure there's quite a few ready to make them vanish or toss them in to join the shopping trolleys in the Liffey. I doubt if there will be too many left by the time we're going for the five-in-a-row next year.
Maybe I'm wrong and if it does prove to be a success I'm sure Mayor Malcolm would be keen to try the scheme out in Kilkenny. It would be very popular with tourists. That's if there are any around next year.
