What happens when you run out of steam?

Hey, I justed turned 35 and I'm wondering whether I should be settling into nicely into painting the back garden. I am still addicted to painting the town red. I think that Dublin right now is a seriously tough place to have a relaxed lifestyle - it's so manic and expensive and it really suits a manic and expensive life. So what happens when I run out steam? Meath? Leitrim? Wicklow?

I have been thinking about this comment for some time. As Luke is the guardian of the spirit of the girl I used to be, am now and always will be, I feel obliged to tackle it.

What happens when you run out of steam?

The Queen Parents took me out for a very nice fish supper with a nice chardonnay to wash it down and then retired; Himself is working nights tonight, which involves playing cards with Greg and keeping the refinery going; absolutely no distractions for Queenie for the next couple of hours.

I have made a nice mix of Cat Power You are Free, Patrick Watson Close to Paradise, and The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs to keep me company.

The northwest wind that was sniffing around Halifax for a few days is gone and when we left the restaurant tonight it was muggy and warm again. I dropped the QPs home and then headed up Spring Garden to get some cash and a cab.

It was hoppin'.

For a Monday.

People walking out into the traffic in that 'the air is warm so I'm going to be crazy' way people have when they realise the summer is still on.

What happens when you run out of steam?

You sniff the air and it is intoxicating, but even though your body itches to head down towards your favourite bar, your brain propels you into the ATM unit and back to the cab rank because it is Monday night and you have a week ahead tomorrow.

I sat into the cab and clicked myself in and told cabbie where I wanted to go and sat back for the rush that is a cab drive down the Northwest Arm on a hot August night.

In the absence of going crazy on a Monday night when I have nowhere to be and money to spend, I love summer taxi rides with the window open. I love being propelled forward through the night by a stranger who may or may not talk to you about something interesting or crazy or just banal.

Sometimes the idea is better than the reality, isn't it.

We hit a light pretty much straight away. It was a long one. I started to notice a weird smell in the cab. Then I noticed that cabbie's hair was a bit 'messy'.

Also, he was gnawing his finger knuckles and making a strange bronchial sucking sound.

When I say gnawing, I mean he had three of them in his mouth and when I say bronchial I mean Denis Hopper in the rape scene in Blue Velvet.

The smell was getting worse.

There was no window opening device in the back of the cab.

We hit road works on Bell St. and cabbie was in the wrong lane. It was closed for repairs. He peered through his enormously thick lenses into the car in the next lane. He was trying to see if the girl in the car would let him into the lane I think, but she took one look at whatever his look said to her and REACTED.

Then she looked at me.

I shrugged.

Which is hard to do when you've stopped breathing because of the smell in the cab.

She mouthed something at me.... don't know what it was.

Probably something along the lines of 'just shout if you need help'.

It was only a cab ride.

I've done worse things on a Monday.

Long pause while nothing happened because the guy working the stop-go sign was having a spliff break or something.

Cabbie did a u-ie in the middle of the road and we sped off down the other route.

We passed the church on North St.

The sign which I always read when I pass this church said 'I came to bring fire to the world and how I wish it were already kindled' (Luke 12:49).

Sometimes you pass that church and it says something really religious. And sometimes you pass it and it says what you've been thinking all day.

As we drove past I craned my neck to see if it was repeated on the other side of the sign, as I hadn't caught the verse number.

'Golf tournament, for details call 4** 2***'

Is that what happens when you run out of steam?

Eventually I got the drive down the NorthWest Arm but the smell meant the rush was not the rush I intended.

Through the Rotary. Which is a Cretan labryinth of red and black traffic bollards at the moment. Cabbie drove ve-ry slowly round due to the lack of eyesight.

Up the hill and he took his sweet time about getting me my change.

Finally I got out of the smell and got my evening back.

WHY ARE HALIFAX CABS SO EFFING SMELLY? IT'S EFFING EMBARRASSING.

So anyways, what happens when you run out of steam?

I am reading Alastair Campbell's diaries at the moment. I am obsessed with them. They are the most accurate description of working for a politician I have ever read and I have read them all.

A former colleague recently pointed out to me that the problem with where I work is that everyone there acts like they are five years old all the time. And I took that incredibly accurate observation on board and resolved to grow up and be twelve, at least.

On a good day anyway.

And after having done that for a month with all the self-control that that entailed, I start reading this book and realise that the architects of New Labour all acted like they were five.

All the time.

The whole book is peppered with Mandelson having a hissy fit about nobody listening to him. And Gordon Brown having a sulk because no one listens to him. And Robin Cook plotting against everyone because he is the smartest person in the universe and yet nobody listens to him. And Prescott trying to beat up people because they won't listen to him. And Clare Shortt fucking everything up for everyone on the Channel 4 news, because she is the conscience of the party and nobody listens to her.

And Harriet Harman and Mo Mowlam are just appalling. All the time.

And Cherie having a tantrum because Alastair sees more of Tony than she does.

And Alastair having a fit because Tony didn't care enough about his ulcerative colitis.

And Tony Blair in the middle of it all sitting on a bed in a chateau somewhere playing air guitar with his underpants on his head saying, for fuck's sake, we're trying to be the government here, can we all stop acting like we're five

Change a few names and we have every political party I have ever worked for.

It sounds like they had a lot of laughs at their own expense. Which is the same for every political party I have ever worked for. Which is why I still do it even though I feel like I have run out of ideas most of the time.

Himself just called and said one of the boilers is not working, so he has run out of steam for sure tonight.

I don't think I ever ran out of steam. I don't think that was what happened.

Honestly.

One day I had a life that involved dinners with ambassadors and weekends in draughty cottages in the west of Ireland with appallingly arrogant Guardian journalists and race meetings with dodgy millionaires and ladies' room chats about other people with drunk female politicians and parties in all the best places and knowing whose intellect was propped up with cocaine and whose was propped up by their wife and what Nobel Laureate to avoid because he was a fucking sexual deviant and which one was the party bore.

And the next day that life was over.

And I never missed that life.

Not for a minute.

Because apart from the fact that all experiences pall after a while, I had moved on and I had a life that involved being on my own and being in total control of what I did and I never had to watch my words or spend an eternity at some boring PR witch's theatre supper because some better guest had dropped out at the last minute and I got to hang out with the best kind of rock band - the professional touring band - which involved nights in the Camden Palace snooker hall and too many pints and then a walk in the Wicklow mountains in the rain with my favourite people in the world.

And then I had a moment of utter silence in the most expensive shoe box I had ever bought and realised that a life without the background noise of the real universe is not a life and decided that I should try to find that soundtrack and live in it.

And sometimes I miss that life.

But I remember every single second of it and when I get achey for it I just tell Himself stories about it and he appreciates hearing about the me that was me before the me that is me now.

And so do I.

And now I have a life that quite improbably and remarkably involves a seamless shift between the ridiculously pompous work of trying to figure out what is the best option for the society I live in and putting it out there safe in the knowledge that when I am wrong someone smarter than me will spot that and call me and tell me to cop the fuck on...

... and the times when I just sit in what's left of the wilderness from which that society was carved and listen to a trio of woodpeckers bore into a spruce bole.

And a whole bunch of creative, ridiculous five year olds to hang out with during the week.

And I don't have to feel guilty about how I spend my money, or my time, or my carbon, or my emotions.

It's not that I ran out of steam.

I just ran out of reasons not to live my life the way I am supposed to this time round.

So I suppose if you are living a life that you choose and it is the life you are meant to be living then you will never run out of steam.

Did you come to bring fire to the world, Luke?

Yes. Definitely.

Are you wishing it was already kindled?

If you are not then you are in the right place.

If you are then know that it is, somewhere and go find it.

And if you're not sure, then come to Bear Cove next August where we'll be kindling a fire.

Like the one in the photo. That's last year's fire I think.

Maybe some whales will come in to feed when the moon is overhead.

We might see a coyote on his nightly run.

We could even hear a shark take a seal.

I have to warn you though, it takes a long time for a seal to die from a shark bite.

And it's very bronchial.

In a Dennis Hopper kind of way.