“Take it with you.”

“I haven’t enough.”

“Ary, settle it some other time.”

AND

Handed him The Collected Robert Frost, adding,

“You’ll want this, too.”

Class.

Vinny Brown was surfing the net, looked up, said,

“You’re back.”

The hardcore team: Charlie, Vinny and Anthony. I’d introduced Anthony to Pellicanos, and in return he’d given me the complete Harry Crews. An American, he seems to understand the pace of Galway. I still don’t. Vinny asked,

“How was London?”

I’d recently ploughed through London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd. Trying not to sound too smart-ass, I said,

“ London is chaos, an unknowable labyrinth.”

Took Vinny a time, then he ventured,

“Ackroyd?”

I don’t know about serendipity. I don’t mean Sting’s atrocious song but coincidence. When God is playing a lower profile. There was a travelling woman in the children’s section. Weighing the difference between Barney and The Velveteen Rabbit. I nodded and she said,

“Mr Taylor?”

That “Mr” is a killer. I asked,

“You doing OK?”

“There’s the replay on Sunday.”

“There is?”

“I said a prayer we’d beat the Kingdom. Do you think that’s all right?”

“Against Kerry, I’ll go and light a candle myself.”

She gave me the full look. It’s no relation to inquisitiveness, but it has everything to do with concern. She said,

“You grew the beard.”

“I did.”

“Suits you.”

Thomas Merton in his journal, written six months before his Asian journey:

I realise that I have a past to break with – an accumulation of inertia, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk. A great need of clarification, of mindfulness, or rather, of no mind. A need to return to genuine practice, right effort. Need to push on the great doubt. Need for the spirit. Hang on to the clear light.