“I meant well.”

I didn’t.

I was too drunk most of the time to mean anything.

As the coach approached the outskirts of the city, I’d mouthed a mantra:

“Attempting to give back to the world a portion of its lost heart.”

The quotation by Louise Brogan, it gave me a sense of longing I couldn’t ever expect to realise.

Getting off the coach at Fair Green, the first thing I saw was the headline:

MORE GARDAÍ FOR GALWAY ’S VIOLENT STREETS

Next I noticed the hotels. Four more in Forster Street. This used to be the arse end of town. Nothing grew here ever. Of course, Sammon’s was long gone. The pub of my youth. Liam Sammon had played on the team that won three All Irelands.

Count them and weep. At least when the pub went, we’d still had the carpet showroom A sign in the window said “Moved to the Tuam Road ”.

Jesus.

You could no longer say,

“Everything’s gone to hell.”

Hell and everything else had moved to the Tuam Road.

Before my departure, I’d found a new pub. No mean achievement in a city that had barred me from every worthwhile establishment. I knew it was my kind of pub from the sign in the window.

WE DO NOT STOCK BUD LIGHT.

Jeff, the owner, had been part of a heavy metal band. Big in the eighties, in Germany. He wrote the lyrics. You go…what lyrics?

Exactly.

He’d hooked up with a punk rocker who odd times helped me. Cathy Bellingham, a Londoner ex-junkie, she’d washed up in Galway. I’d introduced them and withdrawn. They’d be my first port of call.

I’d flown from Heathrow to Dublin, caught the noon coach west. The driver said,

“Howyah?”

I knew I was home.

A reformed smoker, I’d started again. It’s a bastard. The new world is designed for non-smokers. It’s near impossible to do coke and not smoke. It blends so fine. When that first rush hits, you want to wallop it with nicotine.