City Faeries, Oil on Canvas, 100cm x 100cm, 2003
Architect, Floppy Disk, Temple Bar
Cobbles shone, little tiny bottle caps embedded themselves into the putty cracks between the stones and boy did they glisten among the fag ends, bits of yellow polysterene and pigeon shite.
Her brown, spanish leather boots slid and glided down past the clock shop, the tie dye and the vintage tulle dresses as that familiar weekend scent of vomit hung to the air.
Hello early Monday morning in Temple Bar.
When they opened their little green door in the eighties there was nothing here but a derelict remnant of industry. The old bus station was usurped by a group of well meaning, cool as fuck artists who lit a spark that flew into the fog of a sweaty liffey bank. Old earlies dotted the river banks and leather jacketed soggy rolley smokers with bono hair breathed sharp stingy stodgy coddled air under their wings as they walked from trick to trick.
Pigeons red feet mangled in the mist hopped over the empty cobbles searching for a trace of last night’s chipper.
She unlocked the door, careful not to wake Jack who was asleep in the corner. She remembered him back then too. The wrong dealer. Billy O was the right one. The south Dublin one with a boat living on an island we won’t mention. The stories Billy O could tell about every head that tramped these bars in bardic frenzy.
As she was about to rise the stairs she looked out at the stained street, at the logos, the cranes, the progress.
They didn’t know when they dreamt of the cleaner brighter city that it would clean away the grime and leave a clean and clinical place with no room for the bards.
Her father, herself, her husband, a band of warriors.
Up the polished poured concrete steps she rose to the attic. To the roof garden. The terrace, where her cut glass box office with its partitioned clean feature wall lay. One small box frame. She came to look at it every Monday morning. To sit among the Banana trees, the avocado, Palm, monstera, aloe, succulents. In her clean green scene and look at this small piece of plastic and metal. She loved to gaze at the three and a half inch square with neat capital letters in blue biro pen saying “A New Dublin” by Kate Flanagan.
She’d then look at the horizon. The skyline flocked and docked with mechanical arms. She’d sigh and breathe. She’d switch on the coffee machine. She’d grab juice from the fridge. She’d sit in her leather Eames chair and slowly but surely a smile would gather at the edges of her mouth and grow, beaming.
Writing is a short piece from 2019 in The Writers’ Room, Arklow (the writers group I am in) It was inspired by the words Architect, Floppy Disk and Temple Bar.)
