Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry

In the spotlight this week is a song I wrote just over a year ago when I travelled to Edinburgh for a weekend with a group from my East Clare football club, Mixed Bag United. The football was over and I was enjoying the last evening of the weekend, touring a few of my favourite pubs with one of the other Mixed Bag players.

Lyrics | No studio recording for this one, but I’ve got this video shot in November 2008 as part of the “Hats Challenge”, which was just a bit of fun on YouTube involving hats and songs.

As is usual, we ended up in the Royal Oak and got chatting to two sisters from Kerry. Earlier that day, Tyrone had beaten Kerry in the All Ireland football final, so the banter started off with GAA and moved quickly to weighty subjects of Irish current affairs, such as the cultural conseqences of DJ Tom Dunne moving from TodayFM to NewsTalk radio.

Come closing time it was a shame to say goodbye – my normal shy retiring self seemed to have been liberated (something inside me was kicking like a lamb) by a long lost part of me that revelled in the conversation and banter. My friend tried to temper my excitement by reminding me that the sisters were in their 20s giving us a good 20-year head start on them. This sort of made me realise that I operate with a self-image of me in my 20s, which is certainly a bit of blind spot when it comes to flirtatious circumstances.

But what the hell, life is for the living. A big thank you to the Moriarty Party Girls for the craic that evening and a great spark of inspiration.