SUNDAY LUNCH

I had lunch on Sunday, the day after their 1st anniversary, with Sarah and August and a friend of theirs, Jim, who was in town from San Francisco. The San Francisco connection felt very strong to me, especially as Jim and August are of my generation, and it seemed quite natural to share memories of the halcyon days I spent there in the sixties.

I found myself reminiscing about nights riding side saddle on the back of my lover’s Harley dressed in a Jean Harlowesque vintage long satin gown and a top hat, crossing the Bay Bridge from Berkeley to San Francisco on our way to the Avalon Ballroom. Recounting the time I stood next to Janis Joplin as she sang at the Hell’s Angels birthday party at the Filmore Ballroom, and as we were leaving, I watched some Angels threaten to toss another of my lovers down a deep stairwell if he didn’t give up his hat, which I had just decorated with feathers. The Angels got the hat. Relating the night I was in San Francisco with Pallas and Sharon walking the late night streets when a crazed man grabbed Sharon and tried to take her with him. I took Sharon’s other arm and held on with grim determination whilst trying to appear as menacing as possible. Suddenly our white knight appeared, driving by in a pick up truck, he leaned out the window and gruffly addressed the maniac who thankfully fled. He then drove us to his, where his wife made us tea and gave us a chance to calm down. That’s how I met Lenore Kandel, one of the most notorious and renowned poets of our time.

It was a natural segue for the four of us to talk about the poets and songwriters of that generation, who we liked, who we didn’t and to squabble, in a friendly manner, about our differences. It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and to make it perfect for me (I was skint as usual) August generously hosted our lunch.

The sixties were a seminal part of my life and that got me thinking about the times in my life, which were true markers of abandon and contentment. The sixties in California and then traveling across the country to the east coast where I lived for awhile when Bobby and I owned a leather shop where I designed and made clothing then crossing the US again back to California where we opened another leather shop. It was not until I moved to Ireland in the late eighties that I was able to find that same sense of freedom.

Ireland was magical. Tom and I lived in Summer Cove, across the bay from Kinsale, just on the southernmost tip of Cork. I both loathed and loved walking up the hill from Summer Cove, a hill that was so steep I had to bend forward as I walked just to get up it. My reward when I achieved the top was to stop at the place where one could turn and see all of Summer Cove, Kinsale and right out to the ocean. Sometimes on Sundays I would stand there watching the boats and I could hear the music drift across the bay from Jury’s Hotel, the sound of the bodhran, fiddle and pipes soothing my aching muscles as I paused to both catch my breath and have it taken away by the beauty of the scene before me. I adored the celebration we made of dole day, or as we called it, free money day, when Tom and I would go into Kinsale and I would wait at Patsy’s Café eating amazing lemon meringue pie and drinking coffee while he was signing on. We would then drink our way back to Summer Cove, starting at the Greyhound in Kinsale, working our way up the hill around the cove to the Spaniard and then back home to the Bullman. The light in summer lingered long into the night as we would sit outside the Bullman, which sat just across the road from the slip, drinking till last orders. We’d nip into the pub get some drag out and pile into small boats and head out into the ocean, drinking, talking, laughing and sometimes just quietly listening to the waves lap against the boat whilst the ocean was lighted from the phosphorus just beneath the water.

When I left London I was very sad to leave all of my friends but I only wept when I realised that I would never see Ireland again.