I carry it with me
And I know
It gets lighter
By the day
Tick tock
The occasional chime
The beating heart
Of my bag of time

It felt bigger yesterday
Than the day before
It will feel smaller tomorrow
Than it ever felt before

I'm grateful that I still have my ever decreasing bag
I'll happily carry it when skin begins to sag
When what once was a firm pull

Becomes a painfully slow drag

I try keep my bag still
In the whirlwind of time
It gets easier to manage
As each day becomes more sublime
Than the last
How quickly it passed
With a few more blinks of the eye
It will be I

I don't see him very often
I'm grateful
When I do 
It's always a glimpse
A split second can be long enough
To see much

Peripheral
Still clear like crystal
Our eyes not meeting
In the glance, fleeting
I'm not sure if he's watching me
Or I him

It's as if he wants to call
His face etched
With pain
We are one and the same
That's what he seems to be thinking
He wants to tell me
Our ship is sinking

He knows I know
Already
But he feels the need to tell me
Still
Clear like crystal

I yearn to see light
Some light
Any light
But there is none

We are two
We are one 

The Forty Day Challenge has been completed. I should be running around the streets of Portobello singing about the hills being alive, but I’m not. Instead, I’m humming a different tune about making the medicine go down. A spoonful of Jack Daniel’s.

Cutting alcohol out of my life is a wonderful thing but I have to be in the mood to see it that way. I’m more in a kind of ‘Is this fucking it?’ mood. There have been times in the last five years when I felt like that about smoking. Just one cigarette and everything about life would feel a bit better – a lot better, perhaps – but that’s bollox, isn’t it?

I haven’t had a drink for forty days. I haven’t had a cigarette for five years. Right now I would lurvvvveeeee to have both on this rainy Monday morning. Rainy Days & Mondays; I’m hearing Karen Carpenter’s beautiful voice now.  

Nobody said it was easy. Now it’s Chris Martin.

A couple of hours have passed since I started this. The little alcohol receptor demons are making me chuckle. I know they are the ones coming up with ideas and suggestions coz it’s certainly not me. They want drink; they want a lot of drink, and I don’t want to undo the good of the last forty days. I cannot deny (to myself) that I am feeling better and there’s an exponential nature to the feeling good. One day at a time, Sweet Jesus!

Music is my saviour, well, one of them and each one of them is better than pouring poison down my neck for a bit of escapism – more bollox on my part, perhaps – and then having to pay the price. Here’s the thing, my quitting the booze has more to do with paying the many prices; financially, mentally, emotionally, physically.

The song playing in my head should be Vincent by Don McClean. I’m trying to learn it. The song that is playing is Clink, Clink, Fizz, and I’m trying to unlearn that one.

Good fun busking in Tymon North, Tallaght today.

I was joined by two local lads, Archie & Jamie, who performed an impromptu couple of tracks. 

Jamie told me they'll be playing a concert soon. 

The oldest busker in Tallaght being replaced by the youngest. Remember me when you're famous, lads.

And now a bit of Green Day.