It’s now the second half of August, the time when the city is dry, overgrown, sleepy. This year is no different. We are happy to be back into our normal routine but the is the usual sliver of sadness that the summer is racing away - the kids know they’ll be back at school in a fortnight but try to put it out of their minds as they relax back into the urban holiday. In a week or so the breezes will shift subtlely and we will start to feel the cool edge of autumn whispering to us. But, for now, we are holding on to the sunshine and telling ourselves that summer will go on for ages.
We have some visitors. One is my wife’s cousin Terry - an old friend of mine. He is back from Barcelona, perhaps for the last time – come to see us all, to party, to reminisce. He has terminal lung cancer. We find out over the weekend that he has only a couple of months left. But he brings with him a sense of life being lived to its fullest. We spend the weekend lying on grass in the park, telling stories, drinking Tempranillo out of plastic cups. As night falls, he takes up the guitar and the years melt away as he plays the songs we all remember (with me on drunken one string improvised mandolin, trying to keep up). In the old days we would meet up in old men’s pubs around Kings Cross and Terry would put stuff on the jukebox and talk me through the lyrics in real time, giving emphasis on what he felt were important words. He does this now while singing John Martyn’s ‘Solid Air’, staring at me as if trying to get me to understand the song for the first time. Later he does the song again, this time with eyes closed, and I imagine him off camping with his late father, living on Guardian crosswords and roast rabbit. Several hours later comes version number three. By now he cannot remember any of the chords so plays a strange freejazz backing. But the words are the same and he stares into my soul as he intones each word in his clipped, South Dublin tones.
I will see him in the morning before he leaves, but I know this is our last goodbye. We all want to hold this feeling for ever.
‘I know you, I love you
And I can be your friend
I can follow you anywhere
Even through solid air’