USA

Smoke Rising in the South: Some Memories of 9/11

Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too   Everybody remembers where they were on 9/11. I was in Manhattan, with Ciara. We were staying in Brian and Julie’s apartment on the Upper West Side. It was a stop-off on our way to Canada – a couple of weeks’ holiday in Vancouver and British Columbia. It was morning, around nine. I was having a cup of tea and reading. Ciara was having a lie-in, she was still a bit jet-lagged. The phone rang and I answered. It was Dusty O’Callaghan calling from Mallow, enquiring if Brian was okay, if he was down near the Twin Towers. ‘Brian is fine, he’s working over in Columbia,’ I said. ‘Why? What’s happened?’ Dusty told me. I put the phone down and woke Ciara. ‘Something’s happened,’ I said. ‘You have to get up.’

Strange and Wonderful Sights in the US of A

A young man walking down Haywood Street in Asheville, NC, with a snake wrapped around his arm. He looked pleased with himself, to be shocking passers by – the man, not the snake. The snake was maybe five or six feet long and hung its head out from his hand, sniffing. I wondered what it was thinking. Mind you, the snake looked better than some of the tattoos we’ve seen on people here. Ó, mo léir.

Three Drives in the USA, almost 1,000 miles.

Down the I95 It was a long drive down from Washington DC to Athens, Georgia. We were 12 hours on the road, including three rest/food/toilet/gas stops. 600 hundred miles, the longest drive we were ever on. Up and down the middle of Ireland twice. Those huge signs on poles higher than pines. Waffle House, McDonalds, Subway. Holiday Inn. Chicken Filet. Adult Store.

On Airports and First Impressions of DC

On Airports I used to describe Heathrow Airport as ‘the worst place in the world’. That was when I travelled a bit for work and I’d often be sent through Heathrow. That was the time when you had to walk over two roads and into another county to get to the specific far-away-as-possible little terminal (that we christened Paddyland) to get to flights home. I wasn’t comfortable in airports generally that time, it wasn’t just Heathrow.