Red Card

The building site on the edge of Nottingham was mourning a great national tragedy. We were hungover as a result. My young arms ached from the weight of the plasterboard precariously balanced above my head. My Father, who held the other end, exhaled the sweet, stale odour of the night before into my nostrils, triggering my nausea. The screw I was attempting to fasten slipped to the floor followed by the plasterboard and then me as I attempted to stem the tide of pressure threatening to burst forth from my stomach.

"Bleedin hell!" My Father roared before flinging his Stanley knife in my vague direction. "We can't make this pay." We gave up and sat upon on makeshift chairs of cement bags, eating sandwiches in silence.

We should not have been so deflated. The sudden emergence of a teenage sensation had electrified the nation. For 45 minutes the Argentinians retreated in terror against Michael Owen's lightning pace as he tore apart their defence, scoring a goal that would make Maradona blush. England had cracked the code that would see them march imperviously towards World Cup glory.
And then...A flash of anger, a moment of petulance, a red card. Beckham was sent off, England were knocked out and I was gone west.

Such is life, fleeting moments, inconsequential if not for the resultant paradigm shifts visible only through the four-dimensional lens of hindsight.

It was the darkness of our mood that made the response inevitable when the phone rang. A former colleague had been made foreman of a large plastering company. They urgently needed men. The money was good, better than what we were failing to earn here. The only catch – it was in Ireland.

What did we know of Ireland? They were our friends now weren't they? Did we need passports? My Dad thought they still used Sterling.

We weren't completely ignorant. England had been obsessed with all things Irish since we adopted their soccer team in response to our own failure in the previous World Cup. There was Jack Charlton, Riverdance, Ballykissangel and the seductive lilt of Dolores O' Riordan which sent my late adolescence hormones racing. 'If only I could meet a girl who spoke like that,' I mused wistfully.

Dad had factored in the Quiet Man into his equation - "Top of the morning to ye."

What wasn't there to like? There was nothing for us here now the World Cup was over. This would save our Summer.

The next day, like a Christy Moore song in reverse, two English builders boarded a ferry minus passports and Punts in a rusty white Transit van with plywood for back windows.

The job was supposed to last six weeks. Fortuitously, I packed everything I owned into the van. Although I could not know, I was destined for a Celtic Tiger of stacking bricks under the grey skies of wild Atlantic winters. Seduced by the lilt of a girl sounding just like Dolores, Ireland became home.