It’s 1983. I’ve long left small town Ireland for the big city of Dublin. I’m currently working as a trainee retail store manager in Tallaght a village now crammed with 70,000 rehoused inner city residents. It’s a worthwhile career. I’m bursting with nervous energy. I’m not going to fail. No more alcohol. No more cigarettes. No more gambling. No more playing darts in pubs to all hours. I’m a punk rock apostate. The safety pins, razor blades, saliva lathered shirt and tie are redundant now, supplanted by a dark navy suit. I look like John Belushi minus the fedora hat.
There’s ten trainee managers in the store. We are living in Kilmanagh, a gargantuan housing development, in two bland rented semis adjacent to the store. My house is known as The Priory as I don’t drink having taken the pledge. The other house is practically a sheeben. I’m sharing the dwelling with a disparate group, most of whom are rural bog men. There is one exception, a womaniser, cool Shaun the lothario from Leitrim. A friend of one trainee is an ex british soldier, an interloper, who is overstaying his visit. I don’t warm to him. Not because he served the Queen but because he won’t pay any rent or buy any food. He has no bed or sleeping bag opting to sleep Lshaped in a wardrobe.
My twenty first birthday is approaching. The trainees want to host a party for me. I’m not really interested in a booze up so I tell them I’d prefer a night out in Flanagan’s Steak House then on to the Savoy cinema to see the film Flashdance. After considerable negotiations and surreptitious plotting they all agree to have a party, in my house, as it is bigger than theirs. Furthermore, I want to have it on a Saturday night as we don’t trade on Sunday with no work the following day. But again I am overruled. They, in their infinite wisdom, want it on my actual birthdate which falls on a Monday.
I agree to this under certain conditions. No excessive alcohol consumption. No food fights, or female members of staff to be in attendance as management are prohibited from fraternising with staff. Zero damage to the contents or structure of the house and under no circumstances annoy the neighbours. At the weekend I have to go home to Co. Monaghan to see my mother. On my return on Monday evening April 25 I meet three dozen people in the house, at least a quarter of them female staff. I also encounter a keg of Harp lager, a keg of Guinness, two cases of Stag Cider complemented by a giant bottle of poteen.
They present me with a Pioneer turntable to play my music albums on with the added bonus of David Bowie’s controversial pop influenced Let’s Dance LP which they play on the loop. I notice the absence of any party food. I’m informed that they didn’t want food fights but there’s plenty of King Pub Crisps which are bigger bags. Nine trainee managers working in the second biggest supermarket in Dublin who can’t provide any food for a party. I’m more than a bit annoyed. To compound it further David Bowie tells me at full volume to ‘put on my red shoes and dance the blues’. Now the neighbours are threatening to call the Gardai.
Later in the evening I go to the bathroom to witness a reenactment of Last Tango in Paris, minus the butter. Despite being found in flagrante delicto, both Shaun the butchery counter manager and Lan, his diminutive Vietnamese female assistant continue their copulation. Shaun kindly asks me to bring them up two bottles of cider as it is getting quite warm. Bizarrely I oblige, returning upstairs as Lan says ‘gwate parta yah! You happa so many peaple yah? Later as I sit on the stairs melancholic, thinking about facing the ogre of a branch manager the next morning, Club orange in hand, eating a packet of crisps with David Bowie singing about his Little China Girl, the semi naked Lan passes me on the stairs, grabbing a handful of my crisps, innocently declaring ‘nice Kwips. Kwips in big bags betta fill up belly’ as she pats her flat stomach before disappearing into another bedroom.
The next morning the scene that meets my eyes can honestly be described as a catastrophe, perhaps a cataclysmic incident. No, in fact the apposite adjective is Armageddon. I wouldn’t be exaggerating to suggest there had been a riot. Meanwhile Mr. Bowie is singing and if you say run, I’ll run with you, and if you say hide, we’ll hide.
That’s exactly what I want to do. I observe a kitchen table, which like most of the trainees, is legless. Broken bottles and glasses blanket the carpet. The curtains have been used as towels. The kitchen door is in need of a joiner. I go into my bedroom to get my suit for work to discover the British soldier is not in the wardrobe. In fact, he’s in my bed, vomiting into a mop bucket. He looks up at me like he just saw an IRA active service unit, putting his hands in the air in apologetic surrender as he vomits all over my bed.
I walk over to work in my stained suit. I’m Jesus heading for Golgotha without a Simon of Cyrene. I’m the only one sober. The only one going to work. The manager has all the physical attributes of the actor Milo O Shea but not his temperament or sense of humour. He informs me that it was my party, therefore my responsibility and consequently my fault that my housemates are not at work. I’m immediately seconded to drag them all over to the store regardless of whether they are fit or not. Now I’m as humiliated as Captain Alfred Dreyfus at Morlan Court, walking back to the house in disgrace without an Emile Zola to campaign for my innocence. As I approach the gate, Lan races past me, surprisingly on this occasion fully clothed, in fact wearing her meat counter uniform, declaring ‘why you not work?’ Depressed, I just sit on the doorstep as David Bowie sings
I know when to go out
And when to stay in.
Originally from Clones Co. Monaghan, Houdi McCabe is a legend in his own mind. He worked as a Branch Manager with Dunnes Stores all over Northern Ireland for 42 years. Retired, he now writes and acts on a full time basis, with over thirty films/plays within his oeuvre. Some of his stories have been adapted for short films, by himself and with other collaborators. He is a regular performer at literary events TENX9, Soundwaves Portrush, Pub Poetry Causeway Coast, First Drams NI and Flash Fiction Armagh. Resident in Portrush Co. Antrim he is married to local girl Carole Robinson.
They have three adult children and one grandchild, Genevieve. Houdi doesn’t have any pets as he loves himself too much.
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