Houdi McCabe

She drives me crazy Like no one else It was as if the Fine Young Cannibals were singing this song just for me, from the piped music in the department store I was managing in 1989. The building was situated in a housing estate where unemployment was widespread. This resulted in the store experiencing an inordinate amount of shoplifting. I was promoted from a much smaller store in Newcastle, Co. Down, as the company wanted to stymie the haemorrhaging losses. …

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Fifty six….fifty six, he was only fifty six when he died son. My mother was staring into the open coal fire she had lit earlier with the suet from the butchers, assisted by the double leaf page of the Irish Press to create a draught. Chewing cloves in a toothless mouth, her bare legs rested on the fireplace, crimson with phlebitis, reminiscent of a drawing I’d seen the day before of the Nile Delta on the geography class cork-board. I …

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It’s 1987. I’m working in war torn Northern Ireland. Worse, I’m in west Belfast. In a big shopping centre, the first major retail development in that area for decades. The good news is that it’s my week off. I’m listening to Raintown the debut album from Deacon Blue.  The album is mainly about Glasgow. It’s dreary. Glasgow, not the album. Belfast too is dreary, but unlike Glasgow, the tribes here are slaughtering each other. Literally. Only half a mile from …

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Yes Houdi. Cuppa! Cuppa! Wanna cuppa? Gearóid always spoke in whispers and started his conversations with yes and finished with honestly or I swear on the bible. Every conversation. Yes, George Best is dead. Yes, your stock result is bad, honestly it is. Yes, Alex Higgins is dead, I swear on the bible. Yes, any holidays? Yes, it’s not raining. In the early nineties we both worked for a major Irish retailer that launched an expansion programme. The man originally …

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I would give everything I own Just to have you back again That lyric by David Gates’ Bread was from a song I first heard on Radio Èireann as I watched my mother staring, catatonic, into the fire, after burying my 56 year old father. Not even ten years old I was a sad boy then. My melancholy reinforced by a misunderstanding we had just before his sudden death. Fourteen years later listening to Ken Boothe singing his version on …

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In early 1985 my days as a trainee supermarket manager in Dublin had reached the end of the line. The company offered me a very substantial position as assistant manager in their biggest ever store, but there was a sting in the tail. It was located in West Belfast. It was a progressive step in my career but I was nervous about entering the killing fields of: if you are a Catholic, the north of Ireland, or if Protestant, the …

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It’s early 1984. I’m in Dublin having escaped the mundanity of small Irish town life. Twenty-two years old, a trainee manager with Ireland’s biggest retailer, I’m bouncing with nervous energy. George Orwell’s prediction of the totalitarian society is unfounded. I don’t need Winston Smith. My schooldays relationship with an alluring artist has reached the end of the road.  I’m  a free agent on the hunt. A new music entertainment phenomenon has hit Ireland, namely disco bars awash with multi screens …

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I stare at the protruding wires of my brand new Honda Accord mirror lying smashed on the ground like the head of a Cobra. Nauseous, I phone the seller of the car, to be informed the mirror is unrepairable. A new one is £350 plus vat. Only authorised Honda dealerships could provide them. Nosy Stella, the receptionist who was eavesdropping the phone conversation informs me, You should go to a breakers yard and try there. There’s one in Upperlands, Quinns. …

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‘It’s a great album’ says Shaun, ‘a huge departure for Adamson. He’s better away from that troublemaker Jobson’. That was a reference to The Crossing, the debut album from Scottish band Big Country plus the acrimonious split from his previous band The Skids. I feign full knowledge of the internecine musical squabble, although with superficial knowledge of The Skids from my previous incarnation as a punk rocker at the turn of the previous decade, I never possessed anything near the …

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It was the Monday of St. Patrick’s week 1988. I was driving to my work in Newcastle Co. Down having just got my girlfriend’s father’s blessing for our marriage, making me the happiest man in Ireland. I turned the radio on. These rivers run too deep With schemes of men for days that lay ahead They sell their souls so cheap That breed distrust and fill my heart with dread Just released this week that’s the new single Broken Land …

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My life is brilliant  My love is pure  I saw an angel Of that I’m sure My life is brilliant. Is that so? That’s what I ask James Blunt as I travel from the panoramic north coast to the madhouse that is the Crumlin Road in Belfast. The previous year I was working in peaceful Mid Ulster but was transferred to manage a new department store in the most volatile interface in Belfast. As I manoeuvre past the burnt out …

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Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. I was ecstatic when my brother gave me this for my 16th birthday. The Sex Pistol’s debut was released in 1977 but it was a year later that I immersed myself in the punk scene. They were the quintessential agitators.  Sacked by two previous record labels, banned from playing live in many venues for encouraging  Anarchy in the UK. They were subsequently ostracised by BBC Radio One for mocking the Silver Jubilee …

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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 …

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A miserable Sunday afternoon, hailstones bounced off the single glazed windows like crystal bismuth, the house colder than a Cavan-man’s wallet. The coal supply exhausted mid month. We had burned the last of the orange crates taken from the supermarket we were working in. A week away from a payslip, in pecuniary despair, living on cornflakes, beans on toast and Lyons Tea. We stared at the rented TV screen as Alison Moyet empathised with us, emerging barefoot out of a …

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‘Will you finish off the hoovering of that room of yours? I haven’t any more time. I’m away to work’. It must have been a rhetorical question as my wife Carole didn’t wait for an answer. I had recently converted the large living room into a home cinema replete with an 84 inch screen, Panasonic projector with six permanent Java speakers. The concept was perfected using blacked out curtains to create the darkness. On this occasion I chose to binge …

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My brother (Pat) Patrick Mc Cabe’s writing is heavily influenced by music with many of his book titles taken from songs. His novel Breakfast on Pluto (named after the Don Partridge hit song) was brought to the screen by Neil Jordan. A story about a young man wanting to be a woman in a  small border town in Ireland. It was a groundbreaking story as was the performance of actor Cillian Murphy in the lead as Kitten Brady. At the …

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Suspect Device They take away our freedom In the name of liberty Why can’t they all just clear off Why can’t they let us be My favourite anti war lyrics from any song; ever. As a 16 year old I should have been studying for my Inter Certificate Examination in Clones Co. Monaghan, but in 1978 these boys from Belfast, Stiff Little Fingers had a rawness that was paradoxically fresh. A bona fide distraction from textbooks. I played their debut …

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‘That was born to run the boss himself, Bruce Springsteen. If that doesn’t motivate you to enter our 10k fun run in two weeks time, you’re already dead’ said Declan Meehan the presenter on Radio Nova. The station was the market leader in the burgeoning pirate radio phenomenon in early to mid eighties Ireland. We were ten young men living in two rented, dreary, ramshackle semi detached houses in Kilnamanagh, a sprawling housing estate in Tallaght Co. Dublin. Tallaght, once …

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As a nineteen year old trainee manager in Dublin in 1981, I never imagined I would end up in war torn Belfast four years later. I spent the next two years as deputy manager in the company’s biggest shop in Northern Ireland, but now the stabilisers were off. I was given my own branch. Now I had to paddle my own canoe. Take all the hits. One other positive aspect of this promotion was my new branch was situated in …

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You know you’ve gotta help me out, yeah Brandon Flowers from The Killers was with me as I drove home from the Odyssey Arena Belfast. This was a sample lyric of All These Things That I’ve Done a track from their smash hit debut album Hot Fuss. I certainly didn’t feel like Mr Brightside after what happened an hour earlier. I wished that Somebody Told Me beforehand, not that I was a great listener back then. In 2004, I was …

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