Dazed In The Life

The Masses On Dawson Street for the Grand Slam Homecoming

I don’t think there is anything I can add to the paragraphs and paragraphs which have been and will continue to be written about the Miracle Of The Millenium Stadium. The manner in which the mythic Grand Slam was won by Ireland yesterday made it all the more emotional. To be so close to clinching a historic victory only to stare into the abyss of despair right at the moment of triumph – the human capacity for emotional yo-yoing was seriously tested. To witness Bernard Dunne seal a world title a few hours later simply reinforced the old adage: What’s seldom is wonderful. Ireland is such a small country, our triumphs so unlikely as to be so much sweeter. It was a joy to be on Dawson Street today to welcome the team and coaches home – as Jack Kyle said yesterday, they will always be Grand Slam winners, just like him.

Oh, and my €10 bet with Manus on the outcome of the Premier League this year remains very much still on – Liverpool 5-0 Aston Villa. Hot on the heels of the demolition of ManYoo in their Theatre Of Nightmares last week, it just makes you wonder how we’re still behind in this chase. I blame Hull, Fulham, West Ham, ‘Boro, etc.

I watched a beautiful documentary on the late, great Anna Manahan tonight – stuck in the graveyard slot by RTE, like most of their best broadcasts. Filmed 4 years ago, the piece was rerun in tribute to the actress who died two weeks ago. It was a wonderfully simple documentary, meandering about Anna’s past and present, showing a stage great in her eighties, the weight of parts played, loves lost, years gone by. She reminded me a lot of my grandmother, that generation of Irish ladies in particular who speak plainly yet poetically, who grew up with “a certain type of way of behaving”, who ask why you won’t have tea, who delve into the immeasurable recesses of their memories to pick out a name, a place, a story they thought they’d lost. Watching her shocked reaction in the footage of her Tony Award win for “The Beauty Queen Of Leenane” brought a tear to my eye. To see someone who has lived such a long life and had such a successful career still living with her two brothers in a modest house, still revelling in afternoons spent in her garden staring at the sky or talking to her near-blind cat, it has a different emotional impact to sporting euphoria. It makes you think about how we deal with life, how we approach age, how we think about those older than ourselves. Anna spoke of having bought the plot next to her eldest sister’s grave years ago in preparation for her

own passing – a sort of pragmatism peculiar to those who have been schooled for half a century in the theatre, for those who lived a generation or two away from this, for those who probably witnessed that last Grand Slam triumph, 61 years ago.