Regrets? I’ve had more than a few. Leaving the tractor I got from Santa as a four-year-old in the front garden to be stolen by mean kids. Innocently exploring my parent’s bedroom ahead of my ninth Christmas and finding boxing gloves and a Stretch Armstrong under the bed and realising what it meant.
Waiting months for the fireball-shaped plastic medallion that proved I was in the Bullet Comic Gang before losing it on the walk to school the morning it arrived. Never managing to save for World Cup Edition Subbuteo.
Not stopping Snap, the wonder sausage dog, running out in front of that car. Shying away from spin the bottle with a Bandon girl at 11. Fretting about girls at Galway roller discos. Roller discos.
Living in fear of Rattlesnakes (the Galway “gang”, not Lloyd Cole’s album). Befriending mods. Blowing school-tour spending money on a three-button suit on Carnaby Street. Seeing the Smiths in Leisureland but losing my grip on Morrissey’s shirt when he threw it. Being sent to the wrong secondary school. Irish classes. Discovering I couldn’t sing. Not just singing anyway. Not enjoying drumming in bands enough. Learning to smoke. Spending my student days in the UCG basement trying to impress girls in baggy jumpers with my smoking skills. Learning virtually nothing in four years.
Coming of age in an era when sex killed. Worrying endlessly about my health despite never being sick.
Dressing in Dr Martens and wool jumpers during a sweltering Boston summer. Skipping Sonic Youth’s support act in Dún Laoghaire’s Top Hat to drink tequila in a Ranelagh bedsit. Missing Nirvana’s Top Hat gig. Saipan. The penalty shoot- out against Spain.
Never thanking John O’Donnell, the Connacht Tribune’s printworks manager, for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Never thanking my parents for the same. Being a super-grumpy bollocks when I last spoke to my dad. Devoting so much energy to reliving regrets and not imposing a statute of limitations on measuring the manner in which I’ve messed things up and let people down since my tractor was thieved all those years ago.
