Wasted (17 page)

‘That would keep me going until breakfast time, ten o’clock, when I’d go to the off-licence instead of the café. I’d have my other top-up then, which would keep me
going until lunchtime. Two or three pints then. Maybe four pints. I was living on drink. Come in then in the evening I’d go to the pub. For a couple of years I was living on takeaways at
eleven o’clock at night—that was the only bit of food I had.

‘Down through the years I was in a few relationships, but I was married to drink already, put it bluntly. One relationship I was in for four years and she was a good woman. She eventually
said to me, “Me or the drink”. It was like being hit with a fourteen-pound hammer. Without hesitating I said to her, “I can’t give it up.” That was the end of that
relationship after four years. There was no competition between her and the drink. I did love her but there you go.

‘I don’t think a dependence on the drink is down to your family. My father always had a few pints, he still does to this day and he’s nearly ninety years of age. I started at
an early age and the work situation I was in, it was all drinking. But then I had a choice. I know people who had their few drinks and didn’t make a pig of themselves. I realise now it creeps
up without you knowing it. At the time you don’t realise you’re doing damage to yourself.

‘In 2000, I went back to Ireland, and it was the same. I knew a few fellas from here and started using a pub all the time. You get to know people in the pub and unfortunately there are
people there that have the same problem you have. You click with them people. You won’t click with the person that’s only in for one or two pints.

‘I was ten years away from Cricklewood, and when I came back last year a lot had changed. Lot of faces missing. I heard a lot of them died and a few of them moved to Ireland when work was
good. A few of the old faces are still around.

‘The two main ballrooms had closed. I mean in the 1980s many a time we left one of the ballrooms, The Galtymore, at two in the morning and get a taxi to a twenty-four-hour shop and fill
the boot with drink. Then up to some flat and keep drinking until you fell asleep. Wake up in the morning and, anything left over, cure yourself and off to the pub again. I know for a fact
there’s fellas doing the same thing I started doing with them in the early eighties.

‘I knew, though, I was at the end of my road. I hadn’t been eating properly for years. I used to be average fifteen stone in my heyday and the weight fell off me. Which it would fall
off anyone when you have cider for six o’clock in the morning and cider for ten o’clock in the morning. I was down to eleven stone when I went into detox.

‘I was weak. Only for the detox and the medication and all that, it helped me a lot. It helped the horrors, the shakes. I was on ten tablets a day for two weeks to help keep the rats away.
It was my last call out for help. This centre here, only for it. I came out and they put me into a fine house where all the people in the house are absent from drink. We’re having therapy now
five days a week. My family at home know I’m not drinking, but I haven’t really gone into detail with what I’ve done to stop. It’s not a thing you like to advertise, that
you were in drying out.

‘When I was growing up there wasn’t such thing as an “alcoholic”, there was such a thing as a “heavy drinker”. Or “he likes his drink”. There was
no such thing that time as “he had a problem with drink”.

‘I wouldn’t be able to settle back in Ireland now because I’m too far gone. A year and a half before I came back to England, I was in Mayo because through drink I had four or
five broken ribs. Then I broke my shoulder through drink so I went home for a bit.

‘There’s a local pub there over the road and you see married couples in their early fifties and they come into the pub at eleven o’clock at night and I can’t understand
that.

‘I would be pie-eyed that time, only ready to fall into bed. They would come out for an hour, maybe, which I would never be able to do. Not if I lived for a hundred years. They go out at
eleven o’clock at night, I go out at eleven o’clock in the morning. That’s the difference.

‘For example, down through the years I often found myself in early houses. I remember one job in particular where the early house was between the Tube station and the job site, which was a
disaster. You’d get off the Tube and have to pass the pub. If I felt rough at all I’d go in and have one, maybe two quick ones. A couple of mornings I’d go in and there would be
someone from the job in the pub before me!

‘This is the longest now I have been off it. If you had told me this time last year I would be six months off it I’d say you were crazy. The first few months were hard, I was still
nervous. Even after a month off it if some car hooted a horn, I would jump. My nervous system was completely destroyed by thirty years drinking. I was spitting up blood in the end and my liver was
not too good. If I kept going I wouldn’t have seen fifty, in other words.

‘It’s hard to say but it’s the truth. As time goes by things are getting better.

‘My main objective is to stay off the drink. It’s a cliché, but I’m taking it one day at a time.’

——

The Shannon was one of the bars Paddy O’Gorman mentioned where I might still find Irish daytime drinkers. When I got there, just after lunch, I counted maybe 10–15
Irish guys drinking at the bar. In clichéd fashion, the Pogues were on the sound system. Men hunched over the bar drinking lager with whiskey chasers, popping out every few minutes to check
betting slips or smoke. We met a man called John Derry who seemed to know the lie of the land in Cricklewood. With him was a smaller man with a lined faced who spoke with an English accent but,
from what I gathered, was of Irish descent. John didn’t want to speak on tape initially, asking that we first chat among ourselves about the scene in Cricklewood and the Irish drinking
habits. He kept referring to the others at the bar as ‘serious drinkers’, not placing himself in that category by virtue of the fact that he worked from time to time. The supposed
hierarchy among daytime drinkers never ceased to amaze me!

Off tape, John told me about close relations dying due to alcohol, about how much the area had changed, and about how little those who remained had in common with the Ireland that has emerged in
their absence. It was a depressing scene, almost uniquely male and aged 50+. Later, three young Irish guys in workers’ clothes called in, having finished something of a day’s work. They
downed shots and pints in equal measure—Red Bull and vodka followed by pints of Carling. A few of them clashed with one of the older lads in the bar and I couldn’t help but feel that
neither generation had learned much from the other.

Many of the Irish guys I spoke to complained about a new wave of Eastern European workers, who were now lining the Broadway each morning hoping for the pickup. There was a latent racism and wide
stereotyping in many comments, and this from a class of Irish who faced English hostility when they first came to London in the 1960s and 1970s. How quickly we forget. Several others were invited
to join our conversation but refused to speak on tape and demanded it be turned off, somewhat obsessively. It was as if they wanted to still be in conflict mode, to still have to watch their step
and to mistrust everyone new to the group.

One told me, ‘We’re all right when you get to know us, but we’re a very shy people. Myself, I was in prison for a couple of years because of my beliefs. It doesn’t matter
really at the end of the day what area you’re in, you got to get away from certain influences.’ It came to a discussion about the Irish homeless. One of the guys at the table took
exception. ‘Now, hang on, there ain’t no Paddies sleeping on the streets here. Fuck Off. We have a homeless centre for them. We look after our own.’

But I saw several older Irish hanging around the Tube station or sitting in shop doorways with their hands out. Pride keeps some of them from seeking assistance. Some of the guy won’t even
ask for a cup of tea in the Homeless Centre because of pride. One of the men we met told me about his brother, who ended up on the streets following a failed relationship. Everyone tried to help
him; in the end, though, he wanted out. Others in the bar bought him drink, even though they were asked not to. ‘What else could we do?’ they asked. ‘If someone don’t want
help, they don’t want help.’

The men told me about bars in the area open at 6 o’clock in the morning where the cleaners served the drink to customers. They told me about the ballrooms, where ‘a lot of mismatches
took place!’, and volunteered how in their prime they had no trouble with women. ‘We can still turn on the charm if we want to,’ said one, through cigarette stench and shaking
hand.

It was difficult to talk as the tape recorder was making other customers paranoid. I got the feeling many here had been ‘active’ during the Troubles and were wary of having their
names recorded. One of the homeless staff told me afterwards that during the 1980s, informers used to sit in on Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the area in order to get information.

John offered up some insights: ‘We’re like fish out of water, away from your own country and come over here for a bit of work. Things maybe haven’t worked out for some
properly. The older people living in bedsits have no real quality of life, paying from eighty pounds a week up, living on top of each other. It’s not like back home, where people live in
proper accommodation and stuff. I think it is more close knit back in Ireland as well. People don’t give a shite over here. If someone dies here, it’s “such-and-such-died”
and next day carry on as normal. People back home would be more concerned. I think it has all to do with family and caring in the community. They pull together back home. A big factor is the
Eastern Europeans undercutting workers. A Polish man will work for maybe twenty to thirty pounds a day. Lot of people in there on the dole and might get a wee bit of work here and there. Everybody
bonds with each other and looks after each other. I think people are nowhere as bad in drinking in Ireland to what it is over here. They say the Irish drink more away and I’d agree with
that.’

John’s friend, the ex-Irish with a strong English accent, interrupted by outlining the place the pub held in emigrant culture: ‘All the environment around us since we came here has
been pub orientated. If you wanted something you had to go to the pub to get it. They cashed our cheques and took some money off us. They organised accommodation. Everything was the pub. Still is
and all.’

Around the corner from Cricklewood Broadway, I noticed labyrinths of bedsits and multi-occupancy houses, where the last generation of forgotten Irish emigrants live out their days before dying,
mostly prematurely. I was brought to meet Séamus, a 55-year-old former tradesman, also from Mayo, who has lived for 12 years in one room. The year previous I had been in Africa reporting on
developing world stories several times, hearing about appalling human rights abuses in displaced camps in eastern Congo, documenting the aftermath of post-election violence in Kenya and the effects
of climate change on the families living along the Zambezi River in Mozambique. Nothing, though, had prepared me for the shock of seeing a fellow Irishman, in 2009, in central London, living in the
most deplorable and squalid conditions. In truth, it was heartbreaking, shocking, and I was totally unprepared for the deep impression it left. Perhaps because this is what full-term alcoholism
looks like. His room contained his worldly possessions—among them two battered and stained radios, a
TV
and
DVD
player, two tennis rackets,
some videos, books, a ragged duvet, a stepladder, one chest of drawers, a poster shrine to Celtic Football Club, Kerry footballer Colm ‘The Gooch’ Cooper and
ABBA
. Empty cans, cheap brandy bottles, drained naggins, flagons of cider and bottles of wine littered the floor, as well as ash, cigarette ends, leftover Cup-a-Soups, empty pots, a
ready made meal and a book of Joseph Conrad short stories. For every Shane MacGowan, there are a hundred Séamuses, albeit without hefty royalty payments or a blindly supporting public to
fall back on.

Séamus wore a pair of black cords one size too small, blackened white socks and a v-neck diamond-patterned jumper pulled over his gaunt frame. He’d had a hard night, little sleep.
In the previous two years his three best buddies had all died, all living in the rooms next to and above his. Drink took them all, and now Séamus was even more isolated, rarely leaving his
room because of the embarrassment of been seen drunk and deteriorating.

Over the remnants of a half-cup of Strongbow cider, Séamus told me his story:

‘When I came here I didn’t know the ropes. ’Twasn’t to Cricklewood at all I came first and later, then, I even went to Scotland and Australia. Most of all I love
Scotland. Look at that wall there behind you, that says it all. Celtic, Celtic, Celtic. They are two points clear of Rangers now and playing them on Sunday. Today’s Saturday, isn’t it?
It’s Friday? Oh yeah. Well, they’re playing anyway Sunday week in Celtic Park. With a bit of luck I might be up there myself. I used to go to see them all the time. I love them.

‘The area has changed for the worse. One time even this very house was full of characters. There was poor auld Patsy, Billy Simpson—who I had great time for altogether—and Eoin
Kilbane. They’re all gone. Dead. Drink had a lot to do with it and all, like.

‘I’m here nearly twelve years. Another great mate of mine who lived here got a council flat in St Paul’s Avenue. He drank forty-three cans in the one day. Now, Jesus, if I done
that I’d be stone dead. No bother at all to him. He’s a big man.

‘Over the years, with regards work, we were all labouring. The last few years I’ve gone a bit downhill. Me back is knackered. I worked on a golf course in my hometown when I was
about fifteen and I was trying to keep up with the big lads. They were big strong men and that is where I done in me back. There was an older man on the job, who was about sixty, and “Slow it
down,” he said to me. “You’re trying to keep up with us.” Big rocks. Doing up Westport Golf Course. Jaysus it’s a fine golf course now. We lifted rocks onto trailers
and I done in me back.