AA Gill gave me nightmares

It’s been quite a while since I felt compelled to sit at a computer to write, but here I am, 8.30am on New Year’s Eve, up and at it so I could write about the night AA Gill scared the shite out of me.

I was a big fan of AA, I’ll call him AA as I know his first name is Adrian but his second name shall remain a mystery, not because I can’t be arsed to look it up, it’s because that’s what I called him. ‘Did you read AA’s article’ I’d say to the husband. The answer was always no because I was the one who got the Sunday Times Magazine first and it was always the first article I’d go to. I didn’t read it because I had a dream of visiting all of the restaurants he reviewed, I read it because I loved the way he wrote. You’d open the article with one eye closed and the other squinting, hoping the review was good. He could be a savage bastard at times. He wrote a great write up about a trip to Dublin several years ago which ended up in Kavanaghs, more commonly know as The Gravediggers, waxing lyrical about the creamy pints and I thought, hang on a minute pal, you don’t drink. He must have had those pints by proxy and I wished I had been it. When he died I stopped reading the reviews as it was never about the restaurant, it was about the man who wrote them.

So to the nightmare, we’re nearly there…

Before Christmas the eldest child Sorcha and I were in my favourite place, a book shop, when I happened upon his book. I was buying books for the girls for Christmas as I always do, but after spending upwards of €300 in a chemist buying face, feet, legs and arms products for them and having come out of several periods of unemployment I had quite gotten out of the whimsical habit of buying for myself so I left the book on the shelf. At one stage I’d only buy books from the biannual book fare in Holy Faith Clontarf at two euro each, or three for a fiver. I’d be burdened under the weight of them and flying high knowing I had my reading sorted for the next 6 months. I remember buying the second and third instalment of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy in November and keeping them so I could read them on my holidays the following June.

And so to the nightmare, we’re nearly there…

On Christmas morning you can imagine my surprise when I opened one of my presents from the girls and there it was Pour Me: A life by AA Gill. I’ve brought many an author to bed with me over the years, much to the disgust of my husband, he doesn’t like the light being on when he’s going to sleep. Who does to be fair? And now I had AA in my bed and no sign of the Blonde, or my husband for that matter, he was fast asleep on the couch and I’d tucked a blanket around him to keep him there. I didn’t tie him up in it you understand, just keeping him warm so he doesn’t come up to bed to talk about the things he likes to talk about such as politics, the orange monster in the White House, the clown in number 10, the demise of Ruth Coppinger’s career when she wrote, and I quote “Extremely concerning that young man is killed, brandishing a knife but not armed otherwise…” how the Yorkshire Ripper was finally caught, who won the St Ledger in 1984, why it is one of his favourite horses and where he was when he watched it.

And so to the nightmare, we’re nearly there…

Last night I read about the first time he went to an Irish pub in London with his friend Mark. Mark was of Irish descent and incredibly proud of it. My favourite part of the description of him was that his nose was like a broken bannister. The thing about Mark was, he didn’t give a flying fuck about anything, at any time or any where and AA loved him for it. It also scared him a little and as time went on he had to extract himself from this friendship. Maybe the nightmare was because there were two people from different backgrounds forming a bond that led to a path of destruction. Maybe the nightmare was because AA said he drank his first proper Guinness in London, an oxymoron surely.

And so to the nightmare…

I was in the Ramble Inn which has been closed since March due to the pandemic and is what is known as a ‘wet’ pub. When this is over I want to erase that phrase from my memory and never speak of it again. It’s a pub that is right around the corner from where I live and often pass it to go to my preferred local, but the Guinness is good there, the patrons can be rowdy and I’ve seen my share of fights in it. The atmosphere was particularly dark in my dream, small groups huddled together whispering, looking out of the windows as dark clouds gathered bringing an eerie mist with it. In reality, for those who know the Ramble, you’d have to stand on the chairs to look out the window they are that high, but hey, it’s my dream and the windows were big.

Suddenly, a young man burst through the doors, blood streaming from his eye socket where his eye had been gouged out. He was screaming for help but no one wanted to help him because somehow, his screams were insincere, his stumbling around was overacted, he was smirking. The small huddled groups became one, some people were screaming others whispering furiously about what to do. I was one of the whisperers, telling my children to run to the toilets and hide. The young man stood straight and grabbed a girl and dragged her out of the pub to more screaming and panic. This man went after them to get the girl back but came back bruised and bloodied and empty handed. Out of the mist more people came with gouged eyes and broken limbs trying to get into the pub. We barricaded the door as best we could but were overcome and more people were dragged out and this man stood tall and kept trying, and sometimes succeeding in saving people. We were overcome. As each person was taken they were bitten and became part of the army of destruction. This man picked up the leg of a broken chair and ran out the door beating a path so we could escape. We ran. I got to the top of the road outside the opticians where John the optician was calmly smoking a cigarette and drinking tea and asking me what the craic was with all the screaming and shouting. I took my vape out of my pocket, stood against the wall and told him it was a zombie apocalypse but this man was dealing with it. I knew by him he wouldn’t be bitten and he’d win. I wanted him to win but I wanted to watch it for a bit longer because it was exciting to watch without being in it.

As I was waking from the dream, I realised that this man was AA Gill and I was Mark.

The end.

#AAGill #SundayTimesReview #Nightmare