TD 1
Ann Delaney The passing of Ann Delaney was a brut
al blow for so many of the people who knew her from a kind word, a brief chat or a long conversation along her stretch along Redmond’s Hill. Hundreds of people attended the vigil that followed, and celebrating her life, they sang her favorite songs and shared stories of the amazing person and poet she was, with handfuls of red and rose balloons. Now, still, flowers decorate the archway where she used to sit. My heart still sinks every time I pass that spot up from Tesco. A pang. A sense of loss. And what it is, is that the world is simply a lesser place for her absence. Who knows, but that in an age different to ours, Annie Delaney might now be in the process of being beatified? In the past, the often-chaotic facts of outcasts’ lives, their punishing and very public self-sacrifice, the ostentatious poverty, the defiance of squalor, the heroic virtue, the ecstatic visions and holy communing with animals, their radical refusal to abide by the laws of Ceaser or Christ’s self-elected administrators; all of these became the turbulent clay that, alchemized on the potter’s wheel and blessed by Papal conference, turned into venerated statues of saints who lived lives incomprehensible to most, lives enacted so far beyond the common moral margin that they were deemed divine or mysterious. We do not live in such an age. All mystery is now medicalized and interrogated by reason but so often we are still left bereft of answers. I first met Annie in the summer of 2017 when seeking mid-afternoon oblivion I’d frequent pubs around Aungier St where I knew I wouldn’t be known, raising the anchor from the bar stool I’d set sail on a sea of stout, hiding selflacerating ruminations behind tabloid sails of headlines and unfinished crosswords, aspiring only to absolute aloneness, fine combing my failings with a tooth comb of self-pity, mumbling rosaries of resentments along with the distant mantras of horse racing commentators, while hoping not to be found out by a barman polishing the same pint glass for far too long. Leaving the mahogany shade of one of those places, I tripped, half-blinded, into the summer flash of afternoon. I saw her first like an eclipse, her face framed by breeze blown curls, a votive bottle of Rioja in her hand. It was as if I had stumbled into the world of Danny Thompson’s Beeswing. “Brown hair zig zagged across her face, and a look of half surprise, Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes.” I fell in tow with her stagger, wading through the liquid afternoon towards that patch of green behind the cluster of bus stops at the top of Aungier St. We sat there, oblivi48 ous to the carnival of timetabled life that swirled around us, summer swigging from her bottle, each of us in our own way, on the run from ourselves. To my Dublin eyes, she had that west of Ireland look that I romanticized as having been sculpted by the Atlantic and nights in Naughton’s; she set the record straight, telling me that she was from Laois and that she had worked as a nurse. My mind shuddered with the vertiginous freedom of having swum so far from the safe shore of the rush hour bus stop queue that lay just metres way. “She was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing, So fine a breath of wind might blow her away” Annie marked her territory and pitched her life on that precarious perch outside Tesco on Aungier St. Over the years we exchanged glances and greetings. I surrendered to redemptive currents that hauled me back to sober shores as she drifted deeper into her own mystic. We often spoke together, cursing the weather and the cruel vagaries of the street; other times she’d be silent, winking at me through Jameson tears. Surrounded by ice cubes and a congregation of pigeons, she conducted ceremonies and rituals whose spells and incantations were known only to herself and the creatures of the sky. Who am I to decipher the mystery of Annie’s radical refusal of help? Defiantly ploughing her own frozen asphalt furrow, baptized in all weathers by neon speckled sleet, summer rain and unholy hail. “They say her rose has faded, rough weather and hard booze, Maybe that’s the price you pay for the chains that you refuse” I will remember her just as I knew her. I’ll miss meeting her and watching out for her from the upper deck of the number 9 bus, as I’d pass by her sodden bread tray manger. She was a rare one, may she rest now, warm and in peace. Billy Ó Hanluain I got to know Annie during the first Covid lockdown, I spent a lot of time walking around my area, I don’t remember our first exchange but her beautiful smile and her quick wit, intelligence, empathy and humour engaged me, and we started to have regular chats, every day or every few days, where I would sit beside her on Aungier Street or Georges Street where she occasionally turned up, and talk about life in general. She was always full of interesting stories, never in any way sorry for herself and always left me feeling better for having had the conversation with her. I was on the Covid payment at this time and had very little to spend it on, other than supporting the bands I like on Bandcamp, so I ended up trying to give her money every opportunity I could. She was always a very dignified person however and it was surprisingly difficult to get her to accept money. She preferred it if I went off and bought her a naggin of Jameson, or even better, a copy of Ireland’s Own, which is a magazine I can now never see without thinking of her. I have a copy of it on my table right now – she gave it to me the last time I saw her. That was the culmination of a series of exchanges – I had brought my friend, singer John Murry, to see her, and John kindly gave her a tenner, which – as sometimes happened with Annie – raised her hackles a bit. She had a great deal of dignity, as I said above. So in return for John’s tenner, nothing would do her except to give me €20. Obviously I didn’t want to accept the money but she wouldn’t take it back, so next day I swung by to try to return it to her, only for her to say no, just go buy me a naggin and keep the change. I brought her the naggin and tried to give her the change, to no avail, so I said “I’ll spend it on an Ireland’s Own and give it to you next time I’m passing.” So she turned and rummaged through her belongings and pulled out a copy of Ireland’s Own and made me take it. That was the last time I saw her, so I have a debt to her I can never discharge. She was one-of-a-kind, a beautiful soul, and the flood of love for her from the people of Dublin 8 after her death has been astonishing and deeply moving to witness. Writer, Director and Filmmaker Paul Duane