"I carry all these places and people around with me"

Local writer Noel has written several books of poetry and also books about Blackrock, with the proceeds from sales going to charity. 

My favourite thing about Dundalk? 

It’s DNA which is embedded in me! My earliest childhood memories, such as being taken by my parents to visit Santa at Woolworths, the secondary schools which I attended during the mid to late 1960s -the De La Salle and later the Old Technical School at Bachelor's Walk.

The Adelphi Cinema and Ballroom where I spent so many happy hours, Ronan Sorahan's Record Shops in Park Street and later Clanbrassil Street where I first purchased records that were the soundtrack of my young life and the workplaces where I've been lucky to meet so many wonderful people who have remained friends for life.

I carry all these places and people around with me, all now mildewed with memory but never forgotten as long as I can draw breath!

A perfect day in Dundalk and why?

To drive into town while listening to Paddy Mac and visit Roe River Books and buy a novel there. To wander down to Seatown Graveyard and read there in the park beside the Old Technical School.

To have lunch somewhere with my wife Marian and while she troops off around the shops to take a walk down by the Navvy Bank and listen to Tom Gernon's 'Rock Around Dundalk' on the way home! I can't think of a more enjoyable way to spend a day!

What annoys me most about the town?

The occasional but terrible violence which has cost many innocent people their lives and forever scarred their families and loved ones, I'd be a liar if I said anything else.

Also the drug culture and the violence and crime it carries with it, it's symptomatic of society everywhere and the recent violence in Drogheda is a really alarming development.

What plans do I have for the rest of the year?

I hope to finish a short story I'm writing which is set in Haynestown during the First World War and is set in rhyme.

What local amenities could Dundalk do with?

This is purely on a personal level of course as there are many such amenities outlined by much more literate people than I each week in this column, but I think its a shame that the old grounds of the Dundalk Union Workhouse at Rath on the Ardee Road have been allowed to lie derelict for so many decades, I think we should honor our famine dead.

A park with trees and flowers could be put down here if the waste ground was cleared and an information plaque could be erected for visitors. The paupers who died here from 1842 until 1853, mostly from disease, deserve better than this.

How would I describe Dundalk people?

Caring, compassionate, generous, affable, possessed of a wonderfully wry sense of humor and the salt of the earth!

My favorite walk in the local area?

Mine would be from the golf driving range at Clermont through to the crossroads at Haynestown on the Marlbog Road.

This area is mercifully untouched since the 19th Century, being wooded and possessed of a wonderful old church, St. Paul's Church of Ireland which was built in 1827.

There is also an old Norman keep and a motte nearby and to walk through this area is to feel divorced from the rush and noise of modernity.

My first memory of Dundalk?

Probably Malloca's Cafe which was situated opposite what is now Riva's restaurant. On Christmas eve my parents would hire a taxi to town and while my father had a few bottles of stout in the Queen's Hotel my mother would treat me to chips here.

Watching the records flip over and play on the jukebox held me in thrall as if I were witnessing a Russian Sputnik!

Favourite story about Dundalk?

I suppose I should tell the fiasco of my first job interview in 1968 when I applied for a job as an apprentice coach maker in Commercial Road Vehicles on the Ardee Road.

I was an utterly gormless 15-year-old lad at the time and I wandered into the nearby bus station believing I was in the right place.

To further confuse matters, the man I was seeking in C.R.V. had the same surname as a chargehand in the bus station, and he happened to be off that particular day.

At that time there were no computers and a hapless clerk spent over an hour rummaging in a filing cabinet the size of one of Jimi Hendrix's amplifiers before my mistake was uncovered and I was unceremoniously shooed out the door!

I eventually found the right factory and actually managed to secure a job. Needless to say, my interview exploits soon became known to my workmates and I greeted by howls of derision where ever I went!

Over twenty years later, I met one of my former workmates at an ECCO dinner dance. He asked me where I was presently working as we chatted. ECCO, I replied. 'Jaysus', he said, 'You were great that found it'!