I have long been preaching the importance of the written word. An interesting case in point has been the stir caused across Twitter and the Irish media establishment at a tweet from Sile Seoige last night.

Yes something she has written has changed the nation’s perception of her for good. Brand Seoige will never be the same.

After attending a Kylie Minogue concert in Dublin, Sile Tweeted to her few hundred followers:

“I may regret this tweet but I think I just came at the Kylie gig…seriously….that good.”

Subsequently she stated the Tweet was made with tongue firmly in cheek, (whether she was thinking of one of Kylie’s firm cheeks and her tongue we don’t know) but is certainly captured the imagination of the nation.

Suddenly Sile no longer comes across as the innocent looking presenter of safe daytime television. The vixen.

The frisson of excitement.

The hint of the erotic.

The absurdity of it all.

The fact that Sile is a curvaceous raven haired Irish beauty. The idea that she might be aroused by the on stage antics of Kylie. The fact that she probably,  definitely wasn’t.

If she had used the word orgasmic, it wouldn’t have had anything like the same effect. “I think I just came…”. Just think about it.

Just one simple Tweet. Changed utterly, a terrible beauty is horned. And as for Kylie, can’t get you outta my head.

Marion Millican.

God bless our comings and goings our late priest Fr Brian said once, by way of a short prayer leaving our house. It is a wonderfully simple way of decribing the mundane, humdrum things we do going about our own business every day.

This part of the world has been much in the new of late following high profile court case of Hazel Stewart. That drama attracted the prurient interest of everyone – strangers; those who used to see her work-out in Fitness First; friends; former friends; the police fraternity. Even a certain clothes shop in Portstewart where she bought her expensive clothes. Before the dentist cashed in her chips that is. It had all the glamour of a television drama. Sex, lies, jealousy. And murder most foul.

Less widely reported was the murder in broad daylight of Marion Millican who worked in the local laundry in Portstewart. Marion was mortally wounded by a shotgun blast as she sat eating her lunch on a Friday afternoon over a week ago. She died in the laundry. In her place of work.

I heard the news that there had been a shooting as I prepared to collect my children from school. The nearby Prom was sealed off with yellow Police incident tape. It was an incongruous sight in our quiet seaside town of a Friday afternoon. An off-duty copy, father of my son’s friend, informed me what had happened. A shooting he said. In the laundry. A woman’s dead. The guy’s still at large. There’s a police armed response unit on the Prom looking for him.

What? I struggled to compute. The Laundry where I had been a hundred times dropping off and picking up kit. Which of the girls had been shot I asked out loud. I didn’t know their names but irrespective, they were always unfailingly friendly and helpful. No matter how tight our turnaround time, they would oblige.

The owner Sandra Moss would often drop our gear off if no-one had collected it. She knew we needed it for matches. Our new maroon and green kits, always carefully washed and folded. The colour never ran. No wrinkles. The trickiest grass and blood stains removed from shorts and shirts. The gear that was used in Croke Park; in winning Derry Championships; in triumphant Ulster Championships, in going back to Croke Park and this time winning. All washed in that same Laundry.

But who had been shot? The culprit was a former partner of the victim it was said round the town. People asked did I know the girl that had been shot. I’m sure I did I replied. When I saw her photo I said I would know for sure who it was.

And then there she was, on the Monday morning. A face to a name. She was a grandmother it said. She looked too young to have grandchildren. That made it worse. Of course I recognised her. The friendliest of them all. I never took the time to stop and ask her for her name in all the years of my comings and goings. Marion.

And now she was dead. Gunned down in the very place she worked. I thought of Marion looking in the back room for kits forgotten over the winter. Of telling her of successes on the pitch, and not knowing whether she was interested or not. Of course she was. She always smiled.

She and the other girls took pride in their work. Our gear always pristine and clean. Marion wouldn’t have been from the GAA side of the house. But nor did that matter. And they always talk about the women that wash the jerseys. . . Someone shot ours.

Anyhow there she was, a small, pleasant, smiling figure in the midst of my own comings and goings. She did a great job for us. She took great pride in what she did. Sandra told me she ran the place for her.

Yesterday Sean McLaughlin told me he had been speaking to Marion about our girls playing in Croke Park. He said she said to him I hope to God they win.

Yes Marion, we won and it was brilliant. I called in yesterday to see Sandra, and Pamela, the other girl that was there when it happened. To say I was sorry.

In all my comings and goings I won’t see Marion again. Her smile and her helpfulness. It took her death for me to know her name.  That’s my loss. Anyhow, thank you Marion. For all the small things you did for us, in all our comings and goings.

In happier times. Myself and Decky Coyle at Zeb's wedding.

Yesterday I had to attend a meeting in Donegal Town. On the way home I called in to visit an old friend in Strabane. It was pretty much a one-way conversation as usual these days. It wasn’t always thus.

My mate Decky Coyle passed away from Acute Myeloid Leukaemia on 23 February 1997. It was the inevitable end to a story that began the day I got a call at work to tell me he was unwell. Although I was optimistic for him, that gradually ebbed when his illness recurred and I began to fear the worst.

The last time I saw him alive was in the Cancer ward in the Royal in the last week of his life. What had brought him to this stage I thought? I couldn’t speak to him, so choked was I. He just looked at me and shook his head. I will never forget it.

He once told me if I was coming to visit not to be feeling sorry for him or depressing him. His reasoning being the hospital was bad enough without us boys coming and making it worse. On my first visit I brought him a copy of War and Peace, I figured if he was in for the long haul he would need some reading material. My naivety was quickly disabused when I called once after a bout of Chemo. I think he would have hit me with Tolstoy if he could have!

Decky was from Strabane. A larger than life figure, if anyone ever epitomised the phrase joie de vivre he did. At school he entered wholeheartedly into the craic. He used to regale us with tales of being out and about in Strabane, chasing girls, smoking; drinking excessively, throwing his guts up; being caught on by his dad Denis or mother Rose (he called her Aggie) and suffering the consequences.

When we were at school he frequently stayed over in our house for nights out. My mother loved him. He had that effect on women of all ages, charm, a great sense of humour and a twinkle in his eye. He could get away with swearing and saying things I never could.

Through University we shared a house and many’s a night reeling home, or propping up the bar in Queen’s Union, the Elms or the Crescent. At one stage he decided a girlfriend had become pregnant and we drunkenly agreed to raise any resulting progeny. Happily the drink was talking and he wasn’t as fertile as he thought he was, or maybe neither was she.

After graduation he went to work first in Draperstown for Workspace where he was known as the Man From Strabane that Couldn’t Drive. How he got to and from Draperstown I still don’t know. He moved on to Dublin.

There he began a short but impressive career as a Planner working on a range of prestige projects. He was a smart guy and had a very canny eye for detail, he was prescient and whilst he could bullshit with the best, he also saw through it a mile off. He also looked the part – perhaps that harked back to cutting a dash round the fleshpots of Strabane.

We used to head to Dublin for the craic at weekends, sometimes staying at Decky’s place in Portobello or later out round Terenure. And we would paint the town as red and white as we possibly could.

Latterly the long-standing love of his life Catherine had returned from the States. They had met through a school youth development project in Dublin. She from Dublin, he from Strabane. A match made in Heaven. They married when he was in remission although sadly their time together was short.

Decky’s influence on me was profound. As a friend he was resolute, always there. Willing to tell you when you were right and wrong. I recall one conversation in the basement bar in Toners’ Bar in Dublin, where he castigated me for working in the University. He said ‘you are better than that’. He encouraged me to go and work for myself and use my writing skills. It was more than the beer talking. I couldn’t argue with him.

Eventually about ten years after his death I left the University and ultimately realised that he was right. And my decision to work for myself was reinforced when entirely by chance his name appeared in a writing job I was doing for Workspace in Draperstown, his first employer and one of my early clients. It was as if he had spoken to me again across the years and from another place, reassuring me that this was the right thing to do.

He was buried on a typical February day in Melmount Cemetery in Strabane. Some years after his beloved father Denis died. Denis to whom I would speak to regularly on the phone as Decky’s illness progressed. Then shortly after Rose, his wonderful mother, also passed away. She of the beautiful home baking and sandwiches – we always loved the visit to 7 Owenreagh Drive in Strabane.

And now every year, those of us that know him well and a few that don’t gather somewhere in Ireland to play a game of (bad) golf; to eat, drink and reminisce about the man from Strabane.

I realised yesterday standing in Melmount that I miss him as much as ever. The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more.

Inca Kola is to Peru what Irn Bru is Scotland and Football Special is to Donegal. If you’ve never been to Donegal then ignore the last reference. If you haven’t been to Peru, well you dunno what you’re missing.

After getting married, Angela and myself went there. It was to be the trip of a lifetime and it didn’t disappoint. I was delighted a few years later when my brother decided to get married in Peru, which meant I had to go back.

Unfortunately Angela was expecting our son Leo and couldn’t join me. It gave me the chance to experince the wonders of Peru more as a local that a tourist. My sister-in-law Andrea’s family redefined forever my understanding of the words hospitality and family. As the song says, ‘I’ll n’er forget their kindness’. But more about those trips another time.

The one thing that never changed was the presence of Inca Kola. Everywhere. You may think that in a so called lesser developed country advertising would perhaps be less common or in someway less sophisticated than it is here. Not so and certainly not so as far as Inca Kola was concerned.

The drink itself is a bright yellow colour, sickly sweet and fizzy. It is the Peruvians claim, an acquired taste. It is also for them a statement of their national pride. For although Coca Cola is highly visible in Peru, it is Inca Kola that is the preferred drink amongst the locals. In some way, drinking anything else is deemed to be unpatriotic!

The drink is made from Lemon Verbena and was creatad in 1935 by an English immigrant. It was marketed under various slogans:

‘Inca Kola sólo hay una y no se parece a ninguna’

‘There is only one Inca Kola and it’s like no other’

and

Es nuestra, La bebida del Perú

‘It’s ours! The drink of Peru’

I’m not sure that Manco Capac or any of the original Incas drank anything resembling Inca Kola but it is as authentic Puruviana as the local weaving and  pottery, Macchu Picchu, the Nazca Lines, Lake Titicaca or the famous walls in Cuzco.

If you’re ever there try some roasted guinea pig washed down with a glass of the yellow stuff! You’ll need a pisco sour to recover!