Days of Heaven Read Online Free

no reason except that they were Scotland. In them, too, there is a deep restlessness of the
soul.
    But by the looks of it, they clearly weren’t going to be doing anything perverse in Sofia, on this day.
    Then something good happened. Colette Rooney came in from Hot Press , just up the road, to ask me if I could go to London the following day to interview Robbie Robertson. Of course I
could. The former mainman with The Band had just released a solo album, which contained at least two wonderful tracks, ‘Somewhere Down The Crazy River’, and ‘Fallen Angel’,
which could stand alongside his classic cuts such as ‘The Weight’, and ‘The Shape I’m In’, and ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. I revere The Band
above all others, and to meet Robbie Robertson himself would be a signal honour.
    And then Scotland scored.
    It is not true to say that everyone in Ireland remembers where they were when Gary Mackay of Hearts, winning his first cap, scored that goal for Scotland with four minutes to go. Because like I
said, the only people actually involved at this end were a few lost souls scattered around the country and Bambrick’s dog.
    What they also forget, is the agony that was yet to come. Brutalised by the abuse inflicted on us over the years, despite George Hamilton’s now-frenzied commentary, we were loath to even
celebrate that goal until we saw with our own eyes that they were kicking off again at the centre circle.
    So many times, it seemed, we had seen good goals for the Republic disallowed, we had lost hope that there was even the most rudimentary form of justice at work in this football world. Joy had
turned to disappointment so many times, we didn’t bother with the joy any more.
    For years we couldn’t properly celebrate a goal until we had something akin to forensic proof that the referee had allowed it, that all the paperwork had been done and everyone had signed
off on it.
    We had instant recall of some of the bleaker legends of Irish football, such as the times Frank Stapleton had vital goals disallowed against Belgium in Brussels and against France in Paris for
no reason, or at least none that was vaguely plausible. Had there even been an Irish goal disallowed for no reason on this very ground in Sofia, a long time ago?
    ——
    So even though this Scotland goal was being allowed to stand, it seemed inconceivable to us that another four minutes of normal time and God knows how long of injury time could
go by without it all being taken away from us, in some uniquely twisted manner.
    This is what Ireland had done to us.
    This is the way we were, near the end of the 1980s. Not just the football, but all the other bullshit, the wrecked economy, the divorce referendum and the abortion referendum, the North,
everything that was done under the colours of green, white and gold, had eventually worn us down to this level. We were sick men. Anyone who made it out of here had made it despite all the
bullshit, driven by a desperate desire to be free of the bullshit.
    It became strangely forgotten during the era of the Tiger, but as I recall, one of the more influential events of the late 1980s was the publication of a book by Professor Joe Lee, Ireland
1912–1985: Politics and Society.
    Again, because we got locked into that bullshit narrative of success breeding success, we overlooked the fact that failure was also a powerful motivator, and that we had it in spades.
    This book, which was a surprise best-seller, was essentially a long and detailed history of failure in Ireland since the foundation of the State. The author was then Professor of Modern History
at UCC , a man who could increasingly be heard on RTÉ radio explaining how everything in Ireland was broken.
    Clearly he was a man who loved his country, and who was scrupulously, even obsessively fair, about what had been done right, and what had been done wrong. He gave respect where it was due. You
would feel at times that he almost