Me and Tim Malloy
Mike and Peter O'Connor each decided to write a short story piece (2500 words) about how the fictitious Tim 'The Wonky' Malloy got his name. This is Mike's effort.
Me and Tim Malloy
Just a month earlier I’d caught up with Tim and he’d been just his same old sanguine self. Of course, he’d been having ‘issues’ with Clare – too much time with the lads and not enough attention to the housework and shopping for shoes. She needed an emerald pair, you see, because St Paddy’s was just around the corner. It was early January, Christmas was done and dusted and the red shoes were back in their box. So, like I said, St Paddy’s was just around the corner.
“But sweet knees”, Tim soothed, “You’ve already got a green pair, remember you wore them last year”. “Now, Timothy”, Clare said, with her eyebrows all raised up and pointy, like two waggy fingers putting him smartly back in his place as if he was a roll of bog paper hung over instead of under – Clare was an expert in bog paper orientation, you see – “we all know all the girls are wearing patent emerald with them little sparkly things this year. What are they called again?” “Sequins, Clare, they’re called sequins”, said Tim. And with that he resigned himself to the sequins sequestering a good portion of January’s gargle money; aye, all for green shoes and matching zogabongs.
And then his car was peeled again – last time it was the diff and this time it was the box. “The price you pay”, he admitted, “for gettin’ an Alfa. Feckin Italians. On the day of creation the good Lord Himself blessed them with makin’ spaghetti (and green patent leather shoes with sparkly sequins) – it was the Germans that got car makin’. Why can’t people just stick to what they do best?”
But come on now Michael”, he said, “life’s too feckin short for bein’ a miserable old git. Let’s go for a scoop and talk about the new venture”.
You might have guessed by now that Tim’s troubles were mostly self-inflicted. He wasn’t short of a bob or two, being a brilliant engineer and all. But by also being a rawny fella with a face like chewed toffee, it’d left him with a need to compensate. Expensive cars and caked-up girls were his particular weaknesses. His Alfa and Clare were just the latest in a long line of feck ups he’d repeated ever since I’d met him. And God only knows what he’d gotten up to before he’d had the good fortune of meeting me.
But getting back to it, I knew what was coming next – some madcap, get-rich-quick scheme. And he needed my help. Tim’s local was The Palace, on the fringe of Temple Bar and just half-a-spit from Trinity. The lunchers had cleared off and Tim and I found a spot in the corner, badly lit but under the watchful gaze of none other than Aeneas Coffey himself; his right hand swirling a flask of golden dew and those incandescent blue eyes of his looking like they were painted just yesterday, all under a backdrop of copper kettles, smoke and steam.
And, funnily enough Tim’s new venture, it turned out, was making Poitín. I told him, “There’s nothin’ new about makin’ Poitín, we’ve been doin’ it for millennia – it’s what we Paddys do best for feck’s sake”. “But Michael”, came the inevitable retort, “this is Poitín with a difference. You see”, he glanced around The Palace and whispered low, “I’ve found this secret ancient recipe. And it’s simple to make, trust me – we’ll be millionaires in a month”. Now if a could’ve had a bag of beans for every time I’d heard Tim say that.
But getting back to it, Tim said, “I was diggin’ around the other week at the PRO, lookin’ into the archives for my old great grandaddy, Professor Micky ‘The Mop’ Finneran; he’s the one I told you all about from Limerick, you know the fella that invented Lime-o-nade. Now Finneran was an also expert in the old Gaelic tongue, and there in his notebook was a translation of a recipe for what he called Drood Poitín. Have a look and see for yerself.”
Out of the back pocket of his pants Tim produced a crumbling parchment, looking like it was part of the Annals of the Four Masters. “You mean you nicked it - tore it from the notebook?!” I exclaimed. Tim looked about as guiltless as The Palace’s barmaid, Mary ‘The Mallet’ O’Malley. “Well, no not really”, he said. “well, yeah, sort of I suppose, but it’s not like proper thievin’, Michael, and it was filed in the wrong place anyhow, so no-one will ever notice”. Less than convinced I took hold of the recipe. It was all hand written in perfect copperplate. And, sure enough, it was a Poitín recipe, ‘According to the most Ancient Druidic Methods and Purposes’, it read. “Well the purposes are obvious enough”, I told Tim, “Gettin’ langered ahead of Friday night prayers to the goddess, bollock naked dancin’ around like stooks”. And as for the methods, Tim was bang on, as always.
The methods were simple alright, about as simple as sweet Molly Rodgers. Now Molly Rodgers was the first and only girl I ever loved, and we are still together after all of 15 years. Thing is the Rodgers girls are as mad as a box of frogs – and there are nine of them. Sure, Molly is the least mad of them all, but she’s always expecting you to know what she’s wanting, even though she never knows what it is herself; nothing that your own personal crystal ball and a PhD in human psychology couldn’t fix then. And if Molly ever wanted a night on the town, we’d more often than not end up at the Busker’s Bar with her dancing on the tables. Sure, the craic was ninety always, but it generally ended up with her getting picked up by ‘Little’ Richard McBenson and shown off the premises, and me with a black eye and a thick ear from sticking up for her. Personally speaking, I blame her Spanish blood. Like Tim said, God gave the Italians pasta (and did I mention shoes?), the Germans cars, and us Paddys Poitín. Well the Spaniards they got dancing and us needing to know more about them than they do about themselves. “Simple girl Molly is”, her mother told me when I first met her. But if there’s only one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that if it’s said to be simple it’s normally more feckin complex than is ever imaginable.
But getting back to it, the recipe looked like standard Poitín, of the boiled potatoes, bog water and molasses variety. Problem was there were these three other things thrown in that I had no clue about, either what they were, where to get them, or what the recipe meant exactly when it said, ‘Saturate, naturate and contemplate, before combining with the wort, else the presence of the essence of the nascence be lost’.
“For feck’s sake, Tim”, I said, “what’s ballinran, moyad and crobane? Are they some sort of druid herbs? I think we have to add water and salt to them and wait a while before they go to the still.” “Don’t you be worryin’ about that, Mick”, Tim laughed. You see all it took was one pint and there he was getting all friendly and calling me Mick, and he was so excited he snorted Guinness up his snout, and ended up half choking and spluttering all over the place in the process, “No, don’t you worry about a single thing Mick, I’ve got it all sorted”.
‘I’ve got it all sorted’. Talk about flashbacks. There was this time when we were squatting together on Leinster Lane, just about a spit from The Pig’s Ear. Tim was in his last year of Engineering and me in my last of Chemistry. It was the era of the Green revival and he’d had another of his get-rich-quick ideas. “Every so-and-so’s makin’ these organic soaps”, he said, “and have you seen how much they go for? Ten punt for one feckin cake! I’ve done the maths and we’ll be millionaires in a month. And I’ve got this grand sales pitch for it – it’ll be the ‘World’s Only Non-Chemical Soap’.
You see Tim always had a catchy phrase to go with his wild schemes, and they always had to be based on the same precept – they always began with ‘The World’s Only’. Like there was the time he went making suits. He was hanging out with a girl called Sandy ‘Scissors’ O’Sullivan who had a tailor shop on the other side of the Liffey, right near the National Leprechaun Museum. Sandy’s half-brother was Steve ‘The Swede’ Svenson, who was a big wheel in Dublin’s synth-pop glam-punk scene of the early 90s. Steve was always after a fresh look, and that look invariably involved a jump suit with an Irish theme. Sandy would give Tim the daily left-over fabric clippings and, presto, he’d do the rest. The problem was that Steve’s pogo routines would leave his suits in tatters after just one night. Tim solved that by inventing the ‘World’s Only Baize and Lycra Suit’. “With Stevie strutting his stuff the whole world will want my suits, I’ll be a millionaire in a month”, Tim reckoned. And it would have happened that way for sure if Steve hadn’t ruptured a disc a week later in the backstage closet with Toni ‘The Tigress’ O’Toole.
But getting back to it, I said to Tim “You can’t be havin’ a non-chemical soap you feckin eegit. Soap’s lard and lye – they’re feckin chemicals!” “Don’t you go worryin’ about that now, Michael”, Tim said. “We’ll be usin’ only the finest organic pig-lard in all of Ireland. I’m a feckin marketin’ genius me.
So off we went making soap in the bathtub upstairs. Tim had rigged up the base of the old cast-iron, five hundred litre, four-legged beauty with nichrome-wire attached to a car-battery. The lard had melted in no time at all, but the lye had to go in slow and steady, for fear of boiling. Tim also brought along a few McArdle’s and we’d gotten into them – stirring lye into lard is hot work, you see. Not that we were drunk or anything, but the thing with having a drink, as we all know, is it can make you thirsty. “For feck’s sake, Mick”, Tim whined, “why does it have to take so long? I’m dyin’ of feckin thirst here, let’s get on with it and get down The Palace”. And before I knew it he’d grabbed a 20kg bag of lye and emptied the whole thing in. I reckoned we had about ten seconds before the bathtub contents superheated and showered caustic rain over all and sundry. I turned the cold tap on full-bore; the only thing I could think of saying was, “Run!” Needless to say, Leinster Lane and the nearby streets of Temple Bar have never been so clean, and are never likely to be ever again.
But getting back to it. “Got it all sorted?” I said. “Where are we gonna get the herbs, never mind the fermenter and the still, down at feckin ASDA?” “Shut the feck up now, Mick”. Tim’s agitation with my pouring cold water on his Poitín plan evidenced not only with his change of pitch, but also in the manner he walloped back the rest of his Guinness and rolled up his sleeves, like he was about to give me one. “I’m tellin’ ya it’s simple”, he said. “We don’t need those herbs and whatnot. We can just use tea. But not just any old tea now”, he went on, “it’s got to be Barry’s, none of that Lyons rubbish. And old Prof Fitzsimmons is away for a month – he’s always off hikin’ an’ salmon fishin’ at Bruce Lodge in the Highlands this time of year. He said I could use his big reactor tank and fractionator while he’s gone. It’s a 500,000 litre tank Mick; 500,000 litres of Poitín, can you imagine that?”
I tried not to look to heaven and roll my eyes, it was a bad habit of mine but I just couldn’t control my facial muscles in the presence of eegits. “You’re tellin’ me that you’re gonna make Barry’s Tea Vodka and knock it off as ancient Poitín?” “Not ancient Poitín, Mick”, Tim scoffed, “The World’s Only Original Poitín!” I’m a feckin marketin’ genius see – rare as rockin’-horse shite I am. Now, another pint – on me”.
So, long story short; the Poitín venture was an utter and complete disaster. Oh, the mash was just perfect, and the first three strips went like a dream. I’d decided to add the tea to the still after the third and then do the fourth just like I was making gin. Now if you’ve never tried shovelling tea into a huge tank of white dog, let me tell you, Tim and I were trousered within minutes. We somehow managed to get the man-door fastened down and then we did what all Irish lads do when they’ve had one jar too many. We had a drink. And what better drink than on-hand Poitín fresh from the third strip. Now maybe we nodded off a bit, or maybe we just got distracted watching Dave Allen re-runs on YouTube. Either way the next thing we know is rivets were popping left, right and centre. The pot pressure valve was off the planet and the only thing I could think of saying was, “Run!”
So that was the end of that particular project, with everything going up in smoke and all. Or so we thought. Of course, the news of the explosion was all over town, all over the Irish Press and in the end it went global. Then everyone was asking for the World’s Only Original Poitín and Tim was getting phone calls from all over the place. America and Canada, Japan and even Kaiapoi, New Zealand; people wanting to buy his secret recipe. In the end Lord Guinness himself came down to Dublin and he got it for a cool 10 million yo-yos. We were millionaires in a month, just like Tim said. What are the chances? Tim’s as happy as a dog with two mickeys: money in the bank, driving a brand-new Tesla, and Clare with enough green shoes to last until the Lord returns with St Paddy himself in-tow.
And here we are, back at The Palace with a few of the lads to celebrate. Molly with her gaggle of girlfriends has tagged along; they’re already practicing their table moves up in the corner by the jukebox. So I stand up and raise my glass. “Tim, it’s time you had a name change”.
Now as you know, most half-decent Irish folk have a nickname. And Tim, he’s the sort of fella who’s had a few nicknames in his time. With him they change depending on what’s going on, a bit like the seasons. After the fiasco with the ‘World’s Only Non-Chemical Soap’, or wonks as we called it, he’d become known as Tim ‘Wonky’ Malloy. And before that, with the ‘World’s Only Baize and Lycra Suit’, or wobals, he was Tim ‘Wobbly’ Malloy. And I could go on, but two and a half thousand words isn’t enough to even start to tell you about how he came to be called Tim ‘Woolly’ Malloy, Tim ‘Woody’ Malloy or Tim ‘Woffly’ Malloy.
“No more ‘Wonky’ Malloy for you, Tim”, I proclaimed. “Here’s to the World’s Only Original Poitín”. Woop-juice it’s called these days. “So here’s to Tim ‘Woop-Woop’ Malloy. Sláinte”.