Well, its 37 and time, I suppose, to call it a day.   Get real, and end the long, long blag.  Get a life and do some graft. 

Ive never really had a career, so to say I’m coming back – after years in a cult indie band -  to a career is a bit of a myth really.  Don’t be fooled.

Ive lasted the full length in education and vocation, from 18 to 30 spent in uni and a (successful) peace process to a lucky seven more with bands.  Its been rude, its been dishonest, at times its been ugly.  Ive often felt like one big con artist, bluffing my way around the rat-race and giving little back to the system which gave me so much.  However, Ive been offered my advance (albeit I’ll hold out for another $50k), so I suppose  even I have made my money, and should not care.  About doing little, or nothing, for so long.

Or is it really nothing?   Do any of us really “do f*** all”?  Go “unemployed”,  blag it ”off” or “bluff the sick”?  Are we not always doing something, paid or unpaid, either accredited or less luckily or less skillfully taken for granted?

At eighteen, Johnnie got out of the Northern Ireland cauldron, both for space and an unbiased education.  Not that Queens or Ulster were biased in any way, of course.  He just needed out to see what a not divided society was like.  It wasn’t much to ask, for a testosterone filled young Orange male to get away from the politics and the tribal nature of Proddies versus Taigs.  Surely it could only help matters.

Ironically, after working my way to the top of the student ladder in Hull, I went back to contuinue lobbying/pestering folk, and work on the fringes of the formative peace process in Ireland.  This was unplanned but it suited,  having failed at the second of three youthful but love-driven relationships.  I rebuilt alot of bridges back where I was from.  For example, and more importantly my little fringe roles actually worked.   Still in my twenties, I proposed policy which was accepted, mediated conflicts which were managed if not resolved, and worked for up-and-coming local politicians who are now the true Masters of The Peace Process.   I only regret not handing out more press releases as I stood with them on the steps of Stormont, after sending advice to Mo and being told “this is going to happen son”, or taking channel 4 or more recently the BBC news 24 up on their offers of going on TV to tell them my big plan.  Maybe the people at the sick would see me and say “no more sick pay”.  After all, I wasn’t really that “sick” when I was doing such good work on the future of our wee country.