Lines written on hearing Ôa blithe newcomerÕ at Glenlo

Date Published: {J}

Have you ever had an instant when you wished you didn’t know something? In the age of immediate access to information from all over the world, that probably sounds like heresy.

With sources like the world wide web, there is almost nothing which can’t be found, or checked, at a keystroke.

If you forget a particular reference, or you can’t quite track down that book ... all you’ve got to do is open the laptop and, not alone can you check a reference, but, if you’re luck holds, there may even be a piece of video or audio on the subject as well.

Gone are the days when, like Peter Sellers in his short comedy, The Running, Jumping and Standing Up Film, you might lie awake at night tortured by a line from a poem and not being able to remember the rest of the verse.

Sellers was in that predicament with Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and the line ‘the ploughman homeward plods his weary way’. He proceeded to wake all of his friends ringing them looking for the next line!

Within a short time, half the neighbourhood was trying to remember the line. But that was in the days long before the Internet. By the way, in case you’re sleepless, the next line was ... ‘and leaves the world to darkness and to me’.

Of course, I keep on giving people that health warning that there are some web sites which you simply can’t trust – for instance, the ones that any headbanger can access and amend as he/she feels fit. The type of site that tells you that Kiltimagh has a large population of vampires!

So, why do I say there are things you are almost better off not knowing? Well, I have little doubt that I would have been better off not knowing that two of the great screen idols of my childhood – Tom Mix and Rock Hudson – were gay.

I was better prepared for the latter, because the word on Rock Hudson came out after years of speculation ... but, dammit, Tom Mix was my hero in the days when it cost four old pence to get into the local cinema and ‘gay’ still meant something else entirely.

Tom Mix was the cowboy who starred in the weekly follow-up serials, who dressed perfectly, wore a white hat to show he was one of ‘the good fellas,’ and he was always ready to give the girls a song – if nothing else!

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.