The ballad of Spinky, aka Verse Chorus Chorus Chorus, part one.

For a long time I had a best friend by the name of Spinky, a real person of the punk persuasion and not the small spoty dog his name might lead you to imagine. The story of Spinky is long and convoluted, but I lack the patience to give the convolutions the time they merit so I'll just tear through it as usual and regret the omissions later.

I went through a transition when I was about twenty two, I had lost all meaningful contact with my friends from school and had shed most of my friends from college somehow. I had also just broken up with my long-term girlfriend and although our friends were still my friends I felt the need to move on. I didn't know it then, but even though I had all the time in the world for them, the scene that those friends created was not my natural habitat, I was just such a good chameleon that I didn't realise it.

All this is retrospective of course, at the time I was just mad for the craic and other people and the way you might force your way into their social circles. I wouldn't have the balls to do it now, but then I'm sober most of the time now so that might have some bearing on it.

The Hairy Fella is the most constant friend I've had since I started college at seventeen, and when I hit this transitiony time I made an effort to catch up with him more often because Hairy knows everybody, even you. Seriously, if I used his real name here you would either know him or one of your friends would know him. Unlike the connections between all other sentient beings there are only two degrees of separation from Hairy; either you have met him, somebody you know has met him or you have never met anybody and exist as a free-floating consciousness spontaneously arisen from a coincidence of electrical charge gradients across the wet leaves of a forest after a storm.

I called into Hairy one halloween friday, just for the chat and maybe to attempt putting the submission on his fully-automated self-twisting rubber arm for pints.  But a plan was afoot, and it already involved the pub, which saved me the very inconsiderable effort of engaging the self-twisting arm. First we headed to a gaff on Caple St. where we were to meet people and eat the mushies they were rumored to posses, there was also rumors of fly agaric, reputedly the strongest of strong juju. There wasn't any fly agaric (for sharing), as it turns out, but waving possibilities like that around adds an atmosphere of high adventure to a half-cut stroll across town.

The folk resident in this house on Capel street were proper tokers, so there was nothing brief about the visit as it takes tokers bleedin ages to do anything at all, especially if it involves leaving the house. They were, and still are, real good people, hippie grunge types in the main. I took to them immediately as I was also a hippie grunge type and  because they appeared to find it funny when I got loud and offensive, I love it when people react like that because then I don't have to feel terrible when I wake up the next morning with fuzzy memories, the Fear and card-sharp shuffled 12 second snapshots of crying and shouting, the bad kind of shouting.

We headed out to a comedy improv in the Hapenny Bridge Inn where I remember some good natured heckling and some pretty ropey comedy, which is only to be expected as most comics are shite even when they have a script. The details are irrelevant really, I went out with a gang of strangers and had me a good ol time. It's the follow up that is interesting; a week or so later I rock up to that same house on Capel street all on my lonesome, insinuate myself onto the sofa and pretty much declare that "youse people are now my circle of fwends, get used to it hippies". I think I may have used those exact words. The fucking cheek of me. And you wouldn't think it if you met me in real life, as mild mannered as Clark Kent with a migrane.
It worked a treat though, the poor auld soft-touches proved suitably compliant and I've held onto them as my main crew* for something scarily close to thirteen years.

One of these good gentle folk that I met was Pony, and it was in his house that  I first  met / found Spinky, installed on Ponys sofa, smoking big bongs and talking shite.

*I'm pretty sure they don't see themselves as my crew at all, but thats just another aspect of our relationship that they are not consciously aware of. Goddamn preposition.