The metadata on my phone tells me I got the initial idea for it in the small hours wed 29th July 2020. the song was a pondering on how lucky I was in the covid world -suited to it even.
I didn't have to look far for people it didn't work for. Desocialised kids missing friends and routines, People who were out out of work, frightened and lonely. Trapped far from home. or maybe trapped a bit too close.
But I Niall -dropped on my head as a baby and walking between raindrops ever since, this kind of worked for me. I'm the sort who goes home on a Friday and shuts the door on the world til Monday morning anyway. Now with limitations placed on how far I could travel I contented myself finding Tremendous walks, fun, safe cycles and later invigorating swims.
Two days after putting down that sketch for this song I decided to prepare for the impending August Bank Holiday weekend with a bit of a workout I'd jokingly come to refer to as my triathlon which involved a short cycle, jog and swim and after which any indulgence would seem just reward. So late in the afternoon of Friday July 31st I put my gear in a rucksack, hopped on my bike and cycled the mile or so out Ballykeelaun -the old Ardnacrusha road -which for some 90 years now has ended abruptly where the headrace canal brings water to the Ardnacrusha Powerstation. At the top of the embankment I turn towards Clonlara some 5kms away and walk in long strides for 100 paces stretching the thighs and hamstrings and only then do I dare break into the pathetic shuffle I call a jog. Managing Patellar Tendonitis flare ups since my teens I am conscious attempting to run -even on this bank made spongy by heavy rainfalls is akin to poking an angry old dog with a sharp stick. Walk 100. Run 350. Rince and repeat. Several cycles of this later I arrive at a point on the Headrace canal where if I look down into the clear yet peaty water -there's a set of steps that go all the way down the inclined side til they reach the bottom some 30-40ft below the surface. I expeditiously strip and make my way down the steps. I sometimes greet the icy cold on my feet and legs with hot spicey chillis hot spicey chillis Oh My Tenders!. Then I'm in.

It is splendid but the current is strong and I'm not much of a swimmer. Plus I'm already breaking an entirely sensible personal commandment about not swimming alone. So for ten minutes or so I try to stay immersed. I jump in inclining myself upstream and swimming a few strokes against the drift knowing that when I stop I'll quickly be carried back to the steps. The rainfall that made the embankments spongy appears to have chilled, swollen and strengthened the current so that within a few minutes I notice my fingers are starting to turn white. I emerge and towel myself dry, gear back on and retrace my steps home in the same manner I got here. I'm considerably quicker as I'm keen to hit the hot shower. Also the cycle home has more downhill and I stepped through the gears making sure all the sprockets on the cassette got some oil from the chain as the rains had kept the bike in the shed all week.
But I wasn't to know at that point I was still too late and I had already lost a race in which I didn't even know I was participant. I'd lost to a bastard microbial bacterium that had found its way into a small cut on my left index finger and was now gingerly making its way deep into that digits first joint and replicating itself by whatever manner such creatures do so.

It would be some 36 hours yet before I realised I had a problem and so I got on with enjoying the bank holiday weekend. I think we'd Chinese on the Friday evening. Bank Holiday Saturday is as I like them to be. I do as little as possible, knock around the garden a while. Though I think we drove to Curragh Chase and strolled around for a bit. I noted that 'new Irish' be they Polish, Middle Eastern, South American -wherever -make much fuller use of such amenities than us less recent arrivals. They bring the picnic baskets, the barbeques, and an array of day tripper gear so called natives only load in if they're going to Kilkee or Ballyb. But the beaches are all closed. Or at least there's no bathing. There's something in the water. Run off from land after heavy rains and I, with no symptoms, haven't joined the dots yet. Saturday night was similarly chilled. I did a little work and play in the shed I call a studio and later put Len Dinneen on the radio and sang and strummed along to old favourites as is my habit just to keep the chops in some kind of shape. I probably hit the hay around 1.30am.

I awoke at 7am which is the time I normally get up for work but this is of course a bank holiday Sunday. I'm not awake more than a few seconds when I become aware of a searing pain in my left hand. Through sleepy eyes I examine it and can see a band of crimson red just 2 or 3 millimetres wide but completely encircling the first joint of my index finger.

The pain is excruciating and I have very little ability or urge to move the finger. My immediate suspicion is I overdid it playing guitar the night before. I head to the medicine box and munch some pain killers and put the finger on ice.

The pain killers do little if I'm honest though I do manage to doze again for a while. I get up and find nothing comforts it. Later in the day we call to my parents where my brother Paul who's the baby of the family but has the wisest head in many ways notices it and recoils "Ugh ...Kill it. Kill it with fire." His reaction makes me confront the reality it looks a lot different to this morning now. the tight crimson band has spread but softened. The whole finger is now noticeably more swollen and though the top of the finger is turning from crimson to claret the area around the cut is turning white. This is the first time I recall the possibility it was infected rather than sprained or strained being raised. I can't think why I hadn't given it more serious consideration. I'd had a cyst removed from the finger just before lockdown last spring and it wasn't entirely successful. The cyst returned and the wound never properly healed. I just got used to living with it and probably became careless. Quizzed on my where's and when's I'm reminded the beaches were closed to bathers on the day I leapt in the Headrace canal. There followed a quick Geography lesson on where the materials that had caused the beach closures originated -and I'd been swimming in them. You need to see a doctor today he insisted. Though not fancying my chances of getting to see a doctor on a bank holiday weekend during a pandemic I called the out-of-hours medical center that evening. I've dealt with the Doctor here before with one of the kids and he has a great patient manner. "Eugh ...Kill it. Kill it with fire" he exclaimed. Confirming the finger was infected he assured me it'd be fine. I was given a prescription for stronger painkillers and anti-biotics with a reminder to finish out the course.

Feeling somewhat assured and a little relieved I went home and started my meds straight away. But by 2am it was apparent I wasn't going to sleep easily tonight. Between dozes I watched a few Bullseyes, an episode of Dempsey and Makepiece and a movie from 1952 on Talking Pictures about a Japanese POW camp. I can't remember much about it as I ended up researching the whereabouts of the cast on find-A-Grave. When I woke up Monday morning the pain was searing again. I couldn't understand how a solitary finger could produce this much pain and of such intensity. It was unprecedented in my lifetime. I've had a lucky life evidently. Nothing compared to it. Not even a broken heart. Sorry girls. But ye've nothing on this.

I munched my painkillers and hoped they'd kick in too. They didn't. By now a lot of the finger was such intense deep purple I thought it might give us a barre of Fireball. It certainly felt like one. I don't recall much of Monday. Meds. Meds wearing off. More meds.

I went straight to the couch Monday night. I 'd no expectation I'd sleep and I didn't much. On top of Bullseye I found Hitlers Henchmen, several episodes of Sapphire and Steel and Pompeii the final hours. I awoke from one patch of light sleep hearing something . Like something attempting to escape. I looked at my finger, now near twice it's usual size, mostly purple with a white eye and a crown of vanilla yellow. As I looked closer I could hear more. I found myself at 4 in the morning listening to my finger and worse hearing my finger. Its sound had elements of a dolphin captured on a hydrophone, a rat in a wallspace and a sausage sizzling on a pan. I thought of the Tom Waits song What's He Building in There and the underappreciated How To Get A Head In Advertising before succumbing to sleep a while later.

When morning came concern was expressed both about my finger which was showing no sign of improvement and my general condition and complexion which was described as grey, waxy and glistening. I got an appointment with my own GP -a quiet sensible man not given to excitability who shrieked 'Kill It, Kill It With Fire' before dispatching me to A&E with instructions not to divert home for anything. This is very serious.

A&E Reception was relatively quiet and I wasn't there long before being brought through. I was taken to a room where after a while a person i think was a doctor came in, examined it, asked how it happened and I gave my best guess. She then vanished and a different person I think was a doctor came in looked at it and left before returning and announcing "You need to go to Cork, We can’t fix this here. But Cork can't see you til tomorrow morning. So I was hooked up to a proper IV antibiotics drip and given a couple of bags of the good stuff before being covid tested and left home with a prescription for proper painkillers of the “don't even think of consuming alcohol with these” variety.

In Cork the following day a kindly ward nurse with a strong Kerry accent seemed to be assuring me all day I'd been seen next even though I wasn't asking. By afternoon I'd had xrays, bloods and my covid test came back negative. I was moved from one place to another and wheels seemed to be turning. They'd even drawn a little cartoon on my hand that indicated something or other. Then the kindly nurse with the Kerry accent reappeared and said “I'm so sorry they're not going to be able to see you today”. Apparently the surgeons were dealing with a complicated case from A&E.

I was devastated. “But -my finger” I choked like a child with a broken toy. It was what it was. We made the 90 minute drive home in silence.
The following morning I phoned ahead to make sure I'd be seen today. They assured me I would. Back to Cork we go. It,s funny the things you notice when you're not driving. Buttevant with a population of 970 and Charleville with a population of under 4000 and both of them Co Cork towns on the main Limerick to Cork road both have more pedestrian crossings on their main thoroughfare than Limerick -a university city of 94,000 people. Anyway I digress.

Back in Cork the day went much as yesterday. So much so I became anxious I might be turned away again. But around lunchtime I was called, examined again and prepped. In the theatre they explained what would happen next and that I'd just feel a sting from the injections to numb the finger and then they could go to work on it. I did feel it and joked that compared to what the finger had been feeling -the syringe felt pretty good. And then within a minute and for the first time since the previous sunday morning -I felt nothing. They worked quickly. I felt no pain but was conscious of 'tugging' and the hand being moved about. At one point I'm sure I heard the surgeon quip, in a short low tone, 'wow'. I also heard either the word necrosis or necrotic . Necro -dead.

When they were all done the finger was dressed and splinted. Before I even left the theatre I could feel the local anaesthetic was starting to wear off. The pain was quickly moving from whisper to a scream like watching a storm front approaching on the weather forecast and seeing a deckchair fly past the window.

I stopped in the hospital corridor realising I needed to take some painkillers right away if there was to be any hope they'd kick in before the finger woke up and realised some of itself was missing. Slipping my hand out of the sling to help unzip my rucksack I had to root around to find the packet while crouching in to the side of a busy corridor. I swallowed two pills without any water to wash them down then noticed something on the floor. The dressing and splint had completely fallen off. I couldn't stop my gaze turning to the bare finger. I'm not going to claim it was the Somme but it was an entirely passable Passchendaele.

I got myself upright and dashed back the way I thought I'd come eventually finding what I hoped was the right door and banged on it. A bemused person opened it and stepped aside to reveal the people who'd just worked on my finger. "The dressing fell off", I said trying to make it sound like I wasn't in complete panic.

I was beckoned back in and a new and substantially more substantial dressing was applied giving my finger a somewhat comical appearance.

I've been back up and down to Cork since several times for follow ups and to rule out Osteo Mylitis.. Playing guitar has become awkward. I've no callous on the finger anymore so it's like learning to play again with just that digit. I can only play a few minutes before it starts to swell up, heat up and turn crimson. Then I wrap it in pressure bandaging to try and keep the swelling down. I can do quite a few chords -some even using the zombie finger but there's a few I really struggle with now Like Cmajor and Aminor. It's not like they're especially popular chords anyway.

I've a weird pink putty to play with to try and build the muscles up again. it appears there's damage to the nerves and the little muscles and even tinier tendons so it may take a while.

Meanwhile I've to fight with milk cartons, ketchup bottles, anything with a ring pull and turning the key in the door. I got the drums back handy enough but I strap the index finger to the one next to it to stop it flopping about. It has a mind of its own sometimes too like a mini version of Dr Strangeloves wayward arm. It just twitches about a bit. It reminds me a bit of Stephen Kings Pet Cemetery and the people buried up there none of whom came back as they had been. I do sometimes think they buried my gammy finger in the mi'kmaq burial ground beyond the pet cemetery.
This is where it ends. There's no happy ending. It just is what it is. The last sausage under the grill. I'm not even sure why I'm telling this story and yes I am feeling sorry for myself despite the fact many more have much worse to worry about. I'm aware this is unfortunate but scarcely tragic on any scale. Maybe tragic could have been used if I were still 17 and it meant I may not have or be having the opportunities and experiences I did get. But I had my shot and blew it long ago. Everything else I’ve done since can seem a bit of a debris field really. Unsettled dust of something that's past. I should take the opportunity to thank everyone who did so much to help me. Maybe I should be telling people who have open cuts to at least cover them with petroleum jelly before going for a swim. And then maybe it's time I put on my pressure bandage and played with my putty.