T i m e O u t

ABRAKADASTRA

ABRAKADASTRA

October 1996

This is R.T.E. broadcasting on L.M., F.M. and on satellite from Ireland.

One of the family suggested it to me.

‘D’ya know you can get R.T.E. radio in Europe?’

‘Really? I suppose it would cost the earth.’

‘Don’t think so. You could get it in Italy through your TV set.’

‘Wouldn’t it be lovely?’

‘You should, y’know.’

When we ‘hitched up’ to Astra, I’d been living in Italy for twenty years. As the pigtailed technician programmed, decoded and dialled, he smiled at my excitement and, in honour of my origins, name-dropped the great musical sounds coming out of Irlanda.

Fantastico! Fantastico!

Soon, the BBC, clear as a postcard, came on with, what else, but a World News Update, then CNN, ABC, NBC, with their News updates… Eurosport… Discovery and, finally, I heard it.

Faith of Our Fathers, Holy faith, in spite...

Idiotically, my eyes were riveted to the blank television set.

...whene’er we hear that glorious word...

Pigtail looked at me apologetically.

‘I’m sorry, Signora. This station corresponds to this position.’

‘Yes, that’s the one I was looking for.’

‘Oh!’

He found Limerick ‘95 Radio playing an upbeat number.

‘Irlanda?’

‘Si.’

‘Bella, Irlanda!’

‘Yes, but could we just check out that other station again?’

‘No problema, Signora.’

At the touch of a dial, Astra moved back to 19E and I heard it once more.

We stand for God and for his... blazing across the airwaves of the world and into my living room.

I didn’t care that I was being scrutinized and my musical tastes catalogued. Such was my state that the bewildered technician must have thought this Irish Signora was going to levitate!

‘You’re very Catholica, aren’t you?’ Pigtail asked, but I could only nod because, there it was, The Voice, Gay’s own!

I had tuned into Gay Byrne’s Morning Show the day he was reviewing the Frank Patterson CD Faith of Our Fathers and each time the technician hit the station a new hymn was being broadcast!

That morning is indelible, unreal, distorted. A momentary time warp. Not only was I reeled back to Ireland but the Ireland of my school days had become entangled with 1996. I had waited to peep in through the ‘new Irish Window’ and instead found myself suspended between memory and reality and borne back to a time that people on the programme were depicting as a nice time in our lives.

One moment it was 1968 and I was in Galway Cathedral with hundreds of students from all over the west belting out We stand for God, the roof-raising finale to our annual get-together. The next Gay’s voice, with its embracing familiarity, was explaining the technicalities of musical arrangements and then in my living-room a technician was blabbering in Italian about satellites  and codes  

I wanted Pigtail, the technician, to leave. I wanted a cup of tea. I didn’t want to know that some German television station broadcast English programmes. That could all wait! I wanted Gay all to myself! I wanted the newsreader all to myself. I even wanted the ads all to myself!

October 2006

I recognise Pigtail’s voice on the phone.

‘Hello, Signora. R.T.E. television will soon be on the satellite digital system. Are you interested?’

‘Oh! Yes, please!’