The Busted Knuckle Chronicles
Guided by Angels/ON Events ‘WTF’, I thought. I could he have…Werewolf, I mean Phillip, grew up in Dublin, the only child of a bicycle repairer. Unable to read, he was considered to have learning difficulties by his teachers and parents. ‘Did you tell your parents you could see angels?”, I asked him. “No, the angels told me I should keep it a secret. Because if I had said to my mum, “There’s an angel beside you”, I would have been put into an institution.”
see, with angels. Werewolf continued, “Your guardian is extremely beautiful and looks strong. She’s working hard with you.” ‘Are they trying to tell me anything?’, I asked. “He, the other one, says you haven’t made as many bad choices as you believe you have.” How do I know it is an angel telling me what to do, and not just fear? How do I know that this angel, of a different sort, isn’t just yanking my chain. “He knows there are times in your life when you made the wrong decisions and times you made the right ones. It’s kind of through trial,” he said. ‘Shut Up!’, I thought. Now I need air. As we rode, I was trying to process what Werewolf had said. One of the reasons I don’t believe in guardian angels is that people are inherently evil and most lie. Cynical I know. We stopped for a pee break and beverage. As I stepped out of the WC, Werewolf was right there, like the wall he is. “The angels are guiding you, helping to make this life as easy as possible. But they can’t overstep the boundaries of free will…yours.”
He recounts how an angel told him at the age of ten that he was going to meet his future wife, Fuamnach; that he would fall ill, and his wife would have to nurse him; and they would have a child that would die young. They met when Phillip was 17 and working in a garage. They did marry, and they did have a son, who died young, just months after birth. I tell Werewolf that I need the impossible: proof. Can he tell me one thing that will make me believe in angels? “Everyone always wants proof,” he says. “But I can’t give that proof.” His youngest daughter Megan is 15. I ask how she copes having such an unusual father. “All her friends know who her father is and her mom, Fuamnach. Oh did I mean she is the white
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witch? And that her name Fuamnach is from Irish legend: a witch goddess who turns Midir’s second wife, the heroine Étaín, into a pool of water, then a worm, and finally a beautiful butterfly. Some of the club members’ knowledge of everything motorbike made me tentatively confident that, with a fair wind, I might even make it. The route takes us through the town of Dromara, which is heavy on vowels but also heavy on pensioners crossing the road without looking. Very handy for practising those emergency stops. Thirty minutes later my ride for the day: a staggeringly ugly - and staggeringly enormous gun-metal grey sporty complete with the panniers that seemed to contain my entire world, at that Continued on next page