Aine MacAodha

Ghost Town

I want to hear Paul Weller sing Going Underground The Modern World, The Eton Rifles, along with The Specials’ Ghost Town and The Sex Pistols for pity sake, but it’s Saturday night in Omagh and the DJ will only play a few numbers from the ‘alternative music’ scene.

The rest will be pop tunes and everyone will be still doing disco dancing moves on checkered tiles. The queue for the loo, (commonly known in Tyrone as the bogs) will be lined with lipsticked girls wearing boob tubes and carrying a bag they just danced around.

They will look at me as if I landed from the far side of the moon with my Doc Martens on, sticking out like a sore thumb in the rural North of Ireland, in drainpipes and sugar starched spiky hair. God loved a trier, and my friend Trich and I did that.

I wanted to say I’m with you all 100%, I’m shaking my fist at the establishment. I’m doing all I can in this market town to ripple a few waves at parochial powers, at government propaganda.

Aine MacAodha