Birdie could quote chapter and verse about Hughie Donoghue. Then or now. He was a flute player who lived halfway up a mountain, outside the village of Crosshill, which itself was ten miles beyond Ballinasloe. He used to hitch lifts and he’d go wheresoever the lift was going. He’d stand on the roadside maybe hitching southwards, until he heard a car coming. Sometimes the car might be going northwards. So he’d cross the road and hitch northwards. He never actually cared where he was or where he was going, so long as he was always going somewhere. And once he got the drivers’ attention, he could stick to them like glue for the entire day and night. People said there was a trace of a tinker in him, and he never disagreed. And his nickname was Dattledo Donoghue.

‘Where are you going?’ he’d inquire. But no matter what the driver replied, Hughie would sing his tune – ‘That’ll do.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Clifden.’

‘That’ll do.’

It didn’t matter what the driver said.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Castlebar.’

‘That’ll do.’

Flexible Donoghue.

‘Where are you for, sir?’

‘Timbuktu.’

‘That’ll do.’

If his dog was sick, he’d get the neighbour to drive him to town, to see the Vet. Or sometimes, in more recent years, when his bones were stiff and the cod liver oil wasn’t working, he’d oblige a neighbour to make the trip to north Mayo or south Roscommon, so he could visit some quack or faith healer, or Dutch hippie practising reiki, or maybe a German woman in Sligo who massaged arthritic farmers with a concoction of beeswax and wild nettles.

Those trips took forever. They were adventures. Especially when he was in favour of approaching the German woman with the nettles. They’d stop at every pub on the way to and from Sligo. Always on the pretext of getting directions.

And they’d have a pint in each pub they passed until eventually they hit on a musical house. Then Hughie would be drawn into the session. The driver got techy. The dog slept in the back of the car.

The driver would recount such stories to Alex Delaney over some calving cow a week later and Birdie would hear it on the pillow from the inebriated Vet.

And always the same groceries. Rashers and sausages and a sliced pan. Hughie never went home without the essentials. And in the laneway to his house he’d cajole the driver to come in for a feed. And the food would be served with lashings of Powers Gold Label whiskey. A stock of bottles Hughie kept out in the shed. It was ancient whiskey, bonded by a local pub fifty years earlier. Incomparable to any other whiskey in the world. And when the driver finally let his ears back to the feast of bacon and fried bread, Hughie would settle himself by the range and render hornpipes and polkas on the flute. Tunes tunes tunes, until the cows came home. Tunes as clear and sweet as brown trout in a stony river. As Hughie used to say, sure there’s no tomorrow. There’s only today.