Uaneen

Homelands Festival
Mosney, Co. Meath
March, 2000

‘That’s Bobby Gillespie over there,’ said Pen, pointing to a crag of a man amongst a few.
‘No, it’s not him,’ Tim said. ‘He looks too fresh. Gillespie would look like the end of an era.’

They sat down at a table to drink their beers. How they’d gotten into the VIP garden, they couldn’t figure out. Maybe they were able to slip in because of their unholy nearness to Johnny Moy and his entourage, a group of royally badged so-and-so’s, fully approved by club culture.

Anyway, they took their seats, and began to discuss their forthcoming headline set.

‘We’ll come out wearing top hats and tailcoats,’ Tim said.
‘Are ya mad?’ roared Pen. ‘It’s not Andrew Lloyd Webber, this is Gatecrasher in muck. All they need to see is a light show, and our heads shaking violently over a desk.’
‘Maybe we could wear bulbs on our heads like Orbital?’

They’d been discussing their headline set all day, even though they hadn’t been included in the festival’s lineup on account of their not being musicians. The dialogue was deferred however when they noticed close to their table, Uaneen Fitzsimons, the radio and television presenter – she was walking back and forth on her lonesome, talking to herself it would seem.

‘What the hell is she doing?’ asked Pen.
‘She must be rehearsing her lines or something.’

Uaneen’s existence did this mad hungerness to them, this skin like a white cheddar you would have gobbled whole, and hair crunchy delicious red.

‘Hey, Uaneen,’ said Pen.

She was evidently busy with her work, preparing her presentation, but she smiled a wide giving smile regardless, and walked over to them. Uaneen’s television show was called No Disco. It was very popular, and Tim and Pen especially enjoyed watching Uaneen doing interviews with the techno heads.

‘Well, lads,’ she said. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’
‘Oh, we’re loving our time,’ said Tim, embarrassed as he suddenly became aware that his jaws were going 90. He couldn’t remember taking anything. He looked at Pen, and Pen’s jaws were also going 90. The voice from Bullseye roared 180! in his mind and he thought maybe Uaneen heard it also.

‘I’m exhausted, lads,’ said Uaneen. ‘I need a break. Wanna play some Jenga?’
‘Yeah, definitely,’ shouted Pen. ‘Let’s go for it!’
Uaneen told them to hold on for a second while she popped into the building nearby to get the Jenga set.

Tim and Pen chinked their plastic pint glasses together in delight.

‘You’ll never guess what, lads,’ said Uaneen, upon her return with the Jenga set. ‘Bobby Gillespie’s in there, he’s a demon for Hungry Hippo’s.’

They played Jenga for an hour until Uaneen was called away by her producer probably.

This is a true story. Tim told me about this incident only very recently, with many years having passed, and I felt the need to write it here now, as the event of Uaneen Fitzsimon’s tragic end in a car crash some months after her Jenga meeting with Tim and Pen, has, I believe, caused poor Tim some terrible nuisance over the subsequent years. Whenever a flavour of that period manifests, whether it be a Leftfield track, a Primal Scream video, or a pub called Fitzsimon’s, Tim turns away from goings-on, looks up to the roofs of buildings, and says, ‘No more disco in the fields. It looks like the end of an era.’