Thrifting In Malahide

Thrifting in Malahide.

Well, of all the wonderfully trivial notions to tickle my dormant writing brain — and spark up my first blog of 2025!

Maybe I should feel guilty that it wasn’t something epic and worthy, like Gaza, or Trump, or maybe the usual Christmas deaths and year-round tragedies, or indeed family trauma. Of which we have had our share in the year just gone and more. 

Maybe all of these are so big and literal they were too much for that intriguing bit of my straggling imagination that surprises, and even occasionally delights me, as I peruse my back pages or mine the magnificent mundanity of a life that still confuses, infuriates and captivates after all these years.

But thrifting in Malahide?

The words our darling, almost 21-year-old daughter flung behind her in pithy explanation as she dashed off to catch the bus to the train station, and she a bohemian chic vision in long fawn suede coat, black fur ear muffs, pink headphones and with the zeal of a woman about to engage in some serious thrifting.

Herself and her pals love it. Scouring second hand clothes and charity shops for vintage swirling blouses, cool jackets, jewellery … anything that catches the magpie eye — and is going for a song.

The bit that really made me smile though was the incongruity of thrifting in said Malahide — or malaise, as my predictive texting idiot tried to change it to just now. Which I found strangely reassuring, after all the scare-mongering about AI taking over the world, and doing away with writers and all that. 

Malaise, really?

Malahide is a pristine, affluent seaside town in north county Dublin, with added notions. Think The Truman Show with dodgy Irish weather. All compliant, samey shopfronts, waiting list restaurants and marinas for the nouveaux boat people. All very designery, as my viciously unpretentious younger brother would say.

So thrifting in Malahide, what did that involve, I pondered. Holding up women in real furs with frozen facelifts and demanding they hand over that million-dollar bangle, or maybe plain old panhandling … hanging around the harbour and whining for gold, or at least a nice Hermes scarf?

Or maybe, in keeping with the keeping up with the Jones’ aspirations malaise, aka Malahide, is known for by the rest of us — however fairly or unfairly — they have a better class of thrift emporium for my girl and her boutique-combing posse.

Thrifting in Malahide. How gloriously incongruous. Like sunbathing in Iceland. Crocheting with Eskimos. Dancing with the czars. A holiday in Cambodia … or even “Khmer Rouge, genocide quoi/Your place or Mein Kampf”, as Evan Dando sang in If I Could Talk I’d Tell You, on the album Car Button Cloth. 

Thing is, of course, none of us are what we seem, or what we might present.

Like fearsome Mike Tyson loved pigeons when he was a lad, and a certain German dictator was a dab hand with a paintbrush …

And real men feel pain too.

I was thinking all this as I read an article in the Irish Times sports pages about Tadhg Kennelly, one of only two men to hold an All-Ireland senior football winner’s medal in Gaelic football, with his native Kerry, and an AFL Premiership medallion, with Sydney Swans, in Australia, his home for many years.

The article was about himself and his friend David Eccles, and the movement they have founded, all as a result of Eccles’ original intervention to help Kennelly after he had fallen into a severe mental health decline after losing his coaching job in 2020, during Covid. Knocking on Kennelly’s door, literally, turned into regular chats and checkin-ins. A bit of exercise on the beach, and maybe a swim and coffee afterwards.

It brought Kennelly out of himself, but as Eccles explained, it was no one-way thing as he found the process as healing as his friend.

So long story short, they started a group, which quickly became groups — known as Chapters — all over Australia, and now the movement has spread to the USA, Canada, England, and latterly, Kennelly and Eccles’ native Ireland. 

They called the group the WNOW Sunrise Club. It became a volunteer-led charity, and the name stands for When No One Is watching — a message to encourage men to live without worrying about being judged by others.

Reading the article, what resonated most for me was something Eccles said. In tacking his own malaise — haha I knew I’d get the real word in — months before he ended up calling on his pal Tadhg, he found something in naming what was ailing him, and which made it solvable for him.

“You just needed to be a better mate,” he said.

The idea is to keep these Chapters and what they do simple. 

“I think the mental health space has been invaded with a lot of gimmicks. There’s a simplicity in what we’re trying to do,” said Kennelly.

The template is 30 minutes of body weight exercises, 60 press up divided up among the group to remember the 60 men lost to suicide every 60 minutes around the world; then form a circle of trust where they can share without judgment; ending with a swim (where possible) and a coffee.

There’s no one way to tackle what ails us mentally, but there’s food for thought there. 

My own wider family has been dealing with an illness to one of my brothers, and an eating disorder business has also wreaked some havoc. 

Recently my son and I travelled by train to a Kris Kindle gathering at my older brother’s house. The exchanging presents part ultimately had gotten out of hand and this year we resolved to just exchange our gifts for our presence, and our solidarity. There was room to talk about our bothers and our struggles, but mostly we sat around eating, drinking (a lovely Faustino Rioja for me!) shooting the breeze and bickering and bantering loudly over daft board games.

It felt so good to have the freedom to talk about what ails us, but choosing mostly to just enjoy each other’s company. Laughing and bullshitting, like old times. 

So warm and fuzzy inside as I watched our 19-year-old boy chat effortlessly with his cousins. The next generation, all big and grown up, and some of them even mortgaged and living abroad.

Be a better mate. Be a better brother, father, cousin, colleague, friend. Just be better.

There waiting on the counter when we got back home was a late Christmas card from a friend we had not heard from in a while. Lost his beautiful in every way wife four years ago, in those miserable, quarantined funeral days.

He apologised for not being in touch. And I started feeling guilty for having let things slide. But to hell with recrimination or regret. Contact has been reestablished and yet another opportunity to be a better mate has been presented.

Here’s looking at you in 2025.