All-Ireland at the Kingdom's heart
This seriously annoyingly nosey woman from down our way stopped me in the street and asked if my aunt died from Alzheimer's.
'I forget' was my reply.
We lost beloved Auntie Peg and Uncle Mike this summer. The two lived in Dublin a lot longer than in the Kingdom, but they were Kerry to the core. I'm sure Peg and Mike would not mind in the least if I said a win tomorrow would greatly ease the pain of their passing.
Gaelic football is the bread and jam of the people, a release from the grind of earning your bread and butter.
In bad times football was as much of an escape as it was for the boxers who fought their way out of the ghettos to glory.
But it was more than that. The game was a way of expressing the rugged and the truly beautiful on the same canvass and the reward was a wall space in the gallery of immortality.
The purest football of all is played in the South Kerry.
On Tuesday I visited Cahersiveen, the town that hugs the mountain.
My hero Mick O'Connell was window-shopping. I parked on a double yellow line and held up the ring of Kerry traffic like an American taking a snap of a donkey, but when I went back to the spot he was gone. And he didn't buy the window either.
Doorstepped
There was call to the Spar shop to buy a cake for my smashing Auntie Sheila and her devoted husband Jeff and who did I spot only Kerry captain Declan O'Sullivan. He was sitting all on his own in the off licence, thinking.
'Billy' was all he said, surprised to be doorstepped.
'Don't worry Declan I'm not here for an interview. I only wanted to buy a cake'. I don't think I ever interviewed anyone. I get too excited and do all the talking myself.
I wished Declan well too, but I didn't ask any questions. All he said was 'it's going to be tough' when I wished him luck. Then we chatted about sweet cakes.
My Auntie Kathleen taught here in Pres for many years and she is buried with the Sisters in the grounds of the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church. The Liberator is from just down the road in Derrynane and he will greet us as we pass over his bridge into his street on our road to Croker I prayed too at the graves of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty who saved thousands of Jews and my mother's cousin gentle Canon Curtin, a Kerry selector who brought me to many a game. The dead live for All-Irelands. I needn't tell you what I prayed for. But there was a second prayer. 'The Lord preserve us from Liam Hayes'.
Men, women and children from the City of Sive and further down and up the coast will drive for four hours and will be no nearer to Dublin than an all day breakfast café at the foot of a midlands drumlin.
Their mellifluous sing song accents will lilt the city.
When I was a boy groups of Kerry people would look up at the high buildings in awe. Now we are on the verge of beating the two biggest cities in Ireland in the space of a few weeks.
Crusade
Cork are doughty fighters. For them as well as us this is no battle, it's a crusade. We are as bound together by friendship as by the differences between us, but only after the match is well over.
Derry Reen is from Milstreet but has been living among us for a good few years. His children will wear the green and gold.
'Do you know', he said with the confident air of a man who is sure of his facts, 'Kerry have never beaten Cork in an All-Ireland final?'
If we lose I'm going to Easter Island until Good Friday. We'll never be able to stick the Cork slagging.
We will say nothing much if we are victorious. That kills 'em.
The Kingdom should win, but Cork will not lie down.
Men of Kerry, remember who you are and where you're from. Our sense of Kerryness won us many an All Ireland... And watch the attacking halfbacks going up the middle with the midfielders pulling out to the wings to make the space. It's an old Morgan trick. And watch ... ... Ah sure ye know yeerselves.
The tension started as a slow drum roll but the beat is quickening by the day.
The libido is as low now as a Holy Well after news of a miracle cure.
There's no enjoyment in an All-Ireland. That's for murky Sundays in November in front of the DVD.
I'm as nervous now as the man who called the bomb squad when the small boy bust the Tayto bag.
How I wish it was teatime Sunday and Sam was our sugar bowl.
