My Greystones: Mick Ryan

There was a time, long before health and safety kicked in, when parties in Greystones could get a little hairy.

Naked dancing with Burnaby barstools, men in suspenders cracking whips, trainee hippies floating out of upstairs bedroom windows before hitting the ground with a thud. And then a whimper.

The cool thing was, right from the start, you could tell you were in for just such a party by the simple presence of certain well-known-verging-on-notorious Greystonians.

People like Willy The Weed, Dickus Mickus, Plum Sutton, Grace Shanley and Cathal Kettle (you’d always find him in the kitchen at parties).

And the Ryan Brothers.

Yep, you knew your party was sucking diesel once you saw Alan, Mick or Kevin Ryan there. If you saw two of them, you knew you might as well kiss tomorrow goodbye. If all three of them were present and incorrect, it was generally regarded as wise to write your own name and address on the back of your hand.

Today, of course, all the above-mentioned are each living the relatively quiet life, no longer all that keen to tune in, turn on and drop out. Most are in bed by 10pm, watching telly, happy to simply tune in, turn over and drop off.

In the case of Mick Ryan, when you live in the coolest house in Greystones, with the coolest woman, sure, where would ya be goin’…?

Try to imagine if Jeffrey Ignatius Ulysses Maharishi Lebowski had met the woman of his dreams and settled down to raise a family in the most lucious little town in Ireland. Well, that pretty much sums up The Life Of Ryan.

The lucky, lucky bastard.

Born, by the looks of it, in a moving caravan, and bred in Greystones, there was a very real chance that we might have lost The Dúde when eight years of being a fisherman in the US seemed to have Mick’s future all mapped out. But then, he fell hook, line and sinker for the beautiful Róisin, and Greystones got their prodigal piscator back.

Today, with their boys just about all grown up, Mick and Ró are back to where their love started, with, it seems, just about all the time in the world, and one of the finest places on the planet to waste it in.

Indeed, if GG wasn’t so incredibly well-centred and at one with the universe, we’d be incredibly fricking jealous of their warm and tender bliss. But we feel so very, very happy for them. Ferociously happy.

What gets us though is, Mick’s not even the good-looking Ryan.

This My Greystones first appeared August 6th, 2017. Viewing at home, Friday, March 30th, 3pm to 7pm; funeral service on Saturday, March 31st 2018 at 11am in The Holy Rosary Church, followed by drinks at the Greystones Sailing Club.