Hi my name is Paul McGuinness or my nickname to my friends, if I have any left, is Maddog. In these blogs I’d like to talk about my life, living with a brain injury and music.
To quote W. C. Fields “I was born at an early age” but it’s taken me 56 years to write a book about myself. I‘ve got to say, I was reborn at an older age. The rebirth I had is due to an accident I had. I can’t recall any of the accident so I’ll have to take someone else’s word for it, and if I trust any ones word it’s got to be my sister, Mary. I owe that girl my life- without her support I doubt if my rebirth would have taken place.
My birth took place over 56years ago and I’ve got Chrissie and Jim to thank for that. Thanks Mum. Thanks Dad.
Chrissie is short for Christine and she was called that by her parents because she was born on the 26th of December. If Irish people are good at anything it’s making up nicknames so very quickly. They started calling my mother Chrissie before someone from Liverpool started calling her Crimbo. Jim is the short version of James and he is responsible for making my mum pregnant but and this is clearly an Irish catholic sin. Christine got pregnant before she was married to Jim, and if I know anything (and I don’t), that is the reason why I was a sinner while I was still in the womb. To cut a long story short I continued as a sinner right into my older even more sinful years.
I don’t remember any of younger years until I was four so I’ll have to consult my Mother to help me on that. Apparently I was born in London and continued living there until I was about four years old, it was then I made my way by ferry to Waterford. Then through lack of a job, Jim carted us all off to Dublin where he had the good sense to get some mullah that’s money ££££ and put a deposit on a house in Dublin in an area called Santry. The road was called Old town road, Bally mun was not built yet but to increase my fun as a child they built that later. To get the rest of the money to pay for the house and the ever increasing bills my Dad took a job as a commercial traveller. He took the job from his father Leo (more of him later). My grandfather, Leo, demanded a lot from my father and unfortunately this meant he did not spend enough time with my mother so this pissed my mother off. If there’s one thing a woman can’t stand, it’s a lack of attention from their man and that caused a lot of controversy in the house. My earliest memory was the birth of my eldest sister, I wasn’t at the birth but I was there when she was taken home. She was born in the rotunda hospital. My mother and my sister returned from the birth to our home in Santry and my first memory is seeing the baby lying on the floor. She was having her picture taken. I don’t remember much about the photo session but I remember the design on the carpet probably because I spent most of my time staring at the floor but the carpet was the same colour as the baby and that colour was red. This came in handy years later when I cut my head open and bled all over the carpet. I don’t remember the baby being christened but we called her Deborah or Debbie for short and short she was, but she soon grew up and became a great support for me. It took Jim another few years to impregnate my mum again this time my mother gave birth to an even redder child. This one was called after Gods Mother, she was called Mary, so from the age of eight I had a family- I was the eldest, a condition I’ve maintained over the years. Debbie or Mary never managed to catch up with me but they managed to pass me by in every other respect.
Maddogrising 