It is not just Sure, it wouldn’t do any harm. It is not just I could tell he could barely stand up in his shoes. It is not just The poor wasted face of my father.
The entire last verse gets me in floods of tears every time the Liam Reilly-written Streets of New York-invariably-Wolfe Tones-version is played on radio.
I was really young when I was emigrated – from England to Ireland – in the opposite direction to most then. No goodbye to schoolfriends. The move was sudden and for a long time we thought we were going back to Birmingham (home of the band The Streets if you don’t get my blog title!). And it turned out Ireland just there was split and we were on the edge of it in so many ways.
I thought for a long time I would go back until I realised it would just be equal, but (kind of) opposite heartbreak.