Lighten Up: Taylor Swift, where's me ticket?
American singer and songwriter Taylor Swift performs on stage as part of her Eras Tour in Lisbon on May 24, 2024. (Photo by ANDRE DIAS NOBRE / AFP) (Photo by ANDRE DIAS NOBRE/AFP via Getty Images)
Without wanting to panic the nation, the Taylor Swift concert is just around the corner, and I have yet to receive my concert ticket.
A lesser man would be fuming.
The very fellow who should be first in the door, could well be last in line.
And I wouldn't mind, but the last time I spoke to Taylor (or 'Tay Tay' to her friends), she insisted the tickets would be in the post.
"As sure as God, Denny!" she swore. "There will be a ticket in the post for you by the start of the month and a bus ticket too for Dublin city." And that's Taylor all over. She's generous to a fault - as down to earth as myself.
Taylor will of course be playing in Dublin shortly, but the story of her Irish connections go way back.
Believe it or not, her uncle Neilus used to farm nearby, and as a youngster Taylor would spend her summers on his farm saving hay, and when she got a bit older, drawing in the silage.
A country girl to the core, she was never afraid to pull on a pap or squeeze a lively bull.
She could have taken to professional ploughing (she had the gift), but alas, the music bug took hold.
Ploughing's loss is certainly music's gain.
It's a little-known fact, but actually, her nickname to this day, 'Tay Tay', comes from her love of having a strong mug of tea up the fields of the afternoon.
"You can't bate a strong mug of Tay," she used to say as she slurped from the mug on those long hot summer evenings, way back in the days when we were all far more airy and carefree.
I remember the first time I brought out the old Banjo and handed it to her to see what she could make of it.
Impressed that I could play like her hero, the Pecker Dunne, I taught her a few cords, and she caught onto it like a hungry foster lamb latches onto a lactating ewe.
Taylor caught the music bug there and then and hasn't looked back since.
She now has fame in the strangest places, in no small part due to me.
Funnily enough, her big hit "Shake it off" was written right here in west Cork about her adventures on the land.
It's really about her struggles to save hay back in the day when such things were life or death.
Before the round baler came along, my dear man, anyone on the hay bandwagon had a rough ride.
If you failed to get the weather and were unable to make it, the rotting hay would be pushed into a ditch.
"Open up the throttle and 'shake it off,'" I would roar at Taylor as she tore down the field, pulling an old, worn-out PZ Haybob.
"Shake it off, girl", I'd roar, "Shake it off."
In fact, because of my encouragement, she became a mighty woman at saving hay and picking bales, too, if memory serves me correctly.
Then of course came the bad summers or the 'Cruel Summer' as I used to call them. Summers when whatever you did, everything went arse ways.
With the hay tossed in by the ditch, Taylor again with swiftness of pen, got more inspiration from the rain than Frank McCourt.
Angela's Ashes me backside, Taylor Swift was in a league of her own when it came to writing sad songs in the rain.
Woeful sad songs, songs that made us all cry when we'd come in for the spuds.
"Put the pen away!" Taylor, I would bawl, "Tis bad enough that the hay is ruined".
Anyhow that's how it all started.
So now, when my ticket finally does arrive, and you find me in the mosh pit in the Aviva, don't forget to shout, "Hello, Denny."
Remember that it was your auld pal Lehane, the fearless farmer, who took Taylor from the silage pit to the mosh pit.
Sure 'tis no wonder then, that she is back to serenade the nation.
