Esther McCarthy: Two weeks in the clink for no TV licence? Sounds heavenly to me
Esther McCarthy. Picture: Emily Quinn
As part of my quest to buy nothing for 2025, I’m also trying to bring calm to the chaos of the stuff we already have.
My house will be an oasis of serenity, dotted with discreet, perfectly-placed pieces that spark so much joy, visitors may spontaneously burst into an orgasmic rendition of a number from .
My closet will be capsule, my kitchen cupboards will be curated, and as God is my witness, the Tupperware (recycled Chinese takeaway cartons) will each have a corresponding top. No more round ones squashed onto square ones. Not on my watch.
We will have a sensible filing system, part of my grand scheme is to make the box room a proper office.
So I’ve been sorting out the paperwork, binning bills, and burning old tax returns. I shall be one of those people able to put my hand on a passport at a moment’s notice.
The children’s inoculation records? Why they’re right here, filed under M for medical, of course.
House insurance, car tax, credit union book, licences — both television and dog — all present and accounted for, and in date.
I try to get the rest of the family to climb aboard the organised household train. The first stop is putting the post all in one spot.
“Oh yeah,” says one of the boys when I’m grilling them over a missing hospital appointment letter. “I meant to put that there, but I put it … somewhere else.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” I tell him, and am immediately transported back through time.
It’s a proverb I don’t say very often, but that particular one is well-known in McCarthy family lore. I gather the boys to tell them the tale of The Silly Man Who Went to Jail Because He Failed to Produce His TV Licence.
Back in the olden times, I tell them, the late 1980s, my biological father, technically their grandfather, was living what you might call a pretty simple existence.
He had an acre-and-a-half out past Bishopstown — that seemed like the back of beyonds before the Bandon Road roundabout and pre-flyover.
He was rebuilding an old cottage and was largely self-sufficient, he grew his own vegetables before allotments were cool.
He had goats for milk, chickens and ducks for eggs, and a couple of donkeys and horses for no discernible reason.
He kept bees for honey and near-death experiences as he was highly allergic to stings.
For entertainment, he had a record player, and an old television, but he claimed that it was never turned on.
The TV inspector that knocked on the door one day, however, was not the trusting sort, a cynical fellow, by all accounts, who questioned the veracity of such claims.
And so biogranpapa found himself landed up in front of a judge.
He told the breitheamh very sincerely (as he had been advised to do) he had fully intended on getting a licence, he just hadn’t gotten around to it.
He was expecting a slap on the wrist. The judge admonished him, declaring: “That’s all well and good, Mr McCarthy, but the road to heaven is paved with good intentions.”
“Actually,” says Cork’s answer to Grizzly Adams, “I think you’ll find it’s the road to hell.”
Astonishingly, the good judge didn’t care for getting schooled on his aphorisms by some hippie with a bad haircut and an alarming bee-stung nose, and slapped his wrist alright – with handcuffs, sentencing him to two week’s jail time in Cork prison.
“Three grand meals a day, a load of books to read, and the bus fare home. I had a great time,” he told the family when he got out.
“Oh, and I got to keep the pants!” he said, twirling to model his prison denims. What about the other inmates, we asked, agog.
Turns out he knew one of the security guards in the Big House, and he brought him out to the yard the first day and told all the other prisoners to listen up.
“See this fella here,” he roared, with his finger over the Irish Dr Richard Kimble’s head, “ye better watch out for him, ye all think ye’re hardshaws? He’s the most dangerous man in here.”
“What are you in for, boy?” asked one of his fellow inmates, a sturdy sort, who looked like he didn’t want any competition.
“No television licence,” says our Andy Dufresne sincerely. They all looked at him funny, and gave him a wide berth. They thought it was code for triple murder or something.
The more he insisted he was doing time for having no valid licence, the more they sidled away from him.
I tell my sons this story, so they know what genes — and jeans — are part of their heritage.
It distracts them for mere moments before the chaos resumes and a sliotar smashes off the wall and rebounds to splash into the dog’s water bowl, and a fight breaks out over one of them wearing the other one’s shorts, and then the dog goes ballistic because the doorbell rings.
Maybe it’s the TV inspector, I think, hopefully, because my filing system isn’t really as good as I bragged about earlier, and spending a fortnight away in a minimalist setting, reading books in a new pair of bootcuts, sounds heavenly.
