When you travel nearly 3,000 miles in a car, on your own, staring at a road and watching a Sat-Nav count down the miles at the pace of Dimitar Berbatov after a worthy cause, you need to stop talking to yourself, thinking about porn and unwind with some appropriate music.
I say appropriate as when your a recently qualified full-licenced driver going around the country you can't exactly have Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic" or Europe's "The Final Countdown" (did I say Europe, I meant Nine Inch Nails...or something remotely heavier) pumping your adrenalin up when your negotiating
the Red Cow roundabout or some village with 47 inhabitants and a 4 mile an hour speed limit.
For this I normally turned to my two friends Mr Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Listening to the "Sound of Silence" or "America" is the best defence against such obstacles , and should I find myself on a clear duel carriageway back to my beloved Waterford then I would allow myself a blast of "The Boxer" or kick it into overdrive with "Cecilia"
However for my trip to Wexford Youths I accidentally neglected most of my musical travelling companions. Having cleaned the car top to bottom of bugs (a common chore on this mammoth journey) and inside out I took out my collection , neglecting to put them back...bar a couple of CD's stuff in the glove compartment.
Now this shouldn't have been a problem..after all Ferrycarrig is a mere 40 minutes from my house and I'd just come back from the likes of Jackman Park and Tallaght so I could have hummed my way up and back.
Things were progressing nicely until the heavens opened at New Ross and didn't stop for an eternity. With visibility zero and Noah threatening to pop along in his Ark and grab me and my identikit twin and sail to safety I phoned South-East Radio to see if the game was going ahead.
I waited for an answer...and waited...and waited.
Finally at the point of snapping I heard somebody come back, sit down,,,and hang up!
Cocknobs!
Luckily news filtered through to me later that confirmed the game was indeed on.
The soaking I got that night at Ferrycarrig was no fun.
Everybody has a moment in life when they think "What in the name of Christ am I doing?"
This was mine.
Happy to get back in the car (it must be said it was a cracking game, Youths losing 3-2 having come from two behind to level) I needed to unwind.
I reached for the glove compartment, took out one of the four CDs' - three of which were scratched to death - and was then faced with the closest thing to a dodgy cockney second-hand car dealers face.
It could simply mean one thing - Phil Collins.
Now our Phil has sold over 100 million records worldwide .As a member of Prog-Rock group Genesis he'd stepped out from behind the drum-kit to replace a Peter Gabriel who was too progressive for his own good....when you play one gig in the seventies dressed as a Hemorrhoid you know its time to take a long, long, long, break from the industry, whilst as a solo artist he astounded critics by having major success despite a face that couldn't be marketed (he has clocked up an astonishing seven US number 1's).
Now its a well know fact that footballers listen to Phil Collins more than any other recording artists ..of course some footballers have a low IQ at the best of times but if you look inside your CD, Iphone or whatever medium of music collection you'll probably find Phil grinning back at you somewhere among the debris.
So Phil's Best Of got a lash on the way home......the last time it will every inhabit my car. You see I let my guard down during the relaxed tone of "Everyday", I came over all misty-eyed to my younger years of rejection in the local disco to "One More Night" and by the time "Separate Lives" came on I was a quivering wreck....which crucially made me miss my turn , so much so I ended up down at the ferry in Ballyhack...at 10pm...with the last ferry left....5 minutes earlier.
It took me another hour to find my way back home.
Phil Collins didn't make that journey.
Phil now resides about 200 feet under the water at Passage East.
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