Mr Byrne

We are reliably informed that there's two things we just can't avoid in life, those being death and taxes. Whilst being Irish and resident here leads me to know the latter is often still not always true thanks to portly, duplicitous bastards, devoid of any scruples, I am however, only too well aware, especially this past week, that death still has the upper-hand, levelling it's often unexpected focus at all and sundry. Its easy get philosophical about how short life is, you never know your time etc. However that clichéd faff just doesn't do it. Rather like the heroin suppositories Renton gets to help him come off the gear in Trainspotting, most of those sentimental, Facebook-sage sayings are, to paraphrase, well, "You may as well stick 'em up your arse...!". I've lost a friend in the last week and I can't find the words or the wherewithal to express that loss. It's only through listening to others that I've heard anything near to what helps. You see, I'm contradicting myself publicly here because, well, words are all I have. But I usually don't listen. Yet all I've heard are stories, anecdotes, tales and truths. Lets not bullshit here I only met Richie Byrne once, yonks ago at a race. To be honest in the mid-nineties I was always on an MTB and I can't remember exactly where I met him. I think it was a champs somewhere but my brain plays tricks. I don't remember the venue but I remember the man. He was just someone that stood out as being strong. He was to me even then a sentinel. He was hairy and lairy, heard but not part of the herd. And that was ok in the 90's because it seemed we, as a nation, had got our shit together. When you came of age in the 90's you had a sense that you were leaving a cancer behind; that cancer being a lack of freedom, or a grey personality that never stood out truly, or the religious bigotry that saw Anne Lovett die in 1984 in a grotto while trying to give birth without 'shaming' her family and community. The cancer of emigration due to systemic political failures too,was being reversed. In short, the tide was coming in and lifting the nation out of ignorance and monochrome. And I had got a sense of that. I was couriering around Dublin and there was an atmosphere...a palpable something.... But Richie stuck in my mind because there was an assuredness and can-do about him. He just was, what everyone else might be. I hung around with a bunch of nuts-come-bike-messengers that had so much energy they would hit the trails at the weekend after a full weeks cycling so I always heard some occasional story of Richie. But I guess there's lots more people that knew him for real whereas I went on to my own adventures elsewhere. Getting in touch with him since his diagnosis and following his pure, explosive positivity, I was blown away by how little had changed. Over time he had not become, just reinforced his status as a God of cycling whilst I was still, in relative terms an atheist, ghosting along in the shadows. Roger McGough's poem 'Let me die a young man's death' begged for an exciting death, far from the angelic passing of some old man. He wanted a red sports car to mow him down when he was 73 and 'in constant good tumour'. And that was Richie, in constant good tumour, smiling and encouraging to the last. He may not have been hit by the red sports car but sure wasn't he himself the red sports car? Didn't everyone notice him? Wasn't he loud, and fast, and beautiful and not for the faint-hearted? And the cancer came back to visit. On a grand scale all the sheer propulsion of the ninetie's and noughtie's that saw me being offered a mortgage whilst I waited for a delivery signature bathed in sweat and snot in a bank on Baggot Street came to a grinding halt. We were all lost again. It would take a mesomorph of epic vigour to overcome it all. Whilst the concrete cancer knaws away at our souls, Richie rose above the chasm and fought back with true punches and a spirit that most of us know we'd never, ever muster. Eight million people will be robbed of life by cancer this year but Richie won't be a number. He'll be the supernova that was destined to light our world but, ultimately burn out too soon.