Parents are weird and wonderful people. All’s peaceful, our two dogs are licking each other by the open fire. My father’s in his rocking chair dozing and my mother’s happily puffing on a cigarette, solving clues in her bumper book of crosswords.

Then… it starts. My father wakes up tittering. Next he balloons up like a Ribena berry, brays like a donkey and starts convulsing in his chair.

By now the dogs are sitting up staring at him with their heads cocked to one side. My mother bites first. “What’s so funny Pat?” she’d ask, looking over her single-lensed spectacles, disapprovingly.

My father takes a minute to compose himself, then he launches into one of his many stories. He’s a great story-teller. Never misses a beat, has good pause control and his punch-lines always hit the mark.

The only thing is, my mother likes telling stories too. Each story shapes up to be more elaborate than the last, until one of them tells a whopper. When my mother thinks she has it, she sits back and crosses her hands victoriously. “Grace, do you remember the night I burnt Pat McCabe’s eyebrow?”

Unfortunately, I do. It was the night the red carpet was rolled out over the ‘stony grey soil’ for the first showing of ‘The Butcher Boy’.

My mother was celebrating her role as ‘chief mourner’ in the film and had just sung a rendition of ‘The Butcher Boy’. On the couch nearby, Pat McCabe (writer) was banging away on the guitar.

With both hands tied up in G strings and plectrums, Pat asked someone to kindly light the cigarette that was dangling from his mouth. Fortunately for Pat, my mother was at hand to oblige, unfortunately for him, her lighter was highly fuelled and a second later… Poof!

Pat’s eyebrow went up in a blaze of glory. A few nights later, my mother squirmed when she saw Pat on ‘The Late Late Show’ sporting a wonky-looking eyebrow. One day that missing eyebrow reappeared.

I was on a bus home to Monaghan when I spotted Pat McCabe a couple of seats ahead of me. Now normally, when I board a bus, I end up getting squeezed in with some proud mother who talks non-stop about what college their daughter is attending, how much she’ll be earning when she’s qualified and what her boyfriend does for a living.

Why, O why on this particular day would there be no chance of me getting squeezed in with someone like Pat. At least then, I could talk to him about normal stuff, like Fairy Trees and Bog Bodies. I had to sort it out.

One handwritten note later and I was blissfully sitting beside Pat talking about Changelings and Banshees– all that weird and wonderful stuff I was brought up on. Speaking of weird and wonderful, when I arrived at the bus station in Monaghan, my mother was waiting for me.

I knew she’d never forgive me if I didn’t bring Pat over to say hello. “Pat! Do you remember the night I burnt your eyebrow?” said my mother, nearly hopping her head off the dashboard with excitement.

For safety reasons I decided not to inform my mother that Pat had to taxi it home because my mother would have insisted on giving Pat a lift. In fact, she would have bundled him into the car and raced him up the Clones Road, hitting every pothole on the way.

There was no way I was going to be privy to another fireside story which began with the line: “Do you remember the day I broke Pat McCabe’s neck?”

Above: Patrick McCabe