“The Thing About Yokes Is You’re Always Chasing Your First Bang”

As part of our WWN Lives series, we speak to Waterford man Tom Power about love, life and the key to eternal happiness through self-medication and easy living.

We met Tom outside his home in Lismore Park, as he was clipping back his hedge in the fresh spring afternoon.

“I’m only doing this now because that old bastard next door did his yesterday,” he began, pointing to a frail old man in the neighbours conservatory. “Watch him now, he’s only sitting there to see how long I take to do mine, the cunt. He was at it three hours yesterday. Three fucking hours!”

Changing the subject, I asked Tom about his younger days growing up in Waterford, and what he misses most about his youth.

“Speckled doves,” he retorted, now resting the point of his clippers in the grass below. “It was like candy-flipping. You knew your jaw was going every-which-way possible, but there wasn’t a fucking thing you could do about it… and the trails? Don’t get me started on the trails”.

Tom is a self-confessed old-skooler, who spent the majority of his younger days partying in Waterford’s premier rave halls, the Metroland, like many, climbing its walls, dancing to its beats and getting into trouble outside the mean city streets.

“It was some spot, but you’ll never get that first bang back again,” he advised me, clearly lost in a higher state of melancholy. “You could neck two, maybe three in one go nowadays, but you’ll always be chasing your first time.

“It’s sad when you think about it now. All that music makes no sense to me anymore, it’s like the part of my brain that once loved EDM has recoiled to the darkest pit of my being. Even when I feel a drop kick coming on, the rushes are gone, nowhere to be found; the price of too many sessions,” he added, playing with the logo on his very worn pair of X-Works jeans.

It was sad to hear Tom speaking those words, knowing he may never experience another rush or bang like it again. It must be tough to bare for a man of his stature.

“Those were different times back then; 4th dimension, the Prodigy, Coxy,” he concluded, turning back to his hedge clipping. “These days, it’s all faggots now with Macbooks, calling themselves producers like it means a fuck. It is ruined. The whole scene is ruined”.