Spoken Stories: Great Beasts of Myth by Mia Gallagher

Sea swimming, addiction and longing collide in a Dublin pandemic story that is also a hymn to what it is to love and feel connected.

About writing her Spoken Stories entry, Mia has said 'It's brilliant to be asked to write to a theme. Somehow a call and response feels different – more urgent maybe? – than coming up with something out of nothing. I liked the openness of the brief. The state of us is colloquial, self-deprecatory, but invokes wider political ideas too. I made it when the memory of 'coming out’ of Covid was still fairly raw. I wrote it as if it was being spoken. Only afterwards I realised its flow, stops, starts, changes of direction, are that of the sea'

Here is the opening of Greta Beasts of Myth:

Early in the Plague and the need, bad, so Christy decided to chance his arm, go out with Phil to the usual spot. Phil came up with the brother’s address, did you googlemap it, said Christy, sure it’s in the 5K? Yeah, course I did, and when they got there the sun was splitting and it was rammed. Nobody distancing, all the pretty young mothers in the dryrobes and the throwaway latte cups recycle my hole, said Phil, profits for the petrochems and with the new bike lanes just in, they couldn’t find a stand.

So the bikes on the grass beside them, the panniers stuffed, because Phil always got cold after, needed the flask. Plus the helmets and the hi-vis. Better safe, said Phil, though he was always quoting from the forums how it wasn’t hi-vis kept you safe, au contraire the helmets brought on punishment-driving, if you wanted safe, stick in slaloms to slow the bastards down.

Panniers, hi-vis. Might as well have a sign.

Where you coming from, lads? Two guards, one man, one woman.

Phil trotted out the brother’s address. I’m staying there at the moment, he said, he has Mental Health Issues. Said with capital letters so there’d be no mistaking.

Yeah okay, said the woman guard, but that’s too far. You shouldn’t be here.

It was 6K. Phil, know-it-all, hadn’t checked.

Off you go lads. Thanks guard, thanks guard. Stay safe. Oh yeah, stay safe.

Back along the coast, through the quiet roads that Christy liked, though they were all quiet then, then west, and the canal towards home.

The smell. My god. Rot and mulch and dogshit. Christy hadn’t smelt the canal in years.

On the way back, Phil started banging on about a headache. I’ve overdone it, stayed in too long, Christy, maybe it’s a brain tumour? Blaming. Christy could have said yeah but he knew Phil had got a frightener, being pulled over like that, knew too Phil was bad with fear.

No, Phil, he said, you’re grand.

The guards, much as Christy hated to admit it, were right. Everyone had to do their bit, otherwise what do you get?