Wit and warmth fill pages of Mayo man's memoir

A Mayo man’s memoir blends wit and warmth as it follows his hometown beginnings and journeys across the globe.

Castlebar native Sean Lyons’ talents as a raconteur and poet are famed in Mayo and his adopted home in Kerry, and now he showcases those skills and repartee in a memoir that is also unflinchingly honest.

Family, faith, first loves, and late nights collide in stories that are as funny as they are fearless.

A Stranger Walking the Roads moves from small-town Mayo to African kingdoms, Chicago streets and Antipodean adventures.

Reared on Spencer Street, Sean has fond memories of growing up in Castlebar amid its many characters.

“On Spencer Street alone we had Jackie Ellis, who was a legend, Jim ‘The Liar’ Barrett, Henry Downes of course, Patsy Kelly across the street,” said Sean. “It was the polar opposite of Angela’s Ashes growing up on Spencer Street as far as I was concerned!” 

His mother had a small grocery shop while his Dad worked in the Castlebar bacon factory.

The ‘women in scarves’, as Sean dubs them, were great friends and customers of his mother. Together they would check the death notices and dispatch Mass cards to the bereaved families of any missionaries with local connections who had died abroad.

One man who received a Mass card from the ‘women in scarves’ was initially suspicious but his heart swelled when he realised the good intentions of the ladies and Sean’s Mum. He entered the family shop picking out the biggest box of chocolates from the shelf and asking Sean’s mother to wrap it.

"He then handed the wrapped chocolates to my mother and asked her to accept them as a token of his gratitude," Sean writes. 

His mother was suitably touched but as soon as the man’s car had left the street, the chocolates were unwrapped and restored to the shelf!

Sean qualified as a teacher after leaving school, but a sense of adventure took him far afield.

He said his experiences in Africa were "life-changing and profound".

“It just changed me completely,” said Sean. “I saw dreadful poverty there which still haunts me. I saw a mother carry the body of a child about eight miles to a local hospital and nobody would carry her in a vehicle because it was considered such bad luck to put a dead body in a vehicle. That was in Zambia. I was exposed to things that really changed me as a person,” he added.

He said he would love to see a programme or system for more young teachers to go out to the more deprived areas of the world.

“I think it would change people’s outlook. Travel does broaden the mind and it can be life-changing,” Sean commented.

An acclaimed storyteller and gifted writer, Sean hopes that the Irish gift for a yarn will continue to thrive.

“There is still a great interest in it but it’s definitely a generational thing. It would be a shame if it does go because we are known as a nation of storytellers for better or worse. They are part of our history and part of our heritage.”