An
hour with Paddy Linehan was enough to re-ignite my delight in my
fellow man who can still display the ability to think outside of
the conventional box.
Paddy is a story teller in the traditional
sense, a man who has walked beside those on the pathway to
levitation whilst still nursing the burns on his forearms from
frying fish and chips, has had a gun held to his head in a
Kazakhstan gold mine, and who describes the American president
as “ferociously ignorant”. Men like this are interesting.
Like the pigs, Paddy is Irish, from Cork,
“One of the most beautiful parts of the world,” all said in
that wonderful lilting Irish brogue. His father was a
traditional Irish Catholic farmer, who forsook his studies for
the priesthood to run off and marry Paddy’s mother, with whom
he begat (lovely biblical term) six children, of which Paddy is
the youngest.
Paddy described himself as being a good
listener and in those days (pre-TV) there existed in the
villages places called ‘Rambling Houses’ where the
storytellers would entertain the locals. “I would have been in
the last enclave to have one,” said Paddy. “I used to sit on
the hob as a child and listen. It was absolutely magical.”
Since Paddy’s father failed at the
beckoning of the bishops, Paddy was sent to a school run by
Catholic monks, from which the boys would progress to the
priesthood. What has to be remembered is that in the strong
Irish Catholic beliefs of the day, a son a priest ensured the
family of red velvet, front-row seats in heaven. The Linehans
are unfortunately back in the canvas deckchairs on the third
row, as Paddy also failed to don the clerical cloth. However,
rather than running off to get married, Paddy ran off to hotel
management school.
After two years there he drifted into
teaching in a private school during the day to pay for his
university tuition at night, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts
degree in Mathematics and English.
Attracted by the written word he read the
Times Literary supplements and spied an opening for teachers in
Canada and applied and was accepted. This was no well thought
out career move, more just serendipity. “I’ve never dwelled
too much on the future, though I’ve had a terrible curiosity
always.”
After a couple of years there, curiosity
sated, he returned to the UK and then decamped for the great
sun-burned land down-under, where he spent three years teaching
in Western Australia.
Again there was no planning, but after that
period of time, “I thought I would head home. It turned out to
be the most important trip of my life. It was only after this
that I realized the difference between Christian and
non-Christian religions and that there were other cultures worth
looking at.”
The momentous trip began by boat to Singapore
and then hitchhiking through Malaysia and Thailand, flying to
Rangoon and then to Calcutta and taking public transport to Goa.
There he met up with the first wave of the psychedelic ‘way
out’ truth seekers. “I learned a lot about intellectual
freedom there from some of the freaky people,” explained
Paddy, not in any way belittling their individual rights to
expression, in whatever way they wanted.
From there he continued hitching,
experiencing the different religions, Buddhism, Hinduism and
Islam as he carried on through Pakistan to Afghanistan, through
Iran and Turkey. “I looked for Noah’s Ark but I didn’t
find it.” From there it was a short hitchhike across Europe
and back to his native Ireland.
He returned to teaching in the Erin Isle,
whose education system in those days featured a three month
holiday each year. Rather than do nothing or sit on the river
banks and read James Joyce, Paddy ran a fish and chip shop! This
turned out to be a lucrative business, and after a couple of
fish and chip holidays Paddy decided to return to Afghanistan, a
country that had interested him on that first fateful trip into
the great unknown. “I met a chap who said he was going to
India to learn to levitate, so I decided to go with him. He was
seven foot tall and a wonderful character,” said Paddy, who
still cannot levitate, but certainly is another wonderful
character.
For the next 15 years, Paddy repeated the
cycles of teaching, fish and chips and travel, but then took a
career break and went to Saudi Arabia to teach English to
pilots. This had the perk of free air travel, and Paddy would
use his weekly two days off to indulge his curiosity in all
things and all cultures, even African ‘black magic’.
“Belief creates a reality,” said Paddy. “Delving into the
esoteric is a lot more interesting.”
His writing career began at gunpoint. Having
become interested in the share market he bought some shares in a
gold mine in Kazakhstan, so Paddy being Paddy, decided he would
go and take a look at his part-purchase. To the disbelief of the
brokers he then travelled to the bleak country, sitting for six
hours in a Lada (getting one of those to last six hours is worth
a story in itself) and eventually found his gold mine. There he
was met by the gun-toting guard and sent on his way.
On his return he wrote about the exploit for
the Financial Times who published it. This has resulted in Paddy
writing full-time, rather than being a pedagogue, plus he got a
free trip back to his gold mine!
Since then he has learned Russian with
Linguaphone, written a book about his trip in Siberia
(‘Trans-Siberia’ you can get it from Amazon.com) and now
travels the world looking for features.
On this trip with no itinerary, Paddy is currently in Chiang
Mai, and it was my good fortune to be able to sit on the hob for
an hour and listen to the master of the Rambling House! Thanks,
Paddy!
