Monthly Archives: December 2011

Cuttin’ Turf and Shootin’ Cars

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This is a piece I found recently looking through some old work files. It was in hard copy. I wrote it when requested to write a piece for the Annversary Edition of the Omagh CBS School Magazine Saine of which I was the first Editor. The piece wasn’t used at the time due to a tragic accidental death among the School Community. I was asked to submit another piece, which I did. This piece is about a real incident that happened when I was eight or nine years old. It is reproduced exactly as written originally.

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As a child I used to go to the bog past Mountfield to cut turf along with the rest of my family. I remember vividly the hot summer days spent working on the bog, eating picnic lunches and drinking tins of Coke. The first year we went to the bog my father had rented it for our family alone but for the following two years Bobby Rogers rented the bog as well. I remember Brian and Brendan Rogers clodding handfuls of soggy turf at my sister and myself and feeling indignant when Bobby blamed us. Little did I know I was to have the last laugh.

On one such balmy summer’s day, after we had finished in the bog we went to Micky Keenan’s farm at Greencastle, whether it was to leave turf spades back I cannot remember. My father was not along with us this particular day, but I was there along with my cousin Aidan, Brendan and Brian Rogers and my sister Dolores.

We were in the farmyard, standing around chatting to Patsy Keenan and waiting for Micky to appear when he came walking round the corner carrying a double barrelled shotgun. He sauntered over casually and stood talking with the gun in the crook of his arm. Bobby Rogers asked Mickey could he look at the gun and I remember feeling slightly alarmed when he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it in my direction and then proceeded to draw a bead on various other random targets. Suddenly the quiet of the summer’s evening was destroyed by an almighty BANG followed immediately by the sound of pressurised air escaping from a car tyre. Birds flew up into the air, hens scattered and a dog ran for cover.

Bobby Rogers had shot his car with the shotgun. . . .

The front left side of the car slumped to the ground. The paint on the wheel arch was blasted off in places, but the tyre was totally destroyed and the hubcap, well you would have thought an elephant had stood on it. I cannot remember whether I laughed or stood dumbstruck. God knows I have laughed often enough since when I’ve thought about it, but I do remember the expression on Bobby Roger’s face. I don’t think I have ever seen greater shock mingled with disbelief on the face of anyone since. After all, the man had just blown the hell out of his own car.

I cannot remember what my father said about the incident but I can well imagine he was none-too-pleased about his colleague loosing off a shotgun when his two youngest children were about. I remember not being particularly perturbed at the time, although I remember thinking that he could easily have shot me. Perhaps it was due to my innocence as a child that I saw nothing unusual about a grown man shooting his own car.

By the time I made it to the Brothers’, his name was Master Rogers and he was the Deputy headmaster, indeed in my A-Level Year he was Acting Principal. I often wondered did he remember the time he’d shot his car and I often felt like reminding him, but it was like a secret that only he and I knew and we didn’t like to talk about it. Bobby has since retired and I wish him well. Someday if I meet him at the golf club or wherever I’ll buy him a drink and we’ll laugh about his armed assault on his own car. You never know, we might even cut turf again one day.

Soda. A Well Bred Dog.

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“When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire. . .”

One Sunday a while back a familiar figure clambered out of the boot of the car, wagged her tail and limped into the house. Soda was back.

In 1998 our black labrador Sam had six pups. The first born was a lovely golden bitch called Peig. She was born in the bed, her terrified mother obviously decided that the safest place to nest was between Angela and myself.

Waking up in dog’s afterbirth is a curious experience. Sam proceeded to have the remaining five pups in various locations downstairs. I’m not sure the bed could have taken the strain. Even curiouser it was the start of a pattern of peripatetic birthing in the family home which continued for a number of years. More about that another day.

In total Sam had four yellow and two black pups and for a while our house was the place to visit after the pub. Revellers would return late at night to play with some puppies as it were. Once one got lost causing panic in the living room, before a drunken student realised she was sitting on it.

We decided to keep Péig the first born. She was a wonderful dog, a bit idiosyncratic but affectionate and was great with the children when they appeared. She could also retrieve a hurling ball no matter how hard I could hit it into the sea. She was also like the conscience of the house and would slink off ears down and tail curled when any voices were raised.

It was a close run thing between Péig and another one of the golden pups as to which we would keep at the time. The other candidate was a yellow one nicknamed Clever by our lodger Jeremy. She was the first to clamber out of the stockade and the first to try anything. Reluctantly we gave her away but she didn’t go too far. Up to Derry to Angela’s brother Kevin.

Of the others, one went to Bushmills were he significantly upped the IQ level in that wonderful town; another to Omagh where he was later shot whilst worrying sheep; another black dog called Buster stayed in Portstewart; so did his yellow brother Oscar, who was killed on the railway line a couple of years back. Peig lived here with us for ten happy years. And then there was Soda. . .

At the time Kevin lived in a small terrace house which wasn’t conducive to Labrador life. So the dog relocated to Stella Maris for Angela’s mother Patsy to look after her during the day. The dog formerly called Clever became known as Soda, the name coming from one of Patsy’s granddaughters Katie. Katie christened her Soda because she said she was well bred. It stuck.

In time, in fact in a very short space of time, Soda became Patsy’s dog. They became inseparable companions when Patsy was out and about. She walked her in Amelia Earhart Park in Derry; she would take her swimming to Donegal. And, when she visited relatives Soda came too. In fact, sometimes Patsy would forget that Soda came too when, after settling down to a cup of tea or a glass of wine she would suddenly startle and say “God, Soda’s in the boot’ and laugh in that throaty smoky Patsy way of hers.

And, someone having been despatched to retrieve her from the boot, Soda would pad into the house, looking at Patsy a little bewildered as she would say apologetically “Ah my Soda”. In time I think the dog got used to it and probably in the end up half expected it. A day away with Patsy wasn’t the same without a while waiting in the boot.

A visit to Patsy’s and the dog would lie at her feet in front of the fire. Religiously she would walk her giving both of them a bit of exercise although neither needed it really. Patsy would regularly head out visiting, whilst Soda held the fort at Stella Maris.

Then she would head off herself and be spotted in various locations around Derry. Look, Patsy Casey’s dog. There’s Soda.

Once when she was young she went missing, everyone was frantic. Eventually, after contacting the Dog Shelter Angela and Patsy went to collect her. It was only after they got the dog home, when it exhibited some untypical behaviour and the real Soda turned up, did it become apparent that they had lifted the wrong dog from the Pound.

The real Soda was fiercely loyal. When Patsy would appear home in the car Soda would be in waiting and would round ferociously and protectively on the nearest passerby scaring the shite out of them.

One famous night Patsy was contacted by the local police – they had found the dog and having read the nametag were keen to return her to her owner. Patsy would have had no intention of getting up to go out to retrieve the dog when she was in bed, so she calmly instructed the listening policeman to tell Soda to go home. This appeared to have worked as when Patsy got up the next morning, Soda was there. It was a tale Patsy enjoyed telling.

When I told my daughter that her grandmother had passed away last month, her first question to me amidst the tears was ‘What about Soda’. It was a question on many people’s minds.

Happily, she came back here with us, to where she started out thirteen and a half years ago. She seems happy and content. She comes in here to the office during the day and keeps me company which is more than our resident bloody dog Hub does. Anytime she returned here with Patsy I got the impression she was on familiar ground and knew her way about.

When people call and see her they give her a big affectionate hello, as much because of who she belonged to as because of who she is. On the beach today she ran as quickly as her arthritic joints would let her, chasing birds and trying to catch the surf blowing off the sea. She used to chase the birds down on the beach in Shroove and maybe she remembers doing it in happier days.

You never know, we may even lock her in the boot from time to time. For old times sake you understand. She would expect no less.

Run This One Up The Flagpole

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I have had several engagements on Twitter with various people concerning the juvenile goings on in Belfast City Council. It was ever thus. I wrote about the general tenor of Belfast City Council earlier.

During one of these engagements I pointed out that the red saltire on the Union Flag referred to as the Cross of St Patrick has little connection with this island and is in fact an English creation.

It is frequently trotted out as the ‘Irish’ part of the Union flag, but the St Patrick’s Cross itself was invented by George III in 1783, following his establishment of the Chivalric Order of St Patrick. It is as Irish in origin as St Patrick himself. He was by various accounts Cornish or Welsh. He also drove the snakes out of Ireland according to legend. Were there any here in the first place I dare ask?

One of my correspondents on Twitter, a DUP Councillor called Lee Henderson very helpfully advised me that the St Patrick’s Cross was used earlier on Coinage Maps to do with Ireland ergo it is an Irish symbol. A red cross on a white background? Surely some genius prior to 1783 may have already used this device to signify something. I beg to differ.

This is a DUP man arguing with me over the Irish or non-Irishness of a symbol. In the action of making this assertion is he asserting his own Irishness? In denying that it is an Irish symbol am I undermining my own Irishness? In my mind all the time is a-rattling around Seamus Heaney’s ‘Be advised my passport’s green. . .’.

But there is a particular obsession in these parts with flags. In Portstewart this summer past, the local tribe asserted their territory by hoisting a very large Union Flag right in the middle of the Diamond.

It was unnecessarily large. It was a statement. It was a “look at this big flag and take it down if you dare” Statement. There it fluttered and flew proudly all through the marching season. The flag of their Union.

A few people mumbled about that bloody flag and threatened to make a few calls to ask could it be removed when the marching season had come and long gone. Still it flew, billowing out, telling all and sundry, all the golfers and tourists and day trippers, that this was a red white and blue town. I’m sure a few of them stopped and wondered. But sure what the hell matter a few tourists, especially if they’re from the South. Don’t want them back anyway even with their Euros.

Then along came a good autumn storm from in off the sea. The sort that can blow a man off his bike; wreak havoc with the washing line; hurl your flowerpots and shrubs up the street and send bins slewing across the road.

The flag in the diamond already slightly bedraggled from the long damp summer had a bad time with the storm. It slipped one of its bindings and flew crazily in the wind, no longer flag-like but denuded, tattered, like a dishcloth on a clothesline attached with only the one peg. The edges frayed and tattered as it jerked and shuddered in the Atlantic wind. And then, when the wind died, there it hung, limp, demoralised. Spent.

The people that put it up were concerned about the statement made when erected, but when the standard fell it made an even stronger statement. There was no-one there to save its blushes. It was a frayed and torn shadow of its former self.

Eventually it disappeared. Perhaps it was put out of its misery.

And no doubt another one will appear next time, perhaps bigger and stronger. And it will billow and dip and flutter all summer. And maybe if the owners care about the flag as much as they claim to, they will take it down a bit earlier. Before it becomes nothing more than a ragged dishcloth and a symbol of dis-Union.

Dome of Delight II: Return of the Living Dead

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If you remember the eighties in Belfast, you probably wish you weren’t there. We slummed it up in Student Land in South Belfast drinking, throwing beds out the window, and chasing women with varying degrees of success.

But the real craic was down town in what Mairtin O Muilleoir memorably termed the Dome of Delight. Post Anglo-Irish Agreement Belfast was a bitter oul bastard of a place. The bitterness in fact was palpable. These were the days. Through the late eighties and into the early nineties, when the Troubles were literally in their Death throes. Increasingly desperate tit for tat shooting and bombings. It was shite.

I remember well the aftermath of the Gibraltar shootings and a subsequent public meeting in Queen’s Union. One of the IRA personnel who had been shot was Mairead Farrell, a former prisoner at Armagh during the first Hunger Strike and at the time of her death a first year student at Queen’s. The atmosphere was electric. And poisonous.

Bit like things down at the City Hall where the central characters were boys like Herbie Ditty, Jim Rodgers, Mairtin O Muilleoir, Tommy Patton, George Seawright and co. Mayoral stints by the likes of Sammy Wilson brought great colour to the place. It was round this time that photographs of Sammy emerged cavorting round some field with a young lady, naked as the day he was born. The facial hair is still the same, dunno about elsewhere. God help her wit my mother remarked at the time disgusted not so much that the young lady was naked but that she was with Sammy.

O Muilleoir was one of the first Sinn Fein Councillors to sit on the council and there was none of the détente of later years. When he went to speak his DUP opponents including Rhonda Paisley, once Belfast’s Mayoral Consort would gulder No Surrender, howl abuse and sing various tribal ditties.

Herbie for his part rather bewilderingly found himself Mayor of Belfast for a year. It was a great Norn Iron joke at the expense of all the industrialists and business tycoons queuing up to invest here. Not. Anyone who turned up would have wondered why the Village idiot was in charge of the Asylum. Herbie drew great praise in some quarters but mostly head shaking and despair when he refused to meet the Mayor of Dublin. This was a man who once claimed to have gone into public life to stop Catholics getting jobs.

In the early nineties my job meant that I attended a fair few receptions in the City Hall. To say it was a cold house for Catholics/Nationalists would be an understatement. It was positively Arctic. The marble halls were choc full of Unionist hagiography bedecked in the Union Flag with life size oil paintings of every Unionist Mayor. At that stage there hadn’t been many nationalist or republican mayors so the hue was distinctly red white and blue.

As a citizen of the city, and one who was in employment attracting overseas and particularly North American visitors on historical and heritage visits, it was embarrassing and intimidating. Hanging limply out the back was the famous Belfast Says No sign. Looking back, what a fucking moronic signal that was to the solitary Martian that would have landed in Donegall Place and quickly left again for the friendlier climes of a Siberian Gulag, North Korea or Pinochet’s Chile.

If you want to catch up on reminiscences from this time, read O Muilleoir’s book. You’ll think it is a work of fiction. But it’s not. Mairtin himself recently returned to the Dome of Delight after a period of absence doing something better with his time.

He must have felt it was just like the old days when the Unionists walked out the other day in objection to a sign in Irish that said Nollaig Shona Duit. That’s Happy Christmas as gaeilge for all you non-speakers of the leprechaun language. The exodus happened during a debate on diversity. Not being an avid City Council watcher (we have enough rarified discussions in our local chamber) I came to this one late. But, as one Twitter correspondent observed:

“the union jack flies all year round and an irish language Christmas greeting is met with small minded bigotry.”

I remember during the debate at Queen’s after Gibraltar, a guy in a Fairport Convention tee shirt with an English accent stood up and said “why can’t we all just get along with one another.” He nearly got lynched by both sides.

Without wishing to sound like him, and I don’t really like Fairport Convention either, surely it is time a few people wised the f*** up here. There are plenty of other things to be getting on with in Belfast and elsewhere rather than revisit the dark, blackly humorous, but still dark days of the Dome of Delight.

Otherwise lads, let’s break out the old Belfast Says No sign and just go for it.