Students.

When I returned to Queen’s at the start of second year, my mother brought me and my gear down to Belfast. Myself and four other lads had rented a house down near the bottom of Dunluce Avenue. It was an awful place. Damp and fairly cold. Last year I had a series of dreams in which I was back in the house, it was awful, I could still smell the damp and feel the coldness upstairs.

When my mother dropped me off she came into the house and had a look around. It was the last time she ever set foot in a rented house I lived in. I think she fully realised the sorts of shit holes we inhabited. Then the landlords were probably as unscrupulous towards students as they are nowadays. Certainly they provided the bare minimum of comfort, the sofas were typically decrepit affairs, saggy and stinking from years of students’ arses perched on them and god knows what else.

As for the beds and mattresses in particular. Well. When I think about that my stomach churns, in each rented room the surface tapestry on show revealing scenes of emissions, no doubt accompanied and unaccompanied, night-time drooling, alcohol fuelled incontinence. Disgusting it was. They should each have been incinerated at the end of a year’s action. There’s only so much one can absorb impact and otherwise.

Around that time Dolmio came on the market. It may already have been on the market but it became known to us. We would prepare huge hulges of spaghetti Bolognese accompanied by loaves of garlic bread. The whole affair would be washed down with cheap wine, usually Bulgarian if I remember correctly. Then, after sinking a load of tins of cheap beer off we would go seeking a bit of what passed for debauchery in the Students’ Union, the Elms and wherever else we might roam.

One of the boys made a girl physically sick one night in the Union when talking to her. The reek of garlic off him after our spaghetti fest was too much and she turned away to vomit nauseated by the stench. The same fella had a regular handy tackle up the top of the street with whom he pursued an interesting relationship. He couldn’t pass the front door without calling and eventually became quite attached to the same girl. For a while anyway.

We once had a visit from the Police on behalf of the neighbours to complain about noise. This was before wardens and vans with CCTV on board such as they have now. The message was simple.

The big RUC man stood in the living room and calmly told us that our neighbour had told him if we didn’t keep the noise down they knew people who would make us keep it down. When I politely asked were these ‘people’ the police or some other anonymous grouping he told me to shut up and stop being smart. The previous year a student house had been petrol bombed. Point taken.

The lad in our downstairs front room thereafter kept a bucket of water in his room just to be safe. Occasionally we would come in full drunk and trip over it. I think he may have changed to sand when we pointed out water wasn’t the right job for petrol. This was in 1987 when the lower side off the Lisburn road wasn’t the trendy suburban thoroughfare with fancy shops that it has become. It was dark, unfriendly, too close to the Village for comfort, yet we came and went oblivious to any danger. The most threatening encounter was this visit by the law.

But then in those days the RUC played a wearisome game of cat and mouse with students. Regularly shutting down parties. A few years later, a big peeler said to me one night after he raided a house in which we were playing guitar ‘Not you again.’ He despatched me home, guitar and all with a laugh about it all. Wasn’t always the case. Once they arrived at a friends house after a front door pane of glass was broken. The rookie in the squad confidently announced that the glass had been broken from the inside to which was heard the response from one of the wits from Lurgan “Aye right Sherlock!” accompanied by school boy sniggers. The crime remains unsolved.

The house in Dunluce deteriorated further over the course of the year. We had a house rule about dinner plates. To stop boys using other people’s plates the rule was you were responsible for your own plate and, if you should have food prepared and some other lad was using the plate, you were entitled to empty his dinner off on to another plate so as you could use your own. How we managed to live in that wonderful squalor remains a mystery.

Our premises were no better than any others and in fact I can think of several that were much worse. Our final year wasn’t much better but that’s a story for another day.

Today’s list…

Recession horse riding, the girls strapped a large fluffy horse onto the back of a golf trolley and are taking turns going on it. Cáit coined the term recession horse riding.

Got an email from someone in response to something I wrote. It happens occasionally. In this particular instance it meant a lot. Compared to some of the randomers that you run into.

The Armagh camogie team won their All Ireland at the weekend. Fair play to them. Their shirts look absolutely horrendous though.

Spent Saturday evening attending a birthday party for my brother in law. Spent the latter part of the evening with my other brother in law and another fella hoovering all the remaining whiskey in the house. Not a good idea. Created plenty space in the cupboards but wreaked havoc with the head. Sunday Morning Coming Down.

Isn’t it funny how even years later your opinion of someone is confirmed? There’s a fella I knew years ago was a bit of a tool, and having crossed his path again recently it’s good to know that I was right the first time. Once a tool, always a tool.

Also, Jim Allen who I worked with at the University died on Saturday. He was my boss. He enjoyed a smoke and a jar or two and had a great eye for good lookin’ women. One of the good guys, sorry to hear he’s gone from us.

Our Leo’s away off to school without his school bag. They rang me up to bring it down to him. That’s what I love about that school. Maybe get that sorted later.

I thoroughly enjoyed the four minutes of the rugby I watched yesterday.

I didn’t enjoy the many minutes of the X Factor I watched. Load of old cock most of it. Hopefully Janet Devlin will prevail but I wouldn’t bet upon it.

I attended Karen Coyles funeral last Friday. Very poignant. When I worked in the Uni she and I regularly crossed each other’s paths. Once we were part of a Uni delegation that travelled to Boston for an honorary graduation ceremony. Amidst a series of serious nightime sessions we had some great craic. On our day off Karen and I went out from Boston Aquarium to go whale watching. It was a great day out.

Yesterday, Millar Leon a guy I knew through work walked into the bar and tapped me on the shoulder. Haven’t seen him in 11 or so years. Great surprise, really good guy. Funny how sometimes you just get a blast from the past and it puts you in great form altogether.

Below an extract from correspondence to Coleraine Borough Council in 2008 on Consultation regarding Street Names.

Dear Sir

EQIA – Consultation Document – Street Naming & Numbering Policy

Our great poet laureate Seamus Heaney wrote: ‘Every layer they strip/Seems camped on before’.

The danger for us all is that if we choose to disregard history and namings of the landscape we inhabit, that there will be nothing there for future generations that might wish to ‘strip away’ in an attempt to understand where they live and why a placename has a particular significance. Any attempt to frustrate bi-lingual signage, masquerading as consultation but in reality driven by an ulterior motive, is a disservice to the wonderfully rich, expressive and lyrical names which we have the privilege to read and hear day in and day out. Every time the word Coleraine is used it is an expression of an Irish placename – the articulation of the word itself is fundamentally and inextricably bi-lingual.

Heaney has a philosophical and poetic concentration on the ‘sense of place’ that serves to celebrate and understand the countryside around us and the rich landscape where we live. There is a temptation in obstructing or diverting efforts to provide the original Irish placenames as part of a signage programme to divert the argument down the side street of political debate. This is inappropriate and demonstrates a breathtaking level of ignorance on the part of those that would do it.

The fact of the matter is that the area in which we live and breathe itself is a landscape alive with names from the traditional Irish. When someone first described this town as Port na Binne Uaine –  The port of the verdant green rock cliff – they were not making a political point. They were describing a small settlement beside the sea so that would –be visitors would know exactly where they were going.

Likewise the traditional name of the town of Coleraine – the pronunciation of which by the local population with their Ulster Scots inflexion is almost identical to the original Irish –  Cúil Raithin Ferny Corner – related to a story concerning St Patrick.

It is the responsibility of this generation to retain and respect each others’ traditions  – especially now that we have a semblance of peace after thirty years of disrespect and abuse. However, the placenames from which our street names and roads originate do not belong to one tradition or another – they belong to all of us and we use them in everyday speech whether we appreciate it and understand it or not.

I am submitting the views below as a contribution to the above consultation. I would appreciate confirmation of receipt as before the deadline of 13 June 2008 and its inclusion in the EQIA process.

ETC

One of the great traditions of the GAA over the years has been all the rigmarole associated with the round up of players before the game. Although we still pride ourselves on being a resolutely amateur organisation, in matters such as preparation for matches, even the most junior B outfit these days will run their matchday logistics like clock work.

Players will be given precise times to load up with carbs ahead of the big game. They will be well hydrated, well enough to know that clear water means go and amber means stop. They will have digested the psycho-babble at meetings, the individual stats sheet prepared meticulously by the coach, gleaned from a shiny silver Macbook he bought after a stint on placement with a company that specialised in greyhound performance management.

Nowadays no self-respecting coaching course is complete without the mandatory section on what to eat before, during and after a match. Steaks, rashers and bacon; a slice of orange and a rake of pints replaced by pasta; energy bars and more pasta. But it wasn’t ever thus. . .

Sunday morning, coming down for the game, there were always fellas that were too keen by far at the prospect of a game; likewise plenty of the other lads could see a match far enough on a Sunday. The former not up to much, maybe played corner back marking the slowest forward, but he’s invaluable in pumping up balls filling water jars and maybe making sure the jerseys were washed once in a while. “There’s nothing like the smell of another man’s sweat on your shirt to clear the head, eh lads?” would roar one oul boy whose wintergreen would bring a tear to any man’s eye.

The other lads, well some of them would be sittin’ in the house or maybe still lyin’ in bed hopin’ they’d never hear the craggy diesel of the minibus or the doorbell would never ring. Their pre-match routine was a feed of rashers and eggs scorched to within an inch of being edible, maybe a puddin’ or two. A recuperative Major would complete the process, before the painful business of locating football socks, togs and especially boots last seen under a bed, dried turf intact and still in place. The final items in the carrier bag a yellow Mikasa glove and a clean pair of Y Fronts.

This scene was repeated in numerous households round the parish as fellas faced into the fag end of a season. Then there was the lad that managed finally to disentangle himself from active football, but walked that murky twilight between playing and not playing. So the boys still called at the door when they were stuck for players and he inevitable obliged.

His whereabouts might depend on who he was seen talking to the night before and the minibus often trekked the parish looking for him to bring him back to his mammy’s to get his stuff and his inevitable mercurial contribution delivered through the fugue of last night’s fun.

The throw-in time of course was a moveable feast – refs knew not to get there too early, for them could be a long stand waiting for the away team to appear.

But, to its eternal credit the Powers that Be have always recognised the difficulty of rounding up fellas for an away game, with Rule 2.2 permitting a team to start a match with only thirteen men – it explicitly says that so long as the other two lads appear by the beginning of the second half that’s grand.

The arguments around any abolition of Rule 2.2 would make the debate over opening Croker look like a teddy bear’s picnic. The origins of the rule are thought to date back perhaps to more agricultural days when fellas had to complete the farmwork and might be delayed getting away; others put it down to the checkpoints operated by occupation forces targeting known GAA men. Others just point out that it’s a practical rule that has its place and that’s that.

So, the next time your pre-hydration or your carb loading is behind schedule and you’re running later for a match, remember Rule 2.2. Twas made for days like that.