The smoker you think. . .

I smoked my first cigarette when I was about 13. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the inrush of smoke, the burning taste and the light-headedness when I inhaled strongly.

Those first few tentative smokes were probably more designed to look cool than to benefit from whatever smoking added to my repertoire. Anyway, gradually I formed an addiction.

At school at Omagh CBS there was a surprisingly lax atmosphere to the habit with a ‘Smoking Shelter’ ironically located behind the gym, dedicated to those who wished to smoke. There was a healthy black market in fags – it cost ten pence for a cigarette. It made good sense to buy ten Regal, smoke a few, and sell the rest to cover your costs.

Other habits included the ‘hand drag’, where someone would let you have a toke on their fag whilst they still held on to it. The ultimate crime when getting a hand drag was to leave the butt wet. If you planned ahead, at the nearby shop you could buy single cigarettes and many did to feed the habit.

Also, it was common for lads that didn’t have their own fags or the resources to buy a single down at the smoking shelter, or if you were skint, to bags someone else’s butt.

This meant hanging around until some other lad had nearly finished smoking and then frantically sucking the last few drags out of his butt when he gave it to you. People who smoked king size fags or some upmarket brand were usually the best for a decent butt.

And, if you wanted to remain unpestered by fellow smokers all you had to do was smoke Marlboro Reds or Rothmans or worse again something like Gauloises or Players No 6. Nobody would bother you for such.

You soon got to know who left a generous butt with a decent bit of white paper as opposed to the man who pulled the life out of it, leaving a dark tar circle in the filter and squashed it to make matters worse.

It was a strange set up when you think about it in today’s anti-smoking climate. Then the Smoking Shelter was a fugue filled area, the smoke lying in swathes under the low roof. Nowadays it would constitute some sort of health and safety risk. The craic was ninety there though, and since the regime adopted a laissez faire attitude lads smoked their brains out, morning, break and lunchtime. Ironically football was banned on the all weather pitch but smoking permitted in the Smoking Shelter. I think the CBS may have changed that policy since. . .

The only other excitement was the occasional scrap that might break out behind the handball alley. Usually even then the smokers remained non-plussed preferring to finish the job in hand than watch a fight. I spent many’s a happy breaktime there with fellas like Pete McCloskey and Decky Coyle, two lads now sadly deceased. We discussed the issues of the day:  the merits of girls from the Convent and St Biddy’s; Big Lewis’s English class; Paddy Grogan’s unique blend of art and republicanism. Mickey Grimes’ biology class. All sadly departed the scene now too.

When I went to University, I smoked like a trooper. Total freedom, you could smoke in the room in halls, even in your bed if you wanted to or in someone else’s. I remember one oul yoke called Celine that did too but that’s a tale for another day.

Then I decided to give up smoking. Rather I gave up smoking my own fags and smoked others when I was drinking. I would wake the morning after with nicotine stained fingers and thumbs, even a burnt fingernail betimes. There was plenty of other shit to smoke too if you wanted to. This kept going for years and years. In the bar, especially playing music smoking was de rigeur. At Queen’s we majored in smoking and drinking.

Angela smoked from the day I met her. A pleasant waft of smoke and perfume accompanied her. She smelled, tasted and looked like a smoker. Occasionally she would try and give up but I used to find cigarette butts in the garage along with a smell of smoke. I knew she’d cracked. Again. Eventually I knew not to mention the war but when she did try to give up I would have been supportive although she probably didn’t view it like that. Her smoking irritated me intensely but unlike me I got on with it.

Myself? I gave up. Totally stopped after getting a serious bollocking from my brother in Manchester after a United versus Liverpool match. We were drinking in some achingly cool nightspot. I bought myself a packet of Marlboro reds and immediately Peter lit on me. Hard to believe but that was the end of it. He made a few salient blunt points about health risks and that was that.

Angela gave them up when Treasa was born, just like that. That made me happy. Whilst these days I could easily light a cigarette and smoke it and never touch another for the rest of my days, she couldn’t. Once a smoker always a smoker. She would still hanker for a fag but has remained steadfast even in the face of my mother in law continuing to smoke like a train.

Of course, nowadays anyone who smokes is a total pariah. Ushered out of pubs on the grounds of political correctness. Despatched to the furthest reaches of the beer garden. To me, bars were always about drinking, smoking and talking shite. Right-thinking pubs now have smoking shelters not unlike what the CBS in Omagh had in our day. We were truly ahead of our time. The craic. The banter. The problems we solved.

It’s not often standing outside a fancy bar though that you can you buy a single for ten pence. Or see if the fella next to you is willingto leave you his butt.

And as for asking the attractive girl standing smoking beside you for a hand drag. . .

You little witch. . .

Another Mundane day… I’m told Treasa shouldn’t be allowed to watch her programmes in the morning. Well the mood she was in the morning ‘no-ing’ everyone and everything in sight. Pretty soon happiness reigns thanks to Dora, Peppa Pig and a couple of yoghurts.

Meanwhile Sorcha goes through her morning routine and climbs up in beside Hub for a while. I think Hub thinks Sorcha’s a dog too.

Peter brought all of Leo’s shell collection to school.

As the teacher laughed at half of Portstewart beach emptied on the desk I thought ‘bollix if Leo finds out…’

Doing books: Income dependent on too few people – note to self to change.

Spent hours filling in a form and gathering supporting documents.

The recession bites for breakfast. No milk – black tea and toast. Hello is this Lough Derg?

Off to Derry via the bank. Pleasant people in the Bank, they know me by my OD.

Derry full of traffic wardens. Fuckers scuse the language but they fry my head. My sister in law hit one over the head with her hand bag… Go Mary!

Looking round me travelling through ‘Wallworth’, suburb of Ballykelly. Not worth it at all.

Lot of food for thought from last night’s course – we can use it yes we can.

Need writing samples for possible ToV course but wiped my links to some pages I had gathered up. Basic groundrules: spellcheck unless coining a word. Otherwise sloppy seconds. A sentence was invented for a reason – capiche? Some people just cannot write hence they ask me. If you blog does anyone read you? Or are you like a tree branch breaking in the middle of the forest?

Training tonite at Uni with G was good – very enjoyable. Among the group two Ballinderry players, overall girls with good attitude, good level of fitness skills and good enough craic too. The other players including beginners coming along well. Happy enough G & me.

Irish class mighty – verb rules. The light went on, might actually be able to progress now.

Home – craic good with Angie, Baz and G.

Quote of the night, concerning a job application “you put it in and I’ll play with it!”

Bed and to wake to another day just like the one just finished.

St Patrick's College, Armagh. Me and my father both?

I attended an Ulster GAA course last night in St Patrick’s College in Armagh.

It was highly interesting stuff and the content alone made the hour and a half drive entirely worth it, though it was the last thing I felt like doing on a wet Monday evening.

As I walked in that strange front door in the corner of St Pat’s, understated, facing out diagonally towards the wall of the cathedral I had strange rememberings of having been there before. And I had. My late father was a pupil there in the late thirties and early forties.

Our course took place in the Geography room. My da’s subject was Geography. It was a pleasant coincidence.

Of course I had been there before with him. During the ten years of my life when he was alive he must have brought me there on some outing or other.

I remember that door, going in through. Nothing else though. Strange how we remember these comings and goings. No doubt last night at all in my mind, I walked corridors that he ran many times some eighty years ago. Conscious.

Maybe the Geography room was then as it is now. Our tutor, Roger Keenan from Gortin. Himself a fella my father taught in Omagh CBS. His elderly relative Tom Rodgers was an old man we regularly took to mass and on other outings. Most famously my da took him to the Cinema to see Ben Hur. Me, my dad and Tom. Tom was uttterly enthralled by the spectacle. It was about 1977 and the new cinema in Omagh had just opened. My father decided that Tom, then aged about 88 and from Rooskey up in the Sperrin foothills beyond Cranagh, should share in the enjoyment of the new cinema.

As the credits rolled we got up to leave. My da asked Tom what he thought. He answered ‘An’ Dammit, they must have some stables and fodder out the back for them there horses.”

Next time I’m back in St Pat’s I will take a minute to scour the fading wideangle images of the pupils of St Pat’s  taken over the years in the lea of the Cathedral. As I search looking for my father, I hope to see him as a teenager gazing back at me.

And I’m sure I’ll learn something while I’m there. As he did before me.

Part One

This morning my ten year old daughter couldn’t find her coat. Typical glitch in the morning routine plus she had to walk to her cousins’ rather later than have me lift her from school.

I smiled afterwards at the studipity of our conversation/my diatribe. (Studipity – now there’s a word. . . I’ll leave it as it is. . .)

“Where is your new coat?”

“It’s in Schira’s car (her aunt)”

“Not much use to you there is it. . . I didn’t spend money on a new coat so you could leave it in other people’s cars did I? You want to catch yourself on and grow up, what age are you? Ten? For God’s sake. And when it rains…. there’s snow forecast you know –  the coat isn’t gonna keep you dry when it’s sitting in a car? You need to grow up and start taking responsibility for your stuff this is a bloody joke, every morning the same carry one. And let that hen in.”

“OK daddy.” She opens the front door and one of our three hens walked the well trodden walk of shame from the front door to the back door.

Part Two

Sorcha is four.

“Sorcha, you didn’t eat your lunch did you?”

“No I didn’t eat my school dinners.”

“That’s what I mean. Today you’re getting a packed lunch. So eat it OK?

‘But I don’t like dinners.’

Part Three

My son Leo is eight years old. After swimming club it takes him an eternity getting changed. One evening my sister in law eventually boiled her own radiator it took him that long. Cue a long lecture about hurrying up and not keeping people waiting.

“Blah Blah Blah keeping people waiting blah blah blah meeting to go to… blah how can it take you so long blah blah what kept you blah blah need to hurry up Leo …ad infinitum.”

Having listened intently but impassively Leo says: “Schira. Can you see the Great Wall of China from Outer Space?”

End of conversation.