Celtic Illumination, part 58, Just the good ole boys, never meaning no harm

The Rendezvous Inn in Warrenpoint would have been heaving with bodies on a Friday and Saturday night.  It would also be open at almost any time of the day or night.  We would visit the Rendezvous to link up with others or find out where they were.  Occasionally we would zoom off into the nearby towns and villages, if there was a function on.  I remember once being at a dance in Hilltown.  At the end of the evening they were playing the Irish national anthem and I had to hold Phelim up as he was so drunk he couldn’t stand.  I knew if I wasn’t successful we wouldn’t have left that dance hall in one piece.  I managed to keep him upright and then carried him outside where I put him in the driving seat of his car.

Poor Phelim was normally drunk for most of his free time.  I think the car operated on auto pilot for neither of us would have been sober.  Despite the fact that we could stay all night long in the Rendezvous we would sometimes pile out at eleven o clock, the standard closing time, and load into cars aiming for last orders in Dundalk.  In Dundalk the hotel bars wouldn’t close until midnight.

We would break every speed limit on the way there, consume even more beer and then point the cars at the border crossing and try to get home.  Between Dundalk and the border crossing was a Gardaí station.  There was always an old blue Cortina sitting pointing at the border.  We would see the Gardaí as we entered the straight, leading up to their station, and accelerate hard.  As we flew past them they would attempt to start their car, or even get back into it and follow us, but more than often they gave up and ignored us.  We were so daft, for not only were we drunk driving, we were speeding toward a border crossing that was overflowing with soldiers, armed to the teeth, and who were also a little bit nervous and some say, trigger happy.

I’m not making light of it, well; I am, but I am not a supporter of drunk driving.  Even Phelim grew out of that phase.  One evening Peter and he were so drunk they could hardly walk.  They left the Rendezvous and managed to make it to their car.  Phelim was driving.  Off they went and managed to put the car into the front of someone’s house.  Peter went through the windscreen and Phelim lost an eye.

I went to the courthouse in Newry with them when this case was being heard.  The solicitor pleaded with the judge that Phelim needed his license for his job and a ban would harm him immensely.  The judge ordered that Phelim would lose his license but that he could get a new license by retaking his driving test again.  We left the court house and adjourned to the bar next door.  Phelim mused over the court finding and considered the impact having such a serious annotation on his licence would have on him.

“Come on” says he, swilling down the remainder of his beer.  “We’re off to Downpatrick to get a new license.”

We drove to Downpatrick and Phelim, claiming that his old license had been lost, was issued with a new one.

A month or two later I was sitting with them and they were complaining that they had no money.  Peter came up with the great idea that he should sue Phelim for personal injury and they could split the money he would be awarded for the scarring on his face, from going through the windscreen.  Phelim thought it was a great idea although haggling over the exact split of the award did ensue.

As for the car, which was a Ford Cortina, mark 2, I understand that the pair of them went to Belfast and acquired a similar model.  They brought it back to Warrenpoint where the relevant numbers were changed and the car presented as having been rebuilt from the write off in the crash.  Again the money was split between the pair of them and the old car, the actual vehicle that had been written off, is at the bottom of a certain body of water near Burren.

I suppose to say that much of the culture that influenced rural living in Ireland would have been American, especially country and Western.  As such cars and vans and trucks were adorned with bull bars, crazy air horns but especially lamps, or as we would call them spot lights.  One income stream for Phelim and Peter would be to stay off the drink, I know, a huge effort for them, and visit hotels and pub car parks while a function was being held.

Any mechanic, worth his salt, would have a few tools knocking about in the boot of his own car so Phelim and Peter were well equipped to relieve cars and truck and vans of their newly acquired adornments.  They had me keep watch one night when they removed spot lights from a row of cars outside the Great Northern Hotel in Rostrevor.

Why, you may ask, would a future world leading Master Candle maker, High Chief of the clan O Neill and the King of Ireland admit that he had been a part of such activities?  Well; I need to prove to the people of Ireland that I have experienced a broad range of the different levels of society in Ireland.  I’ve snogged with presidents, danced with Dana, slept with priests, so why shouldn’t I experience the sharper side of life in Ireland.  And as for Phelim and Peter, I would refer to the first line of the title song from the Duke of Hazzard.  “Just the good ole boys, never meaning no harm.”

It's a blast!

Celtic Illumination, Part 57, Roger Miller and the most unlucky number

As I said before I met lots of nice new people at Newry Technical College, however my best friend there was Phelim Fegan and he didn’t even go to the college.  Phelim was the mechanic for his father’s haulage firm in Warrenpoint.  If any of the trucks broke down, anywhere in Ireland, then Phelim would have to go and fix it.  If I was at school then Phelim would pull up outside the main school building to collect me.  Now I don’t mean that he would find a safe and convenient parking spot, stop, indicate and manoeuvre his vehicle into the parking space. 

If you remember I said the life in Warrenpoint was very similar to the Dukes of Hazzard.  Phelim would screech into the school car park, perform a handbrake turn and press the car horn.  Sometimes it might be louder than the music pumping from the inside of the vehicle, sometimes not.  I would excuse myself from whichever class I was attending, unless I was already standing at the front of the school smoking, and climb into the car and zoom away for another day of fun and freedom.  It was a fantastic wee car although sadly had to be changed when Phelim’s mother discovered, when she executed an emergency stop that Phelim hid condoms in the roof and she did not appreciate being showered with the infernal things.

Phelim by now had moved from an old Ford Anglia to a Ford Escort.  This car had two whiplash aerials so therefore was very fast indeed, I’m not very technical myself but this is what I’ve been told.  If it had a go faster strip we may have had warp speed.  And the music wasn’t the sort of thump, thump, thump, of angry wannabe ghetto type people that you get these days.  No we were refined, we would be head banging to Roger Miller singing ‘Trailers for sale or rent’.  Sometimes we would listen to classical music like Johnny Cash or Hank Williams.

These days were so enjoyable.  Phelim was a speed freak and of course this was way before the cash collecting speed cameras.  Initially we would concentrate on getting to the broken lorry, fixing it and then we would have a relaxed journey home.  I enjoyed touring Ireland and visiting all the different towns and villages as I had done before, but at least now my travels were pervert free.

I remember one evening we went off to Dublin to find a lorry which had been stopped by the Gardaí.  All the lights on the trailer had failed and the Gardaí refused it permission to move on until the problem was fixed.  Phelim and myself left Warrenpoint at about warp factor three.  Phelim leapt about the truck and trailer like a monkey on a climbing frame.  Eventually he decided that the lights were broken, which shows just how good a mechanic he really was.  The driver was protesting that he had to be somewhere at a certain time whether this referred to the load or the drivers personal life I’m not sure but Phelim was told that it had to be fixed and it had to be fixed now!

Five minutes later the lorry was trundling on its ways with the lights on the trailer working, and then not working, and then working.  Phelim wired the trailer lights into the four way hazard warning light circuit and sent the trailer away flashing like a mobile Christmas tree.  Once, with a similar problem, a truck had been stopped between Dundalk and Dublin that was trying to get to a ferry before it sailed.  We stopped en route in Newry and picked up some bicycle lights which were then attached to the rear of the vehicle which again was sent on its way.

We normally drank in a pub called the Rendezvous Inn.  One evening we were playing cards and darts.  It was way after the normal pub closing time.  I was playing poker.  There was a group of bar staff, some of them full time bar men who took poker and horse racing very seriously indeed.  I wound up facing one of them with a fifty pound bet waiting to be made and a huge pile of cash between us on the table.  I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, nor did I have the money to make the bet so I threw my hand in.  This caused much consternation among everyone as, in their opinion, I should have continued on.  I decided there and then that I would never play cards again in my life and I never did.

Something else happened that night which stayed with me for the rest of my life too, something that I have found very interesting indeed.  Phelim and Peter were playing darts.  As usual there was a lot of good natured banter going on between everyone.  Peter took up his position at the dart board and was told that he had 123 remaining.  As Peter stood wondering what the best combination of numbers for his three darts would be, Phelim said “You’ll never get this, because 123 is the most unlucky number in the world.”

Now, I can’t remember if Peter actually managed to get 123 with his three darts, but what stayed with me for the rest of my life, right up until today, is that I still think that the number 123 is the most unlucky number in the world.

A number of years ago I was having a drink with Phelim and I mentioned this event to him.  He smiled and said that he remembered that evening very well for I had made a momentous mistake by throwing in my hand and he had never seen anyone make such a basic and stupid mistake in poker ever again.  I smiled and told him why I remembered that evening.  He looked at me and asked me what on earth I was talking about.  He couldn’t remember ever saying that and had never heard of any luck, good or bad, being associated with that number.

Despite the fact that I now know Phelim had said the number 123 was the most unlucky number in the world, it was a throwaway line, he had made it up on the spot, and there was no substance to it at all.  So why did I believe it?  And why, to this day, when I see the number 1232 do I still think ‘Oh!  That’s unlucky?”

Celtic Illumination, part 56, Dundalk, the Gardai and the hair of the dog

I was enjoying life, ish.  I still had my father giving me private tuition every day.  After that I would have to work around the house.  It was a brand new house so I was allowed to dig the garden.  This was not some gentile act of wandering around with a hoe and poking out weeds.  A couple of tons of top soil had been delivered and deposited on the drive.  I was allowed to turn the garden over, with a fecking pick axe, before spreading the top soil all around.

This took me more than a day or two, for it was quite a large garden.  Mum wanted rose bushes so I was allowed to use the wheel barrow.  Dad sent me into the local fields where I had to collect barrowful’s of horse and cow manure and bring it home for the garden.  I didn’t mind wandering around the local fields collecting manure. In fact a new neighbour Tommy Toal would sometimes accompany me with his shotgun.   I must have been the only armed shit shoveller in the North.

It was only a single barrel shot gun and you would think that the last thing a normal person would do is wander about fields, in bandit country firing a shotgun at anything that moved.  I had created myself a little business.  If we managed to shoot anything, which normally would be rabbits or hares, I would take them home and skin them.  I would cure the skin and then make watch straps or lighter pouches or even wallets.

I was staggering home one night and met a fellow staggering the other way.  He was carrying a bulging plastic bag.  We knew each other and stopped for a chat.  He was on his way to the dock wall to dump the three dead pet rabbits he had in his bag.  I relieved him of his load and took the rabbits home dreaming of a pure white rabbit fur lighter pouch.

Attending Newry Technical College was quite enjoyable and I was certainly meeting lots of new and interesting people.  One of my class mates was actually on the run from the Irish army.  He had joined the army, decided he didn’t like it and came home to Newry.  They couldn’t touch him, as long as he stayed north of the border.

My sister Carol was in her final year at Trinity in Dublin and she invited me down for the weekend.  Another fellow I was friendly with at the time, Mickey Rush, came with me.  Mickey like myself worked part time in the hotels and bars around Warrenpoint.  Mickey however had not been entered into any training programme by a double top secret cable.  Our moral compasses didn’t exactly point in the same direction.  I learned this as we got on the train at Dundalk.

In those days the train line was often blown up or blocked with suspect vehicles or containers between Newry and Dundalk.  So a Belfast to Dublin train journey would often involve a bus trip between Newry and Dundalk.  Dundalk of course to us was bandit country, it really was Dodge City with the amount of IRA men there and it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow to see in the local newspaper the headline, gun battle on Dundalk Street.  As the train pulled out of Dundalk, Mickey opened his rucksack to show that he had stolen a bottle of almost ever spirit available.

And so the party started on the train there was Mickey, myself, a teacher from the Newry Technical College and the train conductor.  We were hammered by the time we got to Dublin and my sister was not impressed.  She sent Micky and myself off for a walk so that we might sober ourselves up.  The walking was tiring stuff so we decided to have a bit of a sit down and a rest, in a pub.

Mickey and I were sitting at the bar and Mickey hadn’t noticed that the barman had opened a trap door in the floor.   He had descended into the cellar and it was only as he began to emerge that Mickey caught sight of him and began screaming that the very devil himself was coming up through the floor boards.  We were asked to leave, which we did when the Gardai turned up.

That night as we ploughed into the drink, along with my sisters friends, we were told of a dance.  Eager to show off our skills Mickey and I made our way to the dance.  It was a final ball for graduating doctors so everyone assumed that we were medical students.  I wish we had been for I tell you we could have done with some medication for the hangovers that crushed our brains the next day as we headed back north.

Once again we left the train in Dundalk and began to walk across town to the bus station.  We had met some fellow on the train and we were sharing a bit of banter as we strolled along.  He stopped outside a grocers shop and checked his watch.

“You know lads,” he said.  “We’ve a fair bit of time to wait until the bus leaves.”

We nodded as we were aware of the amount of time we would; have to pass in the less than exciting bus terminal.

“Do ye fancy a beer lads?”  said the fellow, to which Mickey and I nodded eagerly.  We might not have been medical students but we surely knew the medicinal benefits of the hair of the dog.

“Come on then,” says the fellow, as he walks into the grocers shop.  Strange we thought but there were two of us, should this fellow turn out to be nothing more than another pervert.  We nodded at the shopkeeper and simply traversed the length of the shop and entered another room which, this was Ireland, was a bar.  Not only was it a  bar but there was a party in full swing and sure it wasn’t even ten o clock in the morning yet.  Never mind ten o clock in the morning most of the people in the bar had been there all night long and when the time came for us to leave and catch the bus into the north it was tempting to think perhaps we should catch the later bus.

Celtic Illumination, Judge and ye shall throw the first in glass houses!

Celtic Illumination, part 55, vodka, a ferry and the French Foreign Legion.

Yes, being treated as adult was nice but, as you might expect, this wouldn’t last for long.  Our exam results were out, and we had to make the obligatory telephone calls home.  It wasn’t that we wouldn’t want to speak to our parents but it was the same questions they would ask all the time. Are you staying out of trouble, are you getting enough to eat, are you going to church every Sunday?  Finbar, who was a very clever fellow indeed, in fact he still is he’s quite an important and successful doctor in Belfast.  Finbar passed every exam he had looked at whereas I had only passed the important ones, maths, physics, English and the like. 

I remember that day well, we had to decide how we were going to return home.  We opted for the Heysham boat train.  We didn’t want to go near Heathrow in case the British airways staff noticed us and demanded we pay for the flight that brought us there.  On our last day in London Finbar went to visit his brother and say his farewells I however went into central London for one final look around.  I was just wandering along Oxford Street when I saw something that made me stop.

I was a creature of impulse.  I had the loveliest legs in Ireland; I was to become the world’s leading Master Candle Maker the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and the future King of Ireland.  I waited for a break in the traffic and began to cross Oxford Street.  Sod going home, sod Warrenpoint, I was going to join the air force.

Unfortunately the air force let me down.  I had hoped that by that afternoon or the very next day, at the least, that I would be flying spitfires over East Anglia.  No, first of all there was the paperwork, and then there was the testing and interviews.  This process would take one week and then there was the fact that I wasn’t eighteen years old, I needed my parents’ permission to join.  Now why they couldn’t have been like the French Foreign Legion I shall never know.  At that time you could walk into any French police station and state that you wanted to join the French Foreign Legion.  You would be offered a seat and within a couple of hours you would have been collected and brought to a central point from where you would be taken and enrolled into the French Foreign Legion.   Perhaps this is why my sister was always being allowed to go to France and I wasn’t.

There was nothing for it but to return to Ireland and Warrenpoint.  I would say that the train and boat journey was uneventful but it wasn’t.  We were both steaming drunk.  Finbar and I decided that we might need some refreshments on the train journey which would have been a good five or six hours so we bought two bottles of vodka and a packet of crisps.  I do get certain flash backs of a belter of a party on the train.

At Heysham we had to go through the normal police and custom checks.  Our bags were thoroughly searched for with long hair and flared jeans it was quite obvious we were drugs dealers.  We were both cleared through customs yet couldn’t resist taunting the customs men that they had missed.  We had removed the batteries from our transistor radios and filled the space with marijuana.

Customs men or police didn’t worry us.  We knew that the IRA shot drug dealers so bring drugs into the country, even small amounts for your own use was quite a dangerous thing to do.  At the time it was widely accepted that the IRA were decent fellows who were protecting the local population by eradicating the drug trade.  Of course what we were not aware of was the fact that the IRA wanted to control the drug trade and couldn’t have cared less about the morals of the local population.

Finbar and I parted in Newry; I made my way to Warrenpoint and once again dragged myself up the Bridal Loanan.  As far as I was concerned my life had changed.  I didn’t have to go back to Violent Hell, the air force was processing my application, and life was good.  My father had a different idea though.  They gave me a day or two to settle in and then one meal time cornered me.

“What’s your plans for the future?”

“I’ve joined the air force,” said I, pleased that I had trumped their straight flush. 

“But when are you going?”

“I don’t know.  They are processing my paperwork.”

“And what are you going to do until then?”

“I’ll  sign on as unemployed,” I claimed.

My father became furious, I mean really furious, even more than when I had been expelled, both times.  “No one in this family has ever been unemployed and you are most certainly not going to be the first!”  Suddenly I could feel that any progress I had made was being taken away.  “You will go to school, you will continue with your education, you will become either a pilot for Air Lingus or a dentist and I will help you!”

I think the double top secret cabal that were organising my training to become the world’s leading Master Candle Maker had bugged the kitchen area of our house with listening devices and my reply to dads statement would show how far I had come.  I couldn’t reply, what could I say?  Although I did try.  I reminded him that Violent Hell wouldn’t take me back.

No problem says he.  First thing Monday morning you are to go to Newry Technical College, see the principle and ask him for permission to attend his school.  And I did.  On the Monday morning I took myself into Newry, went to the technical college and waited to see the principal.  I asked him if I could attend his school and study A levels.  He said yes.  I couldn’t believe it.

I know you will probably think me a bit of a nerd but I actually liked and still like working out a complicated mathematical equation.  There is a certain satisfaction which I find hard to explain. I loved the English language and literature so lapped up the work they gave me.  I followed other courses too but settled into the routine quickly enough.

Flash Dance, Celtic Illumination style

Celtic Illumination, part 54, Watneys Red Barrel, melting socks and toast.

Jimmy the Link and myself made it back to Uxbridge safely, amazed that what had promised to be a well organised and peaceful event had descended into mayhem.  Although the pair of us were used to extreme violence and rioting the riot at Windsor was strange, it didn’t fit.  I have to admit I did enjoy exploring London.  My favourite spot was to go to Piccadilly Circus and sit under the statue of Anteros.  There was a market there, under where all the huge displays and neon signs are now, selling all sorts of hippy paraphernalia and I would just watch all the cool cats wander in and out.

It’s where I was offered my first ever drug deal.  I was simply wandering along when a young couple, boy and girl, pushing a pram stopped and asked me if I would like any blues, or reds, or uppers, or downers.  I hadn’t the faintest idea what they were talking about and dutifully enquired.  They began to explain but a young constable who had rounded the corner, and was approaching us in a northerly direction, had them zooming off down the road with me still none the wiser, although I think it was the first time I had ever been referred to as a stupid Irishman.

It was excitingly strange to wander through Soho and have so many women ask me if I would like a good time.  Sure it was summer, I had been expelled, twice, from Violent Hell, I was unsupervised and in London, I was having a great time on my own, all by myself.  I began to visit the usual tourist spots but wasn’t impressed.  I was more interested in watching people.  I especially loved watching the men on Oxford Street selling, what they claimed to be, knock off perfume, jewellery, or watches.  

We did choose one specific pub to visit, more than once a week, which was the Greyhound pub in Hammersmith.  Apart from the fact that many of the popular groups at the time would congregate there it was full of interesting people.  It would not be strange to find a middle aged man in a boiler suit on your right and someone in six inch high, silver, platform boots and a lime green faux fur jacket on your right.  Brian Ferry and his group were quite often there as were all the big glam rock stars.

The pub itself was quite interesting.  It was over three floors and the two top floors had large openings.  A band would perform on the ground floor and everyone around, and above, could watch and appreciate their act.  The beer was shite.  I ordered my first pint of Watneys Red Barrel, drank it and walked straight into the gents toilet where I brought every last drop up.

We also learned a few tricks while in London like how to travel on the underground without paying any money.  It wasn’t an underhand trick but quite necessary for we were partying hard and with pay day falling each Thursday we would often have no money on a Wednesday morning or even Tuesday night, if it had been a particularly good weekend..

I do remember once that we were completely broke.  We had a kettle in our room and a toaster so would often have tea and toast.  We were so extravagant we would even throw away the heel of the bread.  One week, with no money, and after a full day’s physical labour in the factory, I can remember Finbar and myself taking a couple of heels from the bin.  Scraping the tea leaves and cigarette ash off them and then toasting them, as they were a bit stale anyway.  Immediately after receiving our pay we would be in the canteen eating as if there were no tomorrow.

I found it interesting that although we were in London, away from home, surrounded with people from all over the world, we gravitated to our own.  I even ended up dating a girl from Newry, in London.  She was working as a chambermaid in a large hotel.  There was a party one night at her flat and at the time my feet would stink to high heaven.  So every evening I would wash my socks and leave them somewhere so that I would have a clean and dry pair in the morning.  I went through my normal routine but next morning found that my socks had melted on the radiator where I had left them.  With bare feet in shoes I felt quite odd and went off to find a shop where I could buy some new ones.  This was in the Shepherd’s Bush area of London and to my horror I walked into an outside scene that was being recorded for the popular Television show Steptoe and Son.  For years afterwards I would hide when the programme came on for I was too ashamed of appearing on the television with no socks on.  I know, how awful!

There was almost another riot during our time in London.  The foreman came to the machine where Finbar and I worked.  We operated a saw that required two men to operate it.  Pallet loads of asbestos sheets would be delivered we would pick one up, feed it into the saw, move to the far side, collect the now neat and clean piece and place it on a pile.  It was boring work.   Now and again the whole shop floor would come together and we would all be required to work on this huge contraption where massive asbestos sheet were fed in.  Scrap pieces would fly everywhere, everyone was shouting orders and instructions, even if they didn’t know what they were doing, it was great fun.

I do still wonder if one day I shall fall ill.  Mention asbestos these days and people immediately pull on a face mask, rubber gloves and protective clothing, and no, we are not back to perverts.  We would be standing in two inches of asbestos dust and I do remember thinking that it had a particularly sweet smell.  I digress.  The foreman informed us that the factory was to close for its annual fortnightly holiday.  Finbar and myself complained.  We had signed on to work for the summer, if we had wanted a holiday we would have gone to Butlins.

The management agreed that we could work with the maintenance crew for the fortnight and we did.  It was nice to have something interesting to do.  We had to climb on top of the ovens where the asbestos sheets were cooked, un bolt and remove the extractor fans, inspect the blades, replace any broken ones and then put the whole thing back together again.  We were being treated as grownups and it was nice.

Celtic Illumination, part 53, smoking a spliff at the Queens house.

Thankfully I was only pestered by one pervert while in London, there may have been others but I was too busy chasing girls and having fun to notice.  You may wonder why on earth a double top secret cabal would arrange for me to spend a summer in London working in an asbestos factory.  Well; I now understand the reason.  I was sent there to learn, and learn I did, not at the factory but at Brunel University.  And not in any lecture hall, like a normal person, but in a disco.

As I mentioned before there was an awful lot of dancing in Ireland and as with Irish dancing, or even jiving, there were rules that you had to follow.  I’m not talking about the actual steps you would perform, and with legs like mine, boy could I perform.  I’m talking about actually asking a girl to dance.  There was no fear in this exchange, far from it, normally because drink had been taken. 

You would ask a girl to dance.  If she said yes, then you took to the dance floor and gave it your best shot.  As we are all aware there are various stages that now have to be observed as you begin to determine if this is the one you will spend the reminder of your life with, and you will enjoy it.  In Ireland there were the three questions.  I really don’t want to reveal the three questions, not because I might damage budding relationships but because it shows how bloody stupid and backward the society I lived in was.

First question was “What is your name?”  Quite an innocent question and quite a standard opening line from a young man to a young lady.  However in Ireland the whole name was required.  This gave an indication of the religion of the other person.  If the girl had a name that you were not sure of, then you moved on and asked what school they attended.  “Saint Michaels, Saint Mary’s or Saint Brigit’s,” would all be fine but even here there was room for confusion.  The girl could attend a neutral school like Newry Technical College so could be either Catholic or Protestant.

If you had asked the first two questions and were still unsure you then posed the third question which quite simply asked “What religion are you?”  Now you have probably stood standing at the bar for some time watching this girl.  You probably think she is quite pretty and could possibly end up spending the remainder of her life with you and bearing your children.  However if she is not the same religion as you, you will walk away.  Politely of course, when the dance had finished, we weren’t heathens.

Truthfully it wasn’t something you thought about, it was something you did.  A Catholic and Protestant getting together in N Ireland would be viewed as wrong; if they did stay together it would be viewed as a mixed marriage.  So you may say, who cares, if you like the girl keep going, but it was society who kept this going.  If it wasn’t the neighbours who would tittle tattle about you, it would be the group of lads standing by the exit door at the dance who would remind you that you were in the wrong.

In London Finbar and myself went off to a disco at Brunel University.  It was great fun as there wasn’t a great difference in the ages of people attending.  I asked a girl to dance.  We took to the floor and she refused my hand as I quite naturally offered it to suggest we could jive.  I asked her name and then what school she attended. I was completely stumped and was about to ask her what religion she was when I suddenly realised how bloody stupid I was.  It didn’t matter what religion she was.

That is the point where I grew up, more than grew up, I outgrew Ireland.  I knew that if I was to go back most of my friends would still be asking their three questions and that there was no hope for society.  I wasn’t even attending church but would state on forms that I was a Catholic.  I think that for the people in Northern Ireland they claim to belong to a religion like being members of a tribe, or supporting a football team.  Which God do you support?

I was a member of a new tribe.  I was a hippy and like thousands of others I made my way across London to the Windsor pop festival.  I went along with Jimmy the Link and another chap who was from New Zealand.  He was a vegetarian, again something I had never encountered before and I do remember that he had a twenty packet of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes.  I remember this because he had taken the tobacco out of all the cigarettes and replaced it with marijuana.  My new best friend for life.

It certainly got the old heart going when we arrived in Windsor and saw the police lined up along all the roads.  There were hundreds of them.  As we lay on a nice manicured lawn outside Windsor castle, smoking a huge spliff, I knew I was safe, for not only were all these police people here to look after us, the special branch fellows had promised to keep an eye on me too.

The festival was amazing.  Whether the music was good, or shite, you tapped your feet, drank the cider and shook your head.  Jimmy told me off for asking a passing drug pusher to show me some acid.  He was a bit nervous with the huge police presence.  I loved it, especially one night when the hells angels were driving their motorcycles through a bonfire.  And to think while all this was going on I could have been sitting in Violent Hell getting beaten by a priest or wishing it was Thursday evening so we could see the female dancers on Top Of the Pops.

So; you may think what use were all my skills when I was sitting in a big field with another couple of thousand stoned hippies, well when the police attacked I was able to adopt a battle posture and get myself and Jimmy out of there, as any self-respecting Shaolin trained Master Candle Maker would.  As for the fellow from New Zealand I don’t know what happened to him.  It was strange to see a full scale riot after so much peace love and happiness but I think the double top secret cabal had probably thought I may have been a little homesick so they organised some wide scale carnage to make me feel a little better.

Warrenpoint Fight Fest

Celtic Illumination, part 52, a turban, the missing link and a Zephyr

Well, we had managed to fly into London Heathrow without having to pay a penny for the privilege.  Looking back now I can understand that the double top secret cabal that was organising my training to become the leading Master Candle Maker in the world must have made a mistake and that is why no money changed hands.  However, there we were, so we wandered over to a line of busses to begin our adventure properly.

We walked to the lead bus that sat at the head of the queue.  There was an Indian fellow sitting behind the wheel.  We knew this because he was wearing a turban and we had never seen one in real life before.  The door of the bus was closed.  The driver opened it.

“What do you want?”  said, one very annoyed Indian.

“We want to get on your bus please mister,” said one of us.

“I’m not leaving for ten more minutes,” said the driver, who promptly closed the door again and continued to read his newspaper.

This was new to us.  In Ireland we would have been encouraged to get on the bus, sit down and then in ten minutes come forward and pay the fare, but this was London, England, a different country.  Keeping to his word, ten minutes later the driver put his newspaper away and opened the door.  He indicated that we should get on.

“Where to?”  he asked

“The Uxbridge Road,” said Finbar, he was more qualified to speak as that is where his brother lived.

“Whereabouts on the Uxbridge road?” asked the driver.

“Oh, just drop us somewhere around the middle and we’ll walk,” said Finbar, who was not just qualified to speak, but clever too.

“But the Uxbridge road is eleven miles long!”  said the driver with the turban who must have been sick of these stupid bloody foreigners.

“Ah!” we said, because the pair of us were stumped.

“How about I drop you at Uxbridge tube station and you can get directions from there?” asked the driver, and we agreed that this could be the best plan of action.

We waited a while but no one else got on the bus and then we set off.  Finbar and I actually still expected to get stopped somewhere before we left the airport grounds and have to pay the air fare but it never happened.

We got off at the tube station and managed to find out that the street where Finbar’s brother lived was only about fifteen minutes away.  We were tempted to get a taxi.  There was one in Warrenpoint but I don’t think anyone ever used it, unlike today where there are plenty of taxis in Warrenpoint ferrying the great unwashed home after a night on the stout.  We decided to walk.

This was London 1974.  Flower power was well past its heyday but life was still pretty colourful and we were there to enjoy.  Finbar’s brother, as did the other fellows who lived in their shared house, wore flared jeans, loose Thai dyed tea shirts, coloured John Lennon glasses, called everyone man, worshipped music and smoked the plants that were growing all around the house.

We liked music but these guys were freaky.  The one I remember most was Jimmy the Link.  I think he may have been given this name for he might have been the proverbial missing link. He was a carpenter by trade but had waist length, straight, blond hair.  He, when we were out and about, wore a black velvet jacket, blue denim shirt and jeans.  He looked like any normal hippy but really stood out when he opened his mouth to speak for not only did he have a thick Irish accent, like the rest of us, but he had a stammer and stutter that would murder you to listen to.

Within two days, Finbar and I had jobs and digs.  We managed to get a job in an asbestos factory on Iver Lane in Uxbridge and we secured digs in a house that was next door to the factory.  We paid ten pounds a week to share a bedroom and have one bath a week, each.  As students we didn’t have to pay tax, so bring on the summer.

Finbar and I fell into a routine.  We would catch the first tube train into Uxbridge in the morning.  We would still be in our best finery from the night before.  We would buy two fresh loaves of bread from the bakery in Uxbridge and a pack of butter and we would eat this as we walked toward our workplace and digs.  We would be with our fellow workmates who were on their way to work, so Finbar and I would nip into our digs, change into our working clothes and reappear to continue on to work.

It was a very interesting experience for us.  We were meeting all sorts of people.  Three Ugandans worked there and we couldn’t understand why they would arrive at work in a huge Ford Zephyr, wearing three piece suits and carrying brief cases.  They would come in and change into boiler suits and spend their day, like the rest of us, on the shop floor.  We learned that they had told all their neighbours that they were managers and were pretending to be so.

There was the obligatory Irishman, the Scot, and a variety of English people.  On our first day Finbar and I were called into the blade shop.  This is where a man sharpened the blades from the saws that we used to cut huge sheets of asbestos into manageable sizes.  He told us that we would have to pay him fifty pence a week to join his union.  That was very close to the cost of one pint of beer, so Finbar and I refused.  He informed us that we would not be able to work there.  We joined our first union.

The union met every so often and Cyril, who was the shop steward, would have to read out the minutes of the meeting to the workforce.  The first time he did this Finbar and I cracked up as he had great difficulty reading words made up of more than five letters.  After the next meeting he made Finbar read out the minutes.

Of course as the French say ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.’  Pay day every week would see us all aim for the nearest pub, which was The Malt Shovel, just across the road from the factory.  We were still paid in cash so the drink flowed freely.   One chap, a huge Pakistani, joined us one day and was disgusted at how much rent Finbar and I were paying.  He suggested that we should move in with him.  He lived alone in a three bedroom house and would only charge us five pounds a week each in rent.  It was a tempting offer, but as he added that we wouldn’t have to pay any rent if we slept with him, I made a mental note to make sure that my legs would remain covered at all times, even when I was having a bath, once a week.

Celtic Illumination, part 51, Finbar, Special Branch and bandit country.

 So; if you’ve read all that has gone before you will now know that I have been set on a course of training by a secret cabal to become the greatest Master Candle Maker in the world.  On top of that, I am the high Chief of the clan O Neill and the true King of Ireland, although as my young self I do not know any of these facts yet.  All I do know is that the world is full of perverts, I have the loveliest legs in Ireland, I had been reunited with my bike and oh yes, and I had managed to get expelled from Violent Hell, twice!

The summer holidays were approaching and I was frustrated at the fact that I had been offered free passage to Europe, but there might be a price to pay, which I was not willing to entertain.  I decided that if there were two of us, by sticking together we might make it to Rotterdam unmolested.  I began asking about.  I had plotted out a route on the map in my pocket diary, my bike was in top condition, I had a rucksack at home and was hungry for adventure.  

They were not many takers, probably because they didn’t have as fantastic a bike as I had, however I was approached by one old school friend.  Finbar Magee.  Finbar was a lovely fellow, his family lived in the middle of bandit country, were farmers by trade and Finbar sported the most wonderful head of ginger hair you had ever seen.  Finbar explained that he heard I was trying to find someone to accompany me on a jaunt abroad.  We began to talk and I discovered that Finbar wanted to go to London for the summer.

I eventually agreed that I would go with Finbar to London.  He had a brother there so we could spend a night or two on his floor until we got ourselves sorted out.  Seemed like a plan so I accepted. This was a Friday night, so on the Saturday Finbar came to our house with his parents. Introductions were made and the parents gave permission.  Finbar and myself went into Warrenpoint and went to see Mervyn.  Mervyn was working in a travel agents office.

“Mervyn, we want to go to London.”

Mervyn amazed us as he flipped through all sorts of books and charts and time tables.  I hadn’t really given it much thought and actually had to begin to think about the trip when Mervyn asked if we wanted to fly, or go by boat, and would we want to go from Belfast or Dublin?.  We opted for the flying route of Belfast to London and waited as Mervyn arranged the process.  Rather than pay the fare Mervyn gave us a letter which we were to hand in to the British Airways desk at Aldergrove airport.

That night I went to Finbar’s house, as it was closer to the airport, and the following morning his mother drove us to Aldergrove.  We went straight to the British Airways check in desk and presented ourselves and the letter from Mervyn.  The desk was about chest high so the staff probably didn’t see Finbar and myself count out the money and hold it ready.  They presented us with tickets and as a small queue was forming asked us to move through to the departure lounge.  We did.

We stuffed the money back into our pockets and began to wonder about this flying thing.  We were two very clever fellows from Violent Hell so we should be able to work it out.  We came to the conclusion that the aeroplane would be like a bus, we would pay as we got on, and there would be a conductor or something like that.  The flight was boarding so we asked the stewardesses who were directing us to the bus if we should pay them.  They smiled and laughed at us.

There were no stewards or stewardesses on the bus taking us to the aeroplane so we knew we wouldn’t have to pay the bus driver, we weren’t daft.  The steward who welcomed us onto the aircraft smiled and ushered us to our seats.  Once airborne we knew that someone would come along, like a bus conductor, and issue us with tickets so if someone was flying to London , like us, then they would pay x amount, if someone was flying to Paris they would pay 2x and so on.  But what if someone got on the plane at London?  We realised that this flying business was quite complicated so scoffed the nosh they offered us seeing as it was included in the fare.

We got off the aircraft in London and knew that we would pay as we entered the terminal.  However we didn’t, we found ourselves standing by the carrousel waiting for our bags when two hands approached us in a northerly direction and were placed on our shoulders.   They didn’t even say hello, not once, or twice, or even thrice!

“Peter Morris and Finbar Magee?  We nodded as warrant cards were flashed in our faces and  were not exactly delighted to be informed that Special Branch were going to take us away so that we could help them with their inquiries.  This was just before the Guilford four, Maguire seven and Birmingham six incidents so Finbar and I knew that there was a good chance we could be locked away for a good number of years and all because one of us had ginger hair.  We had tried to pay the fare on many occasions since arriving at Aldergrove so with the letter from Mervyn, and the cash we hoped we wouldn’t be in too much trouble.

Luckily they only tried to pin the burning down of a hotel in Warrenpoint the previous evening on us.  They knew we were from Warrenpoint and that we had probably run away to hide after we had burned the place down, as you do.  After my experiences with the priests and getting expelled for doing nothing, except telling the truth, I was a little bit worried.  Luckily the story that we had spent the night in bandit country was backed up by a number of people, including the pervert priest, so we were allowed to leave although they very kindly informed us that they would be keeping an eye on us.  It was lovely to know that for two young fellows from rural Ireland would be protected by a shady police group.

We came back out to the carousel to find our two bags still circling, looking very sad and lonely.  We collected them and as getting arrested, or lifted, as we referred to it in Ireland was an almost every day occurrence we paid little attention to what had just happened and began to wonder where we would pay our fare.  We left the arrivals hall and entered the main terminal building.  We could see the exit doors where we knew we would have to show our tickets and pay the fare. 

We still wondered where we should pay our fare as we stood outside Heathrow terminal and realised that we were quite some distance from home.

Dude!1 Celtic Illumination Sweet!!

Celtic Illumination, keeping it real

Celtic Illumination, part 50, perverts, provo’s and prossies

I mentioned some time ago that my father had stuck up for me on two occasions that I could remember.  The first was at Violent Hell when the priests thought they could get rid of me as they were unable to teach me anything.  The second time he stood up for me was in Warrenpoint.  I felt good giving him a couple of packs of his favourite pipe tobacco every week and he accepted my smuggling as most people would, as a bit of a giggle, a bit of harmless craic.

One Sunday afternoon, I was in the back kitchen, when I heard a commotion.  I came through to see my father moving quickly, in the front garden, towards two men who stood at the gate.  He was waving his arms and shouting at them telling them to go away.  I recognised them as the bouncers from the Osbourne hotel; my mother explained that my father thought they were customs men coming to harass me.  Thankfully we managed to catch my father before he got to the gate. 

I always found the bouncers very interesting.  I wondered how they could stand there all night and remain calm and at the appropriate moment end an argument, or fight, with the minimum of punches.  They were both experienced boxers from Newry and always very smartly dressed and always happy and joking.  Except at one o clock in the morning when they knew it would be likely their specific skills would be needed.

I do remember one function where there were no bouncers.  Spud, the manager, called me in and told me to clear out the bar in the main ballroom.  I thought it a strange request, but did so.  Later that day I opened the rear delivery doors and a number of vans pulled up, men clambered out and stocked the bar.  That evening a fund raising event was to be held for a Republican cause.  I had to man the bar, but I wasn’t to charge for drinks, I was to serve drinks.  All free.

The Wolfe Tones were playing as were a number of other highly popular republican groups.  It was a great night and everyone was very well behaved, until the army arrived.  If you can imagine the bar was beside the main entrance door to the large ballroom.  I was amazed as I heard a commotion and then, saw what seemed to be a never ending line of heavily armed soldiers, like a never ending line of ants, running into the ballroom.

Everyone was arrested, even me.  And we were all photographed and fingerprinted.  As we stood in line you could hear the people in front taking the mickey out of the English army officer who was trying to record our personal information. 

What’s your name? 

Pat. 

Is it Pat or Patrick? 

No I’m Pat, is your name Patrick? 

No.  Is your name Pat or Patrick? 

Pat, what’s your name? 

That’s not important, where do you live Pat? 

In a house, where do you live………    

It was quite a laugh and probably helped along by the nervous energy in the place.  Once photographed and fingerprinted each of us were shown the front door.   I passed Spud who asked me to come back the following morning; early.

I did and was given a clip board by Spud and told to follow him as we made our way around the hotel on an inspection.  Because the soldiers were wearing camouflage paint on their hands and faces any wall that they had touched and was marked had to be repainted, and not just the wall but the whole corridor.  Spud was saying things like ‘bed destroyed’ while I might find it hard to see anything wrong with the bed, but what was I to know.  Spud took the list from me at the end, added the figures up, probably multiplied by two, added ten per cent for luck, and had the British army pay up.  Such was life in Northern Ireland.  Although the troubles ruined many, many, families and lives, the troubles also made many people very, very, wealthy.

My evasion skills were even brought to the fore while at the Osbourne.  It was a winter’s night.  I had closed the bar and was walking home when I suspected that someone was following me.  At that time in Northern Ireland it was appropriate to be scared, if you thought you might be being followed, for there were quite a few nutters running about the province.  I called on the training I had received in Belfast as a Master Candle Maker and stuck to the main thoroughfares.  I hoped it wouldn’t end in hand to hand kung fu.

The figure kept pace with me and I knew that I was in trouble when I came to the bottom of the lane, the Bridal Loanan, for there were no street lights.  There was no fecking street either just a rough old lane.  I decided to wait under a lamp post and use the street light, should a confrontation ensue.  With hindsight it may not have been a good idea to adopt the stance of a lady of the night but I waited as the figure came closer.  I held my breath hoping he would walk on past but he didn’t.  He grabbed a hold of me and dragged me into the shadows.  He claimed to be from the IRA and said he was going to search me before he would question me.

I had nothing to hide from the IRA and allowed him to search me, but as his hands began to linger, I realised that here was another fecking pervert.  My hand to hand, street fighting skills came in to play and I ran home as fast as I could, having delivered what I hoped would be a series of effective blows.  I kept an eye open for him for years but never saw him again until about five or six years ago when I was informed that he was an elderly bachelor who lived on a remote farm and had nothing to do with the IRA.

But it would seem that with my good looks, and with having the loveliest legs in Ireland, I was destined to be hounded by perverts for a good many years.  Even a friend’s father who was a builder and worked on some of the houses being constructed along the Bridal Loanan, would joke and laugh with us, asking us to perform feats of strength, even to wrestle.  One day, on my way home from school, I accepted his challenge but as I wrestled with him I could feel the screwdriver in his pocket dig into me.  It was as I struggled to get away from him that I realised that he wasn’t a carpenter, he was a bricklayer, and he didn’t have a screwdriver in his pocket!

Celtic Illumination, hell yeah!

Celtic Illumination, part 49, German perverts, condoms and butter

As I mentioned before, life in Warrenpoint was very similar to the television series The Dukes of Hazard.   I wouldn’t match any character from the television show to a person in Warrenpoint but the good humoured lawlessness was quite a feature of Warrenpoint life.  The idea that the border, between Northern Ireland and the Republic, was a very important definition was of course a huge joke to many people.  It didn’t matter how many customs men, or soldiers, or police you placed on the border, it was still possible to cross from North to South and back again without encountering one road block.

As a youngster I remember having to have the family car searched when crossing from the North into the Republic and then having to display a special paper triangle in the windscreen to show that you had legally entered the South.  But this was Ireland and some custom posts would close at six o clock in the evening leaving the road wide open.  The main smuggled items were petrol, cigarettes, poteen, condoms and butter.  These items remained the stable units of local smuggling however other items would come into the flow now and again such as video recorders or new electrical devices.

The CB radio network helped greatly and with a huge community of truckers reporting on roadblocks the odds were quite often in favour of the smuggler.  We were not full time smugglers.  Someone would telephone, an order would be placed, a price agreed and the transaction would be put into play.  A few years ago I was sitting in a pub with Peter, Phelim and my wife.  The barman held a telephone receiver out to Peter informing him that the call was for him.

We didn’t know who was calling but we heard Peter, now operating as a truck driver, agree to buy five thousand, at one pound each, the following day.  The receiver was returned to the bar man and we of course asked Peter what he was buying.  Viagra he replied then excitedly telling us the price he knew he could get for them from his contact in Belfast. 

Poteen was a favourite commodity, always in demand, not just from tourists but from many of the ordinary decent citizens.  There was a fair amount brewed in the North but it was a great cloak and dagger affair to get some, much easier to drive into the south and fill a car boot.   We all would find our own little niche, if we were interested at all, and as you may expect I eventually found mine.

You may wonder what relevance small scale smuggling has on a Master Candle Maker and future King of Ireland.  Well; as King of Ireland I would be responsible for raising taxes and I should have first-hand experience of how certain people might circumvent the law.  My chance to enter the smuggling fraternity came when I was working behind the bar at the Osbourne Hotel in Warrenpoint.   I was only a part time bar man but would spend most of my free time there. 

Warrenpoint had a large docks complex served well by a major road network.  As such, many container ships from different countries came into Warrenpoint.  The sailors would spend their free time in the pubs and clubs although the captains and senior engineers would socialise in more upmarket establishments such as the Osbourne.  One captain, who was in charge of a vessel that went back and forth between Warrenpoint and Rotterdam, claimed that I made the best Irish coffees in the world.  Had we then known that I was the future King of Ireland we would have been aware  why I made the best Irish coffees in the world.

This fellow encouraged me to buy some smuggled cigarettes, which I did and sold them on, making a small profit.  Staying within my own circle of friends I accepted his offer of being able to get anything I wanted and was soon moving quite a large quantity of booze, tobacco and cigarettes on a regular basis.  He kept offering me German porn magazines, which were very explicit and crude although, truthfully, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on in many of the photographs, such was our innocence.

We established a good business relationship and I was bringing in specific orders.  One of the three brothers, that owned the Osbourne, had me get him French cigarettes while another brother wanted a specific French brandy.  I had been offered free passage to Rotterdam any time I wanted and as often as I wanted and this started me thinking of what adventures might lie beyond Northern Ireland.

One day my captain announced that it was too dangerous for him to take the goods off the ship.  He could lose his job if he was caught while I was underage and would only get a slap on the wrist.  It was quite a simple and plain statement which would have been hard to disagree with.  I however found that for the first time I didn’t trust my captain and under no circumstance was I going to his ship on my own.

It was a Saturday evening and the weekly electric shuffle was beginning to fill with people.  I managed to get one girl to agree to accompany me, to collect some stuff, and the pair of us set of for the docks.  We boarded the ship and met my captain who brought us below deck to his cabin.  Here he offered us a drink, which was Bacardi and coke with a squeeze of lemon.  It was really quite nice but time was passing and I had to get back to work as the Saturday evening crowd would be growing as would the pressure on the remaining bar staff.

I asked if we could conclude the transaction and his whole demeanour changed.  He wondered if it were possible for the two of us to get into bed, the girl could watch or, better still, join in.  I now found myself in another ‘sleeping in underpants is unhygienic’ situation.  But rather than shake and cry, this time I stood and clenched my fists.  Business was forgotten about and I used every ounce of cunning and guile to get off that ship, unmolested.

The girl that had accompanied me was unimpressed, she never wanted to see me again or speak to me again, we were finished.  I felt bad that she had been put in such a situation but knew also that our relationship was not the only thing that was finished, so was my smuggling career.

Celtic Illumination, madder than the maddest cow

Celtic Illumination, part 48, a funeral, a riot and a gun fight

Despite the fact that we were in the middle of a war and the mention of Warrenpoint can stir up memories of one of the worst atrocities of the whole conflict, I can honestly say that I had no experience of religious animosity in Warrenpoint.  In fact one of my good friends ‘kicked with the other foot’ as they say to describe someone who is of a different religion.  Mervyn was a Protestant and a member of the Warrenpoint Orange Lodge, but he was one of us, he was a normal young fellow growing up.

I can’t actually remember him chucking stones at army patrols with us but that is not to say that he wasn’t there.  Mervyn was not the only Protestant in our group.  It’s very sad that in this day and age knuckle draggers still spout the same old drivel about hating the other side.  I fear for the future of my country.  Mervyn once asked if we would take him to an IRA funeral in Newry.  This was the sort of event that even we would stay away from because in those days trouble was going to happen, not even at a funeral but especially at a funeral.

Studs Morgan and myself, called so because he was very good at Gaelic football, agreed that we would accompany Mervyn up to Newry.  The graveyard was on the Warrenpoint side of Newry so it would be quite easy for us to get there.  It was quite a large funeral for a senior member of the IRA.  Thousands of people attended as did hundreds of soldiers.  We arrived at the graveyard after the funeral procession.  The graveyard was heaving with people and they packed in tightly around the grave.  The reason for this was that the IRA colour party could come out from the crowd, fire a volley of shots over the coffin and then disappear.

The soldiers and police on the other hand would try to take the tricolour off the coffin especially if it carried the black gloves and beret too.  They would want to arrest the members of the colour party and of course they would want to confiscate the weapons used.  It would be wrong to categorise it as a game of cat and mouse, for people died and that is not a game.

Every high building around the graveyard was covered with soldiers, helicopters hovered above, yet the foot patrols did keep a distance.  The usual people gave speeches over the grave; it was strange to hear their actual voices for they were not allowed to speak on the television.  As the colour party raised their weapons the helicopters pulled away and with the whole ceremony over, the crowd turned and began to move back into Newry.

We hung back and Mervyn was not just grateful to have been at such a historical event but to have been so close in.  He asked if we could follow the crowd into Newry for we knew that there was going to be one hell of a riot.  We kept our distance but were very much aware of the destruction and violence that was occurring two hundred yards ahead of us.  Cars were being burned and any police or army units were being subjected to a heavy volley of bricks and bottles.

The police and army had established a line, across the road by the Newry market.  The crowd formed up and as the troops and police began using rubber bullets and CS gas the crowd began using paint bombs and petrol bombs.  It was quite amazing the way cars would pull up at the rear of the riot and crate loads of petrol and paints bombs would be delivered, talk about fast food deliveries.   Mervyn wanted to get a little closer and I can assure you that he did not want to join in the rioting, but being so close to such an event gives you one hell of an adrenaline rush.   It was tremendously exciting, in a scary way.

We began to cross the road but stopped mid-way for we had become aware of some loud cracks.  It was difficult with the commotion of the riot to not only establish what the sounds were, but where they were coming from.  Two land rovers full of soldiers screaming towards us drew our attention to the fact that this was the direction the noises had come from.  The soldiers were aware of this too, for they were trying to get away from the noise.  On top of a high building nearby were a number of IRA snipers and they were quite happily opening up at the two land rovers.  Once the proverbial penny had dropped, it didn’t take long for us to retreat back across the road, away from the riot and hold ourselves close against the wall.  The initial shock was over and the soldiers were beginning to organise themselves and engage the IRA men.  We watched in amazement as a huge black soldier rammed into the wall beside us.

He looked at us and suggested that we shouldn’t really be there, which we took as a very good recommendation and walked as fast as we could away from the soldiers, the fire fight and the riot.

Wax mining in the Mourne Mountains by Celtic Illumination

Celtic Illumination, part 47, a snatch squad of nuns, The Wolfe Tones and fish

I suppose I was very lucky to have been chosen by the double, top secret, cabal to be entered into training to become the world’s leading Master Candle Maker.   God, as you are aware, chose me to be the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and the true King of Ireland.  Now in Warrenpoint the various strands of my training were coming together.  My mother had been an opera singer so from a young age I had been immersed in classical music. At Violent Hell I had studied the piano and the violin. 

Unfortunately this fell into the ‘family tradition’ excuse for doing things.  I was even given the violin that had been passed down from generation to generation.  I still have it for I wouldn’t have been so cruel to send one of my children to that horrible place.  Studying music was a good ruse to get out of various study periods in the evening.  Rather than sit rigid at your desk in the study hall pretending to translate something or other you could stretch out in a classroom all to yourself, hang out the window and have a smoke and generally relax although you would have to be on your guard as the dean, the Wee Scut would patrol the corridors listening for the screeching’s of someone practising a scale.

Once you reached a suitable grade you would join the school orchestra and after a while, if good enough, you would be allowed to join the Newry orchestra.  The school orchestra actually entered a school orchestra competition held in Belfast.  I remember we travelled up in the old school bus and we actually won our event.  I’m sure you are impressed, as were most of the other boys at the school who were so proud of their ever growing collection of Gaelic football trophies.  At last we music geeks had a little bit of kudos.    Of course it didn’t last for very long as the other boys, the rough and tumble football crowd, found out that we were the only school orchestra in that competition.  It had been a particularly violent week in Northern Ireland with bombs and killings by the dozen so most sensible schools had decided not to attend.   In my defence I would have to say that we did have to reach a certain standard to be declared winners.

Attending practise sessions with the Newry orchestra was quite exciting.  The other boys would be jealous as you would have a full evening away from the school and not only that but you would be seeing girls.  The girl’s boarding school in Newry would allow some of its students to practise with the Newry Orchestra too.  We would just sit there and fall in love with any girl that looked pretty.  Of course the girls were protected by a snatch squad of battle hardened nuns, who I understand were almost as vicious and violent as the priests at Violent Hell.   Stories of punishments such as kneeling on pencils, Chinese burns and hair pulling were always circulating.

I don’t know why but once a year, usually May time, Violent Hell would host a dance.  It would be held in the gymnasium and the girls from Saint Michaels in Lurgan would attend.  It was quite a night and as juniors we were not allowed to attend, we could only sit at our desks and dream.  One year I was actually called out of the study hall during the dance.  I wasn’t lucky enough to attend the function but my sister was the head girl at saint Michaels and she had brought me a bag of sweets. I think it was the first and only time she was ever nice to me, and I liked it.

Now, in Warrenpoint, I was being exposed to even more culture.  The dancing I learned at the Gaeltacht’s allowed me to participate in the weekly ceilidhs in Warrenpoint.  However the country and western music was a big part of life in Warrenpoint as was the growing pop culture of David Bowie and Marc Bolan.  An extra dimension was the folk music element which had a rebel edge.  This would come from people like Christy Moore or groups like the Wolfe Tones who were then considered to be the political wing of the IRA.  On top of which we had our very own stars like Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher and Dana.   A truly eclectic dip in the sea of music culture.

I believe that we were really lucky, as on top of everything that was available to us, I able to experience and enjoy the show bands.  This would be a group of seven or eight musicians who would perform country and western tunes, cover versions of current pop hits and even rock and roll, with every tune being delivered with great enthusiasm.  As you may expect we didn’t stand on the dance floor and twist and shake like any normal teenager, no we jived.  Expert jivers had the greatest respect and on many evenings would give displays of their talents.

I enjoyed all of it whether it was performing a jig, a reel or a hornpipe, or simply jiving to rock and roll.  We were not passionate music lovers; we did appreciate a good tune, well delivered.  We, I suppose, were more interested in meeting girls.  I do remember one evening.  I had been at the docks helping to unload some trawlers which I was usually paid for in cod or lobster.  I had gone home and dropped off a huge cod that I had been given and went off to the local ceilidh.  I had taken a small bag of herring too so that as we danced about, a girl would hold her hand out to take mine and I would hand her a fish.