Despite the fact that I am perhaps the only remaining Master
Candle Maker in the world, and a Royal one at that, the organisation that found
me and enabled my training still exists and continues to search high and low
for the next Master Candle Maker to make an appearance. As I explained before, the Tibetans copied
many of the techniques used to locate Master Candle Makers to find the
re-incarnation of the Dali lama. They go
and stare at a lake for a while but the secret society that is behind Master Candle
Makers refuses to release any information about their methodology, but I can
reveal to you some of their training methods which you may want to subject
yourself to in order to become a successful Master Candle Maker.
Even as a child in Belfast I was constantly put under threat
to enable my training to take on a more realistic edge. Like at my boarding school, Violent Hell,
where I was made to stand out as being the only boy in the school to wear short
trousers in Belfast, as a youngster, I was also made to stand out. You may wonder how this was at all possible. How can you make a small child stand out in a
large city where people were more interested in figures like George Best or Van
the Man? I was brought up in the
Catholic tradition, so, if you wanted to train a child to Ninja standards of
self-defence, where would you make that child live, especially if they were
Catholic and they lived in Belfast.
Correct, and a very popular comedian from Northern Ireland,
James Young, actually sang a song about me, “I’m the only Catholic on the
Shankill Road!” Life was certainly
interesting. My father who drove to and from school each day refused to allow
me to travel with him in the car in case the other boys discovered who I was
and subsequently picked on me. My school
day journeys would make events such as the running of the bulls in Pamplona
child’s play compared to what I had to endure.
Normally it would be after school when the action would take
place. I, to get home, would have to
walk up the Crumlin Road to the Ardoyne and then down the Woodvale Road. Walking up the Crumlin Road meant that I
would have to walk through the hundreds of boys from Saint Gabriel’s, Catholic,
intermediate school on their way home. I
would often find myself held against a wall, usually the wall that surrounds
Holy Cross church and questioned. “Are
you a Catholic or a Protestant?” they would ask. “Catholic,” I would reply. “Say the Hail Mary,” “In Irish,
Latin or English?” I would ask. “Say feck the Queen.” I would oblige and would be allowed to
continue.
On the Woodvale Road I would be walking along with hundreds
of protestant boys on their way home from Somerdale, Protestant, secondary school. Held against another wall but normally still
the wall surrounding Holy Cross church in Ardoyne, I would again be asked if I
was a Catholic or a Protestant. “Protestant!”
I would say. “Sing the sash!” they would
demand and then their coup de grace, “Say fuck the Pope.”
As with all forms of training reality plays a big part in how
effective and significant the training can be and it was one day, I must have
been complacent, I was stopped by a rogue group of Catholic boys. Being on the Woodvale Road I announced that I
was a Protestant and received a beating I would remember for the remainder of
my life. By the way I wouldn’t remember
that encounter for the rest of my life because of the severity of the attack. No. I
remember it because I defended myself with my badminton racquet which didn’t fare
too well and I received a beating from my father for allowing such an expensive
piece of sporting equipment to become damaged.
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