I am pleased to see that many of you are beginning to
understand that although you may not be able to exactly copy my rigorous training
you may duplicate it for your own life, or your children, if you don’t like
them that much. Some of you may slowly
be realising that you are actually undergoing training as we speak. Such is the secrecy of the training for
Master Candle Makers many are not aware there are being trained until it is
over.
The Belfast where I grew up has gone. It is such a beautiful city and what a
wonderful playground. I think it was my
final year in primary school, Holy Cross Boys, when we would have a class test
every Friday. First, second and third
places would receive tickets to go to the Ulster museum on the Saturday morning
to see films about Flipper the dolphin.
In this day and age you might expect young Johnny to be taken
in the family four by four across Belfast, dropped at the museum and later
picked up and returned home probably via a drive through fast food outlet. This was Belfast, during the late
sixties. I would normally walk, or skip,
half way across Belfast, on my own. I would
walk down the Shankill Road and I can promise you when the twelfth of July is
approaching the roads and pavements are decorated with flags and bunting and
arches and it is a wonderful sight.
My friends used to take me to the Queens Bridge in Belfast on
the twelfth of July to watch the bands returning from the field. It was a fantastic sight and what little boy doesn’t
love a marching band. As luck would have
it our next door neighbour, Cecil Ross, was a senior member of the Shankill orange
lodge and on the eleventh evening he would take me with him and we would tour
all the bonfires on the Shankill. It is
only now that I can see that my mentors had arranged for the Orange Lodge to
expose me to their customs and rituals, after all, I would eventually become
their King.
The library I used was on the Shankill Road and I might pop
in on my way to the museum. After the film
gangs of us would rampage through the botanical gardens, that sat next door to
the museum, and then we would disperse and each go our separate way. I would always head for Smithfield market. Strange that a couple of streets away was
Royal Avenue where all manner of shops sold a multitude of shiny plastic stuff
but I was more content wandering through a dusty old market that sold
everything from bric a brac to second hand wood screws.
For me there was no distinction between Catholic and Protestant. I never questioned who was what or why. Our neighbour may have been a senior member
of the Orange Lodge but across the road lived a man called O Hare. He was an elderly man with a huge raspberry nose
indicating a liking for the drink. He often
came to our house and asked me to take some letters to post for him. He always put the stamps on the envelopes in
front of me and he always put the stamps on the envelopes upside down. I remember asking why he did this and was
told that he was ‘one of the boys at the post office’.
It didn’t mean anything to me then, and I was sure that the
Queen would never know of the insult aimed at her, but one day, too late to go
and talk to Mister O Hare about his experiences, one day I realised, and had it
confirmed, that Mister O Hare had been one of the original volunteers at the
post office in Dublin in 1916.
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