Celtic Illumination, part 325, The mothers of invention.

I didn’t hang around too long in Shotley with Tony and Mary, I wanted to get back home and find out how far along Jeffrey had managed to push my three new prospective clients, plus, I had an idea for a new project.  I was still involved with the cadets and still working occasionally for TPT, who still would not employ me correctly and insisted that I produce acceptable business receipts that they would honour.  It was quite a ridiculous situation but what else can you expect when you are working with morons?  Jeffery and myself were constantly at odds over the way I worked.  Jeffrey insisted that I should not write anything unless I was going to be paid for it, but that wasn’t me.  It was the excitement of each project that carried me along.

For example with the O Grady/ Lily Savage project, no publishing contract had been investigated but I had already completed the first novel which we all knew they had read and liked.  I had almost completed the second novel in the series and was planning a third.  Jeffery was telling me to slow down, even stop, and Brendan Murphy, Savage’s boyfriend and manager, was complaining that we hadn’t even agreed on the first novel while I had almost completed the second novel.  It’s not my fault if they can’t keep up.  Of course my new career as a ghost writer was not the only form of writing that I was involved in, I was still firing off a barrage of letters to social services, civil servants and local MP’s demanding that people in Northern Ireland, who had been adopted, should have the right to be given information about their birth parents. Anyone else in the UK could, why couldn’t we?

It was quite a shock one day to find out that we had won.  I hadn’t really expected it, which I know is daft, but on reflection I was more interested in writing letters and complaining, I had never considered what I would do if we won.  I got a letter saying that the law had been changed, that I could now access my birth records.  Although as this involved civil servants and social workers they had to make a fudge of the process before they even started.  I was told that if I wanted to find out any information about my birth I would have to go to Belfast and have a one and a half hour, mandatory, interview with a social worker to determine if I was mature enough to be given the details of my birth mother.  As you can imagine one or two valves in my head exploded.  For a start how dare they suggest that a social worker would determine if I was mature enough?  And secondly I had always been told that my mother had died giving birth to me, so what was the fecking point in telling me about her.  I needed to know who my father was and where he was.

The travel agent was surprised when I booked my standard return flight to Belfast, with hire car, and didn’t tell him that I would be back in a day or two to cancel the ticket.  I flew into Belfast harbour airport, collected my car and set off to find the social worker.  It was a standard row of houses that had been converted into offices, near Queens University.  I was welcomed in and shown to an office that looked as if it had once been a back bed room.  I sat myself down and waited.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, I honestly expected them to tell me the name of my dead mother and nothing else.  But I was sure of one thing and that is that I was going to give the social worker a piece of my mind.  The social worker came in and she was a woman, she introduced herself as Maria.

We settled down, I declined the offer of tea or coffee and she began to explain what was about to happen.  She then asked me to tell her what I knew of my birth.  At that time I was unaware of the snatch squad of battle hardened Carmelite nuns who had spirited me away so I told her what I knew.   I said that my mother had died giving birth to me and that my father, a recently qualified professional, had decided to leave me in Ireland where I would receive better schooling and medical care, should I have gone with him.  I was considering adding how stupid they were giving me the details of my dead mother when in fact I would need the details of my father, but for some reason I didn’t, for Maria was sitting smiling at me. 

“I’m sorry Peter,” she said.  “But many people who were adopted in Northern Ireland, around the same time as yourself, were told that either one, or both, of their parents were dead.”  I can remember exactly what she said to me but it wasn’t registering with me, she was talking about other people not me.  “Your mother and father are both alive and well, they are still married to each other and you have eleven brothers and sisters.” I was incapable of thought, the proverbial spanner had been thrown into the works and my brain had stopped.  She began handing me papers; there was my birth certificate, with all the details of my parents and myself.  There were reports from social workers and contracts from the convent where I had been born.  “When you were born,” she said.  “You were called Malachy Peter O Neill.”

She then left me alone with all the paperwork which I read and read again.  For over thirty years all I had thought about was my father.  I can still remember at boarding school secretly wishing that he would turn up and rescue me from the nightmare that was Violent Hell.  Now the only thought in my head was how nice a name Malachy was.  After about ten minutes Maria came back in, I think normal people would have shed some tears during this ‘alone time,’ but as you all know, I am far from normal.  Maria went on to explain that the moment they received my application to be given this information  they had a duty to inform my mother who had been given an assurance, at my birth, that I would never be given these details and would never contact her, or my father.

Maria told me that my mother ran a flower shop in some small village in Northern Ireland, she would not tell me where they lived, but she would come to Belfast three mornings each week to buy flowers.  I had visions of Elisa Doolittle skipping through the streets of Belfast.  She gave me two photographs of my mother, which were useless; you could not see any features or really see the person in the photograph.  She then said that she had spoken to my mother on three occasions and that my mother was considering meeting me.  If I was agreeable Maria would continue to communicate with my mother and she would arrange a meeting between the pair of us.  I agreed to her suggestion and left.  Nothing had really registered with me; I know as I accelerated out and away from Belfast, I was smiling like an eejit, because all I was thinking was isn’t Malachy a lovely name.

I know I was still smiling when I drove in to Warrenpoint.  I went straight to Phelim, the head good ol boy himself.  As far as I was concerned it was my birthday and I needed to celebrate.  It felt good telling Phelim and Peter about my new name, which didn’t make much difference as I had, for all the time that they knew me been called Peter, now despite the fact that I knew my original name was Malachy, and told them so, they still called me Boris.  I could see that the only person this information made any sense to was myself.  Before our couple of drinks turned in to a full blown session I left and decided to go home and dump the car and my bags and say hello.  I passed a flower shop and wondered if my parents were from Warrenpoint.  They couldn’t be, could they?

Suddenly the whole thing opened up before me, I wondered if I had ever met them or seen them, and eleven brothers and sisters, plus Carol, that would be an awful lot of birthday cards.  I walked in to our house and wondered if I should tell my mother what had happened.  Sounds strange that I was considering telling my mother that I had found out who my birth mother had been.  But I wondered if she had been lied to as well, so as we sat and had a cup of tea I told her that I had a meeting with social workers in Belfast that morning and that I had been given the details of my birth.  She didn’t seem to be affected by the news, I don’t know if I had expected her to feel that I had let her down by going through the process.  But I do remember what she said.  The woman who had told me all my life that my mother had died giving birth to me, now said, “When we bought you we were given all your birth details, and Carol’s, but we just threw them on the fire.”

Celtic Illumination, part 324, The cat in the hat, with the attitude.

I’m afraid that once again I must start this blog with the most horrendous news of yet another casualty resulting from our drive for world domination.  I suppose revealing the casualty in the blog is similar to being ‘mentioned in dispatches’ or receiving the dreaded telegram from the war office, ‘missing in action presumed dead.’  I have to admit that when I learned that I was to become the King of Ireland I never expected that I would have to deal with the horrors of war, again.  Late last night it was revealed to me that Patti Welsh, a long-time member of The Illuminati, has been critically injured.  The poor girl has ‘laughed her ass off,’ which is a great setback for the movement, and no doubt socially humiliating for Patti.

Patti was probably encouraged to join the Illuminati by the double top secret cabal who have been preparing me to become the world’s leading Master Candle Maker, the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and of course the King of Ireland.  Patti like the rest of you, The Illuminati, has a specific skill that they bring to the group.  No one is here because they want to be.  Patti’s skill is that she is a history buff, but more importantly she is an Irish history buff with a creative talent for leading people through Tir Na nOg, The Tain and even The Lorrha Missal.  As I am about to use this blog to explain exactly why it is that I have a claim to the throne of Ireland I, in fact we, need people like Patti to inspect my claim, to validate my right and to show you, The Illuminati, that I really am the true King of Ireland.  So let us all turn towards America, over there in the USA, and send our thoughts and wishes that she heals quickly and returns to our ranks.  

And return is perhaps the theme I may adopt today for my musings.  I had hardly returned to England when I was asked to return to the Isle of Man.  Before many of you start jumping to conclusions it wasn’t the Manx constabulary who wanted me to return, they could never prove anything anyway, it was Tony and Mary.  They had decided to return to Ipswich, well; Shotley they had had enough of Island life.  Certain people suggested that because the Isle of Man was a tax haven, it was top heavy with millionaires, which meant that Tony wasn’t the richest man in the village.  In fact by Manx standards he was quite poor, although if you wanted to see real poverty on the Isle of Man all you had to do was look at Clancey.  There you would see real hardship, addiction, abuse, criminality, and that was just his poor wife Sally.

Tony asked me to hire a van near Heysham, pick it up, then take it over to him on the island where we would load it up and return to Shotley in England.  This time the three of us, sorry, the four of us, I’m always forgetting the fecking cat.  Anyway the four of us, Tony, Mary, Myself and Ben, yes the cat is called Ben, we would return in one van and with one of the cars.  I could remember the kerfuffle when they moved over to the Island as the most important part of the day was waiting for the vet who gave poor Ben some form of injection, to knock it out for the flight.  In the air force we called that vodka, but as you all know it is very difficult to get a cat drunk, they never buy anybody else a drink and tend to sit in the peanut bowl.  This time Ben was travelling with us, in a cage, on a boat, drugged to the eyeballs and completely out of it, lucky fecker.

I had arrived a day or two before the actual move and intended enjoying myself by getting out and about on the Island.  I stayed well away from Clancey as I expected he would be chained to the sink at the Glenduff restaurant, working off the bill for his wedding reception.  The poor fellow would probably have been terribly embarrassed if I had pitched up, so I saved him the humiliation and of course would never speak about it again, in case he got offended.  It was nice zipping about the island, taking in their folklore, history, customs and of course beer till we came to the day for the move.  The three of us stood in the kitchen, I don’t know where Ben was, running through our check list for the journey that lay before us.  Both vehicles had been fuelled and the oil and water and tyres had been checked and kicked.  We knew the route we would follow; Tony had all the tickets and paperwork.  The only thing missing was cigarettes.

I volunteered to go to the local shop to buy some cigarettes.  We would be landing in England at Heysham, late at night and would be driving through the night, down to Shotley, we were not sure if there would be anywhere open along the way so employing the five P’s, Prior Planning Prevents a Piss Poor Performance, sorry, the six P’s we knew we would have most of our cravings catered for.  As I began to leave Tony was talking with Mary, he wanted her to ask me something but she was hesitant.  I had to enquire.  Mary needed some sanitary tampons and was reluctant to ask me to pick some up at the shop for her.  Being a man I laughed it off and asked her for details of the brand she wanted.  Of course being a man I had no understanding, no feelings, no emotion, in fact Irene even says I don’t have a heart, I have a house brick swinging at the end of a piece of string.

I remember pitching up at the shop, one of those small country stores where you pull up right outside the door.  I went in and straight up to the counter.  There were two ladies behind the counter; one asked if she could help.  I asked for six packets of cigarettes and a box of tampons.  One lady grabbed the cigarettes while the other fetched the tampons.  The cigarettes were laid on the counter before me while the other lady held out the box of tampons and asked I would like them put into a bag.  I laughed at the suggestion and said “It’s no problem.”  Ever had your head bitten off?  “It is for some of us!!” she hissed, while putting the tampons in a plain brown paper bag and offering them to me.  Now, I may have been your typical insensitive male but one thing was for sure and that is I knew I had just been told off.  I wasn’t exactly sure what for, and needed time to think about what had happened, but was very careful as I backed out of the shop.

I hedged my bets when I got back to the farm house and left the tampons on the side, in the kitchen, still in the plain brown paper bag.  I then busied myself filling the van and car with stuff.  The fellow who would be renting the house from Tony turned up in his JCB, an Irish fellow, so it was nice to see that someone cultured and stylish would be looking after and enjoying the place in our absence.  We set off for the boat, I drove the van, Mary was a passenger and Ben was unconscious in a cage between us.  Another vet had turned up and injected Ben who now was giving a very good imitation of me on most Friday nights.  The crossing was boring and in a way I believed I was going to miss the farm house on the Isle of Man more than they were. 

At Heysham we had another Blues Brothers moment. “It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.”  Well’ we were at Heysham and heading for Shotley Gate three hundred miles away and a little different to Chicago.  We did have sufficient fuel in our tanks, plenty of cigarettes and it was dark.  The only one who may have wanted to wear sunglasses would be Ben when he woke up, if he ever did.  And he did, somewhere along the A1 motorway. 

If you remember on the first evening we had on the Isle of Man I had broken the silence with a short, sharp, but very loud case of flatulence. Ben, not to be outdone, was now signalling the end of our Isle of Man sojourn with a similar salutation.  Both Mary and I heard it, and despite the fact that it was pitch dark and we were travelling at seventy miles per hour, we both looked at the cage where the eruption had emanated from.  Ben didn’t even have the decency to give a badger warning and within a second or two that was all we could smell, dead badger, which had me perform an emergency stop on the hard shoulder.  Tony pulled up behind and came forward wanting to know why the pair of us had exited the van and were retching at the side of the road.

Tony drove the van from then on, just in case Ben gave a repeat performance.  I don’t think he did, and the remainder of the drive was boring and uneventful.  We arrived at the old house in Shotley and unpacked.  Tony quite obviously had picked up on my military training, having seen how well organised and structured my life was, and had utilised the five P’s plan, sorry, the six P’s plan as he had managed to get his son to leave a huge bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table for us.  With the van and car unloaded, we were all knackered, even Ben, so we sat around the dining table and cracked open the bottle.  Ben didn’t, he went off moaning about pillow abuse or something.  My detailed scientific research, which I had been involved in for years, took an unexpected turn in the morning, for as I woke up, or regained consciousness if you like, lying on the floor of the living room, next to Tony and Mary, I realised that during the night I had been attacked by the carpet. 

Carpets and pillows were in cahoots!  I wondered if any other household items were involved in this escapade. I lifted myself off the floor and managed to get myself in to a standing situation, I made for the kitchen where I knew I could get some refreshing water.  I looked about for the mythical gorilla as I smacked my dry lips together.  I knew he had paid me a visit, but the only animal I could see was Ben as he prowled around on his morning patrol.  It occurred to me as I stuck my head under the cold tap that for all these years we may have been following a false path.  Pillows and carpets might not be the cause of hangovers, the mythical gorilla didn’t really exist, what if, and this was a big if, big enough to rock the world, what if cats were the cause of hangovers?

Celtic Illumination, part 323, For better or worse.

I often wonder how many of you, The Illuminati, actually understand what you put me through each morning when I sit down to produce this blog.  For example this morning, on one platform, I was greeted with eight e-mails all introducing new members of The Illuminati, and by the way welcome.  You may think that’s great, soon the ranks of The Illuminati will be sufficient that I can take back the throne of Ireland and then move on to world domination.  But no, that’s not what I think.  You will all have noticed that some of The Illuminati are more vocal than others; some feel obliged to register their comments publicly, some, on the other hand, feel a need to communicate through solicitors and legal practitioners.  Some however, like the poet K A Brace, over there in Nashville, Tennessee, haunt me with their imposing silence, demanding, without uttering the slightest sound, that I deliver again, and again, and again.

If you think I can’t hear you in the shadows K A Brace, you are wrong.  I know that even the three dogs and four cats are watching me, but I welcome the pressure.  The secret about good writing is that it should be easy to read, so easy that the reader should think, I could do that, and to achieve that takes skill.  One day I might be lucky enough to get some.  When I saw those eight names this morning, I thought, ‘Oh no,’ another eight people that I must regale with the stories of reprobates and rogues I have met.  I worried as I wondered if I could produce, again, I had my blank pages; all I needed was the fifteen hundred words to fill them.  I have sick people, like Ken Clare, who at the moment is having French sea shanties chanted at him by John Clancey.  Clancey is also probably drunk on Pernod, stinking of Garlic and wearing a short leather skirt.  He didn’t have to wear the skirt but he said it makes him feel like a real man.

I suppose if we are talking about Clancy it’s as good a time as any to tell you about the day he got married, Saturday the fifth of August at Kirk Maughold Parish Church, on a bit of rock in the middle of the Irish Sea.  It is the sort of date that would have people on the Isle of Man bless themselves, if they weren’t too busy spitting at rats and dreaming of birching gay people.  Some of us had been warriors, some answered telephones and wrote things down, and some were still warriors dispersed all over the world.  Clancy knew that most people only pretended to like him, I didn’t, I just felt sorry for him.  He knew that by offering free food and booze there would be a good chance some of us might turn up.  It’s sort of like that Kevin Costner film where he has the ghosts in his field next to his farm and he hears the voice saying, “If you build it they will come.”  We were not ghosts but people like Tim Lort would certainly scare the shit out of you if you met him down a dark alley one night, especially in Amsterdam.

Clancey knew I was living the high life on the Isle of Man and, perhaps through jealousy, wanted to disrupt my peace and quiet.  He asked, well pleaded if the truth be told, if I would help prepare the venue where the reception was to be held.  It was so sad to hear that he had to work in the restaurant where he was holding his reception.  He probably couldn’t afford to hire the place, and so was having to work off the bill, washing dishes and taking customer’s dogs for long romantic walks.  He would never admit this so, being a young gentleman, I went to the Glenduff Restaurant, to see what help I could give.  It was just as well that I did as Clancy had indulged in another cost cutting exercise which was to hire a tent for the occasion.  It was a big tent, some people may have called it a marquee, but then some people call BMW’s, motorcars.  The tent had been dumped in the car park of the restaurant, so I was able to organise the local labour and erect the thing in double quick time.

Crates of beer had to be moved about, crates of wine stored, floors washed and then washed again, I can tell you they needed it.  When finished, the place, the Glenduff Restaurant, looked almost presentable.  This is where I saw that Clancy had planned the wedding to happen at three in the afternoon so that by the time people were arriving at the restaurant, it would be getting dark and they wouldn’t notice how dilapidated the place was.  The tent had been filled with tables and chairs and once they managed to get the sheep out, I was sure we could fit at least twenty people in, standing room only of course. It had been a long hard day for many of the people there, I could tell, as the sweat stained their clothing as if a colour blind person had attempted to Tie Dye their outfits.  Clancey thought that as a reward we should all have grilled steak with baskets of warm, fresh, garlic bread and pints of beer.  I have to admit it was very nice, but I would hate to think how many dishes he had to wash to pay for that lot.

The following morning, the day of the wedding, one of the strangest things ever, happened to me.  They say that military men who have served together form a very strong bond, well; you form a bond with those you like.  I had woken up very early, it was six o clock in the morning, it was dawn and the air had a crispness to it that made you feel excited and alive.  I crept downstairs, so that I wouldn’t disturb Tony and Mary, and made myself a cup of tea.  I just stood in the kitchen dreading what I would have to face during the following day.  I decided to go for a drive, there was not much traffic about, so I was tempted to take Tony’s little sports type car and zip along the winding country lanes for a bit of an early morning thrill.  Instead I took the large car, the saloon, lots of leather, lots of room and lots of power.  I set off and decided to drive to the front at Douglas.

What I didn’t know was that three fellows had missed the ferry.  Tim Lort, Rick Stocks and Aggie Milne.  There is no need for me to go in to detail but I am sure you can work out that it had something to do with female women and the demon drink.  Tim of course was in the Royal Navy, well he was a Royal Marine Commando type officer fellow so he was sort of sailor and he managed to scrounge a lift for the three of them on a fishing trawler to Douglas.  I understand the three of them were stood standing on a dock in Heysham in England, wondering if they would actually make it to the wedding, but more importantly how they would move, from wherever they landed on the Isle of Man, to the actual event.  It was Rick Stocks who turned around and said, “Don’t worry about it, Paddy Morris will be waiting for us.”  Who needs mobile telephones when you are teleg, telepateh, when you use Vulcan mind control, ah, telepathetic, that’s it.

Another excuse that Clancy used to hide his financial destitution was to say that the wedding was to be held in the oldest church on the Isle of Man, Kirk Maughold Parish Church.  I think he hoped to pass it off as culturally significant, which it may have been if the church had been in use, by people and not livestock.  Luckily, it was a small church, so it appeared to be full.  We had decided not to play about with any explosives in, or near, the church as I don’t think it would have survived.  Rick Stocks, and myself, being the only two people there who had received proper educations, knew how to belt out a hymn and boy did we.  You could tell some people were jealous of our education as they shot looks at us suggesting we were either too loud, or out of tune and drunk, as if they would know.  Luckily the whole thing was captured on video so it can always be proved that Rick and myself were in fine voice that day, and although the others, Lort, Milne, Mick Hughes, Wilcox and Shag Sabin, were slugging their way through a couple of bottles of whiskey, Rick and I abstained, well; at least during the hymns, we had been educated to a very high standard don’t you know.

Thankfully with the service over we allowed nature and the local livestock to resume their grazing and went off to the Glenduff.  Normally we were all used to the highest of standards but we found the reception embarrassing, there was no one to greet us, there wasn’t even anyone to announce us.  Rick found this terribly annoying but told me that he wouldn’t mention it, he would bite his tongue, which is just as well as the food was, well; to call it bland would be giving it far too much praise indeed.  Being a London lad, Clancey thought that jellied eels followed by pie and peas, was the epitome of haute cuisine.  He thought he would add a little French sophistication to the main course by adding Pommes Frites.  Eating comfort food, in a tent, on a lawn on a Saturday evening, is perhaps not how many cultured people might imagine spending their weekend.  There wasn’t even a string quartet for the hors d’oeuvre!

The dishes had been washed and dried, by Clancey, and there was a second sitting, for food, so we hung around the bar and waited.  Eventually the tent was given over to drinking and dancing.  There’s only one thing missing when you are in a tent, dancing, on grass, and that is rain.  And as this was the Isle of Man, a little bit of rock in the Irish Sea, it didn’t half rain.  It was lashing it down and the locals huddled together as if the very Gods themselves were angry at the pomposity of the situation. We of course were all smiling, for there’s only one thing to do when you are in a big tent and its starts raining, correct, marquee sliding.  I think the locals were surprised to see all the military guys run outside and begin to climb up on to the roof of the marquee.  You need a good, decent, heavy, rain shower for this.  You climb your way to the top ridge of the marquee and then slide off.  The bigger the marquee the better, Clancey knew this, he just didn’t know that it was going to rain and him claiming to be the only officially trained meteorologist on the island.

Inside all you can see and hear are these bottom shaped indentations scraping along and down the roof of the tent, till they depart at the edge, a slight yelp and then a thump, followed by hysterical giggling, before the person races back to the top to do it all again.  The police were not called, well; not to the reception, so it must have been a good night.  They were called however to the bed and breakfast where Aggie Milne had climbed through the window as he couldn't find his key, couldn’t find his key!!  He was so drunk he couldn’t find his hands, never mind his trouser pockets.  He had climbed into a landlady’s bedroom and she had telephoned the local constabulary.  If it had been the landlady of the digs he had been staying at, he may had gotten away with it, but the police just gave him a cuff around the ear and took him to when he should have been trying to break in to.  As for the rest of us, well; we don’t speak about Clancey’s wedding, it might just embarrass Clancey and we can’t have that now, can we?

Celtic Illumination, part 322, Litterarum in exorcismo.

Someone suggested to me the other day that these daily blogs are very similar to that German fellow and his Nuremburg Rallies.  On one level I would have to disagree as the Nuremburg Rallies were an annual event, and were pure propaganda whereas this blog is a daily occurrence, it’s in English, well; sort of, and it’s all true.  On another level I would have to agree with the suggestion as I suppose we both are aiming for total world domination.  This comparison unfortunately allows me to remind you, The Illuminati, of the enormity of our mission and also to alert you to the fact that we should expect casualties along the way.  I have detected ‘rumblings’ in the distance and expect an onslaught to begin soon but I never expected to have to inform you, The Illuminati, of our first casualty so early in the campaign.

It was with great sadness yesterday that I learned of our very first casualty.  Ken Clare, a Liverpool fellow from Liverpool, admitted yesterday that he is addicted to this blog, that he needs his, ‘Daily fix.’  This is a very serious situation because it requires, as prescribed in the Writers and Artists Yearbook, a literary intervention.  Of all interventions, the literary intervention is perhaps the worst, for all concerned.  First of all the addict has to be cornered, caught and tied to a wicker chair.  It has to be a wicker chair, so that it can be burned easily afterwards.  The lights have to be dimmed and then French sea shanties have to be chanted at the addict for three hours forty seven minutes.  I know, not just dangerous, but where can we find a person so deranged and contemptible that they would enjoy chanting French sea shanties while sipping Pernod and eating cheese and garlic flavoured potato crisps for three hours and forty seven minutes.  Luckily for us John Clancey is both deranged and contemptible and has a keen interest in French sailors, so should fit the bill and with a bit of luck should complete the task within the week, which he will have to do, as it looks like poor old Ed Mooney is next to be most likely to succumb.  Good luck with the treatment Ken, or perhaps as I should say, Bon Chance.

Strange that John Clancey’s name should pop up like that, for, according to my notes, I was about to tell you about his wedding on the Isle of Man today.  I was in Liverpool again but not for any exorcism, or literary intervention, this time I was catching the ferry to the Isle of Man.  I was at the Pier Head, with my rucksack on my back, standing, leaning forward, at a forty five degree angle.  The more meteorologically advanced amongst you will automatically realise that this indicates a slight breeze in the air, which would suggest that the sea crossing might not be calm.  At any indication of a rough sea normally the Isle of Man ferry will cancel sailings, truthfully it is rarely because of the weather, it really is because the crew and captain have enjoyed rather far too long a lunch in some of the bars along the Dock Road.  As we set sail the motion of the boat began to suggest to me that my original assessment of us encountering a ‘slight breeze’ may have been a bit too lenient.

By the time we were in open water I felt like a cowboy, this as you understand was not a sexual preference, or some form of exotic Irish cocktail, but the American type fellows who ride angry bulls, for the craic.  People were running about like steel pinballs on a pinball table, looking for somewhere safe to hide and hold on to. I did really feel like a cowboy, for what I needed was not a safe place to hide or hold on to, but a pair of reins so that I could ride the beast.  On the roughest of sea crossings the only place to be is at the front of the vessel and I don’t mean inside the bar sipping pink gins, I mean right at the front of the boat as if you were a rodeo rider yourself.  I left the bar and made my way out on deck and went forward.  It really was rough and the sea was beautiful, there were so many white horses it was a fecking saline stampede.  Carefully, I made my way to the front of the ship and was surprised to find my old friend Paul standing there.  

The pair of us just smiled at each other and shook hands, for the weather was so fierce we could not have spoken.  Paul and myself had known each other for a good number of years.  Paul was ex SBS, Special Boat Service, which is the Naval equivalent of the SAS.  How or where we met is none of your business and as a lot of you are beginning to realise there is a lot more being left out of this blog than being put in.  Paul had left the military and was now a deep sea diving supervisor over in Saudi Arabia.  Suffice to say that Paul and myself would race each other home from the pub, but I would be driving his Rolls Royce and he would be driving whatever I had pitched up in, usually a JCB with front bucket and go faster stripes.  We stood in silence, enjoying the ride, till we both had had our fill and went back inside to the bar.

The great thing about rough seas is that usually the bars and restaurants are empty as the normal people are throwing up everything they think they have eaten for the previous week.  The only real problem is that you have to hang on to your pint of Guinness as they tend to slide all about the place, which might involve spilling some, which as you all know is irresponsible drinking, which I could never tolerate.  We were chatting away with each other and we really were bumping up and down on our seats.  Paul explained that he had bought a small hotel in Laxey on the Isle of Man.  He wanted a quiet rural life for his children, but more importantly was receiving all sorts of grants from the Manx government and breweries.  The other tiny problem was that he had recently received a criminal conviction on the Isle of Man which now would not allow him to become a licensee.

Seems that he was driving along, his wife on the passenger seat, his children on the rear seat, when some buck eejit cut him up and almost caused him to crash.  His quick reflexes allowed him to rectify the situation, avert the crash and head after the buck eejit, whom he caught up to, dragged from his car and beat to a pulp.  He wasn’t in his Rolls Royce as he had sold that.  According to Paul it was forever being vandalised and the silver lady was constantly being stolen.  The final time it had been stolen the police found it tied to the front of a youths moped in Douglas.  After that he gave up and sold it.  The initial problem of holding the landlord license had been overcome as his wife had managed to apply for and be awarded the license.  Now, seeing me heading for the Isle of Man, he asked in I would be interested in running his hotel for six or seven weeks so that he could return to Saudi Arabia and earn the shortfall he needed to complete the hotel deal.

It was one of those bureaucratic overlaps where if you got one grant you were not entitled to another, the sort of thing that pops up at the last moment.  He was thirty thousand pounds short and could earn that much for six weeks work in Saudi.  I said that I shouldn’t see why not, I explained that I would need a couple of hours every day to myself for my writing, but otherwise would enjoy the task.  Paul offered to drive me to Tony and Mary’s house as we arrived in Douglas.  I explained that Tony would be waiting for me and thanked him agreeing that we would meet within the next day or two where I would go and visit his hotel and we could finalise our arrangement.  It was nice to see Tony and we chatted and laughed as we drove back to his farm.  Nothing much had changed apart from the fact that he had had the whole place double glazed, to keep the sound of the motorbikes out.

As usual we enjoyed our evening meal and rather than nip off to a local pub opened a bottle of whiskey so that we could relax and allow ourselves to catch up with each other’s world.  I was surprised to see a huge four by four pull into the farm yard and see Paul leap out.  We all knew each other and were great friends so Paul was immediately invited in and joined our little soiree.  He began to explain his predicament and then told me that he had been on the telephone and could start a new contract the following week in Saudi.  He needed an immediate decision from me; if I would run the hotel he could take the contract.   That’s when Tony started to ask questions and get involved.  None of us expected what happened next, to happen. Tony threw a cheque book on to the coffee table and opened it.  “I’ll lend you the thirty thousand Paul,” says Tony.  “You can pay me back when you can.”

There’s an old Irish saying that goes, “What you give away with one hand, you lose with the other.”  It was no great shakes, it’s not that I was depending on Pauls offer, but I was looking forward to meeting a whole new range of characters while running his hotel for him.  Just as well really, as it probably would have ended up as the Isle of Man’s equivalent to Fawlty Towers, with me at the helm.  Paul took the loan from Tony and the following evening we all went for a celebratory meal in Douglas and then on to a casino, where I stood back and watched mesmerised people pray for more money, I still refused to gamble.  The following morning I rose and, after recording the seriousness of the pillow abuse I had suffered, began to prepare myself for a certain change of direction, socially speaking of course.  It was nice hanging around with people, who some might say had more money than sense, but now I was off to the other end of the social spectrum, I was off to Clancey’s wedding.

Celtic Illumination, part 321, Buckminsterfullerene's and the badgers of Penzance

It was a very difficult job trying to catch Murphy or O Grady on the telephone.  I didn’t want to pester them so I would call every Wednesday afternoon, unless the secretary gave me a specific time that she knew they would be in.  With speaking to the secretary so regularly we established a sort of rapport and she became friendly toward me.  One day I telephoned and she was able to tell me that they not only had received the complete full  manuscript for the first novel but that Savage had read it and, “Was rolling around the floor laughing while holding his tummy.”  That was good enough for me, they had seen it and liked it all I had to do now was convert that into a publishing deal.  The Manchester United deal was chugging forward at a snail’s pace, somehow or other I felt that these publishers were far more important and advanced than Murphy, the gay sauna manager, so I treated them with respect and kid gloves.

I would hate you to think that I would sit down and produce a book in two weeks simply by pulling stories out of fresh air.  Apart from the years of dedication and practise, not to mention the rejections, there is the research element that takes up quite a lot of time.  I mention this now because I do remember specific research that I carried out for my third project.  Sometimes you get things so right it’s terribly exciting.  In my first book I had invented a machine called VAMPT, a Voice Activated Multidialectal Phone Tap, which would be an automatic telephone listening device, monitoring thousands of telephone calls and only activated when key trigger words were used.  A couple of years later to read that these machines were being developed and used by the security services really cheered me up, showed me that I was on the ball, so to speak.

Irene watched a soap opera called Emmerdale, I couldn’t stand the programme, however rather than sit for thirty minutes complaining about the pathetic acting and the ridiculous storylines, I began to watch, but with my writers head on.  There was a family in the show called The Dingle family.  They were mainly pig farmers, but the suggestion was that although lovable rogues they lived just on the wrong side of the law.  I then noticed that the television company had produced a separate video that had the Dingle family travel to Australia to visit relatives.  This wasn’t mentioned on the main television show and it got me thinking.  Using my video to video machine I began to collect footage of the Dingle family and slowly a story began to build up.

As they were pig farmers I needed to carry out some research on pig farming.  I had experience of pigs been reared, from my time on the farms in Ireland, but I needed something specific to focus on, something that might provide one thread of the storyline, like a rare pig disease or breeding problem.  When you take six books on pig breeding and pig farming out of your local library you don’t half get some funny looks, but I suppose some of us are accustomed to funny looks.  I got home and began to read.  Admittedly some of the books were terribly heavy going and they probably got no more than me looking at the pictures and diagrams, but one book was nice and simple and encouraged people to read.   Then I came across one important little detail.

It was a story about the pig breed known as Cumberland pigs from which the famous Cumberland sausages were made.  The last, pure bred, Cumberland pig was called Sally and her owner wouldn’t put her down, but Sally died and rather than dispose of the body he put it in his freezer.  The story then went on to ask that as the line of pure Cumberland pigs had effectively died out, how long would it be before European bureaucrats would step in and stop people from selling products called Cumberland Sausage?  The pig breeders had taken the two breeds closest to Cumberland and bred them together calling the product Cumberland, but of course it wasn’t pure.  Now you might be sat sitting there thinking, so bloody what, well, what I wanted to do was give you a little insight into how a writers mind works.

Think Jurassic Park, I know, I sort of stole the story from Michael Crichton, he wrote the book, Steven Spielberg helped convert it into a movie.  So I decided that government scientists would occupy the farm next door to the Dingles where they were carrying out top secret experiments.  A team of genetic scientists were cloning pure Cumberland pigs from poor old Sally’s remains in the freezer.  This now sets out one area where you have to complete some research on genetics so that you can pretend that you know what you are talking about.  I also wanted then to be next to a secret military installation so thought that I could suggest they were close to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station and Space Surveillance Service at RAF Fylingdales which luckily for me was situated in Yorkshire, as was the fictitious soap opera Emmerdale.

As I began to research Fylingdales I came across Buckminster Fullerenes.  I knew you would immediately get the connection, because it is so obvious.  As everyone knows a Buckminsterfullerene is a spherical fullerene molecule which has a cage like structure of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, resembling a soccer ball, or as we call them, the big golf ball things at Fylingdales.  Now get the girl of the Dingle family, Mandy, to start a relationship with an RAF cook on Fylingdales, who now arranges for them to collect the slops for their pigs.  The cook wants to have a career in the media and has joined the camps amateur dramatic group.

Now add in a badger set, which a local television news crew are monitoring, because they expect badger baiters to turn up, and the opportunities for mirth and mayhem are endless.  Zak, the head of the family finds restricted documents in the slops, doesn’t realise that it is a telephone book, and tries to sell it to the Russians.  The guy who owns the farm next door is gay and falls for Zaks son, who is appropriately named ‘Butch.’  To start off researching dry old books about pig breeding and to end up with an RAF cook singing, “I am the very Model of a Modern Major-General,” on top of a badger set, at midnight, while Russian spies and British research scientists are drinking huge amounts of Zak’s mind blowing home brew is some journey, I can tell you.  In fact it got me so excited I sat down and wrote the book.  I hadn’t approached anyone or asked permission I was just so excited with the story, I had to write it.

It came out quite well and I enjoyed not just writing it but researching the various elements that somehow or other came together and made the story.  But I had a problem, I now had fourteen books that would form one hell of a deal and I knew that I really needed someone to represent me because if the truth be told, I would very soon be out of my depth.  I knew I wanted to have a simple and honest approach to it all but I also knew that publishing was full of sharks.  So I went to the toilet, well; that’s where all my rejection letters were, plastered all over the walls.  I went through each letter some of which were so bland and un-personal they were embarrassing.  I ended up with a list of literary agents who had actually taken time to reply to me, only problem is that the list was two people long.

One was an agent at Peters, Frazer and Dunlop and the other was a fellow called Jeffrey Simmons.  I constructed a letter to both of them explaining that I was about to close three contracts, covering fourteen celebrity book deals, would they be interested in representing me.  I didn’t say who the books were for or give any indication of the deals.  I said that I would telephone them the following week to find out if they thought we could work together.  Peters, Frazer and Dunlop were a huge firm, still are, whereas Jeffrey Simmons was a one man show.  I rang Peters, Frazer and Dunlop first and asked to be put through to the agent I had selected.  One of the thoughts that goes through your head, well; my head at least, was what happens if they both say yes?  I couldn’t believe it when I heard the agent say to the secretary, “Tell him I’m not in.”  It certainly took the legs out from under me.

I now had my final chance and telephoned Jeffrey Simmons.  He answered the telephone and we began to chat.  Jeffrey then referred to my letter and asked me directly who these ‘celebrities’ were.  “Manchester United, Lily Savage and Emmerdale farm on the television,” I said, which brought about a slight silent pause.  I know that I had mentioned in the letter that Carol Anne Duffy had recommended me to her literary agent, in the hope that it would add some credibility to my cause.  “Okay,” said Jeffrey, after a good few moments of giving it some thought. “I am prepared to take you on as a client, I will represent you.”  Well; I had done it, I had secured the services of a literary agent, I could sit back and concentrate on my writing, he could do all the negotiating, and boy would there be some negotiating, for as I hope you might have expected, I had my eye on a new client, it was going to be so nice to phone them and when they asked about money say,  “Oh, my agent will sort out the details.”

Celtic Illumination, part 320, I will arise and go now.

Normally when I would sail into Liverpool on a ship, or ferry, I would be out on deck admiring the Liverpool frontage.  I had always associated Liverpool with The Beatles and of course there was the, often spoken about, great connection with Irish people.  Even the Liverpool accent is claimed by expert linguists to be a mixture of a mild Lancashire accent and the Irish accent.  There’s a large Irish population in Liverpool, a thriving Irish centre and even a huge memorial for the dead from the Great Hunger, in the garden of Saint Luke’s Church, in the city.  But this time I was arriving in a totally different place.  The real history, I now knew, was being massaged, being covered up, the men who had made their millions, from their disgusting trade in human flesh, wanted to be seen and remembered as successful, decent, people.  Orwell really knew what he was talking about.

The ships that drained the food from a starving Ireland also carried the diseased and terrified Irish poor; these vessels became known as ‘coffin ships.’  Thousands of starving people were arriving in Liverpool and many would like you to think that they were cared for, rushed to hospital and saved.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Cellars, no better than dungeons that had been used to coral the poor West African slaves, had been bricked up because of the disease they had carried, were now opened and the Irish herded in to these death traps.  In order to encourage the starving Irish to enter and remain in these squalid pits, eight hundred members of the local Orange Lodges were seconded into the local police force and made special constables.  The main purpose of the Orange Lodges is to promote hatred of Catholics, and from the reports of the time, they now relished their new found power, beating and openly murdering people who were too weak to stand.

You may be starting to get an understanding now of what flashes through an Irish persons mind when someone starts telling Irish Jokes, inferring that the Irish are a second rate people, stupid, lazy and good for nothing but drinking and fighting.  And you will also understand that when an Irish person says “Tiocfaidh ar la.” (pronounced ‘chucky are la’) or in English “Our day will come,” they really, really, mean it.  And if you have any doubt about what I had told you, then look it up on the internet and do your own research.  I had to laugh when I flashed about the internet checking one or two facts when I came across an information sheet for the Merseyside Maritime Museum.  http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/archive/info-sheet.aspx?sheetId=67

Just have a look for yourself, second line of the first paragraph, and you will see them mention ’indentured servants.’  In fifty years’ time no one will question it, no one will stick up their hand and shout, “Oi!!  Don’t you mean slaves?”

It was soon after my arrival back that I found myself in a position where I wanted to stick my hand up and shout stop.  It’s all right I wasn’t with any slavers, I was with the Transcendental Meditators again.  Through my writing circle I had met Gladys Mary Cole, a prolific and respected writer who taught at John Moore’s University in Liverpool.  Gladys had actually liked some of my short stories so much she suggested that she might use them to teach her students how to write the short story.  Gladys had been invited to a presentation evening at the Golden Dome in Skelmersdale and asked a couple of us, from the writer’s circle, to accompany her for support.  I can remember sitting alongside Gladys on the front row wondering what on earth was going on.  Along one wall of the Dome were stacks of mattresses that the Meddies used to practice their yogic flying on.  I hoped they were not going to give us a demonstration of their yogic flying, not unless we were all issued with shotguns and someone shouted “Pull!” every time one of the idiots hopped across the floor like a constipated frog.

On the stage before us was a chair, nothing special, just an ordinary dining chair on which they had set a large framed photograph of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  In front of the chair, on the floor, was a small glass vase with a bunch of dead and decaying flowers hanging out and over.  We were offered some form of fruit drink and some cakes and biscuits.  With the connection to The Beatles, and flower power, you would have hoped that they would at least have served up some hash brownies, but no such luck.  The chief Meddie then began to address us.  He began to read The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats.  This would be a poem that most Irish people would know and enjoy and probably quote you most of it off the top of their heads.  He’s probably best known for the epitaph on his gravestone which reads, “Cast a cold eye on Life, on Death.  Horseman, pass by!”

The chief Meddie now begins to break the poem down, stating that Yeats was actually practising and promoting Transcendental Meditation.  “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.  It isn’t Innisfree,” says the fellow, which has me thinking, as I have actually seen the actual island and knew and understood what Yeats was talking about.  “No,” he says, like a snake oil salesman preparing his pitch.  “What he was saying was ‘In is free.’  To go inside one’s self, to meditate, makes you free,” the Meddies were lapping it up. “And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.”  Here he started going on about using natural materials and not harming the earth.  “Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;  Nine,” he almost hums.  “Nine, the magical number nine which represents attainment, satisfaction, accomplishment, and our success to achieve an influence in our circumstances.   And then there’s the honey bee,” he sings, stating that the honey bee was a messenger between the spiritual world and the real world, but it also signified wisdom.  Meditating brought you wisdom.

It was good to get away from them that evening, I had wanted to take the fellow to task over his interpretation of the work but thought better of it, and after all I was a guest.  It certainly had been quite an intense period in my life and a real game changer, as they say.  But as you all know in my life everything happens for a reason.  The double top secret cabal, who were preparing me to become the world’s leading Master Candle Maker, the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and the true King of Ireland can almost be forgiven for the extreme and exhaustive training they had put me through, now that we would begin to see some of the problems that I would have to deal with.  From murderers to meditators, I had to meet them all.

And the idiots, let’s not forget the idiots, the brainless morons, who like the worker bees, spend their whole life performing the one function of serving their queen, no matter what hue, shape, or form she takes.  I was back at a word processor at the local college correcting the corrections that the typing students had corrected, incorrectly.  I sensed someone standing beside me.  I, looked and saw it was a female tutor who had been going around handing out small posters, or fliers if you will, that were asking people to vote for her as the deputy head of the college.  “What are you doing?” she asked.  Now if you saw somebody sitting in front of an Apple Mac computer using the keyboard to input information from an open file.  Many people could assume, or even work out, what you were doing.

“Typing,” I said, leaving out of course the ‘you fecking idiot.’  “But are you a student here?” she asked, I sensed trouble coming.  “No,” I said.  “I’ve been given permission to tag along for certain sections of the media studies course, but I’m not a student.”  “Well this equipment is for the students of this college only, so you will either have to join the media studies course as a proper student or leave the college.”  You often meet people who deserve a good slap but this was a female flavoured woman, plus, a good slap might have knocked some sense into her.  I had no choice but to sign up for the course, although I refused to wear the leotard and ankle warmers, come on, with legs like mine!  I had no intention of attending any of the classes but for some reason she was on my case and actually forced me to attend class.

She ran one of the section of the course and we were told that we had to design and prepare a questionnaire which we would print off and survey at least one hundred local people about a proposed magazine or newspaper we were launching. Then we had to, based on what we learned from our survey, create the front page of our publication.  We were allowed to take one whole day off to go to the local shopping centre and carry out our survey.  I took my one hundred survey sheets home and filled them out myself while enjoying a nice coffee in my favourite armchair, as the other students ran around the shopping centre annoying people.  The following day she had assembled a group of tutors who listened to our presentations.  I hadn’t bothered preparing the front cover, all the others had. 

As I was asked to stand up I made a point of checking out through the window.  I showed them my survey findings and then explained what I had created as a front page for my newspaper.  “Great,” she says.  “Can we see it?”  “Ah,” says I, looking out the window again.  “I wanted mine to be really good so I sent it off to a publisher in Preston, I’m expecting the courier to have the finished article here any moment.”  She gave me full marks for that and all the other tutors were suitably impressed.  The only thing I could think of was how on Gods earth these people ever managed to get an empire in the first place.

Celtic Illumination, part 319, A rose by any other name.

Clogherhead being so close to Drogheda, and the location of the Battle of the Boyne, allowed me to indulge in one of my favourite past times which was wandering around graveyards taking notes.  I also loved diving into local libraries and learning more about the history of my lovely little country.  I can remember flicking through a book in a local church, with James getting rather bored, when I came across a period of Irish history that I did not know about.  In fact I was hugely embarrassed that I did not know about it and I was also angry that I had not been taught about it.  In Ireland it is known as An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger, but it is more widely and incorrectly known as The Potato Famine.

I promise you I was deeply shocked to learn that enough food was produced in Ireland during this period that could feed every person on the island three times over, there never was a famine.  At the time the British were in control, Irish Catholics were not allowed to own or lease land, they were not allowed to vote, to hold political office, to live in a town, to be educated or to enter a profession, sure they weren’t even allowed to speak their own language.  The food was produced and taken, under protection of the British Army, and delivered to British colony’s abroad.  The potato blight which was affecting most of Europe, devastated Ireland as the poor Irish Catholic depended on the potato, it was the one crop that produced the most food, given the small amounts of land they could cultivate.  But it was only in Ireland where millions starved to death.  The potato blight, which had decimated the potato crop in America for two years, now spread throughout the greater part of northern and central Europe.  It was only in Ireland where three million people were totally dependent on potatoes for food that so many died because of the British Empire’s boot on their throat.

A fellow called Charles Trevelyan was the civil servant responsible for administrating the colony of Ireland.  In his opinion the potato blight was an act of God and he claimed that if they stepped in to feed and save the Irish, they would be going against God’s will.  So his advice to the British government was to stand back and allow the Irish to die, and not just to die, but to starve to death.  He also considered, what he and the British called, the famine as an effective mechanism for reducing surplus population.  Trevelyan has to have been one of the most evil men in history and perhaps one of the most hated men in Irish history.  The most hated man in Irish history would have to be Cromwell, who sacked Drogheda and it excited me being there, the place is dripping with history.  I had also thought that Cromwell was so hated for his barbaric acts of mass slaughter, which like his evil mates he considered to be the work of God, but as I worked my way through the local history books, I began to learn of another practise that sickened me to the core.

Cromwell was heavily involved in, and a great supporter of, slavery and a little known fact is that, food was not the only product that the British drained from Ireland, they also took the people.  The British like to refer to them as ‘indentured servants,’ but they were slaves, nothing more than human cattle, sold to the highest bidder in places like the West Indies, Virginia, New England, Barbados and Jamaica.  I couldn’t believe the huge scar in Irish history that I had uncovered and I was angry that these facts had not been taught to me in school.  I couldn’t stop reading about these periods.  An Irish slave could be bought and sold for five pounds but an African slave was worth fifty pounds so you can imagine the savage treatment the Irish received.  People like the Duke of York would send his troops over to Ireland to gather one or two thousand children around the age of ten.  They would then be taken and shipped abroad where they were sold.  That is bad enough but what really turned my stomach was the fact that he would have the letters ‘DOY’ branded on their necks to show that they were his property.

I can remember confronting, my mother, Seamus and Margaret and asking why I had never been taught about these crimes.  They knew all about them but thought it best that they were forgotten about, that they should be left in the past, for if you spoke about it you would only cause trouble.  I can tell you that I was very angry, not just with the British for their barbaric treatment of the Irish, but for an education system that had not taught me about these episodes.  It really was Orwellian, history being re-written, polished and covered up.   But real Irishmen, and women, will never let these periods be forgotten about and my hat goes off to the Taoiseach, our name for Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern.  Bertie refused to talk to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, until the portrait of Oliver Cromwell, who Bertie referred to as “That murdering bastard,” was taken down and away from the room they were in, in Westminster.

I didn’t want to leave the Drogheda area as I needed to learn much more about what I had discovered, but my little vacation was coming to an end and we went back to Warrenpoint.  I was surprised to discover that many people knew about what I had discovered but simply accepted it as something that happened years ago and moved on.  People were not really that interested although I have to admit that I was ‘all fired up,’ about it.  Everyone else was ‘all fired up,‘  about Ireland winning the World Cup.  I had never seen anything like it in my life, every pub, club and hotel was heaving with people supporting the Irish soccer team, and most of them wouldn’t normally even watch football.  This time we had an Englishman as a hero, Jack Charlton, a very famous English footballer who had played for Manchester United, and who now managed the Republic’s football team and was considered to be an honorary Irishman.

The player most talked about would have been the goalkeeper, Paki Bonner, who they say had a kick as long as a ten day week.  Suddenly everybody was an expert on football.  I can remember sitting at a bar with the head good ol boy himself, Phelim, who wouldn’t even give a football match a second glance, like myself, and the pair of us whooping and cheering along with every other person in the pub.  As they say, the craic was mighty, I think the whole of the Island was drunk with joy, and a fair bit of the back stuff too.   I couldn’t remember who we played, who we beat, or who eventually beat us, but they did and the party dissolved and Ireland returned to normal, well; as near normal as possible, just think laid back and then relax that a little bit more.

For example one morning James and I went down the street to get James a new pair of shoes; he had ruined one pair on the beach the previous day.  It was just before nine o clock in the morning and most shops were flinging open their shutters and doors.  We were heading for O Hares, gentleman’s outfitters, not because it was a fancy shop but because I used to live with the O Hare’s, a beautiful family, and I would normally be given a bit of discount.  Pat, the second oldest of four boys was opening the shop.  “Ah Hello Peter,” he says, adding “And who’s this?”  I introduced James; I probably wouldn’t have seen Pat for maybe four or five years.  Which is why some people might think that what happened next might be a little strange.  Pat seemed to be somewhat agitated, he couldn’t stand still.  With the small chit chat out of the way he turns to me and says.  ”Here Peter, would you look after the shop for us for twenty minutes.”  With which he runs off down the street leaving James and myself in charge of the shop.

The last thing we needed would be a customer, I’m not taking the inside leg measurement of some beast of a farmer, in town for the market, for anyone.  I’m pleased to say that we did get a customer, well; customer would be the wrong way to describe this fellow.  In Ireland we have a habit of just popping in to shops for a bit of craic, a bit of a chat, and that’s what this fellow as doing.  I was a wee bit gobsmacked as he came in and asked if, “The Boys were around?”  This was not referring to the IRA, but the three O Hare boys who worked in the shop.  “No,” says I, reaching out my hand to him.  “Pat’s just away down the street for something.”   We stood in silence as I tried to work out which question I should ask him first, for this was none other than John Hume, the politician.  The man who was to become a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and who was named as ‘Ireland’s Greatest,’ in a poll organised by RTE to find the greatest person in Ireland’s history. 

From the worst to the best I was meeting them all during this trip and it was a golden opportunity to square the circle as I turned to John and asked his opinion on the Irish slave trade.  As they say in Ireland, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you this and I’ll tell you no more,” the most famous person in Ireland stood there and gave me an impassioned speech about our history that I have never forgotten and that made a lasting impression on me.    Pat returned to the shop soon after that and we all reverted to good natured banter.  I am sure Pat and the other boys are very proud that the greatest man in Ireland’s history often popped in to their shop for a bit of craic, but I wonder how he will measure up when they discover that the King of Ireland, didn’t just pop in for a bit of craic, but actually lived with them for a while?

Celtic Illumination, part 318, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

Despite the fact that it would appear that every ounce of my energy was being put into my writing I was also concentrating on my children.  I felt that there was nothing more important than producing well balanced and caring young adults who could stand on their own two feet and make their way in the world.  Unfortunately in Ireland, where children are concerned, we have traditions that we, the Irish, respect and maintain, the British would probably call it child abuse.  I was reminded of it when I visited Anne and Davie.  Anne is the sister of my old girlfriend Pat.  I went to visit them one day in their lovely little house in Warrenpoint and was left alone in the front room as Anne went to make a cup of tea.

Next thing you know is that her two eldest children come in.  “Hello Boris,” they say.  “Would you like us to dance for you?”  A smile and a nod was all that they needed before they set about clearing a space in the centre of the living room.  There was no music and the two children began to perform an Irish dance in front of me.  Anne brought the tea in and not one word was said about what was going on, it was quite normal, it was tradition.  It was then that I remembered that each Irish child would have been encouraged to have at least one ‘party piece’ where they would entertain relatives or visitors.  For me myself I would often have to stand in front of visitors or relatives and saw a tune out on my violin.  Carol didn’t have a musical note in her body so she would recite poetry.

My poor children were encouraged to each learn some poems that they would stand and recite.  The last time I remember them performing their routine was in a hotel in Lytham Saint Annes when Aunt Mary came over for a brief visit.  It may have looked weird that my children were standing in a hotel foyer reciting poems to four elderly nuns, as bemused English people walked past wondering what on earth was going on, but for me, and Aunt Mary, it was tradition.   It’s hard to know if you are bringing your children up correctly and the one comment I remember from a parents teacher meeting was when they said to me, “We don’t know what you are doing to your children, but whatever it is, keep it up.”

We only watched one television programme every week, the Late Late Show, which was broadcast on a Friday evening, around tea time, on an English television channel.  The Late Late Show was presented, from Dublin, by Uncle Gaybo, Gay Byrne, no relative at all, but a friend to almost everyone in Ireland.  I believe that it was the longest running chat show in the world and sure wasn’t he the first fellow to introduce The Beatles on screen.  Uncle Gaybo was another Irish tradition.  In the evenings we would entertain ourselves, or as the children might say, I tortured them.  I still had the coffee table I had made in Germany and it had gone through many transformations.  In fact on one occasion it had turned in to a blackboard, but now it was back as a coffee table.  I was looking at it one evening and I had an idea, this is where the family tend to run away and hide.  I had been looking at a jar of shrapnel earlier on in the day.  Shrapnel is the name we gave to loose change and I had a right old collection of coins from all over the world.  I decided to set them in to the top of the coffee table and so set about doing it.

I ended up with perhaps fifty different coins set in to the table top which I sealed with a nice thick coat of varnish.  There were more than just coins set in to the table as I had come across an old button, from Irene’s fathers service uniform, so that had to go in.  What we would now do is once the children were bathed, in their pyjamas, and ready for bed, is that we would get them to sit around the coffee table.  They had to close their eyes and run a finger around the table top.  Someone would shout ‘stop’ and depending on the country that the coin they had landed on, or was closest to, they now had to make up and tell a five minute story about that country.  I know it sounds mad but we thought it was fun and it became our very own family tradition.

I would also take at least one of the children with me if I ever went anywhere.  I can’t remember why we had gone to Ireland but I do remember my son James and myself going over.  My cousins had carried on the tradition of having summer homes and each had a large caravan at a holiday park at a place in the Republic called Clogherhead.  It was a nice little place and it even had a shipwreck on the beach in front of us.  I mean what else can a little boy hope for.  More importantly was the fact that Clogherhead is only a couple of miles away from Drogheda, which for me was one of the most historically important locations in Ireland.  James and myself were in a caravan that sat right on the edge of the beach.  Behind us, in the second row of caravans, were my mother and Aunt Margaret.  Behind them, in the third row of caravans, was Uncle Seamus, the pervert priest.

This was one of the first times that I realised what a dangerous and predatory man he really was and remember telling James that should Seamus ask him to go to the caravan he was staying in, or even spend the night there, he was to refuse.  I didn’t like the way I was thinking, it unsettled me, but it would still be some time before the situation would resolve itself in my mind.  We found some fishing rods in one of the caravans and decided that we should go fishing.  The previous day James and I had sat and watched three men fish for salmon.  They had a boat and a net and it was so relaxing just to sit and watch them feed the net out and then haul it back in, time and time again.  It was nice to see the old traditional methods still being used and even nicer to be able to show them to James.

James and I went in to Drogheda; of course I took him to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, from which so much of the modern day problems in Ireland stem.  There is such a beautiful river there that it makes you wonder how the place could have been the site of such murder and mayhem.  In Drogheda we found a fishing tackle shop and went in.  We selected two reels; some lures and some line, and took them to the man at the shop counter.  He rang each item up on the till and asked me for the full amount which was somewhere around fourteen pounds.  I reached into my back pocket for my wallet and realised that I must have left it back at the caravan.  ”Sorry,” I explained.  “I’ve left my wallet back the caravan.  If you just keep this stuff in the bag, I’ll go back and get it.”  “Not at all,” says the fellow, behind the counter.  “Take the tackle with you and next time you’re in Drogheda call in and pay me.”

Now I know some people say that the Irish are laid back, but this was ridiculous.  I was of course now under a moral obligation to get the money, return, and pay the man.  I made for the car and was stopped by a gypsy woman standing in the street, with a blanket covered baby, asking if I could, “Spare a few coppers, for da child sir?”  I thought that I was a young gentleman but as I say, we had traditions in Ireland, one of which was to tell gypsies to feck away off.  Before I could smile and apologise I heard myself tell the woman to ‘feck off,’ and hurried past her wondering if I was suffering from some form of Tourette’s.  We got the money and returned to the shop where the fellow smiled and accepted his due; he knew I would have been back.

There’s only one other thing you can do after that and that was to take James down the main street of Drogheda and show him a fellows head.  Saint Peters church is on the main street of Drogheda and in that church you will find the head of Saint Oliver Plunkett.  Little boys love things like that, and it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Ireland.  Plunkett was stitched up by the British, nothing new there then, and sentenced to death.  As they knew he would never be found guilty, by any court in Ireland, they had him tried in England and he was hung, drawn and quartered at the famous Tyburn gallows.  I suppose it’s a strange thing to show your son, somebodies head in a glass box, but it’s tradition.

But perhaps the best tradition is just how laid back the people of Ireland really are.  We went for lunch every day to a local hotel.  Nothing special, just a small, country, hotel that served fierce good food.  Being a creature of habit I always opted for the turkey breast and cheesy garlic spuds.  It was so lovely I once asked if there were any more spuds and the waitress came out with a platter from which she scooped a couple of spoonful’s onto my plate, but kept standing beside me.  Every time I cleared a little space on my plate she would plop down another spoonful.  “I’m fine,” I said, “Thanks very much.”  But she still stood where she was.  “They’ll only be thrown out if you don’t eat them,” she says, and I now realise that I’m no longer having lunch but involved in an impromptu eating match.

But by far the best was when I nipped down to the local shop in the tiny little hamlet of Clogherhead.  It really was one of those old country shops where you could buy absolutely anything.  I think I wanted cigarettes.  As I stood at the counter and the lady found what I wanted, I noticed some fishing lures known as feathers, used mainly for mackerel fishing.  I knew that there was a small harbour close by so thought that James and myself could spend some time pier fishing.  “Can I have two sets of feathers please?” I asked, pointing to the lures.  “Are you sure?”  asked the woman, behind the counter.  “It’s not the season for mackerel,” she said.  “I know,” said I.  ”I just want to spend some time at the end of a pier with my son.”  “Oh!” she says, taking two sets of feathers down and placing them beside the cigarettes.  “I won’t charge you for them,” says she.”  “Seeing as you won’t be catching any fish with them.”

Celtic Illumination, part 317, Fifty Shades of Shite.

As dear old Bob Dylan once sang, ‘The times they are a changing,’ and nothing could have been more true in the world of publishing and writing.  Like most writers I had established a routine for myself, which I would religiously adhere to.  If you ever read about writers and their routines I think you will discover that they are a superstitious lot, silently believing that if they deviate from their routine, their writing will fail or they will lose the ability, very like actors who will not mention The Scottish play.  Hemmingway wrote while he stood, nothing too strange about that, until you learn that he always wore oversized loafers and stood on the skin of a lesser kudu.   Don’t worry, the animal had been killed and skinned, and very probably by Hemmingway in one of his more sober moments.   Jeffrey Archer says that every Monday morning he sits down at his desk, sharpens and lines up seven pencils, one for each day of the week.  I know, I often wish he would poke himself in the eye with one.  Even I had a routine, which because of what was happening, I was terrified of breaking.

In the early days I struggled to write two hundred and fifty words, sat sitting at our dining table with my fountain pen and pad of lined paper.  And as I have said before, counting the number of words you have written would sometimes take longer than the actual writing of them.  Thankfully I had persisted and eventually managed to break the seven hundred and fifty words a day, every day, that the text books recommended.  The more mathematically gifted among you might have considered my Manchester United deal which would have me produce eleven books at fifty five thousand words each.  At seven hundred and fifty words a day that would take eight hundred and six days writing.  I did mention, a few blogs ago, that I was producing three thousand words a day which would still see the Manchester United project take me two hundred and one days.

My daily word count had increased again and I was now producing five thousand five hundred words a day, which allowed me to churn out one novel every two weeks.  For my daily routine I would sit down at my desk and put on some music.  I do know that I started to listen to loud music in order to drown out the barking of the dog next door.  The poor thing was kept in the garden all day, ignored, and did nothing else but bark.  I know it wasn’t the poor animals fault but the cretin who supposedly looked after it.  I don’t think I actually listen to the music, it sort of drowns out everything else and acts as a sort of muffler, I still do it and at the moment Thin Lizzy are blasting out Whiskey in The Jar. Takes me back to the evening when I was stood standing before them as they kicked lumps out of each other on stage.  See how the mind can wander.  I work in three bursts, each burst takes one hour fifteen minutes approximately, during which I will write seven pages.  Each page is about two hundred and fifty words.  After the first burst I would complete twenty minutes on an exercise bicycle then return to the typewriter, read what I had written and then produce another seven pages.

So every morning I would write twenty one pages on my typewriter but I would now spend the remainder of the day editing and correcting what I had written.  The hard part was re-typing the corrected version and even then sometimes retyping it again.  If you are not a trained typist it is a daunting task when you sit down to type two hundred plus pages. So, as I said, the times they were a changing and I became aware of a new-fangled machine called a word processor.  The work could be created on the screen and edited on the screen and by pushing a button you could print it off time and time again.  Sure wouldn’t the machine even count the words for you.  At the time the most popular machines were Apple Mac’s but they were coming in at around the one thousand pound mark, and that was without a printer, which when you began to look into could certainly cost some money along with the inks and paper you would use.

I noticed in the newspaper that the local college was offering a new course in media studies, they were training people to use word processors and they also had a television studio.  I know I had a bit of a cheek but I went over to the college and having found the tutor in charge of the course asked if I could come along and learn about word processors and the television studio.  I explained that I had no interest in media studies and would not get in his way or in the way of his real students. The guy agreed and I was happy that although I couldn’t really afford a new Apple Mac and printer at least I would be learning how to use them but more importantly I would learn the correct terminology used in television studios and that might help me if I ever had to complete any work for television or the stage.

I was quite surprised at how easy the word processing was and managed to break away from the class and spend one whole day a week in the training area simply typing my work and saving it on to disc.  I wasn’t surprised at how petty minded the people who ran each department were after my experience with TPT.  At the end of a class typing and learning how to use word processors, the real students would print off their work.  Some would stuff it into folders and some would rip it up and throw it into the bin.  If I wanted to print anything off, I had to approach the tutor and ask permission and then actually give her the paper.  I had to bring my own paper and you were looking at twenty or thirty sheets of A4 paper a week.  The important thing for me was to get the material on to disc where I could edit it and eventually print it off on my own machine.  They were just letting me know who was in charge, as if I cared.

One day the typing tutor was wandering around and she stopped and began chatting to me.  She asked what I was doing and I explained that I was a writer who was transferring all his work on to disc.  She asked how many manuscripts I had to convert and I explained that I had five book manuscripts that I had to get on to disc.  She then suggested that her girls who were learning typing and word processing could do with a change, so if I would like to bring in my manuscripts she would get her girls to put them on to disc for me.  Talk about luck.  I had the two Lily Savage novels, which I had completed and three novels for the Manchester United project completed.  Having people actually work for me was brilliant and I wondered if I would ever reach the elevated position where I could recline and dictate my work to one of the three full time secretaries I would employ.

I am of course referring to Dame Barbara Cartland who at the end of her life had produced somewhere in the region of nine hundred books during her lifetime.  Her daily routine was to dress from head to toe in pink chiffon, recline, on an antique recliner, and dictate to one of the three full time secretaries she employed while sipping pink champagne.  I don’t think with legs like mine that I could handle the pink chiffon and I’ve never liked champagne.  And although you may think it quite an effort to produce such a huge number of books I would be mortified to get the review in the Guardian which summed her complete canon of work as, ‘Fifty shades of shite.’  (http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2013/aug/14/barbara-cartland-novelist-beyond-grave )

It was strange that even with my limited successes in the world of writing and the established and recognised people who supported my work I was still nervous about anything that I wrote, which perhaps is a good thing.  The mountain of rejection letters a writer accumulates from publishers and literary agents does eventually not worry you too much, but a bad review, or a negative comment, stays on your soul for ever.  I can still remember a cutting remark my sister made over twenty five years ago about something I had written and I have still never forgiven her.  I was waiting for Murphy and O Grady to get back to me about the first novel I had written for Lily Savage so was terrified in case they thought it rubbish.  Some of the novel had been written phonetically to give an authentic Liverpool flavour to the work.  I didn’t go overboard with the phonetics but used what I considered to be enough to make the dialogue sound real. 

Normally in the typing classroom I would stay in the shadows and remain at my machine typing away however I came in one day to be told that all of my manuscripts had been typed on to disc.  I was overjoyed as I could now devote all my time to editing them.  The tutor handed me back all the files and said that her girls had enjoyed the typing exercises if I had anymore I needed putting on to disc, which I had, she would only be too happy to help and sure the girls had been so accommodating, they had corrected all of my spelling mistakes too, especially in the dialogue.  Shouldn’t, suggested the tutor with an air of superiority that would guarantee her a job as a social worker, shouldn’t someone trying to be a writer be able to spell?