Paisley, the pope and me

[greatest ‘hits’ redux]   

 

School was boring, most of the time I wanted to be doing something else and the worst time was always from after lunch to home time. I used to sit beside a guy called Mark, whose dad was the assistant Minster at Ian Paisleys Martyrs Memorial church. He was good craic and we usually spent the time chatting and drawing silly cartoons to while away the hours until the bus came to take us back to the Gilnahirk ‘hood.

Occasionally he’d tell me that Big Ian was round at the house/manse for dinner the previous evening or that he was joining Paisley and his dad protesting outside some den of iniquity (or something or other). He even roped me in one time to going door to door with DUP European election leaflets - im embarrassed at the thought.

One Monday afternoon, after a double PE he told me that his dad was off to Brussels today to kick the pope (exact words). I enquired further and discovered that his holiness John Paul II was addressing the European parliament, so his dad and Paisley where heading over to voice their disagreement with some of JP’s theological musings.

I turned on the six of clock news that night to see Big Ian being dragged out of the chamber by his ankles, shouting. I RENOUNCE THEE THE ANTI-CHRIST… I RENOUNCCCCCE THEE THE ANTI-CHRIST!! There standing beside him was Mark’s dad, holding his papers - he was dead proud in school the next day.

Osama Jones

Its poor blogging to chat about stuff you saw on TV, it says something about a life wasted. But i am what i am.

There were two nice happy happy documentaries on last night, both set in the late seventies. The first was a Storyville special about the Jonesville Suicide death cult and the other was a historical look at America’s involvement in Afghanistan - which is topical I suppose with the release of the movie ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’.

First to Jonesville - this was one of the most depressing things I’ve seen. To give some background, Jim Jones was a cult leader/preacher in America in the late 70s who led a church called the People’s Temple. It was thousands strong, multi racial and counter cultural. A lot of the services were filmed, giving us lots of material of ‘healings’ and conversions and euphoric people selling their homes to give money to the church. Jim Jones then had a great idea to set up a new town in the South American rain forest and bring all his followers there. To cut a long story sort it all went sour when a congressman flew out there to investigate them (with some reporters)… all seemed idyllic until a couple of the members started passing notes to the reporters asking to be rescued… when they tried to leave Jones’ men shot and killed them along with the congressmen. This was all caught on film as one of the cameramen who died left his camera running.

It was gruelling to watch, especially then Jones then gathered up the 1000 people and told them that they would all have to die, and supplied the cyanide. There were no pictures of this but everything was taped through the PA system, letting us hear babies being wrestled from their mothers and poisoned, people pleading for their lives and ultimately the silence when everyone was dead. Three people survived by running into the jungle, and they told the story as we listened to the soundtrack. Gruelling. I’m not all that emotional or sentimental but I had to go and wake my baby son up to give him a hug after watching it - of course making him cry for the next half hour, doh!

Next was the retrospective from Afghanistan. This got my gander up a bit (always helpful when it comes to blogging). Some people have such a selective remembering of history, and are so accusing and self-righteous when using their 20/20 hind sight. In the late 70s when the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear holocaust which would have rendered the entirety of human progress and charity meaningless, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to set up a puppet communist regime. America decided to fund and assist the Afghan freedom fighters, a no-brainer really. But the narrative of this program seemed to be that American was stupid and immoral for backing the likes of Bin Laden and are now reaping a deserved whirlwind. Most of the interviewees were from countries who decided to spend their money on nicer hospitals and social welfare, and let bad old America step up to the plate of saving the world (hyperbole a go-go).

Anyway… this is too long a rant. All I’ll say is… if you travelled back in time to 1980 and told people that the Afghans they funded in the war against the USSR will turn on you after the year 2000, and you’ll get some problems with terror attacks, and a few thousand will be killed in New York. They would have run around the pentagon high-fiving saying… you mean we averted nuclear war!!?

What’s your best Christmas memory?

Ok the reception in my office have a CD player on non stop Christmas hits, and the office smells of pine - so im well and truly in the mood. Lets do this thing.

Gimme your earliest or best Christmas memories.

First one that pops into my head is thus…

My sister and I never had stocking hung up (though I think we did have a dad sock each filled with oranges and apples)… in stead we had a chair each in the lounge.

I’d usually wake up at around 3-4 am on the day, sneak out into the landing where my wee sis was usually waiting, too scared to go downstairs by herself in case ‘the big man’ was still there. We’d creep downstairs very slowly, usually feeling a little cold, but more shaking with the excitement of it all, almost unable to hold it in. We’d open the lounge door and before we’d turn on the light we could see that ‘he’d been’ because of the silhouettes on the chairs. We’d pause for a moment, almost wanting to delay it a second or two longer, then turn on the light to revel all. Truly magical. I’d drive my remote control truck into the mum and dads room at 4am… to ‘show’ them what Santa had brung.

Celebrity Encounter: James Galway

During my formative years, my parents decided it would be a good idea for me to learn an instrument. A friend of the family played the flute and had an old one she could give me, so for that reason, the flute it was. My mum looked up the local paper and found a teacher for me, Tuesday evenings from 6 to 7, for next 4 or 5 years!

I did enjoy it and hate it in equal measure, but looking back I’m really glad I was forced to go when I would have rather watched TV and played with my mates. I didn’t keep it up when I left high school, but I did learn other instruments and it helped make music a big part of my life.

Being a flautist (yes indeed) my hero was the great James Galway, made all the better because he harked from my native East Belfast. Randomly enough, my teacher was the daughter of a guy called Billy Dunwoody, who actually taught Galway (if there is such a thing as a flute geek, then this post will be loved, if not, it will be scorned).

The pinnacle of my fluting experience was when James Galway played a concert at the Ulster Hall. Because of Ms Dunwoody’s contacts she got tickets for five of her students to go along, and wait for it, meet Mr Galway backstage.

I remember it photographically, it was the biggest moment of my short life. The five of us, and the equally awed teacher lined up outside the dressing room to be ushered into his presence. Once there none of us uttered a word, we just couldn’t. But I remember he let us touch his golden flute (not a euphemism), and gave us a sage and insightful piece of advice. Keep Practicing. Brilliant.

Tuesday lunchtime’s alright for fightin’

A conversation stirred up recently about fighting as a kid, and whether I’d ever been in a decent fight. I’m not sure if it was an lead-in to try and convert me to some Fight Club esque underground cult or more of a general conversation starter - can never be too sure . I was transported back to high school, it was circa 1987, the Dukes of Hazard was on telly every Saturday evening, Aha were all the rage and Liverpool FC still won things.

I wouldn’t describe my self as a bully or a bullyee, I was one of the middle ground kids, not a complete sado and not in the really cool groups. Ok, I did play the flute in the school band… and ok you’ve forced it out of me, i was in the computer club, and ok I did… nope, enough!

There was one guy who decided to have a pop at me, take me out for a spin as it were, see what I was made of… he decided to concentrate on one thing, and stick to his game plan. I have/had a bit of a stammer so he just kept calling me M-m-m-monkey (substitute monkey for my real second name - I bet you’re shocked that I’m not Mr Q Monkey). He kept at it… all the time.

Lets be clear, even then, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass, but you know how these things work, he was taking a liberty and I couldn’t have that now… could i? So I went for a few counter punches… the you’re sad head shake and tut …. the boooooring jibe… the ignoring and pretending I didn’t hear him… even the your ma’s your da! (only makes sense in N Ireland - in fact, it doesn’t even there) … I then dealt out the pièce de résistance I know you are but what am I routine …. I kept this up for about a day - even though it made no sense in the context.

Then he escalated maters, in retrospect he probably regrets it, just as those Serbs who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand in 1913 probably… anyway… sorry … he stabed me in the arse with a compass. I jumped to my feet in second period English to deliver a soliloquy worthy or the great bard himself, im gonna kick your head in at lunch time! That was it, I was tied in, he was tied in , neither of us wanted to be, but there it was. Next stop Somme, Ypres, Paschendale (ok, I’ll ill leave the poor WW1 metaphors).

To set the scene, the bully in question (yes, bully! Lets call evil by it’s name!) was reasonably well built and I knew for a fact he been in a few rumbles before. I had no delusions that this was gonna end with anything other than me being beaten up - my only hope was that the dinner ladies steped in and saved me and I could summon up a look of phew, you’re lucky they were here or you’d have been in trouble.

When lunch time came I tried my best to play it all down, fight? What fight? I’m just having my lunch   was my line. But to no avail. A crowd was gathering in expectation and they wanted action. I was pushed to the middle of the circle as was he, strutting around looking relaxed like Ali in Zaire, I was more like rabbit in headlights. I figured one thing out - I needed to get out of there with at least one good thing to talk about, one good ‘did you see when I ….’ story even if I’m telling the story from my hospital bed. I resolved to get in one decent punch in his face, if I could mark him I could claim victory quickly before I was pounded to the floor… maybe even claim ‘fight over’ and run like flip! (rules like this DID sometimes apply).

First up we were pushed together, the crowd roared in excitement… come on , hit him… then the lull when they realised we were really just engaged in close hugging the occasional dead arm and nip. Then we broke up, I had my chance, I took a swing and caught him right on the nose, really, really well. He fell down and the crowd feel slightly silent. I don’t think there was any blood but I’d obviously really hurt him. It was great! But then, it all got weird, out of defeat he managed to successfully scramble for the moral high ground saying awww, what you do that for, flip sake we were only mucking about… then his friends joined in, then everyone did, tutting at me saying… what a physco, can’t even take a joke. To this day, I don’t get it, but sometimes it’s only fair to look at ones opponent with respect and say, I may have landed the only punch but he won the battle for hearts and minds.   A good lesson learned.

The Belfast child blogs again ;)

When i was 9 years old, my dad, who didn’t earn very much decided he needed to provide some more for his young family, so applied to become a policeman, quite a career move from warehouse man, but not unheard off. The thing was, this was Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s, joining the police was a decision to join the front-line in a paramilitary conflict. Every evening the news was filled with stories of police and soldiers being killed, bombs being placed under their cars outside their houses, emotional funerals with wives and children following a coffin, draped in the flag.

For me, childhood memories exist, as very clear, but seemingly quite random moments of absolute clarity. One of these was the day mum and dad gathered us in the sitting room to tell us what was happening, and asked how we felt about it.  In truth, mum was someone who liked to hype up the drama, my sister and i weren’t really of an age to have any meaningful input, but she liked the idea of the ‘family meeting’.

When he eventually passed training and started going to work, i found myself becoming a lot more aware of the news. He had been posted to West Belfast, one of the most violent areas, in fact one of the most dangerous areas in Western Europe. Sometimes when dad was on night duty we’d watch the news and hear “…a policeman has been shot in West Belfast, more news to follow…” the house would fall silent and mum would sometimes phone the station to see if dad was OK, he always was of course, and over a few years we stopped worrying. He was briefly seen on TV and had to appear in court as the arresting officer of one of the top guys in Sein Fein. It was very exciting, and the way he told the story the arrest him was very funny.  I remember really wanting to be able to show off to my mates about it.

Things which in retrospect were bizarrely scary became the routine. Checking under the car every morning, just in case the friendly neighbourhood freedom fighter had decided to blow us to bits by planting a bomb under the family Vauxhall Caviler; the fact that i couldn’t really tell people what my dad did for a job, ‘civil servant’ i was told to say; and of course that there was always a gun in the house. I knew were dad kept it, and from the age of about 15 I’d started to think a bit more about what i would do, if as it were, it all kicked off. Maybe I’d watched a few too many A-Team episodes but i fancied that if someone entered the house, and if dad couldn’t get to the gun, then it was up to me, the other man of the house. Dunno what the heck i was thinking.

Through the years there were ebs and flows in the conflict, and moments which brought the whole thing home to us, and upped the ante. Mum got a phone call on a random Tuesday, and then every other day for a week, from a man saying, ‘we know where you live and we’re going to kill your husband’. As you’d imagine, this was very upsetting - i think mum took to reading parts of the bible to him when he called (i bet that freaked him out). It was a big deal for a while but we changed our phone number and the phone calls stopped, and life got back to normal. Then there was a period when the trend was to throw petrol bombs through the windows of policemen’s houses. It was happening a lot and people we knew had been effected, people who lived near us. I remember going to bed and hearing noises outside on the street, deciding to myself that ‘this was it’, so i ran in to my sisters room and got her up, ran downstairs to wake my mum and tell her there were people outside. In retrospect, its a bit embarrassing, because there was no one there at all - i was probably dreaming. By the time i was ready to go off to university, dad’s job was just part of life. I had enrolled in Dundee Uni, and was planing a trip there to look for student digs. It was a time of great change, little did i know.

I was in bed sleeping, at about 3am, i think it was a Thursday evening, and I’d been round at a friends house the night before watching a video with some other mates. I can remember it photographically, the light went on in the bed room, my sister walked in in her pyjamas, followed by a tall man i didn’t know. I had no idea what was going on, but for some reason my reaction was to be completely nonchalant. ‘yeah, OK I’m up, I’ll be down in a moment’ even before I’d been told what had happened. I could hear another man downstairs with mum, and i knew right away that they were friendly, but there was something wrong. The man in my room was trying to tell me something, but i bizarrely acted like i already knew - it was like i didn’t want to admit that, mum and my wee sister knew what had happened and i didn’t. Then i heard it. “He’s gonna be OK, but he’s been shot”.

What i actually heard was. He’s been killed. I had no doubt in my mind that he’d been killed, i thought that “He’s gonna be ok” is just what they told you, to keep you calm. I started to try and take some sort of control of the situation, ask questions about what we should do. Where do we go now? should i get a shower, or is there no time? mum, why don’t you put the kettle on. Sis, go and put some clothes on. I felt completely fine, but the policeman took one look at me, and went to get me a glass of water, and got me a seat. Mum switched on BBC NI news, and they were talking about it. “There has been a gun attack on a police checkpoint in West Belfast”. Now i was awake.

The next thing i remember was being in the back of the police car on route to dad’s station, we arrived just as it was getting light, and we could see that the road was still cordoned off. The police station was like a fort, with gun turrets and 20ft high walls to stop mortar attacks. It was a very military environment and it felt strange to think that this was where dad worked. He was such a big softy at home, i was a grumpy teenager who thought that parents were naff and didnt know what it was like at school, and how rough it was when in fact he worked everyday in a place like this. Being in the police station, behind the security cordon made me feel like a little kid in a man’s world.

By this time we’d heard the full story. Dad was manning a check point out side the station to warn off car bombers and murder gangs. A car had driven past, a man was hanging out the sunroof with a machine gun and strafed the checkpoint with bullets, dad ran for cover but was hit twice in the leg from an AK47 (On the wall behind where he fell were bullet holes at head height - so in retrospect he was lucky he fell). The car then turned round for an other pass, but when they saw dad on the ground they got out and walked over to him to finish him off. He got out his hand gun, to protect himself, but he must have known he was going to die. At that moment one of the men in the station lookout tower realised what was happening and opened fire on the car. The IRA men fled. Dad doesn’t remember much about getting to the hospital, but he was haunted for a long while by those last moments.

For us, getting to the hospital wasn’t as easy as you’d think. Let me get this right. Dad was being kept in a secure wing, so when we visited him there, we could be identified as his family by unfriendlies, so we couldn’t go in our own car, because we could be followed home. So we had to be driven there in a police car. Because we’d arrive in a police car, we could be identified right away as police family and might be a target on route to the hospital, therefore we travelled in convoy of one army landrover, followed by a police landrover, followed by us in the car (or sometimes in a landrover, if mum wasn’t with us), followed by another army landrover. When we got to the hospital, because we’d arrived in a massive military convoy we could easily be identified, so we had to be escorted up to the ward by half a battalion of Gurkhas, or so it seemed. It was as terrifying as it was comforting. This was the palaver every day we went to visit him, which was every day for about a month. Bizarrely, even this started to seem normal.

When we first arrived at the hospital on that Friday morning, dad was just about to go into surgery, to save his leg. Mum, sis and me went into the room where he was and gathered round the bed. I held his hand, something i hadn’t done since i was a little boy and he burst out crying, something I’d never seen him do before but would see a lot more of. He looked terrified, but i was overjoyed. It sounds melodramatic, but i think up until i saw him, i still thought that “He’s gonna be OK” is just what they told you, to keep you calm.

Prince - Brit Awards 2006

Driving to work this morning, the DJ elected to bless his listeners with a snippet of Purple Rain by Prince.  It reminded me of how surprisingly stunning he his!

A couple of years ago he played at the Brit Awards, showing the younguns how its done :)  Apart from anything else, he plays the guitar like Hendrix, sings like Brown, is as funky as Bootsy and for a 5 foot elf, he OWNS the stage.

check it out: Click here to view Prince @ The Brits 2006 (the first song is slightly borning.. skip through it)

The moment after the second track…  when the spotlight is on the guitarist, then it moves to Prince and he whispers ‘nevamenacauseeeeyou any sorrow’ is pure soul. And the  Whoo  oooos  on Purple Rain!

I loved it at the time, the brit awards were being lavished on people like KT Tunstal and Corrine Bailey Rea…. then Prince broke out his guitar and blew them all way.

i know this is a stunningly dangerous statement, but     if i was a girl  :)   i’d be one of Prince’s dancers.

The best Hair-Metal Anthems of the 80s

Its time to sit back, reflect, turn on YouTube, and respect the hair!

Livin’ on a prayer - Bon Jovi
Here I go again - Whitesnake
Final Countdown - Europe
Animal - Def Leopard
Girls girls girls - Motley Crew
Every rose has its thorn - Poison
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns ‘n Roses

Does that about cover it?

Bustin’ wit the b-boys

In my school, like many others circa 1987 there was a corner of the green and pleasant land that was forever Break-Dance Alley! Every lunch time about 10-20 boys (all white as Jacko and Prod as Paisley) would congregate to show their skills. Some one would break out the, way too big to be practical, ghetto blaster and let loose some Run DMC (for ghetto read affluent and leafy south-east Belfast).

The real hard core would always wear light-weight grey and black Adidas jackets - and they were the ones everyone looked to get the party popping.

The more junior members would kick of first and it would usually involve, I shit you not, body popping. After the entrée was complete the real b-boys were pushed forward to the mat (bunch of coats) and encouraged to get out their bag of tricks. It mostly involved that thing where you do a bit of a crabs bend and spin around on your hands as quick as you can. It seemed to me that the amount of applause you got at the end was directly proportional to the aggression you put into your bad boy gangsta hand thrust.

The occasional nut-case would try to do the head spin thing. I honestly don’t think I ever saw anyone do it, and not really injure themselves. Some people would pretend to have done it, but actually they had kept their hands on the ground - but again, as long as they did a good gangsta sign off, they got some whoops and applause.

I myself, was frankly not cool enough to do it, I was more of a watcher. Still a vital cog in the whole performance I like to think.