I’m originally from

A very subtle moment occurred in my life this morning, so subtle that it passed me by. I met a new person in my new job and upon hearing my accent he asked where I was from. My automatic answer was ‘Bristol’, then followed by ‘but originally from Belfast’. I think the moment when an ex-pat starts saying the phrase ‘…originally from…’ is a moment of transition from long term visitor to resident. This status has crept up on me.

What price truth?

It’s revealed this week that the Bloody Sunday enquiry has now cost £180m! One of the relatives was quoted as saying “You can’t put a price on it” Well, I think you can. We could have given the families £12m each in blooming compensation, if I was the family of one of those killed I’d far prefer that to hearing some judge saying ‘ok, looks like they were unlawfully killed’.

Is every other killing in Northern Ireland going to be investigated in the same way? Are the lives of these 14 somehow worth more? Somehow more tragic and more in need of investigation?

To compare - how much of the Iraqi tax payer’s money would we recommend they spend in 30 years time investigating the 950 Shiites who died in the bombs and stampede tragedy a few years ago - I work that out at £12billion. The sad thing is that large killings and bombings in Iraq don’t even make the news these days - yet the truth about 14 killings 40 years ago during a de facto civil war is worth £180m to people - i don’t get it.

Mass Child Poverty?

A hundred thousand children in Northern Ireland are living in poverty, it emerged today. New figures published by the Northern Ireland Assembly also revealed that 44,000 of them are living in “severe poverty”. Committee chairman Danny Kennedy MLA said: “There can be little doubt that having more than 100,000 children in Northern Ireland living in poverty and 44,000 children living in severe poverty is unacceptable in the 21st century.

Not that I don’t want to believe the Bele Tele or indeed our esteemed assembly but, seriously? That can’t be true unless the meaning to the word poverty has been seriously degraded. To me poverty means the possibility of not having enough food today, no clean drinking water, living in a cold disease ridden squat, living on the streets picking a pocket or two, leaving school at 10, working down coal mines by the age of 12, parents dead from aids and your infected, life expectancy under 40 etc etc etc etc.

If any of these kids own an Xbox or can afford to buy McDonalds or have a myspace account… then as far as grumpy old me is concerned, they aren’t in poverty! Not because I don’t think the lives of people should be continually bettered, just that it completely downgrades the real poverty of children in Darfur, Brazil, Bangladesh, Angola etc .. it leaves people thinking aww those poor Brazilian street kids, they’re just like Jonty in Andersonstown who’s ma can’t afford to buy him a new iPod.

Relative poverty should be called something else, because I’m relativly poor compared to Bill Gates.

A Real Checkpoint Charlie

As I’ve mentioned before in a rather long dramatic and hammed up post, my dad used to be a member of her majesty’s constabulary in Belfast, NI. It did lead to a couple of good blog-fodder moments, which im sure is why he joined. At the age of 16 I decided that having basically failed my exams that moving on to A-Levels and Sixth-Formness was just asking for trouble. So I opted to take a different tack… and go to college. I didn’t exactly know what that meant other than that I didn’t have to get a job, and it wasn’t school. I remember looking through the prospectus deciding between ‘Heating and Pluming’ and ‘Land Management’ I’d no idea what either of them really were but I was told these were the least subscribed courses so I’d a good chance of getting on one. In retrospect if I’d chosen Heating and Pluming I’d most likely be a lot richer than I am now… but at the time it seemed really gypy! I ended up choosing a generic engineering course - but that’s not the point of this post.

The college was at the bottom of Divis Street, beside Divis Flats, infamous for having a British Army lookout base on the top floor and for being a staunchly Irish Republican area. It should be noted that before I started going here I don’t think I had ever had a conversation with a Catholic -  not because I didn’t want to, I lived in a prod area and went to a prod church, all my friends where prods all my parents friends where prods - that’s the way it was/is.

Needless to say that it was enlightening being in a class of 20 boys where I was the only non militant Irish republican - I actually kinda liked it, I was their pet Hun! I started to take note of the Glasgow Rangers scores (even though I hadn’t before) so on Monday morning I could have a bit of banter.

It got a bit ropy at times, especially when there were a lot of car bombs going of in town. One day there was a bomb in the car park of Castlecourt Centre, just across the road. We were all evacuated but we were close enough to see it go of - all the boys started cheering and singing which was a bit of a reality check about the assorted political views.

Then came the moment. On a boring afternoon were all making some sort of electronic capacitance meter when one of the lads called everyone over to the window. There were a couple of police armoured Landrovers outside and they were just setting up a check point. The boys were hanging out the window shouting abuse and pointing rulers at them pretending to be snipers… nothing out of the ordinary really until my mate Connor (who’s house in Ardoyne I’d scarily been to visit) started shouting… “hey, look at the auld boy getting out now… fuck aff ya beardy bastard”. He caused a bit of a stir so I went over to have a look, with the intention of being the ‘sensible’ one and looking a bit put-out by it all. I looked out at the check point and got that sinking feeling in my stomach - the beardy bastard was of course my dad. I almost wanted to say hey, that’s my dad and for them all to be shocked and see that there’s actually a human behind the uniform but I realised that it wasnt the smartist move as some of the lads openly bragged about family in the IRA. I told my dad that night and he just laughed it of like it was nothing, and said he should have waved at me. I took it to heart though and it changed the nature of my relationship with the other students - I was much less of a gung-ho loyalist parody and just kept my head in my books (yeah right!  I just bunked off to listen to the CDs in the Virgin Megastore!!).

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.

The apple never falls far from the tree

…but yes it does! At the back of our house, through the gate there is a massive apple tree. I’m talking taller than our house. It is in common land, so no one seems to really own it, so no one bothers to pick the apples. There must be littlerly thousands of apples on the tree, so I thought this year, im gonna take the bull by the horns and get me a big bag of apples (hadn’t thought much past that).

I decided to construct a device a device so cunning it would have make Archimedes blush, an apple catcher if you will. In essence its four metal rods with a large rubble sack slung beneath it to catch the apples. I’ve left it for about a week while I was back in god’s county, I got back yesterday I went out ro collect the spoils. Rather optimistically I brought out a bin bag so I could carry back all my swag (might take a few trips I thought). But, no go! Not one single apple in there, all around the bag im tramping through rotten apples and much but nothing but leaves in the bag! I think someone is taking the mick!

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.

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.