In a New York minute

[greatist 'hits' redux] 

As mentioned in an earlier post, myself and GrumpyMan spent the millennium on a pilgrimage to New York City. We maxed out the credit cards, jumped on the last Aer Lingus outta Shannon, dodging a few millennium bugs on the way and landed in the Big Apple with woolly coats and big hearts. People forget now, due to the events a year later, but there were serious Islamic terrorist threats on Times Square - the news was doing a ‘countdown to carnage’ rather than countdown to new years. At one point it was rumoured that it would be called off, but in the end it went ahead so as not to ‘give in’. During the actual ‘standing around’ in Times Square bit a middle eastern looking guy who was standing in front of us was thrown to the ground by police who dragged him away (probably to father of Guantanamo).

GrumpyMan and I often used to get into a reckless game of egging each other on to do things, which sometimes led to excitement, but more often led to feelings of ‘hmm that wasn’t the best idea in the world’. On our first night there we were looking for a great NY Bar to go to, so we looked up a nightlife brochure we found in the hotel (hotel was of course one block from the Empire State Building - I say again, nothing by halves), anyway, bars… we found one we liked the look of, it was the Korova Milk Bar, based on a Clockwork Orange theme. We jumped on the Subway and emerged near to were it was, which of course, turned out to be downtown Brooklyn. Dodgy empty looking streets, no cars, dudes standing on street corners, us walking around in the cold for 30 mins looking at a map (jeepers). Eventually we came of a hidden doorway, walked in (expecting to maybe die soon) and arrived in the blacked out pub/club. If I remember right - it was actually a tad rubbish, but we stayed there for a couple of drinks anyway due to the hassle getting there.

This picture was taken by GrumpyMan from the Staton Island Ferry. Good uh!?

The next day we went to the World Trade Centre towers, I remember it like yesterday, leaving our coats in the lobby, getting in the express lift of Tower 2, up to the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor. It was an awesome sight and chilling to think what happened there a year or so later.

That night we decided to make sure we went to a bar that was packed and happening. “Hogs and Heffers” was the choice. To give you an idea, this bar was the inspiration (in 2002) for the movie Coyote Ugly. The blurb said “the barmaids dance on the bar to country hits, try the dentist chair, for a great night out”. Must be said (to wives and such who are reading) there was no hanky panky sought or had - we just thought - this is bound to be a good story to tell.

Again - the rule should be to check out where the bar is before you jump in a taxi. The taxi driver gave us a ‘look’ when we told him where we wanted to go - then promptly dropped us off behind some scary warehouses down by the docks… the kinda place you expect to see cop cars chasing bad guys, knocking over fish crates and boxes. When we saw the bar we hung outside for a while, having decided not to go in, it was just too scary looking. Problem was there were no taxi’s around… so we bit the bullet and headed in. I can’t quite remember the rest of that night.

Next day was New Years Eve, and seeing as we were going to die in a terrorist attack, Grumpy and I decided to get tattoos in Greenwich village. Ok, this is heavily disputed by Grumpy who said he never intended to get one himself. He certainly encouraged me to anyway, we spent a while looking round for a good ‘parlour’ and we eventually found a guy with a spiders web tattoo on his face and thought - he looks nice, lets ask him to do it. So Grumpy told him what I wanted (yes), which was something to commemorate the date and the place… he spent a while drawing it out in pen on some paper, so it would have been rude to then say no. So, the rest is history, except its not, its present on my right shoulder - and I’ve just heard that these things actually don’t wear off!

There are other tales from the american odyssey - but sometimes a blogger has to know when enough is enough.

Those pesky islamists

There’s something very oppressive about the climate of fear brought about by deadly Islamic attacks on western civilians. Has there ever been a more unnecessary statement you may say, but it’s the small things that get to me. Yesterday evening I was coming back from a work meeting on the train, and sitting across from me was a Muslim woman, head to toe in black complete with a head scarf. She was quietly sitting there by herself, eyes closed, lips moving, obviously praying to Allah. I wanted not too, but I couldn’t help it, I was looking around to see if she had any large bags or if she looked like she had any bulk around her waist. Whether I liked it or not I thought that my chances of making it to my destination had at least slightly reduced.

Two years ago I was in Australia with my then girlfriend, flying from Perth to Sydney. It was completely clear as we flew over Western Australia and we could see the shadow of the plane miles below on the dessert earth. After about an hour’s flying time I noticed that we were slowly changing course. At first it didn’t even register as unusual, I thought it was a change of flight path or normal routine, but slowly over the course of 5-10 minutes we kept turning and turning in a large circle until it started to become obvious that we were headed back the way we came.

I don’t know if anyone else noticed but certainly no one said anything and there was no message from the pilot. I took a breath and started an internal dialog, asking myself if what was happening was really happening and what it meant. I decided that either some person was forcing the plane to turn back or something technical was forcing the plane to turn back, neither was good.

I was listening to some music at the time, the song was Bob Dylan’s Forever Young - that’s irrelevant, but I just remember it. It sounds so naff and bravado-lite but I started to physce myself up for trouble. I swapped with my girlfriend from the window seat to the isle, put on my shoes and looked around for any likely helpers should it all ‘kick off’. A bit embarrassingly Rambo-esque, but at the time it felt completely real.

I didn’t want to tell my girlfriend what was happening, as I knew she’d be quite panicky, but unbeknownst to her I was planning to ask her to be my wife that evening, on the steps of the Opera House. The idea came to me that I should just go for it now in case I didn’t get the chance (seriously, this is how I was thinking). So I turned to her and said…. Bing Bong… it was the captain.

‘Ladies and gentlemen you may have noticed that the plane has turned around, we had a slight problem but it’s been resolved and we’re now turning back on our original flight path’

The cabin crew had smelt ‘something funny’ in the food storage area… which on further investigation turned out to be rotten coffee at the bottom of a trolley. Good job I was all physced up for some Steven Segal action!

By the way she said yes, on the steps of the Opera House that evening

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.

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!!?

No words needed

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!!).

Some nice pod casts

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/podcast.xml

Paste that into your iTunes postcast bit… the best one, i think, if the Stephen Fry/Hitchens one on blasphemy - interesting as always. The theos among you will like his references to CS Lewis. If only that tw*t Hitchens would shut up a bit, which he does, after someone in the crowd shouts at him .

I think Stephen Fry is great but i think, as i say, Hitchens is on of the most annoying arrogant people on earth. Even though i agree with the large part of what he says - which just shows that sometimes it about ‘how you say it’.

You can listen to the MP3 here.  The first ten mins and the last ten mins are the best.

It’s not exactly a ‘debate’ as both are in more or less in agreement. It reminds me somewhat of those Greenbelt ‘debates’ i used occasionaly attend (but in the other direction).

Fox News started the Calafornia fires

Just when you think Fox News can’t get any worse. They imply that Al Qaeda might be responsible for the California fires.

Scaremongering ? us ?

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.