Tag Archives: Northern Ireland

Northern exposure

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Part of the ritual of a trip to the flicks is a gawk at departing viewers as the lights come up and the credits roll.  It used to be an unconscious reflex, curiosity to see who else the film appealed to without processing it too finely. But this evening, the descent of young lads two by two-steps at a time is impossible to ignore. They are the Ceasefire Babies, arriving after the worst of it was over yet here they are, quietly absorbing a documentary on Hunger Striker, Bobby Sands. Like Sands needs any introduction.

The newly released documentary 66 Days is compelling viewing chronicling the turbulent period of Sands’s physical demise and corresponding rise of his political determination. It does so while unpicking the competing perspectives of those who considered him a freedom fighter with unflinching conviction against less generous assessments and categorisation of Sands and his comrades as terrorists. All the while transcending firm conclusions by illuminating the contradictions and hypocrisies of violence directed towards others alongside feats of self-sacrifice (something the IRA were not generally known for). Contractions that propel a handful of individuals into the universally recognised iconography of the oppressed. An enigmatic few with a rare ability to attract derision and admiration, often simultaneously.

For all its success at even-handedness, and impressive line-up of talking heads, it is a struggle to ignore the film’s lack of female voices. According to director, Brendan J Byrne, the women he ‘wanted’ (Sands’s sisters, Bernadette McAliskey) declined to participate. When pressed for a comment on Twitter, Byrne responded:

“..I know but it was mainly a war fought by men… Inserting a female voice for the sake of it felt tokenistic to me”

To this viewer, the inclusion of women would not have felt any more tokenistic than having Fintan O’Toole as the main analyst could be seen as a tactical effort to give the film broader respectability. Instead there is an entire male cast of historians, commentators, former politicians, and political analysts.

More critically, Byrne appears to ignore the finer aspects of his own film. For there are women everywhere throughout it, if silenced by the sound of men talking. So we do not hear the bin-lids we see them banging, nor their muffled cries of grief at funerals, nor the spoken-over stomp of their feet as they march in mandatory black berets and matching shades, nor their tearing down of corrugated iron surrounding the H-Blocks in an act that precipitated the eventual end of the Hunger Strikes seven months and 10 dead men after they started. Backroom strategists remain out of view.

As Bernadette McAliskey remarked only last week during a discussion on women in history: “history is what it says it is”.

An examination of war doesn’t require the insertion of female voices into the story for they are always to be found in the centre of it; feeling the impact of it more keenly than most.

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Bobby Sands’s Mother & Sister at his funeral

A different corner

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I don’t have any problem moving house. It’s the staying put that gives me jip. I used to think it was down to a restless gypsy soul. Therefore conferring a certain romantic status on invisible voids strewn across my sense of self.

On closer inspection, roaming between destinations within a few hundred mile radius of each other hints less at a wanderer than a fidgety fugitive. From what? Heartbreak? Conformity? Boredom? Prison? If life’s continuum is a process of breaking free towards the next point of the present, then surely it pays to stop and look around every once in a while to see how it measures up against the brochure.

But flicking forwards and backwards to the other glossy pages became a habit. Until the habit became a pathology. Until the pathology had me sitting cross-legged and leaning over kitchen tables, weekend papers, bar counters, pillows, cinema seats, my own pointed fingers, and steering wheels, weighing up the pros and cons of moving to anywhere-but-here.

And now I’m about to give all that up when we make the permanent move next week…to a mile from here. No longer will I be able to luxuriate in fabricated futures that were never going to be anyway. Just rogue horizons on the shoreline of segregated schools and communities. Rusting fire escapes leaning against hardened vowels beneath tribal flags flapping in the stillness of political ineptitude.

Would it be different elsewhere? Probably not. There would just be different windows through which I could day-dream my way into a new existence. A new job. A new me. The elusive mysterious me I can’t quite pin down. Because when push comes to shove, she’d probably prefer a ground-hog Saturday evening to something anything but.

The 40s are a strange time. The game is up in many respects, but getting used to some things that are so right still takes getting used to.

And where were the women when history was made? (part 1)

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Another summer, another festival of chin-stroking underway in a municipal building near you. Or summer school, as they’re more loftily known. Or loada shite, as they’re more colloquially known. I’m all for rubbing the worrying proliferation of hairs beneath my lips whenever the opportunity arises. Why, I’ve even been known to unwittingly stroke my imaginary beard at a sandwich counter; back when it was imaginary. But enough of this labouring the introduction to a post I haven’t quite decided what it is to be about yet.

Just once, I’d love to look around at one of the terriblay seriarse panel discussions on offer to see a mix of locals among the audience. To my relief, but mostly my insatiable need to complain, they’re a no-show. For now, I’ll just have to make do with the travelling sisterhood of retired teachers. Cultra-accented bespectacled women clutching programmes as proof of their impeccable cultural credentials. And me. And a troupe from the local historical society. And the over-eager post-grad student high on a worrying lack of cynicism. And the town eccentric who looks like the eccentric of every Northern Town, what with the Doc Martens at 60 and an androgynous look that has others wondering with a mixture of awe and horror how she has the balls to wear them with such a severe haircut. And then there’s the obligatory American chair who has been making an academic living from The Troubles (“that unfortunate euphemism” nervous middle-class titter) longer than European funding has been single-handedly keeping the peace industry that followed afloat. And shining not so much as a match-stick of light on them.

So the narrowtive of these things goes.

I only came on here to tell you about Alice Milligan. But, anything can happen when it comes to summer schools.

I  do hope I’m not going to continue with this semi-italic business. It’s so annoying.

People before prophet

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rally

Socialists Worked in solidarity with

Queen’s in communion with

Green Partiers flanked by Kerry

Pro-Choicers who marched alongside

Belfast Feminists who banged to the beat of

hearts of Anarchists who roared over

soaring voices of Parents chanting

‘Hey, Hey, Mister, Mister,

Get your laws off our sister’

Belfast, Saturday 2nd July 2016

belfast 3

Small, far away

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It’s on the tip of my tongue to chalk my collapsed defenses up to the potentially lengthy gap between this ritual and the next. But I don’t. I go on craning my neck as strenuously as my neighbour engaging me in parental small-talk . Enthusiastically we strain to nab a glimpse of little ones tucked under gowns and mortar boards. Defeated by the cuteness of it all, I quietly roll thought balls to toss indiscriminately overhead.

You have to hand it to the Church for pilfering the critical glass-clinking moments from cradle to grave. And Hallmark for making the most of the spaces in between. Cousin’s Day is an opportunity to pause and reflect, and remember how your parents would’ve preferred you had turned out. While nothing says ‘I Love You, Daddy’ quite like a little bear fridge magnet and a bottle opener in the shape of a football. It’s the small things that matter.

But it’s the big things that deceptively give the appearance of being small when really they’re just far away. It’s this apparent insignificance that continues to ripen.  Always for the taking by the Cardinal sinned ever since they first flash-mobbed the corridors of our newborn sovereignty. And it’s this insignificance that’s the last cornerstone of Catholicism standing stoic as the once dominant moral policeforce lie dying in all but one Green Field.

It could’ve been worse. Posing as a bride of Christ pales in comparison to digging up the dead every few years for a boogie. And becoming one of God’s foot soldiers at 12 in exchange for a judiciously chosen name beats being drafted into the local militia. He who rules the world rocks the ritual. Those immune to the inherent need for celebration are not indigenous to this world. Let those who never felt a lump in their throat cast the first spray of confetti. Oh no, wait, they banned that a few years back. Sorry. Dems the man-made rules.

For many, the processional outings of their children are only days, far away. For others, far away days are weightless without context. Eventually we discover they’re neither. When they do come round, we find ourselves squaring reason with emotion before reconciling both with whatever ritualistic apparatus is available to us. The machinery that enables us to come together to raise a toast. And boast of unexpected enjoyment from it afterall.

Not for our one a bridal gownette, nor name-taking coercion further on. Perhaps a mild twinge of envy from her parents at the guaranteed calendar of events laid out for others. Meanwhile, nothing demonstrates the transition from nursery to primary school quite like the deafening rendition of I Can See a Rainbow and an inexhaustible supply of Monster Munch. Such hypocrisy. The parents don’t believe in giving children junk. But it’s just one day, right?

graaduation

Class of 2016

In neutral

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Saturday morning. An authoritative knock at the door. I don’t bother opening my eyes but considerately, if reluctantly, take a moment to assess its forcefulness. On the scale of urgency it’s somewhere between a car-blocking incident, and an exasperated delivery-person giving up grappling with a stubborn envelope. Whoever it is, they’re too impatient to await my plan of inaction so swiftly move next door to keep the rhythm going. Violet’s chirpy greeting is soon punctured by a monotone male. Or Violence, as I prefer to call her, on account of her overbearing inoffensiveness.

My curiosity yawning now, I make for the window just as her door shuts. A PSNI officer flees the driveway. Shit.

On the scale of catastrophe, reason gauges this approximately somewhere between finding my fella collapsed on the park-run circuit (I feared it all along), and an offer of a witness protection programme after my decision to throw a vote at one of the local Unionists was rumbled (I feared it all along). In a way, I’m relieved my dirty secret is finally out.

Earlier that morning…

“A Chara, he was the only candidate who supports same-sex marriage and is pro-choice. See? Only a pretend Unionist. With a font size 2 U. Oh no, please, not the kneecaps. They’re my best feature” *bolts upright in cold sweat from nightmare*

So I knock on the window fully intending to comply. He looks up, shakes his head disappointingly before consulting his watch.

“What sorta time do you call this to be in bed?”

It’s 9:45am. This is nothing, pal. But I’m wearing pyjamas with a family of sparkly rabbits on the front so it’s no time to willingly participate in sadistic interrogation without my lawyer present, who for I all know was found collapsed on the park run circuit moments earlier.

“Small child. You know yerself”. Thankfully the 53-month old is at her relos. I don’t know where I got the giggle from. Possibly Barbara Windsor circa her Carry On days.

The relief on learning the woman three doors down had her car robbed overnight is immense. Yay. My fella’s still alive.

“Some time after one this morning”

“Oh that’s dreadful”, I reply in slightly Violence-esque tones.

“They broke into the house and got the keys”

“Oh no”

It’s impossible to feel anything but pity for the plight of our neighbour. But discussing it with a police officer through an upstairs bedroom window with upside-down hair while in novelty pyjamas isn’t usually my thing.

So I do that thing that one shouldn’t ever do when one is feeling comprised. I relax.

“That happened my brother last year”

I can tell he’s wondering what this has to do with anything. Time to crank it up a gear.

“Down South”

He backs away slowly.

“And guess what? When he replaced the car, they came back and did it again. How mad was that?”

He returns to his watch.

“Well, thanks for your time. If you hear or see anything suspicious you can call the station”

He momentarily looks at my car, declining the opportunity to issue a reminder to keep it locked. We both suspect if anyone bothered to rob it, they’d probably leave it back shortly afterwards.