So much has happened to M and the teenagers since they arrived here in Adelaide. Although things are not perfect here after my return form Abu Dhabi I don't think the family would have survived an extended period of my absence: I would not have been part of what has turned out to be a traumatic readjustment to life in the real world for all of us.(Adelaide).
As it is, living as I do at A's place with my chinese lodger companions, I am still not 'centre stage'-but at least I am here-if only on the fringe. I think it would just have made things worse if I had tried to squeeze in permanently at HQ with the others. (where M,S and J are living). In such a small house space all of us would have felt the strain.
The financial pressure is a real concern but J has just been made employee of the month -at McDonalds and is doing very well on that front -and at school too. S is doing OK at University of Adelaide and has just started a job one day a week as a security guard at his Rugby club.
This should give him confidence and a little more cash-and help us out with the rent.
Retirement, Kota Kinabalu
This is where I would like to be after I have robbed the bank
Winners and Losers
Debate 2008 Winners and Losers Editor at left.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Cabin Hill Campbell College 1964-1969
D C was in the same class as me in Cabin Hill. He was a boarder and I was a day pupil. We used to spend a lot of time together at break times, lunch times and after school. One of my first memories is of playing ‘holesies’ with him outside the wooden buildings. This a game of marbles or ‘marleys’ as we called them. David got bored at week-ends and I would cycle to school –quite a long way –two and a half miles with my burberry stuffed with oranges to give to him. He didn’t like the food at school! We played cricket and soccer together aswell. Unfortunately , he lived in Lurgan, which was forty minutes away, and so I didn’t see him in the holidays. The friendship developed when we went to Campbell.
During these times I don’t remember much of my brothers. My eldest brother R was seven years older and my elder brother P was four years older. Neither of them had much time for their kid brother or ‘worm’ as they affectionately referred to me. We were not close mainly because of the age difference.
Campbell College
“You should write a book ,Don,you’ve had such an interesting life”
How many times have I heard it said to me? Hundreds of times! Well, dozens at least! Well maybe one dozen, perhaps. Usually after an amusing story from one of my earlier incarnations –sometimes consummated with the assistance of an alcoholic beverage.
It has been a strategy of mine since I was a teenager-telling entertaining stories to gain attention. I think it started as keeping the lads amused in the Lower sixth at Campbell College in Belfast. This was a full-time occupation in my teenage years. It was serious stuff –it was a matter of survival.
Campbell was a public school in Belfast. For my English readers this is not an Oxymoron. Campbell had, and still has the reputation of being the ‘Snobby’ school in Protestant East Belfast. It was exactly that. Only the well-off and the propertied could afford it. All the teachers had RP accents and were Oxbridge graduates who had failed to get jobs in the English Public schools. It is to the eternal credit of my parents that they sacrificed so many holidays in Majorca in order to send my self and my two brothers there but we never really appreciated it and I still can’t, no matter how hard I try! I appreciated their intentions but the school was a failure for me in almost every sense.
At a personal level the experience of Campbell for me was pretty miserable. I hated most things about the school like all normal teenagers. I was handicapped by my painful shyness. I don’t know where the lack of confidence in myself came from but it has stayed with me until the present day. I was always the “Outsider’. Never really part of the ‘Rugby” group or “Swats” and not officially a nerd either.
I was a curious anomaly – nerdish perhaps –something of a loner. Well not quite alone –there was D C of course,my chum, and he still is. D C was something else –that rarity – a true friend-a true believer –in me that is –an even greater rarity.
“Crowhead” as I still affectionately refer to him was someone who could actually amuse me. To this day I don’t know the origin of his nickname. But without Crowhead I would not have survived at Campbell.
He was a boarder. He had a very dry sense of humour, and a wonderfully generous and patient nature. We became buddies at Prep school and the friendship thrived and survived all through Campbell into Trinity and for many years in foreign parts on to the present day. At Campbell we were inseparable, and we were known as the ‘terrible duo’ by some masters. Like all young teenagers we spent most of the time laughing at others and the rest of it laughing at and with each other.
Dartmouth and the MFV trip
Two memorable experiences indeed. At Campbell, both Crowhead and I were in the cadets –the naval section. One summer holidays it was compulsory for us to go on a camp. David and I found ourselves with a group of other cadets on a boat trip to Scotland on a Motor Fishing Vessel which was 37 feet long. The trip from Belfast to Campbelltown took 19 hours. When we arrived we pitched tents and Crowhead and I were sharing. I managed to lose my wallet with five pounds in it which Dad had given me as spending money. I was distraught and I remember Crowhead was very helpful. We found it and bought fish and chips to celebrate. This was the first time I had lost something really important in my life.
Crowhead and I attended another Cadet camp at Dartmouth Royal Naval College in Devon the following year when I was fourteen. We travelled to Liverpool from Belfast on the boat and then took the train to Devon. It was a twenty four hour journey and we arrived at Dartmouth exhausted. Immediately we found ourselves with other schoolboy cadets from all over the country in the hands of fresh Royal Navy recruits who had just completed their thirteen week induction course into the Royal Navy at Dartmouth. You can imagine that this was not a holiday camp and the new recruits were only too pleased to put us through for one week what they had been through in the previous thirteen!
On the night of our arrival we all had to have our bunk beds inspected in the dormitory by the section commander. As we all stood to attention beside our beds I could see the commander giving some of the boys a hard time. When he arrived at my bed he picked up my tennis shoes and hurled them with an unnecessarily dramatic flourish into the middle of the floor. He said they were ‘disgustingly filthy’ and that I should buy another pair. I remember having made a point of cleaning these shoes before leaving Ireland. They were spotless. He then proceeded to inspect my clothes. Opening one of my drawers he stared at my five pairs of socks (One for each night we were going to be at Dartmouth). He then turned to me with a look of incredulity on his face and started to shout at me with words to the effect that how could I possibly have thought that it would be acceptable to bring an ‘odd number’ of pairs of socks (five) on camp? When I begged his pardon he resumed shouting at me pointing out that surely it was obvious that I could not pack an odd numbered pair of socks neatly in a drawer: six or four pairs apparently would have been acceptable –but not five.
I don’t remember how the conversation ended but the next thing I remember was being carried out of the building by four officer cadets-one for each arm and leg-and someone slapping my face and saying –are you ok? I suppose the journey and the shock had been too much for me: I had fainted into the arms of the commander and his lieutenants. I quickly took stock of the situation and decided to try and turn it to my advantage.
I was taken to the sick bay where a big, burly Ex - Royal Navy Doctor examined me. He asked me how I felt and had a quick grope of my balls. I replied that I thought I had the flu and perhaps ought to return to Ireland. He told me that all I needed was a big supper. How he could have worked this out from feeling my balls I have no idea. But he was right. I felt fine after supper. This incident introduced me to the arbritrary abuse of power and sexual assault. I was amazed at how irrational and stupid grown men could be. It left a deep impression on me.
Dartmouth was a bad place -for me anyway. Up at the crack of dawn for a run before breakfast, it was rush, rush, rush-and you had to be five minutes early everywhere because you were in such and such a division- ‘Benbow’ division-probably named after some British war hero. Everything was a competition and you lost points for your division if you were late for any activity etc.
I managed to keep out of trouble until the penultimate night. A nerdy cadet called Cox from another division came to me and told me I had been ‘selected’ by Cox’s division commander to be on the welcoming committee for the arrival of some Royal Naval vessel in the middle of the night. I was genuinely puzzled by this request because Cox was not in my division. So, I went to my section commander and asked him what to do. I learned a lot in the subsequent twenty four hours. My commander, ticked off that someone in another division had not asked his permission for me to attend this welcoming party, told me to ignore Cox’s request. The job of the welcoming committee was to stand in a line and blow whistles at the ship as it docked so I was quite pleased , if a little surprised by my commanders decision.
I slept like a bird-as I say it was the penultimate night. Next morning the shit hit the fan. My absence had been noted and I was put on ‘defaulters’ My punishment was to miss the last night party in the officers Mess-a euphemism for a bar. Here we juveniles were to be treated as adults by our tormenters for the first and only time having been abused by them all week. They took out their guitars and started to sing songs and buy us beers!
Anyway, I missed the party on the last night because I was put on ‘Defaulters’ . The worst part of it all was my own commander failed to back me up against the other one. I felt totally betrayed. In fact , my punishment was not only unjust but vindictive. After the party was over I had to report to my own commander (the ‘Judas’) -in my full No.3. uniform. For the uninitiated , No.3 is the most elaborate naval uniform to put on –with all sorts of bits of rope, lanyards and things which have to be put in the correct place. I had to wake up Judas and then go back to sleep and report to him again on the hour for each and every hour through the night!
So that was my last night at Dartmouth as the rest partied. I learned from this experience, at the early age of fourteen not to trust those in authority. This incident also had a lasting impression and influence on me. If I wasn’t beforehand, I have certainly been since, suspicious of those in authority. Another piece of the "outsider" character puzzle was now firmly in place.
My main job at Campbell seemed to be to amuse people. The person I had to keep most amused was M R.You see M was the school ‘Out-half’ on the first XV rugby team (the equivalent of a quarterback in American Football)-and to be a friend of M was really worth a lot of kudos. In retrospect, the kudos of being Mark’s friend more than compensated for being of average ability academically and nerd-like in other respects. (Thankfully, I didn’t know really know I was a nerd at the time.In fact, I didn’t really know it until about a year ago.).
M laughed at my jokes-and for that I was prepared to do almost anything at the age of sixteen . I tried all sorts of things to foster my friendship with M including smoking ‘Players No.6’ cigarettes, “Wills cigars, and ultimately a Sherlock Holmes droopy Pipe with St. Bruno tobacco. I felt the latter gave me a certain air of intellectual gravitas which I desperately needed. As well as being on the first XV, M’s Dad was a sports TV announcer! R R was the closest thing we had to a celebrity in the school. Besides, Mark was cool and all the guys liked him. His Dad had a colour TV and a video machine-the first ones to be seem in Northern Ireland –by me at least.
Yes, Campbell was a school which did little for me, and I have rarely been back. The teachers were strict, for the most part distant and disinterested-and the food was stodgy. Its one saving grace was the cricket. I was good at cricket. That was my saviour –because it gave me a certain status in the eyes of the other boys and the staff.
Back to M again. Iwas sitting with Ma at the back of T.C's Geography class giggling inanely at my own witty comments and, more importantly, making M laugh that started me on the road to obsession with two things: recognition (getting people to pay attention to me) and teaching.
Let’s face it –how many other people can have actually experienced as many schools as I have as a student or a teacher! At last count –it must be over twenty in nine different countries. Each school culture is different –and the concepts of authority and leadership in have come to fascinate me. I am particularly interested in how power corrupts authority and leadership. Not just the leadership shown by management. I mean leadership in the broadest sense. This might include teachers leadership styles with students; teachers leadership styles with other teachers, and even students leadership styles with other students. The whole issue of why people behave in the way they do within school cultures has always intrigued me.
After fifty years of study I’d have to say that I’m not much the wiser for it other than to state the bleeding obvious that each school has it’s own culture and people behave differently in every school.
Duuh!
During these times I don’t remember much of my brothers. My eldest brother R was seven years older and my elder brother P was four years older. Neither of them had much time for their kid brother or ‘worm’ as they affectionately referred to me. We were not close mainly because of the age difference.
Campbell College
“You should write a book ,Don,you’ve had such an interesting life”
How many times have I heard it said to me? Hundreds of times! Well, dozens at least! Well maybe one dozen, perhaps. Usually after an amusing story from one of my earlier incarnations –sometimes consummated with the assistance of an alcoholic beverage.
It has been a strategy of mine since I was a teenager-telling entertaining stories to gain attention. I think it started as keeping the lads amused in the Lower sixth at Campbell College in Belfast. This was a full-time occupation in my teenage years. It was serious stuff –it was a matter of survival.
Campbell was a public school in Belfast. For my English readers this is not an Oxymoron. Campbell had, and still has the reputation of being the ‘Snobby’ school in Protestant East Belfast. It was exactly that. Only the well-off and the propertied could afford it. All the teachers had RP accents and were Oxbridge graduates who had failed to get jobs in the English Public schools. It is to the eternal credit of my parents that they sacrificed so many holidays in Majorca in order to send my self and my two brothers there but we never really appreciated it and I still can’t, no matter how hard I try! I appreciated their intentions but the school was a failure for me in almost every sense.
At a personal level the experience of Campbell for me was pretty miserable. I hated most things about the school like all normal teenagers. I was handicapped by my painful shyness. I don’t know where the lack of confidence in myself came from but it has stayed with me until the present day. I was always the “Outsider’. Never really part of the ‘Rugby” group or “Swats” and not officially a nerd either.
I was a curious anomaly – nerdish perhaps –something of a loner. Well not quite alone –there was D C of course,my chum, and he still is. D C was something else –that rarity – a true friend-a true believer –in me that is –an even greater rarity.
“Crowhead” as I still affectionately refer to him was someone who could actually amuse me. To this day I don’t know the origin of his nickname. But without Crowhead I would not have survived at Campbell.
He was a boarder. He had a very dry sense of humour, and a wonderfully generous and patient nature. We became buddies at Prep school and the friendship thrived and survived all through Campbell into Trinity and for many years in foreign parts on to the present day. At Campbell we were inseparable, and we were known as the ‘terrible duo’ by some masters. Like all young teenagers we spent most of the time laughing at others and the rest of it laughing at and with each other.
Dartmouth and the MFV trip
Two memorable experiences indeed. At Campbell, both Crowhead and I were in the cadets –the naval section. One summer holidays it was compulsory for us to go on a camp. David and I found ourselves with a group of other cadets on a boat trip to Scotland on a Motor Fishing Vessel which was 37 feet long. The trip from Belfast to Campbelltown took 19 hours. When we arrived we pitched tents and Crowhead and I were sharing. I managed to lose my wallet with five pounds in it which Dad had given me as spending money. I was distraught and I remember Crowhead was very helpful. We found it and bought fish and chips to celebrate. This was the first time I had lost something really important in my life.
Crowhead and I attended another Cadet camp at Dartmouth Royal Naval College in Devon the following year when I was fourteen. We travelled to Liverpool from Belfast on the boat and then took the train to Devon. It was a twenty four hour journey and we arrived at Dartmouth exhausted. Immediately we found ourselves with other schoolboy cadets from all over the country in the hands of fresh Royal Navy recruits who had just completed their thirteen week induction course into the Royal Navy at Dartmouth. You can imagine that this was not a holiday camp and the new recruits were only too pleased to put us through for one week what they had been through in the previous thirteen!
On the night of our arrival we all had to have our bunk beds inspected in the dormitory by the section commander. As we all stood to attention beside our beds I could see the commander giving some of the boys a hard time. When he arrived at my bed he picked up my tennis shoes and hurled them with an unnecessarily dramatic flourish into the middle of the floor. He said they were ‘disgustingly filthy’ and that I should buy another pair. I remember having made a point of cleaning these shoes before leaving Ireland. They were spotless. He then proceeded to inspect my clothes. Opening one of my drawers he stared at my five pairs of socks (One for each night we were going to be at Dartmouth). He then turned to me with a look of incredulity on his face and started to shout at me with words to the effect that how could I possibly have thought that it would be acceptable to bring an ‘odd number’ of pairs of socks (five) on camp? When I begged his pardon he resumed shouting at me pointing out that surely it was obvious that I could not pack an odd numbered pair of socks neatly in a drawer: six or four pairs apparently would have been acceptable –but not five.
I don’t remember how the conversation ended but the next thing I remember was being carried out of the building by four officer cadets-one for each arm and leg-and someone slapping my face and saying –are you ok? I suppose the journey and the shock had been too much for me: I had fainted into the arms of the commander and his lieutenants. I quickly took stock of the situation and decided to try and turn it to my advantage.
I was taken to the sick bay where a big, burly Ex - Royal Navy Doctor examined me. He asked me how I felt and had a quick grope of my balls. I replied that I thought I had the flu and perhaps ought to return to Ireland. He told me that all I needed was a big supper. How he could have worked this out from feeling my balls I have no idea. But he was right. I felt fine after supper. This incident introduced me to the arbritrary abuse of power and sexual assault. I was amazed at how irrational and stupid grown men could be. It left a deep impression on me.
Dartmouth was a bad place -for me anyway. Up at the crack of dawn for a run before breakfast, it was rush, rush, rush-and you had to be five minutes early everywhere because you were in such and such a division- ‘Benbow’ division-probably named after some British war hero. Everything was a competition and you lost points for your division if you were late for any activity etc.
I managed to keep out of trouble until the penultimate night. A nerdy cadet called Cox from another division came to me and told me I had been ‘selected’ by Cox’s division commander to be on the welcoming committee for the arrival of some Royal Naval vessel in the middle of the night. I was genuinely puzzled by this request because Cox was not in my division. So, I went to my section commander and asked him what to do. I learned a lot in the subsequent twenty four hours. My commander, ticked off that someone in another division had not asked his permission for me to attend this welcoming party, told me to ignore Cox’s request. The job of the welcoming committee was to stand in a line and blow whistles at the ship as it docked so I was quite pleased , if a little surprised by my commanders decision.
I slept like a bird-as I say it was the penultimate night. Next morning the shit hit the fan. My absence had been noted and I was put on ‘defaulters’ My punishment was to miss the last night party in the officers Mess-a euphemism for a bar. Here we juveniles were to be treated as adults by our tormenters for the first and only time having been abused by them all week. They took out their guitars and started to sing songs and buy us beers!
Anyway, I missed the party on the last night because I was put on ‘Defaulters’ . The worst part of it all was my own commander failed to back me up against the other one. I felt totally betrayed. In fact , my punishment was not only unjust but vindictive. After the party was over I had to report to my own commander (the ‘Judas’) -in my full No.3. uniform. For the uninitiated , No.3 is the most elaborate naval uniform to put on –with all sorts of bits of rope, lanyards and things which have to be put in the correct place. I had to wake up Judas and then go back to sleep and report to him again on the hour for each and every hour through the night!
So that was my last night at Dartmouth as the rest partied. I learned from this experience, at the early age of fourteen not to trust those in authority. This incident also had a lasting impression and influence on me. If I wasn’t beforehand, I have certainly been since, suspicious of those in authority. Another piece of the "outsider" character puzzle was now firmly in place.
My main job at Campbell seemed to be to amuse people. The person I had to keep most amused was M R.You see M was the school ‘Out-half’ on the first XV rugby team (the equivalent of a quarterback in American Football)-and to be a friend of M was really worth a lot of kudos. In retrospect, the kudos of being Mark’s friend more than compensated for being of average ability academically and nerd-like in other respects. (Thankfully, I didn’t know really know I was a nerd at the time.In fact, I didn’t really know it until about a year ago.).
M laughed at my jokes-and for that I was prepared to do almost anything at the age of sixteen . I tried all sorts of things to foster my friendship with M including smoking ‘Players No.6’ cigarettes, “Wills cigars, and ultimately a Sherlock Holmes droopy Pipe with St. Bruno tobacco. I felt the latter gave me a certain air of intellectual gravitas which I desperately needed. As well as being on the first XV, M’s Dad was a sports TV announcer! R R was the closest thing we had to a celebrity in the school. Besides, Mark was cool and all the guys liked him. His Dad had a colour TV and a video machine-the first ones to be seem in Northern Ireland –by me at least.
Yes, Campbell was a school which did little for me, and I have rarely been back. The teachers were strict, for the most part distant and disinterested-and the food was stodgy. Its one saving grace was the cricket. I was good at cricket. That was my saviour –because it gave me a certain status in the eyes of the other boys and the staff.
Back to M again. Iwas sitting with Ma at the back of T.C's Geography class giggling inanely at my own witty comments and, more importantly, making M laugh that started me on the road to obsession with two things: recognition (getting people to pay attention to me) and teaching.
Let’s face it –how many other people can have actually experienced as many schools as I have as a student or a teacher! At last count –it must be over twenty in nine different countries. Each school culture is different –and the concepts of authority and leadership in have come to fascinate me. I am particularly interested in how power corrupts authority and leadership. Not just the leadership shown by management. I mean leadership in the broadest sense. This might include teachers leadership styles with students; teachers leadership styles with other teachers, and even students leadership styles with other students. The whole issue of why people behave in the way they do within school cultures has always intrigued me.
After fifty years of study I’d have to say that I’m not much the wiser for it other than to state the bleeding obvious that each school has it’s own culture and people behave differently in every school.
Duuh!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Not belonging
As I get older I think with regret about how I seem to belong to no place and no group.
I've just spent an evening with friends at a quiz night here in Adelaide. At the table M and I were the only people who were not part of the F family. There were brothers, sisters, and in - laws.
It was a very pleasant evening.There was that easy-going familiarity, but also the lack of curiosity, which characterizes encounters between homelanders and migrants in Australia. I found it both relaxing and frustrating at the same time!
How is it that I have never managed to do this for my own family? Why have I not made it a priority to build a family network for my own children? The F's have so much support for each other and their children. My three have only got their mother and myself. No wonder they are struggling. How could I not see that this would happen? The result is a family suffering from 'culture shock' in Adelaide.
I feel responsible for all the problems my family is having at present. M was such a happy person and now she is sad. She has no family to help. However, she is a very strong person.
It's not just a question of 'belonging'. It is not being needed. It is ot being able to contribute. It is not being valued - which makes me feel depressed, hopeless, worthless.
I don't want people to feel sorry for me and 'help' me. I want to contribute to other people's lives. Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed and humiliated by it all. When this happens I want to break off communication and hide from everyone. But then I feel even more lonely.
When I see how things could have been or should have been I feel envious of my friends.
As for myself I realise now that I will never really belong anywhere. I might aswell be anywhere. Here in Adelaide , if it weren't for the 'F' family, we would know no-one. If we dropped dead tomorrow no-one would notice -or care when they found us.
I don't think this would be true if I had been an African, South American, or an Asian. I have always believed this 'loneliness' and 'solitariness' -to be a dysfunctional artifact of living in a developed country.
In Africa, Asia or Latin America I haven't felt this loneliness , but on the other hand, because I am not indigenous to these places, there was a certain feeling of alienation of being a "foreigner"-no matter how well I was treated by the locals.
That was a different feeling to what I feel in Adelaide
I've just spent an evening with friends at a quiz night here in Adelaide. At the table M and I were the only people who were not part of the F family. There were brothers, sisters, and in - laws.
It was a very pleasant evening.There was that easy-going familiarity, but also the lack of curiosity, which characterizes encounters between homelanders and migrants in Australia. I found it both relaxing and frustrating at the same time!
How is it that I have never managed to do this for my own family? Why have I not made it a priority to build a family network for my own children? The F's have so much support for each other and their children. My three have only got their mother and myself. No wonder they are struggling. How could I not see that this would happen? The result is a family suffering from 'culture shock' in Adelaide.
I feel responsible for all the problems my family is having at present. M was such a happy person and now she is sad. She has no family to help. However, she is a very strong person.
It's not just a question of 'belonging'. It is not being needed. It is ot being able to contribute. It is not being valued - which makes me feel depressed, hopeless, worthless.
I don't want people to feel sorry for me and 'help' me. I want to contribute to other people's lives. Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed and humiliated by it all. When this happens I want to break off communication and hide from everyone. But then I feel even more lonely.
When I see how things could have been or should have been I feel envious of my friends.
As for myself I realise now that I will never really belong anywhere. I might aswell be anywhere. Here in Adelaide , if it weren't for the 'F' family, we would know no-one. If we dropped dead tomorrow no-one would notice -or care when they found us.
I don't think this would be true if I had been an African, South American, or an Asian. I have always believed this 'loneliness' and 'solitariness' -to be a dysfunctional artifact of living in a developed country.
In Africa, Asia or Latin America I haven't felt this loneliness , but on the other hand, because I am not indigenous to these places, there was a certain feeling of alienation of being a "foreigner"-no matter how well I was treated by the locals.
That was a different feeling to what I feel in Adelaide
Friday, May 29, 2009
Democracy and Rationality
It is self-evident that one of the problems of democracy is that people vote out of self-interest.
While this may well be true I do not believe that this is the central problem with democracy. The central problem is that democracy is based on the false premise that human nature is rational.
But human nature is clearly not always rational. People vote for all sorts of idiotic reasons. In the end the vote cast is often based on irrational thought.
That is why "debate" is so flawed. We may have no better system so far perhaps -but still, democracy is very seriously flawed.
While this may well be true I do not believe that this is the central problem with democracy. The central problem is that democracy is based on the false premise that human nature is rational.
But human nature is clearly not always rational. People vote for all sorts of idiotic reasons. In the end the vote cast is often based on irrational thought.
That is why "debate" is so flawed. We may have no better system so far perhaps -but still, democracy is very seriously flawed.
Officiousness: the baby and the bathwater volunteering
This morning's incident is so typical...
I'm in the Salvation Army shop looking for bargains when a lady comes in pushing a most beautiful stroller pram. She says to the male receptionist who happens to be serving me at the time:
"Can just leave this here-it's in perfect condition!"
(perhaps expecting to be thanked for her contribution)
The receptionst is a young man who is serving me turns to her and says:
"Eh.. we don't accept baby's things here" with that confusing rising intonation which has the air of both a question and command. (Aussies don't know they are famous for this in the rest of the world.0
The woman is slightly taken aback but doesn't show it-because she is a polite South Australian.
I am dumbfounded!
"Yeah -just down the road is a childrens place - they'll take it" says the young man.
She repeats her offer just to be sure she can believe her ears. The young man repeats his denial because he rather likes making her feel uncomfortableby refusing her. He seems to quite enjoy telling her so again.
I roll my eyes and the woman winks.
Out she goes to the childrens place. She was as dumbfounded as I was.
Some idiot has obviously sued the Salvos for some piece of baby stuff that didn't work.
Result: Some officious bureaucrat in the Salvos has decided not to accept baby stuff donations!
Doh!
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
As a result, hundreds of people miss out on useful baby stuff because some idiot sued the Salvos.
Who is the moronic judge who awarded against the Salvos?
I could do a better job myself!
Couldn't he/she foresee the consequences of following the letter of the law on this decision?
Can't they just use good old common sense?
If the judge can't use common sense then what hope have the rest of us got? I've been teaching young people for thirty years to make decisions based on common sense-not blindly following regulations-what is he point if they are hamstrung from making them in the real world?
Why does did this incident happen?
The judge, the officious bureaucrat and the receptionist like the POWER of saying 'yes' or 'no'.
Changing the subject....
Trying to volunteer in this country is like trying to break into Fort Knox.
Police certificates of good conduct and mandatory notification documents are necessary. No wonder there are no teachers or volunteers in the country.
What crap! Who would be bothered to register as a teacher or as a volunteer?
And who can trust the police? What makes them more trustworthy than me?
I'd trust myself before I'd trust the police.
I'm in the Salvation Army shop looking for bargains when a lady comes in pushing a most beautiful stroller pram. She says to the male receptionist who happens to be serving me at the time:
"Can just leave this here-it's in perfect condition!"
(perhaps expecting to be thanked for her contribution)
The receptionst is a young man who is serving me turns to her and says:
"Eh.. we don't accept baby's things here" with that confusing rising intonation which has the air of both a question and command. (Aussies don't know they are famous for this in the rest of the world.0
The woman is slightly taken aback but doesn't show it-because she is a polite South Australian.
I am dumbfounded!
"Yeah -just down the road is a childrens place - they'll take it" says the young man.
She repeats her offer just to be sure she can believe her ears. The young man repeats his denial because he rather likes making her feel uncomfortableby refusing her. He seems to quite enjoy telling her so again.
I roll my eyes and the woman winks.
Out she goes to the childrens place. She was as dumbfounded as I was.
Some idiot has obviously sued the Salvos for some piece of baby stuff that didn't work.
Result: Some officious bureaucrat in the Salvos has decided not to accept baby stuff donations!
Doh!
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
As a result, hundreds of people miss out on useful baby stuff because some idiot sued the Salvos.
Who is the moronic judge who awarded against the Salvos?
I could do a better job myself!
Couldn't he/she foresee the consequences of following the letter of the law on this decision?
Can't they just use good old common sense?
If the judge can't use common sense then what hope have the rest of us got? I've been teaching young people for thirty years to make decisions based on common sense-not blindly following regulations-what is he point if they are hamstrung from making them in the real world?
Why does did this incident happen?
The judge, the officious bureaucrat and the receptionist like the POWER of saying 'yes' or 'no'.
Changing the subject....
Trying to volunteer in this country is like trying to break into Fort Knox.
Police certificates of good conduct and mandatory notification documents are necessary. No wonder there are no teachers or volunteers in the country.
What crap! Who would be bothered to register as a teacher or as a volunteer?
And who can trust the police? What makes them more trustworthy than me?
I'd trust myself before I'd trust the police.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
2009 Adelaide Friendship
The default position for human beings seems to be to distrust each other. Any teacher will tell you that it takes time to build up relationships with your students.
The bonds between people are so delicate. So much effort and so many coincidental circumstances are needed to construct and maintain friendships. Neglect, or one discrepancy, and the bond may be damaged or even severed.
Good intentions are simply not enough.
It must be some sort of survival mechanism built into our 'hard-wiring'.
Even between friends there is always distrust. With the best will in the world even real friends sometimes can't communicate. One of my friends is in a situation where I know I can help. I've 'been there and done that'-but they can't see it! They are are blind to what is on offer in front of their very eyes: a solution to the problem. Will they make themselves 'available' to me for assistance?
No, of course not!
Some of my teaching friends are caught up in the Orwellian nightmare of modern living.
Although my friends may be talented ,intelligent, generous and kindly people they all have the modern flaw - they cannot conceive of anyone else being a part of a solution to their problems.
Friendship involves ALLOWING other people to help you - just as much as helping other people.
The fact is that many bureaucrats are failed teachers who are not qualified to lick the boots of my friends. Others are failed pen pushers who don't like teaching or or can't teach.
Changing the subject entirely...
This morning started with a letter in the post which told me I had a two hundred dollar fine for a speed camera driving offence.
Now, I'm not denying that I didn't speed, nor that speed can be dangerous.
My point is twofold: firstly, I have been driving for forty years and have never had a serious accident. So, do we really think that my 8 kilometer per hour infringement was dangerous?
Moreover, what sort of a world do we live in where I can be fined and pay the offence without meeting another human being?
It seems to me that the ultimate objective of the consumer society is for the citizen to grow up, live -and then die without having to meet another human being- in other words without having to "bother" anybody. Is this not the ultimate Orwellian nightmare?
When are we going to realise that 'Efficiency" is not the ultimate goal in life?
Is not the the logical result of pursuing efficiency for the citizen to be born, grow up, live and maybe die "online" without bothering anybody!
There has been so much talk about "accountability" in the past forty years. Fine -but WHO are we accountable TO?
More often than not it is some bureaucrat or politician with no experience whatsoever in the area of expertise of the profession!
Here endeth the lesson for this day!
The bonds between people are so delicate. So much effort and so many coincidental circumstances are needed to construct and maintain friendships. Neglect, or one discrepancy, and the bond may be damaged or even severed.
Good intentions are simply not enough.
It must be some sort of survival mechanism built into our 'hard-wiring'.
Even between friends there is always distrust. With the best will in the world even real friends sometimes can't communicate. One of my friends is in a situation where I know I can help. I've 'been there and done that'-but they can't see it! They are are blind to what is on offer in front of their very eyes: a solution to the problem. Will they make themselves 'available' to me for assistance?
No, of course not!
Some of my teaching friends are caught up in the Orwellian nightmare of modern living.
Although my friends may be talented ,intelligent, generous and kindly people they all have the modern flaw - they cannot conceive of anyone else being a part of a solution to their problems.
Friendship involves ALLOWING other people to help you - just as much as helping other people.
The fact is that many bureaucrats are failed teachers who are not qualified to lick the boots of my friends. Others are failed pen pushers who don't like teaching or or can't teach.
Changing the subject entirely...
This morning started with a letter in the post which told me I had a two hundred dollar fine for a speed camera driving offence.
Now, I'm not denying that I didn't speed, nor that speed can be dangerous.
My point is twofold: firstly, I have been driving for forty years and have never had a serious accident. So, do we really think that my 8 kilometer per hour infringement was dangerous?
Moreover, what sort of a world do we live in where I can be fined and pay the offence without meeting another human being?
It seems to me that the ultimate objective of the consumer society is for the citizen to grow up, live -and then die without having to meet another human being- in other words without having to "bother" anybody. Is this not the ultimate Orwellian nightmare?
When are we going to realise that 'Efficiency" is not the ultimate goal in life?
Is not the the logical result of pursuing efficiency for the citizen to be born, grow up, live and maybe die "online" without bothering anybody!
There has been so much talk about "accountability" in the past forty years. Fine -but WHO are we accountable TO?
More often than not it is some bureaucrat or politician with no experience whatsoever in the area of expertise of the profession!
Here endeth the lesson for this day!
1961-1964 Cabin Hill Prep school
Cabin Hill
At primary school I was shy and introverted, but on vacations in Donegal, I was very sociable and thought to be a 'brilliant conversationalist' by Mum's friends. Yes, I felt comfortable around adults at that age. but, my personality began to change at Preparatory school.
Prep school itself, was not memorable. I have a montage in my mind of seemingly unrelated memories. I remember cycling to the school in Belfast come wind, rain or snow. It was about two and a half miles and that seemed a very long way for a ten or twelve year old. It was often very windy. If it was raining or blowing really hard Dad might relent and let me go on the bus as a concession. I do not remember once ever being taken to school by my parents in a car-even though dad worked as a civil servant quite close to the school. I have often thought how lucky my own children were that they never had to do this; they were always given a lift to school by myself or M.
The teachers were remote and for the most part colourless, strict and dour:it was Northern Ireland of course and there was very little fun involved with school. There was the Latin teacher who one day smacked about a dozen of us with a ruler on the hand for making a noise before his (late) arrival to class. I didn’t mind the smack so much as the comment he made before he delivered it. He was angry:
‘Might have known it would be you, Nixon’
.
I was stung by this insult and never forgave him. I didn’t consider myself to have a reputation as a miscreant.
Mr. L. was another cold fish. He was the history teacher and the cricket coach. I used to open the batting for the first XI and on ‘Father’s Day’ made what I considered to be a memorable 39 not out. Apparently this wasn’t good enough for him, as he said in the team meeting afterwards that my scoring rate was too slow. What an asshole! I remember feeling completely deflated. He couldn’t manage to praise me for my highest score of the season.(and the second highest score of my career)
H was a smooth talking, oily individual. He was the maths teacher and he drove around in his Jag Mark 10 and of course we boys were all mightily impressed. But one day the ‘Mr.Hyde’ side of his character was displayed which made me lose respect for him entirely. There was an accident prone new boy called Alastair B who was bullied mercilessly by everyone when he first arrived in the class. H thought he would join in the fun, one day, when the hapless B had committed some minor misdemeanour. H made merciless fun of him in front of the class at the same time as pulling him by his sideburns and banging his head with the blackboard duster. B was in tears. H and the boys all thought this was hugely funny.I couldn’t understand why everyone was laughing at B. I remember I didn’t laugh. I thought H was a smarmy bully. (but I continued to keep on the right side of him and let him drive me around in his Jag Mark 10.) These were early signs of me developing the character of an ‘outsider’.
H was the English teacher. I remember him scoffing at the idea that I was reading the “Famous Five” books by Enid Blyton when I was 13. The pompous ass presumably thought I should have been reading Dostoyevsky. As I am now an English teacher I find his scoffing reprehensible. I’m happy if my fifteen year olds are reading comics-at least it’s reading. You can’t motivate people by scoffing at them.
The Headmaster was a jovial man. He was strict but not mean. He had one unbreakable rule. When he was speaking in assembly if he saw you talking he would say:
“_____, would you kindly come up to my office after Assembly please?”
Upon arrival in his office the offender (myself in this case) would be asked to bend over his sofa and would be whacked once with his cane. It hurt like hell. The head was smiling and joking all the time and I think he regarded it as very funny.
He never held the offence against you. Most people were whacked at least once by ‘The Bow’ as he was known. Just the once for me.
I discovered an important thing at Cabin Hill: that I was very competitive. I discovered it during the athletics on sports day. I could hardly control myself I was in such a nervous a state at those races. My anxiety was unhealthy: I can still remember the tension. I was developing an overanxious, overachieving highly - strung personality.
Friends at Cabin Hill
There was S. B. S befriended me in the fourth form while I was waiting at a bus stop to go to the dentist. He offered me a ‘Tuti-fruti’ and I accepted . This was the beginning of a friendship which lasted for three or four years. We did lots of things like visiting each others house to play cricket and rugby or make fireworks etc in each other’s homes.
We had some delightful visits to Lough Eske in Donegal where we fished and shot birds and played around on the lake.
Mr Swann, the owner of the land at Lough Eske, had a beautiful daughter who was sixteen and two years older than Stewart and I–I think her name was Diane. She was a flirt and more annoyingly, she flirted with S more than with me!
In order to tease us, I remember one night in the caravan she came to kiss us good night. She seemed to fancy S and kissed him lingeringly on the lips. That she should want to kiss at all seemed to me gross in the first place–but to kiss a little twerp like S was completely incomprehensible when she had a real man-and an intellectual heavyweight at that-right beside her!
‘Women are unfathomable’ I thought. She didn’t kiss me at all. To my horror I also realized I was a coward. I was becoming afraid of women. I just couldn’t figure out what made them tick.
Another story from around the same time (when I was about fourteen) corroborates this. I was accompanying R, my other friend on a ‘walk’ along Church road one evening. It was a Saturday night and we were bored with nothing to do. Suddenly we found ourselves following two giggling girls of roughly the same age as ourselves. I think the girls must have deliberately put themselves in our path. R’s instinct was to try and catch up with them and wolf whistle at them -which he promptly did.
As a nerd form a nerdy boys school and with no sisters I was perplexed by this ‘primitive’ behaviour of R. How could he be so crude? I almost felt like apologising to the poor girls for R’s ungentlemanly behaviour.
There was a puritan streak developing in the outsider. Would not the girls surely be offended at R’s loutish attitude?. I felt sure the girls wanted only to engage us in an intellectual conversation about dinosaurs, or discuss George Orwell and the meaning of life. I was sure that was what all the girls wanted. Very sure.
To my astonishment, the girls however, in a swift maneuver designed to prolong the flirtation took a sharp turn right down a road at the same time as throwing us a coquettish glance over their shoulders.
Then, something absolutely amazing happened: To my utter disbelief - and genuine consternation - they wolf whistled back at us!
R was delighted and wanted to take off after them for a snog and a grope in the bushes. So did I. So did the girls. The easy-going and ‘cool’ R turned to me with a an expectant, leer. But I was already running in the opposite direction!
Even R wasn't up for a threesome. He was very disappointed with me.
So was I. Such a coward! This realisation that I was nervous around girls was actually very painful for me to handle. I gradually realized in my early teens that my bubbly little personality was disappearing and being replaced by an increasingly neurotic one. This came as a great disappointment to me and was accompoanied by feelings of intense anxiety, shame and low self esteem.
This lack of confidence with both sexes–but particularly girls, stayed with me in some measure through most of my adult life. Not that I saw many girls in my early teens (which was of course the problem). But those I did meet found me unapproachable.
The friendship with S came to an abrupt end when I realized he was turning into a selfish prick with a high opinion of himself. He became arrogant and started to boss me around. As I've said before arrogance was 'beyond the pale' to me.
Fifteen years later I ran into him again in Belfast when I was teaching at Methodist college. He was married but we struck up the friendship again one summer vacation when we were both at a loose end. I had resigned form Methodist College and was waiting to go to Malawi. As S was out of work I introduced him to my neighbour D G who had a business erecting Greenhouses. In fact I got S a temporary job with D at the end of the summer I wasn’t pleased to hear when I returned from Malawi that after learning the business S had set up his own rival business and tried to buy D out! A few years later, when S’s own business was booming, he also loaned me a car for a week when I returned from Colombia but he had the cheek to charge me for it! I was not impressed since I was the one who had basically got him back on his feet a few years earlier. I later heard that S had made his pile and retired at about the age of forty-five.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
On openness and sincerity.
I have always believed in trying to be 'open' about my weaknesses-including with my children I don't mean by this that I make a list of them to analyse; I just mean acknowledging them in a matter-of -fact way. Perhaps this is just false modesty-I hope not.
So, I try to be open and say things like. "Well, I tried being a Principal of a school twice but found that I did not have the necessary personal characteristics to enjoy doing it well"
To my consternation I could see disappointment and confusion on their faces
With 'twenty-twenty' vision I get the impression that this is precisely NOT what my children or teenagers wanted to hear from Dad!
Children want to be proud of their father at all costs: they want to hear of successes:
I have a problem with this because I also want to be sincere. Because I was a success in Tennis, Cricket or in the academic world, I didn't want my children to feel pressured to emulate me. I wanted them to chart their own path in life unencumbered by expectations from myself.
Now I hear things like: "Stop being so negative Dad!" or "Don't underestimate yourself!"
You can't win!
At work, too I find myself underselling myself. Such is my fear of boasting or seeming big-headed that it seems like I almost apologise to people for my academic qualifications and experience. My friends say that I expose myself by doing this.
The problem is although I want to be sincere I also want to be valued and recognised!
It's very tricky because I have noticed that some people take me at my own face value and so I feel unrecognized in my work.
As Simon and Garfunkel say in the song:
"I'm just trying to keep my customers satisfied!" (including myself!)
So, I try to be open and say things like. "Well, I tried being a Principal of a school twice but found that I did not have the necessary personal characteristics to enjoy doing it well"
To my consternation I could see disappointment and confusion on their faces
With 'twenty-twenty' vision I get the impression that this is precisely NOT what my children or teenagers wanted to hear from Dad!
Children want to be proud of their father at all costs: they want to hear of successes:
I have a problem with this because I also want to be sincere. Because I was a success in Tennis, Cricket or in the academic world, I didn't want my children to feel pressured to emulate me. I wanted them to chart their own path in life unencumbered by expectations from myself.
Now I hear things like: "Stop being so negative Dad!" or "Don't underestimate yourself!"
You can't win!
At work, too I find myself underselling myself. Such is my fear of boasting or seeming big-headed that it seems like I almost apologise to people for my academic qualifications and experience. My friends say that I expose myself by doing this.
The problem is although I want to be sincere I also want to be valued and recognised!
It's very tricky because I have noticed that some people take me at my own face value and so I feel unrecognized in my work.
As Simon and Garfunkel say in the song:
"I'm just trying to keep my customers satisfied!" (including myself!)
Boyhood in Northern Ireland
Boyhood Chums and Pranks:
Another school incident occurred when I was with R one night returning from the cub scout meeting. We had to take a short cut through the school. As we approached our garden we sensed an eerie apparition on the hill. It was the classical ‘white sheet’ ghost apparition. Anyhow it scared the hell out of R and I and, we backtracked (running) along the Comber road to take the long way home. When we got home I remember the terror I felt at going round to the back door of our house which was quite close to where the apparition had been seen. I was petrified.
It turned out to be a prank played on us by my brother and his friend who, knowing we would be returning through the school had wrapped themselves in a white sheet and taken up a conspicuous position on the hill in the school grounds.
Speaking of right and wrong and righteousness another anecdote: Around this time in primary school we developed a fad of spelling words backwards, or at least mixing up the syllables. As my best friend was nicknamed ‘Rhino’ he tried referring to himself as ‘OnihR’ but it didn’t roll off the tongue easily –so it became corrupted first to “Orine” and then , since we were at that age “Urine”. For me this was fine –as long as we kept it low profile and within our select group. But, I was not happy about this corruption ‘Urine’ being used in public which my friend M, one day conspicuously decided to do by roaring ‘UUUrine!’ at the top of his voice down the road. The roar was directed towards the hapless Rhino at a distance of about fifty metres – well within earshot of neighbours and all and sundry. My response was to engage in the one and only physical fist fight I have ever had in my life -with M -to ‘punish’ him for his unseemly outburst. That day I learned two important things about myself: firstly, that there was a puritan streak in my psyche; secondly, that I was not a great fighter: I came off worst against M.
M lived across the road, His father worked in the aircraft factory in Belfast and had a good job but he was an alcoholic and nobody saw much of him. His mother had a tough job bringing up M and his younger sister more or less on her own.
M was the leader and I was the follower. M could always ‘do’ things whereas I could only watch and applaud. He was a daredevil-and a bit wild because of the lack of close supervision from his Dad. I egged him on oscillating between between awe and grim fascination at his exploits. M enjoyed and needed the hero worship. He was the “Gider” champion. A gider was a Go-kart. He would make (and I would watch him make) a gider by what appeared to me to be magic. All he needed was old pram wheels and some planks of wood, a hammer and a few nails. Like a madman M would fly down a long hill at the school at the bottom of our garden and disappear through an archway. Each time he did it, my heart missed a beat as I was sure it would be the last time I saw him. But he always returned to perform again for his admirer. M liked praise and he got most of it from me.
Another thing M was good at was making guns. He would get a hollow piece of copper pipe as a gun barrel and fit it onto a wooden rifle butt made from a plank. The open end of the pipe would back up against the wood. Gunpowder from fireworks was placed in the barrel and lead shot from fishing tackle in front of a ‘wad’of paper. He would drill a hole ( and I would watch) at one end and put in the touch paper from the fireworks. He would then light the touch paper and aim at a crate of milk bottles at the school at the bottom of the garden. You see, even in my spare time I was obsessed with schools. I never seemed to be able to get away from them, even in my spare time.
Bang! And the milk bottles would shatter –a schoolboy’s delight!
When I told my son about this, he was horrified. He just could not get his head around the fact that his teacher father could have indulged in such an activity.
M and I were both great tree climbers . We would climb those trees at the bottom of our garden and cross from one to the other at a considerable height. I honestly believe Mum and Dad never knew the half of it. We carved our initials in the trees – still there I believe to this day. D.N. 12th of July 1962. That would have been when I was ten years old.
What a different life I had as a child from my own children. Another thing M and I had were endless pets-not just the family dog –but our own mice, rabbits and even Bantam hens. How many kids today in suburbia would understand the joy of owning (and having somebody else look after) all these animals?
When I was a teenager I may have been a miserable nerd who couldn’t communicate with people –but I could always commune with my Bantams-Higildy , Pigildy , Bert and Gerald. Mum had a penchant for naming bantams. My favourite was ‘Dosy’ as in the ‘seven dwarves’.
How caring and thoughtful my parents were to provide us with all these animals.
I was too lazy to give them to my own children: I was too busy trying to get them into a private school to ‘achieve’ rather than worry about such things.
A typical ‘babyboomer’.
Another school incident occurred when I was with R one night returning from the cub scout meeting. We had to take a short cut through the school. As we approached our garden we sensed an eerie apparition on the hill. It was the classical ‘white sheet’ ghost apparition. Anyhow it scared the hell out of R and I and, we backtracked (running) along the Comber road to take the long way home. When we got home I remember the terror I felt at going round to the back door of our house which was quite close to where the apparition had been seen. I was petrified.
It turned out to be a prank played on us by my brother and his friend who, knowing we would be returning through the school had wrapped themselves in a white sheet and taken up a conspicuous position on the hill in the school grounds.
Speaking of right and wrong and righteousness another anecdote: Around this time in primary school we developed a fad of spelling words backwards, or at least mixing up the syllables. As my best friend was nicknamed ‘Rhino’ he tried referring to himself as ‘OnihR’ but it didn’t roll off the tongue easily –so it became corrupted first to “Orine” and then , since we were at that age “Urine”. For me this was fine –as long as we kept it low profile and within our select group. But, I was not happy about this corruption ‘Urine’ being used in public which my friend M, one day conspicuously decided to do by roaring ‘UUUrine!’ at the top of his voice down the road. The roar was directed towards the hapless Rhino at a distance of about fifty metres – well within earshot of neighbours and all and sundry. My response was to engage in the one and only physical fist fight I have ever had in my life -with M -to ‘punish’ him for his unseemly outburst. That day I learned two important things about myself: firstly, that there was a puritan streak in my psyche; secondly, that I was not a great fighter: I came off worst against M.
M lived across the road, His father worked in the aircraft factory in Belfast and had a good job but he was an alcoholic and nobody saw much of him. His mother had a tough job bringing up M and his younger sister more or less on her own.
M was the leader and I was the follower. M could always ‘do’ things whereas I could only watch and applaud. He was a daredevil-and a bit wild because of the lack of close supervision from his Dad. I egged him on oscillating between between awe and grim fascination at his exploits. M enjoyed and needed the hero worship. He was the “Gider” champion. A gider was a Go-kart. He would make (and I would watch him make) a gider by what appeared to me to be magic. All he needed was old pram wheels and some planks of wood, a hammer and a few nails. Like a madman M would fly down a long hill at the school at the bottom of our garden and disappear through an archway. Each time he did it, my heart missed a beat as I was sure it would be the last time I saw him. But he always returned to perform again for his admirer. M liked praise and he got most of it from me.
Another thing M was good at was making guns. He would get a hollow piece of copper pipe as a gun barrel and fit it onto a wooden rifle butt made from a plank. The open end of the pipe would back up against the wood. Gunpowder from fireworks was placed in the barrel and lead shot from fishing tackle in front of a ‘wad’of paper. He would drill a hole ( and I would watch) at one end and put in the touch paper from the fireworks. He would then light the touch paper and aim at a crate of milk bottles at the school at the bottom of the garden. You see, even in my spare time I was obsessed with schools. I never seemed to be able to get away from them, even in my spare time.
Bang! And the milk bottles would shatter –a schoolboy’s delight!
When I told my son about this, he was horrified. He just could not get his head around the fact that his teacher father could have indulged in such an activity.
M and I were both great tree climbers . We would climb those trees at the bottom of our garden and cross from one to the other at a considerable height. I honestly believe Mum and Dad never knew the half of it. We carved our initials in the trees – still there I believe to this day. D.N. 12th of July 1962. That would have been when I was ten years old.
What a different life I had as a child from my own children. Another thing M and I had were endless pets-not just the family dog –but our own mice, rabbits and even Bantam hens. How many kids today in suburbia would understand the joy of owning (and having somebody else look after) all these animals?
When I was a teenager I may have been a miserable nerd who couldn’t communicate with people –but I could always commune with my Bantams-Higildy , Pigildy , Bert and Gerald. Mum had a penchant for naming bantams. My favourite was ‘Dosy’ as in the ‘seven dwarves’.
How caring and thoughtful my parents were to provide us with all these animals.
I was too lazy to give them to my own children: I was too busy trying to get them into a private school to ‘achieve’ rather than worry about such things.
A typical ‘babyboomer’.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Early years in Belfast 2
In the evenings we also fished for sticklebacks in a river which ran through the school. I remember once being caught by the headmaster and told to clear off home. We also used to throw ‘throwing arrows’ in the school grounds. These were arrows made form birch or beech trees. We made the flights out of cardboard. We had competitions to see who could throw them the furthest. It was never me. I remembered.
The ‘Pump house’ was a shack which housed some sort of broken down electrical generator. It was in an isolated location in the school grounds. This was a den of illicit activities for teenagers-mostly smoking and reading pornographic magazines. My little group of friends was divided as to whether they regarded visits to the pump house as acceptable or not. Some did, (M and D) some didn’t (R and his brother A.) I was on the fence: I think my ‘public’ position was not to go-but I may just have gone their on my own a few times to check out that other people weren’t being led astray by those awful magazines. I was showing early signs enjoying a role as public defender of ethics and morality: a shrewd observer might have been heard saying: "That one's going to be a teacher when he grows up".
R’s brother, A, was an interesting character. He was older than the rest of us but we gave him hell because he wouldn’t do what we all did–climb trees and play ‘tig’ etc.-in fact anything involving physical exercise. As a result he was regarded as a killjoy and a grumpy bugger. We knew vaguely that A had some illness –but with that lack of generosity of spirit which characterises children of that age,(10? this excuse didn’t cut much ice with the rest of us: we were not convinced. We really thought A was a bit ‘stuck up’ and didn’t want to play with us because he was older than us, and thought we were childish..
One day, when A was fourteen R (his brother) announced that A was going into hospital to have an operation for a “hole in the heart’ . We were led to understand that the operation was dangerous. Indeed it was, and A died on the operating table.
His death explained his inability to participate in all the physical activities with us–and his sudden conversion to Christianity about a year before the operation. A had not been faking it all those years at all when he used to refuse to climb trees or play football with us and we called him a ‘sissy’ - a derogatory Ulster colloquialism for ‘girl’. How cruel we had all been to him.
'Nicking' (stealing) apples from the orchards was major in the summer. All the neighbour’s gardens were regarded as legitimate targets. We were never caught-perhaps because the neighbours parents would have been too embarrassed to confront each other. They all knew each other anyway and probably colluded to turn a blind eye to the stealing in order to keep the peace.
Some kids on the road were ‘persona non grata’ at our house for many years. R M lived up the road and opposite us. He was rumoured to have a gang of aggressive young eleven year old thugs who would beat us up if given the opportunity. We therefore had to construct defensive positions by digging holes at the bottom of our garden in case R and his gang attacked us. These holes were covered with grass and twigs and had bags of water inside them in order to deter R and his gang from attacking us. In vain we waited in our bunker at the bottom of the garden for R to attack us. If he had come we were convinced that he and his mates would have stopped in the tracks and been so frightened they would have run away. The idea that stepping in the traps might have made them more angry and want to beat the crap out of us did not occur to us at the time.
R and his gang never came that summer-but we enjoyed the fear of waiting for the attack-and had many roasted spuds with salt in the fires we lit in front of our 'bunker'-a very large hole in the ground. A few years later I met R –and he was actually a very nice fellow-the perfect gentleman.
Our road had a legitimate territory which we were careful not to stray too far from. Aside from R's fearsome gang, we also didn’t want to meet up with the feared ‘B' Gang’ from Ardcarn or with Davie B from the Comber Road-a fate surely worse than death itself.
Fearsome neighbours
Some of our adult neighbours were fearsome too. One night when M and I had nothing better to do we were surprised through the sitting room window to see D A ‘snogging’ his wife on the couch in the sitting room in full view of the public from the road (us). This was a very exciting event for M and I and we yelled our appreciation and encouragement from the road through the sitting room window which was only about thirty metres away. DA was clearly occupied at the time and didn’t appreciate the audience. He sprang up from the couch , burst through the door, picking up an iron bar and hurled it at us with all his might. We were at a distance of thirty metres or so and it landed quite close to us. But we had decided that we were safe enough and far enough away from him to hurl some verbal abuse at him without real fear of retribution.
We were mistaken.
DA tore up the driveway after us like a bat out of hell. We escaped down the road to the school (yet again!) Schools have always played a major part of my life –even in my spare time. As usual, M was in the lead and I followed. That was always the way it was in those days. I was never the leader but egged on my more adventurous friends to do the risky things.
But DA gained on us fast. M was cooler under pressure than me and much more streetwise. Quite suddenly he shrewdly took a sharp left and disappeared into to the dark night up a grassy knoll. I kept going on straight as an arrow with DA in hot pursuit. After a long chase he eventually caught up with me. He verbally abused me whimpering and cowering in the doorway of a house. He threatened to do all sorts of things and scared the hell out of me. It was only verbal abuse though, and fortunately for me his bark turned out to be worse than is bite. He must have chased me for about a kilometere!
Another neighbour was knicknamed “Cudgwedge”. MC was the headmaster of a government secondary school. He distinguished himself one ‘Halloween’ night by striking my eldest brother R over the head with a milk bottle.
The motive for this unneighbourly act? Apparently, ‘Cudge wedge” decided that he had had enough of youths throwing fireworks into his garden.
According to a reliable and completely impartial source (Mum), Cudgewedge lay in wait and ambushed my unsuspecting and innocent brother R as he returned home from his ‘constitutional ’ walk which just happened to pass Cudgewedge’s gate at midnight on Halloween night.
I think R had thrown fireworks into the pigeon loft of cudgewedge!
Needless to say “Cudgewedge” was never spoken to again by anyone in our family. I’m not sure whether I entirely believe Mums version of events but R was, to be fair, an unlikely person to bait a character like cudgwedge. I might have done such a thing myself –but not R. It wasn’t in my big brother’s nature.
The ‘Pump house’ was a shack which housed some sort of broken down electrical generator. It was in an isolated location in the school grounds. This was a den of illicit activities for teenagers-mostly smoking and reading pornographic magazines. My little group of friends was divided as to whether they regarded visits to the pump house as acceptable or not. Some did, (M and D) some didn’t (R and his brother A.) I was on the fence: I think my ‘public’ position was not to go-but I may just have gone their on my own a few times to check out that other people weren’t being led astray by those awful magazines. I was showing early signs enjoying a role as public defender of ethics and morality: a shrewd observer might have been heard saying: "That one's going to be a teacher when he grows up".
R’s brother, A, was an interesting character. He was older than the rest of us but we gave him hell because he wouldn’t do what we all did–climb trees and play ‘tig’ etc.-in fact anything involving physical exercise. As a result he was regarded as a killjoy and a grumpy bugger. We knew vaguely that A had some illness –but with that lack of generosity of spirit which characterises children of that age,(10? this excuse didn’t cut much ice with the rest of us: we were not convinced. We really thought A was a bit ‘stuck up’ and didn’t want to play with us because he was older than us, and thought we were childish..
One day, when A was fourteen R (his brother) announced that A was going into hospital to have an operation for a “hole in the heart’ . We were led to understand that the operation was dangerous. Indeed it was, and A died on the operating table.
His death explained his inability to participate in all the physical activities with us–and his sudden conversion to Christianity about a year before the operation. A had not been faking it all those years at all when he used to refuse to climb trees or play football with us and we called him a ‘sissy’ - a derogatory Ulster colloquialism for ‘girl’. How cruel we had all been to him.
'Nicking' (stealing) apples from the orchards was major in the summer. All the neighbour’s gardens were regarded as legitimate targets. We were never caught-perhaps because the neighbours parents would have been too embarrassed to confront each other. They all knew each other anyway and probably colluded to turn a blind eye to the stealing in order to keep the peace.
Some kids on the road were ‘persona non grata’ at our house for many years. R M lived up the road and opposite us. He was rumoured to have a gang of aggressive young eleven year old thugs who would beat us up if given the opportunity. We therefore had to construct defensive positions by digging holes at the bottom of our garden in case R and his gang attacked us. These holes were covered with grass and twigs and had bags of water inside them in order to deter R and his gang from attacking us. In vain we waited in our bunker at the bottom of the garden for R to attack us. If he had come we were convinced that he and his mates would have stopped in the tracks and been so frightened they would have run away. The idea that stepping in the traps might have made them more angry and want to beat the crap out of us did not occur to us at the time.
R and his gang never came that summer-but we enjoyed the fear of waiting for the attack-and had many roasted spuds with salt in the fires we lit in front of our 'bunker'-a very large hole in the ground. A few years later I met R –and he was actually a very nice fellow-the perfect gentleman.
Our road had a legitimate territory which we were careful not to stray too far from. Aside from R's fearsome gang, we also didn’t want to meet up with the feared ‘B' Gang’ from Ardcarn or with Davie B from the Comber Road-a fate surely worse than death itself.
Fearsome neighbours
Some of our adult neighbours were fearsome too. One night when M and I had nothing better to do we were surprised through the sitting room window to see D A ‘snogging’ his wife on the couch in the sitting room in full view of the public from the road (us). This was a very exciting event for M and I and we yelled our appreciation and encouragement from the road through the sitting room window which was only about thirty metres away. DA was clearly occupied at the time and didn’t appreciate the audience. He sprang up from the couch , burst through the door, picking up an iron bar and hurled it at us with all his might. We were at a distance of thirty metres or so and it landed quite close to us. But we had decided that we were safe enough and far enough away from him to hurl some verbal abuse at him without real fear of retribution.
We were mistaken.
DA tore up the driveway after us like a bat out of hell. We escaped down the road to the school (yet again!) Schools have always played a major part of my life –even in my spare time. As usual, M was in the lead and I followed. That was always the way it was in those days. I was never the leader but egged on my more adventurous friends to do the risky things.
But DA gained on us fast. M was cooler under pressure than me and much more streetwise. Quite suddenly he shrewdly took a sharp left and disappeared into to the dark night up a grassy knoll. I kept going on straight as an arrow with DA in hot pursuit. After a long chase he eventually caught up with me. He verbally abused me whimpering and cowering in the doorway of a house. He threatened to do all sorts of things and scared the hell out of me. It was only verbal abuse though, and fortunately for me his bark turned out to be worse than is bite. He must have chased me for about a kilometere!
Another neighbour was knicknamed “Cudgwedge”. MC was the headmaster of a government secondary school. He distinguished himself one ‘Halloween’ night by striking my eldest brother R over the head with a milk bottle.
The motive for this unneighbourly act? Apparently, ‘Cudge wedge” decided that he had had enough of youths throwing fireworks into his garden.
According to a reliable and completely impartial source (Mum), Cudgewedge lay in wait and ambushed my unsuspecting and innocent brother R as he returned home from his ‘constitutional ’ walk which just happened to pass Cudgewedge’s gate at midnight on Halloween night.
I think R had thrown fireworks into the pigeon loft of cudgewedge!
Needless to say “Cudgewedge” was never spoken to again by anyone in our family. I’m not sure whether I entirely believe Mums version of events but R was, to be fair, an unlikely person to bait a character like cudgwedge. I might have done such a thing myself –but not R. It wasn’t in my big brother’s nature.
Interlude (1) : Circumstances Change Cases:
Pills and Beans,
"Pills and Beans!"...."Pills and Beans!
It may seem odd but this is what I was repeating to myself like a mantra as I drove up the road this morning.
I was on my way to my 'other' home. I have two homes in Australia: one where I live and one where the rest of my dependants live-although who is dependant on who is a moot point these days.
I forget things unless I talk to myself-hence the mantra.
I was irritable-angry even. I had forgotten to stop to buy my bean salad, which is the staple of my diet at present, and I had forgotten to take my pills.
I was on my way to get my vehicle registered and the ownership transferred. I slowed down and stopped: cursing under my breathand out loud at the motorists around me. The traffic was horrendous. I briefly thought to myself:
"Maybe I shouldn't do this today." (I have a knack of fighting with public officials who don't measure up to my expectations.)
Apathy triumphed and I continued. I couldn't find the place even though I thought I knew where it was. I was furious. As usual there was no-one on the street to ask for directions-there never is in Australia-its almost empty. Eventually, I parked and went in to a shop and asked someone the way.
Inside, I waited for ten minutes with my numbered ticket observing the people around me.
Everyone was being so polite with each other: the customers and the officials and yet I felt so homicidal! One elderly customer even stopped right in front of me and thanked an official for the excellent service! In a Government department? My jaw dropped open.
What is wrong with me? Why do I feel so irritable and hostile?
Eventually my number was called.
"G'day mate, how can I help you?"
"Gday, just 'Rego' and transfer of ownership please"
"No worries" mate said the official behind the desk. His manner was genial.
After a minute or two of him looking closely at the form I began to suspect that something was wrong and I was going to be asked for the inevitable extra piece of paper or at least the unanswerable question.
He said
'Donald?'
"Yes"
"Did you know that you are expected to transfer ownership of a new vehicle within fouteen days of buying the vehicle?
"No", I lied.(I had just read it thirty minutes ago on the form when I was filling it-but I wasn't going to tell him that.)
"There is a sixty-six dollar penalty for late transfer"
"Oh good. Thanks, I said sarcastically.
"No worries mate" he added quickly. "I'm not going to charge you. Just so you know the next time!"
"Are you sure?" I said.
"No worries mate-I'm not going to lose my job over it"
Now, that is what I respect: someone who is willing to break the rules even if it means taking a slight risk at one's own expense. That really inspires me inthe age of the mindless bureaucrat.
"Circumstances Change Cases" my friend Lev used to say to me.
I left the office smiling-in a completely different frame of mind from the one in which I had arrived.
My morning had changed entirely.
As I drove down the road, an unusual bumper sticker on the car in front of me caught my eye.
I put my foot on the accelerator and inched forward - peering at the sticker over my steering wheel.
It said:
"Practice random acts of kindness"
"Yes", I thought
"How powerful that is!".
Maybe that is how we change the world.
"Pills and Beans!"...."Pills and Beans!
It may seem odd but this is what I was repeating to myself like a mantra as I drove up the road this morning.
I was on my way to my 'other' home. I have two homes in Australia: one where I live and one where the rest of my dependants live-although who is dependant on who is a moot point these days.
I forget things unless I talk to myself-hence the mantra.
I was irritable-angry even. I had forgotten to stop to buy my bean salad, which is the staple of my diet at present, and I had forgotten to take my pills.
I was on my way to get my vehicle registered and the ownership transferred. I slowed down and stopped: cursing under my breathand out loud at the motorists around me. The traffic was horrendous. I briefly thought to myself:
"Maybe I shouldn't do this today." (I have a knack of fighting with public officials who don't measure up to my expectations.)
Apathy triumphed and I continued. I couldn't find the place even though I thought I knew where it was. I was furious. As usual there was no-one on the street to ask for directions-there never is in Australia-its almost empty. Eventually, I parked and went in to a shop and asked someone the way.
Inside, I waited for ten minutes with my numbered ticket observing the people around me.
Everyone was being so polite with each other: the customers and the officials and yet I felt so homicidal! One elderly customer even stopped right in front of me and thanked an official for the excellent service! In a Government department? My jaw dropped open.
What is wrong with me? Why do I feel so irritable and hostile?
Eventually my number was called.
"G'day mate, how can I help you?"
"Gday, just 'Rego' and transfer of ownership please"
"No worries" mate said the official behind the desk. His manner was genial.
After a minute or two of him looking closely at the form I began to suspect that something was wrong and I was going to be asked for the inevitable extra piece of paper or at least the unanswerable question.
He said
'Donald?'
"Yes"
"Did you know that you are expected to transfer ownership of a new vehicle within fouteen days of buying the vehicle?
"No", I lied.(I had just read it thirty minutes ago on the form when I was filling it-but I wasn't going to tell him that.)
"There is a sixty-six dollar penalty for late transfer"
"Oh good. Thanks, I said sarcastically.
"No worries mate" he added quickly. "I'm not going to charge you. Just so you know the next time!"
"Are you sure?" I said.
"No worries mate-I'm not going to lose my job over it"
Now, that is what I respect: someone who is willing to break the rules even if it means taking a slight risk at one's own expense. That really inspires me inthe age of the mindless bureaucrat.
"Circumstances Change Cases" my friend Lev used to say to me.
I left the office smiling-in a completely different frame of mind from the one in which I had arrived.
My morning had changed entirely.
As I drove down the road, an unusual bumper sticker on the car in front of me caught my eye.
I put my foot on the accelerator and inched forward - peering at the sticker over my steering wheel.
It said:
"Practice random acts of kindness"
"Yes", I thought
"How powerful that is!".
Maybe that is how we change the world.
Monday, May 25, 2009
(D) Early Boyhood in Northern Ireland
Another story about authority relates to my Mum. I remember sitting on some wet paint in a newly built tree-house at the bottom of our garden. It was a lovely tree house and I remember having breakfast in it one Sunday morning sitting on the orange boxes we used as chairs. However, when it was being built, my shorts were irretrievably damaged by sitting on some fresh paint. I remember burying the shorts at the bottom of the dirty clothes box so that Mum wouldn’t find them for a while. When she did ask what had happened I invented some story about sitting on the tar on the road on that hot summer day. I don’t quite know why I didn’t tell Mum the truth, but in order to invent such a story, I must have been terrified of disobeying her. I think had been told by her not to go into the tree house until the paint was dry. This little anecdote reveals a bit about both of us. I was basically a coward and tried to deceive Mum. She could be quite fierce and scared the hell out of me!
Dad was fair but could also be firm. He never lost it like Mum did, but I remember one day when I was about ten, I was hanging about on the garage roof smoking a cigarette when Dad smelled the smoke and called me down. He took me upstairs and made me take down my pants and thrashed me. Poor Dad! He didn’t like hitting me -I could see it on his face. He soon forgot the incident, though, but I didn’t!. I felt what he did was reasonable under the circumstances-unlike the caning by Mr Brown in Primary school for watching the fight.
Young friends and neighbours
Douglas B was our neighbour, although I always felt Mum would have preferred otherwise.He was a year older than me but I reckoned I was more intelligent so I considered myself superior as we grew up. ‘Doogie’ was the youngest of three boys and was a rough diamond – a decent soul but with some rough edges. We used to knock about a lot in the afternoons after school playing cricket etc. He was treated with contempt by his elder brothers –especially Peter. Peter specialised in terrorizing Douglas when he failed to do as Peter wished. His speciality was twisting Doogie’s arm behind his back until Doogie, howling like a wolf, uttered the life saving words: “I submit!”. On one occasion Mum tells the story of how she saved Doogie from a beating by Peter by shouting out the window in a loud voice “Leave that boy alone!” Mum was responding to the injustice and cruelty. These genes were passed on to me! My family have always been fighters of other people’s battles –no matter what the cost is to ourselves. No doubt Doogie was only spared the beating temporarily!
Some of Peter’s rough behavior rubbed off on Doogie too of course. He had his rough edges, too. I remember once he pinned me down on the lawn –in semi playful mode –and spat into my mouth. Yes..gross it was! I thought so at the time and I still do! Doogie went on to become a policemen and was decorated for saving someone from drowning in a river near our home..
Rosemary was Doogies younger sister ‘Yomie’ or’ the Kid’ as she was called by everyone and she was also on the receiving end of some rough treatment from her brothers including Doogie. As a teenager she would climb the trees next door and watch us playing cricket. Although ‘Yomie’ was not a looker, one fine summers evening when I was about fourteen, Raymond B and I managed to entice her to come into our garden where we went behind the swing seat for a brief but quite satisfactory grope –if I remember correctly. I remember being amazed that ‘The Kid’ seemed to enjoy what we were doing as much we did and being absolutely amazed by this revelation.
This brings to mind a similar incident which must have been around the same time which took place in Enniskillen at Granny’s house. I can’t quite remember her name but I think it was Joyce-she was the sister of my friend Johnnie M. One evening Joyce was persuaded to go to a rendezvous at a building site with a few of us lads for a grope. As I was in seventh heaven groping Joyce, I remember thinking to myself. “God! this is great-but how can Joyce really be enjoying it?” Somehow I had got the idea firmly entrenched that only boys enjoyed sex. Girls just had to put up with boys wanting it. This quaint little Ulster myth is not rational and has persisted with me far into adulthood.
Why? I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps it was ignorance – after all I had only brothers and went to a boys only school. Perhaps some of my brain circuits are wired up the wrong way. People in Ulster were always telling me I was ‘wired’ –meaning crazy. Maybe they were right!
Around primary school and Prep school age I really didn’t have much to do with my elder brothers. Peter was four years older and only played with me when he was bored. We did play table tennis and he occasionally bullied me for his own amusement-but mostly he just ignored me. I remember one time he was annoying me so much I became exasperated, flew into a rage, took off my belt and ran after him out of the kitchen into the dining room. He managed to close the dining room door only just in time as I lashed my belt at him–the belt buckle hit the door and left two deep visible dents which were still there forty five years later . The dents are a testament to my quick temper and our brotherly love.
My eldest brother R I didn’t know at all at this stage. He was remote and distant. The only thing I can remember about him is that he used to call me ‘Duff’ as a nickname and tell me off if I farted in his presence.
As teenagers we got up to all sorts of pranks. A lot of the action, funnily enough took place at a school at the bottom of the garden in the evenings. We would go down to the school and clamber all over the rooves or shoot at the milk bottles in their crates with home-made rifles. This was highly dangerous and illegal –which was why we did it of course. The rifle barrels were made of copper pipes. We used gunpowder form fireworks and lead shot form fishing tackle to make the charge.
As no-one was ever injured we deemed it all good clean harmless fun and thought nothing of it.
This all went on right under the noses of Mum and Dad. They never knew. The comparison with my own children is stark. They never did anything like that-and, more importantly,I know they didn’t. My own children have had much less freedom than I did as a child-even though I was brought up in the very conservative fifties and sixties in Northern Ireland.
Dad was fair but could also be firm. He never lost it like Mum did, but I remember one day when I was about ten, I was hanging about on the garage roof smoking a cigarette when Dad smelled the smoke and called me down. He took me upstairs and made me take down my pants and thrashed me. Poor Dad! He didn’t like hitting me -I could see it on his face. He soon forgot the incident, though, but I didn’t!. I felt what he did was reasonable under the circumstances-unlike the caning by Mr Brown in Primary school for watching the fight.
Young friends and neighbours
Douglas B was our neighbour, although I always felt Mum would have preferred otherwise.He was a year older than me but I reckoned I was more intelligent so I considered myself superior as we grew up. ‘Doogie’ was the youngest of three boys and was a rough diamond – a decent soul but with some rough edges. We used to knock about a lot in the afternoons after school playing cricket etc. He was treated with contempt by his elder brothers –especially Peter. Peter specialised in terrorizing Douglas when he failed to do as Peter wished. His speciality was twisting Doogie’s arm behind his back until Doogie, howling like a wolf, uttered the life saving words: “I submit!”. On one occasion Mum tells the story of how she saved Doogie from a beating by Peter by shouting out the window in a loud voice “Leave that boy alone!” Mum was responding to the injustice and cruelty. These genes were passed on to me! My family have always been fighters of other people’s battles –no matter what the cost is to ourselves. No doubt Doogie was only spared the beating temporarily!
Some of Peter’s rough behavior rubbed off on Doogie too of course. He had his rough edges, too. I remember once he pinned me down on the lawn –in semi playful mode –and spat into my mouth. Yes..gross it was! I thought so at the time and I still do! Doogie went on to become a policemen and was decorated for saving someone from drowning in a river near our home..
Rosemary was Doogies younger sister ‘Yomie’ or’ the Kid’ as she was called by everyone and she was also on the receiving end of some rough treatment from her brothers including Doogie. As a teenager she would climb the trees next door and watch us playing cricket. Although ‘Yomie’ was not a looker, one fine summers evening when I was about fourteen, Raymond B and I managed to entice her to come into our garden where we went behind the swing seat for a brief but quite satisfactory grope –if I remember correctly. I remember being amazed that ‘The Kid’ seemed to enjoy what we were doing as much we did and being absolutely amazed by this revelation.
This brings to mind a similar incident which must have been around the same time which took place in Enniskillen at Granny’s house. I can’t quite remember her name but I think it was Joyce-she was the sister of my friend Johnnie M. One evening Joyce was persuaded to go to a rendezvous at a building site with a few of us lads for a grope. As I was in seventh heaven groping Joyce, I remember thinking to myself. “God! this is great-but how can Joyce really be enjoying it?” Somehow I had got the idea firmly entrenched that only boys enjoyed sex. Girls just had to put up with boys wanting it. This quaint little Ulster myth is not rational and has persisted with me far into adulthood.
Why? I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps it was ignorance – after all I had only brothers and went to a boys only school. Perhaps some of my brain circuits are wired up the wrong way. People in Ulster were always telling me I was ‘wired’ –meaning crazy. Maybe they were right!
Around primary school and Prep school age I really didn’t have much to do with my elder brothers. Peter was four years older and only played with me when he was bored. We did play table tennis and he occasionally bullied me for his own amusement-but mostly he just ignored me. I remember one time he was annoying me so much I became exasperated, flew into a rage, took off my belt and ran after him out of the kitchen into the dining room. He managed to close the dining room door only just in time as I lashed my belt at him–the belt buckle hit the door and left two deep visible dents which were still there forty five years later . The dents are a testament to my quick temper and our brotherly love.
My eldest brother R I didn’t know at all at this stage. He was remote and distant. The only thing I can remember about him is that he used to call me ‘Duff’ as a nickname and tell me off if I farted in his presence.
As teenagers we got up to all sorts of pranks. A lot of the action, funnily enough took place at a school at the bottom of the garden in the evenings. We would go down to the school and clamber all over the rooves or shoot at the milk bottles in their crates with home-made rifles. This was highly dangerous and illegal –which was why we did it of course. The rifle barrels were made of copper pipes. We used gunpowder form fireworks and lead shot form fishing tackle to make the charge.
As no-one was ever injured we deemed it all good clean harmless fun and thought nothing of it.
This all went on right under the noses of Mum and Dad. They never knew. The comparison with my own children is stark. They never did anything like that-and, more importantly,I know they didn’t. My own children have had much less freedom than I did as a child-even though I was brought up in the very conservative fifties and sixties in Northern Ireland.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
(C) Primary School in Northern Ireland
'Out of my comfort zone’,‘the outsider’, 'back to square one’,‘Rash Decisions and their consequences’,‘three steps forward,two steps back’,‘limitations’;‘travails of a malcontent’,‘Never at peace’,‘on the move’,‘The defeat of boredom’
Just to give the reader an idea about my personality these have been some of the titles I have thought about for writing about my life. I want to give the reader some idea of where I m coming from right at the beginning. As an 'educator' it is particularly the decisions that are made by the powerful in education that have fascinated me. And so the stories I tell have are often about the decisions made by myself and others that have affected my professional and personal life. Sometimes the two were interconnected.
Primary school
Born in 1952 in my fifth year I went to Primary school in a quiet suburb of Belfast. It was almost rural and I used to walk every day –it was about half a kilometer. I was scared of the walk because I had to pass by the 'sand-pit'. (a piece of waste ground)on my way–and the sand–pit contained an evil creature called 'The Earthquake' a most er invented by the older students to terrify the younger ones. I visualised the earthquake as a long sleek sandy coloured monster –rather like an elongated Puma.
It is worth noting that nowadays it would be impossible to walk to school because of the fear of paedophiles. Have we really advanced as a civilisation?
I don’t remember much about the school except that it was extremely boring. Even at that age I was bored by school. Little did I know I was going to spend the next fifty years in schools in one form or another. I was above an average student I suppose –but certainly not in the top tier. In year 5, I remember finding it impossible to get 'bonus' marks for my homeworks in Mr M's class.
Everyone else seemed to get them and it really annoyed me. From an early age I was very competitive. It annoyed me so much I succumbed to the temptation to cheat in order to get a bonus mark. We had to write a poem for homework and my Mum basically wrote it. A few days later I was working in class and Mr.M had given us some work to do so he could sit behind me and mark. He was directly behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.Mr.M,like all male teachers in those days -never addressed me personally -except on business matters to do with schoolwork. “This poem is terrific Donald–did you write this yourself?”
‘Yes Sir” I lied cheerfully- and I got my bonus mark! It was so easy! But it was a bad habit to learn early in life.
My best friend was “hairy’ H and my crush was Margaret R. I can still remember her freckled face perfectly. she never spoke to me and i never spoke to her. I was happy with my fantasy of her and did not want to spoil it. I hoped she had a similar fantasy about me.
Although I was definitely too cowardly to be a troublemaker,I had some early brushes with authority in which I came off worst. One morning just before the bell rang for roll-call a fight developed close to where I was standing.
As the Irish love to fight, immediately the combatants were surrounded by a circle of admiring fans cheering them on with 'Roll-up, Roll-up, big fight!'.
I found myself at the back in the outer ring observing with obvious curiosity, but not much enthusiasm, the progress of the fight. Unfortunately for me I was directly in the line from the Headmaster’s office to the fight. Mr. V appeared with his lieutenants and after breaking up the fight sent the two combatants to his office for disciplinary measures.
Fair enough! But as he was turning to accompany the miscreants to their painful fate in his office, he suddenly stuck out his arm and grabbed me.
You too!
I was stunned but followed him dumbly to the office. I was dealt with first. He was angry and turned to me first with a black and menacing look.
'Hold out your hand, boy!' He was shaking. 'Thwack!' his cane stung my palm.
'That is for watching a fight. Now go back to class!'
I couldn’t contain my tears as I entered my class. More importantly I could never understand the humiliation. What had I done to deserve it?
I never even thought of telling Mum and Dad
I met Mr V about thirty-five years later socially. He was an acquaintance of my father and mother. He didn’t remember me of course. He had a huge, menacing set of teeth-like piano keys. He seemed sinister and had an obsequious air about him like an undertaker.
Mr. V was a pillar of the local Presbyterian community.
Just to give the reader an idea about my personality these have been some of the titles I have thought about for writing about my life. I want to give the reader some idea of where I m coming from right at the beginning. As an 'educator' it is particularly the decisions that are made by the powerful in education that have fascinated me. And so the stories I tell have are often about the decisions made by myself and others that have affected my professional and personal life. Sometimes the two were interconnected.
Primary school
Born in 1952 in my fifth year I went to Primary school in a quiet suburb of Belfast. It was almost rural and I used to walk every day –it was about half a kilometer. I was scared of the walk because I had to pass by the 'sand-pit'. (a piece of waste ground)on my way–and the sand–pit contained an evil creature called 'The Earthquake' a most er invented by the older students to terrify the younger ones. I visualised the earthquake as a long sleek sandy coloured monster –rather like an elongated Puma.
It is worth noting that nowadays it would be impossible to walk to school because of the fear of paedophiles. Have we really advanced as a civilisation?
I don’t remember much about the school except that it was extremely boring. Even at that age I was bored by school. Little did I know I was going to spend the next fifty years in schools in one form or another. I was above an average student I suppose –but certainly not in the top tier. In year 5, I remember finding it impossible to get 'bonus' marks for my homeworks in Mr M's class.
Everyone else seemed to get them and it really annoyed me. From an early age I was very competitive. It annoyed me so much I succumbed to the temptation to cheat in order to get a bonus mark. We had to write a poem for homework and my Mum basically wrote it. A few days later I was working in class and Mr.M had given us some work to do so he could sit behind me and mark. He was directly behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.Mr.M,like all male teachers in those days -never addressed me personally -except on business matters to do with schoolwork. “This poem is terrific Donald–did you write this yourself?”
‘Yes Sir” I lied cheerfully- and I got my bonus mark! It was so easy! But it was a bad habit to learn early in life.
My best friend was “hairy’ H and my crush was Margaret R. I can still remember her freckled face perfectly. she never spoke to me and i never spoke to her. I was happy with my fantasy of her and did not want to spoil it. I hoped she had a similar fantasy about me.
Although I was definitely too cowardly to be a troublemaker,I had some early brushes with authority in which I came off worst. One morning just before the bell rang for roll-call a fight developed close to where I was standing.
As the Irish love to fight, immediately the combatants were surrounded by a circle of admiring fans cheering them on with 'Roll-up, Roll-up, big fight!'.
I found myself at the back in the outer ring observing with obvious curiosity, but not much enthusiasm, the progress of the fight. Unfortunately for me I was directly in the line from the Headmaster’s office to the fight. Mr. V appeared with his lieutenants and after breaking up the fight sent the two combatants to his office for disciplinary measures.
Fair enough! But as he was turning to accompany the miscreants to their painful fate in his office, he suddenly stuck out his arm and grabbed me.
You too!
I was stunned but followed him dumbly to the office. I was dealt with first. He was angry and turned to me first with a black and menacing look.
'Hold out your hand, boy!' He was shaking. 'Thwack!' his cane stung my palm.
'That is for watching a fight. Now go back to class!'
I couldn’t contain my tears as I entered my class. More importantly I could never understand the humiliation. What had I done to deserve it?
I never even thought of telling Mum and Dad
I met Mr V about thirty-five years later socially. He was an acquaintance of my father and mother. He didn’t remember me of course. He had a huge, menacing set of teeth-like piano keys. He seemed sinister and had an obsequious air about him like an undertaker.
Mr. V was a pillar of the local Presbyterian community.
2009 starting to blog
Writing has changed for me from being a painful act to being a pleasure- even cathartic perhaps. it is important for me to establish kinship from heart to heart.
I started by sending what I wrote to friends-but now I find that most of them don't want to read it. I want a wider audience. Is this vanity or greed? possibly.
Can you ever have enough kinship? I don't think so.
During the past forty years I have lived and worked as a teacher in nine countries: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Ghana, Malawi, Mexico,(twice) Colombia,The United Arab Emirates (twice) Australia (four times) and Borneo.
All of these positions have lasted for a minimum of one year -and most for two , three or longer.
It has been very exciting but I have often felt very lonely as well-even with my family around. . I have found that many 'homelanders' from my native Ireland think I have bean on a permanent holiday for the past thirty years. They could not be more mistaken: living in a new culture is not all a bed of roses: It can be more like crossing a minefield at times. But it is always absolutely fascinating-and that is one reason I have continued to do it for so long
Practical expediency is another one of course. With a wife and family of three children one has to earn a living wherever one can. So, sometimes, one doesn't have a choice where to live-more and more one has to go where the work is. But I admit one motivation for my strange career path has simply been curiosity.
It has been my ambition since the early seventies to work in as many places in the world as possible in my career. Preferably, the further these places were away from Ireland -the better. I wasn't interested in just going to Europe to live. I wanted to go far away -to Africa and Latin America.
When I started this nomadic journey I had no idea of the price I would have to pay for such an ambition.
I'm still not quite sure what the total price for all this has been. -but there has been a price to pay for sure.
What sort of themes will I discuss in the blog?
Ideas mostly, I think. I have always liked to reflect, compare and contrast. But I will do it through story and anecdote to make it hopefully more entertaining for myself -since I have no readers.
I'd like to talk about so many issues to do with living in another culture drawing from my life as an Irishman in England and Australia, as a volunteer teacher in Ghana, as an expatriate teacher in Malawi, The U.A.E, Mexico, Colombia and Borneo.
I will reflect on issues which have fascinated me all my life and continue to fascinate me: selfishness, individualism, collectivism, loneliness, alienation, friendship, motivation, optimism, pessimism, hypocrisy, curiosity, sincerity, vanity, complacency, cowardice, arrogance, humility, fear.
This has been my daily bread and butter for most of the forty years since I became able to reflect as a young boy.
In short: I am a student of human nature in general and my own in particular.
I am not a novelist-and could never be one. I have just finished re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Cancer ward'. I first read it twenty years ago and remember being impressed by it. But reading it the second time has been a powerful and humbling experience which has left me breathless with awe.
I am not a frequent reader of fiction-I like to read selected books slowly and intensively. This book for me is by far and away the most powerful novel I have ever read. For me it is a work of Art-a Masterpiece. Since I am not a literary or art critic I can say no more.
If anything at all I am a storyteller.
Most of all I want to share with readers my stories from my personal and professional life. These stories have led me to the (forlorn) belief that we all desperately need each other in this world: Conversely, without each other we destroy ourselves and each other. When man tries to be independent-he merely chases his tail and re-invents the wheel, becomes arrogant, destroys himself and those around him.
There is no choice: we do depend on each other-in our personal, public and political lives. I think this is even more the case now as a result of globalisation.
As I tell my stories you will see that I have always been talking to myself. Ever since I was a child I have been having a dialogue with myself- always asking myself questions. Sometimes, I have got answers, but more often than not the questions are just left hanging there in my life unanswered; they are a paper trail which show where I have travelled.
Through sharing some of these stories I also want to try to answer a really big question I have been putting to myself for years.
Am I an optimist or a pessimist?
At this moment I don't know.
So, here are the stories...
I started by sending what I wrote to friends-but now I find that most of them don't want to read it. I want a wider audience. Is this vanity or greed? possibly.
Can you ever have enough kinship? I don't think so.
During the past forty years I have lived and worked as a teacher in nine countries: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Ghana, Malawi, Mexico,(twice) Colombia,The United Arab Emirates (twice) Australia (four times) and Borneo.
All of these positions have lasted for a minimum of one year -and most for two , three or longer.
It has been very exciting but I have often felt very lonely as well-even with my family around. . I have found that many 'homelanders' from my native Ireland think I have bean on a permanent holiday for the past thirty years. They could not be more mistaken: living in a new culture is not all a bed of roses: It can be more like crossing a minefield at times. But it is always absolutely fascinating-and that is one reason I have continued to do it for so long
Practical expediency is another one of course. With a wife and family of three children one has to earn a living wherever one can. So, sometimes, one doesn't have a choice where to live-more and more one has to go where the work is. But I admit one motivation for my strange career path has simply been curiosity.
It has been my ambition since the early seventies to work in as many places in the world as possible in my career. Preferably, the further these places were away from Ireland -the better. I wasn't interested in just going to Europe to live. I wanted to go far away -to Africa and Latin America.
When I started this nomadic journey I had no idea of the price I would have to pay for such an ambition.
I'm still not quite sure what the total price for all this has been. -but there has been a price to pay for sure.
What sort of themes will I discuss in the blog?
Ideas mostly, I think. I have always liked to reflect, compare and contrast. But I will do it through story and anecdote to make it hopefully more entertaining for myself -since I have no readers.
I'd like to talk about so many issues to do with living in another culture drawing from my life as an Irishman in England and Australia, as a volunteer teacher in Ghana, as an expatriate teacher in Malawi, The U.A.E, Mexico, Colombia and Borneo.
I will reflect on issues which have fascinated me all my life and continue to fascinate me: selfishness, individualism, collectivism, loneliness, alienation, friendship, motivation, optimism, pessimism, hypocrisy, curiosity, sincerity, vanity, complacency, cowardice, arrogance, humility, fear.
This has been my daily bread and butter for most of the forty years since I became able to reflect as a young boy.
In short: I am a student of human nature in general and my own in particular.
I am not a novelist-and could never be one. I have just finished re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Cancer ward'. I first read it twenty years ago and remember being impressed by it. But reading it the second time has been a powerful and humbling experience which has left me breathless with awe.
I am not a frequent reader of fiction-I like to read selected books slowly and intensively. This book for me is by far and away the most powerful novel I have ever read. For me it is a work of Art-a Masterpiece. Since I am not a literary or art critic I can say no more.
If anything at all I am a storyteller.
Most of all I want to share with readers my stories from my personal and professional life. These stories have led me to the (forlorn) belief that we all desperately need each other in this world: Conversely, without each other we destroy ourselves and each other. When man tries to be independent-he merely chases his tail and re-invents the wheel, becomes arrogant, destroys himself and those around him.
There is no choice: we do depend on each other-in our personal, public and political lives. I think this is even more the case now as a result of globalisation.
As I tell my stories you will see that I have always been talking to myself. Ever since I was a child I have been having a dialogue with myself- always asking myself questions. Sometimes, I have got answers, but more often than not the questions are just left hanging there in my life unanswered; they are a paper trail which show where I have travelled.
Through sharing some of these stories I also want to try to answer a really big question I have been putting to myself for years.
Am I an optimist or a pessimist?
At this moment I don't know.
So, here are the stories...
(A) Why I write
Why I write.
I used to hate writing.
When I was a child in Northern Ireland I hated writing at school. It was hard work. Damning me with faint praise, at fourteen, my English teacher wrote on my end of year report:
"He makes up with enthusiasm for what he lacks in ability in this subject."
For the past eighteen years I have been an English teacher!
Back in the sixties I remember Dad telling me we needed science teachers to fight the Russians. So, I did science at school and eventually became a science teacher.
I first started writing when I went to Bristol University to do my teacher training in 1975. I was so lonely that I wrote furiously out of boredom, frustration and anger-about a fictional character called "Macmillan" (myself) who found it difficult to relate to anyone at all.
I remember the typist saying to me kindly:
"You have a very Irish style."
I think she was referring to the four-letter words splattered across the pages. I could hardly look at her with the embarrassment. She thought I knew something about writing! I was vain and so flattered. My fragile ego had been stroked for the first time.
I was addicted. I wrote some more and then lost it all somewhere. I lost patience with myself and gave it up: a familiar theme in my life.
Maybe my old teacher was correct: I didn't write again for twenty seven years.That was in 1975.
I stopped writing and didn't start again until about 2002.
Now, I'm addicted again. The motivation is similar-frustration with the loneliness of life as an outsider. But, I like writing now as an end in itself. I need it like a drug. It is the almost the only form of meaningful communication left to me.
I've tried sending what I've written to friends. Some like it-but others I know only read out of politeness. I don't want to foist my writing on them. So, I've decided to blog.
I'm vain enough to need an audience but I don't want to bother or lose my friends unnecessarily.I've no idea how to start a blog -another very familiar theme in my life!
I'll maybe start with an overview of my life in the next blog. Any assistance from readers would be greatly appreciated.
I used to hate writing.
When I was a child in Northern Ireland I hated writing at school. It was hard work. Damning me with faint praise, at fourteen, my English teacher wrote on my end of year report:
"He makes up with enthusiasm for what he lacks in ability in this subject."
For the past eighteen years I have been an English teacher!
Back in the sixties I remember Dad telling me we needed science teachers to fight the Russians. So, I did science at school and eventually became a science teacher.
I first started writing when I went to Bristol University to do my teacher training in 1975. I was so lonely that I wrote furiously out of boredom, frustration and anger-about a fictional character called "Macmillan" (myself) who found it difficult to relate to anyone at all.
I remember the typist saying to me kindly:
"You have a very Irish style."
I think she was referring to the four-letter words splattered across the pages. I could hardly look at her with the embarrassment. She thought I knew something about writing! I was vain and so flattered. My fragile ego had been stroked for the first time.
I was addicted. I wrote some more and then lost it all somewhere. I lost patience with myself and gave it up: a familiar theme in my life.
Maybe my old teacher was correct: I didn't write again for twenty seven years.That was in 1975.
I stopped writing and didn't start again until about 2002.
Now, I'm addicted again. The motivation is similar-frustration with the loneliness of life as an outsider. But, I like writing now as an end in itself. I need it like a drug. It is the almost the only form of meaningful communication left to me.
I've tried sending what I've written to friends. Some like it-but others I know only read out of politeness. I don't want to foist my writing on them. So, I've decided to blog.
I'm vain enough to need an audience but I don't want to bother or lose my friends unnecessarily.I've no idea how to start a blog -another very familiar theme in my life!
I'll maybe start with an overview of my life in the next blog. Any assistance from readers would be greatly appreciated.
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