(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.