Trying To Visit A Church

Posted on September 1, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

When I was a child……visiting a strange town……with my parents, we considered it important to visit the local Catholic Church. Not a bad habit for a Christian. And I suppose many other Catholic families did the same on seaside outings to Bangor and Warrenpoint…..or day trips to Dublin.

Of course we grow out of the sense that it is “good luck” to visit a Church…..and maybe even grow out of the sense that its nice to say a “wee prayer”. But a Church is often open from dawn to dusk and it seems a good way of getting to know a place….read some leaflets and posters in a Church porch and you get a flavour of a parish or town…….”oops we are in the Arch Diocese of Tuam……I was pretty sure this was the Diocese of Galway”…read the altar boy roster and the “Eucharistic Minister” roster or simply walk around the graveyard or read the dedications on the windows and you will discover that a handful of families seem to dominate parishes….even since Catholic Emancipation. Churches are a good way to understand loca history.

So no trip to Dublin is ever really complete without a visit to a Church. I am not into “lighting candles” or “posting petitions”. But I like to feel that I should visit a Church….if only as a “tip of the hat” to dead generations who brought me up to believe it was a nice thing to do.

So Wednesday night we strolled overa River Liffey bridge…….around 5pm and Temple Bar was just beginning to get busy. Up thru Grafton Street and into the St Stephens Green Shopping Mall. As we left, Mrs Fitzjames Horse pointed out that there wasa E50.00 for taking photographs in the top floor Art Gallery. Of course it would be very bad manners to photograph the work of an artist……but I suppose its some kinda “rule” of the Shopping Centre……and presumably legal that they impose a “fine”.

Short walk to Aungiers Street and one of my favourite Dublin Churches……the Carmelite Church, which has a shrine to of all saints……Saint Valentine. Of course we have to be “adult” and “post modern” about Saints and Shrines and Relics…..but it always seemed to me to be a nice little gesture to visit St Valentines Shrine. He is after all the Patron Saint of LOVE and while I am not the worlds greatest romantic…..I put an engagement ring on Mrs FJHs finger on 14th February 1982….and ya know it just seems right to pay St Valentine a wee visit. But as it turned out…….the Church closed at 6pm just a few minutes before.

So a short walk to the Franciscan Church at Merchants Quay……which was also closed.

Now that DOES seem odd. A reflection on changing times?

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Dublin Shopping

Posted on September 1, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

We spent Wednesday morning shopping for the family in and around Jervis Street and Henry Street. The stores were a curious mix of “total rip off” and genuine “bargains”, particuarly in sportswear and books.

Yet again my overall impression was of people “outside” Society. Retail jobs….like Catering and Hotels are low paid, even to the point of employing vulnerable people, especially migrants with questionable status…exploiting people who wont complain. And I have to say there was a certain rudeness in stores. It has often been the case that Irish “service” has been taken as “servility” but there too often seemed an unwelcoming look in peoples eyes. Is it a change of attitude or is it just generational? Or is it my imagination?

Either way, I asked a question in a shop but had difficulty making myself understood. And the manager barked at me to “talk properly”…….which as we left the store amused us and shocked us in fairly equal measure.

I dont think that the Four Courts actually handles “criminal cases” but on the journey into town, a guy got on the LUAS tram at the Four Courts platform and shamelessly smoked. Of course people merely shuffled their feet and looked away as he did not look the kinda guy who would take it well if someone pointed out the “no smoking” sign. And as we got off the tram I heard another passenger remark that the guy was smoking a “joint”. I think thats the thing about Ireland…….people are either law-abiding or just dont give a damn and treat any court appearance for not paying a TV Licence or not having Car Insurance as an occupational hazard.

On the return journey, at the Jervis LUAS Platform….passengers were hassled by three apparent drunks/junkies. A girl who was trying to appeal to the sympathy vote (she didnt get any) and two guys (one with a black eye) who were perhaps more intimidating.

Again……that has always been the case…..certainly since the 1970s…….and would happen in Paris, New York and London. But these three people in their early 20s have been placed…..or put themselves outside Society’s norms.

 

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DART To Bray

Posted on August 31, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Bray is a seaside town about 12 miles south of Dublin.

We took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transport) train there on Tuesday evening. It was just after 6pm so the train was pretty pack with commuters going home. Thru prosperous South Dublin City, thru prosperous South County Dublin and into Bray, the most northernly town in County Wicklow.

Dublin is a large city in a surprisingly small county (also called Dublin). Suburban Dublin extends north into County Meath, west into County Kildare and south into County Wicklow.

Essentially this is the Pale…a smaller version of the “English Pale” which dates from the late Middle Ages….that limited part of Ireland, ruled directly from England. “Beyond the Pale”, a phrase now meaning “beyond the accepted bounds of civilisation” was Gaelic-ruled Ireland.

It would be grossly unfair to say that Dublin is an “English” City but it is cosmopolitan. The largest group within the city remains those who are Irish…..not just in terms of nationality but in terms of attitude. There are of course other groups, including migrants from Eastern Europe and West Africa, people we dismiss as West Britons (those who look over-fondly on British influence and rule) and a kind of “Euro-Irish” (a younger professional generation who seem to owe more allegiance to Europe than Ireland).

So the train to Bray was a fairly cross-section of Dubliners…..seemingly from the “professional classes”. Not much different from underground commuter trains heading into Middlesex from London. Or from commuter trains heading into Connecticut from New York.

Certainly I have always been fascinated by commuter behaviour in London. There is an…..isolation……about the commuter. Nobody seems to have struck up friendships. On the Bray train, people were attached to their ipads and their ipods or their iphones. People were texting and posting their latest  “status” to their Facebook friends…..virtual friendship.

Bray has changed. Once a resort for day trippers from Dublin….or people on a week-long trip from Belfast, it is now essentially a dormitory town.

My first visit ever was as a 14 year old on a (too-long) Church trip from Belfast. I bought a headscarf for my mother at a market stall and the trader was talking about a murder in Belfast (of Peter Ward, a sectarian killing pre-dating the actual Troubles by three years).

When the Troubles began, I often retreated to Bray, including the “Jubilee Weekend” of 1977……..which was unbearably hot. And of course after we married and had a young family…it was a good place to go.

 So this week’s trip was nostalgic. Some twenty years ago, we stayed at a small hotel and took our sons to the top of the hill…..Bray Head, where a large cross is on the summit. My mother and Auntie Sheila watched from the hotel garden.

Both my mother and Auntie Sheila are dead some years. Our sons are married. We could never climb the summit now. Essentially Life is about Memory. And a Happy Life is about Happy Memories.

There is a think a dilemna for northern nationalists like myself. We fixate on  a particular image of Ireland, where Bray is still a seaside resort more than a dormitory town for Dublin. And where the people on the train are as Irish as I am. Curiously they seemed LESS Irish.

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Collins Barracks…Tuesday

Posted on August 31, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

As always…..I urge you all to visit Collins Barracks at Arbour Hill. Mrs FitzjamesHorse lost me there………..and assumed that as I am so old, the Museum had decided to put me “on exhibit”. The Asgard Exhibit is well worth a visit. Admission is Free.

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Smithfield, Dublin

Posted on August 31, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Most foreign visitors will know Smithfield in Dublin as the site of the Jameson Distillery Tour and St Michans Church with the mummified bodies in its crypts. Most Dubliners will know it as the Old Farmers Market and even today there is a monthly horse fair…..where horses are bought and sold. There is a certain conflict between Tradition and Modernity. The Horse Fair, attended largely by the Travelling Community has a reputation for violence between Traveller “clans” and abuse of horses.

The Dublin Society for the Protection of Animas has been urging its closure for years and the Dublin City Council seems stuck in the middle of an unedifying dispute …too often it seems the Travellers are relying on “Heritage” to support a life-style seen as outdated and worse by those of us who think (rightly in this case) that we are more civilised. Abuse of animals is just wrong…..and cannot be supported by appeals to heritage and traditional values.

About twenty years ago, Smithfield was re-built. It was at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom….and a piazza was built on the old “market site”….the monthly horse fair being its last trace.

Smithfield is just the fifth stop from the city centre going west….. on the LUAS (high speed tram service  which links east of the city to the west). It is just one stop west of the Four Courts (and several legal offices) and one stop east of the Collins Barracks Military Museum.

Its convenience to the City Centre and of course the Museum made it an ideal location for “our” hotel. Yet there is something about Smithfield which does not quite work. Bound on the river side by the LUAS tram line and on the other side by a main road, it is about 250,000 modern cobble stones making a very wide piazza or square.

On the eastern side of the square is mostly a very large and modern “back-packer” hostel which seemingly has branches in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and London. Nice to see that there is a small group of re-furbished family occupied houses. The western side of the square has a hotel, fitness suite, cinema (so discrete that we did not even notice it on the first night) a pizzaria and a large supermarket/deli.

But mostly the western side has some upmarket appartments….the gound floors seem reserved for shop units but in these harsh economic times, they are mostly showing “TO LET” signs. It looks like this optimistic attempt to gentrify or yuppify this ancient part of Dublin has failed bacause the Celtic Tiger economy has collapsed.

I dont suppose many families live in these appartments. Certainly we DID see some families with very young children but appartment lfe seems more suited to single living and appartment share for adults under forty.

Certainly the proximity of so many legal offices make it a good base for young legal professionals.

To Mrs FitzjamesHorse and myself…..this seems a sad way of life. Yet oddly attractive. A life-style I would associate with New York or Los Angeles. Thru the doors, a desk is seen…..it even has the word “concierge” and a liveried woman sits…..with a range of letter boxes behind her. All around Smithfield there are Warnings about loitering and Disclaimers about cars parked at owners risk.

A Gated Community….it seems…. detached. It seems……..un-Irish.

Back at the hotel…..well check-in seems odd. The Desk Clerk is very proper and precise. We have paid our deposit online. And the intention is to settle our bill with cash on the final day. But he asks for our credit card……and I say that we will be paying cash….but without actual explanation he “needs” our credit card.

Now as I have said we are unsophisticated travellers. We dont really understand what all this is about. We rationalise it later…..and of course the procedure is familiar to our sons. It is pre-authorisation.

It seems to me that the Desk Clerk could have explained it better. But he is from the Indian sub-continent. Is that relevant? I think in this context ……”yes”. Because an Irish Desk Clerk would have been more “wordy”….and given me the opportunity of joking that it was “in case we leave without paying…..as we usually do”.

Am I stereotyping here? I hope not. There are friendly and unfriendly Asians. And friendly and unfriendly Irish.

Some time later, we are struggling with the “card key” system in the elevator. The member of staff who helps us out is from Croatia. And being me……I say “ah a Hadjuk Split fan?”. As it turns out he is a fan. They are playing in the Europa Qualifier this very night and he adds that he hates Dynamo Zagreb.

Yet I am uncomfortable at being …..friendly or as some would say “intrusive”. It is in my nature and yet I feel I have to curb it. It is probably something the majority of Irish people (stereotyping?)  “get” and the majority of non-Irish people (stereotyping?)  dont “get”.

Possibly with some cause….including hostility by a minority of people…. towards them, people can get defensive with conversations which I might consider “friendly” and they consider “intrusive”.

It is how it is …in 2012. Not a time I feel at ease.

Is Ireland changing…….the gated communities……….and the staffing at our hotels. It makes me uncomfortable that I even think of this. But some twenty years ago…..the Irish airline Aer Lingus ran an advertising campaign which claimed that a visit to Ireland began when a tourist boarded an Aer Lingus plane (in New York, Berlin or London). Tourism is Ireland’s biggest industry. People……ALL of our people, including “new citizens” are our greatest asset but I wonder how tourists feel that most of the inter-actions with people in Ireland…….hotels, bars, restaurants and shopping centres will be with people who are not actually “Irish”. Of course this merely means that low paid workers in Ireland are in the service  and retail sectors and a disproportionate number of folks in the service and retail sectors are from ethnic minorities. And perhaps Dublin is no different from London, Rome, Paris and New York.

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When “General Knowledge” Became “Trivia”

Posted on August 31, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Dublin……been there. Bought the T-shirt. Well to be totally honest it was Mrs Fitzjames Horse who bought me this T-shirt…in Grafton Street.

 Unfortunately the “Blue” and “Green” do not show well in this pic but the slogan says “Why Google……..Ask Me!” I think it describes me to the literal T (pun intended).

You see…..back in the 1960s…..there were a lot of General Knowledge Quiz Shows on TV. …Criss Cross Quiz…..being my favourite. I have that kinda “Rain Man” memory. When I was about 8 years old, there was a set of 80 bubble-gum cards……..Flags of the World. And some day I will buy them again thru ebay. The cards featured not just the Flag but the capital and currency of the nations and how to say “Hello” and “Goodbye”. Around the same time, I became a very young Stamp Collector. And I was always watching the News.

There are some things that you just dont forget……EVER.

But Attitudes change. In 1988, quiz machines started appearing in Bowling Arcades and other amusement arcades. I was a Quiz Machine Bandit. Memorably in one summer month I raided Superbowl in my nearest town, Ballymena(!), Belfast (!!) and Bangor(!!!). Frankly I cleaned up. And because of me….and a handful of other “professionals” the machines were removed. There was one glorious month when I did not even use a “bank machine” (ATM)….which is pretty good when you are the father of a 5 year old and a 3 year old.

Around then…..Trivial Pursuit was the “must have” Christmas present. And in the early 1990s it was he era of the Pub Quiz. My employer had a team but I was always just a semi-detached member living outside Belfast. The other three were regular bandits at Pub Quiz events around Belfast. And only used me when they needed a fourth person. Actually they were quite dismissive of me…they “knew” stuff like Russian literature and classical music but they rubbished me as the kinda person who would know Elvis Presley’s shoe size.

Thats the thing about General Knowledge and Trivia…in a competitive context. We won regional events because someone got the “Mozart” answer or we won because I buzzed in, interupting that  Kenny Jones replaced Keith Moon as drummer in The Who.

But we won some prizes in Glasgow, Liverpool and Norwich (all expenses paid by employer) and met interesting people including a hard-nosed team of loyalists from Lisburn….led by the son of a well-known loyalist terrorist.

But here’s the thing……although the Pub Quiz has recently made a return as a fun event in itself…or as a fundraiser…….it went thru a period for the best part of twenty years…ridiculed as a form of……..nerdiness.

In 1965…….knowing that Stockholm is the capital of Sweden was considered a social skill……of sorts. But by 2005, knowing that Santiago is the capital of Chile was regarded as a social stigma. Why so? Well in part General Knowledge DID become a form of Trivia as people searched for more obscure questions to ask. But I think that knowing ANYTHING beyond a narrow field of interest or employment became socially unacceptable. Knowing that Juan Pablo Duarte is a national hero in the Dominican Republic was taken as a sign that a person under-valued his/her career.

Probably for the best part of twenty years I have suppressed “knowing stuff” as it pointed up a social awkwardness.

So what has this to do with Dublin? Well as always I must blame Mrs FitzjamesHorse.

There was something nostalgic about our few days in Dublin…..recalling THAT week in Clonakilty….or THAT week in Ballybunion. Or that time when we had breakfast alongside a young couple from Minneapolis, Minnesota ……and I automatically went into “ah the Twin Cities, Mary Tyler Moore and the North Star State”. Seemingly Mrs FJH has always liked that about me…….an ability to meet somebody and to talk to them on their terms (and I tend to do it as a “welcoming gesture”). Yet increasingly I feel more reticent about talking to people (more on the reasons for this in another Blog perhaps).

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Did You All Miss Me?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Home from Dublin. Had a great time. I was not allowed to bring my new ipad. But I got some good material (well at least I think so) for blogging. Actually that was the first time that I have stayed overnight in a Dublin city hotel since 1982.

Generally speaking Dublin is for shopping and sporting occasions so no need to stay there at night. I used to spend a lot of weekends there in the 1970s. And family vacations have tended to be in County Galway, County Cork, County Kerry, County Mayo etc……….and with a young family our preference has been family-run “bed and breakfasts” or “self catering”. So Dublin was a new experience.

We are of course….sophisticated. I have used those hotel “key cards” in Westport, Galway and Manchester. But this week was the first occasion we used them for electricity in the hotel room and to use the elevator…….now we can call ourselves REALLY sophisticated.

There will be a certain “What I Did On My Holidays” (rather like those essays I had to write on the first day school re-started in September) aspect to the next few Blogs. Not overtly political but a reflection on how Ireland is changing.

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Blogging De-Mob Crazy

Posted on August 27, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

I have about three Blogs….all in draft. But I cant be bothered finishing them. I am off on a three day break and I am already in “holiday mood”. So I cant even get worked up about the Alliance Party.

Please do not do anything interesting until the end of the week.

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The IRA By Numbers (Guest Post By Sammy McNally)

Posted on August 26, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Guest Post here from Sammy.

The nomenclature of the Irish insurgency groups is clearly in need of overhaul given the relative nature of the terms ‘old’ and ‘new’ when referring to the ‘IRA’ as highlighted in the post below by FJH – and I think  we can perhaps look to technology to provide us with a more useful and workable alternative.

We could, in the interests of clarity, ignoring the United Irishmen and the Fenians et al, just start with the Easter Rising and simply use the term IRA (Irish Republican Army) in the generic sense to cover all Republican insurgency groups from that point forward.  That would then give us the IRB as the first version of the IRA or version 1.0 and perhaps the anti-treaty IRA as version 1.1.

The hitherto‘old’ IRA would now be referred to as the Version 1s.

Given their relative lack of activity and their limited impact, it is perhaps not necessary to allocate a separate Version number to the IRA involved in the ‘border campaign’ in the 1950s and they might be fairly categorised as BETA Version 2, with the full Version 2 relating to the insurgency that emerged in the late 1960s.  That would make the Provisional IRA Version 2.1 and the Official IRA Version 2.2. I think it makes good sense to include the sundry other insurgency groups in the same numbering system – so we could have the INLA as 2.3, the IPLO as 2.4 etc, with the flexibility in the system to accommodate the likes of the South Armagh Peoples Resistance Front(or whatever they were called) who may or may not turn out to have actually existed.

So the hitherto ‘New’ IRA would now be referred to as the Version 2s.

So what about the currently active batch of IRAs, the Dissers, are they the new Version 3s?

Well Unionists would probably argue that the Version 1s and Version 2s and the prospective Version 3s should all just be lumped together as they would see them as all being all cut from the same papal cloth, so I think we should therefore listen very carefully to any submissions from Unionists – in an outreachy sort of way – and then ignore them. So although arguably there is considerable overlap in terms of timespan and volunteers with the Version 2s we should make the Dissers – Real IRA, Continuity IRA, Oglaigh na hEireann, Republicans against Drugs et al (formerly known as the‘New new IRA’) the Version 3s – but given the propensity of the groups to merge and splinter themselves – perhaps best not to allocate them exact(3.1, 3.2) Version numbers.

Arguably, if there had been proper versioning in place we might have actually seen improvement in later Versions – rather than the reverse, as we have seen up until now – and we might have had some proper and realistic assessments of what had gone before.

In FJHs post below he recounts that an old New IRA man (a Version 2.1) states that  “He wasnt going to apologise to anyone for anything. ……….if people apologise, then it belittles those comrades who died for his and their beliefs.”

… and that is fair enough.

For many, however, myself included, what is required from him and his colleagues is not an apology but an explanation about the nature of the campaign they were involved in  e.g. repeatedly putting large bombs in civilian areas and shooting ex-members of the security forces, or shooting serving members in front of their families.This is important as we move ‘forward’ in Irish history, not just because we have a right as Irish people to know what was done in our name but also because if we had a bit more discussion of the validity of some of the tactics of the Version1s (e.g. shooting Prods) then we would not have so many questions to ask now from the Version 2.1s – and arguably the Version 3s might not actually, currently at least, be with us.

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The “New” Old IRA?

Posted on August 26, 2012 by fitzjameshorse

Chat to some friends in the Republic of Ireland and they might tell you about about a long dead relative who was in “The Old IRA”. The word “Old” is important as it seeks to distinguish the original IRA from any newer version. The Old IRA being the men and women from the period 1916-1922.

Look at old newsreel footage of the 25th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising in 1941….and you will see middle aged men marching behind a banner styled “The Old IRA”. And check out the 50th Anniversary in 1966 and there are fewer people and they are now elderly and of course……the numbers get fewer and all are now (2012) dead. Yet thru the 1970s it was still possible to see veterans of that period interviewed in RTE documentaries.

Of course the Republic of Ireland is a homogenous country. Except for revisionists those men and women who fought against the odds to achieve Irish Freedom for a large part of the island……are revered as heroes. There is something….pure……about them. From hill and farm they answered the call…….and went back to the hill and farm when they …or History…..said it was all over. They enjoyed a certain reputation because they were better organised, more idealistic than those who fought on a risible war in the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. And just as crucially they had contented themselves that they had done all they could while arguably lesser men who had been their comrades were now governing the Republic of Ireland…….in Dáil Éireann or town and county councils. Lesser men who were more likely to identify themselves with militarism at Election time. In short, the “Old IRA” steered a path between militarism for its own sake and careerist politicians in political parties.

Of course Norn Iron is not homogenous. In the 1960s the “Old IRA” in Belfast referred to men from the 1916-1922 period and the 1940s……but not (usually) to the men who had been in the 1956-62 Campaign. Certainly as a young teen in the peaceful 1960s, my father would point out “Old IRA” men to me…perhaps have a chat with them outside Clonard Church. They were…it seems odd now…quietly religious “Confraternity” men….or GAA men. In the late 1960s these Belfast men had mostly severed any connexion with the IRA and its Marxist leadership.

Yet in August 1969 wnen West Belfast was attacked by armed loyalist mobs aided by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and B Specials……and the “Official IRA” refused to defend the Falls Road……..the entire defence fell to eight men from the “Old IRA”. Of course these men formed the nucleus of what would become the Provisional IRA leadership and embark on a campaign of violence that would take over 3,500 lives over a thirty year period.

So……last month I was at a funeral in West Belfast. An old family connexion. And a lot of 1970s “men” were in attendance. An old comrade. A strange sence of deja vu…..these men are now in their 50s, 60s, 70s………middle aged and old men. Rather like those middle aged and old men to whom my father would chat outside Clonard nearly half a century ago.

I was chatting to guy. These men describe themselves as “ex-prisoners”. He was looking forward to a fundraising dinner, where money would be raised to maintain the monument to “D” Company, Second Battalion, Belfast Brigade. Hardly the right place or time for me to pump him for information but it seems to me this old neighbour was as dismissive of the militant nihilists in dissident Republicanism as they are of the political careerists in Sinn Féin.

To some extent I was reminded of the old Hoyt Axton song………”Im A Good Ole Rebel” the anthem of continued Confederate defiance. Without any kind of prompting he rounded on the notion of Truth Commissions. He wasnt going to apologise to anyone for anything. ……….if people apologise, then it belittles those comrades who died for his and their beliefs.

As I have said….this man is an “ex-prisoner”. The attrition rate in the Provisional IRA was not particuarly high……less than 300 killed from 1969-1998. But the attrition rate in terms of prison sentences and internment without trial was massive.

Effectively “ex-prisoners” is coded term for people who were militant republicans, usually Provisional IRA. Of course that organisation no longer exists….officially. The Independent Monitoring Commission seems to think that the Provisional IRA is “no longer a threat”. But certainly there seems to be a belief in PSNI circles that they still actually exist. Of course there is an unspoken question here………as to whether a “Shadow IRA” (committed to Peace) monitoring the progress of the Peace Process is actually a bad thing. It seems naive to think that “they HAVE gone away you know”………..but our old friend Creative Ambiguity obliges everyone in authority to say they no longer exist.

At the end of the day its probably less important than the fact that “ex-prisoners” are still alive……still maintaining contact with each other.

 

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