Paul Malpas

I have just returned after a couple of days in Dublin and I am amazed at what I saw. By nine o’clock at night there was not a shop doorway or office block entrance available or vacant. The homeless were in command and sleeping in niches that offered only the scantest protection from the incessant rain. There must be some remedy for this disgraceful scene, especially with the thought that there are 300,000 vacant dwellings in Ireland. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Health Service Executive to put two and two together and make four, somehow.

When daylight comes to the streets, the pavements fill with beggers of all nationalities and I am not sure there is a link between the doorstep dwellers and the beggers, they appear different in terms of age and nationality. It is disturbing and sad that such a situation exists. It was always to some extent there, with the women and children of the travelling community but the begger’s numbers have increased tenfold these past few years and it is not just women and children of the travellers now, it is man woman and child of most nationalities known.

A walk down Talbot Street or up O’Connell Street will show you the problem, grotesquely deformed cripples and other limbless unfortunates litter the pavements, saying nothing, but holding up empty plastic coffee cups for us rich or not so rich, to fill up with loose change. Not only is it very uncomfortable to witness and so perplexing to deal with, it can also do no good for the lifeblood of Dublin, it’s tourist industry.

Obviously all these poor people are supported by the state and if not you would wonder how they came to the country. Some will be mentally impaired and somehow or other should be cared for by the authorities. The country cannot wash it’s hands of them and allow them to die like dogs in the street. This is not Ireland of 100 years ago. I might have the whole thing wrong and it might be that the State is falling over itself in caring for these people but I am only expressing the thoughts of the occasional visitor who has this problem thrust in his face.

But enough of rant, I came to Dublin at the invite of O’Brien Press to attend the launch of a new book by a young writer, Neil Richardson. I was interested in attending such an occasion because I had watched a performance of a play by Neil entitled “From the Shannon to the Somme” in March this year in the Little Theatre in Athlone. See my blog of that title posted on 27th March 2010. I was then so impressed not only with the acting and the direction of the play but also with the script and how well it was researched by one so young. Neil is in his mid-twenties.

So I was pleased and proud to attend this launch having spotted the writers talents some months ago. It is his first book and it has taken three years of research and is entitled “A Coward If I Return, A Hero If I Fall” which is a line in the poem “Lament” by the Donegal writer, Patrick McGill, who fought the whole of the First World War with the London Irish Rifles. It tells the same story as the play but this time in facts and figures and explains the anguish of the families on receiving the dreaded telegram and paints pen pictures of the Irish men and boys who volunteered to fight in this atrocious conflict and describes the dichotomy faced by the 200,000 returning Irishmen at the end of the war.

They had enlisted in 1914 into what was then their army and what had become the enemy’s army, by the time they were demobbed in 1919. They were coming home to hatred, social ostracization, unemployment and having to live with this and the inevitable post traumatic stress brought on by the war. Nationalistic zeal was running high and they were shunned and forgotten. We are not talking about a few thousand men here, but something like 30% of the 17-35 year old male population, a vast amount of people. Faced with these difficulties is it any wonder so many of them did not return but chose to try and make a go of it in England, America, Canada and Australia. To quote Yeats, everything was “all changed, changed utterly”

The evening commenced with a eulogy on the writer by Michael O’Brien, the publisher, who was amazed that one so young could write with such maturity. Dr. Tom Conan, former Lt. Colonel in the Irish Army and now Defence Correspondent for The Irish Times amongst other things, followed up, reporting some of the startling facts gleaned from the book. There were 50,000 Irishmen killed in that war, roughly the same amount as Americans killed in Vietnam. Vietnam is seared into the American psyche, these 50,000 Irishmen were forgotten in that surge of nationalism in the 20s and 30s. In Easter Week in Dublin 450 civilians, rebels and British soldiers were killed, in that same week in Loos in Northern France 538 Irish soldiers, mainly from Dublin, met their death, mostly by chlorine gas, a horrible killer. The world knows about the dead in Dublin but nothing about the dead in Loos. His talk was emotional and serious and explained the soldiers lot in conflict.

Neil then spoke of his early interest in the war, his long years of research and his pleasure at seeing so many people at the National Library for this occasion. It was obvious from his easy speech on the subject, while he rattled off names and numbers, facts and fables that his research had been deep, accurate and unique.

I brought the book home and started reading and finished the last of its 350 pages in two days. It is a compelling, eye-opening and easy read. It explains the problems it set itself in its title, in a way that, as far as I know, has never been tried before. It’s uniqueness in this genre is a main reason for buying the book. I was so pleased to have accepted the invitation on behalf of the Connaught Rangers Association and so proud to have been at such an august occasion.

Best of luck Mr. Richardson with this work and may you have continued success throughout your career.

Yesterday I watched an American documentary about clerical child abuse in California between 1970 and 1990.  It was the most distressing 120 minutes I have ever watched.  It was on the channel More 4, last Tuesday night.  We recorded it and have it saved and I understand that you cannot pull it off the internet but you can certainly buy the CD from Amazon, price £5 with free delivery.  It is called Deliver Us From Evil and tells the true story of one priest, Fr Oliver O’Grady, and his 20 year sexual spree in various parishes in the state and the way he was moved around by his various bishops.  It interviews victims, parents, bishops and the priest himself, Fr. Olly, as he was affectionately called and it portrays his remarkable open views.  It was like stealing sweets to him.

I will not say any more but try and watch it and live through the terrible anguish that decends on perfectly decent people after these paedophiles have finished their work.  The victim and the family’s stain lasts for ever.  He used to sometimes get at the children by shagging their mothers first in order to ingratiate himself into the family.  If that is not perverse I do not know what is and he continued to smile whimsically throughout.

It showed in detail the amount of work the Church goes through to cover up this abuse and the dreadful and cynical way the perpertrators act when grappling with their consciences afterwards.  I do not know who is the worst, O’Grady or his bishop, now Cardinal O’Malley.

The man, O’Grady, is now wandering around his native Ireland, Thurles in Tipperary, was his last recorded address and by his demeanour and facial expression he has not a care in the world while his victims try to continue their ruined lives in America and the film says that the Garda have not been warned of his presence.

I now know and the Pope has confirmed the fact that paedophilic behaviour by priests is not an insular or isolated phenomenon, it is world wide and has been going on for a while.  In actual fact the Church has tried to keep it under wraps for at least 40 years but with the growth and spread of information technology they were always fighting a losing battle.  If they had not tried to cover it up and put their house in order instead, this would have been a seven day wonder, instead it is their Armageddon and unfortunately the Church is on the side of Evil.

Again do try and get a copy of this film, it is the most powerful piece of cinematic evidence against the Church, I have ever seen.  It was so disturbing that my blog of yesterday was on this subject but I could not summon up the will to write.

AS a last thought, a friend of mine emailed me this morning saying the pope said in his recent pastoral to the People of Ireland that this was a modern event, brought about by the secularization of society.  I am afraid that this is not correct because these grevious sins were being committed 60 years ago to my knowledge and probably have been carried out in one form or the other since the 4th century.

In the school I was educated at, boys as young as 11 were taken away from their families and only during holiday periods, were they integrated back into society and this went on until they were 23 or 24.  12 0r 13 years locked away from their parents during their formative and undoubtably most sexually awakening years in a man’s life.  There was bound to be fraught times ahead of them, with unresolved sexual, social and psychological problems.  One lad I know did not see his family for five years from the age of 18 through to 23, locked away in a Vatican cloister for the whole of this time during which his father died.

Mike Harding  advised me to read an article in the current New Statesman by John Cornwell entitled The Pope, the people and paedophiles.    It explains Benedict’s admiration for Cardinal Newman but also his reticence and lack of resolve in not taking up his philosophies.  He considers him to be a weak and tarnished pope.  It is a strong and wide ranging intellectual essay.  So read that and look at the film but not at the same time.  You could explode with overload.

In  Blogging On submitted on 9 December 2009,  I explained that I initially persuaded myself I was doing this blogging to better my ability on the computer  and improve my writing skills, in as much as the discipline of churning out 1000 words plus almost daily would help me with construction and quality and also help  form a personalised style of writing.  My computer skills have not improved, I cannot fight my way out of a paper bag when it comes to using the tools provided on the screen,  because it relies on memory and has you go down the hill on the other side of life that particular gift of immediate memory becomes lost.  However I have now relaxed into a particular style; I suppose one could say it was light, emotional, cynical and humerous.  I have also conquered,  for the time being,  the discipline of writing 1000 words every day on whatever topic comes to mind.  At the moment, after 21 or 22 of these blogs,  I am not stuck for a subject, in that regard my religion has helped me considerably.  The quality of my writing is to subjective for me to consider, however practice must improve it, practice and reading.  The more you read the better to analyse the skills of the writer.  So I do both and hopefully will improve.  I do not, of course, aspire to be as good as my favourite wordsmith, the late John McGahern, who could paint a wonderful scene in a 100 words, which would take me 400 to write badly and never of course within a million miles of the quality of the Leitrim master.  As regards construction some blogs just fly off the pen and at the end make reasonable sense, whilst others have to have an amount of planning and prethinking.  I suppose it depends on the emotion and knowledge required as to how well the piece is fabricated.

All this daydreaming came about because yesterday evening I met a friend for a pint and a gossip and immediately he started buttering me up and telling me how much he enjoyed reading my journal and how he wished he could write because his head was bursting with ideas and thoughts he needed to relay.  Thoughts  I have noticed that have raised people’s ire sometimes, ill-considered and possibly immature, the truth perhaps, but often enough the truth is too direct for some.  Writing it all down gives you a buffer zone in which to consider the ill-considered.

I told him he was the ideal candidate, start blogging, spit it out, get people on their toes, make ‘em think.  He is in an occupation where something differs every five minutes, he would never be stuck for a subject.  He said no.  The thoughts in his head easily come to his tongue but not his pen.  I told him to relax, consider and slowly write it down, re-read and edit if he needed to, as it will have more power in the end.  But he still said no, he was worried about his spelling, his punctuation, his words, his only basic education.  In truth he lacked confidence.  So I think high up on the scale of things a writer needs confidence, besides the technical skills discussed.  Confidence to sit down alone, understand what you are thinking and put it down in a way that makes sense and you just hope somebody picks it up.

So all you people out there who care and get exasperated with the happenings of the world, get writing, the skills might or might not come but at least it is ordering your mind.

By the way, why is it that when you are your own editor you can read your own stuff 100 times and see that an improving change is needed every time.  It reminds me of trying to sharpen a knife that has lost its edge, it will always be blunt.  Whereas McGahern used to re-read, edit and rewrite 50 or 60 times before he was satisfied.  The difference being that every time he re-wrote, he improved the text until he eventually turned out a jewel.

This to me is a totally new and exciting medium to record my diurnal or bidiurnal thoughts. A diary without boundary, a chronicle without necessarily the need for chronology. I am looking forward to it so much, for its width and its power.

After two days of practice I have now to seriously put pen to paper or should I say digit to key. I have just found out that I am on Mark Attwood‘s Blogroll, so the complexities of the system will slowly unfold while I for the moment concentrate on style and the shift key. My expertise on the keyboard is not great even though I have typed out laboriously my 400 page memoir with one finger which is slowly being pushed into my wrist.

By the way Mark Attwood is an Internet Marketeer and SEO Expert par excellence as well as being lucky enough to be my son-in-law and I am lucky enough to be joined on his Blogroll by Drayton Bird, possibly the most famous marketing expert in the world who is also lucky enough to be born in Ashton under Lyne where my father went to school, by Katy Attwood who is priviledged to be my daughter and mother of three and a half Attwood children, by Ken McCarthy, an American, and also by a chap called Vince Samios who is misplaced ambition personified, no doubt emanating from the fact that he is Australian. I thought that they were only good at cricket and serving penal servitude.

In this exalted company I am expected to shine. So here goes.

I have just finished reading the main works of Diana Athill, a woman of 92 years  who did not start to write with energy until past her 80th birthday. Her work is mainly in Memoir form and so real and honest, you imagine you are living her life for her. As a fan of the memoir genre I find my own pitiable attempts need to be drastically rewritten for them to be half as interesting as her writing is to the reader. She has reached massive new heights in the content and presentation of this style of prose.

Her only claims to fame were that she loved to read, loved to love and loved the art of procrastination. Which is probably why she has lived to her ripe old age without too much trouble. Her titles are:- “Yesterday Morning”, “Instead of a Letter”, “Stet”, “After a Funeral”, “Make Believe” and “Somewhere Towards the End” and a novel  “Dont Look at Me Like That”, which I have not yet read. All it seems can be bought on Amazon for next to nothing. However her compendium edition “Life Class” just recently published with a forward by Ian Jack costs a few pounds more. Start reading, start loving and procrastinating and live to whatever age you want.

Here’s an interview with Diana in case you’re interested:

So I sign off with the thought that it looks like the hand of God has reached out and accomplished more than King Canute ever did. The waters of Boyle seem to have stopped rising just as they started lapping at my gateway.