Paul Malpas

Hello and it is so good to return to the land of the living to meet you all again after three and a half months of researching the life of a 62 year old dead man who passed from this world 42 years ago and who caused great grief to many young boys in Manchester, that he pastored for 16 long years all that time ago. Readers of this column will know of whom I speak and I just wonder whether it was the manner of his humble birth which made young, intelligent and gifted boys such an anathema to him.

Anyway, I am back amongst you, but not in a joyful or carefree mood, although I should be with that pair of burgeoning boys, born to my daughter in June this summer and winking at me from the wallpaper put on my computer screen and also another birth in August, in Bradford, of my sixth grand child, Hamzah, which means I think, Lion. Slightly built but with long fingers, he has time to grow tall and I expect him to play for Yorkshire one day and hopefully for Bangladesh or England, he has the choice and anybody with choice is half way there. I should be joyful after seeing the twins suck Northern France dry on our holidays there last month and I am not carefree because only just over a week ago, a man I held in the highest regard, a man who, more than anyone I know, kept his hometown of Boyle, in North Roscommon, in the artistic and intellectual spotlights of Ireland, died suddenly. It was his management and organization of the Boyle Arts Festival, an annual event of some magnitude, that kept the modern day artists of Ireland on their toes and it was him, alone, who captured the imagination of the Arts media. Except for him, Boyle would have been some little backwater bypassed on the road to Sligo and dreaming of its military and musical past.

I watched the blaze and pageantry of his funeral service, the blaze and pageantry that only the Catholic Church with the help of the local community can throw on occasions such as these and accepted that that is what they do well to bigfish in small ponds. I started thinking would he have liked all this hype, he went so quickly, he might not have left a protocol to be followed but knowing the man, I would suggest his favourite modus mortatis would have been in a blaze of glory, so he would not have been upset by his requiem.

Continuing along with that train of thought I realised that that kind of celebration would not be for me, not the pageantry or a blaze of anything other than the gas fired jets of a burner in some damp crematorium. I am no big fish in any kind of pond, I am not even plankton, possibly a minor diatom drifting around in a puddle caused by an imprint in the soil of some well worn wellington boot . When I go I want to be treated as such, first of all pinched for reaction, to ensure my mortality and when satisfied that life no longer exists, shovelled into some form of container, a body bag or even a shopping bag and taken to the firing chamber as soon as possible once all legal niceties are resolved, and there turned into clinker or ashes and when cooled, placed in some humble container. A cardboard box will do.

It is at this moment my family, if any still hold me in regard and a friend or friends can gather and drink my supernatural health and think of days when I did my best and there were not many of those. It would be a pleasure at this time if some kind burgher would dribble a few drops of life giving nectar over my cardboard contained dust. Just on the off chance so to speak. My mate, Charly’s, hooch would be just the thing. When satisfied that this elixir is only snake oil then take me off to South Sligo.

I want what is left of me to be bisected, roughly will do, if no scales are to be had, and the first half taken to the top of the Bricklieves, the Speckled Mountains, a place my ancestors of 5500 years ago held in high regard and it is there that my acolytes will await a gentle westerly breeze and allow this moiety of my roasted powder to slip away and be carried by this zephyr, over Dunaveragh, that ancient resting place of pilgrims and on over the latter day N4, to rest on the calm waters of Loch Arbhach with the lightest haze finally stopping on the walls of Ballindoon Abbey, where the Dominicans held sway 500 years ago.

Back in the car again with care being taken of my final remnants, a zephyr up there can soon turn into a tempest and this final grit has another place to go. To the historic Plains of Boyle we will be destined. Here on this vibrant pasture land, Irish cattle have been fattened up for thousands of years. In this much prized upland plateau is the townland of Eastersnow. It is here John Mcgahern, my most favourite wordsmith, in his much praised book “Amongst Women” buries the first fictional mother of the family. I can only say that he did this for the beauty of its name, certainly to me a better sound than, Aghawillin in Leitrim where his own mother lies and it has the added advantage of being within walking distance of Cootehall where he lived as a boy.

The graveyard at Eastersnow is a pleasant site, quadrangular in shape with the four walls of an old chapel standing in its centre. It has been the home of rich man and poor man for a long time and I would like my remaining bits scattered within these four walls. If John McGahern had high regard, so do I and it has the added advantage of being close to Byrne’s Public House. If any mourner ravished with the drouth, after so long a pilgrimage, would just knock on the door, I am sure Mrs. Byrne would offer them a drink.

So my time will be over and I hope there is great merry making in the community as one more thorn is picked out of people’s lives and the lovely Helen can settle down to an old age with little to worry about except for the untidiness of the kitchen. I, unfortunately will not be there to keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion.

But before I go for today, I want to reiterate the thoughts in my first paragraph and thank you all once again for your support throughout the Summer. There was a steady flow of people logging on every day for, even though I say it myself, a better read than the newspapers.

The various events of June have dried my mind out, it is now a sere mass of grey matter and I have come to a full stop. Every morning for the last two weeks, i have come down the stairs at the crack of sparrow fart, dawn to the unpoetic, sat at the keyboard and nothing, not even a sentence.

It normally takes me about four hours to write a 1000 words, think, edit, rewrite, edit and type out, but these last two weeks nothing, in fact for the most of June, nothing. I might have been bothered about two major areas of research I have set myself, but nothing there either, only indolence, torpor and langour. I cannot set my mind to churn the way it has for the past seven months. So I have decided to rest up until the 1st October, concentrate on the research subjects and hope that I can get them out of the way for the Autumn.

It was not just that the words would not come although that was my Becher’s Brook, but there are so many other fences to jump. The glorious weather, a fascinating series of one day cricket against the Australians, a lake more or less outside the front door which had a 24 hour shimmer in that glorious June, the planning of a continental trip later in the year, the garden and vegetable plot that seems to want care evey five minutes with its burgeoning crop brought to fruition by the finest June on record, the thoughts of the twins thriving in Manchester and thinking of the life in front of them, I am sure and I hope that it will not be as hard as the past 60 years.

So there it is and apologies to all my readers who have been waiting patiently for most of June to pick up the glowing pearls that emanate from my keyboard every morning. A full stop will clear my mind, let me enjoy my enjoyment and stop making me feel guilty about taking time off. All my working life I have felt guilty at taking time off, even when working seven days a week. A weeks holiday, a round of golf made me a nervous wreck, it really was not worth it, but now I am retired, I am master of all I survey. So full stop until October and thank you for having me.

Doesn’t time fly?  It only seems a couple of weeks ago when I was 40 and running around Manchester, at the height of my powers, worried about nothing and scared of no-one.  Happily married with at that time four children and starting to realize that there was still a long way to go in life.  As I said that seems only a couple of weeks ago when I was 40.  This week I am 64, still happily married thank God, but with an extra two children to manage and three and a half grandchildren to consider but not now at the height of my powers, worried about everything and scared of a few and starting to realize that if those 24 years went so quickly, I should probably be dead by the time March comes along, having lived to a very grand 88 years of age.  Doesn’t time fly?  My first 18 years felt as though it was a tortoise propelling me, the next 46 was by Concorde.

I am telling you this because I just wanted to warn all you thrusting 40 year olds out there that you have only just got two weeks to go before retirement, so if there is anything in your life that needs improvement, get out this afternoon and start the process.  The Queen (or possibly King by then) and her £200 per week is nigh, prepare yourself for a humbling experience.  For you people have possibly noticed how the population prostrates themselves before you, in two weeks time they will be spitting at you and kicking your arse.

Here is me making plans for you vibrant ones and what I should be really doing is making plans for myself because that chronological equation tells me that I have only two weeks myself.  So what do I want to happen to the former me in that first week of March.

Well for a start I do not want some hole in some dauby hillside, I want to be as free as a bird, I want to be able to fly like I did in my twenties, I want to be scared of nothing, I want to feel the sun on my back and the wind in my hair.  I want to be cremated.  A much more civilized and a much older way of saying goodbye, than a hole in the ground.  The folk round here were burning their lifeless ones 5000 years ago so it is not a passing fancy.  Also I am remembering the words of the old Tipperary priest, Fr. Denis Maher I think is name was, parish priest of St. Paul’s in Hyde, Cheshire, who speaking after Dr. Harold Shipman’s life sentence was passed in 2000, said that if grieving relatives could see the condition of their loved ones after a year in the ground, nobody would be buried.  Harold Shipman was the good doctor who murdered his patients.  The authorities proved by exhumation and scientific examination that he had killed 218  of these people, with the big possibility that there was another 200  as well.  By a requirement of law Fr. Maher had to attend about half these exhumations and was horrified by the state of decay he witnessed.  Just as a passing thought my Aunty Betty, a stout hearted farming lady, was thrown off her horse when she was about 70 and damaged her hip and eventually had to have a hip replacement. If it was not for her agricultural heritage of trusting her vet, who looked after her both before and after her operation, she might have been dead now as Shipman was her doctor.

So to get back on course and with this in mind it is the crematoriam for me.  Of course I would love a funeral pyre on the top of some high mountain with the gathered multitude singing Nearer My God To Thee, but practicality was always a subject close to my heart therefore some holocaustic oven in a Dublin back street will have to do.  From whence my gathered dust, having first of all been placed in a suitable container, will be taken up onto the Speckled Mountains or the Bricklieves as they call them round here, handily situated in South Sligo and 50% of my remains will be thrown into the air and let wander down the mountain, wafted by a warm westerly breeze in the direction of Lough Arrow and let mingle and blend with the myths and legends of this astounding place.  Our ancestors certainly knew how to let go.

The other 50% of my clinker I want taken to another calm place, the graveyard of Eastersnow, high up on the plains of Boyle and etched on my memory by John McGahern’s book Amongst Women.  It is to this place he brought his mother in this work of fiction walking her coffin from Cootehall Church to this graveyard.  His real mother was buried in Aughawillan in Leitrim but he must have found something beautiful about the name and place of this quiet graveyard with it’s centuries old ruined chuch.  After this second scattering my life’s purpose will be over and condemned to distant memory.

By the way before you do any of the above give me a kick, if I flinch you will know that I am not quite ready for the oven.