Paul Malpas

Life in Ireland is no different to life in England except really in two different ways.  The casual immigrant, as I class myself as being, one who never did his homework before coming here, one who classed Ireland as his or her’s spiritual home and had to get here come what may, all of a sudden runs up against matters that do not seem to make sense.  Take for example the Health Service here.  If you step outside your door intent on a visit to the doctors, the euros start to clock up.  If the doctor is at his surgery and you nod in his direction he charges you €40 if you are lucky, then there is another €20 for a blood test and when you go to the chemists with a prescription you can be charged anything.  I remember being asked for €193 for some pills for my wife.  There is also 50 cent government  levy on each type of medication you walk away with.  I did not of course pay the €193 but handed same back to the pharmacist explaining how my wife has decided to take the old fashioned remedy and chosen to ignore her complaint because in most cases complaints fade away unless they are very serious and then the doctor or pharmacist cannot really help.  All pharmaceutical products and doctors work on the fear factor to cower you in to partaking.  Why cannot they set up a National Health Service here.  A think tank of doctors and health professional spent a year recently looking into this ideal and came to the conclusion that the transition could be done smoothly and at no real cost if the motivation was there but it isn’t and the consultants and medical practitoners continue to make hay without any real discipline as they have always done so.

So with these kind of costs clicking up like a till register in a superstore, the potential patient has to be quick on his feet to avoid bankruptcy and like most problems Irish there is of course a way round the problem but you need to take a combined 3rd level course in computers and psychology to prevail.  Either that or take a lesson off the simple man in the street who at all times and in every country has found out a way round every barrier known to man.  So within weeks after taking some very intense lessons on life and how to live it, stood at the various bars around town, I passed my examination with flying colours and now the mazuma stays in my pocket and does not grace the doctors.  This medium is not the place to relate the secrets in which I matriculated but if you, like me, will stand at the bar or better still sit on a high stool at your favourite watering hole and invest in copious quantities of Arthur’s finest cordials, your investment will be well rewarded.

Another happening yesterday made me stop and ponder on the conundrums of Irish life as opposed to the puritan English.  Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein TD and Deputy Leader of her party, and champion of all that is foolish about her party, stood up in the Dail and roundly criticized the Coalition’s minister for Social Services, Joan Burton, for once again attacking the very poor in this country.  The reason for this broadside was the fact that under the present rigourous belt tightening that the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition Government is imposing on the inhabitants of this fair isle, Joan was looking seriously at the social service payments paid to thousands of parents throughout the country for Communion and Confirmation dresses hopefully intended for their little cherubic daughters to go lightly tripping up the aisle of their parish church on those two annual sacramental days ordained by Holy Mother the Church.

Now I do not know how the lads fare out in this fashion parade and I hope they are not left with their arse hanging out of a scraggy pair of trousers they have worn every day for the last two years, but yesterday in the Dail only Communion dresses were mentioned.  It might be a case of the Government giving early lessons in cross-dressing which would ease their financial problems no end with the thought of the word gender being thrown out of the window and the lack of need for distinguishing the sexes.

However the thought that these little Catholic children of Christ are getting free party dresses while the poor Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian and all the other myriad of religious and non-religious parents do not get even a sock fills me with distaste.  Is it a fact and so I was told since being knee high to a grasshopper, that the Catholic religion is God’s chosen course and that all the rest of them and now me included, are damned or is the Catholic Church in Ireland after years and years of abusing these little children getting more than its fair share of the financial cake?

Now it is obvious to the casual observer that because of this clerical abuse of the little children of Christ and their abuse of so many things, in so many walks of life, that the attendances at mass are dwindling and that the congregations at Catholic churches now seem to be limited to people over 70 years old who stopped thinking about their redemption 40 years ago.  So why should it be that the thrusting and vital young parents of today, who only see the inside of a church at Baptisms, Communions, weddings and funerals find the need to equip their loved ones in the finest couture the government can buy.  The answer is obvious, because it is there.  Once you see an apple on a tree it is nature’s course to want to pluck it.  The communion dress serves a variety of purposes and if the mother is wise she will design the dress that it fits the child for every social occasion for the next seven years and after puberty is passed, can be cut down by the able and made into very decent curtains for the back bedroom.

Last year the average payout per child was €242 and Joan said yesterday, whilst under constant attack from that party who value family life above everthing else, she might have to limit the payment to €120.  Tell me why in this day of total financial insecurity, where handicapped children are being denied their basic rights, where every government penny is counted, is it even thinking of giving parents, who never dream of going to church, unless there is a party afterwards, €120 towards a new frock.  I am not annoyed, I am slightly shocked but I am also completely dumfounded.

Today we have a short little story of chaos, skulduggery and downright mismanagement.  Yes, we are talking about the Catholic Church of England and Wales.

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the shambles that is the Salford Diocese Safeguarding Commission unably, led up until December 2011, by that nincompoop Fr Barry O’Sullivan until the bishop bundled him out and sent him to Strangeways Prison to practice his hobby on the prisoners, leaving that poor woebegone solicitor Mike Devlin to steady the sinking ship, having long since realised his Bene Merenti medal was not there for the taking.

Then we learnt about that fine actress Baroness Scotland who sailed into the lucrative position of Chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission in a blaze of glory last March saying that her work on the Commission was the most important work in the world, attending a couple of meetings or social occasions and then realising that she did not have time to do her husband’s washing and chair the Commission at the same time, so slipped out the backdoor at Christmas, never to return.

Now we have half of Bristol resigning after a tiff with their Bishop Declan Lang, who happens to be the vice chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission.  Now we know that poor old bish Declan had his eye off the ball as regards diocesan matters, especially with Mrs Scotland doing a bunk but as every dictator should know you have got to keep those at home sweet before you start poking your filthy little mitts into the world arena.  This unfortunately he did not do.

So this week we had the unedifying spectacle of his Safeguarding Commission resigning, or at least all those who seem to do the work there.  Retired judge and Chair of the Clifton Diocese Safeguarding Commission, Mr Roger Bird, Jane Dziadulewicz, the Coordinator of the Clifton Diocese Safeguarding Commission and Eugene Gallagher, the Safeguarding Officer of the Clifton Diocese Safeguarding Commission have all thrown their dummies out of the pram.  Why did they not realise sooner that when it came to abusing priests and clerical child pornography, the Church as a whole and the Diocese of Clifton in particular do not look on this sphere of activity from an altruistic perspective.  They should never have got involved with these sacerdotal villains in the first place and left them to maul about in their own mawkish mess.  It does however make you wonder whether the watchers are being abused.

It seems that one of the holy men of the diocese, an ordained priest, was caught downloading child pornography, brought to court and summarily convicted of his crime.  After the case friends of this holy man, who must have taken great delight in browsing through this mass of child pornography decided he had been treated unfairly by the Coordinator of the Clifton Diocese Safeguarding Commission, Mrs Jane Dziadulewicz and reported her to the police.  Declan “Eye-Off-The-Ball” Lang immediately called for a Clifton Diocese Independent Investigation Committee, consisting of a dozen holy priests and their ilk, to independently investigate these serious charges and very quickly they came to the decision that, yes, the poor holy downloader of child porn had been treated unfairly by the Clifton Diocese Safeguarding Commission and by Mrs Jane Dziadulewicz in particular.  The trio resigned en bloc and good old Mrs Dziadulewicz being the very successful social worker that she is and absolutely sure of her employment rights as she should be, is suing the Clifton Diocese for constructive dismissal.

Now we know that this tribunal will never come to be heard, the holy Catholic Diocese of Clifton as with all the rest of the holy catholic dioceses round the country do not wash their sperm stained linen in public.  What will undoubtedly happen, as has happened elsewhere, the Diocese will roll over, accept that they have done Mrs Jane Dziadulewicz wrong and give her a pocketful of dosh and cover everthing with a confidentiality agreement, sealing Mrs Jane Dziadulewicz’s lips for all time and this she will do willingly because we all need a little financial lift occasionally.  However, hopefully, this will not seal the lips of retired judge Roger Bird or is he in it up to his oxters from previous cases in the Diocese?

Having been inundated with requests for more stories of Longsight in the 1950s, my tales of life in St Robert’s parish have had more comments than others, I have racked my addled brain to think of the idiosyncracies of the place.  I thought I would dwell for a while on the people who lived around me as a youngster and try and describe them and the things they did that influenced my life so much.  To avoid any slight embarassment I have changed the odd family name and hope they do not mind.

We lived in Duncan Road in Longsight, between Hamilton Road and Slade Lane.  Duncan Road extended the other side of Hamilton Road towards Beresford Road and the Anson Hotel but that was the posh end, with little well kept gardens with gates that worked and shining brass letter boxes and knockers.  We lived in the poor eastern end with no gates to gardens that were only ever dug over once a year by “Bob-A-Job” scouts, not for cultivational purposes but to give them a job for their shilling.  The houses had seasonal mice but were riddled with cockroaches or blackjacks as we called them, insects about an inch long, with the capability of flight in their mature state, who loved spending the night in sweaty shoes.

No 13 was our house where my grandfather, Jim Crehan from Ballinamore Bridge in East Galway, was relocated after his house in Miles Platting had been flattened by a one ton high explosive bomb dropped from a Heinkel 111.  The bomb obviously intended for Bradford Gas Works, where he worked, missed the target by a couple of hundred yards but unfortunately hit his neighbours, killing 44 of them.  We, Mam, Dad, myself and my brother Kevin, moved into this rented accommodation in 1947 shortly after Kevin was born and my father bought the place for a few hundred pounds after my grandfather died in 1958.  There was another brother Michael but at this time only a twinkle in my father’s eye and really the scrapings of the bag as he came along 16 years after me, when my mother was well into her 40s.  I think we were the only Catholics living on our end of the street until the Poppaladas arrived later. We were surrounded by god fearing agnostics and atheists and we were certainly the only family that kept the Sabbath Day holy, ensuring that at least one family swelled the contents of the collection boxes.

On our side of the road at the Slade Lane end there was a church and a hall belonging to some strange, to us, religion.  Anything non-catholic was strange and this church anyway had probably had its day as I never remember seeing anybody go in or come out of the place except on one day a year when their Boys Brigade band sent the slates rattling when they marched up the street to god knows where.  I think they were some kind of Methodists or Presbyterians, but our lives were well controlled by our parish priest and we were taught not to get too imquisitive.  As it happens this church still stands today, so you would think it must have some devotees.

Next to this church in our row of terraced houses lived the curate of St Agnes’ church, the posh Anglican church at the southern end of Hamilton Road.  He kept himself to himself, a meek and mild chap, who probably did not like living where he did, surrounded by nutters, non-churchgoers and serious Catholics.  After his house there were three more houses which also retained an air of isolation.  People lived there, we used to see the odd light in winter but we never saw the habitues.  Next door to us was Jim Miller, the most successful man on the street, he was the driver of the London express steam train out of London Road Station into Euston Station and back again, six days a week.  A man to be admired as were his wife’s egg and tomato sandwiches, which she used to make us when we were invited into her house to have tea with her grandson, Christopher, on his frequent visits.

On our other side lived the Mellors and the star of our street, their daughter Eveleen, the best looking girl in Manchester or so the Burtonwood GIs used to think as they wore a track in the granite flags in our footpath  traipsing out of their camp at weekends, hoping to spend an hour in Eveleen’s  company.  Winning beauty competitions was like shelling peas to her, she was the queen of Butlins and Pontins holiday camps.  She was probably seven or eight years older than me and I could not understand her popularity as she struck me as being rather vapid ( a word I only understood years later).  She used to take us to the Galleon outdoor swimming pool in the Summer and there, lieing on the grass at the side of the pool, resplendent in her swimming costume that I never ever saw get wet, her popularity was obvious, as you could not see her for the hairy legs of admirers.  Eventually after going through a couple of thousand GIs at Burtonwood and half the male population of South Manchester, she chose a man from Tampa in Florida, where she lives in blissful retirement to this day.

Beyond the Mellors lived the Jones, a mild mannered cockney cost accountant with a penchant for Lilliput and naturist magazines who had a wife of dubious morals, who most nights used to jump into stopping cars at the top of our street.  I used to play with her two sons both born during the war and a year or two older than me.  Their arms were always covered with scabs where their mother had stubbed out her cigarette on them in some weird form of discipline.  Next to the Jones lived the Clarkes, decendants of Romanies, who later became sucessful fish and chip shop owners in Didsbury.  They had a son John who married a famous folk singer and a daughter who  snapped up another GI from Florida, in those days it was the only sure way of winning the pools in Longsight.

Next to the Clarkes but across the entry that led to Palm Street lived the Wagstaffs.  Just a mother, with no apparent father, whose claim to fame was wringing the necks of her son’s pigeons one day, which he kept in a loft at the back of their house.  She reckoned their cooing was driving her daft.  He was too tough to show any emotion at this sad event because he was our street’s resident Teddy Boy whose main achievement was getting stabbed by another of his ilk outside the telephone box at the top of Slade Grove.

Further on down the terrace after a few more houses with just women in them, lived Geoffrey Smith ( men were in short supply in Longsight, whether it was the war that killed them off or the pleasures of army life made them stray, I don’t know).  Geoffrey only had one eye, an everyday complaint in our neighbourhood, children generally lacked something, an arm, a leg, an eye or a digit, crutches were a common sight but this Nelsonian attribute did not deter Geoffrey in the slightest.  Although not good at contact sports, he was a wizard at the game of marbles, using his glass eye to great effect.  I never saw him lose a game, when with a shake of the head and a swift movement of the right hand this gleaming blue eyed prosthesis became ready for use.

Opposite Geoffrey’s house lived the Stanistreets, whose son John was a few years older than me.  His father, Mr Stanistreet, used to sit on the steps of his house, unshaven and smelly and took great delight in luring young children up to himself, grabbing them and rubbing his stubbled, slavery chin into their faces.  I suppose whatever floats your boat but we never looked upon it as having sexual connotations, mind you we did not know what sexual meant those days but he seemed to get great satisfaction from his actions.

I still had not learnt what sexual meant when Elizabeth Rudden, across the road from us, suggested to me that she would pull her knickers down if I dropped my pants.  I did and felt sorry for her, somehow realising she also was deficient in some way.  Some kids had no eyes, some had no arms, some had no legs, some no fingers, poor Elizabeth had no willy.  I put it down to the house she lived in.  Her grandmother was an Irish woman, who I doubt ever washed.  You could smell her from across the street.  She owned a large four storey end of terrace, which she used as a lodging house for Irish lads working in the burgeoning construction industry after the war.  On a scale of 1 – 10 with 10 being luxury, this lodging house was probably minus 20.  Bare floorboards and beds of sorts in every room. Elizabeth and her stinking forebears all lived in one room, not a man, only lodgers to be seen.

Up the road from the Ruddens lived a mad Belgian woman, who used to lean out of her bedroom window and harangue the street.  They said she was Belgian but she could have been from anywhere that spoke a foriegn language.  Belgium in history as been blamed for most of the world’s ills, so why not blame it for this poor encumbered woman.  She used to follow us to church some Sundays when Fr Brennan took over after Fr O’Shaugnessy’s death and she used to shout down his sermons.  Poor Fr Brennan was too kind a man to remove her and he used to carry on with his prepared text while she taught us all Flemish.  The apparitors had a meeting and my father because he was a neighbour was asked to head her off at the pass but she was crafty and often evaded his blockade by going in different doors.

Next to this lady lived a family of Italians, who moved in about 1960, they had been living a few streets away but their family had increased, so they moved to our mansions.  I began to realise then what sexual meant.  Their eldest daughter, probably a year younger than me, was blossoming into a beautiful girl, she went under the equally beautiful name of Agatina Poppalada and by god wasn’t she a looker.  It took me six months to pluck up the courage to approach her, as she sported herself up and down the street in the fashion of the day.  Her mother was a dressmaker and knew how to turn her daughter out.  Unfortunately six months was far too long for Agatina, so by the time my courage was plucked, Lesley Murphy from Slade Lane had her in his grasp and would not let go.  Lesley was a ne’er-do-well but he obviously had something I didn’t and taking your opportunities must have been it.

I was 16 in 1962 when we left this fragrant meadow and moved to richer pastures but I always look back with fond memories and thank the lord that I was given the chance to experience the riches of Longsight that have formed my character.

I live in a really beautiful part of Ireland, in Boyle in north County Roscommon.  Our house is so close to the Boyle River that from a distance it looks as though the river runs through our front room and in fact it often tries to do.  Down the river a few hundred yards, the waters spill out into historic Loch Ce, a lake of christian pilgrimage for a thousand years.  The Premonstratensian, Augustinian and Franciscan monks all built abbeys on its shores and islands following on from St. Columcille’s monks who built a monastery on Church Island and a church at Drum on the river, at the side of our house in the 7th century.  The lake is six miles long and 4 miles wide and dotted so they say with as many islands as there are counties in Ireland.

Sail to the northern end of the lake and take the road through the village of Corrigeenroe (Little Red Rock) and you are taken along the eastern side of Lough Arrow which is just over the Sligo border.  You are in the ancient Barony of Tirreril, the Land of the McDonaghs, an ancient royal clan that owed allegiance to the McDermots, who were the royal chieftains of this area since the 10th century.  In Tirreril lived the O’Higgins family, a highly thought of family with big estates and a history going back to the O’Neills in the 6th century.  The O’Higgins were liked by all the local big-wigs, the McDermots, the O’Rourkes, the O’Garas and the McDonaghs for their poetry and their intellect.

It was here in 1720, on the shores of Lough Arrow, Ambrose O’Higgins was born in much reduced circumstances because of the Cromwellian persecution and later Jacobite/Williamite upheaval.  It was the time of the Penal Laws, when Catholics were disarmed, stripped of land and reduced to the level of servants.  They were disenfranchised, forbidden to marry Protestants,  join the Army or receive a decent education.  It was a time when most gifted and doughty men left Ireland and filled the ranks of the military and civil service in all the countries in Europe.  They called it the Flight of the Wild Geese.

The O’Higgins family became tenant farmers for the Rowley family in Meath after their land was eventually all taken off them.  In about 1750, aged 30, Ambrose took the plunge and ended up in Cadiz in Spain where he worked for the powerful Irish/Spanish merchant family of Butler.  After some few years in Cadiz, Ambrose decided to seek his fortune in South America.  He worked in Venezuela, Peru and Argentina before getting his big chance.  He worked out a route from Mendoza, in western Argentina, over the Andes into Chile, thus joining up two Spanish colonies that previously had had little contact for most of the year other than by sailing round the Horn.  This route worked and for the first time ever the two colonies could remain in contact all year long.  By now he was enlisted in the Spanish Imperial Service and besides developing this route, he was asked to stay in Chile by the Spanish authorities and join the Army, which he did and sucessfully put down an Indian uprising, humanely and not cruelly, for which he was thanked by both sides and eventually he was upgraded to the position of Governor of Concepcion in 1786.

In 1788 king Charles III of Spain made him Baron of Ballinar for his services to the colonies.  He soon became leader of the Spanish Army and eventually Governor of Chile.  He entered on a programme of road building and rebuilding of ancient towns.  For this service the new king Charles IV made him the Marquis of Osomo in 1796 at the age of 76 and appointed him Viceroy of Peru, the land of which covered present day Peru, Chile, Bolivia, north west Argentina and western Brazil.  It was the most powerful position in Spanish America and he died suddenly from overwork in 1801 at the age of 81.

In 1777 Ambrose at the age of 57 fell in love with an 18 year old girl, Isabel Riquelme, of a powerful mixed race family.  In accordance with society’s rules at the time, he was not allowed to marry her at the risk of losing his hard won position but in 1778 Isabel bore him a son, Bernardo.  Ambrose never met this boy and never ever recognised him but he provided the money to bring him up and pay for his education in London.  It was here, at the age of 18, influenced by South American independence seeking  politicos, did Bernardo start to put his thoughts together towards an independent Chile, free of Spanish rule.  After a short time in Spain he returned to Chile in 1802 and started farming a large piece of land willed to him by his father.  In 1806 he entered the Chilean Parliament.

The Independence thinkers were helped considerably by events in Europe, Napoleon of France took control of Spain in 1808 and whilst he was involved in his European campaigns the Spanish/Chilean ruling class formed their own government, ruling the couintry in the name of Napoleon’s captive king, Ferdinand VII and Bernardo was elected deputy in the first National Congress of Chile in 1811.

After Napoleon started to lose his power in Spain after Wellington and Nelson had given him a bloody nose, the Spanish imperial forces invaded Chile to regain control of the country  but Bernardo defeated them at Linares.  In October of that year he effectively took command of the Chilean Army and defeated the Spanish forces again at El Roble with the famous cry of “Lads!  Live with honour, or die with glory!  He who is brave follow me”  However at a later battle at Rancagua, the Chilean forces were soundly beaten and Bernardo was lucky to escape with his life, scurrying into Argentina.  He returned to Chile in 1817 and defeated the royalist forces at Chacabuco.  Bernardo became Supreme Director of the newly independent Chile in 1818.  He founded the Chilean Navy but after five years with the cost of arming the new country it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy only saved by a £1 million pound loan from England but by then he had run foul of the country’s opposition party and in 1823 at the age opf 45 he was deposed.

He left Chile, never to return, in a British naval vessel intending on returning to Ireland but he met up with Simon Bolivar in Peru and joined him in his successful fight for independence and then went into retirement for the next 20 years.  By 1842 the tide of public opinion had turned towards him in Chile and he was invited back and given back his old rank of Captain General of the Army but on his journey back he suffered a heart attack and was buried in Lima in Peru.

His remains were exhumed in 1869 and brought back to Chile and he lay in a marble coffin in Santiago whilst it was decided where he should be buried.  He had wanted Concepcion but the Chilean people wanted Santiago.  It was not until General Pinochet finally put him down in 1974 in Santiago was the argument decided.  Wherever you go today in Chile, Bernardo’s name shouts out from street names and statues, districts and docks.  He is their Deliverer.

Not bad for two men from Tirreril whose countryside was bypassed by the 20th century.  Even today there isn’t much change from the countryside Ambrose knew.  It is a quaint, quiet backwater but full of more history than most parts of Ireland.  So this evening as you settle by your fire in your favourite armchair, lift your glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon or even better, Carmenere, because without these two boys you might not now feel so smug.  Do not forget that the South American vines saved the European wine industry in the late 19th century when an outbreak of phylloxera nearly killed every vine on the Continent.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ambrose and Bernard!