Paul Malpas

Helen and myself after much Bordelaise bidding decided to take a springtime trip to Bordeaux to see an old friend and the hutch he lives in.  Our flight was booked on Sunday out of Dublin and has Ianrod Eireann only do reduced journeys of a Sabbath we travelled up to Dublin on the Saturday.  A pleasant journey with my free travel pass granted to all who have lived for sufficient years.  It did entail a 35 minute delay at Mostrim or Edgeworthstown, as it is known today, because of a train failure in the Mullingar region.  It was no discomfort for the new trains are so comfortable and I had my Kindle at hand.

Disembarked at Connolly Station we took a short walk down to the Abbey Theatre to meet our daughter, Paddy, at her place of work.  Although we had been before, I am always struck by the friendliness of the staff and how helpful they always are.  You do not meet this sincerity often in corporative life but these young people from the lad selling programmes at the door, to the young girl in the cloak room and the staff at the bar, welcomed us and directed us in such a pleasant fashion that it took my breath away.  So well done management for picking and training a decent bunch of youngsters in the fine art of front of house.  I will be back again for Tom Murphy’s play The House in June and O’Casey’s masterpiece The Plough and the Stars at its revised location at the Belvedere in the Summer.

The three of us decided to eat at a Moroccan restaurant, Dada’s, on South William Street.  I would recommend it to everyone, especially the Merguez sausages, the salads, the Tagines and the Argentinian Malbec which we consumed in more than sufficient quantity.  Then off to Paddy’s abode by the Grand Canal, to chew the cud and where we tucked into more vino, Sangria de Toro from the house of Torres in Spain, a most economic and lovely wine at 7 euro per bottle.  Who said it was expensive in Dublin.

Next morning, Sunday, we were up at sparrow fart and away to the airport giving ourselves plenty of time in case of delay.  However the journey went like clockwork through deserted Dublin.  No sooner had we reached the Luas stop at the top of Harcourt Street then a tram came along to whisk us into Stephen’s Green.  A short walk across to Dawson Street to pick up the airport bus escorted by a friendly man who was in charge of the tourist horses and carriages.  30 seconds later a bright and breezy young taxi driver seizing his opportunity stopped and said he would carry us to the airport for the same price as the bus, 7 euro each.  Helen and I jumped in followed by two Californian girls who had just finished doing Europe in three days and could not believe their luck.  They remained dumbstruck for the entire journey.

Thus we were at the airport 30 minutes after leaving Paddy and leaving us well over two hours to wait for our plane.  However a full Irish breakfast and people watching soon passed the time.  On journeys I  love waiting and watching and I hate being just on time and rushing.  We had booked to travel by Aer Lingus and I do not know what it is about this airline, they are as cheap as Ryanair but they seem to retain the old world gentility and friendliness that is sadly lacking in its rival airline.  One hour and thirty minutes later we were 10 degrees warmer in Bordeaux, an airport similar to Knock but with two terminals and more runway and apron.  We were in Terminal A which is very quiet traffic wise and we were soon outside in the sun looking out for my friend Monsieur R and then I saw a flash of blue in the distance.  It was half time in the Manchester City game against Newcastle which more or less determined the Premier League for them, R had dashed out on the referee’s whistle and hurtled down the road from his pad in St Jean d’Illac, a mile or so from the airport.

We darted back so that no football would be lost by mine host who was in such a state of nervousness he could not watch but remained in earshot.  He had deposited us outside this sprawling mansion, I was looking round for the gardeners cottage but this was the only residence.  He said it was his, so I had to believe him.  The house was modern, with an extensive open plan layout.  You could have a decent 5-a-side foot ball match in the kitchen with room to park a few spectators cars.  The living room could seat 30 people and still leave room for dancing.  A short walk along a glazed corridor to bedrooms and the obligatory indoor swimming pool, sauna and spa, all superfluously  heated to withstand the permanent tropical temperature of Bordeaux.  Up the open plan staircase which was a feature of the living space past the dazzling chandelier to a full sized snooker table, bar and relaxing sofas.  This arena led off to further bedrooms and bathroom.  Only one word sums it all up, palatial.  Two years R and Madame P spent designing it themselves, they then found a portugoose builder who spent 15 months building it.

The kitchen was a gem and the food better.  He had a couple of hens that looked more like feather dusters patrolling the back of the house and they supplemented the plentiful supply of eggs.  Our first feed was ouefs mimosa ( boiled eggs sliced in half with a topping of crab meat, mayonnaise, paprika and pepper), simple but lovely.  The main course was magret with cooked apples and figs washed down with local illicit plonk from the over-producing excellent local vineyards.  A local bonus for local people which I think is well deserved.  An early night followed after the journey and the excesses of the previous night in Dublin but not before we had welcomed in France’s new president, Monsieur Hollande, who had just beaten the previous pantomime dwarf Monsieur Sarkozy by 4% of the vote.  I suppose a close run thing and not really welcomed around St Jean d’Illac.

I was up early at 5.00am and sat in front of the ever present computer screen and answered my overnight e-mails and made notes for this scruffy little piece.  Shortly Madame P arises and within no time sticks a welcoming cafe creme in front of me.  The day has started.  Madame P runs a music school in St Jean which she started 20 years previously and works a tremendous amount of hours.  It shows you what the community think, with a population of 6500 people the school have 700 pupils of all ages.  We breakfasted on eggs, ham, left over magret, home made bread and fig compote before she left for work.  Monsieur R and Helen slept fashionably late but they eventually arose to a grim permanently sunny morning with a temperature at 9.ooam, a balmy 20C. and it eventually peaking in mid-afternoon at 26C.

A quiet day is planned while Dublin wears off, not the wonders of historic Bordeaux and the recent extensive works along the River Garonne, we have seen it all before and we are not an inquisitive couple.  We spent the morning pottering about, I made a visit to the boulanger and returned with pain et canneles.  Cannele is a Bordeaux speciality, little almost cone shaped cakes made with flour and butter and honey.  Here they make them by the thousand every day and they are delicious.  Within a short time we prepared lunch.  Smoked salmon, ham, tomatoes of strange shape and variety and the rest of the magret, nothing is wasted here.  In the afternoon we took a short trip out to Andernos on the northern shore of the Bassin D’Arcachon.  It is a little resort town at one time famous for its oysters and now just at the start of its busy season.

We returned to the mansion at 4.00pm for a well earned siesta before settling in to a couple of aperos around 7.00am whilst waiting for Madame P to return from her work.  As we wait for her return I look around the house and notice  the flaw.  There is no central heating, no radiators.  “How can you make such a basic error”, I said.  “Because we don’t need it” was the reply.  However after further investigation I did discover that there was an under floor heating system, that they do switch on for a month round Christmas.

That evening off we went to Madame’s sister’s house in Cestas to the south of Bordeaux, for more aperos and the biggest homemade pizzas I have ever seen, washed down by a very palatable local wine.  The sister’s boyfriend was Monsieur Chef and while I was on pastis, the chef and R were guzzling whiskey as though it was going out of fashion.  It is amazing how popular whiskey is over here, most men I met on this trip drank it before and after meals.  Monsieur Chef made the pastry bases in between slurps, which he covered with a tomato and basilique sauce, then lashings of mozzarella and parmigiano cheese and ham and then dropped two eggs into the middle of each one and then into the oven.  Impossible to finish so into a doggy bag for tomorrow’s breakfast.  We returned home at 12.45am to an alcoholic night cap and then to bed.

Day 2 in Bordeaux was a Bank Holiday, we all slept in.  Madame P was out for 10.00am because they have had so many Bank Holidays recently The Music School had to open in order to catch up.  We are off to a local 7-aside football competition where we will have lunch and a few aperos before watching Jeremy and his mates take on other local teams.  Jeremy is Madame P’s son from a previous arrangement, a very nice well mannered young man with mates the same and they all think Ireland is the best country in the world.  I have got to say that the ordinary French person has no liking at all for England and its people but they think the sun shines out of the Irish man and woman’s arse

As soon as we arrived at the Stade and on a wink from Monsieur R, a plastic cup brimming with whiskey was put into my hand and a big lump of bellypork squashed between two halves of a baguette pushed into my face.  Basic but very, very tasty.  We then sat down because it was half time in the competition and our team lunched on pastis and pork filled baguettes, just the foundation to a hard afternoon’s football.  You could see who the winners were, a team of African lads were warming up, no lunch or aperos for them.  They were passing the ball about and showing off their individual skills while the French lads were enjoying their Bank Holiday.  The African lads who no doubt will appear in the Premier League one day wiped the floor with their white opposition, but it was all in good fun.

The whole football experience was quite exhausting, whiskey diluted with ice cubes attentively replenished by Gerard, Madame P’s brother in law, who was one of the competition organizers, the barbecue firing out al sorts of tasty bits washed dow by pastis and local beer.  Jeremy’s team were great guys and stood the pressure well ably aided by their girlfriends who ate and drank what the boys could not finish and we the toast of the team because we were Irish.  I did not like to disavow them.  We returned once more for a well earned siesta and then a game of snooker that made me think I had forgotten more about the game than I had ever learnt but I still beat mine host.  The evening meal was a simple affair of meat loaf prepared by ourselves, mashed potato configured by R and washed down by bottles of Bordeaux rose and rouge.

Day 3 was Wednesday and a day off school for the kids but not the musicians.  Late morning we tootle off to the Medoc and spend time in Margaux, too pricey for our pockets so we retire to the little town of Macau on the Garonne where we lunch in a splendid restaurant renminiscent of France long ago.  We had a three course meal with half a litre of wine each for 12 euro, excellent value.  It was now touching 26C so home James, stopping off at a massive LeClerc supermarket in St Medard.  This was the biggest store I was ever in with an unbelievable display of wines from Bordeaux and half a shelf of Vins Etrangeres.  The poisonnerie was  incroyable, if that is how you spell it, with every known fish and a few more on display.  I could still be at the boucherie if let.  The French cuts look so much nicer than our own.

Home to pintade and peas.  I was given the honour of cutting off its head before it went into the pot.  Monsieur Gerard came round, so six of us sat down for dinner.  After numerous aperos, vino by the litre and digestifs to fill a distillery, the piano cranked up and Helen started the ball rolling followed by Madame on the keys giving it Killarney.  Jeremy who is big into jazz piano and Gerard who is a Charles Aznavour look alike and devotee finished off the evening in style.  Plans were made for a similar meeting in Boyle in September after the vintage.  I was told in no uncertain French to look out for Roscommon ladies with similar dispositions to Gerard And Jeremy before I slipped off my stool about eight hours after I had first sat on it.

I woke at nine with a splitting head but after cafe and petite dejeuner, I was fit enough for a hectic return game of snooker, a very small apero and the thought of lunch which is to be bread, boudin noir et pommes.  It is 11.30am and the temperature 29.5C in the cool interior, God knows what it must be outside.  Our plane is scheduled for4.10pm by which time it had reached 35C and I am not looking forward to the journey.  Off the plane in shirt sleeves in Dublin to a freezing 10C and by the time we made it home to Boyle it was a festering 7C.  How clever we are to pick the Arctic to live in.

Over the last few years since starting this blog in November 2009, I have written on occasion about the parish I grew up in and surprisingly these postings received more attention than any other pieces I have written, which I suppose vindicates my theory that Longsight in those days was a lovely place to live and that we at St Robert’s were a lucky bunch of blighters to have such smashing pastors that ruled and organized our lives.  There was no apparent skulduggery by clerics, there was no serious questioning of religion, all the bishops seemed to be decent men who easily received our approbation.  Old days in an old church was the subject of one of my postings and it surely is a true reflection of those days.

A lady who was at school with me and has been a frequent contributor to my blog expressed an interest in giving her story of her childhood and its happy times as we baby boomers kicked off the post war years in style.  Jean Skitt is the lady’s married name but we at St Robert’s knew her as Jean Gay, who patrolled the streets of Longsight with her brother Cliff in those far off halcyon days.  So today I give you Jean Skitt and her lovely piece on her childhood in and around St Robert’s parish.

St Mary’s Church and parish is in North Lancashire, probably the northernmost parish in the Salford Diocese.  The village is famed for its prettiness and old world charm.  The church and graveyard is famed for its bones ie, the bones of Monsignor Duggan and Lord Nolan, the man the Bishops of England and Wales asked to sort out their Safeguarding problems back at the turn of the century (21st that is).  While Nolan was beavering away at his report published in 2002, which really made clear to the dioceses of England and Wales how they were supposed to deal with this pesky problem of priestly abuse on children, Duggan’s bones were already 34 years in the cold Lancashire clay.  No two men could be more poles apart, Duggan, the arch-abuser of vulnerable young boys at St Bede’s College in Manchester and Nolan, the antithesis.  Yet here they are side by side in this lovely Lancashire vale.

St Mary’s had been presided over by Fr Anthony Grimshaw, ex- strapper in chief at St Bede’s under Duggan in the 1960s, a man, who once he had shrugged off the cloying mantle of Bede’s, distinguished himself in Africa as a missionary priest before returning to parish work in Manchester.  A lovely man by all accounts and in my few recent dealings, he seemed to be a good honest man.

Idly flicking through the web this morning, I came across a site named Holy Spirit Interactive, their message for today Friday 4th May 2012 was a long rambling piece on how boring, the boring mass should not be, the writer must have written 5000 words on this boring subject and by the time I reached the end, I was bored to tears.  Then my heart gave a leap because the writer turned out to be no one else but my old mate Bazza, Fr Barry O’Sullivan, who described himself as the parish priest of St Mary’s Chipping.  So what happened to Fr Grimshaw, I do hope he is alright but I did understand he had been in poor health.

So if the the web is not lieing Old Bazza has found his little heaven in the sun.  For those not aware of O’Sullivan or this blog, let me just tell you that in his previous life Bazza was the Coordinator of the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese.  The man charged by Brainless Bishop Brain to look after the welfare of young people and vulnerable adults in the Diocese.  Brain’s nickname could not have been nearer the truth.  O’Sullivan was the complete square peg trying to fit into a round world.  In fact in O’Sullivan’s world there was no square hole even, he was just one useless son of a bitch.

After 10 years slaving away at nothing except feeding his two scraggy dogs he accepted the inevitable, when Brain’s advisors eventually got through and told the Bishop that the present situation in Salford regarding Safeguarding was ridiculous, it could not go on.  Even Cardinal Brady of Armagh was sniggering at Salford.  Bazza with downcast head left his plush Cathedral offices supposedly to devote his time to the poor prisoners in Strangeways Jail in Manchester and devote himself to his 11+ studies in Counselling at Manchester University.  The prisoners revolted and the senior professors threw up.  They have all been saved by Bazza’s mate Brainless removing him to Chipping where he can polish bones and look after another old mate of mine, Ronald Shelley, who I went to school with and who is now a parishioner in St Mary’s.  It was Ron who barked at me one day two years ago that I should leave the sacred bones of Duggan to lie in peace and not publicise the horrors that this devilish man had bestowed on young boys at St Bede’s for 16 years (1950-1966).  Well Ron you have another fine man now so look after him.

It was O’Sullivan who told me one day that he and Brain had discovered something terrible about Duggan and that it was too serious to talk about on the telephone and would I come over to Manchester.  I said I would but before the meeting happened he, in his stupid childish little way, fell out with me over a matter of protocol and said I was an unworthy advocate, not to be trusted and that he could no longer see me and therefore could not speak to me and therefore could not deal with me.  I was persona non grata.  How could a man faced with the biggest clergy abuse scandal to ever hit the Salford Diocese, become my enemy over something so trivial, unless he was the blithering idiot that everybody now knows he is and was.  A man so far removed from reality that he even puts Brady in the shade.

It was the learned O’Sullivan who once threatened to sue me for deformation if I did not retract something that somebody else had written on my blog.  I told him that all resonable gentlemen argued in words and that he had every right to counterbalance the offending sentence with one or two of his own.  Perhaps at that time he had not learnt to write but he is certainly making amends now with this boring old piece of bunkum on the website.

It used to be said that as a priest if you had done something wrong, made love to a women, robbed a bank or went on a drunken wrecking spree, you were sent to North Lancashire to cool off and repent and let the breeze of that area wash you clean.  Unfortunately with O’Sullivan that will not happen because the poor chap needs counselling himself and with his two dirty mutts snuggling up beside him each night, the rancid smell of dog will be with him for life.  God help Chipping.

I am willing to change anything in the above piece if I am proved wrong and the internet has lied to me but I do not think it has and I do not think I will, but at least this piece will be ongoing as more facts arrive.

Shock and horror 12 hours after the above went public a very learned friend who is much closer to the action tells me that I have been duped by that stupid inefficient website Holy Spirit Interactive.  They had the date right but the entry written by our friend O’Sullivan was at least 10 years old.  It seems he was attached to the parish for some time just after the turn of the 21st century.  So I am glad that Fr Grimshaw is in good health or at least as good as it can be at 75 years old and I am happy for the parishioners of St Mary’s.  The last thing I would wish on them is the nincompoop O’Sullivan especially for a second time.  We must also give the website a new name, how about Holy Spirit Inactive.  But at least they gave me a chance to give out about O’Sullivan, another inactive if ever I saw one.

So sorry Tony Grimshaw, sorry parishioners of St Mary’s but God blast you O’Sullivan for being the stupid man you are and to you Ron Shelley watch how you go and listen out for the rattle of bones as Duggan lies uneasily in his bunker.

I wonder whether last night’s (1st May 2012) BBC Northern Ireland television expose (to be repeated on BBC 2 tonight, 2nd May 2012) of all things clerically abusive in Ireland and directed in the main at Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic Church’s main man, could possibly be the forge out of which the last nail was hammered which will eventually fix down the lid of the coffin on this stuttering fart of a prelate.

My old mate from America, Tom Doyle was in it, jostling to be the first man in the queue at the forge.  Tom is a Dominican priest who told the American bishops 26 years ago that what they were doing in covering up this abuse scandal was wrong.  They ignored him and side-lined this once ambitious and learned man and eventually stopped paying him and cancelled his pension.  Tom, a high ranking Canon Lawyer, now travels the world giving expert testimony in courts and on the media pointing out in a very clear and precise way the damage these blundering priests are doing to their religion and flock.

Brady whilst admitting his presence in the Father Smythe case that rocked Ireland nearly 20 years ago, but only in the face of overwhelming evidence, has said he was only at the original enquiry in 1975 as a priest notary and it was not his position to publicise his knowledge.  He did not even report his findings to the parents of Smythe’s abused children and he went on abusing for another 15 or so years, whilst Brady lived in Rome, burnishing his canonical reputation.  His position was clear he said, he had to report to his superior, the bishop, and that was that as far as he was concerned.  Pontius Pilatus comes to mind.

However it is not enough to say he did his duty.  As a priest and a man of God he should surely have allowed his own private person to take an interest.  Brady , at that time was a 36 year old canon lawyer and teacher, he was no slip of a lad fresh out of seminary.  He was a mature Catholic priest with, you would hope, a conscience.  He could surely see a wrong but did nothing to counteract it other than report it to his superior.  A little like the Nazi philosophy to its followers,  it was to this level that the Church had fallen.

So to act as a good centre half in the face of this unfair criticism of Brady, the Vatican wheels out Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  The CDF is the Vatican’s latter-day Inquisition and was headed for many years by the present pope, Benny 16 and is now presided over by the disgraced Californian, Cardinal William Levada.  Scicluna said at the time when the  first evidence was introduced two years ago ” I think he (Brady) fulfilled his duty well”.  He has not learnt and he repeated his mantra again this morning.

Then onto the Pat Kenny programme on RTE 1 came Bishop Gerry Clifford, the mumbling Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, a Scicluna think alike, who said that 1975, when Brady was implicated, “was in a different era, with a different ethos” and so the the turgid rubbish keeps spewing from these advanced cleric’s lips.  Will they never ever learn.  He said the damage to the victims was not realised in those days and it was not treated  seriously.  What shite, the Church knew about its long lasting damage at least in the 4th century at the Synod of Elvira in Spain where the first recorded response to clerical abuse was discussed and legislated against and also in the proceeding 17 centuries following that, where they have tried and failed to grip the problem and failed because of  the transient bishops need to retain power.  Brady will not resign, although age and confidence have deserted him.  The only thing keeping him in place is his own need for power, defending the indefensible is his ethos.

Bishop Clifford’s only answer to his circumlocutor Kenny, who really lost his chance to hammer the man because he got lost in his own verbosity, was to say that if the same thing happened today it would be Brady’s or a modern day priest’s responsibility to go to the local Safeguarding Commission and report it there, if his bishop played a deaf one.  The local Safeguarding Commission would take up the cudgel on the priest’s behalf and stop the rot.

To this statement I have a real problem.  I have had experience of a Safeguarding Commission albeit in England and I doubt it is any different in whatever diocese you go to, they are all trained in the same response.  My experience was in the Salford Diocese, a bunch of dudes I have written about at length, managed and run by priests with a sprinkling of lawyers looking for Vatican recognition and a heap of professionals in the field of Child Safety, who are only looking for additions to their curriculum vitae and could not give two damns about abused children and vulnerable adults.

In my case the fumbling idiot of a priest I reported to agreed with my accusations saying he had heard of the abuser for the whole of his twenty five years as a priest.  Wherever these holy men got together on retreat or at the golf course, they whispered and tittered about the goings on of my man but did nothing about it.  This fool said that their files were clean yet the whole bloody diocese knew of the satanic deeds of this monsignorial monster.  This just sums up the corporative philosophy of the Church and in the years to come when the filth that is the Catholic Church is finally exposed, it will be this philosophy that drained the life out of the Vatican and made millions just like me, who had devoted their lives to its teaching, receive the bravura to walk away to their own personal, mental and philosophical peace.

If you wish to read more on this subject google “Clerical Whispers, 2nd May 2012″ and try and watch BBC2 repeat tonight Wednesday 2nd April 2012.