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.

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?

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.

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!

The damage was so great in relation to the infrastructure that most buildings within a few hundred yards had either to be demolished or had to have fundamental demolition to large parts of its structure.  This led the movers and shakers to think that while we are doing this we might as well do that as well.  Insurance and investment money came pouring in from all angles and kept the construction industry in business for many a year.  No wonder that although the authorities knew who the culprits were they did not have them arrested.  Had they not done Manchester and the North of England a great service?

The only building within the bomb’s vicinity that did not get demolished was the Royal Exchange, a massive Victorian monolith which had experienced Hitler’s bombs in 1940 and stood to tell the tale.  It was formerly the heartbeat of the textile industry which conducted world wide trade within its porticos, but was now offices, shopping centre and avant-garde theatre.  We, as demolition contractors, were lucky enough to win the contract for the complete internal demolition and clean up of this building and so we embarked on two years of hard, busy and lucrative work.

Back at home my fifth child, Paddy Jo or on formal occasions Patricia Josephine, with one eye on her fast approaching second level education, was expressing a wish to learn to play the piano.  She was just over eight years old when the bomb inadvertently did her a favour and well into her tenth year by the time the favour was realised.

The Royal Exchange, as I have explained, was high, deep and massive.  Nine floors above the ground, four floors below and all sat on a footprint of 60,000sq. ft.  As each floor was handed over by loss adjustors and insurance men, we moved in and cleared everything back to structure.  Hard and difficult work in the confined spaces in which we were asked to work.  We literally shifted several thousand tonnes of debris in our time there.

Some time in late 1997 we were given the undercroft to clear.  The undercroft was the lowest floor of four basement floors, accessed by street traffic from a vehicle lift situated on its southern elevation, opposite Half Moon Street.  It was a warren of storerooms and service equipment rooms housing heating and ventilating and electrical equipment.  The tenants of these storerooms and there was several dozen of them had been permitted entry and had taken out what was considered valuable.  Any item they could not remove because of its size had to be bubble-wrapped and it was part of our responsibility to recover the said bubble-wrapped items and place same onto the tenants’ transport.  Everything not bubble-wrapped had to be removed to tip.

One day in the first week of this operation, we were given the keys to a long tunnel-like room, full of point of sale advertising boards for a shop upstairs that had once sold cosmetics and beauty products.  Struggling through this dusty and out of date paraphenalia and right at the end of the tunnel was a piano with no bubble-wrap around it.  I called the Project Manager on the radio, pointed out the instument to him and asked him the obvious question.  He turned to our job description and said “if it is not double-wrapped, tip it”  Although Paddy Jo did not know it then, her constant pleadings had been answered.

Within an hour of our meeting, the not bubble-wrapped piano was on the back of one of our pick-ups and making its way to our house in Heaton Moor.  With a little effort, four of us lifted it off the pick-up and safely installed it in our front room.  Helen set to work with damp cloths and polish and when I returned that evening there was this wonderfully manufactured upright piano dressed in the most beautifully coloured walnut cladding, a most desirable object.

A piano tuner was called and enquiries made for a piano teacher.  Within 24 hours we had both.  The piano tuner said it was a great example of a horizontally strung piano dating to about the 1870-1880 period.  The piano teacher said Paddy was approaching her lessons with great enthusiasm.  All our hopes and dreams were answered.

A couple of weeks later I received a message from the Project Manager asking me to come up to his office.  I entered and there sat a very irate looking matronly figure, who turned out to be the one-time manageress of the previously mentioned beauty parlour.  “Where is my piano, I did not think I had to bubble-wrap it” she squawked.  It seems, to ease the tensions of the day that rapidly build up in beauty emporia, madame used to visit her dungeoned piano and knock hell out of the ivories until her stress levels decreased.  The Project Manager winked at me and enquired as to where we had stored it.  I was nonplussed for a second but thought for the sake of everybody, I had better be straight.  I explained to the rapidly quietening lady that we had to remove it from its position  in order to keep the work moving but we realised that it had value to someone and that we had it in safe storage at our depot.  I received a delivery address but no thanks and the following day Paddy Jo was heart broken, the lady was happy and the piano teacher was out of work.  However the Project Manager was very pleased at the way he had been extricated from a very tricky situation.  But I had a problem how to placate my darling Paddy Jo and how to keep the piano teacher in business.

Longsight, in Manchester, where I spent my formative first 20 years, is a market for anything.  If you want it, Longsight has got it.  Within hours of me sending out distress signals I was informed of this piano showroom situated in an old mill in Hamilton Road, where I used to play as a kid, climbing its sheer vertical sides and generally doing anything that was just one step from death.  This showroom specialised in refurbished pianos and it was from there, having handed over a pocketful of spondulicks, Paddy’s refurbished Walberg piano was delivered next day.  Paddy and the piano teacher happy, me teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Paddy grateful to her splendid father, attacked the piano with all the vim, vigour and verve she could muster and 18 months later won the Music Scholarship to St. Bede’s College, in Whalley Range, my old alma mater. This Scholarship payed 50% of the fees during her stay at College.  With about £3,000 of a saving a year over her seven years at school that piano owed me nothing.  Paddy continued learning and finished up passing her Grade 8 examination which is as good as the normal piano player wants.  Mrs Rosamund Meehan, Deputy head of the school and Head of Music considered Paddy to be an excellent musician  That piano, the mahogany one, mentioned in my blog posting of 13 January 2012 entitled A Man With A Van, after crossing the Irish Sea the other day is hopefully going to earn some other deserving kid’s parents a few quid as well but it is all down to that beautifully clad walnut piano that we borrowed from that lovely lady.

This last Christmas I was in Manchester visiting relations, in fact visiting my grandchildren and future grandchild.  We all went over, my wife, my youngest son, our dog and myself.  We took the mindlessly boring journey across the Irish Sea and the long car ride from Holyhead into Manchester.  I was doing the same journey 40 years ago in roughly the same time.  Nothing has improved in all that time, in fact some things have worsened.  Whereas 40 years ago you were served creamy Guiness out of a hatch, these days with vastly superior service features the Guiness tastes a little like washing up water.  Gone it seems never to return is the HSS fast ferry, whisking you over the waves in something less than two hours or the sedate and civilised overnight cruise to 12  Quays at Birkenhead.

One of the days over Christmas, my eldest grandchild, a strapping seven year old boy, approached me and said that he would like to come back to Ireland with us so that he could play our piano: which got me thinking and asking.  I asked my daughter, the young chap’s mother, who said he was always asking about the piano, but decent pianos are hard got and quite expensive.  I thought of our piano, bought at a cost years ago for my youngest daughter and which does not owe me a penny after she won a music scholarship to my old alma mater, St. Bede’s College in Manchester,  which saved me oodles of cash over her seven year stay, in reduced fees.  In fact this part of the story is worth a blog on its own and I will try to write it over the next few days.

However youngest daughter flew the nest years ago and is revelling in pastures new on the east side of Ireland.  I will here give her a little plug.  If you want discount in Dublin, she is your lady.  They call her Miss 20% due to the many contacts she has in the retail trade in the Fair City.

So having flown the nest, the piano, constructed of quality polished mahogony, has been stood in my study gathering dust and used as a shelf for my many files and papers.  Helen, my wife of many years, as good as she is at most things, is no master of the ivories.  The poor thing (the piano that is) is now redundant and that ain’t what it was lovingly built for by the family firm of Waldberg of Berlin in the early 1930s.

This masterpiece of musical manufacture would be just the thing for this budding Liberace of a grandchild but how to move it from Roscommon to Manchester without an arm or a leg being involved.  I rang a mate and told him of my problem.  This mate not only rivalled my daughter in the discount stakes in the west of Ireland but as it happened knew a man who did little else but transport pianos and similar sized objects back and forth across the Irish Sea.  I rang this man in Mayo and without batting an eyelid gave me his price which was not at all outrageous.  I accepted and he was knocking on our door at 9.00am the following morning.

Not only was this man an amenable sort, he was a Manchester man to boot.  I had enough credentials immediately.  So with the help of the inevitable Scouser I drafted in for his engineering skills, we huffed and puffed and with a few guttural curses common to our part of Ireland, this massive piece of pre-Nazi musical endeavour was hoisted into the vastness of his little white van, joining another piano that was en-route for Lincoln.  The operation was brought to a rapid conclusion without the need for a funny story but the Scouser had to remind us of the TV advert of years ago where a father and son chimpanzee were manoeuvring a similar instrument up the stairs and the son said to the father “Hey dad, do you now the piano is on my foot” whereupon the father chimpanzee said “No, but if you hum it son, I’ll play it”

So we said goodbye to the amenable Manchester man, his white van, our piano and its Lincoln mate and sure enough it arrived at my daughter’s house in Cheshire at 9.30 this morning, he was then travelling over to Lincoln with a vastly inferior instrument and then onto Kent to pick up a motorbike that was destined for Westport.

I am amazed at the smooth, cheap, easy way the whole operation was handled to a very worthwhile conclusion and I hope to hear many wonderful worthwhile musical interludes in the years to come.

I told you previously that I had two problems, the other being of the dog variety.  I explained how we had brought over our dog, a ten year old Shih Tzu of Tibetan/Chinese extraction, on his winter holiday to Manchester.  Well on Christmas Day, not happy with his lodgings, he bolted.  For five days we searched the highways and byeways and dogshomes to no avail, our oriental sentinel was not to be found.  So with heavy heart, we returned to our adopted home on 29th December, dogless.

On one of the early days into the New Year my daughter was at the local supermarket and she noticed a man tying up his dog outside of the shop, prior to attending to his proposed purchases.  This dog was a Shih Tzu, not ours, but obviously a close enough relation to strike up a conversation.  She told him of our sad story and how we had gone back to Ireland broken hearted.  A chink of light appeared, he had heard of a Shih Tzu being handed in at a kennels not far away.  My daughter, keeping a tight rein on her emotions called in at the said kennels and there was Sushi, our dog, having the time of his life with a pack of his mates.

There was immediate recognition of my daughter by Sushi or enough for the kennel maid to hand over the dog and she would not take a penny for his seven or eight days lodgings, which was really kind of her in these hard pressed times.  My daughter took him home and locked him in the stables until she could solve the problem of returning Sushi to his own little home in the west.

But blow me did he not bolt again and my daughter tearfully relayed the circumstances in a telephone call that evening but just on the off chance she returned to the kennels the following morning to be met by the smiling kennel maid.  Sushi had returned the previous afternoon.  He must have been missing his new friends.  The kind lady said “why don’t you leave him here, he seems to enjoy it, whilst you organise his return”.  Problem solved!

My daughter went home and just out of interest she googled “transporting dogs to Ireland” and there was a man who did nothing else.  Twice a week he transported a load of dogs from Ireland to England and vice versa.  There is a market and a need for everything.  Within days the man was contacted, the dog collected with the kennel maid still refusing money.  The lady said she had fallen in love with Sushi and she did not want him to go.  The man with the van and the dog were  introduced and last night in the middle of the Irish Sea, there was a great celebration with piano heading east and the dog west.

I collected him in Mullingar at 6.30am this morning and Sushi did not want to leave his new home in the Mercedes van.  It looked like the most comfortable bed he had ever had.  I had him home at 8.00am and off he went sniffing out his old mates with obviously a tale to tell and as though he had enjoyed every minute of his adventure.

So I would like you all to raise your glass to the amenable men with vans who churn out a living in these depressing times, looking after the needs of their fellow men and looking after them well.

Up until the 4^th Century AD, the priests of the Church were just ordinary lay people from various levels of society, who took it upon themselves to preach to the people on this new religion of Christianity.  They were accepted for the fact that they were intelligent and had knowledge and could speak and explain this new concept which Emperor Constantine had recognised as the official  religion of the Roman Empire and they could  translate the complicated teaching so that the ordinary man could understand.

These priests eventually evolved into a distinct privileged class and the best of them became bishops running the various districts or dioceses of the new Church in charge of a  number of priests who showed them allegiance.  They still lived normal family lives, marrying and having children but from the 4^th Century onwards the leaders of the Church were starting to advocate for celibacy to become part of the priestly state, but it was not until 1139, 800 years later at the 2^nd Lateran Council was the mandate for celibacy passed.  Even then there were priests living open married lives into the middle of the17th Century and some even admit today the practice continues with some priests in the face of constant denials by the Church.  The ridiculous thing today is that the Church is accepting Anglican priests into the priesthood of the Catholic Church complete with wives, children and presumably girl friends, to work alongside Catholic priests living under the yoke of celibacy.

However before celibacy began priests had started to commit adultery with women met with in their priestly work and had sex with minors under their control.  There were no real laws or rules dealing with this problem but the bishops of the time could see this dilemma needed sorting out.

The Council of Elvira in Spain in 306AD was the first mention of this problem in Church history and what catches the eye is that the worst form of abuse thought of at this time was priests committing sodomy on young boys and it was decided at this Council that priests found to be committing these acts had to be deprived of Communion.

Over the next 500 years various synods, which were a gathering of bishops getting together and forming legislation, spoke out and legislated against illicit sexual activity by priests.  In 1140 Gratian, a monk, collected all this legislation into a book, The Gratian Decree, which although never official became the basis of Canon Law.  After the passing of the Medieval Period, the various popes became the source of most legislation in this matter.

The Church realised very early on that the Sacrament of Confession proved to be the source of much of this abuse.  People were laying bare their souls and problems to priests, some of whom were taking full advantage of these vulnerable people and helping themselves sexually with threatened blackmail and sexual bullying after the individual’s confession.

Confession had long been part of the Church’s ritual, but in the form of mass confessions.  Individual private confession originated in the Irish Church in the late 6^th Century and spread eventually to all areas of the Christian world.  It became obvious that priests needed guidance on how to conduct this sacrament and how to deal with the various sins confessed.

This manual for priests took the form of several books written by learned scholars and were called Penitentials.  Several of these Penetentials refer to the sexual crimes committed by clerics on young boys and girls,  The most important and apt is the Penitential of St Bede, in the 8^th Century.  The Venerable Bede, the famous English historian and religious intellectual from the north east of England, is the man St Bede’s College in Manchester is named after.

His Penitential advises that priests who commit sodomy with young boys be given increasingly severe penances commensurate with their role, bishops receiving harsher penalties than mere priests.  The regularity with which these types of sex crimes were mentioned in these Penitentials show that the problem was not isolated, was known about in the community and was treated much more harshly than the same crime committed by laymen.  These Penitentials were the main books of reference from the 6^th to the 12^th Century.

Although mandatory celibacy was only decreed from 1139 it was never fully accepted.   Clerics married, committed adultery, had casual sex, homosexual activity flourished and acts of sodomy with children were rampant throughout Medieval times.  Gratian, the year after the 2^nd Lateran Council, repeated Bede’s Penitential and said that clerics should be punished harder than laymen and advocated the old Roman Law of Stuprum Pueri: that sexual violation of young boys be punished with death.  Even then, a 1000 years ago, the leaders of thought in the Church could see the mental damage this practice had on young boys.

So do not ever be misled by the argument put out by the Church recently that these  acts of abuse by priests is as a result of Vatican 2.  It is a result of the abuse of power and has been in existence since priesthood began.  In those early days the whole congregation knew about it and the authorities tried  unsuccessfully to eradicate it.  Why this abuse is a surprise to us today is because the modern authorities in the form of the Pope and his bishops have tried to cover it all up.

I was reading this morning how Hubert Vaughan, Bishop of Salford and founder of St Bede’s College in the 1870s named the school after his brother, the Bishop of Sydney, who had the monastical name of Bede.  This is not the case, St.Bede’s was named directly after the Venerable Bede in the hope his name would protect the school from sexual abuse.  He could not have been more wrong with the type of men his successors put in charge of the College.  He should have called it Salome’s; we might have stood more of a chance,

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For me the highlight of the sporting year was the annual cricket tour to the Wye Valley on which I went for four years from 1966 to 1969 until unfortunately work took over my life.  They really were magnificent days, setting off in a coach with a really decent set of lads, all older than me; lads I had revered at school for their prowess on the cricket team, lads who were playing at a high standard in league cricket and all treating me as an equal.

Lads like Joe Smith, a crazy left arm fast bowler from Unsworth, near Bury, who taught Classics at Stonyhurst College, that Jesuit pile in Lancashire.  He spoke with a broad Lancashire accent and I always wondered what Xenophon or Pliny would have sounded like, with its Lancastrian twist, to the privileged kids at that school.  To be any good as a fast bowler you have to be fairly crazy and Joe’s lunatic antics often used to get us into scrapes where we generally used to escape with honour.

Other lads on the tour who had been through the mincer that was the College were Dave McGarry, a very good footballer and batsman, who liked bowling leg breaks, and happened to be our in house chaplain and peacekeeper.  Chris O’Rourke, a top wicketkeeper/batsman who had trials for Lancashire and captained Stand in the Lancashire and Cheshire League and Len Whelan, a teacher and drinker, who had all the attributes of a good fast bowler but could not convert this God-given physique into cricketing ability but he made up for this fault with tremendous enthusiasm.  Len was married to a cousin of my future wife, Helen and went on to teach at Bede’s Prep many years later.  He died suddenly in the 1990s leaving his large family devastated.

The normal tour was a first stop at Shrewsbury or Ludlow, then onto Leominster, our usual headquarters followed by games at Bromyard in Worcestershire and at Hereford, playing the occasional game at Ross on Wye and always finishing off playing the Welsh Brigade army team at their permanent barracks at Crickhowell, near Abergavenny, having lunch in the Officer’s Mess and drinking out of silver goblets at the bar.  Crickhowell was a massive army camp and could always put out a very good team.

The second year we played them their team was captained by one aptly named Major Poncia, I tell no lie but he was actually a very good batsman who opened their innings.  We had taken three cheap wickets with Joe Smith bowling at his best when Corporal. Jones joined Major Poncia at the crease.  After an over or two settling in the Major drove a ball through the covers and shouted to Jones to run two.  Our cover fieldsman was a very able man and collected the ball at which Jones denied his captain and sent him back at the start of his second run.  The ball was returned swiftly to the bowling end justifying Corporal Jones’s fears. Major Poncia who had been embarrassed by his swift and ungainly retreat and enraged at this apparent insubordination, tucked his bat under his arm and marched down the pitch to the luckless Jones and demanded off the poor man that “when I say run, you’ll bloody well run Corporal”.  This bit of disciplinary action caused all us non-combatants to roll about the pitch laughing our heads off and this little piece of Army rebuke was repeated many times over by the northern bretheren and shortly afterwards the enraged and perplexed Major Poncia was bowled out to a completely un-Poncialike stroke.

The atmosphere became distinctly unfriendly from then on, we won the game easily and we had to fend for ourselves in the mess that night, we were not as welcome as we had been at lunchtime.  We did not know the ropes; we had no idea on protocol; we had never done National Service.  I bet Poncia wished us to be called up there and then.  We played one more game the following year but we had been demoted to the Sergeant’s Mess and no officers played and after that we became personae non grata alas.

Always these tours were carried out in blazing summer weather, playing teams who were genuinely talented and glad to see us.  They took time off work to play us midweek and gave us a welcome that is now rarely seen.

One year at Leominster, a most picturesque ground with a footpath running through it, whose users had right of way over the cricket and caused the game to be interrupted every now and then, we were chasing runs in the late afternoon when I went in and scored 50 off about 30 balls.  Even the footpath users stopped to admire the sport, we won and I was feted for hours afterwards .

Years later and Dave McGarry had just started his sermon one Sunday morning, I was late and found a seat at the back of  St Catherine’s church.  We had not met for a good few years but Dave spotted me and did a right turn with his prepared speech and dumbfounded the congregation with a ball by ball commentary on the closing overs of that day at Leominster.  I do not know if he was down on his collection that morning but at least he remembered an old mate.

The A49, which went through most of the towns we played at, was for me the best 100 miles of road in the country.  For many years afterwards I detoured and took it remembering the good times of youth and at the same time trying to blot out my wasted years at the school.