Ellen Connor (nee Wilkinson) was born into a different world than the one we know today, a world that only knew hard work, plenty of it, done well and for no reward.  She was born on 12th August 1914, eight days after Britain had declared war on Germany, when the British Army were mobilising to face the threat of the Kaiser.  350 of Ellen’s neighbours, who had enlisted for the York and Lancaster Regiment and who had lived in that triangle of Pontefract, Rotherham and Doncaster  were transferred to the green fields of Ireland and the Connaught Rangers 5th Battalion, who were undergoing basic training at Kilworth Camp in Fermoy in Cork because I suppose the York and Lancaster 2nd Battalion was stationed in Limerick only a few miles away and were oversubscribed and the newly founded 5th Battalion Connaught Rangers were in need of drafts.  Many of this gallant 350 were killed at Gallipoli in their first taste of action in July 1915.  I have the great honour of being the General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association which serves to remember the sacrifice of the dead comrades of that pernicious conflict, the Great War.  Ellen might well have known the families of some of those men.

So Ellen grew up and went into service in Nottingham and then came to Manchester as housekeeper for the priests of St Edward’s parish in Rusholme and met and married the caretaker’s son, Jim Connor, in 1939.  Jim was an electrical engineer at Metropolitan Vickers in Trafford Park, where my father and mother worked.  They lived in Urmston close to Metro’s which was the biggest industrial complex certainly in England, employing at that time about 30,000 people.  In 1948 Ellen and Jim moved to Kelstern Square on the Anson Estate for their first taste of life under the avuncular yet despotic rule of Fr Vincent O’Shaughnessy.  Already they were nurturing four daughters, Sheila (1940), Joan (1943), Pauline (1945) and Angela (1947).

As was the way with life in those hard post-war years, small groups of women got together and supported each other through pregnancy, infancy and early school days of their families and that was how I came into contact with Ellen.  Ellen Connor, Margaret Mackie, Teresa Robinson and my mother Margaret Malpas formed a quartet that could not be broken, all parishioners of St Robert’s, all members of the Union of Catholic Mothers, all having gone through the war in their early years of marriage and all facing the stresses of spartan existences in those rationed years of the late 1940s and early 50s.

Ellen went on to have three more daughters Eileen (1949), Mary (1952) and Rita (1954).  Pardon me if I have got those dates slightly wrong but they were wrought from a memory that is old and obviously frail.  By now nine of family and with seven daughters, they gradually realised that their little council house in Kelstern Square could take no more, so they moved into a large three storey Victorian semi round the corner, No 17 Birchfields Road in about 1960, which easily coped with the nine of them, which soon became 11 when Jim’s sister died leaving two children, Teresa and Robert.  These two cousins were seamlessly added.  The house also coped with Jim’s burgeoning property repairing business, which he had inherited from his father and Sheila’s hairdressing salon that coiffeured the matronly heads of the Union of Catholic Mothers amongst many others.

My first memories of the Connor family was when Rita was born in about 1954, I went with my mother to Kelstern Square to visit the new born child and that was the start of my constant link with the family, I was however, from the age of four, in the same class as Pauline.  When I was about 15 or 16 Jim gave me part time work at weekends and school holidays, working with his brother Frank, painting most of the ecclesiastical institutions in Victoria Park.  It was like the Forth Bridge, it never stopped and for years after I continued this nice little earner at 2s 6p per hour which financed my early drinking career.

In fact during my late teenage years I was hardly ever out of Jim and Ellen’s house, reporting for duty, watching TV and generally learning how to deal with a family of good looking women.  To the worldly wise it would and must have been like heaven, surrounded by this plethora of beautiful girls but oafish and ungainly me could never measure up and the girls all went eventually their separate romantic ways.  The one constant was Ellen, always putting a plate of food in front of me, she was like a second mother to me for years until I also eventually moved on to seek my fortune.  Since then in the middle 60s until now I used to meet up with each and everyone of them from time to time, there was never any awkward silences, we just took up where we had left off, it was as though we remained in those early 1960 years, so tightly bound together.

So it was with great joy and anticipation that I made my way to Manchester to take part in the celebration of Ellen’s life.  There is little sadness when a person of nearly 98 dies, just happiness at the long, fruitful and deeply fulfilled existence.

At the church of St Winifred’s, where Monsignor Michael Quinlan is OIC and who would not be too happy knowing I was sat in his benches, there appeared many still recognisable faces. Those that had hardly changed in the 50 years of my wanderings were Ellen’s seven daughters, easily recognisable because they all carry some aspects of Ellen’s countenance.  They all retain the fine chiselled features of their mother, none look older than 40 yet I suspect if my maths are correct some of them must be older than that.  Two of the Power girls from Montgomery Road were there, Geraldine and Aileen. Jean Gay and her 94 year old mother, her father is still going strong at 97.  There must have been something in the water in Longsight all those years ago because my father at 94 was also striding up the aisle alongside my two brothers Kevin and Michael, Kevin in need of a haircut and Michael clean shaven and trimmed to match his elevation in life.  Another blast from the past, Miss Wallace was also there still recognisable although well into her 80s.  I did not introduce myself because the palms of my hands were still smarting from the edge of the ruler she wealded with such gay abandon on our ten year old palms and my mind still stunned by the negativity she tried to instill without success into our baby booming confidence.

Above everything else was the mass of the Connors.  Ellen had seven daughters who spawned 20 grandchildren with space and time for many more who again bred 26 great grandchildren with hundreds more to come and also two great great granchildren were present with three more tucked into their mothers’ bellies for deliverance later this year.  Fecundity is without doubt the family’s middle name.

At the funeral breakfast, tears of joy, happiness and a few of sadness mingled with the lump in my throat and I found it hard to talk.  I was just so glad to be there and experience the waft of memory as it rolled over me and the delight of a life that had been well lived.  Ellen and her husband Jim, who died in 2005, were as generous as any two people could be.  In the words of her first grandchild Anthony, Shiela’s son, who offered up the Eulogy at the end of Requiem Mass, Ellen’s “legacy is one of wealth, not of money, but of showing how to live your life through selfless love for other people”.

In the few years I have still to live she will never be forgotten, nor will she be in the minds of two of my daughters, Katy and Louise, who accompanied me and knew the family.  Katy weighed down with her two year old twins who were as good as gold until the eulogy and then started shouting like a Manchester City crowd in full voice drowning out Anthony’s well chosen words.  Louise weighed down by a child yet to be born but at 38 weeks cannot have long to go.  They were massively impressed with the whole celebration.

May Ellen rest in peace.

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.

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 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.

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.

But T O’D was different, great things were expected of him.  It was obvious from a very early age, dragging himself from the curse of unwedded birth, everything he touched almost turned to gold.  The rich landowner of those wild Lancashire hills kept a good eye on him, he could see his talents and nurtured them.  As Tommy matured and became a man, the landowner fed him the best and put him in front of the finest educators.  The landowner’s marriage was barren and he loved Tommy like a son, Tommy was going to inherit the land but something happened, we know not what, the story became blurred.

It could not have been anything to do with the pretty young maids who cluttered the mansion house, put there for Tommy’s delictation.  Tommy was a devil for work, ploughing and tilling the fields of his master’s many farms.  He had no time for frippery.  Tommy’s work was his raison d’etre.  However some people say that a change came over him when that big broad and burly sailor wandered through the village.  The sailor, tall and wide like the masts and sails of an ocean going clipper, rolled through the hamlet one weekend, hoping to pick up a four master in the port of Liverpool.  He was dressed in his finest civilian clobber purchased in the world’s seediest fleshpots.  Strappy 6″ high heeled shoes, fully fashioned nylon stockings, pencil thin white skirt putting mighty pressure on his muscular hips, which from the imprint on the sheath, were covered by gossamer thin lingerie.  A tight sleeveless top barely covered the rippling torso and left his tattoed biceps for all to wonder at.  His freshly coiffured head of silken ginger curls took the eye, as the whole was embroidered with professionally applied nail laquer, American lipstick and delicate Provencal perfume.  This man was hitting town big style and possibly Tommy was the victim but do not tell anyone that I said that.

After a few days the eagle-eyed landowner noticed the canker, put sailor and farmer together and came up with a no-no.  No longer was Tommy the next in line, no longer the favourite child, but at the same time the liege lord was not heartless and he searched his fiefdom and came up with the answer, his favourite field.  The lord after rebuking his once favourite, took him down to the Long Field.  Through the wide pillared gateway to the Victorian pile with many outbuildings erected by previous tenants who had obviously seen the good days.  At the rear of the buildings was this God’s gift to man.  The land that had created the name for the place, the Long Field stretched as far as the eye could see and even farther, the finest tilth.  There was nothing that would not grow on it given care and attention and T O’D had that in spades.

The landlord spread his arms wide, “this is yours my son, my good and faithful servant.  This is yours to do with what you will, but obviously you do understand that we cannot have you and your canker in the manor house”.  Tommy’s eyes, seconds before filled with remorse for his recent stupidity, started to shine.  He could see the possibilities.  If this was not on the pig’s back at least it was very close to the sow’s arse.  He thanked his lord profusely and set about the place.

Without doubt it was a long field starting off at his Victorian edifice, it ran for many a mile, far into the 21st century.  Besides being long, unfortunately it was very narrow and had often defeated his predecessors, who had a job turning a cart and horses within its width but its quality was magnificent.  There was no finer loam, a splendid glebe.

Tommy knew only too well his own shortcomings, he knew he had squandered his biggest chance but he was lord and master of this heavenly place and he was going to give it his best shot.  “Thomas O’Duggan is a magician”, he thought ” I have the chance of turning this lovely oasis into heaven, I will not fail, God if there is one, is on my side”.

The Long Field was narrow but with his agrarian acumen and equine know-how, within a couple of seasons he had bred a team of shire horses that could easily turn the cart.  They could shimmy, in fact, far better than that now forgotten sailor.  Tommy was going great guns and except for the occasional blip when the landlord’s help was needed, he carried on regardless and in fact his labours were so good his master granted him a knighthood for services rendered.

On the right hand side of the field was a railway track, like the field, disappearing into the distance and on the left separated by a stony ditch was wet marshy bogland.  Anyone or anything venturing into same would be lost without trace, devoured by this cloying, contaminated slough but between the two was this glorious narrow verdure, the Long Field.

Time moved on and the maturing Tom found life a little dull.  No more the tittilation of tars, the idyll had lost its heavenly allure, thoughts turned to alcohol and worse.  Tommy’s adoring prince could see this and scoured the country for answers, all the agricultural panels were consulted and he came up with a solution.  He drove up to Tommy’s place in a mighty pantechnicon, full to the brim with sacks of  the finest quality seed that the leading bio-scientists could find.  “Here Tommy, here is your gift.  With your abilities the yield from this field will be fivefold, the grain the finest.  You will make a fortune and I only want 10%.”

That evening Tommy brought a few sacks into the house and spread one sack onto the large dining table, normally burdened with huge hunks of beef, tureens of vegetables, pots of potatoes and jugs of succulant velvety gravy.  His trained eye immediately noticed that though all the grain had been passed by the finest scientific brains, it was not all the same.  Each seed was not a clone of the other but each had its own little nuance.  Some were golden and fat, some a pale yellow and pointed, some even round and comely.  As he sat and looked at each grain he developed a game to while away the long winter hours before it was time to plant same.  He pulled out his erect, veinous and by now knarled penis from his voluminous garments and placed it carefully on his knee.  Then carefully placed a seed from each of the main types onto the end of said digit and with a swift flick of his mighty phallus sent the seeds  and any small drippy bits tumbling into the air.  At this point his seaman stained tongue issued out, chamelion like, from his puckered and muscular lips and the idea was to catch as much of this scattered load as he could.  After a few practises he was containing the whole of the tumbled load in one tongueful and after a few pensive mastications he spat the spent husks out into his copper spitoon.

Initially Tommy was heartened with this winter sport, however his lust for the noxious had increased along with the need for alcoholic turpitude and in a fit of rage and in the middle of winter with the frost still on the ground and the land not ready for sowing, he took the seed and scattered it wildly.  Lots went into the murky morass never to be seen again, some fell into the stony ditch maturing some seasons later but impossible to reap, a little fell onto the fine tilth of the unprepared land to grow the following summer but with poor yield.  The rest fell on the railway track and were gathered up in the slipstream of passing trains and carried off to all parts of the known world where they prospered in the main in warmer climates.

Poor T O’D did not last the course, he was carried out of his beloved desmesne in a straight jacket stricken with mental illness brought on by an overpowering need for depravity and two years later died of an aneurism, the legacy of that buxom sailor. ” All’s well that is hard as well” were his final words.

I was born in February 1946 and anybody with a glimmer of simple mathematics can work out that my conception was based on celebrations attached to Mr Hitler’s demise, nine months previously in May 1945.  So I am the only man I know that rejoices in that horrible man and his fortunate death but I doubt that my parents were the only ones celebrating in early May that year.

I was born into a family that had virtually nothing, having been bombed out of their house in Miles Platting during the Christmas Blitz of 1940.  They were at the start of the long weary trail of putting one foot in front of the other and building from scratch.  But in other regards I was born into wealth, into Longsight and its many characters and more importantly into St Robert’s parish, centred on Hamilton Road.  The Catholic Church then, as opposed to now, put its arms around its families and guided us through the hard times.  It seemed to cater for more than pastoral care, it actually managed our existence in times young people now will never understand.

I started school after the 1950 Christmas holidays; I was four years and ten months old and I could read and write in a fashion that was probably better than my script today.  I entered Miss Standen’s class, an old lady who retired shortly afterwards but not before she put me on the road.  My memories of her say she was a kindly woman endowed with lots of patience, ideal for the task in hand.

The following September I moved up to Infants 2 which I think was in the care of Miss Willoughby and then onto Infants 3 and that ended the soft times.  They thought at eight we had certain responsibilities in life and one of these was to accept punishment rather than chastisement for any misdemeanour. Junior One started for me in September 1953, in the newly built prefab adjacent to Farrer Road, built for the first of the baby boomers of my generation.  It seemed the war ended and love started in 1945.  Our teacher in Junior One, a young decent woman who was shortly to get married, decent in that she could control her class by a mix of sternness and niceness, a mixture that was missing in some of the teachers.  Her very presence calmed you and made you listen.

Then onto Mrs McGrath’s class, Junior Two, and it was in this class that the powers decided punishment was the answer to all problems.  Mrs McGrath was the Headmaster, Paddy McGrath’s wife and must have wanted to keep her husband in shape so that any murmur at all was sufficient to send us down the corridor to her husband’s office for a dose o0f his feared strap, which he summarily dished out outside his room for all and sundry to see.

We moved up to Miss Wallace’s class as we approached 10 years old and the punishments got worse.  Miss Wallace, so the rumour went, was attracted by Paddy McGrath’s punitive muscles and always dressed smartly when he was around, tidying up her make-up and recoating with lipstick if Paddy was due for inspection.  It was thought that her and Paddy were close,  but how close in those Catholic days, I don’t know.  Miss Wallace had a grim countenance, only  brightened by Paddy’s frequent visits.  She was always calling me big-headed and far to cocky, always beating me over the hands with the edge of a ruler.  Her possibly unrequited love affair with Paddy might have had something to do with her dissatisfaction of me, but I for my part could not understand her grievances against me because my examination results were always top class and I always wondered what I had to do to escape such duress.  Confidence was not the thing authority respected those days.  Control and subserviance were the qualities to attain.  My reports, which I still have, tell me that I was top of the class of 47 children and still getting beaten to within an inch of my life.  I suppose trying to control 47 Longsight kids was a task in itself, if you were not on top of your game, without trying to teach and vexation did rise to the top more often than not.

I have to say that punishment never ever taught me a lesson either at St Robert’s or at St Bede’s where I went after 11+, it only made me more determined to plough my own furrow.  I think we thought of punishment as a necessary evil, something to be endured, like cutting your knees whilst playing football in the school yard.  A means to an end.

The senior class before the 11+ examination was Junior Four and Mr Groarke’s class.  A fine and fair man, a good teacher, who could dish out punishment just the same.  When he punished you , you felt that you had deserved it.  With Paddy McGrath and Miss Wallace hitting you, you wondered why.  People I remember in that class, most of whom went on to Senior One (there was no secondary schools for most in those days and comprehensive education had not been thought out), were Pauil Richardson, Barry Mannock, Stuart Robinson, David Evans and Alan Morris, David Duffy and Anthony Fahey.  I seem to remember more girls as they were more competitive in the exams, Pauline Connor (one of seven daughters of Jim and Helen Connor), Pauline McGhee, Belinda Maloney, Mary Leydon, Rosemary Keogh, Marlene Moran and Maureen Smith from up North Road, Maureen Sargent and the Swiss girl, Helen Vogeli who did not seem to mind the change in language.  It is funny how you remember some but not others, but there was another 31 kids there somewhere and probably a little reminder and they would all come flooding back.

I was co-opted onto the altar boys at St Robert’s when I was seven, my mother bought me the cassock from John Neville’s in Manchester and my Aunty Kath made the cotta with some fancy lace trimmings on the sleeves and round the hem and Fr Dwyer instructed me in the Latin rites and made me know how important and special was the role of an altar boy.  A few years ago whilst writing my Memoir, a 400 page tome, which I did for my children rather than for publication, I discovered a photograph taken prior to an altar boys trip to Blackpool.  The photograph is strange these days, there was a group of men and boys about to go on an outing, all dressed up in shiny shoes, suits, shirts and ties, no leisure wear, anoraks, tracksuit trousers or trainers.  It must have been taken in 1958  because I was wearing my first year St Bede’s uniform, grey short trousered suit with school tie and blue shirt.

The two priests sat centrally, Canon O’Shaughnessy andf his curate Fr McCardle.  Some of the St Vincent De Paul Society stood at the back who were a lot older than us.  Reggie Singh, who chanced his arm with Evelyn Mellor who lived next door to us but who never stood a chance with the battalion of GIs, fresh out of Burtonwood who were queueing up to register their claim.  Next to him there was John Sparks, Bill Bagnall, Robin Clancy, the twins father, Mr White, John Shepard, John Walsh who became a dentist in Clare and  John Mulcahey.  Lads who were older than me at Bede’s, John Watkins who lives in Zurich now, Michael Power whose sisters , Aileen and Geraldine, I knew and Mike McPartland.  There were “Punch” Donelon’s two sons, Chris and Sean and Anthony O’Malley who went to Xaverian and ended up in Law.  The Harrison twins, John and Michael, Michael continued to serve on the altar until the church closed in 2003, devoting nearly 50 years of his life to the cause.  Then there was Stuart Robinson from Swayfield Avenue who went on to marry Cath Philbin who became Lord Mayor of Manchester, Anthony Millington who I continued to meet the odd time at Houldsworth Golf Club and his brother Paul who I last saw in his butcher’s shop on Meldon Road.  Paul Hopkins was there the son of Gabriel Hopkins, a local shop owner, politician and friend of my father’s, Paul became headmaster of a secondary school in North Manchester.  John Halloran I notice, John was the nephew of a famous Daily Mail journalist whose name at the moment escapes me. There was Tony Deacy who was making a name for himself in the construction industry until he was tragically killed on Longley Lane in 1973 aged 26. also I see Kevin Kelly, son of the church organist Mrs Kelly and his fellow skiffle group member, my brother Kevin, who the following year took up with the Holy Ghost Fathers, John Howarth, Michael Leydon and Robert Fannon.  The White twins , Peter and Paul, John O’Grady and a lad called Davidson (Jeremy, I think).  There are two boys I cannot name but I will do one day when I finish this process.  Whatever happened to most of these faces, they all look very serious and I doubt the 54 years will have changed the ones that are still living that much.

These lads and men formed the backbone of the parish at that time, serving at every church service.  I wonder how many, like myself, have drifted away because of the Church’s inabilities in reinventing itself.  Its power and control was great for the war weary 1950s and before but the Church had given us education and most of us eventually empowered  with this wisdom, realised the faults in its system.  For me its only fault, propagated by lowly priest, dandy bishop, aloof cardinal and disdainful pope was the massive corporative cover up of clerical abuse which has been in practice all my life and which they are still trying to conceal when they have been caught bang to rights as their suppurating corpse twitches on the altar of life.

But back to Longsight and St Robert’s.  Nowadays I wonder at the distances some of the kids walked to school, especially a school in an urban environment.  Marlene Moran from long gone Greenwood House flats on Kirkmanshulme Lane, must have been the farthest.  The Sacred Heart in Gorton or St Joseph’s in Longsight would have been nearer.  Barry Mannock who lived off Stockport Road, near Mount Road and would have been quicker going to St Mary’s and in fact all the St Richard’s children who had unfortunately no school to go to.  I understand the position as now reversed itself and all the St Robert’s children now go to St Richard’s.

It is strange also to think of shopping in those pre- supermarket days.  We lived on Duncan Road and except for occasional trips to town, all the shopping to satisfy our daily needs was done within a 100 yard radius of where we lived.  Mrs Bunting’s greengrocers shop was at the top of the road on Slade Lane, Ernie the butcher on the corner of Clitheroe Road and Dixon Street, Mrs Reynolds grocer’s shop opposite and the off-licence on Clitheroe Road where I used to go with a jug when my granddad was to poorly to stroll down to the Anson Hotel.  The jug would be filled with beer from a pump and I would head back down Dixon Street, having a few slurps to stop it from spilling .  All these shops would have been full if three customers came at once, so you just wonder at where the hundreds come from that fill the supermarkets 24 hours per day.

We were all surely an insular bunch, living in our own little cocoon that the parish had created.  We did not notice the poverty all round us; the only time we ventured further than the top of the street was when we went to the pictures.  Longsight and Levenshulme were well endowed with picture houses, from the flea-pit Queens at the Stockport Road/Slade Lane junction to the opulence of the Regal Cinema in Levenshulme, which does keep reinventing itself, from a cinema to a bowling alley to a showcase curry house.  Sometimes three cinema visits a week were called for to satisfy our needs in those pre-TV days and on the way home, a bag of chips in the previous days newspaper.  You could read the news off the chips, the type transferring itself from the newsprint onto the potatoes.

Well there is 2100 words fashioned out of nothing with still plenty to talk about in Longsight and its church of St Robert.

Victims who were taken into custody report the fact that they were beaten up and further abused with whips, sticks and fists when admitted to detention centres.  Other prisoners were anally raped or hung by their wrists from ceilings and beams.  Many have died as a result and survivors are coming and giving their testimonies from all over the country, all telling a similar story showing that this systematic torture is widespread.

As I was reading the reports of this in the Guardian newspaper this morning, memories of similar tortures came flooding back into my mind, from a time when Amnesty International was only a twinkle in Peter Benenson’s eye (Peter founded this august institution in 1961).  The times I speak of were the late 1950s, the location was St. Bede’s College in Manchester, the perpertrator was Monsignor Duggan and his clerical staff.

St. Bede’s College, the premier Catholic grammar school in Manchester, was where I was unluckily sent after passing my 11+ examination in 1957.  We were faced with torture of equal magnitude, which probity, to use a popular word, forbids me to mention .  A whole generation of clever Catholic boys lives wasted, some have even been lost.

More news to come out of the Catholic dustbin this week is that the Salford Diocese have now appointed a new co-ordinator for their Safeguarding Commission to replace Fr Barry O’Sullivan, who was ignominiously sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester in December 2011 to commit therapy on the prisoners.  The new Coordinator, who starts in April 2012, is a lady called Dawn Lundergan, who works for Rochdale Council at the moment and who must be at least one step up from the blithering idiot she is replacing.  It makes one wonder though, whether after over three months without a Coordinator, do the Salford Diocese need one?  From all their accounts they have the situation under control and there is not one priest or servant of the Diocese stepping out of line.

You can read all about the new appointee, with comments from professionals in the field and a look once more at Bishop Brain’s excuse for an apology in March 2011 for the aforementioned Bedian abuse in this Friday’s edition of The Tablet.  If you cannot buy a copy, read it on line.  However as a person who has had vast experience of Ms Lundergan’s new department, I cannot let this opportunity pass without giving her some good advice.  To start with, her committee are a waste of space, they are only expected to attend a couple of meetings a year and some cannot turn up for those.  They are only there because being on the Committee is good for their CVs, Sullivan knew this and did not bother to involve them, preferring to do his dirty work alone.  Dawn’s chairman, a solicitor chap called Devlin, who likes to control meetings whatever they are about, because his head is full of empty words, but who used to wash his hands of O’Sullivan’s malpractices, is only there for his Bene Merenti medal from the pope and also because his position looks good in the practice brochure.

So Dawn, clear them all out, let your new brush sweep clean, do not allow it to become glabrous, you owe it to the many survivors of clerical abuse who live precarious lives in the Salford Diocese and who cannot find an outlet for their experiences.

I picked the 4th April 2010 because on that day I wrote a piece called Paedophilia: The Hollie Greig Scandal, The Dunblane Massacre & The Scottish Cabal  and in all that time since, for over a 100 weeks, this piece has remained in the top most popular pages read. At this moment it is riding high in first place for this last month.  Why this should be, I do not know, it is not particularly well written but it does bring together a few threads that two years ago were just hanging in the air.  What has happened since is that most of what I wrote then in that posting and in others on the same subject I wrote at that time is now just accepted fact and a few more names can be added to the list I appended at the bottom of the article.

For example two Grampian Police Chief Constables, Dr Ian Oliver, who was forced out of office in 1998 for a reputed botched handling of a child murder and who chose not to investigate the very suspicious and convenient “suicide” of Hollie’s uncle, Roy Greig, in 1997.  Roy being the only witness to Hollie’s rape by her father, Dennis.  Incidentally Oliver’s son, Craig Oliver, is now head of communications in the Prime Minister’s office replacing the infamous Andy Coulson of phone hacking fame.  The other Chief Constable to add to the list is the present incumbent, Colin McKerracher, who has recently shut up shop and refuses to talk or answer any questions put to him about Scottish cover ups of all that is bad north of the border.  Another gracious name is the Glasgow law firm Levy McRae, who are played like a fine fiddle by former Procurator Fiscal, Elish Angiolini.  If any one or anything has to be leaned on in Scotia, Levy McRae are the boys to do it.  They are implicated in everything iffy and down right illegal in Scotland today.

What is interesting in this climate is that those who stood accused of malfeasance in these campaigns for truth and justice have all gone upwards and higher over the last two years, whilst all the campaigners are being trampled on and forced further down the ladder of life.  Robert Green is now serving 12 months in Aberdeen Prison for thinking of handing out leaflets in a breach of the peace conviction that cost scottish jurisprudence a bundle of money to bring to fruition and which involved most of Scotland’s legal bigwigs and all for what.  A simple breach of the peace!  Ann & Hollie Greig are being dragged through the legal system in England and are now back in the secret Family Court awaiting a judgement and a very real threat of Hollie being taken away from Ann if she is deemed not to be a fit and proper person as carer to her daughter.  A daughter she has looked after for the last 31 years.

But the wind has changed, now on a daily basis there is a slow drip, drip of information suggesting that things are not well in the upper echelons of the Scottish establishment.  Judges, lawyers, politicians, high ranking police officers and top civil servants are all bound up in this maze of obfuscation and illegality to ensure that these wrong doings and criminality are kept from the general public.  But history tells us that this type of behaviour cannot be sustained, there are whistle blowers in every walk of life and these whistle blowers are like the oncoming tide which King Canute found could not be resisted.

I have deliberately not gone into detail about these case but you can read all about the grossness of Scottish injustice and the hogwash that their establishment puts out by going on to Hollie’s web site Hollie Demands Justice and spend some time there and also click on Robert Green’s blog on the same site.  Slowly you will be overcome with emotion as you try and reconcile what truth and justice means to you and how it is actually portrayed in Scotland.

One big thing you can do is write to Robert in Aberdeen Prison, he would welcome contact even though the Governor and prison officers are treating him with all the care and responsibility they give their own families.  Roberts address is:-

George Robert Green

Prisoner No 125799

HMP Aberdeen

Craiginches

4 Grampian Place

Aberdeen

ABII 8FN

Try and send him a stamped addressed envelope because he has to pay for his stamps and he will definitely write back.  I got one from him this morning and he does not know me from Adam

In the early morning of the 6th December 2011, I awoke to a steady and painful feeling in my nether regions.  It was a new fresh pain altogether different from the run of the mill aching joints that one grows accustomed to in old age and emanating as it was from this new area which had remained trouble free for all my remembered life, it caused me a little concern.

Over the next few days I continued with my various tasks thinking it was just some muscular pain caused by an exuberant manoeuvre whilst lying between the sheets but gradually I realised that this pain was not muscular but something more complicated.  I ferreted around in this painful area for some seconds and swiftly realised that my right testicle was three times larger than my left one, almost reaching gobstopper proportions and the pain stretched from that swollen gonad through the middle of my body to my right kidney causing at times severe back ache.

I decided that I would have to see my doctor although my all embracing disbelief of all things Catholic made me think that this area was still taboo.  I plucked up courage, had a shower and whizzed down to the surgery to be first there that morning.  I was, with 30 minutes to spare and the standing in the cold awaiting his arrival made me wilt with the pain.  He arrived and brought me in, unzipped my trouser and with a wink and a leer, he squeezed the first one he came to whilst at the same time asking which was the affected one.  As I pulled myself off the ceiling I stuttered “the right one”.  He apologised at his oafishness and did agree that the right one was definitely out of place next to its more sedate and beansized left brother.

He suggested immediately that I sign myself in at Sligo hospital while they did some ultrasound treatment on my painful appendage.  I explained that I was on my way to Manchester for the Christmas holidays and my treatment in Sligo would have to wait.  He accepted my plans but booked me in for ultrasound in the New Year when I returned and prescribed anti-biotics and pain killers.

After a few days in Manchester with Christmas approaching and the anti-biotics seemingly not working but the pain killers were when I took them but I was loath to over a long period for fear of dependance, I asked my wife to drive me down to Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport.  It was the day before Christmas Eve, one of their medical staff was upstairs murdering patients by booby trapping saline solutions ( I think five by then had met their maker), I was downstairs in A&E in front of a very nice triage nurse feeling slightly embarrassed as I related my tale of woe.  She agreed my pain must be immense when she saw the strength of the painkillers I was taking.  “They are the next thing to morphine” she said.

Within five minutes of my triage interview I was talking to a doctor and I felt more relaxed.  He was a nice young chap, not long out of medical school, built like an international wing forward and from Pakistan.  Not a man to blush at my plight I thought but he was unsure how to approach this indecent area of the body.  His Islamic upbringing suggested that it was a sacred area and his medical training made him ask for a chaperone even though Helen, my dear wife of nearly 40 years, could be heard tittering in the corner of the room.

He called in a nurse, a young good looking girl, who he presumed would not be used to this situation.  I apologised for what she was about to endure but he gave her a towel which she had to hold at arms length so that it obstructed her view of my manly credentials, has he carefully removed my garments.  He saw for himself that things were not right or at least not as right as they should be bearing in mind it was the right one that was now approachin golf ball status.  He zipped me up, shooed away the nurse who had in no way improved her education and suggested I needed to see a Urologist which he would organise.  While we waited he took some blood samples and I gave him a sample of my urine which he then took to the laboratory.

I was ushered into a curtained cubicle, backstage of where I had been initially examined and a nurse told me to lie on a bench and await this Urologist chap.  A few minutes later the curtains parted and this vision of loveliness drifted through the drapes.  ”Ello, my name is Adelberta van der Kerkoff and I am the Registrar in the Urology Department” she said in a slightly but interestingly flawed local accent.  She was in her late 20s with long blonde hair and a figure to match.  She was clad in a white coat and judging by its shape and cut was obviously made up in some Parisian house of haute couture.  Her whole ensemble was set off beautifully with a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos giving grace and definition to her splendidly profiled legs which were encased in a pair of gossamer thin fully fashioned nylon stockings.

After a few introductory remarks I gathered she had learnt her trade in Amsterdam and had come over to Stepping Hill to be finished in her art.  She unzipped me with experienced aplomb.  No need of a chaperone with this lady, she was confident enough to realise that I would not squeal and she quickly delved in to the affected area and for ten minutes she rumbustiously coddled the gifts God gave me, her manipulations were of a degree you could only dream about and with all her prodding and digital discoveries there was not one iota of pain.  She raised her sweating forehead and asked me to turn on my side and bring my knees up to my chin.  I could see she was warming to her task as she slowly unbuttoned her white sheath-like coat, revealing a pastel blue sleeveless blouse that nicely held in what was threatening to burst out.  This was finished off with a little black skirt that stopped short of her knees by more than a few inches.  She carefully hung up her white coat and pulled a  long latex glove from out of a drawer.  This type of glove I had last seen worn by a vet whilst artificially inseminating a cow in a field some months previously.  It reached almost to her shoulder.

“Do not worry” she said in this soft netherlandic inspired Stockport accent “but this might be slightly uncomfortable” and she proceeded to thrust the glove, infilled by her fingers, wrist and elbow, up my back passage.  Uncomfortable was not how I would describe it and I started to think how glad I was to be heterosexual as pain from her internal gropings racked my interns.  However after a few minutes of this intense massage, she withdrew and indicated her pleasure that everything in and up there was perfectly as it should be.

She expertly peeled off the long glove, threw it in a bin and told me to tidy myself up and we would talk.  She clad herself once more in her white coat and carefully did up her buttons before going off to get the lab results from my previous donations.  She returned and sat me down and told me my urine sample was perfect, possibly too much tonic with the gin and my blood held no secrets and showed my kidney function was top class.  She said in her very attractive lisping Hollandaise voice that she would like to admit me into her department to do some ultrasound tests to confirm her thoughts and if correct carry out a little procedure.  She said that she thought I had deddidichimus or a word like that.  The procedure would be simple and would entail slicing into the side of my scrotal sac and nipping off the cyst that was causing the pain and the swelling of my right goolie.  I said would I become monorchid and she smiled, the smile of the knowing and said that there was enough in my right one to make three or four others.

After receiving all this wonderful treatment I had to decline her offer.  Christmas was fast approaching and no way was I allowing myself to be incarcerated.  I had to endure and wait for my return to Ireland.  She sadly shook her blonde tresses and told me to be careful and come back to her at the slightest provocation and she gave me a report to give to my Irish doctor and with much reluctance we shook hands and parted.  I think we both enjoyed our little friendship and I had certainly been looked after better than I could ever expect.  Well done Stepping Hill.

Two weeks later after ultra-sound treatment at Sligo Hospital I reported back to the surgery.  The doctor looked at the report and said “no, you are OK, there is nothing wrong with you”.  Sardonically I said “tell my bollicks that” and disconsolately left the room.

It is now 26th February 2012 some 82 days after my affliction reared its head and although not as bad as it was it still gives me great discomfort.  So I decided to write down my tale of woe and let the nations of the world through my readers offer their diagnosis.  What in the name of everything that is Islamic, Catholic and Secular could be wrong with me.