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

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

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

The news from Manchester this morning is that the twins, although not thriving as well as might be expected, are alert and well and their mother, although exhausted because of the new routine, is confident that they will get the hang of the tap that controls the flow from those mammary reservoirs. My daughter says that one of the delights with feeding twins is that when you have finished with one and turn over to the other, the first scratches your back. On top of that there is a lady coming round this morning who calls herself a Breast Feeding Coordinator from the hospital and she has papers to prove it. She will no doubt add her bosomal delights to the feast that is already at the table, but formula milk is definitely off the menu.

It seems these days that wet nursing is no longer a thing of the past and we know of one 72 year old woman in Hollywood who is still at it and has been plying this honourable trade for the last 42 years with the offspring of filmstars and in the process has made herself millions. She lives in a mansion up in the hills outside Tinseltown and must have paps down to her knees by now. Fair play to the rich and famous for ensuring this profession still exists today in this fast food world we live in.

I went to Manchester last week on hearing the news. I went the old fashioned way, by train and boat and train and was amazed by the ease which everything seamlessly slotted into place. I caught the train from Boyle, walked across the platform at Connolly Station in Dublin and caught the Dart out to Dun Laoghaire, walked across the road to the Stena Line Terminal and walked onto the boat. The same at Holyhead, where we caught the train to Chester, and changed for Manchester in minutes. What amazed me also was the number of passengers who choose this form of travel. Going by car you are cocooned and are not aware of this traditional mode. Although the throng was slightly diluted at Chester, some going north and some south, those of us who made it to the end, struck up a friendship that will take a long time breaking.

I heard one amourous young English lady who seemed attracted to this langourous, tall, thin, cigarette smoking West of Ireland youth, who looked to be coolness personified, “how many pints do you drink when you are out on the tear at weekends”. “I don’t know” was the reply “the same amount as I drink during the week. I’m always pissed when I get home and I can’t remember”. This for chat up lines takes the biscuit and I hope they have a long and loving relationship.

It is a trip worth taking for anyone with the time and it took me on a happy memorial tour of all the chemical and petro-chemical plants of North Wales and East Merseyside where I spent many a pleasurable day in the past. I was recognizing the plants but getting their names mixed up. A sign of old age, I am glad I am where I am.

My first meeting with the twins was memorable, emotional and private but I will at least show you this photograph, which was taken within seconds of me arriving at my daughter’s house. The smile I think is more in anticipation of the cold glass of Weston’s Old Rosie cider that my son-in-law was holding tantalizingly out of reach, while I cuddled the delightful twosome.

Two days later, repleat with joy, I came back to Ireland in Helen’s car and stopped off in Dublin to watch the premiere of my daughter, Paddy Jo’s, performance in Brian Friel’s play “The Yalta Game”. She played the female lead, Anna Sergeyevna, in this adaption of a theme from Anton Chekov’s 1899 short story “The Lady with a Lapdog”. Although I say it myself and I am of course as biased as hell, she was magnificent and I was really proud of her in this her first professional performance after years of making a name for herself at UCD’s Dramsoc. Mark my words, look out for Paddy Jo Malpas in the future, she indeed might need that wetnurse in Hollywood in the years to come.

To them a maternity department is a well oiled conveyor belt with all operatives ticking along in unison like those in a car production plant, producing fully formed units every 20 minutes or so.  But this in reality is not the case and drugs and other additives are added to fine tune the system.  But this should not be the case.  Each woman is a unique machine, a Rolls Royce and is hand built to perfection depending on their environmental circumstances.  Each woman is different in a million little nuances; each woman needs empathy, not sympathy and certainly does not need to be patronised.

Most women nowadays understand drugs and their misuse and overuse and consultation and agreement is required, not dismissal and overbearance.  A psychotherapist with no maternity training would make a better maternity doctor than those who have trained for years in obstetrics.  Without a doubt when it comes to producing babies, mind is more important than matter.  Pumping them full of antibiotics and birth inducing drugs, like a cow in the field, is not what the normal woman wants.  Environment and nature is the thing to instil into these maternity mechanics.

On conveyor belts hundreds of things can go wrong.  Take the case of the North Dublin woman, Melissa Redmond, who went for an initial scan on her expectant third child, after a few miscarriages and was told the foetus was dead and the hospital set in motion the machinery to remove the embryo by D&C procedure two days later and gave her an abortion tool and some drugs that would help the operation.  The lady agreed to all this but knew in her own mind that something was wrong.  Her body was telling her different, she knew her own body and everything felt good.  Wisely she went for a second opinion to her G.P. who confirmed to her that her baby was live and well and in fact the bouncing boy was born in March this year.  If she had used the abortion tool or taken the drugs given, prior to presenting herself at hospital that new life would not be..

You might recogniSe the hospital, that conveyor belt to hell, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, famed for Dr Michael Neary’s antics of removing the wombs and ovaries of women as they got out of their cars in the carpark.  To him, no woman was a vital unit until these parasitic organs were cut out.  To read more of this lady’s experiences which was well reported in depth by Fiach Kelly and Breda Heffernan in today’s Independent click here.

I, as a father of six, am well experienced in natural births, long labours (four hours) and short labours (ten minutes), hospital births and home births and I know the most important thing for my wife was environment, nature and absence,  My absence that is, whilst she underwent the joyous and personal effort of birth.  I was obviously welcomed back into the family as soon as the messy bits were cleaned up.

So my daughter, who became pregnant last autumn and was later told she had twins, swore she was going to have her multiple birth at home, like her last child, in peace and harmony and without drugs and insistence and clockwork routine.  She had suffered trauma with her first two births in that den of filth and grime, they called Wythenshawe Hospital, a few years ago.  Let us hope that they have now got their act together.

This time she had independent midwives on call and every thing was progressing well until time stepped in.  Even independent midwives have to send their charges to hospital if they are more than three weeks premature and Katy was 35 weeks gone when she started to have regular contractions yesterday and she reluctantly had to go to Stepping Hill Hospital, where if she had let them, she would have been hooked up to the conveyor belt and pumped with antibiotics.  An institutionalised midwife explained the system and a foreign doctor, who did not have a proper grasp of the language, never mind the mind of the mother, told her she would be endangering the lives of the unborn if she did not enter into the spirit of his system and have steroids administered to the foetuses.

Her husband could see the trauma his wife was in and with the obstinacy only those born in Northampton have, told the doctor to fuck off, which released the tension momentarily.  Katy suffered an adrenalin rush which halted her labour and they came home, exhausted and annoyed.  Her contractions started again this morning and she waited until they were coming thick and fast before submitting herself to an understandable husband’s six mile hair-raising drive to hospital.  An hour later, Tom, her first child was born at 10.05am and as I write between tears, he has already settled on her right breast and we are waiting for the second.  It is important to know that in this case the hospital staff did not have chance to start up the conveyor belt, at least nature if not environment took its course.  My wife telephones me from the ringside and tells me that a doctor in a book she is reading tells that the safest place to have a baby is in the back of a taxi on the way to hospital, to sever the umbilical and tell the driver “home James”.  The phone rings once more with the news that George was born at 10.30am and is settling down well on the left one.   Alleluia! Alleluia!

Mother, father and fourth and fifth born swear to be out of hospital this afternoon.  I wish I was there instead of tapping the keys of this ever devouring machine of mine.  I can hardly see the keys for these last few lines so emotional as this morning become.  Alleluia!

As a post scriptum to this happy occasion the first pictures, as if by miracle have come onto my computer screen.  The two young bucks look like their father and mark my words, they look obstinate buggers.

I left the gathering after a couple of hours and went back to my daughter’s house in a very contemplative mood.  For reasons I will not bother you with, I had not seen the lady, my first cousin, for a number of years.  As you all grow up and move around and settle into a path of life, touch can easily be lost and this is what made this death all the harder for me.  At one time I was so close to her and her family and now I would not have recognized her in the street.  She died before I knew her and yet at one time I knew her well.  Somehow I had missed out on a good life and that is a big miss.

Away I came and the following morning was more than pleasantly surprised from a comment I received on a blog I wrote  on 12 January 2010 called The Importance of Blogs. I had just heard that Catherine, who has just died, was terminally ill and I dedicated this blog to her and her family.  It traced her mother’s  family tree back to the Famine in Ireland, it was a piece of their history they were unsure of because of their mother’s premature death, nearly 50 years ago.

This comment was from a lady who had just read this blog and realized that she was a second cousin of mine and Catherine’s, her grandfather and my grandmother were siblings.  She was from a branch of the family that had gone their separate ways in the 1930s and for whatever reason  touch had been lost.

That is why the blog is such an amazing and powerful tool if used properly.  You often think that once a piece has been posted, that is it, gone and forgotten, but the internet and blog field leaves it there like a bright shiny cherry on a tree waiting to be picked and eaten by passing strangers.  It is there for evermore, hopefully to be appreciated by everyone and that is what happened.  So now as one cousin goes another comes to light and hopefully will not disappear as quickly.

As I was writing these words this morning, there came news that  will only double my efforts in this field.  My daughter, Katy, has entered the final stages of pregnancy with the anticipation of twins.  She is slightly premature but the experts say that this is normal with multiple births and that mother and foeutuses are fine, with estimated weights of 5lb with still four weeks of cooking  to go.  However she will now have to go into hospital for their delivery,  a thing she dreads.  She was looking forward to a home birth and had an army of midwives lined up to take care of any eventuality.  She will have to be forthright and clear minded and not let these tinkerers of mortality, the doctors, try to bully her into treatment she does not want, just to suit the timetable of the maternity suite.

My wife has flown the coop and is now in Dublin boarding the Holyhead boat with a rolling pin in hand.  God help the doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital.   I am left with the young fellah, a mop and bucket and various dusters and told to make sure the house is perfect on her return.  That might not be until these twins are weaned so I have plenty of time.  The male’s station in life as with all things historic is a lonely one, but I suppose I have the pub and my blog and all the interesting things that both these channels deliver, but I must get on, the mop is doing a lonely dance in the bucket of hot water I prepared earlier.

But then the news came through that he has been shagging young Nigerian girls for the last 30 years according to Dolores Atwood, a 41 year old Nigerian who had been under his physical and sexual spell for 27 years.  Dick Burke, has he is known to his friends, has been under investigation by his order, the St. Patrick’s Missionary Society or the Kiltegan Fathers, since 2007 or so they tell us and although they could find no evidence of abuse against young girls, they have accepted Dick’s confession that he cannot leave women alone.  They also say that they accept Dolores Atwood’s sworn statement that he had been molesting her since she was 14.  It seems though, that they only accept bits of her statement because molesting a 14 year old girl in a hospital bed seems to me to be sexual abuse of young girls.  These Kiltegan Fathers also claim to have given Dolores counselling after her ordeal.  Dolores says she does not trust the Kiltegan Fathers one bit.

Richard Burke, from Fethard in Tipperary, was made bishop of Warri diocese in Nigeria in 1997 by Pope John Paul II and then promoted to Archbishop of Benin City in 2008 by Benedict XVI.  This excuse that he failed to observe his oath of celibacy puts a new slant on child abuse and makes it seem not to much of a sin.  But what kind of a sin is it if the Church knew of his abuse of juveniles before he was made a bishop and I will come onto that later.

So now we have the boring bit over with, what made me start to look into this, is what Dolores also said in her statement, that Old Dick had visited St. Luke’s in Manchester in 2009.  That started me thinking that the only St. Lukes I knew in Manchester was the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases, founded in 1818 as the Lock Hospital in Ancoats, it became St. Luke’s in 1918, serving the returning soldiers who had picked up all sorts of nasties in France and the Middle East.

However after a little research I found the name of St. Luke’s, an unfortunate misnomer.  The St. Lukes Centre in Manchester is a private clinic which deals with a slicker form of sexual subversion that of supporting the psychological and physical needs of priests, and that is what Old Dick needed in 2009 when he stayed there.

This St. Luke’s Centre opened in a blaze of silence in December 2005 to try to straighten out those bent clerics who had previously been treated by the Paraclete Fathers at Stroud in Gloucestershire.  To get sent to Stroud as a priest meant you were well bent, you needed lots of straightening out.  Brendan Smyth, the most infamous serial abuser of children in Ireland, was a past pupil.  The Paraclete Fathers said they neither had the resources or the manpower to run this establishment and were going to have to close down and the Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales, with an eye on the Indians coming over the hill, decided they definitely needed such a place but run on more modern, sleeker lines.  They looked around and realized that the Church in America was in the deepest mire and decided to learn from them.  The American Church had opened up such a place some years before, called the St. Luke’s Institute in Silver Springs, Maryland and using their experience and model, the Bishop’s Conference opened up St. Luke’s in Manchester.

Now Dick Burke, in his travels, before bishopric tapped him on his shoulder, was sent by his order to New Jersey in 1995 according to Dolores Atwood’s statement.  A strange place to go for a man steeped in the missionary ethos of the Kiltegan Fathers, but on perusing a map of America, I realized that Silver Springs and the St. Lukes Institute, just north of Washington D.C. are only 65 miles from the border of New Jersey. In American terms, only a hop step and a jump away.  I just hope he was not treated at St. Luke’s Institute in 1995 because to suggest he was is to cynical to consider.

The Rev. Dr. Gerard Fieldhouse-Byrne BA(Hons), STB, MA, MSW, D.Min., MBAPC (Accred), a very highly qualified psychotherapist is the head of St. Luke’s in Manchester.  His education reads like a Who’s Who in the mindbending game.

1989-1992  Lancaster University BA (Hons)

1992-1996  Venerable English College and the Gregorian University in Rome

1996-1997  Angelicum University in Rome.

1997     Boston University School of Theology.

1998-2000  Boston University School of Social Work

2000-2002  St. Luke’s in Maryland.  Special treatment for priests’ addictive, sexual and psychological disorders

And then after these 13 years of intensive study and on his return to the Salford Diocese, he was sent as parish priest to St. Teresa’s, Little Lever, in Bolton.  It was like sending a rocket scientist to mind the corner shop.  He was only there for a year and he was then sent to St. Joseph’s parish in Todmorden for two years until July 2005 whilst retaining his status as Ex-Officio member of the Salford Diocese Child Protection  Commission.  He is top dog when it comes to priestly abuse of minors and it was to St. Joseph’s Todmorden he was sent, the parish where the homosexual abusing priest Fr Thomas Doherty left his slimy trail when he was imprisoned on 5 counts of buggery of children.  It was seven years after Doherty was sentenced and Featherstone-Byrne’s move coincided with his release from prison.  Was this to tidy up or to cover up, but again we can all get too cynical by far.

To return to Dick, who St. Luke’s could not straighten out and to Stroud where the Paraclete Fathers could not straighten out Brendan Smyth and to all the other serial abusers who could not straighten up.  Is there any point. Commendable as all this psychotherapy is, do you not think that Featherstone-Byrne and his cohort are just pissing in the wind.  Paedophiles are born with that preference and nothing will make them divert from their path.  All that can be done is to keep them under proper surveillance and do not give them opportunity.

Read Dolores Atwood’s statement here

And read Richard Burke’s statement here

I have just been listening to Vince Cable, a politician I admired up until this morning, talking in the aftermath of the only thing that David Laws ever did right in his life.  Sky News asked him if he thought David Laws had to resign.  Our Vince, with a sideways look at someone off camera, presumably holding a Kaleshnikov said “No he didn’t, he did not do this for personal gain, he did it to retain his privacy.  It was a mistake and David knows it but he has done nothing wrong”.

Now if fiddling many thousands of pounds out of the public purse, a purse David was there to protect, is not wrong, let us all go and rob a bank or a post office.  I do not get this argument at all.  I have looked at his problem from all angles and I suppose he did have a problem packing good solid muck up his partner, James Lundie’s anal passage, which was always prone to leakage because his sphincter had been severely damaged by years of unnecessary activity, but how do the politicians expect us to believe that he did it to retain his privacy.  He did not have to claim the money in the first place, but as he did claim it, he could have given it back, saying he was well enough off not to need it.  To give it back when he was caught bang to rights means he was doing it for personal gain.  Greed had taken over.

The politicians still think we are sheep and they are still shagging us with lies and hypocrisy.  Cable went on to say “the people out there will understand the decency of the man and know that he did not do it for personal gain”.  Well if Vince Cable can come out with this clap-trap, just like Nick Clegg did last night, then I realize that this brave new world that Cameron promised us last week, is indeed the same old, same old.

Will someone out there please tell these political pricks, that we are not mindless morons who unbelievably use our phalli for what god made them for and not for shagging young boys and Downs Syndrome kids, but we are intelligent people who will hopefully at some stage bite back.   We can tell right from wrong.

Lastly I would like to apologise to my readers for the strong language used in this posting but I have found that politicians only respond, like the poor colonials of years ago, with something stiff and glistening up their khybers.

So he would have been more than pleased with the news that his successor in the seat, Mr. David Laws, started an affair in 2001 that is still thriving to-day.  Parliamentary lobbyist Mr. James Lundie is the happy recipient of Mr. Laws’s amours and he also happens to be Mr. Laws’s landlord and Mr. Laws has been claiming up to £12,000 per year expenses for sharing the joys of Mr. Lundie’s sheets.  Now, it is alright giving your landlord one on a Friday night after a few pints, but to claim he is not your partner or spouse after nine years of jiggery pokery is rimming it a little, even if they say they have different bank accounts and social circles.  You see when you have a spouse or partner you cannot claim the payment of rent to that person as a parliamentary expense.  If you are lucky, you might get away with the odd bunch of red roses but not £12,000 per year.

Mr. Laws, for those who do not know, was highly thought of in the Liberal Party, despite his proclivities which seem highly prized in political circles, so come coalition with the Tories after the recent General Election, David (Laws) that is, was made the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and was given the task of immediately finding £6 billion in cuts in public spending.  He has already drawn up a list of new rules limiting the pay and expenses of hundreds and thousands of civil servants.  He has been a very busy man.  So busy that straight away after being found out by the Daily Telegraph’s intreprid reporters, he offered to set the ball rolling towards the £6 billion target by giving back £40,000 of his hard and pleasurably earned expenses.

Mr. Laws does not think he has broken any rules.  He does not think, by forgetting to tell the parliamentary stewards that Mr. Shagnasty Lundie was his lover and partner and spouse as well as his landlord,  he has done anything wrong.  Well what is he doing as Chief Secretary to the Treasury then.

A friend, in mitigation, has said that Mr. Laws is a man of great integrity, it has not been about profit but privacy.  Tell that to the poor buggers who every week get thrown into the slammer for stealing a loaf of bread.  What a great defence for any thief  “Sorry me lud, but this bird I was shagging wanted a few quid to buy some chips, I did not have it, so I stole a fiver out of the till, I did it first of all for privacy because I had no cash and secondly so I could have another go at her tonight”  “That is okay my private friend and man of great integrity.  Run along and do not do it again, this week at least” says the judge.

What is it about this British establishment that appears to allow them to do what they like when they like and lets them think that it does not matter.  Just keep the people down and treat them like sheep, for it could be said that sheep-shagging is not a crime, especially if done in private and that is what Mr Laws has been doing for years.  He has shagged us to the tune of £12,000 per year for the last  eight years.

Surely Mr. David Cameron you will have to use your muscle and get shut, we cannot have these Mandelson types clogging up the avenues along which you are giving power to the people.

This line of research concerns the Dignan family of Ballinagard House, which is or was situated two kilometres south of Roscommon town on the Athleague or Galway road.  It was a large house of 12 rooms and was owned at the time ie the turn of the 20th Century by Charles Coleman Dignan, the Under Sheriff of Roscommon.  The Under Sheriff as far as I know is or was a court official, normally a solicitor, who carried out the wishes of the courts.  For example he might organize bailiffs to enter a property to seize goods etc, or he might be responsible for the serving of summonses.

Charles Coleman Dignan had lived in Roscommon all his life, born in 1858 and marrying his wife, a local woman, Angelina Victoria in 1886.  He was 28, she was 21.  During their marriage Angelina had 10 pregnancies, one a still birth, another infant dying very young and the other eight surviving well into adulthood.  They were:-

Joseph Patrick born in 1888.

Eveleen Victoria born in1891.

Alfred Charles born in 1892.

Albert Guy born in 1894.

Mabel B. born in1897.

Cecil Joseph born in 1899.

Hilda Angelina born in 1902.

Ethel W. born in 1906.

Ballinagard House was a fine stone built house with a slated roof, it had six outhouses consisting of a stable, a harness room. a coach house, a cowshed, a dairy and a hen house.  They had one live-in sevant, but there must have been others who lived in a cluster of dwellings round the big house like the King’s and the Igoe’s who classed themselves as agricultural labourers and Edward Flanagan who classed himself as a groom/domestic servant in the 1911 census.

The Dignan family were doing well for themselves and were stalwarts of polite Roscommon society and it can be seen that like the majority of people in Ireland at this time, although born and bred in the country, in this case Roscommon, they would have considered themselves happy to be part of Queen Victoria’s Empire.  Look at the names they gave their children, except for Joseph Patrick, the rest of the names could be from anywhere in England.  Ireland to them was as much part of England as Lancashire or Warwickshire.

All the children as far as I know did their basic education at Roscommon National School before being finished off at a convent or Grammer School and this is where I come in.  Joseph Patrick, when he was 14 years and 10 months old, was sent to St. Bede’s College in Manchester for two further years of education, 1903-1905.  St. Bede’s was the school I went to 1957-1963.  We have something in common, we have both kneeled in the same little chapel, built in 1895, at the school, doing penance for our sins, and it is this man, Joseph Patrick Dignan, I am most interested in and I intend over the next few weeks, to find out more about him.

He left St. Bede’s in the summer of 1905 after presumably boarding at the school for two years, he became a clerk in the Bank of Ireland, where he was probably posted to some far flung branch.  He certainly was not working in Roscommon at the time of the Census in 1911.  At the moment I do not know where he spent the years 1905-1914, but in September 1914 he enlisted as a Private soldier in the 19th (Service) Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, which suggests to me that he was back working in Manchester at that time.  He put down his occupation as clerk, not bank clerk, which would have given him extra Kudos, but just plain clerk.  He might have had relations in the town whom he lived and worked with and who he might have lived with while at St. Bede’s.  All these questions I hope to answer shortly; I do seem to remember my mother speaking of a business family in North Manchester called Dignan.

Anyway after seven months training as a private soldier, without going overseas, he applied for and received his commission, as a 2nd Lieutenant in his local regiment, the Connaught Rangers, on 22 May 1915, in fact in the 4th battalion, which normally had a home at King House, the barracks in Boyle, Co Roscommon, where I was yesterday.  Myself and Joseph Patrick Dignan have a lot in common.

The sad part of this story is that from the 4th Battalion, which was a reserve Battalion suppling troops to the 1st, 5th and 6th Battalions of the Connaught Rangers in the field. he was attached to the 8th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers where he had his first taste of action in 1915.  For a 2nd lieutenant he had a long length of active service before being killed in action on16 October 1916 at Wyschaete, a few miles south of Ypres.  He is buried in Kemmel Chateau Military Cemetery.

His two younger brothers, Alfred Charles and Albert Guy, both served with the South Irish Horse, a cavalry regiment.  Lt. Albert Guy Dignan was 23 when he was killed on the 21 March 1918 on the first day of that spring offensive that saw the German Army throw everything it had left at the British and French armies on the Somme in one final effort to break the four year stalemate that was the Western Front.  Albert Guy’s name appears on the Poziere Memorial in the Poziere British Cemetery.

Charles Coleman Dignan, the Lieutenant recruiting Officer for the town and district of Roscommon paid a heavy price for his duties to King and Country with the loss of his two sons.

If anybody reads this blog and can add to this story in any way please contact me through the comments section of the blog or e-mail me on malpas46@eircom.net.  In the months to come I hope to have a fuller version of this family’s story.

Thank you for reading this post and to Joseph Patrick and Albert Guy Rest in Peace.  They will never be forgotten.

Finally I would like to thank Oliver Fallon, Chairman and Chief Researcher of the Connaught Rangers for some of the military facts in this blog.

We landed at Palma and we were bussed out to our hotel, the El Cid, in Can Pastilla, a few miles out of Palma.  To us men from Longsight, it was a remarkable, clean, luxury hotel, nothing at all like the smelly boarding houses in Blackpool that we were used to.  We were certainly not used to such splendour and service.  Majorca was still in its peasant stage and had not yet become the tourist Mecca it now is and I think it was better off for it.  We spent two days riding in the hills in the centre of the island in our sheepskin coats like a couple of bushrangers under the sweltering Spanish sun.

One night, after organizing a hotel babysitter, the four of us went to Palma for a night out and after a drink in a couple of bars, where we were eating slices of meat cut off hams hanging from the ceiling and having thought that we had mastered the language, we felt emboldened enough to enter a night-club which had some entertainment.  Entry was free and it shows our naivity, girls brought us unsolicited drinks and sat with us.  However after half an hour of this spoiling we asked for the bill.  It was astronomic; we refused to pay; the management was threatening us with all sorts of nonsense, the brave new sign language had gone out the window.  We said in a voice getting louder by the sentence that we would pay a fair price but they could not understand and their numbers were getting larger and more aggressive.

Trevor and myself had gallantly pushed old Cliff and Judith to a position of safety and facing up the management, we were discussing tactics out of the side of our mouths, knowing we were in for a fair hammering but wondering how many we could take out in the beginning so has to reduce the number of blows we would have to take later on.  After all they were only dagos but there was a lot of them.  When all of a sudden the police arrived, but there was still a language problem.  So like the police the world over when they do not understand the criminal, they arrested us and put us behind bars with a few unsavoury regulars.  We managed to persuade them in some very basic words that Judith and Cliff were innocent bystanders and they released them.  Judith was now frantic thinking of the kids in the hotel , so we bade our farewells and expected the worst.  After a few hours an interpreter arrived and brought order to chaos and after a little negotiation and a few more hours captivity, we settled for a fair price, the key went in the lock and we were on our much chastened way back to the El Cid.

The next couple of days we spent within spitting distance of the hotel, not daring to chance Palma again.  I was rooming with Cliff who snored so loud that the ships out on the Mediterranean thought he was a foghorn and were preparing to do battle with this unsuspected micro-fog.  I gained some relief by sleeping in the bath behind a locked door but the reverberations from the snores continued to echo round the empty tile-floored corridors of the hotel.

One afternoon, two or three days into the holiday I decided the best cushion against this nightly bedlam was alcohol, so for about nine hours that evening I proceeded to tie one on, but unfortunately this treatment only succeeded in wakening me in the early hours with a bilious problem.  So to Cliff’s glorious cacophony I grabbed a glass of water and threw in two Alka-Seltzers, drank the brew down and returned to bed and tried to sleep in the clamour and uproar that was our bedroom.

Imagine my horror the next morning when I discovered the tablets I had taken were Cliff’s Steradent tablets which he used for cleaning his false teeth, but notwithstanding the griping pains I suffered over the next 24 hours, this dosage certainly cleared out my insides.  It was like having an enema in reverse, but it worked.

Was I glad to be back in Manchester, even though I had no work to go back to and I never darkened the doorstep of the Balearics again.

The players in this particularly unfortunate incident were:-

Alan Malpas, my father, in his prime at this time, 54 years old, mild mannered in ladies’ company, surly and unapproachable in male circles, with a sharp temper kept under control but liable to break out unexpectedly in moments of stress, a Conservative councillor for Longsight, in Manchester. married to a Justice of the Peace, deputy chief apparitor of St. Robert’s Church in Longsight, a pillar of the community and a big fish in a small pond, who had a name to look after.

Howard Skelton, a fine upstanding Longsight man who had served his time as a printer and at 6′2″ tall and about 17 stone weight, was  not a man to mess with.  Captain of  East Levenshulme cricket team, he doubled as a very competent opening batsman and wicketkeeper.  He decided at about 30 years of age to join the Greater Manchester Police force.  He was a man of the streets, feared nobody and these particular traits soon brought him to the attention of his superiors and at this time, having been recently promoted to Sergeant, had taken over the desk  at Didsbury Police Station in South Manchester.  At 35 years old, he was a man on his way up and liked by everyone who had no reason to fear him.

Paul Malpas, myself, a humble sub-contractor in the civil engineering industry, carrying out drainage works on motorways all over England, returning often to Manchester when the work enabled and joining up with old friends like Howard, to enjoy a couple of pints and also to further his betrothal to Helen Towey, the love of his life.  Howard and Paul had a long acquaintance from East Levenshulme Cricket Club and we both enjoyed a few off duty drinks at Longsight Conservative Club.

Kevin Malpas, my younger brother by 16 months, who was another man to fear, 6′ 0″ tall and 16 stone weight, with a nose to prove more than a passing interest in a clenched fist.  At one time training to be a missionary priest, he had passed his vocation up when he realized he would have to leave Manchester to carry out his duties.  With drink taken, his anger would surface very quickly and his change of personality was not nice to watch.  However on more than one occasion Howard had steered him from danger by using a more superior force than Kevin could muster.

Brian Cain, a diminutive taxi-driver, having to work night shifts at his precarious occupation, driving round the wilds of drug and drink laced Manchester, faced with increasing costs he could not control from a supposedly regulated industry which in fact was one out of control, with rogue drivers paying service to a gangster culture that was slowly gaining command of the streets of the town.  Brian, an Englishman with Dublin connections, was a man at the end of his tether.

Helen Towey, an unassuming, honest-to-goodness type of girl and the prospective wife of Paul Malpas, hoping shortly to marry her intended in the following March, on St. Patrick’s Day.  Helen was a quiet and kind girl whose Mayo parents had come to Manchester 35 years previously to escape the poverty of De Valera’s Ireland of the 1930s and obviously knew how to keep their heads below the parapet.

A.N. Other, a man about town, of lower working class extraction, who, although a good and honest worker during the week, followed the habits of his stock by dressing up on Saturdays and spending the day and night drinking in the many legal and illegal drinking clubs of South Manchester, eventually regaining his doorstep and sleeping off his excesses on the Sunday, penniless until the following Thursday.

Scene 1.

Howard Skelton, the desk sergeant at Didsbury Police Station is halfway through his Saturday night shift.  It had been a busy one, with a stabbing outside a pub 100 yards from the station, a couple of loons full of something or other who thought they were Bruce Lee, three or four drunks who did not know where they lived and a local whore who had tried to steal a few quid off a customer who she thought was sleeping off his excesses at the local hotel.  The six cells were overflowing, Howard had had enough and he was thirsty, he was managing the station and could not get out like the beat bobbies, to enjoy a pint after time in one of the local hostelries.

A stuttering fart of a taxi-driver enters the station, effing and blinding.

Brian Cain. I’ve been shuttling this fellah round Didsbury for half an hour, he is that drunk he does not know where he is, never mind where he wants to go to and I want my fare.

Howard goes out to the taxi and immediately recognizes the drunk as Kevin Malpas and gives him a playful tap on the jaw to waken him.

Howard’s playful taps normally knocked out offenders and this was no exception, the man was now prostrate in the back of the cab.  He turned to the surprised driver and told him to follow him back into the station.

Howard. OK taximan, I know this fucker, the best and easiest way to get your money is to take him to this address, 2 Birchfields Road in Longsight.  I will ring them now and tell them you are coming.  They will pay you.  They are alright OK.

Brian.  Fuck me, OK then

Scene 2

It was after midnight on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, Paul Malpas and Helen Towey after enjoying a couple of pints and a game of cards in the bar at Longsight Conservative Club, nothing too grand for this serious courting couple who were saving like mad for their forthcoming nuptials. They had decided to call in to see Alan’s wife Margaret and chew the cud for half an hour.  The phone rang at this late hour and Alan picked up the phone with some trepidation.

Alan. Hello

Howard. Is that you, Alan?

Alan. Yes

Howard. I have that dickhead son of yours outside the station in a taxi, he’s as pissed as arseholes.  I am telling the taxi-driver to take him to your house, you pay the driver and knock some kind of sense into that prick son of yours.  It is either that or I am locking him up and he will be in front of a special magistrates court in the morning.

Alan. Thanks Howard, send him round and I will deal with him and the driver.

Scene 3

Alan Malpas, his eldest son Paul and his very concerned future wife, Helen Towey are stood on the pavement outside  2 Birchfields Road waiting for the taxi to turn up.  Lights approach, a taxi is recognized and Alan puts out his hand for the cab to stop.

Brian. I’ve been told to bring this fellah round to you.  Can I have my fare please.

Alan. Hang on a minute while I get this bollocks out

He opens the back door and the Kevin is just coming round from Howard’s playful tap when he gets an humdinger from his father who, I know from painful experience, packs a fair punch. Alan skuldrags Kevin out of the taxi by his legs and drags him to the hedge.

Alan. Sorry about this driver, how much do I owe you?  He is my son and I will take care of him now.

Brian. I’ve been driving him around for ages  and he could not tell me where he lived.  That will be £5 10 shillings please.

Alan.  Bloody hell, you must have been driving around all day.  Here’s your money now fuck off.

Turning round he gives Kevin’s now supine body a few kicks and attempts to pull him up, Paul observantly exclaims.

Paul.  Hang on a minute, that’s not Kevin.

Alan. Course it is Howard said……….

Gathering our thoughts and leaving the drunk lying against the gatepost Alan and Paul, followed by the distressed Helen return to the house to phone up Howard.

Howard. Didsbury Police Station here.

Paul. What the fuck is going on. This taxi pulls up with a drunk in the back, you told us it was Kevin, my dad as given him a few wallops and we find out it is not him.

Howard. Well it was Kevin in the back of the fucking taxi here. You must have signalled the wrong one to stop.

The three witnesses slowly walk back out to the battered victim to apologize for their mistake only to see him staggering off along Birchfields Road, rubbing his jaw with one hand and soothing the pain from the kicks he had received with the other and no doubt ruminating on whether a Saturday night out on the town was worth it.  They also wondered what kind of hooch the Desk Sergeant at Didsbury Police Station was on during a very busy Saturday night shift.