Paul Malpas

I retired at the relatively early age of 59 on the eve of my 60th birthday.  I retired because I did not like what work had become but I had assiduously applied myself to the task and had a modicum of success and vowed my next few years were for Helen and myself.  I was reasonably young and had most of my faculties intact but I was obviously needing something to do and I naturally knew what it was.  I wanted to write, not rubbish, but something with a little quality attached either in phrasing or ideas or both.

So after a period of thought and preparation I set about writing the memoir of my life, not a great life but one with some interest even to the casual reader, let alone my children for whom the tome was originally prescribed.  I started it in the winter of 2006 and quickly found out that I could write more easily at night time when it was quiet and there was no distraction.  So with a little planning and preparation I set to.  I was amazed; the words tumbled out of my mind onto the page almost quicker than I could write.  In those days and even today with some scripts, I had to put pen to paper first before transferring them onto the typed page.

So as England was trounced by Australia in five Ashes test matches over that deep dark winter, I crafted 130,000 words of my own to describe myself and my forebears.  I wrote it in about four weeks and then asked Helen, my devoted wife of 39 years, to type it out, because her earlier training, before she started on me, was in that direction.  She knocked out about 60 pages in quick time before she tired of the task, or possibly of me, who stood at her shoulder and glowed as she committed my words to the screen and she told me that I would have to finish the job myself.

For me the size of the imposition was gargantuan, never having used a keyboard previously but in true surveyor’s style, I split the work into sections and vowed to complete 20 pages per day, in double line spacing, about 6000 words per session.  I had it done in a little over three weeks and I was a proud man until I started reading and editing which then took me the best part of the next three years before I was happy enough to let others read it.  It was received well by some and not by others.  I could not help being critical of some stages and some characters in my life.  I was brutal but probably factual in parts but I knew I was not quite there yet.

Sometime between 2009 and 2011 my painfully typed memoir disappeared off my computer screen, why or how, I do not know but into the ether it went.  I had made a typed copy but for tinkering purposes I missed it.  I was always adding words or subtracting sentences and it was lovely to play with it.  I am no expert in computers and it probably is in there somewhere that the intrepid expert will  easily extricate.  One day I might give the task to some familial great in the field to find but I have kind of resigned myself to retyping and not without a little pleasure at the thought, because in retrospect some sections need revisiting and rewriting from a different angle.  However that is a promised duty for when I run out of steam and not now when I am so busy with other ideas.

So come the winter of 2009 I was in a writing desert, wanting to write but trying to find a medium, finding a way for others to read my thoughts.  The urge to write is an amazing need in one so struck.  You are impelled by some intangible force to get words on paper, not particularly to earn money, though that would be nice, but that others could benefit from or be critical of your fine turn of phrase and laugh or at least smirk at the humour of your thoughts.

It was then I was struck by an idea mooted by my son-in-law, although he was referring to it in a business sense.  Blogging and how it could help people in business.  I signed myself up as a non-paying customer of a symposium he was about to give on the subject and after 10 hours of education, I realised this idea was for me.  It also taught me a few insider tricks in how to make the blog more available to others.

Within a couple of days my daughter and husband had set me up with a vehicle to put my words on and after a very shy and tentative start I was into my stride very quickly, helped by the antics of the Catholic Church and the publication of the Ryan Report into clerical abuse in Dublin, which gave me an ocean to trawl through for ideas from the very start.

I realised  quickly the subjects to steer clear of.  My scrapbook was full of poison pen letters and anonymous phone calls and threats of all descriptions, including three from the local rag here in Boyle, who were considering suing me for defamation.  Funnily enough I also received a threat from a bumbling priest in Manchester who was going to sue me for “deformation”.  My mind has boggled ever since.  Certainly the parish pump is a no go area if you want a quiet life, especially in small town Ireland.  There are still people seething from stuff I wrote regarding the local scene two years ago, it does not matter that it was the truth but for them to be confronted with it, was not quite on.

So my mind and blogging moved to the international arena and away from the small minds stadium.  I wrote about anything and everything, little ideas wormed their way into my head as I lay, a supine insomniac, in my bed at night and the next day these thoughts displayed themselves onto my screen as I nodded off for want of sleep.

What cheered me and what drove me on was the choice of subjects, especially the Catholic church and its works and pomps for which I had a particular dislike, but the real driver was the feedback.  Over the last 27 months I have met thousands of people through this medium with readers from all over the world e-mailing me and posting comments on the site.  So far people from over 150 countries have contacted me to give me their point of view on a particular subject.  That is the real power of the blog, the fact that there are no boundaries, the whole world is your stage.  Once you have written your piece it is there forever, like an over-abundant fruit tree with a never ending crop waiting to be picked off 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by anybody who chances along.  In that time of 27 months, I have written 177 blog postings containing about 300,000 words with hundreds of thousands of people reading what I have to say.  A tool called Google Analytics tells you exactly how many people read my printed words and how much of it they actually read.  Really useful when you are looking for popular topics to write about, not that that bothers me because I write about things that jar my mind and if others agree or even disagree that is where my pleasure lies.

In all that time two people stand out as really influencing my thought process and making me think seriously about my topics but at the same time distracting me in the nicest possible way from my task of delivering words, having to construct and answer a daily crop of e-mails to them.  However their thoughts, ideas, cajolements and humour have turned me into a far better person.

One of this duo contacted me first out of a need to share his experiences with me after a piece I had written.  This single contact turned into an avalanche of daily e-mails, full of wit, innuendo and downright truth about the revelations coming out of the Catholic Church which certainly attracted the main butt of our humour at that time.  His constant hammering on my computer screen made our main construct into a viable cause and hopefully we will be friends for ever, even after this rash of clerical crap is over.

The main problem with my writing is my lack of subtlety.  My scripts are a blunt force, which makes the point to easily.  I needed  assuagement, like a car engine needs lubricating oil.  My problem was that I did not understand the power of the blog.  I did not realise that you could not just tell it as it was but as the blog became popular I knew that this bluntness could not last because I might be over-stepping that thin, hazy, grey line they call legality.

I was eager to learn because my wealth, however small it might be, was destined for Arthur Guinness’ pockets and not some sidewinding litigant hoping to line his breeches with my hard earned.  A person made herself available, a person with more than a little knowledge of the legal code, a person, who at first, had me cowed with the fineness of her mind, she volunteered to turn my rough Longsight ideas and words into things of beauty and awe.  Her deftness of phrasing was a pleasure to read, her subject easily wrought but it was her humour I craved.  In the midst of all this horror and talk of what legal bods could do to you if you only slightly overstepped this indeterminable line, there was a humour so unlike anything from her ilk, that I had to listen to and take in everything she said.

Eventually her tuition turned me into a far better man and a far more circumspect writer and hopefully I taught her a little of the northern spirit she claimed she had in her genes ( her family having moved from a semi-detached mud hut in Jarrow to a twee bijou residence close to Buck House in the 14th century).  So,  having been edited and tutored to distraction, I write now with ease, splaying silken sentences onto a sensuous screen.  I am no longer the man I was but I thank both my amanuenses for turning me from the guttersnipe I obviously was to a person you could take anywhere.

A reasonably well crafted and hopefully, decently written blog is a powerful tool.  It expects to link to people with similar thoughts, because without a doubt,  if you can see an injustice or a happy event, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, around the world seeing exactly the same thing.  So provided you are taught in the way of the blog correctly, about tag words and analytics, as I was, you are soon able to have people nodding their heads in agreement or shaking them in disbelief, all around the world.

There has never been an instrument like it in this nanosecond communication era in which we live.  So recognising the blogs strength and beauty does not mean that you should disabuse its purity.

I do not like using it for the mundane, for tittle-tattle, so I shy away from asking for help or for donations or even for praising the everyday.  I like to report on the real good and the frequently bad things I see, but it has taken me quite a while to reach this hopeful level of consistency.

Now I was educated at St. Bede’s College in Manchester and my thoughts for some time have centred round the daily abuse we pupils of the 1940s,50s and 60s suffered at the hands of some of its staff.  Readers are asking me to turn my blog into a latter-day Friends Reunited dedicated to the badly done to pupils of the aforementioned era, but no way would I desecrate the blog’s virtue.

However two men in particular have been helping me these last few months, two men of integrity, sincerity and wit, two men honed in the fettling shop that was St. Bede’s College.  In fact two men who have done  several good turns for me this last while.  They are trying to find four old mates from their time at Bede’s and they have asked me in their hour of need to help them.

So I have relented just this once and if any reader knows of the whereabouts or if any of the four men read this, providing they are still able to read, could you please e-mail me on malpas46@eircom.net.  The quartet are:-

1. PETER DOYLE who started at Bede’s in 1955 and was a one time lecturer in Russian at Manchester University.  We specialised in Cyrillic at Bede’s especially round the bike sheds whilst enjoying the last fag of the day.
2. FRANCIS FALLON who started at Bede’s in 1955

3.  CHARLES PILKINGTON who started at Bede’s in 1956.

4.  MICHAEL FARRINGTON who started at Bede’s in 1955

If any contact is made I will put them/you in touch with their/your two friends who will celebrate their/your discovery with a knees up and a right old hooley, providing of course they/you are not wheelchair bound.

That is it and hopefully with purity/virtue intact I turn to my last thought of the day which my dear wife of 53 years has just reminded me of.

In Mitchelstown in Cork, in the infamous Diocese of Cloyne, the parishioners of Our Lady Conceived Without Sin parish have removed a large signed photograph of Bishop John McGee from the back of church.  The caption underneath the photograph read  “BE NOT AFRAID, FOLLOW ME”.

Afraid, I would be bloody terrified.

Today I am struck dumb, my mind is not working because my wife has just done something that I am very proud of but for legal reasons I cannot tell you about it, so you will all have to celebrate with me in this anonymous brilliance and I will try and experiment to see if we can get some empathy here.

One of the beautiful things about blog writing is the facility that WordPress give you to analyse where your readers are, how long they spend reading you and when.  This is  magnificent if you are blogging for business reasons, it helps you to know your customer, but when your purpose is not commercial it becomes useless, but interesting.  So today I am going to try and winkle out some of my readers from exotic corners of this planet and try to get them to tell me what turns them on.

I know who is reading the misguided waffle that pours from these keys on a good day.  I know where you are from, how long I keep you interested and how many pages you read before you get bored to tears. Therefore I am today going to analyse the less trafficked areas of the world.  I will list the locations of these readers, no names because I do not have them, but I know what you read and how many minutes of most days you waste, reading this guff that I spew onto the page.

Introduce yourself in the comments facility so I know who you are.  It might help me write something more pertaining to your situation.

Who for example is the person in San Francisco who spent ages reading me on 7th April or for that matter the person in Sacramento.  I think I might know the person in Tallahassee in Florida, who is a regular visitor and has little to do if she reads me regularly, but at least she has introduced herself and congratulated me.  I also think that I might know the person in Oxford, Mississippi who is a frequent reader and as also written nice things in the past.

I can only guess at the person in Rochester, Minnesota, who had a spate in late March but who has run aground since and I can understand why the person in Manchester, New Hampshire spent ages reading me this Monday gone, obviously wishing they were in Manchester in England enjoying the lovely Spring sunshine as opposed to the horrible rainy weather that early April always brings to New England.

The person in Etobicoke, Canada intrigues me, who spent ages reading me on 6th April.  Where is it?  We also have a regular reader in Bolton, Ontario, near Toronto.  I can have an educated guess at the person in San Miguel de Allende, in Central Mexico.  Good morning Eileen, by the way if your name is not Eileen and your a bloke, my apologies but the name definitely suits you.

Whose fancy have I tickled in I’viv, in the Ukraine, who spent three hours reading last week.  I know the people in Falkenberg in Swedan, because they rang me and said how much they have enjoyed the blog and that they had read the lot.  I have news for them, they have only read seven pages, there are 96 of these posts altogether, so keep reading.  The recent visitor from Melbourne worries me, he should be in the nets training hard for the forthcoming tour not sitting on his backside.  You do not realize how good we are.

There is too much traffic in England and Ireland to isolate individuals but the popularity of the blog lies in London, Manchester, Stockport, Huyton, Sale, Atherton, Henfield, wherever that is, Huddersfield, Basingstoke, Boothstown, Wembley, Reading and Sheffield.  As you would expect Dublin and Limerick feature highly in Ireland.

So please get in touch on the comments facility and tell me what you think, what makes you tick and why I should stop making a fool of myself.  Otherwise it is like talking to a brick wall and I was doing that all my life in Manchester.

Get in touch.

The Church in Ireland as had to withstand a few trials by media in the last 20 years.  At the time of Smythe’s exposure in the early 90s, further disclosures in the late 90s, followed by the infamous Ferns Report in 2005 and now the Murphy Report and its aftermath.  The Church learnt that if it kept its head below the parapet, the crisis would blow over and they would be back to the status quo very quickly.

Unfortunately in the aftermath of Murphy, this has not happened and the row goes on and the longer it goes on the Church starts to panic and in the panic more heads appear above the parapet and these heads seem to have the uncanny ability to start talking before engaging their brains, which leads to the gibberish and all the nonsense we have heard from various monsignori and bishops recently, which leads to even more pressure.  This attack on the Church, its thinking and its confusion will go on as the public, day by day, engage even more in the process of retribution.

What has changed from previous trials?  Why is this pogrom likely to succeed?  The answer of course is the internet, the absolute and previously not felt power of the web.  The whole world in five minutes knows what is going on in the back streets of Dublin.  More and more people have gathered strength and confidence from what the net can do and especially the net’s machinery, such as the blog system, Facebook and Twitter.  People in their thousands are writing blogs on a daily basis, on a subject of their choice, which undoubtedly is the state of the Church.  With this power that the blog gives them, they gain in confidence and become even more vituperative.  Thousands more log on to this conniption and become aroused to be part of the process.  Years ago these thousands and thousands would have just idly read the scourge in the newspaper and forgot about it minutes later.  This way you become part of the inquisition and gives you a feeling of empowerment that the individual rarely experiences.

Unless the Church comes up with some original thought and puts some deliverances on the table, I think it is ruined.  The hierarchy has to go to enable this new process to occur and I cannot see that happening.  These bishops are to fond of their massive joints of beef on Good Friday for them to even think of subduing themselves to this form of accountability, but the pressure will not let up.  This country of Ireland is enraged and incensed and the ire cannot be cooled or controlled unless something extremely radical happens.

To change the subject for a moment, to a more happier thought.  I have been recently writing about the trials and tribulations of parish and school life in the 50s and 60s.  Hardly ever in the 48 years since I left school as anybody contacted me regarding those days.  The paths of life have lead us in different ways and to different corners of the world as we went about the difficult business of putting one foot in front of the other.  Now after writing some simple pieces about those far off days, people of my previous aquaintance are contacting me like never before.  It is a very pleasant and strange feeling that as I sit here writing in the backwoods of North Roscommon there are people thinking of me round the world.  The power of the blog is amazing and humbling.  Long may it reign and thank you, all those voices from my past.