Brendan Gerad O'Brien

Lyracrumpawn! I love that name. I love the way it rolls offthe tongue, smooth and rounded like a spoonful of Strawberry Pavlova.

 I think I must have been about five years old the first time I heard my father mention it, and the wonderful, resonant tone of it attached itself to my  brain like a limpet.

 And it stayed there for many days, rolling around in my mind likeone of those endless music tapes, waiting for an opportunity to display itself, and then when the chance did come I let it just trip out as if I knew exactly what I was talking about.

Nobody else did, of course - they thought I was a bit of an eejit having some sort of a fit.

Anyway, I quickly tried to redeem myself by repeating the story that I’d heard my father tell about Lyracrumpawn,a humorous tale that went way over the head of a child but nevertheless drew a spurt of laughter from everyone else.

Apparently the local priest had been invited to represent Ireland during a rare conference with the Pope in Rome, and all the parishioners were anxious that he didn’t go there empty handed. So they had a special collection at Mass every day for a month. They collected a fair amount of money, and when the priest was eventually introduced to His Holiness the Pope, he presented him with the envelope.

“From the people of Lyracrumpawn,for the love of God,” gushed the priest.

The Pope hesitated for thebriefest of seconds.

“For the love of God,” he responded, “where’s Lyracrumpawn?”

OK, on paper not so hysterical, but imagine it being told in a full-bodied Kerry accent, the singsong tone emphasising each nuance to perfection.

But in answer to the Pope’s question, where is Lyracrumpawn?

Well, it’s actually a small district in the rolling North Kerry countryside, generously dotted with an assortment of wonderful old villages that were once the centre of a thriving community with their churches and their pubs and their rows of diverse little shops.

Of course that was back in a more sedate age, long before the arrival of the motorcar and bulk buying, the fridge/freezer and the Environmental Health Officer. It was a time when the surrounding farmers and their families ventured into town on a daily basis to conduct business and exchange a bit of banter with the neighbours while gleaming important snippets of local gossip along the way.

Sadly, as the ever-increasing pace of modern Irish life demands a wider, straighter, faster highway, these sweet, sedate little villages are hardly ever seen nowadays, having been reduced to a blur through the window of a speeding car. They only exist to most people on roadside signs or as a dot on a map, and if you actually find yourself in one of them then you’re lost! You should have stayed on the big  road with the white line down the middle …

But I digress! Tis names I was talking about, the wonderful, colourful local names that have many a visitor to Ireland struggling to pronounce but which invokes in every Kerryman a beautiful image of a rolling, rugged countryside cascading away gently towards the edge of the wild Atlantic ocean.

In fact some of the Kerry villages have such poetry in their names that they’ve been incorporated into many a music hall song. One of the most famous includes Abbeyfeale, Knocknagashel and Duagh in its title. I can’t swear to it but I think Listowel’s very own John B Keane might have mentioned it in one of his plays.

I’m well aware, of course, that every country on earth has its own collection of beautiful place names - here in Wales we have our fair share; Ynysddu and Pontllanfraith, Ynysybwl and Merthyr Tydfil. Wonderful sounds to all Welsh people who hail from the Valleys, of course, but it’s the names that linger in my own memory that taste the sweetest and invoke cherished moments of my childhood adventures during trips to the country.

My mother’s family lived on afarm called Patch, near the village of Duagh. You had to put Listowel in the address or nobody would find it.  So there’s a whole string of places all around there that often pepper her conversation when she’s reminiscing about the good old days.

Rightly or wrongly, the Englishget the blame for the corruption of a lot of names in rural Ireland. The names as they’re pronounced now bear no resemblance to the original Gaelic version. For instance Tralee is a corruption of Tra Lee. The direct  translation should be Lee Strand, Lee being the river on which the town was originally built, and Strand being the stretch of coast where it entered the sea.

No one is sure if it was because the English were just lazy and couldn’t be bothered to learn the proper pronunciation, or if it was simply an administration decision to phonetically transfer the names onto the English version of their maps.

Historian will insist, however, that it was actually a weapon of suppression, deliberately instigated to antagonise and subdue the population by stripping them of their identity, but that’s material for another debate another time - and with people a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than me, I might add.

Anyway, getting back to names, how beautiful is the name Anascaul?

Don’t ask me what it means; I just love thesound of it. We were out there a few weeks ago visiting my nephew in his most amazing house perched halfway up a mountain just outside the town of Anascaul.

Breathtaking is too simple a word for the scene you look down on. Or up, even, when you look out of the back window. The Dingle Peninsula sweeps away from you in a colourful concoction of mountains and troughs, pointing sedately towards America somewhere out there across the ocean.

And Ballybunion! Everyone has heard of Ballybunion and its famous golf course, where ex-president Bill Clinton is reputed to have lost his ball. Well, actually, it was the one that was used to adorn his statue, which stands outside the Garda station in the middle of town, erected to celebrate his visit some years ago.

A big bronze statue showing Bill about to take a putt at a … well, there’s no ball there now. Someone probably decided it looked better in an ornamental case in their front room, to be usedas a conversation opener with the line; “Did you know I’ve got Bill Clinton’sball …”

And the original sign over the hairdressers across the road has been restored, too. I mean, why would anyone think the name Monica’s was going to cause offence to a visiting American President? But still the sensitive town officials had it painted over anyway, just in case.

Now, of course, it’s famous in its own right…  

Hi Guys

Just wanted to let you know that my book Dreamin’ Dreams  - a collection of Irish short stories -has been published as a multi-format e-book and is available to download for just £2.99  from:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21881

And I want all of the proceeds from the sale of this book to go to charity.

This means that for every book sold, a charity will get £2.20! (obviously the publishers have the other 79p)

My big problem, though, is trying to decide which charity to donate to - there are so many out there desperate for funds.

My initial choice was the Down’s Syndrome Association - my daughter Shelly has Down’s Syndrome - but then I saw a documentary about the atrocious conditions in some Romanian orphanages and it was heart breaking!

Later I saw another documentary about children with cancer. And on the news nearly every night we see more disasters that leave millions of people desperately needing our support …

So, because I can’t decide for myself, I’ve decided to ask all my  friends for your advice.

Is there a particular charity you feel would benefit from this, and if so, can you please give me an address as well.

To help generate enthusiasm and get the sales rolling, please forward this note to as many people as you can think of and ask them to purchase the book - you can actually download 50% of the book free so that you can sample the work before you buy - and hopefully we can make a difference to someone a lot worse off than we are …

Also, if you buy the book yourself and you like it, please feel free to write a review. It would be very much appreciated.

Thanks very much for your support

Sláinte

Brendan

Yee Haw!!!

At last the world knows where we are!!!

As the Ryder Cup arrives in Wales, Newport is basking in the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame... unfortunately the canopy of slate grey clouds that's persistently squirting copious amounts of rain all over the Celtic Manor has taken a bit of the sheen off the event, but everyone here is well excited about it.

So if you're passing through the Brynglas Tunnel give us awave as you exit - we live just to the right of the M4.

When the new meets the old …

Picture this: Tralee, Ireland Sept 2010. Traffic lights at a major crossroads. A busy railway station on one junction. Cars, lorries, buses coming from four directions.

Our line is waiting for the green light, two rows of purring vehicles anxious to be moving. And at the front of our line - a piebald pony!

There’s no saddle on the pony, no bridle, and no reins. Not even a blanket! All that’s on the pony is a young lad in jeans and a grey hoodie, his legs dangling like bendy matchsticks with outsized trainers on the end of them.

He’s gripping the pony’s mane with one hand, and in his other hand he’s holding a mobile phone to his ear and his head is bopping animatedly as he talks loudly into it.

And unbelievably, I seem to be the only one who is surprised by this. Everyone else in the vehicles around me have looks of total indifference on their faces.

The lights change to green and the lad prods the pony into a canter with his knees and they casually negotiate the intersection, the lad still engaged in a conversation on his phone.

They turn right while I have to go straight on, and suddenly they’re lost in the fuzz of activity and I curse silently. Why can't you ever find a camera when you need one!

We go to Bristol City quiet a lot. Our favourite place to walk is along the rejuvenated docks area and then up towards the University. We have great fun exploring the side streets, absorbing the history that oozes out of the ancient houses and filters up out of the cobbles too.

For some strange reason, though, we never visited the marvellous Cathedral. We passed it often enough and stopped to admire the beautiful architecture on many occasions, but we never actually went in.

The reason we went in this time, I’m ashamed to say, is because the heavens opened up and raindrops the size of duckeggs made us scatter in search of shelter. And the Cathedral was the closest building with an open door.

But what a wonderful surprise! First thing to hit you is the whisper of tranquillity, the peace, the enormous space that seems completely filled with some sort of tangible holiness that you can almost touch.

And it screamed history! Plaques on the walls in memory of soldiers and dukes who fought and died in 1140, around the time when Robert Fitzhardinge founded the Abbey of St. Augustine. The Chapter House and Abbey Gatehouse are actually still there - imagine! After such as long time … they don’t build stuff like that anymore, I can tell you.

We spent ages just reading the inscriptions on the flagstones that were hundreds of years old and told brief stories about a time when the English language used a long f instead of an s, and it was all thee and thine and trice, forstooth!

We found a tiny garden at the end of a passageway that was a little oasis in the middle of the bustling city, and a tiny café that sold excellent coffee. It’s amazing that the minute you sit down you realize how your feet are pulsating with the pain of standing around for so long, but it was a beautiful place and the pain was worth every throb …

Finally, on the way out, I noticed another archway with another few steps leading down to a private chapel, so I decided to take a quick look. Like numerous others that we’d seen that day, it had a small alter and the statue of some knight or other lying on top of a tomb, and a big glass window that threw a kaleidoscope of colour into the room.

It was when I turned to go that I noticed the little table beside the door. Old and battered, it was barely standing on spindly, chipped legs. But what caught my eye was the child’s school jotter lying on the top of it, all dog leafed and crinkled from use.

Curiosity made me flick it open, and I was immediately mesmerised by the sheer volume of requests for prayers that filled every page. I was fascinated - strangers asking strangers to pray for them, to pray for their particular problems. A problem shared is a problem halved … and an involuntary lump came to my throat!

Dear God, help my husband who had been diagnosed with cancer ...

Lord, look with kindness on my daughter who’s fallen in with a bad crowd and is into drugs ...

Lord, please help my son …

I couldn’t help but read them, visualising the torment that must have been in their soul when they wrote in this little book, took the time to write in this little book, took the time to ask, hoping that strangers would read the requests too and add momentum to the prayer.

I turned another page and saw the spidery, awkward scribble of a child …

Lord, please look after my Mummy, they say she is dying …

I couldn’t read anymore. My eyes had clouded and I felt the lightest touch of something on my cheeks. I wiped it away quickly with the back of my hand and hurried on out to where Jennifer was sitting on a pew in front of the alter.

She looked up and smiled, and I saw the look in her eyes as she glanced curiously at the front of my shirt.

It was a blue shirt, the kind that shows up every spatter of whatever lands on it. I glanced down. There was a scattered pattern of wet spots all down the front.

Before I could explain Jennifer nodded and took my hand.

“I know,” she smiled. “I read them too…”

Being Irish and living in Wales I've been the butt of a few jokes in my time, but some real events that my wife Jennifer (she's Welsh) and I have witnessed during our visits to Ireland have had us in stitches.

One incident happened when we were driving down to Kerry in an old Ford Cortina. I noticed that every time I took a sharp turn to the right there was an irritating clunk from the back axle. This was annoying as I'd only just had the MOT done and had the grommets changed on that back axle! When we got to Tralee I decided to have it checked out. The old guy in the garage told me that his nephew was the expert and he'd look at it, so we gave him an hour to look it over.

When we came back the nephew shook his head slowly and gave a shrug of his shoulders.

"I'd say you need a new axle - this one's had it." he said in a grave whisper.

"How much will that cost?" we queried, aware that we only had so much holiday money to play with.

"About £100," he answered.

In those days, £100 was all of our holiday money. We couldn't afford that!

"What about a re-conditioned one?" I asked him.

He scratched his head with a rusty piece of pipe that he was holding in his hand.

"A re-conditioned one would be about £150," he mumbled.

After a shocked silence I thought I'd better challenge this quote.

"Are you saying a re-conditioned one costs more than a new one?"

"Of course it does," he said, indignantly. "Shur doesn't a lot of work go into a reconditioned one!"

I decided to risk driving it back to Wales, where I took the car back to the garage that did the orignal MOT. The problem? They'd only put the grommet on upside down! Total cost of a grommet - £1.30 ...

...and there's more ...

One beautiful Sunday morning we decided to drive back to Dingle. Hot and thirsty, we arrived at a lovely old pub about eleven forty-five, and decided to have a quick drink before exploring the famous Conor Pass.


We'd positioned ourselves at a comfortable table by the window when the cheerful young barman obounced over.

"As tis Sunday," he said, full of apologies, "I'm afraid I can't serve you until twelve o'clock."

"Ok," we said. "As it's only ten minutes, we'll wait."

"That's grand," he beamed. "And would you like a drink while you're waiting...?"

Finally ...

...did you know that an Irish jester developed the bagpipes for King Brian Boru, just to annoy him?

The King was annoyed all right - and he gave them to his Scots cousins as a joke.

So far the Scots haven't seen the joke ...

The Harness Maker

It’s long gone now, of course, the old Harness Maker’s shop in Lower William Street, Listowel. Yet every time we visit Ireland we still make a point of taking a mini pilgrimage to Listowel to spend a few reflective moments in the street where it once thrived.

Coming out through the archway from the old cattle market near Tae Lane, we look across the narrow, wet street to where the big glass window with the words HarnessMaker written across the middle of it in big dramatic letters used to be. If you concentrated hard enough you could almost see the top of Moss Scanlon’shead, encompassed in a halo of light created by the early evening sunlight, bobbing about inside the shop as he crafted away on something exceedingly important.

A faded image shimmering in the fog of those hazy bygone days, the shop only exists now in the memory of those of us who can still recall a time when the horse was the lifeblood of the rural Kerry community, and Moss Scanlon, Harness Maker, provided an essential service to most of them.

Back in those days people depended on the pony and trap for their basic everyday transport. Bigger horses were crucial for ploughing the fields and pulling the haycarts, and the donkey and cart was the best way for getting the milk to the creamery.  Needless to say, all of those animals required a huge assortment of leather goods to enable them to do their jobs properly, and the necessary saddles, harnesses, blinkers, straps, and a whole variety of other bits and pieces were usually made, and repaired, in the local harnessmaker’s shop.

 Many were the times that my sister Jo, my brother Maurice and I took the bus from Tralee to spend a couple of  weeks of our summer holiday with our Uncle Moss Scanlon, Harness Maker.

As the bus clattered to a halt outside the hardware shop in the town square, we would bounce down the steps and into a cloud of pulsing diesel smoke, carrying a little brown suitcase between us. The street always had a bustling activity about it as we rushed excitedly past the amazing Maid of Erin figure that sticks out from half way up the front of a pub, and we would practically slide around the corner into Lower William Street.

And there itwould be across the road, the door wide open and wonderfully inviting.

The first thing to greet us was the chirping of the two songbirds in the cage above the door, then the wonderful aroma of leather would waft over us, heavy with the scent of dye and a sprinkling of wood shavings. It was magic.

‘Aye, aye,’Moss would say, looking down at us over the top of his glasses.

Moss was a man of very few words but that didn’t matter because his nephew Mick made up for it. Mick worked in the shop with him, and when Mick wasn’t talking he’d be singing, usually some obscure song that nobody had ever heard of before. Or was it the way he actually sang them that made them so unrecognisable?

Anyway, we’d go straight through to the small back room to say hello to our grandmother, who was usually sitting beside the big black range that always had a kettle puffing steam on top of it, and a teapot with tea in it that was as thick as tar.

Dropping thesuitcase in a corner we’d hurry back out to the shop and perch ourselves up on the counter where we could casually observe the general activity of the day, both inside the shop and outside in the hustle and bustle of the busy street.

We were already well aware that the shop was a magnet for all sorts of colourful characters who regularly wandered in for a chat and a bit of jovial banter. The legendary Bryan MacMahon himself once corrected my grammar.

‘It’s not different to,’ he told mesternly in his headmasterly voice. ‘It’s different from.’

Market Day was on the Monday and it was always a riot of activity with assorted animals haphazardly scattered all over the street; horses and carts tied to lamp posts, ducks, chickens, pigs hemmed in by farmers with long sticks, dogs snapping at each other, farmers snapping at the dogs, cows with their rear ends slap up against the shop windows, groups of men disappearing into the invitingat mosphere of the numerous pubs and emerging later in a much better mood, bursts of riotous laughter, lots of animated banter, the odd person playing on a fiddle and bringing a rash of foot tapping and sporadic hand clapping, deals done and sometimes begrudged, and a steady stream of people wandering into our shop with odd bits and pieces of leather equipment that needed repairing.

Some bits, ofcourse, were way beyond any hope of resurrection and then we’d revel in the wonderfully entertaining scenario of Moss Scanlon trying to convince the sceptical farmer that they should be replaced with new ones.

‘How much wouldthat be?’ was usually the first thing that the farmer asked, and no matter what figure Moss quoted, it was always followed by an unbelieving yelp of ‘How much?’

You’d immediately assume that this was going to be another ‘Mission Impossible’ and that the farmer would storm off in a huff. But Moss Scanlon was good, and more often than not the farmer went home carrying an excellent piece of handcrafted kit tucked reverently inside his jacket.

I’m sure Arkwright in ‘Open All Hours’ was actually based on Moss Scanlon, Harness Maker, Listowel.

Sadly, even way back then, times were already changing. And in Moss Scanlon’s view, not necessarily for the better, either.

First came the tractor, followed quickly by the combined harvester and then the threshers and bailers, and slowly but surely the traditional ways of working in the Irish countryside was succumbing to the relentless drip, drip of progress. Gradually the farmer became less and less dependent on the harness maker and his expertise.

Of course it took a good few years for these machines to filter across to the west coast of Ireland, and initially few people could afford them anyway. The cost was much too prohibitive. Then someone created the Co-Operative and they spread like a rash, and the farmers were delighted.

For Moss Scanlon, though, they brought with them the whisper of advancing doom.

Unfortunately Moss Scanlon became ill some time in the late sixties and he was forced to spend many weeks in hospital, and he never really recovered sufficiently to go back to work full time. Mick made a gallant effort and soldiered on regardless, but eventually it all became too much of a struggle for him, and the business faltered.

Moss died sometime in the early seventies and Mick had no choice but to put up the shutters on the big window with M Scanlon, Harness Maker written across it, and close the door for the final time.

There’s still a shop and a big window there, of course, but this one has a Barber’s candy striped emblem outside it, and there’s absolutely nothing at all to indicate that once upon a time a completely different way of life ever existed there. Life has moved on regardless, confining our little bit of history to a few grainy photographs in an old leather album. You try to inject enthusiasm in to them as you point out relevant details to the kids but, regretfully, those delicate, elusive moments belong only to us. And even they are beginning to fade now, getting harder to recall as time takes its toll on us as well.

I take out a handkerchief and blow my nose,and I wipe a sudden speck of dust from my eye before wandering back through the archway.

The End

Don't get me wrong: I love my car. If it wasn't for my car I would never have been able to visit all the wonderful places that I've been to over the years.

    I mean, what's nicer than hopping in the car and bimbling off out to Fenit or Banna for a stroll on a warm evening?

    So it came as a bit of a shock one day during the festival to suddenly realise how much cars have taken over our lives, and how Tralee has totally succumbed to the onslaught of the motor vehicle. Not just succumbed, but surrendered completely!

    This amazing revelation happened at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Coming out of The Bank Of Ireland I was amazed to see that the whole of Castle St had become totally gridlocked. Two cars were straddling the pavement by the corner to Denny St while the drivers went to use the cash point, seemingly oblivious to the chaos they were causing all around them. A large van was trying to turn into Ashe Street, but a truck was parked right on the corner with its rear end poking out while the driver was taking boxes off the back. Between the cars and the truck, the van didn?t have enough room to swing around into Ashe St, so he was stranded in the middle of the road.

    Cars coming from The Mall couldn?t come down Castle St now so there was also a tail back right down to Bridge St.

    So I leant against the railing and idly watched all the fun, and as I casually scanned the faces of the people stuck in the queue of cars I wondered how many of them actually needed to be there at all. How many had a legitimate reason for being there, and how many of them were just cruising through, not going anywhere in particular?

    How many were just looking for a parking space as close to the shops as possible so they didn?t have to exert themselves too much by actually walking? I?m embarrassed to admit I?ve done it myself many, many times. (What? Why can?t I drive into the shop?) 

     But now, as I watched streams of people darting in and out amongst the stationary cars as they crossed over from one side of the road to the other, I was well intrigued by one big question: how did we evolve into a society where one person in a tin can is allowed to commandeer the whole of the street, while the rest of us are crammed onto narrow bits of scabby pavements?

    Across the road from the bank I counted eleven cars parked legally, and four more on the double yellow lines, illegally parked up on the pavement by the traffic lights outside St John?s Church. (Bless them! They were probably in a rush. And the poor sod in the wheelchair trying to squeeze by?  Not my problem! He?ll just have to go around. The old girl with the stick? Didn?t see her, sorry!)

    Anyway, on the other side of the cars a constant line of shoppers was anxiously trying to negotiate their way along the extremely narrow pavement, trying to avoid the cobbles so they didn?t break a foot, sidestepping the advertising boards and dancing around the wheelie bins: mothers with pushchairs looked totally flustered, a group of bemused tourists were hesitating and looking around in a haze of confusion, a lady pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair having to squeeze into a shop doorway until she managed to find a gap to push through. In the short time I was there I counted over one hundred people trying to squeeze through that narrow space, and none of them could stop to look in the shop windows. It would have been impossible: they just didn?t have the room.

    So I wondered what the local retailers think about all this? Surely it must affect their business. They must know that it is the people on foot who keep the shops alive, which is why most other towns in the country are introducing pedestrian zones and wider, safer pavements. You only have to look around to see that most shopper in Tralee gravitate towards the Square and the Mall, where they can shop in comfort without getting a fong up the butt from an impatient car driver.

     As I?ve been in retail for over twenty years I?m well aware that if you want people to buy your merchandise you have to display it in a way that the customers are comfortable while they?re looking at it. They need to be able take their time: they must feel relaxed as they make up their minds on whether to buy or not. But it?s no good if your shop is hidden behind a barricade of cars and your potential customers can?t even pause for a moment to look in your window before being shoved out of the way by the sheer volume of people squeezing by behind the parked cars.

    I can tell you, if I had a business on that street I?d be roaring to have those cars removed and the pavement widened. How can it be right that, for the convenience of eleven people, we totally inconvenience hundreds?

    My curiosity was aroused by now so I thought I?d have a look at the situation in the Mall. I went along and stood outside Der Sullivan?s.  To establish what percentage of cars actually stopped along this stretch of road I counted the first one hundred cars to turn into the Mall from Bridge St. How many stopped? Four! And they were all Taxis! The rest were on their way to somewhere else. So again, did they need to go this way?

    And what about the tourists? We?re moaning about the lack of visitors to the town, but what kind of welcome do we give them? They don?t all want to sit in an auld pub all day supping a pint of the black stuff. They want to see the town, wallow in the history of old Ireland. Tralee is a beautiful town, oozing character, and it?s a treat to discover. But you just can?t enjoy a moment to look at it. If you don?t watch your step as you walk around the streets you?ll crack your shin on a car parked up on the pavement. You can?t use the pedestrian crossing because there?ll be a car parked on it. There?s actually a standing joke in Tralee that if you park on the pavement you?re technically not parked on the yellow lines ? you?re parked over them.

    I have to tell you, though, it opened my eyes. The next time I go to the Post Office I?ll have to ask myself if it?s right to just hop up on the pavement and run in. (Did you notice that if someone gets caught in a queue they?ll moan that they?ve been standing there for twenty minutes, but if they see the traffic warden they?ll swear they were there for just half a minute!)

    I?ve no doubt that some people see absolutely nothing wrong with this casual attitude to casual parking. In fact, a couple of years ago as I was walking up Ashe St ? before the one way system was built ? there was a line of Gardai ?no parking? cones along the front of the Court House. But there were several cars parked between the cones! A very young lady garda was standing near by, busily gazing at nothing in particular, and when I drew her attention to this rather amusing situation she seemed totally un-phased.

    ?Shur they?re not doing any harm!? she muttered before wandering off to the other side of the street, glancing back at me once or twice as if I was a bit slow in the head.

    So what do we do about it? Is it something we should be concerned about? Should we put a concerted effort into bringing Tralee up to the standard and discipline enforced in all the other towns in the developed world? Should we make the town pedestrian friendly so that the residents of the town, and the numerous visitors and tourists whom we try to encourage to come here, can see the town in safety and not have to risk life and limb while trying to do so?

    Or is it a quaint auld way of life, an throwback to the slower pace and casual attitude of bygone days, that we should treasure at all costs - until we grind to a complete stop?

The End

My mother is five feet two, eighty-four years old and needs a stick to help her get about.

A gentle lady, and very religious too, she goes to Mass most mornings to pray for everyone! She's fiercely proud that she still has thick ginger hair without too many silver streaks in it, and even though she has a bad heart (she's had a pacemaker for over ten years now) she's also fiercely independent, preferring to do everything for herself.

'While I'm still able ?' is her philosophy.

On Mondays she usually meets her friend Philly outside the church, and they bimble off together to the local Senior Citizen's club where they have lunch and a game of Bingo. On the way to the club they call into the little shop on the corner for a newspaper and a few bits and pieces, then they cross the road and take a short cut up McCowan's Lane.

Last Monday Philly didn't turn up, so she went off on her own, stopping at the shop for her newspaper and a Lottery ticket. Because it was raining she didn't take a handbag with her, she just took a purse which she kept in the pocket of her raincoat. 

Crossing the road to McCowan's Lane she didn't notice the young man rush past her.

When she was half way along the lane she was suddenly aware of someone coming towards he, walking very fast. He was in his early twenties; over six feet tall and heavy built, with thick blond hair and Buddy Holly glasses.

Apparently he gave a beaming smile and said 'Excuse me, madam, could you tell me how I can get to ?'

My mother can't recall exactly what happened next; except that she felt very uncomfortable about the way he stood so close to her, towering over her.

She tried to step back from him and suddenly she was falling hard against the wall. Her mind was in turmoil ? did she trip, or did she stagger awkwardly and cause herself to lose her balance?

At that moment in time she actually believed it was her own fault that she'd fallen! She felt sooo embarrassed. She'd made a fool of herself!  She turned to see where the young man was, and was amazed that the b*$!*%.d toe-rag was running away towards the main road.

She manager to find her stick and get up, but even then she was still totally confuse about what had actually happened. She dusted herself down and started walking on, thankful that she hadn't received any serious injury. OK, her pride, but that was something she'd get over ? until she discovered that her purse was gone.

Bless her; she still refused to accept what had just happened. She tried to convince herself that she'd probably left her purse on the counter in the shop, so she went back there.

Unfortunately, as is quiet common in Ireland these days, the young girl behind the counter was a non-national with very poor English, and according to my mother, was not very responsive either, so my mother decided to go straight home. She sobbed all the way to her own back gate.

It wasn't the money in the purse that upset her. 50euro, that's all there was! No, what really upset her was the other stuff that she always carried with her. To most people these things would be worthless, but to her they were a huge chunk of her life. A small pearl Rosary that my father used to pray with before he died two years ago. Little black and white photos that oozed history, her history. She would have been married sixty years in March 2006, but my father died on 19th Feb that year, so she carried a Mass card with his picture on it.  Bits of paper with all our phone numbers on, little cards from her grandchildren ?

Anyway, once she was back in her own house anger took over. How dare this little shit take her stuff! She had driven trams in Birmingham City, England, during the blitz of World War 2, when the German were dropping bombs every single day and night. One time she'd just left for work when a bomb hit the house where she was staying and killed seven of her comrades. She lived through all that and then went on to raise eight children! And some drugged up scroat takes her stuff???

She phoned my brothers and sisters, who all congregated at the house. The detectives came within ten minutes, and apparently they were extremely efficient, kind and very understanding.

They went back to the shop and looked at the CCTV, established the time that she was there, identified the guy, who was actually standing right behind her as she paid for her paper. He was known to the Gardai. He was a drug addict.

The chip shop the other side of the street also has a camera outside the door and it picked him up as he pushed past her and went up the lane in front of her, and then moments later came running out and away up the street.

They caught him within half an hour, and she was so relieved that they also found the purse with all her stuff still in it. He's spent the money by then, of course, had his fix and immediately started crying with remorse.

But meanwhile my mother was drained of all her confidence, saying that she'd never be able to set foot outside the door again ? she was terrified! She couldn't face the fear of being attacked again, she was old and frail, she'd only get hurt again. She had been reduced to putty because we're not allowed to just terminate crap like that.

I know it's a terrible thing to do, but I checked what money I could reasonably afford and phoned an acquaintance in Ireland to actually put a contract on this guy. I wanted retribution, revenge; I wanted to take something precious from this guy ? like his kneecaps. Wipe him out totally ?he had a choice. No one becomes a drug addict ? they choose to take drugs ? they have a choice!

He didn't give my mother a choice!