Going back to the city

Posted on 21st August 2021 by Ian

Sitting at a cafe in Dublin at 5.30 pm yesterday, the phone rang. I stepped away from the tables and stood in an entrance just off Ann Street. The head teacher of a Dublin school offered me a post in his school. It means a return to a city dear to my heart.

It was on August 26th 1981 that I first set foot on Irish soil. It was 7.30 in the morning and we had travelled all night.

I bought a Daily Telegraph from a paper seller standing at the entrance to the Carlisle Pier and we walked the three hundred yards to Dun Laoghaire station. In retrospect, going to the station was a daft thing to do, we could have walked the distance to the seasonal youth hostel in half the time we stood waiting for the train.

The youth hostel was a primary school that was closed for the summer. The metal bunks were in the classrooms. We knocked on the door of the warden’s office; she appeared in her night dress, unaccustomed to arrivals at 8.00 in the morning.

We were allocated bunks and went to rest, but, of course, the place was a hive of activity by that time. I attempted to read the newspaper, but there was the urge to be out and about.

There was another lengthy wait at the station for a train into the city. The suburban rail service in those days was provided by elderly locomotives pulling carriages which were empty except for rows of plastic seats down each side. There were few enough jobs for people to be going to, anyway.

We rolled northwards into the city centre and got off at Pearse station where we were told that we could buy fifteen day passes for train and bus travel throughout the country. The request seemed an unfamiliar one and we were sent to an office at one end of the platform. The man behind the glass glared at us suspiciously.

We explained what we wanted, twice. He obviously doubted our ability to pay. “Those passes are very expensive.”

We explained that we knew how much they were, we had read the tourist board information.

“They are £52 – each. Can you afford that?”

We took unfamiliar banknotes from our wallets and, almost with an air of disgust, he stamped the passes.

Exhaustion crept up as the day progressed and we caught a train back to Dun Laoghaire.

A fine afternoon with bright sunshine and the gentlest of breezes. Walking to the West Pier and finding a deserted spot on the seaward side, we stretched out in the sun. The granite flagstones were warm and the sunlight covered like a cosy blanket.

First impressions last. Ireland will forever be a place of warmth and embrace.

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The interesting dead

Posted on 19th August 2021 by Ian

Perhaps it is because the names are familiar. Perhaps it is because I can recall the faces and the voices of many of those whose mortal remains lie beneath the gravestones. Perhaps it is because I know more people who are dead than who are living. Whatever the reason, the cemetery at the end of Windmill Road is always a place of fascination.

It was said that during the days of Soviet Communism, in days when State policy towards religion was at best one of repression and at worst one of violent persecution, that people would go to cemeteries as “spiritual” places. People might not have been members of any church, they might not have had any explicitly religious beliefs, but among the graves they found something they did not find elsewhere. What did those people find among the dead? The question might still be asked, for the inclination to visit graveyards is not confined to any time or place. Why have death and final resting places retained such a fascination?

Perhaps it is about a confrontation with the one absolute certainty in life (or, if you agree with Benjamin Franklin who said “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, one of the two absolute certainties).  Perhaps walking through a cemetery is a declaration that life continues, that death has not yet had its moment. Perhaps cemeteries, far from being morbid, fill one with an awareness of life, create a sense of urgency to make the most of whatever time may be left.

Thoughts provoked by a graveyard presumably vary from person to person for each one’s memories are unique, each one will have a string of different associations, different moments and scenes will be evoked by even the plainest of gravestones.

Personally, a graveyard is an opportunity to reflect, to read inscriptions on the headstones and memorials and to ponder those whose mortal remains lay beneath the soil. The stories behind the inscriptions are what intrigue; the characters, their experiences, their encounters with life in all its rawness.

Perhaps it is a mark of passing years, but walking among the gravestones has become a common pastime. In casual moments when a cemetery gate might easily be passed, there is always a temptation to pause. Graveyards in other places are as fascinating as those near to home. There is a peacefulness and a questioning – and sometimes even a story to take away.

 

 

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A blithering idiot goes forth

Posted on 18th August 2021 by Ian

“Dad, please try not to look like a lost tourist.” My son admonished me on the telephone.

He had tried to explain to me how to buy a Leap card to use on the trains, trams and buses. With travel costs capped at €9 a day, the card is the economical choice for travel in the city when I visit on Friday.

“I’ll ask the driver on the bus at the airport,” I said. “I’ll pretend I’m up from the country.”

He sighed.

The conversation recalled my ineptitude at the beginning of a much longer journey in 2009. It was the first of my five visits to Rwanda. Inspired by Marcus Brody from Indiana Jones I sat at Heathrow Airport and wrote a blog post called Brody goes forth:

Oh dear, not a great start to the innings. Two wickets down without scoring.

Reaching Dublin Airport at 1130 for a 1340 flight seemed a healthy way to begin. But the omens were not good once check in was reached. It’s self service now, which all worked fine until the tricky bit: peeling the backing off the sticky strip on the baggage label. An exasperated staff member finally came over and said, “If sir pulled where it says ‘pull here’, it might work”. She took the label off me and had it stuck to the bag in a second.

It was 1200 before the fall of the first wicket. Through security, I searched for my phone. It was not in my jacket; it was not in my bag; it was not anywhere. Frantically calling Herself, to whom I had insisted that I had checked and definitely had everything. I got her answering service. “Don’t panic, Ian”, I tell myself, “You were going to buy a SIM card in Kigali, now you will have to buy a phone as well”.

Half an hour passed. Just check everything else is in order. A desperate search of the bag shows a special present being taken for a friend who is hosting me for two nights is also missing. Blast! It is still lying on my desk.

Another phone call and it’s the answering service again. “Hello, things are going from bad to worse”.

The Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow is crowded and bumpy and my hat got squashed under some oaf’s bag that is twice the size of what is meant to be permitted. It is half an hour after the plane has landed before the baggage reaches the hall.

Think now, think; even Brody is not as bad as this.

The present is replaced. It is not what was planned, but will be acceptable. What about the phone? A call to Dublin to discover the phone is at home, with the present.

Kenya Airways has the self-service check in. A smiling blonde at the bag drop says the boarding cards I have printed for the Nairobi and Kigali flights are for middle seats and would I not like window or aisle ones? She tears up the original boarding cards and prints off new ones. That’s what air travel used to be like.

Terminal 4 is as busy as an Irish country railway station on a Sunday afternoon. The cafe prices are exorbitant, but there’s WH Smith. Cornish pasty, £2.49 and a pint of milk, 60p.

The world seems not so bad until realizing that this is only Heathrow. The journey hasn’t started yet; just wait for the real problems.

If one discounts the bout of food poisoning which required that I be taken to a clinic in Kigali, the visit passed without problems.

 

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Wand’rin’

Posted on 17th August 2021 by Ian

Outside the Classic Cinema in Yeovil, the colours of the poster remain unfaded in my memory.  Paint Your Wagon was a musical with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. It was 1970 and not only was the film on release but Lee Marvin topped the pop charts.  His gravelly rendition of Wanderin’ Star, lines expresses the reality of human experience 

I was born under a wandrin’ star
Mud can make you prisoner, and the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, but only people make you cry

It was a year later, in 1971, that the band America’s song A horse with no name reiterated Marvin’s sentiments. The song  evokes a place of vastness, a place of emptiness. A vast emptiness that allows space to be oneself, to remember one’s own name:

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

Mud, plains, snowfields, deserts, might be uninviting, but the open road is filled with attraction. To be driving across the vastness of the United States, between one small town and another, staying in motels where they barely ask your name, eating in diners where farmers sit down to thirty-two ounce steaks and where, when the server says “have a nice day”, the words might actually be meant: such a prospect would be pleasing.  To be coming from nowhere and heading toward nowhere, the only thing mattering being the journeying: it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

To be no more than a person journeying through brings freedom, it also brings one the infinite power of powerlessness. It’s the line from Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” To be someone without a place, without standing, to be no more than a casual passer by, allows one the unfettered freedom to speak the truth to oneself, to call things as they are, to ask for integrity. Of course, no-one may be listening, but what would be the problem? At least you have remembered your name, remembered the person you were.

Does escape demand vast, empty spaces, though? In a sparsely populated place, is it not more likely that everyone will know who you are and know all of your business? Isn’t wandering easier in an anonymous place? Isn’t it easier to disappear in a crowd than in a small community? A city neighbourhood might the romance and adventure of the open country, but it is more likely to be a place without pain.

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Genealogical nonsense

Posted on 16th August 2021 by Ian

Enthusiasts for the writing of C.J. Sansom will be familiar with the tales of  Matthew Shardlake, a barrister in Tudor times pursuing cases against the background of violent conspiracies, royal intrigues and religious extremism.

The tales bring encounters between Shardlake and historical characters, including the Tudor monarchs. Shardlake’s nemesis is a fellow Lincoln’s Inn barrister Sir Richard Rich. Rich was a powerful man who was to become Lord Chancellor of England, it is not hard to imagine him being the ruthless character who appears in the novels.

In Heartstone, Shardlake has been severely beaten. His assailant planned to return and kill him. Shardlake realizes how foolish it is to try to deal honestly with someone as devious as Richard Rich.

I forced myself to my feet, biting my lip against the pain. ‘God’s death,’ Leacon burst out. ‘West must be mad, leaving you in here.’

‘He meant to deal with me last night, but by the time he’d finished getting the stores some men had been stationed on guard. He and Richard Rich planned this yesterday. I thought I had made a bargain with Rich. Dear God, I was a fool.’

Sharply intelligent, the Sir Richard Rich is an immoral Machiavellian figure with regard only for his own personal advantage. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper called Rich a man “of whom nobody has ever spoken a good word”.

It was with a sense of alarm, then, that I discovered that the Ancestry website suggested that Robert Rich, the first Earl of Warwick was one of my forebears. The earl was grandson of Sir Richard Rich.

It was baffling. The ancestors whom I was researching were Warwicks, a yeoman family from the village of Farnham in Essex. My great great grandmother was an Ann Warwick, and the family line from her to the early Sixteenth Century was straightforwardly recorded in parish registers. How could the Tudor villain have been a family member?

Where I had Robert Warwick, a yeoman from a small village on the Essex-Hertfordshire border, Ancestry instead suggested the Earl of Warwick.  The family trees suggested by Ancestry included two that connected the Farnham family with the aristocrat. One person had put a red heart after the earl’s name, obviously pleased at finding what they believed to be a famous forebear.

Staring at the laptop screen, I realised what had happened. The computer-generated family tree programme was unfamiliar with the habit of titled families using their titles as surnames and had confused Robert Warwick with Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick. With a smile, I clicked “ignore,” each time the earl’s name appeared.

It is hard to imagine how many spurious family connections that Ancestry makes.

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