On Saturday, I went to see the film Kneecap. I’m not sure why.
There had been publicity about it winning awards, about it possibly receiving a nomination for an Academy Award. It seemed the sort of thing about which people might talk. Perhaps students at school would mention it.
It was advertised as a biopic on the Belfast hip-hop group of the same name. Then I read a review that said it was a fictionalised version of the story of the band. It was hard to discern what element of …
Sitting in a Liverpool cafe, my companion reflected on his youth in Belfast. From a Protestant working class family, he believed his community had been misled by the unionist politicians and had been misunderstood by the British government.
On the anniversary of the First Day of the Battle of the Somme, the re-reading of Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme creates a sense that the history of Northern Ireland would have been different if the British government had understood what it was that shaped the …
It was dipping my arms into the sink of hot water that recalled the memories.
We were a blue collar family. We lived in a semi-detached council house with an outside toilet. There was no central heating in my younger years, we kept warm with a coal fire in the living room and a paraffin heater as required elsewhere.
The bathroom was heated by the paraffin heater, an appliance that seemed efficacious if you stood within eighteen inches of it, but that otherwise barely took the chill off the air.…
Yesterday, it was the 106th anniversary of the Battle of Messines. Together with the former Irish army officer with whom I am tourin the Western Front, I went to the grave of Major Willie Redmond.
Since the centenary years of the Great War have passed, it seems to have become a lonely spot. There was no evidence yesterday of recent visits.
Major Willie Redmond MP, brother of John Redmond who was the leader of the Irish parliamentary party, and a leading Irish nationalist in his own right, continues to lie …
It was warm today, perhaps for the first time this year.
In the bright evening sunshine, he walked unsteadily towards me. A man who looked as though he would once have been fit, time and substances seem to have taken their toll. His face was battered, his nose broken, his eyes puffy, his ears misshapen.
’Are we playing tonight, Bro?’ he asked, nodding at the red and white scarf I wore.
´We are,´ I said.
’Who are we playing?’
I wasn’t sure of the pronunciation of ´Drogheda’ in these parts.…
One of the blinds in my classroom does not fully roll up, it jams about 30 centimetres from the top. It is not a problem. It is a large room with windows on two sides. There are six blinds on each of those sides, a malfunction of one blind is a matter of no consequence. However, the blind not rolling up appears to be a problem for one of the cleaning staff. Each morning, I go into the room and eleven of the blinds are set at a height to …
