School Days

I have been reading biographies of various writers recently, and I've noticed something interesting. At least three well-known writers-- C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, and George Orwell-- wrote scathing accounts of their schools, which other former pupils insisted were very unfair and distorted.

It made me wonder why I've never written an account of my schooldays, since I've written everything else. Here goes. I'm not going to do a Lewis, Dahl or Orwell as my schools were all fairly good, even if I was mostly unhappy at them.

All of my schooling was in Irish language schools, a fact I appreciate now, but didn't back then.

My earliest schooling was in a school called St. Ciaran's in Glasnevin. Actually this was the school temporarily playing host to my own school, Scoil an tSeachtar Laoch, while our own school was being built. I'm not sure how the arrangement worked exactly, or whether the school had pupils of its own.

Scoil an tSeachtar Laoch means "School of the Seven Heroes", referring to the seven signatories of the 1916 Rising. (The seven towers in Ballymun were also named after them.) It was set up by parents in Ballymun and was unusual, at that time, for not being run by the Catholic Church, although all the religious instruction was Catholic, and Sunday Mass (through Irish) was held in its assembly hall at one point.

But I am jumping ahead. What I remember of Scoil Ciaran's was the darkness of the classrooms and the ferocity of the recreation yard. I doubt it was at all ferocious, but it seemed so to me, as I was a very timid and shy child. I found it hard to walk from one end to another without being knocked over by some racing child or other. I can remember succeeding in this one day and feeling a huge sense of accomplishment.

One day I had a pair of "spectacles" made from an egg-box that someone from my family had made me. A boy in my class begged me to let him wear them. I was reluctant as I thought he'd break them. He did, though not on purpose.

Another time I can remember several of us watching two birds on a wall and chanting the rhyme: "Two little dickie birds". The birds obliged us by following the actions of the chant exactly, to my amazement.

This was the time of Benny Hill's popularity-- a TV comedian noted for slapstick and sexual innuendo. The latter was completely over my head, but I had perfected one of his funny walks, or some approximation of it. I remember two boys in my class, brothers, were so amused by this they harassed me to do it over and over again.

There were two pictures in the classroom which stick in my mind. One was a large framed photograph of John Paul II. He looked benevolent and rugged to my eyes. Another, which had a much greater effect on me, was a picture of a field of corn. This to me has ever after been a symbol of wholesomeness, spiritual health, rootedness, and the joy of the ordinary. Although I am a city boy who can barely tell one tree or bird from the other, I've always had a sense that the rural is spiritually and culturally superior.

We moved to our new school before I had spent a year in Scoil Ciaran. (We must have, as I was still in "low babies". In Ireland, junior infants is "low babies" and senior infants is "high babies".) I remember us sitting in the assembly hall listening to a talk on fire safety in the new building. The speaker warned us of the danger of death in such-and-such a situation and I can remember feeling appalled that children could actually die.

The first Star Wars film was released the year I was born and the trilogy was still riding its first wave of popularity. I remember it was so omnipresent-- in terms of toys, books, etc.-- that our teacher had to correct us on Darth Vader's name. We all called him Dark Vader, naturally enough. I also remember one of my classmates staring obsessively at a picture of Princess Leia in Jabba the Hutt's cage.

We were allowed to speak English in low babies and high babies, but from first class onwards we were expected to speak only Irish. I remember feeling so intimidated by this that I decided I wouldn't speak at all. In fact I spoke very little all through school as I was extremely shy and withdrawn.

In first class we had our first male teacher. I always preferred women teachers. He was the headmaster and was loud and somewhat brash-- from a Cork Gaeltacht. Here I am in danger of falling into the same trap as Orwell and the others. I know this fellow is not a bad chap, he rallied to help my family when my mother died many years later, giving us a loan of a water boiler to make tea for the wake, among other things. I've had a few friendly adult interactions with him. And yet, he sent me to walk home in my socks one day and that still rankles with me.

This is how it happened. We were obliged to wear slippers in class in order to protect the carpets; we would remove our shoes and put them in wooden slots, purpose-built for this, at the front of the class. One day I had forgotten some book or other and this teacher sent me home to get it. I was trying to change into my shoes but he was so irritated and impatient with me that he hurried me out the door while I was still in my socks. He must not have noticed I was still in my socks, as strange as it seems, or perhaps I was too timid to point it out. (Why didn't my classmates, who were watching? I don't know.) I made my way home until two women, passing by, asked me why I was wearing no shoes. I explained the matter, upon which they marched me back into my classroom and berated the teacher in front of the whole class. It was striking to see how, after having been such a terrifying presence moments before, he completely collapsed before them. I've never been able to warm to him since, water boiler or no water boiler. He's retired now. God bless him. It must be hard to be a teacher.

On another occasion, he drew a kind of grid on the blackboard, in marker, and was subsequently surprised that he couldn't wipe it off. He made strenuous efforts to do so. Impractical as I am, I was surprised he would make such a mistake, even at that age.

We had free lunches at this school. We were given a small carton of milk, a choice of a corned beef or cheese sandwich, and a bun. There must be some innate prejudice against institutional food in the human spirit, because I remembered realising with surprise, many years later, that the buns were actually quite nice-- after years of eating them reluctantly. Not so the sandwiches-- the butter tasted funny and there was too much gelatinous stuff in the corned beef.

One of the parts of school I enjoyed the most was the "teilgóir", or overhead projector. We always seemed to use this first thing in the morning, and it was particularly atmospheric on dark winter mornings. The curtains would be pulled and the slides would be projected on the screen. The only slides I can remember were scenes from Irish mythology, but I'm sure there were others. The glowing, frozen image on the screen, coupled with the darkness in the room, always gave me a deep sense of solemnity, wonder, and being somehow outside of ordinary time.

It has become obvious to me that one blog post is not going to be adequate to this subject. I'll have to come back to it.

Fifteen-Year Old Poems

Some poems from my 2005 folder, which I haven't blogged before. (If you think these are bad, you should see the ones I haven't put up.)

Yes, I was pretty down in 2005. My life was not going anywhere and I had no spiritual faith to buoy me up. I felt that history and culture was stagnating, as the second poem expresses, and that all we had to look forward to was more of the same, forever. I was also reading a lot of Philip Larkin, which I think is pretty evident.

Thrombosis

They call it the rush-hour, the time when nothing moves.

He tries out a brand-new curse as the traffic creeps

Down roads that knew long ago the beat of hooves.

In the city of fevered dreams that never sleeps

Life strains to look like the world on magazine shelves

And only the bed-sit crowd clock out at five

While the men in the crumpled shirts convince themselves

That the heart that beats the most is the most alive.

 

Right now, out there, someone is walking a road

That goes from nowhere to nowhere. To exchange

Just isn't on. You don't take off this load

Till the doctor and undertaker come in range

And you've coughed up every curse the world is owed.

What made him think despair was something strange?

 

Apathy

Now all the seas of the world are at low tide

And all the various forms of the verb "to be"

Seem unpronounceable. The dawn is old.

Strange to think anyone ever laughed or cried

Or started a war. To live is just to see

A roll of plain beige wallpaper unrolled.

What hasn't been said by now? What hasn't been tried?

How keen they were this time last century!

But the fire is gone by now and the room is cold.

Unhappy Birthdays

We learn to hesitate at twenty-two--

To wonder what most people would call young.

You look down more in climbing, rung by rung--

So much clear air between you and the ground.

But most people are further up than you--

The small hand moves. You just make out the sound.

Before too long it echoes in your years--

Now a statistic is a cause for shame.

Changing, and trying hard to stay the same--

They're both ridiculous. What have you got?

Ken's a professor and Yvonne's engaged.

You scan your mirror face, and wonder what

Most people would consider middle-aged.

What do you fear more-- death or twenty years?

On an Old Man Who Didn't

When you begin to reminisce

About the good old days

I squirm at your invented bliss

And advertiser's praise.

But still I listen just to please

And why should I condemn?
I know the doors, I have the keys,

But I will not open them.

I will not turn the lock to show

Your treasury's a hoax--

Extinguishing your eye's soft glow

With cruelly called-for jokes.

But finger with fake ecstasies

The glass you call a gem.

I know the doors, I have the keys,

But I will not open them.

Cookery p.138

These pictures of food eaten long ago--

Voluptuous as models, framed like art.

The light makes tender love to a jam tart.

Pasta and sauce embrace in a tableau.

As elegant as if we did not know

The whole unpleasant, mean, digestive part.

Here is our contradiction rendered pat--

The brute and beauty, moulded into one.

Mere fodder, something made worth looking at--

Our spirit lavished on a hot cross bun.

A healthy beast would bolt it and be done;

Having a soul is not to stop at that.

The Curtains

He thought, when he was just a boy,

And mother drew the curtains closed

(Hiding the darkness from his eye)

It slew the ghosts that he'd supposed.

His mother knew the secret way

To shrink the world into a room.

When evening tea could keep at bay

The shadows in the growing gloom.

The magic didn't pass to him.

He draws the curtains, but outside

The world remains, grows cold and dim,

And would not notice if he died.

The Baptists

The nameless baby sleeps, and does not hear

The women practice different syllables.

Somebody snorts on hearing "Guinevere",

But deep inside, each woman of them thrills

At visions of those unspent years unfolding:

A ghost parade of faces, school-yards, rites.

She sleeps, oblivious to their delights

The future like a secret she is holding.

 

Janet and Miriam, Rachel and Louise;

They haggle on a sound that will mean her.

A name that will outlive their fantasies

And one day, many years from now, will stir

Devotion or antipathy or pride

Or all of them at once, in other hearts.

The baptists sigh, and know, for all their arts

Another world will own what they decide.

 

The Unstopped Watch

 

I was cleaning out old boxes when I found it;

A long discarded watch that hadn't stopped,

Right to the very minute. Quite astounded

(Though God knows why), I thought of old men dropped

In lonely nursing homes, sadly repeating

The stories that had meant something before

Or mental cases, something monstrous eating

Their minds, behind a monstrously shut door.

Monstrous, somehow, those hands should go on beating

In this small world where time would move no more.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Well, it's one of my blog traditions to mark neglected traditions like Guy Fawkes Day, so here goes.

As you know, Guy Fawkes was a (Catholic) conspirator who tried to blow up the British parliament in 1605.

For many years the foiling of the plot was commemorated in Britain. Wikipedia says it was "the predominant English state commemoration" in the early 1620s. But even when I was a kid, I remember the English comics used to print Guy Fawkes masks which you were supposed to cut out and attach to a cardboard base.

Now, of course, although commemoration of the day (or even the night) seems to have almost disappeared, Guy Fawkes is an icon of the radical left, a fact which occasioned this rather funny meme:

 Looking for "Guy Fawkes" poems, I came across this piece of folk doggerel which is not exactly polished, but rather charming:

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot ;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent.
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd,
With a dark lantern and burning match

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip Hoorah !
Hip hip Hoorah !

A penny loaf to feed ol'Pope,
A farthing cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,'
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head,
Then we'll say: ol'Pope is dead.

The Backdrop in Holy Pictures

Apologies for another long hiatus in blogging. I haven't been in the library for a long while, so I haven't had access to a desktop. I'm trying to tap this one out on a phone, though it's irksome.

Today I'm writing about a rather strange topic, and wondering if I'll manage to so much as convey the reason it interests me. I'm writing about the backdrops of holy pictures, and my lifelong fascination with them.

They often come into my mind when I'm praying the mysteries of the rosary. I usually imagine painted depictions of the rosary mysteries, whether actual paintings or imaginary ones. Somehow I seem unable to picture the sacred scenes in a "photo-realist" manner.

And the backdrops, strangely, speak to me almost as powerfully as the action in the foreground.

The non-human world around us can seem so starkly indifferent. (I was going to say "the inanimate world", but when I think about it, it includes plants and animals as well.) We might project our own moods into the natural world around us but, ultimately, we know they are without feeling, without personality, without a soul. They are a brute fact-- just there.

Sometimes, this has appeared to me as a kind of nightmare, especially whenever I've inclined towards philosophical materialism. The world doesn't care. If the human race were to disappear tomorrow, it would carry on as normal.

Thomas Hardy says in some poem, I think, that it would be a relief if the universe were actually hostile. Its indifference is far worse than its malice. The thousands of people who die in an earthquake or a tsunami suffer meaningless, motiveless deaths.

And, even apart from natural disasters, the sheer weight and solidity of the physical world can be overwhelming. To me, at least. Looking up into the night sky or into the tracts of the ocean makes me shudder rather than swoon. It seems so alien. Consciousness seems like an orphan in the cosmos.

What kind of reactions are these in a Christian? But then, I was an atheist for so many years of my life, I have retained many atheist "instincts". Or perhaps it is pessimism rather than atheism. Faith, for me, is not the obvious thing, the given. Faith is the second thought. Futility is the first thought. My natural way of perceiving the world around me is not as God's creation, but as a brute fact.

When I look at the backdrop of holy pictures, that weight lifts for a moment, and the relief is glorious.

It's more than relief. It's suddenly seeing everything fall into place, into the correct order. Those mountains, those clouds, those trees, those buildings... now they are not merely clumps of matter, but the stage scenery for a sacred story. And that sacred story is not only the Annunciation, or the Baptism of our Lord, but all of history.

The Incarnation changes everything, but by raising it onto a a new level. The beauty and the innocence of the physical world is saved. The rivers flow on, the clouds drift, the trees send forth leaves. But now, it has a meaning. Now, it witnesses to the Eternal.

Disappearing Comments

 Many thanks to everybody who has ever commented on this blog. I really appreciate comments.

In recent times, comments have been disappearing in my filter. I really have to moderate them to avoid spam, but it's vexing that real comments enter into a black hole. Apologies to those whose (much appreciated) comments have disappeared.

A Joke I Made Up

A sacristan arrived at church a half-an-hour before Mass one Saturday morning and saw that the priest was on the phone, obviously having a rather intense conversation. When he finally hung up, he said: "That was a parishioner whose mother is dying. She left the Faith years ago but now she's hedging over whether she wants the Last Rites or not. She's touch and go. If she says she wants them, I want to rush over there straight away. I'm not sure whether we should go ahead with Mass."

"Oh no!", said the sacristan.

"It's not just that", said the priest. "All the altar boys went to a barbecue yesterday and got food poisoning. Every single one of them is laid up sick today."

"Oh no!" said the sacristan.

"And it's not just that, either", said the priest. "I can't for the life of me find the key for the cupboard with the Communion wafers. I always hang it on the same hook and it's not there now. I've looked everywhere."

"Look", said the sacristan, "there's no way we can go ahead with Mass under these circumstances I'll go out and make the announcement."

The church was beginning to fill up, so the sacristan stepped up and said: "Folks, we're very sorry, but Mass can't go ahead today. All of our servers are down, we can't access the Host, and a terminal is giving us all kinds of trouble."

A Farewell to Irish

 Well, not quite, but...

Recently I've decided that I'm going to give up my efforts (which I've pursued for several years now) to gain fluency in the Irish language. It just seems futile.

My ambition was to attain the level where I could get an article published in an Irish language publication. However, this seems more and more unattainable to me.

Grammar is my great obstacle. I can conduct a conversation in the Irish language fairly well. Nobody cares very much if you make mistakes in conversation. As long as you can keep the ball in the air, that's the main thing. But writing is a different ball game entirely.

The abstract study of grammar completely flummoxes me. For instance, every noun in Irish is gendered male and female, which has a big effect on how they are used in sentences. I can't imagine how anybody ever learns the gender of every single noun they use. It seems to me like having to learn the chemical composition of every object you come into contact with during the day, before you are allowed to touch it. I suppose it's done by a kind of intuition. I don't have that intuition.

I don't even understand English grammar! I've never understood the distinction between "to whom" and "to who", and all that stuff. And yet English has always been my strength. It was by far my strongest subject in school-- I got a fair amount of acclaim for it. A schoolfellow I met again, a few years ago, told me: "It was like being in school with Seamus Heaney". And yet I was mediocre, at best, when it came to Irish, French, and German. (My German teacher once wrote "I'm afraid this is rubbish" on my homework. She was a notorious battle-axe, but I think she was probably fair on that occasion.)

I'd always suspected it was simply a lack of interest that made the difference. I was, of course, interested in getting good grades in those other languages, but I wasn't very interested in them for themselves. All my leisure reading had been in English-- and though I've always felt poorly-read, in truth I'd read a lot by my early teens, comparatively speaking.

But I'm not so sure that it was simply a lack of interest, any more. I grew ferociously interested in Irish, in recent years, and I read a huge amount in it. I read so many of the back issues of Irish language journals, in the library, that I eventually found it hard to find an article (I mean one that interested me) that I hadn't read at least once already. But the magic never happened.

I forgot to mention that all my schooling, up until the age of eighteen, was in Irish language schools. So I have experienced countless hours of hearing Irish spoken by fluent Irish speakers, all through my formative years. (The teachers were fluent, that is. The kids spoke a kind of patois, and always spoke English when unsupervised.) And yet I've still never been fluent.

Why am I relatively good at English, but bad at all other languages? Is it simply because English happened to be my first language? Sometimes I wonder if it's more than that, if English is somehow congenial to my mind. Perhaps it is the lack of gendered nouns! (As soon as I write those words, I find myself fretting that there may actually be gendered nouns in English. How would I know? Well, if there are, I've never needed to know about them...)

I'm pretty good when it comes to vocabulary. I love learning the vocabulary of a different language because, in some ways, it's like experiencing the world anew. The poetry of words in any language is intoxicating. But when it's an unfamiliar language, it has the added lustre of discovery. If mastering a language was just a matter of learning a vocabulary, I think I'd do it very well. But it's a lot more than that.

I still think the preservation and revival of the Irish language should be a top priority for the Irish people. Really, there's no point talking about our Irishness-- which we do incessantly-- if we aren't going to take it seriously. Nothing can replace the language.

But I think I've done as much as I can, in my case. I do intend to keep my Irish up, by regular reading, but it will no longer be my main focus. I think I have to concentrate on my strengths. Life is so short, and we can only do so much.