Patrick Semple

In 2006, when I had had my account at Ulster Bank, College Green for fifty years I wrote a longer version of the following piece. I thought it might be suitable for the Bank archive so I sent it in to the manager.  A few weeks ago, six years later, my mobile phone rang and a voice said ‘My name is David Moore, I’m the new manager at College Green’. I swore to myself, and thought: ‘the shyster’s going to cancel the overdraft.’ He went on: ‘on 11th May we will be marking the 150th anniversary of College Green and at it we would like you to read the piece you wrote for the archive.’ I agreed.
It was an early morning event with breakfast. There were seventy or eighty people there most of them ‘suits’. When I was called on to speak I told them I was still having new experiences: I had never had breakfast in a bank before and I had never addressed a gathering of this configuration before. I apologised that I was inappropriately dressed as I was not in possession of a suit and had not been for many years. Then I read the following:

Dublin Street Scene 1950s

Dublin in the 1950’s was a dismal place.  It was a black and white city with green buses.  The economy was stagnant, unemployment endemic and there was a haemorrhage of young people emigrating in search of work.  I left school at the age of 15 in 1955 and was fortunate to get a job.  I counted bumpers, mud wings, gaskets, piston rings and a myriad of other car parts in the spares department of Brittains of Portobello Bridge, the assemblers in Ireland of Morris motor cars.
After fifteen months, in October 1956, through the good offices of my late headmaster, and through no fault of my own, I secured a job in The Scottish Provident Institution, a Life Assurance Company at 36 College Green, (which by coincidence is the premises in which Ulster Bank College Green Branch started before moving to the present building).  The company asked for details of my bank account into which to pay my salary directly.  I was amused at this request since my wage at Brittains had been £2  5s 0d per week, which came nowhere near to funding my hectic social life, let alone leaving some over to put into a bank.  I now had a salary and not a wage and I needed a bank account. I opened one at The Ulster Bank, College Green because I had known a couple of clerks who had worked in the Wexford branch where I had been born and brought up; Paddy McQuillan and Johnnie Honner, later manager in Monaghan. I have had my account at College Green without a break ever since – fifty six years, despite having lived during that period in Dublin, Belfast, Chicago, Laois, Dublin, Wicklow and Dublin again.
The entrance to the bank off College Green was as it is today, but there was no revolving door.  In those days bank robberies only happened in films.  Customers had to push one of the two large heavy doors with brass knobs, still there, but now permanently open during banking hours. In the 1950’s banks were open to the public 10.00 am to 3.00 pm and closed for an hour for lunch.  The banks’ attitude was:  ‘It’s a privilege for you to bank with us and if you want to do business you’ll have to get here when we’re open.’  This changed when banks became avaricious.
Inside the doors there was a high, wide, formidable mahogany counter, straight ahead of the entrance.  To the left it curved down the side of the banking hall where there were compartments divided off from each other by partitions.  Each compartment had a tall stool that the clerk sat on when not dealing with customers.  The whole atmosphere was dull, sombre and of serious intent, designed, I assume, to communicate to customers that there would be no levity or frivolity in the stewardship of their money; that it would be in safe hands.

Early Days at College Green

Wouldn’t you think they’d take off their hats entering the reverential precincts of a bank?!

At first my business with the bank was conducted through the medium of a deposit account on the balance of which, in theory, I would earn interest.   Living permanently beyond my means, however, I don’t believe I ever earned more than a few pence in interest. Always desperately in need of a few bob, optimistically, I often checked to see had my salary been paid in a day or two before the last day of the month, but the canny Scots didn’t part with their money a day too soon.
The compartment for deposit accounts was manned by one L.F.O’Hare.  He was then a man, I estimate, in his thirties and in banking terms, to say the least, he was not a high flyer.  He was tall, sparsely built; he wore a navy blue suit and looked for all the world like a Leitrim farmer on his way to mass. He was gentle, kindly and patient with my too early enquiries as to whether my salary had arrived.   When it did finally arrive, I would complete a withdrawal form, Mr O’Hare opened the giant ledger on his desk, dipped the nib of his wooden handled pen into the inkwell and in a slow laborious hand he made the deduction from my account.   I presented my little red deposit book, in which he recorded the lodgement of my month’s salary and my withdrawal of all but a couple shillings of it which I left behind in order to keep the account open. In about a year, to mark my promotion from office boy to junior clerk, I opened a current account commensurate with my newly elevated status.
After five years as a small cog in the machinery of commerce, I entered Trinity to study for ordination.  This left me more strapped for cash than ever.  I survived, just about, on grants from the Church, grants from Trinity, a little help from my mother and the prospect of earning money in Christmas and summer vacations.  In my first year I worked at Christmas in the Post Office sorting mail and in the summer in a factory in Manchester, a sweat shop, extruding rubber surrounds for car windows and doors.
In my second year I was offered a job working on a building site in Canada.  I would have free accommodation with an uncle.   The problem was, the fare to get there.   I needed £90, a significant sum at the time for an impecunious student.  I took my courage in my hands and approached Norman Murray, a senior official in College Green, whom I knew only slightly.  I had never seen Norman in a compartment dealing with the public. He seemed to me to spend his time walking around at the back carrying a sheaf of papers in his hand conducting business and  talking to people, like a labourer wandering around a building site carrying a plank.   I needed £55 for the return student charter flight to New York and £35 for a Greyhound bus ticket to get to Canada and to travel around North America before coming home.  I thought an extra tenner would help with general expenses, and make a nice round figure, so I asked Norman if he could give me an overdraft of £100.
He furrowed his brow and asked me a number of searching questions about the job in Canada.  Eventually he agreed to give me the £90 for my fares, but he wouldn’t give me the extra £10 to make up the round £100.  Within a few weeks of arriving in Canada I paid off the £90 of my first of many overdrafts with The Ulster Bank, College Green.  Later I came to know Norman well and never let him forget about the £10 that he wouldn’t give me in 1964.   He disclaimed all memory of it!  He made up for it, however, many times over later on by the following concession.

College Green Today

If my memory serves me rightly The Ulster Bank was the first Irish bank to advertise.  Until then banks considered it infra dig to tout for business publicly, and needless to say in no time the other banks followed suit.  One autumn in the mid 1970’s, by now a respectable country rector, I saw an Ulster Bank advertisement on the back of a rugby programme offering accounts free of bank charges to first year university students if they kept £100 or more balance in credit.  Norman by this time was manager in College Green, so one day when I was in the branch I called to his office.  I told him I took a dim view of the Bank offering young whippersnapper students free banking.  I had had my account there for over twenty years and if it was in credit the Bank used my money free of charge and if I was overdrawn I paid the Bank hefty interest and I still had to pay fees.  Norman furrowed his brow again, but this time into a smile and made no response.  He reached for the telephone, asked me my account number, got through to the machine room and told them to take all charges off account no: 7849824. I haven’t paid bank charges since!
Over the years my account was seldom in credit except for that period required in order to maintain an overdraft.  Hilary, my wife, and I lived on a clerical stipend and a part-time wage of hers.  We sent two children to boarding school and saw one through university and survived all with the help of The Ulster Bank.  When the overdraft got to its limit we paid it off with a personal loan and then, as Julie Andrews sang in The Sound of Music we would ‘start all over again.’
Recently we got a personal loan to replace our ancient and dilapidated drawing room suite. I have a pet hate: filling in forms. I would nearly have foregone the suite rather than fill out the monster dossier that the bank sent me.  Through the good offices of the excellent and humane manager, Anne Doody, I finally got through the form. We had our new suite! It has been this humane and personal touch, exemplified by Anne and after her time by Eileen O’Donoghue, that has oiled the wheels of my humble dealings with this major financial institution.
My father had had an account with Ulster Bank, Wexford. When I was a curate in Belfast from 1967 to 1970, Ronnie Kells, later Chairman of the Bank was a parishioner.  Hilary was at school with Janice Went a sister of a another Chairman, David Went, whom she remembers as a small boy making sandcastles on the little beach at Sandycove Baths; so one way and another The Ulster Bank has had a high profile in our lives.
In these days when financial institutions are interested primarily in big corporate accounts, I suspect that my small, overdrawn personal account earning no fees may be a damned nuisance to the Bank.  But since I intend to live to be eighty-four, ‘the Ulster,’ College Green will have to tolerate me for another twelve years or who knows, maybe even longer!

May 2012

Ecumenism at the Vatican
has been advanced a step;
yesterday the Pope made a pilgrimage
to Campo de Fiori
to pray at the statue of Giordano Bruno.

Burned as a heretic in 1600 AD
because he believed the earth
was not the centre of the universe,
he had questioned ecclesiastical authority
to decide on these matters.

The Vatican did not reply
To enquiries from the press
As to what the Pope’s prayer had been.

It really doesn’t matter what he prayed;
Bruno has been ignored
by the Church for four hundred years,
and there’s only one thing
worse than being reviled
And that’s to be ignored.

Do you remember the time
they changed Births, Deaths and Marriages
from the outside to the inside
of the back page of the ‘Irish Times?’
There were ructions.

Since there are people these days
being born and dying,
that were never born or died before,
we all still consult the announcements
without a thought.

Things have changed, however,
time was when birth notices
thanked God for safe arrival.
Nowadays few make mention of God,
in English, Latin or even the First Official Language.

They thank doctors, nurses and midwives.
Can you imagine?
The odd one tags God on at the end.
I haven’t seen mention of the hall porter yet,
but no doubt it’ll come.

And they’re using the mother’s surname.
Good Lord what’s that to do
with the birth of a child?
Not only do parents and siblings welcome Conor and Kate,
but grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts.

Once you could tell
an R.C. death notice from a Protestant one
by ‘Rest In Peace’ or a quotation from scripture.
Now all and sundry use quotes from God knows where
and even humurous quips.

Holy deadlock these days is another matter altogether.
It’s like diphtheria  – there’s less of it.

We went again to the Okavango Delta, Botswana the following year with friends Bernadette and Clare. For our first camp we returned to Xakanka. The terrain is varied and pleasing there and there is almost the full range of animals to be seen in the Delta. We learned on this trip that the markings on each zebra are unique like the fingerprints of humans.

The routine was the same as the previous year: early morning drive with a coffee break and afternoon/evening drive with sun-downer. Our driver was like our drivers of the year before, he was good company and knowledgeable.

Bernadette and Clare Wrapped against Early Morning Chill

Coffee Stop

It seemed to us that lions spent much of their time sleeping, oblivious of prying eyes and when awake they simply stared back with total unconcern. Leopards, on the other hand, when we approached, made off into the bush or up a tree.

Camouflaged

Up a Tree

Termite mounds abound. They are often propped against a tree or tree stump. Each one has an extensive network of passages and galleries in which the termites rear their young. A mound can be many decades old and can contain a colony of as many as 10,000 to 15,000 termites.

Unconcerned Lions around a Termite Mound.

Hippos are everywhere. They are extremely dangerous at night when they come onto dryland to graze, especially for anyone who gets between them and either their young or their water. Elephants are as ubiquitous on land as hippos are in water.

Hippos

Elephants with babies

There is something magical about evening in Africa; the light, colour, stillness and the occasional sound of an insect, bird or animal.

Evening in The Delta

We flew our longest journey in a small plane in Africa, an hour and twenty minutes, to our second camp, Muchenje, near the border where Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet.

From Muchenje we had a daylong outing on the Zambezi River where the next five photographs were taken.

Sleeping Hippos

Elephant ‘Periscope’

A Sleeping Croc

Lunch on the Zambezi

Sunset

That evening when we arrived back to camp the manager told us there had been somebody there during the afternoon looking for us, and handed me a note!
When we had booked the trip six or more months before, I had sent our itinerary to a friend, Bill, in Co. Carlow. He forwarded it to a cousin, Marjorie, in Australia who he was trying to convince to go with him on a similar trip. Marjorie was clearing out her ‘in-box’ at the time we were in Botswana and came across the forwarded e-mail. Her son, Steve, in whose apartment in Melbourne we had stayed a couple of years previously, and daughter-in-law, Kelly, were somewhere in the Okavango Delta, so she texted them with the names of our two camps. They looked on a map and found that they were in a campsite only twelve or fourteen kilometres away from Muchenge and called on chance to find we were there, but out. I texted them and they came for breakfast the next morning.
It just shows you that even in the middle of the African bush, you wouldn’t want to be with the wrong woman!

For the first time we saw buffalo at this camp. There weren’t buffalo at Xakanaka.

Buffalo -  Dangerous Chaps

We also had the opportunity to visit a village where we saw real poverty.

Passing the Time

Nearby was a first rate primary school where we were welcomed into a classroom to hear the pupils singing. The children were smiling and well turned out.

Playtime

After Muchenje we spent two nights at the famous Victoria Falls Hotel, Zimbabwe. We went there specially to see the Falls. It was the time of year when the Zambezi was in full flood which meant that the Falls were partly obscured by a vast cloud of mist that rose into the sky. It was necessary to wear rain gear and the mist made the taking of photographs difficult.

Rainbow

A Stretch of the Falls

The Mist

The political circumstances of Zimbabwe rendered the hotel somewhat less than it obviously had been in its former glory. Nevertheless it was all there, and great credit was due to the staff for the gallant way they worked to make everything normal and they succeeded.

Cucumber Sandwiches and Battenburg on the Terrace

We flew to Johannesburg from Victoria Falls Airport. The runway had been designed by a friend of mine, John Atkinson, formerly of Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, Harare and now of Fish Hoek, near Cape Town and Dublin, when he was an engineer with the Ministry of Roads, Southern Rhodesian Government. The said John Atkinson calls me a sissy because I like poetry. I forgive him since he is a civil engineer!
From Johannesburg we flew home after another fascinating holiday in Africa.

We left Xakanaka, by motor boat, for our second camp, Little Kwara.  Our journey was about fifty minutes through the Delta to a spot where our driver and tracker, David and Killer, met us. We didn’t have a tracker at Kakanaka and you may have noticed that our driver’s name there was Water. African staff at the camps, having names that might be difficult for non-Africans, adopted a name in English, but it isn’t always a personal name, but simply an easy English word, hence ‘Water’ and ‘Killer’. Killer by temperament was the very antithesis of the name he had chosen. That he should choose such a name was, however, consistent with his sense of fun. He was gentle, kindly and had a great sense of humour. He greeted us at breakfast one morning with: ‘How do you do, I’m Mr Johnston from London.’

Our ‘driver’ from Xakanaka to Little Kwara

Killer with Hilary and David collecting our bags

The routine at Little Kwara was the same as at Xakanaka: an early light breakfast, leaving camp at about 7.30 am on the morning drive, back for a substantial breakfast at about 10.00am. Lunch at 2.00pm, evening drive 4.00pm, back for a formal dinner with other guests, drivers and trackers at 8.00 pm.

Early breakfast; David, porridge and tea

Going the short distance to our tent in the dark after dinner, as at Xakanaka, we had torches and were escorted by a camp staff member in case we would be eaten by a lion! I jest. The most likely animals to wander into camp, were hyena to raid the food store, and hippopotamus. Hippos came out of the water after dark to graze. In Africa they kill more people by far than any other animal despite being vegetarians, as are elephants who are second to hippopotami on this list of infamy.

Killer and David

Driver/guides and trackers qualify after a one year full-time intensive course. They are  extremely knowledgeable; animals, birds, trees, vegetation, environmental matters and they are obviously carefully selected for the work; all the staff we met were affable, good communicators, patient and good humoured.

Standby driver and tracker!

Killer tracking.

At Little Kwara we saw a similar range of animals to that at Xakanaka but in a more savannah type territory than bush. Matriarch-led elephants travel in herds, while bull elephants in musth, not to be trusted, travel alone. On one occasion we stopped on a path in thick scrub to allow a small herd of elephants to cross the track in front of us. When they were across the driver drove on not knowing that there were more members of the herd to come. We didn’t realise we had split the herd until we heard loud trumpeting and rest of them stampeded across the track behind us.

A lone elephant minding his own ‘business’

Two sleeping lions

One evening David suggested that instead of the evening drive we might like to go fishing. We thought well of the idea and around 4.00pm we set out. We travelled by motorboat through the Delta and suddenly came upon some hippos up ahead in a wide bit of channel. David ‘braked’ immediately. He reversed the boat and we thought he would turn around and go back. No, he put the engine into reverse without engaging it, revved it to clear the propeller of weed, surged forward on the opposite side of the channel to the hippos who ducked underwater, and on to the fishing place.
My bait had barely hit the water when a fish took it. Same again next cast; the water was infested with fish. Killer unhooked them and put them back; it was too easy. We fished for a while and then went back to camp by a circuitous route without encountering any more hippos.

Hippos ahead

    Killer unhooking a catch

We left Little Kwara by small plane, back by to Maun, Johannesburg and home.

A jeep met us at the airstrip and we travelled the twenty minute journey to the camp. The sounds as we drove through the bush were unmistakably African. We were welcomed warmly and shown to our tent.

Our Tent

On ‘The Verandah’

On our drive out that evening we saw our first elephant. He was a magnificent specimen, a lone adult male in musth, high on testosterone with no outlet for it and not to be trusted.

In the mornings we were called at 6.30 am, had a light breakfast and went on the morning drive with two others, John and Jane.

At Breakfast Before Morning Drive

Coffee Break

On our second drive out in the bush a couple of miles from the camp the jeep broke down. Not only did it stop, but the radio phone failed at the same time so we couldn’t call for help. Water, our driver, and John, a retired professor of mechanical engineering, worked away for about an hour with no success. Eventually we pushed the jeep on a slight incline on the track, let out the clutch and, music to our ears, the engine started.

Breakdown

African Wild Dogs - Dangerous fellows

On one drive we rounded a bend and Water stopped suddenly. Asleep on the track in the shade of a large tree were four lionesses with swollen stomachs after a kill. One of them lifted her head slightly to look at us and collapsed back to sleep. Lions have no fear of jeeps in preserved areas since there is no threat from them. Sometimes lions will walk within a foot or two of a parked jeep without as much as looking.

Sleeping Off The Kill

LIONESS  QUARTET
For Jane and John Sproston
Dormant power
sleeping off the kill.
Bones stripped bare,
left to bleach in searing sun.
Deep oblivion,
vulnerable only to their own.
A shaded sight
of sure survival.

We drove out morning and evening while at Xakanaka and saw almost the full range of animals to be seen.

It takes all kinds to make a world, however I cannot understand people who dread retirement. There’s time to read all the books and travel to all the places, if the pension holds up, that you hadn’t time to read and travel to when you were working.

In my early life I never thought I’d see Africa. We flew to Johannesburg and took a plane to Maun in Botswana to fly up to Xakanaka, a camp in the Okavanga Delta, to see wild life.

Boarding our plane at Johannesburg for Maun

Different kinds of tyre!

Maun Airport waiting for baggage

Our plane to Xakanaka; Hilary and airport employee

The Bush from the air

I was always unsure about small aircraft. My uncertainty was confirmed for me when a two seater plane landed in a field near our house in a village in West Wicklow. The pilot came up the road carrying a petrol can and asked if there was a garage. When he had filled his tank he offered to bring up some of the children who had come to look, for a spin over the village. Some went, but not our children! When he was ready to continue on his journey he asked in which direction was Wexford. The headwaters of the Slaney rose in the foothills of the mountains opposite the village. ‘Follow the river’ advised an astute bystander ‘and you can’t miss it.’

I knew a talented cabintmaker who had a passion for flying helicopters. One day he ended up in his helicopter dangling from a tree and was lucky enough to survive to fly again.

You see above the photograph of the small plane in which we flew from Maun to Xakanaka, our camp. I gritted my teeth and off we went. I was feeling quite confident until we landed on the way at another camp to drop two of our four passengers. On the ground there was already a small plane with passengers sheltering in the shade under one wing. One of two fuel leads had become blocked and there wasn’t enough petrol in the remaining tank to get the plane to where it had hoped to go. Our pilot explained and said that the one tank in that plane would be plenty to get us to Xakanaka so we would swop planes to let the stranded pilot have ours. ‘Not on your life,’ said we, ‘fly us to Xakanaka and then you can come back.’ He did, and we arrived in one piece.

Plane with blocked fuel pipe

Landing on ‘runway’ at Xakanaka

Xakanaka Airport Fire Department and Medical Centre.

22nd November 2011

Unknown to me when I posted the above on 22nd October 2011 a crash had occurred eight days previously according to the following report which was drawn to my attention on 21st November:

The crash of a Moremi Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan on Friday, October 14, 2011 in the Okavango Delta region of Botswana, in Southern Africa, has left 7 persons dead and 4 others in critical but stable condition according to reports.

Unconfirmed reports are that the aircraft crashed very shortly after takeoff during the initial climb from a strip at the northern edge of the Okavango Delta, about 25 minutes flying time from Maun, near Xakanaxa Camp. The crash was the first fatal accident in several years and has caused shock throughout the local aviation community.

None the less one is probably at greater risk travelling on Irish roads than flying in small aircraft in Southern Africa.

See: Grand Caravan Crash (Examiner)

Here I am on the underside of the world,
downside up and still standing.
My mother, an intelligent woman, well read,
believed the earth was flat, or so she said.
She did, however, leave school earlier than usual,
so I couldn’t quite work out if she was joking.

She didn’t help her cause
by making her statement from behind a grin.
Perhaps it was her way of asking questions,
but nobody gave her answers.
She incurred the ridicule of her sophisticated family,
who thought it beneath them to try to convince her.

Not only am I on the underside of the world,
downside up and still standing,
but a travel agent has taken money
to get me home without retracing my steps.
When I get there I’ll have the proof I need,
but it’s too late to convince my mother.

She died knowing well the family was right,
but deep down she believed the earth was flat.

They helped to carry him to the church,
That was the help they gave.
They didn’t help him during his life,
But they helped him to his grave.

We sailed out of the harbour at Ashdod in the small hours of the morning bound for Salerno, where we had called on the outward journey. We passed the southwest coast of Crete, south of Greece and through the Strait of Messina that separates Italy from Sicily.

                               A sail training ship in the Strait of Messina

We had expected to be in Salerno at 6.00 pm, but didn’t dock until ten o’clock. It was too late to go ashore but the good news was that on the following day we would have time to go to Pompei about 20 miles away. Next morning early we took a taxi from the dock to the station and a train to Pompei.

       Pompei – 1st century reflectors between flags to guide traffic at night

In 79 AD Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompei, a city of 20,000 inhabitants, under a mound of ash and rock where it remained largely undisturbed for 1,800 years until in 1858 excavation started in earnest. Much was learned about the life of a Roman town from the ruins of shops, homes, public baths, sports fields and brothels. It contains one of the finest amphitheatres of the Roman world. A month would not be enough time to spend to see it all.

                                                         The Forum Pompei

After three or four hours walking in the hot sun, we were exhausted. We left by the gate beside the amphitheatre and found ‘Ristorante Amfiteatro’ nearby. We sat outside under a rustic framework covered with an ancient wisteria. We were the only ones there and we rested our weary feet. We had wonderful garlic and herb spaghetti, the likes of which you can only get in Italy. The cook on board did accommodate us very well as vegetarians. Lunch and dinner on one particular day were: for lunch, spaghetti with oil, picante and tomato, followed by a plate of grilled courgette slices with raw garlic and chilli flakes and a banana. For dinner: soup with lentils, pizza, cheese and strawberries and melon in syrup.

                                                      A Mediterrenean Sunset

The steward, who served meals, was Pasquale. In height and build, and particularly in his accent when he spoke English, he was a dead ringer for Manuel from Barcelona, the waiter in Fawlty Towers. One day we were a little late going to the mess for dinner. There was a knock on our cabin door and there he stood. He smiled, pointed down the alleyway and said ‘Ees ready.’ It could have been Manuel.

                                                      Pasquale and Hilary

At Salerno we replaced two of the most important men on the ship: a new captain and a new cook came on board. The single most common cause of discontent amongst crew at sea making for an unhappy ship, is poor food. We left Salerno bound for Savona on the Ligurian Coast between Genoa and the French border. We passed between Corsica and Elba and realising how close they were, we weren’t surprised that the Little Corporal managed to escape.  If he had been exiled to St. Helena in the South Atlantic in the first place, the ‘hundred days’ would not have been. There would have been no need for the Battle of Waterloo, which would have saved the Duke of Wellington a lot of trouble, the language would have been deprived of one of its well known metaphors about a person coming to grief, and they would have had to find another name for the London railway station.
We docked at the quay at Savona and had plenty of time to walk around the town. Christopher Columbus in his early days farmed land outside the town. Savona claims that he was born there, but this is unsubstantiated. It is more likely that he was born along the coast in Genoa.

                                                  The Harbour, Savona

It was Saturday, market day, with a variety of wonderful stalls that sold fruit, cheese, vegetables, bread, oil and much else. The stalls were on a number of streets and under the colonnade of the main thoroughfare.

                                                    Stalls in the Colonnade

On the way back to our ship we sat and watched fishermen selling fish to people on the quay and repairing their nets. While they worked they were nattering away to each other from boat to boat and gave the impression of not having a care in the world. We could have sat there in the sun for the rest of the day, but had to meet our deadline for leaving Savona for Setubal, Portugal.

                                      Fishermen in the Harbour, Savona.

Again we had good warm sunny weather on this part of the voyage. We sailed offshore, but well to sea and out of sight of the coast of Italy, France and Spain. The chart on the bridge told us that we passed well known places: Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Toulon, Barcelona and then between Majorca and Ibiza and the Spanish coast. We passed Valencia, Alicante and then places familiar to sun and sand holiday makers: Malaga, Torremolinos, Fuengirola and Marbella. Passing along this coast we could see the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
Soon we passed the childhood home of Molly Bloom – Gibraltar, and its famous rock.

                                        Rock of Gibraltar – from the east

We passed through the Strait of Gibraltar along the Spanish coast and up the coast of Portugal to Setubal about 25 miles south of Lisbon. It is the third city of Portugal and famous to football fans as the home town of José Mourinho. In this delightful small port town we saw what we had seen for the first time in The Azores, black and white mosaic cobbled streets.

                                      Setubal – a small square with mosaics

One of the main streets was lined with trees in a profusion of pink blossom. We strolled back to the ship and in the evening we set sail for Portbury, the port of Bristol, where we were due to disembark. We passed by the Bay of Biscay without turbulence, close to Land’s End and past Lundy Island into the Bristol Channel and Portbury on the third day out of Setubal after a wonderful four week trip.

                                                   Setubal – Pink Blossom

I can see him
holding a mirror
moving it across behind
looking at the one in front
to view the back.
Then brushing the collar,
opening the smock
and folding it
to hold the hair,
passing on the brush,
then standing nonchalantly
to accept the tip
and holding open the overcoat.

The one beside him
I see in wellingtons
with stick, leaning over
a five barred gate
looking into a shed
of freshly bedded cattle
watching for signs of sickness,
estimating, after a summer on grass, their value
at the back end of the year.

And she to his left, definitely
a charge-hand in haberdashery.

Three violinists
concentrate upon their scores
and on the one
who looks, for all the world,
as though he could do nothing other
than conduct an orchestra.

The itinerary of our Mediterranean cargo ship voyage was: Southampton, Salerno (Italy), Piraeas (Greece), Izmir (Turkey), Limassol (Cyprus), Alexandria (Egypt), Ashdod (Israel), Salerno again, Savona (Italy), Setubal (Portugal) and Bristol. Gran Bretagna, (tonnage 51,700), on which we sailed was vast compared to Horncap, (tonnage 17,439), the vessel we had travelled on to the Caribbean. Gran Bretagna was a roll on roll off car carrier with eleven decks and the capacity to carry 4,650 cars. For some idea of her size notice the vehicles on the quay at her bow.

                                                      Gran Bretagna

She was of the Italian line Grimaldi and as it transpired Hilary and I were the only passengers on board. We had the owner’s cabin; en suite double bedroom with sitting-room attached. It is always more spacious and comfortable than the other cabins available to passengers.

                                                           Our Cabin

We joined the ship at Southampton and late that night as we left the quay we went onto the bridge. As we stood inconspicuously at one end while we moved slowly down the Solent a voice behind us in a strong English accent asked if we were English. It was the pilot. We told him we were Irish.
‘My name is Seán O’Toole, I’m Irish too. My father came from Galway.’
He was on for a chat and told us among other things that despite modern electronic technology and up-to-date satellite aids to navigation: ‘ships are still bumping into each other all over the place.’ When we were into open water Seán O’Toole said a warm goodbye and left the bridge to board his launch which was hovering alongside to take him ashore.
In no time another voice spoke to us from the darkness: ‘Coffee?’ We accepted, and Mark the able seaman on duty returned in a few minutes with two espresso sized paper cups of what I can only describe as coffee flavoured syrup into which he had poured half a bag of sugar, each! To be polite we finished them. This became a feature of our four weeks on board, and very soon we looked forward to our fix every time we went onto the bridge and by the time we left the ship we were hooked!

                                                                    Coffee

We sailed south, through the Strait of Gibraltar bound for Salerno on the west coast of Italy just south of the Bay of Naples. On a warm sunny afternoon we sailed into the Gulf of Salerno, past the Isle of Capri and the Amalfi coast and docked at the quay with a view of Vesuvius in the distance.

                                                             Hilary Driving

I knew of Salerno as the site of the main Allied landings on the mainland of Italy after the North Africa campaign and the capture of Sicily during the Second World War. An uncle of mine had been taken prisoner of war at the Volturno River crossing north of there. It was also, during World War II, the site of the largest mutiny in British military history.
We were able to go up town for a few hours, had a meal and were back to the ship in good time to sail for Pireas, the port of Athens, later that night. When we docked the following day we took a taxi from the port into Athens and had time to go to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon.

                          The Bridge Deck after Discharge of Cars at Pireas

Next port of call was Izmir, Turkey, where we spent some time in the town and where Hilary tripped over the kerb of a flower bed, fell heavily and some solicitous locals called an ambulance. She was checked in the ultra efficient out patients’ department of the hospital. She was seen immediately on arrival by a delightful team of a doctor and two nurses. All was well but for some bruising.
We sailed that evening for Limassol Cyprus. Again we had plenty of time to go ashore and explore the town. Our shopping included some cereals to add variety to our breakfast on board, and something I hadn’t seen since I was a child – a proper natural sponge from the seabed. I think it is Illegal to sell these sponges in Europe, but we were glad to buy one for Tegan, our one-year-old granddaughter for bath time. We had a meal on the seafront, returned to the ship and sailed in the evening for Alexandria.

                                                Street Scene, Limassol

The shipping company was concerned for passenger security at Alexandria so it was the only port of call on the voyage at which we were not able to go ashore. Furthermore if passengers were able to go up town they would be held up by officials at every turn who would expect significant baksheesh before allowing them through. This would cost passengers both financially and in time, which would make a visit not worthwhile. We admired the shoreline and quays of the port from the harbour and ironically as it transpired, Albino, one of the ABs, pointed out to us one of President Mubarak’s palaces!

Alexandria from Harbour with Mubarak Palace with Dome to the Right

The last port of call on our outward journey was Ashdod, Israel. When we docked there a security officer came on board and in the small hours of the morning she photographed, fingerprinted and inspected the passports of all crew and both passengers on board. In the morning were free to go ashore and we had time to travel by taxi to Jerusalem, one hour away. Our taxi driver cum tour guide was Eyal, a most affable secular Jew in his mid forties.

                                                Eyal Our Driver and Guide

He brought us to the sites in Jerusalem: the Garden of Gethsemane,

                                    Olive Trees, Garden of Gethsemane

the Tomb of Mary, the Wailing Wall with the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock behind it, Via Doloroso, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which contains the site of the crucifixion and the tomb of Christ’s burial.

                                                         The Wailing Wall

He would have brought us further but we were both exhausted, so after a fascinating day during which I was entirely incredulous that any of the putative sites might have been authentic, we left Jerusalem for Ashdod and Gran Bretagna. We were glad to have seen Jerusalem, but it had no religious significance for either of us.

                 Pointed out to us as a Hand-Print of Jesus, Via Doloroso

The return voyage, Ashdod to Bristol, will be posted by the third week of September.

Pina Coladas Leaving Moin

We sailed from Moin, Costa Rica, fully laden with bananas, pineapple and some exotic fruits bound for Dover thirteen days away. As it turned out it wasn’t just as simple as that. We moved away from the quay in the late evening, and the following morning as was our custom before breakfast we went onto the bridge to read the coordinates to see how far we had travelled overnight. Before we had a chance to consult the chart, Jevgeijs, the officer on watch with a broad fatalistic smile said: ‘We’re on the way back to Moin.’ We had sailed for ten hours when the refrigeration unit began to malfunction. Without efficient refrigeration thousands of kilos of fruit would be rotten by the time they arrived at the shops in Europe. In twelve or fourteen hours after we arrived back in Moin with refrigeration working again, we sailed for Dover. The Caribbean was still. It was hot. Even at night it could be in the eighties Farenheit

A Barbecue at Sea

During the day we sat on deck and read.

Relaxing on Deck

We had passed Jamaica, through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, then through the Mouchoir Passage east of the Turks and Caicos Islands;  we were a day’s sailing out of the Caribbean into the Atlantic. We had just returned from lunch to our cabin to collect our books to go to the shaded spot on deck to sit and probably snooze in the warmth of the early afternoon sun, when the bell outside our cabin door sounded seven times followed by a single ring, and then it was continuous.

In The Caribbean

‘That’s muster stations,’ Hilary said. She had listened more carefully than I had when we were instructed on safety procedures on the outward voyage.
‘Take your time,’ I said, ‘it’s just a drill.’  Hilary opened the cabin door.  There was a strong acrid smell of smoke, like burning paint, outside.  We grabbed our life-jackets and wet suits and made for our muster station. Had we been on deck when the alarm went, not having been told otherwise, we would have gone down to our cabins to collect life-jackets and wet suits. The correct safety procedure is that there should be a supply of lifejackets at muster stations and passengers elsewhere on board than in cabins should go straight there. We learned later that many passengers who were on deck on the Lusitania when she was hit by a torpedo, lost their lives because they returned to their cabins to collect their lifejackets.
Hilary went first.  Along the alleyway the thought came to me that everything I had left behind in the cabin I could happily abandon except one item. It was all easily replaceable except the work I had done on my laptop. I remembered my computer backup stick, turned around and went back to the cabin. I found it and set out again. There were crew members rushing in all directions. Hilary realised that I wasn’t behind her. She shouted. I didn’t hear. She pushed her way back and found me on my following.
‘That was a stupid thing to do.’ she said. I knew she was right, so I didn’t respond. We saw Ivan, the ship’s cook, with life-jacket, wet suit and hard hat on the way to his muster station. Passing the second deck alleyway there was smoke. When we arrived at our muster station on deck Andreas, in boiler suit and hard hat, Helmuth and Martin were already there. ‘Fire in machine,’ meaning engine, Andreas told us and he left quickly to find Herbert and Joachim. When he came back he pointed out the lifeboat that we would use. We waited. As the only woman on board, Hilary would be first into the lifeboat.

At Muster Station

As we stood there not knowing what to expect I had a mental picture of emerging from the arrivals door of an airport somewhere, facing the world’s press and giving an account of how having abandoned  ship, we watched the burned out hull of Horncap disappear beneath the waves. How we were buffeted around like corks on the ocean until we were finally rescued dramatically by a ship that had picked up our SOS signal.
No marks for tumbling to the fact that nothing of the sort happened. After about half an hour Andreas on his walkie talkie got the ‘all clear.’ They had extinguished the fire.  No drama, no lifeboats, no burned out hull, no airport , no heroics.  We trooped back to our cabins, put back our lifejackets and wetsuits, collected our books and went up on deck. Martin thought it had all been an exercise, but it hadn’t, it had been the real thing, and if they had not been able to bring the fire under control some of the fantasy would have become reality.

Choppy Weather

The sea had been relatively smooth during the day, but that night it changed. We were in the worst weather we had on the voyage; the ship was rolling and pitching badly, there were waves 20 or 30 feet high, our speed was down from 19 to 10 or 11 knots.  When some powerful waves hit the ship it shuddered and felt as if it would stop.  Lashing rain made for poor visibility. It was certainly gale force 8, and possibly storm force 9. The rain battered the windows of the bridge. Virtually every dip of the bow into a trough sent spray over the containers on deck and as far back as the wheelhouse.

Heavy Weather

We had to be very careful moving about our cabin not to be thrown around. Putting toothpaste on my toothbrush I ended up in a heap in the shower. It was undoubtedly the heaviest weather we had had. If we had had to attend muster stations that night we would have been very frightened indeed and if we had had to abandon ship I cannot see how we could have survived.
Four or five days into the Atlantic the refrigeration unit gave up the ghost altogether and we had to change course to the nearest landfall which was the Azores. Before we arrived at the Azores there was a message from Head Office that rather than wait for repairs to be completed, the company was flying passengers home from there rather than allowing us to complete the journey to Dover.
The evening we docked in Ponte Delgada, Martin, Hilary and I went ashore, found a good restaurant and had an excellent meal served by two beautiful waitresses, a welcome change from the grumpy messman that served us at sea.

Our Grumpy Messman

Before we went back to ‘Horncap’ we asked the taxi driver to bring us on a tour of the town, and although he hadn’t a word of English and we hadn’t a word of Porugese we arrived back to the ship with a good impression of a large town of the Azores.
Next morning early, taxis brought us to the airport at Ponte Delgada where we said our farewells to our shipmates and flew home via Lisbon to Dublin. All in all it was an excellent trip.

Our Waitresses, The Azores

For Bernadette Robson

Horses hooves
and the grumble of iron-hooped wheels
on the stony lane.

A stack of scented hay
built on a limestone frame
on mushroom tops
to foil the rats
and conserve a winter’s feed.

The sweat of men on summer days;
talk of girls and games
and local gossip.
Tea and doorstep sandwiches at noon
propped against the dry-stone wall.

The cobbled yard abandoned
to grass and thorn
for more than sixty years,
reclaimed, laid out and planned
to host a home.

Raised beds, a lawn, fruit trees
and drills of extra-mural spuds.
She brought this place to life again
and will preserve with care
this haggard without hay.