Patrick Semple

A shortened version of this piece was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 17th July 2012

‘When the soul of man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe.
Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a man’s country comes first. Ireland first, Stevie. You can be a poet or mystic after.
Do you know what Ireland is? asked Steven with cold violence. Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.’   James Joyce  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

All my life I have had a sense of wanting to ‘fly by those nets,’ to avoid the constraints of nationality, language and religion. My family came to Ireland in the early nineteenth century from England, but originally from Scotland. My paternal grandfather who died in 1909 was in the army in Ireland and in India. His brother was a surgeon in the Indian Army.  In 1885 my grandfather was a member of the famous Nile Expedition that was sent to rescue General Gordon in Khartoum. After the expedition had failed he was posted back to Ireland and ended up as a recruitment officer at the barracks in Wexford where he died. My father was born in Wexford and I was born there thirty years after my grandfather’s death. That’s how I came to be a ‘yellow-belly.’ Both my parents who were adult in 1922, as citizens gave the new state their full, but not uncritical, loyalty.

Since I was a boy, born and brought up in the south of Ireland, I have always wanted to free myself from the narrow, self-conscious and extravagant national pride that was all around me.  I was born only seventeen years after independence so as I grew up I heard at every turn the espousal of Ireland and everything Irish, but always felt that ‘self praise is no praise.’ I became aware that this narrow and extravagant Irish Nationalism came from a national inferiority complex that resulted from having been a colonised people. Some teachers indoctrinated young children with a nationalism that sometimes amounted to hatred of Britain and then we wonder why violent republicanism still rears its ugly head. If you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind.

I once heard a language enthusiast on radio say that unless you speak Irish you’re not a proper Irishman. According to this principle I am numbered among the ninety five percent or more defective Irish people. I have always, however, been in favour of preserving the spoken language as far as possible. I marvel at the naïveté of Irish governments that believed the making of Irish compulsory in schools would result in due course in the general use of the language in everyday life. Two different native speaker friends who love their first language and use it when they can, independently have told me that sometimes so bad is the Irish that they hear spoken on radio and television they cannot bear to listen to it and they turn it off.

Having been brought up a member of the Church of Ireland in the post independence period of triumphalist Catholicism, I was made to feel an outsider. For so many people, both in Ireland and outside, Irish is synonymous with Roman Catholic. However, Brendan Corish, the leader of the Labour party in the 1960s went even further and, contrary to Davin’s belief, said publicly: ‘I am a Catholic first and an Irishman second,’ I resented being seen by fellow countrymen as being Irish but not the full shilling. I also resented that being Irish, foreigners expected me to sit lightly to the law and to have an ongoing affair with alcohol.

How then am I Irish?

I am Irish pure and simple. I am as Irish as the most extreme republican, as the greatest enthusiast for and most fluent speaker of the Irish language and as the most fervent Roman Catholic. I am neither proud nor ashamed of it. It was an accident of birth. I am glad that I am Irish and I know that I could never live contentedly outside Ireland. There are characteristics of Irish people that I appreciate: generosity to the afflicted, welcome to the stranger, relaxed approach to living and a particular sense of humour. However none of these is exclusive to our people; they are all present to varying degrees in the character of the people of other nations. We are not God’s gift to the world. We are one of a multitude of peoples on the planet who happen to live together within particular national boundaries. There are characteristics of many Irish people that I do not appreciate, for example the selfishness of being so laid back as to be unreliable and believing that the destructive use of alcohol is funny. These two, of course, are not exclusive to us either.

I’m not a Kerry Republican, a Dublin 4 Nationalist nor an Ulster or any other kind of Unionist. I’m not a gaelgóir or a Roman Catholic, on the other hand I am not Anglo Irish in any sense; I don’t possess, nor ever did possess, a horse! Nor have I an emotional home in England. There are characteristics of English people and people of other nationalities that I appreciate, but I don’t want to be other than Irish. I am simply a human being that happens to have been born on the island of Ireland, and I’m glad that I was.

Nobody will convince me that time does not pass more quickly now in my seventies than it did when I was in my twenties or thirties. When I go to bed it seems no time since I went to bed the last time

and when I get up, here I am having to shave, wash and dress again having done it only recently. I can understand why men grow beards and become a teeny weenie bit unhygienic in old age. I have the occasional shower, though too many of them are bad for you. I haven’t had a bath since 1982. I sit down after breakfast to read and in no time at all Hilary is asking me what I’d like for lunch. She has no longer gone shopping than she’s back and I’m called to carry the bags in from the car.

When you’ve been to the pharmacist to collect your monthly supply of pills it is no time until you’re standing in the shop again waiting for him to dispense another month’s supply. There is one exception to the exponential decrease in time between these recurrent events. That is the lodgement into your bank account of the monthly pension instalment. It seems to arrive at the same slow pace as it ever did.

It’s as though time speeds up when we become older, or does it? Then it can’t really because we inhabit the same time parameters as young people for whom time appears to pass more slowly. It’s just another of life’s conundrums, but from the following poem I think you will see that a distinguished American scientist may have solved the mystery.

In California
a former Nobel Prize winning scientist
has proved that time
is passing faster now than ever before.

In a controlled experiment
involving a hundred people over fifty,
he has clearly shown
that weeks and months, and therefore years,
are passing faster now
than at any time previously.

A group of experts,
namely, the inmates of the State Penitentiary,
seriously dispute his findings.
They have recently issued a statement
to say they are in absolutely no doubt
that time passes more slowly now
than when they were free.

The scientist has not yet revealed the method
by which he proved his conclusion,
lest someone in the scientific world
should question his sanity.
He has, however, just issued a press release
to confirm that he himself died early last year.

The diversity of human nature means that different people unaccountably have different likes and dislikes. Apart from the kinds of thing that most people abhor, town dumps, traffic jams, louts making a nuisance of themselves on the street, my three most unfavourite things in the world are, 40 watt bulbs, wire coat hangers and tights. Now you may think that these are trivial things upon which to hold an opinion, and why should I allow them to annoy me. The fact of the matter is that I have every right to be annoyed by them.

Most people are not in the slightest irritated or annoyed by these three items. Some people might not like one of them and not the others but I am annoyed by all three. Things that irritate and annoy other people may not even come under my notice. All of this confirms the problem of the diversity in human nature.

Why do, barmen, waiters and the like assume that everybody likes ice in their drinks or like their drinks from the fridge, and as for people who put ice in Irish whiskey! Some people like their water straight from the tap or their beer off the shelf. When they ask for these they are made to feel a damned nuisance. Barmen and waiters have no right to assume that everybody likes ice in their drinks or want them from the fridge, and as for people who put ice in Irish whiskey!

In a high proportion of public places, hotels, restaurants or even shops these days there is compulsory music. You have no option but to be assaulted by it. What’s wrong with silence? Nothing, but we’re forced to put up with non-stop canned music.

A friend to whom I sent an e-mail recently did not reply. I met her about three weeks later and asked her if she had received it.
‘When did you send it ?’
‘About three weeks ago’
‘I check my e-mails only every five or six weeks. If you send me an e-mail send me a text to say that you’ve sent me an e-mail.’ Get off the bus!

Friends I hadn’t been in touch with for years recently asked me to find out some information for them. I went to some trouble on their behalf and was glad to do it. I phoned and left a message with the information they wanted on their answer machine. Five or six weeks later they phoned to know if I had been able to help.
‘I left a message on your answer machine.’ I said.
‘Oh, we seldom check the answer machine’ was the response. Get off the bus again!

As for junk mail, television ads, taxi drivers that talk to you ……one could go on for ever. If there weren’t curmudgeons around to protest at all these dreadful things, people would labour under the illusion that in a civilised society they were perfectly acceptable. They bloodywell are not.

Comments welcome to: semple.patrick006@gmail.com

However the universe came to be and for whatever reason, if any, it fills one with reverential awe to contemplate on a clear night from the deck of a ship at sea the immensity of the starry sky, knowing that it contains as many galaxies as there are grains of sand on every beach and desert in the world.  To know that it stretches outwards for billions and billions of miles and has existed for 14 billion years is to be overcome by the mystery of it all and to feel one’s own insignificance, and the insignificance of all humankind.

Ship, Sun, Sea and Sky

In the unfathomable immensity of it many scientists believe that we, on earth, are the only form of life, as we understand it, in the universe.  Some scientists, however, believe that there may well be life somewhere out there. Why do we on earth, have the right balance of conditions that have allowed life to develop?  Either a creator God somehow arranged it so, or these conditions came about purely by chance.

Looking at human life itself there is no theme, dimension or underlying structure of any kind that points to life having a meaning. The dynamic that does underlie and motivates all life is the vitality for life itself in all its forms, human, animal and plant; the powerful life-force in all living things that ensures procreation and the survival of species. Within this universal force there is competition for survival from viruses and bugs that threaten human life. All of this great complexity must be coped with as an integral part of living, but it gives no hint as to a meaning or purpose for life itself. This is where religion comes in.

Human beings developed rituals and modes of behaviour in order to keep favour with the supernatural divine powers that they perceived to be the source of their food and other necessities for survival and to protect them from all that might threaten them. When the sun shone and the rain came they believed that their god was pleased with them and their crops prospered so they performed a ritual to thank him. When there was thunder and lightning they perceived that he was angry and punishing them so they performed a ritual to appease him. When they defeated another marauding tribe they performed another ritual to thank their god for victory. Nothing changes.

These days Churches have services of thanksgiving to God for giving them the harvest.  They do this despite the fact that millions of people throughout the world die of starvation every year as a result of drought, and God doesn’t appear to do anything to help them to survive. When Aids emerged as a universal disease some churchmen and religious people said it was a punishment from God for the practice of homosexuality, which was the same reason some people said God punished the people of Lisbon with the earthquake on All Saints Day 1755.    When Britain won the Falkland’s war the Church of England put on a service of thanksgiving for the defeat of Argentina which the Royal Family and members of the British government attended.  Religious people invoke God in the most incongruous ways.

While the gurus of religion still proclaim the involvement of God in the world, people get on with their lives under the imperative of nature. They are born, grow to maturity, procreate and die and the cycle goes on. During the space of a lifetime some people, in order to avoid the existential nausea, the experience of meaninglessness, involve themselves in the meaning that religion purports to give, all the while filling their time with the occupations necessary to survive. Some people go further and give themselves purpose by accumulating wealth, excelling at sport, positing alternative religions and a million other ways, including going on cargo ship voyages, to occupy themselves until they come to die.

As I said earlier, out on the ocean we were away from the obsession with news that ashore is pumped at us by the media all day every day.   News that brings into our homes the pain and suffering of the world with accounts of wars, starvation, murder, rape, drugs, gangland crime, inter-personal bitterness, hatred and many more unthinkable human activities. Listening to and reading about all these unspeakable travesties of human love and decency every day cannot be good for us. As we know it is only rarely that the media report the good things that people do; the often heroic care of people by people; the love for each other that does give some meaning to life. Such love and care are the ethical and moral virtues of religion without the miraculous and without aspirations for religious salvation.

Despite what some religious people say it is possible to have one without the other. It is possible to live a meaningful moral life without the metaphysical assumptions of religion. It is possible to live lives where the purpose is to be loving and caring for other people, to create a decent society without the necessity of believing in miracles, resurrections, divine intervention, and life after death. It is possible because many atheists, humanists, agnostics and unselfconsciously non-religious people do it all the time.

Comments welcome to:   semple.patrick006@gmail.com

At sea, aware of the unfathomable immensity of the universe, I was awestruck by the beauty and wonder of the firmament.  It has a greater immediacy in the middle of the ocean than in a city or a suburb.  I marvel at this mysterious creation.  What’s it about?  Where do we fit in?

What’s it about?      Where do we fit in?

How all this came about is hotly debated between creationists and evolutionists.  Creationists believe that the universe was created by God and evolutionists believe that the universe evolved from the Big Bang and is still expanding.  Creationists base their belief on the bible and religious faith and evolutionists base their understanding on scientific knowledge.  It isn’t, of course, as simple as that.  There are churches and religious people today who, because of the incontrovertibility of science, hold that the scientific theory of the origin of the universe, the Big Bang, does not preclude the belief that it was created by God; that this was God’s way of doing it.

Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge astrophysicist recounts that:       At an astronomy conference in the Vatican the Pope told the delegates it was OK to  study the universe after it began, but they should not enquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God.   I was glad he didn’t realise I had presented a paper at the conference on how the universe began.  I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.

For the Pope the ultimate authority in these matters is theology, while the ultimate authority for Hawking is science. Throughout history the Church claimed to be the final arbiter in all such matters, but since the 17th century it has slowly had to accommodate to science on many issues. It wasn’t, however, until 1992 that the Church finally absolved Galileo, who had been condemned by the Inquisition in the 16th century for his belief that the earth went round the sun rather than, that which the Church taught, based on the bible, that the sun went round the earth.

Amongst Christians today there are those who hold every conceivable view in the theology/science debate.  At one end of the spectrum fundamentalist Christians, and they exist in most Christian traditions, believe that the issue of the origin of the universe is a simple matter.  The bible, in the book of Genesis, gives an account of creation by God and since they believe that the bible is infallible, and is to be taken literally, that’s how the whole thing started and that’s the end of the matter.  Over forty per cent of Americans believe this. At the other end of the spectrum of believers there are theologians who claim that on this and on many other topics they can marry theology and science and remain true to both.

Many people don’t take an interest in these matters.  They simply want to get on with their lives, doing whatever it is that they are doing.  Only a small number of people are reflective when it comes to theological issues.  People who are interested and do want to think about creation and religion often find themselves swayed one way or another by reading or listening to people they consider well-informed or authoritative on the topics.  The pattern often is that they listen to one side of the argument and find it has merit and then listen to the opposite side of the argument and find it has merit.  Constantly listening to others, especially those who clearly have more knowledge on the topics than oneself can make it very difficult to come to a conclusion.

Over the years I read a great deal about theological controversies and finally decided that I would make up my own mind rather than look any further for answers from the opinions of others, no matter how authoritative and well-informed they appeared to be. The position I finally came to was that the scientific analysis was credible and that theological analyses, of whatever hue, were not. This led me further than simply deciding on the matter of creation.  It led me to the conclusion that there was no God, no revelation, no divinity of Jesus, no miraculous intervention in the world, no life after death and no second coming.  For someone who spent the best part of forty years involved in Christian ministry you may think that this must have been traumatic for me.  On the contrary it gave me great freedom and peace.  It was a long slow process, but when I finally decided that I could no longer believe it came to me as a great relief.

We are all in danger of submitting ourselves to the institutions to which we belong.  We are in danger of subverting something of our potential to grow and develop as people to the objectives of the institution. Membership of institutions is often not conducive to our own emotional development; rather institutions require loyalty to their doctrine, philosophy or objectives at the expense of the personal freedom that allows us to grow as people.  This is true not only of the institutional Church, but it is true of political parties, trade unions and of all institutions. It is in the nature of an institution that its own wellbeing and survival come before the wellbeing, and often at the expense, of its individual members. We make all the important decisions of our lives with our emotions, and emotions are at the bottom of the list of priorities of institutions if they are there at all.

For some people membership of the Church is the security of belonging to the group. For some it fills the need to have other people to do their thinking for them. For some it provides identity. The liturgy of the Church can be a great comfort in a precarious and fast changing world in which there is a much evil. The Church is based on theological doctrines that were formulated in a pre-scientific world when it was a not uncommon for notable human beings to be thought to be divine, and where the existence of angels, demons and miraculous events were taken for granted. These doctrines and teachings don’t stand up after the best part of two millennia of the evolution of the thinking and experience of humankind.

After I had finally made up my own mind I still thought from time to time about some churchmen and theologians of stature who obviously still believed.  They had finer minds than mine and many of them knew much more theology than I did. It didn’t give me serious doubts about my own conclusions, but I wondered. I wondered how they could believe so many things that I found incredible. I reminded myself that I had believed some of these things for most of my life. I adjusted that thought, however, to: I had accepted some of these things for most of my life. I had accepted them on trust from 2,000 years of the teaching and tradition of the Church and in the ministry I had done my work with people which I enjoyed. When I finally realised that nobody could give me answers I made up my own mind. I can imagine somebody saying: ‘Who are you to disagree with the wisdom of ages, the great minds of the Church over two millennia?’

Over the years since I have been reassured to come across quotations from some significant philosophical and literary figures who advocated such independence of thought.

Immanuel Kant in his essay ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ says: 

 Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.  Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Have courage to use your own understanding.

William Hazlitt in his essay ‘On the Ignorance of the Learned’ says:

You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair, and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, to “take up his bed and walk,” as expect the learned reader to throw down his book and think for himself.

Walt Whitman in his poem ‘Song of Myself’ says:

You shall no longer take thingsat second or third
    hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,
    nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
    things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

The librettist W.S.Gilbert makes the same point in a more humorous way.  In the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta ‘HMS Pinafore’ Sir Joseph Porter sings:

I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party’s call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

All these quotations are saying the same thing: make up your own mind.  Hazlitt and Whitman say explicitly: stop looking for it in books; it is in yourself that you look. Inform yourself and filter things from yourself. However, Gilbert is making the point that not thinking for yourself will help you to get on in the world. This is classically true in the Church.

I don’t feel the need for others, humble or exalted, to believe what I do. I am perfectly comfortable that where I am is right for me and I don’t feel the need to convince anyone else to agree with me. I believe, however, that what I now hold makes some other people uncomfortable. One friend has told another friend that I should not publish my views; I should keep them to myself. Another good friend, a priest, was careful to tell me that Anthony Flew, the philosopher, a long time atheist now believes in God again. The implication that I took from what he said was: ‘if a man as eminent in philosophy as Flew has changed his mind maybe you will too.’  Maybe I will or maybe I won’t. I discovered however that Flew while affirming his belief in God says he does not believe in special revelation. It looks to me that he holds a position akin to the 18th  century Deists. He says explicitly:’ I still hope and believe there’s no possibility of an afterlife.’ Yet another friend, a clergyman, told me that Alister McGrath, a former science professor turned theologian had answered the arguments of Richard Dawkins, the atheist geneticist. In these instances I should have said: ‘Don’t mind Flew, don’t mind Mc Grath, what do you think?’ I didn’t, but I will the next time!  It is human for us to want other people to agree with us, especially people considered authorities, but it is unwise to abdicate to them, no matter how learned or authoritative, decisions on matters that are within our own competence to decide. People who swallowed Marx and Freud hook, line and sinker nowadays have reason to believe that they should have been a little more discerning themselves!

Part 2 to follow

We went ashore at Salerno, Italy, from our cargo ship. We were travelling in the Mediterranean and looked forward to a meal as a break from ship’s fare, good solid food as it was even for us vegetarians.

Here I must digress and, for the benefit of carnivores recount the vicissitudes of vegetarians when eating out. Gastronomically we are second class citizens. In Ireland when going to a restaurant, which is a rare event for the reasons that I will recount, we would phone ahead and say we are vegetarians and the response is usually something to the effect:
‘That is no problem, sir.  We cater for vegetarians.’

When the waiter arrives and you declare your hand, he proudly points to the only vegetarian item on the menu which is most likely to be, rice; risotto or kedgeree, or one of an infinite variety of pastas. When you say: ‘But there is no choice, the carnivores have six options.’ If it is a half-decent restaurant the waiter is likely to say: ‘What would you like, sir? We can do you a cheese or mushroom omelette.’ If it is not, he or she will either shrug their shoulders or say nothing. Not that we don’t enjoy rice, pasta or omelette but when you eat out you want something you don’t have at home.

For chefs, (many of them temperamental devils; even more so than church organists), these three are the cop-out vegetarian dishes. You bite your tongue and say inside your head: ‘Would you ever go to hell.  I’ll never come to this bloody restaurant again.’ If it is just the two of you, you could get up and walk out, and if you do get a table somewhere else, when you arrive it is likely to be a similar story and you are hungry and won’t get food for at least another hour. If friends are with you, you don’t want to make a fuss and for one reason or another you take the dish on offer.

Leek and Tofu

Now to return to the only restaurant we could find open in Salerno that would allow us to have a meal and get back to the ship in time to sail.  There was nobody else in the restaurant and the middle-aged waitress approached and showed us to a table. We drew on our minute store of useful Italian just to be sure there was no misunderstanding and said: ‘Siamo vegetariani. Ne carne, ne pesce.’ A phrase we learned by rote the first time we went to Italy; ‘we are vegetarians. No meat, no fish.’  She had no English and pulling out two chairs at a table gestured that there was no problem. We knew that there was no chance of having vegetarian food, but we could have something that wasn’t meat or fish. To keep life simple, since in Italian the word for omelette is omelette we asked if we could have cheese omelettes. She smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Having had so much pasta on board we craved the spud and ordered roast potatoes. In Italy they cook wonderful diced potato roasted in duck fat. Though vegetarians we are not bigots!

In due course the waitress arrived with what transpired to be lasagne, lasagne without meat, be it said, and straight from the freezer, with three or four small pieces of barely roasted potato each. Delizioso, she said as she put it in front of us.  She also told us it was the best restaurant in Salerno. We took the line of least resistance, said nothing, not that she would have understood if we had, and ate the lasagne. It was OK, but it wasn’t omelette in any language. For dessert, being in Italy, we took the opportunity to have ice cream. The Italians make some of the best ice cream you can have anywhere. Again we called on our meagre knowledge of Italian and ordered gelato. The waitress smiled again and nodded. She arrived back with what we discovered later is called semifreddo; literally ‘half cold’; layers of sponge and ice cream. We paid the bill and left, glad to return to the ship where Pasquale, the cook, provided good basic, but tasty non-meat or fish meals.

Carrot with Cumin Seed and Ginger

At dinner in a reputable hotel in Carcasonne, in the south of France, when the rest of the party were half way through their main course our meal finally arrived. It was four half tomatoes grilled with bread crumbs on top, garnished with parsley and lettuce leaves. The Froggies are not noted for their sympathy towards vegetarians!
In Venice we were guests of a friend at a well known gourmet restaurant where they served us a main course of beautifully presented, but pathetically inadequate, salad. Our hostess noticed and back home wrote to complain. The restaurant refunded her for two meals.

At dinner in a well known, first class Country House Hotel in Southern Ireland we were served very poor pasta, one of chefs’ cop-outs. Next morning at breakfast the owner asked if our meal last night had been all right. We told her and her response was to the effect: ‘I can’t get him, (meaning the chef), to take vegetarians seriously.’ She deducted two dinners from the bill and compensated each of the three of us handsomely with a box of the finest fresh vegetables from the garden and some jars of home-made preserves. I go there from time to time for lunch now when they produce very good vegetarian dishes; the owners have obviously whipped the chef into line or else they cook it themselves!

Aubergine with Parmesan

When vegetarians go to a party and it comes to the buffet supper your hostess points to a dish on the table and says proudly: ‘This is vegetarian.’ You thank her, take some and go and sit down somewhere. It is very tasty so you go back for a little more, but it’s not to be found. The bloody carnivores have scoffed the lot. Again you swear inside your head.
Recently at a college working lunch, notice of which said that sandwiches would be served, there were no egg, no tomato no cheese sandwiches. All of them were filled with pieces of dead animal.

The truth of the matter is; if you are a vegetarian the only satisfactory place to eat is at the home of understanding  friends, other vegetarians or at home!

Aubergine with Parmesan, broad beans and noodles

The first two dishes illustrated above are from a vegetarian cookery book that my wife, Hilary, has written available as an app: Hilary’s Vegetarian Recipes. For details click on ‘Vegetarian’ menu option on the main website.

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.