Cassandra Voices

Author: Stephen Mc Randal

  • A Background in Science

    Most Saturdays they stood outside the GPO in Dublin. People holding signs bearing slogans both contradictory and confused. “Fake Covid Virus.” “RTE IS the Virus.” “End Barbaric Halal Slaughter.” “Our Irish Catholic Heritage is Under Attack.” “End the Paedophile Cabal.” Weren’t many of them. Sixty maybe. Not enough to be taken seriously. No real threat. Nobody in government yet.

    Seventy-five years ago, the world had said no to fascism. But now, empowered by America’s evil clown of a president, it seemed the right wing were making their comeback. On a global front, our world was at a precipice. It could fall towards the scramble model, one where while they were destroying the planet, the corporations created shortages, and by grabbing everything for a few, left the many to fight, amongst themselves, for whatever crumbs fell. Or to try and make a more equitable world, the people could dismantle those banks, hedge funds and large corporations which reward the greedy and punish the needy.

    With their anti-racist placards, a couple of people would stand in opposition to the anti-maskers, on the island, in the middle of the road, facing the General Post Office, known in Dublin as the GPO, on any given Saturday. The anti-maskers would shout at the anti-racist crew, “Pedo Scum! Off our streets!” Sometimes they’d cross over the road, in order to physically attack the anti-racist crew. It made for a very unpleasant day. Manus resented that he had become embroiled in such an activity. It seemed so pointless. Just because a few people stood opposite them, the anti-mask, sectarian, and anti-immigrant crowd weren’t going to change their minds. So why the hell did he do it? He just found it hard to walk past and not say anything in response. Anti-mask conspiracy theories mixed with sectarian and racist rhetoric is dangerous.

    Sectarian and racist views mildly couched, in that they weren’t necessarily anti-Muslim, but against the “Barbaric halal slaughter.” They weren’t anti-immigrant, just “Sick and tired of seeing Irish people homeless, while immigrants got housed.” They believed that in the Irish government, there existed a paedophile cabal. Anyone who opposed the anti-maskers was, by definition, also a paedophile. Loosely bound together by their angry frustration at the uncertainty of Covid-19 and its effects on their lives, they’d dox people who opposed them on social media, give out their names and addresses, and accuse them of paedophilia.

    As a teenage Catholic male, one living in a Protestant area, during the sectarian insanity of Belfast’s 70s, Manus had often been harassed by other teenagers. Young males wearing tartan scarfs, those keen to prove their manliness through violence, would dunt into his shoulder as they walked past. Spit on him. Call him names. He was in the minority. They were the majority. There was already a sectarian cultural history and an existing sectarian state; so, the politicians who’d gained power and position through stirring speeches, those which also brought sectarian murders to their height, aren’t totally to blame. But neither should their part be overlooked.

    Once, Manus was on the street with four friends when, headed in the opposite direction, two loyalist blokes walked past them. For the first time Manus was in the majority, and he dunted one of them in the shoulder. It’s a funny thing, the dunt. Technically speaking, it’s not quite a physical attack. You simply throw your shoulder into theirs, as though they weren’t there. As if, you refuse to acknowledge their right to occupy any available space.

    “Did that make you feel big?” demanded one of his friends. An inquiry which, at the time, gave Manus pause. He didn’t harbor any ambition to imitate his enemies. He wasn’t out for revenge. What he wanted was to walk the streets without fear of physical or verbal attack.

    And Manus now had to ask himself why he insisted upon standing in opposition against racist rhetoric. The anti-mask stance bothered him, but apart from thinking them foolish, he hadn’t given it much thought. No, it was the sectarian and racist rhetoric, so often thrown in, which troubled him.

    The correct response could be a counter demonstration that via logic and rationale examined and pointed out the right wing’s flawed views. But for whatever reason, Dublin’s Left couldn’t muster a weekly counter-protest of more than half a dozen people. Manus could complain about the lack of organized resistance, but he himself was a solitary man, one who wouldn’t join two bits of string. Couldn’t have organized a piss up in a brewery. And without group organization, it seemed you ended up with half a dozen stood against sixty. With such bad odds, what was the point?

    “To act as though you believe your actions have some effect is foolish. To act as though you believe your actions had no effect is cowardly.” He had read that, or something close to it, somewhere.

    So now, it was Saturday morning. He sat at the backdoor drinking a cup of tea, and not having a fag, while his porridge simmered and settled. Apart from those anti-maskers and the couple of people who would stand to oppose them, there was also going to be an Assange protest today. Protest. Ha ha. Two, three or four people would stand outside the GPO from twelve to one with signs saying “FREE ASSANGE.” Manus hoped to be one of them. But again, he had to ask himself, what was the point? It might be nice for the protestors to see each other. Reaffirm their beliefs. But the effect it would have on the American, English or even the Irish government would be nil.

    Most people on the street didn’t know about Assange. Those that did, didn’t care. Why should it matter to them? How would it effect their real world? One that consisted of going to work, paying their bills and buying the latest app or blockbuster. Just getting paid and getting laid. Funneled into a self-absorbed life style. Assange had attempted to inform people on the street as to what corporate-run governments were doing in their world. Democracies were being undermined or overthrown. Wars waged and climate destruction, all for the short-term profit of a few. But people were too busy consuming corporate media and goods to take much notice.

    Having had his porridge, Manus went to the toilet, and then seeking some self-awareness, he sat for an hour, practicing some techniques that might help him get through the day. At eleven o’clock, he went out onto his own street, to help with the monthly community clean up. He hoed weeds. At the end of an hour, he found himself outside Fergus’s house, where the two discussed pros and cons of weeding.

    “The bees need the weeds and the dandelions, I know people say they’re just weeds, but they’re pretty!” said Fergus, to which Manus agreed. He didn’t mind weeds, and anyhow, hoeing them down only encouraged them. It wasn’t like he could get at their roots. And scraping them away just made deeper ruts for them to grow. Still, it got him out with his neighbours, on the street, and jokingly he added, “As they would have said where I grew up, it made the place a bit more Protestant looking.” Clean, tidy and weedless. He kind of half stalled when he said this, realizing that Fergus was actually a Protestant and had probably faced sectarian shit throughout his own life. Not on the same level as the North yet still Manus figured the man had experienced sectarianism and could have been a little put out by a mocking Ulster colloquialism. But it was ancient history and Fergus just laughed.

    Manus didn’t stay to have coffee with his neighbours, but before he left, received praise for his weeding. It was nice to have neighbours, though the others on the street owned their own homes.  He just rented. It made a difference.

    He’d be twenty or twenty-five minutes late to join with Peter, Ruthy and possibly John who were going to try to make people aware that Assange was facing life in prison for exposing the horrendous crimes of corporate governments. It wouldn’t do much good but it wouldn’t do any harm. They were unlikely to take much abuse too. That was always a positive factor these days. They’d been standing from one o’clock to two o’clock, but the yellow vest, anti-immigrant, anti-maskers and the counter demo had put them off. So now Peter had said they would meet at twelve. Manus had fallen out with Peter the week before.

    Peter had said he was anti-mask. Because of their racist overtones, he wouldn’t be standing with the anti-maskers, but as a rule, he didn’t agree with masks. Said something about “the herd immunity and how we would never get it because we were stopping the spread. And how diverse approaches by governments made no real difference, the virus had a life of its own.” Peter claimed he had “A background in Science.”

    The fact that such views had caused the death of thousands really angered Manus. He respected Peter for protesting about Assange, but his anti-mask stance made him look, at least to Manus, like a conceited, childish fool. Still, you work with the tools to hand, and Manus made every effort to set differences aside when it came to their common protest. Julian Assange getting imprisoned for exposing corporate government crimes stood out as important. How would we even know about the horrendous crimes committed in the name of oil and power, if we allowed whistleblowers to be imprisoned? But today, there was no one at the GPO at noon. Peter and Ruthy must have cancelled.

    Though there were lots of cops on O’Connell street, Manus just walked on by. He bought a samosa from Govinda’s. The same pretty woman served him. He had often wondered about her. She’d been serving him samosas for over a decade. But they’d never had any real communication. Thoughts were as far as his contact with her ever went. He had to take it on board that he was old. He’d lost two front teeth and whatever remained of his boyish good looks had gone with them. All that boy/girl or man/woman stuff was over for the likes of him. No longer did the wild dogs of lust pull him violently any which way they chose. And even if they still nosed around, they’d need some sort of signed statement of avowal, before making a move.

    In spite of Govinda’s seeming a reasonable enough place to sit, he decided against that and exited, samosa in hand, to eat it on the street. His daughter phoned him. She’d been with her mother for the week, and was meant to meet Manus later in the day, but suggested that since she was in town, they might cross paths earlier. She had not only changed her name to Sawyer, but also her gender, to nonbinary. Until his little tranarchist, Comrade Sawyer arrived, he had coffee in the Train Café by the Brown Bull. Amongst others, Sawyer had been part of a black block action that had run into the “Irish National Party” protest and stolen their speaker and microphone one week. However, this week, because of Covid, and because the violence at last week’s counter-protest had put them off, The Left were going to stay away from any counter demonstration. The Dublin Left were such wusses.

    Sawyer texted her mother. Was it all right to stay with her father? But Mom complained she’d seen little enough of Sawyer that week. So, Sawyer said she’d be back in the evening. Hence Manus walked around on his own. Seeing not a soul he knew, that is until he spotted Aisling and Veronica having coffee. So, he stopped beside them.

    “It’s the fuckin’ hard core!” Is what he said. And it was true. They were the hardcore of resistance who stood, every Saturday, against the racist sectarian speeches being made on O’Connell street. They’d both taken lots of grief for their almost constant counter-protests. Both had been subjected to physical and online abuse. They both looked skinny as sticks with worry, but they kept going down on a Saturday to stand on the road island opposite the GPO and take a stance against racism.

    More comrades, Gina and Martin, joined them. Manus was useless at figuring age or for that matter, relationships. On the relation front, Gina and Martin could have been lovers, friends, or both. On the age front, he figured they could possibly be nearly as old as him. Veronica and Aisling were younger. Caroline, the youngest at twenty-nine years of age, also turned up.

    The half dozen counter-protesters went round to the GPO. They stood where the anti-maskers usually stood. Today the anti-maskers were at the RTE buildings, and going to march from RTE to the GPO. The counter-protest group knew there would be a large crowd of anti-maskers. Some of them very keen on violence. The counter demonstrators were sick and tired of being massively outnumbered, threatened and abused. They decided not to stand against them today. They left chalk messages where the anti-maskers would stand. “No place for Islamophobia! No place for transphobia! Anti-maskers are conceited fools! No place for racism! No place for hate!” Not much of a counter-protest, but what can a half dozen people do?  Gina and Martin went off for a pint. Caroline, Ashling, Veronica and Manus went off for coffee. No one felt good about letting racist and sectarian shit be spewed on the street, unopposed.

    The anti-maskers had their march on live stream, so Caroline and Veronica kept looking to see how far the march had got, and what they were up to. The sound of the marchers’ live stream coming out of Veronica’s phone gave Manus the heebie-jeebies. He explained that he couldn’t even listen to mainstream media and why righ-twing media made him physically ill. Manus went on to describe how when he was a kid, he regularly had to walk past groups of young men like the anti-maskers. Almost immediately he found himself filled with regret for making the reference. Too long ago. Too difficult to convey. Big loyalist rallies with people like Paisley calling for defense of their Protestant loyalist heritage against the papist hoards. They used words like “cleansing and liquidation.”

    Did they really say things like that?

    Yes. Yes, they did and afterwards the thugs on the corners would be emboldened.

    After coffee. Caroline decided to go on home. Manus, Veronica and Aisling couldn’t help themselves. They went back round to the GPO. Gina and Martin had come back too. They all laughed at their earlier statements, that they weren’t going to stand here today. It was like being horrified by a car accident, but unable to look away.

    So, there they stood. Five against a hundred, or more. Veronica held her battered cardboard sign. “No to Racism! No to Homophobia! No to Islamophobia! No to Hate!” Aisling had one too. “No to Racism!”

    The anti-maskers have signs “Our Catholic Faith is Under Attack!” “RTE is the Virus! “Fake Covid Virus!” “Stop Barbaric Halal Slaughter!’ Some of them cross the road to the island where the five counter protestors stand. One woman and her son (who reminds Manus of Trump’s kid,) cross over brandishing a banner saying that “The Rosary is the Answer to Ireland’s Problems!” Manus called to the sixteen-year-old boy. “Go on, the Virgin Mary’ll give ya a blow job when ya die.” Manus wasn’t proud of his words. It was just the kid seemed so smug. As he turns to threaten Manus, his saintly little face changes. Aisling kept putting her little cardboard sign in front of their larger banner about the holy rosary. The police tried to move her but she didn’t budge. One of the anti-maskers snatches her sign off her, and they started chanting, “Pedo Scum! Off Our Streets!

    More of the anti-maskers crossed to the island. One man came for Manus. Looked like he was in his fifties. Manus tried to understand the man. On a personal level. Like, wasn’t he a bit old for this type of behaviour? Why was he going for Manus? What did he believe and why was Manus a threat to that belief? The man was staring at Manus. “You and me.” He was saying. “Come on.”

    Why was the man there? Okay, he didn’t believe government or the media. Understandable. But to think both government and big media could cook up an imaginary global virus? Well, that was going a bit too far. The truth was no longer incontestable for this man. And in the absence of incontestable truth, you can just cherry pick facts at random to make up any reality of your choosing. The truth is whatever you say it is. Our earth is flat. Holocaust never happened. There is no virus.

    Or perhaps he’d not proved himself a man, back when such concepts were proved by physical violence?  Did he hope to prove it now? And Manus? Why was he there? Had he, as a kid, run too often? And now figured he was in safe territory? At a place where he could and should make a stand? There were Gards all around them so, Manus saw no reason to engage with this man. Not on his level of “Come on. You and me.’

    Inflamed to violence by the mere sight of Manus, the man didn’t care about repercussions. He was a hero for his cause, and lurching forward, made a swing. Fist connected with neck, but Manus didn’t hit him back. Not that he was a pacifist, but multiple experiences with law enforcement officers, who tended not to be left-wingers, had led him to believe that should he hit back, it would be Manus arrested.

    As the Gards stepped in, the anti-masker’s friends pulled him back. “He’s just punched me, and I want him arrested for assault!” Manus declared but the Garda did nothing. He repeated his statement and another Garda engaged with him, if only to order he “Move over there.” “No!” replied Manus. “Maybe racism is acceptable to you, but it’s not to me.” At this, the Garda turned his back. Another bloke on the island made a beeline for Manus, who touched a female Garda on her arm to say, “Excuse me, but that man is about to punch me. And when he does, I’ll hit him back. So, don’t arrest me afterwards.” The Garda came between them. Identifying Manus as a cause of disturbance, one big fat Garda dunted him out of the road. The counter-protestors parted before the protest had ended.  Touching elbows with them, Manus said, “Good to see you comrades!”

    When he got home, he was weary.

  • A Rat on the Wall

    1960s Belfast

    Sat in silence on the bottom step, with my knees tucked under my chin, I fit snugly inside a ray of sunlight which penetrated the dark hallway through a stained glass window above the heavy wooden door. In the four years since my father’s death, a vindictive, sombre air pervaded the house. Harbors of warmth and light were frail, transient things.

    The girls had already left for school and the house was deserted, save for me and my mother, Ruth. She was making the most of a rest before her hard day’s work began, and I was desperate for a reprieve from school. One of the teachers had taken it upon himself to iron out the wrinkles in my character with beatings so severe that I had to attend hospital. Ruth complained about the violence done to her child, but had been told that the teacher in question was soon to be retired, and that taking the complaint any further would be a big stab in the back for Catholic education.

    I had survived that teacher’s class, but I still hated school, and by way of a plea, I faked a rasping cough, to which my exhausted mother responded in an exasperated, voice, “If I have to leave my bed to get you out to school, I’ll break your two legs.”

    I trudged up Blackwood Street, deliberately scuffing the toes of the shoes my mother had worked so hard to buy. My vain efforts to be excused from school had only made me late again. I would be punished.  But there was some compensation. Free from the school kids and workers who had already traveled to their appointed places of toil, the road was not busy and apart from two women downstairs, the empty bus granted me full reign of the upper deck. Rightly installed in the front seat, I surveyed all the little streets, shops and people below. The bus rolled down the Ormeau Road, past where the stink of the gas works leered through the windows, then through the markets to Cromac Street, where it slowed down to turn left, into May Street.

    It was just at the corner of May Street, that the bus traveled at its slowest pace, and I jumped from the open platform, running to stay on my feet, when I hit the pavement. I passed the courthouse and turned down the back of Town Hall street as far as the court cells, before turning left to face the high walled police barracks. Their huge open gates allowing a view of the large, impressive cobble-stoned courtyard.

    The back entrance to my primary school was defined on one side by the barracks wall, and on the other by a fruiterer’s warehouse, and flour mill. Inside the mill, turned an unmanned machine for loading bags of flour onto lorries. Normally the entry swarmed with boys playing hurling, handball and Gaelic football, soccer being banned on account of its association with England. They fought in the entry too, those high walls amplifying and echoing their screams. But the boys had already answered the morning bell, and the entry was empty.

    The mill workers had all disappeared for tea break and apart from the clicking of their unmanned machine, there was an eerie silence in the entry. I had heard of big bombs that can kill all the people and leave their buildings and machinery still standing. The solitary slap of my shoes on the concrete alleyway echoed back with a menacing thought. Had the end of the world come? Was there nobody left but me?

    I might have run in blind childish panic had I not seen it. The rat. Like an eighth wonder from a Marvel Magazine, defied gravity and clung four feet clear above the ground.  The rat’s body ran parallel with the length of the bricks on the corner of the barracks wall. I had never seen a rat so clearly before. It had brown fur and beady eyes. We observed each other briefly before scurrying in our separate directions. The rat made its way back to the mill, while I ascended a broad, cast iron stairway which led from the yard to the upper floor of the old stone school.

    It was a peculiar building built in the 1870s, of large coarse granite stones, with an upper floor jutting out to overhang a part of the walled off school yard. Overall, the place resembled one of the old tower houses, built for protection rather than education.

    I tried to sit down unnoticed, on a long wooden bench at the back of the class room, but the black smocked, chubby figure of Brother Andia beckoned to me. He squatted down on his hunkers beside the hearth to bend his leather strap over the open coke fire, which burnt in the center of the partly partitioned room. I stood with little defiance, save a disinterested acceptance of the inevitable.

    “ah missed the bus,” I started to say, but the excuse seemed lame so I added, “And ah stopped to watch a rat on the wall in the entry.”

    “There are no rats in the vicinity of this school,” stated the Brother categorically.

    We were a captivating diversion for the rest of the class and perhaps it was for the entertainment of my audience, that I cheeked,

    “If there are no rats in the school, then how come you put rat poison down in the cupboards?” My audience was pleased with the show but Brother Andia was not.

    “There are no rats in the vicinity of this school.” He repeated, and had me hold out my hands so that I could be punished for being late. The Brother strapped with unusual brutality, so that each stroke left a red swelling.

    After three strokes on each hand, I expected my punishment to end. Arms folded across my chest, the injuries fit snugly into my armpits and I half turned to take my seat. But the Brother caressed me lightly across the face with the strap and smiling sadistically had me extend my hands once more. This time I was to be punished for telling lies about seeing rats.

    Brother Andia did not come from Belfast, but from one of the twenty-six counties which were no longer under British rule. His years of experience as headmaster of a school, which existed under pressure, within a sectarian state had taught him the necessity of blind loyalty, and when he strapped me, that was the true message which he wished to convey. Oxford Street Christian Brothers primary school was a good, clean school which had no faults, no problems, and no rats.

    The Brother continued to strap. Blubbering, I stood there, forced by my naive, stupid stubbornness, to stick to my story.

    There was…

    a rat on the wall.

    Illustration by Malina | Artsyfartsy

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  • Manus’s Further Misadventures

    Jesinta got back in touch with Manus through the internet. Face-book. He had stuck his name and a photo of himself up, and someone from his distant past had got in touch with him. For Manus it was a timely, and much appreciated contact

    He was down in the dumps living in Dublin. An old man from Belfast. No one knew him.

    He had met a few people but they were all far too straight by far for the likes of Manus. Their smug security inherent in the safe lives they had lived. They hadn’t even tried mind altering illegal drugs or reality revealer’s (as his day would have termed them) like magic mushrooms or acid. Their whole outlook on life seemed to be gleamed from viewing television. They had done straight jobs. Lived straight lives. They had never been on the wrong side of the law, been homeless or squatted houses. They had never been beaten by the police or chased through the streets by thugs while the police looked on. They were straights, who believed the straight view of the world as portrayed on the flat screen. They never thought about it, but if pushed they would say they believed there was a democracy in which they could affect social and economic decisions, and a free press which presented them with all the necessary information to make those decisions.

    Then they would describe druggies as ‘delusional’.

    So it was great to have Jesinta contact him on the net.

    The email said ‘do you remember Ingleston common?’,  then there was the name Jesinta and a telephone number. Manus felt all a-glow thinking about Ingleston common free festival. Just the fact that there had been free festivals.

    It had been the early eighties in England. He had been traveling from Stonehenge with a convoy of around fifty vehicles: cars, vans, flat backed trucks, caravans, buses and motorbikes.

    The police had tried to break the convoy up. It had been during the Thatcher years, and the police were all tooled up and pushing for a ruckus, with the drug-crazed, anarchistic rabble the press had daubed the ‘peace convoy.’

    As a show of strength, police in riot gear lined the bridges going over the motorway. Intent on breaking the convoy they blocked the entrances to the motorway stations thereby denying the convoy fuel. A few inexperienced young bucks broke from the ranks and tried driving in to the service stations as ordinary citizens who had the right to refuel at a motorway station.

    They were captured.

    Then the convoy-led vehicles swerved across the motorway and cut out their engines.

    It was mid-afternoon on one of the busiest motorways in England and if the vehicles of the convoy weren’t going to be allowed to refuel and continue their journey then neither would anyone else.

    The police could trash the vehicles and arrest the people but that motorway was going to remain blocked for at least a day. That would cause disruption to an important trading route, and bring media coverage. The police quickly capitulated, allowing the convoy to refuel and escorted them to a piece of common land just outside Bristol called Ingleston Common.

    A woman called Jesinta had turned up on the site. She was working as a prostitute from a massage parlour in the predominantly West Indian area of London known as Brixton. She had told Manus they were both Virgo monkeys, who could be of use to each other. and brought him home to her boudoir, complete with waterbed, mirrored wall and Turkish light fittings. She gave him the cash for a pound of good Jamaican weed, and set him up in the herb business.

    On the day Prince Charles and Princess Di. married Manus sat with Jesinta and the rest of the girls from the toss shop, who celebrated their day off with champagne and cocaine. They mostly listened too reggae and dub music. Prince Fari boasted about ‘heavy manners … Discipline, discipline, heavy heavy discipline.’

    But Jesinta also had some white man’s music, some American country singer who sang about ‘beat the lady’s of fame at the lady’s own game.’ Manus would always remember the line.

    From his twenties Manus could remember many misadventures. Jesinta had featured in a few. Thinking back to those heady lawless days it seemed like a dream.

    The facebook message from Jesinta seemed like confirmation that his memories were real.

    Manus phoned the number and it was her. He had tried to make contact over the years, but like most of his past she wasn’t easy to trace. And here she was alive and kicking.

    She had got her hands on some cash too. She wanted to send him a ticket to come visit and see how she lived now.

    He was overjoyed at the contact. Some kind of continuity to his life. It seemed he had upped and moved on so many times in his life. Cutting off a little piece of himself each time he moved. Contact with Jesinta was like contact with his amputated self.

    So ‘yea Jesinta,’ he said ‘fly us over to Cyprus.’

    She got annoyed that he couldn’t just up and fly over that day. What was the mater with him had he become an old man? So stuck in his routine that he couldn’t just get up and take off. And he had to admit that he was. He had his five-year-old daughter Shirifa. Her wellbeing was his priority and it wouldn’t be good for her if her da just upped and offed.

    He knew then Cyprus probably wasn’t really such a good idea.

    It had been wonderful the contact with Jesinta. The confirmation that someone else shared the same past experiences but bringing that memory back into flesh and blood reality!?

    Jesinta could be generous and kind-hearted, but she was also a difficult enough human being to be around. She didn’t have any reason to love Manus either. Except in the same way that he loved her, as part of the past, as some sort of passport back to the days of rebellion. Days of virtual no go areas for the police in certain sections of cities all over the British isles. Days when people believed they were going to chant down Babylon. Days of free festivals.

    But that whole counter-culture was dead now. Dead and denied. Like it never really existed.

    Manus had, decades before, loved Jesinta and left her but he had seen her a few times since. The last time he had seen her they hadn’t been lovers for at least five years and he had called round out of the blue after a fight at work.

    She was still on the game advertising herself as a mature woman, and she had a punter call. She asked Manus to be quiet while she went upstairs, but then she was back down in two minutes wrapped in a towel asking him if he would come up stairs and fuck her for a bit and she would give him twenty quid. It was a strange scenario for Manus. Apparently the punter was paying extra to have someone else go first.

    Manus would have done it for free.

    But he’d noticed it then as she’d raised her legs up, her flesh getting flabby and he wondered how long she could keep charging men for the privilege of touching it.

    In the year two thousand and eleven, Manus’s last lover had been the mother of his child and she’d been twenty years his junior. But she had shown him the full, viciousness of unconscious youth in the child custody battle and maybe he was ready for a more mature relationship. Hell he was old himself now. Maybe Jesinta and he could be lovers again. She had been twelve years older than him. He wondered if she could still raise her old legs up. Maybe they could laugh at each other’s ailments and still find some sexual pleasure.

    In any event Manus and his daughter Shirifa flew to Larnaca.

    At first sight Jesinta looked like Maria Sabina the mushroom priestess. Sallow skin and greasy grey long hair, flat against her skull. But her body was plumper. Fast food plump. She moved with the slow effort of age that Manus understood although his own body denied all logic and, in spite of its abuse over the years, had remained fairly healthy. He even still had a full head of black hair. And most of his own teeth.

    When Shirifa went to bed the first night Manus and Jesinta sat with each other. They talked of friends who had died. Biker Spider. Phil the beer. Graham Gaskin. Characters from back in the day.

    And then had little to say to one another.

    Manus was not the wild young brave Jesinta had persuaded back to her reservation and she wasn’t the ass with class persona she had been either. She twirled her once luscious dark, now, lank grey hair between her fingers. There was a residual element of coyness in the gesture. But sex didn’t really seem to be an option.

    She was on some prescription mood enhancers and mostly watched T.V. all day. Manus hated that kinda stuff. As Jesinta had thirty years before. He would rather be crazy and unhappy rather than have sanity and happiness as prescribed by the pharmaceutical and media companies. And whatever they were supposed to be doing for Jesinta wasn’t working. She was intransigent and dogmatic most of the time.

    On one particularly bad day Manus and Shirifa had stayed out as long as they could and, too tired to walk any longer, caught a taxi.

    Then there it was on the floor of the taxi.

    A wallet.

    Bunch of fifties bulging out.

    Manus hadn’t the cash to pay for a fortnight’s alternative accommodation for them but there it was just sitting on the floor of the back seat.

    He thought about it. He picked the wallet up and stuck it in his bag.

    When they got home Jesinta was pissed off. They hadn’t stayed out long enough, or they had stayed out too long. There was no pleasing the woman. Manus asked her if she ever had a good day, and she warned him about another crack like that, and Manus was glad he had picked the cash. He was going to need it.

    He took Shirifa out again on the pretext of getting ice cream. He ditched the wallet in some long grass and pocketed the cash. Six hundred and forty euros.

    He felt sick.

    He didn’t like thieving from individuals. Corporations, companies, banks, governments, he didn’t give a toss about, but individuals…. naw it wasn’t cool.

    He was the sort who would need to talk to someone about it too, but there was no one he could tell. He tried to reassure himself that he could spend it on Shirifa, but it still didn’t feel good. He had a crap feeling in his guts.

    Then Jesinta texted to say the police had called by looking for him. Of course the wallets owner had contacted the taxi firm and the taxi driver had given the last fare’s address. Manus could of course still get away with it. The wallet was ditched and the cash was untraceable but …. no. He just wouldn’t be up to it, and the thought of getting arrested for theft while in charge of his daughter in a foreign country sent shivers down his spine. No. He managed to find the wallet in the long grass where he had thrown it, stuck the cash back inside and brought it down to the cop shop. They said he might be in for a reward. He just raised his eyes and shook his head.

    When he got back to Jesinta’s he felt relief and gratitude for all he had. Shirifa slept safely and soundly and Manus sat beside her. As was his habit he tried to scribble down some semblance of a story around his experience. His story told of an old lover, a free-spirited strong woman he had met at a free festival. A woman who would have despised this ugly caricature of herself trapped in some rut of vicious behaviour. The story went on to the point where Manus brought the wallet down to the cop shop, got back to Jesinta’s and felt grateful for what he had. It went on to have Jesinta wake up to all the treasures she had (not least amongst them being visited by Shirifa and her father) and in so doing Jesinta broke the habit of lashing back at all the vicious blows life had struck her. A habit she had carried on with even when life had stopped dealing her vicious blows.

    Manus left his story (like all his stories an effort to get his point of view across), where Jesinta would find it and read it. And find it and read it she did.

    She never admitted reading it, even denying it when he asked her. But she quoted lines and incidents from the story and did try her best for a half a day or so to behave as though she were with friends. People she could be easy with. People who didn’t want to rob or beat or cheat or dominate or belittle her in any way. People who had a sense of respect and even affection for her.

    They all had breakfast in Jesinta’s room. Brushing Shirifas hair, Jesinta explained to the inquisitive five year old what a September monkey and a March rooster were. But it didn’t last much more than half a day before the drugs wore off, or kicked in, or she just slipped back into some mental rut where she had to fight back even though no one was fighting against her.

    Whatever.

    Shirifa and Manus left Jesinta’s a few days later. They had spent three hundred euros and only had two hundred left. They found a hostel which didn’t charge for Shirifa and only charged Manus seventy for the week. They didn’t eat in cafes any longer, or buy nicknacks, or play the amusement arcades. At the hostel Shirifa met a Romanian boy named Matayo. Manus met a French Canadian woman named Mannon.

    Manus called back on Jesinta before they left. Shirifa didn’t want to. Shirifa at five years old still adored her father, and had been thrilled to meet someone from his world. Daddy’s old friend. And Jesinta had disappointed Shirifa. So Shirifa didn’t call back with him but Jesinta wasn’t the worst. Their was a touch of Miss Haversham about her. The hurt bitter twisted touch.

    Manus tried to kiss her before he left.

    He wanted to be affectionate but the only part of her that seemed to be open to a kiss was her hand. This could have resembled a devotee kissing a priestess or a pupil kissing a teacher. He hoped it wasn’t too much like a peasant kissing the hand of the rich.

    Manus was still an old man from Belfast living in Dublin where no one knew him. Most people that he knew from his youth were now grumpy old ones stuck in their ways. Or dead. The dead ones were easier to love. The living were harder to deal with.

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  • Manus in Seomra Spraoi

    Seomra Spraoi was a hub of resistance. The space was located just off the quays close to Dublin’s city centre. It was used to organise campaigns against, Shell oil’s Mayo pipeline, the World Bank and the deportations of non-nationals, among many other worthwhile causes.

    It is hardly surprising Seomra Spraoi was closed down under ‘fire regulations’. It had probably only been allowed to stay open for as long as it did due to a lack of visibility. No one caused trouble, there were no fights and the Gardaí were never called out over loud music late at night, until they were one night.

    When they came over they were not overly-impressed with some of the anti-capitalist and anti-police posters. Perhaps they began to perceive the space as a possible threat. In any event, Seomra was closed down under fire regulations a few days later.

    But that’s just political spiel. Seomra Spraoi was also a social centre. A place where personal stories unfolded.

    *******

    Manus had just finished with a relationship. The woman had moved out and even though he had custody of the child for more than half the week he still felt a yawning gap in his life. Even more so when the child, Shirifa, went to her mothers.

    Mentally, physically, and economically, Manus couldn’t afford the pubs, and while he could pass the time reading and writing, he still craved human contact.

    For Manus, Seomra Spraoi was manna from heaven. A; social club/drop in/resource centre, not-for- profit, non-hierarchical, and run for and by the people who used it. Those were the ideals to which the centre aspired. Of course ideals and humans don’t always get along perfectly together. It’s hard once you’ve invested time and energy into creating and maintaining something to think of it in any other way than as your baby. It may belong to everyone, but it still belongs more to you. Unofficial hierarchies and cliques seem to evolve naturally regardless of ideology. But having said that the centre did its best, and its best was pretty good.

    Sundays had activities specifically catering for kids but it was child-friendly in general.

    Shirifa loved it.  Even when there were no people her own age the older people took an interest in her, made allowances for her and in general showed her the respect we are all due.

    There is an old African saying, ‘it takes a whole village to bring up a young person’, and Seomra Spraoi was as close to a village as could be found anywhere in Dublin. Manus was enjoying bringing her up in the right type of atmosphere. An atmosphere of mutual respect.

    It was in Seomra Spraoi that Shirifa and Manus heard about the protest against the World Bank, and Manus and Shirifa, along with a handful of others, decided to participate.

    ‘We do very well out of it,’ Manus explained to his daughter. ‘It’s  because people in other countries are kept so poor that we are rich.’

    Shirifa nodded her three year old head and looked serious.

    Manus laughed. He wondered about his motivation for attending the protest. There was only a dozen or so people in attendance. Manus wondered about that too. How come there was so few protesting? Did everybody believe the world order was set like concrete and could never be changed? That protest seemed futile. Or did nobody else care that the poorest countries in the world were having to pay the richest countries in the world lots of money, and as a direct consequence thousands of people lived and died with intolerable hardship?

    People’s apathy amounted to criminal negligence. Manus applied uncle Noamy’s example and felt like a German civilian during the Second World War, looking at the smoke coming from chimneys and saying, ‘am I really sure what’s happening in there and even if I was what could I do about it?’

    Manus didn’t feel like he was doing much but he supposed standing in the cold outside a hotel where members of the World Bank were meeting and saying ‘boo’ was better than doing nothing.

    Anyway the protest in Malahide was a day out for Manus and Shirifa.

    After a few hours they headed off for cake and coffee in a café along with two single parent mums and their kids. Manus was a single parent dad and he had to get used to the idea. He had to start looking at other women, or looking for another woman.

    Phrases like, ‘back on the market’, or, ‘on the hunt’, could now be applied to him.

    Mostly he had enjoyed monogamy but he wasn’t cut out for abstinence.

    These women seemed sensitive, intelligent, strong, independent and politically aware lefty types. Manus was pleased to think they existed, and pleased to have their company. He wondered if he would stand a chance with either of them. Either would do, but shouldn’t he have a preference?

    He would have been hard-pressed to decide. He wondered if his need denied him a preference. One of the women appeared more youthful than the other, more impulsive.

    He had vague recollections of other women he had known when he had been younger. Impulsive times.

    Manus wondered what it would be like to live with either of them over a period of years. He had visions of both women wearing completely different faces from the pleasant persona’s they presented at this moment.

    How far away were the faces of anger, resentment  or painful sadness? How long before he would see those faces?

    Manus had made a few quid that morning. It was the first bit of cash he had made in months and he was pleased to have money in his pocket.

    He offered to buy both women their dinners with wine at the café, but they each refused. He didn’t know them that well and they were of a different gender.

    Manus had an easy-come eas- go attitude to money and would have offered to pay for the food and drink regardless. He was pleased to be able to offer and pleased to sit with two adults who brought their kids to protest against the World Bank. But that didn’t take from the fact that he was still a mate-less male and these were two seemingly mate-less females. He wondered if his offer was really him making a play for the women or if he was just being human and wanting to share in his good fortune.

    In any event they had both refused dinner. The single parent mums were younger than him. Everyone was younger than him.

    They all travelled back on the train together. The three lone parents and their three children.

    One of the women told a story about a skeleton that gave one of its bones to make soup, but when the soup wasn’t shared out the skeleton chased the nasty people out and let a poor little boy stay in the house.

    The story kept the kids happy the whole way back.

    Manus couldn’t help comparing the women to Shirifa’s mum Janice.

    Janice was thirty one going on nineteen. She longed for the heady social life of her late teens and early twenties. For Janice things had taken a distinctly downward turn around the year two thousand and one, when she had been twenty-four years old, and met Manus for the first time.

    For Jan the relationship was never meant to be anything more than a cheap thrill for a fleeting moment. The satisfaction of idle and lustful curiosity. But what should have been a passing fling turned into a prolonged nightmare. She felt trapped by her pregnancy too, and her relationship with this man, an older man, someone from another place and another time.

    She had even been unfaithful to him as a ploy to get him to end it. Shagging someone else had always worked before, but not with Manus. He stuck like shit to her shoe. Just to make her suffer she sometimes thought.

    Janice had fought against and in many ways denied the relationship most of the time but for the sake of convenience, and due to economic restrictions, she ended up living in the same space and even sharing the same bed as Manus, for the best part of six years.

    Receiving a bequest of fifteen thousand euro from her grandfather gave her the freedom to re-arrange her life. So Janice and Manus had officially broken up. That is, they no longer lived under the same roof or slept in the same bed, but they still had to deal with each other.

    Throughout the relationship Janice had fluctuated between being churlish and rude to being needy and crying. Sometimes she wanted his emotional support, other times she just wanted him in bed.

    The break up hadn’t changed the nature of the relationship.

    When she needed him or even just wanted him, she had only to ask and he would be over in a flash, panting like a puppy on her porch. Occasionally he might hesitate for a moment, but it seemed so pointless. Why would he lie on his own and deny himself the warmth and pleasure of her body?

    There were a couple of reasons why. After sex she might pat his crutch and say ‘you were always a great shag’. She probably thought she was flattering him, but a part of him would want to quote Billy Holiday, ‘you’ve had the best now why not take the rest, come on, have all of me.’

    But Jan didn’t want the rest and the parts she didn’t want felt lonely and rejected.

    She would never let him stay the night and he would feel like the dog getting put out at the end of the day.

    He would try to rationalize that lots of people would love such a relationship. Sex and then piss off, but for some reason it didn’t always appeal to him.

    Looked at from a certain slant of rationality, Jan was doing everyone a favour breaking out of a relationship she felt trapped in. Manus didn’t always look at it from that particular slant of rationality.

    It’s funny how unrequited love can turn to hate.

    But then life could sometimes be seen as a very funny experience, especially if you are living in the wealthy West.

    And Manus was living in the wealthy West.

    *******

    He brought Shirifa to a protest against deportations. Manus had friends who had been forced out of Ireland. He had felt frustration and anger. He didn’t have that many friends and couldn’t afford to lose any of them. One of his friends was called Addi. They had met in a border town. They both lived in the same housing estate . They both felt very isolated amongst the remnants of die-hard Republicanism, and the alcoholism which seemed to dominate the estate. They met on a regular basis for over a year, never doing much other than smoking African bush weed and talking or listening to music.

    But contacts like this were an oasis of human interaction in his otherwise social desert. Manus felt close to Addi. Then one day Manus got a message on his mobile saying Addi was in prison and asking for help. Manus didn’t know how to help. He never heard from Addi again. Apart from feeling useless and guilty Manus didn’t know what else he could do.

    His friend Okoro was a different story, which ended with Islam Okoro not being allowed back into Ireland, even though he had three kids who were born and living in the country at the time.

    So now the government was having a pre-Christmas round up of Nigerian fathers. They would be deported and their wives and children would follow them back.

    Manus was angry about the loss of his friends and infuriated that the government still used the tactic of separating fathers from their children. If any one for any reason thought they had the right to separate Manus and Shirifa, they were wrong. They had no such right. Manus was sure of that.

    He got himself a bit worked up as he walked down to the protest.

    Shirifa was sleeping in the buggy. He stood outside the immigration office with a dozen others. He was given a placard that read ‘no deportations’.

    He was glad to show some of the people going into the building that not all of the Irish thought it was ok to deport these men.

    Then a racist, a male in his thirties; poor, uneducated and socially deprived, went by and shouted: ‘shouldn’t let the black bastards in in the first place.’

    The words ‘fucken wanker’ erupted out of Manus in a loud and violence-threatening voice.

    It was always impossible dealing with blind ignorance and hatred. Manus had dealt with a lot of it as a child on Belfast’s Ormeau Road. Then it was called sectarianism.

    ‘Taigs out’ would get painted on the walls, and he and others were chased through the streets. Sometimes people were caught and killed stone dead because they were Taigs.

    Manus could never really figure it out. Was it that perpetrators of these types of crime had defects which they tried to compensate for by showing off an ability to hate? Were they acting under the influence of a crowd with a collectively low IQ? Probably a lot of the blame lay with newspapers, clerics, and bosses who told them it was right to have contempt for people even slightly different from themselves.

    As a child Manus could never figure out why people he had never met could hate him. And there would be no chance to talk, to rationalize. These people wanted to stop you talking, stamp out your rationality.

    Manus’s instant and uncontrolled reaction at the racist statement had shocked him by the depth of violence it carried in its tone. By its vicious rage.

    It shocked the racist too, who kept moving for a bit but then decided to come back and stand up for his right to be a loud-mouthed racist.

    ‘Who called me a wanker? are you looking for a fight?’

    Manus followed his breath closely as he took off his shoulder bag full of nappies and wipes, set it gently on the child’s buggy and stepped out to meet his would be assailant.

    ‘You looken for a fight?’, the man repeated.

    Manus felt centred enough, and just tried to keep his eyes on his opponent’s feet and fists. A head butt would also be a danger as they squared up.

    It crossed Manus’s mind as he approached that it might be best to just lash out with a kick. He was glad he wore heavy shoes and if it was going to happen it would be better to get the first blows in. It would end the tension for a start. But how would it look on the camera? Surely they were on CCTV camera?  Maybe Manus could just stand him down. As he drew closer Manus cursed his own stupidity for having brought a blimp of draw with him to the protest. Manus wasn’t the brightest.

    Then he had Shirifa with him and if they arrested Manus what would they do with his daughter?

    Manus squared up to the man. ‘Just leave’ said Manus and luckily for Manus the racist left.

    Pauline stuck a small camera in Manus’s face just as the racist left. She asked Manus how he felt. Manus had felt slightly overwhelmed by the spontaneity and ferocity of his own reaction, but all he could say to Pauline was, ‘I feel too emotional about the whole thing. I just wish they’d stop this shit.’

    He wasn’t even clear what ‘shit’ he was referring to. Racism. Deportations. The main stream press, who’s messages divided people and diverted them from the real issue of the destructive policies and practices of the world’s greedy, wasteful corporations;

    All of the above he supposed.

    *******

    Shirifa woke up hungry and a bit grumpy. After the protest he brought her round to Seomra Spraoi. They boiled rice and ate it with yogurt. Pauline’s daughter played with Shirifa. So did Patrizia. Pauline was about the same age as Manus. Patrizia wasn’t half his age. Both females seemed fit and healthy, and he wondered if either would consider him a potential shag. He seemed more detached about this question than his sexual needs usually allowed. Did detachment come with age?

    Both women seemed worthwhile human beings. Human contact meant a lot to Manus and although he still worshiped sex more than money or any other god, he sometimes preferred it when sexuality took a back seat to a more rounded and fully human interaction.

    Seomra Spraoi was a slightly different social setting to most. Alternative social relations were possible. Manus didn’t feel like he had a need to show sexual interest in any one, nor would he be too offended if no one showed that type of interest in him.

    In truth Manus doubted his ability to go with anyone other than the mother of his child. She was the only one he’d known for six years. He figured he would miss the familiarity and resent the break in intimacies continuity. Maybe he was just scared of the unknown.

    After Seomra Spraoi was shut down under fire regulations Manus felt a terrible sense of loss at the news. He felt isolated again. Where would he go? Where would he bring his daughter?

    With no where else to go Manus called on two people he knew. Unfortunately Seamus from County Clare had returned to smack, while Ghanny from Nigeria had found Christianity again. Manus turned first to alcohol, and then to scribbling.

    Seomra Spraoi would open again, even if it was in another building. It was a place where people could get together and exchange ideas and go some way to creating social norms, maybe even a social revolution that suited themselves rather than their rulers. But that’s just back to political rather than personal spiel.

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  • Hello Julian Assange

    It was sunny outside. Manus still felt something akin to minor guilt at lying in bed on a sunny day. Just having the option carried a guilt. He had spent most of his life not having to get up in the morning, not working, living off social security benefits.

     There was a certain amount of guilt involved but it was easy to rationalize away. In a world that accepted the waste of half of its food production each day, and for thousands of kids to die of hunger each night, rationalizing guilt away came easy.

    He would have liked to fight against the injustices of the world but it seemed like a global system with no head to cut off that wouldn’t pop back up immediately. Manus had not spent his life researching and exposing corporate crimes or hacking computers. He wouldn’t know where to begin with research and when it came to computers he was technologically challenged.

    His lifestyle choice to just take drugs and scrounge off the state as much as they would allow had been as proactive a revolutionary stance as he could manage, which the less enlightened members of society failed to understand, instead viewing him as a lazy good-for-nuthen-opportunist-bum, but Manus didn’t hold it against them. ‘There but for fortune’ after all.

    No, regardless of mainstream social exclusion, condemnation and relative poverty for someone living in the privileged sector of the planet, Manus had often enjoyed his choice: to lie in or get up.

    This morning, however, he had allowed himself to be robbed of all enjoyment.

    This morning he was cursed with the knowledge that he had pushed a young woman away from him.

    She liked to keep her options open and he had texted her more or less demanding that she give him a definite date for their next meeting. In a ‘normal relationship’ this might well have been acceptable but this was not a ‘normal relationship’. In fact this was not a ‘relationship’. Avril had insisted from the start. She didn’t want a ‘relationship’. She liked to call round. Once or twice a week. Just for sex. And sex had nothing to do with anything. So Avril said.

    But after a few months, Manus got used to her and when she didn’t call for a week or so he was pushing her for rights he didn’t have.

    It was in the contract. She was younger than him by over two decades. All she wanted was a bit of fun and instead of being grateful he had pushed the last woman who would ever fuck him away. Now there was guilt.

    He didn’t want to get out of bed all day. He was stupid and now he was condemned for his crime. Sentenced for the rest of his life to be alone.

    (It wasn’t really true as his thirteen year old daughter who lived with him seventy-two hours a week every weekend would have been quick to point out. But this was the other ninety-six hours of the week, and he was alone.)

    Ah the suffering and the pain.

    He would lie with it all day. No, that might have been excusable had he been thirty or forty years younger, but he wasn’t and though he was very tempted to visit an old favourite familiar haunt, he was just too old. He knew he didn’t have that many days left to waste, no matter how favoured and familiar an old haunt it might be.

    And he had things to do.

    It was Assange’s birthday for a start. Manus was to meet people at Saint Stephen’s Green at a quarter past one. They were going to deliver a letter to the Australian embassy. Originally they had just talked of making a cake and Manus had thought to hassle a friend or two over to play guitar, and maybe see if they couldn’t get something like a small street party going. But that had been before Avril had ditched him. Since then Manus was lacking the strength or enthusiasm to hassle anyone. Yet again his broken heart had got in the way of political activism, or positive action of any kind.

    Ciaron O’Reilly had instigated the protest.

    Amongst other things Ciaron had taken a hammer in his hands and damaged American war planes that would otherwise kill or harm the poorest people in the world.

    Acting like a responsible citizen had earned Ciaron hard time in high security prisons, and Manus’s respect.

    So perhaps it was for Ciaron, as much as for Julian, that Manus would get out of bed and make his way into town. Manus imagined Julian Assange wouldn’t be overly impressed with their protest. Nobody could be. There would be half a dozen people, a dozen people at the most.

    Most passers-by wouldn’t know who Julian Assange was.

    Against a tsunami of banners and all the technology money can buy, which told people that what Julian Assange was doing just wasn’t important, Manus and a few others would stand with a single banner saying ‘free jullian assange’. The few standing with the banner, if they got noticed at all, would look like weirdo nutters. Manus was going to go, perhaps just to show some solidarity with the weirdo nutters.

    Around 11a.m. George Kirwan called for Manus.

    George was one of them smart ass bastards from a fairly privileged background; a former chairman of a Trinity debating society, who would come up with a nuanced argument against anything you said. Manus was one of those dumb ass fuckers from a fairly unprivileged background, where debating skills ran from shouting to yelling personal threats, to physical violence.

    Manus asked George why he wasn’t going to the protest. George said he didn’t protest anything because he thought it was ineffective. Manus asked if all ‘protest was ineffective’ then should we do nothing? George backtracked saying ‘he very seldom protested and saved his energy for the ones he felt were important, which did not include Assange.’  Furthermore, George wasn’t sure Assange was his political ally since Wikileaks had, ‘not just published, but directly funnelled leaked documents to the Trump campaign first’; George continued: ‘directly dealing with a dime store Hitler was naïve in the extreme and a wrong act’.

    It didn’t ring true for Manus that Assange or Wikileaks would be dealing directly with the Trump campaign, though as usual he hadn’t done much research and couldn’t say with any certainty. George as always was certain: ‘there was a server in Wikileaks communicating with a server in Trump Tower’, George swore it with rather more venom in its delivery than the truth needed. Trinity’s training got lost and George could be as emotive as any uneducated thug when he defended a false position.

    Manus said that since he had started speaking for Assange he had heard all kinds of negative fact and fiction. All of which for Manus sidestepped the main issue.

    Publishing the crimes of the powerful should be applauded, not a punishable offence.

    For none of these other reasons, fact or fiction, would Assange be imprisoned.

    Wikileaks was known all around the globe for telling the truth. It had an effect on the way the world was perceived, with potential to affect how it’s citizens and environment were treated.

    Allowing the Wikileaks founder to be imprisoned would send a clear message ringing around the world. Exposing government and corporate crimes would not be tolerated.

    George lost some of his evangelical zeal against Assange and relented with, ‘their wasn’t enough evidence against him for a conviction, but enough to lose him the support of the left.’

    George spouted on then about some group in America who used to fight legal cases for poor black communists to have the right to preach communism and then they fought for rich white fascists to have the right to preach fascism. Then they decided they didn’t have enough resources to fight for both and decided to just fight for the Commies. Not that he was saying Assange was a fascist.

    How had the so-called left gone along with this crap? How had the most effective exposer of corporate and government crimes been turned into the left’s enemy, or person of no worth, or person they least wanted to defend? The answer was obvious, corporate power had attacked Assange because he exposed their crimes and the corporate media swamped the world with their attack, but it was the left’s acceptance of such obvious diversions and spurious attacks that bothered Manus.

    Manus had a frazzled brain. Too much: drugs, drink, punches to the head. He couldn’t always take in a lot of info and he could retain less. George hadn’t done half as much drugs or drink and had probably never been punched in the head in his life. Manus wasn’t fit for arguing with him.

    The two were friends of a sort. They had both protested against the Dublin Housing Crisis; they had both helped out at a social centre. They helped each other sometimes. For all their differences they had things in common.

    George had brought his three-year-old daughter Paulina. Paulina and Manus had gone through a number of high and low points over the three years of her life. Manus had been a fun distraction one night while both her parents had sneaked off but when Paulina became aware of the dirty trick that had been played on her she screamed all night. It had taken a long time but Paulina was gradually forgiving Manus. She got Manus to flush the toilet for her. Which Manus did again and again and again and again. Paulina was delighted. It was nice for Manus too, to perform a task that seemed a worthwhile and appreciated service.

    Nick phoned and arranged to meet Manus on Saint Stephen’s Green. Like Manus, Nick came from the North. Like Manus, Nick had been called names and spat at a lot when he walked the streets as a youth. They both shared the experience of gangs of loyalist thugs throwing bricks and bottles and chasing them. Manus was a taig in a mostly prod area and could run for one of the taig streets. Nick was actually a prod in a totally prod area but his family would have been the only black family in his whole estate. Loyalists in the North of Ireland were known for their sectarianism, but Nick’s family gave them a chance to prove they were just as racist. Nick developed fighting skills whereas Manus was just a great runner. Manus figured Nick had always tried and usually managed to beat the bastards at their own games. He could fight better, play sports or chess better and stand at the bar and talk bullshit about football better than anybody.

    Nick was over six feet tall and when he let his dreadlocks out of his big hat they came down to the floor.

    Manus and Nick had coffee, sat on the grass on Saint Stephen’s Green. Manus babbled about his own child’s graduation from primary school and how it looked like an American teen movie. And how he felt depressed since he had just pushed that woman away. And how he hoped to get a ‘coffee with Chomsky’ van together which would permanently play Chomsky speeches or Democracy Now! episodes or CounterPunch news, or any alternative to corporate news and views of the world. Everywhere you looked there was a corporate message. One small screen wasn’t going to achieve much, but it just might keep his personal sanity.

    Nick loved the idea. Nick was a cobbler by trade but still hoped to build a studio and record his own music. He had two grown boys up North who visited regularly, but Nick at fifty years of age now lived in Dublin with his new partner and their five year old son Thor.

    Nick babbled about his partner going to some medium who had said Thor was a really old soul. Manus’s mother used to go in for that type of stuff. Nick also went on about how England was still in the World Cup and how Manus, even though he wasn’t into football or nationalism, had to join in the world’s prayer that England couldn’t win the World Cup. The world would never hear the end of it. They still hadn’t shut up about their win in 66.

    At least, thought Manus, Nick didn’t repeat the football being more serious than life or death crap.

    Manus and Nick met May O Byrne at the main gate outside Saint Stephen’s Green. Nick had to go to pick up his kid but Manus introduced them anyway. Telling Nick: ‘come on and meet this one she’s cool.’

    ‘Nick this is May she’s an activist. May this is Nick he’s not stopping today but he’s one of us.’

    Nick went on and May and Manus stood alone.

    May had the petition letter, but said she wasn’t that pleased with it because it quoted Obama. The fact that Obama had been responsible for so many deaths in his time put May off.  Manus shrugged. He didn’t reckon the Australian government would give a shit what the letter said. They were never going to protect Assange. What government in the world was going to thumb its nose at America?

    May was even older than Manus. She said her husband wasn’t well enough to attend. He was eighty-five. Her hubby had been a newscaster in Australia. She said he could see the telexes that came into the news office which never got read. After a while he found it impossible to put on a face that looked like it believed what it was reading and so he lost his job.

    May said there was another Australian coming. A woman called Kate. Manus tried to check himself from his ridiculous notions of finding a partner, long or short term, in Kate. At his age looking for a partner. How long did he think he had left? Still his mind ran on. She would probably have rolls of fat hanging over her pants and a squashed up ugly face. He was shallow.

    She turned up. Fit-looking and highly attractive.  When May went to shake hands Kate insisted on a hug. Manus got a hug too. A bit of much needed physical for Manus. She had been visiting her parents. Catching a flight back at the end of the week.

    Just right for a non-committal shag on a holiday thought Manus.

    Kate said she had emigrated to Australia on her own in the seventies. Had Manus heard that right. Emigrating in the seventies on her own made her around his age. Was that possible? Had he found an attractive woman from his own age group? Could she feel attracted to him?

    Youth went for sexual gratification, age expected accomplishments or at least a place in society. Manus was the least accomplished person in the world, with the lowest place in society.

    He had to stop with the negative self-image. It was that Avril ditchen him thing. It was the getting no nouky. Being the least accomplished person in the world or his place in society didn’t bother him so much when he was getting laid.

    Kate had been shoe-shopping. ‘Well shoes are just so expensive in Australia.’

    Believe in the corporate portrayal of the world or not you still had to live in it.  And despite his own choice, he understood that being a bum was not a popular preference.

    Sid turned up with his bowler hat, scarf, waistcoat and corduroy trousers. A talented singer song writer. Sid and Manus were close enough in years. They talked of Ciaron O Reilly’s unceasing efforts. They both did little bits now and again but Ciaron was full time, twenty-four-seven, year-in year-out. They talked of their kids. Sid’s daughter, born when Sid was in his twenties, was in her forties now. Sid said he had been there when his daughter was a child but he may as well not have been. Sid didn’t drink now but he had been a hard drinker. Manus was coming on fifty before a woman had decided not to abort his kid. Age must have granted him some semblance of sense then, as he had stopped drinking and hard-drugging in order to look after his daughter.

    It had clearly been the better buzz.

    Liam arrived. Almost in his forties, with a twenty-one year old son that he had fought for and gained joint custody over when the child was young. A clean cut man from a stable background. Manus and Liam had put the movie Underground: The Julian Assange Story on in a social centre before Assange’s sixth year in detention. They were useless at getting an audience. They got the usual suspects: June; Sid; Manus; Liam; Dave; and Brian (Brian couldn’t stay though, he was no spring chicken and probably didn’t enjoy the music plus, any talk of computers confused him. He had never used one). There had also been a new face, a Polish girl who actually came to the protest the next week. Liam had remained upbeat and positive. The Polish girl was a new convert. One at a time huh? Even if he was getting laid, getting paid and had a place in society other than lowest, Manus’s optimism couldn’t turn the idea of one person into the possibility of victory. Liam was realistic enough too though. Like Manus he saw no victory possible through their pathetic efforts. And like Manus he didn’t know any other tactics. And while the effort and its lack of effect made them feel useless, not to make the effort made them feel worse.

    Paul arrived. Manus didn’t know much about him. Seen him at a few protests. In his thirties maybe.

    He lived down the country somewhere, but if he was in the capital and something was happening he would go. He looked a solid, stubborn sort that would be good to have beside you in a line against thugs in uniforms.

    Ann arrived. Manus had never met her before. She was writing a piece for a Russian magazine. Younger than Manus by a few decades. In a flouncy dress. Manus’s attention switched. Them flouncy summer dresses always got Manus.

    Sometimes he could be such a letch.

    They walked through the park. Manus asked Sid if he had had much success as a singer-songwriter. Sid said, ‘No. Thank god.’ ‘Why? Did you not want success?’ asked Manus, to which Sid replied ‘my head’s so big already it would have blown up completely. Sure I’d a had to get myself a new hat and everything.’

    Manus understood how difficult it would be to cope with success. And agreed with Sid’s sentiment, but in actuality he could have done with a bit of it.

    They walked through the park and after a wrong turn or two found the embassy.

    Martine was there with his two kids who were both under ten years old. Martine had thought of becoming a priest, but had backed out at the last minute. Thank fuck.

    The letter requesting that the Australian government start looking after Julian Assange’s human rights, signed by two and a half pages of Australians living in England and further afield, was read. Photos were taken. Manus held a banner: ‘free Julian Assange’.

    That was it.

    Martine and his kids went off.  Everyone else decided to go to the park for coffee and tea and small buns with a single letter of the birthday boy’s name on each one. Thirteen buns.

    They had the banner spread out in front of them on the grass.

    Free Julian Assange.

    Kids were still starving to death while half the world’s food production was being destroyed. Ecological and nuclear disaster threatened the planet like never before while the corporations’ need for constant profit kept pushing us all towards said disaster. And Julian Assange was hold up in some room in London, threatened with life imprisonment for publishing the truth.

     And it was a beautiful sunny day in Dublin’s Saint Stephens Green.

    The group talked and exchanged phone numbers. Manus didn’t offer or ask and wasn’t offered or asked for a phone number.

    Sid called to him as though the two should walk off together, but Manus stalled. He wanted to walk with Sid but what was Kate doing?

    Liam was showing Kate where the museum was. Manus went too. Perfect, Liam would walk off and Manus could show her round. It was almost too pat. Walk and talk round a museum with an attractive woman he had met at a protest. Engaging conversation and curiosity glances. They would get some food. Time would pass and she would have to get the last bus back out the country unless she wanted to stay in Dublin for the night.

    As usual his mind ran on fantasies. but his mouth said nuthen.

    Liam hugged her goodbye.

    Manus hugged her goodbye too.

    On their walk through town Liam asked Manus if he would like to write a letter to Julian. Manus kina shrugged his laugh. Manus had spent his life trying to ignore or block out what he thought he could do little about. And now he wanted to write to Julian and say he supported him. Hopefully there were better more effective supporters than Manus.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com