Cassandra Voices

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  • Bullying: It’s You, Not Me

    Bullies can take many shapes, forms, and disguises. It seems a daily occurrence that can be defined as repeated behaviours that are intentional or have malicious intent to cause fear or to instil feelings of superiority in the bully, while also causing anxiety and hopelessness in the victim, due to the bully’s relentless behaviour.

    Northern Ireland, where I grew up, is a hotspot for bullying. It seems to thrive in an environment where tribalistic differences are constantly debated, leading to hostility, sectarian violence, hatred, and ultimately, often, murder.

    When I was a boy, from about the age of six for a few years I was indeed a bully myself. I should add that I have been bullied many times.

    Anyway, I bullied a girl at primary school who had an eating disorder. She used to make large bubbles with her mouth because her stomach was troubled. I mocked her over it, because I was a damaged child and did not know any better. She was thin, wore glasses, and I was a pig-ignorant, angry little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes. It was as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, adults used to say about me once they realised, I was a bully without an emotional processor.

    But I could not understand what I was doing due to poor emotional regulation and underdeveloped emotional skills. One thing was certain: I was damaged.

    I come from a broken home and a troubled, all-encompassing background where violence was often inflicted by a parent or guardian. They were young themselves and did not know any better.

    I was constantly on the defensive. And I remained so for decades. Fight or flight with pounding anxiety, cortisol coursing through my system.

    It is a difficult paradigm to break – the cycle of aggressor abuse and the inflicted aggressions, both verbal and physical.

    I was aggressive and used to demand that other school kids bring in a football to school until two much tougher brothers roughed me up out the front of the school on the grass one afternoon. And the bullied girl’s mother accosted me at the school gates, calling me out, rightly so, but I did not know any better. My bullying was reactive without conscious thought. My prefrontal cortex was not developed. Anyway, that was the end of my primary school bullying career.

    Cottonbro Studio

    Bullying in Adulthood

    There is always an opportunity to make money, poke fun at someone, or treat someone like a lesser human being; and here’s the thing: people definitely do, and try to do it, daily.

    I have watched several TEDx Talks on bullying and other YouTube videos on the topic. There seem to be two types of bullying: implicit and explicit.

    It’s a complex human behaviour to gauge on the social barometer. That is, many people are involved in these actions. It is part of us. Indeed, one wonders which circle of Dante’s Hell houses bullies and what they have awaiting there.

    Is it a deliberate choice or a visceral response to something in their psyche? Sometimes, individuals with damaged self-esteem find it challenging to know how to repair themselves. They have become so deeply traumatised that they cling to what they know, or rather, have become.

    There is the Dark Triad of Personality: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and, in a pitiful corner, Psychopathy, which is quite common in Northern Ireland if you ask me.

    In Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, he posits that some individuals employ mind games and manipulate others’ emotions to achieve their goals.

    In my teens, a bigger mate bullied me because of his size and skill as a fighter. Needless to say, we are no longer friends.

    A few years ago, he emailed to ask how I was and say that he missed me, or something to that effect. I replied telling him that he had bullied me, and I had dark thoughts about getting revenge on my bullies.

    He emailed back, saying he didn’t believe it, that he, it, the bullying ‘was that bad.’ But he was – he was a bully. He is probably still in denial.

    In some ways, he was a rather unusual character. I believe he was bisexual and concealed it, using aggression as a coping mechanism. He also tried to project an image of being a tough man.

    In Northern Ireland, the projected image of ‘don’t mess with me sunshine’ is all. The knuckle-dragging image of the hard man, the person feared and respected for his reputation as a fighter, is deeply ingrained in the collective, broken Northern Irish psyche.

    Loudmouth

    When I turned eighteen, I was quite the loudmouth, and a young, tough bloke at a local disco bullied me.

    One night, he was waiting outside the disco, itching for a fight, slouched against the wall under the arch of the local hotel. I was walking alone, leaving the disco, and he decided to pick a fight with me. He approached and swung a big, balled-up fist. I took it without ducking, as I was intoxicated – as usual – and he clocked me. Since I was skinnier and therefore fair game, it was on for him.

    He thumped me, and I staggered away. Afterwards, I sat on a low stone wall, and I think I had a bloodied nose – I cannot quite recall, but I do remember putting my jeans in the bath with warm water and salt, which drew the blood out of them.

    On another occasion, I was a bundle of nerves due to anxiety, excessive drug use, and simply not being well. I suffered from cannabis-induced psychosis and alcoholism. When he came over and threatened me I soiled myself. I sat there in the front seat of my mate’s car, let it happen, and wetted my trousers. I didn’t show anything to my friends inside the car, but that’s what occurred. The bully left after realising I wasn’t taking the bait or accepting the challenge of a fight. I was very skinny then, not eating properly, and most likely he would have beaten me to a pulp.

    Years later, I wanted to attack this individual. Full of rage, I was letting him dominate me in a way. I often thought of killing him. Decades of pent-up rage came to the fore in my psyche, and I was not going to lie down and take it anymore. The fact is that he was an ignorant halfwit and would have had little insight into his behaviour.

    Then there was the self-proclaimed ‘Christian’ in a homeless hostel in Belfast. A ‘Baptist’, ‘turn the other cheek?’ They were full of shite. He was, and probably still is, a narcissist who ‘knew better’ than the rest. He bullied me, well, it was institutional abuse, while I was resident in a homeless hostel. He became insanely jealous of the friendly relationship I had with one of the female staff. Getting through that situation over a year severely tested me because I had finally a bit of strength about me then, and I wanted to test that out.

    After that there was bullying, from a verbally abusive, ‘celebrity’ chef, who I worked for. He called me ‘a useless bastard.’ because I didn’t dress a plate of raw salmon to his standard. I informed him that I would not talk to a dog the way he talked to his staff, and I walked away not to return. He was well known as a bully. One day, allegedly, he grabbed one of his smaller trainees by the neck and pinned him up against a fridge. Needless to say, he doesn’t come across as a bully on the television or radio.

    Image: Pietro Lang

    Owning up to my own Failings

    I intentionally bullied a rather large, but chilled out guy with whom I shared a house as he was one of the laziest people I have ever met. He would not lift a finger to keeping the house in shape. He lay in bed all day nursing a hangover, something I had plenty of experience with.

    He was angry with me, but I later apologised and explained I only tried to motivate him when he lay in bed all day. Once I pulled him and his mattress off his bed and took him downstairs, as it was a lovely day outside, and he was lamenting his life while suffering from a hangover. This was his, or rather our norm.

    One day, I made a loud noise behind him in the kitchen, as he didn’t know I was there, which startled him while making a sandwich. He held a steak knife in his hand, turned around, and said: ‘Just you wait, Burnsy. One day I will get you.’

    Bullying also occurs in relationships. They must always be right. They will gaslight you into believing that you are the problem. They play the victim and are rather good at emotional manipulation. They cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They call the shots, hold the power, and you must bend to their ways.

    I have been gaslight into believing that I was always the problem. Playing the victim is a form of emotional manipulation. Some cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They must call the shots. Bullies rarely change. I work on it.

    Yet, sometimes you have to act aggressively when no other option is working.  Once, back home, a letting agency with questionable ethics, known for rather shoddy practices, failed to answer my calls, refusing to return a deposit of £527.00 owed to me. They dragged their heels and told me one date and then another, and wouldn’t pay.

    The owner has been done for fraud multiple times. It seemed as if the ‘management’ were trying to rip me off for the sheer fun of it. So, I went to their office and told them they had ten minutes to pay me, or I would have to get a bit rough. I got my money back within an hour or so.

    Robert Greene

    Robert Greene on Bullies

    Robert Greene, in his book The 48 Laws of Power, doesn’t explicitly discuss bullying as a primary topic, but he does address behaviours and tactics that are often associated with bullying, particularly in the context of power dynamics and social interactions. He highlights how insecurity and a desire for control can motivate individuals to engage in manipulative and aggressive behaviours towards others.’

    I do not stand for bullying nowadays. Although I wonder whether challenging or confronting a bully is really only a Pyrrhic victory? Or perhaps it’s a way to square the circle of your own trauma. I will leave it the reader to decide. I wrote this piece to confront my own mistakes and bullying behaviours to help build clarity and humility in myself, from now on.

    Feature Image: Mikhail Nilov

  • Wouldn’t You?

    Summer was winding to its natural end but the evenings were still warm in London as Michael Maybrick made his way on foot through a crowded Covent Garden on his way to Long Acre. He was immaculately dressed, wearing a black evening suit with a velvet bow tie, polished to the shine black shoes and a smart top hat. His moustache was trimmed to perfection and the rest of his face was freshly shaved, knowing this was to be an important meeting at the grand lodge. A pretty young prostitute approached him with a basket of flowers to disguise her intentions and offered him ‘relief from his hard day and trouble.’ He stopped and turned to greet her eye to eye. The face that glared out under the rim of the hat froze the young woman’s soul. His expression, as intense as it was vacant, sent a sudden shock of fear through her. She had the morbid sensation someone was laying flowers on her grave. He saw fear in her eyes and a smile cracked side to side on his lips. There was a malice lurking. He turned his head away without saying a word, and with a tap of his cane on the cobbles, disappeared into the London crowd. The woman looked down at her flowers disconcertedly as Maybrick performed a pirouette in a strange, uncoordinated way.

                  Maybrick was a musician by profession and was a well-respected member of his Masonic lodge. He was seen by his brethren as a decent sort of fellow but his brooding and melancholy moods had been commented upon. On one occasion he had struck a bell boy around the face for merely being late with his luggage. He had been rumoured about by some of his colleagues. “Given to fits of anger” was how one of his fellow Masons described him at a lodge meeting in Marylebone, a meeting at which Sir Charles Wheeler, the head of the Metropolitan police at that time, was present. It had been noted in the minutes.

    When Maybrick reached the corner of Neal Street and Long Acre he stopped still. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette case on which was inscribed the letters “TALJ” and then placed it back in his pocket. He put a cigarette in his right hand with an empty box of matches. The case had been a gift from a fellow Mason of high ranking who was grooming him for promotion. He pushed the box open with his thumb and saw that there were no matches left. Again, as if the city were made for the thing, a pretty young woman on the street corner selling matches caught his eye. This time, as he watched her standing on the street corner watching the crowd go by, a cloud of hate itched under his black hat.

    He approached her slowly from out of the shade of an awning and put his hand in his pocket to reach for a half penny. With his eyes obscured by the rim of his hat she handed him the box of matches and he put the coin in the palm of her hand. He gently folded her fingers back over the ha’penny so her hand was making a fist and clasped it between his large, strong hands. He began to squeeze her hand, gently at first, but then gradually harder. And then harder still.

    “Please sir, no!” She said in a squeal as she tried to wriggle her hand free. He began to laugh and then let her go. He turned his back and then lit his thin cigar before making his way on. She looked for a policeman but to no avail. The London crowd milled along Long Acre, behaving as the London crowd always does, as if it were somehow immortal. It does what it does fearlessly and without worry of ends. Two thousand years is only the opening chapter. As long as humanity lives on this planet, there will be London, bathing in the dark and the light. As Maybrick was fond of saying “The pure soul lives in light, the eternal soul under night.”

    He walked on with purpose, gripping his cane tight in a hand. He was riddled with nerves but as he approached the grand lodge he began to take hold of his emotions. He became endowed with a sense of reverence as he entered the building. Filled with fluxing passion he entered the great hall and slowly craned his head backward. He gazed upward at the all-seeing eye. They met each other in an unshakeable stare, back and forth from heaven to earth. The eye sat proudly and distinctly at the centre of the ceiling. Unblinking. He took his hat off and then craned his neck back further still and marvelled at the image for the thousandth time. His heart soared to see it. It was for the glory of God he lived, and through the lodge he had made a solemn vow to work most diligently for his glory. It would be his life’s work. In the stillness of the quiet, near empty chamber, he heard the voice of God speaking to him directly through the great all-seeing eye.

    “Go forth and do my work.” Said the voice. “Obey my command and you shall live with me forever in glory.” The great booming words echoed around his head. Tears welled in his eyes. They fomented through his ecstasy dilating pupils giving an extra sparkle to their blackness. And then they changed. The joy in his eyes turned to fear and he trembled.

    “Yes” he said, with a solemnity that brimmed with emotion. One of his brethren, who had been reading quietly on one of the pews, looked up and peered over the top of his reading glasses. He was a journalist at The Times called Graveney. He saw Maybrick in a trance like state, staring wild eyed, up at the image in the ceiling.

    “I shall do thy bidding.” Said Maybrick softly, and the fear in his expression suddenly turned back to joy.

    “Maybrick! Maybrick there!!” Shouted Graveney. Maybrick looked over at him with a start, as he was suddenly jolted from his trance. The dreamlike state of his aloneness with God, his state of grace, had been punctured.

    “Everything alright Maybrick?” Asked Graveney.

    “Yes. Quite alright” He replied, attempting calm. Graveney noticed the sweat on Maybrick’s brow. Maybrick discreetly wiped his forehead, regained his composure, and returned the hat to his head.

    “Good fellow.” Said Graveney encouragingly, even though he was now tinged with suspicion.  His brethren colleague was certainly acting in an odd manner, one certainly unaccustomed to the lodge. Maybrick nodded at him calmly and made his way to the study to prepare himself before that evening’s meeting began. As he went to leave, he turned to Graveney and said unexpectedly,

    “Call me Jack.” He smiled, turned and walked away leaving Graveney in a state of slight discombobulation, and definite concern.

    When the meeting was over and the brethren were milling about in idle conversation, Maybrick, without informing anyone there, left quietly and made his way clicking down the marble stairs to the back entrance of the Masonic head-quarters in Long Acre. It had begun to rain so he waited a while in the porch for an opportunity to hail a cab. By the end of a thin cigar the cab had arrived and the horses were whinnying in front of him. He opened the door and turned to the driver whose face was covered by a large hood that he wore to protect him from the downpour. Maybrick said one word at him. “Whitechapel.”

    He shut the door behind him and pulled the curtain to, leaving just enough space that he could peer out at the street through the slit. The driver whipped the horses and soon there was nothing in Michael Maybrick’s head but the sound of the wheels and the hooves on the cobbles. It was as if he were void of consciousness. As they made their way east along the Roman road, the summer air began to turn foul.

    Within the east end of London was the pitilessness of human existence manifest. The warren of streets were dark and labyrinthine. It was easy to disappear from sight. Maybrick placed his index finger gently on to the curtain and pulled it back slowly to give himself a better look. He saw two prostitutes talking on a street corner and a sudden volcanic surge of sexual energy coursed through his veins. He could feel his blood heating up in the furnace of his rage and supressed himself from crying out by putting his forearm firmly against his mouth to muffle his excitement. He bit into the arm of his coat hard as the ecstasy turned to euphoria.

    Soon enough they had reached the east end as the pubs were shutting. The quiet of the city night approached. He tapped his cane hard three times on the roof of the cab and it came to a halt half way down the Commercial Road East. He was about to get out but the heavy rain changed his mind. He had somehow lost his nerve. He shouted to take him to the west end where he lived and told the driver he would tip him when they arrived. He looked at the women talking and then closed the curtain and then rested his head back with his eyes closed.

    “Soon.” He said. And with a huge grin that exposed all his large rotting teeth and his blood red gums, and with his eyes as wide as could be, he sat there between his imagination and his reality, conjuring the future images of what he conceived to be the genius of his diabolical game.

    ———

    Warm days passed by. Then on the 31st of August 1888 Maybrick left his house, and shut the door carefully behind him, humming the melody to a song he had written entitled “They All Love Jack.” Night had fallen but before long he hailed a cab and asked again to be taken to Whitechapel. The night was cloudless and there was no sign of rain. He looked at his pocket watch as the cab began to move. It was just after 11pm.  He wore a long coat with deep pockets and about it a black cape and by his feet was a dark carpet bag. That night he wore a bowler hat which was tilted slightly forward. On the inside on his pocket watch was a depiction of the all-seeing eye and when he saw it he went into a kind of flux. His head began to shake softly and his eyes rolled back to a hypnotised state. “God’s work’ said the voice, “Gods work” again until a jolt of the cab’s wheel on an upturned cobble awoke him. He rubbed his face and lit a cigarette and then carefully, as he had done a few nights before, he pulled the curtain back an inch and looked out. If it wasn’t for the noise of the city he would have been able to hear the thumping of his heart. Adrenaline seeped through him, but then diminished, leaving him unfilled in the charging moment, the unrequited eroticism begging him towards the fire. Making sure the curtains were pulled shut he unsheathed one of the knives he was carrying, allowing himself for a moment to admire the sharpness of the glinting blade. He then put it back in its sheath and concealed it in the specially made pocket in the inside lining of his cloak.

    When Maybrick arrived in Whitechapel it was just past midnight and the pubs were beginning to empty. “Hehe” he giggled in a mad way. The sound of his own laughter let off a madness in him that he boiled to repress, sinking his face into his hands and then scratching the back of his head with dug in nails. He rocked backwards and forwards a little. A sweat had began to form around the edges of his hair. His eyes were so dilated they were nearly totally black when he opened them. He got out of the cab and paid the driver, taking care to obscure his face. He thanked him and said goodbye. There was life sounding out of the various pubs and a few people milled around including a drunk, swaying on gin, holding on to a wall to keep himself upright.

    Although the road was badly lit there was still enough light. Not like the side streets and back alleys that were lit by the stars and moon. A light that could be doused by the movement of clouds, plunging the back alleys and courts into pitch blackness. As he stepped down onto the cobbles a man walked past him with wild, incendiary eyes. The man’s name was Kosminski, one of the many immigrants that had arrived in east London, causing the city itself to swell. Maybrick had once commented that the east end was like a bloated abdomen. Rats and sewage festered. Conditions and sanitation in some places, especially the doss houses, were unfit for living, and the stench in places so bad, especially in summer, as to make an unsuspecting visitor retch. But London could cope, as it always has and always will, with change and misery.

    The two men caught each-other’s eye. Their madness met in a fleeting glance. There was a sudden moment, as there is before fights, fuelled by adrenaline. But they turned their heads away from each other and there was no conflict. They had out-madded each other. Kominski carried on, muttering to himself as he walked down Commercial Road East and Maybrick carried on into the sullen heart of Whitechapel, to be among the night wanderers.

    One of those night wanderers was a woman by the name of Mary Anne Nichols. She had been turned out of her lodgings and needed to go and make some money to pay for her bed. She said to the woman that ran the doss house “With me pretty bonnet I’ll soon get me doss money” and she left the place with her shawl wrapped tightly over her shoulders. She had been drinking that day and had a head full of booze but was compos mentis in terms of what she felt she had to do. She staggered a little when she walked but not too much. Almost an hour passed without her getting any business. As she slowly sobered up the night became quiet. The badly lit street where she waited offered no sound. It was almost half-way through the night when she smiled at the opportunity of her luck changing. Walking towards her across the empty road was a tall man with his hands in the pockets of his long dark cloak and with a bowler hat tilted forward. As he crossed the street towards Buck’s Row and to Mary, he said to himself in a controlled monotone way:

    “All this I most solemnly, sincerely promise and swear, with a firm and steady resolution to perform the same, without any hesitation, myself, under no less penalty than that of having my body severed in two, my bowels taken from thence and burned to ashes, the ashes scattered before the four winds of heaven, that no more remembrance might be had of so vile and wicked a wretch as I would be, should I ever, knowingly, violate this my Master Mason’s obligation. So help me God, and keep me steadfast in the due performance of the same.”

    This was a part of his Masonic oath. An oath to which his mad mind clung. By the time he was close enough to speak to her he had stopped speaking. She didn’t hear him say a word. When he arrived he stood two feet away from her and waited for her to make an offer.

    “Hello kind sir. I’m hoping I can be of service. How do you like my new bonnet?” He lifted his head up and looked at her from under the rim of his hat. The moonlight caught his face. She looked back at him and paused as she registered his glare. In a fleeting moment she thought she may have seen some sadness there, some forlorn soul within. However, she was eager to get paid and back to her lodgings to sleep.

    “Yes.” He said. Where can we go?”

    “Just here by the gates. No one can see us.” She said. He followed her calmly into the darkness.

    In Buck’s Row by the stable door she turned and faced him and they looked into each other’s eyes. She knew who he was. That is certain. As did the other four. The canonical five as they eventually came to be known. Including the ripper himself there are six people to know his identity for sure, six that we know of. To actually know his face and his eyes.

    As they looked at each other and she put her hand in his belt he put his hand over her mouth and taking the large knife from his pocket slit her throat causing blood to spill onto his maniacal face. She tried to cry murder but he muffled her cries and she bled out as he began to slash and stab wildly at her if indeed making some crazed attempt to cleave her in two. He stabbed her vagina on purpose. For four minutes he cut and hacked, nearly salivating as the intensity of the moment started to dry the roof of his mouth. Four minutes that felt to his soulless soul like the release of a life-long prisoner, repressed and caged. The laughter had gone out of him, extinguishing some remnant goodness with every vicious slash of the knife. He shook violently as the life left her body. Looking up to the heavens he gave thanks. With his power over life he was now in direct communion with God.

    He suddenly heard the sound of footsteps and dropped her lifeless cadaver to the floor where she fell with a thud. Her eyes remained open though she was now dead. The ripper fell back into the shadows. A man called Charles Cross walked up Buck’s Row on his way to the early shift at work. He was used to walking this street through the dark of the night and saw what at first he thought to be a discarded tarpaulin.

    “A tarpaulin’ he said aloud as he came near, but the moonlight revealed something sinister.

    “Oh Jesus” he said. The ripper heard him speak as he stood motionless in a pitch-black alcove with his back to the street less than fifteen feet away. Within a few moments another man named Robert Paul who was also on his way to work saw Cross standing there and curious at the scene approached, unaware of the grim spectacle that lay in store. Cross touched her face which was still warm with life but her hands were deathly cold. With her eyes open in the bad light there was some confusion between the two whether she was dead or merely unconscious.

    “Let’s find a peeler” Said Paul to Cross “I’m late for work as it is.” This piece of information did not go unnoticed by the man in the shadows. He closed his eyes and concentrated intensely on his hearing. He listened to two pairs of feet making away, and when the sound had disappeared around the corner the ripper emerged from the blackness, ignoring the carnage he had made as he made his way swiftly in the opposite direction through the rabbit warren of Whitechapel’s streets which he had learned so intimately, making his way west on foot in the wake of the rising sun.

    In the lodge of the Freemasons in Great Queen Street Sir Charles Wheeler sat with five other men, including Graveney who had witnessed Michael Maybrick’s bizarre trance like behaviour a few weeks before.

    “Odd kind of fellow” said one man.

    “But he is one of us.” Said another.

    “And a fine musician I hear.” Wheeler sat pensively averting his eyes from the ceiling. Then he spoke.

    “Don’t be troubled. It seems he was having an episode. Thank-you for informing me and I would be grateful if you could all monitor the situation and keep me informed of any developments. Both Maybrick and the Whitechapel murders. It’s possible……. they are connected. Remember, he is one of the brethren and for that he WILL receive our undivided loyalty. No matter what. Do I make myself clear?”

    “On our honour.” They all replied to him in unison.

    Wheeler learned of the second murder soon after it had occurred. Her name was Annie Chapman. The mutilation was even more vicious than the last and initial reports said the two murders were connected. But there were other pieces of information from the first report he received that perturbed him greatly. Things that may connect the murders to themselves. It was about her abdomen. It had been removed by the killer and placed over her shoulder. At once Wheeler thought of the Masonic oath. Then he thought of Maybrick. When the double murder occurred he had personally rushed to Whitechapel and had seen above the bloody apron of Catherine Eddowes the graffiti on the wall which ran ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’ Wheeler had personally ordered the writing to be removed.

    He suggested to himself it may have been coincidental, but he was in reality overwhelmed with doubt. But then he learned about the farthing coins that had been laid deliberately and ceremonially around the body. When Wheeler found this out a grim, unflexing look of despair came over his face. He immediately sent word to the commanding officers on the case and demanded that everyone with knowledge of this event must not tell a soul. Any details with Masonic connections must be excluded from the reports. Wheeler said specifically to those involved in the investigation, especially those who were in liaison with the press that the facts about the meticulous arrangement of the coins and the entrails being placed over the shoulder must be kept secret from the public as it might jeopardise the investigation.

    That was the official line. In private, he recommended caution and vigilance to the brethren of the lodge concerning the Whitechapel murders and then disbanded the meeting. He sat alone that night looking out of the window brooding on the recent horrors. One thought obsessed him and one thought alone. If the killer was a Mason he would have the most solemn task of keeping these despicable events from in anyway tainting the brotherhoods good reputation. Again he thought of Maybrick. At first, each hour, then each minute, then each second until the whole business began to obsess his mind. Graveney, the journalist-Mason that worked on the Times said to Wheeler “If we can make the killer out to be a fool of some kind… the important thing is….. that we are in control. Perhaps I can invent a character for this murderer to live up to. Create some publicity. As a diversion. A crafted idiot, a dunce with a vicious soul. Something for the masses to wonder about. I can put them off the scent. It will be good for us in any event.” He smiled a broad smile. Wheeler looked at him and with a slight nod of his head, gave his tacit approval.

    “But remember” said Wheeler “this is no cause of laughter.” Graveney knew as well as Wheeler that if news got out about the macabre nature of the carefully placed farthings, or the compasses that had been carved into the flesh of the victim, or indeed the fact that the small intestines had been placed over the right shoulder, then it may bring the eye of suspicion on their fellowship. It was this line of thinking that led him to his ingenious idea. He would create a character that would divert public scrutiny. They could benefit from the confusion. He would have to create someone stupid and semi-literate in their ways of thinking. If he made him a Cockney the East Enders might start bickering among themselves, and stoke the fires of suspicion. Then, in Whitechapel, they would need the police even more. They would seek protection. Their power would be upheld.

    One night before the double murder Sir Charles Wheeler looked out of the window of his high office at the lodge down on to the west end street below and saw Michael Maybrick himself standing quite still on the other side of road, staring skywards into the night as he puffed away on a cigar that hung on his lips. Slowly Maybrick began to sway and then to the surprise of Wheeler began to dance slowly with his arm up as if he was doing a waltz with an invisible woman. Wheeler looked down at him from the high window noticing that rain was beginning to hit the pane. But that didn’t stop his dancing.

    Graveney approached Wheeler and stood by him at the window with a blank sheet of paper in his hand. He looked down out of the window with his brethren friend and also witnessed the spectacle, the two of them looking down at the street in silence, through the rainy glass. Graveney turned and went over to the desk, leaving Wheeler by the window. He was unable to hide the smile of inspiration in his expression. Then he dipped his pen in the red ink pot that he had especially purchased and bent over the table as he began to write;

    Dear Boss,

    I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly
    Jack the Ripper

    Dont mind me giving the trade name

    PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now. ha ha[5]

    When it was done he showed the letter to Wheeler who then called the most high ranking Masons into his office to share his proposal. When he finished reading the letter out loud to the brethren they cheered heartily. ‘Well done that man!’ Said one of the Mason’s.

    “I will send it to the central news agency now, should take some of the heat off brother Maybrick.” They said to him “well done old chap” again and in celebration of Graveney’s moment of creativity Sir Charles Wheeler opened a bottle of Glenfiddich and began to pour. When their glasses were filled he went over to the window to close the curtains, and looking down on the street, noticed that Maybrick had gone.


    Feature Image: Michael Maybrick (1841–1913), English composer and singer, best known under the pseudonym of Stephen Adams who composed “The Holy City“, one of the most popular religious songs in English.

  • COVID-19: Shame on You

    A new book COVID-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK (Bloomsbury, 2023) co-authored by Fred Cooper, Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose explores how the British government under Boris Johnson used shame as an instrument of coercive control during the pandemic.

    ‘Shame’, the authors contend, ‘is commonly understood to be a personal experience that arises when one feels judged by another or others (whether they are present, imagined or internalized) to have transgressed or broken a social rule or norm.’

    It appears to exert a particular force in Westminster politics where cries of “shame” or “shame on you” are regularly hurled across the floor of the House of Commons. An anthropologist might trace this to the public school upbringing of a significant proportion number of MPs – David Cameron recalls in his biography, ‘At bath time we had to line up naked in front of a row of Victorian metal baths and wait for the headmaster’ – or a proletarian habituation through spectator sport.

    The stigmatisation of apparently errant behaviour through shaming is not, however, unique to English (or British) culture.

    Over the course of the lockdown in the U.K. the authors argue that shaming became ‘an important component of the ‘collective suffering, exacerbating and complicating other negative experiences and emotions.’ Those that stepped out of line were dubbed ‘covidiots’, while people questioning canonical scientific accounts could be dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theorists’, belonging to the ‘tin-foil hat brigade’.

    Arguably, a drawback of the work is a tendency to assign primary responsibility to the bumbling and often insidious response of the British government, as opposed to a wider international consensus around COVID-19 within which that government’s face-saving policies emerged.

    The authors also seem reluctant to criticize a medical profession, which, they argue, were subjected to widespread shaming. Surely governments lionised ‘front line’ doctors, albeit for their own ends?

    Moreover, some doctors even participated in the shaming effort, agitating for stringent measures that often were not based on cost-benefit analyses, while demonising ‘granny-killing’ objectors.

    The book contains important insights into the lives of ordinary people, many of whom suffered in silence as a result of a British government strategy that often relied on ‘Second World War kitsch.’

    Social Media

    Gabor Maté describes neuromarketing as ‘a strategic invasion of human consciousness.’[i] The extent of the role of social media companies in generating fear and curbing dissent is only now being revealed. The authors draw attention to its enabling role:

    Pandemic shaming was enabled by the rapid formation and spread of virtual groups on Facebook and WhatsApp, created by physical neighbours to stay in touch and help each other out during lockdown.

    They recall that, ‘[a]lthough often started with the noblest of intentions, solidarity and shaming frequently inhabited the same virtual spaces.’

    ‘At times,’ they observe, ‘the groups became mediums for ‘curtain twitching’, or the unspoken, unofficial surveillance or monitoring of one’s neighbours.’

    Thus, ‘So-called pandemic ‘transgressions’ … were  documented by ordinary citizens on these platforms and elsewhere, presumably looking out for themselves and other concerned members of their community.’

    It should also be noted that social media companies platformed so-called fact checkers that were responsible for disseminating misinformation that cast opposition to a dominant narrative as simultaneously absurd and sinister. A ‘Strawman Conspiracy Theorist’ was used to stifle reasonable scientific debate.

    ‘Covidiots’

    When historians get around to providing an account of the pandemic response – that increasingly seems like a bad dream – the cartoon villains of Johnson and Trump will surely figure prominently.

    Thus, the authors observe that when the term covidiot began trending on social media in early March, ‘there seemed to be only one covidiot for Anglophone Twitter, and that was Trump.’

    They say this ‘gave the earliest iterations of the term a political valency: it offered an insult that the otherwise powerless might use as a means to humiliate a powerful individual.’

    They argue:

    [this] relied upon a historical tendency to portray Trump as morally and intellectually deficient throughout his candidacy for, and eventual elevation to, the US presidency. Seen in this light, the neologism owed its first success to the ease with which it fitted into an existing paradigm, as a novel shorthand for describing an existing situation.

    Whatever came out of Trump’s mouth was consigned to covidiocy, even if he, occasionally, made sensible suggestions such as that the cure should not be worse than the disease. Profound antipathy towards Trump seems to have been exploited by lockdown evangelists, which caused profound damage, especially in developing countries such as India.

    The book provides harrowing accounts of ordinary people caught in the crossfire of what became a culture war. The authors point to poignant accounts of the effect on society from the Mass Observation project:

    I went out on Tuesday, with my son, to buy stamps. I sensed a slight hostility. People who would usually smile and let you through a door now avoid eye contact and stay their distance. The woman working in the Post Office was expressing her anger at people who had congregated on the beach the previous day. She hadn’t seen it herself, she said; but it was on Facebook (it must be true!) She said they were idiotic. It differed from her usual affable small-talk and it made me un-easy. I said we had been ourselves on Sunday and there was no-one around.

    Irish Experience

    In Ireland we witnessed similar shaming tactics. Thus, in the so-called ‘paper of record’ the Irish Times, a column from Dr Padraig Moran from November, 2020, arrived with the by-line: ‘Mindless rule-flouting behaviour is the real problem in the pandemic.’ Another article by Kathy Sheridan from 2020 referred to ‘maskless ignoramuses with Trumpian belief systems.’

    A grandmother was even jailed in Ireland for refusing to wear a mask in shops and restaurants.

    Unsurprisingly, we have seen no retractions or reassessments on the subject of those “maskless ignoramuses”, despite a Cochrane review stating that the ‘pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.’

    The shaming reached a crescendo in Ireland with vaccine passes and the scapegoating of an unvaccinated minority by politicians and prominent journalists in late 2021.

    Gabor Maté provides a fitting description of the political class that exploited the virus for their own ends:

    The system works with cyclic elegance: a culture founded on mistaken beliefs regarding who and what we are creates conditions that frustrate basic needs, breeding a populace in pain, disconnected from itself, others and meaning. A select few – especially those with the sort of coping mechanisms that prime the to deny reality, block out empathy, fear and vulnerability, mute their own sense of right and wrong, and abjure looking at themselves too closely – will be elevated to power.[ii]

    Sadly, many among the medical profession were fully on board with this effort, disregarding the traumas caused by lockdowns, which seems to be contributing to the excess deaths we are witnessing in the wake of the pandemic. The fact that Sweden has experienced the lowest level of excess death in Europe over the period is widely ignored by those that condemned that country as a pariah state.

    This is perhaps unsurprisingly given Gabor Maté’s observation that, ‘[a]t present there remains powerful resistance to trauma awareness on the part of the medical profession’[iii]

    Given so much of what we saw during the pandemic in the U.K. and beyond was guided by the medical profession it seems, as Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry put it ‘a complete revolution in medicine is exactly what is required.’[iv]

    [i] Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture, New York, 2022, p.299

    [ii] Ibid, p.357

    [iii] Ibid, p.277

    [iv] Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry, The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the crisis of credibility in clinical research, Wakefield Press, South Australia, 2020, p.198.

    Feature Image: Village stocks in Bramhall, England, c. 1900.

  • When Did You Notice That Smoking is Over?

    When discussing health these days, if we’re not dissecting the latest updates on the pandemic, we’re often focusing on nutrition and dietary choices –– or mental health and wellbeing. These are areas, after all, in which it’s possible to quickly implement practical changes. For instance, we can make easy changes to our diets, particularly with more access to vegetarian and vegan options now widely available, and eateries becoming more inclusive with their menus. Indeed, we’ve even discussed The Vegan Dining Trail from Galway to Cork, where each restaurant along the route is completely meat-free! We might not have imagined such a thing existing several years back.

    One thing that doesn’t seem to come up anymore in conversations about health and lifestyle, however, is smoking. Most millennials and older generations will remember when smoking in restaurants was totally acceptable; bars and clubs had indoor smoking areas; smoking on public transport was permitted; some workplaces would even allow ashtrays on desks.

    There‘s no significant, identifiable moment to refer to as the point when all of this stopped being normal. It all just seems to have faded into the past, so gradually yet so completely as to be somewhat baffling in retrospect. So when did we stop talking about smoking? Did anyone even notice it went away?

    The most obvious change in the quest to phase out smoking came in the form of restrictions imposed across Ireland. Somewhat ahead of the game, Ireland was the first country in the world to implement comprehensive legislation back in 2004, creating smoke-free workplaces –– including bars and restaurants. It was an historic moment, and it caused uproar amongst publicans who claimed it would be the death of the hospitality industry for Ireland. Of course, it wasn’t, like most adjustments, we accepted the inconvenience, changed our behaviours and got on with our lives.

    It was a risky step to take though. In fact, fifteen years after restrictions were imposed, the Irish Examiner took a look back and acknowledged that the extent of the knock-on effects were unknown. At the time when restrictions were imposed, there was fear of factory-floor rebellions, as well as nervousness amongst employers and employees, business owners, and smokers. The contrast to today is stark. Just imagine seeing a patron, elbows on the bar, lit cigarette in hand; you can practically feel eyebrows reaching hairlines, and mouths agog. The very idea almost seems treacherous!

    With such an immediate “nip it in the bud” change back then, the simple fact is that many had no choice but to change their habits –– though many were loathe to surrender nicotine. Plenty were not relishing the thought of standing in the path of a biting Irish wind, trying to light a cigarette whilst shivering in the bitter cold, however. Thus, in response to an influx of determined quitters, a market for alternative nicotine products emerged, slowly but surely.

    That market has evolved over time, with smokeless tobacco products, nicotine gum, nicotine patches, and various types of lozenges all helping smokers to adhere to restrictions at various points in the past fifteen years or so. Today, nicotine pouches are surfacing as the latest popular options. A post on nicotine pouches by Prilla explains that clean, discreet use and a range of flavours are proving to be appealing to consumers. In short though, numerous “nicotine replacement therapy” (or NRT) alternatives have helped smokers to maintain their lifestyles without having major issues with habits and cravings in places where smoking is prohibited.

    So, with the majority of the world following suit with smoking restrictions and the NRT industry providing more socially acceptable alternatives to puffing on a cigarette, smoking really has become almost a taboo subject. With these significant changes now well established, smoking naturally and gradually faded into the shadows rather than abruptly ceasing to be a topic of discussion.

    Recommending the best place for Mujadara, comparing the newest nicotine pouch flavours and staying safe and sanitised is truly the new norm for those who might once have been labelled “smokers.”

  • Last Days in RTÉ – ‘I came to kill you’

    In 1967, the fidgets struck again. That was the year my mother died, rapidly following my father.

    I confess now that I was not obviously upset by the deaths of my parents. In the culture of my generation and class, love, certainly any public expression of it, was an embarrassment. Such namby-pamby language was confined to the worship of film stars, sentimental songs, Jesus Christ and drink. This lack I often regret, having, in the area of emotional expression a limited palette.

    Affection, attachment, addiction, obsession, sentiment, desire, lust, liking, fondness – I am familiar with them all. But love itself is awkward territory, partly because the language of its expression is so inadequate, so debased that I have come to believe that, ‘whereof man cannot speak, let him be silent.’ Predictably, when I am confronted by the technicolour emotions of a funeral, however tragic, what usually comes to mind is a black and white war etching by Goya whose chilling caption is: ‘Shut up and bury your dead.’

    But this is merely a defence, a carapace adopted because I have a dread of being caught weeping, which weakness I am occasionally prone to, especially on occasions musical. Only an embarrassed few have ever been allowed to witness this, my Achilles heel.

    Besides, there is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, ‘Goldengrove’, in which a young girl, Margaret, grieves over the fall of Autumn leaves. Hopkins gently points out to her that as she ‘grows older she will come to sights colder’ and realise that it is actually her own demise she mourns. This applies to all funerals.

    I have no doubt that my parents – from their astral heights, of course – now understand the convolutions of my career. Including, for instance, why I declined to have my own children baptised in any faith, and why I have sung in both Catholic and Protestant choirs with no residue of belief in either of their dogmas – except as a useful social glue. I also admire the Semitic cultures of both Islam and Judaism and wish they would return to their pre-colonial mutual tolerance. My bets are therefore hedged. Music is my sole spiritual sustainer and default position on religion.

    What else could one expect from a flibbertigibbet?

    Decision Time

    Finally in 1967 I had had enough of the commercial dimension of television corrupting the concept of public broadcasting. Brilliant people in advertising were conspiring with TV managers, using reason to control the irrationalism of the masses and turn them into numbered consumers. But vestiges of common sense told me I needed to learn more about how the real world worked.

    A friendly philosopher, the late Jack Dowling, advised me to study Shakespeare. That was not drastic enough for me. I went to the RTÉ Programme Controller, said I had developed mental indigestion and was leaving television. That aesthetic man with a cigarette holder, the late Michael Garvey, said ‘stay brave’ and told me he would treat it as a sabbatical and pay my salary for three months. In retrospect it felt like compassionate leave. I got character references from people like Professor Ivor Browne and Mother Mary Nicholas and other sane people with whom I had made films. I then persuaded Tomás Roseingrave to get me into the University of Antigonish as an auditor in sociology. That’s when I really woke up.

    The philosopher, poet and ex-Jesuit Philip McShane once wrote to me: ‘Happy the man who preserves his illusions’. In Nova Scotia all of my more naïve illusions were demolished. I met Philip again, at a New Year’s party in Antigonish. Our pleasure at renewing acquaintance, expressed in the normal Irish epithets that hide affection e.g. ‘howiya, you old bollocks’, was overheard by our host, an old-fashioned Belfast Catholic immigrant. This stocky little man exploded, shouted that he would not tolerate ‘such fackin language in my house,’ and summarily evicted us into the snow and sub-zero temperature. We started walking, Philip forgetting his new young wife in the excitement. Loyally she followed in her car and saved us both from hypothermia.

    Through lectures in sociology, especially from Italian-American Vito Signorile,  I learned about the relativity of all cultural concepts, including religion, even knowledge itself. Vito was married to a feisty woman from Northern Ireland and he warned me about women: ‘When she has her period, she’s a monster.’  I learned that lesson too late.

    The last absolute I vainly clung to was a simplistic version of Marxism, even contradicting a young lecturer who derided that ideology as one which had never caught on. I sharply reminded him that Marx had not set a time limit for the self-destruction of Capitalism. That marvellous event did not happen for another forty years, in 2007, not too long after Socialism itself had self-destructed.

    Peace Outbreak

    My innocence of political reality also received a cold douche. To acquaint the Canadian students with their democratic system the youngsters were encouraged to imitate the national parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal – by organising elections and establishing a mock parliament.

    We on the Left won in a coalition with the Liberals. On the first day of ‘Parliament’ we heard shots outside and a bunch of rifle-toting students on the defeated Conservative side burst into the formal Assembly. They were shouting that it was illegally constituted. Prudence suggested we leave  with dignity.

    One of the young gunmen, barring our way out, had his jaw broken by my closest friend there, Deets Kennedy, son of a tough Cape Breton miner. As I nursed a hangover on the following day I ruminated on life imitating art and thought hard about democracy. In case the vote didn’t work in your favour, you carried a blackthorn stick or a gun. What an effective system was democracy! At least in Ireland we merely forced the people to vote again and again until they got a referendum result right. I know what Deets Kennedy’s father would do in such a situation.

    I met Mr. Kennedy for the first and only time at a family wedding up in Sydney, Cape Breton. I felt honoured to be invited. On the way back from the formal nuptials Deets drove the car and entrusted his father to me, saying that no matter what happened I must keep his father beside me in the back seat. The earnestness of his request suggested to me that there were tribal tensions abroad.

    There had, of course, been drink taken. On the way, Mr. Kennedy behaved like a lamb, singing softly in my honour ‘Shall My soul pass through oul Ireland’ to the tune of Kevin Barry. The convoy stopped outside our party destination, Deets got out with a curt ‘You two stay there.’ Some altercation developed in front of the car. I leaned forward to try to identify the cause of the melee. When I turned to inquire of Mr. Kennedy as to the cause, he had vanished from my care. I soon recognised him on the footpath ahead, delivering a haymaker to one of the disputants.

    Deets later told me that the recipient was another son, always a troublemaker. Peace broke out and we had a wonderful party. I could only think: it is a devoted father who can identify and instantly defuse the one psychopath in the family, thus restoring equilibrium to the celebrations.

    I was a slow learner in every respect, trying to work things out rather than learn them by rote as I had once done with the penny catechism.

    Star-Gazer

    In December of that year I came home to assist in burying my mother and stayed for Christmas. At the wake in Hazelbrook Road, Terenure, I revealed to five grieving siblings and in-laws that each of the countless zillions of stars in the cosmos consisted of at least one departed human soul. It was, if not a metaphysical, then certainly a mathematical, possibility. Therefore our mother still existed. Despite my siblings’ reluctance  to accept this consolation, I persisted.

    I told them that no matter how simple and blameless a life such as our mother’s might seem, each human personality was so complex as to be beyond our ken and could not vanish into nothingness. The brain itself was a miracle of billions of electro-chemical processes. As it was largely unused during a person’s life, the reality of death must focus it wonderfully. In the final micro-second into which a life such as our mother’s was frantically compressed, there must be a surge of energy imaginable as no less than nuclear fusion. This process must transform the soul into an eternal incandescence. Simply put, the soul turns into a star.

    They should therefore not grieve for the dear departed but enjoy the astronomy.

    A tidy arrangement, I felt, having just read Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of the Noosphere.

    This Jesuit palaeontologist had daringly suggested that the human capacity for reflex thought must evolve into a girdle of consciousness enveloping the planet. He called it the Pleroma and his religious superiors were not happy about his invention. I now suspect that members of my extended family also took my soul-stirring ideas with a pinch of salt.  They guessed that my peroration was a front for grief.

    Thinking back, my speculation required no more a leap of faith than the incredible religion in which we were reared and which I abandoned long ago. In my ripe old age I still believe my invention to be as reliable an explanation of life’s ultimate mystery as anything Aquinas or Avicenna, Darwin or Hawkins or Dawkins, Ibn Sina or even De Chardin invented. And for a practical reason: human consciousness is a form of energy and as such, if we are to believe Einstein, cannot die or decay; it can only transform itself – exactly as water gaily does from liquid to ice to vapour. There can be no limit to the transformation of us bundles of energy.

    Around that time too, I ceremonially flung an old copy of the same penny catechism into a fire. Jack Dowling reminded me quietly that people who burned books were capable of burning people. That pulled me up short.

    In January 1968 I returned to Nova Scotia to complete my ‘studies’ and at term’s end to have a look around North America. For three months another friendly Dominican monk named Luke Dempsey and I drove around that mighty continent, staying buckshee in his Order’s monasteries.

    We called on Chicago, New Mexico, Death Valley, San Francisco, even visited Las Vegas for an overnight. The highlight of that was a breakfast where we perched at a bar and the waitress shimmied along behind it. Her walkway was so elevated that her magnificent thighs moved directly at our eye level. To notice Luke’s eyes modestly concentrating on his empty plate was a hilarious reminder of how fortunate I was not to have had a call to the religious life.

    When we finally came back to Nova Scotia I had a lovely reunion with a sensitive mother of two, named Zane whom I had met in Montreal months before. Skinny-dipping in the local river was delightfully involved. When I returned to Ireland I wrote a poem about our encounter which fortunately I have mislaid. It could never compete with Solomon’s ‘Song of Songs’, astonishing love poems which I encountered at the back of the Catholic Sunday missal when I was an adolescent. They carried me through many a boring Mass service and subsequently came in useful in the business of wooing maidens.

    ”B e h o l d ,   t h o u   a r t   f a i r ,   m y   l o v e ;   b e h o l d ,   t h o u   a r t   f a i r ;   t h o u   h a s t   d o v e s ‘   e y e s   w i t h i n   t h y   l o c k s.

    T h y   l i p s   a r e   l i k e   a   t h r e a d   o f   s c a r l e t ,   a n d   t h y   s p e e c h   i s   c o m e l y :   t h y   t e m p l e s   a r e   l i k e   a   p i e c e   o f   a   p o m e g r a n a t e   w i t h i n   t h y   l o c k s .

    T h y   t w o   b r e a s t s   a r e   l i k e   t w o   y o u n g   r o e s   t h a t   a r e   t w i n s ,   w h i c h   f e e d   a m o n g   t h e   l i l i e s .”

    They may have been intended as paeans of praise to the Creator but I found them pleasantly erotic. My course was fixed.

    ‘Spitting blood’

    One night in 1968, having returned from Canada to resume my job in RTÉ, I saw darkness in the pale face of a man at the bar of Kiely’s pub near the RTÉ studios. I recognised him as Ed, the ex-husband of Zane. What was he doing in Ireland and especially in my neck of the woods? The old antennae of guilt immediately told me this was no coincidence, that there was something awry. My instinct was to clarify matters. I approached the bar and engaged him in as light a conversation as one can have with a brooding man. He was very pale, spoke in grim monosyllables and said he was staying in a nearby B&B. He told me he had hitched a lift from Montreal on a Canadian Air Force plane. I had never known he was a military man.

    Ignoring his clear hostility, I put on a show of welcome and resolved to keep him in my sights. I warmly insisted he come home for a drink in the house in which I was staying. After the short, wordless drive to mine host Dinno’s place, the latter – normally a sociable figure – excused himself and left the house. He told me later: ‘One look at that man’s face and I decided I wasn’t going to sleep under the same roof’.

    I didn’t sleep much that night, either.

    Next morning I boiled eggs for Ed and, as casually as possible, asked had he any particular schedule. ‘I came to kill you,’ he quietly said. So that was clear. I learned that he held me responsible for the break-up of his marriage. It was post-facto revenge because I had been given to understand by his wife that their marriage was long ended.

    ‘You really want to have a go at me?’ I asked. He nodded grimly. There was no getting away from it.  What could I say except: ‘I know the very place.’

    On the way to the wide open spaces of the Phoenix park he explained in detail that the Canadian Air Force had trained him in unarmed killing. He so worried me that I called in to my production assistant in the TV station, explained the situation and told her that, if I had not returned before lunch, she should send out a search party

    In a secluded spot in the Park we faced each other. By now I was more than nervous about his deadly skills. I had not had a fistfight since I played rugby but strict rules had governed that form of barbarism. Neither had the Marquis of Queensbury legislated for this circumstance. Ed ordered me ‘Take off your glasses.’ I reluctantly removed them, placed them carefully on my jacket and prepared for the worst. As I turned to meet my fate I was barely in time to dodge a sucker punch from Ed.  Fright made me go slightly berserk. I probably had the advantage in weight and after some minutes of my wild pummelling at him he held up his hands in submission.

    I drove him down to the nearest pub in Islandbridge where he vomited up the reviving brandy with which I plied him. As I deposited him at his B&B in Donnybrook I volunteered to meet him again that evening and show him the sights.

    He looked puzzled: this was no way to treat a sworn enemy. I pointed out that he was, after all, the son of Dublin emigrants to Canada but knew nothing of their city. The truth was, I felt sorry for him. When I later met him in the Scotch House on Burgh Quay he confessed to spitting blood since our altercation.

    I whisked him off to St. Vincent’s Hospital, then in Leeson St.,  where they decided to keep him overnight. He knew no-one in Dublin except myself, who dutifully called to the hospital the following day.  A nurse reported that Ed was suffering from kidney damage but had already signed himself out of the hospital, presumably to hitch an airlift back to Canada. I never heard from him again.

    Last year, in an email from his daughter – she found me on Facebook, where else?  – I learned that Ed’s curtains had recently been closed by cancer  and that our ancient encounter was now part of their family history.

    His daughter wanted the truth. I wrote a short hagiography of her father, stressing the honourable way he had tried to exact satisfaction from me. This was true. I had not realised that Ed was actually a mild-mannered dentist in the Air Force; he had probably never engaged in anything more violent than extracting a tooth. Apart from his pre-emptive, sabre-rattling about unarmed combat which had incited my overkill, the only other detail worth remembering is that, in Ed’s report of the encounter with me, he said ‘the old man was fitter than I thought.’ This ‘old man’ was thirty-three years of age at the time.

    Everything is relative.

    Resignation and Return

    ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind’, quoteth the tearful lady herself when she landed on my doorstep some weeks later. She and Ed  had physically fought for possession of their two young children in the mud of their farmyard. She had lost the grim struggle and got the next plane to Ireland. I had not the indelicacy to respond: ‘It never rains but it pours’. We spent a short while seeing the sights that Ed never had. She returned to Canada and married a sculptor.

    Not long afterwards I resigned from my permanent, pensionable post in RTÉ, bought an old Volkswagen and drove to Tehran and back with my first wife-to-be. That is quite another story. Alone on the return journey home at Christmas I developed a mild but uncomfortable form of tuberculosis called epididymitis which related to the testicles.

    It meant a short stay in hospital where, besides telling me I had various similar lesions on my lungs which had cured themselves, a specialist said I could never father a child. Recovering fast, but having spent all my pension contributions on the trip,  poverty forced me to crawl back and ask for contract work with RTE.

    Compassionate as ever, the organisation welcomed me and set me to the unexpected task of making a history series for children. I knew this new job was a prudent test of my boredom threshold but I persevered for four months. Then one day on a filming excursion to Belfast I had a discussion with Pat Kavanagh, the solid cameraman.

    It was 1969, one of the years when there was a questioning of all certainties.

    ‘Never trust anyone over thirty’ was one mantra. Another was ‘selling out to the system’. Yet another was: ‘If you’re going to commit suicide, take one with you.’

    Over a liquid lunch in Newry I stoutly maintained to Pat that there was a single unique point in every life when the decision to ‘sell out’ was made. Or not. He disagreed and perceptively said that capitulation to the system just crept up on a person gradually – usually accompanied by a mortgage. I agreed: we were mere puppets on strings. But it was time we looked up and noticed who was pulling the strings.

    I had no mortgage, nor any other responsibilities. I declared that here and now was one of those points of decision and ordered him and the crew to follow me to the West of Ireland. Reluctantly they followed because in those hierarchical times the crew accepted a producer/director as the unchallengeable boss. I would never get away with it now.

    I led the convoy all the way across Ireland to Roonagh pier in Mayo where we boarded the ferry for Clare Island. Then I wrote a letter for my female assistant to bring back to the station. Its intention was to exonerate the crew from any accusation of being willing accessories to my solo flight of fancy.

    A day later my immediate Head of Department, Maeve Piskorski, arrived on the island to persuade her prodigal protege to return to work. After twenty-four hours of pleasantly lubricated argument she departed without me, shaking her head in bewilderment. And that was the end of my RTE career and, I vowed, the end of my involvement with film and TV. I stayed on Clare Island for a couple of months, the guest and labourer of Michael Joe O’Malley, sheep farmer and philosopher.

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  • ‘Don’t let me stop you from going for a swim’

    Picture this scene. Next to a Martello tower, a grimy concrete shelter below which a motley crew, ranging from whooping lads to fragile ladies, make their way, often daily, into the ocean at Seapoint, Dublin. Some swim significant distances – measured in buoys and other landmarks – others simply ‘take the waters’. There are New Irish here, while native Dubliners mix easily with country friends, in the collective gasp before wading in.

    I have visited the sea most days so far this winter. It is the dread of the cold, not the cold itself that holds the most fear. Once enclosed by the water my limbs thrash a course, and I am no longer conscious of the temperature. That is as long as I go in every day. If I leave it for any length, the cold will sting, even in the summer months.

    Is this a sport I wonder? There is no zero sum game of winners and losers. No match reports. No fandom. But there is conviviality, life affirmation, fitness and even a boost to the immune system I have been told. But something deeper motivates my immersions, and any health benefits are tangential.

    I am dreading the months of January, February and March. It is hard to contemplate temperatures that will have dropped a further three or four degrees to eight degrees.[i] Remarkably, the average sea temperatures in December is higher than in May, when the difference between air and water could be fifteen degrees. This month the water is often warmer than the air, although you lose heat a lot quicker without your clothes on.

    Also this month the solstice coincides with a full moon. I have no idea if this has a symbolic significance. What I do know is that swimming with a crowd during a full moon is great craic. I have attended these lantern-lit gatherings for the past two months, and am hoping to brave it again on the 21st. One trick to stave off hypothermia is to bring along a hot water bottle to pour over extremities afterwards, making sure to avoid giving yourself a scalding.

    I have just started wearing protective gloves – which I found on the street – into the water. It makes quite a difference to my hands on the twenty-five minute cycle home. I am thinking of acquiring booties that I see other people wear, but that would involve a financial investment in this lowest maintenance of sports. Really all you need are togs, towel and a good dollop of madness.

    I take pleasure in seeing an array of birdlife by the seashore: there are the usual suspects of gulls and cormorants – which I now see are colonising the River Dodder near where I live as fish numbers decline in the sea – but also Brent Geese along with Waders some of which make their way from Iceland, so I guess they find our waters positively balmy! It is shocking to hear that shards of plastic are affecting these migrants’ welfare.[ii]

    Most days I take a picture from the same spot overlooking the Poolbeg stacks. I do wonder about posting these on social media, but I have available to me the superb technology of a telephone, which takes fine pictures of sky, sea and land converging. Obviously in the process I am selling the platform of an irresponsible multinational, but cannot the same be said of any author whose book is on display in a chain store? I just want to convey the beauty of my city and its hinterland, and how we should treasure the wildlife, and examine carefully issues like the emissions coming from that eerie incinerator by the stacks.

    This summer my mother died. Losing a parent is generally a seismic life experience. I think my dedication to the swimming has had something to do with that. Cycling to and from Seapoint I pass by places I associate with her. It is sad, but I don’t want to avoid it.

    When my mother went into a hospice I immediately returned from the UK where I had been working. The following day she said: ‘don’t let me stop you from going for a swim’, much to our amusement. Two days later she passed away.

    The other landmark near where I swim is Dun Laoghaire pier. It is so much a part of the geography of this place that it seems timeless, but it was built on the initiative of a private citizen, Richard Toucher, a Norwegian sailor who settled in Dublin, passing away in 1841. He provided, at great personal expense, most of the granite for the building of the harbour. This philanthropic enterprise saved many lives, and now provides a bit of shelter as we swim at Seapoint, where it can still get quite choppy.

    This is an extract from one of his letters:

    I write not for fame, but for utility. It is my aim rather to be understood than admired. To elegance of composition I aspire not. But I have some nautical experience…and…the idea of an Asylum Port at Dunleary is ever first in my thoughts.

    The Merchants, Ship Owners and Ship-Masters of Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, Harrington and Parton, are also preparing a petition to be presented to His Grace The Duke of Richmond, praying his aid and support for the erection of this much wanted pier at Dunleary. This I am not astonished at, when I reflect how many of their relatives have been lost on the coast of our Bay, the numbers of widows and fatherless children that are left to bemoan that this pier had not long since been built, which would have saved to them what was in this life most valuable.

    For his troubles Richard Toucher died a bankrupt.[iii] We recall his great legacy today, this Cassandra Voice, who devoted his fortune to the continuing benefit of others.

    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

    [i] ‘Dublin Sea Temperature’, Global Sea Temperature, https://www.seatemperature.org/europe/ireland/dublin.htm, accessed 13/12/18.

    [ii] Tim O’Brien, ‘Plastic shards from Dún Laoghaire spill found in Donabate’, Irish Times, 12th of November, 2018.

    [iii] Tom Conlon, ‘Richard Toutcher – the case for a memorial’, Dún Laoghaire Harbour Bicentenary, January 23rd, 2018. http://dlharbour200.ie/richard-toutcher-the-case-for-a-memorial/, accessed 13/11/18.