Big Ideas and Pointy shoes

The local Christian Brothers school was launching it's 150th anniversary booklet this week. As I contemplated the invitation to attend I realised that I was still very angry with the Christian Brothers even 30 years after I'd left the school and I couldn't quite work out why.

Was it because the Head Brother called me into the office to "count the compasses" and then fondled my knee?

There were many stories told on the night of the launch about the Brothers' time in Drogheda and I remembered a couple of my own.

There was the time the GAA-mad Brother took me off the school team because I had kicked the ball the wrong way up the field. We had just the bare 15 players and there was no-one to come on as substitute in my place. In other words they were better off without me. That was the last game of GAA I played for a while.

I remembered some other incidents which are probably best forgotten. They concerned the Brothers' fondness for corporal punishment and the consequences for the poor unfortunates at the receiving end. On reflection it is the memory of the naked violence which sticks in my throat and still makes me angry. The dark side of the Christian Brothers experience which I witnessed and which shocked me to my core.

As I listened to the stories unfold I was reminded of my own parents' struggle to bring up 14 children and what a blessing it must have been for them to have the Brothers and Nuns - who did not turn children away for want of money - in the town in the days before free education came in in 1968.

I realised that I saw the Brothers through the prism of my own personal experience of their worst excesses whereas my parents would have seen the positive aspects of their family receiving an education. I came away from the night a little more reconciled with the demons of my past.

....One last story of mine on the Brothers concerned the sixth of my eleven brothers when he turned up for his first day at school in the mid 60's. The Head Brother, a powerful man with a Kojack haircut walked down the line of new boys and stopped in front of my brother. "Aaaahh Mr. Murray", he said to the diminutive boy. "Your brothers were here with their big ideas and their pointy shoes".

Sorry for your trouble

We buried Junior Brannigan on Monday. He was my friend Brazz's dad and I knew him from the terraces of United Park when he brought his grandchidren to the Drogheda United home games. A cold North wind blew across St. Peter's cemetery as the cortege entered and we stood around the gravestones as Junior was laid to rest. I looked around at the faces of those around me. Friends and relatives of Junior down through the years. I recognised many of them despite having been out of the town for 22 years. They were older but still the same deep down. We shared some memories of times gone by as the family received condolences. "Sorry for your trouble" is the standard greeting at a time like this. It's an innocuous salutation but we both know what we mean.

The day before the burial I was in West St. in the town centre at a civic reception with 1,500 other townspeople celebrating the Drogheda United team winning the League of Ireland soccer trophy for the first time in their 44 year history. Many of the same faces were present who turned up for the funeral the following day. When I ask myself what makes living here so different from Sydney it's the totality of the lived experience. One gets to experience joy and sadness, celebration and mourning - life and death - they all make up a part of the daily rich ritual of life.

Junior would have loved to be in West St. to celebrate the Drogs but we were there for him. "Sorry for your trouble".

Me and the Reverend Ian

Standing in the Long Hall of the magnificent Stormont building, the seat of government in Northern Ireland is a strange experience for a Southern catholic given the history of the place as a bastion of Protestant loyalism. I was there on November 6th for the launch of singer Dana's biography.

Looking at the mob who were standing on the stage was even more surreal given the conflicting politics of those present. Onstage were political heavyweights the Loyalist warhorse Rev. Ian Paisley, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness (acknowledged as a past prime mover in the Provisional IRA), former Irish Premier Albert Reynolds, Nobel prize winner John Hume of the SDLP and Dana (Rosemary Scallon) who was an 18 year old slip of a girl from the Bogside in Derry when she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland in 1970 when the Northern Ireland Troubles were reaching a crescendo.

Now here they are laughing and cracking jokes together. Paisley is feted like a popstar. I must be the only person in the room who hasn't had their photo taken with him.

That these people would share a room never mind a podium was unthinkable for generations and even 10 years ago it was an impossibility. I have to pinch myself to make sure it's real.

That this gathering was happening in front of my eyes is a concrete example of how times have changed in Ireland during my time overseas.

Should I shake Ian Paisley's hand? Should I shake McGuinness' hand? Do I move with the times and embrace a new chapter in Irish history or do I fall back on past attitudes. I found myself asking what would my dad have done? This is generational change. This is history.

I shake John Hume's hand and tell him how much I admire what he has done for peace and justice over the years.

As we drive home we take a wrong turn and end up in a housing estate with political murals on the gable walls. As we progress we realise that the murals are UVF. We turn the car and quickly find the road for Dublin. Ireland has changed but not THAT much.

Failte roimh Cawk! - Welcome everybody!

On 13th June 1985 I took the boat from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead. From there I went to Sydney in 1996.

On 23rd July 2007 I came back to Drogheda with my Australian wife, Monique, to spend a year here and introduce my two girls (2 and 4 years old) to their granny and explore what it is that connects me across 3 countries, 2 continents and 12,000 miles to the place I left behind 22 years ago.

You are very welcome to join me in my journey and my musings.

Go neiri on bothar linn (may the road rise to meet us).