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Whether we like it or not, tattoos are a feature of modern life. They’re a common sight. Some are small, discreet and barely noticeable, while others are obvious and difficult to avoid, covering large amounts of skin like human graffiti.

As a young lad, I don’t remember seeing too many. In those days they were mostly limited to sailors and fishermen and they were usually located on the upper arm and covered by a shirt sleeve.

Many believe they should have been left there but times have changed. Anyone can have one now and for some people, it’s a case of the more the merrier. It’s sometimes referred to as body art and footballers, like David Beckham, have helped to make it fashionable.

To my mind, sticking a tattoo on your body is the same as branding an animal except that the branding iron has been swapped for a needle, and a parlour is used instead of a barn. Although when you see some of them, you could be excused for thinking that they were applied by a blind farmer with a pitch-fork in a hay shed.

Originally, animals were branded for identification purposes. The owner put his initials on the rump of his cows so nobody else could lay claim to them. That made perfect sense at a time when rustling cattle was big business but why that needed to transfer to humans is beyond me.

Anyway, we already have ways to identify each other. We have names, birth certs and passports that mark us out for who we are. Passports are easier to get and are a less painful form of property marking so there is no need to be jabbing ourselves with inky pins.

Many disagree though, because body art is now big business and has come a long way from its humble beginnings.

The actual word tattoo is derived from the Tahitian word tattau, which means, “to mark.” Early tattooing involved cutting the skin with a knife and packing dirt or ashes from the fire into the cut to discolour it permanently, creating tribal markings.

Some say that it began in China and that sailors discovered it during their travels to the Orient. Sailors often passed the long hours at sea by “pricking” designs into themselves, probably out of boredom. They sometimes used gunpowder mixed with ink, to stain the skin, because Chinese believed gunpowder had magical powers of long life and protection.

There have been many times in my life when I’ve been bored but I have never considered cutting a chunk out of my skin and packing the wound with dirt. The person who came up with this idea must have had a great imagination and a high pain threshold.

Having a tattoo is a personal choice but there is a difference between having something small on your upper arm and walking around looking like you should be housed in the National Art Gallery. Those who support it say that it’s a form of expression but if you cover your body to the extent that you can’t see any skin then what is it exactly that you are trying to express?

A lot of it has to do with personal taste and personality, and there will always be extroverts who have a desire to be seen to be different. Like the Teddy Boys, The Goths and The Punks back in the day with the spikey green hair and the pins in their noses.

Some people will always want to stand out and body art is one way to achieve that. The more outrageous the tattoo, the bigger the statement. But when you reach the point where everyone is looking outrageous, doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole purpose of trying to be original? It’s difficult to be unique if every second person is covered in as much war paint as you are.

Sitting on a beach recently. I noticed that there were several girls who had what looked like poems tattooed on various parts of their bodies. What is the protocol for the rest of us regarding these? Are we supposed to read them, or should we ignore them altogether for fear of being called a pervert?

It could a bit awkward trying to explain what exactly you were doing on your knees next to a sun bed trying to read the poetry tattooed on a girl’s thigh if she suddenly starts screaming.

There is another consideration too. If you’re going to permanently mark your body, then you need to be pretty sure that you like the design because it’s there for life. Getting rid of it is difficult and can be painful.

There is also the fact that as a person gets older the body changes shape. We develop wrinkles and we may start to sag a bit here and there so the original tattoo may not be quite as glamorous as it was when it started out.

What began as something exotic on your back might look completely different later in life when it’s hanging down your backside. Expressing your undying love to Mary may seem like a romantic gesture at the time but that could get a little awkward if you end up with Joan.

Alcohol influences many decisions to get a tattoo. It’s not uncommon to hear of someone waking up with a hangover to discover that his body has a new feature. Drunk or sober, when deciding to get a tattoo, it’s important to ensure that the person wielding the needle is familiar with the English language.

One poor unfortunate had a large tattoo drawn down the full length of his forearm in big letters; ‘No Regerts.’ Now, it’s quite possible that he has no regerts but I suspect that he is very sorry.

I’m not very squeamish, but I don’t like looking at cuts on my own body. I’d rather have a broken bone any day because I can’t cope with the sight of an open wound on myself. A break is sore, but you usually can’t see it under the skin and that’s fine. But when I see a cut on myself, I always imagine death is not far away.

When my daughter, Vicki, was very young, she cut her knee getting out of a swimming pool.  We were on holidays in Spain at the time and there was a piece of a broken tile near the edge of the pool and as she climbed out, it sliced her open. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was very deep, and you could see the bone.

She was crying as she hobbled over to the sun bed where my wife was sitting, with blood pouring out of the wound. My wife took one look at it and promptly passed out. I wrapped a towel around the wound and carried her to reception where we did a quick patch up job. Then we got a taxi to the hospital where she was stitched up properly.

I can deal with the blood and guts stuff. Having spent over 35 years as a policeman, I got to see plenty of it, and it doesn’t bother me once it’s not mine. There was a time when I had a fear of hospitals though.

It was back in the Chernobyl days when we used to drive trucks in and out of Belarus and Western Russia. It was always a worry that one of us would require medical attention out there and many of the hospitals we visited were basic to say the least and we didn’t want to end up in one of them.

I was in the accident and emergency department in one of those hospitals once and the first thing I noticed was this poor character lying in bed on a drip. The drip was hanging from a nail that was sticking out of a piece of wood and the whole thing looked like it had just come out of a rubbish skip.

The doctors and nurses were working under terrible conditions and did their best for the patients, but we had no desire to occupy one of their beds. Considering the amount of time we spent out there over the years, we were very lucky to have had only a few minor mishaps.

My own worst experience was when I got a touch of food poisoning in Belarus and I was really feeling very ill. We were sleeping on the floor of a day care centre at the time and I was sweating profusely one miniute and frozen with the cold the next and I just wanted to die.

A little old lady who was looking after the place for the night saw me and must have guessed what was wrong. She produced a small bottle and while she hadn’t a word of English, it was obvious she wanted to spoon something into me. I was in no condition to care, so I took it and off she went.

Ten miniutes later, there was another nuclear explosion only this time it was inside my body. I hurried to the bathroom and remained there for some time and without going in to too many details, I was a lot lighter when I came out. I went off to sleep and when I woke up the following day, I was feeling a bit delicate but much improved. My new friend obviously knew what she was doing.

They’re tough people in that part of the world and one person who typifies that, is a guy by the name of Leonid Rogozov. In 1961, the 27 year-old was part of a twelve-man Russian team on an Antarctic expedition. He was the team medic and a qualified surgeon, but he fell ill, and his condition was getting worse.

He had a lot of pain down his side and he soon diagnosed that it was his appendix. He knew from experience that if he wasn’t treated properly, there was a chance he could die.

Going to hospital was out of the question. The trip from Russia had taken 35 days by boat and flying him out was impossible because of the foul weather. The only solution was to perform the surgery himself and it would have to be done without general anaesthetic because he needed to be completely awake.

He didn’t know if it was even physically possible to do this to himself, but his preference was to die trying rather than do nothing.

He gave other team members a crash course in operating theatre procedure and showed them how to revive him if he passed out. He showed them the various instruments he would be asking for and how to inject him if he required adrenalin.

He gave himself a local anaesthetic into the tummy, but the rest of the procedure had to be done without any further medication. He planned to use a mirror held by one of his assistants, but he found he was getting disoriented and so decided to carry on by feel instead. In his own account, he says that he just switched into surgeon mode and got on with the job.

He almost passed out a few times but managed to hold on until he removed the appendix but then he had to stitch himself up. The whole episode lasted for two hours and then he took some antibiotics and sleeping pills and went into a deep sleep.

He made a full recovery and returned to his normal duties just two weeks later.

Makes me look like a complete wimp.

Back in the seventies when I was a teenager, not too many of us had cars. We walked everywhere and getting a taxi was always the last thing on our minds. We probably didn’t have enough money to pay for one anyway and the few bob we did have, would have been earmarked for a pint.

A buddy of mine had a Vespa scooter. I can’t remember what he paid for it but whatever it cost, it was too much. Somebody saw him coming. We spent more time pushing the thing around the town than we did riding it. It got to the stage where I would regularly refuse a ride home on it because it was easier to walk.

For some reason that is lost on me now, we decided to take it to Ballyferriter, beyond Dingle in West Kerry one time. I can’t remember what time we set out, but I do know that it was about 2am by the time we got there. It was pre-mobile phone days so there were some people waiting for us who were beginning to get a little concerned.

For a lot of the journey, there were sparks flying out of the back of the scooter and these became more noticeable as it got dark. It was also making some strange noises almost like it was breaking wind. It struggled to go uphill and we knew we were in trouble when it began to have difficulty going downhill too.

When we reached the outskirts of Dingle, it had a massive heart attack and died. We reminisced briefly about the good times we had with it and then promptly threw it in the ditch. We decided to hitch hike the rest of the way but unfortunately for us, it was gone midnight and traffic was non-existent, so we ended up walking the remainder of the journey. It was around 2am by the time we got there, completely wrecked, cold and tired.

My friend graduated to four wheels after that and invested in a Morris Minor. He must have bought it from the same guy who sold him the scooter. This thing broke down so often that we carried a lump of timber in the boot to prop up the bonnet while we rendered first aid to the engine.

Cars were very basic in those days. Heating was flimsy at best so, as a rule, you generally needed to wear as much clothing in the car as you would if you were out walking. They were draughty and noisy as well because insulation was scarce and if you had a radio that meant you had money. In all honesty that Morris Minor was only a small step above a wheelbarrow.

For some reason it always seemed to pack up during the hours of darkness when there was little chance of getting help from a passing motorist. One time we were about two miles from home when the fan belt disintegrated. We walked home and robbed a pair of grans tights and trudged all the way back to where the car was and manufactured a temporary fan belt from the tights and managed to get the car home.

On another occasion, we went to Dungarvan. In hindsight, taking the Morris Minor on an enormous trip like that was asking for trouble. On the way back home, in the dark of course, the rain came down, so, naturally the windscreen wipers failed.

As we were going through Midleton, the exhaust completely detached itself from the underneath of the car and landed on the main street. The noise from the car was enough to disturb people sleeping in Youghal. We eventually got the car home and that was that.

His next car was a Morris 1100 and I did my driving test in it and that was another experience. The car I had lined up for the test became unavailable at the last miniute, so I was in dire need of a replacement. Looking back on it, I had a cheek turning up for the test in the Morris, but I had youth on my side back then and it didn’t worry me too much, but the car had a few defects.

For starters, the front passenger seat was broken and was sitting on the floor. To counteract that, we put some concrete blocks under it and covered the whole thing with a car rug. The gear stick was about two feet long and it constantly vibrated and moved from side to side and it could hurt your knee if it gave you a slap which it regularly did. Every now and then it would dip as if it was trying to escape through the floor.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was either take a chance with this car or cancel the test, so I decided to go ahead.

On the day of the test, the examiner came out to the car with me and walked around it. I think the road tax may have been out of date and I seem to remember him mentioning something about the condition of one or two of the tyres. Things took a turn for the worse when he sat in beside me and announced; “I shouldn’t even be getting into this car.”

That didn’t do too much to inspire confidence that was sadly lacking already. I fired up the engine and started to move off when the gear stick began its war dance. Moving violently from side to side and then dipping, which the examiner obviously found a bit distracting because we were no sooner out the gap onto the road, when he told me to turn around. Surprisingly, I had failed.

On the positive side, he never complained about his seat.

There was an incident in Cobh recently where a local man was bitten on the face by a dog. I’m told that the man was patting the dog when it suddenly turned on him and left him with a number of puncture marks to the skin. The matter was reported to the gardai so we can’t say too much more about it for now.

I have come across other examples of uncontrolled dogs behaving badly in public too, which leads me to wonder if our local authorities are doing enough to enforce the Control of Dogs Act?

I listened to a woman as she described the moment her dog was mauled to death as she walked along Dollymount Strand in Dublin. She was walking her dog on the beach at about 8am when it was attacked by two bigger dogs. They came out of the sand dunes and attacked the smaller dog and she said they were holding him down by the neck and tearing into him.

She broke a stick off the offending dogs, but they wouldn’t let go. The owner of the bigger dogs in this case was nowhere to be seen. The attackers eventually ran away. She brought her dog to the vet who told her that he had never seen such horrific injuries and unfortunately there was no hope for her pet.

It was a terrifying ordeal for this unfortunate woman but it’s not as uncommon as you might think.

Just a few months ago, a similar thing happened in San Francisco when another family pet was mauled to death in a park by two large dogs that were off their leashes. The owner was taking his dog for a walk when two larger dogs quickly approached and started to attack while their owner never got out of his car.

That pet was also brought to the vet, but nothing could be done to save the dog.

Another dog was mauled to death on New Brighton Beach in the UK beach last year. The owner was walking her miniature dog along the beach when a dog that was off its lead, ran toward her and attacked her dog.  She tried to fight it off, but it was too big and strong. The owner eventually dragged it away.

Again, same story, she brought her dog to the vet, but the animal was already dead.

In a separate incident, another dog was killed in a park in London, and his owner suffered two fractured fingers when she tried to save him. She was walking her pet in west London when the other dog, which wasn’t on a lead, ran up to them and began to attack the smaller dog. The owner made no attempt to intervene, he just took the dog and ran away and by then her dog was dead.

These stories are very similar and apart from suffering the loss of their pets, the victims have also incurred expenses in having the animals treated by a vet which I assume they had to pay for themselves.

A dog launching an attack on a human or attacking another dog, is at the more serious end of the scale, while dog fouling and nuisance barking are less serious, but they all point to the same thing. We have an issue with the lack of control of dogs in public. Uncontrolled dogs are roaming our streets and housing estates, causing a public nuisance while their owners refuse to control them.

Dogs are not supposed to be out in public unaccompanied. In plain English, they are not allowed to wander outside their property without being kept under control. By law, they are required to be kept under the effective control of their owner. But this doesn’t happen. This law is being flouted in every town, village and housing estate in Ireland.

Dogs can be found wandering in every public space, free to soil gardens and pathways, barking at will, while their owners give two fingers to the rest of the community. Dog fouling has become a national issue, but it’s not being tackled. Many dog owners leave their pets out of the house in the morning and have no idea what their little darlings are doing for the rest of the day. They couldn’t care less either and they’re getting away with it.

We have The Control of Dogs Act 1986. It’s not a complicated piece of legislation and the responsibilities of the owners are set out quite clearly. It says that the owner or any other person in charge of a dog shall not permit the dog to be in any place other than –

• the premises of the owner, or
• the premises of such other person in charge of the dog, or
• the premises of any other person, with the consent of that person,

unless such owner or such other person in charge of the dog accompanies it and keeps it under effectual control. There are penalties for those who refuse to comply with these regulations.

Let’s be honest, while we do have a Control of Dogs Act, we don’t have control of dogs and the evidence can be seen daily. Dog wardens have a role to play here but I don’t see them, and any complaints I have lodged with them have been ignored and they have never returned a single call to me.

I have been banging on about this for some time and I get the same response from the authorities about how difficult it is to enforce this piece of legislation. That’s not good enough. It’s not fair on responsible owners, who thankfully, are in the majority and it’s not fair on the rest of us either.

Local authorities need to step up to the mark here.

A few weeks ago, a journalist was commenting on the radio about the security situation prior to the visit of President Donald Trump to Doonbeg in Co. Clare. She said gardai and security personnel were everywhere and there was effectively a ring of steel around the village. I had heard that description before and it brought back a few memories.

It’s over thirty years since Dublin dentist John O’Grady was kidnapped from his home. It was in October 1987 and the weather was terrible. I remember it well because I spent some time out in it looking for him as he had been held captive in Cork for a bit. It was a big story when it broke after the initial news blackout.

Mr. O’ Grady was a well-known dentist in Dublin, and he had been sitting at home one night, after coming from his surgery, when a gang of armed and masked men forced their way into the house. They beat up some of the family members and kept them prisoner for the night and stole what valuables they could get their hands on.

They were four extremely violent characters and the following morning, they took Mr. O’Grady from the house and put him in the boot of a car and brought him to another house in the centre of Dublin where they were joined by a fifth gang member. The plan was to get a ransom for him, but they had made a serious error because they had kidnapped the wrong man.

Their plan left a lot to be desired and it lacked some basic intelligence. Dr. Austin Darragh was the intended target because he was known to be a very wealthy man. What the raiders didn’t know was that Dr. Darragh had moved from that house in Foxrock in Dublin and left it to his daughter while he went to live a few miles away in Ballsbridge.

The house they had broken into was now owned by his daughter who was married to Dr. John O’Grady. He wasn’t a wealthy man, but the gang decided to go ahead with their plan anyway.

Dessie ‘Border Fox’ O’Hare of the INLA, was responsible for the kidnapping and along with other gang members they held him in the basement of a house in Parkgate Street for a few days before they bundled him into a car and drove him to a cottage near Carrigtwohill in Co. Cork. He was put in a shed first and was later transferred to a 40-foot container.

The gang had been traced to this cottage by the gardaí but when they carried out a raid on the property, they discovered the kidnappers had escaped through a tunnel that led to the main road and from there, they hijacked a car and made their getaway with Mr. O’Grady.

The manhunt switched to another area after a motorist saw four suspicious hard looking men, crossing the main Cork to Mallow road near Rathduff. I was stationed in Blarney at the time and Rathduff was part of our Garda District, so we were sent out there to search deserted houses, sheds and barns etc.

Then it was decided to extend the search into Rathduff woods, and a large number of gardai and army personnel were summoned to meet at Gurranabraher Garda Station early one morning. At 6am, truckloads of soldiers lined up in the street while the army officers and gardai gathered in the garda station, waiting to be briefed on what was about to happen.

There was going to be a search for the kidnappers but beyond that we didn’t have any specific information. The operation was being kept very quiet for fear of a leak that might alert the criminal gang.

Shortly after 6am, a very irate superintendent stormed into the room and he had a face like thunder. He was a very big man and he wasn’t noted for being mild mannered. He marched up to the table at the top of the room and raised a copy of the Cork Examiner over his head and angrily threw it on the table in front of him. The headlines on the front of the paper, in big bold letters announced, ‘Ring of steel around Rathduff Wood’.

It wouldn’t happen to James Bond or the team of Mission Impossible, but our secret mission had been rumbled. It had been released to the public before we even left the garda station and that didn’t go down too well with our boss man.

Maurice Gubbins and Mark Hennessey, reported that the countryside was cordoned off, within a 20-mile radius of Burnfort, Rathduff and Sixmilewater, after there had been a reported sighting of the kidnappers on the Cork to Mallow road. Garda chiefs decided to search the 1,000 acres of woodlands between Rathduff and Glenville where they suspected that the gang could be hiding.

This would mean a full-scale search in rough terrain where the woods provide ideal conditions for a hideout and the hopes of catching the gang could be slim. Fingerprints taken after the Midleton shoot-out matched those of a Corkman recently released from jail and his local knowledge is said to have been vital in the rapid escape of the gang from East Cork after the shoot-out with gardai.

Maurice and Mark were spot on, but it didn’t matter because O’Grady was back in Dublin. He was held captive for 23 days before he was finally freed from a house by gardaí during a bloody shoot-out in Cabra during which one garda officer was shot and seriously wounded.

O’Hare was tracked to Urlingford, Co Kilkenny, where he was shot and injured by an Army sniper. His associate Martin Bryan was killed. The other members of the gang were also captured and jailed.

When I lived in my previous house in the countryside, Cork County Council insisted that I needed to upgrade my septic tank. There was nothing wrong with it but because I was looking for planning permission, the tank had to comply with new building regulations. Regulations that didn’t exist when I was building it back in 1982.

I got an engineer to have a look at it and he said that what was being proposed was an overkill and unnecessary, but I didn’t have a choice. When I questioned it, I was told that because it was a four-bedroom house, the septic tank had to be capable of dealing with eight people as the regulations count two people in every bedroom.

I pointed out that there were only three of us living there and, as my wife and I were both over fifty at the time, the prospect of us having more kids was highly unlikely but they said it didn’t matter. It was two people per bedroom and that was that.

But maybe they weren’t daft after all, but just looking to the future because there is a serious shortage of houses and it’s my fault apparently.

According to a report in the Irish Examiner, the Government is making a fresh push to entice older people to move out of family homes and free up housing by gauging their interest in a series of financial and property incentives in the run-up to the next budget.

They are surveying older people for their views on downsizing as part of research due to be completed in September, just weeks before Budget 2020. The Department of Housing enlisted a survey company to ask 1,050 older people living alone for their views on what incentives would convince them to move out of their homes.

I came across an earlier statement from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) who said empty nesters should be financially incentivised to downsize their home to help ease the housing crisis and there was talk of a “granny flat grant” of up to €15,000 for homeowners who wanted to convert their homes into two units.

In other words, too many of us are living in houses that are too big. We’re called ‘empty nesters’ because we continue to live in the family sized home after the kids have flown the coop and we’re causing problems. Young people can’t find houses to raise their own families and it’s all our doing.

Don’t panic though because we can solve the housing problem if we go and live in a closet and give the house to younger families. We’ve reared our children, so now they want us to jump ship into a flat and make the space available to others, so they can raise their kids.

Well you can take that solution and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine and take the “granny flat grant” with you on the way out and let me tell you why.

Many homeowners of my age started out in the early eighties, either buying or building our houses. We got married, started a family, saved hard, made sacrifices and in those early years, often struggled to make ends meet.

In my case, we raised two children to maturity, educated them and did whatever else was required to help them get the best start in life. That’s a serious investment and we did it while paying taxes and looking after all the bills that needed to be paid just to keep the show on the road. Clearing the mortgage and being debt free seemed a lifetime away.

That day eventually dawned though, and it was a great relief. The kids were grown and sorted, and it was our time to reap the rewards and enjoy the rest of our lives doing whatever we wanted to do.

Except that it’s not straight forward now because the rules have changed. These days the kids don’t want to leave the nest and, in many cases, when they do leave, they end up coming back to take over the spare room until they find their own place.

Now the Government wants us to either vacate our property and move to something smaller like a granny flat or alternatively, split the house in two. There might even be a grant to help us convert our walk-in wardrobe into a mini flat.

If somebody wants me to move out, they better come up with a decent proposal. If I’m going anywhere, it will be to a place of my liking, built to a high standard and close to local amenities. There aren’t too many of those available to me now and until such time as I see something suitable, I’m staying put.

And don’t worry about me being lonesome when I have the house to myself. That emotional blackmail is not going to work on me. Psychotherapist, Toby Ingham reckons it might be a shock to the system when the kids leave, and it will only hit us when it happens.

He says that empty nest syndrome can lead to feelings of depression, loneliness and grief and while we may think it affects women more than men, men often go through the same experience too.

Who am I to argue with Mr. Ingham? He has obviously met grieving fathers in his time, distraught because their kids have packed their bags, but he hasn’t met me. My wife and I paid our dues and we’ve done our bit for the State. If they want me to solve the housing crisis, they better have deep pockets.

In the meantime, if I happen to be part of the “random sample” of homeowners surveyed, then I hope the guy who comes knocking on my door isn’t easily offended.

I always feel sorry for school kids at this time of year as they go through their exams. It’s a tough ordeal for them. There are a few exceptions but for most of us, sitting at a desk in an exam situation is a lonely, stressful place to be.

Many who know me would probably tell you that I’m not the most excitable character you’ll ever meet, and I generally take things as they come. I rarely get into a flap but there are two things that have always freaked me out; exams and interviews.

It makes no difference how well prepared I am or how familiar the subject is, as soon as I’m put to the test, I quake. My palms get sweaty, my mouth dries up and my brain goes to mush. I’ll give you an example of how silly this gets, even now.

I did a week-long induction course back when I was starting a tour of duty with the United Nations. Part of that course involved an English test. This was because there were many different nationalities involved in the mission but English was the working language so it was important to make sure everyone could understand it.

The test included listening to some audio and then writing down what was discussed and answering some simple questions. I don’t recall the exact format, but you get the gist. It was basic enough.

I’m a native speaker and I have a decent understanding of the language and I also studied journalism, so I was well equipped. There was nothing complicated about this test but, as soon as it started, all the old familiar feelings came rushing back. It made no sense whatsoever that I should feel like that at the prospect of this silly little test, but I did.

We probably all have something that sets us off and for some, it’s a fear of speaking in public. Not an ordinary fear either, but the kind that brings on panic attacks and increases the chances of an imminent bowel movement. I know some who would rather eat a body part than face the prospect of having to address a group of people, even when they know them.

Those of a certain age will remember the flautist, James Galway. When he was in his heyday, he could play a tune on the flute without pausing for air and fellow musicians studied him to try to figure out when he was taking a breath. We all know someone who won’t stop talking long enough to take a gulp of air but put a microphone in their hand and it’s like a mute button. It’s more effective that a bullet.

Apparently, it’s a very common complaint and I discovered that there’s even a word for it, Glossophobia. It’s a fear of public speaking and it’s estimated that up to 75% of people suffer from it. A strange aspect of this affliction is that some sufferers can sing or dance on a stage in front of a large audience without any difficulty but would self-combust if they were asked to talk.

I can cope with large numbers, but my difficulty is with smaller crowds. I’m talking specifically about the interview situation. I’ve always hated interviews and I have no problem admitting that I am no good at them. I just go to pieces.

When I’m asked a question by the interview panel, my brain immediately goes into neutral. They’d get a more intelligent response from the jug of water in front of them. I can do a great interview in my head before I go into the room and I can give all the right answers when I come out, but while I’m in there, I’m clueless.

I went for an interview one time and one of the guys conducting the interview was a colleague of mine and we knew each other well. Once the introductions were made and the interview began, I couldn’t remember his name.

Even when I know the right answer, I doubt myself and start looking for alternative answers that might sound more impressive. Then I get confused and before I know it, I’m talking in tongues and spouting gobbledygook. That’s the way it’s always been and there’s a good reason for it.

We’re not good at telling strangers how competent we are, and we don’t like to boast about our wonderful achievements. We don’t want to sound full of ourselves or cocky either and I reckon it goes back to the way we were raised.

We were brought up to know our place and not to be getting ideas above our station or to be thinking we were better than anyone else. An attitude like that could earn you a clip around the ear. We were trained to be humble and not to be bragging to others so we’re uncomfortable with self-praise because it goes against the grain.

But not everyone is afraid to express themselves at an interview.

A junior doctor was suspended from practising medicine in Ireland by the High Court because he posed a danger to patients. The doctor was recruited despite never being registered to practice medicine in his own country, but he still managed to score well in an interview here, despite having never laid a hand on a patient before he got the job.

It wasn’t long before his colleagues realised that the man was completely incompetent. He couldn’t take a simple blood sample and he had never even been trained to examine a pregnant woman. He went into the interview full of confidence, waving his qualifications around and secured the position after persuading them that he was the perfect man for the job.

Wouldn’t have happened if he was raised by an Irish mammy.

I heard the Master of the High Court, Edmund Honohan, talking on the radio and he was explaining why he used a hammer to smash three panes of glass in his courtroom. While it is normal for offenders to appear before a judge to answer for their misdemeanours, it’s more unusual for a judge to be explaining himself.

He defended breaking the windows because he said there were issues with ventilation. He explained that when he leaves his courtroom at the end of the day, it’s closed until he comes in at 10.30am the following morning. By then, the air has turned stale and he is expected to work in that atmosphere.

He claimed that he had been complaining about it for the last ten years, but nothing had been done and he said it’s unfair to expect people to work in those conditions and it is also unfair on the members of the public to have to suffer. It was making him feel ill, so he brought a hammer to work with him and smashed three small panes of glass to allow for some ventilation.

While I have some sympathy for the judge, the fact remains that he damaged public property. He brought the hammer with him from home and that would indicate a degree of premeditation which I’m sure is a factor judges regularly take into consideration when deciding on cases.

Remorse is another factor considered by judges when determining cases and in this instance, the judge has not shown any. In fact, he said he would do it again if he felt it was necessary but thankfully the matter has since been resolved.  

There is a light-hearted side to this story and the idea of a judge breaking windows in his own courtroom is amusing. It worked for him, but the justice system is having other difficulties and not all of them can be solved by swinging a hammer.

Executive Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Deirdre Malone reckons that prisons haven’t a great record for reducing crime and she’s probably right. If locking people up was the solution, then why have we such a high rate of repeat offenders. 45% of prisoners are convicted of further crimes within three years of being released.

Malone said there needs to be a focus on stopping the cycle of crime at an early stage by investing in drug treatment and supports in communities. She’s correct of course and part of that support should include investment in Garda Juvenile Diversion Programmes and Community Policing, but these have long been considered ‘soft’ policing options by senior garda management. They were never properly resourced or given serious consideration and now there are consequences.

Cormac O’Keeffe reported in the Irish Examiner that the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris came in for a lot of stick when it was discovered that gardai failed to prosecute almost 8,000 criminal offences by juveniles over an eight-year period.

The Garda Juvenile Diversion Programme is designed to engage with young offenders at an early stage and hopefully divert them from committing further crimes and thereby keeping them on the straight and narrow. In simple terms, they are given a chance to avoid having a criminal conviction recorded against them.

Presumably many of the culprits in these cases were originally recommended to be dealt with by caution under this programme but were subsequently found not to be eligible, either because they were over age or they weren’t cooperating or maybe the crimes were determined to be too serious. The vast majority were repeat offenders.

These cases should have been followed up with prosecutions in court because they were deemed unsuitable for the Garda Youth Diversion Programme, but this didn’t happen. An internal garda review of juvenile offences found 7,900 of them were not prosecuted because of garda inaction between 2010 and 2017.

I have commented on some of the failings of garda management previously and my criticism upset some in An Garda Siochana but the truth is often painful. Whether they like to hear it or not, the fact remains that community policing and the juvenile diversion programme were considered as side shows to the main event and were never fully supported. Mainly because they are long term strategies and don’t provide a quick fix.

It takes time to reap the rewards of effective community policing initiatives and youth diversion programmes. In my time, senior management preferred more immediate solutions. Better for the figures, better for the media and ultimately better for the promotion prospects.

Crime detection was always considered to be the main discipline and absorbed the greater amount of resources. That’s fair enough because detecting crime is a major function of any police force and that’s how it should be. An Garda Siochana has a long and successful history in that department.

But there is room for the other sections in the Force to play an important role too, a fact that was lost on the powers that be. Community policing was always the first casualty when there was a manpower shortage.

In response to the lack of prosecutions, Bob Collins of the Policing Authority said that, notwithstanding the succession of other Garda controversies in recent years, this scandal is “the most serious” the authority has dealt with.

Garda Commissioner Harris apologised to the Policing Authority and said there is now a “consideration of discipline” and the mass disciplinary examination was an “extraordinary step” for him to take but accepts that there were both individual and organisational failings.

I had been complaining about the lack of resources and organisational failings for years but maybe they would have paid more attention if I had just asked Judge Honohan for a loan of his hammer and paid a visit to the Phoenix Park instead.

Many years ago, I was in Belarus doing some work on behalf of the Chernobyl Children’s Trust. Back then, I was a regular visitor to that part of the world and one thing I learned, is that dealing with officialdom over there is a unique experience and it takes a while to get used to the bureaucracy.

You have to go through it to fully appreciate what it’s like, but it helps if you consider their history and where they’ve come from. They got their training from the old Soviet Union, so they love forms. The smallest transaction will involve a ton of paperwork, a bit of shouting, lots of banging of official stamps and a lifetime of waiting around.

In the early days, when we were bringing out humanitarian aid convoys, we must have destroyed several forests to generate the volume of paperwork that was required to travel with us. Every truck, ambulance and van had to have a mountain of documentation for the customs officials.

Exact details of the trucks, certificates of insurance, tax, certificates of roadworthiness, proof of ownership, details of cargo, itemised manifest of goods all had to be provided. Individual certificates were required for some goods, especially food stuffs but also for medical supplies including the likes of crutches and walking aids.  

In many cases, we were dealing with items that were donated so this certification wasn’t always available. This regularly created problems because every single item would be examined by customs officials either at the point of entry into the country or at subsequent checks when the items were being unloaded into hospitals, orphanages or day-care centres. It wasn’t easy.

There was as much paperwork again required for every individual making the journey. Personal details of the drivers and volunteers including passports, visas, driver licences, Garda clearance and reams of health insurance and medical certs, added to the pile.

Multiply that by thirty or forty vehicles and seventy or eighty people, depending on the number of vehicles in the convoy, and we ended up with a shed load of paper.

Entering Belarus from Poland presented the first real hurdle. Just trying to get into the country was complicated and we often spent a couple of days there trying to get everybody cleared. Once clearance was given, we were then allowed to go on our way, but we were only given three days to travel the country and deliver the aid.

This process was frustrating for everybody but particularly for the new volunteers. They couldn’t understand it and no matter how often we explained it prior to leaving Ireland, seeing it in action was soul destroying.

The fact that we were all in Belarus for the benefit of their own people didn’t seem to make too much difference to the officials and they didn’t ease our passage any. In each town and village where aid was being delivered there were local customs to be navigated. It was always a slow, tedious and frustrating process but it had to be done and it was at one of these customs posts that I had an unusual experience.

It was a customs post like any other and, as usual, it was crowded with truck drivers who all wanted to get their paperwork cleared. These places were usually old buildings that weren’t designed for comfort and they tended to be hot and poorly ventilated. Tempers were often short and stress levels were generally on the high side.

A Belarussian driver approached one of our interpreters and explained that he had a problem with his truck. He had seen us pulling up earlier and he figured that we might be able to help him. We always travelled with a mechanic, so I called him and asked if he’d take a look and it wasn’t long before he had the problem sorted.

By the time the Belarussian driver returned to the office, it had become full to overflowing. We were all shoulder to shoulder and there was a bit of jostling going on. I was standing just inside the door and I was making slow progress.

When the driver saw me, he started chatting away in Russian and then stepped into the already crowded room. There was no space for him, but he squeezed in anyway and stood in front of me until we were almost touching noses. Then he shook my hand vigorously and stepped back into the hallway. I decided at that stage, that he was a bit unhinged and I just wanted him to go away.

As soon as he was gone, an interpreter explained to me what had happened. The driver was very grateful for the assistance and he wanted to thank me for helping him. There was a door saddle between the two of us which he saw as a barrier. The kind of thing you see under the door as you go from one room to another.

Because it is considered bad manners in that part of the world to shake hands over a barrier, he stepped over the saddle and squeezed himself into the room to avoid insulting me by shaking hands over the barrier.

This guy probably realised that he was going to look like a bit of an idiot for behaving like that, but he was more concerned about my feelings than his own. He was determined to thank me and to hell with the consequences for him. That made me feel a little guilty and I wanted to run after him and give him a hug.

We sometimes write people off because they speak a foreign language, or they look different. Anti-immigrant sentiment seems to be gathering momentum too, but we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn others. They might even teach us a few things.

Back in December 2017, my mother died, and the family home became empty. In truth, it had become empty before that in some ways because when she got sick, she came to live with me and never went home again.

Even when she was living there, a large piece of life went out of her when my sister died of cancer in her mid-forties in 2005. The house was never the same after that which is understandable. It’s not the natural order for children to predecease their parents and my mother never really got over it.

She would always find a way to bring Jillian’s name into the conversation whenever she was talking to anyone. I suppose it was her way of trying to keep her memory alive.

After my father died in 2010, she struggled to motivate herself and, in many ways, I think she was merely existing. She threw in the towel. She wasn’t a religious person, but she was hoping that she would get to see her daughter again someday.

Looking back on it, we now know that she wasn’t fully fit for a long time. She neglected her health and chose to ignore some of the symptoms she was experiencing. She kept it to herself and it was only after an accident at home that the full extent of her ill health was discovered.

She got up in the early hours of the morning to go to the bathroom and fell down the stairs. She managed to get her mobile phone and she called me but when I got to her, she was shaken and had lost a lot of blood. The ambulance took her to hospital at 6am and, although she didn’t know it then, she would never return to live in that house again.

When she arrived in the hospital, it didn’t take the medical staff long to determine that she was seriously ill and didn’t have much time left. She came to live with me in October and died on the 3^rd of December 2017. It was quick, and as far as we could tell, painless, and she was comfortable right up to the end.

It took the rest of us in the family, a year to finally get around to clearing out the house and there were a few surprises in store for us when we did. My father was an avid amateur photographer for as long as I can remember, and he was rarely without a camera in his hand.

In the pre-digital age, he developed his own photographs and slides and there were thousands of them in drawers and boxes all over the house. When I was a young lad, the kitchen was often designated as a ‘dark room’ where he developed his rolls of film.

It’s great for us now that he did that, because we have plenty of material but it’s going to take some time to go through it all. Looking through some of the old black and white photographs gives a real sense of how much we have all changed over the years and brings back many memories.

I came across a photo of me sitting on the roof of a three-storey house when I was about eight years of age. My father was a small-time builder and his sidekick was a guy by the name of George Doherty. The photograph shows me sitting on the roof with George while we were taking a break from removing slates. I look very relaxed and the height of the roof obviously didn’t bother me.

My mother had written on the back of the photo that I loved to work with the lads during the school holidays and I loved to put on my overalls to be like them. She didn’t date it, but I reckon it must have been taken in 1966. There were similar photographs that were taken on other jobs, so I obviously spent a lot of time hanging out with them as a child.

There was another photo of me on a different roof with George when I was about three years old, but I presume I was just put there for the purpose of the shot. I worked with them when I was older too and I was always comfortable on roof tops because I spent so much time up there. I was at home on heights.

If those photos were taken in the modern era, the PC brigade would certainly launch a full-scale attack on my irresponsible parents, and I would probably be removed from the family home and placed in care.

There was another photo of an old Bedford van. Because my father was a builder, he always had some form of transport at a time when there were few cars on the road. The two front doors slid back from front to rear and when you pushed them back fully, they would remain in the open position. I remember in the summer time being in the van with the doors open wide and no seat belt of course then either.

On one occasion, I must have been very young, I was in the front of the van with George and I was sitting on his lap and the doors were open. I was holding on to the door frame with my left hand. My father hit the brakes for some reason and the doors slid forward to slam shut.

George reacted very quickly and threw his large paw over my small hand and he took the force of the door as it slammed shut. Only for him, I imagine my young bones would have been crushed.

This is only the tip of the iceberg and I imagine there are lots more memories to be discovered yet.