Month: May 2021

• 

Unisex toilets are back on the agenda after the Department of Education recommended the use of gender-neutral toilets for all new schools. They will include self-contained cubicles with their own doors and communal access to sinks but there has been a mixed reaction to the proposal.

LGBT groups say transgender children and young people can feel uncomfortable using school toilets as they worry about being bullied or being forced to use a toilet that doesn’t fit with their identity. Parents opposed to gender-neutral toilets say their children will feel just as uncomfortable going into unisex toilets.

I have some experience in this matter so I could offer advice in terms of design. I’m available for consultation and prepared to help in any way I can. I gained this valuable experience during my Chernobyl days when I spent a considerable amount of time in Belarus. We dealt with communities in rural areas back then and many of those villages suffered from poverty. They had very little, and sanitation was a problem everywhere. In many cases, toilets consisted of just a hole in the ground.

I remember one primary school we visited had a shed in the garden which all the children used as the toilet. It was raised a few feet off the ground and located next to a little playground. It had a timber floor with a series of holes cut into it. There were no toilet bowls, so the waste went through the holes in the floor directly onto the ground beneath the shed and was cleared away by men with shovels. Not the most hygienic set up.

I was in another unisex toilet in that part of the world that wasn’t any better. It was a similar timber structure with a few squares cut out of the floor and there was a pit about ten feet beneath it. The smell was so bad, it was difficult to breathe. Getting in and out as fast as possible was the order of the day. Anyway, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the ground moving under me and I thought that maybe the waste was being carried away by a stream or something until I realised the ground was completely covered with rats.

But my most interesting experience of unisex toilets came very unexpectedly. I can’t for the life of me remember where exactly in Belarus we were, but I went to use the toilet and found a series of toilet bowls all lined up in a row. Each bowl was separated from the next by a low wall with no door. It was for all the world like they started building cubicles but gave up after getting to the height of about four concrete blocks and decided they had done enough.

I had the place to myself, so it didn’t bother me. When I sat on the bowl, I could easily see over the wall next to me so I was thinking that if the place got busy, things could get really awkward in there and I had no idea what the protocol was. What do you do if someone sits next to you? It’s hardly appropriate to reach over and shake hands or start a conversation.

As it happened, I didn’t have too much time to reflect on these issues because the door opened, and a babushka walked in. She marched passed and perched herself in a cubicle a few down from me.

For those of you who don’t know, a babushka is a typical Russian grandmother, and they usually wear a scarf, an apron and several long skirts. They are tough, capable women who have lived through tough times and know how to look after themselves. Formidable characters.

So anyway, in she comes and takes her place without batting an eyelid. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry but I went into a state of panic and suddenly became very conscious of my bodily functions. I thought I had managed to stray into the ladies’ loo and was fearful of the consequences. If any of the lads had spotted my blunder, I would never hear the end of it, but right now, I had a more serious concern; how was I going to get out of there with my dignity in-tact?

I weighed up my options. I thought about staying there and waiting her out but then if she didn’t leave before me, I could end up surrounded by more of them. With my luck, it would be time for a tea break, and I’d be caught in the middle of rush hour loo traffic.

Time was of the essence in this case, so I bit the bullet and left as discretely as you can, in that kind of situation. On the way out, I met a local guy coming in, which meant either the babushka was in the wrong place or I was. As it happened, we were both right because, much to my relief, it was a communal toilet. The babushka knew what she was doing.

So, based on my experience, I have some suggestions for the Department of Education that should be included in their recommendations. Firstly, they should insist that toilet bowls are provided in every cubicle and the use of open holes in the toilet floor should not be considered. Squatting over a hole in the ground with a drop of ten feet below is risky and could result in the loss of some children.

They should also insist that cubicles are completed to an appropriate standard. Walls should be above waist height at least, to eliminate the need for conversation between neighbours and every cubicle should be fitted with a door. Running water would be handy too.

• 

I pass the tugs berthed at the Deep-Water Quay almost every day when I go out for a walk. They’re powerful boats for their size, and they need to be because they are workhorses. They’re the marine version of tow trucks and fire engines and there is usually one of them stationed off the oil refinery in Whitegate in case of emergency.

I’ve seen them motoring around the harbour since I was a child but beyond that, I never really took much notice of what they did to be honest until I was chatting to Mick Mulcahy recently. He reminded me that his dad worked on the tugs for years and told me to give him a call. Mick is best remembered for his famous 96fm wind-ups, but he also has a great love for the sea which he probably gets from his dad.

Tony Mulcahy is a retired Tug Master, and he gave me an insight into tug life. He joined the company in 1964 and he had plenty of stories to tell. I think they were called Irish Tugs Ltd. initially, but then Cory Towage took over and the tugs are now operated by Doyle Shipping Group. I don’t have space to go into too much detail, but I’ll try to give you a flavour of the type of life they had.

Two days before Christmas in 1978 Tony was at home when the manager of Irish Tugs Ltd. arrived at his front door and straight away, he knew something was up. A small tanker, The Rathmore, was in trouble just three miles outside Cork Harbour and Tony was told to get there urgently.

It was Saturday afternoon about 3pm when he rushed off to the Thorngarth, to join the other five members of the crew, all experienced men. This was an emergency situation, so time was of the essence. It had been blowing an easterly gale all day, and the forecast was bad, so they knew what was ahead of them. They were expecting to hit rough seas, so they tied everything down as they went.

The Rathmore was a tanker of about 700 tons and was in difficulty since early morning. It was dangerously close to going aground close to a place called Fishpoint, three miles south of the entrance to Cork Harbour and close to Rinabella Bay and Fountainstown. It was a dangerous situation because the Rathmore had already lost one anchor and as the weather had worsened, there was a possibility it could lose the other one as well.

By right, it should have been a Mayday situation but for some reason a Mayday was not declared. If the skipper of the Rathmore had declared a Mayday by just saying “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” on the radio, all services in Cork Harbour such as tugs, naval ships and the Ballycotton lifeboat would have been dispatched straight away. The law of the sea states that a Mayday is number one priority.

As they passed Roches Point, the tug started rolling violently, tossing them about like a cork on the water. By the time they reached the stricken tanker, they were being battered by huge waves and as they stepped out on deck, they found themselves working in waist deep water. They had trouble staying on their feet.

The tug was drenched with water most of the time with waves coming at them from all directions. On one occasion Tony was knocked off his feet and blown against the side of the tug which was submerged at the time, and he hit it so hard with his chest that he lost his breath. 

It was a dangerous situation with both the tanker and the tug rising high with the waves and then dropping from sight. They knew if the tug got damaged, they were in serious trouble.

After battling the conditions for a couple of hours, they finally got a towline connected to the Rathmore and started to head back to safety, but the tow rope was too short for the conditions and they feared it would break. The men had been working in water since arriving on the scene and were frozen to the bone, but they weren’t finished yet.

Tony needed to get an extension line onto the tow rope but that wasn’t going to be easy in the prevailing conditions. Lying on their backs under the tow rope, the crew members bided their time until they got the opportunity to fit the extension line. It would have been a tough ask at the best of times, but the storm made everything more hazardous, but they pulled it off.

Tony joined the skipper, Joe Keane, on the bridge and offered to relieve him at the wheel but he refused. Joe couldn’t talk. His mouth was so dry, he couldn’t even moisten his lips. When they got into the harbour, they brought the Rathmore to a safe anchorage and the Mate of the Rathmore came aboard the tug and spoke to the crew.

He shook their hands and thanked them for saving their lives. He couldn’t believe what the men of the Thorngarth had gone through.

The Rathmore men knew they were in a bad situation but when they saw what the tug crew were having to deal with, they felt safer on the Rathmore. He said the tug looked more like a submarine than a tug and at one stage they feared that when the tug reappeared out of the waves, someone would have been lost.

The Rathmore was berthed at 9pm at the Deepwater Quay in Cobh and the men went off duty. Just another day’s work for the tug men. They didn’t realise until later that the Thorngarth had been severely damaged and required some major repairs.

• 

The Irish Naval Service set up home in Haulbowline in Cork Harbour back in the forties. Since then, it has been a major influence on the town of Cobh and its people. ‘The Base’ as it’s referred to locally, occupies a prominent position in the harbour. It hard to miss and its presence has been very beneficial to the town, economically and socially.

It’s impossible to walk through the town without meeting someone with a connection to the Service. Naval personnel came from all corners of the country and many of them married local girls and settled in Cobh permanently. Some of my own extended family members served as sailors while others worked as civilians in the naval dockyard attached to the base with responsibility for maintaining the vessels.

I have relatives who spent a lifetime in the Service and back in the eighties, I availed of their hospitality on a few occasions when their ships called into Dun Laoghaire in Dublin. I was a young garda stationed a few miles away in Blackrock and was always glad to see a few friendly faces.

The reception the navy got in Cobh wasn’t always hospitable though. There was a time when the relationship between the sailors and Cobhites was fractious to say the least. In the early seventies, there were dances in the local CYMS Hall every Friday night. The navy lads were regular attendees, but their presence wasn’t appreciated by everyone.

Some of the local lads saw them as a threat, bringing raiding parties into town to steal the women. There was always a bit of tension and it didn’t take much to light the fuse. A scrap could quickly escalate to a melee and it wasn’t unusual for it to spill out from the hall and onto the street. Nothing too serious, just some bruises, black eyes, and damaged egos on both sides.

The navy lads got a lot of stick. They were accused of never going to sea because they had to be home in time for their dinner. Those of a certain vintage will remember when the LÉ Cliona, LÉ Maeve, and LÉ Macha, made up the Irish Naval fleet and the sentiments of the time were captured in a song written by Luke Kelly of The Dubliners.

We are a seafaring nation
Defence of our land is a right
We’d fight like the devil all morning
Provided we’re home by the night
The Clíona, the Meabh and the Macha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea

Time has moved on since then and there is a healthy respect for the part the navy has played in peace keeping missions overseas and in protecting our waters from illegal fishing. They have also been successful in preventing the importation of illegal drugs. The largest interdiction was probably the seizure of 1,800 kilos of 80%-pure cocaine, valued at €400 million from the yacht ‘Dances with wolves’ in 2008, off Mizen Head, Co Cork.

Despite their reputation, the Naval Service is struggling to maintain its numbers and continues to lose men and women to better paying jobs in the private sector. According to Sean O’Riordan, writing in the Irish Examiner, figures show that as of March 1, the total complement of personnel had plunged below the 900 mark where the minimum manpower level should stand at 1,094.

A further 24 have also sought to leave and are currently awaiting their discharge, which would reduce trained personnel numbers to 838, more than 2,000 short of what the Naval Service is supposed to have.

My son is only 29 years-old but he told me that friends of his who had joined the Naval Service after leaving school have already left and are now employed elsewhere. So there is obviously an issue with retaining personnel which is a pity because it puts a serious dent in the supply of naval characters to Cobh and we don’t want to lose them.

Characters like Noel Fealy, a retired Senior Chief Petty Officer, otherwise known as Sam. He’s originally from Sallynoggin in Dublin and even though he’s lived here for most of his life, he still retains his strong Dublin accent. We’ve adopted him now though and he rattles off yarns faster than any Corkman.

He told me he was called by the Warrant Officer one day to discuss a problem he had. They were due to use Spike Island for their upcoming annual sports day, but the boss man had no athletes. He needed volunteers or the day was going to be a flop. Sam told him not to worry, he would organise volunteers from the different sections and allocate them to the various disciplines.

The following morning, the sailors lined up for parade and when it was over, Sam told everyone to stay where they were. He went up and down the line and selected his volunteers. The tall guys were picked for either the high jump or the long jump while the skinny guys were selected as runners. He told them they were taking part in the annual sports day, much to their surprise.

When he was finished, he dismissed the parade and headed back to his office but as he rounded a corner, he saw a recruit leaning against a door. Sam couldn’t put a name on him, so he asked him who he was. In a strong Cork accent, he said his name was “Petorrs”. Sam told him, in his best impression of a Cork accent, “Peters you’re in the hundred metres”.

The bemused man asked him what that was, and Sam held up his arms with his hands three feet apart and told him “About a hundred of those boy”.

• 

I have a great deal of respect, admiration and sympathy for all those parents who had to go through the home-schooling experience while the schools were closed. I had a small taste of it when I called to see my six-year-old grandson, Cooper, and it was an eye opener.

It was just before the last lockdown and he was playing with his electronic gaming machine. He described the various games and the different levels he had reached, and I thought he was speaking in a foreign language.

I hadn’t an earthly clue what he was talking about. I tried my best to keep up, but I could see the despair in his eyes as he realised his granddad was completely out of his depth. He was probably wondering why I wasn’t already in a home for the bewildered and I wouldn’t blame him.

The game he was talking about is a Switch, an electronic video gaming system from Nintendo. If you like to read a newspaper and occasionally refer to the radio as the wireless, then you won’t know what a Switch is either so don’t feel so bad.

It looks like an overgrown mobile phone and apart from that, I can’t tell you anything else about it, except that it makes noise. It’s a long way from the cowboys and Indians I was playing at his age but it’s probably politically incorrect to even mention that now.

When he was finished with his Switch, it was time for homework, and that presented me with a reminder of how times have changed. Cooper took out his English book to do his reading and immediately started making these strange noises. I thought at first, he was choking so I leapt into action with my version of the Heimlich Manoeuvre, but as he recovered from the unprovoked assault, he explained that this is the way they learn to read these days.

Apparently, children no longer learn the alphabet. They learn the sounds, so instead of spelling the words, he was sounding each letter and then joining up the sounds to form a word. It worked for him and he got there in the end, but it was totally alien to me. By the time I left, I was a wreck, and I realised the world is changing fast and leaving me behind. It’s happening in my own house too.

My 29-year-old son has a piece of technology connected to a TV in the back room and he plays games online with other similarly demented souls. I have no idea what’s going on except that it involves lots of shouting. Once he puts on his headphones, he is a different zone.

He has a noise cancelling headset which disconnects him from the rest of civilisation. He can only hear his own guys but, sadly, that’s not the case for the rest of us. It gets noisy when they play their war games. There is lots of fighting, shooting and killing and when their lives are threatened, there is a noticeable increase in volume.  

He shouts warnings of impending danger to his buddies, and it get so loud that there must be times when the neighbours take cover behind the furniture expecting the front door to come in around them.

When I’ve had enough, I go into the room and tap him on the shoulder to bring him back to reality. I remind him that he actually faces a greater threat of harm from the person standing behind him than he does from any trained killers on the TV. That’s usually enough to restore a temporary reprieve.

I have come to accept that as I get older, the gap between father, son and grandson is widening. There was a time when I could teach them things but that’s no longer the case because what I know is no longer relevant to them. If they have a question now, they just ask Alexa and that’s OK. That’s progress I suppose but I’m beginning to feel like my dad.

When my father got a desktop computer for the first time, he couldn’t cope. He was an amateur photographer and wanted to upload photographs and photoshop them, but he found the whole process very difficult. He was a good problem solver normally, but he found this new stuff very frustrating, and he promptly gave up.

My mother had a Kindle, but she couldn’t download books from Amazon. I explained it to her until I was blue in the face but to her dying day, she just couldn’t get it. She thought the Internet was her enemy and, in the end, she also gave up and returned to her paper backs. Technology defeated both of them and I’m beginning to understand how they felt.

Cooper wanted to practice his spelling on my laptop, and I was amazed at how well he could navigate his way around it. I can’t imagine what he will be able to do when he hits his teens or where technology will be in ten years.

Progress is inevitable and most of it is good, but I sometimes wish the young people could experience a bit of what it was like to live in simpler times. A time when there wasn’t an app for everything. A time when shouting ‘Alexa’ at the phone in the hallway would only have been answered with the dial tone.

I wrote a piece recently about Laurel and Hardy visiting Cobh in 1953 and I asked my son, Colin, what he thought of the famous duo. He never heard of them and the idea of watching anything in black and white without Hi Definition, 3D, super surround sound on a 70 inch TV with all the bells and whistles was too much for him.