Month: November 2021

• 

Some people are good at striking up conversations with strangers. They’ll chat away in confined spaces like elevators, waiting rooms, planes and trains, but I tend not to do that. I prefer to keep to myself. I suspect many of us are like that which is a pity because you never know what you’re missing out on by not making the effort.

Back in 2017, my wife and I went to Tenerife for a few weeks. We stayed in Los Christianos and found a lovely pub run by an Irish couple Brendan and Annette called, The Devon Arms. They were very welcoming, had a nice clientele and did lovely pub grub so it quickly became our local watering hole.

Brendan, the landlord, was a character and football mad. He kept a referee’s whistle and a red card behind the counter. He was an Arsenal fan and if you cheered for the wrong team or insulted one of his players, he blew his whistle, and you were sent outside. It was all in good fun.

We hadn’t seen him around the bar for a few days and when we inquired about him, Annette told us he was taking it easy because he was having treatment for prostate cancer. That came as a shock.

I discussed his ill health with another man I met in that bar called Richard Harris. Richard and I had only exchanged a few words previously, but we discovered we had something in common; we were both retired police sergeants. It was a brief encounter and when the holiday was over, we parted company to return to our normal lives and that was that.

The following year, 2018, I had my own brush with prostate cancer and while I was at home recovering from the surgery, I got an email from Richard. He had read a piece I had written about my prostate saga, and he told me he was facing similar surgery.

We kept in touch after that, exchanging news of our highs and lows, and became what you might call modern day pen pals. In one of his emails, Richard gave me the sad news that Brendan from the Devon Arms had succumbed to his illness and had passed away. I was sorry to hear that, and I was surprised how much it bothered me because we didn’t know each other well. In fact, I’m sure Brendan didn’t even remember who I was, but I still felt the loss.

Only a short time previously, the three of us were complete strangers and we only met because we were thrown together in a pub while on a holiday. Little did we know the time would come when we would also be linked through diseased prostates. My life was certainly better for having met both of those guys and that brief encounter with Brendan left its mark. Richard, I’m happy to report, is still doing well.

I had another experience with a stranger when I went to the Mater Hospital in Dublin for the prostate surgery. I arrived in the hospital the day before and had some pre-op checks before being sent to the ward for the night. I was a bit apprehensive about facing into surgery the following morning, so I was happy to be alone with my thoughts.

But when I entered my room, there was a guy sitting on the other bed and he was having none of it. He hopped off the bed and marched over to me, stuck out his large hand and introduced himself as Matt Butler. He was a big man in his seventies with a firm handshake. He spent his working life in the market in Smithfield so he was a real people person and boy, could he talk. If telling yarns was an Olympic event, I’d put serious money on Matt to take the gold medal.

He had several issues with his own health, but he didn’t let that bother him. No matter what was thrown at him, he accepted it and drove on. He was a regular visitor to the hospital, so they all knew him, and he had a word for everyone. He was the life and soul of the place.

He had an interesting life and I got to hear most of it in the short time I spent with him. Even when I was stiff and sore, he had me laughing but it is for something else that I will remember him fondly.

The day after the surgery, I was wired up to various bits and pieces and getting to the bathroom was a bit of a trial. Without going into too much detail, after one of those trips, I came back to the bed and there was blood leaking out of me. I panicked because I didn’t know where exactly it was coming from, but I knew it shouldn’t be there. My pyjamas were a mess.

When Matt saw the state of me, he sat me in the chair while he went for a nurse. He calmed me down and offered me spare pyjamas he had in his locker. He took control of the situation which in the cold light of day, might not seem like such a big deal, but to me, at that time, it was everything.

I wasn’t thinking clearly so he did the thinking for me despite the fact he was unwell himself. He offered me his spare pyjamas without thinking twice even though he could have found himself in urgent need of them at any moment. Fortunately, I had my own.

We only spent a few days in each other’s company, but we keep in touch by text and his messages always make me laugh. Another stranger who became a friend in unusual circumstances.

• 

If you’re not a fan of large family gatherings and big sit-down dinners, then be thankful you are not an American. Thanksgiving Day in America takes place on Thursday next, 25th November and that’s the time for families in the States to get together to eat turkey until they explode, have a few beers and fall asleep for the afternoon with only a short break to digest that before doing it all again at Christmas.

Thanksgiving is a big deal for our friends across the pond, it’s just like Christmas Day but without the presents. Family get-togethers don’t always go smoothly though. Johnny Carson, the famous TV host is quoted as saying; “Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they see only once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” They still persist with it though and they’ve been doing it for a while now, since the 1600’s in fact.

It started in 1620, when a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth in England, carrying 102 passengers, a mixture of English and Dutch mainly, all headed for America in the hope of finding a new life for themselves. It was a lot more difficult to get to that part of the world in those days and it was a gruelling two months before they arrived in Massachusetts and dropped anchor.

It was wintertime and the weather was so bad that most of the passengers stayed on the ship where they endured terrible conditions. Half of them died of various illnesses before they even got the chance to set foot on their promised land. The survivors eventually made it ashore to set up camp and a year later they reaped their first corn harvest which they celebrated with a feast that lasted three days. That turned out to be the beginning of what was to become ‘Thanksgiving’. They weren’t the first people to give thanks for a successful harvest though.

Our pagan Celtic ancestors celebrated a harvest festival in the autumn called Samhain. It lasted from sunset on October 31 to sunset on November 1 and during that time they partied. They lit bonfires, had feasts, and offered food to the spirits who they believed controlled everything, including the weather. The offerings were to encourage the spirits to look favourably on them, keep them safe and provide a successful harvest. So, we were at this caper long before our American cousins.

Thanksgiving is all about sharing a meal with family and friends. The turkey takes pride of place and has become synonymous with the holiday and as part of the tradition now, the president of the United States “pardons” a Thanksgiving turkey each year, sparing it from slaughter and sending it to a retirement farm. Many don’t survive though.

Americans eat roughly 535 million pounds of that meat on Thanksgiving, served with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cornbread, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. The average American will consume about 4,500 calories on the day, or about 3,000 for the meal and an additional 1,500 for snacking. That’s a fair amount of grub.

It’s a busy and costly time of the year too and just a short few weeks after Thanksgiving, they get to do it all again for Christmas and the New Year. Not everyone is a fan though because it also presents lots of opportunities for family arguments which is why Andy Borowitz, an American writer said; “Those of you who cannot be with family on Thanksgiving, please resist the urge to brag.”  

On a more positive note, I came across a heart-warming Thanksgiving story which hasn’t been attributed to anyone in particular and as far as I can tell it was written anonymously but the message is a positive one.

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” A man passing by noticed there were only a few coins in the hat, so he took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He asked the boy if he could take his sign for a miniute.

The boy gave It to him, and the man turned it around and wrote some words on the reverse side of the sign. He handed it back with that side showing so that everyone walking by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy and in the afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see the boy and asked him how things were going. The boy recognized his voice and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth.  I said what you said but in a different way. I wrote: Today is a beautiful day but I can’t see it.”

Both signs told people the same thing, but the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign got people thinking about how lucky they were to have their sight. It reminded them how fortunate they were and that was what made the second sign more effective.

The moral of the Story is to be thankful for what you have. Think differently and positively and when life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show that you have a thousand reasons to smile. Prepare for the future without fear and keep the faith.

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling. And even more beautiful, is knowing that you are the reason behind it! And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends.

• 

During my 35 years as a member of An Garda Siochana, I served in several stations in both Dublin and Cork. In the early days, I was proud to wear the uniform and even though I was a just small cog in a large wheel, I was happy to be doing my bit to keep the streets safe. When I started out on the beat, I knew little of policing, but I still felt I was making a contribution by just being out there, walking around.

Walking the beat was a major part of policing in those days. Being present and visible created a sense of security in the community and people liked to see it. They would often stop you for a chat or just smile and say hello. Many would comment on how nice it was to see a garda on the beat in the locality and it just made them feel better. It was an effective deterrent too.

People who never had any reason to go near a garda station often told me about the comfort they got from just knowing the station was there. Just seeing the light on at night gave them a feeling of security and safety.

It was far from being the perfect organisation then. Mistakes were made and there were some rotten apples in the garda barrel too but most of them were rooted out. The vast majority were honest, dedicated members of the Force who wanted to wage war on crime. And there was plenty of it. There was no shortage of criminals either, but I never felt like they were winning or that we ever came close to becoming a lawless society.

I’m sensing a change in recent times though and it’s making me uncomfortable. Senator Jerry Buttimer expressed the view some time ago that Cork city was becoming a “no-go” area due to anti-social behaviour. He said people felt threatened and worried when walking the streets of the city due to the presence of gangs of youths. 

Dublin has similar problems. A programme on TV recently highlighted the growing issue of anti-social behaviour in the capital city. They showed footage of assaults, joyriding, marauding gangs, drunkenness, and general bad behaviour. Some of the assaults were serious in nature and totally unprovoked.

Many of those interviewed expressed the opinion that there weren’t enough gardai on the streets. Gangs were running amok in town, roaming the streets causing assaults and random acts of violence and anti-social behaviour. Many felt it wasn’t safe to walk alone, and people were choosing alternative routes home to avoid trouble.

One woman said she had been assaulted and waited for an hour and a half for the gardai to arrive, but they never came. Another guy said he had been assaulted getting off the Luas and called the gardai, but they never arrived. There were numerous complaints of anti-social behaviour on public transport too.

This was confirmed by Dermot O’Leary, general secretary of the National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) who said rail workers are faced with “constant harassment.” Speaking on RTÉ News, he gave examples of staff members having to deal with passengers being abusive, openly taking drugs, drug dealing in some cases, sexual assaults, and threats of violence.

He said it was well known that the Cork-Dublin line has a variety of anti-social behaviour or crime issues and called for a dedicated transport policing division to tackle the anti-social behaviour, and the verbal and physical assaults on staff and customers that are taking place on a daily basis.

There have been many reports in the media about random attacks on people going about their normal work. Deliveroo guys being chased on their bicycles and beaten up. People being assaulted on their way home from a night out such as happened to Irish Olympian Jack Woolley who was left battered and bloodied on the side of the street for no apparent reason.

I detect a growing sense of fearlessness among certain elements of society who aren’t concerned about the potential consequences of their actions and it’s almost as if they feel they are above the law. They reckon they are untouchable and the lack of garda visibility on the streets today isn’t helping. In my opinion there’s no deterrent but garda management doesn’t agree.

Assistant Commissioner Ann Marie Cagney said lack of resources isn’t an issue, but she would welcome more resources which would allow her to maximise her capacity to provide reassurance around her policing response in Dublin. She is happy with the garda response to the city’s problems and bases her resources on data analysis and temporal analysis but also listens to what the community is saying.

I don’t understand that but if she is really engaging with and listening to the public, she should recognise that something isn’t adding up. People are constantly complaining about the lack of garda presence in their community and this lack of engagement is contributing to the general lawlessness.

Station closures, a new work roster and large-scale civilianisation were supposed to ensure a greater visibility of gardai on our streets according to the then Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald. She said closing garda stations was about smart policing and putting gardaí where they were needed most. Well, we’ve seen how that worked out.

As I write this, Operation Citizen has just been launched as a strategy to make the streets safer in Dublin. They say a greater visible policing presence with dedicated beats combined with responsive foot and mountain bike patrols across the city, will enhance safety and act as a prevention to crime and anti-social behaviour.

In other words, they’re going back to basics and doing what we were doing forty years ago before various modernisation programmes were introduced and broke everything.

• 

In November 2013, I arrived in Cyprus for a twelve-month stint with the United Nations. I rented an apartment in a small complex and from the balcony I had an unrestricted view of the Buffer Zone; the strip of no man’s land that separates the northern part of the island from the south.

They say men died there during the invasion of 1974, and people, including me, have told of strange happenings in the area. I was convinced I saw a man standing at my bedroom door in the middle of the night but when I jumped out of bed, the apartment was locked and there was nobody there except me, but that’s for another day.

I had only been living there for a short while when one evening, I heard a loud crash coming from the apartment next door. It sounded to me like a kitchen unit loaded with pots and pans, had fallen off the wall and clattered to the floor. My first thought was that maybe someone was hurt. I knew two ladies lived in that apartment and one of them had a walking aid, so I was a little concerned.

I went out and rang their doorbell. The door opened slightly and cautiously to reveal two heads peeping out at me. They had a surprised look on their faces. I introduced myself and told them I heard a noise, and I was just checking to make sure they were OK.

They were amazed. They couldn’t believe that a stranger would take the time to check on their welfare. They invited me in and sat me at the table. We chatted for a bit, and it wasn’t long before they produced a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of gin and that was the start of it. We sat there for hours, and I knew straight away we were going to be friends.

They were widows and had been friends for over forty years. They were characters and well able to speak their minds. English wasn’t their first language but if they had something to say, they said it and the conversation was regularly punctuated with expletives when they felt it necessary, which was very often.

We shared many drinks during the year, and we always had fun when we got together. I would come home after a day’s work and flop into a sun lounger by the pool and tell them how exhausted I was after spending the day ducking bombs and bullets and risking my life to keep them safe. They knew that was rubbish of course and they referred to me as Mr. Bond and would regularly ask how many people I had killed that day.

I loved the fact that you could say anything to these two. There were no rules, and it was easy to be in their company. Ulla hailed from Sweden and Tove was Danish and while they both had very good English, conversations often got complicated, but never dull.

One day I came home to find Tove, who was in her seventies, standing by the pool looking into the Buffer Zone. She was leaning on her walker and had the back of her dress tucked into her knickers. Without turning around, she heard me coming and told me not to be frightened that she was just getting some sun on her legs.

I asked her one day about the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. That’s the bronze sculpture displayed sitting on a rock in the promenade that you often see on tourist promotional material. Tove hated it and went into a long rant that would not be suitable for young ears. If I ever wanted to get her going, all I had to do was mention the statue.

Before I finished my time in Cyprus, Tove became ill and had to return home to Denmark, but she regularly sent me Jacqui Lawson cards by email on special occasions. These are animated musical cards delivered via the Internet with dancing animated characters set to music.

These days, when I go to Cyprus, I always pay a visit to Ulla and it was on one of these occasions, a few years ago, that as soon as I met her, I knew something was wrong. I could see it in her face and as we hugged each other, she told me that Tove had died.  

That news came as a shock to me, and her death saddened me more than I had anticipated. We weren’t related and didn’t even know each other that well but for a short time in our lives, the three of us came together from different parts of the world and connected. Became friends.

We had a few things in common I suppose in so far as we shared a good sense of humour, and we were in a strange country, away from home. We got on well together and shared some fun and laughter along the way and a year later, went our separate ways again.

It’s hard to believe that eight have passed since I first met those two ladies. Ulla and I still keep in touch and while in Cyprus a few weeks ago, I called to her again. We went out for a meal and caught up on the various happenings in our lives and talked about the old times. It was sad that Tove couldn’t be with us, and Ulla misses her terribly. Her anniversary occurs around this time, and we remembered her fondly and laughed as we recalled some of the things she said and did.

Meeting those two characters made my time in Cyprus all the more enjoyable and it all started with a noise in their apartment. We never found out what caused it though.

• 

People get anxious for all sorts of reasons. The thought of standing up in front of a crowd to deliver a speech is enough to paralyse some. For others, the fear of getting on an aeroplane will do it. It’s crippling but they can’t help themselves.

We’re familiar with these phobias and we empathise with sufferers but those living with an affliction called deipnophobia get very little attention. Deipnophobia is a fear of dining and dinner conversations. It’s a social phobia which causes the sufferer to feel awkward while eating or dining in public or in front of strangers. They worry about how they might look when eating and fear being criticised.

They’re basically horrified to be seen eating in case they look disgusting or might be judged by what they eat. I’ve never come across it, but I have met some diners who should be afraid to be seen eating. I’m talking about people with no table manners.

A woman well versed on this subject is Vikki Fraser. She has a cookery blog where she lists the worst dining habits of all time, and I agree with most of them. She says double-dipping is by far the most disgusting of communal eating wrongs, where someone puts a spoon into a bowl, takes a mouthful and goes back to the bowl for a second one.

She’s spot on with that. You see it all the time on cookery programmes where the chef dips a spoon into a pot for a taste, then sticks the spoon back in to give it a stir. Not very hygienic. If memory serves me right, the late Monica Sheridan, Ireland’s best-known cook back in the seventies, got into a spot of bother on a cookery programme on RTE for doing just that.

I had an even worse experience in the eighties while having a meal with some Turkish colleagues. We were seated around a small table in an apartment one evening enjoying a few pre-dinner drinks. It was all going well until the food arrived. Things took a turn for the worse when guests on both sides of me started picking at my food with their fingers and eating it. It wasn’t as if they were just taking a chip either. It was a goulash type meal, like an Irish stew, so it was a bit messy.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. They broke off bits of bread and dipped them in my food and carried on chatting as if nothing happened. I didn’t know how to react because this was obviously normal for them so I couldn’t tell them to cut it out. I couldn’t bring myself to eat another bite after that and feigned a bit of tummy trouble.

That’s not on Fraser’s pet hate list and maybe she never experienced it but something else is. She calls it presumptive addition. That’s when someone else seasons your food without asking. Like putting salt and vinegar on the chips without checking to see whether you like it or not or squeezing lemon over the meat. Lemon is used instead of salt in some Mediterranean countries and you either like that or you don’t. I do as it happens, but I prefer to do it myself thank you very much. Anyway, I was always told it was an insult to the chef to season food before you’ve even tasted it.

Chewing food with your mouth open is another of her pet hates. I agree with that too and another one, which is a sign of the times we live in, is talking on the mobile phone at dinner. If a call is important and needs to be answered then the phone should be taken outside. Nobody wants to listen to your life story.

Dining out should be an enjoyable experience. I’m not a fussy eater so I’ll try anything once and the fact that my taste buds aren’t the most sensitive part of my anatomy makes life easier, but I do have my limits. I ate squid one time and that is a dish I will never revisit. It was like eating my wallet; tough and tasteless but there are far worse foods out there.

Eating dog meat is considered normal in some countries, but it will never touch my lips, so I was happy to see that South Korea is considering removing it from the menu. It’s part of the staple diet in some Asian countries but the President of South Korea is a dog lover, and it seems he is anxious to buck that trend in his domain. But if you think eating dog is bad, what about eating rat?

Whenever I see one of those rodents it sends a shiver up my spine even when I’m sitting safely in my car. I despise them. I particularly hate the look of that disgusting tail and I’m gagging now even thinking about it. For some though, rats are considered a delicacy.

According to the BBC, on 7 March every year, in a remote village in the hills of north-east India, they celebrate Unying-Aran, a festival which has rat meat as the centrepiece. One of their favourite dishes is a stew called bule-bulak oying, made with the rat’s stomach, intestines, liver, testes, foetuses, all boiled together with tails and legs plus some salt, chili and ginger.

They say rodent meat is the most delicious and best meat you can imagine. They don’t just eat them either, they also give them as wedding presents and in the Indian state of Bihar there are people called ‘rat eaters’ by locals. They tend the crops of wealthy landowners in exchange for the right to eat the rats that plague the field.

 Deipnophobia is not an issue in some parts of the world then.