Trevor Laffan

I saw a video some time ago where two young lads were given an old telephone. The black type we all had at one time, with the receiver on top and the circular dial on the front. They were told to make a call, but they hadn’t an absolute clue how to operate it.

They tried dialling with the handset still in place, then tried speaking into the handset without doing anything else and then examined it as if it was an alien. It was hilarious. It’s only a short time since these were in use in every home, but telecommunication has changed so much, and so quickly, that they’ve become unrecognisable to a new generation.

We all depended on house phones once upon a time, but not anymore. They’re old hat now. We’ve given up using ours because the only people calling it were scammers looking for our money but these pests don’t have it all their own way either because getting someone to answer a landline is difficult these days.

I wonder when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, if he had any idea of how it would evolve? I doubt it because his first words over his new invention were “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you.” He wasn’t surprised when Watson answered his call immediately and he probably assumed it would always be like that. Little did he know.

If he were alive today, Mr. Bell would notice some changes. For a start, he would find it difficult to contact Mr. Watson’s office. After dialling the number, he would have to listen to his options, select the one most suitable to him, make several more selections before being advised that Mr. Watsons office was experiencing a large volume of calls and waiting time would be estimated in hours.

I experienced this recently when I was trying to get my Covid Booster Certificate amended. It had the incorrect date of the vaccination printed on it, and I couldn’t alter it online, so I had to use the phone number listed on the Website. I dialled the number, made the necessary selections, and then waited ninety-three minutes before speaking to a human. A human who did nothing for me in the end but that’s another story.

It’s at times like that, I think we might have been better off if Alexander Graham Bell hadn’t bothered. They say he refused to have a phone in his own study because he said it would only distract him from his work. That was at a time when I imagine getting a phone call was a rare event so he must have had an inkling of how invasive his machine would eventually become. He couldn’t possibly have predicted the extent though.

When I was a child, our telephone sat on a table in the hall. We picked it up when it rang or when we wanted to make a call and that was it. The rest of the time it just sat there and minded its own business, and I don’t ever remember anyone sitting in front of it just staring at it because that would have been pointless.

These days, we look at our phones about eighty-five times a day on average. We check the time, the weather, our emails, texts, Whatsapp messages, news updates on Twitter and whatever. That’s outside the time we spend talking on it.

I am one of the afflicted. I can’t leave home without it. In fact, I can’t move from one room to the other without tapping my pocket to make sure it’s there. My children didn’t get that much care and attention and that’s because Mr Bell couldn’t just spend his days climbing trees and kicking a football like the other kids.

He was too inquisitive for that. He said, “The inventor looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees and wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialisation.”

He was certainly a determined character and made his invention work. It was worth his while too. In 1876, Bell offered to sell the patent to Western Union for $100,000. Western Union ran America’s telegraph wires at the time, but its top people believed the telephone was just a fad. They couldn’t see it being profitable, so they turned it down.

Two years later in 1878, Western Union’s opinion had altered dramatically. They knew if they could get the patent for $25 million, they would have a bargain. Unfortunately for Western Union, the Bell Telephone Company had been launched by then. They missed the boat.

According to History.com, Bell’s interest in sound technology was deep-rooted and personal, as both his wife and mother were deaf. His father was a professor of speech elocution at the University of Edinburgh and his mother, despite being deaf, was an accomplished pianist.

Bell didn’t excel academically, but he was a problem solver from an early age. At 16, he began studying the mechanics of speech and also learned Greek and Latin. While living in America, he learned the Mohawk language and put it in writing for the first time. The Mohawk people made him an Honorary Chief.

When Bell was 25, he opened a school in Boston where he taught deaf people to speak and it was while teaching, he met Mabel Hubbard, a deaf student. They married 1877 and went on to have four children, including two sons who died as infants. 

Bell died in 1922, at the age of 75 in Nova Scotia, Canada and during his funeral, every phone in North America was silenced to pay tribute to the inventor. And they haven’t been quiet since.

I got a message last year from the ESB informing me that a technician would be calling around to fit a smart meter to the house. It’s part of the National Climate Action Plan, supporting Irelands transition to a low carbon future. They plan to fit twenty-four million of these things across the country.

I presume that will bring about the demise of the meter reader, but the new technology promises to bring benefits to customers, the environment, and the country. That’s great, but when I hear that kind of speak, the cynic in me breaks out and I wonder what the catch is? We’ll have to wait and see.

Anyway, I got a follow up message to say the meter fitting person would arrive at 9.30am on Thursday and sure enough, he arrived as promised. He got to work straight away, pulling bits and pieces out of his van and he told me he would be shutting off the power for a short while. I went out a few minutes later to see if he wanted a coffee while I could still boil a kettle and I got a shock. Not from the electricity but from the sight that greeted me.

I live in a cul-de-sac with only a few houses around me. The electricity box is on the wall outside and there was nobody around except the two of us and the birds. There was no chance of him being disturbed but this lad had the place set up as if he was expecting trouble. I thought maybe he had discovered a nuclear waste dump site.

He was dressed in a boiler suit, high viz jacket, and a white hard hat with a safety visor. He had a sign on the footpath telling everyone in the vicinity to keep away – me in other words – and the area around the box was cordoned off like something you’d see at a crime scene. Images of Chernobyl flashed before my eyes.

He was a very nice guy and he explained that he was just complying with health and safety requirements. He said inspectors could visit him at any time and he would be in hot water if they found any breaches.

It seemed a bit over the top to me, but he did whatever he needed to do, tidied up and headed off to the next job. It actually took him more time to set up the safety cordon system and dismantle it again, than it did to fit the meter. When he was gone, I thought of another encounter I had with an ESB engineer many years ago when I lived in a bungalow out in the country.

Rural living is different in many ways to what city dwellers would be familiar with. Cleaning out a septic tank, cattle wandering into the garden, the smell of slurry and no street lighting would not be part of normal urban living but for us country bumpkins, it was par for the course. Electricity supply wasn’t straightforward either.

There was a transformer on a pole close to our house that was constantly giving trouble because there were too many houses being fed from it and it needed to be upgraded. Whenever there was a strong wind, we were guaranteed to lose power and sometimes, even a light breeze would do it.

When that happened, I had to ring the local ESB office to let them know and an engineer would be dispatched to solve the problem, and all would be well until the next breeze.

Dick was my local ESB engineer, and he was a regular visitor to my house in those days. He was an absolute gentleman. Standing well over six foot tall and built like a tank with big broad shoulders and a full beard, he reminded me of the Desperate Dan character from the comic books, but like most men of that size, he was a gentle giant.

One day while I was in the middle of doing something or other, the power went. I wasn’t having a good day, and this was the last straw. I made the necessary phone call and bit the head off whoever answered the phone. I was running out of patience and demanded action.

Not long after that, I saw my son who was about six at the time, standing in the hallway with his mouth wide open, staring at the front door. The hallway went dark, so I knew straightaway that Dick had arrived. His massive frame filled the doorway and blocked all the light coming into the house. My son was mesmerised.

Dick came in and I had a little rant and a moan about the constant power cuts. He didn’t say much, he just walked past me into the kitchen and reached up to the fuse board to open the cover. Well, he didn’t have to reach up at all because it was almost at his eye level, so he just flicked one of the circuit breakers and the power was restored.

It hadn’t been a problem with the transformer this time. I had tripped the switch myself somehow and I alone was responsible for cutting off our power supply. I hadn’t considered that possibility. I was so used to dealing with the bad transformer that I just assumed it was the same old problem. I should have checked of course.

He just looked at me and smiled but I would have felt better if he had abused me for being so stupid. I felt completely ridiculous, and no amount of apologising seemed adequate. He had a cup of coffee and left the house laughing.

I was happy to see that average speed zone cameras are about to be introduced on Irish roads. It will be our first mainline motorway-based system and following a period of testing and commissioning, motorists will see the equipment being deployed for the camera system. This will include the yellow poles and cameras traditionally associated with speed measurement equipment.

I first came across this system in Scotland a few years ago and I thought it was very fair. Drivers pass between two camera points positioned along the relevant roadway and their number plates are digitally recorded. If a driver reaches the second point too soon, a record of the speed violation is auto generated and sent to the gardai where it’s treated the same way as a speed van image.

The average speed zone will be clearly identified by appropriate signs and Variable Message Signs (VMS) so you will be in no doubt you’re hitting a zone and after that it’s up to you. I think that’s a much fairer system than being ambushed by a speed van in an area where there may be an unexpected change in the speed limit.

I got a letter in the post from An Garda Siochana a couple of years ago informing me that I had exceeded the speed limit in Lemybrien, Co. Waterford. I couldn’t dispute it as there was a photograph of my number plate included and they said I had been recorded doing 83kms per hour in a 60kms zone.

I was surprised because I pride myself on being a careful driver but there was nobody else using the car, so I have to put my hands up. It cost me €80 and three penalty points to atone for my indiscretion but I did have a grievance though and I’ll tell you why.

I’m not a speed merchant. All my life I have been afflicted with a hatred of being late for anything, so I always arrive ahead of time. When I’m going on a journey, I allow way more time than I need. I rarely use cruise control because I don’t particularly like it but when I do, I set it between 110kms and 113kms when the speed limit is 120kms.

I drive a 2.2 litre car which has plenty power and is well capable going faster but I prefer to take it easy. I picked up the ticket while I was driving on the main road from Wexford to Cork and somewhere near Lemybrien, the speed limit drops to 60kms. Neither my brother-in-law, who was travelling with me, nor I noticed the sign.

Maybe it’s not very obvious, but I won’t know until I’m back down that way again but 60kmph is about 40 miles per hour in old money and you wouldn’t be long gathering a crowd behind you travelling at that speed on the main Rosslare to Cork road, but, as they say, it is what it is.

There are some locations where speed checks are carried out that are a little more that handy earners for the State. For instance, there is a regular spot on the outskirts of Cobh where the speed van parks up, near the entrance to the golf club. Cars accelerate coming up the hill on the way out of town, and when they come over the brow of the hill, the speed van awaits them.

It’s really a case of shooting fish in a barrel. These vans are supposed to be located in areas where serious accidents have occurred previously. Fair enough, but I’ve been driving out there for over forty years and I can’t recall a single accident ever happening on that stretch of road but even if there were a few I’m not aware of, it certainly couldn’t be described as an accident black spot.

There is another location coming out of Dungarvan that is often used as a speed trap and that’s exactly what it is, a trap. There is a steep climb as you head towards Cork on the main road and the hill has both a slow lane and an overtaking lane. The speed limit is 100kph but for a short distance, half-way up the hill, the limit drops to 60kpm. It’s easy to miss the 60kph sign, particularly if overtaking a high sided vehicle.

My brother-in-law was caught there, and I consider him to be one of the safest drivers I know and here’s the thing. I’m not sure that fining the two of us has made the roads any safer or has achieved anything apart from generating revenue. In my opinion, placing speed vans in locations like these and hitting soft targets does little to improve road safety.

These average speed zones are a much fairer system but there is another issue that needs to be addressed if we really want to reduce accidents on our roads and that’s the poor standard of driving in this country. The kind you see around schools and built-up areas every day when children are heading home. Bad parking, reckless driving and lack of awareness are commonplace, and it will take more than speed vans to rectify that.

I regularly drive behind cars that crawl along the Fota Road at 50kph and hit the brake at every corner because they can’t handle the car properly but as soon as they reach the N25, they accelerate to the maximum speed allowed, driving beyond their capability, so when they find themselves in an emergency situation, they can’t react quickly enough.

I recently witnessed a woman creating chaos in the centre of town because she was unable to reverse her car and I know of others who plan their route in advance, so they don’t have to go backwards. That needs to be addressed too.

Those of you not up to speed with modern work practices, may not be aware that there is a section of today’s labour force known as hybrid workers; people who divide their time between working at home and going to an actual office. The possibility of earning a living without having to step outside the front door will be an alien concept for those of a certain vintage. Particularly those who spent their working lives in shipyards, factories, coal mines and the like, usually on shift work and in tough conditions.

They didn’t have it easy but some of these hybrid workers feel they are having a rough time of it too. Brian O’Donovan of RTE, reported recently about new research from Microsoft Ireland which revealed that some workers are struggling with the hybrid lifestyle. They’re finding it difficult to cope and feel they are missing out by spending so much time in the house.

They’re finding it hard to disconnect from the job while a quarter of them feel demotivated or uninspired. The ‘Work Trends Index’ also revealed that almost a quarter of hybrid workers felt removed from the company culture and senior leadership. A total of 44% of workers agreed it was harder to build trust with colleagues in a remote or hybrid environment and more than a third said that their team culture had deteriorated. Thirty-six percent of them said they felt lonelier.

The survey also revealed that Irish workers place high value on positive work cultures, flexible working hours and benefits that promote positive health and well-being. Poor company culture and a negative impact on mental health were the top reasons workers left their roles in 2021 and 27% of workers said a lack of flexible working opportunities led them to seek new employment last year.

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like whinging. There must have been workers in the real world, choking on their breakfast cereals listening to that piece. I can think of some who wouldn’t mind spending a few days in the comfort of their own homes, sitting in their recliners, tapping away on their keyboard. Those who work outdoors and battle the elements every day to make a living wouldn’t mind a shot at it, but they’ll never get the opportunity because they have to actually leave the house to do stuff.

Take farmers for example. I know very little about farming and I never fully appreciated how difficult it is until I watched Jeremy Clarkson’s TV series, Clarkson’s Farm. While it was funny and entertaining, it also opened my eyes to what they have to deal with on a daily basis and having watched it, I have no idea why anyone would want to go into that line of business.

There’s no rest. They’re in a constant battle with the weather while trying to deal with things that want to eat their crops and infect their animals. They’re under pressure to get seeds planted then under pressure to get the crops harvested, while tending to sick animals and dealing with a million other things demanding their attention.   

They can’t switch off. Do they struggle to disconnect? You bet your life they do but they don’t spend their time moaning about it because there wouldn’t be any point, so they just get on with it. Do they feel demotivated or uninspired? Probably, but they suck it up.

My father was a small-time building contractor who worked long hours in all weathers. There were other guys in the town in the same game and they were all making a living but none of them became wealthy.

They had a lot on their minds too because they never knew where the next job was going to come from or even if there would be one. They were also weather dependant, which meant they were constantly juggling indoor work with outdoor jobs. It didn’t matter whether they were sick or sore, motivated or not, they still had to go to work, or the money simply didn’t come in.

Did they place high value on positive work cultures, flexible working hours and benefits that promote positive health and well-being? Did they feel lonely? Maybe they did, but I suspect they didn’t have time to worry about such things because they were too busy trying to make ends meet.

“The next 12 months is a pivotal time for many leaders as we try to determine how to transform our workplaces and best meet the needs of our employees after such a dramatic change in ways of working,” said Anne Sheehan, General Manager of Microsoft Ireland.

“It is clear from our findings that the shift to a hybrid workplace begins with culture – one that embraces a growth mindset and a willingness to re-imagine nearly every aspect of the way work gets done,” she added.

I’ll tell you what’s clear to me. People who have the opportunity to work from home are privileged and anyone moaning about it needs to take a look at themselves. They definitely ‘need to re-imagine how work gets done’ and a dose of reality might help their thought process.

For their next training activity, or bonding session, or whatever they’re called these days, bring them to a farm or a building site on a cold, miserable day and hand them a pick and a shovel. At the end of the day when their backs are aching, their hands are blistered and they’re covered in muck with little to show for it in the way of remuneration, they might think differently.

By the time they return to their cosy home office, they will be in a better position to reflect on their loneliness and their coping mechanism. They might even learn to appreciate how good they have it.

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, recently signed a law approved by Congress that makes lynching a hate crime. Lynchings were murders carried out by mobs, which in the US were linked to hatred of African Americans. Racist executions of black people were common in the south of the country during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

It was murder without due process or rule of law and thousands of African Americans were killed. Justice was administered without trial, and offenders were hanged, often after suffering torture and mutilation. They say at least 4,742 people were reported to have been lynched by 1950 but it’s impossible to know the exact number. Very few of the perpetrators were ever convicted but this new law punishes those involved in lynchings with up to 30 years in prison.

My knowledge of lynching was mostly limited to what I had seen in the movies as a youngster but after hearing of Biden’s new law, I was curious to know where the term came from, and I discovered that it got its name from a guy called Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter and justice of the peace who was born in 1736 and whose father came from Galway.

According to Avoca Museum and Historical Society in Virginia, USA, Colonel Charles Lynch was an American whose father was an Irish immigrant named Charles Lynch the Elder. Charles the Elder lived in Galway and when he was sixteen, he rebelled against a harsh schoolmaster and a stern grandmother and ran away from home.

He headed for the docks and stowed away on a ship that he thought was going to Europe but shortly after boarding, he overheard a conversation among the sailors and discovered they were actually headed for America. After realising his mistake, he came out of hiding and asked the crew to return him to Ireland. They refused of course.

He quickly decided he couldn’t stay on the ship, so he jumped overboard with the intention of swimming back to Ireland. The ship’s crew plucked him from the water and placed him in chains and he spent the remainder of the journey in the ship’s hold.

When he arrived in Virginia, he entered into an indentured servitude contract with a successful Quaker named Christopher Clark. In the eighteenth century British-controlled American colonies, indentured servitude was an arrangement in which a person unable to pay for his passage across the Atlantic would agree to work a period of time – usually five to seven years – to pay back the cost of the fare. A kind of temporary slavery.

It worked out fine for him though because he was treated very well by his new master. Clark must have taken a shine to the young lad because he treated Lynch as a son. He set him up with an apprenticeship to a lawyer, and even released Lynch from his indenture early. By the time he left his former master’s farm, he had a significant number of livestock, some equipment, and money.

He did well for himself, became wealthy and bought land in several counties. By then he had married and had a family of his own and after his sudden and untimely death, one of his sons, Charles Jr., inherited a handsome share.

Charles Lynch Jr. took an active interest in local and colonial politics and as a prominent local figure and planter, he made a significant impact on local politics. He was appointed as a Justice of the Peace in 1770. Lynch established himself as significant lawmaker and community leader and he proved himself to be a man with whom one should not trifle.

Legend has it that on one occasion during his tenure as a frontier Justice of the Peace, he was called upon to referee a disagreement over a contest in which two men had forced captive black bears to fight one another. They weren’t happy with Lynch’s ruling and both turned their anger on the Judge. Lynch reacted by grabbing the men and he forced their faces into the earth until they accepted his decision.

As a colonel in the militia, he mobilised his troops during the war with the British. While defending Virginia against invasion by the British troops, his outfit captured seventy-five prisoners. An account written in 1787 by a Bedford County jailer claimed that Colonel Lynch’s deposit overcrowded his gaol and forced him into the hardship that comes with providing food and care for such a large group of prisoners. The poor jailer couldn’t cope and wanted the prisoners sent somewhere else.

Governor Thomas Jefferson told Lynch that if he seized anyone he thought was guilty, he should try them immediately and if found guilty they should be sent to a larger prison in Richmond for further trial. This didn’t sit well with Lynch though and he decided to defy the Governors directive instead. He had his reasons.

Firstly, the distance to Richmond was two-hundred miles, a long and time-consuming trek. Not only would the journey be a tedious one, but it would also incur a significant expense, both in terms of finances and time. Also, they could encounter many dangers on the way from marauding bands, ready to overwhelm the Judge’s escort. So, instead of holding trials in two venues, Lynch decided to try the accused locally instead.

Lynch acquitted some of them and issued prison sentences ranging from one to five years. Still others were subjected to the most well-known and dreaded aspect of what came to be known as “Lynch’s Law” and this gave rise to the term lynching.

Charles Lynch died in 1796, land rich but cash poor. He certainly left his mark though because over two hundred years later we’re still talking about him.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show, Dad’s Army, you will know that Captain Mainwaring regularly referred to Private Pike as “You stupid boy!” He had good reason as well because while poor Pike was the youngest member of the Home Guard, he certainly wasn’t the brightest. His ideas and suggestions usually fell short of the mark.

Stupid is not a term I often use to describe people. I usually try to give them the benefit of the doubt when they do something silly. Maybe they had a sudden loss of concentration, or a seniors’ moment but there are times though when that description is entirely appropriate.

I’m thinking specifically of the airline passengers who can’t get their act together when going through security or who aren’t properly prepared when presenting themselves at the boarding gate. It’s even more important now to be organised with airports warning of delays due to a shortage of security staff but some people just can’t manage it.

I travelled from London Gatwick to Larnaca in Cyprus last month. It wasn’t the height of the tourist season, but Gatwick was still busy. People are probably just chomping at the bit to get away after the last two years of Covid but in any event, there was a lot of activity. Dealing with large numbers of passengers like that, requires organisation. Planes have take-off slots and if they miss them, they fall back in the queue for the next available time and that creates inconvenience for all involved. Which is exactly what happened to me.

As soon as the last passengers were seated on my flight, the captain announced over the intercom that due to the delay in boarding, we were going to have a little wait. It was an hour later when we got clearance for take-off but by then, whatever arrangements passengers had made for being met in Larnaca were scuppered.

That’s frustrating, and it adds additional stress to a journey that many airline passengers find difficult to deal with at the best of times. What makes it worse is that in some cases, delays like this could be avoided if the flying ‘Private Pikes’ of this world could learn to follow some simple instructions.

I know it’s been a while since many have flown anywhere but the rules are pretty much the same as they were before the pandemic. With the exception of having to wear a face mask in the airport and on the plane, nothing much has changed. You still need to present your boarding pass and your passport at the gate.

You will hear this regularly in announcements. It will be repeated as you approach the gate and sometimes a member of the ground crew will even walk up and down the queue reminding passengers to have their boarding passes ready and their passports open at the page showing their photograph. If they gave me a yellow vest, I could do it for them myself by now without any training.

Several people still approached the departure gate without a face mask and seemed surprised when they were asked to wear one which then required a dash to the shop to buy one. Others were asked for their passports and had to go digging in pockets and bags to retrieve them. It was the same thing with boarding passes. People were scrolling through their phones trying to locate them instead of having them ready like they were asked to do.

One lady waited until she got to the gate, put her handbag on the counter and then went rooting for her documents and it’s because of her and the others like her, that I had an extended rest on the runway. It isn’t even peak season yet, so I pity the airline workers and travellers this summer when the ‘Private Pikes’ come out in force.

The security staff have it tough. They tell us to take out our laptops and Kindles and place them in separate trays, remove any liquids from the hand luggage and put them in a clear plastic bag. There are signs everywhere to remind us. Sometimes there are videos to go with the signs, telling us what we need to do and as we get closer to the actual security staff, we will hear lots of officials shouting the same instructions over and over, but some travellers still don’t get it.

In Gatwick, two girls had a wheelie case up on the rollers of the conveyer system and they were taking out various bits and pieces and placing them in the plastic bags. They were in no rush, but they had the whole line blocked up while they faffed around. They weren’t alone either. Lots of other people were pulled aside for not removing their laptops and other electronic gadgets.

Last year I sat in the departure lounge waiting to board a flight and the ground crew were walking among the passengers checking that everyone had a Cyprus Flight Pass. It’s much the same as a passenger locator form. You apply online 72 hours prior to departure, and you receive the Pass in an email. The guy sitting behind me was asked if he had his, but he didn’t even know what she was talking about.

These people are a liability. If they can’t manage a simple task like presenting a boarding card and opening a passport, how are they ever going to manage to put a life preserver on in an emergency. And don’t tell me they will leave their personal belongings behind them on the plane as it bobbles about on the water because they won’t. They’ll drag their little wheelies onto the inflatable slide and puncture the damn thing on the way down, dumping us all in the sea.

When I was fourteen, I thought everybody above the age of thirty was over the hill. Past it. Anyone in their fifties was really old and people over the age of sixty-five, well they were just in the departure lounge, waiting patiently to be fitted with their wings. I’m sure young people today view me the same way.

My grandchildren are probably looking at me in amazement, marvelling at how I’m still able to move around the house unaided, without falling over the furniture. In fact, I know they are.

I was dropping my three-year-old grandson, Toby, to pre-school the other day and he asked me what number I was. He was sitting in the back seat and firing all sorts of questions at me because he likes to talk. He wanted to know my age so, I told him I was sixty-three. He said, “Let me think. OK, you’re right.” It was reassuring to know I could still calculate my age correctly.

That got me thinking about when old age actually kicks in because a few days later, I hit sixty-four and I was curious to know if that was it. Was I officially in that category now or had I some time left? Paul McCartney seemed to think it was sixty-four. He had a very successful hit with the song of the same name and wrote about getting older and losing his hair. Well, I ticked those two boxes anyway.

As youngsters, we think we’re invincible. Old age is something that’s not going to happen to us. Let the old people deal with that, it’s got nothing to do with us. Doesn’t quite work out like that though.

When I was training for a career with An Garda Siochana as a twenty-one-year-old in 1979, there were presentations and lectures on all kinds of things. One of the topics had to do with pensions; what we would be entitled to when we retired, when we would access it, how many years we had to work to qualify for it, and the benefits etc. etc. etc.

I have a low pain threshold and listening to people talking about finance hurts my head. The business section of the news in the morning on the radio interferes with the fillings in my teeth and makes me stick my fingers in my ears. I’ve always been like that, so I probably had a snooze during that pension lecture. Retirement was the furthest thing from my mind anyway. Thirty years was a long way off and I had a more immediate concern.  

Surviving the training in Templemore was the only thing occupying my mind right then. There was plenty of time to figure out how I was going to avoid starvation and homelessness in my retirement. Except there wasn’t that much time at all as it turned out because in the blink of an eye, I was fifty-seven and handing back my identification card. Just like that, I was a civilian again.

I was doing an interview recently with Phil Goodman on Cork City Community Radio about life in general and she asked if I had any regrets. I don’t as a rule spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror. I prefer instead to look forward, trying to plan how I can get the maximum amount of pleasure from the next stage in life, but I did share one regret with her.

I wasn’t too long working in Dublin when I was having a chat with my father one day, telling him about something humorous that had happened at work. I have no idea what it was, but I can clearly remember him laughing and advising me to keep a diary to record these stories. Unfortunately, I gave that suggestion the same consideration I gave to the lecture on pensions. That was a big mistake. I could really do with that diary now because I have the memory of a gnat.

Fortunately, my buddy John O’Connor, has great recall. We worked together for about twenty-five years, and I rely heavily on his recollection but I’m not sure how much longer I can depend on him. He’s only a few years behind me and when he starts getting doddery, I’m going to be in serious trouble. Fortunately, that might be a bit away yet because ‘old age’ seems to be adjustable.

A seventy-year-old today bears no resemblance to the image I had in my youth. Now that I’m only six years away from three score and ten, 70 has become the new 50 apparently and I’m quite happy to go along with that. I’m also happy to go along with my new sleep pattern. When you get older, late nights are less attractive so I’m usually in bed early. I wake at 6am every morning too which is a good thing if you believe this little tale.

“Sixty is the worst age to be,” said the 60-year-old man. “You always feel like you have to go to the toilet and most of the time you stand there, and nothing happens.”

“Ah, that’s nothing,” said the 70-year-old. “When you’re seventy, you don’t have a bowel movement anymore. You take laxatives, eat bran, sit on the toilet all day and nothing happens!”

“Actually,” said the 80-year-old, “Eighty is the worst age of all”

“Do you have trouble going to the toilet, too?” asked the 60-year old.

“No, I go every morning at 6:00 like a racehorse; no problem at all”

“So, do you have a problem with your bowel movement?”

“No, I have one every morning at 6:30.”

Exasperated, the 60-year-old said, “You go to the toilet every morning at 6:00 and again every morning at 6:30. So what’s so bad about being 80?”

“I don’t wake up until 7:00”

When I first spoke to John Dolan, the Features Editor with The Echo, about writing this column, his only instruction to me was to keep the content light. He said people starting back to work after their weekend didn’t want to be digging into anything too heavy on a Monday. That suited me just fine.

That was six years ago, and I have tried to adhere to that brief as much as possible, but sometimes it can be difficult. I’m struggling to be light-hearted at the moment while a friend of mine is in Ukraine, fighting for his country’s survival. I had been wondering about him since the war started but I didn’t know where he was exactly until he sent me an email and told me he was in Kiev.

Since then, the deliberate destruction of Ukraine and the growing number of dead and injured, has become more personal to me. I haven’t been able to communicate with him for over a week now and I have no way of knowing how he is, so all I can do for the moment is hope for the best.

Sergii Mishchyk was a Captain in the Ukranian Army when I first met him in 2014. He was based in Camp General Stefanik (CGS), a military base in Famagusta on the northern part of Cyprus. He was working as a Duty Officer with the United Nations, with responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the Buffer Zone, the strip of no-mans-land that divides the island and separates the Turkish Cypriots in the north from the Greek Cypriots in the south. Keeping the peace essentially.

I was based in Dherynia, on the other side of the Buffer Zone but after a couple of months, I took a position in that same base, CGS. I had no idea what to expect. My job was to liaise with the military and foster good relations with Turkish Cypriot Police and Greek Cypriot Police. All I had to do was attend meetings, talk to everyone and be friendly. Nothing too complicated.

I shared a small office with three duty officers. While I worked from 7am to 3pm. they worked in shifts to cover the twenty-four-hour period so there was always one of them present. Lieutenant Colonel Juri Stipic from Croatia, Captain Edina Bagi from Hungary, who now lives with her family in Cork and has recently become an Irish citizen, and Captain Sergii Mishchyk from Ukraine. He has since been promoted and is now a colonel.

One of my memories of Sergii is how he was always trying to improve his English, constantly asking about the correct use of words and phrases. He regularly apologised for not speaking properly and often got frustrated with his pronunciation. He sounded funny at times, and he would get annoyed if I laughed but his English was better than he thought.

He was good at his job too. They all were. Whether they were on or off duty, they were always close by and ready to lend a hand or offer advice if needed. We worked well together and became friends.

Sergii wasn’t the only Ukranian working with the UN at that time in Cyprus. There were several police officers too. In fact, the head of the police component on the island, my boss, was also from Ukraine. It’s difficult not to be concerned for all these people now. Ukraine is a beautiful country. I’ve been there and have seen for it for myself. I’ve experienced the hospitality of the people, the same people who are suffering.

I’ve been to Belarus and Western Russia many times too and there is a difference. The atmosphere feels more intimidating, more oppressive but while officialdom is far from welcoming, I have never received anything but hospitality from the ordinary residents of Belarus and Russia, even those who didn’t have much. This war will not be supported by those citizens who are decent, hospitable and generous people.

What is happening in Ukraine is nothing short of criminal but the responsibility for that lies squarely at the feet of Putin, Lukashenko and their respective henchmen, not the ordinary people. It’s important to make that distinction.

The Ukrainian people are suffering loss of life, destruction of their property and mental torture. They will have to recover from that when this nightmare is over, but they have shown how tough they are. They are decent and honest too so they will prevail.

Back in the noughties, I travelled to Lviv with Simon Walsh on behalf of The Chernobyl Children’s Trust. We went there at the request of Olga Shevchenko, a Ukranian now living in Cork. Olga’s mother is a doctor in Lviv and the hospital she was attached to needed medical support so we went to see if we could help.

We met our contacts in the city centre, in the outdoor area of a local café beside a busy street. A couple of hours later, while we were strolling around, admiring the sights, we realised we had left a knapsack on a seat outside the café. There was a considerable amount of cash in the bag, so we took off in a panic. We needn’t have bothered because when we got there, the bag was exactly where we left it.

Lviv is a university city, full of young people and it feels modern and civilised. We stayed in a hotel in the city centre overlooking a huge square surrounded by late night bars, cafes, restaurants and ice cream parlours so we were expecting a noisy night. The only sound we heard though was the occasional tooting of car horns as taxi drivers greeted each other.

Unfortunately, the air is filled with a different noise now, but hopefully peace will be restored again soon.

Myself and my buddy, John O’Connor, met for our regular Tuesday morning coffee recently. We were chatting away when we noticed two women sitting behind us. They had a child with them, and he or she was sitting in a highchair. What drew our attention to them was the mess the child was making.

He or she was tearing open the little sachets of sugar and emptying the contents onto the floor, then throwing the bits of paper down as well. Now you might say, so what? A child making a mess is what small children do and maybe the women didn’t notice so what’s the big deal?

Well, the deal is that the women saw what the child was doing and not only were they completely unconcerned about it, but one of them maintained a supply line to the child. Making sure he or she had had an ample supply of sachets.

When they were finished their coffee, or maybe just ran out of sugar, they got up and left without making any effort to clean up their mess. As soon as they were gone, a young lad arrived on the scene and tidied up after them. That got us wondering about what that child is going to be like in the years to come if he or she is being taught from an early age that it’s ok to do what it likes.

It’s not the child’s fault, that responsibility lies with the parents. From speaking to people involved in the teaching profession I’ve learned that many children they deal with on a daily basis are, let’s say, challenging. They push the boundaries of behaviour to the limit and when they are pulled up for crossing the line, they go home and complain to their parents, then the parents confront the teachers.  

Children need to learn about boundaries; behaviour that is acceptable and behaviour that isn’t.  Otherwise, they grow up to become the kind of people who only think of themselves, and we already have enough of those.  

Like the guy who sits alone in the café, at a table for four, tapping away on his laptop for an hour with his cup of coffee beside him. Occupying that amount of space shows the world how important he is, so important in fact that he can’t be done without for five minutes. That’s annoying but not as bad as the zoomer, the guy having a noisy online conversation so everyone can hear how busy he is at running the world.

I remember an Australian lady who was a regular visitor to a particular bar/restaurant one time. She always sat in the same seat, also a table for four, next to an electric socket so she could plug in her laptop. She would buy a pot of tea and sit there for hours using the bar Wi-Fi, talking loudly to family and friends back home. The manager was known to be a bit fiery, so I knew it was only a matter of time until his fuse was lit, and I was there the day it happened.

If she hadn’t been so self-absorbed, she might have seen what was heading her way because it was easy to detect. The atmosphere changed like it does just before a hurricane, cold and very still. He marched over to her and asked her how much value she expected to get for the price of a pot of tea. He gave her a lecture about making a serious contribution to his running costs after which, she packed her laptop away and wasn’t seen there again.

Sometimes the only way to deal with these people is to be upfront and direct because they don’t understand subtlety. My wife and I stayed overnight in a hotel last year and Covid restrictions meant we had limited options for entertainment, so we didn’t wander too far. We kept to ourselves and finished off our evening with a drink in the room. No bother.

Around 2am I woke to the sound of glasses clinking and loud voices. It was coming from the room next door. There were five people there and it sounded as if one of them was leaving the room every now and then and returning shortly afterwards with fresh supplies from the bar.

Around 4am they ended up in the hallway singing. It was a small corridor and the five of them were standing beside one another, but it was like they were trying to communicate with each other on an oil rig in the middle of a storm in the North Sea.

By then, I had had enough, so I went out and suggested that maybe they might want to keep the noise down as there were other people trying to sleep. They were about my own age, so they weren’t youngsters, but they weren’t too bothered. They had a lot of drink on board, and I knew from my thirty-five years of policing that trying to reason with drunk people doesn’t work so I didn’t push it.

They had a bit of a laugh before returning to their rooms for the night completely unconcerned about the inconvenience they had caused to anyone else. Obviously, some guests feel that because they are paying for the room, they are entitled to behave as they like and everyone else can like it or lump it.  

Consideration is not for everyone. Some grow up believing the world revolves around them and they are incapable of thinking about anyone else. By the time they reach adulthood, they’re beyond redemption so it’s important to mould them when they’re young. Teaching children about the unfairness of creating a mess and leaving it for someone else to clean up might be a good place to start.

It’s over twenty years since I first went to Belarus and Western Russia. It was in the aftermath of the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl and over the following ten years, I became very familiar with Gomel, where the recent talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations took place. I have also been to Kiev and Lviv, two beautiful, civilised cities currently featuring regularly in the news.

It’s difficult to watch what’s happening there now. The loss of life and the destruction of property is obscene and the attack on the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine brought back some horrific memories. The sight of a fire at that facility sent a shiver up my spine. We’ve seen the devastation that can be caused when these places are damaged, and we don’t want a repeat of that.

Everyone over a certain age will remember the nuclear accident at the reactor in Chernobyl in Ukraine. National Geographic give a good account of it for anyone who needs reminding about the worst nuclear accident in history and how it unfolded. More than 36 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will be uninhabitable for up to 20,000 years.

On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at the plant, and workers planned to use the downtime to test whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power. During the test, however, workers violated safety protocols and power surged inside the plant. Despite attempts to shut down the reactor entirely, another power surge caused a chain reaction of explosions inside. Finally, the nuclear core itself was exposed, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Firefighters attempted to put out a series of fires at the plant, and helicopters dumped sand and other materials in an attempt to quench the fires and contain the contamination. Radiation spread as far as Sweden, where officials at another nuclear plant began to ask about what was happening. After first denying any accident, the authorities finally made a brief announcement, and the world slowly began to learn of the horrific consequences of that incident.

The world rallied round. Hundreds of charitable organisations sprung up to offer help to those affected as a result of the fallout. Humanitarian aid in the form of food, clothing and medical supplies was collected and delivered to Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia by convoys of all shapes and sizes. We rose to the challenge too in this country.

The nuclear plant was in Ukraine close to the border with Belarus, but following the explosion, the wind took most of the radiation into Belarus, so they suffered more than most which is why much of the relief effort was focussed there. They had other problems too though.

There was blatant institutional neglect, lack of funding and complete mismanagement of childcare facilities. Thousands of children were housed in institutions and orphanages in terrible conditions. President Lukashenko’s regime cared little about the welfare of those children, so it was left up to other countries to do what they could, and many Irish people did.

Humanitarian aid worth millions of Euro, was delivered to Belarus and Western Russia over those years and was gratefully received by the ordinary people, but all the volunteers got from Lukashenko was obstruction. Customs officials in particular were a complete nightmare to deal with. They made life very difficult with mountains of red tape and volumes of paperwork. Endless checks were required before the aid could finally be delivered to where it was needed most.

Customs officers in Gomel were particularly difficult. On one occasion, a group of us with truckloads of aid, were locked in a compound for over twenty-four hours until they found time to deal with us. Delays like that were normal. Lukashenko’s officials certainly didn’t lay out the red carpet, so it struck me as ironic that Gomel was chosen as the location for peace talks.

Lukashenko is by no means the people’s president. He rules by fear and intimidation, and you can feel that oppressive atmosphere once you cross the border from Poland into Belarus. Allowing the Russian President to use Belarus to access Ukraine for his invasion will not be supported by the ordinary citizens of Belarus who, like Ukrainian’s, are decent, hospitable, and generous people.  

I have many friends in Belarus and Ukraine. People I met during my Chernobyl days and during my time working with the United Nations. I shared an office with a guy in Cyprus who is a Colonel in the Ukranian Army. I received an email from him the other day from his base in Kiev and he’s worried about his family. He’s also disturbed about the number of civilian casualties and the destruction of his country. He is wondering what the future holds.

He has every reason to be worried about the future. A ceasefire has just been announced by the Russians, but it is being met with distrust after two previous ceasefire attempts in the besieged southern city of Mariupol collapsed at the weekend. It was reported that families were killed as they tried to leave. They’re running out of food and water.

The latest ceasefire proposes the opening of humanitarian corridors in several areas, but as of now Russian armed forces continue to pummel Ukrainian cities. But even if the Russians do honour the ceasefire and allow people to leave, the humanitarian corridors don’t offer much in the way of refuge.

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement that under Moscow’s ceasefire proposals, civilians in Kyiv will be offered safe passage to Gomel in Belarus while those in Kharkiv, the second biggest city, will have a corridor leading only to Russia itself.

Sounds like out of the frying pan and into the fire to me.