Trevor Laffan

• 

It’s that time of the year again. The period between Christmas and the New Year, when we take a break to digest the mountains of food and drink consumed over the last few days. The belt on the trousers has been discarded; no need for it now, the pants will stay up on its own.

Right now, furniture all over the country is being reinforced to support the weight of bodies stuffed to the gills with turkey, ham and all the trimmings.

We feel compelled to eat dinners on Christmas day and Stephen’s Day that would feed an average family for a week. Trying to be strategic is a waste of time. Saying, “I won’t have much now.” or “Just give me a little.” is guaranteed to fall on deaf ears. The plate will still be carried to the table by at least two people.

We do it justice though. When we can’t face another mouthful, we pack in some trifle or pudding and when there’s absolutely no room left, we top it off with drinks, tins of biscuits and chocolates. We pay for it later with bouts of heartburn, reflux and gout and while we complain a little, we must secretly enjoy it because we do the same thing every year.

It can be a stressful time for many too. If I have learned anything over the years, it’s that nothing is straight forward in this life. One miniute you can be having the time of your life and the next miniute you can be on the flat of your back looking up at the bright lights of an operating theatre. Or worse

My family has been in the wars in recent times. My daughter, her partner and the two boys (three now actually since a recent visit to the CUMH) should have a family room in the CUH with the amount of time they spent there this year. My wife and son took turns visiting the Mater and the Mercy University Hospital so I’m the fittest one in the family at the moment which is a poor lookout.

Situations can change in the blink of an eye so it’s important to be adaptable. It also helps to be optimistic. Life is short and the older you get the quicker time passes, so you need to make the most of it. I thought retirement would slow down the passage of time, but the opposite has happened so, every moment should be savoured and appreciated but some people are determined to make life difficult for us, like scammers and hackers.

Modern technology has had an impact on all our lives. We’d be lost without our mobile phones, laptops and access to the Internet, but unfortunately, these things also provide unsavoury characters with the means to part us from our hard-earned cash. They’re not going to disappear either, so we need to learn how to deal with them.

I got a phone call recently from a person claiming to be my broadband provider advising me that I was going to be cut off unless I provided them with my account details. The voice was that of a heavily accented female and I knew from the tone of the conversation, she wasn’t genuine. I had time to spare so I kept her on the line and asked lots of silly questions until she eventually grew tired of me and hung up.

I get silly messages by email from time to time too, usually written in pigeon-English with bad grammar, and making the same demand. They have evidence that I’ve been watching pornography on my computer, and they will publish the evidence unless I pay them. As soon as they get the money, they promise to destroy the evidence. (I really need to find out who’s tipping them off).

When the HSE was hacked, I got calls and text messages, threatening to publish my medical records unless I cooperated and coughed up. They were wasting their time taking that approach with me because if any scammer expects me to be concerned about releasing details of my prostate removal, they better have a plan B because I couldn’t care less. If someone really wants to know, I’ll happily bore them to death with a full account.

I get other emails too advising me that I have either inherited or won, large sums of money which will be released to me as soon as I provide my account details and passwords. These things are computer generated so they’re impossible to trace but somebody must be making money, or they wouldn’t keep doing it.

There’s no shortage of scammers out there but they aren’t a problem as long as you don’t give them anything. The best advice is to just ignore them but that’s becoming more difficult because they’re everywhere. They’ve even started attacking my phone now, plaguing me with text messages to contact delivery people about non-existent packages being shipped to my address. I’ve also been threatened with prosecution for tax evasion and various other offences. They’re a pure nuisance.

They’re after me on social media too. I’ve had my Facebook page cloned at least three times already this year and my contacts are being pestered with friend requests from a fake me. It’s harder to ignore these things because you have to change passwords and report fake pages which is all very tiresome.

It’s important that we don’t let them win though and the advice from An Garda Siochana is not to engage with these people. Ignore the emails and don’t click on any links. Don’t return dodgy phone calls, don’t follow the automated instructions and never transfer money. Never disclose personal or financial information, just hang up and end the call.

In the meantime, prepare for the next dinner.

• 

We were having a bathroom renovation carried out in the house during Storm Barra. Not great timing, but it was pre-planned, so we had to go with it. The toilet was removed and when the plumber was finishing up for the day, he put a plastic bag into the opening of the sewer pipe to prevent the smell coming into the room but when I looked in later, the plastic bag had popped out.

The storm was raging at the time and the draught was coming in around the pipe, so I popped the bag back in and put a toolbox against it to prevent it popping out again. I checked it on my way to bed and I was surprised to find the bag had disappeared. There was only one place it could have gone and that was down the pipe into the sewage system. That might not bother some people, but I was horrified, and I’ll tell you why.

World Toilet Day has been around for the last twenty years, since November 2001 in fact. It’s organised by the United Nations to encourage us to appreciate our toilets for the work they do because 3.6 billion people don’t have one. It’s hard to believe that nearly half the world’s population live without a basic toilet but it’s true.

The UN website tells us to care for them because life without one is dirty, dangerous, and undignified but not only do we take sanitation for granted, we abuse it too. A 2019 survey by An Taisce found that 58% of the public pour fats, oils, and grease down the sink and one in four Irish adults knowingly flushes items down the toilet that can cause blockages.

According to Irish Water, when fats, oils and grease are hot and in liquid form, they pour easily down the sink and drain but when they cool, they form solid masses, commonly referred to as fatbergs. People under the age of thirty-five were found to be the most likely culprits and the most common items being flushed down the toilet include hair, paper towels, toilet wipes, dental floss, tampons, baby wipes, cotton buds and cigarette butts; stuff that should be put in the bin.

Wet wipes, or baby wipes, are very handy around the house but cause a lot of trouble when flushed down the loo and that has led some local authorities calling for them to be banned altogether. That would be a shame because they have their uses.

They are ideal for a quick clean of dirty surfaces but useful for a dirty body too. Back when we were delivering aid to Belarus in the aftermath of the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, baby wipes were an essential piece of kit. Parts of that country are very poor so there were times when we mightn’t see a shower for days on end, and on those occasions, the wet wipes were a life saver.

Emptying an articulated trailer by hand was dirty work and would leave you covered in sweat, grime, dust, and other nasty stuff. In the absence of proper washing facilities, wipes were our magic bullet. If you’ve never stripped off in one of these trailers and scrubbed yourself with wipes, you haven’t lived. A good rub down would leave you feeling good enough to mix with royalty.

They can be a menace though when not disposed of properly because they don’t disintegrate or dissolve. They become indestructible wraps of gunk and I’ve had first-hand experience of that.

I lived for twenty-five years in a bungalow that was serviced by a septic tank. That’s a concrete container buried in the garden, where all the waste from the toilet ends up. The liquid drains out of the septic tank through a pipe into a soakaway, while the solid waste remains in the tank and is taken care of by bacteria. It’s a highly effective system but it breaks down when foreign bodies are added.

Once the system clogs up, the only solution is to remove the cover from the tank and free the blockage manually using sewer rods and a garden hose. Apart from the visual appearance of a tank full of crap, there is also the smell and the fumes to contend with. Not the most pleasant job and the toxic environment is guaranteed to give you a headache.

We rented out the house for a few years and some of the tenants had no understanding of the workings of a septic tank and treated the toilet like a waste disposal unit. Sometimes when I went to clear it, it looked as if a bunch of otters had been trying to build a dam in there. Not a job I ever looked forward to, but it was very educational. If everyone had that experience, discarded wet wipes would never again see the inside of a toilet bowl.

Clearing a blockage in a domestic tank is one thing but it’s nothing compared to what the local authorities have to contend with at their pumping stations. Earlier this year the BBC reported that a three-hundred-ton fatberg was found in a city in England. That giant turd was said to be half a mile long, three feet in height and weighed the equivalent of 250 family cars. It took weeks to clear it.

We could do without that happening here, but it was reported in the Irish Examiner last year that the past decade has seen the problem exacerbated in Cork by people abusing the sanitation system. That’s not good news and it’s why I felt so guilty about my plastic bag.

We can all help by remembering to only put the three Ps down the toilet: pee, poo, and paper. It’s not rocket science.

• 

My buddy, John O’Connor, was trawling through the Irish Examiner Archives when he came across a photo of me that was taken in 1966 at a school sports day in Cobh. There are three of us in the photo and I’m the one in the middle having taken third place in the under 9’s, 100-yard dash. The sports day took place in what was then known as the College Field, a popular sporting venue in its day but a housing estate, College Manor, now occupies the site.

My memory is shocking at the best of times, but this photo reminded me of something that had confused me as a child. I remember the day clearly for a very good reason. The presentation ceremony in particular sticks out in my mind, if you could call it a ceremony, because after the race we collected our ‘trophies’ at a little table in the centre of the field.

I can’t remember what the other lads got but my reward for coming close to beating the world record was certainly out of the ordinary. It looked for all the world like a biscuit tin and there was a good reason for that. It was a biscuit tin. When l lifted it up, I spotted straight away that it was very light and there was a reason for that too; it was empty.

I think that was the moment I decided that sport might not be the best way to make a living although it worked out differently for two other Cobh legends, Jack Doyle, ‘The Gorgeous Gael’ and Sonia O’Sullivan both of whom also came from the harbour town.

Doyle was the second of five children and grew up in a tenement building on Queen St, along the water’s edge in Cobh and according to Richard Fitzpatrick writing in the Irish Examiner, the Doyle family didn’t have it easy. The children weren’t well off and survived thanks to “the penny dinners” which were basic meals of bread and soup supplied by the local convent.

Jack left school at 12 years of age, and eked out a living working as a labourer, shovelling coal, and carrying luggage for guests at the local Commodore Hotel.

At 17, he joined the Irish Guards, at a recruiting station in Pembroke, Wales, and told his mother as he departed: “Don’t worry, mother. I’m a big boy now. I’ll take care of myself. And soon I’ll be famous. You’ll see.” He was right about being a big boy and grew to a height of 6ft 5in. He was right about becoming famous too.

He found success as a boxer because of his explosive power and a haymaker of a punch but that wasn’t his only talent. He was well able to sing, could act a bit and was a good-looking guy. Women loved him and flocked to see him, but he had his weaknesses. He was demented and dangerous when he was drunk and that eventually brought him to his knees.

Doyle ended up living on the streets in the UK until he died in 1978 from cirrhosis of the liver. His body was brought back to Cobh for burial and a plaque was placed on a wall on Connolly Street where he lived as a child. I pass it most days when I’m out for my walk and it reminds me of his story.

I pass something else on my daily walks as well and that’s the bronze statue of Sonia O’Sullivan. It’s impossible to miss because it’s right in the centre of town, where it should be because Sonia is one of our own and a real hero.

Sonia began her running career in the Ballymore Running Club and went on to become one of the world’s leading female 5000 metre runners. She was known for her dramatic kick at the end of races and her crowning achievement was a gold medal in the 5000 metres event at the 1995 World Athletics Championships.

She won silver medals in the 5000 metres at the 2000 Olympic Games and in the 1500 metre event at the 1993 World Championships. She has also won three European Championship gold medals and two World Cross-Country Championship gold medals and deserves recognition for those efforts.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner at the unveiling ceremony of her bronze statue, Sonia acknowledged that it was a special day for her. “This statue is about everyone who has supported me — everybody who has got me to this point in time. It started for me as just a normal little girl running through the streets of Cobh.”

While she was apprehensive about having a statue commissioned in her honour, she said it was a tribute to all those who had supported her over the years. That’s typical of Sonia’s modesty. With all that she has achieved, she has never lost sight of her roots which isn’t surprising when you look at her parents, Mary and John. John was a good sportsman too in his day and played with Cobh Ramblers for many years.

Fair play to Doyle and Sonia. I have no issue with them being recognised officially and I fully appreciate what they have achieved, but I do have a crow to pluck with whoever is responsible for making these decisions because my third-place finish as an 8-year-old back in 1966 has never been recognised.

Jack Doyle got a plaque, Sonia O’Sullivan got a statue, and I got an empty biscuit tin. There isn’t a flower or a weed anywhere in the town to acknowledge my existence. That needs to be rectified and there should be something to honour the memory of my athleticism. I think all sporting heroes should be treated equally so standby for my campaign for justice.

• 

I got up early the other morning and I could feel a chill in the air, so I flicked on the heat before I had a shower. I like my comfort. It was about 7am and my grandson Cooper who had stayed the night would soon be getting up for school. I wanted him to have something warm in the belly before heading out, so I made some scrambled egg and bacon with toast. He demolished it.

We jumped into the car about 8.30am and the temperature indicator told me it was about three degrees, and it felt every bit of it. When we got to the school we had to stand at the gate until the staff decided to let the children in and I could feel the cold coming up through my feet from the concrete. My follicle challenged head wasn’t doing much to keep the heat in the body, so I was frozen.

When the gate finally opened, I darted back to the car as fast as a person of my age, shape and weight can dart, and turned up the heat to thaw out the bones. As soon as I got home, I made a cup of hot coffee to ward off the hypothermia and slowly but surely the temperature in my body returned to normal. I began to feel human again.

As I sat in the recliner with my coffee, I rang my brother Alex. The call went to his voicemail, but he rang me back a little later. We’ve established by now that it was a cold day but at 9am, at the end of November when the outdoor temperature gauge in the car was warning me to be prepared for frostbite, he couldn’t answer the phone because he was swimming. Outdoors. In the sea.

When it goes below four degrees, my car sounds an alarm to let me know that driving conditions could potentially turn tricky. It showed a snowflake symbol as well and nowhere on the instrument panel did it indicate that this was the best time of the day to dive into the ocean. You could possibly put it down to the foolhardiness of youth except that his father-in-law went with him and he’s in his seventies. There were others too. In fact, there seems to be no shortage of like-minded souls.

I struggled earlier to get into a hot shower before the room warmed up properly so I can’t imagine being in the altogether out in the open at this time of the year. If someone put a gun to my head that morning and told me to strip off outdoors, I would have told them to go ahead and pull the trigger. Death was facing me either way because my heart would stop the miniute I hit the water so shooting me would have saved me the additional agony of having to go naked in Baltic conditions. So why do people volunteer for this madness?

According to IPRS Health, a UK company providing Physiotherapy, Mental Health and Wellbeing Services, there are significant health benefits attached to cold water swimming. They say it boosts your immune system and studies have shown that cold water helps to boost the white blood cell count because the body is forced to react to changing conditions.

It’s good exercise too which helps to activate the endorphins that make us feel good during activities. That improves circulation, flushes the veins and arteries, burns calories and has been proven to treat depression. So, it’s all good.

There are also ongoing studies into the positive effects that cold-water swimming can have on the menopause but that’s more difficult to assess because while the cold water could be having a positive effect, the socialising and exercise could also be the reason for the improvement in general health and wellbeing.

Anyway, I think it would take a very brave man to suggest to any woman going through the menopause that it would do her good to jump into the river in winter. If you are considering offering that advice, can I suggest you stand well back and position yourself behind something solid.

I’m hearing a lot of talk too about the benefits of taking cold showers. Apparently one study found that having thirty second cold showers every morning for sixty days could decrease the number of sick days by 30%. I’ve also heard celebrities promoting this idea, but I can’t help wondering if they would be as enthusiastic if they lived in Ireland.

It’s easy to champion the cold shower theory if you live in a Mediterranean country where shorts and a T-shirt will do you all year round but it’s a different kettle of fish where I live. Cold showers are not nice, which is exactly why they were used to torture people once upon a time.

In the 1920s, the Chicago police used to extract confessions from prisoners by chilling them in freezing water baths. That wasn’t the first-time cold water was used to put manners on people either. During World War I, American military prisons subjected conscientious objectors to ice-water showers and baths until they fainted.

I read an article on the Internet suggesting that in the 18th century, insanity was thought to stem from a “violent heat” and inflammation in the brain. Physicians knew that cold water could calm inflammation in joints, wounds, and elsewhere in the body, so the idea was that a shock of cold water on the head might have the same effect on an inflamed brain. Doctors doused patients with cold water unexpectedly to shock them, and the showers would continue “for as long as the patient could endure, thus creating in them the fear of death.”

Alex and his buddies would probably have enjoyed that. 

• 

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.

• 

Like everyone else who has ever worked in the emergency services, I came across many difficult situations during my 36 years as a police officer. Tragic scenes were never too far away and had to be dealt with before moving on to the next. It thickens the skin and as a result, I consider myself to be fairly resilient; it’s not easy to shock me. Having said that, I’m not completely heartless either and dealing with children who are suffering is one thing I still struggle with.

One of the worst experiences I had during my time in An Garda Siochana concerned the death of a four-year-old child. A little girl who had suffered a serious head injury in a freak accident while playing in her garden at home. We arrived as the ambulance crew were doing their best for her, but it wasn’t looking good.

We got her to the hospital as quickly as possible to give her every chance. A medical team was on standby, and she was rushed to the Accident and Emergency Department. They tried everything to revive her but unfortunately, it was too late so then it was time to meet the parents to give them the sad news. That wasn’t easy.

She was removed to the City Morgue and later that evening I had to go there for the post-mortem examination. It was hard seeing her little body lying there. I stroked her cheek and half expected her to open her eyes and smile up at me. It wasn’t easy for the Pathologist either. Even though she examines bodies all the time, she told me that dealing with children was always difficult.

That child was the same age as my own daughter was at that time and I couldn’t help but think of her. We’re supposed to protect them at that age and keep them safe but it’s not always possible. Accidents will happen but there are circumstances too where children are suffering unnecessarily and that’s just not good enough.

Many years ago, during my trips to Belarus, I regularly visited orphanages and other institutions where conditions were less than favourable. I was uncomfortable meeting the children living there. They had nothing to smile about and very little hope of ever finding a better life for themselves.

Some of them lived in these institutions until they reached eighteen years of age and then moved into adult facilities where they remained for the rest of their lives. Knowing they had little prospect of ever improving their situation was hard to take so I took the easy way out and remained outside where possible to avoid looking into their eyes.

President Alexander Lukashenko is responsible for their welfare, and I don’t have much confidence in his leadership. During the Covid 19 Pandemic, he advised his citizens to get on their tractors, drink vodka and take saunas to get rid of the virus. I’m not impressed with how he looks after the children either but then again, who are we to criticise?

Listening to the Claire Byrne show on RTE recently I couldn’t help but wonder about our own failings. Adam Terry is a ten-year old boy from Co Cork who has scoliosis. He has faced multiple delays to his required surgery and will have to wait another six to nine months before he’s treated. It was difficult listening to him while he told his story.

He is in constant pain which he described as ‘almost paralysing.’ ‘It’s really sore and sometimes I have to lie down and roll around for it to actually stop. Sometimes I have to crack my back to relieve the pain.’ He said he feels as though he is “at the bottom of the barrel.” “Nobody is coming out to find me in the lost and found. To be honest, sometimes I feel like I’m crying myself to sleep because it’s so unfair. It just makes me angry and frustrated and sad.”

His mother Christine broke down in tears and I suspect many of the listeners did too as she told of the effect the long wait has had on Adam and his family. She said that every day he’s been left, it gets worse, and the initial surgery is now deemed too dangerous as his spine has moved even more in the last two years. ‘They’re now going to have to do a different surgery, they’re not going to get the same results that they hoped for.’

A few weeks earlier I heard another interview on Today with Claire Byrne, where a consultant paediatric radiologist told of the case of a pre-teen who had been referred to her with a neurological condition but was told they could not get an appointment until 2035. That’s 14 years’ away.

Dr Gabrielle Colleran told the radio’s show that such a delay was farcical and was a huge source of frustration for the profession as well as the families involved. Every child and adult should be able to access care “in a timely fashion” in less than six weeks, she said.

The day following the budget, Michael McGrath, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Finance were both asked about the case of young Adam Terry. Claire Byrne played a bit of his interview for them, and they agreed it shouldn’t be happening. Of course it shouldn’t, but it is.

Taoiseach Michael Martin said the situation is unacceptable. Leo Varadkar Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment said he believes most people will be better off as a result of Budget 2022.

There are lots of parents and children, like the Terry’s, who won’t agree with him. They feel abandoned. They don’t need sympathy or promises, they need immediate action. Their kids are in pain.