Avoid Irish Pork

Great BBC headlines of our time.

It brings a whole new meaning to the saying those ‘three little words’.

If the irish generally and farmers specifically didn’t have it hard enough already as the butt of jokes – the Irish Pork Scare has just too much scope for buffonery.

I mean.

Tim…

PS. Incidentally, did you hear the one about the Irish pole dancer…

Goodnight.

Tim Ocsko

http://www.storiesfromthestreet.com/

Ireland-The Wild Goose

Wild Goose Wanderings; Photo by Paul Wood.

On the coast north of Dublin you will find one of the largest collection of wild geese. They come during the winter and have evoked centuries of song and poetry. The goose symbolises the Holy Spirit for many Celtic saints, and Brendan supposedly followed their trail when he set off in his coracle. The complete opposite of the religiosity that has plaqued Ireland for many centuries it once again begs the question has Ireland lost touch with its wonderful heritage of wild, untamed, passionate Christianity?

This therefore is our second poem from Ireland during our feature on this nation on the margins of Europe. The writer lives in Dublin as is called Tiffy Allen

WINTER VISITORS

November blows the final shreds of summer

Relentlessly to a shrouded dampened earth

Autumnal glory fleeting, forgetful

As mists and evening darkness catch our homeward path

And the lights of frantic hope glitter garish

Through a dirty train window.

Gusts of sharpness from the north

Propelling us into winter apparel

But the ground not yet ready to die

Frost seen only on the blue map

Of Balkan states spilling out their youth

Into our hungry economy.

The seductive draw of golden sand

The wonder of shiny blue rock pool

Forgotten in the all pervasive grey.

Still, we wander along those seaside paths

Freed a little from the lush mad growth of summer

Neglected blackberries tasteless

From lack of sun.

Suddenly we spot them; we are not alone in this place

Our friends the geese,

Visitors from the ice caps

Safely arrived in their second home

For a winter of mild warmth and gentle breeze.

Their untold tales of buffetings, landless storms,

Lost companions and rocky north atlantic crops

Forgotten in their winter haven, our back door.

Welcome back, cries my soul

Come to us in all your thousands

Come and brighten our winter

Stretch our huddled blurry vision

Draw your skyfilled arrow patterns

Across the desert of my soul

And speak to me once more

Of pilgrimage, risk

Wildness and destiny.

Ireland-Alternative History Lessons

In this our fifth post on Ireland, Tim writes again regarding the lessons of history.

Ireland

Alternative History Lessons

Tim Ocsko

In the early 80s, TV produced one of its rare gems. The BAFTA winning journalist Robert Kee produced a masterpiece series and accompanying book – ‘Ireland: A History’. It brought to Mainland UK and the world in general a balanced view of the history of Ireland. Conor Cruise O’Brien referred to it as an excellent book. I would encourage you to read it – small chunks at a time. It is powerful and often very complex stuff.

Now Robert Kee was serious stuff – for him to expend so much of his time into this project clearly indicated a real passion to get to the heart of the matter, to be fearless in terms of exposing those unwritten, written, unspoken, spoken, deeply painful scars which literally bedevil the history of Ireland. Kee sticks to facts and rarely voices an ‘opinion’. He traces Irish History and Culture from the passage graves of Dowth, Knowth and Newgrange through a catalogue of invading forces upto the early 80s.

Being part of that generation who grew up with the BBC Teatime News starting each bulletin with a story from the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland I was fairly familiar with 20^th century Irish ‘History’ as I had been subliminally taught it by the BBC.

Watching those news bulletins I didn’t realise that the history which the Irish found themselves so publicly and violently picking over in the second half of the 20^th century was rooted far earlier in Irish History and had more than its fair share of surprising and cruel twists.

None stick out more for me as I read Kee’s monumental tome as the original source of Irish Nationalism. My BBC TV ‘day by day’ history bites had ‘taught’ me that Nationalism was the sole preserve of a catholic Ireland. Something which they had defined, hammered their stake into the ground and swore to achieve and protect at all cost.

Not so. Irish Nationalism was borne from wave after wave of invader seeking the authority to self govern. To live and die in Ireland. More Irish than the Irish. It was borne from the fierce sense of independence and self reliance of the wave of Presbyterian settlers. It was borne of generation after generation of Irish Protestant nobles seeking more than an arm’s length distance between themselves and the Kings or Queens of Windsor across the sea.

My point here isn’t a political one – for me the issue isn’t whose idea it was first, though this turnaround does say something about our ability to believe two contrasting ideologies. No my point is this. How often do I look beyond Murdoch, the BBC, the establishment and find out ‘real’ history, the real story. How much do I digest without checking first what’s going into my mind and shaping my opinions. Take Note.

Ireland; What Pain?

Over the last few days we have been posting on Ireland. Yesterday Tim Ocsko looked back to the potato famine and the appalling results of the tyranny of English rule. There is no doubt that such injustice lies deep in the pychic of a nation, and uncontrolable rage can be a  result.

Today we feature a poem; written by Tiffy Allen who lives in Dublin. In this the first of our poems from Ireland, a comment on the drug and gang culture of North Dublin, where Tiffy, the writer lives.

Graffiti by Banksy, on the West Bank, Palestine. The emotions of rage are the same worldwide. Photograph by Paul Wood

RAGE

Rage on sultry nights

Drunken women scratching eyes in midsummer…

Rage in stolen cars

Drug-crazed youths shooting wildly

Shattering glass and lives….

Rage in fatherless children

Articulate in swearing abuse

Throwing impotent stones at passing shadows…

Rage just under the surface

The anxious young professional misses a train

The overloaded mother drops her shopping

The millionaire’s yacht springs a leak…

Oh Ireland

Dig a little deeper

Reach down to those times

When wandering saints called up bright armies

And rebuked evil kings

Rage against truncated spring

Beautiful April tiptoeing to lilac and lime May

Only to have its roots cut away, cruelly.

Dancing lobelias shovelled over with untimely snow…

Rage once again

Against the cutting off of precious youth

The spilling of hopeful young blood

Onto desert sands.

Rage, as they are robbed away

And flowers are more common

Propped in silent sympathy against grieving gates

Than growing in their natural glory

Rage against the deadly cocktail

Drugs drink driving despair

Rage that they returned to you

But you could not hold them

Oh Ireland

Do not go gently into that dark night

And let your rage against hell

Restore your children

Once more to your tired arms.

Written in June 2006, returning to Ireland to find another young man in our neighbourhood shot down.

Ireland-Drew I Love You.

Tim is married to Ann, one of the team that is beginning the walk round Ireland that has featured on the blog these two days just gone. This then is the fourth post on Ireland. Provoking, especially if you are English, a free marketeer, or both!

Drew I love you.

Tim Ocsko

“Drew I love You. Please forgive me”

My wife and I were driving back from nowhere to somewhere when passing under a bridge on the M62, we caught sight of a really well made, cared for sign hanging over the balustrade of the bridge. It read “Drew I love You. Please forgive me”.

Now we have all seen these signs – “Happy 50^th Harry”, “Happy 21^st Kylie” but I had never seen one which clearly exposed a heart so much as this. ‘Please forgive me’.

It bothered me all day. And still does.

Irish history could make any heart bleed but no series of events so much as the tragedy of the Potato Famine {1845 – 1849}. It claimed 1,000,000 innocent Irish lives. The names of only a few hundred of these souls are known. The details of this horrific period are difficult to summarise but for the purposes of this article I think there are three telling details.

1. The suffering of the Irish was horrendous. Simply horrendous.
2. The response of the English Parliament was beyond reprehensible. It was appalling. We generally left the Irish to die, with Russell and Trevelyan wielding the scythe. Their blind reliance on the need for the free market to balance prices and the population reminded me of a latter day free marketeer who also caused wholesale unhappiness and pain for sections of the British population.
3. The potato famine precipitated the emigration of over 1,500,000 – more good men lost to Ireland than the famine itself.

What hatred, what animosity, what sense of injustice was borne as a result of our inaction?. When Mandela emerged from his prison cell his first response was not to greet pain with more pain but to pour the oil of reconciliation over the hurt. Is it time for the English to apologies for this pain. To seek forgiveness to that nation who lost generations to hunger and emigration. It can’t make the past better but it might make our future’s together more assured.

So Drew. I don’t know how you have been hurt, but forgive your erstwhile lover. Even if you can’t see a future together you can conclude this one with dignity, with some restoration, with a full stop.