Day 21

I didn’t wake up until 11 am and had a wonderful shower, lasting until 11:30. The bathroom here (just for the kids and the guests, I think) is great! It's big! And clean! And full of things like mirrors and brass and gadgets and the like. It is the sort of bathroom that would impress me even if I wasn’t a homeless traveller on a budget limited to fruit-loaf and a couple of bananas. I draped the big, clean fluffy towel that I have been provided with over the heated towel rack and stepped into the shower cubicle, after switching on the electric shower.

I brought a towel with me, but I think it is pretty good that I have been provided with towels wherever I go. My towel wouldn’t dry out in my backpack if I had to use it all the time.

Another thing: I didn’t bother to pack any shaving cream while I was in England. The main reason is that it would simply be extra weight that I don’t need. Also, I was recently in a conversation with a drunken person in a pub somewhere in Aldershot, who told me that ‘every man needs to have the pleasure of growing a beard at least once in their life’. I thought, before coming over here that I would give it a shot.

At every place that I have been to that has had shaving cream in the bathroom cabinet (ie. Whitecastle and Carn), I have shaved a little, leaving what will hopefully become a goatee. It looks terrible at the moment, but hopefully something decent will emerge from the patchy, itchy growth I currently have. Needless to say, I will shave this before heading to Sweden.

I found some shaving cream here, so I used it. I should add here that I did bring a razor. I haven’t been using other peoples’ razors – which would be awful. I do feel a little bad abusing someone’s hospitality by stealing some shaving cream, but not that bad.

I wandered down to the kitchen and had Coco Pops! I haven’t had Coco Pops for years.

Irish life, I have found, revolves around the kitchen. If you spend long enough there you are bound to get something to eat, whether a Kit Kat or a sandwich or a cup of tea. The stoves are kept hot all the time and the kettle is never empty or too far away from the top of the stove.

I wandered outside. At least for a couple of hours, the weather was fantastic today. The sky was covered with cloud, of course, but the wind was slight and the air was only slightly moist. There was a bit of ice left on the ground but the hills about five miles or so away were covered with snow! I took a photo of them, but I’m not sure how they will turn out with the lousy camera I have.



The house, which is situated on a small road is surrounded by paving stones. Across the road is a low stone fence, with a house beyond that. To the side of the house is the garage where my bike is. Beyond that is a fence and a large shed. Scattered around this area is the usual junk that farms have. Rusty 44 gallon drums, a few old tyres and some coils of barbed wire. Beyond the back fence a field slopes gently down towards a shallow river. There doesn’t seem to be any animals grazing on this field, or even on the field rising from the other side. In the distance is another house, almost at the foot of the hills. Mickey works in Belfast, and is not a farmer, so I don’t know if he owns the fields and rents them out to other farmers, or if he owns them at all.

Which brings up another point. As far as I know, Mickey owns a business that lays pipes, etc in Belfast, and has a long running contract with the city council. So where does he get the money for a house like this? Of course I can’t ask him a question like that. I commented on how nice the house is, and he told me that it was an old house, and that he had wanted to fix it up. He applied to all sorts of funds (including the British lottery!) but the one he was successful with disagreed with the type of window frames he wanted to put in - of all things, so they wouldn’t give him any money. His words were that he spent a lot of money on the place without any help at all. The window fames - of his choosing - look very good. They are made of Aluminium, not wood. Apparently to fit in with the criteria of a Heritage Home, no metal is supposed to be used on the outside of the house or something. Mickey’s argument is that with the weather up here, the wood would expand in no time and damage the house. I guess if you have the money to use that argument then that is fair enough.

I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, talking with Margaret (I know her name now!). She insisted there was no work for me to do and that she wouldn’t get me to do it if there was.

In an almost continuous stream of food, I was served soup, followed by bread and butter, sandwiches and finally a full lunch (at about 1:30) of roast beef, vegetables and the ever present mashed potatoes. At 2 pm, Brendan picked me up. Mickey didn’t go, so I guess it is pretty good that Brendan was willing to take me.

There were two other guys in the car. One was Brendan’s son and the other was the son’s friend. These boys were younger than me, but the look on their faces was older, I swear it. These boys were tough. They talked tough, and they looked tough. I was a little out of their league.

The car got back onto the main road (which is surprisingly close to the house) and drove through the nearby town of Maghera. We drove for another half-hour or so, and pulled up outside the church where the ceremony was going to take place.

When I got out of the car I realised I would have to try and look tough again.

Luckily, there was no hail on the ground for me to crunch underfoot and giggle, like the other day. In fact, there wasn’t much to smile about. It was very cold and it was raining very lightly the whole time. Also, I was surrounded by a hundred or so other hard looking people. Even the women looked hard.

The Irish tricolour was flying on a flagpole erected directly behind the gravestone. The stone itself had only Gaelic engraved onto it, but a small plaque near the bottom said in English that on the night of 2nd December 1984 the patriot, Antoine McBride was shot and killed by British forces (the SAS, I was later told) in Co. Fermanagh. His comrade, (someone), was drowned in Derry the same evening as he tried to swim across the Lough Foyle in an effort to evade the British forces.

Nearby, a microphone and PA speakers were set up. After paying our respects at the grave, we trooped back and waited in the car while a largish crowd was gathering. I managed to find out that Brendan didn’t know McBride at all, but that he was here because ‘we should all be here’. It was a shame, he said, that the crowds were growing less and less each year. People are forgetting what the Troubles are about. I didn’t say that perhaps that was a good thing.

A hard looking man thanked us for coming and a few wreaths were laid, from the family, from Sinn Fein and another from the community.

A group of five people were holding flags over the grave, one the Irish tricolour, another the Red Hand of Ulster, another the Gaelic symbol of Ulster and another was something I hadn’t seen before, a pattern of yellow stars on a dark blue background (no, it wasn’t the EU flag).

A boy came and played the flute while everybody stood at attention, facing the tricolour.

A man was introduced as being one of the negotiators in the recent talks. His speech can only be described as revolutionary. Although he pleaded with people to back Sinn Fein and the new attempts of peace, he said the IRA would pick up the arms should the peace breakdown again.

There were words and phrases like ‘our struggle', ‘illegal occupation of our country’, ‘enemy’ and the like. He clearly stated that the peace wouldn’t have come about if it wasn’t for people like ‘McBride and all the other martyrs and Prisoners of War who served our cause’.

In the crowd was the man who gave me the £10 last night. I think he was impressed to see me there, but the only acknowledgment I got was a quick, tough nod in my direction.

Brendan and another guy (I think his name was Aaron) decided to go to the pub for a pint. There they plied me with two pints and two vodkas and refused to let me buy a round. Every one is really interested in me, not that I’m some fool cycling around in this weather but also that I show a genuine interest in the politics and have the names, dates and facts to back that up. I thought that, especially while I was here in the North, I would keep my mouth shut and not mention politics, but it seems to be encouraged.

Brendan and Aaron found out that my feet get wet and Aaron said he had a couple of pairs of Gore-Tex socks at his home, would I want them? He wondered how he might get them to me and Brendan said he would pick them up and drop them off to the Bradley household.

About five minutes ago, he dropped off a brand new pair of ‘fisherman socks’ made of neoprene. Brand new! I don’t know if Aaron or he had them spare or if they actually went out and bought them. It is just amazing that people can be so kind to a completer stranger and not expect anything in return. The same people, I have to remind myself, who have all (almost to a man) spent time in prison for an armed struggle against their neighbours.

This pub was unlike any I have seen. Sure, it had all the Guinness signs that they all have, and the wooden floors, the worn stools, the brass fittings, etc. But the front door had a camera over the door and a buzzer on it. Behind the bar was two television screens; one for the camera looking over the front door, and the other watching the area behind the bar. I was told that during the Troubles, the door would never be unlocked like it was this afternoon. Any one wanting to enter the bar had to press the buzzer and satisfy the bartender that they were safe. I knew why, of course, Loyalist groups have more than once entered pubs and shot randomly. I am not sure, but I think the Nationalist groups haven’t done that, or maybe they have only done it once or twice. The IRA prides itself on using only ‘legitimate targets’ and not purely sectarian targets, that the Loyalists don’t mind using. It seems all the civilians killed in the IRA’s actions were ‘collateral damage’. Hmm. Of course, the Kingsmill Massacre, in 1976, when the IRA stopped a bus full of mill workers, pulled the Catholics out and shot the remaining ten Protestant passengers as a retaliation for a Loyalist murder seems to disprove that.

I think the first such occurrence was before the Troubles began in 1969. In 1966, members of the Ulster Volunteer Force had entered a pub on Malvern Street in Belfast and shot four men (only one died) just because they were Catholics and not members of the IRA or affiliated groups. The thing is, I didn’t know that the pubs went to these measures to protect themselves against such attacks. Once again, the reality of the North is being brought home to me.

Brendan and Aaron started talking a bit about the Troubles, and Brendan said that once he was targeted by a group similar to the Shankill Butchers and had a narrow escape, jumping over hedges and crawling through ditches, etc. He told me - as I already knew - that Garvagh is a very Loyalist town. They laughed when I told them my fears about Swatragh because of what the patrons of the Canning Arms had told me. Apparently, Swatragh is as Republican as Garvagh is Loyalist, and that is the reason that none of the patrons would stop there. Then they told me something amazing. The Canning Arms is a very rough pub. They said that if any known Catholic such as themselves had walked into the pub during the Troubles, they would have been taken out the back and shot! ‘Same with the Chinese across the road’ (there was a Chinese restaurant across from the Canning Arms - it was closed when I rode into Garvagh, so I went into the pub instead). It probably wouldn’t be so bad now, they said, since the Troubles had died down. They kept on saying how rough that particular pub is, as opposed to the other pubs in the town.

It is strange to realise how real the Troubles are to the people that live here. All we hear are reports on bombs and the major negotiations. These people live in constant warfare, not just market bombs like in Israel, but having to avoid whole villages because of which family they were born to.

It is like something out of the Balkans, not western Europe.

When I got back here Mickey confirmed it (‘That’s the last pub before you leave the town? Aye, that’s right’). Bloody hell. It is a real eye opener actually being here and hearing what real people have to say.

Mickey had to go to the next town to pick something up for his work - it turned out to be a generator - and wondered if I wanted to come along for the ride. In truth, I was feeling fairly tired due to all of the drinking and eating I had managed today, but I said yes in gratitude. As we were driving, I wondered if I might go into the city with him tomorrow and spend another night here. No worries at all.

I’m not too sure what there is to see in Belfast tourist-wise. All I can think of is a big hill outside the city that Wolfe Tone made a famous United Irishmen speech on before going to America to drum up support. Mickey and Margaret don’t know anything about a speech by Wolfe Tone, but the only hill they could think of is Cave Hill. This rings a bell from Trinity. I guess there might be guided tours around Stormont, and who knows whom I might bump into there. Perhaps I could mention to Ian Paisley what I did today and see what he says!

I will go to a library and find a tourist book to see if there is anything else to do. Maybe I’ll find a copy of Trinity. Who knows?

I know this ... I have to get up at 6:20.