AH SURE AZURE

Category: Reflections

  • GABOS

    GABOS

    ‘What size those shoes ‘,

    Louis Theroux looks back to the prisoner behind bars.

    ‘why?’

    ‘cos those ma shoes. You in here, you git beat up you don give me your shoes’

    ‘What did you do to the inmate who is now in hospital?’

    ‘ah stabbed him. seven maybe eight times’

    ‘Why?’

    ‘Cos he a snitch and snitches get stitches’

    ‘Are you not concerned about how he is?’

    ‘Ah don care he alive or dead. Its Gabos man, thats the way it go in here -gabos-Game Ain’t Based On Sympathy’

    ‘so if I was in there and I refused to hand over my shoes?’

    ‘Yea, man, you get beat up’

    The acronym rang bells in my head. Five letters to do with negotiating -BATNA! Best Alternative To A Negotiated Solution. What a complete contrast to GABOS.

    The first based on the survival of the fittest. I thought what a different world it was in prison. But is BATNA just the same thing dressed up in prettier language? This guy behind bars understood so accurately how the system worked that he framed it in one word.Was there any difference? The best alternative to handing over your shoes was to get beat up.

    The world’s best entrepreneurs are behind bars.

  • Uachtar Ard (Oughterard)

    Uachtar Ard (Oughterard)

    Uachtar Reoite-the Gaelic name for ice-cream

    Delicious aren’t they? Inviting – for sharing. The symbol of sunny carefree days. Uachtar in Irish means the top and the name is also used for cream which is from the top of the milk.

    So a place that calls itself not only Uachtar but also Ard which means high in Irish must surely be a great place. A nice place to live, where there is a community that thinks highly of itself – ‘where all the women are good looking, all the men are strong and all the children are above average’ to quote Garrison Keillor as he began his stories about small town life in St Paul Missouri on his weekly radio slot.

    After the strangeness of landing in a very alien country , the excitement of knowing a place had been found for you to live – in the green Irish countryside – a bit chilly and damp in the winter but lush and more important than anything else – safe- the relief , the hope that an end to the travelling is in sight, an end to the anxiety for your children’s’ futures and a new beginning mapping itself out, for all this to be blotted out by hostility and rejection piled on the still recent, painful rejection by your own country the looking around again – what is to happen, will this happen again, when can the children sleep in their own beds is surely undeserved.

    Be calm displaced ones. Not all Irish are self serving hoarders of their own bounty . Not every Irish person forgets his ancestors who were processed on Ellis Island with nothing but a cardboard suitcase in their hand. Those who intimidated and threatened the hotel owner to renege on his contract are the Iochtar or lowest in Irish society. They are insecure and dishonest, users of slippery arguments to elevate their low objections with the use of moral posturing against detention centres.

    Your strength and tenacity has brought you this far. You will find a place and you will have warmth and the welcome you deserve. You will find a home and people who live up the Ireland of the Thousand Welcomes or Cead Mile Failte -You will find your Uachtar Ard.

  • Heartbreak in Italian

    Agios Markos

    14th August 2019

    I heard someone’s heart break last night – in Italian. 

    I didn’t understand a word, but I understood the pain.

    She sobbed and choked and turned her heart into syllables of agony with a rhythm and beat of emotion as she drew breath and again sent out words from a well of grief.

    In the middle of the night, no other sound, but her phone call of despair.

    Like an Italian aria, whose words you don’t know but  understand completely.

    After a long time, she calmed and the gaps between the sobs were longer and I fell back to sleep.

    Next morning someone threw a cigarette butt down from the balcony above. 

    I called up from my garden and the voice that came back was the voice from the night before – ‘sorry’.

    She was with friends, she was having a cigarette. She was okay.

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