Stunning Stunts

Posted on October 26, 2012 by jasonoruairc

It feels exotic to be here relaxing on a bench in the Ormeau Park in the middle of the week, and I am savouring it. It is late July, and unseasonably warm and sunny in Belfast. The customary overcast skies and rain have briefly abated, and the temperature has reached the dizzying heights of the mid-20s. I am between jobs, and taking full advantage of the time off to enjoy the sunshine. The park is resplendent: the Horse-Chestnut trees are fully-leaved, casting welcome shadows for sun-averse pale skin, the beds are riotous with red, white, and yellow flowers. A low-lying patch of ground by a stand of elegant Silver Birches is still dark and soggy from the teeming rain of the past week; the sodden ground means that there are no blankets spread out for picnics, no lovers entwined on the grass. Today, sedentary life is confined to the black metal benches, the shelter and the bandstand. On one of the benches a crusty with long matted dreadlocks, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and boots, peacefully reads a book, oblivious to his surroundings. I cannot make out the title.

The population of the park is slightly different during the week; the pushchairs are guided by one parent rather than both, and there are fewer young people about. It is generally quieter at this time of year; July is holiday time in the North. Despite the schools being off there are not many kids in the park; they are away getting cooked on Mediterranean beaches or visiting Disneyworld. At the bandstand is an exception to this rule. A very large man is accompanied by three boys, aged about four, six and eight. The smallest child and his middle brother are running about, while the older one watches from his bike. He is stationary, holding onto the iron railings of the bandstand.

I am on the phone when it happens. The father is showing off and has obviously called the kids to watch as he attempts to jump his bike off the bandstand. I am torn from my conversation as he jolts irretrievably down the steps and cowps over the handlebars, landing awkwardly in a heap, while his bike falls down next to him on the asphalt. My friend on the other end of the phone is insistent for my attention and I laughingly explain what has just happened. While I am doing so, I notice the youngest boy running to get the attention of a middle-aged man who is walking close by on the path. Although it has only been a matter of seconds, it is at this point that I realise how serious the situation is. The father is on his back, unmoving. I end my call and rush over to where he lies groaning, and unable to get up. Coming up close to him, I can see that his face is pale and dotted with small beads of sweat. I reckon that he must be 17 stone, but he is tall with it. His youngest son is panicking, sobbing, and trying to talk to him incoherently through his tears. The middle child is quiet; looks a bit shocked. The eldest one seems less moved by it all, and tries to keep the other two occupied, walking them around and talking to them. He seems more mature than his years would suggest.

I call an ambulance. The controller asks me a series of questions, and gets me to quiz the dad about where it hurts, can he move his fingers and so on. I give the location as best I can, and tell him the nearest gate for the ambulance to come through. He asks if there is someone there to go and meet the ambulance, and the eldest kid agrees to do so. He pelts off on his bike towards the Ormeau Road. Me and the middle-aged bloke try to get the injured man to talk to us. We ask what he was trying to do, he just answers I was being stupid. Thought I could jump off the bandstand. So stupid. Lesson learned there. I ask him if this is the end of his stuntman career then, and he laughs, wincing in pain. The kids are visibly relieved to see him smiling. Slowly he fishes out his mobile from the depths of his shorts, and calls his missus. She will come to pick up the kids. They have come all the way from Glengormley and she doesn’t know where he is at all. We give him directions to pass on to her.

Moments later there is a siren, flashing blue lights, and a small paramedic ambulance appears, coming up past the Bowling Green; I wave it over. The driver thanks us and dismisses us, gets on with the job. Slightly miffed that our curiosity is unanswered, me and the other guy walk off, our good deed done for the day. We’d like to think someone would do the same for us if we ever had an accident. The eldest kid returns on his bike, and comes after us. For the quarter hour that the drama has taken, we three have become a team, united by a common purpose. We tell the boy his dad is going to be alright. It’s probably a dislocated shoulder. He’s not my da, he says, I never met him before. We agree he did a great job; and with that we part company, wearing our righteousness like halos, and head back into the everyday. Behind us the big ambulance arrives, and the crusty turns another page.

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Close Shave

Posted on October 22, 2012 by jasonoruairc

I was in the barber’s shop when I heard the news report on the radio. Some guy in a white van had gone crazy in Cardiff, using his vehicle as a weapon. He’d done four seemingly random hit and run attacks, and had even got out of the van at some point to assault his victims. One woman was dead, and the youngest casualty wasn’t quite two years old. The man had been arrested.

I was getting the usual haircut: no. 4 at the sides and a scissor cut for the top. I was well used to the woman who was cutting my hair, and we usually would chat a bit, but this time we hadn’t said much; I wasn’t really feeling like making the customary small talk about kids, holidays, weather. The bulletin changed that. She got in before me: Mad that, isn’t it? We discussed various aspects of the story, theorised about the motives of the killer. She switched scissors and moved the conversation to more local issues: she’d been opening up the shop one morning when joyriders in a stolen Jeep had driven along the pavement at high speed to get away from the peelers who were chasing them through the morning traffic. Thank God the schools were off, or who knows what might have happened. Wee kids walking to school an all. Reciprocating, I shared my story:

You know the big junction up at Forestside, where the road down from Sainsbury’s meets the Ormeau, and there’s a wee island at the traffic lights for pedestrians to cross over the road? So I was there, coming down from the supermarket, yes – in my car, stopped at the lights, ready to turn right and head down the way. The lights were red on the Ormeau Road too, so nothing was moving. I remember it was really quiet; probably a Sunday. There was this hippy on the island, waiting to cross. He’d just lit a rollup and was waiting for the green man so he could cross over. He was holding his fag in his right hand, and it was hanging down by his side. All of a sudden, a car, hatchback, doing maybe 50, flew through the lights, coming from my right. Aye, they must have gone up the wrong side to get round the other cars.

So just then they lost control of the car, and instead of going straight up the empty road they shot across the island, somehow squeezing the car between the posts of the traffic lights. I know; you couldn’t do it if you tried. On the other side they hit the kerb, then raced off up the road. It was still deadly quiet. There was just this wheel hub rolling across the road, which settled in the opposite gutter. I wasn’t sure if the hippy had even noticed what’d happened till he went to lift his fag. The car had knocked it out of his hand. You know, if they’d hit him…

Crazy. He was one lucky boy. She held up the mirror. That alright for you?

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Reservation Blues

Posted on October 18, 2012 by jasonoruairc

There is a stretch of the M1 motorway outside Belfast which comes dramatically to life in Spring. Every year in May I look forward to seeing the flowers. They announce the arrival of warm weather, and lift my spirits with the promise of open windows, holidays, summer clothes, and lengthening days.

Coming down the hill just past Dunmurry at this time of year the vista is spectacular. On either side of the road are dense, sloping woodlands. The colours are intense: the bright green tree buds opening against the latticed backdrop of the black branches, the white bursts of hawthorn, blackthorn, and prunus flowers. At the bottom of the hill the trees give way to small-fielded drumlins, and the motorway embankments are strewn with coconut-scented whin bushes. Their small, densely-bunched yellow flowers are so vivid it is almost painful to look at them. But the real treat is further on: clouds of yellow and white flowers growing in clusters on the central reservation, their sharp, clean, colour pure in contrast to the dull, dirty grey of the metal crash barrier. These flowers have significance: they are a testimony to the tenacity of life. Buffeted by the toxic, diesel-stained, wake of car transporters and airport coaches, they still unfailingly produce this annual display of proud, defiant beauty. The flowers embody hope; they flourish despite adversity.

In February, as I left Belfast on my way to Portadown, cones had been laid out on the carriageway. Speed restrictions were in force, and lanes were closed. Massive signs announced that work was due to be carried out on central barrier improvements for several weeks. By May the metal rails had been ripped out and were being replaced with concrete. A monstrous, many-wheeled machine squatted over the central reservation, relentlessly defecating the oblique wedges that made up the new, bureaucrat-approved, barrier. The soil that had nourished life was gone, sunk under a swathe of lunar grey.

I noticed with relief that the roadworks didn’t stretch far enough to threaten the flowers with obliteration. It seemed that the new barrier wasn’t going to go the whole length of the motorway. But my optimism was short-lived: in fact, the extent of the constructions didn’t matter. Within a few days a new threat was abroad; there was a financial crisis and boys needed jobs to do, however pointless. The destruction was brought by men in high-visibility jackets with spluttering 2-stroke strimmers. It took two of them a week to do their work. They slashed down every living thing in the centre and left a two-foot wide strip of yellowing stubble on the verge. The flowers were gone, left to rot on the ground when the wet weather arrived. The whins, growing further up the banks, were untouched.

On the other side of the Sprucefield junction I saw that one flower had escaped the cull, its solitary head poking out defiantly from between the metal barriers. Its strong roots spread untouched beneath the ground, and alone in its new post-apocalyptic surroundings it carried on, undeterred, with the act of living.

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Shop till you Drop

Posted on October 15, 2012 by jasonoruairc

It wouldn’t do to be in a hurry: there is a queue of cars just to get into the car park. I drive round for ages before I spot some people that look as if they are getting ready to depart. They are very slow. The group consists of two women, and a small baby. I suspect the women are the baby’s mother and grandmother; they look very alike. I wait for an eternity while they load the boot, lift, kiss and coddle the child before finally strapping it into its car seat. The grandmother waves her daughter out, then puts her hand up and halts her while a young man in a VW Golf zips past. The parking space is narrow; a bloated 4×4 has walled up one side and a badly-parked Metro is too close on the other. I swing the car in very slowly, and tell myself to be quick in the supermarket in the hope that I might get my shopping done before these people return and put more dents and chips in the paintwork when they open their doors.

Invariably, on a Saturday, passage into the shopping centre is hindered by gossips with fully-laden trollies blocking the entrance way. All of the traffic in and out of the place has to go through one set of sliding doors. The store is bunged; it looks as if it wasn’t a good idea to put off the expedition till this time of the day. The shelves are starting to empty faster than they can be re-stocked. This affects me: there are only two bunches of ordinary scallions left and they are mangled where the customary blue elastic band holds them together. There is a uniformed shelf-stacker there so I ask him if he has any more. No, they are sold out; didn’t expect the store to be so jammed what with the competition opening a new supermarket just down the road. But it’s good to see the place is busy, eh? It’s good for you anyway, I quip, taking a bunch of heavyweight super-scallions instead. The conversation continues a little; it is cheerful, pleasant.

I am getting cheese for my daughter’s school lunch when a voice from behind surprises me. I look down to see a large woman in an electric wheelchair. She is in stealth mode; I didn’t hear her coming. Sorry, she says, I thought you worked here. She is unashamedly lying; there is nothing about me that suggests I work here. I don’t mind in the slightest. She probably has a range of tactics for getting help with her groceries, and this is merely one of them, badly deployed – but successful. I get her a triangle of Danish Blue, and she thanks me and glides off silently to her next encounter.

Fortunately my shopping list isn’t long and I get what I need fairly quickly, ducking and dodging the dawdling, gurning, shouting, laughing, wheedling kids, the white-haired crone moving at glacier-speed, the preoccupied dad not looking where he’s going, and the young couple discussing the qualities of different ready-made pasta sauces. I am in luck at the checkout too, squeezing in just before a creaking family trolley which will take an age to unload, pack, and pay for. Leaving the store is challenging; the too-narrow space at the end of the checkouts is flooded with traffic. At the magazine shelves there is a group of four old women clutching lottery tickets and blocking the way. Hordes of shoppers are still entering, half-crazy before they even get fully immersed in this maelstrom of consumerism, but I navigate my way through them easily enough and am soon into the off-licence. Here I quickly find a bottle of white and join the short queue. The woman at the checkout is delightful: chatty, funny and polite. I leave the place feeling unusually refreshed.

Back in the car park I dump the trolley and haul my reusable bag to the car. The SUV has gone and it will be less of a squeeze to get back in. I notice with satisfaction that the paintwork has remained damage-free as well. I start up and ease out into the car park. Another shopper has already appeared, indicators on, to claim the space I am leaving, forcing me to go back round the other way.

As I approach the corner a middle-aged man with sandy hair, driving a grimy silver Passat drops his missus off at the entrance to the Shopping Centre, presumably to get started while he finds a parking place. They are having a row, and he is still shouting at her through the open passenger window as he pulls out in front of me without looking. I have to apply the brakes, but there is no drama, no squealing tyres, no skidding. I’m not really all that close to him. I do not bump the horn or remonstrate, but sit there waiting to see whether he will stop or continue. He realises what he’s done, and jams on the brakes, jerking the car to a dead stop. He is enraged, his thin red face creased into tight lines as he roars FUCK OFF at me in fury, slamming both hands on the steering wheel. He’s not having the day I’m having. I drive past, wondering if he’s going to survive the supermarket, or suddenly drop, fighting for breath and clutching at a stranger’s arm.

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Magic Tree

Posted on October 12, 2012 by jasonoruairc

October was starting to get cold, so on my way to the child-minder’s house I had dropped in to the petrol station on the Ravenhill Road to get turf for the fire and some groceries. I was numbingly tired, so when I got inside the shop I kept missing the things that I wanted, and had to revisit the same aisles several times. There was a pretty, red-haired girl shopping there as well, and I kept meeting her. After facing her for the third time, I started to get paranoid, imagining her challenging me for following her, since wherever she went I seemed to pop up like an unwanted jack-in-the-box. I stared at the ground like a pubescent teenager, in an attempt to dispel the wrong impression. She seemed to sense my awkwardness, and this put a forgiving, wry, smile on her face. On my final foray into the bread aisle I was behind her when she knocked a red and yellow ‘special offer’ sign off the shelving with a clatter. Scundered, she tried vainly to fix it back on. It didn’t cooperate, and she wedged it back as best she could. It stuck out reprovingly like a wagging finger. I managed to repress an audible snigger, but couldn’t stop myself grinning. She glanced back, acknowledged she’d been caught on, and walked off, smiling in embarrassment to herself. The wax-papered batch loaf was the last thing I needed to get, so I went round by the gaudy array of impulse-buy crisps and sweets, and towards the till to pay.

There was a man in his late twenties coming in the other direction; we both arrived at the tills at the same time. He had short dark hair under a baseball cap, a neat moustache and sideburns, and a gold ring in his left ear. He was wearing blue jeans and a tracksuit top. He had a small boy, about four years old in tow. He was speaking, loudly, in a West Belfast accent to one of the attendants. Despite the volume, I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but they seemed to be enjoying the chat, as if they knew each other already.

When two males arrive at the top of a queue like this there is generally some kind of jockeying for the first position: body language, signals, facial expressions. Unusually, this was all dispensed with instantly: he simply dropped his eyes and went round behind me to the other till. Pump 5. Fuel and fegs.  Also, one a’ them air fresheners. The cashier didn’t catch it, and he had to repeat: Magic Tree, pointing at the selection on the wall. What colour? Doesn’t matter mate. This one? Aye, black one, dead on. He handed over a couple of notes, waved away the change: that’s alright mate. He tugged at the kid’s hand, C’mon you, and walked off. The cashier called after him, he’d left his Magic Tree on the counter. Fucksake man, sorry, stoned ta fuck. Pushing the boy gently in front of him he turned the corner at the end of the shelving.  Cashiers and shoppers exchanged looks, but no remarks were passed. Through the window I saw them approach a blue van waiting at the pump. The driver, a man of similar age to his workmate, was waiting for them. The boy got in first, helped in through the passenger door, and was buckled in between the lads.

As they slowly pulled out into the rush-hour traffic I understood that ahead of them there were real or imagined peelers, girlfriends, and other head-boilers to be dealt with. I wondered if the Magic Tree would be up to the job.

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Teenage Kicks

Posted on October 10, 2012 by jasonoruairc

We are heading for the Botanic Gardens on a Sunday walk, leisurely, hand in hand. There are dry autumn leaves to be kicked; they have collected in eddying drifts on the pavement of Ava Avenue. At the Annadale Flats we find mushrooms sprouting in the boggy grass under the trees, and more leaves to kick. We take a short cut down the banking, slowly at first, then gaining momentum we run the last few feet, laughing and whooping. There is a new concreted area where major works have recently been done on the sewers. It is patched with textured rectangular metal drain covers. My daughter has to dance, stamp and jump on each of them. We can hear the sound of torrential rushing water under one of them; the wee girl can even see it through one of the small key holes.
It is a glorious day, feels more like April than October, and we are loving the warm sun on our faces. I am carrying her raincoat but she will not need it. Crossing the King’s Bridge we are passed by two black guys. They are like the opposing poles of a magnet; one in a shiny grey suit, talking noisily on his mobile, the other in a red tracksuit, looking a wee bit bored with the company he’s keeping. We enter the park by the playing fields. There aren’t many people around; two lovers are chasing each other, laughing. They stop and kiss each other fondly, then continue walking, his arm over her shoulder. They are in step, synchronized.

Further along the path we meet a witch. She is muttering to herself, staring straight ahead. She has angular features, swept-back, grey-streaked hair. Her left thumb is clumsily bandaged. My daughter whispers to me: she is a bad witch, not a good one, and she cast a spell on that. I look around searchingly: what? She is pointing to an old, redundant, telegraph pole, with a single black cable running down it. The witch has pulled the cable out of the ground, stripping the end of it to reveal copper wire, and has tied it in a Gordian knot around the pole. Very bold behaviour, we agree.

We enter the formal gardens through a gate in the black-painted railings. She is starving, and we gently hurry along the tree-lined paths to a sunlit bench overlooking the lawn, to eat our picnic. She is very diligent, taking her empty yoghourt pot to the litter bin at the end of the railings herself, instead of just handing it to me. Attached to the short fence, next to the bin, is a small round sign. My daughter explains it to me: drinking alcohol is prohibited in public places. I have no idea how she knows this. There is a group of teenagers on the grass near us: two girls, five boys. It looks like they haven’t made it home from Saturday night yet. They are getting stuck into tins of beer and blimps of cheap cider. One of the girls is half-fighting with one of the lads. She is overdressed for the park, wearing boots with spike heels that stick in the ground, leggings, and a top which displays large areas of skin; it is bare at the back and split at the front. She is gorgeous and shapely. In breaks from the rough and tumble she hokes at her top, pulling it into shape and making sure the look is right.

As we eat our picnic, over the next half-hour, more people arrive: a crowd of students in football kit on their way to a match, joggers, couples, dog-walkers, a posse of four beautiful, skinny, Chinese girls. The benches around us fill up. More teenagers join the party on the lawn in front of us; now there is pulsing music and a football. A bleached-blonde girl throws dancefloor shapes. Things liven up a little; I can hear loud cursing and wonder if it is time to move little ears out of range, but my daughter is laughing at their antics: Look Daddy! He’s so silly! One of the boys is nonchalantly sporting a cardboard box left over from the carryout on his head, like a Bishop’s mitre. Someone’s trainer gets thrown around, the owner running awkwardly after it like piggy in the middle, with one muddy sock. The girl in heels is slagging passersby; her voice is surprisingly low, rough. She shouts to an elderly sausagedog-walking couple: is that a real dash hound? She is ignored and the watery abuse doesn’t last long. She returns to the business of the day; soon she is sitting on the grass draped over one of the other boys.

My daughter asks why they are being so silly, and I tell her they have had too much to drink. She reckons they will get into trouble, because it’s not allowed; the police will come. She points to the sign. She is spot on. As we are walking away from the benches a city council van approaches with its hazard lights blinking. Before it even reaches them, they are packing up the remnants of their carryout into plastic bags; they know the drill. They give the driver enough lip to be able to retreat with dignity, but there is no trouble. Only one low, strident, voice still carries through to us as we meander towards the Palm House.

Two of the lads have a competing eye on her; they envisage bucking her tonight: frantic, joyless, sprawling, drunken sex. But she is way ahead of them; the man in the moon has more chance with her than they do. She is a gem, and one day soon she will walk hand in hand with her lover through the gardens.

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Super-cool

Posted on October 5, 2012 by jasonoruairc

I am early getting into Lurgan, and have to wait at the gates as the clunking commuter trains bound for Belfast and Portadown traverse the road. Driving past the high metal-clad walls of the Police Station, I turn down Church Walk and into the free car park. There is a small encampment of travellers on the far side of the asphalt rectangle, on the flat ground at the bottom. The site consists of three caravans in a line; none of them are exhibiting any signs of life yet. Their washing is slung out on lines that stretch from the caravans to the metal posts of the wire-mesh fence. The gleaming white sheets are stiff with frost, hanging heavily like sailcloth in the light breeze. It is bitterly cold; there is no way the washing is going to thaw out today, despite the thin February sunlight that makes the sheets dimly sparkle.

The easiest way to get to Market Street from the Church Walk car park is to walk up the slope and through the narrow tunnel between the shops. This part of the journey is unpleasant; the tunnel is piss-stained, reeking, and littered with fag ends, beer tins, an empty Buckfast bottle. Broken glass crunches and grinds underfoot, sticks into the soles of your shoes. As you come out into the sunlight again, kicking the shards away, the cloying smell of cooking oil from a multitude of fast food shops fills the air. It isn’t yet 9 a.m.

While I wait outside the door to be let in to work, around me a mob of uniformed schoolkids laugh, spit, jostle, smoke semi-secret fags, pass loud remarks, gaze blearily at mobile phones, and look glum, rubbing frozen ungloved hands as they wait for the bus. I am looking forward to a cup of hot sweet tea and a bit of banter with the staff. Work goes in quickly and soon it is lunchtime. The girls question me as to which chippy I will visit today, sparking a debate on the merits of Julie’s Kitchen vs Cafolla’s. I learn that Boss Hogg’s is doing a special offer, but I am foregoing the decadent delights of a curry chip; I must get to the supermarket to do some essential shopping, and I will buy lunch there.

In Tesco’s I wander through the aisles, list-less and hungry, resisting the impulse to buy easy stuff, junk. In one of the aisles a bulging, fat, ugly girl is giving out to her red-haired three year-old son. She is wearing a black v-necked top, flaunting a pasty-looking cleavage with a blue-black tattoo just above her left tit. She slaps the hand of the boy several times for no obvious reason; he starts to squeal, gets another slap and some harsh words for his trouble. I pay for my groceries by card at the self-checkout, take a bag in each hand, and head off back towards Market Street. Just past Fa’ Joe’s Bar I see a man walking steadily towards me on the frost-rimed footpath. He has an almost-shaved head and is wearing shades. His arms and legs are muscular, and his cut-off t-shirt and shorts are obviously deployed to show off this hard-earned physique. He is eating an ice-cream, no flake. I am in awe: the chill has already gone through my woollen overcoat and is going to penetrate to my bones before I get back inside.

He pays no heed to us pedestrians; the disdainful sneer curling up one corner of his mouth dismisses all who appear in his path. I wonder what his purpose is, here in the centre of the town; what kind of superhuman he is. Will he finish his poke, levitate briefly, then speed off faster than sound to avert some far-off disaster?

No. Come nightfall a door will be kicked in; there will be violence, extortion, street justice. Someone’s fingers are going to crack.

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Incendiary

Posted on October 1, 2012 by jasonoruairc

There used to be a bandstand in Cornmarket. It was mostly a home for pigeons and a place for a late-night carryout; the square was quiet, and the bandstand provided shelter from the interminable Belfast rain. I never saw a band using it. Back then, the square was shabby, paved with pale yellow bricks, bordered with red. There was no Emerald City at the end of this Yellow Brick Road; just the grimy square, populated by discarded sweet papers and other rubbish whipped along by the wind. The bandstand was a 1970s project, built with tubular red-painted steel and with a bubble-like glass dome on top. Beside it was an equally ugly low-rise clock-tower affair built from the same red steel pipes.

Me and Mickey had been playing a session in Kelly’s Cellars, and we were full. Short of cash for the luxury of a taxi, we were optimistically and rather slowly tottering in the direction of the Rotterdam Bar to try and get a late drink. The city centre was dead. Coming out of Bank Street, we crossed Royal Avenue, passing a red LED chaser display in Castle Place that proudly proclaimed Belfast is Buzzing to the empty streets. It was probably 11.30, maybe midnight.

When we reached Cornmarket there was a ragged group of lads at the bandstand. They were drinking tins of Harp and smoking. We had a bit of banter with them, and in the spirit of bonhomie that comes with such illicit behaviour, they gave us a can of beer to share. We supplied rollups. It wasn’t long before they had finished their carryout, and left us sitting with the remains of our beer as they headed off home. It had started to drizzle so we decided to sit on for a few minutes and see if it would stop before we continued on our way. There wasn’t a sound, apart from the soft dripping of the rain from the bandstand, and the scrape of a crisp packet blowing past.

It was Mickey who noticed it first: a curtain of thick grey smoke rising from the slatted vents above the shuttered ground-floor windows of the shop next to us. It rose silently, coyly, into the night sky. There was no fuss: no flashing lights, no clanging alarm bells, no flames. It was bizarrely peaceful. As we sat and watched, two of the boys returned with unlit rollups: Either of youse two got a light? one of them queried.

Within minutes we could hear sirens approaching; blue lights flickered off the glistening walls. Response vehicles and peelers were imminent. We swigged the last of the beer and continued our journey. Belfast was buzzing.

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The Boy in the Bubble

Posted on September 28, 2012 by jasonoruairc

My daughter has brought me a present home from school. I have a fever and am coughing up fluorescent green lumps. I am stuck in bed, sweating for all the wrong reasons. Antibiotics are prescribed, but I am no better by the end of the seven-day course and the doctor puts me on a stronger one. At the end of ten days I am weak and hallucinating. I haven’t eaten. I have several different noises in my head and ears.

The white noise is a constant hissing irritation in both ears. It isn’t too bad during the day, and I notice it most at night when the house is quiet. There is also a periodic high-pitched tone that I have had for years. It never lasts for long, since I can control it by focussing my concentration on it and breathing, so it does not really bother me. These two are inconveniences, but there is also another vibration which is altogether more malignant. Between my ears, in the centre of my head, is a deep, relentless monotone, like the buzzing of an old fridge. It comes and goes. Sometimes it wakes me in the middle of the night, and I lie awake for hours waiting for sleep to come. It feels as if every blood vessel in my brain is pulsating. It tortures me and I cannot tune it out.

I have been consigned to my house for two weeks, but the chest infection is away now and I have been eating; my strength is returning. As I begin to return to society and interact with other people I notice another legacy of the illness that has not been apparent in my enforced solitude: everything has become unreal. An invisible curtain has been pulled across in front of me, separating me from the world. I feel as if I am going crazy; people speak to me and I stare at them like specimens on a microscope slide, answering them distractedly. I have become dislocated, shut off from the world I used to know, observing life as though it is happening in another room, to somebody else. Within days my old life is fading into memory, and I am becoming used to life in the bubble.

The GP tells me I have Labyrinthitis, and it will go away in two to four weeks, maybe a little longer. What I am feeling is normal and it will pass. This reassures me. He gives me a prescription for anti-nausea tablets but mercifully I do not have the spins. Nor am I nauseous. After a few more days I return to work in Andytown. I find it difficult to relate to my clients. Their life stories, tales of hardship, love, death and success, are not real. I do not care. I get away with making vaguely inappropriate comments, attracting laughter and the occasional raised eyebrow. I have to concentrate very hard so as to not let something offensive slip out.

So life goes on. After three months the noises have not dissipated, and the disconnection becomes normality. In France, during my holidays, I have to ask my stepfather to drive a little faster, because the diesel engine is uncomfortably vibrating on the same frequency as the noise in my head. I see a consultant neurologist. He tells me that the MRI scan has revealed nothing sinister. My brain has learned to adjust to life inside the bubble, and even though I know that the world changed in June, by October I feel as though I have always been this way. It no longer disturbs me. Some months later I see another consultant, who informs me that I never had Labyrinthitis, and that the noises are tinnitus. I need to relax more.

I am still vaguely aware of the bubble’s presence, aware that life was different once, but I can no longer remember what it was like. I have learned to care about the world outside again, and although I don’t hear as well as I used to, I function normally – apart from one thing. The illness has left me a truly precious gift. It is a residue of the initial disconnectedness that my brain has lovingly kept and nurtured for me: I am no longer afraid. Those niggling voices of self-doubt which whispered in my ear for years have been drowned out by a wash of white noise. I am thankful.

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Miller Time

Posted on September 25, 2012 by jasonoruairc

There is a builder working on the empty house next door. He started early this morning, disturbing my Saturday lie-in. I was out last night, and my eyes are gummed up, my mouth dry; I could do with another hour. I can hear muffled thumps through the walls, and every so often the rasping and whining of a power drill. I put on my dressing gown, go down to the kitchen and fill the kettle. He has moved outside into the back yard, and through the open windows I can hear him whistling above the knocking. The tune of the moment is In the Mood by Glenn Miller and his big band. The builder is giving it the full works, doing the trombone and trumpet parts as well as the melody. It is a faultless performance: note perfect, brilliant, and infectious.

I sip my tea. The day is looking brighter.

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