REMEMBERING IN OLDHAM

 

We are in Oldham, the full Manchester family; two girls, Dad and Mum, daughter to Nanny and Granda.

The girls are famished after an early morning swimming lesson. We are in a café for breakfast. It is on a rising street. In a window of the large office and retail building opposite, young girls in pink, yellow and turquoise taffeta dresses, each one numbered, pass to and fro, in competition readiness. Early mornings are busy for some younsters.

The café is a boho lounge, on Yorkshire Street. Décor is sofas, armchairs and ottomans, wooden tables and plain chairs, a mish-mash of faux nostalgia, creating a contemporary style. The wooden floors are bare, striped with coloured paint, in an organised Jackson Pollock style. It is warm and welcoming.

The manager serves the food. He is an immigrant, likely from North Africa or the Levant. The older girl has a small fry. The younger has her favourite – beans on toast, with added tomato ketchup. The ketchup comes in a tomato-shaped squeezee bottle, which delights her. Mum and Dad gently manage the ketchup ration.

It is her fourth birthday. The manager brings two kids’ portions of chocolate brownies, with a dollop each of ice-cream. One portion has a candle. He leads a(nother!) round of “Happy Birthday to You”, with added, hearty hip-hip hoorays. He is wearing a poppy, an emblem for remembering in Oldham.

Who is he remembering?

People climb the rising street outside the café. They are warmly dressed against the foggy chill. A brass band passes. Young people carry heavy instruments up the street. Their imperial purple uniforms underscore the shining brass of theirtubas, trombones, horns, trombones and cornets.

People in military dress appear, climbing the rising street. One carries a ceremonial sword. More people climb. They are on their way to Oldham’s War Memorial.

Who are they remembering?

Breakfast over, we leave the café. The two girls and Nanny go with Mum. Dad gets the other car, parked around the corner.

I, Granda, step out on to the sloping street. The manager holds the door for me. There is a poppy on the door. I thank him. He says he will be busy later.

I am on crutches, disabled due to critical illness, sixteen years before. I remember.

I hobble across the slope of the street. A lithe man, my age perhaps, wearing a fawn overcoat and a dark soft hat, approaches, close enough for us to exchange greetings.

‘Good morning’.

He is wearing a poppy.

Who is he remembering?

I move diagonally down the street, in the opposite direction to the people climbing towards the War Memorial.

A man wearing the blue-grey beret of the RAF passes, too far away for greetings.

Who is he remembering?

A family group, adults and children, with two whippets on leads, climb.

Who are they remembering?

Then a man, wearing the distinctive maroon beret of the Parachute Regiment, climbs the street. He is wearing a poppy.

He is too young to have been part of the murderous band who killed innocent civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry.

Who is he remembering?

If we only remember our own combatants, our memories are skewed and partial.

Who am I remembering?

I remember John Kelly, who’s brother Michael, aged seventeen, was one of those murdered by members of the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday. John Kelly died a couple of days before my day in Oldham. He, along with other brave relatives of the victims of Bloody Sunday, strived for justice in an exemplary non-violent campaign. He and his allies are beacons in my life and in the world. 

They ripped up a foul report on the murders. They made a Prime Minister twist and declare the innocence of the murdered.

I remember John Kelly, on this day and hour, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We had to wait until David Cameron gave his speech in the Commons before we came out into Guildhall Square to meet the people. 

When I came out that door I couldn't believe the scene that met us. 

The Guildhall Square was packed with people, and they were all smiling and laughing and cheering, cheering for us. 

I do feel that what we achieved, we achieved for those people as well, because Derry itself was injured on Bloody Sunday, but I think at that moment in time, a healing began. 

Everyone was able to come forward and say their loved one was innocent - and that really was incredible. 

It's something I will never, ever forget. 

I remember.

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DATE NIGHT: WATCHING THE INVITE, SAFE AND WAR OF THE WORLDS

They plan a date night. Dinner and a show, as the Yanks have it. Only in reverse. Cinema, for 5 00 pm screening, then dinner in Saffron, a favoured Indian restaurant. This their first date-night in a while. They look forward to it.

He experiences a foul-up with an insulin pen, just prior to leaving home. He misplaces an essential part, which throws him off. She walks to the cinema and gets tickets and popcorn. He follows on his mobility scooter and experiences further difficulties, while manoeuvring it in/out of the lift in the cinema. 

They sit and settle. They eat some popcorn, allow the car ads to wash over them, then focus on the opening scene of The Invite, chosen from the thin selection available and influenced by a decent review in The Irish Times.

Two middle-class, white American thirty something couples skewer each other on spits of embarrassment. One couple perceives the other as ‘cool’, an ineffable but vital attribute for happiness in their world.

The film doesn’t catch them. 

Lame jokes about hyper-business and noisy love-making fill the opening scene. It appears you’re not enjoying sex unless you are guldering loudly and thumping the headboard off the wall. There is a lazy joke about jamon you can see coming from a mile off. It’s no surprise that it lands lamely. No one in the cinema laughs.

Embarrassment is the high point of comedic achievement, whereby the only laughs arrive for failing to be, while yearning to be, ‘cool’, in this comedy (sic!) of male and female impotence, sexual and social.

Both couples strive haplessly and helplessly, to different degrees, in their attempts to be ‘hip’, while simply affirming middle-class conformity, conservatism and materialism. They don’t realise how lucky they are.

The cinema-goers are restless. They sense the film is not for them. They are the wrong demographic for this well-regarded work. She gets fed up of the constant, repetitive bickering among the characters, especially around the lame jamon joke, worn to shreds and stretched to snapping. He doesn’t take to the lead male, right from the start when he behaves boorishly to music students.

They leave the cinema, after about twenty minutes. The act of walking out of a cinema produces a righteous mix of disappointment and relief. They don’t do it often. He has form, having walked out on George Clooney in Up in the Air.

They don’t learn the ending of The Invite. They think its unlikely to be happy, in any meaningful, personal way, as the characters do not desire to be happy, in any meaningful, personal way. They desire to be ‘cool’, as a substitute for being happy.

There is an absent child, away from home on the evening the two couples meet. They leave before the absent child has a chance to appear.

She saves the date by suggesting an Indian take-away meal and a film at home. His insulin injection disruption is overcome by retrieving the mis-placed piece of kit. They find Safe, with Jason Statham playing Luke Wright, as a blue collar Tom Cruise on the tv.

The film is accompanied with an inexpensive Bordeaux red, making the excellent food go down readily in spite of the criminality and corruption, violence and vice portrayed. Safe succeeds as a send-up rather than a representation.

There’s a serious conversation to be had about the merits of this form of entertainment, but this is not a serious film. It has a winning ‘heart of gold’, using ‘caring for a child’ as a core element. Catherine Chan plays Mei. The child is essential to the plot, in jeopardy at all times and acting to save herself and Luke Wright (Jason Statham).

It is fantasy escapism, with more bust-ups than hacks, shoot-outs rather than high wire acts, in bracing pseudo-realist hokum. The film sends itself up and doesn’t ask to taken seriously. As The Invite does, lamentably.

The Indian food lasts a second night. They’re small eaters now, even when including fruit and yoghurt, followed by a slice of ginger cake and a mug of tea. They enjoy another home-date, while watching Tom Cruise in Stephen Spielberg’s version of the HG Wells book The War of the Worlds. Terrifying, in a good way. The literary allusion elevates the hokum, using cinematic suspense devices later seen in the Jurassic Park films.

The date-nights work. They agree tv or film material is only worth watching if the characters are engaging and catch your attention. 

Lessons are learned. Have more date nights, at the cinema and at home. Slow down. Use David Mamet’s father’s carpenter advice: measure twice, cut once.

Blood sugar and other medical matters settle before bed time, though, when he turns in, he grieves at this latest instance of his failing capacities. He’ll have to slow down. Again. Some more.

Recommendations?

The Invite? No. Humourless, self-pitying, disagreeable.

Safe? Yes. If you think you can stomach it. You know what you’re getting into – honest (?) hokum.

War of the Worlds? Enjoyable, slightly less honest hokum.

Saffron, Indian restaurant in Derry? Yes, definitely. 

The Invite

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14173636/?ref_=fn_t_1

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MOYGASHEL BURNING

This year saw themes and actions from the 1988 Hollywood crime film Mississippi Burning echo in events at Moygashel, a suburban village on the edge of Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Moygashel’s Bonfire Community Association erected a huge bonfire of wooden palettes to mark 12^th of July commemoration events. They placed a model of a mosque on top, intending to burn it along with the bonfire. The Association uses FaceBook effectively to advertise its activities and plans. Messages of support and images of other bonfires are shown. Lamp posts in Moygashel carry flags of the United Kingdom and other flags of Unionism and British culture. Google Maps show a well-constructed and visually interesting 12^th of July arch at Grove Place in the village.

The police called the Moygashel bonfire a ‘hate display’.

Mississippi Burning features the story of man who killed a mule that belonged to a black neighbour.

I looked over at my daddy's face. I knew he done it. He saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and said, If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?

You think that's an excuse?

My old man was just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killing him.

The burning of effigies and models is a feature of the Moygashel and some other bonfires. It is not the same as burning and lynching people. However, burning people out of their homes happened in Belfast and Antrim a month ago. Both activities have the effect of intimidating and frightening people.

Such human actions arise from social structures of poverty, deprivation and manipulation: material poverty; poverty of information; poverty of empathy; deprivation of educational and employment opportunities; manipulation by rich and powerful social media and press magnates, often well-outside Moygashel. These sorts of actions are seen across the world. Because of their connection with Moygashel’s 12^th of July commemorations, there is a distinctly British dimension to them in this instance.

The bonfire, effigies, statements and signs seek to make political points about radical Islam and immigration. There is no mass illegal immigration into Northern Ireland by any group of people, least of all Muslims. Moygashel is not a centre for radical Islamists. Small boats with refugees never land in Moygashel.

No one in a mosque decides upon and implements immigration policy in Northern Ireland. Such decisions are made by parliamentarians in London, who meet in The Palace of Westminster. Might a model of that place, with its famous clock tower, be a better symbol of discontent with immigration policy?

The Moygashel Bonfire Association asserts that their symbols and actions are not aimed at any individuals, but at an ideology. These sentences, also, are not aimed at individuals, but at ideologies: the ideologies of exceptionalism, racism, and supremacism. However, ideologies are not abstractions in books, blogs, bonfire models, or people’s heads. They exist in the thoughts, words and lived actions of individuals and groups, such as burning models of places of religious worship on top of a triumphalist bonfire that, ironically, marks a military victory for religious freedom.

Another ideological action would be to put a Christian Church on top of another bonfire.

This would simply compound the human tragedy.

You can tell your bosses - people got the wrong idea about the South. You know what I'm talkin' about. Everybody runnin around ragged, backwards, illiterate, eatin' sow-belly and corn pone three times a day. The simple fact is, Anderson, we got two cultures down here: a white culture - and a coloured culture. Now, that's the way it always has been - and that's the way it always will be.

The rest of America don't see it that way, Mr. Mayor.

Rest of America don't mean jack shit. You in Mississippi now.

Some people, notably business promoters and leaders, find this bonfire embarrassing and distasteful. They react by distancing themselves from the people of Moygashel. Chamber of Commerce leaders worry about the impact of coverage of such symbolic acts on Northern Ireland’s reputation abroad and its effect on inward investment. Currently Northern Ireland is said by economists to be experiencing full-employment (sic!), though there is considerable economic non-activity in sections of the population, when viewed by age and by geography. Back-office data-handling jobs in financial services in Belfast are of limited use to many people in Moygashel.

I told you, I'm a businessman. I'm also a Mississippian, and an American! And I'm getting SICK and TIRED of the way us Mississippians are getting our views distorted by you newsmen and on the TV. So let's get this straight. We do NOT accept Jews, because they REJECT Christ! And their control over the International Banking Cartels are at the root of what we call Communism today. We do not accept Papists, because they bow to a Roman dictator! We do not accept Turks, Mongrels, Tartars, Orientals nor Negroes because we are here to protect Anglo-Saxon Democracy, and the American way!

Some people in Moygashel feel their identity is under threat from the British political powers to which they give allegiance in Belfast and London. They feel their version of the Imagined Community (as written about by Benedict Anderson and others) of Britishness is under threat. This threat manifests as distancing, being ignored, feeling condescended to, being unable to assert their power as they used to and as they feel entitled to.

Many people in Moygashel base their sense of identity on events in The Williamite Wars and on The 1689 Siege of Derry, where the catchphrase ‘No Surrender’ was first used. A further layer was added to this base when over 5 000 soldiers of the British Army’s Ulster Division lost their lives in two days killing at The Somme in 1916. 

Refusal to give in or compromise and willingness to accept sacrifice: these are core ethics likely to be strongly-felt among the Moygashel bonfire builders and the hundreds of people who attended its ignition ahead of police intervention.

The bonfire at Moygashel is a tragedy. 

Other incidents at bonfires add to the list of tragedies during this year’s festivities. Two houses and a garage were burned down, with adjacent bonfires implicated. Neighbours are made homeless, including an elderly couple in Greenisland. A man fell to his death from a bonfire in Braniel, East Belfast. Another man, now homeless, said the worst impact was the loss of his family history. 

There’s opportunity in all tragedies. One religious/faith community feels threatened, following a period of threats and physical violence. There is an opportunity for other religious/faith communities in Northern Ireland to stand with people in Moygashel, in a spirit of support for religious freedom, including for Muslims. While they have been absent from the public media on this matter, the hope is that they are active on the ground among their clergy, believers and neighbours. 

The Orange Order distances itself from bonfire builders, though they draw from a common source: the Williamite success in the war of rival British monarchs in 1689-1691 in Ireland. When this year’s Orange festivities are over senior members of The Orange Order and faith leaders of Christian Churches can present themselves to the people of Moygashel.

And listen.

They can attend to the people of Moygashel’s attempts to be heard and to create other options for making political statements, including fires in the tradition of the beach beacons used in the Williamite Wars.

One measure of a society, an imagined community, at peace with itself is its manner of dealing with its minorities of race, colour, religion and sexual orientation.

You must know how we all feel down here. We don't take to outsiders telling us how to live our lives. And I'm here to tell ya, our nigras were happy, till those beatnik college kids came down here stirrin' things up. Before that, there wasn't anybody complainin'.

Nobody dared.

Bonfires are a form of boundary marking. You gather round this fire and you are ‘us’.

Further away from the bonfire? You are ‘not us’.

Mississippi burning. Moygashel burning.

This can of worms only opens from the inside.

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Clips of dialogue, in Courier New Bold, edited from Mississippi Burning, (film, Alan Parker, 1988)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095647/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_mississippi

Short note on Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson (Verso, revised, 2016)

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/imagined-communities/summary

TWO CHRISTIANS AND A SCEPTIC AT EASTER

It makes for a fine family gathering at Easter: a small holiday camp in the north-west of England, between Blackpool and Preston, accessible by car from the city where the young ones live and by flight to Liverpool and a local taxi for the grandparents. 

The taxi driver is calm, able and an ardent Christian. Our conversation turns to Christianity when I push back against inappropriate remarks he makes on Islam, after comments on changes to his High Street. I suggest the changes might be more economic than religious. His neighbours change shopping habits from the high street to out-of-town malls and superstores. Many similar changes are driven, literally, by cars and the chimera of convenience. 

The driver reads about Christianity and Islam, including the Bible, the Koran and commentaries on the books in the Daily Mail and other aligned publications. He avers that God is Good and that humans are created in his image. I don’t raise the gender issue. I regret that. I ask if he means all humans and he answers ‘yes’. 

He takes the Genesis story as his starting point.When I ask who created the Serpent he says “God”. From there, we stumble through thickets of The Problem of Evil and the use of Free Will. I suggest putting Free Will in an image of God himself might have been a mistake. The driver ends by proposing capital punishment for Axel Rudakubana, the so-called Southport Killer, serving a long prison sentence for murdering three young girls. He says he would hang him. When I ask “would you tie the noose, throw the lever in the trapdoor, plunge home the poison-driver, fire the executioner’s gun?” he replies that he would. 

I mention John Walker, one of The Birmingham Six, released after 16 years wrongful imprisonment when found to be innocent of the IRA pub bombings that killed 21 people in Birmingham in 1974. I say that if the driver's view is taken, then John Walker, and many others, would be dead. He doesn’t respond.

I put it to him that he could write to Axel Rudakubana and offer him his love, as Jesus advised.

We part on good terms. Our family greets us and we settle into the Easter holiday accommodation.

Nanny, daughter and two grand-daughters go swimming the next day. I follow on my hired mobility scooter. I park up and hobble around on crutches, seeking a spot from which to view the family. I don’t manage it and I make my way back to the scooter. I am familiar with these scooters, as I use one at home and hire various models, when travelling.

It becomes clear that I can’t insert the key into the ignition, no matter which way I swivel it. A number of passersby check if I need help. I thank them and they move on. It’s obvious that I really do need assistance, when a man in gym shorts and tee-shirt, carrying a water bottle and a phone, stops. He tries the key. No luck.

I ask if he would phone the scooter hire company. There is a sticker with contact details on the handlebars. I tell him my phone is back at the accommodation. He phones and carries on a back-and-forth conversation with a woman from the scooter company. She asks him to describe the key. When he does, she says it’s not one of theirs. I box the pockets of my jacket and jeans. I find another set of very similar keys. One of them slots easily into the ignition, turns without a hitch, and illuminates the lights on the control panel.

Tears gather in my eyes.

A severe bout of respiratory illness, probably pneumonia, in February leaves me frail and hapless. Even more frail and hapless than from the crippling respiratory and mobility conditions that see me using a mobility scooter, a wheelchair and crutches.

I apologise to the man. I thank him. He invites me to thank Jesus. I laugh lightly, wondering if I am on an Easter Special. It’s Spy Wednesday of Holy Week in the Christian calendar. 

- You are my second Christian this week. 

He smiles and, just like my first Christian, he asks

- Are you a person of faith?

I repeat my earlier and regular answer to the question.

- Yes, I am a person of faith, but not of religious faith.

I tell him I believe in him.

He invites me to believe in Jesus, who, he says, loves me and found the keys. I suggest that he uncovered the keys, not Jesus. There is nothing mysterious about a heavily-medicated seventy one year old man, struggling with pain and disability, experiencing lapses of memory and mental acuity. I say 

- I love you, not Jesus.

He says that Jesus brought us together. I demur. I say the same could be said about contingency. Chance brought us together. It’s not a saviour or an open tomb. It does not offer grace, nor chocolate eggs. Good people like him happen along.

We part on good terms.

On Maundy Thursday, two girls and their grandparents enjoy a quiet meal. The girls’ parents have a ‘night off’. The older girl tells of her drama work at a club and at her primary school. She speaks about a recent show; a pastiche of scenes and songs from the musical Annie. Then she takes us through her school show, a live telling of incidents in the life and death of Jesus, as they take place on the days of Easter week.

She starts with the palm-strewn lanes of Jerusalem, with Jesus on a donkey. Step by step, she moves through the week and the narrative known to Christians as The Greatest Story Ever Told. She recounts the tale with relish and detail. She has the Roman Governor washing his hands, as the people call for Barabbas, not Jesus, to be released. She asks questions of herself, her grandparents and of the story: who? how come?

She tells about a supper and a betrayal: what does that mean? why? She gets her characters to the garden. She details a kiss on the cheek and offers that French and Spanish people do that, but not so much English and Irish people. People are different.

The little sister acts and plays in her own story, coming and going from the table and her half-empty plate, asserting contradictions: I finish. I hungry.

We get to the three men crucified: why three? She describes Jesus’ mother and other women. She describes the soldiers, one of whom she played in the school play. She gets us to the tomb, the empty tomb, the people amazed.

She is not amazed. She is enthralled and full of questions, as she is with many of the stories she hears. Her Nanny comments that if she remembers the geography and history stories she’ll be told at school, she’ll have no bother.

I am delighted. Stories are important to me. They are the structured imaginings with which I explain the world and my experiences to myself.

The storyteller leaves an empty plate and the table. She joins her sister at a jigsaw, until they bicker and the grandparents distract them with fruit and a biscuit. After all, they are human, in their own image. They suffer pain. They inflict pain. They salve pain. Pain unites them and us. Including the two men I met. 

I wish us well, as Easter marks brighter mornings, more heat and a Spring in our gloriously human steps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on3M7YWlewo

Film trailer: The Greatest Story Ever Told

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