I was there in ’96 when the IRA bombed the Arndale, but I was a mile or so away, safe from the blast. I still felt it, shuddering through the ground. Everyone where I was thought it was an earthquake. I was sixteen at the time, an impressionable age, I guess. I gave up shopping shortly after that. Kids at school started going on about the “fucking Irish,” like they knewwhat they were talking about. Half of them had Irish names, for Christ’s sake.
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My granddad used to refer to himself, with a strange mix of bitterness and pride, as “the last in a long line of Catholics.” One Christmas, after one too many whiskies, he launched into a verbal tirade against my mum, calling her a disappointment for rejecting his religion, and a scrounger and a whore for having all these kids. Over in Ireland, he said, people were raising large families because of the Pope. She was just doing it because she wanted a bigger house. And where were all the fathers? He apologised on Boxing Day. He was so sorry, he was in tears at breakfast. When he’d gone, I snuggled up to mymum on the sofa and asked her as tactfully as I could if any of what he said was true. “I fucking love you all, don’t I?” she said. “I love you more than I love myself.” That was certainly true. My granddad died shortly after that, and I wasn’t sad.
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